My next guest is somebody that I have been wanting to interview since I started this podcast about three and a half years ago, and it's finally happening. This guy has got a massive footprint in the veteran space. He's a former army ranger, a YouTuber now with millions of subscribers, and who knows how many views. But look, this guy is putting out really good word. He cares a lot about the country. I even got him to dive into his background, which was like pulling teeth. You know what I'm talking about. But ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, it is my honor to present to you, Mr. John Lovell, to the Sean Ryan Show. Please like and subscribe, comment to the YouTube channel. Head over to Spotify and Apple Podcast. Leave us a review. And those of you that have been watching for a while, you know there is a ton of raw, cut up reels for you to download for free. Download those, put them on your channel, monetize them, make money. Patrick, we love you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mr. John Lovell to the Sean Ryan Show. Love you all. Cheers. John Lovell, welcome to the show, man.

Thanks for having me, man. Good to be here.

This has been a very long time coming. We were going to collab back in the back severalcouple of years ago when I was doing tactics and you were a lot heavier into tactics, I believe. I don't know why that fell off, but you're here now, and I have been really excited to finally meet you in person, man. I love the content you pumpout. I love the, excuse me for saying this, but I love the turn that you made at the right point in time talking about some of the issues in the country and getting loud about things. I don't think there's enough people doing that these days, and you're one of the few.

Well, it seems like we made the same turn around the same time. We talked about that last night at dinner, too, and it's like, I was happy doing my gun-tastic, gun-fu thing in the world of tactics. But man, the world's just really careening towards some disastrous things. I just felt this inner compulsion of like, I can't just make mine and do my merry thing. I think that's the thing when so many crises are happening around me. I've got a platform to steward, and I want to do it well, and I want to be a change agent for good. I just couldn't stop by and watch every value I had and everything I loved be destroyed. We made that change seemingly to me at the same time, right?

Yes, we did almost the exact same time. I feel like it is a responsibility that if you have a platform that's big enough to actually make an impact and hopefully lift the veil on some people, that it's your responsibility to do that. I take it extremely seriously. I know you do, too. I've watched a lot of your stuff where you're interviewing different people. I saw one where you were at a golf course. This was several years ago, I believe it was a golf course. I think you were interviewing congressmen. It's just good stuff. It's things that people need to hear, and it's stuff that you don't hear on the mainstream. It's just another perspective that is an important one. It's good to have you here, John. We got a lot to talk about. Let's do it, man. But let me give you a quick introduction here. John Leville, Christian, missionary, army ranger from second battalion, five combat tours and four in Afghanistan, one in Iraq, husband, married for 17 years.

We're in our 17th, yeah.

Father of two boys, author of the Warrior Poet Society, firearms Trainer, Speaker, Founder of the Warrior Poet Society, and YouTuber.

Yeah, and I'm pretty into dad jokes. That's the big bio bullet point from me. Dad joke connoisseur. I really love dad jokes.

You got one-off the top of your head. Is it your favorite?

Favorite? Man. Why? I just did the leader. Now I can't stall out. I put you on the spot. Do you know why you don't see elephants hiding in trees? No. It's because they're so good at it. Nice. Because the dumber it is, the more I enjoy it. Nice.

But I am really excited to dig into your backstory. I wasn't messing around. We just did a little Instagram story, but I was saying that you are one of the number one. You are one of the top requested interviews that we get. A lot of people want to know your backstory. I know it's like pulling teeth trying to get it out of you, but I will do it. But I just want to tell you, man, I'm really excited about this. Then on the back end, I'd love to discuss some current events. Yeah, love to. But just getting into it, a little warm up here. I like talking to folks similar to yourself about school shootings and the Second Amendment and how do we fix this problem. The politicians just bat the Second Amendment back and forth time and time again. Nothing really happens. Nobody's really pumping money into the school safety. And what do you think the solution here is? We see red flag laws on the left. We see the right doesn't want to do... Doesn't want to bend on that. And how do we fix this?

I think the moment we start protecting our kids the same way that we protect our congress people and our politicians, all the school shootings are just going to disappear immediately. Even the lefty anti-gun politicians are protected by people with guns, which is extremely hypocritical. We should pause on that. But they're protected by people with guns, and yet our kids are protected with signs. That's it, really. This isn't a serious solution, and they know it. I think the moment you take it seriously of like, No, let's protect our kids with people with guns, just like our politicians are, and the moment you do that, it's just going to disappear. The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. That's it. That's the way to do it.

Yeah. How exactly would you do't do it? I mean, the politicians aren't going to do it. They're not going to release the funding. Some things that I've noticed are there are actually some grants available. One thing that I think that would help is there's all these companies popping up, and some of them actually have pretty cool products. I know there's one company, I think it's Fox Two, sir. They have the bulletproof whiteboard that you can lock it down in front of a door. There's the new, actually, it's not new. We were using this a long time ago in various combat zones, the film that you put over the windows. But there are actually grants for these things. And I think if the companies that are selling these things actually educated themselves on the grants and had a team to go into these schools and private schools and daycares and preschools and anything where there's kids and not only educated the business entity on the actual product that they're selling, but also educated them on the grants, we would see a lot more school security coming into play. Yeah, that's right. And another thing that I see is all these parents, they don't want to teach their kids anything.

They want the quick fix. And it's, Hey, let's get a $15 an hour security guard in here because anybody that gets paid $15 an hour is going to want to put their life on the line for your kid, right? Right. Right. Right. So do you want to expound on that at all, any of that stuff?

It's pretty straightforward to me of like, Hey, if you want to fund it, just take a little fraction of what we're spending on weird gender study ideology or drag shows, whatever craziness is going on, and you just pay a cop overtime to be able to come and just park your car outside, park your cop car outside the building and hang out. Guess what? Bad guys are going to find a different school. It's just that simple. Now we can do locks and security windows and all that stuff, and that's all of it. That's icing on the cake. But you put a cop car outside with an armed cop inside and they're going to find a different place.

Yeah, I'm with you.

That's it. It's that simple.

I'm with you. But, well, hey, everybody gets a gift before the show actually starts. Here you go.

Awesome.

So we take, I don't know how many of these you've listened to, maybe haven't listened to any, but we take mental health extremely seriously here. And I want to get into some mental health stuff with you, especially with your transition back into civilian life. But part of keeping your mental health... Part of keeping your mental health up is keeping your brain sharp and giving it the proper fuel. And so put some stuff in there for you from Laird's Superfoods.

Awesome. I open now?

Open it up.

All right. I'm looking for one thing in particular.

Well, those are the gummy bears. I know that's the only reason you came.

It is. Now that I've got them, thanks for having me on, man. I'm going to punch out now. You're out. This has been real, and it's been a ride. Thanks, man. All right.

But that is all stuff to promote brain health. So that's performance mushrooms, functional mushrooms have a lot of benefits for your brain. Basically, it regenerates your brain. You can dump that into... There's some functional mushroom coffee in there and some functional mushroom with adaptogen creamer. So if you like the sweet stuff, you want to put the creamer in there. But super good for your brain, clean ingredients, the performance mushrooms, all the ingredients are from the US. We try to source all the ingredients from the US, but main focus is the best and cleanest ingredients, and so that's what's.

In there. Awesome. Cool, man.

But cool.

Cool, man.

All right, enough of the gifts. Let's move on. Let's get.

Into it. How tacky is it to eat my gummy bears while you talk?

Hit them up. There's only been one other.

Person.

That's done that. Who was it? It was Vivek, Ramaswami. Right after his first one, I said, Don't worry, you'll feel that kick in in about 30 minutes, and I think you're. He thought they were cannabis gummies, but it's just candy. Got it. Well, John, the way I want to structure the interview is let's dive into... We're going to go through childhood, military career, business career, and then we'll get into some current event stuff and some stuff that we think is some of the biggest issues that are going on in the country today and address them and hopefully come up with some solutions on how to solve that stuff. So where did you grow up?

I grew up in Georgia, the suburbs of Atlanta, so neighborhoods. We had a lot of woods around us. I had a real happy childhood being able to just disappear into the woods for the entire day. You come in for a tick-check at the end, hope you don't hit a poison Ivy bush. You make forks and swimming in the lake. So wild and free.

Brothers and sisters?

Two sisters. We had some neighbors as well, and we're sequestered out in our own little private neighborhood. But a lot of alone time, a lot of playing with neighborhood kids, but really in the woods doing stuff.

Close with your parents?

Kind of hit and miss, but yeah, pretty much. I've definitely got a relationship with them. Yeah.

What did your dad do growing up?

A businessman. He was really good as a life coach, and so really preparing me for he wanted to grow you up, get you tough, get you focused, get you disciplined. And so those were the elements my dad really focused on. Mom, great nurture. She's shuttling us to soccer practices and to and from school and just doing anything she can to be there.

What stuff? We're into sports, anything like that?

Yeah, soccer. We're talking just when I'm a little guy, right?

Anytime.

Okay, I got hard cornered wrestling in high school years, but before that it was soccer and just playing in the woods stuff or go-karts or... You had go-karts.

Were you... Did your parents butch you in racing?

No, I just had one year I got the sweetest Christmas present ever, like this go-kart with big doughnut tires on the back. That was a great gift.

That's awesome. That's one thing we want to try to get our kid into, is go-kart rate. You can start them at age five. Really? I'm really excited.

About this. You could, but should you start them at age five? Yes, absolutely. You won me over. You won me over. I agree then.

Now, we took him to a track and he loved it. I can't wait till he was five. They put him in the racing suit, the helmet, and it's pretty neat. That's cute. Were you a troublemaker? A lot of guys that go into special operations were troublemakers when they were little.

Yeah, I was into trouble, but it's like a little bit more innocent, a little bit more harmless, benign. Now, as a teenager, I'll start getting into real trouble. Really? Yeah, I was a bad kid. I was definitely a troublemaker. But I played a smart enough game that my parents weren't really aware of it for quite a while.

Of bad kids. What were you doing?

I mean, chasing girls, drugs, nothing too hardcore, but vandalism and sneaking out, got arrested a couple of times.

What did you get.

Arrested for? Vandalism. Stupid. What were you vandalizing? This is all gone because it was teenage years. I was pre-18 and I didn't get cuffed or anything, but it was there. They just released you to your parents immediately. I'm just sneaking out and just ripping down stop signs and breaking into houses under construction and tearing stuff up and just being crazy kids wandering around, heisgites, and so stupid.

Well, last night I believe you had mentioned some type of a traumatic experience that happened maybe when you were 19?

Yeah, that was a pretty big pivotal point for me. Leading up to that, at 15, I got busted, just into some stuff that my dad particularly was real hard on mom was too, but dad was ready to take action and they punched me out to a boarding school. I got sent away at 15. Oh, really? Yeah. I was gone at 15. I guess the idea is, Well, a boarding school will.

Fix him. What was the issue of 15? What was the final straw?

My dad particularly looked at all the kids around. It's like, This is the biggest bunch of losers going nowhere I've ever seen. He wanted something. He saw, Hey, this is a way to fix it. He sent me to this boarding school. It was a real prestigious one, and so it was really good. I hated it. I didn't want to be there. I set records at that school for how much I got in trouble. I was in-house suspension every week. I was in trouble all the time.

No kidding. Yeah, man. What were you getting in trouble for?

Stupid stuff. A lot of skipping class. I just didn't want to go to class.

What do you do if he skips class in a boarding school?

You would have in-house suspension. They had it arranged where you would have three hours of mandatory study to haul on Friday night. Basically, you're in this cubicle, head down working. There's a mod in the center of the room so you can see everything. If you're looking around, you get in trouble, and you just got to read or do homework. Then Saturday morning, you have another one. Then Saturday afternoon, you have another three-hour stint. Then I think Sunday after church, which you're required to go to as well. They really fill up your whole weekend with that. And then guess what? If you really don't want to go to suspension, you just skip that, and then you get double suspension. Man, I got into some trouble.

What would you do when you skip? Where do you go in a boarding school?

Well, I had a car. Oh, okay. I'd get in my vehicle and I'd punch out and go do whatever. Anyway, yeah, I was... Yeah.

Do you live at the school?

Yeah, you had alarms on the doors so you couldn't get out at night. You had IRAs, and then you had adults that lived at the ends of the halls to check in and make sure you weren't doing anything too stupid. But even then, I wasn't all bad. I wasn't like, Devilhorns. Horrible. Kid. I was really just after having a really good time. I didn't care about school, and I didn't really get along with most of the people at school. I had a small circle of friends, and we were all devoted to let's have the best time possible, and that's what we were really after. I was a bit wild.

Did that bring a lot of resentment towards your parents that you were in a boarding school?

I recognized that I was really at fault, and I think my parents felt like they were doing the best thing they could. I'm close to my parents now of like, I love my mom and dad, and so I'll water under the bridge. They were certainly cost them a lot to send me there. As part of my journey, I certainly didn't want to go there. I hated it. There were some elements I really liked, but generally speaking, I was there because I was forced to be.

Did you grow up with parents that had strong faith? I know you have extremely strong faith now, and you're pretty open about it. Did that develop later on in life or was that from childhood?

My parents were on their own journey as I was growing up. Sometimes we'd go to an episcopal church, and then we'd be like, a Methodist church, and then we'd switch and be a Baptist church, and then a non-denominational church, and then back off a little bit. We just shuttle around and I felt like we were all of it, and so we were none of it. I did have some pieces of my background that were definitely of like, Under the shadow of the steeple, but none of that really stuck. I played the game some, but that wasn't important to me. Especially when I moved out at 15, I was just done with all the religious stuff. I didn't really care. My parents wanted to raise me more in a faith. I would catch my dad reading a Bible every once in a while, mom in it more, but any way of... And we'd pray before meals, and they want to hold you to those values. But none of that was really taken very seriously for me. It's checked the block nominal Christianity, and I punched out at 15 for sure.

Yeah. What happened at 19?

I ended up going into college. I majored in fraternity. I just went wild. That means I'm like, I don't have a major. I just went nuts. I'm the kid that's drunk on a Tuesday morning. You're like, Why? I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't remember a whole lot of that year of college. But somewhere in that year, I'm just like, I don't really want to be here. I want to do something else. However the thought came across my brain, and for a whole bunch of reasons that seemed really important at the time, but in retrospect, if it's hard to even name them, like patriotism or do something high-speed army, blah, blah, blah. I wanted to go special operations. I had pushed myself really hard in wrestling in high school, where I'm living it up and being after party and whatever. I'm also a wrestler, and I'm a good wrestler. I'm the school's wrestler, especially at boarding school. So I'm setting records and I'm known for wrestling. I'm very good. Really? I was good. I was good. So I knew about pushing myself, and I knew I can push myself to death.

I can push myself far past where everyone will give up. I realized I had heart and I could just endure horrible misery and then suck. Especially my sophomore year, I was weighing about 120 by the end of my sophomore year, and I wrestled 103. So I was cutting 17 pounds a week. By the end of it, I hurt bad. Worst I did was eight pounds in a day, and that was murder. That was awful. And the discipline and the drive it took just to cut weight, much less to go out as this just feeling crappy, emaciated wrestler, and going out and fighting that way for six minutes. It was tough. It was tough. But that's what I really cared about, wrestling. And it was on the back of that, I guess I wanted some challenge. I wanted some fight. I wanted some drive. Whereas in wrestling, I could party it up, and I had something for my masculine spirit to contend with. When I got to college, it was like I was just floating. I was just adrift, having a good time, but I don't have a mission. And so special operations, just I'm going to go do that.

Well, how did that even.

Come on your radar? I do not know. I do not know.

You didn't grow up infatuated with military, watching the movies, old Vietnam stuff, none of that. It just hit you.

Just hit me. I thought I could do it, and I decided I wanted to do it. And then that became the mission. That became what I wanted to do. And so I dropped out of school and I informed my parents and everyone else that I'm going to go into the military and I'm going to do something special operations-y. And then I started training myself for it. I was initially going to go Navy Seal. Really? Yeah, you had all the good PR. You had all the movies, all the books. And I thought I had the hair for it.

You do have the hair for it, John.

Yeah, I would have. I could have. And so I started doing cold water training. I was torturing myself of just ice cold, everything, and holding my breath underwater and doing laps all the time and running and doing all this stuff. In training myself for this, I grew to hate cold water so much. I'm like, Can I do the same stuff without all the cold water? I discovered what an army ranger was, and I'm like, Oh, yeah. All the seal with none of the water. I jumped tracks. Now, the irony is I made it through all the Ranger stuff, made it to Ranger battalion and went hypothermic my first week in from cold water. Really? That's the funny joke in it all. I didn't escape the cold water after all.

What year is this that you're gaining interest in the military in special operations?

Two thousand.

Two thousand, so right before 9/11. Were you in before 9/11?

I was in jump school or I was in Airborne Hold. I was about to go in Airborne school when the towers fell. Interesting. We weren't at war. But once I got through your basic AIT, your Airborne school, which was a joke, and then RIP, which wasn't a joke, Ranger Indoxination Program. Now it's called RASP, Ranger Assessment Selection Program. By the way, the worst departure from the coolest acronym, RIP, that's aThat's a cool acronym, bro. An army went RASP, which is a sucky one. I went through RIP. That was not funny. Basic training, AIT, that wasn't very hard for me. I mean, it was challenging. I had some hard elements, but by and large, I thought a lot of it was funny. I got the game and I could play it. It didn't really bother me much. I'd done hard work to train, and so I'm annihilating PT tests. Because my wrestling background, I choked out a drill sergeant when we did combative stay. That was a fun thing. I'm just excelling throughout those things. I got through rip and stuff. Let's rewind a little bit. And rip wasn't fun at all.

Let's rewind just a little bit. How many years of college did you do?

I did one. One year of college? Yeah, one year of college. I think I did a summer school in there. But yeah, later I'd go back after I got out of the military and complete a degree and do all that.

Where I'm going is what did your parents think when you told them, Hey, I'm done with this. I'm done with school. I'm going to join.

The military. Nobody who was close to me was really a fan of this. Yeah, nobody seemed to be a big fan of this. When my parents saw that I could not be dissuaded, my dad would be, I think, one of the first to warm up toward it. But I don't recall him being really on board. We did make a bet that if I made it, he'd buy me a motorcycle. I still got that Harley Davidson, and I'm wanting to bet on my dad. Yeah, really.

That's awesome. What Harley?

It's a Sportster, 1,200, and it's all custom-out and chrome. Anyway, it's pretty cool to ride it. You still ride it? No, I don't. Not much. A couple of times a year just to take it out. But me and my dad, later, much later, we'd do a cross country motorcycle trip, the two of us, riding side by side in the same lanes. I think we had 15 different states. That was pretty cool. Kind of closed the loop on that, but jumping way ahead.

Your parents aren't for you going in the military. You get in, you go to boot camp. What was your impression?

Not too hard. None of that was extremely difficult. Drill sergeants are yelling at you, and you're doing pushups and you're a bunch of wide-eyed privacy. It wasn't particularly scary for me and it wasn't particularly difficult. I'd moved out of the house a long time before and I'd done hard things, and I thought a lot of it was very funny, which caused me to do a lot of pushups. Drill sergeant gets up in your face and he's trying to intimidate you, and I'd just try not to smile. Then I'd smile. After a while, I got dropped for pushups so much more than everyone else because I just couldn't help smile. As soon as it would start, I'd just drop myself and do pushups. I got really good at push-ups. But that wasn't hard. What was ridiculously hard would be the big U-turn that happened in my life, that traumatic experience that you had alluded to. This was before Basic. Right as I'm transferring from civilian life to military life, you're going to like this holding cell, 30th Objectant battalion, 30th AG. There's where you're staying in line to get your dog tags and haircuts, and you're getting your BDUs and duffel bags, and you're getting shots and whatnot, it's a pretty chill, calm time.

You're just standing around waiting in line all day. That's it. There, which would be most people's easiest time in the military, was my hardest. The reason why is I had been, I think, through just a divine reckoning, God would change my life in that moment. It happened around May 22nd of 2001. It's one of the most important dates in my life because everything that was John Lovell died and I was completely remade in a way that is inexplicable and impossible to define the massive departure of I was one way and legit, I became completely different in the course of a couple of days. What happened was, as I had this dramatic conversion to Christian faith, it felt awful. It felt like I was being unmade. It felt like my heart was being broken and destroyed. Then through that, Jesus would... I felt like, not in this divine voice, but I just knew in my knower that Jesus had called me to give him my life. It wasn't as much a question of would I? It was more of a directive, You will, and I did. He crushed me and remade me. Somewhere through all that, I was converted to Christianity.

It felt like death and birth at the same time. I realized how mystical and unsatisfying that would sound for a lot of folks, but I don't really understand what happened to me. I wasn't in church. I wasn't talking to a pastor. I wasn't reading a Bible. I didn't feel like this big void in my life. There certainly was one. I wasn't after God at all. It's like he found me on the road and accosted me. That's what it felt like.

Can you be a little more descriptive? What were you doing at the exact moment when you got that first feeling?

It was a picture, a water pot or a kettle warming up, and then it comes to a head of like, That water is warming, warming, warming, warming. That's happening over the course of a few days. I didn't let anyone know what was going on with me. But what it felt like is if you've ever had your heart broken, it felt like my heart was being broken. Then if you've ever had a tragedy before you, something awful that just destroyed your heart, it felt like that too. The problem is I had no tragedy and I had no heartbreak, but those were the feelings. Through it all, what was happening is I was receiving a miraculous conversion to Christianity, where God was giving me a new heart. This is the only way I can describe it. And so once given that new heart, I was deeply sorry for all the horrible things I'd done throughout my life. I was repenting. I was confessing sin. I had offended God. I had not lived to Him. Through that, He remade me, and I was converted to begin not only not resisting Jesus anymore, but I love Jesus. That made every difference.

I was truly converted. I became a different man. I don't know how else to describe it.

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I remember I was going to call someone on the phone. Maybe it was my girlfriend or maybe it was my family. But I found myself I couldn't even call them because I felt like the inside was so tumultuous, I would have just broke down and cried. I remember not making that call, and I just broke. I remember praying, and I don't remember what was in that prayer, but I had realized that I had just become a Christian. I was already loaded with enough gospel facts from my upbringing. I'm like, Jesus loves you and you sin and you should confess your sin. All the things, the gospel facts. You're a sinner separated from God. Jesus, who is God, became a man, paid a penalty for you so that you should receive salvation and forgiveness of sins so that you might... I knew the gospel fact. I just didn't care. It just didn't stick. I hadn't been converted, so I knew some facts, but I hadn't been converted. Then I got converted in his time.

How did that feel?

It was the worst and best moment of my life. It felt like death. It felt like birth. Have you.

Stuck with it the entire throughout the duration up until now? Yes. In your life?

Yeah.

Very.

Interesting. You got that pre- No, not perfect. I mean, I suck. The more I try to be like Jesus, the more I realize I'm nothing like Him. It's a horrible process of just like, Man, I still suck. But no, I've loved Jesus and followed Him ever since. It was a permanent change. It was a permanent stick. Now, that didn't mean I didn't run laps in and do stupid stuff and then have to repent again. But the difference is I was actually sorry this time. I actually wanted to please Jesus. Not because I had to, because I wanted to. That was a new heart. That was a different change. I was a different man. Now today it's impossible to understand my life without understanding that piece. Some people are like, I'm not religious and the sky god and your myth, whatever, blah, blah, blah. I get it. But you can't possibly understand the departure from who I was to who I became without that, because literally all of my success, all victories, all of it happened as a result of that pivotal change that didn't come from me. It wasn't me.

Wow. Very, very interesting. This happened at the very beginning of your army career.

Yeah. Then basic wasn't very hard. At this point, I remember standing up after the first night to get and yelled at, and I could tell everybody was taking this bad. This wasn't bad for me. I stood up, I'm like, Hey, guys, anybody want to pray afterwards? I'll be in the center. I started leading prayer groups, and I'm like, I didn't know Jack about Bible. Not really. People had these questions about Christianity versus other religions. I didn't know how to defend that either. Anyway, I just jumped in both feet, and I'm like, I guess I'm doing the Christian thing now. I didn't really know much. I grabbed a Bible from a local chapel, and I'm just like, Let me figure this out. I started it, Genesis 1, and I read all the way through to Revelation 22. I just read the whole Bible in fast. When I was done, I flipped it over and I did it again and then again and again and again. That's where I learned Bible, was through military trainings and overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq. I'm like, I'm just reading it. You know how we are. We're kicked off in these small elements.

You don't have access to a chaplain most of the time when you're rolling in special operations units. It's too small. Every once in a while, you go back to some fob to refit and then you see your chaplain, and that's cool, but they can't be where all these little groups kicked out. And so it was really just me and my Bible for a lot of times. But man, the Lord's grace was great because I grew in leaps and bounds.

I'll bet. Moving past boot camp or basic, where do you go from there? Do you go to Airborne or do you go to Brent?

You do Airborne to figure out that you just fall out of a plane. You're trying to steer a D-10, Charlie, which you can't do. You realize, Oh, the slip, which it's not really doing jacks. Then you just learn how to do a controlled, disastrous fall. Airborne school was a bit of a joke. Rip wasn't a joke. That was hard. That was awful.

Pretty nervous going into it.

Yeah, because you knew that it's like brace for impact. You hold, out of my basic training class of, I don't know, 70 dudes, every one of them was going Ranger because it was an infantry basic training. Everyone's going Ranger and everyone's all pumped up and they're standing up after I sound they're singing the Ranger Creed or saying the Ranger creed. Everyone's super motivated. You're seeing these guys that you're in basic with go through and the crowd keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller. I think that had been whittled down through rip to be a smaller group. I think out of all the basics, the guys I knew, I think Seven went to second bat with me. After a year, I think I was the only one standing from my company. I think that's right. That was in my, in second bat or Bravo Company.

Let's walk through that entire process. So you show up to rip. How many total.

Are there? I don't know.

Hundred?

Two hundred? Couple hundred, I bet.

A couple hundred? I bet. What's the drop? You're the first Ranger we've had on.

Oh.

Well, all right, cool. You're breaking the mold here.

Yeah, and so the hardest part isn't getting... It isn't getting to Ranger battalion, it's staying there. Every day is an audition for your own job to see if you get to keep it. You got to be good at everything. When I became a team leader, that was my opening brief. When I had new private, so I'm like, All right, guys, it's very simple. I need you to be excellent at everything. That's the job. If you're hotwiring cars, you need to be excellent at that. If you're doing PT, excellent at whatever, guns or landnav or radio, I need you to be excellent at everything or you'll be fired.

That's the job. Anything less than perfection, you're done.

You say that, obviously, that's not attainable, that's not realistic. But you shoot for the goal and you land it. You become good or great at just about everything that you can be. So Rip was-.

What's the attrition rate?

I don't know. I just don't know. Ranger School, which would come later, that's more known of like, I think we started with a few hundred, and then that boiled down to, I think, like 60 or so out of a few hundred. And so that Ranger School was less, but.

It's-so there's two... Let's just try to keep it in chronological order. Sure. So you show up to rip, correct? Yeah. Let's just walk us through day one.

What are you saying? What RIP is it wants to see what you're made of. And so whereas you're doing some stuff of some land navigation, and you're doing road marches and obstacle courses, and now we're going to learn knots. They have an excuse of what you're doing as if they're teaching you, but really they're just trying to mentally jack you up and make you quit. They're trying to find out whether you're worth investing in. Really, it's just a hazefest where they're playing physical and mental games, all the silly games to just jack with people's minds and crush their bodies to see who's going to be standing. So RIP was just that. It was just four weeks of mental, physical torture. Nothing is super intense, it's something like Hell Week, but maybe something a little bit more general of like Buds, and I don't know, Buds, but it's like it's hard, but it's not like crazy hard.

Are you learning anything or is it strictly an assessment? Yeah, you're learning.

You're learning stuff. But I think in the back, we're doing combatives. And so you are learning stuff. There's the excuse of we're learning the stuff, but really what's under the excuse is we're here to thin the herd. We're here so that we don't send Ranger battalion a bunch of dudes that are going to wash out in two months. That's what it is. Let's get rid of the chaff so that we can just have the wheat left. That's what RIP is.

Could you walk us through the entire process of RIP from day one to graduation?

Probably not. Why not? It's just too far in the past. I don't remember it.

Is it broken into phases?

Probably. But now it's even RASP, so I don't even know what they're doing now. I don't even know the length of time. But for me, when it was in, it was four weeks and road marches, obstacle courses, you're going to do some shooting, you're going to do some landnav. You're always doing stuff, learning stuff. But how you're going about it is you got to screw everything up. Pushups right here. Like, little random PT suck sessions were inserted everywhere. There's the excuse, we're giving you training, but really it's just a hazefest.

What did you find the most challenging in RIP?

Probably the mental games. This always worked the best on me and means the worst is when everyone was punished because of something you did or didn't or failed to do. That's where I had a couple of breakdown points in Ranger School. Actually, one breakdown point in Ranger School is where I was failing my Ranger buddy. I could not handle that well. Whereas you torture me, I'm good with it. But I let that dude down. I don't really remember doing that necessarily in rip, but that right there is the hardest thing that I had to struggle with. My buddy was counting on me. I failed him. I've done that. I failed someone in training before. And that sucks. With rip, I just tried to gray man out as best I could, keep my head down, and make it through.

Sorry, just to backtrack one more time, where were you when 9/11 happened? You were in jump school, you said?

Airborne Hold. I was about to go in jump school, and then rip would come after that. I think because the war was kicking off, we got especially potent rip class because you're about to deploy to war. They don't have a lot of time to fiddle with you. I remember it being particularly brutal. I think the ranger instructor, the rip instructors, their adrenaline is up because, Hey, packing for war. You boys better be ready. Let's give you a test. My assumption is that they were really pretty serious.

How did that affect your mindset when you saw those towers go down? Did you know, I'm going to do exactly what I came here to do?

Yeah, I didn't really think I was going to do the war thing. I thought I was going to live out the army commercial. Then I saw the towers fall, and then it got real. But it hit me in phases of like, at first, it's just surreal, and then you work out the effects and you're all talking it out like you have any idea. But after a couple of weeks, you knew you were going to war. And so it made what you were learning all the more important. I wasn't doing it because this is what we do. I'm like, I need to know this stuff. Things got real. I wasn't training just to pass. I was training because I wanted to be trained. I wanted to be lethal. I wanted to be hard to kill.

Not the fact that the towers fell, but the fact that you knew you were going to war, I mean, did that excite you? Did that give you any fulfillment? The patriotism? Any of that? I mean, you were young.

I was deeply angered by the almost 3,000 civilians that were murdered. I was very, very upset with that. There's part of me of like, Let's go stack some bodies and let's make sure they're so busy playing defense. They never think about offense again against us. There was that. Whether you wrap that up into patriotism or whatever, I didn't have a bloodlust. I didn't want to go kill people. My team leader, when I got in, he picked me out a line of privates, wide-eyed Privates. We got to range a battalion. We're standing in a line. He's first down there and he's looking at all our records and the paperwork that accompanies you. He selected me out of the line as why he thought I was going to be the one. He picked me and I went up to him, but he ended up being quite a sadist. He had a bloodlust. He really wanted to kill people. I thought it was like, All right, that's the macho game and whatnot. I knew enough about the military or I was able to be discerning enough to perspective-wise back out of the pain and the suffering. I just saw it as one big, All right, this is the game.

This is what's happening. I was able to do that a bit. But when I looked at him, I'm like, Okay, all right, you're playing the macho guy card. You're the hardcore. You just want to, Okay, right on. Over time, I'm like, No, I think he's wax is pretty heavy on the psychopath skill. I think you just wanted to kill people. That was my team leader. Now, I found out quickly I was a Christian. I reasoned from there that I would be a conscientious objector and where he wanted to raise a psychopathic, cold-blooded killer attack dog, Sickom. He realized that wasn't going to be me, had buyer's remorse, and then tried for the next year to make my life a living hell. Especially, he wanted to undermine my faith. While I am collapsing in pools of my own sweat, he's nonchalantly, casually walking circles around me, poking holes in my worldview. That was my first year in Ranger battalion. Now, once you're in Ranger battalion and you prove that, Hey, I'm not going anywhere, I can be counted on, I can follow orders, I am no fool, I am tough, I am strong, I am worth investing in.

If you prove yourself over a year in Range or battalion or so, they'll say, All right, we'll send you to Ranger School. Ranger School is a 60-ish-day suckfest where you learn a lot about leadership and embracing the suck, intestinal fortitude, that stuff. It's just misery and leadership. They teach a bunch of old, outdated Vietnam tactics, which do have some merit if you're in jungle and stuff like that. But anyway, you make it through that. If you don't make it through that, you're fired. I made it through just straight through, did well, went back. That's where you can start really developing rank. That's where you're fully welcomed in as a brother. Now, you don't just wear the scroll. The scroll is the unit patch, and that's what makes you a Ranger. Then you get the tab, and that's like now you're a fully initiated brother. Okay. It's like you go from Padawan to Master. You could have a tab, you've been to Ranger School, and not a scroll. You're a Ranger qualified, but you're not a Ranger. You're not an army Ranger. It's the unit that makes you a Ranger. That's what the deadly dude is.

That is your job. You are among Rangers doing rangerie things. You didn't just attend a school and got a tab. Anyway, the full initiated Ranger is Ranger scroll unit, Ranger tab. I proved myself for leadership. Then you come back as a tab spec four, that's a specialist or a corporal. You occupy a more respected position in a fire team. If you do really well there, you're going to become a fire team leader. That'll be a sergeant, and I'd make it through that. Then if you do real well as a team leader, you become a squad leader. That's what end up I'd tap out at squad leader, and then I'd punch out to go on and do other stuff.

So getting back to Ranger battalion, I can't say a typical day because I'm sure you guys are on the road doing different things all the time. But how is the training broken up within Ranger battalion? Do you guys have a cycle? For example, when I was in the SEAL teams, it was pro dev was your school time. That was about six months. Then you have your workup. That's six months. That's working with your platoon, going to all the different diving block, CKB block, a land warfare block, a maritime block, a jump block. And then you go to, I can't even remember what they call, but that's where you work with your counterparts that you're going to deploy with. Maybe you're going to do some training operations with the Ranger battalion or some... I was in East Coast SEALs, so maybe you're working with some of the West Coast teams, ODAs, whatever. How is sustainment training in Ranger battalion? How is it broken up? What's the cycle?

My first day at Ranger battalion, they packed me for war. Really? Yeah. That was step one, packed for war because we were gone immediately. I don't remember how long it was, but a month or two or three, and then we punched out and went over across the pond.

So hold on. So you show up to Ranger battalion and they're like, Get ready in 30 days. We're going.

To Afghanistan. I don't know what the timeline was. It could have been one month. It could have been three months. I don't remember when we punched out. But I know day one, pack for war. You always have they're rotating their range of battalions across. Right now, second bat is over, for instance. First bat is in the hole and third is on deck. Third is now in a reposture, refit, they're going to go ahead and take leave and go see family and take a little vacation and knock out these items. We're going to make sure their teeth are fixed and they're medical and they're going to do some training opportunities that you can't do when you're on deck because at any moment you may be wheels up in 48 hours or 72 hours of like, Hey, we're going. There's one time I went to war of like, We didn't know and we're just on alert. Any day you could have gone and we lived that way for a month or three. Then all of a sudden it was the day and you can't tell anyone you remember how it was. You can't tell anyone you're leaving.

You just disappear. You had to be ready. I don't know what Ranger battalion was like before war because all I did was war with a Ranger battalion. But much like the teams, we had areas of focus. I'm like, All right, we're going to do a rotary wing operation. We're going to go down to Texas and do such and such. It's going to be the CQB hit with moving urban terrain around, and then we're going to move after that, the dust is settled on that. We're going to go learn explosive breaching, and we get bringing this person to do that. Now we're doing range work up. Now we're going to travel on do some medical stuff, then we're going to do some vehicle stuff. Then you're just always being cross-trained so that you can be this renaissance man of lethality. Much the same that you guys are doing. You got the fundamentals and basics. You're always shooting and you're always working on movement and communication, all that jazz. And then you're using these con skills, these pushouts where you're getting specialized training in areas of focus.

How is the team broken up or the entire battalion? How is it broken up?

So battalion is separated into Alpha, Bravo, Charlie Company, and then you'll have the headquarters. In that headquarters, you may have a recce element or your snipers and stuff. So that's the junk drawer of Rangers, but an Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie Companies. And then within that, you're going to have platoons, a first, second, third platoon, and then you have a headquarters platoon or a weapons platoon, fourth. And then of that, a platoon, which is 30-ish, 40-ish dudes, depending on how heavy. Right now, recruitment is so low that may be like eight dudes. I have no idea. But 30, 40 dudes, guns attached or mortars or snipers, you're flexing here and there and just based on numbers. We got down real lean after around the year of 2005. They used special operations so much in the war, we all just got burnt out and people just started ETSing or punched out of like, This is too much. Just constantly going back and forth and just war you out. It's not like we're guarding gates, we're hunting bad guys. We may run two or three different missions in a night. I remember in Afghanistan on one particular deployment, I slept in a different geographical location in that country every single night for a month.

Because we're just traveling at the speed of human, SIGA, and we're punching around just wherever Hey, somebody made a phone call up here. We think it's the Jack of clubs, and we're going to go up and try to find that dude, for example. We're just traveling at the speed of intelligence all over the place and just wear you out after a while. I rememberWe'd got down to a real lean, and then other times you get pretty fat. Oh, and then a platoon is broken up into four squads: first, second, third, and a weapons squad. Then a squad is broken up into teams, and that's three or four dudes. Okay.

So when you guys deploy, when second-bat deploys, do you all deploy together as one or are different as Alpha, Bravo, Charlie going to different locations, different countries?

The typical plan is a battalion would deploy altogether. That did not always happen. Okay. But that's the general idea.

Okay. What about how is the team broken up into, is it different expertises? Do you have breachers, snipers, communications guys? Or is everybody... Does everybody do everybody's job?

The general idea is to have as much cross-training as humanly possible. We're not going to be nearly as specified as something like a group guy where they'll get real into the weeds, but you'll do certain con skills. Jason here is going to be our master breacher, and he's been to the schools, and we're all pretty good at breaching of like, I love blowing doors. I had this leg bag I always carried. Leg bags are dorky, but when it's filled with a bunch of debt cord, it's pretty cool. I had the leg bag whenever we were running around clearing cities because I'm like, Yeah, let's blow some doors open. I kicked open a lot of doors. I blew open a lot of doors. All of us knew how to blow open doors, of course, but when there was something spicy of like, We want a Shape Charge. Hey, we got a safe. Jason's like, I got it. He's the guy who's going to be able to do that. In the absence of a medic, one of us is going to be pretty darn schooled up. I took the medical conscript, so I went and got my EMT certificate.

I went through EMT school so that I was pretty good at the medical stuff. I liked doing the medical stuff. Now, that wasn't my job. I dorked out on that. We were all generally cross-trained, but in all the necessary areas, you wanted within your squad, somebody who really rocked at that. You need somebody who is not just good at land-nav, they're a savant. All of us can landnav. Anybody can, most of us, especially a tab spec four, a sergeant, you can pick up and do good landnav. But you got Blaine, who is he's the dude. You want him on point, he's going to rocket. We have some specificity within, but everyone's pretty cross-trained.

What's the culture for a new guy showing up. You went through it a little bit. You definitely get hazed. Terrible. What happens? When do you start to get accepted and people quit messing with you and it's like, Hey, John's going to be here. John's solid. Lay off him. He's part of us now. At what point? What does it take to prove yourself within Ranger battalion?

Everything's become so cissified in culture and in the military. I have no idea. Not now, back then. But back then, man, you show up and your life is going to be real bad because they don't care that you've been through rip or whatever. They'll look down on the stuff of like, No, no. You know nothing and now you start. Now it starts. So it's like, Oh, well, he's been a rip, so he must be good. Nope, they're going to see for themselves. You want to know whether, Hey, has this guy really got my six? Can I really count on this dude? Is this a quitter? What's his character like? What's his attitude like? Do I want to be around this guy? And so all elements of the person come together. It's not just how good of a shooter you are of like, Do you fit within this culture? Can I count on you? Are you tough? Are you an idiot? What am I dealing with here? And so everything is a test. And it's going to be real painful. Mental and physical games until you prove yourself. Now, once you get back from Ranger School and you got a tab, now it's a completely different culture shift.

Now it's like you're not getting dropped for pushups unless you did something really jacked up. And if you did something really jacked up, you're going to be given the respect of you'll be pulled into a room typically if you got good leadership and you'll be privately reprimanded. Privates will be publicly reprimanded and shamed and anything, depends on the leadership. I led differently than those who led me initially. I was on an entirely different leadership journey where I kept some stuff and then incorporated my own leadership strategies as well, which I found better in some ways. Yeah.

You know, we came into the military at basically the same time period. And so there was, I don't know a lot of the history of the Rangers, but we came in, when me and you came in in 2001 time frame pre-9/11, there was a long stretch, or maybe just with a few things where men could have gotten combat experience. Right. I know for Rangers, I know Somalia was a big one, obviously. I guess maybe a little bit maybe in Desert Storm, but there wasn't a lot. There was a long time period from Vietnam to 9/11, 2001, when it was really peacetime. I was a little hesitant to ask you what was the turning point? Because you mentioned you had been rushed. It was almost a rush to get you out the door to war. Did that create any animosity from a guy, let's say, a guy that's been in Ranger Bat for 15 years, and it was all training and peacetime. Now you have John Lovell, who joins in 2001 and is going to war his first year at Ranger Bat. Did that create a lot of animosity within the community? Because you have junior Rangers who now have more experience and had seen more, done it for real than guys that have been in 10, 15, 20 years.

I don't know, because I wouldn't have been fraternizing with those dudes who were fuller up. Now, guys who are like, All right, you got your squad and your low man on totem pole, and you got your spec force, and you got your team leaders, and you got a squad leader, platoon sergeant. There, I don't think at that level, at the platoon level, you're going to have a lot of that because they need you to be awesome. We were ready to gear up to be a dangerous, well-oiled, functioning machine. I don't think they were looking down on that bolt with condemnation, knowing you need that bolt to stay in place for that engine to run well. I didn't get that sense, but I was in such dire straits of just scary war. I am under-trained. I am trying to stay alive. There's lots of hazing amidst this. The power curve is so immense. The sociological grudges that high ranks would have toward me, I would be oblivious of.

Interesting. Well, hey, let's take a break, and then when we come back, we'll pick up with your first deployment, what that brief was like, what you felt.

Sounds.

Good. Cool. Next on The Sean Ryan Show.

I was kicking open some palace doors, kick, kick, kick, and then the door flings open. Immediately coming through the fatal funnel of the doorway, we took incoming fire, screaming right past me. I was a saw gunner at the time. I came up and I shot him in the face and just dropped him. I'd never killed someone that close.

My first mission, real mission was in Haiti, and we didn't really see much. At the time, it was the biggest deal that I had ever encountered. How did you mentally prepare?