Marines

Of course, yeah.

So they approached me and said, "Hey, join the military." So I first went, um, to the Marines, um, and they made me run, like, five miles the first day and I threw up, and I'm like, "Oh, crap, this is not for me."

[laughs]

"This is not for me." So I went to, uh [laughs] I went to the, the Guard, then I went to the Army, and I had my ASVAB test.

Fort Lee, Virginia, that's where you do your MOS, your job and the jobs that they give you to do.

And then from there I went to Fort Benning, Georgia, to Fort Airborne School.

That was crazy as well, because when you go to Airborne School, you go with Marines, Recon, soon-to-be Marines, soon-to-be Green Beret, soon-to-be, um, Rangers.

They, they approached me to be a Green Beret.

There was very little industry or work that could happen normally as the conflict and the fighting got worse and worse.

Eventually, our government with the Iraqi interim government ordered Marines to attack Fallujah proper, which is give or take about half a million people.

We asked them to leave before the big military operation, and then that led to the half.

I say Fallujah was half level.

And I really did want to show that the Marine Corps had a job, the Iraqi government had a priority.

And then eventually, you know, decomposing bodies has a smell, it has a dynamic that stays with you.

And I think for a lot of those junior Marines who are a decade or five or eight years younger than I, I'm sure that that part of their job has stayed with them, you know, two decades later.

I'm sure.

I'm really excited about a conversation today.

My guest is Ken Maines, a Marine veteran, a former law enforcement investigator, a cold case investigator, and an author whose work I've followed and admired for quite a while.

And one of the things I admire about Ken is the balance in the way he investigates.

He has that old school hard nose approach, but he also does the legwork, reading the records and talking to people.

Yeah, no, I get it.

Okay, so let's get into your military background.

You are a Marine veteran, once a Marine, always a Marine.

So can you...

Yeah.

Do you think, and another thing I touch on as well, do you think people, the thought of special forces selection, you know, for the Green Berets, for Delta, for 2-2 SES, the SPS, and even to a level our Royal Marines and Parachute Regiment, because there is a selection process for those as well that's particularly tough.

Do you think a lot of people talk themselves out of it because of the thought of it and what they've heard, you know, mentally? Yeah.

100%.

It's, it's competitive nature and that helps.

And obviously he channeled into that.

What I was going to say today, you touched on, you said you're not a bright person and like I get, People talk about it a lot, like infantry, special forces, our parachute regiment, Marines, they talk about being not like, oh, you're thick or you're not intelligent.

But I always argue to top, maybe not like academically, but the amount of courses that SF guys go on, you have to have a level of intelligence that again, might not be academic, but it's that absorption of courses.

awful.

The Battle of Kotang was when the U.S. Marines, who were part of this ad hoc task force, they got into this heavy...

They were engaged in very heavy combat with the Khmer Rouge on Kotang Island.

And...

And proceeding from a position of apparent strength, especially in the Far East, was essential.

So that's the context here, okay? And plus, too, the Khmer Rouge showed how game and savage they were and tactically sophisticated.

You know, they really put a hurt on the U.S. Marines.

And some real firepower was deployed there.

they don't know what i'm looking at

I made a typo and called my space Marines blood angles instead of blood angels, but my girlfriend just went with the typo and said they were acute.

That was a math joke for you guys.

I need a boo button.

The, the Terrell, the tarot deck RPG thing that we did or that we interviewed about.

Um, but he's in the, he's in the news for now for this free Warhammer 40 K fan game is a slapstick space Marine death match from war gamer.

So, uh, uh, They had a potential to be every bit as silly as they are epic, a truth the fandom has exploited from comics like Turn Signals on a Land Raider to made-up Space Marine chapters like The Angry Marines to spoofs like The Space King.

Guess what we're going to talk about later.

Navy SEAL that was killed in the recon.

He was one of the recon Marines next to Marcus Luttrell that was killed.

Take it for what it's worth.

Danny Dietz's wife went on to remarry DJ Shipley.

Whenever I say something on Facebook, usually I'll question how ISIS is doing its job.

Yesterday, they beat up those 17-year-old boys who were citizens who were going to sign up to be Marines.

And on the way, I saw a target, so they beat up these kids thinking they were illegals.

So I'll criticize that.