Constant Combat

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Great convo with Brian Fox who in 2004 was a corporal fapped to military police and refuses to drift away to his end of enlistment... and fights to return to Ramadi. Arriving alone to a bonded unit and earning trust by taking the wheel of Vehicle 2 in Rainmaker platoon. The story tracks hard choices, aggressive driving, VBIEDs on Route Michigan, and the rituals that hold a platoon together.

• volunteering out of a FAP to rejoin 2/4 as a first-wave combat replacement
• getting assigned to Weapons Company at Hurricane Point
• the lonely integration of a new Marine into a battle-hardened platoon
• adopting a sustainable five-section rotation for missions and QRF
• LCpl Savage KIA and stepping up to drive Vehicle Two
• tactics of convoy driving under IED and VBIED threat
• reading crowds, roads and tells for ambush
• chasing triggermen to disrupt IED supply chains
• firefights and respect for a clever enemy
• superstitions, small rituals and music pumps before mission

If you like what you've heard, this is a multi part episode. Make sure you listen to the rest of the story

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If you like what you heard, please subscribe on your favorite podcast service or follow our webpage for direct downloads @ https://www.buzzsprout.com/2525088

If you are a member of Weapons Company or someone with a story about Weapons Company 2/4 in 2004, please come tell some stories with us - 20 mins or 20 hours! Help paint the canvas of an archival story for others to know what it was like. Contact us @ [email protected], or via the podcast website above. 

All music used with permission by soundbay: https://www.youtube.com/@soundbay_RFM 

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Navy Corpsman Rudy Contreras’ job is simple on paper and brutal in practice: find the wounded, make the call, and keep your honor clean. He brings us front seat in part 2 of his interview to combat medicine, the IED strike that took Jeremiah, and the long road from Ramadi to healing. Hard choices, raw humor, and a code of honor shape how Rudy treated enemies, held his Marines together, and found peace years later.

• treating enemies and civilians under fire
• triage choices, morphine scarcity, and restraint
• the IED blast, airway management, and medevac
• grief, survivor’s remorse, and meeting family of the fallen
• reunions, guilt released, and quiet forgiveness
• barracks chaos, dark humor, and cohesion
• transition to Okinawa and identity after combat
• managing PTS with exercise, meditation, and community
• building a life beyond one deployment

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If you like what you heard, please subscribe on your favorite podcast service or follow our webpage for direct downloads @ https://www.buzzsprout.com/2525088

If you are a member of Weapons Company or someone with a story about Weapons Company 2/4 in 2004, please come tell some stories with us - 20 mins or 20 hours! Help paint the canvas of an archival story for others to know what it was like. Contact us @ [email protected], or via the podcast website above. 

All music used with permission by soundbay: https://www.youtube.com/@soundbay_RFM 

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“Doc” wasn’t just a nickname. It was trust earned under fire in Ramadi. Doc Contreras' story goes from Navy schoolhouse to Ramadi’s streets, where he learns to improvise care, earns a rifle, and covers two mortar platoons through months of daily contact. The story tracks hard lessons in combat medicine, leadership, stress, and how he kept the unit moving.

• joining the Navy and embedding with Marines
• Bridgeport training and earning trust as “Doc”
• deploying via Kuwait and first contact in Ramadi
• improvising tourniquets and chest seals with limited gear
• QRF tempo, April firefights, and evolving tactics
• TBIs, the Warlock jammer, and vehicle vulnerability
• getting a rifle and stepping into the stack
• covering two platoons and managing burnout
• combat stress, stigma, and reintegration
• officer calm, NCO decisions, and platoon styles
• summer heat, cordon and searches, and long gunfights
• lessons for today’s combat care and leadership

If you like what you've heard, this is a multi part episode. Make sure you listen to the rest of the story.

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If you like what you heard, please subscribe on your favorite podcast service or follow our webpage for direct downloads @ https://www.buzzsprout.com/2525088

If you are a member of Weapons Company or someone with a story about Weapons Company 2/4 in 2004, please come tell some stories with us - 20 mins or 20 hours! Help paint the canvas of an archival story for others to know what it was like. Contact us @ [email protected], or via the podcast website above. 

All music used with permission by soundbay: https://www.youtube.com/@soundbay_RFM 

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Part two with Jamie Rocha and his raw, unscripted memories from 2004: the streets of Ramadi can turn from quiet to chaos in a breath.  He details everyday texture of deployment: spades games in the hooch, bootleg DVDs, a gas alarm when no one has a mask ready... and set it against the heaviest moments: responding after sniper teams were killed and meeting the family of your fallen brother and roommate. 
Jamie also shares the living legacy: the 2/4 Association, reunions that bridge Vietnam to Iraq and beyond, and the families who keep names alive.

• outer cordon roles and early bug hunts
• split-second decisions with the runaway wrecker
• rooftop ambush and returning fire
• downtime rituals, gas alarms, and hooch life
• losses, medevac support, and transporting the fallen
• OP Library fight and media embeds
• training memories, missing footage, and unit culture
• 2-4 Association reunions and intergenerational bonds

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If you like what you heard, please subscribe on your favorite podcast service or follow our webpage for direct downloads @ https://www.buzzsprout.com/2525088

If you are a member of Weapons Company or someone with a story about Weapons Company 2/4 in 2004, please come tell some stories with us - 20 mins or 20 hours! Help paint the canvas of an archival story for others to know what it was like. Contact us @ [email protected], or via the podcast website above. 

All music used with permission by soundbay: https://www.youtube.com/@soundbay_RFM 

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Jamie Rocha paints a picture of the first weeks in Ramadi in 2004: a broken flight, a slow convoy, and a first mission that turned a crowded market into silence and a defining memory that never really fades. Early raids, QRF nights, and hard choices about restraint and pursuit shape the story. From truck assignments to map frustrations, fear and humor all rode in the same vehicle.

• deployment journey through delays, snow, and convoy into Ramadi
• Warth wounded, emergency cordon, and shock of close blast
• buried artillery lucky near misses 
• holding a street while choosing not to escalate
• night QRF, improvised rocket launches, and searching the fields
• failed breach, wrong-house raid, and weight of bad intel
• leadership sprinting forward, pursuit risks, and unit cohesion
• getting lost on rooftops; NVG limits
• memory gaps, reunions, and finding old teammates

If you like what you've heard, this is a multi part episode. Make sure you listen to the rest of the story.

----------------------------------------------
If you like what you heard, please subscribe on your favorite podcast service or follow our webpage for direct downloads @ https://www.buzzsprout.com/2525088

If you are a member of Weapons Company or someone with a story about Weapons Company 2/4 in 2004, please come tell some stories with us - 20 mins or 20 hours! Help paint the canvas of an archival story for others to know what it was like. Contact us @ [email protected], or via the podcast website above. 

All music used with permission by soundbay: https://www.youtube.com/@soundbay_RFM 

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A story can be both absurd and sacred, sometimes in the same breath. That’s the energy in this conversation with Mike Martinez and Jason Adams, two Marines whose memories from Ramadi are stitched together by dark humor, grit, and the stubborn will to stick together. From taser “experiments” and a rescued dog to transporting fallen snipers and sprinting down a trigger man. Leaving Iraq and being able to carry the lessons forward without sanding off the edges.

• Tasers, welding improvisation, and small mercies
• Transporting fallen snipers and museum-triggered grief
• IED strike, chase, and the shot not taken
• Negligent discharges, QRF scenes, and NCIS questions
• Checkpoints, a translation misstep, and brutal heat
• The Fanta story and an arsenal under mattresses
• Mud-stuck Humvee, compound entry, and teamwork
• Kuwait downtime, a bad wrestle, and homecoming
• Haircuts, a roadside stop, and civilian friction
• From mailman to teacher, passing on lived history

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If you like what you heard, please subscribe on your favorite podcast service or follow our webpage for direct downloads @ https://www.buzzsprout.com/2525088

If you are a member of Weapons Company or someone with a story about Weapons Company 2/4 in 2004, please come tell some stories with us - 20 mins or 20 hours! Help paint the canvas of an archival story for others to know what it was like. Contact us @ [email protected], or via the podcast website above. 

All music used with permission by soundbay: https://www.youtube.com/@soundbay_RFM 

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For this conversation, we talk to Mike Martinez and Jason Adams, combat replacements to 2/4 Weapons Company. A simple question sat on the table: go home, or go back with your friends into a fight that had already taken lives. Mike and Jason chose to return to Ramadi in 2004 as combat replacements, and their story lays bare what that decision meant—on bad days, on good days, and on the days that never leave you. The result is a raw, fast-moving account of grief, near misses, leadership that mattered, and the strange humor that kept people sane.

• choice between orders and loyalty
• arrival amid loss and tension
• 2003 versus 2004 combat realities
• IED at Habaniyah Dam aftermath
• rooftop pistol ambush near miss
• QRF restraint and detainee handling
• Junction City culture clashes
• leaders who protected Marines
• mortars, gas scares, long bug hunts
• hooch life, cards, crud, coping humor

If you like what you've heard, this is a multi part episode. Make sure you listen to the rest of the story.

----------------------------------------------
If you like what you heard, please subscribe on your favorite podcast service or follow our webpage for direct downloads @ https://www.buzzsprout.com/2525088

If you are a member of Weapons Company or someone with a story about Weapons Company 2/4 in 2004, please come tell some stories with us - 20 mins or 20 hours! Help paint the canvas of an archival story for others to know what it was like. Contact us @ [email protected], or via the podcast website above. 

All music used with permission by soundbay: https://www.youtube.com/@soundbay_RFM 

Send us Fan Mail

Part 2 with Doc Bundeson from Mobile Assault Platoon 2 to trace the most violent stretch of Ramadi in April 2004, when Marines were pinned in houses, snipers were trapped by the river, and convoys fought through ambush after ambush in the Sophia and industrial districts. Then the focus turns to the ethics that define real combat medicine.
There’s humor and heart here too. Hooch pranks, sunsets, and a misreported “face shot”. Twenty years later, we finally admit we all could have called each other sooner. 

• early-war gear limits and cutting flak vests to reach wounds
• April 6–10 ambushes, sniper rescue, route fights
• running out of Mark 19 ammo and forced resupply
• treating wounded Marines and prisoners under Geneva Convention
• mental detachment to do care, reflection afterward
• misreported injuries and comms blackout
• leadership with a soft edge in chaos
• hooch pranks as a pressure valve
• sunsets on the Euphrates as a reset
• breaking 20 years of silence and validating memories

** Warning - These episodes discuss traumatic injuries in graphic detail **

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If you like what you heard, please subscribe on your favorite podcast service or follow our webpage for direct downloads @ https://www.buzzsprout.com/2525088

If you are a member of Weapons Company or someone with a story about Weapons Company 2/4 in 2004, please come tell some stories with us - 20 mins or 20 hours! Help paint the canvas of an archival story for others to know what it was like. Contact us @ [email protected], or via the podcast website above. 

All music used with permission by soundbay: https://www.youtube.com/@soundbay_RFM 

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Today we have a brutally honest conversation with Mike Bundeson, a Hospitalman/E-3 Corpsman during Ramadi 2004, to trace how combat medicine, gear, and mindset evolved under fire. From raiding a pharmacy before the flight to running tourniquets on the dam road after an IED strike. A freshly minted Navy corpsman steps off a packed C‑130 into Ramadi and learns to fight with a rifle in the stack while keeping Marines alive under relentless pressure.
We walk through the real decisions Corpsman face via a dam road IED story in harrowing detail - tourniquets high and tight, a blind casualty still speaking, a sprint down the slope to evac - and the surreal moment of a medical misstep that could have upended everything. 

• joining as a boot Corpsman and volunteering for Iraq
• building a field loadout beyond the basic med kit
• the C‑130 breakdown and mid‑air gastro outbreak
• packing trucks, memorizing bags, working in the dark
• improvising care with MRE heaters and ratchet straps
• new airway tools and chitosan hemostatics
• combat triage vs civilian EMT mindset
• mental rehearsal and staying outwardly calm
• rifles for Corpsmen and learning CQB in country
• the dam road IED: treatment, stretcher run, evacuation
• training Marines to save lives under fire
• later tours, advisory work and returning to Ramadi

** Warning - These episodes discuss traumatic injuries in graphic detail **

If you like what you've heard, this is a multi part episode. Make sure you listen to the rest of the story.

----------------------------------------------
If you like what you heard, please subscribe on your favorite podcast service or follow our webpage for direct downloads @ https://www.buzzsprout.com/2525088

If you are a member of Weapons Company or someone with a story about Weapons Company 2/4 in 2004, please come tell some stories with us - 20 mins or 20 hours! Help paint the canvas of an archival story for others to know what it was like. Contact us @ [email protected], or via the podcast website above. 

All music used with permission by soundbay: https://www.youtube.com/@soundbay_RFM 

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Our continued conversation with Dave Dobb pulls you straight into Ramadi 2004. A plywood roof full of bullet holes. A windshield that wasn’t ballistic.  Buzz Lightyear “earning” a Purple Heart. Dave relives the ambush on the 7th, the massive IED on the 12th, and the aftermath that forced immediate security, fast decisions, and the unglamorous work of keeping everyone alive while expecting the next hit.

• Ambush on the 7th and the massive IED on the 12th
• Triage decisions, perimeter security, and second-blast risk
• Informal After Action Reports shaping tactics, routes, and OPs
• Vehicle overload, improvised armor, and broken transmissions
• The log train fiasco and friction with 2/5 during turnover
• Driving urgency, leadership presence, and command culture
• “Bearded ladies” standby order, one-night relief, reinstatement
• Rotation rhythm, radios, and scarce downtime
• Coming home, recruiting duty perspective, and hearing-loss appeals
• Awards process challenges and Savage’s posthumous recognition

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If you like what you heard, please subscribe on your favorite podcast service or follow our webpage for direct downloads @ https://www.buzzsprout.com/2525088

If you are a member of Weapons Company or someone with a story about Weapons Company 2/4 in 2004, please come tell some stories with us - 20 mins or 20 hours! Help paint the canvas of an archival story for others to know what it was like. Contact us @ [email protected], or via the podcast website above. 

All music used with permission by soundbay: https://www.youtube.com/@soundbay_RFM