#189 Thomas "Drago" Dzieran - Navy SEAL / The Terrorist Terrorizer

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I could shoot the guy, but he was not armed. As I'm working with the guy, the car comes in, hey Drago, stop the Grom guy, Grom element is moving on the backyard, and there are three guys in ambush lanes.
I'm going to knock his front teeth out, and I'm going to make a necklace out of it. So actually I woke up to him, and very carefully lift his upper lip and just drove his two front teeth in, just pulled them out.
Did that affect you at all? No. No? Killing never affected you.
Drago, welcome to the show. Thank you for the invitation.
It's an honor to be here, brother. It's an honor to have you.
So we have a ton of mutual friends and I've heard about you since I was in the SEAL teams and you just have a phenomenal reputation and I can't believe we haven't crossed paths until today. Well, you know, I was watching you and I watched your channel, I'm subscribed to your channel, but I never thought, you know, some small guy, a little guy like me, will show up over here because, you know, the guests that you have, there's like world-class leaders, world-class people.
So I never even thought about it. And here I am.
So I guess miracles happen. Thank you, brother, for the for invitation i would uh disagree with you you're definitely not a small guy so basically i can't you're still 65 years old but still holding my 65 yeah i'm 65.
wow well you know i mean this is how the show started you know what i mean was was i don't nobody's a small guy you know that we have on it some people don't have the exposure that that that i think that they should have and um you know when i started this that's that's how that's how i wanted it to be i wanted to get guys that have and women you know that have had phenomenal careers and in in very interesting life stories and have been through a lot of just a lot of everything operated at the highest level traumatic experiences and and how they got out of those because I think you know somebody like yourself that brings a lot of hope and and and I mean we're both very aware of what's going on in the veteran community right now you know i think we're up to what 40 40 veterans a day commit suicide and uh i think that you know this show and and getting stories out like yours it it it puts it on display and it brings it brings veterans from all walks an example. And it just proves that there's a way out of that rut, you know, in that gap from service into finding success in the civilian world.
And that they're not the only ones that are going through that kind of experience. There's a lot of us.
And I'm one of them. And I know you them and i know you're one of them and pretty much everybody we've ever had on this show uh from a military standpoint is also one of them and so i've been you know i saw when your book came out and i've been kind of watching you from from afar on social media and uh i just i think you're a great person and so it's an honor for me to have you here as well.
Thank you very much. It's great to hear it.
I appreciate your kind words. I'm just a regular person.
I'm American. So I want to be like you guys.
And that's what drives me. You are like us.
Because you are one of us? I'm American, yes. Yeah.
Before we get, when did you come over? I came in 1984. How old were you? I was 24 years old.
So I was leaving Poland. I left prison when I was 23 years old.
And then I came to U.S. embassy, I asked for help, and I was given status of political refugee and flown to the United States when I started my life.
The funny thing is, I came to America not knowing English, having no money. I had a 10 Phoenix, German coin in my pocket and bag of clothes.
Wow. Well, we'll get super in depth on that on that but to start off everybody gets an introduction here and a gift you know you got a gift coming if you watch the show but thomas drago jaron you're a polish-born warrior who grew up under communist rule you spent two years in jail as a political prisoner for standing up to regime that tried to silence you with censorship and oppression you came to america in 1984 and became a u.s citizen in 1991 you're a retired u.s navy seal who served with seal team two and seal team four running over a hundred direct action missions in iraq is a lead bre.
You are a recipient of the Bronze Star with V for Balor. You are the founder of the Navy SEAL Fund, giving back to the Brotherhood, and ConnectZing, a platform fighting for free speech.
You're the author of the book, The Pledge to America. You're a husband to Rachel, who is an Air Force Academy graduate,

father of four, and most importantly, a Christian and devout Catholic.

And American.

And American.

And American.

So everybody kicks it off with a gift.

So those are Vigilance League gummy bears. Thank brother made here in the USA by Americans you mind if I just open it now have at them I'm all about sweets I have embargo on sugar and sweet things at home but since my wife is not here what do you think oh I love it perfect and then since I found out you're a catholic I wanted to give you this so that do you know Dom Razo he was at he was at two he's my generation I know the name.
I cannot connect with the face yet. Yeah, he's a...
I know what it is, brother. Thank you.
You're welcome. Yes.
He's a seal, and he has these warrior's rosaries made, and he gave me one a long time ago, and I carry it everywhere with me for protection. I have mine in my pocket right here.
It is beautiful. Thank you.
But it's also very important for me. For me, it has an extra meaning too.
So I really appreciate it. Yeah, you know, I think that just, you know, I grew up Catholic.
Then I kind of fell out of it, you know, in the SEAL teams. I think most people did.
And then kind of found faith again a couple years ago. And I'll tell you one thing.
I just think the Catholic religion has it right when it comes to protection and talking about demonic entities and all of that kind of stuff. So I carry mine everywhere I but yes but um so i wanted you to have one thank you brother dom's been uh dom's been a mentor of mine when it comes to dom yeah i know we're talking about okay okay i got it now sorry yeah yes yes yeah dom i I don't, I mean, yeah, I just like, if you hear it, yes, I know who he is.

Cool. And so before we get two in the weeds on the interview, which I can't wait, I have a subscription account on Patreon, and we've built it into one hell of a community.
I think we're at about 60-something thousand members now you know when I was telling you and your wife downstairs I started this in my attic and it was to it was to basically shine a light on on veterans who who've just who have done amazing things and are doing amazing things now and back then when I was in my attic nobody wanted to touch me nobody wanted to fund anything advertise with me and so you know I needed some income you know to grow this and so I started a community on patreon and that community has just carried me all the way from the attic of my house to the amazing team that I have today

to this studio that we're in now. And now we're building a 7,000 square foot studio out in the woods.
And that community has just always supported me and always supported our guests as well and so one of the things that we do is we offer our tier three members the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question. And you had quite a few questions.
Okay. So this is from Eric Auger.
Do you see any parallels between the tactics used by the communist regime in Poland and what's happening in the U.S. today?

And then there's a follow-on. And more importantly, how can the average American recognize and push back before it's too late? Thank you.
That's a very important question. I'm glad somebody asked it.
so yes not right now at this point

but in previous administration

there was a lot of things

that somebody ask it. So yes, not right now at this point, but in previous administration,

there was a lot of things that to me seems like deja vu from socialist state run by communists. I'm saying socialist state.
Poland was never communist country. People need to understand it.
Neither was Soviet Union a communist country, nor any country behind Iron Curtain was ever a communist country. People need to understand it.
Neither was Soviet Union communist country nor any country behind Iron Curtain was ever communist country. They were socialist state, very dangerous totalitarian socialist states, but they were run by communists.
We say that there's communist state, communist country, but in reality they were socialist state. That's why that distinction now that is being made, that communist was bad, but socialism is good, is a very dangerous distinction.
And yes, there are many things that happened in the last, I would say, four years were very disturbing for me. And I talk to my wife about it quite often.
So we agree that something needs to change because we're going to fail, like Europe, fail the Western Europe right now into depravity and perversion. What are some of the things that stick out to you? Censorship is the first one, is the big one.
It is easy to explain for people who censor that the government doesn't censor you. It's just private organization like Facebook.
When I was heavily censored, like LinkedIn, I'm still being heavily censored. But the problem with it is that they are being coerced by the government, and this is the very disturbing stuff.
You know, like I'm running my own social media platform and definitely I censor people posting anti-American posts. I don't want them here and they are faster than lightning gone from my platform.
But I think that censorship is very dangerous. Branding political opponents as criminals, as terrorists is very dangerous.
This is the same thing exactly what I experienced in socialist Poland run by communists, like my father. So the censorship also denigrating moral values, denigrating patriotism, denigrating the family values.
It is important for a socialist state to take control of people, but it reminds me of the same thing that happened in Poland when I was growing up. There is another thing, too, I would like to mention.
In America, people do not understand very well the concept of desensitization. Desensitization.
Desensitization? Yeah. Oh, I could be a president.
President Biden. So I'm getting better.
But anyway, so they do not understand the concept of desensitization and normalization of evil. And that's what it is.
So, first you talk about it, you give the different names, which is benign, and then you enforce and normalize the evil and the entire process. I'll give you an example with walk.
Walk. Walk, yes.
What is walk? Well, if you talk to somebody and tell them that the teacher is walk, little bit walk, it's not really alarming. It's just like, well, maybe a little bit strange guy or woman.
But if you look behind that word, what it represents, what this word walk is hiding, the depravity and perversion, that whole process takes different meaning for most of the people. It's different when you hear, oh, the teacher is living the walk, but the teacher is pervert.
That definitely perks your attention and say, maybe I don't want to send my children to this class. So this type of techniques is not well known and described here in the United States because people were never exposed to evil of socialism and communism on mass scale.
And let's hope it will never happen. So those are the things when I talk, the censorship, branding political opponents as criminals and terrorists, attack on moral values, family values, and most important, faith.
These things that happened the last four years were very disturbing for me because I knew where it leads. I knew what can happen if it continues.
So, yeah. You know, I think the other question that Eric had was, you know, how can the average American push back before it's too late? There's many ways to do it.
One of them, we are the, for socialists, for the evil, we, me, you, we are a lost generation. We are all, we don't change.
They attack our children and this is what they are after it. So today, nowadays, after seeing what is happening in our schools, it is no longer enough for parents to ask child, hey, how was your school today? Oh, mom, dad, it was really good.
Okay, go play. You need to be inquisitive.
You need to find out what the child is being taught, what is being done to him. And, you know, there are great schools in America, but also they are perverted schools.
You need to intervene. And this is why there is such a big push from the evil side to get control of our children.
So we need to take this control back and if school doesn't let you change the curriculum or perverted teacher you need to do it on your own, you need to teach your own children. I'm homeschooling my children after I found out that school was teaching 73 genders and other perversion perverted way of thinking to my kids so we pulled the kids out of the school.
Not everybody has that, has meaning, have meanings. Not everybody has meanings to homeschool their kids.
People have to make a living. They have to work and they work hard.
At least you can come back home instead of spending time drinking beer. Maybe you should spend time with your child asking what he's doing and correct what school did wrong to your child.
This is important. We don't need to concentrate on ourselves.
We know our moral values are pretty much at this age immutable. But our kids are very vulnerable, and we need to be that example for our kids and stand up to the depravity and perversion throw on our kids in some of our schools.
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Excellent answer and you know it's it seems i moved up here from south florida uh where there's a massive american cuban population and they're all saying the same things it seems like anybody that you talk to that moved here from a communist country or socialist uh maybe not all socialists but venezuela cuba pol Poland, they're all saying the same stuff. And it's really, it's just really interesting to hear.
And I think it's an important conversation. We'll live that.
We'll live through it. Those people live through it.
They've seen the dangers, they've seen the results of such depravity, like communism and socialism. So they do shun warnings, but again, the censorship with today's technology and government coercion takes its toll, so people don't hear about it and don't know about it.
So yes, we need to be more proactive, especially with our children. Thank you for that.
So, Eric's a huge fan, the guy that asked the question, Eric Auger. So, if it's okay with you, I'm going to have you sign this at the end of the interview.
I would be honored to do so. We're going to send it to him.
I'm sure he would love that. So, all right, let's get into the interview.
So born in 1960, growing up in communist or socialist at that time. Well, we call it communist.
There's commonly known communist. There's a technicality here and people need to understand what we call communist states behind Iron Curtain.
Those are socialist states run by mostly by communists. We can call it communist state.
I call it too sometimes. What was it like growing up in Poland? Well, the first thing to realize is that in the 1960s, when I was born, it was only 15 years from the Second World War.
So the entire generation of people who went to the brutality, to the Holocaust to experience war personally, live in dead societies in Europe. I'm talking about in Poland even more so, because Poland lost around 6 million people.
There's one-fifth of population during the Second World War, murdered by Germans. and that was very, I would say they were dangerous times.
I don't have a bad memory. I have more nostalgia, nostalgic feelings to this time when I grew up.
But I remember now from the perspective of being American, living here in peaceful society, I remember how, and I realized how sometimes depravity was taking over, the brutality was taking over. People were ready to fight on the moment notice.
I mean, here you look somebody in the eyes and say, hey, hello, and say hello. In Poland, they would say, what the fuck are you looking at? That was the times that the typical reaction would be.
And so fighting, beating people on the streets was nothing unusual. It was frowned upon.
Nobody liked brutal, vulgar people, but it was very common to the point that when there was a fight on the street, and usually you can go on town and you can see two, three fights if you go through the town. People learned to just across the street.
They didn't even bother to call police. So it will later play a role in my upbringing when I get a little bit older.
But 1960s was a very brutal time for Poland.

It was the big transition from the wartime brutality experience society to peaceful, more peaceful society, and it was also hindered by the socialist and communist ideology that transition was not very smooth in Poland.

And also talking about it, I experienced the both worlds. They were living as a privileged kid when my father, who was a high-ranking communist and government official, so up to seven years old, when I was growing up with him being at home,

then when he left and the poverty,

the lifestyle that I experienced for the next decade,

it's nothing unusual in Poland, but for me it was a stark difference.

And then I was sent to my father when I was, I believe, 16 years old. Why did your father leave? Well, my father was communist.
He was entrenched into their ideology. And my mom going to church with us was not acceptable to him.
There were two things. One was a fear that he can lose his career.
As a communist and as a member of Polish government at the time, it was frowned upon going to church, especially having family and kids going to church. Why was it frowned upon to go to church? Because church is very dangerous.
The faith is very dangerous for socialist state. Faith gives you roots, a moral basis that are basically immutable.

That you have that morals that communists most likely can't change. So this is something that the first attacks in the communist state was on faith, usually, and children.
And this is why they try to eliminate this. And faith is a dangerous concept for communists and socialists.
And you will see that if you read the history of socialist states, the first attack usually happened on people's faith and their families. I think we saw some of that here.
Yes, we did. In the last four years, especially, that was something very disturbing for me.
And we need to be aware of it. How did your father leave? Well, he decided it was very dangerous for him, for his career, to stay at home with mom, who was a devoted Catholic.
My entire family, even his own mother, they were Catholics. And they didn't approve what he was doing.
I'll tell you later when we get to it. So he decided that's not his way of living.
He wants to make a career as a politician. He wants to make a career as a communist.
And when I was seven years old, he decided to leave, and he just took off, leaving us. Me and my two siblings, so it was three of us and my mom.
So he abandoned his three kids and his wife. Yes, yes, he did.
And as a communist, he died as a communist in 2021. When I went to visit, his views did not change.
He would be ready to murder people on the spot if they were opposed to socialism and communism. But I will talk about it, too.
We'll get to it. His view was very extreme when you get to know him, but when you didn't know him, you would think there's a great older man, there's somebody you would like to have for the neighbor, very well spoken, very commanding Polish language, extremely well because he was his major in university.
So, very nice man until we start probing his views and his internal thinking. That became very disturbing.
That's somebody you would not want to have as a neighbor. So, growing up, if he grew up as a…

Peasant.

As a Catholic or a believer, I mean, what was it that got into him that changed his entire view? Do you know? It's hard to guess, but this is my understanding of it. So he grew up in a peasant family, very poor.
and what he was offered by the communist state is, hey, we make you somebody, we make you somebody big, and you can progress with us. But you need to discard the fate, you need to discard all the attachments that are superstition.
So you need to be free man, they call it free man, to accept socialism and communist ideology.

And they were helping him along the way. He was very smart, so he was doing very well at school.
and eventually they grabbed hold of him and he, like many other Poles, gave in.

He gave up his faith, his moral views, and accepted so-called relative morality. This is another term that is not very popular here, and not very well understood yet.
So he subscribed to so-called relative morality. And that's where things start

changing. That's where people, that way he become the person he was later in his life.

What was it like for you when he left?

So there was dramatic change right away. In the first place...
What did he say to you? He didn't say nothing. He just didn't show up.
Wow. So, yeah, we didn't know where he was.
Mom tried to hide it from us. And at that time in Poland, there was also stigma for people who were divorced, especially for the kids.
They had a special name for divorcees. So I remember parents saying, these kids are divorcees, I want to play with them.
The parents got divorced, stay away from them. So I remember that.
And that was very, for me, I love to cope with it. But at the time, I see the kids didn't want to play with us.
So that was kind of the way it was, you know. That was the reality, and I didn't know any other.
And so, I mean… But also, life was different too, because from abundance of everything, from the legal protection. Because, you know, when I was a kid, I burned the wheat field by accident.
We were playing with fire, baking something in the fire in the middle of the wheat field. So we burned the entire wheat field.
So of course the neighbor comes in and because I was living on the outskirts of little town, Jelonagura, that was established in 1200, year 1200. So it was a beautiful town.
So I burned the Whitfield, so when a neighbor came to complain about it, my father said, just chase him out and say, look, you've caused problems. You'll have a secret police coming and talking to you.
And actually they did send the goons from the secret police to explain this guy that we are pretty much untouchable, so just leave it and plow the field again. Wow.
This is how bad it was. But I didn't know anything about it.
It was just my father was trying to, I guess, protect his family the way it is happening in socialist totalitarian states. You know, you don't agree with him.
I have more power. If you don't agree with me, I will send the police on you,

and you get either arrested, killed, or disappear. So there was nothing uncommon.
Interesting. But then it changed when he left.
So I had no protection. If we did something wrong, we should get punished for it.
And my mom would never agree with it. My mom was always, and those were the biggest fights between my mom who was a devout Catholic and my father who was totally opposed to any type of faith.
He only believed in the party and communist ideology. That was his God.
So there were always fights. And I remember the time, it was before my sister was born, so I had to be at least three years, maybe around four years old, but I vividly remember that my grandmother from my maternal side came to visit us.
Of course, she was even more devout. She was like, I would say, total fanatic and total zealot.
But this is how they survived the Second World War. This is what helped my grandmother and her children, my mom, survive the Second World War.
So when she came in, she said, all of us to church, we are going to church Sunday. So my father, I still remember, standing in front of the door with her hand outstretched, and said, no, kids are not going to church, and you are not going to church because if somebody sees you or kids I'm gonna lose my career I'm going to lose my job you aren't going to church so my grandmother went outside we were living on the first floor my mom passed me I get football through the window so I thought it was fun that's all right, let's play.
And then my mom left. We did went to church, but my father eventually learned to tolerate it.
But he was always on the edge, was always nervous, always wanted us to stop going to church. He called the religion a superstition.
And also he used the technique that I see being deployed here very often. Basically, he was trying to find some articles, some quasi-scientific articles, like, okay, we just find out new things about Jesus.
Let's see if Jesus was real. You know, it can pick your curiosity, especially if you start reading and it's like totally end of faith article or book.
So my father was bringing it up and just tried to either shove it for us to read or try to read it to us against protests of my mother. But this is the technique they used to.
Wow. To actually remove people from faith and change their beliefs.
How many?

So you had two siblings?

Two siblings, my younger brother and younger sister.

My sister still lives in Poland.

Actually, I visited her not a long time ago,

and I went to, as I was testifying,

I'm going to come back to it, in the criminal case

in Poland against a judge who actually sentenced me to prison time. Where's your brother? My brother lives here.
He's here in the States. He owns his business.
He owns his great business. He's doing well.
He's doing good. I don't really have much contact with him.
So you're not close with your brother? No. I'm closer with you guys, with people like you, with fellow teammates.
They are my brothers as a person living in the States. Were you close with your siblings growing up? Yes.
What would you guys do? Did you guys have any fun? Yes, we had a lot of know, the nice thing about it at that time, we did not have, we did not have the direct street supervision of our parents. Kids used to play, like I was four, six years old, and I was going to kindergarten by myself.
I was working around the school, going over the major street. Actually, one of my little friends was killed on that street by the motorcycle.
But we were doing it ourselves. So we had house shoes in one hand, holding hands with my brother and just walking to the kindergarten.
That was maybe a quarter mile, and through the woods, not through the woods, but through the different small streets. Mom taught us how to cross the street.
You look left, you look right, there's nothing that happened. You just go fairly fast through the street, but don't run.
And then, we were six years old. Play, as long as we were back at home before dark, we were fine.
So we were roaming the city. We were just sometimes, we found ourselves like a mile, two miles away from the home, God knows where, running some streets and just exploring.
So that was cool, playing with fires. We like to bake things in fire, potatoes and stuff.
This is how I burned the wheat field by accident. But that time, my father was still with

us. After he left, I wouldn't get away with it.
So that was the… I have a fond memory. I was poor,

but I didn't know that I was poor. I thought that was just normal.
This is how everybody lived.

And I didn't see at that time, they noticed the richer kids or kids of party, communist party

members that I noticed later in the elementary school.

How did your family make money after your father left?

My mom was a teacher, so she had a little salary.

It was not much, and it was enough to buy food.

If she was quick enough in the morning to stay in line to buy bread,

if she was a little bit late, by the time she made it to the end of the line, there was no bread, so we didn't eat. But again, it was really not a big deal.
It's just like, well, we don't have a bread today. Okay, do we have bread from yesterday or something? No, we don't.
All right, so maybe some potatoes. So mama always tried to make something, but sometimes we went hungry to school and there was really nothing there.
When I was in elementary school, I learned how to help myself and actually feed myself. But I'm not very proud of it now, but at the time, I basically was extorting sandwiches from the kids of the Communist Party members.
How would you do that? Well, I just beat them up and I told them, you give me the sandwich. But I remember, you know, in Poland at the time, people don't want to be seen as poor, right? So a lot of us, including me, my sandwich, if mom got the bread, very often was a little bit of water, sprinkle on it, and sprinkle sugar.
If it was good, we had a batter. If it was butter, a little bit of sugar, if the sugar was put together.
I don't want people to see it because I see some of the kids eating these big buns with ham, with tomatoes, mayonnaise, salt. I mean, today I'm just looking at this like I would eat one too.
So this is something that I've seen. I didn't want them to see that having bread and a little bit of sugar on it.
So, there's another technique too, like take a tea, like pour the tea on the bread, put some sugar on it. I still like that.
And so we're eating in the corners. Like I don't want anybody to see that I have like the sandwich, nothing.
And then most of the kids did too. I didn't notice that, but then I was, when I started feeding myself of the Communist Party, twerps, little kids, then I noticed other kids doing the same thing that I did.
And there's a story like it still touches my heart, you my heart when I talk about it.

Because the first one, I remember I seen the kid, a little fat kid with a big bun with everything on it. If you had the sandwich today, you would say, damn, that was really good.
So I said I woke up to him and just took it from his hand, just rip it in half, and just eat it like, wow it like wow this is good he was about to cry up there but like hey listen a little tomorrow you bring two sandwiches like this because how old so you grew up i was seven years old at the time you grew up you grew up fighting for food i grew up fighting well i didn't have to if my mom find out what i did i would be i would would be spunk. I would be spunk so hard I would be able to sit on my ass.
But I had to hide it from her. She would not tolerate it.
But yeah, I was hungry. So I figured out these people, the party members' kids, they have everything.
You can tell them the way they dress, the way they carry themselves, the way what they eat the most important. So I figured I would just help myself.
He has so much, he has abundance of the bread. So I'm sure he won't money if I eat half of it.
So yeah, I'll come to him and he says, I told him that if you don't bring tomorrow two sandwiches, you won't have a sandwich because I will eat an entire sandwich. Today I just ate half.
Well, he brought us two sandwiches. He found me himself and just gave it to me.
So, from then on, it came to the point that I had to tell my- That started at seven years old. Seven years old, yes.
And then, so I started noticing other kids doing the same thing. And there was a kid in my class, the first grade, who we call him all kinds of names.
This guy was smaller than the rest. We torment this guy.
We're talking about bullying. And so it's brutal.
You have no empathy. At least I did not have any empathy for bullying to the kids that were bullied.
It changed. So one day, he was like the black sheep in the class, nobody wanted to talk to him.

Even those poor kids, other poor kids, they call him all kinds of names. So one day I was just coming back from school and I had to travel across town, had to take a bus, then another bus, and travel to travel home.

And I don't know, that was I think second grade, when I noticed that. And my bus took off, I was late.
So I started walking home, and this kid is walking, and he's already scared, because now I'm walking behind him, and we determined him. But I said, well, you know what, hey, what's up? Do you live somewhere here? You don't wait on the bus? I said, no, I'm living maybe a quarter mile from here.
I said, well, cool, so let's go. And we started talking to him.
And I found out that he's just trying to survive with his mom. He doesn't have a father.
And my curiosity pig, I said, hey, can I just, where do you live in this building? Once we made it to his place, he said, I'm going right here. So let me see how you live.
I was curious. So, okay.
So walk in, like one room, like half the size of this room here. There's a table.
There is one chair and one bed.'s it and the sink sink like you see in the janitorial closet there's deep sink when you keep the map and stuff and on the table dirty table there was a full can of cigarette butts so I say well, well, okay, well,

I see one bed, where do you sleep?

I say, I sleep with my mom because we cannot afford another bed.

So, you know, this is something

that still touches me

because this guy was,

we gave him so much hell.

And then I say, okay,

so what do you eat?

I see one chair.

I say, I eat on my mom's lap.

So then he says, I say, okay, well, where's your toilet?

We have a toilet outside.

So where do you keep your food?

I don't see any food.

Well, we eat every day the food.

So we don't have any reserves.

We don't have any leftovers.

So I said, hmm, okay.

So this is actually when, so then I think it was in second grade or something changed. And I said, okay, well, I hook you up.
So then I went to another kid who I knew has like the same type of sandwiches. You can tell these kids that they dress better, they have better food.
So I said, hey, look, tomorrow you bring two sandwiches, one for yourself, one for this kid. So he mouthed off to me and I just beat him up and drag him in the toilet up there.
And because in Poland, during the breaks, all the kids walk on the hallway, just they have to walk. So I drag him in the toilet and just beat the shit out of him and say, tomorrow we'll bring the two sandwiches.
And he did. So I say, wow, that worked.
So I gave him the sandwich. I said, look, from now on, he will bring you the sandwich.
If he does not, you let me know because I'm going to give you half of his sandwich or just entire sandwich to you. He was very grateful.
He said, well, I don't know why you do it. And then, you know, I didn't let other kids touch him.
I didn't let other kids to bully him anymore. And it changed.
So from then on, I think I look at the kids a little bit differently than until this time. And that was in second grade.
That was in second grade. Yeah, but I was pretty violent too from the beginning as well.
I remember in the first grade when we first class up, our class become, when you go to your first grade, so they divide you, you class A, you'll be with this group, you'll be with this group, class B and C. So one of my friends from kindergarten, I say, oh, this girl has a crush on you.
I think she's your girlfriend. I got so mad, but not at the kid, but at the girl.
I went to the girl and just kicked her as hard as I could. She fell down, they took her to the nurse's room.
And this is another lesson that I learned very quick. So she came back all crying to class.
This is the first time in the class in our lives. Her name was Bogusia, and she's crying at the bench.
at the bench. I was like being somewhat culls until my mom walked in.
She was a teacher at that school. So she just looked around the class, looked at me and said, who did you hurt? And the entire class, like that's it.
That girl right there. So I was pulled from the bench by the ear, this is just like method in Poland at the time, walked in the middle of the class, my pants were dropped and I was being spunk so hard for so long time until I broke down and started crying.
When I started crying, she said, okay, now put your pants up and go out there and apologize. So I did when I apologized and then I I gotunk again when I get home.
So with more explanation why don't do that. I never did it again.
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But yeah, so there was things that, the times that I still remember that still affect me sometimes. And the second grade later we moved when I living on the, away from that school, so I had to take the bus to school.
This is where my father was already gone, so the kids started picking on me. On the way to school, usually not because of zero pneumonia, on the way back from school, I got my ass kicked sometimes, but the older kids.
They just thought it's funny to beat up on me. So I feel like, okay, I don't have a father, so I don't have an older brother to go and stand up for me.
I just have to handle my own. So what I did, I went find a rebar.
Maybe there's that big rebar. And I start carrying it with me.
I was carrying it in my book case. When they, on the way back, I could expect they would harass me, they would try to kick my ass.
So I had this thing with me in my briefcase and I knew they were walking, this group of kids is walking behind me. So I walk into, in Poland, those buildings, there were fairly new buildings at the time.
You have a stairway. You walk into the stairways, you go up, and then you walk to your apartments.
So I just walk in the stairways. I just wait with this thing in.
As soon as my first kid walked in, I hope he's alive today. But anyway, so that was it.
And so I knocked him out. Yeah, the blood was everywhere.
I remember that. And then the other kids ran away.
And the next day, they repeat itself. The guy was okay, I guess, because he showed up with the head band-aid.
So same thing happens again. So I just walk into the...
I see these kids walking and they're making those warrior grunts. So I walk into the stairways, just wait until they walk in.
I got two of them this time. So they let me along.
After that, they decide, well, we're going to find another victim. But what they told me is that violence works.
Violence always works. And if it didn't work for you, it means you didn't apply enough of it.
So that was my lessons, I think the first lessons from my childhood, that you just have to be violent to accomplish things. And that violence works, and you just need to apply it in the right place.
Wow. But I was, what, eight years old, nine years old.
Those are the first lessons in my life. But society was brutal at the time.
It's not an excuse. I get a lot of flack now in today's society when I talk about it in Poland.
There were podcasts in Poland that I went to, and people are very disturbed that how a kid like this, eight years old, almost kills somebody that is so violent. Well, they don't understand that there were different times.
But the way I look at it today is, this is good. The Polish society is different.
They don't tolerate violence. You know, my mom wouldn't tolerate

either, but there were things that she did. And that was my upbringing.
And when I see today people complaining about this and pointing out how bad and evil it is, I agree with them. But I'm also kind of happy that they can speak to it, that they can verbalize this, and they don't afraid to speak that there's a government goon somewhere behind them looking to how to put them to jail or how to persecute them.
they can speak their mind and their minds, they don't have to agree with me. And very often they don't.

And I'm kind of happy about it because the police society is slowly changing more like in America where we can speak, we don't have to look over our shoulder. Well, maybe not the last administration, but we don't have to look on our shoulder.
I tell you, you know what, even the last administration, I never felt that I'm saying something that can put me to prison, to jail. You know, I can say something, I can lose my job, but I'm not, because being the, I never put myself in that situation, but I never worry about being.
What would get you thrown in jail in Poland for? well you could stay in line for bread, like my mom, and you complain that, let's say, there's never food, there's never enough food for people here. What this government is doing? Well, if there was a neighbor who next to you or somebody who knew who you were and overheard it and he was working for secret police or he was a snitch, you could get arrested.
There was nothing unusual that police show up on your doorstep, they took you on the police station and say, hey, tell us about your comments here in the breadline or tell them about your comments you made at your work about disparaging Communist Party members. So in my book, actually, I describe the case when one of my fellow political prisoners was testifying in his defense.
His defense was not a defense, it was offense. It was actually laying straight truth to the judge.
I remember the judge asked him, well, but this is offending the party member. Do you think it is right? So you can see the way the socialist state worked up there.
So you could put you to jail dead. That was the fact that people were afraid the most to get on the political list in Poland.
Because once you find yourself there, you were always that troublemaker, the anti-socialist, anti-communist. Wow.
Take it. You had mentioned people disappearing, being murdered by, sounds like, the state.
Did you witness any of that growing up? Even today, even today, they are still looking for the mass graves of some of Polish heroes who were executed by socialist state. Just, I think recently, they found the grave of big Polish hero, Rotmistrz Pilecki, Captain Pilecki, the man who volunteered to go to to locked up in Auschwitz so he can write reports, what's going on up there, and then he escaped after a while.
But those reports went to the West on Churchill's desk, so they knew what was going on in those prison camps. So this guy later fought in Warsaw Uprising in 1944.
He became a hero in Poland. So after communists took over, he was promptly arrested and executed, sentenced to death and executed like many, many people.
And his grave was never found, I believe, until recently. But there are still people that are missing,

and their graves are being found in the prison yards, digged in somewhere, in some unspeakable forests, in places. So people are still looking.
There's an IPN organization in Poland, the government organization, Institute of Polish Remembrance, where they pursue still the searching for Polish heroes who disappeared under communist regime. So there was nothing uncommon to disappear.
And also, please remember that every communist system, whether in Poland, a socialist system, whether in Poland, whether in East Germany, Romania, Czechoslovakia, they had their, they were almost given every four or five years the upheavals. So in Poland it was 1956, 1960, 1968, 1970, 1976, the people went on the streets and there were more, the protesters, they were brand insurrectionists, bandits, terrorists, and shot at.
So every so many years, these upheavals happen. And every time that happens, the new crew comes in and say, okay, socialism is great.
These people just didn't know how to work in socialism system. So we're going to replace, and sometimes that government before was either killed or in prison as well.
And the new crew come in to build the better, the real socialism. And it repeats itself every so many years and every time the new crew, the new gang came in, the socialist gang came in, and they were telling people that we will do it the right, the socialism the right way, we will build socialism the right way.
You know, you never hear, and there's another thing people need to know, they were not communist states.

They didn't even pretend to build communist states.

Even in Soviet Union, you can see,

if you read their literature from that time,

they all were building socialism, not communism.

Communism is, the way my father explained to me,

is just a stepping stone to further societal development into communism. But you cannot omit socialism.
The socialism is a very necessary step. So that's how it happened.
And you mentioned about the parallels. I've seen a lot of parallels in the last administration that were very dangerous, and I was afraid.
I'm just curious, sidetrack here. Are you familiar with what's going on in Romania? Have you been following that at all? Yes.
The USAID with European Union, this ban the election, they removed the candidate. This is what I'm saying.
I think the European Union reminds me more of the Soviet Union right now with totalitarian control than the European Union at its inception. I mean, look at it.
People are getting arrested in the European Union for Facebook posts. And it's not like, well, maybe somewhere you heard about it.
It's documented. You can see even on the videos, there's videos when police coming in arrest people for Facebook posts, let's say in Great Britain.
The decay of that society is immense, and I don't know how long it will last. But it seems like the days of European Union are numbered, I think.

That's maybe not that good, but you see what happened in Romania, you see what happened in Georgia, you see the assassination attempt in Slovakia when the President Fico, Prime Minister Fico, barely survived. And the same thing in 2014 in Ukraine.
So the US ID, and there's another organization working hand-to-hand with it, I think END, that did a lot of harm to people trying to subdue them and convert them into the compliant masses. Yeah, yeah.
It sounds like it's on the cusp. I went over to Romania to interview Colleen Georgescu.
He had a commanding lead in the election, and they froze the election, and then I guess they unfroze it, and they just pulled him. He's not running anymore.
They just completely pulled him. This is what I call, like here people don't hear this term.
We call it socialist elections. Socialist elections are elections where communists and socialists always win.
So there's a socialist election, and all the mechanisms behind it was, you know, if you would accuse, let's say in Poland it was the same mechanism. You cannot vote somebody who you really thought could be a good person or politician.
You were voting for people that they told you to vote and the mechanism was set up this way that no matter what, that person would win elections. If you notice in Eastern Europe, the first thing they did when socialists grabbed the power was to start changing the rules and laws to give them the advantage and give them the opportunity to falsify elections even if they have to, to stay at power.
Because they know after four or five years of that socialist communist ideology, people had enough. They did not want any of that and any of these Marxist goons.
In Poland, when I was growing up, I remember people would hang those Marxists from the Latin posts if they could get away with it. This is how much hate it was.

But there's always segments of the society, like my father, that go get along to go along and try to stay afloat, and they will do whatever it needs to take to stay in the control and control the society. Because we need to notice that most of the atrocities committed in Poland were not committed by Russians, were committed by Poles.
They were trained in Soviet Union by—and not necessarily Russians, there were different nationalities, Ukrainians, there were Belarusians who were part of the Soviet Union at the time, who trained and who installed that type of government in Poland at the time. So in Poland, the most atrocities that happened were committed by Polish communists on Poles.
The Soviet Union, I think no other nation experienced the atrocities and danger of communism, socialism, more than Russians. They were the biggest victims of that system.
So there was no Poles murdering Russians,. There were no Ukrainians mordering Russians.
There were Russians killing Russians because evil ideology will do it to you. This is when you subscribe to so-called relative morality.
And this is what you become part of the system that will actually twist you into this type of behavior, this type of morality. So that's very dangerous.
When did you get sent back to your father? I think I was 16 years old at the time. I was still in the eighth grade of elementary school, but my mama just could not afford to feed three kids.
So she said, you are the oldest one, so we can go send you there. And I didn't really want to go, but I had no choice.
The funny thing is that so father came, picked me up, and we traveled from my city lots to after all the court proceedings were done to his apartment in Warsaw. I remember his wife opened the door, he said, okay, so he'll be living with us from now on.
I can remember the screams like, what? What are you talking about? Nobody's going to live here with us. So, you know, the tension already started.
That was not very pleasant, you know, walking the house and and you see this weird woman screaming and yelling. But I had no choice, so I stayed there.
And she had a son, so she was giving me a hard time, so I was beating up her son. And it was kind of like equalizing.
The more I get punishment from her, the more I beat up that other kid. And eventually I had enough.
And they had enough too, so they kicked me back to my mother. That was one year, but also I could see at the time my father's mental state and his value system.
Like I mentioned earlier here, when you've seen him, you would think, well, this was a nice, clean man, well-spoken and educated man, somebody that would be great to have as a neighbor. But when I start talking to him, I remember I had a conversation at the time that he says, I asked him, you know, what if people were resisting socialism and communism? There are some people who will not buy into it.
I don't buy into it. Or he says, well, we have methods to convince people.
We will make them do that. But if that doesn't work, we have prisons.
So, well, if a prison doesn't work, we still don't change them. Well, the social system is such a great system that is worth the sacrifice.
So, we just eliminate physically these people. That way, they don't interfere with us implementing such a great system for everybody.
Once people get into the socialist system, they will love it. We just need to eliminate people who oppose it because they derail our efforts.
So he wouldn't mind these people being killed. And also what I didn't know at the time, my father was responsible for censorship in Poland at the time.
He was a minister of art and culture in Poland. He was a director of the department for theaters, movies and libraries.
So if you wrote the book that my father did not like, your book never showed up.

Not only that, if that book was skeptical of socialism and communism,

none of your books were ever showed up.

And if you argue about it, you could end up in prison.

So movies, somebody pointed out not too long time ago, an older person,

that do you know that your father was responsible for censoring the very popular comedy that was in Poland at the time, Samis Foy. It was named like All Hours, I can lose translation.
He was responsible for removing parts of that movie, and he was arguing with the director that this does not support the socialist point of view. It opposes what we would say, the nice transition to socialist and communist society.
So we need to cut this, this, and just told the people who want to cut the movie, and they had to comply. I didn't know about that movie.
I knew that he was censoring things, censoring books, censoring artists. So a lot of the things that happened in Poland at the time, in post-war era, was you either could adopt the art and people to socialism or you eliminate it.
So there were statues that socialists, the communists like my father decided they do not support the communist narrative, the ideology. One just destroyed and remove it so people don't know about it.
Or change the meaning of it, knowing that author had creating, let's say, that painting had this on his mind. Well, kill the author and explain people what really we think the picture means.
So that was just normal methods. And if you were not in line with the socialist state, the terror state, you were cancelled.
So it's not much different than it could happen today that happened today under the last administration.

So I'm talking about last administration, I know we're going to get a lot of flack for it and I think that YouTube may flag this interview, but I don't know. Bottom line is that a lot of the things that happen in Poland, like you asked me earlier, it was like deja vu from… I could extrapolate on what is happening in the United States under last administration.
The difference is this, that America was built by free, strong people. The culture of freedom, the understanding of freedom and the yearning for freedom is so strong that it's not as easy to subdue and change and derail it.
So people survived that four years, and now you can see what is happening. People are raising up of their, I would say, standing up again against some of the methods used by the previous administration.
And they have to, because if we fail, we have no place to go. Wow.
How often would your dad and you have these conversations? Quite often because I wasn't a good student. So always to get him over my back, whether I didn't do the homework or the homework was bad, I asked these questions and we started arguing about it.
I just rolled him up, but it also allowed me to understand a little bit more the way he thinks. And it was scary thoughts at the end.
The guy has no scruples in implementing the ideology that he was subscribing to, and he wanted everybody to subscribe. If you didn't, he will force you to do it or he will eliminate you so you don't derail other people from it.
It's very dangerous, but this is how they operated at the time. You could lose your job.
And you would not be able to find your job.

You could not open your business. You couldn't attend the college.
Matter of fact, the education was a very big thing for communists and control of the students. So to get to college, if you were not a member of a youth socialist organization, your chances were smaller to get into university than somebody who was activist and openly, how to say it, virtue signaling that he's a communist and pro-communist.
So these people were sought after, and they were given priority to join the universities. There were also people who did get into universities being opposed to communist system, but there were very rare and few in between.
So they control everything, and they control from the schools. It happened to me.
You know, when I was in fifth grade, I remember this was the time, fifth grade is the time when kids in Poland had to start learning Russian language. It became part of like math, Polish, physics, mathematics, you had to learn also Russian.
So me not being the greatest student, I got pissed off because I hardly have the time and the ability to do homework from this math, physics, the Polish language. And now it's Russian.
So I just don't like it. And I piped up at the school and said, why do they teach us the Russian language? We don't speak Polish very well yet.
And on the top of it is the language of occupiers. My grandmother always called the Russian occupiers at that time.
So I didn't think much of it. There was nothing political at the time about it.
But the repercussions were because the teacher walked right away to my bench and grabbed me by my ear and holding my ear through the whole

hallway took me to principal's office explained what happened the principal got on the phone and called police so the police came but on the way to school they stopped my mom this is fifth grade fifth grade yes so what was a fifth grade is like 12 i guess something like that yeah so they they detained my mother

they brought her

with them

so there was two secret police, there was two police in uniform, there was four of them. My mom was sitting in the middle, I guess, in this small car they were driving.
So they came, they started yelling at us, you know, and they told my mom very straight, if you don't instill more love to socialism in your kids, we're going to take them away. We will educate them the right way.
And don't do it. There won't be any warning.
If we run across that similar situation like this, you're as a parent, your parenting will be done.

My mom cried. I cried because I didn't know why my mom was crying.
I was scared, but being a kid I really didn't still conceptualize what was really happening, until later my mom explained to me. But this is something that from then on my mom was always, before I was going to school, say, do not talk politics at school.

Do not because they want to harm our family.

Do not, because they want to harm our family. Do not talk politics.
And that was before I was leaving the school in the morning, to school in the morning. Every time I had this, just a reminder, it tells you the fear people were living in of the totalitarian socialist state.
And that was not the exception. I mean, all my friends were giving the same advice.
When I talked to them, they said, well, my mom told me not to talk about politics because it's dangerous. So yeah, that's happened.
Wow. You see a lot of that going on on the West Coast right now with that in Washington I mean, Washington, if you don't subscribe to the gender confusion stuff that's going on right now, then the state will come in, take your kids.
That's your kids, yes. And also the cases where actually kids were being converted in their gender.
That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, behind parents' back.
The parents even didn't know about it. So I'm aware of the case where a girl or the boy was transitioned behind parents' back and eventually committed suicide because of all the things.
You know, this is something that is very tragic. But I think we need to stand up to it.
We need to understand what is going on. We need to understand that normalization of depravity.
Especially if you have a therapist that they are not allowed to treat mental illness because it's politically incorrect and you can lose your license. It tells you how far some of the groups in our society have fallen.
That's pure evil. This is what I'm talking about.
This is not the struggle between the Republicans and Democrats. Really, there are good people on both sides.
This is struggle evil against good, good against evil. And evil is not an intellectual concept.
It's not something you just think about. Evil is real and we face real dangerous times right now.
It just seems like sometimes the evil side, the evil has upper hand. But you know, I'm looking with hope and I understand that this is

not going to take roots in America. American psyche is much stronger than that.
You can throw these things on some people, some weaker people will cave in, But Americans and American people will not.

That freedom on which America was born, from which was born, the quest for freedom, the quest for being strong, independent, is much stronger than evil. We will win.
America will win. And so, when you moved in with your father and his, was it his wife? Yeah, I already learned my techniques too, how to extort sandwiches.
By this time, I was extorting wines, wine and drinks from other kids at school. Well, it didn't start this way.
I just didn't know much better. I was doing boxing at the time.
I was training box. And I decided to...
I remember one time on the football field, soccer field, there was some little kid making... Little kid, not really little kid, but he was like my age, making fun of girls.
So I was trying to be a tough guy, but just knock him out. But I didn't know the guy was part of the gang at school.
And that's it, in Warsaw, they had those gangs. So I then, they surrounded me and said, okay, well, we just hit our guy.
So we're gonna go and we need to talk. Well, I didn't wait, I just knocked another one.
So that just put them on the back foot. But then they say, okay, now to mend our case, we won't cause you any problems, you just bring us a bottle of wine.
So I say, a bottle of wine, I just knocked the next one of you, you're not going to get shit from me. But then I I was thinking, hmm, that kind of work like I used to do with sandwiches, so maybe I should talk to them.
So I did get them wine. Then we started extorting wine from other kids.
So that was, again, violence works. If it didn't work for you, it means you didn't apply enough of it.
It has no place in American society. I have to be open about it, and I have to state it openly.
It wouldn't work here. America is different.
But at that time, it worked for me. So it lasted with your dad for about a year.
Yeah. And then you got sent back at what age, 17 now? Yeah.
No, that was like 17 going, yeah, 17 years old, yes.

So before I get back to my mom, I finished my regular elementary school.

And the high school that I went to was very sought after. Only kids with the best grades could get to it.
My grades were like the worst of the worst. But I had a father, a communist father, so I just take one visit at school.
And I was greeting like a hero at school, just come on in, pick your class, what do you like to do?" So I was treated very well. But again, it didn't last long because eventually his wife got tired of me, his kids got a lot of bumps and black eyes many times, so they just sent me home.
And then I started my life back again with my mom. How was it starting your life back again with your mom? Well, there was, again, I have found memories of my childhood.
So today when I look at it back, yeah, it was poor, it was violent, but when I also, I have the nostalgia for it. So when I came back home, I didn't go back to do boxing.
My home at that time was in Zielona Góra, a small town. So I didn't go back to the boxing because the first Karate Kyokushin Kai was born in Zielona Góra, in the town.
So I said, I need to get to it, but because you have to be 18 to join, I took my school ID and I scraped the date and I changed my date one year earlier. So I was actually 18.
So I didn't tell my mom about it because my mom was very strict about these things. And I told my mom that I want to go there, but we couldn't afford it.

But she said this, if you stop drinking and stop smoking, because I was a drinking smoker, if you stop drinking and smoking and try to pay for your training, I will help you. So then I was selling the, what do you call it, like papers.
You get the papers, like recycling. I was doing the recycling and I was just getting money for it.
You could do it in Poland. It took a lot of stuff to carry, heavy stuff, to make meaningful money.
But I learned I can steal the newspapers, the stack of newspapers, because in the morning, it was like 6, 5 o'clock in the morning,

there was no electronics at the time, there was no internet. So they just throw those newspapers by the places where they were being sold.
So I just wait until the guy left and just grab a couple of these bags, each one maybe like 5, 6 kilograms, that's a lot of heavy weight, and I just run away with it. I hid in my basement.
And after, three days I just ran up to the place where they were buying their recycling and just started making money just to supplement my karate training. And it worked.
My mom seen it, she seen that I tried. I stopped drinking,

I stopped smoking. Just like this, just one day I stopped and started doing karate kyokushinkai.

It was fun. I mean, there was something that I've very fond memories of it.
And that's how my life

moved. And then you found yourself in prison.
I found myself in prison after, that was 1978, and that was when John Paul II came to Poland. And at that time when you were watching on official TV his interaction with people, you would think, yeah, just the way that was explained by communists was when the crazy guy in a funny dress showed up and few people show up to talk to him.
And when the TV shows, yeah, a few people here, a few people there, but even more protesters like, yeah, the Pope is bad. And that was the communist propaganda.
If you look today, and some of the pictures on the internet, there were masses, there were, if not millions, there were hundreds of thousands of people coming to meet the Pope. But you wouldn't know it from official press, from fake news media in Poland at the time.
The impression was there's nobody interested in just funny dude in the white skirt. That's the way how it was explained.
But that was very meaningful for Polish nation because by this time, no matter what the fake news media say, people do believe that. If they say this is white, people usually comment that it's got to be black because the communists say it's white.
But people had the chance to gather together in those meetings where thousands of us show up to meet the Pope, and they had the chance to see that there's not only a few of them, there's most of them. There's entire society, you know, that opposing that depravity and that socialist terror.
And they start talking, they start dreaming again. And the words that I still remember the Pope said was, you know, don't be afraid.
Stand up, get up with your knees, fight for your rights, don't be afraid. This is why the Vice President J.D.
Vance, when he said the same thing to European Marxist goons in that room during that visit, he was not speaking to those turds and baboons sitting there. He was speaking to people in the European Union, stand up, fight for your rights.
Don't let these goons and baboons bully you. So those words, what Vice President J.D.
Vance said, resonated with me and still resonate.

What was it that got you in prison? So after John Paul II's visit in 1978, people started actually organizing. They said, you know what? He's right.
We don't need to live on our knees. It's time to get up.
It's time to fight for our rights. We don't need to be afraid." And they start organizing groups in the different places, and eventually they decide, well, why don't we just legalize our organization as a trade union? Because mostly there were workplaces, factories.
So let's organize and let's legalize. Let's just say, fuck the communism.
Let's make your organization independent from Communist Party. And they did.
So they start building slowly. And of course, it was a price to pay too.
The persecution, the prison times. Sometimes people were beaten to death or suicided.
So that's, but that was the price worth to pay. What do you mean suicided? Well, for example, I'll give you a student, I think it was 1978.
His name was Piaz. So he was active in opposition, working, trying to, he was a student.
So he was found dead. And official cause of that, he followed the stairs.
So there's many cases like this. So they were not afraid to go and kill people, just like my father would do it if he had the opportunity or if he was required to do it.
I have no doubt that if he wouldn't do it himself, he would find somebody to do it. So that was normal.
But people started organizing. And in 1980, finally, the people had so much, so enough of the socialist state, they started doing strikes.
They went on strikes here, there, in Gdynia, and eventually the entire economy started collapsing. So communist government at the time, in socialist Poland, said, OK, let's go get some agreement, let's just do something, let's try to work it out, so you guys can go to war, and we try to change the socialism, and be more humane.
We now know how to fix socialism. We make socialism better now, like every six years.
So people say, well, no, not really. Now we need to be recognized as a trade union's solidarity.
They call themselves solidarity. So that trade union was born.
Eventually the government had to give in and approve. It was the first organization in the entire Warsaw Pact that was totally independent from Communist Party..
That was the first one. It was the first brick that was kicked out from the Communists, the terror war.
Poland did it, and eventually the entire war crumbled. So, yeah, this is how it started.
But they never gave up. They started making lists of people inconvenient to the socialist state.
And eventually, in December 13, 1980, they imposed martial law. So at midnight, they started mass arresting people from the list.
There were secret police, army involved, the regular police,

they were raiding apartments across entire Poland, arresting people and detaining them. That was at midnight.
I remember I was at the Solidarity headquarters at the time, the trade union movement, which turned into the social movement. I was on the phone with with Austria at midnight just click everything is gone.
I didn't think much of it because communist socialist equipment didn't work well anyway. So it was like well another I'll call him maybe later.
And then people start coming into our building headquarters say hey my son was arrested, or my father and my mother were arrested. Sometimes they were asking people leaving kids in the apartments with no supervision.
So that was really bad, because all the telephones, radio, everything was cut at midnight. So a lot of people died, people who had a heart attack or emergency,

they had no means to get help.

And people were shoving to the back in their apartments,

you could not be on the street past certain time.

If you were, you could be arrested, and you were most likely arrested.

And this is where I got even more involved.

This is where I started getting involved in underground structures.

Thank you. could be arrested, and you were most likely arrested.
This is where I got even more involved. This is where I started getting involved in underground structures and building the resistance to communist takeover through martial law of entire Poland.
There was a lot of people arrested, a lot of people were shot and killed, but they were able to subdue the society yet for some time. And this is when I got involved.
I started building the structures, eventually we got caught. We started printing a bulletin.
A bulletin? A bulletin, yes. It was behind the censorship of official fake news media.
So, that was basically challenging them. They were saying one thing.
But what we were doing, basically, collecting the names of people who were arrested, detained, sent to internment camps, and what happened to them, the court cases. So this is what we're printing.
It was very dangerous for communist state. Anything beyond what they can't censor is perceived by socialists as very dangerous, detrimental to their power.
So of course they tracked us down I got arrested. And I call it bulletin.
They call it newspaper. But it was just a leaflet.
It was a leaflet with two, I think, two pages maybe. But it was dangerous enough to give me three years' prison sentence.
How did they arrest you? They arrested me when I came on the point, because we didn't know much about how underground works and how to protect ourselves. So we printed out and just went on the street and were giving to the people.
So they tracked us down and said, okay, these guys are passing those illegal newspapers, so I guess they follow us, and I walk to the point because we're supposed to print the next batch of the newspaper. Then as I knock on the door, I was just like, I hear people running from upstairs, from downstairs, the doors open with the gun in my face.
I was like, whoa, okay. So, okay, they throw me on the ground and after a few kicks, they handcuffed me and they dragged me by

my feet to the apartment. They shut the door and they were waiting.
They were hoping that some of

the olds will show up. And so one of those secret service guns, he was sitting in the chair like I

sit right here, but he put me in front of it and said, put his feet on me and just like, I was working as a footstool for his feet for quite a few hours. And then nobody showed up because it was only us.
So they took me back to, they took me to political, not political, they took me to secret police headquarters in my city.

That was my first stint with communism and prison. You were there for three years? No, I was there less than that because there was amnesty.
So after around a year and a half, they kind of started releasing us right before the second

visit of Pope to Poland. He demanded that before he visits Poland, they need to instill amnesty for political prisoners, so they slowly started releasing them.
What was it like in prison? Well, there was like, I didn't have any problems. I just, if I had to beat somebody up, I did.
I didn't have scruples about it. But I remember the first one, even when I was arrested, they put me into this holding tank with other prisoners.
And this is normal technique of secret police. They will keep you not freezing, but they keep you cold.
They will not keep you starving, but they will keep you hungry. So they slowly, they will break down your resistance that way.
You are easier to fall down. And they, so I remember they told me like two o'clock in the morning, it was dark, no windows, so I just didn't know even where to go.
Somebody said, I just go along the wall, find an empty spot, sit down and sleep, we're going to figure it out tomorrow. I said, okay.
So we got up tomorrow in the morning and this big dude comes up and says, hey, I didn't eat quite enough, so I'm going to eat your breakfast today. You are well fed, I guess.
You just came back from outside, I'm going to eat your breakfast today. You are well-fed, I guess.
You just came back from outside. I'm going to eat your breakfast today.
So I didn't have much experience with prison time. So I figured out I just knocked him out and just asserted myself that nobody's going to eat my breakfast.
So I knocked him out. So he was laying there, and I was thinking, I said, well, I'm going to knock his front teeth out and I'm going to make a necklace out of it.
So actually I woke up to him, I very carefully lift his upper lip and just drove his two front teeth in, just pulled them out. And well, I got caught with them.
I think in the next prison time, because when they transferred me to a real prison, this is where they started searching us much better, and they found my teeth. So I'm sorry, I don't have my necklace.
But that was the... But, you know, nobody never bothered me with taking my breakfast.
It would be very unlikely in prison that somebody, like a real prisoner, would just go and try

to take my breakfast. It would be very unlikely in prison that somebody like a real prisoner would just go and try to take your breakfast.
There was some punk who think he's somebody. But he was threatening me, yeah, when you go to real prison I'm going to pass these guys and they're gonna fuck you up.
I was like, all right, you say it again, I'm going to knock your bottom teeth out. You want that? He let me along.
So then I was transferred to eventually when they finished with me, they transferred me to this intermediate prison where I was waiting for my sentencing. And then after that, they took me to political prison on the Russian border in the city Hrrubyashuv.
That's where the pictures in my book and my websites are from, because when I visited that prison in 2022, I had the chance actually to go inside and tour the place where I spent my time as a prisoner. Wow.
Yeah. What was it like in that prison? Was there like a re-education program or anything? That was, but it was not an official re-education program.
Yeah. So from intermediate prison, I was transferred to, after sentencing, to that political prisoner.
But then they kept, there was known, one of the harshest prisons in Poland, this is where they kept political prisoners. They kept them all over Poland, but it was the most known harsh prison.
And then they… So this is where I met people, professors, engineers, people with a statue that accomplished something in their life, and even politicians. So that was very educational for me.
It stopped being, I didn't think about it as a punishment, it was more like education for me. I learned about the real history of Poland, and I learned how twisted the official history of Poland was.
So that helped me. This is what shaped me in the big part to who I am today.
I met a lot of brave people. When I was sitting in prison, I didn't have a family, I didn't have a wife or kids.
And now we have kids, so we know how it is. I understand how it was difficult for all those engineers, all those professors who never had contact with prison or law enforcement, suddenly being on the receiving end, sitting in prison, and worrying about their wives, their kids, and still not giving up, still fighting the system, even from prison.
For me, that was inspiration. I was so inspired that eventually the prison administration sent a letter to my mother that basically come and help out

because I'm not following the rules and my behavior is highly negative

and not up to standard socialist regulations and stuff.

So I still have it.

I need to find it because we just found it maybe like a year ago.

And I said, okay, I'm going to keep it.

And I put it somewhere in the safe place where I don't know where the safe place is now. So, but I have that letter from personal administration to my mom, calling her and asking to influence me to come here and talk to me.
So it was funny because they got extra visit from my mom. I didn't expect that to get a visit once a month.
And suddenly my mom showed us, hey, you need to go and visit mom. So my mom sees them crying and says, well, I'm very proud of you.
I said, well, I'm sure you are, but what's up? She said, well, this, and she just pulled this letter up. I'm very proud, twice as proud now.
So keep doing what you're doing. Don't give in.
So yeah, and then we were actually start fighting back. I remember we went on the hunger strike, so we were like, I don't remember, three weeks or a month where we didn't refuse to eat.
We were trying to, it started from beatings. So one of the political, some of the political prisoners got beat up by guards.
So we had a hunger strike. But then we said, okay, well, we are ready for like eight, nine days.
So why don't we just attach the request for status of political prisoner? We are political prisoners, so let's fight for that. So we wrote the letter to the administration that the strike will continue until we receive that, until we receive the status of political prisoner.
And they start breaking our strike, starting with the older, more sick prisoners. Some professors were taken to the room and say, by the Polish regulation at the time, they have to feed you forcefully, feed you after I think two weeks.
So they start that, and the way they do it is that big pipe, looks like a vacuum pipe, but a little bit smaller, corrugated pipe and the funnel on the end. So they handcuffed you to the chair, they took this pipe, and they shoved this thing up to your stomach, and then they have a big, what? We don't call it like big thing where they cook stuff, like a yellow goo, and they just put it into your stomach.
So what they did is like with older people, they say, look, there's nobody here. It's just you and us.
So instead of us shoving this thick, big pipe in your stomach, why don't you just take this little cup so I won't have to put it in and just drink it? People who, some older people say, well, this is very painful, so I just drink it here, I'm still on strike. So usually they don't even let them finish that drink because as soon as he grabbed that cup, put it in his mouth and make two, three sips of it, say, okay, now you are not on hunger strike, you feed yourself, your hunger strike is over.
And in transport to different prison or different pavillon or whatever, they just start separating these people. So a lot of people went this way, they were treated this way.
But eventually the letter from Catholic Church in Poland came in, guys, you will not get status of political prisoner. You can accomplish other things, but that's not.
You need to stop that because you are wasting yourself. There were people taken to hospitals, to emergency rooms because of that.
And that's how we, eventually the strike is over. We will stop the hunger strike.
What were you guys, how would the hunger strike have worked if they were censoring all the media? How would anybody know you guys were on the left? The priest that was coming to, they were allowed once a week, on Sundays, the priest to come in. And the friend who was passing him the information was a friend of mine, who we are still friends.
That's how the information was getting out. So they would leak it to a priest, and then the priest would disseminate it through the church? Yes, disseminate it to the church and pass it to the people.
Because Poland at the time already had pretty strong underground structures. They were eventually infiltrated by the secret police,

but they were working and they were still effective.

So they were being spread out through alternate media.

So basically the fake news media, of course,

we know what to expect,

but there were still bulletins like mine.

They were being printed and disseminated to people or being just left thrown in the street here.

So people could pick it up and read it. That thing spread like wildfire.
But also, you know, there's another thing. What would the consequences be? If they caught you with it? No, no, no, no.
What would the consequences be for the government if people knew that, I mean, they're already arresting. They shut down communications at midnight that day and did mass arrests.
Right. And so I guess what I'm asking is what would the consequences have been for the government when the church would leak out that there was a hunger strike? Other than just a bunch of pissed off people.
Not so much within the country, but outside. It would be okay.
The Western media, yes, the Radio Free Europe, Voice of America. The Voice of America, in my life, plays a very instrumental role, because the things that I started learning about the communist regime, about the real history of Poland, started with the Voice of America, where it was transmitted to Poland with real, true information, what was happening in Poland, what was the real Polish history.
It was very interesting, but it was illegal to listen to it. So they did not want this information, the governor, to leak outside, besides the sanctions against communist government by President Reagan, who was paying a big role in eventually the collapse of communism and socialism in Poland.
But yeah, there were repercussions, they were afraid, and they had enough. People were fighting them on every steps they could, maybe not physically, but intellectually.
They call it in Poland, it was coined the name internal immigration. So basically, people were shutting themselves down away from the government, not cooperating with them, and the entire economy was going to shit.
And so they did not want that. Eventually, they realized that they cannot, this minority, you wouldn't know or listen to the fake news media, but that minority cannot rule over the majority.
People were realizing there's more and more of them versus the small group of elites, socialist elites in Poland. So yeah, they were afraid.
They didn't want that. And then eventually that thing collapsed.
Wow, so you were part of the collapse. I was part of the collapse.
Well, by this time I was already in Poland. But it totally collapsed in, I believe, 1987.
This is where the transition from the totalitarian system happened towards democracy. By this time, I was already living my American dream in America.
How did you get out of prison? So was the pope. Amnesty.
The pope was coming in, and they started releasing political prisoners. So after coming out, it's actually a funny story, because I was arrested in the winter time, so all the clothes

I had was just winter, like a big old coat, you know, big boots, the strings were already broken, the hat, the cap, and I remember they let me out and they say, okay, this is your clothes, Now, there's a ticket to your city and bye, get out. So when I left, I looked like a bomb, you know.
So I remember I was walking, like showing my shoes because they're falling, they have strings in it. So until I get to the town, I had to walk from prison, maybe like three miles to town to get the train and then change the train.
So yeah, I do look like a bomb and people like look at this guy, no, there's a bomb. In Poland it was normal for people, even if they went to take trash out, they wanted to look good.
They wanted to dress, they just dress themselves so they look decent. There was not like sweatpants or something, just go, I do it now, right? But at that time you always put something, some nice clothes,

whenever you were outside. Like for me, I remember I had a special clothes for the Sundays to go to church, so like a church clothes that I was not allowed to wear at home or anywhere else except going to church because it was a special occasion.
So people were there, so seeing me as a bomb, without working these shoes, untie shoes, you know, big big jacket in the summertime it was I think outside for a lot of Polish people there so yeah where did you go do you want do you want I walked to the train station then I took the train to my city and there was no cell phones at the time so like my mom didn't even know anything. And yeah, I just took the...
I didn't have the money to pay for the bus ticket, so from the train station I just took... Part of it started working, but it was so unpleasant that eventually I illegally jumped on that bus and said like two, three stops, I just went and then I walked back home.
That was it. My mom was very happy.
She couldn't believe, you know, my siblings too. But yeah, that was it.
And now I thought, okay, so now I'm done with prison. What's next? So try to find the job, try to do something, try to save my life again.
And of course, I resume training, Taekwondo and kickboxing. I switched Kyokushinkai to Taekwondo because I liked it better.
I liked the people there. They have a similar mentality to mine.
They didn't mind to fight. They liked to fight on the streets.
So that was just more like a good group of people. Less sport, more fights.
And so I went to try to resume my life. But then coming out from the trainings, very often I had the police car or sometimes civilian cars pulled in, get handcuffed, thrown in the car, drove around the town for a few hours, sometimes drove outside the town and dropped, or usually they dropped me off outside of of town and then I had to walk back home.
But it was not so much to terrorize me, they knew they cannot terrorize me, but they were to terrorize people around me. I said, you know what, don't do that, don't hang out with this guy.
And eventually, in daytime was okay, I can take a bus or something and go back home. But at night, when the buses were not working, sometimes I had to work four or five miles to home.
So eventually I decided one day I may not come back from those excursions. It's time to go, time to leave.
And I went to the US Embassy to ask for help. I went to US Embassy because at that time, America was, as it always is, but it's that beacon of freedom.
This is where people look up to. I remember dreaming, like, why Poland cannot be like America? You know, and what happened too, when I was going to this very exclusive school in Warsaw that my father set it up for me, I had to travel to change the buses.
The stop was by the US embassy. So I remember I loved just to go out there because at that time they had those glass displays where they had pictures from America.
They were in formation America. So I remember even before the martial law, even before I got political, I just loved to look at it and see, wow, I love to dream.
So sometimes it was so nice that I remember missing the bus. I said, fuck this bus, I just want to read this.
So I did read that and I was always fascinated. I like to peek through the fence and they see the big, powerful, beautiful cars.
I was like, my, this is the country. Those are the free people.
Why aren't we that? Today those glass displays are taken down for security reasons, I guess. and I still, when I went last time, I went up there, because for me, it's very nostalgic.
But yeah, that was gone. Wow.
And so you got, you put in and they- Yeah, I told them what happened, and I said, I would like to escape Poland. I need help.
They, you know, I didn't even, the wildest dream, I think they would allow me to come live in America. It was just like, well, but I have to try.
So I went to ask, you know, I find out. They asked for documents and all that stuff I did.
And so I got like within, I think, very short time, like documents documents stating that yes, the visa will be granted to me when I get Polish passport. So that was normal procedure at the time.
A lot of political refugees came to this way, either to America or different countries. My choice was always America.
So once I got that promise, I could apply. With that, I could apply for a passport.
Otherwise, you cannot get the passport in Poland. So with this, I applied for a passport.
The passport was given to me, and I got a visa, I got a green card, and actually I-94. That was, I think, the first document, which was a later exchange for green card, eventually I became a US citizen.
But yeah, so this is where my journey became. There's one thing I would like to mention too during martial law.
You know, when everything was banned, like the solidarity insignia, solidarity lap like lapel pants, they were just forbidden. You could not wear it.
So people started wearing American flag. As a resistance, as a show, yeah, we are free.
We want to be free. So I remember that.
So we all had the American flags. Communists got tired of it.
I remember my city because at the Marshall Hall they had the roadblocks. Once every while they stopped bus or something.
Everybody has to disembark. They were checking documents.
If they found the Solidarity trade union pen, you could get beat up and hold your ass to jail. But with the American flag, they just could not really do that much.
To the point, because I remember with the time that I got stopped on the checkpoint, when they pulled us out, they ripped our American flags off and they stomp them in the ground. So the funny thing is that's not funny, but so we're back on the bus and then the guy, as the bus was moving, the guy said, ah, fuck you, we're gonna get more, we're gonna buy more American flags.
And when they stopped the bus, they pull everybody out and they grabbed the, I think, I don't think it was the guy who mouthed off to them. They just picked the first guy they could easily grab.
They grabbed him, they dragged him, and they dragged him to the police van while beating him with those rubber sticks all the way on the way to it. So now you can leave.
So we're like, okay, well, maybe we don't say anything. We just buy new American flags.
So yeah, that American flag was always for us, for many of us, that beacon of freedom, that drive. And then I came to live here.
Did any of your siblings or your mother come with you? No, no, they stayed there. And my sister is still there.
She's still... She's living her own life.
She has her own business now. And they have a peaceful, nice life.
So they enjoy it. And I'm here.
When I was leaving Poland, I was saying goodbye to Poland forever. I have my passport.
I'm going to post on my website. My passport is only one way.
So it's a step in it. You can cross Polish border one time only.
So I say, well, that's it. Wow.
And yeah. Was it hard to say goodbye? Well, I was anxious.
Not really that much, but it was more difficult for my family, my mom, because the way we understood, we're never going to see each other. So for me, it was like, well, I have to go because if I don't, then I may not last long.
And yeah, I remember, I just like, I've had a bag of my clothes and I had the $20 because you had to have the $20 and I woke up to the plane and left. That was it.
Wow. So yeah, that's how my journey started.
The funny thing is that I always was dreaming about having a tape recorder, like a little tiny tape recorder, never had one. So I said, well, you know what, I have $20 in Germany because I flew to Germany, stayed in Germany for like three weeks.
And so I go and buy me one. So all $20 I spent on tape recorder.
So when I landed in New York, I had only 10. The change that I got for the tape recorder was 10 Phoenix.
So this is like, I think, 5 cents. It was a German coin.
So that's how I landed in New York, bag of clothes. And I didn't speak English.
Let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll get into the USA.
No, you can cut out from it, whatever you want to cut out. We're not cutting anything.
Yeah. Yeah, that's a, that's the...
No, you can cut out from it, whatever you want to cut out, but... We're not cutting anything.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's... That's...
Wow. Well, you know what? Like, my story, whether in the book or taught here, I don't want people to see as the guy just came and bitched about the socialism and communism.
We all know the communists bad. I want this to be a prism, a lens, so they can see America maybe from different vantage point.
Because I see very often people, especially the younger generation educated with these anti-American universities, they hate this, outright hate America. So I want them to see America through, I would say, different eyes, different vantage point, so maybe they can change their mind.
Because I tell you, some of the hate towards America, I've from our own citizens, I didn't see the terrorists we were hunting in the Middle East. So that's what is disturbing for me.
Not all, but I did run across people with so much hate towards America and our own citizens. And this is a product of these universities, these anti-American universities, these Marxist, Marxist, communist bent and communist professors and teachers.
So, geez. Yeah.
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All right, Drago, we're back from the break.

And so a couple of interesting conversations we got to revisit that happened off camera.

One, you said you're a bad student.

Now you're a software engineer.

Yes.

Well, you know, I was a bad student because I think that I didn't like to was my personal challenge to stay focused on something, especially something that I didn't like to do. I like to play soccer, I like to kickbox, I like to fight.
I was not the best student. Software engineering is fascinating.
It's like having a puzzle and you solve the puzzle and it trains your brain to memorize things, to remember things and using the tools. It is fascinating and you build things.
things, you know, just like you are a designer. And software engineering is more like an art than, it's a science, but it's also big

art involved in it because you can solve the problems. It's about solving the problems.
And you can solve the problems in so many ways, so many different things you can do to accomplish your task. It's fantastic.
I love it. I mean, this is something that was very fascinating to me.
Matter of fact, the way I started it was in the SEAL teams. So I was the only SEAL who, having a cruise box with guns, having another cruise box with books and another one with full computer.
There were no laptops at the time. Maybe there were, but I couldn't afford one.
So I had a big monitor, big computer, keyboard, mouse, and I traveled with it. When we deployed to Germany or to Bosnia, I had that all shebang with me.
Matter of fact, when we came back from deployment, we were carrying guns back into the SEAL teams. So we picked the case with the guns, with the guy who just carried it in, then picked my case to carry to my cage and say, what the fuck is in this box? Do we have a guns in it or something? I say, no, it's just my laptop and my books.
Because there was no internet at the time, so I had to have a book, so I carried books with me. Damn.
But I love it. It's a fascinating world.
And then we had a conversation, too, we have to get this, about Taekwondo. I was talking about Palmer Luckey's cameras, and then somehow that morphed, or helmet cameras and then somehow that morphed or a helmet and then somehow that morphed into oh yeah morphed into cameras and then basically you guys critiquing yourself on the street right we're talking about the cameras yes when i was growing up there was no cameras you can have a camera maybe like the one with this little crank on it.
And it was hard to get. I never had one.
And I didn't know even anybody who had one. So for us to progress in fighting, in the kickboxing, in Taekwondo, we just need to critique each other.
So, a matter of fact, this is why I switched from karate Kyokushinkai to Taekwondo at the time. It's not like this today.
I know I don't want to offend anybody who is practicing taekwondo today in Poland. Today taekwondo is very inclusive to all kinds of people and is very, very, I would say, civilized.
It's very, not only educational, but also very healthy. But at that time, we just decided to, especially when our teacher from Laos came and was telling us that, you know, fight on the ring is one thing, it's fairly safe.
But you need to be good, we want to be a good fighter, you need to fight on the street. Well, he didn't have to say twice to us that right we're just like okay right on let's let's do it so the way we did it was just pick the people on the street who look more rough or like trying to somebody who was willing to fight and it was not difficult to find people like this in Poland at the time so we go and the way we did we did it is like, okay, so I'm going to go first, I'm going to beat up this guy, and you guys will watch.
This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to use this technique, this technique, this technique, and you grade me.
Basically, there were the cameras of our, the eyes of my fellow buddies from Taekwondo. There were the cameras of our times.
So, you know, you go up there, you use your technique, you beat the guy up. And again, I'm not proud of it today, but I have to say it correctly, but that was the way I lived the life at the time.
So, and you critique me. And so after the fight was over, the guy was laying unconscious.
The guys come in and well you miss your technique right there you could emphasize a little bit more that kick was not very strong or you miss the guy here where you could actually do more damage or do this this so that was our techniques and that's that's how we uh we got really good at it we got really good at it to the point point that we didn't look for a single people anymore. We just wanted like, let's challenge ourselves.
Let's just beat two people at a time. So sometimes it was difficult to find, like a group of people to beat up.
So if we found one, usually it was like whoever called first was able to beat them up. Sometimes it was so hard to tell because we were like, yeah, the mine, the mine.
We had to draw the straws who would be beating them up. And this is how we practiced.
So we just woke up to the guy who started the fight. And in Poland, again, it was not very difficult to do it because almost everybody was fighting everywhere.
And then we practiced our technique, or two, three guys. And it was become more actually interesting.
The beating just one guy was a very simple thing. But now we have two or three guys and now you can show your art, I would say.
You can show your way of how you master your techniques, your reaction time and all that stuff. So that was very interesting.
And some of them, you know, we, we didn't know, we didn't pick people who, because you couldn't know if the guys to beat up were martial artists too or not. But we did, we just, you know, like taking chances.
And sometimes the guy had actually martial training, was boxer or wrestler. So they were hard to beat up sometimes.
Sometimes you have two, three guys, and one of them is not really reacting to your punches. You have to actually strain yourself to knock the guy out.
But that was our training. The cameras were our eyes, and the review was our critique how the fight went.
Wow. That was, you know what, again.
Whose idea was the safety pin? Oh, I don't know where it came from, but, oh, yeah, that was, came from, you know, when you fight, when you were fighting in Poland, when I was fighting in Poland, I, you know, I learned very quickly that, and I'm sure you experienced that when you start the fight, the guy gets beat up and says, okay, I had enough. Thank you.
You better let me walk away. I'm fine.
That's a very dangerous thing to do. What I learned very quickly, because usually the guy recover and attack you again or come back with his friends.
So then you have a fight on your hands, even more people to beat up. So when we fought, when we used to fight there, we used to fight until the guys stopped moving.
So it's not that, hey, I had enough, enough, enough. No, no, no.
You don't tell me when I end the fight. I will tell you when I end the fight.
Most likely you will just be moving again. So you just beat the guy until he doesn't move, right? Now he falls down, doesn't move.
But then we find out, and it happened to me actually, that one of the guys, I think, had a thong falling, and he was already turning blue, and I panicked. I didn't know what to do.
I didn't know what happened. And thanks God there was a nurse.
And she said, give me a safety pen. Give me a safety.
Somebody's safety pen. So somebody pulls her safety pen, and she kind of like hooked his tongue and pulled it out, rolled him to the side.
It was good. And she said, if something like this happened, you know, you need to make sure that his tongue doesn't, that person's tongue doesn't fall in.
So I said, well, that's pretty cool, but if you need to run, what do you do? Well, I guess you take the safety plan and pin his tongue to his lower lip, and he will leave too. So this is how we started doing it.
And sometimes police in Poland at that time seldom intervened. people were so used to violence there that if there was a fight on the street and you could see two, three fights when you walk through town usually, people just cross the street, go around you and keep walking down.
It's not my business, two people, three people are fighting. Let them fight it out, let them duck it out and just move on.
But sometimes when police was coming, then you have to leave unconscious guy on the street. So we learned very quickly that the best way is just to use the safety pin, pull his tongue out, pin it to the lower lip, roll him to the side and just leave him there.
He will leave, he's not going to die. So that was kind of like a technique that we learned very quickly.
And it's effective. It's a life-saving technique.
I think the last one I applied in Horton Plaza in San Diego already being a seal. I have to say, it never occurred to be to pin up guy's tongue to his lip after I beat him up.
So it doesn't choke to that. I didn't think either until this guy almost died on my eyes.
So I learned there's a safer way. I treat the safety pin as a safety device, you know? You just ensure the guy doesn't die, that he's fairly safe, that his tongue pen to his lower lip is not going to hurt him.
You know, he wake up and I never had anybody complain about, well, maybe they never saw me after. But it was effective 100%, I guess.
So that worked, yeah. So let's get to, so you came to America, you had $20.
In Germany. In Germany.
On the tiny tape recorder. You bought the tape recorder.
Yes. So you had, I think you said five cents.
Five Phoenix. So Phoenix is like a German mark, it has 100 Phoenix.
So I had the five Phoenix in my pocket, bag of clothes from like old clothes from 1970s, or whatever my mom could, you know, prepare for me. So so I had a sweater I think I still have it till today somewhere in the closet I didn't want to throw it away with my mom made by his hand by her hands so that's yeah that's how I came to America knowing nothing knowing no English only knowing that America is a free country the are living free here, and I can live as a free man here on this land,

and hopefully one day become an American citizen if I'm good enough.

Where do you go? No family, no money, no English, nowhere to live.

People were waiting for me, actually.

So when I came in, because I came legally, they organized an apartment for me. They helped me find the first job.
I didn't complain or how could I complain? I got the job as a janitor and I was happy as I can be. Sean, I could pay for my own apartment, my own money.
I didn't have to borrow the money. I could buy my food, you know, and I was living in the apartment with air conditioning, with, you know, telephone.
There was something unusual in Poland and air conditioning. I only, I didn't even know how it works.
I never, I never seen air conditioning. I heard about this climatization in apartments, but having apartment with air conditioning, good God, I felt like a king.
You know, there was a project, there was like apartment was like $180 a month. And there was a bunch of, you know, a lot of crimes, drugs, and prostitution, but who cares? You know, I had my own apartment and I could afford it, I could live in it.
And then, you know, so my goal became now to learn English and to get different jobs, get better jobs and to start English because I was working as a janitor, so really, you know, physical work. so I had the cartoons in my back pocket so I

had a map in one hand it's like Jane loves Joe Joe loves Jane you know I was just mapping the floors and and that's like okay so I need to memorize that so this is how I learn basically how I I learned English at the time.

And this is why my grammar sometimes is still like the fence of Rachel, my wife.

She's like, hey, don't say it this way.

You have to say it a certain way.

But yeah, this is how I started.

This is how I learned English.

Eventually, I improved and I went to school, but that was my first beginning. I tell you, the patience of American friends who helped me, who saved me my life here, I mean, it's so incredible.
Sean, I offended so many people unintentionally, not even knowing about it. I remember I was invited by the church after the mass on Sunday in the room so the parishioners can meet this new Polish immigrant and stuff, and I can mingle with those great people, great American friends.
So I walk into that room and the pastor came with a big plate of cookies and just like so happy. Everybody is like smiling and happy.
So I took this cookie and in Polish language it does not sound like TH. So somebody advised me to use F like thank you.
That came out like fuck you. And so when I took this cookie, I knew that I said something wrong because right there I could hear the gasps, like everybody.
So I'm holding this cookie and like, what the hell did I say wrong? I say thank you, but now there was a fuck you. But this older gentleman came out and said, look, what he's trying to say is, he looks at me and says, thank you.
So I'm like, yes, that's what I'm trying to say. So, you know, things like this, the Borat moments.
I was invited to party, like swimming pool, family party from the parishioners. And they have a grill set up and everything.
So of course I want to represent myself the best I could and, you know, be that good American I want to be. I just want to look good there.
So I went and I found the skimpiest, the shortest shorts I could find. I would call it banana hammock, I guess, today.
And I thought, this is really cool. I will look really good.
I think these people admire me. You know, that's like, I really represent myself well.
So as soon as I walk into that pool, I can see a whistle and people being ushered out of the swimming pool behind the building somewhere. And somebody calls me and says, hey, come on here.
We have shorts for you. So they took me to the room.
They gave me big shorts. I didn't argue.
I was like, yes, sir, yes, sir. You know, in Poland at the time, in 1980s, the shorts like we wear today only fat people and old people wear.

So there was no, if somebody's seen you in those shorts, they think that you are just like weird guy. So everybody was there, the skimpiest, the shortest, the smallest, the swimming trunes, the better.
So I just didn't know. And another thing too, I remember the first few days I was staying with all their family parishioners in the church.
So sometimes they give me a ride around Memphis and they give me a dictionary, a first dictionary. I have it today with their corrections on it.
I have it in my home, actually, I'm going to post on my website. So I was trying to tell them, impress them that I'm learning English, I'm using this dictionary.
So as we drive, I'm looking and saying, this is house. It's like, yeah, yes, good, you know.
This is man, this is woman. You know, and just like reading and trying to find out what it means.
And they were pretty happy until we came and I see the black guy walking on the street and find out what is the black guy. Okay, this is an ugly word.
It was not the ugly word. You know, there's something very offensive to, I guess, anybody, to me too.
But at that time, I didn't know. And they almost wrecked the car.
This woman jumped out, said, she's yelling at me, I don't understand what. She takes this dictionary from me and slowly, this is bad.
No, no, no. And she scratched that word and wrote, Black man.
I said, Black man. This is Black man.
And, you know, it was the last thing on my mind, or in my heart, to offend an American or anybody, especially an American, especially friends. So I just didn't know any better.
So as you can see, my progressing through my learning how to live in American society, it took its toll on me too, because I was trying to be so good. And sometimes it just backfired at me, but there was never intentional mistake.
maybe one when eventually I got the job as a sub mechanic that's a story just in itself how I got the job and then so the mechanic, the shop foreman invited me to say hey let's have a steak today there'll be a couple other mechanics coming so let's go have a party." I said, party yes! So we'll show up and he gave me a steak. Sean, that was the first time in my life I seen that one big piece of meat in one piece.
So I'm looking at it, there's like, I think five or six of them, but I'm,

so I'm like,

Jim,

by this time,

I spoke a little bit English.

So it's like,

an entire town is coming here

to the party or what?

He said,

no, no,

it's just,

so are you telling me

I can eat the whole steak?

In Poland,

when you had the meat,

you slice it

like a razor blade

and you use the meat,

at least in my home, not to fill feel yourself use the meat for the taste but you feel yourself with the potatoes or or or bread so i'm just like how be eating entire it was the first time i had entire big chewing like a brick of meat in my life so i was so grateful to him so they knew i was doing kickboxing earlier, and they said, well, show us something, you know, something, show us something. You know, we have a few beers.
I say, okay, I'll show you. I'll show you the basic punch, what I like to punch people with.
And can I punch this wall? He said, yeah, sure. I thought it was a concrete wall.
In Poland, the walls are concrete, all those concrete plates. Sun walled on this wall, boom! But there was a freaking dry sheet wall, so my fist went through one wall and went out in his bedroom on the other side.
That was embarrassing. I said, Dude, Jim, I am so, so sorry.
I didn't mean to destroy your house. I just wanted to show you the punch.
I didn't think that. I thought there was a concrete wall.
And they thought it was funny. So I said, I'm going to go and fix it.
But they said, no, no, no, that was fine. I will keep it for a while.
So I have a story to tell. So yeah, things like that were a little bit different.
How old were you when you came to the US? 24. 24 years old.
No, 23, going 24. How long did it take you to learn English? I'm still learning English.
Enough to be able to communicate. Yeah, but to be able to communicate.
I think it took me maybe, to be fairly efficient, to convey my thoughts, I think maybe six months, seven months. Wow, that's impressive.
But please remember, I had to do it on my own. So it's easier to learn the right way than learn the bad way and then correct this.
So I still make a lot of mistakes when I speak, which is obvious to people around, maybe not for me so much, but my wife always says, well, you know, you're just funny, so I'm not going to correct you because it sounds good, sounds funny, so keep going. So yeah, she domesticated me.
So I'm like fully, well, I consider myself now fully domesticated. She always, when you ask her, she will tell you that I'm still a project under construction.
So I still have edges to polish, but I'm working on it. So where did you go from New York? From New York, I went to Memphis, Tennessee.
This is where I started my American dream. And again, this is something that I always say, I would never succeed.
Maybe not the way I succeeded if not American people, if not American culture, if not the help I got from people who didn't know me from Adam. There were people coming to my apartment.
I had no furniture. So I was thinking, well, my apartment is great.
I can sleep on the floor. No, they brought me a bed.
They brought me shelves. Everything that I had in this apartment, I got from my American friends.
They were coming to me, bringing me clothes, because the clothes that I had from the 70s really didn't fit, I wouldn't fit between people. So they were bringing me clothes.
They were bringing me food. I think I had like $20 a week left after I pay my bills to buy food.
So they were just checking my fridge. They were just coming in saying, hey, you know what? I think you need this.
Let me bring you some hamburger meat. Let me bring you cereal.
Well, with cereal itself, this is something that I never seen before in my life. And then when I was taken first time to shopping, to grocery shopping, for me, it was like going from the normal world into science fiction movie right inside it.
I've seen so many things I never seen in my life. And it happened I was on the aisle with the cereal box.
I didn't know what it was, but it looks, these boxes look so nice, so good that I just loaded my whole cart with the boxes. My American friends who helped me with the shopping, they were just laughing.
It's like, dude, it's easy. Like, okay, if you want it, yeah, you got it.
So I just load my whole shopping cart with the cereal.

I was eating the cereal for a year later, but I learned to like it. So my favorite was the Krispies.
The rice Krispies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that.
And then that one and the chocolate one. So there was like milk with it.
I love that. How did you wind up at Memphis? Well, when I came to my journey, I started in Warsaw through Germany.
In Germany, the political refugees, they had a center there. They're just only for political refugees.
Where we spent time waiting for a sponsor or somebody to help us assimilate in American society. So we had people from the State Department coming in through these three weeks, telling us America, you know, what to expect in America, how to live, what's the best way to go about things, what do we need to do when we arrive to America.
So it was a great help. I was like sponge trying to soak all the information.
And then I remember I was calling the office and say, do I have any preferences where I would like to settle down in America? I say, my preference is to settle down in America. I don't care what I'm putting, but if you ask, because I was speaking Polish, if you ask, I would like to go somewhere where it's hot, like hot, hot.
I'm tired of being cold. In Poland, we didn't have a good close.
I was always freezing. So I'm like, I'm so sick and tired of being cold.
Put me somewhere where it's hot. So it's like, well, what do you think about Memphis, Tennessee? So they took me to the map, showed me the map.
Do you know anything about Memphis, Tennessee? Well, I knew that Elvis Presley was from Memphis, Tennessee. So I told him, ah, I know Elvis Presley is from Tennessee.
Yeah, great, you know it. But is it hot up there? I said, yeah, it's very hot.
I said, sign me up, I'm in. And they shipped me up to New York, back to Memphis.
This is where I started my life. Got my first job as a janitor, then as a parts man, then as a mechanic.
You know, there's funny things. I never had a car.
I didn't even know in Poland anybody, I did not have a friend in Poland who owned the car. But those are European cars.

Would you like to work on European cars?

Absolutely, yes.

So they got me in the interview.

There was a company of the Schilling, the Porsche, Saab and Audi.

So the Porsche guy came in and said, well, it's kind of expensive car.

The guy doesn't speak English, know nothing about cars. So maybe we just set it.
Maybe not today. So then the Audi mechanic came in, the same thing.
And then we're waiting for the sub mechanic to come in. And I hear this big sound roar of the Harley Davidson.
I just run in the garage up there. The guy looking like a sasquatch, looks like seven feet tall, walks in.
I said, hey, so that guy? I said, yeah. A sub? I said, yeah.
Tim Presley was a service manager at the time, I still remember his name. He looks at Tim, and the manager said, I need a slave, sign him up.
And here we are. So we become really good friends, if not the best friends.
He told me everything about cars I need to know. I was clueless, I had no idea.
So he told me everything about Saab. I became a really good mechanic to the point that even Mercedes came later and asked me if I want to work for them.
So this guy, there's the guy who invited me for the steak party when I broke his house with my fist. But so he, I remember trying to learn English.
My English was still very difficult.

I said, Jim, I have an idea.

You're going to read me the manuals and I will record you and can listen to it.

I thought he would kill me.

It's like, what did you just say?

I'm going to read you like a mama story to children

and I read you the manual.

And on the top of the sub manual? I said he said yeah I was thinking for okay but if you tell somebody I fucking kill you so so I still have I still have a Jim's recording somewhere there because what helped me I was explaining to him that if I read the words and I'm listening at the same time it's easier easier for me to understand what it is, and also I'm learning English at the same time. So this is the guy, half gangster, the guy who just wouldn't mind to go and just kill you if you had to, and become like my bigger brother, you know, helping me out.
So there's many things that happen later in my life that would not happen if not this guy you know I owe this guy so much we lost contact after I left for the Navy but if he is there if he's listening up there you know Jimbo I remember yeah that, man. It wouldn't surprise me if he's listening.
What's that? It would not surprise me if he's listening. Hopefully.
I know he had a son, too. They're just great people.
I owe them so much. I owe Jimbo.
I think the way my career moved on in America is because this guy.

So, yeah.

Where did you go from mechanics?

From Memphis straight to the Navy.

How did the Navy pop on your radar?

Well, you see, by this time I already became a U.S. citizen.

And I was living my American dream.

I had everything I wanted.

I was skydiving even. I was teaching skydiving.
I was teaching AFF. I was AFF Jumpmaster.
So I was living my life out. And then the war broke out, the first Persian War.
So I said, I am American and I have such a great life. So what can I do for my American friends and for America?

I think I can serve in the war.

I remember this funny thing because I decided to join the military.

I didn't know Navy from Army.

For me, it was military, it was military.

Army was everything.

So I was just one day in the post office and I see this draft card, where everybody needs to fill up for high school kids. So I say, oh wow, they are recruiting people even from post offices.
I fill it up, I sign up for the army, the war is on, they're going to get me soon. So I fill it up, mailed it off, came back to my apartment, I was living with some other skydivers and I start packing myself I said like what are you doing you cannot just move out we have a contract here we had to pay the rent and stuff no no no I said I'm not moving out yet but I'm packing myself because I'm going to war I'm going to war to fight for America and I was like wait a minute we didn't How did you sign it up? I said, I went to the post office, I filled it up, I sent it off, and I'm just waiting for them to just come and get me.
Well, I said, no, that doesn't work like that. You need to go actually to the recruiting office.
And the actual letter came in that, well, thank you, but no thank you, you are not required to fill this card you are ready to all for that so I was like 32 at the time so I say okay well the war is going on and I want to pay my freedom back so I want to help and support my country my America so I went to the at my recruiting office, and I said, hey, this is who I am, this is what happened to me, this is why I'm here, and I want to join military, I want to go to war. So it's like, where would you, okay, well, sure, there's any unique preferences, where would you like to serve? I said, well, whoever goes first in combat, sign me up.
I had no idea. But I said, sign me up wherever I want to go to war, fight on behalf of America and American people.
So they're like, okay, infantry. I said, I don't know what infantry is, but if you say so, sign me up.
So they proceeded with the paperwork and everything. And that was pretty close to everything being completed.
And then Navy SEALs showed up in Memphis, leapfrogs. They were doing some demo jumps.
So they came to our drop zone to do some jumps. I started talking to them.
And I still remember a guy who I know him as Tim O'Hara. He was a firefighter in San Diego so he's the guy I talked to and he was just I was fascinated he was a really good skydiver.
So we did many jumps together also with his guys and he just told me and said look you want to go on SEALs because you want to skydive right? In the Army you want to be sky be skydiving, but you want to be skydiving to combat parachute jumps and stuff. Why don't you go join Navy SEALs? I didn't know what the SEALs were.
For me, it was not important to be a SEAL. It was important to serve America.
So I said, okay. But I had to go to Army, guys, and tell them all this work you did for me.
I'm sorry, but I'm going next door. So it was awkward because I made friends with them.
But I said, well, OK, I'll do it. I want to join the Navy.
So I went and grabbed the paper, went up there, and they finished it up. And they were fair with me because they said, OK, you are 32, going 33.
So you are not eligible for SEAL program because you are too old. The cat of age is 28.
But if you sign this paper, you go to boot camp, they make a SEAL out of you. You look strong guy, so they're going to make a SEAL out of you.
I say, okay, well, again, my goal was not to join Navy SEALs. My goal was to go join America in the war and support.
So I said, yeah, that's fine. If not, I will serve wherever America needs me, because that was my idea.
I didn't know where to go. So I signed it up, and they told me, okay, we'll be fair with you.
If you go as an undesignated, the Navy will put you on scraping decks or we'll do something that you might not like. Why don't you go pick the job in the Navy? So after boot camp, you go to your A school and then you go in their SEAL training.
If you fall out, I couldn't go in SEAL training at the time, but they didn't tell me that. So you go to SEAL training, you fall training, you fall back on your job, so you don't go scraping decks, you'll be doing whatever the Navy trained you to do.
So I said, okay, so what's the best job? I said, well, you like skydiving, right? I said, yes, parachute rigger. I said, okay, sign me up, parachute rigger.
And so, but they say okay if you want to go parachute rigger you will have to leave uh so we will proceed doing the paperwork maybe like three weeks later they count your month later so okay to be a parachute rigger there's two options now you can go to boot camp like next week and right after the bootcamp, your A school starts, the parachute rigging school. Or you have to wait like four or five months and then wherever the next parachute rigging school is to coordinate it with you going to bootcamp and to school.
So I was thinking like, shit, the war may end by this time. So sign me up for the closest one.
I call my girlfriend and say, hey, look, I'm leaving next week. I'm joining the Navy.
I'm leaving next week. She's like, what? I say, yeah, let's get married.
So we just got married. That was a Monday, I think.
Tuesday we ran in the afternoon after her work to the office in Memphis. We found the judge who was already leaving, but I think we looked so desperate.
He said, OK, let me go sign you up. So he married us.
And then I went on, I think on Friday, I went to Depp. Into Depp.
Then I was sworn in. And I think Saturday and Sunday they flew me, and a few other guys from Memphis to Great Lakes, to Illinois.
That's how my adventure started. So that's the beginning of my Navy time.
And again, I just wanted to serve. It didn't matter where I serve.
My idea was to serve where America needs me. That's whatever I can be useful.
But I passed the test, the SEAL test. They did let you try it.
They did let me try, yes. So what they say that I will have to ask for the waiver for my age.
And this is where I met in boot camp, but then I had a kidney stone. So they say, okay, now, and I still have this document today that does not disqualify me from SEAL training, from the program, but I have to wait for at least a year or two before I can reapply again because the kidney is not my recure.
I have the document at home. And then, so I say, okay, well, it's not a big deal.
I just want to serve. And so I graduated from boot camp as a number one recruit.
I'm very proud of it because, you know, like my English was still not perfect. And but I always, I excel in the academics, I excel in the PTE, I excel in everything that I did.
So I was selected to be the number one graduating recruit from the entire batch. So I got the Military Excellence Award from bootcamp.
I'm very proud of it. And then I had good instructors too.
So then I went to A school and this is where I met Jason Cabell, a friend of mine, a really good friend of mine. We later met in Iraq, in Baghdad, doing combat together.
So I couldn't swim very well because I'd never seen the ocean, I never seen the sea he says but he was so sure he's going to make and he couldn't swim he swam even worse than I do so he was like very for me it was inspirational because I look at this guy struggling to just stay on the surface and he's going to be a seal so I'm going to make it

too so so we're having to try to swim and and all that stuff we got better of course he went to bats I had to wait for my for my orders first but even before I wait for my orders I went on in Millington in the A school, I found the seal motivator. It was Les Barrios, rest in peace, brother.
And I went to him. I said, look, I have a document.
I would like to be a CL if possible. But my documents in my medical records say I had a kidney stone, so I cannot apply for the program for a year or two years.
And he said, OK, well, can you pass the test? I said, yeah, I passed the test. Bring me your documents.
At that time, there was no electronic documents, so he wrote me the chat. I ran with it to medical, got my medical record, came to him and said, okay, here it is.
I said, okay, step outside. I step outside and just listen all right come on in so look he's sitting at his desk it's like look I look through your medical record I really can't find anything about a kidney stone can you help me find it I say yeah it's right here so we look and say no it's not here he looks at me say are you sure you had the kidney stone? By this time, I'm like, I'm sure I didn't.
Okay, that's good enough. So yeah, they put me on hold after the graduate form.
I also graduated, I think, one on the top of the class. So then I was waiting for the waivers.
And I think the waiver was granted to me because I excel in everything I did. I did so well, and I think they've seen that maybe this guy, because of his age, maybe his age will not inhibit him a lot, but we give him a chance.
So eventually, after maybe two months being on hold in the A school, I got my orders to Buds. I called him Jason Cabana and said, Brother, I'm coming after you.
He gave me a tape. I still remember the tape.
I still have it at home, the tape that he gave me. It was the cassette we used to play.
So I was just playing it on the road because I was driving to California, to San Diego. So that's how my Navy career started, how my SEAL career started.
Did you have any idea what a SEAL was at that time? No. Other than skydivers? No, except them.
Well, they show me the video in the recruiting station. I say, wow, this is really cool, but what's the difference between the Army? And I was like, that looked like an army to me.
But, you know, it was the unit that this guy recommended to me. And if I could get up there, it's fine.
But again, that was not driving, that's what motivated me to join the Navy. So for me, it was not really that important.
But the way I imagined seer training was they would be at prison. So I couldn't think of any other way.
Those are special forces. So they will lock you up there in some camp, and you will be just going through all these evolutions.
You'll be going through all the training, totally isolated from people. That was my imagination.
And I was thinking like, well, you know, I'm married now, so it would be kind of sad for my wife, but, well, I survived communist prison. At least here, they don't try to kill you, right? They just try to make you better, unlike in communist prison.
So I said, I'll be fine. Well, as you know, it's not dead.
There is no prison. Actually, you have enough freedom.
They give you enough rope so you can hang yourself if you are not careful with what you do in vats. You just have to manage not only the training, but you need to manage yourself as well.
So I remember a lot of guys going out and partying and drinking. And I would love to do it too.
And I did sometimes too, but for me it was more often it was Ben Gay, you know, rubbing on my muscles and like, oh God, I need to survive. Tomorrow will be maybe better.
Tomorrow I feel better. Let's hope so.
So like as they were drinking, I was rubbing Ben Gay in myself, trying to bring myself better in the bed and trying to go to bed early. But it helped, you know.
I did very well. I was like never...
I was rolled back only at the beginning of the first phase because I got an infection in my leg. I got MRSA on the back of my thigh.
Oh, MRSA. So swollen so bad that I couldn't put my pants on.
So actually, I had to cut my pants to go to medical. But I figured out this.
So, okay, I'm not going to tell them anything. I just go through the rest of this week.
It was like two more days with the leg like this. On Friday, right after they shut down the evolutions, I'll run up to Balboa to hospital, let them fix it.
So I would have three days basically to heal and I should be okay. Well, it didn't work that way.
I went up there. They did cut this big piece, the big white piece out of it.
And it was thick like my pinky. And my leg was coming down a little bit.
I could put my pants on. But then in the morning, Monday morning, when I was driving to Baths, I swole again.
So I had no choice, but I had to go to our medical in Baths and tell them what happened. So what I find out is Balboa, they cut this out and just let me go instead of irrigating it for maybe like an hour.
And that's what they did. They actually gave me antibiotics.
They put me on the gurney and they put the IV into my, in that big hole in my leg. And they keep irrigating for like two, three hours.
And like my legs, the swelling came out and everything was good. So they banded in my legs and I came back and said, we have to roll you.
I said, you can't roll me. I said, no, we have to.
We have the mud flats where we are going to. You cannot go with a leg like this.
And the Helwig next, you cannot go to Helwig with a leg like this. So I was really like broken, you know.
I was like, holy shit, I don't want to be rolled. I said, please let me stay in the class.
So I think it was instructor Graves. No, it was instructor Fitzhenry.
He says, like, okay, if you can run here five, sprint around five times around this thing, I might keep you in the class. So I said, right on.
But I had to still get a cut on my pants because I couldn't put them on.

And I ran, I ran through all these fives and stuff.

I said, can I stay?

It's like, nope, 185.

So that was from 184, right at the beginning, before the mud floods, I got rolled to 185.

I had to start again.

But it allowed me to heal my leg.

I don't think I would be able to, I would make through Hellwig with this big open wound

on my leg, with infection in my leg and like swollen like the elephant leg.

What about the my leg. I don't think I would be able to, I would make through Hellwig with this big open wound on my leg with infection in my leg and like swollen like the elephant leg.
Wow. So yeah, so there was my first phase.
What did you think, what did you think of Buds? Did you find it difficult being from your... I found it physically very difficult, but I didn't find it mentally difficult because maybe when I came to BADS, I was thinking that this is going to be hell, that it's in the hell, that it's going to be extremely...
and it was physically, but mentally, like for some reason the instructors yelling, calling names and all that stuff didn't faze me. I kind of expected it.
I thought that this is, actually, I thought it was funny because I didn't do anything. I yelled it for nothing.
So I didn't show it to instructors that I think it's funny. I took everything seriously.
When they say drop down, I didn't question it. I dropped down and pushed it out whatever I was told to do.
And I did, I think, very well, actually, one of the instructors, instructor trainer, just looked at me and I said, drop down, 50. So I just looked, 50, I think it was the first phase.
So the first phase, you don't do 50. So I did it.
I stand up. Who are you, instructor trainer? He just looked at me and said, well, you know what? I think I like you.
Get the fuck out of here. Go back in the class.
And then in the Hell Week, you remember that there's a time after maybe two, three days when they get you together and they ask you, okay, tell me why you come here to BOTS. And I just have to tell them what's there.
So I hear guys, well, I came here to try to be the best. I'm here to, and I will try to finish this training, give my best and so.
And so when they asked me, I said, fuck, I didn't come here to try, I came here to become a SEAL. And either I will, my body will break down or you kick me out, but I will come out of this as a, I will graduate from this program.
I didn't came here to try. I mean, I didn't come here to try.
They got mad, but I know they liked it because I can see them like right on. And then, you know, there's a lot of things like this with the knives, you know, we had these knife inspections.
So they always called me because my knife, you know, it was like cheesy knives, but fairly cheap, and they got the, you have to maintain them very well. I could put my knife, just the edge, like on my arm and just let it slide.
It would shave your hand. They were dead sharp.
So they were calling me sometimes to demonstrate to other classes how to maintain the equipment. Also on the swim, remember, I couldn't swim very well.
Neither was Jason Cabell. And not only that I couldn't swim very well, I could swim only on one side, the side stroke.
So then on the top of it, they put the mask on me. I have never swim with mask in my life.
This is the real thing I thought I would drown because I remember I was swimming, I couldn't breathe, the mask closed my nose, and I was breathing as much water, I think as much air. And when I came out of that pool after the first few swims, my belly was so big that I could feel water sloshing in it.
And there were times that I remember I was swimming. I was like, I'm about to pass out.
I have so much water in my lungs, and I have black spots in my eyes. But if I stop, they will kick me out.
So I know they are watching. There are instructors there.
If I pass out, I'm not going to die. So I just like, you have to trust them.
And slowly become easier and easier. By the end of my,

that was in the fourth phase, that was in the pre-phase, when we finished, I was asked

actually to demonstrate the new guys coming into that training, how to do the side strokes.

So I was very proud of it.

Wow. Wow.
Yeah. And Jason Kamara too, He became a really good swimmer.
We are still friends, so we talked to each other. And a great guy.
He was very inspirational for me. So, yeah.
So you graduated buds at age 33. Yes.
Is that correct? Going 33, yes.

And I checked into team in March 2000,

March 1993, sealed team two. Well, not very many people get through BUDS in their 30s.
No, I think there's very few people that made it. people that made it.
I think I'm one of that few that not only made through

B I think there's very few people that made it. I think I'm one of the few that not only made through BANs, but made through the SEAL teams, into the SEAL teams.
Because as you know, very often people who made through BANs, they still don't cut and they are either removed from SQT, or today before it was SQT, or they were being removed while in the platoon, either pre-war cup or during the event after the deployments. Like, well, you are not the guy, so you need to leave.
And I have friends that came with me or after me who made bots to that selection, checked into the teams, and they were sent to the fleet. So that was not easy for me being old, especially with my English too.
I need to say that, but at that time I was still at the stage that when you talk to me I had to translate myself in Polish before I speak to you. I had to

translate on English. But I guess I did it so fast, I was able to do it so fast that people seldom notice that.
The issues show up in CQB where you have to be on your feet, you have to be very fast. And that's when I really started occurring to me that I need to improve my English.
I need to get better with my English. Matter of fact, when I came back from the first deployment, you know, when you come back from deployment, you pick the schools.
I want to be a sniper. I want to go to diving school, jumping school, I want to be an instructor here, there.

Well, for me, I didn't have a choice. I was sent to English 101 school right away.
It's like the guys were leaving. Hey, we are going to the sniper school.
We are going to Drago. I was walking to the center up there.
It's like, English 101. But, you know, it helped me.
It did make a big difference and it allowed me actually to be successful in my career. How were you greeted at SEAL Team 2 when you showed up? I think like most of the guys, I was beat up pretty much.
Not beat up, but I remember I didn't even make out of the building. So I checked to quarter deck, I checked with Master Chief, I think with XO, and I was told to later go to the supply, get my gear.
So as soon as I walked out in the building, the big courtyard in the SEAL Team 2, there was the guys waiting up there. I said, okay, yeah, new FNG.
How about the bars? I already knew, you know, that's like, you don't argue with these old seals. You just do what they say.
So I jump on the bars, the pull-ups, sit-ups. Basically, I did the whole PT, the PT test that we do every year.
And then they didn't want to, because my uniform, that was the nicest uniform I could have. I just pressed, I just picked every little thing, make sure that it's so perfect.
So after this forced PT on the concrete, that looked like shit. It was really bad.
You know, it was torn up, sweaty, dirty, dust everywhere. And, you know, my nice shoes scuffed.
They didn't want to walk me to Quarterdijk because I was frowned upon. They took me to the back gate.
They woke me up when we started three miles run. I said, okay, now you run.
We'll see your time, what you have. Now you see that dude with the torn up uniform, holding his hat to his head, running like crazy on the base, because it was in the base, outside the SEAL teams.
So I'm sure people were thinking, what is this crazy guy? What happened to this guy here? So I did that three miles round, came back, they said, okay, go continue with your stuff now. So I went to supply, got my gun, and the guns got all my weapons, all the gear that I needed.
I was assigned the cage in SEAL Team 2, and I moved my stuff there, and my adventure with SEAL Team started. So that was my welcome to SEAL Teams.
And, you know, very often there was other new guys too, a lot of other new guys. And one day they say, okay, guys, you are invited for Friday kegger.
At that time in CL Team 2, all the CL teams, I think, Friday ended at noon. So after PT, you just clean your gear, clean yourself, and you can go home.
Except in CL Team 2, you to attend the kegger so keg of beer was waiting the high bay so they said you guys guys invited for the kegger today friday so me and other new guys like dude so i think they like us you know they invite us to to uh have a part to party with them to mingle with these old guys this old experienced sales so I was so excited, I think we all were but as soon as we walked in we got jumped, taped a little bit kicked and beat up hang on the chains and just like butts upside down, pull up to the roof of the highway while these guys were drinking they were drinking, laughing, we just were hanging like a bat all taped up. Once every while they roll us down on the chains, they had the dragger bag, the bag from the diving rig with the pipe.
So here, a new guy, stick it in your mouth, they put the beer in it and just squeeze and goes everywhere. All right, drink enough.
Let's go back to rest. So that was our first days in the teams.
Today it doesn't happen, or at least we're not to that extent because it's frowned upon. But at that time, there was like regular welcome to SEAL teams.
And I didn't mind it. I mean, it was okay.
I've seen worse. So where was your first deployment? First deployment we deployed to, it was when Bosnia happened, we deployed to Italy and that was the same time when our pilot got shut down.
My platoon was one of the platoons that we were flying over the Adriatic, if we could locate him, we could pick him up. So we were searching for him.
The other unit actually was tasked with recovering him, but we were on standby ready to recover him. That was my first deployment.
So we were… Normally we deployed to McAhanish in England, in Great Britain, but this deployment was to… they put us in Italy. So this is where we stayed there, stayed throughout the first deployment.
Again, we didn't find the guide or somebody else to pull our pilot out, but I'm proud of participating in these efforts. Mm-hmm.
Were you upset that you missed the war? Well, at this time, my concern was that I'm serving America. I'm doing good things for America.
And the war, yeah, I wish I could get on it. It was kind of too late.
So, you know, what I if you chase the war you will never find it the war will find you just like happened to me later but I was happy where I was you know my idea was to join the military for the time of war and I had such a great life that after the war, I would come back and I would resume my life. But then the life that I started in the Navy was so fascinating that I never left.
I left 20 years later. So I was not upset, but I wish I met that war.
I wish I went to that war, but I missed it. And how was your wife? Did she follow you through all this? What's that? Your wife.
My wife, yes. And you got married, too.
Yeah, so that marriage didn't last long. See, the way, as you know, our schedule is constantly on the road, you're constantly somewhere.
The thing is, what I learned to understand is, as we do not have that routine, because our lives change every month, every two months, you go do something else, our spouses usually stay in the same place, they have the same routine, they go to the same places, and eventually they meet somebody they are interested in, and very often that marriage ends this way. I didn't understand at that time, I was really upset, but that's what eventually happened.
So we did get eventually divorced. That's actually what it was later in the SEAL teams, when I came back from my deployment and the thing fell apart.

Well, we'll get there.

Yeah.

When was, where were you when September 11th happened?

When September 11th happened, I was in the gym and SEAL team too.

We were working out.

I still vividly remember that.

Somebody came in and said, hey guys, I just came back from quarter deck. The airplane hit one of the Twin Towers.
So like most of us, well, some pilot of small airplane got lost and killed himself. So sad, but let's go to work out.
And then the other guy said, oh no, guys, there's those big jetliners that hit the towers and something is going on. So we left the gym, went to quarter deck and see our team two.
We're watching. I was actually watching when these fucking bastards ran the the second airplane, flew the second airplane to another second tower.

I was watching it.

I knew we're going to be hunting these scumbags.

I knew that their time is up and we'll be killing them hopefully soon.

I was watching that and it's still very vivid in my memory.

Yeah.

What were the prelim conversations that were happening

after that at the SEAL team?

Still time to start killing these bastards.

You know, SEAL teams, I think, their attitude is a bit different.

When I went to Iraq, especially after what I've witnessed, what I've seen on September

11, I did not go there to win hearts and minds, fuck their hearts and their minds.

I want them to kill them, to kill the terrorists.

Thank you. hearts and minds.
Fuck their hearts and their minds. I want them to kill them, kill them, to kill the terrorists.
That's all I was thinking, kill as many as many as you can. The only regret I have from Iraq, we didn't kill enough of them.
And I'm taking it very seriously, because even today, decades after the war, what happened there, I still question myself, what if we get that son of a bitch? If we kill this bastard, if we didn't let him get away, if we kill this son of a bitch, maybe one of my brothers, our brothers, would come back home, whether it was Army, Marines, or the Navy. You know, for us, they're all brothers, and we're all in the fight together.
So sometimes I dwell on it. If we could kill the bastards, get rid of them, then some of our brothers would come back.
Because I believe that the best way to win war on terror is to terrorize the terrorists. I am a terrorist terrorizer.
I have no qualms dealing with these scumbags. You cannot reason with terrorists.
You just have to kill them and get rid of them. And that was my attitude when I went to Iraq to fight on behalf of America and American people.
And so how long was it after September 11th that you went to? Well, so the West Coast was already in the war, right? They were fighting. I don't know when the invasion happened in March or something, 2003, in Iraq.
Something at the beginning of the year. My platoon, SEAL platoon deployed to Central South America at the time.
So we're working there. In the middle of deployment, I get a call, say, hey, Drago, there is a Polish unit, SF unit, operating with SEALs in Baghdad.
And I think we need you there. I want you to go and help us out, coordinate that staff with them.
So you pack your staff. You are three months into deployment, I think, so you're going to spend there for three months to keep up the six-month cycle.
And then you can start your regular War Cup with your new platoon and stuff. So in the middle of the platoon, in the middle of deployment, you can imagine the guys being pissed off because we are aggressive guys.
We are type A personalities. So everybody wants to get into the war.
Everybody wants to fight the war. So when they find out that I'm just only I'm leaving to Baghdad, they were like, Drago, I want to go there too.
What the hell? How did you pull this off? Well, I didn't. I was ordered to go there, but they all wanted to go.
I don't know a SEAL who would not want to go to war. Me neither.
So I know they were pissed off, but in a good way. They were very supportive.
So I left after three months in deployment for three months. and we were very busy.
We were busy every single night, pretty much. And then when the three months came in, like, I don't hear anything from my command.
And I was calling sometimes Rob O'Neill. We're really good friends.
And we did an entire platoon with Jaco together. That was the second platoon.
And then the platoon I'm talking about right now is my third platoon. So I called him and said, Hey, Rob, just tell the command I'm here, I'm doing fine, I don't need anything.
He said, Yeah, I got you, Drago. But then three months passed, I don't hear from my command anything.
They asked me if I would extend my stay in Baghdad, the West Coast guys.

I said, absolutely, yes, sign me up.

I'm not going to go back.

So then I call Rob O'Neill.

I said, hey, Rob, I'm still here.

Just don't tell them anything.

Just keep it quiet.

I'm still here in Baghdad.

So he said, yeah, I write down, Drago. So once every while I call Rob O'Neill and I let him know.
Say, I'm still here. I'm doing good.
Don't tell them anything. Don't tell them I'm here.
And so from these three months to five, six, seven, eight, nine months. And I think I will stay there longer, but my NVGs broke.
So I get to call the command for new NVGs and they got me. They said, hey, where are you at? I said, I'm back.
How long? Like, almost a year on deployment. Well, hold on.
So you went to, you deployed to Iraq. In 2003, yes.
With who? I deployed by myself. They sent me there to work with the CLT-5 to help coordinate CLT-5, the missions between CLT-5 and GROM.
But we skipped the one platoon because there was a platoon with JAKO that I did right before that. So there was the platoon to Middle East, too.
There was a first CLT-2 strike platoon. And this is the time when we hijacked the Russian tanker, the Volganeft, in the year 2000.
So that was a very good platoon. So it was Jacko.
And one second. So that was my first.
That was my fourth platoon, I think. It was getting mixed up.
So first was to Italy when O'Grady got shut down. The second one was to Bosnia.
Third one was with Jaco. Okay, so the third one was with Jaco.
So after the first platoon, we deployed to Yugoslavia, to Bosnia. This is where I met the strongest guy I think I ever met in SEAL teams.
That was a guy who went to the Frenchies, to Lorien, to train with the Frenchies. What an ugly guy.
So Chris, he put like so many plates on the bar to do the bench press, he bent that bar, the plates start falling off. So the Frenchies got all pissed off that we intentionally are destroying their equipment.
Another, Rob, just was doing the military presses, like 225 pounds or something. I mean, we were strong, we were big, and these little Frenchie guys, they look like the ballerinas, they have those spandex little pants.
Well, yeah, I mean, we were strong, we were big. And these little French guys, they look like the ballerinas.
They have those spandex little pants. Well, yeah, I mean, and you know, the nasty part of it is that when on the Pebble, we had a French officer with us and CL team too.
And we just tried to help him and cater to him the best we could, get him the best trips, best per dim and all that stuff. So when he left to France and then maybe like six months later when we deployed to Bosnia, we actually had to decide to have some exercise with the French guys where this guy was stationed.
So we called these guys, hey we're coming, are you excited, you know, gonna see your old friends? It was like, okay yeah just come on in and click we show up on the lorient the gate of their things it was a winter time it's sleeping raining we sit in our bags and of our uh on our uh uh you know gear for like three hours before the bastard showed up and he showed up not to welcome He showed up and said, all right, I know you guys, I know you sales. If you fuck up any of our equipment, you're not going to leave this base until you pay for all the broken equipment that you break.
We said, that's a nice welcome. And then they didn't want to work with us.
You know, they, like, but, you know, work with us. I mean, look at these guys.
They were, like, 110 pounds ballerinas, and they did actually wear the spandex, like, all these tight pants. So I said, just give them the tutu, and you have a perfect ballerina.
So, yeah, and then we walk into their gym, and they have those, like, jumping jacks, you know, their weights, like, what they were they were using was like 5 pounders and 6 pounders and we have one of the strongest guys in the SEAL teams Chris and he walks in he breaks their freaking equipment they get even more pissed off they didn't want to jump with us we didn't do anything with these guys and so they didn't really like I guess they didn't like us and we stopped liking them too. Because I say, I remember one of the guys asked Chris, Chris Strupp, I can't say his name because I asked him for permission for it.
So again, that was one of the strongest team guys I met, I have met. And also he created the programs for us, how to get big and strong.
By the time we finished that deployment, the entire platoon was over 200 pounds each. So that was Chris's big contribution to make us stronger and better.
We just couldn't get along, I guess, very well. of one of these guys asked Chris, well, you are so big, can you run? I was like, unlike you, we don't run away from the battlefield.
So we, no, I don't have to run that fast, but I can beat you up. So it's like, okay, okay, okay.
And then, you know, we had an international incident, two of them actually. So first when we're going to St.
Moritz to do some exercises there in Switzerland. So we decided we would fly C-130 and we jumped on the lake in St.
Moritz, this big frozen lake. It was pretty beautiful because the C-130 was flying below the top of the two mountains on both sides.
And right in the middle of it, so when we jump out of it, we got maybe five, six second delay, we could see the mountains just going on both sides in free fall and then we opened parachutes. Well, what we didn't know, and we decided to get a shortcut, instead of furring our ammunition through the convoy, through the roads from Germany to Switzerland, we said, well, the hell with it, we just loaded up our guns, we put the ammo in the brooksacks, and we jumped in.
So we did, and there was a bunch of civilians on this lake walking, you know, there were like trails made up on this lake, on the ice. So we basically jumped right into the civilian population.
And they look at us, soldiers unload the gun, you pull the, you know, unload the guns, make safe. And they seen it.
Well, it turned out to be that you are not allowed to bring in Switzerland

guns and ammo in the same place, especially loaded guns. So I think we're the first troops in Second World War that landed in Switzerland with loaded guns.
This was like, all right, I know my platoon hatcher, it will do a lot of explanation to do. But then we go to, it was the time when Switzerland was accused of stealing gold from Holocaust victims.
And there was even a lawsuit filed because of that, trying to recover the gold that supposedly Swiss stole from Jewish people and Holocaust victims. But we were invited to dinner up there.
We already got over jumping into the St. Moritz with loaded guns.
So we barely got over with that. We are invited to dinner now.
So they went on top of the mountain the mountain. So we go on this little train, like a chuchu thing, and go straight up.
So we go up there. We are the best restaurant, supposedly in St.
Moritz. And the guy who was guiding us says, hey, so this is Chef Saint-Coe.
He's such a great chef known in the entire world.

And he has like five golden spoons here.

Chef, can you go around and bring the spoon?

Like I never held the gold thing, maybe ring,

but entire spoon of gold and I never held my life.

So I was like, holy shit, this is heavy, solid.

Wow, you know, I can brag about it.

I was holding the gold spoon in my hand. So when the spoon went around everybody until it went to Chris, the strongest guy, he looked at this and said, like, World Chef, so how many, you think, that gold of yours, how many Jewish teeth went into that spoon? That was like, I got quiet.
The guy woke up, took the spoon, he left. We never seen the guy again.
We were just ushered out very quickly out of the restaurant, go down, and we never were allowed to go to the restaurant again. Holy shit.
But you know what? There was legitimate questions. I believe, in my opinion, the gold, the Swiss were stealing that Holocaust victims' gold, and they were benefiting over the Second World War.
So the guy had the balls to ask about it. But you can cut it out if you think it's too controversial, but that really happened.
So there was like, well, we were all stunned, but like, well, you know, he's right. It's a legitimate question.
Because basically, the gold debt, in my opinion, was stolen by Switzerland from Holocaust Vignette. That's interesting.
I don't know much about that. Well, actually, there was a lawsuit filed by people trying to recover the gold.
I don't know. I think it came to some agreement, but you can Google it up.
I read about it just not too long time ago as well. There was a time, but I remember it was very common to hear this accusation in 1979, 1978, I'm sorry, 1998 timeframe.
So So, yeah, that's... Wow, I had no idea.
I don't know anything about that. Yeah.
But yeah, you know, it's just asking a question. Yeah, he was just asking the question because these people, they suffer so much.
The Holocaust, it's hard to imagine for people,

but there's millions of people that were murdered

just for being who they were.

This is something that could only happen in a socialist state.

Please remember that Germany was a socialist state.

Adolf Hitler was a socialist.

So we're talking about national socialism.

But you know, whatever flavor of socialism it is,

they all have many things in common, as we talked earlier,

the censorship, persecution of political opponents,

jailing political opponents,

and those are the hallmarks of a socialist state.

So was your Iraq deployment the first time you saw actual combat? Yeah, that was the first time I saw the combat. Let's talk about that.
You've done four deployments, and then you finally go to Iraq to see actual combats. Yes.
We've seen a little bit in Bosnia, not so much combat, but we've seen the war scene, we've seen some of the atrocities committed there in Bosnia. We hijacked the Russian tanker, and at that time it was like, holy shit, the super mission.
Today is really not really not a big deal but at the time you know to go and uh uh do vbss on the russian tanker was early let's talk about that then because oh that's that's the russian tanker yeah that was actually funny so there was the jack was platoon a jack and mr uh queen f uh this was still team two I didn't realize Jocko was ever on the East Coast. Oh yeah.
This was field team two?

Field team two.

I didn't realize Jaco was ever on the East Coast.

Oh, yeah, he was my AOIC.

I've never met him.

Splatoon, yeah.

I tell you, it is a great guy.

He's a great leader.

That's what I hear.

Yes, yes.

It was honored to serve under his command.

Very aggressive guy.

We love that.

So when we got the permission to take down the tanker, you know, there's always competition between the team guys, right? There's one squad, another squad. It was like, oh yeah, we are better.
No, we are better. So my squad was taking it down because we had like three Russian speakers.
I speak Russian. I speak Russian, Polish, and Japanese.
You speak Japanese? Yes. Where did you learn Japanese? When I was doing kickboxing and I figured out some of those commands, I said, well, I can understand the commands, but why don't I just learn the Japanese? And it happened that my mom, she was a teacher, she had a PhD professor from Hokkaido University, working with her, doing some study on Polish educational system.
So I connected with him and he was teaching me Japanese. I was very proficient with Japanese.
Actually, I was guiding Japanese students around my city a lot, especially those new who came and did not speak Polish, so I was able to help. I forgot now, it's like 40 years now, but I forgot a lot, not everything.
So I was a Russian speaker with Rob, who was a Russian speaker, and our OIC, Mr. Quinn F., great officer, he was the Russian speaker.
So we had three Russian speakers in the initial assault. And the problem was that they were the new, they were looking at them.
What was, well, hold on, what was the tanker? Volgoneft? I think Volgoneft 142. You can Google it up, it's online.
As a matter of fact, we are in Balaclavas, but there's a picture of me standing on the bridge on the Volga left.

What were you taking the tanker down for?

They were smuggling oil from Iraq illegally.

There was a Russian tanker who smuggled oil.

So we were tasked to take it down, but they knew it already.

We were on the Monterey, I think, Frigate.

Frigate. Frigate.

And I like the captain. He is like, okay, I was told by command that we cannot come closer to that ship than maybe a mile.

But if you want to get closer to it, I come close.

Because like maybe a mile. But if you want to get closer to it,

I can close because they told me a mile,

but I can measure that mile with my own stick.

So he just pulled almost next to them.

So we look at them and say,

yeah, there's a bunch of younger guys.

And there were some women.

But the concern was because this is a Russian tanker

and the Russian flag and young people who might try to resist. So, you know, Navy has their own boarding teams.
They could do it really easy, but because the concern that maybe a firefight can ensue, we're going to take it down. And another thing, too, is they already knew that we were looking at them, so they were skirting the territorial waters of other countries.
Basically they could just turn left or right, whatever, get into territorial waters, we couldn't get them. We would have to jump off the ship, not to cause the international incidents, no foreign forcesading or getting into another country.
So we had to be quick. And I remember 2 o'clock in the night, Rob O'Neill came and he woke me up, said, dude, let's go, we need to go get dressed.
So it's like, I think it was nine of us, it was Jacko was one of them. Mr.
Fionda, we just got like 80.

And it's not like the other. nine of us.
It was Jacko, was one of them, Mr. Fionda.

We just got like an A-team.

And it's not like the other guys

were not team. Everybody was A-team.

They just picked us up on what we can

do and stuff. So we

flew over it. We fast-robed on

the tanker. We got this tanker

down under, I think, two minutes, if not

a minute. And they were already

turning

into the territorial waters, so

we just had to go and learn

I'm sorry. down under I think two minutes if not the minute and they were already turning into the territorial water so we just had to go and learn how to turn it over.
I have a cool picture with me actually at the helm steering that tanker and we did we turn it over and then we search the ship of course make sure there's no left or anything. And this was the competition between the team guys and the squads come in.
So we took down the target, now we need a change, because after we were changing like every six hours or every eight hours, whatever the shift was. So we said, okay, let's go bring the other squad.
The other guys came in, we packed, we left. The other guys came in, we are going to change them, so we are going there and it's like, dude, you just leave all the guns, all the weapons there, you didn't search the ship very well, and you can hear this, they have a big bag, clunking shit in it.
So we're like, well, what did we miss? That's not really good, doesn't look good good. And so we look into the bag, and it's like freaking spoons, forks, and butter knives.
I was like, dude, that's not the weapon. Well, it can be used as a weapon.
Your squad didn't do that well because that could be used as a weapon, even the butter knife. I was like, come on.
All right, so we just, whatever. But Jacko, standing on the bridge.
The guy is still clunking that weapon. He takes the binoculars.
Oh, cool, guys. You stole the butter knives.
But what about those axes hanging on the doors up there? Did you mind to take them? So we go and change. And the first thing, Russians are pissed.
You know, they were very, they were good people, I think. They were just, well, good people.
They were thieves. They were smoking oil.
But they were, so they are pissed. They were compliant.
But when we come back, they're pissed. So, like, what's going on? We want our forks and knives and spoons back.
I was like, why do you need that? We need to eat. Well, eat with your hands.
Can you eat with your hands? We speak in Russia as they speak English. And they say, well, we would, but we don't have teeth.
And just like pull out, it's like they had no teeth. There was like, if you put all the teeth together from the crew, I don't think you would have one full set.
So I talked to Jack, I explained to him what happened. He said, let's get him the knives back and their forks and their spools.
So we called back and the boat came in and we called the big bag with their spools. And they were happy like they can be.
There were no issues with them whatsoever. How many of them were there? I think maybe like 15 or 16, something like that.
It was not that many. And then I had an argument with the...
How did you board the ship? We fast rope on it. And I thought it was planned already because I was the aerobics guy, so I was told to rehearse guys on the very tall fast roping.
We're using the 120-foot rope in Bahrain, I think we were in Bahrain at the time. We're using 120-foot rope just to practice the fast roping right on the mark, and the heroes were practicing it too.
So that was already the plan, I think, ahead. They knew this ship would come out of Iraq with the Iraqi oil, and we'll try to intercept it.
So we practiced that, and then it was easy. We just, at 2 o'clock in the morning, rolled in over the ship, throw the ropes, and just slide down it.
It was pretty cool at the time. Right on.
It was pretty cool out. Yeah, you know, I never did any VBSS in the SEAL teams.
Just one training out, that's it. Yeah, yeah.
So that's, for us, it was, at that time, it was a big deal. Because we did such small ones, we got a couple of dows with that.
They were smuggling maybe something. We didn't bother with that, but take down the big tanker and the Russian flag, there was something.
So we did that. We didn't torment the crew, and the crew was not really— you know, they did what they had to do, but they were not cowering or anything.
They were just like normal people, you know? So let's take another quick break. When we come back, we'll pick back up in Iraq.
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If you haven't already, please take a minute over to itunes and leave the sean ryan show a review we read every review that comes through and we really appreciate the support thank you let's get back to the show all right drago we're back from the break let's pick up to your your first deployment to Iraq, where you saw a lot of combat, it sounds like. So you went from South America to Iraq to be a liaison with SEAL Team 5 for the Polish Grom, correct? And so a lot of questions, but let's, let's start with what was it like for you to go to combat and to be a liaison with the Polish Grom, being Polish? Yeah.
Well, for me, first thing, I didn't know what the Grom was. I was told there was Polish Special Forces.
So, and when I checked in Baghdad, I had a brief from my commanders and they were kind of a little bit standoffish who said, well, we don't know who these guys are. And they briefed me on what's expected, what we need to do.
But then I was thinking like the best way to find out is just to go on the OOP with them and do work with them. But I was like, well, we don't know these guys that well.
You know, we cannot risk your life because you know how it is. It gets dicey, you know, in those missions sometimes, especially the assaults and direct action mission.
And I understand that because if something was to happen to me while I'm working with Grom, there could be some repercussions to my commanders too, that they allow these things to happen. But I was able to convince them.
I said, like, no, if we want to be effective, I mean, we need to cooperate closely, but I need to be with them too as well. So they allowed me to, for maybe like first three missions.
And then it was like, oh, I would say, yeah, these guys are great. Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, do it. You know, that's fine.
Let's coordinate. Let's do it.
We did start doing assaults together. So very often we needed more people.
We bring the Grom guys. If Grom needed more people, he used us on assault.
And then one night we did set up the and the Grom was doing assault. I was doing it.
And then next day was the vice versa. The Grom was doing perimeter and we were doing assaults.
So for me, it was pretty great. I was like double dipping on the missions and I was, I loved it.
How were they? Did they operate the same as we did? They operate pretty much the same way. We find out that their tactics are good.
Their weapons are pretty much the same. Their manufacturer of their M4 was different at the time, and they had some issues in the desert environment with it, but that was just, I think, something minor.
It was noticeable to them. We didn't really register it.
And they were quick, too. Their assault techniques were very fast, And I would say, I don't say brutal, but these guys are consumed professionals.
They don't tolerate any deviation from their SOPs, unless there's some flexibility is needed to save lives or to accomplish the mission. But otherwise, they are well-trained.

And again, like I say, they are fast.

The funny thing is when we,

sometimes when we snatched the bandits, terrorists,

we had to get them with us.

So if we got the call and it happened,

that, hey, we have bad guys moving on the location,

you need to bail out, you need to stop what you're doing, get out.

So to evacuate, sometimes they just, once they handcuff the guy we handcuff the guys so when we walk them down the stairs grown them just toss them to the window the other guys who wait in the cut them throw them on the Humvee and here we go so the other guys were asking sometimes what is so fast I say because they don't fuck it they just like when they have a terrorist in their hands, the guy is just flying out of the window into Grom's carrying hands, and they put him on the Humvee and they are ready to go. So that was kind of a surprise for me too, because I didn't expect them to be so well trained and so well coordinated.
Their assaults were working just like ours, very similar if not the same tactics, because they learned from the same people. So they had the exposure, also more exposure to SAS and German Special Forces.
But that was good because we can actually benefit from their experience as they were benefiting from our experience. It was a mutual, I think, cooperation and work on accomplishing the mission.
So our missions were together. Interesting.
Yeah, I never got to work with them, but I remember when I was contracting for CIA, I saw them. They were co-located uh to an adjacent forward operating base and those guys were busy they were going out several times a night they had these dune buggy looking things and they were just tearing it up yeah but and uh made me extremely jealous to watch but I I was like, oh, man.
Yeah, so what about their team dynamic? Do they have a good camaraderie? Same like ours. Very similar.
It's a lot different, yeah. They are very close with each other.
I would say because they are way smaller than us, they are very close. These guys know each other better than they know their family members.

Just like us too, you know. So yeah, that was very, not only educational for me, I think for all of us, to work with them.
It's also very pleasant, very nice to work with them doing the assaults, take down the targets.

We really enjoy working together. And it came to the point even that some of our guys were coming in and said, Hey Drago, can you help me? Can you talk to Grom guys so I can do assault with them? And just so I can put my record that I did work with Grom, I did the direct action missions with them.
So yeah, I think they didn't have a problem with them because they trusted us. So we have quite a few guys going on targets with them if they wanted to.
And I have quite a few pictures of it too as well from our guys working together with Grom. Did they speak English? At that time they did not.
Today there's a requirement. You cannot be in Grom without speaking English.
So they are very proficient. I would say some of them speak better English than I do, because there's a requirement as they go to regular schools.
And besides the training day, everybody had to learn English. Besides in Poland now, English is very popular.
Like before, everybody had to know Russian. Like in my case, we had to learn Russian.
Today, nobody forced people to learn English, but people want to learn English, because it's so productive, because it's so empowering. I'm just curious, what were your conversations with mean, did you have conversations about your childhood? There was very technical ones because, you know, doing the assault mission with the direct action mission within the foreign unit, it could be very dangerous.
So we did rehearse things. You know, I had to learn their way of communication, their tactics.
But because I speak Polish, then there was no issue to learn that stuff. But the first conversation was just, yeah, incorporate me into their structures.
And that was, yeah, that was a little bit intense. But they were great guys.
So they were very helpful. A lot of fun, too.
A lot of laugh, you know, because my Polish was very rusty at the time. Things that I still do say, that means totally different things than I tend to say.
But at that time, yeah, so they were very helpful. But then we started drinking together, we started having a party together too, whenever there was a chance.
It was a bit little, if. This is how we created bonds that persist even today between those team guys who work with Grom or even those who didn't but helped about our missions with Grom.
That big friendship continues too. They still come here sometimes to the States.
When we go up there, they are always helpful, try to, you know, help you and accommodate our guys. So, the friendship that we create on the battlefield continues and still is very close.
I mean, you had not been back to Poland since you left, correct? Yes. So, did you have a lot of questions about? I did.
Yes, I did. I was asking them about stuff.
Well, I did win. I went with my SEAL platoon in 1995 for a brief couple days, three days visit in Gdansk.
We didn't work with GROM. We worked with their commandos from Formosa unit.
And so I kind of like a little bit seen. For me, it was surreal because I left as a felon, a criminal, and then I was greeted as a hero in Poland when I came back.
Maybe as a hero, but I was greeted as a valuable, respectable person. That was very kind of different for me, that first visit.
But then, but yeah, that was a very short visit. So the first longer visit was later on when I retired from the Navy.
So I mean, did they have questions for you about what your childhood was like in prison? Yeah, they did. You know, for them, the more significant thing was that I was part of the Solidarity Trade Union movement in Poland in the 1980s.
For them, the big deal was that I participated in underground structures and I resist communism. For them, it was very fascinating that I spent time in prison fighting for Polish freedom.
So they were very respectful of that. But otherwise, there was a lot of questions about America.
How was the life? How were the people? How did it happen that I succeeded? I became who I am. And where some people were not that successful.
And so there was a lot of questions that I had to answer about America, about my life in America, and about my America. Did they have, I mean, I don't know if there was a lot of chatter back and forth about it.
Were you very curious about what Poland was like now? At that time, I was curious because, because uh again remember they were part of the warsaw pact they were opposing us nato so they were trained to fight us and suddenly here we are working very close i think that i i think we were so close with them i don't remember in working, and the other forces from different countries working that close with us, with SEALs, as Polish Grom did. So they earned a lot of respect in our community, but also I believe we earned a lot of respect for them.
For them it was curious how the foreigner like me can come to America and join the most secret forces, the tip of the spear that America has. So they were a little bit fascinated by this.
How is it possible? We know in our unions the foreigners cannot serve. You have to be US citizen, you have to have access to secret clearance, you have to have a secret clearance to serve in SEAL teams.
So that's something that for them was very fascinating. How did I pull it off? I said, dude, this is America, you can be whatever you are able to be, there's nothing holding you back.
And if you can't do this or that, there's no politicians that are saying that you can't. In America, there is nobody there holding you back and saying you can't do that.
As long as it is legal, as long as this is something that is beneficial, hopefully it's beneficial for the country, for America and for other people, you are encouraged to succeed and people will help you to succeed. This is the big difference between other countries.
This is what I want to... I want people to use this book as that vantage point, to see how different we are.
The America that was built on goodness, on personal freedom, on being strong and independent, and on the faith that make America so great. And this also rolls into the way people in America treat other people, with compassion, with help.
And I experienced every single one of this. So, yeah.
Do you think... They were fascinated by this.
Did any of them want to come over? Yep. Some of them did.
No kidding. Asking them, can I be a SEAL? I said, why would you want to be a SEAL? You are the one in the top tier of the Special Forces.
And, you know, somebody was asking, they said, is it possible? Because this is something... What did they say when you asked why? Was that? What did they tell you when you asked why? They say because SEALs have the reputation, they have, because we are the best.
I didn't inquire too much into it, but some of them were like, hey, if I could do it again, I would just do what you just did.

I said, well, no, I didn't do it because I did it because I left Poland

because I had to leave Poland.

But you don't have to leave Poland.

There's no reason for you to do it.

I joined the military because my debt of freedom that I had to pay back.

But you don't have to do it.

You're living in a free country.

Wow.

Wow.

So that's what I told myself when I came to America.

And that's what I follow with today.

That's my pledge to America and American people.

So let's talk about, so you got to Iraq, you start seeing real combat. What was your first engagement in Iraq? I think first we did snatch a couple of the guys in the high riser.
So we did breach. We get the guys out of the, they were so quick that they had no chance to to to to do anything so we are we got them and this is where i learned that not everything that we learned the breaching school actually works like that some of the breaching charters for example i don't want to go into details here we we're not very effective, we're not, or we're outright dangerous to, not so much to us, but to people on target.
We found out that most of these targets were hitting, they were terrorists hiding behind women and children, and they tend to put them next to front door or somewhere close, close so they can have a route of escape while we

stumble over their family members. Breaching the way we used to do could be potentially life-threatening to people there.
We had to change. As a matter of fact, we had the army guys in charge of the theater, I think they call us to scale down with the breaching because they don't want civilians to get hurt.
So we had to actually change some of the methods we were doing, make it safer for them, but also for us, but also the breaching charges that actually I was instrumental in developing it and make that charge available to all of us. And that was widely used later by serial teams in Baghdad and in Iraq.
So that was pretty good stuff. I remember I was breaching the steel door with the woman.
We didn't know at that time yet, but she was maybe like three feet, two feet away from the steel door. And we breached the, I breached the steel door when inside she was an injured.
Well, we trampled over her because she got scared and fell down on the floor as we rushed into the apartment, to that house. We trampled her a little bit, but otherwise she was untouched.
If I use any of the other charges that we used to train with, I would kill that woman. So for me, it means a lot too that I contribute not only to killing these people, but the bad guys, but also to saving lives, they were innocent on target.
What was the daily life routine there? Were you guys going out all the time? We became vampires. But also the way I look at it is like a customer service, like a government customer service.
But my customers, our customers were always wrong and we got to kill them. So that's kind of good things.
But the life was, we wake up in the maybe three o'clock, sometimes four o'clock in the afternoon, get ready, rehearse what we need to rehearse, plan for the mission.

At 2 o'clock in the morning, 3 o'clock in the morning, we staggered the time.

We didn't use the same time.

We got in the Humvees.

We ride the road to the target or close to the target.

We move on it and we either snudge or kill the bad guys

and then move out before they could catch us. The thing is that at that time we didn't have armored vehicles.
So we were exposed to the IEDs very much and also to the enemies. We actually had to remove the doors from our Humvees.
So we had a few guys on the back and our seats were facing outwards we put the install the skids on the side of the car outside so we're sitting facing outside with the guns we actually look like a porcupine each Humvee was looking like a porcupine I have a like 17 hours video from my helmet camera from those DA's so this is something that when I'm looking now, it's just, it's incredible how we could get away with stuff that, you know, today as the battlefield requirements and the tactics change, may not be able to do so. But at that time, we were, sometimes we were just lucky to do it.
What was the first stop where you killed an enemy combatant?

That was, we breached the, we breached the, those two apartments next to each other. And we breached one, the other guy, the two doors were breached, The one guy was kind of jumped away.
There were the holes pre-made in the opposite wall, the long hallway. And when we went in, it just happened.
The guy was just standing next to me. Another one was in the Humvee.
We were driving, I think we were driving back to base, and there was a vehicle coming and just trying to pull next to us, pull next to us, and he just didn't want to stop, didn't want to back out. And that was kind of suspicious at the time.
It was, I think, like 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock in the morning on the way back. No, I'm sorry, we're just driving on another mission because we were hitting multiple targets at the time.
So I just had to stop him, and I stopped the guy. Did that affect you at all? No.
No? Killing never affected you? Not really, because I did what was right for America, and we were all prepared. I never seen in Iraq anything that I was not prepared to see.
I never did in Iraq anything I was not prepared to do by the US Navy. So, really, not really, that didn't bother me at all.
I wish I could kill more of them. Because, like I said earlier, if that one that got away, maybe we were able to kill him, some of our brothers would come back home.
Maybe that was that guy who got one of us. So that weighs in me.
Sometimes at night I think about those who get away and who would like to kill. You guys were doing multiple targets a night.
Yes. Sometimes at night, sometimes daytime.
Hitting daytime targets too. It depends, you know, like...

Our missions were dictated by the circumstances,

so if we need to get somebody, it was the only chance to get him at daytime,

we did that daytime hit and got the guy.

We preferred nights, of course, most of our missions were at night,

but there was nothing unusual to do something in daytime if we If we had to do it, we were prepared for it either way. You guys did over 100 direct actions? Mm-hmm.
In one amount of time? What's that? What amount of time? Well, the time frame? How much time? Yeah. Well, that was within the first year in Iraq.
Wow. Most of it.
What was your Bronze Star for? On target, it was a hand-to-hand combat with the insurgent. And we needed this guy, we needed this guy alive, so I was able to go and basically kick his ass back and tag him and take him out could you be a little more descriptive um yeah with uh i don't want to go into too much details because you know the the today's environment but basically he uh tried to first try to move away we need to stop him, and I was on the way.
So when he rushed through me, he didn't make it. And he ended up actually trying to do it again.
And he was pretty aggressive.

So the easiest way was to kill the guy, but we needed this guy. So I was able to go take him down and eventually, yeah, pummel him a little bit and handcuff him and bring him down.
So yeah, that was the guy. Who was it? I don't remember who he was.
But we have the list of the guys. That was, there were so many of them, I just don't remember this particular guy who he was.
I see his face. I see his, you know, I still vividly remember that.
But, yeah. How did you get him down? With my fists and my legs and my gun.
So I didn't want to shoot him because, again, that was not the guy who wanted to shoot. But it came to the, yeah, to the hand-to-hand combat.
So this is what my bronze star actually says, what happened that describes that. Drago, welcome back.
Nice to be back. But, man, I was hoping you would come back.
I mean, one of the hardest parts about interviewing special ops guys that have done just phenomenal stuff is trying to break through the humility. Nobody wants to talk about the veracity of what they've done in combat.
And we very lightly breezed over your bronze star. And then I was hoping I would get a call from you saying, hey, we should probably go into a little bit more detail on that.
And I know it's hard to break through the humility. But at the same time, I mean, it's important.
It's important that people understand what the sacrifices that were made over there are and what it's like. And so I just want to say I really appreciate you coming back to give us the full scoop on what happened that day with your Bronze Star of the Dollar.
Yeah, thank you. You know, this is something that is, the way I see it is the stories are being said, some of the stories are being said quite often, and that makes almost desensitize people to what we go through.
We are just human beings, just like anybody else. But people listening to these stories, watching these movies, they don't see us as human beings often.
Not everybody. They often see us as just a little part of the machine.
If you fall out, you fall. Just expect it.
Let's get another guy. And that's what I think is important that our society doesn't see us that way.
We are all individual people. We are all human beings.
And everybody that falls is those heroes. They shouldn't be seen as just little pieces of the machine that can be easily replaced.
So I was never, yeah, I try not to talk a lot about these stuffs. And nobody ever asked me about it.
It's important. It's documenting history.
And I don't think anybody sees any of the guys that I bring in here as just part of the machine or invincible. Because we start at childhood and go all the way through the career and then the pitfalls afterwards.
And we did that with you. And I do it with everybody, too.
And the reason I do that is to humanize, you know, to humanize. Yeah, this is very important.
Who I'm speaking to. And to humanize them in front of the audience.
And so, but let's go in. So let's just start at the very beginning.
Yeah, that was the fact that I remember that, you know, I did so many of these DAs that they got 20 years later, they all get blurred up. This one kind of sticks out because as we, so we move out, like we always work.
We try to work. We did some daytime missions too, but we try to avoid.
So at night, the car came in, we had to get the guy. He was like one of the leaders in financiers, I believe, who we don't want to kill him, just need this guy.
So we came to the set point and then- Was this a capture kill? It was capture kill, yes, yes, yes. Preferably capture.
But, you know, like, we never had this type of priorities that you cannot kill the guy. You have to capture him.
That's a very dangerous concept. But so for us, it was, you know, like, if we can, we try to capture the guy, but we'll really try it.
So we came to the set point with this embark and patrol towards the target. And as we patrol, maybe like 20, 30 yards from that, where we're supposed to cross over the fence, then the whole hell broke loose.
And that was just like the bullets were flying everywhere. And you know how it is that you don't, in urban

environment, it's kind of sometimes difficult pinpoint where the shots are coming from, especially here from behind you in front of the sides, and then you don't see mass of flash. If you see mass of flash, yeah, you know where this is coming from.
But so we just hang it for a second on the side of the fence and like we're not gonna be waiting here forever it's time to go so we just move along that fence that's a few hours back we we put the ladders while we why this all the shit is going on we cross that thing we've approached the doors i breached the door we blew the door up what'd you breach it with What's that? What did you breach it with? Explosives? Explosives. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We breached with explosives. At the time, most of our breaches were with explosives.
You know, it gives us that extra couple seconds when the enemy is disoriented, where the terrorists are disoriented, so we can take advantage of it. So it was a preferable entry method for us.
And then, so as we bridge, we enter the house. It's a pretty big house, and we kind of knew how it is set up, because we have the intel, you know, what to expect, even inside.
And as we enter, it was a short hallway, then it was maybe two feet to the right, there was a wall up so you can see the wall the guy was standing behind the door when I blew the door so he just backed out basically to throw him off a little bit but he was still on his feet so there I was coming into the house as a second guy so the guy went left I went right and up this guy so he's doing nothing just standing there he's blind from he's blind from the flush and uh so i throw him on the ground i bag him and tag him and then i move on to the what do you mean bag him and tag him well just basically make him ready to be move out and what does that entail for the audience yeah i know what that means but what does that mean oh okay so basically subdue the guy handcuff the guy you know you can say bag and tag basically kill the guy put in. I know what that means, but what does that mean? Oh, okay.
So basically, subdue the guy, handcuff the guy. You know, you can say bug and tug, basically kill the guy, put in the body bag and move him away.
But that's not what I mean, I guess. Just throw him on the ground, handcuff him, get the guy ready to be moved out.
So we did that. I joined the guys and clearing the house.
And the shed is still going on outside. So when we walked to the second floor, I don't remember if it was two or three floors.
I think it was two floors, but it was a big house. So as we cleared the rooms, and one of the rooms as we entered it, that was a crazy, I think the craziest thing, one of the craziest, the crazier thing that I remember.
The guy just charges at full speed and I don't know if he's trying to charge me or he's just trying to run away from that room. Anyway, he just bumps into me, so throws him on the ground, he drops the gun.
So now I look at this guy, he has no gun, the room is pretty much clear.

So as I'm getting this guy now, he jumps back again, kicking, screaming and punching. So as the fight is going on, I'm getting the call.
I could shoot the guy, but he was not armed, so really there was no need to shoot the guy. guy and I'm working with the guy, the car comes in.

Hey, Drago, you need to stop the Grom guy.

Grom element is moving on the backyard,

and there are three guys in ambush lane.

So tell them, stop them.

Tell them to wait.

The hero is coming to lace them.

Put the laser beam on them so the guys know where they are.

So I'm here trying to get this guy compliant and at the same time speaking on the radio. So I put my gun at the time kind of to the side.
I had another guy in the room too, but he was busy still doing his stuff. So, and at the same time, I'm talking to, on the radio, to Polish guys in Polish.
Don't move on that backyard. Just hold on.
The hill is coming, and I will get you there to, they will let you know where the guys are. So they stop, and at the same time, and the bullets are flying into the room through the windows too.
So I remember I had like two of them came and you don't hear the, there's not a whistling like you can see on the movies, it's just a crack and there's just the impact on the wall. So, and then the Grom guys is calling me too, telling me that, hey, we are moving on this on, we see these guys now, we know where they are, there's element maneuvering to the side, so taking the crossfires from the side.
And then, so then I relay this to our guys while I'm bugging the guy. So eventually, yeah, I bug him, tank him.
That was the guy, but I don't know which guy it was, the one that we were after, but I think we were after all of them. So I think we hauled from this target maybe like four guys or five guys.
We left, I think, some guys there. They were like, probably not important.
But anyway, the call came in, we need to move out because I think there is a group of guys coming on us. You know, we have a limited number of people, so we are not set up to run and gun for like an hour.
It's very surgical. Yeah, very surgical.
So we just grabbed the guys, whoever we had, and bailed out and left. The whole neighborhood.
The whole neighborhood. The whole neighborhood.
Yeah, because the guy was very important. So he had a set up, he had a security set up inside the house and outside the house in the perimeter.
The perimeter was the one that opened up on us and our external security actually was duking it out with them, took care of them at the same time while we were clearing the house and bugging and tagging the bad guys in the house. So, yeah, we got them.
And like I say, nobody got hurt. Those Iraqis in the ambush, they pretty quickly realized that that's not a good idea.
So we got them too. And that was, you know, that was memorable.
That was one one of many of those missions that they, you do it for so long time that it is, it becomes like almost like a normal thing. But it's not the most memorable mission like that, the most like impactful on me mission that I did.
When did you find out, well, what was it leaving? Before we get there, what was it like leaving with the whole neighborhood shooting at you guys? Well, that was pretty dicey because at the time, like when we were leaving the house, there was still shit going on. But as we were leaving, by the time, everything was suppressed.
So there was not so much. There was patch shots here and there.
You can see, you can hear the bullets crack. You can hear bullets cracking here and there.
tracking here and there, but there was not so much there was patch shots here and there you can see you can hear the bullets cracks you can hear bullets cracking here and there but there was no that intensity that was at the beginning was at the beginning was especially when our 50s open on the ambis whole that was like whole hell broke loose this is where we're breaching the door at the same time. So yeah, remember that.
I just never pay attention to each particular mission. For me, you asked me- It all blends into one.
What's that? It all blends into one. All blends into one, especially if you do it for so long.
Another another thing, like I said, the more impactful for me was the one time we were in the house, clearing the house, and I was on the left side of the hallway, there was a guy on my right on the other side of the hallway, and you can see commotion in the end of the hallway. It's like maybe 30 feet maybe.
It's a pretty long hallway in the dark, and you can see the commotion. You can see feet coming out, and then coming out you can see like a have dresses and then you see the gun and then coming out, you can see like a half dresses, and then you see the gun, and then the people come out, and you can hear the guys just like, hey, drop the gun, drop the gun.
Those Iraqis, I don't think they understood what he was, what we were saying. Besides, he was so stressed out.
When I look at this, this is like old man, an old woman.

He's holding her hand.

He's walking with this gun and pissing himself at the same time.

He looked like, to me, 80 years old guy.

And I can hear that.

So I had the guy on the top, he had a guy low on the opposite corner. And the guy who came low later, I could almost hear the click.
I just didn't want the guy to get killed. So I just say, I got it, I got it.
And I'll step in front of these guys, barrels. Because I could walk on my side.
I just didn't want them to shoot this old man. So I woke up there, I walked to this guy, I had my very short M4s, so as I was walking up to this guy, I am in his heart, I mean, I would just pull up if he would just try to do something, because he was holding the guns, he didn't aim at me, he was just maybe a little bit down.
So I woke up to him, I took this gun away from him. And then, so we took the guy with us, it was one of the guys we needed, we went after.
So when we were leaving, his old wife came up to me and said, like, Jack, thank you very much for not killing us. Because I told him to put the gun away, but he thought that this may be some insurgents or some people got to kill him.
So thank you for not killing him. And I got a lot of flack from our guys too.
Because, you know, think about it for a second. That was kind of selfish selfish on me but I just did not want this guy to get killed because there was very quickly point out to me on the debrief what if this guy were just there and there was other guys just waiting in the dark hallway when you can't see it we had a we had a flashlight too so we hear the commotion put the see the gun, right? So, and that you were right in front of our guns, we wouldn't be able to do anything.
You can't do it. I understand, I agree with them.
It was not tactically the wrong thing to do. I don't know.
You felt it. I just felt it.
I just felt it. I don't want this guy to get shot.
His old wives, they're holding hands each other. This guy is just barely walking.
They have still those house shoes, those flip flops on. And then, yeah, he's holding this gun and is shaking like this.
And I remember, you can see the dark spot on his pajamas. And I think he still had this funny hat with this little funny ball, just like you see in the cartoons.
So, yeah, that sticks out to me for two reasons. One is that, yeah, maybe what I did was wrong because it could endanger me and maybe other guys in the house.
I just did not want this guy to get shot, and I think I was afraid he was about to be shot. And this woman standing by him.
Wow. So yeah, that was very impactful on me.
I don't know if I was brave, my husband was stupid, but I just felt it was the right thing to do. I could get shot, because you know that these guys are not worrying about this stuff.
If there was somebody there, there was many times they just shoot their own people just to get to you. There wouldn't be any hesitation.
I agreed with the guys that I was on the wrong. I think, I think it was brave.
I mean, maybe you weren't thinking about it at the time, but not only getting shot by your own guys because everybody's hyped up. I know I wouldn't.
Maybe when the firefights start, maybe they would have to fire above me, but I trusted these guys. There's also the possibility that the man would have had a suicide vest on.
True. But I didn't think about it.
I just see this lost old grandma and grandpa working with the gun, scared shitless. Yeah.
He didn't drop the gun. The cows were being made.
I don't know if he understood the English. No, didn't, actually, because we talked to him later before we took him.
And he could barely speak English, but his wife spoke English. So by the way, they were so scared they wouldn't be able to utter a word up there.
And they were working on our guns. So when you got back from the mission, when did you find out who it was that you had puked? We already knew who this guy was.
I just don't remember. It was the guy who was one of the big financiers of those IEDs and those terror groups in Baghdad.
He knew a lot. In the house, we didn't know who was who at the time.
So we tried to bag everybody and bring in whoever we had there. He was identified later.
So, but you know, like with the names, I knew their names because we had to learn for the mission. So you can call, it was just like normal for me.
But now, 20 years later, there were so many of these Mohammeds that I don't remember. Yeah.
I'm just curious. Do you remember what the write-up says? Not really.
I know what it says, but I don't dwell on it. It says nice.
I read it. It's just like, yeah.
I'm sure somebody else could say it in a much better eloquent way. I'm still better with bullets than words.
So for me, to come and speak about anything is pretty scary. I think one of the bravest things I have done, being just be able to go and face the camera and microphones and speak, but I'm better with bullets.
So, you know, maybe somebody else can tell the story better, but it is what it is. We are human beings, we are not robots.
We are just the people. And how long, how many times did you go to Arbrak? I went there three times back to back.
So I spent the year first and first deployment came back.

There was another SEAL team coming out

and they were slated to work with Grom as well.

So I asked them if they can just take me for,

I just wanted to go back.

And if they can take me with them,

they said, yeah, sure, absolutely.

So that's supposed to be like two weeks,

just the fam, let them have, say, yeah, sure, absolutely. So that's supposed to be like two weeks, just the fam,

let them have, help them settle down with Grom.

But then like four months later, it's like my team is calling and saying,

hey, Drago, you need to come back because we are about to deploy after these guys.

That was the time when the entire SEAL team was deploying.

So they say, you need to come back.

So I came back and then went back with my platoon again. The missions changed, the tactics changed at the time, so we were tasked with protecting Iraqi politicians.
So my platoon had one of those big wigs, Iraqi, that we were protecting those PSD missions mostly. Although wherever I could, I would just like to get away from babysitting the old grown man, old grown fat man, and try to get on the DA mission.
So I was still able to do that. And some people accuse me, even now, that I was just doing my own DA missions on my own.
But it was not really that much on my own, but I was trying to get as much into those missions as possible. But I paid the price for it too with being a breacher, the injuries that we sustained, that we didn't know at the time of how dangerous it can be.
So that was when, on the first deployment, I think I started feeling first symptoms, first things.

But like I say, I was afraid to say anything because I didn't want to be pulled out of the missions. What were the symptoms? What were you feeling? First was I was not able to read.
So what I find out that I was trying to read, but I couldn't concentrate on the text. Seems like that thing was jumping.
And so I figured it out that maybe this is because the lightning, because we were living in the tents. Outside was very hard and bright, very hot and bright, so most of our activities during that when we sleep or eat was in the tents or inside.
So said well maybe I just my vision is bad because the dark environment but then I noticed that I cannot read even if I can follow the letters because I forgot if I read the paragraph I forget what it was paragraph about by the time I finished it so that was kind was kind of weird. Sometimes it took me an hour to get to the page.
So that was odd, but I didn't make much of it. I kind of brushed it off.
I still was strong. I was thinking for a clear.
I just couldn't read, so there's no big deal. It's not like I have to read some manuals to terrorists, right? So I was fine.
And then the balance issues start showing up that much later, and the sleep disturbance. So that was an irritability too as well.
So that's when I start thinking that something is not quite right. Yeah.
But you know, we were sometimes five feet, six feet from the breaching charge. And besides me as a breacher, I learned very quick in Iraq to calculate the charge and stand of distance for my team, for my guys, by the manual, by the book, but I also did another calculation just for me, if I can't get in the cover, was the minimum there is that I can still bridge the door without injuring myself.
It happened to me not once, but there's one very dramatic time where we actually were assaulting the target. We see us, we look at the intel photo, intel pictures, so we look at it, from our best ability, this is what we make.
We're going to go assault these doors, this is how it's going to go, and this is where we stagger our guys. As a breacher, I had to brief it before the mission to our guys.
We had a secondary entry point, we had all that stuff pretty much ready to go. The picture shows this empty space, maybe like that wide between the concrete wall and the building itself.
Then, there's a corner here where they just walk straight to the door. So I said, well, I'm going to stack the guys right there.
The way I breathed, I'm going to go to the door and blast the door, go inside. It's just a standard mission.
We did tens, hundreds of them. And that one time, we didn't know that from the pictures, but that space was filled with rubbles.
There was just enough space to stack the guys, and there was no space for me. So we go out, and I kind of see something is not right here.
So I go with the security to the door, place the church, we're going back. The guys go in, but there's no place to me.
So I climb the wall, it's maybe like six, seven feet tall. We found a way later to do something similar.
I can talk about it. But that point was like invisible.
We can, if we linger, the longer we linger, the bigger chance that there will be alert and, you know, somebody gets killed. So, yeah, so I just, it's no big deal.
I mean, I knew the distance was still safe for me. So I got on my knees, I put the gun in front of my face, I cooled up and blasted the charge.
And so yeah, it stunned me a little bit. I described it in the book, but it's not maybe as dramatic as it is in the book.
I did have my nose a bit bleed, my ear did, but it was not like I was gushing blood or anything. It was just I was a little bit stunned, but not enough not to participate in the assault.
So I still catch up on the train, on the back of the train, and we did assault. We took the target down, we got the guy.
So yeah, that was... But these things are repeating over and over and over.
When you stay in close proximity to the bridge bridge it will affect you eventually and at that time there was very little known about this matter of fact when eventually I became SEAL instructor in BAS but I still had this issue with reading, with sleeping so I talked to her, what do you do? You just go to your family. My family at that time was seals.
I didn't have another family. So we said, hey, what happened? Do I have this? I wake up every two o'clock in the morning and stuff.
So we're like, well, maybe we're drinking too much. No, I wasn't drinking.
And this happens every day. Two o'clock in the morning, I'm wide awake.
Or maybe this. So finally we agreed there was a ghost.
The apartment was haunted and there's a ghost up there and the ghost is waking me up. So that was the conclusion.
So then I realized that, shit, I'm scared of ghosts. I need to find different apartments because I don't want to be scared sleeping at night that some ghost comes here to scare the hell out of me.
So I didn't find an apartment. So finally I resigned myself to living with the ghost, which eventually turned out to be a TBI, the traumatic brain injury that caused me to react that way.
So that tells you how little we knew at the time. It's not the case today.
We know, we are acutely aware, the danger and the damage that can those explosions cause. But at the time, it was not that...
But funny thing is that I think the NSW came out to conclusion the biggest damage occurs during the breaching course, because people are exposed to those breaching charges constantly day in, day out. Well, that is just a baby walk next to what we did in Iraq, when you just have these things going multiple times every night, and it's not just for like two weeks, three weeks or for the month.
You spend a year doing it, eventually you start feeling it. So that's what happened to me.
Now, I don't complain, I would do it again if I had to do it, but at least now we know what it is and we can actually do something about it. I not the only one who suffer from this.
We talk to any breacher, I think they can even come with the term breacher brain right now, something like this, that's what they call it. Again, I don't complain, this is not complaint, it's just the fact, maybe somebody who suffers it can recognize the symptoms and things and get himself help.
That's what I'm saying. So after all your Iraq tours, you went to Bud's to be an instructor? Yes.
Well, I had a slighter. My orders were to bridging school to be an instructor, but I already knew that something was wrong with me.
Even shooting guns next to my head caused a headache for a day. So I asked if I could change my orders, go somewhere where I am not exposed and break from the noise, from explosions, from the shock waves.
and they said why why don't you try BATS? The BCL instructor said, sure. But then the problem was I had my orders cut.
So I had to actually call. I went behind the back a little bit, and the chief, one of the chiefs, he passed away today.
He was in Millington. He became the detailer in Millington.
So I called him and said, this is what happened to me. This is what I want to do.
This one will change. And I need your help.
So within like a month, I got the change of orders. And he called me and said, dude, I got you.
You're going to BUDS. So that's how I end up in SEAL training.
How did you like your BUDS tour? It was relaxing. It was fun, too.
I kind of missed the combat. I missed the engagements in Iraq that you don't have it here.
But what helped me get to this assignment was understanding that I might be saving lives, I might be making these people as good as possible, so when they go to combat, they will be extremely effective, they will be mentally prepared, and those who could not achieve that type of readiness, they will be removed from the CL training. So I was pretty harsh, but I was very fair instructors from what I was told by fellow students, who today are very successful SEALs.
Some of them already retired from SEAL teams, but I have a fond memory of the young guys going through BADS. Matter of fact, I tell you, this is a very humbling experience, because the way when we go through BATS, it's most of, at least for me, it was a blur.
You just go do every day, you do something, you just try to survive a day, just to the next day, from meal to meal, from hour to hour. And it just goes quick.
It's like almost you walk in the room, you get a kick in the balls a few times, then kicking the ass out of the door and you don't. Well, now you are the one who is actually doing this to these kids, who is demanding from these kids that sacrifice, that pain.
And it is very, again, very humbling because you see these young kids and they don't quit. They just keep going, no matter what you throw at them.

Some of them falter, some of them quit, some of them get injured and be removed.

Most of the people I notice in bats, they don't resign.

They don't quit.

They get injured, they get removed from the training.

But seeing these guys, and you could not make them quit, no matter what, some of them, it makes you think that, yeah, America is safe. When did you, what year did you retire? I retired 2011.
So by this time, I met my wife.

How did you meet her? Well, that was a story to itself. So I was in Baths.
I didn't have a family at the time. And finally, I came to realize, like in a year and a half, I'm retiring.
I have no family. So I have to find me a wife.
So it was not that easy because, like, you know, with my English,

the way I was, I guess I was not a very attractive guy.

So I asked for my friends and, you know, my teammates.

And they said, OK, Drago, the best way to do it is go online. You find yourself a chick.

And if you like her, you're going to marry her. I said, sounds good.
So let's do it is go online, you find yourself a chick and if you like her you're gonna marry her." I said,

sounds good, so let's do it. So I had incidents, I mean I had those misfires, what I would say.
So there was a girl I was courting for a long time and eventually we agreed to meet and then and we scheduled and tried to meet for the first time at the coffee shop,

like, safe for her place. It was lunchtime, good God, it was a place where a bunch of executive chicks were coming in, a very super nice place, a bunch of offices around.
I didn't think much of it, but these girls who I looked at the picture were so beautiful. I said, I'm going to go and pretend I'm smarter than I am.

So I took the book.

I couldn't still read it, but I just pretend I was reading.

So I look smart.

And then she's coming.

And so every girl, those girls are coming.

I said, this is it.

So I just try to get myself bigger and look better.

And then there's none of these girls. So I find, well, it's almost like 10 minutes late.
Maybe she won't show up. And then I see the girl walking, but she had to walk sideways through the door.
So I said, that cannot be her. So I just like sitting up there, just look at the book that I brought to make myself look smarter.
And all these nice, good-looking chicks line up next to my table. And she's coming and coming.
I see the big shadow comes up. It's like, are you Thomas? Drago? It's like, yeah, how do you know me? It's like, who are you? I'm Wendy, whatever the name was.
We talked about it. I was like, damn.
And all these chicks, I can see already the smirk on their face. It's like, dude, what you got yourself into it? And then, so I said, well, Wendy, just have a seat, sit down.
And I'm thinking like, fuck, I mean, how do I make it look like a business meeting so these chicks are not laughing at me and so I say so Wendy tell me, so talking about your company how many employees do you have, you know, how many people do you manage she says look at me like an idiot and it's like we're supposed to have a date not talk about my job and so this guy was just laughing out loud. It was like, dude, he just...
So I'm like, okay, all right, date, okay, let's make it a date. So we talked for a while and I just wanted to end this thing.
It was so humiliating. She was so loud and she was like, oh, you're so beautiful.
I was like, damn, just go. And so we go back.
I say, could you give me a ride? I have a car on the other side of the mall. And that was in San Diego.
I was like, yeah, okay, yeah, I'll give you a ride. So we go to my Jeep.
My Jeep is not even the lift. It's just like it has bigger tires at the time.

And she cannot get into the Jeep.

She's like trying to push herself back,

but the doors are too narrow for her.

She tries to pull the leg with her hands,

put in the Jeep,

and hopefully I can push her in it,

but that didn't work.

She almost fell down.

And I was like, I'm getting like already,

like what the hell?

I got myself into it.

And then she said, well, I just walk. I said, yeah, thank you.
You just go. And she left.
She called me and, hey, it was a great date. You want to meet again? Let's have a date again.
I was like, listen, Wendy, first of all, you misrepresent yourself. We could be friends if we didn't lie.
I don't mind being friends with you if you were honest, but you send me all these pictures of some other chicks pretending that this is you, and then you show up and look like a Jabba the Hat, and that's not you who the... And I don't want to be rude to her, but I have to tell her that I'm not interested in any dates with her, so I told her that.
And then, you know, as instructors in pool comp, you remember, you spend almost all day in the water testing students. So we have students who are broke dicks, the guys who are some injurious, so they cater to us.
So if you have a phone call, they say, Instructor Drago, you have a phone call here, give me the phone. So you're still in the pool, you eat in the pool, it's like all day for these two days of pool comp.
And one of the guys says, Instructor Drago, you have a call, a message here. I say, okay, bring me the phone.
So he brings the phone, he looks, I can see his face like, by this time I was dating Rachel already. So I will come back to it how we met.
and And so I'm looking, I see the tits. So, I was like, what the hell is this? So I called Rachel, I said, Rachel, don't send your naked breasts here.
The students are looking every time they pick the phone, they see this. It's like, whose tits are you receiving the messages from? Then I look and say, oh shit, that's not Rachel.
So that was that fat chick trying to send me the message. So I said, call her, tell her not to delete her, they tell her not to call you again.
So I called her and said, don't call me anymore and don don't send those naked pictures of you. I say, oh, yeah, I'm so sorry.
My boyfriend is right above your name. And I just by accident send you my naked picture.
I was like, yeah, right on. You know, just stop lying.
Just don't call me anymore. So, you know, I had a problem like this.
So then when I met Rachel online, so I see this chick, I was like, holy shit, I'm in love with that one. So, you know, I try to wink to her, nothing.
Wink to her again, nothing. So I talk to the guys, who do I talk to? I talk to my family, team guys, sales.
What do I do? How can I get her interested in me? So one of the guys looked at the profiles. First thing, get yourself some few years off.
So make yourself like maybe eight years younger. I said, okay, eight years younger.
Then write her some nice letter where I really can't. Can you help me? So this is how it started.
So then I had the team guys writing the love letters for me so I can send it to her. She was writing back to me, and she liked the letters.
So we continued this way. With my English, I am proficient with it.
I'm proficient in combat. But I'm not really proficient in those lovey-dovey things that, you know, like...
Romance. Yeah, romancing, especially romancing online, you know.
So that's something that I turned to my fellow teammates. And so she wrote me a letter, whoever I could find, say, hey, write me the response, write me some nice love letter.
So she typed very quick something in and sent it back. And it continued.
It worked. So then eventually the guys got tired.
So Drago, we don't use so many of these love letters. Now you can make any letter out of it, just copy and paste.
So I said, okay, I'll try. I was nervous.
So I did that. And her profile disappeared from those American singles websites, I remember still.
So disappeared it's like oh damn I was writing the emails team guys were writing the emails I was reading her emails so it was kind of like I was falling in love and then her profile disappeared so I was like I cut one of the guys and said, hey, you know, help me out with this. This is the email I sent to her.
And I think maybe she doesn't want to communicate with me anymore. She just looked at this like, yeah, dude, that's fucked up.
I think this is why. So I was mopping for a few days, and I was still checking online.
She showed up again. And I was like, shit, Andy, I just need to talk to her.
I need to tell her maybe that letter that I wrote because of my English. So I need to talk to her.
So eventually, I coerced her to call me,

and she called me on the private line.

So she answered.

So we talked for a while and said,

hey, wait a minute, so let me get it straight.

You are not on drugs.

You're not drunk when you write to me.

You just don't speak English.

She's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it, you know, that's it.

So we start talking on the phone,

and eventually I asked her to come and visit me in San Diego.

She did come, and this is what I found out.

Where was she?

Well,

Thank you. That's it, you know, that's it.
So we start talking on the phone. And eventually I asked her to come and visit me in San Diego.
She did come. And this is where I find out.
Where was she? Was that? Where was she? She was living in Ohio, in Dayton, where I was living. So I flew her to San Diego.
And it was a funny story, actually, because after the bad experience with these chicks, they were not who they told me they are. I asked a team guy, I said, hey, can you go with me? If this is another Jabba the Hat, if this is another person that really lied to me, I need you to bail me out.
I will run and you tell her that I was called for just some combat mission in Iraq, whatever, just tell her something. So we both are waiting and here she is going down the escalator.
He recognized her first. I said, dude, is that chick? I said, yeah.
Did you just rub the cradle? Dude, she's decades younger than you are. How did you pull it off? I I, well, you wrote the love letters, and now you lie about my age at work.
Here we go. I said, okay, Drago, you got it.
You're on your own. She's hot.
And he just left. And I was, I remember, so nervous because I had all this with my emails.
When I just wrote the email, it was really not up to speed, up to her standards. Now I was supposed to go and talk to her in person.
I was very nervous. So when she came out, I was like, there'll be a super gentleman.
I was just very stiff and saying, Hi, Rachel, I am Drago. And she just looked at me and said, Yeah, cool, but I didn't fly 2,000 miles to shake your hand, give me a hug.
I was like,

holy shit. So I gave her the big

Drago hug and then

I remember, so we started talking

but she stepped back and said,

wait a minute, I think I know you.

I was like,

for team guys to meet the girl

who you don't recognize and she

says she knows you, the first thing through my mind was,

what did I do to her? When?

But they say, yeah, you know what, when you were in the Habs training,

you are the new guy in your platoon with your group of guys,

you went to the Habs training and this is where I met you first time.

I remember you for your accent and the belligerence. I say, belligerence? Yeah, because, you know, like in the Habps training and this is where I met you first time I remember you for your accent and belligerence I said belligerence yeah because you know like in the haps training we we hapsing is the high you know what it is right is the chamber ride when they ride you to like 20,000 feet the air pressure and then so you can recognize if if you have a problem let Let's say if your equipment malfunctions in the real life in an airplane, you can recognize because you learn in the chamber what your symptoms are, how you will react, then you have a few seconds actually to remedy the situation or step away from the ramp in the airplane.
And so we're sitting there and they took us up. Rachel was in the chamber actually.
When they asked who wants to be the volunteer to demonstrate the hypoxia, I mean the lack of oxygen. I was a new guy, so that guy right there.
I was like, okay. They told me they drove us to 25,000 feet.
I took my mask. And then I had to do those toys, you know,

like throw the square peg into square,

in the ball, square.

I get things, they sign my name and stuff.

And these guys start egging me.

I say, yeah, we can blah, blah, blah.

And I got mad.

And I was like, I was threatening to kill everybody of them

in the tram, but I'm going to kill you.

I'm going to do this and this and this.

And then, you know, I passed out. So they just put the oxygen mask on me very quick.
Other guys were on the mask. So I didn't know who was saying this.
But they were just saying, you know, Drago, you know, you're going to pass out. You're going to do this.
You know, I was getting mad. And so when I came to, the crew in that center, they were excited.
They were like, dude, this is awesome. Well, we have example of almost every symptom of that hypoxia, right? Hypoxia.
Hypoxia. Yeah.
But we never had the belligerents. Now we just recorded your belligerents.
So this is a great educational video. So I'm floating somewhere there as an educational aid to show people what the belligerents look like.
So she remembered me from there. She reminded me.
And then we walked to the car. I was very nervous.
I hardly could talk to her from being scared. But I had a flower.
I had a flower in my Jeep because I say, if Jabba the Hutt shows up, I will run, and I'll just give the flower, throw it away. But in this case, I was so nervous, so I grabbed this flower and said, hey, this is for you.
It was like a great paper wrapped up. And I was so nervous.
I didn't know how to wrap it. I still have it upside down.
Just give it to her. I said, here.
She just looked at me. What's this? I was like, flower.
So she took this. I was like, okay, hold on one second.
Hold on one second. She told me to wait.
She unwrapped it, throw the paper thing, flip it upside down. She grabbed my hand.
She goes, okay, try it again now. It's like, okay, here.
So that was my first thing. I tell you, I was more scared at the time than I was before the assault, before the entering on target, because that was so unusual for me.
That was so foreign and scary. So yeah, that was a pretty scary experience.
But that's how I met my wife. And then we started dating each other.
She was coming to visit me, I was coming to visit her. And eventually, yeah, we got married.
and we have, I consider myself fully domesticated now. That is what she, but if you ask her, she say, well, yeah, but I'm still the project under construction.
I'm still being domesticated. So she's making me a better person every time.
So yeah, that's how it works. But I still have my pitfalls with English.
It seems like, you know, so 40 years, but things that I sometimes say or the way I pronounce things still get me in trouble sometimes. So I remember I asked her sometimes one time to feed me a dessert.
I said, well, what would you like for dessert? I said, well, no, I want to eat

Kimberly.

I see the terror in her eyes.

Who is Kimberly?

I said,

who is Kimberly? You know, the dessert

we had in the restaurant two days ago

or so.

You mean Kimberly?

I said, yeah, that's what I say.

No, you say Kimberly. You don't eat Kimberly, so, you know, I still get that shit.
I'm better now, but she's still working on me. She's still on the project under construction.
So now we have, you know, two kids together, 15 years, 16 years old, or beautiful girl, very smart. And I, I cannot be, she will, I could not beat her in chess games since she was, I think, eight years old.
I still can't. I think she's the only person who checkmate me in maybe five or six moves.
So I'm not a bad player, but I cannot beat this girl. And I have a son, he's doing gymnastics.
He's 15 years old. And we have also from our previous marriages, the oldest son, Adam, my oldest son.
He lives in Tennessee. He's running his own detailing business.
My other son, Blake, is actually a student. He was Marine.
He spent one year in Afghanistan. He's working now.
He's studying electrical engineering in Ohio University. And I have a younger son, too, who is still active duty cost guard.
So I'm very proud of my kids. How long have you been married? Oh, that's a dangerous question.
Now we can't be in trouble. She's down there listening.
Yeah, she's down there listening. And if she listened to the podcast, then I get myself in trouble.

Those are the most kind of dangerous questions for me.

But I think since 2007.

So we got married in August 18.

A kind of funny story because August 18 is the presumed date when Battle of Thermopylae started,

when 300 Spartans with 5,000 other Greeks defend the Greece against 250,000 Persians. So that's the presumed date when the battle started, and this is my date of when we got married.
And then the place we got married is Leonidas, like the name of the Spartan king. Oh, wow.
Wow. Yeah.
Also, when we got engaged, it was another story too, because I'm kind of troubled. I'm kind of like, I'm not very big into these nice things, because I don't know how to do these things.
So I asked the guys, what would you do? How can I, how can I, where's the best engagement? Dude, you need to go to Cancun, you need to go there, get the restaurant, make it big. I said, dude, I don't have the money for that.
I just have barely money to buy the ring. So I was thinking, I say, what I'm going to do is I'm going to invite her on the range to Nyland and let her shoot every gun that we have.
And the last gun, M48, will be, M48 will be when she opened the tray there's going to be a ring hanging down and there's going to be a piece of paper like marry me so that I jimed it up myself so I said I have a seal away to get getting and ask girl to marry so I brought her to Ireland, she had no idea. Then we had to prepare the range.
So with the guys, I put her in the room. I'm still amazed that she didn't complain or anything.
There was one old shooting magazine, there was nothing there, you know, like an island out there, there's really no place to leave. And she's sitting in this room while we are setting up the guns, like M4, you know, and this and this and this.
Almost every gun that we had, every type of gun we had, inverter, we signed up, lined up online. Then I brought her in, you know, I have actually video of it.
I'm going to post it on my website one day. So she goes from gun to gun and shoots.
And actually, the M4, she shoots pretty good, you know. That was like all on target.
My heart skipped a bit. So we go from gun to gun and the last gun, when she opened the tray, I'm next to her and she sees the ring and then this piece of paper says, marry me.
And I was right there, I said, would you marry me? And she said, yes. Beautiful.
Yep. So there was a serial way to get married.
And I got away, you know, like, because I didn't have the money. So it turned out to be not a very expensive way, but it was a very memorable way.
It was very memorable for her. So yeah.
So you remember 2007, so that's what? 2007, 2017, 18 years. Yeah, 18 years.
Yeah. Congratulations.
It went so fast. It went so, so fast.
It's just the time goes by. Here I'm running and gunning, kicking doors in, and then suddenly here I'm being married, taking care of the kids and enjoying my American dream.
So what's your secret to a successful marriage? A successful marriage? I think understanding and being reasonable and being loving and being accepted that she's another human being that needs respect as well. And we just enjoy our lives together.
This is something that the longer it takes, the better it is, it seems like. We fought tooth to the nail at the beginning, and now we really don't.
match we match so well together that you know I think that's a love so yeah that's that's that's pretty my story again I'm telling it I'm telling this because I want people to see the beautiful America the the America greatness, how unique country it is, how powerful it is. And sometimes it is hard to see if you sit in the trenches, if you are part of it, but when you have a chance to step aside, take a different vantage point, you can see how beautiful country we have.
Yeah, that's some positivity we don't hear very often here. Yes.
You know, there's another practice that I live as a free man. I can't live as a free man only because the founding fathers, because the ideas the founding fathers were fighting for, and the that were have been carried to this day by american people by americans like you like other americans thank you i saw that did you do an ibogaine treatment yes i did uh it.
But, you know, like some people say how great experience they had. For me, it was really a nightmare.
I didn't meet, like some people, I didn't meet Jesus. I met demons.
And it really scared the hell out of me. But, yeah, but it also changed me.
I remember after this treatment, I called my wife, and I say, well, because she always said, like, she doesn't like when I'm being called Drago. She said, Drago is gone, you know, you are Thomas.
And she did the same. We're going to like Drago in the cage, and you are Thomas from now on.
I said, sure, my wife, you know, she the boss, or whatever you say. But then I called her from there after the abogaine treatment.
I was coming back. I said, look, I buried Drago in the desert, you know, in the abogaine there.
Thomas is coming back. Did you get any benefits out of that with the TBIs? I stopped drinking immediately.
And there's another thing, too. It's difficult sometimes to admit.
I think even more difficult is to notice that you can be an alcoholic.

And for me it was like I had to drink, but I didn't feel like I had to.

I was like, well, this is such a cool thing, to have a few shots here, you know, a few

shots there, and I can stop anytime, I just don't stop it today, I'll stop it tomorrow.

But tomorrow, I say, well, you know what, I'll take a couple more shots and I'll be

fine.

I'll just stop it tomorrow.

Thank you. time, I just don't stop it today.
I stop it tomorrow. But tomorrow, so well, you know what, let's just add a couple more shots and I'll be fine.
I'll just stop it tomorrow. I can't stop it.
It's very easy. I just told myself I'm not drinking and it continues and I couldn't stop.
So I came back without drinking. I don't drink.
I don't have to drink. Now I can have a glass of wine with my wife if I need to, but there's nothing that compels me to drink.

I start sleeping better. And also the peace that came in with, I would say, the acceptance of who you are, where you are.

And also, but that's not just the abogaine.

I think that faith and God plays a big role in my life right now.

And this only thanks to Rachel, to my wife. So, yeah.
Did your faith strengthen after the Ibogaine? Yes, definitely yes. And this may be a—I don't think she gets mad if I tell, but we read books on faith every night before we go to sleep.
So most of the time she's reading. And sometimes I ask, because of my English, let me try to read this.
But mostly she's reading. And it's so peaceful that she's like, well, you're not listening.
You're falling asleep. Because when I snuggle up, she starts reading.
It's like, hey, you know what, I'm just fading away. But yeah, so yes, definitely yes.
And the faith plays a big role in our life. And I think this is also another reason why my marriage is so successful.
There's two things, actually, the faith that we both share and her emotional intelligence. That's something that, how to say it right away, she knows, like, if I'm angry, there's some emotions online, she can disarm me.
So this is something that, you know, is great. I mean, I love the life.
But I think we together work as a team greatly. And I credit the abogaine treatment in big part for what happened there.
And I think it's important that we pursue it because as a veteran, I know that different people react to different things. The different things will help me may not help you or may not help somebody else.
This is why we cannot restrict people to only want cookie cutter treatment. If you have let's say TBI or PTSD or whatever that this this is what we're gonna do to you.
And my turn now witnessed that things didn't work for some guys, but they found relief and help doing different things. So the abogaine, I think, is important that we continue with it and try to allow or bring it, allow people to get this treatment in the United States so they don't have to travel to Mexico like I did or to other places.
Yeah. Yeah, I hope that happens.
We have the secretary of the VA coming on soon. Right.
That's a big discussion I'm going to have with him. Nice.
We need that, I think, because it is very powerful. I was very skeptical initially.
A friend of mine, another team guy called me, said, Drago, I need to tell you something. The guy is just as a knuckle-drager as somebody can be.
You don't want to fight this guy. This guy is just a badass dude.
He calls me and says, Drago, I need to tell you I met Jesus. I was like, what? I talked to Jesus, man.
I was like, Rachel, get Navy SEALs fund ready. I think we have another going out of rails.
I think that we have a guy, he will need help. And then I talked to him, and that changed my life too.
So we talked for quite some time, and he explained me what it was. I didn't know anything about Abogaine at the time or Ayahuasca.
And eventually another friend of mine, rest in peace, Dan Cirillo, Taco, he called me and said, how did he say it? He said, Drago, you need to go. I mean, if you don't go, I'm going to kidnap you.
You need to go to this treatment. And you are coming with me.
So he took his time from his work, from his family, just to help me get to Mexico and get this treatment. So yeah, I owe him a lot too.
Man, he was a good friend of mine. He was a good friend of mine.
Yes. He was, for a while there, he was my only friend here.
And then he died of a heart attack on the range. Very young.
With his son. Yeah.
But on a hunting trip, on a hunting trip. Yeah, he was doing things for other people when he died.
He's an awesome human. Yes.
And I just, I never served with him, but... I did.
And he was a warrior, a true warrior. Yeah.
Yeah. I miss him.
Yeah, me too. I miss him too.
I miss many guys, you know. There's something that I think we lost for...
It was almost like a survival guilt, you know, there's something that I think we lost.

You know, it's almost like a survival guilt.

You know, like, why I survive?

Why me, not him?

Why he got, why he was killed, not me?

We ask those questions that I think we always ask until we die, you know.

But that's the faith, you know, and that's how the life goes. He was a big part of me finding my faith.
Yes. He was.
He helped many guys. Yeah.
He's a great guy, man. But this is about the teams, what people don't understand.
And I watch some of the programs, some podcasts, too, with fellow team guys. And this always ends up pretty heavy, you know.
So people tend to forget that we're normal people, you know. We just do our job sometimes, that's the way I look at ourselves.
It's like we are not sheepdogs. There's other people capable of doing it.
We are wolves and we hunt wolves. Sometimes nations need monsters to fight other monsters because this is the only way we can fight those monsters.
So I think sometimes we have to become those monsters to protect our society, right? So that's the way I look at it. And yeah, that's sometimes that's life.
You know, and we all knew what we are getting into getting in SEAL teams so we those we we and we all were ready to do what needs to be done to protect our citizens to protect America and I'm proud of it well I'm proud to know you man I think that's I think that's the perfect way to end this. I just want to say, Thomas, it was an honor to interview you and just get to know you.
Like I said, I've just heard so much about you and your reputation speaks for itself. I'm really thankful we met.
Thank you so much, but I'm just a product of SEAL teams. I always wanted to be like you guys.
I wanted us to keep up with you guys. So I'm nothing special.
I'm not different than you. I'm not different than anybody else.
So I'm just one of the community members. I'm one of the SEALs, retired SEALs now, but we are all the same.

We are from the same clothes and we did the same job.

So it was an honor to be here.

I thank you for the invitation, but it gave me also the opportunity to maybe make people

pause and look at America from different vantage point.

Look at how great America is and is worth protecting. All right, Drago, you got an update on the judge that prosecuted you in Poland.
Yeah, I was sentenced to three years of prison time. And what happened at the time, there was nothing unusual because those so-called activist judges, they worked for the party.
They didn't openly work for the party, but they did what the political party told them to do. They were just doing their bidding in the society.
And so I was not the only one. There was like thousands of people sentenced by these activists, judges to prison time.
Some of them were sentenced to death, especially people coming back from the Second World War who experienced the Western freedom, who experienced the Western way of life. The communists in Poland, like my father, they did not want these people there.
So from the very beginning, they were finding cases to murder them, to kill them, to put them in prison. For example, the top scoring ace of Polish Air Force fighting in the Battle of Britain, He was arrested very quickly after he returned to Poland and sentenced to death.
His death sentence was committed to life in prison. Then I think he was let go after 10 years in prison time, of prison time or 15 years in prison.
Now, I don't remember how many years, but he spent a few years in prison and on the death row too. He was lucky because many of those people were executed very often just outside the prison cell with the shot in the bag of his neck.
So that's what happened. And those are so, these activist judges, you would never think, you would never think that something will ever happen to them.
They were the masters of life and death for so many Poles. But the night 2024, I got a call to, if I could come to Warsaw and testify in the case of one of such judges.
It happened to be the same judge who sentenced also me to prison time. So yes, I did absolutely.
So me and Rachel flew to Warsaw and the judge was charged with communist crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes against Polish nation, and judicial terror, judicial terrorism. That's what they did, those activist judges.
So it was surreal, but also like bittersweet. Because when I walk in with my wife in this courtroom, I had my American flag and I was like, you can't do anything to me anymore.
But it's not. Poland is different now.
Poland is very, how to say it, they're law-abiding citizens. They go by the law, but they want to protect themselves from totalitarian systems like communism, socialism, nazism.
they don't pulse, don't want it, they experience it already. So there is actually a Polish constitution, I believe, I forgot which point it is, that prohibits promotion of totalitarian ideologies in Poland.
You can't do it. So, yeah, I went to Warsaw and I testified against this judge.
Although, you know, this guy, I don't know what age he is now, maybe like 80 years old. And it was 40 years ago.
So, it would never cross my mind that judge was sentencing me to prison time. He will be prosecuted for judicial terror and I will be testifying in his case.
Also, I learned that I was tortured, the beatings in prison, beatings from the police. I never considered it torture.
I thought it just normal. This is how things work.
You get caught, that will be beating you up. But now when testifying, that was classified actually as a torture.
So that's something else that down on me when I went a year ago to Warsaw. So I asked also, I testified in the court.
My wife was there too, Rachel, and she was very proud of me. We both had the American flags, you know, sitting in this courtroom.
But I asked for not putting this guy in prison. I asked the judge to, you know, no matter what they're going to do, there's no need to put 80 years of men present.
He asked me if I have some against this guy still, if I have some feelings and some anger against this guy. I said, no.
40 years in America changed me.

I am a different person than I used to be when I was, when I came to America. So forgiving, I think I learned too in America.
If you can't forgive somebody, you leave that hate, or you leave that part, it becomes part of your life, destroying your life. We just, you know, like following the God, Jesus' teachings, you know, you need to forget.
You may disagree with the sinner, but you don't condemn the sinner, you condemn the sin. And that's what I ask, you know, condemned what he did, but as a human being, you know, in his age, really, there is no—I think there will be—I forgave him, so there's no need to put him in prison.
So, I don't know what happened, and I didn't follow up on it. I'm just—like, for me, it just like, I learned how to forgive.
And that's America changed me. A lot of people need to learn how to forgive.
We know if you don't, that thing goes with you, wherever you go. You don't leave as a free good man, good man being free.
You have this thing on your shoulder. So if we can learn how to forget, how to forgive, not forget, but how to forgive, I think we are better people.
America made me a better person. When you forgive, you free yourself.
Yeah. You know, you also asked me about what I feel when I killed a guy.
Oh, by the way, I was thinking about it too. It's so mixed up.
The first guy that I killed was the guy in the car who was following us. He just pulled from behind the corner.
I was in the last car. It was so fast.
Then as he was coming at the, you know, like, I think I think i was in 50. so i was in the last car he pulled out next to that he was coming to our right and i see with the under the with the flashlight i mean with the lights that we have but also the street lights there's a guy on the right sitting with the ak sitting with the k so it was like surreal i was like what is he thinking? I mean, we can just obliterate these guys.
But anyway, so he started pulling in. My concern was that if he has, if this ID, VBID, we can all get hurt.
So I didn't think much. It was almost so close.
I just pulled the pistol. I killed the guy on the right seat with the gun and I shot the driver.
So they went to hit the light pole. The kind of funny things is like, so we're driving, I didn't think much of it.
I said, okay, guy's gone. And I got a call from the front from the OIC say, hey, do I hear some shots being fired? What's going on, guys? Everything is okay? I say, yeah, I just stopped the guy.
He was just coming. He was coming on us.
So I stopped the car. I say, okay, no problem.
No question asked. Because we were actually driving, I think, from, no, we were driving to the mission.
So, yeah, we didn't want any interruption. I said, oh, yeah, let's see what happened to this guy.
There's no time for it. You just take care of the business and move on.
So yeah, but the thing is what you asked me earlier too. I was thinking about it, about the feelings of it.
I was never like a feeling touchy guy. For me, there was no...
I say like I didn't feel anything. I didn't because I was thinking about it.
I see myself more as a technical person. So for me, the dwelling on it was more like, what could I do better? How could I kill him better, more efficient way? Not like, oh my God, he's dead now.
My priority was always life of American citizens, the well-being of America. Any foreign entity has no value to me, has, I say, no value.
I understand. It comes second.
You know, like, I'm not so eloquent, but, yeah, the American life will come before any foreign life. Number one priority.
It's number one priority. American citizens.
Well, Drago, thank you again for coming back and setting that record straight and being open and vulnerable. It'll lack for better words, you know words setting humility aside for the full story.
I really appreciate it. Yeah, it was kind of difficult.
Again, like I said, we're talking about this often, and people watch all these movies. They stop seeing us as human beings.
They see us more like just part of that machine that if you're just broken, something happens, you'll just bring another one. Some people almost expect you to be hurt and replaced with somebody else.
So that's something that maybe I don't like people to see. I don't wear the Trident.
I also mentioned about it earlier. I wear American flag because American flag encompasses the trident and everything that is good.

And I want, when people see me, to think about me as American and not the Navy SEALs.

I'm no longer Navy SEAL now, of course.

You know, I lived that life for 20 years. I loved it.

But now I am just American. There's no hyphen in front of this American.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

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