Inside Delta Force: Afghanistan, Syria & the War on ISIS | Brent Tucker (throwback ep)
The Team House
Brent Tucker, a 20-year Army Special Operations veteran, shares his journey from a quiet upbringing in Florida to becoming a member of Delta
Key takeaways
- The September 11th attacks were a pivotal moment that led Brent to enlist in the military despite his initial plans to stay in his hometown.
- Brent's early assignment in air defense was not aligned with combat operations, prompting him to pursue Special Forces training through the National Guard's 20th Group.
Main topics
- Military enlistment after September 11th
- Path from National Guard to Special Forces
- Delta Force selection and training
Notable quotes
"I didn't want to live a life with regrets. I didn't want to be 70 years old looking back and said, man, when I was 20, our country got attacked... and I felt like I should have done something."
Conclusion
Brent Tucker's story illustrates the transformative power of personal conviction and resilience in extreme environments. His journey
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) Hey guys, welcome to episode 235 of the team house. I'm Jack Murphy. I'm a, is it over here? Oh, sorry guys. My phone was on apologies. Uh, so episode 235 of the team house. We're here with our guest tonight, Brent Tucker. I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park. Brent again. Uh, thank you for being on the show tonight. Really appreciate you joining us on a Friday evening. Speaker 4 (0:29) Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I truly do appreciate it. Speaker 2 (0:32) So, again, because I got a little distracted in the beginning, Brent is a 20-year veteran of Army Special Operations. He served in 20th Special Forces Group, and then he served in Delta Force. deploying to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Today, he runs the First Responder Coffee Company, and he's also the co-host of the Antihero podcast. We're really happy to have you here today, Brent. And I'll kind of start it off from the top asking the same question I ask all of our guests about their origin story. If you could tell us a little bit about where you grew up, what your upbringing was like, and sort of how that took you on a path towards the military. Speaker 4 (1:10) Yeah. I grew up in a small town in Florida, Sanford, Florida, working in a family business. We own Tucker's Farm and Garden Center that my grandfather started. I was one of the few people who didn't want to leave my small town. I just wanted to work in the family business. My path in life was already set and I was more than happy to go down that path. I definitely wasn't a... Speaker 4 (1:40) an adrenaline junkie as a kid. I was a pretty quiet kid. So definitely not someone you would have pegged for anything in the special operations realm or even leaving town at any point. Speaker 2 (1:56) So how did that happen? I mean, if you were on this track of like going on, taking over the family business. Speaker 4 (2:03) Yeah. So the September 11th happened. I mean, I had it's it's crazy. September 10th, September 10th. I'm 20 years old, you know, still chugging down that that same path that I was on as a little kid. September 11th happened. And, you know, it changed it changed my world the same way it changed a lot of people's world. I. Speaker 4 (2:29) I knew I wanted to do something. I made a decision that day that I kind of would make time and time again throughout my military career when I had to come to make a big decision. Speaker 4 (2:43) which was I didn't want to live a life with regrets. I didn't want to be 70 years old looking back and said, man, when I was 20, our country got attacked. Almost 3,000 people died, and I felt like I should have done something, but I just played it safe and stayed in my small town. That honestly is the – I mean, there's the genesis right there. That line of thinking started it. I raised my hand. It took me until September 27th to actually sign the paperwork. And off I went. And I only meant to do a four-year stint and come right back to my small town. And as the saying goes, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. I couldn't have been any more wrong. And I continued to be wrong about my career as it progressed. Speaker 2 (3:37) So what did you enlist as as far as like your MOS? What was kind of like your plan going into the military? The one that God laughed at, of course. Speaker 4 (3:45) Yeah. When I knew nothing about the military and I mean, well, next to nothing. My dad would take me to air shows. My dad wanted to be a fighter pilot so bad, I guess, when he was in his late teens. Then eyesight got him. And so he didn't get a chance to chase that dream. So I definitely grew up in a military friendly family. You know, we watched war movies. My dad made us watch all the Vietnam documentaries and I loved it. So we were we were a military friendly family, but no one was talking about joining. And I had no idea what I was going to join. So a good friend of mine. uh that i went to high school with jessica butters her dad was was a i all i knew is that he was in the military i knew nothing more than that um come to find out he was a cw4 at a national guard unit a national guard air defense artillery unit um out of daytona beach so he was the first he was the only person i knew so i went to him and said hey you know, a country got attacked. I want to do something about it. So I came to him. He gave me pretty good advice. He's like, hey, I'm in the National Guard. I think you should do that. You'll get a chance to fight. You'll get called up. But, you know, you don't have to go away for four years. It sounded like a good plan to me. It sounded like I was going to get what I wanted, which was to deploy. And so I went to the recruiter. that he recommended me to go to and for a guy who wanted to join the military and fight i got put in air defense national guard which may not have seen a lot of action so that was that was it took me about a year to to well probably took it took it took less than a year for me to figure that out um but you know figuring it out is one thing, but doing something about it is another. So as soon as I got a basic in AIT, we did get mobilized to go to the invasion of Iraq. And we sat around for like six months in Fort Bliss. Speaker 4 (6:10) At that point, we had a sister battery coming back from Afghanistan. And so I couldn't wait to talk to those guys to see what war was like. And I asked them and they did like a 14 month deployment to Afghanistan. And I found out that was a Speaker 2 (6:31) Patriot missile battery that you were with Brent. Sorry to interrupt. Speaker 4 (6:35) Yeah. So that would have been a part of. of of the unit i me in particular i was in uh short range air defense which was stinger missile operator okay so or stingle yeah so shoulder fired stinger missiles 14 mike which eventually became 14 sierra um because i had to go to the a little bit longer course to do the uh the avengers like that that uh humvee with the the four missiles uh on each side of the turret so that's a the avengers that's that's what i went to school for but when those guys went overseas for 14 months and came back they just guarded the gates that's all they did they did nothing to guard the gates um which which was my worst fear come true i kind of eventually was slowly figuring out i don't think the taliban has a lot of helicopters to shoot down and i'm not sure my skill set will be utilized in the war on terror um so i asked those guys and said hey what uh like then who was doing things and uh they they told these stories that were probably a little bit true but uh a little bit embellished they'd be like oh man these special forces guys these green braids would come on to uh would come to our come to our gate with blood all over their humvees and i'd have to be like hey sergeant uh i need your ids and they'd be like f you just open the gate And so I was like, so what'd you do? He's like, well, I opened the gate. What do you, what'd you expect me to do? I was like, man, and a part of me was like, those guys kind of sound like assholes. And the other part of me was like, those guys sounded really cool. So I eventually found out about 20th Special Forces Group, which is a National Guard group. And that started really my whole first fight trying to do that because we were mobilized at the time. getting ready to go. And that was the nail in the coffin. It was like, I don't want to do this. I want to do that. And so it's very difficult as a National Guardsman who's already mobilized. And we went through the whole mobilization process. And what, you know, we're supposed to be, even though we didn't leave when we were supposed to, they were going to just kind of hold us in this limbo as a mobilized unit they could call any time. And so we sat there. for months at El Paso waiting for a call that never came. So I started fighting with my company leadership then telling me, hey, I want to go to Special Forces. I want to go to National Guard, to 20th Group. They kept saying no. They told me all sorts of lies like, well, you have to be an E-5 to go be a Green Beret. So you'll have to wait a few years. Yeah. I've just talked to a few more people, found out that wasn't true. You know, I mean, just a 20th group when in a weird way has a lot of like. with other National Guard units has a lot of myths like surrounding it um and you're like oh you can't go to 20th group because you have to be you know a an active duty special forces guy first and when they come out that's how they go to 20th group I mean just all sorts of things just weren't true um I eventually found I don't know if you guys remember this you guys remember the uh Ako white pages oh yeah yeah Speaker 4 (10:10) Yeah, that's how I found my 20th group recruiter. I went to the AKO white pages and I Googled 20th Special Forces, searched 20 Special Forces, and I actually found a recruiter number out of Ocala, Florida, which would have been the closest one to me. So I'm still deployed or mobilized in Texas, and I call them and. I still remember the guy who picked up because I ended up he was a support guy there and was a recruiter. He picks up the phone, Sergeant First Class Carey. And I was like, hey, I just want to introduce myself. My name is Private First Class Tucker and I want to be a Green Beret. And he asked me like two quick questions. Like, yeah, how long have you been? He was like, Private First Class, where are you at? I told him, how long have you been in? And I told him and he basically goes, call me back in like a year. then hangs up the phone and again i was like man these guys are kind of dicks i think maybe I'm a dick but that's like I don't know I kind of want to like I love that like you're not good enough and you have to prove yourself and you know this yeah Speaker 2 (11:24) it's like you Speaker 4 (11:25) know Speaker 2 (11:25) you got to come and stand out in front of the door and wait wait your turn right Speaker 4 (11:28) yeah I mean you know it's not this everyone gets a trophy mentality I can't can't wait to welcome you you know I you know I I enjoyed that we we we demobilized a few short months later uh I I called him right back um and talked to someone else on the phone who was a little more welcoming and told my sob story and said you know what come over here and do a uh Do a small tryout and we'll see. So I show up knowing absolutely nothing to this small tryout. They told me to get ready to ruck and do a PT test at least. And so I said, okay. And I showed up not knowing anything, but knowing that, hey, all I know about soldiering is boots and uniform matters. And I'm not a Green Beret yet, so I better show up with polished boots and a pressed uniform. And I did that and I was immediately scolded for it and told to get into PTs and don't ever wear those around here again unless there's some sort of award ceremony going on. And I said, OK, I like this place already. I did the PT test and the RUC and I did very well on it. They said, hey, we want to bring you over to our program and send you a selection as soon as possible. Go back and tell your unit. that you want to transfer over here. And that's where the real fight kind of started. You know, they had already been giving me a bunch of, you know, slow roll on me. And now they just simply told me, nope, we're not going to send you. But like before the mobilization, we sent a couple guys over there. They never make it. You know, don't waste our time with the paperwork. Don't waste your time. We're just not going to send you over there. So I carried that message back to 20th group and the Sergeant Major laughed at it and said, hold on, I'll make a phone call. They can't. It's I told you to do that, but it's really not up to them. So he makes a phone call. I go back to work a couple of days later. They're like, well, you got what you want. I hope you're happy. We'll we'll see you in a couple of months when you don't make it, which was one of the. best things they could have done for me because I absolutely trained my ass off. I couldn't stand them anymore. I had too much pride to fight that hard and then have to swallow it and come back and tell them I wasn't good enough. I go to selection a few months later. I come back. I think I had to turn in some gear that I still had from them. And for whatever reason, I was kind of hoping. that they'd be like, hey, we were wrong about you. Good job. You're like the only guy that's ever made it. Instead, they're like, well, guess what? You haven't made it yet. Half the guys don't make the Q course, so you'll be right back. And that was the last time I saw him. And I'll tell you how petty I can be. When I retired 20 years later after the Delta Force, a part of me wanted to drive down there and... and shove my two 14 on their face and say, see, see, see what I did. Uh, but of course I think everyone there would have been like, who are you? Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's how, that's how I got to, uh, that's how we got the 20th group. Um, I was, uh, unfortunate. I was unfortunate enough to be smart. Um, which means I got to be an 18 echo. I put After selection, I put down the four MOSs I wanted. I put Bravo, Charlie, Echo, Delta. I sure as heck didn't want to be a Delta. They said, congratulations, you got your top three, is what the guy told me. And I was like, what's that mean? He goes, your Echo was in your top three. There's only four choices. It was second to last is what I viewed it as. Speaker 4 (15:43) There's two reasons I wasn't real happy about getting neck being an echo because at the time they had a longer Cue course than Bravo and Charlie and so at that time and in 2002 everybody Thinks the wars are gonna go away if you don't hurry up and get over there So I wanted a short MOS Bravo or Charlie, you know I wanted to try to clip out of Spanish and you know and be in Afghanistan and you know eight, nine, 10 months. I mean, the Q course is already long enough without the rest of that. Again, what I wanted never seems to work out and I always have to just deal with what I got. So I got Echo. I stayed there longer. I tried to test out of Spanish. I missed it by like two questions. And of course, the jokes on me. I didn't get to miss, maybe I missed the deployment. So instead of 13, maybe I'd have had 14 if I got out of there a little quicker. But yeah, there was a lot of war left. And really, I look back at that generation of Q course guys, and they were good dudes. Man, I'm telling you, I couldn't be, I still talk to some of those guys in the Q course to this day. They were such good dudes, and they went on to do amazing things. And really little did we know that era of QCOR students was really going to see 15 years of war after that, which really may be the most amount of combat, you know, any other generation was going to see. We had no idea what we were in for. Speaker 1 (17:27) Hello, everyone. If you're hearing this, you are not a member of the Patreon. You can get your hands on. Ad-free episodes that come out early, and you can ask us questions. Maybe we'll answer them. You can also watch the Teamhouse podcast completely ad-free and early, and you can also watch it live as we interview our guests. Speaker 4 (17:48) And Speaker 1 (17:48) it's the best way to support the channel. So if you can, if you're open to it, you can go to patreon.com slash the Teamhouse. That link is in the description. We appreciate the supporters. we hope you would consider being one. So it's patreon.com slash the team house. Thanks guys. Speaker 3 (18:05) Brent, I want to ask you a little bit about how 19th and 20th group are structured, because we know that the different SF groups generally have, you know, are assigned an area and aligned to a particular area. How like how did they choose your language? How are 19th and 20th group, the guard units aligned? Speaker 4 (18:24) Yeah. At the time, a battalion aligned with the group. So third battalion, 20th group aligned with seven special forces group. so i got spanish because our our battalion was aligned with seventh okay that's yep Speaker 4 (18:43) The well, which which really kind of gets me to my days with with 20 Special Forces Group as a Green Beret. I was I spent my whole guard time as a, you know, as a as a single guy, just being a guard bum. I just went from set of orders from school to school, to deployment, to deployment and just stayed active the whole time. And I loved it. I absolutely loved it. Speaker 4 (19:11) As soon as I graduated the Q course, I was on a C-130 down to Bolivia for a month. Speaker 4 (19:21) I, I had only, I'd only got to see the different ODAs in the company a few times. And I saw these, uh, I saw these guys on the dive team who were just, who were just better than everyone else. And we're more than happy to prove it. And, um, I, my senior echo on my first ODA was going, was going to dive school because he wanted to go to the, to the dive team. And, uh, And by the second or third time, you know, we had done some training together. He looked at me and goes, hey, you should go to dive school too. And so I was like, I'd love to go to dive school. He goes, yeah, it's easy. Just, you know, raise your hand. There's always slots. Go to dive school. So I'm getting ready to go down to South America. And just like he said, you know, all you have to do is say you want to go to dive school and they'll put you in a slot. So I go down to South America. I start training for dive school before South America. As soon as I get to South America, I get an email back to AKO again. I get an AKO email saying that funding fell through and don't worry about don't worry about dive school. And so I said, OK. So the next three weeks, I went on a very different training regime. and partied my ass off and had a great time. We trained hard. We partied hard. It was a great first experience. In fact, that team I went down there with had their Bravo on their team went to the unit before me. Their 18 Delta on the team went to the unit as a medic before me. It was a stacked team. of great dudes that were seasoned guys. You know, they had all been to Afghanistan already in multiple trips, and they'd all been on the team for like five, six, seven years. So it was a great, great first trip learning. I was the only Echo on the team. So, you know, it was a great experience as a new guy to have all the camo to fall on me. It was a real cool experience going to hotels and setting up a, you know, SATCOM. know psc5 and you know shooting out uh reports you know from a hotel room uh in different cities and in bolivia just kind of a in civilian clothes as you're traveling around so just just you know definitely a cool experience in that part um it's a couple days before die school is supposed to start and i'm at a roadside cafe in bolivia and i get an email uh it's an atar's notification Speaker 4 (22:10) saying, giving me, you know, details and checking in to dive school. So I went to the I went to the warrant officer on the team and I said, Hey, this is probably nothing. But I did get this ATAR notification. And he's like, Well, if you have an ATAR slot, you're going to need to get on a plane right now and go to Key West. I was both excited to hear that. And also, you know, it like a getting punched in the gut going i i'm not ready for this let's hope by you know yeah but there's a lot of things you can do when you're 24 that that you can't do later on in life so i uh you know not to make these stories long but you know just kind of you know i i get in a a uh a one-way rental car and we drive like me and one other guy that was going to go back with me drive like nine hours straight and there's these massive unrest going on because of the uh the elections just happened and no one's happy with the the the election and there's roadblocks everywhere we don't our Spanish actually wasn't too bad but it it wasn't enough to be by ourselves negotiating roadblocks um we just randomly gave people money that you know just kept on giving them money until they seemed to be less angry with us and they let us go we get to the airport and uh we landed on a military base dirt runway in the middle of the night unloaded and left so i didn't get my passport stamped when i get to the uh when i get to the airport we're trying to load up and the guy's like hey Speaker 4 (24:01) something's weird. You don't have a stamp on your passport. How'd you get in the country? And I remember the last thing my warrant officer told me was, hey, if you get in any trouble, here's the number to the embassy. Call this guy. He's our fixer. And so I didn't give an answer about how we got in here. I just said, hey, you should probably call this guy first. And the guy told me, goes, I don't care who that guy is. How did you get in on our country? And you can go ahead and start looking at other flights because you're not getting on this one. And I was like, you know, OK, that that sucks. But, you know, call this guy. He walks away 30 seconds later. He looks at me with disgust. He just takes my passport and he stamps it and he says, get out of here. To this day, I don't know who that guy was. I don't know what he told him. But, you know, just that it was at the end of it was a very cool non-combat first experience of being a Green Beret and just, you know, doing things that really is really unique to two Green Berets. Speaker 4 (25:10) I fly right to Miami and check into dive school and proceed to have the worst six weeks of my life. The whole week was absolutely horrible. I quit doing breath holds. I was not ready for it. I got dragged out of the pool almost every day and asked why I suck so much. And I just I remember calling my dad at one point and saying, hey, dad, you know, the Q course has been a lot. You know, just went on a trip down south. Now I'm in now I'm in die school. It's just it's really tough right now. I think I think I just need to come home for a little bit. And but my dad is not the the the guy to to cry on his shoulder. He's he's just a very hard man. But I also never complained to my dad about anything. So I think my dad knew if I was calling him to tell him things were pretty tough right now, he just said. do what you got to do, son. And I said, okay, I'll, I'll, I'll call you tomorrow and let you know. And, uh, every day I showed up to the pool and had to fake motivation. Like I wanted to be there when it was everything I didn't want to do. And, uh, I never called my dad back and told him that I wasn't coming or was coming. My dad said he, he figured that when I didn't call back, he, he knew. And again, my dad's just a hardcore guy. So it's not, he's going to call me and ask what's wrong. that was just the the odd random conversation we had um it was a fleeting moment of weakness um i'll come back to that story here in a little bit because i i tell on myself later my career saying hey this is the hardest thing i've ever done and i'll i'll tell you the one particular like time It was like the end of pool week and you're just, you know, you're just physically exhausted. And they they put us in. And again, and part of why it was so hard is because I I wasn't ready for it. So, I mean, I'm not saying it would have been easy otherwise, but I definitely didn't help myself out. They put us in the pool and they're going to have us do these. Speaker 4 (27:33) uh, sprints. And they said, Hey, and they told us, Hey, bring, bring two shirts to the pool this day. Um, and so at the very end of the day, they, uh, they said, Hey, get, get one shirt wet, take your, take your Brown shirt off, put them in both your hands. And that's what you're going to swim in to get to the other side of the pool. These two soggy shirts. Speaker 4 (27:53) And they said, pays to be a winner. First one to the other side of the pool gets to get out. And so everyone swam as hard as they could to get to the other side of the pool. And they didn't let anyone out of the pool. They're like, hey, but that's not this round. They sent us back and forth, back and forth like 15 times. No one gets out of the pool. And it sounds dramatic, but it's just true. Like guys are getting fished out of the pool because they're cramping up. And they're giving it their all. And I remember thinking, looking to the guy beside me on the gunwale, and we didn't say it, but we both looked at each other and said, this sucks. That empty look in another guy's eyes when he's just Speaker 2 (28:39) giving it his all. Speaker 4 (28:41) Yeah, we've all been there. And I remember thinking to myself, I got one more in me. Speaker 4 (28:51) If they don't get us out of the pool, I'm quitting because I'll end up at the bottom of this pool if they send me again. So they send us again. I get to the other side of the pool and I'm talking, I'm coaxing myself up. Well, this is, it's time. It's time to quit. It's time to quit. And me and that guy look at each other one more time. And we both kind of shake our heads like this sucks. And he goes, F it. I quit. And gets out of the pool. And I remember looking at him getting on the pool and thinking, you quitter. I can't believe this. What is wrong with you? Knowing that I was just as big as – if he would have beat me to it, I probably would have quit. And just like do you remember watching him quit? Just disgusted me. And I stayed on the pool. We went back and forth over six or seven times. Speaker 1 (29:46) But I Speaker 4 (29:47) guess maybe he left me some of his energy on the way out. Super glad I got die school out of the way early in my career. Insert joke here, but like most divers, I'm a proud diver. Really proud of that accomplishment. And it got me to work on the best ODA I ever worked with. Best group of guys. Honestly, I ended up having one of my best deployments in my military was a 20th group deployment with that dive team running the commandos out of Afghanistan. We just, you know, just when a group of really good friends deploy together, have the same mindset and just wanted to get after it. To this day, one of my best experiences in the military and dive school is what kind of afforded me that. that possibility i Speaker 3 (30:45) you know it's interesting because i want to paint sort of a picture for people who may not understand earlier when you're talking about going to dive school or you know the chance to go to combat diver school you know you said the the senior echo said there are always billets available there's always slots open and and the reason for that is because combat diver is such a notoriously hard school that people don't sign up for it in general. Like it is, it's one of those schools that somebody has to generally be really motivated to go to because it is such like a Speaker 4 (31:22) dick dragger. Speaker 3 (31:24) I Speaker 4 (31:24) don't know if I'd have gone back. I don't know. I mean, I mean, I mean, thankfully I didn't have to make that decision. I'd like to think that with a little bit of rest and, you know, I'd have got back on there. I was really lucky in my career to have not have recycled, to not, we'll get to it a little bit. There's one thing I recycled, but SF didn't hand that to me. And die school. I'm not saying the Q course was easy. By no means was the Q course easy. The Q course had really tough days in it. But for just an absolute smoke session, day in, day out, running red line the whole time, dive school, without a doubt, was the hardest military school I went to. Speaker 2 (32:15) Yeah. So talk to us about that deployment that it led you into with the KANDAC commandos. Speaker 4 (32:21) Oh, yeah. So we I had I had I'd been selected for for the unit. Actually, I got selected and I told him, hey, we're on the verge of a of another deployment. And I want to go back to this. Speaker 4 (32:44) well, I should say my second time at selection, I get selected and, and we're going, I want to do this, this deployment with, with, with, with our guys. It's one last hurrah if you will. And I told them that. And, and they, they were like, absolutely. You just not going anywhere. Go, you know, go, go, go fire your guys. I think they respected that. So I go to. So that was really cool in a weird way, kind of being a made man and 20th group as a guy already selected to go to the unit. And it was such a great mission. So we didn't have any air assets dedicated to us. You know, we didn't. But we got a lot of aviation assets given to us by the Battlespace owner. And how those deals usually worked was, of course, we had plenty of direct action targets that we collected the intel for. Here's a blast from the past, if you remember terms like J-PEL targets. So we had our list of J-PELs to go after, but most of them required, to do it properly, aviation assets. And the Battlespace owner was interested in giving us... aviation assets but the battlespace owner is actually a really a really good dude and he also wanted to work out of us and smartly so he would give us assets if we would do missions for him and what he wanted from us was to take our commandos and do valley clearing operations for for his conventional forces Which really was which is a great opportunity, you know really for us to like and and he's absolutely right like that's the commandos should have been at the very Ford edge of those Valley clearing operations, you know taking bullets that so Americans don't have to it's it's it's their country They're a motivated unit. They were more than happy to do it They had a short shelf life. So if it wasn't, you know, I can't remember the exact hours. It's 48 or 72. And trust me, they knew what the shelf life was. It's even it's in their charter. And I want to say it's 72. So if, you Speaker 1 (35:05) know, Speaker 4 (35:06) if 72 hours is about to come up, they'll let you know, hey, our work's done here. This is this is this is as much as we're allowed to suck. And and on more than one occasion for a unit. that can't logistically do anything on their own. If they're on an operation, a valid clearing operation, the longer than 72 hours, they'll they will find taxis to come pick them up in the middle of the woods. All of a sudden, their logistical masters and can find their way back to base. They can't find their way to a mission to save their life. That's I know I just said they were a great partner force, but that's that was a. That was a reality of them. I'm telling you, I feel like. uh you know the more experience i got in sf the more robin sage was real yeah Speaker 1 (35:59) yeah yeah Speaker 4 (35:59) i remember robin sage going i have to show up and beg these you know these fake g's to let me in their camp and to and to fight with me like we're in the real world we're americans with with you know with bombers and suitcases full of money no one's yeah i don't have to i don't have to beg anyone to come fight with us And there I am in Afghanistan begging our commandos not to leave us going. Am I in Robin Sage right now? This is crazy. But sure enough, happened on more than one occasion. But those valid clearing operations were great. They