The Real Marine Behind Generation Kill | Brad Colbert

The Team House

Brad Colbert, a retired Marine and real-life inspiration behind 'Generation Kill,' discusses his military service, the Carry On Podcast, and his post-military ventures. He reflects on his journey from a troubled youth to a Force Recon Marine, emphasizing discipline, legacy, and the importance of honoring past sacrifices.

Key takeaways

• Brad overcame a difficult childhood through military service.
• He served in Force Recon and was part of the original 'Generation Kill' platoon.
• His podcast focuses on veterans, current events, and reconnecting with 'Generation Kill' cast members.

Transcript preview

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That's promo code house call. Visit bluechoo.com for more details and important safety information and we thank bluechoo for sponsoring this podcast. Hey everyone welcome to the team house I'm Jack Murphy here with our guest in studio today Brad Colbert. Brad is a retired marine served in force recon. You did a stint with the royal marines. we'll talk about. Your platoon of course was the inspiration for the book and subsequent television show Generation Kill. And you have a podcast called the Carry On Podcast. I do, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well just right off the bat you want to tell people what that podcast is where they can find it. Yeah, carry on podcast is available either video through YouTube or whatever platform they use to consume audio podcasts, Spotify or Apple or Apple or I heart and we do a couple things in the show we talk to guests authors policy makers discussing current events treatments for veterans health we talk about some fun equipment things and we also look for reconnections with generation killed cast members to sort of give people aware they now look and maybe some stories that weren't originally portrayed in the book or the TV series yeah so you try to interview the Marines you see served with in the platoon and do you try to interview the actors also that portrayed them? We haven't actually had any of the actors yet but I certainly wouldn't put it past them. I do keep in somewhat contact with the individual that portrayed me Alex Scarsgaard so maybe I can ask him if he wants to come on the show. All right cool. We'll get deeper into all that in a bit but if we're to start at the top you know I always ask people about their origin story. military service? Well, I had a pretty rough childhood, not because of my parents. I was just, I was a pretty shitty kid. So, and I think my parents would probably agree with that if I was to ask them. They may couch it a little differently, but I was a difficult child. I was fiercely independent. I was probably smarter than my own good for my own good. And I got in trouble a lot. In fact, I was expelled from every school that I ever went to. I was expelled from elementary school, which is pretty hard to do by the way. Junior high I was expelled from high school. I ended up finishing school at a military academy that was in Missouri. All that to say that I was very rebellious and I did not handle groups well and I wanted to give myself a challenge. I wanted to find a place where I could fit in. I wanted to, I originally wanted to be, and I told this story before, but I wanted to be an astronaut, and in order to be an astronaut and in order to be an astronaut and in I'll short circuit the story. Most astronauts were pilots. Pilots come from the military. Okay, so I have to be an aviator. Well, what do I want to fly? I want to fly F-18. So that's Navy or Marine Corps. The Navy has shitty uniforms. Sorry guys. They didn't have the personal discipline to stay in college. I tried it for a little while after high school and just said, F it. I'm just gonna enlist. So I was going to say this isn't one of those scenarios where like the parents brought the Marine Corps recruiter to the home was like sign. No, in fact it was the other way around and again I like I had a rough go of it you know I got in trouble with the law I was on unofficial probation so so I got in trouble and I had to sort of like keep my nose clean for a little while so I went to the recruiter and the recruiter says I can't take you can't take you. You've got you. And I'm like, okay, cool, well what do we have to do to get this thing? You have to go in front of a judge and so I did and I got it cleared up. But I was a recruiter's wet dream because I marched right in and said I want to be you know 3-11 infantry. That's one of those things where the occurs like I don't know I'll try to pull a few strings we'll see what we can do. You know. Meanwhile it's like that's the hardest. We'll see what. So I did I enlisted I wanted to be a recon marine I knew it if I wasn't gonna fly that was the only other option it is to this day I think one of the better decisions I've ever made in my life and it has served me well not just in character development and personal growth and interpersonal but you know I think it's good for the soul people who have done what we've done and worn the uniform service the sacrifice that comes with it that you get anywhere in our life from that experience and I mean it was it was beautiful for me and I did it for a long time and it was it was amazing so what year did you enlist I enlisted in 95 October of 95 and I left in October of 16 yeah so so 19 90s marine corps still where a lot of us expected it to be like full metal jacket and you know that is not what it was like at all or platoon or a lot of the movies that Hollywood dramaticizes Marine Corps boot camp I had come from doing several years at military school and that was hard believe me you you know kids can be very cruel to one another and when you give them implied authority over each other Hasing. The Marine Corps was a walk in the park. Like I was hung upside down by my ankles the very first day I was at military school when I was 15 years old. Like boot camp was you want me to stand on these yellow footprints and you're gonna scream at me for a little while? So it was fine and I mean I found it actually to be easy and I was also older. I was 21 when I enlisted. The average age you know 17 and a half 18 years old so I had life experience. I had a little I had some experiences that a lot of the other recruits didn't. And I found it really fairly easy to be perfectly honest. I think Marine Corps boot camp out of all the services is still the most challenging. It is the longest. It has the greatest amount of attrition. Yeah. And I left knowing that this is what I wanted to do. I had no regrets. leave their initial entry training and say, ah, this was a mistake. No, I didn't have that. So it was good. And you shot iron sites? Yes, we did. Yes, we did. In fact, really the Marine Corps, I want to say recently, within the last couple of years, transitioned away from the iron sites to using an optic. But all the way back from the 60s, Marine Corps has shot the M16 with iron sites at basic training and then every year to recall. I can get Marines really wound up about the iron sites. That was pretty good. But I mean to speak to the Marine Corps, I mean jokes aside. They do train, what do you shoot out the 500 yards in basic in boot camp? I mean that's really good. It is. Yeah, so it's different positions. You know you start from 100 and 200 and 300. Each yard line is a different body position. So you know at the shorter distances you're standing and then you're doing kneeling and then prone at 500, but make no mistake shooting a high score on iron sites in the prone it still it's not easy. Yeah 500 you're struggling to see the target. You are struggling to see the target. But I mean shooting iron sites again jokes aside like it is really good to learn all the fundamentals like that. And the Marine is huge into that that adage of every marine is a rifle man or rifle person, whatever the adage is today. I mean it holds true and I think that is something. And I think that is something. that some of the other services are struggling with you when it comes to identity you know every marine is a rifleman so but what about the air force what do you say is every person a pilot they're not right oh yeah yeah so the marine corps I think nailed it pretty early and has kept consistent all this time yeah so after you graduate from boot camp what unit do you get assigned to so after uh... boot camp you you i went to infantry school because i didn't list as an oh three eleven at that time community was what we would call a secondary MOS. Right, right. You couldn't get into Recon at the point of enlistment. There was a pathway. So you had to be in the Combat Arms, preferably 03 11. And then you had to try out and go to selection and pass selection, which I did. I did that at the school of infantry, which was another three months of training at Camp Pendleton. And then from there my first unit was third reconnaissance company in Okinawa Japan. Oh, cool. I didn't. then you could go kind of like straight into the recon community. You could provided that you passed assessment and selection. Yep. Out there at Paris Island. Well this would have been Camp Pendleton but they had both. Yeah gotcha. Yeah. They had screening teams that would go around and screen people. They try to get them as early as possible. Before the unit scoops them up because once they get embedded into an infantry unit those units are very reluctant. You want to take our best, our highest. SPT or are our smartest people, there was a GT requirement. So there's a general technical score that the ASVAB will kick out. So when you go to the recruiting office, you have to take a test and it assessed you on all these different things. Part of that test is a general technical score which rates your aptitude for, you know, cognition and a whole bunch of other factors. It's a number. Recon needs that number to be 115 or above. and you need to have a high PFT, your physical fitness test. So if you go to an infantry unit, they're going to probably hide you. Like, no, you're not leaving. So they go to the school of infantry where you're not yet assigned to a unit and they screen you there. So you get to the Recon community and do you want to talk a little bit about what the difference was at that time between Recon and Force? Yeah, it was really, there was a huge cultural difference and one, and one that. was rigid. It's a lot of people at that time would say you know the reconnaissance community is the JV team and the force reconnaissance community is the varsity team and I would say that's really childish to categorize it like that guys we both go through the same schools it really comes down to mission sets the force reconnaissance unit typically operates outside of the artillery fan. So we're talking, you know, close air support range. They support a Meff, which is a higher echelon of table of organization. The reconnaissance community works within the artillery fan, so up to 30 kilometers in most cases, and works for the division. I mean that doctrinally that's your difference. Now, culturally, night and day. We wanted to go over to the force recon, force recon felt that they were, you know, were up here, you figure it out. And there was another vetting process, you know, you have to screen again. They usually took you when you were a little senior, you know, you know, you're an E5, maybe an E4, and they wanted you to have a little experience under your belt. And I, looking back, I understand the need for that type of progression, but there was a huge difference in culture. more homogenous. Both of those units are now organized pretty much under the same house because of Mar Sox creation. But in the 90s, it was a different Marine Corps. They also had better equipment in many cases because they had access to a little bit more money. And we were still coming off of the heels of not really understanding what would be over the horizon. Right. Like, you know, we always trained for the last war. We still did a lot of jungle tactics. Patrol-based activities. We did a lot of things that we did in Southeast Asia that we would not be doing in OIF, OEP. But the forest reconnaissance community still had, you know, the Chenoweth Dunebuggies. They had a lot of the equipment that you just, we don't use anymore. And a mission set to go along with it. Not that it's still not pertinent, but it's not as pertinent, you know, especially modern world. warfare with drones. So what did they have you doing in recon at that time? But you end up going to Thailand, anything cool like that? Yep. Did a lot of COBRA-Golds, did some marine expeditionary units. That's when you go on ship. A lot of people don't realize that the Marine Corps has an infantry battalion up to three at any given time patrolling the waters of the ocean, available for immediate dispersion anywhere that the president deems that they're needed. And Okinawa has a mew and I did. And Okinawa has a mew. And I did. And I did. And I did that I did that I did that I did that I did. And I did that I did that I did. And I did that I did. And I did that I did that I did that I did. And I did that. And I did that. And I did that. And I did a mew. And I did that I did a special purpose magtaff a marine air ground task force to China so we went into China for about a week and a half into the port of Queen Dow and this was the first time that Marines had been to China since World War II I was gonna say the boxer rebellion absolutely yep the China Marines were the last Marines to be there and it was surreal I'm we could we went on liberty we worked it was a working port call we were allowed to leave the ship in groups and we went out into the city and I remember I'm wearing my my well we would call them Charlie's your class C uniform so khaki long sleeve shirt no I tell a lie sorry short sleeve shirts no tie green trousers piss cutter hat oh I couldn't say that it doesn't matter we're walking around and the Chinese had not in many cases seen Americans before They certainly hadn't seen Marines. I'm walking and people would come up to me and they would they would stroke my arm because of the you know the body hair because they're just not used to seeing and they would fascinated but strangers were calling us into their homes. They just wanted to talk. They wanted to practice their English. They wanted to offer food and so we could you we wanted to go on liberty but you couldn't because you're just getting mob. Right, but it was amazing and it was fascinating and this was And I remember we pulled into the port and I'm looking around at their ships and their subs are just rusted at the water lines. Their surface fleet was not in great shape. I was young, but I was pretty into military hardware, tables of organization. So I'm looking around and I'm like, these guys are not in great shape. Now fast forward, they are arguably ahead of us in many of those same categories. So I'm like, these guys are not in great shape. Now fast forward, they are arguably ahead of us in many of those same categories. they have incredible growth in their military industrial complex but back then we toured their ships we did some exchange and they were not a concern I was gonna yeah I was gonna say I mean first off that's something that would never happen today there's no way they'd have Marines going on liberty in China but then I mean just what a couple years after this we had that surveillance bird Yeah, I'm not pretty sure that's the name of it. It was a bit of an embarrassment. We did get it cleared up diplomatically, but you know there was also There were some other instances as well. There were some missile tests that they had done against Taiwan that covered the Strait We did some GPS jamming that caused those missiles to splash into the water They were horribly angry about that. They knew that it was us side publicly admitted it because they didn't want to save it didn't want egg on their face so there were a couple of things yeah you're right it wouldn't get done today but what an amazing experience for me out of the uniform we got to go see the great wall of China got to go to the National Art Gallery Tiananmen Square the forbidden city it was that's so awesome I mean like that's one of the great things about the military is those those those intangibles those travel opportunities you can't get that anywhere else you can't that something like that wouldn't happen today. It is, because I get that there are adversary, but there's a lot of opportunity there as well. Yeah, I mean it's a culture that's been more or less intact for like a thousand years. Right. I wouldn't, unfortunately I wouldn't go as a private citizen. I'm afraid of, you know, it's like going to Russia. Yeah. I'm afraid of, you know, it's like going to do that. Not going to do that at all. I'm fascinated by the history and the culture. I think it's super cool. I think it's super cool. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I'm I mean they they do have and it's there's very similar parallels with Japan as well you know it's a very rich culture with a long history and you know China for many centuries was the cultural epicenter of the world they created a lot of and as did those in the Middle East you know and then somewhere along the way things just oh we're gonna do communism okay cool cool I so you're in recon what when did kind of you get the opportunity to start thinking and taking action about going to force it was actually kind of an accident really and I didn't spend to be perfectly honest with you I really didn't spend that much time in the force community I I dipped my toe into it because when I left the British Royal Marine Exchange Program in oh 7, 06, 07. Yeah. I was assigned to first force, but only for about six months before Marsock stood up. Ah, gotcha, okay. And then I found myself back with First Reconnaissance Battalion, and then they stood up the Force Company in First Reconnaissance Battalion because, you know, there was Marsock. So they took what was first force. You're now Marsock, but we need a group of you to be. force that job we don't know what we're gonna call it yet and that's what I did so was I still force was I not I guess it's I don't it's a matter of semantics but in a very short time I found myself as a platoon sergeant going back over to Iraq in 07 so my stint in force was fairly short just because of the circumstances you know three years in England with the commandos right on the heels of the invasion of Iraq and then Marsoc changing in 06. So maybe seven months with force. Okay, okay. Maybe another three at the reconnaissance battalion in a forced platoon. And that was it. 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To back up then. Let's uh, you're in Recon. What was sort of like the experience like being in recon when 9-11 happened? That was, that was, everyone has their where were you when 9-11 happened story, right? That is the where were you when Kennedy was assassinated version of our generation. For me, I was on a marine deployment. I was on a marine expeditionary unit. So we were in the coast of, sorry, we were in Darwin, Australia when 9-11 happened. And, as one of the... Platoons. I'm trying to think if the seals, I don't remember if the seals, I'm sure they were back then. Yeah, they weren't. So we had a forced platoon, we had a reconnaissance platoon, I'm pretty confident we had a seal platoon as well. So I think those three groups were pretty confident that we were going to do something. And we were right, we all did separate things. But I don't think any of us were privy to any more intelligence. anyone else was privy to. I mean the world was on CNN yeah yeah it was pretty much open source and then whatever you know the captain of the ship was being told and whatever the battalion commander was being told it was surreal though being forward deployed when 9-11 happened was surreal. Mm-hmm. And what did you guys end up doing? What was the Marine Corps response to it in those you know weeks and months after? Well we immediately pulled, we sailed out of port. It was late when it happened in Darwin, so it was probably 20, I want to say 2,300. Liberty expired at midnight. They were dragging people back to the boat, half drunk. Nobody would say what was taking place. They're seeing some things in the news, on the bars. From what I gathered, bringing the ship's compliment back was a nightmare. I was already on the boat. day we left we weighed anchor we basically what no one knew what had taken place was this the opening shot of a war is this some kind of asymmetrical attack that is going to repeat itself so we left and went into the open waters 50 60 100 miles off the coast and just cut squares for a couple of weeks then we went into East Timor did a humanitarian mission and then it was in very short order apparent that we were going to to Afghanistan that they were the ones responsible. So we made an amphibious landing into, well, we hung out in Pakistan for a while at an air base. And then we did an amphibious assault into Afghanistan. And it was an amphibious assault into Afghanistan. Right? The technical amphibious assault was because we departed from ship and we landed in Afghanistan. Right. Afghanistan and that by definition is amphibious and it's the longest amphibious assault that's ever been made in the history of American. Right, right. So you had to refuel a few times in the air on the way. Yeah, yeah. Also one of the scariest flights I've ever had. We landed at Camp Rhino, which was a compound in the middle of the desert. It was a hunting preserve for some very rich individuals, but it had private runway, unapproved runway. It had a big hangar runway. It had a big hangar. It had a little mosque. It had all these ancillary buildings and it was surrounded by this wall and we're like that's it So C-130. I mean we are packed in I No doubt you've been on a C-130 before I don't know if you've done a mass tack Yeah, but it's that kind of cramped and I mean you're you got your gear your pack is on your legs and you can't move and we flew? you're assuming you're going to get a lot of ground fire. There's also going to be surface-to-air missile threats. You got to fly basically nap of the earth. So C-130, we did receive some ground fire. We don't know where, but the plane did get shot a little bit. But that wasn't the problem. You're going from this really high altitude and then it goes screaming down to like a thousand feet. And you're just sardine in. You can't move. And then the runway is made of this. like moon dust yeah you know what I'm talking about because you've walked that you sink into it it's up to your ankles but here's a C-130 fully loaded full bag of gas and it's coming in on this runway and it's not getting purchase and it's just sliding and yawing and I'm like oh this is it this is how it's gonna end the plane is gonna clip the ground it's gonna cartwheel and I'm wedged in between you know 60 other fuckers I'm done this is it this is it's my story I mean this is basically kind of what happened to the C-130s in Iran a few months ago they got stuck in the dust essentially sunk in because of that whatever it's that certain type of soil it's unique and then you know so fast forward I had a guest on the show Alexander lemons and he did some research to find that the soil in Iraq is unique from all of the soil in the world I know that we're talking about But there's some property about this particular type of sand where it just recirculates due to the you know the the dust storms and stuff that does something to grind it down But yeah so I ran Afghanistan Iraq it's all that same type of dirt Yeah, I thought it was over It didn't turn out that way and so you guys kind of spearheaded into Camp Rhino? We did. Yes. There was. And then it turned into like the who's who of special operations forces because it became the beach head for everyone to flow in. So there was British SAS, there was Australian, there were French, there was German, clearly the Marines, Navy Special Forces, there was I think for a very brief time, I want to say there was an ODA team, but it all kind of blends in at this point. We're talking, oh one. We ran operations out of there. The infantry was dug around the perimeter. It was just weird. You know, it was weird because Nobody enlists in the military under any illusion that you are not going to potentially go to war. But I enlisted in 95. There was no war taking place. I mean, we had some people that were concerned, but it was like, oh, that's, you know, Nicaragua or that's, you know, Somali or that's Somali or that's... the United States getting attacked on its home turf and then retaliating was unheard of. And then finding yourself in like such a third world country. What's going on here? It was so weird and we didn't have any of the equipment to really do this type of thing. You know, you're still wearing, we had just transitioned, we didn't have them yet, but the Marine Corps had just transitioned to that new digital pattern. Yeah. classic tricolor woodland pattern or chocolate chip like 91 chocolate chip desert storm so that's what we had and that was our desert uniform and we didn't have vehicles that were really tailored towards what we were doing which was you know some long-range desert patrol we didn't have the we didn't have the equipment for it so we made it work but it was very weird I remember working with Marines and I remember working with Marines in later on this would have been, what, 2004, Marine infantry, and I mean they had like one pair of nods per squad, they didn't have any sort of organic intelligence attached to their battalion, and there's, again, not trying to throw shade on them, it's just they didn't have a lot. The infantry operates under very austere conditions, they always have, so much so that it's really a point of pride to them at this point. Yeah, I know. Yeah, like we can do everything everything with nothing. And the marine. And the marine reconnaissance. had a lot more. It did, but now when you compare Marine Recon or even the Force platoon to say a Ranger Battalion or an ODA team or, you know, CAG, oh yeah, like night and day, like don't even get it started. But we did have more equipment, you know, we had some laser rangefinders, laser designators, everybody had NVGs, we had M4s, we had suppressors, we had a lot more hardware than your run of the mill and we had reach back and that was one of the things that reconnaissance is able to do in the Marine Corps is you're in all of the other services put an officer in charge of their smaller SF units Marine Corps doesn't run that way now Marsoc does but there was no Marsoc in a one so this was six enlisted Marines