John Brown — Beyond Battle

What motivated you to try out and become a Recon Marine?

Originally I signed up for the infantry- so I went to infantry school, or school of infantry (SOI), which is in Camp Pendleton, and then they sent our entire infantry platoon to Okinawa- where there is a full time infantry unit that rotates every six months. We were there on a one-year duty station, so the Marine Corps made a mistake and sent a group of infantry guys there. So they told us “You can try out for Recon or you can try out for the state platoon which is a scout sniper platoon. Or you can be an administrative guy for a year and then rotate back to California or Lejeune and be a grunt again.” And I was a better swimmer than a shooter and decided to try out for Recon.

"On the island of East Timor in 1999 after fighting broke out over a vote to be independent from Indonesia." Photo Credit: John Brown — "On the island of East Timor in 1999 after fighting broke out over a vote to be independent from Indonesia."
Photo Credit: John Brown

At that time the way to get into Recon was that you had to be in the Marine Corps for a certain amount of time, but I was in a unique position so I was able to try out. But usually you have to be in for a while. And then they have a trial test which starts on a Friday night and maybe goes for the weekend. And it’s a big, grueling, twenty-four to forty-eight-hour gut check where you’re swimming, running, hiking with a lot of weight, doing memory games, all sorts of stuff where you’re cold, wet and don’t know what’s going on. So Recon indoctrination is a big gut check, and once you pass that then you get orders to a Recon battalion. From there you go into a recon training program that’s called Recon Indoctrination Program (RIP) which is a preamble to the reconnaissance course. So before you go to become a Reconnaissance Marine to the actual school, if you go the route I did, you’ll be in the battalion or company in RIP and you’re going through classes. It’s like an informal recon course that the battalion puts on to make sure that when guys go to the recon course they have as much knowledge as they can in them already, so that when they get there they have a better chance of passing.

That’s how I got in the Marine Corps and the route I took to get into recon, and then after I went that route of being in Okinawa, to go to school off the island, like jump school, dive school, ranger or sniper, you have to have a year left at the battalion once you get back. So they don’t want people to have a one-year time at third recon in Okinawa and then go to four months of school in the U.S. and come back for a few months and rotate back, and all that expertise goes somewhere else. So they want you to extend. They’ll say “We want to send you to these schools, but we want you to come back and actually operate at this battalion.” And so I was also dating a girl from Okinawa at the time that I ended up marrying, so I had a couple of motivations and ended up extending for four years and did my four years at third recon in Okinawa.

Now guys will actually sign up for recon before they even go in the Marine Corps, which increases the attrition rate, but the recon MOS is a primary one, so you can be just a recon marine. Whereas before you were an infantry Marine with a secondary MOS of recon. So now guys can sign up for Recon, go to bootcamp and infantry school and then go to a formal RIP type program, which is recon marines awaiting training. And they go for a few weeks until the next class picks up.

What do you miss most about being a Recon Marine?

"At a recon wedding last year in Boston" Photo Credit: John Brown — "At a recon wedding last year in Boston"
Photo Credit: John Brown

Free ammo. I mean I’m in a unique position now because I’m still connected to the Reconnaissance community as the president of the Recon and Sniper Foundation. I get to have daily interaction with my recon brothers all across the globe. So I’m unique in that I get to continue outside the Marine Corps and maintain that relationship. But as a Recon Marine you’re doing really cool work- jumping out of airplanes, diving and swimming, cruising around in zodiacs, shooting suppressed guns, using some of the best communication and cryptographic equipment and computers and optics. So you get to do some cool stuff. You also feel like you’re part of something bigger than yourself. All of that and the comradery and the brotherhood, I miss that, but again I’m in a position where I get to maintain that at a level much higher than most because I continue to work with these guys and stay involved with the community. But to be ready at a moment’s notice to do anything from dress like reporters and grow out our goatees and do urban surveillance in plain clothes or fast rope down a helicopter, blow a door and save somebody. To have that array of opportunities to do cool stuff and work with the best of the best- I miss it. Everybody misses it. It’s tough to go from that to normal.

If you could narrow it down, what would you say is the most important lesson you learned in the Marine Corps?

Well there are so many things that I’ve learned that are invaluable life lessons. First, I think, would be not to judge people by race, religion, clothing or appearance. There are so many important things I’ve learned, but that’s something we talk about often. When you go to bootcamp, and I grew up in Eugene Oregon, where there isn’t too much diversity at all, and I had a twenty-seven-year-old Lebanese guy who was my bunkmate. He was in or around the embassy in Beirut when it was bombed in 83’. I had two black guys from Alabama- deep south dudes right next to me on the other side, and also two Filipino kids who didn’t speak any English who came to join our Marine Corps to give back for everything that the Marines and military had done for them. You see a lot of foreigners working in our military to give back which is pretty cool.

So when I got done with bootcamp, I think you graduate on a Friday, the whole thing is about thirteen weeks long, and the Wednesday before you graduate, your parents get to come and visit you and they give you your civilian clothes back. So this is the first time in thirteen weeks that you get to wear your clothes again- most guys don’t even fit in them. I was only eighteen, but I remember seeing these guys who were huge pussies that dressed like badasses. So like in bootcamp they were crying or I thought they were weak, and then you look at the way they dress when they put their civilian clothes on and they’re all thugged out who I would have been sketched of or maybe reliant to talk to or engage. Or vice-versa I see someone who is a nerd dressed in their civilian clothes and I know that they’re a badass because I’ve seen them do amazing stuff. So just that skin color and all that shit doesn’t matter at all. We make racist jokes and we say racist shit all the time, and we tease each other about our own race, culture or religion and all that stuff, but at the end of the day, in terms of actual racism within our community, no one gives a shit.

You also get to learn the truths about other countries and cultures. I got to Japan and I thought that all the flashing lights out in town were whore houses. I mean I had no idea that they weren’t. There aren’t any and there are more in America than there are in Japan. All I knew was the movies. I flew to Vietnam and I didn’t know if I was going to land in a rice paddy or a city, or if they were going to hate us or love us. And the Vietnamese people, especially in the south, absolutely love Americans, and it’s a cool place, I had a great time and every time I go there it’s awesome. I realized how ignorant and sheltered I was and probably still am, and got exposure to a diverse array of people and places that opened my eyes to a lot of life lessons.

Are there any particular stories from your time in service that were particularly memorable, and you would be willing to share?

I got to do a lot of really cool stuff like shooting all sorts of cool things, jumping out of airplanes, diving the great barrier reef and other places where civilians can’t dive, and doing all of that. But one of the coolest things that I got to do was I went to the island of Iwo Jima. And Iwo Jima was where the famous picture was taken with Marines raising the flag on Mount Suribachi. And it’s a little tiny island less than a mile long in the middle of the Pacific, and there is nothing there except a Japanese Air Force Base. I was on the thirty-first Marine Expeditionary Unit in 2000 and we got word that a bunch of the Japanese and American veterans who fought on the island were going back for the first time and they asked if we would be able to go help clear paths to the top of Mount Suribachi and other more famous battle sites on the island so that when the vets got there we could help easily facilitate their travel. So myself and four other recon guys along with about thirty guys from the ship went in. We slept on the floor in the gym that the Japanese Ground Self Defense Force guys had in their barracks. We had been on ship for a couple months at that point and had visited Australia and southeast Asia, so we got there and my buddies and I broke away from the main group and let them do some of the path clearing work and we decided to go explore the island on our own. There are over one-hundred miles of tunnels underneath Iwo Jima, and again the island itself isn’t even over a mile long, and without anybody with us, just the four recon guys, with flashlights, shorts and t-shirts, opened up a manhole cover that’s on the runway, climbed down there, put the lid back up on top of us and went and explored these tunnels. There were some places that you could walk and some places that you had to low crawl on your stomach. And we found old guns that were all rusted and of course the wood was rotted off, whiskey bottles- in fact I kept two whiskey bottles, filled them up with sand and brought those back. So that was cool.

When the veterans got there, to see the Japanese and American veterans come together and they’re crying and hugging and the respect that they showed for each other- and I didn’t know what to expect or if they would hate each other. I think that they realized that they were sent to do something and they knew nothing about the other person, and they were just fighting on behalf of their country and what they thought was right at the time. I also got to meet the youngest Medal of Honor recipient, a guy named Jack Lucas, I think he was about fourteen when he lied about his age and joined the Marine Corps. He got sent to Hawaii where his cousin was stationed, and when his cousin got deployed to the Pacific he snuck on ship and went with his cousin’s group.

On the way there he got discovered and was being punished on ship for being a stowaway and they got to Iwo Jima and he wanted to go fight and they wouldn’t let him so he jumped off the ship and swam in and grabbed a rifle from I guess a pile of rifles from fallen Marines. I mean we lost three-thousand plus guys there. He started fighting with this unit, and at one point they were clearing tunnels and two grenades came out and he pushed one into the sand with the butt stock of his rifle and then he jumped on the second one to absorb the blast and protect his guys. It went off, but he survived obviously. So he was sitting there at the base of Mount Suribachi telling us this story with his wife, and he told us that when he got out of the Marine Corps he promised his mom that he would finish high school. So he went back home and finished high school and the local car dealership gave him a Cadillac, and he said he would drive to school every day with the Medal of Honor around his neck and three or four girls in the back. It was pretty awesome to listen to that guy tell his story in Iwo Jima at the base of Mount Suribachi.

"On Iwo Jima on February 20, 1945, 17-year-old Private First Class Jack Lucas dove onto two grenades, saving the lives of his fellow Marines. Lucas was awarded the Medal of Honor on October 5, 1945. He is the youngest recipient to win the Medal."

What makes transitioning out of the military so difficult?

In my opinion there are different factors. Not everybody does the job that I did or that guys in our field did. But regardless of if you are a cook or a Navy Seal, you are doing an extremely important job. By the time you get out after four years or whatever you’ve done, you’ve earned rank, you’ve earned respect, you’ve earned leadership positions, and now you have people you are responsible for. You might be cooking breakfast for a thousand Marines or you might be jumping out of an airplane at twenty-eight-thousand feet to go rescue a hostage. Whatever you are doing is an extremely important and unique position with a lot of responsibility. To go from that back down to being equal with eighteen year olds who just got out of high school and are now going to college, that in itself is a kick in the gut. And I don’t think people think about it as much as it is subconscious kick. “Wait a minute, I just earned my way to an E-4 or E-5 non-commissioned officer position and I was in charge of one-hundred Marines, and now I get out and I go to school and I’m with these kids who have zero clue what I’ve done or what I’ve seen or where I’ve been or what’s going on in the world.”

I just read this article the other day in USA Today about how people are complaining about “the veteran’s preference”. So when you get hired for certain federal, state or local jobs, they have a thing called veterans preference. So you may get ten points extra out of a thousand because you are a veteran. And people are complaining that the lack of diversity amongst veterans who are applying for these jobs is hindering the ability for minorities to get into police positions or whatever. So you see little things like that and you think “You’re saying that the little ten-point preference that I get on my job application isn’t deserved or it’s supposedly hurting other people?” So it’s little things like that or you see stories about guys who are killing themselves in the parking lot of the VA hospital, or getting pushed a bunch of drugs from the VA that end up killing them. There are so many factors of things that hurt the veteran community.

Also, a lot of people join the military because they’re not ready for the next step in life, and that was a big motivation for me. You get out and you have all of these new skills and capabilities and can do all these great things, but if you don’t know the proper interest rate for a car or home loan, and you don’t have a cool uncle, dad or friend who can guide you through that stuff, you can get tripped up really quick just like anybody else. On top of that you’re thinking “Wait a minute, I just got shot for my country and went to combat and did this, this and this and now I’m getting my car repossessed because I made a mistake? I don’t know what an interest rate is.” And this isn’t to absolve everyone’s personal responsibility because they served, but that’s vaguely what the thought process is- you go from something back to nothing, and I think whether it’s military or something else, that can have an effect on your ego and your subconscious. You feel like people don’t care or respect what you did.

Also getting used to being by yourself again. One thing about the military is that regardless of what you are doing or how miserable it is, you are always with someone else, you always have a buddy there with you to share in your pain. When you get out and you’re by yourself that’s a new thing as well. And then of course there is combat stuff that is affecting our guys like PTSD and other physical or mental injuries that stem from combat and experiences in combat. We’re getting better, but people just don’t know how to handle or how to deal with stuff like that. The way we prescribe medication through the VA, for example, is extremely hurtful to veterans. There are veterans that are addicted to drugs and are physically and mentally dependent on pills, and it’s terrible.So there are lots of issues, but I think just going from something to nothing, not that people who just went to high school or college are nothing, but I guess if you went from flying a space shuttle and went back to flying Cessna’s you’d probably feel like you were going backwards.

For those who don’t know, what is the Recon and Sniper Foundation, and what is your job there?

So the Recon & Sniper Foundation is made up of former Reconnaissance Marines and Marine Snipers, and we provide emergency assistance to veterans in need. So if we find out a man or woman who served this country is in a position of need, or they are being booted from their apartment, or they have a drug or alcohol issue, or a financial problem, they are eligible for our assistance. A couple of years ago we had some private, closed groups with a couple thousand former Recon Marines, Snipers and Recon Corpsman, and every once in a while things would pop up. “Hey, we heard about a guy, he’s over here and somebody needs to help this guy, he’s not doing well.” And ninety-nine percent of the time we don’t even know who these people are, we hear what is going on, we have resources across the country, and we want to do right. Out of that we decided to create a 501c3, an actual non-profit, and focus primarily on emergency assistance for veterans in need. We are all volunteers, no one gets paid, we all have our own jobs, kids and other things in our personal lives. We’re spread across the United States, I live in Eugene, Oregon and our Vice President is in Alabama.

So we operate through a messenger app, so we have all of our board members on there. If you go to our website, if someone needs assistance, there is an area where you can submit someone or yourself for assistance. Once that happens, an email of everything that they put in goes to everyone on our board, and then we have a guy whose responsibility is to conduct intake, so he’s the one who will authenticate that person and make sure they are a veteran because people do lie. So if someone is being kicked out of their apartment in two days and their rent is whatever amount, we will contact the renting company and pay them directly. After that, we will try to connect that veteran to groups of veterans, and the intent is so that in the future we can be more preemptive, where instead of getting a terrible car loan at a ridiculous interest rate, you contact us or your network of brothers and sisters and you get someone to help you.

Within our own private groups in the Recon and Sniper community we have guys who are everything from homeless and addicted to crack to people who are kicking doors for the CIA, tip of the spear doctors and lawyers, millionaires and congressmen. So we have a diverse array of people who can help, we just need to know who needs that help and hopefully get them that assistance before they really need it.

America provides around seventy-five-percent of the world’s humanitarian aid, we give money to one-hundred and fifty of the one-hundred and ninety in the world. The day after the Boxing Day tsunami devastated Indonesia we put twenty-seven thousand troops there two days after Christmas, into the most Muslim populated country in the world to save hundreds of thousands of Muslims. And it would have been nice if there were embedded reporters, but my point is that I firmly believe that stability of the world, and I know it isn’t always stable, is contingent on what we do as a country. And right or wrong, whether we intervene too much, or help too much or not enough, we provide aid to about seventy-five percent of the world. And without the military being able to do that, protect us and our way of life, our world would be a much different place. So to me, helping these guys and girls out is an honor and a no-brainer. We wouldn’t be able to live this great life if it wasn’t for them protecting us.

What has been your proudest moment working for the Recon and Sniper Foundation?

So it’s a story about a Vietnam veteran who was assaulted at an airport. We got word that a Marine Corps veteran and Purple Heart recipient was in the airport in South Carolina, I believe, and a former Marine who was kicked out of the Marine Corps and the UFC, thought that this Vietnam veteran was stolen valor because he had ribbons on his civilian jacket. They got in his face and started screaming like a drill instructor and really hurt this guy and caused emotional stress, and he had a hard time coming home thirty or forty years ago from the war and received a similar welcome from the anti-war activists. So it took a long time for that to go away and for those memories to dull, and for this to happen from his own brothers, supposedly, was a kick in the gut.

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So we had a hog hunt that we were working on for a fundraiser in Texas. Right after that, a few of us who lived in that area on the east coast and I, flew out to take this guy and his family out to dinner. We presented him with a nice glass laser etched plaque and let him know how the real twenty-first generation Marines think about the Vietnam veterans and those guys who went before us. And that experience, which is over two years ago now, I think is my single best moment at the Recon and Sniper Foundation. We’ve saved lives and been a part of some pretty cool stuff, but this guy was crying and telling us that we saved his life, and I have never felt that good. So to right that wrong that was one of the prouder moments. And it’s always a group effort. We have guys who are behind the scenes who are working their butts off to help people out and do amazing things, and call in favors. And these guys have their own problems in life to. They have kids, school, divorce, and bills and all of the normal life stuff, and these guys are donating their time. So on a daily basis being able to see Recon guys and Snipers do amazing things everyday behind the scenes just to help a complete stranger makes me really proud to be a part of the organization.

Early Life and Reason for Joining the Military