Inside the Special Forces Crisis Response Team | Dave Harris

**Jack Murphy** (0:00)
Hey, guys, welcome to The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, here today with our guest, Dave Harris. Dave had a nice long army career here. He served in the 82nd Airborne before transitioning over to 3rd Special Forces Group, where he spent 17 years, lots of Afghan deployments in different contexts. And then he was part of the Crisis Response Force when it kind of took over responsibility for the African continent.
And then finished out his career as a phallic instructor and today works with a training company through Vortex Optics. So Dave, thank you for joining us on the show today.

**Dave Harris** (0:39)
No, thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here, man.

**Jack Murphy** (0:43)
So Dave, the first question I always ask folks is, if you tell us a little bit about kind of like your upbringing and sort of like how that took you towards military service, like what was it like for you growing up?

**Dave Harris** (0:55)
So I grew up in the Bay Area, Richmond, California, to be exact. I've always had an affiliation with guns, loved them to death my whole life, so much so that my family wouldn't let me play with them. So I loved guns my whole life. I always wanted to be like military, I mean more like law enforcement. When I was growing up, my mom was a single mom, having when she was 18, I will say my dad went to prison and was away. So he was gone. I don't really know him, didn't have much contact. So when people say like a village, like my mom had me at 18, I was the first grandbaby. So like my uncles and my aunties and my grandparents, like everyone raised me. I was the only one for like seven years, so everyone chipped in to raise me. So like we live with my grandparents, so they had the most influence, but my uncle Donald, my mom from grandpa beat, everyone just chipped in and raised me up. And then I went to college playing basketball, somewhere I got off the like gun thing, and I went to college playing basketball. And so I was playing basketball in college at Western New Mexico University, and I realized that it was levels to this basketball thing and I wasn't going to go pro. So I was like, man, what am I going to do? So I decided, I was sitting there, and I'm not going to lie to you, I was sitting in my dorm room and I was watching Black Hawk Down, and I'm so simple minded, I walked in Black Hawk Down and I was like, I'm going to go do that.
And the next day I walked down to the recruiter and I was like, hey man, I want to go do that. And he was like, okay, you want to be infantry. And then I went to MEPs in New Mexico, got into New Mexico, went to MEPs, and this is what I mean by simple minded. They were like, hey, how long you want to do? And I was like, just sign me up for 20, let's go.
And she was like, how about three? I was like, all right, three it is.
And so she said, what do you want to do? And I told her, look, I want to put on a ruck and I want to run. She was like, you want to ruck and run? I was like, yeah, so what job you got that's going to let me do those two things? And she was like, okay. And they didn't put me infantry. They made me a 14 Sierra Stinger Missileman.
So, I got to that. And then you want me to keep going about the Army piece?

**Jack Murphy** (3:14)
Yeah, sure. I mean, I think, you know, it's, yeah, definitely. Go ahead.

**Dave Harris** (3:20)
Okay. So, when they put me as a 14 Sierra, I went to Korea for my first duty station.

**Jack Murphy** (3:26)
Okay. Okay.

**Dave Harris** (3:28)
One year in Korea and I was sitting in Korea and I was like, this is nothing like Black Hawk Down. So, I'm getting out, right? So, I was like, I'm getting out. So, my first sergeant was like, hey, you're going airborne, you're high speed private, I want to put you in airborne school, get you in. So, a month into Korea, I knew I was going to the airborne school, going to the 82nd.
My first sergeant had called and that's before I knew about calling DA and talking to your branch manager. I didn't know any of that. First sergeant took care of it all just because I sang cadence on some runs. So, he'd be like, oh, you're good. I like you. So, he pulled some strings and got me there.