that was the first time I ever had to engage a person on the top of a striker on the 50 cal my PL slaps me on the helmet and he's shoot this mother you know cussing me out and how did that feel knowing that you had just taken another man's life for the first time did not make sense to me it didn't make sense until I got back my first real engagement where I saw a body drop was I take that back I'm going too far ahead the first person I ever saw was the 50
cal guy and that was my first experience with killing someone but he was not shooting at us he had a vehicle full of the uh uh ID a vad but in the back at the time they had the um what's that chemical uh that you clean pools with oh um chlorine chlorine yeah they had the back full of chlorine and explosives like a chlorine bomb or whatever that was her thing then uh um that was the first time I ever had to engage a person on the top of a striker on the 50 cal and
when I got the call to engage this guy I was like what the you know why and he's coming Vining straight towards us in our Convoy and he's you know maneuvering to to come right at us and I wasn't understanding what was going on never trained for that you know and he's like my PL slaps me on the helmet and he's shoot this mother you know cussing me out and like all right put the sights on the hood of the car this white car and put the butterfly switches on it the butterfly trigger and skipped
the rounds nine round burst from the hood all the way into the driver's seat and he went veered off the road we got out and the assaulters did and you know did their little ssse and investigated what had happened and found the explosives and yeah but when they opened the car I remember him like spilling out the car how did that feel knowing that you had just taken another man's life for the first time did not make sense to me it didn't make sense until I got back and I went to sleep and that's when
I had my first weird dream of like I I didn't feel anything I didn't feel it didn't feel real because it's not what I expected I thought it was going to be like in the movies you know big decisionmaking process yeah yeah this was like I'm not even being shot at this guy's just driving at us at High rate of speed and I don't I didn't train for that you know and yeah it was just it was a weird feeling I didn't have a disconnect I didn't feel anything but I went to bed that night
and that's when I had the dream of that guy was the ceiling fan and his arms were the blades and his head was the centerpiece where the light would be and he started spinning and I'm strapped to my bed and it's spinning faster and faster until his body like starts to rip apart in my room and he just bathed my May or soaks my room with blood and I'm like bathing in his blood and his face stayed still and was just screaming but no sound was coming out and that's when I was like oh I
guess I don't know what I I just felt I woke up scared but I guess that was the first real moment where I had a chance to say or say to myself man I killed someone you know but after that it was like not a normal thing but it was as a machine G her back then it was it was a lot of shooting you know a lot of yeah a lot of laying down fire during ambushes and things of that nature um so it was it was different but it was not what I expected
uh the first time I shot someone with an M4 was I was hanging out the the hatch of the striker and my guys were just uh the assaulters were in this it was almost like a trench warfare scenario where they had this trench thing they were foreign Fighters and they had this trench system that we had to the assaulters had to fight through my vehicle blocked off the portion of the road so they couldn't uh scr across one guy did and I remember I'm parked next to another Striker Rico 2 or whatever and I remember
him looking at this guy and he puts his laser on the guy and and his flood light when his flood light hits him that's when you see the AK and he's running back looking at our guys and he's running with an AK that guy starts shooting my guy start shooting at him so I'm like well we got to light this guy up and I'm my first time doing that with an M4 I clicked I hit the safety or not the safety I hit the mag release on the side of my M4 mag falls out Click
Boom one bullet comes out hit the guy in the back and he falls down tumbles and um yeah that was like the first experience I had with shooting a person and seeing the laser go on the guy and pulling a trigger and watching him collapse but I wasn't like the sole contributor I didn't like I don't think I killed him myself it was a joint thing where he was being shot up by lots of lasers yeah yeah yeah it was my first experience but with that though you know but I don't contribute to no my
bullet did it was a few lasers lighting this guy up yeah and it was like like that for pretty much that entire deployment was just a lot of direct action but the firefights were never to where we thought that we were being overrun or going to lose a firefight it was pretty one-sided and happened was over pretty quick did you guys lose anybody on that first deployment no no we did not we lost somebody in a different platoon um believe second platoon we lost one guy in during an blast that blew up his Striker and
a a nut that goes onto one of the screws in the striker blew and punctured the back of his back and went through him and he bled out that's the only guy we lost on that deployment that I can that I knew sounds like a very kinetic deployment yeah yeah most of them were except for one and I was working with uh SE Team Six and Jal about and that's the difference yeah I got my it wasn't fun we'll get there we'll get there so you do a 90-day deployment mhm about 120 raids or Ops
what what is it that you think I mean if I remember in your outline we talk about that you you know your first I mean how did you gain your guys respect what was it about you that I along with the program I I just fell in line I didn't like I got in trouble for stupid new guy drunk stuff that everybody was getting in trouble for at the time you know Barracks fights and stuff like that or one time I mailed off to a team leader because we just got back from Kentucky we were
doing uh some air air uh air assault stuff like Fast rope and somewhere in Kentucky and my a team leader who is not my team leader wanted me to rean some 240s and Mark 48 and everybody else was going to bed and I'm like dude I'm not going to do that and he chewed me out and the next day when I went back to work there was a handful of team leaders who were waiting for me and ready to take care of things the way they take care of things in in Battalion behind the back
of the shed so got rectified quick fall in line quick yeah so let's wrap up your first F when you come home I mean what very connected employment sounds like a lot of killing yeah how are you processing this at home I really wasn't man I just uh I felt like I felt like Robin amongst a bunch of Batman you know I was just Robin just a just yeah I was just a sidekick it felt like so I didn't really nothing really processed I think it happened relatively quick and I got wasted you know to
be honest with you like that was the first thing we did when we got back was just drank and drank and drank and drank for like two days of bins drinking and as soon as you're done that you're back in the training like there was no time to we had two weeks 13 days were allotted 2 weeks per year one month per year so 2 weeks before deployment 2 weeks after you're allotted for that so yeah I went home to Maryland stayed with my friend did some cool stuff I guess got drunk and just hung
out with friends I didn't really think about too much of anything like I didn't have bad dreams or anything like that no matter where you're watching Sean Ryan Show from if you get anything out of this please like comment subscribe and most importantly share this everywhere you possibly can and if you're feeling extra generous please leave us review on Apple and Spotify podcast
