From Bosnia to Iraq: Green Beret Mark Giaconia’s Unconventional War

  Former Green Beret Mark Giaconia discusses his experiences in Bosnia and Iraq, emphasizing unconventional warfare, cultural intelligence, and the importance of documenting military history. This episode highlights how rapport building, local engagement, and historical understanding shaped Special Operations missions—and why these stories must be preserved.

Key Topics Covered:
• Green Beret operations in Bosnia
• Cultural integration in Special Forces missions
• Transition to Iraq and the War on Terror
• Unconventional warfare principles
• Preserving veteran stories and legacy

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to a Green Beret’s Journey
 02:57 Green Berets and Pre-9/11 Conflicts
 06:00 Bosnia Operations and Cultural Immersion
 09:02 Rapport Building in Special Forces Missions
 12:09 Realities of Balkan Warfare
 14:59 Working with Local Populations
 18:05 Kosovo, Russia, and Regional Dynamics
 20:59 Transition from Bosnia to Iraq
 24:05 Unconventional Warfare in Iraq
 32:35 Mission Planning and Execution
 36:06 Initial Infiltration Operations
 43:05 Terrain Challenges in Northern Iraq
 46:03 Why Military History Matters
 52:02 Brotherhood and Service Reflections
 57:56 Life After Military Service

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Transcript

Busting Green Beret Stereotypes

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Most people don't even know Greenberg too. What we did in Bosnia in the mid and late nineties, like working with the Russians in Kosovo, like basically joint patrols with the Russians BDB. When I told people stuff like this, they were like, What? I thought soldiers went overseas and sat in bunkers in the rain with a helmet on and waited to die. It's like, no, actually, you know, Green Berets live in rental houses.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

People have this misunderstanding of what it means to be a Green Beret. The G Want certainly shifted the focus to direct action, kicking doors in. But when we look at our Green Berets of today, the young men that are in that seat in that team room, a lot of them have this idea like they missed out. When in reality, it's like, no, no, you're about to witness the rebirth of the great Green Beret mindset.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

I gotta be honest, like initially none of us really liked the mission in Bosnia. We were like, this is too soft.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Mark Giaconia, welcome to Security Hub Podcast, brother. How are you? I'm great, man. Thanks for having me. Dude, absolutely, man. You your career, everything you've done, I mean, it spans into our GWAP, but you you're also one of our Green Berets that knows intimately what it was like to be part of things like, you know, Kosovo, which now by and large has been forgotten. People are just now starting to understand Sarajevo, the the Bosnia conflict, the things that happened, how brutal humanity can be. And uh who better to tell those stories than Green Berets that were there, that witnessed it firsthand, man. We cannot let history fade into the background. And you're also part of something that's pretty fucking rad. Nothing's greater than tapping into our lived historians that experience these big named operations. Uh Operation Viking Hammer. Like that is that is history, man. Uh that's that's now part of our generation of of Green Beret history we get to pass down, but only if people read the books.

Introducing Mark Giaconia And Mission Context

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Yeah. Yeah, man. That's one of the reasons I wrote my book, is like there's all these little micro histories, you know, out there that are almost like teen level lore.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

You know, like I think every SF guy should write a book. Don't worry about if you if you suck at writing. Just just do it, man. Absolutely. AI can help you edit it at this point. Yes, man. But get get the stories out, man. That was one of the reasons I did mine, is I had a weird career through a bunch of stuff that most people don't even know Green Berets do, you know, like what we did in Bosnia uh in the mid and late 90s, like and working with the Russians in Kosovo, like basically joint patrols with the Russian VDV. You know, just weird. When I told people stuff like this, they were like, what? Like I thought, I thought soldiers went overseas and sat in bunkers in the rain with a helmet on and waited to die. Like and it's like, no, actually, you know, green berets live in rental houses and drive around drinking, you know, schlieve bits with Bosnians. You know what I mean? And like and report that intelligence direct to like NATO. You know, and these and these little things were were amazing, man, especially in the times. Um, you know, back then in the 90s with the the Balkans, the fall of Yugoslavia and all that. Like those were serious, serious events, man.

SPEAKER_02 4:02

Dude, and and that was real Green Beret work. Uh, people have this misunderstanding of what it means to be a Green Beret. The the GWAT certainly shifted the focus to direct action, kicking doors in. But when we look at our Green Berets of today, the young men that are in that seat in that team room, a lot of them have this idea like they missed out. When in reality, it's like, no, no, you're you're you're about to witness the rebirth of the great Green Beret mindset, the guy that can have those discussions that pull that intelligence out of that asset to be in, and then go train somebody to go across the border to do operations. And if then if need be, you're right there with them. And uh it it's so it's a great reminder that sometimes history repeats itself. The things that you were just talking about, doing those partnered ops with Russians, like that couldn't be more. I mean, like, it's a little different because right now Russia's uh the opposition. But we got Green Berets on the ground working with Ukrainian forces. That's the that's the reality of sometimes history comes back, and and what better place to kick it off than uh what was it like being that Green Beret in a in place like Bosnia, man?

Why Write The Micro Histories

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Um I gotta be honest, like initially none of us really liked the mission in Bosnia. We were like, this is too like this is too soft, you know? Yeah. Um but in my in hindsight, and after uh, you know, after Bosnia going to Kosovo and Kyrgyzstan and then Iraq, the big Iraq invasion, those were some of the best missions we did was in Bosnia. It was actually really interesting, man. And it was like massive human connection.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Yeah.

Bosnia JCO Mission Explained

SPEAKER_01 5:51

But the the day in the life there was like I went there twice, my team. Um first was in '97 to '98, like we spent the winter there in this town called Bihotch. Yes, it sounds like Bihotch, uh, but it's Bihotch, which is in uh western Bosnia. And then the second time I went was in 1999, which was a lot different over in the northeast kind of corner of Bosnia in Birchko. Um uh in the the first one, like basically a day in the life in this mission, the mission was called Joint Commissioned Observers. Um, so Green Berets, and actually the first time I went, we split teamed with a Navy SEAL team. So we should which was which was super weird because the mission was very not SEAL-like at all. So that was that was weird. This was my first mission too, out of out of the Q course. Like I graduated language school. Uh back then you just went to the Q and then language school and then you're done. There was no sear. Uh and you got your Green Beret. And I got my Green Beret before language school. So that's how it worked. And I I graduated in when did I graduate? '97. So like anyway, we went straight from um Q to 10th group in Colorado and shipped out to Bosnian like two months later. I don't remember. And it was like a roughly five or six month tour over there. But yeah, so Day in the Life was like, you know, here I am, former infantry, you know, 11 Bravo, Ranger Tab kind of guy. Uh, and I'm like, we're gonna go live in a house and talk to people? That's our mission. Like, what about jumping out of planes and like, you know, doing UW stuff? And like, anyway, that wasn't what it was, but basically we landed in I think we landed in Sarajevo, and then we just drove these rental cars out to our house. It was almost like you just rented an Airbnb and flew in somewhere, basically. And we roll out to our house, you know, this this house was rented. We rented it from like a German couple or something, I don't remember, but uh, we lived in the in a house just on a street in Bihat, Bosnia. You know, we we buy like bread and food locally. They make great pizza over there, by the way. And uh everything was totally local. We got no support, there were no no bases anywhere near us at all. Um the Canadian base was closest. Um, because Bosnia was like a patchwork of NATO countries or something. Um Yeah, so anyway, man, then then a day in the life was like the team broke up into like two man teams, each one assigned an interpreter, and then um we had sectors set up across, and this was huge geography here. Like we went from you know, I can still vividly remember like the map. We went from like Bert uh Bih all the way out to the Republic of Srpska, which is like that's how it was partitioned back then. It was a lot of I could talk for days on the Balkans, man, but like basically we would go out every day, drive, and meet different people. So we met with like mayors, chiefs of police, um farmers, you name it, man, random people, and just talk, talk to people. The the whole the whole point of the mission was to do relay like the pulse of the people at this super hyper local level across the whole country. So you have this all these 10th group teams, I think third group came in after us. Um, and that was it, man. We were like insanely embedded situational awareness, essentially.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

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SPEAKER_01 10:17

Exactly, man. Every day we drive out, and some of these some of these drives were like three, four hour drives, man. Like just with two of us. Oh, and one other kind of interesting thing is we were like um given the power of like NATO command as individuals. So we wore our uniform, but with no rank, no insignias. Uh, and we uh and and we would draw and all we carried was a concealed pistols. Uh and in certain places we would carry a like a broken down long gun in like a backpack. Yeah. Um but usually not really needed. People were super cool over there, all of them. Um but anyway, that's how we were. So I we would go into like the bases and and share like intelligence with the um with the Canadians and the and the second time I went with American base, and we had no rank. And we went in there as if we were like, these are the guys who are out there that work for the whole command, and they you basically you might as well consider them some nebulous rank, which was kind of weird. You know, I was like an E5 on the first tour, man. I would have abused the fuck out of that. Just mean on it got abused a little bit for sure.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

But I don't know, sir. Should you do that? Maybe.

Living Local And Reporting To NATO

SPEAKER_01 11:52

It sounds kind of boring, you know, like, oh my god, they drove around and talked to people, but you have to remember the the situation there was the Yugoslavia just like collapsed. The Bosnian wars were big like hell on earth inside of Bosnia. Like so many factions just fighting against each other along with criminal elements mixed in there. And like meeting with all these people, hearing like their stories and all that stuff. Uh and some of them, like a lot of Serb people over there didn't really want to talk to us. So there was like the you know, the the Robin Sage situation. Uh it was almost like a flavor of that when you go meet certain Serbian um groups. Because they we we bombed them, you know, in in Bosnia. We kind of picked a side and said the Serbs are bad, and you know, we hammered them. Um so when we met up with some of them, there were times where it was pretty tense, you know, and those those Green Beret rapport building skills were very much practiced every every day. So we dude uh also we got drunk roughly every day.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

It's part of the culture, man.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

And uh that was a we had an exception to drinking policy across the board because you can't go to Bosnia and not drink what's called Schliewitz, which is kind of like a a brandy, I guess, or like a I'd probably maybe I'm not much of a drinker, but rakia is like the traditional drink. It's like a plum-based alcohol. The stuff is brutally strong. It's like moonshine, basically. Uh if you don't drink that, man, it's very insulting to most of the people there. So the way it looked usually, we would head out in the morning, meet someone like mid to late morning, get tipsy with that guy, then go to lunch, then meet with somebody else and get roughly drunk again. And then we would have dinner out or something while we sobered up and then drove back to the house. That was kind of a that was a day in the life of a JCO in a lot of cases. Dude, I was I could drink like Serbs under the table by the time I left Bosnia. I think I was an alcoholic. I'm not like not exaggerating. There's a there's a few people that I don't stay in touch with many people actually, but there are a few who we reminisce about those that mission because of that, man.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

I want to see the end of tour awards for that deployment.

unknown 14:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:30

Get an art conference just being blasted.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Oh yeah, man, it was it was insane. Um, but it was a really cool in hindsight at the time. We were like, man, we're supposed to be, you know, badass gunslinging warriors. Like, what are we doing with this? And some of the old timers were like, no, guys, this is like this is like a piece of UW. Yeah. We're basically practicing UW skills here, at least one of the set of skills. And uh Intel collection is basically what it was all about through rapport and networks. We even had like parties at our house where we would invite people to all of our like contacts in and get hammered. Don't go upstairs. That room's off limits. Exactly. We had yeah, we had an ops room set up upstairs with like all our radios. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

I'm laughing because allegedly that may have happened in Peru. Oh yeah, we had uh man.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

I'm tapping into my own lived experience here. Oh, yeah, man. I almost anywhere you go, I think, Green Berets, man. Like oh man. Um stuff like that has to happen. Like to build rapport, you have to truly uh, you know, integrate and open up to people. Um you you can't just speak 556 and be a decent Green Beret, you know.

Culture, Drinking, And Rapport

SPEAKER_02 15:56

Yeah, absolutely, man. That's the thing that people don't realize about the the mission set culturally, the situation demanded that you drink. That was part of the culture. Totally. I mean, yeah, I don't think people understand it. The movies don't really do it a good service. If you if you've traveled across Europe, if you've been abroad, you know. I mean, South America to a point, but not really. It's it's um they love drinking beer, but it's not to the point where like you can't just walk away. I think in Europe, it's more of a uh if you don't drink this, you're not part of this. You we're not gonna respect you or bring you into the fold. So that's right, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Yeah, and we used to uh so uh chip for like reciprocity, man. We used to go to the uh on the border of Bosnia, there's Croatia on the left side, and like there were these duty free shops on the border. So we would go buy like Jack Daniels and Jim Beam and stuff and bring and bring those with us. We're like, you guys are always giving us Rakia, we're gonna give you some American whiskey, you know. And like I would give people bottles and we'd get hammered on that too. So yeah, it was it was awesome, man. When I left there, dude, it was like leaving like legit friends behind. Like so the because we were there for like seven, six months or five or six months each time, and we met with these different people over and over through the whole time. And you become like legit um, you know, friends with with these people. Um and I was a I was a German speaker too, coming out of language school. And a lot of people there actually spoke German about as well as I did. So you can so you can get by with uh I did pretty well in language school. I don't know why. I kind of had an affinity for language, but I was able to com you know converse a little bit at least. Um they had broken German, I had broken German, and it kind of worked out pretty well um over there. Yeah. Um so man, the the second time though is really interesting because we were bombing Kosovo. So we were in Bosnia in '99. Same deal, living in a different house, um, but mostly in a Serbian ethnic area in the Republic of Srpska. Bosnia is like two things. It's like this federation entity, and then it's the Republic of Srpska. And uh Birchko is in this little spot in the middle where it kind of breaks the Republic of Srbska in half. I think it's like an autonomous region or something now. I don't I don't remember, but whatever. Um but that time we were bombing the piss out of Serbia, which didn't help us build rapport with Serbs.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Oh shit.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

And like so that was rough. That's an under that's the understatement of the year right now, and we're we're still in January. That is insane. That's that's a difficult mission.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

It was tricky, and actually we I think we overthought it more than it was actually a major problem. Because when we we were kind of locked in our house almost like a bunker, because and literally sandbagged windows, and like we put up chicken wire for grenades and stuff not to be able to come through the windows. And there's there was no barrier around the house. And Serbs were having these huge protests like with thousands of people, and we were worried about getting basically overrun by you know a massive amount of people. So we were on like defensive uh you know posture in this house. We used to do like battle drills in the house to like assume these positions. I was as a weapons guy, I was like designing out how we're gonna defend the house, you know, and we had a Hum V hidden in the garage as like an escape vehicle.

Tense Encounters With Serb Communities

SPEAKER_02 19:59

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SPEAKER_01 20:52

ENR routes to be able to get out of the house and over into Croatia, which is right on Birch Cove's right on the border, Croatia. Um, but anyway, it ended up like we were we were penned, you know, kind of penned ourselves into our house until our commander was like, you guys need to get the hell out of the house. You can do your friggin' job.

SPEAKER_00 21:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

Uh and actually it was a good call that he did that. And we did, man. We started going out. And, you know, lo and behold, the Serbs were actually super cool all the time. With any any Serb I met was super cool to me. They were like, Yeah, we know it's not you guys. It's all but politics bullshit. Um, so any and on that tour over there, I ended up having probably more rapport with anyone than we had even on the first one. I actually played in a Serb band in a bar one time. Uh like I'm a guitar player. So we're we're in there jamming on a guitar. There was a couple dudes who were kind of sore about what we were doing to Serbia. You know, and like I definitely kind of learned the um the perspective of the Serbs uh in the whole conflict. Um, and honestly became a little bit of a sympathizer to like their their whole thing. The normal Serbian people. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

It's hard not to. You're right there. You're seeing it from the ground truth. The yeah, the the problem is is the optics. What's what's reported, what we see. And and I know it's not you know, you understand this more than most people. You're an 18 Fox. Things are rarely what you see on TV or as black as what it's portrayed, man. The reality is is these conflicts and international relationships are very, very difficult things to report on and get it accurately accurate and correct every single time, man. Except if you're on the ground. If you're on the ground, you absolutely understand what's going on and you can talk to people. I mean, that that's every conflict we've been in. Like it there's moments in time I reflect back, thinking to myself, what the fuck are we doing in Afghanistan?

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

Just a few years before that, what the fuck am I doing in Iraq?

Kosovo Bombing And House Defense

Russians, RPG Attacks, And Vodka Chaser

SPEAKER_01 23:13

Yeah. It's uh the the Balkans, man, are uh are a hot topic. Like you go over there, you will you will get totally different perspectives from each ethnic group against the other ethnic group. Like and uh man, I learned that I learned so much about that whole place by just talking to people, you know. I I read a lot about it too, since, but man, it was it was uh it was a hell of an experience. I one of one of the guys I knew the best that I used to go to his house and like eat dinner with his family was this guy who was a sergeant in the Republic of Srpska Army. And like the first time we met that guy, they outwardly did not want to talk to us. They were like, we have nothing to say to you guys. And uh that one took a little while to to get to get going. I think I I think I ended up telling them that the conventional troops are going to do an inspection on them, so they better get their shit together, and that helped bring rapport. He was like, hey, this guy's on our side. But you know how that goes, man. You gotta sometimes you gotta work the system, but ended up having awesome rapport with that guy, and he was telling us all kinds of stories about the war, and the Serbs were not the only people to do atrocities in the Bosnian wars. And like, um yeah, it was awesome, dude. And during that tour, um, when we started, you know, we we were bombing Serbia and the Russians spun up inside Bosnia because they were in we actually had like a Russian liaison team in Bosnia, too. Uh not my team, it was a different ODA on another on another house. And one of the houses got rocketed by RPGs, the house in Savornik, Bosnia. They had like six RPGs ripped through their house. Somehow nobody got wounded. Um, but anyway, the the Russians spun up and like had these massive convoys headed into Serbia. And we thought it was going to be like World War III again, man. And like, or World War, you know, World War II started in the Balkans, basically. And like, here we go again. Um, so we got we got redirected to do this mission that was called Operation Vodka Chaser. And our uh our c I think our commander came up with that term. He was freaking hilarious. Uh I forget his name, man. He became like a general. Um but anyway, uh, yeah, so we ended up our shifting focus to reconning the Russians as they go across the border and kind of you think of basic like salute reporting on the Russians. And of course that turned into something, you know how it is, man. Like on the ground, things are totally wacko compared to what you would think they are. But so we ended up driving to these points where the Russians were crossing from Bosnia into Kosovo or into Serbia, and um uh we ended up just kind of running into the back of the convoy in our car. There's mines everywhere on the sides of the road in Bosnia, so you can't like this whole idea that you're gonna recon, like, forget all that. You know, we're basically driving an SUV up to the back of the Russian convoy and sitting there, you know, in full sight of the Russians. Um but then on one of these places where we did that, it was on this bridge that goes from Balina into Serbia. Um, if you looked at a map, it's on the east end of Bosnia. Um this Russian guy comes over and asks us if we have any cigarettes, you know, because we got like they've been sitting there for like days, so they were running out of cigarettes. And my captain was uh basically native, not native, but a fluent Russian speaker. Um he went to he was one of those guys who went to DLI for their language. Yeah. And I think he was an Intel guy before SF and uh and he was prior enlisted. But anyway, he he was a really good Russian speaker, like basically fluent in Russia. And uh so he builds rapport with these guys as they come to get cigarettes, and like next thing you know, we're bringing the Russians like cigarettes and pizza. So, like meanwhile, report and we're telling them openly, like, we're reporting how many of you guys there are, and they're like, Oh, there's like 350 of us. This is Alpha Company, you know, whatever. Here are green coordinates. Exactly. Like, it's not like you can't see it, they're just parked, you know, on driving in. And like that was one of the highlights of that trip, man. It was just the Russians rolling in, and everybody thought it was gonna be a big deal. Yeah, you know, and we were joking with the Russians of like, you know, we might need to start killing each other at any moment, you know, just FYI. That was the kind of conversations that happened, man. And like any moment they just rolled off one one night, they rolled off into the over the bridge and into Serbia.

SPEAKER_02 28:37

And uh see you facing a Russian just going for your pistol. Nah, I'm just joshing it.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

It's funny, man. And like then there was this huge ordeal in in Serbia where there was like a big face-off on some airfield or something with the Brits and that, you know. And I I don't know the details of that, but it was a super tense time, man. You're talking about fall of Yugoslavia, NATO bombing Serbia because of Kosovo, and the Russians are now rolling into Serbia from Bosnia. You know, massive muscle movements here, and we're kind of stuck in there driving around rental cars and looking at Russians, and uh it was intense.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

It's crazy because I you anybody listening that's around you know my age group, early, you know, mid early 40s or mid-30s, late 30s, early 40s, like you probably remember seeing some of the stuff on on uh on TV as a kid, and just I mean it it just blows my mind. Like in the chaos of that time period, there's teams of Green Berets out there just gathering metrics, driving around.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

Yeah. Yeah. Me and this one dude who became a warrant.

SPEAKER_02 29:59

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Reconning Russian Convoys And Building Rapport

SPEAKER_01 30:39

We're by ourselves. He was a decent uh Serbo-Croatian speaker. They used to teach that in my during my era. Serbo Croatian was like a core language because of so much going on in the Balkans. And uh it was just me and him in a in a Kia, you know, driving out towards the border in the middle of nowhere. This was in the phase of we're looking where Russians might be crossing. Uh, and we ended up going to this area where there was um, because we're basically at war with Serbia at this time, which is our neighboring country from Bosnia. And uh we we rolled up on this place where I guess we had different sectors, me and this guy, and this guy had been to this Republic of Srbska unit, like a military unit before. Um yeah, just real quick, there's Bosnian Serbs, and there are Serbs in Serbia. The Bosnian Serbs have their own um military as part of the Republic of Srpska in Bosnia. Serbs in Serbia is a totally different Serbian military or whatever. Um, so anyway, we went we we go to this Republic of Srbska outpost, and as we roll up there, we notice dudes on the other side of the river. It was like the Drina River, I think, over there. And we realized there are Serbs from Serbia hanging out with the dudes in Bosnia, and these you know, two dumbasses drive up in a Kia, and everybody s sits up and starts like headed for their kit, basically. And we got like there's probably 40 or 50 dudes that you could tell were kind of spooked. Which, by the way, in some of these interactions, people didn't know what to do. They're like, okay, I mean there the there's Americans in Bosnia. The Americans are at war with us in Serbia. Well, we're in Bosnia. Are we supposed to kill the Americans? I don't know, you know, and like is there a flow chart that explains Yeah, so they started spinning out though, and me and this guy, Steve, we just we hauled ass because we weren't sure what we're supposed to do either. Yeah. And uh so we there's there were some moments like that along the border at that time that were that were tense, and then the the rocket attack was probably one of the biggest the biggest things. But yeah, man, it's kind of weird too going from that um Bosnian experience, which was almost over a year total of living basically in Bosnia. By the way, when I got out of the army and I described Bosnia to people, I s I leave out that I was in the army because it just confuses people. They're like, Army guys don't do that in their in their head, you know. And I'm like, no, I just tell people I lived in Bosnia for a year. Oh man. Then it's more intuitive to them of what we did.

SPEAKER_02 33:40

They just don't understand, man. But I gotta imagine coming, you know, you do a year there, getting that cultural experience, getting that that side of the Greenberry experience first. And then moving through your career, then Iraq and Afghanistan kick off. Like, how the fuck were the were you able to flip that switch to be like, all right, fuck, man? Like, this is war. It's completely different.

SPEAKER_01 34:09

Yep. It was uh I guess you could say Kosovo was a little bit of a warm-up for us because that was kind of like a counterinsurgency mission with the Russians. Um, but yeah, it was uh, you know, honestly, man, like the the beginning of Iraq for us, and some guys this was Afghanistan. I never went to Afghanistan. Um, but when Iraq kicked off and my team got kind of selected to be one of the one of the pilot teams, or we called it the AFO teams. Um well there's pilot teams and there's AFO teams, they're different. Um it was like we got, you know, we won we'd won the playoffs and we're going to the Super Bowl, man. You know what I mean? Like we were pumped. Um and it was like a it was a it was a classic UW mission there. You know, it's uh I would say almost completely old school in terms of like infill, link up with indage, you know, yeah, organize the resistance and do your like um what was it called? The unconventional warfare assessment of like which is kind of like your who, what, when, where, and why of the of the resistance.

Reflecting On Media Narratives Vs Ground Truth

SPEAKER_02 35:28

Um take us take us through that, man, because that's something that so many of us what if if you trained, went through the Q course, you you hear your cadre talk through these phases of the operation, talk through what it's like to go there. But vast majority of us never got that. We we fell in on a fob, we fell in on a cob somewhere with a partner force that was already well established. And if some of us were lucky enough, you partner up with the you know the premier guys, the catejas, guys that you know you just point them in the right direction, they're fucking going. When you and your team get that fucking notification that's like, hey, you won, you're going in. Holy fuck, that's the win. But then then comes the planning, then comes the actual execution of this.

SPEAKER_01 36:16

We actually did. Um by the way, you should have Mark Gerdovich on, who was my ops officer, and uh he was company commander. He wrote a book about this too called Um Those Who Face Death. Um, I actually I think our books are a good compliment. His is kind of like a high-level uh historical account. Mine is more like a personal, you could say first person shooter kind of account of it. The two actually I think go pretty well. But um we start we were in Colorado, we get the word that we're doing this, and we did go into kind of like your classic semi-isolation. Um, and we even like went out to this big training area and did a full almost to make a long story short, almost like a full rehearsal of some of the pieces that we're gonna do. Um, and then it was it was one of the worst parts was waiting for the word to actually ship out. Um so but yeah, we did we basically did your you got the mission. We actually had to get read on to like some program, you know, like basically sensitive stuff. Um, which at the time, man, I none of us had had that happen to us, and we're like, holy shit, you know.

SPEAKER_02 37:36

You can't take notes, you're gonna have to remember all this shit.

Transition To Iraq And AFO Mission

SPEAKER_01 37:40

Yeah, you're going in. You guys are going in early uh to do advanced force ops. Your mission is to establish contact with the Kurds. Uh our for us, it was the PUK. There were different Kurds, which not all Kurds like each other, by the way. Um, and we had to rebuild an airstrip so the rest of the Greenberets months later could actually land and be distributed. Uh, and we had to identify essentially the safe house for each ODA that was going to come in for the main body of SF guys doing UW. So it was infill somehow. There were a bunch of options we laid out um for that uh link up, do an assessment of where all the Kurds are and what they have and what sectors they can cover, and if the Iraqis attacked, where would they go? And all, you know, just getting a handle on where they all are, because they're all over the place. And like that half of northern Iraq is actually gigantic. Yeah, we were doing like six-hour drives to try to find like pockets of Kurds and like assess them, which at times was hilarious, uh, which I we talk about in a second, man. Like classic shit. But um, yeah, that was so for the f we enfilled in j in January of 2003. Um, which you know the war started like what m officially like March 20 something. I don't remember. Um, because uh that that line was blurred for us. We were we were there. We what we were watching the news over there where someone was saying there's no Americans in Iraq from from in Iraq. That was hilarious. By the way, man, like there were there were dudes on the pilot teams who were in there months before we were.

SPEAKER_02 39:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:45

You know, and they laid some of the groundwork just to get us in there, I think. Which the the the way we okay, yeah. So that that was the mission. Infill, link up, assess the Kurdish, you know, composition, disposition, rebuild the runway, and then do the targeting for the shock and awe, you know, initial strikes. That was pretty much the and oh, and also find safe houses for all the ODAs that were in the most advantageous locations. Uh, and that was basically that's the AFO mission. Um and our info is very mysterious to me, at least. Um, and I was kind of a knuckle dragging 18 Bravo, you know, but like it's possible that my captain told us everything. I just wasn't listening. I'm like, you know what I mean, man?

SPEAKER_02 40:39

Yes, absolutely. I was guilty. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

So, but for my personal perspective was we basically said we were told to drive well, we well, first of all, we we infilled in rental cars.

SPEAKER_02 40:57

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SPEAKER_01 41:51

That we rented in Turkey and then just drove them in and abandoned them eventually. So and I think the rumor was that our comp the rumor was our company commander signed for them as like Donald Duck or something. I don't remember.

SPEAKER_02 42:09

Are you sure you don't want the entire insurance package? Yeah.

Infiltration By Rental Car And Mountain Snow

SPEAKER_01 42:14

I think we're good. So we rented cars, we loaded them up, and we hid all of our equipment in the cars. You know, because these are just one, by the way, one of our trucks was like a two-wheel drive, almost lowrider, little pickup with like tinted windows. So we were laughing our ass off on that. We're basically pimping across the border or whatever. Uh, but yeah, it's hilarious, dude. But we we we ended up driving out through the we drove out of the Air Force base with these rental cars loaded up with stuff, as if we were on like a day pass to like go check out, you know, parts of Turkey. And twenty-seven hours later, we're approaching, you know, the border. And that for me, this was like when when my I was I was in a Jeep Cherokee with two other dudes, my team sergeant and one other guy. And uh our thing was like we don't know we have no idea what's gonna happen on the border. Like in our minds, we could be arrested and thrown in Turkish prison. You know, what if they what if they look in the back of these vehicles and dig up under the seats and find a an M4 and an M21 and a whatever, you know? We could have been in deep shit. So our mindset was we're gonna fight our way in if we have to. That's what so approaching the the thing, I'm driving this Jeep Cherokee, it's raining. Uh and I got like my pistol under my thigh on the driver's seat, and like it was super tense, man. But it ended up being like completely effortless to just we drove in. We took like a bathroom break inside the border like area. Um by the way, we're in civilian clothes completely. You know, I was wearing like um, you know, mountaineer, you know, 10th group, 10th group looking guys, basically, with a bunch of cold weather gear on. By the way, it was freezing cold, and it was you know, Iraq isn't hot all the time, which we were about to learn quickly.

SPEAKER_02 44:24

Oh, I know. We we had groundbreaking, uh like friggin' freezing weather both years I was there. Snowed in Iraq, and uh boy.

SPEAKER_01 44:34

Yeah, dude, that's that's what happened next, basically. So we you know we took a piss break across the border um and then linked up with the Kurds and some guys from our pilot team. I think it was like the 2nd Battalion pilot team. I was 3rd Battalion, 10th group, ODA. I think they changed the numbering, but it was ODA 081 that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_02 44:56

Yeah, it's back it's back to three digit now. They went back Oh, is it? Yep.

SPEAKER_01 44:59

Oh, cool. Yeah, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_02 45:01

Yeah, and back to the rest of it.

Kurdish Linkups And Rebuilding A Runway

SPEAKER_01 45:02

I'm weird, dude. I'm kind of weird. I got out when I got out, I got way out, man. Like I I don't really I'm not really involved or track much of anything that goes on, so I didn't know that. But yeah, man, we we rolled over, linked up with the Kurds, and this was the KDP Kurds, not our PUK Kurds. So so our team what was gonna happen is we link up with the P with the KDP Kurds, uh, and uh and that pilot team, and they're gonna move us to link up with the PUK. The KDP and the PUK are not uh not very friendly. They they almost had a war at one point, I think, uh, because of I think the KDP let like Saddam in or something one time. There's a whole history, man, between the different Kurdish factions. But we linked up with KDP and they were like, Iraq's Iraq already knows you're here. So you can't take the main road around because it's within like missile range and artillery range of the of the Green Line. Um which but back then there was the Green Line, which was like kind of the forward line of Iraqi troops against the northern Iraq, which is Iraqi Kurdistan. Um there's a whole history there that is uh you know, you could talk for hours about that history, but um so the Kurds are like you need to drive, just follow us, basically, which is very Rob and Sage-like. You link you come across the border, you had a plan, first contact with the indage, they're like, nah, you're not gonna do that. Like, we're gonna we're gonna bring you through the mountains to get to this uh safe site that then you'll you'll spend the rest of the night, and then we'll bring you to the PUK. And that's what we did. But to your point about snow, it was white out snowing as we were going through those paths, man. There were times when there was a Kurd walking in front of our vehicle as we went through like these mountain passes to like guide us along. That's how bad it was snowing.

SPEAKER_02 47:12

Yeah, to the to the audience that never went to Iraq or Afghanistan, Iraq does have terrain features. It's just it's not a cartoon desert.

SPEAKER_01 47:20

That's right. And I didn't, yeah. I like we were looking at maps and stuff, obviously, before we left, but I had no idea that the mountains of northern Iraq and Turkish border and the Iranian border further over are so massive. Um it's it's like Rocky Mountain level shit.

SPEAKER_02 47:39

Yeah, and it's I mean shit. It there's we've had not uh you know security hall, we always segue out, but we've had friggin' throughout the entire GWA, we've had civilians have had to been friggin' recovered out of the area because they're climbing excursions. Like there's it's a very popular happening spot, and people just fucking continued going there.

SPEAKER_01 48:00

Yeah, it's crazy, man. Yeah, so the whole infill dude was was intense. We drove forever. We were friggin' we were tired, man. I think by the time we got so we we we we end up getting to this safe site, we sleep for maybe two hours. I don't and you know, we pr we weren't sleeping really. We were too excited, man. Yeah, we're we're in Iraq. Like there's Kurds everywhere, they're bringing us tea, you know, and like we're actually doing this shit. Like, because think about it, before then, man, like a lot of places, a lot of a lot of guys had never seen any action in whole like 20-year careers. And suddenly we're in the Super Bowl, you know, where it's like Robin Sage V2, and we just couldn't I or maybe I s I can only speak for myself. I couldn't believe we were actually there. We're in Iraq. We made it across the border. There's Kurds all over the place, and we're about to go link up with our like indige. Yeah. Um guys made history, man. Like this. It was it was insane. It was totally surreal. Yeah. It's actually interesting to me, man. I should ask you, like, is that in like the new, let's just say the new generation, are those missions like well known?

Pride, Lineage, And Passing On History

SPEAKER_02 49:23

And they're like talked about. I will tell you from my perspective, as I didn't understand the importance of culture as a young Green Beret. And I think that's that's something that needs to change. And and part of this whole experience is so that people can hear it and can then, if they're still in, bring that back to the teams. Because I found it incredibly important as a warrant officer. Like you have to understand the importance of the living continuity of a team. And and it it was a heavy thing for me. Like, how do I not know my Green Beret history? How do I not know how to expand on this and give give guys the information that you know you belong to to a group of individuals have done amazing things? Like it's part of your history. 82nd gives that to you. 173rd gives that to you. You don't serve in those units. Like, I knew that felt that weight of having those freaking patches on my shoulders. I was like, Paratrooper, World War II, like holy shit, Band of Brothers, like all these historical things. Like you carry that, it gives you so much pride. When you walk into your team room and you see the lineage of all the other teams, like that of the men that came before you, like you owe it to yourself to understand and at least look up a little bit, especially when it comes to the memorial stuff. That's the thing that I keyed in on. Like being able to serve with some of the guys that had been there for the early parts of GWA, those stories resonated and they stayed. They're part of the the living hallways, man. And I know that's the same thing for 10th group. I know it's the same. And on the outside, it like I said, it's even more important to continue talking about it. Like you're you're part of history, but more importantly, you're part of the Greenberry fabric, man. What you guys did, like, it's talked about, it's honored, it's respected. Like you have like this moment that anchors all of us back to like fuck, like we may not have been able to do it. We were younger, we were kids, but I'm part of something bigger to myself. I'm part of that lineage. And every time they make a hype video, anytime our soft history does something and connects it, even if you weren't there, you can say, that's the lineage I belong to. That's that's that's the important thing about this, man. That's why it's like guys like you getting out writing these books. We need more of that because it's not about being a silent professional. You can be a quiet professional, you can write a book. Hell, use a pen name, help have somebody help you with it, but you have to get these stories out there because it it robs us of a future where a young man picks up that book, reads these accolades, and says, I think I can do this. I think I have what it takes. Because if you look back to a lot of these stories people I've had on here, that's how a lot of us got the idea to serve. Reading these stories, like being able to say, you know what? Fuck yeah, I want to be, I want to know what it's like to be one of these operators, one of these guys, you know, Mac V. Sog, all these stories, man.

SPEAKER_01 52:37

Exactly, man. I was gonna say, like, that's my era. Like, I I signed I wanted to be a Green Beret because of like the um Vietnam books about like working with the Montagnards and the Nungs, and doing these like deep penetration missions, MAG V, SOG, and all that.

SPEAKER_02 52:58

And like Tilt, John Stryker Meyer, man, like that. Having him on the show, it was like the greatest full circle moment of like reading stories about this man, reading stories about the teams he was a part of, reading stories about all these operations that he lived on, and there he is on the other side of the screen sharing his stories in person, man, like to give back to another generation of Green Berets. That's the shit we need, man.

Infantry Roots And The Value Of Grit

SPEAKER_01 53:26

You know what's interesting too, man, what you just mentioned, like when I got to 10th group, I don't remember history being iterated to us. But like when I I was in the 25th ID uh before I went to SF, I was I was an infantry guy for five years before I went to SF. And uh there, man, they did actively reiterate the history of I was in the 27th Regiment, which is the Wolfhounds. Uh and the Wolfhounds are one of the most decorated units of like World War II, Korea, Vietnam, or whatever. And I I was actually the what do they call it, the guide-on carrier guy. And we had so many of those like things on there, the streamers that the thing weighed like 40 pounds, man. And I was like, so I'm actually I'm still insanely proud, man, of my like infantry time in the Wolfhounds. It was awesome. And man, I was also I was in the recon platoon of my battalion, which you have to do a little tryout to get into at the scout platoon. Um, and uh so I was in this little group of kind of elite dudes in my battalion for probably three out of the five years. Yeah, and I gotta tell you, man, in in a lot of ways, that little team, like I was a squad leader for a while in that. Those teams in the infantry rival like soft teams in terms of like badassery. I don't think infantry gets enough credit for how awesome they are. There's a lot of dudes in there that just really don't want to go through all the BS to BSF, but they definitely could.

SPEAKER_02 55:13

We talk about that a lot on here. Uh a lot of us that were prior service from especially the infantry background, it it is a school of mastering, like the basic principles. It gives you that confidence to go. I love being a Green Beret. It was a great time. It gave me so much. The team is a very important thing. The teammates are amazing, but I look back to my my company, my platoon, those deployments to Iraq, and and I that's when I feel like I was part of some of the greatest fucking elements, dude. Like the the brotherhood. That's you don't have kit. You don't have the fancy kit, you don't have the endless budget. It's just you and the tenacity of a bunch of a 19. I mean, the guy that we looked up to, the guys that we looked up to as our mentors were like fucking 25, 28. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:09

They were old guys, man, in the infantry. So you're 30 years old, you're so smart. And then like I remember when I turned 32, I was like, fuck, I don't know shit.

Preserving Memories: Photos, Coins, Shadow Boxes

SPEAKER_01 56:18

Yeah. Yeah. So it's uh I tell people that all the time. The everybody has a bad, I think, perception of the infantry of like a bunch of dumbasses or whatever. It's like not even close. You know, you've got some of the toughest people on earth, man. And they're just grit, crude, tough dudes, man, who can carry a rucksack for two weeks straight in the rain, sleep in the friggin' mud, don't give a shit about any of it, and just kick ass, man. Where I a lot of guys coming into soft come from non-infantry MOSs, man. And you can you can see it. They're kind of soft, man. From like, especially in like SF selection, I remember seeing these guys. I'm like, dude busts out like a brand new pair of boots. I'm like, what are you doing, man? You don't have your boots broken in yet. He's like, no, I thought I would have the best boots for this. Like, oh my god, you're doomed, man. Like, and of course he was, but that's a that's a strategy. Yeah, not the preferred technique, what they what they used to say. But yeah, man, I'm always I'm always hyping up for the infantry because my dad was also an infantryman in Vietnam, too. Oh, no shit. And he was uh, and my grandfather was in the Marines. Oh man. Yeah, so I got a like a history of the infantry and my blood, too. So my dad's very proud still of his blue cord, man.

SPEAKER_02 57:53

Oh, hell yeah. That's um, you know, I was just talking to my wife. I uh I made some really bad decisions as a young man, leaving dating the wrong type of women, had one that uh skipped town and like took like so much of my shit. Luckily, luckily, she didn't take my motorcycle uh or any of my firearms. That was that was nice, but like all of my old uniforms, just like all of them. I mean, I'm pretty sure the guy she she uh left town with took all my ammo, so that that lost that. But in all the shit she took was my my old um set of army dress uniforms with my friggin' beret, my blue cord. And uh I was sitting there, my wife's like, you know, we we still got to do a shadow box for you for your service. And I'm like, man, like you know, I got all my green beret stuff, but the one thing that really just fucking hurts, that really just gutted me was when I was sitting there reflecting with her, I'm like, I had the same damn maroon beret my entire time. I was in 82nd. I was so proud of that. There's nothing better than that, that fucking that pear chupper lean. Yeah, and um it just it reminded me like fuck, I can't, I don't have that. I don't, I like don't have my my uniform and my 2504 patch or my um division and all that stuff. Like it and that that's a hard thing to for me to reflect on. I was like, fuck, man, like when you're out, when you're older, all that shit will matter someday. So, guys, if you're listening, please, please don't be like me. Don't shack up with a single mom with a fancy set of implants with loose morals, keep your shit in the storage shed. Don't let her have keys and whatever you do, move out before the deployment comes to it. Because I'm telling you, she will take all your shit.

SPEAKER_01 59:49

Yeah, that's good advice, man. And probably more relevant than you might think.

SPEAKER_02 59:55

Because you'll never get it back. I mean, like I and like I said, like I'll I'm I'm gonna go figure out a way to go back to Kim's because that was the other thing. I went to the same Speedy Kim's number one on uh Riley, Riley or Yadkins. Uh went to the same same lady for all my SoShop stuff, got all like got my Green Beret from her, and it was just one of those things, but like you don't you don't forget, it's part of your lineage, man.

Closing, Books, And Next Conversation

SPEAKER_01 1:00:21

Yeah. One thing I regret, man, I didn't like I was given a million coins. I don't know where any of them are. I have like two coins or something. I didn't take pictures. Like I I hardly took any pictures. Um it I I so especially nowadays where you got some so easy to take pictures, you know. Um take pictures. Like you're gonna wish you had them. Like I have zero pictures of me that I took with like the Kurds in Iraq. The only pictures I have are what other people gave me, like emailed me way, way later on. Uh anyway, man, just it's uh it's a thing that you'll care about someday when you walk down. Like I periodically go in the basement and open up the closet and look at my class A's down there. No, I do shadow box as a shadow box right there, actually. Nice. Yes. And my and my flag. You can't see it, but it's right there. But it doesn't have my infantry in it, though. It only SF stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:26

I think since my wife asked this past week, and I'm gonna make it more of put it on the on the forefront of my mind and really design what I want for a shadow box and put the effort by buy the stuff I want to to replace what I lost because you got your ERB, you know what you earned in in each one of your your units, you know all the patches you need. If you're like me and you lost stuff, like just go buy it. Go buy it, put together a shadow box, telling you I didn't think it was important, but when I don't know why it hit me, it hit me differently when I sat there and I reflected on that loss of like, fuck, dude, like all those, all those friends you lost, all the people that aren't here anymore that you served with, that that young man that was willing to think that he could serve within that. I mean, and and getting, you know, I will tell you, I've I've heard so many stories of of sheer luck of how you got airborne school or how you got assignments to this unit that ended up being the greatest. I wasn't guaranteed to go to airborne school. It was a pure chance and a drill sergeant that made a promise and he honored it and dropped me and my other buddy off at airborne school and snuck us in. And you forget all these things, and later on down the road, like I remember I'm like, fuck, dude, I was slotted to go to Fort Hood. I was slotted to go to fucking one of the worst places on earth. And by chance, by luck, somebody saw worth and saw value in me and gave me the opportunity to go there. So that's why even now, more than ever, I'm like, fuck, man, I am grateful for that 80 second time. I'm grateful that experience. Every single one of those paratroopers that made me the man that I needed to be to go to selection.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:07

Yep, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I'm glad this shadow box I have was actually built for me when I retired. Oh, hell yeah. I retired out of SOCOM, and uh, which will maybe we'll talk about all that. But um, and yeah, they they put it together for me. I mean, do you want me to show it to you? Yeah, yeah. Let's see. I don't know. Well, here's the flag they gave me. That's the retirement flag with the legit emerit on it. Nice. Um, and but let me pull this thing out of here. Here it is. And it has my crusty green beret right there. Like to your point about your old red beret. Yeah, yeah. That's my crusty. I wish it had tenth group on it, but I left on my last flash from SOCOM. This thing is dusty, by the way, man. But there's the rust of it.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:56

And I'm telling you guys, it's important to do that. Uh all of my friends are Jolly, Jason Jolly, I'm throwing it, throwing your name out there. Your your time's coming soon, bro. Uh be willing to put some money into that. Be willing to sit down, plan it out, and make it unique, make it for you. Uh, you don't have to make it look like anybody else's. Like, I'm certainly gonna make mine a lot different, but it's it's gonna encompass my entire career because man, like to look back on life, look back how long you served, like it's a trip down memory lane that we all need to take. We all need to honor it, man. And and Mark, this is this episode has been exactly what I needed it to be, man. To sit down with a living, living piece of history, man. Somebody that lived it, but not just one aspect of it, like various aspects of it, places that and and and parts of history that I was a kid watching TV and seeing this stuff fall, like just unfold. I'm just like, fuck, dude. There's why aren't there good people? And little did I know that there are good, there were good people on the ground right there doing a mission that you know, years, decades later, I finally got to be a part of. And even though I never traveled to those parts of the world, I can say that I was part of a brotherhood, a part of a lineage that allowed me to freaking carry the banner forward. So today, brother, this has just been a fucking awesome, awesome experience, man. If people want to check out your book, where can they go?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:27

Just go to Amazon and look up, you know, my name. And then the the title of the book is One Green Beret. There's another one that's just Viking Hammer, but the nothing is in that except for literally the Viking Hammer thing. So I just subseted it out. So I recommend getting one Green Beret. Um that has Bosnia, Kosovo, everything in it, all the way up to my transition out of the military into the into the technology industry. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:56

Um we gotta we gotta get you back on and to tap into that because. One of the things that we love to talk about is that transition piece. And it's so many guys forget that they've done so much and they just see that transition piece as being just so impossible. And uh they struggle with it.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:15

That's uh yeah, I had a kind of unique path on that. Um that yeah, I mean, I we we should do another one and just talk specifically about how you know I went from green beret to basically like a software engineering computer scientist and uh and kind of like a upper middle management of I I came straight out of the army into kind of an upper middle management, you know, like high-end technology, you know, industry. And like, man, what a what a culture shock, you know, that was. It was uh it was it was awesome. I'm still in it, you know. It's been 15 years, believe it or not. I've been out of the army almost as long as I was in. This this year's 15 years I retired.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:06

Damn. Holy cow. Well, Mark, it's an absolute pleasure to have you, man. Great talk. I'll resend another booking link so we can get you back on and uh do a part two. Everybody listening, do me a favor, you know, the spiel, click pause or just go right now to the episode description, click those links, hit me up with a share, a like, a follow, and a subscribe. I'd greatly appreciate it. And do me one more, leave me a review. It helps me grow and it helps other people find the show. Mark, again, thank you for being here and everybody tuning in and listening. Thank you as well. And we'll see you all next time. Till then, take care.