Security Halt!
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Security Halt!
Mark Grdovic on Green Berets, the Iraq War and Lessons From Special Forces | Security Halt! Ep. 469
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What did Green Berets learn during the uncertain early days of the Iraq War?
In Episode 469 of the Security Halt! Podcast, Deny Caballero sits down with Mark Grdovic to discuss his firsthand experiences as a Green Beret, the realities of operating in Iraq, and the leadership, innovation, and adaptability required when plans collided with the realities of war.
Mark shares stories from the early Global War on Terror, including pre-deployment planning, operational secrecy, isolation planning, unexpected challenges in Iraq, team operations, and the decentralized leadership that allows Special Forces teams to adapt in rapidly changing environments.
The conversation also explores the importance of preserving Special Forces history. Mark explains why books and firsthand accounts matter, why veterans should document their experiences, and why the stories of the men and women who served during the GWOT era deserve to survive long after the generation that lived them is gone.
Listen now. Follow the show. Share this with the veteran or entrepreneur who needs to hear it.
Chapters:
00:00 Meet Green Beret Mark Grdovic
02:03 Understanding the Bigger Objectives of War
03:20 Why Books Preserve Military History
04:13 The History & Legacy of the Green Berets
06:12 Special Forces Before & After 9/11
08:57 Planning Secret Operations in the Early GWOT
10:43 Isolation Planning & Preparing for the Unknown
13:03 The Unexpected Reality of Iraq
15:21 Secret Missions & Operating With Limited Information
17:50 The Difficult Reality of Deployment
19:39 Learning From Mistakes & Success in Combat
22:52 Green Berets on the Ground in Iraq
29:53 Decentralized Command & Empowering Special Forces Teams
37:36 How Technology Changed Modern Warfare
41:29 Looking Back on Service & Legacy
44:21 Milestones, Uniforms & a Changing Military
45:41 The End of an Era & the Future of Special Forces
47:40 Iraqi Forces & the Challenge of Long-Term Stability
52:48 Why Military Stories Need to Be Preserved
54:41 Your Story Deserves to Be Heard
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Why GWOT Stories Must Be Told
SPEAKER_02It's becoming very evident that this is the most highly compartmented secret. And somebody who's going into enemy territory, you can't tell me the invasions on the 15th. So we've got to do all of our planning based on an unknown. Those two groups have been in a civil war with each other and hate each other. We got them to cease fire with each other for this opportunity. I tell you this, because if you find yourself in proximity with each other, it might not be a good idea to stay close to each other. Like try to keep the group separate. Saddam Hussein could have killed me and the battalion commander. It doesn't matter once I got my teams in. They've been given the launch guidance of what to do. And there's 15 of them running amok in, you know, in the Iraqi territory. That's probably the most unique, I don't want to say unique maybe, but important aspect of how we chose to command and control this mission.
SPEAKER_01Did you find sort of healing or at least a catharis in sitting down and putting pen to paper and writing this out completely?
SPEAKER_00That Security Halt Media is looking for clients that need video editing. Have them reach out to info at securityhaltmedia.com.
SPEAKER_01Mark, welcome to the show. How's it going, brother? Good, good. It's great to have another Green Bray brother on the show, but it's uh even more of a of a you know an incredible connection to have somebody that has told the story, has told uh part of the GWAT story, has gone out there and done the work that it takes to bring a book to life. And um yeah, it's great to have you on the show today to talk about this because it's something I champion a lot with uh other veterans and and the audience is um if you serve during the GWAT, you owe it to yourself and everybody else to tell your story. Uh everybody has a piece of it. And I think our the next generations uh deserve to hear it from us before they see it on a TV show or a movie. And uh I I just love the fact that you're out there doing it and you're somebody that's that holds a piece of history that we're not we we don't have it out there. There's no Amazon show about it, there's no Netflix special about those early years of Iraq. So today, my man, I want to hear it from you. Uh I want to hear your story.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I really appreciate that. And I you I the way you described it, I think is really, really good. Um, because it was obviously a very long conflict or long war, and a lot of it is not captured. And I I did feel a personal responsibility to get the story of the guys. But and by the way, for anybody who hasn't seen my book, this is not one of those, hey, it's the memoir of me and combat book. This is me as a guy who knows the whole story of an operation. And I was fortunate to be able to capture it all and then convey it with some lessons. Um, and I honestly feel like we haven't, we the community haven't spent enough time talking about what we experienced and what we take away from it. Um and I think we're we're just there now where we can start having important conversations that aren't, you know, tainted by emotion, um, and we can we can actually realize what we did.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I I think that um sometimes we focus on the you know the assault element, the the guy on the door, so to speak, and we miss the broader objectives, we miss the bigger picture. We don't get a real detailed analysis of what it takes to get that team on the ground. All the different moving pieces to go on. That we we fanboyed uh to to to to use a different term. Like we we really amplify that uh you know the the Jack Car figures, the the the not the actual author, but the you know the No I don't exactly yeah yeah those stories are great, they make an amazing show. I'm a big fan of it. But for generations to come, those those movies, those TV shows, they're not gonna be as easily accessible. They're not they're gonna fall by the wayside. That you know, how often do we watch those movies nowadays? Like very few of us are are big time fans of the war movies that got it right. What will stand the test of time um are the books. Are yeah, I'm a big believer in that because it was guys like John Starker Meyer, his books that spoke to me. It was those stories that told a young Denny that maybe he could somewhere, somewhere down the line, he could probably maybe, if he was lucky enough, maybe find himself amongst those legends, those heroes. And I'm lucky. Yeah, it wasn't John Wayne's portrayal of Green Berets that did it for me. Uh, you know, it it wasn't him. It it was the books. And I think what you've done is not only have you given us a piece of history that's missing, uh, you've given the Green Berets that are from that time period their round of applause because we we need to hear those stories. We need to understand the by with and through. We need to understand what it takes to build the capacity. Long before we focus on the guy kicking in the door, we need to understand what it was like to go in there and establish these connections.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I should probably also uh former door kicker here, you know, former C World 10 guy. So, like, I love that part of the community, absolutely love it. Um but your your points are very well taken. You know, and I'll I'll say this too. It's kind of interesting for the audience that might not be the same age as me, um, and I feel like I've got a couple of years on you too. You know, I was of the generation that was in the army for a while when 9-11 happened and had to see the transition of you want us to do what? And like there's a neat part of that that it's really hard to explain to people of, you know, as I often joke, I'm like, hey, back when war wasn't a novel, when war was a novelty, um, you know, one day everything was normal and the next day it wasn't. And then suddenly we're talking about stuff that, you know, honestly, like we talked about in the special forces course, but I didn't think you were serious. Like, you really want me to go do that? And we were like, yeah, we want you to go do it, and we want you to go do it next month. So this story is part of that time frame of where we have to learn or relearn things, you know, from scratch. It's not we're not following a rotation. We are the first ones in to go do something that has not been done yet.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Yeah. That that's for all of us in in my age cube. I'm a little younger, I'm wet behind the ears of uh uh, but we always had a PDSS. We always had a blueprint to follow. We had a previous deployment. Even if we didn't have anybody at that out station for a rotation or two, there was a skiff to go to, prior reporting, and other green brewers we could reach out to. You know, you go have lunch, you grab a cup of coffee, you talk to guys. In our case here in Florida, uh, you go to AJ's and you uh sit down and you have a couple beers and you talk about what it was like the last that previous summer. You didn't have that. Um as a young, take us through that. What was it like as a as a young officer to be sitting there and be like, hey, um, yeah, uh I'm gonna have to do this?
SPEAKER_02Well, okay, so uh this is something that didn't make it into the book. It made it, as my editor says, it's on the cutting room floor. So I returned to 10th group, and I I literally think I was a Stuttgart guy, and I now I'm coming to Carson, Fort Carson. And I think I arrived on like 8th September 2001, and I was happy to be back at the group, but I was a little bit disappointed because I was like, man, the the Conus base guys aren't gonna do anything because that back in those days, the overseas guys did all the really interesting stuff. And I was like, all right. So I took command of B Company, uh 3rd Battalion, I think literally like the day before 9-11. And I like I said, I reconciled in my head that I'm like, man, this is gonna be, it's cool to be here, but this is gonna be a boring command. Um and this is this is true. I don't want my I don't want to sound too negative, but it was a different error back then before 9-11 that we don't talk about now. And as a company commander, I had to go sign for my uh lawn equipment, which is something I did not know from my Stuart life. So I had to go sign for like 10 lawnmowers, 10 weed whackers, you know, a whole shed full of tools and stuff. And I was like, what is this? And a guy described, he goes, Oh, sir, every Wednesday is like lawn maintenance day. And I was like, What? And I I I was stunned and he said to me, Oh, but Thursday is still sergeant's time. And I my I couldn't reconcile this because I'm like, in Stuart or overseas, every day was sergeant's time. Like we didn't carve out three hours of a week. And I jokingly said to him, I was like, Man, I wonder what Day Delta does their lawn maintenance. Um and yeah, and the the next day when 9-11 happened, amidst everything that was going on, I remember turning to that supply star. I was like, hey, you can go put a lock in that shed. We're done with that. And he's like, Oh, Star Major's not gonna want to care that I was like, he'll be okay. We're not, we're not doing lawn maintenance anymore. So that was part of the rapid transition. Yeah, those that that was that's a true story. Um, that was part of the rapid transition to, okay, guys, it's time to snap into place. And and I'm gonna say, the guys were fantastic because everybody's mindset, you know, we were everybody that you all remember where you were on 9-11. Everybody was in a state of shock. Guys in the special forces group, we were in a state of shock, but we wanted to, you know, go do something. Um, and by the way, and seventh group is guilty of this too. Everybody made a case that everybody rationalized in their head how they were the obvious choice for Afghanistan. I can't believe they're sending fifth group. Clearly, it should be our our group. I'm telling you, every group did that. Um But so we started, you know, spinning up for things. We didn't know what was going on. And literally for us, we watched Afghanistan start, and it was probably about February of 2002, is the first time we got the hey, come on and close the door. We got to talk about an operation. And we got the hint of an operation in Iraq, you know, and it was it was pretty compartmented and secret from about February uh 2002 to about June, and June is when it turned more for real. Like we actually got like a warning order and stuff like that, and we knew that we're the ones doing this now. We're on the hook. And what's weird is we kept getting the secret uh insider information, don't tell anybody, but it's next month or it's it's next week. That nonsense went on for about eight months. And I like I and I stressed how that's that is a real thing. That is painful for everybody to realize we're leaving next week. And you keep going through this with your families, and it just stressed the heck out of us. It also impacted how we approached uh training and planning. And we did a pretty good job because we didn't just throw our hands up and give up and go, we're gonna be gone in a month, it's not worth it. We're like, let's approach this as if we had more time and let's let's prioritize what we're gonna do. So we very methodically, um, very deliberately methodically developed a plan. And by the end of our planning, like we, if you in the book, you if you saw, we actually did old school style isolation planning. And a lot of people Oh no, yeah, a lot of people were like a little bit freaked out by this, but on the back end of it, everyone was like, that was really good. And okay, so if you don't, if you don't remember this story, the 10th 10th group has, as all the groups do, we had a really cool isolation facility. You know, that's a very World War II style thing. We don't really do that a whole lot because we're not really going into
From Garrison Routines To 9/11
SPEAKER_02enemy territory all the time. But for this one, like we're gonna do isolation planning. And but in 10th group's case, like two of the isolation rooms had been like a mountain locker, two of the rooms had been converted to a gym. This was long before there was ever anything like a Thor program. And I should point out, like, all the equipment in the gym was all the junk from people's houses that like their wives said, get that out of the garage. Um, except for the one guy that was really, you know, industrious and made a set of barbells out of cement and uh like you know, big, big coffee cans. Like we this is this is really the equipment we used back in the day. But so we decided I don't want to do this on the on-base isolation facility. We drove to Pinion Canyon three hours away, where there is, it's it makes Camp McCall look like you know Shangri-La. There's nothing out there. And we sequestered uh companies, one company a week for four weeks, and it paid huge dividends. Um it really got everybody focused. And then we didn't go. This is like probably September. September 2002. We didn't go. We had plans for okay, if we're not gonna go, we're gonna put everybody through two weeks of language training, Arabic, Kurdish, or Turkish. We didn't go. Like, okay, we're gonna take all the leadership by bus because we didn't have money to Fort Leonardwood, Missouri and go through live agent training, which was which was cool, but like 16-hour bus ride to get off the bus, get dressed up, go into a room that has chemical agents, apparently, but you can't tell because you're not dying. We stood there, did some jump and jacks, and then left the room, got undressed for an hour, and then got back on the bus for a 16-hour bus ride back to Fort Carson. We did a ton of stuff like this, really, really making good use of our time, though, from like close air support to live tissue training to foreign weapons training. Like we really thought about how do we spend our time. We had two college professors come in from New York and just give like two or three days of Kurdish um cultural history training, really valuable stuff. And finally we got to about uh December or January, and we well we started to transition out. This is when the war seemed imminent. We had had a pilot team, two pilot teams on the ground for about four months. A lot of people don't know that. That was a huge deal. They were co-CIA special forces pilot teams, and that made a world of difference because those guys did all the preparations for us. Like they they spoke to all of our counterparts and said, okay, you're gonna work with this guerrilla group, and they could send that back to us, a whole dossier on the guerrilla group that ODA 123 was going to work with. Um, they could tell us, hey, this is what's really on their mind, this is what's important to them, this is their logistics shortcomings, this is their operational challenge. Like we were really, because of my pilot team, very, very well set up. But then Turkey surprised us and decided they want it to be neutral. And that was a huge hit because we had been funneling vehicles and equipment to Turkey for the last six months. So there's literally 300 Land Rovers waiting on an airfield in Turkey with all of our equipment, and Turkey's like, you can't launch from here, you can't use our airspace, and we don't think we're gonna give you your equipment back. So that's that's a pretty big, you know, what now patrol leader kind of moment. Um Yeah, and I'll so like that's and that's like two of the things I'll say that make for anybody who's listening, you're thinking, uh the way I wrote it, and I want someone to take the story as what if this was you? Like, I want you to feel like you're a part of the operation. Okay, so I tell you that you're gonna get a mission to go into enemy territory to work with guerrillas or resistance to develop a second front. You hear that, and you're like, okay, I'm still cool, I'm on board. And I'm like, I should probably make you aware, though, uh, the two groups we think we're gonna work with, 2nd Battalion's gonna work with this group, third battalion's gonna work with this group. Those two groups have been in a civil war with each other and hate each other. We got them to cease fire with each other for this opportunity. I tell you this, because if you find yourself in proximity with each other, it might not be a good idea to stay close to each other. Like try to keep the groups separate. You're like, okay, no, no, that's all right. I'm still on board, I'm cool with this. Um, for my battalion, um, and I was the S3 for the battalion, so I'm very heavily involved in developing and working the plant. For my battalion, they're like, oh, one more problem. Your battalion rests below the northern no-fly zone line, and there's an insurgent, not an insurgent group, but an Islamic extremist group that's taken up hold in the back area of your sector on the Iranian border, and that's actually, and it's affiliated with al-Qaeda. And we think they're testing with chemical and biological weapons. That's actually the way the Kurds are focused. They're not focused towards Sunan, they're focused on this rear area threat. So you probably need to neutralize that thing before we can get them to divert to go attack Iraqi forces, which is your mission. Like, okay, that's that's pretty daunting. Um, and then also, by the way, I'll just offer up um I can't tell you when the invasion is. And this is something as a special forces guy, I'd never really thought about or experienced in our training. Like, you know, you go to Robin Sage, you do your thing. I just kind of assumed I would know. And now that I'm facing this scenario, it's becoming very evident that this is the most highly compartmented secret. And somebody who's going into enemy territory, you can't tell me the invasions on the 15th. So we've got to do all of our planning based on an unknown, you know, like what we call D-Day. But so when is D-Day? D-Day is D-Day is C plus seven. When's C Day? C Day is A plus two. And you're like, what the hell? You know, damn it, it's that math problem that I didn't pay attention to in high school. Um but but that's a real problem that I don't know how much time I have to conduct and achieve my mission. So I got all this stuff thrown on top of me. Now I throw in, oh yeah, Turkey just bailed out, so I don't know how you're gonna get into country and we don't have a forward staging base. Deal with that. And the story is largely about us dealing with each one of these problems in sequence to work our way through it to protect our mission and it and achieve our mission. Um spoiler alert, it goes pretty well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's um a couple of things to dive into, man. The we take it for granted the experience of the jiwa from the perspective of the guys that were in the surge, the guys that were in the later years of Iraq and Afghanistan. Because it's it's easier to to focus on that. It's easier to see, like it's already established, you're already in the fight. A lot of our story is before that. You know, there's there's so much history into what happened in the days right after 9-11, prepping for the fight that goes unheard. And and and when it comes to diving into this story, it's easy to go into it wanting to highlight and talk about all the things that went right. But having to talk about the hurdles and the pain point and the frictions, like, did you find yourself like you know a little bit hesitant to talk about, like, oh, you know, like do the do my readers really want to know how difficult it was to get guys on board to like get ready and get amped to go into isolation planning and and all the details like that?
SPEAKER_02I I think the readers kind of want to know. I think some some people in the community would prefer I didn't share some of those stories. And like, that's a real thing. But that's a real thing. Like, and this is the instructor in me. I was an instructor twice. Um, you know, I cling more to what didn't go right and the lessons from it than just telling the good news, you know. And and my form anybody who's a former student of mine knows this. Like, hey, if I tell you you did eight things wrong, I'm not being overly negative. That's just the thing I care about more. If you need me to say the teamwork was good, you know, movement, like I'll tell you that stuff too. But I want to harp on what did we not do as well as we could. So we learn from it. Um, and when you're writing a book and you you realize there's some moments that are not going to be glowing, you have a choice of how do you talk about these. I don't avoid them, but at the same time, I'm not gonna like uh if I said something negative about an event,
Isolation Planning And Training For Unknowns
SPEAKER_02I generally didn't use the person's name. Um, because I'm not trying to bring, you know, shame to that person, but it at the same time I can't hide that from the story that hey, that guy made a really bad decision that that was difficult and caused a lot of problems. Um so the feedback I've generally gotten, people are like, hey, that was a really great uh we liked the way you told that story because it was true to life. It wasn't everything's great, everything's bad. Um and and in the middle of it, there's it's there's more about the lessons weaving in than whose fault was this. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's important to highlight without being hypercritical and calling people out. Um because that doesn't do anything to help anybody. Like you this was new for so many people. Like there was there was Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's a really good point.
SPEAKER_02Um so look, again, the story I for a reader, I think it's pretty action-packed. You know, it's it's a pretty thrilling on the edge of your seat kind of story. Um, but I also you know tried to make a point, like, and about probably about half the cases. If somebody did something that wasn't great, like for example, I'm pretty critical of CENCOM's planning. Like CENCOM's planning was not very good. At the same time, I'll acknowledge that, and all of us were new to the concept of planning an invasion. So I think you get a little bit of a pass on that. Um the there's there is some critical talk about, you know, the role of the 173rd in the North, 173rd Airborne Brigade. I make this point all the time. Hey, they're a fantastic brigade. Uh, and I and I'm sure they were a fantastic brigade at that time. But the reality is they were still operating under a risk-averse mindset from the pre-9-11 period. And it was, it made things really difficult. I know they're great soldiers. I'm ha I have absolutely no doubt. But the reality still stands. We didn't get to utilize them in a particularly valuable role. And that was frustrating.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's uh that's another piece that doesn't get talked about much. Um, interoperability, being able to work with other everybody thinks that the pain point and the friction is always going to be with a partner force that's from a foreign country. Or more often than not, the big pain point, the big friction comes working with other army units. It it comes working with our own brothers and sisters in big army. And it I think the problem. Only grew in scale as the years went on.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think that's probably accurate. And um look, hey, at the end of the day, more so then than now, you know, I'm an army guy. And I've I've said that to all of my peers and all my friends and things. Hey, at my center, I'm just like you. I'm in at the center of me, there's an infantry guy in there, too. Um, and I always made that point, particularly as an officer, you know, this is my job to step up and hey, where's the officer? Get up here. You know, speak army to this guy. No, I'm serious. You know, hence the reason back in the day I was trained at Fort Benning. Like my education was, my professional education was at Fort Benning, which was great. And it it would be the equivalent of if a guy was a 3-3, whatever speaker, like, oh, I can speak army, you know, and when we are dealing with a regular army person, that's my that's that's no different than the medic has to deal with that injured guy. It's my chance to build that bridge to the regular guy. Sometimes we're good at it, sometimes we're not. But I can tell you like my mindset and as an instructor was always trying to reinforce, particularly to the younger generation, hey, don't ever lose sight that we are a part of the army. We're not, you know, we're not celebrities that think we're different than them or think we're better than them. We are part of the same franchise. Um, so don't ever let an aura come off you like, hey, we're really super cool. You guys aren't, you know, and just create unnecessary animosity.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You know, I want to, I want to dive into the story a little bit and without giving too much away because uh I want you guys to go to the episode description at the very end and click the buy button. Uh I need you to support my man. But, you know, when it finally came time to get boots on the ground, um, what was that like for you? I mean, this is the like the great thing about this discussion is you're you're one of the guys that were there. You're one of the guys that have done this. Like you, you're for the next generation moving in, when they pick up your book, they're gonna be able to say, like, oh shit, man. Like, you know, I remember reading this in Mark's book, that feeling of the new guy here and this new element.
SPEAKER_02So uh here's my pro tip advice. You know, whatever you get asked to do, because it will happen at some point to some generation in the future, like we're gonna get real complacent, we're gonna atrophy some of our skills, we're not gonna have as many combat vets in the formation, as hard to that maybe to believe. And then one day someone's gonna be like, oh my God, we need to go do these things. Um, when that happens to you, whoever you are, if you're one of these people listening right now, stay cool, act like it's no big deal, even though your brain is like, no, I say that because like the the night that a bunch of things were falling apart and it looked like we were going to Turkey fell out, it looked like we were getting shut out of the north, which was brilliant on Saddam Hussein's part. He turned a two-front war into a one-front war by negotiating with Turkey. Strategically brilliant. So we're trying to figure out how we get back in. Until we can figure it out, the group commander is like, I want to prove that we're still serious. Let's insert the two battalion commanders and the two ops officers tonight. And like, you know, just that moment, you know, when he said that, I remember I was like, okay, stay cool, act like it's nobody. I was like, tonight? Yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah, in an hour? Like as if I got something going on, like, I was gonna work out, but you know, and we ended up going in the next night. Um, and and there was a lot of that that you just had to like let it go, get past it. Like, okay, I'm I just infiltrated into Iraq. I'm inside Iraq, I'm meeting with the guerrilla chief, you know, and like we're all doing these things. And that's one of the things I was saying, you made me think of it before. All the crazy stuff I brought to the teams, it was really cool to see how the teams were like, okay. I was like, well, hey guys, no, I understand. When we go in, there's there's no close air support, there's no Medivac, there's no QRF. And they're like, okay, well, once we're in, though, you know, I just want to make sure you understand. Like, we go in, there's no X phone. And everybody was like, okay. It was really almost like super cool to watch how well the guys adapted to the new reality of we're on our own. That's okay. And and they just and they that's another thing, too. Like the guys, the teams were so innovative. They just kept making they every time if you go to war, something happens. Uh, the the the Department of Defense, Department of War will just start pushing every piece of test equipment to you. And that sounds really cool, but it becomes overwhelming. Like, literally, we were getting pallets of boxes every day and every team room, like, what are we supposed to do with these? We don't know how to use this thing. And like, like Blue Force Tracker is one of my favorite stupid stories. Blue Force Tracker is is, you know, everybody knows what that is now. It was not a thing that we no one had ever used it. So we all get issued these Blue Force trackers, and they're about this big. Uh and of course, in it back then, it takes a battery that like fits nothing else. Um and I I think we issued them. I went away, I came back a half hour later, and literally in the team rooms, guys are disassembling them, and and I see guys soldering things. I'm like, what are you doing? And one of the guys is like, Oh, we just soldered on a cigarette lighter adapter for the vehicle. And you know, and half my brain wants to be like, Are you insane? You just and the other half of me's like, that's actually pretty cool. Um, that was typical, and it was going on everywhere.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, the the innovation that I've seen in Special Forces when it comes to the equipment is uh, I mean, only only second to paratroopers in 82nd. We made some amazing stuff. Uh shout out to the boys for creating the Alabama cooler. Only about five people know what that is, but uh it'll keep you cool throughout the entirety of your rotation. But it's a necessity to innovate, man. Like we we tend to think that it only existed uh with our generation, with our group. It's been part of the military experience for frigging eons. And to be able to capture that in a book, showing in
Turkey Backs Out And D-Day Is Secret
SPEAKER_01in these stories, showing what guys are willing to do to accomplish the mission. That's what's important.
SPEAKER_02Like one of my favorite parts of the story, and it's it's not a specific story, but it's weaved throughout. One of the reasons we were successful is because, you know, we let teams do team stuff. And like we we, myself and the battalion commander who think very similar on this, you know, we have choices to make. You know, oh my God, we're going to combat again when combat was a novelty. And we're like, how do we do this? And we're like, well, let's give the teams real guidance, let's make them do real planning, and then let's let them actually do what we told them to do, decentralized execution, like we've always talked about, you know, for forever. And we that's why I said isolation was so important because um it's another pet peeve of mine, former instructor time, especially. Isolation planning was not a re was not a uh performance. It was not a it was not an audition. It was planning. And like, you know, if you're one of my ODA commanders, you're one of my ODA commanders. I gave you this mission. It's not contingent if I think you're good enough. Like if I didn't think you were good enough, I shouldn't. Why didn't I fire you last month? You know, so we didn't we didn't treat planning like I said, like an audition. We treated it like I really need you to talk to me. If there's something missing, if you're not happy, you don't understand. And we we beat that into the guys, like I am here to enable you. Yes, I am your higher command, but I'm here to enable you. So we got guys start to say, hey, it seems like we didn't get the equipment we needed. We don't know what to do. And a lot of it, again, is my instructor experience. Like I would, I would stop the guys in their briefings and say to them, if you can only do one thing, what's the most important task you need to accomplish on the ground? And we really got guys to understand the commander's intent. And here's the thing we got on the ground, everything started falling apart. Everything was falling apart. The teams were able to launch, and I refer to it in some other videos, like me putting a virus in the enemy's computer. I just launched it. Once I've launched it, it's on its own. The guys all know what to do. Um, and you know, and frankly, like I say this all the time, like Saddam Hussein could have killed me and the battalion commander. It doesn't matter once I got my teams in because they've give they've been given the launch guidance of what to do. And there's 15 of them running amok in, you know, in the Iraqi territory. Um, that's probably the most unique, I don't want to say unique maybe, but important aspect of how we chose to command and control this mission. We really empowered our teams. They don't have to call back and check with me for everything they do. They know what to do. I appreciate it when they can call back and tell me, you know, if they need help, what they've done, but I certainly don't need them to stop and not do something until they've checked with us. And that that made us so powerful and really a nightmare for the Iraqi forces. Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01And so tell me that's that's uh another great place to pivot into, like getting on the ground and getting the teams out and watching them move and operate. What was that like? Uh, because now you're you're part of the first groups of of Green Berets getting actually on the ground. And you know, our reporting criteria in uh the late 2000s probably was not the same reporting criteria. So watching these guys go across to battle fail space and and actually start developing their next mission sets. What was that like?
SPEAKER_02It was even yeah, yeah, it was it was it was brilliant. It was nice, it was nice to see what we had planned and what we had prepared for come to fruition. And like again, I make this point, so many things had gone wrong, but we were able to quickly adapt to every one of them because of the way we interacted. And I stress this point, you know, to leaders all the time. If you hope to do what I just said in combat, you kind of got to do it in garrison. Like, meaning you can't have this magical idea that when it's real, I'm gonna snap my fingers and I'm gonna treat everybody like adults, but I'm not gonna treat them that way in garrison. You have to develop this relationship where they trust you as a commander, you trust them as a subordinate, you give them leeway, you give them decision authority, and they get it wrong sometimes. And when they get it wrong, you don't crush them, you adjust, you you know, unless they continue to get it wrong, which I didn't really see. So for us, when it was time to, oh crap, everything's falling apart, you guys know what to do. I mean, literally, when we infiltrated the teams, which is a super cool story on its own, um, you know, I handed them a piece of a torn piece of paper with my satellite phone number on and said, call me when you can. You know, because I was like, you've got enough to do. I don't need you feeling like you need to check in with me, you know, every 24 hours. If you and there were times where teams did write or send me messages like they would actually write NSTR, nothing significant to report. I know that I know that that doesn't mean there's nothing significant to report. It means I can't talk right now. And I'd look on Blue Force tracker, I'm like, okay, they appear to still be alive. I can check in with my Kurdish counterpart and be like, hey, is the Kurdish unit they're with still okay? And he'll be like, oh yeah, they're still good. So like we gave everybody the flexibility or leeway of, hey, keep me updated, but take care of your mission first. And it just worked brilliantly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, that's one of the things that we we often talk about uh in in in our friends' groups of the deployments of past the the reporting criteria, the amount of friggin' messages and storyboards and approval levels.
SPEAKER_02But like, like, okay, but I'm gonna I'll I'll tell you. Um around 2004, I was back at uh Fort Bragg. I was I guess I was back at the schoolhouse. And that's when like the notion of the con op started to really take hold. Yeah. And uh that we had a problem because like the con op wasn't something in our curriculum in the schoolhouse. And everyone's telling us, well, that's the way they're doing it forward. And I and I was actually one of the guys who like, well, that's not the way I did it forward. And I'm not gonna say that the the current age doesn't require that to some degree, although I'm still actually not completely convinced. But it got out of control over the years, like you know, before before, and we did the I participated in the best I could to combat that at the schoolhouse that hey, just because they're doing it doesn't mean it's the right way to do it. Like uh if you, you know, and this goes back to being an infantry guy. If I give you a sector, that means it's your sector. It has to come with some authority to make decisions. Yes. Um, you know, and and we kind of, I think, still lost some of that. Um I spend a fair amount of time still talking with a lot of the community members, like trying to always re-emphasize that it's hey, if I'm operating in 3rd brigade of the 101st area, I get it. I have to coordinate. It is what it is. But there are times where I am the battle space owner. And and there's no reason I can't carve that down to my ODAs that this is your battle space, you know, and and you have the authority to go on a patrol, you have the authority to go do an operation. If you need things, you should probably coordinate with me the higher to get it for you. But uh, you know, but like if you see an enemy patrol outside your perimeter for like, you can you can pull together a team and go do something right now. You don't have to check with me. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I think that's something that was to put it in in polite terms, it was a a hindrance. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, so to put it in polite lesson terms, we had to go through some learning curves over the years of what does modern command and control look like? And again, just because you did it doesn't mean it's the best way to do it. And I think we're still having that debate now of you know, the the influx of communications equipment over the last 15 years has empowered officers to like get right in, you know, into the lowest guy's stuff. Okay, great. It doesn't mean I should. I still, I as an officer still have responsibility to, I used to, I used my training, I used to be in charge of officer training. And I used to tell those guys, I was like, look, your job is to be a psychic. I'll explain. You know, you don't get the privilege of perfect information, but you have the responsibility to make decisions. So you have to have psychic abilities to say, I think we should go left. And right or wrong, that's your responsibility. And it's it's a it's a dil it's a delinquency if officers or any leaders, I shouldn't just say officers, are going to try to use the excuse of I don't have all the information because subordinates aren't sending it to me. I can't make decisions. Well, then maybe you either empower them to make them or you make them with less than perfect information. Um technology is potentially pushing us in a bad direction, and it's up to us to be aware of that.
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely. I I think that anybody that's been watching the development and TTPs in Ukraine completely understands that we would not be able to operate the same way and have the same reporting criteria as we did in Afghanistan and Iraq at the end of it. Um because, you know, as we advance in technology, so does our our our adversaries. And you know, the signature, the amount of okay.
SPEAKER_02That's you just remind that's that's a great example. Uh signature threshold. You know, the way we operate every day now, it's everybody knows I am there. So
Infiltration Reality With No Safety Net
SPEAKER_02I can do whatever I want. I can send reports all day long. Now the mission tomorrow is for you to go into enemy territory. That's an entirely different scenario. This and and you know, I'm gonna I'm sound like I'm making fun of officers. I kind of am. But um, but this is part of their their you know, their job, their toolkit is to recognize, hey, the TTPs that worked here do not work there. And I remember going through this saying, uh, with with our hire, you know, what do you expect from us? And they said reports or they said push to talk. And I remember looking into Sergeant Major and saying, that's not happening. And he he told me to suck it up. And I was like, no, sir, it's not a matter of suck it up. We don't have the manpower or batteries to man radios 24 hours a day just in case you have a question. And and and by the way, also, the enemy is monitoring the spectrum for unusual communications. So we don't have the luxury to just talk about the thing and why don't you make me some slides? Like, that's not that scenario. It's a different scenario, but it's not this one. And it was really hard to get people to wrap their head out, get away from the 90s mindset of you can do whatever you want to. This is a restrictive environment where you have to hide.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It's not the same. You're not going to be pushing 12 to 15 page con ops.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. And what you're talking about, that's years of counterinsurgency. We're we're operating with the government. We're operating in the open. We are not the insurgents. It's it's different sets of TTPs that professionally we generally generally do kind of know this, but everybody has a responsibility to understand how to operate in both of those environments because it's not the same.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You know, coming through that experience on the backside, you know. What was your initial idea or concept for what the war would look like versus what it turned out to be? I I would imagine that in the early years, there might have been that mindset of like, okay, we're we're going to be on the ground here in max two, three years, and uh we'll we'll hand it over to somebody else.
SPEAKER_02Um that's yeah, that's pretty close. I don't remember how we never talked about exactly like that. Um we we personally thought as the first wave going in, honestly, most of us expected to be on the ground like a year. Like I say it that way is we that's an important point. We didn't, it's not a deployment. You know, it's not January to July. Um we didn't know how long we're gone. So we mentally all just expected probably about a year. We were about three months in, and it was going, you know, from my perspective, surprisingly well for us. And then some decisions started to get made that we thought were really odd. And, you know, obviously, it, you know, people aren't real excited about talking about the Iraq war because it's somewhat unpopular at times, parts of it. It's great history, but it's not super popular. Um a lot of those decisions that were made completely changed the trajectory of the war. And I'm not trying to be like this pro-war guy to be like, it would have been easy. I'm not saying that at all, but it could have gone drastically different if we had not deliberately made a couple of very, very bad choices. Um you know, and and it could have it could have wrapped things up with a different outcome in a couple of years.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It's um it's crazy to think how long we were in Iraq and in Afghanistan in the fall of each. Um, I mean, we're still we stopped troops in Iraq. We uh that completely removed, but to be able to go back in time to that younger version of yourself, uh, to give any sort of inside baseball, is there anything that you would say or any any sort of like like advice or wisdom you would share with that young leader before he goes and embarks on this journey?
SPEAKER_02Um for the younger, the major uh yeah, actually I'd be like, hey, don't pack your, don't pack your coal weather girl, you're not gonna need it. Uh and the reason I the reason I say that is because in typical fashion, like we pack, you know, like you know what I'm talking about. We pack like an A bag, a B bag, and a C bag. And I swear to God, and and you know, we don't know what year time of the year we're gonna deploy. So we deployed when we did, and now in May, I'm getting my C bag that's literally filled with my thermal, my thermal underwear, my winter whites, uh, you know, my big cold weather boots. And like I'm I'm also, by the way, also getting the same notice. Hey, you're going back, you're going home next week. So I'm like, I got to take this back back with me. That's kind of my facetious comment. But it's, you know, know your job, focus on what you have to do in combat. And also don't gauge what you think will happen based on what you see today. Because again, uh what we saw on September 10th was very different than what we saw on September 11th. And there were plenty of people who would have said we would never do X, Y, and Z. Well, you're still supposed to be prepared to do X, Y, and Z because the world does change. Um I also remember that a lot of guys who didn't get to go on the invasion uh were really freaked out because they're like, oh man, I just missed my chance for war. Yeah, that didn't pan out. That that didn't pan out like they thought. Um but but it it but it speaks to that point again is hey, don't don't you might think you know what the future holds, but it may not. So so prepare a little bit more for the unknown. Um you know, and just make sure you know how to do what your job is supposed to be. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, you you make it through that, you you probably and like many, many guys I've talked to over the years, the gravity of the situation probably wasn't there at the very beginning, like, okay, but just another mission. As you went on through your career and you watched the war evolve and the regiment change and shift in its response to the needs of the nation, did it ever finally set in like, holy cow, like I was I was part of the very beginning of this. Like I like I have a I have a piece of history forever that I can say I can pinpoint, like this is mine.
SPEAKER_02Um, yeah. It you know, the gravity was with us going in, what we were doing, like we all were like stunned at what we were doing. And again, I say that on one hand you had that, but on the other hand, you had to compartmentalize it and act like it was no big deal. And the guys were really, really good at that. But as we moved on to the second, third, fourth, fifth, set, you know, continuous coin rotations, particularly for me as an officer, because it did kind of suck, and this is a weird thing to say, it's harder for me to go back on rotation. Like as an officer, I get phased out. And and there's a bit of call it what you want, survivor's guilt or whatnot, that the guys are there, they're going again, and you're going on to some other assignment. And it's really, really frustrating. I fought really hard to go back on my second assignment. Um, like I had to really petition to rejoin the Siegesotave. Um But it's also weird as we changed uniforms. Like if you really want a a mark on the wall that will make you feel like something is significant, when the army decides to get rid of the uniform you wore in that combat tour and we go to another uniform. And then, you know, and literally as I'm retiring, I'm wearing the third set of fatigues that we've cycled through. You know, it feels like, man, have we been at this for like 50 years?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, like the first time I came back and had to put
Decentralized Execution Versus C2 Creep
SPEAKER_02on ACUs was really weird. Uh I hated the ACUs, but as did everybody else. I always did. But but I was I was in a civ I was in a I was in a job that wore a suit when the ACU transition happened, so I had never worn them. So I come back to group, I come back to group uh to go to Iraq and I get issued ACUs, and it felt like it didn't feel like a uniform, it felt like a costume. Um so that was like super weird. And I this is a maybe a weird way to joke about it, but I always kind of said, I feel like a guy that fought in Bataan, and now I'm participating in the D-Day invasion, and I'm talking about how we used to wear spats on our ankles. We used to have big smoky the bear hats. You know, the machine gun used to have a big water-cooled cylinder on it, and they're all like, Yeah, thanks, old timer. Um, that's the way it felt.
SPEAKER_01Back in my day. Yeah. I mean, that's the way it felt like that.
SPEAKER_02Back back before we had these ACUs, we were wearing BD hues, or you know, and then someone goes, Oh, the chocolate chips. Those are the old desert fatigues. Um But like there were those milestones that made it evident how long we've been at this, and you did feel more and more removed. It was just weird. And frankly, I retired in active duty on in 2012. Iraq had wrapped up. Um, I did a tour in Afghanistan, and Afghanistan was obviously like a kind of pivoting it to something else. And again, it was hard to walk away from it knowing it's not over, it's not done. My friends are still going back. That was really hard.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's crazy. Um, you know, thinking back to my career, and and you know, I was one of the last rotations in Iraq with 82nd. Um, because it was all supposed to be wrapped up. It's you know, the the the conflict is over, and it's like, man, like I was a kid when this took off. Now I'm one of the last few rotations. Later on in my career, find myself, you know, worthy enough to rent that Green Beret and Long Tab for a little bit. Uh then I'm a warrant officer in Afghanistan at the end, and I knew it. I knew it. Like it's and I talked to my friends, my my the the guys I was on that last ODA, and I we we all sensed it. I'm like, I don't think we're gonna get another one. I certainly think that this is gonna be a shift. Like the writing was on the wall. I remember, I vividly remember the last X-Fill. I still remember that last ex-fil and that last mission saying to myself, like, I think this is it. I think this is the last combat trip. Like, definitely, definitely feel like nobody else. And sure as shit, that next rotation of guys that replaced us, COVID hit, they didn't do nothing.
SPEAKER_02And then something that's really, really weird, and I don't think I've ever said this on a on a podcast before, but like for people who are listening and you're like, wow, that guy sounds like he did some really cool stuff. That guy sounds like he did some really cool stuff too. Okay, let me tell you something about that. If you've done some cool operational stuff, at least in my case, it doesn't make you sit back and like, well, I did something cool. If I hear another guy's story, I'm, you know, I feel like the more you've done, the more you want to do. You know, and if somebody's if somebody if somebody's telling me a story about like this cool raid they did in Afghanistan, I'm like, oh man, I wish I was on that. That sounds I wish I was a part of that. I don't be like, well, I did something cool too. It's not like that at all. It's really weird.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, it's just it's weird to to finally look at it all from the very beginning, from from a guy like yourself, like the very beginning of Iraq and all the way down, and and to think of every single other green beret that came during that time frame that had a piece of that puzzle, that had a piece of that that country, and it's just like, holy cow, man.
SPEAKER_02Oh, well, and so let me say this too, for any listeners you know don't know the whole story. At the end of the book, there's an epilogue where I talk about going back to Iraq because I felt it was important to give a snapshot of the coin years. And and for anybody who doesn't know this, because very little is written about this, what the special forces guys did in Iraq was I'm talking in the coin years, was unbelievable. And it does not get the attention or credit it deserves. Um what I said before about innovation is nothing compared to how well they served to innovate during the coin years, and the partners, the partners they created in the Iraqis were epic. They were amazing. Um, the uh what was called the ICTF, the Iraqi Counterterrorist Force, which had multiple components of the ICTF and the commandos, those dudes, you know, and people will criticize, like, you shouldn't make guys in your own image unless you want to. And like those dudes were clones of us. Like we all joked about it, that they all dressed like us, you know, they were all wearing their baseball hats. Like they they started to mimic our cultural gestures.
SPEAKER_01They did.
SPEAKER_02They did. And and we made them into us. And it worked for for what we needed at that time, it was brilliant. Like they're a fantastic force. And as we left Iraq and we weren't super happy about the con, you know, that we we didn't really like the way we left. The ICTF and the commandos, in my opinion, are largely the thing that held the country together under the strain of ISIS a couple years later. Yep. Yes.
SPEAKER_01And that's a really, really cool story. And they were all over social media. They were all over social media and they looked exactly like us. They were fighting, and even down to the the the cultural, like it was there wasn't any U.S. forces there with them. That the things that they were posting, the way that they were took it to the enemy. It was just like, I was like, is that third group team in Iraq? Like, who are these dudes? Like, no, these are actual Iraqi software.
SPEAKER_02I told a story in the book. Um, there was an event where we had done some operations and the enemy tried to capitalize it and said, this is the 82nd Airborne. And it was like, it fell right into our hands that we're like, no, it was not. It was your counterterrorist forces. And we, you know, in the propaganda fight, the enemy put that out. We put our information out, and we really harked on. No, these were not foreign occupiers of the 82nd Airborne. These were Iraqis. And it took off like wildfire. Like it created a degree of um pride among the Iraqi population. And then we started to say, hey, did you notice who's wearing masks now? We're not wearing masks. The enemy is wearing masks. And it was, it it was somewhat of a turning point. And I'm talking about 2008. Um, it really put the enemy in Iraq on the defensive.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, Mark, I um I can't thank you enough for being here, man. But I before I go, I I need to dive into the transition piece a little bit because, you know, we often focus on the enlisted. I've done a lot of work to talk about our senior leaders, need just as much resources and talking to. And often enough, more more often than not, they're the ones that need it the most because it gets lonelier the higher you go. Like in your career at the very end, having witnessed and gone through so much, and did you find sort of healing or at least a uh cathardis in in sitting down and putting pen to paper and writing this out?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, completely. Um yeah, absolutely. Because it one, it was a it was a labor of love and it was a hard process, but it's something one I I I actually did feel, and I still say it this way, I felt it was a responsibility I had as the operations officer. Like it was, I joked, it was my last official act as the S3. Like I know it took me 20 years,
Long War Lessons And Writing For Healing
SPEAKER_02sorry. Um, but I I literally still did feel it was a responsibility to tell the story correctly on behalf of the guys who conducted it. And then second part was to share the lessons with the community. But to write it, I probably interviewed about 25 different guys. And, you know, this is a really cool thing to say. Like, I I haven't talked to this guy in 20 years, got in contact with him. It's like we were talking yesterday. You know, like that connection is immediately there. Um, and and it was really super cool for me to connect with all of these guys that I haven't talked to in probably, you know, 10 or 15, 20 years. And it felt like we're right back there, like it was yesterday. And I'm still talking with a lot of those guys more now, which is actually really cool for all of us to share these stories. Um, and a lot of the guys have come back to me um, you know, and said this means a lot to them because nobody knew this story. Uh, I mean, like one of the guys in the book, you know, if you interview somebody for a book, it's it's kind of a polite thing to do, just give them a copy of it when it's done. So, you know, I'm gonna mail out like 25 copies of the book to all the guys that helped me out with the interviews. And one guy was in a hotel in town here, um, and I met him in the lobby, and you know, we hugged and we both started tearing up, and he goes, now my grandkids can finally understand what I did. Um, and that's you know, that was that was cathartic for him, it was cathartic for me. So, yeah, and that's when I talk about, I go, we're right at a point now we can start talking about these things without bad emotions coming into it. And that's that's an important as a so for any any veterans who have stories, I really stress try to find a venue to at least convey that story, whether it's writing, podcasts, or some other venue, it's totally appropriate and useful for the community.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. That exactly the type of answer I was hoping you'd provide us because uh I think that for a lot of guys, they don't understand that inside every Green Beret or heck, and any service member, there's a storyteller.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, you've told stories around the company area to make people laugh. You've joked with your friends and told tall tales of deployments past. There's a storyteller in you. Your story deserves to be heard. I don't want the GWAT generation to be silent. Look, you can be a storyteller and not be a grifter. You can be a storyteller and not be telling tales larger than life that of things that didn't happen. Tell your authentic GWAD story. If it was a story of just driving in the desert uh with friends and avoiding IEDs, that's a story in and of itself. I'd love to hear it. And I think a lot of Americans want to hear it. And I'll I'll I'll say this: if we want our nation to be smarter about the conflicts it gets itself in, we owe it to ourselves and the civilian populace that don't serve, that have any understanding of what it means to serve, to at least hear our stories. So please, if you're listening and you have a story to tell, get out there, write it. Have ChatGPT help you with the outline or reach out. A great resource is Scott Mann. I I love plugging him and rooftop leadership and what they're doing. So please give it a give it a thought. Sit down with it. Mark, thank you for taking the time to sit down with us today. And more importantly, thank you for writing this book because our regiment needs more individuals like you that are willing to share the truth and the stories of the guys we served with. Because it's not about us, it's about the giants we worked with. There are some iconic green berets that people don't know anything about, and dang it, they deserve to be told. Those stories deserve to be told about them. And uh, I'm glad that you're out there doing it. And to everybody listening, please do me a favor, you know the spiel, the episode's over. Go to the episode description, click those links, buy a copy, support the book. It's a little thing that will go a long way into preserving our GWAT history. Uh, Bark, before I let you go, where can people connect with you? Where can they find out more about this incredible book?
SPEAKER_02No, thanks for asking that. Um, it's available on Amazon and Barnes Noble. It's also, you can you can go to the book's homepage, which is uh those who face death.com all crushed into one word or Mark Gurdovich, all crushed into one word. That'll take you to the book's homepage, and there's all sorts of links uh and podcast links on there as well. And it's also available on Audible and Kindle.
SPEAKER_01Heck yeah. There you go, folks. Do me a favor, like I said, click those links, support Mark, but more importantly, help share this so other people don't forget what it was really like at the very beginning, because a lot of people don't understand that it wasn't this well-oiled machine at the very beginning. It was a lot of grit, a lot of determination, and a lot of uh know-how that went into it. And uh the guys that paved the way for us, uh, we're eternally grateful for them, man. Thank you, Mark, for what you did. And uh again, thank you for putting that pen to paper because uh if we don't do it, we're gonna forget about it. Guys, thank you for tuning in, and we'll see y'all next time. Till then, take care.
