Previously on the Sean Ryan show.

Did you grow up with parents that had strong faith?

My parents were on their own journey as I was growing up.

What happened at 19?

I ended up going into college, somewhere in that year I'm just kind of like I don't really want to be here I want to do something else

so I knew about pushing myself and I knew I can push myself to death.

What did your parents think when you told them,

hey I'm done with this.

Done with school, I'm going to join the military.

Nobody who was close to me was really a fan of this.

You get in, you go to boot camp, what was your impression?

Not too hard. What did you find the most challenging?

Probably the mental games.

Well, hey, let's take a break and then when we come back we'll pick up with your first

deployment what that brief was like.

All right, John, we're back from the break.

We're getting ready to dive into your combat career.

But before we get started, I can tell you are extremely uncomfortable

digging into your background, and I don't want you to think

that we're just getting into war story time to brag. So my method here is childhood

military we do go into the war stuff we go into the struggles afterwards and here's why

one reason is because nobody's documenting this history anymore.

...