Episode 16 – Critical Incident Review – Medal of Honor Recipient – MSgt. Earl Plumlee

Jon Becker: This is a very special episode of the Debrief and the CATO podcast. We are at the CATO conference and have the opportunity to sit down with Master Sergeant Earl Plumlee, who is a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient for his actions in Afghanistan, sitting here today with Brent Stratton.

Brent Stratton: What's up, Jon? How are you, man? It's nice to see you!

Jon Becker: Glad you're here, buddy!

Brent Stratton: Yeah, it's good to see you, too, man! Getting to be spending a little bit of time together at the CATO conference.

Jon Becker: Absolutely. With a legitimate American hero.

Brent Stratton: My goodness, man! We were lucky that he came to speak with us into our membership. And I just walked away from his presentation impressed, and we'd done a lot of research on him. I'd watched a lot of his interviews. I'd watched the citation presentation with President Biden, so I felt like I had an understanding of it.

But hearing his presentation, Washington, moving, insightful, and I loved. Obviously, the story is compelling, but his thought process and how much he's put into dissecting and understanding what led up to that and his actions and what got him there, what made him successful, that was what was most insightful to me.

Jon Becker: I totally agree. We're very fortunate to have this time with Earl and hope you all enjoy this interview.

My name is Jon Becker. For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units. As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations.

The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.

Welcome to The Debrief!

Earl, I appreciate you joining us today. We're excited to interview you and kind of hear your story.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: No, pleasure to be here! Thanks for having me!

Jon Becker: Why don't we start with, like, let's go back to the beginning. Talk to me about where your career began.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So my career began to – I decided to join the military as a junior in high school. I went to the marine recruiter who laughed at me. I thought I had discovered a glitch in the matrix. I was like, I'll just get out of here. Forget high school. And turns out the military knows about that. You have to finish high school before you can join. But he said, go to the National Guard. They will let you join now if you really want to. Which was true.

So I joined the National Guard as a junior in high school. And had a marvelous time, one weekend a month, two weeks a year throughout my high school career. It was a great way to. It kept me out of trouble mostly. And I got to go drive a tracked vehicle or a hemet, which was what I was doing anyway when off roading and playing around. And that's what I did all of high school, but it's not what I was looking for.

So as soon as I was able, I went back to the Marine Corps recruiter and signed up for the infantry because the artillery in the National Guard was too easy, but he had a harder job for me.

Jon Becker: So how long were you in the Marine Corps?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: I'd have to check exactly, but nine years and some change.

Jon Becker: And what was your career arc in the Marine Corps? Started in the infantry?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, I started off in the infantry. Had a great time walking around with stuff on my back, digging holes. I'm still among my friends now. I'm without peer and hole digging. They've never been professionally instructed. I have, but served in the infantry, later became a recon Marine, and ultimately, after nine years in the Marine Corps, left and joined the army as a 18 x-ray, which is the entrance program for selection. You go straight to selection. It's a great program if you make it. It's an interesting way to end up in the army if you don't.

Jon Becker: And so you obviously made it through selection. Where did you go from there?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So I went after selection. I didn't realize that the Q course is a year and a half, two years long, depending on the job you pick. I thought it was selection. You do this 30 days of arduous assessment, and then you're in. No, that's just to make sure that you can actually complete the training.

And then I did, I think, a year and a four or five months of the Q course, the qualification course, which was learned a lot, became a much more professional soldier. I didn't know you had to speak a foreign language as a Green Beret, and that was obviously, I'm not a deep academically, so that was the scariest part for me, having to learn to read, write, and speak a foreign language. But they met dumber people than me. They locked me up in a room for six months with a very nice lady by the name of Ibu Maggie, and she taught me how to speak Indonesian.

Jon Becker: So Indonesian was your language?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Indonesian was my language.

Brent Stratton: By choice or by assignment?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: They took a test. I got to pick some languages, and you know where you're going to get stationed. And I had a older GB. He's like, make sure your wife picks what group you work in because she's the one that's going to live there. You'll be gone the whole time. Good marital advice.

Jon Becker: Brilliant!

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So my wife picked. She went to live in Colorado or Washington. So I wrote down, I think, two asian languages and one european language with first group being in Washington and centered on the Indo paycom, and then 10th group being in Colorado working in Europe. And we have a test that says which languages I would have a higher chance of learning to a higher ability. And that one said that he is an Indonesian guy.

Jon Becker: That's interesting. That's interesting if they have a system that can actually diagnose that.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah.

Jon Becker: So then you ended up at?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Ended up at first special forces group in Washington, and it's been my home ever since. I've never been stationed anywhere but inside a first group. We have a battalion for deployed in Japan that I served in three years, but I've always been in first group.

Jon Becker: Which is Fort Lewis, right?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yep.

Jon Becker: So let's kind of walk. Walk me forward to the event you deploy. Which theater are you in? Kind of give us the background.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: We deploy to Afghanistan. We did a train up in the winter in the mountains of Washington, which really had us set up well to do a summertime deployment in Afghanistan and was chosen to do a VSO site. It was in the city of Miri in the Ghazni province.

Jon Becker: So I'm gonna play ignorant for you because not all of our listeners are gonna. We both speak, you know, acronym natively. I'm gonna play dumb the whole interview here and ask you to define all of the acronym.

Brent Stratton: You just playing?

Jon Becker: I am, yeah.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So Villi stability operations. And it's a program we had where to kind of eliminate those safe spaces and also just to kind of add some backbone to the governance of the old government of Afghanistan. At this point, we put an ODA into a village and kind of let them create a police force and then help with infrastructure projects and just keep the Taliban out of those villages.

So you'd lay down ODAs and kind of sprinkle them through every three or four villages. You add an ODA and the theory, which it was fairly successful, would keep them out of there.

Jon Becker: ODA?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yep. Operational Detachment Alpha, which is the kind of the base maneuver element of special forces in the army. It's twelve men. They each have a particular skill set and they're built for an operation like this. They go on the ground and you don't really need to support them other than we need money.

And if you want us to shoot american guns, we need american bullets. But we bought our food from the village, so we kind of prop up the economy of the village. We try to use as much of their economy as we can, and it's not top down, it's bottom up. Like, we're putting the money at the bottom of this economy and using it and causing it to grow. And we plug in a lot of the programs from the State Department. Can you grow grapes instead of heroin? That would be cool. And here's a benefit to that.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think one of the things that I don't think people realize about your unit is you are for deployed into foreign areas and are kind of there on your own.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. That's what attracted me to it, is we go, they leave us there, and they would rather we don't ask for any help. The whole point of us is the footprint's small, the logistical strain is small, and the output is supposed to be.

Jon Becker: Great because you're affecting it early in the system.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yep. And we're kind of. The state department tries its best, but you have somebody deciding what is best for an area from Kabul. When I'm there, I'm like, yeah, that's not the best for this village. They need these things, and we're gonna. They need a drainage ditch. They don't need you to pave anything. That's not gonna help.

Brent Stratton: You know, what's kind of cool is hearing it. This is a much more advanced version of it. I don't mean any disrespect towards that, but it's almost similar to, like, a community oriented policing model that you would see where you're working on building relationships and, you know, hoping that if you can build these relationships and you're gonna be able to keep crime out, so to speak. So you're taking that on a much bigger, much more macro level. But as you're saying that, I see how there's some very similar principles and philosophies associated with it there.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: No. And we, I mean, I think it's not just like it's heavily nested in it. We did. We have shuras, and we'll have everybody come out like, what do you like about the Afghan government? What do you hate about it? And then we identify these problems. Like, well, we hate the Afghan police. And I'm like, why? Well, they set up checkpoints, and you have to. They take road tax. Like, they take road tax. And we go to our Afghan police.

Jon Becker: They rob people.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. Why are you setting up basically a strong arm road tax. People hate it. Like, well, we have to pay for our food and our fuel and our ammunition. I'm like, you have to pay for that? Why are you paying for that? And our Afghan police were taking tolls and then driving to Pakistan and buying arms and ammunition to serve as a police force.

And we're writing that up like, hey, where's all the money going? Because these guys haven't been paid or supported in any way in about eight months. And they're like, we figured whatever the problem was, obviously some kind of graft, but we fixed that problem. And then the people don't get taxed by their own police when they're trying to utilize public roads, which makes people like the police more.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's fixing them. It's fixing the village from the inside.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Right.

Jon Becker: As opposed to trying to impose a solution and one that they may or may not agree with.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: And that's also, we try to do all that stuff and never actively participate in the discussion. So we want these things to get solved. We may move things, pull strings, but we want them to feel like they 100% solved it. And in the end state when, if we decide to leave, we want that we have left systems in place that they are solving it. And then also, you know, let them trust their government, let them trust their police, and not always run to the nearest American soldier. And, like, I need this fixed.

Jon Becker: Teaching them to fish and then letting. Letting them pick the kind of fish they want to eat as opposed to, like, handing them a fish and going, here's your fish.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Unfortunately, I think we got there about 400 years too early. I have high hopes. In a couple hundred years, my great grandkids will probably be able to get that place really sorted out.

Jon Becker: Alexander the Great had the same hopes.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So, yeah, there's a famous story of an ODA and they ask a village, like, what do you guys need? And, well, we used to have a dam here, and it was really great before the dam was destroyed. And if the dam was rebuilt, this village would really prosper. So they send the engineer sergeant out to see this blown up dam, and we're thinking that the Soviets, or maybe we blew it up during the invasion.

And he goes out there and he's like, I don't know what they're talking about. There's no dam out there. It's like, you could build a dam there, but there's not one. And so we go back and, you know, talk to these guys and why do you. Why is there. There was a dam when was there a dam? Alexander the Great built the dam. Genghis Khan, as punishment for the afghan king killing his emissaries, came in and tore everything up and he tore the dam down and he broke all the stones into gravel so that they couldn't remake the d***.

And so that's how long they've been without a dam. And which is, when you think about it, if they just annually, sometime in the over the past 500 years, carried one rock out there, they'd have a dam, but they didn't.

Brent Stratton: Amazing perspective, though, if you think about that. I have this problem today. Oh, no. It's such common sense that this problem was actually from several hundred years ago. I can't even imagine thinking that on a day to day basis that the problem was actually something created that, that far previously.

Jon Becker: There's a fantastic book called prisoners of geography. And the premise of the book is he looks at all the areas of the world that have had extensive conflict, Afghanistan being one of them, and why do we fight over this area?

And in the case of Afghanistan, goes back before Alexander the great and talks about trade routes and all of these kinds of things. And it's like, many times it is a structural problem. You know, he talks about why does India and China never fight? Because they have the himalayas between them and it's too expensive to fight.

And the chapter on Afghanistan is fascinating because of that very thing. Like, you know, they've got a multi year, thousand year relationship with their village and, you know, many cases we show up and we're like, hey, we can fix this in two weeks. No, I don't think you can.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: We don't want you to.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Yeah. And we don't like your solution.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah.

Jon Becker: So talk to me. So let's keep going forward in a timeline. So you're deployed, Oda?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, we're having effects and I'm having a great, I'm falling in love with being a Green Beret at this point. It was neat. At this point, I know I'm never going to leave a team until I absolutely can't serve anymore. I'm just loving the challenge. Every day is different. We're doing ambushes one day, we're doing medical engagements the next day, training the police, you know, one time, you know, how to collect evidence and, and not be awful and then working with our afghan special forces and trying to get them up on, on a pier with us. And, you know, I never have ADHD.

So if we're going to do the same thing twice in a day, I'm going to start bashing my head against a wall. So I really, I really loved it. And, and, you know, my, the team's small, so, like, there some problem comes in and, like, that's your problem. Go fix it. And as a young, you know, e six, that was kind of heady stuff. And like, hey, go solve this problem. I'm busy. And here's what you, you get 50 grand, you know, and a truck. Solve it. And I love, and I just loved it.

Jon Becker: That's fantastic. So keep walking forward.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: I'm doing great. And then, you know, my, my, my sar major Tony Bell flies into the camp and he's looking for me. And, you know, normally you don't want the company sar major looking for you, but at this point, you know, I know that my performance has just been exemplary and I'm doing great work.

So I'm, like, not afraid. Whatever he's about to tell me, it's going to be a good job on something. I just don't know what. And it was terrible news. You know, he's telling me that they're closing our site. It was very successful. And then I could go home early or I could come work for him in the company headquarters. And no Green Beret goes to selection to do either of those things.

So I'm, like, crestfallen. That's two equally crappy things for me. But I decided that working at the company headquarters is still deployed work. It's still in support of this war and going home is not. And so I chose to work for him and left Miri and moved to Fob Gosney, where I supported the company headquarters as the weapons sergeant and started my, you know, my nine to five, if you will. It wasn't a nine to five. It was about a five to ten at night.

Jon Becker: Work till you get work till you exhausted. Go to sleep till you can't sleep anymore.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, like, one of my first things is we had, I think, 60,000 pounds of fragmentation producing munitions stored near the living area and the company headquarters because the fob had just grown. But the ammunition plan had not changed. And I was like, well, you generally don't want to sleep next to bombs. At least I don't. But everybody has a job on the AOB, so I had to move it myself or had one other soldier help me.

So every day we would get up about four in the morning and start carting the stuff off and put it in a different area. But every day was some challenge like that where not the most interesting work in the world. A lot of it was, you know, back breaking labor or mind numbing paperwork. Like, I calculated ammunition consumption for all the ODAs and projected what we would need to order in the future, which is nobody wants to do that.

Jon Becker: I'm gonna say that was probably not part of selection.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: No, they did not have that. Nobody said, hey, at one point you're gonna get to do this forecast ammunition and if you get it wrong, you know, people are not gonna have ammo and they're gonna hate your guts. And I'm like, okay.

Jon Becker: So give me kind of describe the fob for me. How big is it? How many people?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So, you know, I don't know how big, it's not how many people were there, but it's. I think it's. I think it was 2000 meters by 1000 meters, you know, and I think it is roughly, it's got straight lines, but, you know, think of jelly bean. And it was a Polish camp. The ODB had probably 40, 50 people on it. And then we had two teams that were living connected to our camp.

So we had a very small SF footprint on the camp as that's how we worked anyway. And I think there was a polish couple thousand poles, you know, and it was a really, it was a hub, as we were, because we'd won the war in 2013. A lot of people forgot that we won once already, but we were winning and leaving. And it was, it was kind of the first larger fob where you could actually ditch equipment as your unit was retrograding out of the country.

So huge logistical hub for that area of Afghanistan. And for a unit that's leaving, it's the first place equipment that's not actually yours, you only need it for Afghanistan. It's the first place you could find somebody to sign for it so you could leave.

And it's also in the city of Ghazni is kind of a big deal in Afghanistan. It's part of the old trade routes. It used to be a huge city and had some religious significance. If you're not, if you can't afford to Hujj at the Mecca, you're allowed to do some form of worship in Ghazni and get partial credit. But what kind of got us into a bind was we generally don't tell anybody when we're closing a camp because the Taliban developed a really neat, easy win for them. So if we say we're closing a camp, they'll come in and attack it very near to the end.

So then they get to take credit for running us out of that area. So unfortunately they figured out that we were closing Ghazni and selected us for a complex attack so they could kind of claim credit for shutting it down and running us out. And then also they, I mean, rightfully so, if they were able to inflict the kind of casualties they were hoping for, can kind of dictate foreign policy or the US's swag at it.

And, you know, you figure if you killed a couple hundred american soldiers, like that would be front page news. Everybody be like, what is going on? And let's get out of there. Everybody kind of had lost their taste for the afghan war anyway, so that's what they were hoping for. The low end kind of make the afghan people think that they're driving us out at the high end, affect America's foreign policy.

But we didn't know that. I'm just on the ground carting ammo around and eating chow and lifting weights and hoping that some weapons sergeant somewhere sprains his ankle and I can go take his place. And we always got indirect fire. And I look back on all the precursors if we really paid attention, but we were too busy. And the AOB by its nature, is a support mechanism. It's not a kinetic operation. The poles owned all the land around us, which kind of kept us disjointed.

But we were watching the frequency of the indirect fire attacks on the camp come up to the point where I didn't leave the camp between 10:00 and 12:00 because the worst case scenario is there'd be an indirect fire camp or indirect fire attack on the camp and I would get trapped because the whole camp shuts down. And you have the regular army out there strictly imposing all these, these processes they have.

And if, you know, like I'm trying to get work done, I'm trapped across the camp until they open it, and they won't open it until EOD inspects each of these rounds. And it's, so if I'm going to get trapped somewhere, I get trapped on the SF compound where at least I can get, you know, a task completed. But it started, it went from being, you know, a intermittent thing to a weekly thing to a daily thing. And, you know, we're thinking even then I remember like the big win is that they're closing the camp for an hour to 2 hours every time they do this. And it's just a harassment thing.

But what they were doing was conditioning the camp. You know, every day you need to go sit in your bunker, this is normal. Also mapping out where all these soldiers are seeking cover and also refining where these rounds are landing so that when they launch their big attack, they can hit key infrastructure on the camp, which they did.

So they're the first volley of indirect fire after the initial breach hit the camp generators, and somebody decided to park the spare or alternate generator right next to the primary to make maintenance easy. When one burned it, burned the other. So we live without electricity for kind of a while.

Jon Becker: So you think initially, as they're doing this, they're basically scouting and training?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yes. Looking back on it, we went after it, and we know that they're assessing. Scouting. Each of the guys that assaulted the camp had a little card that was hand drawn, but amazingly accurate. Even I don't read the posh tube, but I picked it up, and I recognize everything on the camp. I can point to each structure and tell you what it is because it's drawn so well.

Jon Becker: Do they have people inside the camp also?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. So we had, you know, even on the polish fob, they have a program where they hire afghan laborers to do different tasks and perform things. And the Taliban just went and either coerced, recruited, or just caused their own people to be hired. And, you know, had those guys all over the camp.

And, you know, we recovered, I think, five suicide vests that had been hidden on the camp. Somebody put them on and sweat in them, and then for whatever reason, you know, they didn't receive the signal or see the thing that would cause them to conduct their attack, and they took them off and then just went and rejoined that workforce, which caused everybody to be, you know, nervous wreck for. Cause that guy's still here. And is there any more suicide vests buried on the camp somewhere?

Jon Becker: Yeah, I mean, so they're basically, they're building towards an attack objective and gradually getting more accurate maps, figuring out their fire, figuring out your patterns, figuring out where everything that's critical is so that when they do kick off the attack, it's all at once.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: And they, you know, and it was bigger than that because they'd launched some attacks throughout the entire country, and they're getting the critiques and ars after action review and, like, what is successful and what is not.

So one of the first things, one of the first attacks, they detonated the bomb, and then the guys had to drive down from a safe place, and the lapse between the vehicle borne explosive device and the little assaulters was too long.

So the camp had kind of shrugged off the bomb and was waiting for them. And killed them all immediately. And then a second attack. They got much closer. Dressed up as Americans. But, you know, if you've ever watched any of the stolen valor videos, man, if you put your tie clip on wrong there's a marine out there somewhere that'll spot it from 200 meters. So nobody was fooled that these guys were American soldiers because they had AK-47s but their uniforms were wrong and slovenly. So those guys were all instantly neutralized without penetrating the camp very far.

So, you know, they're like, okay, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna. They staged in a structure very near the camp dressed up as the Afghan army, which worked. Cause when I first saw them, I was like, these guys, I'm a Green Beret. I'm gonna put these guys to work. This is my job. Why are they over here anyway? And then they identified themselves as not the Afghan army by shooting at me.

Jon Becker: Which is a pretty clear message. Yeah.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: It's in the intelligence community, we call it indicator. It's a clue.

Jon Becker: Police work, you call it a clue. Yeah.

Brent Stratton: I mean, a great detective, Earl.

Jon Becker: So how does talk to me the morning of the event, what happens?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So the morning of the event. And one of the reasons I was able to respond as quickly as I had is we always make fun of young Earl. He's a real knucklehead and I pick on him all the time. But we took a picture for the deployment on the AOB and we're having a change of command. And I went full, full bore for the picture. I wanted to look amazing.

So I had all my equipment, I had all my ammunition looking good. My rifle's cleaned up, I have my sniper rifle. And I took a great photo right before the attack and I get distracted. So instead of taking my equipment back and putting it up in my room I went to hang out with a buddy of mine in the med shed and set all that stuff just outside instead of putting it up like a true professional.

But it worked out for me. And we're hanging out, like I said, both of us are kind of bummed out that we're on the AOB and we can't wait to not be on the AOB. And suddenly we're both on the floor of the med shed covered in everything that was on his shelves because a 3500 to 5000 pound bomb is just detonated about 700 meters from where we're at.

Jon Becker:

Where did they actually detonate the bomb? Was it the gate or.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee:

Oh, that's. So that's what kind of clued me in immediately that this was going to be different because that is a very common attack. They'll drive a truck bomb or a vehicle bomb into a gate and try to kill the sentries working there. But this one was on the far end of the camp that's not habitated. And we had a flight line on it. And this is about midway down the flight line.

There's a long section of this Hesco wall. And they detonated the bomb back there. And the chances them killing anybody are extremely low. I think there was one guy running down the flight line who lived, apparently. I saw him on a video but somebody said they knew him and were talking to him. He didn't remember his name for a couple days.

But because he was about 200 meters from, you know, this, this thousand pound, multi thousand pound bomb and you can see him just get launched off his, he's out there running, obviously at the end of his run, kind of going all in and you just see him get launched like a rag doll off the, off the running trail.

Jon Becker: So they basically used a 5000 pound breaching charge.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: It's a, I would say flashbang would be more apt. You know, they got, they needed a hole in the wall which a much smaller device would have built a, they cleared out 60 meters of eleven foot Hesco wall and left a 20 foot crater under it. You know, like it was overkill. A couple hundred pounds would have made what they needed.

So I think it was mostly to shock the camp. And also they, either by accident or by design, you know, all the alarms go off, everybody runs to their bunkers and, you know, those first few rounds came in and killed the power to the camp.

So they, the camp had, you know, two conditions for attack. Fobcon Red, you know, we're getting attacked. Everybody, you know, hit your bunkers and get in there. And then Fabcon black means, hey, everybody, come out and fight for your life. Because the camp's been penetrated, it's a possibility that's being overrun. And the polish command was not able to communicate that down to the guys in the bunkers.

So they're riding this attack out in the bunkers and unbeknownst to them, there's 15 guys wearing suicide vests sprinting across the airfield, coming to the bunker, coming to a bunker near you. Up until now, their plan is going perfectly, working out really great.

Jon Becker: Because they've created their diversion, they've breached the wall and now the 15 guys are coming in through that opening.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: And, you know, at this time I'm hearing they had a base of fire set up, which is, you know, to machine guns that aren't going to penetrate the camp, but it's to provide suppressing fire so these guys can worry more about movement than about engaging us forces or polish forces.

And I could hear that, and I was kind of figuring out what we were facing, and, you know, jumped in my stuff and started looking for a way to get over to the other side of the camp, which we had a mail clerk out picking up the company's mail. And he was not excited about being out during this.

And then as he was coming back on, 180 degrees from where this bomb detonated, we had a hotel that had a good amount of foreign fighters, or not foreign fighters, afghan fighters, and about 160 of them, also with machine guns, RPGs, recoilless rifles and mortars. And, you know, after the bomb detonated, nobody's really moving except for him. And they wanted something to shoot at. And he was the guy, so he was super pumped not to be out there anymore.

Jon Becker: So the 160, they're friendlies or they're.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: No, this is. The attack was going great until then, but we surmised that they meant to penetrate the camp on at least three sides. And there's probably more fighters, but these guys are sitting in this hotel just firing into the camp. And there was another truck, a 20,000 pound charge, and the fuel pump went out on it, and the driver just got out and walked away. But it broke down, I think, less than a mile from the camp.

So we're kind of thinking those guys were supposed to create space for at the gate because these guys are firing directly into the front gate. This truck supposed to pull in as far into the camp as he can and detonate, and then these guys will leave the hotel and kind of hit the camp.

Jon Becker: Got it.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: But that didn't happen, you know, didn't do proper maintenance on their vehicles, so they would.

Jon Becker: Yeah, their whole operation was ruined by a fuel pump, right?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, fortunately. Because, you know, you know, as I tell the story, like, if they'd had one more Girl scout, I'd have been in trouble because I was down in my pocket knife by the time it was over. But anyway, that's, you know, I'm unaware of this other than, you know, we get into a truck, me and my two buddies, and we pull out of the camp, and I'm like, well, you know, I'm in charge of security for the SF camp. I already decided I'm gonna go get in a fight, but, I mean, I'm gonna lock this gate because we had a big gate, and I'm like, you guys pull through, I'll lock this gate.

And, you know, that's going to be my. At least I didn't leave the gate unlocked. And somebody just ran in here until these guys mount the towers because I can kind of see the AOB shaking it off, and everybody's doing what they're supposed to. And anyway, the truck parks out on the street, and they start taking fire. And, you know, I slip through a little foot gate, and by the time I get to the truck, you know, Drew and Nate are pretty excited that we need to go somewhere else.

Jon Becker: Yeah, they're taking fire, and they're ready to leave.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: I'm locking the gate up and, you know, putting. Putting my locks on and making sure my shoes are tied tight. And they're out there, you know, rounds bouncing off the truck and are like, you know, looking. Where is he?

Jon Becker: Cursing you, screaming at you, honking the horn.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, I probably almost got left. But, you know, we hop on the truck, and we start pulling away from the camp, and we're pulling past our motor pool, and it's. It's catching h***. And we're. We're thinking, well, maybe we'll go help those guys. But, you know, they're. We can see them. Everybody's running around pretty animated, and the guard towers are starting to return fire. And, like, they. They got it. There's. Let's. We'll head for the breach.

And, you know, we start moving toward the breach, and that's when my company warrant, and then a medic from one of the other teams, Matt Horde and. And Mark Colbert, pull up. They're on a four wheeler giving us thumbs up and pointing toward the blast. And we're giving them a thumbs up, and, yeah, we're going there, too. Let's get after it. And we headed down there together. And it started off with us in the front, and I kind of get to the airfield, and we start slowing down, kind of thinking about dismounting at this point. And as they pull past us, they start catching h***. I could see them getting hit, and I could see them. I could see rounds impacting around them.

At this point, though, I thought it was the base of fire. Honestly, I could see that they were catching a lot of small arms fire, and I just thought it was from the base of fire that I could hear from just off the camp because at this point, I'm still down this little lane, and I haven't come out onto the airfield to really see the whole thing. Yet I can just see them know, catching a ton of fire.

Jon Becker: So at this point, you think it's still external fire?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, because.

Jon Becker: Not internal fire?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Not internal. Because we got there so fast. You know, I just couldn't. I was like, we must have beat them before they got here because, you know, there's still smoke in the air. And we raced down there in this truck, and, you know, that's, Taliban didn't give me their plan, so I was unaware of what they were doing, which was rude, but that's okay. But they back. Yeah, they stacked really close to this thing. I don't know where. I mean, it must have been a bumpy ride for them, because, you know, they. They were already 200 meters into the camp by the time I get there.

And anyway, we pull around to block these guys from the fire, and then, you know, I see the Afghans, and before I have that split second thought, like, wow, these idiots are facing the wrong way, and they're running away. The bad guys are over here. I'm gonna jump out here and put them to work. And that's, you know, they turned inboard and identified themselves as the enemy by firing at me, which, you know, got everybody stressed out in the truck again.

Jon Becker: They would subsequently learn to regret that decision, though.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So maybe I never got to talk to them. But, you know, I have my sniper rifle, and I'm kind of banging it on everything in the truck, trying to get the dangerous in toward the bad guys, and I present it out and fire. Fire one round, and it jams. I think that I had a scar variant. It's got an external charging handle. I think that the charging handle must have caught on the door frame because it's, like, one of the most reliable rifles ever. It's. That thing never jammed before. Never jammed since. But for this story, it jammed, which was a huge letdown for me.

So, you know, I've decided, you know, I know I got Drew and Nate with me. They still got a couple plays to make, so I'm gonna create space for them, and I pull my pistol, and I'm a pretty good shot, but I'm better the closer I get. So I just started closing with the nearest group of fighters and engaging them with my pistol as best I can.

Jon Becker: And describe the battle space for me. How far are you from them? How are they set up? They're set up. How many are there?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: You know, like, I think back, I don't think all 15 of them were there. I think there's probably 9, maybe. Maybe 12 were there. But, you know, they were in a semicircle around us. So they were all the way. The trucks kind of started the turn. There's guys all the way out to the left shooting into the driver's window, and they come all the way around to my front and slightly to my rear shooting into my window.

Jon Becker: So they were spread out, closing towards you guys when you encounter them.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So they had, this particular lane was the only way to access the main thoroughfare through the camp off the airfield. And they had it marked on their little cards. So, you know, we didn't know what they were trying to do until later, which they had to get past us to meet their intent. They had to get past us and get down this lane because right behind us, down this little lane is all the bunkers where all the soldiers who are seeking cover from this indirect fire. They're all in these little bunkers that are set up, up and down the street.

And as best we can tell, they, they all had 20 hand grenades, a lot of 40 millimeter grenades for their under barrelled grenade launchers and about 20 rifle magazines, which is kind of a lot in Taliban equipping. And we figure they're supposed to hit these bunkers, throw grenades in them, shoot grenades in them, and then ultimately obviously detonate their suicide vest at some point and kind of work down these.

And everybody has a different guess of how that would have worked out. But it would have been fairly successful, I think, especially a lone guy. Somebody probably would have killed him. But operating in, in a team like that, they'd be able to suppress a target and have a guy sprint and run and dive into the bunker, which is, was a tactic they, you know, later used on me.

But, you know, at this point, I dismount with my pistol. I start engaging as best I can. I think they had a plan that if somebody got wounded, they would detonate their vest because I put two rounds in this guy's rifle and he kind of came off of his gun. And then we do a training. If somebody's wearing a vest, I didn't know it was a suicide vest, but we go for the pelvic girdle and I was like, oh yeah, I'm doing this wrong.

And I dropped down to his pelvis and fired around and turned the strings off. The doll dropped. Also. I'm super close to him now and they haven't hit me yet. I'm obviously getting effects as I transition back and forth to each of these guys give me distance, like what? The nearest guy was probably 7 meters, and the furthest was probably 15. So we're right. I can tell that they washed today because I don't smell too much.

Jon Becker: That's pretty close.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: And close enough. I remember seeing expressions. I know when I got a hit because I'm looking at this guy's face, and I can see that what I just did hurt. I can. I remember being, you know, agitated, frustrated, and so, you know, we're close, and. But now, you know, I've covered that distance, and I honestly didn't think I was gonna make it that far.

So I'm kind of, I didn't have a great after plan, so I was kind of like, holy s***. What the h*** just happened? How did they not hit me? And obviously, Nate and Drew have a different version of this because as I was running around with my pistol, they were both getting hit with everything that missed me.

So they're fairly frustrated and don't understand why that happened either. But I never thought I would actually close that full distance. I was just trying to have as good effects as I could because I was just waiting to get hit, to be honest with you. And once I got up there, I was like, well, I guess I need A plan B now.

Jon Becker: Yeah, here we are. Now what?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: And, you know, I grabbed a lot of stuff, but I didn't grab my gun belt, so I was carrying a concealed pistol, and I only had one magazine for it. And I have. I call it my combat purse. I have a purse, and I keep lots of hand grenades and spare mags in it. But when I jumped out of the truck, it's in the floorboard of the truck, which, you know, I didn't bring the truck with me, so I didn't have that. But I had a hand grenade. You know, it's the next best thing I had on my vest.

So I pulled that out and popped the spoon and tossed it, and just blind luck, I hit that fighter. I'd hit in the hips, and he's just laying there still. And everybody, all the guys behind him saw that grenade and just got way much further away, which was the plan. You know, that's what people do when you get hand grenades out. They go somewhere else.

Jon Becker: So they basically turn a run away.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yep, they all. Which was great for me because I needed a little bit of time to figure some stuff out and get some bullets or. And get some bullets. Get a gun. I need a gun.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Any gun. I went to work on my rifle. You know, we have the drill, and I locked the bolt to the rear and stripped that magazine out and did my little. Three little piggies, and the rounds fell out right away. Thankfully, wasn't a bad jam, or I probably wouldn't have made it again and then put a fresh mag in and was back in the fight. And, you know, the grenade detonated, which is, you know, the guy did have a suicide vest on his is the only vest that didn't detonate. Is the guy killed with a hand grenade. Just one of those weird.

Jon Becker: Yeah. The one guy that was actually exposed to an explosive device his vest doesn't detect.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Didn't detonate. Yeah, because everybody else we were shooting, their vests were detonating, and I was like, how did the grenade guy not blow up? But it did kill him, so we didn't have to worry about him anymore. And then I'm sitting there going, you don't see that every day? And I start hearing pop, pop, and I can hear a thump, thump, thump behind me.

And I remember, ever since I was a recon marine, I hate. You know, I sound like Anakin, but I hate sand. And there's sand running down the back of my neck, and. And I look off, and I can see, you know, to my rear and left. There's a guy in the. In the prone, with us, sling supported prone position, just laying them. Laying them in on me, and he's going for a headshot at, like, 100 meters. And he just had a bad zero and threw, like, five rounds into the wall, just not in me, and I knew exactly. I have 100 meters zero on my gun. This guy is at, like, 100 meters because it's where we do our wind sprints for pt in the morning.

So I dropped to a knee, and I held on the notch of his throat and pulled the trigger, and he instantly, you know, vaporized off the earth. He was gone, which surprised me. I was not ready for that.

Jon Becker: Yeah, you're expecting him to be shot, I guess. His vest detonates his.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. You know, it took me a minute because we had polish tanks, so I thought maybe a tank had come up and just decided to crush this one dude with the gun.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: But they started looking around, and they're not there, and I, and you know, it dawned on me that I hit a suicide vest with a sniper rifle. And, you know, like, great, you know, bucket list is complete. I've now done every sniper's dream shot.

Jon Becker: Shot a guy in a suicide vest and detonated the vest.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yep. Recommend it doing that much further away, if you can. 100 meters is still kind of close. Whatever their vests were made of. I think the other thing is they had a very hot explosive in it with not enough shrapnel.

So, you know, later, as I get exposed to these vests, you know, it was painful, but, you know, I never got hit by any fragmentation of any substance other than one piece of brass from an AK. Got blown out of a vest and hit my arm, but, you know, it didn't. Unless I get a bad sunburn, there's not even a scar.

Jon Becker: Amazing!

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So Drew has an opposite story. So he caught every piece of frag on the battlefield, ruined a couple tattoos. So, you know, that's my, that's my side. His got a different story.

Brent Stratton: Everybody's got a different perspective on how things unfold.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: He's like, they were great vests. Every time one went off, I got hit with something. But at this point, you know, I can hear everybody kind of screaming behind me. I'm at this corner, so I don't want to go back to where they're at because these guys will just be right on top of us, and I'm not going to. I didn't know that they were just down there waiting for me. I thought maybe they were trying to run down to the airfield where the aircraft are stored and start destroying aircraft.

So I'm going to go after them, and I'll stay engaged. As far away as I can is, you know, my rough plan. And I know, like, whoever is not out of the fight, they're coming, and they're going to hear. They're going to hear me. I'm throwing grenades and I'm shooting my rifle. You know, the rest of the rest of the guys I came with are going to get down here any minute.

Jon Becker: Cavalry's on the way.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Cavalry's on the way. So I start moving down that lane, and I get about halfway down it and about, you know, five guys hang muzzles out and start shooting at me, and I start, you know, returning fire. And, you know, at this point, like the furthest one, we're talking maybe 20 meters, you know, nearest, probably 15, but really close if you have a, you know, 5 by 25 scope.

So I'm, luckily, I had a red dot on it on a 45 offset, so I'm trying to use that and, you know, I'm shooting at them, and every time I put my rifle, you know, they're doing whack a mole stuff, so they'll pull back, and some else is shooting at me. So I'm trying to transition back and forth.

Jon Becker: And so they're ducking behind cover.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Oh, yeah, they were using cover. Well, and even the guys who were exposing, you know, they're, they're using, you know, the sealant containers and the Humvees and the boxes. They're, they're using it really nicely, really only giving me, like, you know, half of their face, mostly their rifle, and not, you know, big targets to engage. And, you know, there's more of them than me. So every time, I point a gun at somebody, he'll just duck behind, and then somebody else will take a couple of shots at me.

Jon Becker: Are you in the open at this point?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: I'm in the open. I'm, in my mind, I'm slowly walking, but, you know, due to, you know, using mostly adrenaline and very little red blood cells, I was probably sprinting or jogging. But I, you know, I remember still, like, working, working through this problem, trying to keep moving. Cause I can see this, uh, this junction panel, and that's my goal, is I'm going to fight to this junction panel, get behind it, and, you know, have cover and. But anyway, most of the way, that junction panel and my rifle ran dry.

And I, you know, just try to do a speed load, a speed reload right there in the middle of them. Not optimal, but my pistol is empty and my grenades are gone. And anyway, as soon as I dumped that magazine, the nearest fighter to me slung his rifle, sprinted toward me. You know, the classic screamed out lock bar.

And at this point, I kind of, I know what's going down, but I, well, practice, you know, I don't really have to think about this. I got the gun reloaded. Felt like he was hanging off the end of the muzzle, but he was probably, you know, 710 meters away and fired, fired a few rounds and struck his vest and detonated it.

And I think the junction panel ate most of the frag. The blast kind of blew me out from behind there, off to my side. And I wasn't out confused. I was trying to figure out I was very comfortable for whatever reason, but I just remember kind of laying there, and I was, why is there so much gravel in my bed? And you can hear that pop, pop, pop of rifle fire. And there's another fighter has left cover. And he's looking over his sights. He's got his gun super low on his chest, and he's just looking right at my face, firing his rifle. And all his rounds are landing about a foot low. Cause he wanted to take it all in. I guess.

Jon Becker: He was watching himself be successful.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: And anyway, I jerked my rifle up and just hammered away at him and folded him up. He's the same distance. He's probably at that ten to twelve meter line. And I must have hit him five or six times because I was really getting after it, being aggressive on the trigger.

Jon Becker: He's closing on you. You're trying to make him stop closing on you.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: It was an emotional event for both of us. And, you know, I get back to my feet and go back to that whack a mole thing I'm doing. Just shooting at everybody that's got a head on their shoulders when I run, you know, ran at ammo again. And so this time I'm like, I'm not going to do. I'm not going to do the race again. That was lame.

So I dumped my magazine as I simultaneously turn off and sprint back to my. The corner where the. Where I dismounted the truck and get reloaded. About the same time, I'm kind of dashing around this corner and, you know, crash into Drew Busick, who's been in the backseat getting shot, bleeding all over the mail for the entire company. Everybody was pretty bummed out. My mom sent cookies and you bled all over him. Thanks!

But, you know, he's had his own struggle. Like, the one of the rounds came through and hit the child safety locks on the truck door. So he was climbing through all this mail, and he's trying to get this truck door open, and it's not gonna happen.

Jon Becker: Oh, God! So he's trapped in the back of the car with the child safety locks.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. And then Nate, that's literally like a bad dream. And Nate's driving. He got hit. And we call it the nuclear karate chop. He got hit and he had a stainless steel windlass on a tourniquet that he had up on his collar of his gear and around has hit it, and he thought he got shot through the neck.

So when I dismounted the vehicle, he jammed the truck into reverse and did a reverse 180 out of there. So when Drew finally got out of the truck, I guess he was confused about which way is this truck facing now.

Jon Becker: Cause he had done the cool James Rockford J turn.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: But Drew, he saw me run down that alley, so he came running for me. Nate left the vehicle. They got super lucky on their shot placement for killing the truck. They shot the battery terminals and the alternator. So the truck was kind of. And the child safety lock and the child safety lock.

Jon Becker: Three for three.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. Missed me. At this point, Nate's still in pretty good shape. I think Drew caught three or four rounds, but most of them hit a truck door, a truck seat, so they came through as more like chinese throwing stars. So it really looked like he just got in a knife fight. It's not that bad. He'll disagree because he's had some very nice tattoos that are ruined at this point, so he's pretty upset about it.

Jon Becker: I think it's reasonable to be.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. You know, nobody wants to put in all that time and effort, and then now it's just this weird flayed open thing when.

Jon Becker: Plus, nobody wants to get hit with frag.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Oh, yeah, that rounds.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee:

But he saw me run down the alley, so he's coming. Like, I thought, you know, like I knew he would. Somebody's coming. And, you know, he. We crashed into each other, and I was like, hey, I know where they're at. Let's go get them. And he's like, yeah, let's go get them. So we, at this time now it's two people. That's a team. We're doing some teamwork. He's on the far left of the lane. I'm on the far right. We're moving down. Nobody's really shooting at us, but, you know, it's still. It's indirect fire. Still landing on the camp. This base of fire is still shooting.

So I don't mean to make it sound like it was a peaceful walk. It's still, you know, if we're. If Spielberg was filming, we got plenty of stuff going on to make it exciting. And he's looking like he's gonna step over. This last guy I shot, and he's. This guy is, like, smoking. Like, you know, there's a little bit of smoke coming off of him.

And I remember telling Drew, I was like, stay away from the bodies. They have suicide vests on. And Merritt kind of stopped him in his tracks, and he turned back, and he's like, what? Everybody has a suicide vest, so, you know, keep your distance. Be forewarned.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Which, you know, he's kind of paused there, kind of edging toward this d*** junction panel again. It's the only cover in this little lane. Everything else is open thoroughfare, and it's all these sea lane containers, so there's nothing really to hide behind.

Jon Becker: You see, junction panel. You make an electrical box.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So, yeah, it's a gigantic electrical box. So it's where all the big two inch cable from the generators comes in here, and it gets dispersed out.

Jon Becker: Got it. How big is this?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Probably two and a half feet wide and 3ft tall, 4ft tall. You know, it's almost big enough for two people to hide behind, which comes up in a minute.

Jon Becker: Which probably at this point looks to you like a….

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: It's better than no castle. Yeah, pretty funny. The rounds that had come through it because it wouldn't stop a bullet but it would hit those big, heavy cables and since they were aiming at me, it would turn the bullet, you know, like 30, 40 degrees. So if they aimed it, if they had just sprayed blindly, they probably would have got me. But they were actually aiming at the panel trying to hit me and it would just turn just enough to go around me and come through the back of the panel, which is kind of marvelous. It's one of those weird things.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I mean, this whole event is you literally couldn't script even up till now. And have anybody believe this actually occurred?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: No, not at all. I think the only, only reason anybody even remotely believed us was, you know, it happened on base. So when they came back to investigate it, you know, they did like, you know, CSI. Like you said you were shooting here. Let's see. And like, well, there's a pile of. There's a pile of brass there. And I actually was doing a walkthrough for. I was on drugs for pain. So it was either General Conville or Secretary of Defense Esper. But I was kneeling down. I was like. And then I got my grenade out and threw it right here and found my grenade pin.

Jon Becker: Wow!

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So I was like, oh, s***, I was right here, actually. And he's like, well, I mean, yeah, I guess you were right here, but, you know. Anyway, Drew is sitting there and this vest goes low order. So it's like a blowtorch. Like a gigantic blowtorch. It's like 20ft of flame and overwhelming heat. It went from being spicy back there to just like, you opened an oven door and you're looking in at it.

Jon Becker: So if Drew had stepped over him, he would have probably been.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, crispy. It wouldn't have done him any good. But anyway, Drew hates things like that. So he came over to join me behind the junction panel and either the guy's grenade started detonating or everybody just started throwing grenades just because. But either way, we start doing the whack a mole stuff again. Me and Drew, and we just. Everything was exploding. We watched the video of it. We're trying to count at least 15, probably more like 20, 25 grenades because you can just see them rapidly exploding in this area. And stuff's flying out of the alley.

And, you know, we're, you know, Drew and I are having this little chubbing fight where I want to get all the way behind the panel so I can shoot behind it. And he hates that because every time I dig my hips in, I'm kicking him out the other side of it. And then, you know, likewise, he'll jump back in and kind of push me over to the edge of it, and I dislike that intensely.

So we're kind of, you know, sharing this thing like. Like two brothers would share something not well. And at that time, that's when I get hit in the base of my throat with a large, heavy device. And I'm kind of choked up over this junction panel. And I have called an admin pouch. It's just a big, bulky pouch, and you can keep a notebook and a gel shot and a candy bar, things you need in combat.

And anyway, I look down at mine, and it's got a grenade wedged against it, which it's not my grenade, and it doesn't have a pin, so it amps the stress level up for me and Drew. Well, for me, Drew, I don't think, noticed it, but for me, it was a traumatic event. I whacked that thing away from me, and then while I'm messing with that, something hit me in the back of the leg, and it's another grenade. You know, we figure it hit the wall behind me and then just ricocheted off and hit me.

And Drew and I are both trying to kick that thing out of there because it's in the same configuration. It's not ours, and it doesn't have a pin, so we don't want it. And we get it out of there, and Drew grabs me. He's like, hey, we got to get out of here. They're going to kill us. And he's a pretty smart guy, so I tend to go with what he says. And we take off running out of there, and I think we get three or four steps away from that panel, and we both just get kind of knocked down by an explosion.

And I remember he's trying to get up, and I'm kind of laying on his leg, and I'm messing with my gun because I can't get my stalk into my shoulder, and I can't get on my feet because he won't stop yanking on me. And that's when I had looked down, and I can't figure out what's wrong with my rifle. My buttstock's folded over. And there's an arm just below the elbow down. Has smacked into my rifle and broke the buttstock off. Or not off, but broke it and folded it.

Jon Becker: When you say an arm, you mean literally, physically, somebody's arm?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yep, just somebody's arm. And I think he might have reached across his vest and detonated his vest and then sent an armed missile at me. Or maybe it was just laying out there. Because after the battle, there was body parts everywhere. Like you find when a bunch of guys get together and detonate suicide vests. That's all that's left is the extremities. Mostly pieces. Yeah.

Jon Becker: So the blast that knocks you down is him setting off his suicide vest.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Well, probably. It could have been a grenade also. Maybe there was an arm on the ground and the grenade just, you know, who knows? But there was stuff exploding. A lot of it. And anyway, we get up, you know, drew helps me to my feet, and we end up back around this corner again. And that's where we see Mark Colbert, because, you know, I remember seeing him falling. I haven't seen him at this point. I haven't even heard him.

And he's, you know, he's usually the guy that would be driving it. I'm trying to figure out where, like, I'm kind of. I'm thinking that he's either dead or, like, you know, grievously wounded, which I guess he was grievously wounded. He got shot through the b***. He says it was the upper thigh, but I was in the hospital when he got treated. It's definitely b*** meat, you know, and. Which hurts.

But I guess he and Nate had got Matt Horde, who was driving the four wheeler. They've been spending this whole time getting him patched up and off the battlefield. So he got shot through the calf and in the forehead, but is hit the lip of his helmet and stopped it. But he is not useful because he….

Jon Becker: Yeah, when an AK round hits a ballistic helmet, that's not designed to stop an AK round, it does tend to pass some kinetic energy through.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, that's what he said. So he was pretty confused for a day or two. But anyway, I'm pumped to see Chief Colbert. He was from my team. He was on the AOB with me, and he was one of the guys that kind of mentored me directly on my team. He's a GB I aspire to be, and he was a part of my team leadership, and I was very thankful he wasn't dead. And he's kind of a character, so he's like, what you know, kind of a gruff guy, and he's like, you know, what the h*** are you guys doing?

You know, say, do the same spiel again. Like, chief, we know right where they're at. They're right down here. Let's go get them. And he's like, yeah, well, h***, let's go get them. And he starts limping up from his, you know, ostensibly upper thigh injury. I never seen anybody walk like that with a thigh injury. But, you know, he waddles around, stacks up, and I'm about to lead us down. You know, Drew's taking that far left again. I'm on this corner. You know, you can't have a good war story without a Navy SEAL.

So we had one Navy SEAL showed up, Lieutenant Turnip seed. He stacked up with Drew, and I'm trying to reload my rifle, you know, if you hear, I keep running out of ammo, and it's always been a stressful thing for me, so I'm like, I'm going to reload before we go around the corner, and I can't find a magazine. I look down, and my vest is empty. There's no more magazines.

And I was like, well, I better check to see what I'm dealing with here. And I pull my magazine out. It's got one round on the feed lip there, which sounds bad. It's not that bad. Cause I have one in the chamber, so I've got twice as many as I thought I had. So I have two.

Jon Becker: So you have the double Andy Griffith special two bullets.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: But they're not any bullets. They're sniper bullets. So fair.

Jon Becker: Okay. Yeah, problem solved.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, problem solved. But I'm like, hmm, probably. Well, I probably shouldn't walk point. So I yelled, hey, chief, I can't go first. I'm out of ammo. You got to go first. Which confuses him. He's like, huh? What the h*** you talking about? Like, I only got one bullet. You have to go first. You take point. But don't worry, I'll cover you.

He's like, you know, oh, I'm already shot, so I can go point and get shot more. That's your plan? I was like, well, yeah, yeah, you. You go first and get shot more. But, yeah, he rolls in front of me, and we start to kind of, you know, push down this alley. It's at this time that a soldier from the 10th mountain, Mike Wallace, has run all the way across the camp. He's heard this gunfight the whole time. I guess he was in the MWR with his guys, didn't have any equipment. He just had his rifle and 130 run mag and can do attitude. But he's run about 1100 meters, I think, and he sees us kind of easing into this alley, and he's like, can I go with you? We're like, yeah, come on. If you want to come. This is the place.

Jon Becker: We got 32 bullets.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: No, we got 32 bullets. Yeah. And anyway, we. We ease down this alley. We get. We get to the end of it, you know, the same thing. Pretty peaceful at this point. It's better than it has been. Nobody's throwing grenades at us, and nobody's really, like, shooting directly at us. The camp is still. You can hear stuff blowing up, and you can hear everybody on the camp shooting everywhere.

But in our little spot, it's not bad. And, you know, the chieftain is looking down. There's body parts everywhere, and stuff's on fire. The UAV compound had, I think, like, 500 gallons of aviation fuel for the drones, and it has been burning this entire time. And anyway, he's like, I think you guys got them all. And we hadn't because somebody heard that must have spoke English, decided to make a funny, a funny little dig on chief, but bounced past two hand grenades at us and yanked the lanyard on his vest and detonated his vest, which, you know, scattered everybody. Everybody wanted to be somewhere else.

And I remember, like, thinking, why is everybody running? Been through way worse than this. And one of the grenades actually, you know, came, you know, dumped over near me. And I'm back almost to the generator panel again. It's my spot. It's my favorite hangout. And I'm like, I'll ride this thing out. And I'm looking at it, and I remember, like, oh, I don't have eye pro on. I probably shouldn't look at it when it goes off. So I remember turning my head.

Brent Stratton: Safety first.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Safety first. Yeah, yeah.

Jon Becker: When you're gonna stand by a grenade.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Don't look at it.

Jon Becker: Important safety tip. Wear eye protection.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Right. Which is just, you know, at this point, not thinking completely clear and figuring out what's really going on in the world. But it did. It detonated, and it hurt. I remember, in my bones, it hurt, but nothing hit me. And, yeah, man, I guess I was right about that one.

Jon Becker: That's a win.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: But I start hearing fire again from behind us. We didn't know this is the last fighter has run all the way around. He's shooting the guys up in the back of this thing, you know, I guess he hit Mike and he hit this polish lieutenant. His name escapes me at the moment, but they're both a catch in h*** and returning fire. I fire my last two bullets, and drew fired a few rounds at him. And either we hit his vest and detonated him, or we hit him and then he has detonated his vest. Either way, his vest detonates, and it blew my call us from where he was kind of toward the end of the lane where we started. Most of the distance to me.

Jon Becker: How far do you think that is?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: It probably blew him probably 10 meters. And he was right choked up against this guy. So he pretty much tamped that charge. And, you know, at this point, I have no ammunition. I got my pocket knife out, and I'm kind of dancing around with this knife. And it occurred to me that there's probably more useful ways to spend your time than knife fighting suicide bombers.

So I was like, I know Mike's gonna be injured. I didn't know who he was at this point. I just knew he was a us soldier, but I know he's gonna be injured. So I ran over and grabbed him and attempted to. Tried to grab him by his collar, but he had a stretchy shirt on. So I just pulled it off, and it was just stretching way out. So I was, s***, I'll figure this out another way.

And I reached down and I grabbed him by the belt buckle and kind of just picked him up and shuffled him into this UAV compound and started treatment on him. You know, he was in a bad way. I had an IFAC, and what he really needed was a hospital. And lucky for him, you know, we're on a fob, and I can see the hospital from here.

So I grabbed a contractor for the UAV compound. He's sitting back there hanging out next to a generator. They had a little Suzuki mule, and he got it fired up. We loaded Mike up and got him, you know, got him to the hospital pretty quick after he was wounded. Unfortunately, he did, you know, succumb to his injuries and died that day in Ghazni.

And, you know, now I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do because, you know, I'm alone again because I keep. My friends keep running off and abandoning me, and I send away the only friend I had, this contractor. But, you know, I, in the Q course and the weapons side, to become a weapon sergeant. They have light weapons, and it's the annoying part, they're taking these guns apart, putting them back together, and it's a high stress thing, and they have all these, you're gonna be on the battlefield and have to assemble a gun at night covered in honey. And I'm like, I don't think so. I'm a combat veteran. This has never come up.

So I hate this part of the story. But I went and grabbed an AK, and it had a really nice 30 caliber hole through the bolt. And the operating rod is like shattered off of it, so they don't work like that, even as reliable as aks are. And I throw it down, I grab another one, and it's got nine mil rounds through the top of the magazine, but it has blown the magazine out, which has stretched the receiver apart. And they don't work like that either.

But I was like, well, this one's got a good bolt. I stripped that one out, go back and put AK together and got it. I start grabbing magazines and grenades and trying to figure out what I'm going to do. And the incoming commander, we had a change of command that day, runs up and he's like, Earl, what the h*** are you doing? And I kind of tell him about my day and try to get him involved with my plan to run off base and attack this base of fire. And he's like, well, the poles have tanks here. We'll probably just let them do that. Let's go back to the camp and takes me back to the AOB. And that was the end of my day.

Jon Becker: So at this point, after all that, you're ready to go off the base and go attack the base, fire at the other facility?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. Well, there were Taliban out there.

Jon Becker: But in the process validated the Q course. I mean, you weren't covered in honey.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: But yeah, I'm like, yep, yep. So if you're in the Q course right now, you know, yeah. Maybe one time you might have to put guns together in combat on the battlefield. I'm sorry.

Jon Becker: It's interesting. Cause as you're going through, I hear you referencing training Q course, prior experiences, how much of your training kicked in without you really having to think about it as this happened?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: All of it. So every instance, the actions I didn't take, actions I executed, rehearsed activities that had been trained into me relentlessly. So I didn't decide to pull my pistol out because my rifle jammed like it was a, it was a auto reflex. As soon as the rifle didn't recoil properly, it registered that the rifle was down.

And then by the time I really cognitively figured that out, my pistol was already out. When I had to reload, you know, that that process started because I, you know, I trained, so much that when I felt that bolt locked to the rear, there was already a magazine coming, and the old one needed to be out of the way because they're passing each other in the sky, and so, which really, you know, I always tell people the only thing I'll own is the will to engage with the enemy. All the success that I enjoyed on that battle was for the training I had received and, you know, good training that was well thought out.

And being in an organization that won't leave well enough alone. I had peers that were like, well, you didn't really do that great. It was executed kind of poorly. You should do that one again. And being humble enough to listen to guys tell me that I wasn't the best and to become the best. But, yeah, obviously, everything I had executed on that battlefield was something I had trained at before many, many times.

Jon Becker: So your responses were automatic, at least at a technique level, those responses had become automatic for you?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Absolutely. Yeah. I didn't have to. I could concentrate on other things. Cause I didn't have to come up with what to do. My body was just reacting to that.

Jon Becker: Do you think that that facilitated you not being overcome by the events?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, I mean, if I had to figure out that my rifle is jammed and I need to pull my pistol out if I need to, if I had to think through why I don't have ammunition in my rifle currently, I think that not having those ready made solutions kind of providing me a tool to use against the enemy, obviously held my psyche together.

Jon Becker: I'm going to guess also that as, I mean, you obviously, you were exposed to multiple blasts, right? I mean, your sequence of explosions, at some point, I'm going to guess that you're no longer, you know, able to do advanced mathematics as you're moving.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: You know, if you notice that the person that decided to stand next to the grenade so they didn't have to run somewhere, that that is not a brilliant mind.

Jon Becker: Eye protection. He was wearing eye protect.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Oh, wait, no. He turned his head through the battle. When I start the battle very clear, and I can remember seeing, you know, further off into the camp. And then, you know, as. As the battle progresses, my little circle of cognitive recall, it gets closer and closer and closer to the point when drew and I were getting grenaded. At a certain point, I remember. I know that was engaging something, you know? Right?

But in my memory, all I can kind of see is the rear of my rifle, the red dot and the brass. I have a astounding memory of the brass coming out of the rifle. I can't remember what was in front of me at all. And that's where I can kind of tell how much stress I was under through the battle is kind of how far away I could see, which I recognize because it's an evaluation of how competent you are for free fall. Is the instructor first thing on the ground, he's like, what did you see? And if you saw nothing, that's bad, because, I mean, you were really in your own head. When guys get a few jumps, they remember their altimeter, which is about eight inches from their face.

So you'll see guys have a very good the whole jump. They just remember the dials spinning on that altimeter. And then when somebody is really competent in the air, they'll remember, well, I saw the instructor, and then there was a mountain and a lake off to the, you know, to your rear, and that's as you kind of get inoculated to stress and fear, you'll start taking in those. Those details.

So that's kind of, you know, I know I was kind of maxed out for what stress and fear I could kind of deal with because at that point, I couldn't see past, you know, the rear aperture of my rifle.

Brent Stratton: You know, one of the things that you touched on was you felt like the training had come from people that were being honest with you and saying, hey, you're not performing very well here. I'm guessing in a training environment, when you were getting that feedback, I would imagine that there's a lot of really cool things to break down there that you have the organizational culture at that point that somebody is willing to be able to say that.

And then you touched on, too, the humility to be able to accept that and then that drive to be able to continue to train and build those repetitions. And then you saw it play out. So oftentimes when we talk about accountability, when we talk about standards, those are just kind of words that people use. Oftentimes it's used with supervision, or I'm going to hold somebody accountable.

Jon Becker: Right.

Brent Stratton: But we're talking about some line level, lateral accountability, truly with your team and being able to say, hey, you're not performing well here. You need to work on this. And I could see a lot of people shutting down, and nobody wants to work on the things that they're not good at.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. It's not comfortable to embrace weakness. Right. I would rather, obviously go out and just nail the things I'm really good at. So to take stock and look in the mirror and be like, well, I'm going to throw myself on the altar of humble pie and go and fail at this until I'm good at it, it's a hard thing to do. And I think SF has a good culture where people will respect that and kind of honor your, like, well, at least you're out here.

Brent Stratton: Yeah. And that's great to be able to build that culture, and that's something that organizationally, I would love to make sure that we're building that in each of our organizations, but I don't know that we always see that. Oftentimes you see, well, I'm not the sergeant. That's nothing. My job, I don't want to be the one that goes and does this, but really being able to step up and do that, I thought was really interesting that you said that. Those are things that I'm keen on.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. And, you know, we were talking earlier, I guess, you know, rehash my. A lot of people are like, wow, it's great. That's amazing that you did that. I couldn't do that. I'm like, well, let me tell you about Earl's first gunfight and, you know, driving into a city at night in Iraq and wasn't even that bad. Nobody was shooting at me, but they were shooting at things.

And I, you know, luckily, you know, Browning makes a very sturdy gun because I was trying to pull that thing off the truck and get sitting so low in the truck that I couldn't see anything. If I'd had to react, there's no doubt in my mind I would not have. I was wanting to be anywhere else but then that gun truck.

But I had some really good leaders, and I think noticing that I was kind of down here thinking about myself, wishing I'd gone to law school and just giving me small tasks to get me outside of my own head. Not an important task, but asking me if I had my flares ready for escalation of force, asking me if the truck behind us was still there. And I'm, like, forcing me to kind of get out and participate in the battle, not in a meaningful way, but in a way that just kind of kept me engaged. Engaged, yeah. And then once I, you know, you'll get comfortable with anything if you're there long enough.

So, like, you know, once I realized that I wasn't going to die immediately, I started coming up out of my little turtle shell. And luckily, that was a pretty one sided fight. By the time we kind of got there, it was all over, and I never really got engaged, but that was my first gunfight. If I hadn't been strapped into the truck, I was definitely ready to run somewhere else.

Jon Becker: What do you think? So from that earl to Medal of honor early. What happens there? What changes in you?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So every, and I also, I got really lucky in that I had a very, what, low escalation of violence. So gunfights that were overwhelming on my side, very little return fire. And then gradually, they got worse and worse. And as I went through. But each time, you know, I started getting confidence. You know, it's one thing to, you know, you train martial arts your whole life. If you've never actually fought somebody, you don't really know.

And to kind of see my training function on the battlefield and to, you know, after you've survived a few gunfights and then you're like, the reason that we were successful is these things that we had practice and training, and it validated the training. I'm like, I just have this confidence that I'm ready for anything.

And I think after Ghazni, I've never been stand alone in the face of the enemy before. But there's a very common nightmare that combat veterans have, and I've had both of them, or I used to have both of them. And one, the bad guys, you shoot them and they don't die.

Brent Stratton: They don't go down.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, they don't go, they don't go down.

Jon Becker: The Michael Myers nightmare.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Or they fall down and they get right back up. And you're on the battlefield, and you're shooting these guys, and they just, they don't die, and they keep coming. And eventually, you're oval run. And then the other one is, you know, being on the battlefield without ammunition or no gun. Yeah, right.

Jon Becker: So you played out both of those.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So I played out both of those, but I've never had that nightmare again after that day.

Brent Stratton: That's funny. Cops have the same thing. Right? But shooting and running out of ammunition and not being there, and when you're telling the story, you know, we had, we were fortunate to be able to hear you present it a little earlier. In hearing it again today, that's all. I kept thinking is, man, you are playing out everybody's worst nightmare.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, it's the old going to school without pants thing.

Brent Stratton: You did that, too.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: I did that, yeah. Yeah, we're not talking about that. Yeah, we'll keep this on combat and training, but, no, that's, you know, it's a very, very common thing. And then after that day, I went and looked at what would I have done different? I could have come better prepared. I could have brought a different rifle if I could see the future. I wish I'd had my gun belt on, but habitually for the labor I was doing, a gun belt does not help with manual labor. I did the best I could with how I would have come.

And when I really looked in the mirror, I was like, I wouldn't really have changed anything. I still think the fight I anticipated having to shoot, waif off the camp or being asked to support another team. The sniper rifle lended itself to being that thing and then surviving that battle. And I would say strictly off of the training and then the tactics that I've been taught gave me, like, a really high level of confidence.

Brent Stratton: Is there anything that, and maybe this is too strong of a word, and I certainly mean no disrespect to it, but the word that comes to mind is, in the weeks leading up to the assault, would you term as complacency of getting used to the assaults that were coming daily? And then you could set your watch by how often they were coming. And is there anything that you even would have been able to do offensively to be able to impact that?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So, you know, we looked back at that. What could we have done different? So the AOR that we were in was not ours. So we were staged there just for logistical reasons. So we had no right. If we had found out that these guys are doing this, a camp attack, us special forces would have had no right to go out and prosecute this. And nor would we ever waste any of our time trying to solve that mystery because that was, you know, we have a coalition partner, the polls, that's theirs.

And then, you know, we had some intelligence indicators that painted the picture that they were also solving. So they had their. Their picture. They knew that the camp was going to be attacked that day. They didn't know it was going to be a spectacular attack. You know, they went, they sent a two man sniper team to the hotel to what they thought stop a team from emplacing a – Either recoilless rifle or a rocket or some sort. And that was their big plans because they had kind of picked up some intelligence that there would be an attack, obviously underestimated, vastly.

And on the other hand, we knew that somewhere in that quarter of Afghanistan there was going to be a spectacular fob attack because we could see them sucking up all this support to support it, you know, like the, a 20,000 pound bomb and then two, you know, 5000 pound bombs, that's, that's a vast amount of explosives. So we could see them gathering the stuff up, the munitions that they were moving around. We knew there was going to be a spectacular attempt.

And I guess if we'd ever sat down and just disregarded the other work we'd been given, we might have figured that out, but we had no cause to do it. We were doing our job in our areas of Afghanistan and they were, they were running theirs. And I think, you know, it's just one of those, the battlefields are messy and the enemy gets a chance to kill you. You can mitigate it as best as you want, but in the end of the day, they get a vote and how the battles go, suspect gets a vote.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Yeah. So, from a lessons learned standpoint and things that you think are actionable for other units, what, looking back at this, you talk about stress inoculation. How would you now, on the heels of this, explain to other people building stress inoculation and how did this event change the way that you viewed that?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So I had always been trained in a manner that was stressful and that's different. As you get older, older and more competent, the stress is different. So as a, like a young, a young private, it just takes a sergeant yelling at him and that's stressful. You know, that causes a ton of problems for him. And then for like, my, my operators, the closest thing I can get is to like physically fatigue them. It's very common. Before we do a stress shoot, have a guy run a mile in his gear.

And then I also like pepper spray and tasers because even if somebody thinks that there's a chance that they're going to get tased, you'll see them act in a very different manner because especially if they've been tased once before.

Jon Becker: So you'll unexpectedly tase them.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Well, I'll tell them that, hey, we're doing training today and somebody's getting tased.

Jon Becker: Could be you, could be somebody else.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. Whoever shoots the lowest score gets tased today. That's always a fun one. But, you know, it's, it's one of those things. I find that when somebody's physically exhausted, like, to the point of like muscle failure, that closely mimics their combat performance because, you know, in combat, different processes are taking place and, but a lot of them, you know, the racing heart from all the adrenaline in your system, the fear and just the, you know, that over that preponderance of emotions that are coming in, you get the same physical performance from just like, running a guy ragged, you know, that's how good he is.

So if you think on any given day at 50 meters, I'm very competent with a pistol, I can just beat a ten ring to death. But somebody stands down there with one bullet and they're going to shoot it back, that's a tough shot for me. And I'm, you know, that I'm a high level performer. So you think, and you look at statistics, they kind of bleed that out, that these gunfights will happen inside of 10ft and, you know, two guys will wail away at each other and shoot, you know, seven, eight rounds and there's one hit and, you know, they weren't very good in the first place.

And then once those eyes dilate, you know, keeping the front sight post clear is nearly impossible. And, you know, and the best you can do is just kind of hope for that process to line up once. And, you know, you look at, I think, people like Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, very fascinating characters because they weren't exceptionally fast gunfighters and they weren't exceptionally well known for their competency with a firearm. But what they did possess was either, you know, very probably sociopaths. They just didn't get rattled and they would hold the gun out, use the front sight post and line up a shot and take it.

And, you know, you have to be able to get out of your own head, kind of master your body and apply the fundamentals like your life depended on it. Cause for this story, it does. And make those hits. And for training, if you're not completely stressed out in one manner or the other, you're not really training.

Jon Becker: You're just practicing.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: You're just practicing. You're not training for an actual scenario. You're out farting around a little bit.

Jon Becker: It's interesting because you talk about two complementary things. One is absolutely fundamentally drilling the basics and being able to execute those basics under a high stress situation. The other thing that you're talking about is the culture of the unit. That is accountability to one another and to the unit itself, to constantly attack your weaknesses and to create a culture of driving towards perfection. It strikes me that those two kind of came together for you.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. And even as a force recon marine, that was the same culture, actually, probably more rabid. That place is very aggressive with it. And to be there, have your peers demand perfection of you, and then to have relevant, well thought out training and then to be a professional yourself, you can't help but end up with something pretty special at the end of that.

Jon Becker: It seems, though, that it's very easy to decide that you've mastered the basics, and it's very easy to avoid uncomfortability in interpersonal relationships because, you know, I know Earl isn't practicing this, but, like, I don't want to have the awkward conversation. How do you prevent that from occurring in a unit?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: I think, I mean, it's always going to be uncomfortable at first, and then it's the manner that's delivered, you know, and you can tell, you know, if somebody's picking at you in a malicious manner, like, that's how it comes off. But if somebody is being humble and like, hey, you know, the stopwatch doesn't lie, the target doesn't lie, you're not doing well.

And I think I know what's wrong. Maybe they're trying to help you, maybe they can't. You know, if it's up here, a lot of times they're like, I can do this, but I'm not there where I can teach you. I'm just telling you, you're not there. So be back here tomorrow.

And then, you know, something that always kept me humble, also, right after I became a force recon marine, being qualified as an zero 321 coming from the infantry, huge deal. I got airborne wings. I've been to Sears school, and I walk in, and my first team, Sergeant Pat Sterling, he sat me down, the whole team's gone, and he's lauding my accomplishments. He's like, you graduated Ardeche.

Yeah. He's like, cyr and jump school. Like, it's a big deal. And I was like, my head's this big. And he's like, that's the bare minimum. To even walk through that door. Like, you are the bare minimum. I will even accept that. Comes in here and drinks water in my presence. So, like, so now what are you gonna do? Like, why should I keep you?

And for me, that was like, man, he took the wind right out of my sails. And I was like, yeah, why am I going to be here? And I was like, okay, so I'm not special anymore. I was special before I walked in this door. And now I have to hold myself to a higher standard. And I'm looking at the unit to see what guys are good at that I'm not. And it's everything. And I just rapidly attack that.

And I think that that conversation kind of stopped me because it's a two way street, you need somebody to be bold enough to tell you you're not meeting the standard, and then you got to be humble enough to take that. And don't take it as a personal attack. You're not good. Get good.

Jon Becker: It's interesting! One of the things that you said is that you talked about stopwatches and scores and things that are objectively measurable. Do you think it's essential that you are driving objective standards? Because if I say, well, I don't like the way you sing, that's it. That's a difficult thing. It's very subjective. But if I go, hey, you know, it took you 45 seconds. It's supposed to take you 15.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: I mean, that's an easy one because if you don't know that, you're not trying very hard. But there's other things, especially how you're giving commands to a room, especially the job we have. They have the sleepovers. You'll go into a room and sometimes it'll be empty, and sometimes there'll be 30, 40 guys in there. And we're like, okay, rehearsing these commands, and you're like, hey, that's not intimidating. I don't feel like you're owning the room. I think the way you're delivering it, I feel like, is inviting violence.

And then you got the other guy that's, like, way over the top, and I'm like, hey, you're screaming like a maniac. That's almost as bad as this weakness. You're kind of adding a, like, stress to the room. Like, we don't need them panicking that we're going to murder them all. We want them to understand that we are in command of the situation competently.

And that's, you know, like, have that conversation how you're standing. Like, you know, you look scared. Like, that's. That's not. Like I didn't feel intimidated. I felt like you were intimidated. And, you know, and most of the time, people's body language is, is there, like, well, I was intimidated. It was terrifying. But, like, okay, well, don't stand like that. You know, stand like this. This is how you were looking. And, you know, subjective things like that.

And I can tell, like, when somebody's in placing an explosive, how confident they are. They can lie to me. They can even, like, yep, it went off. But, like, you know, you're sitting there messing with it and your hands are doing that. You know, the, like, I don't know what to do with my hand stuff. And, like, you're. You need to rehearse this more, because obviously, you got it right this one time.

But I know and you know that you were nervous to a huge extent. Like, let's go practice that until you're not nervous. And, I mean, you can lie about it, like, well, it's because it was cold. That's why. You know, and, like, well, I don't. Maybe you're the only one that knows, but that looked dumb to me.

Jon Becker: So it's just a constant drive towards excellence in everything.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: In everything, yeah. Why? You know, I don't think anybody wants to write a book about how I did pretty good at some stuff, you know? And nobody's gonna read that. Like, Tiger woods gets to write a book. He nailed it. So why wouldn't you want to master these things? And especially, you know, in the military and law enforcement community, like, not only does your own life hang in the balance, somebody else's life hangs in the balance.

And that was always been my kind of thing. Before you go off the battlefield, you could get killed. That's bad. But if you get somebody killed, especially somebody you care about, because you didn't want to train hard, and you got to carry that forever. And I've seen that eat at people either because it's true or because they think it's true.

So, you know, I also decided that at the end of the day, when I go to bed at night, I'm going to go to bed fine, because when my friends do get killed, I know that there was nothing else I could have done. I gave everything on the battlefield. I gave everything in training, and this is the profession we're in, and that's just what happens. And if you can't say that, you're just putting yourself up for one bad event to ruin two lives.

Jon Becker: So, initially, you were given Silver Star, which was then upgraded to the Congressional Medal of Honor, which is obviously the highest honor that our nation bestows upon warriors. What does the Medal of Honor mean to you?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: I haven't really figured that out yet. I've always admired Medal of Honor recipients. I've read their stories my entire career, even before I joined the military, I've always been just profoundly interested in those types of men. Like, this situation was so bad. And then he rose to this occasion. It's just always fascinated me.

So to be honored with it myself, I don't know what it means to me. I think for me, obviously, to be honored by the nation was a profound thing. But I think what really affected me the most was my peers, when men like Tony Bell and Mark Colbert are giving me accolades and telling me that I exceeded the standard.

And those are guys I always drove myself to emulate, to be half as good of, and to have them there when it happened, clapping at me was huge. You're having your heroes worship you is a huge paradigm shift. That's very uncomfortable.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's interesting interacting with so many warriors throughout my career. It's always interesting to me how the people that receive the highest honors are usually so humble about it and often find themselves wondering, why me or why not somebody else. It's almost like it takes that humility to reach the level that you were able to reach.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, I think probably, yeah. But, you know, it's hard. It's hard not to be humble when, you know, I wasn't the best gunfighter that was there. I was the best gunfighter that didn't get shot in the first 5 seconds of the battle. You know, so, like, for me to, like, I was the only person that could have accomplish those tasks is not true. You know, Drew and Mark Culbert were, you know, equally proficient at those things, and, you know, it's like, the only reason that I was able to be, you know, receive those accolades is because I didn't get shot right away. They did. And no doubt in my mind that if those had been reversed, if I'd gotten hit right away, you know, Drew would have stepped in and. And filled that breach or chief would have shaken that off and been the guy to receive that award. I know that's true.

Jon Becker: But I think, also, you had to be able to rise to the occasion, and you were.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yep. Well synced to high level of training. I didn't rise to the occasion, luckily, I had a high bar set for me that I grasped onto. And, you know, as the. Everything was kind of falling apart. Like, I had a really strong foundation. Foundation better than theirs. You know, I always. I love telling soldiers, like, you know, you're not as good as me, but your training is. Is the best, and it's relevant.

So when you, if you have to go on the battlefield, you know, you know, go on with your head up high and that confidence that you. You are going to be the best man on the battlefield, I think that's a unique thing that we get to say as Americans that whatever room I am, I'm probably the best at this thing.

Brent Stratton: You know, one of the things, Earl, outside of everything that we've talked about today in doing research and reading about you is one of the things that was that I saw included in your bio was that you put a lot in there about your family. And my perspective is that of all the great things that you have done professionally and some of the great things that you bring to the table, humility wise, I really liked reading things that spliced into your professional accomplishments in your career you outlined.

This is when I met my wife. This is where she's from. This is when we got married. This is when my daughter is born. This is when my son was born. And seeing those things in there, I really appreciated that about you. I would imagine, never having served. I don't know this for a fact, but I do see a lot of similarities in the people that I know from the military community as well as in the law enforcement community.

And there's a lot of guys who really get it right professionally. There's a lot of guys who might get it right personally. There's not a lot of guys that can build both in there. And John and I have a mutual friend in Sid Heal, and I touched on him this morning, and some of the things that he taught me about where some of those things line up for both is really something that's changed my life. It's driven me to be a better person.

So I don't know you personally in that regard, but I thought it was unique. I read a lot of people's bios and things. I hadn't seen a whole lot of people that bring that in there. So I thought that was really cool. To be able to see that and to see how you interact a little bit in that regard is something that's really great, too.

And something that's worth mentioning for the people who will end up listening to this and being able to find that balance away from your professional life. And you touched on it, too, with your language school and picking out where is it that your wife wanted to live, and this is what you're going to do and being able to keep that balance together, man. So I think that's really cool to see. Just an observation.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: No, I think it's true. And I always, we don't recruit young men. We recruit mothers of young men. Cause that's who has the say. Like, I think about joining the army. If the mom's not convinced it's a good idea, they're not coming. And then by keeping a guy, most of the time he wants to stay, if his wife doesn't think it's worth it, or if she feels like the paradigm is way out of whack or the work is not of value enough to explain why he's not home. You're going to lose that guy.

And I've taken my wife right to the edge several times. She's not shy, so she's like, hey, this is like, I signed up for adversity, but this is not it. And I have to go and find that work life balance and turn it back a notch.

Brent Stratton: That's good. It's a good thing to learn. One last question. Winning the Medal of Honors probably had you go to a lot of different events and probably get to meet a lot of people. Who's the coolest person that you've met since you've won the award? At going to some of these events.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee:

I don't know who's the coolest person.

Brent Stratton: Or maybe one of the most impressive to you, to you personally, one of the people that you enjoyed meeting the most. Maybe that's a better way of putting it.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: I got a single one out. But especially growing up, reading Medal of Honor narratives, when I went to the Medal of Honor convention and I walked into the room and I'm looking at all the legends from the Marine Corps, from the army, from the Navy, air Force, and you see all these guys that I've been reading about, and I'm in a room with them, and they're trying to buy me a beer. That was pretty cool. Yeah.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's a very unique club.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yep. And I'm also the new guy in the club. So they were like….

Brent Stratton: So you have to buy the beer?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. They're like, hey, actually, there's this crappy stuff we have to do around here, and you're the guy that's in charge of it now. So I'm like, right back at the bottom of a population building.

Brent Stratton: The humility, man.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Earl. On behalf of a nation that is grateful for the service you provided. Thank you!

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Pleasure!

Jon Becker: It's very easy for us to forget these kinds of stories, and it's very easy for people that are not in this community to think, well, how bad can it be? And I think that events like this show us not only how bad it can be, but the amazing level that people can rise to. And as a country, we appreciate you!

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Thank you!