Every Marine defends their boot camp. Randall Parkes is one of the few alive who saw both sides of it, San Diego recruit, three years as a Parris Island drill instructor, then back to MCRD San Diego as a First Sergeant. Ronnie asks the question every Marine argues about, and for once the answer comes with full context.

And that's just the warm-up. Twenty years from a founding MARSOC Raider: walking into the monitor's office to dodge Albuquerque and walking out with orders to a unit he'd never heard of, boot camp on the morning of September 11th, a drill instructor story he's never told on any show, and the phone call from his old interpreter as Kabul fell, eight months of paperwork going nowhere, and the Bro-Call that finished the job in days. Plus turning down Sergeant Major, EMDR at the VA, and the benefits playbook he wants every Marine to run before they get out.

This episode is sponsored by Bulkhead Energy — www.bulkheadenergy.com

CHAPTERS

0:00 — Cold Open

2:46 — Welcome to Vegas Veteran Voices

6:50 — A Funeral, Dress Blues, and a Navy Dad

8:38 — The $10,000 Offer vs. the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor

10:16 — Security Forces, Bangor, and Coming Home Pale

12:03 — Accidental Orders to MARSOC

15:56 — Boot Camp on September 11th

19:47 — Four Combat Deployments

22:25 — Kandahar and the Gunny

27:11 — Becoming a Drill Instructor

31:23 — The World's Smallest Drill Instructor

35:37 — San Diego vs. Parris Island: The Verdict

37:44 — Turning Down Sergeant Major

42:09 — The Kabul Rescue

50:21 — Using Your Benefits: GI Bill, USC, and the VA Loan

59:45 — EMDR and Mental Health at the VA

1:05:04 — Wrap-Up

1:05:38 — Outtake: Full Send

If you're a veteran in crisis or having thoughts of suicide, call 988 and press 1, or text 838255. The Veterans Crisis Line is free and confidential, 24/7.

Vegas Veteran Voices is a Las Vegas–based 501(c)(3) nonprofit media organization telling veteran stories with the production they deserve. New episodes every Friday.

#MarineCorps #ParrisIsland #Veterans

Radio Battalion is chock full of nerds. Edward Haines would know. He led them.

He signed an infantry contract in 1995. Somewhere in boot camp the Marine Corps pulled him out of his platoon, sat him in a back room, and had him do things with language and sound that nobody explained. He walked out of there a signals intelligence Marine and spent the next twenty years in rooms most people will never hear about.

Radio Recon selection on Friday the 13th, 1996. Reconnaissance course. Airborne. SERE. Three MEUs back to back out of First Radio Battalion in Hawaii, learning to swim in cammies with a kettlebell in his hands. During the invasion of Iraq he was pushed out forward of the infantry, because that is what recon means when it goes in front of your billet. Later, Fort Meade and the National Security Operations Center. Fifty-some Marines under him at one point. Two soldiers at another. Retired a Master Sergeant in 2015.

Ten years out, there are still parts he will not get into.

The men he led were not what you would picture. MIT dropouts who ran out of tuition money. Cal Berkeley guys. Linguists with top secret clearances at nineteen. All of them, by the needs of the Marine Corps, still had to sweep the parking lot and cut the bushes. Almost all of them understood that. One of them did not, and took his objection further than anyone at that battalion thought a person could take it.

By his last deployment to Afghanistan, Ed was I MEF, headquarters, behind the wire and full admin by his own description. He and some others ran CrossFit on base. A couple of the local Afghan linguists trained with them.

Then Kabul fell.

He got involved with some folks. He gave them names. Some of his linguists got out. He will tell you it is still twisted in his mind, because he knows they could not get everybody, and he knows there are people still over there who are afraid, and there is nothing he can do about it. That one keeps him up.

Also in this one: the MEU that flew its helicopters home and left his team stranded in the hills at Camp Pendleton, and how a payphone, a shopette, and a case of Natty Light got them back. The machine gunners who wore plastic vampire teeth on patrol in Iraq, in front of kids who had not seen an American since the eighties. Morse code at Fort Huachuca until the whole schoolhouse started clicking at each other in the chow line.

Today Ed is a licensed athletic trainer at Coronado High School in Henderson. He tapes ankles for kids who were not born when he first deployed. He will tell you he was not much of an athlete himself, that he made the football team rather than played on it, and not to go looking through the old papers for his name. Then he will tell those kids that not being the star does not mean your life stops here.

Twenty years of listening to people who did not know he was there. He is still not looking to be seen.

Stories Over Stigma.

Guest: Edward Haines, USMC (Ret.), Master Sergeant, 20 years, SIGINT / 2600

Host: Ron "Ronnie" Long, USMC, OIF

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0:00 Chock full of nerds

1:17 Welcome back to Triple V

1:26 Growing up in Las Vegas

5:38 GI Joe, dad, and the recruiter's phone call

7:00 Why the military before college

8:39 Standards, and who can hold them

10:49 The special recruiter nobody tells you about

14:19 Morse code at Fort Huachuca

16:29 First Radio Battalion, Hawaii

19:56 Selection on Friday the 13th

20:48 Three MEUs back to back

24:44 The MEU left us in the hills

28:15 Kuwait, Camp Commando, and over the border

29:59 What Radio Recon actually does

32:39 Vampire teeth on patrol

33:58 Break

34:00 Comms as an E-3 with nobody above or below

35:42 Delegation, burnout, and learning to let go

40:30 Why Ronnie does this

41:47 Welcome back

42:13 Too good for yard work

51:22 The fall of Kabul and the names he passed

56:32 What it costs, and who chooses to stay

59:36 Found and lost over there

1:01:21 Out in 2015, and the CrossFit gym that never happened

1:03:29 Finding athletic training

1:06:35 Working with teenagers who heal in front of you

1:08:45 Mentoring kids toward the military

1:11:18 The weekend brief

1:12:33 Outro

Bruce Cardenas grew up in a New Jersey steel mill town of 1,200 people. He wanted one thing: a badge. The police chief looked at him and said "you're young, dumb and immature." Then he told him exactly where to go instead. The Marine Corps.

What happened after that doesn't make sense on paper.

LAPD, January 1988, right before the most chaotic decade in the city's history. The riots. Rodney King. The earthquake. Every single day of the OJ trial, standing at the courthouse. He was involved in all of them, and what he says about the officers he knew will stop you cold.

Then he walked away from full-time patrol and everything changed again. A gym conversation with a woman making protein bars in her kitchen turned into Quest Nutrition. Celebrity protection turned into a multi-million dollar company. Mariah Carey. Ricky Martin. J-Lo.

Today he's with Legendary Foods, a snack company spending $20 million a year of its own money on cancer and heart disease research. He's a patient in one of the studies. He'll tell you why.

And he's still a cop. Seven dollars a month.

This episode is about what happens when somebody tells you no and what it costs to prove them right about where to go instead.

️ Vegas Veteran Voices

Stories Over Stigma