how do you deal with being away from family loved ones oh I'm uh I'm odd I
always have been I think this might be where I might be a little bit like you D
ever like I just I don't really miss people yes does that make sense yes you
know what I'm saying I know I can see it okay you know III I don't miss people
cuz I know I'm gonna see them even my dog I love my daughters love my
daughters and I'll walk in the house and they're better than puppies right they
jump on me and I get daddy dad it's my the seven-year-old still does it I get
kisses I get hugs I get where were you you were gone so long but like today I
haven't spoken to them and I don't miss them
I know that they're out there like but in a certain level when I do get home
I'm real happy to be home yeah like you were saying to me on the phone like you
just want to get home but when I'm away from home
you're in the game yeah especially for this I guess because I'm here to promote
the book and I'm here to hang out with you guys so I'm like I'm looking forward
and it's like when my dad was crying in the parking lot before I went on my
first mission ever to me it was like what's the big deal dude I'll be back in
six months and and you know my best my best buddies you know the the guys that
I was happy didn't die in combat I've talked to them every three to six months
you know I just talked to the leader of that Green Beret team that I work so
much with just the other day after two years of not actually speaking you know
a couple messages on Facebook and this it's weird for me yeah I'm very similar
don't I don't feel the need to continually update people or talk to
people and my best example is a guy went through SEAL training with did three
platoons within the SEAL team one was in training so with him at SEAL team one
and he was my roommate that entire time so eight years or so we were and we did
everything together drink together hung out together everything we did
and I got and then I got moved to Virginia Beach for two years didn't talk
to him not one single time not a letter not a phone a phone call nothing came
back so that's okay what's up man oh yeah hey you want a burger with this you
know what I mean it was just like nothing to write up picked it right up
and that's how I always feel so and I kind of do that with my family at least
in you know I'm assuming that this person is a guy that's thinking about
being on deployment without his family and so yeah and again what I talked
about earlier is I'm gonna compartmentalize and say and I'll tell
you this is I didn't want to talk to my wife and kids everyday at all when I was
on deployment I didn't know what you could do it I mean if you were if you
were on base you could do it I mean for those of you that don't know overseas
most places overseas right now you got internet you got satellite phone you can
call home you can I did not want to do that with my wife and with my family
when was your first deployment 2003 2004 that was your first one ever
oh no no I my first appoint was in 90 to 90 yeah mine was Kosovo 99 you called
home on a you had one phone mmm it was seven second delay and you got 15
minutes a week maybe was four second delay I just know it like it sucked
yeah there was no such thing as email email in 99 first of all I didn't even
have an email and so there's one guy on base who is the geek and he would go
back to the main camp where they had the internal interweb and you had to give
him your email and the password and he would download your messages onto a
cd-rom come back with it and print it off on the clerks computer for you I
wonder if our type of thinking about it is a response from the fact that we just
didn't have it the first time and then bite between 99 and 2006 and 2006 I had
a Sat phone in my pocket for every everywhere I went I could have called
home all day every day but I didn't yeah because I was like well first of all to
treat and second of all I know how to work at a job
to do and I can't be worrying about a one time I was on the phone and a shot
went over my head hey Dad I gotta go wait you know when he's and then I think
your guy Chris Kyle in his book he talks about being on the phone and then a
gunfight starts yeah and his wife listens to the gunfight because he
forgot to hang up the phone are you kidding me putting your family
through that but I think maybe our situation is that we came from the
generation where that just wasn't an option anyway so I would love to have
talked to some of the newer guys yeah about this about this subject my idea -
I did three shipboard deployments as a seal so we used to deploy on ships and
the first one I went on the we didn't have internet so it was old-school you'd
get mail written mail but that was the norm once every 30 days or 35 days to be
like mail call everyone would be all excited but yeah I think that that
definitely conditions you to not be addicted to having that and I don't
think you're helping the homefront either to call every day and say I miss
you so much I can't wait I don't know if it helps someone friend either I think
it actually is a little bit painful for the home-fry I was talking to one of the
wives the other day of some of our guys that are deployed I don't get mad at me
ladies but I'm just a lot of ladies that have deployed - nowadays true but I was
talking to a wife of a guy I know and she says hey I haven't heard from
so-and-so for for like four days oh my hat I'm like he's probably on an OP like
you know what he does for a living you know exactly what he does for living ops
can take a while he's like it's like yeah but usually he gets back to me and
I'm like obviously he's on a long op but they're conditioned now to always hear
back from you you know what you talked about this in your book which is life's
gonna go on yeah and I think that that's something too that will help you know if
you're like for this guy that's gonna be gone for a long time and how's it going
to deal with it accept the fact that life's gonna go on
and just be cool that things are gonna change the things are gonna get
remodeled this is gonna be some new rugs and
give me a new piece of furniture the fridge might break and she'll go get a
new one exactly and there's nothing you can do about it you could just be cool
with it yeah if you don't like the color she
picks say thanks for getting the new fridge yeah thanks for taking care of
that because I was busy doing protecting the freedoms and democracy in the world