Jocko Podcast 207 with Kyle Carpenter, Medal of Honor Recipient. Live a Life Worth Fighting For

this is Joo podcast number 207 with Eko Charles and me Joo willink good evening Ekko good evening now on podcast 203 I had the honor of having on some members of kilo company 37 Marines I had on Corporal Kelly Miller Sergeant Wild Bill William Hampton First Sergeant John Ferg Ferguson and Lieutenant Colonel Trent Gibson and they came on the podcast to share the story of their brother in [Music] arms their fellow Marine Jason Dunham who sacrificed his own life by smothering a grenade to save Kelly Miller and Bill Hampton on April 14th 2004 and he died of his wounds eight days later on April 22nd 2004 and obviously that was an extremely hard podcast to record I know it was hard to listen to it was hard for them to recount their memories of [Music] Jason and of his life and of his death as well and it was hard for me to watch as their emotions came to the surface and to see the anguish in their faces and hear the sorrow in their voice as they spoke and it was also hard for me because I was thinking about Mikey Monsour because on September 29th 2006 in the city of aradi Iraq Mikey who was one of my guys in tasking at Bruiser at Seal Team 3 he also jumped on a grenade to save three of our teammates and he was also [Music] killed from this ultimate act of selflessness and both of those men posthumously received the Medal of Honor and the stories of Jason and Mikey were I mean they were definitely similar stories and what the men of 37 kilo company went through were similar to what we experienced in task unit Bruiser from the mour of our brothers to the writing of the award citation to the ceremony at the White House to the christening of US Navy warships one named the USS Jason Dunham and one named the USS Michael Monsour and there’s another similarity that’s there that that can’t be denied and that is that we all wish that we could have had one more one more conversation with these Heroes one more chance to tell them about our lives now to tell them that we are not wasting the gift that they have given us one more chance to talk and smile and laugh with them again one more chance to say thank you but we will not get that chance at least not in this life because even though we remember them they are gone and we can only imagine what they would say to us now where they would be how they would explain their actions and what kind of miracle could have allowed them to survive and to survive something like that it it absolutely would take a miracle or a miracle on top of a miracle on top of a miracle on top of a miracle to survive a grenade blast at Point Blank Range well fortunately miracles do sometimes happen and tonight on the podcast we have someone here with us that is the result of many miracles Miracles that unfolded after he did the same thing that Jason Dunham did the same thing that Mikey Monsour did he smothered a grenade with his body to save his friend his name is Kyle Carpenter and it is an honor and it is a miracle to have him here with us tonight Kyle thanks for coming on it’s awesome to meet you thanks brother you too and to say it’s a honor and privilege to be here would be an understatement so I do appreciate this opportunity yeah I that through the podcast you know and I I had you know one of my guys Mike Celli on and he’s one of the guys that Mikey Monsur saved and you know it’s just sitting there with the guys from kilo company and you just you’re just thinking the whole time that man if I could just have one more conversation with your bro you know just one more conversation and you know when I when I was reading your story I mean I’d obviously heard about your story but when I was reading about your story you know it’s like I I I I kept smiling to myself and saying man this is this is that chance you know this is that chance to talk to somebody that for all practical purposes there’s no possible way that you should survive there’s there’s just it just doesn’t make sense I mean the only that’s why I use the term miracle and I know you used in your book as well but to have you here sitting and being able to talk to you it’s it’s just uh it’s amazing it’s amazing to be able to sit here so thanks for making the journey and making the trip and coming out here and I just mentioned your book you got this book that just came out um it’s called you are worth it and you know whenever I have someone on I always kind of like to start I guess to start at the beginning you know kind kind figure out what people’s backgrounds were where they came from and you do a good job of that you know you actually you you’re second chapter in the book is called it starts at home and you go into your history sounds pretty it sounds like you’re pretty uh let’s just say an energetic kid yeah like a little 5-year-old Marine yeah you start off here uh my dad will tell tell you that I had more confidence than any little any little kid in history when I was still a toddler I insisted he draw Superman logo on my chest with a marker and not some weak washable marker that would come off in the bathtub no I had to be the man of steel impermanent marker and I wanted the logo redrawn every time the ink started to fade aside from my secret superhero identity I was exactly like every other little boy in Mississippi I was Fearless Restless Reckless and Relentless a tiny blonde ball of energy who climbed up leap from played on rolled in ran around or found a way to destroy whatever I possibly could and my dad and mom were thrilled about it truly from the start my parents Jim and Robin taught us to believe taught me to believe in myself of course they protected me and worried about me at times but they also made me believe that anything was possible they’ both grown up in wonderfully stable and loving homes that had also been a little bit sheltered my mom had set a goal to make sure her kids expanded their Horizons my dad said my dad made sure he didn’t just spend time with his kids but made quality time with them engaging with us in meaningful and deeply personal ways both of them hit their parenting goals squarely on the head so that’s a that sounds like you had an a Very ideal upbringing I did uh and it absolutely gave me the foundation that I needed to become the person that I wanted and needed to be and also I believe um played a huge part in that Foundation that allowed me to be the marine and the friend that I needed to and I’m so thankful and proud that I was in that moment and stepped up when I was needed but you know talking about that chapter of the book I was hesitant actually to to write so much about my parents how amazing they are and how much they did for me because I wrote this book to transcend all boundaries and um I wanted to write a book that anyone and everyone could pick up and understand but also take lessons from but with that said I didn’t want to shut anyone out either and I know uh that there are so many out there that were not as fortunate as me that were not born into that stable loving kind of textbook perfect home but as I thought about it and through the two years of writing um you I decided that hopefully I’m going to put it in there and hopefully it won’t turn anyone away if anything those that maybe didn’t get that example that don’t know not only how great of a parent you can be but also when those trials and tribulations come what you can make it through you know obviously everyone loves their kids wants to help them and and you know make them uh great but um you know I wanted to use my parents as an example um you know of of the hardships that you can make it through with your child and what you can battle through together you know what else is it’s interesting when you come at it from that angle cuz as I was reading this the thought goes into your brain right of like well oh he had this perfect childhood right no wonder he ended up good here’s the thing there’s kid after kid after kid in the world that have the most perfect situation that they grow up in and it turns out to backfire on him I mean what’s the difference the line between being a spoiled kid I mean the fact that you joined the Marine Corps right you had a nice upbringing you had no reason to to say oh I’m I’m I’m not I’m going to leave College I’m going to go in the Marine Corps I’m going to be a grunt in the Marine Corps like that’s there’s a fine line right with raising kids and I got four kids there’s a fine line between hey I’m supportive and I’m helping and I’m gonna and I’m gonna be there for them and turning them into spoiled brats and it seems like your parents found the place where that line existed and and didn’t go overboard but at the same time you know they they provided you with support does that make sense yeah absolutely that makes perfect sense and uh yeah I think uh all the way up until working at the chicken plant for two summers uh was about you know where my potentially being spoiled uh ended um but yeah you know I’m I could have written the entire book about my parents I’m so thankful that they’ve been there from the moment I was born and from the moment that I woke up again to this beautiful bonus round that I’m living now awesome uh continuing on with the book I desperately wanted siblings but that proved a particularly elusive goal marked with a lot of loss the hardest was a stillborn baby boy when I was four I’d been over the moon about getting a little brother and crushed when it didn’t happen but you can imagine how devastated my parents were to lose a child and feel completely powerless as it is happening has got to be one of life’s greatest agonies finally two months after my sixth birthday my mom gave birth to twin boys named they named price and Payton and I was smitten I could not imagine anything in the world more special than getting two siblings at once I could not have been prouder when I have three older kids and and when they when my youngest was so they were seven like 7 9 and 11 or something like that or 6 8 and 10 and we were we found out that my wife was pregnant we were having another kid and it was Halloween and we decided we were going to tell them you know Halloween then we can go out trick-or treating it’d be fun so we sit the kids down and we we say we’ve got some really exciting news for you all you you know you’re going to have another baby brother or sister and they action the oldest daughter literally stood up and started crying and ran to a room that made my middle daughter stand up and go to her room to start crying and then my son just started crying right there in the spot it was like we delivered the worsts the world I I was kind of saying well that was exactly what we were looking for what we expected I was hoping for the Kyle Carpenter reaction like Yay this is awesome but no that whole thing I don’t know what it was I I still haven’t quite figured it out I don’t know if they were jealous I think they might I think my oldest daughter who is very sensitive about like money and you know I was in the Navy we didn’t have a ton of money we lived in Southern California so don’t have the Navy is not a lot of money in Southern California I think she thought to herself we’re not going to be able to afford to eat so she freaked out and that just made the other kids freak out but um yeah awesome you know for for a kid though that’s a legitimate concern and I I’m might not be able to relate to that and I and we’ll get to it but you know after I was was injured at Walter Reed especially being a junior Marine that I had done one three Monon deployment if you want to call it that before I went to Afghanistan and you know you get these predeployment briefs but you know at least on the Marine Corps side of things at the time and hopefully this book helps kind of educate and maybe uh change things up a little bit as far as protocol goes but uh and he in these predeployment briefs it’s it’s kind of like they tell you okay well here’s what’s going to happen if you come back thankfully okay with your unit or here’s what is going to happen and how it’s going to go if you come back in a box and there’s not really that between so being ignorant on Military medicine especially that some of who were going to be down the road some of my best doctors that saved my life and my limbs uh and kept me here uh you know they were going to be wearing camouflage Air Force Army Navy doctors uh but to wake up and not know that military medicine world is out there uh along with the injuries disorientation and um the medication which probably was the the number one factor you know I uh it I had a extremely hard time trying to come out of the ICU fog and hallucinations thinking that you know my parents had lost everything had spent everything couldn’t provide those meals and food on the table for my brothers um and you know of course everything thankfully was covered CU I think it costs a little a little bit to put Humpty Dumpty back together again but uh yeah you know I think as a kid um you know for some reason you worry about those kind of uh crazy life situations but I was thinking that story is going to go a little bit better than it did yeah yeah and and you know what my daughter didn’t realiz is that an extra pack of ramen noodles didn’t cost that much all right so getting to you a little bit I was obsessed with any kind of physical challenge so Sports became a major part of my childhood aside from the birth of my brothers the thing I was most proud of was making the Brandon Allstars in Brandon Mississippi when I was in first grade it was a coach pitched baseball league and my dad was usually throwing the balls and then you start getting into football you and and I always have to say this so when I’m reading chunks of this book for everyone that’s listening I’m obviously not reading the whole entire book and there’s this is an unbelievable book all kinds of details in there great storytelling and I don’t know how much you thought about that Kyle as you wrote this but like just your story telling capability is great it’s a great story to read and so but I’m jumping around as I read this so you know you’re only getting part of it that’s why you have to buy the book you are worth it so here we go you’re getting you’re you’re into football now here we go finally as summer practices between my sophomore and Junior years came to a close obviously I’ve just chump jumped ahead um and the starting lineup was posted on the door of the football Fieldhouse there was my name Kyle Carpenter strong safety and what did you weigh at this point maybe 140 at the most I had done it I had accomplished the thing I had dedicated the last three years of my life to pursuing I was elting and I was all it was elating and it was also incredibly deflating we just learned that my family was moving to South Carolina in a matter of weeks so your dad worked in the poultry industry poultry industry and just like with a lot of the business world out there you move up do good things get promotions and sometimes that comes with moving around which uh every other time before that kind of moving across the southeast and gradually making it to South Carolina uh every other time before that was an adventure you know there’s always the the I guess nerves and kind of dread of going and walking into that class as the new kid especially in in elementary and middle school years but this time just um not only knowing that I was going to have to restart in a way halfway through high school but also I I high school football now in the grand schema life um isn’t a deal breaker by any means but at the time just having committed and devoted you know every ounce of myself you know it was either class or I was working towards that goal as a starter from 8th grade until 10th grade and the summer after 10th grade uh you know that was that that was hard on me just that in addition to knowing I was going to have to start over not only that but the school that I was starting over at was the first two-story high school I had ever seen I mean they had fake fake painted doors on the wall so all the you know dumb freshman would kind of walk towards those and you it was it was a massive school so you know 900 000 a class so that was daunting in itself but you know to have have a move right after seeing that strong safety posted on the door it was tough yeah you kind of went from you also kind of went from the small the big fish in the small pond or at least a mediumsized fish in a small pond into into being uh us tiny fish in a giant Pond this is what it felt like here going back to the book The reputation I’d worked so hard to cultivate with my coaches back in Savannah meant nothing here a guy who would always show up ready for practice and give 100% someone who didn’t get into F fights or get put on academic probation no one knew how hard I worked or how de or how dedicated I’d been over the past few years to develop as a leader basically no one at my new school knew my character it wasn’t anyone’s fault it was just the way the chips fell I was starting from scratch as a guy weighing 135 PBS trying out for football at one of the largest high schools in the state I’m rarely someone who gives up but at that moment I just couldn’t see the point it wasn’t worth it to me to continue making it my life’s mission to earn a starting spot on a team where none of the coaches even knew my name I’ve always been an optimist but that doesn’t mean you can’t be a realist too realistically I knew I would graduate before I ever saw the field earlier than the fourth quarter so I quit and the following months that decision and the following months following that decision remained to this day one of the lowest periods of my life I hadn’t just lost I had given up the opposite of who I was for the first time in my life I felt like I didn’t have a purpose yeah you know you said it’s it seems like no big deal um you know High School football or whatever this is one of the reasons that I I I’ve written a bunch of kids books one of the reasons that I wrote a bunch of kids books is because one day I was talking to my kids one of my kids about something and what I realized you know I was like in the military and we had Wars going on and I was worried about you know big things like that life and death and War and I was talking to one of my kids about something and I forget what it was but I realized that for a kid like what’s going on in their world is the biggest thing in the world it’s the biggest thing in the world and when you’re when you work that hard to play high school football and you make the starting team and all of a sudden you can’t even play anymore that’s your whole world that’s your whole world and that’s the situation you’re in and your dad noticed that and he recognized that there was an opportunity that there was a a a little 1A private school out in the middle of nowhere and he asked you if you wanted to go visit it and so you went out and checked out Wyman King Academy tiny K through 12 Christian School how small how small was that it’s like are we talking 25 kids in a class we’re talking three Lunch Ladies handmade lunch for every student K through 12 uh we um prepared the football fields the baseball fields we painted the lines We R the endzone we built the new football Fieldhouse uh we built the new weight room and did everything but probably cuz I was 135 lbs bring all the weights in so but no it was uh it was amazing and and just good small town genuine you know patriotic uh people and everyone you know there was there was uh truck Row in the endzone of the games where the grills would be set up and uh all the guys with um uh camouflage on and still turkey blood all over their pants would come and watch the game on Friday night and uh you know I remember one time and you know I’ve been in big Public Schools my whole life and you know everything from the uniforms to clear backpacks so I get to this school and and um and I I feel like I fit in right away and it was amazing but at the same time it was a very different world than what I had experienced and what I thought was was normal school and I remember one time it was uh we hadn’t even started the day we were kind of in a home room and this guy named Kirk comes in big old it had been turkey hunting that morning before school and uh had a big knife on him and it was just kind of like hey you know C you know you can’t have that here take it back out to your truck like oh yeah sorry I forgot I was turkey on this morning now was it you know time to start the day so it it was um a different experience but one that I’m forever uh thankful for uh at the time you know I was just um uh I guess you could say in such a bad place I just thought it was more of a you know why not than a oh I want to go check this out and I think it could be good for me you know but once I did I immediately felt welcomed and loved in that family and uh from day one I feel like I thrived and uh just again met some really amazing people that I still keep in touch with today and that still show me that that same amount of love and support as they did on that first day and it’s actually not in the book another example of how small it is uh you know and and through the writing you know in the contract we had 75 000 words but as we went along through the two years you know you really dive into deep thought and self-reflection and you kind of start branching off remembering different stories and and examples in the stories you’ve already given and uh we took out the ham sandwich story but my nickname to these three amazing lunch ladies was ham sandwich cuz sometimes in the morning I would I sneak in there in the back of the kitchen and make me a couple but if that tells you anything that’s how small it was like oh here comes ham sandwich again did you not get breakfast like yeah Sor right thanks for the two ham sandwiches I’ll pay you later put it put it on my tab did you did you transfer did you already start at the other big school and go there for a few weeks and then leave I did I went um the first semester of junior year okay and then I transferred I guess during Christmas break Christmas break so I spent a year and a half at King but it was a great year and a half yeah that’s awesome so so that meant you were going to show up with only one more year to play football as well correct okay you got a couple other cool things to mention in here you would get guest speakers would come in and you say this one who had the greatest impact me on me was a Vietnam veteran named CLE McClary am I saying that right yes while serving the Marines in 1968 CLE took heavy shrapnel from a grenade that cost him his left eye and his left arm at the elbow now he and his wife run a nonprofit focused on helping military families navigate the stresses and challenges of deployment and combat injuries at the time I wasn’t as taken with the fact that he had been a marine or wounded in battle as I was with the fact that he was someone who really understood how to live despite his advancing age and significant injuries he was still active engaged and dynamic if ever there was someone who had an excuse to throw in the towel it was CLE but he didn’t I was in awe of his spirit that that someone who had been through so much could create an incredible life not only in spite of but because of his experiences so that’s obviously something that stuck with you and then you had a football coach coach ditt was a great teacher and was really funny with the students but he was also Absolut he would also absolutely destroy you on the past on the practice field he knew how to push you beyond what you thought was possible so that you ended up capable of stuff you never thought you imagined you could do and here’s how you wrapped up I finished the season with over 2200 yards in offense more than 20 touchdowns and three kickoff returns for touchdowns it was a different kind of game from playing at a big school but I loved it in fact the year I was able to play for King Academy my senior year we went to the state championships you losing in the finals in double overtime dang it was a good one it was a really good one uh and and uh yeah I I mean I’m just I’m I’m thankful for that experience I wish I would have had longer um but you know better late than never so it was uh it was good yeah it’s it’s an interesting called decision to leave the big school and go to the little school that’s that’s a tough decision for people to make right and you know it’s one of those ones well I’m this close to being done forget about it but you you know you made that tough decision as a kid that’s a tough decision to make it was it was and maybe thankfully at the time I was uh so I guess bummed out that it helped me make that decision but also you know looking back over my life especially that time period and moving around like with all great and beautiful lessons in life a lot of times those come from the hardest and darkest of days and so now looking back and you know my dad has has struggled before and maybe still does a little with the fact that you know maybe moving me around so much and and you know the fact that I was unhappy during that uh influential uh time in my life that that kind of led me to join the military but as I told him and and as I truly feel and believe that moving around uh and and you know being forced to meet new people being forced in new uncomfortable situations circumstances now looking back I feel like all of those times uh condition maybe isn’t the right word but they prepared me for a life of service for a life of service which you know really means a life of the unknown and to join and I don’t think until you know you go through the things that you do through in a life of service you can fully compreh Rend or get mentally prepared or ready for uh so just to know uh hey I know what I know I know who I am I might not know what’s coming next but I’m going to confidently step forward anyway uh so I am thankful for all of those moves and and all of those good and bad days because I do believe it’ll it gave me essential tools uh to step into that un own and uh join the Marine Corps yeah you know going going referring back to your parents again here the example my parents set was instrumental in shaping who I became and how I engaged the world everything in our home was about developing character humility and resilience my parents focused on raising my brothers and me to be functional rational contributing members of society even as they let us enjoy amazing childhoods they always had an eye on what sort of adults they wanted us to become chore charts and church trips were a given we were expected to take responsible for responsibility for making the house run smoothly and we were encouraged to be involved with our community life was more about life was about more than what we could take out of it it was about making a difference not necessarily on some global scale but by improving someone’s day or helping to lift someone up those are like the values you were just talking about and then you say this and you you you kind of talked about this already but you say I realize there are many people out there who weren’t as Fort who weren’t fortunate enough to have the kind of stable loving parents that I was blessed with which which is why I don’t take my family for granted there’s something to be said for the so-called All-American childhood respect your father love your mama stick tight to your brothers always do your best always be honest and never talk back like any family ours wasn’t perfect but it absolutely gave me the foundation I needed to become the adult I wanted to be as the saying goes my parents gave me roots and wings and none of us had any idea how important both those gifts would prove to be I’d actually never heard that term before roots and wings but that’s a good one that’s a good little dichotomy there you know give him roots and wings the other thing that I that is awesome about this it’s kind of like what I was talking about earlier here you are from this you know uh picturesque family of love and support and yet you still were raised in a way that you were willing to you know to step up and make a sacrifice and I’m not talking about you know jumping on I’m just talking about joining the Marine Corps just that right there you know there’s I guess I guess what I’m thinking about is the stereotypical spoiled kid that’s never going to do anything like that then it doesn’t have to be that way right and the other the other thing I like about this is respect your respect your father love your mama stick tight to your brothers always do your best always be honest never talk back there’s kids that there’s kids that look at a kid like that and they think oh that that kid’s a a wimp or that kid’s a you know what’s the word I’m looking for that kid’s you know a goodie two shoes s a square something like that and what you’re proof that that’s wrong actually you know that this that you can be raised that way and you can be tough as Nails cuz I think the reputation of someone that would say those things let me put you this way I got a 16-year-old son he he wouldn’t say those things cuz he’d think oh I don’t want my friends to think I’m you know soft I’m you know that’s the way it is you know he wouldn’t say love your mama maybe he would a little bit but you know it kind of sounds like oh this person’s just a a square a goodie two shoes and it’s like oh guess what and you know I I I’ve actually explained this to people before cuz you know in in the military we get people from every background in life every different background in life everything kids from the ghetto kids from the hood kids from the farm and here’s the deal kids from good families kids from no families kids that don’t have a family at all and they all end up in the military and it’s you still even with all those diverse backgrounds it’s hard to predict what a person’s actually going to be like what what what that person is actually going to be like and you know you meet some kid from the hood and versus some kid from a farm somewhere versus some kid that went to a private school his whole life and you know had a fantasy about being in the Seal team so he enlisted even though his dad you know has 10 houses but that’s what he does he and you just can’t tell what that person’s character is going to be like based on how they were raised that’s that’s just the way it is I don’t know if you noticed that but absolutely absolutely from every background and you get you might have a rich kid that’s a total loser in your team or you might have a rich kid that’s great I had a guy who was he was wealthy Beyond wealthy right like you he had more money his family had more money than you than a family could ever need in 20 Generations like we’re talking generational wealth and I didn’t know it he was he was in there he’s a hard somebody asked me about him they said hey what do you think of this guy and I said oh he’s he’s great he’s you know he hard worker he’s great new guy he’s putting out he’s making stuff happen and they go isn’t it weird and I was like isn’t it what weird and they said isn’t it just so weird that he’s like that and I said that he’s like what why is it weird and they said well you know what his last name is right and I said yeah but I didn’t connect the last name with the last name and it turns out yeah they said this guy he he’s got unlimited money basically and I never would have known it in a million years cuz he was just a hard working head down guy that was had enlisted in the dang SEAL Teams that’s awesome and and you would never know that so that’s what I think this this calls out to me you know is that this type of attitude that gets frowned upon and I guess that’s a little bit of what you know when you were saying you don’t even know if you want to write about this stuff that’s what I’m getting at like you saying well I don’t know if I’m right about this cuz it’s a little bit but some people might you know not connect with it it’s like hey it’s okay you should connect with it you can you should what people should do is look at the positive look at the positive things behind this you know that’s what I think and I think it’s awesome that you did write about it and what did you say here you actually you you that’s what you said that there’s something to be said for it right cool agree that’s amazing that you took took that from it and I appreciate you telling me this because and I’ve never talked about this before but I always just to myself in my head battle with the classic you know the nice guys finish last argument because for my entire life my mom has always said you know your your uh biggest weakness and this was not in a negative way but more of just just wanting to look out for me you know being too trusting of people being too nice um and so you know uh kind of play off this you know should I be a little more hardcore a little more aggressive a little more not me uh because you know do I need to be in this world but uh you know I’ve I believe learn and realize over time that uh and this is just me personally but um you know I I I do uh you know deeply care about people uh and you know I I do feel like maybe I am a little too nice at times but um you know for you know that one time every once in a while that I might get walked all over you know there’s a hundred times s that I’m thankful and um and proud of myself for you know always you know really striving to treat every single person no matter what the circumstance with love and respect and now you know uh I’m starting to get a little bit of gray just turned 30 looking over this long you know salty life I’ve had uh looking back you know I do feel like now I’m finally starting to get to a place where looking back I do realize that um it’s not a bad thing at all to you know be uh if you want to say soft or uh square or you know whatever it is and you know when the times as a Marine in Afghanistan uh when I’ve needed to be when I was called upon when that was appropriate for that situation and that mission I feel like uh going into a room first with the saw you know kicking in the door having a couple hand grenades on uh on my on my plate carrier you know I uh that was me at that time but now I do feel like I’ve gotten it as far as I have in life and I’ve done as well as I have obviously with the amazing support team and the people that picked me up when I stumbled you know but um aside from that I do feel like uh my softness I guess has got me to an incredible place in life you know there’s there’s a a saying which I was thinking of as you were talking about that the saying is and I know you’ve heard it before CU I know I have the saying is don’t mistake kindness for weakness and if you think about why that saying exists that saying exists for two reasons one because people do mistake kindness for weakness people see someone that’s nice and kind and they think oh that person’s a pushover so that’s one reason that that statement exists the other reason that that statement exists is they’re saying don’t do that because it’s a mistake because kindness is not weakness in fact kindness takes strength and when you have that person that has that internal fortitude and they have the the the self assurance that they don’t need to you know what makes someone walk around with their chest you know P pushed out acting like they’re tough most of the time those tough guys are acting like they’re tough because they’re insecure about something that that’s what’s going on and so when people actually have when people are kind it’s because they’re secure I can tell you like I I train Jiu-Jitsu I’m way nicer I I you know I started training Jiu-Jitsu when I was I started training when I was 20 something I became nicer and nicer and nicer the more I trained Jiu-Jitsu because I realized oh yeah like I don’t need to act like a tough guy I don’t need to walk around like I’m some intimidating no it’s like oh I know how to fight if somebody wants to bother me then I can handle it but I really don’t want to cuz I don’t need to right so I think that idea of mistaking kindness for weakness is there there’s a reason why that term gets said and there’s a reason why you you best heed that and the other thing is you know when you just talked about well I’ll say this kindness may have a negative impact in the short term sometimes right I think that’s what you’re talking about like hey sometimes oh like oh this person kind of got what they wanted in that immediate shortterm thing right you know somebody oh here’s you know somebody cut in front of the line and instead of being like hey you know go to the back line it’s like uh you know what I’m not going to say anything it’s fine and you know I think to myself well that person is probably going to be somewhere you who knows what they’ve got going on in their life whatever they got kids or whatever so fine they they might win in that situation right there but over the long term being kind to people and helping people out I mean look at the support network that you just talked about those people were supporting you obviously they’re doing it because they’re good people but they’re also doing it because you’re a good person you you know that little extra effort when they say hey this guy’s a good human being this guy said hi to me this guy was nice to me this guy didn’t flip out when I made a mistake like okay the that long term that kindness is going to win every single time EV longterm like I said short term there’s going to be some some jerk that’s going to walk around and push around it’s like okay everyone just saw what just happened and when you come back here into the store or into the situation and you want a little extra help from somebody it’s just you’re not going to get what you want you know I I used to I was the Admiral’s aid for a while and I used to have to book US Travel yeah no pressure no pressure and just s just send me back to Iraq oh man yeah I will believe not logistical plane tickets I would gone back to Iraq in a heartbeat but you know he’s a great guy a nice guy but you know you want to take care of the boss this a guy that’s in charge of all the seals and I want to make his life easy so I would be booking travel and you know we’d get bad seats like on an aircraft and I would call up the the dang help desk of delta or of America or whoever whatever Airline and I would spend at least the first like two minutes of saying hey how you do you know they’d say how can I help you and I’d say oh how you doing I’m just setting up some travel and I’d make some little small talk and I’d be nice to him and I guarantee you like the chances of success when you were just nice to people just just just be nice to them and they’d say well you know the First Response be like no the seats are all booked I’m like I’d say you know ah wow is there anything I could do because I got my B I don’t I usually complain about my boss that’s how I would connect with him I’d say you know my boss is gonna I work for this guy and he’s can be a bit harsh which was actually not true so I tell a little white lie they could relate yeah they can relate to it and as soon as I was as soon as they related to me as like someone that was just a working nug like they were they’d say ah you know what I can get you an upgrade or hey let me get you a window or whatever and they just take care of me just by being nice you know whereas I guarantee you you get on the phone with someone at an airline and you start saying look I booked these seats two weeks ago you need to give me the seat I want there’s no possible you’re accidentally on the next flight you’re not even on that one exactly not window not aisle you’re on the next one you’re the middle seat 47th row you’re in the car coat V so yeah but you know that’s uh uh you’re exactly right man I couldn’t have said it better and with all that said uh I always kind of forget like you know the biggest piece of this and you know I don’t after getting hit with a grenade you know it’s it’s okay if people uh think I’m nice I feel like hopefully that in itself gives me a little bit of street cred you know yeah yeah that gives you some credit I guess uh I I’m G to hammer on your parents a little bit more well not hammer on them but bring them up a little bit more my parents did not believe in shortcuts and I always claimed I believe the same thing until I was 18 and my dad got me a job at the chicken processing plant where he worked I figured I would get some kind of an Airman boy starting the coffee in the mornings maybe filling some paperwork or answering phones in the air conditioned office dad didn’t pull any strings though and I was not the boss’s son I was Kyle the new hire and you go into that you know it’s obviously it’s it’s real hard work real hard work very hard work um and this is this is what you get out of it this is again looking at life of what can I learn and you know you were saying earlier that all these different situations that you’ve been in that’s what prepare you for the future and this is one of them as awful as I thought that job was I developed a whole new appreciation not only for the value but also the importance of hard work it was sobering for me to realize firsthand how many hardworking people do a job that allows us to grab food at a store without giving a second thought to how it got there so you’re you’re you’re learning about work you know this is this is what it is and also learning to appreciate once again you know when we talk about being raised in a sheltered situation you know that’s that’s what that is you don’t understand what goes into that chicken patty that’s coming onto your plate night you know we got a factory up in Maine and there’s where we make clothes you know and you people don’t realize oh somebody somebody made that somebody swed that you know me people you know Stitch their fingers and injure themselves just trying to make a pair of jeans or the time away from their families of course it’s a job but still yeah there’s there’s there’s real sacrifices out there in the world and it’s and that’s what America’s made of by the way that’s what America is it’s hardworking people that put chicken patties on your plate and put a pair of jeans in your drawer and then you also start getting some leadership skills here I also gained an important an important Mentor in my supervisor Rodney Taylor he was in charge of of Sanitation for the plant and a leader like none I had met before he was rough around the edges and authentic he rolled up his sleeves and worked alongside his team whenever an extra set of hands was needed he wasn’t above Grime or heart hard work since workers at the plant were from various walks of life he learned to relate to his people in order to be able to communicate effectively with them rather than getting frustrated at the differences in everyone’s backgrounds he believed that his workers would respect him more if he was able to connect with them directly he also believed that they would do their job their own job more efficiently if they weren’t afraid to ask him for clarification that’s little decentralized command you know hey boss why are we doing this can you explain this to me yeah oh absolutely and by the way I’ll communicate to you in a way that’s respectful that you’ll understand that you can relate to these are these are really good lesson learns from the chicken factory yeah and uh also two more things uh he had this U guy that worked under him kind of his right-hand man and I although I did see him get out get dirty you know get down on his hands and knees work show us how to do certain things and supervise for every one time he left his office you know that guy his right-hand man came in 15 20 times a day and so now after earning that title becoming a Marine seeing how the Marine Corps military is as far as effective communication and delegating I see what was going on there now and also a big uh portion of the workforce at that uh chicken factory was from the Hispanic community mexican-americans and uh after he got that position he would bring his workers in while he was working on learning Spanish himself bringing him in all day just asking him questions you know how do you conjugate this how do you say this and he got to where he was completely fluent and he did that now I realize because he needed the most effective communication he didn’t need anything he couldn’t afford to have anything Lost in Translation just because you know and to learn a second language I that’s no joke uh of course he could have got you know his right-hand man in there got you know any number of people out of the plant to help him out with that but he wanted to do that he wanted to take ownership of that position and those under him and so uh through that and and just those simple lessons and him telling me just stories which now don’t seem anywhere near as uh crazy but stories from his service and many of them were um but just you know things that unless you enter our world um you know on the other side of it our not only powerful but incredible to listen to to think about to try to even though I don’t think you’re effectively can but to try to you know visualize or put yourself in those situations like damn you jumped out of a plane and broke your leg and picked your shoot up and kept you know running to your objective like what are you talking about right now but just things like that that his leadership along with those stories of um of you know perseverance and just aggressiveness and determination all of that you know Together made me not only realize what a leader could be uh but also um uh you know planted that seed started that fire and kind of gave gave me that burning of of of knowing that there is more out there and and seeing what maybe with hard work and dedication I could become not him specifically but just how he carried himself and the the way he you know even as sanitation supervisor at a poultry processing facility you know that leadership that he brought every day and how all of those under him were not only structured but extremely effective you know I never I hung out in the office a lot probably because I got so many cool stories but you know I never and maybe they wouldn’t have come in and reprimanded him or talked to him about business in front of me anyway but you know I always heard about issues with QA with you know go down the list of all the pieces that help make this company but it was never hey we need to start from the beginning sanitize the plant again everybody knew what they were doing how to do it and they knew that they worked hard and did it right and had that effective communication uh that everyone was going to not only complete the mission but hopefully get out of there at a uh a decent time but were you conscious of these things as it was happening or is this you look back and you go wow I learned this there and I learned this there or at the time were you saying hey this guy’s a good leader uh definitely at the time but I think like with most things I realize a lot more now looking back than I did at the time but I knew that uh it was special and different and it was unique what I was experiencing and learning at that time and he was prior military Marine Corps oh dang yeah okay yeah so now we start putting the pieces together also where the uh most creative swear I’ve ever heard comes into play so little shocking to your ears yeah my little baby 18y old ears yeah that’s awesome some people can do it pretty well and you can definitely get a good background in in Creative swearing in the United States Marine Corps I was impressed and yes you can he had a PhD I think I’m just uh you know maybe a bachelor’s or Master’s level but uh uh I never swore in front of my kids but I would take my son to training sites when I was training guys in the teams and platoon and and I think the first time he listened to me give a debrief to a seal platoon his eyes were as big as saucer plates man cuz I you know you start running away crying like he did when he felt like he’s getting a new brother you know he thought that was he was like wow that that must have been some serious talk right there you could see the look on his face it was pretty funny yeah but just like we were talking about you know there’s a time and place for everything yep yep yeah even my platoon commanders or guys at work for me be like they’ come over to my house and I’d never swear in my house you know not never front swear in front of my kids and and and they’d come over and they’d be like how do you do that and I just you know just like no can’t swear in front you can’t have your kids running around CU your kids will imitate you and you can’t have that so so um you start getting done with you know high school and you start looking at college and and that’s sort of uh the expected path but your your senior year was what 2007 is that when you graduated uh 20 8 2008 so we’re talking the war is on I mean it’s on and well you say this in here in the book around the world terrorist activity was increasing from the London someway bombings in 2005 that killed 52 people and wounded about almost 700 to the Mumbai train bombings in 2006 that killed nearly 2 people and injured more than 800 every time I turned on the news it seemed like the world was in chaos is awful and I believe should be a last resort but sometimes it can be the only way to restore some kind of order and help those in need it seemed to me that the United States military had a mission to do exactly that and I fit the bill of someone who could contribute to that effort young healthy fit willing to be challenged and eager to be part of something bigger than myself it was that last part that affected me the most as I considered what my life might look like if I took took a different path I found myself increasingly disillusioned with the traditional expected path the more I looked around at colleges the more I detached and began to feel the more detached I began to feel from the whole experience I could definitely see the appeal for many people but it wasn’t where I felt I needed to be at that point in my life I turned 19 in October and had been sitting in classrooms my entire life there were some major events in the course of human history going on in the world at that time I wanted to get out and do something so you start thinking about it um and you talk about it with your parents and that how was that your mom wasn’t too stoked on that was she ah that was uh a difficult to say the least part of my journey and uh you know to for a couple of months after I had initially kind of broke the news on what I was really thinking about and considering uh like you said we were in a time of twoo um serious uh conflicts and who knows where things were going to go from there with all of of these terrible and and just unreal things happening around the world and for a couple of months you know to to see my mom in the morning and I dreaded walking into the living room and seeing her eyes red and swollen and knowing that she had been you know crying through the night to herself because she was so scared and so concerned for if I was going to do this you know at the time I think she was thinking hopefully not but if I was going to do this knowing that her son her oldest son could be put In Harm’s Way uh or killed but you know after a couple of months I sat them down and uh you know yes I agreed that one day I was going to get my degree I was going to go back to school that that was a priority but that was a priority that I could complete at that moment or 30 years down the road you know I know a lot of people say that and then you they eventually don’t go and just kind of the classic I’m going to do this and then it doesn’t really work out for whatever reason but that was kind of secondary I sat him down one day and and when I told them and after after I had obviously took the time to think self-reflect and and truly uh decide if this is not only what’s right for me but what’s meant for me when I decided that and I sat him down and I told them this is not just what I want to do with my life but this is what I need to do and I have to do and you know not only do I feel called to do this but um you know no matter what happens this is my decision and this is the path at least for now that that deep down inside I I need for myself you know when I told them that they’ve always loved and supported me but in that moment as tough as it was you they gave me a hug and and from that moment on they were serving with me and they’ve always been again they’ve always always supported me but um I guess uh that moment that conversation and them hearing that I believed it was my purpose I think that ended the period and maybe denial is not the right word but the period of oh well maybe he’s just thinking this is cool or a phase just a phase yeah it’s just a phase Mom did you did your mom or dad have any military experience either themselves or with their parents no well no one in my family except for my mom’s dad who unfortunately died when I was very young so I think I had one picture with him and I definitely don’t remember any conversations was he a career military guy uh he was Navy guy okay but uh yeah I think he spent uh it wasn’t just you know a four-year term he’s he spent some significant time in it seems to me like if in many cases it would be harder for parents that don’t like if my if your kid joined the military or my kid joined the military it’d be like oh okay I know what he’s doing I know he’s getting into I know what it’s like I know what it’s going you know you know what’s going to happen the unknown of just thinking cuz what let’s face what Hollywood can portray the military to be like is a lot different from what the military really is yeah and not parent friendly most of the time yeah absolutely absolutely and even you know some people they think that you’re they think that 20 years in the military is 20 years in boot camp that’s what they think they think it’s 20 years of people yelling and screaming at you and it’s like no that’s 13 weeks right or whatever it’s a very short period of time and then you become a responsible human being that’s doing stuff but and that and also I mean the chances of going to war the chances of being on the front lines the chances of being an actual direct combat and then the chances of getting actually hurt wounded or killed are are are relatively small compared to what it looks like in a Hollywood movie you know in a Hollywood movie it’s like everyone’s going to fight everyone’s going to war everyone’s getting blown up it’s like that’s what happens in the movie it’s not like that in the real military so I’ve had plenty people ask me about that and and yet the bottom line is the other side of the spectrum is people think oh well that will never happen to me but I’ll go in it’s like no this is what happens when you do join the military and you put your name on that line that means you have the possibility of this happening you know you could you could be there you could you could go to war you could fight you could get wounded you could get killed that’s what the that’s that’s in the that is that is one of the things that can happen without question and I feel like if that is a statement that you say maybe you’re not at the right place to sign on that dotted line yeah I’ve I’ve told many young aspiring seals oh I want to be in the SEAL Teams and you know they’ll start asking me questions about you know the workouts and the you know that kind of thing and I’m like you don’t join the SEAL Teams to work out you can work out at the gym you can work out at 24-Hour Fitness when you when you join the SEAL Teams what you’re joining the SEAL Teams to do is kill people and then when you’re killing people there’s going to be people that are trying to kill you and by the way sometimes they do they could kill you they could kill your friends and they’re not going to care about your six-pack and your and your workout plan no no um that’s amazing that people come to you and and you know Aspire um to be something that you’ve accomplished but how many times have you heard I want to be a seal oh yeah yeah definitely a lot of times and and I was just saying that yesterday um you know it’s the bottom line is most people quit yeah 80% of people quit and that number really hasn’t changed so it’s cool you want to do it but how bad do you want to do it you know how bad do you want to do it is the question then do you have the intestinal fortitude did you have the mindset going into it and again I don’t care where you’re from I don’t care what background you’re from because I’ve seen every different type of person you can imagine make it through training and I’ve seen every different type of person you can imagine quit through the training Champion wrestlers Champion athletes quitting you know ivy league people quitting you just don’t know and then you get some kid from a farm in Iowa that makes it you know and you’re like number one in the and the reason I say that’s surprising isn’t cuz he’s farming a farm in Iowa but if you grow up on a farm in Iowa there’s a decent chance you’ve never seen the ocean before and here you’re going to be a seal so yeah so yeah um it’s definitely something to think about and I guess what I’m saying is from your mom’s perspective there’s two Wars going on and you know did you tell me you wanted to join the Marine Corps out of the gate did you go straight hey I’m going to the Marine Corps yeah unfortunately that probably uh didn’t help the did tell be infantry uh I didn’t and oh man so I definitely didn’t put this in the book but you know I always try to be open and honest no matter what the situation and uh and kids I don’t recommend lying to your parents but I just couldn’t I couldn’t hit them with two hay makers in a row so I I pulled the I was I was military police to uh to start out and then eased them into it after boo Camp not really eased them at all but you know they found out uh after a little bit of time to digest just the Marine Corps piece of it um does do you get a choice of an mos in the Marine Corps now when I was a kid you joined the Marine Corps really well you joined the Marine Corps and then you got whatever assignment you were going to get everything was open contract as far as I could tell yeah and again man I was I’m not exactly smart now when I was 18 I was even Dumber but you know I I remember talking to Marine Corps recruiter and it was like you know I want to be a I want to be a machine gunner you know and he’s like well you know you join the Marine Corp everyone’s a Rifleman the Marine Corps okay well I want to be a machine gunner well you might be but you know you need to join the Marine Corps and I never got an answer that made sense and uh and the impression I got was you joined the Marine Corps and then you got assigned whatever you’re going to get assigned I think later on they started saying okay we need to start allowing people to have some say over where they end up but thankfully things have changed yeah good yeah so you so did you did you actually ever have military police as your MOS or was that just fabricated completely uh and I hate to use the word lying yeah yeah no uh not definitely not officially actually but uh I did um you know cuz nothing is really official until you go and and raise your right hand and all the paperwork is official uh so it was what I was going for for a few months but uh as I thought about it you know if I was going to do this I was going to fully commit and I wasn’t you know the most important thing was was earning that title that eagle globe and anchor and becoming a Marine um but you know what good is that if I’m not being true to myself yeah yeah you have a section in here on on being true to yourself you say in coming months and years I would learn what an essential part of the Marine Corps leadership is keeping one’s word your fellow Marines have to be able to trust you completely and you them each Marine has to know that everyone else will keep their word otherwise you can’t stay focused on the right things even more basic than that however seeing your promises through is a reflection of your character and integrity and an essential part of Integrity is respecting yourself enough to defend and follow through on your personal convictions and that’s what this was I mean this was a personal conviction of yours that you were going to move forward with so you so when you enlisted when you raised your right hand did you have infantry 0311 infantry I did get some yep uh I can never resist getting a little bit of boot camp activity here back to the book as you near the Gate of Paris Island the bus driver tells you to put your head between your legs then you ride with your head down until the bus stops and the doors open they do this so that if you try and run away while at boot camp you won’t know which direction the only exit is it sounds crazy but it also makes sense given what’s coming next it’s got to be a universal feeling for every Marine I’ve ever talked to anyway when that when that J door is jerked open on the bus and you step out onto the famous yellow Footprints as a new recruit you are hit with a mixture of thoughts is it real what’s going on what have I done oh oh no this is the beginning of a four-year obligation that I can’t get out of I I know I absolutely had those feelings at first but I also was determined that this was what I was supposed to be doing so I resolved not to let anything get to me easier said than done at Marine Corps boot camp so there you go you’re getting that you’re getting the classic Marine Corps it’s I mean how many times have you seen Full Metal Jacket prior to this uh uh crazy answer I had not oh my I know God that’s crazy had you seen any boot camp stuff may maybe for the best uh no I had you ever seen a rated R movie before I had but you know I think uh I it didn’t matter to me to do the research because it didn’t matter what was going to be put in front of me or what I was going to be put up against or experience and so my mindset going into boot camp what well you know I joined the military like we said to commit devote my life life and purpose and now my body to something greater than myself or anyone individual I joined the Marine Corps growing up I always welcomed and thrived on that challenge and so you know I knew my limits at that point and up to that point in my life but I joined the Marine Corp specifically because I wanted something that Not only would push me past those limits that I knew about myself but would make me really look deep down inside myself to discover not only how far I could go and how hard I could push myself but who I could become and the Marine I could become and so you know with that said after a little context I didn’t do too much research yeah I think I had seen one or two rated R movies uh with Mom’s permission but uh you know I just thought about it as hey I don’t think any amount of research can prepare me for what I’m about to the Endeavor I’m about to to take on and knowing that and that there was really no point and even trying to know or prepare my mindset was just I’m going to do this I’m going to fully commit no matter what happens I made a vow to myself that I would never quit and you know I even though I couldn’t prepare or visualize what was coming I just was always thinking to myself okay when those moments do come the inevitable moments where uh I want to quit or I feel like I’m at those limits that I just I can’t get past I just thought okay in those moments you know right now remember remind yourself how you felt right now before you went in the how special this is to you how how much this means to you your purpose of wanting nothing more than to earn that eagle globe and anchor and you know people are probably like oh well why are you having to remind yourself of that you obviously already know that but as we all know in this room in those moments without remembering those things and reminding yourself and self-reflecting about those things that’s why I think it’s easy to well not easy but it allows you to hang up that towel or ring the bell and so um it was not more of specifics that were coming my way but just thinking about when those things that I couldn’t even imagine at the time when they do come how am I going to handle it how do I want to handle it and how can I learn and become better and try and strive to become the best version of myself I’ll tell you what so you were what 19 years old yes I was 18 when I joined the Navy and you were about 5 000 times more introspective and thoughtful than I ever was like I’m sitting here listening to you uh you just said something like uh the things that I how can I imagine the things I can’t imagine I couldn’t even imagine anything I was just like so dumb uh we you know you heard that saying if you’re going to be stupid you got to be tough that was written about me I was like oh well I’m going in the SEAL Teams that’s what I’m going to do what am I going to do to get ready I don’t know they run I’m going to run they swim I’m going to swim I’m going to show up there I’m not going to quit what you know I mean I just had so such they say that that part of your brain isn’t fully developed until you’re like 25 maybe yours was a little bit earlier maybe mine was a little bit later cuz you were way more introspective than I ever was I was like a knuckle dragger and I you know and even when you said research you’re like you know I didn’t do any research I didn’t do I wasn’t I didn’t watch Full Metal Jacket to do research I don’t think I ever researched anything until I was like 30 you know I just it was a movie and I said oh that looks you know this is a cool war movie I watched every war movie I could possibly watch and and that opening scene of the opening scene which is 45 minutes long of Full Metal Jacket it in my mind it would I would think oh if you saw that you’d know what was coming right you’d know like okay these guys are going yell and scream this is blah blah blah and and you you just you didn’t do any of that uh but you had these incredibly introspective thoughts about what could happen if these situ I’m I’m like sitting here baffled that I was able to accomplish anything because I never thought through any of it to that level it’s crazy that’s good man cuz you know uh Marines aren’t known for being very smart or intelligent so thankful I can hold it down somebody put a a meme up of it said happy birthday Marine Corps and it had a picture of a 240 Golf and then four and it said it had a picture of the 240 Golf and it said plus and had four crayons and it said you’re this many today I was like yeah that’s that’s pretty funny good good grunt humor oh yeah um you got a couple things about about leadership and obviously I talk about leadership all the time and you got this in the book like any successful and efficient organization the Marine Corps emphasizes leadership at the foundational level with every Marine trained and ready to take over the job above them if the situation calls for it this appealed to me as being a part of the military the discipline that shapes recruits into leaders obviously the way the Marine Corps does it is not the most Pleasant approach but it has a remarkable success rate then you talk about this I was honored to be named a squad leader early on and hold that position through graduation if the dis decide you have earned the right to stay in that role and you graduate as a squad leader you will leave boot camp at the rank of private first class rather than private it is an honor but it does come with its drawbacks you help maintain order but you also have to share the punishment with anyone in your squad who needs to be disciplined if one of your guys is told the ass to do pull up push-ups you have to be there doing them right alongside him that was one of the best lessons in leadership the Marine Corps taught me a true leader is not someone who keeps the eles separate from the people they lead he or she is right in the middle of what the team is going through experiencing the lows as well as the highs with everyone else and you go on here there were times when I got in trouble for something that one of my squad members had or had not done and I had to be willing to accept that ultimately the responsibility for the execution of any order came back to me since I had been trusted with the job of seeing it through and you’re getting that in Marine Corps boot camp that is so legit so legit and it’s something you know I mean obviously I wrote a book called Extreme ownership which means that you know when you’re in a leadership position you’re responsible for everything that happens 100% And and they’re teaching you this with simple tool to teach you it’s called push-ups yeah you take the words right out of my mouth and you made that connection though that’s that’s what I find pretty amazing about you that you’re making these connections see for me when I look back at my career I see where I learned things but I learned them more like a dog learns right like I learned like oh you know if I want this to happen I need to do that like I don’t you know your dog isn’t saying your dog isn’t philosophizing about how to get another treat right they’re just performing an AC cuz it worked that’s kind of how I learned when I look back at my career you know I I had a bad leader and I’d see what they did and I’d say oh that doesn’t work good I’m not going to do that then I’d have a good leader and say oh that worked good I’m going to do that kind of like a dog getting trained that’s how I felt and yet it seems like you were actually connecting legitimate leadership principles even at that young age even when you were in the chicken factory you were making that happen that’s pretty impressive man thanks man I wish I would have pulled that off you’re making me like feel like kind of smart right now I don’t know what to think uh going on here by the time we got to The Crucible the grueling 54-hour culminating event that caps off your time at boot camp our platoon was one unit that felt as if we were going to live or die together every obstacle in The Crucible is named for a different Marine who is awarded the Medal of Honor part of the experience is learning their stories of bravery and loyalty honoring the history of which we are all about to become a part as newly minted Marines the Marine corps’s motto is Seer Fidelis meaning always faithful I wanted to be a leader who was always faithful to the people with whom I was serving I paid special attention to the each to the story of each Medal of Honor recipient as the DI recounted them as we moved through The Crucible it felt profound sacred and Monumental I wanted to understand what made a great Marine that was also the reason why when it started raining just 3 hours into my Crucible my feet quickly blistered beyond recognition I decided to hike the 10 miles back to the barracks anyways because my feet were bleeding so badly I was offered a ride in the medical van at the end of the second day but I refused to take it why are you hiking on your tiptoes recruit the DI yelled at me but I was not going to take the easy way out I was going to stay with my platoon no matter how much pain I was in you end the final hike as the sun is coming up at the parade deck in front of the EO gima Memorial it is there that you are handed your eagle globe and anchor Insignia or EGA as it is affectionately called they place the EGA in your left hand and shake your right at that moment you’ve officially earned the title Marine I got chills still that’s that’s new relatively new that you get your e eagle globe and anchor after The Crucible in boot camp how many weeks into boot camp is it uh you’re there a total of about 13 and A2 weeks and The Crucible happens a little less than a week before you leave so about 12 weeks so you’re right there right there at the end of it um yeah that’s that’s that’s powerful and it actually stepped up a little bit here you go to Family Day you have the graduation ceremony and then this happens it was a relief to know that boot camp was over but I broke into a cold sweat when di drill instructor Billingsley pulled me aside and asked to talk to me alone for a minute behind the racks in the squad Bay Carpenter he said where’s your EG I retrieved my EGA from my cover and brought it to him he took off his drill instructor hat and his own Insignia and said here I want you to have this he said he saw something special in me and that he respected my determination to complete the 10-mile hike even though I would have been medically excused from doing so that was one of the most surprising and impactful moments of my 13 weeks in boot camp that’s pretty crazy it was and I mean now looking back it’s even more crazy because I’ve never heard of that happening uh to anyone else and maybe it hasn’t it just didn’t come up but yeah before uh we did get behind the reack though I thought man I almost made it I almost got out of here alive but uh yeah I was um I mean floored uh blown away and maybe in a way a little confused to say the least when you talk to him because you you talk about you had a little bit of relationship with him after that like did he tell you what was his reason for doing that that’s a big deal yeah especially when he was the one that uh you know you always have those leaders drill instructors that are extra hard on you and seem to always pick on you pick you out and up until that moment I felt like it was his mission every day waking up even though at the time we we didn’t even think that that those guys slept but his mission waking up every day to destroy recruit Carpenter and I wholeheartedly believe that and he did a uh great job at it so you know that um that moment was very powerful and it also showed me that uh you know a a a good and effective leader at times can seem very hard on you but but you know drill instructor at the time Sergeant Luke Billingsley um I realized that uh at least from just what I knew in in that moment and and the past 13 weeks that and again my opinion but the most effective leaders yes are hard on you yes bring the hammer down daily if they need to but you know to have that moment and to have leaders that yes they do destroy you all day but at the end of the day they sit you down and they they calmly respectfully effectively and efficiently talk to you and and tell you hey this is why I destroyed you all day and I didn’t do it because I don’t like you I did it because I do see that potential and I am you know I know the risks I’m a sergeant I’ve been in I know what you could potentially be going into and so you know to to give the reasons not only you know why they’re so hard on you but also to tell you this is why and uh and I do it because I care and not only that they give you the tools to fix whatever it was that brought that pain and suffering initially and uh not only the tools to fix it but how you can become better and how you can mitigate those mistakes and make them less and less time and so uh yeah the time uh I I think probably because out of a nice mix of fear and just being completely dumbfounded that this was happening uh I you know I was uh at a loss for words but again um and and now we’re we’re great friends I saw them a few months ago we uh we had a beer together but um yeah that that was a uh that was an important lesson that I’ve always carried with me that um you know the people that care about you the people that want to make you the best version of yourself you know at times have to be hard on you um I was so what the last job I had in the SEAL Teams was training the West CO SEAL Teams and I’d be putting platoon through these really hard training evolutions and I was really harsh debriefing I mean the training was really hard we set up super hard training and then and then I was incredibly harsh in debriefs and I I actually have a guy actually two guys that they used to they were they worked for me but they would record the debriefs like I’d be in there debriefing and they would record them and I’ve heard them and I’m like really harsh I mean just blunt and just pointing out all these mistakes and just really harsh on guys and what I realized that there’s two things that made me realize it but one is I I worked had a guy on the podcast named Jim mukama who is a army guy and he worked for David hackworth and anyways he became a general but he was like one of the leadership principles that he talks about was like is like the most important thing is that you care about your people so I have that in the back of my mind all the time time right and it’s what you just said like when you know someone cares about you then you’re you’re willing to listen to what they have to say so there’s that and then I started I started thinking to myself you know well how I always tell people what you started off saying like hey be nice to people right you know be nice you know how you know when you’re communicating with someone be nice because that’s how you get people to listen to you and that’s kind of contradictory I was thinking to myself that’s kind of contradictory the fact that I’m telling people to be nice but I know for a fact and I’ve heard recordings of me being overthe toop harsh on guys and I said to myself how is it that I because I would get feedback from those guys you know either six months later or two years later or five years later or or that day they’d be saying hey thanks thanks it’s good stuff I need to work on that and I was thinking to myself how how what am I doing that’s allow what did I do at that time that allowed me to be brutally harsh with these debriefs and I realized that General mukama explained it to me he didn’t say it directly to me at the time but I came to understood it understand it what it was when I was putting guys through training all those guys knew that more than anything else in the world I cared about them and their men and I wanted them to be able to go overseas accomplish a mission and bring their guys home and I cared about that more than anything and so they knew that they knew that I wanted them to bring their guys home they knew that I didn’t bring my guys home and I didn’t want them to ever have to feel that they knew I cared about and that allowed me to say Hey you screwed this up this is what you need to fix you need to do this better and they accepted it for the same reason that you listened to and learned from Billingsley is because you knew that he cared about you and that’s the difference and that every time you’re not harsh you’re not relaying those lessons could could be uh a potential moment downrange just a couple months later that uh you know not for y’all uh you know training is is obviously longer but you know in the short term for every mistake that you know you weren’t so harsh on them for uh could be a life altering or life ending you know mistake that that could have been corrected before so uh yeah you’re exactly right yeah I remember coming back from ratti and I’d be doing urban urban combat training with guys and if I saw a guy it didn’t happen it happened for probably like six months when I would see like a Young new guy seal standing in the middle of the street with no cover I would get I would feel sick to my stomach like just a real like a a sickness I would come over me because I I would think that they’re going to get shot you know and I’d go over be like hey you need to get some cover what are you doing stand out you know I’d like try and teach them that lesson that man if you’re in an urban environment or any environment you cannot be standing out in the open you move from cover to cover that’s what you do don’t stand up you’re going to get shot and I would I felt this sickness in my stomach it it’s this it’s the same thing that you’d feel you know patrolling in rem you’d see like an army guy or see one of my guys like standing in the open you go it’s like it makes you feel sick because you’re waiting for rounds to come at them and and so yeah that absolutely has an impact and you know for our timeline too you know you get guys that would go through basic SEAL training go to seal qualification training and deploy if they got aign to a team that was on deployment they’d go on deployment so yeah like you could have we I had in ratti had a couple couple guys show up yep we’d be on deployment they’d show up and you know we wouldn’t throw them into an assault train or whatever but hey they’d be external security I mean they we would we’d start to use them we needed bodies we needed we need men so um yeah it can happen that’s wild straight from training yeah to ratti yeah yeah that’s uh that’s that’s a that’s an interesting way to get broken into the teams yeah especially because you know we were talking about earlier like the amount of combat that you may or may not see in a career you know you if your first deployment is to ratti that’s going to be it’s going to be a tough jumping in halfway through a deployment yeah do you agree with that obviously they’re trained and what we did what we did with them is we didn’t have high expectations we weren’t like okay now you’re going to be The Driver of the lead vehicle like no yeah you know we we would we would continue to train them while we’re there they’ start off doing something really simple and then if they did okay and we continue to work with them we’d get them up to speed and and eventually they’d be they’d be all right but you know what’s what’s what’s crazy you talk to guys that were in Vietnam guys were in Vietnam you’re you would just get Replacements would just come in and they would just show up and one guy would wrote you know be your your 365 days are up you’re going home and here’s a new guy to take your place and that’s it and it there was no continuity it wasn’t like work up like what we got the luxury of doing work up train Together live together then deploy together as a unit do our work and then come home together it’s like it doesn’t it didn’t work that way in Vietnam which undoubtedly is bad it’s undoubtedly bad you know um I had Jim Webb on here who is the Navy cross recipient Marine Corps but you know his story he’s like goes he finishes the Naval Academy goes to the basic school goes to their little short INF condensed infantry course that’s like 11 weeks long gets 13 days a leave flies to Vietnam and then they take him out on a patrol they point up to a ridg line and they’re like your platoon is up there go take it over and then he walks up there he goes hey I’m here to take over for the platoon Commander they’re like oh the platoon Commander’s dead welcome aboard this is Sergeant you know Smith and he’s been running things and then that night they got like into a heavy contact and he was on the radio calling danger close fire support that night 12 hours boots on the ground crazy that ain’t it crazy that is not and that shows you how efficient the Marine Corps is that you could take a guy like that and they would actually be up to speed you know that’s incredible that’s incredible and then I we we just had a guy on the podcast that was Army um special for Ranger Special Forces officer and he had enlisted but he he got to Ranger school got to OCS got to Special Forces school and then volunteered to be in SOG in Vietnam and I I was I said you know well you know was it hard to get selected and he was like no he goes it was Vietnam you know the survival rate of an officer in Vietnam was like nothing and he said if you wanted to volunteer for that they were like oh yeah come on come on over here oh you want to volunteer for Special Forces cool come on over oh you want to be Ranger cool come on over oh you want to be in so cool no problem there was no resistance whatsoever it was just wide open doors because so many the casualty rates were so high so yeah we kind of have a little bit of a luxury nowadays the way that we do it the Army everyone does it that way now pretty much you can you can lose guys sometimes or you can have guys replaced you know in all branches I think but you know they’re not going to they’re not going to do what they did during Vietnam again I think everyone recognized that was not a good plan yeah um you head off from there you go to school of INF infantry s SOI which is awesome and you described that here for the next two months life consisted of learning how to master various weapon systems that would be vital for our service in Afghanistan that and taking progressively longer hikes where we would dig fighting holes and learn how to operate the radio wall out in the middle of nowhere in combat survival depends on finding the right place the right right balance between caution and action I think for most of us myself included are wired for caution but I knew that in order to be the kind of leader I wanted to be one who would protect my guys and do what I could to ensure the success of the mission I had to respond automatically when my brain detected danger that became one of my main goals at so SOI because we all knew that a deployment was coming wherever we got assigned after graduation that’s what infantry does we fight so this is interesting I wrote another book called The dichotomy of leadership and what you’re talking about is exactly what that book is about the difference finding the right balance between caution and action if you throw caution the wind you’re going to get every one killed if you never take action you’re also not going to accomplish Mission and you’re also in my opinion going to have a higher chance of getting everyone killed because in action and standing there while or sitting there while the enemy Maneuvers is not going to turn out good so finding that balance and then the other balance that you talk about is protecting your guys and accomplishing the mission like that’s a dichotomy that you have to balance so you’re right in it right in it you figured that out and again were you thinking about that you were thinking about that as a how old were you 19 19 19 years old you were thinking about that yeah yeah to an extent I think these lessons are you know a little more complex than than what I was thinking about during boot camp so I think I realized these even though I did at the time I realized them uh less then and more later on mhm yeah the the reflection when you look back and for me I’ve been doing a lot of that you know I I got this book that I just wrote leadership strategy and tactics and I start off by explaining how I transitioned I don’t use these words because I just thought of this today but how I transitioned from learning like a dog which is you know kind of how it started to saying oh okay this is what’s happening oh okay and and for me one of the reasons that I got focused on leadership was because I wasn’t that great at anything else I wasn’t that fast I wasn’t that strong I wasn’t that smart I wasn’t going to win any of the races and so what I could do is like pay attention to what was happening pay attention to how we could work together as a team help the whole team do a good job together I could help with that more than I could help as an individual doing the best cuz I wasn’t the best so I kind of naturally focused on leadership because it was the thing that I could do better than I could do the other things so that’s what happened with me but that’s also amazing that you were that introspective knowing like a good leader realizing admitting to yourself which is sometimes the hardest thing to do your weaknesses and to emphasize different areas that you knew Could Be Strings yeah I really wish I would have thought about it that way the reality was I was like well I’m not that great at this but just wanting a dog treat yeah want a dog treat and the and the dog treat for me was as we were maneuvering if I took a step back I could actually tell what we should do I could figure out what we should do and as soon as I realized that I was like oh I can I can do this I can I can be a leader I didn’t even think of it in those words but I just thought oh I can make the calls you know I can make calls I didn’t even think of that word yet and then luckily well you kind of went through a similar experience to me and we’ll get to it where you had a bad leader and then you transferred to a good leader or you had a good leader come in and I had that happen too that was another thing that really opened my eyes um but hey you finish I want to get back to this you finished the school of infantry when our assignments came down I couldn’t help but feel like we had lucked out the four guys who roomed together Griffin Scott Mike Jared Lily and I had all been assigned to Fox company second Battalion ninth Marines AKA Hell in a helmet it had a nice ring to it in fact 29 is a unit that is only activated in times of combat and you say here I couldn’t have been more excited however this enthusiasm quickly turned into fear when the Marines from Fox company arrived to pick us up and take us to our new unit 20 minutes after SOI graduation the guys assigned to 29 were loaded on a bus for the 10-mile drive up the road to Camp leun I will never forget the first Marine I saw when we arrived he had more tattoos than anyone I’d ever met before I distinctly remember that his right arm was covered with a skeleton wearing a top hat and holding a double barrel shotgun that seemed to point right at anyone looking at it yep that was me staring down the end of that barrel for the next four years of my life I opened the door to my new bars and experienced the one of the most intimidating M moments of my Marine Corps career the entire platoon of Marines Mar our new family had lined the halls in preparation for the new guys they had just gotten back from deployment to Iraq and seemed like hungry caged dogs waiting to be fed it felt like we were their next meal and we were that’s classic like that that scene right there is epic those guys just coming back from Iraq and here’s the fresh new Meats showing up from s SOI ready to get some yeah uh so not only you know did that Marine with the tattoos uh have the most and most intimidating tattoos but half of them weren’t Rock and skiy shirts which I didn’t even know was allowed at the time so I I I knew things were get getting real when there was no skiy shirt on under the cammies and then yeah we get to what I hope have been demolished since but the barracks at the infamous French Creek on Camp leun which were um not I mean falling apart yeah that’s kind of a given but uh they were some of if not the last Barracks that the rooms were internal and in the hallways and not outside to where you could escap hopefully you could Escape if someone a responsible someone maybe an officer was walking by they could save you uh if if you were getting destroyed but no uh and and maybe not funny is the right word but you know we got off the bus and of course we look like clowns walking around we got our seabags at our pack knows what I got all this stuff and so we get off the bus and no one’s really around thinking nice we got here at the perfect time maybe they’re all just relaxing maybe at the ch Hall we’re good you know we at least got a couple buffer hours to get you know uh get checked into our lovely Suites and uh you know take a breather before the chaos begins and uh they were there they just were not outside they were patiently waiting for that door to open up and uh the yeah the chaos began right there but uh again you know as hard as they were on us um um you know they would have us 10:00 at night running classes in the hallway taking you know putting tourniquet on and off going through those nine lines um you know learning about everything from Air panels to let hilos know where you are um to to those nine lines to uh you know fighting holes uh and just everything and at first there was no love shown so it wasn’t uh that nice balance that we’ve already talked about but as we went through those first few initial months after that first three-month deployment and leading up to Afghanistan you started to realize that yes they were hard on you but the respect slowly started to come and not only hopefully it started to come because they saw us working hard and trying to be the best Marines we could but also knowing that look when we gave our loved ones that last hug or potential last hug and got on those buses it was just us and it didn’t matter if you were a boot or if you had been in a year or 10 years you were going into that unknown together and just because I’m three ranks lower than you doesn’t mean that I’m going to try to protect you any less or vice versa and so I think you know that mutual respect uh started to grow thankfully and you know it’s a good thing because even though we didn’t know what what was in store for us um just to have that mutual respect understanding and that efficiency of working together as a team um you know it’s it’s not only vital and essential but it’s comforting MH and you when did you get assigned as a saw Gunner was that during s SOI or was that once you showed up once I showed up yeah yeah I still don’t understand why 142b me was given one of the biggest weapons in the platoon but welcome to the Marine court right on uh yeah that’s the way it happens sometimes um so you you just mentioned you guys did a little float and while you’re out on float you hear Obama is saying like Hey we’re going to step up the game in Afghanistan you guys kind of know what that means uh since you guys are prepared basically prepared for deployment because you’re on a little mini deployment so you guys figure if there’s troops going to Afghanistan for this surge thing going on it’s probably going to be us you say here I was excited as were most of the Marines I knew this is the reason we had joined up after all to be part of a mission bigger than ourselves I had found what I was looking for in the Marine Corps Mission and meaning we had a clear objective to flush the Taliban out of their Helman Province stronghold in southern Afghanistan where they were growing NeverEnding fields of poppies regardless of the what what inevitable dangers lay ahead I was excited to earn my place in the platoon that motivation Drive was quickly overshadowed though when I was assigned to my four member fire team my fire team leader was a disappointment to be charitable everything I had seen experienced and had been taught about effective leadership was suddenly being contradicted he yelled without purpose gave little to no useful instruction and was one of the slowest guys in physical training every day how could we trust someone to lead like lead us as a fourman fire team in combat someone like that to lead us in a as a Forman fire team in combat he didn’t seem to care about anything but his next cigarette and getting out of the military the days weeks and months dragged on under his command so there you go you got a bunch of little statements in there you know my favorite one out of that is he yelled without purpose because people think that oh well it’s a military leader they’re going to yell and scream it’s just not true and uh I usually bring up the fact that I never yelled at my guys and in fact when I as a leader when I have to yell at someone I feel like I failed about 48 times s prior to me having to yell if I take us to a situation where I have to yell and the other thing I was up talking to a tech company um a few days ago and when I got done talking one of the guys that was working there he’s a vet he comes up he came up to me and he said you know because I talked about look you know you got to explain to people why they got to understand you got to let them come up the plan all these things all these principles and one of the things I said was sometimes when people hear me say hey your people should hey they should want to know why we’re doing something and that scares some bosses cuz some bosses you know if Kyle comes to me and says hey why are we doing this I say shut up and do what I told you to do and that’s just horrible leadership and so I said this and the guy came up to me afterwards and he said yeah you know when I was in I had this my my I had this first sergeant and I asked him I said hey why are we doing this Mission and he told me you’d be a better Soldier if you know if you would shut up and do what do what you’re supposed to do do what you were told to do and he said I’m glad that the military doesn’t have that attitude anymore cuz he was in during the 9s and I go I W I said listen I appreciate it but that’s not the way the military is the military just like the civilian world has varied types of leaders various levels of leadership and some of them are good and some of them are bad so here you are in the modern Marine Corps and you still have marines that haven’t quite figured out that hey you you you don’t want to yell at your people for no reason you don’t want to you want to actually instruct them on how to do things you want to make sure they understand why they’re doing what they’re doing and you had a guy here that was none of those things yeah and it it wasn’t even a disappointment I was just dumbfounded to to and I I I realized I had obviously been exposed to the other Marines in the platoon my Jew instructor every Marine and I encountered Rodney up until that point it was just uh baffling to me that all of these ideals I had learned about heard about seen firsthand all of the characteristics that I aspired to have as a marine and all of these things I was working so hard and striving for to not only try to learn but really grasp and understand in every way he went completely against all of that and it it was it was it was um it was scary because you know I wasn’t in this situation I didn’t get put with this leader leader uh uh as a sergeant as a staff sergeant after a couple of years in I was first couple of months in the fleet and not only did I feel like every day he was in charge of me I was I was not able to thrive and potentially reach my full potential for that day or continue evolving as a Marine but like dude in a few months we’re going to be in Afghanistan and you’re gonna you’re going to be in charge of my life and I just destroyed you in PT I just I didn’t know what to think I didn’t know what to do and I just got and I talk about it I got in the mindset of okay he is not going to Define Who I Am The Marine I am what I know what I can learn how I can be in Afghanistan how I can step up he you know really it uh and this was counterintuitive to think well he really doesn’t matter in the big picture because you know you’re taught that every Marine is so vital and important to the mission and you need every Marine to be efficient and to reach your full potential uh and so it was scary but I just decided that I would train learn evolve on my own and I would help the two other guys on the fire team really just one cuz cuz he had come in after me he was a lower uh we were same rank but he hadn’t been in as long as me so even though it’s just a few months different you know you got to start somewhere that’s the Marine Corp so I was there’s two men in the room one of them is the senior man yeah yeah exactly and so I knew that Nick who eventually was going to be on on top of that roof with me that day uh I knew that I could take care of Nick we could look out for each other we could learn do classes together behind closed doors and we don’t have to really worry about him but with that said and again talking about once you get on that bus there’s no rank you know to to a degree everyone is equal and everyone’s lives are just as much on the line as as the person to the right and left of you but I and and it’s kind of sad to say this but I got to where I look forward to getting on that bus and going on that deployment because I thought I can tell you what’s up and what’s on my mind once we get in Afghanistan and once you’re in charge of my life which I’m not really even going to let happen once we get over there but um I I can educate you on on the things I’ve been thinking about these past six or seven months and so I look forward to that thankfully as I talk about it didn’t come to that and um he um politefully got asked to leave the Marine Corps after uh not obeying the rules so thankfully you know I and I I kind I I hate to say thankfully but just for my self-preservation sake and our fire team thankfully uh he did kind of dig his own grave and make a mistake to where he had to leave the Marine Corps which leads into yeah this is a awesome situation so so well that’s not the awesome part but the fact is you say here we caught a break the Marine who would fill our old fire team leaders boots would be his opposite in every way is it Taran Heins is that how you say it farm boy from Iowa there you go Taran Heins was an eagle scout an exceptional person and an exceptional marine and exceptional leader and my saving Grace he was exactly what I had been searching for opening the door to the barracks Lance corpal Heins seemed more like a teacher than a boss leading us with patience understanding and calmness hein’s style can be summarized in one sentence lead with action any orders or tasks that Hines gave us he had either already done himself or he was absolutely willing to do alongside us he made sure we ate first he was the one to work holidays and take less take the less desirable posts so his Junior guys were taken care of in short he earned respect he didn’t demand it I wanted to follow him until my last breath his arrival changed the morale of our entire fire team the bond of trust and commitment we felt towards one another became unbreakable as hard as my first experience was I am thankful to have been exposed to to poor leadership so early on it not only taught me what leadership is not supposed to be like but it also showed me that no matter what is going on around you or who is in charge you can still be your own leader and Lead those and a leader to those around you I think that experience helped bring the rest of our fire team together we were going to need that in the months ahead so there you go you this is a great contrast and this is this is what I was saying this similar thing happened to me I had a platoon Commander that got fired and a incredible leader came into take his place and that was my second platoon and so I had just enough experience to like pay attention and this is probably when I started moving more out of dog learning mode into actually paying attention but the shock of those two things the contrast is what sort of shocked me into paying attention you know I was saying wow this guy was horrible we didn’t like him we had a mutiny and got rid of him and then we had a new guy come in who was not a new guy but he was a experienced guy to replace him and he was just the contrast of those two made me start paying attention a lot and as you said you’re thankful to have it I I’m thankful that HP that that happened to me same thing I saw my previous boss that got fired saw what not to do like hey that’s bad leadership I’m not going to do that um this is another little dichotomy you talk about even from our first day as new recruits on Paris Island we were Sim simultaneously being trained to be leaders and also respectful of orders so that’s that’s a dichotomy hey we’re going to lead but we’re also going to respect the orders it might sound illogical but is actually a brilliant way to shape the character and Outlook of the next generation of Marines what I witnessed in the first year of service modeled me for the importance of the balance of confidence and humility initiative and patience action and caution so there you go you just named three dichotomies of leadership that everybody has to pay attention to and if you go too far in any of those directions in any of those characteristics they’ll be bad so if you have too much confidence bad too much humility bad too much initiative bad too much patience bad too much action bad too much caution bad you got to balance every single one of those and then you say the best leaders aren’t the ones who detach themselves from their people or use their authority to avoid responsibility the leaders who have the most influence and ultimately earn the Loyalty of their team are the ones who invest themselves in their people and who willingly shoulder the responsibility that comes with being in charge I learned from watching the Marines more senior to me and from being entrusted with a bit of authority myself at boot camp that being a part of whatever needs to be done no matter how seemingly menial or unpleasant goes a long way towards strengthening the bonds of a group when you know the person in front of you during drills is also willing to be in front of you in a firefight or next to you scrubbing the squad Bay you begin to view the entire ire Mission and your role in it differently a great leader communicates his or her actions that you are worth their time effort energy and sacrifice that’s when your people will trust you to lead them anywhere even Into the Heart of the fight and that’s exactly where we were headed so there you go I mean these these are just again incredibly profound leadership um attributes that you’re picking up man all of these dichotomies I didn’t know I wrote about them I’m glad I can make you proud jock hey it’s funny you know if I wouldn’t have stolen the idea and put it in a book before you you’d have another book under your belt already but yeah and this is it’s one of those things that as I was teaching leadership to Young seals I re I realized it you know because I would tell that you got to be aggressive and then they’d be so aggressive that it would be stupid and I’d say well you can’t be over aggressive and then I’d say hey you got to take initiative but then they take so much initiative that no one knows what’s happening and it’s say hey you need to still pay attention to what the overall plan is you know so that’s what I realized and it’s true in everything it’s true in every characteristic and you know it’s um it’s stuff that you picked up on you know like I always say I didn’t inventi this stuff I mean leadership has been around for since human beings have been trying to surround a damn Lion on the planes and kill it right somebody had to take charge of that yeah and so leadership has always been there and even that group of guys trying to kill a lion if they got overly aggressive you know too early they’re G to get eaten but if they did it right and if they and if they weren’t aggressive enough well then they would never catch that thing so they’d have to find that balance too who ever did it right live to pass on those lessons to us exactly exactly um you’re heading to deployment now in Afghanistan and again you got so much great information in this book um I’m jumping ahead a little bit you’re heading to deployment as the bus buses pulled out we wave goodbye to our families I looked back to my mom I’d never seen this look on her face before one of pure desperation then we were out of sight how’d that hit you seeing your mom like ready to break down it it was it was uh it was beyond that it was it was one of those looks where along with the thousand yard stair even though you know looking around there’s nothing around you that could help you but you just look around because you’re such a loss and and in such despair that that you don’t even know what to do and your brain I think is struggling to comprehend is this really happening is reality is reality really reality right now and so uh that uh it was devastating but at the same time as I had so many times before I had to remind myself uh this is my purpose this is what I’m doing this is my mission and even though it devastated me I tried and I it this is hard to say but I think I was in a way more successful than not attempting to not let those emotions carry on any further into that bus ride MH I saw it it was so tough I had that moment but I also knew that if you know I didn’t snap out of it get immediately fully into mission mode uh that I might not survive to see seven months later when I could get off that buzz and give her a hug and see the complete opposite emotions and I also knew looking around on that bus that you know not only were we all seeing those loved ones left together but also to look around and wonder and not not just wonder but know hey on this bus ride home there’s going to be a lot of empty seats and to know that and and know that your emotions and your attitude is going to potentially dictate or affect how many empty seats there are on the way back uh it it’s a it was a heavy dose of a of a reality check yeah there’s a line in the book and I didn’t read it earlier but it’s it’s when you’re having the discussions with your parents about about joining the military and and like your mom says something and you’ve got the quoted there I’m gonna butcher it I’m sure but she says something along the lines of I spent you know my entire life trying to protect you and keep you safe and and set yourself up set you up to live a good life and you’re about to go do something that takes that entire idea and throws it in the garbage can I mean you know like I said I’m butchering it but just that thought you know that’s what a mom does right a mom’s supposed to take care of her kids and here here she is she’s done everything and you’ve said okay thanks for protecting me for 18 years and now I’m going to go put everything at risk everything that you’ve tried to prevent from happening I’m voluntarily running towards it uh you get on a civilian aircraft you you know you talk a little bit about your attitude going in and you know you say this it’s not hard to feel Invincible first the Marine Corps trains you so well that you know you are part of one of the most elite fighting forces on Earth It seems impossible that 40-year-old Soviet weapons and homemade detonating devices of the Taliban could possibly pose a serious risk you’re in your late teens or early 20s and the risk reward center of the brain has not fully developed so the possibility of danger seems thrilling rather than sobering it’s hard to think about death when the world seems so full of life possibility and excitement you feel Invincible to be because up to this point you basically have been broken arm from falling out of a tree fort no problem the doctors can fix you right up by putting you in a cast for month concussion from a bad hitting football concerning but you’ll be back in a few weeks when that is your frame of reference it’s hard to imagine the degree of injury that might be waiting you that might be awaiting you if you can imagine it it still seems like something that would happen to someone else the problem is that you are everyone else’s someone else and uh I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to listen to it but I had just had a guy a Marine that was went into guad Canal Tara saan and tenian and you know I I’ve had this same exact conversation with a lot of guys that have been in a lot of extreme combat but you know he was the same way he’s like yeah I mean I’m sure some people are going to die but it’s not going to be me I’m sure some people going get wounded but it’s not going to be and by the way he did end up getting gut shot at Tara 100 meters out of the landing craft while he still had 500 met to get to the beach and you know talk about miracles he was able to survive but yeah that attitude of it’s not going to happen to me is a real prevalent one for anyone under the age of like 23 24 25 27 29 sometimes 40 yeah yeah now that’s and I think a lot of it is attitude and again kind of like I said at the beginning you know what even though we signed up for it we we raised our right hand you do the research you know we’re in a time of two conflicts and two different on two different fronts in two different countries and you know for y’all’s family uh many more countries and a lot of fronts that thankfully people have the luxury of not even knowing about but with that said uh even though we signed up in volunteered know to think oh well I could get all my loans blown off or the second I put boots on the ground sniper could take me out at 18 19 years old I think those even though you you know it’s a risk you’re not naive about anything those things are just so ah surreal I think along with thinking oh it’s not going to happen to me also just not really being able to comprehend the possibilities that are very quickly and aggressively coming your way uh I think you know those two things is is are the two biggest contributors to that mindset I guess we should be thankful that that mindset exists because otherwise I think you might go crazy right yeah absolutely all right jumping ahead we didn’t jump into patrols on day one so you you you arrive Helman Province Autumn 2010 we didn’t jump into patrols on day one there was a kind of leadership training down period the higher ranking Marines went out on patrol first to get a feel for things before leading patrols of their own it was a way to help everyone get acclimated to being outside the wire but our step our time to step into an active role came quickly enough my first Patrol took place four or 5 days after we arrived we stopped at a compound at the end of a road after pausing to talk to the owner about his family in the area and whether or not he’d seen Taliban nearby you guys said up security here and as I lay on my stomach behind my gun scanning the landscape I remember thinking that the field before me was a perfect rectangle as if it had been laid out with a ruler in a region where there’s so much where so much is scattershot adapted to the land it was unusual to see something so precise it was oddly beautiful all of a sudden it was as if the skies had opened and the clouds were dumping hail so many rounds were hitting the ground around me that I couldn’t even see through my scope for all the dust they were kicking up there was a thunk as a bullet ricocheted off the side of a shed and at almost exactly the same time I felt something hit my lower back about 2 Ines to the right of my spine just above my Belt Line and below my body armor probably only an inch of skin probably the only inch of skin that wasn’t protected I’m hit I yelled grabbing my done and leaping about 10 ft behind me to where my buddies were holding security two thoughts raced through my brain did bullet wounds really not hurt as much as I had imagined or did I just have so much adrenaline in my system that I wasn’t registering pain and after an hour outside the wire was I already a casualty I was Furious that I wouldn’t get to contribute anything to the effort and if this stupid Taliban bullet sent me home I couldn’t imagine leaving my guys behind because of an injury on our very first Patrol as I bounced back another Marine instantaneously moved forward to man The End of the Road security position while the Corman checked me out behind the compound amazingly the bullet had not penetrated the skin but it did leave a dark bruise almost like a paintball fired at Point Blank Range I was hurting but grateful it wasn’t but grateful my tour wasn’t over so quickly so that’s your first Contact you get that you get the Ricochet round dang uh let’s just say for the next 4 months every single day that we were getting some that is the one and only and last time I ever was in the prone position all 800 rounds every single day out of my saw roughly uh everything was from standing from that point on and you know uh not only did I immediately feel more vulnerable than I I just in the prone position you know I that’s how we had train that’s how we had shot most of the time and I had never really uh just uh let loose from the standing and so that really wasn’t even kind of an idea in my head so just do doing you know a lot of things like in life on the job in the military you learn a lot of the most important lessons and kind of the tricks of the trade as you go along and uh laying in the prone surrounded by Taliban is not the way to do it at least it wasn’t for me uh during that deployment so I learned quickly that the prone position at times on elevated position positions on OverWatch and um at times that even though you can’t predict it might be a little less uh kinetic than others you know maybe maybe I would have considered the prone position but in that moment you know not only could I not even see out of my scope uh but but laying down uh and I wasn’t Frozen by fear it was just you know when rounds are coming down range at you even if it only takes two or 3 seconds to get up know grab that carrying handle and make moves bullets travel a lot faster than two or three seconds and so I learned my lesson but ultimately I’m just thankful that I was not taken out of the fight but it was surreal uh to say the least and almost um incomprehensible that I mean an hour or maybe less outside of the wire the first time uh you know I was uh getting lit up with an AK-47 but I mean I want maybe not the wakeup call I needed but um the wakeup call that uh helped immediately put me in the mindset and uh expectations and kind of frame of reference that I needed to be from the second I stepped out of the gate MH and you said that it it made you feel more vulnerable because I could see that going two ways one would be the attitude of like I just got shot and I’m good to go bring it and the other one is I’ve been here for an hour and I’ve already been shot this is going to be a long seven months and you felt like you leaned a little bit towards this is going to be a long seven months I would say completely towards the [Music] ladder uh you you say that you know not every Patrol is that exciting you know but you were always prepared um and again jumping again you’re on another Patrol you’re with Nick epio is that how you say it you’re with Nick epio my best friend was out on the canal and exposed when all of a sudden bullets started to hail down on us we began while we we began Manning the VP vcp Taliban had set up three Shooters no more than 100 yards away at different angles in what’s called a Bearpaw formation to try and triangulate and wipe us out we could see their heads as they ran along the canals by the tree line I happened to be positioned by The Compound on the other side of the road Lance corporal Stringer the team leader at the time peered over the edge of the canal to see if our guys could safely return fire when his head flew backward like had been punched it looked like a bullet had gone straight into his forehead for a moment he sat perfectly still blinking in a days then he shook it off miraculously the bullet had struck his helmet and the Kevlar had done its job warping the track of the bullet so that it skimmed the edge of his helmet rather than lodging in his skull I had a 200 round drum ready already loaded onto my squad automatic weapon so I called the guys get ready to move when I turned the corner of this building I prepared to unload I turned the corner of the compound pressed my finger on the trigger and didn’t let up while the other guys ran in a Crouch position down the dried up Canal before hopping out to cross the road and take cover in the compound until the fire fight was over there’s a classic example of cover and move doc friend told me later that he could see the bullet striking the wall right next to my head and body as at least one of the shooters returned turned his weapon on me Nick who had been lobbing grenades in the direction of the shooters in an effort to clear the area long enough to give the other guys a chance to run was the last of our guys to cross exact at exactly the moment when he made it across the road and behind the wall I ran out of rounds for the next two hours we were engaged in an intense firefight until mortman Corporal Vance wrath awesome name was able to respond to our radio calls back at base and drop mortors on the Taliban with pinpoint Precision almost 2 miles out after we were confident that there were no active Shooters left we approached the shooters position to a battlefield damage assessment bullet casings littered the ground those guys have been busy incredibly none of our men had been injured that day but the incident shook us up our squads had already taken an incredible beating that Autumn while that initial what had initially started as a platoon of three fire squads broke into up into four in order to cover more ground but we lost so many guys we had to reorganize and combin back down to three no matter how mentally prepared you are or you think you are you will never be ready for that first firefight let alone the first casualty a guy gets blown apart by an ID or takes a bullet to the chest and suddenly everything you’ve ever believed about the world collapses in a moment I turned 21 on October 17th but the day really didn’t make me feel any older my experiences in Afghanistan however felt like they aged me years at a time we had left early in the afternoon on my birthday birthday and we were now trying to make it back to patrol base beatly by Nightfall it had been a 4-Hour game of cat and mouse as we entered one patch of woods our Patrol had Frozen M mid-step as the dreaded sound of 203 fire echoed all around us a 203 is a grenade launcher that attaches to the bottom of a rifle and when fired it makes a distinct fump sound followed by an anxious wait to see where that deadly thump impacts immediately our squad leader got on the radio to tell the other half of our Squad to stop firing 203s until we could get their exact location we had intentionally split up to cover more ground but during the intense fighting through the thick tree lines and Scattered villages we had become unsure of our exact proximity to one another a voice crackled over the radio that’s not us those are not our 203s in an instant we went from F Frozen to ex executing some quick Maneuvers to find cover for the first time in 3 months the enemy was launching grenades at us happy birthday to me yeah never split forces that’s one of my rules if you can avoid it that’s why you guys pulled it off but it’s it’s so dangerous when you end up splitting forces I know we have to do it I shouldn’t say never split forces use caution yeah plan think communicate M you continue on here maneuvering out of the tree line we approached a compound on the outskirts of the village we were nearing as usual family livestock were hanging out at the home two goats were tied up to tree the chicken strutted around pecking at the ground we slowed down just in time to hear another dreaded thump from the 203 the scene couldn’t have been scripted more perfectly the grenade ripped through the air struck a chicken vaporizing it in an instant I felt terrible for the chicken but part of me had to laugh because I was just relieved that our latest casualty wasn’t another Marine before that battle was over I vividly remember crawling through the field with my weapon on my back holding the barrel over my shoulder to keep it as clean as possible crawling in just under the trajectory of incoming bullets I couldn’t help but think how strange it was that I might not even make it to enjoy my first legal beer that’s a hell of a 21st birthday you got going on there I won’t forget it that’s for sure when you’re when you’re doing these missions where were you guys based out of were you guys just based out of a Ford operating base somewhere uh patrol base a single uh as you know kind of mud hut compound type setup we had had uh a few Afghan National Army members attached to us but it was just myself and my platoon uh when we started roughly 60 Marines unfortunately yes we lost some and had casualties along the way uh but it was just uh us and as a platoon there at patrol base beatley in uh this specific Village in Maria and uh how how often were you guys going out on patrol all day every day all day every day so we had all day every day get get your gear on what time were you guys going out so with our four squads we sent out an early morning Patrol late morning SL early afternoon late afternoon and a night Patrol doing that to not only continue to disrupt enemy activity operations continue to expand that area of operation by pushing that enemy out but also and just as important showing the civilian population that you really are there for them that you’re willing to sacrifice for them to do those patrols get rid of that enemy that oppresses them that kills them for wanting to learn how to read um and so yeah and and you know the mission and the uh kind of structure of your deployment depends on when you were there mhm when you’re there in time and when you’re there in in the operational picture of things and with that said we were the Second Marine unit and some of the first Marines to put boots on the ground in that area potentially you know in history as far as American forces go and no one had really been there since the Soviets in the 70s and so uh because we were there so early on you know looking ahead the goal is you want to in the big picture give these people a better life help them to wake up every day and not live in fear and to hopefully see that better and brighter future but to get to that you have to create stability and a foundation so if you’re there more towards kind of the end of that stability and that structure your mission changes you hold that Tempo you hold that stability while roads are being built schools are being open fresh clean drinking water wells are being dug but in order to get to that you have to get rid of the instability the bad guys the enemy the evil people that are creating all of these problems so when we were there you know I would love to say we had this you know profound Mission and in a way it was but uh you know people ask me all the time what what were you really doing why were you going out there what were you doing why you were outside uh of your base and the simple answer is we would go out every day I mean and it’s important to know every day from sun up to sun down was a constant and vicious fight for survival every single day was never a question of I wonder if we’re going to get shot at today it was I wonder when we’re going to get shot at today and every single day I never walked outside of friendly lines with less than 800 rounds for my saw and there was a few times where I had to do the whole prayer walk back to base just hoping I have zero rounds please do not shoot at us please do not shoot us and after hours of fighting you know you you it’s kind of wishful thinking you think there’s no way we’re going to make it all the way back to base without getting attacked again thankfully we did during those times but we were there in the beginning and our mission was to patrol and Patrol just meant every day all day sending out patrols leaving those friendly lines and walking around until we pick to fight with the Enemy and as crazy as it sounds that was the most efficient way to do it you go out you upset them because again you’re trying to give this region these people a better life and I think in a way you’re showing them the people that they really are and these marines have to be here because you are such terrible and evil people as as both of you know and so that’s what we did all day every day we would go out and we’ll walk around until we pick to fight with the Enemy they came to us and we either continued to push them further out or eliminated them that’s a hell of a optempo so was it how big was each Patrol was each Patrol a Squad Squad so would you guys rotate you’d get so for a few days you’d be the morning Patrol then you’d be the afternoon Patrol then you’d be the night Patrols you’d rotate yeah a few weeks to maybe a month okay and uh you know we wanted that continuity of of if you’re a night Patrol operating with those mvgs you know obviously we knew how to use them and and we’re um effective with them but uh just keeping you know that that Rhythm that you know and you’re comfortable with and then you know we would have those transitional periods where we might go from night Patrol to early afternoon Patrol um but you know to keep that presence uh and and strive for that stability we always kept the patrol out you say here um again I’m always impressed with your perspective as a young Marine there you see I think a lot about the Afghan people who were threatened with violence if they didn’t raise a gun Against The Americans on the surface it would be easy to classify them all as the enemy but some of them just wanted to be left alone to raise their families in peace how quickly did I dismiss People based on circumstances I didn’t fully understand and what about the way people react to extremely high stress high stakes situations previously I might have regarded someone’s Panic or coping mechanisms as a sign of weakness but that was before I ever I had never lived with this kind of pressure and Trauma before I know now how the horrific casualties I witnessed deeply impacted me but what about the perspective of the guy who got hit what about his family in an instant their lives changed forever in ways I couldn’t fathom I started asking myself when I am having an unshowered dehydrated meal far away from home kind of day how do I react how do I view myself and what does it mean that there are still people out there millions of them who have still got it worse than I do they say there are no atheists in foxholes I think maybe we all become philosophers in combat outposts as well so you’re you’re seeing these things and you’re you’re thinking about them that’s that’s awesome that you that you perceive these things even as a young as a young kid thank you I give you maximum credit for your and uh what’s good is that you know as you write this stuff down and you look back and you see how it affected you and it’s it’s neat to see in the Arc of the book and again you got to read this book you can follow the Arc of how you assemble these things and you know you started off earlier in this conversation talking about how what you went through kind of prepared you for what came and you can as you start as you read this book you put those pieces together and you can kind of see it form it’s awesome continuing on here there were certain sounds I never would have imagined that I could tune out like AK-47s being shot at me with the intent to kill but at some point your brain starts registering certain input as more of a nuisance than a threat besides bullets were not our main concern we were focused on avoiding the IEDs that were stretched across roadways walking paths and inside of walls they’ taken quite a toll on 29 on September 30th lance corporal Timothy M Jackson had been killed by an IED then in mid November IEDs had taken out two more of our guys one of those remarkable Marines was our squad leader Zack Stinson who stepped on an IED that had been placed underground near a wall that separated two Villages the scariest thing about the IED is that without a metal detector a well-placed one can be almost impossible to spot even in broad daylight you’re lucky if the person who placed the IED is inexperienced or lazy CU they will lead leave red Flags like Disturbed dirt or a small trash pile that looks like it might have been constructed to hide something at about 1: p m we were walking on patrol through one of the dried up irrigation canals that criss-crossed the landscape we were scanning the terrain for Taliban and making our way toward the next town we needed to secure when another dreaded explosion went off the shock wave of the blast rippled through our Patrol I was the fourth man in the patrol the cloud of dust engulfed me as the debris rained down the stomach wrenching curiosity of who had been hit began to sink in it took a few seconds to locate Stinson because he had been blown about 15 ft and was on the other side of the wall of the canal we found him folded in half like a lawn chair he was his one remaining foot was up by his head and his legs were mangled Christopher doc Friend R Corman quickly evaluated the scene and announced I think Stenson is dead I didn’t seem possible it didn’t seem possible anyone could survive that incredibly Stinson called out I’m not dead I just can’t move doc rushed over to administer triage care while other marines called in medical evacuation helicopter and our Squad moved to provide cover just as we got into position insurgents open fire and began their attack they often attack after an IID blast because they know that our Corman will be with the casualties leaving us exposed and vulnerable doc tried to pull Simpson Stinson down a St down to a safe while I laid down fire to suppress the shooters the other Marines rushed to help doc drag Stinson to safety behind the other Canal wall as they did they realized that one of his legs was no longer attached to his body what was left simply stayed on the ground as he was dragged around the corner when doc applied tourniquets Stinson asked us to take care of his wife back home who was pregnant and he talked to us about our mission doc gave him an injection of morphine for the pain but didn’t knock him out he somehow remained conscious we remained under attack the entire time we waited for the medical evacuation helicopter to arrive almost 50 minutes it was the worst thing I ever witnessed you pointed out that moment of this explosion takes place it’s close to you close enough that you’re engulfed in dust at some point in the following seconds you realize you’re okay and the very first thought that goes to your through your head is like okay someone is not okay you don’t even want to look around cuz someone had to have initiated that IED and so uh you have to obviously you you are concerned to say the least you want to get to them as quickly as possible to take care of them to comfort them but um you you don’t want to look around and survey and look for and and discover who that is 50 minutes for the Evac to get there you continue on a few hours later this is after the um casualties evacuation a few hours later after the sun had set I was on my shift as radio watch back at patrol base beatley listening to information as it came in from the Marines who were outside of the wire during the Silence of breakes and the radio traffic I couldn’t help but let my mind wander back to the hour before was Stinson still alive how would his wife and family handle the news would I be able to survive something like that if it if or when it happened to me as my brain race to compartmentalize the recent past my present reality suddenly became even worse loose dirt crumbled out of the cracks in the wall as the room shook a second later the sound of a massive explosion reached us more than a mile away Lance corporal Dakota hu had been making his way through the dark fields and tree lines with his squad on night Patrol they were moving toward a village to our South the Taliban would flood fields in order to make it harder for us to advance quickly the inundated Fields didn’t slow down our tall guys much because the water was only about as high as their boots but for shorter guys like Dakota and me the water was up to our ankles and even our calves at times between the water our 22 lb squad automatic weapons 20 to 30 PBS of machine gun ammo and 45 PBS of gear it was hard to move quickly and the Taliban knew that as Hues and his Squad approached the village he reached a goat path a small trail that surrounds an agricultural field and allows local to travel through the patchwork of land without damaging their crops stepping on onto it a few moments later 19-year-old Dakota from Greenwood Louisiana took his last step and breath on this Earth so this do you find out immediately that you know that he was Kia uh it was um that could be gathered from the radio traffic and the fact that um and uh I’m hesitant to go into detail just in case his his family ever listens to this but at the same time I think um I think that it’s important for people to know what really happens sacrifices that are really made um and so if we couldn’t conclude that from the radio traffic uh when they got back to our patrol base um they didn’t call in a medac they uh they couldn’t even bring Hughes back because uh the IED had been so big and inflicted so much damage that uh it would not have been wise at dark to start walking all over that field to look for the pieces of Hughes uh that were left and was that the was was Hughes the first guy from from your from your platoon that was was killed cause because Stinson he’d been caked and he survived he survived and uh yeah it was amazing now he’s completely outnumbered by enemy forces with not one but two uh baby girls now but uh he’s doing amazing uh he’s crushing marathons on his hand cycle just finished his first Iron Man I text him I’m like dude like take it easy man you’re really making all those guys with both our legs and and and healthy look bad but uh yeah he’s doing amazing and you know hopefully if uh you know he keeps he keeps uh working hard which he always has and uh keeps doing well I hope that maybe one day uh sooner rather than later he will be you know representing our country potentially in um the Paro Olympics so aesome uh he’s doing amazing and we recovered together and really grew our relationship at Walter Reed for the years that we were there and uh I’m glad you brought this story up because as we’ve talked about leadership is vital obviously and no Marine is ever from the first day of boot camp as a recruit or a marine that’s been in 40 years compared to a marine that’s been in a week no one lives no Marine is more important than those to to your right and left but Stinson was the highest ranking marine and leader he was our squad leader on that Patrol leadership is it is especially important and vital on the battlefield not only to communicate that strategic information to hire us within your chain of command to keep that order and discipline on the battlefield and arguably most importantly to direct troop movements during engagements With the Enemy so although is not more important his job it could be argued is more important and is the most vital role out of our Squad that needs to last as long as possible so with that said from the moment that IED went off I had always wondered why did that happen and not why did it happen as as and why was there an IED there but why was Stinson specifically the casualty we took and when I speak to companies and and corporations I relay this story because I think it is one of the greatest examples of leadership but years later you know uh we’re sitting in his uh Walter Reed Wounded Warrior Barrack’s room and it was uh they were nice it was more not Marine Corps Barracks it was uh they were a little more luxurious they had a couple of bedrooms and and your family could live there with you while you recovered and and so you could have that support system and we’re sitting there and uh watching ESPN and he’s in his wheelchair while Olivia his daughter it was an amazing moment at least just me I didn’t see anything but his daughter that he had in his what we thought were his final moments giving us you know his final request take care of my wife and my unborn first child and baby daughter and she’s Olivia crawling all over him all over his wheelchair you know what’s what’s left of his legs and in that moment time had passed we had healed we had got to better places and so I finally got the opportunity years later to ask him what I had always wondered that question and his answer was very simple but very profound and he said I’m just glad it was me and not one of you guys and so you have to know as a leader that your responsibility is laced with risk and that if and when that risk comes to fruition you not only are obligated but you are you are uh expected to Bear the burden for those that you lead and so sson taught me a very um powerful lesson that I’ve always carried with me and I’m very thankful that of course he not only survived but you he continued to be a leader and teach me things along the way as we recover together yeah that’s uh that’s that’s what we talked about earlier I mean he proved at that moment you know that he cared about you guys more than he cared about himself which is what a good leader is going to do yeah and um last corpal toota Hughes uh we had had many casualties but he was our second killed in action and um you know 12 days later at our new uh uh Patrol P base that we were living and operating out of named patrol base Dakota is where I was injured about a week and a half later well after after that had happened after you lost Hues to that IED I’m going back to the book here it says 10 days later word came from command that we needed to expand our area of operation to create more of a presence in the area my squad got orders to help establish a new compound in the Village to the South the same one where Hughes had stepped on the IED because it was a Taliban stronghold in the region so there you go you want to know what the Marine Corps does that’s what they do oh we got a problem cool we’re going to go attack the problem The Village was Tiny no bigger than a hotel conference room and the home we were occupying was only two stories high though it was one of the largest structures in the area unfortunately the Intel we had received proved accurate that there were Taliban in the village and they weren’t happy about our arrival and the choice of landing spot and again skipping a bunch of stuff you guys are now kind of in this in this new position as the afternoon sunlight started to fade I was instructed to get off the roof and keep Post in the room directly below this is after you would spend a bunch of time and you do a great job covering this in the book of you’re up there trying to build put put some sandbag protection up and there’s a guy basically taking sniper shots at you and you’re just staying up there there staying low people handing you up full sandbags you’re putting them in position every time you put one in a position boom he cracks off around at you so yeah it was probably a really stupid assumption at the time that he had a single bolt action rifle but I thought that’s the what I gathered from the first couple shots and so thankfully he was nice enough he didn’t start shooting at me until uh I got three sandbags high of a kind of semicircle wall on that roof and around me so when he did start shooting if I laid completely flat uh I was covered by those sandbags but for the most part yeah yeah for the most part but it was uh it was Eerie to be behind those sandbags laying up against them and I can still feel right now uh when he would take those shots you know usually the Taliban weren’t extremely accurate especially I mean we rarely if ever up until this point saw snipers and if we did they were not accurate and so that was surprising but it was just so Eerie to lay behind those sandbags and when we heard the crack of the rifle to be able to feel because he was so accurate the thud of that round impacting the sandbags that I was laying up against yeah as you said it may not have been the best decision to stay up there yeah add it to the list uh we live and learn so then finally you do you do get instructed to get off the roof and move to a room below and then you say this I gouged out a little hole in the wall so I could get a better vantage point about 45 seconds later a rocket came barreling into the roof and the sandbag wall I just built completely obliterating the post position it was as if I had stepped into the middle of a tornado the debris cloud surrounding me was so thick that I couldn’t see and couldn’t breathe my squad members immediately realized what happened to the roof and Doc friend was scrambling for his medic bag ready to rush in and see if there were any signs of life somehow I wasn’t injured and was able to get up and walk out of the room on my own so they obviously don’t want you there continuing on we had officially lost the roof as a vantage point from this post we were now facing four major challenges the first first was we had proviously we that we had previously had two positions in the compound on each of the two roofs but now we only had one so we had to double up on the remaining roof the second was that it wasn’t a great position to begin with since we couldn’t see as far out as we would have liked to from just two stories up the third was that we were now dangerously low on sandbags and fourth was that because we only had enough sandbags for a 3 to four foot stack we would have to stand Post in a somewhat reclined position in order to not be exposed that meant the enemy could sneak right up alongside the building and throw an explosive over the compound wall or fire at us then Dart away the weakness of our position was proved almost immediately we heard a thud thud thud from the courtyard outside the building it as if someone were tossing something over the wall compound there was just enough time to ask who’s throwing rocks before the first round of explosions began they weren’t rocks they were grenades Brad Skipper had been sitting out side as he cleaned his weapon and he took off running for cover as he took off running for cover a grenade exploded near him he staggered into the house squirting blood from a hole in his spleen I had been outside in the courtyard of the compound helping dig a burn pit and fill more sandbags when I saw what happened I took off after Skipper reaching the house just a few seconds after him doc who was inside stuck his finger into Skipper’s wound to stop the bleeding while he grabbed his supplies Skipper kept pounding on his chest to tell us he couldn’t breathe I kneeled down next to his head assuring him he was going to be okay and that pretty soon we’d have all the ice he’d have all the ice cream he could eat in the hospital doc grabbed what he needed and performed a needle decompression on skipper for a collapsed lung it was the first one he had ever performed I cringed watching them Jam the needle into the skipper into Skipper’s side but when he heard what but when we heard what sounded like a balloon letting out air as Skipper’s lung reinl as Skipper’s lung reinflated we all wanted a high five dock but he was a little busy Jake belote am I saying that right belot Jake belot who had been outside the courtyard in the courtyard made his way to the house as well white as a sheet and covered in blood from where shrapnel had hit him in the groin two things were abundantly clear to me Corman are worth their weighting gold and PB Dakota was not going to be easily held so you get those guys out of there right did you get those guys kavak we did and uh we also lost one of the few just a casualty but who was also hit with shrap on one of the few Afghanistan national Army members that had gone down on this Mission with us uh and so right there immediately just from hand grenades and not even leaving our four walls of our patrol base we were down three guys and we had only gone down there with a squad and and arguably uh small Squad and our mission and and we did this to give people listening context we were over the halfway point of our deployment when you’re you know we still had three months but when you’re you can see the end in sight you know that at seven months whether you want to or not your time’s up you’re going back home and another unit is going to come in and relieve you to prepare for that and to continue to keep the momentum going of an an efficient Mission just like with anything in life hopefully you want to leave it better than you found it so you know say and and this is random numbers I don’t know what what they are but say our area of operation was was two square miles looking ahead to that next deployment and leaving things better for them than when you got there you want to expand your area of operation to continue to push that enemy out and continue that mission of creating stability which we’ve we’ve already talked about so when that time frame is drawing to an end you want to like we did push into those outer outskirt Villages from your area of operation and doing that uh again there was nothing sexy about this Mission if we were to go down there pack as much as we could in a bag in a day pack food water ammo and stick your foot in the ground don’t move and try to survive for the next few days until we can get you reinforcements and that is the first step that I was talking about earlier that you need to accomplish in order for years down the road road to have a school across the street to have those fresh clean drinking water wells and so that was our mission getting down there on November 19th Rockets multiple hand grenade attacks multiple casualties and our numbers weren’t strong to begin with and now with those three casualties we’re already creeping towards not only being combat ineffective but just for self-preservation needing reinforcements yeah yeah this is a rough situation how many people do you have right now like what are you down to you know I should know this especially after but I mean just like an estimate you got is it your squad plus some Afghans is it like 10 or 11 Marines with a navy Corman and then three or four Afghan National Army members so you got 15 guys roughly generously and and with that said you know surrounded by Villages and miles of enemy how far away from you are the are how far are you away from the patrol base that you that you left to get it down here oh uh is it like 500 meters or is it like three or four clicks click to at the most maybe a click and a half and that’s where the rest of your platoon is correct still at Patrol Bas beatley and we were setting up patrol base Dakota and did you guys have any Vehicles there at all it was other than your feet yeah that’s it the Marine vehicles uh no no vehicles uh it was so primitive and there was so little to know infrastructure uh uh and because there was no paved roads Vehicles could not get to where we were uh not only not having roads but not having roads leads to dirt paths that if you take a 7 ton truck on the side of that Canal collapses and you have four Marines strapped into an armored vehicle upside down in water MH and so it wasn’t worth the risk and you know with that said we were so far out Behind Enemy Lines and that enemy territory that for those seven months well the four that I survived anything and everything we needed from water food ammo medical supplies had to be brought in by aircraft and helicopters and I even remember there were times where they brought things at night because during the day a lot of times they would have to u-turn and return to base and bring it later because you don’t want an osprey crashing in some random backfield in Mar Afghanistan especially I mean hopefully everyone survives but to have an aircraft crash no vehicles no support no nothing and you’re going to potentially have survivors of that aircraft crash immediately be pretty much a Blackhawk Down situation rough rough uh rough day as it’s as I was prepping for this you know it’s today is November 20th 2019 and what we just talked about was November 20th 2010 getting to the next day so now it’s November 21st 2010 it’s the next day um here we go our solution to the visibility problem on post was that we were going to put two people on the roof at the same time this gave us an extra set of eyes to help evaluate the scene Nick and I began our first shift at noon it was quiet almost eerily so during the entire 4-Hour shift because the sandbag walls were so low we had to lean back propped up just enough to see over the edge with only our head and shoulders exposed as we scan scan the weirdly silent Village waiting for something to pop off at any second we went through the different scenarios we might encounter okay if this if we get attacked from this direction you do this and I’ll do this but if it’s the other direction we’ll need to do this instead I was glad to be on post with Nick especially on that day when something just felt off Nick and I started going over the what F scenarios again we hadn’t seen any grenades our entire deployment that is until the day before previously the enemy preferred guns and Rockets but after seeing grenades thrown over the wall of the compound yesterday we now knew they were possibility so Nick I joked making fun of this of his crazy strong Massachusetts accent as best I could what happens if they throw a grenade up here my ass is off this effing roof he said I laughed dude I’m right behind you so you guys are um going through some scenarios that could unfold some wh ifs that’s what’s going on so you guys are up there and then we get here presumably there is a soft sound and a puff of dust as something lands near our feet but I don’t remember it all I know is that my body reacts instinctively before my mind even registers what it is then suddenly it feels like I’ve been hit really hard in the face and I can’t see a thing it’s as if I’m looking at a TV with no connection just white and gray static my ears are ringing Extremely Loud but my body is numb there’s no connection no through line no logical progression of events I just remember heat laughter and then a massive impact as all of my senses go Haywire for reasons I can’t explain the last thing I remember clearly is laughing with Nick before starting to move toward something and here’s an official report four eyewitnesses saw Lance corporal Carpenter rise up to a standing or kneeling position immediately prior to the blast multiple eyewitnesses saw lance corporal Carpenter’s Body lying directly over the blast hole immediately after the G grade Detonator detonated the explosive ordinance disposal staff non-commissioned officer attached to the platoon provided his expert opinion that the grenade had to have been covered by a heavy object to blast through the roof and that the significant damage done to Lance corporal Carpenters personal protective equipment particularly his Small Arms protective insert sappy plate carrier was consistent with the grenade detonating immediately under or in close proximity to his body in other words I threw myself over the grenade apparently I don’t remember thinking about it and I certainly don’t recall actually doing it I only remember the after effects a few seconds after the strange assault on my senses I tried to shake it off and push my body up but I couldn’t feel my arms with every ounce of strength I possessed I worked to push myself up but my body simply would not respond the dis the disorientation was overwhelming 5 seconds before everything seemed normal suddenly I was numb and vaguely aware that I probably should be in pain but I could feel nothing at all I knew I was alive so I must be okay but nothing made sense why couldn’t I see what was that deafening Roar that was blocking out every other sound where was I and why was everything numb calm down and think the last thing I remember is being on the roof I reasoned in my head I wonder what could have injured me this badly on the roof or did I get off the roof and went on patrol and all this is just going on in my head maybe I stepped on an IED and the last thing I remember is being on that roof as I was puzzling through these questions all of them racing through my mind in a split second my confusion grew even deeper as I realized that someone was pouring warm water all over me what was happening nothing made sense and I had no context to even try and make sense out of it I was on the roof talking to Nick then this whatever this was as I searched for answers my brain was furiously putting the pieces together to create some kind of meaning and then it clicked this wasn’t water it was blood I was bleeding out at that same moment I tried to call for help but the only thing I could feel was that my tongue was searching for my lower jaw no cheeks no teeth no jaw it was as if the bottom part of my mouth had disappeared a seed of panic started to grow inside me was I just in shock or was I really missing part of my face according to the reports a great friend and one of the greatest Marines I’ve ever known Jared Lily had been watching us from the stairs and was the first one to the roof just seconds after the explosion he immediately screamed for Doc friend normally doc would have stayed downstairs until we had a chance to sweep the perimeter and make sure that there was no one hiding in an effort to Ambush our medic but Jared knew there was no time for that doc came pounding up the shaky bamboo ladder from the room below and saw me lying face down on the sandbags with one glance he sized up the scene and realized that even though and realized that even though it was probably too late for me Nick had a chance he had taken shrapnel to the forehead that had blown up and under his helmet not good but he was still breathing well kind of the reports said it was more of a snoring sound as his body struggled to pull air into his lungs so doc went to work stabilizing him while the rest of our guys radioed for Medevac and backup there it is it’s weird I first saw an interview with some with you sometime a long time ago and I remember you saying yeah I don’t I don’t really remember it which is crazy to have this incredible amount of focus on your life story on a situation that you don’t remember and I’ve been knocked out before and I mean I imagine this is just like the absolute worst knockout a person can can get and you know you wake up and you go wait where am I you know I’ve been knocked out and just you know come to going oh wait a second where am I and that’s basically what what you had yeah and you’re exactly right it is uh you know in the beginning after five weeks later after I woke up after those what I thought were my final moments on that roof uh it used to frustrate me that I couldn’t remember and I don’t I don’t think it it would if there were no external influences but knowing that the Marine Corps the military Department of Defense and in a way the whole country World we’re looking into talking about examining parts of your life that you can’t remember was wild and you know but as with everything I I tried to not only see both sides but really think through it and uh thankfully and eventually I just realized how wrong of a mindset that was was and not only is it understandable that I don’t remember anything after taking a grenade to the face but also uh I woke up and I’m still here and I’m so thankful and grateful to be alive like who cares what I can’t remember not that they would have taken my eyewitness statement anyway cuz you can’t be injured and be an eyewitness just because the blast might have affected your memory of things and so um yeah you know when when everything kind of started with the metal and I’m going forward a little bit we can backtrack but uh yeah you know they called me up first phone call in the hospital and I I just said I’m sorry you know I don’t there’s nothing that I remember that can help hurt assist in any way with this investigation and um Chief foreign officer fives Reeves uh who was a stist to 29 second Battalion ninth Marines just to spearhead this investigation uh you know he thanked me for my honesty and he told me no matter what happens what this investigation turns up that you know we’re proud of you and the job your fellow Marines did and uh you know we’re thankful for your service and that was really it but yes you’re right it was um weird and and uh frustrating to to have this happen and has so much um so many people so much time and effort going into these moments that um were nothing but a dark abyss to me I was actually surprised at how much you did remember I mean and because I mean this is devastating injuries um but you you know you you regained Consciousness and memory pretty quickly I’m going back to the book here here’s doc blood was on every inch of my body my body armor was torn torn and mangled a huge portion of my face was hanging off my skull and onto my shoulder which clearly h a shrapnel embedded in it DOC could see that I was struggling to breathe so he started putting an airway in before they took they took me off the roof he figured he could put humpy Dumpty back together again after they got me on the ground but I but he had a choice to make normally with a fractured face in oral fenal would be the way to go but he did but I didn’t have any jaw left to help create the airway so he had only three choices he could cut my throat open with his pocket knife to create an airway which is was even more terrifying than it sounds because he didn’t have a mask or a bag to help me breathe so he would have had to do the breathing for me through a rubber Camel Back tube from our hiking cantens or he could cke through my nose and down the back of my throat to create an artificial Airway as I was choking on blood but he didn’t have a cke kit either or I could somehow figure out how to breathe on my own but I was still choking so he realized he was going to have to improvise with that same pocket knife and camel back tube and rig up a a cke that wasn’t the sort of thing they taught when he was preparing to be a medic presumably because they never anticipated a fire team would run into so many casualties in such little time to exhaust their supplies he put a device into my nose to support the tube and that sensation was the trigger that jerked me back to Consciousness and made me start coughing doc needed to lay me down to finish the procedure but he was afraid of all my teeth fragments falling back into my throat so he kept me sitting up right as he worked I kept trying to talk but it only sounded like gurgling from gurgling water from all the Blood and Tissue blocking my throat even though they couldn’t understand a word my attempted speaking was a good thing because doc saw that my body was somehow still functional enough to keep me breathing so he decided not to risk the CIT after all as he pulled the plug from my nose a huge stream of mucus and blood came with it and I suddenly began to take more to take in air more easily so I mean I’m picturing This and like looking at you look now okay you you can tell you got dinged up but this is like catastrophic injuries it’s still I mean borderline unreal to even still working on this for two years obviously knowing for nine years now what happened experiencing it myself uh it’s just too still too surreal to comprehend that it not only happened but that I did survive it and uh you’re right I haven’t really thought of it that way before but it is amazing that I can remember anything at all but um and thankfully now again looking back back I’m thankful that you know besides seeing uh white and gray static and my ears ringing and and not being disoriented not knowing what happened you know all of those thoughts were only going on in my head and all of that really happened in just a few seconds and the most profound couple of things things that I do remember and at the time it uh it was just too heavy in my mind I and with the blood lost to even halfway processor comprehend and it’s crazy to think about and think back to what you thought were your final moments on this Earth but I’m so thankful that I did get knocked down so hard that I did have those final moments where I truly thought that was it you know after I put the pieces together okay this isn’t water my buddies aren’t messing with me this is blood I’m bleeding out I knew that from how I felt the casualties I had unfortunately seen so far on that deployment and just the basic medical training we get as Marines once I realized that it wasn’t warm water and I was bleeding out I used those last few seconds I thought about my family specifically my mom again and how devastated that she was going to be that I did not survive to make it home I said a quick prayer for forgiveness and anything I had done wrong and I faded from Consciousness in the world and I say that I’m thankful that I tasted death and I went through that what I thought those final moments because now I know and I can share with people and it sounds kind of cliche but just how truly finite and delicate and beautiful life is and I can tell people thankfully that have not tasted those final moments and have never had that reality check which is great but I think a lot of times [Music] we just again going back to that maybe the the Invincible conversation and always thinking it’s going to be someone else that that’s it we always do think it’s going to be someone else and so to remind people and give them that reality ity check hey really think about and and and really you know realize that at any moment in the military or as a civilian you know with the terrorist attacks with you know cars planes at any moment you could be that someone else tasting those final moments so before you get to those not only strive to to be a good person and live your life the right way and love and care about those around you but for yourself don’t get to those final moments and wish that you had more time or wish that you had a few more seconds before the darkness closes in and so it just it’s giv me such a profound just appreciation for not only waking up after that but you know being able to continue to live my life knowing that it just makes it so much sweeter but also the downfall and negative side is once you have tasted that or been around guys and have seen those final moments moments in their eyes and have heard those last breaths it it you know I’m not scared of death now and and I don’t dread it I don’t think any more than I would have before but just knowing and experiencing that when those lights went out until I woke up five weeks later they were out and it wasn’t it wasn’t even a Darkness it was it was a darkness of nothing and so before you get to that Darkness enjoy love and live your life but waking up that’s you know that is really what started this New Path and and journey of recovery and and I um self-discovery I guess you could say um that you know I’m I’m living now there’s a bunch of things that went down as all this is happening I mean for one there happened to be two cavac birds that were nearby that were there in a matter of 10 15 minutes I think 12 minutes is what the actual number is there was Doc that was trying to give you a shot of morphine to to to you know ease the pain and as he’s they had wrapped so much gauze around you to try and prevent you from bleeding out that as he’s trying to give you a shot of morphine the needle breaks and he can’t give you any morphine his last morphine shot oh so he broke that one if he had if you had one more he would have pulled out another one cleared some of the gauze away and given it to you correct and they told me you know after the fact after I woke up um that if I would have received a single drop of morphine it would have depressed my respiratory system to the point of being unrecoverable to where they could not resuscitate me and it was the combat Galls that you know they had that 12 minutes and it was kind of like okay we have the combat gos we have a couple minutes even though his legs are just mind tissue wounds compared to everything else and I wasn’t even bleeding out of my legs and they were a little tore up but I wasn’t even bleeding out of my legs because I wasn’t even bleeding out of the hole in my kateed because my brachial artery which had been blown open was putting out so much blood and so the needle caught the combat gauze that was wrapped around my leg which was at the time a paper cut compared to everything else if that uh and so that just you know and I think you’re getting into it but just one of the few beginning of those dominoes of Miracles that uh allow me to be sitting right here with you yeah you you you say this um there are two types of Miracles the first kind of Miracle is one when one amazing thing happens and there’s no explaining how or why the second kind is when there are there is a massive line of do dominoes set up that all have to fall precisely the right way and at the right time for something to work out this piece of my life is the second kind of Miracle so number one the the cavac helicopters being in the area they’re there and pick you up in 12 minutes that’s a miracle I mean just a few days earlier it had taken 50 minutes which there’s no way you’re living 50 minutes then you already talked about the the morphine if they’ had given you that morphine or had one more mer morphine to hit you with because the first one broke you wouldn’t have survived it would it would have killed you and and then um you have this where first I was flown to camp Camp Bastion Bastion I was treated by a armor Army forward surgical team my official ruling upon arrival was e was pea pulseless electrical activity meaning I had flatlined but the medical staff there restarted my heart and managed to stabilize me enough to send me on to Kandahar so that’s another so you got you’re flatlined you’re dead and they bring you back and then the last one in the morning of November 24th you flatlined again and you got revived again so that’s Miracle upon Miracle upon miracle that you’re sitting here right now and any I mean what are the chances that doc friend could have loaded two extra morphine in his back right I mean it’s just there’s so many different ways that this could have gone um you get to laun stool the nickname for launch stol is halfway home because once wounded military members there make it there their chances of survival rise drastically the fact that I had survived long enough to make it a long stool was a miracle on Wednesday November 24th Master Sergeant Chuck Williams a chaplain’s assistant from South Carolina was reviewing the list of chalks expected that day that’s folks that are coming in he always checked for reservists and National Guard Guardsmen since he served through the South Carolina Air National Guard but that day he was also scanning the list for my name he’d gotten a call that the that there was a critically injured young man from South Carolina arriving and he thought it might be nice for a marine to hear a familiar AC accent praying at his bedside table Master Sergeant Williams had made sure that he was part of the group assigned to my flight’s arrival and he was ready to move the moment he heard my name called as I was unloaded and rolled toward the door hello Kyle I’m chaplain Williams and I’m here to help you with anything you need while you’re here at long stool he said gently leaning down next to my face then he spoke a quick prayer for me and I was whisked away into the operating room the next morning he came into my room to talk with me again what the chaplain Corps calls Ministry of presence I wasn’t awaken I couldn’t ask him any questions or seek his Counsel on spiritual matters but he thought he would sit with me so that I was not alone as I fought for my life I’d never heard that term before Ministry of presence me either but that’s that just the just the image alone of that is amazing is is is powerful mhm and you know again I I I hate to not do this book Justice I mean I can already tell you like I just skipped the entire notification process for your parents which is a book in its own right as a matter of fact I just I just did a podcast on a book called knock at the door the knock at the door yeah Ryan Manion yeah and amazing family I mean that’s one of the reasons I said you know what with Kyle I’m going to like not go in depth on that part but you do a great job of explaining what that was like explaining the the unknown and the and the the just the the complete sorrow and Fear And the emotions that they’re going through I mean it’s just again you got to get this book to to get all that um you talk about the surgeons Physicians the nurses I mean they are all just doing incredible work and you go you go into awesome detail you’re getting surgeries on your skull your face your jaw and I this this shocked me on Sunday November 28th I was cleared to head home as it turned out however mine was not a typical flight so it shocked me that we’re talking it’s been a week and they’ve got you stable enough to to to try and get you home that’s just phenomenal um as it turned out however mine was not a typical flight there was an Army sniper on board named Ryan Craig whose mother Jennifer Miller was a nurse Ryan had taken a bullet to the head in a firefight and his chances of survival had been even lower than mine Jennifer had received the dreaded invitation from the military to come over to Germany to say goodbye to her son but by the time she arrived his condition had begun to improve and suddenly it looked like he was going to survive after all like me Ryan was still unconscious but he too had been cleared to fly back home as she settled in next to him for the trip Jennifer heard me start to make a sound my bed was right next to Ryan’s and as she listened she realized ized I was saying mom she knew immediately what she had to do what any mother would do she situated herself right between us and with one hand reached out to her son and with the other reached out to me she held his hand and my hand the entire eight hour flight man yeah you know you talk a lot in here as well about these like responses that you give to hearing voice I mean you’re not conscious but you respond your vitals Peak you know so like a little thing like that is having real impact you know it’s like when you read about you read about little kids that are abandoned and what what messes them up they figure this out in Russia I think I read an article about like when they have a bunch of babies that have been abandoned and they’re little and they don’t have any human contact they become they have real problems so just that human touch is a real thing that has impact and here is this story of this mother who’s doing everything to help her son and she sees you and it’s like she knows instinctively that that human contact can make a difference again jumping ahead you’re at Bethesda by the end of the first week of Bethesda I was apparently awake and alert I would follow people with my eye and blink and Nod and response to questions but I was not yet talking other than some groans and incoherent mumbling my first memory is from about a week after that when I opened my eye and saw hospital equipment it was weird because the last thing I could recall clearly was being on that roof Rooftop in Afghanistan I was definitely disoriented now but in my confusion I just rolled with it gradually a seated figure next to me came into focus and I managed to croak out the words hey Dad I’m not not going to lie it was difficult as I slowly became cognizant of the extent of my injuries I think it was difficult for my parents to watch too as I gradually started to realize one thing after another each time I emerg back into Consciousness I’ve lost an eye I’ve woken up with no teeth I can’t feel my face I can’t lift my arm my arms but once reality s sunk in I didn’t enter any kind of deep mourning period for my body or my old life at least not yet the more cognizant I became of the extent of my injuries the more realized what a miracle it was that I was alive at all maybe my tendency to compete with myself kicked in right away maybe my mom was right and she really was willing me to live whatever the case my focus switched from the injuries that were out of my control to whatever recovery and Rehab I could do to maximize the facilities I still had I don’t think people believed at first that my positive perspective was genuine I’m pretty sure my family and nurses thought I was in denial or not fully lucid but I was driven by three things the first was the simple fact that I couldn’t undo my injuries second I had a desire to be strong for everyone around me who is clearly struggling with how to learn how to support me finally I was motivated to not let my injuries and by extension the Taliban have any power over me for the sake of every Marine who had gone before me and those still fighting yeah how how long did it take that transition from when you were like each time how long you’d be awake for 15 20 minutes and go hey I I I only have one eye and then you’re out for another day and then you wake up and go I’d like to itch my face but I can’t move my arms the crazy thing is at first I didn’t know that my right eardrum was completely blown I didn’t know that I only had one eye left I think because of the disorientation the medication uh uh they give you this medicine it’s called atropine and I forget exactly what it does but one of the side effects is it dilates your pupils really bad and so everything was kind of blurry already and it was just everything was just so strange you know and again going way back not only that Not only was my injuries the medication where I was at those was you I faded from Consciousness and World on the on a hot Dusty rooftop on the other side of the world now there’s snow building outside my hospital room window pane I didn’t even know there were military hospitals and everyone you know you always see your whole life doctors in white lab coats now my doctors uh were in camouflage and just all of those things it was like you know what is going on uh but yes I knew I was alive that was the main thing you know a lot of times when I woke up in the beginning it was uh very short bursts of being awake and those short bursts were either uh full of pain full of confusion or full of I think I just had so much of not an idea what was going on I again I just kind of roll with it until thankfully you know I started to comprehend more but uh you know for me to say hey Dad that was one of the most profound moments in my recovery for my parents and my family because they had the mindset which they talk about now that anything physical missing limbs missing eyes we can get through that we can get better we can love and heal you but you know the brain is a a a beautiful but delicate thing and if you weren’t kle anymore or if you didn’t know who we were that would have been an entirely different area of how do we cope with this so you got all that going on and then this happens I’m lying in bed my heart races as I try to process how they got me into the hospital I am fixated on what used to be the silver sprinkler heads that are mounted in the ceiling now they are bullet holes they’ve been shot out by the Taliban who’ve been taking over the hospital and now now in the room above mine Lo unloading AK-47 rounds down into my room I can’t move as my mom stays at my bedside with me she gets shot in the leg and I’ve never felt so helpless the shooting suddenly sto seconds later the silence is interrupted by the dreaded clinking of a hand grenade bouncing on the hospital room floor the Taliban dropped it down through one of the holes in the roof and it lands at the foot of my bed I hear the nurse scream no he’s had been he’s been through enough already she jumps on it I watch the pink mist and body parts that are the only things left of her float around my room and what these are these are hallucinations that you’re having and they are 100% real to you as real as us sitting here right now going on my parents told me later that night was the worst of their life even worse than getting the call that I’d been injured or seeing my mangled body when I’d arrived up to that point I’d still been Kyle just physically battered Kyle they had no idea who this hallucinating person was and I was so far gone on to whatever my mind had taken me they were afraid that they would not be able to get me back I was returned to the ICU early the next morning and then my dad franic that our family can’t afford the medical bills loads himself down with weapons and storms in the emergency room to demand that I get the surgeries I need and to reverse the hospital’s order to discharge me I try to scream and beg him not to I want to tell him it’s okay and he doesn’t have to do this even if I can get even if I can’t get any more care as the second set of the ICU sliding doors open he is met by a SWAT team who unload on him until I see him fall behind the nurses station the last thing I remember is the sound of the shotgun my dad was holding as it hits the ground I think about how much he must have loved me to do something like that and then this I am standing on the top of a small hill looking down and across a field watching a funeral the sky is so gray it seems more light than dark more dark than light there are no tombstones not even at the gravite of the person being buried the only person in attendance is the pastor who is holding the Bible and standing at the head of the Grave I begin to wonder why I’m here standing on this hill by myself as the pastor begins to speak I realize the horrifying answer to my question I am watching my own funeral and no one has come the Marines I called my brothers were so disappointed that I had left them behind in Afghanistan that they didn’t come to say goodbye I try to yell out but I can’t I try to take a step but I can’t I am paralyzed with despair as tears roll down my face then you say the hallucinations were intense at no point did it ever occur to me that the things I was seeing hearing and feeling like might all be in my head every detail was so vivid and lifelike to this day they are forever locked in my brain not as memories of hallucinations I had but as memories of real events I experienced how long did that period last uh it seemed like months but I think it was only a few hours and that was the reaction to a drug that they were giving you correct and you know early on especially during my time around this time that we’re talking about and an ICU I mean I was in surgery minimum every other day going through 13-hour surgeries to save my arm going through uh uh multiple you know every time you put someone to sleep is a risk yep so every other day they might have put me to sleep one time but they would do three or four operations and every other day if not every day wounded warriors uh at Walter Reed myself included had to go to daily every other day what’s called wash outs and as you know the bacteria and things that we don’t quite understand haven’t researched enough yet in the soil in Afghanistan create uh infections that can be just as deadly if not more deadly than the actual injury and can kill you weeks later at Walter Reed so having to go in for these wash outs multiple operations every time I was put down so I think just all of that combined along with already struggling to grasp this new reality that I was waking up to and experiencing but and that last hallucination you read about about watching my own funeral is the only thing out of my entire Journey that still um chokes me up because it was just a feeling of Beyond despair I I couldn’t move I was so Frozen with Despair and I was just so devastated that not just my buddies but no one no family no nothing massive Rolling Hills worth of a field was just a hole in the ground where I was and you that religious leader conducting the funeral but like with so many pieces and parts of my journey I’m thankful that that hallucination occurred because that taught me one of or helped me realize one of the most powerful lessons and questions that I continue to carry with myself today day and always ask and remind myself and that is and at least just for me this is what I translated from that but what is my legacy and when I get to those final days which will be followed by my funeral you hopefully where people will come but you know who will I have there how many people I have helped loved touched impacted what am I doing every day and and how am I living to create a funeral that has people there or has more people than less and uh you know I think it was also scary and I’ve never really thought about this until right now but I think it was also scary because the other hallucinations I think maybe 1% of my brain you know at least after the first hallucination continuing to have more yes they seemed completely real and I felt like I was completely loosen but after going through multiple hallucinations that were just so crazy I mean giant spiders attacking my hospital room the Taliban dropping grenades my dad you know charging the the emergency room they were not kind of normal life experiences so when I entered that hallucination of watching my own funeral then it became mixed with okay this actually does relate to what’s going on like did did I did I finally succumb to the fight and actually you know is this really really happening you know because last I remember before this hallucination started I was struggling to to hang on to life so it was it was kind of like a plausible scenario um but yeah you know that was uh of course I know today it’s it’s it wasn’t real it’s not true but um it still you know cuts into me to you know feel like I disappointed those around me and that I disappointed them to the extent that they didn’t care about me anymore and that they were upset with me for leaving the deployment early and my own family didn’t come and I don’t remember exactly but I think in that moment in that hallucination I was thinking well you know they didn’t come because of the hardships I put him through and so that was uh extremely tough but again has made me from that day on think about you know when that time for my funeral comes what Legacy am I leaving yeah and it’s interesting that it’s framed up what the most important thing to you is is everyone else like who’s who have I helped who who have I given enough to that they that they want to come and give a little bit back to me right now you’re getting back to your your attitude a little bit here which is just um you know important for anybody to hear you’re Nick had woken up because Nick you know he suffered bad injury too um and you say this I was thrilled when I learned Nick had woken up for a variety of reasons I only saw Nick a couple of times in the hospital but it made my day when he penned what up Kyle on his whiteboard when he was doing occupational therapy for writing we were just a few rooms AP apart but still bedridden so we started sending a whiteboard back and forth with short messages we practiced writing to each other it was encouraging to see it was encouraging to me to see that Nick was on the same journey I was we were reclaiming our lives and learning how to be our fullest selves not in spite of our injuries but because of them our injuries happened nothing would ever change that our wounds were part of our bodies but we were the ones who would get to choose what role they would play in in our stories awesome statement and it’s a what’s awesome to me about that statement is how often do people let things that are much less significant in infinitely less significant than the injuries that you received and the injuries that Nick received and yet they let those things those little insignificant things dictate their whole life dictate their reaction dictate the way they’re going to behave and here you were looking at these catastrophic injuries saying you get to choose what role those injuries play in your life it’s a that’s an attitude to to think about for sure yeah everything is a choice everything is is not only a choice but everything is shaped by the lens of perspective that you choose to look through I I’m trying to kind of conjure up where you found that lens because there’s plenty of people I’m saying that could use to would want to borrow those glasses from you to have a look through that lens at their world and I think you know I always think that um there’s things that can help people that all they need is awareness right like all they need is to see it and so I think even hearing you say look it’s how you look at it hearing you say that people go maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way so if you’re in a tough spot right now out there in the world my guess is you’re not in as tough as a spot as you were in as Nick was in and how can you adjust your perception a little bit so that you see it in a different light see your situation in a different light yeah absolutely and you know I think it’s important important to note that struggle adversity all of these life obstacles that get in our way that knock us down you know those those things are the last things we should ever compare but exactly what you’re saying to have a frame of reference of you know wow um I can get through this and I I you know and this is one of the reasons I wrote the book to tell people that you can come back better and stronger might be physically mentally and emotionally different or emotionally different and that is absolutely okay we all handle adversity differently we all heal on our own time but you truly can come back better and stronger than you were before whatever knocked you down and in good time you can not only come back better and stronger but you can do it with a smile on your face just to kind of point out some of the what we’re talking about for a struggle you you you end up going home for rehab for some of your rehab which was great but like you you go into like a full celebration mode after you finally are able to put on a pair of socks for the first time and by the way it took you like 10 minutes per sock to get the socks on so and eight months and yeah and eight months of effort of work to get there so eight months of failing to put your socks on oh my mom brushed my teeth you know before that getting ready the few teeth I had left so yeah I mean it still sounds crazy to say it took me eight months to to you know be able to put my socks back on you know some sometimes people look at a challenging situation you know and they say well it’s going to take me a long time to get this done and whatever that thing that they’re going to get done is going to be a pretty giant Triumph whether it’s completing a marathon or completing some courses at school and here you are grinding as hard as you can and it takes you eight months and your reward is it only took you 10 minutes per sock but you were able to put your own socks on you say I knew I was reclaiming my body and my life one tiny muscle twitch at a time yeah it that right there again what is what you know if you’re listening to this right now and you think you got some challenges hey you probably do we all have challenges but if you can make that little that little bit of progress that little tiny bit of progress and you do it today you do it tomorrow and you do it the next day you will dig yourself out of where you’re at you say this and and you say this I I I get mad because I can’t just read this entire book to everyone right now but that’s why they can buy it and actually you read the audio book too yeah yeah so that’s really that’s really cool as well yeah so a lot of times books are read by some random actor and and and they say like like here uh this part says I know caretakers are the unsung heroes but they read it like this I know caretakers are the unsung heroes so you didn’t do that you read it yourself which is awesome uh and you’re in this section you’re just talking about everything that they did for you day in day out tasks of keeping someone comfortable taking them to the bathroom remembering their pill schedule accommodating their diet helping them to get dressed keeping them company cheering them up celebrating good days walking them through their bad days I can’t imagine how exhausting it must be to find yourself in a full-time around the-clock job of taking care of someone else and yet this was the role that various people took on for me it was this strength and support when I still when I was at my worst and most broken physically that enabled me to begin to rebuild a normal life so again shout out to the caretakers the people that got you through this just incredible people um continuing on here I wasn’t just physically exhausted I was emotionally drained from the moment I regained Consciousness back in December I’d been putting a strong face on for my family I thought if I could reassure them I was okay it’d be easier for them to deal with what happened to me I am a marine which means the instinct to protect others is second nature nature and that instinct was working over time now it was more than the endless Hospital trips and surgeries and skin grafts and adaptive exercises it was getting used to the constant pain and the feeling of the shrapnel still trapped in my body from what I could see with my remaining eye the world looked much the same my mom and dad looked exactly like they look looked before i’ shipped out my brothers were taller but otherwise the same boys I’d known but I knew that what they saw what they saw was forever changed every every time they looked at me they couldn’t help but see my wounds I had been the one to enlist but now my family was serving alongside me yeah this it’s so easy to Breeze through like the the a what your family’s going through b what you’re going through it’s like you know I’m the when when I get an injury I’m like the sorest PA pathetic person I’m so embarrassing like I get so frustrated if I get a cut on my finger and I can’t like you know train Jiu-Jitsu I’m all and and when you think about this level of injuries that you suffered it’s just it’s it’s hard to comprehend and something you said earlier there was I had a a guy on here a few weeks ago um named Jim cley and he was a he was in Vietnam he’s a awesome guy went to Vietnam he was on his 11th month of his tour in Vietnam and he was checking the perimeter of where his element was set up and he stepped on a mine and and it it took off uh both of his legs and one of his arms and and they took like high above like way above the knee Pro more like at the hip but one thing that he said that I was thinking about it wasn’t on the podcast but we were talking about it later is like the 100% like this is this is this is what happened this like the 100% acceptance he said made a big difference in his life because he was with a lot of vets he talked about some of those other vets with me that he was with that never accepted what had happened to them and you know it reminds me two things it’s like number one you say hey I accept CED that I couldn’t change what had happened but also because he told me he said you know some of the guys that are knew they only accepted at 95% it reminds me what you said when you talking about those hallucinations and some of those weren’t as bad because you even though you were 99% sure that little 1% was enough to make a difference in your brain and I I think that’s what happens with our life like we have to accept okay these things happen in the past and there’s not not anything you can do to change what’s happened in the past it is impossible and it’s the most obvious piece of the whole puzzle it is the past we know we can’t change it we know we can’t alter it fix it go back but it is one of the most detrimental aspects potentially of a recovery of a struggle the what is that daunting question that most of the time will never be answered and the main thing a lot of the times that people get hung up on but the most obvious and so I’m thankful that I did leave the past in the past and I left it 100% behind me but in order to realize that I had to hit rock bottom arguably the lowest point in my life by far the lowest point of my recovery as you already said I had gone home to recover roughly six or seven months I had been injured November 2010 I was in my first three kind of initial life-saving months of my recovery until the last week of February of 2011 at the time there was such an influx of casualties not only from Iraq but now from the push into Afghanistan I remember just stopping in my tracks at Walter Reed I went up on to the recovery floor and I think I was going to visit some some uh guys because you know this was after I had already got back on my feet become stable but I remember stopping in my tracks at the sight of hospital beds being put in the hallway because Walter Reed had run out of space in rooms every room was doubled up on patients initially after I got injured I was the only one on the whole floor because of how delicate my condition was that did not have a roommate because I needed two cor or Army medics in there every second of the day on what’s called a onetoone to just sit there for hours and hours day after day watching me watching my machines so that if I crash if I flatlined you know it might only save 5 to 10 seconds but someone would not only be in there but they could immediately contact doctors and people that could help bring me back so with that said you know uh we had already been told and I had already unfortunately heard the extremely heavy news that minimum I was going to have to spend two years at Walter Reed minimum if everything went textbook if all 40 of my surgeries and maybe at this point it was like 20 25 left me and mom lost count but uh you know three years and 40 surgeries uh that’s obviously a long time a commitment so and with the months that I had been there the chain of command the Marine Corps they met my family they knew them I knew they were they have my best interest which unfortunately is not the case all the time with Wounded Warriors coming back um and so knowing that they were going to take care of me they had my best interest if we agreed if they let me go home lay on my own couch with the dog eat mom’s amazing home-cooked food I could go do that with the agreement that they would just continue to extend my leave month by month every day I would go to the local hospital clinic in Lexington South Carolina get that daily therapy and every two weeks from fir March 1st until September when I moved up to Walter Reed every two weeks my mom drove me from South Carolina to DC to get a surgery so if all those agreements were good I could go home and recover so and the point I’m getting to is uh I’m at home recovering and it’s March maybe early April spring of 2011 right after the hospital and it was around 10 o’clock at night I was winding down for the day and I mean after a whole day of therapy with the injuries I still had and how early on I was in my recovery might as well been 3 in the morning so I was already tired maybe a little frustrated uh and my mom was in the in the Next Room over the living room and there’s a a couple of reasons which I I’ll get to but there’s a couple of reasons why this story goes so deep in dark so quickly and the first is and I didn’t realize this till recently but it was the first time standing there sitting there in my kitchen that really for the first time time since I joined the Marine Corps and especially from the first time that I got injured and woke up in the hospital it was just me not a team of six people standing around telling me hey it’s okay to go to the bathroom in front of us in this bed pan not a team of people holding all the tubes coming out of me I wasn’t struggling to breathe through the tube the tra in my neck and it was just me my own thoughts in my own head with the ringing in my ears and in that moment by myself in the quiet and leading up to this moment I had been taking on the Monumental challenge of trying to make a bowl of cereal for myself and at this point I hadn’t had the nerve graft repair surgeries to fix my wrist from hanging um my weight was extremely low for what it you know my age and and you um circumstances aside uh my weight was extremely low I was extremely weak you know the milk might as well weighed 100 lbs you know I struggled to open the box of cereal and it was almost impossible to even hold the spoon I complete the mission of making uh my bowl of cereal and I’m sitting at the kitchen counter and that was only half the battle now I had to try to eat it my nerves had been severed in my face I still can’t feel a portion of my face and my chin I didn’t have have teeth which not only give you don’t really realize but they give your mouth so much structure and your lips structure gives you the abil ability to close your mouth to not have milk going everywhere and Not only was it going everywhere I couldn’t even feel it all over my face and this bowl of SE was just dude it was defeating me and in that moment I completely broke and we’ve already hit on it but I know for two reasons that I broke in this moment because it was the first time I had been by myself with only my own thoughts and also until this point I had been strong every day because I knew you know the hardest part of my entire Journey was my parents suffering through that burden of recovery with me and I think now knowing and going what I’ve been through being on the other side of that hospital bed is a loved one a lot of times a helpless loved one is exponentially harder than laying in that bed so trying to put a smile on every day trying not to tear up when that’s all I really could do after a 13-hour arm surgery where they had been hammering metal rods through my bones and it was pain like I had never fell all the way to the Deep Center core of my bones you know telling them hey I’m not in pain it’s okay I’m good you know smiling being strong but in that moment by myself no one around me almost a movie type setting the lights were a little dim and yeah I completely broke my mom rushed in and like any wonderful mother she puts her arms around me and asks if I’m in pain what’s going on on and through the the the Saabs I could only choke out one thing and that was you know look at me who’s ever going to love me again and uh that’s that’s tough even still now to talk about that today but like I’ve said already multiple times sometimes the deepest darkest lowest moments in life teach us the most beautiful lessons and in that moment you know I’m thankful that I had this insight and and I realized that and talking about the past that the past is truly the past in that moment I realized that with any situation with any obstacle or event that that really knocks you down in life every opportunity every intersection good or bad you cut out the noise and this is going to be a tough pill to swallow for some people listening and it was for me but it must be done and that is that you cut out the noise and you only ever have two options you can either stand up and take that small step forward you don’t have to know where you’re going you don’t have to have the perfect plan you don’t have to know what tomorrow holds but you can either get up and take that small step or you’re going to sit at that kitchen counter for the rest of your life and now years later and one of my favorite lines in the book uh I’m thankful that I pushed through those hard times and I realized and I truly believe in now that the smallest of steps eventually completes the grandest of Journeys and that is one of the parts of my mission that I am trying to get out there and tell people and educate people about uh and um this is by no means ending it I I already I’m still excited and looking forward to keep going but with that said and I appreciate you having me in in this time and helping me with your platform with that mission of helping people through that struggle and telling people that one small step at a time you work hard try to stay positive try to be a good person do the right thing and you know it’ll not only bring you out of that but take you to great places yeah I don’t have anything to add to that I mean that’s um that’s such a poignant thing to perspective to have and and it’s you know I often talk about the fact that the first step is the hardest one in many situations like the first step is the hardest one and and what I like about what you bring to that statement is like it doesn’t matter how big that step is or more important how small that step is you got to do something you gota you you got to move in the right direction um yeah that and you detail that it’s a whole chapter in here um where you where you go through that and people go to people got to pick this up to really reinforce those ideas so that we can push through it you know here here’s here’s one of the things you say kind of bringing this home at some point everyone will face a rock bottom moment when the past looms too large to overcome and a hopeful future seems too far out to imagine I mean just think about that right there there’s times that you’re going to face where the past is too much and and the future seems too far away too far out there you go on it’s difficult to prepare yourself for that moment because it’s impossible to know what will trigger it it may be a major setback that knocks you to the ground or could be something so seemingly minor and innocuous like trying to eat a bowl of cereal which is what you went through the point is you can’t really do much ahead of time to prevent that moment from happening you might not even be able to brace yourself for the impact all you can do is commit yourself to surviving for another day and recognizing that you can’t change what is behind you only what lies ahead you may even wonder if it’s possible to move on and it might not be without professional guidance to help you process everything that your past represents it’s not a process that can be rushed you have to be honest with yourself as to whether or not it’s time to let go of the past past maybe the answer is not yet and that’s okay but at some point you have to be willing to say from this day forward I am choosing to live too often we fall into the Trap of thinking we need to have everything figured out before we act you don’t have to have a road map before you set out you don’t even have to know what direction you’re traveling you just have to be willing to move and leave the past behind so this is just you know powerful stuff and you you you go through and you talk about you know you went jumping with Jay Redmond who who’s been on the podcast and you know a seal that was wounded very badly you did a bunch of mud runs with the Marine Corps like you’re doing stuff you’re pushing and and this kind of you know this is what you say about that about those things every obstacle I took on had a whole new significance and every time I conquered one I took on new significance too I gained significance as someone who fought to live and was succeeding I gained significance as a combat Survivor who is doing more than just surviving I gained significance as someone who attacked physical and occupational therapy with every fiber of my being and was now proving what my restored body could do I gained significance as someone who refused to let fear make his choices for him I gained significance as someone who reclaimed his life unapologetically and even if that significance was only apparent to me and no one else had changed who I was in my own eyes and in my own mind my injuries will not Define my life I will and the greatest power I have that any of us has is the power to make that choice so once again it is about taking control over what choices you make deciding to move forward yeah and again it’s one thing when somebody says that stuff that you know their their big challenge was who who knows what what Big Challenge they had but to hear it coming from you who’s literally been dead and and and come back and suffered through the the the recovery process you know it’s just if you can say that we can all say that and and uh just to add on to that and thanks for pointing that out but that’s exactly why along with having to realize how I wanted to approach and write it that’s why this book was written now nine years later because I didn’t want to write a book not only that only military service members veterans or people that have been to combat could understand and I wanted a book that that I lived I I lived learned and and proved and completed the lessons that I am teaching and the worst is when you get whether a book or or some motivator out there telling you you know a whole spreadsheet of things you need to do and they have it done it themselves and so the last thing I I wouldn’t have wrote it if I wouldn’t have have done these things but I’m not going to tell people you know after you get knocked down you can go to college earn your degree without doing that I’m not going to tell people oh you work hard you know one foot in front of the other and eventually one day you can run a marathon without crossing the finish line of that marathon without jumping out of the plane backpacking across Europe so uh thank you for recognizing that and I just wanted to add that um you know people ask me like oh you could have wrote a book right after this happened I mean your story was there after the medal you know it pretty much would have been the same book in a way yes but not really because I uh um I wanted to I wanted to have substance behind the things the lessons um the the challenges and victories that I talk about in this book you know you you kind of got a tone in your voice when you said some motivator out there like uh and I have I’ve I’ve pretty consistently talked smack about the term motivation as a matter of fact I I made a little video the other day where I was making fun of motivation Monday right and and as I was reading your book I got to this chapter it’s called stay motivated and I was like oh done [Music] reading and and um you know my mind is always open and I’m always looking to learn so I was like okay let’s let’s see what what Kyle has to say about it and you said you know stay motivated you had in quotes any Marine reading this is rolling their eyes right now I was like okay so he knows what I’m talking about uh those two words stay motivated are pretty well worn within the core leadership loves to say them when you’re in formation on a grueling run or anytime there’s a large lag in the conversation in fact it seems like when you are cold and wet and hungry and dirty and missing home that’s when you say it the most stay motivated the line has become a bit of a joke in the marines that Marines will toss around sarcastically in really miserable situations when it seems like everyone hates their life but still there’s some wisdom in the phrase so I I I checked it out and that that allowed you to keep going yeah yeah yeah well I my mind is open man my mind is open and there’s something that I realized I I did a little research and the the root word of motivation which we know motivation is like it comes across as an emotion or feeling that’s what I don’t like about it because we can’t rely on it right but the root word of it is Latin modus and it means move that’s what it means move and so you spell out all these things you might be angry tired broken hurt confused what can you possibly do in a situation like that stay motivated which ties back to what you already said you you get up and you move that’s what you need to do uh no matter who you are or where you are in life there are simply things that are going going to be terrible but you just have to lower your head put one foot in front of the other and walk straight into that storm stay motivated that’s what we’re talking about we’re talking about moving we’re talking about taking action and when I turn that word motivation which is like a a a feeling into action then I get it then I get it um yeah that this chunk of the book where you talk about what you went through is and and your attitude towards it and sometimes you have to dig a Little Deeper you got this part here there was a local afan Afghan boy about 12 who loved the Marines who would always salute us when we would walk out of our patrol base on foot he and his 8-year-old brother even made a game of trying to snatch our water bottles and goodies from the dump pouches on the back of our sappy plates which were designed to carry empty magazines from firefights but doubled as a snack candy and water B bottle carrier the two boys got to be friends with us and through the months of talking and playing with us would sometimes tell us where well- hidden IEDs were buried our EOD guys made a good show of trying to make it appear that their discoveries were accidental before the explosives were diffused but in Taliban Taliban strongholds eyes are always watching one night about two weeks after I was evacuated a grenade was thrown over the wall of our compound and detonated at exactly the spot where my now empty bunk sat no one was injured but it obviously shook everyone up a bit a few nights later that same boy who used to salute us showed up at camp in the middle of the night to tell us he threw that grenade he was sobbing and begging the Marines to forgive him and not to kill him the Taliban had caught on that he was friendly with us and that fewer IEDs were being detonated they suspected he was the cause so they beat him senseless but they didn’t kill him instead for his final punishment they dragged him to the wall of our compound placed a grenade ated his hand and pulled the pin a 12-year-old child was forced to kill or be killed that was just one story of countless others we heard stories of violence ritual stoning of women pushing people off buildings for being gay and children forced to become weapons of war how is one not affected witnessing that degree of evil you remind yourself why you’re over there in the first place to stop the Taliban and their torture and oppression of their own people you remind yourself that if you were able to weaken their stronghold or just give hope to those innocent people even in the smallest of ways so that one day they might taste the freedom of safety then you made a difference that helps you stay focused that helps you stay motivated that’s a that’s a I would love to say that that’s a rare story but that’s what those that’s what the enemy is like yeah that’s what they do so you know you just mentioned that you put down your backpack put down your ruck sack and picked up a backpack you ended up going to college uh kind of fulfilling that promise to your to your parents and um on the afternoon of December 18th 2017 I was sitting in a folding chair on the floor of Colonial Life Arena just adjusting my tassel to make sure it was positioned correctly on my cap I was about to receive my diploma making good on the promise I’d made to my parents eight years earlier that one day I’d go back to school and earn my degree the graduation speaker introduced me to the crowd and announced joining Kyle’s family this afternoon are members of his medical evacuation team and two of his doctors from Walter Reed National mil milary Medical Center our thanks to you Kyle would you please stand and receive our recognition I stood and suddenly so did the entire Arena my fellow students were cheering the crowd was cheering my family was cheering and I realized that I had really done it we had really done it my family my peers and all the people I’d been with who’d kept me alive along the way both literally and figuratively so you graduated from college and while you were doing that you were you were also running marathons right do I have that timeline correct you have that timeline correct the first one was 2013 all three were Marine Corps Marathon for the simpi fund in Washington DC and the first one I completed was October after I got out of the hospital in July and then the the next two were the few years following that the second one actually which I don’t recommend cuz I didn’t think about circling and cruising around in the clouds over the Pentagon before I skydived out into the starting line it was uh a solid 20 minutes worth of invisible air squats cramped up in that plane waiting for the sun to break over the horizon yeah great times and so uh I landed and and if I hadn’t put my weat mother through enough already of course it was not the the greatest weather and it was windy that day so I’m not only skydiving in front of her putting her through that but the wind because I jumped with Team fastracks Awesome team most of which are our former operators and and special forces and myself and and my jump partner got blown off course ironically Crash Landing I’m talking sliding in between headstones and Arlington Cemetery my God I thought oh man I hope this isn’t about to express me into into being on one of these spots right now this is so completely crazy that you’re running marathons parachuting this is just ridiculous I might I might like have a talk with your mom we might need to tighten you up a little bit I think I think I’m actually on her side she hammers me enough already so we crashed land in Arlington I’m I’m sprinting to the starting line undressing out of my out of my gear doing an interview right as a Canon goes all so I made that one but these marathons came up um very early on when I was in the hospital and when I said earlier you might be a little different physically mentally or emotionally but you can truly come back better and stronger than you were before whatever knocked you down and that lesson comes from early on when I had you know when I was breathing through that tube when I had my arms tied up from swelling when I had to go to the bathroom in a bed pan in front of my parents and six to eight medical staff from the hospital in that low knockdown seemingly hopeless State I decided to think of something that I could do you know whether it was a year from then or just at some point in my life I tried to think of something I could do to show and and prove to myself that I was not only back but again I was better and stronger than before and I thought and at the time I mean I can’t say I was 100% confident I was going to accomplish this goal but I set the goal to run a marathon and years later what is it that was 2011 first marathonas so over two years later when I crossed the finish line of that first marathon thankfully I had sunglasses on I was tearing up because you know for years I had been telling myself deep thought to myself coaching myself and I think doing it so much unknowingly just try to trying to convince myself that hey you know I really can get better come back stronger like I I knew I could and I I did believe those things but again sometimes that goal or the future it is so far away and you have to go through so much to get to it that it’s not that I didn’t believe myself but it’s kind of like until it happened I couldn’t fully buy into it which is weird cuz it was my own just internal talking at device but when I crossed the finish line of that Marathon it was such an incredible amazing beautiful moment because not only was I just like I do every day in life any new experience I have any experience I have period just sitting before we we drove here this morning sitting and watching the sun come up anything I do I I literally can’t help but to think wow like I was so close to not experiencing this right now big or small so when I cross the line of that Marathon that finish line and they draped that that metal around my neck uh in that moment I prove to myself what I have been hurting and and and working striving getting knocked down every single day for and after years in that moment I not only realized but I fully believed it solidified permanently forever in my mind what I had been teaching myself day in day out and through those long dark and painful nights yeah that’s a that that’s an incredible journey and I cannot believe that the journey only lasted what two years to get to you for your first Marine Corps Marathon from the time you got wounded yeah which I don’t recommend what soever you got all this stuff going on you got your recovery going on you got your going to college you’re running marathons you’re skydiving you’re skydiving into marathons and at some point you start hearing the and you talk about it in the book when you first start getting uh some indication that their their the the Medal of Honor could be um in your future and again you you talk about it in the book um you kind of build to it the little indicators along the way and then you get to this here on an unassuming day in February I was notified that I should expect a call from President Obama the following Monday at 1:36 p m this seemed weirdly specific until I remembered that the leader of the Free World has more than a few demands on his time and probably runs a pretty tight schedule I told my parents of course but they didn’t say a word of it to my brothers I think we thought it would be more fun for them to be caught off guard and then you go on the call came through at 136 on the dot I remember being surprised that an actual number appeared on my phone screen rather than an unknown caller message but it must have been the number for the central switchboard at the White House I answered the phone and a Stern sounding woman on the other end announced stand by I have the president of the United States on the phone for you okay was all I could get out after such a profound statement a moment later a voice familiar to me came on Kyle said the president in a surprisingly conversational friendly and upbeat tone it immediately set me at ease or as much as at ease you can be at when you’re talking to the commander-in-chief yes sir how you doing I’m fine sir how are you am I really making small talk with to the president I thought to myself I’m doing just fine thanks he answered then he continued it is my pleasure to let you know that based on the recommendation of the secretary of the Navy and the secretary of the defense of Defense I have approved the medal of honor to be awarded to you for your courageous actions in Afghanistan in support of operation enduring Freedom there it was it was happening that’s got to be a uh that’s got to be a hard thing to kind of contemplate that you are joining this you know Legion of our most profound Heroes and how old are you at this point in time 25 25 sophomore in college I had left class to drive home received the call uh after entering my home and getting yelled at by my mother because my first question was does anyone have a phone charger I’m on 7% so I was uh not prepared for the mission you could say and I also got yelled at even though it was a call on speaker phone uh with no video that my shoes that I was wearing were nasty and so after getting reprimanded uh I did I uh received that incredible and and surreal phone call and at this point for years we had heard you know not really any updates but it also hadn’t ended so one can only assume especially with the months before this since the previous November November of 2013 the year before I received the medal at the commants Marine Corps Birthday ball uh my mom and I sat down uh for a a casual meeting with uh a marine by the name of KRA Moes she worked um public relationspublic affairs for the Marine Corp and she wanted to sit down with us and say hey we have no idea where this thing is where it’s going to go if it’s even going to happen but looking ahead at your next semester of school you know I had recovered I had left the hospital I had been out of the hospital for um you know I guess now that I’m thinking about it only a few months but by the time the the the metal rolled around I had already had to not only recover but get on with my life make that transition so as a sophomore in college they knew that that was my new mission that it was a my priority and I wanted to do good at it and give it my best and it was kind of you know them looking out for me and all of this was so weird as we went along because all of these you know I had to um I had to do all this Preparatory work for something that not even the highest Marines knew where it was at and they wouldn’t tell me of course even if they did but I believe they truly did not know and so with that said as the first couple months it was just like hey this could potentially happen uh even though we don’t know if it’s going to happen we need to adequately prepare you so with that said it was kind of like hey if you want to do good at school we suggest unfortunately that you need to withdraw from this semester but once I got word that I was going to be receiving that call it was beginning of February so I was still just a few weeks into the semester and I was thinking hey I’m going to stick this out and wait for this insane call if it actually is going to come to happen before I withdraw and lose a semester of time energy effort and class credits and so uh yeah I left left class I took the call I drove back for some reason to make the next class and finish out the day strong before I withdrew from my classes and it was so strange still to this day sitting through that history class and thinking like okay well it’s kind of crazy I was just talking to the president of the United States and now I’m in my sophomore College history class and so but after that yeah I got the call we knew it was going to happen but we still couldn’t tell anyone so I was at the Pentagon every other week all week going through chaos train everything from sitting in a room for hours getting drilled by two who were awesome and really did good to get me prepared but almost an interrogation set up and Grilling me with every question that could be detrimental to me or learning how to if I don’t want to answer a question directly navigating that reporter that interview and the direction that I wanted to take it but all my friends I couldn’t tell anyone so all my friends thought I was still in class so like oh how are finals going oh yeah well they’re good not knowing I was just at the freaking Pentagon all week and then hanging out with them on the weekends going to football and basketball games but uh yeah it was it was uh incredibly surreal to receive that phone call but even when I received that phone call it made it no more real mhm and and I think just one of those things in life that like combat like the unknown of a life of of service holds I think you can you can only comprehend and process to a certain extent until those actual moments happen and you’re exposed to them but yeah fast forward a few months after my imaginary semester that I was suffering through um I did I received the Mel of Honor as along with Dakota the second living recipient Marine recipient since Vietnam and still currently thankfully that um um thankfully I’m still the youngest living um recipient of that incredible and humbling honor and award you I mean you do a great job of in the book of talking about you know the ceremony and doing the interviews and the pressure in the white house and all those things going on but and it’s definitely worth reading to get some appreciation if you don’t understand what this award means that will begin to give you some appreciation of what it what it means for the person that’s receiving it I mean just what you are what is happening to you you do a great job of of explaining that in the book but I I really like this section here which also kind of explains what the Medal of Honor means it says the thing I want people to understand is that the Medal of Honor is a heavy distinction it only weighs a couple of ounces but the physical weight is nothing compared to the weight of what it represents everything that the metal symbolizes not just the circumstances under which it was earned but the broader conflict of which that action was part and all of the losses that are a result of that conflict adds weight one of my friends from deployment told me that when he saw the president place the metal around my neck he cried because our unit our story and the guys we lost will never die after that for my fellow Marines he said the metal was a part of everyone’s deployment and you go on and here talking a little a bit more about Awards and you say the ribbon rack never tells the full story of a person’s service but having served alongside someone who has awarded the Medal of Honor somehow helps to capture in a bigger sense what we all went through even beyond our current operations when you start trying to add up each casualty each death each injury the mental scars and every person listed as Mia over nearly 2 50 years of military conflicts it’s overwhelming I Marvel too at the tremendous acts of bravery and heroism from the Civil War Spanish American War World War I World War II Korea Vietnam Desert Storm Somalia OE oif even to the special forces and intelligence communities who operate without recognition in places we will never know that never got told maybe those stories weren’t told because there was no one around to witness them maybe they weren’t told because no one survived to tell them maybe they were told but some external Factor stood in the way of someone getting the honor they deserved that is why I often say the medal doesn’t belong to me not really my story just happened to be noticed thinking that the Medal of Honor thinking of the Medal of Honor as an individual award couldn’t be any further from the truth yeah I mean um hard to sum up in words but that’s a pretty good that’s a pretty good uh shot at it to to to explain what it means and and certainly for me having served with with Mikey Monsour everything you’re talking about that that your Marines felt you know I know that myself and and the rest of the guys in tasking a Bruiser we all we all feel that we all feel that Pride we all understand that sacrifice and it’s and it’s not just limited to guys in tasking a Bruiser everyone that was in ratti with us they all feel the same way you know you end up I guess you’re I guess you know when you were you said you were a kid with a lot of energy well that that hasn’t really been St stifled out just Des spite um grenades and whatnot cuz you end up going on something that you call a gratitude tour and you go around the country and you actually go around the world because you go to Afghanistan you go to Germany you go and you meet people and you thank people the medical people the Medevac Crews the rehab folks everyone that that kind of played a role in your survival and your rehab and your recovery and you basically go go around and you say thank you and you say something here there is a power in moving from someone who only receives to someone who is able to give to for me it marked a major shift in my view of myself and of my view of the world even though my healing Journey will never really be over the opportunities I’ve had to thank people have helped me moved beyond the chapter of my life dedicated to recovery now I can look ahead to whatever comes next making something out of this life that so many people work to save the healing power of saying thank you is immense I believe this with every ounce of my being I can’t imagine anything more beautiful in this world than gratitude feeling it expressing it receiving it gratitude is at the heart of every thank you for your service that someone offers to a veteran I understand the feeling of not not knowing what to say but wanting to say something because the gift that was given is too significant to go unacknowledged I appreciate the gr gratitude that is shared with me but I hope people know that I owe so much more thanks than I will ever be able to express gratitude I’ve come to learn is one of the most important parts of becoming a whole person and building a life of significance gratitude requires wisdom to recognize the roles of others it requires humility to admit that you couldn’t have done it alone it requires strength to be able to give part of yourself back to someone and know there is still enough of you left to thrive and it requires inner peace to be able to say what you did for me helped create a life I am glad to call mine he um before we end here today uh even though the uncorrected proof which we just went through and the final copy are same content essentially the same the uncorrected proof does not have the introduction or my parting thoughts and the part ing thoughts is one of the most important um important lessons I would like to convey here today and the end of The Parting thoughts um or I guess really collectively as a whole I wrote them to help people not discount their own situations or struggle because Going Through The Years uh and all the while going through school and before the metal after the hospital and even during the hospital I had slowly started even though I didn’t really know what I was doing I had slowly started to work towards building not only the professional side of my life but the public speaking side of my life and going through the events over the years people would always come up to me and say if they weren’t in the military they would say well you know I was never in the military and I never did or went through anything like you if they are service members or veterans they come up and essentially say the same thing but it’s hey I wasn’t infantry or you know I didn’t do anything like you did or I wouldn’t have jumped on a grenade as you can see from one of the first chapters of the book If you would have asked me hey in 10 minutes will you jump on a grenade I could and I don’t believe anyone could confidently say yes and with these parting thoughts I wanted to not only lay that out and say that we should never compare our Journeys our struggles even our triumphs but also to show people that the beautiful thing about people and the human Spirit which I see this you know take my name out of it my story I see this book as an example and as a journey not of me but as of what the human Spirit can go through so with that said these parting thoughts I wrote to not only help people not discredit their own situations lives circumstances and struggles but also to tell people that the beautiful thing about that human spirit is you never know when how or to what capacity you’re going to step up in a Time of Need for someone else and be that hero to someone else big or small and so uh thanks for let me let me put that out there but uh you know I I had to do that because on one hand it was it was good and turned out to be a positive that people were coming up and telling me those things because I realized and I had this light bulb moment as I was going through years of thinking about okay if and when I graduate from school or if and when I get the time and Insanity in my life to maybe start a project like this I’m willing you know I’ll be I’ll be motivated and I I’ll I will do that but and and because I had the speaking the school the metal I thankfully things are too chaotic so I couldn’t have this light bulb moment before the timing was right but as I thought about how would I write this book because I again I don’t want a book that only people that have been to combat could understand I realized after all these people have been coming up and saying well I was never in the military but and then proceed to tell me their own version of struggle I realize like of course everyone can relate to struggle and everyone physically mentally or emotionally has struggled and can relate and and really thinking about it and realizing that struggle Beyond religion Beyond really anything but love struggle is the only Common Thread throughout every single person on this Earth and so so when I realized that that’s the angle I could write about and I could just work on the terminology and take everything I had been through and allow everyone to relate and understand that was amazing but also it it’s sad and hard to hear these people just after they hear my story or or research you know about my story for the first thing they tell me is you know comparing their struggle and what they haven’t done or haven’t been through and so uh one of the most important pieces of this book is to tell people you know don’t discount yourself your journey your struggles everybody handles adversity differently everyone heals in their own time and and you never know uh again how or to what capacity you’re going to to step up and take that grenade in combat or in life for those around you yeah as you were saying this as you were going through this I was kind of following your thoughts and you said something about take me out of this picture take you know remove me from this and I mean we’ve gone over countless stories on this podcast of the strength of the human will and the human spirit is beyond comprehension but when you said take me out of this I actually did something a little bit different in my mind I sat here and said to myself what if we take the grenade out of the picture what if what if that didn’t happen to you what if that just didn’t happen there was Taliban didn’t attack that day you went on that deployment you came home you carried on with your life and when you said to people don’t discount your struggle don’t discount what you’ve been through I started thinking to myself and came to the same conclusion that you just said which is you don’t know don’t discount the fact that you’ve got this in you you’re a human being and the the the strength of the human will and the human Spirit just because you haven’t measured it yet doesn’t mean that it’s not there and that’s an incredibly humble thing for you to be saying but from your perspective after hearing this over and over again it makes sense that someone that’s been through what you’ve been through can connect those dots and paint a picture for all of us to see so yeah thank you and and those parts like you mentioned this book and I’ve mentioned it’s called you are worth it and building a life worth fighting for by Kyle Carpenter I know you talk about gratitude and and I and I hope that I know that you like to give gratitude but I hope that you can accept some gratitude from all of us we’ve been going for almost 5 hours and it’s just been incredible to sit here with you talk to you um so accept some gratitude from me from everyone that’s listening for your sacrifice for writing this book for sharing your lessons uh people want to you know keep up with [Music] you how do we do it Facebook we got Facebook we got Instagram and Twitter Facebook you’re William Kyle Carpenter and Instagram and Twitter you have a unique call sign on there which is chicks dig scars so at chicks dig scars with no C by the way it’s C hi i k s dig scars and then you’re also available on you got your own website which is William Kyle carpenter com and that’s how people can track you and you’ve got all kinds of stuff going on speaking um talking to companies your Twitter’s are your Instagram’s cool you’re always posting stuff on there I know like I said we’ve been going for almost five hours do you got any anything else you want to say anything else you want to close out with well I’ll just throw it right back at you thank you for having me and uh not only am I sincerely honored to have been here today but again uh thank you for uh lending me your platform and helping me get the good word out about helping people through their struggle but uh you know you have helped me along the way and uh I I appreciate the uh strength and reality checks that I hate sometimes when when I’m rolling out about 8:30 in the morning I see You’ already had half of a day but uh yeah you’re you’re the man joa and I uh I thank you for this and and uh as a person but you know uh a Navy SEAL um uh with a you know Superman type career and the things you’ve been through and what you done it’s awesome man it’s uh it’s it’s humbling to be here I can promise you that I was no Superman and it certainly am not um but I appreciate you coming on I can’t even express that enough and most important I think is just thank you for setting an example for setting an example for all of us to follow of what courage is of what honor is and and thank you for representing not just the Marine Corps but representing men like Jason Dunham and Michael Monsour what you’re walking around here doing and I know that we will never forget them and we will always be grateful for men like them and for men like you and for all of those who go forward and defend defend freedom in the world so thank you you’re worth it and with that Kyle has left the building obviously just an incredible story an incredible human being and I am lucky to be able to talk to people like Kyle and I’m lucky to be able to talk to people like you out there listening which if you didn’t know I’m going to some cities and I’m going to talk directly to you in person this is in fact a tour so at one point not too long ago I was saying look we’re not a rock band at Echelon front we’re not we don’t go on tour the muster is two maybe three times a year but this isn’t a muster this is just me talking so it’s not taking the entire resources of echelon front and focusing on this so it’s just me and it’s a tour so here’s what’s going on live gigs in first of all January 6th in Washington DC January 11th in Austin Texas which is sold out January 16th in New York January 20th in La January AR 27th in Seattle and January 28th in San Francisco so if you want to come to those go to jool live com and again we already have one show that is sold out apologize apologies for that um we’ll do more but if you want to come to these other gigs go to jool live com and get tickets come see me come hang out I’m going to talk I’m I’m going to go deep on some stuff go deep going to bring the heat cool um yeah that’s what we’re doing so jool live com Echo I know that uh having Kyle carpent on here can definitely change your perspective on things I know that we all have the opportunity to kind of create the life that we want the best possible life that we can create for ourselves seems like a good plan and I was wondering you know what you have thoughts advice maybe perspective on what things might make our life better MH and by our life I mean all of us all of our Lives better and at the same time also will provide support yes to this podcast so that we can continue to bring people like Kyle Carpenter on and share his story document his story mhm document his story I mean I’m saying his story Little play on words here straight up history yep history so that’s what we’re doing so what do you have what do you have for recommendations for us improving your life improving your life broadly any recommendations yes I do all right well Jiu-Jitsu right that’s the thing that comes to mind first jiujitsu so I’m talking to a friend happens to be named Keenan Cornelius Jiu-Jitsu guy and oh I mentioned it to some jit you guys kind of underst understand understand yes sir cuz Keenan is a a real good let’s say Jiu-Jitsu player yeah even that’s an understatement and that’s an understatement so he uh and we talked about it briefly at the mustard so Jitsu improves your life right and you know how you do you we I guess but you do a good job in spreading the word of that notion try to yes didju help me with my life but I don’t want to keep it a secret yeah I want everybody to know that because it’ll make everybody’s life better yeah so it’s no secret we’re spreading the word hey in the old days it was a secret yeah when I started Jiu-Jitsu was a secret you weren’t allowed to show people that weren’t in your Academy anything about Jiu-Jitsu yeah and back then you’d have more like way higher percentage if not everybody was like if you do Jiu-Jitsu you’re in you’re doing Jiu-Jitsu you know it wasn’t you’re not a casual Jiu-Jitsu guy it was really it was more way more rare you know now it’s starting to have like a casual Jiu-Jitsu person you know and some people might think that that’s like not that good you know cuz it’s like hey we’re Jiu-Jitsu guys either you’re Jiu-Jitsu gu you’re not kind of thing and and I dig it but I I think that having casual jiujitsu people is highly beneficial in fact it’ll help not only the normal non hardcore jiujitsu people not only it’ll help them for sure but it’ll even help the the hardcore jiujitsu people yeah more people in Jiu-Jitsu is better is better for everybody better for everybody 100% so and that’s not to mention the personal benefits you get from doing Jiu-Jitsu wait that is the personal benefits oh but you’re saying collectively it helps but it also helps individually yes yes sir 100% so do Jiu-Jitsu if you don’t do Jiu-Jitsu so we’re doing Jiu-Jitsu that’s what we’re getting at yep 100% so anyway look into it if you don’t do Jiu-Jitsu why are you wondering some people they on the fence they’re like Curious Jiu-Jitsu curious yes exactly right Jiu-Jitsu curious step out of that column get right into Jiu-Jitsu there was a guy who asked at the Australian muster he was like it was one of the early questions he was like oh is there striking and I knew exactly what he meant cuz he didn’t know at all like you know cuz cuz when you talk about it’s like there’s sort of three maybe more kind of capacities that you can kind of regard Jiu-Jitsu so the original in my the more the most holistic way of looking at it is like a hoist Gracie ufc1 situation where it’s like a straight up fight you know you use submission holds positioning like what Jiu-Jitsu is sure you can use strikes but that’s not what Jiu-Jitsu is Jiu-Jitsu isn’t training striking you know um but you can strike in Jiu-Jitsu kind of thing right so he was asking like oh yeah can you strike so it’s like oh well it depends you know so when you train Jiu-Jitsu at a jiujitsu school typically no even though some places do offer training with striking in a Jiu-Jitsu competition sport Jiu-Jitsu no striking but that’s just the rule that’s just the rule see what I’m saying but and then obviously in a self-defense situation yeah you do whatever you want kind of thing but if you know Jiu-Jitsu you’re going to have the advantage and that again is an understatement they’re going to be striking you too by the way so it helps to know these s of things true so but at the end of the day from a day-to-day standpoint Jiu-Jitsu is an enjoyable and beneficial another understatement thing to do for yourself and for the people around you yeah I agree and if you’re going to be doing Jiu-Jitsu which hopefully you are you’re going to need a ghee yes you’re going to need a Rashard yes you’re going to need the clothing uniform the uniform for for the Jiu-Jitsu yeah it is a uniform I mean the ghee is certainly a uniform the Rashard is kind of a uniform yeah I call it a uniform for sure uh yeah so where are we going to get the ghee no one ask me that anymore no they don’t ask CU they know everybody knows everybody knows but for those of us that don’t quite know yet here let me tell you origin you get an origin ghee 100% go to origin main com this is where you can get these things so you get origin ghee you can get rash guards there as well you can also get jeans yes like that you wear every single day yeah not for by the way emergency situation mhm something happens and you don’t have a pair of shorts to do squats in guess what you can do wear your origin jeans they got a little bit of flex in them you can you can you can do you can do ass to Grass squats in origin jeans all day long no Factor good no Factor yeah man I mean let’s face it that’s what we kind of look for in jeans so and they’re good to go and of course they’re made in America 100% in America so when you buy a pair of jeans you are supporting Freedom when you buy something from origin you are supporting freedom and democracy in the world that’s what you’re doing so you might you might want to do it might want to do it not to mention they are dope jeans if I’m wearing you mean from like a fashion perspective I can’t judge that we’ll just say from an aesthetic perspective I had like a 10-minute conversation with someone about whether the jeans they were just they weren’t even asking me they were just telling me that the jeans were quote fashionable fash and and I was like well they’re just jeans and they’re like yeah but I said what’s different about these I said there’s no like remember like those jeans that were out for a while you know what I’m saying no they had like uh no they had like sewing all over them and everything like that and like ripping and whatever then sewed up rips and stuff like that yeah it’s not that origin jeans don’t have that no no no no they’re a pair of blue jeans pair of blue jeans here’s what you’d be hardpressed to give me a fashion specific part of those gen that is not fully there for function only right tell me one thing yeah tell me one thing you can’t cuz they’re functional the the here’s here’s this is this is like Pete Roberts is getting offended right now cuz you know he slipped all kinds of little fashion things he’s like it’s got a reverse Yol your reverse yoke is functional I forget even what a yoke you explained I remember but it was it was I don’t look for the Yol shape or quality every time I pick up the jeans like I’m not like fascinated and just enamored by the Yoke I just put them on and they working all right see functional they work there you go thank you but when I say when they work they got got to look good like my wife can’t you know talk trash to me because I’m wearing Grand Grandpa jeans or dad jeans or whatever I don’t even know what that means bro yeah cuz I am a grandpa well not really but I’m a dad nonetheless you can be a grandpa and that’s cool dad is cool but if you have Dad jeans maybe not so cool if your wife is telling you that you have them and she doesn’t like them they’re not attractive to her my wife’s not saying that saying they fit good so that’s what I mean when I say they were going to put them so the jeans are Sarah Charles approved all right we’ll go with that all right anyway yes all made in America all the way from the threads all all made in America that’s big that’s it’s not nothing what’s that stuff that they plant in the ground and then it grows what is it called what is it called it’s called cotton cotton all right thanks anyway supplements don’t forget about supplements don’t forget about joint Warfare don’t forget about krill oil don’t forget about discipline and discipline go in the cans which I’m drinking right now which is uh and of course strawberry and chocolate and mint and peanut butter milk which is glorious yes which is dessert that’s all it is that happens it has a bunch of protein in it clean protein sure there’s no sugar sure it’s it tastes delicious it’s dessert yeah so check some of that out oh yeah and and get your get your jock of white tea as well Winter’s here Brew some up get a brew on as the Aussies used to say or the Brits hot like out in the field yeah out in the field they’re they’re they’re Brewing up in the field do the Brits still put milk in tea yes that’s the thing right at least my Brit does yeah yeah no they absolutely put milk in tea I yeah I guess so why would I I don’t know how they do that in the field though cuz they’re not carrying milk with you in the field maybe evapor in milk maybe yeah I don’t think it’s that serious in the field but you know I I I dig it you know I know it’s not a phase of course they’re still putting milk in the tea it’s a thing yes no it’s a it’s a real thing it ain’t no phase over there in England cool anyway also when you’re getting the copy of you are worth it building a life worth fighting for by Kyle Carpenter don’t worry I got you it’s on our website Joop podcast com click on books from the episode boom it’ll be right there listed ready for you to purchase if you want to do so also Jo store it’s called Joo store and this is where we this where we get clothing items discipline equals Freedom t-shirts hats beanies hoodies people been asking me what def core stands for they get the deaf part they get the core part and I’ll go into that at some point but let me just say that there’s layers yes there’s some layers there and this important very important yes and this is what I I’m I gathered this is what I feel I feel like we all kind of know what that means yeah I think people understand you understand from a from a broad perspective what it means but then there’s layers right right they yeah they want to know the the why like why is it called this specifically and not something else but that aside that I I feel like we know I feel like we know and we feel it y but anyway yes so yeah you want death course shirts boom dco store com cool stuff on there when you’re representing a def core shirt that’s pretty much kind of you’re kind of you’re kind of there you’re kind of legit yes like you get you get like the full head nod if I see you in the wild it’s like oh okay oh yeah people will see other people in the wild representing and they will they will check in with me let me know let me know they’ll take pictures all this stuff and yes approve so what I want to start doing is if I see someone in the wild and they come up to me what I want to start doing is doing live Q&A get that person one question cuz every everywhere I go you know people like hey you know hey hey what’s up Jo hey what’s up man but I want to start going okay give me give me your one question and do right there just let’s do it let’s answer the question live on what you call the gram sure or or or you could flip it around ask them a question I don’t know that might freak people out put people on the spot spot yeah you can do that you’re right you’re you’re completely right I mean some people would don’t care but some people would freak out yeah so you don’t want to yeah that’s true I agree low risk anyway yes some more rash cards on there too by the way some cool ones also subscribe to the podcast if you haven’t already on your Stitcher iTunes I think it’s something it’s important yeah you can leave a review on there yeah I read the reviews I haven’t read the reviews on cuz sometimes the reviews are so good like and by good I don’t mean positive reviews I mean they’re funny I mean you know what is the reviews have layers thew review layers it’s kind of worth I’ve read some of those before they’re always good and they kind of crack me up so appreciate that one also don’t forget about the grounded podcast I uploaded another one by the way I saw that Jason with one Jason Gardner and then the warrior kid podcast which will be released by Christmas cool I’m going to get three possibly four done cuz I know people are amped and I know the warrior kids are out there going hey what’s wrong with Joo what’s wrong with Uncle Jake why can’t he put together another podcast I’ll tell you why Uncle Jake’s out there working he’s he’s out there getting after it but he’ll come back he’ll record some more podcasts he’s going to do it and um don’t forget about that Warrior kid soap from Irish Oaks ranch com 100% get some yep warrior kid up there making soap and if you want to then you should so that you can stay clean dang it also we have a YouTube channel official doesn’t have the check mark I think YouTube has check marks oh does it I think I’m pretty sure we don’t rate the check mark wait yeah maybe I’m thinking of something else I don’t think it does bro no I think it does no I don’t think it does well I’m going to look into it look into it I’m going to go look into that nonetheless check mark no check mark doesn’t matter doc podcast does have an official YouTube channel it’s just called Jaco podcast and you know and we just released Mikey and the dragons full the entire thing you know drawings by John boac Echo put together we’ll call it Dynamic video of the images and the lettering and yeah so if you if you want to have your kids listen to Mikey and the dragons read by Uncle Jake if you want to hear my accents yep if you want to hear my seven-year-old boy voice Unforgettable from England or from Scotland or from Ireland from somewhere not America I heard that I was like that’s doesn’t sound good yeah you know it was good I liked it I it kept me immersed in the story we’ll put it that way you see what I’m saying I I should have rehearsed that more or experimented more but we I’ll get I think I make up for it when I do the king’s voice and when you put the reverberation on the king’s voice sure that makes it all kind of worthwhile I can deal with the kid couldn’t you have used some like post production to raise my voice for the little kids voice or something oh like the tone yeah yeah a pit shifter something yeah that would have been nice instead it sounds like a Jo seven-year-old kid that has been to war yeah yeah exactly it verying no it’s essentially like an audio book with video yeah it’s an audio book with video so check that out it’s good one yes it is on the YouTube channel and don’t forget about psychological warfare yes sir did I cut you off no were you going to talk about psychological yeah if if you’re one of those people that goes I wish Joo would wake me up in the morning or oh I wish Joo would talk to me when I want to eat a donut or I wish Joo would talk to me when I don’t want to work out cool I will talk to you get psychological warfare from iTunes Google Play MP3 and when you feel that moment of weakness press play on your iPhone 14 or your Samsung Galaxy 98 or whatever it is note your note I don’t know whatever press play on that thing and you can listen to me tell you to to put the donut down sugarcoat and then we also have fli flip side canvas with my brother Dakota Meer making visual representations of the path that you can place strategically around your home office and gym to keep you on the straight and narrow Flipside canvas com we also have some books we have a books first of all Kyle Carpenter’s book you are worth it building a life worth fighting for get this book that’s all I’m going to say get this book it’s awesome on top of that I have a new book coming out it’s called leadership strategy and tactics it has a ton of information that you can use to take and apply to your immediate life there’s no there’s no uh pause between taking what’s in this book and putting in action like you can do right now and it’s also a reference book so when you run into a little problem and you go man I wish Joo was here to tell me about what I should do here no no no you just open it up you just open up you check the index and you’re like oh what should I do about um emotional arguments oh there you go emotional arguments page 59 what should I do how can I improve my Charisma oh page 65 66 and 213 oh what should I do when someone complains oh go go to page 195 through 196 what if I have a complex problem oh check page 65 all these things are just in there yep so there you go check out leadership strategy and tactics and look we’ve been through this many times before and and this is all my fault but we know that the publisher doesn’t understand the pop podcast because I personally have failed to explain to them that there’s people listening to this podcast and that the people that the podcast want to read the book and so when the book comes out if you haven’t ordered it yet they’re going to run out of books again two problems with that number one you’ll have to wait a long time to get it and what’s even worse than that is you might end up with a second edition a second edition and you notice I can’t say a dish when I say second no no no no it’s a second edition it’s a totally different thing now if you order now you’re going to get that first edition which what you want y you don’t want to be walking around oh I wasn’t in the game just you might as well get you know some people get like a discipline equals Freedom tattoo or a good tattoo true cool that’s cool you’re in the game if you get a second edition you might as well just get a tattoo that says wasn’t in the game got that second edition hey I just spent money on uh I I get books I try and get books that are first a dish and like I well about face I have a lot of copies of about face I think I have close to 20 copies of a about face they’re all on one bookshelf it’s it’s awesome but the little special ones well I’ve got a bunch of signed ones by hack I’ve got the advanced readers copy signed by hack that was given to me at A muster by a guy’s like hey I thought you might like this I was like he didn’t even he I don’t even think he understood how much how how how much you’d actually like look I’m hard person to shop for I’m a hard person to give anything to my wife just doesn’t get me anything cuz she’s like whatever you want you just get I mean I don’t I don’t sit there and think about like oh well I really wish I no no no if I want something I’ve got it yeah my wife’s like I’m not even getting you yeah cool don’t get me anything yeah just just just hang out it’s all good what are you getting what do you want for Christmas nothing yeah this guy gave me that audition the advanced readers copy unedited Edition signed by David hackworth you know where that thing is in my gun safe it’s in my gun safe yeah dang literally the best gift you ever had I think it is well I can’t think of another gift that’s been better than that in my life right now I mean I’ll have to review that statement cuz I’m really I haven’t thought about it much but I mean it’s been a long time since I was needing something that I couldn’t figure out like I mean this was just you could if if I just right now just said okay I have unlimited money and I want to get another one of those I don’t think I could find one I don’t think I could find one yeah so anyways I don’t even know what we’re talking about but I do know this first Ed dis that’s the first Ed dish you want that first so get on get on the uh Amazon let my publisher understand that we need to print more they need to print more copies so otherwise you’re going to be late you’re going to get that second Ed dis you saw in the video I included the first Ed dis yes I know little little little uh little message little subliminal maybe not so subliminal message to people to get some get some of that first edition all right also we have way the warrior Kid 3 where there’s a will we have way of the warrior kid number one and number two Mark’s Mission we have Mikey and the dragons again you know you get the video you watch the video now that’s for free YouTube Now teach your kid to read using that they can flip through the pages they can read along the pictures match it’s like what an incredible way to teach to read and teach them to be brave oh here’s two things you can do teach your kid to read and teach your kid to be brave you’re welcome Merry Christmas uh discipline equals Freedom manual this is another one this is one of those ones where you’re like hey I’m not really sure what to get this person for Christmas cool get him the discipline equals freedom field manual it’s the book that they can put anywhere and they read two pages a day one page a day day three pages a day and it keeps your damn mind straight yep let me ask it keeps your mind straight this about the uh about the field manual you know how the new one no displine freom Field Manual black one black on black way real good what if should you get it for someone who doesn’t read you know how people are like oh you got me a book they don’t really read books oh it doesn’t matter this is like the book that they going to read yeah but what if they’re like hey I’m not going to read it but I do want it because it looks cool and on top of it and let’s face it this is thing this is an actual thing where people will like get it just to be like yeah I got it so people will see that book on their table and be like dang you’re you’re whatever you know here’s the thing even a person that doesn’t read that doesn’t like to read that hasn’t read a book since high school maybe they didn’t even read a book in high school you get them the field manual it’s a different thing it’s not even reading yeah it’s like absorbing first of all it’s not it’s easy to read I mean it’s easy to read it’s not like and you don’t have to read the whole thing at once and you don’t have to you have to read it to understand what’s going there’s nothing that needs to be explained to you there’s no like hey wait a second who’s this guy and what’s going on no doesn’t happen there’s zero questions when you get done reading that book about anything you’re like I totally get it I know what I’m supposed to do that’s the discipline equals freedom field manual and that’s what I tried to do with leadership strategy and tactics hey look you don’t have to ask me these questions anymore because boom here it is page 49 yeah learn how to deal with that problem it’s really effective man that that new one where it’s like you know how like sometimes every once in a great while rarely but it happens where I’ll come in and I’ll ask you like hey I do I need kind of some advice right now this is literally the book for that like this is joo’s advice on all these very specific things and there’s it’s surprisingly short book given how many things are in there yes because I didn’t want to put any fluff in there there’s no fluff in there no fluff yeah I just wanted pragmatic solutions to problems I’m reading a book right now that’s name will not be what do you call it remains to be said or whatever anyway I’m I’m reading a book and there’s fluff in it I think it’s normal to have fluff I didn’t he you were going to talk smack I thought you were going to say something positive and I was like oh tell the book but if you’re just saying there’s a Fluff in it yeah I’m talking I’m I’m I’m throwing it under the bus for a reason though you’re still reading it though apparently oh yeah it’s a good book but there just happens to be fluff in it there’s like three story examples for the little thing that they’re talking you know there’s a concept and they have you know stories some of the time there’s like three stories oh yeah you know kind of like reading the concept and about the concept isn’t enough like there’s like three sto so kind of extreme ownership and dichotomy leadership has two stories per concept okay well well you might be brushing up again the thing is those stories are you calling me fluff you’re fluffy guy bab to me just writing fluff I would not consider that to be fluff but to me because in my opinion we have a military story mhm and then we have a civilian story and then you have the principal so you need to see the application in two different perspectives well that obviously makes sense I’m saying in in this specific one and a part of this is me too by the way like it’s fluff because I feel like it’s fluff what if someone reads a concept in this particular book that I’m reading and they’re like I get it but I’d like to hear an example hear the example and you’re like I get it but what about in the real world you know maybe they need the three example I get it man it’s good but to me I got it when they explained it and then I read a story I’m like cool I see it in you feel that way about extreme ownership well you know I uh I think that the application to business part of it since I was not in the military made it landed harder with me I think okay so in my opinion now so what’s your fluff rating for extreme ownership at that of leaders fluff rating CU I don’t think there’s any fluff in those book I don’t think so either um I think there’s there’s we are explaining the concepts yeah in a way that people can relate to them and understand them yes agree okay so whoever guy that wrote that maybe it’s just that extra story maybe if Le and I would have written a sports example what if we did military civilian and then random Sports example if I that would have been a bit much okay well see that’s what that that’s what the that’s what you want nothing can be added nothing can be taken away there you go this dichotomy of leadership and extreme ownership so the leadership strategy and tactics one to me has like way less way like way less where you I understand the concept and I’m like okay and when there’s a story when there’s like an example or whatever used in action or whatever I’m like cool good I got it and then you you’re just moving on you’re not like okay I got to read like yet another one yet another one I get it man yeah I’m looking like some of the chapters in here are two pages long I’m looking for one of the ones that’s like one page long because there are there’s some that are hey it doesn’t take a bunch of information yes don’t dig in y you know like these are straightforward some take them a little bit more time but I actually give pragmatic like how to how to actually say something yeah to someone yeah hey don’t say this because it’s going to offend them and they’re not going to listen to you say this because it’ll get it’ll win them over and they’ll start to listen to what you have to say and then you’ll make a positive influence y actually give that level of detail of leadership instruction so that’s that and uh leadership strategy tactics Field Manual FM 02 dichotomy leadership extreme ownership all those books get them on top of that we have a Echelon front which is our leadership consultancy we solve problems through leadership go to Echelon front com if you want us to come and help your business team or organization get better at leading and once you get better at leading you get better at everything across the board EF online this is our online training program because I me the team at echon front we can’t always train everyone all the time we don’t have the capacity so we decided to make an online training program interactive what’s another word to describe it’s not just interactive it’s immersive immersive so you because you’re going to go into scenarios in there and solve leadership problems and then get critiqued on how you did so it’s the it’s the most advanced form of online learning go to eonline com to check that out and then we have EF OverWatch and EF Legion so these are two these are two two businesses that we’ve started to take military personnel and get them into civilian jobs where they can use their leadership skills in the civilian sector and put positive influence into companies cuz Leif me and the rest of the echelon front team get asked all the time hey I really love what you guys did for us but where can we hire people that know what you know it’s like oh I’ll tell you where EF OverWatch and EF Legion so go to EF overwatch com or EF leg whether you’re a military person getting out or you’re a company that needs solid people that understand extreme ownership that understand the dichotomy of leadership that understand the principles we talk about that’s where you get them you need leadership at your team go to EF OverWatch go to EF legion org to announce the date soon but that is a live event if you go to extreme ownership comom and check those out you can come see the entire Echelon front team and if you still want to communicate with us even after listening to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of this podcast you can do it we are on the interwebs Kyle Carpenter is on Facebook William Kyle Carpenter and he’s on Instagram and Twitter at chicks dig scars c i KS digs scars and on the interwebs Kyle Carpenter sorry William Kyle carpenter com and of course we are also on the interwebs on Twitter Instagram and on that fishy Eko is at Echo Charles and I am at jonco willing once again thanks to Kyle Carpenter for joining us here today and for passing on the lessons that he was taught through pain and through suffering and through leadership and Brotherhood and through faith and through family and it’s an honor to have to be able to talk to these Heroes and to the rest of those men men and women that have worn the cloth of the nation and that currently do so thank you for keeping evil at Bay around the world and to our police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service and all the First Responders out there thank you for what you do to protect us and keep us safe here at home we are grateful for your service as well and to everyone else out there the root word of motivate is modus and it means move and that’s what you need to do staying motivated means keep moving when things are bad don’t stop don’t let up don’t allow yourself to give in instead put your head down put one foot in front of the other keep moving and keep getting after it and until next time this is Eko and Joo out