Jocko Podcast 200: Are We Doing What We Are Capable Of? w/ Jim Sursely

2019-10-24T18:06:49Z

Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @DAVHQ @echocharles 0:00:00 - Opening 0:01:44 - James Sursely.   1:40:18 - Final Thoughts and Take-aways. 1:43:23 - How to stay on THE PATH. JOCKO STORE Apparel: https://www.jockostore.com/collection... All Supplements: https://originmaine.com/nutrition/joc... Origin Jeans and Clothes: https://originmaine.com/durable-goods/ Origin Gis: https://originmaine.com/bjj-mma-fit/ Onnit Stuff: http://www.onnit.com/jocko 2:03:20 - Closing Gratitude.

AI summary of episode

I mean I knew when my rotation date was but a lot of guys actually made what was called a short time calendar that's a bad idea never never never did that at all so you just every day was a new day you're going to do your best job and if you're doing what you're doing that's the best you can do and that's one more thing I wanted to say this because again we got young folks in the military out there when I was talking about hey some people are afraid some people are in a afraid some people think it's gonna happen them some people think it'll never happen them look wherever you are on that spectrum what what I can say is this there's things that you can control there's things that you can't control and as you're going into combat before you're going to combat train hard be prepared know your weapon systems know your immediate action drills then that's that's the best you can do you've done everything you can to take control over what you can control once you're in combat there's some things that you're not going to be able to control and if you worry about those things it's actually a set it actually negatively impact you if you're worried about things that you can't control if you're worried about what's going on at home if you're worried about mate all those things they're gonna take away your aggressiveness take take away your awareness take away your attention those things are gonna drag you in the wrong direction so don't worry about the things that you can't control it's okay to be afraid too like but he probably wouldn't listen to anybody else because Chris had a great deal of experience driving for it that's one of the misconceptions about the military and it's really one of the misconceptions about leadership is is the last thing that I want as a leader is to have a bunch of yes men that are just going to do what I tell them to do because I told them to do it I want people that are going to say hey Jock I don't know if that's the best idea or hey that we should do this a different way and and people don't think that that's going to happen in the military that's what you want you want that kind of environment inside the military and the good thing is that way when I would make a call and guys would execute I knew it was a good call because no one gave me any pushback because believe me I had a relationship with my guys if I was saying tell them to do something stupid they'd say hey boss we need to we need to put go go on hold right now and figure this out there's got to be a better way so that's the way that that's how I that's how I make good decisions not because I'm great it's because I got a bunch of great guys working for me that are going to tell me hey that's not the right call and that's a classic example right there you know if if Chris who had the experience and had the the the the the where we're fall to say hey boss we don't want to cross right there it's not a good call let's just go 10 meters down mix it up a little bit that's the kind of thing where that that would save lives and the other thing that you just talked about this is another thing that people get really surprised about is even because we work I work with a lot of companies and businesses and people say well you know my guys get complacent with things because you know there's there's it's not combat so people get complacent I always have to explain people get complacent in combat too you go on you go on your 14th patrol on a row in a row and nothing's happened for the last 13 patrols and you think oh you know we can we can cross here or we don't need to we need to pack extra ammo or I don't need to carry that extra radio battery because I have a needed yet but maybe we should go to woodstock I don't think anybody did though but did you feel like like I know that our treatment from the wars from the wars that we've been in the last couple decades you know we've had great treatment from for the most part we've had incredibly incredible treatment from not just from well from from people from normal citizens you know that it's thank you for your service it's thank you for what you did regardless of whatever their political beliefs are as well it's like most people say hey we know that you were doing your job and and that's thank you did you feel mattered did you feel did you feel like it was did you get the negative feedback that we often hear about from Vietnam bets I never got any of the negative Well you get up and fix breakfast you know fix some coffee or some sea rations and you know easy to carry it because your armored personnel carriers wait didn't make a lot of different stuff we'd have somebody would fix this somebody would fix the coffee we'd all kind of share the meal together because you didn't have any food that came out to the field very often and we just sit down maybe the night before that morning with the L.T. and go over what the daily operation was and follow up with a myler cover on the map sheet and a grease pencil and you know go through the checkpoints throughout the course of the day you know if you faced any any difficulties you you know just faced it had on return fire called in artillery maybe you'd get a call an infantry unit to be pinned down nice part of about being armored personnel carriers you could move real fast lay down a lot of suppressing fire and let them back out and save them we did that from Marines as well as United States Army so then um and then this is just what you do this is just the day in day out all day every day and you're during the night time you you stay you know you stay on watch so I don't think it was as easy for him to be a strong leader and a strong decision maker because I think that was on his mind a lot the L.T. was not that way and everybody that we served with was not that way I don't know if I know anybody else that I served with for 10 and a half months that was married other than most of the platoon sergeants or the first sergeant so they have that in the back of their mind they're thinking about you can sense that there may be leaning a little bit towards trying to stay alive and trying to take less risk and you know to all that works is that's not always the best person to have for a leader if you're not tuned in 24-7 while you're there you're in trouble you know that's the only way to survive you have to be conscious of every fly that lands on on your food you know what I mean you're just you just get that heightened sense of awareness that it's probably lucky you can even go to sleep when you lay down at night because you're the adrenaline is pumps so much all day long so I'm sure probably in the back of my mind the use of it or abuse of it was probably something I was conscious of all the time but that never really looked like that was a great alternative path I mean I thought that was fairly easy to recognize that that wasn't good and and I'm not critical of anyone that chose that because everybody's psyche and the way they're handling things at that time the difficulties you're going through or just being out in public missing two legs in a room maybe you need to be high to do that I never felt that way I didn't feel like I needed to explain anything to anybody had to put on any particular performance or airstone make people accept me if you didn't accept me I'm okay with that too you know what I mean that was fine because I'm just going to do what I need to do for my survival and for me to move forward so the biggest thing that we had to do and I mean that was the number one thing in part of the training with you drove where you were commanding a track was you never take the same stream crossing twice you you track the vehicle right directly in front of you you never get outside of the lead tracks tracks in the ground and we'd stay in the patties or around the patties as much as possible because it weren't very likely to put a landmine in the rice patties it would be on the road or the edge of the road or maybe on a rice petty pike that we never never went in that direction very often either and what was your leadership like you know your your young lieutenant platoon commander what was he like what was your platoon sergeant like what did what was your interaction with those guys like and even your vehicle so who was in charge of of your track was he was a young E5 probably 21 or 22 years old at that time and the leadership in my platoon the platoon leader was was a great first lieutenant like oh no you don't need to do that you don't need to do that like kind of like no you can actually do this other thing kind of thing like he made it sound so casual what almost like hey it's almost like he he reversed it all the way back down to the bare decision making of it you know rather than like it's no big deal that's what people feel it's you don't need to think your your weak because you're feeling that you're just going into survival mode you got butterflies in your stomach because your blood's drawn away from there because you want to focus on other things it's a positive thing so don't worry about those things you can't control focus on what you can control and if you're if you're feeling a little bit afraid good that means your your mind isn't the right place you're aware and you're in a hyper sensory mode so you can survive out on the battlefield that's what's going on um what was the what was going on with the mission where you got wounded we've been out on a searching clear for that whole day I mean probably it'd been out in the field for six or seven days at that point I had picked the night longer position we set up that evening about five to six o'clock we were supposed to get resupply and get get hotchow that night brought up by helicopter so I mean it was a real easy decision for me and like October early November 69 that we'll just put those in a trunk someplace and have great memories about walking in the parallel bars so you were done with rehab at nine months well really once you heal and if you're not going to do anything further with prosthetic legs and they need a bed because you're still killing and injuring a lot of people in Vietnam in November 1969 you know you got to move on something's got to happen so 1969 this is this is at the height of like anti-war protests and woodstock was in woodstock was in August of 1969 are you paying attention to that is that entering your world at all or we're we're watching it on the ward in the day room and probably just getting a tremendous amount of enjoyment out of it because we're all sitting around we're all Vietnam combat soldiers you know on the ward I mean it because it's like you still feel like you have those limbs like you feel like you need to scratch behind your knee or scratch you know your hand is itching that type of thing it's almost like you're bald up in a fist where your fingernails are pushed into your hand type of thing and little by little I think is those nerve endings received from the surgery and the amputations a lot of that relaxes and changes I don't get that at all anymore That's good did you and then did you eventually make E6 I did and did that change your position again at some point did you become like the vehicle commander I became what was called the field for a surge with the called six alpha in the in the army I was on the command track out in the field with the company commander and then two other machine gunners on our track so you did you leave your platoon to go and be with the company commander I did and what's your what's your job when you're in that position well basically everything you do for the daily operation you're kind of in charge over overseeing everything you're you know because keep in mind now we've got not just my third platoon out there but the second and the first might be with us or they might be off on an operation of their own sometimes two platoons that go out together and we wanted to go a different direction so you had to be cognizant of where everybody was all the time and what they were doing and any difficulties that they were having and it was a brand new company commander who did not have any Vietnam experience so then it was almost like having to train the CO once he got there but I always felt that if you were thinking about other things like family that was going to make you less aggressive and as far as I can tell if you're aggression if you're not aggressive on the battlefield that has a higher probability of getting you killed than if you're aggressive I think that hesitation is a bad thing and I'm looking at saying and I used to try and make this clear all the time and I'm talking about you know being hyper aggressive and running to your death that's not what I'm talking about but if there's something going on and you're nervous about making a move that's not a good thing to have happening and it would make when I would have guys that I could see you were thinking about other things it would make me nervous that they were going to hesitate when they needed to move or needed to make something happen.

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jocco podcast number 200. With echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening,
[00:00:06] I'm good evening.
[00:00:10] In the morning, after my swim, I sit down and have a cup of coffee and think,
[00:00:17] Jim, you're the luckiest guy in the world.
[00:00:21] And that is a quote from a man named James Sersley, a man who served his country.
[00:00:33] That's a soldier in the US Army. So he volunteered for the Army and then volunteered
[00:00:40] to go fight and Vietnam, a man who made incredible sacrifices and who faced incredible
[00:00:50] challenges. Challenges that would overwhelm most people. And yet he carried on. And he proved
[00:01:06] and is still proving that the human will is stronger than many of us ever realized. And
[00:01:20] if you have the right attitude, you can look at a harrowing situation and still call it
[00:01:32] lucky. And it is an honor to have this man with us tonight to talk about his experiences
[00:01:42] and how he has overcome so much adversity. Mr. James Sersley, welcome to the show.
[00:01:50] Thank you. Great to be here. Jocco. Sir, honor to have you on. And I apologize that the fact
[00:01:56] that you had to travel all the way out here from Sunny Florida to Sunny San Diego, but I'm
[00:02:01] honored that you were able to make the trip. I'm honored to be here again. Thanks for asking.
[00:02:05] And I like to start at the beginning about, you know, just where you came from, where you grew
[00:02:12] up. And I think we're talking about Minnesota, right? We are. You somehow you cover up that
[00:02:17] accent pretty well. Well, I've been living in Florida since 1971, so I hope I get rid of some of
[00:02:23] that. So you grew up, what kind of was the family situation growing up? What's your, what
[00:02:28] did you dad do and whatnot? My dad was a barber in Rochester, Minnesota, and my mother for the
[00:02:32] most part was a mother in a housewife and worked a little bit apart time when I got into my teenage
[00:02:39] years, along with my older sister was also a couple years older than me. And what's Rochester,
[00:02:45] Minnesota like? Well, Rochester, Minnesota is home of the Mayo Clinic. So I mean, it's probably
[00:02:51] that's the biggest thing in town and IBM, but it's rural, south eastern corner in Minnesota. Just
[00:02:58] great, bunch of patriotic Americans is what I was accustomed to growing up. And your dad served,
[00:03:05] if I'm correct, your dad served in the Army Air Corps? He did. He was a radio operator on B-17s
[00:03:11] and B-24s during World War II. Now, how much did he talk about that when you grow it up?
[00:03:17] You know, not really a whole lot. I think the biggest thing that I experienced with him was he
[00:03:21] had a foot locker that he brought back home, and I can remember probably as a nine or 10 year old kid
[00:03:27] trying to put on that stuff and have the jacket drape all over me and the pants too big and huge
[00:03:32] boots and everything else. But he never really said too much about another than, you know,
[00:03:37] where he experienced training in different parts of the United States and that type of thing.
[00:03:41] But he was a B-17 radio operator and B-24s. And B-20s. So was he doing the missions into Europe?
[00:03:50] He did not do it in, in, never left the United States. Okay. Because when he, when he finished
[00:03:55] whatever training he had, they made him a trainer of other radio operators. He got it. So he was lucky.
[00:04:01] Well, yeah, otherwise there's a good chance you wouldn't even be here exactly.
[00:04:05] Yeah, those are the, those are the guys that we're doing. If you did 25 missions,
[00:04:09] you got to go home. But there wasn't too many people that got to go home.
[00:04:16] So when you were growing up, I mean, going to high school, what was it? What was your, what were you into?
[00:04:22] Growing up? Football, basketball, and based in girls. And that's your which one was the greatest priority.
[00:04:31] And were you any good? I mean, I was starting full back on a football team for three different,
[00:04:37] you know, sophomore junior and senior year. And probably go to go into college. But I wasn't
[00:04:42] exactly the greatest student in the world. So I did make myself eligible to go on to college.
[00:04:48] You were focused on studying female anatomy at this point instead of.
[00:04:53] That would be a good interpretation. So, so were you planning to go to college?
[00:04:59] Were you thinking about going to college? Were your parents,
[00:05:01] edge and you towards college? My parents really never said too much about that. My older sister
[00:05:08] was already two years into college at that point. My thing was if there had been a place where I could
[00:05:15] have gone to play football, but I didn't have to go to school. I'd have been the first one in line
[00:05:20] for that location. Yeah. And as I got closer to, you know, finish school in May of 1966,
[00:05:29] and as they got into September 66, I kind of thought about it. And I said, you know what I might
[00:05:34] do is I might just join the military. Do three years in the army come back home, use the GI
[00:05:41] bill and go to school wherever I wanted to. Because I knew the army would get me a GED just about
[00:05:46] us quick as I got in there. So that was kind of some of my thoughts when I, as they got ready to join
[00:05:52] the military. So what year were you set to graduate from high school? Is that 1967 or no?
[00:05:57] No, 1966. So May of 1966. So may of 1966 you started saying yourself, all right, when I get done,
[00:06:02] I'll just, I'll just join the army. Well, and I don't know if I even really did that. I mean,
[00:06:08] it's, it's probably been more simple than that. I don't know whether I was a forward enough
[00:06:13] thinker to actually be in that direction. I actually drove by the post office in downtown Rochester,
[00:06:20] Minnesota. There's one of those signs that were on a spring in a head uncle Sam, red, white,
[00:06:26] and blue and the big top hat. And his finger was pointed right at the windshield of my car.
[00:06:31] And it said uncle Sam needs you. And I circled the block when in and talk to the army recruiter,
[00:06:38] not really within a great intentions of joining, but just to kind of see what, what that process
[00:06:44] was all about. And what maybe I could do if I did join the army. When that recruiter saw you
[00:06:50] come through the door, he was thinking something completely different. He said, I got this guy.
[00:06:54] Well, yeah, they were probably tremendously in need of warm bodies at that point in time during the
[00:07:00] Vietnam era. So, so this is 1966. So how much were you aware of what was going on in Vietnam?
[00:07:09] At this time, how much were you watching the news? How much were you seeing as far as as far as
[00:07:14] the Vietnam War goes? Because it had definitely escalated by 1966. I mean, I had one of my friends
[00:07:22] who was a pilot in Vietnam, but he was in the Naval Academy. In 1965, they said they didn't even
[00:07:31] talk about Vietnam at the Naval Academy at all. It wasn't until they got close to the end of the
[00:07:37] senior year that they started going, oh, there's a war going on. But by 1966, it had absolutely escalated.
[00:07:43] And so what were your thoughts were you thinking, hey, this is if I go in,
[00:07:48] then I know what's going to happen. I know them to be going to war.
[00:07:50] I mean, there was some discussion with fellow classmates, and I went to a Perlky school,
[00:07:56] and there was a bigger public school that was there in town. And a lot of those guys were talking
[00:08:01] about, let's all go in on the buddy system, whether the Marine Corps, the Army, or something.
[00:08:06] And I didn't want to have anything to do with that. I mean, that was my answer to everybody
[00:08:09] that ever raised that proposition. But we were aware of what was going on and probably she'd pass
[00:08:15] through the living room, your parents had had the television on. You'd see it on the six o'clock
[00:08:20] with the 10 o'clock news. So you knew the respectivity going on, but it wasn't like it didn't
[00:08:25] scare me, but it also wasn't attracted to send me down to the Army recruiters.
[00:08:31] So after that first visit to the Army recruiter after you after Uncle Sam called you out as you drove
[00:08:36] down the street at what point. So you go to see him and how much longer was it before you sign
[00:08:43] the dotted line? Well, I went home and talked to my parents about it and it's kind of one of
[00:08:48] those things where I think they probably really focused on the news much more than I ever did.
[00:08:54] And I mean, the first thing that I mentioned about the possibility during the Army,
[00:08:59] my mother was in tears. I'm sure because of what you see on television. My dad having been
[00:09:04] former member of the military was not quite that way, but just said, hey, you know,
[00:09:09] there's the Navy, there's the Air Force, there's a lot of different possibilities. What
[00:09:13] did she give that some thought? And I just kind of told them if I did join what I thought I
[00:09:19] would want to do and that was to be like a mechanic that was something that I enjoyed doing on
[00:09:25] my own vehicles and motorcycles that we had. So I mean, I never thought about joining to be a combat
[00:09:31] soldier. And again, I probably gave myself about two weeks, had a little bit more discussion with my
[00:09:39] parents and that's probably when I decided to go down and join. Again, I was 18 years old, so it wasn't
[00:09:44] wasn't like I needed permission to join. I could have done it on my own. And that's basically what I did.
[00:09:49] So did you, you were in the cars then? Did you have your own car? I did. Did you have multiple cars?
[00:09:55] At two cars in a motorcycle? And what were they?
[00:09:58] A 1957 Chevy, a 1964 Chevy and a Yamaha 250 motorcycle?
[00:10:04] So you're at your girls that I mentioned girls? You did a little bit, yes.
[00:10:13] And nothing about the Navy, the Marine Corps, did they give you a contract in the Army where you
[00:10:19] were going to become a mechanic? Did they do that back then? They did.
[00:10:23] Okay, so you knew right away, hey, you're going to go in, when to make you a mechanic,
[00:10:28] and that sounds like a pretty good plan. Especially because I'm just thinking like when I
[00:10:33] joined the Navy, all other prospects in life didn't seem as cool as that. They didn't seem,
[00:10:41] you know, when you said you wish there was a place where you could just go and play football,
[00:10:45] well, I wanted a place where I could just go and play a commandil. And there was a place like that.
[00:10:50] It was called the Navy. And that's how I ended up joining. And it seems like, yeah, I don't know,
[00:10:56] I'm not saying I didn't have any other options, but it just seemed like such a good option for me.
[00:11:00] It's so simple and straightforward. And that's actually one of the things that I liked about the
[00:11:04] Navy was when I joined. Nothing else, none of my previous life mattered. It was just here you go.
[00:11:11] Here's what you have to do. So, so, did your mind shift at all about your decision when you
[00:11:18] showed up to boot camp? No, okay. And I think really because, you know, when I reflect on that now
[00:11:25] and look back, that there was a lot of guys who'd never left their home town, never done anything,
[00:11:30] when they got drafted and, and I don't know, what 40% of the people in my basic training,
[00:11:35] and it were probably drafted. Didn't want to be there and never had any intentions of being the military.
[00:11:40] It also scared the living crap out of them. I mean, the people that cried
[00:11:45] half the night all night in basic training, you know, they were away from home for the first time.
[00:11:51] They weren't physical type of people to start with and it was just extremely difficult to watch a
[00:11:56] lot of that while I went through basic training. So, where did you go to basic training?
[00:12:02] Fort Polk Louise and Anna. Now, we're most of the kids that you went through boot camp with.
[00:12:08] Did they send them where they kids that were from that area? Did you go to boot camp
[00:12:12] like regionally or was it people from all over the country? People from all over the country.
[00:12:17] I think you're induction and where you go for basic training in the army at that time,
[00:12:21] dependent on the timing of when you got drafted or when you joined.
[00:12:25] Could have been to Fort Stewart, Georgia. Think there were places out here in California where they
[00:12:30] actually had basic, Fort Lewis Washington had basic all over the place. Fort Dixon, New Jersey.
[00:12:36] So, you're in there with people that have been drafted. You said 40%.
[00:12:40] I think roughly at that time. And there's, I mean, this is where people start doing crazy
[00:12:47] things just to get out, like, you know, wet their bed or whatever sleepwalk and all this kind of
[00:12:52] things so they just would get out of their service. Did you see that kind of thing?
[00:12:56] We had three guys that actually went AWOL and stayed underneath one of those elevated
[00:13:03] wood frame World War II barracks for three days because even if they had got out from
[00:13:08] underneath the barracks, they wouldn't have known how to get out of Louisiana to get back where
[00:13:13] they were from. So people brought them food for three days and then they finally decided to surrender.
[00:13:21] And that's the other the interesting thing about. So this is 1960. This is still 1966.
[00:13:26] And so the anti-war movement wasn't in full swing yet. Was it as far as just
[00:13:33] open hippies in the streets and those kind of things? That wasn't really happening.
[00:13:37] And 66. Was it? No more like 68 and 69 is when it really got cranked up. So these kids that were coming
[00:13:43] in, they were just horrified about what was going to happen. And I don't know whether it was even
[00:13:49] a fear of going to Vietnam. If it was just a fear of being away from home, the physicality of
[00:13:55] of basic training and people screaming and hollering in your face and everything else. I mean,
[00:14:00] I think that's what scared of more than anything else. You know, that's one thing that
[00:14:04] they can never put back in the bottle is these days. Well, first of all, it's all volunteer.
[00:14:10] But second of all, we've seen when I joined the Navy, I had seen, you know, military bootcamp movies
[00:14:17] since I was born. I mean, we just knew every little trick and anticipated everything that was
[00:14:23] going to happen. And it seems like if you were a kid from wherever and you got drafted and you'd
[00:14:31] never left home and then you show up and you got some drill sergeant going nuts at your face.
[00:14:36] Yeah, that's totally different. That's a shock to the system.
[00:14:44] And that was before you could play that card, I guess, that they use now. You know, there's a time
[00:14:49] out card in a lot of different branches of the military where you can go for and make a phone call
[00:14:55] and call your congressman if you want. If you're being mistreated, you can call home and report it.
[00:15:00] Well, they used to say over there, we'll take you to the phone booth, but I'm not sure you'll ever
[00:15:04] make it back to the unit. So, but you were, you were an athlete, you were a three-sport athlete,
[00:15:13] you were used to working and so it wasn't a big deal for you to go through and you
[00:15:20] and you volunteered to do it. Right. So you get done with bootcamp and then what's next, you
[00:15:25] must have to go some kind of MOS school to learn your trade, right? I stayed at Fort Book,
[00:15:29] Louisiana for wheeled vehicle repair school. And that was another, I think, eight weeks or seven weeks.
[00:15:38] And then after that, they decided I was a pretty good mechanic. So they sent me to Fort
[00:15:43] Hill, Oklahoma for track vehicle repair school, which was everything that the Army owned that had a track
[00:15:49] on it, you know, self-propelled howitzers and armored personnel, carers, tanks, you name it, anything
[00:15:55] that had a track on it. Did you enjoy all that? I did. Like I have a nephew that he's just loves
[00:16:04] all kinds of big machinery, you know, he just anything that any caterpillar, any big piece of machinery
[00:16:10] he just loves it. And I could see him joining the Army to be a tank repairman. And then so how long
[00:16:16] is that school last? Another eight weeks. And at this point, are you, I mean, with the war going on,
[00:16:24] are you starting to be more aware of possibilities of where you could end up? Well, you would hear
[00:16:31] people talking about it. And some of the people that I took the track vehicle school with were people
[00:16:36] that had been in the military for a year, year and a half, two years, Robert E. Five, or some of
[00:16:42] them actually even E. Six, who had had the wheel part of it, but never the track part. And I think
[00:16:47] they were kind of merging those two M. O. S. So that's why they were training in both, both categories.
[00:16:53] Did you have any guys in those schools that had already been to Vietnam? We did not, not
[00:16:58] any of those schools, but I did. My first assignment was to the 24th Infantry Division in Germany,
[00:17:03] and there were Vietnam veterans in our unit in Germany. So you wrap up your school and that's your first
[00:17:08] your first permanent duty is over in Germany. And you show up there, which has got to be a good time.
[00:17:17] I mean, it's pretty nice. So are we in the 67 yet? Yep, we're in 67. So 1967, how old are you?
[00:17:25] 19 19 years old, and you get stationed in Weren, Germany?
[00:17:28] Oh, it's good. Did you, did you drink any beer while you were there? A little bit.
[00:17:37] I think everything right outside the gate, just like the military bases here in in this country,
[00:17:41] all the pubs are right outside the gate. And your 19 years old, you got more, you're the richest
[00:17:49] human being in the world, because you got that. What are you to E3?
[00:17:53] $97 a month is what it paid when I joined here. I quit $150 a week job to get $97 a month,
[00:18:01] but I got all the closing free food I wanted. Yeah, I was looking at one of my
[00:18:06] paystubs the other day when I first joined the Navy, and it was, I want to say it was like $700,
[00:18:11] a month or $642 a month, and I was looking at it going dang. They really, they got me pretty good
[00:18:17] in the day for a month. But you're in Germany, and what's your job there? I mean, you're working
[00:18:25] on tracks like you were supposed to. That's what you're doing. Well, I did a little bit of that,
[00:18:29] and what the assignment of do was run the TI-based technical inspection on all the vehicles,
[00:18:34] you know, you know, having been around the military, every vehicle, I step a logbook,
[00:18:38] all the logbooks have to be up to date with repairs and maintenance on them. So my job was to
[00:18:45] sort of fair it out. What needed to be done, making sure the driver took care of it, and if not,
[00:18:49] then we sent the rest over with a work order over to the regular mechanics, and they replaced
[00:18:53] or fixed something that was damaged at that point. Now, are you doing any time in the field at this point?
[00:18:59] We used to go to Graffin, Vera, Holon, Felt's, Wild Fleckin, and do training out that way.
[00:19:04] So you'd go out and do a big exercise, and when you do those exercises, would you be a,
[00:19:11] would you be one of the crew on any of the tracks, or would you be standing by to repair them?
[00:19:16] Only standing by to repair them, because the motor pool was battalion, motor pool, and it was big enough
[00:19:22] that you had the full contingent of mechanics, welders, and everything else. And then how long did you
[00:19:32] spend in Germany? I spent about eight months in Germany before a volunteer to go to Vietnam.
[00:19:39] Now, at this point, you said you did have guys that had been in Vietnam, and they were with you,
[00:19:47] and what were they? What was the feedback they were giving you? Well, I mean, they were negative about it.
[00:19:52] They weren't trying to make it overly scary. I think they were realistic and honest about it.
[00:19:56] But I think one of the things that when I look back at that now, they were okay, and they were alive.
[00:20:03] So, you know, maybe it's really not that bad. Yeah. But I mean, if it had been somebody that had been
[00:20:09] seriously injured, maybe going, maybe I need to think about this a little bit more. Yeah.
[00:20:15] I mean, I was kind of determined to go in the reason that I was, because I felt like when I was
[00:20:21] in Germany, I felt like I had a civilian job with a green uniform. I didn't figure I was being
[00:20:31] utilized or I was using myself to the best of my ability. I joined because I wanted to make some kind of
[00:20:39] a contribution. You know, what, you know, what in a John Wayne kind of story or anything that big?
[00:20:45] But I just didn't feel like I was accomplishing that there in the first surgeon talked to me about
[00:20:51] it and said, you know, you need to think about this. I'm going to give you three or four days.
[00:20:54] Talk to some of the guys that have been in Vietnam. Because I mean, I think he'd been,
[00:20:59] and it wasn't anything you just wanted to rubber stamp and put you on a plane and send you back
[00:21:03] and get you ready to go. He was really a genuine kind of person who felt like, hey,
[00:21:08] make sure this is what you want before we actually sign the paper work and send you on.
[00:21:13] Yeah, there's also different people have different experiences in war. And I know,
[00:21:18] in Iraq, there was places in Iraq where the living conditions were better than most than much of
[00:21:24] the living conditions that I experienced in my normal life in America. And then you go 10 miles away
[00:21:31] or sometimes even three miles from that point and you're outside at some forward operating base.
[00:21:36] And it's really dangerous and really hard living conditions. And it just depends on where you are.
[00:21:41] And I think the other thing you were just talking about, I think they call it survivors bias,
[00:21:46] which is the only people that we get to talk to. Like, it happens with businesses.
[00:21:51] You know, someone says, oh, I did this with my business and that's why I'm a multi-millionaire
[00:21:54] now and says everyone says, well, that must work. So I'll do it. What you don't get to talk to is all the
[00:21:58] people that they tried that and it failed. So yeah, from your perspective, you're here and from
[00:22:02] guys that were in Vietnam. And like you said, they, I don't want to say they had a good time, but it
[00:22:07] wasn't that bad. Because they were coming back to be able to tell you about it. So you thought about it
[00:22:13] for a few days. What were you seeing on the news at this point? You didn't see a much news at all when
[00:22:18] I was in Germany. I mean, I don't know whether I ever watched a television all the while I was there.
[00:22:25] And were there, were there any like Intel reports, were there casualty reports? Were you seeing?
[00:22:33] I got to remember for me and Iraq, I was always paying attention to how many, how many people
[00:22:39] were getting killed every month. I mean, I tracked that all time and you'd see those numbers creeping
[00:22:45] up and they crept up and they crept up and I paid attention to that. Was that something that
[00:22:50] you were looking at thinking, well, hey, that could be me? Never saw any or never heard any reports
[00:22:57] of that at all. I mean, I think there were, there was information shared that people were
[00:23:02] dying in Vietnam, but there wasn't any statistical paperwork that actually would bear out all those
[00:23:09] numbers. So you talked to the first sergeant. He tells you give it a few days. You give it a few
[00:23:15] days and you say, yep, I'm still in. I want to go do this. Did you, when you go volunteer, what do they
[00:23:23] do? Are they assigning you to a specific unit? Are they just shipping you off to Vietnam and you're
[00:23:27] going to sign when you get there? That's what happens. Your replacement troop. So basically, I think
[00:23:33] when Vietnam first got started, whole units went to Vietnam. But as time went on, everybody became
[00:23:40] a replacement troop. Somebody would rotate out tomorrow. Another guy would come in. Three days later,
[00:23:45] another guy would rotate month, you know what I mean? I just went on that way all the while I was in
[00:23:49] country. So how long do they give you to prepare? Did you anything different to prepare? You just
[00:23:56] how long did it take from the time you said, hey, I want to go, yep, and then how long was it before
[00:24:01] you left? It was about two weeks before I actually got orders that came down from Battalion or Brigade.
[00:24:08] Went home on a 30-day leave back to Minnesota during the month of February of 1968. And then
[00:24:14] I reported to Fort Lewis Washington on the last couple days of February, 68 was in country by March
[00:24:23] the first, 68. Did you fly over on civilian aircraft? I did. With studiouss and
[00:24:30] threat of airlines, if I remember correctly, which is not even an existence anymore. What was it called?
[00:24:35] Brand of brand of airlines. And that was, what about saying goodbye to your parents? Was your
[00:24:43] dad nervous with your mom a disaster? She used already sad when you joined the army in the first place.
[00:24:48] It was pretty hard on my mom. And I think it was difficult for my dad to, because I'm sure they
[00:24:55] probably both thought I was just absolutely crazy for volunteering to go. I mean, I could have stayed in
[00:25:00] Germany ran out my three years and got out of the military, but I just couldn't see myself doing that.
[00:25:07] So it was difficult for. So civilian flight, you get over there. You know, again talking about movies
[00:25:17] and we all see the movies and you know, I watched all those Vietnam War movies growing up and
[00:25:23] you, they always have the iconic scenes of the new guys in their fresh camouflage uniforms,
[00:25:32] getting off the bird and there's the hardened veterans that are head and home after year a combat
[00:25:38] and they look like they've been through year combat. Did you, did you see that? I did.
[00:25:44] Yeah, they were actually loading planes on the same location that we were off loading. So just exactly
[00:25:49] like you described is what took place. Anybody talked to you about anything? Anybody say anything to you?
[00:25:56] Um, I mean, usually they're kind of giving you just a thumbs up and they're great big smile on their
[00:26:01] face because they know they're loading the bird and going home. So they're happy to be getting out of
[00:26:06] there. And the attitude with the guys that you were with, you know, you already talked about the
[00:26:10] draftees and boot camp that are freaking out. Was there any guys now that are heading to Vietnam
[00:26:15] and there and some of those guys probably just got out of advancing for chetrini or whatever
[00:26:20] the and have been in the army for whatever for months. Yeah, four months and then maybe a
[00:26:26] 30 day leave at home and on their way to Vietnam. And again, that same kind of situation
[00:26:32] and I think they're whether you join the army or you got drafted. I think they're still that
[00:26:37] fear even though that's what you signed up for if you enlisted. There's that fear of the unknown
[00:26:43] that you've gotten off this plane and what's going to happen next. It's weird because
[00:26:51] there's the I think a lot of this your attitude goes a long way because
[00:26:58] there's definitely people and times and myself included where I would think there's nothing's
[00:27:02] going to happen to me. Like it'll happen to anyone else. I've talked about this before like I always
[00:27:07] feel if I'm on a commercial airline and it blows up in the sky that I'm going to live.
[00:27:13] I'm going to I'm going to grab a seat cushion or something. I'm going to figure it out.
[00:27:18] So there's that kind of stupid ignorance that that I know I had, especially when I was younger,
[00:27:25] like nothing was ever going to happen to me. And I would see that in my guys, you know when I was
[00:27:29] old, I didn't go to war until I was you know older and I saw some of the guys that you could tell
[00:27:34] they didn't think anything was going to happen to them and I had other guys where you would swear
[00:27:40] in their mind they had a target on the back of their head every step that they took. And so you get a
[00:27:47] drastic difference between people's attitudes. Did you see that between did you see that with
[00:27:52] different guys and what did you think yourself? I did see that same thing. I don't think that's
[00:27:57] changed any from Vietnam to the generation that served in Iraq or Afghanistan. I think that
[00:28:04] mixture in that percentage is probably still the same all the time. Certainly a lot of people who
[00:28:11] had a certain Emma West but maybe they had some other kind of a job in the states would say,
[00:28:15] well I might be a Levin Bravo which is a grunt but I'm not going to have to do that because I was
[00:28:21] the company armor and I'll be I'll be running you know distributing weapons and stuff like that
[00:28:26] but you'd see them out in the field some pain later they'd be humpin the bush with the 65 pound
[00:28:31] pack on their back. So I mean I think there was a certain fear but a certain courage is well too
[00:28:38] that I think most of the people that I ever served with displayed and I think even the guys that
[00:28:43] got drafted came to the resolve that you know look at I'm here I met as well make the best of this.
[00:28:50] There's no sense of complaining or whining unless just go ahead and get our year ran get my
[00:28:55] two years in in the military and get it over with and I can go home. So I mean I've always said that
[00:29:00] the people that I served with were tremendously courageous and extremely brave individuals.
[00:29:06] I never saw anything that I would ever be afraid to serve alongside of that person.
[00:29:11] Yeah that's powerful that's the American that's the American serviceman right there
[00:29:16] because even when I was talking about guys that I knew that would and I had friends that would
[00:29:23] verbally you know they'd say I don't know feeling good about tonight man they would say that stuff.
[00:29:29] Yeah and guess what they'd get on their gear and they'd go out night after night and I actually
[00:29:34] have to give them more credit because sometimes I think well I'm not I think I'm going to be fine
[00:29:39] but it doesn't take me that much courage to overcome that and here's a guy that has that feeling
[00:29:45] night after night but like you said every time night after night they're getting their gear on
[00:29:49] they're going out and doing their job. How did you get assigned? So now you show up this is just
[00:29:56] this is like this is what the army has the reputation of the big army hey you're a piece
[00:30:04] you're a piece you're a you're a cog in the machine you give them your I mean how how
[00:30:08] did that process work? Well you get to be an army you do a three day in-country orientation
[00:30:15] where they teach you all about snakes and bamboo vipers and all that crazy stuff and whatnot to
[00:30:20] do and punchy snakes and all that and then I'm sure that while you're there they're working on
[00:30:27] who needs a track vehicle mechanic or who needs infantrymen whichever the case may be and
[00:30:32] they just put me on a plane and flew me up to the night or actually to flew me to Tulae on that one
[00:30:37] and then helicopter and me to Elzie baldie out in the middle of nowhere and that's how I got to the
[00:30:42] unit I served with. Now as you're getting further and further away from civilization did the
[00:30:48] hair on the back of your neck start to stand up straighter? Well I'm probably a little bit on the
[00:30:53] crazy side and I think the curiosity factor I was okay with you know I mean I'm like you're talking
[00:31:00] about I've never felt like I'm not going to say I've never felt fear but I've always just been
[00:31:06] excited about what's going to happen next. I never worried when I was in-country about dying that
[00:31:13] thought never crossed my mind. I just felt like if I did what I knew to do and use the the
[00:31:20] experiences that I had and everything else in a plight of the way you're supposed to I was going to be okay.
[00:31:25] So you're rolling into Elzie baldie? Where about some Vietnam was that? That's in the I-Core area
[00:31:32] closer up to the DMZ. There's about 17 kilometers southwest of Deney. And so is it a pretty remote location
[00:31:39] then? Called the Quasan Valley is our area of operation I mean a lot of the I-Core and that area
[00:31:46] especially in 68 and 69. And how big how big was that was the forward operating base that you were
[00:31:53] staying? How big was it? Not very big I mean battalion headquarters. So it's all in headquarters.
[00:31:58] And then so you check in there you land on your airplane you land on the helicopter. Get out of the
[00:32:05] helicopter and then what happens? Well I go to Eptroops company headquarters report to the first sergeant
[00:32:16] telling who I am and what I am and the first sergeant called everybody's son. He said son. I told him
[00:32:24] I was a track vehicle mechanic and feet point me in the direction the motor pool I'd go report to the
[00:32:29] motor sergeant. He said son. We really don't have a motor pool here in Vietnam. He said there is a guy
[00:32:36] that runs the maintenance department. He's spec 5 so and so. And he said you can you'll see him
[00:32:42] at Chaud a night but you'll be at machine gunner on a 1-1-3-A-1 and we'll make sure you get a toolbox.
[00:32:49] So if anything goes wrong while you're out there that's your job to fix them.
[00:32:52] So there's the wake up call. The uh you know I fought in the battle our body in 2006 and
[00:33:03] you know what vehicle we use for casualty evacuation 113's. Yep the exact same vehicle. So that's
[00:33:11] where you got assigned. You got assigned to a 113 which is an armored personnel carrier made out of
[00:33:17] aluminum if I'm correct. I'm not sure probably wouldn't be bit surprised though and they're very
[00:33:24] they're like they're basically a box with tracks that's basically what they look like exactly.
[00:33:29] It is a box with tracks on them. They're not huge and not as big as a tank. How many people you
[00:33:34] think they hold maybe? You could probably put 80 or 10 on the inside. Yeah we used to are joke about
[00:33:40] armored personnel carriers. What's how many people can you fit into them one more?
[00:33:43] Uh so that's where you get assigned. So now you realize okay there's no motor pool here.
[00:33:51] There's no that's not happening. He says you're gonna be a machine gunner on one of these
[00:33:56] 113's. So you check in who are you checking in with now?
[00:34:01] Are you well when when my unit my platoon was out in the field and they came back in for
[00:34:07] child that night that's when I was introduced to the L.T. and the platoon sergeant and then I don't know
[00:34:14] they just picked a track that was short one guy and that's the one I went to. And how many how many
[00:34:18] tracks do you have in your platoon? Nine. Wow that's a pretty big bulltune. Well it's 18m60
[00:34:24] machine guns nine 50 caliber and one 106 recoilless rifle so it's a lot of fire. Yeah that's that's
[00:34:32] serious business. I didn't think they had that many in one platoon. Then so then okay so now you
[00:34:39] settle in and what kind of what kind of missions were you guys doing? Well hey when I originally
[00:34:45] got in country they called him search and destroy and then I think somebody in Washington decided
[00:34:50] we need to change it to search and clear. It didn't sound quite as disastrous if you called it search
[00:34:56] and clear but the mission was exactly the same thing. You still went out, checked all the villages,
[00:35:01] checked all the people anybody that was out working in the fields looking for cashes or rice,
[00:35:06] looking for weapons that were hidden in different villages, net type of thing. Sometimes you'd have
[00:35:11] intelligence reports that would send you somewhere or maybe they had some information that there was
[00:35:16] something bad going on. Sometimes it was there sometimes it wasn't. The area of operation that I actually
[00:35:23] worked in was exactly the same one. Me lie was in my area of operation. We called it the pink
[00:35:30] bill on our map and I think Lieutenant Kelly's thing had happened three weeks or four weeks after I
[00:35:38] got in country or something like in third week and March or maybe around the first of April you
[00:35:44] you're familiar with that. But you guys did you guys hear anything about it?
[00:35:51] I think we heard a little bit about it but communication back then was not the same as it is today.
[00:35:58] I mean obviously nobody had cell phones or anything like that. You didn't have pictures or any
[00:36:03] information. We just knew there was a lot of people in that village and it was a sizeable village
[00:36:09] for as remote as it was. Most of them were just all rice farmers that were out there so all they
[00:36:14] do was harvest rice and carry it to market. But we'd been through there a number of different times
[00:36:19] before and after the actual meal I massacre. And I think the thing that was interesting about
[00:36:26] Vietnam was for villagers. If I used an interpreter to ask somebody a question in a village
[00:36:31] about what they rather have the NVA in charge or where they rather have the Americans or the
[00:36:36] South Vietnamese military in charge and they were really always reluctant to answer that question
[00:36:43] because I don't think there was a good answer they could give me. If they answered at one
[00:36:50] way it kind of meant they were Vietnamese NVA sympathizers and if the injured at the other way
[00:36:57] then that meant they were totally opposed and they would support us but we know that wasn't the
[00:37:01] way it happened either. They were just trying to go rice and stay alive. So I mean if we would leave
[00:37:06] them alone and the NVA would leave them alone they'd be the happiest people on the face of the earth
[00:37:10] but it didn't happen that way. We didn't abuse them but the NVA abused them all the time not only
[00:37:16] for the rice but for shelter and everything else. How what was your opt-empo like and so how long
[00:37:24] would you go out on a mission for? I mean probably a standard time is about 20 to 22 days at a time
[00:37:31] and then we get re-supplied in the field with shinux for fuel and for water and food and everything.
[00:37:37] So this forward operating base that you were out that you were out of when that
[00:37:42] potteen came back they'd been out for a long time they'd been out for and on that particular
[00:37:47] one I don't know but I would have to guess they probably were at least a two week period of time
[00:37:51] once you went out and you started through the area of operation usually didn't come back until
[00:37:56] you covered the whole thing. But you guys are living do you have death mounts with you or is
[00:38:02] everyone on is everyone in the potoon traveling inside the track and sleeping inside the track
[00:38:09] and you got water I mean what's like the daily routine like? Well you get up and fix breakfast
[00:38:16] you know fix some coffee or some sea rations and you know easy to carry it because your armored
[00:38:23] personnel carriers wait didn't make a lot of different stuff we'd have somebody would fix this
[00:38:29] somebody would fix the coffee we'd all kind of share the meal together because you didn't have any
[00:38:33] food that came out to the field very often and we just sit down maybe the night before that
[00:38:40] morning with the L.T. and go over what the daily operation was and follow up with a myler
[00:38:45] cover on the map sheet and a grease pencil and you know go through the checkpoints throughout the
[00:38:50] course of the day you know if you faced any any difficulties you you know just faced it had on return
[00:38:57] fire called in artillery maybe you'd get a call an infantry unit to be pinned down nice
[00:39:03] part of about being armored personnel carriers you could move real fast lay down a lot of
[00:39:08] suppressing fire and let them back out and save them we did that from Marines as well as
[00:39:13] United States Army so then um and then this is just what you do this is just the day in
[00:39:22] day out all day every day and you're during the night time you you stay you know you stay on
[00:39:27] watch but you're in a perimeter somehow and circle up just like wagon trains and an old
[00:39:31] western television program like John Wayne in the guys and and then everybody would stay up on
[00:39:39] the track there'd be two hours segments from 10 to midnight on down to 6 o'clock in the morning
[00:39:44] you'd rotate every two hours and you just be you know you'd have clay mors out and set up your
[00:39:49] perimeter defense and everything you'd call in dead cons so that you had positions available for
[00:39:55] local artillery could drop stuff real quick if you needed to have it now it seems like it would
[00:40:00] not be a great move for the the conner for the NVA to attack you know this you guys I mean
[00:40:11] how how often did they attack never well I was there but I think the the big thing is
[00:40:17] is is that one of the things you have going for you is you have the speed of movement
[00:40:23] that you could travel with an armored personnel carrier so there really wasn't any way that
[00:40:27] they could pattern you and go set up in front of you or follow you fast enough to be even if they
[00:40:36] probably walk through the night to get you which might have been possible but it never happened
[00:40:41] I just don't think they ever tried to do that when they had enough infantry units and Marines
[00:40:46] that were in the area and they were walking slower and their movement was slower that's who they
[00:40:51] would set up on and then you guys would utilize your firepower to go help out if some infantry unit
[00:40:58] called for help you guys were rolling and and laid down the thunder which you guys most certainly
[00:41:04] had that weapons package is no is no joke right there wow wow well when you talked about it before
[00:41:10] when we rode two machine gunners the hatch was always open on an APC and two machine gunners said
[00:41:17] on on the back on that hatch with the guns out to the right and left of course the the turret
[00:41:24] was in the center with a 50 caliber and you never got down inside I mean it only if maybe if you were
[00:41:31] taking fire you'd get down and get behind the the the M60 but you stayed up on top all the time
[00:41:38] because I guess if you were ever going to hit a land mine which is you know something that happened
[00:41:42] quite often you didn't want to be down inside with stuff exploding from from that explosion
[00:41:48] you wanted to be on the top and maybe get blown clear but so that was out was at the biggest
[00:41:53] threat to the tracks was getting hit in some kind of land mine or an RPG rocket from a woodland
[00:42:00] the yeah I mean obviously in Iraq and Afghanistan really I mean I can really only talk about
[00:42:07] Iraq from my experience but yeah the obviously the roadside bombs were what what they what they did
[00:42:14] that was what they did and they did it well and you know the the bigger vehicles that we got
[00:42:20] the bigger bombs they built and so when it started my first deployment we were in humvies with
[00:42:26] we didn't have we literally didn't have doors on our humvies we actually turned the seats
[00:42:31] to face outboard so that we could present our weapon and that we could present our front
[00:42:35] plate of our of our body armor and then eventually we put we welded doors together and put
[00:42:42] steel doors on and then by the time I got back to Iraq we had armored humvies and then
[00:42:46] after that came the big giant of mine resistant vehicles and the whole time the enemy just kept
[00:42:52] building bigger and bigger and bigger bombs but we were always we were oftentimes not always but
[00:42:59] we were oftentimes channelized on roads because of bridges or because of because of just being
[00:43:05] in the city whereas you guys did you guys you guys with tracks in the jungle or you know you guys
[00:43:13] could just go wherever you want to do is that right pretty much so the biggest thing that we had to
[00:43:18] do and I mean that was the number one thing in part of the training with you drove where you were
[00:43:22] commanding a track was you never take the same stream crossing twice you you track the vehicle
[00:43:29] right directly in front of you you never get outside of the lead tracks tracks in the ground and we'd
[00:43:35] stay in the patties or around the patties as much as possible because it weren't very likely
[00:43:41] to put a landmine in the rice patties it would be on the road or the edge of the road or maybe
[00:43:46] on a rice petty pike that we never never went in that direction very often either and what was your
[00:43:52] leadership like you know your your young lieutenant platoon commander what was he like what was your
[00:43:58] platoon sergeant like what did what was your interaction with those guys like and even your vehicle
[00:44:03] so who was in charge of of your track was he was a young E5 probably 21 or 22 years old at that time
[00:44:12] and the leadership in my platoon the platoon leader was was a great first lieutenant and I mean it was
[00:44:19] one of those things that I learned very early on the best thing that I could do for the first three
[00:44:23] or four months was just shut up and listen and watch what was going on and follow the lead of the
[00:44:29] people that really knew what was going on the platoon sergeant was that same kind of a person
[00:44:35] the different with the platoon sergeant was that he was probably in his 30s he was married he had
[00:44:41] children back home so I don't think it was as easy for him to be a strong leader and a strong
[00:44:49] decision maker because I think that was on his mind a lot the L.T. was not that way and everybody
[00:44:58] that we served with was not that way I don't know if I know anybody else that I served with
[00:45:05] for 10 and a half months that was married other than most of the platoon sergeants or the first
[00:45:11] sergeant so they have that in the back of their mind they're thinking about you can sense that
[00:45:16] there may be leaning a little bit towards trying to stay alive and trying to take less risk and
[00:45:23] you know to all that works is that's not always the best person to have for a leader if you're not
[00:45:30] tuned in 24-7 while you're there you're in trouble you know that's the only way to survive you
[00:45:38] have to be conscious of every fly that lands on on your food you know what I mean you're just you just
[00:45:45] get that heightened sense of awareness that it's probably lucky you can even go to sleep when you
[00:45:50] lay down at night because you're the adrenaline is pumps so much all day long yeah something else
[00:45:56] that I always felt and I don't know from right or wrong but I always felt that if you were thinking
[00:46:04] about other things like family that was going to make you less aggressive and as far as I can tell
[00:46:12] if you're aggression if you're not aggressive on the battlefield that has a higher probability
[00:46:20] of getting you killed than if you're aggressive I think that hesitation is a bad thing and
[00:46:28] I'm looking at saying and I used to try and make this clear all the time and I'm talking about
[00:46:31] you know being hyper aggressive and running to your death that's not what I'm talking about but
[00:46:35] if there's something going on and you're nervous about making a move that's not a good thing
[00:46:41] to have happening and it would make when I would have guys that I could see you were
[00:46:47] thinking about other things it would make me nervous that they were going to hesitate when they
[00:46:52] needed to move or needed to make something happen. I agree a hundred percent because we experience
[00:46:59] a lot of that and the only thing I would do when I got to a position where it was an E5 or eventually
[00:47:04] became an E6 was to identify those people and try to utilize them in some spot where they weren't
[00:47:12] going to get anybody else killed. That wasn't always real easy to do short of actually sending
[00:47:17] him back to the rear area and not let him come out and out in the field with us but if you were
[00:47:22] short of people you didn't have that option very often either so you were an E4 when you got in
[00:47:28] country and then you got promoted to E5 right did that change your position in the in the track
[00:47:36] at all it took me off the machine gun and put me behind the 50. That's good did you
[00:47:45] and then did you eventually make E6 I did and did that change your position again at some point
[00:47:50] did you become like the vehicle commander I became what was called the field for a surge with the
[00:47:55] called six alpha in the in the army I was on the command track out in the field with the company
[00:48:01] commander and then two other machine gunners on our track so you did you leave your
[00:48:07] platoon to go and be with the company commander I did and what's your what's your job when you're
[00:48:13] in that position well basically everything you do for the daily operation you're kind of in charge
[00:48:20] over overseeing everything you're you know because keep in mind now we've got not just my third
[00:48:25] platoon out there but the second and the first might be with us or they might be off on an operation
[00:48:31] of their own sometimes two platoons that go out together and we wanted to go a different
[00:48:35] direction so you had to be cognizant of where everybody was all the time and what they were doing
[00:48:41] and any difficulties that they were having and it was a brand new company commander who did not
[00:48:46] have any Vietnam experience so then it was almost like having to train the CO once he got there so
[00:48:55] I think the fact that I got assigned to that track was what the first sergeant felt enough confidence in
[00:49:00] me that I could do that and not be a jerk to him or not worry about him being a captain versus me being
[00:49:08] any six I mean that part never bothered me anyway you know man never picked much attention to that
[00:49:15] so how long had you been in Vietnam when you got moved to that assignment? I had been in country
[00:49:23] about eight and a half months so that was that's like perfect then you got a you know year
[00:49:29] experience and the the company commander didn't have any experience I know I always had a
[00:49:35] I had a special vehicle we in a Humvee the vehicle commander sits in the in the basically the front
[00:49:43] right passenger seat and you know you're the one that's supposed to be kind of directing the vehicle and
[00:49:47] and I would always have to do other things because I was either an assault force commander,
[00:49:51] a ground force commander, whatever so I always had I always took the best smartest driver so that I didn't
[00:49:58] have to do worry about him you know and it's kind of the same relationship you know he knew that
[00:50:04] hey he needed to handle all the stuff going on with the vehicle but that's um that's like the way the
[00:50:09] military does things the military does things like that right there where they take the the new
[00:50:14] company commander that doesn't have any experience and they give him a guy that can help
[00:50:20] advise him in a you know positive way to make sure he doesn't for lack of a better word
[00:50:26] screw anything up. I thought it was a very enjoyable process because I mean I didn't intend to be a
[00:50:35] career soldier so I mean I just knew that I had X number of time amount of time days months whatever it
[00:50:44] was but I've just always felt like if I'm gonna do something I'm gonna do it to the best of my ability.
[00:50:51] I'm sure I didn't have all the answers but I also knew who to to talk to who'd still been around
[00:50:57] even longer than I had some guys who had extended been there 14 15 months already you know and
[00:51:04] a great deal more experience than I did I would ask I'm not afraid to get information from somebody. I mean that's
[00:51:11] that's that knowledge could save a lot of people's lives and that's a big part of what I felt like
[00:51:16] I was responsible for now I'm responsible for the whole company which is you know I don't know
[00:51:22] 210 people I guess at that point. Now you mentioned that the the the the enemy was not outright openly
[00:51:30] attacking you but you guys were responding what was the casualty rate for F troop while you were there.
[00:51:43] I mean just in terms of how often were you guys taking casualties and I know I looked there's
[00:51:50] a really good website that you guys have from F troop and Vietnam and it in why the numbers are
[00:51:57] down in 1967 so before you showed up there was there was four people from from F troop that were
[00:52:06] killed in action in 1968 so the year that you were there that number went up five times
[00:52:14] these were and according to that document it said that there was 20 20 men killed in action in
[00:52:22] 1968 so that is some heavy contact I mean that's more than 10 percent that's more than 10 percent
[00:52:30] that's not that's not counting wounded in action that's all killed in action so even though you said
[00:52:35] the enemy wasn't attacking you very often you guys must have been in some significant enemy
[00:52:40] contacts to be taken those those kind of casualties. Well and I think most of those that I'm familiar
[00:52:46] with were all landmines and they were landmines for people on the vehicles were at blue the M1-1-3
[00:52:53] to pieces. I mean the reason we had a new company commander in the fall of 68 was because the
[00:53:01] company commander had directed a new driver to do a stream crossing that we knew you shouldn't
[00:53:07] cross a second or third time and it blew they hit a 500 pounder and I mean it just killed all
[00:53:13] four people on the track and it blew the the captain off he was riding on the driver's hatch
[00:53:19] that was open blew him clear but injured him seriously that's why we ended up with a new company
[00:53:24] commander and then Jim Stark he was from San Jose, California was a real good friend of mine
[00:53:30] was killed in April of 1968 shortly after you know like six weeks after I got in country but
[00:53:37] he was just one of those guys that love girls and played sports so immediately became a
[00:53:43] great friend. That's one of the horrible things about the one one three and it's really the same
[00:53:50] thing with a humvee they built those things to have a low profile because when you're talking
[00:53:56] about tank battles what you want to have is you want to have a low profile so that you can hide
[00:54:01] behind you can take the vehicle and you can you can sink it into a depression you can get behind
[00:54:06] some kind of a terrain feature and not get shot at. The problem with designing vehicles with
[00:54:12] an extremely low profile is that they have no ground clearance and so when there's a landmine
[00:54:20] underneath them it just it just just wrecks those vehicles and that's why the new vehicles the
[00:54:27] mine resistant vehicles their super tall off the ground they have these big V shaped holes that literally
[00:54:33] deflects some of the power of the bombs at the enemy plants so that's one of the problems with
[00:54:40] these one one three is there's not much ground clearance on them and so when they get hit with a
[00:54:45] with a mine it does catastrophic damage often and so that was what you you guys that was the major
[00:54:54] threat from the enemy was was hitting these these bombs. Yeah and I would have to guess I mean I
[00:54:59] had never heard that number before that we lost 28 in 1968 but I would have to guess it may be two
[00:55:05] or three of those might have been small arms fire and the rest were all from their vehicles being
[00:55:10] blowing up. How did that grade on your nerves? The the landmine explosions? Yeah. Well again you still
[00:55:23] just do everything to the best of your ability you have to track that vehicle in front of you.
[00:55:29] Now obviously if you're the lead track and that changes periodically but you're in greater
[00:55:36] jeopardy that you could hit something because there's no way in the world that you can't
[00:55:41] hang a wound and do you know mind detectors and stuff you're out the middle of nowhere you
[00:55:45] probably get shot off the track trying to run detectors and you would just run through it but
[00:55:50] in most of ours were not that kind of explosion they were more bad choices by people who thought
[00:56:00] this time it's going to be okay and you just can't do things that way it's never going to be
[00:56:07] okay it's always going to be bad and if you think that direction you'll usually be safe 90
[00:56:14] percent of the time and like I say when the captain made that decision my best friend from
[00:56:20] Marks that she texted Chris Wendler was his driver and Chris would have never
[00:56:26] crossed that stream as his driver but he had a replacement because Chris was back home in
[00:56:32] Texas on a 30 day extension leave and I mean I've asked Chris that question over all the years
[00:56:40] of you know would you have crossed it he said but captain Davis probably would have listened to me
[00:56:45] but he probably wouldn't listen to anybody else because Chris had a great deal of experience driving
[00:56:51] for it that's one of the misconceptions about the military and it's really one of the
[00:56:55] misconceptions about leadership is is the last thing that I want as a leader is to have a bunch
[00:57:04] of yes men that are just going to do what I tell them to do because I told them to do it I want
[00:57:09] people that are going to say hey Jock I don't know if that's the best idea or hey that we should
[00:57:13] do this a different way and and people don't think that that's going to happen in the military
[00:57:17] that's what you want you want that kind of environment inside the military and the good thing
[00:57:22] is that way when I would make a call and guys would execute I knew it was a good call because
[00:57:26] no one gave me any pushback because believe me I had a relationship with my guys if I was saying
[00:57:30] tell them to do something stupid they'd say hey boss we need to we need to put go go on hold
[00:57:35] right now and figure this out there's got to be a better way so that's the way that that's how
[00:57:41] I that's how I make good decisions not because I'm great it's because I got a bunch of great
[00:57:44] guys working for me that are going to tell me hey that's not the right call and that's a classic
[00:57:48] example right there you know if if Chris who had the experience and had the the the the the where
[00:57:55] we're fall to say hey boss we don't want to cross right there it's not a good call let's just go
[00:57:59] 10 meters down mix it up a little bit that's the kind of thing where that that would save lives
[00:58:06] and the other thing that you just talked about this is another thing that people get really surprised
[00:58:10] about is even because we work I work with a lot of companies and businesses and people say well you
[00:58:17] know my guys get complacent with things because you know there's there's it's not combat so people
[00:58:25] get complacent I always have to explain people get complacent in combat too you go on you go on
[00:58:32] your 14th patrol on a row in a row and nothing's happened for the last 13 patrols and you think
[00:58:39] oh you know we can we can cross here or we don't need to we need to pack extra ammo or I don't
[00:58:45] need to carry that extra radio battery because I have a needed yet and we cut those corners when you
[00:58:50] get complacent that's when these horrible things happen you cannot get complacent and all those
[00:58:58] all those service men out there right now service men and women don't cut corners don't do it you
[00:59:04] got to hold the line and if you see people cutting corners call them out one of the biggest
[00:59:10] things that some of the infantry units used to do is get complacent and not put claim wars out
[00:59:16] when they set up for the night and just like you mentioned it might have worked 12 or 13 times before
[00:59:21] but the one time you decide you're going to leave it in your pack that's exactly when Charlie
[00:59:27] decides to come through the perimeter not that he knew but you weren't prepared you know that's
[00:59:32] that's the guaranteed way to get attacked don't set up claim wars every time you set up claim
[00:59:38] wars in your prepared and everyone standard watch correctly that's how you don't get attacked
[00:59:42] the minute that someone slacks off yeah that's that's what that's what sent you going sideways now
[00:59:48] you mentioned the draftees that pretty much when you were there once you guys were in country once
[00:59:54] you were doing your job did you could you even tell the difference between who's a draftee
[00:59:59] and who wasn't only if you would ask him if that was the case because there was no other
[01:00:03] identification anybody but you know again I say this because in ten and a half months period of
[01:00:09] time they were still the most courageous and brave people that I've ever served with I think they
[01:00:14] resolved all that draft stuff and I don't want to be here before they got in country or right
[01:00:20] after they got in country because they were they were not complacent at all once once I started
[01:00:25] to work with them yeah I had a retired general who is who is what a David hackworth's
[01:00:35] company commanders and Vietnam and I asked him about the draftees and he said he couldn't tell
[01:00:40] who is a draftee and who wasn't and and I always you know I hear a lot of people ask me about
[01:00:46] again the skating into the business world people ask me about what it's like to or you know how
[01:00:50] how do you handle these millennials and I always bring up people like hackworth who says
[01:00:58] who hackworth said he loved his draftees I mean I don't think you need a harger workforce
[01:01:02] to deal with and someone that was drafted to Vietnam that doesn't believe in the war that doesn't
[01:01:07] want to be there and who can lose their life doing this job okay I get it the millennial might
[01:01:12] like looking at his phone or whatever but that's still as a completely different deal but if you have
[01:01:16] good leadership and you explain to them why it's important and you get them involved and give
[01:01:22] them ownership they'll step up and you're the you're another example of someone looking at me
[01:01:28] and saying hey the draftees if they knew it was going on we couldn't tell who is who and that's
[01:01:35] again a testament not only to good leadership but it's a testament to to American soldier and what
[01:01:41] we do here when you you you said you got shifted into that new job with the company commander
[01:01:51] at eight and a half months at are you starting you know and we said this a little bit
[01:01:58] not as much as you guys not as much as I hear about it in Vietnam but we might have had this creep into
[01:02:03] our head a little bit of the idea of you know you got short time and it's almost time to go home
[01:02:09] and and did that start creeping into your mind at all at eight and a half months there was that
[01:02:15] too far away where you're not even thinking about it yet I honestly never gave it any thought at all
[01:02:20] I mean I knew when my rotation date was but a lot of guys actually made what was called a short time
[01:02:25] calendar that's a bad idea never never never did that at all so you just every day was a new day
[01:02:32] you're going to do your best job and if you're doing what you're doing that's the best you can do
[01:02:37] and that's one more thing I wanted to say this because again we got young folks in the military out there
[01:02:44] when I was talking about hey some people are afraid some people are in a afraid some people think it's
[01:02:49] gonna happen them some people think it'll never happen them look wherever you are on that spectrum
[01:02:54] what what I can say is this there's things that you can control there's things that you can't control
[01:03:01] and as you're going into combat before you're going to combat train hard be prepared
[01:03:07] know your weapon systems know your immediate action drills then that's that's the best you can do
[01:03:12] you've done everything you can to take control over what you can control once you're in combat there's
[01:03:18] some things that you're not going to be able to control and if you worry about those things it's
[01:03:23] actually a set it actually negatively impact you if you're worried about things that you can't
[01:03:30] control if you're worried about what's going on at home if you're worried about mate all those things
[01:03:33] they're gonna take away your aggressiveness take take away your awareness take away your attention
[01:03:38] those things are gonna drag you in the wrong direction so don't worry about the things that you
[01:03:43] can't control it's okay to be afraid too like hey if you're if you're scared guess what it's normal
[01:03:49] you're going into a hard situation it's normal you're gonna be you're gonna feel that you're going to
[01:03:54] feel your gut's gonna feel uh what do they say butterflies in your stomach that's normal it's okay
[01:03:59] it's no big deal that's what people feel it's you don't need to think your your weak because you're
[01:04:05] feeling that you're just going into survival mode you got butterflies in your stomach because
[01:04:10] your blood's drawn away from there because you want to focus on other things it's a positive thing
[01:04:14] so don't worry about those things you can't control focus on what you can control and if you're
[01:04:19] if you're feeling a little bit afraid good that means your your mind isn't the right place you're
[01:04:24] aware and you're in a hyper sensory mode so you can survive out on the battlefield that's what's going on
[01:04:32] um what was the what was going on with the mission where you got wounded
[01:04:42] we've been out on a searching clear for that whole day I mean probably it'd been out in the field
[01:04:48] for six or seven days at that point I had picked the night longer position we set up that evening
[01:04:55] about five to six o'clock we were supposed to get resupply and get get hotchow that night brought
[01:05:00] up by helicopter and so what I was doing was once the platoon's got set up on the perimeter
[01:05:07] and our command track was in the center of the circle I went out to check the um clay morson
[01:05:13] all the perimeter defense to make sure that everybody put out what I mean because I just did that
[01:05:18] before I don't know whether that was my responsibility as in my new position but I probably
[01:05:24] slept much better knowing that I had checked it and that's when I stepped on a landmine was
[01:05:29] checking the perimeter and what do you remember about stepping on a landmine? I don't remember it
[01:05:35] blowing I remember going up in the air and I remember coming back down I never lost consciousness
[01:05:41] um you know from the from the explosion but when I laid on my back and the medic came over and I
[01:05:47] known the medic for seven or eight months and and tears were running down his face and he was
[01:05:52] telling me I was going to be okay I knew it wasn't real good. Not what you want to hear from the
[01:05:58] medic on it at what point so that was so then what happens? You're well I mean I I laid there
[01:06:04] for a little bit while he's trying to do stuff the interesting thing that happened with my
[01:06:08] my explosion was all powder there was no shrapnel to it whatsoever must just been a bag of
[01:06:14] H.E. you know so when it blew it actually blew in a gigantic ball of flame and it partially
[01:06:21] caught a rise my arteries that were exposed and probably actually saved my life at the same time
[01:06:26] the dampy tated both of my legs and my arm because I didn't lose consciousness and he wasn't
[01:06:32] forced to do turn against and all kinds of other stuff to try to save me so you know whatever time
[01:06:37] I spent on the ground then dust off helicopter and about a 12 minute ride to the 95th of the
[01:06:42] back and that's kind of the way that one worked. He didn't even put turnic hits on you.
[01:06:46] Didn't have to do so you lost both legs you lost your arm you didn't put turnic hits on anything.
[01:06:51] Right that's crazy. Is it burn shut? Wow. Yeah.
[01:06:56] Hey do you we burned anywhere else on your body? Some you know done my chest and under this
[01:07:01] arm because most of the blast came up the left hand side that's what saved my right arm I guess.
[01:07:07] Did you where were you wearing a flat jacket? No. Did you how often were you guys wearing flat jackets?
[01:07:12] When you were on the track and rolling but just don't walk around generally didn't you know you
[01:07:17] wouldn't even you'd roll up your pant legs because it was so hot you'd just wear a t-shirt
[01:07:23] and carry your weapon. So 12 minute flight and where did they take you?
[01:07:29] The 95th of the back and the knee back hospital and were you still conscious at this point?
[01:07:34] No, I lost consciousness on the flight because I knew I went into shock as I felt like I was
[01:07:38] going to freeze to death soon as the chopper lifted off and then I remember maybe a little bit of
[01:07:45] consciousness when I first got to the 95th of the back don't know exactly what they did there but
[01:07:50] it was a real slow night so it wasn't like there was a lot of casualties and they didn't have
[01:07:54] to triage you never know how that might work out either if they have to pick and choose who they're
[01:07:58] going to work on so they just took me right in and you know got me right up on the table to
[01:08:03] begin with and went to work. Did you know did you know while you were conscious that you lost
[01:08:07] your legs and your arm? The only thing I remember when I was laying on my back out in the field after
[01:08:13] the explosion was I reached down with my good arm and I could touch this stump as long enough that
[01:08:20] if I'm laying on my back I can probably touch it but not all the way to the end so I felt like I
[01:08:25] still had this leg. I couldn't reach the other side I didn't know how badly damaged all of this
[01:08:30] was didn't know that till I actually got to Japan quite some time after you know the evac
[01:08:37] hospital and a bunch of surgeries in Japan so when they when you so when you lose conscious they put
[01:08:43] you in a medically induced coma. They didn't do that when I was at the 95th of back in
[01:08:49] denang but they did it shortly after I got to the 106 general in Yokohama Japan and I was unconscious
[01:08:56] from the 14th of January of 69 to the 15th of February of 69 31 days 31 days that's a medically
[01:09:06] induced coma and then you wake up and you're in Japan and what kind of a shock was that when you
[01:09:14] woke up? Well I mean I really didn't know for sure exactly where I was when I woke up but you
[01:09:20] know I mean it doesn't take you too long to figure out because the nurses are all coming around
[01:09:24] and they would actually straight up ask you do you know where you are you know so if you didn't they tell
[01:09:29] you and you know that was more for me to spend five weeks there was highly unusual. Normally
[01:09:39] all you did was come through the 106 or campzam in Japan for the army and they'd stabilize
[01:09:45] make sure you're going to be strong enough to make the trip back across specific to get to
[01:09:50] back to the states and I think they just once they got started with me and on any surgeries I think
[01:09:56] somebody just made a decision let's just do all of them right here let's not worry about waiting
[01:10:02] while we've got him in the position that we have him and let's just keep him there and go in
[01:10:05] and not a surgery so I mean I'm actually probably pretty fortunate that they did and then you know
[01:10:11] like a week after I came out of the coma they tried to feed you regular food but I'll guarantee
[01:10:17] that when you have an eaten for five weeks nothing looks real good it doesn't taste very good either so
[01:10:23] but I did regain enough strength to make the trip back across specific went to landed in
[01:10:30] California at Travis Air Force Base in California and spent the night and then went on to
[01:10:37] fit Simmons General Hospital in a Rara Colorado. It's right did the rest of my rehab for another nine
[01:10:43] months so when you when you figure out that you know you lost both your legs you lost your arm
[01:10:48] what what are you thinking at this point? I mean there's a lot of stuff when I when I got back
[01:10:54] to the states I actually got sick whether an airborne thing or whatever it was and I mean I was
[01:11:00] to the point where not only could I not eat whole food but I couldn't even really drink
[01:11:05] hardly any liquid it wouldn't stay down either so they kind of estimate I went from 220 pounds
[01:11:11] before the explosion to about 150 after the explosion and then from the time they put me on the
[01:11:18] plane in Japan and suddenly back to the states they figure out probably weighed about 135 pounds
[01:11:24] and then after I got sick at fits Simmons until like you know actually started being able to eat again
[01:11:29] I waited about 95 or 98 pounds so I think did they share some photos with you? I did I saw something
[01:11:38] and that that one is kind of a scary I mean it's kind of a Auschwitz like looking photograph
[01:11:45] I guess is the way I describe it right? Yeah and when you were going through that are you thinking
[01:11:53] I mean is it is it that you can't hold your food down is it that your you don't have an appetite
[01:12:01] I think you're probably a combination of a lot of things but they think I had some sort of
[01:12:09] virus or something that you know because I'd really only been back to the states for 30 days
[01:12:16] and almost a two-year period of time something that I picked up some or could have even been in the
[01:12:21] hospital in Japan because I mean I ate food for a week in Japan before I got on the flight back to
[01:12:27] the states and when I got back to fits Simmons I would just sick I mean I couldn't horrible sick
[01:12:33] enough to lose like 40 more pounds and that's that's that's crazy now did you get like the
[01:12:40] Phantom pain and your limbs and stuff for the first five years it's really pretty bad I mean it
[01:12:48] because it's like you still feel like you have those limbs like you feel like you need to scratch
[01:12:52] behind your knee or scratch you know your hand is itching that type of thing it's almost like you're
[01:12:58] bald up in a fist where your fingernails are pushed into your hand type of thing and little by
[01:13:03] little I think is those nerve endings received from the surgery and the amputations a lot of that
[01:13:09] relaxes and changes I don't get that at all anymore but I mean it's been 50 years now so
[01:13:15] so when you get to the fits Simmons Army Medical Center to start your rehab I mean at this point
[01:13:24] then it must have been not too many guys that were in worship than you are at 90 pounds and sick
[01:13:32] and missing three limbs I mean you must have been in comparatively and the reason I say that is because
[01:13:38] you know with the moderate advances with combat trauma and how quickly we can matter
[01:13:42] back guys off the battlefield and we get guys that are in horrible suffering horrible wounds but they're
[01:13:48] able to survive because the medical advancement that we have but for you it was like a miracle
[01:13:54] through the the type of blast I mean because if that would have been any other type of blast the chances
[01:14:00] of you being alive are very slim so when you got there I'm like what would the other guys think it
[01:14:07] mean I mean there was two other triple amputees that were already at fits Simmons at the time
[01:14:13] the orthopedic words were full of single leg and double leg amputations because I mean that's exactly
[01:14:20] what they're placing via now I'm all the time not much different than a rack and Afghanistan
[01:14:25] we're watching a lot of young guys come back with multiple amputations so I mean I think you
[01:14:31] you cared for one another is where you got your support I mean the hospital staff did everything
[01:14:37] they possibly could they were incredible doctors nurses you know aids whatever it was
[01:14:44] but actually another triple amputee was more beneficial to my survival someone who'd been there
[01:14:49] for two months three months or four months before I got hurt you know and then you could at least
[01:14:54] you could emulate and say you look at this guy can make it I can make it I'm not sure what I'm
[01:14:59] going to do with the rest of my life but I think I'm going to be okay I'm going to be alive
[01:15:04] and then how long how long was that rehab at fits Simmons that was nine months total
[01:15:10] because I got discharge from the military on the 22nd of November 1969 and that's occupational therapy
[01:15:18] working with a prosthetic arm making sure that you can use it and function with it I had prosthetic legs
[01:15:25] walked in the parallel bars but but not a it's not anything you're going to use the rest of your
[01:15:31] life and even if you fast forward today's modern limbs with computers and everything else
[01:15:37] it still wouldn't work for a triple amputee in in my condition and you wouldn't be able to function
[01:15:45] the same way that I do today to be able to get out and go and do things and be aggressive
[01:15:50] if you had to worry about trying to put those things on deal with them all day long worry about
[01:15:56] falling somewhere not being able to get back up so I mean it was a real easy decision for me and
[01:16:02] like October early November 69 that we'll just put those in a trunk someplace and have great
[01:16:08] memories about walking in the parallel bars so you were done with rehab at nine months
[01:16:14] well really once you heal and if you're not going to do anything further with prosthetic legs
[01:16:21] and they need a bed because you're still killing and injuring a lot of people in Vietnam in November
[01:16:26] 1969 you know you got to move on something's got to happen so 1969 this is this is at the height
[01:16:35] of like anti-war protests and woodstock was in woodstock was in August of 1969 are you paying
[01:16:45] attention to that is that entering your world at all or we're we're watching it on the
[01:16:49] ward in the day room and probably just getting a tremendous amount of enjoyment out of it because
[01:16:54] we're all sitting around we're all Vietnam combat soldiers you know on the ward so you know
[01:17:00] you know I think some people actually talk but maybe we should go to woodstock I don't think anybody did though
[01:17:07] but did you feel like like I know that our treatment from the wars from the wars that we've been
[01:17:14] in the last couple decades you know we've had great treatment from for the most part we've had
[01:17:20] incredibly incredible treatment from not just from well from from people from normal citizens you know
[01:17:27] that it's thank you for your service it's thank you for what you did regardless of whatever
[01:17:31] their political beliefs are as well it's like most people say hey we know that you were doing
[01:17:35] your job and and that's thank you did you feel mattered did you feel did you feel like it was
[01:17:42] did you get the negative feedback that we often hear about from Vietnam bets I never got any of
[01:17:47] the negative personally I know a lot of people who did and most of that was people who came back
[01:17:53] uningered we got off of that same transport a travel-sair force base or or up at Fort Lewis
[01:17:59] Washington moved to a civilian aircraft most of them would change out of their military clothing
[01:18:05] in the civilian clothing so that they couldn't be recognized or wouldn't be readily identified
[01:18:11] as being returning from Vietnam the only thing that I ever really experienced that I didn't
[01:18:16] know this until after I got to fit Simmons was lawrear force base used to be right in downtown
[01:18:21] Denver and that's normally where the transport would have brought me would have been to lawreary
[01:18:26] but because they were having protesters outside the gate at lawrear force base they landed in
[01:18:32] an old world war two-feel called Buckley Field outside of Denver and the protesters never knew
[01:18:37] where that was at so then they'd load you on the on the hospital bus and take you right to the
[01:18:42] hospital luckily the protesters weren't smart enough to figure that out so you get done with this
[01:18:48] you get discharged from the army that's it and now we go and now and now what's your what's your plan
[01:18:53] now didn't have the famous idea we should get tell you I'd really thought that went out in a big
[01:19:00] way but I mean I think you're you're kind of still in a form of survival mode at that point you know
[01:19:08] to mean each each new experience I mean getting in and out of the shower getting on and off
[01:19:17] of a commode feeding yourself putting clothes on wondering if you're gonna be able to drive again
[01:19:26] are the things that are paramount in your mind at that point because you know what it takes to
[01:19:32] do stuff out there in the world and I mean I would I would go to physical therapy I'd go to
[01:19:38] occupational therapy I'd come back to the ward and I'd be thinking about things and my my
[01:19:45] Catholic upbringing and in Minnesota and the Bible and things that take place I'm waiting for
[01:19:53] something outside my hospital ward window like a burning busher of bolt a lightning and there's
[01:20:00] going to be a revelation gymsurcely this is what you're going to do for the rest of your life
[01:20:05] it never happened it didn't come so you know now I'm still praying
[01:20:11] but I'm actually getting angry with God at this point because I'm not getting any answers
[01:20:19] and maybe's answering things but I'm not smart enough to recognize it I don't know
[01:20:24] but I think what I actually did at that point which I think is my survival and what allowed
[01:20:29] me to move forward with my life was I surrendered I just said I said to God here's the deal
[01:20:36] your job is to take care of a vision or things that you have in store for me for the rest of my
[01:20:44] life my job is to do occupational therapy physical therapy and maybe as new guys come in my
[01:20:51] job has helped inspire them to realize that they're still going to be a life beyond the
[01:20:57] injuries you've sustained and I mean it's not like you did that one day in the next day it was perfect
[01:21:03] you know it was still a process every day you'd have to kind of go through that little bit of
[01:21:08] surrender all the time until you finally just came to the conclusion that if you just relax
[01:21:15] do what you're supposed to do everything else is going to be okay in a truly turned out that way
[01:21:21] so that when you're going to occupational therapy is that when you're are you still at
[01:21:26] fit Simmons when you're talking about that right and so now you're helping people out you get this
[01:21:32] kind of point in your life where you say okay I'm going to do my part and I'm going to let God
[01:21:38] handle his part I'm not going to worry about what he's going to do with me I'm going to do what
[01:21:43] I'm supposed to do right now you do that for nine months when you get done at fit Simmons
[01:21:49] where do you go and when back home to Rochester Minnesota and stayed at my parents' house
[01:21:56] and I remember specifically the chief of physical medicine said to my mom when they were there
[01:22:03] said now whatever you do when you get him home I don't want you to wait on him all the time because
[01:22:09] that's the worst thing you can possibly do and you know they're explaining that to your mother
[01:22:14] and you're 21 years old and she knows this guy's full of shit because I'm going to go home and
[01:22:20] just bathe him like he was two years old so I sat on the couch for I mean not every day but
[01:22:27] on the couch and I tell her to bring me the remote and change the channel and give me a
[01:22:31] Pepsi and do all that kind of stuff and finally about 30 days in it I said something to her
[01:22:36] one day and she said why don't you get off your story ass and get it yourself and I said mom
[01:22:41] I just can't believe it took you 30 days to give me that response you're you're melted as long as
[01:22:47] you're here I said well I I don't know if you knew it mom but I overheard the chief of physical
[01:22:52] medicine tell you that so I had to use it so then once so you're living at home and what
[01:22:59] did that what did that look like it's kind of a scary experience because you're going back to
[01:23:08] an able-bodied world even though the male clinics there in Rochester Minnesota there's still
[01:23:14] streets don't have curb cuts buildings are not level to the ground every building doesn't have
[01:23:21] an elevator to get you to the second floor the Americas would disability act didn't come into
[01:23:27] play into the late 70s or early 80s so I mean it wasn't like anybody had to do anything to
[01:23:33] accommodate disabled people there were not a lot of disabled people on the street out in public
[01:23:41] either working or going to school or anything else they had there was a system off to the side
[01:23:47] I think for disabled people but I think the Vietnam veterans came back and were were vocal
[01:23:54] and pushy and just decided we weren't willing to accept that as being the standard and that's not
[01:24:01] what I want to do for the rest of my life so primarily I came back and I started junior college
[01:24:06] and then at least when you're in school there's vet groups at school so you had that sharing again
[01:24:13] I mean if I had difficult getting from one location or another I could holler at somebody they'd
[01:24:17] give me a push to my next class or carry books and I'd push whatever so I mean little by little you
[01:24:24] realized you got to swallow a little bit of pride and you may need that help at times if you're
[01:24:30] going to get back into civilian life if you're going to be part of it and if you want to join the
[01:24:34] human race that's what you're going to have to do is accept some help and some guidance along the way so
[01:24:41] that's what I did and little by little that just gets better every day and every week and every
[01:24:47] years so you see what did you start studying in school well I wanted to be a CPA
[01:24:53] until I actually got to all those big long ledger sheets and I said oh my god really
[01:24:59] I don't want to do this for the rest of my life so just I just changed the general business
[01:25:04] general business and then you graduate from junior college graduate from junior college
[01:25:13] went to what's now called the University of Central Florida was called FTU at the time
[01:25:18] continued towards the business degree but did not finish and get a degree but I finished
[01:25:25] about halfway through my senior year and then I went to work and what you go to work doing
[01:25:31] well I've been a real estate agent for 40 years in Florida and then I'm also a real estate investor
[01:25:37] and I have a small roofing company so straight from school you you must have started to delve
[01:25:45] into real estate before you decided you're going to leave school I had actually the guy I knew
[01:25:51] the guy real well that on the real estate company and he had asked me because they had a van
[01:25:56] a lot of people with wheelchairs use we would carry his real estate signs out the bigger ones
[01:26:03] and smaller ones and I would I would drive and he would put up the signs he was fairly new in the
[01:26:07] business too so I think that just sort of got me excited about what he was doing and I would he would
[01:26:13] say you need to go get your real estate license and said yeah when was the last time you bought a
[01:26:18] house from a guy in a wheelchair missing two legs in an army go add don't worry about it they'll
[01:26:22] never even notice I mean that's just the kind of guy he was it sounds like he was absolutely
[01:26:30] it doesn't take arms and a leg to explain to people that this thing is about through
[01:26:36] him central air and heat three bedrooms and all that kind of stuff usually most people are
[01:26:41] pretty intelligent lesser blind and they can't see it they can pretty well figure out what it is
[01:26:46] my pointing those things out doesn't make them want to buy it what it is and where it is
[01:26:51] is usually why they buy it and that was is that is that what you ended up doing for your whole
[01:26:57] career you said you've been doing it for four or you did it for 40 years or I got my real estate
[01:27:01] license in 1978 and then courses is part of selling things deals come along that are worth owning
[01:27:10] so I would buy him kept him for rental property and still have all those today
[01:27:14] nice moves I gotta ask you this because you know a lot of a lot of vets listen to this
[01:27:24] what did you see in terms of alcohol and drugs especially when you were in rehab when you're coming
[01:27:32] out of rehab what did you see what was your attitude how did you avoid going down the path of
[01:27:40] where people end up you know either addicted alcohol or addicted to drugs you know and that's a kind
[01:27:48] of a good question because there was a lot of that there were a lot of guys especially alcohol because
[01:27:52] you could just go off the base and and go someplace in the evening the drugs I think they were
[01:27:58] a little less likely to give you more than you actually needed during the Vietnam era that was my
[01:28:05] experience and my father was an alcoholic so I'm sure probably in the back of my mind the use of it
[01:28:13] or abuse of it was probably something I was conscious of all the time but that never really looked like
[01:28:20] that was a great alternative path I mean I thought that was fairly easy to recognize that
[01:28:27] that wasn't good and and I'm not critical of anyone that chose that because everybody's
[01:28:33] psyche and the way they're handling things at that time the difficulties you're going through
[01:28:38] or just being out in public missing two legs in a room maybe you need to be high to do that
[01:28:44] I never felt that way I didn't feel like I needed to explain anything to anybody
[01:28:48] had to put on any particular performance or airstone make people accept me if you didn't accept me
[01:28:54] I'm okay with that too you know what I mean that was fine because I'm just going to do
[01:28:59] what I need to do for my survival and for me to move forward and I had a lot of support from family
[01:29:06] and friends that allowed me to be that way man I wish I could spread that word to
[01:29:13] basically everyone you know not to worry about one other people I'd thank you what you're supposed to do
[01:29:21] at what point did you I what point did you did you link up with the with the DAV
[01:29:26] well the DAV initially gave me what they call a complementary membership all Vietnam
[01:29:32] era veterans that were injured got that that was in 1970 and then I moved from Minnesota to Florida
[01:29:40] in March of 1971 and my wife at the time said what are you going to do about that membership in the DAV
[01:29:48] and I said you know I really hadn't given it much thought I was busy with with the job that I'd
[01:29:54] moved there for and I know she looked it up I think when time said well there's a chapter in
[01:29:59] Sanford so I actually started going welcome me with open arms it was a nice friendly group of people
[01:30:06] and I mean it it was a great great great great relationship with them and I needed that so maybe
[01:30:14] she was even smarter than I was to recognize that it's nice to be able to go back and associate
[01:30:21] with other disabled veterans because you're actually there to lift that person up and bring them
[01:30:28] along and they're there to do the same thing for you you can be an inspiration great not maybe
[01:30:33] you can be inspired by somebody that's there so that's my initial strong involvement on the
[01:30:39] local chapter level was in Sanford Florida Seminal chapter 30 and then just stayed involved constantly
[01:30:47] I mean you know we're 50 years this year DAV is going to celebrate their 100th anniversary
[01:30:53] I'm going to celebrate my 50th anniversary being a member of the DAV now you mentioned that
[01:30:59] in that whole thing that you had begun married at some point where here was that I got married in
[01:31:04] February 1970 to a young lady that I met in the community of Denver, Colorado so that was that was
[01:31:14] while you were at Fitt Simmons no I was home okay matter when I was at Fitt Simmons got married back
[01:31:20] in Rochester Minnesota got it and then did you you did you ended up having kids with her two children
[01:31:26] two two boys we're now 44 or 45 and 43 years old that's awesome then you moved up through the ranks
[01:31:37] of the DAV correct well I did a lot of stuff in the local chapter then I got involved on the
[01:31:42] department level which is what we call our state organizations became an officer in the state
[01:31:48] went through all the chairs and became you know a department commander and then obviously people who had
[01:31:54] been in the national organization before recognize it maybe I could be a national officer asked me if I
[01:32:01] would consider doing that so in 1999 I initially got elected to what we call the fourth junior
[01:32:07] vice commander the beginning of your working your way up to be a national commander so now we're talking
[01:32:15] 1999 where were you on on September 11th 2001 I was home in a popga and what did that when you saw that
[01:32:29] I mean obviously you must have heard the word drums like everybody else what were what were you thinking
[01:32:33] I mean almost unbelievable to begin with that could ever happen here on American soil
[01:32:40] and then I don't know where I was originally but then my wife had hollered to me and
[01:32:45] and the plane was at the second building by the time I got front of the television and I mean
[01:32:51] we knew it was real I mean it's it's a shock to think that anything like that can happen in two buildings full of
[01:32:57] people just unbelievable now did you immediately I mean we were in an afghanistan
[01:33:06] bi October when you think in yourself where there's war there's gonna be wounded
[01:33:12] and the DAV and year you know you talked about how much it helped you to meet somebody that was a triple
[01:33:19] ampute two months before you three months before you they didn't even have much experience with it
[01:33:25] but it was enough to make you say okay if they can make it I can make it did you think to yourself
[01:33:31] here we go again I don't know whether I ever came to that conclusion that early on
[01:33:37] but as you know it didn't take long before we started getting wounded back
[01:33:41] and as long as I was a national officer I always asked if I could go up to DC and spend a day or two
[01:33:49] so I could go through wall to read and spend time visiting young men and women coming back from
[01:33:54] Iraq and Afghanistan so I look forward to having that opportunity to do that and one of the
[01:34:01] guys I mean this is fast forwarding some but a young man came back at injured in September of 2004
[01:34:08] and he was also a triple ampute he lost both legs and an arm and you because of the hip
[01:34:14] a law as you had to go through and get permission to visit people in the hospital well he had originally
[01:34:20] been on our list and then he'd scratched the DAV off of that because they were kind of getting
[01:34:26] tired of politicians just coming into in photo ops with seriously injured vets so he kind of thought
[01:34:32] that's what it was well we were visiting another young guy there was a single leg amputee on the
[01:34:39] physical therapy ward and he was in a bed maybe 15 feet away so he called the officer over that
[01:34:45] was with us and said who the hell's that guy said well that's the guy was going to come to visit
[01:34:51] and goes oh hell I'll see him you know because we were we were one in the same so my wife was with
[01:34:57] me on that trip as well too so we went over to the bed when we finished with this first young man
[01:35:02] and talked you're a little bit and it's not a matter that you're going to be doing any great
[01:35:07] wonderful pep talk it's kind of just more a matter of explaining I'm just exactly like you were
[01:35:15] I've been in that bed it was back in in you know 1969 I've been through a lot of difficulties but
[01:35:22] you're going to be okay you're alive his mother and his fiance were standing at the end of the bed
[01:35:28] and my wife was talking to them and I truly believe that she was probably more inspirational and
[01:35:34] more informative to them than I ever was with him in that one initial meeting he'd after we'd
[01:35:41] have to see each other multiple times as he started to grow a little bit and get out of bed and get
[01:35:47] into a wheelchair where he pretty well understands he is going to be okay it is going to be better
[01:35:54] and today which is I don't know how many years ago is that 25 or something maybe more than that
[01:36:00] he's college educated got a wife two children hugely successful and you know I could probably
[01:36:07] say well part of that was my inspiration but I think part of that was the grit he was raised with
[01:36:12] the kid from Michigan as well too he was probably going to be okay no matter what happened but
[01:36:18] you know to see him do that makes me feel extremely good that younger generation is picking up on
[01:36:25] that and they're moving forward and getting along with their lives as well too yeah no that's
[01:36:30] yeah that's that's unbelievable I mean obviously you might not feel like you may feel like
[01:36:39] you would have done it anyways but you know anything that you do in life when you see that someone
[01:36:44] else has done it and and you know it's possible I mean that's so much of the battle right there
[01:36:49] is just knowing that something can be done and for someone to look at you and see that you got
[01:36:55] kids and you got wife and you got business and you got damn apartment complexes and whatnot and
[01:37:02] you carry you carry on for someone that's however old 19 20 23 years old and say okay I've been
[01:37:10] putting this rough spot but I can but I can do this he did it if he did it I can do it that's a
[01:37:17] man that's that's that's worth it's weight and gold is there anything that that we can do to help
[01:37:30] out the the DAV anything that just people that are listening to the show that that recognize the
[01:37:38] the benefits that that the DAV provides what's the best thing for people to do to support it
[01:37:44] well I mean I think there's a lot of different things in their local community there's
[01:37:48] opportunities at local chapters there's a department level donations to our national organization
[01:37:54] that allow us to continue to do great things every single day I think the numbers we're talking
[01:38:00] about right now is we provide service to over a million veterans every single year and it may not
[01:38:08] be the same service of service work when the claims representation it might be transportation
[01:38:13] to and from VA medical centers for guys that don't have a way to get there for their doctors
[01:38:18] appointments they might we might be volunteers and hospitals we can use help in all those areas
[01:38:25] from the American public so the the website is DAV.org they're actually quite high speed on their
[01:38:36] social media they have Twitter which is at DAV HQ they have Instagram which is also at DAV
[01:38:43] HQ and then they have Facebook which is just at DAV and anyone can get on there they have
[01:38:51] pretty good you know it's pretty simple to figure out how you can help how you can volunteer
[01:38:56] how you can donate to that to that awesome cause and you know I started off this podcast with
[01:39:03] a quote from you when you were talking about how lucky you were and and even just before we before
[01:39:11] we pressed record today you were you were explaining you were just saying to me you know you've
[01:39:17] had this life that you wouldn't trade any part of it and I think anybody that's that's listening
[01:39:27] to you seeing you talk here you talk to have that attitude and maintain that attitude that is
[01:39:34] that is the most powerful thing that a person can have for you to be in the situation that you
[01:39:39] were in 90 pounds lost both your legs lost your arm and to get up and move forward I mean that
[01:39:49] that mentality is it's it's it's unbelievable it's it's it's it's miraculous and it's and it's
[01:39:57] it's inspirational when you look back now do you ever feel do you feel like this was the way it was
[01:40:08] meant to be well I think because of my faith in God I believe that nothing happens to you that
[01:40:16] that he doesn't think you can handle that's the way I prayed my entire life is it is not I don't
[01:40:23] praise so that I wake up tomorrow morning and I've got two legs in an arm I pray that I have the
[01:40:28] same opportunity tomorrow that I had today or maybe maybe something more I can do tomorrow not
[01:40:34] so much but I'm asking for something so I think really truly the best thing that I can say is
[01:40:41] my injury is from the neck down but my ability to continue on is from the neck up it's it's the
[01:40:49] way you think and what you want to do is again from the neck up if somebody said well how in the
[01:40:56] world can you have a a roofing company well that's really easy I don't get on the roof you
[01:41:02] mean that doesn't look like that be a whole lot of fun it's easier for me to get customers do the
[01:41:08] estimates and do the money part of it and and hire people that do the work so but I never looked at
[01:41:15] that said well you can't do that if you're missing two legs in arm sure you can you can do anything
[01:41:20] if you're missing two legs in arm anybody out there are DAV members or anybody that sustain any
[01:41:26] form of an injury that wants to give up I'm just here to tell you you don't need to give up don't
[01:41:32] ever give up there's a challenge out they're just accept a challenge and move forward well I don't
[01:41:39] think I have anything else to say after that you got anything else that's the floor is yours
[01:41:49] I just want to thank you again I know we did it the beginning of the podcast but thank you
[01:41:53] for the opportunity for allowing DAV and meet a commissar representative to be on the program with you I hope
[01:42:02] we got millions of people out there that heard the podcast or will hear it in the future and that
[01:42:07] they'll remember that the DAV is if they're a veteran it's there for them and their family and
[01:42:11] dependents if they're a member of the American public that would just like to reach out and do
[01:42:16] something to help their fellow disabled veterans you can get all the DAV.org just like you mentioned
[01:42:23] before we would welcome the opportunity you would come to us and offer to help.
[01:42:28] Well I'm sure that folks will definitely do that and I know you're thinking me for having you out
[01:42:36] here but this is it's absolutely honor for me to be able to sit here and talk with you and thank you
[01:42:43] for coming on this show and thanks for sharing your experiences and more important thank you for your
[01:42:49] service for your sacrifice and not just what you did you know in Vietnam but for what you've done
[01:42:56] with the DAV and what you've done to help you know my generation of warriors who have suffered
[01:43:04] greatly and who are able to look at you as a mentor and as an inspiration so that they can do exactly
[01:43:12] what you said which is never give up and keep moving forward so with that thank you for coming
[01:43:21] on the show and thank you for everything thank you Jack will appreciate it and with that
[01:43:30] Mr. Sersley has left the building how does that man not change your attitude about just about
[01:43:42] everything that you do all the day to day basis yeah oh yeah big time and he said something
[01:43:47] that kind of this is real small but I was like it's different when you're talking about um how
[01:43:54] or when he was talking about how he didn't drink and do that and his that's all call it so
[01:43:59] that's like that's not just oh yeah I just didn't but the way he said it was this he was like
[01:44:06] I knew that that wasn't a path I was going to go go down right but then he said and I want to kind
[01:44:11] of let I'm paraphrasing obviously I want to let everyone know that you don't you don't have to give up
[01:44:16] or something he said he didn't say don't give up like a bit this big thing it's like he said
[01:44:21] you don't need to give up do kind of thing because it when my mind anyway it seemed like
[01:44:26] like like giving up seems like such a viable option you know yeah for sure and these like oh no
[01:44:33] you don't need to do that you don't need to do that like kind of like no you can actually do this
[01:44:37] other thing kind of thing like he made it sound so casual what almost like hey it's almost like
[01:44:43] he he reversed it all the way back down to the bare decision making of it you know rather than like
[01:44:49] oh there's hard battle or whatever it's hard battle 100% but that's not what he was focusing on
[01:44:54] the way he said it that's what it sounded like you know like all men that's kind of an interesting sort
[01:44:59] of way to present it yeah you don't need to give up sometimes we stop record to you because you
[01:45:05] just told a really cool story about the fact that his first sergeant was telling him hey
[01:45:14] if you stay in you get a $10,000 realness component and a brand new Corvette which you can order
[01:45:20] here we'll get delivered to your house for $5,500 and you know what he said hey hey listen
[01:45:28] for sergeant there's people here trying to kill me if I'm good so well by my own Corvette when
[01:45:35] I get home so you know and that's when you when you hear a guy like him you just realize that
[01:45:42] there's so much more that we're capable of overcoming and and he's singing he's lucky and it's just
[01:45:52] if he's lucky to be here we're all lucky to be here and what we need to do is make sure we take
[01:45:59] advantage of the opportunities that we have getting our attitude straight
[01:46:07] being on the path staying on the path so echo Charles speaking to the path yes what can we do
[01:46:14] well as we always talk about first two just two we can do two we're at victory MMA in the main
[01:46:24] where we call this corridor we call it a corridor we're in the kind of lounge this is the lounge area
[01:46:31] oddly enough I have to admit that I have a lounge area in my gym right instead of having more
[01:46:36] squat racks still in case you got a lounge area yeah this is the echo Charles lounge area
[01:46:41] I prefer to call it the recovery area okay so anyways we got nice couches
[01:46:48] unless we're here yeah and yes so this is where we can do jitsu kudos more Matt space here by the way
[01:46:56] side note yeah more jitsu we got a lot of jitsu going on here yes you can pretty much do jitsu a lot here
[01:47:02] yes so you can you can get you know that you can get here origin geese you can come here
[01:47:09] to victory MMA in San Diego and get an origin gee right here and if that's a far trip for you
[01:47:15] guess what you can go to origin main dot com you can get an origin gee you can get an origin rash guard
[01:47:23] you can get origin jeans and guess what you can get why can't I easily guess you can get boots
[01:47:29] because guess who just got there you get your origin boots yes right did how's we do there
[01:47:36] extra swing it's it's kind of crazy right when you look at those boots and you think
[01:47:42] we just started that process and I'm throwing that we out there I'm taking like I'm throwing
[01:47:47] my name in there you did not make I did not throw me but we got a mate like American people got
[01:47:56] a mate he the crew the folks up there it's awesome so yes origin main dot com you can get
[01:48:04] all kinds of clothing t-shirts hoodies all that and supplements important supplements
[01:48:11] critical supplements to stay in the game and if you don't think they're critical try not taking
[01:48:15] them yeah it's not a good idea join warfare cruel oil combo my suggestion recommendation
[01:48:21] strong repetition recommendation uh one more thing we've got right now so we have discipline
[01:48:26] in a powder form and it's sort of like a pre mission cognitive and physical enhancement
[01:48:33] so we just came out with a new flavor the new flavor is called jaccopommer it's 50% iced tea
[01:48:41] 50% lemonade and it's really really really good it's in fact it's all I'm drinking right now
[01:48:48] unless I'm having a discipline going to can wait so the the one you have the jaccopommer that's
[01:48:55] the powder one yeah it's not just when go it's discipline yes and discipline go in a can
[01:49:01] jaccopommer is coming okay we're gonna cover all the bases we also got dac savage
[01:49:07] what is that that's another quote of Myers decoda Myers custom what no no no wait better
[01:49:16] a signature signature signature from decoda what flavor the flavor is called cherry vanilla
[01:49:25] which if you know anything about flavors that's basically a doctor pepper what okay so it's
[01:49:32] sedax savage is the name of the flavor yes discipline from decoda Myers that tastes like
[01:49:40] doctor pepper decoda Myers signature signature flavor yeah signature flavor so anyways I'm coming
[01:49:46] out to the next and we all got milk for your protein or you can call it protein or you can just
[01:49:52] call it dessert dessert I do prefer to call dessert because that's basically what it tastes like
[01:49:57] do would you ever and and this thought flashed in my head last night almost almost not going to
[01:50:04] admit it but I'm gonna tell you because you know I've known you for a long time so it trust you
[01:50:08] so I had a little thing of leftover rocky road ice cream not for me it was it was my son's birthday
[01:50:14] a while back and so far my wife did not want to get my bunch of you know sugar well there was
[01:50:20] a lot left we didn't eat that much but so I busted it out left him on the counter can I eat
[01:50:25] some and sort of forgot about it in my whatever it melted oh but it's in the what he called I don't
[01:50:31] know if it's a pint the be the one but you have to figure the half count yeah coming in hot so I'm
[01:50:36] like all right whatever so for milk shit involuntary milk shit so I'm pounding this rocky road ice
[01:50:44] cream milkshake out of the container by the way it's nighttime nobody saw but I'm pounding
[01:50:50] Martian there's a little marshmallows in there little nuts what's in rockerwood like almond or
[01:50:54] no almond or walnut yeah we're doing it some kind of nuts yeah nuts yeah and marshmallow
[01:51:00] yeah and all soft now anyway it's not bad it was good did you put milk in there but I'm thinking
[01:51:06] no it didn't see I could but it would sort of what it did but what if you put marshmallows and nuts
[01:51:12] in mock you could do that it'd kind of be the same thing I don't like marshmallows by the way yeah
[01:51:17] I don't either I don't like marshmallows I don't like any marshmallows except let's face it
[01:51:22] whatever those kinds of marshmallows are that are in lucky charms right right right right right
[01:51:27] oh yeah those things when I was a kid I was I was all about those lucky charms and the crazy thing
[01:51:32] is it was just normal you just Saturday morning this is a thing you used to be a thing cartoons
[01:51:38] Saturday morning that's what that's what kids did yeah those lucky charms marshmallows are
[01:51:42] so they're kind of odd because like I mean I guess hey if you dig on my dig it but those the dehydrated
[01:51:47] ones when you eat them you get the you know that like nails against the chalkboard feeling on the
[01:51:51] Chomp those dehydrated mushrooms you know I would probably I probably haven't had any of that since I was
[01:51:55] in Iraq it's really the last time I had some lucky charms like there was some box in the
[01:51:59] whatever yeah I don't know man I was like you can't dig it so cinnamon toast cr- I think
[01:52:05] that cinnamon toast crunch back and then I think that was like the weakness cereal one oh you know
[01:52:09] this is bad but it's I think we might have just gotten off track because we're talking about lucky
[01:52:13] charms and cinnamon crunch yeah that is not on the path that's what we're talking about yeah
[01:52:17] smoke additional protein taste delicious and for kids instead of feeding your kids cereal or
[01:52:22] rocky road ice cream give if you would have told your son heck that's your birthday here's a
[01:52:27] strawberry milkshake yeah and you gave him strawberry milk you'd have been totally pumped
[01:52:30] and healthy and stronger when you didn't do that don't forget about chocolate white tea as well
[01:52:37] so check it out origin main dot com yes also jacquoise store it's called jacquoise store and this is
[01:52:45] where you can get and I know we are I'll be saying this again if you're like hey everyone knows but
[01:52:49] he's thing not everyone knows so anyway jacquoise store it's called jacquoise store
[01:52:55] jacquoise store dot com this is where you can get t-shirts this little equals freedom if you
[01:53:01] want to represent while you're on the path there's a new t-shirt by the way yes discipline equals freedom
[01:53:05] it's a I call it I don't even know what I call it deaf discipline equals freedom because it has
[01:53:12] an X another X over the D that's that's layers right there it is not going to disclose what the X is for
[01:53:18] some people know so no already actually on Twitter someone was like hey I see you did the
[01:53:23] and he explained what it was I was like this guy knows nonetheless yes new shirt just
[01:53:28] when equals freedom it's on there jacquoise store but it's on there yeah truckers hats
[01:53:33] flexed hats
[01:53:35] beanies on the way I I switch like I we're out of beanies for a while
[01:53:39] yeah you want to say that like that's a big surprise that we're gonna add us up because you don't do a good job
[01:53:44] of no I don't do a job of an explain you how important is so it's my fault no but we are doing
[01:53:49] a lot of people put me up on social media and say oh there's no there's eight things I want to get
[01:53:55] in the store and there's none of them there and I go that's my fault no I tag you and say it's my fault
[01:53:59] it is my fault no it's like we collectively we're doing a lot better and the beanies are on their way
[01:54:05] there was there was a thing there was a little curve little little that we had to kind of maneuver
[01:54:10] and get the beanies out of the fact a little bit yeah but nonetheless we're getting it sorted out
[01:54:15] okay last they will be available joc was door calm good place to get also subscribe to the podcast
[01:54:22] if you haven't already echo things that you may not have I have faith in you that you subscribe to the podcast
[01:54:29] yes don't forget about the warrior kid podcast also also subscribe to that one
[01:54:37] working on some new ones yeah we are for a while don't forget to get some warrior kid soap
[01:54:42] from irishok's ranch dot com uh young aiden has sold a sold his 1000th bar of soap
[01:54:50] that's entrepreneurship man yeah and you go mil justice impressive as or maybe more impressive
[01:54:58] of the fact that we had to go and visit because when I was 13 because that's when he started when he was 13 right
[01:55:03] or 12 12 12 yeah so when I was that yeah and I was 12 to 11 yeah well your business buttons
[01:55:09] what about buttons I used to sell buttons like not like not for your shirt but you know the
[01:55:13] bucket yeah like a pin a pin a button for a paid drop we had the yeah we had the old school
[01:55:19] uh oh my mom did the little button maker yeah you buy all the little raw supplies for
[01:55:23] the echo fans are going nuts right now because you're saying button over and over anyway
[01:55:28] so I used to we draw you know you make the design designs for what the button
[01:55:33] button the button oh there you go make this anyway and you clamp it and you make the button you
[01:55:42] know and people would make customer and I'd sell them for like 75 cents or something like that
[01:55:47] they cost a dollar each but it's all great no it's like a dollar for the whole mint hit raw material
[01:55:51] buck you may but it's okay nonetheless I was like yeah that's cool and it is cool
[01:55:57] to have a little business where but aiden's making the proud com list face it man if someone goes
[01:56:02] without their buttons like who cares but so that's like you can't just make soap you know you
[01:56:09] gotta know how to do that stuff and then he's making soap from actual goats milk that he raises
[01:56:14] yeah so it's a he's way advanced man Irish folks ranch dot com stay clean just sir also
[01:56:21] we have a youtube channel you want to see what everybody looks like if you care I dig it if you don't
[01:56:25] but nonetheless you want to see the video version of this podcast that's where you go just
[01:56:29] him has a good voice yeah that's me like he that's a powerful voice yeah yeah you can tell he was
[01:56:36] like a brick he said he was what 220 yeah when he was in 1960 whatever 1969 guys weren't as big
[01:56:44] as they are now yeah but you can tell you big when shake his eyes like for like being listed hands
[01:56:48] yeah so you know uh psychological all that that's a youtube channel you do so you know
[01:56:53] the social channel looks like yep and you feel like he echoes in hands to videos where he started to work with
[01:56:59] cg hi-dow so now I think they're gonna be in hands in hands it's just gonna get stupid if
[01:57:05] you're gonna be thinking it's going on that no one can imagine yeah it was for me is I don't
[01:57:11] like cg i and i genuinely don't like any movies with a lot of explosions in them and that is like
[01:57:16] your thing so there's gonna if you it's gonna get to a certain point where we're no longer like
[01:57:21] gonna be able to work things out yeah yeah we're gonna have some problems but hey look i think i'm
[01:57:26] gonna make it work i think so okay but in this way i want to all explosions in cg i okay maybe
[01:57:32] well i don't know but it looks just say that that's not the concrete plan yeah we have psychological
[01:57:38] warfare as well which is an album with tracks where you can get a little little hitter little boost
[01:57:45] oh did you say hitter you know you're on the field by uh situation it was it was good i enjoyed it
[01:57:50] did you let me do it that's the whole thing just a little excerpts that you know i've been
[01:57:55] put out but yeah they influenced me and yeah man i said it hitter did you didn't say malkidder today
[01:58:00] did that one scoop so uh if you need a little psychological hitter you know to get you through
[01:58:07] a moment of weakness you can check out psychological warfare or if you need to learn clock
[01:58:12] for your iPhone or your android phone you can put psychological warfare on their note and
[01:58:18] i will personally wake you up in the morning every morning don't get mad at me if you are married
[01:58:23] to someone that's doing this not my fault i do not take ownership i'm running away
[01:58:29] all right so yes uh also flip side canvas speaking of decoder myr back savage he has got a little
[01:58:38] company where he makes will call it artistic hitters the joke already played out
[01:58:46] okay cool yeah check it out flip side canvas dot com to get things graphic designs to hang up
[01:58:54] in your house so that you can stay on the path also i've written a bunch of books the next one
[01:59:01] that's coming out it's called leadership strategy and tactics and it is available for pre-order
[01:59:07] right now it is a field manual of how to lead pragmatically how to lead actual instructions
[01:59:17] and actual field manual on how to lead also have way the warrior kid one two and three get those
[01:59:23] books for every kid you know and the library and the school because every kid should be reading those
[01:59:30] i hear that at least once a day someone tells me every kid should get issued these books i agree
[01:59:37] why because we all wish we had the way the warrior kid books when we were kids we didn't have them
[01:59:43] and we suffer the consequences don't don't punish the children of the world get them the books
[01:59:51] and also if you got a younger kid get a mickey in the dragons which by the way somebody bought
[01:59:56] the flip side canvas mickey in the dragons poster uh and said that this was the this was the
[02:00:04] what they read with their son before the son went on deployment so it's like oh yeah
[02:00:10] overcome your fears that doesn't that's not only for kids mickey in the dragons get that book
[02:00:16] read it and the discipline goes freedom field manual how to get after it the audio version is on
[02:00:24] iTunes and MP3 things extreme ownership and the dichotomy leadership the first two books i wrote
[02:00:30] with my brother Lave Babin these are all the leadership principles that we talk about all the time
[02:00:34] on this podcast for your business and for your life check those out echelon front that is
[02:00:41] our leadership consultancy and what we do is solve problems through leadership if you need help
[02:00:46] with your company go to echelon front dot com we have ef online if you need to get additional training
[02:00:56] which you do you can't get complacency with complacent with your leadership attitude so get
[02:01:02] ef online interactive online training to keep you to keep you home to keep your leadership skills
[02:01:13] home check out ef online dot com if you got a big company this another one this is the reason
[02:01:18] we created originally is so that companies with 38,000 employees can get everyone in their company
[02:01:26] aligned when it comes to leadership so check out ef online dot com we have one more monster left this
[02:01:33] year it is in Sydney Australia we are not going to go back to Sydney Australia for a long time
[02:01:40] so if you want to come check us out and we're also not going to go to perf and we're not going to go to
[02:01:45] brisman and we're not going to go to anywhere else in Australia so if you're like oh well i'll just
[02:01:50] wait until they come to my hometown in Australia we're not even going to the hometown in America if you're
[02:01:55] in America it's not happening we're not a rock band on tour we're not playing every club
[02:02:00] we can't do it we don't have the time so if you want to come to the monster in Sydney
[02:02:05] Australia it's December 4th and 5th go to extremownership dot com every monster we've done has sold out
[02:02:12] so register early we also have ef Overwatch so if you have a company and you want spec ops
[02:02:21] or combat aviation leaders coming into your company to help with your leadership then go to ef overwatch dot
[02:02:27] com to connect and find one of those leaders to come into your company and if you have comments
[02:02:37] or questions or answers for us you can find them on the interwebs you can find us on the
[02:02:44] interwebs we are on Twitter we are on Instagram and we are on Facebook key uh for the disabled
[02:02:56] American veterans they are at d a v h q on Instagram and on Twitter and then on Facebook key they
[02:03:06] are just at d a v and echo is at echo Charles and i am at jockel willink and once again thanks to
[02:03:13] Mr. Jim surzly for sharing his story with us and i am it's such an honor for me to be able to talk
[02:03:25] with such men and women who have given so much and yet they continue to give and to all the other
[02:03:33] veterans out there to those that have served and those that are serving and those that are holding
[02:03:38] the line as we speak thanks to each one of you for fighting for our freedom and to our police and
[02:03:46] law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers
[02:03:52] and border patrol and secret service and all the first responders each of you work so hard and give
[02:04:00] so much to keep us safe here at home so thanks to all of you as well for your service and to everyone
[02:04:07] else out there you just heard another example of what the human will is capable of
[02:04:16] and even when facing the most unimaginable challenges even when ripped apart by a bomb
[02:04:27] the will to live and the will to fight and the will to overcome is unstoppable and what that
[02:04:38] makes me wonder what are we capable of what are we capable of if we summoned the kind of will that
[02:04:54] Jim certainly has are we doing everything right now that we are capable of doing are we reaching
[02:05:06] our potential how much more could we do how much more could we do there's only one way to find out
[02:05:22] and that is to step up into the breach to put yourself out there every day and do everything you
[02:05:28] possibly can to get after it and until next time this is echo and jacco out