Andy Stumpf was Involved in the Rescue of Jessica Lynch | Joe Rogan

Dude, I didn't know, I was listening to your podcast, I didn't know that you were involved in the rescue of Jessica Lynch. That was the second target that we hit in the first invasion of Iraq. That's crazy. It was an odd series of events. You know, we went over there, I had just finished the selection process for the East Coast Command and they actually, there are, what would be the best way to describe it? There are multiple squadrons inside of that command. All tasks, they all have the same skill set, but you need multiple so one can be on deployment while another one is training and the other one is resting. You want to get into a, you know, a rotation cycle. So at the end of selection, an X number of people get partitioned off to each one of those. And it takes time to get up to speed because the selection tactics and the way that you train are, they're good, but you get better as you are working with the guys with more experience, specifically the real world experience. And so they pulled us out of selection about a month early and sent us over to augment the Karzai detail in Afghanistan at the very tail end. I mean, nothing happened. We basically, you know, you're a deterrent at that point and it's one of the worst missions because you can't, it's very reactive security detail stuff. You can't really do anything until somebody else does something. So you're already behind the power curve. It's my least favorite mission set, I think. But we came back from that and then the intel started kicking off for Iraq and they sent us over to Saudi Arabia and we were there for probably somewhere between seven to 10 days. That's where I watched Bush give the speech. You know, Saddam Hussein has, I think it was 24 hours to comply or turn himself in, whatever it was. And we had already taken a look at, we knew before going over there that there were two or three objectives that we were going to look at. So we had already basically planned missions that we were going to do while we were in Virginia Beach. We were planning for stuff in Iraq. So we continue the planning in Saudi Arabia and the number one, the first target we hit was the number one chembio target in Iraq. So to do that, you have to get all your shit on this. It's called MOP gear, mission oriented protective posture. It's like a chemical chembio suit, gas mask, which compounds a lot of stuff. You have all your normal shit on anyway. Like there's guys carrying quickie saws in a hazmat suit with a gas mask on, breathing through a blower on their back, overworking the blower. And it's amazing how close to suffocation have actually come inside of those gas masks. It's the worst feeling ever. Like you're sucking so hard for air that the mask is like sticking up against your face. Because you're not supposed to be physically exerting yourself while you're wearing that thing? There's a limit. It's just, it's harder. It's be like putting the, because there's a canister on the side. And how much weight are you carrying around? In those days, it was probably body weight plus 8,200 pounds. Jesus Christ. That was about average. And it trimmed down after that because the actual amount of real world experience at that time was low and it drastically increased. So you'd be like, you know, I think I need this pocket and then you wouldn't need it for a month. Like I need to get rid of this goddamn pocket because it carries sweat and like backpack hunters, same kind of thing. Oh, yeah. The gear that I wore towards the end was substantially different than the gear that I wore towards the beginning. I trimmed. I mean, I think I probably had 10 magazines on me, like that first target. I think the last deployment I did, I would carry four, four and one in the gun and no pistol. So things changed over time. But this just for weight, just for weight and for ability to move because then I would need less food and I would need less water and I'd actually be mobile. But on this target, so it's a four hour helicopter ride in. We're sitting there. We have all of our mock your arm, but not our masks. And we're doing a midair refuel on a C-130. So you had a 47 double, you know, the big double propellers. It would be rotor blades on top of the helicopter. They're hooked up next to a C-130 inflight refueling. Missile goes underneath the C-130 is like, see you boys later. Palms out. And it like, so the C-130 bailed when the missile flew under. Oh, fuck yeah. I don't blame them for that either. They're literally a flying fuel tank. But I think they had gotten enough gas and we had to hit the tanker on the way back as well. But so you're just sitting there waiting for three and a half, you know, three and three quarter hours and about 10 minutes out, you start getting your gas mask and stuff on because you got to stuff the drape and you know, night vision goggles. Have you ever looked through a pair of night vision goggles? Yeah, your field of view sucks. It's terrible. It's weird, which is why you notice when people who are actually using them, they will all constantly have movement in their head because they're increasing their field of view and up and down. And that's when you can orient them to a good offset to your eye. Now imagine putting a gas mask in between your eye and the lens of the night vision. Goggle. Oh, Jesus. So you're taking already a limited field of view and putting it into a soda straw. So, and mind you, this is the first combat target I've ever been on. So and you're 18. Oh, no, no, this one. 22? No, I went through. How old are you? Me, 42. I was in my at the time. This was in 2003. It was 25. Okay. 25. But you enlisted when you were really young or 17. Junior in high school. I signed the paperwork when I was in junior in high school. I didn't, you still got to graduate and then, you know, continue on. But I was in like the third or fourth 47 that went in. So you finally get all your stuff on, you know, and you have a blower on your back. So there's ways that you can help the canister. If you just have the canister on your mask, it's a lot like breathing through a few straws shoved in your mouth. If you maintain a low enough heart rate and you're totally chill, you're fine. But as your heart rate goes up and your demand, you know, for oxygen goes up, you're really limited. So they have, you know, you can put them on your back. It's a blower. It's a battery powered blower that will basically push air into the mask and it gives you, I would say, more buffer space. It's like almost like a positive pressure. And if you're not doing much, it's actually really nice. It's just jamming air down your face. And it works well unless you put your weapon sling over the top of that tube, which is exactly what I did, which was awesome. Oh, it was great. Jesus Christ. Great first experience. I lost my nods on my first target ever. I went back and got them, but it was a fucking shit show. What's nods? Night vision goggles. Oh, okay. Things that you need to see at night. And we'll get in trouble for if you lose. It's terrible. So we come in number one, Ken Biotarget in Iraq, and we had looked at it from the perspective of like air conditioning specialists in the, you know, from architects to what we could encounter on the ground, potential threats, satellite imagery of historical stuff. And we get there. And by the time I even got on the ground, there was already a firefight going on. The helicopter that I was in had 27 rounds come through the helicopter. Not a single person was hurt. Like guys were like reaching up to like scratch their ass and like a round would come through and dismiss everybody. Jesus Christ. I take that back. The door gunner standing next to me got shot right in the head at about a minute out. That was my first exposure to combat just over and helicopter lands and you go and by the time I got to the front door of that structure, I was probably as close to being unconscious due to this asphyxiation as I often am doing. Joked out like the world is just coming down and it instantaneously. We could tell that it was as a agricultural school like the intelligence was so horribly and incredibly off when it came to that. So I just ripped my mask off at some point because I would have rather died from whatever horrendous disease could have been in there then suffocate and then you know, we cleared through it and I knocked my night vision goggles off with a sledgehammer. I had to go back. It was a shit show. So we get back from that. The next morning we wake up and I remember having a cup of coffee with a buddy of mine. I was like, hey man, I don't think we're going to get out of this if things keep going like they did last night and shortly after that a few days after that we got word that Jessica had been captured. So we forward staged and went up to Nazaria and the information that we had going into the hospital is that it was a Fedayeen hotbed like 50 to 500 people was the expected amount of resistance that we could have and we could fit 27 people in the helicopter. So that's what we launched with in the back of our head and fortunately we didn't meet any resistance inside of the structure and it actually was kind of business as usual looking back like there was nothing exciting about that target whatsoever. People in the modern day if they were to action that target now with the experience that they have that you wouldn't even register on the radar scope. The amount of the little little amount of resistance that was encountered outside of this would be another day at the office. There was a public story of that and then there was a lot of dispute about whether or not that was accurate. There was a like I remember she actually cleared up a lot of it. She well she was not responsible for a lot of the things that were said because she was deep into the repatriation process into I mean her she's fucked up to this day when I met sat down I probably get to sit across the table. She had never sat down and talked to somebody who was there. It was so did you meet her. I went out again. Yeah. I had it on my podcast. Yeah. It was one of the earlier episodes. I want where she listened. I didn't even know you had her on. So she told her side of the story. I told my side of the story and we were able to like settle my gaps and we sat across the table just like this and she still wears a brace. She came and gave me a huge hug. I mean I didn't know what to expect happened to her physically. Um man I don't have the exact details but from my understanding the vast majority of her injuries came from when her Humvee wrecked. I do not believe she was buckled or strapped in so she got just pounded and she was not treated well. You know it's guys are going to get the same. I mean bottom line you're going to get raped if you're a male or a female. Really. Oh yeah. For sure. And you get captured. Oh yeah. You're going to for sure. If you're a male or a female. If you're a male or a female you're not going to have a good go of it for sure. And again I'm not an exact expert on what happened specifically with her but from my understanding she experienced that as well as all the other medical issues. But when we she was in bad shape when we pulled her out of the hospital for sure. But then so and I remember there were two people with us that were carrying video cameras and there was a little bit of footage that was taken from that like when she was in the hospital bed in the hospital. And a lot of the rest of it was from the cameras on the helicopters and some you know the sensors overhead. But the narrative from that not a word was said by anybody that was there executing that objective or from her. And I think my hypothesis is you know we were a month into that war. A lot of that war was based on we need to go rid this country and this dictator of their WMDs. We hadn't found any from PR perspective wise it wasn't probably going as well as they wanted it to do and they wanted to have a PR victory. But the stuff that was said the stuff that made the news all this stuff that got blown out of proportion none of that came from the people that were actually there. It came from all the layers on top. What was blown up because I'm trying to remember. I remember some of the first reports they were saying that she was going to be the first female Medal of Honor recipient that she had fought until she had her you know she expended her last round and then was finally overtaken and he talked to her and she she never even loaded her weapon or weapon jammed. She she never said that she fought you know I mean I remember people talking about she never said any of that. So what do you think was doing that was that the government's PR. I think people are often in a rush to talk in an educated manner about things they know nothing about. I mean it takes time to to understand the details of what happened. She was not in a headspace to give a debrief. You know she was literally being flown probably to Germany for her first round of countless surgeries and she's going to need to spend time with a therapist and a counselor. I would assume she would obviously can't speak for but they're going to you know they're going to want to do a robust medical treatment and that's really not the time to dive into the details of her exact actions. And we left the next morning and flew into Baghdad like three days later like it was just another day on the job and you were off and running. You just had it was cool because it was the first rescue US POW since World War Two. And so the rescue of her was she was rescued from the hospital. And so they had abused her and then taken her to a hospital. I get a little grainy on the details of what happened in between the wreck and when we picked her up because there are conflicting narratives. There are there are I don't know what the correct word would be stories or there are reports that they attempted to put her into an ambulance and bring her back to US forces. But at that same time the Fedein were using ambulances as basically military fighting vehicles. So they said that when they tried to do that the ambulance was shot at which makes sense if there was a trend of people using an ambulance as a military vehicle that would make sense and they would get turned around. So they might have tried to bring her back. You know that hospital was being used as a Fedein staging point because they're I mean they're not dumb people. They understand we're not going to likely bomb hospitals or religious structures. So use them to their military advantage. Wow. Wow. And this is your second. Your second real. Yep. Wow. Praise. It's great that mean that story was a giant story. Yeah. In in the media about the war and people trying to sort out what was true versus what was the you know the publicity narrative. I would say on average take 90 percent of what you hear off the top. 90 percent.