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

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Speaker 4 When our fifth is open on the Amvis, holy shit. That was like whole hell broke loose.
I could shoot the guy, but he was not armed.

Speaker 4 As I'm working with the guy, the cow comes in, hey, drago in to stop the grome guy, drum element that's moving on the backyard. And there are three guys in ambush lanes.

Speaker 4 I'm going to knock his front teeth out and I'm going to make a necklace out of it.

Speaker 4 So actually, I walk up to him and like very carefully lift his upper lip and just drove his two front teeth in, just pull them out.

Speaker 5 Did that affect you at all?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 5 No? Killing never affected you.

Speaker 4 Drago, welcome to the show. Thank you for the invitation.
It's an honor to be here, brother.

Speaker 5 It's an honor to have you. So we have a ton of mutual friends, and

Speaker 5 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 have not crossed paths until today.

Speaker 4 Well, you know, I was watching you and I watched your channel.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So I never even... thought about it and here I here I am.
So I guess miracles happen. Thank you, brother, for the invitation.

Speaker 5 I would disagree with you. You're definitely not a small guy.

Speaker 4 Basically, I can't still 65 years old, but still holding my hands.

Speaker 5 65?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I'm 65.

Speaker 5 Wow.

Speaker 5 Well, you know, I mean, this is how the show started. You know what I mean?

Speaker 5 Nobody's a small guy, you know, that we have on.

Speaker 5 Some people don't have the exposure that

Speaker 5 I think that they should have.

Speaker 5 And, you know, when I started this,

Speaker 5 that's how I wanted it to be. I wanted to get guys that have, and and women, you know, that have had phenomenal careers and

Speaker 5 very

Speaker 5 interesting life stories and have been through a lot of

Speaker 5 just a lot of everything,

Speaker 5 operated at the highest level, traumatic experiences and how they got out of those. Because I think, you know, somebody like yourself, that brings a lot of hope.
And

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 And I think that, you know, this show and getting stories out like yours,

Speaker 5 it puts it on display and

Speaker 5 it brings veterans from all walks an example and it just proves that there's a way out of that 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.

Speaker 5 There's a lot of us.

Speaker 5 And I'm one of them. And I know you're one of them.
One of them. And pretty much everybody we've ever had on this show from a military standpoint is also one of them.
And so

Speaker 5 I've been, you know, I saw when your book came out and I've been kind of watching you from afar on social media. And I just, I think you're a great person.

Speaker 5 And so it's an honor for me to have you here as well.

Speaker 4 Thank you very much.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 You are like us. Because you are one of us.

Speaker 4 I am one of us.

Speaker 4 I'm American, yes. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Before we get, when did you come over?

Speaker 4 I came in 1984. How old were you? I was 24 years old.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 German

Speaker 4 coin in my pocket and bag of clothes. Wow.

Speaker 5 Well, we'll get super in-depth 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

Speaker 5 Thomas Drago Geron.

Speaker 5 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 a regime that tried to silence you with censorship and oppression.

Speaker 5 You came to America in 1984 and became a U.S. citizen in 1991.
You're a retired U.S.

Speaker 5 Navy SEAL who served with SEAL Team 2 and SEAL Team 4, running over 100 direct action missions in Iraq, is a lead breacher. You are a recipient of the Bronze Star with V for Balor.

Speaker 5 You are the founder of the Navy SEAL Fund, giving back to the Brotherhood in ConnectZing, a platform fighting for free speech. You're the author of the book.
The Pledge to America.

Speaker 5 You're a husband to Rachel, who is an Air Force Academy graduate, father of four, and most importantly, a Christian and devout Catholic.

Speaker 4 And American.

Speaker 5 And American. And American.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 everybody kicks it off with a gift. So

Speaker 5 those are Vigilance Elite gummy bears.

Speaker 4 Thank you, brother.

Speaker 5 Paid here in the USA by Americans.

Speaker 4 You mind if I just open it up?

Speaker 5 Let me know.

Speaker 4 It's all about sweets. You know, like my I have embargo on sugar and sweet things at home.

Speaker 4 but since my wife is not here, then

Speaker 5 what do you think?

Speaker 4 Oh, I love it.

Speaker 5 Perfect. And then

Speaker 5 since I found out you're a Catholic, I wanted to give you this.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 that, do you know Dom Razzo?

Speaker 5 He was at... He was at two.
He's my generation.

Speaker 4 I know the name. I cannot connect with the face yet.
Yeah, he's... I know what it is, brother.
Thank you.

Speaker 4 You're welcome.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 5 He's a seal and he has these warriors rosaries made and

Speaker 5 he gave me one a long time ago and

Speaker 5 I carried her everywhere with me for protection. I don't mind it in pondered right here.

Speaker 4 It's beautiful, but thank you.

Speaker 4 But it's also very important.

Speaker 4 important for me. For me, it has an extra meaning too.
So I really appreciate it.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you know, I think that is, you know,

Speaker 5 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 of years ago. And I'll tell you one thing.

Speaker 5 I just think the Catholic religion has it right when it comes to protection and

Speaker 5 talking about. demonic entities and all of that kind of stuff.
So I carry mine everywhere I go.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 so I wanted you to have one.

Speaker 4 Thank you, Ado. I appreciate it, brother.

Speaker 5 Dom's been a mentor of mine when it comes to Dom?

Speaker 4 Yeah, Dom. I know who Dom is.

Speaker 4 Okay, I got it now. Sorry.
Yeah,

Speaker 4 Dom. Hi, Dom.
I mean,

Speaker 4 I just like, if you hear it,

Speaker 4 yes, I know who he is.

Speaker 5 Cool.

Speaker 5 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 built it into one hell of a community.

Speaker 5 I think we're at about 60 something thousand members now. But, you know, when I

Speaker 5 was telling you and your wife downstairs, I started this in my attic and

Speaker 5 it was to basically shine a light on veterans who've just, who have done amazing things and are doing amazing things now.

Speaker 5 And back then, when I was in my attic, nobody wanted to touch me.

Speaker 5 Nobody wanted to fund anything, advertise with me. And so,

Speaker 5 you know, I needed some income, you know, to grow this. And so I started a community on Patreon.
And

Speaker 5 that community has just carried me all the way from the attic of my house to the amazing team that I have today to

Speaker 5 this studio that we're in now. And now we're building a 7,000 square foot studio out in the woods.
And

Speaker 5 that community has just always supported me and always supported our guests as well. And so one of the things that we do is

Speaker 5 we offer our tier three members

Speaker 5 the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question. And you had quite a few questions.

Speaker 4 Okay. So this is from Eric Auger.

Speaker 5 Do you see any parallels between the tactics used by the communist regime in Poland and what's happening in the U.S. today?

Speaker 5 And then there's there's a follow-on. And more importantly, how can the average American recognize and push back before it's too late?

Speaker 4 Thank you. That's a very important question.
I'm glad somebody asked it.

Speaker 4 So yes,

Speaker 4 not right now at this point, but in previous administration, there was a lot of things that to me seems like deja vu from mass socialist state run by communists. I'm saying socialist state.

Speaker 4 Poland was never communist country. People need to understand it.
Neither was the Soviet Union communist country nor any country behind Iron Curtin was ever communist country.

Speaker 4 They were socialist states, very dangerous totalitarian socialist states, but they were run by communists.

Speaker 4 We say there's communist state, communist communist country, but in reality they were socialist state.

Speaker 4 That's why the distinction now that is being made, that communism was bad, but socialism is good, is a very dangerous distinction and yes there are many things that happened in in the last i would say four years were very

Speaker 4 very disturbing for me and i talked to my wife about it quite often uh

Speaker 4 so we agree that something needs to change because we're gonna fall fell like Europe fell

Speaker 4 with the Western Europe right now into depravity and perversion.

Speaker 5 What are some of the things that stick out to you that you have to do that?

Speaker 4 Yeah, censorship is the first one, is the big one. It is easy to explain for

Speaker 4 people who censor that the government doesn't censor you. It's just private organization like Facebook, where I was heavily censored, like LinkedIn.
I'm still being heavily censored.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 the problem with it is that they are being coerced by the government. And this is the very disturbing stuff.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 But I think that

Speaker 4 censorship is very dangerous. Branding political opponents as criminals, as terrorists, is very dangerous.

Speaker 4 This is the same thing, exactly what I experienced in a socialist Poland run by communism, by communists, like my father.

Speaker 4 So, the censorship also

Speaker 4 denigrating moral values, denigrating patriotism, denigrating the family values. It is important for socialist state to take control of people, but it reminds me the same

Speaker 4 thing

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 5 desensitization.

Speaker 4 Desensitization.

Speaker 4 Oh, I could be a president, President Biden. So I'm getting better.
But anyway, so they do not understand the concept of desensitization

Speaker 4 and normalization of evil. And that's what it is.
So first you talk about it, you give the different names,

Speaker 4 which is benign, and then you enforce

Speaker 4 normalize the evil and the entire process. I'll give you an example with walk.
What is walk, yes. What is walk?

Speaker 4 Well, if you talk to somebody and tell that the teacher is walk, a little bit walk, it's not really alarming.

Speaker 4 It's just like, look, maybe a little bit strange guy or woman. But if you look behind that word, what it represents,

Speaker 4 what this word walk is hiding, the depravity and perversion, that whole

Speaker 4 process takes different meaning for most of the people. It's different when you hear, my teacher or the teacher is a little bit of work, but the teacher is pervert.

Speaker 4 That definitely perks your attention and say, maybe I don't want to send my children to this class.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And let's hope it will never happen. But so those are the things when I talk the censorship, branding political opponents as criminals and terrorists,

Speaker 4 attack on moral values, family values, and most important, faith.

Speaker 4 These things that happened last four years were very disturbing for me because I knew where it leads.

Speaker 4 I knew what can happen if it continues. So, yeah.

Speaker 5 You know,

Speaker 5 I think the

Speaker 5 other question

Speaker 5 that

Speaker 5 Eric had was, you know, how can the average American push back before it's too late?

Speaker 4 There's many ways to do it. One of them,

Speaker 4 we are the,

Speaker 4 for socialists, for the evil, we, me, you, we are a lost generation. We are old, we don't change.
They attack our children, and this is where they are after it. So today, nowadays,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And if school doesn't let you change the curriculum or pervert the teacher, you need to do it on your own. You need to teach your own children.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Not everybody has that

Speaker 4 has meaning, have meanings.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Maybe you should spend time with your child, ask him what he's doing, and correct what school did wrong to your child. This is important.
We cannot go, we don't need to concentrate on ourselves.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 the depravity and perversion thrown our kids in some of our schools.

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Speaker 5 Interesting. Excellent answer.
And, you know, it seems, I moved up here from South Florida, where there's a massive American Cuban population, and they're all saying the same things.

Speaker 5 It seems like anybody that you talk to that moved here from a communist country or a socialist,

Speaker 5 maybe not all socialists, but Venezuela, Cuba, Poland,

Speaker 5 they're all saying the same stuff. And it's really, it's just really interesting to hear.
And I think it's an an important conversation.

Speaker 5 We'll live that.

Speaker 4 We will live through it. Those people live through it.
They've seen the dangers. They've seen the results of such depravity act like communism and socialism.
So they

Speaker 4 do shound 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.

Speaker 4 So yes, we need to be more proactive, and especially with our children.

Speaker 5 Thank you for that. So Eric's a huge fan, the guy that asked the question, Eric Olger.
So, if it's okay with you, I'm going to have you sign this at the end of the interview.

Speaker 5 We're going to send it to him.

Speaker 5 I'm sure he would love that. So,

Speaker 5 all right, let's get into the interview. So, born in 1960, grown up in communist or socialist at that time.

Speaker 4 Well, we call it communist. There's commonly non-communist.
There's a technicality here, and people need to understand what we call communist states behind the Iron Curtain.

Speaker 4 Those are socialist states run by mostly by communists.

Speaker 4 We can call it communist state, we'll call it to sometimes.

Speaker 5 What was it like growing up in Poland?

Speaker 4 Well,

Speaker 4 first thing

Speaker 4 to realize is that in

Speaker 4 the 1960s, when I was born, it was only 15 years from the Second World War. So the

Speaker 4 entire generation of people who went through the brutality,

Speaker 4 to Holocaust, to

Speaker 4 experience war personally live in that societies in Europe.

Speaker 4 I'm talking about Poland, even more so, because Poland lost around six million people, there's one-fifth of population during the Second World War, murdered by Germans.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 that was

Speaker 4 very...

Speaker 4 I would say they were dangerous times. I don't have a bad memory.
I have more

Speaker 4 nostalgic feelings to this time when I grew up. But I remember now when I, from the perspective of being American, living here in peaceful society, I remember how

Speaker 4 and I realized how

Speaker 4 sometimes depravity was taking over, the brutality was taking over. People were ready to fight on the

Speaker 4 on the moment notice. I mean

Speaker 4 here you look somebody in the eyes and say, hey, hello, instead of say hello. In Poland, they would say, what the fuck are you looking at? That was the times that the typical reaction would be.

Speaker 4 And so fighting,

Speaker 4 beating people on the streets was nothing unusual. It was frowned upon.
Nobody liked brutal, vulgar people, but it was very common.

Speaker 4 to the point that when there was a fight on the street, and usually you can go in town and you can see two, three fights, as you go through the town,

Speaker 4 people ran to just cross the street that 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 very

Speaker 4 very brutal time for Poland it was the big transition from the wartime

Speaker 4 brutality experience society to peaceful more peaceful society and it was also hindered by the socialist and communist ideology that the transition was not very smooth in Poland.

Speaker 4 And also talking about it,

Speaker 4 I experienced

Speaker 4 both worlds.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 in home, then when he left, and the poverty,

Speaker 4 the lifestyle that I experienced for the next decade is nothing unusual in Poland, but for me was a stark difference. And then I was sent to my father when I was, I believe, 16 years old to...

Speaker 5 Why did your father leave?

Speaker 4 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 was two things. One was a fear that he can lose his career.

Speaker 4 As a communist 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.

Speaker 5 Why was it frowned upon to go to church?

Speaker 4 Because church is very dangerous. The faith is very dangerous for socialist state.
Faith gives you roots, a moral basis that are basically immutable.

Speaker 4 that you have that morals that communists can't, most likely can't change.

Speaker 4 So this is something that

Speaker 4 the first attacks in a communist state was on faith usually and children. And this is why they try to eliminate this.
And the faith is a dangerous concept for communists and socialists.

Speaker 4 And you will see that

Speaker 4 if you read the history of socialist states, the first attack usually happened on people's faith and their families.

Speaker 5 I think we saw some of that here.

Speaker 4 Yes, we did. In the the last four years especially, there was something very disturbing for me.
And we need to be aware of it.

Speaker 5 How did your father leave?

Speaker 4 Well, he decided it's 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.

Speaker 4 And they didn't approve what he was doing. I'll tell you later when we get to it.

Speaker 4 So he was decided that

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Me and my

Speaker 4 two siblings, so it was three of us, and my mom.

Speaker 5 So he abandoned his three kids and his wife.

Speaker 4 Yes, yes, he did. And as a communist, he died as a communist 2021 when I went to visit.
His views did not change.

Speaker 4 He would be ready to murder people on the spot if they were opposed to socialism and communism. Wow.
But I will talk about it too. We will get to it.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 spoken, very commanding Polish language, extremely well, because

Speaker 4 that was his major

Speaker 4 in university. So

Speaker 4 very nice man until you start probing his views and his

Speaker 4 internal thinking, that became very disturbing. That's somebody you would not want to have as a neighbor.

Speaker 5 So, growing up,

Speaker 5 if he grew up as a

Speaker 5 peasant, as a Catholic,

Speaker 5 or a believer.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 5 I mean,

Speaker 5 what was it that got into him that changed his entire view? Do you know?

Speaker 4 No, it's hard to guess, but this is my

Speaker 4 understanding of it. So, he grew up in a peasant family, very

Speaker 4 poor.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 But you need to discard the faith, you need to discard all the attachments that are superstitious, they call it superstition.

Speaker 4 So you need to be a free man, they call it free man, so to accept socialism and communist ideology. And they were like helping him along the way.
He was very smart.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 he's doing very well, he was doing very well at school, and eventually they

Speaker 4 grabbed hold of him and he, like many other Pauls,

Speaker 4 gave in. He gave up his faith,

Speaker 4 his moral views

Speaker 4 and accepted so-called

Speaker 4 relative morality. There's another term that is not very well, not very popular here and not very well understood yet.

Speaker 4 So he subscribed to so-called relative morality and that's where things start changing. That's where

Speaker 4 people

Speaker 4 that were he become

Speaker 4 the person he was later in his life.

Speaker 5 What was it like for you

Speaker 5 when he left?

Speaker 4 So there was dramatic change right away. In the first place.

Speaker 5 What did he say to you?

Speaker 4 He didn't say nothing. He just didn't show up.
Wow. So yeah, we didn't know where he was.
Mama tried to hide it from us. And at that time, in Poland, there was also a stigma

Speaker 4 for people who were divorced, especially for the kids. They had a special name for divorcees.
So I remember parents saying, Hi, these kids are divorcees. Don't want to play with them.

Speaker 4 The parents got divorced. Stay away from them.
So I remember that. And that was very...

Speaker 4 For me, I'll learn to cope with it. But at the time, I see the kids didn't want to play with us, so that was kind of

Speaker 4 the way it was.

Speaker 4 That was the reality, and I didn't know any other.

Speaker 4 But also, life was different too, because from abundance of everything, from the legal protection, because when I was a kid, I burned the wheat field

Speaker 4 by accident.

Speaker 4 We were playing with fire, baking something in the fire in the middle of the wheat field. So we burned the entire wheat field.

Speaker 4 So of course the neighbor comes in and because I was living on the outskirts of little town Jirnagura that was established in 1200, year 1200. So it was beautiful town.
So I burned the wheat field.

Speaker 4 So when a neighbor came to complain about it, my father said just face him out and say, look, you cause problems.

Speaker 4 You'll have a secret police coming and talking to you. And actually they did send

Speaker 4 the goons from the secret police to explain this guy that we are pretty much untouchable. So just leave it and

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 it is happening in socialist totalitarian states. You know, you don't agree with,

Speaker 4 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 you disappear.
So, that was nothing uncommon.

Speaker 5 Interesting.

Speaker 4 But then it 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...

Speaker 4 And there was the biggest fights

Speaker 4 between

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 That was his God.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 there was always fights. And I remember the time, that 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

Speaker 4 from my maternal side came to visit us. And of course, she was even more devout.
She was like...

Speaker 4 I would say total fanatic

Speaker 4 and total zealot. But, you know, 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.

Speaker 4 So when she came in, she chased us all of us to church. We are going to church Sunday.
So my father, I still remember, standing in front of the door with hand outstretched and say, No,

Speaker 4 kids are not going to church

Speaker 4 and you are not going to church because if somebody sees you or kids, I'm going to lose my career, I'm going to lose my job. You are not going to church.

Speaker 4 So my grandmother went outside, we were living on the first floor. My mom passed me like a football through the window.

Speaker 4 So I thought it was fun. That's like, whoa, you know, let's play.

Speaker 4 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 wanting us to stop going to church.
He called

Speaker 4 the religion a superstition. And also, he used the technique that I see being deployed here very often.

Speaker 4 Basically, he was trying to find some articles, some quasi-scientific articles, like, okay, we just find out new things about Jesus.

Speaker 4 let's see what's the if Jesus was real and I can pig your curiosity especially if you start reading and it's like totally anti-faith article or book so my father was bringing it up and just try to either show it for us to read or read it try to read it to us which

Speaker 4 against protests of my mother but this is the technique they used to

Speaker 4 to actually uh

Speaker 4 remove people from faith and uh change their beliefs How many you so you had two siblings? Two siblings, my younger brother and younger sister.

Speaker 4 My sister still lives in Poland. Actually, I visited her not too long time ago and I went to

Speaker 4 as I was testifying, we're gonna come back to it in

Speaker 4 the criminal case in Poland against judge who actually sentenced me to prison time.

Speaker 5 Where's your brother?

Speaker 4 My brother lives here. He's here in the States.
He owns his business. He runs his great business.
He's doing well. And he's doing good.
I don't really have much contact with him.

Speaker 5 Were you... So you're not close with their brother?

Speaker 4 No, no, I'm close with him. I'm closer with you guys, with people like you, with fellow teammates.

Speaker 4 They are my brothers,

Speaker 4 as just a person living in the States.

Speaker 5 Were you close with your siblings growing up?

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 5 What would you guys do? Did you guys have any fun? Or was it...

Speaker 4 Yes, I've had a lot of fun. You You know, the nice thing about it, at that time, we did not have, we did not

Speaker 4 have that direct strict supervision of our parents. Kids used to play, like, I was what, six years old, and I was going to kindergarten by myself.
I was working like around the school, going over the

Speaker 4 major street. Actually, one of my...
little friends was killed on that street by the by the motorcycle. But we are we're doing ourselves.

Speaker 4 So we had had house shoes in one hand, holding hands with my brother, and just walking to the kindergarten. That was maybe like a quarter mile, and through the woods,

Speaker 4 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 happened.
You just go

Speaker 4 fairly fast through the street, but don't run. And then, and then we did six years old.
Play, yeah, as long as we're back at home before dark, we're fine. So we were roaming the city.

Speaker 4 We're just sometimes we found ourselves like a mile, two miles away from the home, God knows where, running some streets and just exploring. So

Speaker 4 that was called

Speaker 4 playing with fires.

Speaker 4 We like to bake things in fire, potatoes and stuff.

Speaker 4 This is how I burned the wheat field

Speaker 4 by accident, but that time was father was still with us. After he left, I wouldn't get away with it.
So that was the...

Speaker 4 I have a fond memory. I was poor, but I didn't know there was poor.
I thought that was just normal. This is how everybody lived.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 How did your family make money after your father left?

Speaker 4 My mom was a teacher, so she had a little salary. It was not much, and it was not enough to...
It was enough to buy food if she was quick enough in the morning to stay in line to buy bread.

Speaker 4 If she was a bit late, by the time she made 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, well, we don't have a bread today.

Speaker 4 Okay, do we have bread from yesterday or something? No, we don't. All right, so maybe it's some potatoes.
So mama always tried to make something, but sometimes we went

Speaker 4 hungry to school and there was really nothing there.

Speaker 4 When I was in elementary school, I learned how to help myself and actually feed myself. But it's like, I'm not very proud of it now, but at the time,

Speaker 4 sick I was extorting extorting sandwiches from the kids of the Communist Party members so yeah how would you do that well I just beat them up and I told them you give me the sandwich

Speaker 4 but I remember you know in Poland the time like people don't want to be seen as poor right so a lot of us like including me like my my sandwich if mom got the bread very often was a little bit water, sprinkle on it and sprinkle sugar.

Speaker 4 If it was good, we have a butter. Or if it was butter, a a little bit of sugar.
If the sugar was, put together.

Speaker 4 And so, like, I didn't want people to see it because I see some of the kids eating these big buns, you know, with ham, with tomatoes, mayonnaise, salad.

Speaker 4 I mean, there was like today, I'm just looking at this, like, I would eat one too.

Speaker 4 So, this is something that

Speaker 4 I've seen it. I didn't want them to see that having like bread and a little bit of sugar on it.

Speaker 4 So, or it is another technique too, like take a tea and like pour the tea on the bread put some sugar on it i still like that

Speaker 4 and and so we're eating the corners like i don't want nobody to see that i have like the

Speaker 4 nothing sand 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 uh twerps uh uh little kids then uh

Speaker 4 then uh yeah i noticed other kids doing the same thing that i did and there's a story like this still touches my heart you know when i when I talk about it.

Speaker 4 Because

Speaker 4 the first one I remember, I seen the kid, like

Speaker 4 a little fat kid with a big band, you know, with this like with everything on it. If you had the sandwich today, you would say, damn, that was really good.

Speaker 4 So I say, I woke up to him and just like took it from his hand, just rip it in half, give him half and just eat it. Like,

Speaker 4 wow, this is good. He was about to cry up there, but like, hey, listen, a little shit.
Tomorrow you bring two sandwiches like this.

Speaker 4 How old? So you grew up. I was seven years old at the time.

Speaker 5 You grew up fighting for food.

Speaker 4 I grew up fighting.

Speaker 4 Well, I didn't have to. If my mom find out what I did,

Speaker 4 I would be spank.

Speaker 4 I would be spanked so hard I would be able to sit on my ass. But

Speaker 4 I had to hide it from her. She would not tolerate it.
But yeah, but

Speaker 4 I was hungry.

Speaker 4 I figured out these people,

Speaker 4 the party

Speaker 4 members, kids, they have everything.

Speaker 4 You can tell them the way they dress, the way they carry themselves, the way

Speaker 4 what they eat the most important. So I figured I will just help myself.
He has so much, he has abundance of that bread. So I'm sure he will

Speaker 4 money if I eat half of it.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 yeah, I woke up 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 the entire sandwich. Today I just ate half.

Speaker 4 Well, he brought the the set of sandwiches. He found me himself and just gave it to me.

Speaker 4 So from then on, it came to the point that I had to talk about...

Speaker 5 That started at seven years old. Seven years old, yes.

Speaker 4 Well,

Speaker 4 and then

Speaker 4 so

Speaker 4 I started noticing other kids doing the same thing.

Speaker 4 And there was a kid in my class, the first grade,

Speaker 4 who we call him all kinds of names. This guy was smaller than the rest.

Speaker 4 We torment this guy. We're talking about bullying.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 so

Speaker 4 it's brutal. You have no empathy.
At least I did not have any empathy for

Speaker 4 bullying

Speaker 4 to the kids that were bullied. It changed.
So one day,

Speaker 4 so 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

Speaker 4 school and I had to travel across town, had to take a bus and then another bus and

Speaker 4 to travel home. And

Speaker 4 I don't know, it was I think second grade

Speaker 4 when I noticed that and my bus took off.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 we determined him. But I said like, well, you know what? Hey, what's up?

Speaker 4 Do you live somewhere here? You don't wait on the bus? I say, no, I'm living like maybe like a quarter mile from here.

Speaker 4 I said, well, cool. So let's go.
I start talking to him. And I find out that he's just trying to survive with his mom.
He doesn't have a father.

Speaker 4 And my curiosity peaked. I said, hey, can I just...

Speaker 4 Where do you live? This building? And once we made 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,

Speaker 4 like one room, like half the size of this room here.

Speaker 4 There is a table.

Speaker 4 There is one chair and one bed.

Speaker 4 That's it. And the sink.
Sink like you see in the janitorial closets. There's a deep sink when you keep the map and stuff.
And

Speaker 4 on the table, dirty table, there was a full can of cigarette buds. So I say, well, okay, well,

Speaker 4 I see one bed, where do you sleep? I say, I sleep with my mom because we cannot afford another bed.

Speaker 4 So,

Speaker 4 you know, this is something that still touches me because this guy was,

Speaker 4 we gave him so much hell. And then I say, okay, so where do you eat? I see one chair.
I said, I eat on my mom's lap. So then he says, I say, okay, well, where's your toilet? We have a toilet outside.

Speaker 4 So where do you keep your food?

Speaker 4 I don't see any food. Well, we eat every day the food.
So

Speaker 4 we don't have any reserves. We don't have any leftovers.
So I say, hmm, okay. So this is actually when...

Speaker 4 So then I think I was in the second grade where something changed. And I say, okay, well, I hook you up.

Speaker 4 So then I went to another kid who I knew has like...

Speaker 4 The same type of sandwiches. You can tell these kids that dress better, they have better food.

Speaker 4 So I say, hey, look, tomorrow you bring two sandwiches, one for yourself, one one for this kid so he mowed off to me and I just beat him up and dragged him in the toilet up there because and because in Poland during the breaks all the kids walk on the hallway just they have to walk so I dragged him in the toilet and just beat the shit out of him and said tomorrow we bring the two sandwiches and he did So I said, wow, that worked.

Speaker 4 So I gave him the sandwich. I said, look, from now on, he will bring you the sandwich.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 I think I look at the kids a little bit differently than

Speaker 4 until this time.

Speaker 5 And that was in second grade.

Speaker 4 That was the 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

Speaker 4 like when you go to your first grade, so they divide you, okay? You class A, you'll be with this group, you'll be with this group, class B and C.

Speaker 4 So one of my friends from kindergarten said, yeah, this girl has a crash on you. I think she's your girlfriend.
I got so mad, but not at the kid, but at the girl.

Speaker 4 I went to the girl, just kicked her as hard as I could. She fell down.
They took her to the

Speaker 4 nurse room.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 this is another lesson that I learned very quick. So she came back all crying to class.
This first time in the class, in our lives, her name was Bogusha. And she's crying at the bench.
And I was like,

Speaker 4 somewhat cows until my mom walked in. She was a teacher at that school.
So she just looked around the class, look at me, and say, who did you hurt?

Speaker 4 And the entire class, like, that's a dead girl right there.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 i was pulled by from the from the bench by the ear this is just a method in in poland at the time walk in the middle of the class my pants were dropped and i was being spanged so hard for so long time until i broke down start crying when i started crying she said okay now put your pants up and go out there and apologize so i did when i apologize and then i got spang again when i get home so like with more explanation why i don't do that i never did again and um that worked buckle up because the biggest Black Ops ever is available now.

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Speaker 4 But yeah, so there was things that

Speaker 4 the times that I still remember that still affect me sometimes. And the second grade later we moved when I was leading

Speaker 4 away from that school, so I had to take the bus to school.

Speaker 4 This is where

Speaker 4 my father was already gone, so the kids started picking on me.

Speaker 4 So on the way to school, usually not because of the pneumonia on the way back from school, I get my ass kicked sometimes by the older kids. They just thought it's funny to bedouble me.

Speaker 4 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 and finded like a rebar.

Speaker 4 Maybe there's a that big rebar. And I started carrying it with me.
I was carrying

Speaker 4 in my book case when they, on the way back,

Speaker 4 I could expect they will harass me, they will try to kick my ass. So I had this thing with me in my birthday, and I knew there were the walking, this group of kids is walking behind me.

Speaker 4 So I walked into in Poland, those buildings, they were like fairly new buildings at the time. You have a stairways.
You walk into the stairways, you go up and then you walk to your apartments.

Speaker 4 So I just walked in the stairways, I just waited with this thing in it. As soon as that first kid walked in,

Speaker 4 I hope he's alive today. But anyway, so that was it.
And so

Speaker 4 I knocked him out. Yeah, the blood was everywhere, I remember that.

Speaker 4 And then the other kids ran away. And the next day, the repeats itself.
The guy was okay, I guess, because he

Speaker 4 showed up with the headband.

Speaker 4 So the same thing happens again. So I just walk into the, I see these kids walking and already making those warrior grunts.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 But what they taught 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

Speaker 4 that was my lessons, I think the first lessons from my childhood, that you just have to be violent to

Speaker 4 accomplish things. And that if you can

Speaker 4 that violence works and you just need to apply it in the right place. Wow.

Speaker 4 So 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.

Speaker 4 I get a lot of flag now in today's society when I talk about it in Poland.

Speaker 4 There were podcasts in Poland that I went to, and people are very disturbed that

Speaker 4 how kid like this, eight years old, almost kills somebody that is so violent. Well, they don't understand that there were different times.

Speaker 4 But the way I look at it today is this is good. The Polish society is different.

Speaker 4 They don't tolerate violence. You know, my mom wouldn't tolerate either, but there were things that she did.
And

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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 is a

Speaker 4 government

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And I'm kind of happy about it because that police society is slowly changing more like in America where we can speak, we don't have to look over our shoulder.

Speaker 4 Well, maybe not the last administration, but we don't have to look on our shoulder. I tell you, you know what?

Speaker 4 Even the last administration, I never felt that I'm saying something can put me to prison, to jail. You know, I can say something I can lose my job, but I'm not

Speaker 4 because being the,

Speaker 4 I never put myself in that situation, but I never worry about

Speaker 5 being

Speaker 5 what would get you thrown in jail in Poland for

Speaker 4 well, you could stay in line for bread, like my mom, and you complain that, let's say,

Speaker 4 there's never enough food for people here. What this government is doing.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 you could get arrested.

Speaker 4 There was nothing unusual that police show up on your doorstep, they took you at the police station and say, hey, tell us about your comments here in the bread line, or tell us about your comments you made at your work

Speaker 4 about

Speaker 4 disparaging Communist Party members. So in my book, actually,

Speaker 4 I described

Speaker 4 the case when one of my fellow political prisoners was testifying in his defense. His defense was not really defense, it was offense.
It was actually laying straight truth to the judge.

Speaker 4 And judge even said, 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 work up there.

Speaker 4 So you could put you to jail then.

Speaker 4 You know, that was like people were afraid the most to get on the political list in Poland. Because once you find yourself there,

Speaker 4 you are always that troublemaker, the anti-socialist, anti-communist.

Speaker 5 Wow. Take it.

Speaker 5 You know, you had mentioned people

Speaker 5 disappearing, being murdered by the sounds like the state. Did you witness any of that growing up?

Speaker 4 Even today, even today, they are still looking for the mass graves of some of Polish heroes who were executed by socialist state.

Speaker 4 I think recently they found the grave of

Speaker 4 big Polish hero, Rotmis Pilecki, Captain Pilecki,

Speaker 4 the man who volunteered

Speaker 4 to go to be locked up in Auschwitz so he can write reports what's going on up there and then he escapes after a while.

Speaker 4 But those reports went to the West on Churchill

Speaker 4 desk so they knew what was going on in those prison camps. So this guy later fought in Warsaw Uprising in 1944.

Speaker 4 He became a hero.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 But there are still people that are missing, and their graves are being found in the prison yards, digged in somewhere in some

Speaker 4 conspicuous forests, in places. So people are still looking.
There's an IPN organization in Poland, the government organization, Institute of

Speaker 4 Polish Remembrance, where they

Speaker 4 pursue still

Speaker 4 the searching for Polish heroes who disappeared under communist regime. So there was nothing uncommon to disappear.

Speaker 4 And also, please remember that every communist system, whether in Poland, socialist system,

Speaker 4 whether in Poland,

Speaker 4 whether in East Germany, Romania, Czechoslovakia, they had their...

Speaker 4 they were almost given every four or five years the upheavals. So

Speaker 4 in Poland it was 1956, 1960, 1968, 1970, 1976. The people

Speaker 4 went on the streets and there were more, the protesters, they were brand insurrectionists, bandits, terrorists, and shut it.

Speaker 4 So every so many years, these upheavals happen.

Speaker 4 And every time that happens, the new crew comes in and says, okay, socialism is great. These people just didn't know

Speaker 4 how to work in socialism system, so we're going to replace, and sometimes

Speaker 4 that government before was either killed or in prison as well, and the new crew came in to build the better, the real socialism.

Speaker 4 it repeat 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.

Speaker 4 You know, that's you never hear in and this is another thing people need to know They were not communist states never they didn't even pretend to to build communist states Even in Soviet Union you can see if you read that the literature from that time they all were building socialism not communism communism is

Speaker 4 the way my father explained to me, is just a stepping stone to further societal development into communism but you cannot omit a socialism the socialism is very necessary step so that's that's how it happened and you mentioned about the uh asked me about the parallels i've seen a lot of parallels in the last administration that were very dangerous and i was really i was afraid are you familiar i'm just curious but

Speaker 4 sidetracker are you familiar with what's going on in romania have you been following that at all yes the usaid with european union disbanded the election.

Speaker 4 They removed the candidate.

Speaker 4 This is what I'm saying. The European Union reminds me more of the Soviet Union right now than

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And there's not like, well, maybe somewhere you heard about it. It's documented.
You can see

Speaker 4 even

Speaker 4 on the videos, there's video when police coming in arrest people for Facebook posts, let's say in Great Britain.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 That's maybe it's not that good, but you see what happened in Romania, you see what happened in Georgia, you see what the assassination attempt in Slovakia, when the President Fizzo, Prime Minister Fizzo barely survived, And same thing in 2014 in Ukraine.

Speaker 4 So the

Speaker 4 USID,

Speaker 4 and there's another organization

Speaker 4 working hand-to-hand with it,

Speaker 4 I think END,

Speaker 4 that

Speaker 4 did a lot of harm to people trying to subdue them and convert them into the

Speaker 4 compliant masses. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 5 it sounds like it's on the cusp.

Speaker 5 I went over to Romania to interview Colleen Georgescu. He had a commanding lead in the election.

Speaker 5 Then they froze the election. Yes.
And then I guess they unfroze it and

Speaker 4 they just pulled him. Yeah.

Speaker 5 He's not running anymore. They've just completely pulled him.

Speaker 4 This is what I called, like here people don't hear this term. We call it socialist elections.

Speaker 4 Socialist elections are elections where communists and socialists always win. So there's a socialist election.

Speaker 4 And all the mechanisms behind it was, you know, if you would accuse, let's say in Poland it was the same mechanism.

Speaker 4 You cannot vote somebody who you really thought could be a good person or politician.

Speaker 4 You were voting for people that they told you to vote. And

Speaker 4 the mechanism was set up this way that no matter what,

Speaker 4 that person would win elections.

Speaker 4 If you notice in Eastern Europe, first thing they did when socialists grabbed the power was start changing the rules and laws to give them the advantage and give them the opportunity to falsify election even if they have to

Speaker 4 stay at power because they know after four or five years of that socialist communist ideology people have had enough.

Speaker 4 They did not want any of

Speaker 4 that and any of these Marxist guns. And in Poland, when I was

Speaker 4 growing up, I remember people would hang those Marxists from the latter posts if they could get away with it. This is how much hate it was.

Speaker 4 But there's always segments of the society, like my father, that get along, to go along and try to

Speaker 4 stay afloat. And

Speaker 4 they will do whatever it needs to take to stay in the control and control the society.

Speaker 4 Because we need to notice

Speaker 4 that

Speaker 4 most of the atrocities committed in Poland were not committed by Russians, were committed by Poles.

Speaker 4 They were trained in the Soviet Union by, and not necessarily Russians, there were different nationalities, Ukrainians, there were Belarusians,

Speaker 4 who were in Soviet, part of the Soviet Union at the time, who trained and who

Speaker 4 installed that type of the government in Poland at the time. So in Poland,

Speaker 4 the most atrocities that happened were committed by Polish communists and Poles.

Speaker 4 The Soviet Union,

Speaker 4 the most,

Speaker 4 I think no other nation experienced the atrocities and danger of communism,

Speaker 4 socialism more than Russians.

Speaker 4 They were the biggest victims of that system.

Speaker 4 So there was no

Speaker 4 Poles murdering Russians. There were no Ukrainians murdering Russians.
There were Russians killing Russians because evil ideology will do it to you.

Speaker 4 This is when you subscribe to so-called relative morality. And this is what

Speaker 4 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...

Speaker 5 So when did you get sent back to your father?

Speaker 4 I was, I think I was 16 years old at the time. I was still at the eighth grade of elementary school, but my mama just could not afford to feed three kids.

Speaker 4 So he said, you are the oldest one, so we can go send you there.

Speaker 4 And I didn't really want to go, but

Speaker 4 I had no choice. The funny thing is, my father came and picked me up, and

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 he'll be living with us from now on. I can remember the screens, like, what?

Speaker 4 What are you talking about? Nobody's going to live here with us. So, you know, the detention already started.
That was not very pleasant, you know, walking the house and you see

Speaker 4 this weird woman screaming and yelling.

Speaker 4 But I had no choice. So I stayed there.

Speaker 4 She had a son, so she was,

Speaker 4 you know, 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

Speaker 4 eventually I had had enough. And

Speaker 4 they had enough too. So they kicked me back to my mother's.

Speaker 4 That was one year, but also I could see at the time my father's

Speaker 4 mental state and

Speaker 4 his values system, his value system.

Speaker 4 Like I mentioned earlier here, when you seen him, you would think, well, this was a nice, clean man, well-spoken and

Speaker 4 educated man, somebody like would be great to have as a neighbor. But when I started talking to him, I remember I had a conversation at the time that

Speaker 4 he says,

Speaker 4 I asked him, you know, what if people were resisting socialism and communism?

Speaker 4 There are some people who will not buy into it. I don't buy into it.
Or he says, well, we have a methods to convince people.

Speaker 4 We will make them do that. But if that doesn't work,

Speaker 4 we have prisons. I said, well, if the prison doesn't work, if you still don't change him, well,

Speaker 4 the socialist 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And also what I didn't know at the time,

Speaker 4 my father was responsible for censorship in Poland at the time. He was a Minister of Art, Culture,

Speaker 4 Art and Culture in Poland. He was a director of the Department for Theatres, Movies and Libraries.
So

Speaker 4 if you wrote the book that my father did not like, your book never showed up. Not only that, if that book was

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So movies, somebody pointed out not too long time ago, older person, that do you know that your father was responsible for censoring the very popular comedy that was in Poland at the time, Samisfoi?

Speaker 4 It was named like all ours,

Speaker 4 as I lose translation.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 It opposes

Speaker 4 what we would say

Speaker 4 the nice transition to socialist and communist society. So we need to cut this, this, and just told told the people where to cut that movie and they had to comply.
I didn't know about that movie.

Speaker 4 I knew that he was censoring things, censoring books, censoring artists.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So there were statues that socialists, the communists like my father, decided they do not support the communist narrative, the ideology.

Speaker 4 One just destroyed and removed it so people don't know about it. Or change the meaning of it, knowing that Autor had

Speaker 4 creating the, let's say, that painting had this on his mind. Well,

Speaker 4 killed Autor and explain people what really we think that 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.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 it's not much different than could happen today, that happened today under last administration. So

Speaker 4 I'm talking about last administration. I know we're going to get a lot of flag for it and I think

Speaker 4 the YouTube may flag this interview, but I don't know.

Speaker 4 Bottom line is that a lot of the things that happen in Poland, like you asked me earlier,

Speaker 4 was like deja vu from,

Speaker 4 it was like deja vu I could extrapolate on what is happening in the United States under the last administration. The difference is this, that America was built by free, strong people.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So people survived that four years, and now you can see what is happening. People are raising up of their,

Speaker 4 I would say, standing up again against some of the methods used

Speaker 4 by the previous administration. And I have to, because if we fail, we have no place to go.

Speaker 4 Wow.

Speaker 5 How often would your dad and you have these conversations?

Speaker 4 Quite often, because

Speaker 4 I wasn't a good student, so

Speaker 4 always to get him off my back, whether I didn't do the homework or the homework was bad, I asked these questions and we started arguing about it. And I just rolled rolled him up and

Speaker 4 but it also

Speaker 4 allowed me to understand with better

Speaker 4 more the way he thinks and it was scary thoughts at the end. The guy has no scruples

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 from it. It's very dangerous but this is how they operated at the time.

Speaker 4 You could lose your job,

Speaker 4 and you will not be able to find your job.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 if you were not a member of youth socialist organization,

Speaker 4 your chances were smaller to get into university than somebody who was activists and

Speaker 4 openly

Speaker 4 how to say it

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 being opposed to communist system, but they were very rare and few in between. So they control everything and they control from the schools.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 It became part like math, Polish, physics,

Speaker 4 mathematics. You had to learn also Russian.
So me not being the greatest student,

Speaker 4 I got pissed off because I hardly have a time and the ability to do homework from this math, physics,

Speaker 4 the Polish language, and now it's Russian. So I just don't like it.
And I piped up at the school, I said, why do they teach us

Speaker 4 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 counted Russians as occupiers at the time.

Speaker 4 I didn't think much of it. There was nothing political at the time about it.

Speaker 4 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 the principal's office, explained what happened.

Speaker 4 The principal got on the phone and called police. So the police came, but on the way to school, they stopped my mom.

Speaker 5 This is fifth grade?

Speaker 4 Fifth grade, yes. So

Speaker 4 fifth grade is like 12, I guess.

Speaker 4 Something like that, yeah. So

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 more love to socialism in your kids, we're going to take them away. We will educate them the right way.
And, you know, don't do it. There won't be any warning.

Speaker 4 If we run across that

Speaker 4 similar situation like this

Speaker 4 you're you're as a parent you you're parenting will be done

Speaker 4 my mom cried I cried because I didn't know why my mom was crying I was a little scared but

Speaker 4 you know being 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

Speaker 4 My mom was always before I was going to school say do not talk politics at school do not because they're going to harm our

Speaker 4 do not talk politics and that was before we were leaving the school in the morning to school in the morning every time i heard this just that reminder uh it tells you the fear people were living in of the totalitarian socialist state and i was not the exception i mean all my friends were giving the same advices because when i talked to them they said well like my mom told me not to talk about politics because this is dangerous so yeah that's happened wow you know you see a lot of that

Speaker 5 going on on the West Coast right now, you know, with that. And I mean,

Speaker 5 Washington. You know, if

Speaker 5 you don't subscribe to the

Speaker 5 to the gender confusion stuff that's going on right now, then the state will come in, take your kids.

Speaker 4 That's your kids, yes. And also the cases where actually kids were being converted

Speaker 4 in their gender.

Speaker 5 That's what I'm talking about.

Speaker 4 Yeah, behind parents. Back.
The parents even didn't know about it.

Speaker 4 So, and I'm aware of the case where a girl, where the boy was transitioned behind parents' back

Speaker 4 and eventually committed suicide because of

Speaker 4 all the things. You know, this is something that is very tragic.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 This is not the struggle between Republicans and Democrats. Really, there are good people on both sides.
This is a struggle evil against good, good against evil.

Speaker 4 And evil is not

Speaker 4 an intellectual concept. It's not something you just think about.
Evil is real and we face real

Speaker 4 dangerous times right now because it 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.

Speaker 4 American

Speaker 4 psych is much stronger than that. You can throw these things on some people.
Some wicked people will cave in, but America's and American people will not. That

Speaker 4 freedom on which America was born, from which was born, the quest for freedom, quest for being strong, independent, is much stronger than evil. We will win.
America will win.

Speaker 5 And so

Speaker 5 when you moved in with your father and his, was it his wife?

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 I already learned my techniques too,

Speaker 4 how to extort sandwiches.

Speaker 4 By this time I was extorting wines, wine and drinks

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And I decided to...

Speaker 4 I remember one time on the

Speaker 4 football field,

Speaker 4 soccer field, there was some little kid making, a little kid, not really little kid, but he was like at my age, making fun of girls.

Speaker 4 So I was trying to be like a tough guy, who got just knocked him out.

Speaker 4 But well, I didn't know the guy was part of the gang at school. And I said, see, in Warsaw, they had those gangs.
So I then

Speaker 4 they surrounded me and said, okay, well

Speaker 4 we just hit our guy, so we're gonna go and

Speaker 4 we need to talk. Well, I didn't wait, I just knocked another one.
So that just put them on

Speaker 4 on the back foot. But then

Speaker 4 they say, okay, now to mend our case, we cause you any problems, you just bring us a bottle of wine. So I say, a bottle of wine, I just knock on the next one of you.

Speaker 4 You're not going to get shit from me. But then I was thinking, like, hmm,

Speaker 4 they kind of work like I used to do with sandwiches, so maybe I should talk to them. So I did get them wine.
I did get them wine, and then we started extorting wine from other kids.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 that was the, the, again, violence works. It didn't work for you, means you didn't apply enough of it.
And it has no place in American society.

Speaker 4 I have to be open about it and I have to state it openly. It wouldn't work here.
America is different.

Speaker 4 But at that time, it worked for me.

Speaker 5 So it lasted with your dad for about a year. Yeah.
And then you got sent back at what age? 17 now?

Speaker 4 Yeah, no, that was like 17, going, yeah, 17 years old, yes. So, but before I got, so before I get back to my mom,

Speaker 4 I finished

Speaker 4 my regular elementary school and

Speaker 4 the

Speaker 4 high school that I went to was very sought after.

Speaker 4 Only kids with the best grades could get to it. My grades was like the worst of the worst.

Speaker 4 I had a father, communist father, so just take one visit at school. And Steam, I was greeting like a hero at school, just coming in, pick your class, you know, what do you like to do, and so and so.

Speaker 4 So I was treated like very well.

Speaker 4 And uh but again, didn't last long because uh uh eventually they his wife got tired of me, his kids got a lot of bumps and black eyes many times, so they just sent me home.

Speaker 4 And then I started my uh

Speaker 4 life back again with my mom.

Speaker 5 How was it starting your life back again with your mom?

Speaker 4 Well, there was,

Speaker 4 again, I have

Speaker 4 found the memories of my childhood. So

Speaker 4 today

Speaker 4 when I look at it back, yeah, it was poor, it was violent, but when I was also, I had the nostalgia for it. So when I came back home,

Speaker 4 I didn't go back to do boxing.

Speaker 4 My home at the time was in Geronagura, a small town. So I didn't go back to the boxing because the first karate

Speaker 4 Kyokushin Kai was born

Speaker 4 in Zhironagura in the town. So I say I need to get to it but because

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So I didn't tell my mom about it because my mom was very strict about these things.

Speaker 4 And I told my mom that I want to go there, but we couldn't afford it.

Speaker 4 But she said this, if you stop drinking and stop smoking as i was drinking smoker if you stop drinking and smoking and use i see your try to pay for your uh

Speaker 4 training i will help you

Speaker 4 so then i was selling the uh what do you call it like papers you get the papers you like a recycling i was doing the recycling and i was just getting money for it you could do it in poland it takes 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 six, five o'clock in the morning,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So I just waited until the guy left and just grabbed a couple of these bags, each one maybe like five, six kilograms. That's a lot of heavyweight, and I just ran away with it.
I hid in my basement.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 after

Speaker 4 two, three days, I just ran up to the

Speaker 4 place place where they were buying the recycling and just started making money just to supplement my

Speaker 4 karate training. And it worked.
My mom seen it and she seen it. I tried.
I stopped drinking. I stopped smoking.

Speaker 4 Just like this. Just one day I stopped.
And start doing karate kikushinkai. It was it was fun.
I mean, that was something that

Speaker 4 I have very fond memories of it. And that's how my life moved.

Speaker 5 And then

Speaker 5 you found yourself in prison.

Speaker 4 I found myself in prison after that was 1978.

Speaker 4 And that was when John Paul II came to Poland.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 at that time when you were watching

Speaker 4 on official TV his interaction with people, you would think yeah just the way that was explained by communists was one the crazy guy in funny dress showed up and few people show up to talk to him

Speaker 4 and that 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

Speaker 4 if you look today and some of the pictures on internet, there were masses, there were, if not millions, there were hundreds of thousands people coming to meet the Pope.

Speaker 4 But you wouldn't know it from official press, from fake news media in Poland at the time.

Speaker 4 The impression was there's nobody interested in just funny dude in the white skirt.

Speaker 4 That's the way how it was explained.

Speaker 4 But that was very meaningful for Polish nation because

Speaker 4 by this time, no matter what the fake news media say,

Speaker 4 people do not believe that.

Speaker 4 If they say this is white, people people usually comment that it's got to be black because the the communists say it's white but people had the chance to gather together in those

Speaker 4 meetings where thousands of us show up for to meet the pope and they had the chance to see that there's not only few of them there's most of them

Speaker 4 there is entire society you know there that that opposing that depravity and that socialist terror and they start talking they started they start dreaming again and the words that I still remember that Pop said was, you know, don't be afraid.

Speaker 4 Stand up. Get up your knees.
Fight for your rights. Don't be afraid.
This is why what Vice President J. Devans, when he said the same thing to European Marxist goons in that room

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Don't let these goons and baboons bully you. So

Speaker 4 that's those words, what the JD, Vice President J.D. Valles said, resonated with me and still

Speaker 4 resonate.

Speaker 5 What was it that got you in prison?

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 after John Paul II visit in 1978, people started actually organizing. They say, 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.

Speaker 4 We don't need to be afraid.

Speaker 4 And they start organizing groups

Speaker 4 in the different places. And eventually they decide, well, you know, why don't we just legalize our organization as a trade union? Because mostly there were workplaces, factories.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 so there's they start building slowly and of course that

Speaker 4 it was a price to pay too the the the persecution the prison times sometimes people were beaten to death or suicided so that's uh but that was the price worth to pay and what do you mean suicided well for example i'll give you a student i think it was 1978 his name was pias so he was he was active in opposition working trying to

Speaker 4 he was a student so he was found dead. And official

Speaker 4 cause of that, he followed the stars. So there were many cases like this.
So

Speaker 4 they were not afraid to go and

Speaker 4 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 he would, if he wouldn't do it himself, he would find somebody to do it.

Speaker 4 So that was normal. But people started organizing.
And in 1980, finally, the people had

Speaker 4 so enough of the socialist state, they started doing strikes. They went on strikes here, there in Gdańsk, Gdynia.
And eventually the entire economy started collapsing.

Speaker 4 So Communist government at the time in socialist Poland said, okay, let's go get some agreement. Let's just do something.
Let's try to work it out. So you guys can go to work.

Speaker 4 We try to change the socialism on being more humane.

Speaker 4 We now know how to fix the socialism. We make socialism better now, like every six years.

Speaker 4 So people say, well, no, not really now.

Speaker 4 We need to be recognized as the trade unions, solidarity, they call themselves solidarity.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 That was the first one. It was the first brick that was kicked out from the Communist terror wall.
Poland did it. And eventually the

Speaker 4 entire world

Speaker 4 crumbled. So yeah, so this is

Speaker 4 how it started. But

Speaker 4 they never gave up. They started making lists of people inconvenient to socialist state.

Speaker 4 And eventually in December 13, 1980, they imposed martial law. So at midnight, they started mass arrests, people from the Middle East.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 I remember I was in the Solidarity Headquarters at the time, the trade union movement, which turned into the social movement.

Speaker 4 that I was on the phone with friends with Austria and at midnight, just click,

Speaker 4 everything is gone.

Speaker 4 I didn't think much of it because communist socialist equipment didn't work well anyway. So it was like, well, another a call maybe later.
And then people

Speaker 4 start coming into our organized building headquarters, say, hey,

Speaker 4 my

Speaker 4 son was arrested, or my father and my mother were arrested. Sometimes they were arresting people or leaving kids in the apartments with no supervision.
So that was very,

Speaker 4 really bad because all the telephones, radio, everything was cut at midnight. A lot of people died.
People have a heart attack or emergency. They had no means to get help.

Speaker 4 And people were shoving to debug in their apartments.

Speaker 4 You could not be on the street past certain time.

Speaker 4 If you were, you could be arrested and you were most likely arrested. And

Speaker 4 this is where I got even more involved. This is where I started getting involved in underground structures and building the resistance to communist

Speaker 4 takeover through martial law of entire Poland. And yeah, there was a lot of people arrested, a lot of people were shot and killed,

Speaker 4 but

Speaker 4 they were able to

Speaker 4 subdue the society yet for some time.

Speaker 4 And this is where I got involved. And I started building the structures.
Eventually we got caught. We started printing a

Speaker 4 bulletin.

Speaker 4 A bulletin. A bulletin, yes.
It was

Speaker 4 behind the censorship of official fake news media. So that was basically challenging them.
They were saying one thing.

Speaker 4 But what we were doing, basically, collecting the names of people who were arrested, detained, sent to internment camps, and

Speaker 4 what happened to them, the court cases.

Speaker 4 So they,

Speaker 4 this is what we were printing. It was very dangerous for communist state.
Anything beyond what they can't censor is perceived by socialists as very dangerous to their

Speaker 4 detrimental to their power. So of course they track us down and I got arrested.

Speaker 4 And I call it bulletin, they call it newspaper, but it was just a leaflet.

Speaker 4 It was a leaflet with two,

Speaker 4 I think, two pages maybe, but it was dangerous enough to

Speaker 4 give me three years' prison sentence.

Speaker 5 How did they arrest you?

Speaker 4 They arrest me when I came on the point because we didn't know much about how underground works and how to protect ourselves.

Speaker 4 So we printed out and just went on the street and we're giving to the people.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 they track us down and say, okay, these guys are passing those illegal newspapers. So

Speaker 4 I guess they follow us and I walked to the point because we're supposed supposed to print the next batch of the newspaper. Then

Speaker 4 as soon as I knock on the door, I was just like,

Speaker 4 I hear people running from upstairs, from downstairs. The door's open with the gun in my face.
I was like, whoa, okay.

Speaker 4 So, okay, they throw me on the ground and after a few kicks, they handcuff me and they drag me by my feet to the apartment. They shut the door.
And they were waiting.

Speaker 4 They were hoping that somebody also will show up.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 so one of those Secret Service goons, he was sitting in the chair like I sit right here, but he put me in front of it, put his feet

Speaker 4 on me.

Speaker 4 I was working as a

Speaker 4 footstool for his feet for quite a few hours. And then nobody showed up

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 That was my first really stint with

Speaker 4 the

Speaker 4 communism and

Speaker 4 prison.

Speaker 5 And it was you were there for three years?

Speaker 4 No, I was there for less than that because there was amnesty. So after around a year and a half,

Speaker 4 they kind of started releasing us

Speaker 4 right before the second visit of Pope to Poland. He demanded that before he visits Poland, they need to instill

Speaker 4 amnesty for political prisoners. So So they slowly start releasing them.

Speaker 5 What was it like in prison?

Speaker 4 Well, there was like,

Speaker 4 I didn't have any problems. I just, if I had to beat somebody up, I did.
I didn't have scruples about it.

Speaker 4 But I remember the first one, even when I was arrested, they put me into this holding tank with other prisoners. And this is a normal technique of

Speaker 4 secret police. They will keep you not freezing, but they keep you cold.
They will not keep you

Speaker 4 starving, but they will keep you hungry so they slowly they will break down your uh resistance that way

Speaker 4 you are easier uh to fall down

Speaker 4 and they uh so i remember they told me like two o'clock in the morning was dark no windows so i just like didn't know even where to go somebody say i just go along the wall find that empty spot sit down sleep you we're gonna figure it out tomorrow i'll say okay so we have tomorrow uh in the morning and this big dude comes up and says, hey,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So like, I didn't have much experience with prison time, so I figured out I just knock him out and

Speaker 4 just assert myself that nobody's going to eat my breakfast. So I knock him out, but I after, so he was laying there, and I was like thinking, like,

Speaker 4 say, 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 like very carefully lift his upper lip and just drove his two front teeth in just pulled them out and and

Speaker 4 well

Speaker 4 I got caught with them I think in the next prison time because they want to transfer me to a real prison this is where those they start like searching us much better and they found my teeth so I'm sorry I don't have my necklace

Speaker 4 but that was the that was the but you know like it never bother me nobody never bothered me uh with uh taking my breakfast it would be very unlikely in prison that somebody like 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 to these guys and and they're gonna puck you up.

Speaker 4 I was like, all right,

Speaker 4 you say it again, I'm going to knock your bottom teeth out. You want that?

Speaker 4 He let me along.

Speaker 4 So then I was transferred to eventually

Speaker 4 when they finished with me, they transferred me to this intermediate prison where I was waiting for my sentence, sentencing.

Speaker 4 And then after that, they took me to political prisoner, prison, political prison on the Russian border in city Khrubyashuv.

Speaker 4 That's where the pictures in my book and my websites are from, because when I visited that prison in 2022, I had a chance actually to go inside and tour the place where I spent my time as a prisoner.

Speaker 4 Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 5 What was it like in that prison? Was there like a re-education program or anything?

Speaker 4 That was, but it was not an official re-education program.

Speaker 4 So from intermediate prison, I was transferred to the, after sentencing, to that political prisoner. But then they kept

Speaker 4 there was known, one of the harshest prisons in Poland. This is where they kept political prisoners.
They were kept all over the Poland, but it was like the most known harsh prison. And then they

Speaker 4 so this is where I met people,

Speaker 4 professors, engineers, people with a statue,

Speaker 4 that accomplished something in their life. And even politicians.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 that was very educational for me. It stopped being.
I didn't think about it as the punishment. It was more like education for me.
I learned about the real history of Poland that was that and

Speaker 4 I was I learned how twisted the official history of Poland was.

Speaker 4 So that was how that helped me and this is the way this is what shaped me in the big part

Speaker 4 to who I am today.

Speaker 4 So that was

Speaker 4 I met a lot of brave people.

Speaker 4 You know, like when I was sitting in prison, I didn't have a family, I I didn't have a wife or kids. And now we have kids, so we know how it is.

Speaker 4 I understand how it was difficult for all those engineers, all those professors who never had

Speaker 4 contact with prison and law enforcement, suddenly being on the receiving end, sitting in prison, and worrying about their wives, their kids, and still not giving up.

Speaker 4 still fighting the system even from prison. For me, that was inspiration.
So yeah.

Speaker 4 I was so inspired that eventually the prison administration sent a letter to my mother that

Speaker 4 basically come and help out because

Speaker 4 I'm not following the rules and my behavior is highly negative and not up to standard to socialist

Speaker 4 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 say, okay, I'm going to keep it and

Speaker 4 put it somewhere in the safe place where I don't know what what the safe place is now.

Speaker 4 So, but I have that letter from prison administration to my mom,

Speaker 4 calling her and asking to influence me to come here and talk to me. So it was funny because they got extra visits from my mom.
I didn't expect that. Get a visit once a month.

Speaker 4 And suddenly my mom showed us, hey, you need to go and visit mom. So my mom sister crying and say, well, I'm very proud of you.
I said, well, I'm sure you are, but what's up? She said, well, this.

Speaker 4 And she just pulled this letter up. So I'm very proud, twice as proud now.
so keep doing what you're doing don't don't give in

Speaker 4 so yeah and then uh it we were actually start uh fighting back

Speaker 4 i remember uh we went on the hunger strike so we're like for i don't remember

Speaker 4 three weeks or month where we didn't refuse to eat we were trying to it started from beatings that so one of the political some of the political prisoners got beat up by guards so we're on hunger strike.

Speaker 4 But then we say, okay, well, we are ready for like eight, nine days, so why don't we just attach the request

Speaker 4 for

Speaker 4 status of political prisoner? We are political prisoners, so let's fight for that. So now, so we wrote the letter to the administration that the strike will continue until we receive that.

Speaker 4 Until we receive the status of political prisoner. And then they start breaking our strike,

Speaker 4 starting with the older, more sick prisoners. some professors were taken into the room and say, like, the way

Speaker 4 they, by the Polish regulation at the time, they have to feed you forcefully,

Speaker 4 feed you

Speaker 4 after, I think, two weeks. So they start that, and the way they do it is that big, the big pipe, looks like a vacuum pipe, but a little bit smaller, corrugated

Speaker 4 pipe, and the funnel on the end. So they handcuffed you to the chair, they took this pipe and they

Speaker 4 shove the thing up to your stomach, and then they have a big

Speaker 4 what

Speaker 4 big

Speaker 4 thing where they cook stuff like a yellow

Speaker 4 glue glue goo glue goo

Speaker 4 and they just put it into your stomach so what they did is like with older people

Speaker 4 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, just drink it.

Speaker 4 People who

Speaker 4 some of the older people say, well, this is very painful, so well, I just drink it here, I'm still on strike.

Speaker 4 So usually they don't even let them finish that drink because as soon as he grabbed that cup, put in his mouth, and maybe two, three sips of it, say, okay, now you are not on hunger strike.

Speaker 4 You feed yourself, your hunger strike is over,

Speaker 4 and in transport to different prison or different pavilion or whatever they just start separating these people

Speaker 4 so a lot of people went this way there they were like treated this way but eventually the letter from the

Speaker 4 from church from catholic church in poland came in guys you you you will not 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 because there were people taken to hospitals to emergency rooms because of that and that's how we

Speaker 4 eventually decide, okay, it's over. We'll stop the hunger strike.

Speaker 5 Well, what were you guys,

Speaker 5 how would the hunger strike have worked

Speaker 5 if they were censoring all the media? How would anybody know you guys were on the street?

Speaker 4 Well, we have the priest that was coming to, they were allowed once a week on Sundays, the priest to come in.

Speaker 4 And the friend who was passing him the information was a friend of mine who we are still friends. And

Speaker 4 that's how the information was getting out to.

Speaker 5 So they would leak it to a priest and then the priest would disseminate it to the church.

Speaker 4 To the church and to the

Speaker 4 pass to underground because Poland at the time already had pretty strong underground structures.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So basically the fake news media, of course, we know what to expect.

Speaker 4 But they were still, there's bulletins like mine, they were being printed and disseminated to people or being just left thrown on the street here. So people could pick it up and read it.

Speaker 4 And that thing spread like

Speaker 4 wildfire. But also, you know what? There's another...

Speaker 5 What would the consequences be?

Speaker 4 If they caught you with it,

Speaker 5 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. Right.
And did mass arrests.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 5 And so, I guess what I'm asking is,

Speaker 5 what would the consequences have been for the government

Speaker 5 when the church would leak out that there was a hunger strike?

Speaker 5 Rather than just a bunch of cousins.

Speaker 4 Not so much within the country, but outside.

Speaker 4 The Western media, yes, the Radio Free Europe,

Speaker 4 Voice of America. Your Voice of America is,

Speaker 4 in my life, plays a very instrumental role because

Speaker 4 the things that I started learning about the communist regime, about the real history of Poland,

Speaker 4 started with the voice of America, where it was transmitted to Poland

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 they did not want this information governor to leak outside, besides the sanction against communist government by President Reagan, was playing a big role and eventually collapse of the communism

Speaker 4 and socialism in Poland. But yeah, there were reports that were afraid and they had enough, people were fighting them on every steps they could, maybe not physically, but intellectually.
They call it

Speaker 4 in Poland was coined the name internal immigration. So basically people were

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Eventually they realized that they cannot, this minority,

Speaker 4 you wouldn't know listening to the fake news media, but that minority cannot rule over the majority.

Speaker 4 That 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.

Speaker 4 And eventually that thing collapsed.

Speaker 5 Wow, so you were part of the collapse?

Speaker 4 I was part of the collapse. Well, by this time I was already in Poland.
But it totally collapsed in 19, I believe, 1987. This is where

Speaker 4 the transition from communist,

Speaker 4 from the totalitarian system happened, towards democracy. By this time, I was already living my American dream in America.

Speaker 5 And how did you get out of prison? So was the Pope. Amnesty.

Speaker 4 The Pope was coming in, and they started releasing political prisoners. So after coming out, it's actually a funny story because

Speaker 4 I was arrested in winter time. So all the clothes I had was just winter,

Speaker 4 big

Speaker 4 old

Speaker 4 coat, you know, big boots, the strings were already broken, the hat, the ball, I mean the cap.

Speaker 4 And I remember they let me out and they say, okay, this is your clothes. Now, this is a ticket to your city and buy, get out.

Speaker 4 So when I I left I was I looked like a bomb you know so I remember I was walking I show you my shoes because they're fine they have a 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 I changed the train so yeah I do look like a bomb and people like look at this guy no that is a bomb in Poland it was normal for people even if they went to take trash out, they wanted to look good.

Speaker 4 They wanted to dress, they just dressed themselves so they look decent. That was not not like sweatpants or something.

Speaker 4 I do it now, right? But at that time, you always put something, some nice clothes, wherever you were outside.

Speaker 4 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, but it was a special occasion.

Speaker 4 So people are there. So what seeing me as a bomb working this shoes and anti-shoes, you know, big jacket

Speaker 4 in the summertime

Speaker 4 was, I think, outside for a lot of Polish people there so yeah

Speaker 4 where did you go do you want do you want back 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

Speaker 4 yeah I just

Speaker 4 took the I didn't have the money to pay for the bus ticket so from the train station I just

Speaker 4 took

Speaker 4 part of it started walking but it was so unpleasant that that eventually I illegally jumped on that bus and say, like, two, three stops. I just went, and then I walked back home.
And that was it.

Speaker 4 So, my mom was very happy. She couldn't believe, you know, my siblings too.

Speaker 4 But yeah, that was it.

Speaker 4 And now I thought, okay, so now I'm done with prison. What's next? So try to find a job, try to do something, try to sell my life again.
And of course, I resume training, the Taekwondo and kickboxing.

Speaker 4 I switched Kyokushinka to Taekwondo because I like it better.

Speaker 4 I like the people there. They have a similar mentality to mine.
They didn't mind to fight. They like to fight.
They like to fight on the streets. So that was just

Speaker 4 more like a

Speaker 4 good group of people, you know,

Speaker 4 less sport, more fights. And so I want to try to resume my life.

Speaker 4 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 outside of town.

Speaker 4 And then I had to walk back home. But it was not so much to terrorize me.
They knew they cannot terrorize me. But it was to terrorize people around me.
I say, you know what? Don't do that.

Speaker 4 Don't hang out with this guy. And eventually,

Speaker 4 at daytime was okay. I can take a bus or something and go back home.
But at night, when the bus is not working, sometimes I had to to work four or five miles to home.

Speaker 4 So eventually I decided one day I may not come back from those excursions. It's

Speaker 4 time to go, time to leave. And

Speaker 4 I went to U.S. Embassy asked for help.

Speaker 4 I went to U.S. Embassy because

Speaker 4 at that time America was...

Speaker 4 It always is, but it's that beacon of freedom. This is where people look up to.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 set it up for me my I had to travel change the buses and the change the bus was changed the stop was by the US Embassy so I remember I love just to go up there because at that time they have those glass displays where they have pictures from America they were information America so I remember even before the martial law even before I got political i just love to look at it and see wow you know i love to dream so sometimes it was so nice that i remember missing the bus you know i said

Speaker 4 fuck this bus you know i just i want to read this so i was i did read that and uh and i was always fascinated i like to pick to the fence and they see the big powerful beautiful cars i was like man this

Speaker 4 this is it this is the country those are the free people why why aren't we that today those uh uh glass displays are taken down for security reason i guess and uh i i still uh when i went last time i've seen i went up there uh because for me it's very nostalgic but uh yeah that was gone wow

Speaker 4 and so you got you put in and yeah i asked for i told them what happened and i say i would like to just uh I would like to escape Poland.

Speaker 4 I need help.

Speaker 4 They, you know, I didn't even, the wildest dream, I would think they would allow me to come and live in America.

Speaker 4 It was just like, well, but I have to try.

Speaker 4 So I went to ask and I'll find out.

Speaker 4 They asked for documents and all that stuff I did. And I got like within, I think, very short time

Speaker 4 documents stating that, yes, the visa will be granted to me when I get Polish passport. So

Speaker 4 basically, that was a normal procedure at the time. And a lot of political refugees came to this way to either to America or different countries.
My choice was always America. And

Speaker 4 so once I got that promise

Speaker 4 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 passport.

Speaker 4 The passport was given to me and I got the visa, got the green card and actually I-94. That was the

Speaker 4 first document, which was later exchanged for green card. Eventually I became U.S.
citizen. But yeah, so

Speaker 4 that's where my journey

Speaker 4 became. There's one thing I would like to mention too during martial law.
You know,

Speaker 4 when everything was banned, like the solidarity insignia, solidarity, like lapel pants, they were just forbidden. You could not wear it.
So people started wearing American flag.

Speaker 4 as a resistance, as a show, yeah,

Speaker 4 we are free, you know, we want to be free. So I remember that.
So we had, we all had the American flags. Communists got tired of it.

Speaker 4 I remember my city because at the martial law they had the roadblocks. So they, once every while they stop bus or something, everybody has to disembark.
They were checking documents. And so

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 do that much.

Speaker 4 At least

Speaker 4 they did not, to the point, because I remember with

Speaker 4 the time that I got stopped on the checkpoint, when they pull us out, they rip our flags, American flags off and they stomp them in the ground.

Speaker 4 So the funny thing, that's not funny, but so we're back on the bus and then

Speaker 4 the guy, as the bus was moving, the guy say, yeah, fuck you, we're gonna get more, we're gonna buy more American flags.

Speaker 4 And when they stop the bus, they pull everybody out and they grab the. I think I don't think it was the guy who

Speaker 4 mouthed off to them.

Speaker 4 They just picked the first guy they could easier grab. They grab him, they drag him, and they drag him to the police van while beating him with those

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 that American flag was always for us, for many of us, that beaker of freedom,

Speaker 4 that drive. And then I came to live here.

Speaker 5 Did any of your siblings or your mother come with you?

Speaker 4 No, no, they stayed here. That time they stayed there.
And my sister is still there. She's still

Speaker 4 living her own life. She has her own business now.
And they have a peaceful, nice lives. So they enjoy it.
And

Speaker 4 I'm here.

Speaker 4 When I was leaving Poland, I was saying goodbye to Poland forever. I have my passport.
I'm going to post on my website.

Speaker 4 My passport is only one way. So it's just stamping it.
You

Speaker 4 can cross Polish border one time only.

Speaker 4 So I say, well, that's it. Wow.
And

Speaker 4 yeah.

Speaker 5 Was it hard to say goodbye?

Speaker 4 Well, I was anxious.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 each other. So, for me, it was like, well, you know, I had to go because if I don't, then

Speaker 4 I may not last long.

Speaker 4 And, yeah, I remember, I just like, you know, had a bag of my clothes, and

Speaker 4 I had the $20 because you had to have a $20.

Speaker 4 And I walked up to the plane and left. That was it.

Speaker 4 Wow.

Speaker 4 So, yeah,

Speaker 4 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 say, well, you know what?

Speaker 4 I have $20 in Germany because I flew to Germany. I stayed in Germany for like three weeks.
And so I'm going to buy me one. So they're all $20 I spent on the tape recorder.
So when I land in New York,

Speaker 4 I had only 10.

Speaker 4 The change that I got for the tape recorder was 10 Phoenix. So this is like, I think 5 cents.
It was German

Speaker 4 coin. So

Speaker 4 that's how I landed in New York. Bag of clothes.
And I didn't speak English.

Speaker 5 Well, let's take a quick break. Yeah.
And when we come back, we'll get into the U.S.

Speaker 4 No, you can cut out from me whatever you want to cut out, but...

Speaker 5 We're not cutting anything.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 That's...

Speaker 4 Wow.

Speaker 4 Well, you know what? Like, my story,

Speaker 4 whether in the book or taught here, I don't want people to see

Speaker 4 as a world. The guy just came and bitched about the socialism and communism.
We all know the communists bad.

Speaker 4 I want them

Speaker 4 this to be a prism, a lens,

Speaker 4 so they can see America maybe from different vantage points. Because I see very often people, especially the

Speaker 4 younger generation educated with these anti-American universities, they hate this, outright hate America. You know, and So I want them to see the America through,

Speaker 4 I would say, different eyes,

Speaker 4 different vantage points. So maybe they can change their mind.
Because

Speaker 4 I tell you,

Speaker 4 some of the hate towards America I've seen from our own citizens, I didn't see in the terrorists we were hunting in the Middle East.

Speaker 4 So that's what is disturbing for me.

Speaker 4 Not all, but I did run across people with so much hate towards America, our own citizens and this is a product of these universities these anti-american universities this marxist with a marxist communist bent and communist professors and teachers so geez yeah we did a damn good job painting that picture was that you did a damn good job painting that picture

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Speaker 5 All right, Drago, we're back from the break. And so, a couple of interesting conversations we got to revisit that happened off-camera.

Speaker 5 One, you said you're a bad student, now you're a software engineer.

Speaker 4 Well, you know, this I was a bad student because I think that

Speaker 4 I didn't like to learn. That was my, I think, maybe

Speaker 4 my personal challenge to stay focused on something and

Speaker 4 especially something that I didn't like to do it. I like to play soccer, I like to kickbox, I like to fight.
So I didn't have,

Speaker 4 I was not the best student. But yeah, this is like software engineering is fascinating.
It's like having a puzzle and you solve the puzzle and

Speaker 4 it trains your brain to memorize things, to remember things. And using the tools, it is fascinating.

Speaker 4 And you build things, you know, just like you are the designer.

Speaker 4 And software engineering is more like an art than it's a science, but it's also a big art involved in it because you can solve the problem. It's about solving the problems.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 was very fascinating to me. Matter of fact, the way I started it was in the SEAL teams.
So I was the only only SEAL who, having a

Speaker 4 cruise box with guns, have another cruise box with books and another one with full computer. There were no laptops at the time.

Speaker 4 Maybe there were, but I couldn't afford one. So I had a big monitor, big computer, keyboard, mouse, and I traveled with it.
If we deployed to, like when we deployed to Germany

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So we picked the case with the guns with the guy, just carry it in, then pick my case to my cage and say, What the fuck is in this box?

Speaker 4 Do you carry 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 carry books with me.
Damn. But I love it.

Speaker 4 It's a fascinating world.

Speaker 5 And then

Speaker 5 we had a conversation, too. We have to get this about Taekwondo.

Speaker 5 And I was talking about Palmer Lucke's 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.

Speaker 4 Right, but all about the cameras.

Speaker 4 Yes. When I was growing up, there was no cameras.
You can have a camera, maybe like the one with this little

Speaker 4 crank on it. And it was hard to get.
Like, I never had one. And I then didn't know even anybody who had one.
So for us to progress in

Speaker 4 fighting, in the kickboxing, in Taekwondo, we just need to critique each other. So,

Speaker 4 matter of fact, this is why I switched from Karate Kyokushinkai to Taekwondo at the time. It's not like this today.

Speaker 4 I know I don't want to offend anybody who is practicing Taekwondo today. In Poland,

Speaker 4 today Taekwondo is very inclusive to all kinds of people and is very, very,

Speaker 4 I would say, civilized,

Speaker 4 it's very

Speaker 4 not only educational, but also very healthy. But at that time, you know, we just decide to,

Speaker 4 especially when our teacher from Laos

Speaker 4 claim and was telling us that, you know, fight on the ring is one thing, it's fairly safe. But you need to be good, you want to be good fighters, you need to fight on the street.

Speaker 4 Well, he didn't have to say twice to us that.

Speaker 4 We just like, okay, right on,

Speaker 4 let's do it.

Speaker 4 So the way we did it, it was just pick the people on the street who looked more rough or like trying to somebody who is willing to fight and it was not difficult to find people like this in Poland at the time so we go and

Speaker 4 the way we did it is like okay so I'm going to 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 you they were they were the cameras of our the eyes of my

Speaker 4 fellow buddies from Tech Wando, they were the cameras of our times. So, you know, you got up there, you use your technique, you beat the guy up.

Speaker 4 And again, I'm not proud of it today, but I have to say it clearly, but that was the way I lived alive at the time. So, and you critique me.

Speaker 4 And so, after the fight was over, the guy was laying unconscious. The guys came in.
I said, okay, well, you missed your technique right there. You could emphasize a little bit more.

Speaker 4 That kick was not very strong, or you missed the guy here where you could actually do more damage or do this, this. So, that was our techniques.
And

Speaker 4 that's how we

Speaker 4 got really good at it. We got really good at it to the point that

Speaker 4 we didn't look for a single people anymore. We just wanted like,

Speaker 4 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 came first

Speaker 4 was able to beat them up. Sometimes it was so hard to tell because we were like, yeah, the mind, the mind.

Speaker 4 We had to draw the strolls who would be beating them up. And this is how we practice.
So we just walk up to the guy who started the fight.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And it was become more actually interesting. Then beating just one guy, it was a very simple thing.
But now we have two or three guys. And now you can show your art, I would say.

Speaker 4 You can show your way of how you master your techniques, your reaction time and all that stuff. So that was very interesting.

Speaker 4 And some of them, you know, like we didn't know, we didn't pick people who, because you couldn't know if

Speaker 4 the guys to beat up were martial artists too or not. But we did.

Speaker 4 We just, you know, like taking chances. And sometimes the guy had actually martial art training was or boxer or wrestler.

Speaker 4 So they were hard to beat up sometimes, you know, sometimes like you have two, three guys and one of them is like, you know, is not really reacting to your punches.

Speaker 4 You have to actually strain yourself to knock the guy out. But that was our training.
That was our the cameras were our eyes and the the review was our critique how the fight went. Wow.

Speaker 4 That was

Speaker 4 you know what again.

Speaker 5 Whose idea was the safety pen?

Speaker 4 Oh, I don't know where it came from, but oh, yeah, that was came from

Speaker 4 you know, when you fight when you were fighting in Poland, when I was fighting in Poland,

Speaker 4 I learned very quickly that, and I'm sure you experienced that when you start a fight, the guy gets beat up a little bit and says, okay, I had enough, thank you, you better.

Speaker 4 Let me walk away, I'm fine. That's a very dangerous thing to do.
What I learned very quickly, because usually the guy recovers and attacks you again, or come back with his friends.

Speaker 4 So then you have a fight on your hands, or even more people to beat up.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 with uh when when when we fought fight when you used to fight there we used to fight until the guy stopped moving so it's not that really i didn't have enough enough no no no you you don't tell me

Speaker 4 that to

Speaker 4 and when i end the fight i will tell you when i end the fight most likely how you won't 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, at the tongue fell in, and he was already getting turning blue.

Speaker 4 And I panicked. I didn't know what to do.
I didn't know what happened. And thanks to God, there was a nurse.
And say, give me a safety pen, give me a safety pan. Somebody's safety pen.

Speaker 4 So somebody pulls her safety pen, and she kind of like hooked his tongue and pulled it out, rolling to the side. It was good.

Speaker 4 And she said, you know, 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.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 uh i say well that's pretty cool but you know we're like if if you need to run and what do you do well i guess you take the safety pen and pin his tongue to his lower lip and then he will leave too so this is how we start doing it and sometimes

Speaker 4 police in Poland at that time seldom intervene.

Speaker 4 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 walked through town, usually, people just cross the street, go around you and keep walking down like they're like it's not my business you know two people three people are fighting let them fight it out let them duck it out and just move on uh 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 pen pull his tongue out pin it to the lower lip rock him to the side and just leave him there and he will live he's not going to die So

Speaker 4 that was kind of like a technique that we learned very quickly. And it's effective as a life-saving technique.
I think last one I applied in Horton Plaza in San Diego already being a SEAL.

Speaker 5 I have to say, I've never

Speaker 5 occurred to me to pin up a guy's tongue to his lip after I beat him up.

Speaker 4 So it doesn't jump to that. I didn't think either until this guy almost died on my eyes.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 I learned there's a safer way.

Speaker 4 I treat the safety pen as a safety device.

Speaker 4 You just ensure the guy doesn't die, that he's fairly safe, that

Speaker 4 his tongue paint to them to his lower lip is not going to hurt him you know he wake up and

Speaker 4 I never had a

Speaker 4 never had anybody complain about

Speaker 4 well maybe they never they never saw the after

Speaker 4 but it was effective 100% I guess

Speaker 5 so that worked yeah so let's get to so you came to America you had $20

Speaker 4 in Germany I suppose in Germany on the table, a tiny tape recorder.

Speaker 5 You bought the tape recorder, so you had like five, I think you said five cents would have been a bad thing. I had five Phoenix.

Speaker 4 So Phoenix is like German mark, has 100 Phoenix. So I had the five Phoenix in my pocket, a bag of clothes from like old clothes from 1970s, or whatever my mom could

Speaker 4 prepare for me. So I had a sweater.
I think I still have it till today somewhere in the closet because I didn't want to throw it away, with my mom made by her hands.

Speaker 4 So that's, yeah, that's how I came to america uh

Speaker 4 knowing nothing knowing no english only knowing that america is a free country the people are living free here and i can live as a free man uh here on this land and hopefully one day become american citizen if i'm good enough where do you go no family no money no

Speaker 4 there was already

Speaker 4 People were waiting for me actually. So when I came in, because I came legally,

Speaker 4 they organized like an apartment for me. They organized the first, helped me find the first job.

Speaker 4 I didn't complain or

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 I could buy my food, you know, and I was living in an apartment with air conditioning, with,

Speaker 4 telephone, there was something unusual in Poland. And air conditioning,

Speaker 4 I didn't even know how it works.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 You know, there was a project, there was like apartment was like $180 a month, and there was a bunch of, a lot of crimes, drugs, and prostitution. But who cares?

Speaker 4 You know, I had my own apartment and I could afford it. I could live in it and and then you know so my goal became now to learn English and to

Speaker 4 get

Speaker 4 different job get better job and

Speaker 4 to start English because I was working as a janitor so it's 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.

Speaker 4 You know, I was just mapping the floors and that's like, okay,

Speaker 4 so I need to memorize that.

Speaker 4 So this is how I learned, basically how I learned English at the time. And

Speaker 4 this is why

Speaker 4 my grammar sometimes still

Speaker 4 offends Rachel, my wife. She's like, hey, you don't say it this way.
You have to say it a certain way.

Speaker 4 But yeah, this is how I started. This is how I learned English.
Eventually, you know, I improve and

Speaker 4 I went to school.

Speaker 4 But that was my first beginning. And I tell you, the patience of American friends who helped me, who sent me my life here,

Speaker 4 is so incredible. Sean,

Speaker 4 I offended so many people unintentionally, not even knowing about it. I remember I was invited by the church.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So I walk into the room, and the pastor came with a big plate of cookies, and just like so happy, you know, everybody is like smiling and happy. So I took this cookie, and

Speaker 4 in Polish language, there's not such sound like TH. So somebody advised me to use F, like thank you.
That came out like F, fuck you.

Speaker 4 And so when I took this cookie, and I could, I knew that I said something wrong because right there

Speaker 4 I could hear the gasps

Speaker 4 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.
So, but this like older gentleman came out and said, look,

Speaker 4 what he's trying to say is he looks at me and say, thank you.

Speaker 4 So I'm like, yes, that's what I'm trying to say.

Speaker 4 So, you know, like there were things like this, the Borad moments.

Speaker 4 I was invited to party, like

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 be that good American I want to be.

Speaker 4 I just want to look good there. So I went and I found the skimpiest, the shortest shorts I could find.

Speaker 4 You would call it banana hammock, I guess, today.

Speaker 4 And I thought, this is really cool. I will look really good.
I think these people will admire me. You know, that's like, I really represent myself well.

Speaker 4 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, say, hey, come on here.

Speaker 4 We have a short for you. So they took me to the room.
They gave me big shorts.

Speaker 4 I didn't argue, I was just like, yes, sir, yes, sir. You know, in Poland at the time, in the 1980s,

Speaker 4 the shorts like we wear today, only fat people and old people were.

Speaker 4 So there was no...

Speaker 4 If somebody's seen you in those shorts, they would think that you are just like...

Speaker 4 weird guy. So everybody was there, the skimpiest, the shortest, the smallest

Speaker 4 the swimming troops, the better. So

Speaker 4 I just didn't know.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 another thing too, like

Speaker 4 I remember first few days, I was staying with older family parishioners in the church. So they sometimes they give me a ride around the Memphis.

Speaker 4 And I was trying, and they give me a dictionary, 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.

Speaker 4 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 say, This is house.
It's like, Yeah, yes, good, you know, this is man,

Speaker 4 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 see the black guy walking on the street.

Speaker 4 I find out what is the black guy. Okay, this is a n

Speaker 4 that ugly word. I was not the ugly, but it was the ugly word, you know, there's something there very offensive to to to

Speaker 4 I guess anybody to me too. At the time, I didn't know, And they almost raked the car.
This woman jumped out, say, where did you,

Speaker 4 she's yelling at me, I don't understand what. She takes this dictionary from me and slowly, this is

Speaker 4 bad.

Speaker 4 No, no, no.

Speaker 4 Wow. And she scratched that word and wrote, black man.

Speaker 4 I say, black man. This is black man.
And, you know, it was

Speaker 4 the last thing on my mind or in my heart to offend an American or anybody, especially American, especially friends.

Speaker 4 So I just didn't know any better. So as you can see, my

Speaker 4 progressing through my

Speaker 4 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 it was never intentional mistake.

Speaker 4 Maybe, maybe one when eventually I got the job as a sub-mechanic. That's the story just in itself how I got the job.

Speaker 4 And then,

Speaker 4 so the mechanic, the shop foreman, invited me to say, hey, let's have a steak today. There will be a couple of other mechanics coming, so let's go have a party.
Say, party, yes.

Speaker 4 So show up, and

Speaker 4 he gave me a steak.

Speaker 4 Sean, that was the first

Speaker 4 time in my life I seen that one big piece of meat in

Speaker 4 one piece.

Speaker 4 So I'm looking at it, there's like, I think, five or six of them, but I'm so like, Jim, by this time I spoke a little bit of English, so it's like an entire town is coming here to the party or what?

Speaker 4 He said, no, no, it's just, so are you telling me I can eat the whole steak?

Speaker 4 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 to fill 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 ate entire big chung 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 oh show us something you know something show us something you know we have a few beers i say okay

Speaker 4 I'll show you, I show you the basic punch what I like to punch people with.

Speaker 4 And can I punch this wall? He said, Yeah, sure. I thought it's a concrete wall.
In Poland, the walls are concrete, all those concrete plates.

Speaker 4 Sand walled on this wall, boom.

Speaker 4 But there was a freaking

Speaker 4 dry sheet wall. So my fist went through one wall and went out in his bedroom on the other side.
That was embarrassing. I would say, dude, I am so, Jim, I am so, so sorry.

Speaker 4 I didn't mean to destroy your house. I just wanted to show you

Speaker 4 the punch.

Speaker 4 I didn't think there's, I i thought it was a concrete wall and they thought it was funny so but i say i'm going to go and fix it but i say no no no that was fine i will keep it for a while so i have a story to tell

Speaker 4 so yeah so the the things like that

Speaker 4 were a little bit different how how old were you when you came to the us 24 24 no 23 going 24.

Speaker 5 how long did it take you to learn english I'm still learning English. Enough to be able to communicate.

Speaker 4 Yeah, but

Speaker 4 I think it took me maybe

Speaker 4 to be fairly efficient to convey my thoughts. I think maybe

Speaker 4 six months, seven months.

Speaker 4 But please remember, I had to do it on my own. So

Speaker 4 it's easier to learn the right way

Speaker 4 than learn the bad way and then correct this. So I still make a lot of mistakes when I speak,

Speaker 4 which is obvious to people around, maybe not for me so much, but my wife always says, like, well, you know,

Speaker 4 you're just funny, so I'm not going to correct you because it sounds good,

Speaker 4 sounds funny, so keep going. So, yeah,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So, I'm still, I still have edges

Speaker 4 to polish, but I'm working on it.

Speaker 5 So, where did you go? Where did you go from New York?

Speaker 4 From New York, I went to Memphis. So, Memphis, Tennessee.
This is where I started my American dream. And again, this is something that

Speaker 4 I always say

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 There were people coming to my apartment. I had no furniture, so I was thinking, wow, this is my apartment.
It's great. I can sleep on the floor.
No, they brought me a bed. They brought me shelves.

Speaker 4 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 like from the 70s and really

Speaker 4 wouldn't fit between people. So they were bringing me clothes.
They were bringing me food.

Speaker 4 Because, you know, 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 and saying, hey, you know what?

Speaker 4 I think you need this. Let me bring you some hamburger meat.
Let me bring you a cereal. Well, with cereal itself this is something that I

Speaker 4 never seen it before in my life

Speaker 4 and then

Speaker 4 when I was taken first time to shopping to grocery shopping

Speaker 4 for me it was like a

Speaker 4 going from the normal world into science fiction

Speaker 4 into science fiction movie right inside it. I've seen so many things I never seen in my life.
And happened, I was on the aisle with the cereal box.

Speaker 4 I didn't know what it was, but it looks, these boxes look so nice, so good, that I just loaded up my whole cart with the boxes.

Speaker 4 My American friends who helped me with the shopping, they were just laughing. It's like, dude, you know, easy.
Like,

Speaker 4 okay, if you want it, yeah, you got it. So I just loaded 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.

Speaker 4 This

Speaker 4 rice crispies. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I love that. And then that one and the chocolate one.
So there was like milk with it. I love that.

Speaker 5 How did you wind up at Memphis?

Speaker 4 Well, when I came to my

Speaker 4 journey started in Warsaw through Germany. In Germany, the political refugees, they had a center there.
They're just only for political refugees

Speaker 4 where we spent time waiting for sponsor or somebody to help us assimilate in American society.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So it was a great help. I was like sponge trying to soak all the information.
And

Speaker 4 then

Speaker 4 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 preferences is to settle down in America.

Speaker 4 I don't care what I'm putting, but if you ask,

Speaker 4 because I was speaking Polish, if you ask,

Speaker 4 I would like to go somewhere where it's hot, like hot, hot.

Speaker 4 I'm tired of being cold. In Poland, we didn't have a good clothes.
I was always freezing. So I'm like, I'm so sick and tired of being cold.
Put me somewhere where it's hot.

Speaker 4 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 know,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 But is it hot up there? I said, yeah, it's very hot. I said, sign me up.
I'm in.

Speaker 4 And they shipped me up to New York back to Memphis. This is where I started my life.

Speaker 4 Got my first job as an

Speaker 4 janitor, then as a parts man, then as a mechanic. You know, this funny thing is like,

Speaker 4 I didn't have it. I never had a car.

Speaker 4 I didn't even know in poland anybody any friend i didn't i did not have a friend in poland who owned the car so but those are european cars you would you like to can you work on european cars absolutely yes so they they they got me on the interview there was a selling

Speaker 4 uh company of the selling the porsche sub and audio so the porsch guy came in said like well it's kind of expensive car the guy doesn't speak english know nothing about cars so maybe we just

Speaker 4 set it maybe not today.

Speaker 4 So then the Audi mechanic came in, the same thing.

Speaker 4 And then we're waiting for the sub-mechanic to come in, and I hear this big sound roar of the Harley Davidson. Reus Morris are just running next to the

Speaker 4 garage up there. The guy looking like a Sasquatch,

Speaker 4 maybe looks like seven feet tall, walks in. I say, hey, so

Speaker 4 that guy?

Speaker 4 I like, yeah,

Speaker 4 Saab, I say, yeah.

Speaker 4 He looked at the Tim Presley, who was a service manager at the time. I still remember this name.

Speaker 4 He looks at Tim and the manager said,

Speaker 4 I need a slave. Sign him up.

Speaker 4 And here we are. So

Speaker 4 we became

Speaker 4 really good friends,

Speaker 4 if not the best friends.

Speaker 4 He told me everything about cars.

Speaker 4 I was clueless.

Speaker 4 I had no idea. So he told me everything about Saab.
I became a really good mechanic to the point even Mercedes came later and asked me if I want to work for them. So this guy,

Speaker 4 there's the guy who invited me for the steak party when I broke his house with my fist. But

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And I will record you. I can listen to it.
I thought he would kill me. It's like, what did you just say?

Speaker 4 i'm going to read you like a mama story to children and i read you the mic and on the top of the sub

Speaker 4 curve sub manual i say yeah he said

Speaker 4 yeah i was thinking for a okay but if you tell somebody i kill you so so i still have i still have a gyms 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 for me to understand what it is, and also I'm learning English at the same time.

Speaker 4 So, this is the guy,

Speaker 4 half-gangster, and the guy who just wouldn't mind to go and just kill you if he had to, and become like my bigger brother, you know, helping me out. So,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 But if he is there, if he's listening up there, you know, Jimbo,

Speaker 4 I remember. Wow.

Speaker 5 Yeah. That's cool, man.

Speaker 5 It wouldn't surprise me if he's listening.

Speaker 4 What's that?

Speaker 5 It would not surprise me if he's listening.

Speaker 4 Yeah, hopefully, maybe. I know he had a son, too.
So there's great people. I owe them so much.
I owe Jimbo.

Speaker 4 I think the way my career moved on in America is because this guy. So, yeah.

Speaker 5 Where did you go from

Speaker 4 mechanics?

Speaker 4 From Memphis, straight to the Navy.

Speaker 5 How did the Navy pop on your radar?

Speaker 4 Well, you see, by this time, I already became 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.

Speaker 4 I was AFF Jam Master.

Speaker 4 I was living my life out.

Speaker 4 And then the war broke out, the First Persian war.

Speaker 4 So I say, 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

Speaker 4 I decided to join the military. I didn't know Navy from Army.
For me, it was military, it was military. Army was everything.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 I was just one day in the post office and I see this

Speaker 4 draft cards where everybody needs to fill up for the high school kids. So I say oh wow I mean they're recruiting people even from post offices.

Speaker 4 I fill it up, I sign up for the army, the war is on, they're gonna get me soon. So I fill it up, mailed it off, came back to my apartment.

Speaker 4 I was living with some other skydivers and I started packing myself. I said

Speaker 4 what are you doing?

Speaker 4 You cannot just move out. You know, we have a contract here that we had to pay the rent and stuff.
No, no, no. I say I'm not moving out yet, but I'm packing myself because I'm going to war.

Speaker 4 I'm going to war to fight for America.

Speaker 4 And he was like, wait a minute.

Speaker 4 We didn't know anything. How did you sign it up? I say, 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.
I was like, no,

Speaker 4 that doesn't work like that. You need to go actually

Speaker 4 to recruiting office.

Speaker 4 And actually, the letter came in that, well, thank you, but no, thank you. You are not required to fill this card, you are already too old for that.
So I was like 32 at the time. So

Speaker 4 I say, okay, well, the war is going on, and

Speaker 4 I want to pay my freedom back. So I want to help and support my country, my America.
So

Speaker 4 I went to the Army 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.

Speaker 4 So it's like, where would you, okay, well,

Speaker 4 there's any unique

Speaker 4 preferences, where would you like to serve? I said, well, whoever goes first

Speaker 4 in combat, sign me up. I had no idea.
But it's like, sign me up, whatever go,

Speaker 4 go, I want to go to war, fight on behalf of America and American people.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 they're like, okay, infantry. I said, I don't, I don't know what infantry is, but if you say so,

Speaker 4 sign me up. So they proceeded with the paperwork and everything.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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 like fascinated.

Speaker 4 He was a really good skydiver.

Speaker 4 So we did many jumps together with also with his guys.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 and he just told me say like look you want to go on seals because you want to skydive right in army you won't be skydiving but you like skydiving to combat parachute jumps and stuff why don't you go join navy seals like 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 um i say okay so

Speaker 4 But I had to go to Army guys and tell them like all this work you did for me. I'm sorry, but I'm going next door.
So so they

Speaker 4 it was awkward because I made friends with them but I said well okay I'll do it I want I want to join the Navy so I went and grabbed the paper went up there and

Speaker 4 they finished it up and they were fair with me because they say okay you are 32 going 33 so

Speaker 4 you are not eligible for seal program because you are too old the cat of age is 28

Speaker 4 But if you sign this paper, you go to boot camp, they make a seal out of you. You know, you look strong guy, so they're going to make a seal out of you.
I say,

Speaker 4 okay.

Speaker 4 Again, my goal was not to join Navy SEALs. My goal was to go join America in the war and support.

Speaker 4 So I say, yeah, that's fine.

Speaker 4 I will serve wherever America needs me. Because that was my idea.
I didn't know where to go.

Speaker 4 So I signed it up.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 they told me, okay, we'll be fair with you. If you go as an undesignated, Navy, you'll put you scraping decks or we'll do something that you may not like.
Why don't you go pick the job in the Navy?

Speaker 4 So, after boot camp, you go to your A school and then you go into SEAL training. If you fall out, I couldn't go in SEAL training at the time, but they didn't tell me that.

Speaker 4 So, you go into SEAL training, you fall out, you will fall back on your job.

Speaker 4 So, you don't go scraping decks, you'll be doing whatever the Navy train you to do.

Speaker 4 So, I say, Okay, so what's the best job? I say, Well, you like skydiving, right? I say, yes. Parachute reguer.

Speaker 4 I say, okay,

Speaker 4 sign me up. Parachute reguer.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 so, but they say, okay, if you want to go parachute reguer, you will have to leave.

Speaker 4 So we will proceed

Speaker 4 doing the paperwork maybe like three weeks later. They call me or a month later.
I say, okay, to be a parachute reguer, there's two options now.

Speaker 4 You can go to boot camp like next week and right after the boot camp your A school starts the parachute rigging school or you have to wait like four or five months and then wherever the next parachutering school is to coordinate it with you going to boot camp and to school so i was thinking like Shit, the war may end by this time.

Speaker 4 So sign me up for the closest one. I call my girlfriend.
I say, hey, look, I'm leaving next week. I'm joining the Navy.
I'm leaving next week. She's like, what?

Speaker 4 I say, yeah, let's get married.

Speaker 4 So we just got married we we ran that was a Monday I think Tuesday we ran like in the afternoon after her work to the to the office in Memphis we found the judge was already leaving but I think we looked so desperate that he said okay let me go sign you up so he married us and then I went on I think on Friday I went to Depp

Speaker 4 into Depp then I was sworn in and I think Saturday and Sunday I flew they flew me

Speaker 4 and a few other guys from Memphis to Great Lakes

Speaker 4 to Illinois. That's how my adventure started.
So that's my beginning of my Navy time. And again,

Speaker 4 I just wanted to serve. It didn't matter where I serve.
I would say

Speaker 4 my idea was to serve where America needs me.

Speaker 4 whatever day

Speaker 4 I can be useful at.

Speaker 4 But I passed the the test the seal test

Speaker 4 they did let you try they did let me try yes yes but uh so but they say that I will have to ask for the waiver for my age and this is where I met

Speaker 4 so 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

Speaker 4 I have to wait for at least a year or two before I can reapply again because the kidnapping stand recure. I have the document at home.
And then

Speaker 4 so I say, okay, well it's not

Speaker 4 it's not a big deal.

Speaker 4 I just want to serve. And so I graduated from bootcamp as a number one recruit.
I'm very proud of it because you know like my English was still not perfect and

Speaker 4 but I always I excel in the like 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.

Speaker 4 So I got the Military Excellence Award from Bootcamp. I'm very proud of it.
And then I had a good instructors too. So

Speaker 4 then I went to A school. And this is where I met Jason Cabell, my friend of mine, really good friend of mine.
We later met in Iraq and Baghdad doing combat together.

Speaker 4 I couldn't swim very well because I'd never seen the ocean, I'd never seen the sea.

Speaker 4 He says, but he was so sure he's going to make,

Speaker 4 and he couldn't swim. He swim even worse than I do.

Speaker 4 So he was like very, for me, it was inspirational because he can, I look, this guy is struggling to just stay on the surface and he's going to be a seal. So I'm going to make it too.

Speaker 4 So we were having that. We tried to swim and all that stuff.
We got better, of course. He went to baths.
I had to wait

Speaker 4 for my orders first.

Speaker 4 but even before i wait for my orders i went on in millington in the a school uh i found the seal motivator was les barios uh rest in peace brother and um i went to him i said look i have a document i would like to be a seal if possible but my documents in my medical record say i had the kidney stone so i cannot apply for the program for like year or two years and he liked me and said okay well can you pass the test i said yeah i passed the the test.

Speaker 4 Bring me your documents. At that time, there was no electronic document.
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.

Speaker 4 Say, okay, step outside.

Speaker 4 I step outside and just listen. I'll get a crit.

Speaker 4 All right, come on in.

Speaker 4 So I look,

Speaker 4 he's sitting at his desk. It's like, look, I looked through your medical record.
I really can't find anything about a kidney kidney stone. Can you help me find it? I say, yeah, it's right here.

Speaker 4 So we look and say, no, it's not here.

Speaker 4 He looks at me and says, are you sure you had the kidney stone?

Speaker 4 And by this time, I'm like, I'm sure I didn't. Okay, that's good enough.
So, so,

Speaker 4 so, yeah, they put me on hold after the graduate. I also graduate, I think, one on the top on the class.
So then I was waiting for the waivers.

Speaker 4 And I think the waiver was granted to me because I excel in everything I did. I did so well.
and they I think they seen that maybe

Speaker 4 this guy

Speaker 4 because of his age, maybe his age will not inhibit him a lot but we give him a chance. So eventually after like maybe two months being on hold in the

Speaker 4 in the A school, I got my orders to bats. I called Jason Caballer and I said, brother, I'm coming after you.
He gave me a tape. I still remember the tape.

Speaker 4 I still have it at home the tape that he gave me. That was the little cassette we used to play.
So So I was just playing it

Speaker 4 on the road because I was driving to

Speaker 4 California, to San Diego. So that's how my Navy career started and how my SEAL career started.

Speaker 5 Did you have any idea what a SEAL was at that time? No. Other than Skydivers?

Speaker 4 No, except them.

Speaker 4 Well, they show me the

Speaker 4 video and recruiting station. I say, wow, this is really cool, but what's the difference between Army? You know, it's like, that looked like an army to me.

Speaker 4 But, you know, it was a unit that this guy recommended to me. And if I could get up there, it's fine.
But again,

Speaker 4 that was not the driving, that's not what motivate me to join the Navy. So for me, it was not really that important.
But my imagine, the way I imagine

Speaker 4 CR training was they would be like prison. So I couldn't think of any other way.
Those are special forces.

Speaker 4 So they will lock you up there in some camp and you will be just going through all these evolutions. You will be going through all the training, totally isolated from people.
That was my imagination.

Speaker 4 And I was thinking like, well, you know what? I'm married now. It'll be kind of sad for my wife.
But, well, I survived communist prison.

Speaker 4 At least here, they don't try to kill you, right? They just try to make you better and like in communist prison. So I say, I'll be fine.
Well,

Speaker 4 that was...

Speaker 4 As you know,

Speaker 4 is not that. 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 bats.

Speaker 4 You just have to manage not only the training, but you need to manage yourself as well. So

Speaker 4 I remember a lot of guys going out and partying and

Speaker 4 drinking.

Speaker 4 And I would love to do it too. And I did sometimes too, but for me, it was more often Ben Gay, you know, robbing on my bus.
It was like, oh God, I need to survive. Tomorrow will be maybe better.

Speaker 4 Tomorrow I feel better. Let's hope so.
So, like, as they were drinking, I was rubbing the bengay in myself, trying to put myself better in the bed and trying to go to bed early.

Speaker 4 But it helped, you know,

Speaker 4 I did fairly well. You know, I was like, never.

Speaker 4 I was rolled back only at the beginning of the first phase because I got an infection in my leg.

Speaker 4 I got MERSA on the back of my thigh, 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.

Speaker 4 So, okay, I'm not going to tell them anything.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 I ran up to Balboa to hospital, let them fix it, so I will have three days basically to heal and I should be okay.

Speaker 4 Well, didn't work that way. I went up there, they did cut this big piece, the big white piece out of of it and it was thick like my pinky and

Speaker 4 my leg was coming down a little bit, I could put my pants on.

Speaker 4 So but then when in the morning, Monday morning when I was driving to Baza swole again, so I had no choice but I had to go to our medical in Baz and tell them what happened.

Speaker 4 So what I find out is Balboa, just they cut this out and just let me go instead of irrigating it for maybe like an hour. And that's what they did.

Speaker 4 They actually gave me antibiotics they put me on the on the gourney 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 the the swelling came out and everything was good so they banded my legs and I came back say we have to roll you I said you can't roll me.

Speaker 4 I said, no, we have to. We have a mat flats where we are going to.
You cannot go with a leg like this. And the Helwig next, you cannot go to Herwick with a leg like this.

Speaker 4 So I was really like broken you know I was like holy shit and I don't want to be rolled I say please let me stay in the class so I think it was instructor graves no it's instructor Fitzhenry

Speaker 4 he says like

Speaker 4 okay if you can run here five

Speaker 4 sprint and run five times around this thing I might keep you in the class. So I say right on, you know, so but I had to still get a cat on my pants because, you know, I had to, I couldn't put them on.

Speaker 4 And I ran, I ran to all these fives and stuff. I said, Can I stay? It's like, nope,

Speaker 4 185. So there 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.

Speaker 4 I don't think I would be able to, I would make through Halloween with this big open wound on my leg with infection in my leg and like swollen like the elephant leg. Wow.

Speaker 4 So yeah, so that was that was my

Speaker 4 first phase.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 4 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 uh difficult because maybe um when i

Speaker 4 when i came to buds

Speaker 4 i i was thinking that this is going to be hell

Speaker 4 that in is in the hell that this is going to be extremely

Speaker 4 and it was physically but the mentally like for some reason the instructors yelling calling calling names, and all that stuff didn't faze me. I kind of expected it.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 When they say drop down, I didn't question it, so I dropped down and pushed it out, whatever I was told to do. And

Speaker 4 I did, I think, very well. Actually, one of the instructor instructor timers just looked at me and said, drop down.

Speaker 4 50. So I just looked 50.
I think it was the first phase. So the first phase, you don't do 50.

Speaker 4 But so I did it. I sent them.
Who are you?

Speaker 4 He just looked at me and said, well, you know what? I think I like you. Get the fuck out of here.
Go back

Speaker 4 in the class. So, 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

Speaker 4 you come here to bat. And I just have to tell them what's so here, 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 say and so.

Speaker 4 And so when they ask me, I say, fuck, I didn't come here to try, I came here to become a SEL.

Speaker 4 And either my body will break down or you kick me out, but I will come out of this as a as a, I will graduate from this program. I didn't came here to try.
I mean, I didn't come here to try.

Speaker 4 They got mad, but I know they liked it because

Speaker 4 I can see they were like, right on.

Speaker 4 And then, you know, there's a lot of things like this with the knives, you know, we have these knife inspections.

Speaker 4 So they always called me because my knife, you know, those like cheesy knives, but fairly cheap and they got the, you have to maintain them very well.

Speaker 4 I could put my knife just the edge like on my hand, on my arm, and just let it slide. It will shave your hand.
They were that sharp. So

Speaker 4 they were calling me sometimes to demonstrate to other classes how

Speaker 4 to maintain the equipment. Also on the swim, remember I couldn't swim very well, neither was Jason Cabell.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 not only that, I couldn't swim very well, I could swim only on one side, the side stroke. So

Speaker 4 then on the top of it, they put the mask on me. I have never swim with mask in my life.
This is the really thing I thought I would drown. Because I remember I was swimming, I couldn't breathe,

Speaker 4 the mask closed my nose. And I was...
I was breathing as much water, I think, as much

Speaker 4 air. And when I came out of that pool after the first few swims, my belly was so big that just I could feel water sloshing in it.

Speaker 4 And there were times I remember I was swimming, I was like, I'm about to pass out.

Speaker 4 I have so much water in my lungs and I have black spots

Speaker 4 in my eyes. But that's like 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 was just like, you have to trust them.

Speaker 4 And slowly become easier and easier. By the end of my

Speaker 4 fourth phase, it was a pre-phase.

Speaker 4 When we finished,

Speaker 4 I was asked actually to demonstrate the new guys coming into the training how to do the side stroke. So I was very proud of it.
Wow. Wow.
So, yeah. And Jason Cabar, too, he became a very good swimmer.

Speaker 4 We are still friends, so we talked to each other. And great guy, was very

Speaker 4 inspirational for me so yeah

Speaker 5 so you you graduated buds at age 33 yes is that correct going 33 yes

Speaker 4 and we are checking to team in uh march

Speaker 4 2000 uh

Speaker 4 uh march 1993 seal team 2 well not very many people get through buds in their 30s no as uh i i think there's

Speaker 4 There's very few people that made it. I think I'm one of

Speaker 4 that few that not only made through bats, are made through the SEAL teams, into the SEAL teams.

Speaker 4 Because as you know, very often people who made through bats, they still don't cut and they are either removed from SQT or today, before it was STT, or they were being removed while in the platoon, either pre-war cap or during the event after deployments.

Speaker 4 Like, well, no, you are not the guy, so you need to leave. And I have friends that came with me or after me who

Speaker 4 made two bats to that selection, check into the teams, and they were sent to the fleet. So

Speaker 4 that was

Speaker 4 not easy for me being old,

Speaker 4 and especially with my English too.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 on english but i i guess i did it so fast i was able to do it so fast that people seldom notice that that's the issues show up in the uh in uh cqb where you have to be on your feet you have to be very fast and uh that's when i really start uh

Speaker 4 start occurring to me that i need to improve my english I need to get better with my English.

Speaker 4 Matter of fact, when I came back from the first deployment, you know, when we come back from deployment, you pick the schools. I want to be a sniper, I want to go to diving school,

Speaker 4 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. So

Speaker 4 it's like the guys were leaving. Hey, we're going to the sniper school.
We're going draggers.

Speaker 4 I was walking to the center up there. It's like English 101.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 it helped me.

Speaker 4 It did make the big difference and allow me actually to be successful in my career.

Speaker 5 How were you greeted at SIL Team 2 when you showed up?

Speaker 4 I think like most of the guys,

Speaker 4 I was beat up pretty much.

Speaker 4 Not like the beat up, but I remember I didn't even make out of the building. So check the quarter deck.
I checked

Speaker 4 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 woke out in the building, the big courtyard in the SEAL TIM2,

Speaker 4 there was the guys waiting over there. I say, okay, yeah, new FNG.

Speaker 4 Hop on the bars. I already knew, you know, that's like, yeah, you don't argue with these old seals.
You just do what they say. So I jump on the bars, do the pull-ups, sit-ups.

Speaker 4 Basically, I did the whole PT,

Speaker 4 the PT test that we do every year.

Speaker 4 And then they didn't want to, because my uniform, that was the nicest uniform I could have.

Speaker 4 Chain skill tin too i just i press it i just pick every little thing to make sure that it's so perfect so after this force pt on the concrete that looked like a like like like shit it was really bad you know this torn up sweaty dirty dust everywhere and you know my my nice shoes scuffed and so after they didn't want to walk me to quarter deck because what that was frowned upon so they took me to the back gate they woke me up when we started the three miles run and said okay now you run you have we'll see your time, what you have.

Speaker 4 So now you see the dude with the torn-up uniform holding his hat to his head, running like crazy on the on base because it was on on the on there was not in the team, it was in the base outside the SEAL teams.

Speaker 4 So I'm sure people were thinking, What is this crazy guy? What happened to this guy here? So I did that three miles run, came back, they said, Okay, I go continue with your uh stuff now.

Speaker 4 So I went to supply, got my gun, and the guns got my all my weapons and everything. that's the

Speaker 4 the all the gear that I needed I was assigned the cage in seal team too and I moved my stuff there and that's my careers my my adventure with seal teams started so that was my welcome to seal teams and you know very often there was

Speaker 4 other new guys too a lot of other new guys

Speaker 4 and one day they say okay guys you are invited for Friday Kegger at that time in SEAL team 2 and all the SEAL teams I think Friday and ended at noon So

Speaker 4 after PT, you just clean your gear, clean yourself, and you can go home. Except in Seal Team 2, you're required to attend the Kegger.
So Kegg of Beer was waiting in the high bay.

Speaker 4 So they say, you guys, guys, guys, invited for the Kegger today. Friday,

Speaker 4 me and other new guys, like, dude,

Speaker 4 so I think they like us, you know, they invite us to

Speaker 4 have a part to party with them, to mingle with these old guys, these old experienced seals. So I was so excited, I think we all were.
But as soon as we walk in, you know, we got to jump tape,

Speaker 4 a little bit kicked and beat up, hang on the chains, and just like bats upside down, pull up on the to the roof of the highway while these guys were drinking, you know, so they were drinking, laughing, and we just were hanging like a bats, all taped up.

Speaker 4 Once every while they roll us down on the chains, the chains, they had a dragger bag, you know, the bag from the diving rig with the pipe. So

Speaker 4 here, a new guy will stick in your mouth, your mouth, they put the beer in it and just squeeze and sort of

Speaker 4 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 is frowned upon.

Speaker 4 But at the time, there was like regular welcome to SEAL teams, and I didn't mind it. I mean, it was okay.

Speaker 4 I've seen wars.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 5 where was your first deployment?

Speaker 4 First First deployment we deployed to

Speaker 4 that was in the when the Bosnia happened.

Speaker 4 We deployed to Italy and that was the same time when our pilot got shut down.

Speaker 4 So my platoon was one of the platoons that we were flying over the Adriatic close to the

Speaker 4 if we could locate him, we could pick him up. So we're searching for him.

Speaker 4 The other unit actually was tasked with recovering him, but we were on standby ready to recover him. That was my first deployment.

Speaker 4 So we were normally we deployed to Microhanis

Speaker 4 in England, in Great Britain, but this deployment was to

Speaker 4 they put us in Italy. So, this is where we stayed there, stayed throughout the first deployment.

Speaker 4 Again, we didn't find the guy, that somebody else pulled our pilot out, but I'm proud of participating in these efforts.

Speaker 5 Were you upset that you missed the war?

Speaker 4 Well, at this time my concern was that

Speaker 4 I'm serving America.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 4 what I learned later too, if you chase the war,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And I had such a great life that after the war I will come back and I will resume my life. But then the life that I started in the Navy was even so fascinating that I never left.

Speaker 4 I left 20 years later.

Speaker 4 So I was not upset, but I wish I met

Speaker 4 that war. I wish I went to that war, but I missed it.

Speaker 5 And how was your wife? Did she follow you through all this?

Speaker 4 Was that? Your wife. My wife, yes.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so

Speaker 4 that marriage didn't last long.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 as we do not have that routine, because our life change every month, every two months, months, you go to something else.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So I didn't understand at that time, I was really upset, but that's what eventually happened. So we did get eventually divorced.
And

Speaker 4 that's actually what

Speaker 4 it was later in the SEAL teams when I came back from my deployment and the thing fell apart.

Speaker 5 Well we'll get there. Yeah.
When was where were you when September 11th happened?

Speaker 4 When September 11th happened I was on the in the gym in SEAL team too.

Speaker 4 We were working out. I still vividly remember that

Speaker 4 somebody came in and said hey guys I just I just came back from quarter deck. The airplane hit one of the twin towers.

Speaker 4 So like most of us right, where some pilot of a small airplane got lost and killed himself. So,

Speaker 4 sad, but let's go to work out.

Speaker 4 And then the other guy came, no, guys,

Speaker 4 there's a

Speaker 4 those big jetliner that hit the towers and something is going on. So, we left the dream, went to quarter deck and sealed him,

Speaker 4 and we're watching. I was actually watching when these fucking bastards ran the

Speaker 4 second airplane, flew the second airplane to another the second tower I was watching it I knew we're gonna be hunting these scumbags I knew that their time is up and we'll be killing them hopefully soon

Speaker 4 I was watching that

Speaker 4 and it's still very vivid in my memory

Speaker 4 yeah

Speaker 4 what were the

Speaker 5 prelim conversations that were happening after that at the SEAL team?

Speaker 4 Time to start killing these bastards. You know,

Speaker 4 SEAL teams, I think, is that the attitude is a bit different.

Speaker 4 You know, when I went to Iraq,

Speaker 4 especially after what I've witnessed, what I've seen on September 11,

Speaker 4 I did not go there to win hearts and minds. Fuck their hearts and their minds.
I want them to

Speaker 4 kill them, to kill the terrorists. I didn't,

Speaker 4 that's all I was thinking. That's kill as many, as many as you can.
The only regret I have from Iraq, we didn't kill enough of them.

Speaker 4 And I'm

Speaker 4 taking it very seriously, because even today,

Speaker 4 decades after

Speaker 4 the war,

Speaker 4 what happened there, I still question myself, what if we get that son of the, if we kill this bastard, if we didn't get him, let him get away, if we kill the son of the bitch, maybe one of my brothers our brothers would come back home whether it was army marines or or or or the navy you know that's for us they're all brothers and they we all in that fight together so sometimes i dwell on it you know maybe we if we could kill the bastards get rid of them then there would be

Speaker 4 some of our brothers would come back you know because I believe that

Speaker 4 you know the best way to win war on terror is to terrorize the terrorists. I am a terrorist terrorizer.

Speaker 4 I have no qualms dealing with these scambags.

Speaker 4 You cannot reason with terrorists. You just have to kill them and get rid of them.
And that

Speaker 4 was my attitude when I went to Iraq to fight on behalf of America and American people.

Speaker 5 And so,

Speaker 5 how long was it after September 11th that you

Speaker 4 well?

Speaker 4 So the West Coast was already in the war, right? They were fighting.

Speaker 4 I think, I don't know, the invasion happened, like March or something, 2003, in Iraq.

Speaker 4 Something at the beginning of the year. We deployed, my platoon, SEAL platoon, deployed to Central South America at the time.
So we're working there.

Speaker 4 In the middle of deployment, I get a call, say, hey, Drago,

Speaker 4 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 stuff with them. So you pack your stuff.

Speaker 4 You are three months into deployment, I think. So you're going to went there for three months.
So keep up the six-month cycle.

Speaker 4 And then

Speaker 4 you can buy and start your regular workup with your new platoon and stuff.

Speaker 4 So, in the middle of the platoon, in the middle of deployment, you know, you can imagine the guys being pissed off because we are aggressive guys, we are type A personalities.

Speaker 4 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 am leaving to back that, they were, Grego, I want to go there too.

Speaker 4 Where the hell, you are, how did you pull this off? You know, well, I didn't, they were just asked, I was ordered to go there, but they all wanted to go.

Speaker 4 I don't know a CEO who would not want to go to war. Me neither.

Speaker 4 So I know they were kind of like pissed off, but the good way. They were very supportive.
And then so I left after

Speaker 4 three months in the deployment for the three months. And

Speaker 4 we were very busy. We were busy every single night, pretty much.
And then when

Speaker 4 the three months came in, like

Speaker 4 I don't hear anything from my command. And I was calling sometimes Rob O'Neill.

Speaker 4 We're really good friends. And we did the entire platoon with Jacko together.
That was the second platoon. And then the platoon I'm talking right now is my third platoon.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 I call him and say, hey, Rob, just tell the command I'm here. I'm doing fine.
I don't need anything. He says, yeah, I got you, Drago.

Speaker 4 But that three months passed, I don't hear from my command anything.

Speaker 4 They asked me if

Speaker 4 I would extend my stay

Speaker 4 in Baghdad, the West Coast guys. I say, Absolutely, yes, sign me up.
I'm not going, I don't want to go back. So then I call Robonio, I say, hey, Rob, I'm still here.
Just don't tell them anything.

Speaker 4 Just keep it quiet. I'm still here in Baghdad.
So he's yeah, I write on dragon.

Speaker 4 So once every while I call Robon El and I write him notes, hey, I'm still here, I'm doing good, don't tell them anything, don't tell them I'm here.

Speaker 4 And so there's like this from these three months to five, six, seven, eight, nine months. And I think I would stay there longer, but my NVGs broke, so I had to count the command for new NVGs.

Speaker 4 And they got me, they said, hey, where are you at? I said, Baghdad, how long? Or like almost a year on deployment.

Speaker 5 Well, hold on.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 5 you went to.

Speaker 5 You deployed to Iraq?

Speaker 4 In 2003. With who?

Speaker 4 With. I deployed.

Speaker 4 by myself. They sent me there to work with the CLT-5

Speaker 4 and to help coordinate C-L1-5,

Speaker 4 the missions between C-L-T-IV and Grom. But we skipped the one platoon because there was a platoon with Jacko that I did before, right before that.

Speaker 4 So there was the platoon to Middle East too. There was a first C-L-T-2-Strike platoon.
And we,

Speaker 4 this is the time when we hijacked the Russian tanker, the Volga Neft,

Speaker 4 in the year 2000. So that was

Speaker 4 a very good platoon. So it was Jacko

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 4 one second, so that was my first, that was my fourth platoon, I think. This is getting mixed up.
So

Speaker 4 first was to Italy when Algrady got shut down. The second one was to Bosnia.
Third one was with Jacko. Okay, so the third one was with Jacko.
So

Speaker 4 with the...

Speaker 4 After the first platoon,

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 when we went to Frenchies, to L'Oréan to train with the Frenchies,

Speaker 4 what

Speaker 4 ugly guys.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 Chris, he put like so many plates on their bar to do the bench press.

Speaker 4 He bent that bar,

Speaker 4 the plates started falling off. So the Frenchies got all pissed off that we intentionally are destroying their equipment.
Another Rob

Speaker 4 just was doing the military military presses like 225 pounds or something. I mean we're strong, we're big.
And these little French guys, they look like the ballerinas.

Speaker 4 They have those pandex little pants. Well

Speaker 4 yeah, I mean and you know then the nasty part of it is that when the on the Pep Billet we had a French officer with us.

Speaker 4 and Siltin too and we just tried to help him and cater to him the best we could get him the best trips best per dime and all that stuff so when we

Speaker 4 left to France, and then maybe like six months later, when we deploy to Bosnia, we actually had the decide to have some exercise with the French guys, with this where this guy was stationed.

Speaker 4 So, we called these guys, hey, we are coming. You know, are you excited? You know, we're gonna see your old friends.
It was like, okay, yeah, just come on in and click.

Speaker 4 We show up on the Lorienne, the gate of their things. It was a winter time, sleeting, raining.
We sit on our bags and

Speaker 4 on our

Speaker 4 gear for like three hours before that bastard showed up. And he showed up not to welcome us, he showed up and said, all right, I know you guys, I know you SEALs.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And then they didn't want to work with us. You know, they

Speaker 4 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 already tight pants.

Speaker 4 So I say, just give them the tutu and you have a perfect ballerina. So,

Speaker 4 yeah, and then we walk into their gym and they have those like jumping jacks, you know,

Speaker 4 their weights, like what they were using, was like five pounders and six pounders. And we have one of the strongest guys in the serial teams, Chris, and he walks in, he breaks their freaking

Speaker 4 equipment. They get even more pissed off.
They didn't want to jump with us. We didn't do anything with these guys.

Speaker 4 And so they didn't really like, I guess they didn't like us. And we stopped liking them too.
Because

Speaker 4 I remember one of the guys asked Chris, Chris Stroop. I can say his name because I asked him for permission for it.
So again, that was one of the

Speaker 4 strongest. team guy I met, I have met.
And also he created the programs for us, how to get big and strong. By the time time we finished that deployment, where entire platoon was over 200 pounds each.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 that was Chris's big contribution to make us stronger and better. So

Speaker 4 they just...

Speaker 4 We just couldn't get along, I guess, very well. And

Speaker 4 one of these guys asked Chris, well, you are so big, can you run?

Speaker 4 Unlike you, we don't run away from the battlefield, so we

Speaker 4 know

Speaker 4 I don't have to run that fast, but I can beat you up.

Speaker 4 And then, you know, we had an international incident,

Speaker 4 two of them actually.

Speaker 4 So first one, we're going to San Mauritz to do some exercises there in Switzerland. So we decided we'll fly once or C-130 and we jump on the lake in San Mauritz,

Speaker 4 this big frozen lake. And it 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.

Speaker 4 So when we jump out of it, we could have maybe five, six seconds delay, we could see the mountains just going on both sides in free form. Then we opened parachutes.

Speaker 4 Well what we didn't know and we decided to get a shortcut instead of ferrying our ammunition to the convoy to the roads from Germany to Switzerland. We say, well, how would it?

Speaker 4 We just loaded up our guns, we put the ammo in the Bruck Sacks, and we jump in. So we did, and there was a bunch of civilians on this lake walking, you know, doing that.

Speaker 4 There were like trails made up on this lake, on the ice.

Speaker 4 So we basically jump right into the civilian population, and they look at us, so we just unload the gun, you pull the, you know, unload the guns, make safe, and they've seen it.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 I think we're the first troops since the Second World War that landed in Switzerland with loaded guns. So this was like, all right, I know my platoon actually will do a lot of explanation to do.

Speaker 4 But then we go to,

Speaker 4 we are invited to, it was the time when the Switzerland was accused of stealing

Speaker 4 gold from Holocaust victims. And

Speaker 4 there was even a lawsuit going

Speaker 4 filed because of that.

Speaker 4 Try to recover the gold that supposedly Swiss stole from Jewish people and Holocaust victims. But we were invited to dinner up there.

Speaker 4 We already got over jumping into the San Mauriti, into San Mauritz with loaded guns.

Speaker 4 So we got over, we barely got over with that. We are invited to dinner now.
So

Speaker 4 they went like a top of the mountain. So we go on this little train, like a choo-choo thing, and go straight up.
So we go up there, we are the best restaurant, supposedly in San Mauriti.

Speaker 4 And the guy who was guiding us says, say, hey,

Speaker 4 so this is Chef San So. He's such a great chef known in the entire world.
And he has like five golden spoons here. Chef, can you go run up, bring the spoon?

Speaker 4 Like, I never hold the gold thing, maybe ring, but entire spoon of gold and never hold my my life so i was like holy shit this heavy solid wow you know i can brag about it i was holding the gold spoon in my hand so when the the spoon went around everybody until we went to chris

Speaker 4 the the strongest guy he looked at this say like well chef so how many

Speaker 4 you think

Speaker 4 That gold of yours, how many Jewish teeth went into that spoon?

Speaker 4 That was like, I got quiet.

Speaker 4 The guy woke up, took the spoon, he left. We never seen the guy again.
We're just ushered out very quickly, out of the restaurant, go down, and we never were allowed to go to the restaurant again.

Speaker 4 Holy shit. But you know what? There was legitimate, I guess, legitimate questions.

Speaker 4 I believe, in my opinion, the gold, the Swiss were stealing that Holocaust victims' gold, and they were benefiting of the Second World War. So the guy had the balls to ask about it.

Speaker 4 But you can cut it out.

Speaker 4 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.
There's a legitimate question. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Because that basically, that gold that,

Speaker 4 in my opinion, was stolen by Switzerland from Holocas Viking.

Speaker 5 That's interesting. I didn't

Speaker 5 know much about it.

Speaker 4 Well, actually, there was a lawsuit filed by

Speaker 4 people trying to recover that gold. I don't know.
I think they came to some agreement, but you can Google it up.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 1978,

Speaker 4 I'm sorry, 1998

Speaker 4 time frame. So yeah, that's

Speaker 5 wow. I had no idea.
I don't know anything about that. That's

Speaker 5 just

Speaker 5 asking a question.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 he was just asking the question because

Speaker 4 these people, they suffered so much. The Holocaust,

Speaker 4 it's hard to imagine for people, but there's millions of people that were murdered just for being who they were.

Speaker 4 This is something that could only happen in socialist state. Please remember that Germany was socialist state.
Adolf Hitler was socialist. So we're talking about national socialism.

Speaker 4 But, you know, whatever flavor of socialism it is,

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 a socialist state.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 5 was your Iraq deployment the first time you saw actual combat?

Speaker 4 Yeah, that was the first time I seen the combat.

Speaker 5 And so

Speaker 5 let's talk about that. So you've done

Speaker 5 four deployments

Speaker 5 and then you finally go to Iraq to see actual combats.

Speaker 4 Yes. We've seen a little bit of in Bosnia, not so much combat, but we've seen the war scene.
We've seen

Speaker 4 some of the atrocities committed there in Bosnia.

Speaker 4 We hijacked the Russian tanker and that time there was like a holy shit, the supermission, you know, like today is really not a big deal, but at the time, you know, to go and

Speaker 4 do VBSS on a Russian tanker was really significant.

Speaker 5 Let's talk about that then.

Speaker 4 Oh, that's that's the Russian tanker? Yeah. That was actually funny.
So that was the Jocko's platoon. Jocko and Mr.

Speaker 4 Queen F.

Speaker 5 This was field team two? Field team? I didn't realize Jocko was ever on the East Coast.

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah, he was my AOIC.

Speaker 5 I've never met him.

Speaker 4 This platoon, yeah. Oh, I told you, it is a great guy.
It's a great leader.

Speaker 5 It's what I hear.

Speaker 4 Yes, yes. I was honored to serve under his command.
Very aggressive guy. We love that.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 when we got the permission to take down the tanker,

Speaker 4 you know, there's always competition between the team guys, right? And there's one squad, another squad, it was like, oh, yeah, we are better. No, we are better.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 my squad was taking it down because we had like three Russian speakers. I speak Russian.
I speak Russian, Polish, and Japanese.

Speaker 5 You studied Japanese? Yes.

Speaker 5 Where did you learn Japanese?

Speaker 4 When I was doing kickboxing, and I figured out that

Speaker 4 some of those commands, I said, well, I can understand the commands, but why don't just learn the Japanese?

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 I did not speak Polish, so I was able to help.

Speaker 4 You know, I forgot now, it's like 40 years now, but I forgot a lot, not everything.

Speaker 4 But so I was a Russian speaker, we had Rob, who was a Russian speaker, and our OIC, Mr. Queen F, great officer, he was the Russian speaker.
So we had the three Russian speakers in the initial assault.

Speaker 4 And the problem is that they already knew, they were looking at them. What was the, well, hold on, what was the tanker? Volgoneft? I think Volgonev 142.

Speaker 4 You can Google it up. It's online.
A matter of fact,

Speaker 4 we are in Balaclavas, but there's a picture of me standing on the bridge

Speaker 4 on the Volgoneft.

Speaker 5 What were you taking the tanker down for?

Speaker 4 They were smuggling oil from Iraq illegally. There was a Russian tanker who smuggled the oil um

Speaker 4 so we were tasked to take it down but they knew it already uh we're on the monterey uh uh uh

Speaker 4 i think frigate frigate frigate frigate frigate

Speaker 4 and uh

Speaker 4 the i like the captain he he's like okay i was told by command that we cannot come closer to that ship than like a maybe mile

Speaker 4 so but but if you want if you if you want to get closer to it i come close

Speaker 4 because

Speaker 4 they told me mile, but I can measure that mile with my own stick. So, he just put almost next to them.
So, we look at them and say, yeah, there's a bunch of younger guys and there were some women.

Speaker 4 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 really easy.

Speaker 4 But because of the concern that maybe a firefight can ensue,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 not to cause the international incidents, no foreign fighter,

Speaker 4 foreign forces invading or getting into another country. So we had to be quick.
And I remember two o'clock in the night,

Speaker 4 Rob Oniel came, he woke me up and say, dude, let's go. We need to go get dressed.
So

Speaker 4 it's like, I think it was nine of us. It was Jacko

Speaker 4 was one of them. Mr.
Fiona, we just got like 18.

Speaker 4 And it's not like the other guys were no team. Everybody was 18.
And they just pick us up on what we can do and stuff. So we flew over it.

Speaker 4 we fast roboned the tanker we got this tanker down under i think two minutes if not the minute and they were already yeah they were already turning into the territorial waters so we just had to go and learn how to turn it over i have a cool picture with me at the actually at the helm steering that tanker and um

Speaker 4 We did, we turned it over and then we searched the ship of course make sure there's no weapons left or anything and this is where the the competition between the team guys and the the squads come in so we took down the target

Speaker 4 the target we

Speaker 4 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 well let's go bring that other squad the other guys came in we packed we left

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And you can hear this, they have a big bug clinking clunking shit in it so we're like well what did we miss you know that's not really good doesn't look good and so we look into the bag and it's like freaking spoons forks and butter knives it's 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 it's like come on all right so so we just whatever but jacko standing on the on the bridge the guy is still clunking that weapon.

Speaker 4 He takes the binoculars.

Speaker 4 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? It's like

Speaker 4 so we go and change.

Speaker 4 And the first thing, Russians are pissed. You know, they were very, they were good people, I think.
They were just...

Speaker 4 Well, good people. They were thieves.
They were smoking oil. But they were...

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 they are pissed.

Speaker 4 They were compliant. But when we come back, they are pissed.
So like, what's going on? We want our forks and knives and spoons back. I was like,

Speaker 4 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 didn't speak English. And they say, well, we would, but we don't have teeth.

Speaker 4 And just like pull out, it's like,

Speaker 4 they had no teeth. There was like,

Speaker 4 if you put all the teeth together from the crew, I don't think you will have one full set.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 I talked to Jack, I explained to him what happened. He said, I was getting the knives back and their forks and their spools.
So we call back

Speaker 4 the boat came in. We hauled the big bag with their spools.
And they were happy like they can be. There were no issues with them whatsoever.

Speaker 5 How many of them were there?

Speaker 4 I think maybe like

Speaker 4 15 or 16, something like that. It was

Speaker 4 not that many.

Speaker 4 And then I had the argument with the.

Speaker 5 How did you board the ship?

Speaker 4 Hilo, we we we fast rope on it

Speaker 4 so and I know it was planned already because I was I was the A-Robes guy, so I was told to rehearse guys on the very tall fast roping, so we're using the 120-foot rope in

Speaker 4 in uh in Bahrain, I think we were in Bahrain at the time, uh we're using 120 foot rope just to practice the

Speaker 4 fast roping right on the mark and the hills were practicing it too. So that was already planned I think ahead.

Speaker 4 They knew this ship would come out of Iraq with the Iraqi oil and we're gonna try to intercept it. So we practiced that and then it was easy.
We just

Speaker 4 at two o'clock in the morning, rolled in over the ship, throw the ropes and just slide down it. That was pretty cool at the time.
Right on.

Speaker 4 That was pretty cool.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you know, and I never did any VBSS in the SIL teams. Just one training app, that's it.

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah. So that's for us.
It was at that time, it was a big deal. Because we did a small one, we did got a couple of DAOs with their,

Speaker 4 they were smuggling, maybe something. We didn't bother with that, but take down the big tanker and the Russian flag was something.
So we did that.

Speaker 4 We didn't torment the crew, and the crew was not really,

Speaker 4 you know, they did what

Speaker 4 they had to do, but they were not

Speaker 4 cowering or anything. They were just like normal people, you know.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 5 let's take another quick break. When we come back, we'll pick back up in Iraq.

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Speaker 5 Let's get back to the show.

Speaker 5 All right, Drago, we're back from the break. Let's pick up to your first deployment to Iraq,

Speaker 5 where you saw a lot of combat, it sounds like. So you went from South America to Iraq to be a liaison with SIAL Team 5 for the Polish Grom.
Yes.

Speaker 5 And so

Speaker 5 a lot of questions, but I just

Speaker 5 let's start with what was it like for you

Speaker 5 to go to combat and to be a liaison with the Polish Grom

Speaker 5 being Polish?

Speaker 4 Yeah, well, for me,

Speaker 4 first thing I didn't know what the Grom was.

Speaker 4 I was told there was Polish Special Forces.

Speaker 4 And when I checked in Baghdad, I had a brief from my commanders. And they were kind of a bit standard officials, say, well, we don't know who these guys are.
And

Speaker 4 they briefed me on what's expected, what we need to do. But I was thinking, like, the best way to find out is just to go on the hub with them and do it, work with them.

Speaker 4 But I was like, well, we don't know these guys.

Speaker 4 that well you know we cannot risk your life because you know how it is is it dicey you know in those missions missions sometimes, especially the assaults and direct action mission.

Speaker 4 And I understand that because if something was to happen to me while I'm working with Grome, that could be some repercussions to my commanders too, that they allow these things to happen.

Speaker 4 But I was able to convince them. I say like, no,

Speaker 4 if we want to be effective, I mean, we need to cooperate closely, but I need to be with them too as well.

Speaker 4 So they allow me to, for maybe like first three missions, and then it was like, oh, I'll say, yeah, these guys are great.

Speaker 4 okay yeah do it you know that's fine let's coordinate let's do we did start doing assaults together so very often we we need more we needed more people we bring the grom guys if grom needed more people he used us on the assault and then one night we did the set up the perimeter and 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.

Speaker 4 So, how were they?

Speaker 5 Did they operate the same as we did?

Speaker 4 They operate pretty much the same way. We find out that their tactics are good, their weapons are pretty much the same.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 We didn't really register it. And they were quick too.
Their assault techniques were very fast, and

Speaker 4 I would would say I don't say brutal but these guys are

Speaker 4 consumed professionals they don't tolerate any deviation from their SOPs you know unless there's some flexibility is needed to save lives or to accomplish the mission but otherwise they are they are well trained and again like I say they are fast the funny thing is when we sometimes when we snatch the bandits, terrorists, we had to get them with us.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So to evacuate, sometimes they just, once they handcuff the guy, we handcuff the guys.

Speaker 4 So when we walk them down the stairs, Grom just tossed them to the window, the other guys who were waiting, they caught them, throw them on the Humvee, and here we go.

Speaker 4 So our guys were asking sometimes, what is so fast? I say, because they don't fuck it out.

Speaker 4 They're just like, when they have a terrorist in their hands, the guy is just flying out of the window to into a Grome's caring hands and they put him on the Humvee and they are ready to go.

Speaker 4 So that was kind of surprising for me too, because I didn't expect them to be so well trained and so well coordinated.

Speaker 4 Their assaults were working just like ours, you know, very similar, if not the same tactics, because they learned from the same people. So

Speaker 4 they had the exposure also more exposure to SAS and German special forces. But this was not

Speaker 4 that was

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 work on

Speaker 4 accomplishing the mission. So our missions were together.

Speaker 5 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

Speaker 5 to an adjacent

Speaker 5 Ford operating base, and those guys were busy. They were going out

Speaker 5 several times a night. They had these dune buggy-looking things, and they were just tearing it up.
Yeah. But,

Speaker 5 and made me extremely jealous to watch. But I was like, oh, man.

Speaker 5 Yeah, so what about their team dynamic? Do they have a good camaraderie?

Speaker 4 Same like ours.

Speaker 4 That's much different. Yeah.

Speaker 4 They are very close with each other. I would say because they are way smaller than us, they are very close.

Speaker 4 These guys know each other better than they know their family members, just like us, too, you know.

Speaker 4 So, yeah,

Speaker 4 that was very

Speaker 4 not only educational for me,

Speaker 4 I think for all of us to work with them. It was also very pleasant, very nice to work with them doing the assaults, take down the targets.

Speaker 4 We really enjoy working together. And it was getting to the point even that some of our guys were coming in.
I said, hey, Drago, can you help me? Can you talk to Grom guys so I can do assault

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And I have quite a few pictures of it too as well from our guys working together with Grom.

Speaker 5 Did they speak English?

Speaker 4 At that time they did not. Today there's a requirement.
You cannot be in the Grom

Speaker 4 without speaking English. So they are very proficient.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Besides in Poland now English is very popular. Like before everybody had to know Russian.
Like in my case, we had to learn Russian.

Speaker 4 Today, nobody forced people to learn English, but people want to learn English because it's so productive, because it's so empowering.

Speaker 5 What were the, I mean, I'm just curious, what were your conversations with them?

Speaker 5 I mean,

Speaker 4 there was very technical ones because, you know, doing

Speaker 4 the assault mission with the direct action mission

Speaker 4 within the foreign unit is could be very dangerous. So we did rehearse things.
You know, I had to learn their way of communication, their tactics. Because I speak Polish,

Speaker 4 then there was no issue to learn that stuff. But the first conversation was just, yeah, incorporate me into their structures.
And that was

Speaker 4 a little bit intense. But they were great guys, so they were very helpful.
A lot of fun too, a lot of laughing, because my Polish was very rusty at the time.

Speaker 4 Things that I still do say things that means totally different things that I intend to say. But at that time, yeah, so they were very helpful.

Speaker 4 But then we started drinking together, we started having a party together too, whenever there was a chance. It was a bit loud,

Speaker 4 if we could. And

Speaker 4 this is how we created bonds.

Speaker 4 that persist even today between those team guys who worked with Grome or even those who didn't but heard about our missions with Grome. that

Speaker 4 big friendship continued too. They still come here sometimes, the States.
When we go up there, they are always helpful, try to help you and accommodate our guys.

Speaker 4 So the friendship that we create on the battlefield continues and

Speaker 4 still is

Speaker 4 very close.

Speaker 5 I mean, you had not been back to Poland since you left, correct?

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 5 So did you have a lot of questions about

Speaker 4 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 of days, three days visit in Gdańsk.

Speaker 4 We didn't work with Grome, we worked with their commandos from Formoza

Speaker 4 unit.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 so I kind of like a little bit seen.

Speaker 4 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, you know, as not maybe as a hero, but I was greeted as a a valuable,

Speaker 4 respectable person. That was very kind of different for me,

Speaker 4 that first visit. And then,

Speaker 4 but yeah, that was a very short visit. So the first longer visit that was later on when I retired from the Navy.

Speaker 5 So I mean, do they have questions for you about what your

Speaker 4 childhood was like?

Speaker 4 You know, for them, the more significant thing was that I was part of the Solidarity Trade Union Movement in Poland in the the 1980s.

Speaker 4 For them, the big deal was that I participate in underground structures and I resist communism. For them it was very fascinating that

Speaker 4 I spent time in prison fighting for Polish freedom. So they were very

Speaker 4 respectful of that.

Speaker 4 But otherwise there was a lot of questions about America, you know,

Speaker 4 how is the life, how are the people,

Speaker 4 how did it happen that I succeed,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 Did they have, I mean,

Speaker 5 there was a lot of

Speaker 5 chatter back and forth about it. Did you were you very curious about what Poland was like now?

Speaker 4 Or did you? At that time, I was curious because,

Speaker 4 again, remember, they were part of the Warsaw Pact. They were opposing us,

Speaker 4 NATO. So they were trained to fight us.
And suddenly here we are working very close.

Speaker 4 I think we work so close with them. I don't remember in combat working, any other forces from different countries working that close with us, with SEALs, as Polish Grom did.
So

Speaker 4 they earned a lot of respect

Speaker 4 in our community, but also I believe we earn a lot of respect for them. For them was curious, you know, how the foreigner like me

Speaker 4 can come, somebody like me can come to America and join the more secret

Speaker 4 forces, the tip of the spear that America has. So

Speaker 4 they were a little bit fascinated by this. How is it possible?

Speaker 4 We know in our units the foreigners cannot serve. You have to be U.S.
citizen, you have to have access to secret clearance. You have to have a secret clearance to serve in SEAL teams.

Speaker 4 So that's something that

Speaker 4 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 do this or that,

Speaker 4 there's no politicians there saying that you can't.

Speaker 4 In America, there is nobody there holding you back and say you can't do that.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 there. I want people to use this book as that vantage point to see it, how

Speaker 4 different we are, that the America that was built on goodness, on personal freedom,

Speaker 4 on being strong and independent, and on the faith

Speaker 4 that

Speaker 4 make America so great. And this also rolls into the way people in America treat other people with compassion, with help.
And I experience

Speaker 4 every single one of this. So, yeah.

Speaker 4 Do you think they were fascinated by this?

Speaker 5 Did any of them want to come over?

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 some of them did.

Speaker 5 No kidding.

Speaker 4 Asking you about, hey, can I I be a SEAL? I say, well, why would you want to be a SEAL? You are the one in the top tier of the

Speaker 4 special forces.

Speaker 4 But you know, somebody was asking, they say, is it possible? Because this is something...

Speaker 5 What did they say when you asked why?

Speaker 4 Was that?

Speaker 4 What did they tell you? They say because SEALs have the reputation they have, because we are the best.

Speaker 4 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 say, well, you know, I didn't do it because

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 I joined the military because I had to, my debt of freedom that I had to pay back.

Speaker 4 But you don't have to do it. You're living in a free country.
Wow. Wow.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 that's what I told myself when I came to America. And that's what I follow with today.

Speaker 4 That's my pledge to America and American people.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 let's talk about... So you got to Iraq, you start seeing real combat.

Speaker 5 What was your first engagement in Iraq?

Speaker 4 I think first we did snatch a couple of the guys

Speaker 4 in the high-riser, so we did breach. We got the guys out of

Speaker 4 that We are so quick that they had no no chance to to to to do anything so yeah we got them and this is where I learned that not everything that we learned in the breaching school actually

Speaker 4 works like that some of the breaching charges for example I don't want to go into details here were not very effective were not

Speaker 4 or were outright dangerous to

Speaker 4 to not so much to us but to people on target we find out we found out that most of these targets were hitting they were terrorists hiding behind women and children. And they tend to put them

Speaker 4 next to the front door or somewhere close so they can have a route of escape while we stumble over their family members. And

Speaker 4 breaching the way we used to do was very...

Speaker 4 could be potentially life-threatening to people there.

Speaker 4 And we had to change. Matter of fact, we had army guys

Speaker 4 in charge of the theater. I think

Speaker 4 they call us to

Speaker 4 scale down with the breaching because they don't want civilians to get hurt.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 available to all of us. And that was widely used later by Syria teams in Baghdad and in Iraq.
So

Speaker 4 that was pretty good stuff.

Speaker 4 I remember I was breaching the steel door with the woman. We didn't know at the time yet, but she was maybe like three feet, two feet away from the steel door.
And

Speaker 4 I breached the steel door. When inside, she was uninjured.
Well, we trample over her because she got scared and fell down on the floor as we rush into the apartment, to that house.

Speaker 4 We trampled her a little bit, but otherwise she was untouched. If I use any of the other other charges that we used to train with, I would kill that woman.

Speaker 4 So for me,

Speaker 4 it means a lot too that

Speaker 4 I contribute not only to killing these people, but the bad guys, but also to saving those lives that were innocent on target.

Speaker 5 What was the

Speaker 5 What was the daily life routine there? Were you guys going out all the time?

Speaker 4 We became

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So that's kind of good things. But the life was,

Speaker 4 we wake up in the maybe three o'clock, sometimes four o'clock in the afternoon.

Speaker 4 get ready, rehearse what we need to rehearse, plan for the mission.

Speaker 4 At two o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning, we started the time, we didn't use the same time.

Speaker 4 We

Speaker 4 got in the Hunvis, we rode 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 We actually had to remove the doors from our Han Vis. So we had a couple guys, a few guys on the pie on the back and our seats were facing outwards.

Speaker 4 We put the installed skids on the side of the car outside. So we were sitting facing outside with the guns.
We actually looked like a porcupine. Han V was looking like a porcupine.

Speaker 4 I have like 17 hours video from my helmet camera from those DAs. So this is something that

Speaker 4 when I'm looking now, it's just

Speaker 4 incredible how we could get away with stuff that

Speaker 4 today has the battlefield requirements and the tactics change may not be able to do so. But at that time we are

Speaker 4 sometimes we were just lucky to do it.

Speaker 5 What was the first stop where you killed an enemy combatant?

Speaker 4 That was we breached the

Speaker 4 we breached the

Speaker 4 those two apartments next to each other and we breached one

Speaker 4 the other guy there's two doors were breached the one guy was

Speaker 4 kind of jumped away to the dirt there were the holes pre-made in the opposite wall the long hallway and when we went in uh just like it just happened the guy was just standing next to me so just

Speaker 4 the other one was in the Hamvey we were driving I think we were driving back to base and there was a vehicle came in and just like

Speaker 4 trying to pull next to us, pull next to us, and

Speaker 4 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 three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning on the way back.

Speaker 4 No, I'm sorry, we're just driving on another mission too, because we were hitting multiple targets at the time. So I just have to stop him, and I stopped the guy.
So

Speaker 5 did that affect you at all?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 5 No? Killing never affected you?

Speaker 4 Not really because I did what was right for America and

Speaker 4 there was just

Speaker 4 we were all prepared. I never seen in Iraq

Speaker 4 anything that I was not prepared to see. I never did in Iraq anything I was not prepared to do by US Navy.
So I it really not really

Speaker 4 that didn't bother me at all. I wish I could kill more of them

Speaker 4 because like I say earlier, if we

Speaker 4 If they if that one that got away, maybe we were able to kill him some of our brothers would come back to

Speaker 4 come back home. Maybe that was that guy who got one of us.

Speaker 4 So that that ways in me sometimes at night I think about those who get away and I would like to kill.

Speaker 4 You guys were doing multiple targets a night yes sometimes sometimes at night sometimes daytime hitting daytime targets too

Speaker 4 it depends you know like

Speaker 4 we our missions were 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 get the guy we prefer nights of course most of our missions were at night but it was nothing unusual to do something at daytime if we had to do it we were prepared for either way

Speaker 5 you guys did

Speaker 5 over a hundred direct actions

Speaker 5 in one amount of time was it what amount of time

Speaker 4 well

Speaker 4 the time

Speaker 4 yeah well that was within the first year in iraq wow

Speaker 5 most of it what was your bronze star for with

Speaker 4 uh on target and it was a hand-to-hand combat

Speaker 4 with the insurgent. And we needed this guy, we needed this guy alive, so

Speaker 4 I was able to go and

Speaker 4 basically kick his ass, bug and tag him, and take him out.

Speaker 5 Can you be a little more descriptive?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I don't want to go into too much details because, you know,

Speaker 4 today's environment. But basically, he

Speaker 4 tried to move away. We need to go stop him.
and I was on the way. So, when he rushed through me,

Speaker 4 he didn't make it. And he ended up

Speaker 4 actually

Speaker 4 tried to do it again. And

Speaker 4 he was pretty aggressive.

Speaker 4 So,

Speaker 4 the easiest way was to kill the guy, but we needed this guy, so I was able to go take him down and eventually

Speaker 4 pump him a little bit, and handcuff him and bring him down so yeah that was the guy what who was it

Speaker 4 um that was i don't remember who he who he was but we have the list of the guys

Speaker 4 that was

Speaker 4 there were so many of them i just don't

Speaker 4 remember that this particular guy who who he was i remember i see his face i see his uh you know i still vividly remember that but uh yeah how did you get him down?

Speaker 4 With my fists, with my

Speaker 4 legs and my gun. So

Speaker 4 I didn't want to shoot him because, again,

Speaker 4 that was not the guy I wanted to shoot. But it came to the

Speaker 4 to the yeah, to the hand-to-hand combat. So this is what my bronze starter actually says that

Speaker 4 what happened that describes that.

Speaker 5 Drago, welcome back.

Speaker 4 Nice to be back.

Speaker 5 But,

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 Nobody wants to talk about the veracity of what they've done in combat. And

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 And I know it's hard to break through the humility,

Speaker 5 but

Speaker 5 at the same time, I mean, it's important. It's important that people

Speaker 5 understand what the sacrifices that were made over there are and what it's like.

Speaker 5 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 dollar.

Speaker 4 Yeah, thank you. You know, this is something that

Speaker 4 the way I see it is the stories are being said,

Speaker 4 some of the stories are being said quite often, and that makes almost desensitize people to

Speaker 4 what we go through. We are just human beings, just like anybody else.
But people listening to these stories, listening, watching these movies, they don't see us as human beings often, not everybody.

Speaker 4 They see often see us as just a little part of the machine if you fall out you fail

Speaker 4 you fall that just well just expect it you 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

Speaker 4 those heroes, they shouldn't be seen as just little pieces of the machine that can be easily replaced. So I was never,

Speaker 4 yeah, I try not to talk a lot about these stuffs. And nobody ever asked me about it.

Speaker 5 It's important, you know,

Speaker 5 it's documenting history, you know, and

Speaker 5 I don't think anybody sees any of the guys that I bring in here as just part of the machine or

Speaker 5 invincible because we do, you know, 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.

Speaker 5 And the reason I do that is to humanize, you know, to humanize

Speaker 5 who I'm speaking to and to humanize them in front of the audience. And so, but let's let's go in.
So let's just start at the very beginning.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that was a part that I remember that, you know, I did so many of these DAs that they got 20 years later, they all get blurred up.

Speaker 4 This one kind of sticks out because as we, so we move out, like we always work, we try to work.

Speaker 4 We did some daytime missions too, but we try to avoid. So at night, the car came in, we had to get a guy.
He was like one of the leaders in financiers, I believe. Who

Speaker 4 we don't want to kill him, just need this guy. So

Speaker 4 we came to the sad point,

Speaker 4 and then

Speaker 5 was this a capture-kill?

Speaker 4 It was capture or kill, yes, yes, yes. Preferable capture.

Speaker 4 But, you know, like

Speaker 4 we never had this

Speaker 4 type of priorities that you cannot kill the guy,

Speaker 4 you have to capture him. That's a very dangerous concept.

Speaker 4 But so for us, it was, you know, like, if we can, we try to capture the guy, but we will really try it. So

Speaker 4 we came to the side point, we disembark and patrol towards the target.

Speaker 4 And as we patrolled, we made it like maybe like

Speaker 4 20, 30 yards from that where we were supposed to cross over the fence, then the whole hell broke loose. And that was just like the bullets were flying everywhere.

Speaker 4 And you know how it is that you don't, in urban environment, it's kind of sometimes difficult to pinpoint when the shots are coming from, especially here from behind you, in front of the sides, and then

Speaker 4 you don't see masoflage. If you see masoflage, yeah, you know where

Speaker 4 it 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.

Speaker 4 So we just move along that fence that's a few yards back, we put the ladders while all the shit is going on, we cross that thing,

Speaker 4 we approach the doors, I breach the door, we blew the door up.

Speaker 5 What did you breach it with?

Speaker 4 What's that?

Speaker 5 What did you breach it with?

Speaker 5 Explosive?

Speaker 4 Explosives, yeah, yeah, yeah, we breached with explosives.

Speaker 4 At the time, most of our bridges were with explosives.

Speaker 4 You know, it gives us that extra couple seconds when the enemy is disoriented, where the terrorists are disoriented, so we can take the advantage of it. So it was preferable entry method for us.

Speaker 4 And then I, so as we bridge, we entered the house, it was pretty big house,

Speaker 4 and we kind of knew the

Speaker 4 how it is set up because we have the intel, know what to expect inside, even inside.

Speaker 4 And there was like, as we entered, it was like a short hallway, and then it was like maybe two feet to the right, and there was a wall up, so you you can see the wall.

Speaker 4 The guy was standing behind the door when I blew the door, so he just backed out.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So, he's doing nothing, just standing there.

Speaker 4 He's blind from the flash. And so, I throw him on the ground, I back him and tag him, and then I move on to the.

Speaker 5 What do you mean, bag him and tag him? Well, just

Speaker 4 basically

Speaker 4 make him ready to be

Speaker 4 move out.

Speaker 5 And what does that entail for the audience? Yeah, I know what that means, but what are the titles?

Speaker 4 Oh, okay. So basically, subdue the guy, handcuff the guy.
You know, you can say bag and tag, basically kill the guy, put in the body bag, and move him away, but that's not what I mean,

Speaker 4 I guess. Just throw him on the ground, handcuff him, get the guy ready to be move out.
So we did that, and I joined the guys and clearing the house. And the shed is still going on outside.

Speaker 4 So when I

Speaker 4 we walked to the second floor I don't remember it was two

Speaker 4 or three floors I think it was two floors but it was a big house so as we clear the rooms and one of the room as we enter it there was a crazy I think the craziest thing I have 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.

Speaker 4 Anyway, he just bumps into into me, so throws him on the ground, he drops the gun. So now I look at this guy,

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 as the fight is going on, I'm getting the car. Well, I could shoot the guy, but he was not armed.
So really, there was no need to shoot the guy.

Speaker 4 And as the car, as I'm working with the guy, the car comes in hey drago in to stop the Grome guy Grome element is moving on the backyard and there are three guys in ambush lane so tell them stop them tell them to wait the helo 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'm 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.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 and at the same time as I'm talking to on the radio to Polish guys in Polish that don't move on that bike yard just hold on the helo is coming and I will get you there to

Speaker 4 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 a two of them came and

Speaker 4 you don't hear the

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 and then the grome 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.

Speaker 4 And then

Speaker 4 so then I relate this to our guys while I'm backing the guy. So eventually, yeah,

Speaker 4 I back him, thank him. That was the guy,

Speaker 4 but I don't know which guy it was, the one that we were after, but I think we're after all of them. So I think we hold from this target, maybe

Speaker 4 like four guys or five guys. We left,

Speaker 4 I think, some guys there.

Speaker 4 They were like,

Speaker 4 but anyway, the cow came in, hi, 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

Speaker 4 run and gun for like an hour.

Speaker 5 It's very surgical.

Speaker 4 Yeah, very surgical. So we just grabbed the guys, whoever we had, and

Speaker 4 bailed out and

Speaker 4 left. The whole neighborhood.

Speaker 5 The whole neighborhood.

Speaker 4 The whole neighborhood. Yeah, because the guy was very important.
So

Speaker 4 he had a setup, he had a security setup inside the house and outside the house in the perimeter.

Speaker 4 The perimeter was the one that opened up on us and our external security actually was ducking 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.

Speaker 4 So yeah, we got them and

Speaker 4 like I say, nobody got hurt. Those Iraqis in the ambush, they pretty quickly realized

Speaker 4 that's not a good idea.

Speaker 4 So we got them too. And that was,

Speaker 4 you know, that was memorable, but it was like one of many those missions that

Speaker 4 you do it for so long time that

Speaker 4 it became almost like a normal thing. But it's not the most memorable mission, like that,

Speaker 4 the most impactful on me mission that I did.

Speaker 5 When did you find out? Well, what was it like leaving before we got there? What was it like leaving with the whole neighborhood shooting at you guys?

Speaker 4 Well, that was

Speaker 4 pretty dicey because at the time, like when we were leaving the house, there was still shit going on.

Speaker 4 But as we were leaving, by the time there was everything was suppressed, so there was not so much. There was patch shots here and there.
You can see, you can hear the bullets cracks.

Speaker 4 You can hear bullets cracking here and there, but there was no the intensity that was at the beginning. It was at the beginning, especially when our fifties opened on the Hanvis.

Speaker 4 Holy shit, that was like whole hell broke loose.

Speaker 4 That's where we were breaching the door at the same time.

Speaker 4 So, yeah, that was

Speaker 4 that was

Speaker 4 yeah, I remember that. I just never

Speaker 4 pay attention to like each particular mission. For me,

Speaker 4 what's that?

Speaker 5 It all blends under one.

Speaker 4 All blends into one, especially if you do it for so long. And another thing, like I say, the thing more impactful for me was the one time we're in the house

Speaker 4 clearing the house

Speaker 4 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 a hallway it's like maybe

Speaker 4 30

Speaker 4 40 30 feet maybe it's pretty long hallway in the dark and you can see the commotion you can see like feet coming out

Speaker 4 and then coming out you can see like a half dresses

Speaker 4 and then you see the gun

Speaker 4 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's

Speaker 4 what he was what they were 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.

Speaker 4 He looked like, to me, 80 years old guy. So, and I can hear that.
So I had a guy on the top, I had a guy low

Speaker 4 on the opposite corner. And the guy who came low later,

Speaker 4 I could almost hear the click.

Speaker 4 I just didn't want the guy to get killed.

Speaker 4 So I just say, I got it, I got it. And I'll step in front of these guys' barrels.

Speaker 4 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 to this guy. I had my,

Speaker 4 it's very short and forced. So as I was walking up to this guy, you know, I aimed his heart.
I mean, I would just pull like if he would just try to do something because he was holding the guns.

Speaker 4 He didn't aim at me. He was like,

Speaker 4 maybe like

Speaker 4 a little bit down.

Speaker 4 So I woke up to him. I took this gun away from him.

Speaker 4 And then, so when

Speaker 4 we took the guy with us, it was one of the guys we needed.

Speaker 4 We went after. So

Speaker 4 when we were leaving, his old wife came up to me and said, like, thank you very much for not killing us.

Speaker 4 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.
Wow.

Speaker 4 And I got a lot of flag from our guys too, because, you know, think about it for a second.

Speaker 4 That was kind of selfish on me, but I just did not want this guy to get killed.

Speaker 4 Because that was very quickly pointed out to me on the debrief: what if this guy were just there and there was other guys just waiting in the dark hallway where you can't see it?

Speaker 4 We had a flashlight too, so right, we hear the commotion, put the flashlight, we see the gun, right? So

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 It was not tactically the wrong thing to do.

Speaker 4 I don't know.

Speaker 5 You felt it.

Speaker 4 I just felt it. I just felt.

Speaker 4 I don't want this guy to get shot. His old wife, you know, they're holding hands on each other.
This guy is just barely walking. They have still those house shoes, those flip-flops on.

Speaker 4 And then, yeah, and he's holding this guy and shaking like this. And I remember

Speaker 4 you can see the

Speaker 4 dark spot on his pajamas.

Speaker 4 And I think he still had this funny hat with his like this little

Speaker 4 funny ball you know just like

Speaker 4 you see in the cartoons

Speaker 4 so yeah that that's that sticks out to me for two reasons once 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

Speaker 4 I was afraid he is about to be shot. And, you know, this woman standing by him.
Wow.

Speaker 4 So yeah, that was very

Speaker 4 impactful on me. I don't know what was brave, my supposedly was stupid, but it was just, I just felt it was the right thing to do.

Speaker 4 You know, if I could get shot, because you know that these guys are not worrying about this stuff.

Speaker 4 If there was somebody there, there was many times they just shoot their own people just to get to you. So

Speaker 4 there wouldn't be any hesitation.

Speaker 4 And yeah, I agreed with the guys that, yeah, I was on the wrong.

Speaker 5 But it was. I mean, I think it was brave.
I I mean, you know, maybe you weren't thinking about it at the time, but I mean,

Speaker 5 not only

Speaker 5 getting shot by your own guys because everybody's hyped up.

Speaker 4 I know I wouldn't. Maybe when the firefights start,

Speaker 4 maybe they would have to fire above me, but I trusted these guys.

Speaker 5 There's also the possibility that the man would have had a suicide vest on.

Speaker 4 True.

Speaker 4 But, you know, I didn't think about it. I just see this lost old grandma and grandpa walking with the gun, scared shitless.

Speaker 4 so yeah and and you know he didn't drop the gun there was the cows being made i don't know if he understood english no he didn't actually because we we talked to him later before we took him and he could barely speak english but his wife spoke english so wow but they were so scared they wouldn't be able to utter a word up there and they were working on our guns so so when you got back

Speaker 5 from the from the mission yeah when did you find out who it was that you had pucked

Speaker 4 um

Speaker 4 We already knew who this guy was. I just don't remember.
It was the guy who, he was one of the big financiers of those IEDs and those terror groups in Baghdad. So he knew a lot.

Speaker 4 So in the house, we didn't know who is who at the time. So we tried to bug everybody and bring in whoever we had there.
He was identified later.

Speaker 4 But with the names, I knew their names because we had to learn for the mission. So you can call.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 What did the.

Speaker 5 I'm just curious, do you know what? Do you remember what the write-up says?

Speaker 4 Not really. I never I know what it says, but

Speaker 4 it's

Speaker 4 like I don't dwell on it,

Speaker 4 you know, so it says nice. I like

Speaker 4 some I'm sure nice I read it it's just like yeah

Speaker 4 you know

Speaker 4 I'm sure somebody else could say it with much

Speaker 4 better

Speaker 4 eloquent in 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

Speaker 4 bravest thing 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

Speaker 4 it is what it is you know we're we are human beings we are not robots we are just just the people

Speaker 4 and how long

Speaker 4 how many times did you go to Iraq I went there three times back to back so I spent the year first on first deployment

Speaker 4 came back it was another SEAL team coming out and they were slated to work with Grome as well. So

Speaker 4 I asked them if they can just

Speaker 4 take me for, I just wanted to go back.

Speaker 4 And if they can take me with them, they say, yeah, sure, absolutely. So that's supposed to be like two weeks, just

Speaker 4 the fam, let them have, help them settle down with Grome.

Speaker 4 But then like four months later, it's like my team is calling SAA Drago into come back because we are about to deploy after these guys.

Speaker 4 There was the time when the entire Silo team was deploying. So

Speaker 4 they say,

Speaker 4 you need to come back. Second back and then one back with my platoon again.
The missions changed, the tactics changed at the time. So we were tasked with protecting Iraqi politicians.

Speaker 4 So my platoon had one of those big weeks, Iraqi, that we were protecting those PSD mission mostly. Although

Speaker 4 wherever I could, I was just trying 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.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 get as much into those missions as possible. But I paid the price for it too with

Speaker 4 being a breacher,

Speaker 4 the injuries that we sustained that we didn't know at the time of

Speaker 4 how dangerous it can be. So that was when on the on the first deployment I think I started feeling first symptoms, first things.

Speaker 4 But like I say I was afraid to say anything because I didn't want to be pulled out of the missions. So.

Speaker 5 What were the symptoms? What were you feeling?

Speaker 4 First was

Speaker 4 I was not able to read.

Speaker 4 So what I find out that

Speaker 4 I was trying to read, but I couldn't concentrate on the text. Seems like that thing was jumping.
And so I

Speaker 4 figured it out that maybe this is because

Speaker 4 the lightning, because we are living in the tents.

Speaker 4 Outside was very hard and bright, very hard and bright. So most of our activities during the, when we sleep or eat was in the tents or inside.
So I said, well, maybe I just,

Speaker 4 my vision is bad because the dark environment.

Speaker 4 But then I noticed that I cannot read even if I can follow the letters because I forget if I read the paragraph, I forget what it was paragraph about by the time I finished it.

Speaker 4 So that was kind of weird. And 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

Speaker 4 brushed it off. I still was strong.
I was

Speaker 4 thinking for a clear and I just couldn't read so that's no big deal. It's not like I have to read some manuals to terrorists, right? right? So I was fine.
And

Speaker 4 then the balance

Speaker 4 issues start showing up that much later and the sleep disturbance. So that's was

Speaker 4 an irritability too as well. So that's when I start thinking that something is not quite right.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 But you know, we were like sometimes five feet, six feet from the breaching charge. And

Speaker 4 besides me as a breacher, I learned very quick in Iraq

Speaker 4 to calculate the charge and the standoff distance for my team,

Speaker 4 for my guys, by the manual, by the book. But I also did another calculation just for me.

Speaker 4 If I can't get in the cover, what's the minimum there is that I can still breach the door without injuring myself.

Speaker 4 It happened to me not once, but there was one very dramatic time where we actually were assaulting the target.

Speaker 4 We get the intel photo, intel pictures. So we look at it, we just 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.

Speaker 4 And this is where we stack our guys.

Speaker 4 As a breacher, I had to brief it before the mission to our guys. And we did, you know, we had a secondary entry point, we had all that stuff pretty much ready to go.

Speaker 4 And the picture shows this empty space, maybe like that wide, between the concrete wall and the building itself. And then it has a corner here where they just walk straight to the door.

Speaker 4 So I say, well, I'm going to stack the guys right there. The way I breathe, I'm going to go to the door and blast the door, go inside.
It's a standard mission. We did tens, hundreds of them.
And

Speaker 4 that one time

Speaker 4 we didn't know that from the pictures, but that space was filled with the robots. There was just enough space to stack the guys, and there was no space for me.
So

Speaker 4 we go. I already kind of see something is not right here.
So I go with my security to the door, you know, place the church. We're going back.
The guys go in, but like, there's no place to me.

Speaker 4 So I said,

Speaker 4 climb the wall. It's maybe like six, seven feet tall.

Speaker 4 We found a way later to do something similar. I can talk about it.
But that point was like infeasible. We can, if we linger, the longer we linger, the bigger chance that there will be alert and

Speaker 4 somebody gets killed. So, yeah, so I just, it's no big deal.
I mean, I knew the distance was still safe for me.

Speaker 4 So, I got on my knees, I put the gun in front of my face, I cooled up and blasted the charge. And

Speaker 4 so, yeah, it stirred me a little bit, but you know,

Speaker 4 like 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 little bit bleed, my ear did, but it was not like I was gushing blood or anything.

Speaker 4 It was just I was a little bit stunned, but not enough not to participate in the assault.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So yeah, that was, but these things repeating over and over and over, when you stay in

Speaker 4 close proximity to the bridge, it will affect you eventually. And at that time, there was very little known about this.
Whether or fight when

Speaker 4 eventually I became

Speaker 4 a SEAL instructor in bats, baths but I still have this issue with reading with sleeping so I talked to our what what do you do you just go to your family my family at that time was seals I didn't have another family so

Speaker 4 we say hey what happened I have this I wake up every two o'clock in the morning and stuff so we're like well maybe you were drinking too much no I was not drinking and this happens every day two o'clock in the morning I'm wide wide awake or maybe maybe this so finally we agreed there was a ghost that the apartment was hunted and there's a ghost up there, and the ghost is waking me up.

Speaker 4 So that was the conclusion. So then I realized that, shit, I'm scared of ghosts.

Speaker 4 I need to find a different apartment 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.

Speaker 4 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 a rag that way. So

Speaker 4 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 the damage that can those explosions cause.

Speaker 4 But at the time, it's not, it was not that.

Speaker 4 The funny thing is that

Speaker 4 I think the NSW came up to the conclusion the biggest damage occurs during the breaching course, because people are exposed to those breaching charges constantly, day in, day out.

Speaker 4 Well, that is just ba baby walk next to what we did in Iraq, where 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.

Speaker 4 You spend a year doing it, eventually you start feeling it. So that's what happened to me.
I don't complain.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 I'm not the only one who suffers from this. You talk to any breacher, I think they even come with the term breacher brain right now.
That's something like this, that's what they call it. But again,

Speaker 4 I I don't complain.

Speaker 4 This is not complaint. It's just the fact.
Maybe somebody who suffers it can recognize the symptoms and things and get himself a help.

Speaker 4 That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 5 So after all your Iraq tours you went to Buds to be an instructor?

Speaker 4 Yes. Well, I had a slightly my orders were to breaching school to be instructor, but I already knew that something was wrong with me, like any sh Even

Speaker 4 shooting guns next to my head caused the headache for a day. So

Speaker 4 I asked if I could change my orders, go somewhere where I am not exposed and the break from

Speaker 4 the noise, from explosions, from the shock waves. And they said, well, why won't you try buds? As Brazilian instructor, I said, sure.
But then the problem was I already had my orders cut.

Speaker 4 So I had to actually call.

Speaker 4 I went behind the back a little bit. And the chief, one of the chiefs, he passed away today.
He was in Millington, he was became the detailer in Millington.

Speaker 4 So, I called him, I say, Look, this is what happened to me, this is what I want to do, this one for change, and I need your help. So, within like a month, I got the change of orders.

Speaker 4 And he called me, say, dude, I got you. You're going to buds.
So, that's how I ended up in SEAL training.

Speaker 5 How did you like your buds tour?

Speaker 4 It was relaxing, you know, it was fun to...

Speaker 4 I miss the combat. I miss

Speaker 4 that engagements in Iraq that you don't have it here. But what helped me get through this assignment was

Speaker 4 understanding that I might be saving lives, I might be making these people as good as possible. So when they go to combat,

Speaker 4 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 SEAL training.

Speaker 4 So I was pretty harsh, but I was very fair instructors

Speaker 4 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 found memory of the young guys.

Speaker 4 going through bats. Matter of fact, it's very, 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.

Speaker 4 You just go do every day, you do something, you just try to survive a day,

Speaker 4 just to the next day, from meal to meal, from hour to hour. And it just goes quick.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Well, now you are the one who is actually

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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 being removed.

Speaker 4 Most of the people I notice in baths, they don't resign, they don't quit, they get injured, they get removed from the training. But

Speaker 4 seeing these guys,

Speaker 4 and you could not make them quit no matter what some of them it makes you think that yeah

Speaker 4 america is safe

Speaker 5 when did you

Speaker 4 what year did you retire i retired 2011 so by this time i met my wife and uh how did you meet her well that was a story to itself because uh

Speaker 4 so I was in Baz, I didn't have a family at the time and finally I came to realization, like in a year and a half I'm retiring and I have no family so I have to find me a wife.

Speaker 4 So it was not that easy because like you know with my English,

Speaker 4 the way I was, I guess I was not a very attractive guy. So I asked for my friends and

Speaker 4 my teammates. And they said, okay, Drago, the best way to do it is go online, you find yourself a chick, and

Speaker 4 if you like her, you're going to marry her. I said, sounds good.
So let's do it.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 I had incidents.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And then

Speaker 4 we scheduled

Speaker 4 to meet the first time in the coffee shop, say for her place.

Speaker 4 And it was a lunchtime. Good God, it was the place where there was a bunch of like executive chicks were coming in, like very

Speaker 4 super nice place, bunch of offices around. I didn't think much of it, but these girls who I look at the picture was so beautiful.
I say, I'm going to go and pretend I'm smarter than I am.

Speaker 4 So I took the book. I couldn't still read it, but I just pretend I was reading.
So I look smart.

Speaker 4 And then she's coming. And so every girl, those girls are coming.
I said, well, this is Anne. So I just try to get myself bigger and look better.
And then

Speaker 4 there's none of these girls.

Speaker 4 So I finally like, well, it's almost like 10 minutes late. Maybe she won't show up.
And then

Speaker 4 I see the girl walking, but she had to like walk sideways through the door. So I said, that's not, that's not, cannot be her.

Speaker 4 So I just like sitting up there and just look at the book that I brought to make myself look smarter. And all these nice, good-looking chicks lined up next to my table.
And she's coming and coming.

Speaker 4 I see the big shadow comes up. It's like, are you Thomas

Speaker 4 Drago it's like

Speaker 4 yeah how do you know me it's like who are you

Speaker 4 I'm Wendy whatever the name was

Speaker 4 we talk about it I was like damn and all these chicks I can see already the smirk on their face it's like dude would you gad yourself into it

Speaker 4 And then, so I say, 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.

Speaker 4 And so I say, so when they tell me, so talking about your company, how many employees do you have? You know, how many people do you manage? She just looked at me like an idiot. It's like,

Speaker 4 we're supposed to have a date, not talk about my job.

Speaker 4 And so this guy was just laughing out loud. It was like, dude, you just...

Speaker 4 So I was like, okay.

Speaker 4 All right, date. Okay, let's make it a date.
And so we talked for a while and I just wanted to end this thing it was so humiliating and then uh

Speaker 4 and she was so loud you know and she was like oh it's so beautiful i was like damn

Speaker 4 just go

Speaker 4 and she so we we go back and say could you give me a ride i have a car on the other side of the mall and those in san diego i was like Yeah, okay, yeah, I'll give you a ride. So we go to my Jeep.

Speaker 4 My Jeep is not even the lift. It's just like it has

Speaker 4 bigger tires at the time.

Speaker 4 And she cannot get into the jeep. She's like trying to push herself back, but the doors are too narrow for her.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 I'm getting angry 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.

Speaker 4 And she left. She called me and hey, it was a great date.
You know, you want to meet again? Let's have a date again.

Speaker 4 I was like, listen, listen wendy first of all you misrepresent yourself we could be friends if you didn't lie you know i i i don't mind be friendly 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 like show up and look like a jab at the hat and that's not you who the

Speaker 4 and so and i don't want to be rude to her but i had to tell her i'm not interested in any

Speaker 4 dates with her so I told her that and then

Speaker 4 you know, as instructors in pool comp, you remember, you spend like almost all day in the water testing students.

Speaker 4 So, we have students who are broke dicks, the guys who have some injuries, so they cater to us.

Speaker 4 So, they like if you have a phone call, they say, Instructor Drago, you have a phone call here, give me the phone.

Speaker 4 So, you're still in the pool, you eat in the pools like all day for these two days of pool comp.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 I can see his face. like

Speaker 4 by this time I was dating Rachel already.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 I will come back to it, how we met.

Speaker 4 And this, so I'm looking at, I see the tits.

Speaker 4 So I was like,

Speaker 4 what the hell is that? So I call Rachel. I say, Rachel, don't send your naked breast here.
The students are w looking every time they pick the phone. They see this.

Speaker 4 It's like, whose tits are you having the receiving the messages from? Then I look and say, oh shit, that's not the Rachel.

Speaker 4 So that was that fat chick

Speaker 4 calling me about

Speaker 4 trying to send me the message. So

Speaker 4 let's just say, call her, tell her,

Speaker 4 delete her, they tell her not to call you again. So I called her and say, don't call me anymore.
And don't send those naked pictures of you.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Just don't call me anymore.

Speaker 4 So, you know, I had a problem like this. So then, when I met Rachel online, so I see this check.
I was like, holy shit,

Speaker 4 I'm in love with that one. So, you know, I tried to wink to her.
She did nothing. Wink to her again, nothing.
So I talked to the guys, hey, who do I talk to? I talked to my family, team guys, sales.

Speaker 4 What do I do? How can I get her interested in me? So one of the guys look at the profile. So

Speaker 4 first thing, get yourself some few years off. So make yourself like maybe eight years younger.

Speaker 4 Okay, eight years younger. Then write her some nice letter or I

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 She was writing back to me and actually she liked actually the letters. So we continue this way.
You know, with my English, I am proficient with it. I'm proficient in combat.

Speaker 4 But I'm not really proficient in those lovy-dovey things that, you know, like

Speaker 5 romance.

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah, romancing, especially romancing online, you know, so that's something that I had. I turned to my fellow teammates.
And

Speaker 4 so like, she wrote me a letter, whoever I could find, say, hey, write me the response, write me some nice love letter. So just like type very quick something in and I send it back.

Speaker 4 And it continued, it worked.

Speaker 4 So then eventually the guys got tired so drago we don't use so many of these love letters now you have you can make any letter out of it just copy and paste so I say okay I'll try I was nervous so I did that and her profile disappeared from America those American singles website I remember still so her profile disappeared it's like oh damn I was so ready I was I was you know writing the the emails well team guys were writing the emails I was reading her emails So there was kind of like I was falling in love, and then her profile disappeared.

Speaker 4 So I was like,

Speaker 4 I cut one of the guys and say, 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. He just

Speaker 4 looks at this like,

Speaker 4 yeah, dude,

Speaker 4 that's fucked up.

Speaker 4 I think this is why.

Speaker 4 So, you know, I was mopping for a few days and I was still checking online. She showed up again.
And I was like, shit, I just need to,

Speaker 4 I need to talk to her. I need to tell her maybe

Speaker 4 that letter that I wrote

Speaker 4 because of my English. So she needs to just, I need to talk to her.
So eventually

Speaker 4 I coerce her to call me. And she called me on the private lines.

Speaker 4 She answered.

Speaker 4 We talked for a while and say, 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.

Speaker 4 It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. You know, that's it.
So we started talking on the phone. And that's eventually I asked her to come and visit me in San Diego.
She did come.

Speaker 4 And this is where I find her. Where was she? Was that?

Speaker 5 Where was she?

Speaker 4 She was living in Ohio,

Speaker 4 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 that they were not who they

Speaker 4 told me they are,

Speaker 4 I asked one team guy, hey, can you go with me? If this is another job that I had, if this is another person that I'm not,

Speaker 4 really lied to me, I need you to bail me out. I will run and you tell her that I was called for some combat mission in Iraq, whatever, just tell her something.

Speaker 4 So we both are waiting. And here she is going down the escalator.
He recognizes her first. He said, dude, it's that chick? I said, yeah.

Speaker 4 Did you just just rub the cradle? Dude,

Speaker 4 she's decades younger than you are. How did you pull it off? I said, well, you wrote the love letters and now you lie about my age at the works.

Speaker 4 Here we go. I say, okay, Drago, you got it.
You're on your own.

Speaker 4 She's hot. And

Speaker 4 he just left. And I was, I remember, so nervous because You know, I had all this with my emails.

Speaker 4 When I just wrote the email, I was really not up to speed, up to her standards now i suppose to go and talk to her in person i was very nervous so when she came out i was like to be like super gentle mannered just like very stiff and saying hi rachel i am drago and uh

Speaker 4 she just looked at me say yeah cool but you know i didn't fly 2 000 miles to shake your hand give me a hug i was like holy

Speaker 4 so i give her the big drago hug and then i remember so we start talking you know but she took step back say wait a minute, I think I know you.

Speaker 4 It's like, you know, 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?

Speaker 4 When?

Speaker 4 But they say, yeah, you know what? When you were in the HAPS training, you are the new guy in your...

Speaker 4 platoon with your group of guys uh you went the haps training and uh 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 HAPS training we we hub straining is the high you know what it is right there's the chamber ride when they ride you to like 20,000 feet

Speaker 4 the air pressure and then so you can recognize if

Speaker 4 if you have a problem let's say if your

Speaker 4 equipment malfunctions in the real life in airplane you can recognize because you learn 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.

Speaker 4 And so that's, we're sitting there and

Speaker 4 they took us up. Rachel was in the chamber actually.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 when they asked who wants to be the volunteer to demonstrate the hypoxia, I mean the lack of oxygen. So like every older, I was a new guy, so like that guy right there.
It's like, okay.

Speaker 4 So they told me, they drove us like 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,

Speaker 4 in the ball, square, rug at things, they signed my name and stuff.

Speaker 4 And these guys started egging me, like, say, yeah, Drago, you can blah, blah, blah, and I got mad, and I was like, I was threatening to kill everybody of them in the chamber.

Speaker 4 I'm going to kill you, I'm going to do this, and this, and this. And then,

Speaker 4 you know, I passed out. So they just put the oxygen mask on me and work away.
And

Speaker 4 other guys were on the mask, so I didn't know who was saying this. But they're 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.

Speaker 4 And so when I came to

Speaker 4 the crew in that center,

Speaker 4 they were excited. They were like, dude, this is awesome.
Well, we have example of almost every symptom of

Speaker 4 that hypoxia, right?

Speaker 4 Hypoxia. Hypoxia.
Yeah. But we never had the belligerence.
Now we just recorded your belligerence. So this is great educational video.
So I'm floating somewhere there being in the as the

Speaker 4 educational aid to show people what the belligerence look like. So she remembered me from that.
She reminded me.

Speaker 4 And then we walked to the car. I was very nervous.
I couldn't talk to, hardly could talk to her from being scared.

Speaker 4 And so, but I had a flower. I had a flower in my G because I say if the Jabba Dehat shows up, I will run and I'll just give the flower,

Speaker 4 throw it away. But in this case, I was so nervous.
So I grabbed this flower and said, hey, and this is for you. It was like a gray paper wrapped up.

Speaker 4 And I just, I was so nervous, I didn't know how to wrap it. I still have it upside down, just give it to her.
I say, here.

Speaker 4 She just looked at me, what's this? I was like, flower. So she took this.
It's like, okay, hold on one second. Hold on one second.

Speaker 4 She told me to wait. She unwrapped it, throw the paper thing, flip it upside down.

Speaker 4 She grabbed my hand. She went, okay, try it again now.
It's like,

Speaker 4 okay,

Speaker 4 here.

Speaker 4 So that was my first thing.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 But so, yeah, that was like 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

Speaker 4 to visit her,

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 4 eventually, yeah, we got married. And

Speaker 4 we have,

Speaker 4 I consider myself fully domesticated now. That is what she, but if you ask her, she says, well, yeah, but I'm still the project under construction, I'm still being domesticated.

Speaker 4 So she's making me a better person

Speaker 4 every time. So, yeah, that's how it works.
But I still have my pitfalls with

Speaker 4 English.

Speaker 4 It seems like 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 feast me a dessert.

Speaker 4 I say, well, what would you like for dessert? I said, well, I want to eat Kimberley.

Speaker 4 I see her like terror in her eyes.

Speaker 4 Who is Kimberley?

Speaker 4 I say, who is Kimberley? You know, the dessert we had in the restaurant two days ago or so. Like, you mean Kimberley?

Speaker 4 It's like,

Speaker 4 yeah, that's what I say. No, you say Kimberley.
You don't eat Kimberley.

Speaker 4 So, you know, I still get that shit.

Speaker 4 I'm better now, but she's still working on me. She said, I'm the project under construction.
So now we have two kids together,

Speaker 4 16 years old.

Speaker 4 beautiful girl, very smart. And I cannot be...

Speaker 4 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 or like maybe five or six moves so I'm not bad player but I cannot beat this girl and I have a son he's doing gymnastics he's 15 years old so 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.

Speaker 4 He was married. He spent one year in Afghanistan.

Speaker 4 He's working now. He's studying electrical engineering in Ohio University.
And I have a younger son, too, who is still active duty Coast Guard. So I'm very proud of my kids.

Speaker 5 How long have you been married?

Speaker 4 Oh, that's a dangerous question. Now I'm getting me in trouble because now

Speaker 4 she's down in the listening. And if she listened then to the podcast, then I get in myself in trouble.
Those are the most kind of dangerous questions for me, but I think

Speaker 4 science 2007. So we got married in August 18.
A kind of funny story because August 18 is the presumed date when the battle of

Speaker 4 Thermopylae started, when 300 Spartans with 5,000 other Greeks defend Greece against 250,000 Persians. So that's this presumed date when the battle started.
And this is my date of when we got married.

Speaker 4 And then the place we got married is Lonidas like the name of the Spartan king oh wow wow yeah oh also the

Speaker 4 when

Speaker 4 when we got engaged was another story too because

Speaker 4 I'm kind of troubled eyed I'm kind of like a

Speaker 4 I'm not very big into this nice 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 could we base engagement dude you need to go to Cancun you need to go there get a restaurant get make it big.

Speaker 4 I say, dude, I don't have the money for that. I just have barely money to buy the ring.

Speaker 4 So I was thinking, I say, what I'm going to do is I'm going to invite her on the range to Nyeland and let her shoot every gun that we have. And the last gun, M48,

Speaker 4 will be, Mark 48 will be

Speaker 4 when she opens the tray, there's going to be a ring hanging down and there's going to be a piece of paper like marry me.

Speaker 4 So that I genuinely dab myself. So I said, I have a seal away to get an ask Girlfriend to marry.
So I brought her to Ireland. She had no idea.

Speaker 4 Then we had to prepare the range.

Speaker 4 So with the guys,

Speaker 4 I put her in the room.

Speaker 4 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 up there. There's really no place to live.

Speaker 4 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 line up online then i brought her in you know just i have actually video of it i'm going to post it on my website one day so she goes from to gun to gun and shoot and actually she should see the m4 she should pretty good you know that was like all on target my heart skipped the bit skipped the beat and uh so we go from gun to gun and the last gun when she opened the tray i'm like next to her and she sees the ring And then

Speaker 4 this piece of paper says, Marry me. And I was right there.
I said, Would you marry me? And she said, Yes.

Speaker 4 Beautiful. Yep, so there was the serial way to get married.
And

Speaker 4 I got away, you know, like I didn't have the money, so it turned out to be

Speaker 4 not a very expensive way, but it was a very memorable way. It was very memorable for her.

Speaker 4 So, yeah.

Speaker 4 So, remember 2007, so that's what 2007, 2017, and 18 years. Yeah.

Speaker 5 18 years. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Congratulations. It went so fast.
It went so fast.

Speaker 4 It's just the time goes by.

Speaker 4 Here I'm running and gunning, kicking doors in, and suddenly here

Speaker 4 I'm being married, taking care of the kids and enjoying my American dream.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 what's your secret to a successful marriage?

Speaker 4 To successful marriage, I think

Speaker 4 understanding and being

Speaker 4 reasonable and being loving and being

Speaker 4 accept that

Speaker 4 she's another human being that needs respect as well.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 we just enjoy our lives together. You know, this is something that the longer it takes, the better it is, seems like.

Speaker 4 We fought tooth to the nail at the beginning, and now we just we really don't. We have a

Speaker 4 we match so well together that

Speaker 4 you know I think that's a love.

Speaker 4 So yeah,

Speaker 4 that's pretty much my story. Again,

Speaker 4 I'm telling this because I want people to see the beautiful America, the America greatness, how unique country it is, how powerful it is.

Speaker 4 And sometimes it is hard to see if you see it in the trenches, if you are part of it.

Speaker 4 But when you have a chance to step aside, take a different vantage point, you can see how beautiful country we have.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's some positivity we don't hear very often here.

Speaker 4 Yes. You know, there's another fact is that

Speaker 4 I live as a free man. I can live as a free man only because

Speaker 4 the founding fathers, because the ideals the founding fathers were fighting for and the ideas that have been carried to this day by American people, by Americans like you, like other Americans.

Speaker 5 Thank you.

Speaker 5 I saw

Speaker 5 that.

Speaker 5 Did you do an Ibergain treatment?

Speaker 4 Yes, I did.

Speaker 4 I've done it, but you know, like some people say how great experience they had. For me, it was not really, it was really nightmare.
I didn't meet, like some people, I didn't meet Jesus.

Speaker 4 I met demons. And it really scared the hell out of me.

Speaker 4 But it also changed me. I remember after this treatment, I called my wife, and I say,

Speaker 4 well, because she always say,

Speaker 4 she doesn't like when I'm being called Drago. She said, Drago is gone, you know, that's, you are Thomas.

Speaker 4 And she did say, like, we're going to lag Drago in the cage. and you are Thomas from now on.
I said, sure, my wife, you know, she's the boss or whatever you say.

Speaker 4 but then I called her from the after the abogue treatment. I was coming back.
I said, look, I buried Rago in the desert, you know, in the Abogaine there. Thomas is coming back.

Speaker 5 Did you get any benefits out of that?

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 you can be alcoholic. And for me, it was like I had to drink, but I didn't feel like I had to.
I was like, well, it's such a cool thing. Have a few shots here, you know, a few shots there.

Speaker 4 And I can stop anytime. I just don't stop it today.
I stop it tomorrow. But tomorrow, I said, well, you know what? Let's just, I'll take a couple more shots and I'll be fine.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 I would say the acceptance of who you are where you where you are

Speaker 4 and also but that's not just the Abogaine I think the faith and God plays big role in the

Speaker 4 in my life right now and this only thanks to Rachel my wife

Speaker 4 so yeah

Speaker 5 did your faith strengthen after the Abogaine Yes, definitely yes.

Speaker 4 And you know, this may be a, I don't know, I don't think she gets mad if I tell, but we we read books like on faith every night before we go to sleep. So sometimes, most of the time she is reading.

Speaker 4 And sometimes I

Speaker 4 because of my English, let me try to read this. But mostly she is reading and you know, it is so peaceful that she's like, well, you're not listening, you are falling asleep.

Speaker 4 Because you know, when I snuggle up, she starts reading. It's like, hey, you know what?

Speaker 4 I'm just like 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.

Speaker 4 There's two things, actually, the faith that we both share and her emotional intelligence. That's something that

Speaker 4 How to say the right way, she knows like if I am angry, obviously there's

Speaker 4 some emotions online, she can disarm me. So this is something that's great.
I mean, I love the life. But I think we together work as a team greatly.
And

Speaker 4 I credit the Abogaine treatment with

Speaker 4 in big part for what happened there. And I think it's important that we pursue it because

Speaker 4 as a veteran, I know that different people react to different things.

Speaker 4 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 one

Speaker 4 cookie cutter treatment. If you have, let's say, TBI or PTSD or whatever, that this is what we're going to do to you.

Speaker 4 It might turn out now witnessed that things didn't work for some guys, but they found relief and help doing different things. So

Speaker 4 the abogue, I think, is important that

Speaker 4 we continue with it and try to allow or bring it,

Speaker 4 allow people

Speaker 4 to get this treatment in the United States so they don't have to travel to Mexico like I did or to other places.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I hope that happens.

Speaker 5 We have the Secretary of the VA coming on soon, and that's a big discussion I'm going to have with him. Nice.

Speaker 4 We need that, I think, because

Speaker 4 it is very powerful.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 I was very skeptical initially from it. A friend of mine, another team guy, called me, say, Drago, I need to tell you something.
And the guy is just as a knuckle-dragger as somebody can be.

Speaker 4 You don't want to fight this guy.

Speaker 4 This guy is just a badass. dude.
He calls me and says, Drago,

Speaker 4 I need to tell you I met Jesus.

Speaker 4 I was like, what?

Speaker 4 I talked to Jesus, man.

Speaker 4 I was like, Rachel, get Nevisilos fund ready. I think we have another going out of rails.

Speaker 4 I think that we have a guy and he will need help. And then I talked to him, and that changed my life too.
So

Speaker 4 we talked for quite some time.

Speaker 4 And he explained me what it was. I didn't know anything about Abogaine at the time or Ayahuasca.

Speaker 4 And eventually

Speaker 4 another friend of mine rests in peace, Dan Cerrillo, Taco, he called me and said,

Speaker 4 How did he say it? He said, like, 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 Man, he was a good friend of mine,

Speaker 5 he was a good friend of mine, yes. He was uh

Speaker 5 for a while there, he was my only friend here,

Speaker 5 and then uh

Speaker 5 and then he died of a heart attack on the range

Speaker 5 with his son, yeah, but um, on a hunting trip, on a hunting trip,

Speaker 4 no, he was doing things for other people

Speaker 4 when he died,

Speaker 5 awesome human, yes, and uh, I just I never served with him, but uh i did and it was that was a warrior a true warrior

Speaker 5 yeah

Speaker 5 yeah

Speaker 4 i miss him yeah me too

Speaker 4 i miss him too miss many guys you know there's something that uh

Speaker 4 i think we uh we'll ask for

Speaker 4 you know it's almost like a survival guilt you know like why why what why I survived why why mean not him why well why he he got

Speaker 4 why he was killed not me we ask those questions and i think we always ask until we die you know but uh

Speaker 4 that's the faith you know and that's how the life goes

Speaker 5 he was a big part of me finding my faith

Speaker 5 yes he was

Speaker 4 i had a uh he helped many guys yeah he's a great guy man and uh

Speaker 4 but this is about the teams you know what people don't understand and and i i watch some of the programs, some podcasts too with fellow team guys.

Speaker 4 And this always ends up pretty heavy, you know.

Speaker 4 But people so people tend to forget that

Speaker 4 we are normal people, you know, we just do our job. Sometimes

Speaker 4 that's the way I look at ourselves. It's like

Speaker 4 we are not sheepdogs. There's other people capable of doing it.
We are wolves and we hunt wolves. Sometimes nations

Speaker 4 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?

Speaker 4 So that's that's the way I look at it. And

Speaker 4 yeah, that's

Speaker 4 sometimes

Speaker 4 that's life, you know. And

Speaker 4 we all knew what we are getting into getting in SEAL teams.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 Well, I'm proud to know you, man.

Speaker 5 I think that's the perfect way to end this. And I just want to say, Thomas.

Speaker 5 It was an

Speaker 5 honor to interview you and to just get to know you. And like I said, I've just heard so much about you and

Speaker 5 your reputation speaks for itself. And so I just, it's, it's, um, I'm really thankful we met.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 I'm not different than anybody else. So I'm just one of the

Speaker 4 community members. I'm one of the SEALs, former retired SEALs now.
But we are all the same. We are from the same cloth and we did the same job.
So it was an honor to be here.

Speaker 4 I thank you for the invitation. But it gave me also the opportunity to

Speaker 4 maybe

Speaker 4 make people pause and look at America from different vantage points. Look at how great America is and

Speaker 4 is worth protecting.

Speaker 5 All right, Drago, you got an update on the judge that prosecuted you in Poland?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I was sentenced to three years of prison time. And

Speaker 4 what happened at the time, there was nothing unusual because

Speaker 4 those so-called activist judges, they worked for the party. They did openly work for the party, but

Speaker 4 they did what the political party told them. to do.
They were just doing their bidding in the society. And

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 people coming back from the Second World War who experienced

Speaker 4 Western freedom, who

Speaker 4 experienced the Western way of life. The communists in Poland, like my father, did not want these people there.
So

Speaker 4 from the very beginning, they were finding cases to murder them, to kill them, to put them in prison.

Speaker 4 For example,

Speaker 4 the top scoring ace of Polish Air Force fighting in Battle of Britain,

Speaker 4 he was arrested very quickly after he returned to Poland and sentenced to death.

Speaker 4 His death sentence was commuted to life in prison. Then I think he was let go after 10 years in prison time,

Speaker 4 of prison 10 or 15 years in prison. No.

Speaker 4 I don't remember how many years, but he spent a few years in prison and on the death row too.

Speaker 4 He was lucky because many of those people were executed very often just outside the prison cell with the shot in the back of his neck. So that's what happened.

Speaker 4 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 Pauls.

Speaker 4 But the night in 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 present time.

Speaker 4 So yes, I did absolutely. So me and Rachel flew to Warsaw and the guy, the judge, was charged with communist crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes against Polish nation, and

Speaker 4 judicial terrorism. That's what they did, those activist judges.
So

Speaker 4 it was surreal, but also like bittersweet, because when I walk in with my wife in this courtroom, you know,

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 how to say it,

Speaker 4 they're law-abiding citizens. They go by the law, but they want to protect themselves from totalitarian systems like communism, socialism, Nazism.

Speaker 4 Poles don't want it there. They experience it already.
So there is actually a constitution, a Polish constitution, I believe, I forgot which point it is, that prohibits

Speaker 4 promotion of totalitarian ideologies in Poland. You can't do it.
So, yeah, so I went to Warsaw and I testify against this judge. Although,

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 it would never cross my mind that judge was sentencing me to prison time.

Speaker 4 He will be prosecuted for judicial terror. And he will be, I will be testifying in his case.

Speaker 4 Also, I learned that I was tortured, you know, the beatings in prison, beatings from the police. I never considered it torture.
I thought it just normal.

Speaker 4 This is how things work. You know, you get caught, they will be beating you up, but never.
But now when testifying, that was classified actually as a torture. So that's something else that I

Speaker 4 downed on me when I went like a year ago, when I went a year ago to Warsaw. So I ask

Speaker 4 also,

Speaker 4 I testified.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 courtroom.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 I asked for not putting this guy in prison.

Speaker 4 I asked the judge to, you know, no matter what they're going to do, there is no need to put 80 years men in prison. He asked me if I have some against this guy still, if I have some

Speaker 4 feelings and

Speaker 4 some

Speaker 4 anger against this guy.

Speaker 4 And I say, no, you know,

Speaker 4 40 years in America changed me. You know, I am a different person than I used to be when I was when I came to America.
So, you know, forgiving, I think I learned too in America.

Speaker 4 You know, 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,

Speaker 4 you know, like

Speaker 4 following the God,

Speaker 4 Jesus' teachings, you know, you need to forget. You may disagree, you may not,

Speaker 4 with the sinner,

Speaker 4 but you don't condemn the sinner, you condemn the sin. And that's what I ask, you know, condemn his

Speaker 4 what he did, but as a human being, you know, in his age, really, there is no,

Speaker 4 I think there will be, there is no,

Speaker 4 I forgave him, so there is no need to put put him in prison so i don't know what what happened and i didn't follow up on it i'm just like for me it's just the

Speaker 4 i i i learned how to forgive and that's america changed me a lot of people need to learn how to forgive

Speaker 4 we know if you don't you you that

Speaker 4 that that that

Speaker 4 things goes with you wherever you go. You don't live as a free good man,

Speaker 4 good man being free.

Speaker 4 You have this thing on the on your shoulder so if we can learn how to forget how to forgive people not forget about how to forgive I think we are better people Americans are a better person when you forgive you free yourself yeah you know you also

Speaker 4 you asked me about the what I feel when I killed a guy. Oh, by the way, I was thinking about it too.

Speaker 4 I get so mixed up. The first guy that I killed was the guy in the car who following us.

Speaker 4 he just pulled from behind the corner i was in the last car it was so fast then as we was coming at the you know like car 50 i was on i think i was on 50 so i was on the last car he pulled out next to me he was coming to our right

Speaker 4 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 seat with the ak sitting with the ak so it was like surreal i was like what is he thinking i mean we we just

Speaker 4 we we can just

Speaker 4 obliterate these guys, but anyway, so he started pulling in. Um,

Speaker 4 my concern was that if he has,

Speaker 4 if this ID,

Speaker 4 VBID,

Speaker 4 we can all get hurt. So I didn't think much.
It was, 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

Speaker 4 light pole.

Speaker 4 The kind of funny thing is like, so we're driving, I didn't think much of it. I said, okay, guy's gone.
And

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 He was coming on us. So I stopped the car.
He said, okay, no problem. No question asked.
Because we are actually driving, I think, from, no, we were driving to the mission.

Speaker 4 So yeah, we didn't want any.

Speaker 4 interruption say, 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.

Speaker 4 I was thinking about it, about the feelings of it.

Speaker 4 I was never like a feely-touchy guy. For me, there was no, but I say, like, I didn't feel anything.

Speaker 4 I didn't because

Speaker 4 I was thinking about it.

Speaker 4 I see myself more as a technical person.

Speaker 4 So, for me, the dwelling on it was more like, what could I do better? How could I kill him better, more efficiently?

Speaker 4 Not like, oh my God, he's dead now.

Speaker 4 My priority was always life of American citizens, the well-being of America. Any foreign entity has no value to me,

Speaker 4 has

Speaker 4 no value.

Speaker 4 I understand it comes second. You know, like I'm not so eloquent,

Speaker 4 but yeah,

Speaker 4 the American life will come before any foreign life. It's number one priority.
It's number one priority. American, American citizens.

Speaker 5 Well, Drago, thank you again for coming back and

Speaker 5 setting that record straight and being open and vulnerable. And,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 it'll act for better words, you know, setting humility aside for

Speaker 5 the full story.

Speaker 5 I really appreciate it.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it was kind of difficult.

Speaker 4 Again, like I say, we're talking about these

Speaker 4 often and people watch all these movies. They stop seeing us as human beings.

Speaker 4 They see us more like the just part of that machine that you if you just broke and something happens, you just bring another one.

Speaker 4 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.
That's why I don't wear the trident.

Speaker 4 I was already mentioned about it earlier. I wear American flag because American flag encompasses the trident and everything that is good.

Speaker 4 And I want when people see me to think about me as American and not the Navy SEALs. I'm no longer a Navy SEAL now, of course.
You know, I lived that life for 20 years. I loved it.

Speaker 4 But now I am just American. There's no hyphen in front of this American.

Speaker 5 Thank you.

Speaker 4 Thank you.