as funny as we were finishing up that last video that guy comes up and asked you where to swim
right that's one of the locals in the area which is kind of funny it works out for me yeah yeah
the dark skin I is I think they call it being ethnically ambiguous in fact when I was in the
teams one of the things we did with the Iraqis is we actually took off our American colored uniforms
and we would put on their uniforms and so my Doc's can start growing out a little facial hair
then get on Iraqi uniform all the guys on my team are looking at me and going like hey Williams you
really blend in with those guys now don't you I guess I do to my benefit yeah I guess thinking but
for that at times though ask if I'm from Ethiopia you know yeah I could kind of see it actually my
dad was from Honduras I am the son of an immigrant but Wow yeah nobody can nobody would ever know
what yeah hey Manuel I'm dying to hear about some of your experience as a sealed real-life combat
kind of stuff and the stuff that you some missions you went on what was it like sure let's go back to
the last deployment I was on we were out in Iraq and my team was given the task of hunting down men
that make suicide vests and roadside bombs like IEDs and while we're out there we're working with
a group called the ice off which is Iraq's Special Operations Forces and one of our goals with these
guys is to simply teach them how to fight their own fights and so we figured the best way to do
that is their only train them on base but actually go outside the wire and fight side by side with
them and if you can imagine a whole deployment going by I'd say pretty good because we bagged
and gagged a lot of bad dudes or making the world a better place and we're coming up on what look
like just enough time on the calendar to do maybe one more operation and we weren't really sure up
the ice offers ready for us to pass that baton off to them so we decided for this final operation
why don't we try and make it a sort of graduation operation well let them plan the whole thing from
the ground up and we'll be there with them just in case things go bad so they need to start from
scratch what's the first thing they need they need some information they need some Intel and so they
hit the streets and they find this source that tells them about a man that's an Iraqi policemen
by day and this is making great video right here we're good about to get poured on yeah this is
great though I think we should embrace it nice too so they find information on this guy it's an Iraqi
policemen by day but at night back home he's one of these bomb makers that were looking for and I
kind of give you folks an idea of like what type of character is it that makes a suicide vest well
oftentimes these guys are complete cowards they are not the ones that are actually willing to wear
it themselves oftentimes they have such a hard time finding somebody else to volunteer to put
it on that in one instance over there what they did is they took two mentally handicapped women
and strapped vests onto them and pushed them off in a crowded marketplace and they watched from a
distance like cowards as they set it off with this remote killing these women and obviously
so many more so the ice off though they've got this whole plan they figured out where this guy
lives they know how they want to approach the house get in grab him extract it all checks out
it looks pretty good and they mentioned one other unique thing though they wanted us to wear their
uniforms they felt they got shot at more than the Americans did they thought that the distinguishing
factor was the uniform so they wanted us to blend in with them and we're trying to follow the logic
here like you want us to put your uniforms on to get shot at more with you and they're like
yeah it's like it's fine you know cause it's not about a uniform you know it's the way you
shoot move communicate it's your tactics and so you know we get the uniforms on loading up in
the Humvees that night on behind the 50 caliber machine gun which is a weapon that could really
reach out and touch somebody got my night-vision goggles on I'm looking through my green little
world and just kind of going over this mental inventory as I'm thinking about all the things
I know about this night that is going off in my mind I know my weapon is headspace and time that
means it's ready to go I know where this guy lives how we're gonna approach the house get
him grab him extract but one unique thing I know about this operation that makes it different than
every other operation I know this is the last operation which also means I know just a matter
of days from now I'm gonna be back in my hometown Huntington Beach California and I'm thinking about
now surfing in the ocean I thought what we didn't know about that night was that we were actually
being set up the entire time I guess thrown the absolute worst circumstances we've been in on
this entire deployment we're being set up on this ambush and now we find ourselves engaging in this
gun battle for our lives and so what happened was his as we're pulling up and I should backtrack
just a little bit as we're out on the road I see a sign and the sign is big it's hard to miss as this
balloon chiraq and airbags work laughs big signs you see before you go turning into Fallujah and we
passed this sign before but I don't know why for whatever reason I never thought about that sign
the way I thought about this last night when I saw it I thought to myself huh what are the odds that
Scott my mentor looked at that same sign that I'm looking out right now you know pretty good chances
because not that many years had gone by and then I just thought about what had happened to him
and just how you know little did he know probably after glancing at that sign what would come next
and here we are little do I know in my team that something similar is about to happen and so as we
pull up to the house where this guy is and we're gonna extract him we're getting into one of the
most vulnerable positions you can be in which is a moment where you're gonna make your way
from armored vehicles through open space that's where everything pro-police we start getting shot
at from three different directions taking what we call effective fire meaning the rounds are being
very effective effective tick-tick-tick goes over the radio it means troops and contact routes and
contact we're trying to get you know that quick reaction force trying to get air support as quick
as we can but in an ambush the odds are really against you I mean remember this is on my mentor
and all the guys he was with in his vehicle they got wiped out but one of the big difference makers
here was the resources we had available to us we had these armored vehicles heavy weapons machine
guns and so the call goes over the radio from our salt leader alright boys were getting out
of here alive but I need you to push left and push the left tactically speaking meant we're
not high tailing it not that he actually wants us to basically flank these guys and so now we're
just trying to do what we do best as seals I'm taking this fire from three different directions
I see their muzzle flashes around snapping over my head and it's just time to pick a direction and go
and so I'm just trying to identify make sure we don't have frogmen you know up on the roof as I
see these guys maneuvering and just start firing back at them and we end up you know turning this
firefighter around getting overwhelming firepower and we kill the enemy drive them back we make our
way into the house we decide let's not just get out of here let's get this guy that we're going
after and so we get in and he's wounded but alive and one of the big differences between I'll say us
and them over theirs we do preserve life wherever possible you would think now we've got this guy
in the corner you know he was just trying to kill us and now we'll just you know finish him off and
let God work it all out it's like no we save his life and as difficult as that is especially for
a guy like me that Here I am operating in the same province the same area where my mentor was
ambushed for all I know this guy had a hand in it at the very least he celebrated and what had
happened to my mentor and now I'm getting the responsibility hey Williams pick them up take
them in Hospital so we're putting them into the vehicles driving them back and we're saving this
guy's life and that was a really big first full circle moment I think for me as a little bit of
closure because when I was looking through that TV screen and seeing my mentor you know be just
mutilated and dragged to these streets and these guys celebrating and chanting for losers the great
part of Americans I was filled with a hatred that did not exist before in my heart I wanted
I'd never really played with the idea in my mind of killing somebody up and to that point I was
just a high school kid going to a local community college talking about one to become a Navy SEAL
and watching Charlie Sheen you know Navy SEAL I'm thinking how cool it would be to like run around
and go bang bang bang I never really thought about what it would be like to actually be
pulling the trigger and take somebody's life and not only was I thinking about it as I watched my
mentor on the TV screen I was I was hungry for it but you know I became a believer along the way in
the teams and and God really helped to kind of work some of that hatred out in my heart
and so this was a big closure moment because I had an idea of what I would like to have done to
this guy when I watched their TV screen what happened to my mentor but I'm not doing that
now you know now I'm actually bringing him into our own Hospital and saving his life a god that
was just trying to kill me in the teams and so I think that's a testimony as well to how God can
really radically change a human being yeah that's awesome awesome flood these stories hey well in
our next video why don't like you to share what led you to leave the teams okay and I'm looking
forward to hearing that I'm sure many of our viewers will too all right thanks Gloria yep
you