#75: [War Stories] MAJ Andrew Batule - Pt 2: I'll Always Say Their Names

[00:00:00] Hey everybody, welcome to the Traffic Lightning Podcast, the official podcast of America's

[00:00:08] Pacific Division. I'm your host for today's show, Chaplin Pete Stone. Today's show is an

[00:00:14] interview with Major Andrew Batull. Major Batull is currently serving as the Division

[00:00:19] Deputy G3 but started out as career in the Wolfhounds of Warrior Brigade. In part one of our

[00:00:25] conversation, Major Batull shares about why he chose to serve and one of the highlights from

[00:00:29] his first combat deployment. In part two of our conversation, Major Batull shares about a tragedy

[00:00:36] that took the lives of two of his young soldiers. Hope you enjoyed the show.

[00:00:44] Andrew, so when I ask you to kind of share some of your experiences,

[00:00:51] you kind of hesitated at first because you didn't like the idea of telling a war story just

[00:00:57] because of you didn't, you just didn't feel comfortable talking about it because of what it

[00:01:05] you didn't want to be trying to draw attention yourself. But then you were thinking about some

[00:01:10] of your other experiences. I think you alluded to a very difficult time in your deployment.

[00:01:16] Can you would you mind sharing a little bit about that and then why you wanted

[00:01:21] what you were willing to talk about your experiences?

[00:01:26] Yeah, I'll surely get emotional to describe in what happened in the impacts. It's had on all of us

[00:01:37] and that's okay. And sort of twofold one, I didn't want to tell a war story

[00:01:45] and make it about me. And so that was then sort of an initial sort of unease to do in this

[00:01:57] doing this interview, doing this podcast was I didn't want to make it about a war story and glorify

[00:02:02] myself. And the second part is just selfishly. I quite frankly wasn't sure how I was going to be

[00:02:13] able to put all that in towards. And it was you played a clip for me in, it was your introduction

[00:02:22] and it was just a demo but man how powerful listening to that and hearing you describe

[00:02:29] the war story and its true purpose and capturing the legacy of the events. And more importantly

[00:02:37] capturing the legacy of the people that passed were injured or survived either as a member of

[00:02:47] that person's unit or their family. And that's when you had me hookline sinker and emotion be damned.

[00:02:57] I was willing to come on here and talk about it. And yeah, I think I'm going to look back at

[00:03:06] this podcast and interview as just that being able to capture their legacy.

[00:03:11] Yeah, well so this was in the first half of your deployment then after the high that you had

[00:03:19] just come off with a successful mission where you had actually led men in combat, led soldiers in

[00:03:25] combat and one, it's always nice to win. And then what happened with this difficult story?

[00:03:34] Yeah so I talked about the sort of the regional geographic alignment with the fourth Iraqi army

[00:03:46] Battalion out on the east side of Iraq and then the sort of the area of operations that we had in

[00:03:59] the west as well. And this was, this specific incident involved a key leader engagement and it

[00:04:05] was a series of key leader engagements that are Battalion, excuse me our company commander,

[00:04:10] Boris I6, Chris D. Fiori was, was executing on the other side of Iraq and it was our rotation

[00:04:18] during that month, during the beginning of September 2010 to be Kaylee security. And so we traveled

[00:04:27] across the country so that Chris D. Fiori could engage with the local provincial leaders and

[00:04:37] the Iraqi army battalion leaders as well. And so we had a mission for Kaylee's both on the outskirts

[00:04:44] of the town and then in the town centers with the key leaders as well. And the mission was

[00:04:51] predominantly security and then engagement at our level as well. So what happened?

[00:04:58] So we moved out to the other side of town. We had about a four day stay in our place

[00:05:07] of, you know what? We bedded down was outside the city at one of the disparate command posts of

[00:05:16] the fourth IA battalion. We would establish patrol bases on about day two of Kaylee's and you know

[00:05:26] engagements and site visits to the various projects in that part of Iraq. We were back at

[00:05:36] one of the infantry on the fourth IA battalions headquarters which was in the town of TUS.

[00:05:44] And we were inside this mini fob, I'll call it inside their gates, inside their walls and

[00:05:50] we were just, we were engaging with the leaders of the IA battalion there. And while we were there

[00:05:58] there was a soccer game, there was dinner, there was all the things that you expect just local

[00:06:05] two ally companies in the same area kind of doing. We played a competitive soccer game with each other

[00:06:14] had, you know, broke bread, had dinner together. And while we were in some downtime following

[00:06:24] dinner and soccer together and prep and honestly to get ready to sort of bed down,

[00:06:32] get ready for the next day, talk about the next day and pass the report back to the battalion talk

[00:06:37] of what had occurred and send that information up. We were inside the fob, our four strikers were

[00:06:47] in a square essentially. And you know, the ramps down sort of facing each other in a square

[00:06:55] facing out. And IA, Iraqi Army soldier was and at least this is the report that we eventually

[00:07:10] received was his family was captured, held hostage and he was given essentially a

[00:07:18] a suicide mission for, he was given a suicide mission for attacking us. So he went into the IA

[00:07:34] battalion headquarters, he drew a weapon and we call him green on blue incidents. He

[00:07:44] entered into our square of strikers fully intent on causing as much harm as he could with his

[00:07:54] AK-47 and what was essentially a pile of up a tune in the company headquarters trucks

[00:08:03] before we killed him. And his family was held hostage and this cell told it this was like an

[00:08:11] ultimatum for him. He was giving the ultimatum you go in and conduct this insider attack or we're

[00:08:18] going to kill your entire family. And he took that threat seriously and he drew that weapon and

[00:08:25] he came in and he began firing as AK-47. And at the time I was on top of my striker just

[00:08:31] resting, relaxing, you know recovering as you will do on a four day mission. And I was on top of

[00:08:39] my striker when it happened. And he began engaging with the AK-47 amongst the platoon of men I loved

[00:08:53] and began shooting. And quite frankly we had for lack of a better term an active shooter inside

[00:09:01] of our perimeter dressed in an Iraqi army uniform with an AK-47. And so he actually began shooting

[00:09:10] from outside the square of the strikers and was able to pass between two trucks and get pulled

[00:09:16] into our perimeter quite frankly because some of the soldiers had no clue. This is a friendly

[00:09:24] combatant. This is an ally we're pulling into the platoon as we start to figure out what's going

[00:09:30] on simultaneously to this. We had machine gun fire coming from outside the city elevated positions

[00:09:37] down onto this coordinated. Yeah so definitely a coordinated attack and I don't know how

[00:09:44] the other shooter was tied to this and probably just a straight member of the cell that captured

[00:09:50] this eye soldiers and a family but they began engaging from outside the city as well on down

[00:09:56] onto the top of the strikers and that just added to the sort of that fog of war that initial

[00:10:02] scramble to try to figure out what was going on. And I that feeling I had when

[00:10:09] the eye was initially shot at back in August, I had another machine gun engaged in me on top

[00:10:15] of my striker and I remember scrambling for my life as I could feel machine gun rounds getting

[00:10:25] closer. I jumped off the top of my striker with no regard to where I was landing because I knew

[00:10:31] I was about I was sure I was going to be shot. Got to the ground and then immediately

[00:10:40] moved to the sound of the machine gun that I could now hear inside our little mini patrol base

[00:10:48] and so this soldier was engaging inside of our formation so you now have a bunch of soldiers trying

[00:10:54] to shoot this guy back in try to figure out what was going on and just in that moment

[00:11:00] in an instant nine wounded two KIA. At the time 11 wounded soldiers inside my formation of about

[00:11:11] 35 to 40 men and so instant mass casualty situation on my hands and I remember panic

[00:11:22] just everybody knew this was this was this was this was not your average sort of engagement

[00:11:31] and it's not your average combat what had just happened. Actually a first sergeant in second

[00:11:37] brigade right now first arm A-RAM and eventually killed this guy put him down you know a bunch

[00:11:48] 556 rounds inside of him and it was while he was trying to change his magazine or his weapon jammed

[00:11:58] and he was able to put the threat down. So he was just moving in and out of tense or?

[00:12:04] Well no we were just struck four strikers so we you know just four strikers yeah just four strikers

[00:12:10] ramped sort of almost ramp to ramp we only had about less than half a basketball worth of space

[00:12:19] in that square in sort of what we thought was like that protected area inside the strikers

[00:12:26] and yeah he was inside of that moving and shooting. And so you know I haven't interviewed him but

[00:12:37] trying to pick up that target amongst your friends your battle buddies and try to engage him

[00:12:43] and actually pull the trigger he was able to get through either his whole clip or a partial clip

[00:12:49] before his weapon jammed and the shooting stopped and about when the shooting stopped is when

[00:12:54] the threat went down and that was when I was moving back into the sound of the firing to figure out

[00:13:01] you know engage with my weapon and at this point I only have my 9 mil drawn from the side

[00:13:06] moving in and I remember seeing I saw the the casualties I saw the carnage

[00:13:13] and the first thing I saw was probably the first glass James with a clamorock on the ground

[00:13:19] with a wound through his neck and I knew right then that we had to evacuate immediately.

[00:13:32] We began trying to get comms with we're now across the country yeah and quite frankly maybe

[00:13:38] maybe bad planning that we didn't have immediate comms the QRF for the unit that was you know only

[00:13:44] 45 minutes to our south to the south of us as opposed to trying to get a hold of our battalion

[00:13:50] headquarters which is on the other side of our rack and I made a call with my company commander

[00:13:55] right there on the spot it was just his headquarters truck there with my platoon doing Kalees for four

[00:14:01] days I made the call we got to get out here I remember distinctly yelling on that we need to get

[00:14:08] to an HLC and we began moving towards we began gathering you know trying to take you

[00:14:16] trying to figure out what had happened um trying to figure out how many wounded we have

[00:14:20] what you know trying to tree out trying to figure out what the classification of casualties are trying

[00:14:24] to wrap up a nine line report get that call back to the talk get something out to us so that we could

[00:14:30] then begin air medevac because I knew we had to get them to higher levels of care with the levels

[00:14:36] of wounds we had um even now as I just described but there's so many things going on I had um

[00:14:44] joebarian staff Sergeant joebarian shot through the chest um calmly sir we got a guy here

[00:14:55] um you know talk about an unbelievable moment maybe he's in shock but to see this bear of a man

[00:15:02] still standing with a gunshot wound directly to the center of his chest I remember seeing

[00:15:11] the entry wound and not I couldn't believe he was alive one two standing and three able to articulate

[00:15:19] the exact words that I relayed to my company commander we got to get out of here

[00:15:26] and so we began casualty mass casualty operations I mean it was initial care yet guy shot in the

[00:15:33] in the leg or the you know you know a glancing wound that they were doing self self-care

[00:15:40] we had buddy aid going on and with that I knew we were caught by an effective

[00:15:46] and we had casualties change McClamrock being one of them and my gunner staff Sergeant

[00:15:54] Jenkins Phillip Jenkins was was was also shot through the neck and I knew we had to try to save

[00:16:01] their lives and so we began casualty care and evacuation or if an evacuation casualty care on

[00:16:08] the move and we began moving to to what I knew were these the preplotted HLZs to be able to then

[00:16:15] so what what do you do just like you fire up the trucks and everybody raised the ramp and everyone

[00:16:21] just kind of carries the wounded into the ramps like I'm trying to envision what that looks like

[00:16:25] it's probably just absolute chaos with with a mask as it was where probably and yep it was

[00:16:34] a scramble to try to simultaneously report so we could get air medevac to us or at least spinning

[00:16:43] so they're moving towards us try to everything picked up don't leave any weapons we're still trying

[00:16:48] to engage these rooftop machine gun positions and trying to try to triage while we loaded up

[00:16:58] I knew that we needed to get to an HLZ to be able to save as many as people as we could

[00:17:04] and that was going to be our only option so I began moving the platoon this absolute mess

[00:17:09] that we had picked up and we got everything I remember running around the trucks with with no

[00:17:13] kid on just holding my pistol making sure that we weren't leaving sensitive items we didn't leave

[00:17:17] the sat the satcom antenna we didn't leave you know bags and m4s against the sides of trucks because

[00:17:24] that's you know that's what it was and me it was quite literally hucking you know toss and stuff

[00:17:30] into trucks and trying to get the ramps up while my company commander tried to get coms with

[00:17:35] the battalion headquarters and get air medevac move into our position so that's what that's what

[00:17:41] it looked like it was it was absolute chaos and trying to remember the princeles of security and

[00:17:49] what not was it was definitely a moment of what called a disarray but it was hectic to say the least

[00:18:01] and we began moving outside of this little mini base if you will this iraqiy army base and

[00:18:09] began moving north to the nearest army cob my camera in the name of this this fiber cob

[00:18:23] but I knew that there was higher levels of care at that place and so I began moving us there

[00:18:29] because the worst case scenario is we didn't get air medevac and we would at least be moving towards

[00:18:36] the the long pull in the tent will be ground evac if we had to go to our alternate I want to

[00:18:41] start moving our alternate now and if the birds eventually came we could find a place to conduct

[00:18:46] you know air medevac lake lake hlaes the operations get the bird down and get get our casualties loaded

[00:18:53] and we so we became moving north we eventually had comms and we knew that we had

[00:19:00] medevac on the way and so we began establishing a perimeter established hlaes get marking down

[00:19:11] all while buddy aid with our with our medic doc corner was was treating as many people as he could

[00:19:19] treat most urgent you know I've skipped a couple things as I've walked through this the story as we

[00:19:28] were moving north I won't ever forget looking at one of my soldiers dying at my feet

[00:19:36] and he could tell us hard for me to try to articulate it's the hardest thing I've ever looked at

[00:19:51] and watching one of my soldiers try and vein to keep him alive and I watched my gunners harness

[00:20:02] Philip Jenkins pass and I remember expecting getting called out over the radio as part of the

[00:20:11] updated casualty count and I knew we were 10 w a in one k a and while we were on the ground

[00:20:21] they were trying to keep james the clamorock alive and we eventually got to a point where birds

[00:20:30] were still in bound we had two expectant and ours the two neck wounds they were

[00:20:38] and before they left I knew we had nine wounded in two k a on my on my in my platoon

[00:20:48] um and it's the lowest of lows and yeah trying to describe that and the motions I'm going through now

[00:21:04] I talked about selfishly wide and wanted to do this um and that's the reason but you know

[00:21:11] you know what um why do you want to tell this story why is it important to you why did you change

[00:21:22] your mind and say I do want to tell the story oh it's about it's about legacy it's about

[00:21:29] I don't know where it comes from but there's a there's a famous saying I've heard that I've

[00:21:33] captured and taken with me and that's they say you died twice on this on this earth the moment

[00:21:41] you actually die and then in the last name the last time your name is set out loud and that

[00:21:52] the lesson of legacy that comes out of that for me I know that when I'm alive

[00:21:59] James will come on my clam rock and Philip Jenkins will never die a second time

[00:22:06] hmm because this podcast was about saying their names

[00:22:12] thank you um you know the older you become and the more that time passes between

[00:22:24] um G.Y. and some of those other experiences um in the less combat that people experience the

[00:22:32] less the farther we are removed and our newer generation of soldiers are in don't have

[00:22:39] that kind of exposure um I think it's important for these stories to be told so that people understand

[00:22:48] um what it means to serve and what it means to sacrifice would you mind sharing a little bit about

[00:22:53] what what it means to serve for you what that what that entails and why it's important to you

[00:23:00] yeah absolutely and there's probably multiple questions kind of laced in there and the first one

[00:23:10] I'll answer is I can't personally have that experience without applying it to the rest of my

[00:23:20] my time in the army and you talked about the gap between the g-watt or combat generation

[00:23:31] not that there's no combat going on right you know right now there's no conflict um because I

[00:23:36] truly believe that we are always in competition and potentially conflict but the experience that

[00:23:42] we have proliferated throughout the formation decreases every day that a combat veteran gets out

[00:23:50] of the army and the new generation that you know hasn't um you know don't want to call it an

[00:23:58] opportunity but it hasn't had the experience of deploying to a combat zone and experiencing combat

[00:24:06] it grows and that gap uh that those those younger leaders are now becoming our company commanders

[00:24:14] and they now have the responsibility to teach the preparation for combat operations and our

[00:24:22] our response to them whether they be you know synchronizing fires or mass casualty operations

[00:24:31] and I think our responsibility is combat veterans who've who've seen and personally experienced

[00:24:41] um closing with and destroying the enemy and true casualty operations on the battlefield

[00:24:50] it's our responsibility to ingrain that in those younger soldiers I think we do that as

[00:25:00] combat veterans by really enabling our formations to have and to experience realistic training

[00:25:10] and the more realistic you can make your training the more um the more realistic you can make your

[00:25:19] training the better prepared they will be in combat and it's the the old adage uh you know gallon

[00:25:28] sweat and uh and a drop of blood gallon of sweat now prevents uh you know prevents a drop of blood

[00:25:34] and I think that's our responsibility as you know going forward is to try to

[00:25:43] empower our junior leaders to create realistic training scenarios when they have it

[00:25:49] mm-hmm you know um the reason you signed up was for the flag um just that sense of national identity

[00:26:02] and wanting to be a part of answering the call to arms in defense of the nation and your family

[00:26:10] and all of that stuff but it's and I think that's why most people start out but then

[00:26:19] soldiers go down the road a little bit and have experiences and at the end of the day

[00:26:25] it moves its shifts from that um patriotic sense of duty um and pride and it becomes something

[00:26:35] much deeper which is what you've kind of described it's about the people that you serve with on your

[00:26:40] left and your right and at the end of the day you're just thinking about them you're not necessarily

[00:26:44] thinking about the flag you're thinking about the person on your left and your right um and you

[00:26:51] mentioned um would you mind sharing this might be too personal but you said you have some tokens

[00:26:58] you you uh have memorialize these men in your mind in your life how have you done that?

[00:27:05] yeah it's as uh it's as simple as the the k i bracelets I wear every day

[00:27:16] um in their memory actually I'm not wearing them uh right now I laid them at their memorial

[00:27:25] um on memorial day and that's it those are two tokens I've taken with me forever and wearing

[00:27:30] their names on my wrist and saying their names out loud um I actually have three you know three names

[00:27:37] on my chest and two of them are from from that day and I I have a tattoo that I wear every day

[00:27:47] um with their names on my chest and I actually took a piece of paper and went to the memorial

[00:27:56] with their names on them and stenciled it as though you see um folks do with the the Vietnam

[00:28:03] you know veteran uh the wall memorial and they'll stencil the names of their veteran where's

[00:28:09] the memorial at which it's it's in it's in dc okay there's the wall of all the the the killed in action

[00:28:17] in the Vietnam War and so people the guys uh that you their names oh I'm sorry yeah I was

[00:28:24] describing the action of tracing it yeah the the the global war on terrorism um memorial is actually

[00:28:30] outside 214 headquarters for second brigade okay and on that wall are the the k a from uh the global

[00:28:37] war on terror and um McClam rock and Jenkins are on that wall and so I took I took a piece of paper and I

[00:28:47] uh stenciled and shaded so that their names came through on the piece of paper and I took that to

[00:28:53] my tattoo artist and I said that's what I want on me forever and I wear it over my heart

[00:29:03] that's uh does there are a couple of the momentos that I take with me and I've got

[00:29:09] the the wolf hounds are incredible uh with heritage and legacy and uh boys I

[00:29:16] you know second platoon and boorzai company every year on september 7th 2007 do a workout called

[00:29:24] the McClam rock and Jenkins and I came over the exact uh workouts with you but they they add a poster

[00:29:34] um made with their pictures on it and the workout uh looks like a big movie poster and all of the

[00:29:41] current boorzai soldiers uh that participated in the workout last year um sign that uh

[00:29:50] sign that poster and then the current platoon leader at the time uh gave that to me as a token

[00:30:00] to take with me and I have it hangs in every office I have so that I can I can tell their story

[00:30:06] of McClam rock and Jenkins what what date is that the workout september 7th to 10 okay

[00:30:13] september 7th is the the anniversary of uh McClam rock and Jenkins I would like to do that workout

[00:30:21] with you this this coming to you bring your kid hey um so we I just I paused the recording

[00:30:28] and we're recording again um because I I wanted to um I wanted to go back to your story if

[00:30:38] if you don't mind because one of the things it's important I think is

[00:30:44] to talk about leadership and how leadership is forged in the trials of fire and um while I had

[00:30:52] the the recording pause you you were saying man I didn't really talk about some of these other things

[00:30:58] I think it's important if you don't mind going back and telling some of those details

[00:31:02] like the chaos because that's part of who you are today and it's part of what you give to others

[00:31:10] through your leadership and through the way you do your job is how that was forged in you

[00:31:17] in in in the chaos and the shock of what was going on kid would you mind just kind of talking

[00:31:22] through some of those details you were just now talking about yeah you you know I I talked about how

[00:31:30] and you know for the listeners this is the first time I've ever walked through this story out loud

[00:31:38] with anyone um let alone uh anybody that's willing to to listen to my voice but um I remember the

[00:31:48] absolute chaos of the day and coming back into um 11 wounded and all of the different

[00:31:58] responses uh that we had going from the soldiers that were that were shot and I you know at one point

[00:32:08] trying to direct security get a meta back called in get equipment picked up accountability

[00:32:15] of sensitive items and people and I had one of my soldiers come up to me and say I'm sir I'm shot

[00:32:23] through the leg and literally stopping me from what I'm what I'm doing trying to direct things

[00:32:28] and get return fire and get somebody to call up the the the meta back report and then call up

[00:32:33] the nine line and I had a soldier physically stop me to tell me he was shot in the foot and

[00:32:39] I remember yelling at this soldier hey I don't care Joe Barion shot through the chest

[00:32:47] he I've got we have multiple neck wounds get in the truck and I'm sure with different ords

[00:32:54] yeah yeah I'm sure I'm trying to keep it as as clean as possible uh Lieutenant Lieutenant Patul didn't

[00:32:59] didn't save on the on curse words um but yeah a fire response to try to snap somebody who was

[00:33:07] responsible how did he respond he did I think and and maybe he did but at least he realized in a

[00:33:13] in a moment of sort of perspective he took the the blinders off and and and realized really quickly

[00:33:21] I'm I'm just shot through the foot yeah and he got in the truck um so

[00:33:27] yeah you've got a lot of a lot of things going on all simultaneously and it's an interesting

[00:33:32] snapshot about leadership um when you zoom out on leadership as a broad topic and that instant that

[00:33:42] vignette right there were soldiers coming pretty traumatic he's been shot in the foot I mean

[00:33:47] I've never been shot in the foot so I would probably be doing the same thing but like he's going

[00:33:52] to his leader and he's talking about his little perspective on the situation and isn't that what

[00:34:00] leadership is is helping everyone on the team recognize the bigger perspective and getting on

[00:34:06] board with that bigger like there's a bigger agenda involved in here than your foot right now

[00:34:13] yeah I the the term I kind of use for people and trying to describe it is it's sort of that birds

[00:34:19] eye view you know the birds eye view of a video game where you come out of the the point of view

[00:34:26] and you try to get over the top of a situation and try to see it uh and that zoom out can happen

[00:34:32] several times well simultaneously while you're on the ground in the game you've got to be doing both

[00:34:39] and I think that's that's what I think differentiates great leaders from leaders that aren't great

[00:34:46] or the capacity is to do that yeah and I I think that um you know like a lot of things those

[00:34:55] that principle of a birds eye view and be able to see the see the field see the bigger picture

[00:35:01] yeah that that transcends combat uh you know peacetime or competition leadership if you if you will

[00:35:10] and being able to take the the blinders off and see the whole team and the way we are all

[00:35:16] rowing together rather than just complaining about your arms being tired on the row real you know

[00:35:23] on the on the or no yeah you know you're you're seeing it how everybody is rowing together

[00:35:31] and I think that's that's that's that's part of great leadership absolutely and people may um

[00:35:41] bifurcate or decouple great combat leadership from great leadership in general great

[00:35:48] leadership on scophial does not the same as great leadership in afghanistan i i disagree the the

[00:35:53] environment changes but the principle remains the same and as a leader that's our expectation

[00:36:00] that's what the mothers fathers our leader the leaders above us expect um out of leaders on the ground

[00:36:11] the the company grade and um the company grade leaders and the the battalion level leaders they

[00:36:17] expect us to be able to take a birds eye view see the field see the bigger picture understand

[00:36:23] that we're still being engaged in our patrol base from several elevated and disparate positions

[00:36:32] and then the perspective of my shot my foot is shot versus i've got a mascot of two situation on

[00:36:41] my hands and i'm still trying to pull security and i've got a guy shot through the chest the middle

[00:36:46] of his chest what happened with him he survived he survived you know barian's you know he's still uh

[00:36:52] he's out of military now um so the round went through his sternum or missed his lungs it

[00:36:59] yeah quite frankly uh i don't know what miracle happened you know the when you start breaking down

[00:37:06] what a bullet does in the air versus what a bullet does inside of a human body um it's to me

[00:37:13] it can almost defy physics where you can have an entry within one side of the body and having

[00:37:17] exit will done the same side of the body um is just absolutely um mind boggling and quite frankly

[00:37:27] i mean you know rounds are designed to do that i mean they're designed to cause as much destruction

[00:37:35] inside of a inside of a person um to try to create as much damage as possible and if you hit

[00:37:45] them in the leg and it comes out there you know their back um you've now just created a substantial

[00:37:53] if you didn't even get a you know kill shot you've now taken one casualty and whoever has to

[00:38:01] evac back guy is now out of the fight uh for at least a moment and so yeah i think it entered in

[00:38:07] his is uh dead center in the middle of his chest and it left out like his his side of his sternum

[00:38:15] um and missed uh you know that's like a a lights off sort of pain point is dead center in the middle

[00:38:22] of chest and how he was shot and how it entered now in exit is still a mystery to me but um he stood

[00:38:30] there on the ramp of a striker and told me sir we gotta get out of here and i don't think i think

[00:38:35] i'm i'm removing some language from his his response to me too you should put it on a t-shirt

[00:38:41] should put on a t-shirt um andry thank you for um telling the story and um saying those names

[00:38:53] and um helping to preserve um the culture that of what it means to serve and to sacrifice because at

[00:39:03] the end of the day that's what it's all about is um serving and sacrificing and uh those two men

[00:39:12] what were their names again when you say them i'm a clamorok and jankan's clamorok and jinkans

[00:39:17] ssssssssssss or remember that thank you