Spring 2003. While the world watched tanks roll toward Baghdad, about forty Americans were already inside northern Iraq — dressed like Kurds, sitting on promises of money, weapons, and air support that never arrived, and expected to open a second front alongside Peshmerga fighters the United States had already abandoned three times in twenty years.
LTC (Ret.) Mark Grdovic was the battalion operations officer who planned that campaign and lived it. Twenty-three years in the Army, nineteen as a Special Forces officer with 10th Group, twice an instructor in the Special Forces Qualification Course. His book, THOSE WHO FACE DEATH: The Untold Story of Special Forces and the Iraqi Kurdish Resistance, isn't a memoir. It's the full account of a campaign almost nobody has heard of, from one of the only two men who saw the whole thing from planning through execution.
This one runs long because it earns it:
- Why our surrender leaflets failed — "polite" Arabic that read as an insult, and the one wrong word that made Iraqi units bury their jets
- Loudspeakers playing tank noises on a hilltop, and the fill-in-the-blank "telemarketer letter" sent to Iraqi generals
- The single order that turned thousands of professional Iraqi officers into the insurgency we spent the next eight years fighting
- A Green Beret captain who stopped a Peshmerga commander from shooting prisoners — without threatening him once
- Three SF weapons sergeants in a straight-up duel with an Iraqi mortar crew, and what winning it bought them
- Why a twelve-man team can live inside a hostile city and survive, and it has nothing to do with walls or drones
- Taking Kirkuk with almost nobody, then using the press to convince a city of 600,000 that five thousand paratroopers had shown up
Two very different careers in the same war. Mark is a Green Beret officer. Ryno was a Ranger forward observer with 1st Batt. They don't always land in the same place, and the conversation is better for it.
If you're a young man looking for direction and you're not sure the military is it — this one is for you. That's why we're both here.
GET THE BOOK: Those Who Face Death — hardcover, paperback, Kindle, and audiobook narrated by Mark. More at markgrdovic.com
CHAPTERS
00:00 Cold open
01:30 Meet LTC (Ret.) Mark Grdovic
05:00 Ryno's road: Marines, 9/11, and a contract he didn't understand
07:51 A book at fifteen that pointed Mark toward Special Forces
14:18 The Kurdish word that turned Green Berets into eighth graders
17:35 Rangers, SEALs, Special Forces: what each is actually for
24:55 Discipline when nobody is standing on your left or right
26:54 Robin Sage for real: prisoners shot at the front line
34:47 El Salvador and the case for staying engaged
38:26 An American flag pressed against a car window
45:29 Kirkuk: liberation, parade flags, and lying to the press
51:56 PSYOP done badly — the surrender message nobody accepted
57:46 Tank noises, telemarketer letters, "your officers have left"
1:04:30 Broken-down tanks and the general's missing helmet
1:13:03 Building the ICTF and the Iraqi commandos from scratch
1:16:55 The Baghdad church hostage rescue they ran without us
1:26:26 AKs, negligent discharges, and a body rolled in a rug
1:33:25 The loaded Saddam pistol pointed at everyone in the room
1:44:57 Katyusha rockets and the skill nobody should have to learn
1:51:33 Three NCOs versus an enemy mortar crew
1:58:52 "The next time we meet, it will not be as friends"
2:03:14 How we built the insurgency that fought us
2:10:03 The secret sauce: why the neighborhood decides if you live
2:14:33 Con men in brand-new BDUs and the "Free Iraqi Forces"
2:29:40 Walking off the field in the fourth quarter
2:35:40 Turning the power back on
Old Ranger, New Dad — hosted by Ryno. Former Marine infantry, then 75th Ranger Regiment, 1st Ranger Battalion, 4 combat tours.
Now a dad trying to hand the next generation the map nobody gave me.
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