George Bowe Blitch has been a Wildlife Manager, 5th generation Texas Rancher, Professional Writer, Videographer, Photographer, Editor, Speaker, Brand Developer & Designer, Cartographer, Touring Musician, Teacher, Coach, Serial Entrepreneur, Finance Manager, and the owner of numerous businesses.
George has met some wildly interesting people in his lifetime, and this "Son of a Blitch” is sure to share some impactful stories, interviews, and messages that will be informative, educational, and highly entertaining!
Guests often include: #1 New York Times Best Selling Authors, Television Show Hosts, International Touring Musicians, Actors, James Beard Award-Winning Chefs, Leaders in the Outdoor Industry, Photographers, Filmmakers, Navy SEALS, Green Berets, Veterans and related Veteran Organizations, a Master BladeSmith, a Federal Judge, Professional Athletes, Business Leaders, Inventors, Survival & Wilderness Experts, Instructors, Publishers, Inventors, Cartel Fighting Game Wardens, other podcasters, and more!
"I've met some incredible people in my life, and I want to share their stories!" ~GB
A GREEN BERET. TWO FOUR-STAR GENERALS. ONE AMBASSADOR. AND WAY TOO MANY EXPLOSIVES.
What could possibly go wrong?
In Volume 2 of Son of a Blitch StoryTellers, George Blitch revisits one of the funniest and most unbelievable stories from his conversations with former U.S. Army Green Beret Matty Nelson, of Seekins Precision and Hat Creek Training.
During a deployment to Colombia, Matty was assigned to organize a tactical demonstration for some very important guests, including the U.S. Ambassador and high-ranking American and Colombian military officials.
With his team away for Thanksgiving, Matty had to improvise. The plan involved simulated combat, explosive door breaches, and Colombian soldiers who insisted on playing the Top Gun soundtrack during the assault.
What happened next involved a massive explosion, an evacuated ambassador, stunned soldiers, injured spectators, and a four-star general who somehow still presented Matty with a military challenge coin!
It's a story of military life, improvisation, spectacular miscalculation, and one man's realization that his career might be over.
ABOUT MATTY NELSON
Matty is a former Green Beret, an experienced military veteran, and an accomplished member of the outdoor and firearms industry. He works with Seekins Precision and Hat Creek Training and has appeared on the Son of a Blitch Podcast three times. Ep. 71Ep. 92Ep. 120
ABOUT GEORGE BLITCH
George Blitch is the host of the Son of a Blitch Podcast, featuring authentic conversations with musicians, actors, authors, chefs, outdoor industry leaders, and other fascinating personalities. His StoryTellers series explores remarkable experiences, unexpected encounters, and the stories behind the stories.
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Son of a Blitch podcast. I'm your host, George Blitch. On this episode of Storytellers, we hear from Matty Nelson, who you guys probably know from Sequence Precision, Hat Creek Training. He's a former Green Beret, one of my favorite people I've ever met in the outdoor industry, a heck of a great guy. And we hear his story about when he was down in Columbia doing a demonstration that literally blew everyone away. Quite literally. Lots of explosives, evacuations, uh blown eardrums, splinters in people's faces. It is an incredible story, and I can't wait for you to hear it. Uh, I've actually had him on the podcast three different times talking about his own personal journey and uh you know his time with Sequence Precision and some of the amazing products they have. They are one of my favorite partners. So make sure you check out all three episodes, show notes below. But for now, here is the best story I think I might have heard on this podcast.
Yeah, come for Thanksgiving. My team's like, okay, we've been down here for seven months now on this two-week standby, like or you know, like a three-month train up and then two weeks, two weeks, two weeks. Like, we're going home for Thanksgiving. If if shit pops off, runner bird, we're coming back, right? Like the embassy approved it, everything's good, you guys hit it. So my whole team flies back home. It was just me and a couple guys that were there. And they they took a little bit of a vacation while they were there. Um, that was that's why we're leaving names out of it. But as soon as they left, the embassy calls, so the talk phone starts shooting and answering. It's like, hey, the the ambassador and the uh his four-star, like a four-star general, and then the Colombians counterpart, four-star guy. I want to come down and see like a demonstration of your capabilities. And I was like, Okay. So when are they coming? So this is the week of Thanksgiving, right? So they call on Tuesday. Hey, we're coming down on Friday. I was like, oh boy, okay. Sounds great, we'll get it done. So I leave like 9,000 messages on my teammates' phone. Of course, they're not answering, they're off doing whatever they're doing, right? Like, great. So uh I get the guys
and I tell them, okay, here's what we got going on. We're gonna have to put on this this kind of dog and pony show. Um, so uh, like this will be assault team one, this will be assault team two, here's this little compound. They have this big bleacher set up where they're looking kind of like down into this compound. Uh, and it was all paint rounds, but they wanted live explosives. So I was like, great, I don't have any op fund, right? So I get in the truck, go downtown, and buy like on my own dime, right? I'm buying two by fours and plywood to make doors so that we can blow these doors up for this demonstration. But it's my dime, right? So I roll in and I'm like, the shittiest plywood you got, right? This dude sold me this plywood that was so thin, like it only had one side. It was ridiculous, right? So yeah, so we get up, my guys are training. Like, here's what we're doing. This guy's gonna be a casualty, you guys will fix them up. We have this whole thing's all choreographed out, so it looks sharp. Um, and I build these doors, and then I call a sister team that's in country uh on another part of the base, and I was like, hey, I need one more guy to run the stack because we can't have these guys doing the demo. So they sent a guy over that at the time I didn't know him. Uh, we became real good friends after this because of kind of what happened, and then we rubbed shoulders on a couple other deployments and a couple different things, but super, super cool dude. But so keep in mind, right? Maddie Nelson's entire Green Beret career is graduated Q course, got the group, went straight to Afghanistan, wrecked shop in Afghanistan, doing just direct action stuff, went to Brazilian jungle school, got a month off to get some sleep, and now I'm in now I'm in Colombia doing this event for this the ambassador and a couple of four-star generals on both sides of Colombian American fence, right? So I've never built wraps, like I've never built door charges that weren't for like big metal Afghanistan doors. So I build these flex linear charges, which is like our sticky tape roll-up charge in an Afghanistan to blow these big gates and hinges off and stuff. You do uh five 80-inch pieces of deck cord with kickers at the top and the bottom, and a kicker for the lock in the middle. So it caves the door and the lock, and then the rest of it just pushes it in. But that is like for people that don't know this, five 80-inch pieces of deck cord is a lot of explosive. So, but I don't so I build these charges. My buddy comes over that we aren't friends yet, but he's a demo guy, and he looks at it and he's like, five reps, huh? Okay, doesn't say shit, doesn't like that's just like well, the new guy's gonna learn today. So we we get everything going. It's Thursday night. I tell my guys, like, we run through the rehearsal, you know, 50 times now. Everybody's got everything down, and uh they're like, hey, everything looks good, we just have to add the music to it. And I was like, like, we're professional soldiers, like, we're not assaulting to music. And they're like, You're an American, you don't get it. There's 50 of us, there's one of you, we're assaulting the music. Okay, deal. So the morning of right, like we're like a quarter mile away from this little spot that we're gonna assault, these big bleachers. And at a quarter mile, I can see the speakers they've set up. I was like, Oh my lord, like when you're like, we see the ambassador's helicopter flying, we see a couple more helicopters flying, the whole entourage arrives, get the call on the radio, like, hey, they're here, they're set up, let's hit it. So it's me and two Humvees full of Colombians for one stack, and then it's my buddy and two Humvees of Colombians for his stack. And they, I mean, these guys are jazzed, they are so I mean, just adrenalines through the roof. They get the call and they're just I mean, wide open on these Humvees, red line, as fast as they can go, right? And at that speed, with four Humvees at a quarter mile, we could still hear the music they were playing.
My buddy looks over and he is furious, right? He's just mounting horrible obscenities at me, right? And all I can hear is these Humvee motors screaming and the opening music, the top gun. So we're flying is doot doot doot doot doot doot, like, oh my gosh, like just bury me now. Like, what are we doing? So we get there, guys pile out, dude. Stack up on the door. They've never had a charge go off in like close proximity, right? So you're supposed to open your mouth, you're supposed to do all this stuff. I hadn't thought about any of this because everybody I've been around for the last year and a half is used to that.
George Blitch
They know it, yeah.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so like my guy stack up, I look at him, he's like tia two, five, four, three, boom! And like the entire first room on both compounds just evaporated from me. Gone. No, all the guys all the wind knocked out of immediately, like snots coming out of their nose. The number two man's puking. I was like, Oh boy, like and like there's no room. I'm telling my guys, like, get in there, get in there, and they're like, get into what? And I was like, that one's still standing. I like just flash a glance up at these big bleachers, and the first two rows, all I see is like the bottoms of people's feet. Like I have exploded the crowd, right? The ambassador's bodyguards are like jumping on him. They don't know if it's like water round from the fark. I'm like, I'm like, I am, I am like, here's my beret, here's my tab, like I am fired forever, right? We get through, my guys do their thing, like they recover
from you know, just getting smashed by these two explosions. They get through, they're jazzed, they all line up, you know, like freaking dress right, dress. And I'm like, I am on the end of this line, just like head down, not at attention, not at parade rest, just like like I'm on my way to make rocks at Leavenworth for the rest of my life, right? Like, I just endangered this whole crowd of people, like I can't believe it. And my buddy has like popped smoke, right? Like, he knew what was gonna happen. He set the charges off and just like it's done. He went into straight, like, escape and evasion mode, right out of the back of his beat. Like, just so I'm looking around, like, I'm the only American there, like, great. So I'm just like, ugh, I'm toast, right? The four-star general from the American side happened to be from the Air Force, and he was a dentist. So he hadn't been a practicing dentist for a while, he was obviously in the administrative and whatever, but he had no idea what was supposed to happen. Like the ambassador got evaked and exited by his crew of bodyguards. So it's this Colombian four-star, and he comes, he's shaking everybody's hand, kind of muddling through his Spanish, and he gets to me, and he like his head is all like he's got sprinters in his face, like he's bleeding, and he hands me uh this coin. He gives me this that's what we like to see, Sergeant Nelson, and then like stumbles off, all like just just blown to pieces. And I was like, What just happened? Like, I cannot believe I got away with this. Oh my gosh! Like, I was in like thank goodness, because I would have been like so just whoo! But but that was like your Brazilian jungle school, straight to this. That mission got canceled after I blew the ambassador up and the four-star general and their whole like Colombian entourage with enough ribbons to have like have a hinge on it, you know, just smoked the whole crowd, and then uh that mission ended up getting canceled like a month later, and I got pulled out of country, and we ended up going back to Afghanistan just by ourselves without that, without that unit. But just oh man, yeah, yeah.
George Blitch
I don't think I've ever told that story before on a oh my gosh, I am so glad you have.
