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Conversations with a Vet Rob Harrison - Air Force Veteran · Military Broadcast Radio | MBR Talk

• 1:07
  Well, hello everybody. Welcome to Conversations with
• 1:10
  Yvette. My name is Carol Lee and I am
• 1:13
  your host tonight. I have a great guest who's
• 1:16
  waiting in the wings. Before we get to him, I wanted
• 1:20
  to talk about a couple of books. I know I've brought it up for
• 1:24
  the last couple of weeks, but if you haven't already checked
• 1:27
  these out, you can go out and find these at some of your
• 1:30
  favorite locations where you buy books.
• 1:33
  These are all from these both are from veterans who were
• 1:37
  guests on the channel. And so we're also going to be
• 1:41
  doing a giveaway of this first one when we hit the next
• 1:44
  milestone. So we have Unshaken Resolve
• 1:47
  that's by Michael Alexander Payne, great read.
• 1:50
  And you can go out to michaelapayne.com and you can
• 1:55
  get his book from there. You we also have Tim Thomas, he
• 2:00
  is from Australia, also a veteran and he has written fight
• 2:04
  Flight and Feel and that can be found again at Walmart.
• 2:09
  I mean it could be found Amazon wherever you get your reads.
• 2:14
  So go check them out and help support a veteran.
• 2:18
  So I want to say thank you for everybody showing up tonight.
• 2:22
  And then for those of you who haven't been here before, feel
• 2:27
  free to jump into the chats and put questions in there.
• 2:31
  We'll save those for the end of the show.
• 2:34
  And then comments, etcetera. Feel free to talk amongst
• 2:38
  yourselves, comment, etcetera. So without further ado, please
• 2:42
  help me welcome Rob Harrison. Hello and good evening.
• 2:50
  Hey, Carol Lee, thank you so much for having me.
• 2:52
  I appreciate it, ma'am. Oh, I'm happy to do it and thank
• 2:55
  you so very much for agreeing to come on and tell your story.
• 2:59
  Is your weekend going OK? What's left of it?
• 3:02
  It it's been pretty busy. One of the topics that we'll get
• 3:06
  to kind of erupted a little bit at the tail end of last this
• 3:11
  past week on the Air Force's birthday and and another
• 3:14
  installment of the saga dropped on podcasts earlier this
• 3:18
  morning. So hot, hot off the press.
• 3:22
  I'm, I'm in that that family life balance, trying to make
• 3:26
  sure that I don't get too consumed by the drama and, and
• 3:29
  can continue to love and appreciate the family on the
• 3:32
  weekends when we want to, you know.
• 3:35
  Yeah, and that is a struggle to be able to keep that balance.
• 3:39
  And sometimes, yeah, you really got to make a full conscious
• 3:43
  effort. So.
• 3:45
  Well, thank you and thank you and thank your wife also for
• 3:49
  allowing us to allowing me to take time away from from them
• 3:53
  and your family. So without further ado, I like
• 3:57
  to start off asking my guests to tell me a little bit about who
• 4:01
  you were as a child. The child.
• 4:05
  All right, we're going. Back.
• 4:08
  Way back. All right, so I, I turned 50 not
• 4:14
  too long ago. So thinking back in the, in the
• 4:17
  childhood arena, I'm a, a 94 graduate from high school.
• 4:22
  As a child, I think the, the memories I have are, you know,
• 4:28
  my, my mom and my dad sports, that sort of thing.
• 4:34
  We were pretty close family. I'm an only child when, when I
• 4:38
  was growing up, everything was, you know, competition, sports,
• 4:43
  work hard, play hard type of deal.
• 4:46
  You, we were raised to know the difference between right and
• 4:49
  wrong. Had had family members that had
• 4:53
  that had previously served in the military, had always
• 4:56
  considered that as a potential option in childhood coming into
• 5:01
  into high school and so forth. I was a good student.
• 5:04
  I was a a pretty decent athlete. Not as competitive as I would
• 5:09
  have liked to have been, I think.
• 5:11
  I think my my fire in the belly exceeded my my physical
• 5:15
  attributes at times. What?
• 5:17
  Sports Did you like to play? Baseball and soccer were mine.
• 5:21
  And baseball? What position did you play?
• 5:24
  I was primarily an outfielder, but a little bit of pitching and
• 5:27
  a little bit of first base. I'm, I'm left-handed.
• 5:29
  I just wouldn't necessarily, you know, the, the strapping 6
• 5:33
  footer that you would tend to have the large target over
• 5:36
  there. You know, I took some, some
• 5:39
  scars along the way. I remember, I remember in, in my
• 5:44
  14 year old baseball season, I played on one of the best teams
• 5:49
  that I've ever played on. And, and, and all of my
• 5:51
  childhood friends were there. One of my, one of my buddies
• 5:54
  dads was our coach. We were sponsored by, by a local
• 5:58
  eatery that was on our, our reservoir.
• 6:00
  I grew up in a small town outside of Jackson, Ms. And so
• 6:05
  we, we went undefeated 14 and O that season.
• 6:08
  I got to play first base and, and somewhere along the way we
• 6:13
  were doing a practice and, and my buddy Chris Goolsbee was on
• 6:17
  the mound and I was on first base taking pick off plays.
• 6:21
  And the coach stops. Everybody says, all right, heads
• 6:24
  up, everybody listen up. I want your attention.
• 6:26
  And he's telling us something. So I I take my eyes off of
• 6:29
  Chris. I look at the coach down the
• 6:31
  first baseline. I had kind of have my hands on
• 6:33
  my knees and next thing you know, everybody hollers heads up
• 6:38
  at me as Chris had just stepped off the mound, turned and threw
• 6:43
  a perfect strike right at my head 'cause he was continuing
• 6:47
  the pick off play practice. I I had a brand new San
• 6:51
  Francisco Giants hat on. The hat got knocked off, got got
• 6:56
  knocked loose. When the ball hit me, I could
• 6:58
  count the seams as the ball was rotating right before it hit me
• 7:01
  in the forehead. I tossed my hat aside and said
• 7:04
  don't get blood on my hat. Just as I've kind of fell
• 7:06
  backwards, so little bit of concussion, about 20 stitches
• 7:10
  later, maybe a brief heart attack for my Mama in a 90 mile
• 7:15
  an hour road trip to the local hospital, I was I was back up in
• 7:18
  action before the season was over.
• 7:20
  You know, it's interesting that you say that.
• 7:22
  So I was out now, I was probably 19, I guess, and I was out
• 7:28
  playing with some some kids and some adults.
• 7:31
  And we were just playing and one of the adults originally had
• 7:36
  gotten signed by my Major League but ended up hurting his
• 7:40
  shoulder or something. So, you know, he didn't go, but
• 7:45
  so he was out there and he hit. I was in the outfield and I was
• 7:48
  hollering at one of the kids. You need to pay attention.
• 7:51
  And he hit that ball 90 mile an hour and right here.
• 7:56
  And I had the stitch marks on my forehead, spun me around.
• 8:00
  I dropped to the ground and of course they're coming over and
• 8:03
  going, how many fingers do you see?
• 8:05
  And I'm like, get away from me. No blood, no nothing.
• 8:08
  Get up next couple of days. I mean, I continue to play next
• 8:11
  couple of days like around the base of my eyes and around my
• 8:14
  nose, black and blue. Didn't think anything of it.
• 8:18
  You know, it didn't really hurt even, I mean my headache and I
• 8:22
  could still see that the scarring or that, you know, the
• 8:25
  indentation marks from the, the baseball.
• 8:28
  But and then like 3 years later, I just remember going, I really
• 8:32
  got to go in because I've got this cold I cannot kick.
• 8:36
  And turned out I had broken my nose and had no clue.
• 8:41
  And the doctor, he was an ENT and he looks in my ears.
• 8:44
  He looks up my nose. He goes, when did you break your
• 8:45
  nose? I was like, I never broke my
• 8:47
  nose. He's like ever been black or
• 8:48
  blue around the eyes of the nose.
• 8:50
  I was like, yeah, like 3 years ago.
• 8:51
  And he's like, yeah, you broke your nose and it's really bad.
• 8:55
  We need to do surgery like right away.
• 8:58
  Oh no. That was the worst surgery I've
• 9:00
  ever had. Ever.
• 9:03
  I've had it deviated septum. Yeah, I it was, it was really
• 9:08
  bad. But while he was in there, he
• 9:10
  also, I think he let's see, I I don't know what else he did.
• 9:13
  Might have done taken out some adenoids or something.
• 9:17
  I don't know. No clue.
• 9:18
  Great guy though. I will never forget that.
• 9:21
  So sorry. I, you know, just some
• 9:24
  similarities there. And so, OK, so you get through
• 9:29
  high school and what is it then specifically that you said, OK,
• 9:34
  I have made-up my mind. I'm going to go join the
• 9:37
  military. So through high school I did.
• 9:44
  I ended up doing things like youth legislature, mock trial,
• 9:49
  speech and forensics type stuff. Oh, OK.
• 9:52
  I thought I was going to follow my uncle's footsteps.
• 9:55
  He was an attorney and and I was thinking along the lines of
• 10:00
  rather than taking on huge, you know, college debts, I was going
• 10:04
  to take my my academic, you know, scholarship opportunities
• 10:08
  to local junior college, knockout all my general
• 10:10
  education requirements. And then I thought I was going
• 10:13
  to transfer to one of our bigger universities.
• 10:16
  I was eyeballing Ole Miss. I was thinking of doing a two
• 10:19
  year Air Force ROTC program and trying to, to Commission into
• 10:23
  the Air Force that way and perhaps become a Jag officer.
• 10:28
  So when, when I started doing my general education in the, the
• 10:34
  local junior college, I wanted the college experience And we
• 10:37
  had one that, you know, I could, I could basically go in
• 10:40
  residence on the, on the other side of town.
• 10:42
  I was about 45 minutes away from, from my home and, and boy,
• 10:47
  oh boy, did that taste of freedom taste good.
• 10:51
  Unfortunately, it tasted so good that I didn't read the fine
• 10:55
  print on my, on my academic scholarship.
• 10:58
  And I had AGPA requirement for every semester, not just the
• 11:02
  academic school year. So I had a plan and it didn't
• 11:07
  involve reading the fine print. I thought I was going to, I
• 11:10
  thought I was going to go and, and have fun that very first
• 11:14
  semester. And then I was always, always
• 11:17
  capable of pulling a four point O.
• 11:19
  So I figured, well, if I do a 2O in the first semester and have
• 11:23
  fun and I get a four O in the second semester, when I buckle
• 11:26
  down, I'll hit my minimum GPA requirement.
• 11:29
  Then I got the, we regret to inform you, Mr. Harrison, in the
• 11:32
  fine print, the GPA requirements are every semester.
• 11:36
  So I worked out a deal with my grandmother, did a did a lot of
• 11:41
  work around her house painting and and so forth.
• 11:44
  Fortunately, my my junior college tuition for the the
• 11:47
  second semester of that first academic freshman year was a
• 11:51
  very expensive. So I earned my way through
• 11:55
  through that. But my dad wasn't as pleased
• 12:00
  with my performance as I thought that I had turned around for
• 12:03
  him. And so he and I end up having to
• 12:05
  come to Jesus. And he's like, I think it's time
• 12:08
  for you to figure out what you're going to do with your
• 12:10
  life. And and that ended up with a
• 12:14
  like, yes, Sir. And a quiet moment.
• 12:16
  I go up to my room. I'm thinking on it for the
• 12:18
  better part of the day. And I come down and I was like,
• 12:21
  I've got it. And he said, well, would you
• 12:23
  decide? Said I'm going to go see the Air
• 12:26
  Force recruiter this week. And he's like, I think that's a
• 12:28
  good idea. So he was all for it.
• 12:32
  Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
• 12:33
  My, my family always pro military.
• 12:37
  Now, I'll caveat that with my dad.
• 12:40
  So I just turned 50. He was born in 50.
• 12:44
  So he was a Vietnam generation. Fortunately for him and my
• 12:50
  uncle, they both have really high lottery numbers.
• 12:52
  So they did not end up getting drafted, but they all had, you
• 12:57
  know, their plans of, you know, what they were going to do
• 13:01
  should, should that event happen, You know, how would
• 13:04
  they, how would they overcome, you know, a potential draft and,
• 13:09
  and getting, getting shipped to the less desirable frontline of
• 13:16
  Vietnam. You know, there, there were
• 13:19
  helicopter pilot opportunities that my dad was exploring and
• 13:22
  and so forth. There were there were a number
• 13:23
  of varieties that he could do, but he he tells a story.
• 13:28
  He's like, yeah, I think the life expectancy of a of a newly
• 13:33
  commissioned either Warrant Officer or second Lieutenant
• 13:36
  flying helicopters in Vietnam. It it was pretty short.
• 13:39
  So he said maybe that's not a good idea and set back on the on
• 13:44
  the high lottery number. So that immediate generation
• 13:47
  skipped, skipped military service.
• 13:50
  But but my grandfathers and great uncles and and that sort
• 13:53
  of thing, everybody served. Nice.
• 13:56
  And your mom was was what was her thought?
• 14:00
  Because I know as a mom with military children, I mean,
• 14:06
  outwardly we show nothing but pride and we stand behind.
• 14:11
  Inwardly, we're a wreck. So you you're from Tennessee.
• 14:17
  Is that is that where you were born and raised?
• 14:19
  No, I was born and raised in Nevada.
• 14:22
  Well, I was raised in Nevada. OK, all right, well, you've been
• 14:27
  in Tennessee at least long enough to to understand you how
• 14:32
  Southern moms might there might be stoic at times, but there's
• 14:37
  that little bit of a of a lip quiver when there, when there's
• 14:40
  a little fear involved, especially when it's your baby
• 14:42
  boy. So she kept a straight face.
• 14:45
  She she held her composure pretty well.
• 14:47
  But but I would say that Mama was probably a nervous wreck.
• 14:53
  Goodness. All right, so tell me you get to
• 14:57
  the base for your basic training.
• 15:03
  Yep, in San Antonio, TX there's a place called Lackland Air
• 15:07
  Force Base and that is that's where Air Force basic military
• 15:11
  training takes place. All right, What was it like
• 15:14
  initially? The minute you get there, what's
• 15:16
  going through your head? I arrived on Halloween evening,
• 15:22
  that period of darkness between the 31st Hallows Eve and the 1st
• 15:26
  of November and we got off the bus from the from the airport
• 15:31
  and it was immediately the pick them up, put them down drill
• 15:34
  where the drill sergeants meet you at the bus and are yelling
• 15:37
  at you and it's a it's a quick call it fire hose into
• 15:43
  assimilation. They are immediately
• 15:46
  conditioning you to follow their instructions.
• 15:50
  Yeah, yeah. Were you thinking, Oh my gosh,
• 15:53
  what did I do? No, like I, I handled basic
• 15:58
  pretty well. It like I, I understood the, the
• 16:02
  game. I understood the, the idea of
• 16:04
  the, the breakdown and, you know, building up of a team
• 16:07
  unit. You know, as a kid, I grew up
• 16:10
  watching discovery wings channel again, I had I had family
• 16:15
  members that had served. I I did rather well in basic
• 16:18
  training and it I was, I think I was I was 1 little oops away
• 16:23
  from being an honor graduate when we were coming out of there
• 16:27
  ATI the the the bad boy T is where the blue ropes in the Air
• 16:33
  Force and they're the inspector qualified basic military
• 16:39
  training instructors and one of the inspector senior master
• 16:42
  sergeants. He had a, a, you know, sleeve
• 16:45
  chock full of stripes. You know, he was he was one away
• 16:48
  from the the top enlisted rank. And he caught me in the
• 16:53
  stairwell, taking him two at a time, hustling back up to my
• 16:55
  dorm from running a quick errand.
• 16:58
  And I did not have my hand on the handrail.
• 17:00
  And that resulted in, you know, something as simple as what we
• 17:04
  we call these little forms, 340 ones.
• 17:07
  He said give me a 341. And so I had to give it to him.
• 17:10
  And then, you know, safety violation not didn't have my
• 17:14
  hand on the handrail. I mean, it's, it's silly stuff.
• 17:17
  But those are the, those are the types of things, at least back
• 17:21
  then that that would be part of conditioning and helping,
• 17:25
  helping people what we would call attention to detail.
• 17:28
  You know, just sweat the small things because they matter when
• 17:31
  you're in military. Service, yeah, for sure.
• 17:35
  And for you, what was it like going through all of the drills
• 17:41
  that you went through? Had you been around firearms
• 17:48
  growing up? Things of that nature?
• 17:50
  Yes, so shooting wasn't a problem.
• 17:54
  I had done that with recreationally with family.
• 17:57
  My dad kind of, he got out of hunting before I really got old
• 18:02
  enough to get into it. But the basics of, you know,
• 18:05
  firearm safety and marksmanship and stuff, I, I understood and,
• 18:09
  you know, I got to do stuff like that and, and, you know, summer
• 18:14
  camp, you know, scout camp, that sort of deal as I was growing
• 18:17
  up. So none of that was extremely
• 18:20
  foreign. One basic training event really
• 18:23
  stuck out and it, it's actually what determined what my job was
• 18:26
  going to be. And there's a week where they,
• 18:30
  they do the, the handing out of the job assignments based on
• 18:33
  what your aptitude and, you know, if you signed into the
• 18:36
  military based on a specific career field contract, that sort
• 18:39
  of thing. I wanted to fly.
• 18:42
  And when I was working with my recruiter, there weren't any
• 18:44
  slots to to be become aircrew. They were limited.
• 18:49
  I knew that if I wanted to serve in the Air Force, I wanted to be
• 18:52
  on an airplane and do what the Air Force does.
• 18:55
  Yeah, fly, fight and win. And so I, I went in open
• 18:59
  electronics. I was like, well, if I can't, if
• 19:01
  I can't do, you know, like become a flight engineer, for
• 19:04
  example. If I can't do that at this
• 19:07
  point, I'll learn the avionics side and at least I'll have you
• 19:10
  know, something that is immediately transferable
• 19:12
  depending on whether or not I stay for a little while or I
• 19:15
  make a full career out of it. I didn't know.
• 19:18
  So I go in open electronics, they hand out the jobs and damn
• 19:22
  if I didn't get pardon me, I got missile maintenance and, and I
• 19:27
  knew that missile maintenance meant the outskirts of the US in
• 19:33
  this bottom of a silo, because we were talking about missile
• 19:36
  maintenance for intercontinental ballistic missiles.
• 19:39
  And, and I said, oh, that's, that's not like it's a very
• 19:44
  important thing. Don't get me wrong.
• 19:46
  So no, no Ding on, on my missile maintenance guys out there.
• 19:50
  But that was not the job that I was looking forward to.
• 19:53
  I wanted to go and fly. I did not want to be, you know,
• 19:56
  in an underground, you know, silent.
• 19:58
  And so this is that moment in in basic training, they always tell
• 20:02
  you like, don't raise your hand, don't volunteer.
• 20:05
  I raised my hand at this moment and I was AI took all these
• 20:08
  aptitude tests and my recruiter said that I could be a linguist
• 20:13
  and it was like somebody knocked the the needle across the record
• 20:16
  player in there. All the sudden one of the the TI
• 20:20
  says anybody else take the defense language aptitude
• 20:25
  battery and be told that they scored high enough to become a
• 20:28
  linguist. And a buddy of mine in my
• 20:31
  flight, he, he saw what I was doing and he raised his hand.
• 20:35
  The next thing you know, a side door opened up.
• 20:38
  An in service recruiter came, came into the room, pulled us
• 20:41
  out. So we had a couple of hour grace
• 20:44
  relief from the conditions that were basic military training.
• 20:48
  He took us down the hallway, gave us a coke and a smile.
• 20:50
  And we signed a new contract and became airborne cryptologic
• 20:53
  linguists. Wow, now that's pretty brave
• 20:57
  though, when you think about it. I mean, to be outspoken, you
• 21:03
  know, a lot of times they're, you know, unless the questions
• 21:05
  asked, they expect you to just stand there and do whatever they
• 21:09
  say. Yes.
• 21:11
  So that is really, really brave. I tell you, you know, you, you
• 21:15
  don't do it in a reckless manner, but if you're read, if
• 21:18
  you're reading a room, there's a time and a place to be able to
• 21:22
  open your mouth the right way in the military.
• 21:24
  And I, I got another story that I'll tell you as as we get
• 21:27
  through this. Yeah, perfect.
• 21:31
  What was it like then for your graduation?
• 21:33
  Where was your family able to come?
• 21:35
  No, my, my family, it wasn't that they weren't supportive.
• 21:40
  They were like, well, he's just graduating basic.
• 21:43
  He's only been gone 6 to 8 weeks or back then it was six weeks.
• 21:46
  Now it's, it's 8 weeks. He's only, he's only been gone
• 21:51
  six weeks and he's going to have a bigger milestone ahead of him.
• 21:54
  We'll wait and go see, you know, a bigger event.
• 21:57
  And, and so that's what what they ended up doing.
• 22:00
  That's fair, That's fair. Sure.
• 22:03
  So you said you had a secondary story.
• 22:07
  I, I do, it has to do like it's, it's probably a watershed moment
• 22:13
  in my career. But depending on where you,
• 22:16
  where you want to go, it's about 5 years into my career.
• 22:20
  So, OK, depending on how you want to proceed with your line
• 22:24
  of questioning, ma'am, I can either skip forward or we can
• 22:27
  work our way to it. Let's work our way right to it.
• 22:30
  So when you graduate, where do you go?
• 22:35
  I went to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA and it
• 22:40
  was not a hardship tour. Is this was this your first time
• 22:46
  being in California? Yes, ma'am.
• 22:48
  And the difference between the South and California, what did
• 22:52
  you think of that? Huge.
• 22:55
  Yeah. The so I the when I flew to
• 23:02
  basic training, it was the first time I've been on a commercial
• 23:05
  airliner. I had flown on, on small like
• 23:08
  Cessnas and like small planes and stuff like that, but I'd
• 23:11
  never flown on a commercial airliner.
• 23:14
  I went out to, to California and yeah, that was, that was
• 23:17
  different for sure. I the very first morning that I
• 23:23
  woke up, I got woken up by the seals in in the harbor there in
• 23:29
  Monterey Bay. We're not talking.
• 23:33
  Yeah, I was going to say just for.
• 23:35
  Our. Vacation.
• 23:35
  We are not talking military seals.
• 23:37
  We are talking about the the the animals, yes.
• 23:40
  Yes, yeah. No, but that's that's all.
• 23:44
  Yeah, they are allowed to and you go through this is
• 23:50
  additional training here. Yeah, So this is the first, the
• 23:55
  first stop in my tech school. And when you go through foreign
• 24:00
  language training as a military member, it doesn't matter what
• 24:03
  service you're in. If you're Army, Navy, Air Force,
• 24:05
  Marine, you go to DLI Defense Language Institute of Monterey,
• 24:10
  California, and all the all the languages that that we might
• 24:14
  need our military members to to be familiar with or taught out
• 24:18
  there. You go to school five days a
• 24:20
  week, 8 hours a day with native instructors and it is literally,
• 24:23
  you know, trial by fire within the first two weeks.
• 24:28
  You've got a vocabulary. You went from like 0 to 200.
• 24:32
  And I don't think that they spoke outside of the target
• 24:36
  language past the first week. Wow.
• 24:41
  Yeah, but how many languages did you end up learning?
• 24:45
  I I studied Farsi for this one, Persian Farsi, the the spoken
• 24:49
  language of Iran. It you when you when you learn
• 24:54
  it that that course is a little over a year again native
• 24:58
  instructors you become absolutely fluent by the time
• 25:02
  you're you're done consider yourself like a high school
• 25:05
  educated fluency is about what the target is when you when you
• 25:08
  come out of a year long intensive language school.
• 25:12
  Fast forward several years, we had already been well
• 25:16
  established into the global War on Terror and I re language into
• 25:20
  Somali and, and that I went from probably one of the prettier
• 25:25
  foreign languages and one of the the prettier cultures.
• 25:29
  When you think about Persian culture, not talking about, you
• 25:32
  know, like the mullahs or any of the geopolitical stuff that we
• 25:35
  deal with over in the country of Iran today, but Persian people,
• 25:39
  if you've ever been introduced to their culture, like it's
• 25:43
  amazing and the the language is beautiful.
• 25:45
  The people are wonderful, but you know, unfortunately, the the
• 25:49
  religious zealots that that run the country over there, that's a
• 25:51
  little different story and and why we need military members
• 25:54
  that can speak Persian, Farsi. So Somali on the other hand,
• 26:01
  man, that place is like the armpit of the world.
• 26:05
  It is probably the ugliest language I have ever heard
• 26:08
  spoken. It wasn't.
• 26:11
  It actually wasn't even a written language until after
• 26:15
  World War 2. I, I, I want to say it was like
• 26:18
  early 70s, there was a group of international scholars that came
• 26:22
  together to to actually capture the Somali language and
• 26:26
  establish a dictionary and turn it into a written language.
• 26:30
  Before that it was purely spoken.
• 26:33
  Interesting. Yeah, that's crazy.
• 26:37
  All right, when you get through your schooling, where do you go
• 26:41
  from there? From there, you leave Monterey
• 26:45
  and the Air Force, since they're people, to Goodfellow Air Force
• 26:49
  Base in San Angelo, TX, and that's where you learn how to
• 26:53
  apply your foreign language to your intelligence career field.
• 26:58
  In other words, you're learning Intel analysis.
• 27:02
  OK. And was there ever a time that
• 27:04
  you you struggled, things didn't make sense, or did it all just
• 27:08
  flow really well for you? Language school, like let's,
• 27:14
  like my dad, he, he was a crew chief for Top Fuel dragsters in
• 27:20
  the early 70s. He's a, you know, like gearhead.
• 27:23
  He builds stuff. He, he does things, he's not
• 27:28
  what you would consider the, the arts and humanities type that
• 27:31
  you find in studying foreign language.
• 27:35
  I was a fish out of water in that career field.
• 27:38
  Yeah, even though I, I did things like, you know, the
• 27:41
  debate and forensics and speaking and all that kind of
• 27:44
  stuff. Like I was more geared towards
• 27:47
  technical electronics, you know, doing things, you know, working
• 27:52
  through problems, building stuff.
• 27:54
  So was there a struggle? Yeah, probably just because my
• 27:57
  passion wasn't in the language. But.
• 28:00
  But once I had learned a baseline of the foreign
• 28:04
  language, the passion built when I got to Goodfellow in the Intel
• 28:09
  school, because now I knew what I was doing was applying the
• 28:12
  language to the understanding of military day-to-day operations.
• 28:16
  And so the fact that I understood, you know, like, what
• 28:20
  are tanks, what are planes, what are, you know, planes, trains,
• 28:23
  automobiles, like I understood, you know, like the operational
• 28:26
  aspect of the military. Therefore applying the, the
• 28:29
  foreign language to it became second nature.
• 28:31
  I did really, really well in that school.
• 28:33
  Ended up with, you know, top honors, got the commandants
• 28:37
  award for the highest grade and and so forth.
• 28:40
  Nice, very nice. And at that point, what's the
• 28:44
  next phase for you? From there we go to survival
• 28:48
  school and that's where me and my buddy we, we made-up a little
• 28:52
  song about we were going to survival school.
• 28:56
  We were going to get a flight suit and a leather bomber
• 28:58
  jacket. We were, I mean, we were jet
• 29:00
  set. We were hot to trot.
• 29:02
  Like we were looking forward to that.
• 29:04
  We got to survival school though, and that's not a walk in
• 29:08
  the park. That's that's interesting
• 29:10
  training. You get to, you know, figure out
• 29:13
  how to live off the land and then how to conduct yourself if
• 29:18
  let's just suffice it to say you are trained in the event things
• 29:21
  go wrong in the combat zone. That is part of the training
• 29:25
  when you get to survival school. So it is how that you can
• 29:28
  survive in captivity and then repatriate with honor and
• 29:33
  continue to fight and serve the country.
• 29:36
  So tough, tough school for people to go through any level
• 29:40
  of, of survival school is, is something of significance.
• 29:44
  And then from there, I went to Omaha, NE for my first duty
• 29:47
  station at off at Air Force Base.
• 29:49
  Wow. So All in all, your training was
• 29:52
  how long from graduation until you went there?
• 29:56
  Entered. I entered basic on the 1st of
• 30:00
  November in 95 and I got to Omaha May June time period of
• 30:07
  1997, so just shy of two years. So stands to reason you've got
• 30:13
  quite a lot of training under your belt at this point.
• 30:16
  Our our pipeline for airborne cryptologic language analysts
• 30:21
  since they're known today is second in length and expense on
• 30:27
  the enlisted career fields only to that of special tactics.
• 30:30
  Wow, that's impressive. And tell me about your time
• 30:34
  there. Off it was was cool because it's
• 30:38
  it's cold there. It I got introduced to snow.
• 30:43
  One of my roommates was from from outside of Green Bay, WI
• 30:48
  and it it didn't dawn on me until about a year and a half
• 30:51
  into our friendship what he was doing.
• 30:53
  But he conveniently took all the deployments in the winter time
• 30:58
  that took him to the desert. And I was on an opposite
• 31:03
  schedule. We were roommates, so we were
• 31:04
  ghosting each other as roommates.
• 31:07
  So I was having to take care of the house in the winter time and
• 31:10
  learning to shovel snow. He grew up shoveling snow.
• 31:13
  He knew better and he was going to the desert and avoiding it.
• 31:17
  So so I got to, I got to learn some of those basics while I was
• 31:20
  there. But my tour in, in Omaha, we, we
• 31:26
  flew with the, all the variations of the RC 135.
• 31:30
  It's the, there's three different platforms that we fly
• 31:33
  out there. It's called the Rivet Joint, the
• 31:34
  Cobra Ball and the combat scent. And I, I competed amongst my
• 31:39
  peers to hit the very first deployment that was going to be
• 31:42
  a combat scent rotation going to the Middle East.
• 31:46
  We were basing out of, out of Saudi Arabia.
• 31:48
  And anyway, I studied hard. I got on that deployment, I got
• 31:52
  to, to fly a mission, you know, on my very first deployment, the
• 31:56
  very few of my career field I ever got to do so.
• 32:01
  I got to literally fly that mission in the gulf up and down
• 32:05
  the, the coastline of Iran and got tons and tons of target
• 32:10
  exposure. You know, learning, learning on
• 32:13
  the job, on the job training as you might call it during during
• 32:17
  that first week or two of the deployment, that kind.
• 32:21
  Of is that right? No, this is 1997.
• 32:25
  So we're we're on the tail end of Operation Southern Watch and
• 32:29
  Northern Watch. Jiwat hasn't happened.
• 32:34
  Operation Allied Force in Bosnia, Serbia hasn't happened.
• 32:38
  We're just, we're out there. The primary mission in that area
• 32:41
  is is patrolling the no fly zones that were established over
• 32:44
  Iraq when Saddam was still in power.
• 32:47
  Got it. Makes sense?
• 32:49
  So that deployment led to several deployments to the
• 32:53
  desert going back and forth. I did 10 different rotations in
• 32:56
  a in just a short amount of time.
• 32:59
  And then I was, I thought to myself as a it'd be nice to go
• 33:01
  somewhere else. And we had another platform
• 33:03
  called the Cobra Ball. So I tossed my hat in the ring
• 33:06
  to to go do that one to see if I could see some other site that
• 33:10
  wasn't the desert. Makes sense.
• 33:15
  It makes sense to me. And then obviously, do you get
• 33:19
  chosen. Yeah, I got got a chance to to
• 33:23
  enter that program, got qualified on the Cobra Ball.
• 33:28
  Cobra Ball mission is monitoring, they do technical
• 33:34
  intelligence on, on inbound intercontinental ballistic
• 33:39
  missiles. So when we fly that that
• 33:41
  aircraft we're we're typically doing it for what we call treaty
• 33:45
  verification. So if you think of, you know,
• 33:48
  nuclear non proliferation or what was called the START
• 33:51
  treaties, you would fly and monitor whenever Russia was
• 33:56
  doing a missile shoot and make sure that everybody was
• 33:58
  operating in accordance with the treaties in the agreements.
• 34:02
  Wow, that's that's a lot of responsibility.
• 34:05
  It was pretty neat. We would there was a, there was
• 34:08
  a trip where I went out, I went out via Alaska.
• 34:11
  We flew missions against Russia, got got retasked in the middle
• 34:17
  of that. That rotation ended up in a tiny
• 34:20
  little island in the Indian Ocean called Diego Garcia.
• 34:24
  And that was when India and Pakistan where they were going
• 34:28
  through their own nuclear, you know, power.
• 34:31
  They were in their own, their own version of a Cold War at
• 34:35
  that point, little arms race. And then by the time I came back
• 34:40
  from that trip, I came back via the East Coast.
• 34:42
  So I went on one trip. I actually circumnavigated the
• 34:45
  globe. Wow, not a lot of people can say
• 34:49
  that. Right, I thought it was pretty
• 34:51
  neat. Yeah, yeah.
• 34:54
  All right. And then what's the next thing
• 34:57
  that happens for you at that point?
• 35:00
  At that point, I'm going on 3 1/2 years on station in in
• 35:05
  Omaha, probably close to five years in service at this point.
• 35:11
  There is a opportunity once you have hit a career milestone back
• 35:16
  then, if you, if you had a minimum rank and a minimum
• 35:21
  number of flying hours in this career field, you could
• 35:24
  volunteer to be assessed to go and work for Air Force Special
• 35:28
  Operations. So I had, I had just met my, my
• 35:34
  now wife and I told her, I said, I know we just met, but I have
• 35:40
  my eyes on this place down in Florida.
• 35:42
  It's called Herbert Field. We used to vacation down there
• 35:45
  when I was a family and I remember driving down Hwy. 98 in
• 35:49
  the Panhandle of Florida and seeing the sign that said the
• 35:52
  home of Air Force Special Operations.
• 35:54
  Well, on one of my very first, on that very first rotation for
• 35:59
  the RC130 fives. When I came back, I we did a
• 36:04
  stopover in Germany and while I was there, an AC130 gunship crew
• 36:09
  was staying at the aircrew building where we were.
• 36:13
  And I saw these guys in like these subdued patches.
• 36:16
  And I met this dude named James Patterson O'Brien.
• 36:19
  And, and he total, you know, Irish from, from Boston, you
• 36:25
  know, brothers, a cop, a firefighter and a priest type.
• 36:28
  I mean, he fit the stereotype, had the had the accent and he
• 36:33
  drops an expletive when I asked him what he flies and he puts a
• 36:36
  colorful adjective in front of gunships.
• 36:39
  And then I like my mouth kind of drops.
• 36:41
  I'm trying to trying to maintain my composure because I'm in awe.
• 36:45
  I think that's cool. And then my one of my trainers
• 36:48
  is like, you remember you were asking about that place and that
• 36:51
  other mission is that this is what they do and you can go and
• 36:54
  fly with them. And I'm like, holy cow.
• 36:56
  So that seed was planted. I'm making those connections.
• 36:59
  Seeing home of Air Force special operations as a kid when we
• 37:02
  would vacation down on the coast and and anyway, I charted my
• 37:07
  path, I went for assessment, I got picked and I got I got there
• 37:11
  in Florida and started doing that mission in December of 2000
• 37:15
  just before just before 9/11. Wow.
• 37:20
  And all right, you, you take that position and where does it
• 37:26
  lead you to? I, I get qualified on EU model
• 37:30
  gunship, we called it the spooky.
• 37:32
  It was the AC130U that was my first platform.
• 37:35
  I was qualified on it by that summer time after training and
• 37:39
  trying to figure that one out. And you know, the transition
• 37:42
  from the, from the, the intelligence surveillance
• 37:46
  reconnaissance bird that is the RC135 where you have an entire
• 37:49
  crew of Intel analysts that are aircrew in the back.
• 37:53
  You, you're never alone. Like you have a whole team
• 37:55
  around you when you go and do that mission for special
• 38:00
  operations, you are one deep. You're the you're the threat
• 38:03
  warning specialist for this mission set.
• 38:06
  And the whole reason why you're there is because that bird is
• 38:09
  potentially going into harm's way.
• 38:11
  And so it's an on board capability to do imminent threat
• 38:15
  warning and and we help increase the survivability of those
• 38:18
  platforms. So, so that was a a pretty eye
• 38:24
  opening experience because when you, you're like, you're flying
• 38:27
  with these aviators that are not the same as as what we did for,
• 38:31
  you know, Intel surveillance reconnaissance for us, we have a
• 38:35
  designated track. You take off and you go fly and
• 38:37
  you sit in orbit for a long time.
• 38:39
  And then eventually after multiple air refuelings, you get
• 38:41
  to come home when these special operations birds take off, they
• 38:47
  go and they do a mission, you know, of, of some sort and not
• 38:51
  to, not to, you know, belittle the, the ISR mission.
• 38:55
  It's just different. You know, it's, it's like blue
• 38:57
  collar versus white collar. You know, the, the soft guys are
• 39:01
  going to get their hands dirty. And and that was interesting and
• 39:04
  appealing to me. Wow.
• 39:07
  And tell me a little bit about how that goes for you.
• 39:13
  So when, when I was going through the training, I, I
• 39:18
  recognized that there was a group of people within the
• 39:21
  squadron that were highly respected and they had all just
• 39:24
  come back from this little fight over in Europe called Allied
• 39:28
  Force. And I latched on to to those
• 39:30
  guys. We had a couple of folks who
• 39:33
  were, who were seasoned and experienced in the Arabic
• 39:36
  language as well as the ones I just described were Serbo,
• 39:39
  Croatian or former Russian linguists.
• 39:42
  And so I just, I, I learned early on from my great uncle who
• 39:45
  had served in the Air Force, hey, find somebody that, that
• 39:49
  you are wanting to emulate and stick to their heels.
• 39:55
  And so that's what I did. I, I found those people that I
• 39:58
  wanted to live up to and they showed me the ropes and I
• 40:02
  ingratiated myself with their, their presence and whatever
• 40:05
  knowledge they would, you know, it was just make yourself a
• 40:08
  sponge, you know, don't, don't be annoying and show them that
• 40:11
  you're willing to learn and work.
• 40:13
  Which is the best way to go about it?
• 40:16
  Because yeah, once you're annoying, they don't want you
• 40:18
  around. OK.
• 40:22
  And what happens next? Next I I remember being
• 40:27
  scheduled to fly on September 11th, 2001, local daytime
• 40:32
  sortie, a young Intel officer named Eve.
• 40:36
  She was going to fly with me for an orientation ride.
• 40:39
  We go over to the four special operations squadron to to check
• 40:43
  in and the first tower has already been hit.
• 40:46
  The second one is struck. As we're like in between
• 40:49
  buildings and the operations officer, that squadron comes out
• 40:54
  and explains, hey, airspace is closed.
• 40:57
  All flights are cancelled. The only thing that's flowing
• 40:59
  out there are combat air patrols and, and I need you to go check
• 41:04
  back in with your respective command and probably go home and
• 41:08
  pack a bag because it's only going to be a few moments before
• 41:12
  we get called to action. And, and that was, couldn't have
• 41:16
  been more true. I I did go home and pack that
• 41:19
  night and within a couple of weeks we were planning
• 41:22
  operations to to deploy out of Robert Field and I ended up
• 41:26
  being on the on the second wave out for 9/11 with an Armada of
• 41:30
  AC130 gunships and MC130 combat talons.
• 41:35
  Wow. Wow.
• 41:38
  What was going through your mind at that point?
• 41:41
  So I told you before I was going to tell you a story about
• 41:45
  opening your mouth, and this is one that paid off.
• 41:48
  We were sitting in a room for planning and this, it was a good
• 41:54
  I grew to know the guy really well.
• 41:57
  Well, his name was Eric Cox. He was an, an older former
• 42:02
  Persian linguist. And we knew for this deployment
• 42:06
  we were going to take all of our Farsi folks and all of our, our,
• 42:09
  our Arabs based on what we assessed for that target over in
• 42:13
  Afghanistan, because Persian Farsi was close to Persian Dari.
• 42:16
  And then we had the Arab speakers and we knew that, you
• 42:19
  know, Al Qaeda was, was primarily probably going to be
• 42:21
  speaking Arabic. So we're setting it up that way
• 42:26
  with the plan. We'll, I'm most recent from that
• 42:30
  other mission set. So I'm, I'm like the, the newest
• 42:34
  guy in the unit, but the most recent having flown against an
• 42:38
  actual target. And so I'm not in the original
• 42:42
  plan. And, and they finished briefing
• 42:44
  the plan. And like any good OPS officer,
• 42:47
  Tim Sipowicz is sitting at the head of the table and he goes
• 42:50
  around the horn and he starts right by the door and happened
• 42:54
  to be sitting in the first seat. And he's like, any any comments,
• 42:58
  any points at Rob? And I said, yes, Sir, I've got a
• 43:02
  problem. He's like, my name's not on that
• 43:04
  list and I want on it. I think it's silly that you're
• 43:07
  going to deploy Eric, who hasn't touched this specific language
• 43:12
  in X number of years. I'm already qualified on the
• 43:15
  gunship. I've been working against his
• 43:17
  target set since the moment the the towers fell.
• 43:21
  I want it. And he stopped and he looked
• 43:25
  around and everybody said, well, he's not wrong.
• 43:28
  And I got a vote of confidence from the seniors that were in
• 43:32
  the room. And he said, OK, Cox is out,
• 43:35
  Harrison's in. And that literally.
• 43:37
  What did Eric say about that? So Eric, he was actually in the
• 43:42
  Pacific. So like this plan was to pull a
• 43:45
  guy who had had transitioned from Middle East language to a
• 43:48
  Pacific language. He was flying different aircraft
• 43:51
  variants than what we were going to task him to do.
• 43:54
  So 1, he was going to have to knock all the rest off of the
• 43:57
  the language. He was going to have to come
• 43:59
  back and get qualified on a platform that he wasn't
• 44:02
  qualified on. And I already was, and I was
• 44:04
  current and everything made sense.
• 44:06
  I don't think there was ever any bad blood in, in that.
• 44:10
  Eric knows the story. I've told it to him.
• 44:12
  But you know, like, it was a moment where I spoke up.
• 44:15
  I, I, I made my case. Others heard it, gave me a vote
• 44:20
  of confidence. And the boss put me in Wow.
• 44:24
  So you're on your way and and what is the progress that you're
• 44:31
  making over there? So we, we went out in, it was 6U
• 44:37
  model gunships, 6 combat talent twos.
• 44:39
  We're literally 12 C one 30s flying across the pond.
• 44:43
  So we're getting air refuelling between continental US and I
• 44:47
  think our first stopover was in lodges in Portugal.
• 44:51
  And then we eventually made our way through Rhoda, Spain and
• 44:54
  then down into the Middle East. That first deployment, we ended
• 44:58
  up in a place called Misira Oman.
• 45:01
  When I got there, I had fortunately some very senior
• 45:05
  guys that were with me that took me under the wing and showed me
• 45:08
  the ropes because this was the first time that I was really
• 45:11
  being directly involved in, in true special operations.
• 45:15
  And like, wow, like we did some amazing things.
• 45:20
  I, I got a chance based on language and and so forth.
• 45:23
  That senior guy, he put me on the very first AC 1:30 that flew
• 45:28
  into Afghanistan. We went in as a 2 ship, but he
• 45:32
  put himself on #2 and put me in the lead aircraft.
• 45:36
  And you know, we, we went feet dry into Afghanistan and I, I
• 45:41
  think my legs were shaken just a little bit.
• 45:44
  I can only imagine. I can only imagine.
• 45:46
  I mean, just the responsibility of being in that lead and to
• 45:50
  begin with, yeah. The after that first mission,
• 45:55
  we, we did a, a rather simple interdiction target.
• 46:00
  We went after a Garrison where we knew some, some weapons were
• 46:05
  being stored. So we went and struck those
• 46:08
  targets with the, with the gunships and our our cannons on
• 46:11
  board and then ended up flying home.
• 46:14
  It was rather uneventful, but it was a good first mission for the
• 46:17
  for the crews. We stood down the next night and
• 46:21
  we were preparing for what we called hit night and that's when
• 46:24
  we seized an airfield at what we we called objective Gecko and
• 46:31
  Rhino. Objective Gecko was Mullah
• 46:33
  Omar's palace in Kandahar and then objective Rhino was seizing
• 46:38
  the airfield that was South of of Kandahar.
• 46:42
  And that was essentially, again, I've already may overplay the
• 46:48
  term Armada, but all of our aircraft were involved.
• 46:52
  So we had a slew of fixed wing MC 130's, both combat Talons and
• 46:58
  combat Talon twos. So some of them were primarily
• 47:02
  refueling all the Rotary wing assets.
• 47:04
  The others were carrying all the Rangers that were going to seize
• 47:07
  the airfield. And I was on the gunships that
• 47:10
  were providing both cover to the airfield and doing the strike on
• 47:15
  Will Omar's Palace. We every if there was a a
• 47:19
  special operations capability and country.
• 47:22
  It was utilized this night and I got a chance to be part of one
• 47:25
  of the the biggest missions that we had done probably since
• 47:28
  Panama. Wow, that's amazing.
• 47:32
  And how long did that particular mission last?
• 47:38
  It was the one night my aircraft.
• 47:42
  I ended up having the airborne mission commander.
• 47:44
  His name was Pete Blaber. His name can come up in the and
• 47:47
  the Chapman saga, but we, we flew the the gecko piece over
• 47:55
  Mullah Omar and then after doing that part, we followed the
• 48:00
  Rotary wing assets and we covered the end of the airfield
• 48:04
  seizure. So my aircraft ended up getting
• 48:07
  extra refueling and we were airborne in excess of 12 hours
• 48:11
  and an AC130 that night. That's it.
• 48:14
  That's a long mission for a gunship.
• 48:17
  Yeah, that's, that's amazing. So let's let's jump ahead a
• 48:21
  little to your time where you're covering what's going on on the
• 48:27
  ground pertaining to a mission with some Navy Seals.
• 48:35
  Yeah. So we're fast forwarding now
• 48:38
  into the spring of 2002. I'm still on the same
• 48:41
  deployment. Everybody else that was flying
• 48:44
  aircrew had typically most everybody had been relieved.
• 48:48
  My relief, a buddy of mine named Phil had a knee injury playing
• 48:51
  basketball. So he tore his ACL and we were
• 48:55
  waiting on him to rehab so that he could then be, you know,
• 48:58
  medically qualified to deploy. So I ended up doing essentially
• 49:02
  a double rotation, kept me out and flying.
• 49:05
  I had transitioned from Masira up through Pakistan and ended up
• 49:09
  flying with the H model gunships called Spectre out of
• 49:14
  Karshikanabad, Uzbekistan. And so I had all my experience
• 49:18
  from working in the South at the very beginning.
• 49:21
  And then I went up there and was flying out of the north and in
• 49:25
  Anaconda. That was the spring of O2.
• 49:28
  That was the kick off what we called the spring offensive.
• 49:31
  So fighting slowed down because of the winter time in the
• 49:34
  mountains and the the weather. But come springtime, we were
• 49:38
  about to, to kick it off and, and really hit the enemy as hard
• 49:44
  as we could. So they, the enemy had hunkered
• 49:48
  down in in an area called the, the Shahikot Valley.
• 49:52
  It was known to us as their stronghold against the Russians
• 49:55
  back in the 80s. And so they were, they were
• 50:00
  pretty, pretty much creatures of habit.
• 50:02
  If, if, if it occurred against the Russians in the 80s.
• 50:06
  We were seeing similar things in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda and
• 50:11
  the Taliban when we were there. OK.
• 50:15
  That the Anaconda mission kicks off.
• 50:18
  What happens is you have a, a group of Seals that are forced
• 50:23
  into the Operation Anaconda schema maneuver where we had
• 50:28
  special reconnaissance teams that were that were put in place
• 50:32
  days in advance. They had already acclimated the
• 50:35
  and all this maneuver was run by Advanced Force Operations Delt
• 50:40
  Force Colonel by the name of Pete Blaber.
• 50:42
  And this particular SEAL team was SEAL Team Six.
• 50:46
  They were forward in in Bagram and they that group was supposed
• 50:51
  to cover the high value target mission.
• 50:53
  In other words, if on the battlefield, one of the big
• 50:56
  three targets, Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, you know, Zawahiri,
• 51:01
  those types of characters, if they showed up, these were the
• 51:04
  guys who were supposed to swoop in in the helicopters and take
• 51:07
  them off the battlefield. So they had a specific mission.
• 51:12
  Well, when Anaconda kicked off, everybody was like, man, we
• 51:15
  really think some of the big three are here and there.
• 51:18
  Everybody and their mother was trying to get into this fight to
• 51:21
  include this particular SEAL team.
• 51:23
  So again, they weren't part of the original plan.
• 51:26
  Their their SEAL leadership essentially, this is my
• 51:30
  assessment. There's an Air Force deputy
• 51:32
  commanding general named Trayvon and the SEAL leadership, the
• 51:37
  commander of SEAL Team 6 and his executive officer, Captain
• 51:40
  Kernan, and Commander Tim Zamanski, and they effectively
• 51:44
  twist the arm of that general. The general pulls rank on Pete
• 51:47
  Blaber and says they're coming. And so the Seals forced their
• 51:51
  way into the mission at the very last minute, right before
• 51:54
  everything's about to kick off and they don't have time to to
• 51:57
  infill and undercover of darkness slowly make their way
• 52:00
  to their area. Instead, they are forced, based
• 52:03
  on a compressed timeline, to infill right on top of the
• 52:06
  mountain that they hope to take up an Overwatch position.
• 52:10
  Unfortunately, the unfortunately the enemy already occupied it.
• 52:15
  Well, that's good planning, isn't it?
• 52:19
  Not so much. Not so much.
• 52:21
  Not so much. OK.
• 52:24
  And what happens? So they're they were supposed to
• 52:27
  be covered by a gunship. Murphy's Law takes over an
• 52:31
  airfield, comes under attack. The gunship that was going to
• 52:33
  cover them gets retasked. Their helicopters have a
• 52:36
  maintenance delay. They finally get well.
• 52:40
  Well, our aircraft is supposed to be the emergency on call,
• 52:43
  cast platform, close air support.
• 52:45
  We're scheduled for a tanker command and control doesn't want
• 52:48
  to break up the tanker schedule. So instead of re tasking us to
• 52:52
  cover that airfield that was being attacked or pick up the
• 52:55
  escort for the helicopters, they keep us on the tanker schedule.
• 52:59
  So we're in Pakistan airspace filling up with gas.
• 53:04
  The other gunship is handling the attack on a neighboring
• 53:07
  airfield and when you know it, the helicopters get fixed and
• 53:12
  the Seals go to insert without dedicated close air support.
• 53:17
  When they do the enemies there, they rock the aircraft with
• 53:21
  small arms and RPGs. Petty Officer Neil Roberts falls
• 53:24
  out of that helicopter on top of the landing zone.
• 53:27
  The aircraft is crippled. The aircrew does an amazing job.
• 53:30
  They limp it off 7 clicks north and crash land in the valley
• 53:34
  floor. Call sign Razor 03.
• 53:37
  It was MH47. Wow.
• 53:42
  That's nuts. When?
• 53:44
  When that happened, Chapman showed up on on a sitcom.
• 53:48
  Freak. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.
• 53:50
  Any grim, Any nail. This is Mako 30C.
• 53:53
  He's given us the mayday call, International distress, letting
• 53:57
  us know that something's wrong. We're on the tanker.
• 54:00
  We hear the call. As soon as he tells us what
• 54:03
  happened, we do an emergency separation with the tanker, slew
• 54:06
  the sensors to his location and make a beeline.
• 54:09
  And within 15 minutes, we're established in an orbit
• 54:12
  overhead. That's when he tells us about
• 54:14
  Roberts falling out and asked us to slide over to the top of the
• 54:18
  mountain and look for their teammate.
• 54:20
  And we see the strobe of Roberts and we see enemies surround him.
• 54:25
  And then ultimately, we don't know in real time for sure, but
• 54:29
  but Roberts is executed and he's drug up by a boulder and I think
• 54:34
  he was left at bait, left his bait knowing that the Americans
• 54:37
  would come back for their fallen.
• 54:39
  Oh, goodness gracious. And so this time, this whole
• 54:44
  time, what's happening on your ship, like you're seeing this
• 54:48
  happening in real time. We're seeing it.
• 54:52
  We're reporting it to to Mako through through John Chapman,
• 54:56
  Mako 30C. If you can see on my shirt,
• 55:01
  that's the call sign for John Chapman.
• 55:05
  That suffix means that he's the combat controller in the in the
• 55:08
  Mako 30 team. And so we're talking to him.
• 55:11
  We're talking to Pete Blaber as call sign Ultra 01.
• 55:14
  We're telling him what's going on.
• 55:16
  Their helicopter sister ship, Razor 04, is on the other side
• 55:20
  of their terrain mast on the other side of a mountain Ridge.
• 55:24
  And they can't talk to Razor 03. They don't know that Razor 03
• 55:27
  has crashed. So we're affecting the
• 55:30
  coordinated pickup rescue of all of that thanks to the hard work
• 55:33
  of John Chapman. Then that team gets picked up by
• 55:37
  04. They reconstituted a safe house
• 55:39
  in a town called Gardez, and they come back loaded for bear
• 55:43
  to to recover their fallen Petty Officer Roberts.
• 55:47
  OK. And to be clear, John Chapman is
• 55:49
  a Navy SEAL. John Chapman is an Air Force
• 55:53
  combat controller embedded. Alright, alright, I'm following.
• 55:57
  Yep. Got it embedded with the Navy
• 55:59
  Seals. That makes more sense in my head
• 56:02
  there. And an Air Force combat
• 56:03
  controller is think of a high speed air traffic controller,
• 56:09
  but they specialize in knowing all of the airborne platforms
• 56:12
  and the weapons that they can deliver.
• 56:14
  And so they deliver fire support from airborne platforms.
• 56:19
  They are literally the deadliest airmen on the battlefield.
• 56:23
  Oh wow. Like to say these guys are bad
• 56:26
  dudes, like in a very tough kind of way that their Air Force
• 56:31
  special operations, they have to assess to the combined standard
• 56:35
  of Army soft, Navy soft and Marine Corps soft.
• 56:39
  Because at any given time, our our Airmen, those special
• 56:42
  tactics airmen can get embedded with one of those teams.
• 56:46
  OK, So you see this happening and you're in communication with
• 56:53
  John Chapman and what all is he saying and and you know to you
• 57:02
  guys. They they're coordinating with,
• 57:06
  with Ultra 01 and our aircraft. We're talking, you know, at
• 57:11
  various points to a lot of different players, whether it be
• 57:13
  command and control the helicopters or Mako 30 the the
• 57:19
  team itself. They, they come up with a plan.
• 57:23
  They're supposed to we've got a spot identified on the mountain
• 57:26
  where it we think it's safe for them to land the helicopter.
• 57:29
  We want them to to get off the helicopter, establish radio
• 57:33
  comms with us and allow them with their eyes on the ground to
• 57:37
  walk us on the targets. And we would strike the targets
• 57:40
  with the the guns and cannons on the on the gunship.
• 57:44
  We would help them regain the high ground and recover.
• 57:46
  Roberts That was a great plan. Unfortunately, that's not what
• 57:52
  Slab the team leader executed. Instead, in his own 2002
• 57:56
  statements, which I've got I've got copies of this stuff.
• 58:01
  Slab he, he directed the pilots to go right back to where they
• 58:06
  had last seen Neil and they flew back to what we call the X,
• 58:10
  meaning they were going to land right back on the objective the
• 58:13
  same place that they got shot up the first time.
• 58:16
  So when when they came back in to to reinsert to recover
• 58:21
  Roberts, we were lazing a spot, they flew right through that
• 58:25
  spot and went to where they wanted to go.
• 58:28
  In other words, where Slab told them to.
• 58:30
  They deplaned and we were waiting with bated breath for
• 58:34
  them to come up and establish radio comms.
• 58:36
  The rules of engagement. We could not shoot from our
• 58:39
  aircraft until we had positive two way comms with the
• 58:41
  controller on the ground. So no matter like they wanted us
• 58:46
  to do pre assault fires, we would have loved to have done
• 58:49
  that and helped give them a better fighting chance.
• 58:52
  But we didn't know the status of Petty Officer Roberts.
• 58:55
  So with that like you don't want to go slinging rounds from a
• 58:59
  gunship into close proximity of a potential survivor.
• 59:02
  Now hindsight 2020, another unmanned platform with a sensor
• 59:07
  capability had seen what had happened and we weren't in
• 59:12
  direct comms with those folks, but there were people that
• 59:14
  understood that Roberts had already been executed at this
• 59:16
  point. So had we known that we would
• 59:19
  probably opened up with pre assault fires.
• 59:21
  But such is the fog of war. Right.
• 59:24
  Exactly. And what what ends up occurring
• 59:28
  with this the SEAL team going to the reestablishing back at the
• 59:35
  X? Yeah, the the team goes in
• 59:38
  slabs. The first one off he gave the.
• 59:41
  If I, I'm going to stop you there for a minute.
• 59:42
  So his name full name is. Britt Slabinski.
• 59:47
  Slabinski, Britt Sablinski, and you guys remember that name
• 59:50
  that's going to come up again. So Britt Slabinski was a team
• 59:54
  leader. He told everybody all eyes on me
• 59:57
  right here right now and gave the plan.
• 1:00:00
  Chab, Slab and Chappie were supposed to go together and the
• 1:00:04
  other guys were going to fan out in 2 two man fire teams.
• 1:00:09
  Slab had told Chappie take the high ground and establish radio
• 1:00:14
  comps. And so that's where that's where
• 1:00:18
  Chappie was going. So when they when they deplaned
• 1:00:21
  from the helicopter, Slab was the first one off and he
• 1:00:24
  misjudged the depth of the snow and he falls over into the snow
• 1:00:28
  because it's really deep. That put Chappie on point.
• 1:00:31
  Chappie leapfrogs him in the order and goes off and according
• 1:00:34
  to their plan, the exact direction that he was supposed
• 1:00:37
  to go. Well, the rest of the team forms
• 1:00:40
  up in what they call a wagon wheel.
• 1:00:42
  It's a just a small circle as they get their immediate
• 1:00:44
  bearings and they figure out what they're going to do in
• 1:00:48
  slabs on words. He he says to John.
• 1:00:51
  Hey John, what do you got? John says.
• 1:00:53
  I don't know. Just as he he says that the fire
• 1:00:58
  erupts from multiple directions. Chappie has no choice.
• 1:01:03
  It's a near ambush situation. He charges the first machine gun
• 1:01:06
  nest. We called it bunker One slab
• 1:01:10
  goes in trail behind him. The other two two man fire teams
• 1:01:14
  flank the positions and they try to assault up the hill so that
• 1:01:19
  they can recover Roberts. They end up in one heck of a
• 1:01:21
  firefight. Chappie takes out the the first
• 1:01:25
  threat, that is bunker one. He goes in and out of that
• 1:01:28
  bunker, comes out on the right side if you're looking up the
• 1:01:31
  slope. Slab follows him but never gets
• 1:01:34
  any closer than about 15 feet and he's directly behind him so
• 1:01:37
  he's not able to put fires in support of what Chappie's doing.
• 1:01:41
  So Chappie single handedly takes out this very first bunker.
• 1:01:45
  Then when they get up there, Slab goes to the left after
• 1:01:50
  firing confirmatory rounds into the enemy that were in that
• 1:01:53
  little bunker that's dugout, and he goes in between that bunker
• 1:01:56
  and the boulder where Neil Roberts is propped up and and
• 1:02:00
  Chappie is on the right hand side.
• 1:02:02
  Now they're both focusing fires on a thing called Bunker 2, and
• 1:02:06
  that's when there's machine gunfire that that opens up and
• 1:02:10
  it incapacitates Chappie. The team thinks that Chappie's
• 1:02:14
  killed in action right then and there.
• 1:02:16
  This is where they have this narrative saying that John was
• 1:02:19
  killed in the first 3 to 4 minutes.
• 1:02:21
  It's simply not true. And, and the number one way to
• 1:02:25
  refute what they're saying is where those wounds were based on
• 1:02:29
  the medical forensics, while they were mortal, they did not
• 1:02:33
  kill him. And he had suffered multiple
• 1:02:36
  wounds after the fact where there continued to be bleeding
• 1:02:39
  and bruising and and so forth. The ultimate kill shot on, on
• 1:02:44
  John based on medical forensics happened more than an hour
• 1:02:47
  later. And it the shot came in, you
• 1:02:50
  know, back on the back right, and it came up through and
• 1:02:55
  impacted in his left shoulder that took off the the the aorta.
• 1:03:00
  And that was instant death for him.
• 1:03:03
  And so all these other wounds that could have happened that
• 1:03:06
  that did happen could not have if John was killed in the first
• 1:03:11
  3 to 4 minutes, like the Seals conveniently want to say.
• 1:03:14
  And then the sad part about all of that is during this
• 1:03:17
  firefight, it was really bad. They took multiple casualties.
• 1:03:20
  The team thinks that Chappies killed they they basically throw
• 1:03:24
  a smoke grenade and break contact from the enemy so that
• 1:03:27
  they can put distance between them because they like they're
• 1:03:30
  not winning at this moment. So they break contact and when
• 1:03:33
  they do, they inadvertently leave Chappie.
• 1:03:37
  They think that Chappie's dead like no one.
• 1:03:41
  There's no fighting person in the military that would ever
• 1:03:45
  leave a fallen teammate on purpose to include these Seals.
• 1:03:49
  OK. It was not done on purpose.
• 1:03:51
  I've never said that. It was like they just.
• 1:03:54
  It was fog and friction of war. They thought that he was in,
• 1:03:57
  they thought he was dead, he was only incapacitated.
• 1:04:00
  They broke contact and finally established radio comms with us.
• 1:04:04
  We could never explain why Chappie was never in direct
• 1:04:06
  comms with us 'cause we we would have expected that the the only
• 1:04:10
  thing that would ever make sense to me was some sort of equipment
• 1:04:13
  malfunction or maybe rounds, you know, impacted his radio.
• 1:04:18
  Something happened for a combat controller not to establish
• 1:04:21
  comms with our aircraft. But I can't explain that part.
• 1:04:25
  I don't know what happened, but the seals, the seals broke
• 1:04:29
  contact and they asked us. They come up with a radio and
• 1:04:32
  it's slab. He says, hey, I got a possible
• 1:04:34
  Kia. We're no longer on top of the
• 1:04:35
  mountain. I need fire on tops now.
• 1:04:38
  Real heavy breathing like they're they're under a lot of
• 1:04:41
  exertion. It's a it was a hellacious
• 1:04:43
  firefight. So we get ready to start
• 1:04:47
  shooting what he said possible KIKIA killed in action.
• 1:04:52
  We think that he's talking about Petty Officer Roberts.
• 1:04:55
  We don't realize that that they're down Roberts and they're
• 1:05:00
  down Chapman. Chapman, where he was
• 1:05:02
  incapacitated, is up underneath the foliage of a tree and we
• 1:05:06
  don't notice him at first. Well, once we start to fire,
• 1:05:09
  there's a moment where when when you're firing in a gunship, 1
• 1:05:13
  sensor is is controlling the weapons and shooting on the
• 1:05:17
  targets. The other sensor is maintaining
• 1:05:19
  the location of the friendlies. And they're constantly doing the
• 1:05:22
  stance back and forth between where the friendlies are for
• 1:05:25
  deconfliction and where the other sensor is shooting.
• 1:05:28
  So in the midst of this process, Chris, our TV sensor says, hey,
• 1:05:33
  I've got another strobe up here. This one isn't with the others.
• 1:05:36
  It doesn't look like the others. And all of this is recorded on
• 1:05:39
  tape, to include when when Chris saw the hot spot that was John
• 1:05:45
  Chapman, he turned on the robe and he crawled from where he was
• 1:05:49
  into the bunker and he was found inside the bunker, not where
• 1:05:54
  Slab said he was killed. Wow, now with I have a video
• 1:06:00
  that you have shared from that ship, is that right?
• 1:06:05
  Yes, ma'am. So this is the video.
• 1:06:09
  The first one that we're going to play is it's a narrated
• 1:06:13
  video. The video is is the.
• 1:06:17
  US Air Force Combat Controller and this.
• 1:06:20
  Is this the one? That's the one.
• 1:06:22
  Let me let me finish setting you up here.
• 1:06:25
  So this video is compressed for time, OK?
• 1:06:30
  It is not edited in the sake of, of manipulation.
• 1:06:35
  It's edited to tell the story of John's valor in a condensed
• 1:06:39
  timeline rather than having to show everybody the full hour and
• 1:06:42
  20 minutes of of what happened. So you're going to, you're going
• 1:06:47
  to see, you know, this footage. It's narrated by Dan Schilling,
• 1:06:51
  the the author of Alone at Dawn, which was Co written with John's
• 1:06:56
  sister Laurie Chapman Longfritz. Great book for your audience
• 1:07:01
  since since you started out with book recommendations Alone at
• 1:07:04
  Dawn by those guys. So you're going to see this
• 1:07:09
  unfold. As everything else happens.
• 1:07:13
  The team has separated. Chapman ends up up there by
• 1:07:16
  himself inadvertently. We put down fires for a while,
• 1:07:21
  shooting in and around John's position, and then ultimately
• 1:07:25
  the sun starts coming up and we get ordered to depart the
• 1:07:28
  station and eventually the QRF, the quick reaction force with
• 1:07:32
  Rangers is going to come in. And sadly we weren't there.
• 1:07:36
  We weren't able to stay and extend our coverage and cover
• 1:07:39
  their infill. Well, John hears the the
• 1:07:44
  additional 40 sevens come in and he takes himself out of cover
• 1:07:48
  and puts down covering fire for this helicopter because he knows
• 1:07:51
  that there's additional fighters up there.
• 1:07:53
  So you're going to hear a reference in this to where John
• 1:07:57
  earned his first Medal of Honor. And when he earned his second
• 1:08:00
  Medal of Honor, John was only ever awarded one.
• 1:08:03
  There were two material findings, one for saving the
• 1:08:06
  team when he assaulted the first bunker, and then two for what he
• 1:08:10
  did, fighting by himself and then ultimately sacrificing
• 1:08:13
  himself for the quick reaction force.
• 1:08:15
  You'll see that narrated here by Dan Schilling.
• 1:08:18
  OK, let's watch. AUS Air Force Combat Controller
• 1:08:24
  and the Seals are attempting to rescue their last team mate.
• 1:08:28
  You'll watch Chapman's heroic actions as he saves the lives of
• 1:08:31
  his entire SEAL team and then another eighteen members of a
• 1:08:34
  quick reaction force earning America's highest award, the
• 1:08:38
  Medal of Honor. Chapman and the Seals X fill
• 1:08:42
  their MH 47 helicopter. John is the second individual to
• 1:08:46
  exit and immediately moves in the direction of the summit.
• 1:08:50
  He can be seen moving off to the right of the screen alone.
• 1:08:55
  The team is taking heavy fire from every direction as
• 1:08:57
  indicated by the arrows. As Chapman begins engaging
• 1:09:00
  targets, you can see spent cartridges ejecting from his M4.
• 1:09:08
  Chapman then begins closing with the enemy, forcing his way up
• 1:09:11
  slope in knee and thigh deep snow.
• 1:09:16
  He is constantly under fire. As he does this, Chapman's team
• 1:09:21
  leader begins to close on Chapman, following his trail
• 1:09:24
  through the snow. The dark mass above Chapman is a
• 1:09:29
  fortified bunker containing 2 enemy fighters, each armed with
• 1:09:32
  AK40 Sevens who are firing down on the team in the darkness.
• 1:09:37
  This bunker will come to be known as bunker #1.
• 1:09:43
  To the left of the tree and Bunker One is another Gray mass.
• 1:09:46
  This is a rock outcropping that came to be called the Boulder.
• 1:09:51
  Between Bunker One and this boulder can be seen the body of
• 1:09:54
  slain SEAL Neil Roberts, the man Chapman, and the others are
• 1:09:58
  attempting to recover. Chapman, still alone and closest
• 1:10:06
  to the enemy, pauses to engage targets as his team leader
• 1:10:09
  follows him, but never actually catches up with him.
• 1:10:18
  Chapman, on his own now makes the decision to charge directly
• 1:10:22
  into the enemy bunker. Despite withering point blank
• 1:10:25
  fire, Chapman, now literally on top of the enemy, engages the
• 1:10:30
  two combatants and kills them, saving the lives of the
• 1:10:33
  remaining Seals. He does this from a distance of
• 1:10:36
  no more than 10 feet. These actions by themselves
• 1:10:39
  earned him his first Medal of Honor.
• 1:10:42
  He then climbs into and takes control of the bunker.
• 1:10:45
  Having cleared the immediate threat, Chapman is then joined
• 1:10:48
  by his team leader in Bunker 1. You can then see Chapman and his
• 1:10:52
  team leader engaging the next bunker, known as Bunker 2, which
• 1:10:56
  is situated to the left edge of the screen.
• 1:10:59
  This bunker, manned by a handful of Chechen and Uzbek fighters,
• 1:11:03
  also contains a heavy PKM machine gun, hand grenades and
• 1:11:07
  rocket propelled grenades. John Chapman is shot twice at
• 1:11:10
  this time in the torso and collapses, incapacitated.
• 1:11:19
  This is fast forwarded slightly. You are now looking at a new
• 1:11:23
  angle and at the left of the screen can be seen the two man
• 1:11:27
  fire team and team leader. On top of the boulder.
• 1:11:30
  Just below it is Bunker one with the mortally wounded Chapman.
• 1:11:34
  One SEAL can be seen firing his modified M60 machine gun from
• 1:11:38
  the hip into Bunker 2 on the right side of the screen until
• 1:11:41
  he is struck by grenade shrapnel and tumbles 10 feet off the top
• 1:11:44
  of the boulder, collapsing at the feet of his team leader,
• 1:11:48
  thus setting off a chain of events that would lead to the
• 1:11:51
  Seal's abandoning Chapman on the summit.
• 1:11:55
  The wounded SEAL and the team leader can be seen conferring
• 1:11:58
  about his injuries. Moments later, the Seals decide
• 1:12:04
  to retreat from the summit because their position is
• 1:12:06
  untenable in the face of continued massive enemy
• 1:12:09
  firepower. They can be seen moving toward
• 1:12:12
  the right side of the screen and passing the body of Neil
• 1:12:14
  Roberts. Unfortunately, the Seals do not
• 1:12:17
  pass John Chapman, who is above them and inside Bunker One.
• 1:12:27
  This angle shows 3 Seals in a triangle.
• 1:12:31
  The larger black heat signature is a smoke grenade.
• 1:12:35
  Just to its left is a donkey and dead Al Qaeda fighter killed by
• 1:12:38
  Chapman. The steepness of the mountain
• 1:12:43
  can be seen as the Seals begin to slide down the near sheer
• 1:12:46
  face. The team leader, desperate for
• 1:13:00
  relief and now with two wounded teammates, asks for uncontrolled
• 1:13:03
  airstrikes from an orbiting Air Force AC130 gunship.
• 1:13:08
  The impacts you see are from one O 5mm Howard surrounds being
• 1:13:11
  fired onto the Ridge top in order to save the remaining
• 1:13:14
  Seals. Because neither the Seals nor
• 1:13:17
  Gunship no Chapman is alive, he is experiencing these
• 1:13:21
  detonations from his position. At approximately 5:20 in the
• 1:13:26
  morning, Chapman recovers and begins to engage the enemy.
• 1:13:31
  Bunker 1 is on the right side center of the screen and Bunker
• 1:13:34
  2 to the left near the screen center.
• 1:13:37
  It will never be known what caused his incapacitation and
• 1:13:40
  recovery. Of the two rounds that
• 1:13:42
  originally wounded him, at least one was mortal, and at this time
• 1:13:46
  he is experiencing severe blood loss and shock.
• 1:13:49
  Despite that, he begins his one man stand against two dozen
• 1:13:52
  enemy combatants. During this time, Chapman
• 1:13:56
  initiates a series of radio calls, many of which are heard
• 1:13:59
  by a fellow combat controller and teammate of his and Delta
• 1:14:02
  Force operators on a nearby summit.
• 1:14:05
  Despite this combat controller's replies, Chapman never
• 1:14:08
  acknowledges, whether because of damage to his equipment or
• 1:14:11
  himself will never be known. This new angle and footage shows
• 1:14:17
  Chapman at the top, identified by the green dot under the tree
• 1:14:21
  at Bunker One. The lower center of the screen
• 1:14:24
  shows the first enemy fighter who is about to charge Chapman
• 1:14:27
  in the hopes of killing the American.
• 1:14:29
  The timestamp at the bottom shows it is now six O 5 in the
• 1:14:32
  morning and fully light. He's been fighting alone now for
• 1:14:35
  40 plus minutes and has received more gunshot and shrapnel wounds
• 1:14:39
  as a result of the fierce combat.
• 1:14:41
  This scene shows the second of several enemy charges.
• 1:14:44
  In this stunning display of determination and courage,
• 1:14:47
  Chapman can be seen fighting hand to hand with the fighter.
• 1:14:51
  In the larger screen display can be seen additional enemy moving
• 1:14:54
  on to the summit. But right now, John Chapman is
• 1:14:57
  fighting for his life. 6 minutes later in this new shot, Chapman
• 1:15:02
  can hear another helicopter approaching the summit.
• 1:15:05
  He is in the bottom center of the screen underneath the tree
• 1:15:08
  and can be seen in the magnified inset box as he begins his
• 1:15:11
  desperate final stand to save the lives of the 18 men on the
• 1:15:14
  helicopter. The red dots are enemy fighters.
• 1:15:19
  John begins engaging the enemy in multiple directions and is
• 1:15:22
  rapidly approaching the last of his ammunition.
• 1:15:25
  The helicopter contains a quick reaction force comprised of
• 1:15:28
  Rangers, para rescue men and another combat controller.
• 1:15:31
  It is now 613 and the helicopter is short final.
• 1:15:36
  The enemy is desperately trying to displace Chapman so they can
• 1:15:39
  put heavy weapons or rocket propelled grenades in bunker one
• 1:15:42
  while simultaneously engaging the helicopter with the choice
• 1:15:47
  to save his life or the lives of his unknown comrades.
• 1:15:50
  Chapman makes the decision to climb out of the bunker and
• 1:15:53
  begin firing in multiple directions, as can be seen in
• 1:15:56
  the inset. Suffering from as many as a
• 1:15:59
  dozen wounds, Chapman is in fact already in the process of dying.
• 1:16:03
  As he fights, the helicopter is struck by a rocket propelled
• 1:16:06
  grenade and makes a remarkable controlled crash just below
• 1:16:09
  Chapman and the summit. Chapman, now off screen,
• 1:16:12
  continues to cover his comrades as they pour out of the stricken
• 1:16:16
  helicopter. Some of them are fatally shot as
• 1:16:19
  they exit. These images, with Chapman
• 1:16:23
  fighting the enemy a close quarter, are the last to show
• 1:16:26
  him alive and in this heroic act, thus qualifying for his
• 1:16:30
  second Medal of Honor. Ultimately, Chapman would expend
• 1:16:34
  all but the last few rounds of his ammunition until finally,
• 1:16:38
  after 16 bullet and shrapnel wounds, Chapman succumbs.
• 1:16:42
  When he is shot through the heart.
• 1:16:43
  We will never know his final thoughts or words, but what we
• 1:16:47
  do know is his decisions and actions single handedly saved
• 1:16:51
  the lives of 23 comrades. For more information about John
• 1:16:58
  Chapman's amazing story and the details about this mission,
• 1:17:01
  visit danschillingbooks.com or your favorite book retailer to
• 1:17:04
  obtain a copy of the Chronicle of His Life Alone at Dawn.
• 1:17:11
  Wow. It's powerful.
• 1:17:14
  It really, truly is. That's, I mean, well, the
• 1:17:18
  narration and the music obviously make it quite
• 1:17:21
  dramatic, but it's already dramatic to begin with.
• 1:17:26
  So when you are researching the information, tell me how that is
• 1:17:35
  going for you and and how it came that you were involved in
• 1:17:42
  helping to research this information.
• 1:17:46
  So my aircraft had flown out of Uzbekistan.
• 1:17:50
  There was an Intel analyst there with us.
• 1:17:54
  His name was Frank Daley, and we ended up in same circles as our
• 1:17:58
  careers went on. He became one of my chiefs and
• 1:18:01
  was a mentor of mine somewhere. I think conversations really
• 1:18:07
  started picking up somewhere between 2011 and 2014.
• 1:18:11
  I can't, I can't pinpoint exactly when, but I know that I
• 1:18:16
  was stationed out at Beale Air Force Base in Northern
• 1:18:19
  California, just above Sacramento.
• 1:18:20
  And around that time period, I'd had some, some communications
• 1:18:24
  with Frank and he was, he knew that I had been on that gunship
• 1:18:29
  and I had sent him some of our crew information so that he
• 1:18:33
  could try and track down people and statements and, and that
• 1:18:35
  sort of thing, which told me that he was digging into it.
• 1:18:39
  I don't know if anything it officially kicked off or or or
• 1:18:42
  not, but my next duty station after Beal, the summer of 14, I
• 1:18:47
  moved back to Hurlburt Field where where Frank was.
• 1:18:50
  And Frank is retired at this point.
• 1:18:53
  He's a civilian. He's a civilian Intel analyst
• 1:18:57
  and happens to work in the special tactics community.
• 1:19:00
  And by this point it is, it is known and understood that
• 1:19:04
  there's a Valor Hero Decoration Review Board established inside
• 1:19:10
  of AFSOC Air Force Special Operations Command that's home
• 1:19:14
  there at Herbert Field. And so Frank is part of that.
• 1:19:18
  And I, I had shared some information with him.
• 1:19:22
  Ultimately the commander of AFSOC was going to decorate some
• 1:19:27
  of the people who had done the early research on all of this
• 1:19:30
  because like it was labor intensive and intensive on all
• 1:19:34
  of their efforts. And the effort ultimately ended
• 1:19:37
  up being joint. It was professionally done, peer
• 1:19:40
  reviewed, audited, multiple command levels, all that kind of
• 1:19:44
  stuff. So the, the package for a Medal
• 1:19:46
  of Honor has to be pretty airtight.
• 1:19:48
  So anyway, I was going to this award ceremony and the project
• 1:19:53
  officer was there and I, I saw this model where National
• 1:19:57
  Geospatial Intelligence Agency had rebuilt the entire mountain.
• 1:20:00
  So they like they mapped this thing down to the NTH degree and
• 1:20:04
  you knew exactly what the terrain elevation was and and
• 1:20:07
  and so forth. And so anyway, they were talking
• 1:20:10
  about the mission and I was sharing details because stuff
• 1:20:14
  that I had seen from the live mission.
• 1:20:16
  And so all of a sudden that project officer realized that I
• 1:20:19
  had something to contribute to their effort.
• 1:20:21
  And then I got formally invited on to to the effort.
• 1:20:25
  And I could, I could confirm to him that our sensor had seen him
• 1:20:31
  re enter that bunker and we knew it to be true.
• 1:20:36
  So that footage had been part of the stuff that was lost.
• 1:20:39
  And even after they had reconstructed everything based
• 1:20:43
  on partial data that had been it had been segmented.
• 1:20:49
  So what happened was we flew, someone said give me the tapes.
• 1:20:56
  They were under orders like give me the tapes.
• 1:20:58
  So that guy met us at the aircraft, took the tapes when
• 1:21:02
  in, they were immediately transferred digitally back to
• 1:21:06
  the Pentagon. And then the very next day the
• 1:21:09
  SEAL showed up and said give us the tapes.
• 1:21:12
  And so they confiscated everything before anybody really
• 1:21:14
  ever got to go back and look at all of it.
• 1:21:16
  Well, when it was when it was transmitted back to the
• 1:21:19
  Pentagon, what nobody realized until months down the road was
• 1:21:25
  that the server for that secure e-mail server had chunked all of
• 1:21:30
  that data. It had broken it up in order to
• 1:21:32
  transmit it back over the satellite back to the Pentagon.
• 1:21:36
  And anyway, we, we, we lucked up on it because we had lost the
• 1:21:41
  physical copies. So anyway, those that became
• 1:21:45
  like, once they started to look into, you know, was there
• 1:21:47
  anything missing from this? You know, was this potentially
• 1:21:51
  not just an Air Force cross, which John Chapman and Britt
• 1:21:55
  Slibinski were both rewarded with their respective service
• 1:21:59
  crosses for this mission. The Air Force started looking
• 1:22:02
  into it to see whether or not there was anything else there
• 1:22:05
  that perhaps warranted the consideration for Medal of
• 1:22:08
  Honor. And then we started going back
• 1:22:10
  and piercing all of the the footage back together.
• 1:22:14
  And once it picked up momentum, they had, you know, the, the
• 1:22:19
  letter that said that the general had ordered the
• 1:22:21
  investigation and basically all the commands that had evidence,
• 1:22:25
  we're supposed to turn it over so that we could look at it and
• 1:22:27
  review it. And so I got brought into a
• 1:22:30
  team. It was a team that was already
• 1:22:31
  existing. I played a, a tiny, tiny part in
• 1:22:35
  all of this. There was a slew of intelligence
• 1:22:38
  analysts, specifically imagery analysts.
• 1:22:40
  Frank as an all source guy, the folks that that helped us with
• 1:22:45
  National Geospatial, you know, intelligence agency, it went
• 1:22:49
  across the services, you know, Army was involved on the the
• 1:22:53
  medical forensics side with U.S. Navy was even involved in the
• 1:22:58
  joint communities and and so forth.
• 1:23:00
  So again, professional research project, peer reviewed, audited
• 1:23:05
  past all of the levels of approval.
• 1:23:07
  We went from AFSOC to JSOC to US, SOCOM to the Pentagon and
• 1:23:13
  and it it withstood the the scrutiny that goes into the
• 1:23:17
  approval and review process for a Medal of Honor.
• 1:23:21
  Wow. It's, it's amazing to think of
• 1:23:24
  the amount of work that goes into that.
• 1:23:27
  I mean, I've heard about how intensive it can be and just
• 1:23:32
  knowing that amount of detail and checking, rechecking and,
• 1:23:39
  and just ensuring that every aspect is is shown or proven to
• 1:23:45
  be accurate. So it's, it's just amazing to
• 1:23:48
  me. And So what happens once
• 1:23:56
  everything is resolved, it's all realized that all the
• 1:24:00
  information is there, you have the imagery, you have all of
• 1:24:03
  that. What?
• 1:24:04
  What happens from that point? So there was a lot of
• 1:24:07
  interaction between US and, and the Navy, you know, we, we felt
• 1:24:12
  we owed them courtesy of letting them know like what we had
• 1:24:16
  discovered. And, and we never, never cast
• 1:24:19
  any blame on on the SEAL team as far as how they broke contact
• 1:24:24
  without, without Chappie, We understood that they thought
• 1:24:27
  that Chappie had been killed. And, and you know, that just is
• 1:24:30
  what it is. Unfortunately.
• 1:24:33
  We, we wanted to show them that, hey, here's Chappie.
• 1:24:38
  After you guys broke contact, when we started shooting in the
• 1:24:40
  gunship, all the sudden the stroke comes on and you see a
• 1:24:43
  guy enter the bunker one. And we had the audio and the
• 1:24:46
  video and could show all of that.
• 1:24:48
  And then you saw the rest of the, the footage that had been
• 1:24:52
  stitched back together so that, that, that piece that Dan
• 1:24:57
  narrates, it's a combination of sensor footage from a predator
• 1:25:03
  and from AC 1:30. So everything was meticulously
• 1:25:07
  time stamped to where you could sync everything, but you had you
• 1:25:11
  had different, different recordings from different
• 1:25:15
  platforms where you had those different angles and and so
• 1:25:18
  forth. And some of that was literally
• 1:25:19
  our gunship footage when you saw the, the one O fives going off
• 1:25:23
  and and so on. But anyway, it was a painstaking
• 1:25:29
  ordeal. A lot of a lot of time and
• 1:25:32
  effort went into making sure that it was it was right, it was
• 1:25:35
  accurate, and it was representative of the valor that
• 1:25:39
  that John displayed that night. And what was the Seal's reaction
• 1:25:44
  to that? They they agreed with everything
• 1:25:48
  up to bunker one and they wanted to end the story after where
• 1:25:52
  they say that John was killed and and that is their story
• 1:25:57
  still. And this is what I what I call
• 1:25:59
  the the seal false narrative. They portray John as being
• 1:26:04
  killed in the first 3 to 4 minutes.
• 1:26:05
  They say that he was an inexperienced radio man, which
• 1:26:08
  is a just in the term is an insult to anyone that's a combat
• 1:26:13
  controller. And and then they say that that
• 1:26:16
  that continued fighting up there is red on red.
• 1:26:21
  And they specifically name a guy named Red Beard.
• 1:26:24
  And you have to know that at the end of that mission when we got
• 1:26:27
  ordered home, the reason why we were ordered home is because the
• 1:26:29
  sun was coming up. There's a radio clip where my
• 1:26:32
  pilots explained it to command and control.
• 1:26:34
  Like, hey, I'm wearing sunglasses up here.
• 1:26:38
  Like it's, it's like. Right, right.
• 1:26:40
  They're in close proximity that that is absolutely not red on
• 1:26:44
  red and and we were able to debunk that theory as well.
• 1:26:48
  So the the killed in the 1st 33 to 4 minutes, that was based on
• 1:26:53
  the SEALS statements. It is disproven by the medical
• 1:26:57
  forensics that say, OK, the fire came from in front of John.
• 1:27:02
  It would have been the wounds that that the medical forensics,
• 1:27:06
  the the medical examiner found those were mortal if not
• 1:27:10
  attended to, but they weren't instant death.
• 1:27:14
  And so when they saw John be incapacitated, like that's what
• 1:27:17
  happened, he was incapacitated, but he came back too.
• 1:27:20
  And we captured that footage. So we knew, we knew from a
• 1:27:24
  medical standpoint only like and multiple other levels of
• 1:27:28
  evidence. But the number one thing that
• 1:27:30
  disproves to 3 to 4 minutes is the medical forensics because
• 1:27:34
  the kill shot was the aorta. Therefore, all the rest of the
• 1:27:37
  wounds that he suffered during that hour and 20 minutes total
• 1:27:41
  for him up there, those other wounds wouldn't have bled or
• 1:27:46
  bruised had he been killed by just the rounds that they said
• 1:27:49
  he was killed with, right? So what it briefly tell me about
• 1:27:55
  kind of the narrative then of what happens with Slabinski and
• 1:28:06
  you know, obviously we know, you know what the thought process is
• 1:28:09
  from the Navy, but what what occurs, what happens with John's
• 1:28:16
  Medal of Honor? Where does it go from that
• 1:28:20
  point? So in, in 2016, the research and
• 1:28:24
  review process really picks up speed.
• 1:28:27
  In September of 16, I'm on a trip to DC and we're briefing
• 1:28:31
  the surviving members of Mako and Captain Jeremy Williams, who
• 1:28:35
  was the commander of Dev group at the time.
• 1:28:38
  He they, they take our brief, we give them all the evidence for
• 1:28:42
  the, for the Medal of Honor package for, for John.
• 1:28:45
  And in that meeting, after we show them the the footage of
• 1:28:49
  John crawling back into bunker one, that's when Slab changes
• 1:28:53
  his story. And he says, I crawled right
• 1:28:55
  over the top of John. And so before everything was
• 1:28:58
  about the rise and fall of the chest and seeing a laser.
• 1:29:01
  Well, he just doubled down like a cornered, wounded animal and
• 1:29:05
  then just made the lie that much deeper.
• 1:29:08
  Now he goes, I crawled right over the top of John.
• 1:29:11
  Well, no, you didn't because we have all the breadcrumb trails
• 1:29:14
  of you guys on the the ISR footage and we can show that you
• 1:29:18
  never got within 15 feet of John.
• 1:29:20
  And oh, by the way, when you say that you saw John, you're
• 1:29:23
  actually terrain mask because we have that analysis too.
• 1:29:26
  Wow. So they they also like they said
• 1:29:31
  that they never, never saw Roberts where they crawled.
• 1:29:34
  They literally crawled right over the top of Roberts.
• 1:29:37
  But there's some, there's some gamesmanship in their in their
• 1:29:40
  statements because they wanted to be able to say that they
• 1:29:44
  never saw Roberts because it was understood that somebody was up
• 1:29:48
  there fighting after all of this.
• 1:29:50
  And and that turns out to be Chapman.
• 1:29:52
  As we proved, it wasn't red on red, but the Navy initially
• 1:29:57
  before they realized that without a doubt that Petty
• 1:30:00
  Officer Roberts had been killed. Initially they were kind of
• 1:30:03
  hoping that it was Petty Officer Roberts that was continuing the
• 1:30:07
  fight up there. That just that didn't happen to
• 1:30:09
  be the case. Now you also sent me a second
• 1:30:15
  video and this video that is now a good time to share that one.
• 1:30:22
  Yeah. So this one essentially you saw
• 1:30:26
  Dan narrate what happened. This one explains it, but it's
• 1:30:31
  more the form of a news reel. So if you would, if you'd like,
• 1:30:36
  I think I can present and share that one from here.
• 1:30:38
  Oh, I've got it. You've got it all.
• 1:30:40
  You have it for me. OK, let's see what happens.
• 1:30:45
  Hey. Do I need to hit play?
• 1:30:48
  You must. Yep, go ahead.
• 1:30:50
  OK. It's coming, Al.
• 1:30:55
  Qaeda was waiting for Air Force Sergeant John Chapman and a team
• 1:30:59
  of Navy Seals when they came off the helicopter.
• 1:31:02
  The enemy was in basically overhead positions around him on
• 1:31:05
  three sides, raining down fire in three different directions.
• 1:31:08
  Lieutenant Colonel Michael Wendelkin spent 2 1/2 years
• 1:31:12
  analyzing every frame of surveillance video of the 2002
• 1:31:16
  battle in Afghanistan. That's Chapman.
• 1:31:18
  You can see him running up the mountain.
• 1:31:21
  Straight out of bunker where an enemy machine gun was firing.
• 1:31:24
  It's hard to understand why he wasn't cut down.
• 1:31:28
  Harder still to understand where he got the courage.
• 1:31:31
  There were two enemy in inside the bunker.
• 1:31:33
  He he killed them both as they were shooting at him.
• 1:31:35
  Basically, we watched what my aircraft commander described as
• 1:31:38
  a firefight in the phone booth unfold.
• 1:31:40
  Sergeant Robert Harrison was in a gunship circling overhead,
• 1:31:44
  trying to blast Al Qaeda off the mountain.
• 1:31:47
  The video is hard to follow, so the Air Force commissioned this
• 1:31:50
  animation, which, when Delkin says, is accurate down to the
• 1:31:53
  exact location of Chapman's wounds.
• 1:31:56
  He was shot a total of nine times.
• 1:31:58
  Chapman jumped out of the relative safety of the bunker to
• 1:32:01
  fire at another machine gun 10 meters away.
• 1:32:04
  He was hit and then and went down and was likely rendered
• 1:32:08
  unconscious at that point. The rest of the team was sure
• 1:32:10
  Chapman was dead and pulled off the Ridge to wait for
• 1:32:13
  reinforcements. A few minutes later, he awoke
• 1:32:16
  and continued to fight for another hour and 10 minutes.
• 1:32:19
  On his own, fighting for his life against the enemy at point
• 1:32:22
  blank range, the helicopter was bringing in reinforcements and
• 1:32:27
  he tried to provide covering fire.
• 1:32:29
  Within 30 seconds of the helicopter landing, knowing that
• 1:32:31
  he was just 10 meters from a machine gun, he put his back to
• 1:32:34
  that machine gun to engage an enemy that was trying to shoot
• 1:32:38
  down the helicopter. That's when he was shot twice in
• 1:32:41
  the back and killed. The reinforcements made it in,
• 1:32:45
  but not in time to save Chapman. It's pretty clear he sacrificed
• 1:32:48
  his life to make sure that they had a chance to land and rescue
• 1:32:51
  the rest of the team. If ever a man went down fighting
• 1:32:55
  for his country, it was John Chapman, David Martin, CBS News,
• 1:33:00
  Hurlburt Field, FL. Dude, guess how much it cost me
• 1:33:05
  to make sure? Wow, that's that's really
• 1:33:10
  impressive to see that they're able to make that more animated
• 1:33:13
  and easier to follow because it is very difficult kind of
• 1:33:17
  looking at that from above from the gunship it kind of and the
• 1:33:22
  different aircraft. It's reminds me if you've ever
• 1:33:28
  played years ago, lemmings, right?
• 1:33:31
  You just see these little you know, and you're not quite sure
• 1:33:34
  what's what. So so it does kind of give a
• 1:33:38
  whole new dimension to it as if you're you're really right there
• 1:33:44
  with them. And so there's this disagreement
• 1:33:48
  between SEAL Team 6, Navy and the not just the Air Force,
• 1:33:59
  there were other branches that were in agreement with the Air
• 1:34:02
  Force or. I would tell you no, the nobody
• 1:34:05
  else was was necessarily against the Air Force as far as this
• 1:34:09
  goes. Just the Navy just did not want
• 1:34:11
  to acknowledge that that anything passed the assault on
• 1:34:16
  the initial bunker happened. Like they they want to, they
• 1:34:21
  want to conveniently have Chappie be killed during the
• 1:34:24
  first 3 to 4 minutes so that they don't have to admit that
• 1:34:27
  they inadvertently left a guy behind.
• 1:34:30
  Yeah, it's like I said, it's just an inconvenient truth.
• 1:34:33
  But rather than them, you know, just own it And like, that's
• 1:34:37
  what happened. We know you didn't do it on
• 1:34:38
  purpose. You could have just walked away
• 1:34:41
  from all of this. Everybody'd still be decorated
• 1:34:43
  and you wouldn't have all of this turmoil that you have going
• 1:34:46
  on for years after the fact. So they, they, they bucked back,
• 1:34:51
  they, they fought the, the Air Force through the review
• 1:34:54
  processes. We would go, go before a board
• 1:34:58
  and you were supposed to present each side's case.
• 1:35:01
  In other words, like make your case for John's Medal of Honor
• 1:35:05
  and slabs Medal of Honor. Well, the Navy would spend all
• 1:35:08
  their time arguing against John and never present anything on on
• 1:35:12
  their guy. It, it was crazy people that,
• 1:35:16
  that were there and experienced it.
• 1:35:18
  And I, I would VTCN video teleconference in because I
• 1:35:22
  wasn't Co located with them. So there were several of these
• 1:35:25
  boards that I was on, on the, on the audio on the camera or what
• 1:35:29
  have you for. But it, it was just wild the
• 1:35:31
  amount of pushback that the Navy would would go through.
• 1:35:35
  And then I've got a I've got an interesting e-mail after the
• 1:35:39
  award, the Intel officer that worked for Dev Group, his name
• 1:35:43
  was George Hartwell. And he reached out to Pete
• 1:35:46
  Blaber trying to get Blaber's attention and say that the Air
• 1:35:49
  Force was lying about all of this stuff.
• 1:35:50
  And so he was essentially trying to get Blaber to hear him out
• 1:35:54
  and and get Blaber to buy into what was the Navy false
• 1:36:00
  narrative that the three parts killed in the first 3 to 4
• 1:36:04
  minutes, inexperienced radio man and the red on red theory again,
• 1:36:09
  all of which was debunked. That's nuts.
• 1:36:15
  So he ultimately John Chapman posthumously receives the Medal
• 1:36:22
  of Honor. Yep, President Trump presents it
• 1:36:25
  to his widow Valerie in August of 2018.
• 1:36:29
  OK. And then there is a museum and
• 1:36:36
  that has been built and talk to me about this and, and quickly
• 1:36:43
  if we can and and then kind of a brief overview of what happens.
• 1:36:50
  This museum, wow. So this is what reignited the
• 1:36:55
  essentially call it a debate, but there there's no debate from
• 1:36:58
  an Air Force or official record standpoint.
• 1:37:00
  Like everything that was proven for, for John's valor and
• 1:37:03
  heroism and his Medal of Honor stands.
• 1:37:07
  But this is the moment where I become aware that the Navy is
• 1:37:13
  still behind the scenes trying to affect the the information
• 1:37:17
  and, and what the public's understanding of the events are.
• 1:37:21
  And I'm sitting there going, Oh my goodness, I can't believe
• 1:37:24
  this. It comes to my attention because
• 1:37:27
  Lori makes a post on social media that the museum left her
• 1:37:32
  hanging out to dry. There were people involved in
• 1:37:34
  the museum. They promised that they were
• 1:37:35
  going to do a dedicated display for John.
• 1:37:38
  We got forward to the museum. Those people have been muscled
• 1:37:41
  out. And the seals were littered all
• 1:37:44
  throughout the board of this privatized National Medal of
• 1:37:48
  Honor Museum. And next thing you know, there's
• 1:37:51
  a huge display dedicated to Britt Siebinski.
• 1:37:54
  And there's a tiny little like 20 inch video screen playing
• 1:38:00
  what happened to John with no audio, no narration, just text
• 1:38:04
  on a screen. And then you get over to Britt,
• 1:38:07
  even though these two guys were in the same battle and both
• 1:38:10
  earned a Medal of Honor per SE. Even though like I would tell
• 1:38:14
  you that half of what's in Britt's citation is stuff that
• 1:38:18
  actually was done by John. And that's probably arguable.
• 1:38:23
  People can argue about it, whatever.
• 1:38:25
  Just my personal opinion based on the track record they have of
• 1:38:29
  lying about this mission as it stands.
• 1:38:31
  So anyway, figure out that that was going on and next thing you
• 1:38:36
  know, I start doing a little Google research and and I'm
• 1:38:38
  finding video after video after video where Slab has been using
• 1:38:44
  his position with the Congressional Medal of Honor
• 1:38:46
  Society and his position on the board at the National Medal of
• 1:38:50
  Honor Museum. And he's doing all of these
• 1:38:53
  public engagements and and yet that's expected of a Medal of
• 1:38:58
  Honor recipient. The problem is that Slabs not
• 1:39:02
  telling the official story he's telling his story he's telling
• 1:39:07
  Chappie died in the first 3 minutes.
• 1:39:09
  He's saying inexperienced radio man.
• 1:39:12
  He's saying read on read theory, or at least the people in
• 1:39:15
  support of of slab are. But the the primary thing is
• 1:39:20
  that slabbing them are like, yeah, he was killed in the first
• 1:39:22
  3 to 4 minutes. We left nobody behind, he says.
• 1:39:26
  And there's, there's, I've probably got a spreadsheet of no
• 1:39:29
  less than 20 some odd videos that I like.
• 1:39:32
  I, I didn't need to find any more.
• 1:39:34
  I had enough of his own words where he literally contradicts
• 1:39:37
  himself between the videos that he put out and the statements
• 1:39:40
  that were part of the official record.
• 1:39:42
  So I know, I know his stuff is bogus as far as his recount of
• 1:39:47
  the mission and the Navy tried to do a disservice to John
• 1:39:51
  Chapman. And now they're now they're
• 1:39:53
  continuing to do that, at least indirectly, with a an effort for
• 1:39:59
  a private docu series done by another former retired SEAL.
• 1:40:05
  Is that what came up this? OK, let's talk about that part
• 1:40:09
  here in just a minute. I want to talk about what's
• 1:40:12
  coming up or what is been posted.
• 1:40:16
  That will be premiering December 2027.
• 1:40:22
  There you go. So this past week it was an
• 1:40:25
  article and deadline, I think is the the name of the website.
• 1:40:29
  But they they public publicly announced The MGM, Amazon, you
• 1:40:35
  know, partnership with Ron Howard's direction of the movie
• 1:40:39
  alone at dawn. It stars Anne Hathaway and Adam
• 1:40:44
  Driver and it is set to release December 25th, 2027.
• 1:40:49
  So we've got to wait a little while.
• 1:40:51
  But there's there's really good review indications and based on
• 1:40:55
  those articles that I read, it sounds like there might be some,
• 1:40:58
  some Oscar scuttle around this movie.
• 1:41:00
  So I'll keep my fingers crossed and we'll hope to to see a
• 1:41:05
  picture that that really captures the heroism and valor
• 1:41:09
  that John displayed that day. I am trying to share.
• 1:41:14
  Let's see if I can show that real quick so we can kind of at
• 1:41:17
  least get an idea. It's just going to let me, OK,
• 1:41:28
  you might have to go ahead and unshare.
• 1:41:34
  Unshare. The the one that you had might
• 1:41:38
  that you had shared earlier. There we go.
• 1:41:39
  Let's see if that'll work. Now try again 'cause I want
• 1:41:46
  everybody to just kind of get an idea of where it is and and what
• 1:41:50
  to look forward to. Sure, let's see if we can if
• 1:41:55
  that's showing yet. Ah, there we go.
• 1:41:59
  OK, there. So you can go out here to
• 1:42:04
  deadline and I just typed in deadline alone at dawn and it'll
• 1:42:12
  come up so you can read the article.
• 1:42:14
  But I'm really excited to see this and know, you know, their
• 1:42:21
  adaptation for this. Have you heard, is it going to
• 1:42:25
  be real true to the Navy's determination of what happened
• 1:42:34
  and or is this just, is it based off of what Lori is aware of and
• 1:42:39
  and her documentation? Yeah, I would tell you it's
• 1:42:42
  based off the truth that is captured in the book Alone at
• 1:42:46
  Dawn. So there's there's not an airman
• 1:42:49
  out there that's going to be disappointed in in how this is
• 1:42:52
  depicted. Excellent, so y'all can go out
• 1:42:55
  there take a look pretty exciting to see that.
• 1:42:59
  So tell me now then about the the series that you were just
• 1:43:09
  talking about. So how did you hear about?
• 1:43:11
  That so in 2022, I got contacted by this retired seal named Mitch
• 1:43:17
  Hall. One of our, one of our research
• 1:43:20
  project team members put me in touch with him.
• 1:43:24
  He said, hey, you know, I'm not going to do anything I'm not
• 1:43:26
  able to, to interact with the guy.
• 1:43:29
  He sounds legit. He's like, but I'm not
• 1:43:32
  encouraging you one way or another.
• 1:43:35
  Give it some consideration whether or not you want to talk
• 1:43:38
  to him. And oh, by the way, here's this
• 1:43:39
  e-mail. And, and so I get the e-mail
• 1:43:43
  that I described earlier between George Hartwell and Pete Blaber.
• 1:43:46
  Well, Blaber had then reached out to Dan Schilling and asked
• 1:43:50
  him. And Dan Schilling says, hey,
• 1:43:52
  Pete, be careful. That guy's casing you.
• 1:43:55
  In other words, he's just, he tried to work you over and get
• 1:43:57
  you to come to his side of the, of the story, if you will.
• 1:44:02
  And so I'm given that I see the name of who who that e-mail
• 1:44:07
  comes from. I know that he was the Intel guy
• 1:44:10
  for Dev Group. And I know that Jeremy had him,
• 1:44:13
  Captain Williams had him building the the false
• 1:44:16
  narrative. He's the guy that every time we
• 1:44:19
  went before a board, the guy that presented the Navy's case
• 1:44:22
  against the Air Force was George Hartwell.
• 1:44:25
  So I asked Mitch Hall point blank as a does your docu series
• 1:44:31
  effort have anything to do with George Hartwell?
• 1:44:34
  And he said he got evasive. I told you we went to survival
• 1:44:38
  school. We, we, we learn how to handle
• 1:44:41
  ourselves and all of us get, get some, some degree of training,
• 1:44:46
  you know, and I'm not going to say that that my training
• 1:44:49
  anywhere close equals that of Seals, but I've been in some
• 1:44:51
  similar training as to what they go through.
• 1:44:53
  I recognized immediately that he was evading the question and,
• 1:44:57
  and didn't want to give me a straight answer.
• 1:44:59
  So we became enemies at that point because I knew that he was
• 1:45:04
  up to no good and started his project with that bias.
• 1:45:07
  That was George Hartwell. Now they're going to do a good,
• 1:45:10
  good job of saying that's not what they did and that they just
• 1:45:14
  went back after the facts and just readdressed everything.
• 1:45:17
  Because, you know, there's no way that we could have done it
• 1:45:20
  right when we showed that the Seals got outclassed by a combat
• 1:45:23
  controller on the mountain that night.
• 1:45:26
  Like no, no way that could be the case.
• 1:45:31
  Goodness, And that's a lot to take in.
• 1:45:34
  It, it really is. I'm trying to make sure that I
• 1:45:36
  don't allow it to, to consume me by by any means.
• 1:45:41
  But but at the same time, I, I owe, I think I owe it to, you
• 1:45:46
  know, the, the public. I owe it to the legacy of John
• 1:45:49
  Chapman to make sure that the, the Seals don't try to go out
• 1:45:53
  there and rewrite history in the, in the form of something
• 1:45:56
  that looks better for, for their own ego.
• 1:45:59
  Like guys just own the mistake. Like, you know, the, the team
• 1:46:03
  and what happened. It wasn't their damn fault.
• 1:46:06
  They were pushed into that situation by, by leadership that
• 1:46:09
  were just hell bent on getting them into that fight right away.
• 1:46:14
  And they had no business being there to begin with.
• 1:46:16
  And in the end, that leadership is responsible for the death of
• 1:46:19
  seven American fighting men and what ended up being 3
• 1:46:25
  helicopters getting shot up, all because somebody just had to had
• 1:46:29
  to get in that fight. That's a significant loss for
• 1:46:33
  sure. And my, my thoughts go out to
• 1:46:37
  each and every one of the family members that died that day.
• 1:46:43
  Let's move forward now. And as we're getting close on
• 1:46:49
  time, let's go ahead and talk a little bit about if you had
• 1:46:55
  somebody that was interested in joining the military, not even
• 1:47:02
  specifically the Air Force, but any branch, and they came to you
• 1:47:06
  for advice, what would you advise them?
• 1:47:08
  Upon I would tell them it the serving in the United States
• 1:47:14
  military and and I'm never going to be partial against one.
• 1:47:18
  Well, when you ask and phrase the question the way you did,
• 1:47:20
  I'll never be partial. I'll always bleed Air Force.
• 1:47:23
  But the opportunity to serve in the military for for young men
• 1:47:28
  and women is an opportunity to to grow become independent to
• 1:47:35
  not, you know, in induce a huge, you know, financial burden when
• 1:47:40
  it comes to the pursuit of higher education.
• 1:47:44
  When I when I came in my all of my undergraduate work was 100%
• 1:47:49
  tuition assistance. That opportunity still exists
• 1:47:52
  for Airmen. I earned my Post 911 GI Bill,
• 1:47:55
  went back to school and obtained my Master's with that
• 1:47:59
  opportunity, and I still have 2/3 of that benefit to pass on
• 1:48:03
  to family. So when, when you come in,
• 1:48:09
  whether you decide to come in for a short tour, you know, gain
• 1:48:13
  some life experience and some independence and move on with
• 1:48:16
  your life to bigger and better things.
• 1:48:18
  Or if you decide to make a career out of it.
• 1:48:20
  The military's an opportunity for for people to to to serve,
• 1:48:25
  to give to something bigger than themselves and to to grow as
• 1:48:29
  individuals and kind of set themselves up for, for future
• 1:48:34
  success. Now if anybody's got any
• 1:48:38
  questions for Rob, go ahead and put those out there now in the
• 1:48:41
  chat. I do have a couple, the first
• 1:48:44
  one from Timothy Hendricks, and he was curious.
• 1:48:48
  What was your favorite point in your career?
• 1:48:52
  Favorite point in my career, I think there, there comes a time
• 1:49:00
  once it's in a military career, if you, if you do a full 20, you
• 1:49:06
  end up having an opportunity to give back in so many different
• 1:49:09
  ways through the, the development and the building up
• 1:49:13
  of other people. And so when, when you get to
• 1:49:17
  that point in your career and you can look back and you see
• 1:49:21
  those younger, that younger generation coming in and serving
• 1:49:24
  that you help mold and develop and set up for opportunity.
• 1:49:27
  It's kind of like becoming a parent, Like when when you see
• 1:49:31
  your kids succeed, to me, there's nothing more special
• 1:49:35
  than than developing someone else.
• 1:49:38
  And I don't care if that's your family, if you're a civilian or
• 1:49:42
  if you're, you know, working in the civilian sector and you have
• 1:49:46
  a job of supervisory or managerial or executive
• 1:49:49
  responsibility and you're building somebody up, that
• 1:49:52
  opportunity in the military exists as well.
• 1:49:54
  And that's probably the, the favorite point of my career is
• 1:49:57
  when I, when I look back and I see those that I positively
• 1:50:01
  influenced and I see their success, it's, it's really damn
• 1:50:03
  cool. And G23 reviews, he says.
• 1:50:09
  Question What is one place you were stationed at or visited
• 1:50:14
  that you'd like to go visit again with your family or
• 1:50:17
  friends? My number one bucket list item
• 1:50:21
  is probably one of the hardest places to to get to for for most
• 1:50:25
  people. But I did a stint out in the
• 1:50:27
  Pacific and we got a chance as a family to go and visit
• 1:50:31
  Singapore. Wow, wow, wow.
• 1:50:36
  We had an awesome time, great opportunity.
• 1:50:39
  Neatest, neatest place that I've been.
• 1:50:41
  I've I've gotten a chance to go all over the place.
• 1:50:43
  It's hard to only say one, but if I if I shared 1, Singapore is
• 1:50:48
  going to be it. Wow, that's amazing.
• 1:50:51
  Now somebody you know, Rob, and this is Jason Davis by the way,
• 1:50:55
  Thank you so much for subscribing by the way.
• 1:50:59
  Much appreciated, he said. I was stationed with Rob for
• 1:51:02
  years, close to 10. I know he will not be us and is
• 1:51:06
  telling the truth. Great job, Rob.
• 1:51:08
  JD and I go way back, way back. So there's a funny story.
• 1:51:14
  We were, we were out in the, the desert on the RC135 deployments
• 1:51:19
  and Jason, he's allergic to shellfish.
• 1:51:24
  And, and there was a question that popped up one day is shrimp
• 1:51:27
  shellfish as sadly he started to swell.
• 1:51:31
  I wasn't physically there, but I was, I was there during that,
• 1:51:35
  that deployment and, and that happened.
• 1:51:38
  And that's a story that sticks with me.
• 1:51:40
  We, we used to play on the softball teams together.
• 1:51:43
  He's a heck of a competitor and one hell of a bass fisherman.
• 1:51:47
  Wow. Love you, Jason.
• 1:51:49
  I appreciate everybody being here tonight.
• 1:51:53
  Now, any last words for us, Rob, that you'd like to share?
• 1:51:59
  Stay tuned for the for the saga there.
• 1:52:02
  There shouldn't be a saga, I'll tell you that much.
• 1:52:05
  John Chapman's a bona fide hero. He's an Air Force legacy legend.
• 1:52:10
  It it is sad what is is happening.
• 1:52:14
  I think it gets chalked up to people just not being able to to
• 1:52:19
  handle an inconvenient truth. And I, I, it's, it's sad, but
• 1:52:24
  the reality is that that mission was covered up from the moment
• 1:52:28
  that it happened and we were never supposed to find out we
• 1:52:32
  did. And they didn't like the truth
• 1:52:34
  when they were when it was presented.
• 1:52:37
  Well, it's, I don't see any other questions, but it's
• 1:52:40
  absolutely been a, a privilege and an honor to have you on to
• 1:52:44
  hear your story, to hear your involvement in John Chapman's
• 1:52:51
  Medal of Honor and the research, the hard research and the time
• 1:52:56
  that it's taken from your family, your continued sacrifice
• 1:52:59
  and service to the branches, as well as taking time from your
• 1:53:05
  family. Thank you for that.
• 1:53:08
  And I hope to stay in contact with you because, yeah, I'd, I'd
• 1:53:14
  like to hear anything new that may pop up.
• 1:53:17
  And a lot of thank you for your service popping up on here as
• 1:53:23
  well. So let's see, what else?
• 1:53:28
  I'll share one, one response to, to the thank you for your
• 1:53:32
  service and, and this is a good nugget for any of our other
• 1:53:35
  service members out there. Guy that we call CZ Ramon
• 1:53:41
  Cologne Lopez. He was the senior enlisted
• 1:53:44
  advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we call
• 1:53:47
  it, he was CAC number 4C. CZ says that the best response
• 1:53:52
  for anybody that thanks a military member for their
• 1:53:54
  service is you're worth it. That's nice, but I think, you
• 1:54:00
  know, I just feel for myself. I did not serve.
• 1:54:06
  So I really have so much more respect for those who have and
• 1:54:11
  it's it's like the least we can do as civilians to set to let
• 1:54:16
  you know that you are appreciated.
• 1:54:18
  So I guess that's kind of where we come from.
• 1:54:22
  That's my counter for what it's. Worth it's, it's much
• 1:54:26
  appreciated. Thank you so much.
• 1:54:28
  Yeah. So all right, everybody, I want
• 1:54:32
  to say thank you to each and everyone of you for joining
• 1:54:36
  tonight as well. And then I have a guest
• 1:54:39
  scheduled for next week, same time, 6:00 PM Central, 7
• 1:54:44
  Eastern. So fingers crossed all goes
• 1:54:47
  well. And if that's the case, then we
• 1:54:49
  will see you here again next Sunday.
• 1:54:53
  Everybody, please have a very wonderful week and be safe out
• 1:54:58
  there. Thank you, Jason.
• 1:55:00
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• 1:55:05
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