Thank You For My Service

This weeks book of the week I bought not too long after publication, but because I have thousands of other books, just never got around to reading it, making this weeks book of the week Thank You For My Service by Mat Best, with Ross Patterson and Nils Parker. Plus, he’s a veteran, yesterday was Veteran’s Day, so it seemed like a book by a veteran was a good pick for this week.

This is an autobiographical book by and about Mat Best, who, before becoming a YouTube personality, served with the 2nd Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, serving five tours before getting out of the US Army. After a brief break from overseas theaters, Best began working as a contractor for the US Government, agency is not identified in this book, but Wikipedia identifies it as contractor for the CIA. But it is Wikipedia, so…trust that or not, your call.

While serving as a contractor, Best uploaded his first YouTube video, then more, ultimately creating Article 15 clothing, which I feel like this company may have been folded into one of his other enterprises, but also Leadslingers Whiskey, and joining with Evan Hafer to create Black Rifle Coffee Company. Hence my choices for this weeks cocktail.

This book is how he got from joining the US Army at 17 years old, to successful entrepreneur.

So, Best does not go all the way back to his birth, and unlike Tim Kennedy, who’s birthday I was able to easily find online, I could not find Best’s basic biographical information. Other than clarifying he contracted for the CIA, his Wiki page is more like a synopsis of the book…just FYI…but without the hilarious anecdotes and witticisms. So I don’t actually know when or where he was born, although I feel like at one point I read he was born in like 1987…or maybe I mathed that. Let’s see…joined the army at 17 in 2004…yes, I mathed that. So he was born sometime in 1987, to a military family. Like his dad and brothers served.

In fact, his two older brothers were set to graduate USMC basic training at Camp Pendleton and the family was driving down for the graduation ceremony when 9/11 happened. Unfortunately, Best’s middle brother, Alan, was diagnosed with Stage 2 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma just as he completed basic training. And like a fucking Marine, he just looked at the battle ahead and said Ok, what’s next.

And this set the role model for Best as to how to handle life’s hurdles and challenges. And after beating cancer, Alan basically hopped a troop transport unauthorized to catch a ride to Iraq for some combat. Which, reading through Best’s book, seems like a very Best thing to do. Sort of like a family tradition.

Now, as the youngest of 6 children, Mat decided he also wanted to serve, but go his own way, so he set his sights on the US Army, specifically the Rangers. And because he was not yet 18, he had to get his parents permission, which both signed off on, and as soon as he graduated high school, he was off for basic training, then immediately to Airborne school, then Ranger Assessment and Selection Program, which he passed….obviously or the book would be much different.

And even just that bit of training…which don’t get me wrong, I’m not by any metric trying to down play this as nothing. It is very much NOT nothing, to go through Army training and it is DEFINITELY not nothing to go through Ranger training. But when he got back from his training rotation for a family visit, he was visibly changed. Pounds of muscle, more confident.

At one point in the book, he self-describes himself as an introvert, which you might not get from his YouTube videos. That’s because most people confuse introvert with being shy. Shy is being easily frightened or timid. Introvert is someone who enjoys spending time alone. Typically they are quiet and reserved. I’ve also heard it as someone who resets their social battery with alone time.

So, he self-describes as introvert, but by the time he returns from training, this has changed. And the formerly nerdy, introverted kid who used to play in an emo ban and was part of botany club…I think it was botany club…Is now the hottest piece of ass the young ladies in Santa Barbara can get.

Ok…seriously, if the Army is having a problem with recruiting, they should set up a booth at like comic con and just give away copies of this book to every incel who even looks at their booth. Become confident, lose some weight, gain some muscle, and you too can be swimming in….well, there it is then.

Best went through I think it was at least two deployments before he is set to go through Ranger School. On his second deployment, he lost two of his mentors in combat. Which hurt to read about, because it’s always heart wrenching to think about young men dying in courage in fire. But those mentors set him up as best they could to succeed at Ranger School. And after finishing Ranger School, he was eventually made a sergeant, completing in there somewhere his fifth deployment. It was during his fifth deployment that he made the decision to leave the Army. He was worried he might become so institutionalized that he wouldn’t be able to leave, so he made the decision not to re-enlist, and moved to LA with some friends from high school.

And that’s where he realized just how much he had changed. Because the people in LA, as Best will tell you, SUUUUCK! LA is so divorced from reality, and they always seemed to subtly look down on him, even while thanking him for his service. He briefly considered going to college, but that…well look, college is even more sucktacular than LA at divorcing people from reality. So after meeting with the VA office on campus, I don’t recall which school although he says in the book, he walked away and never went back.

Since he was quickly burning through the little bit of money he had managed to save while in the Army, Best started looking for work. The problem being, what he had been trained for, i.e., killing people, doesn’t have a lot of bearing in LA. So he went into personal security, which I think he worked in for two years, before a wild party he attended had him walking away from that, contacting his buddies who were doing government contract work in theater, and re-entering a combat environment, which he did for several years, before uploading that first youtube video, which led to his ultimate fame, at least among military veterans’, and those with a twisty sense of humor.

Now, obviously this is a much abbreviated version of this book, which had me laughing out loud more often than not, because Best’s wicked sarcasm and humor bleeds through on most of the pages, with absolute deference and homage to those he would honor where the story requires such solemnity.

And I was absolutely not kidding when I said this book should be handed out to basement dwelling incels who just think women are out to get them for their money. Because despite all his <pussy> stories, Best does have respect for women. At least, there are a couple of anecdotes that lead me to believe that. Maybe I’m misreading that. Maybe I’m ascribing honorable character traits to Best because he is a veteran, and my own interactions with veterans have been invariably honorable.

And as he points out when talking about some of the companies he founded, veteran’s are just people like you and me. Despite what Hollywood would have you believe, they are not crazy, and what they did, meaning serving our country, is not all that crazy either. But they are JUST PEOPLE. Meaning, they can have good days and bad days, and they can also be lazy and self-serving. Just like all of us. Which is ultimately what Best’s message is. It’s ok to laugh at the horror you’ve seen. There’s nothing wrong with that. And no, having seen horror does not automatically make you the next big NYT story…even though, as we learned from Ashely Rindsberg’s book, the NYT tried to tell America exactly that.

But his story is one of hope for our veteran’s. There is life outside of the military. You can thrive there. Basically, if he can do it, so can you.

This book was originally reviewed on YouTube on November 11, 2023, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.