Watch: Indonesian soldiers put on show for Mattis, drinking snake blood and smashing flaming bricks

by Luke Ryan · January 25, 2018

U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis didn’t get the usual pomp and circumstance when he traveled to Indonesia. Instead of a “dress-right-dress” style parade, he was met with soldiers shooting balloons from between one another’s legs, rolling in broken glass, and slashing a cucumber from the mouth of another soldier — just to name a few. They drank the blood of snakes and conducted flying elbows at walls of flaming bricks, all to the sound of beating drums in the background.

About Luke Ryan

Luke Ryan is a SOFREP journalist in Tampa, FL. He is a former Team Leader from 3rd Ranger Battalion, having served four deployments to Afghanistan. He grew up overseas, the son of foreign aid workers, and lived in Pakistan for nine years and Thailand for five. He has a degree in English Literature and loves to write on his own as well, working on several personal projects.

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stanley l
I would imagine putting the junior guys on the demonstration team only, while the senior guys do the real missions; but the junior guys should invest more time in useful skills instead and improve as operators so they can keep up with the senior guys, so put the senior guys on it; but they need the seniors guys more for real missions. It's a fu#ked up situation overall to have a flashy demonstration team like this, unfortunately many units in Asia have it.
RB
Their CO probably read "The Duffel Blog" and confused satire for real news and decided "Potemkin Village Idiots" was the way to go. What a gigantic waste of resources.
Monroe Kelly
I totally agree Luke. It was a bullshit demonstration. They were focused on trying to impress General Mattis with how tough they are while concealing their operational TTP’s. Pathetic. Drinking snake blood doesn’t impress anyone that you are a bad ass. Let’s them know you’re a dumbass. And smashing flaming bricks. Really?!?! A demonstration of the Indonesian-Malay combative art Silat would have been much more relevant. And any operational techniques they didn’t want to reveal are probably already known by our special operations forces. Their operators all appeared to be fit and motivated but to waste training time and resources on crap of this nature in no way enhances operational readiness. It exposes severe shortcomings in the abilities of their senior leadership. RLTW
Susan B
I’m sure it was a great show. Almost sounds like an old time Wild West show with its daredevil acts. Video was good. (Snakes were bad. Ugh!) By the way, is Madagascar’s health situation improving? (I saw your article on the way to the comments section and was reminded of their plight.)