Battle of Wanat

I know you've worked with apparel companies designing shirts and stuff for veterans, right? Mm-hmm.

Yeah, we, um, two, uh, local Florida SWAT operators, a coworker's husband of my ex-wife Served in the Battle of Wanat in Afghanistan, which was, I think, one of the deadliest battles of that war, and he was able to come home.

But through Operation Give Back, which is the Central Florida chapter of Wounded Warrior, I designed a shirt as a fundraiser, and we must have sold, like, 70 shirts, raised, like, 800 bucks, and some cop buddies of mine who were the SWAT operators, it was that, th- the expression, uh, "Same blood, different mud." And so he bought a couple of shirts just to support, having never met, uh, Mike, the, the, the soldier, and a couple months later he's like, "Hey, how'd those shirts do for, for Mike?" And I was like, "Oh, it was great.

We sold 800 bucks." He's like, "Look, in 1989 we had a SWAT operator get shot through the sidearm, uh, and our, our department won't...

Okay.

So, um, that would be the Battle of Wanat, pretty sure.

Yeah.

So they were, like, placed in this dog shit position just as, like, to occupy, and then the Taliban attacked and overran their position, like hundreds of Taliban, and-

Um, that was kind of a, a wild situation.

When we were prepping for this, when you initially told me about the Battle of Wanat, and actually, uh, Jesse Costaca had talked to me about it, I was like, man, I don't really, I'm not super familiar with that.

Mm-hmm.

I, you know, again, man, there's so much that went on during the GWOT, so many different significant events, but I try to stay, uh, current.

And I, I wasn't totally aware of it, so, um, and you casually mentioned it, right? I had to, I was pulling on strings, and then I started doing a bunch of research, and I was doing research as you were talking about it, and I, I had no idea how detailed this was and how they're still teaching this at, you know, the leadership colleges, uh, or courses, both on the officer and the enlisted side.

So, um, I kind of want to set the scenario of what the Battle of Wanat was, where you guys were, why you were doing it, before we actually go into, you know, the significance of that day for you personally and, and your unit.

So by the end of your tour, there had been talk for months about building an outpost at Wanat, uh, which is a location in Afghanistan, which is kind of in this Kunar, same Kunar Province area?

Yeah, northern, but yes.