One of my former teammates from back when I was a Navy Seal had one of the most insane stories you will ever hear. He gave me permission to tell his story, so today I will share it with you all. Story names, previews & links to original YouTube video:#1 -- "The City of Death" -- A Navy SEAL buys a 1 way ticket to Iraq (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79uDkod_FIk)For 100s more stories like these, check out our main YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What is the story behind 'The City of Death'?
Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. One of my former teammates from back when I was in ABCL has easily one of the most insane personal stories you will ever hear. And he gave me permission to tell his story, so today, that's what I'm going to share with you.
But before we get into his story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast, because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week. Once on Monday, and once on Thursday. So, if that's of interest to you, go ahead and drop a 2,000 pound JDAM on the follow button. Okay, let's get into today's story.
Lamont Jones is shattered when his cousin dies just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. Wondery presents Death County PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
In June of 2011, I had just failed a very stressful and anxiety-inducing underwater test as part of Navy SEAL training. And after I failed this test, my instructor told me to get out of the pool and go over to the corner with the other failures. And so I made my way to the edge of the pool.
I climbed out and I sulked my way to the corner where I saw my other classmates who had met a similar fate on this test. They were all sitting in the corner with their backs to the pool in neat rows. And so I was totally gassed from this test. And so when I sat down, I start dramatically breathing really loud and heaving my chest up and down to show off just how hard my test had been.
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Chapter 2: What challenges did Ephraim Matos face during Navy SEAL training?
In about two seconds into this ridiculous performance of mine, one of my other classmates who had been sitting in the corner when I showed up, a big 18 year old kid from Wisconsin named Ephraim Matos, he immediately turned around and made eye contact with me and through gritted teeth, he just goes, shut up. Everybody here is in pain. And then he turned back around.
And immediately, I was actually really mad at him because he just totally publicly dimed me out in front of my other classmates. But then it dawned on me he was right. The job we were trying out for, Navy SEAL, they're not looking for people who just feel bad for themselves all the time. And so I never forgot the lesson Ephraim Matos taught me on the pool deck that day.
And I, along with everybody else in the SEAL teams, never forgot the totally insane thing that Ephraim Matos did five years later that was picked up by virtually every major news network at the time. Back in 2012, so about a year after our exchange on the pool deck, Ephraim and I graduated and became Navy SEALs. I was assigned to an East Coast SEAL team and he was assigned to a West Coast one.
And over the next five years, I never saw the guy until I saw him on TV. It was mid-June 2017 and I was on base in Virginia in an office full of other Navy SEALs and we were wrapping up for the day. I was closing my email and powering down my computer and I noticed my phone that was sitting on the table suddenly started lighting up with all these text messages from current and former teammates.
So I grabbed my phone and all the messages said the same thing, turn on the news. And so in this office we were in, there was always a TV that was turned to the news sitting in the corner that was on mute. And so I turned to look at this TV, and on the TV from a distance, all I can see is breaking news and Middle East.
And so given our profession, news like that tended to have a direct impact on our day-to-day lives. And so I assumed all these text messages must be about whatever happened in the Middle East. And so I get up, I walk over, I grab the remote, and on my walk back to my seat, I'm turning the volume up, and everybody else in the room is turning around to watch the TV as well.
And we start hearing the TV reporters talking about this group of American civilians that had gone to Iraq and taken up arms against the terrorist organization ISIS. And so as they're talking about this group of American civilians, they put on the screen an image of one of these Americans.
It was this big bearded guy in his mid-20s carrying an AK-47 rifle standing behind a tank somewhere in the Middle East. And as soon as I saw that picture, I knew right away why I had gotten that flurry of text messages from current and former teammates. It's because we all know this guy. The guy on TV was Ephraim Matos.
Five years earlier, after our graduation, Ephraim checked into his first SEAL team out on the West Coast, and very quickly after he showed up, they deployed to Afghanistan. During one of their missions, Ephraim was in the back of his patrol as they walked across this huge open field as they left this village they had just been in.
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Chapter 3: What significant event changed Ephraim Matos's perspective?
How could anybody force a child to be a suicide bomber? How could anyone be that cruel? And so by the time Ephraim came back to the United States after that deployment, he had changed. That experience specifically had changed him.
Even though he believed in the US government's mission over in Afghanistan and in the Middle East, he felt like he could be doing more for these poor innocent people that were just trapped inside of conflict zones like these two little girls. And so over the next few years, he began looking at different conflict zones all over the world where civilians were in the most danger.
And he discovered there was one place that was killing and exploiting civilians at an unprecedented rate. That place was Iraq, where a new terrorist organization had taken power called ISIS.
So in early 2017, when Ephraim's Navy contract ran out and it was time for him to decide if he wanted to stay in the SEAL teams or get out and become a civilian, he opted to not re-enlist, so he left the military, and instead he got on social media and he contacted a foreign volunteer group in Iraq that was providing humanitarian aid to civilians.
And he reached out to them and he said, hey, can I join you? And of course they said, yes, we'd love to have a Navy SEAL come out and support us. And so just a couple of days later, Ephraim sold his house. He packed up a bag of clothes and a backpack. He grabbed his passport and he hopped in a plane and he flew to Northern Iraq all by himself.
Now, before we continue the rest of the story, you need to understand just how bold this move was by Ephraim. Now, when he was a Navy SEAL, and so a member of the United States military on active duty, when he went to Afghanistan to a war zone, he had lots of support. If his team got pinned down by the enemy, they could call in an airstrike or they could call in backup.
If Ephraim got hurt on the battlefield or his teammates got hurt on the battlefield, they could call in special medical teams that would fly in in virtually any condition to come save them. And if Ephraim got captured by the enemy, you better believe America is coming for him. But in this case, Ephraim went to a war zone as a civilian.
He was not in the US military, so he didn't have any of that support. If he or his team got pinned down out in Iraq, they would either have to fight their way out or get killed or captured. If he or one of his new teammates from this volunteer group got hurt, they would have to either save themselves or get killed or captured. And if Ephraim got captured as a civilian, nobody's coming for him.
Nobody even knows he's been captured. He is completely on his own. But Ephraim knew these risks. In fact, he knew them better than most people because he had already deployed to a war zone and saw how important it was to have a support infrastructure. So when he flew to Iraq as a civilian, he knew he was hanging it out there, but he just didn't care.
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Chapter 4: Why did Ephraim Matos go to Iraq as a civilian?
But they noticed on the ground there was a piece of plywood. They moved it aside and it revealed this huge hole that led down into the ground. And this hole connected to a huge underground tunnel system that ISIS used to escape gunfights just like this one. And so Ephraim and Dave, who was with him, just hopped right down into the tunnel. They didn't have night vision. They didn't have backup.
Just the two of them start running down this totally pitch black tunnel, periodically throwing grenades ahead of them in case there are ISIS fighters ahead of them. And at some point, after running for quite a while, just getting ready to come in contact with their adversaries, they reach this big high ceiling cavern that's a dead end.
And they're looking around thinking, okay, I guess no one ran in here. But before they turned around and left the tunnel system, they looked up with their lights and they saw high up on the wall, dug into the wall, was another entrance to another tunnel. It looked like there needed to be a ladder to get up to this additional tunnel entrance.
And so Ephraim and Dave look at each other and they're thinking, I bet ISIS fighters ran down here. There was a ladder. They climbed up and went in that entrance and then pulled the ladder up so we can't follow them.
so ephraim and dave couldn't do anything about it they decide okay well you know we'll just go out and we'll tell the iraqi army and see what they want to do so ephraim and dave they leave this tunnel system they go back outside they tell the iraqi army and the iraqi army brings in a bulldozer and they fill in that entrance they had found inside of the house completely seal it up so nobody could go in or get out
And then later that night, after that village had been cleared of all ISIS fighters, they began hearing muffled explosions underground near where this entrance to this tunnel was. And what it turned out to be was ISIS fighters that realized they had been buried alive. They had snuck down there. They had used a ladder to get up into that crawl space.
But when they realized they were doomed, they blew themselves up. Hey guys, Mr. Ballin here. You know how I tell strange, dark, and mysterious stories? Well, I've stumbled on some strange, dark, and mysterious medical stories that really are just as wild. Like there was a story about this woman who accidentally swallowed something that got lodged in her heart.
There was a story about a guy where a tree grew in his lung. Or there was a story about this person who their skin turned bright blue. Or this town, everybody started laughing uncontrollably that lasted for months. I mean, the list goes on. And these are not urban legends. These are real mysteries that we dive into that have left doctors and scientists baffled, sometimes for years.
And so that's why I created Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, a totally separate show all about these wild mysteries of the human body. Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Want to listen to episodes early and ad-free? Well, join Wondery Plus or listen on Amazon Music with Prime.
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Chapter 5: What was Ephraim Matos's mission in Iraq?
For the next month, Efrem and the Iraqi army unit that he and his volunteers were working with continued to periodically get into small skirmishes with ISIS in these villages outside of Mosul, but the majority of their time was spent providing humanitarian aid and medical care to civilians in the area. Then in May, their mission changed again.
The other Iraqi army units that had been sent directly into Mosul a month earlier to inch by inch eradicate the area of ISIS fighters, they had done a relatively good job, but the last few ISIS fighters had been pushed up into this northern section of the city where they had bunkered down inside of these blown-out concrete structures, and they were putting up an unbelievably fierce fight.
So fierce, in fact, that these Iraqi army units in the city were not able to go any farther forward. They needed armored vehicles and tanks if they were going to be successful. And it just so happened, the army unit that Ephraim and his volunteer group had embedded with, that had been outside of Mosul this whole time, they were an armored unit. They had armored vehicles and tanks.
And they were ordered to head right into the heart of Mosul and liberate it once and for all. And so on May 4th, Ephraim and the other volunteers loaded up in their armored vehicles and they joined this huge line of dozens and dozens of tanks and other armored vehicles looking at the western side of Mosul. There was just a field between them and the city walls.
And as soon as this massive convoy began moving forward towards the city, the city just opened up on them.
heavy machine gun fire rocket fire mortars it was just absolute chaos isis knew they were coming and so they were unleashing everything they had on them and ephraim would say after his vehicle actually got inside of the city limits of mosul and was on one of their roads all these booby-trapped cars began detonating all around them and the machine gun fire and rocket fire and mortar fire only intensified
At the same time this was happening, Iraqi civilians inside of Mosul saw this unbelievable wave of violence happening and they began trying to flee the city.
Now ISIS had effectively kept them hostage inside of Mosul because they needed lots of civilians in and around the area because it prevented Iraq and America and other forces that were fighting ISIS from indiscriminately bombing Mosul to get rid of the ISIS presence there. And so when Isis saw these civilians running away, they began shooting them to deter other civilians from trying to escape.
And so right in front of Ephraim as he's driving into the city, men, women, children are just being gunned down all over the place. Naturally, Ephraim and the other volunteers hopped out and tried to return fire at these ISIS shooters, but they were so well fortified in different structures, they couldn't even see them, let alone hit them. So they did the next best thing.
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Chapter 6: How did Ephraim transition from humanitarian work to combat?
And so as Ephraim is scanning this carnage, being careful not to stay exposed for too long, he notices one particularly large pile of bodies. There's about 20 or 30 bodies. He sees in this pile, there's clearly movement. And he can see there is a little girl who's attempting to hide herself under her dead mother's clothing.
And then next to this girl were two other adult men that clearly were wounded, but were alive. Ephraim immediately starts yelling to them to run to him, run to him, you're going to get killed out there. But the three of them were completely shell-shocked. For the past 24 hours, they had been laying inside of this pile of bodies, and so they were not going to be able to move on their own.
And so Ephraim realized, unless they did something to get them out of there, they were going to die. So Ephraim and the others ran back to their Iraqi army counterparts, and they got them to sign off on a rescue mission.
And their plan was they would have one of the Iraqi tanks drive down that road straight towards that hospital where all the ISIS fighters were, and right behind the tank would be an Iraqi Humvee, inside of which would be Ephraim and the other volunteers.
And so they would go straight down the road, the tank would serve as a sort of shield for the Humvee, and after the tank passed the pile of dead bodies, the Humvee would be lined up right next to it, Ephraim and the others would hop out, they'd grab the girl and the two other men, pull them back in the Humvees, and then the two vehicles would back up to safety.
Once this plan was in place, Ephraim and Dave and the other volunteers contacted the American military in the area and they got them to authorize a smoke screen. They would fire artillery shells with airburst smoke grenades that would obscure the view of the ISIS fighters in the hospital.
They wouldn't actually be able to see the tank or the Humvee or this rescue operation taking place right in front of them. And so shortly after these plans are totally finalized and Ephraim and the others are loading up in the Humvee and they're getting in position to turn that corner and begin this operation, the driver of the Humvee says, you know what? I don't want to do this anymore.
It's not safe. I'm not willing to do it.
Ephraim and the other volunteers tried to convince him to still do the operation because they didn't have time to get a replacement Humvee and they had already coordinated with the American artillery units that were going to be firing these shells at a certain time, and so they really didn't have an opportunity to do this operation again if this guy backed out.
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Chapter 7: What happened during the encounter with ISIS fighters?
He holds his hand and Ephraim just shakes his head and says, I'm sorry, because he knew he couldn't move him fast enough behind the tank before both of them got shot. And he couldn't throw him on his back in time before both of them got shot. And so he had to leave him.
And so Ephraim jumped up, he leapt behind the tank right as a volley of fire hit right where he had been standing, and then Ephraim and the others continued moving back. That wounded man would go on to be killed by Isis. Only a few moments after Ephraim was back behind the relative safety of the tank, he suddenly fell to the ground and felt a pain in his right leg.
He had been shot through the leg. but where he fell was right in line with where one of these tank treads were coming. But again, they can't talk to this tank, so they can't stop the tank from running him over. And so a surge of adrenaline came over Ephraim and he leapt up onto his feet and just continued hobbling behind the tank, despite this gaping hole in his leg.
Eventually, they made it all the way back to that intersection where they had started, but the only way they could get back down the alleyway to safety with the Iraqi army was to run across a small segment of the street. Basically, you needed to be exposed for just a second running across. But at this point, the smoke screen was gone.
ISIS knew exactly where they were and they were waiting for them to pop out from behind that tank. And so Ephraim and the other volunteers are screaming across this gap in the road towards the Iraqi army to get them to send an armored vehicle across this road, pick us up and bring us back across. We can't run across this gap without getting shot.
But because of the chaos and the noise, the tank is firing, there's mortars, there's rockets, there's gunfire, it's crazy. The message was just not received. And so in a sudden fit of madness and frustration and fear and all sorts of things, Ephraim just runs across the street. And he gets to the other side miraculously without being hit again.
And there he tells the Iraqi army, send an armored Humvee across this gap, get the girl, get the guy, get the rest of the volunteers, save them. Seconds later, an armored Humvee crossed that gap. They picked them up and brought them back. And at this point, Ephraim is now lying on the ground behind that concrete wall. So he's relatively safe and he's getting his leg bitched up.
And he remembers when the girl and the guy were brought out and they were safe and alive, the Iraqi army erupted in cheers. It was this unbelievably happy moment in an absolutely tragic, horrible time. The Iraqis would transport Ephraim in an armored ambulance to an aid station south of where this intersection was.
And there they would put him on a cot and a doctor would re-bandage his leg and then he would walk away. And so Ephraim has left inside of this room to kind of think about what had just happened. And he looked over to his left and just two beds over from him was the girl he had just nearly died saving. And she was sitting on her cot. She wasn't looking at him. She was looking straight ahead.
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