Episode 183: Doug Stanton Author of “Horse Soldiers”

  Award-winning author Doug Stanton joins us to pull back the curtain on these quiet professionals in a conversation that spans from the personal anecdotes of "Horse Soldiers" to the broader implications of military service on mental health. Doug's storytelling prowess shines as he recounts the challenges and profound responsibilities involved in bringing the Green Berets' narratives to light, revealing the meticulous research and relationship-building that underpins his work.
 
 In our latest episode, we traverse the rugged terrain of military history writing, unearthing the Afghan-American perspective and the evolution of warfare. Doug's journey saw him conducting over 120 interviews to piece together a day-by-day account, visiting battle sites, and capturing the essence of the soldiers' experiences. We also discuss the role of Afghan allies and the bold tactics that reshaped the battlefield, highlighting how military strategy and technology have advanced to meet the demands of modern conflict.

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Make sure that you follow Doug on LinkedIn and follow him on all of his social media channels! 

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 Doug Stanton’s Books:
Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan

In Harm's Way

The Odyssey of Echo Company: The 1968 Tet Offensive and the Epic Battle to Survive the Vietnam War

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:01

security hot podcast let's go with a man who's the best with guns, with knives, with his bare hands, a man who's been trained to ignore, ignore weather, to live off the land. Job was disposed of enemy personnel to kill.

Speaker 1: 0:22

Period with nutrition I never, never, hit the record. But uh, doug stanton, uh, thank you for being here. I, this project is about advocacy and mental health, but it's also about reaching into the ecosystem of linkedin and the interwebs and finding individuals, such as yourself, that have been able to take our stories and translate them and put them out for the entire world to hear, because we don't always do that. We're the quiet professionals, we're the individuals that go into the unknown, come back and then you never hear about it unless it was met with failure. Yeah, but in your book that details one of the greatest adventures of green, modern green berets. You get to bring all that to life, to the audience, and horse soldiers is something that's near and dear to every green brace heart. Yeah, that's great. So, but before we dive into that, doug, how did you find yourself as the quote unquote, as I said earlier, the, the, the warrant officer to the regiment collecting this story?

Speaker 2: 1:30

yeah, I remember walking around fifth group, uh, special, fifth special forces group of fort campbell for those listening um, uh, in 2003. I connected in 2002 and I called the PAO, the Army PAO in New York. They bumped me to Fort Bragg where I connected with General Jeff Lambert, now retired. He connected me with now retired General John Mulholland who is the colonel at Fifth Group running everything and getting run up, actually spun up to go to Iraq and there was no PAO. There was no one really at the front desk to take any phone calls.

Speaker 2: 2:12

So I began to drop ship copies of my book In Harm's Way, which is about World War II, and the guys liked it and the command liked it. It's about men aboard the USS Indianapolis who sink in the war and survive and see, and I just started walking, they let me on post and I started walking around the team rooms knocking on doors. You know, like, hey, you know I have my little Duke tape in my book, my business card. Like guys are like what? Well, no, they said I could be here and I walk in and I spent, I remember, talking for like 10 minutes. And like guys are like what? Well, no, they said I could be here and I walk in and I spent, I remember, talking for like 10 minutes with the guy. It's in the book, it's in Horse Soldiers, and I asked you know, let's just make up a name, is John Smith here? No, john's not here. He's like I kept going, and then finally he looks at me and goes you know, I'm John.

Speaker 2: 3:04

I think that's you know what do you want to know? So it just began this very slow process. I stayed at the Country Inn in Sweets, off exit four, on the way to Fort Campbell, a lot of times and just going and interviewing, and then met an element, a person from the two teams which are now named differently, but back then there were 595 and ODA 534, and then there was a command and control amount that came in later, november 2nd of 2001. So, as you know, denny, these are the first SF guys to go into Afghanistan after 9-11. They're the ants, and so this is such early days.

Speaker 2: 4:04

No-transcript thing like just ask and go with it. You know, and, um, I remember, uh, uh, colonel major scott brower, now retired, he was a, he was the battalion commander, I think. But I'm sitting in his office and all these guys kind of file in like who's this, who's this yokel who showed up in a suit and tie with all of his books and wants to talk to us. And they weren't hostile but they're just like curious, like who the heck was. Because, remember, the biggest thing that SF was going to do before 9-11 was foreign internal defense. They're just going to go around and train and advise. They never were going to go around and train and advise. They never were going to do any kind of lead action. So this was a big deal and this is post-90s. So this is after the action. I'm on Fort Campbell, they're headed to Iraq, but I'm trying to capture what they did two years earlier and Scott Brower kept saying well, maybe you need to talk to ODA 534, oda 595. And I'm like ODA, what's an ODA? And I kind of knew. But they're like the room stopped and they looked at me like and two things happened. They thought this guy is so stupid, how dangerous can he be? And we really need to help him.

Speaker 2: 5:24

And you know, I always, and that's how I operated throughout the three or four years it took to write the book, just always straight ahead, very clear, very transparent. And, and, denny, my question was not so much um, the trainings and tactics and procedures, but what it felt like to be there. What was the effect? How did you accomplish this mission? You know what did it? What was the human journey that you went on as an SF soldier, because that is is much that. That, as you know that, that mental kind of Jedi mind meld that you try to do with so many things as you're on your mission, is the other half of the whole. You, you know direct action, kinetic part of it, and that's unusual and the public doesn't really understand that. About the special forces soldier, right, I mean yeah, yeah, so that's how I ended up there, just, uh, kind of like, uh, what was the tom hanks character? Um, he's always running around doing stuff. Um, the box of chocolates guy. Oh, forrest gump.

Speaker 1: 6:31

Yes, what's an oda like you just hear the room go just stop and I have to imagine that when you're diving into the story it. How much coaxing and how much patience did you need with each one of these individuals? I can imagine that it was not the easiest thing to get them to divulge like what it was actually like in the moment, because we're all about data you guys are worse than biology.

Speaker 2: 7:11

I'll tell you, mike, mike elmore, now retired, but um, he was the weapons sergeant on 595 and he went on to have a long career after this. I think he just recently retired. He was like really straight ahead. You know, he just really by the book person, and before I said anything he said, doug, I can't tell you how much the batteries weighed in the radios, he goes. If I tell you how much the batteries weighed, then the enemy knows how many calories we have to consume. You know what our logistics train looks like and I'm looking at him and I thought, oh man, this is going to be great, mike, I don't care about the batteries at all really.

Speaker 2: 7:53

And I want to know what you did in the cave in the Darius Valley in October of 2001. You know, when you're with General Dostum and, uh, maha kek and atas folks, these different tribal groups, what were you doing in the cave? Waiting for the attack to happen? And he goes oh well, I was uh drawn to my notebook. I was drawing 1970s vinyl record album covers like black sabbath, acdc, or you know. I said, oh, that's great. That's the kind of detail because that makes you real, that makes you a human, that makes you a person that the reader in America can really relate to. And then we start from that position and move outward to this very unique and odd skill you have, which is to go into a country a la OSS in World War II and work behind enemy lines and create relationships and maybe never fire a shot. I remember hearing from General Lambert, so you asked her how it happened. I mean, so they just kind of got used to me and they realized that wasn't crazy and was basically going to do what I said I was going to do. And so it came down from higher that the book was approved.

Speaker 2: 9:06

I mean, I worked, I went to MacDill and SOCOM and I went to 10th Mountain Group to talk to the QRL. I went to Fort Drum because they were the QRF at the College, anguille Fortress, november 25th 2001. I didn't, I got a hold of the Air Force Tech Peas 2001. I didn't, uh, I got ahold of the air force tech peas. Um, some Intel folks just I mean I must've done interviewed 120 people, someone from almost every element that was there. And um, holy cow, uh, cause I really want.

Speaker 2: 9:39

And then, and then the Afghan point of view. And when I went to Afghanistan um, twice, but the first trip was more consequential I got up to Mazar-e-Sharif and then the Afghan National Army was still there on the other side of the camp, and so I found two people who had been in the battle in November of 25th 2001. This was 2005. So I was able to walk with them through the Kalajangi Fort and have them narrate the battle, because I knew what had happened from the US side Exactly. Yeah, when you read that section in Horse Soldiers, you'll see that it alternates between the Afghan and the American side. So kind of wandered off the topic here. But, um, that, uh, that that's.

Speaker 1: 10:31

You know, that's how I, just you, keep going yeah, yeah I want to touch back on that that it seems like you have to be a forensic detective to be able to put all of this data together and then also be able to put it in and conceptualize it from the afghan perspective like that's. That's a lot of work it is.

Speaker 2: 10:59

I wish you know. Behind me you can kind of see all this research because we've driven through houses and somewhere in there there are things called scenarios. So let's say I was going to interview you about your last deployment. I'd interview you as the warrant officer, then your captain, and then your medic and so on, and I would say so what happened on day one? And then, denny, you would say, well, on day one we did X. The medic would say on day one, we did.

Speaker 2: 11:27

And what happens is you get that all down and then you transcribe it and you open it up, open up a file on your computer that says day one, and this is Denny did this on day one. And then I jumped to the medic. And then you, once you go through all 50 pages of the interview, then you open a file called day two and I've asked you what. You see what I mean. So you create like documentary scripts so that when you're writing and then I'm typing and you know you might say to me you know we got up, we we actually ate something that day, and you know it's hot and it rained at night, and and I, and it rained at night, and um, and I start to you start.

Speaker 2: 12:03

You actually start writing the book that way yeah, you start kind of saying what you did and then what your, your teammate, did, and it's that's about 80, that's about 70 of the book writing actually the organization, yeah, and then you hang it all on the wall like if you don't I don't know what I wanted to do I would um tape, like there'd be sections where you just get lost, cause the book is that's the ferocious attack dog. The book is bigger than you. You know, like you have to kind of stand up and say no, you know, you got to take control of it. And so I printed out and tape it together like in a film strip. Sorry about that. No, you're good. At the end of the podcast we're going to have a raffle and the winner gets the dog.

Speaker 1: 12:56

That's okay. Seasons one through three. My giant schnauzer would sit with me and just go crazy.

Speaker 2: 13:09

So yeah, it's, it's, it's the manly toy poodle. Um, anyway, you get up there and you hang all that on the wall. You tape it up on the wall and, uh, look at it, and then you take a sharpie and just start to attack it and then when you open the door of the room it starts to move like a bed of kelp and you're like man, it's a living document it's just going on too long, um, but yeah, go ahead. What's the next? I I don't want to one trough your topic no, you're good.

Speaker 1: 13:37

You are good at doug. This is your show, my man. I am pulling everything from your experience writing this because it to understand the story is also to understand the human aspect and us as green berets, soft professionals, we're not always forthcoming with everything that we experience. Uh, I touched on a little bit. We're we're great at data points, right, great at metrics. We're great at being able to. We're great at metrics. We're great at being able to provide clear, concise write-ups. But something we're not good about is touching into the emotional components of it. Sure, you know, with those individuals were there they? They may not have known what it would be like 20 years from that day, right, but they knew at that moment, when they touched down in Afghanistan, they were carrying the ball, they were going in and going to do something that had not been done, and that's what's amazing about you being able to be able to come in contact with these individuals and pull that story from them.

Speaker 2: 14:43

Yeah, boy, you know, when you put it like that, it was clear to everybody that I was interested in the unconventional warfare part of what they did, and I usually don't have a dog or a phone ringing. But, and just as an aside, you know, really grateful to jerry bruckheimer and nikolai fuselig who didn't, who made, uh, this movie called 12 strong and didn't turn into a seal movie, yes, a rambo, yeah, yeah, because even they understood that it was a different kind of war movie. It's a war movie about guys who land somewhere and they want to talk. Yeah, you know what do you want? You know what will stop you from fighting these guys and what are your common? You know? Well, you know, I mean all the doctor, the general public doesn't know that's it. That's a tough, that's a tough war movie to make, so to speak, a tough um. It's a tough war movie to make, so to speak, um. But it was clear to them that I was. That's what I was interested in. I was really interested because I had not listened to any, not understood this.

Speaker 2: 15:52

On september 10th 2001, I didn't know anything about this and my discovery of the quote story was reading a time magazine piece by a great journalist named alex perry, I don't know. We talked about this and, um, he had found himself kind of trapped inside college angie. On november 2nd, number 25th 2001, ended up filing this story about that battle, and people might remember that a lot of enemy forces had surrendered to conduits and been escorted by convoy back into Mazar-e-Sharif, which they had lost in the not too distant past. They had fled from that city. It turns out now the surrender was perfidious. They were actually surrendering in a Trojan horse move to get back into the city, as you, as as many of your, your teammates, know.

Speaker 2: 16:47

And once they get into college engie, they break out or they try to break out. In the middle of that, uh, was this american named john walker lynn, who has earlier joined. He's come to yemen to study arabic from marin county, california, if I have it correctly, and like a pinball, he's just kind of gone through these wickets and made decisions that have placed him ultimately in bin Laden's brigade, at which point I feel he didn't know what the hell he was doing, obviously, or what he would do next. If he had tried to escape. They would have probably shot him in the back, and although I did talk to one intelligence officer later who said that when Lynn was found he had a lot of powder burns on his cheek from firing a weapon.

Speaker 2: 17:45

Yep, that was kind of immaterial to his trial. But he was later convicted and found guilty of aiding and abetting the enemy and spent time in prison and is not released. But his, his discovery there was a shock to America and the world really, like you know, and tragically, like you know, and, um, tragically, as you know, the guy bending down in the college ingy courtyard, the fork fortress, is michael span, who is a young intelligence officer with the agency and he's he's looking at him, he's trying to figure out something's not right about this guy. He can't quite figure it out. Lynn does not say anything. You know like, hey, we're down in this dungeon it was called the pink house, which I went to and down the stairs, and we're all gathered down there and they have grenades and they have, they have a plan and they're going to bust out and while mike and his colleague dave tyson are there's just two of them, by the way, and they're not really heavily armed. This surrender has happened so quickly and things are moving fast and Mike gets attacked and he's tragically killed and Tyson escapes to Dostum's kind of half of the fortress. It's enormous, it's about 300 meters across, and that news breaks.

Speaker 2: 19:12

And that's how we learn, really, that we have special forces soldiers or U S army personnel in Afghanistan, that an American is there and that the CIA is there. And so Alex finds that. But my and I thought, well, I'll just write a book about how those two Americans kind of come together. But then that really wasn't. I have to bring the manly dog up here. Really, you know, submit your raffle ticket. Now. I had to figure out how they ended up there. But then I realized, no, that's not it. That's really who is this? What is this part of the U S army that no?

Speaker 1: 19:52

one really knows about.

Speaker 2: 19:54

Yeah, the quiet professionals and you guys you know I had to hand it to the, to the SF community. They really do believe in their bumper sticker. Well to a fault fault to a fault dog.

Speaker 2: 20:10

We couldn't say the word delta for us for a long, long time, but yet they'd publish more books than any of that guy right, I mean, and chuck norris did make some great movies I don't want to get you in trouble with your friends, but but so I just, I just I just really honest and open, like, and I approached it not so much as a blood and gut story of bombs and bullets, I approached it as how did you, you know, remember, I think Rumsfeld or the command, gave what a year or two years to achieve what happened in Afghanistan and what it really happened in? By January of 2002, it had been, as you know, pretty much sealed, at least the Taliban collapsed and moved into Pakistan or surrender, just put down their weapons. But, um, it's quite an amazing, um, quite an amazing victory, uh, uh, it's funny I won't name the general who told me this, but he's, in the Pentagon, been capitalized had it not been for big army coming in and a lot of big army leadership. Well, yeah, I think Horse Soldiers is a book about the first 10 minutes of a 20 year war year war. Yeah, it's really about. It's really about when the doctrine really was followed. It did work, um, because what choice did the command have? I mean, there was no plan to invade afghanistan and there was no time to do that.

Speaker 2: 22:13

But, um, this special forces general is walking down the pentagon hallway, coming at him as a his uh, his uh, colleague, his, his equal, his peer um, from the conventional side. And the conventional side general says I hey, hey, so, and so I bet you're really proud of what you did in afghanistan. And the uh sf general says yeah, we are goes. And the other guy from conventional says good, because you'll never get to do it again. You know, I mean, you know, I have you heard. I mean, is that your sense of relationship?

Speaker 1: 22:59

it's not a uh, it's not a beautiful relationship by any means, and it's it. It continues to grow and expand. And look I will. I'm. I am no longer beholden to a commander, so I will say this um, I have always felt better supported and better enabled when, underneath leadership that rep that comes from my community yeah, like you'll, you'll never be in a situation where you're worse off than when you have conventional leaders in charge of soft elements, and that's a truth. Yeah, that's just. There's a lot of um and I don't know if it's, I think there is. Some individuals have that idea that we're just cowboys and renegades, and then there's a lot of well, I couldn't do it, so I'm going to be bitter and angry, and that's just something we experience. All of us at some point have seen that.

Speaker 2: 23:55

Why do you think that is?

Speaker 1: 23:58

I think honestly, they don't know how to utilize the soft forces and they see themselves as having to posture, having to you know, sort of puff out their chest. The conventional, the conventional, yeah. And the reality is we're not against them. We're not there to be renegades and cowboys. We follow orders, we do our job and there isn't a need for that sort of competition and negative connotation. But we've seen it, all of us, that if you've served within SOF at some point, you've experienced it and seen it and it it does suck. And and our, our senior leaders, they've, they've all experienced it themselves. But look, you don't want anybody else. When you absolutely need the best, you're the ones that come after and and look for us. We're a force to multiply.

Speaker 1: 25:00

For a reason our doctrine is sound what we bring the, the tools and resources we bring to the fight, are they always wanted and they're always coveted.

Speaker 1: 25:11

I've never met a conventional officer that didn't have anything positive to say. But they're still so hesitant to embrace and understand where we fit in the grand big scheme of things. And even now even now I hear it even though we're not technically at war, I still see the issues that our community is facing. But at the end of the day, sof continues to move on, sf continues to deploy. We're still doing our core tasks and our core missions and I think that, now more than ever, the uw mission set, the mission set that's unique and specific to special forces is needed, and and we're seeing that fight play out in places like Ukraine. Yeah, we don't have a conventional force foothold there, but I would beg to argue that when we are ready to put boots on the ground, it's going to be the unconventional side, it's going to be the soft individuals and soft units that are utilized. We're just different and we're more specialized for that fight.

Speaker 2: 26:22

Oh yeah, I mean, I don't know if you I'm assuming that training and advising is going on right now. I mean I don't know if it's allowed. I mean technically, but that's a classic. It's Afghanistan all over again. It's the same dynamic, just exactly different religions, or yeah?

Speaker 1: 26:46

and and goals, and you know yeah, and cultural mores.

Speaker 2: 26:51

But, um, well, it's, it's control. Well, you know, it must be very hard for a conventional general to deputize a young captain to go meet up with a warlord, yeah, and kneel down and draw in the dirt and make a plan that involves the future of the United States of America, exactly.

Speaker 1: 27:14

Without 24-hour control.

Speaker 1: 27:16

And that's the beauty of that time period.

Speaker 1: 27:21

You know, just a few years ago, before afghanistan was done, there wasn't this if you go on mission, you're sending reports, you're pushing back to command on red side, you're pushing back if something, if comms go down, you're coming up on iridium back. Then there wasn't that. The commander had to understand that that team was going in and, okay, what's our combo windows? When are we going to have contact with this team? And that's it's not like two, four hours, no days, weeks, right, going all the way back to the vietnam era. And that's the beautiful thing of of looking at, looking at those individuals at that mission. We can see that it's still possible for us to expect that from our soft operators. We don't own the air anymore with drones and the new advancements in tech, so we're going to have to dial back and scale and be able to say you know what, operationally, I have to assume this risk that that element's going to go in there and I won't be able to talk to them until maybe two, three days. They'll come up on their window.

Speaker 2: 28:29

I'm curious so how has the drone affected the deployment of a small force like an SF team attaching it? I mean it's kind of off topic, but I'm just interested. No, because the drone is kind of an asymmetric weapon, right?

Speaker 1: 28:46

yeah, yeah, it moves the front line all over the place, yeah and in just in the, in the matter of just four or five years, it's changed so much. We on the ground, we're using our own mavic drones to get eyes on and in a matter of a few short years now we have the same over-the-shelf drone capability that can be utilized to drop ordnance Right, and now suicide drones what's the next? And we've been trying to just rapidly develop new tech to mitigate that. Right, I mean, there's so many defense tech companies that have sprung up. They're trying to fill that void in capabilities.

Speaker 1: 29:30

Because, you know, everybody right now on earth has access to what's going on in Ukraine and all over the world where drones are being utilized as weapon systems, and it's scary. It's a scary new world we're living in where off the market drones can be utilized as a weapon. Um, but it's advancing so fast, and even here in the states, that we're developing new stuff and I I just when you think you've seen it all new things get released and get put out on on the internet and social media. So it's an advancing and scary world. The world, the, the afghan soft individual is no longer relevant as far as ttps and training and tactics. Um, just like our counterparts you know we they were doing things that you know to the general public in that time period just thought it was just not impossible. Like holy cow, they're able to get in the frontline, trace the enemies and drop bombs with laser guided guidance. Like, oh my goodness, like, yeah, that's nowadays. It's like that's just, we're just so used to this capability. Well, I know that.

Speaker 2: 30:40

I mean there are. So there's some stories of calling in those using the soft lamb, calling in these smart bomb, these JDAMs on the Taliban battlefield in Afghanistan, where the person on the ground is telling, and first of all, it's close air support, you know, with the B-52, which is a misnomer. And so the guy on the ground says anything in a truck is an enemy, or you see, anything with wheels you can bomb it. Anything with wheels you can bomb it, because you know the locals have it. It was just weird pure battle space where there were not really civilians out there on the plane. There was either taliban and trucks, uh, or armor, and then there were um, um, atah, mahkek and dostem and and um and others on horses or their own trucks. But and the pilot said, what he goes? Yeah, he goes, drop on anything with wheels, because we're on horseback.

Speaker 2: 31:52

And this was a shock to those guys. And and when they started to drop bombs, you know they would call in, they would try to figure out the distance and then sit and plot the coordinates and then radio them up to the aircraft and then they would plug them into the J dam and then it would drop and then they'd be off and then they'd redo it and the Taliban would come out of their bunker and they're like looking around, like where is this stuff? They thought it was coming over the ground. Yeah, they had no concept. Because, you're right, this is, that's only 23 years ago. Yeah, right, um, and that's why I mean, I don't know how many people I'm sure a lot of people in in the community already know why, why they're on horseback. But for those who don't, um, they were there because let's just take general uh Rashid Dostum as an example, you know, they're fighting for uh, years uh, with the Taliban, who have armor, even have a little air force, which people don't really know, and um, uh, they would take some ground, um, they might overwhelm it on their horses, um, because the armor and the mechanical stuff couldn't adjust.

Speaker 2: 33:10

This is this is why it gets really kind of interesting, and and special forces like the, the 20th century mechanical stuff, cannot adjust or adapt quickly enough for the charging human.

Speaker 2: 33:24

And so you see this thing where you know the john boyd who is the thinker about, um, the ooda loop, yeah, you know, or observation, orientation, decision and action, where the person, horseback gets inside their ooda loop and they can't adjust quickly enough so they would take the ground, capture the hill, but then, as you know, the armor would retreat and then turn around and then blow them back off the hill and that's why there was such a stalemate before 9-11.

Speaker 2: 33:54

And when the towers fell, I remember reading in some kind of brief or after action report that Mahakek, the Hazara tribal leader, said oh, thank God, the Americans now will come, because they'd all been in a stalemate. And and what the U S did, what the SF teams did with the air force tech peas and these soft lambs, is when they charged uh the ground and took it, then they called in a strike and blew up the armor so the armor could not reattack and then take the ground again. That's I mean, it just started to really collapse. Them, and as they drove north, uh to to Mazzei Sharif, and then they, they took Kabul.

Speaker 1: 34:39

There were a couple of movements going on and then they took Cobb, there were a couple of movements going on. Yeah, one thing that doesn't get enough coverage is that aspect of it, and we have to give credit where credit's due the attack piece, the air component Right. Without that piece, that's great. But we have to talk about the air power, we have to talk about the air force being able to conduct what they did, which, again, back then they didn't have a frame of reference, they hadn't done that before, no, and now they're able to do it right and the tech fees are assigned, um, to the teams.

Speaker 2: 35:33

So they're yep and they're the. I think that what they got two per team or one per team, um, and I talked to them too Um, uh, and they weren't, you know, initially welcomed by the team, because the team thought the team thought they were fully capable of calling an air, because you guys train for it, but the reality is, I mean, that's all they do, and I think that all the value is. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:00

Um, yeah, and I have to give shout out where uh to uh. Two of our own uh shout out to ryan and luke. Uh are are intimately our close friends here at security hall because ryan was our tack p on the last trip and that that's something we are very, very proud of, the capabilities we have internally within the team. We send guys to go get qualified and certified and being able to drop ordinance. We have our own because they do that all day, every day, rain or snow, shine, they do it and they're great at it. And controlling that chaos in the air is insane. I mean, the movies don't do it justice the book. You can't really live it until you've gone out to a range and seen what these individuals go through to achieve that certification. It is not an easy thing through to achieve that certification. It is not an easy thing. Did what when you had those conversations with those individuals? What was that?

Speaker 2: 37:08

like With the, with um, yeah, with the TACPs. Well, I was talking with one who had to drop in Mazar-e-Sharif, on a, um, a building that the Taliban had taken. They they wouldn't get out, they couldn't, they couldn't get them out of this building and they'd kind of they'd taken the town and, um, he set up across the street on top of another building and they're in a residential. There are a lot of people around and, um, although you know it's utter chaos, there are bodies in the street. The fighting was intense and um, he called the bomb and it came right through the roof of the building and just, and the, the enemy came flooding out those who were still around and they got it and he, well, um, you know, they never, you guys never really bragged.

Speaker 1: 38:05

So I think it's not a public you know it was.

Speaker 2: 38:15

It was intense because the other thing was, I want to remind you like some of the close air was like this close air was like this Okay, pilot, do you see that tree? Now, do you see the shadow of the tree? I am 500 meters to the east of the shadow of the tree and if you look at the contour map, you might see you know, I mean so I don't know what it's like today, but it was pretty primitive and, yeah, most of the people listening to the show what should we talk about? That would tell them about this special characteristics of SF that they may not, they might not know. I don't want to talk about things. I don't want to tell the guys who already know all of it, as if I, oh, please, yeah, go ahead, as if I know what I'm talking about. But I mean what I will say. What did impress me as well? What we got into.

Speaker 2: 39:26

It was just the training of trying to think in ambiguous situations, yep, which is really, in the end, it's impossible. You can't really I mean you can create scenarios in which the young captain, for instance, when I was, I went to Robin Sage and took part of it as an auxiliary. Actually, they gave me the job of journalist and and they had triage and I had to carry a litter and you know it was fascinating as watching the, the teachers and black t-shirts out in the bushes you know kind of guiding the scenario and I don't know if I told you this, but the G chief was a guy from Vietnamietnam, the sante raid kind of a legend, and everyone was really I wish I could remember his name. Someone listening will know I'm talking about and um, and uh boy, he was just like, not brutal but just strong. He's really into the role.

Speaker 2: 40:23

And these guys come in, as you know, they come in by pickup, not helicopter, and have to trudge into camp and try to build rapport with the guerrillas because they've been attached, as everyone in SF knows, to this G-Chief. Try to link up with him and see what he needs and help him. See what he needs and and and and help him. And um, I'd gone to the camping store cause I I'd done a lot of reading, I didn't know more than the captains, but I'd gone to the camping store and bought like a lantern and a heat blanket and a sleeping pad, gifts, yeah, and so when I showed up I presented them to the gorillas and they're like oh, come on in and I'm sitting around the campfire and I'm looking over at these poor, the SF candidates you know, who were going through Robin Sage and I mean they didn't have time to go to the camping store but I was kind of surprised that they didn't work harder to kind of schmooze the guy and um, uh, but that was lesson learned.

Speaker 2: 41:32

I mean that that's, that's why they do this. Yeah, that's a Rook move.

Speaker 1: 41:35

Uh, rule number one if you're listening and you're about to go to Robin Sage, uh, smuggle in a small bottle of bourbon, that will, that will instantly build rapport.

Speaker 2: 41:46

Or anything, anything. I mean, you know there's nothing to eat, and um, and so, anyway, in the middle of this, the g chief, he, he, what does he do? He points to the captain and he says, uh, show me the intel in your pocket. And of course he can't, right, he can't close this to uh, this person. And but then the g chief says, well, if you don't, then I'm gonna beat one of my men. And he raises his stick like he's going to club this guy.

Speaker 2: 42:27

And the cadre was from the 101st, I think, or something. So they had the unlucky job of being there for the week playing gorillas. I don't know if they liked it or not, it seemed kind of miserable after a while. So what does the captain do? And this is for those of you who don't know this kind of warfare and war fighting you know this is a, this is a key moment. Like uh, if he discloses this intelligence, he's um, broken all kinds of laws and protocols. If he allows the gorilla, uh chief to beat his guy, then he really he has to remove himself from situations. Human rights violation. Yeah right, there's no right answer here, you know. I mean, well, there is. He's got to somehow figure out, uses wits to talk, that's right.

Speaker 2: 43:23

And on the guy, the young captain, froze. He, like he, he just didn't know what to do and you know, um, but he'd never been in this situation. This is early, you know. I think he was, yeah, he'd done all of his jump training and etc. But, um, so that it was very interesting that and this is what the public needs to know the instructors came out of the bushes and they huddled and they said okay, captain Smith, here you are. This is a problem. If you do this, this is what happens. You do that. But the thing you need to realize, captain Smith, is this moment just didn't happen now. It actually had been percolating for a couple of days. If you'd been aware of the guerrilla chief, maybe you'd seen that he saw when your uh intel guy had given you this intel.

Speaker 1: 44:12

Yeah, like you, just awareness, awareness, awareness, um, yeah, and that is a really you know, you don't get that in boot camp you don't, and that's that's the beauty of being in that that world, being in in that training and understanding how to operate in those ill-defined problem areas. You live in the gray, you live constantly knowing that you're going to have to develop the gift of gab, be able to talk your way through something fast, and that that's a beauty of that's a beauty of the, the environment you're in, because if you sent anybody else, if you sent anybody else into that environment, into afghanistan, as that first response, we would have had a very different outcome.

Speaker 2: 45:00

Yeah, I mean the, the, uh, the conventional guy who knows they might've pulled their weapons out, they might've had a standoff. Yeah, he said, go ahead, beat him, I don't care, shoot him. You know what I mean All kinds of yeah. And then the morale starts to break down. The team, right. I mean it's all these after effects and yeah.

Speaker 2: 45:24

So how you train someone to think that way. These are lessons, however, in life, which is why I thought was interesting about writing the book. Or soldiers is that? Um, you know, when I, when I was reading if those, if you haven't gone to Wikipedia and typed in John Boyd, there's an interesting thing. Um, he was an air force thinker, right, and pilot, and the short anecdote is is that at some point he's flying and he gets into a mock battle with a Russian MiG, and I'm not sure how or what airspace this was, but just for the purposes of this illustration, it happens and he's, however, being beat they're not really going to shoot each other, but you know, I think they're harassing each other and he's, however, being beat. They're not really going to shoot each other, but, you know, I think they're harassing each other and the MiG is superior to his aircraft. But he realizes that his instructor at one point said never on this aircraft, like push this pedal and pull this stick, because if you do, this aircraft will fall out of the sky. But that's what he does. So he's going along, and so he does that. So he does. So he's going along, he's being, and so he does that. So he, he drops and now the MIG zooms past. Now he comes back up in his superior position.

Speaker 2: 46:34

So the point of it is is that, as in the, the thing I think one of the core fundamentals of SF is that he who changes fastest or adapts most quickly can overwhelm a superior force, especially even a mechanical force, a la the horses charging the armor line. And just for civilians such as myself learning that and thinking about it. And then, of course, post-war, you see a lot of people come out of the army and they start to talk about these ideas in the business community. You know how do you get ahead, quote and stay ahead, um, but I just thought that was such an interesting. You know changing your state, yeah and just and just. And that was the other thing that was interesting about meeting he talked about. How did I meet these guys is often they didn't look like. I mean Mark Mitchell, who ends up winning the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions in the college angie. He's from Wisconsin. We became good friends. We still keep in touch. You know Mark might have passed for a high school biology teacher Strong worked out a lot, did a lot of pt, but not, um, not a chess beater, you know a thumper and um, but, but, but, a thinker and that, and that's, that's what was.

Speaker 2: 47:59

I mean I, I even went to I think it was at robin sage. I spent three hours in some lecture no, no, this was at swick and um, uh, listening to the three hours, listening to these special forces soldiers debate what uh defined link up. I mean it was just, it was like, yeah, we would do that. Yep, you know, like talking about bridge, or like you know, yeah, but you know what is a link up? Does it? Are you just linking up or are you? Well, I mean, you can tell me more than that, but I mean this. These were the things that were really fascinating. That kind of kept me going and writing the book.

Speaker 1: 48:46

And then, right now, the new additions of horse soldiers have an additional new chapter. Yeah, revisiting this 20 years later, what was that like it was?

Speaker 2: 49:00

depressing, you know. I mean I just I mean it was depressing in a in a contact kind of way. It was depressing because when I talked to Mark Mitchell, who actually went on to work at the NSC, went into government service, he was just depressed, he was just depressed. My friend um, who was the chief political advisor to NATO, who actually lives in my hometown, um, he said to me wow, what was my career about, you know? Cause he'd made, uh, 10 or 20 trips to Afghanistan back and forth from Brunson and the Netherlands, working with all the um principles in the country. And so I, uh, I, you know it has this little thing, it says new.

Speaker 2: 49:57

Afterward, on the 20th anniversary of 9-11, I called up you know, maybe 22 people and I tried really to reach out to women in afghanistan, or a lot of them working in l, working in London or England, because they couldn't safely work in Kabul anymore, you know. And and I caught some of the interpreters who had moved to Houston and Dallas, who'd been on some of the teams they had gotten out and asked them and the thing that kept coming up was no matter. My question was what did we gain and what had it cost and what did we lose? And the biggest thing that everyone said was education that, no matter what else had happened during those 20 years, selfishly or not, the Afghans who were there for that 20 years, those women, especially young girls, and the men, had gotten a leg up in the world. Yeah, and in some ways the the culture had been changed. It's hard to put the genie back in the bottle, but they had learned so much and made some strides on the internet and realizing the world was larger, that that can't be erased, even though the Taliban, you know, is obviously doing just that. You know Rapidly, right, rapidly, and you know talking with.

Speaker 2: 51:21

If people read the chapter Andy Marshall, chapter Andy Marshall so Andy was attached to one of Dostum's elements and they had gone way out to the East, they started down in the Darius Sioux Valley and they spread out like this, make a big horseshoe and they just keep moving up the Valley and they're moving to Mazar-e-Sharif and they keep spotting the Taliban, they keep calling in air, they keep blowing them up, they just keep moving. And he's way out there with, I think, two guys or maybe one other guy from the team. They've split into elements, as you know they do, and so he really had some rough work. But Andy was a very cool guy. He was so capable and I just never thought I'd hear him say this. But when I called him up I said what's going on? 20 years later I said what, what, what, uh, what advice do you have for people in af? Uh, he goes. If I says okay, uh, he goes. Um, if you had asked me 20 years ago what you know, he goes. My son ended up in Iraq. So now I had skin in the game in a different way. And, um, if you thought that your own son was going to get blown up, et cetera, et cetera, and this is what was going to happen, would you think it was worth it? I mean, he was a true Special Forces warrior in that he and Paul Evans, who is the engineer on the team, paul and andy worked a lot together. They had a whole thing in a certain place where they were, where they actually started to go into what is it? Phase three of the uw doctrine, where they start to build an economy, the civil society. Yeah, they had some, they had something moving way beyond combat and so on, and so they were very committed. So he just felt they were never given a chance to do that.

Speaker 2: 53:33

And then, of course, as General Lambert says in the chapter, the guy who gave me the original kind of invitation. He said they just turned it into the big army. He said we're going to turn this into America. Are you kidding me? I'm paraphrasing him. I know I'm kind of ranging far afield here, but maybe you can help me explain what I'm trying to say to people. Which is, on the one hand, we wanted the Afghans, we needed them to be our ally. One hand, we wanted the Afghans, we needed them to be our ally, we needed them to make the area unsafe for the terrorist activity, right, but on the other hand, we didn't really want it to be America. When you were deployed there, you weren't thinking, oh, I'm going to turn this into Ohio right?

Speaker 1: 54:23

No, not at all. And then that's exactly it. That's, that's the whole shebang. I'm so glad you brought us here, because that's where a lot of us feel it went wrong. Diplomacy and statesmanship really took a left field left turn, went way off course. Yeah, with people wanting to implement american-like structures and american-like uh institutions into a nation that will never, ever be like america, you know yeah.

Speaker 2: 55:01

So I mean, I say these things because all the blood and treasure that was spent both in american and then international partners. And then don't forget the afghans who, yeah, who sacrificed mightily, uh, and still believe in it. Um, they, at the 9 11 memorial park in new york city, where the towers were, there's a statue now called the america's freedom memorial monument, something, yeah, but the nickname for it is the horse soldier. Um, I went, there were a couple dedications, but, uh, how much the world had changed is that when I was writing the book, I used pseudonyms. So andy marshall is actually sam diller in the book, but at the time they all wanted to be more private.

Speaker 1: 55:55

Yeah but it's understandable.

Speaker 2: 55:58

I mean, they were still yeah yeah, and I and I and I did that, but then I think it was in 2010 all of us walked, walked down Fifth Avenue in New York City, behind the statue, in broad daylight, you know, as it was being dedicated. It was later moved again to the 9-11 part, but at one point, general Dostum's son he was going to a university in America he showed up at one of the dedications, oh wow, and he was there talking with our daughter who speaks Turkish. And so you know, these two young people under 30, one a Muslim, one not a Muslim talking, and I just thought I actually said this to one of the guys I wrote about. They said I was full of baloney, but, you know, I said, well, maybe that's the future, like if you can get to that point where these younger people who don't have these religious prejudices and these and that's actually what I heard from talking to some, it's funny even the interps, you know, who are in their 30s and 40s, so younger people. And I maybe talked to him three years ago.

Speaker 2: 57:12

Um, so he said, let the young people take over. You know, get rid of these old guys. And, um, it was a theme that kept coming up. Um, so I certainly wouldn't. I don't want to leave this by saying, um, that the afghan, the afghans are hopeful. They're fighting, as you know. I don't know if you've been involved, because you probably have in just some relocations. You, you, probably some of your guys that you worked with, have come to the states, right, I mean have been. I know where I live, in Michigan. We've welcomed four families.

Speaker 1: 57:50

Yeah, we've been fortunate to have a lot of guys that. But there's still the Facebook messages from individuals are still there, I know that are still trying to get out and that that's a. You know that that is a moral injury that a lot of us are dealing with. Right, you know how do we navigate that, like, how do you reconcile what our nation wasn't willing to do, which was to take care of of the guys that took care of us, right, the guys that um were willing to go toe-to-toe with the enemy next, you know, and rack and file with us. That is a very, very hard pill to swallow, but there is hope. There are organizations that to this day are still plugged in to networks in-country trying desperately to get people out of there.

Speaker 2: 58:43

Yeah, and I mean Khan, who in his family and, uh, we, uh, he came to town, um, he got a job. I mean he, he, he worked, he worked with, he was attached to a lot of jsoc teams. I mean they even sent him to ranger school back in the us. I mean, and he's, he, he is, is just a one person you know, and he's happy to be here and he works his ass. I mean the young daughter, taqua.

Speaker 2: 59:17

So when Horse Holders came out, I started this thing called the National Writer Series and we started these writing programs for kids who maybe couldn't otherwise have it, such as I was growing up in Traverse City, michigan, and Takwa actually is learning English and she won a scholarship writing an essay about leaving Kabul, leaving Afghanistan in August when it fell. So that's really heartening, really heartening. The other odd coincidence about writing this book is that Shannon Spann has she was Mike Spann's widow and Mike was the person the intelligence officer killed in Kuala Lumpur. I've gotten to know her a bit. She's been working very hard to try to get families that actually worked with the CIA team, the pilot team though Not the pilot team but the lead team that went in ahead of time the chapter and her, her, her big thing, you know you asked about what about today was how um divided we've become, that her husband, her deceased husband, mike um, having gone over, having been part of a combat operation, a mission in which was trying to remove one element from the society and join people back together, because I mean civilians listening don't know that the tribes over there were fighting each other until you guys showed up and tried to get everyone pointed in one direction. And Shannon, if you get a chance to read the chapter, shannon's reflections on what it all means are really interesting.

Speaker 2: 1:01:08

How do you feel? I mean you said moral injury. Do you know the Jonathan Shea book Odysseus in America? No, no, I think Jonathan Shea lives in Boston. He's the first. He was the psychiatrist or psychologist who came up. Well, I don't know if he came up with the idea of moral injury. Who came up? Well, I don't know if he came up with the idea of moral injury, but those of everyone listening, if you haven't seen Odysseus in America and Achilles in Vietnam, he took a lot of Vietnam vets and and in the Odysseus in America book he takes the story of Odysseus the warrior who has gone a long time and he's kept trying to get home and he tries to reintegrate. He comes home, he goes into the dining hall his wife doesn't recognize him and he takes, he breaks down the myth and uses it to talk about the modern re-entry of the soldier into society it's funny because, without even reading that book, so many of us have used that same story to explain how we feel yeah, well, if you are.

Speaker 2: 1:02:19

Um, yeah, exactly, well, if you, I'll have to jot that if you're talking to anybody professionally, they, they may have gone to a conference that Shay does. I mean, it is a, it is a thing, and it's really interesting because if you don't have a story to live by, if you don't have a way to make sense, this is what I found in writing my Vietnam book Um, if you can't tell your story, then you don't really have your voice. Yeah, yes, you don't. You haven't made sense of the quote. Nonsense that's happened, not not the ridiculousness, but literally stuff that doesn't make sense, the nonsense and um, I think that book very helpful.

Speaker 1: 1:03:00

A lot of people so you just brought it full circle right now, doug, because because the whole purpose of today was to if the audience right now, if you're listening, if you're a member of the SOF community or you're a part of the Afghan project, as I like to say, if you're a part of the past 20 years, there's a story, there is something within you that you want to share that you maybe think that no, no, I'm a quiet professional, I shouldn't share this, but if you don't share your story, we're going to forget and history is going to continue moving. Time is going to continue moving. We need to start cataloging and start being able to bring out these stories and sharing them. Yeah, horse soldier can't just be the last story of our time in afghanistan. It should be the first of many. There are so many pivotal moments of our time there and I know what you're thinking. Well, my story is not that important. Take that critic and make him shut up.

Speaker 1: 1:04:12

There is something that you, all of you, should be sharing, and that's your time in that war zone, your time in that country, and maybe it's not a great American history lesson, but maybe it's a great part of a larger story. Connect with your friends, connect with your brothers and sisters. I've started taking part of an anthology, a book that's going to be published here soon, and it's not because I'm some great, wonderful writer. No, it's because there's something powerful that I want to share with the world, and within each and every one of you listening, there is a story that's waiting to be told. Don't just die holding onto it. Share it with the world, because I know that there's something great within you that could connect within somebody else and allow them to share their story.

Speaker 1: 1:05:06

And there's been so many great moments in that war that don't even have to include actual combat. Just a story of friends, just a story of a connection made downrange. That, in and of itself, is a story that I'd love to read about, and so many of us would as well. So please take the time to explore your time and service. Take the time to explore your time in service. Take the time to explore all the things you went through and write it down and share it.

Speaker 2: 1:05:32

Exactly. Or have someone talk to you, yeah, or start a group. Talking is really important, yeah, the best way for people to start to say, well, just tell me what happened. It's like I, that's that was my question. You asked why did they talk to me? I think it's just that's what I asked. I didn't say tell me who you killed. Tell me, yeah, tell me the blood. You know what I mean. Tell me what happened. How did it, how did it make you feel and how did it change you? And how did it? How did it make you feel and how did it change you and how did you do your job?

Speaker 2: 1:06:10

Yeah, importantly, but anyway, that, um jonathan shea, um, I will say this as we, as we wrap up in my experience of interviewing people for, in harm's way, which is about world war ii vets, what seems to happen with the american male is they get to be about 70 and they open up. Right now we're in that period with the vietnam veteran, yep. But don't wait, I don't think we can wait that long for the afghan vet. We can't wait. We can't another 40 years, 30 years. Because why? Because we have two generations of americans who've been militarized and run through these rapid and repetitive deployments and in some ways ground down and really worn out, and we, they can't hold all that inside for 30 years. No, you know, it's a different experience. I mean 20 years.

Speaker 1: 1:07:11

Yeah, it's time, it's our turn.

Speaker 1: 1:07:14

That's a long time to be at war. Yeah, and that's one thing that you can definitely say about the writing experience it's cathartic. Get it out and then you share it, and then you're not carrying that burden on your back, you're allowing others to help you carry that right. So, take a knee, write down your story, get it out there, because we need it, you need to save our history and collectively we can all take on this challenge. So, doug, thank you so much for being here today. Um, your book, horse soldier, but also, in harm's way, the sinking of the uss, indianapolis and the story of its uh, uh survivors. And then, um, your other book on vietnam, the odyssey of the odyssey of echo company. Yes, there it is that's very much.

Speaker 2: 1:08:00

You know, that book is very much in tune with what you just said.

Speaker 1: 1:08:03

No, so um yeah, and all those books will be in the episode description. So either pause or, after you're done listening to it, go to the episode description, click the links and go straight to the books. Uh, again, doug, thank you for what you did for us in the regiment. Thank you for getting our story, uh, horse soldier, out there and I can't wait to read all your other books. Uh, you got anything else that's waiting to to get published?

Speaker 2: 1:08:29

no, covid kind of slowed me down. I'm, I'm behind. I'm trying to figure out what to do with all this stuff well, sir, get to work, because I love to read.

Speaker 2: 1:08:40

All right, keep in touch, if anything I can do as you guys try to tell your stories. The thing I'll leave you with is because I get it. I do teaching when it comes to writing. So it says I don't know what to write. You say to them okay, do this. Then if I don't know what to write, but if I did know what to write, I would write that. And then you just keep going there. You go All up here. Mostly, inability to write is a mental problem.

Speaker 1: 1:09:11

Heck yeah, thank you, doug.

Speaker 2: 1:09:13

Okay, see you, man.

Speaker 1: 1:09:14

We'll see you guys till next time. Take care, if you like what we're doing and you enjoying the show, don't forget to share us. Like us, subscribe and head on over to our patreon, where you can be part of our community and get access to all of our episodes as soon as they drop. And remember we get through this together, take care.