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Chris McCoy served in the 75th Ranger Regiment alongside Pat Tillman and speaks plainly to the cover-up of how Tillman died. He recovered bodies inside the Pentagon after 9/11, fought through the high mountains of Afghanistan, then walked off the battlefield and onto a Bering Sea crab boat — one of the deadliest jobs on Earth. He returns to The Vanguard Wall for Part 2: the war stories he’s never told, the modern face of drone combat almost no one understands, and what it actually costs to come home.

His first appearance became the most-watched episode this show has ever released. This one goes further.

▶️ Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/S5H_9VieDH0

CHAPTERS
00:00 Chris Is Back — The Most-Viral Guest Returns
08:06 Recognized in the Wild — Life After the First Episode
22:06 The Pentagon After 9/11 — 28 Days at the Hole
36:22 He Stood Next to Pat Tillman
43:13 The Truth About the Cover-Up
1:09:40 Mourning Their Own — What Really Happened in the Platoon
1:24:29 Winter Strike 2003 — Sent Into the High Mountains
1:43:51 Living at Altitude — The Body Breaks Down
1:53:20 Honoring the Ones Who Didn’t Come Home
2:09:07 The First Time He Got Shot At
2:19:04 John Owens — The Hardest Man He Ever Served With
2:49:01 Do We Even Need Navy SEALs? — Redundancy in Special Ops
3:06:21 An E-4 Ranger vs. SEAL Team Six — The Warlord Capture
3:24:48 The Car Bomb — When the CNS Burns Out
3:36:32 The Book “Unseen Worlds” — Why He Wrote It
3:50:10 What a Team Actually Costs the Men In It
4:06:49 Onto a Bering Sea Crab Boat — The Deadliest Job on Earth
4:53:04 The High Seas, the Money, and the Men Who Break
5:05:20 Things You Only See at Sea — The Jellyfish Bloom
5:27:38 Becoming a Master of the Craft — Competitive Shooting
5:58:58 Six Years Inside a Drone Program — The Department of War
6:10:53 The $400 Drone That Kills a Tank — Where War Is Headed
6:27:01 Leadership, Recovery, and Coming Home
6:43:26 Why He Keeps Telling These Stories

🔗 More from Chris McCoy
📖 Book — “Unseen Worlds” (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H7Z6JMWP
🌐 Website: https://chrismccoyauthor.com
📰 Substack: https://chrismccoyauthor.substack.com
📸 Instagram: @rok275

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Director William Kaufman brings Man of War to The Vanguard Wall — a grounded military action thriller set on the opening morning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, starring LaMonica Garrett and out now on digital via Well Go USA.

LaMonica Garrett (1883, The Lioness, The Terminal List) plays Connor, a burned-out ex-operator at the lowest point of his life when a girl he's spent years protecting calls from a Kharkiv orphanage — the morning the invasion begins. Kaufman co-wrote the film, shot it in Bulgaria with a crew he calls family, and cast real Ukrainian refugees in key roles, including a woman with an actual drone-strike scar on her face. Jason Patric reprises their collaboration from Shrapnel as Connor's ex-CIA handler. Andrew Howard (Limitless) plays Danny Sudhakov, a Ukrainian fixer and the film's moral center.

Kaufman’s thesis, stated publicly and repeated in this episode: “This is not a political movie. We’re not picking sides. We don’t have a political agenda. This is a movie about people caught in the middle of war. War is ugly. It’s a monster. It eats up everything.” The film carries that through with a dual-perspective script — Connor and Danny hold opposite views on the conflict by design — and with a level of gear authenticity (Lead Devil Belts, tech adviser Max Krausz) that veteran audiences will clock in the first five minutes. Kaufman is a U.S. Army Cavalry Scout veteran and Christian filmmaker who has never lived in Los Angeles.

This is Kaufman’s fourteenth feature. He’s the director behind Sinners and Saints, The Hit List, Shrapnel, The Channel, and Osiris — twenty years of work built outside Hollywood, with crews rooted in New Orleans and Sofia, Bulgaria. The press track record speaks: “Kaufman creates taut suspense and dynamic action” (Variety), “Absolutely riveting” (HFPA), “Kaufman’s movie stands out because he doesn’t miss a beat” (RogerEbert.com). Man of War is out now on digital. Watch it on Apple TV: https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/man-of-war/umc.cmc.j9guu91a0zqhlj5w8osaf1u9

Follow director William Kaufman on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/williamkaufman_director/

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Seb Lavoie is the most decorated operator most people have never heard of. Over 20 years he went from a French-Canadian kid with no childhood memories to a soldier, a covert air marshal, an ERT tactical operator and team leader, a court-recognized tactical expert, and the Divisional Sergeant Major over 8,200 people — then pride cost him his leg, and faith rebuilt him.

Hostage rescues, the Surrey Six gang murders, an explosive breach gone catastrophically wrong, the cost on his family, rock bottom, and the conversion that changed everything. The Vanguard Wall’s first RCMP guest and first international guest.

▶️ Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/wyy01D7FYT8

CHAPTERS
00:00:00 Introduction
00:09:00 Why He Can’t Remember His Childhood
00:14:30 Growing Up French-Only in 1970s Quebec
00:19:57 Bruce Lee on a Black-and-White TV
00:23:19 From Kung Fu and Muay Thai to BJJ
00:29:36 Becoming the Bully: Juvie and a Path of Destruction
00:33:13 The Roadside Moment That Pointed Him to Policing
00:39:38 Bouncing, Labor Disputes, and the Quebec Biker Wars
00:43:59 Weekend Infantry Basic with the Van Doos
00:50:13 Why He Left the Military for Policing
00:55:25 Inside the RCMP: Canada’s National Force
01:02:45 Depot: One Academy, Paramilitary From Day One
01:17:04 Posted to Tofino Speaking No English
01:29:12 Combatives Training and the Cop He Chose to Be
01:41:50 First Time Things Went Bad on the Street
01:48:38 The Parking-Lot Talk Before a Bar Fight, Outnumbered
02:04:54 Complacency, the 501st Stop, and Soft Shifts
02:22:16 Where He Was on 9/11 and What Changed
02:27:47 Going Covert: The Air Marshal Years
02:38:06 Chasing ERT: Canada’s SWAT
02:51:17 ERT Selection and the Training Pipeline
03:01:44 First ERT Call: A Machete and Two Hostages
03:13:47 Becoming a Breacher: Explosive Entry
03:24:39 Six Executed: The Surrey Investigation
03:49:20 Maritime Tactical Ops: Taking Down a Boat
04:03:32 Stepping Up to Element Leader
04:19:30 Leaving the Team: The Cost on the Family
04:31:11 Divisional Sergeant Major for All of BC
04:39:56 Leadership Dilemmas and Delivering Bad News
05:00:09 The Decision to Retire
05:07:35 Compartment Syndrome to a Below-the-Knee Amputation
05:17:45 Finding Faith Later in Life
05:26:26 The Moment That Changed Everything
06:00:46 The Roots of Orthodox Christianity
06:23:05 Building Raven Strategik
06:35:56 Final Word: The Power of Discernment

🔗 Connect with Seb Lavoie
🌐 Raven Strategik: https://ravenstrategik.ca
📚 Books — Raven Praxis Press: https://ravenstrategik.ca/raven-praxis-press/
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slavccmdr

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Hugh Mills flew the OH-6 “Loach” as a low-level aeroscout in Vietnam — statistically the most dangerous flying job of the war. Shot down 16 times, three Silver Stars, four Distinguished Flying Crosses, three Purple Hearts. Author of the classic memoir Low Level Hell.

📖 Low Level Hell: https://a.co/d/0glrcnww

CHAPTERS

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At Tora Bora in December 2001, Gary Harrington sat on one of the closest American observation posts to Osama bin Laden — close enough, he says, to watch the bombs he was calling in streak past the ridge sideways. Then the war handed him to the CIA, and he spent the next decade hunting the same enemy from the inside.

Harrington is the rare operator who wore the uniform six different ways: Marine Corps infantry officer, Marine Recon, the second officer ever to graduate the Marine Scout Sniper Instructor course, Green Beret 18-Delta Special Forces medic, Delta Force operator (ODA 572 / Task Force Dagger, Bronze Star at Tora Bora), and CIA case officer. Over nearly eight hours, he walks through the entire arc — from a poor childhood in the North Carolina mountains, to the caves of Tora Bora, to the cables of Benghazi — and the night on Black Mountain he says set the course for all of it.

It's a story about war, tradecraft, and the long road home: what the job cost him, the forgiveness it took to come back, and the line he uses for both halves of his life — "I wore wolf's clothing so long, I became the wolf."

In this conversation:
• The 9/11 morning that turned him toward the war — and the climb to the OP above Tora Bora
• Calling in strikes near bin Laden's position, the daisy cutter he says "did nothing," and why he believes the body was hidden
• Nate Chapman, the first American killed in Afghanistan — and the helicopter Harrington was told not to get on
• Standing up firebase Coast: warlords, duffel bags of cash, and the plot to take out Pacha Khan
• Running smugglers in Iraq — and the hidden camera that confirmed Jessica Lynch
• Hugging the Taliban to feel for suicide vests, and a black Toyota he walked away from two minutes before it detonated
• The strike that answered the Camp Chapman bombing
• Reading the Benghazi cables in real time — why he says "that was fire for effect"
• Beirut, 1983: the barracks bombing, and the day he refused a U.S. ambassador's order
• Delta Force selection on a broken compass — forced out on an unjust evaluation, then clawing his way back
• The glowing light on Black Mountain at his lowest moment, and the words he says he heard: "Do not be afraid… I have a purpose for you"
• Faith, forgiveness, meeting his wife Kim, and the mission behind Power Prudence

⏱ CHAPTERS
0:00:00 Welcome & introducing Gary Harrington
0:04:55 The Inner Ring: the drive to belong to the elite
0:07:10 Appalachian poverty, moonshine & a kid written off
0:25:38 The glowing bubble on Black Mountain
0:34:23 "I get paid to work out": becoming a Marine
0:56:59 Into 2nd Recon Battalion
1:09:48 Beirut, 1983: surviving the barracks bombing
1:14:52 Scout sniper instructor & crossing to Army Special Forces
1:36:23 The road to Delta Force selection
1:46:17 Delta selection: the broken compass & "I trained less"
2:02:11 The negligent discharge — the press check he skipped
2:16:00 Kicked out of Delta — & the commander who swore to end him
2:25:21 Clawing his way back into 5th Special Forces Group
2:35:35 Yemen, Ambassador Bodine & the USS Cole report the embassy killed
2:54:43 9/11: the diner, the second plane & turning toward war
3:16:12 Tora Bora: the climb to the OP & bombs flying past sideways
3:28:11 Why Bin Laden's body was hidden — & briefing McChrystal
3:45:03 Coast & Nate Chapman: the first American killed in Afghanistan
4:01:35 Warlords, duffel bags of cash & the plot to kill Pacha Khan
4:24:39 Running smugglers in Iraq: the hidden camera & Jessica Lynch
5:07:56 Hugging the Taliban to feel for vests — disrupting a suicide-bomber cell
5:29:34 A black Toyota, two minutes from death
5:33:19 The strike that answered Camp Chapman: "Predator, party of one"
5:52:07 Reading the Benghazi cables, CIA infighting & betrayal
6:39:39 The reckoning: faith, PTSD & "I became the wolf"
7:18:39 Power Prudence, situational awareness & "we're stained glass"

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📲 Follow Gary Harrington (The Power of Prudence): YouTube @thepowerofprudence · IG @therealgaryh · X @GHarringtonCo · FB TheRealGaryHarrington · LinkedIn gary-harrington

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Senior Master Sergeant Aaron Love — Air Force Pararescueman, 22 years, five combat deployments — is the first PJ ever on The Vanguard Wall. Fewer than 500 people have earned the maroon beret. The pipeline carries a 91% attrition rate — the longest special operations selection pipeline in the DoD.

In 2002, Aaron quit on a pool deck at Indoc. He'd made it through Hell Night. He said three words to an instructor and walked out. What followed was five years in aerospace physiology, waiting for a cross-training window. At a poker game with PJs, his friend looked him dead in the eye: "What the hell are you doing at this table?" He went home. His wife was feeding their four-week-old daughter. She said: "Put the packet in. But don't come home unless you graduate." He graduated.

In 2019, Aaron was standing four feet from the open door of a C-130 over the Gulf of Mexico when Staff Sergeant Cole Condiff was ripped from the aircraft. He ran dive operations for two days. Side-scan sonar returned two shapes that looked like parachute canopies with a body mass behind them. Divers went down. They were two boulders. Cole Condiff has never been found.

⚔️ THIS EPISODE'S SPONSORS (#sponsored #ad):

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CHAPTERS:
(0:00) Cold Open: Aaron Love & The Cole Condiff Story
(6:04) Aaron Joins the Show
(8:34) What Is a Pararescueman? (91% Attrition Rate)
(9:51) Growing Up in Barberton, Ohio
(19:01) Ohio State, Factories & Hitting Rock Bottom
(27:57) 9/11: "This Is My Generation's Moment"
(29:05) Discovering Pararescue: The Air Force Recruiter
(35:04) Air Force Basic Training: Lackland AFB
(41:49) PJ Indoc 2002: Day One
(49:22) Hell Night — Extended Training Day
(53:32) "F*** You, I Quit." — The Decision That Cost Five Years
(1:00:43) Reclassified: Aerospace Physiology & HALO Support
(1:06:58) The Poker Game With PJs
(1:09:33) "Pass or Don't Come Home" — His Wife's Ultimatum
(1:13:00) Going Back: The Second Run at Indoc
(1:40:48) Dive School & Earning the Beret
(2:28:42) "The Only Spec Op You Need One Of" — PJ Identity
(3:19:24) Pedro 66: Knowing the Men Who Died
(3:32:45) "I Made the Decision to End My Own Life."
(3:53:30) Konduz: Mike Cathcart & Dignified Transfer
(4:09:00) "We Wrapped Him in the Flag Before His Brothers Walked In"
(4:20:48) Are You Gonna Kill Yourself? I'll Be Awkward.
(5:50:59) The Cole Condiff Stand-Down: Four Feet from the Door
(6:05:30) "Get Me the F*** Out of This Aircraft"
(6:21:42) Two Boulders. Cole Condiff Has Never Been Found.
(6:31:55) Calling the Air Force Out in Front of 200 People
(6:38:12) "I Was Hammered on the Plane Home. I Was Done."
(7:16:00) Sobriety, DMT & Becoming Someone New
(7:56:25) "The Black Pill Is a Lie. Have Hope."

CONNECT WITH AARON LOVE:
Ones Ready Podcast → onesreadypodcast.com

Instagram → @aaronlovesamerica or @onesready

Thinking about buying a home or refinancing? Nuwave Lending built a dedicated page specifically for Vanguard Wall listeners so you can connect directly with the team assigned to our audience.

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Marine vet Johnny Raushi joined the Corps at 17 for a free skateboard sticker. Four years later he came home broke, picked up change in a gas station parking lot, and sold his plasma twice a week to fund the first batches of a pomade he was perfecting on his stovetop. That pomade became Johnny Slicks — an 8-figure American manufacturing company employing 30+ people out of a North Carolina facility, fully U.S.-sourced.

Asher and Raushi cover boot camp, the in-unit suicide that happened seconds after he walked away from his armory window, the Accutane spiral that nearly killed him, the six-day phone call with Marine Raider Nick Koumalatsos that turned a kitchen-table pomade into a brand, and his first book "23 Virtues in 23 Days" (Aug 2025).

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CHAPTERS:
(00:00) Welcome
(03:30) Growing Up in NJ and the Poconos
(11:00) Faith, Questions, and the Church
(22:30) The Recruiter and a Sticker
(27:00) Bootcamp and Brotherhood
(37:00) Marrying Rebecca and Camp Lejeune
(41:00) The M9 Pistol Eureka Moment
(51:30) Deploying With BSRF-14 to Romania
(1:02:00) Losing His MOS and Earning It Back
(1:17:00) Suicide in the Ranks
(1:22:30) Knee Injury and Leaving the Corps
(1:41:00) Hair Loss and the First Pomade
(2:00:00) Selling Plasma and Picking Up Change
(2:14:00) Six Days With Nick Koumalatsos
(2:35:00) Hurricane Florence and Moving In With Nick
(2:55:00) Scaling Johnny Slicks
(3:15:00) The Accutane Spiral
(4:00:00) Building an 8-Figure Business
(4:30:00) Leadership and EOS
(5:00:00) Plant Medicine and Healing
(5:45:00) Marriage and Trust
(6:15:00) 23 Virtues in 23 Days
(6:30:00) Closing Thoughts

CONNECT WITH JOHNNY: johnnyslicks.com | IG: @johnnyslicks | @johnnyraushi

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The last C-17 lifted off Kabul's runway at 11:59 PM on August 30, 2021. The man who gave the order — and made the radio call "Math Safe" that officially ended America's longest war — tells the full story for the first time.

Colonel Alex Pelbath (USAF, Ret.) commanded SOUL-2, the only C-17 Special Operations unit in the world, and served as Air Mission Commander for the final flight out of Afghanistan. In this episode, he reveals the moment the Abbey Gate bomb went off, the suspected suicide bomber on his own aircraft, the Taliban press conference that Biden then agreed to, General Milley's coin he handed right back, and the bureaucratic fight that nearly grounded the last flight before it ever left the ground.

Born to a first-generation American family — his grandparents fled communist Hungary through a minefield in 1956, survived a Russian soldier's mercy, and spent a year in an Austrian refugee camp before an airlift brought them to America — Pelbath's story is a 65-year generational arc that ends with him commanding the largest airlift evacuation in modern history.

Over nearly 7 hours, he covers his entire career: growing up with a blind mother on a construction worker's wages, earning a last-minute wrestling scholarship to the Air Force Academy, flying 22 years of C-17 combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, a near-fatal black hole effect landing on NVGs that almost killed his crew, being hand-selected to brief the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, shaping two national defense budgets inside the Pentagon — and the full firsthand account of Kabul: the chaos, the failures of leadership, and the men and women who held it together when the generals couldn't.

Now running for Congress in South Carolina's 1st District, Pelbath explains why the same broken thinking that produced Kabul is still inside the building — and what he intends to do about it.

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If this episode brought you value, drop a comment below — we'd love to know what you're implementing.

What does it take to fuel the most elite light infantry unit in the U.S. Army — and earn their respect doing it? Dr. Nick Barringer didn't just study performance nutrition, he built the standard for it inside the 75th Ranger Regiment.

Dr. Nick Barringer is a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, Bronze Star and Legion of Merit recipient, Ranger-tabbed, airborne-qualified combat veteran, and one of the foremost authorities on tactical performance nutrition in the United States. He holds a PhD in Kinesiology from Texas A&M, co-authored the International Society of Sports Nutrition's position stand on Tactical Athlete Nutrition, and spent years embedded with the 75th Ranger Regiment as part of the Ranger Athlete Warrior (RAW) Program — one of the first human performance programs in all of Special Operations. He later served as Program Director for the Army Baylor Graduate Program in Nutrition and as an Assistant Professor at West Point. Most recently, he founded Salvo Gum, a precision-dosed performance caffeinated gum engineered for controlled alertness under pressure.
In this conversation, you'll hear:

Whether you're a tactical athlete, a serious lifter, a first responder, or someone who simply wants to perform at a higher level — this episode will change how you think about fueling your body and protecting your mind.

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0:00 Introduction & Welcome
0:03 Salvo Gum First Impression
0:05 Wrestling, Football & His First Nutrition Hack
0:07 The Clemson Strength Coach Who Changed Everything
0:09 9/11 and the Decision to Join the Military
0:19 The Army Dietician Pipeline & Getting Branched Wrong
0:21 The Paperwork Error That Changed His Life
0:28 First Deployment: Baghdad — Managing Media & Interpreters
0:30 How Rangers Recruited Him From a Combat Hospital
0:33 Airborne School to RASP in One Weekend
0:35 The Sergeant Major's Challenge: "We've Been Fine Without You"
0:36 First Days at Ranger Regiment — No Computer, No Desk
0:47 How He Earned Trust Inside the Regiment
0:49 Ranger School — The Graduation Reality Check
0:50 The RAW Program — Origin Story & Vision
1:03 What Supplements He Actually Pushed to Rangers
1:09 First Deployment With the Rangers — Baghdad Round Two
1:28 Texas A&M PhD — How the Creatine Obsession Started
1:32 Omega-3, DHA, and the Suicide Prevention Research
1:37 Vitamin D, Depression, and the Study He Built at A&M
1:53 Afghanistan Food Study — What He Discovered Shocked Him
1:59 Creatine & Sleep Deprivation — The Cognitive Research
2:06 Creatine Timing, Dosing & the Monohydrate vs HCL Debate
2:07 Creatine Myths — Kidneys, Cramping & What Science Says
2:13 Why He Put His 77-Year-Old Mom on Creatine
2:14 His Personal Supplement

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In August of 1968, Travis W. Mills was shot five times in a single engagement at FOB 4 — the deadliest night in the history of U.S. Army Special Forces. He survived. And then he went back to Vietnam.
A Green Beret who served with one of the most classified units in American military history, Travis Mills sat down with The Vanguard Wall Podcast to document a story that couldn't be told for nearly three decades.
Assigned to the 5th Special Forces Group and then to Military Assistance Command, Vietnam — Studies and Observation Group (MACV-SOG), Travis led small recon teams deep into denied territory along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, conducting cross-border operations into Laos and Cambodia during the most dangerous years of the Vietnam War. After surviving the FOB 4 sapper attack that left 16 Special Forces soldiers dead and over 30 wounded in a single night, he recovered aboard the USS Sanctuary — then returned to Vietnam, not as a patient, but as a leader. He was tasked with building the next generation of warriors, founding and commanding the MACV-SOG Recon Leader School, known as the One-Zero School.
MACV-SOG's existence stayed classified for nearly 29 years. Travis carried that history quietly until 2001, when the unit was finally awarded the Presidential Unit Citation.
In this conversation, viewers will hear:

What it was like to serve in a unit whose missions "officially weren't happening"
A first-person account of the FOB 4 sapper attack — 16 SF killed in one night
Why Travis chose to return to Vietnam after being wounded rather than rotate home
The operational structure of MACV-SOG recon teams and the Hatchet Force
What Travis witnessed in Vietnam that still shapes how he thinks about service today
How he and his wife Bobby have stayed married for 62 years
His message to the next generation considering military service

Watch the full episode and subscribe to The Vanguard Wall Podcast to hear more conversations that preserve the history of those who served.

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#MACVSOG #VietnamWar #SpecialForces #GreenBeret #VanguardWallPodcast #VietnamVeteran #MilitaryHistory

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