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Time Code | Speaker | Narrative |
00:01 | Ansel | Alright, how did you end up on cape? |
00:04 | Jesse | Umm, I was born in Boston and my parents lived on the cape, and, so I grew up in Dennis and I ended up going to Harwich highschool. And just, kind of like, where you’re born from is where you kinda hang out. |
00:26 | Ansel | Yeah, um, have you had any family members be in the Military before you? |
00:32 | Jesse | Uh, My grandfather was, he served in World War 2. He was a naval gunner in the Navy and he actually served on the USS Missouri, which is located in Hawaii. I went and saw it last year. |
00:51 | Ansel | When did you realize you wanted to be in the military? |
00:54 | Jesse | I actually uh, I was sitting in my library, and we were doing some senior report on something; some kind of economical project, and that’s when we saw, basically 9/11 happen. And that day, and that kinda changed my whole outlook from going from, you don’t wanna play football and so I ended up joining the armed forces after that. And that’s pretty much what made me [pauses] go that path. |
01:26 | Ansel | What years did you serve? |
01:28 | Jesse | I served from 2002 to 2006. |
01:33 | Ansel | What was your job and military rank? |
01:36 | Jesse | In rank? Uh my job was basically, we were forward operating teams basically we go and we take over bases if stuff goes down we kinda, we run patrols, we’re part of Special Operation’s security forces unit called the eight 20th. And basically our job is basically train here, and deploy, and then we deploy, we run convoys, patrols, and things like that. |
02:08 | Ansel | What did you enjoy most about your job? |
02:11 | Jesse | I liked the uh, the comradery, the brotherhood of the military. Some things I don’t like about it, but for the most part it’s just an experience and it’s just trying to make the world a better place I guess. |
02:28 | Ansel | What was your boot camp and training experience like? |
02:32 | Jesse | Boot week, book camp for the Air Force to me it was just kind of the beginning of the training kind of breaking you down from civilian to uh, you know part of the armed forces. For me, Air Force basic training was you know, a little easier than probably some of the other basic trainings cause they, they want people’s brains to go through, not saying that the other armed forces aren't brained but the Air Force, they just want them to be smart so a lot of people aren't physically active in the Air Force and my job more came physically after all the other training. Basic training wasn’t that big a deal for me. It was six weeks long [pause] it was, it was good. |
03:19 | Ansel | So you were an actual, like, pilot? |
03:21 | Jesse | No, no everyone thinks that the Air Force uh, because it’s mainly run by planes but our job was more to like, call in air support if we need it, running patrols and stuff. I was more of a ground troop, but you have everything. Just like every armed forces you have cooks, you have personnel that run your bank accounts while you’re away. Things like that. Very few are pilots actually in the Air Force |
03:49 | Ansel | Uh, what were your instructors like? |
03:52 | Jesse | My instructors? |
03:53 | Ansel | Yeah. |
03:53 | Jesse | What do you mean instructors? |
03:54 | Ansel | Like, the people who, like, taught you how to do [pause] what you do I guess? |
04:01 | Jesse | Like teachers? |
04:03 | Ansel | Were they like harsh? You know you always see[cut off] |
04:04 | Jesse | Yeah, well in basic training their job is to break you down, they’re called TIs, and their job is to basically just yell at you, break you down from civilian into Military Personnel and after that you know you are no longer civilian, and you are owned by the Government, and your job is- your job so like, the people that teach you after that are the people that have been through situations and they just want you to learn to be safe and stuff like that so it’s, it goes from a very intense training environment to um, a little more relaxed. I mean when you’re dealing with weapons and stuff like that it can get, still a little more, still gotta, you know, practice safety procedures. Like just in the range. The range they’re a little more angry, you know, if you do something wrong cause you know, it’s a safety violation if you don’t aim the weapon down range or something like that. But other than that it’s, you know, training. We did like normal P.T. every day, um, training. Basic training for the mission, you know, going overseas, basically what we did every day. And the instructors were nothing more than your, uh, people that were in charge. Like Staff Sergeants, Tech Sergeants, and then you go up to your flight leaders and squad leaders, that kind of thing. |
05:22 | Ansel | Do you recall your first days in service? What was it like? |
05:26 | Jesse | My first days in service were basic training. It was, it was basically, like I said, breaking you down. You start doing stupid stuff like learning how to fold your sheets a certain way and if you don’t do it right you get disciplined and yelled at, you know, waking up to reveille and uh, I mean I can remember it. My, I think my best parts were like when we were overseas and we kinda like didn’t really know what was going on cause I served in two thous- I was like basically one of the first Air Force units over in Iraq and uh, we convoyed from Kuwait into Tallil on a deuce-and-a-half, or 5 tons. And uh, and I think that was kind of like the highlight “fun-ness” of my experience, even though it was you know, we didn’t know if it was chemical warfare going on cause we literally went in wearing charcoal chemical war-suits. Um, cause of the, you know, the, the threat of chemical warfare being over there. So that was, that was kind of fun, but dangerous. |
06:48 | Ansel | Oh, why was that fun? |
06:51 | Jesse | Oh, I don’t know it’s just, you know, young kid, you know, 18 years old trying to, you know, go, I don’t know, kind of make a difference after September eleventh kind of thing. I mean it was a, it was just a different mindset I guess. [pauses] I don’t know I can’t explain it really. |
07:12 | Ansel | Did you ever see combat? |
07:14 | Jesse | I did, I did two combat tours, one in Tallil airbase which is right outside Nasiriyah. We did a bunch of raids and stuff. Basically like, Saddam Hussein was in power at the time and we’ve, some of the people in Nasiriyah had evidence of, you know, like Saddam doing bad stuff and our missions, some of our missions were to like go over and get DVDs of this kind of stuff and to raid, um do raids and stuff. We did convoys and patrols and pretty much we were trying to find what was going on over there, and then my second tour was in Baghdad and that was um, a good one. |
08:04 | Ansel | Can you tell me about a couple of your um, most memorable experiences? |
08:11 | Jesse | Umm, ya I have a few memorable ones, I mean um the memorable ones I’m not really, I’m don’t like to talk about the memorable ones. The ones that you know like, besides you know, bad stuff I would say some of the times um, just like joking around with other people and uh, I guess one of the funny ones was we were all sleeping on cots, cause we took over Tallil Airbase, so we literally lived- we lived outside for a while then we took over this old Iraqi building and we literally lived like cot, to cot, to cot, to cot. And we were literally fed MREs for like 6 months straight until we got UGRs which was like a giant MRE. Just like a little better tasting, still like crap. And so we, so we ate these but- so we lived cot to cot. The cots like sucked like you didn’t wanna sleep on these things anymore. So I heard about the Army giving away mattresses and they were like, I don’t know, couple miles away. So I got all frustrated in the middle of the night and I ended up walking all the way to this army base, got the mattress, brought it home, I think it was like, I don’t know, 5 in the morning. Finally got back to the base and I was the only one sleeping on a mattress for like, I don’t know, a month before the other people got a mattress and you know, everybody was jealous of that. |
09:41 | Ansel | So these troops around you were like brothers to you? |
09:44 | Jesse | Yes |
09:44 | Ansel | Yeah, uh what was the food like? |
09:47 | Jesse | Um, well the food sucked. It was MREs which was basically an MRE is like a meal and it comes in a package and it has a little heater element. And you can pour water into that and you can heat whatever flavor so you have like 25 flavors and you eat one, it’s like chicken noodle and you eat that one cause you’ll think that’s the best tasting for like, I don’t know, like a week then that will taste like complete crap to you and then you’ll try like another one, it will be like ham but it’s more like spam. And it’s just kinda like- you just do this until you run out of the numbers and you just start all over. To this day I don’t even like M&Ms or Skittles cause that’s the only thing that came in MREs. And I remember seeing these, the M&M package, and it was like, you know, guess what the, the new M&M is, well I already knew it was blue but these M&Ms were so old that there was still no blue M&M in them. [short pause] stuff like that but, yeah they were just terrible. And then the UGR went from MRE to a UGR which is basically we had like cooks convoy in and they like made a little bit better, um, food, but it was basically just heated, giant MREs. Like everything was a casserole, of some sort. It was pretty bad. And just not, things that you miss the most about the whole food thing was just, having to be able to drink a coke, like not drinking a Coca Cola in a year, or having anything, I mean we were literally rationing the water. We got like seven water bottles a day, and you brush your teeth with it, you could shower with it. You couldn’t really shower I was one of the only ones to learn to shower because I just hung a camelback up, you know like a backpack-water thing, hung it up and showered that way. But I would end up using one of my rationed water bottles to do that. So that was [mumble] the food was terrible. And the second time we were a little bit more, in Baghdad, we were a little bit more advanced where we had like a trailer truck. The trailer truck would like serve food and it was a little bit better food. It was like, still not like traditional amazing food that you can have here at Laurinos. [chuckling] |
12:08 | Ansel | What modern day luxuries did you miss while you were enlisted? |
12:10 | Jesse | What what? |
12:12 | Ansel | Modern day luxuries? |
12:13 | Jesse | Luxuries? |
12:14 | Ansel | Yeah. |
12:15 | Jesse | Like overseas or like- cause when we came home we lived a normal life. |
12:20 | Ansel | Like overseas like, like you said you miss coke and stuff like that? Was that just- |
12:27 | Jesse | Yeah I mean, I mean basically your only dessert was M&Ms or Skittles and that’s, I mean I can’t even taste skittles without hating them. But it was everything, it was anything and everything but you just, just the thought of like a Coke would be like, “Oh man I can’t wait to have a Coke,” and that kind of thing. I think we got somehow we got like this fresh watermelon from somewhere, like somebody delivered it from Kuwait and it was like probably the best tasting thing we’d had in like forever. And me and my buddy we used to sit, we used to sit on a post and I remember we’d dream of what we were going to do when we get out of the military and we were just, we were literally going to try to own an ice cream like truck business and deliver ice creams and we just thought, and like stupid things you just sit on a post and think about. Or on a convoy or something like that. |
13:25 | Ansel | How has your military experience affected you, and your life today? |
13:29 | Jesse | Um, in a lot of ways. It’s good, good and bad. Good being you know it’s [pauses] it, I don’t know made me a stronger person. Umm, it defiantly helps, you know, certain relations and dealing with certain things, you’re a lot calmer. On the other hand you’re a lot more easier to get, I don’t know, mad about certain things. [pauses] You know there’s a lot more bad than good. Good, you know, you can get jobs, better jobs being in the military and stuff like that or ex-military. Bad being, you know I got sleep problems, stuff like that. So, yeah, I don’t know I think, I think it just makes you a stronger person I guess. |
14:33 | Ansel | Do you think your country re-payed you for being a veteran? |
14:39 | Jesse | It’s not really, I never thought of it as trying to get anything back from the military. I think it was, you know, someone has to do it. I think everyone should do it- at least two years. I think it’s, I’m not gonna say JFK’s quote or anything but i think it’s, you need to do, give to your country and not so much ask for, you know, that kind of thing. |
15:07 | Ansel | If your children asked to enlist when they’re of age, what advice would you give them? |
15:13 | Jesse | I would be happy about it. |
15:15 | Ansel | Happy about it? |
15:16 | Jesse | Yeah. |
15:17 | Ansel | Would you give them any advice on the side. Tell them any- |
15:20 | Jesse | I mean I would hope that at the time we weren’t in war, or going into war, or anything like that. But there’s a lot of education out of it. A lot of uh, a lot of benefits besides- you know you never want your children to go to war or anything like that, you know possible they don’t come home but I think overall it does make you a better person and if my son, you know, wants to join the military I would be proud |
15:57 | Ansel | (small pause) Were you exited when your service came to an end? |
16:00 | Jesse | I was um, I think I called my mom and left a voice message and it was like just ridiculous and ah i just had enough. I did my time and just had enough. Yeah it was just after doing two tours, and you never know if your living or dying and things like that just living on the edge. And when I came home you just partied like a rock star and I just had enough of it. It was good my mom was happy to have me home, you know she wouldn't have to worry about me going away again.” How did you keep in touch with your family, just by calling them? “Ya I mean when your home you just live a normal life, um you're training everyday and that kind of stuff. I was stationed in Georgia but ah ya you would just call mom like you would normally. My mom tried to buy me a when i was over there, tried to buy me a satellite phone. It wasn't even satellite phone, I think it was a tri-band phone it worked in like Germany, because we flew to Germany but it didn't work in Coate, before we convoyed over. So basically ah, but we did have a you know laptops in Iraq. But they, we used satellite phones from here and there but we were only allowed to call on them, well shit like once every three months or something. |
17:27 | Ansel | What did you do in Germany? |
17:30 | Jesse | Germany was just a transfer over, so basically you flew in a I think a C5 from ( small pause) Georgia to Germany. We might have made a couple more stops. From Germany, I mean we might have made a couple more stops. C5s always broke down so we broke down in Germany. |
17:48 | Ansel | Whats a C5? |
17:49 | Jesse | Giant plane. Giant military plane. |
17:55 | Ansel | Ya, ya ,ya. |
17:56 | Jesse | C17s are a little smaller. C130s are the ones that like we land, it's like combat landing and you land into Iraq. Um the first time we convoyed from Coate into Iraq, um a deuce and a half or five tons it's like a giant truck. And we all kinda piled in the back and just aimed our weapons out the sides, kind of thing. And then the second trip we actually, you know did like a combat landing from C 130s. |
18:22 | Ansel | uh huh, did you ever like parachute of plains? |
18:26 | Jesse | Uh huh, yep. Um I was airborne uh basically at fort Benning. Our unit, uh there is a lot of guys, pathfinder and Rangers and Airborne and it's just our unit allows us to go to army schools or even Marine schools. And one of the ones, you know I always wanted to do was airborne. Going to fort Benu, getting certified. Getting my wings and then um, just another thing. And our unit wanted to get a combat jump into Iraq so we ended up, going up to, in a in Tallil. And a it wasn't like a real combat jump just a area. Basically all of Iraq is combat, so if you jumped in, you would get your combat wings sorta thing. |
19:28 | Ansel | Well it is often said that a strong sense of humor helps in difficult times. Do you have any humorous stories? |
19:35 | Jesse | (thinking back) Ya, basically we just joked around. We just did stupid stuff to each other. Overseas we would do pranks on each other and stuff like that. Uh I remember this we had this area. In Baghdad we had our own tent area, so then you'd have your tent, sectioned off, you'd just hang a blanket up and that would be your section kind of thing. I remember we baby powdered the crap out of one area and so we’d come back and everything would be covered in powder that kind of thing. and then one time I duct tape everything this kid owned. It was just literally duct taped. Then we did it again with tin foil everything was just covered in tin foil. We just do dumb stuff like that, to keep our minds of stuff. That was just some of the stuff. I remember in when we were in Tallil we,you know anytime an explosion lit we’d say gas gas gas and everyone would throw their gas mask on. And I remember we used to bust each others ah yeah and so you'd saying gas gas even if something exploded and I remembered, this kid he didn't have the part that basically it’s like a breather cap thing. Basically filters the air.” yeah. “And he didn't have the canister on and I remember he started to do the funky chicken the ground because he thought he was gonna be exposed by gas. But there was no gas, but it was kind of funny. We did all kinds of dumb stuff. |
Ansel | 21:31 | Are you still in contact with the people you work with? |
Jesse | 21:34 | I am. I have a few close ones ah, of mine that were on my fire team. That um you know, ones a sheriff now in Louisiana and a couple of them are in Florida. But yeah it's like the modern day. See know we didn't have Facebook, when I first started it was for college kids only. I think it was Myspace or something but, I think everybody has facebook now so I can still find them and they still contact me once in awhile. and stuff like that. |
22:21 | Ansel | ( small pause) If you don't mind me asking and you don't have to answer this, but a where there any casualties in your unit? |
22:25 | Jesse | Yeah there were. My unit itself had one. Which were a small unit of convoys we went on. There was a few army convoys where (small pause, starts to become a little emotional) where guys got um, Basically killed. |
22:48 | Ansel | (Small pause) What did the enemies use for weapons? |
22:52 | Jesse | Um they used anything, um I mean they had, their weapon of choice was an I.E.D. they did carry AKs. I.E.Ds more than anything, I mean they would put I.E.Ds in dead dogs, they would put I.E.Ds in everything. I mean we were on travel and our convoy was on a road called msr tampa, it was technically the most dangerous road to travel on. All the I.E.Ds, everywhere. They were just sick the way they did their I.E.Ds and stuff. One of our units got blown up from an I.E.D and it was an armored Humvee , thank god. But the two people in my unit, the one guy totally shattered his femur, the other kid got thrown out I think he was in the turret. But we just kept going over this area we were patrolling and they put like a I.E.D but it was like a 40mm, maybe even bigger but it was like a mortar and they saw our tire tracks. We ended up running over it and hitting it. We ended up getting the guys finding it though. and then ya know there was Aks and more any nation like that. And then I.E.Ds were their more weapon of choice. They would send mortars around, but they were really bad at hitting anything. |
24:47 | Ansel | what weapon did you use? |
24:48 | Jesse | Um I was an M4 203 grenadier. So basically I had to carry an M4 203 and my sidearm was a Beretta M9. Um I was trained on the M60, the M240, The M249, The 19 and the a 50 cal. Well I Was also trained on the M124, or the M24. And a what else? We were trained in grenades that kind of stuff, pretty much our mission was to carry weapons so we were trained on the weapons used in the military uses today. |
25:27 | Ansel | Most of your time it wasn't a lot of combat right? Like training in camp right? |
25:36 | Jessie | My unit, I joined a unit that basically are we train for six months then we deploy. Ours is actually the opposite we do a lot more combat than we did here in the states. That's why I Was just exhausted by the time I was done in four years. Most of the time I was actually overseas. |
26:03 | Ansel | (long pause) Did you recall your day when you're serves ended? |
26:10 | Jesse | Um I don't know maybe sometime in 2006 maybe may. |
26:15 | Ansel | Where you overseas? |
26:16 | Jesse | I wasn't. I was home for four months or something. |
26:20 | Ansel | What would you do when you would come home, see your family? |
26:23 | Jesse | A couple times I Would do that. You would train, but you would also have some time off too so from a diplomat you would get so much leave time. Then you would get like so much time from being deployed, and it's like extra time. Then there'd be a bunch of money, because you didn't spend any money. You would just be racking up, so you would come home and party like a rock star. You really didn't know if you were going to come back, that sorta thing. I spent a lot of my time in Tampa and Panama city and just a, Don't know a lot of fun stuff. |
27:09 | Ansel | would you do it all again if you had the opportunity? |
27:14 | Jesse | Um yeah I would do it all again. |
27:16 | Ansel | Uh why? |
27:20 | Jesse | I don't regret, I mean somethings you go, you look back you know and if we did things differently. But I don't regret anything that happened, I have came to the realization that it is what it is. And I just couldn't see me doing anything else. I think it's what made me who I am today, good or bad. My wife can say it’s bad but for the most part it’s good. Definitely would do it again. |
28:04 | Ansel | And you are in the fire department right? |
28:06 | Jesse | I am now yep, I'm full time Paramedic and firefighter. |
28:11 | Ansel | If you could go back what is one thing you would change about the war and why? |
28:15 | Jesse | What would I change? |
28:16 | Ansel | Ya. |
28:18 | Jesse | I would change the story, one thing I don’t like talking about. And a maybe some people wouldn't of got hurt. That kind of thing. You know a few things kinda haunt you and that would be the things I would change. |
29:00 | Ansel | (long pause) For the things, ah, what were the things you were aboard like.. |
29:05 | Jesse | Board? |
29:07 | Ansel | Helicopters? planes like? |
29:17 | Jesse | Yeah a we were part of the air force so, we would always.. |
29:23 | Ansel | Were you more like? Would you like, be on the plane in combat or the helicopter in combat? |
29:29 | Jesse | No, ground troops.” Oh ok. “So yeah if stuff went bad” you can call in for backup? “Yeah we can call the Air Force, they’ll send in A10 support, basically we were more likely to get their support. Or they like you know, basically we’re more likely to get our support from the Air Force than an army unit or stuff like that. That's why the army likes us, you know we have the backup of the Air Force, which we were still an Air Force we were just sort of an army unit I guess since we're really ground troops. (Long pause) I know a lot of people are getting confused because the Air Force and planes and stuff like that, but it’s just not true. Only officers and pilots and very few pilots. |
30:28 | Ansel | If you were to join the military again would you change your job? Like would you go back into the Air Force? |
30:37 | Jesse | No, I enjoyed my job. I think it was exactly where I wanted to be. It got me overseas, and um at the time it's exactly what I wanted to do. I think it was good. It was more of a militarized unit and Air Force is not militarized, but I wasn't I didn't, I just wanted to join the hardest one to get into when I joined the military and Air Force. The Air Force was the hardest one to get into, and I think that's why I went to the Air Force, to get into the action. So that's why I joined. |
31:16 | Ansel | Thank you for your time. |
31:18 | Jesse | Yep. |