Jocko Podcast 180 w/ John Stryker Meyer: Covert Lessons from "Across The Fence."

2019-06-05T16:45:00Z

Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @echocharles 0:00:00 – Opening 0:05:05 – Green Beret, John Stryker Meyer: Life, Lessons, and Vietnam 2:11:28 – Final thoughts and take-aways. 2:16:42 – Support: How to stay on THE PATH. 2:43:48 – Closing Gratitude.

AI summary of episode

she's like, yeah, because like when you get used to guys and meanwhile, there's like two guys scrolling like hard though. But I saw her wheels turning when she was like, like, yeah, you know, like, I will all see the results, you know. It's kind of like kind of like, you know, when you have a dog and you got to feed them the heartworm pills. You know, we were in when I was in Ramadi, you know, you see like picture of seals with like beards and all that I was rolling with a guy literally, like he's like trying to release my grip from his wrist or whatever, and like he's visibly angry, because he couldn't. So during one of the classes, they would have, you know, like, in my case, it was a rainy day where in the gym, there's like 607 of people sitting on the floor. When I got, when we got back that night, it wasn't just me that felt like that because that night, all my guys, they went in every humv every input belt fed machine guns, we mounted and we staged them. But a bit bomb like a 2000 pound bomb in order in areas that were so packed with vegetation that you couldn't get in helicopter and they're like, oh, we got a night. And the last thing I want to read from the book is just this section right here, the dedication, it says this book is dedicated to all sog reconnaissance team members, both US special forces and indigenous troops, as well as to every man in every air support unit, especially the King B pilots of the 219th South Vietnamese Air Forces special operation squadron who worked daily with sog teams on the ground across the fence in America's secret war. You need to come up with something where we have better backup, especially when the situation is because you guys can get air support and you guys used it heavily, but as soon as the weather rolled in, it was like, you guys are out there on your own. Where you uh, the other interesting thing that you talk about in the book, uh, I don't think it was one of yours, but even when you guys would do training missions over there, that was like a potential for enemy contact on your training missions. It still, it like it puts you in this mindset of like, you know, working and re-pain results of work. I thought we have, you know, like, you like we've seen in the movie with John. It's not like an accountant is like some, you know, scraping by sort of gay. And she said basically the stuff we were saying, where she was like, I was like, but I only see her sort of in the men's class. And the reason we called the company actually on front is because we wanted people know that we were the guys that were like in the front, not the REMS. You guys didn't have an A-Dob like a like a belt fed machine gun. Well, like I said or like you said, But you know, eventually we went out, learned about weapons a little bit along the way, and then of course when this came along, do we got to real deal? One time I was doing, you know, you got to have introduced you have risk control, you know, and varying levels of risk control depending on the position. If you're honest with you, I came back in, by the time I landed in the States, like May 1, May 2, 1969, the anti war movement was going on strong. Yeah, they're a piss because when King went down to the first chopper, nobody else followed and I said, you make sure you tell them, then you give me the green light, then we'll send some people, and then Bubba and I got on the second next track. So your kids instead of turning out to be like an obese, out-of-shape kid that you were like trying to, no, don't even put them on that path. So that was a slot so sometimes the guys would be wounded they couldn't go to the field but they could fly cubby got it so that when we're on the ground we have a situation that we're dealing with then he's able to understand as opposed to talking to an air force pilot right who's just used to getting a bomb and drop it somewhere and talk about a contingent liability that's been off of a firefight One of the guys at Rambeacon says, remember those pictures you got on the your second book on the ground there I said, yeah, No, no, no, no, it's like that's a, and there's a few people like that. But it was taking those couple steps, jumping in and going like, WTF2, what's going on here now? So I read the book and I said, you know what, if I'm going to go, if I can get in with these guys, that'd be a great challenge. yeah, that's amazing that you guys, and also you had the you had the cognizance to say, hey, wait a second, we've never worked with these helicopters before get out there and tell them we got some Vietnamese folks coming their way with AK 47s. You think he decided like this guy's probably got the drop on me and I want to live. She's like, when you get with it, and we kind of laugh because we she like motions to them. No, you got we got the whole wheat sandwich with like turkey from a real turkey with sprouted grains. So well it seems like like now it is night is no factor for America. Because I mean, I got just, I mean, this these books are, there's awesome the detail that you go on to and just the experiences you've had, which are just it's a miracle that you're sitting here, talking and able to tell us what you went through when, as far as I can tell, there's no way in hell you should be sitting here right now. Was this just like completely like he's you could barely even could you see his face at all? You know, I'm just going to, I'm just going to, for the record, if I go one insertion and I get shot off, I'm coming home. The weird thing is I guess and having worked in the jungle a little bit, you know, I spent some time in the jungle in South America in the Southeast Asia. Like it's not, I'm not saying it's like, or it's so serious. But just the weight, the rounds and everything else, you know, like a my case, I carried the radio, always carried the radio. That was just like, what do you like to eat? Like like, he spoke four languages, he had been educated in France and he cracked up my English.

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jockel Podcast number 180.
[00:00:03] With echo Charles and me, Jockel Willink.
[00:00:06] Good evening, echo. Good evening.
[00:00:08] It was May 1968.
[00:00:13] We were triple volunteers.
[00:00:16] We had volunteered and graduated from the Army's parachute jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia.
[00:00:21] Made it through the qualification course at the Special Forces Training Group in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
[00:00:27] And after attending the fifth Special Forces Group airborne in-country training program,
[00:00:32] we had volunteered to serve in Mac V. Sogs, Command and Control.
[00:00:39] During Special Forces Training at Fort Bragg, several of the green berets teaching various
[00:00:43] courses told us to avoid C and C because the duty was rough and the Special Forces casualties
[00:00:50] were high in the top secret unit.
[00:00:55] Despite all those warnings, Rick Howard, John McIntyre, Rick Estes, Tony Horell, Mark
[00:01:03] Gentry, Bob Garcia, Bobby D. Letters, myself and a few others volunteered to serve in C and C.
[00:01:13] I'd been in training or in between training cycles since entering the Army on one December
[00:01:18] 1966. In May 1968, we were finally shifting gears from being in a training mode to an operational
[00:01:26] mode. None of the rumors prepared us for what followed.
[00:01:32] You won't need those. The sergeant major said, put away all pens, pencils and notebooks.
[00:01:37] This is a top secret briefing. All of you have either obtained a top secret clearance or
[00:01:42] will do so in the near future or you wouldn't be here.
[00:01:46] Welcome to the Command and Control Detachment of the Fifth Special Forces Group Airborne.
[00:01:50] First Special Forces United States Army Special Operations Augmentation Study and Observation
[00:01:56] Group or simply C and C.
[00:02:00] Gentlemen, before you is a confidentiality agreement. You can't tell your girlfriend, your
[00:02:06] mother, no one.
[00:02:10] We were prohibited from writing anything about the operation forbidden from keeping
[00:02:14] diaries taking photos, making drawings or tape recordings, notes of any sort.
[00:02:20] The sergeant major advised us that anyone who didn't want to sign that agreement could
[00:02:23] leave.
[00:02:26] Gentlemen, the sergeant major turned toward a generic map on the wall. The North Vietnamese
[00:02:31] Army controls these neutral countries.
[00:02:35] And pointed to Cambodia and Louss, located to the west of the Republic of South Vietnam,
[00:02:39] and of course, North Vietnam. For several years, the North Vietnamese Army had moved soldiers,
[00:02:45] supplies, rockets, guns, and propaganda south into the eastern provinces of neutral,
[00:02:51] Louss and Cambodia, through an ever-increasing network of trails and roads called the Ho Chi
[00:02:57] Men Trail Complex.
[00:03:02] Now listen up real close, the sergeant major said, when you go across the fence, you
[00:03:07] will carry no identification of any manner, shape, or form.
[00:03:12] That meant no identification papers, no dog tags, no diaries, no photos, no love letters,
[00:03:17] and certainly no green berets.
[00:03:20] Everyone would wear sterile fatigues with no company insignia, no name tags, no unit designators,
[00:03:26] no jump wings, or combat infantrymen badges.
[00:03:32] Why? Without giving anyone a chance to respond, he said that because Louss and Cambodia
[00:03:37] were neutral, United States government could publicly proclaim that the US repres respected
[00:03:43] that neutrality. Thus, if we were killed in Louss, Cambodia or North Vietnam, the US government
[00:03:49] would deny having anything to do with us.
[00:03:53] United States government would explain that no Americans were stationed in Louss or Cambodia,
[00:03:58] which was technically accurate.
[00:04:01] The US government had a plausible deniability if we were killed or captured.
[00:04:08] And if captured, we were to speak of foreign language.
[00:04:12] Don't tell them who you are, he ordered.
[00:04:15] Remember, technically, under the terms and conditions of the Geneva Accords, your status
[00:04:19] is different than Air Force and Navy pilots shot down over North Vietnam, they're in uniform.
[00:04:25] Their identify as US servicemen.
[00:04:28] CNC men don't fall into the category of prisoners of war.
[00:04:34] We were, in effect, spies, although the sergeant major never used that word.
[00:04:41] He also didn't tell us that spies had no protection under the Geneva Convention and that
[00:04:47] we could some are rarely be executed if captured.
[00:04:55] And that right there, that's some excerpts from the beginning of a book called Across the
[00:05:01] Fence, which is written by a special forces soldier in Vietnam named John Stryker
[00:05:09] Meyer.
[00:05:12] And in this particular case, it is an absolute honor for me to say that we have him here
[00:05:20] with us tonight to teach us about his experiences as a member of Mac Vesog, studies and
[00:05:27] observations, command group, command and control teams.
[00:05:33] Sir?
[00:05:34] Welcome.
[00:05:35] Welcome to the show.
[00:05:37] Glad to be here.
[00:05:39] That's quite a welcome.
[00:05:40] You got the Vietnam, huh?
[00:05:41] Yes, it was quite something, absolutely.
[00:05:44] And at the time we just watched the John Wayne movie to Green Barais on top of it all.
[00:05:49] So we were all psyched.
[00:05:51] We're seeing the movie we're ready.
[00:05:53] That's all it takes.
[00:05:54] And we have been for warned, you know, when you go there, this is going to happen.
[00:05:57] Little guy is going to come out and ask for people to volunteer.
[00:05:59] So we said, yeah, right.
[00:06:01] Now, when we were done, it happened before the shift to say our little guy goes out,
[00:06:05] we're looking for volunteers.
[00:06:07] And then Johnny Mac goes, for what sergeant can't tell you either you're in or you're
[00:06:12] not.
[00:06:13] So we raised her hands.
[00:06:14] Next day we're up in denying for that briefing you covered.
[00:06:16] Yeah, how do you end up in a military?
[00:06:20] Where'd you grow up?
[00:06:21] You grew up in Jersey?
[00:06:22] Yeah, grew up in Trenton, New Jersey.
[00:06:25] Dad was a milk man, grew up in the milk truck.
[00:06:27] And my mom was a piano teacher, choir organist.
[00:06:31] And after high school, it took me two years to flunk out a college.
[00:06:38] Upon flunking out in 1966, I was working up here 70 in National Park.
[00:06:43] Oh, nice.
[00:06:44] Yeah, the garbage man firing man up there.
[00:06:46] And the book, the green brace came out.
[00:06:49] And my dad is sent me a letter saying, hey, that's it.
[00:06:51] You've finally flunked out.
[00:06:53] You're going to get drafted.
[00:06:54] We got the notification here from the draft board.
[00:06:56] So I read the book and I said, you know what, if I'm going to go, if I can get in with
[00:06:59] these guys, that'd be a great challenge.
[00:07:02] And if I can do that, that's the way I want to go.
[00:07:05] Because at that time, with the army, eight weeks of basic training, eight weeks of advanced
[00:07:10] infantry, a month leaving, you're in Vietnam.
[00:07:12] You could be with any regular conventional unit.
[00:07:16] But at that time, there had been a story about some issues, particularly when the
[00:07:20] were engaged in the regular North Vietnamese army, that there were have some major issues,
[00:07:25] and surprises to how strong the enemy was.
[00:07:27] So give me some more training.
[00:07:30] I needed it.
[00:07:31] And when you were a kid, did you play sports or anything like that?
[00:07:35] Yeah, I was never that good at it.
[00:07:38] But I loved baseball, was a head game, and football.
[00:07:42] And my dad wouldn't let me play football to my senior year of high school.
[00:07:46] So I had one year of football, but everything else was just like J.V.
[00:07:50] Little League, just love baseball.
[00:07:52] Where do you want your play football?
[00:07:53] Do you want you to hit in the head too much?
[00:07:55] They didn't care about that.
[00:07:58] Did they?
[00:07:59] You know what, I think it was more, well, in eighth grade, I heard my knee playing soccer.
[00:08:03] I said it were worried about follow up injuries here, and still have your body in one piece
[00:08:07] when you go to college or wherever you're going to go.
[00:08:11] So they were very conservative.
[00:08:13] I mean, my mom, she's no foreign girl from Central Jersey, and she was really unhappy
[00:08:20] when my granddad gave me a cap pistol.
[00:08:23] So that's the household we grew up in.
[00:08:26] But you know, eventually we went out, learned about weapons a little bit along the way,
[00:08:31] and then of course when this came along, do we got to real deal?
[00:08:34] And so in 1966, so public opinion wasn't completely against the war yet.
[00:08:41] It was in 1966?
[00:08:42] No, but it was beginning.
[00:08:43] It was starting.
[00:08:44] It was starting.
[00:08:45] You had people doing their protest and letters to Yatter, and some of the fringe elements
[00:08:51] have society like we see today.
[00:08:53] Some of those parallels.
[00:08:55] But you going down, how did your parents, your dad was on board, obviously, because he
[00:09:00] sent you the letter saying, all right, buddy.
[00:09:02] Yeah, what's the school that you think?
[00:09:04] What school did you think out of?
[00:09:05] Yeah, try and stay college.
[00:09:07] Yeah.
[00:09:08] How are you just said, I'm going to go to your ceremony to be a firefighter?
[00:09:11] Well, we had a couple of buddies of mine that I've been in college with helped me flunk
[00:09:15] out.
[00:09:17] And we did much, much serious drinking just stupid young, young, young, dumb.
[00:09:22] And the idea what you're talking about.
[00:09:24] Yeah, I'm sure.
[00:09:28] So they had a crop congressman that got us jobs in your semides.
[00:09:33] It's a good old Frank Thompson came through for us. He drove across and in fact, in Manhattan
[00:09:40] Kansas, we got hit with tornado, June 12th going across the Rocky Mountains.
[00:09:44] We had snow with a back window blowing out of the car.
[00:09:47] So it was just fun.
[00:09:48] Yeah.
[00:09:49] In a nice experience, again, we drank a little bit too much there.
[00:09:52] But the first time we were able to job real money and then the reality check, it was just
[00:09:56] like these guys are amazing.
[00:09:59] I mean, if I could get even close to this to get the jump school, at least get a taste of this.
[00:10:03] So that was the plan.
[00:10:04] How was the culture shock when you rolled into Army boot camp?
[00:10:09] Well, but at the time, I've seen a couple dozen of the movies over time from the World
[00:10:13] World War II movies.
[00:10:14] It kind of knew what was coming.
[00:10:16] So early on, I had a friend of mine who's dad had been in New York.
[00:10:24] He goes, you go in.
[00:10:26] Just remember, this is like a game.
[00:10:28] They want to see if they can break your knot and you just got to have the right mindset.
[00:10:32] That stuck with me.
[00:10:33] So through basic, particularly with jump school, they come in and shake you out of bed
[00:10:37] to a clock in the morning for bogus inspections.
[00:10:39] Just to see if they could mess you up or break you a little bit.
[00:10:43] Kind of like, okay, we all noticed this is a game.
[00:10:45] We all know we're training here.
[00:10:47] And so that was the way we moved forward.
[00:10:49] And you guys could go right into the, you guys, you could go right into the QCourse.
[00:10:53] Like you could just do that pipeline.
[00:10:54] It was open for you.
[00:10:55] Well, because we lost so many people, they came out at that time, we called the baby
[00:10:59] SF course.
[00:11:01] So yes.
[00:11:03] And even to this day, some of the guys that went through training group with are still
[00:11:07] down a brag now training SF guys.
[00:11:10] And we're biased.
[00:11:12] But we feel that if you come through basic advanced jump school and go right into the QCourse
[00:11:19] and qualify, now I have a pre-qualification, then your qualification, and then you get
[00:11:24] the bere.
[00:11:25] That there's no bad habits.
[00:11:29] Like a lot of the sergeants for the old days when they came in, you had to be an E5 above
[00:11:34] more time and grade, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:11:37] And before they be even considerate, but they need a bodies.
[00:11:42] Well, the guys, again, were biased.
[00:11:45] So let me get the bias out front.
[00:11:47] As the green kids that came in, that went off the day to job.
[00:11:51] And eventually it saw, by 68 and 69, the majority of the ones, zeros, team leaders were
[00:11:58] young guys.
[00:11:59] And there's a lot of us that either got bored, like a miccase, flunked out, or just wanted
[00:12:05] some different, something different.
[00:12:07] And it said, this is special forces.
[00:12:09] And then you get the rumors.
[00:12:10] And then you finally get to that briefing where you say, here's a chance to volunteer.
[00:12:14] It's a little de-realized.
[00:12:15] There's the highest casualty operation in the entire world.
[00:12:18] But they forgot to tell you.
[00:12:19] They didn't tell you that part.
[00:12:22] So did you volunteer for CNC while you were still state-sided?
[00:12:25] Was that once you got overseas?
[00:12:27] No, at that time, the only way you could get it in the special forces, or that program was
[00:12:31] to list for airborne on a signed.
[00:12:35] And then when you went through basic, then the vancimitriot, you would be offered the
[00:12:42] opportunity to volunteer.
[00:12:44] So during one of the classes, they would have, you know, like, in my case, it was a rainy
[00:12:49] day where in the gym, there's like 607 of people sitting on the floor.
[00:12:53] And they had a stage of front-wood side steps.
[00:12:56] And a cook would come up and say, hey, the coolest MOS, you'll never go hung you with
[00:13:00] us.
[00:13:01] And they're all fat and sloppy, you know, just a couple of times.
[00:13:04] And then other guys coming for commo, Intel, MPs, that kind of stuff.
[00:13:09] At the very end, this little banty rooster comes in.
[00:13:12] It was raining.
[00:13:13] So everybody else had to rain jackets and stuff on.
[00:13:15] This banty rooster comes in with a buray and his fatigues are wet.
[00:13:20] He came up and did a straight jump on the stage, turned around and said, we're looking
[00:13:26] for a recruits for special forces.
[00:13:28] If you're interested in seeing me outside, in fact, anybody interested?
[00:13:31] Well, hell, I read the book.
[00:13:33] I jumped up off the floor.
[00:13:35] Me about three other guys.
[00:13:36] And the other seven hundred just sat there.
[00:13:38] I'm going to like, WTF.
[00:13:40] You guys are going to nom the couple weeks.
[00:13:42] I'm going to get this a little bit more trained there.
[00:13:46] It was just amazing.
[00:13:47] So he jumped off the stage.
[00:13:48] Now it's it.
[00:13:49] So he ran us through the cycle of a test.
[00:13:50] Had to show we could swim, run, all that stuff.
[00:13:54] And then when you were comm guy initially, did you get trained as a comm guy?
[00:13:57] Yes.
[00:13:58] Is it, was it, was it, was it still called 18 echo back then?
[00:13:59] No, no, this is prehistoric guy.
[00:14:01] Go 5B for us.
[00:14:03] The 4S is the SF designator.
[00:14:05] God, and O5B is commomores code.
[00:14:09] And then after a training group, they sent us down for 12.
[00:14:12] Weeks to 4Gordon for RTT.
[00:14:15] Because they need a lot of A camps.
[00:14:17] And of course, C and C needed some RTT operators.
[00:14:20] Radio tell it.
[00:14:21] And so that was the extra training.
[00:14:24] And that's where I got busted.
[00:14:25] Me and Johnny McIntyre got busted down to private.
[00:14:28] He do so.
[00:14:30] We landed and not.
[00:14:31] Where did you reach the new to our nine?
[00:14:33] Well, we were just asked holes really.
[00:14:35] I mean, these are, these are butter bars.
[00:14:37] Two young Nutenists that get this company.
[00:14:39] And here come these green berets.
[00:14:40] We just got done all our training.
[00:14:42] We're official green berets.
[00:14:43] You're the baddest man on the planet.
[00:14:45] That's over your body.
[00:14:47] Yeah.
[00:14:49] So when I have my article 15 hearing with the CO, I go in.
[00:14:52] And there's eight article 15s on the tail.
[00:14:54] It says pick one.
[00:14:55] If I picked one, scrusted up and threw it at me.
[00:14:57] Because you got nine now.
[00:14:59] And I got me a Macatar got busted.
[00:15:02] So is he do's landed in knobs and he do's.
[00:15:05] Oh, yeah.
[00:15:06] Yeah.
[00:15:07] So you get to, so it wasn't until you got to Vietnam.
[00:15:11] Correct.
[00:15:12] What about CNC?
[00:15:13] Or no, you said some training instructors.
[00:15:14] Right.
[00:15:15] And he told you like they don't do a comma.
[00:15:16] Well, you know, here, one of these little side bars.
[00:15:19] And we go through comma myself, Macatar and few us got recycled.
[00:15:23] Because you had to get up to, I figured, 12 or 15 groups were limited or something.
[00:15:28] For a minute, yeah.
[00:15:29] WPMs.
[00:15:30] Yeah.
[00:15:31] And two at the.
[00:15:32] Is that right?
[00:15:33] I went through a course.
[00:15:34] Like when the last guys that were learning Morris code and we had to get whatever
[00:15:37] it was.
[00:15:38] I think we had a lower standard than that.
[00:15:39] Because we, because it was just no one would have bought it.
[00:15:42] You want to even officers, then.
[00:15:43] You couldn't give you the officer out of the room.
[00:15:48] So no, but one of our guys who took us under his wing was a guy named Paul Villarosa,
[00:15:52] SFC, been in non-three times, had a little tattoo around his neck.
[00:15:56] Cut here.
[00:15:58] And but he helped us.
[00:16:00] He got us gone.
[00:16:01] So in our mind, he and we had a widener in Russo, two other instructors for the
[00:16:05] O5B.
[00:16:07] And so one thing got to know is near the end.
[00:16:09] It's like, hey, you guys go, don't do this.
[00:16:12] Followed, cheers stuff.
[00:16:13] Get an A camp.
[00:16:14] Turned about the people.
[00:16:15] Blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:16:16] Okay.
[00:16:17] That's what it came down to.
[00:16:18] So when we get that briefing, the top secret briefing and one of the first things we hear about
[00:16:22] from Scuddlebut, Paul Villarosa was KIA.
[00:16:25] The first KIA out of FB4 at the time, which was in January of 68.
[00:16:32] So here's one of our living legends who got us in the SFC, trained us up.
[00:16:37] It's KIA.
[00:16:38] And that had us, you know, talked about science.
[00:16:41] It hit hard.
[00:16:43] But so that was in Vietnam when they now said to you, okay, do you want to be a part
[00:16:48] of this other program?
[00:16:49] Right.
[00:16:50] Do you want to go one more volunteer route and then up here?
[00:16:53] Yes, of course you're like, yeah, let's bring it.
[00:16:55] Let's go.
[00:16:56] Young and dumb.
[00:16:58] And then so then you immediately got us signed.
[00:17:04] Right.
[00:17:05] Let's do screen, you anything else, they just said, okay, you're smart enough to volunteer.
[00:17:09] Yeah, that's what you were talking about.
[00:17:11] All the vetting had been done.
[00:17:12] And all of us either had the top secret or it was in process.
[00:17:17] And so from near, literally, next day, a plane to Denang up north and then we had the briefing.
[00:17:25] And of course, you know, we had a safe house at Denang where there's House 22, that's
[00:17:29] our safe house.
[00:17:31] And walking to special forces.
[00:17:33] And that was the safe house that was run by either us or the agency or both.
[00:17:40] And you know, you go in and here's old SF guys.
[00:17:44] In fact, there was one of the teams that just got back from trying to arrest you one of
[00:17:49] our hatchet forces.
[00:17:50] And there was a sit and they're talking about the combat and Mac and I said, we're going,
[00:17:54] oh, shit, we're going to really die.
[00:17:56] It's a good thing we spent our money.
[00:17:58] We were going through the RTA training.
[00:18:04] We had a weekend pass.
[00:18:05] We go up in Washington when we see the Tata offensive and the tanks are running over Lang
[00:18:09] Bay, the A camp at Lang Bay, A 101.
[00:18:13] We know we're going to die.
[00:18:15] We're high degree of certainty.
[00:18:16] So we went home, took our money out of the bank.
[00:18:19] All of our princely earnings of $1,000 to a state dinner until you went to Vietnam.
[00:18:24] So there we were at this house 22 and we're thinking about the same thing as going, oh, shit,
[00:18:29] we're really into it now.
[00:18:31] And so we go upstairs, take showers and then the showers, the couple of these hookers that
[00:18:34] are in there, do you know, with Coke, Coca-Cola.
[00:18:38] Yeah.
[00:18:39] And they're clean up just like welcoming you here a couple of guys getting a load in the
[00:18:42] back there and they're all pumping away.
[00:18:44] It's like, oh, this is really cool.
[00:18:46] They're just about this side of Vietnam.
[00:18:50] Here we go.
[00:18:51] Yeah.
[00:18:52] So bring it on.
[00:18:53] We're ready.
[00:18:54] And then you talk about that flight up to the first place you got to sign was Fab 1.
[00:19:00] Yeah.
[00:19:01] So we always call it an F.O.B.
[00:19:03] You guys call it Fab and you get a generation.
[00:19:06] I guess we're cutting corners over here.
[00:19:07] Okay.
[00:19:08] So you're going to F.O.B.1.
[00:19:10] Call anything like still giving you late for supper.
[00:19:12] Well, there's a whole, there's a whole offshoot of the word F.O.B.
[00:19:17] Which we turned into Fab.
[00:19:19] Have you ever heard the turn Fab it before?
[00:19:21] Yes.
[00:19:22] So someone that stays on the fob and never goes out.
[00:19:24] Yeah.
[00:19:25] So known as REMS.
[00:19:28] Yeah.
[00:19:29] Well, yes, the REMS is what you guys call them and I don't know if the name of my consultant
[00:19:34] company is actually on front.
[00:19:36] And the reason we called the company actually on front is because we wanted people know
[00:19:40] that we were the guys that were like in the front, not the REMS.
[00:19:44] Which is specifically taken from David Hack where it's book.
[00:19:47] Indeed.
[00:19:48] Runa-tun, read it ton of times.
[00:19:49] Yeah.
[00:19:50] Me too.
[00:19:51] Yeah.
[00:19:52] Awesome.
[00:19:53] And flying up into F.O.B.1.
[00:19:56] Right with the Kingby.
[00:19:57] Yeah.
[00:19:58] How was that?
[00:19:59] Oh, God.
[00:20:00] It was just another day of the secret war, you know, because they had the old H.34s.
[00:20:06] And so the pilots stood up high and then you had the the apartment in the back for the passengers.
[00:20:11] And there's a door gunner.
[00:20:13] So when McIntyre and me and John Hutchins get on the H.34s, the door is only on the right
[00:20:20] side.
[00:20:21] So we all get in and I see the helicopter pilot gunner gunner gunner gunner gunner gunner.
[00:20:27] Was the gunner Vietnamese?
[00:20:28] Yeah.
[00:20:29] This is all Vietnamese.
[00:20:30] Were you ready for that mentally?
[00:20:32] Not at all.
[00:20:33] Okay.
[00:20:34] I guess like yeah.
[00:20:35] Because it's one more novelty.
[00:20:36] Important note to make everyone so the aircraft is being flown by a Vietnamese pilot with
[00:20:41] a Vietnamese copilot and a Vietnamese gunner.
[00:20:43] Yeah.
[00:20:44] It was the 2019 Special Operations Squadron for the South Vietnamese Air Force.
[00:20:50] And all pilots.
[00:20:51] And so, you know, our training was we're going to work with the people there at the
[00:20:58] end of business people.
[00:20:59] But when you literally climb it to their helicopter and your life is now in their hands.
[00:21:05] That's like, you know, we did a big semester.
[00:21:08] I didn't really think about it.
[00:21:09] But it was taking those couple steps, jumping in and going like, WTF2, what's going on here
[00:21:15] now?
[00:21:16] I thought we have, you know, like, you like we've seen in the movie with John.
[00:21:19] They all had you.
[00:21:20] It's not this old age 34.
[00:21:22] Of course, keep thing.
[00:21:23] And that has it in the engine and that was a B-17 rotary engine.
[00:21:27] And we're going to get into the fact of how those guys prove themselves over and over
[00:21:33] over again to be just incredibly brave and not just incredibly good pilots.
[00:21:38] But just brave beyond comprehension.
[00:21:41] Would you find up there was it was it a mellow flight up there?
[00:21:45] It was cool.
[00:21:46] Yeah, it was a beautiful day.
[00:21:47] You know, it's warm like it.
[00:21:52] It's always hot.
[00:21:53] But once you get there, you get to flow you to how it is when you're flying through.
[00:21:52] And we go on over to Cemetery, isn't everything.
[00:21:54] And we're going down Highway 1, which is heading north from Danang up to Fubai.
[00:22:00] And we went past the Fubai airport.
[00:22:03] And so we're flying north on the west side of the Highway 1.
[00:22:06] And you see the airport and then this is big compound, which was the second Armin Division
[00:22:11] training camp company.
[00:22:13] And then all of a sudden it's like your flying north and then on your side, looking straight
[00:22:19] down at the rear, you did a 90 degree flip as it begins to turn.
[00:22:24] So I've seen the guy talking, the door gun are like doing a scrunchy thing.
[00:22:28] You know, we all had our new faties and you could just tell where newbies, disgusting
[00:22:33] newbies, green ass green gray.
[00:22:35] I mean, this guy's going to have his kick.
[00:22:37] So I was kind of thinking, what's up?
[00:22:38] It's going to happen.
[00:22:39] What is this?
[00:22:40] Well, Mac and Target was cheap.
[00:22:42] And Hutchins goes the same way.
[00:22:45] And I'll watch the guy.
[00:22:48] So we did the, you know, you looked down.
[00:22:50] There's the road.
[00:22:51] And it's the first time we had a helicopter with that kind of a radical ride.
[00:22:55] And so he did a 180.
[00:22:57] And then came back and did a 360 and landed.
[00:23:00] We get off.
[00:23:01] Well, we get off and then a reconteen gets on.
[00:23:04] Disappears.
[00:23:06] Was that was that spite team?
[00:23:08] I'd hope that got on.
[00:23:09] Correct.
[00:23:10] So that happens the one zero as to bracelet right there.
[00:23:14] And that does that you got off that bird that brought you into F.O.B.1.
[00:23:18] And it was spite team Idaho that got on board.
[00:23:22] Yep.
[00:23:23] Then it was the one zero and Robert O'Nn was the one one with four
[00:23:27] and distance troops for five and distance troops.
[00:23:30] And so you start your check in and whatever.
[00:23:33] And then whatever.
[00:23:34] How many hours goes by?
[00:23:35] Yeah.
[00:23:36] And all of a sudden, what's happening on camp when you start to realize
[00:23:39] that something's going sideways?
[00:23:40] Well, you know, it's very fortunate when we'll be training group.
[00:23:42] I was a catcher and played center field for eight company softball team.
[00:23:47] And we went on to feed it that summer.
[00:23:48] And the reason why is spite or parks?
[00:23:50] Robert J. Spite or parks was our pitcher.
[00:23:53] Not a little skinny as testing could bring.
[00:23:56] And we still played fast piz.
[00:23:57] None of this went be slow piz.
[00:24:00] And so we won our games.
[00:24:01] And so I come in, we land McTar and I and Hutchins.
[00:24:05] And we're like literally walking in front of the S3 office.
[00:24:08] Just you had a long road that went from highway one east into the compound.
[00:24:14] The training centers on the right.
[00:24:16] It's all new.
[00:24:17] We hear the Vietnamese and we hear a Cambodians on the left.
[00:24:20] If you go down and we get in and take our stuff out.
[00:24:23] We're just standing, looking stupid.
[00:24:25] And then here comes spite or parks.
[00:24:27] And it's like whoa, I might glad to see you.
[00:24:30] Could we use it?
[00:24:30] We were both in a company together.
[00:24:32] Spent many months there training up before we came.
[00:24:35] And now he, but he was no one that told you what was going on with.
[00:24:38] No, because right at that point it was like, hey, and I got a spare bunk.
[00:24:42] If he goes in and toss the sergeant majors as I notice, I'll, I'm going to bring him
[00:24:46] with me for a couple of days and we'll see what's going to happen.
[00:24:49] Because at that point, Spite or had been on Idaho run four or five missions with the sergeant
[00:24:54] lane.
[00:24:56] And then Lane said you're ready for your own team.
[00:24:58] So he promotes them off.
[00:24:59] They appointed him as a one zero.
[00:25:02] And so he was in that interim time waiting for the transition to come where he's going
[00:25:06] to get assigned to team.
[00:25:08] And so he's in base.
[00:25:11] Team goes out.
[00:25:12] So he's got a high degree of interest on what their status is.
[00:25:16] So they missed the first common check.
[00:25:19] They gave a team okay, which in our case, once you're on the ground, you usually wait
[00:25:22] about 10 minutes to see what's going on around you.
[00:25:26] They gave a team okay.
[00:25:27] Then the assets leave because they can't stay there long anyway.
[00:25:30] At least the helicopters.
[00:25:31] So they head back.
[00:25:32] Which the team okay was breaking Squelch on the radio?
[00:25:36] Right.
[00:25:37] Generally speaking, yeah.
[00:25:39] So for those of you that don't know what that is.
[00:25:41] When you break, we squeeze the handset on the radio.
[00:25:43] You can tell on the other end.
[00:25:45] Okay.
[00:25:46] They just purposely squeeze that microphone three times.
[00:25:49] We know that that's the signal for okay.
[00:25:51] Right.
[00:25:52] And sometimes early on the guys may say, team okay, but yeah, later on, that's all it was.
[00:25:59] It was a break break and then they say, okay, then coffee will leave.
[00:26:04] So they were in and then spider came back later he goes, hey, we haven't heard from
[00:26:08] my to hell.
[00:26:09] So by dinner time, hey, we haven't heard by Hadoho.
[00:26:13] We haven't heard from them.
[00:26:14] We're really concerned about what's going on here.
[00:26:16] And then by the morning, there's still at that point, not a word.
[00:26:22] And what point did you guys get word?
[00:26:25] I know what, I'm hazing on how many what the day or time frame was, but eventually another
[00:26:31] day decided that it's been too long, no combo.
[00:26:34] They put in what they call a bright light, which is a team that goes into either fine
[00:26:38] the other team, if just casualties or downpilest.
[00:26:42] That's what the bright light missions were.
[00:26:44] Downpilest, bring relief or just bring casualties out or help people get the team out
[00:26:50] the wounded team.
[00:26:51] So they went in and a team that went in, everybody was wounded, one guy was killed.
[00:26:56] This is from the team that went in.
[00:26:57] Went in for the bright light.
[00:26:58] This is Oregon.
[00:27:00] Correct.
[00:27:01] Yeah.
[00:27:02] With Mike Tucker and George, the troll stirmer, they went in and at one point, they were thrown
[00:27:09] in a bomb crater.
[00:27:11] And so the NVA, we're hitting them with our weapons, Car 15 fire, they had our M26
[00:27:18] and the flag grenades, one of which blew off George's jungle boot.
[00:27:22] So all these guys were really banged up pretty bad when they came out.
[00:27:26] And they got out.
[00:27:27] And they didn't find anybody from Idaho.
[00:27:29] Correct.
[00:27:30] I'm going to take it back to the book here.
[00:27:35] This is sort of the reaction back at FOB1 when Oregon comes back.
[00:27:45] The kick base, there was a collective sigh of relief that ST Oregon had survived the short
[00:27:49] lift but furious but ferocious bright light mission.
[00:27:52] The loss of ST Idaho, however, hung over the camp like an invisible fog.
[00:27:59] Spider was the first person I spoke to after that bright light.
[00:28:03] He went straight to the bar, unable to believe that ST Idaho had vanished.
[00:28:07] The complete lack of clues added to the mystery, where they killed, where they wounded
[00:28:12] the captured and now prisoners of the NVA, and that entire voice, everyone's next thought.
[00:28:19] Before he'd be captured by the NVA, he said he'd kill himself with a round from his car
[00:28:24] 15 or pretend to be dead and blow up as many NVA as possible with one final hand grenade.
[00:28:30] There was no doubt in my mind.
[00:28:32] I'd never be taken alive.
[00:28:34] From that day forward, I always carried an M26 frag grenade on the upper hook of my web gear.
[00:28:40] It was the last one I'd used.
[00:28:43] I would use.
[00:28:46] Welcome to CNC, McIntyre Muddered.
[00:28:50] We had heard about ST Asp from FOB4 vanishing and loused, presumed KIA on 28 March 1968.
[00:28:59] But there were others.
[00:29:01] Sergeant 1st class Robert L. Taylor killed 4 April.
[00:29:06] ST Bear from FOB3 KIA loused.
[00:29:10] Major George Cuomo, U17 crash died 14 April.
[00:29:16] FOB5 based Spite Team members, Sergeant 1st class Lee Roy and Wright and Staff Sergeant Lloyd F.
[00:29:23] Mussel, KIA Fishook area of Cambodia, 2 May.
[00:29:28] FOB2 based Lieutenant Joseph C. Schrieve, KIA Hatchett 4 Operation 1 May.
[00:29:37] FOB1 based ST Alabama Team members, Specialist 5th class Kenneth M. Cryon and Private
[00:29:45] 1st class Paul Chester King, KIA, A. Schow target 4 May.
[00:29:52] FOB1 Hatchett 4 Sergeant 1st class Ronald J. Miller, KIA 12 May.
[00:29:58] FOB1 based Master Sergeant Robert D. Plato and 1st and Sergeant 1st class John Hartley
[00:30:04] Robertson, KIA King B. Helicopter Krausch, Crash Loused 20 May.
[00:30:10] Additionally, 5 SF troops were killed at FOB3 from mortar and artillery strappinol between
[00:30:17] 15 and 21 April 1968.
[00:30:21] Specialist 5th class Charles M. Corey Specialist 5th class Daniel F. Sandival, Sergeant
[00:30:28] Dennis Thorpe, Sergeant 1st class Stefan Mazak and Specialist 5th class Samuel R. Hughes.
[00:30:38] McIntyre and I didn't personally know any of the KIAs, but the sheer number in that
[00:30:43] short period of time was sobering. Most of them were veteran special forces soldiers.
[00:30:51] King is green as we were made us all the more nervous, but not scared enough to quit CNC.
[00:31:02] That's quite the welcome aboard.
[00:31:07] Well yeah, then one little side note on Spiderman Parks on that bright light. When the team
[00:31:13] came out, there was so shot up because one of the team members got a disney wounded on
[00:31:19] the extraction that they never gave a team okay. Spiderman down with a King B. Separate
[00:31:25] King B. God out looking to make sure everybody was out. And they took a tense fire.
[00:31:32] That King B got fired up and on extraction, the door gunner was KIA on that. So Spiderman
[00:31:39] was quite a mess when he got back.
[00:31:46] Yeah, that was such a short period of time to be losing all those guys. That's a matter
[00:31:50] of months. Oh yeah. And we left the subway out.
[00:31:59] So these Spike teams going in. Were you explained a little bit about what the Spike teams
[00:32:05] were? The Spike teams were the code name for our recontimes. They had two basic elements
[00:32:12] with CNC. The hatch of force which could be a company, a petriner, a company size operation.
[00:32:20] And then the recontimes which we had would be two or three Americans with the corresponding number
[00:32:28] of indigenous troops. So, initially we ran three Americans with three South Vietnamese.
[00:32:33] The South Vietnamese and our team were really good. And then later, they were so good. I just ran
[00:32:39] myself in a one-one with four of the ditch. And we trained up heavily, particularly up to that.
[00:32:48] And then, learn who the best ones were. And we had a couple of the guys that had been like
[00:32:54] hept or an interpreter, SAL, who had been there. They've been running business for two years
[00:33:00] by 68. So they were highly respected. In fact, only about a grace of God, they weren't on the
[00:33:07] team that disappeared because we were able to build around them. You have this other part in the
[00:33:13] book here. This is another sort of welcome to FOB1. During the first few weeks, in FOB1,
[00:33:20] I attended at least three memorial services for fallen SF comrades. Services were held in the
[00:33:25] mess hall. The last one I attended was for Lane and Owens. During the service, the chaplain
[00:33:30] hesitated on Lane's name. This was the last official function honoring Spike Team Adaho's members,
[00:33:37] and the chaplain couldn't remember Lane's name. I didn't care if he had attended to
[00:33:41] dozen memorial services for other branches of the military. That day, I was so angry. I never
[00:33:47] attended another memorial service at FOB1. The services soon stopped anyway because there were
[00:33:53] so many casualties, no official announcement. They just stopped. Yeah, you and I were talking a little
[00:34:07] bit about a Ramadhi when we were in Ramadhi and the one thing that we started doing immediately
[00:34:13] was going to the memorial services of the soldiers and Marines that were getting killed. And that
[00:34:17] was a big wake-up call for everybody. I can tell you, I don't think probably anyone in my task unit
[00:34:25] had ever been to a memorial service overseas for guys that had been killed. I mean, and here
[00:34:34] we were there with their happening every day. You never think about it? No. To your there. No.
[00:34:39] And you guys that were having so many casualties that they just said, okay, well we're not
[00:34:43] going to have them anymore. Here's talking about some of your first few operations that you
[00:34:54] went on. And I don't think I've talked about this, but so these little teams that you had.
[00:35:01] Yeah. These little teams were getting into helicopters and flying over the fence, which means
[00:35:10] over the border into Lous and Cambodia to do reconnaissance pretty much in the middle of nowhere by
[00:35:21] yourselves. Correct. This type of operation in present day is not very likely to happen.
[00:35:29] The amount of risk that you guys were taken, it's it's crazy to read about like my
[00:35:34] my personal contingency that I'm running through my head. You know, what if this happened? What if
[00:35:40] that happens? Right. I'm looking at these saying, yeah, if I was the commander in charge, I'd say,
[00:35:44] well, you need to come up with a better plan. You need to come up with something where we have
[00:35:48] better backup, especially when the situation is because you guys can get air support and you guys
[00:35:52] used it heavily, but as soon as the weather rolled in, it was like, you guys are out there on your own.
[00:35:57] And I mean, we'll get into some stories. We're out there on your own. For sure.
[00:36:02] And you know, and that element of this nextary contingency, we had no artillery,
[00:36:12] no traditional army or marine corps support, and of course no seal teams. They were busy doing
[00:36:18] this stuff on the coast. And so it was quite something, go across the fence. And in a way,
[00:36:26] we were flying into the 18th century because everything was so old, the way of working.
[00:36:34] And they said, do slasher and burn agriculture. So you come in with the helicopter,
[00:36:38] everybody will hear you coming. And the local people had to cooperate with the NVA, because their
[00:36:43] model was work with us. We're going to kill your dumbass. So the game was on. And the purpose of
[00:36:51] most of these was to figure out where the trails were, what was being transported, where the location
[00:36:57] of enemy personnel were. It was basic reconnaissance missions, right? Well, in addition to, yes,
[00:37:03] that was the first part. So you always had general missions. Here's a point mission,
[00:37:08] because by the end of 68, they were building fuel lines from the north. They were coming down.
[00:37:14] They were going across the DMZ river in Laos. And so we heard reports about that. So that could be
[00:37:20] a point mission or general re-conocity where the movement's gone, what supplies are. And then
[00:37:27] wire taps, fuel, W snatch, and those were the other missions. And so our south-view and the
[00:37:34] meters are trained. We trained them up so back then we had stadium art and cassette player, right?
[00:37:41] And south could climb up a telephone pole, hook it up, and then cover to wire all the way up
[00:37:46] with mud. So if anybody walked past, they would never see that wire. And we would record,
[00:37:52] because the CIA told us, if you record, even though you don't hear anything, keep it on.
[00:37:58] Because when you get those tastes back to it, we're going to amplify it a hundred times,
[00:38:01] because the north Vietnamese phones even over in the cradle, they're still on. And we could record it.
[00:38:08] They'd amplify it and they could hear people talking to the background, get in tell off of that.
[00:38:11] So does it some of the other missions? So you start going on your first few operations here.
[00:38:20] And by the next morning, back to the book, by the next morning, the weathered broken and we were
[00:38:23] inserted smack dab in the middle of the biggest road running north to south through the A-show valley.
[00:38:28] Am I saying that right? S-show. S-show valley. There was no jungle. There were however, hundreds of
[00:38:36] bomb creators of various sizes. But what surprised me the most was a number of punji pits that we passed.
[00:38:42] Some were huge, large enough for animals. And you go through this mission, this one of your first
[00:38:48] missions, and there's like no enemy contact. And one of the guys who were walking in and I looked at
[00:38:53] each other and complete disbelief. We had just walked down into the valley, the shadow of death without
[00:38:57] seeing one NVA soldier. Spider-Joke with me saying that, I was one of the few people in the history of
[00:39:02] CNC to have a run, a practice mission, and two missions, and still have not gotten the combat
[00:39:08] infantryman's badge. The award given to soldiers who had seen combat with the enemy or were
[00:39:13] under direct hostile fire. I kept telling myself that this was a fluke, and I remembered what
[00:39:18] the special forces trainers told us at Fort Bragg, the NVA and the Viet Congrillas will fight
[00:39:23] when they want to no sooner. So your first couple of operations, you got pretty, uh, pretty lucky.
[00:39:30] Oh yeah, we're a slayer. Snails not. We went in and put in those Air Force sensors, and then
[00:39:36] we had all this here. Tackier stacked up. Could we just figured it's going to be a shit show?
[00:39:40] Nothing happened. So we left out some poor support and Viet gunner opens up with a 50 caliber.
[00:39:46] They killed him several times, man. Napom bombs. Because they wanted to use sub-domus, big mission.
[00:39:52] Right. Where you uh, the other interesting thing that you talk about in the book, uh,
[00:39:59] I don't think it was one of yours, but even when you guys would do training missions over there,
[00:40:03] that was like a potential for enemy contact on your training missions. Absolutely.
[00:40:06] Yeah, Lynn Black and his team, they ran the heavy contact. In fact, it was the navy that saved
[00:40:11] their dumbass, all that one training mission, because they just happened to have the frequency.
[00:40:15] The king, he's couldn't get in and they called the navy and they came in, I don't know, a big boat.
[00:40:20] Yeah. Yeah. Some kind of big boat. That's really long. But they came in and pulled their ass out.
[00:40:26] Good. They, the Viet Kong must have a couple hundred people who were coming after.
[00:40:30] And they, they were just out trying to do like a shake out patrol with just a little training
[00:40:34] operation. Yeah, just a little in country thing. You know, it's just go train, get a couple of days,
[00:40:38] get out of camp, eat some, eat some lurps, have some fun. Well, you're uh, you're luck didn't hold
[00:40:46] up. Yes. Going back to the book. And is this guy's name Sal, am I saying that right? Perfect. Okay.
[00:40:52] By now, Sal, eyes were, Sal's eyes were bigger than sauces. So you've been inserted and now you,
[00:40:57] you're starting to have a situation unfold. If you raise spider walk and said,
[00:41:02] tell him I'm declaring Prairie Fire Emergency. If he says anything about not hearing any gunshots,
[00:41:07] tell him to fuck off. I'll explain later. Sal's never been wrong. Look at him. As we spoke,
[00:41:13] Sal looked at us. Boku VC, Boku VC, call King B's now. He whispered. And then you get on the horn.
[00:41:22] I have a Prairie Fire Emergency team in distress. I have a Prairie Fire Emergency. Can anyone
[00:41:28] hear me? I spoke in a hushed tone with my hand, cut over the mouth of the radio. I looked at my
[00:41:35] watch. We still had more than a hundred minutes before our next schedule to commo check with spider
[00:41:40] at 1600. No one responded. So the deal with comm windows are back in the day when we had batteries
[00:41:51] that would run out. You couldn't just sit there and monitor the radio all the time. On either side,
[00:41:56] people that were waiting for you to call, they'd be waiting and they wouldn't monitor the whole
[00:42:01] time so they would come up at certain predesignated communication windows. So that's what's going on
[00:42:07] here. You have this bad situation unfolding and you go to call, but they're not particularly listening
[00:42:13] at that moment, which is why no one's responding. Right. You know, I'm just explaining that to
[00:42:17] some folks that is nowadays we have, well, first of all, we have cell phones. We call anyone
[00:42:22] whenever we want it to make some nice ring tone and you talk to everyone there. Even when I got in,
[00:42:26] we had comm windows. Oh, is that right? Yeah, yeah, we set up comms. I was a comm guy too. Sure,
[00:42:31] we set up comm windows and we'll call you, you know, whatever it was every two hours or whatever.
[00:42:35] And that's the situation that's unfolding right here. You guys still hadn't been contacted yet.
[00:42:42] So back to the book, I sat down with my back against the PRC 25 and opened a can of apricots.
[00:42:49] I was facing south and just starting to sip the sweet apricot nectar when all hell broke loose.
[00:42:55] The green jungle around us are rusted with deafening full automatic blasts from NVAA-AK-47s
[00:43:00] and R-KAR-15s because my back was to them. I hadn't seen sales warning gestures or watched him get
[00:43:07] the jump on the approaching NVAA. I remember spilling apricot nectar on the stock of my car 15.
[00:43:13] As I turned to my left with a majority of the NVAA gunfire was coming from foolishly. My first
[00:43:19] thoughts were that I'd have to clean off the nectar off my weapon and not spill the entire
[00:43:24] can of apricot apricots because I had waited so damn long to eat them. They were always a treat in the jungle.
[00:43:33] But the initial seconds of the firefight I remember saw and how do I say his name?
[00:43:37] FEP? What a fuck. Yeah. Fuck. Fuck yelling profanities at the NVAA as they fired on full
[00:43:42] automatic. The crack of AK-47 rounds had never sounded louder or closer. All I could see from our
[00:43:47] perimeter was gun smoke. The red and orange blast coming from the darker than ever green jungle
[00:43:52] and the green AK-47 tracer flying overheads. In an odd sort of way there was an eerie beauty to
[00:43:58] the scene. The thunderous fury of dozens of men blasting away each other on full automatic within
[00:44:04] 10 feet of each other killed all other sounds. The ear drums were numb. A adrenaline slammed into
[00:44:10] our bloodstreams and was now screaming through our systems. It heightened all senses. It extended
[00:44:15] time. For example, a car 15 fires 20 rounds of 556 high velocity ammunition in less than one and a half
[00:44:21] seconds. Yet those first opening moments of combat with the NVAA seemed much longer than a half a second.
[00:44:28] Then the second and a half. Or nearly when firing on full automatic the weapon
[00:44:32] expended rounds quickly and we trained ourselves to try and gauge when that last round in the
[00:44:36] magazine was slamming into the receiver. Some men placed a trace around in the magazine
[00:44:41] as a visual cue. During that firefight it seemed as though I counted the rounds leaving the
[00:44:47] car 15 and knew exactly when the 18th and last round was exiting the weapon. Also during that first
[00:44:53] expane exchange, full quiz slightly behind me to my right and since I was on the ground he was
[00:44:58] firing over my shoulder. That exposed my right ear to almost a full blast from his car 15.
[00:45:04] The explosions were painful but fuck saved my life. I had aimed the car 15 down the hill toward
[00:45:10] the largest number of AK-47 muzzle flashes that I could see to my left what I hadn't seen were
[00:45:15] a handful of NVAA soldiers who broke out of the jungle to the right and had opened fire on us.
[00:45:21] Fuck realized I hadn't seen the NVAA troops coming up the hill so we got to my right and
[00:45:26] blasted them back into the jungle. I was so focused on the first muzzle flashes that I completely
[00:45:32] missed the others. If those NVAA soldiers had advanced a few more feet we would have been history
[00:45:37] and the remainder of the team which was on my left would have been at risk. That time war
[00:45:42] continued when everybody ran out of bullets simultaneously. The only audible, the only sounds
[00:45:48] audible were the metal clicks of cold magazines being slammed into hot machine guns and
[00:45:53] bolts slamming shut to resume the firefight. A key element in any firefight is the race to reload
[00:46:00] after the initial contact. On 7 October 1968, ST Idaho won the race. No one was faster than
[00:46:08] SAU, heep, heep, heep, heep, folk at getting the first magazine out the second one in and returning
[00:46:17] full automatic gunfire on the enemy. Within seconds we had gained fire superiority. The months and
[00:46:22] months of training on the range under the 2-delegive spider and walkin all of the live fire drills,
[00:46:29] all the live fire races to see who finished reloading first, paid off. All other games in life
[00:46:35] were frivolous and irrelevant. In this deadly game, if you missed hitting the target, you died.
[00:46:45] So that was your first big contact, huh? That was it. That's a doozy. It was absolutely.
[00:46:51] And it still sticks with us, you know, never forget it. And fuck, I mean later wrong we're back
[00:46:57] in base. I was complain. I'm glad you didn't realize what had happened. And so talking through
[00:47:03] the interpreter said you'd dump fucker. I just saved your ass. These guys were coming up to
[00:47:09] Hill on you're too stupid to realize it. Oh, so you were mad at him for shooting too close to
[00:47:12] you? Oh yeah, because my ear was just fucked. I couldn't hear for days. It's like so thanks for
[00:47:18] saving my life on complainer. Classic. Oh yeah. You continue on with this a little bit as
[00:47:27] as we gain complete fire superiority. I turned on the URC 10 beeper and started screaming into
[00:47:31] the PRC 25. I have a fucking prairie fire emergency that bitter fear-laced plea was greeted with
[00:47:38] complete silence. Woken was less than subtle. Keep yelling until you get someone. A key factor
[00:47:44] in SDI to host favor that day was the small null that woken is driven us to. The jungle is so thick
[00:47:50] and the null is so small that only a score of NVA could rush at once. They weren't moved. They weren't
[00:47:55] fast moving. Fear inspiring charges that the NVA were known for successfully executing
[00:48:01] either. Here the jungle worked against them but the NVA kept coming. At one point, Wolk and pulled
[00:48:07] me over pointed into the jungle and said, look, they're stacking up dead bodies to get to us.
[00:48:12] Hip showed me. Can you believe it? And they keep coming. Hell, if we kill enough of them,
[00:48:19] the body stack will be as high as we are. Because the jungle area was so dark at first. I couldn't
[00:48:25] tell exactly what I was looking at but Wolk and his right. The NVA were stacking bodies and firing
[00:48:30] it from behind their dead comrades. A lot of NVA soldiers died in those first few minutes of how on earth.
[00:48:39] That's a determined enemy. Oh yeah. And we heard about, you know, it's one thing to hear about
[00:48:45] it basically and the press of force is training how determined the enemy was. And the see it
[00:48:53] firsthand. Dying like that. I mean, Lily just kept coming and we had high ground. You know,
[00:48:59] thank God for high ground thick jungle and the fact that it wasn't a big area where they could
[00:49:05] mass more. You guys didn't bring a, you guys didn't have an automatic weapon with you.
[00:49:10] You guys didn't have an A-Dob like a like a belt fed machine gun. You guys wouldn't carry those?
[00:49:14] No, we had a sick, well, in the case of six-man team. And the team's some of the teams began
[00:49:20] carrying the M60 a little later. And then the R-P-G because they cut the barrel off and it had the
[00:49:29] the magazine, the circular magazine, the holes. I think it's 200, 250 rounds. God. But they
[00:49:36] with something to do. But in our case, because we carried the M79 also, it solved off M79. God,
[00:49:42] gave you a lot of extra firepower. But did you use the full of shut rounds without or just the just the
[00:49:46] H-E. But the first round would be flesh-shat. So if anything was close, that would be the first round
[00:49:52] and then we needed the H-E-E-E rounds. For no A-W, man, that's it. This, when I hear that story right
[00:49:59] there, I would do anything to have an M60 machine gun. Oh yeah, that's your way, shit. Absolutely.
[00:50:06] But just the weight, the rounds and everything else, you know, like a my case, I carried the
[00:50:10] radio, always carried the radio. Yeah. And so between the radio, the battery, and we always had
[00:50:15] 600 plus rounds. We were, I was on my first deployment to Iraq. I was on like one of my first
[00:50:20] controls in a humvise and we were out and we ended up, we hit a little, I don't know what you call
[00:50:31] them, the steel hedgehog, do you know what that is? It's like a little obstacle, right? That Americans
[00:50:35] had put out. Americans had put it out, a steel hedgehog, a little obstacle for those of you don't
[00:50:40] know, it's to prevent cars from going by. Well, we, we made a wrong term somewhere and we went
[00:50:45] down road, we weren't supposed to go to and we hit one of those little steel hedgehogs. We didn't
[00:50:50] know what it was. So we're driving like, it's actually my humvise too and it made it loud noise
[00:50:56] and sparked and I actually thought in my mind, I thought we just got hit with a low order ID,
[00:51:00] like a low order boo, boo, boo, boo, we tripped that didn't fully explode. So we come to a stop
[00:51:06] and we all get out of the vehicles and now we're in the middle of Baghdad and there were just
[00:51:11] surrounded by threats and in our mind we're about to be attacked because we didn't know that we just
[00:51:17] ran over our American thing but we're too stupid. We don't know. We don't know that. So everyone's
[00:51:22] out there, we're all out there with our, with our M4s, our little basically car 15s and you are like
[00:51:29] I felt completely naked. I was saying myself, God, we know what, we need better weapons.
[00:51:34] Now we had 50 cows mounted in the humvise but once we were mobile, I'm thinking we do, why don't
[00:51:39] we have, why don't we have belt fed machine guns? When I got, when we got back that night,
[00:51:44] it wasn't just me that felt like that because that night, all my guys, they went in every humv
[00:51:49] every input belt fed machine guns, we mounted and we staged them. So anytime we got out of
[00:51:53] those vehicles, we were ready to go to war. Oh yeah, yeah. Particularly in the situation like that
[00:51:59] because you can have all the limit to people coming out of these. I have a little nuts. But yeah, that
[00:52:03] naked feeling, yeah, because in a w in a situation like this, that'd be nice. Going back to the
[00:52:09] book, more than an hour, my cries and screams into the radio and the URC 10 beeper went unanswered
[00:52:16] as the NVA mounted more attacks. There was no need for radio secure procedures. Now the
[00:52:22] hide and seek portion of the game was over. Now it was simply a matter of survival. My respect
[00:52:26] for the NVA's to nasty grew that day, but the hill, the jungle in our car 15s, worked against
[00:52:32] them as they continued to pile up or drag away more bodies. With no help around,
[00:52:37] conserving ammo while keeping the enemy back became a top priority. There were no more full
[00:52:42] automatic blasts from us, although we had been in contact less than two hours. It felt like we've
[00:52:46] been fighting for several. As the team anxiously awaited for help from above, the few team members
[00:52:54] pitted against the enemy NVA seemed ludicrous in terms of survival. The enormity of the jungle hit home.
[00:53:02] Yes, so you got, how many rounds did you say you would bring? Well, he always carried 600 plus.
[00:53:07] Per man. Oh, no, the Vietnamese were carried a light of load because they could
[00:53:11] just be only like 98 pounds. So I forget what they're load. And you guys had 20 round magazines at this
[00:53:18] point, right? Correct. Now, 30 were just a dream we thought about. And a couple of guys were smart enough
[00:53:24] to write the call order and they had a mail to them later. We weren't that smart. So we had the
[00:53:30] 20 rounds, but because of the spring you only put 18. Yeah. And so you're taking at some point,
[00:53:36] probably how long into this are you starting to take point shots instead of, oh yeah,
[00:53:41] he's just waiting till things come out. You see it and then just one, two. Finally, I heard the
[00:53:49] Texas draw of Spiderman on the radio and have four phantom jet returning from a bombing run in northern
[00:53:54] louss and heard the beeper and called him. I told Spiderman we had a Perry Fryer, Perry Fryer
[00:53:59] emergency. Spiderman said that he had also called the judge and the executioner. Who are the
[00:54:04] judge and the executioner? They were pilots for the 176th of America out division and they
[00:54:11] were the muskets. And they had been assigned permanently to CNC earlier in the year,
[00:54:19] they built the camp duck and then they had been assigned, when camp duck was closed down,
[00:54:26] they came to food by. And they actually built a barracks that the helicopter possibly stay and
[00:54:30] they were one of the crews, them and the Marine Corps, a scarfase, were a gunster that
[00:54:36] regularly hung out with us and saved our bacon. So the judge, they had these old guns,
[00:54:44] they could barely get off the ground. But he had the rockapods and then the executioner was a
[00:54:50] cook and he had the minigun. Those are some awesome call signs. Oh yeah. Going back to the book,
[00:54:59] thankfully we had made mirror contact with Spiderman earlier and he was able to pinpoint our location
[00:55:03] in a matter of minutes. Soon Spiderman was over us. He told me to pop smoke. Our SOP was not to say
[00:55:08] what color smoke grenade we would use. Soon the NVA were monitoring our FM frequency. I popped a yellow
[00:55:14] smoke. He said he saw two yellows which meant the NVA were monitoring our frequency and it guessed
[00:55:19] which color we would use. We changed frequencies and I popped a violet smoke. A few minutes later,
[00:55:25] the first A1E Skyrader arrived on target and made a gun run on our eastern perimeter. His wing
[00:55:32] man made the first Napomron on the south side. Put your heads down. I'm going to make you sweat. He said
[00:55:38] he brought it so close. We could feel the heat from the deadly jelly. A few seconds later,
[00:55:43] we smelled burning flesh. He dive toward us a third time. The pilot drawred its crispy critter time.
[00:55:50] The Napomron was so close we could feel the air being sucked away from us by the exploding material.
[00:55:57] If the jelly landed on a person's skin it would continue to burn. Either until it burned itself
[00:56:01] out or is deprived of air by mud or some other substance. The spads arrival changed the temple
[00:56:06] the firefight when the NVA heard the old World War II plane making another run they charged us in
[00:56:12] a desperate attempt to get as close as they could in order to avoid the skyraders deadly ordinance.
[00:56:17] The NVA were getting close to the belt. That's horrifying. So those that don't understand the
[00:56:23] tactics of that situation. You got aircraft overhead. They're dropping Napom. So what do you
[00:56:27] think? Oh, cool. That'll make the NVA run away. No. No. Actually what they wanted to get close enough
[00:56:32] to Americans that they can't get Napom dropped on them. By 68 they had the attack down really
[00:56:39] tight. They knew when they aircraft were there that they were safe for the closer to us and then
[00:56:44] so they get closer or hopefully the wipe us out and to say their own ass. That's like there's
[00:56:50] I guess there's no higher motivation than that Napom coming out of you if you stay where you're out.
[00:56:55] Nasty. And so therefore even that that stage of the game we had to go back to full
[00:57:02] automatic couple times because they're charging hard. Oh yeah. What numbers are we talking about?
[00:57:08] Never knew. We just stacked them up so high. We'd never had no time to go do a body count. You know
[00:57:13] that is you're just busy killing. Yeah. I don't want to throw that out. This all non-shall not like
[00:57:18] yeah. I know how that is. No, actually we never stacked up body so high that we lost count.
[00:57:26] Going back to the book then an Air Force pilot and an F4 fan of a Rive Dawn station. Tell
[00:57:30] your people the ordinance will arrive on target before you hear me or the rounds. The pilot said.
[00:57:36] I told the team to put their heads down. The phenomenon of having bullets tearing into a target before
[00:57:41] anyone could hear the aircraft which delivered them was unbelievable. The jungle in front of us
[00:57:46] was shredded by the F4's gun run. Within a midnight or two his wingman dropped to 500 pound bombs.
[00:57:52] The change in aircraft staggered the NVA for a few moments. Right then in there I think the
[00:57:57] Lord for Uncle Sam's Air Force. The judge and the executioner rolled in right behind the fast mover.
[00:58:05] The judge's mini gun was real close to our perimeter. Seconds later the executioner followed
[00:58:10] behind him firing several 2.75 millimeter rockets while his door gunners blasted away with their
[00:58:15] M60 machine guns because we hadn't expended any ordinance to our West. We ran the gun ships
[00:58:21] over the western edge of our perimeter. They drew no enemy fire either. About a half an hour before
[00:58:28] dusk spider told us the king bees were on their way. By that time the judge and the executioner
[00:58:33] had refueled, reloaded and were returning a few minutes in front of them. Everyone in STIdeho
[00:58:39] was dangerously low on ambient ammo, grenades and M79 rounds. So now you got the extract,
[00:58:46] platforms are coming back. The king bees are coming to get you. Before the king bees moved in
[00:58:53] an attempt to pick us up spider had the judge and the executioner made gun runs so close to our
[00:58:57] perimeter that we could hear the expended shell casings from the gun ships and 60 in miniguns falling
[00:59:02] to earth. Through all the excitement I told, walking that spider had spotted an area west of our
[00:59:09] perimeter where the king might be able to settle into some elephant grass for us. Walking in and
[00:59:15] hip passed the word to the team and we started moving toward the area from our location. We couldn't
[00:59:20] see the elephant grass and I had assumed we were locked into double a triple canopy jungle.
[00:59:26] Again the judge and executioner hammered our eastern flank as we moved toward the tentative
[00:59:32] LZ. So I got it. Or if you could explain spiders position a little bit because that's pretty unique
[00:59:41] to Vietnam of how those guys could be up overhead sort of watching and directing.
[00:59:47] Yeah they're we called in cubby the codename was cubby c o v e y but they were four air controllers
[00:59:54] basically and in the CNC mission you have an air force pilot at that time most of the cubby's
[01:00:03] were o 2s, says no 2, they had a push pool double engine but they always would have a prior
[01:00:13] one zero somebody with experience who'd been on a ground who would be with the air force pilot.
[01:00:18] So the pilot would fly then he would turn the radio over so to spider or whoever the cubby rider
[01:00:25] was. So that was a slot so sometimes the guys would be wounded they couldn't go to the field
[01:00:31] but they could fly cubby got it so that when we're on the ground we have a situation
[01:00:35] that we're dealing with then he's able to understand as opposed to talking to an air force pilot
[01:00:41] right who's just used to getting a bomb and drop it somewhere and talk about a contingent
[01:00:48] liability that's been off of a firefight and so that was a spider shop he was the cubby rider
[01:00:55] and then he and Pat Walkers that day were the two cubby riders that came in and they covered
[01:00:59] us until they got us out.
[01:01:02] Oh man, going back to the book, Salon Hipwear covered our frantic desperate drive to the chopper.
[01:01:12] After taking 10 minutes to cover those last 10 yards we reached the hovering king b
[01:01:16] which is about 8 feet above the ground. Fox set up an impromptu security watch on the western
[01:01:23] side of the road or wash. A quick check of my ammunition revealed I was down to one frag grenade,
[01:01:28] one white phosphorous grenade and two magazines of car 15 rounds. If I didn't get extracted that last
[01:01:34] frag grenade would be mine. There was no way in hell I was going to be a POW, especially after all
[01:01:40] the NVA ST Idaho and tack air had killed. If I had to use it I'd take as many NVA with me as I could.
[01:01:48] That's a bold statement. Oh yeah but by that time we knew about POW is what they go on through
[01:02:04] and we had lost a couple of guys and one of them had escaped and they were you know by now we're
[01:02:11] hearing the POW stories. So it's bad enough in country but for our mission. No, what's it going to happen?
[01:02:19] I figured it's just a sit. I'm just trying to take as many as we can. Make it a final contact.
[01:02:28] Now you guys eventually get to where you're loading the the king beast which again these are
[01:02:34] Vietnamese pilots. They're old aircrafts. Probably look like they were held together with
[01:02:43] duct tape. But they always had oil and fluids inside and so it's off you sat in too deep you get the
[01:02:49] fluid on your head. But we liked it better than the youy because they could take more hits
[01:02:58] and they had those old B-17 engines up front the nine rotary heads and they could take more
[01:03:04] hits and it's what we liked them. And this captain thin is I think he said thin.
[01:03:09] Captain thin. At some point during the craziness I looked up at the pilot of the king be captain tin.
[01:03:16] He was above all the madness on the ground to completely calm and collected while his aircraft took
[01:03:21] numerous hits from enemy rounds. What made his demeanor all the more extraordinary was how it
[01:03:26] contrasted with our adrenaline hype, frantic behavior on the ground. We had been fighting for hours.
[01:03:31] We were dirty. We were sweaty and we were exhausted. And their sat captain tin. Cool as a rocky mountain
[01:03:38] breeze. Giving the impression that it was just another milk run. It was as though he said no
[01:03:43] sweat boys I got all day. You just take your time. The students will break out the beverages after
[01:03:48] you've secured your seats. Looking at captain tin for a brief moment generated a mental image I
[01:03:54] carried with me forever. Frankly I never understood how one man could be so steady under so much
[01:03:58] enemy fire and keep the chopper hovering. Can you imagine? It's as day I can't.
[01:04:09] Yeah and you go into a little bit further here. A day or two after the extraction.
[01:04:13] Captain tin and his crew came in to F.O.B. one's green beret lounge. I went in and thanked him
[01:04:18] again and ordered a couple rounds of drink for all the king be pilots and crew members.
[01:04:23] Speaking through an interpreter, Captain tin said the king be he flew to extract
[01:04:27] us from Echo 4 had 48 holes in it from enemy ordinance. Sitting at the bar, Captain tin appeared
[01:04:34] to be just as cool and above the fray of daily life as he had on seven October. Tin said that an
[01:04:41] enemy round had torn a baseball sized hole through one of the rotor blades. I asked him how he
[01:04:46] could hover so long. He told me that when he piloted a helicopter he thought only about flying
[01:04:51] nothing else. No enemy bullets, weather or anything. Only flying. If it's my turn to die, I die.
[01:04:58] That day wasn't my turn to die.
[01:05:04] Amazing man. He's a he's an Arizona today. Really. He's still alive. Yeah. Oh.
[01:05:10] We'll be having him on the podcast. Hopefully you want to come on here. That's awesome.
[01:05:15] Uh, and then you had one of your guys and this is like the other on the spectrum. It's hard to
[01:05:24] maintain one of your guys Davidson had to talk to you when he came up and he said,
[01:05:28] I haven't mentioned that your nickname was tilt yet. Which get that nickname? Pinballs.
[01:05:35] See, when you play a pinball machine, you lose and walk away pissed off. When I lose, I shake the
[01:05:40] shit out of it. Get to see my nickname, Leon. Don't I leave? How did the SF guys know about that?
[01:05:46] How did they learn about it from us? It goes way back. Yeah. It was a kid. We said,
[01:05:50] I didn't even pinballs all the time. Little anger man has been issued. Indeed.
[01:05:58] So Davidson, he comes up tilt. I have to tell you something brother. I don't think I can do this.
[01:06:04] I survived back to brother, but I ain't seen I never seen shit like that before in my life.
[01:06:12] We were really lucky to survive that mission. I don't think I can go on. I hate to desert
[01:06:17] you brother, but I think I want off the team. Now I understood that look on his face from the previous
[01:06:24] day. I told Davidson that I respected his decision and that I appreciate his friendness.
[01:06:30] I thought it took more courage to be honest and camp than to not say anything and go in the field.
[01:06:36] A man unsure in the field could get other team members hurt. He reiterated that he
[01:06:42] performed well under fire in Echo 4. He hadn't run. He hadn't quit and he had demonstrated
[01:06:49] exemplary courage during the entire mission. As we walked and talked, I put my hand on the shoulder.
[01:06:55] James, you and I and walk and did something few men in America will ever do. We survived Echo 4
[01:07:01] and all the NVA could throw at us. There were six of us against hundreds of North Vietnamese
[01:07:07] finest. We will always have a special bond. Something no one can ever take away from us.
[01:07:14] Thanks again for your honesty. I asked him if he wanted me to talk to the sergeant major
[01:07:19] or did he want to do it? Because he had only been in camp a short while, he asked me if I wouldn't
[01:07:24] mind speaking to the sergeant major first. I agreed and asked him what sort of assignment he preferred.
[01:07:31] I don't know brother, I'll need some time to get my head straight. And you have a note in here
[01:07:36] 32 years later, I talked to James Davidson and New Orleans on the telephone. One of the things he said
[01:07:44] was brother I've never been the same since those two days and louss. Oh yeah, and he gave me
[01:07:51] back the captain 10 for a moment. The ethic pulled us out and we landed a food buy. I'd climb
[01:07:59] up the bank and say come on in and get you a drink. He goes, no my family is waiting for me. They're
[01:08:05] holding dinner. No, and even on that extraction that night because it's right at sunset. And so
[01:08:12] when we pulled out, it's one of those beautiful scenes where it's a dark green evergreen of the jungle.
[01:08:20] And all these little sparkling lights that are red with the green traces coming up. If I had
[01:08:25] had been traced it was just a beautiful scene but then you realize hey that's the NVA still trying
[01:08:29] to shoot our dumb ass down. But then we flew, he had a South directly for a few minutes. We had
[01:08:36] the sunset because that sweet sunset and was at that point that South looked at me and gave me that
[01:08:42] look. That's all it was. So we cut the mustard. So you know because when I first got in the camp,
[01:08:51] he looked at me. My came into it but it's better introduced me. He goes, he's too tall.
[01:08:57] His feet are too big and he looks stupid. It took me five months to get on his good side but we
[01:09:04] finally got there in Echo 4. All you had to do is just fend off a few hundred NVA together.
[01:09:10] Yeah, that's all it took. And so Davidson, so this was a volunteer to get into the program and you could
[01:09:16] add any points. Hey Tom, you can put. Oh yeah, absolutely. And no dishonor to it. Always preferred
[01:09:23] because like with Lynn Black in chapter six when they came up against 10,000, one of his Americans
[01:09:29] who was the son of a general who was just there to try and get some medals for himself. Never fired
[01:09:35] one round an anger and prayed during the entire day. What is facing the ground? The Vietnamese
[01:09:40] were ready to kill him. So that's kind of thing that you don't want. No, that's horrible.
[01:09:49] Yeah, these contacts that you're getting in, I just it's hard for me to get my head around.
[01:09:55] You're not to beat out there like a low-mic that with just really limited support, you know.
[01:10:01] Oh yeah, there are days, but we had Uncle Sans Air Force and those door gunners were great.
[01:10:09] Absolutely. And we had Scarface, you know, from the Marine Corps and we had different units
[01:10:12] of attached to us and we're just really lucky. Whenever we called the Aways Came and in fact we won
[01:10:19] Scarface it was Lieutenant Colonel Robinson. He pulled us out several times and he pulls out
[01:10:26] the one time. He got his plexiglass shot out, the bird shot up. We get us back to food. We chewed my
[01:10:32] asses every time we come to get you and he chewed my ass out. We go into the club. He's still chewed my
[01:10:37] ass out. I bought him drinks. Got him so drunk he couldn't walk. He had to fly. He's still chewed my
[01:10:44] ass out. I said Colonel, are you saying you're not going to come to the next time? I didn't say that
[01:10:49] every time you were hanging to Bell they came. But oh my God, they could really, they were
[01:10:54] tried the door gunners we get out of the helicopter. They were like the B or D models was really
[01:10:58] early U. E. So this is true with the muskets. The door gunners had to get out and kind of lift the
[01:11:04] helicopter as they tried to get enough power to get off the ground because they're just so loaded
[01:11:08] with ordinance than they jump in once they got moving. Quite a sight. But they always came.
[01:11:16] And the other thing is that's weird is they didn't really have night time capability. Not like
[01:11:22] anyone. So well it seems like like now it is night is no factor for America. Oh I know we would have
[01:11:30] been over our mother for one of those dogs. Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But for you guys once the
[01:11:36] sun went down it was hard to get picked up. It was hard to call for fire. It seemed that way. Oh yeah.
[01:11:44] No doubt. And then you were racing the sun. You were racing the sun. You were racing the
[01:11:48] nature. Oh yeah, she's a key player between a weather and the sun said. Yeah, that's the other
[01:11:54] scary thing. I don't mean you see, you know this is something I usually say early on but I haven't
[01:11:58] said yet. I'm reading tiny excerpts of this book. So if you're listening to the podcast,
[01:12:05] these are tiny excerpts. This is less than five less than 3% of this book. This book is filled
[01:12:11] with this kind of mayhem. So you have to get the book to appreciate it. Well I'm just kind of
[01:12:16] hitting some of the highlights. But yeah, the fact that you guys were racing against the sun going
[01:12:22] down and how the sun goes down. Okay, cool. Where did we go to that mean? In modern-day
[01:12:27] sealtimes for me, that means we use a night strobe, an infrared strobe that the enemy can't
[01:12:33] see instead of a marking panel. What does it mean for you? It means another another 12 hours out
[01:12:38] in the bush because you're not getting picked up. I just hope that the the lions leave you alone.
[01:12:44] You know, let me to tigers. You had this one idea or you know, the group had an idea of dropping
[01:12:55] like a big giant daisy cutter. But a bit bomb like a 2000 pound bomb in order in areas that were
[01:13:01] so packed with vegetation that you couldn't get in helicopter and they're like, oh, we got
[01:13:07] a night. It will just drop a big bomb and it was going land in there. Yeah. Get dropped off in there.
[01:13:12] And so this one operation where you're doing that, you're heading into the jungle. You're going
[01:13:19] to one of these things where you dropped 2000 pound daisy cutter bomb. You're repelling, you're the
[01:13:24] number one man heading down. Right. And you decide that, like, hey, this is an abort situation.
[01:13:30] I think you saw some enemy. Oh, yeah. And so you decide, okay, let's abort this thing. And here
[01:13:34] we're going to the book. As I looked up, I was glad to see King, who's one of your team members
[01:13:38] climbing back into the King Bay. I got on the radio and told Kovey to abort the mission as we had
[01:13:44] been compromised again for a few fleeting moments I'd consider trying to get the team on the ground.
[01:13:49] Frankly, I was sick and tired of getting shot out of LZs and I wanted to run a mission instead of
[01:13:53] going through the gut wrenching firefight on the LZs, which is, you know, again, I'm skipping around
[01:13:58] this book. But you would do mission after mission where you guys would try and land. You get shot off the
[01:14:03] LZ. Oh, yeah. That would be the primary secondary and then the alternate LCs. So you try three
[01:14:12] insertions. You know, I'm just going to, I'm just going to, for the record, if I go one insertion
[01:14:17] and I get shot off, I'm coming home. I'm coming home. We're going to go on the road. I'm not going
[01:14:24] to go to the secondary. And if I get shot off the secondary, I'm damn sure not going to the
[01:14:28] tertiary. I think I'm going to get away with it. I'm going to go back and come up with a new plan.
[01:14:31] Well, by then, the King be running out on the gas. They had to go back. So you're there.
[01:14:38] Then I saw the helmet of an NVA soldier heading toward the Bomb area. He was approaching from the
[01:14:42] area where I heard the first voice from the jungle area in front of the helicopter, which was
[01:14:47] up the hill from where I was on the ground. As soon as I saw my open fire with my car 15,
[01:14:51] suddenly the King be swirled away leaving me on the ground. Suddenly it was eerily quiet, then it hit
[01:14:57] me. I was standing in the middle of a smoking LZ in the middle of Louss. And I was alone. All of a sudden
[01:15:02] I felt small, very small. The trees that had survived the Bomb blast were tall. The jungles
[01:15:08] around in the LZ was both impressive and formidable and not somewhere I wanted to travel by myself.
[01:15:14] I tried to raise Kavion the radio. There was no answer from Watkins. Even though I was the American
[01:15:19] teen leader on ST Idaho, I insisted on carrying the radio because I wanted to be the person calling
[01:15:24] air strikes around my team. The Vietnamese kept surviving the field and I felt my end of surviving
[01:15:29] the jungle warfare was to direct tax to the air strikes and helicopter gunships to the enemy.
[01:15:36] So the King be comes back. So you're there. The King be comes back. Captain Tuan.
[01:15:41] Drap drops a rope down to you for you to clip into because it's I guess too tight for it to land
[01:15:47] or it doesn't want to land because it's going to take a bunch of time and energy. So they just
[01:15:50] throw you a rope. Yeah, they can't land because there are too many tree stumps.
[01:15:54] They're easy carding and everything down. And at that time we were just refining the tactic
[01:16:01] of using rope extractions. So for anyone that's listening right now,
[01:16:08] when you're refining tactics, try and do it on training operations. What we did, we trained
[01:16:15] first. We had 150 foot rope, we'll sand back to it and then I had a D ring on the end and be 150
[01:16:22] foot rope and so they had to have a sand back so we'll get through the jungle to get to the ground to you.
[01:16:28] And we had developed other tactics but you had a D ring on your chest. Well, you're going to get to that.
[01:16:32] Yeah, yeah. But so yeah, here we go. I saw no NVA but the weapon that was being fired at the
[01:16:37] unmistakable bark for an AK 47. I fired another M79 round in that direction.
[01:16:43] That round's explosion must have startled Captain Tuan because he jerked the King be upward
[01:16:47] yanking me off the ground before I could slip the D ring on my left shoulder around the rope.
[01:16:52] That shoulder D ring was critical for staying in the Swiss seat. We had heard horror stories about the
[01:16:57] body, desecrations and the NVA had performed on Sogman and I didn't want that happening to me.
[01:17:04] As Tuan lifted me into the air, I opened fire with my car 15 on what appeared to be a muzzle flash
[01:17:09] coming from the hilltop area. So you're getting hoisted up by the helicopter while you're
[01:17:15] returning fire and slipping out of your D ring. Yeah, then quite get hooked in, because at that
[01:17:20] as we got a little higher up, I was ricocheting off the trees. I was I was a human pinball for a few
[01:17:25] men's here. Tilt. There we go. Then I became scared. So then you decided to become scared. Okay,
[01:17:35] that's fine. I still hadn't hooked my shoulder D ring and someone fired a few green tracers at us.
[01:17:41] Captain Tuan started to pull out of the target area. As he started gaining speed, I ricocheted off
[01:17:45] a few trees before I cleared the jungle. Having sat in the Kingby's copilot seat, I understood
[01:17:49] why he pulled away from the LZ before I'd cleared the trees. If the chopper gets shot down,
[01:17:53] the mission turns into an operational light mirror while potentially injuring or killing the crew
[01:17:58] and the recon team members aboard the ship. I wasn't angry with him hell. He came back for me.
[01:18:03] I would have been stranded down here for at least two more hours before other choppers with ropes
[01:18:08] could have been able to extract me if he hadn't. But being dragged through the trees hurt,
[01:18:13] I was angry myself for not getting the damn D ring hooked before I lifted off the ground. My arms
[01:18:18] were getting very sore. As I went to switch arms, I was struck by some sort of air pocket and
[01:18:23] suddenly I was upside down at 5,000 feet. My only physical length of life was the D ring hooked
[01:18:31] into my rope seat and the 150 foot piece of rope hanging from the helicopter. I twisted my body
[01:18:37] to look up at King again. Thank God he was still hanging out the door. I signal to get the
[01:18:41] chopper to land. As I was giving King signs, I felt the rope slipping down my thighs to my knees.
[01:18:47] At the same time, my web gear was sliding from my hips over my stomach toward my neck. And
[01:18:52] a matter of moments the Swiss seat was at my knees. The only way I stopped it from moving further
[01:18:57] was by spreading my legs. I felt really stupid. After all the training, this was going to be a
[01:19:03] dumb way to die. As the ropes slid across my feet, I knew I was moments away from passing out.
[01:19:09] There was no way I could keep my legs spread just before the end. Several brief scenes from my
[01:19:14] life flashed through my mind. Dolores, my kindergarten sweetheart, why did she move to California?
[01:19:20] I saw my dad's new 1949 Chevrolet milk truck with its dark evergreen paint with the white
[01:19:25] side panels and rich gold leaf letters. My red wagon from childhood high school football games.
[01:19:32] And to add insult to injury, I saw the front page article in my hometown part paper about my death.
[01:19:38] The story was below the fold because stories about local boys dying in nom were now commonplace.
[01:19:44] That angered me because my family would never know where I really died. On the other hand,
[01:19:50] I didn't want them to know how I really died. Just as I started to pass out, I felt the rope
[01:19:56] slip off my feet. My body went limp. I vaguely remember hitting the elephant grass before landing
[01:20:03] hard on my back on the ground. I had fallen only 10 or 20 feet. The elephant grass cushioned the fall.
[01:20:10] I hadn't realized that Captain Twong had the aircraft descending during those last
[01:20:15] frantic moments. Had those legs spread like a New York City hooker?
[01:20:27] Yeah, that's a nightmare. King came out and picked me up and threw me in the
[01:20:34] chopper left on my gear there. So my car 15 and my sawed knife, which now would be a highly treasured item,
[01:20:42] still in Leos. Oh, you lost it a lot. He just pulled the open a web gear and he had to get
[01:20:48] to think off my neck, the rucksack, the web gear. He pulled it off and just picked me up and
[01:20:54] threw me in the helicopter. I was really happy to feel my head bounce off that metal floor. It hurt,
[01:21:00] but it was a happy hurt. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah again, if you have to get this book because
[01:21:08] I'm trying to pick some good stories, but these are just the kind of ridiculous
[01:21:15] things that are going on. Just another day in the song. Just another day in the song.
[01:21:19] Getting hung upside down, 5000 feet above enemy territory by a D-ring.
[01:21:28] Another one here. You guys got some bad weather. You're got no support overhead.
[01:21:34] That's another thing people need to understand is, because of where you guys were located,
[01:21:40] at a pretty good distance away from the bases, if there was no aircraft overhead,
[01:21:46] then you wouldn't be able to communicate with anyone because they would use line to site.
[01:21:50] Now, do you guys carry every carry HF radios to try and make long distance? We had VHS for
[01:21:54] our UHF. Yeah, the York 10 was at. But at nights, during the day there was always an airborne
[01:22:02] command aircraft up. So at the daytime was Hillsboro, code at night, it was moombeen. So they
[01:22:10] would check in with us on our frequency. So you would no matter what, you'd have some
[01:22:15] full of cops. Okay, that's good to hear. And so because of the, we knew the NVA
[01:22:20] RDF radial direction finder was really good. They were sharp on that. So when they would
[01:22:26] check in with us again, it would be just a click-click. No discussion. And Fuzzy, you don't know
[01:22:31] the direct radio direction finding. So if you sit there and talk on the radio for a long period
[01:22:36] of time, the enemy can actually capture those transmissions. They're trying to make a useful
[01:22:42] multiple stations and they can tell what direction they're coming from and they can try and
[01:22:45] get where you're at and they can come and get you. So for this particular one, you guys are
[01:22:51] the weather's bad. So you don't have any, you don't have any actual direct support overhead.
[01:22:56] The, the NVA had been just the, what is the one where you got? You try to set up an ambush
[01:23:00] and they told you don't do it. Well, we had the ambush set up. We'd been there. But then they told
[01:23:04] you don't execute the ambush, right? They don't execute it because we were had visions of,
[01:23:08] we get the POW because the nut day, if you, we caressed a live POW. Five day R&R, anywhere in the
[01:23:14] world, $100 bonus. Like, man, we're talking about, we're the plank and plans Hawaii or Australia.
[01:23:22] We hadn't quite decided. And as spider came back over and I gave him the code, we got a POW
[01:23:27] it would be back at the primary LZ and one hour. And that's where he said, don't move. Yeah.
[01:23:32] But you hadn't initiated. You didn't have the POW. No, yeah, you were waiting. Oh, yeah, they're
[01:23:36] walked up and down a trail. Yeah, it was just a matter of time before you were going to, well, we
[01:23:40] spring your ambush. And this is one of those deals where we violate the order rules of recon.
[01:23:44] Not only we go 10 and 10, walk 10 minutes, pause 10 to hear the jungle, let the jungle,
[01:23:51] see how it's gone. Well, this one, because we had so much trouble trying to get in, they had
[01:23:57] slashed in burn areas that were underneath the jungle canopy. I divided the team. We had to
[01:24:02] eight man team this time. But for each side, and I said, we're going to go up this hill until we get
[01:24:08] to an area to a trail or whatever. And we didn't stop. We went really hard. Maybe 20, 30, 40 minutes
[01:24:14] I forget now. We came up to a big trail. We crossed it one at a time. Covered our tracks.
[01:24:21] Got things that up, South put up the wire tap, had a perfect ambush. You know, we had trained
[01:24:27] limb black had developed the the ambush kilzone so that we had clay mors that would go across.
[01:24:37] But in the center there'd be a six foot area that there'd be no strappin' on. But we had,
[01:24:43] he he practiced on himself and see for it. So he finally figured out at the certain length
[01:24:48] what a stick of C4 was. We didn't knock yourself out. He did literally. Yeah. I know this is another
[01:24:53] enter. Oh yeah. So that's our input. But we had a lot set up. So we had C4 to knock out one person,
[01:25:00] clay mors to kill everybody else with sides, parameters, and one in the rear just in case he
[01:25:06] came down to mountain on us. And they're diddy popping up down the trail. We could have had officers,
[01:25:12] they're walking down the trail. Nobody said upset because we had gone so far so fast
[01:25:16] violating all of our rules that the people up to hill didn't know what was going on down the hill.
[01:25:23] And then Spiders says don't move. I was like, that's what things that really ugly.
[01:25:29] And when he, what was the reason why he told you guys no to do it? Because the weather was moving in.
[01:25:33] Oh yeah. They certainly have been on the ground two or three hours. And the weather sucked.
[01:25:38] And he's at 10,000 feet. I can't even see the mountain, let alone C and L's. So he's saying,
[01:25:43] look, we're not going to be able to get you out of there right now. Just don't do what
[01:25:47] we're going to do and and and break contact in a way. Yeah. So you guys are kind of kind of on the run.
[01:25:53] You guys start moving out of there. Right. And so about that time up the hill, we hear the tanks
[01:25:58] and other trucks starting up their engines. And all of a sudden the activity on the trail
[01:26:03] goes from casual to frantic. Now everybody's two with me guys. They all got their AKs.
[01:26:08] What do you think could have been that you were there? Well, they heard us come in.
[01:26:11] And by then we could hear the dogs. They have some dogs that were deaf back on the L.C.
[01:26:17] So they had started looking for us officially. So when you hear dogs, tanks, trucks,
[01:26:22] I mean a bunch of people with AK 47's. Yeah. How do you feel about that?
[01:26:33] The Pucker Factor is mine is zero. It really is. It's like, oh my God.
[01:26:38] And you know that you've got no form of extraction. Correct. The weird thing is I guess and
[01:26:44] having worked in the jungle a little bit, you know, I spent some time in the jungle in South
[01:26:48] America in the Southeast Asia. Like I will say this, the jungle is huge. Right. And you could see
[01:26:54] we're okay. I can get I can make myself scarce at least until you remember they got trackers. Right.
[01:27:00] And they got dogs. Lots of them. So you're in that situation here. Yeah.
[01:27:06] Another Thursday night. But would you get them? We did get the wiretap though.
[01:27:10] South had run their wiretap. I worked for an hour. So once you want you guys had to take the
[01:27:14] tape recorder with you though. Oh yeah, we carried the little, you know, you think about the traditional
[01:27:20] early old cassette recorder. So I had like two or four of the chip of a deep
[01:27:27] bad reason. And then we had the microphone that had little plug in in and then South would run
[01:27:35] up the tree or fly up the telephone pole. In this case, he'd gone up when he came back down and put
[01:27:40] mud on the whole thing. So anybody going by on the trail looked at the pole they wouldn't see
[01:27:45] in. And so we ran it for over an hour. We had run that wiretap and it flipped the cassette over because
[01:27:53] that was steady. Are the times sets. I think that's where you were. You're now stuck down. Now you
[01:28:00] can't even move in pull back all the clay amorous to see for which direction did you had.
[01:28:06] Did you go away from where you inserted or did you go back to where you were. We went, no,
[01:28:11] we went away from it. If I'm facing ELZ, we went to our left. We had to go, we crossed that big
[01:28:19] trail again. But this time we had a cross it in between and it became up and down. The truck
[01:28:24] went past us and so took us a while to get back across the big trail because this trail again,
[01:28:30] this is LALZ. By the way, this is a slightly more T-min trail. The Ho Chi Montreal. Spiders that
[01:28:36] even when he could see the jungle, he couldn't see that road and the road was big enough. You could
[01:28:41] drive tanks down a side by side. It's huge. It would be the equivalent of Highway 78 or 52
[01:28:50] two lanes. So tanks side by side but it's completely covered by the covered by the vegetation.
[01:28:57] So took us a while to get across the road. Then we went to the left and we finally came to a
[01:29:02] little stream bed and went up that stream because now it's dark. But now we hear more dogs.
[01:29:07] The activity on the trail, another couple of trascobines, all those noise we noted looking.
[01:29:13] And eventually you're holding up and you stop. Right. And on the way up that stream, we put out
[01:29:19] pepper. We put out the mace to throw off the dogs. We had our team go up and down. He's a little
[01:29:26] because it's about 10 foot tall bank. We're in this little creek or stream. He had water in it.
[01:29:33] And so we're trying to lose the dogs. We knew they're coming at night. And now it's dark.
[01:29:38] And we continued up that stream for a while. I wanted to get it far away from them as we could.
[01:29:43] Because Salah climbed a tree and said they're coming. He pointed out he told he had
[01:29:47] there are hundreds of them coming with lights. They all had lanterns and the dogs were getting closer.
[01:29:54] So we could chain up that stream for another hour to at night. Doing still going out,
[01:29:58] putting down the mace to me. Fines went up to the bank on the right.
[01:30:02] Set up our RON for the night. Rest overnight. And I'm facing the bank.
[01:30:07] And the other seven guys are around. And so again, we hear the dogs, the people.
[01:30:13] So we're there in the RON for maybe two or three hours. Two guys come up. The stream with a lantern.
[01:30:21] Burning brightly. They go past this. Lenten goes out and they come back as a compact,
[01:30:27] hept, coughs. And then they stopped. And I think that's where you're going next.
[01:30:33] Well, yeah, here it is. One of the NVA and the creek started crawling up the embankment toward me.
[01:30:38] I was still facing the creek. The NVA soldier was good. He only moved when the wind stirred the trees.
[01:30:46] For a moment, my thoughts drifted to summer camp and new hampsure years earlier. When we played
[01:30:51] capture the flag on those clear summer nights, my favorite trick was to use the woods to get his
[01:30:56] close to the flag as possible. Now, my mind was racing a hundred miles per hour and I realized I was
[01:31:02] the flag and he was closing in. He was too close for me to tell anyone on my team. The jungle that
[01:31:10] might seem deadly quiet except of course when the wind stirred. As the NVA soldier crawled closer,
[01:31:16] I remembered thinking that my heart was beating so damn loud that Ho Chi Minh could hear it in
[01:31:22] Hanoi. I flashed back to my childhood when we used to play high and go seek on West Paul Avenue
[01:31:29] and Trent New Jersey. One of my favorite hiding places was behind the hedges and missed him.
[01:31:33] And Mrs. Amigos front yard. I remember worrying that Teddy's a brow ski or John Wayne Austin
[01:31:39] or Worc, Barbara Pointen would find me because they could hear my heart beating so loud.
[01:31:45] I tried to comfort myself by thinking that because I had not been running in recent hours,
[01:31:49] my heart beating shouldn't be too loud. Yet my heart sounded like a kettle drum during Beethoven's
[01:31:53] ninth. No matter the NVA soldier kept moving up the embagament. I was very impressed with this stealth.
[01:32:00] I could barely hear him. Then it happened during one windy moment. I heard movement very close to
[01:32:07] me. It was only a slight sound but a sound nonetheless before the wind stopped the NVA soldier
[01:32:14] touched the soul of my size 10 R Army Issue Jungle Boot. I heard it's like gas was surprised
[01:32:22] from him. At that moment I had a death grip on my car 15. I had it on single shot. A car 15 on
[01:32:28] full automatic sounds much different from the bark of an AK47 on full automatic. If I had to shoot
[01:32:33] it would be single shots. For a millisecond I wondered if my left foot was far enough to the left
[01:32:39] so that when I fired it I wouldn't shoot myself. Time stood still. My pocket factor was minus zero.
[01:32:46] After a few of the longest seconds of my life the wind stirred but there was no movement.
[01:32:51] He remained still. After what seemed like an eternity the wind stirred again and I heard the NVA
[01:32:57] move backward just slightly. He was so cool. I knew he was facing me. I wondered why I couldn't
[01:33:03] hear his heart. The jungle around us remained pitch black. That was my twilight song moment.
[01:33:14] Yeah. That's craziness. You think he decided like this guy's probably got the drop on me
[01:33:26] and I want to live. What do you think he decided? I believe so because there had been any other
[01:33:31] movement at all. Then he would have been on the receiving end of the 556. He made a tactical decision
[01:33:38] to live. Then obviously once you started shooting the gig's up and you would have been people
[01:33:46] on your trail clothes. And had to happen. I thought was if I just did one single shot could the
[01:33:50] muscle flash would light up where he was and then I would just hope it would take no more than
[01:33:55] a second shot to finish them off. So that the jungle they would hear gunshots but they wouldn't
[01:34:01] be quite sure where. Was this and people that haven't spent time out in the woods or out in the
[01:34:07] jungle. It can get completely pitch black in the jungle. Is that what this was? Was this just
[01:34:14] like completely like he's you could barely even could you see his face at all? Nothing.
[01:34:17] He's like new he was there. You sit there and you can feel your hand in front of your nose when
[01:34:21] you shake and move it back and forth. You can feel the breeze from your hand but you can't see it.
[01:34:25] Yeah. So for those of you that haven't been in this it's when you get at night time and then
[01:34:31] it's a cloudy night and then you're in triple canopy jungle. There is no light. You can't see anything.
[01:34:37] And that's what this situation is. Absolutely. Well luckily you you you got out of that and then
[01:34:46] you guys continue on going back to the book by nine o'clock we had located the LZ and secured it
[01:34:51] at the clear area at several feet of grass on it and the ground was at an angle because it was on
[01:34:56] the side of the mountain again we heard dogs. Our tactical scenario stunk. We were in a relatively
[01:35:02] open area on a hillside with minimal cover and the NVA had the high ground. Time seemed to be our worst
[01:35:09] enemy although having limited airs air resources didn't prove our mood. Finally the other team
[01:35:15] was extracted without taking further casualties and spider was overhead taking ground fire
[01:35:20] from the north of the LZ. He told the trustee and reliable Marine Corps UH1B gunships with the radio
[01:35:27] call sign Scarface were seconds away. As we heard the choppers approaching us one of the tow
[01:35:34] poppers that sound suned planted exploded. So you guys were doing that too. You guys said booby traps
[01:35:40] on them on the enemy set claimors on them. Right. Which would really piss them off. Oh yeah.
[01:35:50] Try to ruin their parade. Yeah. We knew the NVA were going to be hopping mad now. That's an
[01:35:56] gentle way of putting it. Spider was able to vector the Scarface gunship to our location quickly.
[01:36:01] There was no time for orientations. We pop smoke and seconds later. The first Scarface chopper
[01:36:05] roared in. The jungle north of us erupted with small arms fire. The second Scarface chopper roared
[01:36:10] in so close to. I could see the facial expressions on the door gunners. He blasted the area north
[01:36:14] of our LZ with his M60 machine gun. Both Scarface both Scarface aircraft took several hits.
[01:36:20] When the sky raiders made their passes they also took hits from small arms fire that sounded like
[01:36:24] AK-47s. During the second gun run, Sal Blue a claim or in the face of an NVA scout. Sal then
[01:36:31] blew a second claim or returned to the LZ reporting more NVA troops right behind him.
[01:36:37] And you guys this is another interesting SOP and we would do this too.
[01:36:40] Carry claimors. I didn't do the I own the rephrase. We would we got trained to do this. You know,
[01:36:46] you know, jungle situation. Right. You guys would make claimors with like five second and 10
[01:36:50] second fuses on him. Boom put him down pull the fuse. Yeah, and run. I never used to one of those.
[01:37:01] I'm very thankful that I did not. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently the combination of
[01:37:09] air assets and our 40 millimeter barrage is slow the NVA troops long enough for the extra action
[01:37:14] ships to come to the LZ. Spiderman told me that the 101st airborne division was going to extract us.
[01:37:19] The Marine Corps gunships would make one more gun run and for the first time ST Idaho
[01:37:24] slicks from the 101st airborne division would follow right behind them and get us close to the LZ
[01:37:29] as possible. We were used to the Kingbees and new most of the pilots on a first name basis. The
[01:37:33] 101st pilots were good too. But because this was our first time with the 101st airborne division
[01:37:38] slicks, I told Sean King that they had to be the first people to approach the ship and that they
[01:37:42] had to alert the young doorgunners that that five of our men were Vietnamese. That's a crazy
[01:37:48] thing to think about. Absolutely. So you got that we had horrible results when they were
[01:37:53] careful. And again, young doorgunners for sure coming to country and if they're not
[01:37:58] briefed properly because our guys dressed their reggly, they're not that they would look like
[01:38:04] NVA but they weren't Americans. And we've had team members that lost Vietnamese that way. Yeah,
[01:38:10] tragically. When Roger Hade was on, he told a story of the same thing. He had Vietnamese scouts
[01:38:17] and they were doing a hammer and anvil operation with a platoon they had to work with before that
[01:38:22] was new in country. And there were some mix-up, it was on the insertion and you know, just some
[01:38:27] mistakes that compounded. And anyways, these guys, the the Anvil portion was waiting and the first
[01:38:33] guys that came out of the tree line were their Vietnamese scouts. Yeah, and they got they got lit up.
[01:38:38] You know, we were in when I was in Ramadi, you know, you see like picture of seals with like
[01:38:48] beards and all that and they're gonna go like, everyone shaved and everyone, we were regular uniforms
[01:38:54] what the army and what the Marine Corps wore. Why? Because that exact reason, you know, you
[01:39:00] swing around a corner and you've got a 19-year-old on a 50-cal and he sees some guy with a beard and
[01:39:06] a gun, there's a chance you're getting shot. Whereas an American, you know, because the geodists would
[01:39:11] have beards, right? And in Ramadi we just didn't, everything we could do to identify ourselves as
[01:39:17] good guys, right? And your geoders could have everything from M-16s for car beans to AKs. You didn't know
[01:39:24] what they'd be carrying it. Yeah, and they also will be new, our guys had AKs or SKSs. Yeah,
[01:39:30] the other thing was they wore paramilitary outfits. Right. So they wore camis, they wore body armor
[01:39:37] sometime, they wore helmets sometimes. So yeah, that's amazing that you guys, and also you had the
[01:39:44] you had the cognizance to say, hey, wait a second, we've never worked with these helicopters before
[01:39:49] get out there and tell them we got some Vietnamese folks coming their way with AK 47s. Yeah,
[01:39:54] they're a piss because when King went down to the first chopper, nobody else followed and I said,
[01:39:59] you make sure you tell them, then you give me the green light, then we'll send some people,
[01:40:03] and then Bubba and I got on the second next track. And there's two of the things on that mission.
[01:40:07] Yeah. King had experimental pump M79, which he carried it, helped five rounds, and we
[01:40:14] we thought we tried once, but he carried it for five days, well, that for whole five days we were on
[01:40:19] the ground. And so at that LZ it worked. And imagine five M79 rounds go off to 40 millimeters.
[01:40:26] Then also one night was the night that the Russians flew over us and did a resupply, and we were
[01:40:33] begging for Moonbeam to show up and get somebody on it, Russian has. But the whole side of
[01:40:38] the mountain that was a weirdest damn thing we ever saw. So that was like a signaling device for
[01:40:42] that was signaling devices that the Vietnamese were using to have the Russians drop the resupply
[01:40:48] and they were doing resupplies to the Vietnamese. What language did you speak? My foreign language is English.
[01:40:57] So they pushed us through and they weighed the language requirement because by 68 they knew we had
[01:41:03] a SF had a strong interpreter core. God it. Like like, he spoke four languages, he had been
[01:41:09] educated in France and he cracked up my English. And he was a smart ass on top of it. A little
[01:41:15] fucker. But he was our little guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. Going back to the book, the
[01:41:24] extraction was slick and quick. When as we pulled out of the automatic, as we pulled out the LZ,
[01:41:30] the slick took several hits. Three of us returned full automatic fire from our car 15s. I threw
[01:41:35] a white phosphorus grenade as the area north of the LZ lit up with dozens of muzzle flashes from
[01:41:41] AK 47s and SKSs. The green traces from the AK 47s appeared as though they were coming between my legs.
[01:41:48] I was told later that as our slick pulled out of the LZ, the escarface gunship laid down a full
[01:41:54] fuselage fuselage of suppressing fire. The lead marine aircraft piloted by Lieutenant Colonel Robinson
[01:42:01] had the plexiglass windshield blown out of the aircraft. In addition, his chopper in the second
[01:42:06] gunship had taken more than a dozen hits. And yeah, that's the, that's the, that's the, that's the,
[01:42:13] yes, but you were saying, yes, he was riding you and riding you. Oh, yeah, the way you tell
[01:42:18] the book. Colonel does this mean the next time we're in trouble. And we call for Scarface. You
[01:42:23] won't respond to the bell. Hell no Robinson responded. I never said that. It just pisses me off with my
[01:42:29] aircraft gets shot up. Parts are hard to come by and I'd rather be flying. Fearless. And you know,
[01:42:41] you continue on here. I went back to my room. So this is after that crazy operation. You
[01:42:44] clearly make it out for the hundredth time that you, you, you dance in death's face. I went
[01:42:51] back to my room and picked up a news magazine with a picture on the front page about the biggest
[01:42:55] latest antiwar protest say side in saying who side were they on? They hadn't seen Charlie,
[01:43:02] like ST Idaho head. They never, they never asked South, hip, and other Vietnamese men on my team,
[01:43:09] what they felt about the war. What a day. S3 refused to pull us out when we were ready for extraction.
[01:43:16] Then S3 questioned my integrity despite the fact that we were only minutes away from fighting NVA
[01:43:21] in close quarters. Battle had not scar face the AE1Es and the hundred first airborne
[01:43:28] slick defended us from the sky. And there are people back in the states protesting this war.
[01:43:33] I shook my head, dropped my rucksack and web gear, picked up a small ammo belt holding several
[01:43:38] magazines of 556 ammo and went to the S3 to get a Jeep. The dentist was only a short drive up the
[01:43:44] road, but I kept my trusty car 15 year by anyway. I went to the dentist, got my tooth pulled
[01:43:49] and drew new rations and PRC 25 batteries. And the reason I read all that is to read this line right here.
[01:43:57] The next day, the next day, ST Idaho got shot out of 5 LZs.
[01:44:03] Yeah, once the morning and once the new afternoon. But at that time when we got inserted on that
[01:44:10] mission error, we had gone on a couple days of the same thing. The morning gets shot out.
[01:44:16] And on one of those missions on the primary LZ, when the king bee was going in,
[01:44:24] sal, saw a wire across the LZ. How does sal even see a wire in the helicopter when we're going in?
[01:44:34] He saw it. He told the door gunner. Fortunately, the via the meest thing was quick and they were able
[01:44:40] to swore of away. And the A1 came in and hit that. There was a 500 pound bomb. They knew we were coming
[01:44:48] and we had been compromised. We never realized how seriously we had been compromised. And that was
[01:44:52] proof. Hard proof. And our guys, so Tara, I switched a lot of the via the meest around.
[01:45:01] So your guys were some of your via the meest were getting burned out. Oh sure. Because you know
[01:45:05] you do that long flight, go out through the LZ, then you go in and get shot out, shot out,
[01:45:11] shot out, fly back, get lunch, get a new target. Sometimes they just say, here's your next target.
[01:45:16] Cubby would know where it would be. Be wouldn't even have any kind of background or anything
[01:45:20] on it. Just they wanted to get a team on the ground. Go back and then we did it again. Bam,
[01:45:24] bam, bam, bam. And sometimes when you and Sarah, you're feeding me, sometimes Sarah, I had enough of
[01:45:32] the school's your main, whose your main, South of the South, South by counterpart. He was the
[01:45:36] assistant team leader. He is the Vietnamese team leader. And who was the other American that would be
[01:45:40] with you? At that point in time was Bubba, John Schur. He came on the team and the Vemba when I
[01:45:46] became to 1-0 at the end of October. And these guys were all freaked out too because you were like
[01:45:51] young. Oh yeah. And what were you? Was your rank at that time? Well by then I've been promoted to
[01:45:58] an E4 because I remember I like the promoted. Yeah. I'm an E-Doo's in camp with the bill for
[01:46:04] E8 or E9 on the recon team. So Spiderman probably got me promoted back to PFCs and now roll up
[01:46:10] your sleeves so people think you're a sergeant. We don't want them knowing you're just a dumb ass PFC.
[01:46:17] Instead of bi October, we were able to, I respect for and then when Jim wanted to
[01:46:25] off the team which we respected and to this day I respected. Never I'll never say a word against them
[01:46:30] on that. Then Bubba came on. So in November that's when Bubba, he was the one one and then
[01:46:38] on that one mission. King came along. I just felt funny about I want to look extra firepower.
[01:46:43] He wanted to try that pump M79. Yeah, why not just go on a mission to test out that there.
[01:46:49] Yeah. We had that they sent us some thermal barric grenades for the M79.
[01:46:57] Really? Yeah. And then they called a week later and said, hey, did you guys get a chance?
[01:47:05] It was actually late. I think late dumped like an entire loadout on one operation.
[01:47:11] And anyway, they call back this, hey did you guys want to? If you can a chance to use those
[01:47:14] thermonic thermonic grenades, you're like, we use them all. Send more. Yeah, that's the feedback.
[01:47:21] Do not wait. Oh, yeah, and also as I speak of that as one of our side missions,
[01:47:28] we always carried out the sun or Italian green, which would be enemy ordinance,
[01:47:34] doctor took splotin or face. So when we were going along a trail like with that big trail,
[01:47:40] we crossed it. We go down and dump a little bit of the ammo. So if anybody was see the ammo,
[01:47:44] they pick it up. And then if we ever came across a cashier, which only happened a few times,
[01:47:50] we would put the bad ammo in their cashier. So they'd use it for siops, then it would blow up in their face.
[01:47:57] Yeah, that was a good siops thing when they, there was another mission where you talk about
[01:48:03] where they killed the Americans, but they let the interview to me, let's go. That was their January 1,
[01:48:08] 69. All right, speaking of holiday season. Here's Christmas day, 1968. You're inserted into like
[01:48:18] some really tall elephant grass. There's NVA around you. Going back to the book,
[01:48:25] due to the elephant grass, both in terms of the noise, we were making how muffled, how it muffled
[01:48:29] our other sounds. We couldn't have exactly how many NVA were moving or if they were even NVA.
[01:48:33] Black said, I smell smoke, either our hand grenades or the NVA have started fires.
[01:48:41] Things are really heating up on the LZ literally. I radioed spider. I told him we were surrounded and
[01:48:47] had fires on two sides of our perimeter. I told him that if the King bees didn't get in here,
[01:48:53] ASAP, ST Idaho would be engaged in fighting fires as well as fire fights.
[01:48:58] What's really making these funny jokes in the middle of these situations? Sometimes you have to
[01:49:07] laugh to keep in cry. They're starting more fires, Bubba said. By now the noise from the fire forces
[01:49:14] to raise our voices when we were talking to each other, the smoke was getting thicker. I began to
[01:49:17] sweat. We threw a few more hand grenades down the hill to force the NVA to keep their heads down.
[01:49:22] The southern fire, so just so everyone understands this is what's actually happening. You're in elephant
[01:49:26] grass, dry elephant grass, and it's burning on multiple sides of your position, which is 12 to 15 feet tall.
[01:49:35] The elephant grass. So your visibility is like five feet, three feet? Yeah, minimal.
[01:49:43] And it's filled with smoke. Yeah. And getting worse over. We wish you a merry Christmas.
[01:49:50] The southern fires intensity grew by the second and continued to move up the slope towards
[01:49:54] us and around to the east. There was fire or fires to the north and northeast, but they weren't
[01:50:00] heading toward ST Idaho with the speed of the southern flames.
[01:50:05] By now the smoke was so thick. I had my green crevat over my face and pulled up over my nose,
[01:50:11] burning embers from the south, kicked up and flew over our small jagged perimeter, dumping ashes,
[01:50:16] sweat, and small burning sparks on the elephant grass and on us. When the hip and twan were
[01:50:22] hats, several of us soaked our hair. Black told me that the NVA weren't far behind the flames.
[01:50:28] Twan had reported seeing images of short distance behind the flames to the south and southeast.
[01:50:33] Captain Twan knew exactly where we were, as he brought the H34 down the canyon toward us.
[01:50:40] Seconds became ours. My vision was clearer than ever, and I was a completely aware of the smoke fire,
[01:50:46] popping sounds and enemy gunfire. I stood on the western edge of the perimeter, waving a
[01:50:52] colored panel skyward trying to catch the pilot's eye. The H34 continued its slow motion descent.
[01:50:58] All I saw was the bottom of the chopper with the front of the struts sticking out to the right
[01:51:03] and left coming down like a giant praying mantis. The rotor wash from the king be began to hit us.
[01:51:09] Finally the choppers know's turned slightly to the left and I could see Captain Twan.
[01:51:13] Seeing his face, seeing him sitting in there so calmly in the pilot's seat, made my
[01:51:18] confident surge. We would survive. You guys get around, get it under control.
[01:51:27] Under control as you can, you start boarding the chopper. Chopper is the last man board of the
[01:51:30] chopper. I signal to the door going to the exit area. As I sat in the door, I sat in the door as
[01:51:35] Huang lifted the king be straight up for several feet before heading south. As we pulled away from
[01:51:39] the null, fire swept up the hill and engulf the area where we had been standing moments earlier.
[01:51:48] Oh yeah. Have you Christmas up pause?
[01:51:56] Captain Twan roared down the canyon. We had chugged only a short while ago. I radioed Spider and
[01:52:02] gave him a team okay. Once again, ST Idaho entered that magical post-mission moment.
[01:52:08] The adrenaline was still flowing. We had survived another target.
[01:52:14] Every breath of air was sweeter. There was no thought of Christmas, mom or holiday presence.
[01:52:23] Our gift was to be alive. That Christmas 1968 would haunt me sporadically for more than 25 years
[01:52:34] after a while. I was able to stop sitting upright, sweating with fear when the nightmares hit.
[01:52:40] It's been almost 10 years since I had that dream. But every Christmas nightmare is or not. I always
[01:52:46] take a moment to think of Captain Twan's courage. No sweat. King bees never rest.
[01:52:53] Yeah. So that's just a crazy situation.
[01:53:05] Oh yeah. Close. And then this is like on Thanksgiving was when we had a mission down south.
[01:53:11] We were a six-man recon team. The Colonel tells us you have to find three missing NVA divisions.
[01:53:18] The first, the third and the seventh. We found them. How did that work out for you?
[01:53:22] It was pretty intensely used. We used more than one of those five second fuses.
[01:53:26] The whole back. Yeah. That's why you need to buy this book and read this book if you want to hear
[01:53:33] about the eight-man spike team versus a division. That day was three. Three divisions.
[01:53:40] For those of you that don't know what I mean, that's 30,000 men roughly.
[01:53:45] Yeah. That's where those five second fuses. Those five second fuses. Just so everybody understands
[01:53:53] what that means. You're trying to escape the enemy. Have a little thing called a clay more mine.
[01:53:58] It's like the size of a book, maybe a little bit bigger.
[01:54:03] It's kind of bunch of ball bearings on one side. 550. 550 ball bearings on one side.
[01:54:08] That spray out when this thing explodes. So they wound people. How many of those things did you
[01:54:17] guys carry? Everybody had one on the team and then the one one or the other two or three.
[01:54:25] So you guys have to see four. Yeah. And so what these guys would do? So you can use them for a
[01:54:31] bunch of different reasons. And one of the things that you guys did a lot with them. And this is again,
[01:54:35] these are things that I was trained in when I was first got to the seal teams. They do. Okay. When you
[01:54:39] set up a, when you're going to sleep at night or you're going to set up a rest overnight position,
[01:54:43] you're going to put out claymores. And that way if you get attacked in the middle of night, boom,
[01:54:47] you can light off the claymores and you can get some fire superiority or at least shock the
[01:54:51] enemy or do some damage to them. So you guys did that all the time. But then you made these little
[01:54:56] five second fuses knowing that if you're running away, you can just put this thing up,
[01:55:02] you know, put it in the ground real quick or put it up against the tree. Well, yeah, you always want to have it
[01:55:06] up against the tree or something to take the back. But back then even when you put it in,
[01:55:10] and you got the last four seconds before it explodes, you're running and you could still,
[01:55:14] you want to make sure that you got a little protest on the black blast. We used to detonate those
[01:55:20] things that are completely unsafe distance behind them. I, like I look back now and I'm thinking
[01:55:27] what we're doing. WTF times. Yeah. Yeah. It's like let, we, we'd play the game. Let's find out.
[01:55:35] Are you relate the limb blocks? Yeah. Yeah. So you started to tell that story a little bit. For those
[01:55:41] that didn't catch the whole story, the story was, Lynn Black was trying to figure out what it would
[01:55:45] take to knock somebody out with C4. So C4 has six feet. Yeah. C4 just explodes. There's no
[01:55:52] shrapnel in it. You can put shrapnel in it, but you don't have to. So it's just, it's just a big
[01:55:56] concussion. So Lynn Black was trying to figure out how much C4 it would take so we can stun a guy
[01:56:03] so we can grab them so we can get a P.O.W so that we can get a five day liberty anywhere in the
[01:56:08] world anywhere and $100 cash. And so he, so the way he, the way he experimented with this
[01:56:16] was by doing it to himself. Yeah. Just standing around at the range and blasting himself with
[01:56:21] heavier heavier weight until he got knocked out. And when he finally succeeded, he, uh, his hearing
[01:56:26] was bad for a few days. Yeah. This air was all. So you know, I was really, I don't know if this,
[01:56:31] in the seal teams, that would have been, we would have used a new guy for that. We would
[01:56:35] use the new guy like, okay, let's see if this works. I'll do, let's win the stun guns, the tasers
[01:56:42] first came in. Right. It wasn't fun to be a new guy because we had to see how those things work, right?
[01:56:46] So we, uh, we used to experiment that. So, um, yeah, that's, that story is just crazy and you,
[01:56:55] and you looking down and seeing the firing, golf, the place that you just got picked out. Oh yeah,
[01:57:00] instantly. Sure, is this like one of those moments in time? It was the same thing like on
[01:57:07] Thanksgiving Day, we got distracted. They were coming out of the jungle running at Port Arms
[01:57:11] and so they would be trying to come down. So being the door gunner would just literally stop them
[01:57:16] and they're trying to like, one of those cartoons you see on the TV with the guys running and
[01:57:20] stops and gets a joke. They would just push them right back in the jungle before they even fell down.
[01:57:25] And that was just, yeah, you just, you don't forget those things. They stick with you.
[01:57:32] The next chapter is called a happy new year. Oh.
[01:57:35] Well, uh, the day after Christmas, the S3 brass asked ST Idaho to run another MA target in
[01:57:45] Louss. I respectfully declined signing fatigue in general, wearing this. I didn't tell the
[01:57:50] brass that I had a funny feeling about the target. I felt apprehensive for some reason.
[01:57:56] Back at FOB 1 around 1200 hours, someone from the commoshack came into the club instead of
[01:58:01] Vietnamese team member from RT Aspsis on the radio talking to Spiderman. That was very bad news.
[01:58:09] Several of the recon team members in FOB 1 headed toward the commoshack before we got there.
[01:58:14] Tony Horell of Veteran Recon Man came around the corner with some more bad news.
[01:58:20] They were hit by sappers. It doesn't look good. It appeared the Americans and been slow to react
[01:58:25] in a matter of seconds. The sappers killed the three SF troops and chose to leave the South
[01:58:30] Vietnamese team members alive. The news about the sappers was a triple dose of bad news. First,
[01:58:38] we had three dead green berets. Second, reports, one zeroes had received for months about NVA
[01:58:46] sappers being a lethal force were now confirmed. Third, by killing only the Americans, the NVA
[01:58:54] pulled off a major psychological coup. By leaving the Vietnamese team members alive,
[01:59:00] their survival would plant seeds of doubt and dissension between SF troops and our little people.
[01:59:15] And then you guys were heading north. The 101st Airborne Division choppers carried the six men's
[01:59:20] south. When the choppers landed on the helicopter pad, Colonel Jack Warren had ordered every man
[01:59:26] in FOB 4 out to the site. He was held in high regard by SF troops because he genuinely cared
[01:59:33] about his men. It had been said that because of his dedication to the SF mission and the men
[01:59:39] of SF, he would never advance beyond the rank of Colonel. He'd remained in SF too long, a career
[01:59:46] decision that the traditional Army hierarchy despised and punished. Asp was from FOB 4, FOB 4,
[01:59:55] which Warren commanded. After the three corpses were unloaded from the helicopter, Warren gave
[02:00:02] a turse, tear-eyed speech to his captive audience. Warren warned everyone that if they were careless
[02:00:09] in the field, death was the result of that carelessness. Then he bent down, opened a body bag,
[02:00:16] and picked up a portion of a body of one of the dead Americans. He was now crying and screaming
[02:00:23] at his men to never be careless in the field. Warren was never the same after that. Neither was C&C.
[02:00:33] What was it that changed from your perspective?
[02:00:41] Well, from early briefings, probably in October, we heard about the N&VA sapper teams. They were
[02:00:50] highly trained, and they were just where a loincloth, carrier weapon, and they were really just
[02:01:02] highly trained in tracking. So when they came to the attack part, they had minimal clothing,
[02:01:08] and they knew what they were looking for. The N&VA at that point had a metal, kill American metal.
[02:01:15] So they killed us, they got their metal and a bonus, and there would be heroes for the rest of
[02:01:19] the lives within the Communist Party. So we heard about them, and it just kicked up everybody's
[02:01:28] concerned about it. And that being New Year's Eve, the team had that the Americans had
[02:01:36] taken a bottle of Scotch with them, so they had a little hit of the Scotch, we don't know how much.
[02:01:41] And that's what Jack Warren had going to extra distance on saying about being careless, we don't know.
[02:01:46] But those sappers were good, and that proved it and it just gave us an arcase.
[02:01:54] No, as you know, if you do your R&M that night, without the dogs, he would do your perimeter,
[02:02:00] and our people always checked to me, and we always had rotated who's sleeping, who wouldn't,
[02:02:06] and we never ever had a problem with that. No matter how tired you are, there'd be somebody
[02:02:11] awake just so something like that happened, somebody'd be there on full automatic ready to respond.
[02:02:18] New level terror. Yeah, and those guys were so, they just traveling super light and super
[02:02:25] select the sappers. Sure. You know, just could move quickly and that's a scarier.
[02:02:31] Yeah, because you know, we knew that the NVA had all our sources set up, besides being compromised
[02:02:37] in headquarters, they also had people that alerted when the choppers left the long site.
[02:02:43] They had border watchers so that when we came in, they would report where we were heading
[02:02:49] to a higher command, and they would try to rally their troops. So we were up against that at all times,
[02:02:55] just a question of who would be there, how many? And a lot of times, just getting on the ground,
[02:03:00] was the first part, but then you hoped to get into the mission, and it was just really a challenge.
[02:03:13] Speaking of a challenge, you were going back to the book, the daily grind of running missions
[02:03:17] across the fence was wearing on me physically and mentally. As 69 dawned, I began a mental
[02:03:23] examination of life in Saga, being in an elite unit within America's finest special operations
[02:03:31] was where I wanted to be. The adrenaline enhanced high of deadly firefights against a relentless
[02:03:38] enemy under extremely lopsided odds was intoxicating. I had never experienced such exileration or sheer
[02:03:47] terror. Yet there was a little voice in the back of my head which spoke of survival. Surviving
[02:03:54] not only of vigorous enemy campaign directed against the Saga members, but merely surviving the
[02:03:59] odds of going home in one piece. My mind also began the mental debate between rising to the new
[02:04:08] challenges inherent in a secret war and returning to a safer assignment. My one-year tour of
[02:04:15] duty was scheduled to end at the end of April. Under the general rules of Saga after running targets
[02:04:22] across the fence for six months, I could request a cushy assignment. I'd already spent seven
[02:04:28] months with the team. I was alive, however thanks to hip, sal, fuck, taunt, and the other man of
[02:04:37] STI-Doh. I couldn't just walk away. That's where you wrap up this book. You go into some cool,
[02:04:53] one more really interesting story and then you also have a very cool thing in there about what
[02:05:00] you guys carried. What we didn't carry. And what you didn't carry. So how much longer? So now it's
[02:05:06] January of 69. You've been there for seven months. How much longer did you stay with the C and C teams?
[02:05:12] I'll stay right there to the end. We closed F will be one in January. They shipped us down to the
[02:05:19] Nang and that's where I picked up with the second book and they needed help down there. So we hit the
[02:05:27] ground, continued to run. Bubba asked the team to take an off the team. So he left, limb black came on.
[02:05:36] So was linen on for my last couple months and at the very end they had a mission up at the
[02:05:42] Mugia Pass which was north of the DMZ River in Leos which was a major channel point.
[02:05:50] And the plan was for us to go in, set up on a mountain top, taking a lot of clay mowers,
[02:05:57] mortars and calling air strikes for two or three days on that just the race held with the NVA there.
[02:06:05] Because they never had a recon team go that far north. And we did an inspection which is that
[02:06:13] inspection prior to that mission which was about April 20, 69. And then we finally went up to the
[02:06:21] launch site and we were up there. I guess maybe about the 24th or 25th I just figured these
[02:06:28] act date now but we went up to the launch site. Got on the chopper as we get ready to launch the chopper's
[02:06:33] take off and they turned around with back. That target had just had two aircraft shot down over it.
[02:06:41] They figured they just shot down a fanton jet and the sky reader. Chopper's going to be easy to knock out
[02:06:47] the sky. So the sideboard to that, I met a beginning two years ago. One of the guys at Rambeacon
[02:06:54] says, remember those pictures you got on the your second book on the ground there I said, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[02:07:00] He says, what was that mission? Wasn't that something like that's a suicide mission right?
[02:07:05] He says, well, I don't know about suicide. It was going to be high odds but you know,
[02:07:08] we were gone and we had two extra Americans. We had M60s. We got Buku Bullets, Hangrines. We were
[02:07:16] going to give the shot. Guy goes, do you realize they asked me to do that and I told him to
[02:07:22] fuck off? I go, really? I said, you saw his technique picture. You didn't tell me that.
[02:07:28] So I didn't know what your mission was. So here's a top secret operation. The recon guys,
[02:07:34] another recon man had been given that target. I said, hell, now it was too far north and he just
[02:07:40] felt that the it would just be a suicide mission. Once you get in you never get out other than
[02:07:45] a casket or a body bag. But there's no talking between teens much because everything is like,
[02:07:50] you got a mission, you do your mission, they do it errors. So yeah, well, I already gave you a fair
[02:07:57] warning before we started this that we're probably going to have to have you come back on here.
[02:08:02] Because I mean, I got just, I mean, this these books are, there's awesome the detail that you go
[02:08:10] on to and just the experiences you've had, which are just it's a miracle that you're sitting here,
[02:08:17] talking and able to tell us what you went through when, as far as I can tell,
[02:08:23] there's no way in hell you should be sitting here right now. I agree. I mean, there are times when
[02:08:28] in talking to friends or people that've read the book, you know, particularly on page 202
[02:08:33] would the guy touches your boot. I mean, I've talked to people, it's just like it feels surreal even
[02:08:39] today. It's like thank God everybody at home was praying. And the last thing I want to read from
[02:08:48] the book is just this section right here, the dedication, it says this book is dedicated to all
[02:08:54] sog reconnaissance team members, both US special forces and indigenous troops, as well as to every man
[02:09:02] in every air support unit, especially the King B pilots of the 219th South Vietnamese Air Forces
[02:09:08] special operation squadron who worked daily with sog teams on the ground across the fence in America's
[02:09:16] secret war. This book is also for every man in sog and their support units who made the ultimate
[02:09:27] sacrifice. Yeah, because today as we sit here, there are still 1,589 Americans missing
[02:09:36] an action in Southeast Asia from the Vietnam War that includes CIA, SF, Reggur Army,
[02:09:41] and Lea Solone, 50 green berets, are amongst those MIAs, over 140 aviation army Marine Corps
[02:09:52] Air Force, MIA's diet supporting our missions here, just how deadly it was.
[02:09:59] You guys had a over 100% casualty rate. Yeah, several of our guys have multiple purple hearts,
[02:10:05] Bob Howard, received eight, he had been put in for 11, he was a recipient of the metal abonner in
[02:10:12] December 68 for a mission out of costume and yeah, the cashew rate did exceed 100%.
[02:10:20] Yeah, and I couldn't find any numbers on the numbers that were actually killed, but that was a
[02:10:28] massive number percentage wise of guys in sog that were killed. Right. Yeah, the numbers are hard to track
[02:10:37] and I'm working with a gal now who's a real, she's a retired master sergeant from the 101st.
[02:10:43] She's beginning to do some research to try to put that number together because during a war,
[02:10:48] 3.2 men American served in Vietnam. That includes the 500,000 sailors that were off the coast
[02:10:55] and your seals that were going up north and out of that 20,000, approximately 20,000 were
[02:11:02] SF out of the SF, approximately 2,000 went to sag. Out of that depends on which author you talk to,
[02:11:11] there's no hard stats anywhere, it's because SF was not as good as the seals, I keep her records.
[02:11:17] And it'd be between 500 to 700 maybe 800 green braids actually went across the fence with
[02:11:25] recon missions out of the 3.2 million. Those are our numbers. Yeah, amazing. Well, I hope you
[02:11:37] don't mind coming back here. I'll be honored to come back because I've heard some of your stories pal.
[02:11:42] Did you believe my stories are a big joke? I conversed with one of one of the guys that was in
[02:11:48] Romadi with me, guy by the name of Dave Burke, he was a Marine Corps anglico guy on the ground with us.
[02:11:56] We always joke about our experiences. He had a friend, we had him on the podcast who served in
[02:12:04] World War II, Korean Vietnam. Really, he was a purple heart recipient in every war,
[02:12:09] everyone was worse. That's the way I feel standing here talking to you. I'm a
[02:12:16] in a totally different and much lower category of experience, but that's why it's such an honor to
[02:12:21] sit here and talk with you. Well, that's mutual. If you have any other closing thoughts to,
[02:12:25] well, the only thing about this book actually I just want to mention that I could have done it
[02:12:28] without my wife. Awesome. My dear wife Anna, at the time we had 14 ages and one newborn in the house.
[02:12:36] And since you've imagined that turmoil and I'm working that at a fish wrapper up in North County.
[02:12:44] And so between the fish wrapper and the kids, she goes, go right to book.
[02:12:49] Awesome. She's supportive of it. That is one thing real quick. You got home from
[02:12:54] so you got out shortly there after when you got to done with Vietnam. Is that that's when you were
[02:12:57] done right? You got out of the army shortly thereafter? Yeah, I went back to CNC for a second tour
[02:13:03] and then I got the army in April 25. That's what book two is about. Going back. One tour wasn't enough
[02:13:09] at CNC. Well, you know what? If you're honest with you, I came back in, by the time I landed
[02:13:15] in the States, like May 1, May 2, 1969, the anti war movement was going on strong. There was a woodstock,
[02:13:22] our men walked on the moon, but I hated it. We were and I was supposed to go to Fort Bragg with
[02:13:29] the regular SF, but they put us in tenths, best of forces group was us up in Massachusetts.
[02:13:34] And they had five companies, ABCD and E. E was a signal company, which was Rinky Dink. They had
[02:13:42] new lieutenant's butter bars running this thing. And they treated like basically can't find
[02:13:47] us out. And the top and off they had old career sergeants that are all overweight,
[02:13:52] all an embarrassment to the parade they wore. And they came in and put me up with a tune sergeant.
[02:13:57] And I'm in this environment that was not a good chemistry. So I heard that the MPs were coming
[02:14:05] basically and I went out to Pentagon, I had a woman Billy Alexander who hinted our orders.
[02:14:11] And I told what kind of wine and what flowers she liked. So before I went down here, I had her wine,
[02:14:17] her flowers. And Thursday morning I get to the Pentagon at 7 o'clock,
[02:14:22] get her to flowers no wine. Went back to sleep in the park a lot, came back at 4 o'clock,
[02:14:26] she gave me the orders to nom. I cleared on Friday. The MPs came on Monday and I was back in my team
[02:14:31] and we later. 4 o'clock the MPs covered for. And some bar fights brought in destruction. They
[02:14:37] had reports of a 442 which I had at time, a 442W30, which is what, us and also Bill.
[02:14:43] Oh, I was like, oh, that 442. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. It's 69, which was the coolest
[02:14:50] card that time. Here meet a first. Sure. There reports about that car going through the entrance gate
[02:14:55] on a sideways drift. I'm sorry, when entered the base on the exit gate, that's what it was. The MPs
[02:15:02] weren't happy about that. They couldn't catch me and I was able to hide within our concrete,
[02:15:07] but they were trying to begin to figure things out. But anyways, they were coming. Sounds like
[02:15:12] the next podcast. That's the warm up for the next podcast. We'll, we'll take it for their next time.
[02:15:18] Like a bad dream. I'll be back if you ask. Thank you. No, that's awesome. These books
[02:15:22] across the fence, which one do you think people should write read first? Across the fence is the
[02:15:27] first. That's my book about my getting involved in, et cetera. And the stories of other people,
[02:15:32] which by the way, we have a greenberry medic John Walton who was the son of Sam Walton.
[02:15:38] You heard a story called Walmart. Mm-hmm. Sun. One of the best medics. There was at the time,
[02:15:43] chapter four, where a fellow greenberry is as leg blown off. And the fun of the music I shot four
[02:15:50] times, John brought them all back and Tom Cunningham's alive today and has two children. Thanks,
[02:15:57] DeJohn. That's awesome. These books are available on Amazon. Amazon. Go to Amazon or be able to
[02:16:02] with ebooks or paperbacks. And then on website is socronacles.com. Socronacles.com. That's the name of
[02:16:09] volume one. That's another book. Right. And then on the ground, the secret war in Vietnam. That's the
[02:16:15] second book. The second book. If then here there are some stories I missed because of deadlines. Right.
[02:16:20] And the first story we have, the RVContimes in our worst target, Oscar 8, and the NBA come up
[02:16:27] and tap them on the children and say, it's your turn for God, duty. Oh, that's pretty close to the
[02:16:32] enemy. All right. We will cover these books in the future. Everyone go buy these books. So you're ready.
[02:16:39] And thank you. Really true honor to have you on. Appreciate it. honor to be here. And thank you.
[02:16:45] There we go. Happy back. Happy turn. Outstanding. Thank you. And with that, Mr. John, a striker,
[02:16:54] Meyer has left the building. And what an honor it was to talk to him. And I can absolutely promise
[02:17:03] we're having that guy back on. And thanks to you, John, for your for your service and your sacrifice
[02:17:12] in this sacrifice is your teammates. It is meant like you that have allowed us to live the way that we live.
[02:17:21] And that is in freedom. So he has left the building and echo, speaking of living,
[02:17:33] living the way we should live. What do you got for us? Well, as we have been doing,
[02:17:40] talking about duty to first duty to martial arts, capability is what it is. That's really what it is.
[02:17:49] You want to generalize like the whole thing into one big nugget, capability. Just improve your capabilities.
[02:17:55] We want to improve our capabilities. Oh, yeah. Sure way to do that. Not just in the martial
[02:18:00] fields, but in life. It's to train some of that duty too. Yeah. I was talking to there's a girl
[02:18:06] named Kara who trains here. You know, I see her every once in a while. I'll see her whatever. And
[02:18:12] she said basically the stuff we were saying, where she was like, I was like, but I only see her sort of
[02:18:19] in the men's class. And I said, hey, have you tried the women's class? They're women's class. Good.
[02:18:24] Developed. And then she was like, not yet. I want to whatever. And I was like, yeah, that's I think a lot of the
[02:18:28] times will offer more benefits depending on who you are as a girl. We'll offer benefits because you
[02:18:36] can get like the moves you can kind of do, you know, on a body that's more similar to yours. So you
[02:18:43] can go through the moves a little bit like more thoroughly I think in a way for lack of a better way
[02:18:47] putting it. She was like, yeah, that's good. That's true. She's like, you know what though? I really
[02:18:51] like, there's a lot of value here in the guys in the men's class. And she said straight for self-defense.
[02:18:56] For sure. And I was like, yeah, she's like, yeah, because like when you get used to guys and
[02:19:01] meanwhile, there's like two guys scrolling like hard though. You look kind of with the rolling and
[02:19:06] they're grunting it right in front of us like sweating and split their split sweat. She's like,
[02:19:12] when you get with it, and we kind of laugh because we she like motions to them. And I'm thinking like,
[02:19:16] yeah, any girl to come in and see that or anyone, even. Anyone, whoever's the paid in that. Yeah,
[02:19:21] I think you're not going to do that. No way, man. I'm not ready for that. All right. Those are not ready for that.
[02:19:25] Oh, yeah. And what if you just all of a sudden, like one day you go to the grocery store and
[02:19:30] go, now you got to deal with that? Man, that's tough. There's a big psychological gap you need to make up.
[02:19:36] Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. She changed your jitz. Yeah, she was like, I'm used to it. And she's not a big girl either.
[02:19:40] She's just like a pretty small girl. She's like, yeah, and she's too nice. You know, nice.
[02:19:44] She's like, yeah, I'm kind of, and I'm really used to that. And I've been training for it,
[02:19:49] like almost a year now. I'm like a big difference. That's that's good that you can come in here
[02:19:54] as often as you do and have that mindset. That's good. That's going to get you places. 100%.
[02:20:00] So we're talking about jitzu. Oh, yeah. And then you need to start talking about the gear that is needed for
[02:20:06] jitzu. Some of it. Yes. Some of the gear that you need for jitzu is a ghee. Yes. If you're going to train ghee,
[02:20:11] jitzu, which we recommend strongly recommend. We also recommend you train no ghee. You train all kinds of
[02:20:19] jitzu. That's what you train. If you need a ghee, what you do, get one for more jim made. Yeah,
[02:20:24] origin. So you go to originmain.com. This is where you can get all these things. Also, jeans,
[02:20:29] American denim. Again, we all know this, but I'm going to say again, it's all made in America.
[02:20:35] All of it. Yeah, every little piece of it. The little seeds that they plant to eventually grow
[02:20:40] cotton to eventually go into the loom to eventually formulate weave. Yes. Formulate both. The
[02:20:48] fabric that gets sewn and stitched into geese jeans, rash guards, all this stuff shorts.
[02:20:56] Best shorts in the world, too. By the way, yeah, factually. Anyway, all of it is in America.
[02:21:01] Done in America. So boom, there's that huge deal. By the way, so yeah, American denim has
[02:21:06] we have some new jeans, good ones. Jogger, you know, sweatpants, sweat, athletic gear,
[02:21:13] boom, originmain, their supplements. Mm-hmm. Big deal. Pretty much all the essential supplements
[02:21:22] that you're going to need as you go through this kind of a hectic path at times, the path is
[02:21:27] hectic. It should be. Yeah, kind of cheesy. That's not the path we want to be on. Yeah, that's the path
[02:21:32] leads down. Yeah, it's going to be easy if it's a downhill situation because all you're going to do
[02:21:37] sit there and slide. Don't take the path down. Yeah. So yes, the supplements are joint warfare
[02:21:43] for your joints. Joint warfare is more for like if you have a get abuse on your joints. You're running
[02:21:48] a lot. You're doing your jitsu, you're twisting a lot. And you're going every day or something like this,
[02:21:53] or you're just lifting every day. You're lifting every day. Oh, yeah. So basically, if you're doing
[02:21:57] physical activity. Yeah, that's kind of like hard. I mean, I guess you could break it down like
[02:22:01] over you're doing some weak physical activity. Then you might not need it, but I think not
[02:22:08] to do so much with Joe or for you made a good point though at the master. Remember because your knee is like kind
[02:22:12] of on the final stages of healing. Yeah. And you were like, I was like, how's your knee or whatever?
[02:22:19] And you're like, uh, what would you say? Oh, it was good, but like, since I've been standing up on it for
[02:22:24] long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well kind of like, yeah, that the master. Yes, it actually swelled up again.
[02:22:29] Yes. Surprisingly. So here's the thing. It made me think when I was a bounce race to stand up all the time.
[02:22:35] Like for the whole thing, you're standing at the front door and not the correct. Right. It's
[02:22:39] acting. The path is like it. And the struggle is real. And, but I have dress shoes on. I don't
[02:22:45] have the new balance or the, you know, the deal. It's like dress shoes. So it's like, it was
[02:22:50] a man joint warfare. What a human being. So, you know, varying levels of heart. So get some
[02:22:57] joint warfare for your joints. Get some acrylic oil for your joints. That's general maintenance of
[02:23:01] your joints. Yes. Life support. Yes. And then discipline and discipline go, which is sort of like,
[02:23:09] gives you a little bit of that. Yeah. Little edge mentally shot in a split.
[02:23:19] One be illegal. Negative. If you are going to confront someone in an intellectual battle,
[02:23:28] what is it legal for you to take discipline go? And they don't. Should not be illegal,
[02:23:35] because it's not any legal drug. It's not even drugs. It's actually a good one. It's no, right?
[02:23:40] Yeah. Good. We lifting weights in advantage. We lift or the results from lifting weights in advantage.
[02:23:46] The results from eating salads. That's an advantage. So boom. Same thing. But discipline just tastes
[02:23:52] really good and have that advantage over your enemy. Whoever they may be. Yes. Then we got a,
[02:23:58] we also got moch, which is moch. Let's just, let's just protein. I had a moch shake last night.
[02:24:07] I meet loaf. No potatoes. Meet loaf carrots. Moch shake. That's a good meal right there.
[02:24:14] Chocolate, dark, the darkness and I put peanut butter in it.
[02:24:18] Boom. Literally my late dinner last night. That was 10 days. Yeah. That's the moch.
[02:24:25] And you can give it to your kids too. You can get the water your kid moch for your kids.
[02:24:29] Yeah. So your kids. So your kids instead of turning out to be like an obese, out-of-shape kid
[02:24:35] that you were like trying to, no, don't even put them on that path. Put them on the moch tray.
[02:24:39] Let me ask you this. When you were young. Yes. And you went to whatever.
[02:24:45] I met you school junior high, whatever. Did you bring home lunch?
[02:24:52] Sometimes. Yeah. So not very often. Okay. So do you, as far as you can remember,
[02:24:58] did you, did you have a healthy home lunch? Did you, was your, you know, nothing.
[02:25:02] And we didn't even know what healthy was. Okay. That wasn't even a thing. Yes. So that's
[02:25:06] it. That was just like, what do you like to eat? Peanut. And what, what do you like to eat? And what's
[02:25:10] cheap? Yes. Right. Because we're going to get you when I get new coal cuts. Right. Because there's
[02:25:16] cost money. Guess what doesn't cost money? Well, jam. PB and jam. Right. Peter and jelly. Go to
[02:25:25] all day long on on on white bread. Oh, white bread. That's okay. On white bread. And then you know what?
[02:25:31] You get the little bad, the little party mix of potato chips, fredo, lays, Doritos, which I never
[02:25:42] liked or used. I still don't like Doritos. But then you get some of that. And then like some
[02:25:46] chocolate chips. Some chips, a hole cookies. You know what those are? Yeah. Get the sweet little, little,
[02:25:52] mini, sleeve, a chips, a hole. Yeah. That's a, and so there's nothing nutritional. Right. There's
[02:25:56] the nutritional value of this lunch is zero. You had nothing. Yeah. That's case scenario. I used to
[02:26:01] get the chocolate milk from the, you know, because that cost five cents for a white milk,
[02:26:09] seven cents for a chocolate milk. Oh, the my school school lunch. Yeah. So I used to get that. That would
[02:26:14] probably be what I actually lived off of because everything else was just poising in a wrapper.
[02:26:19] Basically. Yeah. So that is that is that is your question. Well, I mean the reason I was asking
[02:26:24] is because okay, so my family or my mom, more than my dad I guess, but you know, my mom took
[02:26:29] care of the home lunches in the event of us bringing a home lunch. She, she's health conscious.
[02:26:34] She was like a hippie, you know. So we had like the whole week bread. Okay. You know the, the,
[02:26:40] and then what though, how old are you? I will be 42 this year. Yeah. So you're like five years
[02:26:45] younger than me. There's a difference there in terms of what people were even thinking.
[02:26:51] Yeah. Well, keep in mind, everyone wasn't like that. I'm saying my mom was my mom was like a
[02:26:56] hippie. She was different than everyone. And here's my point with that, where when we'd come to
[02:27:01] school and I bring home lunch, we'd get sort of teased. Because it's like, you don't get the cool
[02:27:06] snacks, the cool freedom, what I believe. Chips and cookies in like the cool fun stuff. Oh, no.
[02:27:12] They're not an up in the milk. Negative. No, you got we got the whole wheat sandwich with like
[02:27:17] turkey from a real turkey with sprouted grains. So we're sorry, we're about that sprouted grain. Oh,
[02:27:25] that's nice. And they're like level. Right. So it is. It is. On the last, we got laughed at that.
[02:27:31] My mom and that guy was coming in hard with the sprouted grain bread with a health. Yeah.
[02:27:35] And never was making fun of you. Because it's like cardboard. I don't even know because they don't
[02:27:40] know how tasted it. It's not that it's more of a social thing. Everyone knows that cookies are
[02:27:43] young. Young. Everyone knows that like chips are delicious for snack and all this stuff.
[02:27:48] We didn't have that. We had like the snacks that they knew that weren't that good. Carried.
[02:27:51] Taste and carrots and like carrots are pretty tasty though. I think so now. Yeah. I think it's
[02:27:56] good about carrots. If you're not eating sugar and you eat a carrot taste sweet. Yeah, it is.
[02:28:00] You're like, oh, this is super sweet. Oh, it's good. You can eat too many carrots because
[02:28:04] your body can't that just them fully if you eat too many of them just that way. I've made
[02:28:09] that mistake before. It's pounding bags. It hurts. I do like one of those bags of carrots. Your
[02:28:13] gut is going to tell you. All right. I know what they're issue. Good. No, but where are you going?
[02:28:17] All right. I'm making a good point unless you even talk about carrots a little bit more. I can't
[02:28:22] we can't but unless I'm making a point. So these kids would make fun of us because they got the
[02:28:26] cookies and we had like tomatoes and sprouts in our sandwiches. Yeah. But growing up when you come
[02:28:36] early adulthood adulthood, that health consciousness paid off big time. Huge texture. So to make
[02:28:44] the switch from non health consciousness to health consciousness, it's like it can be a grind.
[02:28:49] That can be harder. Yeah. And it's just made to the path. I mean, came the path and it's already
[02:28:53] instilled as being a young person. So there's that. So, milk. So my daughter comes home from school
[02:28:59] literally yesterday saying they were teasing me because I had carrots. And choose, she wasn't very
[02:29:04] happy about it. That's what she knows. She just started talking fools out. Well, I started to say
[02:29:09] that but she was it was no time for jokes at this point because you didn't like our issues. You're
[02:29:12] not like, you know, I'm choking anyone for teasing for your carrots. But this is what I said.
[02:29:18] One of the things I said, I said, don't worry about them. There's not first of nothing
[02:29:22] funny about carrots. Like it's not, I'm not saying it's like, or it's so serious. I'm just saying,
[02:29:27] what's funny about I don't get it kind of thing. It's just like, yeah, that's kind of true. And I was like,
[02:29:31] and guess what carrots are good for you. Just like your lunch is good for you. And as you grow up,
[02:29:34] you're going to see the result of that. And you're going to see the results of them not eating,
[02:29:38] not healthy food. Yeah. And you're going to see you need to do better than that as a father.
[02:29:43] Why? Because you need a better deal. Yeah. No, she needs to be like, they say, oh, what are you eating?
[02:29:49] Peel you eating some, you eat and some carrots? Yeah. And then she says, what are you eating?
[02:29:53] There are some type two dieted. You're going to diet age 32. Lose her. Get out of my face for
[02:29:59] I put you to sleep. All right. All that, you know, that direction. That's not part of the way
[02:30:04] where you could go right there. No, that's not how I'm having fun. If on his part of life. But I
[02:30:10] saw her wheels turning when she was like, like, yeah, you know, like, I will all see the results,
[02:30:16] you know. And then, you know, then my wife's there and she's like, yeah, look at Dad,
[02:30:19] how big is muscle? All this stuff right. So kind of, why does your wife is kind of like,
[02:30:23] just making stuff up? Unless it worked. But go back to milk or your kid milk. This is what you
[02:30:31] achieved with that. One of the many things is you actually made it like kind of cool to have a
[02:30:37] healthy thing, have a healthy snack. We're going to sway a lot of people with these books and
[02:30:43] this stuff. I mean, I see that. It is happening. It's awesome to see. All right, dude, we got to rock
[02:30:50] it off. Come on. But that was an important story. That was a long, that was 12 minutes. Anyway,
[02:30:55] deep, I'm like, all right. We got Jockel White tea. How about that? Jockel White tea. Tell me about it.
[02:30:59] Get it. Drink it. Taste good. Dad left 8,000 pounds. Certified organic. Yeah, certified organic and
[02:31:05] all that good stuff. And it tastes delicious and it looks cool. So you're good. Sure. And we have a store
[02:31:13] called Jockel Store. So you're going to Jockel Store.com. This is where you can get rash cards.
[02:31:20] You can get t-shirts. You can get truckers hats. And if you're, if you're not into truckers hats,
[02:31:28] because whatever you can get flex fat hats. Yeah, right. Flex fat hats are good though. You don't
[02:31:37] get the judge hats. You don't wear hats. Well, they look stand down. Stand down. I stand down.
[02:31:46] Anyway, you want to represent the pad. This is what it's for. It's quality stuff. It's not ballpark
[02:31:50] giveaway shirts. The one you never wear, you're used for like wiping your hands in the kitchen or
[02:31:57] whatever. It's not that. You're not going to wipe your hands in the kitchen with just a little
[02:32:00] quality quality quality quality and representation. So yeah, some women stuff on there. Yeah,
[02:32:07] a lot of good stuff. I'm going to have a two more new shirts coming out. Nice. No, I don't want to necessarily
[02:32:13] say just shirts, but two more new items. Sure. Coming up. So stand by for that. Also subscribe.
[02:32:20] Right. Yes. Subscribe to what the podcast. We're not talking about subscribed to a magazine
[02:32:25] because no one gets magazines anymore. Magazines are dead. Sure. Right. Right. Right.
[02:32:29] I'm magazine now. You get a, I've somebody bring a random bunch of papers to your house
[02:32:34] without advertising. You're not going to do that. No one does that. Good. So you're not going to
[02:32:37] subscribe to a magazine. Subscribe to this podcast. If you want to, sure, if you get value out of it,
[02:32:47] whatever. And don't forget about the word of your podcast. I just, I've got hit. I got hit today.
[02:32:52] I got hit. Kind of hard. Somebody said, is the warrior kid podcast dead?
[02:33:00] It's like, oh, that's a question. That's, that's, that's, that's, warrior podcast is not dead. But
[02:33:06] warrior kid podcast, I need to put more out. So I need a little bit of time, which I'm making,
[02:33:14] but I need to get it done. So yes, warrior kid podcast, subscribe to that. I'll get some new
[02:33:19] ones in there. Also Irish Oaks Ranch.com is where Aiden, warrior kid, up in Central Cal, has his own
[02:33:27] business. 13 years old runner in a business, nobody do. That's where warrior kids do. He makes soap
[02:33:33] from goat milk. So that everyone in the world can stay clean and don't forget about YouTube.
[02:33:42] We have a YouTube channel. Did you know that? Yes, right. And it's called,
[02:33:46] Jockel podcast. And it's on YouTube. So podcast is not just a podcast where it's audio only.
[02:33:54] On the video version, you can see us. If you want to know what John Striker Meyer looks like,
[02:34:00] you can watch this on YouTube. This is getting a lot of views on YouTube. Yeah. Listen to
[02:34:05] John Striker Meyer and hear his stories. Yeah. So check that out. Also, echo Charles makes
[02:34:12] what he calls enhanced videos. Some people might call them distracting from the message.
[02:34:19] Sure, they might. Some people like them. They have millions of views. Some of your videos that you've
[02:34:26] made. Do you know what? Oh, yeah. I did. A lot of views. Well, like I said or like you said, yeah,
[02:34:32] you can call them distractions on the message, which I actually won't even argue with it. Thank you.
[02:34:39] But some people look at it or see it as enhanced. Oh, that's what you look at there. You put in
[02:34:47] enhances the message. It's kind of like kind of like, you know, when you have a dog and you got to feed
[02:34:51] them the heartworm pills. You know, where the pills, the heartworm pills is good from. It's good.
[02:34:55] That message is good. But sometimes you've got to put it in the food, you know? So like taste good.
[02:35:02] It's like the message gets delivered. So my message is so hard to swallow that you have to put like
[02:35:06] videos around it. Is what I'm hearing music around it? Yes, sometimes. Break at the jealous. Sometimes.
[02:35:11] Yes. Yeah. Hey, so that's the YouTube channel. Check them out. And then we also got psychological
[02:35:16] warfare, which is on iTunes, Google Play, other MP3 platforms. And if you want an alarm clock,
[02:35:23] that's me talking. Then you go to psychological warfare. That's what you get. And you'll see that
[02:35:29] you can use it as a alarm clock or you can use it as an emergency, as an emergency air cover.
[02:35:35] Yes. Fire support. You're like, I'm not sure if I should work out right now. Press play on the
[02:35:41] on the psychological warfare track that's about not working out. And you will get up and you will go to the gym.
[02:35:48] And if you're about to eat some donuts or some chocolate chip cookies, right?
[02:35:54] Sure, chips are only whatever chips are holy. You've been to sleeve a random chips are
[02:35:59] playing around somewhere. You know, use that term for the first time when it was James Neilson.
[02:36:05] What? James Neilson would talk about eating a sleeve or a meal just get after it.
[02:36:13] James Neilson, a world's toughest accountant. A great yes. Blackbelt and Jiu Jitsu for a long time.
[02:36:20] One of the OG American true Jiu Jitsu practitioners teaches on on Saturdays here at Vickory
[02:36:28] MMA in fitness, which by the way is our gym in San Diego, California. Do you have a train,
[02:36:32] so? You know what's funny about that too? Where, you know, he said, oh yeah, the world's tough as a
[02:36:36] accountant, right? Any teachers Jiu Jitsu too. So teach Jiu Jitsu, that's a job. Like that's a career. Like you're a
[02:36:41] Jiu Jitsu instructor. True. But he's like, he's an accountant. But he's just Jiu Jitsu. It's not like an accountant
[02:36:46] is like some, you know, scraping by sort of gay. No, no, no, no, it's like that's a, and there's a few
[02:36:52] people like that. You know why? Because teaching Jiu Jitsu is fun. And it makes you better at Jiu Jitsu. That's just how it is
[02:36:59] man. The nature of the game. That's un psychological warfare. Also you can get it if you want some
[02:37:04] visual representation of the path to keep you there. You can go to flipsidecampus.com, run by my brother
[02:37:12] Dakota Meyer. He makes art with layers. With layers, the layers are free. They're not free. They
[02:37:21] come with the cost of the art. Right, layers included layers included. There you go. Yes. We've designed
[02:37:27] some of the items there. Yeah. You know, let them know. Like hey, this would be kind of cool over here.
[02:37:33] And if you want something just just request to go to on Twitter, I think is the best place. Yeah.
[02:37:38] And that's cool. Flipsidecampus.com if you want to get some cool stuff to hang up in your house.
[02:37:42] So back to psychological warfare. If you use that whole thing as a playlist, psychological warfare,
[02:37:48] even if it doesn't apply to it, you're not eating donuts. Well, a playlist while you work out.
[02:37:52] You're even if you're not eating donuts while you work out, which most of us do not.
[02:37:56] It still, it like it puts you in this mindset of like, you know, working and re-pain results of
[02:38:02] work. Yeah. It goes back to the podcast machete season when they talk about how the power of the
[02:38:08] audio into your ear. Yeah. Yeah. That's what's happening with psychological warfare. Yes. It's going
[02:38:12] right in your ear. You're like, you walk, you get done listening to that. You're not even thinking
[02:38:15] about the fact that you're thinking about the fact, yeah, here I just said, you're not even thinking
[02:38:20] about the fact that you are thinking about the fact that you don't want donuts, that you want to
[02:38:26] get in the gym, that you want to attack your project. Oh yeah. That's what's happening. Yeah. It's
[02:38:31] true. 100% true. Also, while you're living, if you're lifting that home, if we're doing the
[02:38:36] lifting the home, which I do, which you do, which a lot of us do, actually, people hit me up,
[02:38:41] show me their home set up. Awesome. You should have kettlebells in my opinion.
[02:38:46] kettlebells is one of them pretty much the biggest, as far as changes to my workout, the most
[02:38:52] valuable change that I changed my workout. Functionality. Functionality. Like the band buzz
[02:38:59] word. One time I was doing, you know, you got to have introduced you have risk control, you know,
[02:39:03] and varying levels of risk control depending on the position. I was rolling with a guy literally,
[02:39:07] like he's like trying to release my grip from his wrist or whatever, and like he's visibly angry,
[02:39:15] because he couldn't. So I just sort of sat there and just let him like do it, whatever. And I was
[02:39:20] just technique because technically he should be able to get out of that. Sure. But I've been doing
[02:39:25] those kettlebells. So my risk control is a lot, we'll say the effectiveness is a lot higher.
[02:39:32] Unless my original point kettlebells, this is where I get my kettlebells from on it. So you
[02:39:36] go to on it.com slash jackel there. You can get these kettlebells and they're all the cool ones,
[02:39:40] too. By the way, like always say Darth Vader, my most recent one, Stormtrooper kettlebell.
[02:39:47] My second most recent one, and not to mention all the other primal bells and legend bells that
[02:39:52] I have from there. Also, at on it is the electrolyte mineral mix. That's part of my daily
[02:40:00] make mix with jackel's discipline. Like I said, the mineral electrolyte mix, water. Maybe a little
[02:40:11] gatorid if I'm feeling a little feisty. And oh, that's how you take a joint warfare and grow oil.
[02:40:17] Don't don't drink gatorid or grow a little stuff. There we got some books, too. We got
[02:40:23] way in the warrior kid three where there's a will. It's out right now. And for everyone that's
[02:40:27] got that so far, awesome. Appreciate it. Write some reviews. So I know what you think of it. That is cool.
[02:40:35] If you have warrior the warrior kid three where there's a will, that means you should also have
[02:40:41] where the warrior kid one and two. Number two is called Mark's mission. Also, we got Mikey in the
[02:40:46] dragons. Best children's book ever written according to a lot of people. A lot of people.
[02:40:54] I dig it. A lot of people when telling me that. Tons of people. No, seriously, check out Mikey
[02:41:02] in the dragons to help your kids overcome fear. Fear of all kinds. Also got the discipline
[02:41:06] equals freedom field manual. If you need to know how to get after it. If you want the audio
[02:41:10] version of that, it's on iTunes Amazon, music and Google Play. Also, we got extreme ownership
[02:41:14] and the dichotomy of leadership written by myself and my brother, Dave Babin. Extreme ownership.
[02:41:20] Number one, the selling business book, since it got released the whole time. We just got that
[02:41:27] little stat. It's got the big stat. Yeah, yeah. Some people tell me that dichotomy of leadership is
[02:41:37] better. It's a good combo. I'll leave it at that. Asheline front, that is my leadership
[02:41:46] consultancy. What we do is solve problems through leadership. It is me, Dave Babin, JP,
[02:41:52] to Nell Dave Burke, Flynn, Cockroach, Mike's really Mike Bima and Jason Carner. If you need help
[02:41:57] in your organization with your leadership, which will help everything that you do in your business
[02:42:02] and in your life, go to Asheline front.com for details. If you want to come to the master,
[02:42:07] you already missed Chicago. It was sold out. Your next opportunity is Denver, December,
[02:42:12] or sorry, September 19th and 20th. That is going to sell a help in the December 4th and 5th
[02:42:20] in Sydney, Australia. If you want to come to it, sign up as quick as you can so that you can
[02:42:24] actually go and you don't get all mad. You'll be mad at me outwardly, but deep inside you'll know
[02:42:32] that you hesitated and you procrastinated and you just didn't get your game on. That's why you're
[02:42:36] not at the master. So if you want to come to that, check extraemotorship.com, EF Online. Leadership
[02:42:42] training is not in a noculation. It doesn't take one shot and now we're good to go. You want to
[02:42:48] follow up with it. And that's what you can do with EF Online. Or if you can't make it to the
[02:42:51] master for whatever reason, go to EF Online. Online interactive leadership training. Check that out
[02:42:59] EF Online.com. And of course, we have an EF Overwatch. If you have a company and you want to
[02:43:06] get some good leaders that understand the principles of extreme ownership and they're going to
[02:43:12] apply them inside your organization, go to EFOverwatch.com. We will deliver you a leader from the special
[02:43:20] operations community or the combat aviation community that is ready to step into a role and lead
[02:43:25] your company, the victory. Also, if you want to hear more about important things like Hawaii
[02:43:35] 505 or other highly intense shows from Eko Charles or if you want to hear about leadership
[02:43:43] and war in human nature from me. Between the two of us, we are on Twitter. We are on Instagram
[02:43:50] and we are on the Flashball. Eko is at Eko Charles and I am at Joko Willink and thanks to all the
[02:43:58] veterans out there, especially those like John Stracker-Mire. Volunteer and volunteered and volunteered
[02:44:08] again to do the hardest missions in the worst areas for zero recognition by the way, not even from
[02:44:17] your own friends and family. Those are true heroes and we are forever indebted to them. We are also
[02:44:25] indebted to police and law enforcement firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers,
[02:44:32] border patrol, secret service, all first respondents. Thanks for keeping us safe. Here at home and to
[02:44:40] everyone else. I know that life can be stressful. But chances are you aren't surrounded by
[02:44:52] elephant grass that is 12 feet tall and burning and closing in on your chances are you aren't
[02:44:59] being assaulted by NVA soldiers. Chances are you aren't facing death. But at the same time,
[02:45:10] actually you are facing death. We are all facing death. So remember like John Stracker-Mire said,
[02:45:22] every breath of air is sweet and our gift is to be alive. So go out there and live.
[02:45:38] And until next time, this is echo and jacco out.