Please be advised the following episode contains references to violence and may not be suitable for all audiences. Welcome to Veterans you should Know a podcast from My Heart Radio that celebrates the men and women who have honorably answered a call to serve their country and the armed forces. I'm Rob Real, actor, comedian, and former Marine raw In this special series Honoring Veterans Day, I'll be speaking with four incredible veterans as they detail challenges they've faced and how their experiences in military service served them in their everyday civilian lives. The therapist that I talked to you at this VET center, she was very very good at explaining the science behind PTSD, and so she said, you mentioned to me that you you'd like to sing, and that you were writing songs in your car when you were homeless and doing this in that right, and she said, you know, you can use that as a form of natural therapy for your depression, in your anxiety. For this episode, I'm here with fellow Maureene Elliott Mackenzie. Elliott received highly specialized training as part of the Fleet Anti Terrorism Security Team and Presidential Support duty. His combat experience during his deployment to Iraq resulted in post traumatic stress disorder and severe depression. Music has been a new way forward for Elliott. He writes to inspire and uses his songs to communicate his personal experiences, hoping that by sharing his music he can foster understanding and help others through tough times as well. Welcome Elliott, Glad you're here. Thanks Rob. How are you doing. I'm doing great? Thank you. Um. Before we get to your music career and which is outstanding and I'm very proud of you, I would like to go back. Since we are this is a veterans you should know. We we want to talk obviously about your time in the military, time in the Marine Corps and the army. How did you find your way to the military. How did your life and the military begin. So my journey with the military began in junior high. Actually, do you remember that famous Marine Corps commercial with the marine standing on that bridge with the dragon? Yeah, exactly, So that commercial is what got me. If you the Proud the Marine, that commercial is what drew me in and what attracted me to the Marine Corps initially, and then from there it was just a good fit because I was really physically active so I was physically fit, I played football, I was in sports. I just I like to work out myself. So I felt like culturally the Marine Corps was a good fit for me. It's something that can make my family proud. And then also it would buy me some time because I didn't really know myself when I was in high school and junior high. Didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I hadn't really figured that part out yet. I knew that college probably wasn't really an option, and so I figured, Hey, I've wanted to be a marine since I was in junior high. Let's go into the Marine Corps. And it's a good fit for me too. So that's kind of what led me to becoming a marine. That's awesome. Uh, And I know what you're talking about. I've had I've actually okay, I go back to the first thing, that commercial. I've talked to a couple of marines that have said that commercial was one of the reasons that hooked him in earlier. So that's so funny you said that too. Now you joined. Let's go back, so we get a time frame on this. You joined, We're talking around two thousand three, so pretty much right at the beginning of the major hostilities. I know we were engaged is Afghanistan two thousand two two, but two thousand three, ye is when Iraq started, and that's about the time you joined. What did your family think about you joining a Marine Corps right at the threshold of what appeared to be some major wars going forward? So my mom was not thrilled, right, but she knew that I wanted to be a marine from a young age. I had all the Marine Corps mooto stuff from the recruiter's office in my room. Even after Iraq and Leven happened and we went to war, she knew that wasn't going to prevent me from going in, so she kind of prepared for it, and she kind of told me, like, I know this is what you want to do, but I also know that we're in the middle of al war right now that just started, so I'm kind of nervous, But this is your dream. Go get your dream. My mom was very supportive. I was raised by a single mother who was an amazing parent. She adopted myself along with three other kids, and gave us lives that we would have never had without her. Oh my gosh. I'm grateful for her to this day. The support was always there from the beginning, with a little hesitation because she knew that I was gonna be possibly going to Iraq, which I ended up doing. Wow, what an amazing lady to adopt as a single mother and take on the challenge of raising truly inspirational I. But she's a very special lady. Oh yeah, absolutely, and she was probably very worried about her baby. Listen, the youngest of all. He's going off to war. That's a big deal. Elliot knew he wanted to be a Marine since the ninth grade, so he enthusiastically signed up as soon as he could, but he still had his senior year of high school to complete the Marine Corps Delayed Entry Program a k A depth allowed him to train for an entire year before heading to boot camp. During this time, Elliott learned the expectations of what it meant to be a marine, allowing him to put his feet in the yellow footprints, a term that signifies the first step of a transition into a United States Marine. All his preparation paid off, and Elliott was selected for presidential support duty, an elite team of security Forces who are charged with the protection of the president of the United States, not your everyday assignments. Before he could go on to such specialized training, he had to complete the second phase after boot Camp s o I, the School of Infantry. So this is where my story in the Marine Corp gets kind of interesting. While I was in recruit training, one of my drill instructors pulls me aside and he's like, you've been selected for this unique job. Go here at this time tomorrow and I'm like, Roger that sir. I show up and there's other recruits in the room. There's probably about fifteen of us, and they basically tell us, you guys have been selected for what's called Presidential support duty or Yankee White as submarines might know it. So the process for that is you go to recruit training, you graduate, you go to s o I. But then after s o I, I went to Security Forces training because Yankee White is part of security forces. So you have to go into Security Forces school and become a security Marine before you can go into Presidential support duty. So for people at home that might not know security forces, that includes embassy type security duties. It includes guarding nukes, with the Navy. Uh so it's really high profile, a little more advanced security training than you know, your rank and file marine would receive by far right, So I go to Security Forces training and then I got orders to the wrong place somehow. The staff at the Security Forces school got me orders to a FAST platoon. So FAST is another element of Security Forces and it an acronym and it stands for Fleet Anti Terrorism Security Team. And basically, in a nutshell, what FAST is, it's a Marine Corps squat team that's trained to go into buildings like embassies and take them back if they've been taken over, like recently there was the Iraq embassy that was taken over. They sent it, I believe it was three FAST platoons to go in there and take it back. That's a lot of specialized training it is. It was actually really fun. The training with FAST was a lot of fun. And then I got sent to my primary MS which was three eleven at Camp Pendleton's and that's when I went to Iraq. In two thousand five, Elliott was ordered to the first Battalion, fifth Marines. Up unto that point, his duties that kept in state side. His new assignment a combat deployment to Iraq. So what happens you joined one five and you go to Iraq? Holy cal Um, can you tell us about that? What was that experience? Like? Joining one five was unique because, like I said, I had been in security forces for a little bit and that was where my experience was. The fleet as we call it, which is basically all the infantry battions in the Marine Corps, is different in the fact that the I guess, the level of camaraderie is brought up because those are the battalions that are going to combat in Iraq, Afghanistan, etcetera. So I got there and it was like an instant brotherhood and I loved that about it. I was like brought right in. So I get there in two thousand five and early, like January two five, and then we leave for Ramadi in I think it was in March two thousand five. So two months later I'm in Ramadi, Iraq, and I'm in combat. It was a very quick turnaround, a very quick turnaround. And as you transition from state side and prepping for deployment, and then within the blank of an eye, it feels like you find yourself walking the streets of Ramadi, and I'm sure that you have some harrowing experience this is over there with the insurgents, the terrorists, all kinds, all kinds of people over their cousin hate and discontent, especially during that time frame when you found yourself on the pointy end of the spear, as they say, and you're you're out on patrol. What were you thinking? I mean, did you feel like you were ready when you got there? So I have a story for you. So it's kind of funny. So the moment that that lightbulb went off, when I kind of realized that, I was like, oh crap, I'm really in combat. This isn't training anymore. So we get there and one of the first things I'm thinking is I gotta go to the bathroom. So I jumped to a porter potty and I'm in this porter potty and I'm doing a number two, and all of a sudden, I hear this weird whistling sound is feed. I'm like, what is that? And then all of a sudden I hear boom and a mortar went off. I'm guessing it was probably about fifty yards maybe Les's probably like between thirty and fifty yards away. From my porter potty on the base and the door flew open. The ground started shaking a little bit during the explosion, like the rocks and the inside the porter party flew up, and I was like, oh crap, Okay, this is real, Like this isn't training anymore, Like that was a real explosion, Like okay. So that was when I kind of like flipped from like okay, I was in training mode to like, okay, this is actual combat now. Yeah, there's a moment when either a bullet goes by or mortar hits close by, that you realize someone's trying to hurt you. And it's different. It's just different. Um. I assumed that you you finished your dump pretty quickly. Oh yeah, I Um, I pulled my pants up and then I ran straight over to the where my platoon was and I was like, what was that you guys? So yeah it was that was at that moment. I never wanted you never want to die on the craper. So tell us about your missions if you would real quick. Uh, you we found yourself over there on foot patrols, you said, a lot, and and where are you looking for weapons? Caches? Where you looking for bad guy? Is? Were you just doing security to make sure your perimeter was safe. Like what what did you find yourself doing most of the time when you were out there and really exposed. You know, in this type of war, as we learned with I. E. D. S, and there is no necessarily front everywhere. It's a three sixty battle space, So everywhere you look in turn, there's danger everywhere, which is causes a whole another level of anxiety exactly. So when you're over there, your radar, as I like to call it, is completely on twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, your anxieties through the roof your your level of awareness is super high. So our average day would consist of three two to three foot patrols. And so the r o E or the rules of engagement over there were that we were not allowed to fire or shoot until we were shot at first. We'd go into foot patrol and just wait to get shot at. That was how we operated because we couldn't find the enemy until they found us first. If we did, then we'd engage and we get into firefights, and if we didn't, then it was just to walk around Ramadi. We came back and that was probably about ninety five of it. The other five percent we had specific missions, like specific targets that we would go look for, specific people that we would go look for, or we would also do i e. D. Sweeps with the army. Wow. So you had a full deployment, a lot of action, a lot of kinnectic environment that you had to live in every day. Uh and being outside the wire being exposed constantly. When did you decide to that you you were going to transition back to civilian life. That decision got made probably about six months before I ended up getting out. Stay tuned for more of Elliott's story after the break Welcome back to veterans you should know. So after Ramadi, we went to Okanhawa, Japan. One of my marines who knew that I liked to see, introduced me to a marine who was stationed in Okinawa who was a music producer and he had like a small recording studio set up in his barracks room, and so he was like, you guys should work together. I know you like to sing, he's a producer. Make it happen. And I ended up recording an entire album with this person, along with some other Marines who were rappers and that kind of like I guess you could say, lit a fire in me to kind of like pursue music. And that's when that really kind of like started. And there was a program at the time where if you got accepted to a college, you could actually get out of the Marine Corps up to six months earlier than your contract states. So I took advantage of that resource. So I ended up getting out of the Marine Corps because of that. So I got accepted to Musicians Institute in Hollywood, and I got out three months early. When I got back from Okinawa, I kind of like really decided to pursue music, and that's when it happened. So that's awesome because I too chose a life in the Marines and the arts, and so I have a great appreciation for what you're describing because that first taste, that first taste of it, because I I was a fan of comedy my whole life, but I never did anything until I did. And then once you do it, at first now I hated it, but then I realized that it was bigger than me and it was a calling almost as you transition out. That transition is tough for a lot of veterans, for multiple reasons, whether it's post traumatic stress disorder, whether it's actual physical wounds from the battlefield, whether it's just an ability to assimilate back to a civilian world after coming out of such a high intensity military world. Also, we have a lot of veterans that I've talked to that feel a sense of isolation because there was such a brotherhood, there was such a connection with the people they served with, and then they go back to the civilian world and they can't find that deep connection and they get isolated. Tell us about your transition. So my transition out of the Marine Corps was extremely difficult. I first started noticing the anger issues immediately when I got out. I got out in two thousand seven, and I think it was a couple of months after I got out I started noticing I was constantly piste off for no reason at all. For example, I'll be walking in a grocery store or something, or somewhere where there's a crowded place and somebody would accidentally bump into me or something like that. Them bumping aem me would piss me off and make me want to fight that complete stranger for absolutely no reason. So my adrenaline was super high, my anger was super high. My hyper awareness was always on, just like I was back in Ramadi. I was always worried about somebody attacking me from behind, from the left, from the right, from anywhere. So I would always have my head on a swivel. I felt like that switch you turn on when you go to combat. I never turned it back off. It just stayed on forever. And I went to Musicians Institute for a couple of months, but I couldn't really focus and I couldn't really succeed, so I dropped out and I ended up going back home and just kind of like working random jobs here and there. So the transition was really difficult with my mental illness. And then just remembering that I was a civilian again. Wow, that that would be incredibly challenging. And I know what it's like to stay in a fight or flight mode where you're peak awareness. And if you stay at that level, when you're constantly in fight or flight, you're the physiology of your body. It's so hard on your body to be in that state. And mentally it's hard to be in that state because as you fatigue, you get angry, and then you know the slightest. You know, a cool breeze that hits you in the wrong way could piss you off. And it's inexplicable because you're aware of yourself to a certain degree. You know that that's not right, but you still can't help but want to lash out. So what happened from there is this two thousand eight? Are you still struggling with this? So this is still two thousand seven. This is probably late two thousand seven, And I guess it all came to a head when I was at home getting ready for a job. I was working as a security guard at the time, and me and my older brother got into a verbal argument. That verbal argument turned physical, and it was just me, my mom, and my older brother living at home at the time, and this physical altercation was happening in the living room. My mom comes out of her bedroom because she hears all the commotion and she sees her two big son's physically fighting, are about to physically fight in the living room. I grab a kitchen knife and I started brandishing this kitchen knife at my brother, saying I'm gonna I'm gonna get you, I'm gonna stab you. Leave me the hell alone. Blah. Blah blah, and my mom freaks out and she calls the police. So I end up throwing the kitchen knife across the room and just walking out and like, f this, I'm gonna go to work. I'm out of here by and I see my mom on the phone with the police, so I kind of knew they were coming. So I'm walking to work. A Sheriff's department vehicle comes up and says, are you Elliott McKenzie. Yes, put your hands behind your back, et cetera, et cetera. So I get put in handcuffs. They drive me back to the house and luckily the sergeant on that call was an Army veteran, and he spoke to my mom, spoke to me, kind of got some background about what happened about my history, and he goes to me. He's like, I'm gonna give you two options. Your mom told me that you are a Marine Corps veteran who came back from Iraq and you've been having some angry issues and some things like that since you've been home. I think you might have pt D and you haven't figured it out yet. So you have two options. Like one, I can charge you with assault, with a deadly weapon for throwing the knife at your brother, or I think you need some help, and I can drive you to the v A myself. Because I'm an army veteran, I understand, and I want to see if the v A can get you some help. So obviously I took the second option. I said, drive me to the v A, see if they can get me some help. So he did that, and I think that's what ended up kind of like saving my life in a way, one of the one of the many things that ended up kind of helping me out. So he drove me to the v A that evaluated me, figured out that I had PTSD and a whole bunch of other issues. And when I got released, I called my mom my brother. I said, Hey, I'm released. Can I come back home. They were like, we're scared of you now after what happened. We don't think we can trust that you're not going to do that again. We're kind of worried about your condition. We don't know. So I had nowhere to go, so I ended up just sleeping in my car for like, I want to say, a week and half, almost two weeks, and I didn't know about resources back then, so that's why I didn't I think I had any other options. So finally, after the two weeks in my car, I'm like, I gotta do something. I can't live in my car forever. I had the number when they released me from that hospital. They gave me phone numbers, said hey, if you need anything, call us. So they ended up connecting me to a nonprofit organization that has transitional housing for homeless veterans. And I got lucky and I got a spot at one of their transitional housing facilities in Long Beach and I ended up living in that transitional housing place for about a year and a half. What a blessing though, that that police officer and former veteran recognized and took the time to ask the right questions to get you some help. God bless you know, veterans looking out for each other. Yeah, absolutely, because that's what that sounds like to me. And it gave you it sounds like a better option obviously in jail, and gave you a chance to maybe understand more about yourself and your situation. Wow, what a journey that. That must have been a hard couple of weeks in your car. Yeah, it was. I would have to go to a local park to take showers. There was a park that had a swimming pool that was open to the public, so I'd go there to take showers. I'd sleep in my back seat. I would write songs in my car when I was having a bad day, when I was having you know, just I just wanted to get something off my chest. And then I'd played like a beat through the speakers in the car, and I'd sing to that beat, and I'd write the lyrics on a piece of paper. That was how I spent a good amount of my time every day, was just doing that, just to kind of get things off my chest. What an amazing way for you, in your solitude and in your you know, moment of pain, but also discovery that you were able to find this creative outlet, this wonderful creative voice inside of you that needed to come out and buy a necessity almost it did come out. While living at a homeless shelter, Elliott maneuvered from job to job, but his PTSD made it challenging to hold down a steady one for any long stretch of time. He ended up leaving the shelter and moving in with an old high school friend. Who had an available couch. That couch was Elliot's bed for a year until he eventually moved back in with his family. He also discovered the post nine eleven g I Bill, a benefit to honorably discharged veterans to pursue higher education. After three years of attending junior college and trying to get his life back on track, Elliot's depression and PTSD overwhelmed his studies and he dropped out. But it was a turning point for Elliott and he realized that after five years of living with these feelings after leaving the Marine Corps, it's time to get help. So I got lucky in the fact that the therapist that I talked to at this VET center, she was a former Marine, She was a sergeant in the Wrinkle herself, and she was very very good at explaining the science behind PTSD. Basically it came down to this. She was like, give me the laundry list of symptoms that you're experiencing and tell me about what you experienced sin Ramadi, and she said, I'm gonna break down each of these symptoms for you, Explain why you're doing them, Explain the science behind how they're happening in your brain and then connect them to what you experienced cin Romati. And that's when the light bulb kind of went off for me because she explained why I was doing what I was doing. And so she said, you mentioned to me that you you like to sing and that you were writing songs in your car when you were homeless and doing this and that right, And I was like, yeah, music has been a big part of my life since I was young. And she said, you know, you can use that as a form of natural therapy for your depression, in your anxiety. She explained the science behind adrenaline and endorphins and how performing on stage you release endorphins in your brain. And she taught me about how endorphins or the natural fighter of depression specifically and anxiety. When I'm performing or when I'm writing songs and I'm singing, I'm not depressed anymore. I'm I'm feeling good. I'm I'm getting that out of me. It's like flushing the toxic energy out of your system. Absolutely, she was like, you can use that. She's like, go songwright, sing, try to get book to perform record music. Used that as a natural way to combat what you're going through. And so I took that information and I just ran with it. I started writing my butt off, I started marketing, I started reaching out to people in the music industry telling them about myself, started performing in l A and all of Socow and it was working. That's what started my positive progress, and that's what started saving my life. Fast forward two years, two fifteen comes around and I feel like I'm better enough to go back into college. So I re enrolled in college, the same college that I had just dropped out of two years earlier. Two thousand sixteen comes and I ended up graduating with my associates degree in Liberal Arts with an emphasis and behavioral science. And I ended up going from failing grades to nothing but straight a's and straight bes, and I graduated on the Dean's list, And it was amazing transition. That's a total transition, right, So it was like day and night like I was super depressed, super failing, and then I ended up using the music to turn my life around. And I went from f to as and b's and I transferred to a university and same thing there, got nothing but straight ais and straight bes. And I ended up graduating with my bachelor's degree in two thousand eighteen in behavioral science. That's fantastic. Wow, what a journey, thanks brother. What a journey and a triumphant one too, in my opinion, to go through all of that, to hit those lows and then come back and hit those highs. I think it was Booker T. Washington who said judgment man's accomplishments by the obstacles he had to overcome to get there. And so you know, we use that as our gauge. You have overcome so much. So what you've achieved is truly truly remarkable. Thank you. What is your advice to veterans that are one young people that are thinking about joining the military and to those who are leaving the military to pursue a life, whether it's in the arts or just leaving the military to go on into civilian life. So the high school students who want to join the military, and to their parents, I would say this, there are a lot of students who are thinking about college as an option. The post nine eleven g I Bill is an amazing resource to tackle that and not be in debt. I have three degrees now, my associates degree that I got, my bachelor's and then I also went back and got a certificate in peer mentorship. I'm zero dollars in debt because of that. So you've got two paths. You can take high school straight to college. You've got to pay for it on your own. Right now, you're in debt thousands of dollars. After you've got your bachelor's degree or your master's degree or whatever degree you end up with, or join the military for four or five years, get an honorable discharge, take advantage of the resource that's there, the post loving g I Bill. Now your education is paid for and you get a paycheck on top of that. School is your job, so you can focus on the school and you can do really well. And then there's a ton of resources when you get out that you can utilize to make sure that your life is successful, including the g I Bill, amongst many others. And then the advice that I would give to veterans who want to get out and go into the arts. The way that it happened for me was completely natural and completely unexpected. After all that happened in two thousand and seventeen, I wanted to write a song telling people about the combat and the PTSD experience for US combat veterans. And so I wrote a song called Gunshots, and I did a music video for that song, which is on YouTube. And that's when it happened for me. I wasn't doing that song and music video and hopes like, oh, I want to become famous. No, I was doing it because I was like, I wanted to use it as therapy for myself and then educate the general population about what combat veterans go through. And that music video ended up exploding pretty much, and that's what put me on the map. So I would say, do it for a reason that's really close to your heart, that doesn't include fame or money. It's just something that you care about, like a cause that you care about some maybe a story that you want to tell through whatever art you do. And I'm now in a position where I'm blessed to be able to inspire people worldwide through my story and my music. My inspiration now is my fans, So I'm trying to inspire and motivate as many people as I can. Good. Keep it up because it means a lot. Not to be overly dramatic, but you're saving lives every day. Somebody's gonna hear that message right when they need to hear it. Trust me. Yeah, I actually have so these two. I have tattoos on my arms. So this is a quote from a fan who's a here in an Army veteran and it says, just her ju new album, it saved my life. This was a comment that I got on my YouTube. And then this one is actually a message that I got on Facebook from another Army veteran fan and they're basically veterans who were suicidal and they listened to my album my first one therapy session and they decided not to kill themselves. That was one of those moments when I realized, this is my purpose, this is what I'm here for. I'm meant to try to save lives through my platform. That's fantastic. We'll keep doing it because it's working clearly. Thanks brother. What's coming down the road? What can we look forward to? Because I'm really excited to hear what projects you got going. And then the last thing is you've got this audience, You've got a chance to to give them one nugget of wisdom that they can put in their pocket and say, wow, I'm probably gonna carry that around for the rest of my life. So my album came out earlier this year. A Therapy Session came out in March, and that's sixteen songs of beautiful music. I like to call it a mix of R and B music and inspirational songs with the purpose of inspiring people to get through those hurdles that they might be going through, whether their veterans or not. My next single is called be You, and it's releasing on October twelfth, and it's a song that's inspiring people to be themselves, to discover who they are at their core and be proud of that. So this single is going to be part of my next project I'm and I'm gonna call it follow Up. And then I'm working with Veteran Television right now on a Grunts Live Season two. I was in a Grunts Live Season one, one of the principal characters, and so I'm just working my butt off, just trying to be successful. And then the advice that I would give to veterans. Honestly, the thing that's really changed my life most recently is coming to terms with who I am as an adult, as a person, as a man, as a veteran, as a recording artist. I've had a tough time over the years of accepting who I am and really just learning about me because, as you know in the in the Marine course specifically, it's all about your brother and your sister, to your left and your right, it's not about self. When you get to a point where you know yourself, you know what your purpose in the world is, and you know what truly makes you you and makes you happy, nothing can bother you and nothing will ever get to the point where you're getting like stressed out or anything like that, because you're always happy because you know your life's purpose. I couldn't agree more. I I could not agree more. I know thyself is one of mine. I even have a necklace on that says know thyself. So I believe that wholeheartedly because I think once you do know yourself and all the ways you just described, you start going with the grain instead of against it, and life gets so much easier and it gets so much more joyful. Yes, thank you for your service, Thank you for your your journey and for sharing your journey and being so open and honest with us today and your inspiration through your music, And what a joy to meet you today. Uh whom. Everybody can google you, Elliott mackenzie. They can also uh find you on social media. I have no doubt. People, I hope you stay, Start looking for your album, start looking for follow up when that's ready. It's all very exciting. I think we're gonna hear a lot more from you. We need more marines out here, uh, filling up the airwaves and the and the silver screen. So that's the plan. Thank you, Elliott, Thank you for being here and joining us. I really appreciate it was an honor to meet you today. Hey, thank you brother, thank you for your service to absolutely man. Hey, a big thank you to Elliott mackenzie for sharing a story of service. Congratulations on your release of the new single b You and working on your second album. I'm very excited to see the music and content you're creating the future. I know everybody else is, and I have no doubt that you will be changing people's lives with your gift. Thanks for listening to veterans. You should know to hear more inspiring stories of perseverance and camaraderie. Check out all our episodes, including those from season one, featuring veterans who have overcome incredible obstacles and found renewed purpose in their civilian lives. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review the podcast. We would love to hear from you. You can listen to the show on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Veterans you Should Know as a special four parts series from I Heart Radio and hosted by me Rob Wriggle. Our show is written and produced by Molly Sosia, Nikkia Swinton, and Jackie Perez, with assistance from Quincy Fuller. The show is edited, sound designed and mixed by James Foster and Matt Stillham.

Please be advised the following episode contains references to violence and may not be suitable for all audiences. Welcome to Veterans you should Know a podcast from My Heart Radio that celebrates the men and women who have honorably answered a call to serve their country and the armed forces. I'm Rob Real, actor, comedian, and former Marine raw In this special series Honoring Veterans Day, I'll be speaking with four incredible veterans as they detail challenges they've faced and how their experiences in military service served them in their everyday civilian lives. The therapist that I talked to you at this VET center, she was very very good at explaining the science behind PTSD, and so she said, you mentioned to me that you you'd like to sing, and that you were writing songs in your car when you were homeless and doing this in that right, and she said, you know, you can use that as a form of natural therapy for your depression, in your anxiety. For this episode, I'm here with fellow Maureene Elliott Mackenzie. Elliott received highly specialized training as part of the Fleet Anti Terrorism Security Team and Presidential Support duty. His combat experience during his deployment to Iraq resulted in post traumatic stress disorder and severe depression. Music has been a new way forward for Elliott. He writes to inspire and uses his songs to communicate his personal experiences, hoping that by sharing his music he can foster understanding and help others through tough times as well. Welcome Elliott, Glad you're here. Thanks Rob. How are you doing. I'm doing great? Thank you. Um. Before we get to your music career and which is outstanding and I'm very proud of you, I would like to go back. Since we are this is a veterans you should know. We we want to talk obviously about your time in the military, time in the Marine Corps and the army. How did you find your way to the military. How did your life and the military begin. So my journey with the military began in junior high. Actually, do you remember that famous Marine Corps commercial with the marine standing on that bridge with the dragon? Yeah, exactly, So that commercial is what got me. If you the Proud the Marine, that commercial is what drew me in and what attracted me to the Marine Corps initially, and then from there it was just a good fit because I was really physically active so I was physically fit, I played football, I was in sports. I just I like to work out myself. So I felt like culturally the Marine Corps was a good fit for me. It's something that can make my family proud. And then also it would buy me some time because I didn't really know myself when I was in high school and junior high. Didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I hadn't really figured that part out yet. I knew that college probably wasn't really an option, and so I figured, Hey, I've wanted to be a marine since I was in junior high. Let's go into the Marine Corps. And it's a good fit for me too. So that's kind of what led me to becoming a marine. That's awesome. Uh, And I know what you're talking about. I've had I've actually okay, I go back to the first thing, that commercial. I've talked to a couple of marines that have said that commercial was one of the reasons that hooked him in earlier. So that's so funny you said that too. Now you joined. Let's go back, so we get a time frame on this. You joined, We're talking around two thousand three, so pretty much right at the beginning of the major hostilities. I know we were engaged is Afghanistan two thousand two two, but two thousand three, ye is when Iraq started, and that's about the time you joined. What did your family think about you joining a Marine Corps right at the threshold of what appeared to be some major wars going forward? So my mom was not thrilled, right, but she knew that I wanted to be a marine from a young age. I had all the Marine Corps mooto stuff from the recruiter's office in my room. Even after Iraq and Leven happened and we went to war, she knew that wasn't going to prevent me from going in, so she kind of prepared for it, and she kind of told me, like, I know this is what you want to do, but I also know that we're in the middle of al war right now that just started, so I'm kind of nervous, But this is your dream. Go get your dream. My mom was very supportive. I was raised by a single mother who was an amazing parent. She adopted myself along with three other kids, and gave us lives that we would have never had without her. Oh my gosh. I'm grateful for her to this day. The support was always there from the beginning, with a little hesitation because she knew that I was gonna be possibly going to Iraq, which I ended up doing. Wow, what an amazing lady to adopt as a single mother and take on the challenge of raising truly inspirational I. But she's a very special lady. Oh yeah, absolutely, and she was probably very worried about her baby. Listen, the youngest of all. He's going off to war. That's a big deal. Elliot knew he wanted to be a Marine since the ninth grade, so he enthusiastically signed up as soon as he could, but he still had his senior year of high school to complete the Marine Corps Delayed Entry Program a k A depth allowed him to train for an entire year before heading to boot camp. During this time, Elliott learned the expectations of what it meant to be a marine, allowing him to put his feet in the yellow footprints, a term that signifies the first step of a transition into a United States Marine. All his preparation paid off, and Elliott was selected for presidential support duty, an elite team of security Forces who are charged with the protection of the president of the United States, not your everyday assignments. Before he could go on to such specialized training, he had to complete the second phase after boot Camp s o I, the School of Infantry. So this is where my story in the Marine Corp gets kind of interesting. While I was in recruit training, one of my drill instructors pulls me aside and he's like, you've been selected for this unique job. Go here at this time tomorrow and I'm like, Roger that sir. I show up and there's other recruits in the room. There's probably about fifteen of us, and they basically tell us, you guys have been selected for what's called Presidential support duty or Yankee White as submarines might know it. So the process for that is you go to recruit training, you graduate, you go to s o I. But then after s o I, I went to Security Forces training because Yankee White is part of security forces. So you have to go into Security Forces school and become a security Marine before you can go into Presidential support duty. So for people at home that might not know security forces, that includes embassy type security duties. It includes guarding nukes, with the Navy. Uh so it's really high profile, a little more advanced security training than you know, your rank and file marine would receive by far right, So I go to Security Forces training and then I got orders to the wrong place somehow. The staff at the Security Forces school got me orders to a FAST platoon. So FAST is another element of Security Forces and it an acronym and it stands for Fleet Anti Terrorism Security Team. And basically, in a nutshell, what FAST is, it's a Marine Corps squat team that's trained to go into buildings like embassies and take them back if they've been taken over, like recently there was the Iraq embassy that was taken over. They sent it, I believe it was three FAST platoons to go in there and take it back. That's a lot of specialized training it is. It was actually really fun. The training with FAST was a lot of fun. And then I got sent to my primary MS which was three eleven at Camp Pendleton's and that's when I went to Iraq. In two thousand five, Elliott was ordered to the first Battalion, fifth Marines. Up unto that point, his duties that kept in state side. His new assignment a combat deployment to Iraq. So what happens you joined one five and you go to Iraq? Holy cal Um, can you tell us about that? What was that experience? Like? Joining one five was unique because, like I said, I had been in security forces for a little bit and that was where my experience was. The fleet as we call it, which is basically all the infantry battions in the Marine Corps, is different in the fact that the I guess, the level of camaraderie is brought up because those are the battalions that are going to combat in Iraq, Afghanistan, etcetera. So I got there and it was like an instant brotherhood and I loved that about it. I was like brought right in. So I get there in two thousand five and early, like January two five, and then we leave for Ramadi in I think it was in March two thousand five. So two months later I'm in Ramadi, Iraq, and I'm in combat. It was a very quick turnaround, a very quick turnaround. And as you transition from state side and prepping for deployment, and then within the blank of an eye, it feels like you find yourself walking the streets of Ramadi, and I'm sure that you have some harrowing experience this is over there with the insurgents, the terrorists, all kinds, all kinds of people over their cousin hate and discontent, especially during that time frame when you found yourself on the pointy end of the spear, as they say, and you're you're out on patrol. What were you thinking? I mean, did you feel like you were ready when you got there? So I have a story for you. So it's kind of funny. So the moment that that lightbulb went off, when I kind of realized that, I was like, oh crap, I'm really in combat. This isn't training anymore. So we get there and one of the first things I'm thinking is I gotta go to the bathroom. So I jumped to a porter potty and I'm in this porter potty and I'm doing a number two, and all of a sudden, I hear this weird whistling sound is feed. I'm like, what is that? And then all of a sudden I hear boom and a mortar went off. I'm guessing it was probably about fifty yards maybe Les's probably like between thirty and fifty yards away. From my porter potty on the base and the door flew open. The ground started shaking a little bit during the explosion, like the rocks and the inside the porter party flew up, and I was like, oh crap, Okay, this is real, Like this isn't training anymore, Like that was a real explosion, Like okay. So that was when I kind of like flipped from like okay, I was in training mode to like, okay, this is actual combat now. Yeah, there's a moment when either a bullet goes by or mortar hits close by, that you realize someone's trying to hurt you. And it's different. It's just different. Um. I assumed that you you finished your dump pretty quickly. Oh yeah, I Um, I pulled my pants up and then I ran straight over to the where my platoon was and I was like, what was that you guys? So yeah it was that was at that moment. I never wanted you never want to die on the craper. So tell us about your missions if you would real quick. Uh, you we found yourself over there on foot patrols, you said, a lot, and and where are you looking for weapons? Caches? Where you looking for bad guy? Is? Were you just doing security to make sure your perimeter was safe. Like what what did you find yourself doing most of the time when you were out there and really exposed. You know, in this type of war, as we learned with I. E. D. S, and there is no necessarily front everywhere. It's a three sixty battle space, So everywhere you look in turn, there's danger everywhere, which is causes a whole another level of anxiety exactly. So when you're over there, your radar, as I like to call it, is completely on twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, your anxieties through the roof your your level of awareness is super high. So our average day would consist of three two to three foot patrols. And so the r o E or the rules of engagement over there were that we were not allowed to fire or shoot until we were shot at first. We'd go into foot patrol and just wait to get shot at. That was how we operated because we couldn't find the enemy until they found us first. If we did, then we'd engage and we get into firefights, and if we didn't, then it was just to walk around Ramadi. We came back and that was probably about ninety five of it. The other five percent we had specific missions, like specific targets that we would go look for, specific people that we would go look for, or we would also do i e. D. Sweeps with the army. Wow. So you had a full deployment, a lot of action, a lot of kinnectic environment that you had to live in every day. Uh and being outside the wire being exposed constantly. When did you decide to that you you were going to transition back to civilian life. That decision got made probably about six months before I ended up getting out. Stay tuned for more of Elliott's story after the break Welcome back to veterans you should know. So after Ramadi, we went to Okanhawa, Japan. One of my marines who knew that I liked to see, introduced me to a marine who was stationed in Okinawa who was a music producer and he had like a small recording studio set up in his barracks room, and so he was like, you guys should work together. I know you like to sing, he's a producer. Make it happen. And I ended up recording an entire album with this person, along with some other Marines who were rappers and that kind of like I guess you could say, lit a fire in me to kind of like pursue music. And that's when that really kind of like started. And there was a program at the time where if you got accepted to a college, you could actually get out of the Marine Corps up to six months earlier than your contract states. So I took advantage of that resource. So I ended up getting out of the Marine Corps because of that. So I got accepted to Musicians Institute in Hollywood, and I got out three months early. When I got back from Okinawa, I kind of like really decided to pursue music, and that's when it happened. So that's awesome because I too chose a life in the Marines and the arts, and so I have a great appreciation for what you're describing because that first taste, that first taste of it, because I I was a fan of comedy my whole life, but I never did anything until I did. And then once you do it, at first now I hated it, but then I realized that it was bigger than me and it was a calling almost as you transition out. That transition is tough for a lot of veterans, for multiple reasons, whether it's post traumatic stress disorder, whether it's actual physical wounds from the battlefield, whether it's just an ability to assimilate back to a civilian world after coming out of such a high intensity military world. Also, we have a lot of veterans that I've talked to that feel a sense of isolation because there was such a brotherhood, there was such a connection with the people they served with, and then they go back to the civilian world and they can't find that deep connection and they get isolated. Tell us about your transition. So my transition out of the Marine Corps was extremely difficult. I first started noticing the anger issues immediately when I got out. I got out in two thousand seven, and I think it was a couple of months after I got out I started noticing I was constantly piste off for no reason at all. For example, I'll be walking in a grocery store or something, or somewhere where there's a crowded place and somebody would accidentally bump into me or something like that. Them bumping aem me would piss me off and make me want to fight that complete stranger for absolutely no reason. So my adrenaline was super high, my anger was super high. My hyper awareness was always on, just like I was back in Ramadi. I was always worried about somebody attacking me from behind, from the left, from the right, from anywhere. So I would always have my head on a swivel. I felt like that switch you turn on when you go to combat. I never turned it back off. It just stayed on forever. And I went to Musicians Institute for a couple of months, but I couldn't really focus and I couldn't really succeed, so I dropped out and I ended up going back home and just kind of like working random jobs here and there. So the transition was really difficult with my mental illness. And then just remembering that I was a civilian again. Wow, that that would be incredibly challenging. And I know what it's like to stay in a fight or flight mode where you're peak awareness. And if you stay at that level, when you're constantly in fight or flight, you're the physiology of your body. It's so hard on your body to be in that state. And mentally it's hard to be in that state because as you fatigue, you get angry, and then you know the slightest. You know, a cool breeze that hits you in the wrong way could piss you off. And it's inexplicable because you're aware of yourself to a certain degree. You know that that's not right, but you still can't help but want to lash out. So what happened from there is this two thousand eight? Are you still struggling with this? So this is still two thousand seven. This is probably late two thousand seven, And I guess it all came to a head when I was at home getting ready for a job. I was working as a security guard at the time, and me and my older brother got into a verbal argument. That verbal argument turned physical, and it was just me, my mom, and my older brother living at home at the time, and this physical altercation was happening in the living room. My mom comes out of her bedroom because she hears all the commotion and she sees her two big son's physically fighting, are about to physically fight in the living room. I grab a kitchen knife and I started brandishing this kitchen knife at my brother, saying I'm gonna I'm gonna get you, I'm gonna stab you. Leave me the hell alone. Blah. Blah blah, and my mom freaks out and she calls the police. So I end up throwing the kitchen knife across the room and just walking out and like, f this, I'm gonna go to work. I'm out of here by and I see my mom on the phone with the police, so I kind of knew they were coming. So I'm walking to work. A Sheriff's department vehicle comes up and says, are you Elliott McKenzie. Yes, put your hands behind your back, et cetera, et cetera. So I get put in handcuffs. They drive me back to the house and luckily the sergeant on that call was an Army veteran, and he spoke to my mom, spoke to me, kind of got some background about what happened about my history, and he goes to me. He's like, I'm gonna give you two options. Your mom told me that you are a Marine Corps veteran who came back from Iraq and you've been having some angry issues and some things like that since you've been home. I think you might have pt D and you haven't figured it out yet. So you have two options. Like one, I can charge you with assault, with a deadly weapon for throwing the knife at your brother, or I think you need some help, and I can drive you to the v A myself. Because I'm an army veteran, I understand, and I want to see if the v A can get you some help. So obviously I took the second option. I said, drive me to the v A, see if they can get me some help. So he did that, and I think that's what ended up kind of like saving my life in a way, one of the one of the many things that ended up kind of helping me out. So he drove me to the v A that evaluated me, figured out that I had PTSD and a whole bunch of other issues. And when I got released, I called my mom my brother. I said, Hey, I'm released. Can I come back home. They were like, we're scared of you now after what happened. We don't think we can trust that you're not going to do that again. We're kind of worried about your condition. We don't know. So I had nowhere to go, so I ended up just sleeping in my car for like, I want to say, a week and half, almost two weeks, and I didn't know about resources back then, so that's why I didn't I think I had any other options. So finally, after the two weeks in my car, I'm like, I gotta do something. I can't live in my car forever. I had the number when they released me from that hospital. They gave me phone numbers, said hey, if you need anything, call us. So they ended up connecting me to a nonprofit organization that has transitional housing for homeless veterans. And I got lucky and I got a spot at one of their transitional housing facilities in Long Beach and I ended up living in that transitional housing place for about a year and a half. What a blessing though, that that police officer and former veteran recognized and took the time to ask the right questions to get you some help. God bless you know, veterans looking out for each other. Yeah, absolutely, because that's what that sounds like to me. And it gave you it sounds like a better option obviously in jail, and gave you a chance to maybe understand more about yourself and your situation. Wow, what a journey that. That must have been a hard couple of weeks in your car. Yeah, it was. I would have to go to a local park to take showers. There was a park that had a swimming pool that was open to the public, so I'd go there to take showers. I'd sleep in my back seat. I would write songs in my car when I was having a bad day, when I was having you know, just I just wanted to get something off my chest. And then I'd played like a beat through the speakers in the car, and I'd sing to that beat, and I'd write the lyrics on a piece of paper. That was how I spent a good amount of my time every day, was just doing that, just to kind of get things off my chest. What an amazing way for you, in your solitude and in your you know, moment of pain, but also discovery that you were able to find this creative outlet, this wonderful creative voice inside of you that needed to come out and buy a necessity almost it did come out. While living at a homeless shelter, Elliott maneuvered from job to job, but his PTSD made it challenging to hold down a steady one for any long stretch of time. He ended up leaving the shelter and moving in with an old high school friend. Who had an available couch. That couch was Elliot's bed for a year until he eventually moved back in with his family. He also discovered the post nine eleven g I Bill, a benefit to honorably discharged veterans to pursue higher education. After three years of attending junior college and trying to get his life back on track, Elliot's depression and PTSD overwhelmed his studies and he dropped out. But it was a turning point for Elliott and he realized that after five years of living with these feelings after leaving the Marine Corps, it's time to get help. So I got lucky in the fact that the therapist that I talked to at this VET center, she was a former Marine, She was a sergeant in the Wrinkle herself, and she was very very good at explaining the science behind PTSD. Basically it came down to this. She was like, give me the laundry list of symptoms that you're experiencing and tell me about what you experienced sin Ramadi, and she said, I'm gonna break down each of these symptoms for you, Explain why you're doing them, Explain the science behind how they're happening in your brain and then connect them to what you experienced cin Romati. And that's when the light bulb kind of went off for me because she explained why I was doing what I was doing. And so she said, you mentioned to me that you you like to sing and that you were writing songs in your car when you were homeless and doing this and that right, And I was like, yeah, music has been a big part of my life since I was young. And she said, you know, you can use that as a form of natural therapy for your depression, in your anxiety. She explained the science behind adrenaline and endorphins and how performing on stage you release endorphins in your brain. And she taught me about how endorphins or the natural fighter of depression specifically and anxiety. When I'm performing or when I'm writing songs and I'm singing, I'm not depressed anymore. I'm I'm feeling good. I'm I'm getting that out of me. It's like flushing the toxic energy out of your system. Absolutely, she was like, you can use that. She's like, go songwright, sing, try to get book to perform record music. Used that as a natural way to combat what you're going through. And so I took that information and I just ran with it. I started writing my butt off, I started marketing, I started reaching out to people in the music industry telling them about myself, started performing in l A and all of Socow and it was working. That's what started my positive progress, and that's what started saving my life. Fast forward two years, two fifteen comes around and I feel like I'm better enough to go back into college. So I re enrolled in college, the same college that I had just dropped out of two years earlier. Two thousand sixteen comes and I ended up graduating with my associates degree in Liberal Arts with an emphasis and behavioral science. And I ended up going from failing grades to nothing but straight a's and straight bes, and I graduated on the Dean's list, And it was amazing transition. That's a total transition, right, So it was like day and night like I was super depressed, super failing, and then I ended up using the music to turn my life around. And I went from f to as and b's and I transferred to a university and same thing there, got nothing but straight ais and straight bes. And I ended up graduating with my bachelor's degree in two thousand eighteen in behavioral science. That's fantastic. Wow, what a journey, thanks brother. What a journey and a triumphant one too, in my opinion, to go through all of that, to hit those lows and then come back and hit those highs. I think it was Booker T. Washington who said judgment man's accomplishments by the obstacles he had to overcome to get there. And so you know, we use that as our gauge. You have overcome so much. So what you've achieved is truly truly remarkable. Thank you. What is your advice to veterans that are one young people that are thinking about joining the military and to those who are leaving the military to pursue a life, whether it's in the arts or just leaving the military to go on into civilian life. So the high school students who want to join the military, and to their parents, I would say this, there are a lot of students who are thinking about college as an option. The post nine eleven g I Bill is an amazing resource to tackle that and not be in debt. I have three degrees now, my associates degree that I got, my bachelor's and then I also went back and got a certificate in peer mentorship. I'm zero dollars in debt because of that. So you've got two paths. You can take high school straight to college. You've got to pay for it on your own. Right now, you're in debt thousands of dollars. After you've got your bachelor's degree or your master's degree or whatever degree you end up with, or join the military for four or five years, get an honorable discharge, take advantage of the resource that's there, the post loving g I Bill. Now your education is paid for and you get a paycheck on top of that. School is your job, so you can focus on the school and you can do really well. And then there's a ton of resources when you get out that you can utilize to make sure that your life is successful, including the g I Bill, amongst many others. And then the advice that I would give to veterans who want to get out and go into the arts. The way that it happened for me was completely natural and completely unexpected. After all that happened in two thousand and seventeen, I wanted to write a song telling people about the combat and the PTSD experience for US combat veterans. And so I wrote a song called Gunshots, and I did a music video for that song, which is on YouTube. And that's when it happened for me. I wasn't doing that song and music video and hopes like, oh, I want to become famous. No, I was doing it because I was like, I wanted to use it as therapy for myself and then educate the general population about what combat veterans go through. And that music video ended up exploding pretty much, and that's what put me on the map. So I would say, do it for a reason that's really close to your heart, that doesn't include fame or money. It's just something that you care about, like a cause that you care about some maybe a story that you want to tell through whatever art you do. And I'm now in a position where I'm blessed to be able to inspire people worldwide through my story and my music. My inspiration now is my fans, So I'm trying to inspire and motivate as many people as I can. Good. Keep it up because it means a lot. Not to be overly dramatic, but you're saving lives every day. Somebody's gonna hear that message right when they need to hear it. Trust me. Yeah, I actually have so these two. I have tattoos on my arms. So this is a quote from a fan who's a here in an Army veteran and it says, just her ju new album, it saved my life. This was a comment that I got on my YouTube. And then this one is actually a message that I got on Facebook from another Army veteran fan and they're basically veterans who were suicidal and they listened to my album my first one therapy session and they decided not to kill themselves. That was one of those moments when I realized, this is my purpose, this is what I'm here for. I'm meant to try to save lives through my platform. That's fantastic. We'll keep doing it because it's working clearly. Thanks brother. What's coming down the road? What can we look forward to? Because I'm really excited to hear what projects you got going. And then the last thing is you've got this audience, You've got a chance to to give them one nugget of wisdom that they can put in their pocket and say, wow, I'm probably gonna carry that around for the rest of my life. So my album came out earlier this year. A Therapy Session came out in March, and that's sixteen songs of beautiful music. I like to call it a mix of R and B music and inspirational songs with the purpose of inspiring people to get through those hurdles that they might be going through, whether their veterans or not. My next single is called be You, and it's releasing on October twelfth, and it's a song that's inspiring people to be themselves, to discover who they are at their core and be proud of that. So this single is going to be part of my next project I'm and I'm gonna call it follow Up. And then I'm working with Veteran Television right now on a Grunts Live Season two. I was in a Grunts Live Season one, one of the principal characters, and so I'm just working my butt off, just trying to be successful. And then the advice that I would give to veterans. Honestly, the thing that's really changed my life most recently is coming to terms with who I am as an adult, as a person, as a man, as a veteran, as a recording artist. I've had a tough time over the years of accepting who I am and really just learning about me because, as you know in the in the Marine course specifically, it's all about your brother and your sister, to your left and your right, it's not about self. When you get to a point where you know yourself, you know what your purpose in the world is, and you know what truly makes you you and makes you happy, nothing can bother you and nothing will ever get to the point where you're getting like stressed out or anything like that, because you're always happy because you know your life's purpose. I couldn't agree more. I I could not agree more. I know thyself is one of mine. I even have a necklace on that says know thyself. So I believe that wholeheartedly because I think once you do know yourself and all the ways you just described, you start going with the grain instead of against it, and life gets so much easier and it gets so much more joyful. Yes, thank you for your service, Thank you for your your journey and for sharing your journey and being so open and honest with us today and your inspiration through your music, And what a joy to meet you today. Uh whom. Everybody can google you, Elliott mackenzie. They can also uh find you on social media. I have no doubt. People, I hope you stay, Start looking for your album, start looking for follow up when that's ready. It's all very exciting. I think we're gonna hear a lot more from you. We need more marines out here, uh, filling up the airwaves and the and the silver screen. So that's the plan. Thank you, Elliott, Thank you for being here and joining us. I really appreciate it was an honor to meet you today. Hey, thank you brother, thank you for your service to absolutely man. Hey, a big thank you to Elliott mackenzie for sharing a story of service. Congratulations on your release of the new single b You and working on your second album. I'm very excited to see the music and content you're creating the future. I know everybody else is, and I have no doubt that you will be changing people's lives with your gift. Thanks for listening to veterans. You should know to hear more inspiring stories of perseverance and camaraderie. Check out all our episodes, including those from season one, featuring veterans who have overcome incredible obstacles and found renewed purpose in their civilian lives. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review the podcast. We would love to hear from you. You can listen to the show on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Veterans you Should Know as a special four parts series from I Heart Radio and hosted by me Rob Wriggle. Our show is written and produced by Molly Sosia, Nikkia Swinton, and Jackie Perez, with assistance from Quincy Fuller. The show is edited, sound designed and mixed by James Foster and Matt Stillham.