Jocko Podcast 105 w/ Echo Charles: "We Were Soldiers Once... And Young"

2017-12-21T01:39:16Z

Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @echocharles 0:00:00 - Opening 0:08:26 - "We Were Soldiers Once... And Young", by Gen. Hal Moore and Joe Galloway.  2:16:16 - Final Thoughts and Take-aways. 2:18:34 - Support: JockoStore stuff, Super Krill Oil and Joint Warfare and Discipline Pre-Mission, Origin Brand Apparel and Jocko Gi, with Jocko White Tea,  Onnit Fitness stuff, and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes). Extreme Ownership (book), The Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. 2:32:04 - Closing Gratitude.

AI summary of episode

Yeah, so like I said the the close air support is absolutely or the close air support the artillery is absolutely what and that's been happened many on many occasions for for American soldiers, sailors, marines, overseas fighting, you know the air force, the navy pilots, the marine core fire pilots coming in and actually the guy on the ground controlling these guys is a air force pilot as well. Now talking a little bit like I said, there's a there's great information in here about the enemy and like I said, they went and interviewed and got reports from the enemy and here we go a little bit about the enemy. So there's a, you know, we talked about the detachment that he said, hey, look, I'm not going to be up in the helicopter, but right now he's saying, look, I'm not going to be in the helicopter overhead at 1500 feet, but I'm not going to be sitting in a platoon as a rifleman slugging it out with the enemy. If the air bridge failed, so the the meaning of the helicopter's ability to get there if the air bridge failed, the embattled men of first battalion seventh calf would certainly die in much the same way George Armstrong Custard's cavalry men died at Little Big Horn. You're unloading wounded men and you're getting on that aircraft that's going to go pick up more wounded men but you're going to stay. Then here's how more talking about the wounded back the book, all of the wounded, all of our wounded flown out of X-ray by Krandels Huey's ended up at Charlie Company, 15th medical battalion, first cavalry division, which was temporarily set up in tents that camp all the way. One full enemy battalion, more than 500 determined enemy soldiers, was boiling down the mountain toward Herrick's trap second platoon and maneuvering near Aldivini's pin down first platoon. Before we went after the cutoff platoon, Captain DeDal got us together and said, man, we've got an American platoon cutoff out there and we're going after them. And what happens is it seems to make sense because you cover more ground or you have better angles and it seems like a good idea like hey we'll just split up and you can take care of your guys and I'll take care of my guys but you always need to stay within a position where you can mutually support each other. Herrick charged right past Lieutenant Devny's men, swung his platoon to the right in hop pursuit of a few fleeting enemy soldiers and disappeared from sight into the bush. I ordered Alphan Bravo companies to evacuate their casualties with draw out of close contact with the enemy under covering fires and prepared a launch, a coordinated attack supported by heavy prepared to where artillery fire to reach the cutoff platoon. And they converted the unneeded anti-tank platoon to the machine gun platoon for for duty in Vietnam because there was no enemy tanks going up against. So, man, you know, I talk about all the time about having the high ground, well, these guys are landing in a valley, and they're surrounded by high ground. Rescordla moved his men back 50 yards, which not only shortened the sector but meant the enemy would now have to leave the trees and cross 40 yards of mostly open area to reach Bravo Company Foxholes. I mean, there's all the company commanders, the platoon commanders, the platoon leaders, the platoon sergeants, there's the ground troops, there's all these characters. The left squad had taken a number of casualties and had pulled back out of the creek bed, refusing their left enemy, their left flank to the enemy. No matter how bad things got for Americans fighting for their lives on the x-ray perimeter we could look out to the scrub brush in every direction into that seething inferno of exploding artillery shells 2.75 inch rockets, napalm canisters 250 in 500 pound bombs and 20 millimeter cannon fire and thank God and our lucky stars that we didn't have to walk through that to get to work. Back to the book and the small cops, the other two platoon, platoons of Bravo Company men had open sea rash and cans, and we're grabbing a bite when they heard the first shots in the brush. And by the way, going back to the book as this fifth left lift of the day roared out at treetop level, the landing zone was suddenly turned red hot. Whispered orders to his squad, telling men on either side of him to hold their fire not to shoot until the enemy stepped out into that open space right in front. They also had another combat support company Delta Company, which had a recon platoon, a mortar platoon and an anti-tank platoon. Each time sending about 50 men against the Americans in each time being beaten back by artillery and rifle fire. So the first rush by at least 300 North Vietnamese was beaten off in less than 10 minutes by small arms machine gun and artillery fire from the alert and well prepared Bravo Company second battalion troops. They're prepping the landing zone by dropping a bunch of 105 ha, into the surrounding area around the landing zone, and then the helicopters, once it's too close, and the, and the hawitzers have to turn off, then the helicopter starts shooting, and they do their best to clear the area around the landing zone. The platoon later heard still another large enemy force moving down the northern trail toward X-ray and again brought artillery fire down on them. During those 14 months before we sailed for Vietnam, we spent most of the time in the field practicing assault landings from helicopters and the incredibly complex coordination of artillery, tactical air support and aerial rocket artillery with the all-important flow of helicopters into an out-of-the-battle zone. At the stated time, our perimeter erupted in ear splitting up roar and immediately a force of 30 to 50 north Vietnamese rose from a cover 150 yards forward of Joe's, Saudini's alpha company, second battalion lines and began shooting back. I told Deeric to assemble his men in a company's 30 yards north west of the command post of act as a batalion reserve for the time being.

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jockel Podcast number 105 with echo Charles and me, Jockel Willink. Good evening, echo. Good evening.
[00:00:10] Specialist Viera was witness to scenes of horror.
[00:00:15] The enemy was all over, at least a couple hundred of them walking around for three or four minutes. It seemed like three or four hours.
[00:00:22] They were shooting and machine gunning or wounded and laughing and giggling.
[00:00:30] I knew they'd kill me if they saw I was alive. When they got near, I played dead.
[00:00:37] I kept my eyes open and stared at a small tree. I knew that dead men had their eyes open.
[00:00:44] Viera continues. Then one of the north Vietnamese came up, looked at me, then kicked me and I flopped over.
[00:00:55] I guess he thought I was dead. It was blood running out of my mouth, my arm, my legs.
[00:01:02] He took my watch and my 45 caliber pistol and walked on.
[00:01:06] I watched them strip off all our weapons. They left, then they left, back where they came from.
[00:01:15] I remember the artillery, the bombs, the Nae Palm everywhere, real close around me.
[00:01:21] It shook the ground underneath me. But it was coming in on the north Vietnamese soldiers too.
[00:01:27] All this and more, much more, took place between 6.50 a.m. and 7.40 a.m. on November 15th, 1965.
[00:01:42] The agonies of Charlie Company occurred over 140 yards of the line.
[00:01:48] But men were fighting and dying on three sides of our thinly held American perimeter.
[00:01:52] In the center, I held the lives of all of these men in my hands.
[00:02:01] The badly wounded Captain Bob Edwards was on the radio now asking for reinforcements.
[00:02:07] The only reserve I had was a reconnaissance platoon 22 men.
[00:02:12] Was the attack on Charlie Company, the main enemy threat, Delta Company and the combined mortar
[00:02:18] position were also under attack now. Reluctantly, I told Captain Edwards that his company would
[00:02:24] have to fight on alone for the time being. The den of the battle was unbelievable.
[00:02:32] Rifles and machine guns and mortars and grenades rattled banged and boomed.
[00:02:38] Two batteries of 105 millimeter hoitzers, 12 big guns located on another landing zone,
[00:02:44] five miles distant were firing nonstop. Their shells exploding no more than 50 yards outside
[00:02:50] the ring of shallow foxholes. Beside me, in the battalion command posts, the Air Force Ford
[00:02:57] controller Lieutenant Charlie W. Hastings 26 from La Mesa, New Mexico, Radio to Special Code
[00:03:03] Word, Broken Arrow, meaning American unit in danger of being overrun. And within a short period
[00:03:12] of time, every available fighter bomber in South Vietnam would stack overhead at a thousand
[00:03:17] foot intervals from 7,000 feet to 35,000 feet waiting its turn to deliver bombs and
[00:03:23] napoms to the battlefield. Among my sergeants, there were three war men, men who perished
[00:03:32] you didn't ignore me on D-Day and had survived the war in Korea. And those old veterans were
[00:03:38] shocked by the savagery and hellish noise of this battle. Choking clouds of smoke and dust
[00:03:45] obscured the killing ground. We were dry mouthed and our bowels churned with fear and still
[00:03:53] the enemy came on in waves. And that right there is from the opening chapter of the book
[00:04:08] we were soldiers once and young, by general how more and Joe Galaway. And the book which was
[00:04:18] turned into a movie, which I saw when it came out in 2002, Mel Gibson. It's a good movie,
[00:04:29] for sure. But it's also a Hollywood movie and Hollywood movies, they're forced to fit
[00:04:38] into two hours and they got to follow some kind of a plot and they can't dig into the details
[00:04:43] and I can't really give you a comprehensive understanding of the events. And I purposely did not
[00:04:49] watch this movie again while preparing for this podcast because I didn't want it in there.
[00:04:55] And it went, it in my brain, the movies interpretation of the characters in it and the way
[00:05:02] that they were portrayed. And the book is so good. And it's so packed with detail and drama and action
[00:05:12] and an utterly incomprehensible heroism. Everyone should read this book.
[00:05:24] Everyone. It starts off, it explains the way the battle unfolded and it talks how it went
[00:05:32] tactically, operationally and strategically goes through all those levels of warfare.
[00:05:38] And you can see in the book how strategy unfolds at the tactical level and how tactical situations
[00:05:45] impact strategy is well you can see it on both sides and there's also which is interesting.
[00:05:50] There's significant commentary from the Vietnamese enemy leadership that they went back and
[00:05:55] interviewed after the war was over. Which just makes it an incredible book and like I said,
[00:06:00] everyone should read it. So it tells the story of operations in the I-Drain Valley in 1965
[00:06:07] from November 14 until November 18. So five days. But the fighting as was noted in that opening chapter
[00:06:20] is absolutely brutal. Leadership is tested over and over and over again.
[00:06:28] And this battle took place with battalions and companies from the seventh cavalry
[00:06:34] regiment. And if you remember the books we covered on general George Custer, he was a officer
[00:06:41] that led seventh cavalry troops in the battle little big horn of where he was surrounded.
[00:06:47] And he was killed along with 267 of his soldiers, all of them dead,
[00:06:53] by the Native American warriors on the suicide from the Lakota and the Dakota and the northern
[00:07:00] Cheyenne and the Arapot tribes. And cavalry in those days meant horseback. That's what
[00:07:08] meant. That's what mounted cavalry. That's what it was. And in 1965 they adopted cavalry to a new
[00:07:17] kind of seed, a new form of transport and this was the helicopter. And in 1965 they converted the
[00:07:24] 11th aerosol test division to the first cavalry division. And the first and second battalions
[00:07:35] of the first cavalry division soon took on the historical name of General Custer's unit. And
[00:07:42] by the way General Custer's seventh calf, even though that's kind of the most famous,
[00:07:47] along with this I guess, along with the I drink valley, but the seventh calf served in
[00:07:55] World War II and Korea, all kinds of incredible service there. And a lot of that is covered in the
[00:08:02] book. But again we'll have to move through this a little bit more quickly. Otherwise,
[00:08:11] go read the book, which I highly recommend. But let's get into it starting about where
[00:08:20] Lieutenant Colonel Halmore takes over the first battalion at 7th cavalry. Going back to the book.
[00:08:28] On Monday, June 29th as scheduled I took command of my battalion. I was 42 years old,
[00:08:34] the West Point graduate of the class of 1945 with 19 years commission service, including 14
[00:08:39] month tour in Korea, combat tour in Korea. In a brief talk to the troops afterward, I told them that
[00:08:47] this was a good battalion, but it would get better. I will do my best, I said, and I expect the same
[00:08:54] from each of you. Before taking command, I had a long talk with the most important man in any
[00:09:00] battalion, the sergeant major. Basil L. Plumbly, 44 years old, and six and a six foot two-inch
[00:09:10] bare of a man hailed from West Virginia. The men sometimes called him old iron jaw, but never in his hearing.
[00:09:20] Plumbly was a two-war man and war master parachute wings with his five combat jump stars.
[00:09:26] He was what the young airborne types called a Ford jump bastard. Plumbly had survived all four
[00:09:34] combat jumps of the 82nd airborne division in World War II, Sicily and Soleno in 1943,
[00:09:41] then in 1944, D-Day at Normandy and Market Garden in the Netherlands. For that matter, he also made
[00:09:49] one combat parachute jump in the Korean War with 187th airborne infantry regiment.
[00:09:55] He ended World War II, a buck sergeant, and was promoted to sergeant major in 1961.
[00:10:01] So let's think about that for a minute. Let's think about that. I mean, we've talked,
[00:10:07] we've definitely talked about Normandy, we've definitely talked about Market Garden,
[00:10:11] he jumped into both those and jumped into Sicily and Soleno, and jumped into combat in the Korean
[00:10:19] War. Unbelievable. Going back to the book, the sergeant major was a noble shit guy who believed,
[00:10:29] as I did, in tough training, tough discipline, and tough physical conditioning. To this day,
[00:10:35] there are veterans of the battalion who are convinced that God may look like sergeant major
[00:10:40] basal plumbly, but he isn't nearly as tough as the sergeant major on sins, small or large.
[00:10:47] privately, I thanked my lucky stars that I had inherited such a treasure.
[00:10:53] I told Sergeant Major Pondley that he had unrestricted access to me at any time
[00:10:58] on any subject he wished to raise. After the ceremony, the company commanders and the
[00:11:04] battalion staff got to look at their new boss and award on my standards. They were fairly simple.
[00:11:10] Only first place trophies will be displayed, accepted, or presented in this battalion.
[00:11:15] Second place in our line of work is defeat of the unit on the battlefield and death for the
[00:11:21] individual in combat. No fat troops or officers, decision making will be decentralized,
[00:11:28] push the power down. It pays off in wartime. Loyalty flows down as well. I check up on everything.
[00:11:37] I am available day or night to talk with any officer of this battalion. Finally, the sergeant
[00:11:42] major works for only for me and takes orders only for me. He is my right hand man.
[00:11:49] So he's set in the stage. Pretty interesting. Not only first place trophies.
[00:11:58] Second place. No. Not happening here. Back to the book, the officers of my new battalion were
[00:12:06] the usual great army mix of men who had come from their jobs. Come to their jobs from West
[00:12:11] Point, ROTC, Officer Candidate School, and Military Schools like the Citadel. Most of the young
[00:12:16] second-loop tettids had come through OCS and college ROTC programs. There were three rifle
[00:12:22] companies in the battalion, Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie companies. Each had full strength,
[00:12:27] supposed to have six officers in a 164-in-listed men. They were my maneuver elements.
[00:12:32] Each rifle company had three rifle platoons, plus one platoon of
[00:12:36] three 81-millimeter mortar squads for fire support. Each rifle platoon in turn had three rifle
[00:12:43] squads, plus a weapon squad of two M60 machine guns for fire support. So there's the breakdown
[00:12:49] right there. They also had another combat support company Delta Company,
[00:12:55] which had a recon platoon, a mortar platoon and an anti-tank platoon. And they converted the
[00:13:00] unneeded anti-tank platoon to the machine gun platoon for for duty in Vietnam because there was no
[00:13:04] enemy tanks going up against. So that's what the battalion was looking like.
[00:13:10] Going back to the book during the during those first 14 months and now he's going to talk about
[00:13:15] their work up a little bit. How they got ready for combat back to the book. During those 14
[00:13:20] months before we sailed for Vietnam, we spent most of the time in the field practicing assault
[00:13:24] landings from helicopters and the incredibly complex coordination of artillery,
[00:13:28] tactical air support and aerial rocket artillery with the all-important flow of helicopters into
[00:13:35] an out-of-the-battle zone. Commanders had to learn to see terrain differently, to add a constant
[00:13:41] scan for landing zones, which are called LZs and pick-up zones, PZs, to all the other features they
[00:13:48] had to keep in mind. We practiced rapid loading and unloading of men and material to reduce the
[00:13:54] helicopters window of vulnerability. Total flexibility was the watchword and planning and attitude.
[00:14:01] There was one bit of sobering reality that I insisted be introduced at every level in this training.
[00:14:06] We would declare a platoon commander dead and let his sergeant take over and carry out the mission.
[00:14:11] Or declare a sergeant dead and have one of his PFCs take over running the squad. We were training
[00:14:16] for war and leaders are killed in battle. I wanted every man trained for and capable of taking over
[00:14:24] the job of the man above him. So they're working a whole new gig here. They never, no one had
[00:14:30] really done this before riding everyone's going into combat on helicopters. And obviously helicopters
[00:14:35] give you great amount of maneuverability. You can be up vertically and take off and travel a
[00:14:40] great distance and set down anywhere or not anywhere just about anywhere. You can set down
[00:14:44] in a lot of places. You can't set down anywhere. Especially in the jungle. You've got trees and
[00:14:48] all kinds of obstacles and then you've got enemy on top of that. And helicopters are
[00:14:53] pretty vulnerable flying machines. And so this idea of what they were practicing was this massive
[00:15:00] movement move all the troops into the combat zone very quickly and the enemy doesn't expect you
[00:15:04] that you can just shell up there. So that's what they're practicing over and over again.
[00:15:08] And clearly a Korean war veteran like how more was he knows that leaders can get killed in combat.
[00:15:17] And so he's sometimes killing the leaders and training and that's a tradition we still had.
[00:15:22] We did that all the time when I was running training the seal teams. The minute the leaders
[00:15:25] started to get a grip on things, it was like, okay, you're dead. Next man's got to step up.
[00:15:30] And sometimes that would just wreck a platoon or task unit. The leader dies if they're a good
[00:15:35] leader and no one is used to stepping up. It'd be problematic. But sometimes it would actually
[00:15:41] be beneficial because you get some guy that's a micromanager killing and then watch everything run
[00:15:45] smoothly and you come back and you go dude. You better back off a little bit because this guy's
[00:15:49] running a better show than you are. And it's really clear. So sometimes we teach guys lessons that way.
[00:15:57] Back to the book. Unfortunately my battalion and every other in the division now began to
[00:16:01] suffer the consequences of President Johnson's refusal to declare a state of emergency and extend
[00:16:07] the active duty tours of draftees and reserve officers. The order came down. Any soldier who had less
[00:16:15] of less, who had 60 days or less left to serve on his enlistment as of the date of deployment
[00:16:21] August 16 must be left behind. We were sick at heart. We were being shipped off to war sadly
[00:16:28] under strength and crippled by the loss of almost 100 troopers in my battalion alone. The very
[00:16:34] men who would be the most useful in combat, those who had trained the longest in the new techniques
[00:16:39] of helicopter warfare were by this order taken away from us. It made no sense then. It makes no
[00:16:46] sense now. So again I talked about the strategic kind of implications that these guys felt and this
[00:16:52] is one of them and obviously I'm jumping through the book. They talked more about the work up and
[00:16:56] what they did to prepare. But now he's getting this point where President Johnson doesn't declare
[00:17:00] a state of emergency and keep these guys in. That's a political decision obviously. What
[00:17:08] it wears an impact? Sure, it impacts the guys on the front line. That's where it impacts.
[00:17:14] Now like I said this book is written not only by Lieutenant General Howmore,
[00:17:21] it's how he retired in this book. I'll refer to him as Lieutenant Colonel or sometimes I guess I'm just
[00:17:27] a disrespectful and call him Howmore. I don't mean it disrespectfully. But anyways, how more
[00:17:34] wrote the book. But he also wrote the book along with another guy named Joe Galaway. And you know
[00:17:40] what a ghost writer is. Yeah, ghost writer. Well this is so ghost writer writes a person's book
[00:17:46] but no one's supposed to know it. And then there's people that write the book but they get credit for it.
[00:17:50] And you might think that's a situation here looking at the title because you've got Lieutenant General
[00:17:55] Howerald More retired and Joseph L. Galaway. Like, you know, it doesn't say any service thing. Well
[00:18:04] in this particular case that could give you an absolutely wrong impression because Joe Galaway
[00:18:09] was a reporter, a combat reporter who was obviously he was very courageous and
[00:18:16] and basically got after it for lack of a better word. So I'll go in where they introduce him a
[00:18:23] little bit back to the book. UPI reporter Joe Galaway, a 23-year-old native of Refugeeotexus,
[00:18:30] marched with us. When he hooked up with us, he carried on a shoulder an M-16 rifle, which the
[00:18:35] special forces commander made your Charles Beckworth had handed him when the fight was over.
[00:18:42] Galaway told Beckworth that strictly speaking under the Geneva Convention, he was a civilian
[00:18:47] non-combatant, Beckwith's response, no such thing in these mountains. Boy, take that rifle.
[00:18:54] So if you know anything about Charles Beckworth major Charlie Beckworth, it's the guy that created
[00:19:00] Delta Force, complete badass warrior and he was a special forces commander in Vietnam and was one of
[00:19:08] the first people that apparently Galaway worked with and Galaway said, you know, you better arm
[00:19:11] yourself. So here's Galaway talking. Galaway remembers. My first time out with Halmore's first
[00:19:20] Italian seventh cavalry was a hellish walk into the sun to a remote Montagarde mountain village.
[00:19:26] We got into a patch of brush and wait a minute vine so thick and phony that every step had to be
[00:19:31] carved out with machetes. We covered maybe 300 yards in four hours and forwarded a fast running
[00:19:37] chest deep mountain stream just as darkness fell then huddled in our poncho's wet and freezing
[00:19:43] all night long. At first light I pinched off a small piece of C4 plastic explosive from the
[00:19:48] emergency supply in my pack and used it to boil up a canteen of water for coffee.
[00:19:54] If you lit C4 very carefully, you could be drinking hot coffee in maybe 30 seconds if you were careless,
[00:20:00] it blew off your arm. Over a first cigarette I watched Moore's men.
[00:20:06] First they shaved. Shaved up here I was amazed. Then the Colonel himself blonde,
[00:20:13] jet-jod and very intense. A son of barge-down Kentucky and West Point walked by on this morning
[00:20:21] rounds with the sergeant made with sergeant major plumbly. Moore looked to me over and said,
[00:20:26] we all shave in my outfit. Reporters included. My steaming coffee water went for a wash and a shave
[00:20:33] and I gained a measure of respect for the man. Daily discipline and all things.
[00:20:41] You know that's another thing that I failed to mention but it's very clear when you read the book
[00:20:44] is this is 1965 and the war had not escalated at all and it wasn't the meat grinder that it
[00:20:52] turned into. So these guys you know in their workup they knew that they were going to fight but
[00:20:59] they didn't know it wasn't the Vietnam that we think of now where there's a lot of casualties happening.
[00:21:05] It hadn't gotten there yet. It's a matter of fact this battle is really the first one where
[00:21:10] that where you start seeing very significant American casualties. The guy that's in charge over
[00:21:21] how over how Moore is a guy named Colonel Brown and he shows up going back to the book
[00:21:26] not long after Colonel Brown flew in check on the situation with Alpha Company then called me
[00:21:31] aside. How I'm moving your battalion west tomorrow morning. He said unfolding his map. Here is your
[00:21:38] area of operations north of Chu Pong and the I-Drain Valley. Your missions the same one you have now
[00:21:45] find and kill the enemy. He rapidly outlined the scope of operations and the resources he could spare
[00:21:51] 16 UH 1D Hueies. So that's a Huey helicopter. It's the most Iconic helicopter
[00:22:02] probably of any military and certainly of Vietnam the Huey helicopter is is completely iconic.
[00:22:11] 16 Hueies to move my troops to 105 Hours or batteries within range to support us and at least two days
[00:22:17] on the ground patrolling. He added that Alpha Company of the 229th Helicopter Battalion would provide
[00:22:25] the helicopters. The 229th A company commander Major Bruce Crandell was on his way now.
[00:22:33] One more thing how in that area be sure your companies are close enough for mutual support.
[00:22:38] So the reason I highlighted that a lot of times people have a tendency in combat situations,
[00:22:49] especially when planning to get too far apart from each other. Then I would see this all the time.
[00:22:53] And what happens is it seems to make sense because you cover more ground or you have better angles
[00:22:59] and it seems like a good idea like hey we'll just split up and you can take care of your guys and
[00:23:03] I'll take care of my guys but you always need to stay within a position where you can mutually support each
[00:23:09] other. Where if we get a trouble we can cover move that's what it is. You want to be able to cover to
[00:23:13] move cover move. So the minute you're out of sight, out of line of sight, out of radio,
[00:23:20] out of the out of a distance where your weapons can be used to support your alone.
[00:23:26] That's the thing. You get away from line of sight, radio contact,
[00:23:30] the distance that weapons can be shot effectively from the other unit that you're out there with.
[00:23:36] Now you are alone. So when you're planning, make sure and he's saying in that area,
[00:23:43] I always use that rule. As often as possible, are there times where you can flex that rule a little
[00:23:52] bit? Of course there are situations you can get into and you might be a better tactical call,
[00:23:56] but always keep in mind what you're doing and what you're sacrificing when you can no longer
[00:24:02] mutually support the other units out you're out with and they can't mutually support you.
[00:24:08] You're alone. So he knows this is going to be a little bit of a hot area.
[00:24:14] At least he expects it. Going back to the book, how ready was my batalion for combat?
[00:24:19] We had never maneuvered in combat as an entire battalion. Although all three rifle companies
[00:24:23] had been minor scrapes. So they've been in Vietnam for a while. They've been in a little bit of
[00:24:27] contact, but nothing too major. And like you just said, none of them had been.
[00:24:32] Then they've been out as a group as a battalion. Back to the book, most of them
[00:24:35] had never seen an enemy soldier dead or alive. We had killed fewer than 10 black pajama gorillas
[00:24:42] in the get acquainted patrols and small operations since our arrival. The four line companies had
[00:24:48] 20 of their authorized 23 officers. But the enlisted ranks have been badly whittled down by
[00:24:55] expiring enlistments, malaria cases and requirements for base camp guards and workers
[00:25:02] back in an K. Alpha Company had 115 men, 49 fewer than authorized. Bravo company at 114 men was
[00:25:10] 50 short. Charlie Company had 106 men down by 58. And the weapons company Delta had only
[00:25:17] 76 men 42 fewer than authorized. Headquarters company was also under strength and I had been forced
[00:25:24] to draw down further by sending men out to fill crucial medical and communication
[00:25:29] as vacancies in the line companies. I didn't like being short-handed, but things had been
[00:25:36] no different in the Korean War than somehow we made do. You just suck it up and do it.
[00:25:41] And we would do the same way in the eye-drying. The officers and NCOs would do what they could
[00:25:50] to make up the slack just as we had done in Korea. So my point of reading that, these guys are
[00:25:55] heavily undermined. Suppose to have 150 people in the have 105 or whatever. And there's nothing
[00:26:04] to do about it. And it's also interesting in worth noting that he has a headquarters company, so you
[00:26:09] got the battalion commander and he's got a group of guys that do weapons for him and also communications.
[00:26:15] And he's pushed those guys out. So instead of keeping those guys and making him his own team,
[00:26:21] all fat and happy, note that he makes his team thin and gives as much as he can to the forces
[00:26:27] that are out in the field. So another good note on leadership. Now they're getting ready to roll in
[00:26:34] and we will talk about he's kind of going through the plan a little bit. Here we go back to the book.
[00:26:43] I would personally land on the first helicopter piloted by Bruce Crandell and Bruce Crandell's
[00:26:46] the commander of the helicopters that are flying them in. That would permit me a final low-level
[00:26:51] look at the landing zone and surrounding terrain. And with Crandell and the front seat and me and
[00:26:55] the back, we could work out on the spot any last minute diversion to an alternate lander's
[00:27:00] landing zone if necessary and fix any other problems with the lift. In the American Civil War,
[00:27:06] it was a matter of principle that a good officer rode his horse as little as possible.
[00:27:11] There were sound reasons for this. If you are riding and your soldiers are marching,
[00:27:15] how can you judge how tired they are, how thirsty, how heavy their packs weigh on their shoulders.
[00:27:22] I applied the same philosophy in Vietnam where every battalion commander had his own command and
[00:27:27] control helicopter. Some commanders used their helicopter as their personal mount.
[00:27:33] I never believed in that. You had to get on the ground with your troops to see and hear what was
[00:27:37] happening. You have to soak up firsthand information for your instincts to operate accurately.
[00:27:44] Besides, it's too easy to be crisp, cool, and detached at 1500 feet. Too easy to man the
[00:27:50] impossible of your troops. Too easy to make mistakes that are fatal only to those souls far below in the mud,
[00:27:57] the blood and confusion. This is something we talk about all the time from the leadership perspective.
[00:28:02] You cannot be, it's the dichotomy of detachment. It does pay and there are certain times where you can tell
[00:28:11] in these situations, if you're in the command helicopter that's up above the fighting,
[00:28:15] well, you're defacto. You are detached from the situation. You can see what's happening and you have
[00:28:22] you have a good view of what's going on. But even though you have a good view, you're also missing
[00:28:28] a bunch. You're missing what it's like down there. You're missing what the men are seeing. You're
[00:28:31] missing what it looks like to them. You're missing the communication breakdowns that are happening
[00:28:35] down there. So you have to find that balance between these two and he clearly is aware of that.
[00:28:47] Preparing for this and he's got a book called Street Without Joy by a guy named Bernard
[00:28:55] Fall and it's a book about Vietnam. It's a book about the tragedy that the French troops went through
[00:29:05] fighting the Vietnamese and he says that he took one lesson away from that book and this is the lesson.
[00:29:11] Death is the price you pay for underestimating this tenacious enemy. So he was aware and like
[00:29:19] General Mattis said, you know, not too long ago they were talking about General Mattis and how
[00:29:23] coming read so many books and he says because I get to see I get to learn and this is a classic case.
[00:29:28] He knew he read books about the French that had fought the Vietnamese what ten years earlier,
[00:29:34] eleven years earlier and that made him more prepared. Now talking a little bit like I said,
[00:29:41] there's a there's great information in here about the enemy and like I said, they went and
[00:29:47] interviewed and got reports from the enemy and here we go a little bit about the enemy.
[00:29:54] Back to the book the soldiers commanded by Brigadier General Chu, Chuui, Man had been training
[00:30:00] for more than 18 months. When they joined the people's army each recruit was issued two
[00:30:05] khaki shirts, two pairs of khaki trousers, a sewing kit and a pair of Ho Chi Minh sandals cut from
[00:30:11] used tire trucks. Those uniforms were expected in the last five years. Basic training lasted 13
[00:30:19] weeks, six days, a week, six a.m. to nine, 15 p.m. The instructors emphasized weapons and tactics,
[00:30:25] the house of warfare while the political commissars had time had time set aside each day to
[00:30:31] lecture on the wise of this war. The recruits were reminded constantly that their fathers had beaten
[00:30:37] the French colonialists. Now it was their duty to defeat the American imperialists. They were
[00:30:43] imbued with Ho Chi Minh's dictum. Nothing is more precious than freedom and independence.
[00:30:49] After basic training, some were selected for six months of NCO school and would emerge as new
[00:30:54] corporals for the rest advanced infantry training included familiarization with all weapons,
[00:30:59] the use of explosive ambush tactics, reconnaissance tactics, adjusting mortar fire and patrol
[00:31:05] tactics. In June of 1964, man soldiers moved up into the mountains of North Vietnam to rain similar
[00:31:13] to that in western highlands of South Vietnam. Here, physical conditioning was emphasized. They
[00:31:18] scaled steep slopes while wearing rock sacks loaded with 50 to 60 pounds of rocks. Their advance
[00:31:24] training now also focused on the art of camouflage. When the time came for them to begin the
[00:31:30] arduous two-month journey down the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Louss, General Man's Regiment broke down
[00:31:36] into battalions for security purposes, each moving separately at least three days ahead of the
[00:31:41] next. Each soldier carried four pounds of rice, seven days rations, plus another eight pounds of
[00:31:47] foodstuffs that were expected to last in the whole trip. Two pounds of salt, two pounds of wheat
[00:31:52] flour, and four pounds of salt pork. One man in every squad carried the aluminum cook pot that would
[00:31:59] that the squad's rice would be boiled in. Each man also carried 50 anti-malaria pills,
[00:32:05] one for each day on the trail, and a hundred vitamin B1 tabs to be taken at the rate of three per week.
[00:32:12] Despite the pills virtually every man who walked the trail contracting malaria and on average
[00:32:17] three or four soldiers of each one hundred and sixty man company would die on the journey.
[00:32:23] Malaria, diarrhea, accidents, poisonous snakes and American error raids took their toll.
[00:32:30] Man's soldiers marched nine miles each day, the distance between rest camps where they spent each night.
[00:32:37] Every day, every fourth day they stayed in camp, taking the day off to rest up,
[00:32:42] wash their clothes, and tend to minor medical problems. So this is a legit enemy. We're looking at
[00:32:49] legit enemy organized, well trained, hard, tough, well led, and ready. And you can't ever,
[00:33:02] you know, this is one of the biggest problems with fighting a counterinsurgency, as you're going
[00:33:06] against someone that's fighting on their own turf. And that is just, you can't, how do you overcome
[00:33:10] that advantage? Well, you overcome that advantage with firepower and with some technology,
[00:33:14] but that is a hard advantage to overcome. Yeah. And here's a quote from General Anne,
[00:33:23] when you landed there, you landed right in the middle of three of our battalions of the 66th
[00:33:28] regimen, our service, our reserve force. It was the strongest we had. At full strength, the battalions
[00:33:36] each had about 450 men. Also, there was a headquarters battalion. The regimen's total strength
[00:33:42] was about 1600 men. So there, kind of by chance, set up on the same spot where these guys are
[00:33:52] going to go in, which is LZX-ray, landing zone X-ray. And here, they're flying into the LZX-ray.
[00:34:04] Captain John Herron, whose Bravo Company troops filled the helicopter recalls it was a cool,
[00:34:09] it was a misty cool morning with some low-hanging fog when we lifted off. But shortly after take off,
[00:34:15] we broke into the clear and you could see the 105 artillery pounding the areas around the LZX
[00:34:20] we headed in. Vietnam, even in war, was scenic, with green jungle, heavy forested mountains,
[00:34:27] and wild looking rivers, crisscrossing the terrain. Now the helicopters of the aerial rocket artillery
[00:34:37] slam the perimeter with rockets, grenades, and machine gun fire using 24 of the 48, 2.7 inch rockets
[00:34:45] they carried. So it's the same thing that we've heard before it's cover move, right? As you come into
[00:34:51] a landing zone, like they did in D-Day, what do you do first? You bomb the crap out of it. You hit it
[00:34:57] with naval gunfire and they're doing the same thing here. They're prepping the landing zone by
[00:35:01] dropping a bunch of 105 ha, into the surrounding area around the landing zone, and then the
[00:35:08] helicopters, once it's too close, and the, and the hawitzers have to turn off, then the helicopter
[00:35:13] starts shooting, and they do their best to clear the area around the landing zone. That's what's going on.
[00:35:17] Back to the book, The People's Army Commander on the battlefield, then senior Lieutenant Colonel
[00:35:25] Nguyen, who on, says, when you drop troops into X-ray, I was on Tupong Mountain. We had a very
[00:35:32] strong position and a strong mobile command group. We were ready. We were ready. Had prepared for you
[00:35:39] and expected you to come. The only question was when? The trees and bush limited our view of the
[00:35:46] helicopters landing, but we had an observation post on top of the mountain, and they reported to us
[00:35:51] when you drop troops and when you move them. So, man, you know, I talk about all the time about
[00:35:59] having the high ground, well, these guys are landing in a valley, and they're surrounded by
[00:36:04] high ground. So, you're at your tactical disadvantage there. Right as soon as, just about as soon
[00:36:12] as I hit the ground, they're there for a little while and they get a prisoner. The Americans
[00:36:17] get a prisoner, and here's there's a translator, and he translates the prisoners' words, and here's
[00:36:24] what the prisoner says. Well, here's what the translator says. He says there are three battalions
[00:36:29] on the mountain who want very much to kill Americans, but have not been able to find any.
[00:36:35] Now, you take that with a grain of salt, because it's coming from a prisoner, but it's not nothing.
[00:36:40] I'll put it to you that way. It's something. Back to the books, only a few rifle shots,
[00:36:46] rang out in the area where the prisoner had been captured. Sergeant Gilrod's men were in contact.
[00:36:52] It was now 1215 PM. We had to move fast if we were going to survive, had to get off the landing
[00:36:57] zone, and hit them before they could hit us. Only if we brought the enemy to battle deep in the
[00:37:02] trees and brush, could we stand even a slim chance of holding onto the clearing and getting the rest
[00:37:07] to the battalion landed. That football field size clearing was our lifeline and our supply line.
[00:37:13] If the enemy closed away to the helicopters, all of us would die in this place. So that's one of the
[00:37:20] one of the hard things about helicopter warfare, especially in Vietnam, well, actually anywhere,
[00:37:25] is you get great. You can go along distance and get in there, but then once you're there,
[00:37:30] if the helicopters can't come get you out, or they can't resupply you're in real
[00:37:34] problem, you're back to the word that I said earlier, you're alone. Back to the book, even as the
[00:37:40] first shots rang out, I was raiding you and heron to saddle up the rest of the rubble company.
[00:37:45] The rest of his his rubble company met a move out fast toward the mountain to develop the situation.
[00:37:50] Turning to Nendal and he's again, there's all these characters. I mean, there's all the
[00:37:56] company commanders, the platoon commanders, the platoon leaders, the platoon sergeants, there's the
[00:38:00] ground troops, there's all these characters. And the book doesn't outstanding job of
[00:38:05] detailing who all these individuals were. What they're back on was where they came from,
[00:38:10] and I just don't, we can't do that right now, but that's why you buy the book and you read the book.
[00:38:16] But this guy in Adal is one of the company commanders. So here we go, turning to Adal.
[00:38:22] I told him that the original plan was out the window that his alpha company should immediately
[00:38:26] take over L.C. security and get ready to move up on Bravo Company's left when Charlie
[00:38:31] went enough of Charlie Company to arrive down the next lift to assume the job of securing and clearing.
[00:38:35] So classic, you hit the ground and now all the sudden the plan is out the window, right?
[00:38:43] Out the window. We're going with our standard operating procedures, which is hey, we're going to
[00:38:46] move a company here, you're going to set up perimeter security and go. Back to the book and the
[00:38:51] small cops, the other two platoon, platoons of Bravo Company men had open sea rash and cans,
[00:38:59] and we're grabbing a bite when they heard the first shots in the brush. The older sergeants
[00:39:04] glance at one another and nodded. Eat fast, they told the men, and get ready to move.
[00:39:09] The battle of L.C. X-ray had just begun.
[00:39:12] And it doesn't take long to begin going back to the book says sergeant Gil Reeth,
[00:39:22] we were virtually pinned to the ground and taken casualties. Lieutenant Dennis Deal remembers that moment.
[00:39:28] Devny's platoon was taking moderate fire. We could all hear it through the foliage and I heard
[00:39:33] it crackling on my radio. Owls and some sort of trouble, the firing increased in volume and
[00:39:39] intensity. Then I saw my first wounded trooper, probably the first American wounded in L.C. X-ray.
[00:39:46] He was shot in the neck or mouth or both was still carrying his rifle, was ambulatory,
[00:39:51] and appeared stunned at what had happened to him. When he asked where to go, I put my arm around
[00:39:56] and pointed to where I'd last seen the batide commander. So it's immediately on and you of course
[00:40:03] it is because there's three battalions of Vietnamese soldiers there. And this is how more talking
[00:40:19] back to the book, the military historian S.L.A. Marshall wrote that at the beginning of a battle,
[00:40:23] units fractionalized, groping between the antagonist takes place and the battle takes form from
[00:40:28] all of this. Marshall had it right. That is precisely what was happening up in the scrub,
[00:40:33] brush a rub above landing zone X-ray this day. And no other single event would have greater impact
[00:40:41] on the shape of this battle than what Lieutenant Henry Herrick was in the process of doing.
[00:40:46] Herrick charged right past Lieutenant Devny's men, swung his platoon to the right in
[00:40:51] hop pursuit of a few fleeting enemy soldiers and disappeared from sight into the bush.
[00:40:57] Says Sergeant Ernie Savage of Herrick's orders, he made a bad decision. And we knew at the time it
[00:41:04] was a bad decision. We were breaking contact with the rest of the company. We were supposed to
[00:41:08] come up on the flank of First Platoon. In fact, we were moving away from them. We lost contact
[00:41:14] with everyone, everybody. So again, this is what I just talked about. And it's, you're going to
[00:41:21] see throughout this book, all these principles that we talk about all the time that that we taught
[00:41:28] and that we live through. You can see that these types of things happen. And here's a classic
[00:41:32] thing I was just talking about. Like when you get out of distance from your supporting elements,
[00:41:37] you're now alone. And that's a bad situation to be in. Back to the book. Now, John Herron was
[00:41:47] up on my radio reporting that his men were under heavy attack by at least two enemy companies. And that
[00:41:52] his second platoon was in danger of being surrounded and caught off from the rest of the company.
[00:41:56] Even as he spoke, more than rocket rounds hit in the clearing where I stood. My worst case scenario
[00:42:02] had just come to pass. We were now in a heavy contact before all my battalion was on the ground.
[00:42:08] And now I had to deal with a cutoff platoon. My response was an angry shit.
[00:42:13] Captain John Herron's estimate that his bravo company men were trying to deal with two enemy
[00:42:19] companies with slightly off. One full enemy battalion, more than 500 determined enemy soldiers,
[00:42:25] was boiling down the mountain toward Herrick's trap second platoon and maneuvering near Aldivini's
[00:42:30] pin down first platoon. Again, here's something that I failed to talk about with helicopter warfare.
[00:42:37] So he's got a battalion of 500 guys, 550 guys. You can't fit all those guys on 16 helicopters.
[00:42:47] So you've got to do multiple laps. And that's what he's he's worried. He was worried about it going in.
[00:42:54] That, hey, I want to get my whole battalion on the ground before the fighting starts.
[00:42:57] He's already failed to do that. Or maybe he hasn't failed to do it, but it didn't happen.
[00:43:02] Back to the book, I was tempted to join the dolls or Edwards men, but resisted the temptation.
[00:43:10] I had no business getting involved with the actions of only one company. I might get pin down
[00:43:15] and simply become another rifleman. My duty was to lead rifleman. So there's a,
[00:43:21] you know, we talked about the detachment that he said, hey, look, I'm not going to be up in the helicopter,
[00:43:25] but right now he's saying, look, I'm not going to be in the helicopter overhead at 1500 feet,
[00:43:29] but I'm not going to be sitting in a platoon as a rifleman slugging it out with the enemy. That's not
[00:43:34] the right place to be either. You have to lead in, in order to lead, you have to take a step back. You have to
[00:43:38] detach. And he does that to the best of his ability. And here we go back to the book. Just now,
[00:43:44] the snaps and cracks are the rounds passing nearby took on a distinctly different sound, like a swarm of
[00:43:48] bees around our heads. I was on the radio trying to hear a transmission over the noise when I felt the
[00:43:54] firm hand on my right soldier shoulder. It was sergeant major plumblies. He shouted over the
[00:44:00] racket of the firefight. Sir, if you don't find some cover, you're going to go down. And if you go
[00:44:04] down, we all go down. Plumbly was right as always. Anyone waving, yelling, hand signaling, or talking
[00:44:12] on the radio was instantly targeted by the enemy. These guys were quick to spot and shoot leaders,
[00:44:18] radio operators, and medics. I'd never fret about being wounded in combat in Korea or here,
[00:44:25] but plumbly brought me up short. The game was just beginning. This was no time for me to go out of it.
[00:44:31] The sergeant major pointed to a large termite hill. Six or seven feet high, located in some
[00:44:36] trees in the waist between the two open areas of the landing zone. It was about 30 yards away.
[00:44:42] And three of us turned and ran toward it with bullets kicking up red dirt around our feet. And
[00:44:47] the bees still buzzing around our heads. That termite hill, the size of a large automobile,
[00:44:53] would become the battalion command post. The aid station, the supply point, the collection area
[00:44:58] for enemy prisoners, weapons and equipment, and the place where our dead were brought.
[00:45:05] Casualties were now beginning to pile up. As we drop behind that termite hill, I fleetingly
[00:45:09] thought about an illustration, an illustrious predecessor of mine in the seventh cavalry,
[00:45:15] Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer. And his final stay, stand in the valley of
[00:45:21] Little Binghorn in Montana 89 years earlier. I was determined that history would not repeat
[00:45:28] itself in the valley of the eyedrain. We were a tight well trained and disciplined fighting force,
[00:45:34] and we had one thing George Custer did not have. Fire support.
[00:45:39] Fire support plays. It's beyond critical. I mean, they would not have been able to do this
[00:45:48] without fire support. And that's the one thing that's going to save them. I mean,
[00:45:54] obviously the discipline, obviously the training, obviously the bravery, but the fire support is
[00:46:00] a gift. Back to the book. Sergeant Steve Hanson was behind into the right of Lieutenant
[00:46:08] Tafft. He says, we moved at a trot across the open grass toward the tree line and heard fire up
[00:46:15] on the finger to the west where we were headed. My radio operator friend, specialist for
[00:46:21] Ray Turner, Ray Tanner, and I cross the streambed. Captain Nodal's party and the two other
[00:46:28] Patoons were off to the right. Lieutenant Tafft was well-forward as we crossed over into the trees.
[00:46:33] Sergeant first class Lorenzo Nathan Ray Turner and I were close maybe 10 yards behind.
[00:46:42] We were moving fast, specialist. Speck four, Pete Winter was near me.
[00:46:48] We ran into a wall of lead. Every man in the lead squad was shot.
[00:46:54] From the time we got the order to move to the time where men were dying was only five minutes.
[00:46:59] The enemy were very close to us and overran some of our dead. The firing was heavy.
[00:47:06] Sergeant Nathan pulled us back out of the woods of the streambed.
[00:47:13] Bob Hayes in Bob Tafft's radio operator recalls Lieutenant Tafft got out in front of me. I was off to his left.
[00:47:19] He had his radio handset in his left hand, connected to the radio on my back with that
[00:47:25] fluxed flexible rubber wire. It got tight and I pulled back on the lieutenant and hollered.
[00:47:30] We're getting off line. He glanced back at me, turned back to his front and took four more steps.
[00:47:36] Then he fired two shots at something I couldn't see what. Then he dropped face down on the ground.
[00:47:42] Lieutenant Tafft was hit. I didn't realize how bad until I rolled him over.
[00:47:47] He was shot in the throat and the rounded ricochet down and come out his left side.
[00:47:51] He was dead and it was difficult to roll him over. Even though he was a slightly built man.
[00:47:58] Captain Nadal says the enemy on the mountain started moving down rapidly in somewhat
[00:48:03] uncoordinated attacks. They streamed down the hill and down the creek bed. The enemy knew the area.
[00:48:09] They came down the best cover route. The third platoon was heavily engaged in the volume of firing
[00:48:16] reached a crescendo on my left at this time I lost contact with Tafft platoon. In the center of
[00:48:23] that fury, Bob Hayes and struggled and rolled his dead platoon leader over. He was gone and there
[00:48:30] was nothing we could do. The first thing I thought of was what they taught me. Never let the enemy
[00:48:36] get his hands on a map or the signals codebook. I got those from Lieutenant Tafft and was kneeling
[00:48:41] over to try and pull his body back. That's when my radio was hit and the shrapnel from the radio
[00:48:46] hit me in the back of the head. It didn't really hurt all the sun. I was just laying face down
[00:48:51] on the ground next to Lieutenant Tafft. I felt something running down my tree,
[00:48:56] my down my neck reached back and came out with a handful of blood. Carmen Miscelli was on Hayes
[00:49:03] and right. We knew what had happened. The word passed fast. They got Lieutenant Tafft. Again,
[00:49:11] we're talking within minutes of these guys arriving. This is going completely sideways.
[00:49:19] Back to the book, Captain Nadal out of radio contact with Tafft platoon moved toward the
[00:49:24] furious firing on his left flank to find out what was happening. Nadal says,
[00:49:29] my radio operator Sergeant Jack E. Gell, the company communications chief who had volunteered
[00:49:35] to carry one of my two radios ran with me out from out of the creek bed and into the open area
[00:49:41] toward Tafft's position. We ran into Sergeant Nathan and I asked him what was happening.
[00:49:46] He said the platoon had been attacked on the left flank. The left squad had taken a number of
[00:49:51] casualties and had pulled back out of the creek bed, refusing their left enemy, their left
[00:49:55] flank to the enemy. Nathan said Tafft had been hit and was left in the creek bed. That made
[00:50:01] me angry. We had been taught never to leave any wounded or dead on the battlefield. Sergeant Gell and I
[00:50:07] crawled forward of our lines to that creek bed where the enemy were to find Tafft. We came
[00:50:12] under grenade attack from the west side of the creek bed but had some cover from a few trees.
[00:50:17] We located Tafft dead. While bringing him back, we saw another soldier who had been left behind.
[00:50:22] After leaving Tafft's body with his platoon, Gell and I went back again and we picked up the other man.
[00:50:36] Back to the book, Dennis Deal remembers. We moved online for about a hundred or 150 yards
[00:50:43] before the volume of firing forced us to stop. We were taking too many casualties.
[00:50:49] I radioed Harix Platoon and said, I think we're getting close to you. Shoot one round off, wait
[00:50:55] to the count of three and shoot two more. The radio man or whoever was on the radio did that.
[00:51:00] So we had a pretty good fix on where he was. We got up and started the assault again. We went
[00:51:05] about 10 yards and the whole thing just blew in our faces. Blue up in our faces. The enemy
[00:51:11] had infiltrated between Harix Platoon and us and now we're starting to come behind us. So that
[00:51:17] Platoon that had gotten separated, this element with Dennis Deal was going out to try and get
[00:51:23] contact with them and bring them back inside the perimeter. They meet. They they they're assaulting.
[00:51:27] They go all hundred yards, 150 yards and they start getting mowed down. And now they realize that
[00:51:34] in between they've got bad guys in between where Harix Platoon is and where the rest of the
[00:51:39] perimeter is set up. Because they do have kind of a rough perimeter on this landing zone and the
[00:51:44] landing zone. Apologize for not explaining this. I mean in order to bring in Helicopters in the
[00:51:48] junk, we need some open space. So the landing zone, LZX, as an area where there's not much of
[00:51:52] foliage for whatever reason. And so that's where they've kind of consolidated their forces. Only
[00:51:57] because they can't go anywhere else. They hit the ground. They start getting shot at. So now they're
[00:52:01] setting up a what's called a perimeter. And obviously Harix Platoon is outside the perimeter.
[00:52:07] Back to the book. Lieutenant Deal adds that he and another he and the other two
[00:52:13] platoon leaders now began planning yet another attempt to break through and rescue Harix men.
[00:52:18] Leaders were running back and forth coordinating when all of a sudden firing began.
[00:52:23] The lull dissipated quickly. It was at this time my weapon squad leader Sergeant Curry,
[00:52:28] the chief was killed. His last words were those bastards are trying to get me. He was caught
[00:52:35] rolling around on the ground. Later on as my men were carrying him back, I had them put him down
[00:52:42] and turn his face toward me and looked at him. I could not conceive of the chief being dead.
[00:52:50] Staff Sergeant Wilbur Curry, Jr. of Buffalo, New York, was 35 years old.
[00:52:55] Haric and the other two squads were holding precariously to the small,
[00:53:07] no near the bottom of the finger. Savage, so a kid named Savage is out there with Harix Platoon.
[00:53:16] And he ends up running a lot of stuff and you'll find that out. But here he start here in a
[00:53:21] little bit of him right now. Savage teamed up with McKenry Squad, which was pinned to the ground.
[00:53:26] Haric was with that squad. Sergeant Zaylan Squad was off to the left rear. Savage checked on his
[00:53:32] men when he tied up with McKenry. He knew that spec 4 Robert M. Hill M79 Grenadier was no longer
[00:53:41] with them. He got killed in there somewhere. He had his M79 and a 45 caliber pistol and he was firing
[00:53:48] both at the same time. The 23-year-old Hill came from Starkville, Mississippi.
[00:53:56] And here's Sergeant Savage talking, explaining some more, back to the book. The enemy was
[00:54:01] past the machine gun before it ever quit firing. I could hear Sergeant Hurdle down there cursing,
[00:54:06] even over the firefight I heard him. He was famous for that. Motherfucker, son of a bitch,
[00:54:11] I could hear him hollering that down there when they threw, then they threw grenades on him.
[00:54:16] Hurdle 36 was from Washington, DC. Baron bomb 24 was a native of New York City.
[00:54:24] PFC Donald Roddy 22 hailed from Ann Arbor, Michigan. The three of them died in a hail
[00:54:32] of rifle fire and enemy grenades. The enemy down below turns Sergeant Hurdle's M60 around and
[00:54:42] begin using it on the Americans on the knowle. So that causes all kinds of confusion.
[00:54:49] You can tell the difference between different types of weapons by the way they sound when they shoot
[00:54:54] and when someone starts shooting a friendly weapon at you, it's caused a lot of confusion and the M60
[00:55:00] is a beast of a weapon. Belt fed machine gun and it's when I got in the seal teams that was the
[00:55:07] machine gun that we used was the M60 machine gun and it's a devastating weapon. Back to the book,
[00:55:14] the enemy more than 150 strong now attacked the knowle from three sides, north, south and east.
[00:55:21] And soldiers on both sides were falling. Lieutenant Haric ran from Trooper to Trooper trying to get
[00:55:26] a defense organized and enemy volley cut across Haric, his radio operator specialist,
[00:55:32] John R. Stewart and the artillery recon sergeant, sergeant, John T. Brown wounding all three.
[00:55:42] Haric and Brown seriously. Stewart took a single bullet through the leg. Haric radioed
[00:55:47] Bravo Company commander John Harin and told him he had been hit and he was turning command
[00:55:51] of the platoon over to sergeant Carl Palmer. Haric then gave explicit instructions to his men to
[00:55:57] destroy the singles codes, redistribute the ammunition and call an artillery and if possible,
[00:56:02] make a break for it. Harin says, I give Haric all the credit in the world for pulling that
[00:56:08] platoon together so they could make their stand. So should we all? Savage and Zalin
[00:56:16] paint a clear picture of a green, young lieutenant who did a superb job in a hail storm of
[00:56:21] enemy fire. His platoon stopped the very large north Vietnamese unit clearly heading down to
[00:56:27] join the attack on the landing zone. I long ago concluded that the very presence of this platoon
[00:56:33] so far to the northwest confused the enemy commander as to exactly where we were and how far we
[00:56:38] had penetrated in all directions and thus helped us as the battle built. Sergeant Savage recounts
[00:56:46] the final moments of Henry Haric's life. He was lying beside me on the hill and he said,
[00:56:50] if I have to die, I'm glad to give my life for my country. I remember him saying that
[00:56:56] he was going into shock, hidden the hip and in a lot of pain. He didn't live long. He died early
[00:57:03] in the fight next to a little brush pile. Spectre four Charles R. Lowe's 22 of Mobile Ammo,
[00:57:12] Alabama was the new platoon medic. He joined the platoon only a few days earlier. Lieutenant Haric
[00:57:18] was kneeling when hit. He had a bullet wound to the hip. He told me to go help the other wounded.
[00:57:28] Yeah, we have to remember that this guy Haric is like 22, 23-year-old fresh out of
[00:57:37] him. He made that majorly offensive move and pursued and got out of touch. But how more is saying,
[00:57:48] hey, that confused the enemy. Even though it confused the friendly suit, it confused the enemy
[00:57:51] as well. So there's some good that came out of it. Back to the book, Sergeant Ruben Thomas was
[00:58:00] struck by a bullet above his heart that exited under his left arm, bleeding heavily. He grabbed
[00:58:04] a rifle and fought on. The encircled infantrymen of the lost platoon refused to give up.
[00:58:12] Here's what Specialist Dorman said. We were all on the ground now and if you moved, you got hit.
[00:58:18] Our training really showed then we shifted into defense of positions. We had five men killed
[00:58:23] in 25 minutes. Then all of a sudden they tried to mass assault from three directions rushing
[00:58:27] from Bush to Bush laying fire on us. We put our M-16s on full automatic and killed most of them.
[00:58:36] Another guy named Galen, Bung, Bung, Bung, Bungum said, we gathered up all the full magazines.
[00:58:43] We could find and stack them up in front of us. There was no way we could dig a foxhole. The handle
[00:58:47] was blown off my entrenching tool and one of my canteen said, I'll hold blown through it.
[00:58:52] The fire was so heavy that if you tried to raise up to dig you were dead,
[00:58:56] there was death and destruction all around. By now, eight men of the platoon's 29 have been killed
[00:59:03] in action. Another 13 were wounded. The 25 yard wide perimeter was a circle of pain, death,
[00:59:10] fear and raw courage. Medic Charlie Lowe's crawled from men to men throughout the raging firefight
[00:59:18] doing his best to patch the wounded with limited supplies and his medical pack. Although he himself
[00:59:24] was wounded twice, Lowe's never slowed his pace. He would keep all 13 of the wounded alive for the
[00:59:31] for 26 long, harrowing hours. Lowe says, on several occasions, I had to stand or sit up to treat
[00:59:39] the wounded. Each time the VC fired heavily at me. Lowe's used his 45 and M-16 rifle to help
[00:59:48] defend his patients. Getting attacked from three sides, 13 wounded, eight dead, was it nine dead?
[01:00:04] Unbelievable. Back to the book, command had passed. So this is talking about,
[01:00:11] if the leader gets killed, it goes to the next person, that person gets killed, it goes to the next
[01:00:15] person. So here's what's happening in harrowing spatoon, the lost platoon. Back to the book, command
[01:00:21] had passed from Lieutenant Henry Harric to Sergeant Carl Palmer to Sergeant Robert Stokes and each
[01:00:26] in turn died fighting. Now it was the turn of Buck Sergeant Ernie Savage. Sergeant Savage came
[01:00:33] up on the radio, Captain Harrow calls. He said, Harrowing sparring, Stokes were dead to give him
[01:00:39] more artillery and he would direct it in as close as possible. We could never establish the platoon's
[01:00:45] exact position. But Lieutenant Riddle could have just fire on Savage's sensing and he began to do that.
[01:00:53] The extraordinary unyielding resistance that the dozen or so effective fighter fighters were
[01:00:58] putting up plus the artillery barrages that Ernie Savage was bringing down, finally beat off the
[01:01:04] heavy enemy attack. Ernie Savage and his small band honkered down determined to hold their ground
[01:01:11] to the end. Yeah, these guys are calling in to danger. Of course, if we were talking about danger
[01:01:17] close, no, no. Okay, danger close is when you're calling in fire support and you want it to be
[01:01:25] very close to where you are and you on the ground have to take responsibility for it. So in
[01:01:30] other words, the person whether it's artillery, whether it's aircraft, you have to call in, say,
[01:01:35] danger close. Yes, send the rounds. We know it's close. It's we take responsibility for what happens.
[01:01:44] And by the way, going back to the book as this fifth left lift of the day roared out at
[01:01:49] treetop level, the landing zone was suddenly turned red hot. So they haven't even landed
[01:01:53] everyone yet. But this is going on. They haven't even gotten everyone on the landing zone yet.
[01:01:56] Yeah. And here's Krandell talking and again, he's the pilot, unbelievably heroic pilot and
[01:02:05] commanding officer of this helicopter unit. Says Krandell, as I was flaring out to touch down,
[01:02:11] we started receiving heavy, heavy ground fire. I had three dead and three wounded on my board,
[01:02:16] bird. The wounded included my crew chief who had been hit in the throat. When we landed, we saw
[01:02:22] that every bullet had struck the wounded in the head or neck, excellent markmanship by the other side
[01:02:28] and not a happy thought for a helicopter pilot to say the least. So the enemies taken headshots.
[01:02:36] Back to the book with Krandell, flying serpent yellow three were chief war officers,
[01:02:42] Ricardo J. Lambardo 34 of Hartford, Connecticut and Alex S. Pop, jekyll 43 of Seattle, Washington.
[01:02:50] Pop jekyll was a father of nine children during World War II at the age of 20. He had flown
[01:02:55] beat 24s out of England and beat 29s during the post were years until he left the service in
[01:03:01] 1950. Pop jekyll reinlisted in 1952 and had been flying helicopters since 1963.
[01:03:08] Pop jekyll keyed the inner comm and said, I flew 31 missions in B-24s in World War II. And that's
[01:03:15] the closest I've ever come to swallowing my balls. So these landing zones were crazy with these helicopter
[01:03:23] pilots flying in there. It's your gear. You're getting there as fast as you can, but there's
[01:03:30] not much you can do. You bring it in as fast as you can. You try and get loaded up quick and you try and
[01:03:34] take off, but it's not like you're able to shoot back. Even once you're on the ground, your machine
[01:03:38] gunners in the hewies, they can't shoot anymore because you don't know where the friendly troops are.
[01:03:41] So you're a sitting duck, literally a sitting duck. And these pilots going in time and time and
[01:03:47] time again. This goes to the Delta Company commander La Febra. And here's what's going on.
[01:03:55] La Febra, seriously wounded was phasing, was fading fast. I lost a lot of blood. I could see
[01:04:02] people shooting, but I couldn't hear any sounds anymore. I told John here and somebody had to take
[01:04:07] over. I called again Colonel Moore and told him that I was going to turn over the company to
[01:04:11] sergeant Gonzalez. Then the medic arrived to bendage my wound shortly after. I remember someone
[01:04:18] putting me in a poncho and hauling me over to the area of the battalion command post. When I saw
[01:04:22] Lieutenant Aboda again, later we never did talk much about it. It was just too damn close to the real
[01:04:28] thing. Ray La Febra and his handful of Delta Company troopers had unknowingly joined the
[01:04:36] Alpha Company flight at a crucial moment. About 30 North Vietnamese were flanking the dolls men on their
[01:04:41] left and Captain La Febra La Febra's party ran smack into them and killed most of them.
[01:04:47] The dolls men dispatched the rest. Unknown to La Febra, sergeant Gonzalez had been hit in the face by
[01:04:54] an enemy bullet. Gonzalez simply said Roger, when La Febra told him he was now in command. And
[01:04:59] for the next hour and a half he ran Delta Company. Sergeant Gonzalez shot in the face, no factor.
[01:05:10] I'm going to take leadership right now. Going back to the book, it was during all this
[01:05:20] horror that Beck remembers fear coming over him. And here's Beck talking. While Doc Knall was here
[01:05:25] with me working on Russell, fear, real fear hit me. Fear like I had never known before.
[01:05:31] Fear comes and once you recognize it and accept that it passes just as fast as it comes and
[01:05:35] you really don't have to think about it anymore. You just do what you have to do, but you learn
[01:05:40] the real meaning of fear and life and death. For the next two hours I was alone on that gun
[01:05:47] shooting the enemy. Any minute we're shooting at me and bullets were hitting the ground beside
[01:05:51] me and cracking above my head. They were attacking me and I fired as fast as I could in long bursts.
[01:05:57] My M60 was cooking. I had to take a crap and a leak bad so I pulled my pants down while laying
[01:06:03] on my side and did it on my side, taking fire at the time. Now we're going back to how more talking
[01:06:10] here. From my command post at the termite hill, the enemy were clearly visible 100 yards to the
[01:06:16] south. They were damned good soldiers. Used covered concealment to perfection and were deadly shots.
[01:06:23] Most of my dead and wounded soldiers have been shot in the head or upper body. The North Vietnamese
[01:06:28] paid particular attention to radio operators and leaders. They did not appear to have radio
[01:06:32] as themselves. They controlled their men by shouts, waves, pointing, whistles and sometimes bugle calls.
[01:06:39] It was 245 p.m. All three of my rifle companies were heavily engaged. We had lost the use
[01:06:47] of the larger clearing for the helicopter landings. Wounded were streaming into the command post
[01:06:52] aid station. We were in a desperate fix and I was worried that it could become even more desperate.
[01:06:57] By now I believe we were fighting at least two people's armies battalions turns out it was
[01:07:02] three. They were very determined to wipe us out but a major difference between lieutenant colon
[01:07:07] when who on of the people's army of Vietnam and lieutenant Colonel Howmore of the first cavalry
[01:07:13] division was that I had major fire support and he didn't air force captain Bruce Wallace
[01:07:19] and his fellow A1E Skyrader pilots as well as the jet fighter bombers from all three services
[01:07:25] help provide that edge. Flying 50 sordys and close air support that Sunday afternoon.
[01:07:30] He says Wallace the importance of airplanes and a vulgar brawl is to be down among the palm trees
[01:07:37] with the troops putting ordinance on the ground at the exact time in the precise place that the
[01:07:41] ground command needs it. And then so they're in these old school skyraders but then captain
[01:07:50] Wallace is talking about what it was like watching the helicopters back to the book with it. It
[01:07:56] was different with a Huey to watch four eight of them at a time maneuvering up and down and
[01:08:01] laterally and even backwards boggles the fighter pilots mind. Those guys swarmed a target like
[01:08:08] bees over honey. I had to hand it to those Huey guys. They really got down there in the trees with the
[01:08:13] troops. Then this is how Maher howmore talking again the field artillery what we called
[01:08:20] two bartillery to distinguish how it's your folks from the helicopter rocket folks proudly
[01:08:25] calls itself the king of battle. The brave cannon cockers in Elzee falcon went without sleep for
[01:08:31] three days and three nights to help keep us surrounded by a wall of steel. Those two batteries,
[01:08:37] 12 guns fired more than 4,000 rounds of high explosive shells on the first day alone.
[01:08:45] Says Barker on the first afternoon both batteries fired for effect directly on target for
[01:08:50] five straight hours. One of Bruce Krandels Huey's slick pilots captain Paul Winkle touched down at
[01:08:57] Falcon briefly that at first afternoon and was astounded by what he saw. There were stacks of shell
[01:09:02] casings at least 10 feet high and exhausted gun crews. They had fired for effect for three state
[01:09:08] straight hours by then without even pausing to level the bubbles. One tube was burned out to
[01:09:15] be busted hydraulics. That's some shooting. No matter how bad things got for Americans fighting
[01:09:21] for their lives on the x-ray perimeter we could look out to the scrub brush in every direction
[01:09:26] into that seething inferno of exploding artillery shells 2.75 inch rockets,
[01:09:32] napalm canisters 250 in 500 pound bombs and 20 millimeter cannon fire and thank God
[01:09:39] and our lucky stars that we didn't have to walk through that to get to work.
[01:09:46] Yeah, so like I said the the close air support is absolutely or the close air support the
[01:09:52] artillery is absolutely what and that's been happened many on many occasions for for American soldiers,
[01:10:01] sailors, marines, overseas fighting, you know the air force, the navy pilots, the marine
[01:10:08] core fire pilots coming in and actually the guy on the ground controlling these guys is a
[01:10:11] air force pilot as well. So having that air superiority is a wonderful thing.
[01:10:20] Now speaking of the avianers going back to the helicopters chapter nine in this book is called
[01:10:25] brave avianers and it again is sitting ducks coming in as crazy to read about.
[01:10:33] Going back to the book over the 20 months of air mobile training a bond had been welled
[01:10:36] between the infantry and their rides that Huey helicopter pilots and crewmen.
[01:10:41] Now the strength of that bond would be tested in the hottest of fires. If the air bridge failed,
[01:10:46] so the the meaning of the helicopter's ability to get there if the air bridge failed,
[01:10:51] the embattled men of first battalion seventh calf would certainly die in much the same way
[01:10:56] George Armstrong Custard's cavalry men died at Little Big Horn. Cut off surrounded by numerically
[01:11:02] superior forces overrun and butchered to the last man. I asked Bruce Kent, Krandels,
[01:11:09] brave air crews of Alpha Company, the 229th Aviation Battalion for the last measure of
[01:11:15] devotion for service far beyond the limits of duty and mission and they came through as I knew they would.
[01:11:24] And so so again you're basically asking these guys to get shot down every time they fly in and
[01:11:29] this is interesting. Back to the book, this was early in the war and the Metavac commanders had
[01:11:34] decreed that their birds would not land in hot landing zones. In other words, that they would not
[01:11:40] go where they would need it when they were needed the most. Even before I asked Bruce Krandel
[01:11:46] at Art Decided to begin doing everything that had to be done.
[01:11:50] Staying with it, Krandel now dropped as Huey loaded with casualties onto the red dirt strip.
[01:11:59] And this is Krandel talking. When we hit the ground, we were met by medics and infantry troops
[01:12:05] still waiting to be lifted into X-ray. So that's another crazy thing to think about. You're
[01:12:11] unloading wounded men and you're getting on that aircraft that's going to go pick up more
[01:12:16] wounded men but you're going to stay. So the troops that aren't on the ground yet think about what's
[01:12:20] going through their minds. They remove the dead and you want to know what's going through their minds?
[01:12:26] I actually know what's going through their minds. They're going most of those guys are saying,
[01:12:29] get me in there as fast as you can. That's what they're saying. These are their brothers out there.
[01:12:37] Back to the book, they removed the dead and wounded from my bird and this act is engraved in my
[01:12:41] mind deeper than any other experience in my two tours in Vietnam. A huge black and listed man,
[01:12:47] clad only in shorts and boots, hands bigger than dinner plates reaching to my helicopter to pick up
[01:12:52] one of the dead white soldiers. He had tears streaming down his face and he tenderly created
[01:12:58] cradle that dead soldier to his chest as he walked slowly from the aircraft to the medical station.
[01:13:04] I never knew if the man he picked up was his buddy or not. I suspect not. His grief was for a
[01:13:11] fallen comrades and for the agony that violent death brings to those who witnessed it.
[01:13:22] More about the helicopters back to the book, one of the ships brought in Larry Litton,
[01:13:28] who immediately took over command of Delta Company from the wounded sergeant Gonzalez. I told him
[01:13:33] to add the four Delta mortars to consolidate mortar position set up by Captain Edwards and to control
[01:13:40] all seven mortars from a single fire direction center. Principal direction of fire was towards
[01:13:45] Alphan Bravo companies and the mortar man would also have the mission of defending our two
[01:13:50] chopper landing zones from the east. There is no highlight that is even though I talk about
[01:13:54] decentralized command all the time and how more starts off the book talking about how important
[01:13:59] decentralized command is. He's right now in that moment he's centralizing command. He needs to
[01:14:05] get control of all the mortars so that they can use it correctly. Again, that's why it's the
[01:14:10] dichotomy of leadership because you can, there's times when you most of the time you
[01:14:15] decentralized but you can actually decentralize too much. If you don't coordinate the efforts of
[01:14:18] these mortars, you're not going to use them effectively. So he centralizes the command of the
[01:14:21] mortars, brings them all into one location and starts using them effectively. So that's a good note
[01:14:26] for leaders to remember. Now here's another platoon commander, Joe Morm.
[01:14:34] Joe Morm describes the situation in his platoon. My platoon medic was a short timer and did not
[01:14:40] accompany us to Chu Pong. Sergeant first class George McCulley, the platoon sergeant,
[01:14:47] carried the aid kit and we planned to use staff sergeant Thomas Toliver as our medic
[01:14:53] when the need arose. He had been a combat medic during the Korean War and was well qualified.
[01:14:58] Still, we did not have enough medics to go around so we sent down specialist booknight and
[01:15:05] specialist Charles Lowe's a senior medical aid man as platoon medics to Bravo Company.
[01:15:11] Now Calvin booknight still alive but mortally wounded was laid gently on the ground in his blood-filled
[01:15:18] rubber poncho before the medical platoon sergeant. Sergeant first class Keaton, his friend and
[01:15:24] Comrade for the last two years and here's what Keaton says. Booknight wasn't dead. He was shot right
[01:15:31] between the soldiers, right directly between the soldiers. He reached up and took my hand and said,
[01:15:37] serge, I didn't make it. We got an IV started on him and put a pressure bandage over his back wound.
[01:15:45] There was just no hope. We were able to get him on an evac ship but he died.
[01:15:50] The scriptures say that there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends.
[01:15:58] This is what Calvin Booknight did in that fire-filled jungle. He sheltered the wounded
[01:16:05] he was treating with his own body, his back to the enemy guns completely vulnerable.
[01:16:24] And except for the predicament of sergeant savage and the cutoff platoon, I was feeling a good deal better about the situation. We had all of our men in.
[01:16:34] Massive firepower had been deployed. A company reinforcements was on the way. Our two chopper lifeline landing
[01:16:40] Zelean was secure. Most of our wounded were either evacuated or awaiting evacuation and we were holding tough.
[01:16:46] I was determined to make one more attempt to rescue sergeant savage and all of us wounded and dead on the slope.
[01:16:54] I ordered Alphan Bravo companies to evacuate their casualties with draw out of close contact with the enemy
[01:17:00] under covering fires and prepared a launch, a coordinated attack supported by heavy prepared to where
[01:17:04] artillery fire to reach the cutoff platoon. I was tortured by the fate of those men and the need to rescue them.
[01:17:12] And chapter 10 is called Fix Bay Annets, which can give you an indication. Back to the book,
[01:17:22] Alphan Bravo companies, the first units to land had now been locked in violent battle for more than two hours.
[01:17:27] It had suffered no small number of casualties, especially among the sergeants and radio operators.
[01:17:32] And it shawed up most of their ammunition. That's another thing we got to remember.
[01:17:37] The movies they never run out of ammunition, right? Unless it makes some theatrical point.
[01:17:41] Yeah, plot point. Right. They also in the movies, there's plenty of water. Oh, they're in the jungle.
[01:17:46] They got plenty of water. These guys don't have water out here.
[01:17:51] No water, no food and now they're running out of ammunition. The two commanders,
[01:17:56] Tony Nadal and John Hare needed time to evacuate their dead and wounded to reorganize and regroup their
[01:18:01] diminished platoons and designate new leaders and to replenish stocks of ammunition and grenades.
[01:18:07] They would have 40 minutes to accomplish this. Then heavy artillery fire would laying down a head of them
[01:18:13] as they kicked off one more attempt to break through the ring of enemy troops and rescue the survivors of Lieutenant Henry
[01:18:19] Herrick's Secondal Tune. Meanwhile, help was on the way.
[01:18:24] Back at third brigade headquarters in the tea plantation, the orders were going out.
[01:18:28] Our sister Battalion, the second Battalion, seventh Cavalism formed that one of its companies Bravo
[01:18:33] was being detached and sent to landing X-ray, landing zone X-ray to reinforce. On arrival in X-ray,
[01:18:40] Bravo Company Second Battalion would come under my operational control for the duration of the fight.
[01:18:44] So there's two battalions. Each Battalion has a number of companies in them and they're going to
[01:18:49] take one of the companies from the other Battalion and let them come in as reinforcements.
[01:18:56] Captain Mairen, Dedurich, Bravo Company, troops won the toss hand down.
[01:19:05] So there was a bunch of different companies there and they were all doing various things.
[01:19:12] But Mairen Dedurich's company was actually, I think they were standing guard and they were
[01:19:19] closest by and so they were the ones that were going and it's probably a good thing because
[01:19:24] this guy, Captain Dedurich is a complete badass as we'll see.
[01:19:30] Bravo Company Second Battalion had good solid professional non-combs and its troops
[01:19:34] served together for some for a long time. It was a good rifle company, I was happy to get it.
[01:19:38] Captain Dedurich was 27 years old, a native born Ukrainian who'd come to the United States with
[01:19:43] his family in 1950. He was an ROTC graduate from St. Peter's College in Jersey City, New Jersey,
[01:19:50] and was commissioned in July of 1960. He completed Paratrooper in Ranger Training and had served
[01:19:56] tours in Germany and at Fort Pending. Dedurich was married and the father of two children.
[01:20:03] While our reinforcements were saddling up, my Alphan Bravo companies were about to launch
[01:20:08] their second attempt to break through Lieutenant Herrick's trap platoon. John Herron and Tony Nadal
[01:20:13] had pulled their men back to the dry creek bed during the law so they would begin the attack
[01:20:17] from there. Platoon Sergeant Troy Miller remembers the scene. Our morale was very high after the
[01:20:23] first contact before we went off. Before we went after the cutoff platoon, Captain DeDal got us together
[01:20:28] and said, man, we've got an American platoon cutoff out there and we're going after them.
[01:20:32] Their applies were, yeah, and let's go get them and Gary Owen and Gary Owen is the
[01:20:39] it's like the war cry of the cavalry. So and there's a comes from an old song and it's just a
[01:20:46] historical thing and that's why you read the book. You can find out about Gary Owen.
[01:20:51] It's their marching song. Back to the book, Captain Tony Nadal, Alphan Company, was the first
[01:20:59] man out of the creek bed leading first platoon in the assault. He recalls, we moved about 50 yards
[01:21:04] when we ran into the enemy force which had come down the mountain. I presume they were
[01:21:09] preparing to launch their attack about the time we launched ours. The fighting quickly became
[01:21:13] very vicious at close range. We took many casualties. Lieutenant Wayne Johnson, the first platoon
[01:21:20] leader was hit. At least three other squad leaders were also hit. Two of them killed.
[01:21:25] One while going forward in an attempt to rescue one of his soldiers against direct orders.
[01:21:30] Against direct orders, I'm going out to get my buddy.
[01:21:46] Tony Nadal had ordered his men to fix bayonets for the attack.
[01:21:51] Bill Beck firing a burst from his M60 machine gun to his right front was transfixed by
[01:21:56] what he saw just forward. A tall thin sergeant bayonetting of North Vietnamese in the chest.
[01:22:03] It was just like practice against the straw dummies. Forward thrust pull out move on. One, two,
[01:22:10] three. Captain Tony Nadal had four men in his command group as he charged into the brush.
[01:22:14] Two radio operators, sergeant Jack Gal in a 25-year-old native New Yorker and specialist.
[01:22:20] Spect Ford John Clark of Michigan plus the company's artillery forwarded observer lieutenant Timothy M. Blake
[01:22:27] 24 from Charleston, West Virginia and Blake's recon sergeant, sergeant Floyd L. Reed, Jr. 27 years
[01:22:34] old of half Arkansas. As they moved up, Nadal had the radio handset to his ear.
[01:22:42] A burst of any machine gun fire swept across the group. Sergeant Gal was hit and dropped
[01:22:46] without a sound. Nadal kept moving until the long black cord pulled back on him. He was looking
[01:22:56] around to see what was wrong. The same burst that killed Sergeant Gal and also killed Lieutenant
[01:23:00] Blake and struck Sergeant Reed who died shortly thereafter. Sergeant Sam Holman, native
[01:23:08] Sergeant Sam Holman, Jr. a native of Pennsylvania, Naut beside his mortally wounded buddy Jack Gal
[01:23:15] and heard him gasp. Tell my wife I love her. Tony Nadal had no time to mourn Jack Gal.
[01:23:30] A man he greatly respected. Too many other lives were in his hands. On the right flank
[01:23:39] of the Bravo line, Lieutenant Deal was now rolling around on the ground desperately trying to
[01:23:43] dodge a valley of machine gun slugs cutting through the grass all around him.
[01:23:48] Suddenly 25 yards away, Deal saw an American get up and charge forward while everyone around him was
[01:23:53] flat on his belly. Says Deal, I saw him throw a grenade behind a net, hell, an MP is weapon into it.
[01:23:59] Then he fell to his knees. I said to myself, please get up. Don't be hurt. I didn't know who it was.
[01:24:04] I couldn't make out the form. There was so much battlefield haze, dust and smoke.
[01:24:09] It was Lieutenant Joe Marm. He had spotted an enemy machine gun dug into a big termite hill.
[01:24:16] It was chewing up both Bravo company ploons after failing to knock it out with a law rocket
[01:24:22] and a grenade and a throne grenade he decided deal with it directly. He charged through the fire,
[01:24:29] tossed a hand grenade behind the hill and then cleaned up the survivors with his M16 rifle.
[01:24:33] The following day, Lieutenant Alde Vetti found a dead north Vietnamese officer and 11 enemy soldiers
[01:24:41] sprawled behind that termite mound. Says Deal, Joe Marm saved my life and the lives of many others.
[01:24:51] Lieutenant Marm staggered back to his position with a bullet wound to his jaw and neck.
[01:24:55] He joined a growing stream of walking wounded flowing back toward the battalion aid station,
[01:25:00] sergeant Keaton treated Marm's wound and one of Bruce Kondel's crandell's
[01:25:05] queues evacuated him to the rear. Within days Lieutenant Joe Marm was recuperating at Vali
[01:25:12] forj army hospital near his home in Pennsylvania. In December of 1966, Joe Marm reported to the
[01:25:18] Pentagon with a secretary of the army acting on behalf of President Lyndon Johnson, presented him
[01:25:25] with the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for Vali.
[01:25:41] Joe Marm's heroic action unfortunately failed to open the door to the Kondoff Platoon.
[01:25:46] Bravo Company had progressed only about 75 yards, Alpha Company a bit further.
[01:25:51] All through of Nadal's Platoon leaders were now either dead or wounded as were many of his non-combs.
[01:26:00] Worst yet, Alpha Company's first platoon had gotten out ahead of the two other and was heavily
[01:26:05] engaged with perhaps a hundred enemy. Some of the north, some of the Alpha Troopers bypassed the
[01:26:11] enemy in dense brush and those north Vietnamese had opened up on them. Not only were we unable to
[01:26:18] punch through the rescue herics platoon, we were now in danger of having another platoon cut off.
[01:26:26] And again, I apologize. It's one of the things I should have talked about was the way this terrain is set up.
[01:26:31] It's that there's a lot of grass. Like I would say waist high grass, maybe a little bit taller than
[01:26:35] waist high. And if you take cover, you can't say anything. Because you're in grass. If you stand up,
[01:26:42] you get shot. So it's a terrible catch-22. Do you stand up so you can see what's happening and see where
[01:26:50] people are going and see where the enemy is maneuvering? And you might get shot or do you lay down?
[01:26:53] Were you take cover? Do you have a better chance of not getting shot? But you can't see anything.
[01:26:58] Captain Deeric ran up to me and shouted, Gary Owen's sir. Now this is this is awesome. So
[01:27:03] Captain Deeric is the guy that's coming into. He's from 27. He's coming in as reinforcements.
[01:27:09] And like I said, Gary Owen is like their war cry. So here we go. Captain Deeric ran up to me and shout,
[01:27:15] so this is how more it's awoken. He's on this embroiled war zone. Been taken so many casualties.
[01:27:22] And here's what how more it says. Captain Deeric ran up to me and shouted, Gary Owen's sir.
[01:27:26] Captain Deeric and Bravo Company, Second Battalion, 7th Cavry, 120 men strong reporting for duty.
[01:27:33] His eyes sparkled with excitement and the challenge of the situation. I told Deeric to
[01:27:37] assemble his men in a company's 30 yards north west of the command post of act as a
[01:27:41] batalion reserve for the time being. That's awesome. Captain reporting, Gary Owen, Gary Owen's sir.
[01:27:52] Captain Deeric says, the flight continued for another 20 or 30 minutes with neither side
[01:27:57] making headway. It was getting dark and casualties mounted at night. Decided we were not
[01:28:00] going to be able to break through. I called Colonel Moore and asked for permission to pull back.
[01:28:04] That here's what Colonel Moore says with night approaching, there was no real choice. I did not
[01:28:10] want to get into the hours of darkness with my battalion fragmented with the companies in capable
[01:28:14] of mutual support and subject to defeat in detail.
[01:28:21] Word came over the radio and this and so now this is a specialist.
[01:28:27] Gailum bungam who's out there with the lost platoon. Back to the book Word came over the
[01:28:32] radio that we would have to hang on until morning. I could not believe what I heard. I thought
[01:28:37] there was no way we would be able to do that. Others thought the same thing. Clark,
[01:28:42] Kek, asking me, do you think we'll make it? I didn't know. But I said we have to pray and pray hard.
[01:28:50] It was a big question mark in all of our minds. We had to keep our cool and bear down.
[01:28:55] Now we're here from Al Morrigan. I now considered the toll this day's fighting had taken.
[01:29:02] Tonya and Dados, Alpha Company had lost three officers and 31 enlisted men killed or wounded.
[01:29:10] And now reported effective strength of two officers in 84 enlisted.
[01:29:16] John Herron's Bravo Company had lost one officer and 46 enlisted men killed or wounded. It was
[01:29:22] down to four officers and 68 enlisted men with one platoon Herrix trapped outside the perimeter.
[01:29:30] For almost eight hours I had been involved in the minute to minute direction of the battle.
[01:29:35] Now I wanted to personally walk the perimeter and check the preparations for what promised to be
[01:29:40] a tough night and another tough day tomorrow. Just before dark, sergeant made it your plumbly
[01:29:47] and I broke away from the command post and set out to check the perimeter talking with the
[01:29:51] troopers and getting for a feel for the situation on the ground. What concerned me the most
[01:29:56] was the morale of the men. How well the companies were tied in. Their defensive fire plans
[01:30:01] and the situation with ammunition and water supplies. Moral among the men was high. Although
[01:30:08] there was understandable grief over the friends we had lost. The men and I talked.
[01:30:16] The men I talked with realized that we were facing a fierce determined enemy.
[01:30:20] But he failed to break through our lines. They knew the fight was an over. I heard weary soldiers
[01:30:26] saying things like, we'll get them sir and they won't get through us sir. They're fighting spirit
[01:30:32] had not dimmed and they made me proud and humble. In every one of my companies that had landed in
[01:30:40] this place this morning there were 15 to 20 soldiers who had less than two weeks left to go in the army.
[01:30:47] Some of those men now lay dead, wrapped in ponchos near my command post. The rest of them were
[01:30:54] out on that perimeter standing shoulder to shoulder with their buddies ready to continue the fight.
[01:31:10] 37 miles to the northeast. Bruce Crandell and big Ed Freeman friendly shut down their
[01:31:16] hewies at a large, at a huge helicopter pad nicknamed the turkey form outside the wire at Camp Hollow Way.
[01:31:23] They had been flying non-stop since 6 a.m. It was after 10 p.m. when Crandell shut down and tried to get
[01:31:30] out of the aircraft. That is when the day's activities caught up with me. My legs gave out as I stepped
[01:31:37] on the skid and I fell to the ground for the next few minutes I vomited. I was very embarrassed
[01:31:43] and it took some time to regain my composure. Someone slipped me a bottle of Konya into my hand
[01:31:50] and I took a big slug. It was a waste of good booze. It came up as fast as it went down.
[01:31:58] I finally quit shaking and made it to the operations tent to recap the day and plan the next.
[01:32:03] The aviation unit had quite a day. We had not suffered a single fatality and we had not left the mission
[01:32:11] undone. When our infantry brothers called, we hauled the standard for combat assaults with helicopters
[01:32:19] had been set on this day. I wondered about tomorrow. Would it be worse? I wasn't sure I could handle
[01:32:28] another day like today. Then again, I thought about the troops in X-ray. Then the choice was not mine to make.
[01:32:49] Then here's how more talking about the wounded back the book, all of the wounded, all of our
[01:32:55] wounded flown out of X-ray by Krandels Huey's ended up at Charlie Company, 15th medical battalion,
[01:33:01] first cavalry division, which was temporarily set up in tents that camp all the way.
[01:33:06] The executive officer of Charlie Med was Captain George H. Kelling 28 from St. Louis, Missouri.
[01:33:13] Charlie Med's five surgeons tried to stabilize the soldiers coming off the helicopters.
[01:33:18] The treatment we provided says Kelling was designed to keep the blood flowing through the patient
[01:33:22] system until he could be gotten to a hospital, which had the personnel and equipment to perform
[01:33:26] definitive surgery. Charlie Med's doctors tied off perforated blood vessels to stop the hemorrhaging
[01:33:34] and then pumped in whole blood. Kelling recalls that many of the casualties were rapidly bleeding
[01:33:41] to death, so it was a race against time to get blood into the soldier faster than he was losing it.
[01:33:46] Even while the surgeons were trying to tie off bleeders, we threw caution to the wind and gave
[01:33:52] a patient four cut downs, which is an intervenous tube tied into blood vessels, with four
[01:33:57] corpsmen squeezing the blood bags as hard as they could. It was not unusual for the patient to
[01:34:03] shiver and quake and lose body temperature from the rapid transveusion of so much cold blood.
[01:34:10] Both the alternative, what's a let them die? So they're giving blood directly into the veins
[01:34:17] and they've got corpsmen standing there, squeezing the bags of blood to try and keep people alive.
[01:34:29] Back on LZ, here's Sergeant John Stedellan talk and they probed us all night long. We had a few
[01:34:36] men wounded. I'd never been in a situation like that. When they would come at us, they would come
[01:34:41] screaming and we could hear bugles. As darkness fell, savages on the radio with Lieutenant Bill
[01:34:54] Riddle, Herons artillery forward observer, walking the high explosive barrage is all around the
[01:35:01] cut off platoon. All of us were lifted off the ground by the impact and covered with dirt and branches,
[01:35:08] bung them recalls. Savage told them on the radio that was right where we want them. We
[01:35:15] hauled it was too close but I looked back where those first rounds hit and saw three men running
[01:35:20] towards us. We opened up. They must have been crawling up on our position when that artillery
[01:35:25] came in. They would sneak in as close as ten yards or less and many times just stand up to laugh at us.
[01:35:31] We would mow them down. It begins to work on your mind. What are they laughing at? I couldn't believe it.
[01:35:43] The North Vietnamese launched three separate attacks to keep the pressure on the trap
[01:35:47] to Second Platoon during that long night. Each time sending about 50 men against the Americans
[01:35:52] in each time being beaten back by artillery and rifle fire. Savage had seven men on hurt and
[01:35:58] 13 wounded. Nine others were dead. Some of the lost platoon's wounded continued to fight
[01:36:04] including Sergeant Ruben Thompson who had been shot through the chest. The platoon later
[01:36:11] heard still another large enemy force moving down the northern trail toward X-ray and again
[01:36:17] brought artillery fire down on them. This was followed by a flurry of hand grenades back and forth
[01:36:23] at about 4.30 a.m. Within an hour the first lightning eastern sky revealed dozens of
[01:36:28] khaki clad enemy dead scattered all around the little no. The trap platoon had survived the longest
[01:36:35] night any of them would ever know. They checked their ammunition and prepared to receive a dawn attack.
[01:36:44] And here's one of the platoon sergeants talking. Platoon sergeant Robert
[01:36:52] Jemons and Jemison. At first light we sent out a patrol. Staff sergeant Sidney Cohen
[01:37:00] spec for Arthur L. Bronson and three other men were picked to go says Jemison. They saved us from
[01:37:06] being surprised. They spotted the enemy on their way back into an attack position. They came running
[01:37:11] back with Bronson screaming their common serge a lot of them get ready. I told the machine gun
[01:37:16] ers to hold their fire until they were close. PFC Willy Godbolt 24 of Jacksonville Florida was
[01:37:24] hit while firing from his position 20 yards to sergeant Jemonson's right. Jemonson remembers
[01:37:28] Godbolt hollering somebody helped me. I had I'll go get him. Lieutenant Joe Hagan.
[01:37:48] I will go to the Jemonson.
[01:37:52] Jemonson remembers Godbolt was hollering somebody helped me. I yelled I'll go get him. Lieutenant
[01:38:12] Joe Hagan yelled back no I will. Joe Hagan moved out of his position in the fox hole to help
[01:38:20] Godbolt and was shot. This was ten minutes or so from the time the firing first broke out.
[01:38:27] Struggling the back of the head Lieutenant John Lance Jack. Joe Hagan was killed instantly.
[01:38:34] The man he was trying to save PFC Godbolt died of his wounds shortly afterward. The enemy was
[01:38:43] now closed to within 75 yards of Edwards line. They were firing furiously some crouch low and at
[01:38:50] times crawling on their hands and knees. Others no taller than the elephant grass they were passing
[01:38:55] through came on standing up and shooting. They advanced screaming at each other and Edwards men.
[01:39:01] Leaders were blowing whistles and using hand and arm signals. A few were even carrying 82
[01:39:07] millimeter mortar tubes and base plates. This was clearly in no hit and run affair. They'd come to stay.
[01:39:19] And here's Joe Stetland talking. Sergeant John, Sergeant John Stetland. Here's John Stetland talking.
[01:39:26] It seemed like half of Italian hit us all at once. He hit us headlong and he hit us strong.
[01:39:33] I thought we were going to be overrun. When Charlie hit us he had this strange grazing fire.
[01:39:38] He shot right at ground level trying to cut off your legs or if you weren't deep enough in
[01:39:43] your fox hole he shot your head off. When he started firing at us it came like torrents of rain.
[01:39:50] You just couldn't get your head long up long enough to shoot back. You just stuck up your weapon
[01:39:54] pulled the trigger and emptied the magazine. Lieutenant Charlie Hastings are forward.
[01:40:02] Air controller had already swung into action. Sensing disaster Hastings made an immediate
[01:40:08] instinctive decision. I used the code word broken arrow which meant the American unit on the
[01:40:13] in contact was in danger of being overrun and we received all available aircraft and South
[01:40:18] Vietnam for close air support. We had aircraft stacked at a thousand foot intervals from
[01:40:24] 7,000 feet to 35,000 feet each waiting to receive a target and deliver their ordinance.
[01:40:33] And here's how more. By now I was convinced that the enemy was making a primary effort to
[01:40:38] overrun us from the south and southeast and I alerted the reserve platoon for probable commitment
[01:40:42] into Charlie or Delta company sectors. The noise of the battle was unbelievable. Never before or
[01:40:49] since and two wars have I heard anything equal to it. And here's specialist Arthur Viera.
[01:41:00] The gunfire was very loud. We were getting overrun on the right side. Lieutenant Croker came out
[01:41:06] into the open and all this. I thought that was pretty good. He yelled at me. I got up to hear him.
[01:41:12] He holed at me to help cover the left sector. I ran over to him and by the time I got there he was dead.
[01:41:18] He had lasted a half an hour. I knelt beside him took off his dad dog tags and put them in my shirt
[01:41:25] pocket. I went back to firing my M79 and got shot right in the elbow. My M79 went flying and I was
[01:41:31] knocked over and fell backward over the lieutenant. Viera now grabbed his 45 pistol and began firing
[01:41:38] it left handed. And he says, then I got hit in the neck and the bullet went right through.
[01:41:44] I couldn't talk or make a sound. I got up and tried to take charge and we shot with a third round.
[01:41:50] That one blew up my right leg and put me down. It went in my leg above the ankle travel
[01:41:55] up came back out, then went into my groin and ended up in my back close to my spine.
[01:42:02] Just then two stick grenades blew up right over me and tore up both of my legs.
[01:42:08] I reached down with my left hand and touched a grenade fragments on my left leg.
[01:42:12] And it felt like I had touched a red hot poker. My hands just sizzled.
[01:42:25] Unbelievable attack. And I think that script description right there really spells out how
[01:42:32] intense this was. And obviously when you got chrome more saying that this is the loudest thing
[01:42:38] he's ever heard in two wars. That also confirms what we're dealing with here.
[01:42:45] Back to the book at 7.45 a.m. the enemy struck at the left flank of Tonyan Doll's
[01:42:50] Alpha Company at the critical elbow where Alpha and Charlie companies were tied in.
[01:42:55] We are now under attack from three directions. Grazing fire from rifles and machine guns
[01:43:00] shredded the elephant grass and swept over the batained command post in aid station.
[01:43:05] Leaves, bark and small blanchers branches fluttered down on us. Several troopers were wounded in the
[01:43:11] same command post and at least one was killed. My radio operator, spec for Robert P. Olet.
[01:43:20] 23 years old had a of a speckled six-fourter from Madawaska main was hit and slumped over in a
[01:43:28] sprawl unmoving and seemingly dead. I kept the handset to my ear. And here's Joe Galloway the
[01:43:35] reporter. The incoming fire was only a couple of feet off the ground and I was down as flat as I could
[01:43:40] get when I felt the toe of a combat boot in my ribs. I turned my head sideways and looked up there,
[01:43:46] standing tall was sergeant major basal plumbly. Plumbly leaned down and shouted over the noise
[01:43:53] the guns. You can't take no pictures laying down there on the ground, sunny. He was calm, fearless,
[01:43:59] and grinning. I fought. He's right. We're all going to die anyways, so I might as well take mine
[01:44:05] standing up. I got up and began taking a few photographs. Plumbly moved over to the aid station,
[01:44:11] pulled out his 45 chambered around and informed Dr. Carrera and his medics, gentleman, prepared to
[01:44:18] defend yourselves. So Plumbly thought they were getting over onto or at least going to get close.
[01:44:26] You're in the aid station. That's in the center of this whole perimeter. And he's pulling out his 45
[01:44:31] and saying, prepare to defend yourselves. You can't make that up. Specialist,
[01:44:40] willard F. Parish, 24 years old, an unedivable bristow, Oklahoma was an assistant squad leader of
[01:44:47] one of Charlie Company's 81 millimeter mortar squads. Parish was one of the mortar men who had
[01:44:52] been outfitted with his spare machine guns and rifles collected from our casualties and put on the
[01:44:56] Delta Company perimeter. Parish recalls, when we were hit, I remember all the trace around and I
[01:45:03] wondered how even an ant could get through that. Back to a right, we started hearing the guys
[01:45:08] following, they're coming around, they're coming around. I was in a foxhole with a guy from Chicago,
[01:45:14] J. P. F. C. James E. Coleman, and he had an M-16. I had my 45 and his 45 and I had an M-60 machine gun.
[01:45:21] We were set up facing out to the tall grass. I was looking out front and I could see some of
[01:45:27] the grass going down like someone was crawling at it. I hollered, who's out there? Nobody answered
[01:45:31] and I hollered again. No answer. I turned to, I turned to Coleman, burn his ass.
[01:45:37] Coleman said, my rifle's jammed. I looked at him and him at me. Then I looked to the front and they
[01:45:44] were growing out of the weeds. I just remember getting that machine gun from there on out and the
[01:45:49] training takes over and you put your mind somewhere else because I really don't remember what specifically
[01:45:54] I did. I was totally unaware of the time, the conditions. On that M-60 machine gun, according to the
[01:46:01] extracts from his silver star citation, specialist Paris, Paris delivered lethal fire on wave after
[01:46:08] wave of the enemy until he ran out of ammunition. Then standing up under fire with a 45 pistol
[01:46:15] in each hand, Paris fired clip after clip into the enemy who were 20 yards out and he stopped their
[01:46:22] attack. Says Paris, I feel like I didn't do any more than anybody else did up there. I remember a lot
[01:46:30] of noise, a lot of yelling and then all at once it was quiet. The silence out in front of
[01:46:36] Willard Parish was that of this cemetery. More than 100 dead North Vietnamese were later found
[01:46:43] where they had fallen in a semi-circle around his foxhole. 45 in each hand. That's crazy actually.
[01:47:01] I mean, he's going to a whole other level because you can't reload. You can't reload your
[01:47:09] pistol. Maybe he would stand up fire both just dump it, and he'd be able to get back down reloaded
[01:47:16] both. That's after he used all of the 60 ammo. George Fox 25 and Nathaniel Bird 22 were
[01:47:29] slumped across their silent M-60 machine gun surrounded by heaps of empty shell casings in
[01:47:34] empty ammunition cans. They had died together, shoulder to shoulder, sergeant jemisin pays them the
[01:47:41] ultimate compliment of a professional soldier. Bird and Fox did a great job. They kept firing
[01:47:48] that gun and didn't leave it. They stayed on it to the end. So all this close air sports coming
[01:48:05] in this whole time artillery is coming in the whole time and all of a sudden they get a situation
[01:48:09] where they start. They see aircraft coming overhead with jets coming overhead low pass and they're
[01:48:15] heading towards them and they drop some napalm. So here's how more. I yelled at top of my lungs to
[01:48:24] Charlie Hastings. The Air Force FAC call that son of a bitch off column off. Joe Gallaway heard
[01:48:30] Hastings screaming in the radio, pull up, pull up Matt Dylan says, I can still see the canisters
[01:48:35] tumbling toward us. I remember thinking turn your eyes away so you won't be blinded. I put my
[01:48:41] face into a reporter's shoulder to hide my eyes. That was Joe Gallo-Az. I could hear good time
[01:48:48] Charlie Hastings shouting into his radio, pull up the second jet did. The napalm from the first
[01:48:55] hit some people and caught some ammo on fire. Sergeant Major plundly jumped out to put the fire
[01:49:01] put out the fire around the ammunition. I ran out into the LZ to put an air panel out.
[01:49:07] Sergeant Nye says, two of my people. PFC Jimmy D. Nakayama and specialist five
[01:49:17] James Clark were on the other side of me several yards away. Somebody was hollowing and
[01:49:23] Colonel Moore were standing up there hollowing about something about a wingman and I looked
[01:49:28] up. There were two planes coming and one of them had already dropped his napalm and everything seemed
[01:49:33] to go in slow motion. Everything was on fire. Nakayama was all black and Clark was burned and bleeding.
[01:49:41] And here's Joe Gallo-Az. Before I had walked over and talked to the engineer guys in their
[01:49:46] little foxholes, now those same men were dancing in the fire. Their hair burned off in an instant.
[01:49:52] Their clothes were incinerated. One was a massive blisters. The other not quite so bad, but he had
[01:49:58] breathed fire into his lungs. When the flames died down we all ran out into the burning grass.
[01:50:04] Somebody yelled at me to grab the feet of one of the charged soldiers. When I got him,
[01:50:10] the boots crumbled and the flesh came off and I could feel bare bones of his ankles and the palms of my hands.
[01:50:19] We carried him to the aid station. I can still hear their screams.
[01:50:24] Spec 4 Thomas E. Bernlial, a medical man from Bravo Company, second battalion, rushed out
[01:50:33] into the clearing with his kit back to help them napalm victims. Bernlial was shot in the head and
[01:50:38] died within minutes in Lieutenant Ress Corlola's arms. An Oklahoma man, Bernlial had turned 23
[01:50:46] years old just four days before he was killed. Back in the command post,
[01:50:55] our ear forced fact, Charlie Hastings was stunned by all the consequences of the misplaced air strike.
[01:51:03] Hastings were calls after the napalm strike. Colonel Moore looked at me and said something that I never
[01:51:08] forgot. Don't worry about that one, Charlie. Just keep them coming.
[01:51:24] Yeah. I mean, he knows what he's got to do. He's got Hastings that just jered killed some of his own men.
[01:51:30] Wounded some of his own men by fire and he's freaking out. Probably doesn't want to call any more bombs on
[01:51:35] and how more realizes that's what's keeping them alive. Don't worry about that one.
[01:51:44] Just keep them coming. Charlie Company first battalion, seventh cavalry had begun its day
[01:51:55] with five officers in a hundred and six men. My new net had no officers left and only forty-nine
[01:52:01] men on her. A total of forty-two officers and men had been killed and twenty more wounded than two
[01:52:06] and a half hours of vicious hand-to-hand fighting. The bodies of hundreds of slain,
[01:52:12] Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, littered the bloody battleground.
[01:52:22] Speck four, Pat Selic, 24 in a native of Mount Kisco, New York says, I remember one guy had a
[01:52:27] small American flag on the back of his pack. When I saw that, I felt very proud.
[01:52:36] That's something that always stuck with me. This American flag was put on top of a blown-up tree,
[01:52:40] just like a Urujima. Another battle we had won for the United States. That little flag flew
[01:52:48] over landing zone X-ray for the rest of the fight, raising all our spirits.
[01:52:53] And now there's a law in the fighting. And here we go back to the book. During this
[01:53:05] law, the saddest, most painful and hardest duty to endure was collecting our dead and loading
[01:53:10] them on board the helicopters. There were so many that the brigade ordered the big choppers,
[01:53:15] the CH-47 Chinooks. One such helicopter lifted out all 42 of the dead from Charlie Company.
[01:53:24] They came in together, died together, and now left together, wrapped in their green rubber
[01:53:30] ponchos. Speck four, Vincent Cantou, says, we were picking up our dead and placing them in the choppers.
[01:53:40] Some of these guys I had known for two years, you'd I could recognize them only by their
[01:53:44] name tags. Their faces were blown off. It was hard not to get sick. We would look at each other
[01:53:55] and without saying a word, just continue putting our dead on the choppers.
[01:54:00] Now, the Colonel, that's in charge of both battalions. He makes a visit and here we go.
[01:54:26] Mid-morning before Tully arrived, Colonel Tim Brown flew in for a visit.
[01:54:30] Pumly recalls Lieutenant Colonel Moore-Souluded Brown and said, I told you not to come in here.
[01:54:34] It's not safe. Brown picked up his right collar, the bell, and waggled his full Colonel's eagle
[01:54:39] at Moore and said, sorry about that. Dylan and I gave him a situation report. Brown asked whether
[01:54:47] he should stay in X-ray established a small brigade command post and run the show. We recommended
[01:54:52] against that. I knew the area and Bob Tully and I got along just fine. Brown and Ghee agreed.
[01:54:58] Lieutenant Dick Merchants says Colonel Brown had trust and confidence in his commanders.
[01:55:03] I'm aware that some felt he should have landed in X-ray and established a command post. I've never
[01:55:07] accepted that. The first battalion seventh cavalry was probably the finest battalion in Vietnam,
[01:55:14] well-trained, superbly led without standing officers and NCOs throughout the unit.
[01:55:18] Brown would have been out of place in X-ray. Besides there was no room for brigade CP.
[01:55:25] I recall it being rather crowded behind that anheil. So, the reason I put that in there is because
[01:55:30] here's the guy that's, you know, how Moore's boss comes in to check on the scene.
[01:55:37] And some people say, oh, he should have stayed there because it was a bad fight and he, in this
[01:55:42] Dick Merchants said, no, like he shouldn't have stayed there. He did the right thing. He came
[01:55:46] visited and left. And by the way, you want to set up a brigade command post. You need to find
[01:55:52] your own little ant hill because this one's all, this one's a, you know, the size of, yeah, it's full,
[01:55:56] that's the size of a car. We got dead mooned everywhere. And so, but it's, it's the important point
[01:56:03] there for my perspective is, you know, the key thing is that he had trust in confidence in his
[01:56:09] officers. He didn't need to go out there and micromanage them. And I'm not saying you could never do that.
[01:56:16] I'm definitely not saying that's the dichotomy leadership. You know, sometimes you might look out
[01:56:19] there and say, there's something going on. I need to get out there and you need to get in the
[01:56:22] weeds and get this problem handle. I need to come out there and support. In this particular case,
[01:56:26] probably wouldn't have been a good idea. How more had it under control at this point? That's why
[01:56:29] they're landing a, uh, a chinook, which is CH47 giant helicopter, much bigger than a Huey. You
[01:56:35] know, it's a slower and at least on on a prochids slower. So, yeah, there's a time to get out there
[01:56:41] in micromanage and there's a time when you let your teams lead. Okay, going back to the book
[01:56:50] in Myron, D'Durric and Lieutenant Rick Ruskola. So, these are the two guys that came from the second
[01:56:56] Patience 7th Cav. And he just talks about him a little bit and I think it's worse worth mentioning
[01:57:01] Rick Ruskola and, uh, Myron D'Durric, Bravo Company, second Patience had two foreign board officers
[01:57:09] whose accents and gun-hol attitudes went to touch of foreign Legion flare. The Ukrainian D'Durric
[01:57:16] and the Englishman Ruskola was or destined over the next 72 hours to become battle field legends in
[01:57:22] the seventh Cav as much for their style as their fearless leadership under fire. And,
[01:57:27] yeah, it's, it's, it's, you can see what these leaders do and you do get to see it.
[01:57:36] But here's when, when D'Durric, remember he touched down and he was told, hey, go, go set up security
[01:57:41] and here we go. Myron D'Durric and his soldiers had not yet been sorely tested but they soon would be.
[01:57:46] During that role, D'Durric made certain that fields of fire and observation were cleared out
[01:57:50] to be on 200 yards. That good fighting positions were dug. That machine guns were placed in
[01:57:54] positions that assured flanking interlocking fire. That trip flare is an anti-intrusian
[01:57:59] devices were installed as far as 300 yards out. That every man was locked down, loaded down with
[01:58:03] ammunition and that ammo, ammo, resupply points were designated. That all radios were checked and
[01:58:08] double checked. Then D'Durric worked very carefully with his artillery forward observer registering
[01:58:12] pre-plan fires across the front. The officer, the officer Lieutenant William Lund had four batteries
[01:58:19] 24 hours, registered and adjusted on call. So that's, you ever wonder what, uh, what a military leader
[01:58:27] does. That's what he does right there. Diales everything in. And here he's talking about, uh,
[01:58:34] so one of D'Durric's platoon leaders was Rick Rescordla. And here's what he says about Rick Rescordla.
[01:58:39] Rick Rescordla first platoon leader was six months out of OCS at the infantry school at four
[01:58:44] betting. But he had arrived there with a wealth of good training already in under his belt. He had
[01:58:49] served in the British Army in Cyprus and with the Colonial Police in Rhodesia and he knew what
[01:58:54] soldiering was all about. What he did to prepare his position and his men speaks for his professional
[01:59:00] them. So here's what Rick Rescordla did. Rick Rescordla walked a terrain and tried to see it from
[01:59:05] the enemy's point of view. That's critical. What's the enemy thinking? Scrub brush elephant grant,
[01:59:10] grass, ant hills and some ground cover stretched to the front. The ground was not as flat as it
[01:59:15] first appeared but had seams and thick ruts stretching off to the south with a slight incline away from
[01:59:20] his positions. The hasty prone shelters dug by Charlie company first battalion had been dug after
[01:59:26] nightfall under enemy pressure. Rescordla moved his men back 50 yards, which not only shortened
[01:59:32] the sector but meant the enemy would now have to leave the trees and cross 40 yards of mostly
[01:59:36] open area to reach Bravo Company Foxholes. Rescordla recalls, because of our short lines,
[01:59:43] I decreased the number of Foxholes. Three manholes were constructed. The M60 machine guns were said
[01:59:49] on principle directions of fire from which they could switch to final protective grazing fire
[01:59:54] interlocking with each other and with the machine guns on our flanks. Foxholes and parapets were
[02:00:00] built in detail. I tested the holes. Some were so deep the occupants could not even see the
[02:00:06] pair over the parapet. In these cases firing steps were built back up. Two hours before dusk,
[02:00:12] sergeant E S. Bach, A27 and sergeant Thompson organized a booby trap detail. Carefully they rigged
[02:00:19] grenades and trip flares far out on the main avenues of approach. Claimer mines, claimer mines
[02:00:25] would have ice the cake but somewhere they had been lost. A screw up but I felt we were ready to
[02:00:31] tangle with the best of North Vietnamese. And again these guys are luckily there's a wall and they
[02:00:35] have all the time to prepare this and get it all set up. And that's a big difference from what
[02:00:38] happened when these guys hit the LZ and they didn't have any of this stuff. They didn't have any
[02:00:43] the terrain figured out. They didn't have a chance to send it into your personnel. These guys
[02:00:46] are taking advantage of that tactical situation to get up there and make things right. And you know,
[02:00:53] both of those guys, you can see that's what a leader does. That's what a leader does. They make
[02:00:56] sure things are right. They make sure you're ready to win. And you can do that and it will
[02:01:02] that applies to every leader and every position and every industry and every team in the world.
[02:01:08] The leader is stepping up and making sure we are going to be prepared to win. And by the way, this
[02:01:15] Rick Raskorla and this is a little bit of a side note, he ended up working for Morgan Stanley
[02:01:22] as the head of security for Morgan Stanley. And they worked at the Twin D'Hours in New York City.
[02:01:28] That's where Morgan Stanley was. And he felt like they needed to do drills, like they needed to prepare
[02:01:35] and that, like, what happened if the towers came under attack and they ran a bunch of drills.
[02:01:40] And when September 11th came, they ran those drills and got everyone evacuated. And
[02:01:49] Rick Raskorla was last seen on the tenth floor going back up into the building to do a final check
[02:01:56] and make sure that everyone was out and the tower collapsed at 9.59 a.m. and he saved a lot of lives
[02:02:07] that day, not only through his actions on the day of but through his actions in preparing.
[02:02:15] Now, the Vietnamese come, the North Vietnamese come and they bring it. Here we go.
[02:02:24] So the first rush by at least 300 North Vietnamese was beaten off in less than 10 minutes by small
[02:02:30] arms machine gun and artillery fire from the alert and well prepared Bravo Company second battalion troops.
[02:02:34] At 431 a.m. 20 minutes later, they came back to Durex said the intensity of their attack
[02:02:40] increased and I was under the under assault aimed at my three left platoon sectors.
[02:02:47] Screams, shouts and whistles split the night as NVA swept down the mountain straight into the
[02:02:54] smoke clouded killing ground. Now all the mortars of my battalion and Tully's were turned loose.
[02:03:01] Adding their 81 millimeter high explosive shells to the general mayhem.
[02:03:06] Rifleman John Martin, who is in Durex lines says, we kept pouring rifle machine gun fire and artillery
[02:03:13] on them and they broke and ran. I don't think we had any casualties but they were catching hell.
[02:03:20] So now it's totally different story. These guys are dug in. They have all their artillery dialed in.
[02:03:24] They've got their field of fire set up and their attacks come well organized acts with 300 people.
[02:03:29] They don't make it happen. The Vietnamese don't make it happen.
[02:03:34] Yeah. Back to the book. Over on the perimeter of Skorlo's men fought on.
[02:03:41] Our M79 switched to direct fire. Fire delivered to a visible target and lobbed rounds out between
[02:03:47] 75 and 100 yards. Still, the shadowy clumps moved closer. RPGs and machine guns
[02:03:52] crackled as they blasted us from the dark line of ground cover.
[02:03:57] Across open fields they came in a ragged line. The first groups cut down after a few yards.
[02:04:03] A few surge right on sliding down behind their dead comrades for cover. An amazing,
[02:04:09] highly disciplined enemy. A trooper cursed and pleaded in a high pitched voice. God damn it stopped
[02:04:14] the bastards. So here they are. They're attacking and when the North Vietnamese soldiers get hit,
[02:04:20] their buddies are coming up behind them taking cover behind their bodies and continuing to assault.
[02:04:25] So this is an indicator. Like I said, this was early in the war. This is 1965.
[02:04:29] And we didn't know that's determined enemy yet. We didn't understand that yet. And here we're
[02:04:34] seeing it for the first time. This is what this is how determined these guys are. They are going
[02:04:39] to attack. They're going to attack through whatever we put out.
[02:04:48] Here's another situation. Steadolin. This is a Steadolin. Whispered orders to his squad,
[02:04:53] telling men on either side of him to hold their fire not to shoot until the enemy stepped out
[02:04:57] into that open space right in front. Suddenly a flare and a booby trap went off and they were
[02:05:01] there in the grass shooting at us. I took around just above the elbow, nothing really just a
[02:05:06] stitch or two and a piece of tape after the fight. Nobody shot back. Then they stepped into that
[02:05:11] open area. The flares were burning. They were lit up and it was easy. We opened up and picked them off.
[02:05:18] It was a light attack. Then they hit us harder 30 minutes later, blowing bugles, blowing whistles.
[02:05:24] We killed them all. Then some white phosphorus came in about 15 in front of my hole and I lost
[02:05:30] most of my web gear in my shirt. Had about eight burns on one arm. John Steadolin sat there
[02:05:37] under the light of the flares and used the point of his bayonet to quickly dig the still burning
[02:05:42] Willie Pete fragments out of his flesh. White phosphorus is a type of munition that we use and
[02:05:47] it's it's white phosphorus and it hits and blows up and it's on fire. It's a little pieces of
[02:05:52] burning hot metal and he's picking it out of his arm. During the two and a half hours of the attack
[02:06:02] against a deer-exceptor, the rest of the x-ray perimeter had been quiet. Two quiet. Dylan and I discussed
[02:06:07] the possibility of conducting a reconnaissance by fire to check for presence of the enemy elsewhere on
[02:06:12] the line. We had plenty of ammunition and what the hell? The enemy knew where our lines were by now
[02:06:19] as well as I did. We passed the word on the battalion net at precisely 655am every man on the perimeter
[02:06:26] would fire his individual weapon and all machine guns for a full two minutes on full automatic.
[02:06:34] The word was to shoot up trees and hills bushes and high grass forward of the
[02:06:38] fort of and above the American positions. Gunners would shoot anything that worried them.
[02:06:43] By now we had learned to our sorrow that the enemy used the night to put snipers and trees
[02:06:48] ready to do damage at first light. Now was the time to clean up out front. At the stated time,
[02:06:57] our perimeter erupted in ear splitting up roar and immediately a force of 30 to 50 north Vietnamese
[02:07:04] rose from a cover 150 yards forward of Joe's, Saudini's alpha company, second battalion lines
[02:07:12] and began shooting back. The mad minute of firing triggered their attack prematurely.
[02:07:17] Our artillery fire was instantly brought in on them and the attack was beaten off.
[02:07:22] When the shooting stopped, one dead sniper dangled by his rope from a tree in
[02:07:26] Fort of Dyricks left most position. Another dropped dead out of a tree almost immediately
[02:07:31] forward of John Harrow's John Harrow's Bravo Company. First battalion command post.
[02:07:37] A third-veid north Vietnamese sniper was killed in the hour later when he tried to climb down
[02:07:41] from from history and run for it. Sergeant Stedelen's arm speckled with white phosphorus
[02:07:47] burns began hurting him now. I was sent back to the aid station where my arm was bandaged
[02:07:53] and I was waiting to be met a backed out. The more I sat there, the more I realized I couldn't
[02:07:59] in good faith get on a chopper and fly out there and leave those guys behind.
[02:08:03] So I took the sling off my arm and went back out. Somebody asked, where are you going?
[02:08:12] I said, back to my foxhole. Nobody said anything else.
[02:08:21] So obviously these guys now have gained some good fire superiority, the upper hand in the battle.
[02:08:28] Back to the book, Rescoral and his men had been watching the air show
[02:08:35] appreciatively. We gathered for the last sweep. Suddenly a fighter bomber
[02:08:39] plowed down on us from above. We buried our noses in the holes.
[02:08:43] An express train screamed down in the explosion shook the earth. The bomb landed 30 yards from
[02:08:48] our holes. We came up cursing in the dust and debris. The call came to move out.
[02:08:54] Every available trooper, including Colonel Moore, pushed the perimeter out. This time it was
[02:08:59] no contest at all. We killed 27 more enemy and crushed all resistance. I looked over the field,
[02:09:06] littered with enemy dead, sprawled by ones and twos and heaps across a torn gouged land.
[02:09:13] Blood, body fragments torn uniforms shattered weapons, littered the landscape. It was a sobering
[02:09:20] sight. Those men, our enemies, had mothers too. But we had done what we had to do.
[02:09:30] Aside from wanting to make certain that the deeric and his men did a clean, safe job. I had one
[02:09:36] reason for joining the final assault personally. This is Colonel Moore talking and then it goes to
[02:09:42] Rick Raskola. Rick Raskola watched. Colonel Moore and our sector was rushing up the clumps of
[02:09:47] bodies pulling them apart. What the hell is the Colonel doing up there? Sergeant Thompson asked.
[02:09:52] I shook my head. Later we saw him coming back at the head of men carrying ponchos.
[02:09:58] By 10 30 a.m. Colonel Moore had found what he was looking for. Three dead American troops were no longer
[02:10:04] missing in action. Now they were on their way home to their loved ones. By now, late morning,
[02:10:18] Tuesday, November 16th, the personality of landings owned x-ray had changed. What previously had
[02:10:23] been a killing field had become something else. We moved without impunity in places where movement
[02:10:29] had meant death on the hours before. Except for our own artillery and air, there was nothing to be heard.
[02:10:35] It was just too quiet, too sudden, and it made me uneasy. That old principle, nothing was wrong,
[02:10:42] except that nothing was wrong. Where was the enemy? Headed back to Cambodia, still on the mountain,
[02:10:48] preparing to attack again, headed north to the eyedring and its precious water.
[02:10:52] And again, the old question. Where were the enemy 12.7 millimeter heavy anti-aircraft machine guns?
[02:11:00] If the enemy commander brought those weapons to bear on us from the mountain above,
[02:11:03] LZX-ray with three American battalions crowding the clearing would present a beautiful target.
[02:11:09] I told Dylan to step up the harassing artillery fire and to keep the air strikes coming in
[02:11:14] and loslobs above us. I told him I wanted a picture perfect telecopter extraction,
[02:11:19] covered by all the firepower we could bring to bear. So, yeah, tides have turned completely.
[02:11:27] And in fact, they've turned so completely that a chanook, which is the big helicopter, flies in
[02:11:33] with a bunch of photographers and television crews and reporters. And they surround,
[02:11:41] they surround Colonel Moran, here we go, back to the book. The other reporters now
[02:11:46] clustered around me. I told him that this had been a bitterly contested battle.
[02:11:50] That clearly we were up against a brave determined and very tough enemy in the North Vietnamese soldiers.
[02:11:56] But that American firepower, discipline, guts, and will to win had carried the day at LZX-ray.
[02:12:05] Brave American soldiers. And the M16 rifle won a victory year, I said.
[02:12:10] My voice choked and my eyes filled with tears as I told the reporters that many of my men
[02:12:16] who had been killed in this place were only a matter of days away from completing their
[02:12:19] service in the army, but they fought and died bravely. As I stood there, I knew that the telegrams
[02:12:27] that would shatter the hearts and lives of scores of American families were already being drafted.
[02:12:33] Now came the body count. And if you remember we talked about this before everyone was always
[02:12:42] they wanted to talk about the body count Vietnam, even at this early stage.
[02:12:46] He was thinking about that back to the book. Now came the body count. From the beginning of the
[02:12:50] fight, I had known that higher headquarters would eventually want to know what damage we had done to the
[02:12:54] enemy. So after each major action in this battle, hating it, I asked my company commanders for
[02:12:59] their best estimates of enemy killed. The battle raging back and forth over three days and two
[02:13:05] nights, it was anything but orderly. There was no referee to call time out for a body count.
[02:13:10] We did the best we could to keep a realistic count of the enemy dead. In the end, it added up to
[02:13:16] 834 dead by body count with an additional 1,215 estimated killed and wounded by artillery,
[02:13:24] the air attacks and aerial rocket attacks. On my own, I cut the 834 figure back to 634. A personal
[02:13:34] allowance for the confusion in fog of war and let the 11211 estimated stand. We captured an evacuated
[02:13:43] six enemy prisoners. On our side, we had lost 79 Americans killed in action, 121 wounded and none
[02:13:55] missing. And at this point, they get extracted off the battlefield, including Colonel Moore,
[02:14:09] the last man to leave from his battalion. And here we go back to the book. It was a short,
[02:14:16] fast ride to landing zone Falcon. Just five and a half miles east of X-ray. As we landed among the
[02:14:22] artillery pieces, I saw 75 yards away a group of my troops off in the northwestern edge of the
[02:14:27] LZ. Dean Brellis, an NBC news correspondent, was in LZ Falcon that afternoon. He captured the scene
[02:14:39] in his 1967 book, The Face of South Vietnam. And here's what Dean Brellis wrote.
[02:14:47] How Moore was the last man to come out of the battle. It was the biggest battle he had ever fought.
[02:14:53] He was a lieutenant Colonel and he carried himself like a proud man. His sergeant major was at his
[02:15:01] side. It would need a Shakespeare to describe what happened then. But it was something that was love
[02:15:08] and manliness and pride. It was the moment of the brave. How Moore turned and went from group to
[02:15:18] group of his men. And only a few bothered to get up because there was no exclusivity now. No rank.
[02:15:24] And how Moore did not want them to stand and salute. He was saluting them. He talked with them.
[02:15:32] He thanked them. He was not solemn. And he did not bring to his greetings the salutations of
[02:15:38] a political of a politician. There was no poverty of spirit in his handshook, shake, and he shook
[02:15:46] every man's hand. It was a union of men who had met and defeated the enemy, not forever,
[02:15:53] not in a victory that ended the war, but in a victory over their uncertainty.
[02:16:01] When their hour had come, they had done their job. And it was this thought too that
[02:16:07] our more had in his mind. And he said that if they had won no one else's gratitude, they had his.
[02:16:19] And I think that these men, all these men, have our absolute gratitude for fighting for freedom
[02:16:44] for fighting for each other for fighting for us. And actually the story doesn't end there.
[02:16:53] Nor does the book. And we're going to save it for the next podcast, but we're going to hear about
[02:17:01] the story of LZ Albany, which is a few miles to the north. In still inside the I-Drain Valley,
[02:17:07] where second battalion of the seventh cab moved in and fought. And it's... There's so much
[02:17:23] that I didn't cover in this, in this, what I just covered. There's so much I didn't cover.
[02:17:26] I mean, I didn't even cover the loss, but who does eventually get recovered?
[02:17:31] Read the book. I should have left that out. Spoiler alert.
[02:17:33] But there's so much in there. There's so much... So many lessons learned, so much
[02:17:44] action, so much good description. And so many heroes and so much sacrifice. I don't even think
[02:17:52] gratitude. I mean, they gratitude enough. I think we owe them more than just gratitude. We owe them
[02:18:01] our best. We owe them our lives, our best lives every day, every moment.
[02:18:15] And remember this sacrifice and what we owe them is we owe them to live our best lives.
[02:18:29] And I think that's all I've got for tonight. So echo. Yeah, well I decompress over here, maybe you can
[02:18:49] get some input on how to support this podcast, or support yourself if you want to.
[02:18:54] Sure. Yeah, if you want to. So of course, the first way is supporting your joined. So we
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[02:19:35] Class of product. I'm going to work out. You're on it. Yeah, it's buzzing on it right now. Yeah.
[02:19:42] So discipline. It's a pre workout. It's a call. You say that's a cool word or that's the name. Both.
[02:19:51] So it's called discipline. Right. So it's pre if technically they call it a pre workout, but we're
[02:19:57] calling it a pre mission. Yeah. Supplement. Well, pre workout would help you with your physical
[02:20:03] activity. Sure. But the discipline has cognitive enhancers in it as well. Right. Because when you're
[02:20:09] on a mission, you just don't need physical strength. You need mental strength. Yeah. So this gives
[02:20:16] you both. Yeah. So if your mission is the workout, boom, there you go. It's a pre workout. If your mission
[02:20:21] is an exam, it's a pre exam. Yes. Supplement. If your mission is a mission,
[02:20:29] well, you're good to go. Oh, pre mission. There you go. Boom. Oh, yeah, get down on. I too can vouch for this.
[02:20:37] Because I'm on it too. Because it should perform well to, you know, display its effects. Also,
[02:20:44] geese and rash guards at origin mean all made in America. The more I think about that, the more of a
[02:20:51] big deal that is. The real big deal. Yeah. Because it's from like, I always say the cotton to the
[02:20:58] the ghee or the, you know, the other stuff that there's a lot of cool stuff on their geese rash
[02:21:03] guards, even a pair of all made in America, origin mean.com. This is about to get them. If you want to,
[02:21:10] I want them. I like them. It's funny. Like everyone's on all of, find myself just wearing all
[02:21:15] origin stuff. Not on purpose, too. It's the kind of, okay, in my favorite shorts, even though they don't
[02:21:20] have them. I know, wearing that, I wear them every other day approximately. And, you know, you just
[02:21:26] find yourself in the stuff. It's so good. That's my opinion. Also, for fitness gear, cool fitness gear.
[02:21:32] You want to, even if you're just doing kettlebells, I say get the artistic kettlebells from on it,
[02:21:39] on it.com slash jockel. That's where you get them. There's all other creative workout stuff on their
[02:21:44] maces and cool jump ropes and battle ropes and whatnot. Pretty much anything if you're getting
[02:21:51] bored with the workout and you want to enhance it in some creative way. Go there on it.com slash
[02:21:58] jockel. Don't get addicted to the website because a lot of good information. So it's kind of a
[02:22:02] catch 20 too good. You can get info on there. A lot of good info. Interesting info. But you might
[02:22:08] spend a lot of time there. So be careful. Also, when you buy this book, we were soldiers once
[02:22:16] and young, but general, how more in jail, galo, you know what I was thinking? I have no idea
[02:22:24] what you're thinking. So, sometimes, you're about to hear that. If you watch the movie a few good
[02:22:29] men, I think it's a bit more. Yes. She plays a jaggle with 10, yes. I see the movie. Her name, the
[02:22:40] character name is Joanne Galoey, but color Jill. So her name is Jill Galoey. I noticed that.
[02:22:48] Anyway, when you buy this book, we were soldiers. There's no layers that they, those are
[02:22:55] interpreted layers. Those are not layers. Those are coincidences. There's a big difference.
[02:23:01] It's a fine line. Charlie, back with that formed up Delta Force.
[02:23:06] Sure. Being in this book, but that's layers. That's layers. Yeah. Yeah. I would come from those layers
[02:23:12] for sure. I don't know. I still feel like Jogalo is layers somewhere. I don't know what if they
[02:23:21] negative. No of this. These stories in me. And they named the good. They could. Negative.
[02:23:29] Maybe maybe not. And if they did, they failed. They failed. Yeah, because
[02:23:33] Jill got it wrong. God after it. Yeah. So, will Jill and Galoey kind of got it? No. Not really.
[02:23:40] Wait, she convinced me. Oh. All right. Either way. I still think it's layers. Either way.
[02:23:48] When you buy this book, we have a list of the website along with all the books that Jogalo reviews.
[02:23:55] It's on the website Jogalo podcast.com. In the section, open the top menu, click books from podcast.
[02:24:01] Boom. It's all there. Buy episode. Click through there. Good way to support. Get from Amazon.
[02:24:06] You know all that stuff. And then continue to do more shopping if you want. If you want.
[02:24:11] Just carry on. There you go. Good way to support. Also, subscribe to the podcast. I do
[02:24:17] Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify confirmed. Something sent me the actual link. Visually. Visual confirmation.
[02:24:28] And other podcasts, providing platforms. Just subscribe. I know you have already, but let's save some
[02:24:34] business. And likely a chance that you didn't subscribe. Good. Subscribe. Good way to support.
[02:24:42] If you want. Also, subscribe to YouTube. If you like the visual, the video version of this podcast.
[02:24:52] You're going to see what Jogalo looks like. You want to see what I look like if you care about. That's
[02:24:55] sort of thing. Boom. Most people don't care what we look like. No. I don't. I don't think so.
[02:24:59] It makes sense that they don't care. No. It doesn't matter. They just care about the content of your
[02:25:05] character. Subscribe to YouTube. That's the point. If you do care about what we look like. Also,
[02:25:13] this excerpts on there. Good way to get little bits of lessons messages from Jogalo.
[02:25:21] Sheryl, so you don't have to share the whole two and a half ish hour podcasts. You can just share
[02:25:28] the excerpts. Pass them on. Let someone else learn these lessons with you. Also,
[02:25:35] Jogalo's a store. It's called Jogalo's store. Name it after him. Jogalo's door.com.
[02:25:41] That is where you can get the cool shirts. I think they're cool. And I think it goes beyond just my opinion
[02:25:48] because people have emailed me and been like, hey, these are cool. Because I made sure they're not
[02:25:54] the low quality. People in this study share brand or if they're printing sure they're like,
[02:26:00] hey, let me get the cheap ones. I don't have to spend a lot of money. Play it safe. All this stuff.
[02:26:04] I didn't do that. I got the good ones. Stuff that I would actually wear regardless of what's
[02:26:10] printed like you wearable. They're wearable. That's how I put it. Anyway, that's all I know. They're
[02:26:15] good. I'm wearing one now. Yeah. Correct. Me too. Boom. See, I wouldn't wear it if I didn't want to
[02:26:21] wear it. So anyway, they're very good. That's where you can get the shirts. There's women's stuff on
[02:26:25] there. Also, this rash cards on there for activities such as surfing. You get to warrior kid rash
[02:26:31] card out there. Yeah. Warrior kid rash card should be reached on there. Should be on there.
[02:26:38] I vowed to get them in time to ship for Christmas. So that would be like today. So go on there.
[02:26:46] And that's the my vow. That's the right word. Vow. I vowed to do this. That means you better succeed.
[02:26:55] Yeah. You know, that's my vow. Okay. So anyway, yeah. Yeah. Some rash cards on there for
[02:26:58] just surfing. I'm going to kind of cool activity, cycling, whatever. Anything you want range of
[02:27:03] motion to be maintained 100% and performance be increased by 19%. I think it's up to 21%.
[02:27:10] Yeah. Reverse back from the field. Yeah. Yeah. I think that kind of average because some people
[02:27:15] a little bit more, you know, so those people, they push the average up. I think that's how it works.
[02:27:21] Anyway, cool stuff on there, check it out. Nothing gets something. But if you want something,
[02:27:27] then you get something and it supports podcasts. Good way to support. Who is on there as well?
[02:27:33] Fick or once? They might be running line might have to get some more. It is winter. I get it.
[02:27:39] But they're the thick ones. Like I said, also psychological warfare. What that is, if you don't
[02:27:46] know, I know we all know what it is already. It's been number one and I too well. Might not be number
[02:27:51] one anymore. That's a long story. Anyway, if you don't know what it is, the unlikely event that
[02:27:56] you don't know what it is is what it is. It's an album with tracks, jockel tracks. Each track is designed
[02:28:03] to help you through moments of weakness when you're on your path. When you're on your war path.
[02:28:13] I mean, you know, I don't know. Nonetheless, when you're on the path of discipline,
[02:28:18] right, you're on the program, you're on your campaign against weakness. You hit little. It's not
[02:28:23] just one smoother out and it's not a one straight road either. And it's riddled. Riddled.
[02:28:30] Every day. Probably every minute, literally riddled with distractions. Everyone's in a while.
[02:28:40] You'll hit moments of weakness whether it's a speed bump distraction, lack of energy,
[02:28:47] boredom, repetitiveness, tediousness, tediousness. That's a word or it. That's what psychological
[02:28:57] warfare is for. It's a little spot for those moments. You don't want to wake up early. Every single
[02:29:03] day. Ah, we got the solution for that. Listen to the little track. Jockel, pragmatically telling you.
[02:29:11] I can get over that little moment of weakness. Same thing with wanting to skip the workout for
[02:29:15] the day. That was mine. That was mine. Not anymore. Jack. And yeah, there's a bunch of them for
[02:29:22] all kinds of stuff. Keeping on the diet. It's a good one. That's what psychological warfare is. Very effective.
[02:29:27] 100% affected. That's a bold statement. And you can get Jockel white tea on Amazon,
[02:29:32] which will make you deadlift 8,000 pounds. Factually, confirmed confirmed. You can get some
[02:29:38] books on there. Way the warrior kid. Good Christmas gift. And it's also a good whatever gift. So
[02:29:45] get a kid on the path. Get them on the path. Got so much great feedback on that. Extreme ownership.
[02:29:52] This is for leading at every level in combat in business and in life. Extreme ownership.
[02:29:58] Written meat by meat and my brother, life, babbin. Also from an individual perspective.
[02:30:05] If you want to get yourself on the path, there's no better gift than discipline.
[02:30:08] The discipline equals freedom field manual. Everyone to ask me for workouts. That's where they are.
[02:30:14] Everyone asks me what I eat. That's where it is. Everyone asks me how much I sleep. That's where it is.
[02:30:18] So get that. If you want the audio version, the audio version is not unautable. The audio version
[02:30:24] of discipline equals freedom. Field manual is on iTunes, Amazon, music, Google Play and all those
[02:30:29] other MP3 distributing platforms. There's another master, the master, which is Escelon Front
[02:30:39] leadership conference. There's two of them. Going to be only two of them in 2018. We don't have
[02:30:45] enough room in the schedule to fit three. One, Washington, DC, or sorry, this is actually not one.
[02:30:52] It's number five. So number five, Washington, DC, May 17th, and then number six, San Francisco,
[02:31:00] October 17th, and 18th. Coming get it. You can register for those at extreme ownership.com.
[02:31:05] Is are they going to be bigger? Like you only have two now. Now, you sure? Are they going to have more
[02:31:10] people? We have a little bit bigger capacity. Yeah. But we just, we don't have time in this schedule anymore.
[02:31:16] Yeah, I dig it. And we are going to do the roll call for law enforcement, military,
[02:31:23] firefighters. We're going to do that as well. But we haven't locked a date on that one yet.
[02:31:28] Also, four leadership in addition to this podcast, in addition to the books,
[02:31:32] in addition to the master. We have a leadership management consulting company. And you can hire us
[02:31:37] to me, Dave Babin, JP to know Dave Burke, email info at echelonfront.com. If you want us to come and
[02:31:45] speak at an event, don't call a speaker's bureau. Don't call a speaker's agency. Just go to
[02:31:52] ask just go to echelonfront.com. Yeah, they've been calling me. Yeah, don't do that. That's what we do.
[02:32:00] And if you have comments or questions or answers for us, we can be found on the interwebs
[02:32:07] on Twitter, on Instagram and on the Facebook. He's at echelonfront. Charles and I am at
[02:32:12] Jockel Willink. And thanks to those people, those soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines that sign
[02:32:20] up, that sign up and volunteer to make the ultimate sacrifice. Thank you all for protecting us
[02:32:30] and our freedoms and to police and law enforcement. Thanks for protecting us from crime and criminals
[02:32:41] and terrorists right here at home to paramedics. Thanks for coming to us in our time of need when we
[02:32:49] call and to the firefighters right now out there on the line, especially in our state right here
[02:32:56] of California calfire. Thanks for your service and your sacrifice and my condolences to those
[02:33:03] who have fallen in recent days and weeks and our thoughts are with the families of the fallen.
[02:33:11] And for everyone else that's listening when you see what men can do when pushed be on the limit
[02:33:18] of human capacity. When you see that, when you're here about it, when you read about it,
[02:33:28] well then remember to push yourself, push yourself every day every moment, get out there and
[02:33:38] get after it. Until next time, this is Echo and Jocco. Out.