You're listening to software radio, special operations military meals, and straight talk with the guys in the community.

Hey, what's going on? Welcome back to software radio. This episode is truly unique because we're going to talk about home buying in the economy right now, and how you as a veteran can have access to some tools that are out there for you.

I'm also going to dive in with my guests about some of their back story, and right now I've got Justin Allen, who's a United States Army Alma Mater, and I've got Tom Pakwin, who's United States Marine Corps, all caps. Okay. F-18 pilot. Okay. Welcome to the show, gentlemen. Yeah. Great. Thanks for here.

All right. Wonderful. Now, I'll also shout out to Karen for reaching out and saying, hey, I think this would be a good fit for your listeners, Brad. And so thanks for all the back and forth with her getting this arranged.

So, I guess my first question for my listeners is, tell me, Justin, what branch were you in? United States Army, and tell us how you dived into that? How old were you when you listed?

Yeah. So, I was United States Army just shy of 10 years, and so I actually joined. I was 22. So, I kind of took a unique path. So, I graduated college. I didn't do ROTC. I didn't go to an academy or anything. I went to Lehigh University. And so, I graduated. I was working for a little bit, and I kind of had the bug.

You know, my older brother is Marine. I wanted to serve. I wanted to kind of have that life adventure. So, actually, I joined the Army and went to OCS Office of Canada School. So, that was kind of the way in the Army where if you wanted to go be an officer, you went to basic training.

And then you go to a 16-week course to get a commission. So, it's like the accelerated version of West Point. So, 16 weeks, got a commission, went to the infantry. And then from there, I really, you know, I joined with the whole intent. I wanted to go special forces. To me, it was just kind of like, you know, if you're going to do it,

I feel like you got to go all the way. I felt like it was the best way to have a big influence to really, like, solve those tough problems that our nation was dealing with at the time. And I felt like it was just a good pathway for me. So, joined up. I was able to go to selection a few years later. And then, and that kind of started the whole journey for me.

I went through the qualification course. I was able to do some courses along the way. I went to free fall school. I actually went through the dive.

So, 18 series were you? So, 18 alpha. Also, team leader, right? Yeah, yeah. Detachment commander. So, oh, right. Yeah, no. So, it was great. I mean, it was just awesome for one, just to be able to work in an awesome organization. A lot of awesome people that I'm still just insanely close with. And then, I was just, I was really lucky as a team leader.

I started in 2017 is when I got placed on my team. I was with ODA 1215, which for the, for the old timers, those ODA 145 actually changed the number and convention, but was 1215 and we were able to go to Afghanistan twice. We did two different deployments. I was there relatively late in the war.

Actually, my first combat deployment of 2018 was an Eastern Afghanistan with the team. And then I was really lucky. I was actually able to stay on the team for longer than normal.

So, I was able to stay on the team for about three years, team leader. And then we went back to Afghanistan in 2019 to kind of, you know, things were winding down and got back in 2020, at which point it was when I separated from service and kind of went on to my new life adventure.

But, yeah, I mean, all in all, it was wild ride. And I'm incredibly grateful for it.

Yeah, that is, that's crazy. Right. Right at the end of it there when everything was being exited out and, you know, wound down, what was the vibe of the environment in 2018 to you?

When you first boots on the ground, was it like this place is vibrating with activity?

You know, so in 2018, I was, again, I kind of say I was lucky. My team was able to go do the counter-ISIS mission, which, you know, really in Afghanistan, there were two things going on. We were fighting the Taliban and we were also fighting ISIS and trying to affect influence there.

And so the counter-ISIS mission really was, was picking up in 2016, 17 and 18. Some people might remember when the Moab was dropped. It was like big news, you know, but that was actually Nangahar province. And that was where my team ended up going.

So we were probably about a year after the Moab was dropped. We were in that same location. And so really for us, it was just pushing back on ISIS, which was getting a lot of visibility at the time. Wall Street Journal came out and was embedded with us and was following the story.

So, you know, even though it was like so late in the war, I think people were still able to kind of get behind that counter-ISIS fight. It felt, you know, a little bit more close to home, I guess. It felt a little more, you know, I guess higher energy maybe.

And we were definitely, you know, ramped up. And we felt like we kind of felt privileged to be able to go out there. I mean, only a handful of teams were able to go do the counter-ISIS fight just because it was kind of concentrated part of Afghanistan.

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