 The only easy day was yesterday. Head off the door! Get your head off and get your eyes open. Stop trying to hide from the pain. Head off, eyes open. Welcome to The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday, the official Navy SEAL podcast. Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator Edward Byers is the sixth SEAL to earn the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions during Operation Enduring Freedom on December 8th, 2012. He discusses the challenge of going from a life of secrecy to the responsibilities of a life in the limelight. He says he wears the medal to honor his fallen teammate from that mission and continues to humbly serve as a mentor and inspirational representative of the naval warfare community. Here's his story. Get your head off and get your eyes open. Stop trying to hide from the pain. Head off, eyes open. The main objective of this podcast is really to assist in continuing or growing the quality and preparedness of NSW candidates, specifically SEAL SWIC guys. In many ways, you can set the bar for standards for people in other branches of the service and as well in the Navy. But at the same time, I think if people that are coming into this process are trying to shoot for fame or success, that they're probably going to miss their opportunity to be successful, because as I've learned so much of success in the teams is about that team, it's not about itself. How can people that are intending to become high-performing NSW operators navigate that duality between self and team to be a successful team member? One of the fundamental principles of Bud's is in the very beginning, they have to start out the clean slate with the people that make it through the pipeline that they're going through. So what they do, through a whole lot of pain and some suffering and trials and tribulations is they get you to repeatedly fail or struggle through things in the hopes that you start to realize that you cannot do this process alone. You can't make it through Bud's alone. So they strip away your experience and you do that through a multitude of different exercises and while you're going through that you really don't understand at a time what they're trying to get to. And what they're trying to get to is to make you realize that you have to start thinking about team before self. And when you start to do that as pretty indicative of each class is the class will start to grow together and they'll become more efficient which means they'll get beat less and they'll end up with this core concept of team gear, your gear and then yourself and that's the order of which you take care of things. So do you think it's fair to say that maybe in the beginning parts of the process or even through professional development after Bud's that there is more of a focus on self because obviously there's a big aspect of like you're saying the team is yourself or kind of becomes yourself so that is where your focus on success is. Are there aspects of your career in NSW that are more focused on yourself like whether it's professional development or you think that's something that people should hone in on the ability to kind of switch back and forth and have that awareness? Well there's always going to be an aspect of self individuals everybody has their own personality their own things that make them tick and what defines them but just like any good building it has to have a good foundation and that's where Bud's comes in they have to lay the foundation first and teach you these inherent traits that our community believes that makes a good team guy. Eventually there will be times where you'll be out on your own it's no secret that at any one time in this world right now special operations are in over 130 countries around the world so a lot of those countries may only have one or two people in them so there will be times if you're at a certain level or on a certain team where you will be on your own representative to the US government in that country so you absolutely need to have a person who can fluctuate back and forth between team and then knowing that you might have to do self alone but while you're doing that alone you're always thinking about how can I best support my team it always comes back to supporting the mission the cause, your brothers as a foundation what do you want to see in a teammate that may be new to your team as an indicator that they're going to gel well with you and there's going to be success Naval Special Forces 4 for Community has a very unique advantage and the advantage is that first of all we have a volunteer military and then we have individuals then that want to volunteer again for what they already know as being the hardest military school that exists so if you make it through that you already have a person has an innate nature to want to be part of the best team there is that is incredibly driven they have an intense desire and passion because there's no way you're going to make it through that pipeline Buds is being the pipeline if you don't and they've learned that they need to work together as a team so when you show up first to your team then you kind of start right back over again because you become close to the people you go through Buds with but you may be the only guy the new guy that shows up to your team and they have no idea who you are is a saying in the community it's you know you earn your trident every day it's every day you have to come and bring the best work ethic the mentality that you can bring and show that to people there is no mistaking that Buds is the easiest part about being team guy hands down it's a hard school and a lot of people fail but that is the easiest part about being a Navy SEAL showing up to the team and doing this day in and day out going on deployment after deployment is where it takes a whole lot of resiliency determination dedication and commitment so when you show up there and you have a new guy that comes in the first thing you're going to look for is when are they going to start to broaden, spread their wings a bit show a lot of initiative fundamentally be the last one to leave at work is able to look more at the broader picture and what else needs to be accomplished and not have to be told what to do those are the things right off the back because I know the guy is proven right hard he's in good shape that he has some fundamental core concepts built into him from what the pipeline is but now we're looking to expand him and grow him as a person those are the things that were expected of me and that's something I would expect of somebody coming in to my team initially looking at him something that I'll reiterate that you said about starting over again and when you get to a new team or whatever it's really even more than that starting every day you need to earn it every day and I think that kind of plays into as well as far as what you look for in a person that is going to be functioning at the highest levels are they willing or are they able to come in with that mindset a little bit of humility but then at the same time stick with it how do great team members and yourself included balance that need for grit and toughness with the peace of mind and maybe calmness that's needed either on mission or through training say the easiest way to balance that is what's fundamental to our community we're naval special warfare and we're the maritime special operations branch so with that said water is fluid and we spend our life around water you have to be able to ebb and flow with the ever in changing environment build yourself to the situation and fill in where it needs to be filled in and bend around situations that frankly can't be solved or maybe too hard or complex at that time to tackle so that's step one the next step is there's a lot of compartmentalization you can't take what you do overseas in a battlefield environment with that same tactic aggression grit and toughness when you're back home in a training environment and you're around people that's never experienced that or have no idea what no concept to be able to relate to you so you have to be able to push back and forth between environments and make yourself able to be able to communicate in both environments and work in that battle space do you think how quickly you're able to make those changes is a distinct advantage because it seems like that kind of stuff comes and goes pretty quickly changing between staying calm and pushing through whether it's when you're physically pushed and there's a lot of demands and having that perspective that ability to switch back and forth do you think that's something that is given high performing members an advantage or even enable them to get to where they are it definitely gives the community an advantage the community as a whole is a pretty smart group of individuals and I don't have the exact figure I think it's well over 50% of the people have degrees and even advanced degrees and that's across the entire community so we take a lot of pride in the fact that we're also free thinkers it's back to that concept of you could be operating in a team in one environment and then six months later you could be on your own and having to solve these problems with absolutely no supervision and just making decisions as you go so we 100% rely on the fact that guys can switch back and forth, understand situations and blend themselves into that appropriate environment I think that's something that there's maybe a misinterpretation or misrepresentation or people are confused about as in the civilian space or even in other armed forces that and we've touched on this numerous times that operators are a certain way and generally they don't realize how academic these people are it's even more so the mental aspects of the job that are what's more required because the physical will get you so far but do you think that's kind of in line with your perspective of the teams in general being a team guy is extremely complex you gotta know the basics from how a gun works to advance ballistics if you're a sniper to advance explosives which is physics and chemistry if you're a breacher maybe you're a medic and maybe you're all three and then maybe you might be a communications guy that has to know advanced communications and that's just on a military side but then you can put in environments where you have to be able to speak talk and act like a businessman or how to navigate embassies and do all that so you're having to bridge both the civilians side of the world or non-military agency side of the world and also know how to handle all your military knowledge are there any parts of your childhood that you think uniquely kind of set you up for success as an operator with your background absolutely I fit the typical majority of team guys I'm a midwestern boy that grew up in Ohio I grew up on a farm that was on a river so I was around water and I was around woods and my dad was a general contractor so he was in construction so it just lends yourself to always be thinking about things and building things and unique challenges that come with that and then it gave me the opportunity to also get out and be in the environment and be around water and fortunately coming from an era where we didn't have smartphones and iPads and everything else that pulls at people's time and bandwidth it drove me to be outside and do these things and then there was a lot of a few key factors that came out like the first movie Navy Seals came out and there was a handful of books there coming out about team guys in Vietnam just right around that time where I was fairly impressionable around the 10 to 12 year age range so my father was in the Navy at the very end of World War II but it wasn't really talked about in our family at all and that was the only part of our family that had the military but there was just something that this was always innate to my desire of everything military was intriguing to me even though it was I don't know if it was necessarily planted it was just it was the Rambo era and Rocky that growing up in that scenario where those were the cool movies of the 80s so as a young boy that drove a lot of my mentality and especially being in the country country is going to be more more of a tenancy or lean towards you know hunting and shooting and fishing and all that stuff it helped me get to where I wanted to go and by the time I was in high school that was the only thing in my mind was I'm going in the military did you at that point in high school know that NSW was kind of your track or were you kind of just a little more vague at that point I had to narrow it down North West Ohio was not a very big military area so I did my due diligence of narrowing down the branches and it came down to the Marine Corps and the Navy but I already kind of knew I wanted to be a seal it was just checking my last box and going let me just see if the Marines is where I want to go with force recon ironically my first tour dude was with the Marine Corps so I spent my first three years as a medic down at Camp Lejeune which was a great tour of duty for me and really set a very good foundation of becoming a seal in the fact of I realized what I had during those three years in the Marines was not a lot and then going into the special operations community all of a sudden you're just inundated with the best technology and gear and training possible so I really appreciate even more at least from my perspective where I was at we talked a little bit about you're growing up in light of that do you see people that have children that grow up to be successful military members or just successful in general people that are either team members with kids or in other military branches is there something different you think that they do that gets their kids prepared for military than maybe other families well I definitely think parental involvement and a child's life is going to help them for sure I have a daughter that's a competitive figure skater and if we didn't constantly pour into her to about her training and nutrition and everything else she would not be at a national level like she is right now just like any parent would prep their kid they want them to go to you know Stanford or Harvard and they put them in prep courses and get them surrounded about test taking and being book smart becoming an ABCL would be the same way but I didn't have any of that I grew up I didn't have there was no one around me to motivate me to do anything special it was something inherent inside of me that it was in my mind and in my heart that that's what I wanted to go do I wanted to become part of the best and be part of a group that's incredibly unique and special I wanted to be someone special and that is the greatest thing about human nature is you can never just like a book you can't judge it by its cover you never know what's inside a person's mind or in their heart or in their gut and that drive of personal tenacity can make people do some incredible things you see that a lot in Buds where you have the collegiate level swimmer or the cross country runner that was the state champion and you're like yep those are the guys that are going to make it what will happen is that those guys that you thought will make it are the ones that quit during how we and the guy that you looked at or would never have guessed was going to make it through is the one leading the pack and the charge throughout the class and is there at the end I talk about this when I go to schools and I speak to all ages of kids I can count on my hand the amount of people that actually thought I was going to become a Navy SEAL the majority of people thought it was a pipe dream and that I was wishing there was no way this kid from northwest Ohio doesn't have any military background was never really physically active other than playing soccer until my senior year in high school was going to go on and be part of the most elite special operations unit in the military so while it's great that parents should be absolutely part of their kids lives and that's what they want to do help them and give them opportunities to do that at the end of the day it comes down to that child to have that desire to want to do it and it's what we always tell our daughter to you can quit any day you want we'll love you the same we'll stand by your side I have to see it from her that's what she wants to be every day she gets up and puts on her skates it's the rink and that's the same as a parents provide them the opportunity but they gotta be the ones going I need to go to the pool put some laps in or I need to hit the gym or I need to go for a run my training when I grew up on the farm was I would do breath holding contests in the bottom of my pond for minutes at a time because I thought you had to be able to hold your breath as a seal under water and be comfortable in the water that's what I had access to me and that's what I did I see it's absolute advantage to have that as a child or a young adult with your parents wanting to drive you to that way but you don't need that it's almost maybe even a detriment if you don't have it inside you then it's an external thing that goes away when you're tired living up with expectations can be a hard thing that's another balance of if your parents are driving you to that and they want it more than you do that scenario never goes well because it's not going to be your parents that are going to be holding the boat over your head when you're cold, wet and tired it's almost like the flip side of that you talked about adversity yourself people saying like there's no way alright have fun and that's got to drive you more than someone telling you that you can do it almost sometimes I think that's probably one of the biggest motivators of all time is when people say to other people that they can't do it and the people that come back and go tell me what I can and cannot do and that's a big driver for sure I kind of think that's a pretty consistent thing through the people I've spoken with in the community I can do it just confidence, I mean it's tough because there's sometimes not even really a word that accurately describes that kind of level of drive of just seeking challenge in general you see somebody else do it you know it can be done or I want to prove I can do that even to yourself I think that's kind of what you're talking about a little bit at the core people having that as kids you can't necessarily make your kid feel that way you can't make your kid feel that way fundamentally as Americans our nation was founded on a rebellious nature and we're fighters to the core and that's what makes our force so unique there are individuals out there and it starts in their youth just like it did with me of those that just want to be part of something special they know in their mind and their heart that no matter what they're going to make it through they're going to suffer whatever amount of pain they're going to put whatever amount of risk to their personal safety on the line to make it happen and it's what they want because it's that's what they envision that's their dream you talked about the difference between going between you know deployment and being back home or that kind of switch is that similar to what you deal with being in the public so much being a team member that has to make that switch is that in line with that kind of skill that you need to be able to be a good operator one of the aspects of being an ABCL or Naval Special Warfare as a whole in special operations in general is that and that's what drove me to want to become part of that community was the secrecy that surrounded the community so the people that want to be a part of that want to be a part of it because they just like it for the job you're not doing the job to become famous or seek that you know recognition another tenant in the community is you know the deed is all not the glory so it's very hard sometimes to make that transition 18 years of my life I didn't have any sort of social media interaction nobody knew who I was there wasn't a single picture of me on the internet so the day that the president put the Medal of Honor on me is a day that changed my life fundamentally forever and then you're thrusted in the spotlight so like anything you can take that as being another stage in your career and your duty and your job and the next mission ridgeline or you can complain about it well there's no good complain about it it's not going to change the scenario you have to learn how to operate and work within that environment Medal of Honor is a very is a very humbling to be a recipient of and it plays an incredibly important and unique role within our nation there's 73 living recipients in our nation right now that range from World War II to the global war on terrorism and it's in representation and validation of the type of heroics that are continuously witnessed within our military and our modern-day warriors I just happen to be a beholder of one of those but it represents a culminated effort of what our entire group does within Naval Special Warfare have distinct privilege because it is a privilege to work with the most incredible individuals on the face of the planet and if anyone was to listen to this and go what do I want to do in life if I you know to be a banker or finance or want to be a seal what have you is this is the most exclusive job in the world you can do because it's a job that no matter how much money you ever have you can't buy it you have to earn it every single day so I got to be around for 20 years of my life these individuals that I've seen time and time again do the most heroic things in the world but true to the nature of what our ethos represents they're probably never going to get recognized at a level where an entire nation is going to know who they are they're going to be a name on a wall in a building that you can only get to if you walk through the gates of Buds and Coronado and when I look at it from that perspective it becomes an obligation and a duty to have to be out there and represent what it is our community has done and to pay homage and tribute to all those who especially within our community have paid and sacrificed with their life in particular Nick Check who was killed on that hostage rescue mission in 2012 so when I think about that under that it becomes something I'm comfortable with doing but for the majority of people out there that's within our community they're just wired that way they don't want to be known they don't want anyone to know who they are they like it that way they like living in the shadows going about overseas doing our nation's work it's certainly a lot easier that way so the community has to be that way well I will say that your malleability or flexibility there that you did mention earlier talking about being like water it does speak to that in your own personal character you get dealt this hand and then you're going to make something fruitful out of it as opposed to whatever the our alternative is so I think people can take that away from the discussion even a little bit to know that things aren't going to go always according to your plan or expectation and if anything it's usually not that way so if you're unwilling or unable to adapt then you're kind of stuck in the water for lack of a better phrase very rarely in life does anything go according to plan I guess that's kind of a bigger overarching I think word of wisdom I think for people that for any point in their life not necessarily just for buds or NSW or the community at large you mentioned that you were traveling around to speak to schools or whatever through that kind of exposure is there anything that you've kind of come to have as a piece of your own personal voice that you try to communicate to people kind of something that you like to remind people that's unique through your experience yes there's definitely when I speak to the younger generation there are a few course concepts and I'm always going there in the capacity as a Medal of Honor recipient to be a Navy SEAL there's six tenets to what the Medal of Honor represents to the nation and it's embedded in what they have it's called the character development program and it's sacrifice, integrity, patriotism commitment citizenship and courage and the core concept around that is anyone can be a hero you don't have to serve in the military to become a hero you can be an everyday citizen who just does the right thing at the right time and that's what would define you as a hero you see this in papers all the time younger people or just general citizens that rescue other people or put their life in danger to save someone else that is an absolutely definition of a hero you see a lot in the younger generation nowadays there's a huge problem with bullying whether through cyberbullying or just within the school and the environment is much different because back when I grew up it was if you did something it would take it would take a minute for people to hear about what you did nowadays everyone can hear about it in your entire school in the matter of a minute and that brings on a whole lot of unique different pressures they still have the same type of struggles of I don't have any friends or a small very small group or friends or they don't see themselves as being courageous or that they can do something unique and my message always to them is don't let anyone ever tell you what it is you can do in your life I wouldn't have been standing on that stage talking to them if you listen to what other people tell you then you're never going to accomplish what it is you think you can do I see the most incredible young boys and girls that you would never think when I ask them hey how about you tell me about a problem you are having in the school today and then you'll see this one little hand raise up from the crowd and they bear their soul in front of a thousand of their classmates and it was a person that come to find out has no friends is dealing with a lot of this internal burden of self doubt or maybe depression or what have you and I look right at him I go you're going to be someone absolutely incredible because that takes the most insane amount of courage to be able to do that and have everyone in your school judge you and it changes their life I'll follow up with them 6 months later 10 months later with the teachers what have you those few sentences that you said in front of their entire school completely changed their whole persona and their confidence and everything it's just quieting the noise around you and not listening to all the negativity and looking yourself in the mirror and believing in who you are and what you can accomplish I think that's a pretty big thing to do for the community at large and that's huge a lot of people I think would maybe take the easier way out as opposed to really trying to lift people up from the core like that a lot earning your Medal of Honor is obviously a huge life changing event but for people that might not know about it you can give as brief a version as you feel comfortable explaining just to give our conversation a little context in the history of the United States there's only been 3500 Medal of Honor recipients half of those came in the Civil War and Lincoln designated the Medal of Honor to be the only award given for battle that's out of the 42 million Americans that served in the armed forces to equate that it's 110 millionth of a percent to become a Medal of Honor recipient and the reason they designated it as a recipient is because you win awards in the military you never come in the military because you want to get accolades and different awards for going into combat so that number is unique extremely unique and small within itself now if I jump into Naval Special Warfare as a whole I became the sixth Medal of Honor recipient in Naval Special Warfare history 2007 and that happened in 2016 about three and a half years after the operation in 8 December 2012 this was the first time that the Navy had a living active duty recipient in 45 years so the reason I say that is so important to who I am now is because of with any great honor comes that great responsibility you become a recipient of this medal because your peers thought you did something that was worthy of this but I personally wear this to give tribute to Nick Check and in 8 December 2012 we were based out of a remote base in eastern Afghanistan and we got intelligence directing us that an American doctor Dr. Dilip Joseph was taking hostage by a bunch of Taliban captors so we were under a time sensitive target we had some varying intelligence of whether or not he was going to stay within country or leave so we had to go and execute this operation on little fidelity surrounding his situation hostage rescue at the tactical level is the hardest thing a military unit can do in combat there's so many complexities you don't know the state of the captors you don't know the state of the hostage you don't know the internal dimensions or things that happen in the building there's a lot of things that can go wrong and there's unlike movies you can't just fly into your target and be inside the room in a matter of minutes so that night I saw off along with my team we launched and we patrolled for about 5 hours through the mountains pretty cold night out like I said it was December and as we were approaching the target building Nick Czech who was our point man was right in front of me and a guy in one of the centuries came out to go to the bathroom as it was getting close to sunrise and call for prayer Nick saw him immediately engaged that individual and we started sprinting towards the door it wasn't a normal door though it was layered blankets so they were very hard to weave through and we tried ripping them down and we couldn't so it wasn't just like you could open a door and make entry by the time I finally got in I went to my area of responsibility and there was a armed Taliban at the end of the other side of the building we had an AK-47 point right at me fortunately I was able to kill him and I saw someone else moving across the floor and I didn't know whether or not that was one of the hostages or it was one of the terrorists that was trying to go towards some more weapons so we thought that could have been three hostages or doctors along with Dr. Dilip Joseph so by the time I got to him I was able to straddle him and I had to adjust my night vision and look down at him to try to get some facial recognition at the same time this was happening calling out for the doctor to answer hey are you in this room just something right about that time all that happened he rogers up and says hey I'm over here I'm over here and so I engaged a person I was on top of and then I got up off of him as fast as I could and ran over and then jumped on to the hostage when I did that I grabbed him and brought him in close to my body armor to shield him from everything else that was going on and there was another one of the terrorists in the corner who was just waking up this was very early morning and this all happened relatively quick so fortunately he was within arms reach and I was able to pin him by the wall by his throat and was basically choking him until the rest of the team was able to get in and eliminate the threat because he was reaching for guns and that all happened in a matter of about a minute, minute and a half everything happened really quick we didn't know what the time was that Nick entered the room first he had been mortally wounded he had been shot so as we were pulling the doctor out of the out of the room I noticed that Nick was being worked on by our medics and being a prior medic myself I went over and started helping doing CPR on Nick on the heal flight back to the base where he was pronounced dead that one evening is without a doubt captures what it is to be an AV seal it was a mission that was completely successful that is success in the military world even at the expense of losing Nick because that's the job you sign up to do but Nick was what it meant to be an AV seal he was like the hardest guy I've ever met incredibly resilient just tough as nails a guy would get knocked down get right back up again and he portrayed every part of our ethos that night and it's the reason why I continue carrying on the mission of getting out there and speaking about that night to be able to tell people about Nick what he meant and will always mean to this community about sacrifice I can't thank you enough for your time we really appreciate your words of wisdom I think that some people will gain a lot from this conversation so thank you I appreciate it thanks