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The Protectors® Podcast
Welcome to The Protectors® Podcast, where the valor meets the storyteller. Hosted by Jason Piccolo, a seasoned veteran and retired special agent, this series is a must-listen for anyone intrigued by the courage and tales of those who pledge to protect us. Beyond the front-line stories of bravery and dedication, this podcast goes a step further, weaving in the perspectives of those who bolster and narrate the protector's journey—featuring a remarkable lineup including New York Times Best Sellers and acclaimed Hollywood actors.
The Protectors® Podcast offers a diverse array of voices, from those who wear the uniform to the authors and entertainers who amplify their stories. It's a unique blend that highlights not only the raw realities faced by our protectors but also how their sacrifices inspire the narratives we cherish in literature and film. Each episode is a testament to the interconnected worlds of service and support, bringing listeners an unmatched depth of insight.
Dr. Jason Piccolo is a retired federal agent, former U.S. Army Infantry Captain (Iraq 2006), and author.
Past Guests Include:- Sean Patrick Flanery - Andrews & Wilson- Mark Greaney- Stephen Hunter- Remi Adeleke - Florent Groberg - Clint Emerson - Travis Mills
The Protectors® Podcast
500 | John Dailey | From Battlefield to Books: The Journey of a MARSOC Marine | With Eric Bishop
Discover the evolution of Marine Corps special operations with our special guest, John Dailey, a seasoned Force Recon and MARSOC Marine. John narrates his journey through the ranks, culminating in the transformative period post-9/11. His firsthand accounts of deployments, particularly in Afghanistan, shed light on the dramatic shift in military tactics and the increasing value of MARSOC in high-stakes direct action operations. John's upcoming book, "Tough Rugged Bastards," serves as a testament to the resilience needed in these elite roles.
With John, we unravel the intense, multifaceted training of special operations units. He shares how rigorous preparation, mental rehearsals, and learning to handle high-stress physiological responses are crucial for success on the battlefield.
Cohost: Author Eric Bishop.
Make sure to check out Jason on IG @drjasonpiccolo
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa. Once I hit that record button. Now remember, john, your opinions do not reflect those of the Special Operations Command. Your opinions do not reflect those of the Special Operations Command Central Atlantic. Anywhere SOCOM is. Your opinions do not reflect what they're doing. John, welcome to the show man.
Speaker 2:Thanks for that reminder. I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to think of any other disclaimers we should have.
Speaker 2:John, thank you for not making knives so I don't end up buying another one, not yet, not yet anyway and then eric eric bishop, is joining us as co-host today.
Speaker 1:So let's get going guys, let's talk. We're on a protectors podcast and we're here to talk about all things. Marines, specifically marsak. John marsak, you know, I'm a. I'm a child in nineties I shouldn't say child in the nineties. My military career began in the nineties the Marine, special operations command. Everything was so much different in the nineties, the cold war nineties. Everything changed in 9-11, you know that. So you you're, you were birthed in the marines, let's just say that. And then you got into recon, this variable of MARSOC. Where did this all come from?
Speaker 2:yeah, that didn't exist for the, the preponderance of my career. So the, the US Special Operations Command, you kind of joined the, the military, about the same time that I did, just a little bit before, so I should know this. But I think it was April of 87 was when SOCOM was officially formed and it was a outcome of the failed attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran. They realized after what was called the Eagle Claw or the Desert One debacle, where soldiers died, that there needed to be some unity of command when conducting special operations. And it took a little bit of time and it took some congressional kind of mandates, but eventually in 1987, the US Special Operations Command opened its doors and when it did it invited the SEALs to be a part, the Green Berets to be a part, the Rangers, the US Air Force Special Operations guys, the combat controllers and PGA's to be a part.
Speaker 2:And the Marine Corps was invited but decided to opt out at that time and I didn't know about this, you know, for a little bit after, but it was, you know, they were formed in, like I said, I think, april. I joined the Marine Corps in June of 87. So just kind of missed that. But it took me another five years before I made it to to force recon, and at the time that force recon was, uh, the, the Marine Corps special operations force, and had been, you know, since the the fifties.
Speaker 1:Now, when you talk about force recon, I in my, in my mind, I imagine reconnaissance, all reconnaissance. You know, throw the ruck on your back, throw a million pounds on your back, gear and everything you can possibly imagine, and hump towards your location, observe, reflect, call in whatever you need to do. But MARSOC, it seems to me, turns more of like a direct I mean, when I read up on you about going to Iraq it turned into more of like a direct action type force.
Speaker 2:Yes, so we've always there's always within the Marine Corps there's been a reconnaissance battalion and they serve as the eyes and ears, essentially, of the battalion commander that they support. The force recon has always been re -answered to the force commander. So whoever the kind of the highest commander on the field was After 9-11, when I found myself in Afghanistan that was General Mattis and we were reporting to General Mattis, kind of taking direction from General Mattis to observe and report and interdict enemy activity. Observe and report and interdict enemy activity. So Force Recon has always had the secondary mission of direct action.
Speaker 2:So early on, when we kind of assumed that mission, about the same time that Special Operations Command was forming, it was an extremist hostage rescue. If the big boys couldn't make it to town, then we were the guys who would be called on to do that. We were obviously sea-based with the Marine Expeditionary Unit, so our deployments were on ship and we were usually a pretty quick trip away from any hotspot. And that's what happened with 9-11. I was sitting in a bar in Darwin, australia, you know, when we saw the first tower get hit, knew that hey, finish your beer because we're going to go jump on the boat and make our way to Afghanistan.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's crazy, 9-11. When in the 90s I was in Lissa, I was artillery and then I branched infantry later on. So I was actually at infantry officer basic course at Benning on 9-11. We were supposed to do our mount training that week and really it did change. We went from the peacetime army essentially peacetime to all of a sudden, hey, everybody's going to war, you're eventually going to go to war, and it just changed, going to go to war. And it just changed. Now, I'd imagine with marsock and with recon and and all of that, it really, I mean, it just went on, it didn't just change, it evolved. I mean we're talking decades and decades here of just evolving into a war fighting machine. But in order to get to that evolution you had to actually start. Now your book tough rugged bastards you you talk about how the marsauks started and how they needed these tough rugged bastards to go out there and do the job yeah, the uh.
Speaker 2:So, like I said, I was one of the the first marines in afghanistan and in 2001 and you know we were there and we're actually in Pakistan in October and in, uh, afghanistan in November Um, as that was happening, back in the States, the secretary of defense was was, you know, kind of looking at the big picture of this war. That was was no longer on the horizon. It was here, right, and, and he rightfully said hey, you know, this is going to be the war that you know, special operations needs to have a big play in. And so he pretty quickly directed that all of the special operations components increase in size. So, hey, make more seals, make more green berets, make more Rangers. And this time the Marine Corps was told hey, you're not allowed to opt out.
Speaker 2:Um, and the the marine corps has always had and I, you know, I'm a marine, always be a marine, I love the marine corps, but the marine corps has always had a somewhat of a tough relationship with any special operations unit. All right, that started. That started with, uh, you know, world War II with the Marine Raiders, the Raiders, uh, then they existed for two years and they were, they were disbanded. Um, you know the force recon was was formed and then, um, you know, the unit that I spent most of my time in first force recon was disbanded after Vietnam and wasn't resformed until 1987. So there's always been a reluctance to have someone in the Marine Corps that views themselves as better than any other Marines. You know, the Marine Corps looks at itself as a special operations force, and rightfully so. All right, but that's when you're the guy who's trying to work your way up to the tip of the spear, that's a little bit, you know, it can be disconcerting, right, you're like, hey, I'm just trying to do a job that you know that obviously there's a need for. So this time the Marine Corps was told you're going to participate in the special Operations Command, and still they kind of pushed back for a good while and US Special Operations Command pushed back as well.
Speaker 2:The Army kind of enjoys like a 75 percent ownership of US SOCOM. They're the Army, right, they're huge. So the SEALs form, you know I forget the statistics but somewhere in the 20, 25 percent the Air Force, and that's largely because they, within special operations, they have aircraft maintainers and things like that. So they're a pretty significant chunk, but the Army has a greater than 50 percent share, a greater than 50% share. So when we came along we're talking about, initially, the initial uh, tough, you know unit that tough rugged bastards was was kind of based on. There were less than a hundred of us, so we, we really weren't a threat to anybody but, uh, but still there was. There was pushback from the army, pushback from the Navy, pushback from the Marine Corps and uh, we were told, hey, you know, in spite of all that kind of make it happen.
Speaker 1:It's like hey, here's a scraps, guys, you, you do what you gotta do. You're going to be part of this machine, but you know, and we'll let you in on the party.
Speaker 2:but nobody wants you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got to earn your way and when you talk about ego, you know I picked up a word ego somewhere on there. I don't know if I said it, you said it or anything but when you throw in the Marines and the Navy SEALs and the Army, you know Air Force, we can get along with them anywhere because they had the best show. But listen, when you put all these egos together and especially you're such a small footprint, you really got to have strong leadership to back you and I'd imagine in the beginning you really had to have the strongest leaders, because this is the birth of MARSOC. So what was leadership like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Marine Corps. Despite the fact that they weren't excited for the whole enterprise, they were not going to fail. So they picked the best guy that they could to head this whole thing and his name was Colonel Robert Coates. He had been a Marine, kind of just post-Vietnam days working for the agency, spent time down in South America working against the Contras during that thing in El Salvador. I was fortunate that he had been my boss for over a number of units, which in the military is very, very rare that you have the same boss across multiple units. So he was the exact right guy to pick for it. And when he asked me if I wanted to serve as a team leader in the unit, then yeah, it was kind of a stupid question, right, and he brought me into his office and that was.
Speaker 2:You know where the title of the book came from? And it was I. I, I swear to God, I thought this at the time. He was like hey, daily you know my expectations, excellence, you know nothing less than that. And you're allowed to pick, you know, out of the Marine Corps, who you want for your team.
Speaker 2:Uh, just, the only stipulation is that they're tough, rugged bastards with strong backs and hard feet, and that was verbatim the words that came out of his mouth and he's. He said a lot of other stuff and like threatened me if I didn't perform. But when I walked out I was like you know, one day I'm going to write a frickin book and the title of that book is going to be Tough, rugged Bastards. So it was. There was a little bit of a fight with the publisher. They're like yeah, we don't know. You know, bastards might throw some people off and like really, that's probably not the worst you know word that that people have heard. But yeah, I was, I was adam, was adamant. I'm like that's kind of a deal breaker for me. You know, this is this book.
Speaker 1:Uh, it's been a long, long, long time I mean over 20 years kind of in the in the making and uh, well, you know one thing about, you know one of the I did want to talk about the book because you joined the marines in 1987. You know we we have very limited conflicts between 87 and 2001. You know you have granada, you Storm, Desert Shield, you have some Somalia action with the Marines and then you're doing direct action missions in Iraq. I mean, that must you know, going from the reconnaissance to the train up to heading over there. The pucker factor, even as a Marine, because you know you always have to have that stoic, you know, hey, you know everything is good, I'm good to go, but that first initial pucker factor of being, whether it's Afghanistan or Iraq, that must have been pretty high.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and I had been in before we got to Afghanistan about 14 years. Afghanistan, about 14 years, so you know a pretty significant, I mean much longer than most people you know by by a factor of several that most people spend in the military. So, and I had, really I had missed out on on everything else, right, I was in overseas, well, overseas, working at embassies when the Gulf War happened, right in 90. I was supposed to go to Somalia and the Marine Corps made a decision to switch, you know, my unit out with some other unit. So I really had just kind of missed out on every opportunity of everything that you join the Marine Corps to do right, and I had really started to think that I'm like a bad luck, you know, penny, or whatever, or good luck I guess it depends totally on which way you want to look at it but from my perspective, for somebody who had had the opportunity over those intervening 14 years to have been trained as a sniper, been trained as uh, you know, you know, arguably among the best you know in the Marine Corps and force recon, uh, jump out of airplanes, dive, you know, and you know, in the harbors, uh, train for a close quarter battle and hostage rescue and all of these things I I had, you know, done a lot of training but never had the opportunity to, to employ an aviate until, uh, afghanistan, and in late 2001.
Speaker 2:And even even minutes kind of before the first firefight that I got into, I was kind of joking about the fact that I was bad luck. You know, I'm like you know, you know, go ahead and relax, you know nothing's going to happen. And then, uh, you know, two minutes later we're kind of in a gun battle for our lives, um, on a cold road, you know, outside of Kandahar. But uh, yeah, it is. You know, I think. I think you don't, you know you don't join the Marine Corps for the college, right, you join the Marine Corps because you want to be a Marine, you want to test yourself, and, yeah, that was. I had almost given up on the fact until until then.
Speaker 1:Given up on a fact, and that's the thing I think a lot of civilian world doesn't realize that you, when you join and I was looking at some of your other podcasts and stuff when you join to be an 11 series and or 311, you get into these types of units. You want to go to war, you want to fight, you want to protect the homeland, you want to protect your brothers and sisters, you want to do what you got to do and you don't want to just train all the time. Training is great, it's great, it's great, but then you actually want to actually see if it works't want to just train all the time. Training is great, it's great, it's great, but then you actually want to actually see if it works.
Speaker 2:You want to test yourself and that's, that's it, I think, more than anything, I mean there's there's the perception that people want to go kill somebody.
Speaker 2:You know, I don't, you know that never really was the thing for me, but you you've done all of this stuff to to hopefully mold yourself into the type of person who will think well, perform well, act well, do all of the things that you you need to do in combat, and so there's absolutely the desire to to have that opportunity and it's it's intoxicating really. I mean, you know when the adrenaline starts pumping and things are going and you know if you are, if you trained well and if your leaders did a good job of building you. You know you you perform as you should, and it's a magnificent thing to watch. You know, in Afghanistan I had the opportunity and I talk about it kind of at length in the book, but to see the guys standing beside me, guys that had some role in training as their platoon sergeant over a number of years, and watch them just do exactly what they should be doing in the situation in a very complex situation, what they should be doing in the situation in a very complex situation. It's nighttime, there's fire, there's people shooting at it and just watching them like man, this is, this is.
Speaker 3:It would be hard to explain, and it is hard to explain to somebody who hasn't been there, did the awe factor and not not awe factor in, I guess, for all those years of training and then to actually go and implement it did the, did you. Was the transition a lot easier than maybe you might've expected? Or was it just natural that everyone, just like you said, just did what they were supposed to do?
Speaker 2:It was. And, like I said, we're, you know, in the force recon unit. We were really really well trained. I mean, we had, you know, just rehearsed and repeated and done things so many times. There's a saying, that one I got from colonel coach so he said, uh, you don't practice until you get it right, you practice until you can't get it wrong. And that was really the mentality that I took into training these guys and they came with their own, you know they, you know they weren't new when I got them, they were guys who were seasoned.
Speaker 2:So there's almost a little bit of a letdown. You're like man, I thought that this would be harder, I thought that it would freak me out a little bit more, I thought it would be a little more stressed. But when you're like, hey, there's a saying that the Romans had that their drills were bloodless battles and their battles were bloody drills, if you practice something enough, it becomes second nature and you really start to notice so much of it is mental. Just that you've done mental rehearsals that you understand what happens kind of in the brain and in the body under conditions of stress. Cortisol gets released, epinephrine, norepinephrine, you get this surge of chemicals and there's a pretty predictable series of events that happen. You know, and a lot of it was things I'd read about, things I've been told about.
Speaker 2:You know, the FBI does probably the best job of cataloging agent-involved shootings, and so the idea that there's a thing called auditory exclusion, where you just can't hear anything. You know, gunshots, which are really really loud, don't sound very loud, there's a perceptual narrowing, don't sound very loud. Uh, there's a perceptual narrowing. So your, your, your focus shifts down to just the, the bad guy in front of you. Um, you start to lose, uh, blood shunting, so your body is trying to go into fight or flight mode, so it's trying to put all of the blood into the big muscles, right, so you can run away, right for the flight, which can make some things fine, motor skills challenging.
Speaker 2:So there's all of these things going on and it could be overwhelming if you weren't, you know, aware of it and fortunately we had spent a lot of time with people who had been in. You know, from LAPD SWAT guys to you know, fbi agents to other. You know, from LAPD SWAT guys to you know, fbi agents to other. You know military folks. You know we would routinely bring in, you know, vietnam veterans from Force Recon to talk to us about things. So we had done everything imaginable to prepare ourselves other than have somebody shoot at us. So it's good to know that Al that taxpayer money, you know, in time taxpayer money.
Speaker 1:That's because I'm thinking that the thousands and thousands of bolts you guys go through, the fire and train and everything, but also the blanks, the simulations, the simulations, the, the, the quantity of training you do. And that's one thing I've always wondered about the special operations community. It's a lot different than you know know. Being an enlisted 13 Bravo guy, I spent most of the time in a motor pool cleaning up oil spots, infantry, just paperwork, a lot of you know as far as an officer and stuff like that. But when you get into the special operations, what is? We're not talking like okay, we're talking about a train up. What is your train up like? What's the week like? Wake up in the morning run 20 miles.
Speaker 2:We would, you know, train in blocks. I mean I think most people it makes sense, right. So you'd have a. You might spend a week doing practicing medical training. You know you'd spend a week or two doing communications training, so just making sure everybody knows the radios, and that's the sort of thing that gets boring. You know people aren't terribly excited about it. I really hate it. We would usually start the day in our medical training by giving somebody else an IV and getting an IV Valuable skill. But I really I don't like needles, so I was always.
Speaker 2:But you know, then when you get out to the, the whole idea is that everything is a spiral approach to learning, which is really kind of become the big educational buzzword now. But you know, scaffold that, hey, you start with some medical training, start with communications training. Now you're using the communications to call for a medevac while you're working on the guy. Now you're out shooting and you're, you know, having simulated casualties and you not only have to call in the medevac but you have to call in supporting arms, so artillery that come in, or gunships, and you just progressively build, you know, over time until you're performing. You know you have guys performing everything that would happen in combat, minus the, the getting shot back at part, and even that is simulated quite a bit.
Speaker 2:So, um, you know, as we progress closer to our deployment, our weeks were, you know, quite often we would just stay out on the range and, you know, up in the morning, you know, shoot all day or sleep all day, shoot all night. Um, it was, uh, and on occasion, shoot all day, then shoot all night, it just uh, you know, really depended, but it was, it was consistently hard training and that was a lesson that I'd learned very early, um, in in my career and when you know one that I absolutely, you know, carried on from, you know, from Colonel Coates and from other, you know, leaders that I had, that just pushed the fact that the thing that always scared me as a leader is, you know, having to come back and you know, tell a wife or tell a child or whatever, that, hey, your husband isn't, isn't coming back, because I didn't do a better job enough of preparing him. Um, and that that, you know, just literally scared the shit out of me when you talk about training, it's evolved.
Speaker 1:It has absolutely evolved. You know, when we talk about the 80s and 90s, we were fighting the cold war. We were fighting a big, large scale. Um, any army who would call them Krasnovians? That was our opponent. You know, the 1990s Training evolved so much that now you have all the Gucci gear in the world you want You're not running around with. You know scraps and everything else you need, but who's conducting the training? How do they keep up to date? I've always wondered that too. Yes, your unit can know exactly what they're doing, but who is bringing in a training and making sure that they're up to date?
Speaker 2:Now that's, that's a great question and that's really started to. You know, post 9-11 started to to change, you know, because in the, in all those those days, um, you either, you know, you just trained kind of in house or you went to um and we used to go to the army, you know, trained with the army out at uh, like Fort Polk, uh, the joint, uh, jrtc or the? Uh. Up in California they have the, the big training center in NTC where you're fighting I don't know if they're called the Krasnovians, but the other is in Soviet tanks and vehicles, you know, fighting a big force on force war. You know we would, for that we would like parachute in or move in and observe and report, and it was great training.
Speaker 2:But post 9-11, there was a recognition that, hey, there are people who have done this. You know there are people who have, particularly, you know, somalia era guys, you know some higher level, you know guys who had, who had worked, or you know either FBI types and special agents and things that were brought in that had expertise in certain areas. So it really, you know, we, the FBI types and special agents and things that were brought in that had expertise in certain areas. So it really, you know, within special operations there was a level of funding that wasn't it's not available in the big army or the big Marine Corps. So you know, we would bring in like top IPSC shooters you know Todd Jarrett and just guys who were at the top of their game at shooting and they had never, you know, heard a shot fired in anger, but they knew how to shoot. So you use that for what it's worth.
Speaker 2:Then you get some guys who had been in Somalia with you know the Black Hawk Down, you know guys to come out and a lot of them had started training opportunities and a lot of them had started training opportunities and so that really started growing post 9-11. People that had something to offer, making a good bit of money but also, you know, doing their best to make sure that soldiers, sailors and airmen had the skills to meet the challenge, and that really continued. People started branching out into vehicle training, into all sorts of explosive training, people with particular expertise, and there was no shortage early in post-9-11 of money to throw at that training. So it was good, absolutely great, to get trained by the trained by the best, you know. I mean the best in the world at a particular scale.
Speaker 3:Was it difficult to come home now and tell those stories, cause for so long, um, I'm sure as part of your training, as part of your instruction, you're basically told to shut up, not tell people where you're going, what you're doing, who's training you, and then to then put it in a book form years later. Was that a hard mental block to get over, or was it even cathartic to be able to then be at a point where you could share that? Yeah, it was both.
Speaker 2:It was. You know, absolutely, the Marine Corps prides itself, and special operations pride itself on being quite professional, prides itself and special operations pride itself on being quiet professionals. So being a marine in special operations, you're kind of double, double tapped on the fact you're really quiet you're supposed to be.
Speaker 2:You're supposed to be humble, um, and it's it's hard, because there's absolutely a level of humility in the, in the guys that I I feel are kind of at the, the higher levels, right, um, but you're also, you know, there's a part of you that's like kind of really proud of. You know the opportunities that you've had and the things you've had the ability to do. So it was I didn't start writing this for really almost 20 years after the fact. So there's absolutely a large part of it that's cathartic. One of the things I think I wasn't prepared for I had read, and one of the things that always struck me as interesting with those guys when you would talk to them was that after a long time in captivity, you realize that everything you've ever seen or experienced or learned is still in your brain somewhere. You just have to think long and hard enough and have nothing to do for weeks at a time.
Speaker 2:And there was one of the guys that they brought in to talk to us was had recreated. You know every classroom that he had been in, from first grade, I guess on you know where everybody sat and it just over time he's like oh, that was Linda and Billy and Jimmy and Tommy and he, uh, but it's, it's funny when you actually, you know, and I'm like man, my memory is shot. All right, I've been exposed to a lot of blasts, you know, I don't know if I blame that, but, uh, when you, when you sit down and really start thinking back, you know, things start to open. You know, it's kind of like floodgates start open and memories come back. And I wasn't entirely prepared for all of the memories that came back, but you know, ultimately it was absolutely a beneficial experience.
Speaker 1:Putting pen to paper and, like you said, the quiet professional. Listen, I love Navy SEALs. They're great, they do their things, but there's a million Navy SEAL books out there. Tough to find some solid Marine books, a ton of Army books. But I remember, you know, before the age of the, the internet I'm going to the wayback machine here before you could youtube everything and all we had was books. You know me, trying to figure out what service I wanted to go into is always like you know. Look at the vietnam era, how many books were out there. I still think, yeah, podcasts are great, youtube is great, but there is nothing like a book to get the information out there and get the visualization flowing than you would get from like an audio, you know, from anything like that term pen and paper, and obviously we're using typewriters here. But when you first sit down where you're like man, I've been a marine where did this, this writer, come from? Where's the john daly writing aspect of this whole variable come in?
Speaker 2:yeah, let me, like you, I grew up loving books. You know my first uh, and I kind of lived down the middle of nowhere, so, uh, I didn't have a lot of friends to to play with, but my dad had a big you know just this bookshelf that it have a lot of friends to play with. But my dad had a big, you know just this bookshelf that seemed a lot bigger than it is now but just filled with, you know, the Hardy Boys and Adventures, tarzan, zane, grey, just all of these books of kind of badassery, right. And you know I loved reading them, right, and you know I loved reading them. And you know, when you love, yeah, sure, I'll probably wind up writing books someday.
Speaker 2:The Marine Corps kind of doesn't encourage the artistic side of things that much. I did write a few articles about training and about things like that. That made it into the Marine Corps publications. But after I retired, the GI Bill was a great phenomenal, probably the best benefit that the military offers the opportunity to go to college and I had used the last couple of years that I was in to get a bachelor's degree in. And that was a surprise to anybody that knew me right, because obviously the kid least likely to ever engage in any higher education. But at the time I thought that Homeland Security Studies was kind of the thing. Right, I was going to be a security consultant and make a bunch of money, so I was able to use the tuition assistance that the Marine Corps has to get that without using any of my GI Bill.
Speaker 2:So when I retired I was like, hey, you know, after a couple of years I'm like man, I really I've got this, I'm not going to let it go away. You, I'm going to use this, this benefit. So I got, uh, looked into a master's degree in in uh, literature basically, and as in liberal studies, but it primarily centered on literature. And that really got me into reading again, reading more than uh, you know, the newspaper and uh, in that we had to do some writing. And luckily one of the professors just you know the newspaper and uh, in that we had to do some writing, and luckily one of the professors just you know. Then that was when I wrote the, the first story that really became this book. Uh, one of the professors was just like, hey, there's something here. You know, you've got a little bit of talent, you know, maybe you should consider another master's degree in writing and I'm like you know I'll. I still have some GI Bill left, so I'll. I'll apply to the Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing Program. Give it a shot. And it was.
Speaker 2:The University of North Carolina in Wilmington has one of the top programs and I was unaware of this. But they I mean they take very few people each year and I don't know if they needed more veterans programs and I was unaware of this. But they, I mean they take very few people each year and I don't know if they needed more veterans or if I was local or what it was. But I was very surprised when they told me that I had been accepted to that program and that was. I've said this.
Speaker 2:You know countless times that that was scarier. You know walking into my first classroom trying to pass myself off as a writer than walking. You know being shot at. You know by far it was a scary, scary situation. But you know, dealing with the only being the only military guy in a writing program of incredibly talented writers all of them with backgrounds actually that knew how to use punctuation and spell things properly, that wasn't me. So I learned a lot and they were very kind and taught me a lot and that really kind of gave me the kickstart that I needed to attempt to write a book.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, you spent a career training to get really good at what you're doing. And then the vulnerability of going out of your element and putting yourself in a situation where, I mean, when you're writing and when you're in that position, it's all on you. And if it's something you're not comfortable with, not familiar with, I could absolutely see how that would be more stressful than almost any situation you've been put in before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean, I was. I had been trained so well for being shot at, so that was, you know, kind of um, you know. But I also the benefit was that I'd been brought up and trained that you know, if you decide you're going to do something, you, you do it. You know, you do it. It doesn't matter that you are completely ill-qualified for it. And over time you learn, and I learned. A lesson that I learned as a leader early on is take help where it's offered. Don't think that you know everything. Go to the person that knows and and uh and learn from them. And the one uh like benefit that I had was something that I'd learned, you know, being a guy who'd become, you know, arguably successful in special operations as a you, a mildly talented you know general athlete. You know was, uh, you know the thing you can always do is work harder than than anybody else and if, as long as you, you know, refuse to fail, that uh, at least that's what, that's what worked for me.
Speaker 1:You know you've expanded beyond just writing, going to class and writing a book and pulling it all together. You actually have sub stacks and I always tell people, mike, sub stack is just such a great area to do it. And one of the sub stacks you have is about rucking, but not just rucking. I mean, that's kind of like the metaphor of it. Rucking is like my go-to. You know, that's my go clear my head. I throw the ruck on my back. I still do. Actually, when we get off tonight I'm going to go rock a few miles Because you need to get out there and clear your head. You need something. You can't be stuck behind a screen. You can't just go to the gym and jump on a treadmill. I mean, yeah, you can go for a run, but listen, I'm not running. I'm 51 years old.
Speaker 1:My knees are running, my knees aren't going, but you do have this stuff. You know you have two sub stacks. One is walking point with John Daly, and everybody want to repeat that again. I say again walking point with John Daly, and that's a sub stack. And the other one is about rucking. You know, ruck, the fuck up.
Speaker 3:We're allowed to swear in here.
Speaker 1:But one of the things you had on here was this I loved it. When you load up a ruck and put it on your back, your shoulders will hurt, move long enough, your feet will hurt, your calves will scream and your lower back will ache. That's supposed to happen. If you do it long enough, it starts to hurt less. There are two reasons for this you're getting stronger and building muscle, but you're also learning to embrace the pain, to make friends with it, to realize that I won't kill you. And that's the greatest thing about rucking is you're learning different life. That's a life lesson. Everybody that's almost like hey, you know what Rucking is going to hurt your body while it builds it. But that same concept that goes with rucking is life lessons. So I love how you have the ruck. A lot of people don't understand what the ruck is.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about these sub stacks and you know sure, Um, I started, so I started it after the the book deal had happened and I was told that I didn't know this. I was absolutely, uh, you know, naive in in everything to do with writing, but, uh, you know it's, it's valuable if you have a email list of people that you can send things out to, and uh, so I looked around at the best way to do it. Substack was kind of growing and as a platform, it's great. It's. It's offers a absolutely free way for anybody really to to have a platform and have opinions and and write. Um, so I started doing that and, you know, first, with, with walking point, um had a different name at the beginning, but, you know, trying to take the lessons, and I think there's there's so much that I got out of my time in the Marine Corps, right, Leadership lessons, life lessons, and there's so much of the kind of the minutia of things that you learn in the Marine Corps that translate directly, if we're somewhat metaphorically into, to life, and so I was like, hey, man, if I can, you know, use this as an opportunity to test some things out, you know, and, and it's, it's, it's grown, you know, it's uh, I've been kind of like impressed with, uh, with, with how it's grown. People seem to like it.
Speaker 2:I spent a couple of months writing about rucking. That led to a lot of people interested. Rucking has grown. I think it was listed by the New York Times as the exercise of the year for 2024. The company Go Ruck has been a huge part of that. This guy, Michael Easter, has a great book called the Comfort Crisis that is also responsible for that. So I said, hey, let's absolutely.
Speaker 2:You know, rucking is this metaphor for life, you know, a metaphor for building mental toughness, metaphor for for life, you know, a metaphor for building mental toughness. But it's also just putting a pack on your back and going is probably. You know, I'm, um, about to hit 55 and and I've spent, you know, post Marine Corps career, really got into running long distance, like a hundred mile races, and it beat me up a lot. So it's it that throwing 40 or 50 pounds on your back is less of an impact than running. But it is. You know, and it's something that you know.
Speaker 2:You can get out in the woods and use the weight on your back to survive and live. You know camp, or you can just have weight. You know sandbags or plates, and it's. It's something that anybody can do, and you, I can do it with somebody who's in far better shape than me, and I just I can have less weight, you know, and they can have more, or vice versa. So I think it's a it's a phenomenal um exercise and it's it's also you can't do it without learning something about yourself.
Speaker 2:So I've had the opportunity in, you know, since starting that, for to to start, you know the go-ruck people said, hey, you want to come out and be one of our like cadre, so I get, you know, the chance to do that. And it's, it's really phenomenal to go out to an event you know, meet some people that you didn't know. Some may have been in the military, a lot of them not, and you know people that are absolutely unconvinced that they're going to be able to make it through the event that you put them through and at the end, to see that, you know, people come together, they help each other. So it's absolutely. You know I'm a huge evangelist right, Put weight on your back and go out and walk right. There's very few things that you can do that are better for you than that.
Speaker 1:Throw the azympic away and throw the ruck on the back. You know, I only have one more question. I'm sure Eric probably has one more, but this can be pretty controversial here. Oh man, we don't talk politics, but we do talk Gunny Highway, gunny Highway. So what's the thoughts? What's the thoughts on Heartbreak Ridge?
Speaker 2:That came out. I think it was about the time I was in boot camp, so I don't think that I had seen it. I'd have to check the exact date, but I think I watched it after I got home for bootcamp and that came out. Or that may have been right before, but 86, 86.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, so it did I had seen that before and when you, when you see that absolutely as a as a young guy, that did not make me want to join the Marine Corps. Less the history of the story, the actual facts in it are very sketchy, but the Marine Corps has always been willing to kind of play fast and loose with the truth. You know, as it, as it regards our history, um, and I do, I talk about that in the book there's some, you know, kind of comical things that we've taken credit for. That may or may not be, uh, 100 accurate, but uh, yeah, to watch it now it's, it's absolutely comical.
Speaker 2:But when I got to first force recon, I you came to find out that uh, a lot of the, the extras, and at, the marines from the unit were extras in that movie, so it was. You could kind of point to guys to be like, oh wait, a minute. You know I, you know they had obviously grown up a a bit over the years. But uh, one of one of the, the men who was in the movie and he, he plays the role of they're they're doing rappelling and he's kind of the Marine who's preparing them to go off of the rappel tower. He wound up, he was our first sergeant and he had really kind of gotten into the whole acting thing and now owns a company that does, and he's worked with a number of movies with clint, eastwood, so the sands of iwo jima, the flag of our fathers. You know he was the military uh liaison for those. So it uh, I think I think his production company or his, his advisor company, is called like first force productions, right, so it ties back to that.
Speaker 2:But uh, yeah, that was a great movie. There were a few others Full Metal Jacket. Obviously I didn't understand it as an anti-war movie, which I think it was meant to be. You know there's growing up watching books. Obviously I love books, but you know, at that time there were just so many, you know, vietnam movies, you know Chuck Norris and Rambo, and all of these things that were just fueled fueled the absolute passion that I had to go join the Marine Corps and find my way into a special operations unit.
Speaker 3:So where does John Daly go next? Are we going to delve into the fiction world, or what's next on the writing plate for you?
Speaker 2:That is a great question. I have part of my writing program that I went to. I have a novel. It has none to do with the military. I've come to realize it's not that great. It's got good bones right, but it needs some work. I'm not sure that I'm up to that work.
Speaker 2:I, I, I would love to take the things that I write about in the sub stack and expand on those. And uh, that was also that's kind of been something going through my head over the past couple of years that I've been doing. This is that's. That will probably be the next book, or at least the next thing I'll pitch as a book. You know, there's, I feel like there's a lot of you know it's at this point in time and I think it's something like less than 3% of the military age people are eligible to join because of fitness and because of and there's just there's a lot of of people, I think, that are looking for something that's that's that's, you know they're not finding. And I think there's there's lessons. You know, even without joining the military, there's lessons that you can learn that I think haven't been taught to. The thing that's sitting in the back of my head once I get through this whole book release thing, which is more strenuous than the actual writing I've come to find out.
Speaker 3:He's like just shoot at me some more that I can handle, but all this other stuff is difficult, the beauty of it too, though, is you can go so many places.
Speaker 3:So you know Jason touched on your sub stack you know, with the experience you have in real world and also the experience you have now with writing, you know you can do short stories. If you want, you could put together a novella. I mean, you could put together almost name what you want to do, and as long as you're willing to invest that time and you've obviously got the creative spark there, then you know, kind of the and just the way the market is evolved over the years when it comes to publishing is you can go so many different routes to get your works out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and that's one of the things that I do in my spare time, all of my spare time, when I'm not writing or being on podcast or rucking or running or working, is the. Where's this free time? I don't know. I don't know I get up very early but uh, is is trying to encourage, you know we kind of talked about it, the cathartic nature of it. You know, veterans, other veterans, to write.
Speaker 2:One of the organizations I work for is is uh called the lethal minds journal and it's a great opportunity, you know, for veterans, veterans kind of exclusive to veterans but to tell their stories. Or, you know, have somebody you know work with somebody who's done a little bit of writing and you know, help you craft it to a point where it could be, it could be published, you know. Or you can say, hey, you know what, I don't want to publish it, I want to keep it for my kids. But there's massive value in, in and not just for veterans. But you know, that's kind of where my experience lies. And you know, putting getting the things out of your head and onto paper, yeah and uh, you know it's, it's happening a lot more, you know, I think there's, there's a lot of you know, a lot of people have stories to tell. There's a lot of people that want to learn from them. So it's there's not only it's cathartic, but it's you know, there's also somebody that it's liable to, to help somebody that will benefit from it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely that new mission. That's what it is. It's like you're having a new mission, like your new mission is like to be creative and there's such creative outlet there in the veteran community. Because one thing about being a veteran is your worries, the hurry up and wait. You're always in your mind. You're always in your mind somewhere along the line you're going to be in your mind and that's going to bring out the creativity in it or it's going to bring out a darkness with it. But I've seen so many more people getting creative. I mean mean we were talking about it before we started the show. But knife making One of my friends, michael Broderick. He does acting lessons because he's an actor. He does acting lessons for veterans and stuff like that. There are so many ways that you can give back while also helping yourself. Hence starting a podcast. Be creative in some way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, I think that's the best advice.
Speaker 2:You know so many, you know I personally have, I think, in the past three or four months know four, you know former Marines, guys that I worked with or knew, at least priorfully, that have killed themselves.
Speaker 2:And it's really you know this. You know people are are getting out of the military where you have a very distinct mission and then you know being, you know, finding yourself without a purpose or thinking that, hey, this thing is going to be the thing that I'm going to, I'm going to get into and I'm going to get an MBA and I'm going to make a lot of money and that'll make me happier. But the more I look at it, the more I talk to people, the more you know the people that you see that are happier, people that have found some other way to be useful. Right, to give back to somebody, right, and doing that to veterans makes sense. But you know, maybe it's you know writing something that for somebody else, maybe it's, you know, working in some other capacity, maybe it's being creative, but there's absolutely too many people choosing a, you know, the permanent solution to a temporary problem.
Speaker 1:And I'd say that that reflects onto the civilian community as well. I mean, so many people in a civilian community are getting their head and they don't have that mission. They're chasing a dream that's more fiscally motivated than it is creatively motivated. More about that. You know the next that. You know the next dollar sign. The next dollar sign when, yeah, you need money to live, but your primary function in life shouldn't be money. You can have 10 minutes here and there to be creative and somehow or just do something to keep your mind focused on not that dark matter. Yeah, no doubt.
Speaker 1:Well, john, I appreciate it everybody. The book is tough rugged bastards. I should I you know what I gotta really put their voice in there. Tough rugged bastards. August 13th 2024. John eric, I appreciate you both.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me on.
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