Griff
Appearances
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So my whole thing is if you shoot at my guys, I'm just going to f*** your whole world up. One team, one fight.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
But what they could do is they could weave rugs in their homes. And so the women. knew that they had to educate their kids and what to stay away from. So they started doing in the patterns of the landmines. I stay away from these landmines, stay away from these grenades. Hey, if you see this type of helicopter, you need to stay away from it versus this one. This is an AK.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So that's how the war rugs actually got started. It was an educational thing to keep kids from getting hurt to tell us. And then it turned into the story of wars, right? Because that's the only thing they can.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah, but when you say, for example, we do a Brandon Herrera war rug collection, which we're going to do now.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So my kumu, which is a Hawaiian teacher, Kapono, made all of these. And if anybody here, if you guys give him a shout out, but it is Namea Kaua. So N-A underscore M-E-A underscore K-A-U-A. It means war things in Hawaiian, but that's his Instagram. If you guys want these on your own, you want to support a Hawaiian small business, you guys can get some of these for yourself.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
I hope everybody does because that's fucking awesome. Chase. Thank you. Put it.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
It's pretty funny. But I know rangers. And rangers love tomahawks. So I brought you a Hawaiian tomahawk.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Swordfish bill.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
That is a Hawaiian war club, a swordfish bill. They would take them, dry them out, and you would cleave somebody with that thing.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Or you could stab him with it. Double-sided, dude.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah, but you guys make a lot of things happen. And, you know, with the war rugs or with what we're doing right now, we're about to unbox, dude.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
That has some heft to it. That has heft to it.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
I've enjoyed it. I've really enjoyed coming down here and hanging out and learning from you guys too.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
It's, it's, it's hard to explain to somebody how heavy that thing is. And if you had any kind of arm speed getting hit in the head with that thing would be fatal.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah, it's been really cool to be out in Hawaii and have a teacher and, like, specifically a guy who is a historian. You can ask him all the questions because everybody asks me, like, oh, Hawaiian gun laws and weapons and everything else. I tell you, like, Hawaiians, they have a very rebellious culture. They love their fucking guns. And if you disrespect them, they will always throw hands.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So if you go to the islands, be very kind to everybody you meet. Do not mistake the Aloha for weakness. That was something you said yesterday that kind of stuck with me. That's really cool.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah, if you ever have daughters, that's the one to club somebody with. Because it's not like they're going to identify the tool on CSI. Like, what clubbed him? Like, get killed by a swordfish?
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
I'm so tired of people hitting us up with our AKs. Like, oh, you should have Brandon Herrera wear your stuff. Yeah, I know. And I feel like Leonardo DiCaprio in your videos. He's wearing it.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Z-list celebrities. Yeah. At Walmart, we might get recognized one time. I'll go like X minus, you know. You just never want to be like, hey, you want to collab and do this and do that? I'm just thankful you guys work. I know people will see it. And I'm like, all right, that's cool. You guys have a great company. It's a great product. Well, thank you.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Dude, I had tuk tuks. So I make those every now and then. Those are fun.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
We need some Chonkless. We need some Chonkless. You guys have some up close and personal experience with Chonkless? Well, yeah. It's called childhood, yeah. White people had one spoons.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
The headache is chasing you to get shit done. Oh, right.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
this sound great scrambling what is it eckhart tolle the power of now right you can have too much of that if you're if you're not conscious conscious of oh yeah power now i'm just gonna do this right now and then you you don't finish it right now you start it right now but then you committed to finish it so you have 18 different things in the fire at once and that's the power of now is the side product of adderall
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yes. The Vanna White.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
yeah yeah i couldn't be more proud of the team and just like the amount of people because i've seen i've been to the factories i know the people that are working on them is the volume of people that get employed the number of families that get fed oh i know because you were edging them the whole time like let's show them the fucking shoe this is the fucking so this is the tiger stripes there's a beauts
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
What do you think of the boxing?
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
I couldn't be happier. The sublimation, because that's the thing. People don't get it. We had to buy... when you're printing on a fabric, like, oh, you know, so we did, so we were licensed to make cock-a-flage. So we have a multicam pattern that looks like dicks. I ran a competition using your cock-a-flage shoes, by the way.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah, appreciate that. And the very first run we did, we worked with a sublimator and they came up pink. So we had pink Dick shoes that we paid for and shipped all the way up. And so sublimation, I just never understood how complicated it was to actually print something on a shoe, but those came out.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Oh, my goodness.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
How do you like those slip-ons?
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah, so speaking of which, right? Oh, you guys just redesigned Chucks. Fuck you. Right? I wish Nick was here to throw the helmet on and throw the keyboard over the side because if you knew how footwear were made, you know, Chucks are just like glued on the outside and guys who have worn them in our...
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
environment they blow out the sides and they fall apart often like ours are different we use actual real rubber on our outsoles so they're super sticky and that's the one thing i've noticed like when you wear these shoes i mean you got to be careful when you walk up to people because they're really quiet
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
you're going to freak people out and then you get really good grip on stuff but our outsoles are actually stitched onto the uppers so that prevents that blowout that you have so they're just built better and i hate to say it but a shoe is a shoe is a shoe and like it may look similar this is way better and it has zero communism
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Zero communism. These are the ones that I want. I want these. I'm going to get a set or two of those. The unsub camo.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Understood.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
If you heard that beat, you'd be like, I've definitely heard that song. You want to see?
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
The contrast of it. I don't know if the colors are coming through just right, but when you throw them on your foot... Dude, look behind you.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
All right. That is a limited run box. That's like a defect collection card because the unsub is upside down.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And that's what we want to see, because I have two brothers that are cops. I have great relationships with a lot of cops in my hometown and everything else. And you see them, they're just wearing a hefty boot. It's just unnecessary. It's not breathable. It's not good for their feet. And we just wanted something that they could wear, be comfortable, lightweight. And just affordable, candidly.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
You know, that actually works for them and less. And you guys bought it.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
6'9 by 4'20. I'm just mad that I didn't think of it first. Fuckers. That's awesome. That makes me so happy.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So not used to that. God, And we just like, we try to be the easiest company to work with. I just, that's it. When somebody like, when I always think about being an entrepreneur or a business owner, when somebody calls you and you see the number on your caller ID, if your first reaction is to pick it up or do you like, Oh, do I have to answer this call?
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
As a small business owner, you want to be the guy that when they see your crawler ID, they're like, this guy is going to solve a fucking problem for me. They're going to make life easier on me. And that's what we always aim for. So I'm glad that these things turned out spectacular, way beyond anything. Our whole team down in Bogota that put these all together, they've really been amazing.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
No, it's like if our shit falls apart, we'll make it right with you. That's it. I just want to make it right with you. Which is wild. Because, again, there's zero communism involved. You go to any other fucking manufacturer, all their shit's made in communist countries, and we're like, no, we're a veteran-owned company working with rag companies. We're putting people to work.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
We're putting girls in school. We're clearing landmines. We're helping veterans. Anytime you buy our product, good shit happens.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
yeah we were really like on the come up in afghanistan like things were really turned in the corner and i don't think anybody thought how bad it could get that fast and it really has turned the corner the country's really falling apart it's been with the pull out with the pull out it's been it's been a super struggle but i will tell you that like our
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
factory is still kicking ass like it's been a struggle but those guys are still working we're still making chamaz we're still making cashmere we're still doing everything we can to put products together because we think that that's the best way to represent america as we're going to go on with business we're going to do it ethically nobody can tell us anything because i've taken 0.0 dollars from the us government it's all been funded because of our customers and people like you to make all this good shit happen
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
the worst part is the goddamn internet man everybody's like oh you're just making and trying to fuck you oh no that's gotta hurt no yeah oh it's chinese knockoffs like stop like oh yeah and like the racist stuff that people like throw at us you know just like oh making afghanistan and like the like racial slur racial slur racial slurs like come on man Like, really?
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
You're not even saying it to be funny.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah, then when anybody says the word poverty to me, I know right where I'm sitting. I'm in the back of a gun truck and I'm driving my first time south out of Bagram through Kabul. And you drive down these roads and there are these women and they're sitting with like six-month-old babies in their arms and they're in the middle of the road.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And they're holding their hands up like this, begging for food or for water or for anything because their husbands, they got killed in the war or whatever. And they have no employable skills and they need something. And you think to yourself, that woman probably hopes somebody's checking their cell phone.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Oh, $600 a year is the sustainable, like what you can do for a person. 600 per year.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
like damn you have no idea how good you have we have we have things so good yeah it's so uh we we hit this one area is again on that winter strike deployment and we're all freezing and um our cmo lee you know you've met him um so he was on an outpost and he got dysentery like after he hit
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
the ground right so he's like himself like in his pants as we're clearing an objective and between sergeants like hey man just like just go rest we're gonna like go overnight and he's like oh there's this like shelter like the overhang and so he goes and he lays down and he doesn't realize that's the afghan toilet because it's like the the overhang where all they're asking so now he goes and lays down and just passes out and he wakes up and he's like covered in
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
human fecal matter. And so he's like, now we're freezing in a morning and he's sick and he's like shitting himself and he's covered in crap. And he's like pulling security and doing his thing. And this little like eight year old girl walks out with this tray with chai and some jelly filled crackers and gives it to him. And that was the best he's to this day.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
He's like, that's the best gift anybody's ever given me. Yeah. clean water and Warmth and they're like a shelter and that's all that we need is human beings and he was just so thankful for that and It's really disappointing to me to hear that like that's the way that cops get treated or you know when you're trying to help somebody like watering got no taste it's like man, I
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
I think everything's about intent. Yeah.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Or you just keep giving his name to recruiters and they just keep calling you. I had a recruiter call me yesterday like three times.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
I'm glad that you freaking chimed up here. Good. I like it when you're animated.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
We all watch Star Wars and we vote for the Jedi. Versus Empire. Did we not see the irony?
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah, I think the one thing I really wish is that we would go back to the days where we would shit on military generals. The ones that... No, literally, if you were not a good general and you were not winning a war and you were not doing the right things, you were reported in the public to not serving your country correctly. And somehow after Vietnam...
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
That something happened in America where we don't question military leadership. And if you question them for not doing their job appropriately, for not using your resources appropriately, not accomplishing your objectives appropriately, somehow you're not patriotic.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Agreed.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
But I really wish we would go back to criticizing our military the way that we used to during World War II, Korean War and Vietnam. We spend so much money as a country on our military to not have it go right.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
The Pentagon audit, they lost $6 trillion. It's unaccounted for with a T. A T since 2001.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
A little bit more complicated than that, which we'll get into it, but yeah, I like living adventurously. I like traveling to far off and distant places and meeting new people.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
It gets old, you know, you know, or you can just like go to dinner and have a beer with them. What are the other ways? Yeah.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
I got out in 2006. I did the standard thing that most veterans do. You get out and you get a regular job and try to be a human being. Fail miserably. Lose your job. Fall back into contracting because you need to make money to support your family and they send you back overseas. It's basically my story.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Man, I need money. I need money.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Send me back. And I ended up being over there. And in my job, I was responsible for putting in clinics and contracting doctors to agencies, different other government agencies who needed people to provide medical care and equipment. So when I showed up, I had a smile and a backpack and some cash and I had to be alive when I left. got back on the plane, right? So what do you do?
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And I'm a map guy because I was an artillery guy in the regiment. And every night they have this briefing of where all the bombs were off on the previous day. Like, all right, here's where all the attacks went off. And then they overlay it. Here's it over a month. Here's what it's like over three months. And you see nodes.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And the nodes are around the US embassy, military compounds and convoys, and reporters. Those are where the three in combat zones, that's where all the shit happens, around those areas. Well, if you're smart, I'm just not gonna go to those places.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And where you go is where there's a local small business flourishing, because the local small business owners don't let shit happen on their corner, so you just stay there. And there was one time I was getting ready to walk out of my hotel in the morning, and the concierge says, hey, Mr. Griffin, you need to go upstairs and have another cup of coffee. And I'm like, noted. Got it.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And so I went upstairs, rooftop place. And this is where all the Russian stewardesses and pilots would stay in this little hotel, kind of on the outskirts of Kabul. I'm upstairs having a drink of coffee, just kind of rescheduling a few meetings for the morning. All of a sudden, IED goes off. Coffee shakes, rumbles. Take the last sip of it. Walk back downstairs. Am I good to go now?
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
We've got so many cool things going on right now. It's going to be an unboxing episode. I'm really excited about this.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
He's like, oh yeah, Mr. Griffin, you're good to go. Have a great day. So it just goes to show the local business owners, they know when shit goes down versus our intelligence agencies and our military. So my thought was, why aren't we encouraging more business? For the cost of one MRAP, we could turn around entire square blocks of cities.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
I wish they would. I wish they would. That would be the more ethical thing for them to do. But that's how I got started is I was looking for a cup of coffee. So I was at a conference for the Afghan National Army. I'm a weird looking guy and I'm a dirty secret. I'm an officer, right?
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And I was at this conference, and it's all the old sergeant majors and the good old boys, and they're selling stuff to the Afghan National Army. And I had long hair and a beard, and nobody's talking to me. And I look across the conference way, and there's somebody like you, long hair and a beard. Nobody's talking to him. And I'm like, hey, man, weird knows weird. Like, what's up?
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And he was a Marine captain. His name is John Boyer, and he got hired to run an Afghan combat boot factory. Because a lot of people don't know this. But the U.S. government, U.S. taxpayer paid for a 340,000 person police force and military force in Afghanistan from 1,700 to 340,000 in a couple of years. So using the same mentality that we use in America where you want to create jobs and stability.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So they need to make the boots in country, need backpacks. But they don't have those factories. So they had a program called Afghan First, Afghan Made. The US government's like, hey, Afghan business owners, if you build a factory, we're going to give these contracts
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So they built these huge factories. The private business owners paid to build these factories on the bets that they were going to get government contracts to build product. And then they were taking people who didn't know how to do anything and training to be cobblers and tailors to make boots and uniforms for the Afghan national military.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Each one of those people supported five to 13 family members. So the social impact of a factory was just massive. And I met John. He's like, dude, I built this factory. And I bought the most badass espresso machine in Afghanistan because when you're there in country, it's nest cafe or it's tea and you're ready to shoot a motherfucker for a good cup of coffee.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Like after a week, I'm like, dude, I'll be there tomorrow morning. And I walked into that factory and it changed my life. Yeah. I saw all of these people working and they were like from the, they took me on the tour and the guys learning to like feed a sewing machine to sewing a straight line. And by the time you get to the end of it,
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
there's hundreds of guys in a room knocking out bad-ass combat boots. They could withstand the burgers of Afghanistan, which our boot manufacturers couldn't do for years. And it was really impressive. And I asked him, I was like, Hey man, what are you going to do when the war ends? And he's like, nothing, we're not going to do anything. Everybody here is going to go out of work.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yours hasn't shown up yet. I've had yours in the making for months. Oh, no. I flew it halfway around the fucking world, and we're barely missing it on this podcast.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Nobody's going to want to buy anything in Afghanistan. And I went from like inspiration to fury, like pretty quickly. And I looked down at this table and there's this combat boot sole with a flip-flop thong punched through it. I was like, it's ugly and cool. Americans will buy that shit.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
if i put combat on there they'll buy it and the longer story of it is is that uh we built this huge multi-hundred thousand person military out of i think the number was like 60 plus percent of them were illiterate and they also grew up in a culture without shoelaces so now you're taking these kids you're training them to be a soldier
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
and you're making them wear these combat boots, but they're also Islamic. So they have to take their shoes on and off five times a day. So if you can imagine taking your combat boots on and off five times a day, it's kind of a pain in the dick. And then if you don't know how to tie shoelaces, it kind of complicates things.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah. So they were losing tens of thousands of man hours per day because of fucking shoelaces. Think about that. And so he's like, Hey, I'm going to solve this problem. I'm going to make a Garrison style combat flip flop. And like, you guys can wear, yeah, you go on the field, wear boots, but hey, just wear these around Garrison.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Never took off, but, except for us, and then we just started and that was it.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
I was in artillery training course. I was doing a fire support course. And the instructor comes in, slams the back door, says, everybody shut the fuck up. And we're like, what do we do? And he turns on the TV right in time for the second plane to run into the tower. And we're like, oh, shit. I guess we're going to war now, huh? And my girlfriend at the time worked in Manhattan.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And then I heard about the Pentagon and my mom worked at a naval dental clinic. She was a dental hygienist and she worked right near the Pentagon. And I'm like, mother. So now I'm in the dark in Oklahoma, like while this is going on. And this is like back from when we had the old 12 digit like cell phones.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Back in the day, you're trying to get a hold of people and you get nothing. Yeah. And that was just scary. Like they were both fine, but you didn't know, didn't know.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
I think people took it a lot more seriously then. I always wanted to go to the regiment.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
like i that's where i wanted to go i fight like when i graduated school i want to be a ranger fire support officer period that was my aim so i was already in pre-ranger training i was ready to go but then they just ramped it up you know went through ranger school got to my first conventional unit and i just walked in and told my first battalion commander is like i will do whatever you want me to do but as soon as i can i'm going to drop my packet to ranger regiment and i just would like your signature
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Okay. Yeah. And, uh, and it was cool. Like everybody supported the mission. Like if you're a motivated guy in the military, you're all creaky over there.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah. So you guys are actually really hard to shop for. I mean, like just really, like if you guys got all the cool stuff, you guys get to go hang out with all the cool, like rock stars and shoot all the guns and do all the cool things. So like, what can I get you guys? That would be unique. And so I was like sitting there and like, I can't like, literally I was on my way to the airport.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
2009 or sorry, 2001, 2001 graduated from college, went through officer basic course, went to ranger school, winter phase, like early 2002, got to my first, I knew it was, is what it is, man. I went into 190 pounds, the best shape of my life. I came out at 150 pounds two months later. And then I went to 215 in two weeks. Oh, you bloated right up. I gained 65 pounds in two weeks.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
No, I will spoon another man in a heartbeat. I got no, I got no warmth. Yeah. Come here. Cody, it's 90 degrees. Stop.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
But it's funny because you're an artillery guy and people kind of expect you to not be in shape and to be kind of like round because you're artillery, right? You just don't, you're not infantry. And I showed up my first unit and I was over, I was 20 pounds heavier than I am now. And I finally started running and I started losing my ranger baby weight and my commander. And they pulled me in.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
They're like, Hey, we need to send you to the doc. Like, cause do you have cancer or something? It's like, no, man, I'm good. I'm just getting back down to it. So I lost it. 35 pounds in my first couple months in my unit, and they were just surprised by it. You had that Christian Bale career of weight loss making. Yeah, it was interesting.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And then as soon as I could, I went to the... I put down my packet, and my first battalion commander... You've got to imagine, this is...
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
right after the invasion of iraq so we have afghanistan and then we go to a convention unit so now we're creeping into 2003 then they did iraq and spring of 2003 and just things are just going off in the army now it's like everybody is going to war yeah it's not just like green berets and the rangers are going to go do a deployment for a year a little bit it's like everybody is going and
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
My first battalion commander, he came out of the regiment. He was a really good dude. And we had to change of command. And you know, when the new colonel comes in, they want to go out and smoke all the lieutenants and approve their... So the new colonel comes in and they, we're going to have like officer PT in the morning. And then he...
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
trains up and they go run you five miles at some like break dick pace and then they give you some motivational hoorah speech and his hero speech is like we're going to combat this summer if any of you guys are thinking to go into the regiment none of you are going to go don't even think about doing this you're staying here and i was kind of shocked i like that was his first comment to me well our change of command ceremony was that afternoon
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And Colonel Rob Chapa, the guy's the man. If you're watching this, Rob, you're fucking awesome. So we're literally, you go through the change of command ceremony and I'm shaking his hand. I'm like, grabbed his hand. I was like, hey, sir. He said, like, we're not going to the regiment. Like, what's going on? He's like, meet me in my office in 15 minutes.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
He left his change of command ceremony, drove across base, backdated my orders, send me to the regiment.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
I was like, I got this. So I got you some, uh, some war things.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
My favorite part about that book is service equals citizenship. Oh, shit. I like that.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
It's too much. So the fact that Carmen fucks other guys.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
I'm just saying that my first response would have been, yeah, like young guy. That's what I probably would have said.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
War things, right? So I've recently moved to the big island and I got a Hawaiian teacher. So he's a Hawaiian historian and Hawaiian weapons maker. So all the historic Hawaiian tools, cause they're very like Polynesian, like born culture. And I met him because my wife's Hawaiian and we were moving to Hawaii and she's like, you gotta be less white, you know?
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So we gotta, we gotta get you culturally appropriated. So she like, I went down and I took a class at the Four Days of Aloha in Washington. They have this big thing. So obviously I took the weapons making class and I took the poi pounding class and my teacher there was really cool. And turns out he lives on the Big Island. He's a fellow hunter.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Well, it's just nuts to you because I landed there in July of 2003. So second bat had just gotten back from the invasion of Iraq. So we got privates walking in with scrolls and stereo, scrolls on both shoulder. Lee, my business partner, bird one, chalk one on the Baghdad International Airport. He was literally, my CMO was on the first helicopter on to buy up.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Like the invasion force. Like when you think about that, like we are invading there on the first helicopter, first humans landing in there and taking it over.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
One 73rd jumped into Northern Iraq.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So I'm only repeating the story from hearsay because obviously I wasn't there from it. But what I do know is I got to drink a lot of Johnny Walker Blue Label. Because the first thing the Rangers did was they secured all of the fucking bars in the airport. They stole a fucking truck. Acquired.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
acquired what's uh what's nick's term strategically transfer equipment to an alternative location yeah and they raided every bar and back because you know saddam was actually good with christians you could drink you could go to church you could do all that other stuff so they were stocked with all the high-end liquors and alpha companies second ranger battalion went into baghdad international airport after they had cleared it and they stole all the smokes and
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
all the booze and we kept it and we fucking drove it around in a truck with us for months. You protected that truck at all costs. And they brought it all the way back to our company. We had a bar and it was stocked.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
You have the company bar, right? And the first sergeant had a jump light switch in his office, and when it flipped on, the jump light next to the bar door would go from red to green, and everybody could roll in and just drink. So that's how you keep young guys from not getting DUIs, is just to have the bar and the barracks. instead of having guys roll out into town and spend all their money.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And that was just it. But we drank a lot of Blue Label for a better part of a year.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yes. And all they're doing is they're just pushing those little green square containers that roll under the back of C 17, just plain lands. A couple of guys get off their boxes, roll out ours, just get pushed back on guys, get back in the bird and we fly home. You're home 72 hours later and like it gets pushed off. They pick up the trucks from the battalion.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
They drive it back and like, right, cool. We got it all the way back. Sweet. Good. Oh, shit. Yeah. Wild times.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And so we made friends and we've been hunting for the last six months and he makes some pretty badass stuff. So Trout, I got you first. So no, come on now. I'm trying to find if that got delivered.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
What are you going to do with 30 gold bars? I could probably only get 15 over the market.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah, we're out. So in somebody's infinite wisdom, they figured out that Taliban fighters had a methodology because fighting in the cold sucks. Like, I don't know if you've read any military history, but like nobody likes to fight when it's cold out. And the Taliban fighters, what they would do is they would retreat to these high altitude mountain villages on the pack border.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So 10,000, 11,000 feet of elevation. They would just go hang out all winter. And somebody decided they were going to send three ranger battalions from sea level to fucking 10,000 feet of elevation and the middle of winter to go run these guys down out of their fucking safe havens. Like no winter break for you guys. So it's called operation winter strike.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And it's one of the two times in history where.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
all three ranger battalions were deployed to the same area at the same time and we did real rangering like we drove the trucks as far as they would go the hiluxes and everything else before armor we didn't have any armor we had no gun trucks zero we had we had gun trucks which were pretty cool hummers with you know roll cages on it but they look like porcupines because we had a
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
three 240s and a Mark 19 or a 50 Cal up top. And then everybody was armed with like, there was usually a couple saws on them. So it was just, it was like, what was that movie? The Last Starfighter. If you hit the button, it just spins around and shoots everything. That's what our vehicles were like.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
If somebody like came at us, like the whole thing just erupted in fire and you're like, ah, we're good. Fuck left side. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah, just death blossom. Yeah, just death blossom. It just fucking goes away.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
It's just a lot of trout. So I got you some Hawaiian brass knuckles. So these are tiger shark teeth. Cool. You wrap around your hand. What? Like this. You try so happy right now. So it's like it's a hammer fist with a twist, but you can slice somebody up. So you got some Hawaiian brass knuckles. Dude, I'm going to kill somebody with these. Tiger shark teeth. Well, that's intent. Thank you.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
I mean, I was a fire supporter. And the reason I liked him is because like, hey, you're rolling in an A-10 or a AC-130 or a couple of helicopters. And that thing makes a huge cloud. So somebody is like having a sad face day because they're getting hit with Mark 19 shells. But what they really don't understand is that they're going to have a whole bunch of like
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
chain machine gun fire and or 2.75 rockets and or 500 pound bomb or a thousand pound bomb or a two thousand pound bomb or 105 millimeter
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
cannon fired from the sky like right up following that and that was the reason why i like this because it was just such a good marking instrument i could just create such a big dust cloud that everybody could see it up to 15 000 feet we're like oh yeah that's where we're gonna fuck up right there let's do it god you're a death kim x it's all right kim light it's marking your target oh thank god they missed
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
yeah two thousand pound jdms is crazy we did 500 we did like two 500s i think never dropped it to what most people don't understand is when those things go off it's not the shock and explosion that's gonna fuck you up it's all the shit falling down from the sky afterwards it's so much energy it blows shit like cars straps and metal windows glass everything like thousands of feet into the sky and you're standing there after it goes off you're like
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
week two weeks to really climatize to a situation and you guys don't have was it sea level to 11 000 sea sea level and within 72 hours i was at 6 000 feet in another like four days after that we were at 11 walking and this is how how many feet like for reference how far were you guys walking when you dismount
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
It would be anywhere between like, we would do anywhere between like five to 12 miles a day in the mountains. And then, and then in the snow, it was snowing at that elevation. And so I remember we got to, we drove from Bagram to Asadabad and then Then we drove to Nangalam, which is now Fah Blessing. And we're there like, oh dude, these mountains are big.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And me and my JTAC, Sandy Lopez, we were sitting there looking at the terrain of where we're going. I'm like, dude, this is steep. Like, I think it's like, neither one of us are going to be both asleep at the same time. So like, let's just, we're going to ditch one of our sleeping bags because we had to carry all of our batteries for the week.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And we had to have all of our radios to talk to aircraft. And it's like, okay, how are we going to shave weight between the two of us? so that way we can walk up and down these hills. And we ended up getting, driving, going up this mountain and it dumped like feet of snow on us. And we found this goat hut. right at like 11,000 feet and literally six inches of goat shit on the bottom of it.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
The things like we're creeping to get in there and we're like, I guess we're staying in the goat hut for the next day or two until like things are good. And you know, we lay out the sleeping bag and he's sleeping and I'm sleeping and we're just freezing. And somebody goes like, dude, the commander said, let's start a fire. And so we, all right. So we're like, Oh fuck.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
so somebody goes out and we're like getting the snow off all the wood we're finding dry pieces of wood and somebody starts a small fire in this little goat hut the smoke floats up hits the lid and you know like when you're inside an enclosed space and you can see a layer of smoke 10,000 spiders minimum descending out of the roof of the goat hut oh fuck fuck
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
screaming rangers one single mark 19 round and then we're all outside like oh we're good and they're all like little teeny spiders and we're like yeah what's worse the cold or the spiders and the shit and i'm like the cold is worse so we went and we endured the spiders and the like the next day god so we could get out of there oh it's so horrible
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
you made this no i didn't make it no but we made it like actually i could say i made it because i held on to it as he was braiding it because he had one that he had he he was supposed to give it to his dad i was gonna buy he's like dude this one's my dad's i was like how fast can we make one so i literally held it as he was making it you were involved in the man i was i was involved in the making of it so that's cool as shit dude thanks man you're welcome man all right so i feel bad cody because i kind of came at you pretty hard about your ostrich boots last night
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
I had two embedders and a 117. So I was carrying 40 pounds of radio and battery and 40 pounds of radio just alone. before my weapon and ammo and my cold weather gear and my sleeping stuff like that's just radios do my job there's ammo guns all those little things start stacking up so fast and this was before like all the gucci gear you gotta remember we were still in like we were wearing um
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
BDU tops, so the green BDU top and we were wearing chocolate chip bottoms because that was the best color combo. This is prior to multicam. This is pre-multicam because you look like a bush when you wear like the desert bottom with a jungle top. You actually kind of blend in better. It really works.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Right. And so that was the camo that we were using at the time. And, uh, like this is the best we had was like Daner cold weather boots and I'll never fucking forget. Like we're up there freezing. We had the wool, the old green wool inserts inside the leather faster gloves. And that was all that we had. That was it. And we landed on a helicopter one night and we cleared this valley.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And I remember like sleeping in this barn on a big pile of shuck corn. And I am cuddled next to my JTAC. I am like pulling him in. I am hemorrhaging. I am so cold. Hemorrhaging. Like just...
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
What are they going to bring? What are they going to bring? And they rolled in and they kicked out a couple of duffel bags. And this is back in the day when like guys, we call up with a credit card and they go, Hey man, we need like 200 pairs of fucking gloves from the local REI. And we need them driven to this airfield right now.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And they would put them on a C-17 and they would be on their way to country immediately. That's what happened is they bought OR gators and OR gloves from outdoor research.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
They still are the best glove manufacturers. And we actually could move our fingers during the day to actually work our radios and move our weapons and do our jobs. Yeah. That's why I'm just like, they're an Uber. Ditching everything and then bouncing. When we were so high elevation, the helicopters couldn't land. They had to keep a forward momentum.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
You know, to get in and get out of the valley and then turn around and get back out. And they were just, like, kicking it off as they rolled. Why couldn't they land? We were at so high elevation. I think we were, like, 11,500 feet.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And we were at the range limitation where they would stop and get fuel. They would climb to elevation, fly out, and then we're right at the fringes of where they could get to us. They drop it and turn back around and fly out. It was a wild time. So what did they drop off? Outdoor research gloves and gators. And then, yeah.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah. But we were so far out that we were buying all of a village's winter rations from them. So we would roll. You have a platoon of Rangers rolling into an Afghan village with like 50 or 60 people in it. And they've got all of their rice and stuff stored for the winter. And we're like, all right, here, dude, here's a few thousand dollars. Oh, and they're selling. They're immediately.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
They're selling it to you. But you realize like they don't have food for backup.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
But they don't care because they know how much they can go into town. They'll just send somebody in like. in a week and they'll go get more, which is fine. But I'll never forget. We came back from patrol one day and we walked into the hut that we were staying in and there was a sheep like running around. I'm like, oh, it's super cute, right?
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Do you wanna explain that at all? About why ostrich boots are bad that I didn't know? So to make ostrich leather, you have to pluck an ostrich and leave it bald, and then it has to heal until the scabs fall off of it. Then you kill it, and then you make the leather. So.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And I just pick it up and I got this photo of me like holding this sheep next to my buddy. And I set it down and it runs around the corner and they got as hot as it was. We called him Grizzly Adams. And he looked like Grizzly Adams, an Afghan Grizzly Adams. And he had this Christmas knit sweater that probably got donated by somebody in America to Goodwill.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And he grabbed the sheep, opened the front door, 18 inches past the front step,
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
slit the sheep's throat blood everywhere cuts its head off drags it back inside the house and i've never seen an animal skin this way but he cut around the butthole and then he took his hand and he shoved his hand between the finger and the meat and he like worked his way all the way around and then he like pulled it out like a sock and then like hands it to his wife to cook no soap no clean water anywhere
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
didn't clip his fingernails, whatever. Right. And then like, that's what we're eating with him for dinner that night. And like, nah. And that's how you got your first case of dysentery.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
No, that trip. I got my, I thought I was going to die. I, uh, we were coming back. We were, we were actually going home. So this is at the very tail end of the deployment. We've made it all the way back from all of these like harrowing adventures up in the mountains. Yay. Fun.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So we're in a SADA bad, it's kind of warm and I'm like walking back to the truck and there's my JTAC bustle, like on the ground in the fetal position with his pants down around his knees and a pool of shit behind him on the ground. And he's, I can't stop shooting.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
i'm so glad toilet paper is so that you know it turns red when you know you're done down and out down and out it's like i call the medic and i'm like hey what do we do so we let him full of like phenadrine and imodium right we get him to stop trapping himself we give him the anti-nausea pills and And he was our driver in our truck.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So it was the JTAC, the commander, the RTO, and myself, the four of us in a Hilux. And we were driving from Assadabad to Bagram. And this is like the trip we got to make to go home for Christmas.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
12 hours it's wild you're doing that it's not up on you or anything nothing there's no armor no no cody imagine you're in a war zone in your hylux he has a hylux with a 50 cal i got an 81 hylux attaboy hey so uh so i'm like all right fuck it i'll drive you know and so we leave assadabad and then we were driving and then i'm starting to feel like a little bit not well the tingle the tingle right and i'm starting to feel like in the back of my jaw and i'm like
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Right. We have one of those before we pull in a job at anytime you pull into a city, you're on, you're going to stop outside the outskirts. You're going to make sure all the drivers are secure. You're going to check all the weapons. You're going to do everything else before you go into an area where you might make contact. And I look at my commander, I'm like, sir, like,
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
I'm going to tell you, like, I think I'm about to be non-mission capable. I don't think that I'm going to be able to drive this vehicle. And my, my commander at the time, he was an asshole. Like he was the worst commander I've ever had in my entire life was my first company commander in the range regiment. He was a dick.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah. And like, this guy was so bad. He was like, we'd be on patrol and he'd just sit there and like, tell me shit about me that he hated about me.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
he was he was just not a good person that's motivating yeah really like he's not a good dude and uh he almost got cleaned off the side of a uh a mountain by like this rock when you want somebody oh yeah rock it's falling like no there was a huge boulder falling like big right i'm watching this motherfucker come down the hill and it's about to hit my commander and i'm like fuck yes
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
dude this is awesome you're like i am not yelling out to say watch out he does love me and like the commander like turns to the side the rock sails between me and the rto and the rto and i both hated this guy and like it fucking sails between us and the only thing that was like there's a 1500 pound rock that just sailed past us at 40 miles an hour. And we're just disappointed.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So, do you know what a hypocrite is? Slightly. Who isn't? Right, so...
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
It didn't clean our commander off the side of the mountain. And so he starts yelling at me and I'm like, sir, like I'm telling you, I'm not going to make it like not a good drive. And so he's got to drive. Right. So a commander driving gross. Yeah. Gross. And so I'm riding shotgun. The RTO is behind me.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
The JTAC is in the back corner and he's just finally starting to like wake up, you know, from his issues and. When you drive into Jalalabad from Asadabad, the first place you hit is the meat market. It's where they hang the meat on the side of the road for days. And there's that smell.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
You still buy it. And there's that smell. It's like they throw the intestines out in the back. And you got all the fucking skin and all the stuff rotting. And I realized the first section of town that you hit on your way in that hits me. And I am out to my waist, out of the high locks, heaving, doing everything that I can to keep myself from shitting myself. And my RTO has got the window.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
He's got his window down too. And I'm heaving and I'm looking at him and he's just laughing at me.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And I get to Jalalabad. We pull into the airbase. They load me full of Phenogren and Imodium II. They throw me in the back. And I don't remember the most of that drive on the way back. But we finally, we made it to Bagram. I think we went through the... what is that pass between Bagram and JVAD? But it's one of those like weird, like switchbacky ones.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
I kind of woke up in the middle of there and I'm looking over like, I don't want to go off that and die. Yeah.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
The guy starts on our guy, Richie movie.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Oh, the covenant covenant covenant.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
I hurt so bad though god it's wild yeah so then like we were home and it's that back and then it's just so weird because this is before post-traumatic stress disorder or TBI or any of that all of those things and you know we literally drove the trucks in cleaned them up did our AR handed off to a different battalion got in our C-17 and literally I was sitting on my couch 24 hours later Man.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
It was my fiance, and then we learned that I'm not allowed to drive for the first two weeks when I get home. Fucking aggressive watching for a side. Yeah, you go underneath an overpass, and you immediately jank a lane over so that nobody hooks a grenade down on top of you. You pull up in front of stoplights, and somebody pulls up beside you. I'm reaching for a gun. That you don't have.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
That you don't have, and you're just reaching for it. I mean, it's an automatic thing. Then we're like, I need to not drive.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah. It slowly goes away. Yeah. Yeah, it just takes you a while because you're just so into it. Anytime you roll outside the gate, you're just hyper-focused on everything. You can't let it go. You're in a vehicle, you might die any second. Hyper-vigilant.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And you get home, it's like, okay, I I can let this go. I can let this go. And it just gets there over time. But that was the first deployment where I learned that I'm not allowed to drive for the first two weeks when I get home.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So, uh... when I was doing this weapons class, like he brought out Marlin bills, which they form into daggers. And I know you've been doing a lot of videos and people getting stabbed and shit. And I was like, dude, I'm not gonna make this knife. He was like, why? I was like, cause I am like kind of an animal lover and I love Marlin and swordfish and things like that.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Was she at least understanding through that whole thing? Yeah, she was in the army as well. Oh, okay. Yeah, so she understood. But it's like, again, this is early on in the war where I knew I was deploying and we couldn't say anything to anybody. So we went to a Halloween party. We dressed up and everything else. I tucked her into bed drunk at night and everything else.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And then I got up at two in the morning and I went to the unit and I was gone.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
That was during like there is no heads up. You don't talk to anybody about it. You know you're going. You can't tell anybody what you're doing. Girlfriend. Imagine you can't tell your girlfriend that you're going to be gone when...
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Like, you can't mention anything. Like, hey, guys, we're leaving in a month. You're doing all your train ups. You're getting all your briefs. You can't say anything to anybody. God, even day before. Nothing.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
I mean, that's just later on because we're always in the war. There's always a special operations unit there. It doesn't matter because there's always one there. But before there wasn't. And so which units went where mattered because we thought the enemy cared. Yeah.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah. So I was home. on ground. Yeah. So when I got home from that deployment, uh, my fiance at the time, uh, told me that she got orders to go to Iraq for a year. So that was like Christmas. And then she deployed the first week of January.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Okay. Yeah. And you know, she comes back like three weeks later, pregnant. So it was like, so like holidays, everything else. And so, so it's just like, you know, my kid, you know, everything else. And so she came back like immediately. And I was like, well, hate to tell you this, but like, I'm leaving again. Yeah. So it's like, we got to get married real quick.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And I just, I'm not gonna do it. But since you've been making all the videos on stabbing people, I got you a Marlin bill shiv.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
We got married and then I left like three days later and I was gone for another three months. You know, we were down in the coast district on Salerno. And so we were doing like the whole like pack border thing.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
security against the Taliban creeping across and everything else and that was like the first time we were really understanding how I think we kind of understood before but now we were really thinking about how Pakistan was with us and like funding guys back and forth across the border so we were doing a lot of like cross-border work and um that was a high Adventure deployment I was a that was a good time what was one of the craziest things that happened during that one
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Um, we had this one objective that had like a tower on it and they told us that there was a dishka in the tower. And for people who don't know, a Dishka is a 12.7 millimeter, like, fuck you up gun. I've always wanted to fire one. I've never gotten to fire one. I've always wanted to fire one. Do you want to? I've always wanted to fire a Dishka. Can we do that in December? Yeah, dude.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
I've always wanted to fire one. Like, when I got FU money and I can go back to Afghanistan, I'm like, we're getting a Dishka? Yeah. We're going to get like a valley and I'm going to go have fun for a day. Like as much ammo as I can buy. I'm going to put some goats out there. Give me a cow. Let's go. And I've always wanted to fight. Cause I've seen them lined up against us.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
We've captured tons of them. And I'm like, that looks like a bad-ass gun.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
That is a Marlin Bill shiv, yeah. That's the best drop weapon.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So we're looking at this tower. We're looking at it. And again, I'm not an infantry guy. I'm an artillery guy. So my whole thing is if you shoot at my guys, I'm just going to fuck your whole world up. I will bring everything that the DOD has to offer to bear. And I will give you generational fucking pain. I will make sure your grandkids feel this.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So that is a Pa'oa'ahu. That's the name of his Pa'oa'ahu. And then yours is Pa'oa'ahu.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
and so i had ac-130 2a10s i had cobras on standby i'm like if this thing lights up i am going to decimate this grid square and we got dogs and everything else and we fast rope on top of this compound to get the guy and like literally we come off the rope and there's a guy sleeping on a cot right outside of his home
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
We run up and we just grab the dude and we pick him up and we're like, fuck, this is him. Like, it's the guy. And like, there's a 47. There's still guys dropping off a rope 100 feet above him. And you caught the first guy. The guy was like right there. And the first sergeant grabs him and he's like, this is the dude. But we're still securing the objective.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
and now all i'm worried about is this tower right and i'm just like creeping around the building i'm getting eyes on it like all the aircraft are looking at it all like the gunships are just ready to launch this thing into like the next dimension and there's no activity like no thermal no nothing we're like send the dog right dog rolls in dog's in there for a bit dog comes out with a hand in his mouth
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
hand it was a mausoleum for all of like their dead family members and stuff oh shit and the dog went in there and ripped a freaking hand off a skeleton and brought it back out we're all standing there like staring at the dog and we're like
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
good good boy good boy like all right guys sorry like call them like the older aircraft like all right I guess we're good here like the rest of you guys can go home like stand by for ex-phil like we're good together dude there no there was a couple other family members and everything else but he was the top dog that we were after and he just and these guys they just they're asleep they literally land a helicopter like on top of their house and they don't hear it it's so weird
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
It's crazy.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
yeah what's yours is pu-u-le-ni-ho and i'm sorry to all my kanaka brothers and sisters here if i that up so i'm sorry i'm still learning my level oh trout's gonna type this out oh that's incredibly sharp yeah dude that's a gangster and then show i got you because i know you're the one who makes everything happen here um and a car bomb no yeah So these are an OP shell necklace.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
You're like, oh, shit. Literally off the rope, you turn, and you see a guy sleeping right there like 10 steps away. grabs him, pulls him up. It's like, oh crap, this is the guy, right? And rangers are going past him into the house and everything else, getting everything else done. And then we're still clearing the outbuildings.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
There's a camel like floating around somewhere, you know, just a good time. Yeah.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
All the time. We didn't do the Little Bird stuff until we were in Iraq. So I came back from that deployment. And we lost a dude during that deployment. It was pretty traumatic. And came back. I was home for a month. Had my honeymoon. My wife was six months pregnant. And then I'm gone again. And then we're back to Afghanistan. And we were in the TST mission, which is the Time Sensitive Target.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So we were at Bagram with all of like the gunships and the fighter pilots and everything else. And we were like, if there's any top tier bad dude that picks up in country that we like get signal on where they're at, doesn't matter where they're at, we're the crew to go get them. And that was a really cool mission.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Cause a lot of times we just sit around for a week and like all of a sudden somebody pops and then you're all the assets, all the eight, 10 pilots, all the gunship crew, you're all standing next to one another, which is a much different experience than most other guys get.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Cause you get to know the navigator, you get to talk to them, but when they pull up on the radio, you now have a relationship with them because you eat dinner with them every night.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah. And it's the guys in the sky and they know you and now they care about you on the ground because they know you by voice. And it's much different. And they know, oh, hey, this is the younger fire FO. So they work with them on the ground. Because younger guys, it's complicated. You're dealing with a slow-moving AC-130 gun trip hanging left-hand circles.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And then you've got an A-10 that might check out. And then you've got an F-16. And they have different capabilities. And the young guys just don't know what the pilots are. So they pull them in. And they're like, we'll go sit in the aircraft.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
the pilot's sitting is like hey man when you tell me this i'm literally flying 400 miles an hour and i'm looking at this screen and it gives the young guy a reference to go okay now i need to know how i need to describe it to the pilot in order to be able to do my job better which is which is really cool that was a environment that i was really thankful to be in because it was the best team effort in special operations that i'd ever been in
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And so we get this one objective, and it's like north of Cal, so it's near the PAC border. And my JTAC, so the JTAC is the Air Force guy, because this is before Army guys are allowed to drop bombs off of Air Force planes. So I was in the first wave of guys that was actually certified for that in the GWAT.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Before, you always had to have an Air Force guy with you to say, like the JTAC, to say, yeah, Air Force plane, this is cool. This Army guy is calling in this bomb. And yeah, so like his name's Sandy. He's my daughter's godfather, like thick as he is. We've been friends like forever. And we always used to think like, you know, what snacks are we going to bring for the way back?
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So every night, like it was his job or my job, his job or my job. And my thing on deployments is like his wife always sent him candy. So I'd always like raid his hooch and steal all those jelly bellies. One team, one fight. And so we hit the subjective and it's a really steep terrain and you know, the Rangers and the,
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So if you ever see like the videos of Hawaii and the black sand beaches and the waves crashing up on big vertical cliffs, this is a delicacy kind of crustacean that like hangs onto those cliffs. And for the guys to get them, they put on armor and like knee pads and everything else. I have to get out the right time and they just send down these cliffs to pick these out. But I got you. Oh,
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
i think it's fine now but like back then it was you know you always have rangers working with like a tier one group so it's either the navy guys or their army guys and on this deployment we were working with the navy guys and there's always animosity between army and navy and so this is one of those things where we go in and we're going to do an objective but we're going to plant a listening device right on the objective and so we put you know 100 guys at risk
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
to go, you know, foe hit an objective to go plant a listening device. Well, if an Afghan guy has got seven things, if there's eight, he's going to notice kind of deal. Right. And then you got to go in like a couple of weeks later to go recover it, to hear what it's got to say. Cause this is before like all of it. Yeah.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Stranger. These Americans are so nice. And so this is one of the missions where we went in to like go recover a listening device. And we fly in, we go hit the objective, we grab the garage, we grab the listening device, but it's so steep. We had to fast rope in because the helicopters can't land.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And then like now we're kind of scrambling around the objective because sometimes you just got to chase guys between houses and the units are kind of spread out and you got to tell the helicopters where to come in at. And we were the last group of dudes to get picked up because we were on the steepest terrain. And
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
the Black Sea platoon sergeant, Brian Stover, total badass, former RRDI came in, was our platoon sergeant. And he runs up to me, he's this just huge dude. And he's like, I'm gonna bring this helicopter in. And he's like, you got him on the radio? I'm like, yeah, I got him on the radio. And he pulls my mic.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
out of the like he pulls my mic from my headset out and he plugs his in and he keys my mic so he's talking to the helicopter on his radio and i'm not hearing what's going on all of a sudden i see this 47 coming at me and then it turns around slides backwards and then the the tailgate ramp lands on top of this ledge i'm standing against And he like unplugs it. He's like, sir.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And he grabs me and he throws me up the wall. I was like, get on the fucking helicopter. All right, so I scramble into the back of the bird and there's the two minigun guys out of the side door. There's an ATV in the center and you're piling a bunch of dudes in there. So I go and I jump and I'm sitting on the ATV, like holding the handlebars.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
We're stacking around, right? So I'm between the minigunners and then under night vision, when those rotors are going around, there's a lot of ferrous material in the dirt and the rotors hit them and you can see that flash.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Sparkles under your nons. And I'm looking out the side and I'm like, oh, yeah, there's the sparkles. And then I look down the back and the crew chief of the freaking helicopter, the pilot's name is Andy. I know that for sure. But the crew chief was like hanging out the back and he's like, yeah, a little more, a little more. Because as more guys get in it, the helicopter starts like weighing down.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
ope necklace and then um and then i got you a weapon as well because everybody's got to have a good weapon but this is a uh a cattle um cattle hair pick so you can throw a nice little hair pick in there but if you need it you can pull it out and ship somebody with it yes yes yeah show the shiver showing a shiver Did Brandon's deliver or no?
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So he's got to apply more throttle to get it back up.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
and the rear rotor of this freaking 47 was like this is the ledge this is the rotor they had like literally a foot and a half of distance off the rock wall and i'm just changing and it's changing because rangers are just jumping in he's like yeah yeah yeah little and like pilot cucumber fucking cool a little bit more you can't see what's going on he's like Yeah, that's it, a little more.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And then as soon as everybody's good, the sweet hop song, we got everybody, the whole helicopter like falls off the side of the mountain. And one of those, like, I'm so glad that I'm hanging on to the freaking, like the ATV. It's the only person there who's got oh shit handles. Yeah, that was a moment for sure.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
That's crazy, man. I was like, that was one of the, I had to unclench and let go of the seat out of my culo. I was pinched into that seat.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
no um so that was great and then uh we got like uh six months off right and that was the first time like after that deployment so you do three on three off three on one off three on and we had just a weird rotation where we were always just like cycling through but by this time our fourth deployment i had really realized that the rangers were just professional kidnappers
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Like Nick does this, he's got that Army Rangers, you know, like, oh, if you're going to decide to be a problem, you're not going to be a problem. That could not be any more true. And so now they sent us to Northern Iraq. How do you describe it? It's like the sharpest blunt object.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah. When people ask me about like Rangers or versus Navy SEALs, like dude, SEALs are great. I got a lot of great SEAL friends. They're awesome. Like their mission set is tremendous. You know, what they do is they're like a surgical, like a surgeon's role of tools. If you need something very specific done in and out, reconnaissance, all these types of jobs, they're great.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Rangers were like a dump truck full of sledgehammers. I've always heard rangers can unroll ball bearings. If you give a ranger two ball bearings and tell him to cross the street, before he gets to the other side, he'll eat one and break the other.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah. Yeah. Be hungry. Me broke other. And so then we get to Iraq and this is the first time that we got to work with the army tier one guys. And I will have to say that was a world of difference. What was the biggest shift for you? The biggest shift is they actually talked to us.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
build a good rapport yeah and it was you know kyle lamb viking tactics so he was the kyle's one i love kyle is one of my favorite humans kyle
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And, uh, and like Kyle was amazing. Like we got to interact with him and he was just a tremendous leader. You know, a lot of those guys come. that army unit, they come out of the Rangers. And so they have a lot of rapport. They know, sometimes they know guys and they're like, yep, look, young Rangers, you don't know this. You get like, I will never forget.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Cause I remember Ranger setting objectives. I work fast and he goes, you guys are so slow. You guys are doing things right, but you're just so slow. But they would take us out during the day and they would work with us. And that was a huge difference of what the Navy guys never did. And we fucked up Northern Iraq during that deployment. If there was anything in Northern Iraq... you were gone.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
You done fucked up son. We crushed Northern Iraq for that period. And this was that time when YouTube really started taking off, right? The videos and being uploaded to the internet. So I don't know if you guys remember that, that contractor little bird that went down where it was in the glades where they
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
the Al Qaeda capture that dude and then they stood him up right and then they've Gunned him down right in front of everybody and then they displayed that to the world That would that happened like on our deployment. No shame. We're like, okay now really funk up you're around you're going to find out and We did not around that deployment and like it like the
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
the assets that we had on station the team that we had the leadership that we had we got a new ranger battalion commander and he was just phenomenal and this is how phenomenal the guy is and like i i wrote this down i put a star next to it as the skull powerpoint this is a powerpoint i'd actually stay tuned into so you know bill gates did not have this in mind when he was creating microsoft powerpoint at all
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So you have a talk, a tactical operations center, and the commander sits at the center, and then you have his right and left-hand man, then it goes around in a circle, and you have all the displays with the UAV feeds on it and stuff. Can you grab me one while you're up there, please? Yes, what would you like? A beer. A beer? Yeah.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And we were just kind of getting our rhythm with this new battalion commander of how things were working and with Kyle. Thank you, sir.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
but you know we're now getting to meet all of the different um the units so we're working with different pilots now and so we're working with the ah6 pilots which are the md500s with the the miniguns and the rockets on the side of them right so we had that's what the alpha company
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And then we have the MH6 pilots, which are the ones you were wearing on your shirt earlier with the platforms on the side. So those are the B company guys that fly us around to chase squirters. And then we had, we have to have maneuver helicopters. You guys know what a DAP is? No. It's a direct action penetrator. So me. Yeah. Yeah. You.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Okay. So it's a, it's a, it's the U S military's most bad-ass Blackhawk. So what they do, it's like, just imagine Skywolf on steroids or whatever that show was from the 80s. So it's a Black Hawk with big wings on it. And it's got two 19 shot rocket pods, a Mark 19 grenade launcher, and usually like a couple mini guns, like a triple barrel to kill it.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And the purpose of that platform is when you invade a country, these things fly like 15 feet off the ground. and they roll in and they look out all of the surface to air missile sites, all the Sam sites, all the radars. So these guys like skimming low to the ground and they are loaded for bear. And if you're popping a radar or you get a Sam missile, they're going to your shit up.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
What was it?
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah, they were, yeah. They've been around since the late nineties, I guess. No shit. Maybe, maybe even older.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
I'll do yours first. We'll close him out. We still got a lot of podcasts. I couldn't be more proud of you for running for congressman. I really think that we need good people with common sense running for office that are going to represent the needs of the everyday people, right? People who care about the rights, they care about freedom of speech. They care about taking care of their families.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah, and the first time, I had no idea. I was a Ranger Fire supporter. I was like, oh, we get little birds and gunships. And then we showed up to the 160th to do a training down there and do our familiarization and get to meet all the pilots and the platforms. And they're like, this thing rolls in. I'm like, oh, my God. That is a fucking sad-faced day for somebody. And...
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
I don't have to steal that. A sad face. Sad face day.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah. Not, not very much. And, um, But they didn't have enough helicopters because now it's now we're like late 2005. And so now we got both wars like rolling at speed. And now all the special operations units, all the Navy SEALs, all the Raiders, all of the special forces group are all like rotating at speed. And there's only so many helicopters and pilots trained at that level.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So now we're getting really stressed out. And unfortunately, what they had to do is we needed lift helicopters to move us around. So what they did is they neutered the DAPs. They made them transport for us. So they took the wings and the guns off of them. And that is the most emasculating thing you could do to a DAP pilot is to take their guns off. Because they had to carry us for weight.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Oh, gotcha. They're just mad now. Now they're mad. Are they just kind of like taking it out on you guys? No, no. They just pissed at the world more or less. It was an inter-rivalry between the pilots because now the AH-6 pilots, the Little Bird pilots are like, yeah, we're the fucking badass ones. Those guys kill more people than cancer. Little Bird pilots? Yeah.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
they're they're done and uh so we're going around and when a new battalion comes in like you got all the new staff officers and everybody else but usually they don't rotate all the units over at once so that way you get some sort of like overlap and the first night you get there there's a powerpoint brief and it's like hey sir you know we've got
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
this many little birds, here's what we're carrying for ordinance, here's our flight time, here's this, here's our pilots, here's everything that we can do. And just basic capabilities brief. And the little bird chief, Chief Meehan, his name was Meat, is what we called him. He was a big freaking dude, you could barely cram him into a little bird, but he was the best pilot I have ever seen.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And he gave the brief, very professional, sits down. And then the DAT pilot gets up, Captain Brown, Matt Brown was his name. And he stands up and he gives the brief and he thinks he's going to be funny. And he's like, you know, I just want to say on behalf of the 160th and the mighty little bird, you want to say thank you. And do you guys remember that ringtone from the 90s?
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And so that's like everybody makes fun of the little bird because it just sounds like It's the go-kart of the sky world. Yeah, it's the go-kart of the sky, right? And so everybody kind of giggles and laughs, and Chief Meehan just quietly sits there, right on, carries on. So every night, everybody's got to give their capabilities, their status.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
If you've got something down, you've got to work on it, what your priorities are, blah, blah, blah. And so Chief Meehan says, hey, you got something to just say? I want to thank, you know, Captain Brown for inspiring us and just getting a little bit of, you know, respect for one another. And we just wanted to say what we think of DAFs. And it fires up with the same PowerPoint.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
They want to live in a safe environment in America. And like, it's really awesome to see people like you being willing to stand up and do the right thing.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Then all of a sudden it fades into this girl absolutely getting sculled. Makeup running down the face. Whole Miss Pac-Man. Oh!
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
and this guy pulls this monster dong out whaps her across the face comes on her face and then it fades in daps suck and here you have this cw5 standing there just completely professional big pilot mustache big dude he just sits down and everybody in the talk is just
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
commander cool as a cucumber next slide let's go this story gets better so like as uh you know one team one fight like no nope moving on right and that was back in the day that's how the army used to be you could joke about shit nobody cared right it was fun you guys were killing people on a nightly basis you could have some liberties with how you're gonna live life and everything else and so uh
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Not enough people do that. So I'm really proud of you for doing that.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
War was proper. War was proper back then.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
So as a Ranger fire supporter, you're always bringing in new privates, right? There are always new fire supporters coming in and they've like, you got some kid coming in from California or Oregon or Tennessee or whatever. And you're having to explain to them, hey man, here's what a little bird is. And they're like, huh? And they just got out of RASP. And they just don't know what they're doing.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
They're basic artillery fire support. And you go, hey, dude, here's what a DAP is. Here's what a gunship is. And so then you have all these PowerPoint slides before you go work with them. And they have to memorize all the stats and statistics and all these other things. So you're always, whenever you're on these deployments and you get to meet the guys, you download the briefs.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And so I just downloaded the little bird brief. And I just had it on my unclassified drive. Get out of the army. A couple of years later, my wife, or now my ex-wife at the time, she went to work for a outdoor company that was supplying stuff to the military. And they were going down to the Special Operations Conference down in Tampa. And there's a company out of Seattle.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And she's got her assistant, Weather, who's like this really good dude, but he's just not into the military. He doesn't know stuff. And they're on a plane flying between Seattle and Tampa. And she's like, okay, we're going to meet with, you know, Green Berets. We're going to meet with the Rangers. We're going to meet with the 160th. And like, here's their, what they do.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah. So I had, I commissioned a handmade custom Afghan rug that said, let's go Brandon on it. One of one. One of one. So they literally.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And so she opens, like does all these slides and she rolls through the fucking little bird slide. And they're in a plane side by side, laptop up, volume on high.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Like co-workers. Dude, the call that I got when she got off that airplane. Gold. Gold.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
The dark humor, it gets us through. People just don't understand it unless you've been there. Like cops get it. Like- Gallows humor is the best thing ever. Yeah, because that's the only way you can make it levity. Like you walk into a situation and that would traumatize most people.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah. It's Let's Go Brandon. It's an Afghan handmade tapestry. It is the only one in existence. Probably the only one ever to be made. But that was made in a home. They've like sheared the freaking goats. They made the wool. They tied the knots in a home. And it says Let's Go Brandon. And I have you a one of one custom Afghan rug.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And everybody's staring at it, but all of a sudden you hear somebody crack a joke and you're like, okay, we can get through this. We can get centered and make this right. Yeah.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Well, now you have, like... I straight up, like, my closet upstairs is full of those motherfuckers. Yeah, we started bringing them in. Like, if you want a custom one, let me know. I'll make you whatever you want. That's fucking rad, man. Well, I appreciate that. Thank you, dude. Thank you so much. I'm really proud of you, dude. Well done.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
That's it. Combat flip. That's one word. Easy.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
Yeah. That will pass a metal detector, by the way. I know.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
That's like, ding!
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
A lot of people don't know the history behind the war rugs. So when the Soviets invaded... all of the kids went out of school and the Soviets were brutal in Afghanistan. They like, there's still just beautiful mountain ranges. If they were in America, they would be a national park.
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
And outside of those mountain ranges, there's just rows for miles, hundreds of miles, like white rocks that are painted. And that represents landmines. You just don't go past the white rocks. And so they, but before they painted those rocks, there were just kids that didn't know any better. And
Unsubscribe Podcast
185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185
You know, on, on one deployment, we had some kid who picked up a dud mark 19 and smacked it on a rock and he's now missing his right arm. They drug him to the front gate and we had to fucking get him to the medics and get him. He load out of there. And so unexploded ordinance is a big deal. They didn't have paper. They didn't have pens. They couldn't go to school because of the invasion.