In this episode of the Soldier Fund Podcast, Ben Derrick and Jordan Jones discuss the mindset and experiences of a Special Forces operator with 23 years of service. The guest, SFC W.D., shares his journey from joining the Marines in 2001 to becoming a Scout Sniper and eventually a Green Beret. They delve into the concept of discipline, defining it as doing the right thing even when it's hard, and emphasize the importance of maintaining humanity and ethics in combat. W.D. highlights the need for emotional control and respect for one's enemy, even in war. The conversation also touches on the relationship between Special Operations forces and conventional units, stressing the importance of understanding and executing the basics of warfare exceptionally well. W.D. and Ben Derrick discuss the challenges and complexities of transitioning from military life to civilian life, particularly for Special Operations forces. They explore the concept of operator syndrome, the heightened situational awareness and aggressive responses that soldiers develop in combat, and how these traits can be problematic in civilian settings. W.D. emphasizes the importance of finding a fulfilling occupation, building a new fraternity, and maintaining self-worth post-military. They also touch on the psychological impact of survivor's guilt and the need for self-assessment and adaptation.
W.D. 0:00
Music.
Ben Derrick 0:13
Welcome to the soldier fund podcast, the platform for untold stories from the National Guard Special Forces community join us as we delve into the lives of these elite warriors and the journey of our non profit dedicated to supporting their courageous mission to free the oppressed worldwide. I'm your host. Ben Derrick, let's dive in. Jordan, the podcast continues. We're back at it. You're back in and by the way before the mics turned on, you were pretty rude to me, but we're gonna leave it there. Yeah, we won't bring it up. That's fine. Is that a thing? Green Berets just they're rude when at will. I
Jordan Jones 0:48
think so, man, will you get a green hat and a healthy dose of sarcasm at graduation?
W.D. 0:54
It's actually a good sign, yeah, if they're not messing with you, then they probably,
Ben Derrick 0:58
yeah, that's right. Well, this episode is one that actually I've been anticipating, bracing for, studying for. I think our listeners are in for an experience. How about you? Yeah, and I
Jordan Jones 1:09
think, I think we're probably still under prepared, so I
Ben Derrick 1:14
distinctly get that feeling, yeah, yeah. So would we've your name has come up since we first, like, purchase microphones. So the fact that you're here very, very grateful that you've made the time, I know you're a busy individual, the topic we're going to talk about today, I guarantee you, is going to captivate our audience in particular, both on the military and civilian side. We're going to get to both sides of that. I don't know what the timeline is going to be on this episode, probably one that people are going to have to break up in a couple of listening sessions, wouldn't you say?
W.D. 1:45
I mean, maybe
Ben Derrick 1:49
that was like, hey, they can't see or not. This is Radio, bro. So just so people, people may not be familiar with you that are outside of a particular radio so maybe just spin us up on kind of top level career where you sit now, and then we'll jump into our topic.
W.D. 2:08
So yeah, thanks for having me. And yeah, y'all are, I don't deserve any of the the accolades that y'all are.
Ben Derrick 2:15
Well, that's okay. Nobody does that's in the studio. We just, yeah, it's just part of what we
W.D. 2:19
do. Just, I'm just, a just a dude doing a job anyway. Um, so, yeah, I actually, so I've been in for about 23 years so far. Actually, I was in the Marines. First, I grew up on a farm out in the middle of nowhere in Mississippi. I don't really know why I joined the Marines. Nobody in my family was in the military. I mean, I knew they would pay for college and shit, but it was just, I don't know, it's kind of a spur of the moment thing. And so I joined in June of 2001 and I remember right after I was right out of high school when I was 18, and right after I signed, you know, because I had to wait till I was 18, because my mom was gonna do it for me. So right after I did it, you know, I told my mom and my dad, and, you know, my mom was crying, and she was just like, I don't want you to go to war. I'm like, Mom, there's, what are you talking about? There's nothing going on right now. And this is June of 2001 so very quickly stuff started going on. Didn't age well at all, not at all. So bad for that poor lady anyway. And so I ended up coming into the I was originally in the infantry in the Marine Corps, no 311 then I ended up going to a thing called is out in Virginia. But it was the Fast Company, which is the fleet anti terrorism security team, which it seemed kind of cheesy at the time, but, man, they really, actually, they, they really worked me up with close quarters battle and urban combat. That was a lot of what they did. And that's quite a shift from the way you grew up. Yeah, I grew up out in the on a farm, out in the woods, like I was good on the woods, you know, grew up hunting and everything except the city was like, a whole new thing for me, and they really made me comfortable there. So I was really happy with my time there after I was for like, a few years, and we deployed a few times. Then after, after that, I ended up going back to the fleet. Then I went to Second Battalion, eighth Marines, in order to become a Scout Sniper. Ended up becoming a Scout Sniper there, and which was awesome. So
Ben Derrick 4:16
what attract you to the if I could interrupt being a sniper?
W.D. 4:20
Oh, man, I don't know, you know. So it's weird. It's like, when I originally joined the Marines, I was just like, you know, I wanted to be in the infantry, but I didn't know if I could be in the infantry. I didn't know if I was ever gonna make it. And went to boot camp and ended up going to Soi, our School of infantry, and ended up doing actually pretty well there. And it was, it was almost like a lot of what is in you, and this may happen throughout my life, but a lot of it was, I don't know if I am good enough to do it, because the dudes there are so good, and I just be like, Well, I'm gonna give it a try, and eventually I you. I did well, that
Ben Derrick 5:01
sort of this comes up a lot as we have these conversations, that sort of desire to reach for more, but that humility, it seems like an important part of the cocktail, before you even try those things. I
W.D. 5:12
think it is. I definitely think it is an ambition. Can definitely be a double edged sword, I will tell you that. But either way, as far as being a sniper, like I so I really wanted to be, I didn't really, you know, they didn't have MARSOC at that time, so they you either went recon or force recon and or Scout Sniper. And I didn't, if you, if you do recon and force recon, and people listen to this podcast that are in those communities, like, Don't hate me for saying this, but like, you're you do your R and S mission, but you are a sniper. But you can be a sniper if you go to school, but truly, to be like, live, eat, breathe, sniping, you have to, you really have to be a Scout Sniper in the infantry, because that is your sole purpose for being. And that's kind of what I wanted to do, and it was good. And eventually, eventually my did a few deployments there, and then my contract ended. And by that point is, this is around 2000 late 1005 early 1006 and I'd kind of like, kind of like, lost my taste for, you know, the military and war. I'm not, like a militaristic person at all. And eventually, somehow I was, when I was on terminal leave, somehow met Jeff Dawson, and Jeff was, he tried to get me to come over to Special Forces, you know, and he was basically set up a meeting. And I was like, Well, I'm not gonna go, but I'll just go to I'm not gonna go to I'm not going to go into special forces, but I just go to this meeting. And when I was sitting down with Jeff, I was basically interrupted. And I was like, Look, dude, like, Man, I'm just here to fight. I don't I'm not going to stand up parade rest for you. I'm not going to get, you know, I'm not just going to go get my hair cut all the time. I'm like, I don't give a shit about all that. I would just like to fight. And I thought he was gonna kick me out of his office, and he sort of looked at me, and he was like, man, you're perfect for
Jordan Jones 7:05
this, yeah, knowingly saying the exact right things. And so we,
W.D. 7:09
I remember he looked at me, he was like, Man, I hadn't seen my hat in like two years.
Ben Derrick 7:15
Accidentally passed the interview, that's right.
W.D. 7:17
And so then I got brought in to ended up doing, doing well, went to the Q Course. Did well. Got on 2232, which has been my OD. I've been on, I've been blessed. I've been on the same ODA, for you know, my entire career.
Ben Derrick 7:30
How would you, how would you say, the the combination of growing up rural and then becoming trained in close quarter combat, getting familiar city? Did that help? Because we have a lot of guys, like, 18x rays that are listening to this. Like, that combination help you get through the process selection and the course,
W.D. 7:49
I think, yeah. I mean, I think it did. I mean, obviously, like, so selection, selection and the Q Course are going to be predominantly sort of, like, you know, like, selection is going to be all pretty much out in the woods. I mean, a lot of that is going to be the star, course. And so you really have to be comfortable, really just being by yourself, out in the woods, in the dark. There's those that can do it, and then there's those that like thrive in it. And I remember, I mean, this is gonna sound weird. I used to love and I still do, like, one of my favorite things to do, and it's probably like a form of meditation for me, is to just go out in the woods, in the dark by myself. No lights. I hate lights. I don't know it just it felt good. A lot of guys, I think, whenever they do these really hard lamb navigation courses. I think some of them for whatever reasons they can't take being by themselves in the dark. I know that sounds weird, but I do, I feel like I saw that a lot, yeah. So I do think that helped prepare me as far as close quarters combat and the Q Course itself. I do think it obviously helped because we did, we did a lot of like, you know, gun truck work. We do a lot of stuff like that. Everybody, you know, obviously cross train, machine guns, everybody did whatever. So I was fairly well good at doing all the weapons stuff and how to and tactical stuff. And I knew how to blend my urban tactics into my rural tactics, which is kind of an art in and of itself. Because, you know, when you hit a house, you can quickly go from rural to urban quite a bit. So I do think it helped me there. But you know that the the urban combat portion of Sut, at least when I went through, I mean, this is, again, this is, you know, shit 20 years ago. It was, it was fairly small. I mean, a lot of it Sut is just like straight seven, dash eight. So, but I do and so I think that growing up on a farm basically did help me. Yeah, the
Ben Derrick 9:43
reason I asked the question is because mostly what we're here to talk about today is mindset, and as we're getting this interview rolling, there's a lot of that being exposed, even initially in that mindset, no matter where you grow up or what your previous military experience is, Jordan, I you and I have sat around. Sfres and talked about this a lot, related to age, actually. You know, when the mindset kicks in, what makes a guy quit and what makes a guy stay? Like, how does that work out? So much of it is literally between the man's ears, right?
Jordan Jones 10:16
That's when we were talking about land nav just a second ago. It's not the task of land, nav, necessarily. There's a lot of self assessment happening. Are you okay with your own faults? And it's not the physical being alone, it's inside your mind alone. And can you, can you stay on task and not let those or do you even have voices or whatever it is that haunt you? Does that stuff gets exposed when you're alone, in the dark, traveling, yeah, a lot
W.D. 10:45
of is like, am I going in the right am I? Am I really on the right ads? Did I go too far? Did I do whatever? And so a lot of that emotional response will end up destroying your confidence, and that's actually one of the things that we kind of talk about later.
Ben Derrick 11:00
Well, for me, it leads into the mindset. I think, if you're looking at the civilian point of view, which is 100% where I come from, the mindset is actually the most fascinating thing about special forces to me, because you have guys that can go, you know, roll around in the sand, and people are paying 10s of 1000s of dollars to, hey, look, I can go through this and I can go through that, but the mindset, the sustained mindset, for me, is what's so fascinating, and where it helps and actually where it hurts. I know we're going to get to that a little bit later in this interview, but I think it would be helpful at this point, just to start with discussing warfare and what that does to a mindset, what's required in order to go towards that, to go towards danger and to operate efficiently in that, I think a large part of the misconception from the civilian population as well, it's just muscle memory. It's just reps. I mean, it's trained into you and but we see that that's not true, because if it were, then everybody could be a Green Beret. Obviously, everyone is not a Green Beret. So talking through when we drop into, what it breaks down to is, I would like to stay alive, so I'm fighting you. You would like to stay alive, so you're fighting me. Let's dig into that a little bit, because I think it would be fascinating discussion there. Yeah,
W.D. 12:16
and I mean, so in this sort of like, and so I'm pretty obsessive with details and so, and also read a lot of philosophies. You have to forgive me for how this episode is going to go, but I do so. And there's this argument about nature versus nurture, about what makes somebody like that and like all arguments with nature versus nurture, I don't think one wins out or the other. I threw I really think it's a combination of the two. Your life is a system of punishments and rewards, and a lot of it is how you can perceive that actual punishment, reward. I mean, if you perceive a punishment, this is going to sound strange. If you can morph a punishment into a reward type feeling, I think that that can help you. Now. The trick is figuring out how to do that. Um, Jordan,
Ben Derrick 13:06
is this what you guys are talking about when you say, Eat pain. We just eat pain. I think
Jordan Jones 13:11
so. I think I think it's very
W.D. 13:13
similar, yeah, yeah. When I like for Scout Snipers, we used to have this thing in our school house, they would always say, uh, suffer patiently and patiently suffer. And the reason why we would do that is because, you know, we were, our job was to basically remain unhidden and just in take these precision shots and remain unhidden after the shot is over as well. In order to do that, you really have to just, you're in the worst possible conditions. You're in the worst possible terrain. You're, you know, quote, you're just basically eating shit. The thing is, is like, and we'll get into this later, it's like, you're not just surviving, you're trying, you're thriving. And that takes, that takes a mental shift for a lot of people, but, um, but anyway, so again, so and when I was in again, this kind of goes about me growing up. I mean, I was like the kid that, like, I was really nice kid. I was like, the kid that, like, butterflies and shit landed on, I don't know, it was very strange when I was really popular in high school. I, you know, had a lot of friends I never, ever, ever, like, ever considered that I could ever kill anybody. I mean, it was repulsive in my mind. And so again, I don't know why join the race. And
Ben Derrick 14:25
yeah, your whole glide path just makes a whole lot of sense. Man, nice kid, could never kill anybody. It's
Jordan Jones 14:31
really weird though, that you say that, man, because that you kind of described me. And I've talked to several guys that are the same way. They're like, man, I was a really good kid, yeah, you know, my parents didn't have to get on to me a whole lot, like, it's, it's the weird, not it's weird. It's strange that this many guys with very similar stories all find themselves in this line of work. Yeah?
Ben Derrick 14:56
Meaning Green Beret, yes, yes. Yeah.
W.D. 14:59
So again, so I usually like to start as like, so how did I make that shift? And I'm pretty introspective, or at least to try to be some of the things is, like, it's like, starting from the very big, very basics. And what I've come to realize is like, you know, so warfare is warfare like, warfare is pretty much been the same as it was 1000 years ago or more. Now it has evolved, and most of that evolution comes from our trying to solve problems without flanking our enemy, and so we use it, started with projectile weapons and cavalry. Now we have missiles, drones, things like that. But no matter what, at the end of all that, warfare always involves like that infantry man on the ground. And so that was where that mindset of that infantry man on the ground like I became not obsessed with but it was just more like how I morphed and so, and this took me a while, because when I first, when the Marines like, I don't, I didn't have a good understanding. I mean, I was just learning. And, you know, in the Marines, I don't know if y'all know this, like in boot camp, you say they, I don't say they force you, but you say kill, like, 100 times a day. You say you, you attack the chow hall. You every time you do is like, kill, kill, kill them all. And you and people say it's brainwashing, and probably it is, I mean, to a point, but it's really more like a mantra, like a prayer, really, and it just allows you to put that in your mind, if that makes any sense. Yeah, so, but anyway, so I don't really think I understood human conflict. It's kind of a fast forward. I don't really, weirdly enough, until I was, you know, I was already, like, six, seven years in, and I ended up going to college, and I took this course on just simple ecology. This is ecology. And ecology is just a study of how power moves from thing to thing in nature, basically, you know, with predators, prey, you know, sunlight, everything, and so one of the tenets of ecology is, and there's probably some biologists out there that are going to crucify me for messing this up, but it's been a while since I've been to college, but basically, two different species competing for the same finite resources in a biosphere region are eventually going to come into conflict. And I think, and that's just a very non emotional way of looking at nature. And so if you kind of put that on our scale, you know, there's a finite amount of resources. You can pick your resource. I mean, we can start with like petroleum, or something like that. There's a finite amount of petroleum. We know that it runs a good bit of our country or our, you know, our economy, and there's a finite resource, eventually we're going to come into conflict with somebody else who wants that resource, because it was what we're trying to do is continue our genetic line. I mean, for the most part, you want your kids to be happy with that being said, you know, and it's in your particular region, like, I think where humans are, it's like, it's where we see social creatures. You know, we evolved into tribes, and we evolved into city states, and then we evolved into essentially, countries and nations. And so you can sort of take that quote, unquote species part and say it's like when one nation and another nation are competing for the same finite amount of resources, they're probably going to come into conflict. And that's just the that's that's ecology, and that's okay, but I think the big takeaway is that we're always going to have an armed conflict as long as there's finite resources.
Ben Derrick 18:40
I want to pause there for just second, because this idea does fascinate me as well. Finite resources, I think, are often the underpinning, not necessarily mentioned by governments for reasons for going to war. There's usually some larger, more honorable cause, then we need more fuel Well,
W.D. 18:58
you know, and I think that that's like, I mean, I'm an idealist, but I think that, okay, so let's, let's talk about, like, the Iraq conflict. A lot of people said the Iraq conflict was about oil. Now, do I personally think it was just about oil? Like, not necessarily. I mean, this is also post 911. Americans were calling for blood from somewhere we had had, you know, quote, unquote intelligence. It was talking about al Qaeda Ben and Iraq and all that stuff, and Saddam Hussein, you know, was not a good, not a good man, yes. But, and there's people that say, well, it was all over all Now, what if it was? So? What if it was, I mean, so is the old gonna so again, we're competing with, you know, I don't want to say an enemy economy, but like another economy, so either we keep people China or Russia, if they have that oil reserve that is going to help their economy out, while probably hurting ours. Because, again, this is saying, I'm not talking about fracking or anything like this. It's still a finite resource. Yeah. And so if we went there. Get that all to help out America's economy. Now, people may look at like, look at that like it's a very bad thing, or that's not honorable, but in the end, speaking pragmatically, is it the right thing to do? And that's what and you can start to go into right or wrong. But I think when you're a leader, when you're a leader, a lot of what you have to do is make non emotional assessments about what you have to do to help out who you're leading, trying to do the greatest good for the greatest amount of people, absolutely, whether it's understood or not, whether it's understood or not. And so that's a whole nother aside. But I mean, I think that's a big thing. And so once you can kind of wrap your because the world is not, you know, the world is not a nice place. And so once you can sort of wrap your mind around that, I think it does help, because, like knowing that there's going to be conflict, I think the next step is like realizing what a government is, and a government so essentially, you know, back when we were starting to sort of form in societies and things like that. A lot of the reasons why we formed into these societal structures was to defend ourselves against either wild animals or opposing tribes or whatever. And so in order to do that, you had these big group of people. And with those big groups of people, you had to have the several things. One, it's like you needed. So you needed a leader to basically delegate how this work was going to be done. It's like, you know, because you were going to, you were working for the whole so you had people that were purely doing pure military combat type stuff. You had farmers, you had whatever, but they would delegate all these resources to how they should be spent. The next thing is, like, you probably had to have laws which sort of govern how the society was going to be run. And so the thing about these laws, and even today, is, like, these were just simply ideas, like, these are all these are holograms in our head. But there's, but you'll but, like, like, when I was a kid, you know, you you break the law. It's like this. It's like an actual wall that's in front of you to keep you from doing something. But in real reality, it's not. And I know that sounds very strange, but I think that's an aspect that helps us in combat, and I'll get into it later.
Ben Derrick 22:15
This is a part of the of your you guys in your world experience, though, that gets a little bit lost on the on the American you know, as always say in line at Chick fil A Wait a minute. You know, the world isn't a nice place, but it should be, you know. And then we have our government huddled together in one location talking about how we can make the world a nicer place. But then there's the knowledge of the reality that the world isn't a nice place. And I see the more that I interact with this population, this is a foundational understanding that you guys have, the world is not a nice place. You know, nobody's coming to save you. So there's a little bit of a top cover. And Jordan, you and I just discussed with all of our windshield time, this can create a lot of cognitive dissonance here, that everyone around me kind of believes the world is nice and getting nicer. We know different. Yeah.
Jordan Jones 23:05
We call it first world problems. Yeah, like and that. That becomes really frustrating once your blinders are off and you see more. You know, your peripheral vision is opened up to the rest of the world. It makes the small things of day in and day out here in America, makes you truly believe they are small things, because nobody's dying. Nobody's dying because somebody made your coffee wrong. It's not really a big deal, so just drink the coffee, right?
Ben Derrick 23:31
Yeah, but I think this is a great place to insert into the conversation. So if this is true as a premise, then violence is the word do you apply to that necessary?
W.D. 23:43
I think, Man, there we go. Here we go. So when you were growing up and you got into like a altercation with somebody, somebody would always say, violence is never the answer. I that is a somewhat naive thing to say. And I really hate to use the word privileged, but it is. It's like, you know, they have the ability to say that because they're not dealing with what Jordan was just talking about. So violence is an answer to problems. The thing is, is it's a controlled application of violence that is usually overlooked, not overlooked, but controlled by leaders of that community. That's because violence is an answer. Police officers carry guns. You. Police officers carry guns because they're enforcing the law, again, ideological hologram that we have in our mind. But they're enforcing the law with threat of violence, because if you don't do it, if you do kill the guy that made your coffee wrong, or something like that, like they're gonna come and they're gonna hunt you down and throw you in jail, and there's a threat of violence against you, and that's what's keeping you in line. There's, I mean. You know, if you look at hundreds of years ago, they did public executions for a reason that was a violent I mean, you know, you could get into the emotional versus non emotional thing. Are they just simply removing people from society in a non emotional way or but when you look at when they used to actually do pretty severe punishments on people in public, they were doing it to try to show the rest of the population, this is what happens when you mess up. Thankfully, don't really do that anymore. But to say that violence is never the answer, I think, is a naivety that you probably that we all quickly. I don't say get over but it's just more like you understand that violence has a place. It has a place in the natural world. Carnivores can't eat without killing another animal. I mean, period, and that's a violent act. So it's not it's one of those things where we say, this is good or this is bad. I don't think there's, I don't think it really falls in that realm, because that's going to be all relative. But and we can so, and we'll kind of talk about talk about that later too, but I think knowing what the government is and knowing what society is, and knowing that we're going to be in conflict, so the governments did one thing. It's like they basically had people in these societies. They had people whose sole job was just to fight, and this is the military. And essentially, if you look at what the military is, it's all. It is the political arm there to impose the will of your government on another country. And it does this by like we talked about, willful acts of violence. And so if you're just gonna break this down, I mean, the military and its logistical support structure is purely there to kill people and break things. I mean, that's That's its job. You can say that, you know, they go on humanitarian missions and all this other stuff, but, I mean, the point of the military is to impose political will via violence. And I think that some people, it's kind of hard for them to get that through their head. Well,
Ben Derrick 27:00
even me sitting here, knowing what I know about this population, there seems to be a separation, though, in the mind of a Green Beret, in that there is a humanitarian aspect to what you guys do, moving in to be an aid to life. Now that does include doing bad things to bad people. But there's, there's kind of two worlds going on inside the Green Beret, it seems,
W.D. 27:23
I think so, yeah, and that's absolutely true, and I'm not. I don't want to sound heartless when I say this, a lot of that is because we're there to complete our mission, and that's our mission. Our mission is to overcome our enemy, if that means that we're going to go build a well in another country to help them drink water, and then all of us, then they're going to start giving us intelligence, then they're going to tell us where all the bad guys are, then we could action it, and then they're going to be on our side that. I mean, yeah, I mean, we, it's not like we don't enjoy helping those people. It's just more like our we don't have to do. I mean, our point is to go and complete the mission to do, to still destroy our enemy, and we do. We don't The thing about Green Berets and especially special operations. They don't do it by just direct conflict or kinetic operations. They do it through everything. And so everything that we do, make no mistake, everything we do, is there to eventually destroy our enemy, and it should be, and that, because there's nothing wrong with that. That's the way it should be. I mean, the government's going to tell you that we I mean, even in our Bill of Rights, like we have the they say we have the right to live, to go to school, to all these things, like in a lot of other government, constitutions say the same thing. The thing is, is like, again, that's not that is an idea, and that's an idea in each of each of our head that can be taken away. Our government designates us to go kill people who have those same rights under their government. If that does that, does that repeat that? You know what? I mean, like their rights don't the rights are just an idea that we have and so and that is kind of, it's kind of hard to hear sometimes, but, I mean, but don't forget it. I mean, the military is a very politically incorrect thing by nature, so it's, it's difficult to talk about that aspect of stuff. But that is a reality. This is a pragmatic reality of what's of what our purpose is, part
Ben Derrick 29:24
of why it's so difficult, I think. And I you know, I'm sure a lot of our listeners are bracing the things that they're hearing, but we're okay with that, because we're talking about this idea from what we would hope is as truthful a perspective as we can gain. I think it also explains why things like 911 Pearl Harbor, there's a very predictable thing that occurs when violence gets closer. But for generations, apparently now, we have lived with the violence being very far away. So I think that's part of why this, a podcast like this, is so very important. Because it gives us a little bit of the verbiage and language for those in our society that have gone to where the violence is, where very bad things are happening. So you know, we can, we can wax poetic about philosophy or all sorts of ideals, or life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but when you have someone on your front porch with a gun, then everybody's scale changes somewhat. You guys have lived an extended period of your adult lives face to face with that level of violence and also viewing a lot of violence via drone footage with things that people do when they think no one is watching. So this changes the perspective of a person, and it's worth listening to, because it can impact this is a big word we've kind of been dancing around since we turned the mics on. It impacts our emotions of a thing exactly. You know, emotions are a huge driver to what we do or what we don't do, and the level of information we have impacts our emotions. Part of what you guys say pretty frequently, though, is that not that you might have to become unemotional, but you have to be in control of your emotions in very chaotic situations.
W.D. 31:10
If you so what I just said, If you had told that to 17 year old me, I would have, like, felt repulsed, like saying that we can just kill another person. But that is, I mean, that's a reality of the world, and it is a repulsive thing. But again, that is a reality of the world. The next thing is pretty much okay, if you're if you're gonna say, okay, the military's there to kill people, this is always gonna happen. So the next step is like, so how do you get to the point where you can actually kill somebody else? And that's basically accepting that you're gonna have to kill somebody to complete your objective. Hopefully not, but, I mean, but the most of the time, I mean, the military is there to kill people and break things. You're either gonna threaten to kill them or you're gonna kill them. Um, with this being said, and I do think, and as you said, so, it's important, it's very important, to separate yourself from your emotions during warfare. The thing about warfare is, and I think a lot of this is how you approach it. So I used to read a lot of, like old, like, Greek philosophy, and it's like it was almost kind of like it was a contest, the way that they would like approach each other, and they would approach warfare in general, they didn't necessarily hate each other. It was more of a contest, like it was one fighter against the other, and it was a respectful thing, and it was, that's what we say. It was an honorable competition. And that's kind of the way I've always sort of approached it, and I do think that that's helped me out, because it is an honorable competition. And honestly, it's like one of the reasons why you have guys, it's like they go to war and they struggle coming home is war is this extremely, brutally honest place. Now your enemy is doing everything they can, including deception, to try to kill you, but they're honest about it. Everything is you know that it's there and you're gonna do everything you can to deceive them, to do whatever you can, to try to kill them. And it's this unbelievable brutal honesty. And with that said, it was like your your teammates, you start to treat each other differently. I mean, you do become brothers. And you know, it's weird, because it's like, you know that when you got on patrol, this may be the last time that you see each other. And so when you tell, when you tell one of your teammates, like, Hey, man, love you. Like you mean it, it's not some you're not, you're not veiled, and some criticism about what that means, or whatever, like you're just like, hey, you're my brother. I love you. Come back, and there's this honesty that happens in combat that is extremely difficult to get over when you come back to and I'm just gonna say America, and I'm sure this is pretty much any other I mean, other countries likely go through the same thing, because you come back and people here lay traps for each other. They disrespect each other. They don't whatever warfare is this incredibly respectful place, and you learn to respect life and respect things, and then you come back and you feel like it's not there, and you want it to be, because you've made so many sacrifices and so many people die, and so maybe what, because you want it to be this idealistic place, and it's not, and that really messes a lot of people up. I think it's
Jordan Jones 34:16
one of the purest ways to live, at least for me, like you cherish every day. You don't take things for granted. You don't take each other for granted. You tell the truth when you can up front. You know, just because of everything you just talked about wood, that it may be the last time you may not get to do this again. You may not. So when you say, I love you, you truly mean it. It's not taken for granted. You know, water isn't taken for granted because the water you had to do work to get the water, it's really hard to replicate that, at least in my experience here at home, because even with the people you love you and you live with them, every day, you start taking them for granted. You don't do that when you don't know that. You. I mean, he obviously we, we today may be our last day here. We just don't treat it as such like you do there.
Ben Derrick 35:06
Scott man, a couple episodes ago, talked about this very thing, just the difference in culture and what happens when you're in combat, and how that forges relationships. And you know, I think the unfortunate side of that is that you guys are a very small slice of the population. So you operate between these two cultures, one of which is very honor shame based, as Scott Mann put it. And then you step into this civilian population, and my proposal is, the deeper we go into the human experiment, honor is receding, yeah, yeah, you know. So it puts you guys in a very precarious situation, which I think would lead to certainly, a lot of conversations, especially if the mics were turned off. Yeah,
W.D. 35:50
and it's interesting too, because you're not like, okay, and okay, we keep using this word honor. But I mean, like, what is that? Is so many things, and that's again, obsessed with basics about why, but like, I mean, honor is an extremely difficult thing to describe before getting into that. You know, you talked about separating yourself emotionally and stuff like that. I do want to say that there's a difference between like, so Okay, emotions, to me, are the enemy of logic. Emotional thinking is the enemy of reasoning. And you have to be calm and collective in combat, and you have to make logical decisions like this is, I mean, it's very scientific That being said, you don't need to lose your humanity. And it's very easy to do that. So ethics should still play a part in most everything you do, at least you try to. I mean, if you I mean, honestly, if we're going to look at if we were really going to defeat our enemy, I mean, why wouldn't we just nuke them? Why wouldn't we just do whatever? Why wouldn't we just go over there and just kill everybody? But, I mean, that's not an ethical thing to do. We're just trying to destroy the actual enemies. We're trying to do certain things. I don't know. I think ethics. Ethics is a difficult portion to play in it, and that's it's good, because you do have, like the Geneva Conventions, you have these things that try to and again, they're trying to do the impossible. They're trying to make something political, politically incorrect, correct? They're trying to make something, you know, universally, I don't say right? It's just more of their it's just a very, I don't know how else to say it. It's just an extremely difficult thing to do, and I think that every individual is going to struggle with it, and especially, especially when they go through a big combat firefighter, whatever, and they're all of a sudden flooded with all these emotions, extremely when they see their friends get killed. And they're flooded with all these emotions, they have to learn how to suppress that is as good as they can.
Ben Derrick 37:57
So based on the way the Green Berets operate, this, this part of the discussion, I think would be great to capture in that you've got a team of people, a group of people that love each other, know each other, have been through a lot together. They're not all going to be at the same place, at the same time when it comes to emotions, because these are people. They've got life going on outside of military career, even even on deployment in the AAR, though you're almost applying, you're going about it logically, right? But if you step away from it, then all violence seems unethical, not necessary. So this is a big mix, and we see it happen a lot like, what did this team do? What did these guys do? And often, the language that you hear back is, well, it would be impossible for me to actually convey to you what it was like because you weren't there. Yeah, often, though, that's been used as a justification for some some really off the wall stuff, but I think the thing that we're discussing here today is the emotion and the mindset. I mean, how do you actually maintain humanity? You've got to depend on the on the dynamics of the ODA. I'm assuming, because the way that you guys operate deep, deep, behind enemy lines, isolated, you have to depend on the chemistry or the dynamic of the ODA to make sure that humanity is maintained.
W.D. 39:18
And so and again, this sort of goes into this like, so what are we doing? Like, I am killing another person, so like, my kids can live. That's the basics of what I'm doing. Even if I don't have any kids, I'm killing another person so my friends kids can live. So I mean that that is the brutal honesty of what we're doing. That's okay, because that's there the when you talk about what's right and wrong. And always use this example to my friends that actually, if they ever listen to this, they're gonna laugh at me. So right and wrong is like a relative thing. And always, like, I always came up this thing in my head. It's like, it's like a line versus a gazelle. So a line wants to go and then flip. Violence upon this gazelle. Wants to eat the gazelle, and in order, it has to eat the gazelle because it wants to feed his kids. It wants to continue its genetic line. It wants that's how it survives, because so that particular show. So the gazelle doesn't want the lion to eat him. He's going to do everything he can to to get away, do whatever, because if the lion eats the gazelle, then the gazelles kids are likely not going to survive. His genetic line is not going to continue. So which one is right and which one is wrong? This is relative to the individual. I mean, it's, it's a, it's and that's okay, like, again, this leads into, like, what is right and what is wrong. And I think that honor does have something to do with it, not and again, and so getting into at least how I look at it, as far as honor goes, like it's really funny, because before this, I try to define things and like, you know, the way that honor is defined by the army is basically fulfilling your values of respect, duty, integrity, loyalty, selfless service and personal courage, and I'm not, I don't necessarily disagree with that, but that just sounds like a typical line that you would read in like an army manual. And so I mean whatever, there's different definitions to different people. Basically, to me, honor is basically staying true to your ideals of what is right despite what is happening around you, but this is like, so what is right and what is wrong? I mean, how do we decide? And so I do think that you have an underlying moral kind of right versus wrong, and they can act as a moral compass. I do think that that can get degraded, and you do see that, especially in places where you've seen terrible war atrocities, because you have to look your enemy is not it's not like your enemy just became like an asshole overnight, or something like that. It's not like Hitler became an asshole overnight, or, you know, whatever a lot of these they evolved into either way. So it's not like they didn't have a moral compass. I just think that again, system of punishment, rewards, for whatever reason, they got morphed into this, where they became, you know, in the end, this, this horrible creature. But I do, personally like the way that I always say is like, you know, when you kill somebody, you know, be very respectful. It's like, so I always looked at like, I think that Hating Your enemy is wrong. One that's an emotional response. You shouldn't have that. But like, you know, I've known people that hated the enemy, they degraded them, or they treated them as inhuman. And I think for a number of reasons, that's a mistake. And one of the main reasons I think that's a mistake is because whenever you treat your enemy as not a human, you underestimate them. Like these people that you're killing, they have mothers, they have, you know, fathers, they have probably sons and daughters. These are all people that love them. That doesn't mean you're not going to kill them, but I mean, if you don't, if you look at them like they're just this sub human thing, I don't think that you understand their capabilities. And if you don't understand their capabilities, then you are underestimating them, and that is to your detriment later on. I do think that, again, if you kill this person, just do it honorably, do it respectfully, or be respectful about it. Now, I mean, you're gonna say, how do you respect somebody in this to kill the same time? Honest question, you know? And I think that is, I think that is, again, it goes back to how you approach the combat in the first place. I mean, this is a com it's similar to, like, a football game, like, I'm gonna fight against the other team as much as I can, and I may, like, hate them for like, a little moment, or whatever, like that, and it's an emotional response that they're forcing out of me. But in the end, this is still a competition. It's an honorable competition, because they are stepping on the battlefield with you. And the thing is, is like, honestly coming home, there's a lot of people, at least I felt this way, like I felt like I had more in common with the people that I was killing than I did back home, because they weren't they, whatever, even though their values were different from mine, they still had the courage to stand up and fight for what they thought was right now, again, different values, whatever, and they thought that so much that they were going to take up arms. And so then you get to meet them on this, like super glorious field of combat. And whoever wins wins. It's not it's not a bad thing. This is an honorable thing. It's just, you have to put it in your mind that it is an honorable thing, because you can quickly degrade it, and warfare can quickly, quickly degrade into stuff that is extremely repulsive. How do
Ben Derrick 44:33
you explain this at the soccer field? Right? I mean, what? What does this conversation go like?
Jordan Jones 44:40
I mean, I have this kind of conversation with my kids, like I got kids playing soccer, football, baseball, and, you know, there's an honorable way to win, and we would all agree with that. There's an honor. There's an honorable way to lose, whether you're throwing helmets and throwing bats and kicking things around and cussing and the way you're acting, we would all probably in this. Room at least agree that that's a dishonorable way to act on the field, just because you lost or because you won, the way you treat them after you beat them. That's That's how, you know, I just discuss it with with kids. You know, we don't go into warfare, and what that looks like, not age appropriate, right, right? But I think through a lot of it that wood was just talking about, there's this deeper layer that, and he mentioned it briefly, of moral compass. There's this your morals, whatever it is, these values that you hold deeper, your emotions are gonna rise up and you're gonna wanna act a certain way, but when you start feeling it, pull you away from that. You have this backbone to go to that, you know, is this foundation that you can always go back to, that holds you accountable, and if you can't find your way there. The beautiful thing about an Oda is you got a bunch of honest men around you that can immediately be, hey, I get it like I feel how you feel, but there's a way to go about this and a way not to go about this. So how do you want to look back on this in your memories? How do you want to live out the rest of your lives and look back on this moment in time and pull each other back in so again, it goes back to brotherhood. It's not just the training and all. There is an emotional side to that as well. Like it's it's real.
Ben Derrick 46:19
This requires, from my point of view, an incredible amount of discipline. And that's one of those words that just sticks to the SF culture is discipline, right? So can we talk about that for just a minute? Because I think this is also a word that is getting bastardized and falls on deaf ears and current culture, you know, what does discipline mean to the Green Beret? Discipline
Jordan Jones 46:43
is this is doing the right thing, essentially, like, for instance, disciplining yourself to stay in shape, disciplining yourself to do all of your tasks and be the best you can possibly be at those tasks, and then having the integrity. I think integrity and discipline go kind of hand in hand that you're maintaining whatever it is on your own. So if I can't trust you to have this much weight in your rucksack, and you can't be disciplined enough to carry that load, how can I trust you with anything more? How can I trust that your discipline level is there? Like I don't have time to discipline you, to make you do it, you have to have this internal discipline. Does that. Hopefully I stayed on right track there. I think, I think
W.D. 47:28
so. I think, you know, it's interesting because, again, it's like, kind of like the definition of honor. It's like, so it was discipline. I remember when I was in the Marines, like a young, young Devil Dog, they were talking about discipline, and somebody said, you know, discipline is doing the right thing, even, even when no one's looking. And for whatever reason that that always, that definition always bothered me, mainly from the fact that it's like you're it's almost like you're doing the right thing because somebody else is watching you or doing the right thing for somebody else. And so I sort of, I agree with sort of it. I think that, to me, discipline is like doing what you feel is the right thing, even when you don't want to do that and that. And it's kind of a simple definition, but it's like, I think it is pretty powerful, and so I mean, early on, and you probably ran into this, it's like, what to me, what you would see, what separated the good soldiers from, like, the average soldiers, or good Marines, from average Marines is like when they were put in these incredibly difficult scenarios, and how they chose to perform a big one. That always kind of used was, you know, if you're going from a long patrol, like this is like for Sut or Ranger or something, but after you're going from a long patrol, it's like you go into your priorities of work. Most people, they're tired, they're worn out, and so immediately, the one thing they want to do is go to sleep. But you know, you need to set in your perimeter, you need to clean your weapon, you need to do all these things. You need to get set up for when you're going to get attacked and when you're going to get blown out. Because the whole purpose for all these party works is to get set up for when you're going to get attacked, when you're going to get blown out. And you're setting in your defense, while most people just want to go to sleep. And it's very and you'd be surprised at how difficult it is for I mean, these are special operations soldiers that are doing this too. They find that they don't do the right priorities of work. I think, for indoctrination, things like SFAs, I know, for Scout Sniper indoctrination, which was incredibly brutal when we went through and there was really no real rules. Surprised, probably shouldn't say that. But, I mean, the thing is, is like, you would bring people like, like, we always talk about bringing people to their breaking point. You would bring them to their breaking point. And there's certain things that are like, Oh, we're going to bring them to the breaking point and see, you know, and push them just enough to see how they act. The indoctrination was like they would bring you your breaking point, and then they would just push you in. I mean, they, I mean, you had people that were just mentally breaking down, crying or doing whatever. I mean, it was, it really was like it was one of the more brutal selection processes ever went through. And each each potential, just, I. As a society's battalion does their own thing. It's kind of weird, or it's probably just obviously changed now, but either way, like you saw how people acted once they reached that level, there's certain people that are just like, you're used to the end of a 26 mile road march and you're like, Okay, you know you thought you were at the end, but we still have 26 more miles. Certain people just, they, man, they break down. And then there are certain people that just put their head down and just keep going, even though they know that they probably won't make it, they're still gonna try. And it's weird because it's like, they, they, it's the right thing to keep going. I think that that's an example, um, but to me, it's like, so whenever, when I think of discipline, it's like so I think a true warrior should practice discipline pretty much in everything that they do. And that's, you know, basically, and that it goes into the training as well. They need to train when they're tired. They need to expose yourself to harsh conditions for long periods of time, put yourself in scenarios you don't want to be in, taking the time to perfect every single small step of the task or procedure that you're going to do, and then, not only that, but self critiquing yourself with after that, and trying to seek that self improvement with each task, I think that is discipline, not taking shortcuts when it basically when quality is going to Be when it's going to be detrimental to the quality now. So I think it's okay to take shortcuts. I think it's okay to cheat. The thing is, is you just got to do it, as long as it doesn't it's not detrimental to the quality of how you're going to conduct the
Ben Derrick 51:33
mission. This is also part of the culture that gets very confusing. Just to shoot straight with both of you, skirting the gray seems to be, you know, very applauded when it's to a particular end. But I've seen, you know, even in my brief time around the community, a significant amount of arguments about skirting the gray, like, was this appropriate? Was it not appropriate? So there's this middle ground again, kind of being hung in this ideal hung between two poles of what should have happened or what didn't happen. You know, who gets to make that call. And then we start talking about, you know, chain of command. And so it layers and layers and layers. But part of this, this culture that is so fascinating, is, yes, if we can find a better way, or a faster way, or more effective way, even if it goes against, as you've referenced already, the manual, even if it goes against the manual, it will pass in the end, because it's what should have happened, or it's the way we determined that it should happen. This stuff gets really messy, gentlemen, yeah.
W.D. 52:33
But who gives a shit about the manual if you lose the war? Yeah? I mean, that's, I think
Jordan Jones 52:38
it's goal oriented. So if you take a group of guys that are all goal oriented, who cares how you get to the goal? How do you achieve it? I don't care. And that's why, I mean, that's built into the teams where you'll, like, sit up, set up, and come up with different courses of action, and then put those together, and maybe we use yours, or maybe we use yours, or maybe we blend the two together to get the desired outcome.
W.D. 53:02
I think, okay so, and this kind of goes with so if you look at most special operations and most selection processes, they're selecting individuals. They're selecting individuals that they can trust to do the road, at least they hope that they can trust to do the right thing in these very difficult situations. And that takes a lot of maturity, that takes a lot of what we talked to mind. Of what we talk the mindset. When I was in the like, when I first started off in the Marines, they told me how to be. They told me what honor was. They told me, you know, they made me say kill. You know, 30,000 times a day they told me how to be. Because, I mean, when you're a young kid coming up, when you're like a young infantry, you don't know what the fuck you're doing. You don't know how to win a war. You don't know how to really maneuver. You could probably regurgitate seven to a point, regurgitate seven eight to them, or, like, how to set an ambush. You don't know what the fuck you're doing. You don't know how to be because this is it's a learning process. You have to mature into it. You have to be. You have to experience it. And that So, and again, this goes into what you're saying so, and that's, that's, I think, where a lot of X rays, not, honestly, to feel bad for them, because I've had some really, really great X rays on the team. But, I mean, the attrition rate for X rays is incredibly high, or at least it was, it still is, and it's because, I mean, you're trying again. Nobody gives a shit how far you can rook. They're not. I mean, yeah, you have to be in shape to do it. But they're not, like, assessing you on that. They're assessing you on if they man, can I trust this dude to go down range with no oversight and still more and make the right decision, and when I say make the right decision, like win the fucking war, like complete his objective, because ultimately, that's what it's all about. Now I'm also sort of back, you know, back when the wars were it was still pretty pragmatic. Nowadays, obviously there's, you know, J sets and things like that, and there's your left and right lateral limits have narrowed significantly as far as what you're allowed to do. But in the end, I mean, yeah, you're there to accomplish a mission. Now, if you're if. Mission is to go be diplomatic, but still try to assert influence. That's your mission, so and so. And it kind of goes about, like what discipline is. And I remember, even when I was there's always this, been this clash between, like, conventional and special operations. And again, it's like convention you have to understand, like conventional is kind of like this big, you know, this big team, their job is to be this, this death dealing super organism. They work as a team in order to kill people and break things. And so they so the uniforms, like the hair, they have uniformity. They have all these things, because each person on that team has to do their job in order for the organism to survive. So they're not wrong in the uniform that they want, as far as uniform standards and haircuts and things like that. But again, a lot of that is made up of just younger guys. They the younger guys, unfortunately. I mean, they need mentorship. We all needed mentorship when we were younger special operations, and they still have some mentorship and special operations. There's a reason why. On an ODA, you have a senior and a junior, and you still have your chain of command. And so the thing is, is, like, on a when you get into special operations, discipline is one of those things where, you know, you'll see the conventional guys go like, Oh, they don't have a haircut, they're on discipline. And then I don't understand. You have to understand, like, where they're coming from. But that's not really the thing, the way that okay, this to me. So people that look best and clothing look best naked. People that need that can execute their job to perfection. They don't need a uniform standard to remind them to do that, hopefully. So if that's the case, like we don't care whether we have haircuts or anything like that, we're just there to complete a mission. We're there to do our job and to do the absolute best that we can now where it's kind of gotten conflicted, and God, the whole war on terror shit, like we grow we have beards and beards, so that's our job, was, to go and, you know, basically, recruit and train foreign soldiers to fight for us, or with us, through us. And so in order to in that community, to get respect as a male, a lot of the times you needed a beard. And that was what it was. And then it sort of morphed into this thing like, oh, special ops has beers. And there was even a lot of special operations guys that had no idea why the fuck they had a beard, like, because they would be asked why they had wanted to be like, Oh, it was to cover my face up. And you're like, No, that's not the No dude. Your job is to go and to build rapport and to blend in. Now, that being said, these same special operations guys, you know, if you're gonna say, go and train this conventional and whatever, because conventional is what it is, and conventional is fucking badass. And there's not much there's that's another thing. Conventional is awesome. They will save your ass. There is nobody that you want to be in a dirty firefight other than being with them. And you can ask any guy who's been in like a blue on blue with like a conventional platoon, like they, they lay down walls of lead like they will fuck you up, like a conventional company, like they they're the amount of firepower that they can deliver is unbelievable. Oda is don't stand a chance if they were to go one on one against them. That's the reason why we sneak around. We blend in seriously. Now, you know, we say that we're more agile and we think quicker on our feet, and that's true. Sure we're not as slow just because we're a smaller organization. But then again, we also, like, like, when I was in Afghanistan, we were leading companies and almost battalion sized elements, you know, in combat, it was still slow. It was basically we were conventional to a point, um, that being said, like, you know, conventional is awesome, man. They really, really are and they deserve respect, and so you need to work with they look at us like we're these incredible like Jedis, which I don't think we deserve. But it's weird, because it's like, when you get guys that have been through a lot and have good experience, it's funny, like, how much that they can actually train to improve your own nation, like your own whatever I used to do exercises where I was like, I was kind of obsessed with near peer stuff after Afghanistan, and where I was like, man, you know, when was the last time we trained on killing tanks? When was the last time we trained on shooting down air and all this stuff? So I would just go, and I would go to these conventional units, like a tank company, and be like, hey, they're about to deploy. And I was like, Man, can I just ride along with y'all, can I just, kind of just hang out. And they were like, Yeah, sure, whatever. And so I was just like, show me how y'all work. Show me how you look through your FLIR tubes. Show me how you burn, you know, how you look for enemy. And then you're like, Okay, how would you kill yourself? The best, like, if you were an enemy, how would you kill yourself? And then return, I would like train them on small unit tactics and stuff. Stuff like that, and they would just look at it like it was this incredible thing, and you could tell, like, what was morphed into the military mindset about how they would do stuff, because they would do stupid shit, like, when they were going to, like, attack a bump bunker, they were using, like, CQB tactics. I'm like, bro. I'm like, put your fucking Bradley up and just fucking fire that fucking chain gun into that bunker, exhaust your grenades, and then go in, like, you don't need to go in. I mean, it was funny. I mean, it was weird, but, I mean, that's, yeah, because they look at movies, they look at us, and they see the sexy CQB thing, and you're like, bro, you don't realize, like, how incredibly dangerous CQB is anyway, but that's, that's anyway. But working with conventional, you need to become conventional. So if your job is to go in training conventional and they wear a uniform and they have a haircut, then get a fucking haircut. I mean, period, if your job is to help them out, your job is to blend there and complete the mission. So if you're an SF guy who is supposed to go, you know, beat the flagpole or go do whatever, like get a fucking haircut, it's like you can. You're more than happy to blend in when you're in the Middle East, but you're not happy to blend in when it's your own when you're on dudes. None of us like being told what to do. I want
Ben Derrick 1:01:06
to make sure I'm hearing you right, though, because, I mean, you're saying some pretty controversial things. You're just saying them, you know, in a fluid manner, yeah, but you are caught. You're called the special forces. But the point that you're making is, we're not that special. Unless I'm hearing you wrong, the point you're making is, we're not that special. That's a little bit confusing. I've said
Jordan Jones 1:01:27
this thing in classes that I've taught, and I've had it said to me in classes, and it made sense is you're not really that special. You you do the fundamentals really good, and as long as you because the fundamentals work, and they've been proven to work. So why don't you just do the fundamentals really, really good, better than everybody else, and then it's going to look special. Even though you're doing the same thing they're doing, you just have had more time, more training. I mean, that's that's really it. Special
W.D. 1:01:57
Operations are tools in the toolbox period. So I would maybe we're more of like a I don't know. What separates us is like we our ability, our agility to move to certain areas blend into whatever, and our ability to concentrate firepower. But make no mistake, the reason why we're doing that is you support a greater mission in one way or another. And a lot of the times that greater mission is conventional. So it's like for green braids. We do unconventional warfare. We go and do we go and again, we train dudes up. We go and do direct action. We do do sabotage, Subversion, whatever. The reason why we're doing is we're prepping the battlefield for conventional to come, for the freaking sledge hammer to come. And that's the conventional now, do me wrong. I love my job because it's just incredible. But again, we're not, we're just, all we are is just infantry on steroids. I mean, you're doing basic literally now,
Jordan Jones 1:02:52
or maybe, or figure speech, but
W.D. 1:02:56
no, I mean all you're doing is just doing those you're executing the basics very, very well. And I think the thing is, is like your understanding is, to me, that's the difference is, like, you're understanding the basics very well. I mean, so if you look at like these, like incredible painters, like a lot of the times, they use the same brush strokes, the same tiny brush strokes, every single time, they just know how to apply to make this beautiful picture. And I think that's the thing that special operations at least try to do, is you do these basics very, very well. You execute the same way every time you do it very well, not emotionally, self critiquing, improving yourself constantly. Because you your job is to become this where the battlefield is just your canvas, and you're a painter, that's what you wish to become, but you don't forget the basics in doing so it just looks like you do, because you maybe did this incredible thing or whatever. But it all came from just executing basic level stuff very, very well. I think
Ben Derrick 1:03:55
part of that is sent through the filter though, if I and I don't want to get out over my skis here, but there's obviously in this culture and obsession with information, let's get as much information as possible that's very accurate, so we need to figure out what that is, so that we can employ whatever tactics we need to. So that's one part of it. The other part that that for me, is striking, is that I've yet to meet a Green Beret that wasn't extremely comfortable with his own death, maybe to the point of, like, I've already nearly experienced it. I don't know how to put words to it, just because I'm a sheltered individual, but that seems to be a huge marker inside the population as well. Like i i don't have to fight through that fear of dying, because I've already kind of been there so much, that's one of those brush strokes. Am I reading that correctly? Yeah,
W.D. 1:04:46
I think so. I think it's this guy, I mean, and this is not like a new thing or anything. This was, like Bushido basically had this, you know, back samurai and, I mean, they had a quote and actually wrote it down. Actually, I write the. One of the things I do because I'm a nerd, fucking nerd, but I write what I think is necessary quotes to remind me every day, because we still need reminding. One of those that I've always lived with is while you're sleeping, someone is training to kill you. That was one of my favorite ones. And the other one is, rehearse your death every morning and every night. It's like, only when you can live as though you're already dead that you can truly be free and you can execute any and I'm paraphrasing here, but you can execute your job without fault.
Ben Derrick 1:05:34
It's very Marcus Aurelius of you. Oh, so
W.D. 1:05:37
that was Bucha, but yeah, so good, yeah. No, that's, this is stoic sort of philosophy. And I do think that, like, stoic philosophy is probably one of the better things to that mindset is very, very similar. I mean, it's so basically, you're humble, you're there with yourself. So it even goes back to what we're saying Special Forces ain't special. Like you're comfortable with your death, like you're going, like, if I so, if I put my Oda up against an infantry squad, it would be a good fight, now, to a point, as long as they had good leadership and stuff like that. But it can be a good fight. They're gonna it's not like they're not gonna execute, not like they're gonna do. I mean, you're probably gonna have, you're you're probably gonna have casualties. There's a reason why we always want to do three on one or more special operations a little different, because we use different strategies to our advantage, like whatever. But, I mean, the thing is, is like, and it kind of goes into the humility, into the assurance from your own death. But like, are you familiar with, like, the the seller scouts? No, you know, man, God, there's some good there's some good history behind that. And it is gonna be somewhat controversial, back in the 70s in Africa, but either way, so the seller scouts were part of Rhodesia. You know Rhodesia? Yeah, basically they were there. They called them counterterrorism force, and so them, along with the Rhodesian light infantry, became one of the most successful quote, unquote, counter terrorism entities that ever lived. They were incredibly good at what they did. The seller scouts. Main job was to go and find people like they were good target, if you were going to put it in modern day times like they were good at targeting, even though I don't know, I guess if you want to use quotes or buzz words now they were, they were the integral part of the kill chain. I hate that freaking word. But they they went, you can't, like, Yeah, us is great at killing people. The US military can go and just destroy pretty much any enemy they come against. But they're, like, Why were we in Afghanistan for 20 years? You're, you're in Afghanistan for 20 years because it was hard to find these people. That was what the sales guy was really good at. And the way they did that was they blended in a number of things. But either way, there was this very, very elite special operations union, and there was this guy named Reed Daly who sort of started him up. And there you can actually YouTube this video too. And it talks about their indoctrination process. It talks about their mindset and things like that. And he talks about what, why he doesn't like their unit organization, being in the media, is because, like the media looks at and they special operations. They look at these special operations guys like they're super men. And then they, all of a sudden, these guys start to think of themselves as Superman, and they do stupid shit. They don't like they think that, like, Oh man, I can do that. I can do that. And they don't use their fucking head. There's one thing to say, like, I'm gonna go do this very, very difficult mission, but I'm going to realize that there's a lot of things that are against me. Just because I'm there, just because I'm there and I'm God's gift to warfare, doesn't mean I'm gonna do well. And you'd be surprised at how many I'm not just talking about, like, I mean, this mean, this is with Air Force, Navy, Marine, Army Special Operations across the board. And I've seen Green Berets that, like, I remember, like, when I was in Afghanistan, there was, like, one team, and I'm not going to try to get too into details, but like, they were like, Oh, we're just going to do a movement of contact in this very particularly, it's particularly bad area. And they were like, we're just gonna go get our gun trucks and do a move into contact. And I'm like, and they were like, do y'all guys want to come along? Because you can bring your commandos. And we were like, Fuck no, bro. Like, what do you mean? You're just gonna go drive up to them? He's like, Yeah. It's like, we're just gonna go drive up, find some contact and go do it. And I'm like, You're fucking retarded man. Look, you're gonna get lit the fuck up because they were so sure of themselves and just Green Berets that went through hard training that all of a sudden they're gonna be just do well in war. And that's not the case. And guess what? They got fucked up just just the way it is. Like you have to be smart and understanding, and you have to have a level of humility when you when you do these opera you have to have the level of like you have to be realistic with yourself about what your capabilities are, what your real capabilities are. And then you figure out what the enemy centers of gravity are, where they are, you know, it's kind of like the old car matrix, like where their weaknesses are. And then you just basically surgically exploit them. And then you leave you. Because once they find you, and if they fix you, they're gonna fuck you up. You got to get out of there. But yeah, that was a it was a big thing as far as, like, having a distorted opinion of yourself, or just overconfidence, and that can absolutely and I'm sure that there's guys that are probably listening this podcast can think of examples about where that really got people really, really messed up. So we're
Ben Derrick 1:10:19
talking about some big words here today, which I'm very appreciative of, but honor, discipline, courage, one we haven't touched on yet. I want to bring up is expectations, because I feel like you're hovering in that area right now. What are my expectations of how this is going to go? The expectations of what my training has produced in me, expectations are a different, difficult thing to monitor, and I would say, even especially today, as warfare has changed over the course of G watt, there has been a dramatic shift in the view of war, the expectations of war, the government's expectations of war, and this has caused some problems for the fighting man, correct?
W.D. 1:11:02
And when you're saying expectations, you mean like, what are the expectations I'm setting for myself? Or what
Ben Derrick 1:11:10
I would say both the expectations I have myself, of course, I could answer that very briefly, extremely high for the Green Beret. Those I have high expectations for myself. That is a necessary component of becoming your Green Beret. I think where the trouble starts to ensue is when that same level of expectations is applied to other things, whether it be the government at large or other forces. So expectations are a huge part, I think, of what gets the Green Beret, if I could say sideways, correct? I
W.D. 1:11:41
think so. I mean, I don't want to mistake how you're wording this, because it's like, if I was going to basically again, so the military's political arm, so some politicians going to say, like, I don't like that person. You need to go kill them, or you need to go be a diploma or do whatever, or like you could look at like, you know what they're we're going to have our infantry go and we're going to occupy this country and I have an infantry act as a police force, like setting that that's the expectation you set that has if you're if that higher level leadership is going to put their soldiers in a situation to which they did not train, and expect them to have a good outcome, I don't think that that's going to get, well, not a good you're going to train them from day one to kill people and break things and then say, like, hey, hey buddy, we're about to send you over there. Welcome to combat. But hold on. You got to be nice to people. You got to do this, this and this, and it's difficult. I mean, because, again, these are kids, man. They're worried about coming home and they're worried about the dude next to them. So they're a lot. A lot of these kids are emotional. So you have to really that, as far as the expectations that are set forth on Green Berets, on whatever is difficult, because if they look at us like we're these Superman and stuff like that, or how we execute and get things done, the thing is, is like that all that takes time. So it's like, you know, working with the local populace, like blending in with the local populace, getting them to trust you by doing humanitarian whatever, whatever, whatever, building that trust, developing targets, actioning a target, which you're likely is not going to go well the first few times, you're probably going to hit a shit ton of dry holes, you're probably going to hit this shit ton of stuff. But then eventually, eventually, you got to keep doing it and keep building your intelligence and keep actioning your intelligence. You know that takes a lot of time. We go on, like six, seven months deployments, and to be quite honest, like, I'm not saying it's not enough, because, again, they said in world war three, we're still trying to come home to our families. It's just, you know, if this was World War Three, realistically, we'd probably be over there for be like, the OSS. We're gonna be over there for like, two or three years. That's right. I mean, realistically, so, yeah, yeah,
Jordan Jones 1:13:44
six months is like just, just touching the tip of the spear, yeah, where you're starting to get things figured out, and you know where people are and how things are going. And then you get pulled another team comes in, and you try to do a great hand off with them, and hope that they continue doing what you're doing. And maybe they do. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Just kind of depends on team dynamic of what, what's coming in after you. This
Ben Derrick 1:14:07
leads to a great deal of frustration, though, right? I mean, I'm home from a deployment, and this is where, you know, my job comes in as part of HP, W, I'm really frustrated because that deployment did not meet my expectations
W.D. 1:14:21
and that so. And then we kind of just kind of touched on this with the outline, but yeah, I mean, so that, I think that that is a huge thing with special operations in general too, is like, so you go through all this training, you're all of a sudden this cool guy that gets to wear fucking sunglasses and stuff like that. And then you go on a deployment where you basically train some jundies, and you're never allowed to leave the base. You go on a deployment where you're going to try to do what you think is this good, good mission, and it ends up falling short of what your expectations were. Frankly, a lot of the guys, they just want to go out and kill people, and they don't get to do it. And that really. Really messes with the psyche of a lot of guys, and that really messes with the psyche of a lot of teams. And you will see teams that, and you sister ODA, not where, but like, they not, not anymore, not anymore. I had been on a while, so not point fingers at this one, but it was like, you know, no mission was cool enough for them. So it was like, even, and the thing is, isn't that bled down into training too, which is such a pain in the ass to watch. Like, this training scenario sucks. I'm not gonna do it. And it's like, because my expectation is I'm this, like, I'm the tip of the spear. I need to be here, here, and here doesn't mean shit. Man, a lot like Ben, we had a really like, so my best, I've had a few really good deployments, but I'd say, like, my favorite deployment was probably Africa. But my second favorite one where, honestly, we killed the most people was in Afghanistan, and it was, frankly, just right time, right place. And that's all combat is, is like, you're in the right time right place. You have the right team, right time, right place. And so a lot of these guys are like, God, sent me on a mission, whatever, whatever, whatever, and it's just, I mean, that's just how it falls. It's unfortunate. But, I mean, I think once those guys get into the where they're like, I'm too good for this, that's a huge poison to the team, and any leader of that team needs to try to nip that in the bud, like, right away, I will say this. It's like, you know, I was, when I went through the Q Course, I was very fortunate to I trained under Jim Gant. I know he's a bit of a controversial subject in our community, but I loved him. And the thing was, it was like, because he was 100% like, for the mission, 100% and one of the things that he always used to harp on was like, you can't do well in combat, like, unless you can take training seriously. Or the people that do the best in combat scenarios do the best in training scenarios, like mentally putting yourself when you're in that training scenario that you're in combat, making those decisions, because it's just like how we talked about rehearsing your death every morning and night. So by the time it gets there, it's you're not freaking out. You know, training realistically in combat, whether it's a whether you're the training scenario fits or not, whether it's what your expectations are or not, treating it as real as you can will only help you out. It will only help you when that actual combat scenario comes. But no, the a lot of a lot of guys that don't have the career that they wanted, it ends up messing with them quite a bit. And even even when your own, like those good and the thing is, is like those guys, even when they're on this really, really good deployment, or they're on this really, really good team or whatever, it's almost like they're never happy. It's almost like it gets snowballs into like, I don't know, they're never happy unless they're doing this particular mission set. When you're a Green Beret, like, your mission set is not just to go kick down doors. Your mission set is enormous. Your mission set is to be whatever it's supposed to be for that particular deployment. Particular deployment. You have to adapt, and you have to complete that mission, whether it's what you want or not. That's
Ben Derrick 1:18:10
a tough thing to balance, though, isn't it? I mean, you, you're you're brought in because of your capabilities are so wide, the left to rights are so wide. And then at some point it does. It seems to happen, maybe not to a large percentage, but to a certain percentage, that the shop pattern gets real tight, like I'm only happy in this particular scenario, and you want to talk about wrecking a career, as you mentioned, like everything gets very, very narrow. And when I sit down with HP W and I start talking to a guy, and that that emerges, I will say, honestly, that is very hard to correct. It's really hard to talk a guy out of that because of the certain set of circumstances over a protracted period of time seem to have to have led to that. And there's always the ability for that Green Beret or that soldier to hide behind. If that's not a disrespectful term, the accumulation of experience, there's just no way to logically pull a guy out of that scenario,
W.D. 1:19:10
man, dude, you're gonna meet, especially when you're a special you're gonna meet dudes that look incredible on paper, that are just like, you're like, you look at the resume, and you're like, bro, this dude's a fucking stud. And then he gets to your team, and he fucking sucks because he can't be with the team dynamic. A lot of it is that he expects certain things for himself, and that kind of goes back into like, I mean, you have to have, I mean, you have to be able to look at yourself. You have to be able to be humble. So have humility, but also say, like, Okay, what is my point of being here? My point of being here is to win wars. However, I'm supposed to do it, and as a Green Beret, I have these particular skill sets. It's good to have skill sets. It's good to bring that tool, to have that tool in the toolbox, and bring that to the table for your team, but they may not need it. Again, everything is like CQB is a tool in the toolbox, right? All right, urban warfare. I kind of separate urban warfare from CQB, and one's very collateral damage oriented, and one's not, but like, there's there's scenarios where certain things are appropriate, and there's scenarios when you know they're not. And the trick is, is, what for the special operator to this Ben that has that experience is he can shift from one, one to the other, like, super, super quickly. And so he says, like this, this isn't working. I'm gonna do this. So it's like, if I'm, if I'm, I don't know if I'm gonna hit like a target house, like, I'm going to use my rural, sneaky, you know, tactics to get in there. Then I'm going to treat, go into the house and treat it like it's a CPB style scenario, but, oh shit, there's a fucking machine gun nest or whatever in there. CQB goes out the fucking window. Then it turns into what I consider urban combat, which is or mount or whatever like that, where collateral damage heavy and you're just fucking you don't need to go fucking flood the hallway. You need to fucking throw grenades. You need to drop bomb, and you do whatever. And it takes a certain it honestly, you have to, I don't know. It takes individuals that have that experience of saying, like, I can switch from one to the other, like, right off the bat, and because that's, that's what you have to do. You have to be able to assess yourself and say, like, this particular tool is not, not what's needed right now. Does that make sense? Yeah, that's the only
Jordan Jones 1:21:20
thing I could think of the whole time you were talking were talking there is self assessment. Yeah, like, we're really good at it early on in our careers of self assessing, and somewhere along the way, you think you reach the pinnacle, or you're too good, or whatever it is, and you quit self assessing and looking at yourself and trying to find your weaknesses and fix them. But as long as you can maintain that awareness to step away from yourself and how great you are and say, Where am What am I missing? What have I not trained on recently? What whatever it is, so that you can self assess and
Ben Derrick 1:21:54
correct, that's part of the trick, though, right? I mean, I'd like to hang here for just a second, because I think especially with our listening audience, this is, this is where the gold is so far. If you're very good at it early on and you slip, then part of your mentality is what, I know I'm good at self assessing. I don't. I'm not seeing anything, right? So to have to trust that external source, that's a difficult shift. And I understand that, don't you? Yeah,
W.D. 1:22:19
absolutely. You know, it's kind of like, okay, if you're going to look at the champion, I was just like, boxing or something like that, or like, you know, mixed martial arts, like the mixed martial art, mixed martial artist who's, like, the number one in the world. I mean, that is, that is literally for seconds at a time. He may have won that bout that night, but somebody somewhere is training to beat him, and it's only a matter of time before they exceed him. You are never the best at any if you're the best in anything, it is for an extremely limited amount of time before somebody else is better. And I mean Special Operations, dude, there's always younger dudes that are more fit, there's always younger dudes that are smarter. There's always dudes that are waiting to take your spot on the team, and they're not just pieces of shit either. These are good dudes, and so being able to, I think your mindset helps you, and we talked about, like stoicism, things like that, admitting to yourself that you're not Superman, admitting to yourself that you're not God's gift to warfare, knowing that there's always someone better. And it's kind of like, I mean, I hate saying it's like that, like, while you're sleeping, someone is training to kill you. While you're getting complacent, someone is getting better, like, in one way or shape or another, and just because you're good at something doesn't mean shit. You just, I mean, because you may you may not have the you could be the like, if I was the best, I don't know if I was the best sniper in the world. I might go on deployment. I may never pull out my sniper rifle, just the way it is. It's right time, right place. You have to be able to be humble enough to look back, be introspective. You know, when we say, when we do our AARS after everything, you have to be real about doing ARS. Because there's a lot of, there's a lot of dudes in the community that whenever they do stuff they really don't go through, and you probably they don't really do really good AARS. And you're really a lot of that is going to be up to the commander. And whether, you know, whether, how bad the commander really wants to pursue that. And I think they're extremely important, because you know, every hindsight is always 2020, no matter what you do. And then if you can't non emotionally. And again, this is going away with emotions and like disregarding, you know, the the ego of yourself, and saying that I can non emotionally say that I need to get better at this. And whenever you receive a correction, you can non emotionally receive that and say that is, they're not wrong. Like, I need to be better at this, this and this, a lot of guys like, especially, and it's hard man especially, like, when you're in the community for a while and you've, like, if you again, if you're in, like, whatever, like, Maslow's hierarchy, and he's like, if you've self actualized, it's difficult to go back. If that makes any sense, it's. Difficult to sometimes it's difficult to receive criticism by that you don't think deserves to criticize you. Yeah, and we're all guilty of that, and that's that's okay. I think the main thing is, like, no one, no one should ever be a bigger critic of you are than than you are to yourself. Like, I'll just repeat that again. Nobody should ever be able to talk any shit or be any bigger critic about what you do or how you did stuff than you are to yourself. Like nobody if they tell you that just something sucky, like they would never be able to say it worse than what you would say. That's not
Ben Derrick 1:25:32
new information, right? I agree, yeah, but I mean, but
W.D. 1:25:37
that's, but that's a lot of people do have trouble with that?
Ben Derrick 1:25:41
Well, I think part of it, too, for me is, is having discussions about capacity. Like, how do you how do you talk to Green Beret about capacity, especially as a civilian, I mean, most of us, I don't understand my capacity. I've never been taken to that line. And when you have and you're trying to make assessments on your own capacity, and someone speaking into your life, into your career, about your capacity, it turns into a big F you like, what do we you don't know? I know about my capacity. What do you know about my capacity? Who are you? There's that skepticism and cynicism that emerges, and it's founded. Is the point I'm trying to make. It's not coming out of nowhere. There's a lot of history there with you as an individual and your experiences and doing the right thing, not just, you know, when no one's looking, but when you don't want to, and somebody meets you with a little external accountability and, God forbid, tells you you need to take a knee because you're not right right now, and you need to take and all these things start swirling around. There's somebody who's been training that's ready to take my spot on the team, and you don't understand what you're trying to ask of me. This, this stuff gets very complicated, and, I would say, very emotionally driven.
W.D. 1:26:51
And again, you have to separate yourself from your emotions, I think. So look at okay, so let's use World War one as an example. World War One, it was a huge, super high casualty rate. Is the trench warfare. And why? Why was that? It was like, traditionally, they tried to fight like they did 30 years ago, which is what happens in every war. But all of a sudden they have these super high casualty producing weapons. They have machine guns, they have tanks. They have a really start off with machine guns. They have machine guns. So it's like getting online and doing these mass assaults. They don't work anymore because you have machine guns, but the generals are still gonna fight like they did. They're still going to send these assault waves, and then all of a sudden they get mowed down. So what they do? So let's build some trenches. We got to do this. Then they have artillery that comes in. So it's like, they all it is, is an evolution. You're going like, Dude, you're gonna get old, man, you're gonna get old. You're the what you were good at is gonna get outdated at one point. You have to evolve if you're gonna do well in warfare, you have to evolve. Look at like, machine learning, like, look at like, what's happening as far as like, robotics now, like, dude, okay, we're imperfect creatures. We talk about being non emotional all the time, and we have ethics. And that's, that's, those are, these are all really good things. So what's going to happen when our leader wants us to do something and we have, I don't know. We have a moral conundrum, whatever, whatever, for whatever reason, like, so really, the perfect soldier is, I mean, we could say he's a machine, but we have that. I think that's what makes us better. Our job, especially in Green Berets, is like, because if you have ethics and you have morals, but really, if you look at what a perfect fighter is, is going to be like a robot. It's gonna be a machine. And don't think that it's not gonna evolve that way, because it is, and that's and honestly, like, the future of warfare is somewhat terrifying to a point, because you can see that. But like, machines don't say no. They don't have trouble with conscription. They don't have trouble back home. They don't get drunk and get DUIs getting back on the base. I hear a lot of United
Ben Derrick 1:28:55
States Marine coming out.
W.D. 1:28:57
This is, this is real. These are, these are real thing. So it's like, you know why, if you were from again, if you were gonna speak pragmatically, why wouldn't you morph into that? And the thing is, is, like, we may have some moral things gonna say, like, Okay, I don't want to use machines in warfare like that or whatever, but you know the enemy is, I mean, so if you, if the if, if you had a country with a population that may not be able to conscript as many soldiers or do whatever, why wouldn't they go for more advanced like robotic technology or something like that, to replace that individual soldier on the ground, which they see as a weak point 3d
Ben Derrick 1:29:35
printers should send chills down. Everyone's fine, and
W.D. 1:29:39
the only reason I'm even, and again, I'm digressing a lot, but the reason I'm getting into that is, like, that is that is an evolution of warfare. You know, the whole thing about Oda is now, is like, you know, they're gonna have, like, a robotics guy on the odas and, yeah. And some people were like, Oh, whatever. And you're like, Bro, that's just that is an evolution. Like, honestly, I trained when I originally did my marksmanship trained. Or, you know, whatever you qualify. I did it all open sites. And as a Marine course, like a 500 500 yard, you know, range open sites, whatever, then all of a sudden they're going to, like, fucking acogs, and you're just like, bro, come on, man. Now, I mean, and I still have arguments where I think open sites are obviously good, but, but they're not wrong. I mean, like most, every op, most we can afford to put optics on every weapon. And they are, they increase lethality period. So it's like, you know, why not qualify with them? But that's an evolution, and it was hard for me to come out of that. It was hard for me to say that this, this and this, but, yeah, I mean, you have to continually self assess. You have to be humble, and you have to learn, you know, be humble enough to realize you're not the best and that you have to evolve.