Scott DeLuzio: [00:00:00] You get home, but home doesn’t feel like home anymore. The noise in your head never really stops. The calm moments feel like they’re missing something and that something might just be danger. You try to sit still at work, but your eyes keep scanning the exits. You love your family, but a part of you aches for the brotherhood, the purpose, the raw intensity that civilian life just can’t touch.

Ben Sykes knows this fight from a Hollywood desk job to a marine machine gunner in the invasion of Iraq. He’s lived through firefights adrenaline highs and the brutal crash landing back into civilian life. In this conversation, we are gonna talk about the, that rush, the withdrawal, and the road back to finding.

Purpose in civilian life. But before we begin, I do want to take a moment to raise awareness for something deeply important to our community. The Global War On Terrorism Memorial Foundation. This organization is working to build a permanent national memorial in Washington DC [00:01:00] to honor the service members, families, and civilians who are impacted by the global war on terrorism.

This memorial will serve as both a tribute to those who served and a way to ensure that their sacrifices are recognized and remembered for generations to come. If you would like to learn more or find out how you can support the mission, visit GWOT memorial foundation.org. Now, let’s get into today’s episode.

Scott DeLuzio: Hey, Ben, welcome to the show. Really glad to have you here. Looking forward to this conversation.

Ben Sykes: Yeah, Yeah. Great to be here.

Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, you bet. I always like to do this with, with folks when, when we you know, first start talking just to get a little bit information about their background, a little bit of their military history, that type of thing.

I, you were, you were in Iraq and you. Tell, you know the whole story better than I do. Tell us the whole story. Tell us about, you know, who you are, your [00:02:00] background, your military experience, and kind of, you know, kind of lead into the transition out of the military and, and kind of how all that that went for you.

Ben Sykes: Yeah. Yeah, no problem. So, nine 11. I’m living in North Hollywood. I’m working on flash websites for the studios. At the time, I’m 27 years old. I was I was drinking a 40 ounce. I don’t drink anymore. 40 ounce in the morning. I’m listening to Howard Stern and it’s, he seems a little, a little

off today and I know what’s going on. I turn on the television

with the bunny ears ’cause I didn’t have cable at the

And I kind of caught like what was

happening. And

Be told, I was sort of like, oh man, that’s wild. And then the second plane hit and you’re like, oh, oh, okay. But it

really didn’t it, it didn’t it didn’t shock

me at the time. I was too focused on work.

Scott DeLuzio: sure.

Ben Sykes: And then then all my contract, I mean, obviously the world changed instantly and all of my contracts stopped. So I thought, well, what am I gonna do now? I gotta get a job. I was working for myself at the time, and so I applied [00:03:00] for job that I...