Walk me through the day that your bird went down.

This flight was different.

It felt very different as soon as I sat down.

And so I'm thinking in my mind, like, what if we crash?

All of a sudden the back of the bird starts clipping the top of the trees.

Holy shit, we were falling.

I'm getting thrashed around, there's gear flying around.

And that's the first time when I was like, I'm dead.

And then we hit the ground and then I kind of like come to split second later, I see orange glimmer coming like this.

I unstrapped myself and I just started shouting, get the fuck out.

Get the fuck out.

Thinking in my mind, it's like a timer ticking, like you're about to blow up.

You're about to blow up.

You're about to blow up, you're about to blow up.

And I'm just frantically trying to get out.

I'm going to die in a couple seconds.

Hi.

I appreciate you making time to come here.

I've, I've really.

I've been watching you for a while.

You are taking the Internet by storm, I'd say, especially for your generation of young men.

You're a very, very outspoken person on your belief, on your political stances, political environment, what's going on all over the world.

You're very, very big into your faith, which is I love.

And I definitely want to touch on that before we get started.

The kids, we have our own little bakery.

Yeah, it's still hot, so we'll get you sent home with a fresh loaf from the Sour Bee.

We try to send him home, every guest with a fresh loaf of bread.

And I have a couple of shirts I would like to give you is one is Golgotha.

Obviously they're a local Christian brand.

Really cool woman that runs it.

She brought back like punk.

You remember, like the warriors back in the day, like just old school punk.

But she made it Christian.

Absolutely.

No, no.

So I love it because it's not your typical Christian apparel.

It's very punkish.

Got a really cool feel to it.

No, that's sick.

Yeah, I love these guys.

They do a lot.

They give us apparel just to hand out to anybody that's on the show.

So, yes, I.

So I'm orthodox and that's kind of not really punk is the theme.

But we have a lot of skull symbolism.

Yes.

In Orthodoxy, which kind of fits this.

Yes.

Per right up there.

And Golgotha, it's.

This hat is actually based on.

It's a Golgotha design.

Yes.

So, yeah.

This is sick, man.

Thank you.

Mountain.

The mountain.

I can't remember what it translates.

Place of the school.

That's what Golgotha means.

Yes.

So Christ was crucified and then linear, man.

This guy is a really cool dude.

I know you're a fit dude.

So that's a.

That's a.

A tank top they make.

Really?

He's a local guy.

Badass dude.

Ended up going out for buds and ended up getting hurt during buds.

Gotten dropped out of that.

Found a new mission in life.

Really cool, dude.

They make really high quality apparel.

Fitness apparel.

Yeah.

And all of their influencers and everybody that works for the company are all veterans.

So it's really cool.

Very, very nice feeling.

I actually have one of their normal tees on underneath this, but.

So, yeah, man, I want to send you home with some cool swag and a loaf of bread is kind of what we do for our guests here.

So.

Thank you, man.

Did you say you homeschool?

Yeah, we're homeschoolers.

I was homeschooled.

Were you?

Yeah.

It's so rare these days too.

Like, I grew up homeschooled.

I have three siblings, an older brother, two younger twin sisters, and we were all homeschooled.

And it's like.

So nobody is homeschooled these days anymore.

It's growing.

You think so now?

I don't know.

Yeah, I don't have.

I don't have kids.

It's a huge, huge movement.

Actually.

As we speak there, the numbers of public school classes are dropping.

I think a lot of it.

With what's going on, people are finding out the original reason why schools and classrooms were created to help create the factory workers.

And we can go down that rabbit hole at any time.

The whole system's made to create batteries for the entire global system.

And 100 in the.

You look at it as a parent.

When you look at it, it's like, well, nothing has changed since our grandparents have been in school.

Same curriculum.

Very little has been adopted.

Except for now these kids are.

They're taking writing away.

It's all electronic.

It's all laptops and computers.

And so we made the decision.

I think we're going to our sixth year now.

She'll graduate this year as a senior and she's done all homeschooled.

And so, yeah, it's been life changing.

So one of the things with homeschooling was, okay, we're going to start a project and we want you to learn.

Build the entrepreneur mindset.

Doesn't mean, you got to do it your whole entire life.

But we want kids to leave the house with some skills.

So, yeah, we started a bakery and, and a podcast.

So she runs the podcast.

She took it over at 16 and was like, hey, learn how to edit.

We had no idea what we were doing.

So, yeah, I mean, my parents homeschooled us, but they, they didn't necessarily teach us, like, how to be entrepreneur entrepreneurs, which nobody teaches.

The school system doesn't teach that.

So it's super cool that you teach that because when I got into entrepreneurship, it was all just bootstrapping it.

It was all self taught.

And it's.

With that there's a lot.

There's a process of struggling and not making money and doubting yourself.

So if you can teach that young, that's great, man.

Yeah, yeah.

And we tell them, you're like, hey, I don't expect you all to make bread the rest of your life, but at least you have the people skills.

Communication, customer service, product shipping, the stress marketing, marketing, everything that goes into it.

So, dude, let's start this conversation.

I wanted, I really wanted to have you on and have this conversation for many reasons.

You, I feel you have lived a life by 30 that most people will never be able to live.

You've traveled the world.

You've been to 27 countries.

You've lived at, think three years overseas.

You served your country, United States Marine Corps.

You're an 0311A grant, which is one of the greatest jobs the Marine Corps in any military.

So I got to give props to my grunt boys.

You're on MSG duty, which is a really cool job.

You get to travel and live at embassies and do some other cool stuff around the world.

And you're also involved in an Osprey accident which ended up unfortunately taking the life of three Marines that you were on board with.

Which I would like to get into that story because I'm sure it left some scars and some weird times after that.

You are now, I would say, a political influencer.

I don't want to say a social media influencer, but you are very, very open about your beliefs about the political environment.

You're a Palestine Palestinian advocate.

I would say you've gone.

You've put boots on the ground, you've seen the destruction, you've seen the people.

You have smell, you have tasted.

You have seen and heard everything that's going on there.

I believe you've also gone to Israel, spent time there.

You're a world traveler.

So that was A big reason why I've been watching you for quite a while, and I've just been watching you grow, and I've been seeing everything that's going on.

And you being a younger guy, there's this weird turmoil in the country, I'd say right now, especially since Charlie Kirk being killed, there's not a lot of positive influencers.

Like, I'm not an Andrew Tate guy.

I'm not a Nick Fuentes guy.

Even though they have their parts and their roles, there's bigger missions.

I feel guys like that with a.

With a platform could be sharing, which you are, at least in my.

My opinion.

You.

I. I feel you're doing it the right way because you're not just regurgitating the.

That's floating around on the Internet.

You're actually traveling, you're studying.

You're a very educated young man, and I hope a lot of your generation, from what I've gathered from you, is able to follow in path because you're also a huge man of faith.

You're an orthodox Christian, which a lot of everything that you're building, what you are in the future of your.

Of your success is built around your Christianity and your beliefs, of course.

So I would like to touch.

We got a lot to touch on.

It's probably for people listening.

It's probably gonna be a long one, but I. I guarantee it's gonna be a great one because you are fascinating to me by being such a young, educated person that has a voice and you're not scared to be just absolutely crucified online over it.

So, Clyde, why don't we get into this?

Who are you?

Where you from, man?

So, yeah, Cl.

Clyde.

Been doing social media for a couple years now, but recently in 2025, started doing the activism and.

And like, political content.

But before that, I grew up in Iowa in a small town.

It's like a suburb of Des Moines called Bondurant.

Okay.

Yeah.

And as we said, I was homeschooled my whole life.

Grew up in a very Christian conservative Republican upbringing.

And.

And growing up in Iowa, I call, like, I call a Iowa, a bubble within a bubble.

Okay, so Iowa, America is a bubble.

Yes.

And I. I've traveled to, like you said, 27 different countries.

And people do not understand the world outside of their bubble.

America is such a bubble.

Like when you go to the east or when you go to Europe or Asia or the Middle east or Africa, even those people, they bounce around and they see other cultures and other parts of the world.

And in America, we don't really do that.

Maybe we go to Canada.

Maybe we go to Mexico every now and then.

Or the Bahamas, maybe.

Yeah, maybe some people live their whole life and never leave the country.

So I always, from a very young age, had this desire to get out there and explore and see things.

And I always would ask my parents, like, why do we live in Iowa?

It's so.

So boring here.

There's no mountains.

There's no, like, cornfields.

Yeah.

Flat corn fields.

There's no big cities.

There's not much to do here.

And I just had this desire to get out there and consume the world and.

But, yeah, I was homeschooled.

And Iowa, like I said, is a bubble within a bubble.

So America is a bubble, but Iowa is even more so.

Just this microcosm within the microcosm, this bubble.

So people there are very sheltered from the world outside of their small little town.

And also being homeschooled, I was kind of.

I would say, you know, I'm not saying that all homeschoolers do this, but I think my upbringing was kind of.

I was kind of sheltered from a lot of things, and that also deepened my desire to get out there and learn more about the world.

So I joined the Marine Corps when I was 20 years old.

Why?

Why did you join the Marine Corps?

I joined the Marine Corps for a few reasons.

I mean, I was that kid growing up that was always playing airsoft in the backyard with my brother and my friends.

And, you know, I always looked up to the Special Forces community.

Navy Seals and Rangers and Grim berets and MARSOT guys and stuff like that.

And I. I was.

As a kid, I was always like, oh, maybe I want to go be a Navy Seal or maybe I want to be a Ranger.

But I was always drawn to the Marine Corps.

Yep.

For whatever reason.

And so I just.

That was always a part of who I was as a kid.

I just wanted to do that.

I looked up to those guys that were like real superheroes to me.

And so I also.

I mean, you know the cliche reasons to be a patriot and to serve my country and to do something bigger than myself and also to explore and get experiences.

So I ended up going to college for a year.

I played baseball in college for a year, had a shoulder injury that never really healed, and then realized college wasn't for me.

I didn't want to be in college.

There wasn't really anything I wanted to study or do with my life outside of play professional baseball or join the Marine Corps.

So when I quit playing baseball, I actually took a year off between school and the Marine Corps and I just traveled.

So I backpacked the world.

I went to like five or six different countries that year.

At what age?

19.

Dang, dude, good for you.

Young, fresh, right out of high school, no clue about the world.

I just packed a backpack, got on a plane and would travel and I would.

Yourself?

Yeah, by myself.

I had, I would go with a friend.

I went with a friend overseas once and actually I went with my dad once because I used to, I worked for Delta Airlines and with that you can fly free on standby.

That's the only reason I did the job.

And I spent all my money on traveling.

Hey, that's a perfect plan.

Yeah, yeah.

So I took that year and kind of experienced the world.

Went to Europe a couple of times, went to the Dominican Republic, went to all over the States, went to Egypt, saw the pyramid.

So I, I got to experience a little bit of the rest of the world that year.

And then I joined the marine Corps at 20.

That was in January of 2019.

And then I, I signed a five year contract.

So my contract, I, I always knew that I wanted to be an O3 or a grunt and eventually like work my way up to MARSOC or, or recon or something.

So I told my recruiter, I'm like, I want to be an 0311 or I want to be in the infantry.

And you know how recruiters are, they're always trying to pawn you off on the contracts they, that they need to get off their quota.

Salesman for sure.

Yeah, they need to, they have contracts, they have to get, you know, off of their quota.

And so he was like, oh, we don't have any more, you know, O3 11 or O3 xx contracts, which is, they always have those or a dime a dozen.

So he was trying to feed me these other contracts and like, no, I want to go to the infantry.

So he found a contract for me which was a, it's called the MG contract when I joined, but essentially it's just a five year contract on the first half.

Like first two and a half years you're either going to do Marine security guard duty.

So the embassy duty, which I ended up doing, you're going to do either that or security forces or you're going to do presidential security.

So when he told me that, I was like, okay, the MSG thing sounds really cool.

And then maybe the presidential thing sounds cool.

So I signed the contract.

And then on the back end, my last two and a half years was as a 0311.

What years were these?

What year did you join?

January of 2019.

Okay.

And then I got out five years later.

So what's that?

January of 24.

So I've only been out for like two years.

You're fresh.

Yeah, I'm still fresh out.

So, yeah, I signed the contract and, you know, went to boot camp, did basic boot camp training, three months there.

Then I went to Infantry Training Battalion ITB, did my 0311 infantry training, got that cert.

And then from there I got orders.

I was kind of in limbo because when I was at the school of infantry, I didn't know what orders I was going to get if I was going to go to, you know, security forces or msg.

And I was just sitting there waiting, hoping I got msg.

And I got it.

And so I got my orders.

And then after I graduated infantry school, I went to Quantico, Virginia.

I was there for about six months.

The schoolhouse took about three months.

And then I was in holding.

And then I had to wait after graduation, I had to wait to get my visa.

So MSG school explained MSG for everybody listening.

It's a really cool.

It's one of those jobs if you're.

In the marine corps.

If you're in the marine corps.

If you're going in the marine corps, you need to put a package in for MSG 100%.

It is one of the best secrets in the marine corps.

Yes.

And it was honestly the best two and a half years of my life, I don't think.

I don't know, maybe when I have kids one day.

But like as far as right now, nothing tops those two and a half years.

I have a buddy that we deployed together twice.

We were rack mates at boot camp, rack mates at schools.

We do, we did all of our years together and then he, after eight years, we, I got out and he stayed in, but he ended up going MSG to take on over the added embassy.

And dude, he, he said we up so bad.

Yeah.

He ended up getting a job on the state side.

They offered him a job being in on msg and he ended up getting out and getting hired now.

Now he's a u. S. Marshal and he travels all these, he's in all these different crazy countries because of msg duty.

So explain MSG for the, the young bub bubbas that are looking to join the military.

Yeah, so it's a super unique job in the marine corps because, number one, you get to be separated from the like, flagpole marine corps fleet Marine Corps.

You're not in the fleet games.

Yeah.

And so the schoolhouse, basically, it's run by a group of, like, staff NCOs, their instructors, and then you have another group of State Department instructors.

Because on msg, your operational chain of command is the State Department.

Your administrative chain of command is the Marine Corps.

And so when you're out at embassies, you're following orders, you're training with State Department, you're training with other three letter agencies that are out there because the State Department runs the security for the embassy.

Okay.

So you're under their chain of command.

And so we had to learn, like, it was basically like going through boot camp, but for the State Department.

So, like, you have to learn the rank structures, you have to learn how the State Department operates.

We had to go out and like, they gave us, like, well, after we graduated, they gave us, like, I don't know, $3,000 to go buy suits.

You have to wear suits.

Sometimes you have to conceal carry in a suit if, like, the President comes to the embassy or like the, you know, politicians or whatever.

So we went out and bought suits after graduation.

But the schoolhouse was cool.

I had a great time.

You learn a lot.

I'm sure you learn a lot of stuff that you wouldn't learn elsewhere in the Marine Corps, which is very cool.

So different security.

I mean, I guess you could learn a lot of it in the Marine Corps, like the security aspect of it.

But how to be a professional, I would say, which is something you can learn like in the.

More like Special Forces fields.

Your everyday Marine Corps is not teaching.

There's a night and day difference.

I noticed when I came back to the fleet, like msg, Marines are usually like, you know, more well groomed and more professional.

And they know how to, like, articulate themselves and speak diplomatically because we have to.

Sometimes we're working with the embassy, we're working with, you know, diplomats and sometimes foreign nationals that come in or foreign diplomats or the President comes in.

I think my first visit, my first VIP visit that I saw was.

What's his name?

Mark Milley, General, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Okay.

So big.

I mean, he's the highest ranking person in the entire military.

Like, the command of the Marine Corps answers to him.

And so he came to my first embassy, which was in Tokyo.

But yeah, at the schoolhouse, you learn a lot of stuff that you wouldn't learn elsewhere.

And that's also applicable outside of the Marine Corps.

Absolutely.

And so you.

They also give us top secret clearances which is so valuable.

I mean, your top secret clearance is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, because you can take that and you can apply that in the private sector or you can work.

A lot of guys that I know, they.

When they got out because they still had their TS clearance, they would go work for the agency or the.

They would go work for the FBI.

Or right back to embassies again.

Right back, dude.

Honestly.

Yeah.

I mean, that's what my buddy did after he.

We split.

I. I can't tell you, like, how many people I met at the embassy who told me prior Marines, they were.

Prior msgs, because I. I love what you're saying, because most people don't realize, like, when you'd see an MSG Marine, you guys are not just Marines.

You're representing the Marine Corps, and you're representing the United States in foreign countries.

So you guys are held at this professional level that your everyday grunt doesn't even know exists.

Absolutely.

Because you got your normal knuckle draggers.

Yeah.

Door kickers.

We're just eating crayons and just being drunk retards.

Yeah.

Your knuckle dragon.

Rock eaters.

Yeah.

Then you got these MSG guys that are like.

And you're like, why does this guy act like this?

And they don't realize what actually goes into it.

It's a really cool job.

Yeah, it's a cool job.

You get a lot of exposure to these other agencies.

So when you're out there, like, I.

Connections.

Connections.

Especially if you want to get into, like, the Agency.

I didn't realize how important connections were to get into the CIA.

Very important.

And you.

We, like.

We work with them.

Not, like, on their cases directly, like, out in town.

But I.

There were many times where I'd have to go to briefings with them.

And what I did find out is the MSG program is basically there for them.

I mean, it's there for the embassy, of course.

But I. I saw this.

I have this proclivity for, like, pattern recognition.

Okay.

And so I realized that every embassy that MSG detachment was at was either an embassy or a consulate that the agency was at.

Interesting.

So it's almost like, you know, we're not solely there for them, but it's like we're only where they are.

I feel like they would.

They use the Marines when, like, hey, you guys got to go.

We'd rather the Marine's name get put on this than the agency.

So you're almost like the scapegoats.

The professional scapegoats.

Maybe yeah, yeah, for the Agency.

So you're not.

They're not getting.

They're not making the news.

The Marines that are in freaking Djibouti, Africa, make the news before the agency does for sure.

Yeah.

But it was cool because, you know, we got exposure to them, got to make connections there and all.

Like, like pretty much every other three letter agency that's at embassies.

And then we work, like I said, with the State Department.

So to this day, I have a lot of connections in the State Departments.

When I went to Israel and Palestine, I leveraged my connections to get in there and like, operate within Palestine.

So got a lot of connections.

And so my first embassy that I went to graduated the schoolhouse in 20, like November of 2019 or October.

Did you get your wish list?

So don't you get to put down, like, what your dream embassy would be or.

They don't for the honor graduate.

So the honor graduate gets to put.

They get three requests.

Okay.

It's not guaranteed that you'll get one of those three requests.

If there's a slot open, then maybe.

But the honor graduates here.

He.

I remember he.

He was one of my peers and he.

He requested London and he got it.

Okay.

But I got lucky.

I got so lucky on the program because my first.

My first embassy was Tokyo, Japan.

How dope was that?

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh, dude, Japan is literally my favorite place on the planet.

I mean, I'm Tokyo.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What a year.

Year and a half, 12 months.

Yeah.

Best.

It was one of the best years of my life.

You got paid to go live in Tokyo by the Marine Corps?

Yeah, it was awesome, dude.

Went there for my first post and I had.

My thing was like, I was never this anime kid or like this Japanese nerd or whatever.

And so the funny thing is when they tell you your post assignment, it's kind of like this bittersweet moment because the very last thing that you do is you get OC sprayed.

Like, that's the last thing that you do in the schoolhouse, okay.

Like, you've basically already passed all the tests.

You've passed the board.

All you have to do now is get OC'd.

And if you pass that, you're good to go.

But you pass it.

And so they OC.

Have you ever been OC'd?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, it is a shit show.

Horrible.

It is un.

I can't even explain the pain.

I can't.

I. I've tried to explain it, and the best way I can explain it is like, if you took Razor Hot fiberglass.

Like fiberglass dipped in rattlesnake venom.

And then shove a million of those in your eyeballs all the way to the back of your brain.

That's what it feels like.

And your face melts.

I mean, I'm not joking when I say it feels like somebody took the back your head and dipped your face in a deep fryer for, like, 30 seconds.

Sure.

It's terrible.

For sure.

And so we all get OC sprayed.

And it's funny because the whole class gets OC sprayed.

It's kind of an interesting course because we have staff NCOs and all the way down to lance corporals going through the course.

And so all staff NCOs to the lance corporals get OC'd at the same time.

So you.

It was funny because we'd see, like, my deck commander, the staff NCO who's in charge of me, and, like, he got OC sprayed, and he just act like a little girl.

He just fell to the ground, like, held his face.

It was just funny watching these grown men freak out.

But so, anyways, after everybody gets OC sprayed, you go to the decon area, and then one of the instructors comes out and stands on a picnic table, and then he reads all your names and post assignments while your stuff.

While you're suffering.

While you're suffering.

Yeah.

I would even remember, like, what the.

Yeah.

So everybody.

It's kind of.

It's bitter.

It's very bittersweet because you get OC sprayed, you just get kicked in the dick very hard, and then you're gonna get kicked in the dick again or get a good post.

Oh, I didn't.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Africa.

Yeah, pretty much.

So you're just there dying.

Your face is melting.

And then some guys are told, gomez, Juba, South Sudan.

Like, you know.

But for me, you know, they said my name, and I got Tokyo and everybody all the sar.

Because I was at Lance, I was a junior Marine, so, like, all the sergeants and corporals were so pissed at me because I got Japan.

Where?

Okay, so during the course, you're going through msg, and obviously everybody's talking, like, where do you want to go?

Where's the number one?

Do you think most people wanted to go?

Japan, bro?

No.

Everybody was so jealous because it was only me and one other lance that got Japan.

Sent two troops.

Yeah, they sent two boots to Japan.

Okay.

And then some of these sergeants went to, like, Juba, South Sudan, or, like, Nigeria or, like, Chad, Africa, Congo or something.

Yeah, yeah.

God, could you?

I couldn't imagine, bro.

Yeah, I kind of wanted one of those posts, too, though, because, like, I wanted to go to, like, the rough areas.

I was this young, motivated Lance Cooley who kind of wanted to go to, like, a more austere environment.

But, yeah, I got Japan.

All of the other, like, fleet Marines, the staff, or the.

The NCOs, who had done deployments, they got sent back to a hole.

So.

Yeah.

But, yeah, that was cool.

And then so I spent a year in Japan.

What was your favorite part about Japan?

Oh, man.

Sure.

The food.

I mean, I love.

I love traveling, so I love.

Been there.

I've been.

No, the closest I've gone was Hong Kong, and we did that on a mew, so.

Yeah.

But I want to go to China, too.

Yeah.

I honestly need to go to more places in.

In Asia because it's my favorite, favorite food, favorite culture, favorite, like, architecture.

It's beautiful.

Amazing history, amazing culture.

They're very nice.

The history I love, because this.

They preserve.

Yes.

Their history.

I talk about that, too.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

So I.

That's why I love Asian culture.

I mean, I haven't been to Tokyo, but obviously Singapore.

As far as Asian countries, that's the biggest that I've been to.

But love, we.

We would travel.

Like, I would go and explore, and you'd see these things, and you're like.

This is so different than here.

Hundreds of years old.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Here, everything's just.

It's all torn apart, rebuilt.

Everything's modern and.

Yeah.

That's when you were talking earlier is like, the United States is in a bubble.

That said, the first thing that I went to is world travels.

Like, there's so many incredible places and people and cultures and foods and everything out there.

If you go looking for it, it's.

It's the greatest thing.

Okay, so you're in Tokyo.

I'm a big history buff.

So, like, there's not much history in America.

I mean, it goes back to, like, what, the 1700s.

So, like, I don't want to downplay our history, but compared to ancient cultures, like.

Yeah.

We don't have for history.

When you're coming to old World, history is.

It's fascinating places that have literally thousands of years of history that they've maintained.

Yes.

And still preserved like it's brand new.

Yeah.

So went to Japan.

What you said the.

My favorite thing, like, everything, bro.

It's.

It's like, the food.

It's my favorite food.

Sushi is my favorite food of all time.

And the funny Thing is like in Iowa you don't have like sushi places, so I never had sushi before I went there.

Okay.

And I was a little like creeped out at first and then it became my favorite food.

So.

The food is amazing.

It's very clean.

Also because you guys like do the sourdough and stuff and I assume you probably eat more whole foods here or try to at least, which I do too.

Yes.

And in America, the food supply is.

It's toxic, bro.

Yeah, it is.

And in Japan, it's all natural.

No GMOs, no preservatives, none of that garbage.

So the food, you feel better when you eat it.

It's delicious.

The culture is beautiful.

The architecture is beautiful, Lots of history.

The people are nice.

It's a safe, homogeneous society.

Like Tokyo, Japan is the biggest city in the world.

Like grid square wise.

And then population wise, you'd think you might see like homeless people or dirty areas or like crime.

None.

How they preserve their culture, man, that's.

Just the way families take care of families.

Families take care of families.

They're hard working people, they look out for the neighbor.

It's a more collectivist society.

Chris here is like kind of more of a individualistic.

They're looking out for the neighbors.

Even before, because I was there during COVID but I got there four and a half, five months before COVID hit.

And they do the masks like in.

Asia, cold or anything like that.

If you're sick or cold, like they go to work, they're workaholics.

But if they have like the slightest sniffle or cough, they wear a mask for their, for the people on the train, like so they don't spread their sickness, right?

So it's just stuff like that.

And like, dude, you, you can, you can eat off the sidewalk.

It's so clean there.

The way they package their food too fascinates me.

Like even in grocery stores, how everything they think so far into the future, how just normal produce is packaged and it makes sense when you see it.

And here you're like, well, this is gonna.

I don't mean like, I don't.

That's kind of weird tangent, but you, you probably understand what I'm saying.

Even all the way down to their food packaging is just light years ahead and makes so much more sense of everything that we even put on.

Everything's so efficient there it.

And every job.

You could be a janitor.

I don't remember the, the philosophy that they go by.

I think it's called ikigai.

So ikigai I'm a big philosophy nerd too.

And so ikigai is this Japanese philosophy about finding your purpose and your meaning and whatever it is to do it to the best of your ability.

Or that's one of the core tenants of ikigai.

And so even if some guy is a janitor, a custodian, or like somebody who works at a gas station, they take their job very seriously.

It's not like they're laxic, laxadaisical or lazy.

They're very disciplined, hard working, collectivist society.

And I love that.

Like it was night.

They, they say there's this thing called post, post Japan depression.

And it's a real thing.

Oh yes.

Google this, look it up on Instagram or Tick Tock or whatever.

Like anybody who goes to Japan, you go there and you experience this like legitimate utopia.

And.

And then when you come back to wherever you came from, like America, you literally have depression.

Like it's a dopamine depletion when you get back.

I was there two months ago on a trip with some buddies for like two weeks and same thing, I came back and it's like you're just drained and depressed because you come back to like America.

That's fascinating to me because I feel it would be, I'd be so overwhelmed with the lights and the people because I'm, I'm a very seclusive, like mountains are my home.

Right.

Like, I love just peace, I love quiet, I love looking at stars.

But then you take something like Tokyo, which is polar opposite of everything that ever want to be or ever want to like live in and experience for a long term.

But the hearing that, it's fascinating me because obviously they're doing something right, like efficiency, the cleanliness.

It's like the whole country is like staying in a five star hotel, if I can put it that way.

So it looks like that even restaurants are mind blowing.

Yeah, the hospitality is next level, the food's next level.

I mean, how do they treat, how do they treat Americans there nicely?

Yeah, they're very, if you're respectful.

Because what would piss me off, especially when I lived there, is when I would see tourists come out, come around like the Australians, because they're everywhere, the Aussie tourists or like dumb Americans that would come by or also like, you'd also have to deal with like the, the sailors in Yokosuka or the airmen in Yokota and the Marines from Oki coming to mainland for leave and stuff.

So when I would see tourists, you know, running amok and being loud on A train or something.

I'm like, guys, shut the up.

Like be respectful of the society.

Because if you are, they're not going to have a problem with you at all.

They're going to be very welcoming.

They're going to try to speak English with you, to help you out and give you directions and all that stuff.

On my last trip, because if you go to Japan, you can't just go to Tokyo.

You got to go to the countryside too.

And like Osaka and Kyoto especially.

But when I was in Kyoto, Kyoto is a, a very.

It used to be the capital of Japan.

Before.

Actually, I don't remember when Tokyo became the capital, but for like the longest time Kyoto was the capital of Japan.

And when we were looking to nuke Japan During World War II, they actually looked at Kyoto as a possible target.

But somebody, one of the guys who was there in the Manhattan Project basically said, I think his wife was from Japan or something.

And he was like, no, absolutely not.

We are not bombing the Kyoto.

Yeah.

Cuz it's all like, it's history, bro.

It's like thousands of years and hundreds, centuries and centuries of history, like these beautiful temples and it goes back to the Shogun era and the Shogun period of Japan.

And so you got to go to those places too.

And.

But I had a personal story when I was in Kyoto last time a couple months ago, we went to this pagoda, like a big temple type thing.

And then we were just walking around.

It was this little neighborhood in the middle of nowhere Japan.

And, and I speak like when I was there, when I lived there, I used to study Japan and I was like slightly conversational.

It's a tough one, right?

Yeah, very tough.

Yeah, very, very tough.

Especially the writing charts because they have three kanji, hiragana and katakana.

But I got myself to a point when I lived there where I could, I could get around just fine and have like, you know, very like basic rudimentary conversations.

And.

Which is impressive only being there less than a year.

I mean obviously you're learning it, so that's, that's impressive.

Yeah, I was, I wanted to learn it really badly.

So I tried.

But it takes a long time to learn it.

But anyways, last time I was there, we're walking through this neighborhood and we're trying to go back to the main street so we can get a taxi and go back to our hotel.

And this old couple, like the guy was 90 years old, the woman was like 85 or something, and they're just sitting on the sidewalk and they Just start chopping it up with us.

But they don't speak a lick of English.

They just look at us and they just start blabbing in Japanese.

And my friends all looked at me, and they're like, clyde, Clyde, come translate.

And.

And so I go.

And we ended up talking to them in, like, Japanese for, like.

For, like.

For, like, two straight hours.

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

We were talking in Japan.

English for two straight hours in there, for sure.

Yeah.

It was super cool, though.

Like, I would speak what I knew how to speak, and, like, it was so funny because they were acting like we could speak Japanese.

They weren't, like, slowing down.

I would say, like, which means, like, can you speak slower?

And they did not care.

They were just going at us, and they would say stuff, and they'd look at each other and they'd start cracking up.

Like, they were, I don't know, making fun of our shirts or something.

And.

But that.

You just get those raw experiences when you travel.

Yeah.

And it's super cool.

But, yeah, Japan has a very special place in my heart.

And I try to go back, like, now I want to try to go back every year.

Oh, that'd be cool.

I'd like to go and visit.

Yeah.

It has to be on your bucket list, for sure.

Oh, 100%.

It's.

It's fascinating.

I love all Asian culture.

I mean, dude, I got a giant Asian culture.

I mean, I have a giant samurai.

My whole back's a samurai.

Like, I love.

Oh, yeah, dude, they got sick tattoos there.

I got a couple there.

I got one on my.

I got a dragon on my thigh right here.

And then I got some kanji, some, you know, corny stuff.

Did you do the traditional way or no?

When I was there, I. I think they might have legalized it in some parts, but it was still illegal.

It was still like a underground, like, Yakuza type of thing.

So I had to go find, like, a dude, and he had a tattoo shop in the back of his apartments, and it was, like, all underground and illegal, and it was, like, a cool experience.

I love that type of.

Yeah, that's where.

Joining the military for the experience into, like.

Because I feel the military.

I have mixed emotions these days, and I want to get into it with you, you know, because obviously when I joined, it was after 9, 11.

We were pitched a whole entire different.

Yeah, dude thing.

So I have.

I. I'm very mixed emotions these days about the military, but I feel also the military is.

It's a gateway to success as far as it is what you make it 100%, it's net.

If you're going to join because you're going to defend the US because of these foreign invaders.

I mean, that was what we were pitching.

If it was different.

And I was like, man, I just want to join the military.

Better my life.

I feel like I'd have a different perspective on a different view on the military now.

But one of the greatest things that was for me was doing two Muse and being able to hit all of these different countries and to be.

And so I was very fortunate with my buddies that I did it with.

Because the typical Marine thing is just get off the ship, get as up as fast as possible.

Cause an international incident.

Yeah.

We would take a cab, a ride, a train, a bus, as far away as that we could.

And we would experience.

We'd spend.

Let's say we were there for five days.

We all would shake hands.

First three days was culture.

We want to experience the food, the culture, the people, just the atmosphere.

Then the last night to two nights, that's when we would just be like, we'd meet, we'd head back to like, whatever the port was mean, link up with all the boys, and then all hell would break loose.

But I.

At least we were smart enough to be able to experience all of these countries and what they had to offer.

And during my military time, that was one of the greatest times, was just being dropped off in this foreign country as a young kid.

You're just like, holy, let's go figure this out.

And then just talking to these people, not being an.

Not being the tip.

When I say the typical American.

If you've ever traveled and run into other Americans in foreign countries, it's almost embarrassing.

A lot of times it is really.

Where no offense on Texans, but they come off very Texanish.

Yeah.

Texas.

Hook them.

You know, you're like, okay, we're.

We're in.

In Singapore.

We don't.

These people don't give a.

Where you're from.

Yeah.

Let's just be cool and like, hang out.

And so.

But once you get that good group of people and you're able to travel and really explore what cultures.

And if you're there for the experience, bro, the things that open up and what people will show you, invite you into their homes, feed you, dude.

Take you to underground, like restaurants that don't exist.

Experiences like that.

Yeah.

And it's so much fun because then you're.

You're in this market and there's a giant crab crawling across the floor that came out of a tank behind you and they got fished or hacking up, they're still alive.

You're just like, what the are we?

It's the greatest food you've ever.

And then they're sitting and they're eating.

You're eating with your hands and that, like, though that to me, is where I want.

I want my kids to experience the.

The stuff that I was able to experience through the military without being in the military, because it's.

There's nothing like it.

And it's the greatest time you'll ever have is going to a foreign country with the most open mind and just experiencing it.

Yeah.

Just kind of wing it, honestly.

You know, have.

Have a little plan.

But we're nomad off of the.

Off of the path and wing it.

Talk to the locals, try to learn some complimentaries in the local language.

And they open up a lot.

If you can speak like a couple phrases to the people, you see them open up a lot.

And then they want to help you or they want to show you stuff, you know, you're not just like another annoying American tourist.

Yeah, they.

It shows even the slightest thank you, please.

Yeah.

Literally just basic words where you're going, and then it just shows that culture that you're trying or you're just not the typical tourist, dude.

The things that will open up in your journey is wild.

Yeah.

So it's in Japan for a year, but, I mean, it was still an amazing experience.

But I was there during, like, the hit of COVID Yeah, I was there for.

I got there in November of 2019, and then Covid started in, like, what, March 2020.

Really?

That's when it started.

Yep.

So I still had a great experience.

There was a couple lockdowns, stuff like that.

But then it was time for me to leave a year later in November of 2020.

And so when you leave your first post, you do have the option to, like, request your next post, and you get, like, three picks.

Okay.

So I picked.

All three of my picks were in the Middle east because I wanted to go to the Middle east.

And my whole thing, like, joining the Marine Corps is like, I wanted.

I was, you know, chasing action and whatever.

Like, that's why I wanted to be a grunt, and so I wanted to go to the Middle East.

I remember when I was in Japan, there was a siege on the embassy in Baghdad.

I don't know if you remember that, but.

And I don't even remember the whole political climate of what was going on, but there was a big siege at the embassy.

In Iraq.

And I knew some guys there and I was like, man, I wish I was there.

I want that action.

You know, they were trying to actually break into the embassy and they had to shoot tear gas at them and stuff.

Yep.

And it was a big thing on the news.

Quick though, right?

It was very quick.

It was only a few days.

Yeah.

So all of my three requests were in the Middle East.

Okay.

It was like Iraq, Afghanistan, and.

And somewhere else.

And so I didn't get any of my requests, but I got Saudi Arabia.

So that was my next post.

Okay.

And I didn't know jack diddly squat about Saudi Arabia.

I was going to Riyadh.

I did not even know what Riyadh was.

I didn't even know it was the capital of Saudi Arabia or.

No, it's not.

I think Jeddah is the capital.

But so I get my post assignment and, you know, pack up, leave Japan.

I actually ended up coming home for leave in between because my.

My grandfather passed away.

So I came home on e leave, went to his funeral, and then I went to Saudi Arabia.

And my.

Dude, we could talk probably this whole podcast about Saudi Arabia.

But I'll hit like some main points.

Such an interesting place.

I was.

You just talked.

I was going to say Saudi Arabia is fascinating.

Fascinating culture.

The people.

Oh, you have no idea.

Especially Riyadh.

Riyad is such an interesting place.

Especially if you get plugged into the right to community.

The witch level of wealth.

Oh, my goodness, bro, you.

No, no.

No idea.

You have like, nobody watching.

No idea the type of wealth that is there.

I mean, families of billionaires and I would say families of trillionaires.

The compounds, the size of subdivisions here.

Yes.

Be a family.

Yes.

I mean literal palaces with.

With million dollar horses in million dollar cars.

They're so rich, bro.

They're so rich.

They bought every car.

People have bought every watch.

They bought penthouses in every major city.

They don't know what to do with their money.

People literally go and buy tigers.

Yeah.

And lions.

So how did you get tied in with these people?

Okay, so as a Marine, this is.

This is a very.

I've never really talked about this publicly, but it's like I said, I probably could talk about this the whole podcast, but.

So actually, before I went to the embassy, one of the Marines in Tokyo had a good friend who was at the embassy in Riyadh.

And so he was kind of telling me, like, hey, there's this guy lance corporal who's coming to your post.

He's kind of curious about what it's like.

And so he was telling me stories, and I'm like, that can't be real.

Like, what are you talking about?

He's talking about stories like parties, okay?

Like some next level.

Like, it sounded like he was hyping it up and he was just over exaggerating, but he wasn't.

And so I remember he's telling me, I'm like, parties in Saudi Arabia.

Doesn't make any sense.

And so I remember also the guy in Tokyo who I work with, he was telling me what his friend was telling him.

And then I remember another day.

It was one of my last days on post at the embassy.

And I was at the front.

It was like post two at the embassy.

So right at the entrance, and I remember this.

This air Force colonel or lieutenant colonel came in and he kind of knew me.

He was.

He was a nice guy and would talk to the Marines sometimes.

And so he's like, hey, I heard you're leaving.

Where.

Where's your next post?

And I go, riyadh, Saudi Arabia, sir.

And he goes.

He just kind of looks up and laughs and he's like, have a good time.

And then he walks in.

Like a good sign.

Yeah, he had been there.

He'd been to that embassy.

And so I'm like, what the is going on in.

In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia?

So anyways, I get there, I show up, and I get to the.

The airport, and the A slash.

So basically like the.

Essentially like the squad leader, if you want to refer to him as that, he comes and picks me up from the airport, and he drives me back to the.

The compound, the embassy compound.

And he's giving me, like, the rundown, the debrief on, like, how the post works, how the country works, like do's and do nots.

And then he tells me, because in Riyadh, alcohol is.

Or in Saudi, alcohol is illegal because it's a Muslim country and they don't drink.

And so there's no bars, there's no restaurants that serve alcohol.

There's no clubs, nothing like that.

But Riyadh is a melting pot of expats from all over the world who are business people or people who work at embassies.

So you have all these expats from all over the world, and then you have stupid you money everywhere.

So there's some tent parties going on.

So there's some tent parties, which is what I started to pick up on.

And he's telling me my A slash is telling me.

He's like, okay, so I need to break I need to like give you this, this rundown real quick.

So alcohol is illegal in the country.

Rights.

But at the embassy we have a liquor store where we import stuff.

The government allows us to do it, but we have to keep it on compound.

And then he tells me like, whatever you do, do not take it off compound, do not distribute it to the locals.

And then especially don't sell it because people have got caught selling it because you can sell it for a lot of money to like wealthy Saudis and stuff and you'll get in trouble.

You can get RFC'd off the program and sent back to the States.

And I was like, okay, okay, I'm not gonna do that.

Like I'm not gonna around.

And so I should probably preface.

I'm a very different person at this time in my life.

We all were.

Yeah, I was a very different.

I would not be doing this today, but I was a very different man back then.

I could say that about most of my life.

So.

So just to preface that.

But I get there and when I show up, I have to like go into quarantine because it's still Covid.

So I'm in my room for a week and I remember.

So our, our Msgr.

The marine house was on the embassy compound.

And then all the other embassy staff, they lived off compound in the diplomatic quarters.

So the diplomatic quarters is basically like a big giant base that houses all of the embassies.

So like the rush or not the Russian, but the like French embassy, the Australian, the Mexican, the Canadian, Afghan was.

Outside of the Afghan embassy.

I worked, I did contract there, but out of the back gate of there was all like French.

Yeah, you had all the embassies in little compounds.

So it was basically like a little city of expats.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was very cool, very safe.

You could walk around at night, no problems.

You wouldn't have to deal with like locals bothering you or anything like that.

Security and everything around.

Yes.

The whole thing was like going onto a base, they had Saudi military guarding.

Okay.

Coming into the compound.

So it's huge compound.

But then all the embassy houses are there.

Yeah.

And then the embassy itself.

The compound itself is in there.

So the marines were the only ones that lived on the compound.

We had a super nice house.

So in the house we have a kick ass gym in the house with a loudspeaker.

The best gym of my life.

I was going to say best gym culture of my life.

The living conditions like in Saudi Arabia.

Cuz you guys probably have the biggest budget.

Like I Mean, they just.

Oh, dude, whatever.

For going away gifts.

Because when a Marine leaves post, they give you, like, a plaque and a going away gift.

Back in the day, like in the early in 2000s, 2010s, and 90s, they were giving Marines Rolexes as going away because they had so much money.

But we'll get to why they had so much money later.

So we get to the embassy and, like, to explain the house.

It had a nice gym with a loudspeaker and mirrors everywhere.

And the gym culture there was, like, the best gym culture I've ever had, because all the guys are just lifting shirtless with their.

With their silkies.

Yeah, silkies.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pretty much.

Silky, shirtless combat boots blaring like Chief Keef and Suicide Boys in the gym.

And then we had a kitchen, a nice kitchen.

We had a cook that would come during the weekdays and cook our meals.

We had a nice dining room.

We had a little room for, like, doing your mcis on a computer.

We had it.

You guys had it?

Yeah.

We had a living room with, like, an Xbox and love seats and a big couch.

We had a room with, like, a pool table and a dartboard.

And then we had, like, a laundry room.

And then we had a big bar inside the house.

Like a.

No bar.

Like a.

Like a.

Like a bar.

Like, bigger than this room right here.

Like a club bar.

Like a club bar.

Okay.

And it had a DJ booth in the corner, and I had a disco light up top.

And we had all these rifles.

We had, like, fals and old AKs.

Okay.

That we like.

They basically, like, emailed them, they demilled them, and they put them all around the wall, like, for decoration.

And it was super sick in there.

And then a legitimate bar.

Like, a legitimate bar in the back.

And so what that was there for is every embassy has a bar that's run by the Marines, which sounds kind of weird, but when you're in countries like Saudi Arabia where you don't have bars, you can't go out.

Like, the embassy staff can't go out and let their hair down and, like, go to bars and stuff.

So they do it at the embassy.

Only the.

Only the Marine Corps would make sure the Marines have a bar in every country.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And then also, I forgot to mention, like, on the compound, we also had, like, a restaurant that had its own bar as well.

And then connected to that was a pool with some, like, some lawn chairs around the side.

Probably, like, we had a. Yeah, made it.

We had a big outside outdoor basketball Slash, like, tennis court.

And then the embassy was also, like, further down on.

On the compound.

So it was like this crazy place to live.

I was like, 22 at the time.

And so.

So back to, like, quarantine.

I was in quarantine for a week.

But I'm in my room going stir crazy.

And we have this, like, outside balcony that connects to all the rooms.

And we all had our own individual rooms.

And so I would be out there, like, just chilling on my phone, listening to music or something.

And I would see the guys sometimes walk past, and they would be, like, going out and like, where the hell are you guys going?

And they're like, we're going to a party.

And I'm like, a party?

What.

What do you mean, party?

Party in Saudi Arabia.

But they would be going to these big parties because they got plugged into this party scene, because.

So the embassy would open up for, like, what we call steak nights, which is like, every Thursday.

Thursday in, like, middle Muslim countries is basically Friday.

Yeah.

So every Thursday, the embassy used to do what's called steak nights, where they would serve meals and then they would invite outsiders.

So each person from the embassy could invite, like, three to five guests from outside of the embassy.

And they would come and have these, like, three to 400 people ragers at the Marine house.

And so they would.

They would have parties and they would charge for the drinks.

But who's profiting?

The Marines.

That's why they were buying Rolexes for going away gifts.

It was crazy.

This is the most Marine shit ever.

I know.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

So the Marines are basically like the frat.

The frat boys of the embassy.

Perfect and.

Perfect representation.

Yeah, I saw some.

We had, like, a photo album in there, and I saw some pretty wild pictures from back in the day, like in the 90s and stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

Tires on the barn.

Yeah, yeah.

Like playing beer pong with the.

With the ambassador with their shirts off and stuff.

It was pretty funny.

People don't understand because when I was working in.

In Afghan at the embassy, Ragers, they go hard, bro.

I'm talking, like, diplomatic women passed out in bushes and they go hard, bro.

Like, you're, like, waking these women up, like, hey, ma'.

Am.

Like, they go, yeah, ragers.

I'm talking middle.

You're on post like, Marley, it's three in the morning.

Yeah.

I think they're stumbling out of the front gate, and you're like, you're gonna end up on Al Jazeer television getting your heads cut off with a spirit spoon.

Like probably wouldn't recommend going out here wasted right now.

Yeah, dude.

Embassies throw ragers.

Oh no, it's a culture.

It's a thing on in the State Department when you go overseas.

It is a culture, like a party culture.

And the people are all like.

It's kind of gets kind of weird.

I've heard about some like, swinger groups.

Big time, dude.

Yeah, big time.

I didn't know that was a thing until I got to Riyadh.

Like within the State Department, there's like swinger groups.

It's kind of weird.

Yeah, dude.

The, the normal civilian has no idea.

Even the, in the, in the military.

Marines have no idea what goes on in embassies.

Yeah, I mean, I've worked on the civilian side in em.

Like that's the only reason I know I never got doing the military side.

Yeah.

But it's fascinating.

Yeah, it's fascinating.

And so that's why I say was such an interesting place.

But during COVID the they wouldn't have as many parties or that like the numbers were very limited.

So we didn't have those like huge ragers at the embassy.

And I mean, it started to pick up towards the end of my time there.

But because they weren't hosting them at the embassy, they moved them off compound.

So the Marines were just known in Riyadh.

Like the whole city knew that the Marines were like partiers, the party people of the city.

And so they would have these parties now off compound because some of the people that like, some of the locals that would come to the parties would be like very, very wealthy Saudis.

And when you say wealthy Saudis, you're talking billionaires.

Hundreds of millions.

Sometimes.

Yeah, I, I've.

I went to a couple parties where there were princesses, like royal family, because the, the royal family is huge.

The, the father of mbs, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, he had like, I don't know, 30 kids or something like that.

So now like the parties aren't happening at the embassy, but the Marines are still known as the party animals.

And so they would just move them to like essentially a palace or like these crazy mansions that were owned by the Saudis.

Oh my God.

And so I remember when I got out of quarantine, the first like party I went to, big party was.

It was a New Year's party.

And so the.

A slash at that time, he was, he was a party freak, a party animal.

And so he invited me.

He's like, you want to go to a party?

It's a New Year's party.

I was like, yeah, sure, whatever.

And so he gets in like a, the silver suit he bought like the silk silver suits.

And he goes out and we, we drive like an hour and a half out into the desert and we pull up to this compound.

Look like Osama bin Laden's compound with like all around it.

Gate.

Giant.

Giant.

Giant gate.

Yup.

And so we drive through and as soon as we get in, there's.

There's these two giant Nigerian dudes in black suits and sunglasses and they have a clipboard with a list and they flip it open and they're like, what's your name?

And we tell them our names and then we get in and then I don't want to say his name.

Cuz this guy, the, the a party animal, he just.

As soon as we park, he gets out and he starts dapping everybody up at the party.

And I get out and I'm like, whoa, where am I at?

I don't know anybody.

And then all these people just keep coming up to me and they're shaking my hand and they're being really nice and introducing themselves.

But the place we were at was like, it was a huge estate out in the middle of the desert.

Like the house was huge, had like six bedrooms.

It had a, it had this dolphin fountain out in the backyard, like a huge statue of a doll, a dolphin with like water squirting around.

And then he had like, we called it the farm because he had like goats and sheeps and.

And camels.

Was always camels.

Yeah.

Just walking around.

Yeah.

And then he had this huge pool and he had a guest house and a huge soccer field like all on his compound.

And when we were there, they had this DJ who was outside and then like a dance floor they made.

And then we're walking around and I go to like the dance floor and I see these guys at this bar and they have all these drinks like Jack Daniels, Grey Goose, like all brand name vodka and whiskey and tequila and beer.

I'm like, where the hell did you guys get that?

Like you get all this stuff but you can't buy it anywhere.

So what I later found out was like the embassy people at the embassies were selling it to them.

And people from the embassies were like running these parties.

Oh, for sure.

So I got plugged into this group and this group is like crazy.

There's like crazy very wealthy Saudis and then like all these expats from all over the world who like work at embassies or they're.

They're there for business.

And so my little entrepreneur mind starts spinning and I'm like, damn.

They're probably getting this from like the embassies and stuff.

And so fast forward a couple, like maybe month or so.

Some of the people at these parties would ask me if I could like bring alcohol.

So I would start bringing it.

Because at the embassy, like you could buy an allotment.

Yeah, you had like 12, you had like 20 points or something.

And like two points would get you like a bottle of liquor or like a case of beer.

And so you could only buy a certain amount because it's a limited supply.

And so I would buy out my whole supply for the month and I would take it to the parties and I would kind of supply the parties.

But then somebody German guy from the party and some other guys, they had this idea to essentially like charge covers for people to come in.

And so I kind of turned into this party kingpin of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

And I was throwing like 400 people deep ragers just collected bank.

Oh yeah, what's the COVID What's a cover in Saudi Arabia?

Cover.

We were charging covers and drinks.

We would rack up like 20 grand a party profit.

Yeah, good for you.

Yeah, good for you.

Yeah, I love it.

Especially the Marine Corps.

And we were doing like multiple, multiple a month.

So for sure you got your 20 points back.

You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I would also.

So like, it evolved because I started like this crazy business where like I would be bringing like my allotments and I would make, you know, couple thousand bucks.

But then as like sounds kind of weird, but as the business progressed, I gained like, bigger connections and I like, would have like more and more like higher and higher net worth clients.

And they would pay more and more because they wanted all of it.

Because I had so many people asking for my allotment of alcohol and to come to my parties.

It's a big thing that people were like bidding over pricing because you're, you're.

Dealing with a product in a country where people can buy anything from other people to million dollar horses, except for alcohol.

And you, you're, you're the missing piece.

So they can literally these, these live in a country where they can own anything except for alcohol and you have it.

Exactly.

So you're just like, I'm your man.

So I got very well known in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia by like, you very, very high net worth families and all the expats and stuff.

And then eventually, like, because I could only have like My allotment.

So I had, like, all the Marines on my payroll.

Like, I was getting all their stuff.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

It was a crazy time, but I made a lot of money that year.

Off the record.

Came back with a couple Rolexes.

I did.

Yeah, actually.

I actually did.

I'm not joking.

I had to.

Yeah.

It's a good time.

Like I said, this was a different man, different time.

Yeah.

But cool story, and that's hilarious.

Very interesting place, though.

I mean, the people you meet there.

It's just such an interesting place.

Such a weird melting pot of different people.

The mindset is fascinating of how just money is just nothing to those people.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

I mean, they talk about millions, like we talk about thousands.

And you just sit in these conversations and you just like, what the am I even doing here?

Like.

Like, this guy just trashed a freaking Bugatti and done laughing about it.

And they shot it up in the desert and didn't even care.

Literally.

Yeah.

I mean, have you heard about the story of when Lil Wayne went there?

No.

So Lil Wayne went there for some, I think a concert, like, years ago.

And I think it was somebody from the Royal Family.

They're like, before he showed up, they.

They, like, booked his private jet, flew him over, and then they were like.

They messaged him, and they're like, lamborghini or Ferrari?

And he's like, what?

He's like, lamborghini.

And he's like, red or black?

And he's like, I don't know.

Black.

And he shows up, and they pull up in a black Lamborghini on the tarmac and they gift it to Lil Wayne.

Just.

That's just whatever.

It's like buying a can of soda to them.

I was gonna say, did you have a Conex box show up at your house when you got back?

No.

No.

I almost asked that before he brought that stick.

I wish that story up.

Then when he got to his.

He was.

Gets in his hotel, checks in, goes to his room, and he hears a knock.

He opens the door, and somebody, like, one of the people from the.

One of their, like, servants or whatever, they literally have servants, too.

He opens the door and he gifts him a Richard Mill, which is like a 300, 000 watch.

Like, just the stupidest amount.

I mean, the things they do with their money is the craziest thing.

But the way that they look at us in our culture, like, they love it so much, but they can't experience it.

Yeah.

So they'll go above.

They just.

They what?

They have on us is the ability to be able to flex their money.

Yeah, it's nothing.

They would do that with these parties, too, because the parties are so exclusive, and, like, you.

Anybody can buy a Lambo or a Ferrari or even a Bugatti out there.

But, like, if you had these big parties, and it also is great for networking, like, you'd meet super interesting people, like, very wealthy people, people from all over the world, different embassies.

Yeah, it was a crazy time, man.

Good for you, dude.

Was there for 14 months, and then.

But you were bummed to be leaving there.

I was actually.

Yeah.

I had some really good friends there.

Some, like, lifelong best friends that I met there, Some guys that are still in.

But, yeah, it's a great time.

And then I left there.

I got orders to three one.

Oh, God.

It was a good time.

I was in Horno, which was Saudi Arabia.

3.

What a kick in the nuts.

That probably was.

Going back to the fleet.

I went from being, like, the Riyadh alcohol kingpin, partier guy to coming back and being a team leader in some platoon in Horno.

So, yeah, that's the most Marine core.

Yeah, it's the most.

Yeah, you're probably, like, coming back like, ah, yeah, like, y' all heard of me.

And then they're like, shut the up.

Here's your platoon.

Go run.

Yeah, go run.

The mountain hadn't rucked in, like, two years, man.

Yeah, yeah.

Except for Party on.

Yeah, I get it.

Yeah, it was.

I mean, no, we did cool training in Saudi, too.

It wasn't all partying.

It was.

We did some cool training.

Got to train with, like, some rangers and DSS guys and got a lot more exposure to, like, the agency and stuff like that.

But then, yeah, came back to 3:1.

I was there for two years before I got out, and.

Which is in Horno, in Camp Pendleton, if people don't know.

Camp Pendleton is a great base to be at, but Horno is not a good part of it.

You know, you're kind of out in the middle.

It's like the ghetto.

It's literally the ghetto of Camp Pendleton.

It's just.

I don't know.

I mean, I don't know how it is now or when you're getting out, but, yeah, bro, that place is a slums.

Yeah, the slums.

Black mold in the barracks.

I think the only other place that we compare to it in the past would be Del Mar, where the trackers lived.

Like, that's.

They were.

Or 29 maybe, but with more liberty stuff to do off Base, that's a shithole.

But, yeah.

Yeah.

So how was that transitioning into.

It was a transition for sure because I came back as a corporal and was immediately, like, given a team.

And I hadn't been doing grunt stuff, like.

Like real grunt stuff for, you know, over two years.

So how did.

Okay, so how did that platoon absorb you into it?

Because I know there's a big rift between security forces coming back to the fleet versus, like, some lance corporal, at least during my time, has got three deployments in, dude stacked, and now he's got some senior corporal that coming off MSG or security forces telling them what to do, and they have zero at my time.

Deployment time.

But was it.

Did you feel anything like that?

I mean, like, prejudice from the guys that were.

Sometimes you get some salty lance corporal grunt that's been in for four years and been busted down three times.

I mean, the dude.

If you're squared away, they're not gonna.

Yeah, if you're squared away, you're not going to get messed with.

I mean, and I was a corporal, and I was squared away, and, you know, I was good.

Some guys would come back from MSG and they were, like, fat and nasty and they couldn't run or they couldn't ruck or whatever.

They couldn't lead a team.

Those guys would have a hard time at first.

They'd kind of get rebooted, as they say, for a little bit.

But if you were squared away, you were fine.

You were good to go as long as, like, you take it serious and, you know, you know, pick up your knowledge and learn quick.

A lot of guys would, like, go to AIC pretty soon after coming back Advanced Infantry School.

I kind of stayed a team leader.

I had no intentions on staying in longer, so I didn't become a squad leader or anything like that.

Yeah, it was a good time.

And also I had, like, you know, some of my best friends were in that unit to this day, like guys that are like brothers to me.

So I had a good time there.

And then I did a deployment.

The Murphy in Australia.

Okay.

Yeah, that was my last, technically last deployments or last time overseas.

Did that in 2023.

And are you familiar with the Murphy?

So I haven't done the Murphy, but I did when I was in Marines.

I got to hit Perth, Sydney, Brisbane, Darwin.

Darwin.

That's where we were.

Darwin was.

Dude, Darwin's like an oceanside.

Oh, it's a doo doo.

Yeah, we drank Darwin out of Jaeger in the first day of hitting port there.

Did you Go to.

What's it called?

Shenanigans.

I have a. I have a Shenanigans, man.

I used to run beer pong there.

I have a shirt in my closet.

I bet you if the wife I'll dig it out.

It's a. I have a Shenanigans.

Shenanigans.

That's.

That place is still there.

We bought rugby jerseys, shirts there.

And we went around.

We were so tore up that night.

We went around telling everybody we just won like the world cup of whatever.

We didn't even.

We were so tore up and we ran and we ended up running into an actual rugby team.

Like six of these dudes that were giant and they like kind of snatched us up.

And they're like, who the are you guys?

We're like, oh, yeah.

Running around being drunk marines.

And we're like, we just won.

We just won.

They're like, like, we're rugby players.

You're like, let's show you how we party.

And so.

Oh, they.

They party.

They took us right in, man.

And we just got obliterated.

But yeah, we spent like a two weeks out in the bush training out there.

It was horrible, bro.

It was so hot.

And you'd be sleeping at night in this bug.

Yeah.

Spiders sp the size of a plate crawling over your face.

Use a bathroom, these little outhouse in the middle of the night and you like turn your little flashlight on.

It's like, you're like, literally everything out there will kill you, man.

I mean, literally, bro.

We were there for six months, mainly in Darwin.

We were in Darwin for like four and a half months.

But we did a training exercise in Queensland, in town.

Townsville.

Okay, Queensland.

And the training area that we were in, we were there for like five weeks.

Just in the field for five weeks.

Kind of like itx.

But yeah, everything there you up everything.

You can't go in the water because they have this thing called irukanji, which is a.

It's like a jellyfish the size of a nickel.

And if it touches you, you're done.

Done.

And you can't see it.

Spiders, snakes.

Spiders.

Saltwater crocs, sharks, fox jellyfish.

Jellyfish.

Literally everything you go in the water, you go in the bush, you go to take a dump in your bathroom and there's a spider that's going to bite you in the ass.

I mean, everything there will kill you.

Yes.

And so when we were in Townsville, that training area was home to eight of the world's top ten most deadly snakes.

Wonderful.

And we're sleeping in the field with them every night.

Yeah, yeah.

I remember we were training with the Gurkhas, the Nepalese special forces, but Afghan, you.

You worked with them.

Horrible.

They're funny.

Horrible.

The worst experiences of my life.

Yeah, yeah.

They jerk off everywhere and they blow their snot rockets on everything.

That's our.

I didn't experience the gooning.

We had to share heads like community bathrooms with them.

It was horrible.

Shower babies and neon green loogies on everything.

I've talked about on a podcast with working with Gurkas.

Luckily I, I avoided that.

Lucky.

But yeah, we were doing one field op with them and it was like us, the, the Aussies and the Gurkas and we were like raiding.

We're doing a night raid on a town and obviously like, we're, you know, consolidating and we have machine gunners posted up and they're engaging the town and there was a Gurkha who was laying in the prone in the bush engaging the town.

And all of a sudden you just hear a pause X or pause X, pause X, pause X.

And lo and behold, he got bit in the calf by a snake.

Okay.

In pitch black darkness.

And they have no clue what type of snake it is.

Like, and for the.

For snakes, if you give, you have to identify it so you know what type of anti venom to use.

Otherwise if you use the wrong antivenom, you can mess yourself up.

And so he gets bit by a snake and they call paws X and we had to call in a, like a basically a cassie back like osprey.

Had to fly in and pick him up.

To this day, I don't know if the dude's alive or not.

I don't know the condition.

I never heard what happened to him, but all I know is he got bit by a snake and it took like an hour and a half to get him out of there.

He's still alive?

I think so.

I don't know.

Oh, yeah, Valid.

But I mean, they give us training on like, how to wrap snake bites.

Have you ever gotten that?

Training?

No.

So basically like our corpsman gave us training because they went to a course from the Aussie, like Corman or whatever.

And if you get bit by a snake, let's say you get bit like on your forearm right here.

What you have to do is take a bit.

What's like the H bandage or something, and you have to, you know, tie it from like your elbow all the way down to your hand, but you have to crank that thing as literally.

I mean, I'm not like A weak person.

But, like, when I did it, they're like, it has to be tighter.

Like, you just have to crank it as tight as you can.

Basically, like a tourniquet that covers your whole, like, extremity.

Why?

Because it consolidates the venom.

It doesn't let them let it go throughout.

You can't just put a tourniquet above the bite.

Doesn't work that way.

No, because if you do that, when you take the tourniquet off, it's all going to shoot, and then you're going to go into shock.

And also when they administer the anti venom, they have to drip it into your.

Into your system while they slowly unravel the wrap.

So if you do put a tourniquet, you probably just killed that guy.

So you don't want to put a tourniquet on.

So, like, even if you don't have a bandage, like, you know, rip your pants off or something, you know, make it into a strand and then wrap whatever you can around it as tight as you can.

Basically, you make a cast on it.

Yeah.

Over it.

But I don't know if they did that with the Gurkha guy, but, yeah, they're expendable.

Okay, so Gurkhas, our Gurkhas were like terps.

You know how there's different tiers of terps?

Like, the better speak, they go to, like, the special forces units, and then you get, like, the villager that can say a couple of words.

And that's what goes to us.

That's what it was for the Gurkhas in Afghan.

These were like villagers that they, like, scraped the bottom of the barrel.

And the only thing they were missing were, like, a pitchfork and, you know, like a burlap sack thrown over their shoulder with some corn husks in it.

That.

Those were the Gurkhas that we were, like, working with and had the trade at the embassies.

And it was a show.

We all had dysentery from these dudes.

Like, everyone was sick.

It was cool.

I actually got a Gurkha knife, the.

What do they call the blades?

They have a specific blade that the.

Gurk is used who cry.

That might be it.

Yeah.

That was, like, curved.

Yeah.

I have one downstairs that was gifted to me.

I got to lob the head off a few things with it.

It was pretty cool.

So, yeah, I mean, I. I respect the.

The Gurkha culture.

Like the.

The history of the Gurkha.

Yeah, yeah.

Guarding what?

The Queen of England.

I mean, they're supposed to be some, like, badass Nepalese warriors, we got like the bottom of the barrel.

And these dudes, I mean, I can't say they're the most like tactically competent, but they put out, they put out in the field.

They put out on rucks.

Like, we would do like long rucks because, like, for some reason, I mean, it's Marine corps.

We do the longest rocks out of any other, you know, foreign force I've ever seen.

So we would be doing like a 20k.

A 20k movement at night.

No, dude, that's just Australia.

When we were training there, we would walk for like a day and a half.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

To get to a fucking grenade range.

Grenade.

And then you're walking.

Yeah, it's.

It's.

Yeah, these dirt roads and you can't get transport.

We can't get 7 tons or like anything.

You just have to walk to the range like 20 clicks away.

Yeah, I remember man day.

And then you would get to a grenade range.

You're like, I don't even want to throw this grenade.

Yeah, you're going to arrange to shoot and you're like, I don't even give a about this.

I want to go home.

I'm so pissed off.

We've been walking all.

And we're trackers, so I'm not, we're not grunts.

Like, I'm.

Where's my vehicle?

Like, that's what I'm thinking the whole entire time.

I got a 27 ton tracked vehicle.

Why am I not driving this everywhere?

Yeah, they made us when we were in Australia from one of our deployment.

Dude, we walked everywhere was miserable.

Yeah, I mean, I hiked that deployment more than any time in training in Pendleton or 29.

Yeah, we ended up catching it on fire with tracers.

We caught the bush all the time.

It happens all the time.

And then those giant termite mounds, they're like 20 foot high.

We were just do with saws, just chopping through those with the 240 with the saw.

We ended up catching the bush on fire on a live, live fire maneuver.

And dude, it spread and they're like, we got to put it out.

I. I'll show you a picture.

I'll send it to you if I can't find it.

Dude, there is a picture of us, my whole platoon.

It looked like Lord of the Flies.

We're like in silkies.

We got skivvy shirts typed around our heads like bandanas.

Because we're put.

We're literally got like palm leaf branches.

We're putting out these fires.

This giant tree's on Fire.

And we're pushing this thing over as the battalion commander comes pulling up in this little Land Cruiser.

This.

Yeah, yeah.

Giant, like old rotted out eucalyptus tree comes collapsing right in front of his car.

Dude, shit's flying.

Branches landing on his hood.

He gets out, he's like, it's good Marines.

And we're just like, imagine Lord of the Flies marine version where we're just like on the beach, like, with a torch.

Yeah.

Like doing like these rituals.

That was us in the bush of Australia, man.

For.

It was horrible.

Australia was such a terrible, worst time.

It's so humid, so muggy.

The, the, the mosquitoes.

You can't, like, nothing makes them go away.

No, they're just there.

Actually, I learned a trick when I was there because so they would always tell us to bring bug spray, but it doesn't do anything.

The mosquitoes do not care about your bug spray.

You could spray that in the face and it's going to come at you still.

But you know the aboriginals that live in Australia, okay, so these people have been living there for like thousands of years.

They've been living in that climate in the bush still to this day.

They still live in, like mud huts in the bush to this day.

And I would always think, like, these guys must be like, how are they still here?

1.

There's so many things that would kill you, like genocide you.

The freaking spiders will genocide an entire population.

But I would see them, you would see them in Darwin because they're all over the place.

You'd be just driving down the street and you would see like a tribe just off the street in the bush.

And I noticed they would be cracking these, like, leaves.

Okay.

I'm like, are they just doing that for fun or whatever?

Like, are they making a stew or.

They'd be cracking these leaves and I saw it, you know, a couple times.

And so one time when I was out in the field, I was getting destroyed.

I was on.

I was like on watch one night.

We're doing like 50 security and like a whatchamacallit.

Oh my.

I'm gonna get fried in the comments now, dude.

A pb, okay?

A patrol base.

We were in a pb and I'm.

I'm on security and I'm getting just destroyed by these, these mosquitoes.

And I see one of those little plants, one of those little weed things next to me.

So I was just bored on, on watch.

So I grab one and I start just cracking them, you know, as I'm looking down my rco, cracking them Looking down my nods.

And all of A sudden, like 10, 15 minutes later, I stopped getting bit by the mosquitoes.

I don't know what that plant was called, what it was, but every time I went back in the field, I would have a pocket full of those and just crack them.

And it like made the mosquitoes go away.

So weird.

I don't know what it was.

I never asked anybody, but that was my technique and it worked.

Did I have a didgerido, I think in that closet that I got for like a legit one from when I was in Australia.

A what?

Did you redo didgeridoo?

I'm not.

Yeah, I collect all kinds of cool shit like that.

Like.

Yeah, I got all kinds.

Hold on.

Dude, I love Australia, man.

It was the coolest.

It was the coolest time.

Yeah.

Is it in there?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The aboriginals would use those.

Yeah, yeah.

Dude, where did you get that?

At like a store.

A store or what?

Well, this dude ended up taking us to like this.

Authentic.

I don't know if it's authentic.

I was a young dumb marine.

But it used to have wax and a bunch of that I built up around it.

But.

Yeah, that's a hog right there.

Yeah.

Yeah, dude, Australia's one of my friends.

Just wood.

Yeah.

Does it have like a.

It doesn't have like a certain groove to make that noise?

No, it's just a hollow fucking branch.

You just make it all with your note, with your mouth.

It's pretty cool.

I know you're a fan of trinkets from around the world.

Yeah, I always get something from wherever I go.

Yeah, that was one.

That was one of mine.

I tried to collect something.

Like I got.

I'm one of those people, I collect sand and like I steal from places.

Like I'll chip things off of stuff.

Yeah.

When I went to.

The first time I went to Egypt and went to the pyramids, my tour guide let me like climb up them probably like 20 meters.

Okay.

That's pretty.

I didn't think.

Yeah.

So I went to them and you climb up them?

He let me go like 20 meters up and on the pyramids.

It's like they're all like broken up rocks.

Yeah.

And so when I was up there, I like sat down to take a picture and I'm like grabbing rocks and putting on.

So I have pieces of the pyramid.

Be friends for sure.

Yeah.

I have pieces of the pyramid of Giza at my house.

See?

Cool.

We went.

I don't think you're Supposed to do that.

I'm sorry.

But, like, no, we get over it.

I was like, 19 at the time.

We went up to Suez Canal, into Elizabeth, trained.

We did Operation Bright Star.

I don't know if you've ever heard of that.

You train with the Egyptians and, like, the prince comes out and they sit in the stand and you do this big mock amphibious assault.

Yeah.

If you Google Operation Bright Star, it's pretty cool.

But, yeah, we trained out there for, like, a month, dude.

We were, like, just 100 miles from the pyramids at one point, and we were supposed to go see him, and then we loaded up in Humvees and everything.

We were gonna go drive to him, and they canceled it.

So I spent a month in Egypt.

Like, oh, dude, you missed out pretty.

Cool and see it.

But I got.

I got really cool sand and from the beaches there.

But yeah, it's got Egyptian sand.

No, they're cool, man.

It's like a one time.

You know, you go one time and you like, oh, I saw it.

But like, Mount Rushmore, you're like, yeah, Jack.

Yeah, pretty much.

But it's definitely a.

It's pretty cool.

Yeah, it's the coolest.

I don't know.

I've seen a lot of very cool, like, ancient places and historical places, but that one blew my.

Fried my brain, dude.

Who built the pyramids?

Aliens.

What type of aliens?

Do you want to know something?

So we're talking fallen angel aliens or alien aliens?

I don't know, but before, because I've always been, like, a conspiracy theorist since I was, like, a teenager.

That's kind of how I got into what I do now.

So I've always been in, like, a, you know, have this infatuation with conspiracy theories and, like, very, like, fringe facts and stuff and historical knowledge.

And so I go to the pyramids, and I'm just a random tourist there, and I'm like, I'm gonna go see the pyramids.

I go there, and when I left, I was convinced aliens were real.

Like, just seeing those in person convinced me.

But I. I'm the question on aliens now.

I don't know, but I was, like, very convinced for probably, like, four years.

That was like, 100 convinced that aliens were real.

Now it's kind of like I don't really know and doesn't really matter.

Yeah.

But then now to discover the pillars that go like a mile and a half under the pyramids.

Is that real?

I haven't seen anything that's debunked it yet.

Have you?

No, because they did those with the seismic scans or whatever, the Zona or whatever technology.

Lidar.

Yeah, that did.

To scanner things.

That's more fascinating than the pyramids.

How the fuck did you dig pillars that far into this?

The thing is, man, they got.

It's built by granite and limestone and one other stone, but there are no granite or limestone deposits for like, hundreds of miles.

Thousands.

They say they moved them on, like, rocks and stuff.

Like, and the night they.

They were saying, like, apparently the Nile did go closer up at that point.

But even if they're.

Dude, these stones are so huge.

They're bigger than, like an suv, like.

And they're cut with some of the.

Stones would take up this entire room.

I'm not even joking.

100.

But the.

The precision of how.

Oh, that too.

It's not just the sheer mass and size of them.

Like, if you took one of those pyramids and you dropped it on, like an NFL stadium, it would engulf the entire stadium all the way into the parking lot.

They're that massive.

Just the sheer size was like, holy.

They're ginormous.

Way bigger than any picture or video can do justice.

But then also, like, I'm hearing all these.

My.

My guide is like, you know, telling me all of these facts about the pyramids of, like, you know, when they were built, it was like 5, 000 years ago.

So like Alexander the Great, right?

We look at that guy, like, ancient history, like, way, way, way, way long ago when he went and visited the pyramids, when he, like, conquered Alexandria.

The pyramids were older to Alexander the Great than Alexander the Great is to us.

I've never put it.

I've never had put that into perspective.

They're that old in the fact that, like, they'll have one stone notched, perfectly.

Aligned, but you can't.

Can't even fit a credit card in between them.

They say that those stones are cut with more accuracy than any tool to today can replicate how precise the cuts are on them.

To put it into perspective, it would be extremely difficult to replicate that today with the technology we have today, 100%.

Even the alignment of them, if they've taken lasers and pointed it down all four sides and they point perfectly north, south, east, and west.

Also, for.

This is like a military podcast, there's a grid, a plot, a plot on a map for the Great Pyramid of Giza.

That grid number is like a 14 digit number.

And digit for digit for digit for digit.

It is the exact number of the.

Speed of light and the fact of where they align to yes, but probably.

Do a whole podcast on just pyramids.

A grid that big, a number that big gets you within like a mic, a millimeter of your plot.

Like, that's spot on.

Right.

But there's only one of those plots on the planet, and it's the pyramid, and it's the pyramid of Giza.

So either this is no way that you can tell me that was by accident.

The coincidences don't exist.

That's like so impossible for it to be by accident.

Like, they had to have put it right there.

So either ancient civilizations had technology that we just can't comprehend and it got lost somewhere.

Maybe they weren't recording it because they.

I think they had cuneiform at that time.

Maybe they just weren't recording the process of how they built them or the tools.

But somehow either they had incredibly advanced technology that we haven't discovered, or it was aliens.

Somebody showed them.

Yeah, something showed them.

Yeah.

But they are quite amazing.

Blew my mind and.

Yeah.

But I've seen like a lot of very cool, like, ancient places.

That was probably the most, like, mind bending.

Well, in the acoustics and the sounds that are.

I mean, you look at those, the pyramids down in like South America, in.

Mexico, there's some near like tulum and.

Stuff how they can clap in.

It echoes all the way up and travels back and like this, the way that they're designed, it's not by just coincidence and it's not just.

Oh, it just happened to line up this way.

And the fact that all the pyramids in the world all kind of align and there's.

It's crazy, man.

And then also like what they were built for, they.

The Egyptians used them as tombs, but that was clearly not what they were designed for.

Because if you look, if you go in the pyramids, it's like a series of shafts.

So the shafts kind of look like a Y, like upside down Y.

It goes all the way to the top and then it comes in through the angle.

Through, like at an angle.

Right.

And they're just tiny shafts.

You can go in there, but you have to like, duck.

It's like a crawl space.

And so if they were used as tombs, the Egyptians believed in like, the afterlife and the Book of the Dead, which was like their.

Their process of like basically like toll houses that you had to reach to get to, like, the final resting place of heaven.

So when somebody dies in the ancient Egyptian world, they would put like treasures in the tomb with them and they would preserve them a certain way and they would make it like a very beautiful, like, big, like, homage to that person.

And these were for, like, pharaohs and kings.

So if you can imagine if they're building these as a tomb, they'd probably make it this grandiose, beautiful architecture with this big mosaic room.

Sticky in a hole.

Yeah.

Underground crawl space to get in there and stuff like that.

So it doesn't make sense for them to be tombs.

So what were they built for?

Right.

Like that.

That was my thing.

And then I was doing, like, more deep dive research on it, and apparently in the shafts, they found deposits on the side of the wall of, like, zinc and copper and some other metal, which, when you combine those, you can make an electrical current pretty fascinating.

So I don't know what they're.

What they're.

Yeah, it's one of those things I don't know if we'll ever figure out.

But God will explain it to us one day, hopefully.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Let's talk about your offspring crash.

That's a pretty.

It's a pretty big thing.

So walk me through the day that you got into that.

Your bird went down.

Yeah.

So it was in Australia on my deployment there on the Murphy.

And it was actually.

The crash happened like, six weeks before I was easing.

Yeah.

Almost died.

Six.

I almost died six weeks from getting out.

Yeah.

Oh.

Because I went.

I almost didn't make the deployment.

I was almost gonna have to extend because my EAS was so close to the end of deployments.

But they sent me anyways, and so I was like, six weeks out.

This was my very last field op, like, training exercise ever in the Marine Corps.

Like, the very.

Like, the last thing that I do in the Marine Corps is this training exercise.

You're done.

You just got to ride your time.

Yeah.

And so what we were doing was a big culminating event of the deployment, a huge training exercise where we were training with the Gurkhas, the Aussies, the French, I think the British, our army, and then the Marines.

And it was a huge, dynamic training exercise.

And so what we were doing is we were flying from the.

The raf, which is like the air base in Northern Australia, flying from there on Ospreys to a remote island called Tiwi island just off the coast of Northern Australia.

And so we were only going to be out there for, like, four days.

It was this quick op.

But I've flown, like, plenty of times on birds.

I've been on Ospreys, I've been on 53s, Hueys, and I've never had an issue.

I always thought it was really cool.

Like, anytime we would do, like, fast roping, I was like, having the time of my life, like a little kid, you know, you know, sliding out of a helicopter.

And I always thought it was fun and cool and like, that's what I joined the Marine Corps for, for those experiences.

So I never had a problem.

I always thought it was fun.

But we get in.

I was in the first stick to fly off, so there was two birds, two ospreys that were leaving in unison.

And I was in one of the first birds, and I get in there, and at this time, I'm.

I have a ma.

Like a Carl Gustav, a big giant rocket launcher.

And I've got my IR M27.

I've got, you know, a full ruck.

Like, is a rocket slung.

Are you carrying it?

No, I jimmy rigged it with like a bungee cord on the pack of my goes back my ruck.

Okay.

Yeah.

That made that pretty heavy.

Yeah, for sure.

But I had all this.

I had like, all my gear, full combat load.

We had like full, like six full mags, all this gear.

And so we get on the birds and it's a full flight.

Like, all the seats are taken, and we sit down.

Have you been on ospreys?

Okay.

You know how crammed you are in there?

I was very fortunate.

I got to fly an Afghan, so it was just me and one other dude.

So we got to sit on the tail.

It was not the normal experience, but continue.

Yeah, but I know.

I know how it's set up.

Yeah.

So full flight, and when you sit in there, it's literally like.

You're literally sitting like this, and each guy is like pressed up against you.

And you're in full kit on.

Your ruck is at your feet, just pressing up against your knees.

Your rifle's right here.

You're sitting like this.

And just for like, however long you're gonna fly sitting like this.

And it's like nobody tells you how long blaring loud in your ears because of the rotors.

Like, if you have to talk to the dude next to you, you have Ear pro on you, like screaming at his face, you know, just trying to talk.

Hope to God you do not have to go to the bathroom.

Oh, yeah.

I've been on some.

Some long flights where I was like, had to pee and stuff.

Yeah.

But anyways, we get on and load up and sit down and we were flying over the ocean.

We had like a 20 minute flight, 15 minute flight, and.

But like 10 minutes of it.

We had to be over the ocean.

So for that, you have to wear the.

I think it's called LPVs, the life little, like life jackets.

They're thin little life jacket things.

You put them over your shoulder.

And then it has a belt with an air tank.

Like, it has, like 10 to 15 minutes of air in it.

And so we.

We did like, the.

The helo dunker training before deployments, like, where they put you in a gutted out, like, 53 body, and then they hook it up to a crane and they dip you into the deep end of, like, the recon pool.

And you have to, like, train to get out of there.

And sometimes they put, like, blindfolds on you, and they'll be, like, twisting you around under there.

And so you have to train on how to unstrap yourself, get your breathing apparatus in, clear it, and then, like, get out.

And so sometimes you'd have, like, push out the.

The porthole or whatever to get out.

So, like, I had that training, right?

And so I've flown on birds before where we have to have the LPV in the life in the air tank.

And I've never really checked it because I was never worried about anything.

But this flight was different.

It felt very different as soon as I sat down.

The best way I can expl.

It's.

I can't really explain it, but, like, I guess the best way that I can explain the feeling that washed over me, like consumed me, was.

It's gonna sound weird, but I felt like the angel of death was in the bird with us.

Really.

It was a super dark, eerie, uncomfortable feeling that I couldn't shake as soon as I strapped myself in, before we even took off.

No problems with the bird.

Like, we're on the ground still, and I feel this eerie feeling.

It was like this esp, but like a very dark feeling.

Okay.

And so I'm checking my gear.

I'm making sure that my.

My air tank has air in it.

Which you've never done before.

Not really, no.

Like, I might have checked it and checked the gauge, but, like, I'm putting it up to my mouth and making sure it works and making sure the hose isn't kinked or anything like that.

And so I'm sitting there and we take off, and I'm literally holding my air tank like this the whole time because I'm thinking I might have to deploy it soon.

I don't know.

There's nothing wrong with the bird at this point.

I just have this very strange feeling.

That I've never felt communicate this with anybody else.

Yeah.

And actually after the crash, a lot of the other guys felt the same feeling, the same exact feeling.

It was literally like there was a presence of darkness in the bird with us.

It was very strange, and, like, people might think, I'm making this up.

I'm not making this up, man.

It was very strange.

I felt very uneasy.

And so we take off, and pretty soon we, like, get over the ocean.

And, you know, in ospreys, they usually keep the back hatch open.

And I'm sitting in.

Like, if that up there is the cockpit.

I'm on the right back side of the bird.

So I'm sitting right here.

And if I look to my left, I can see, you know, out the back hatch.

How close to the.

How are you in the middle of.

The seats or in the middle towards the back?

Okay.

Which is kind of a good area to be.

Yeah.

And so I'm looking out the back hatch because it's, like, kind of cool to look out there when you fly.

And, you know, we had a full flight.

We had 23 Marine.

23.

We had 22 Marines and one corpsman on board.

And so we have, you know, two pilots, two crew chiefs, one at the front, one at the back.

And then we're all just crammed in there like sardines.

And so we take off and we get over the water.

And I'm looking.

You know, you can look down and see the water, and I start to think, like, this day or night?

Day.

It was, like, in the morning, like, late morning when we took off.

And so I'm having this eerie feeling that's not.

I'm not shaking it.

And so I'm thinking in my mind, like, what if we crash?

And I've never thought that on a commercial flight, on any military flight.

I've never thought about crashing.

But this time felt different.

And so I'm holding my air tank and I'm looking behind me, and I'm thinking about scenarios of crashing.

It's just, like, consuming my mind.

It won't go away.

And so I'm starting to think, like, man, if we crash, I hope we crash in the water, because at least that'll give us, you know, some sort of chance of surviving the impact.

But then I start thinking, like, oh, shit, if we crash in the water, there's, like, sharks and saltwater crocs in there.

Then I'm gonna have to figure out what to do.

And again, there's no problems with the bird.

It's flying, cruising normally.

So then I start playing, you know, I start playing out scenarios in My head, and I'm looking around and I'm like, okay, that guy's an iron dunk duck.

That guy can't swim.

That guy can't swim.

So I'm going to have to save him and him.

And then I'm going out that porthole and I'm playing this over in my head of like, an evac route before there's even any problems with the bird.

Oh, shit.

Yes.

Okay.

And so I'm, you know, game planning in my head.

If we go down and then, you know, 10 minutes pass and we get over the island and.

And then I can see the islands out the back hatch.

And shortly after that, maybe a couple of minutes is when the bird starts freaking out.

How so?

I didn't automatically think that we were flying out of control because I've been in birds when they're doing, like, you know, notional evasive maneuvers where the pilots are training that maybe a missile or ground to air weapon system is engaging them, and they have to, like, you know, evade the missile.

So I've been in the birds when they do that, and I know what it feels like.

So I'm thinking we start flying, you know, doing hard banks and, like, going up and going down hard banks.

And I'm thinking, like, oh, we're just doing evasive maneuvers, whatever.

But then it gets really intense.

Like, really, really strapped in.

Yeah, I'm strapped in.

Okay, I'm strapped in.

And, you know, you're tight in in the seat.

And so at some points we're making such hard banks that I'm getting sucked into my seat and my cheeks are coming down like I'm on a roller coaster.

Like, we're making it.

I'm feeling it.

We're making really hard banks and hard turns and, like, sharp corners and stuff.

And I still didn't think that we were flying out of control, but in hindsight, we were, because I was trying.

I had this eerie feeling, but I was trying to rationalize it in my head because nobody wants to think you're about to crash for sure in a plane for sure.

So I'm at the whole time just like, okay, we're just doing evasive maneuvers.

This feels weird, but it's just evasive maneuvers.

But then the other half of my brain is telling me that we're gonna crash.

It's a very weird feeling.

And so at one point, we're flying over the island and we're literally flying like this.

We're like this on our side, and I'm sitting on my back.

Like, I'M laying on my back.

So you're looking at dudes above you?

Yeah, yeah.

I'm looking at the dude sitting in front of me, and they're.

They're facing downwards.

They're hanging.

They're hanging like this.

And I'm sitting on my back, in the back of my seat.

Like, this is not normal.

Yeah.

And then I look over my shoulder.

There's a window right behind me, and I look over, and you can see a straight shot to the ground.

Straight shot.

It wasn't at an angle.

It was a straight shot because we were flying like this.

Is this the point you knew you were.

Nope, nope.

I still was trying to rationalize it because I didn't want to think we were crashing.

So you're flying like this.

Yeah, almost.

Almost inverted.

Yeah.

And you're still not thinking that you're crashing in this helicopter.

I thought it was weird and sketchy.

Okay.

But I didn't.

Like, my brain never wanted to tell.

Me for sure that I was a training environment.

So you don't know what's going on.

I get it.

But it definitely felt sketchy.

I'm not gonna lie.

And then as we're flying like this, we start to correct ourselves and come back to, like, parallel with the ground.

All right?

And as we're coming down, coming parallel, we're getting closer and closer and closer to the ground.

And I'm like, okay, we're about to land, but we're flying over the island.

And we're flying over, like, a.

The forest part of the island.

So there's just trees under us.

I'm looking out the back, and I see tops of trees.

How close?

It gets closer and closer and closer.

So we just keep flying closer and closer and closer to the top of the trees.

And I'm thinking, like, man, we're coming in hot.

We're doing, like, a hot LZ landing or something, but we're not slowing down.

And if you know how ospreys operate, they don't land like airplanes, like, on a Runway.

They hover down.

Yeah.

They can fly like an airplane when they tilt the rotors.

The point is to land vertical.

The whole point is to land like a helicopter.

Yeah.

To slow down and come down vertically.

So we're coming in really hot, and we're getting closer and closer to the ground.

And I'm like, man, we're gonna do, like, a really hot landing.

And so we just get closer and closer to the top of the trees.

And my eyes are glued out the back hatch, and I can see the top of the trees, and they're getting just closer and closer and closer and closer.

And all of a sudden the back of the bird starts clipping the top of the trees.

And I'm like, holy shit, we're gonna have a hot landing.

I'm still trying to rationalize it.

A couple seconds later, we're fully in the trees, ripping through the trees.

And that's the first time when I was like, I'm dead.

I was like, I'm dead, I'm dead.

I.

No more rationalizing it.

I'm gonna die in a couple seconds.

And it clicked in my mind.

I couldn't rationalize it.

I couldn't escape that thought anymore.

Yeah.

And we were ripping through the trees.

We're getting pretty close to the ground now.

You're feeling the trees.

Oh, the whole bird's shaking like this.

Because we're in the thick of the trees, the whole bird.

Oh, my.

We're ripping trees down.

And are the props hitting trees at.

This point or can you hear that?

Oh, yeah, I can hear the rotors ripping through the trees.

The rotor, sorry.

Yeah, I can hear them just ripping through the trees.

Chopping loud.

Yeah, like a.

Like a chainsaw.

Just chopping through them.

Other dudes picking up on this?

Dude, I don't know.

I was.

I was himself at this point.

Yeah, I was just like, I'm about to die.

Okay.

And so I remember the last thought that I had before we hit the ground was I was thinking about what death was about to feel like.

So we're ripping through the trees and I probably had, I don't know, one and a half to two seconds for this pop.

This thought to pop into my head.

And the thought was, there's going to be three outcomes of what I'm about to experience.

Number one, we're going to hit the ground and blow up, and I'm just going to blow up.

Number two, we're going to hit the ground and we're going to tumble and barrel roll, and I'm going to get crushed in here like a pop can.

Or three, we're going to hit the ground and we're going to get torn up and I'm going to get torn from limb to limb.

That's going to suck.

And so that's what's going through my head in the last, like, two seconds of us ripping through the trees.

And that's just.

I'm just sitting there waiting to die in a very, like, assumingly painful death.

And then we hit the ground and the impact is like, if You've ever been in a car crash?

Oh, yeah.

Nothing compares.

I've been in some.

A few car accidents, and there's no impact that I can compare it to.

Do you remember if your eyes were open or close?

I think they were open.

Okay.

Because I kind of knocked out.

I went out for a second after we hit the ground, you guys, Boom, hard.

I mean, we weren't slowing down at all, man.

We didn't slow down at all.

I mean, we were falling.

Yeah.

He was like, control falling.

Okay.

Yeah.

Controlled fall is probably the best.

It wasn't landing.

It was like a controlled fall out of the sky.

And so we hit the ground super hard, and we slide for about 100 yards, and we're just ripping down trees, and we come to a stop.

And I just think, holy shit, I'm alive.

I just think for that split second, holy shit, I'm alive.

But I'm kind of.

I'm getting thrashed around.

There's gear flying around.

And then I kind of, like come to, and as soon as I open my eyes, I can't see shit.

Like, you put your hand this close in front of your face, it's all black smoke and dust just consuming the cabin.

You can't see anything.

But then, you know, split second later, I. I see orange glimmer coming.

Like this flame.

Flame.

Yeah.

An orange light coming through an orange.

An orange flame is coming closer and closer to me through the.

The haze of the.

Of the smoke and the.

The dust.

And as soon as I realized I was still alive and we stopped sliding, I unstrapped myself and I just started shouting, get the out, get the out.

And everybody was, you know, shouting, get the out, get the out.

Because my next thought was, I survived the impact, but I'm about to blow up.

Yeah.

And I'm thinking I'm ripping my stuff off.

I'm trying to get up.

There's packs all over me.

I'm pushing packs off myself.

I'm climbing over packs.

I can't see anything.

You can't see anything.

So I know the back is that way.

I start climbing towards the back, and I'm.

The whole time, man, I'm just frantically climbing over packs and thinking in my mind, it's like.

It's like a timer ticking, like you're about to blow up.

You're about to blow up, you're about to blow up, you're about to blow up.

And I'm just frantically trying to get out.

And so I. I see daybreak out the back hatch through the smoke and I jump out, and I sprint, like, 25 yards, straight shot, 25 meters out past the crash.

Because I'm thinking, like, there's gonna be an explosion behind me.

And so I get out, like, 25 yards, and I. I'm like, where are the rest of the guys?

So I turned one out.

I don't remember because it was so much chaos.

I. I was one of the first out.

Okay.

I do know that you shouldn't have.

Been being where you were sitting.

There should have been a group of guys ahead.

I mean, you had probably, theoretically, yeah, in.

Yeah, in theory.

Yeah.

Maybe they were struggling with their gear more or something.

Yeah.

Now you're probably processing, like, oh, these dudes are all still in here.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

Because I was thinking.

My whole thought process was like, I'm about to blow up.

Get away from the bird.

And so I sprint, like, 25 yards, and I. I turn around, and you can't even see the plane.

You can't even see anything.

It's just black smoke and fire.

And I can see from a pit of fire and smoke, guys just jumping out, jumping out, guys being dragged out, dragged out.

And so I run back, and there's guys being, like, firemen carried, guys being buddy dragged.

People are banged up.

One of my buddies had a broken rib, and he was being carried by two guys.

So I went up, and I was like, hey, push further back.

Push further back.

We need to go further back.

And so as I'm, like, kind of directing traffic, telling them to push back, all of a sudden, I see the crew chief being dragged by two.

Two Marines.

It was one of the lance corporals and one of the platoon commanders, so LT and a.

A lance corporal were dragging this guy, the crew chief, and he was knocked out cold.

I ran up to them, and they were dragging him, and he's just there like a limp.

Like a limp noodle.

And I go up to them, and his eyes are rolled back, and he's knocked out cold.

And they set him down probably 25, 30 yards out.

And I'm like, you guys got to push him back further.

Go back to where everybody's consolidating.

And so that whole commotion happens.

Everybody kind of gets out and consolidates like, 80 to 100 yards back.

And then from there, it was just triage, accountability.

Pass up nine lies, nine lines.

And so did you get everybody out.

Immediately, or were there still, like, once you.

No.

So we all pushed back, and we consolidated, and we were.

We started going into, like, triage of all the casualties guys had broken legs, broken bones, broken arms, concussions.

Guys were knocked out.

And so we're just doing accountability to figure that, like, you know, all the team leaders, all.

Yeah, headcounts.

Just doing headcounts.

And so we get like, my platoon and my squad, we got our.

We got our, our squad and our platoon up.

So we had all of our guys.

And then I'm asking, like, a couple guys were asking like, hey, do you.

Did you see where the pilots went?

Or did you see where the other crew chief went?

Did you guys see them?

And nobody had to answer.

They're like, I don't know.

I think they went out the side.

I think they went out the side hatch or something.

But I didn't see them.

I don't see them.

But we're like 85 to 100 yards back, and you can feel the heat of the flames.

How much of the birds on fire at this point?

All of it, bro.

So the bird that was flying in front of us, I had, you know, some of my best friends were on that bird and they were flying in front of us.

They had a bird's eye view of everything.

They got to watch you out of the back of the Osprey.

Your Osprey go down at a bird's.

Eye view of the whole thing.

Oh, my.

Was told by multiple people on that bird that when they saw us crash, it was a.

A plume of a mushroom cloud, fire and smoke that went like 300ft up in the air.

And like, we were engulfed by fire and smoke.

And they thought, holy, our friends are dead.

Yeah, like, no survivors.

So you guys didn't, like, come in.

You just, you control fell, hit, controlled fall.

How fast?

How many knots do you think you guys were going?

I looked it up.

We were going about 370 miles an hour.

You hit the ground at 375 miles an hour.

From the research I've done of how fast they move when they're flying with rotors down, yeah, it was about 320 to 375, 200 miles an hour.

Yeah.

Oh, my.

And that thing.

Holy.

So the explosion, like we blew up on when we hit the ground, like, I survived an A. GI Fucking gantic explosion.

I don't know how, but we got out and the bird in front of us, like, my friends thought they just saw me die for sure.

And the crazy thing is, we were on that island for four hours before we got evac'd.

And the whole company didn't know any of our status.

So for Four.

No.

Probably because I went to the hospital after.

They didn't get, like, names back for hours, like, up until late in the night.

All my friends, basically that whole rest of the day thought I was dead.

So, like, guys were crying like, my phone was getting blown up on, like, text messages from my buddies asking if I was alive and stuff.

And I couldn't reply for, like, six hours later.

They all thought I was dead.

They thought we were all dead.

Because when the first transmission over the radio came.

What.

What is it?

Like, routine.

Routine.

Because there's, like, a.

A system of, like, triage.

Oh, yeah, yeah, the routine.

Routine can be like they're.

They're fine or they're dead and there's no need to get them.

Yep.

So they heard, like, 19 routine.

So in their minds, 19 dead.

Yeah, just watches playing this bird go down.

So for, like, six to seven hours, they thought 19 of us were dead.

And you guys have no comms because everything's inside the.

Yeah, this flaming crash.

Well, we had.

We had, like.

We had green gear.

We had.

So the RO lost his.

His radio, but the squad leaders, the section leader and the platoon commander had radios.

Okay.

And so they were just.

And comms were not good.

There.

We were on a remote island, like, off the northern coast of Australia.

We did not have good comms, and we were basically just, like, sending up nine lines and trying to get, like.

We were communicating with the Aussies, trying to get a bird to do, like, a hoist.

Cassie, back of some guys.

And so, I mean, long story short, the pilots and the crew chief in the front, they never made it out.

The hope in our minds is that.

They died on impact.

They died on impact is what we hope.

And there was one report from one of the Marines there.

I didn't see this.

And to my knowledge, nobody else saw this, but one Marine said that he saw the crew chief walk out.

He saw him walk out.

And so the.

The running theory is that the crew chief at the front walked out and then realized the pilots were still.

Still in there.

And he went back in the gunner's hatch, the gunner's door.

It never came back out.

Never came back out.

But there were multiple guys that tried to run around to the front.

And it.

I mean, the bird was like.

The flames were moving like this, man.

Because of the jet fuel.

Oh, for sure.

Moving through the bird like that.

Like, I was almost on fire.

Like, it was moving quick.

And so some.

Some guys tried to.

As soon as they walked out, they tried to go around to the front, but they couldn't even get more than, like, 15 meters without, like, melting.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So there was no way.

I mean, they were engulfed in like, 15ft of flames all around them.

There was no way to get in.

There, especially if you're a training exercise.

I mean, I don't know if they had a full.

Full load, but I'm sure they had enough fuel.

And then you guys weren't in there that long, sounds like.

So you probably had a ton of fuel in that bird when you guys hit.

When the report came out, it was over.

The.

The fuel was more than it was supposed to be.

And that was what caused it.

What said in the report.

They said in the report.

That's part of the reason.

Just too heavy.

Too heavy.

They're fighting it the whole time.

Yeah.

Because, I mean, ospreys are notorious for having problems.

Right.

100.

I was gonna say my early days, that's when they were all crashing and killing all those marines all the time.

In the early 2000s.

Yeah.

But then they went a stretch for a while.

I mean, you hear things here and there, but I mean, they're.

They're.

I don't want to say notorious, but they are.

They definitely have the reputation to, like, just fall out of the sky.

Oh, yeah.

All the time.

I mean, they're notorious for having issues.

I think, like, 95% of Oscar crashes are.

Are like, non pilot error.

Yeah.

So it's because of the bird.

And.

Yeah, I don't know the exact full report, but essentially they lost altitude.

It wasn't pilot error, but they lost altitude and it was too heavy to bring back up or something.

But I don't really know because the report doesn't fully reflect my experience, because I heard alarms going off in the cockpit before we ever started flying out of control, and I writ them off as, like, ambiguous alarms.

I'm not a pilot.

I don't know what the those are.

Yeah, but that happened before we started flying out of control.

And then we were flying out of control for probably three minutes, and then that's a long time.

The only reason that I survived is, like, by the grace of God and the pilots.

Because the way we were flying like this, like I said, and they brought us down and it was like nose first.

Like, they essentially sacrificed themselves or put themselves in harm's way to make sure that they could bring the bird down as safely as possible.

Dang, man.

Yeah.

What a wild experience.

Yeah, it was crazy.

And we were on the island for four hours before we got evac'd.

How'd you guys get evac'd out of there?

Well, like I said, they tried to bring in some paramedic helicopters and they dropped a hoist, but we were in thick brush, so they couldn't really drop a hoist and get guys out.

But the priority patient was the crew chief because he was knocked out.

I mean, he was, he was banged up.

He was up.

He ended up losing his left lung because he had internal bleeding.

He lost like he, to this day, he's, he's alive.

He has one lung.

Oh, yeah.

And so he was knocked out.

He had a broken pelvis, internal bleeding, I think a couple other broken bones.

Was he sitting, do you remember?

He wasn't sitting, bro.

He was standing.

When you guys crashed, he was standing, strapped into his gunner's belt.

He was getting thrashed around like a ping pong ball.

Yeah, that explains that.

Yeah, you're done, you're strapped.

You're standing in there like that.

The crew chiefs are done.

So he's lucky.

He's lucky he's alive because when we were on the island, you know, we had one corpsman, but the corpsman, his med kit, his med pack was on the bird.

So all we had was ifax to treat this guy.

Like, we can't do a needle D.

We can't do t collapse longer.

Yeah, we can't do any of that.

Oh, man.

He's got a broken pelvis.

So we're trying to wrap up his, his waist and he's like, got a severe head trauma and internal bleeding.

He had attention pneumothorax.

So we knew he had something going on, but we couldn't release the pressure because we didn't have needle d. We didn't have nothing.

And so we're just kind of keeping him stable and trying to talk to him and keep.

Four hours.

For four hours.

Paramedics showed up probably three hours into it.

Okay.

And they had to come in through foot because there was no road.

I mean, we're in thick brush, man.

There's no way to drive there, really.

They can.

Couldn't drop a hoist.

They couldn't land anywhere.

So they had to run in from who knows where.

And these are just like Aussie paramedic guys.

And they run in and I remember cuz we were standing around him for a while as they were operating on him.

Cuz they did two.

They tried to do a needle d, but it didn't work.

And then they did like two insertions and chest tubes.

Yeah.

So they slid open in between, like the his ribs right here.

And you could see they made a big in incision.

And we were.

I was standing there shading him with my blouse, and a bunch of us took our blouses off because it's hot.

And we had, like, a tent of our blouses around him while the paramedics were working on him.

And I could see his lung.

I mean, they were working on it, sticking their fingers in there, getting chest.

Or the chest tubes in.

And he was green, like, all his.

They ripped his.

His camis off.

He was just in his underwear, and his feet were like a white.

Green color.

And I thought he was dead.

I thought I was just standing there looking at a dead guy.

But they got him out about three hours and 45 minutes into it, and he was in the hospital.

He was in a coma for, like, two months.

He lives, like, 45 minutes away from me now.

I see him every now and then.

Oh, that's funny, dude.

He makes jokes of it.

He's got one lung.

He had a.

He had an infection when he was in the hospital, and it, like, destroyed the nerves on one side of his face.

So he looks like two face.

Oh, God.

Poor guy.

Yeah, he had an infection, like, in his fingers, and he lost, like, half of one of his fingers.

I mean, he's.

He is, you know, up for life.

You know, he's.

He's gonna have lifelong injuries.

You know, he has one lung.

The Marine Corps is like 30.

VA rating.

Yeah.

Service maybe.

Service connected.

Poor guy, man.

Good.

Yeah.

So then we got evac'd out of there, and we all went to the hospital.

Like, luckily, I was one of the least banged up guys.

I had a tbi.

And the crazy thing is, like, for all four hours on the island, I didn't feel a thing, dude.

No pain because the adrenaline for sure didn't feel any pain, But I was in pain for weeks after.

And then there was a guy, one of our machine gunner section leaders.

This dude had two broken feet, but he was literally sprinting around, checking on his guys.

Couldn't even feel it.

He was literally sprinting around on two broken feet for, like, four hours and didn't feel a thing.

How many spine injuries from hitting the ground that hard?

One guy, my squad leader, got medsept because he had a herniated disc or.

No, something really bad.

Not a herniated disc, but, like, his.

His back's, you know, messed up for life.

Yeah, he had to be.

He was one of the priority casualties.

He had to be airlifted out because he couldn't walk Guy with a broken ribbon, guys with broken arms, broken legs, concussions.

Some other guys got knocked out, but they came too.

I was luckily one of the least banged up guys.

I had like my tbi, banged up back, banged up legs, like cuts and bruises type of stuff.

And then like the most unreal whiplash.

Oh, yeah.

Like, I couldn't.

I had to turn like this for like two weeks.

Oh, I couldn't even imagine what your bodies went through.

They're airlifted us.

They threw us out.

They flew like a police plane, like a.

One of their, like police planes onto the island and dude, I just survived a plane crash and now I gotta get on a plane and fly back over.

I can't tell you how scared I was on that plane, bro.

Yeah, it was one of those small little bush planes and they hit turbulence really hard and so we're flying out, they come pick us up and this, you know, police pilot, whatever, flies us back to the mainland and then we go to the hospital.

And I was in a neck brace for like a day.

In the hospital for like two days.

And then.

Yeah.

And then deployment was over about two weeks later.

And then I went home and eased.

And they just thanked you for your service.

Yep.

Oh, and the crash was all my injuries.

Every single one.

Not service connected.

I just made that joke, like, yeah, tbi.

Not service connected.

Back.

Not service connected.

Banged up knees.

Not service connected.

How?

Ptsd.

Not service connected.

How?

You tell me, man.

It's like it's a crapshoot with the va.

It's like it depends on, like, who's working your case and how they're feeling.

Bro, I know dudes that are 100 service connected due to bacne because they didn't have.

Same here.

Dudes on the deployment that didn't even go on the op that had like next to nothing.

They had flat feet and like back pain to claim.

And they got 100 and I got out with 80.

But have you fought in it?

I mean, you still.

You.

You'll get 100.

I can't.

I've just been lazy to do it again.

Yeah, you got enough.

But damn, bro.

And then.

And here you are just putting yourself back together and they're like, thanks for your service.

Yeah, pretty much.

I mean, I didn't.

I got out like a month later, bro.

When I got back to the States after deployment, it was all like EAs paperwork, checkout paperwork, turn in my sift gear, all that stuff.

Did you?

I mean, that's got to linger.

That's because when people Hear, like, PTSD and veterans, they think war, right?

Like, gotta go to war, do all this.

But PTSD comes in lots of different forms.

Did that with you for a while.

Getting in a helicopter crash, like flying, just traumatic.

Yeah, just.

Oh, flying was.

Was.

So this year I've flown every single month.