Speaker 1: So Correy shot and killed himself last night, the same
Speaker 1: night that I was considering. You know, and I do
Speaker 1: say this's Corey saved my life. Unfortunately, went took his
Speaker 1: own doing the memorial service, let.
Speaker 2: Guys get closured.
Speaker 1: When I saw how it affected the guys, I realized, Okay,
Speaker 1: I cannot go out this way. I cannot give permission
Speaker 1: to my men to do this. The fear was not
Speaker 1: letting them down, but giving them permission, because you knew
Speaker 1: they were all struggling.
Speaker 2: They're all struggling.
Speaker 3: Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney,
Speaker 3: I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
Speaker 3: I'm an entrepreneur, and I'm a football coach in inter
Speaker 3: city Memphis. And that last part, well, it somehow led
Speaker 3: to a film about one of my teams that actually
Speaker 3: won the Oscar. That movie is called Undefeated. Guys. I
Speaker 3: believe our country's problems are never going to be solved
Speaker 3: by a bunch of fancy people and I using big
Speaker 3: words that nobody ever uses on CNN and Fox, but
Speaker 3: rather by an army of normal folks. That's us, just
Speaker 3: you and me deciding, Hey, you know what, maybe I
Speaker 3: can help. That's what Dan Jarvis, the voice you just heard,
Speaker 3: has done. Dan was a squad leader in Afghanistan, and
Speaker 3: his traumatic experience there and returning home led him to
Speaker 3: plan on becoming part of the statistic of twenty two
Speaker 3: veterans committing suicide every day. Thankfully he didn't, and today
Speaker 3: his nonprofit, Healing the Hero, is spreading a trauma resiliency
Speaker 3: protocol that helped him. Heal has since helped over eighteen
Speaker 3: thousand people and he is just getting started. Dan is
Speaker 3: yet another example of how you can transform your pain
Speaker 3: and to your greatest purpose, and how you can be
Speaker 3: a dog on a bone, not letting go of your
Speaker 3: mission until every single person has access to the solution.
Speaker 3: I can't wait for you to meet Dan. Right after
Speaker 3: these brief messages from our general sponsors, Dan Jarvis from
Speaker 3: winter Haven, Florida, drove up from Dallas to be with us.
Speaker 2: Hey you doing man, I'm good. How you doing, coach,
Speaker 2: I'm good. Thanks for being here. I appreciate you everybody.
Speaker 3: Dan Jarvis is the founder of Healing the Hero from
Speaker 3: winter Haven, Florida, travels around a lot. This is an
Speaker 3: interview that I am really excited about because it combines
Speaker 3: two things that I'm actually very passionate about, which is
Speaker 3: the brain. I'm a psychology major, which many of our
Speaker 3: longtime listeners. I've said that probably twenty times. I'm really
Speaker 3: enjoy the.
Speaker 2: Science behind psychology.
Speaker 3: And you're a veteran and I have an enormous amount
Speaker 3: of respect and appreciation for those who've served our country
Speaker 3: and your capacity. I've said this for but I sleep
Speaker 3: really well at night. No one men like you are
Speaker 3: on the wall. And so before we start, I really
Speaker 3: want to say to you, and I don't I hate
Speaker 3: it when it comes off almost like when people say, Hey,
Speaker 3: how you doing this morning? They really don't care how
Speaker 3: you are that morning. It's just a greeting, and a
Speaker 3: lot of people greet that's with thanks for your service,
Speaker 3: but it almost seems just kind of like a comment
Speaker 3: in passing. But I mean, Dan, when I tell you
Speaker 3: that I appreciate your service, I want you to know
Speaker 3: how deeply sincere I am. When I say how much
Speaker 3: I appreciate you and your brother's an armed service to
Speaker 3: our country and to the people of our country.
Speaker 2: Thank you for being worth it.
Speaker 3: That is a crazy good response, and it also makes
Speaker 3: me feel even bigger, like a toolshed that I did
Speaker 3: serve I'm worth it, but I didn't do anything to
Speaker 3: earn it. We'll let him reassess it at the end
Speaker 3: of the interview, whether you've been worth it or not. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's a good point, all right. One last thing before
Speaker 3: we go. A lot of people bring their wives or
Speaker 3: their girlfriends or their friends with them, uh, and they
Speaker 3: just kind of sit over there and an interview and
Speaker 3: I ask questions. And you have a girl with you
Speaker 3: who is extremely close to you, but unfortunately, I don't
Speaker 3: think she'll respond to my questions. Mays, we're going to
Speaker 3: tell you the story about how May's came into your life.
Speaker 3: But everybody, Mays is a former service dog or current
Speaker 3: what do we call make she's a service dog. She's
Speaker 3: a service dog, and she's beautiful. She's half German Shepherd
Speaker 3: and half in Melawon, which for those who don't know
Speaker 3: what that is, those are those crazy dogs that can
Speaker 3: jump all over everything and jump on top of ladders
Speaker 3: and stand. And she's been hanging out with me a
Speaker 3: little bit. She's perched under the table, and she's beautiful
Speaker 3: and she's really friendly. So I guess May's welcome welcome
Speaker 3: to Amazement. Another guy that I have a lot of
Speaker 3: respect for, Scott Man, recommended you to us.
Speaker 2: Do you know Scott? Oh, I know Scott very well.
Speaker 3: Alex asked Scott what some of his favorite nonprofits were
Speaker 3: and he named Healing the Hero, which we're going to
Speaker 3: spend most of our time on together. But I think
Speaker 3: it's absolutely Germaine to the story when we talk about
Speaker 3: Healing the Hero. Why that meant so much to you?
Speaker 3: And I think it's best to start our March second,
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen. When you found yourself looking down the barrel
Speaker 3: of a rifle? Can you tell us about that? But
Speaker 3: most importantly, what brought you to that place?
Speaker 1: Yes, that was a turning point in my life. It's
Speaker 1: when I was so overwhelmed emotionally. I couldn't regulate, and
Speaker 1: all I would do is drink alcohol because it's a
Speaker 1: central nervous system depressant. I didn't realize what was going on.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what was happening. I just thought I
Speaker 1: was stronger than that. Why am I experiencing these emotional
Speaker 1: roller coaster rides? You know, if you go back up
Speaker 1: a year prior to that, I was deployed to Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: and in my squad, eight of us.
Speaker 2: Were awarded purple hearts to include myself.
Speaker 1: How many people in the squad there's usually nine, but
Speaker 1: then plus usually a gun team.
Speaker 2: So eleven and eight, Yeah, had been wounded. Eight had
Speaker 2: been wounded.
Speaker 1: Four of them left theater not to return because of
Speaker 1: the injuries. One left in a flag drape body bag.
Speaker 1: And when we lost Doug. It was August nineteen, twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: It was nine thirty six in the morning. And I
Speaker 1: know this because I'll never forget that moment. I'm a
Speaker 1: thirty six am.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was in the Zabo Province of Afghanistan, which is
Speaker 1: between Kandahar and Helman Province, and we were doing a
Speaker 1: mission off the main Ring Road.
Speaker 2: There's like one asphalt ring.
Speaker 1: Road around the entire country of Afghanistan. They called it
Speaker 1: Ring Road, and then all the others are dirt roads.
Speaker 1: We were on Route Snake. One of our other platoons,
Speaker 1: sister platoons, had discovered an ID on a hilltop. The
Speaker 1: lieutenant there actually stepped on it and it kind of
Speaker 1: fizzled out. So they were we were escorting the explosives guys,
Speaker 1: the bomb techs.
Speaker 2: We should have stopped on the main road, stepped on it,
Speaker 2: and it fizzled out. Yeah, it didn't detonate. That'll wake
Speaker 2: you up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure Lieutenant Howard probably still thinks about that.
Speaker 2: Right. He literally stepped on this. He stepped on it.
Speaker 1: It was you know, one of those they're like toe poppers,
Speaker 1: and it didn't detonate. Sure, yeah, he's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of us that have had close calls. So that day
Speaker 1: that we lost Doug, we were on a black route,
Speaker 1: which means the route hadn't been cleared. And originally the
Speaker 1: Romanian military was supposed to do it, but they refused
Speaker 1: the mission because of.
Speaker 2: The route, and they refused the mission. They refused the mission.
Speaker 1: The Remainians were responsible for a kilometer off the main road,
Speaker 1: so they did all of the you know, ied exploitation
Speaker 1: and you know, and if it was one kilometer north
Speaker 1: or south that was there, that was their responsibility and
Speaker 1: we took care of everything else. So remember that specific mission.
Speaker 1: We had just gotten back from being at a patrol base.
Speaker 1: We were out for a week, we were going to
Speaker 1: get a couple of days down, and then the mission
Speaker 1: came up, like literally as soon as everybody got cleaned up,
Speaker 1: weapons got cleaned and then we had to go right
Speaker 1: back out and we just did what we did our
Speaker 1: normal brief as we get ready to go. One of
Speaker 1: the vehicles that was in our convoy was a what's
Speaker 1: called it MGS, a main gun system Strikers one hundred
Speaker 1: and five millimeter howiser. So it looks like a tank
Speaker 1: but on wheels.
Speaker 3: And we've seen those. Yeah, I didn't know what the
Speaker 3: as well. It does look like a tank, but it's
Speaker 3: got tires.
Speaker 1: Eight, it's got eight wheels and they're very large wheels.
Speaker 1: It's a very powerful weapons platform. But it's also you know,
Speaker 1: it comes with a big signature, right you see it,
Speaker 1: and it looks like a tank. And when we went
Speaker 1: down that specific route, we got into a waddie.
Speaker 2: We came out of the wady.
Speaker 1: I was in the lead vehicle, so our job was
Speaker 1: to exploit it, find IDs and then we would call
Speaker 1: up the EOD guys, the explosive guys that were with us.
Speaker 2: I've read this. I've read this.
Speaker 3: The minute I saw read that, I thought, what I'm
Speaker 3: about to ask you, what does find IUDs mean? I mean,
Speaker 3: aren't they under the ground.
Speaker 2: They're typically under the ground. So what we look do
Speaker 2: you find them?
Speaker 1: Other than running over them things, You're really looking for
Speaker 1: disturbed earth, you know, because if they're digging, it depends
Speaker 1: on when they placed the I D there, So you're
Speaker 1: looking for the indicators.
Speaker 2: We had the we had what was.
Speaker 1: Called a mind roller on our striker, but the also
Speaker 1: the benefit of as we were we just fielded the
Speaker 1: very first double Vhle strikers. So the double Vhle Strikers
Speaker 1: is a pretty awesome platform because it allows the energy
Speaker 1: to dissipate. The MGS striker with the one oh five
Speaker 1: howitzer was still a flat bottom, so there's nowhere for
Speaker 1: the energy to go except through the bottom of.
Speaker 3: The vehicle and a V groove imagine like I guess
Speaker 3: a speed boat.
Speaker 2: Well it's a little bit smaller than that kind of
Speaker 2: a groove. They have like sections of the hull that
Speaker 2: have openings and there is a little bit of a
Speaker 2: degree of variation of the metal which allows it not
Speaker 2: to appear to be flat. And what it does is
Speaker 2: when the energy hits it, the energy will dissipate through
Speaker 2: the sides in the back of the vehicle.
Speaker 1: It's instead of coming through it. I don't know whoever
Speaker 1: the engineer was a design that it's absolutely brilliant. Was
Speaker 1: We actually fielded the very first hit on one of
Speaker 1: those id's in country and it was just like a
Speaker 1: roller coaster ride for the guys inside.
Speaker 3: But nobody was hurt really so because of the v
Speaker 3: I guess instead of a flat when the concussion the
Speaker 3: explosion happens, it just kind of redirects.
Speaker 1: It redirects the energy and the energy will go out
Speaker 1: the sides in the back.
Speaker 2: Instead of straight to the floor. Okay, so when Doug
Speaker 2: got hit it.
Speaker 3: Well, well, so you're in this thing leading this steal
Speaker 3: right and looking for disturbed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're Earth.
Speaker 1: We're looking for the disturbed or if we're looking for
Speaker 1: anything that may be an indicator. Sometimes you'll see wires
Speaker 1: if their command wire. This specific wody that we had
Speaker 1: gone through. We have a what's called a mine roller,
Speaker 1: so it forces pressure on the earth in front of us.
Speaker 1: So it's designed to detonate an ID before the vehicle
Speaker 1: gets to it.
Speaker 2: So how far out in front of your vehicle is it.
Speaker 1: It's probably from the very front of the vehicle. Maybe
Speaker 1: it extends out about eight feet.
Speaker 2: That's all you need.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because if the further the detonation is away from
Speaker 1: the vehicle, the higher likelihood of survivability, like significant anybody
Speaker 1: if it detonated ten feet in front of us or
Speaker 1: beside us, nobody in the vehicle.
Speaker 2: Would be harmed.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe get your ears rung a little bit if
Speaker 1: you're like me as a truck commander, you're standing up
Speaker 1: outside of the vehicle. But that day we went through it,
Speaker 1: and I really feel kind of bad because as we
Speaker 1: made it through the water, I'm like, look, I guess
Speaker 1: boys were still among the living.
Speaker 2: And then my driver was drivers, that's mess up. I say, hey,
Speaker 2: you got to got to see the humor in this.
Speaker 1: And then maybe a minute later we heard the explosion
Speaker 1: behind us, and that's.
Speaker 2: When when Doug got hit.
Speaker 1: And when that vehicle was hit, what they do is
Speaker 1: there's a button that you push and you shut off
Speaker 1: all of the fuel to that vehicle and it shuts the.
Speaker 2: Whole vehicle down.
Speaker 1: Originally, Sarbrokowski was the truck commander there. He put up
Speaker 1: a green flag indicating everything was okay, and then when
Speaker 1: he turned his handheld radio on, then that's when he
Speaker 1: requested a medic and that's when we realized something was
Speaker 1: not happening.
Speaker 2: That was wasn't good.
Speaker 1: And I'll never forget that day because the Medica is
Speaker 1: the very last vehicle the patoon sergeant and Doc left better.
Speaker 2: Was our medic and you're just seeing them.
Speaker 1: They're they're with a mind detector, very slowly kind of
Speaker 1: clear on earth because they had to get up to
Speaker 1: the vehicle yet and you can't just run up to
Speaker 1: the vehicle because secondary IDs, pressure plates, you know, they
Speaker 1: have no protection. And the bomb guys amazing. It was
Speaker 1: a Navy crew, the Naval Special Warfare guys. They exited,
Speaker 1: they were in the third vehicle and they still had
Speaker 1: to go back two vehicles and that was you know
Speaker 1: you're talking about that.
Speaker 2: Nobody were not like super close.
Speaker 1: There's there's distance and just washing those guys clearing, i
Speaker 1: mean they're like hauling butt back to the back vehicle.
Speaker 1: And then they cleared all the way up and then
Speaker 1: they got to Doug and got him out of the
Speaker 1: vehicle and then they announced that he had been killed
Speaker 1: in action, and that was tough.
Speaker 2: Nobody else in the vehicle was hurt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sargeant Rakowski was injured. The other both of them,
Speaker 1: there was only three in that vehicle. Because that vehicles
Speaker 1: designed to have a three person a driver, a gunner,
Speaker 1: and a truck commander.
Speaker 2: So the dry and the gunner. The driver was killed.
Speaker 2: That was Doug.
Speaker 1: And then you had Sarnbrokowski and started Lore were the
Speaker 1: they were the tankers that were inside of the vehicle,
Speaker 1: and they both got meta backed. Sarnrokowski was banged up
Speaker 1: pretty good and he did he's he was sent back
Speaker 1: to the States and sart Lower continued the mission. He
Speaker 1: was fine.
Speaker 3: And now a few messages from our general sponsors. But
Speaker 3: first Alex finally after a year of people begging, has
Speaker 3: gotten off his rear end and we now have our
Speaker 3: merchandise store is alive. All you gotta do is you
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Speaker 3: you'll see all kinds of cool stuff shirts, hoodies, hats, magnets, bags,
Speaker 3: banners and all of this for each of our six
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Speaker 3: get it just for listening, you know, wearing your normal stuff.
Speaker 3: Another thing we've done is we really did want people
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Speaker 3: So we figured the more folks that can afford this
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Speaker 3: helping spread an army and normal Folks across the country.
Speaker 3: So we're trying to make it as inexpensive as possible
Speaker 3: for all of you. So get yours at normal Folks
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Speaker 3: community and look cool representing the Army and Normal Folks brand.
Speaker 3: We'll see you wearing that stuff when you send us
Speaker 3: pictures and we get to post it on our social media.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back. Are these things like mines? So
Speaker 3: like old school mines have some type of pressure thing
Speaker 3: that when you push on it, it activates it.
Speaker 2: And then when you lift they explode.
Speaker 3: Is that what this was or is there some guy
Speaker 3: somewhere watching this and they're either wired or remote controlled
Speaker 3: and they just decided to blow it them.
Speaker 1: So this specific id was more than likely it was
Speaker 1: homemade explosives. So they're using ammonium nitrate and what they'll
Speaker 1: do is they'll bury it. This one was not a
Speaker 1: pressure wire, which is why we didn't set it off.
Speaker 1: This was a what's called a command wire, and the
Speaker 1: radio signal is what set it off. In other words,
Speaker 1: they waited for that specific vehicle because of what it
Speaker 1: looked like being a tank.
Speaker 2: That's the vehicle that they targeted.
Speaker 1: And we know this because as we met a act
Speaker 1: Sarn Rokowski, Sarn Lore and then they take Cordo's body out,
Speaker 1: we had to recover the vehicle and that the mechanics
Speaker 1: that came out. They had hooked the vehicle up was
Speaker 1: already missing one wheel. And I'll never forget. As we're
Speaker 1: driving back out and I'm the vehicle right behind the striker.
Speaker 1: As we're pulling it out, another platoon had come to
Speaker 1: assist us, and the vehicle hit an idea second time,
Speaker 1: So they targeted that same vehicle a second time. And
Speaker 1: I'll never forget because I'm standing up and I'm like
Speaker 1: twenty five maybe twenty yards behind it, and I'm just
Speaker 1: watching this massive striker wheel, which they're huge, They're like
Speaker 1: five feet big old round wheel, and I just watched
Speaker 1: this striker wheel fly about three hundred meters through the air.
Speaker 2: That's crazy. That's the amount of force.
Speaker 1: And it got to the point where as we're moving
Speaker 1: out of that I mean, they were basically dragging this
Speaker 1: vehicle out, and the vehicle behind us said, hey, my interpreter,
Speaker 1: who's listening to an icon ra is hearing chatter that
Speaker 1: they're trying to hit another vehicle. And his electronic warfare
Speaker 1: system was going off. So in other words, they were
Speaker 1: trying to command wire another ID on that on us
Speaker 1: as we're coming out. But that system was designed to
Speaker 1: jam those radio signals so he could hear his system operating.
Speaker 1: And then we had we found targets and we just
Speaker 1: we lit them up for about two three minutes, and
Speaker 1: then we continue to pull the vehicle out because we
Speaker 1: had to get we had to.
Speaker 2: Get the guys back out of that area. That was
Speaker 2: a pretty bad day.
Speaker 1: It was pretty you know, it's it's warfare, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of what we experienced in the military.
Speaker 2: And everybody in the platoon, I mean, we knew we
Speaker 2: lost our brother.
Speaker 1: He had already been announced KA and you know, as
Speaker 1: tough as it is, you know, mission has to continue,
Speaker 1: and we learned to compartmentalize and when we all got
Speaker 1: back to the fob, everybody just had the thousand yards stare.
Speaker 1: You know, we just you know, nothing we could do
Speaker 1: at that moment. So that was that was probably one
Speaker 1: of the worst days of my life.
Speaker 3: So when somebody like me says thank you for your service,
Speaker 3: I'm thanking you for your service, but I'm also saying
Speaker 3: thanks for enduring trauma. The ninety nine point nine percent
Speaker 3: of us will never understand.
Speaker 4: And that's why we do it. Seth Alverton, Somebody's got
Speaker 4: to hold the guard. So I've heard about survivors guilt before.
Speaker 4: Is that what that was for you?
Speaker 1: That was an eight hundred pound gorilla that I couldn't
Speaker 1: get off my back because even in theater, even in theater,
Speaker 1: because the problem that I had was, if you want
Speaker 1: to back up three weeks. I'm leading a patrol across
Speaker 1: the Tarnac River. I have four Americans and I have
Speaker 1: four Afghan soldiers and one brand new interpreter we've never
Speaker 1: worked with before, and we had to link up with
Speaker 1: our strikers. We were doing a mission up on top
Speaker 1: of a mountain. We were on one side. We had
Speaker 1: both sides of the mountain covered and we were just
Speaker 1: assessing patterns of life.
Speaker 2: I tried to tell them on.
Speaker 1: Lieutenant, I said, they suck out here, assess it's done.
Speaker 1: But we had We were getting hit from behind the
Speaker 1: one mountain, so they were launching rockets to us.
Speaker 2: So we were up there hoping to capture something.
Speaker 1: So I had to lead a group down across the
Speaker 1: river and to link up with our strikers because we're
Speaker 1: all dismounted up on the mountain. And as we're coming
Speaker 1: across the river, we're getting ready to go down into
Speaker 1: the river and come back to the other side.
Speaker 2: So a valley and a yeah, pretty exposed.
Speaker 1: River exposed and that's really the only green you'll see
Speaker 1: up there in the Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: It's right along the river.
Speaker 1: There's green on both sides, so there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of vegetation going through there. And I stepped on a
Speaker 1: pressure plate on that dismount of patrol and I detonated
Speaker 1: an id that was probably five ten feet away, and
Speaker 1: that was no armor. Basically, it looked like looked like
Speaker 1: somebody lit a match in the went straight up in
Speaker 1: there about twenty feet and then all the pressure comes out,
Speaker 1: all the dirt and the dust and the debris comes out,
Speaker 1: and I remember hitting the ground and I got up
Speaker 1: quickly checking status of my guys, and one of my
Speaker 1: guys didn't respond, so I go into squadaler mode. We
Speaker 1: got to get accountability of everybody. So I'm calling up
Speaker 1: on the mountain, trying to tell the guys not to
Speaker 1: come down. Nobody's I can hear them, but they're not
Speaker 1: I'm not able to push my transmission out and when
Speaker 1: I look down when I hit the ground, the antenna snapped.
Speaker 2: So we had to get off the objective.
Speaker 1: And we got off the objective pretty quickly, set up
Speaker 1: a perimeter, and I'm just trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: planet I was on because the blast is it was
Speaker 1: pretty intense. And I'm still trying to call up. Oh,
Speaker 1: my bell's wrung. I played football in high school. My
Speaker 1: bell had never been wrung like that before.
Speaker 3: For those who hadn't played football, when you get your
Speaker 3: bell wrung, which is really a bad metaphor because it's
Speaker 3: actually brain damage, And we can get off this for
Speaker 3: a second, go to the CTE thing that's become very
Speaker 3: popular for football players. But the point is, every time
Speaker 3: you get your bell rung, I E you see stars.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you've ever done this, but you
Speaker 3: almost it almost tastes like you're biting aluminum foil. Have
Speaker 3: you ever gotten that taste in your mouth?
Speaker 2: It's a metallic like a little metallic thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that football players, if you've played football for any
Speaker 3: period of time, will have. Well, they're basically it's basically
Speaker 3: a concussion and your brain is bruised and you need
Speaker 3: adequate time to recover. You get real sensitive to light.
Speaker 3: So all of that I can correlate to quote having
Speaker 3: your bell rung, But that's being hit in the head
Speaker 3: by another human that is not having an explosion happen
Speaker 3: in your face and you're disoriented and your ears are ringing,
Speaker 3: or you can't hear. Your vision sometime gets tunneled, you
Speaker 3: lose your peripheral for a little while. That's happened to
Speaker 3: me before. But anyway, the point is, what of those
Speaker 3: were you experiencing?
Speaker 2: So probably all the above.
Speaker 1: When I got my guys to a secure perimeter, everybody's safe.
Speaker 1: Inn Mind you, I don't speak the native language, so
Speaker 1: I'm relying on an interpreter to speak with the Afghans.
Speaker 2: Everybody seemed to be okay.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're all, we're all pretty concussed and were
Speaker 1: lucky to waste dead. Well, that's the crazy part is
Speaker 1: we got We're very blessed. You know, I still have
Speaker 1: all my limbs, you know, I'm you know, all my
Speaker 1: guys are still alive, and to this day they're still
Speaker 1: they're still I mean, some of them are dealing with
Speaker 1: concussion related injuries. But you know, it was one of
Speaker 1: those things where when we got off that objective and
Speaker 1: we're in a perimeter, we're like, did that just happen?
Speaker 2: Really well? And that's the crazy part.
Speaker 1: You know, when you come to trauma, the event happening
Speaker 1: as it was unfolding, wasn't traumatic. We were we basically
Speaker 1: do battle drills, so we we got off the objective.
Speaker 2: We didcause everything we were trained to do.
Speaker 1: And then when you stop and you pause, and that's
Speaker 1: when the brain goes what just happened? And that's when
Speaker 1: all the emotions attached to that moment, the adrenaline. So
Speaker 1: what ended up happening is my lieutenant brought an element
Speaker 1: back off the mountain, an element like another squad of okay,
Speaker 1: like an element of people.
Speaker 2: I got it.
Speaker 1: So when he came back down, he looked at me, Okay,
Speaker 1: you guys are good. Okay, go back to the strikers,
Speaker 1: pick up the food for the Afghans, and then come
Speaker 1: back up the mountain. I said, certain, no offense. I
Speaker 1: can't even tell you what day it is. And then
Speaker 1: that's when he had the medic look at everybody in
Speaker 1: the medic said, they're all done, sir, They're all they
Speaker 1: all have concussion.
Speaker 2: They're all TBI related injuries. They got to.
Speaker 1: Get from out of brain injury, which most people call concussions,
Speaker 1: we call TBI. So that ended our our operation. And
Speaker 1: I remember they were I couldn't even read my garment,
Speaker 1: my GPS. I couldn't even tell what direction I was going,
Speaker 1: you're kidding. I was so out of focus. And then
Speaker 1: so I had to take disoriented. My brain is a
Speaker 1: way disoriented. And then as we're walking back to our strikers,
Speaker 1: they led the squad. Another squad leader came in and
Speaker 1: I'm I remember walking and all of a sudden, I
Speaker 1: start veering and leaning and then I'm falling over like
Speaker 1: I had no balance. My brain was just like I
Speaker 1: couldn't even tell you anything. And then when we got
Speaker 1: back to our strikers, I was sitting there talking to
Speaker 1: my oppatoon leader, Lieutenant Cousey, and he said, Sartain Jarvis,
Speaker 1: what are you saying? Like I'm talking to but he
Speaker 1: couldn't understand what I'm saying. So I think I'm talking
Speaker 1: but I'm not making sense, right, So he said, hey,
Speaker 1: just go sit in a striker and then they had
Speaker 1: to go back up the mountain, get the get the
Speaker 1: folks that were still up to bring all our rock
Speaker 1: sacks back.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it was just one of those crazy things.
Speaker 1: And when I get back to the Ford Operating Base,
Speaker 1: what I had to do is go see the dock.
Speaker 1: We had a really good We were fortunate for a
Speaker 1: company sized element. We had a battalion surgeon, so we
Speaker 1: had a medical doctor with us. And you know, he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're done for a while, right. I remember daylight
Speaker 1: hit sunlight. I was like I couldn't even look as
Speaker 1: the door opened up. It was like it's like somebody
Speaker 1: is like hitting you in the face. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: shut that door please. Sounds were over intense, and he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you're done for a solid week, seven days, You're done,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I don't want to be done. My
Speaker 1: guys are still going to go on a mission. So
Speaker 1: I told my lieutenant, Hey, sir, you need to go
Speaker 1: talk to Major Greenberg.
Speaker 2: I need to get back on the battle roster.
Speaker 1: So he went and talked to the PLPL comes back
Speaker 1: and was a hey tell you, sar drivers. But he says,
Speaker 1: if you get another concussion like that, it could kill you.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, what you can't argue with that.
Speaker 2: So for seven days I stayed while my guys went out.
Speaker 2: Of course, I'm listening to the radio.
Speaker 1: I'm here, they're not far from from our base, and
Speaker 1: you know, during that time, I heard an ID blast
Speaker 1: go off.
Speaker 2: My guys are out there. I'm like, what's going on?
Speaker 1: And they had actually lost an Afghan police sergeant was
Speaker 1: killed by an ID while they're out on patrol.
Speaker 2: You're feeling guilty, like I should be there. I'm not there.
Speaker 1: And then about seven days later they put me back
Speaker 1: on the battle roster. Problem was, whenever I would fall asleep,
Speaker 1: I would hear the explosion again, and the first couple
Speaker 1: of times a nightmare.
Speaker 2: Well, they they never didn't get to that level.
Speaker 1: As soon as I closed my eyes, I'm vibrating to
Speaker 1: fall asleep all of a sudden boom, I'm hearing the
Speaker 1: explosion and I'm up. First couple of times I'm putting
Speaker 1: my kid on, I'm like, I think, I'm thinking we're
Speaker 1: getting receiving fire, and I'm realizing nobody else is responding.
Speaker 2: Something's not right.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: So I was pretty much a zombie after that, which
Speaker 1: is why, when we go forward three weeks, why I
Speaker 1: felt so guilty was I was not at one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: I knew I wasn't at one hundred percent, but I
Speaker 1: didn't want to say I'm not at one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: And when we lost Doug, I always thought, man, I
Speaker 1: if somebody else had been up front, would they have
Speaker 1: found it?
Speaker 2: You know, would he still be here?
Speaker 1: Those are the things that go through the mind of
Speaker 1: a leader, because that was like me saying, I can't
Speaker 1: deal with this right now. But I did not want
Speaker 1: to be sidelined. I didn't want to have to go
Speaker 1: to one of the bigger bases and deal with you know,
Speaker 1: I did eventually have to do that after one of
Speaker 1: my other kids was wounded. You know, we almost lost
Speaker 1: donni Essa, and that would have been in September, not
Speaker 1: too far after that. When he was impacted by eighty
Speaker 1: two millimeter record the rifle that detonated about four feet
Speaker 1: from where he was on our base, and we didn't
Speaker 1: think he was going to survive. And it was that
Speaker 1: the toll of that, I'm like, I'm not sleeping, I
Speaker 1: can't handle this right now. And I eventually went and
Speaker 1: talked to my commander and they sent me to Kandahar
Speaker 1: and I had to go see a neuropsychologist and then
Speaker 1: a neurologist, and that's when they labeled the injury as
Speaker 1: a moderate traumatic brain injury. So he a mild, moderate,
Speaker 1: and severe. So it wasn't like severe like Donnie when
Speaker 1: he got hit. He's got a titanium plate in his head,
Speaker 1: that would be that's severe.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So when Donnie was hit in September, we were doing
Speaker 1: a you know, a detail on the base. We're cleaning
Speaker 1: up the the HLZ, the helicopter landing zone, so the
Speaker 1: guys were out there and when the rounds hit, it
Speaker 1: was literally four feet from where he stood to the
Speaker 1: point where he was so lucky. The shrapnel went through
Speaker 1: his chest and as it went through the chest, it
Speaker 1: shredded the pericardium sack, which is a thin membrane around
Speaker 1: the heart, which means the heart had been in the
Speaker 1: contraction mode. If the heart had been fully pumping, it
Speaker 1: would have blew his heart up.
Speaker 2: It's literally a heartbeat away.
Speaker 1: He was a heartbeat away, right, And I'll never forget
Speaker 1: that day because we're just they're trying to get him
Speaker 1: off of the HLZ. As they're moving him, the rounds
Speaker 1: are adjusting fire, so they either the rounds are following
Speaker 1: them as as they're evacuating. So they end up getting
Speaker 1: him into one of the strikers, and then they realize
Speaker 1: this is not the best place for this because that
Speaker 1: specific round was a heat round, high explosive anti tank,
Speaker 1: so if it hit the tank, it's going to hit
Speaker 1: and it's going to probably hit everybody inside it. And
Speaker 1: they end up moving him to a bunker. The medics
Speaker 1: came out, rounds are still impacting and all the way
Speaker 1: to getting him into the age station. So when you
Speaker 1: get to the dock, Major Greenberg, if you got to
Speaker 1: him alive, you were going to survive.
Speaker 2: He was that good.
Speaker 1: So Major Greenberg got him all patched up ready to go.
Speaker 1: They and we were on the perimeter trying to find
Speaker 1: targets one of my guys and my strikers that were
Speaker 1: doing maintenance on the weapons system, and they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: sarm drivis, I've got a heat signature, and he gave
Speaker 1: me a distance in direction. And then we had a
Speaker 1: a like a satellite system on the base and they
Speaker 1: gave a distanceing direction and that point of origin site
Speaker 1: where they determined where it was was only about twenty
Speaker 1: meters from where the striker had that same heat signature
Speaker 1: twenty meters, which means that was the point of origin,
Speaker 1: which means that heat signature was the shooters right.
Speaker 2: And he's like, do you want me to get in
Speaker 2: the gun?
Speaker 1: I said, get your gun up and get it, get
Speaker 1: it operational, and and I'm doing them.
Speaker 2: I'm calling in a polar plot fire mission, so.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get ar chillery rounds going out to
Speaker 1: that target and we were next. We were not allowed
Speaker 1: to because it was too close to the perimeter of
Speaker 1: a structure. So there were certain rules we couldn't engage
Speaker 1: if it was too close to where there would be
Speaker 1: civilians casualties, which I get. You know, we go to
Speaker 1: great lengths to not injure or kill civilians. Doesn't always happen.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, well, you know what, he got the
Speaker 1: fifty cal up. I just said start engaging, and I'm
Speaker 1: up on a tower and I'm hearing those rounds whiz
Speaker 1: by me and they're shooting, you know, as far basically
Speaker 1: doing plunging fire because it was probably about three thousand
Speaker 1: meters away and that gun is that accurate three thousand
Speaker 1: But you can't hit rounds on target, you know, And
Speaker 1: it was it felt like a little bit of justice
Speaker 1: to be able to shoot back because a lot of
Speaker 1: times we don't get a shoot back.
Speaker 2: And yeah, that was what's that at the end of
Speaker 2: their day? No, No, that was that was not the
Speaker 2: end of the days.
Speaker 1: A matter of fact, later that evening they saw them
Speaker 1: on the on They had an aerial vehicle up. They
Speaker 1: saw them with the the eighty two millimeter recordless rifle
Speaker 1: carrying a box.
Speaker 2: Two guys going up over the hill.
Speaker 1: And but the area we were in did we didn't
Speaker 1: have priorities, so we couldn't we couldn't call anything in.
Speaker 2: You just had to watch them go over the hill.
Speaker 3: Okay, I absolutely understand if you're saying your brain was
Speaker 3: rattled up and you're feeling guilty and everything.
Speaker 2: But I mean, you.
Speaker 3: Can just hear you talk. You're you're you're a professional warrior.
Speaker 3: You clearly care about your people. You're doing the best
Speaker 3: work you can do, and it's a war zone and
Speaker 3: bad guys are trying to kill you. I think somebody
Speaker 3: not in your situation can hear that story and rationalize.
Speaker 3: It's awful that one of your men were killed, the
Speaker 3: Afghan policeman was killed, that people under your charge were injured.
Speaker 3: But isn't that expected when you're in leadership and you're
Speaker 3: in theater, that there's just going to be casualties and
Speaker 3: therefore they're not really they're not your fault. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's it's the fault of war. It's the fault of
Speaker 3: the enemy.
Speaker 2: Well that's that's a proper frame to look at it, right.
Speaker 2: So but in the moment, setting.
Speaker 3: That up for you a little to explain how the
Speaker 3: rationalization doesn't work.
Speaker 1: Well in in theater, you're you're tasked with the survival
Speaker 1: of your men, right, and and anybody that's a leader knows,
Speaker 1: you know, good two rules of war, good people dying war,
Speaker 1: and the second one is good people dying war.
Speaker 2: Right, There's nothing you're going to be right.
Speaker 1: That's just the nature of that kind of business, and
Speaker 1: that's why you train so hard to make sure you
Speaker 1: can bring everybody home. But you're right, it was realizing that, well, one,
Speaker 1: I didn't place that id right, I didn't select the route,
Speaker 1: I didn't pick the mission right. Those are all things
Speaker 1: that I didn't have context in the moment. So in
Speaker 1: the moment you got to realize when a traumatic event occurs,
Speaker 1: you know that spidy sense in the back of your
Speaker 1: brain that kind of has your hair standing up, that's
Speaker 1: the fight or flight response. That part of your brain
Speaker 1: is You're amygdala, and what it's doing is it's taking
Speaker 1: all of the data that's around that moment in time
Speaker 1: and it glues it to the memory. So anytime you
Speaker 1: hear something, see something.
Speaker 3: Because it's so intense that it gets sucked and that's
Speaker 3: a memory you're going to have no matter what is
Speaker 3: that what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Well, what I'm saying is it's a survival mechanism. So
Speaker 1: that part of the brain, its whole job is to
Speaker 1: protect you and to survive the species.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Feeding comes from your megala, fighting flight comes from your migala,
Speaker 1: and then procreation is also in a miglar response. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's the It's that's why it's such a powerful emotion.
Speaker 1: When you're you know, intimate with somebody. That part of
Speaker 1: the brain is to propagate the species.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: What happens is when it takes all that data and
Speaker 1: it glues it to the memory. Now, anytime you see something,
Speaker 1: hear something, smell something that reminds you of that event,
Speaker 1: the alarm goes off in the brain red alert, danger danger.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I'll give you a prime example. Well, guys will come
Speaker 1: home from my Raq, right, because I've been there as well.
Speaker 1: When guys came home from Iraq and on trash day,
Speaker 1: they're swerving to miss trash cans because the alarm goes
Speaker 1: off and says, hey, there is a possible ID in
Speaker 1: that trash can.
Speaker 2: Because in Iraq, even though.
Speaker 3: It is completely unreasonable, I think that they can't help
Speaker 3: it because that part of their brain has the danger
Speaker 3: that they lived has been tethered to that part of
Speaker 3: the brain and the brain can't let it go.
Speaker 1: It's called Olympic hijack. It's called what Olympic hijack, O
Speaker 1: limbic l imbice, the Olympic system.
Speaker 2: It hijacks.
Speaker 1: It's hijacked. It's hijacked it right. You see it regularly
Speaker 1: with like law enforcement officers getting super triggered. It's just
Speaker 1: Olympic hijack. Something else in the past is what's caused
Speaker 1: that the alarm goes off, right, I'll put it in
Speaker 1: a civilian terminal. Say a woman was sexually assaulted, and
Speaker 1: because I'm a product of the eighties, DRNKR was a
Speaker 1: big thing back then, and the suspect was wearing Dr Car.
Speaker 2: Deodorant or not deodorant, but you know whatever, Colone Colonne.
Speaker 2: That's it. I couldn't think of the word.
Speaker 1: And then twenty years later, you're in a grocery store
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you smell that drunk cologne
Speaker 1: and the brain goes into Olympic hijack. I got to
Speaker 1: get to safety because they're back, right, That's what the
Speaker 1: brain does. It's a constant reminder to keep you safe, right,
Speaker 1: not realizing it's just a very inefficient way of doing it.
Speaker 2: I read that.
Speaker 3: Doug's mom would post memorabile things on Facebook or something
Speaker 3: about them. Yeah, and every time you read those it
Speaker 3: was like somebody was stabbing you in the face. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And it's not that you didn't appreciate her love for
Speaker 3: her song and the memory of her son, but I
Speaker 3: assume it was because that triggered your hijacking.
Speaker 2: I'm asking that I don't.
Speaker 1: So whenever I would see her, because I knew Doug
Speaker 1: was an only child, so a mom lost her son,
Speaker 1: and every time she would post something, it was like
Speaker 1: it's like a gut punch, like I was being stabbed
Speaker 1: in the heart, not because of what she was posting,
Speaker 1: because I felt responsible.
Speaker 2: That's what affected me.
Speaker 1: That's the survivor guilt, right, That's a very powerful emotional.
Speaker 1: I'd say survivor guilt and PTSD are probably equal in intensity,
Speaker 1: you know, because I felt responsible for Doug.
Speaker 3: And so this all back to the original question. This
Speaker 3: all led to you wanted to check out? Yes, And
Speaker 3: that concludes Part one of our conversation with Dan Jarvis,
Speaker 3: and you don't want to miss part two. It's now
Speaker 3: available to listen to together. Guys, we can change this country,
Speaker 3: but it starts with you. I'll see in part two.