Jocko Podcast 218 w/ Ike Eisenbach: Pinned Down, Shot in The Head, Still Winning

2020-02-26T18:49:17Z

Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @echocharles 0:00:00 - Opening 0:08:40 – Charles Robert "Ike" Eisenbach. Silver Star. Vietnam. 2:17:39 – Ike's son, Matt Eisenbach. 2:28:17 – Final thoughts. 2:29:47 – How to stay on THE PATH. JOCKO STORE Apparel: https://www.jockostore.com/collections/men Jocko Supplements: https://originmaine.com/origin-labs/ Origin Jeans and Clothes: https://originmaine.com/durable-goods/ Origin Gis: https://originmaine.com/bjj-mma-fit/ 2:47:50 – Closing gratitude.

AI summary of episode

Hopefully it was where the, the insert, L.D. was where, you know, the operations officer or the operations shack said it was, sometimes it wasn't there, but, you know, that's why, you know, as a patrol there, first thing I did to, and I got on a helicopter was dump my gear, get up my little map and insert myself between the pile and the cop out, because if you didn't know where you were, when you started the patrol, you were gonna know where you were for the next six, seven days. Next day, like it's, you know, the school that has like the loudspeaker that like clicks on from when the office calls and I think, you know, one of the, one of the office staff is like, you know, Mr. Schneiderman, I think Mr. Eisenbach is here. I don't know what, it was maybe it's just that you're adrenaline popping, you know, that you're finally going to get in country, and you know, what's going to, you know, you're going to take incoming rounds while you're landing. And, uh, there's this young, uh, last corporal, where the clipboard, he's going to each of the second tenets that I had, you know, my buddies and asked him some question, and they're going, you know, so I said, I said, this poor kid, you know, I've been in this position before, so I'll find out what's going on. Pack it here, get out of here, don't, you know, sleep in the night with these guys, you know, and I don't know whatever happened to him, because I never came back from that patrol, you know, but I'm sure it was taken care of. So, you know, you kind of had to grow up learning just to like, you know, roll with that sort of stuff, which is, you know, a lot of what you see in the military is like, we do things this way just because it's the way we do it. And, you know, you practice that, you know, you did hill-computer operations, you did, you know, walking insertions, you did land navigation, daytime, and night, which I'm sure, you know, is a different, a horse of a different color. But, you know, not everything is like that in the military, you know, you get, you know, input, which, I don't, like, eight years old I have a lot of input and things. So, you know, you guys are, I mean, you guys are just like West Arnch, no different, you know, again, my great education, same age, you know, same skills. And it's time to, is it time to deploy to, you know, a time to get on a bus and head up to, uh, air force space and sandburner, you know, don't know the name of it, but yeah, flow over to Ocanawa, spend a week there so they kind of drove the dribble to in. You know, when we fired the 45 or 12 occasion, down at TBS, I think our instructor actually told us, you know, in combat, if this is all you've got, you know, you're probably just better off throwing the pistol at him and shooting at him because you have a better chance of hitting him. All you thought you might get a little, you know, a flee flicker, a flicker, a wound or something like that and get a purple heart, but you never figured, you know, you might come back, but I'll limbs or otherwise, you know, markedly impaired. You know how like, you know, the kind of where you're super strong, but like your elbows or jamming you up so hard, like, probably you're not strong. And so, I went through my little spiel, you know, my reputation, I'm a toned commander, you know, administrative, or stuff, you know, how I operate. I think it was a, a first senior, a senior said, uh, my, what is it that the Marine Corps, second Lieutenant has that, a Navy incident, doesn't have, you know, they got three hot meals a day, and I said, I said, I said, I said, what, what if the Marine Corps, second Lieutenant, got that, a Navy incident, doesn't have. In fact, in fact, you know, I got shot in the head and I have classmates who said, who's still saying that this day, we think that made you smarter, because I did go on to graduate school and get a master's in a PhD, you know, after I was retired out of the Marine Corps. Now, and patrols rarely went, you know, according to the pre-planning, which, you know, the operations shattered, you know, we didn't do that. And of course, you know, we were, we'd, we'd be running around with Navy cheers and any cadre fellow, you know, staff sergeants that could pop up and, you know, halt us and drop us for push-ups and everything. So yeah, it is, it is clearly different, you know, it's, you know, the growing up with like somebody that is like the essence of the brain core. You know, you took a serious heat cattle, that's an emergency metaback, which is again, you know, announcing the whole world that there's Marines out here and one of them, you know, down with the heat catchment. Most of the time, like, you know, there were things that, you know, you just have to do because that's way, I want them done or that's what I said. Because, you know, they're standing on the cream with their crap because you're, you know, you're representing the, you know, it's a Marine Corps in front of the public on a regular basis. Uh, some other, obviously other factors before they assign you someplace like if you're, if you think you want to get to, to eight to nine, uh, and be part of that in Washington, D.C. you know, you've got to be like six feet or higher in taller than whatever. Like him, we would schedule trips around the anapolis area to go visit friends and we'd wind up, you know, at the academy or you know, we'd be like the logical one. Uh, you know, the, you know, the, you look at me like any selection program is going to be tough. Uh, and so, you know, I kind of known for a while, like, you know, I want to be a pilot. I think it was sixth grade and I had a friend who would get in trouble in class regularly and you know what, you know, I'm the youngest kid, so a lot of teachers knew who I was and my sisters were probably better at school at that time than I was. I got a lot of vocational like I said vocational counseling I got interest tests that I take you know because the question now is okay what am I going to do for the rest of my life. But sure enough, it turned out there was a a quorum, a till me later, a couple days later, that there was a baby that had been burned, you know, due to US force action, who was, you know, this was like a ward that was a intensive care ward. Lieutenant you've got to understand that you know we've done this a few times before and we kind of know the the history of these kinds of injuries and your board did recommend the permanent retired disabled this not the temporary. You were, you're considered good to go, you know, after graduation on TBS, you know, now they have a 10 week officer or infantry officer training course, which I think would have been outstanding, but we had what we had. A lot of them, maybe, you know, the O Corps or something like that, but that was just at, you know, an eight minute struggle. Yeah, he was kind of like this, this hero, like a lot of our friends though because he was, he was really good with our friends and he was just like kind of like a wild man. What the base of school does is teach you everything you need to know as a company level officer, you know, from your time, it's a second lead to end up to a captain. And so I went to my advisor I said look this tree flights of stairs is killed me three times a day you know we got to get that elevator work as well can't do it like no way hasn't worked since I've been here the prof set. And I said, you know, so the, my group that's, you know, six seals that are over in Eastern Ramadi, I said, they've been, they've been in enemy contact, 23 straight operations. And I don't know what the percentage was, but it was, it was a vast, it was very rare that my guys would come back and head and shot their guns, you know, very rare.

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jockel Pondcast number 2-18.
[00:00:03] With echo Charles and me, Jockel Willick.
[00:00:06] Good evening, echo.
[00:00:07] Good evening.
[00:00:09] In the Marine Corps, in Vietnam, first and second,
[00:00:16] we tend to make up about 65% of the Marine officers killed in action.
[00:00:25] Now, if you add captains,
[00:00:28] Marine Corps captains, oh, threes onto that,
[00:00:30] you get to about 85% of all Marine officers killed in Vietnam,
[00:00:36] we're in these relatively junior ranking officers.
[00:00:42] These were the platoon and company commanders.
[00:00:48] And if you go to 1968, 1968 was the year with the highest number
[00:00:53] of Americans killed in action in Vietnam.
[00:00:58] 16,899.
[00:01:03] That's over 1400 per month, 1400 per month killed in action.
[00:01:12] Now, to put that in perspective, a little bit
[00:01:17] during the heaviest fighting, when I was in Iraq,
[00:01:21] which was in 2006, there was 823 Americans killed.
[00:01:27] Now, obviously, every single loss is a tragedy.
[00:01:42] But during the Vietnam War, the tragedy was 20x that number.
[00:01:51] 20 times more people killed in 1968 in Vietnam than there were in Iraq in 2006.
[00:02:02] That is just a different level.
[00:02:05] Now, in total in Vietnam, there were 14,836 Marines killed.
[00:02:16] 187 of those were officers.
[00:02:21] So that's basically 10% of the Marines killed were officers.
[00:02:29] And as I already said, 85% of more of these junior officers.
[00:02:34] Now, if you just run that mouth out a little bit,
[00:02:39] there's generally around going to be one officer in an infantry
[00:02:45] group, and there's going to be around 40 guys, which means that these officers
[00:02:50] make up for about 2.5% of Marines.
[00:02:57] And then, again, just by my estimation, just some rough math,
[00:03:02] that means that these young Marine officers were about four times more likely to be
[00:03:09] killed than the enlisted guys.
[00:03:15] And if you think about that, you wonder, why is that?
[00:03:23] How's that happen?
[00:03:24] Well, from a tactical perspective, first of all, the enemy knows what I say all the time
[00:03:32] and that is that leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield.
[00:03:37] Because of that, the enemy aims to kill the leaders.
[00:03:42] And then on top of that, Marine officers are trained to be the first one on the ground,
[00:03:50] the first one that's off the helicopter, the first one that's out of the vehicle.
[00:03:55] The first one in the combat situation, and then the last to leave, the last to load the
[00:03:59] helicopter, the last to get inside of an APC.
[00:04:02] So right there, your chance is go up, because you're in it longer.
[00:04:05] And that might only be an extra 30 seconds, but those moments when you're inserting your
[00:04:10] extracting from the battlefield, those are the most critically dangerous moments usually.
[00:04:18] And then on top of all that, you add to the fact that as an officer, you generally
[00:04:23] lead from somewhere near the front of the patrol, maybe you're behind the point man,
[00:04:29] maybe you're behind the point man in the first automatic weapons gunner.
[00:04:34] And since you're in the front of the patrol, well, that increases your exposure to
[00:04:40] booby traps.
[00:04:41] It increases your exposure to ambushes.
[00:04:46] And then, of course, on top of all those things, when the time comes, you actually have
[00:04:54] to lead.
[00:04:57] You actually have to step up.
[00:04:58] You actually have to make decisions.
[00:04:59] You actually have to get your men to maneuver on the battlefield.
[00:05:05] That's what your job is.
[00:05:07] And by the way, that job description is not just some theoretical job description.
[00:05:19] This is what the young Marine officers in Vietnam actually did.
[00:05:30] And here's an example of what a young Marine Corps officer did in Vietnam.
[00:05:41] The president of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the silver
[00:05:45] star to second lieutenant Charles Robert Eisenberg, United States Marine Corps.
[00:05:53] For conspicuous, gallantry, and interpetity in action while serving as Platoon Commander
[00:05:59] with company D, first reconnaissance battalion, first Marine Division, FMF, in connection
[00:06:05] with operations against the enemy in the Republic of Vietnam.
[00:06:10] In 4 July 1968, the second lieutenant Eisenberg was leading a reconnaissance patrol.
[00:06:20] When the units suddenly came under intense small arms and automatic weapons fire from
[00:06:24] a numerically superior North Vietnamese army force and the lead elements were pinned down.
[00:06:33] Realizing the seriousness of the situation, he immediately directed the remainder of his
[00:06:36] men to maneuver to aid the beleaguered Marines while he fearlessly moved forward to direct
[00:06:42] the fire of his men.
[00:06:44] Ignoring the enemy fire impacting around him, he moved about the fire swept terrain, deploying
[00:06:50] his men into advantage of firing positions and directing their fire until he was seriously
[00:06:56] wounded.
[00:06:59] Although he was partially paralyzed and unable to move, he continued to direct his men while
[00:07:03] simultaneously adjusting air strikes and supporting artillery fire upon the hostile
[00:07:08] positions.
[00:07:11] Disregarding his painful injury, he resolutely controlled his unit throughout the remainder
[00:07:16] of the firefight.
[00:07:19] His heroic and timely actions were an inspiration to all who observed him and contributed
[00:07:25] significantly to the accomplishment of his unit's mission.
[00:07:31] He encouraged the leadership and unwavering devotion to duty and the face of great personal
[00:07:36] danger.
[00:07:37] Second Lieutenant Eisenberg upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and of the United
[00:07:44] States Naval Service.
[00:07:52] Now when you hear an award write up like that, you kind of have to ask yourself, who
[00:08:03] are these men, where did these men come from?
[00:08:08] Where did they learn this level of courage and bravery?
[00:08:19] Where did they learn to lead?
[00:08:23] There is an honor to say that today we have one of those men with us.
[00:08:29] As a matter of fact, we have that man, the man who's silver star citation, I just read
[00:08:37] his name is Charles Robert Eisenberg or Ike as he was known.
[00:08:44] He's here to share his story so that we can learn some of the lessons from him about
[00:08:52] leadership and about life.
[00:08:55] Ike, thanks for coming on, appreciate it.
[00:08:58] My pleasure.
[00:08:59] Great to meet you.
[00:09:03] And luckily, your son and your daughter put together a bunch of information kind of a timeline
[00:09:10] of your life which made it really easy for me to prepare for this podcast because that's
[00:09:15] normally what I have to go back and do but Matt, appreciate you doing that.
[00:09:19] Not a problem.
[00:09:21] And it starts off where I always like to start off these podcasts in the beginning.
[00:09:28] So sir, let's talk about your childhood.
[00:09:32] Let's talk about like what was young Ike doing?
[00:09:35] Where did you come from?
[00:09:37] But young Ike wasn't around but young Bob was or Bobi because I was Bob or Bobi to the
[00:09:42] family before I went in the service and about a week into the Naval Academy pleaps summer
[00:09:48] squalid or got us all out one night and gave us nicknamed, some stuck, some didn't.
[00:09:53] Ike stuck.
[00:09:54] So that's the way that was, but when Bobi was growing up, Bobi's dad was a current
[00:09:59] aval officer.
[00:10:00] And somewhere just to the right of a till of the hunt, I would say.
[00:10:04] He was a hard man but we had an interesting childhood, moved very a couple of years back
[00:10:11] and forth the East Coast, West Coast, spent a couple of years in Lima, Peru and ended up
[00:10:16] in at Subic Bay in the Philippines graduating from high school out there.
[00:10:21] So it was an interesting childhood.
[00:10:23] So was he in World War II?
[00:10:26] He was.
[00:10:27] He was an aval avater.
[00:10:28] He out of the Naval Academy class of 36 flew PBYs.
[00:10:33] He used to say flying used to be fun.
[00:10:36] You know, you put on the silk scarf, go up or 45 minutes or so and said, then somebody
[00:10:41] invented this damn PBY which stayed a lot for 12 hours and flying was not so much fun
[00:10:47] after that but that's what he did in World War II.
[00:10:49] He was in the long a poe and the Philippines when the war broke with his squadron, which
[00:10:55] I think was VP 101.
[00:10:58] They kind of got out just by the hair, their chini chan chin, worked their way south down
[00:11:04] the Philippines Islands to Java, current day Indonesia and then up in Perth, Australia.
[00:11:12] From there, I think he came back to the US for about a year and did whatever they did
[00:11:17] with the folks in World War II back then.
[00:11:20] And went back, picked up a command of a seaplane tender, the sand Pablo and worked his way
[00:11:28] back up the specific with my Carthor's group.
[00:11:33] I think it was the battle they take golf and I was like, I'm batting because a seaplane
[00:11:39] tender isn't that one or two five inch guns.
[00:11:42] They didn't go out there and shoot it up with anybody.
[00:11:45] We hope not.
[00:11:46] No.
[00:11:47] Yeah, they carried ab gas and ammunition so that wouldn't have been a pretty picture.
[00:11:52] But after World War II came back, he didn't see me until I was a year old, I guess.
[00:12:00] I didn't know what I looked like because he said my mom's pictures were just nothing
[00:12:04] blur.
[00:12:07] So we just picked up the family from there, started moving.
[00:12:12] The first step was to burn a couple years later after I was born in Arlington, Virginia.
[00:12:18] I said, we'd come back to Car Nautilus once or twice.
[00:12:22] Four of them were great.
[00:12:25] That's right.
[00:12:26] It was the ferry back then.
[00:12:28] And that was a big deal.
[00:12:30] Of course, when you're a little kid, it was a very fun.
[00:12:34] When you're a parent, I guess they're just a pain of the butt because you're trying to get
[00:12:37] back and forth to Car Nautilus from San Diego on a time schedule.
[00:12:42] So how long did you stay in for?
[00:12:45] He was in for 26 years.
[00:12:48] How to heart attack out in the field means this last two years.
[00:12:52] Back in the sixies of heart attack was, you were just automatic medical retirement.
[00:12:57] So they shipped him back to Newport and he was retired.
[00:13:01] Probably up about 27 to 28 years.
[00:13:03] How old were you at this point?
[00:13:05] I was in first year college at the University of Utah when he had his heart attack.
[00:13:11] I went into the Naval Academy to follow him here.
[00:13:14] So when you were growing up, when you were thinking about, obviously, if you went to the
[00:13:19] University of Utah, did you want to go in the Navy at that point?
[00:13:24] Well, my dad being my dad, he had prepped me for the Naval Academy.
[00:13:32] We visited there when I was younger and everything like that.
[00:13:35] When I was about a junior in high school, he would start with the, well, Bob, yeah, what
[00:13:41] do you want to do?
[00:13:42] I'd be a graduate from high school.
[00:13:44] And I didn't have a good answer.
[00:13:46] No answer was going to be just right.
[00:13:48] I knew what the answer should be.
[00:13:50] But I went and started to say, well, dad, I think I'm going to go to college.
[00:13:54] That kind of satisfied him for a few months and then he came back and said, well, who do
[00:13:58] you think is going to pay for that?
[00:13:59] Well, I had me stumped for another couple of months.
[00:14:02] But it's a fun fact.
[00:14:03] Well, I joined your year, I said, dad, you know, I think you're going to pay for it.
[00:14:07] And so that's kind of stuff that.
[00:14:09] So we're going to have to fill up pains.
[00:14:11] Graduates from high school out there had 17 in my graduating class all time high for
[00:14:16] a Georgia to do a junior senior high school.
[00:14:20] And I still, you know, I wasn't going to go to the Naval Academy.
[00:14:24] I said this wasn't in my scheme of things.
[00:14:27] So three of us got accepted to the University of Utah.
[00:14:31] I went to the University of Utah because it was the one school that accepted me out of high school.
[00:14:35] I'm not going to have bad grades or anything.
[00:14:37] I had decent grades and good recommendations.
[00:14:39] But it's just, you know, the way things worked out and the early 60s, this was 62 when
[00:14:46] I graduated from high school.
[00:14:48] So three of us went off from our graduating class off to just all like city and where
[00:14:54] it's a role of this freshman at the University of Utah.
[00:14:57] There was a get together of all the freshman before schools officially started and I don't
[00:15:04] know who was up there on the stage.
[00:15:05] But he was touting the diversity back then of their entering class.
[00:15:10] And so we'd have to stand up and say, and we have three down and hair from the Philippines.
[00:15:15] But just stand please.
[00:15:16] So that's three green goes kind of stood up because we're looking at like, you're from
[00:15:20] the Philippines.
[00:15:21] Yeah.
[00:15:22] No, yeah.
[00:15:23] You know, check me out if we were.
[00:15:26] Please, you know, please, me too.
[00:15:28] Really, well, I thought at the time was quite a funny story.
[00:15:32] We, in Utah at the time, you couldn't get anything higher than a 3.2 beer.
[00:15:38] But, you know, you couldn't smoke unless you were older than 18.
[00:15:42] Was you tickets for a fake culture?
[00:15:44] Did they be on the Salt Lake City, please?
[00:15:49] But somehow we, deliberated some beer one night and we had a guy in the dorm who had a car.
[00:15:56] So we went up to Canyon Road that evening and we're drinking beer up there.
[00:16:02] Next thing we know, there's a cop car, but right behind us, not cop, good senses.
[00:16:05] All right, you guys, get out of the car.
[00:16:07] There was the three of us from the Philippines and the friend of ours who was dead was in the
[00:16:12] diplomatic corps.
[00:16:14] So he starts at one end and it's a, you know, where are you from?
[00:16:19] Philippines, sir.
[00:16:21] Next, get Philippines.
[00:16:22] Me, Philippines.
[00:16:23] And so he comes to the last kid.
[00:16:25] I suppose you're from the Philippines to get us.
[00:16:28] No, sir, I'm from Saudi Arabia.
[00:16:30] So he said, you know, guys, if you go about half mile up the road, we don't go that far
[00:16:35] there.
[00:16:36] So, meanwhile, we had dumped the beer and everything.
[00:16:39] So, you know, that was just, that was the deal.
[00:16:43] Salt Lake City.
[00:16:44] And then at one point, did you start thinking, I'm going to go to the Naval Academy instead
[00:16:47] of continuing with your career at the University of Utah.
[00:16:50] My career at the University of Utah was fading fast.
[00:16:53] I always say, I had joined NROTC and really enjoyed that.
[00:16:57] But the rest of academics really, you know, weren't my forte.
[00:17:02] About Christmas time, my parents were back in Newport, Rhode Island.
[00:17:08] So I had to call to train back to there for Christmas.
[00:17:12] And that's when my dad and I had some serious talks about, you know, what I was going
[00:17:15] to do and I said, okay, I promised him, I had to promise him that I would apply to the
[00:17:20] Naval Academy.
[00:17:23] And I wasn't, you know, that key not, but you know, I got to keep that happy.
[00:17:28] Happy dad and he kept that $50 a month spending money coming, which typically was spent
[00:17:34] long before I'd arrive.
[00:17:36] So I applied to the Naval Academy, took the SAT one weekend and it's a pricing and well.
[00:17:43] And a couple of months later, I get this little bond will open the mail and I'm thinking,
[00:17:47] you know, gosh, well, actually it was a packet, I guess.
[00:17:50] So I was thinking, I was afraid to open it and I roommate it.
[00:17:54] You know, if it was going to be a rejection letter, it's probably just a simple letter.
[00:17:58] And he said, you get a packet, you're probably going to, you're probably in so sure enough.
[00:18:01] I opened it up.
[00:18:02] I had been accepted at a presidential appointment from JFK and they went off.
[00:18:08] I had some interesting experiences as an NROTC kiddo at UNI at Utah.
[00:18:14] And one came from a senior and listed Marine there was a gunna, just an outstanding jet.
[00:18:22] He couldn't do enough for you.
[00:18:24] He organized the little programs on the weekends where we go out and set up ambushes
[00:18:29] in the canyons, up from Salt Lake's, up from the University of Utah.
[00:18:34] And it's really, so he kind of, I think that's where I got the idea that I wanted to be a Marine
[00:18:40] from gunna who is named, I can't remember.
[00:18:43] But was he in a World War II guy?
[00:18:46] I don't think so.
[00:18:47] I think he was more of a Korean guy.
[00:18:49] Just outstanding.
[00:18:51] He couldn't do enough for you.
[00:18:53] And he, in my speech class to give a speech that used a prop.
[00:19:03] And so we had just had a class on the Thompson Sub machine gun.
[00:19:08] Now, you can't imagine doing it.
[00:19:09] You couldn't do this today.
[00:19:11] No.
[00:19:12] So, hey, Gunny, can I burn a Thompson Sub machine gun?
[00:19:14] I got a Tuesday for my speech class.
[00:19:17] It'll be gone for a couple hours.
[00:19:18] I head out.
[00:19:19] I get a, I get a Tark case from somebody on my floor in the dorm that I carry it in.
[00:19:27] So I'm carrying, I'm walking across campus with this guitar case with a Thompson Sub machine
[00:19:32] gunner.
[00:19:33] I didn't think I'd think of it.
[00:19:34] Back then, this was 60, fall of 62.
[00:19:40] Back to the speech class, and I said, you know, kind of, shut the class up.
[00:19:44] I'm here to talk about, you know, whatever.
[00:19:48] I don't, I, I don't, I, I forget what word I used, but I didn't, my weapon here, but
[00:19:53] my device here in the case.
[00:19:54] Of course, everybody thought I was going to be a Tark Poppeller's Thompson Sub machine
[00:19:57] gunner.
[00:19:58] The prop nearly kills over.
[00:20:02] So I give my little speel.
[00:20:03] It was very well received, I must say.
[00:20:05] I think I got an A for the speech, but he, he gave me a pretty good tongue lashing.
[00:20:10] I think about bringing such a thing to a classroom.
[00:20:13] You know, much better.
[00:20:14] I was interested in you and the other, right?
[00:20:16] No, probably not, but it was fun.
[00:20:19] So when you, when you, how long was it between when you got your acceptance letter, then
[00:20:24] when you actually showed up for a pleap summer?
[00:20:28] Showed up for pleap summer on June 26th of 1963, and I probably got my acceptance letter
[00:20:36] and March, March April, something like that.
[00:20:39] And were you, were you mentally prepared for pleap summer?
[00:20:43] I believe I was, yes.
[00:20:45] In fact, I had pretty much come to all stop academically at Utah when I got the acceptance
[00:20:53] letter because they had had my first semester grades and that was all they were going to
[00:20:58] evaluate.
[00:20:59] So I kind of ditched college for the next four or five months.
[00:21:04] There was a joke I heard later in the, in the ROTC, and then NROTC, and it was later
[00:21:09] that they, they joked that the way to get an unable academy was a flunk out of the University
[00:21:14] of Utah.
[00:21:15] But I did okay there.
[00:21:18] I struggled with academics at the NAV Academy, but I looked at it more as a leadership laboratory,
[00:21:24] I guess.
[00:21:25] And then so, so now it's 1963, you said when you started to start it?
[00:21:29] Yeah, yeah.
[00:21:30] Are you guys even thinking about Vietnam at this point?
[00:21:33] Or not.
[00:21:34] I can't even recall hearing about Vietnam.
[00:21:39] At Utah, that fall, we had heard and not part of, but the whole deal had been about
[00:21:49] the Cuban crisis.
[00:21:50] That was all the news that fall.
[00:21:54] We followed that pretty closely, but now I don't think we had heard about Vietnam at all.
[00:21:57] Yeah, I think, I mean, things were not really escalated there at all.
[00:22:01] So not at that time.
[00:22:02] It's no surprise.
[00:22:03] And you were in a, I mean, you had some pretty notable people in your Naval Academy class.
[00:22:09] Well, this is true.
[00:22:14] I became friends early on with a fellow who, by then, at that time, went by Larry, Larry
[00:22:20] North, and now it goes by Oli.
[00:22:24] I want to, one of my friends in the class, after that was Jim Webb, he was a boxer.
[00:22:31] I was a boxer, North was a boxer.
[00:22:34] Well, bunch of, bunch of guys I hung up with were a boxer.
[00:22:37] We had a fellow in a race, Smith later on, became a two-star seal.
[00:22:42] I believe the first one to carry two stars.
[00:22:45] I'm not sure about that, but good guy, Captain of the track team.
[00:22:50] Had Pete Pace, and the class first, Marine, to ever be chair, the joint chiefs of staff,
[00:22:58] four stars.
[00:22:59] Pretty heavy duty company.
[00:23:02] Yeah.
[00:23:03] And then, what about, what about, was the stop-walk with you guys, too?
[00:23:08] Stop-and-back was in the class of 65.
[00:23:09] It was two years ahead of us.
[00:23:11] But our plea beer, the first year there, was the year he won the Heisman Trovie, which
[00:23:16] of course, argued well for plebes, because after a football game, if you won, you'd
[00:23:21] have carry on that weekend.
[00:23:23] And if you beat Army, you got carry on, meaning you didn't have to brace up in the halls.
[00:23:28] And you know, chop around in the halls.
[00:23:31] And you didn't have to sit on the last couple inches of your chair in the mess room.
[00:23:37] And I know you got another guy that got some information on a guy by the name of Tex.
[00:23:42] Tex Harkins, fellow from Texas, needless to say.
[00:23:47] It was my roommate, plebe, summer, and plebeier, one of several, met him when I first came
[00:23:54] in the room, a sea bag full of gear that I had to stencil.
[00:23:59] He'd been there a couple hours, and it introduced himself as Maurice.
[00:24:04] Well, I did a double take, but I didn't think Maurice was going to fly.
[00:24:09] I'm sure a couple hours later when I was worn out from hearing about how great things were
[00:24:14] in Texas.
[00:24:15] You know, he became Tex.
[00:24:17] And Tex stuck.
[00:24:18] He still Tex to this day.
[00:24:20] Good guy.
[00:24:21] And you're so note about him trying to kill a firstee.
[00:24:27] That wasn't Tex.
[00:24:28] Oh, I was north.
[00:24:30] I stopped north going into this firstee's room early morning when we had window closing
[00:24:36] detail in the winter.
[00:24:37] You have to go in close up or class windows.
[00:24:40] He was headed off to this first classroom with a bayonet, bayonet.
[00:24:45] He was going to do this guy in this guy with a corset beyond belief.
[00:24:50] Ah, north, you can't do it.
[00:24:53] You'll get in serious trouble, buddy.
[00:24:55] Yeah, you can't kill someone.
[00:24:57] You're going to get in serious trouble.
[00:24:58] That's good advice right there.
[00:24:59] Clevver was a little different back then, I think.
[00:25:03] Not quite the same anymore.
[00:25:06] And then you talked about boxing.
[00:25:08] And were you a boxer before you showed up there?
[00:25:11] Negative.
[00:25:12] No.
[00:25:13] You just got into it when I was not a particularly athletic young man, but boxing was something
[00:25:19] that most of everybody started up from Brown Zero with no experience.
[00:25:23] So that's kind of what I did.
[00:25:24] Pleeb Summer and took it on to Pleebier and Boxed Pleebier.
[00:25:31] Some youngster year, which is sophomore year and St. Clash year, junior year.
[00:25:38] First class year, senior year I was in academic trouble shall we say.
[00:25:43] So, I wasn't on the boxing team, but I did run the boxing
[00:25:48] sub squad where freshmen and sophomores ended up if they failed boxing as part of the PT curriculum.
[00:25:58] You'd have to go to a sub squad.
[00:26:00] Was for every sport until you could, you know, to sub-sculeda the sub squad past you.
[00:26:06] So you'd get a D. Good.
[00:26:08] Couldn't have an African.
[00:26:09] Did they make you?
[00:26:10] I know guys that I know that went to Naval Academy, they made them boxed for a semester.
[00:26:15] They made them wrestle for a semester.
[00:26:16] Did they make you guys do wrestling in D. Good?
[00:26:20] We did wrestling. Boxing.
[00:26:23] We had a part of the PT curriculum where it was mandatory.
[00:26:26] You had two years of boxing lessons, two years of wrestling, two years of gymnastics.
[00:26:34] Four years of swimming and they fed in all kinds of other things.
[00:26:39] Squash and golf and track.
[00:26:42] But, yeah, first two years you had some mandatory things that you had to pass as part of the PT curriculum.
[00:26:50] Didn't have judo.
[00:26:52] Well, it's still boxing and wrestling is an awesome base to have as a fighter.
[00:26:57] And they feel just going there.
[00:26:59] You're pretty good to go.
[00:27:00] Yeah, I didn't.
[00:27:01] I know you did some cornering for some of the guys, you know, when they were boxing.
[00:27:10] I did. That was my senior year, first class year.
[00:27:13] And North was in the finals, the boxing finals.
[00:27:18] You could win your Navy and your letter in boxing.
[00:27:23] Even though it was not an in-emeral sport, so much.
[00:27:26] But it was a more of a club sport.
[00:27:29] But we didn't box against other institutions.
[00:27:32] They do now.
[00:27:33] But it was all within the brigade.
[00:27:35] And we have championed, we'd have quarter-finals, semi-files and finals.
[00:27:40] And I was a North corner the year he won his and boxing against another well.
[00:27:46] And then on the Naval Academy graduate, Jim Webb, well, I think you've had on your program before.
[00:27:53] Indeed.
[00:27:54] And shall we say it was interesting.
[00:27:58] Webb had a lot of experience boxing.
[00:28:00] He'd boxed the Golden Gloves, I believe, before he came to the Naval Academy.
[00:28:04] Or at least a city in County, type boxing and state boxing.
[00:28:08] From wherever he was, this dead was stationed at the time.
[00:28:11] But he and North never, they were two folks that were but heads.
[00:28:15] I think their entire careers, and whenever they would run into each other,
[00:28:20] certainly at the Naval Academy, and certainly when they were boxing.
[00:28:23] But it was an interesting night.
[00:28:24] So this is a legit grudge match.
[00:28:26] If I think that probably would be fair to say, it had to go down.
[00:28:32] North one, much to everybody's surprise.
[00:28:36] North was the street fighter.
[00:28:39] And Webb was a more polished boxer.
[00:28:42] Yeah, that's, I mean, if you boxed, if you boxed certainly at the Golden Gloves level,
[00:28:47] even at like the County level, you're really good.
[00:28:50] Oh, yeah.
[00:28:51] Yeah.
[00:28:52] So that's a, that's a, that's a big achievement.
[00:28:56] Well, but somehow they spend, you know, people look backwards and it,
[00:29:01] always comes up when you start talking about North and or Webb, you know,
[00:29:05] it was the boxing match.
[00:29:08] Everybody knew it was a, did it, did it, did it, did it.
[00:29:09] Don't get a distance.
[00:29:10] It did the distance being only three rounds, you know, back then.
[00:29:14] Yeah.
[00:29:15] Why are they two minute rounds with three minute rounds?
[00:29:17] Because sometimes they have Ambitr's boxed,
[00:29:18] time in a round.
[00:29:19] I think there were two minute rounds.
[00:29:20] Yeah.
[00:29:21] They were six minutes of fury.
[00:29:23] Blot.
[00:29:24] Yeah.
[00:29:25] And I know the wrestling kind of wiped you out.
[00:29:27] And, you know, five, six minutes, but we were, we were spent on, you know,
[00:29:32] at the end of a boxing match.
[00:29:33] You were spent with all you could do to,
[00:29:36] just pull yourself out of the ring.
[00:29:39] They wanted you, like for boxing for use as you were new to boxing.
[00:29:44] And you weren't much of an athlete before.
[00:29:47] What do you think you took away from boxing?
[00:29:49] Well, don't quit.
[00:29:53] I went to the semi-finals, my junior year got knocked out of the ring by that guy,
[00:30:01] by my, by a point.
[00:30:02] Got back up, got back in the ring, took the standing eight count, and finished the fight.
[00:30:08] And, I know, I met a Marine officer a year later when I was, you know, on service
[00:30:14] election night, I was able to select the Marine Corps.
[00:30:17] And he said, got to the same thing I would ever say.
[00:30:20] Oh, thank you, sir.
[00:30:22] But, you know, you don't quit.
[00:30:24] It ain't over until it's over.
[00:30:26] You know, and it was over that night for me.
[00:30:29] But, and you mentioned from the gunny that you work with at the University of Utah,
[00:30:34] that you were thinking Marine Corps when you showed up at the Naval Academy.
[00:30:37] Was that, was that, did you stick with that the whole time?
[00:30:40] I did, you know, my dad being career-nab, I, I, I, I, I could never feel his footsteps.
[00:30:47] Uh, and he, he was perplexed while I was going to go Marine Corps.
[00:30:52] He, he, he asked me straight out one time.
[00:30:54] I think it was a, a first senior, a senior said,
[00:30:57] uh, my, what is it that the Marine Corps, second Lieutenant has that, a Navy incident,
[00:31:02] doesn't have, you know, they got three hot meals a day, and I said,
[00:31:06] I said, I said, I said, what, what if the Marine Corps, second Lieutenant, got that, a Navy incident, doesn't have.
[00:31:12] I was like, I'm just saying, yeah, I think it's respect.
[00:31:15] Ooh, shots by the shot.
[00:31:18] Shondouman down.
[00:31:21] Wow. Yeah, that's, that's definitely, that's definitely shots fired for sure.
[00:31:27] And, uh, my grandma was not somebody you would probably want to say that to.
[00:31:32] I don't know about at the time though.
[00:31:34] Well, he was not a nice guy.
[00:31:37] Hey, hey, hey, hey, just was like I said a little to the right of a tilde on.
[00:31:41] And there was, there was, a couple of ways to do things. There was his way, and there was everybody else's.
[00:31:47] He, he took me out for dinner before I, you know, got on the train to head off from the Naval Academy from,
[00:31:54] from, from Providence, Rhode Island where it could catch the train back then.
[00:31:58] And he said, he told me, he said, Bobby, you graduated from the Naval Academy, and I'll buy you the car of your choice.
[00:32:05] Oh, thank you, Dad.
[00:32:06] Four years later, I'm getting close to graduation.
[00:32:09] I said, Dad, you remember when I, when I, when I left the Naval Academy,
[00:32:12] I just told him you buy me the car of my choice if I graduate?
[00:32:15] He looked at me and said, did you get it in writing?
[00:32:18] No.
[00:32:19] Come on.
[00:32:21] No.
[00:32:22] It, as you, as the other thing that's on the folding is it's, in 1963, when you show up there, hey,
[00:32:28] I'm going to be a Marine, but you, there's no war going on.
[00:32:31] Now we fast forward. It's 19, well, 1967.
[00:32:36] Yeah. And Vietnam is now, I mean Vietnam really started escalating like 1965,
[00:32:42] 1966 even more in 1967.
[00:32:45] I mean, you guys now know in the Marine Corps what you're signing up for.
[00:32:50] They're no mystery.
[00:32:51] Oh, no, no, no. We know precisely what we were signing up for.
[00:32:55] There was a board.
[00:32:57] I think this has been referenced in other places and books and articles.
[00:33:02] A board of, you know, those who've gone before, so it's, it died.
[00:33:05] And it was starting to fill up with pictures and names from Vietnam.
[00:33:11] So yeah, we understood that.
[00:33:14] But you know, I'm sure I've been coming back to yourself that, as you know,
[00:33:19] it's not going to happen to you.
[00:33:20] Maybe the guy on the left or the right, but not to your bulletproof.
[00:33:24] These are in your own mind.
[00:33:27] And so, you know, you worried about maybe getting maimed.
[00:33:32] I don't think we even worried about that.
[00:33:34] You're worried about possibly getting killed, but then, hey,
[00:33:38] there's nothing to happen with that.
[00:33:39] You know, your worries are done.
[00:33:42] And then your family picks up on it.
[00:33:44] All you thought you might get a little, you know, a flee flicker,
[00:33:47] a flicker, a wound or something like that and get a purple heart,
[00:33:50] but you never figured, you know, you might come back, but I'll limbs
[00:33:54] or otherwise, you know, markedly impaired.
[00:33:57] That just never entered your mind.
[00:33:59] I'm sure if it did, you would have been useless to your unit.
[00:34:03] Yeah.
[00:34:06] The guys that are all going for the marine option at the academy,
[00:34:11] it's competitive, right?
[00:34:13] It's hard to get that.
[00:34:15] Is it hard to get that marine option coming out of the academy?
[00:34:17] Oh, well, I can't speak for today because today,
[00:34:21] I have like 250, you know, guys in Galsk going to the Marine Corps.
[00:34:25] In my day and in the years and the sixies and before,
[00:34:29] there was a certain percentage of a classic Goulmere Inc.
[00:34:33] We had some, just about 900 guys in my class and we had 86 slots.
[00:34:39] And they were divided in half from the,
[00:34:42] to took half from the upper half of the class,
[00:34:46] grade wise, and half from the lower.
[00:34:48] So you could get in the Marine Corps, say in being the middle of the lower half
[00:34:52] of your class, when a fellow who was in the lower part of the upper half of this class,
[00:34:57] wouldn't have got selected because those, you know, 43 slots were gone.
[00:35:02] And I got slot 86.
[00:35:04] Well, when I went down for service selection night, I was sweating well.
[00:35:09] But what I got, in fact, a good friend of mine,
[00:35:12] who was a couple of numbers behind me offered me two grand for my spot.
[00:35:17] If I would give it up and so because he wanted to go Marine Corps,
[00:35:19] I knew how much he wanted to go Marine Corps.
[00:35:21] You know, I can't do that.
[00:35:23] You know that, he said, you know that.
[00:35:25] But they was competitive in that respect.
[00:35:28] It was, you know, academics played a lot.
[00:35:30] A big part in it.
[00:35:32] Yeah.
[00:35:33] The Marine Corps does that with the way they give your jobs in the Marine Corps, too.
[00:35:37] Like coming out of the basic school.
[00:35:39] I know that they take the class and break it up in the thirds.
[00:35:42] And like the first, you pick your job.
[00:35:46] So you could be the number one guy and you,
[00:35:48] or if you get the number one guy, you can get your job.
[00:35:51] But you might be the top of the next third down.
[00:35:54] And you get your selection and then the top of the last third and you get your selection.
[00:35:58] So it's, it's a, it's a way that they distribute the people.
[00:36:01] So that not every single, the, the top of the class goes,
[00:36:05] everyone's going to go his infantry in the whatever job it's at the bottom.
[00:36:08] We get a bunch of people that weren't the highest performers.
[00:36:10] Right.
[00:36:11] Exactly.
[00:36:12] The Marine Corps smart.
[00:36:13] It's about the Marine Corps in the Marine Corps.
[00:36:15] The Marine Corps understands that it's about the Marine Corps.
[00:36:17] Because they haven't lasted this long without being able to put up a good fight.
[00:36:21] You know, in a nation's wars and back in the DC area, when the time comes along for
[00:36:28] keeping the Marine Corps in the Marine Corps.
[00:36:30] And that was, as, as your dad talked and you had any more about looking at you and saying,
[00:36:34] hey, son, there's a war going on and he's, you know, obviously being in the Navy in a war war two.
[00:36:38] He knows exactly what the Marine Corps does.
[00:36:40] And he's, is he having any more talks to you and saying, hey, you might want to think about this a little bit more?
[00:36:44] No, I don't know.
[00:36:45] I, you know, he kind of respected my decision, I guess.
[00:36:48] And just, you know, let me go.
[00:36:51] I guess he is an interesting person.
[00:36:54] I got back to Bethesda after I was shot.
[00:36:57] I spent 12 months in Bethesda.
[00:36:59] He can be seen me once, which for him was probably enough.
[00:37:03] And actually for me, wasn't enough to.
[00:37:06] But I, you know, I later on found out that he obviously was affected, you know, by my being moved.
[00:37:15] I kind of joked in one day, one day we were out, you know, barbecue and some hot dogs or something.
[00:37:22] And I said, dad, you almost collected on my life insurance.
[00:37:26] What are you talking about, Bobby?
[00:37:28] I said, what's your dad, you almost got that 10-ser 10-grain, you know, serviceman's group life insurance from, from, from my demise and we are not much.
[00:37:38] Don't talk like that.
[00:37:39] That was it.
[00:37:41] That's, that's the affection you got.
[00:37:43] That was the, yeah, that was the understanding and the compassion that I got from Beth.
[00:37:50] So you get done with, you get done with the Naval Academy, you graduate, and now you're going to the basic school.
[00:37:57] Right.
[00:37:58] Do you remember what rank you were at the Academy, how close to the bottom?
[00:38:03] Right.
[00:38:04] Oh, I think I was, since on service election, I went down in groups of 50, which is why I was sweating,
[00:38:11] getting a place in the Marine Corps because you know, they could have all been gone by the time.
[00:38:15] I got down there in the last group of 50, because I was in the last group of 50.
[00:38:20] Oh, there you go.
[00:38:21] So, answer that question.
[00:38:23] You weren't in command, so you didn't-
[00:38:25] No, I wasn't in command.
[00:38:26] You didn't collect any money.
[00:38:27] I didn't get the dollar from everybody, but, uh,
[00:38:29] Oh, is that what the last time was with the last time?
[00:38:31] That's right.
[00:38:32] The lunch by the, you know, I've never confirmed, but the last person in the class gets a dollar from, for every last thing.
[00:38:37] Well, so you can walk off with, you know, six, seven, eight, nine hundred bucks.
[00:38:42] This spot of distinction, I guess.
[00:38:46] Or not.
[00:38:47] Well, we were-
[00:38:48] We were still gradually.
[00:38:49] So, I guess at that point, it doesn't matter.
[00:38:51] And you got paid.
[00:38:52] My class, we were kind of put out by, because our anchor man was a foreign national.
[00:38:56] I think from a country that didn't even have a Navy.
[00:38:59] So, we were like, do we even want to fart over this buck for this guy?
[00:39:03] And of course we did, because that was just-
[00:39:05] That's a tradition.
[00:39:06] It's always been that way.
[00:39:07] So, uh, you showed the TDS, and now it's 1968?
[00:39:13] No, no.
[00:39:15] Graduated in June of June 7th of 67.
[00:39:21] And I put in for the first basic school class that was forming, which is a first of July.
[00:39:28] That was the beginning of the fiscal year back then, July 1st.
[00:39:32] So, you know, I had a few weeks in home, bloom right back down to the quannico, the start
[00:39:39] the basics school.
[00:39:40] Okay, so you started in the summer sometime in the summer of 1967.
[00:39:44] Right.
[00:39:45] And you know, how well did the Naval Academy prepare you for the basics school?
[00:39:49] I think pretty well, uh, of course we didn't ever get into the tactical side of things
[00:39:54] of the Naval Academy for the Marine Corps, but, you know, you were in good shape.
[00:39:59] Yeah, obviously could wear a ear in a farm, whichever it was in Marine Corps or Navy Corps,
[00:40:03] well, because you've been doing it for the past four years.
[00:40:07] And I had gone to jump school between, on my summer leave, between June, or in senior year.
[00:40:13] And, you know, the physical requirements for that were pretty demanding.
[00:40:16] You know, we got data for it, bending and August after crews, and, man, that baby is hot.
[00:40:23] That red clay and charge it reflects that heat and you sweat.
[00:40:27] They saw those midship and come.
[00:40:29] And of course, you know, we were, we'd, we'd be running around with Navy cheers and any
[00:40:35] cadre fellow, you know, staff sergeants that could pop up and, you know, halt us and drop us for push-ups and everything.
[00:40:42] Which we'd love.
[00:40:44] I don't think they're any UDT or SEAL groups going through when we went through, but they just ate the program up, you know.
[00:40:50] Yeah.
[00:40:51] Needless to say.
[00:40:52] But I was one of the eventually SEAL stop to go into airborne school at Fort Benning, Georgia and started running it in house.
[00:40:58] Okay.
[00:40:59] But yeah, I was lucky enough to go to airborne school.
[00:41:01] And yes, the instructors down there, definitely appreciated our presence and said, well, let's know that.
[00:41:06] Sure they did.
[00:41:07] It's ridiculous too, because we're coming out of, you know, but, right, literally a week, or whatever.
[00:41:13] You know, we travel across country, we show up there.
[00:41:15] So we're in really good shape.
[00:41:17] So there was really nothing that they could do to us.
[00:41:20] We just would, and of course that encouraged guys to be, you know, wise asses.
[00:41:25] And you know, you, I'm going to make a new push-ups.
[00:41:27] You can't make new enough push-ups.
[00:41:29] So there's that whole thing going.
[00:41:31] And now that you're at TBS though, well, now you know exactly what's going to happen.
[00:41:36] You know, you're going to go to Vietnam.
[00:41:39] Right, regardless of your MLS that you came out with, of course, I'm going to be an O3 and most of my friends did too.
[00:41:45] Oh, yeah, that's a good point.
[00:41:46] So it's not actually guaranteed.
[00:41:47] So I'm thinking you still have to do a service selection inside or whatever job or selection inside the ring.
[00:41:52] Exactly.
[00:41:53] Exactly.
[00:41:54] You put in for your top three and you hope you get number one of course.
[00:41:58] And the most guys did, you're pretty savvy about your capabilities and your, you know, likes and dislikes by the time you get to TBS.
[00:42:09] I think regardless of where you come from.
[00:42:11] You know, we had a lot of recent ROTC grads and recent OCS grads.
[00:42:16] And the Naval Academy grads and you couldn't distinguish who came from what pipeline.
[00:42:21] You know, they're all pretty motivated folks back then.
[00:42:24] And I'm sure all the instructors must have been guys that were coming off of towards the,
[00:42:30] They were just back from their tours.
[00:42:32] We had them and they were all captains or above.
[00:42:34] Yeah, very sharp guys.
[00:42:36] They didn't pick a slacker to be, uh, instructors at TBS.
[00:42:41] And how, I mean, compared to the Naval Academy, was it just a totally different vibe of seriousness because they know what exactly what they're preparing for you guys for?
[00:42:51] It sure was.
[00:42:53] Uh, you know, you're here out on problems, uh, daytime problems, nighttime problems, uh, didn't matter when they ended.
[00:43:01] And if you got back and turned in any, any gear you checked out at 3 a.m. in the morning,
[00:43:07] you're still up at 0-0-0-30 the next morning.
[00:43:11] You didn't do that at the Naval Academy.
[00:43:13] You know, you had study hour and stuff like that.
[00:43:15] But, uh, now there was a definitely heightened level of seriousness at the basic school.
[00:43:20] Again, all the instructors who were giving you straight poop, you know,
[00:43:23] big footers.
[00:43:24] They had just come back from there or recently back.
[00:43:27] My, uh, platoon command, we had a platoon of about 50 guys.
[00:43:31] It was a, a captain, two silver stars, well decorated.
[00:43:35] Big guy, you know, they don't take, uh, again,
[00:43:38] I, the Marine Corps looks at you all kinds of ways.
[00:43:41] They look at how you did it, basic school, uh, your height versus your weight.
[00:43:47] Uh, some other, obviously other factors before they assign you someplace like if you're,
[00:43:53] if you think you want to get to, to eight to nine, uh,
[00:43:57] and be part of that in Washington, D.C. you know, you've got to be like six feet or higher in taller than whatever.
[00:44:03] Because, you know, they're standing on the cream with their crap because you're,
[00:44:07] you know, you're representing the, you know,
[00:44:08] it's a Marine Corps in front of the public on a regular basis.
[00:44:11] And rightfully so, you know, all the services do that.
[00:44:14] You know, the guards at our own ten aren't, you know, four feet eight and sloppy.
[00:44:19] You know, they're all standing tall and looking good and very professional.
[00:44:23] Needless to say.
[00:44:24] How hard was it to, uh, you know, when you, when you started,
[00:44:28] pick your job obviously, you said you wanted to be an infantry,
[00:44:31] infantry, a two-commander, how much competition was there for that?
[00:44:35] What did you have guys that were like all I'm not doing that?
[00:44:39] I'm not doing that job. You can have it.
[00:44:41] And what's there, what's their competition for it?
[00:44:44] Um, I think there was only cop, there, we didn't feel competition.
[00:44:48] You know, obviously had to do well on the,
[00:44:51] of course, and all the different evolutions.
[00:44:53] You know, the past the PRT and, you know,
[00:44:55] you had to do well in land navigation, daytime, nighttime,
[00:44:59] daytime, daytime, daytime, daytime, daytime, daytime.
[00:45:01] That was, that was just part of the competition of TBS.
[00:45:05] You were always competing with your, but your,
[00:45:09] What do you call?
[00:45:10] Your classmates.
[00:45:11] Classmate.
[00:45:13] Yeah, your classmates at TBS.
[00:45:15] But, uh, you know, a lot of guys wanted to go infantry.
[00:45:20] And obviously not everybody was going to go infantry.
[00:45:23] I don't know what the selection process was, but, uh,
[00:45:26] I had a good friend from the Naval Academy.
[00:45:28] Not really good friend, but he was like,
[00:45:31] he was like, how did that go?
[00:45:33] Are you going to go in for treat two?
[00:45:35] Also, meaning also, I, in of course, you had no idea.
[00:45:38] It depends on what the Marine Corps,
[00:45:41] what their selection process was, and whether you made or not,
[00:45:44] and ended up not getting infantry, which was probably
[00:45:49] probably a good move for him and the Corps.
[00:45:53] Is there anything that you had struggles with
[00:45:56] when you're going through the base as well?
[00:46:00] A lot of them, maybe, you know, the O Corps or something like that,
[00:46:03] but that was just at, you know, an eight minute struggle.
[00:46:07] As long as you were doing the best, best you could,
[00:46:11] you know, they didn't beat you up too hard or a market down,
[00:46:14] but no, I didn't really feel that there was anything that was going to hold me back.
[00:46:19] And they're training you with all the tactics, small unit tactics,
[00:46:23] Naval Gunfire, Colin for fire, all, all, there, are you feeling
[00:46:27] like you, were you feeling like you were getting good preparation for the battlefield?
[00:46:31] I did.
[00:46:33] What the base of school does is teach you everything you need to know
[00:46:37] as a company level officer, you know, from your time,
[00:46:39] it's a second lead to end up to a captain.
[00:46:43] After that, there's another school, there's, I'm not sure what it's called,
[00:46:48] but, you know, for senior captains, a new major,
[00:46:51] but, yeah, I felt well prepared.
[00:46:53] They had a Vietnam village built up in Quantico,
[00:46:57] staff, of course, by Vietnamese, duh.
[00:47:01] And, you know, you practice that, you know,
[00:47:04] you did hill-computer operations, you did, you know,
[00:47:07] walking insertions, you did land navigation, daytime, and night,
[00:47:11] which I'm sure, you know, is a different, a horse of a different color.
[00:47:15] It was indeed, but, apparently, it was pretty efficient.
[00:47:20] Like, right away, it's seventh in the class,
[00:47:23] not the first, like, web did it as class,
[00:47:27] but that's, that's okay.
[00:47:29] Seven was good enough for a letter accommodation
[00:47:31] coming out of the base of school.
[00:47:33] And that's seven, how, how the class, how many?
[00:47:35] About 240.
[00:47:37] Okay.
[00:47:38] So, it seems like you were better at the field craft
[00:47:41] and you weren't the academic.
[00:47:42] Well, this is true.
[00:47:45] In fact, in fact, you know, I got shot in the head
[00:47:48] and I have classmates who said,
[00:47:50] who's still saying that this day,
[00:47:52] we think that made you smarter, because I did go on
[00:47:55] to graduate school and get a master's in a PhD,
[00:47:58] you know, after I was retired out of the Marine Corps.
[00:48:02] And maybe there's something to that I don't know.
[00:48:05] So then, so the basic school is, what, six months long?
[00:48:09] About five and a half then, yeah, they were shorten it up.
[00:48:11] Five and a half months long, you get done with the basic school,
[00:48:14] you get infantry, right?
[00:48:16] And then what happens?
[00:48:18] I got selected for reconnaissance replacement training,
[00:48:21] which was a couple of weeks in the Southern California,
[00:48:24] we get the Pendleton, again, from more supporting arms training
[00:48:30] in artillery, that sort of thing, air.
[00:48:34] And then a week at Caronado for learning about Naval Gunfire Support.
[00:48:39] Did you use the board?
[00:48:42] What is it called?
[00:48:43] The smoke board?
[00:48:44] Did they have the little fake terrain set up that you could call
[00:48:47] for fire on?
[00:48:48] I went to the Marine Corps Naval Gunfire School,
[00:48:52] and they had this terrain board.
[00:48:54] And it was kind of like a, it must have been built in like 1975.
[00:48:59] And when you'd call for fire, if you got in the right spot,
[00:49:01] little smoke would come up through that spot.
[00:49:04] And it was like you were looking at, you know,
[00:49:06] if you were looking at the fire, then it was like,
[00:49:09] well, it was a really good fire.
[00:49:12] So, it was a very good fire.
[00:49:15] I never saw anything like that.
[00:49:17] I mean, we were actually filing firing real high-vartillery at
[00:49:22] Pendleton.
[00:49:24] And at the Naval Gunfire Support school, we had this big board,
[00:49:27] but it was blue.
[00:49:29] It was ships in the ocean per se.
[00:49:32] But that was interesting because I did one night
[00:49:34] and we had them, which was fun.
[00:49:38] You know, like the couldn't use their six inch guns because they're too flat.
[00:49:42] So they used their five inch, you know,
[00:49:44] bringing in direct fire on.
[00:49:45] We had a bunch of lights below us.
[00:49:47] I think folks were trying to move, move their troops around in middle and night.
[00:49:51] But, you know, this was on call for, so we used it.
[00:49:55] So you got to use the Naval Gunfire.
[00:49:57] That's like a dream of mine.
[00:50:00] In a reverse sense, I sat there on that little terrain board.
[00:50:03] It was a dream of mine.
[00:50:04] And I got to use my Bravo Zulu term at the end of it.
[00:50:08] I don't think I'm further fine.
[00:50:09] The real Bravo Zulu.
[00:50:12] That is outstanding.
[00:50:14] That is outstanding.
[00:50:15] I never even, I never even got close to even remotely thinking about calling for
[00:50:20] Naval Gunfire for real.
[00:50:22] So I probably weren't too close to, you know, big waterways.
[00:50:26] Yeah.
[00:50:27] Yeah.
[00:50:28] I don't know.
[00:50:29] There's always that thing where guys want to fire, you know, a bunch of different weapons.
[00:50:32] In combat, right?
[00:50:34] And I had one guy get shot in the chest, but hit him in the chest plate.
[00:50:39] So I wasn't with him, but they actually had video of that.
[00:50:44] So you get shot in the chest plate.
[00:50:46] And so he's all mad.
[00:50:47] He's mad and he shoots a bunch of machine gun rounds.
[00:50:50] And someone goes, hey, shoot your pistol out of two.
[00:50:53] Maybe he goes.
[00:50:54] He looks out of like, why?
[00:50:55] And he says, we're going to make you feel better.
[00:50:57] So he pulls his pistol out and shoots that too.
[00:51:00] But I'm sure if you would have had Naval Gunfire, who knows?
[00:51:03] Maybe he would have gone for it.
[00:51:05] I don't know about the pistol.
[00:51:07] You know, when we fired the 45 or 12 occasion,
[00:51:11] down at TBS, I think our instructor actually told us, you know,
[00:51:15] in combat, if this is all you've got, you know,
[00:51:18] you're probably just better off throwing the pistol at him
[00:51:22] and shooting at him because you have a better chance of hitting him.
[00:51:25] You know, the bad guy on the other end.
[00:51:27] Did you guys not have infantry officer course back then?
[00:51:30] Because that's like a, you know, multi month course now after TBS.
[00:51:35] We did not.
[00:51:37] You were, you're considered good to go, you know,
[00:51:40] after graduation on TBS, you know, now they have a 10 week
[00:51:43] officer or infantry officer training course,
[00:51:47] which I think would have been outstanding, but we had what we had.
[00:51:52] So, so you go to this, you go to this
[00:51:55] and you go to this, this recon course.
[00:51:58] And so now, are you getting jump, jump paying all that stuff now?
[00:52:02] No, you know, even though it was jumped qualified,
[00:52:05] if you're, if you're not in a unit that maintains
[00:52:08] your jump qualification in the core, you don't get jump pay.
[00:52:11] In fact, we've got to be at now in first recon battalion.
[00:52:15] There was only one company, you know,
[00:52:18] that maintain their jump status.
[00:52:20] That was Charlie Company and they were the force recon company.
[00:52:23] They did the same thing as battalion recon companies did,
[00:52:27] but they did maintain their jump status.
[00:52:29] That's all they got jump pay and ever extra 75 bucks a month,
[00:52:33] which was a big deal back then.
[00:52:35] So you end up, you end up going through this recon training
[00:52:39] and then what happens?
[00:52:40] And it's time to, is it time to deploy to, you know,
[00:52:43] a time to get on a bus and head up to,
[00:52:45] uh, air force space and sandburner, you know,
[00:52:48] don't know the name of it, but yeah,
[00:52:49] flow over to Ocanawa, spend a week there
[00:52:53] so they kind of drove the dribble to in.
[00:52:55] Uh, are you with, are you with, uh,
[00:52:59] all different branches of servicemen,
[00:53:01] are you just with Marines at this point?
[00:53:02] Just with Marines at this point, you know,
[00:53:05] going over, flew on Saturn, Airlines,
[00:53:08] I believe, you know, a non-scheduled, non-sched Airlines to Ocanawa.
[00:53:12] Oh, just like civilian was there civilian,
[00:53:14] uh, what do they call hostices?
[00:53:17] Students, students, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,
[00:53:19] a few students.
[00:53:20] Flight attendants.
[00:53:21] Flight attendants.
[00:53:23] But, uh, typically, you wouldn't have anything to do in Ocanawa,
[00:53:28] while you waited for your, for your assignment to be
[00:53:31] flown into country, but, uh,
[00:53:33] when I got to Ocanawa,
[00:53:35] there was about five of us that were traveling together.
[00:53:38] We had been at the recon replacement training together.
[00:53:41] And, uh, we were just milling around the,
[00:53:44] receiving area after we got off the plane.
[00:53:48] And, uh, somehow I got up above it,
[00:53:51] somehow I'm higher up than the crowd below me,
[00:53:54] and I'm watching it.
[00:53:55] And, uh, there's this young, uh, last corporal,
[00:53:58] where the clipboard, he's going to each of the second tenets that I had,
[00:54:02] you know, my buddies and asked him some question,
[00:54:04] and they're going, you know,
[00:54:06] so I said, I said, this poor kid, you know,
[00:54:10] I've been in this position before, so I'll find out what's going on.
[00:54:13] So he, he, but he needed his, uh,
[00:54:16] his company gunning or something.
[00:54:18] It sent him down.
[00:54:19] He needed a signature from an officer to run three plain loads of
[00:54:23] Marines through a little program on an Ocanawa,
[00:54:28] where the, your fam fire, the M16,
[00:54:30] because none of us had ever seen an M16 much less fired one before we went into Vietnam.
[00:54:36] And so you had fam fire familiarase,
[00:54:38] from a, familiarize yourself fire,
[00:54:41] the M16 before he went in country, made sure all your shots were up to date,
[00:54:45] and all of, all your paperwork was up to date.
[00:54:48] So I said, sure, you know, so I signed for him.
[00:54:51] I'd have to get up every night.
[00:54:52] There were other night, while I was there for about a week,
[00:54:55] meet incoming plane at about 2 a.m. in the morning.
[00:54:58] Find the senior, or a lesser guy on the plane.
[00:55:01] Form these guys up, take them over to a barracks,
[00:55:04] had him draw a mattress, you know,
[00:55:06] flopped down, told him to be in the,
[00:55:08] he had X morning at 7.30 a.m. in the morning, go to the chair,
[00:55:11] and then we started him through the little program that you had to go through before you could get in country.
[00:55:16] So I met my three planes in a little more than a week's time.
[00:55:21] I was desperately afraid, my, my after buddies were going to rotate into country before I did.
[00:55:27] Didn't happen, we all went off together.
[00:55:29] But anyway, it's an interesting week.
[00:55:31] Would you shoot in the basic school, M14?
[00:55:33] M14, you know.
[00:55:35] How'd you feel about the M16 when you got it?
[00:55:38] I loved it.
[00:55:40] Lightweight, the Amos lightweight.
[00:55:42] Unfortunately, most Marines, and we got now found out that I had pitted barrels.
[00:55:47] And sure enough, I had to trade mine in, you know,
[00:55:50] I'm not the two after I got there.
[00:55:52] One, one that was a newer one with a good barrel in it.
[00:55:56] That's crazy, you guys didn't even get, you even shoot that weapon.
[00:55:59] Oh, you got the old canal, that's right.
[00:56:01] And then was the other training course that you're giving you like,
[00:56:03] like preparation for Vietnam, jungle navigation or something like that?
[00:56:07] Are you looking out?
[00:56:08] Yeah, you were just, you were just kind of on your own until you rotate it in.
[00:56:12] K-san was getting hot then.
[00:56:14] So, he's the, at least to go to some three-shack operations,
[00:56:21] shack of some outfit on Okinawan.
[00:56:24] And here the morning brief about K-san and kind of look at each other and think,
[00:56:28] if you still want to get sent there, new.
[00:56:31] No, no, no.
[00:56:34] So, then you spent that, so you spent that one as a week in Okinawan?
[00:56:37] About, yeah, but now you guys all fly over to Vietnam.
[00:56:40] Right.
[00:56:41] Where do you fly into?
[00:56:42] Don't act.
[00:56:43] And then when you get there, what's that process like?
[00:56:45] That person would get there in the evening, it's dark.
[00:56:48] Again, somebody met you, yeah.
[00:56:52] Took you off somewhere, you grabbed a mattress, flopped you down,
[00:56:55] and some barracks at the end of the runway.
[00:56:57] And you slept until the next morning with all this effort
[00:57:01] to take it off of the bobbie, no sleep.
[00:57:04] Did you have that stereotypical moment that people talk about,
[00:57:08] which is the guys that are going home, the guys that are rotating home after their
[00:57:12] year, and you see that the contrast between the new guys showing up with their
[00:57:17] brand new gear and the old guys that are heading home, and they look like they've been
[00:57:21] through Helen Bata.
[00:57:22] No, never saw anybody that was going home.
[00:57:25] You know, down at the Nang, airfield.
[00:57:29] Didn't see him.
[00:57:30] We arrived sometime in the middle of the night, and it was dark, and we had no.
[00:57:35] You know, you have that little kind of internal feeling of impending doom or dread,
[00:57:42] or something.
[00:57:43] I don't know what, it was maybe it's just that you're adrenaline popping, you know,
[00:57:45] that you're finally going to get in country, and you know, what's going to,
[00:57:49] you know, you're going to take incoming rounds while you're landing.
[00:57:52] No, it's just no.
[00:57:53] Yeah, it's a normal landing, you get off the aircraft, you know, somebody meets you
[00:57:58] as often as this way.
[00:57:59] I'll list you guys that way.
[00:58:01] Drew, your mattress is straight asleep at the rest of the night.
[00:58:06] Do you know where you're heading at this point?
[00:58:08] You knew the division you were going to.
[00:58:10] First or third.
[00:58:12] Third was up north in north, I core.
[00:58:15] First was down around around the Nang area.
[00:58:18] I know it was going to the first division.
[00:58:20] You didn't even know what you're going to get to the recon battalion.
[00:58:23] You went to division.
[00:58:26] The next day we went to division, we got introduced for commanding general for some reason.
[00:58:30] And we were required to sit down, give us a big book, rules of engagement.
[00:58:34] You had to read that sign that you'd read it and understood it.
[00:58:38] And then you got sent off to your unit.
[00:58:42] And about three of us were lucky enough to go to the reconnaissance battalion.
[00:58:47] They went off to regular grant units, infantry units.
[00:58:51] So when you get your assigned to recon, and then what do you do?
[00:58:56] You guys drive up there, you take a helicopter up there, how do you get up to your actual unit?
[00:59:01] The actual unit, first recon battalion was located just below and across the street from division headquarter.
[00:59:08] So yeah, you're walked down there.
[00:59:11] And as I said before, we had the one company Charlie company that wasn't with the battalion in denying.
[00:59:19] It was forward based at Foubaide.
[00:59:21] There were the ones that kept up their jump status.
[00:59:24] And one of my buds who had gone through the reconnaissance battalion,
[00:59:28] I was slated to go up there because I was single up to the force reconnaissance company.
[00:59:33] And he asked if I would mind to give him that position to him.
[00:59:37] If it was okay with the Colonel because he was married and expecting their first kid to go.
[00:59:42] And he did that extra 75 bucks.
[00:59:44] I would just happy to be there.
[00:59:45] I said, sure, take it.
[00:59:47] If that's what you want, that's no big deal.
[00:59:50] So he went up to force company and flew by.
[00:59:53] I stayed there with the battalion in denying.
[00:59:56] And then what was checking in like, I mean, you're showing up there, you're new guy.
[01:00:02] These guys have been in country.
[01:00:03] This is something that you know always surprised me about Vietnam is that you guys would rotate.
[01:00:10] Well, just one individual individual right place.
[01:00:12] Right.
[01:00:13] For me, all my deployments were, yeah, it's going in and the whole night's leaving.
[01:00:18] And so that's got to be a weird thing showing up as a new guy.
[01:00:23] And there's a bunch of people that have been there for between, I guess, between two days and 360 whatever day.
[01:00:31] I said, you know, I mean, my, my working premise when I got to be at NAM was that anybody who was there a day longer than I was.
[01:00:38] Then I had been there and was a day smarter about the situation or day more experience than I got.
[01:00:42] I was going to listen to this version, you know.
[01:00:45] But, uh, interesting enough, my platoon wasn't even there.
[01:00:48] They were a board ship with the float of battalion.
[01:00:52] And we all, the Rink are always kept it up battalion, float off the coast of Vietnam.
[01:00:56] They could jump in to an operation, you know, at a moment still to skip or take.
[01:01:01] And they always had a, a reconnaissance platoon with them.
[01:01:05] And they apparently used them pretty much as point for the battalion.
[01:01:09] So that was not a plumb job.
[01:01:10] But my, my platoon with its outgoing platoon commander was a board ship.
[01:01:15] So I didn't see them for two weeks.
[01:01:17] I just, I had nothing to do except I got tasked to sit on court marshals.
[01:01:22] You know, I had the unit grades quarterly grades or something, something like that would or do.
[01:01:29] I had to go, oh my guys, service record books and give them a grade for their performance over the last quarter.
[01:01:35] Without knowing what I would have, having seen them.
[01:01:38] You know, this was going to be used for promotions.
[01:01:41] So I did the best I could, you know, I took a, in service record book,
[01:01:46] how long the guy had been the core in country.
[01:01:50] Had he been wounded.
[01:01:53] What was the level of education?
[01:01:54] And I signed a few points and then, you know, like, one to ten.
[01:01:58] And then I added everybody's points up and I had a grade to give him.
[01:02:04] And recommended the top three for promotion or something like that.
[01:02:07] It was crazy, but I had to do it.
[01:02:09] It's what you did.
[01:02:11] We were just complimenting the brilliance of the Marine Corps.
[01:02:14] I mean, you got a tell story like that.
[01:02:17] Then, okay, so then did you eventually get flown out to the ship to be with them or did they know?
[01:02:21] They came back.
[01:02:22] They rotated back.
[01:02:23] They rotated back.
[01:02:24] They were just filthy dirty.
[01:02:25] I think they came right from the bush.
[01:02:27] And the tenant, I got to talk to for about ten minutes because he was, like, overdue to rotate out of country.
[01:02:34] So he just, he just wanted to get a shower, you know, a uniform, and get back down to the Nang.
[01:02:39] And what, what pearls of wisdom did he give you in those ten minutes?
[01:02:42] He, he told me, yeah, who the best guys in the platoon were.
[01:02:46] And who I think he thought I might want to peat my eye on.
[01:02:49] And that was about it.
[01:02:51] No, no tactical advice on anything.
[01:02:54] Well, it's interesting.
[01:02:55] You know, I always say the leadership is the most important thing.
[01:02:57] And what he was trying to give you is a heads up on who he's like, who is the best guys and from a leadership perspective.
[01:03:02] That's interesting.
[01:03:03] He just wanted out.
[01:03:05] I didn't just want to get out.
[01:03:06] But I wasn't a hooch.
[01:03:08] Yeah, you know, with other Lieutenant's second, first Lieutenant who's been there.
[01:03:12] Now, anywhere from maybe two months to four months.
[01:03:16] And they were filling me in on, on how to play, operate, how the deal operate.
[01:03:21] Was there anything that surprised you that you were hearing from those guys?
[01:03:25] Anything that, you know, you said, oh, I didn't really expect that.
[01:03:29] Only thing that really surprised me.
[01:03:31] I think once, once I got into Recon and got working with him was that.
[01:03:37] Occasionally, you had to go out far enough,
[01:03:41] if it didn't, anybody's artillery fan.
[01:03:44] You know, you weren't on the rarely where we under the 105 fan.
[01:03:48] And the 105 fan, usually.
[01:03:50] And then there was Army 175, which were very scary.
[01:03:55] Thanks because the, the word was, they could click out.
[01:04:00] They could, you know, bump out out, click when they fired these things.
[01:04:04] They were big.
[01:04:05] We flew over one time.
[01:04:06] I looked at them.
[01:04:07] I swear they drooped.
[01:04:08] You know, one 75 artillery base, they were huge.
[01:04:11] I swear they drooped.
[01:04:13] And then, of course, if you were out past the 175 fan, you had nothing but air
[01:04:19] to call on.
[01:04:20] And that leads to take about 20 minutes to get there.
[01:04:23] And pilots never really trusted ground officers to, you know,
[01:04:29] to bring them in correctly.
[01:04:31] So they'd always want to fly out an aerial observory, you know,
[01:04:34] on one of these little spit-kit planes, you know,
[01:04:38] polar into back.
[01:04:39] And I don't know what they were.
[01:04:40] Ove tens, I think.
[01:04:42] But that was kind of surprising because.
[01:04:45] But our artillery over there was fantastic.
[01:04:49] Great, you know.
[01:04:52] They, on call of 24, seven obviously.
[01:04:55] The best thing I ever fired was Marine Corps self-propelled eight-inch.
[01:04:59] They were like a, look like a big tag with an eight-inch.
[01:05:02] You know, fired an eight-inch shell.
[01:05:04] But when they were accurate to the anti-degree, unbelievable.
[01:05:07] But basically, artillery was excellent over there.
[01:05:10] Save their bacon many a time.
[01:05:13] So when you, it's been two weeks, your guys get back.
[01:05:17] You take over a Splatoon Commander.
[01:05:19] What's your intro meeting with the guys in the Splatoon?
[01:05:22] What did you say to them?
[01:05:23] Just kind of introduce myself.
[01:05:25] Probably telling the same thing to you,
[01:05:27] if you've been here one day a long time.
[01:05:29] I have, and you've got a better idea where I think you do.
[01:05:33] Talk to me.
[01:05:34] I'm here to listen.
[01:05:35] You know, I want you all to get back home.
[01:05:38] Obviously, you know, intact and not tacked in as we used to say.
[01:05:42] In fact, the five and a half months I was a Platoon Commander.
[01:05:46] We only took one serious casually.
[01:05:48] And that was me.
[01:05:49] And I wouldn't have in any other way.
[01:05:51] We were extremely lucky, but we were also pretty good.
[01:05:55] We didn't do dumb things.
[01:05:57] They were folks who would like harbor at night near a trail.
[01:06:01] And hope bad guys would come down it.
[01:06:04] Just so they could try to set up a hasty ambush.
[01:06:06] No, no, no.
[01:06:07] Once your troops knew that you were serious about their welfare,
[01:06:12] we would have done anything for you.
[01:06:14] And of course you do anything for them.
[01:06:16] I had 23 brains of my platoon.
[01:06:20] Maybe a couple of corpsmen.
[01:06:21] They rotated in and out according to the will of the Italian age state.
[01:06:26] The fire to see young men ever settle on a symbol.
[01:06:30] I know most of the platoon commanders say the same thing, but these kids were.
[01:06:34] Average age and 19 average education, ninth grade.
[01:06:39] You know, but they were taught, maybe a pre-mult.
[01:06:42] If I had told them that we've been tasked to flap the Hanoi,
[01:06:47] drop in with a river raft and paddle up and free the folks out of the Hilton.
[01:06:52] They would have been right there.
[01:06:55] They were just great kids.
[01:06:57] What was kind of normal?
[01:07:00] Well, first of all, what was your first operation they went on with these guys?
[01:07:03] Well, first thing that I did was turn out to be a.
[01:07:07] TET 1968 broke on my first snap in patrol.
[01:07:13] They started to get you on a snap in patrol or two.
[01:07:17] Before you started leading your guys, you know, you were just there as a two-bezerv and learn.
[01:07:23] And your patrol leader might be an E3.
[01:07:26] In my case, it was an E5, Sergeant E5.
[01:07:29] And we got up this ridge line.
[01:07:32] And after crossing this path, it looked like the E5 of people passed and we got now.
[01:07:39] It was smooth.
[01:07:41] And we got up into bad bunch of brush and some rocks.
[01:07:45] And we were looking up the ridge line.
[01:07:47] And pretty soon at 4.4 NVA come.
[01:07:50] We could go down down this highway.
[01:07:53] So, 4.
[01:07:55] And then there was 8.
[01:07:57] Then there was 16.
[01:07:59] 32.
[01:08:00] We stopped counting.
[01:08:01] This is your first message.
[01:08:02] Just the first.
[01:08:03] Exactly.
[01:08:04] And is this your Paltoon?
[01:08:05] No, I was with just a few little long time ago.
[01:08:07] I was just checking on.
[01:08:08] And the leader, the Paltoon leader's knee five.
[01:08:10] Well, yeah, the patrol leader was knee five.
[01:08:12] The patrol leader's knee five.
[01:08:13] Great young man, great young man.
[01:08:15] And so, his rule of thumb was where there's four, there's more.
[01:08:19] Because when we saw these four guys come out of the jungle down this ridge line, first thing was,
[01:08:25] let's go sit up and ambush.
[01:08:26] No, sorry, I said no, no, no, no.
[01:08:29] Where there's four, there's no.
[01:08:30] We stopped counting at 400.
[01:08:33] And by now, we had artillery coming in.
[01:08:35] We had air on the way.
[01:08:36] We had an aerial observer up there.
[01:08:39] We fired artillery all day, all afternoon into the night.
[01:08:44] Into the evening.
[01:08:45] We had a puffed magic dragon dropping flares with the,
[01:08:48] jets coming in underneath it.
[01:08:51] We were dropping Nae Pong and night.
[01:08:52] Oh, it was unbelievable.
[01:08:54] And this was your first time.
[01:08:55] Were you doing the call for fire?
[01:08:56] No, no, no, it was sergeant.
[01:08:58] Sorry, I was doing it.
[01:08:59] Yeah, I was there to learn.
[01:09:02] And to the Pucker Factor was like this.
[01:09:05] You know, guys would go on to one or two snapping patrols and never see anything.
[01:09:10] But, and they might go to Vietong.
[01:09:12] Yeah.
[01:09:13] And they, maybe have a little too lousy of fair attitude.
[01:09:16] And this was my welcome to Vietnam.
[01:09:18] And I thought it was great.
[01:09:20] I mean, we were dropping artillery on these guys.
[01:09:23] They were running down the path toward our position.
[01:09:26] You know, and they were in the brush.
[01:09:28] They're not on the path.
[01:09:29] But they were in the brush.
[01:09:31] We had brush.
[01:09:32] We had rocks on like our north side and our, or each side of west side.
[01:09:41] East side and south side.
[01:09:43] West and north of just had brush.
[01:09:45] There's, you know, North Vietnamese there in the brush coming toward us.
[01:09:49] They're crying.
[01:09:50] They're screaming.
[01:09:51] You know, they're yelling for mom.
[01:09:52] Whatever.
[01:09:53] Whatever we could do.
[01:09:54] And that fear North Vietnamese soldier.
[01:09:56] And they were going to run right into us.
[01:09:59] So it started bringing our children behind us.
[01:10:02] A real club, you know, danger close.
[01:10:04] So we got trapped in a flan over our heads.
[01:10:07] And of course this, this dissuades.
[01:10:10] These bad guys are coming toward us.
[01:10:13] And also we had a kid set up when they should have been laying flat like a mushy pancake.
[01:10:18] Took a piece of shrapnel right into his face and knocked out a few teeth and cut open his lip and everything.
[01:10:23] And the shrapnel was dropping down.
[01:10:25] I had burn right through your, through your utility shirt, burn your skin.
[01:10:31] You just, you just endured it.
[01:10:33] It was a, it was a, it was a, it was a little hairy.
[01:10:36] So danger close rounds coming your first night out.
[01:10:40] And then he hit mom.
[01:10:44] Oh, well.
[01:10:46] Welcome to the war.
[01:10:48] And you guys, and you guys maintain your, your, your, clandestine position.
[01:10:52] Oh, yeah.
[01:10:53] How many guys are out there with you?
[01:10:55] Oh, probably about 10, 11.
[01:10:57] That was a heavy patrol.
[01:10:59] Yeah.
[01:10:59] Wow.
[01:11:00] All right.
[01:11:00] So now at how many of those snapping patrols did you do?
[01:11:03] Two.
[01:11:04] What was the next one like?
[01:11:05] Second, sure.
[01:11:06] Well, next one was, was even, wasn't that interesting from a,
[01:11:09] uh, or, a, a tactical point of view, but, uh,
[01:11:11] It was going to be a lead by a lieutenant who had, uh,
[01:11:14] got a little tanked up at the o-club the night before.
[01:11:17] It hadn't given the patrol a patrol order.
[01:11:19] Uh, so we're down there waiting for, on the LZ, waiting for the,
[01:11:24] Insert helicopter, stop.
[01:11:26] Get ready to take us off.
[01:11:28] Come down the hill with the Battalion Commander, Lieutenant Colonel.
[01:11:32] He, uh, comes over to our patrol.
[01:11:35] Points of the Lieutenant sir.
[01:11:37] to the tenets of pack, get back up, pack,
[01:11:40] group here, you're going to the grunts, you know,
[01:11:42] boom, he was out, Colonel Sesta,
[01:11:45] I mean, it's Lance Carple, System Control,
[01:11:48] I think you guys can run the special, yes sir, no problem.
[01:11:51] So we did, it was great.
[01:11:53] But, you know, shit can this guy,
[01:11:55] he's just right there on the spot,
[01:11:56] and you can do that in Enrique.
[01:11:59] I had to do it once to one of my guys.
[01:12:02] What the guy do that rated you firing him on the spot?
[01:12:07] Um, I had, uh, my patrol was like cutting half,
[01:12:12] I let my platoon was cutting half, I let half of it,
[01:12:15] you know, anywhere from 8 to 10 guys, depending on who was,
[01:12:20] not on R&R, who wasn't sick, a red sort of thing.
[01:12:24] And I had a platoon start, I, E6, Stassard,
[01:12:29] he ran the other put down.
[01:12:30] We flip flop about, uh, about half way,
[01:12:34] through my tour, I was about five, five and a half months.
[01:12:38] And so, you know, my, the guys I led,
[01:12:43] we were, our codename was West Arnch.
[01:12:45] We had an excellent, uh, reputation of a tie.
[01:12:50] They were fast day, make, they felt like they were kind of
[01:12:53] distant cousins in the platoon, but I, I kind of got you
[01:12:56] about Pep Talk tonight with, with the patrol order.
[01:12:59] So, you know, you guys are, I mean,
[01:13:01] you guys are just like West Arnch, no different,
[01:13:04] you know, again, my great education, same age, you know,
[01:13:09] same skills.
[01:13:10] And so, I went through my little spiel, you know,
[01:13:13] my reputation, I'm a toned commander, you know,
[01:13:16] administrative, or stuff, you know, how I operate.
[01:13:19] Anybody doesn't want to, to go to a fast day now,
[01:13:24] one kid raises his hand, so, okay, you don't have to go.
[01:13:27] Pack it here, get out of here, don't, you know,
[01:13:29] sleep in the night with these guys, you know, and I don't know
[01:13:33] whatever happened to him, because I never came back from
[01:13:35] that patrol, you know, but I'm sure it was taken care of.
[01:13:39] So, when you start getting into, what was the kind of
[01:13:42] typical mission that you guys were doing?
[01:13:44] Typical mission was, you know, we'd go out on a six,
[01:13:49] seven-day patrol, we're just, we're just snooping and pooping.
[01:13:52] That's what we call it.
[01:13:54] Find in trails at the enemy would use race camps.
[01:13:58] Would you guys insert on helicopter, would you guys just
[01:13:59] foot patrol?
[01:14:00] No, always hill it got per, you know, always hill it.
[01:14:03] So, you pick out a spot and get dropped off and then what
[01:14:09] was your, what was your S.O.P.s?
[01:14:10] Once you guys got inserted.
[01:14:12] We got up to hill it got, we start.
[01:14:14] Hopefully it was where the, the insert, L.D. was where, you
[01:14:19] know, the operations officer or the operations
[01:14:22] shack said it was, sometimes it wasn't there, but, you know,
[01:14:26] that's why, you know, as a patrol there, first thing I did
[01:14:29] to, and I got on a helicopter was dump my gear, get up my little
[01:14:32] map and insert myself between the pile and the cop out,
[01:14:35] because if you didn't know where you were, when you started
[01:14:38] the patrol, you were gonna know where you were for the
[01:14:40] next six, seven days.
[01:14:42] Would you guys insert in the daytime in the nighttime and
[01:14:44] the pre-drawn in the dusk?
[01:14:46] When would you guys go in?
[01:14:47] Would it go in in daytime?
[01:14:51] We'd be down at L.C. waiting, you know, by about eight
[01:14:55] o'clock in the morning, birds would come in if they weren't
[01:14:57] being used for men of action stuff or some operation that was
[01:15:01] going on, about mid morning, they'd do up and get a brief
[01:15:04] from the intelligence folks at first streetcon.
[01:15:07] We'd be sitting around there and they'd come back down from
[01:15:10] their brief, we'd pop on the aircraft and off we'd go.
[01:15:13] So like mid day, you're getting in there?
[01:15:16] Mid day, yeah, yeah, I was pretty much probably.
[01:15:18] Generally, yeah.
[01:15:19] You hit the, and then what, you hit the ground and what
[01:15:21] would you guys do?
[01:15:21] As soon as you hit the ground, what was your, what was your
[01:15:24] standard operating position?
[01:15:25] Yeah, so pay with the DD and get out of that L.C.
[01:15:27] Fatsby.
[01:15:28] Yeah, nothing says, Marines are coming in here,
[01:15:31] then much of helicopters come in the land.
[01:15:34] Would you be on two, two, Hues?
[01:15:37] Now we'd be on a two, forty sixes.
[01:15:39] Oh, okay.
[01:15:39] Yeah, yeah.
[01:15:41] Army had Hues, you know, transport troops,
[01:15:43] Marine Corps did any time in a Marine Corps, they probably had
[01:15:46] about 60 helicopters and we had an arm on Andy
[01:15:49] give me a day about half of them would be airworthy.
[01:15:52] So we had Huey gunships, he was, I guess, carry the brass
[01:15:56] around, but we didn't use much troop transport, well,
[01:15:59] forty sixes.
[01:16:00] So, big old, forty sixes.
[01:16:03] Big old, forty sixes.
[01:16:04] All noisy.
[01:16:05] Forty sixes.
[01:16:06] I did, would you guys just like, we always used to do
[01:16:09] something which was sit, look and listen.
[01:16:12] So like, we would, you know, go two or three hundred yards
[01:16:15] away from the L.C. and then we'd all do stop.
[01:16:18] And then just listen.
[01:16:18] Get down, yeah, pretty much the same way.
[01:16:20] Yeah.
[01:16:21] And when you guys have different areas where you were headed
[01:16:24] to specifically, we did.
[01:16:26] We had a patrol route that was pre-planed and an extract
[01:16:30] point that was pre-planed.
[01:16:32] Now, and patrols rarely went, you know, according to the pre-planning,
[01:16:36] which, you know, the operations shattered, you know, we didn't
[01:16:40] do that.
[01:16:41] So they were actually telling you where you were going to go in
[01:16:43] at, but they have a recommended patrol route, which we'd
[01:16:46] stick to if we could, couldn't all the time.
[01:16:50] And then we'd get out at this point where they had recommended.
[01:16:54] Yeah.
[01:16:55] And again, sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't.
[01:16:58] What was it, how often would you guys be contacted by the enemy?
[01:17:05] You know, it wasn't all that frequently.
[01:17:11] Because we did, you know, we were, we were snooping
[01:17:15] poop with a bad smell.
[01:17:15] But your purpose of being there was to not be right.
[01:17:18] You know, in recon, you have one to, you know, find them,
[01:17:23] fix them in FoxDot.
[01:17:24] You didn't get online with nine or 10 guys or 11, maybe.
[01:17:30] And say, charge.
[01:17:31] Your idea was to gather information.
[01:17:34] But if the situation was to your advantage, you could, you
[01:17:40] could, you know, if the leader felt that it was worth the effort
[01:17:46] set up an ambush, but in early we'd bring our children on.
[01:17:49] If we saw groups and I probably ran 21 patrols.
[01:17:55] And I'd say probably good three quarters of them.
[01:17:57] We had, we had fire missions on top of bad guys.
[01:18:00] Oh, that's, that's it.
[01:18:02] That's a high percentage.
[01:18:04] Well, I think what you're going through, what do you
[01:18:07] earn your money?
[01:18:08] Well, but there was, there were some of my guys in
[01:18:10] your money that would get contacted a lot.
[01:18:13] There was one group over in Eastern Ramadi.
[01:18:16] And they did.
[01:18:18] I was actually briefing a, I was briefing the CGISO
[01:18:22] of Commander, who's the, the Colonel, that was the charge
[01:18:25] of all special operations.
[01:18:27] And I said, you know, so the, my group that's, you know,
[01:18:30] six seals that are over in Eastern Ramadi,
[01:18:32] I said, they've been, they've been in enemy contact,
[01:18:35] 23 straight operations.
[01:18:37] And I'm not kidding.
[01:18:38] I didn't plan this for dramatic effect.
[01:18:40] But my intel officer who's run in attack cooperation
[01:18:42] and it comes walking in and says, hey, sir,
[01:18:45] just want to let you know that the guys out Eastern
[01:18:47] in contact right now.
[01:18:48] And I looked at the Colonel, I said, make that 24 missions
[01:18:50] in a row.
[01:18:51] So there was definitely some hot, hot airs.
[01:18:53] Yeah, it was pretty much expected if you were going out
[01:18:56] in Ramadi that you were going to get in contact
[01:18:58] by the enemy.
[01:18:59] And I don't know what the percentage was, but it was,
[01:19:02] it was a vast, it was very rare that my guys would come
[01:19:06] back and head and shot their guns, you know, very rare.
[01:19:10] Yeah, but, but 75, but I also, what was interesting
[01:19:15] when I came home from that deployment
[01:19:17] and we talked to some of the Vietnam guys,
[01:19:19] depending on the Paltoon, depending on the seal
[01:19:21] of Paltoon and Vietnam, there's guys that shot their weapons
[01:19:25] on a six month deployment, shot their weapons three times,
[01:19:27] four times.
[01:19:28] And there's other Paltoon's in Vietnam
[01:19:30] when they shot their Paltoon, shot their weapons
[01:19:32] a hundred times.
[01:19:33] So it all depended on, and my first deployment to Iraq,
[01:19:37] I think I shot my gun, we got four or five fire fights.
[01:19:40] So really, not that big of a deal.
[01:19:44] And then in Ramadi, the number is just very high
[01:19:48] for as far as the whole task,
[01:19:50] you know, getting into big gun fights.
[01:19:53] But three quarters of the time, you know,
[01:19:56] that's a lot of fire missions.
[01:19:58] Well, but yeah, but they weren't gun fights per se.
[01:20:01] You know, they be, you eyeball on some buddy
[01:20:03] or some place or some trail cross-winger,
[01:20:06] some little vill that you might come across
[01:20:08] in the middle of nowhere.
[01:20:09] One time we came across a corn field.
[01:20:12] In the middle of the jungle.
[01:20:13] I mean, it wasn't jungle per se
[01:20:17] because there was no high tree canopy over it,
[01:20:19] but it was just a field, a clearing in the middle of the jungle.
[01:20:21] With rows of corn, nice.
[01:20:23] But this is not your typical jungle plant.
[01:20:28] So we'd get up a little higher ground,
[01:20:30] we'd watch to see if anybody come,
[01:20:32] okay, man, they're settled down.
[01:20:34] There's a few hooches there too.
[01:20:35] Whereabouts were you guys operating, it could be at all?
[01:20:38] We are operating north, south, and west of Danang.
[01:20:42] First, reconnaissance, Patience Mission was to patrol
[01:20:47] the rocket belt around the airport of Danang,
[01:20:51] but that wasn't particularly that far out.
[01:20:54] So we'd have a lot further out looking for, you know,
[01:20:59] main line NBA forces.
[01:21:02] And, or where they camped out, the trails they used,
[01:21:07] et cetera, et cetera.
[01:21:10] But gun fights were relatively rare, which is a good thing.
[01:21:15] You can't see anybody in the jungle anyway.
[01:21:17] It typically just firing blind.
[01:21:19] So that was one of the nice things about the M16.
[01:21:22] It would put out a lot of fire for him.
[01:21:25] And that's what you needed over there.
[01:21:27] You didn't need to have you bulletin as a serene
[01:21:29] leader to knock guys down, but the seven point six two or five point
[01:21:37] whatever was just fine.
[01:21:39] Not what a 7.62, that was the big heavy.
[01:21:41] Yeah, that's the important.
[01:21:43] When you were when you would get these mission taskings,
[01:21:46] kind of from above, above from the battalion,
[01:21:51] they'd give it to you that how long
[01:21:53] would the planning cycle take for you guys
[01:21:54] to come up with a plan and do your briefing at all that?
[01:21:57] That 24 hours.
[01:21:59] Yeah, it wasn't hardcore boiler play.
[01:22:02] No, no one near the detail that you all went through in Ramadi.
[01:22:07] But it was just, we were out six seven days back to her three.
[01:22:13] So that was a regular schedule.
[01:22:16] You knew, the kids were already, the rains were already.
[01:22:20] Their weapons were clean.
[01:22:22] If we had done things that we needed to do administratively,
[01:22:24] like go down to the gas tent, check all the gas masks,
[01:22:27] stuff that had all been done on kind of the 24 hours in between.
[01:22:32] Were you carrying the radio?
[01:22:33] No, I had a radio man, primary radio man was right behind me.
[01:22:38] And I had a secondary radio man,
[01:22:40] toward the end of the patrol.
[01:22:42] And you're taking what?
[01:22:43] Seven eight guys, 10 guys?
[01:22:45] Something like 10 guys.
[01:22:46] I usually went heavy.
[01:22:47] So you're 10 guys?
[01:22:48] How many damn batteries did you have to carry for an eight day patrol?
[01:22:53] Would you get re-supplied?
[01:22:54] Because we're using the 77, the prec 77 radio.
[01:22:59] Well, I was one prior to that.
[01:23:00] Well, we're not prior.
[01:23:01] I get prick 25.
[01:23:03] The prick 25.
[01:23:03] There you go.
[01:23:04] Not necessarily the best thing, but it was pretty good.
[01:23:06] Yeah.
[01:23:07] The line is longer a line of sight.
[01:23:09] Yeah.
[01:23:09] But you must have had to carry a lot of batteries for that thing.
[01:23:12] We didn't.
[01:23:13] I mean, I just the radio man had extra batteries,
[01:23:15] but we typically, you know, go through that much battery.
[01:23:19] Man, I was a radio man.
[01:23:20] And it was ridiculous.
[01:23:22] The amount of batteries in the early days.
[01:23:24] Because we got much smaller radio as they were on.
[01:23:27] And then how about water?
[01:23:28] Would you guys just refill canteens and rivers and whatnot?
[01:23:31] We would if we could find water, but we went out on eight to 10 canteens.
[01:23:35] Because you didn't know what are you going to find water.
[01:23:38] And if you found it, you didn't know what was going to be portable or not.
[01:23:41] But we were taken quickly.
[01:23:44] Often I say, more often than not, in the mountainous type area, mountainous being,
[01:23:48] you know, thousands of meters are higher.
[01:23:50] And if we came across running water that was moving on, I thought it was fine to
[01:23:56] save the drink.
[01:23:57] And until I went to this one day school, put on a way.
[01:24:01] Chief Quarman who talked about how the leech of Lyric would be, you know,
[01:24:08] expelled into the water and just rub bubble down with the water.
[01:24:11] Yes, after that, I had nine tablets every time we refill.
[01:24:15] So never had any problems.
[01:24:17] Have a food. Food, we had three in era, sea rats.
[01:24:21] Did you say, Korean era, Korean era?
[01:24:24] Oh, Korean era, yeah.
[01:24:25] Yeah, you know, 1554, it would save my name.
[01:24:28] Just playing sea rats and cans.
[01:24:31] MRAs were brand new when I was there.
[01:24:33] And we occasioned on two patrols.
[01:24:35] I think that we managed to steal some MRIs from somebody in the army.
[01:24:39] Find dining.
[01:24:40] Yeah.
[01:24:41] But see, they used water.
[01:24:43] So it was a better meal, but they would use water.
[01:24:48] So it was a 61 half a dozen of another.
[01:24:52] And then would you guys patrol during the day and then lay up at night?
[01:24:55] That's a firm.
[01:24:56] It would be fine to nest just mean this fugitation at night and crawl in there.
[01:25:01] And harbor.
[01:25:02] It would be in a harbor site.
[01:25:04] Did they use dogs to try and find you?
[01:25:09] Nope.
[01:25:10] And that we're still on dog and we're at NAM.
[01:25:12] We're in the jungle.
[01:25:13] And apparently, Rekond had taken out dogs and handlers in the early days.
[01:25:19] And the dogs just couldn't handle the heat and the terrain.
[01:25:23] So the handler would have carrying the dog out.
[01:25:27] So that was a.
[01:25:29] You guys bring claymores to saffron?
[01:25:31] We did.
[01:25:32] We did.
[01:25:33] We did.
[01:25:34] We bought claymores and sometimes little antifersoned nomines.
[01:25:38] Which sounded like a great idea.
[01:25:40] And until the next morning, I would put them out.
[01:25:43] Gotta go retrieve them.
[01:25:44] Yeah, you gotta go retrieve them.
[01:25:45] You gotta maybe have six mines out and they kind of like with five.
[01:25:50] So we would be moving out in the opposite direction.
[01:25:56] Claymores a good weapon.
[01:25:57] So you're, it sounds like your, your optempo was like, go on a patrol.
[01:26:05] You're out there for six, seven days.
[01:26:08] You come back, you rest, you refit.
[01:26:11] You spend three, four days in camp, something like that.
[01:26:14] Two or three maybe.
[01:26:15] Two or three.
[01:26:16] Yeah, yeah.
[01:26:17] It's a pretty quick turnaround.
[01:26:19] You didn't have time to settle in and get comfortable anywhere.
[01:26:25] I did it.
[01:26:26] It's back out.
[01:26:27] Were you guys just skinny as could be?
[01:26:29] We were.
[01:26:30] Yeah, I went over there waiting 150 pounds on here, 55 pounds.
[01:26:34] Which was my way to enable Kevin.
[01:26:36] Going back, I was 123 when I got back.
[01:26:40] But part of that was the previous, like, 19 days, I remember I was shot like a back in
[01:26:46] the States, I didn't eat too much.
[01:26:49] I was being fed for one thing, and most of the time was red jello.
[01:26:52] And that one real appealing.
[01:26:53] I couldn't look at red jello for about five years after that.
[01:26:57] Did you guys have any night vision at all?
[01:27:01] Like a starlight scope.
[01:27:03] We had fixed positions that we would go to, for sometimes too long and much as two weeks.
[01:27:08] And they were essentially high points, like a hill, a hundred meter high hill.
[01:27:14] And they'd have a permanent radio, we had a permanent radio relay station on there.
[01:27:19] And patrols would just rotate there every couple of weeks to provide security for that guy.
[01:27:24] Because he was up there for like three plus months.
[01:27:27] And on those, we would take, we had starlight.
[01:27:32] We watched the valleys and stuff below us.
[01:27:35] But never used a metmuch, you know.
[01:27:38] You know, going out in the field that much, you guys must have really been, I mean, you
[01:27:44] guys must have been really good and really efficient out in the field after doing a field
[01:27:48] out after field out, after field out, after field out, after field out for six, seven, eight
[01:27:51] days every time.
[01:27:53] Did you feel like you guys were kind of part of the jungle at that point?
[01:27:58] Never, never felt really part of the jungle, but I'm sure I got more comfortable in it.
[01:28:03] One thing that you always had to be very careful about in the work that Recon did was heat
[01:28:08] casualties.
[01:28:09] You know, you took a serious heat cattle, that's an emergency metaback, which is again,
[01:28:14] you know, announcing the whole world that there's Marines out here and one of them, you
[01:28:18] know, down with the heat catchment.
[01:28:20] As a consequence, the days we were back in the area, first between Delta Company
[01:28:27] and PTED every day, people thought we were crazy.
[01:28:31] I took my heat catch on these on Freedom Hill Road, you know, running, two and a half miles
[01:28:35] down, two and a half miles back, including myself, you know, stopping to barfer and never
[01:28:39] had a heat catchment.
[01:28:40] And the five and a half months, I went to throw something very proud of.
[01:28:45] Yeah, you got to carry enough water for that though.
[01:28:49] Really, right?
[01:28:50] You know, you just had to ration yourself, you know, and each individual will see that
[01:28:56] eight can teams you bring an eight can team to warm up, and that's going to last you eight
[01:29:00] days.
[01:29:01] Sixth or six.
[01:29:02] Sixth or six.
[01:29:03] That's what you got to extend it, which was not on her go.
[01:29:06] You know, the Marine Corps helicopter would be, you know, some operation would start while
[01:29:10] you were on patrol, they'd be tasked for metabacks and you couldn't get out the day
[01:29:14] you were supposed to.
[01:29:17] You prayed, I guess, would be the nice thing to say that you got out the next day, because
[01:29:23] by then your food was exhausted, your water was either gone or sheel short.
[01:29:28] Yeah, we used to have a lot.
[01:29:30] We used to have a heat casualties in training out here in Calgary, in Calgary, in
[01:29:35] Piero Valley where it's 120 degrees.
[01:29:37] And it's tough.
[01:29:38] And like you said, a guy can go from he's fine to all of a sudden he's like a legitimate
[01:29:44] like a legitimate casualty.
[01:29:46] That's right.
[01:29:47] Yeah.
[01:29:51] Let's go to July 4th, 1968.
[01:29:54] What was going into that operation?
[01:29:57] What was the overall operation that you guys were looking to do?
[01:30:01] We were looking to find an old LZ, a place called Charlie Ridge, you said you had neighborhoods
[01:30:08] in this area that were hotter than others.
[01:30:11] And reminded we had the same thing of course we got them.
[01:30:14] Some places were known as hot spots, you had almost guaranteed, you know, somebody's
[01:30:17] going to shoot a few rounds at you coming in or going out if they didn't find it during
[01:30:22] the, you didn't find them during your patrol.
[01:30:26] But we were supposed to flip flop.
[01:30:29] We'd go in and another team would come out on the top of this mountain and the team had
[01:30:33] gotten lost.
[01:30:36] They didn't know where they were.
[01:30:38] So they finally somehow scraped their Sierra together and we went out.
[01:30:46] We flipped flop with them, but we were way far away from this thing and we were three
[01:30:50] or four thousand meters away from this mountain top where we were supposed to flip flop
[01:30:54] with another team.
[01:30:56] So I really pushed the patrol to find this space, most of the really hard to find.
[01:31:01] These guys couldn't find it.
[01:31:02] No, no, they just were lost.
[01:31:05] But we found that thing on the second day, old fire base on this top of this mountain,
[01:31:10] you know, like three years of sea rats on the side of the mountain because we had NVA walking
[01:31:16] trail below us, they'd stop and have lunch there.
[01:31:19] He'd all see, I'd have ham and lime of beans, I think, supplied half the NVA and
[01:31:24] Vietnam because it means just always pitched those to the, nobody, we call them ham and
[01:31:28] mothers.
[01:31:29] Nobody ate them.
[01:31:32] But so we had a flip flop.
[01:31:35] So I didn't want to get too far away from this LZ because I wanted another LZ within,
[01:31:39] you know, three or four clicks.
[01:31:43] So we were going to, you know, we harbored that night, moved off into the jungle outside
[01:31:48] the LZ.
[01:31:49] Harbored that night had some big rocks around us.
[01:31:52] I thought we were going to get position.
[01:31:54] And at night, I would pre-plot fires, you know, artillery targets north south east west
[01:32:01] around our position.
[01:32:02] In case you had to call them in the middle of the night, you know, you didn't have to figure
[01:32:04] out what the, what's our sixth, you know, numbers here.
[01:32:08] No, these targets were already plotted in.
[01:32:11] So we walked up the next morning and we were just going to kind of lay a low all day long
[01:32:15] in that area.
[01:32:16] Wasn't something you really wanted to do.
[01:32:19] But, you know, since we were scheduled a flip flop and, and, and, but Ty and really wanted
[01:32:23] us to do that because it hadn't worked, you know, when we had gone in, we weren't, we
[01:32:27] should have gone in where we were going out.
[01:32:29] Uh, but they wanted to flip flop.
[01:32:32] So I said, but we're just going to lay a low for this day and we'll be out here next
[01:32:36] morning.
[01:32:37] Well, that morning, I guess some, you know, 12 men and VA reconpatreal walked a close
[01:32:44] aboard or came by close aboard.
[01:32:46] Uh, I never heard them.
[01:32:48] Just they either saw flash a motion.
[01:32:51] We must go, we were eating breakfast.
[01:32:53] Uh, or they heard us, which I don't think they did because we were super quiet.
[01:32:57] But all of a sudden, I just, you know, all this automatic fire opened up and, fortunately,
[01:33:03] was over our heads, you know, because that's pretty typical happening in the jungle, a
[01:33:07] shoot high.
[01:33:09] But I had a big rock kind of behind me.
[01:33:11] So I'm getting guys, maneuvered around starting to call the artillery and when, uh, a bullet
[01:33:18] apparently hits the rock behind me and comes about hits me in the head from behind, goes
[01:33:23] forward.
[01:33:24] I'm boom, I'm down.
[01:33:25] And, uh, I'm almost history.
[01:33:28] Uh, next thing I know, my, uh, corpsman is doing a pat down on me.
[01:33:33] Apparently, the bullet had gone through my floppy cover and didn't knock it off.
[01:33:37] And it wasn't till he saw a bullet, certain around down the side of my face that
[01:33:40] they realized that the wound was up here.
[01:33:42] But there was nothing visible.
[01:33:43] So he's just going to pat down.
[01:33:44] And I knew what that meant.
[01:33:46] I knew I'd been shot and I knew he didn't know where it was.
[01:33:50] But, uh, I never did figure out it was in my head or in the head.
[01:33:54] I could clue that sometime that morning because we were on a ground for about another
[01:33:58] four hours before they tried to get us out.
[01:34:02] Uh, that had been bitten by a sentipede.
[01:34:05] It had some nasty sentipedes over there who has been apparently attacked your sexual nervous
[01:34:09] system.
[01:34:10] So that was my working theory that morning was that I had been by a sentipede.
[01:34:14] Which was really piss me off.
[01:34:16] How long were you on conscience for after you got hit?
[01:34:18] I was hit.
[01:34:19] I was hit.
[01:34:20] I was hit.
[01:34:21] I was hit.
[01:34:22] I was hit.
[01:34:23] I was hit.
[01:34:24] I was hit.
[01:34:25] You know when you saw a record scene, I mean fighting with Shane on aksmanman.
[01:34:26] I'm like laying down on my lean mean, green stock of broccoli.
[01:34:29] How much time, how much time it passed between the, uh, the initial fire incoming fire
[01:34:36] and you getting hit.
[01:34:38] It was really as to matter maybe a three to five minutes.
[01:34:41] Okay, you know.
[01:34:42] Trying to get guys positioned.
[01:34:46] In recon, we did not want to fire back.
[01:34:50] Somebody started firing at you,
[01:34:54] they didn't really know where you were,
[01:34:56] especially with this fire going high.
[01:34:58] And the last thing you wanted to do,
[01:34:59] really was fire back,
[01:35:00] is now we know where they are.
[01:35:02] And then, you know,
[01:35:04] so the deal was not to fire back.
[01:35:07] Just bringing supporting arms to a quick-achocud,
[01:35:10] but eventually of course the guys started to fire back
[01:35:12] because it was just a little too hot.
[01:35:14] And I just thought of this,
[01:35:16] I'm guessing you guys wouldn't carry,
[01:35:18] like a heavy machine gun with you,
[01:35:20] like in M6, you or something?
[01:35:21] No, we didn't too heavy.
[01:35:24] And then we had two more guys tasked with ammunition.
[01:35:29] And they can't really,
[01:35:30] you know, I'm getting one of those things set up quickly,
[01:35:33] you know, I had a jungle, but occasionally we did.
[01:35:36] Occasionally the warning water that I would get
[01:35:39] from Battalion was like, you know,
[01:35:40] you're taking an M6 on this,
[01:35:42] which I hope a group had reports of X, Y and Z in this area.
[01:35:48] And you might need it, so great.
[01:35:51] Obviously, somebody had a volunteer to do that.
[01:35:53] And my little guy, Smithman was mouse.
[01:35:56] He would always walk very carefully, M6,
[01:35:58] the great kid, great kid.
[01:36:02] Never really had to use it in the jungle,
[01:36:04] which was good, but occasionally carry it.
[01:36:07] So here you are, you're five minutes into this gunfight.
[01:36:09] You get hit, you're unconscious for a very short period of time.
[01:36:13] And then you come back too,
[01:36:15] and how do you feel when you come back?
[01:36:18] Again, it didn't what had happened.
[01:36:20] I got it.
[01:36:21] My first thought was the centipede thing,
[01:36:22] but the sounds were muffled.
[01:36:25] Colour was gone.
[01:36:27] Things were moving in black.
[01:36:28] Slowly and black and white around me,
[01:36:30] and sounds were very muffled.
[01:36:32] By now, the artillery started to come in.
[01:36:36] We had a brand new second lieutenant with us.
[01:36:38] He was on his first snap in patrol.
[01:36:40] He apparently assumed command.
[01:36:42] A long time my experience corporal, it was my,
[01:36:45] normally was the patrol leader for this patrol.
[01:36:49] And together they managed the situation.
[01:36:53] And we got everybody out.
[01:36:54] I was the only one wounded.
[01:36:56] Take that back.
[01:36:57] Crew chief on the hill of copper that picked us up was wounded.
[01:37:01] He was on a 50 caliber and got hit in the hand.
[01:37:06] But we were the only two wounded.
[01:37:07] I was the only guy I met patrol wounded.
[01:37:09] In the corpsman standing the same class hospital man.
[01:37:15] He kept me alive for an extra four hour
[01:37:17] until I could get me into the day.
[01:37:19] How about were you bleeding?
[01:37:21] Apparently, blood out.
[01:37:23] There's a cavity down the center of your head
[01:37:26] called a superior saginal sinus.
[01:37:27] It's like an upside down triangle.
[01:37:30] And it drains blood.
[01:37:31] You brain and that was nicked by the bullet.
[01:37:34] It was just close enough to midline
[01:37:35] to nickless superior saginal sinus.
[01:37:38] Like my car might just get put in battle dressing
[01:37:41] after battle dressing on my head.
[01:37:45] Every one of my whole day, Nail is saying,
[01:37:47] were you passing back out and then waking back up?
[01:37:50] I was.
[01:37:50] I was.
[01:37:52] I remember I knew I could hear the helicopter coming in
[01:37:56] and I knew we were about to break out of the jungle
[01:37:58] to run to the sea.
[01:38:00] The helicopter was coming in that we had been on the day before.
[01:38:03] So I took all this strength I could to open my eyes
[01:38:06] and look up.
[01:38:07] And all the time, I saw our trazers
[01:38:08] converging kind of over us from all the plugs of the company.
[01:38:12] Damn, this is serious.
[01:38:14] Who?
[01:38:16] You're, I got a, I got a,
[01:38:18] some information that your kids gathered up.
[01:38:21] And one of them, one of them was a note from Captain Frederick,
[01:38:26] Rick, Jay Wilson, the third.
[01:38:29] And he, you wrote this little kind of description of what
[01:38:33] happened. He says, I was the pilot of the CH 46,
[01:38:37] YT, TAK 13, M.M.H. 164 that rescued your team.
[01:38:42] What you couldn't know was that a lot of people,
[01:38:44] including your recon team responsible for getting you to the hospital.
[01:38:47] I vividly remember the mission because my crew chief
[01:38:49] who's wounded, that's the guy you just talked about.
[01:38:51] All right, he like you also survived and prospered.
[01:38:55] He and I received silver stars for our actions that day.
[01:38:57] You tend to remember things like that.
[01:38:59] I flew 928 missions in Vietnam
[01:39:02] and that was my harriest.
[01:39:04] I first heard that your team was in trouble
[01:39:06] and you were wounded when I was landing at the Nang Hospital
[01:39:09] with another metavac.
[01:39:10] Because of your head injuries,
[01:39:11] I was able to get a corpsman at the hospital
[01:39:13] before I headed out for the rescue.
[01:39:15] It turned out to be the corpsman Terry Galey
[01:39:18] was from my hometown of Wakefield, Rhode Island.
[01:39:20] I found this out 20 years later when Terry's wife showed up
[01:39:23] at my sister's house with an old copy of Stars and Strived
[01:39:26] that covered the mission.
[01:39:27] Your team at Evidently ran into an NVA base camp
[01:39:30] that no one knew was there
[01:39:31] and was greatly outnumbered.
[01:39:34] Because of your wounds and the combat situation
[01:39:36] and extraction was requested
[01:39:38] and I was the closest to the action.
[01:39:40] The problem soon became apparent
[01:39:42] that the team needed to move about 200 yards
[01:39:45] to an old bomb crater where I could land.
[01:39:47] I called for gunship support and some fast movers.
[01:39:50] What I got was four flights of phantom,
[01:39:52] dropping bombs pretty close to the team
[01:39:54] and four huge gunships.
[01:39:56] I was circling overhead for about an hour
[01:39:58] before the team got to the only feasible landing
[01:40:01] zone on the ridge.
[01:40:03] They did a good job progressing fire until I was landing.
[01:40:06] Fortunately, the bomb crater also protected me somewhat
[01:40:10] and we were getting, we were able to get everyone on board.
[01:40:14] I was a little short on fuel
[01:40:15] but that worked on my favor
[01:40:17] because I was also about 2,000 pounds
[01:40:19] over gross according to my copilot
[01:40:21] who was wondering if we could lift off.
[01:40:24] In the meantime, your team and my gun
[01:40:25] are engaged in a firefight.
[01:40:27] Your team knocked out all the windows on my bird
[01:40:30] but I didn't object because they were covering my butt.
[01:40:33] We managed to take off and took a few hits out on the way
[01:40:36] but thanks to the huge escorting me,
[01:40:39] I was able to dive off the ridge and get out a range.
[01:40:42] Long story short, we were able to get everyone
[01:40:45] on a hospital and the NVA got a beating.
[01:40:49] So he had to just take off and just fly over this ridge.
[01:40:53] Right?
[01:40:54] Yeah, apparently he just got a dove off the ridge
[01:40:57] and he can't speak back up.
[01:41:00] I heard that this thing was so riddled with bullets
[01:41:03] this helicopter was that the Marine Corps
[01:41:06] helicopter facility was across this highway
[01:41:08] from the hospital in the neck.
[01:41:10] They wouldn't fly it over there.
[01:41:11] They called for a tug to toe it over there.
[01:41:16] I'm gonna put that thing back in the air that day.
[01:41:19] Right, man.
[01:41:22] He continues on, this was a nice,
[01:41:23] I'm taking bits of this from a nice letter
[01:41:26] of Europa.
[01:41:27] He says I understand that you count that day
[01:41:29] as an alive day, which is a very good thing to celebrate.
[01:41:31] I was probably one of the few Marines who enjoyed
[01:41:33] their torn Vietnam primarily because I was saving lives
[01:41:36] and rescuing your recon teams.
[01:41:38] I also love the flying since they would never let you fly
[01:41:41] like that back in the States.
[01:41:43] One of the best things to come out of Vietnam
[01:41:45] was the improvement of medical care.
[01:41:46] Your proof that as a survival rates from Afghan,
[01:41:50] as are the survival rates from Iraq and Afghanistan.
[01:41:53] Hope you have a wonder.
[01:41:54] Wonderful 50th rebirth, they happy birthday, Marine.
[01:41:57] And that's once again, that's Captain Frederick Rick
[01:42:00] J Wilson III.
[01:42:03] He was the command pilot that day
[01:42:05] and the bird that pulled me on the team out,
[01:42:08] saved all our lives.
[01:42:10] No question about it.
[01:42:12] We did, do you guys under the threat of being overrun
[01:42:15] at some point soon?
[01:42:17] I tried the truth, Jacob, I have no idea,
[01:42:20] really, my memory of that day was pretty sketchy.
[01:42:23] So I talked to him on the phone last year
[01:42:26] and he said they had to circle overhead for an hour
[01:42:29] because they just couldn't set it down.
[01:42:31] There was no possible way
[01:42:32] and they estimated probably 200 NBA on the ground.
[01:42:37] And that's part of the reason why they weren't able to fly
[01:42:39] back to squadron because small arms fire through rotor blades.
[01:42:45] You know, as an imagery officer,
[01:42:47] I always felt very comfortable on the ground
[01:42:49] and very exposed on the helicopter.
[01:42:51] I just figured those were things were flying magnets
[01:42:53] made a lot of noise.
[01:42:55] But of course the Aviator's felt just the other way.
[01:42:58] They were felt safe in their birds
[01:43:00] and were never wanted to be on the ground.
[01:43:03] Never.
[01:43:04] I feel the exact same thing as you.
[01:43:07] I didn't ever like any sort of machine.
[01:43:09] I didn't like any of them.
[01:43:11] I wanted to just be on my feet.
[01:43:12] Exactly.
[01:43:13] So, and yeah, that feeling that you have an helicopter
[01:43:17] where you're up flying and all you see is,
[01:43:19] all you, all I see when I'm flying
[01:43:21] to helicopter is threats.
[01:43:23] And you can't even come close to cover them all.
[01:43:26] At least on the ground, I can cover some of the threats.
[01:43:28] When you're in an aircraft, it's like,
[01:43:30] I'm a weight and you get shot to them.
[01:43:32] That's what it feels like to me.
[01:43:35] When you remember coming to or when you remember
[01:43:38] what they do with you once you got in the hospital,
[01:43:39] do you remember much of that?
[01:43:42] No, I remember the helicopter landing
[01:43:47] because my head bounced on the middle.
[01:43:50] I thought, damn, could I put someone on my head?
[01:43:51] And I remember, then pick them up and put them
[01:43:54] on a stretcher because they grab my belt
[01:43:56] and pick them up in the middle.
[01:43:58] And it felt like a drug just going right through me.
[01:44:03] I've faintly remember the sound of,
[01:44:07] hearing this guy that sounded like there was another side
[01:44:09] of a football field saying,
[01:44:10] negative vitals, negative vitals, negative vitals.
[01:44:14] And then the next thing I felt this crush on my chest,
[01:44:17] and I thought, that's okay.
[01:44:18] Because they're getting the heart back up.
[01:44:22] Checkin' you know, oh, so they were like doing CPR.
[01:44:25] Yeah, well, I was probably resuscitated three times
[01:44:28] just after the helicopter landed at the NSA
[01:44:31] denying the hospital, but my corpsman had been straddling
[01:44:35] at a whole time when the helicopter was pushing
[01:44:37] on the heart to keep blood flowing.
[01:44:41] And it was, I said, I'm not my best day, but you know,
[01:44:46] hey, I want him here talking about it, so.
[01:44:48] And I'll take it that way, tell him.
[01:44:50] You do, you do different, believe me.
[01:44:52] Because there's no reason I should be.
[01:44:54] When I left Bethesda after a year,
[01:44:56] my attending physician was the chief of neurosurgery.
[01:44:59] He called me in his office and said, hey, I can't know.
[01:45:01] I said, I wish that medicine could take credit for this,
[01:45:05] but no, he said, we can't.
[01:45:07] He says, I don't know what, it's what everyone
[01:45:09] called, you know, karma, luck, God, whatever you want to call.
[01:45:13] I wish it was medicine, but it wasn't.
[01:45:16] I figured he was a pretty leading expert on head injuries.
[01:45:21] How long did it, so you get to the hospital and you're there?
[01:45:25] At some point, they must have gotten stabilized.
[01:45:30] They must have, yeah, as I understood at the chief
[01:45:33] neurosurgeon from the hospital, she'd just happened to be there
[01:45:36] that day, like, given an insert, which was not like that.
[01:45:39] And boom, they were on me, like flies on steak.
[01:45:43] I just remember waking up, being extremely cold
[01:45:47] and hearing a baby cry and cry and cry.
[01:45:52] And I said, this can't be right.
[01:45:54] Maybe I'm not here, you know?
[01:45:58] But sure enough, it turned out there was a
[01:46:01] a quorum, a till me later, a couple days later,
[01:46:03] that there was a baby that had been burned, you know,
[01:46:06] due to US force action, who was, you know,
[01:46:09] this was like a ward that was a intensive care ward.
[01:46:12] And apparently, and there wasn't a baby
[01:46:15] anymore, a couple of mama signs in the baby did cry,
[01:46:17] almost all the time.
[01:46:19] That's what I remember, my troops came to say goodbye.
[01:46:23] Twenty-two of me, led a minute in groups of two.
[01:46:27] All I could do was cry.
[01:46:32] I just, I didn't have words for them.
[01:46:34] Other than say, things like keep your head down and stuff like that.
[01:46:37] Because I knew by then that I had a head injury.
[01:46:39] And I knew it just slowly dawned on them.
[01:46:42] I mean, no one told me, you know, that this left side
[01:46:44] was paralyzed along with my right leg.
[01:46:47] No one told me that it just came to me over time
[01:46:49] when I would try to do something.
[01:46:50] The only way I could get attention,
[01:46:52] so I had this perfect left paralysis down
[01:46:54] side of my face for a talk like that.
[01:46:57] I'd raise my hand.
[01:46:58] They tied it down, the bedrails because that's,
[01:47:01] well, all the IVs were in the right arm.
[01:47:04] Well, I was helpless.
[01:47:06] I was, I've never been so miserable.
[01:47:09] Is that moment when they tied that arm down?
[01:47:11] And it's just the trauma to your brain that it caused you
[01:47:14] to be paralyzed in your left arm and, and was your left side of your body?
[01:47:18] Left side of my body in the right leg.
[01:47:19] It was the, the bullet head blown away about three by seven
[01:47:24] centimeter defect in my skull.
[01:47:26] I had, had, had penetrated the meninges.
[01:47:29] Naked the parital robe and the frontal lobes.
[01:47:33] And I tore this pure sagittal sign up, so that's,
[01:47:36] that's, that's one of this incompatible with life as we know it.
[01:47:39] But the, here I am, telling you about it, so.
[01:47:42] You know, one of your, one of your guys, once again,
[01:47:47] your, your kids in an awesome job getting gathering some information.
[01:47:50] One of your guys, Robert Wood, daily, beard.
[01:47:55] The third, you know, you're a third too.
[01:47:58] I'm second.
[01:47:59] Okay.
[01:48:00] I, I thought it, if somebody's, he says he thought that he'd be
[01:48:03] rethed, but yeah, so he's the third.
[01:48:06] He was a Lance Corporal in first,
[01:48:08] putoon, Delta Company.
[01:48:10] First Recombatalion.
[01:48:12] And he, he talks about, and he, he, he starts off kind of telling
[01:48:15] what it was like for him to meet you and how impressed he was with you as a leader.
[01:48:19] And, and actually felt what you talked better than it was like, you know, that he could tell that you,
[01:48:23] you, you cared about the troops.
[01:48:25] And then it gets to this point where he's.
[01:48:28] Coming, they're coming to that, they're journeyed to say goodbye to you.
[01:48:32] And so here's what Robert Wood, daily, beard.
[01:48:36] The third says he says then that afternoon,
[01:48:38] the team made a solemn journey to the Naval Hospital to see the lieutenant.
[01:48:43] Everyone watched the scenery without really seeing it as we rode along in a six by truck.
[01:48:48] We were too worried about him.
[01:48:50] We arrived and went to neuroward Bravo to.
[01:48:55] We could only see him two at a time and since I was new, I was last, I waited.
[01:49:00] When my teammates came out, they looked pale.
[01:49:04] Then it was my turn.
[01:49:05] I was nervous.
[01:49:06] I entered the World Ward.
[01:49:08] It was lengthy with empty racks here at the near end.
[01:49:13] Each rack was covered with a crisp white sheet ready for its next visitor.
[01:49:17] On a long shelf on the right, there were plastic models of planes, ships, and cars that the patients had made.
[01:49:23] I walked onward.
[01:49:25] One of the health your men was putting together a model plane.
[01:49:28] On the left was an ancient poposon with white hair.
[01:49:31] His beard, a dirty gray contrasted with his hospital tunic, a nurse with an angelic voice attracted my attention.
[01:49:39] I noticed her face, firm with conviction and wondered how she could work in such a tragic place.
[01:49:44] She was feeding a baby, seeing that struck me deeply.
[01:49:48] The baby was burned over 70% of its body.
[01:49:51] I pressed onward, but paused.
[01:49:54] Wondering what I should say.
[01:49:56] Patients filled the beds at this end of the ward.
[01:49:59] Unhealed wounds, burns, scars, and vacant stairs, stabbed out at me.
[01:50:04] Half of the face there.
[01:50:06] No eyes and no arm legs here.
[01:50:09] Body's covered with gauze, seemingly mummified.
[01:50:12] The morbid display may be realized how truly bad war is, but the worst was yet to come.
[01:50:17] I passed Harry Mundorf and Rudy Seville.
[01:50:21] They were coming out somehow they didn't look the same as when I'd seen the Meshore time ago.
[01:50:26] There he was in the last raft on the left.
[01:50:30] He lay on his right side and glanced up with glazed eyes when I approached.
[01:50:34] A turban of bandaged, bandaged his cover to his head.
[01:50:37] His pale face showed no emotion, except sadness, and his eyes were red from crying.
[01:50:44] All the time we talked, he stared at the airborne parachute wings on my chest as if they were something he wanted very badly.
[01:50:53] He had told me when I'd first joined the platoon that he hadn't gone to jump school yet.
[01:50:59] And that he was looking forward to it.
[01:51:01] He started by saying, hello, beard, how you doing?
[01:51:04] I said, good afternoon sir, I'm fine.
[01:51:06] His voice was weak like a child who was afraid of times I could barely hear him.
[01:51:10] He added again to the conversation by thanking all of us and I replied that it had been the least we could do.
[01:51:20] Then I asked him if he'd be back at recon in three months or so.
[01:51:23] A tear came to his eye and he said he would never be coming back.
[01:51:27] You see, he said my legs are paralyzed.
[01:51:29] I choked up in my skin, crawled and I was unable to speak.
[01:51:34] A silence cold and heavy, a silence cold and heavy prevailed.
[01:51:39] Finally, he broke the silence saying, beard, you're a big man and there's something I want you to do.
[01:51:44] Keep your head down there, keep your head down when you're out of the bush.
[01:51:48] This statement hit me and grabbed my heart and I screamed inside myself deep, deep down somewhere that I never knew existed.
[01:51:56] I promised him that I would would and bid him my fondest farewell, turned and walked away.
[01:52:03] I wanted to run from him, from them, from the whole world.
[01:52:07] I wanted to run past those helpless men in those metal beds out to the street and far far away,
[01:52:12] but I kept my control and walked at a brisk pace.
[01:52:16] The echoes of that screen resounded inside me again and again, threatening to tear me apart.
[01:52:22] Suddenly, the anguish melted away as I stepped out into the brutal, tropic sun.
[01:52:27] But the feeling that I had still ran like hot lava through my veins.
[01:52:34] The ride back home was the same. No one looked at the scenery or any other nor talked with anyone.
[01:52:39] Each was involved with their own memories of second lieutenant Charles Robert, Eisenbach II.
[01:52:46] He was a man with such brilliant mind and exuberance to be alive.
[01:52:50] Now he lay in a hospital, suffering a far worse fate to him than death.
[01:52:55] His once healthy body was now frail and flimsy, like a person who had always been an invalid.
[01:53:00] Left only was his mind and he had too much time to think and reflect upon what had happened and what was going to happen.
[01:53:07] It was a great strain and shock to see him with hope.
[01:53:12] He will work his way back because he does have guts.
[01:53:18] And what's interesting about that, that's a heavy rendering of what happened.
[01:53:24] But that's actually from his personal journal that he kept while he was in Vietnam.
[01:53:28] So the thoughts of whatever probably a 20 year old kid seeing this unfold.
[01:53:34] Well, I need to say, Alaska will be aired. I think he had a year of college.
[01:53:38] He was kind of a platoon spokesman. He became a writer and a poet.
[01:53:44] So he obviously had a great command of the English language and maybe saw some things or invented some things that weren't necessarily there.
[01:53:52] But that was his reality.
[01:53:55] I can't argue with it. Nothing he said in the air. I don't think was untrue.
[01:54:01] I was what we call a herton gator.
[01:54:05] In fact, I remember they told me that I was going to an army hospital in Japan.
[01:54:15] Well, the only thing I knew was that Marines when they got wounded and Vietnam, they went to a naval hospital in Yokohama.
[01:54:21] So I just pissed a little busy fit. Why are you setting me to an army hospital?
[01:54:27] Not knowing that this army hospital in Camp Drake outside of Techakawa Air Force Base in Japan was where all head injuries went.
[01:54:35] That was their specialty was head injuries.
[01:54:39] So they probably got a dock in there to calm me down and tell me how this was the place I needed to be.
[01:54:45] And one hospital was just as good as another, which of course you don't believe when it's not your services hospital.
[01:54:53] But hey, I was 23-year-old kiddo and I had been a naval hospital before and I always got in great care.
[01:55:01] And that's what I was expecting.
[01:55:03] And it turned out this general support hospital that I ended up at was first rate.
[01:55:09] I was there for like 10 days before I was a stable enough to make the planter at back home and interesting place.
[01:55:17] So for 10 days you're there.
[01:55:19] Are they doing surgery or are they just trying to let you heal up?
[01:55:23] They're just kind of letting me heal up and they've started physical therapy on my head.
[01:55:29] Tremendous spasms in both my legs and my left arm so they had physical therapy makes some braces that they put on my feet.
[01:55:38] And they made a hand brace for my thumb sticking out like this.
[01:55:41] And on my arm it's spasms that's coming to beat me into the eye.
[01:55:45] I have to hold this arm down.
[01:55:47] I was miserable.
[01:55:49] There was just a young kid to my right who lost an eye was an Air Force Airman.
[01:55:55] And it lost an eye and an eye and that was this that was this problem.
[01:55:59] That was this major problem.
[01:56:00] And he had been tasked to be my feeder and my smoker.
[01:56:03] I was a smoker then and I would just crave a camel and he'd have to be around to handle it because I couldn't deal with it.
[01:56:11] But terrific kid and they really took excellent care of me in this hospital.
[01:56:17] Just like everybody else.
[01:56:19] So the spasms in your arms and legs which we are all admittedly
[01:56:24] all of us just laughed when you told that story.
[01:56:27] It's pretty disturbing but that had to be a little bit of a good sign because some kind of spasms means that there's some nerve signal getting there.
[01:56:36] Well exactly.
[01:56:37] And what it was was a screwed up signal.
[01:56:40] It wasn't telling the thing to do anything useful.
[01:56:43] It was just telling these muscles to fire.
[01:56:46] Again from the damage to area in my brain as I understand it.
[01:56:51] And looking back on it.
[01:56:55] But that was your mindset that you're going now from hey.
[01:56:57] I mean when you said you were paralyzed when you initially got hit.
[01:57:00] And now you can't move your leg.
[01:57:02] You can't move your leg.
[01:57:03] You can't move your leg.
[01:57:04] You're going to move your legs or your left arm.
[01:57:06] But and would you in your mind?
[01:57:08] Did you think okay I might be this might be it.
[01:57:10] You know I might be paralyzed like this forever.
[01:57:12] Well of course you don't know what the future holds.
[01:57:15] I mean none of us do but the better you become more aware you become of your limit.
[01:57:20] And yeah you start to think how long is this going to last?
[01:57:25] Is this forever?
[01:57:26] What am I going to do for the rest of my life?
[01:57:29] You know you're not going to be a Marine because you have a job description.
[01:57:35] Marines through you know in wheelchairs.
[01:57:38] But the one saving grace I always thought was well I'm single.
[01:57:43] At least there's not you know a wife involved in a child on the way.
[01:57:48] Like most of my contemporaries had.
[01:57:51] But conversely the guys who were you know as I found out later on it but this the guys who were married felt it was much better to be married because you had this.
[01:58:00] You know direct support system which you were coming back into.
[01:58:03] You know you know this woman was going to be there.
[01:58:06] They weren't of course always.
[01:58:08] You know things don't last a lot of times when you get big changes like that in your life unfortunately.
[01:58:13] But the guys who are married that are much better be married and those of us who are single those much better be
[01:58:17] single.
[01:58:18] But sure you say you know that's the first question out of your mind is when you get to your final destination was for me with the thessanable hospital.
[01:58:29] So how long am I going to be here?
[01:58:31] Well they don't have any idea.
[01:58:33] They don't know how your cover is going to unwind.
[01:58:36] So finally my doctor said to me hey you could be here for two years and I can't guarantee that you'll walk out even then.
[01:58:43] I thought to myself well damn he didn't know who he's dealing with my plan.
[01:58:47] I got shot on the fourth until my plan was to be back and we got none by Christmas with my guys.
[01:58:51] You know that didn't work out but that was my plan.
[01:58:53] And I worked hard to make it happen.
[01:58:55] It didn't happen.
[01:58:56] You know a year later I walked out of there under my own power with a leg brace and a cane and got on to ambulance
[01:59:02] and was driven down the road in 1995 to the VA hospital and Richmond Virginia where I was stayed for another four months.
[01:59:08] But you don't know what's going to happen.
[01:59:10] You're just it's a slowly evolving kind of mental process you go through.
[01:59:18] You hit a point I did and I know the guy is dead too because we talked about this.
[01:59:23] Well you'd say why me you know why my my my my my my my god why does that happen to me.
[01:59:29] And I don't know if other guys got there got an answer to that question but I did.
[01:59:34] I over time this answer evolved you know and answer was why not you I some buck.
[01:59:42] Who are you?
[01:59:43] You're no better than anybody else I put down that little blue planet but you're no worse either.
[01:59:49] So you're just going to have to go with the punches and that's the answer why not you you're no better in a worse than anybody else.
[01:59:57] I mean that's a little hard for I think for some people to stomach but that was the answer I got.
[02:00:01] And you know it's it's served as purpose okay why not me this is it this is the way it is I guess I'm what I just have to take it a day at a time.
[02:00:11] And do my best to get better and see where I end up and and when I get to that point.
[02:00:17] You know I'll make decisions about what I'm going to do for the future which I you know I did and I had a lot of vocational counseling from the VA.
[02:00:24] When I get flushed you know out of the service and out of the VA system.
[02:00:29] I got a lot of vocational like I said vocational counseling I got interest tests that I take you know because the question now is okay what am I going to do for the rest of my life.
[02:00:38] Well not surprisingly I scored highest on military officer.
[02:00:42] Oh right.
[02:00:43] Gee I just was one of those a couple of months ago second highest was FBI agent.
[02:00:49] Oh that sounds good but again they don't have job descriptions for guys who limp you know and finally I scored third on teacher.
[02:01:00] I said well I see interesting and that evolved in the thing about becoming a therapist.
[02:01:06] And specifically a speech therapist I had a speech defect that I just kind of overcame myself at Bethesda by slowing down and trying to think about what I was going to say before I said it.
[02:01:18] I got the nickname Spock because my speech became very deliberate but when I was just spontaneous apparently and I never heard this but my roommate would say I said I said what?
[02:01:33] He said what was with that language that's a what language.
[02:01:36] And I would maybe had some visitors couple of gals from people I know or overseas and got up.
[02:01:42] He said it was filthy and I said really I never heard it and he said yes I started to slow down myself and try to think about what I would say but speech therapist kind of stuck in my mind after this vocational counseling that I got.
[02:01:58] That's eventually what I became was a speech language pathologist.
[02:02:01] So he said your speech was filthy meaning that you were like swearing.
[02:02:05] Oh yeah.
[02:02:06] Just using every filthy word like what's a Tourette syndrome is that what it's called?
[02:02:12] Yeah, what Tourette syndrome?
[02:02:14] I had no idea that I was doing that I didn't hear it.
[02:02:18] Because what you just did it naturally like that how you talked kind of thing or like why didn't you remember it?
[02:02:24] I know it wasn't how I normally would speak it was just it would just come out and totally inappropriate situations and it not monks the guys but you know monks visitors.
[02:02:36] Like I said I didn't know what's going on.
[02:02:39] But you uh you kind of glanced over the fact that that you know you got the feedback hey you can't you can't stay in the Marine Corps anymore and you.
[02:02:49] It sounds like you you figured that out yourself but at some point that's that's got to turn into a harsh reality.
[02:02:55] But that's what you wanted to do.
[02:02:57] You're in Vietnam, you're in a cartoon command you got the best guys in the world and all of a sudden in one day it's gone.
[02:03:02] It's right it's gone and you don't know what's going to replace it but yeah eventually you get before a physical evaluation board.
[02:03:10] And what I had hoped for because most of my roommates and most of the guys there I knew that had Marines they had orthopedic injuries.
[02:03:19] You know they got stitched up with the machine gun and their legs or whatever they got put on the temporary disabled retired list.
[02:03:26] That allowed you five years to regain your ability and if you could you would get the chance to go back into the Marine Corps.
[02:03:37] Well on the other hand if you got better the VA could drop your disability rating down so it was kind of a double edge sword most guys just wanted to get out.
[02:03:47] But for guys like me that they call a life risk if I wanted I wanted to career it.
[02:03:53] And I argued that I could fly any desk well that that was fine but that wasn't that wasn't going to fly.
[02:03:59] I was going to be retired but as long as I was on the TDRL temporary disabled retired list I thought well I got a chance but I get a I met the VA hospital now I've been through my physical evaluation board they've asked me questions and I've got a transcript of it.
[02:04:15] My doctor submitted statements and stuff like that and they said well we'll get you on the TDRL.
[02:04:20] And I said great because I'd have five years to work myself back in the Corps came through my orders for retirement hours came through one day and when I was in the VA hospital.
[02:04:30] Permanent disabled retired list no chance that they were getting back.
[02:04:34] But I was just talking about I was on the phone to the secretary and navy's office which I got through to and some nice older woman right there who obviously had heard this story before you know I was promised the TDRL but I've heard I've been permanently retired.
[02:04:54] Lieutenant you've got to understand that you know we've done this a few times before and we kind of know the the history of these kinds of injuries and your board did recommend the permanent retired disabled this not the temporary.
[02:05:11] So you know we have to go to the they say in of course they were right but again you know I was you know by now I'm old men at 24 right and I'm being retired excuse me I didn't that's not the plan.
[02:05:23] But that's that's how it all worked how long did it take you to realize how long to take you to accept that so you you kind of got through the the why me why not right.
[02:05:34] How did you how long to take you to get through this fact that okay now the Marine Corps your your sacred Marine Corps has has made this decision.
[02:05:45] You know I'm still thinking about.
[02:05:50] So 50 on years that's right I'm still now I got a new why me question here but now I I adjusted.
[02:05:59] I went out of graduate school got a master's degree in the speech department the University of Florida and.
[02:06:06] They weren't quite sure what had walked through the door when I went when I arrived I wanted to know where the coffee mess was.
[02:06:15] And they're all looking like the what. Oh, you know place where you get just dropping morning get a cup of coffee pay a dime or whatever.
[02:06:22] Well, we don't have anything like that. Well we're going to get one to do now we do now that's right and most of my classes were on the third floor of this building.
[02:06:30] Which had an elevator went up to third floor but it didn't work had worked in years.
[02:06:35] And so I went to my advisor I said look this tree flights of stairs is killed me three times a day you know we got to get that elevator work as well can't do it like no way hasn't worked since I've been here the prof set.
[02:06:47] Well we'll see about that. He said well what are you going to do I said well I'm going to talk to the president.
[02:06:53] The president what president president of the university.
[02:06:56] So you can't do that really watch me so I did he wasn't there but his it's like chief of staff was who happened to be a guy who had kind of an arm injury from World War II.
[02:07:09] And he said oh can't be repaired can it. So lots of the telling me sir.
[02:07:15] I'll take care. Well next day it was working just fine and work for the next three years.
[02:07:20] I'm sure my master broke. Didn't have a down day. How we kind of we kind of jumped over this part how long were you in Bethesda for total I wasn't Bethesda for over 12 months.
[02:07:31] And and throughout that time you know when you showed up when you got wounded you couldn't move your legs or arm.
[02:07:38] What was the progression like getting you back to to you know the best.
[02:07:44] Yeah well it was a physical therapy occupational therapy you know once they which I decided once it was good twice might be better.
[02:07:52] So I argued for that and pretty soon I got that.
[02:07:55] By November my right leg had started to get remarkably better.
[02:08:01] My left leg still wasn't real useful but that you put a brace on it and I could bite November I was walking.
[02:08:10] I had a crutch on one side on the right side a law-francrutch you know the metal things called polio crutches back then but I don't know what they're.
[02:08:20] I think my call them law-francrutches because that's a guy invented and a carman on my left side but I was walking you know and of course I went back to.
[02:08:28] I found a drop to a carman and and went to two law-francrutches drop the right the left one after a while back to the right one then drop that to a cane and the leg brace on my left.
[02:08:39] And then I did fine for about 42 years that way about eight years ago my right leg decided to take an early retirement on me and so I had to start wearing a brace on that leg and.
[02:08:52] And I was falling too much so they put me into a to an electric wheelchair which is what I.
[02:08:58] Scooter around the house and around town and.
[02:09:01] The scooter over there is what it flies my my wheelchair and flies 247 pounds and it doesn't fly that flies that breaks down in four or five parts of my life.
[02:09:12] Can do it usually by our own course this weekend we've had the kids to help her just throw it back.
[02:09:17] I know some of the real so speaking you fall down some of the notes had you wear in our football helmet while you were down there it sounded like that made a quite an impact on some of the places that you'd visit with your football home and.
[02:09:30] Well, you know I was falling when I started that you know walking to penalty at the hospital.
[02:09:36] You don't have a left foot drop.
[02:09:37] It means the brace was supposed to bring it up so it clears all the little obstacles and they're you don't have pay attention to when you got too good feet.
[02:09:45] But I would fall into elevators because they wouldn't exactly align and I'd fall into everybody in there.
[02:09:50] So eventually I started to they get they say you need a football helmet.
[02:09:54] You got the right right I have got I've got a defect up there you can put your hand in my defect and take it take my my pulse just like this for a squeeze hard the thing would pop up.
[02:10:04] But when you get a titanium plate in there.
[02:10:07] Oh that was after about a year at the end of the my year they waited a year before they put a plate in your skull because it was considered a
[02:10:13] a contaminated room not sure what that meant to the medical people but it meant to me it meant you waited a year and put the plate in.
[02:10:23] But so this football film my dad got it from the University of Delaware he worked and it was blue with the commission thing with you know y'all stripes.
[02:10:33] So in the occupational therapy I got a can of all of graph pain with my they'd make it.
[02:10:38] You do everything with my left hand I spray painted this thing. I'll grab my roommate at the time he had been there long and I had apparently I was the perfect roommate for him because.
[02:10:51] I had lost my sense of smell and taste and apparently he'd been in a body spike a cast from here you know down it was knees for like six months and he's stuck to high heaven.
[02:11:01] So I didn't smell so I was apparently the per his sister got this button book where he had a blank button and a bunch of things you could put on the button.
[02:11:11] And but it also had some you know bullet holes with the shattered glass type things so I put those on the front of the front of the football.
[02:11:21] And I had a little badge. Oh, you know maybe three inches around said my head is a pressed area.
[02:11:31] And I'd wear that on my my bathroom around the hospital. I'd know people would just stop and look at me and I agreed that.
[02:11:37] Look at me and they just they can't move out of the way.
[02:11:41] And you want to mess with this guy he might have been crazy dark dark humor's popular family.
[02:11:46] Well dark humor you know Bethesda that time there was probably all always about a dozen of us young look and it's you know between the eighth floor and the fourth floor of the.
[02:11:56] Well they call it Roosevelt's erection the tower.
[02:11:59] And Bethesda anyway and we had a we didn't know it at the time but we had a great group dynamic going on there was always someone who was worse off than you.
[02:12:09] So when you started to feel sorry for yourself or started to get down your buddies would come in as hey.
[02:12:14] What about you know what about ice my cover there what about but to chill over here or so and so smitty and and sure enough there was always somebody better off than he was putting up the good fight.
[02:12:24] So you never got to down on yourself.
[02:12:27] No, those are those are important lessons for life right you bet I mean we can complain I'll be the for all be the person complaining about oh I.
[02:12:36] I I I I jumped my finger and I'm all bad about it because I can't do something that's like no you what you need to do is be quiet and as I always say do what you can you know do you can.
[02:12:48] So so you get down.
[02:12:51] So now we're going back to college you got the elevator work and you got a and how long is it takes you to get your your doctor what you get your doctor.
[02:13:00] I got my doctor and and speech language pathology you know with a minor in psychology.
[02:13:06] But it first I had to get the masters and I.
[02:13:11] I'm not sure how the University of Florida looked at my transcript from the Naval Academy and how they factored in you know weapons and navigation and courses like that I that I took but I had to do a whole lot of.
[02:13:24] Under graduate courses before I could you know move into the graduate level course so it took me.
[02:13:30] I think about three years to get the masters to very go into school full time.
[02:13:34] And the VA was you know picking up the tap for that.
[02:13:37] VA isn't very good to me very good and I know there's a lot of complaints out there about the VA and I'm sure some of them are awarded to some degree or another but.
[02:13:46] I don't understand with the VA you know it doesn't happen yesterday doesn't happen five minutes from now it happens it happened down the road but as long as you you know check every box and go from.
[02:13:58] A BCD instead of trying to jump from a to F you know it'll all work for you great.
[02:14:04] And what point did you meet Jerry. I met Sherry after I had my masters degree.
[02:14:14] My work for a year down in Orlando at an Easter Seals community and was a great experience my one of my little profs at the University of Florida invited me to come back up to the medical center there and become one of their staff speech pathologist at the medical center.
[02:14:29] And I was like, I'm sorry, which is why I did that Sherry was a staff occupational therapist had an office that kind of across the hall for me.
[02:14:37] We met we met and being dull normal about these things like most men apparently I didn't catch on fast enough so we had a mutual friend who was in the other master speech pathologist there she had us over for dinner one night great.
[02:14:54] Still didn't get it so we were at a convention one time when summer and we were having lunch together myself and the other speech pathologist who was also a friend of Sherry's.
[02:15:04] And she said, I like, why do you think I invited you and Sherry a work for dinner.
[02:15:12] You like us. She said, listen if you don't when we get back from this convention if you don't ask her out when two weeks she's going to ask you.
[02:15:23] So I asked her out and we went out and we did it for a while and eventually everything fell into place and we got engaged me while I had to kind of give an up on marriage I had dated a fair amount and you know I was just running into wall after wall.
[02:15:42] So but I decided you know I want to be a dad I love kids I always love kids so I went to the children's age society for and I wanted to stop.
[02:15:54] Well back then and this was not the late 60s early 70s they looked at you like you had a hole in your head of course which I did so that was okay.
[02:16:10] They gave me all the stuff to read and all these exercises to go through and said, you come back in a couple of months and if you still want to pursue this thing we'll talk about it. Well so I did and this process took about nine months but eventually I was approved.
[02:16:25] I mean they my everybody my family had it submit letters and all my friends and they just they sliced and dice me one side up one side and down the other because they weren't going to let one other kid I was getting a home some kind of freaking guy and what you totally understand.
[02:16:45] But getting engaged all that went away you know if you're going to get married that's what they wanted they wanted obviously a two person situation for their kids and a stable so.
[02:16:56] If you got engaged or something like that during this process it was over but I had been accepted and sure enough so as we got engaged I call my case work and told her great I way to go and book things the options off though.
[02:17:10] Okay, that's fine. We'll do it the old fashioned way which we did.
[02:17:15] And as this time you still pursuing your doctor and at this time I'm percent of my doctor at this time that's right.
[02:17:21] And that was about seven years going to school half time and we're going to have time you know I'd get a fellowship at the VA and you know half time research fellowship or clinical fellowship and stuff like that and go to school half time.
[02:17:36] I'm going to be a money head run out by then so I was funding this which was fine with me.
[02:17:41] And then at some point you get you finish with the marriage you get married and you start to have kids this is true.
[02:17:48] Matt Matt he's a third kid. Oh, here we go.
[02:17:52] My time to shine. Yeah, this is your moment.
[02:17:55] What was it like for you growing up with a dad?
[02:17:58] You know, I don't think it was a typical childhood compared to my friends. He would charge and earn it probably felt like four in the morning.
[02:18:09] But it was probably more like seven o'clock.
[02:18:12] Wake us up. We'd all be out in the hallway in line like formed up ready to go prior to school and he would you know do what he called belly busters.
[02:18:22] Yes, he morning PT with the family. You know, obviously like it was very limited but we did like push ups set ups jumping jacks.
[02:18:33] What else you have to do?
[02:18:35] It's a lot of the only thing I was thinking of.
[02:18:37] Yeah, and so it was just like I don't think anybody else's kids did that at the time.
[02:18:42] Yeah, right.
[02:18:43] Oh, there you go.
[02:18:47] You'd wake us up by like playing reveli. You know, I knew what reveli was before I joined the military.
[02:18:55] It was, it was, it couldn't shoot gum.
[02:18:59] It was somewhat controlled case. There's a lot of discipline there that maybe other kids didn't have.
[02:19:04] We got a, we got put on restriction, which I didn't know what that was until I went to Naps.
[02:19:10] I guess, possibly being grounded as opposed to being grounded. We got put on restriction and that's just what it was called and we had to like explain what it was to our friends and
[02:19:19] Okay, no, we've got to know what restrictions we're saying.
[02:19:22] What is that?
[02:19:24] So we have to explain that's being grounded.
[02:19:27] Yeah, he was kind of like this, this hero, like a lot of our friends though because he was, he was really good with our friends and he was just like kind of like a wild man.
[02:19:39] He was notorious throughout the school system of not being a guy to mess with if you were like a school administrator.
[02:19:46] I think the,
[02:19:48] Is that one of my kids? I'm going to be talking to you.
[02:19:51] Not in the notes, but I'll tell the story. I think it was sixth grade and I had a friend who would get in trouble in class regularly and you know what, you know,
[02:20:01] I'm the youngest kid, so a lot of teachers knew who I was and my sisters were probably better at school at that time than I was.
[02:20:08] And so, you know, the teacher would pulls me aside one day and she's like, you need to stop being friends with she now.
[02:20:13] You're just a bad influence on you.
[02:20:15] And so I go home, tell my dad that, you know what, we'll see.
[02:20:19] Next day, like it's, you know, the school that has like the loudspeaker that like clicks on from when the office calls and I think, you know, one of the, one of the office staff is like,
[02:20:29] you know, Mr. Schneiderman, I think Mr. Eisenbach is here. She's like, oh, great. I'll send him out down to the office and you could kind of hear it in the voice of the office staff and they're like, no, no, he's, he's here to see you.
[02:20:44] And the whole class is just like, what is happening?
[02:20:49] So yeah, it is, it is clearly different, you know, it's, you know, the growing up with like somebody that is like the essence of the brain core.
[02:20:58] Like discipline kind of like iron fisted.
[02:21:01] This is what people think of.
[02:21:03] But fair.
[02:21:04] Sure.
[02:21:06] Yeah.
[02:21:07] That's what we're calling these days.
[02:21:09] Most of the time, like, you know, there were things that, you know, you just have to do because that's way, I want them done or that's what I said.
[02:21:18] So I didn't matter how much.
[02:21:19] Right.
[02:21:20] Which is like, that's what he wants.
[02:21:21] So, you know, you kind of had to grow up learning just to like, you know, roll with that sort of stuff, which is,
[02:21:27] you know, a lot of what you see in the military is like, we do things this way just because it's the way we do it.
[02:21:33] Or it's, because the way I want it.
[02:21:36] But, you know, not everything is like that in the military, you know, you get, you know, input, which,
[02:21:41] I don't, like, eight years old I have a lot of input and things.
[02:21:45] So what point did you decide you were doing with the Naval Academy?
[02:21:48] Like him, we would schedule trips around the anapolis area to go visit friends and we'd wind up, you know, at the academy or
[02:21:56] you know, we'd be like the logical one.
[02:21:59] We'd work for it.
[02:22:00] Right.
[02:22:00] We'd go, uh, we'd go to San Diego for spring break and go check out the Naval Station, things like that.
[02:22:07] Uh, and so, you know, I kind of known for a while, like, you know, I want to be a pilot.
[02:22:13] This is kind of what I want to do.
[02:22:15] And I think the best way to go about that is probably go to the Naval Academy.
[02:22:19] Um, and so I'd probably like early high school kind of had that idea in mind.
[02:22:25] Like him, I probably wasn't the best student ever.
[02:22:28] Uh, I got better over time, but at that time, I didn't really, like, put a lot of effort into
[02:22:34] school and homework.
[02:22:35] So I had to go to, uh, it was called Naval Academy Prep School, which is, you know, basically an academic year to get you ready for the Naval Academy.
[02:22:43] Um, I found out about restriction there.
[02:22:46] Uh, the little more restriction to everything.
[02:22:48] That was it.
[02:22:49] Right.
[02:22:50] Uh, well, I'll tell you, if I can, my, my, my, my one of my favorite stories about Matt was,
[02:22:54] when he was, uh, getting ready to apply for the Naval Academy, you know,
[02:22:58] I thought he had taken the PSAT or whatever that is, the pre-set.
[02:23:03] And I thought, well, we got to bump this up a little bit.
[02:23:05] So, you know, I'll challenge him.
[02:23:08] So I made a bet when I said, I bet I can score higher on the SAT than you can.
[02:23:13] And he looks me like, of course, that I got three heads and 14 ears.
[02:23:17] Oh, dear.
[02:23:19] So I, I mean, while has strategically bought some of these,
[02:23:23] uh, prep books that I was leaving around the house.
[02:23:25] Because we played a win over here.
[02:23:27] That's right.
[02:23:28] And I hope he would buy into those, you know, he didn't.
[02:23:31] But we scheduled the, the SAT and we took it and the results come back and, you know,
[02:23:37] you gotta be careful with your wish for.
[02:23:39] I outscored him and I, I hate like a 650 or 750 at 800 on the English side.
[02:23:45] And he looks he's dead.
[02:23:47] No, whatever he said, 50 on English.
[02:23:50] So that all just came back to heart me and I, I beat him on that.
[02:23:54] But, uh, right here, you know, he had a lot of things going for me.
[02:23:57] It was an eagle scout, uh, he'd let her in a couple sports at high school.
[02:24:01] And he did, he had a good interview with a, with a building gold officer.
[02:24:05] Fellow who kind of recruits for the NA able academy and, you know, around the area.
[02:24:09] They got him all over the country.
[02:24:11] He helps that he knows all those people too.
[02:24:14] Well, I don't think so.
[02:24:16] But, and I didn't know anybody on the, on the admissions board and when they helped if I did.
[02:24:19] You got in there yourself.
[02:24:21] And you ended up being a, a sub-mariner though.
[02:24:24] Uh, you know, the, you know, the, you look at me like any selection program is going to be tough.
[02:24:30] And there's only a limited number of spots and there's, you know, physical requirements.
[02:24:36] You have to meet, uh, you know, I don't have 20, 20 vision anymore.
[02:24:39] So, uh, probably being a pilot was not in, in the, in the, in the works for me.
[02:24:43] So, I just went, uh, you know, I think I got selected as a surface warfare officer.
[02:24:48] And then, you know, I didn't necessarily want to do that.
[02:24:51] I wanted to do something different, uh, or more challenging.
[02:24:54] And so, I went asked to be a submarine officer.
[02:24:57] And you have to, you have to ask to get an interview with the, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,
[02:25:06] the captain on the yard who is the, the head submarine officer there.
[02:25:11] And, you know, he looked at all my stuff and said, you picked the wrong major.
[02:25:15] I was an econ major at the time. And, uh, again, probably to have the best grades ever.
[02:25:20] But I was good enough in math and science that he, uh, let me through onto the, the Naval reactors interview.
[02:25:26] So, went from there.
[02:25:29] Uh, you got to go, still kind of like old school where you used to have to go interview with Admiral Rickover and he'd,
[02:25:35] play mine games with you. They still, they keep that traditional life.
[02:25:39] You still go interview with the four star that's headed to Naval reactors, but, uh, fewer mine games.
[02:25:44] More just, you know, technical interview and then go.
[02:25:47] And how many years did you end up doing?
[02:25:49] I did six. I got out in 2012, uh, July of that year.
[02:25:53] So, just a little over six years.
[02:25:55] And so, I, what are you doing now?
[02:25:59] I am, uh, when I call fully retired and doing it immensely.
[02:26:04] After my speech pathology career kind of,
[02:26:09] it just kind of peatered out here in the Pacific Northwest. It's a whole, uh, different, uh, atmosphere and, uh,
[02:26:17] ball game for how I'd held professionals, then it is on the East Coast, which was, okay.
[02:26:22] But, uh, so I, in about, in 95, uh, when it is selling life insurance and mutual funds, uh, which, uh,
[02:26:31] which I enjoyed, but, uh, wasn't wildly successful.
[02:26:35] I was successful enough to, you know, pay the bills and keep some income coming in.
[02:26:39] But finally, uh, uh, uh, uh, good to that and decided to live a life of, uh, leisure.
[02:26:46] Shall we say? But, uh, you know, every day is a little bit different.
[02:26:50] You know, getting up in the morning is not the typical.
[02:26:53] You got to get braces on and, and, uh, make sure you don't fall out of bed.
[02:26:58] You know, my, my, one of my theories is gravity always wins.
[02:27:02] And it always does, you know, so everything is just a little bit more difficult.
[02:27:07] But, uh, it's okay. It sure beats, uh, rein it on and kind of looking up with the,
[02:27:12] sod, uh, which is where I theoretically should be.
[02:27:18] Well, we are, uh, certainly glad that you didn't end up there.
[02:27:23] Yeah, I was. And that you ended up here. It's, uh, it's probably a good place to wrap it up.
[02:27:28] Um, just, uh, just awesome to sit and talk with you. Um, we'll like Goi's, Chicago.
[02:27:33] Did you have any closing thoughts, Matt? Anything that I missed?
[02:27:36] I don't have any closing thoughts.
[02:27:39] Well, you just want to thought, here's, it's just, you, we almost always miss, uh, in the service
[02:27:46] and frankly, in any kind of industry or something. And that's the part that, uh,
[02:27:51] your spouse plays for you. My wife has been terrific over the last 41 years.
[02:27:56] Uh, she's, uh, a, the level of my life and be the mother of my children.
[02:28:01] And, uh, you know, I, I just, I don't think I could get to a week without her.
[02:28:06] Uh, she, she helps me. She points out where I'm, you know, turning left when I'm maybe
[02:28:12] should stay the straight and narrow. You know, she's a good cook.
[02:28:15] Uh, she's pretty good at managing my life.
[02:28:18] And I'll lower dearly.
[02:28:23] Well, that's, that's awesome. And, uh, yeah, like, we, we can often overlook the, the, the, the, the,
[02:28:32] families, you know, whether it's right, the husband, the wife, the kids.
[02:28:36] They all make a huge sacrifice for those that are still in the military.
[02:28:39] You know, they always make this sacrifice to support, you know, their spouse.
[02:28:44] So, absolutely, to the families out there that are out there supporting
[02:28:48] this spouse's, um, thank you to you all. And, sir, you know, it's, it's just been
[02:28:54] on her to sit here and talk with you and, and I feel, thank you for coming on the show.
[02:28:58] More importantly, though, obviously, um, thank you for your, for your, for your service
[02:29:03] and your sacrifice.
[02:29:05] Well, you as well, Dr. Go ahead. Also you, yes.
[02:29:08] Yeah. Well, we're waiting on that echo.
[02:29:13] Uh, everybody serves in their own line. There we go.
[02:29:18] You just gotta, you just gotta, let's go through that.
[02:29:21] We, you know, the, the sacrifice that you made, the efforts that you made, um,
[02:29:27] you know, it's what allows us to be here today as a free people doing what we're doing.
[02:29:33] So, thank you for, for putting your, your own safety and your own life on the line for this country.
[02:29:42] And we deeply appreciate it.
[02:29:45] Well, thank you for your service again. And for all those out there who have served and are serving,
[02:29:50] you know, get some.
[02:29:51] Awesome.
[02:29:53] Thanks, I appreciate it.
[02:29:55] And with that Charles Robert Ike, Izenbach has left the building and honored to have him on to talk to.
[02:30:08] Here is perspective kind of a crazy life. Start with growing up in the Philippines.
[02:30:14] Yeah.
[02:30:15] The father is dad's.
[02:30:16] I'm like a character.
[02:30:17] Yeah.
[02:30:18] A character.
[02:30:20] He's like, yeah, the, he's like, from the Philippines.
[02:30:23] Right. But not technically Filipino.
[02:30:25] So you know, so they, well, yeah, you're from the Philippines, like, not computing.
[02:30:29] It's good.
[02:30:30] Interesting stuff.
[02:30:32] Um, and this is the awesome for us to sit here and, of course, get to, get to,
[02:30:37] talk with another hero, another individual that just steps up and overcomes.
[02:30:46] Reminding me, reminding us, right?
[02:30:54] That we need to do more.
[02:30:58] That we can do more.
[02:31:00] Is there anything echo Charles that you recommend that we should all do?
[02:31:04] Yeah.
[02:31:05] Okay.
[02:31:06] Of course.
[02:31:07] Okay.
[02:31:08] I think of the many reasons to do due to it.
[02:31:12] So I think we've concluded.
[02:31:14] Number one is that it's fun.
[02:31:16] That should be, however, I don't know if it's the biggest reason.
[02:31:20] I'm not sure.
[02:31:21] It's the reason that we'll keep you with it.
[02:31:24] Oh, yeah.
[02:31:25] There's so many strong reasons though.
[02:31:27] We'll just say, fun slash beneficial.
[02:31:30] Here's the weird thing.
[02:31:31] Like on social media.
[02:31:33] So, somebody asks me all these different questions, all these different questions about,
[02:31:37] what would you do if, what would you do if you have trouble controlling your temper,
[02:31:41] due to, what do you do if you have trouble detaching,
[02:31:44] or what's a good way to learn to detach, due to, due to, due to, due to,
[02:31:47] what's a good workout to start getting in shape, due to,
[02:31:49] what's a good way to let off steam and not get stressed out, due to.
[02:31:52] You see what I'm saying?
[02:31:53] Yes.
[02:31:54] This is the answer answer answer answer answer answer.
[02:31:56] So, yeah.
[02:31:57] Pretty much across the board, what we are saying, due to, due to, due to,
[02:32:01] what we are talking about is, when you do due to, you get it taboo key,
[02:32:05] for sure you're gonna need a key, so when you do key,
[02:32:09] this is the key you're gonna get, origin key.
[02:32:12] That's not just one origin key, get as many as you want,
[02:32:15] but you have different selections, as I'm saying, same same.
[02:32:19] So, one of the reasons to get an origin key, not that it's fun,
[02:32:24] it is fun to get an origin key.
[02:32:26] Sure, it is fun to get an origin key, but.
[02:32:28] They're actually the best thing, because how are all my personal feels when they shop?
[02:32:32] Yes.
[02:32:32] What do they call it?
[02:32:34] Like, some therapy, shopping, or is it that?
[02:32:37] What is called shop therapy?
[02:32:38] Yeah, it sounds like what it's called.
[02:32:40] No, oh, yeah, I don't know, but it's that situation,
[02:32:43] or it's therapeutic to go shopping.
[02:32:45] Some people just go winter shopping.
[02:32:47] I think what I have you ever heard might me rage against consumerism,
[02:32:52] because I'll do it right now.
[02:32:54] Well, you know, you people buy everything, right?
[02:32:57] I think what happens is there is a certain level of gratification that you get from building something,
[02:33:02] making something, right?
[02:33:03] Yes.
[02:33:04] Whether it's a brick wall, whether it's a re-paying and drywall in the kitchen,
[02:33:09] like it, there's a satisfaction that you get from it from creating something.
[02:33:14] Well, I hate to say it, but sometimes for some people,
[02:33:18] shopping starts to kind of replace that.
[02:33:21] Yeah.
[02:33:22] And they want to create something cool, they can just click on Amazon,
[02:33:25] and it's common, and they kind of get a little bit of a little bit of it.
[02:33:27] A little dose of it feels good.
[02:33:29] Yes.
[02:33:30] So there is that when you buy an orange and ghee, I will say you feel a little bit,
[02:33:33] and what's better though, is when you buy an orange and ghee,
[02:33:37] what you kind of feel, you look, when you buy some random thing off of Amazon.com,
[02:33:43] you don't know where that thing came from, right?
[02:33:45] You're not contracted to it.
[02:33:47] You buy an orange and ghee, you know what exactly what's happening.
[02:33:51] You know exactly where it came from.
[02:33:52] You know what it means.
[02:33:53] It's true.
[02:33:54] You know what it represents.
[02:33:55] True.
[02:33:56] You know that it has, so...
[02:33:58] So...
[02:33:59] So...
[02:34:00] Heck yes.
[02:34:01] So get yourself an orange and...
[02:34:02] Well, what you're talking about is completely correct.
[02:34:04] Well, so I had both, so you know you're saying,
[02:34:06] making something or doing something, creating something, creating something.
[02:34:09] Yes.
[02:34:10] So this may or may not count.
[02:34:11] So I switched the door some door knobs in my house.
[02:34:14] Big done.
[02:34:15] Right?
[02:34:16] You seem saying that.
[02:34:17] But you got gratification, right?
[02:34:18] Yeah.
[02:34:19] So you have the right satisfaction.
[02:34:20] But good about it, especially you shut that door because
[02:34:22] you shut that door.
[02:34:23] Yeah.
[02:34:24] Shut the salad.
[02:34:25] Yeah.
[02:34:26] Heck yeah.
[02:34:27] Well, one of them, the locking thing was like jammed up yet to use the thing.
[02:34:32] It was just give me issues.
[02:34:33] Mm-hmm.
[02:34:34] Like given the duobrocombe.
[02:34:35] The state of my door knob, that was like that wasn't an acceptable state.
[02:34:39] Okay.
[02:34:40] Isn't my room fixing that whole situation was like that.
[02:34:44] That was something that needed to be done.
[02:34:46] And I did it by myself.
[02:34:48] Same thing with the...
[02:34:49] A different door knob.
[02:34:50] Yeah.
[02:34:51] It needed a lock.
[02:34:52] It didn't have a lock.
[02:34:53] Okay.
[02:34:54] So there's three altogether with different issues.
[02:34:56] Same same.
[02:34:57] But, okay.
[02:34:58] So it did it.
[02:34:59] Yes.
[02:35:00] University of overcame it.
[02:35:01] Overcame it.
[02:35:02] It did it gratification.
[02:35:03] But on top of that, I shopped for the new door knobs on Amazon.
[02:35:06] And I got gratification from that too.
[02:35:08] Same thing.
[02:35:09] But.
[02:35:10] So that fact does remain.
[02:35:13] But with the ghee, you have the additional gratification.
[02:35:19] And of course, they're the best ghee in the world.
[02:35:21] But they are made in America.
[02:35:22] Imagine that.
[02:35:23] Like, you know when you're a kid, you want the best car.
[02:35:26] Yes.
[02:35:27] But it's hard to afford that car.
[02:35:28] Yeah.
[02:35:29] Orgian ghee.
[02:35:30] It's like, oh, you want the best ghee cool.
[02:35:31] Yeah.
[02:35:32] You can make it happen.
[02:35:33] Yeah.
[02:35:34] Or you could go get the not the not best ghee up to you.
[02:35:37] But I mean, it's well, that's on you though.
[02:35:40] It's face it.
[02:35:41] That's on you.
[02:35:42] That's not encouraged to be able.
[02:35:43] Oh no.
[02:35:44] Man.
[02:35:45] And the last.
[02:35:46] Get your ghee.
[02:35:48] Orgian.
[02:35:49] Main.
[02:35:50] Yeah.
[02:35:51] And the good thing is if you need other clothing items outside the realm of jujitsu, outside the realm of
[02:35:57] geese, outside the realm of rashguards, then you can get other clothing materials, such as t-shirts,
[02:36:03] such as hoodies, such as yes, jeans.
[02:36:07] American, made denim.
[02:36:09] Yeah.
[02:36:10] Same deal.
[02:36:11] And you might be thinking, well, why stop there?
[02:36:13] Don't worry.
[02:36:14] We didn't stop there.
[02:36:15] We didn't stop there.
[02:36:16] We didn't stop there.
[02:36:17] We didn't stop there.
[02:36:18] But you know where the letters from though?
[02:36:20] Where?
[02:36:21] Oh, it's from America.
[02:36:22] You know where the stitching is from though?
[02:36:24] Yes.
[02:36:25] Yeah.
[02:36:26] From America.
[02:36:27] Well, you know where they're actually assembled though, to be honest with you?
[02:36:29] America.
[02:36:30] And then there's some supplementation.
[02:36:35] Yeah.
[02:36:36] Yes.
[02:36:37] The most important kind of supplements by the way.
[02:36:40] The ones that work.
[02:36:42] And well, in the case of mulk, the kind of taste like dessert.
[02:36:46] So yes, that is the best kind of supplement in my opinion.
[02:36:49] But joint warfare, cruel oil.
[02:36:51] These are for you joints.
[02:36:52] Keep you in the game.
[02:36:53] That's a big deal.
[02:36:54] Like, doesn't matter how much I'm saying that is the deal.
[02:36:57] It's the deal.
[02:36:58] It's a real deal.
[02:36:59] If you're not in the game, then you just sort of know the game.
[02:37:01] Yeah.
[02:37:02] You know how like, you know, the kind of where you're super strong, but like your elbows
[02:37:06] or jamming you up so hard, like, probably you're not strong.
[02:37:08] No.
[02:37:09] Because your elbows can't take it.
[02:37:10] You're not strong.
[02:37:11] So yeah, joint warfare, cruel oil.
[02:37:12] Also disciplined.
[02:37:13] That's for your brain.
[02:37:14] Brain and body.
[02:37:15] It's a brain body sort of scenario.
[02:37:18] Look at you.
[02:37:19] That is becoming everyday one for me, by the way.
[02:37:22] Oh, you're on this.
[02:37:23] Detrain all day or away with a deep plane discipline, plain, the deep plane.
[02:37:27] Where was it that?
[02:37:28] I think Dave Burke.
[02:37:29] Is that really good?
[02:37:30] Oh, he is a weight good dude.
[02:37:32] I think I'm pretty sure I'm not sure.
[02:37:36] Let me come from that later.
[02:37:38] But nonetheless, discipline, free-brain, everyday and helps.
[02:37:42] Toolly does help.
[02:37:43] More calps every day too, especially when you got that.
[02:37:45] That little post dinner.
[02:37:48] You want a little something.
[02:37:49] Let's face it.
[02:37:50] You, let's face it.
[02:37:51] Stake is awesome.
[02:37:53] We all know that.
[02:37:55] But let's just face the facts.
[02:37:58] Sometimes you get done and you got that little craving.
[02:38:01] That little, that little want.
[02:38:03] She wants something called dessert.
[02:38:05] But you know, it's not part of the plan.
[02:38:07] You're just not on the program.
[02:38:08] You know it is not on the path, certainly.
[02:38:10] Yes.
[02:38:11] Cake is not on the path.
[02:38:13] But that's okay.
[02:38:14] We got you.
[02:38:15] You can have dessert.
[02:38:17] You get such off some milk.
[02:38:20] You're also for the kids.
[02:38:21] Where are your kids?
[02:38:22] So same deal.
[02:38:23] Same deal.
[02:38:24] But more engineered for the kids.
[02:38:25] Would you say is that safe to say engineered for the kids?
[02:38:28] Speaking of engineering for the kids.
[02:38:31] You know what?
[02:38:32] I'm not even going to mention it.
[02:38:33] But there is an artifact.
[02:38:34] Artifact, artifacts are on the product that we sampled at the vitamin shop situation.
[02:38:46] We allowed to talk about this because it might be like against some big reveal plan.
[02:38:50] You see what I'm saying?
[02:38:51] Are you talking about milk bars?
[02:38:53] It's been revealed.
[02:38:55] Okay.
[02:38:56] All right.
[02:38:57] There you go.
[02:38:58] Well nonetheless, look, that is going to be like another level even.
[02:39:00] Another layer of post-dinner dessert situation.
[02:39:04] Same thing.
[02:39:05] Yeah.
[02:39:06] I do know what you're saying.
[02:39:07] Because it is a candy bar.
[02:39:09] Straight up.
[02:39:10] Straight up.
[02:39:10] Good for you.
[02:39:11] Yeah.
[02:39:12] And legitimately good for you.
[02:39:13] Oh yeah.
[02:39:14] Don't taste like it.
[02:39:15] This is not normal.
[02:39:16] This is good.
[02:39:17] Yeah.
[02:39:18] It was different than when I was used to for sure.
[02:39:20] But the last thing.
[02:39:21] Yeah.
[02:39:22] You know what I have of those right now?
[02:39:23] How many?
[02:39:24] Mark bars.
[02:39:25] I have 200.
[02:39:27] Oh, you grabbed them all.
[02:39:28] See, that's where they went.
[02:39:29] Yeah.
[02:39:30] I was wondering where did those go?
[02:39:32] Because I kind of wanted someone to know.
[02:39:33] I never want anything.
[02:39:35] Like I'm always like, oh no, keep it.
[02:39:36] No, you can have it.
[02:39:37] No, you know, because that's just my kind of my personality.
[02:39:39] Like I don't even want to have that other stuff.
[02:39:42] Yeah.
[02:39:43] No.
[02:39:44] They were like, oh, I took them all.
[02:39:45] I put them all right my car.
[02:39:47] Okay.
[02:39:48] All right.
[02:39:49] So I got all those.
[02:39:50] No, I don't want you to do the right thing.
[02:39:51] Yeah.
[02:39:52] I don't want you to do the right thing.
[02:39:54] Yeah.
[02:39:55] Yeah.
[02:39:56] Okay.
[02:39:57] Cool.
[02:39:58] Long bars.
[02:39:59] Many more bars as you need.
[02:40:01] Anyway.
[02:40:02] So yes.
[02:40:03] So, moq bars.
[02:40:04] Not currently available, but on the horizon.
[02:40:07] On the horizon.
[02:40:08] Jockel White tea is available right now.
[02:40:09] Yes.
[02:40:10] If you need something organic in your life, could you want to feel like one of those people that is, you know, healthier than you are?
[02:40:19] Oh, yeah.
[02:40:20] Now you can come back at him.
[02:40:21] What someone's like, is that organic?
[02:40:22] Actually, yes it is.
[02:40:23] Otherwise, I wouldn't put it in my body.
[02:40:26] We would say, I'm the middle of the world of an organic organic.
[02:40:29] What?
[02:40:30] Step.
[02:40:31] So, there you go.
[02:40:32] And by the way, the stuff is all available at the wind and shop.
[02:40:35] Nationwide.
[02:40:36] Which is pretty.
[02:40:39] It's convenient, bottom line.
[02:40:41] Yeah.
[02:40:42] And only that sign.
[02:40:43] I'm a little troubled with convenience, right?
[02:40:46] Convenience, all of a sudden you know what.
[02:40:48] Is there a slippery slope to make Donald's.
[02:40:50] There's no.
[02:40:51] No.
[02:40:52] There's not.
[02:40:53] No, that's not.
[02:40:54] Don't let that happen.
[02:40:55] Yes sir.
[02:40:56] Also we have a store called
[02:40:58] Jocco store.
[02:41:00] They always said this.
[02:41:01] We have a store.
[02:41:02] Yeah, Jocco.
[02:41:03] We do.
[02:41:03] But it's not just you and me.
[02:41:05] It's all of us.
[02:41:05] We the whole group.
[02:41:06] We have a collective.
[02:41:07] Everyone here has a store.
[02:41:08] Your own store.
[02:41:09] You are our own store.
[02:41:10] We could have called it that.
[02:41:12] But we didn't think of that back then.
[02:41:13] A store could have just the people you know.
[02:41:15] Our store.
[02:41:16] The trooper store.
[02:41:17] Sure.
[02:41:18] For people that are just getting after it.
[02:41:19] Anyways, if you if you're getting after it,
[02:41:21] maybe you need a rashguard.
[02:41:22] Maybe you need a t-shirt.
[02:41:24] Maybe you need a hat.
[02:41:25] If you're echo, you don't need a hat because he doesn't wear a hat.
[02:41:28] Very rarely.
[02:41:29] I've never seen you with a hat.
[02:41:30] Not even for one second.
[02:41:32] Not even in the cold weather.
[02:41:33] No.
[02:41:34] I don't think, wait, maybe I seen you in an orange and beanie.
[02:41:36] I think you've never seen me in cold weather.
[02:41:39] Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
[02:41:40] You taught.
[02:41:41] That was cold weather.
[02:41:42] 19 degrees.
[02:41:43] Yeah, you must have had a hat on out there.
[02:41:44] I don't know if I didn't know.
[02:41:46] Yeah, I had a beanie on you.
[02:41:47] Yeah, you ran you.
[02:41:48] In the last, Jocco store.com.
[02:41:49] Yes, represent while you're on the path.
[02:41:50] That's where you get all this cool stuff.
[02:41:53] Also, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already.
[02:41:57] I think it's important.
[02:42:00] Verying levels of importance, but yeah, do it.
[02:42:02] Leave a review if you're in the mood.
[02:42:03] It's kind of cool thing to do to kind of like just confirm where you're at in your
[02:42:09] mental space.
[02:42:10] I think so.
[02:42:11] Don't forget about the grounded podcast, which is part of the Deafcore Network.
[02:42:17] You didn't know about that, did you?
[02:42:18] We got a whole network called the Deafcore Network.
[02:42:21] We're building a network.
[02:42:23] We got free podcasts on it.
[02:42:25] Jocco podcast, grounded podcast, and warrior kid podcast.
[02:42:30] You can subscribe to all of them if you want or none of them.
[02:42:33] Whatever.
[02:42:34] You can also check out warrior kid soap at IrishOx Ranch.com.
[02:42:40] There's a kid who's been a warrior kid since day one in the game.
[02:42:45] And guess what?
[02:42:46] He makes his own soap from goat milk.
[02:42:47] He goes to the he raise.
[02:42:48] And we have a new soap, a new soap.
[02:42:53] It's called, well, it's got some active ingredients that help fighting against bacteria.
[02:42:58] I don't really know what I'm talking about.
[02:43:00] Well, bacteria.
[02:43:02] My cromials.
[02:43:04] My crubs.
[02:43:05] Yeah.
[02:43:06] Those funguses.
[02:43:07] Yeah, fun guy.
[02:43:08] Yeah, all these things.
[02:43:11] All these things.
[02:43:12] All the things need to be defeated.
[02:43:14] So we have a soap.
[02:43:16] And it's called killer soap.
[02:43:18] And if you use it, it will help you to.
[02:43:22] You can make it.
[02:43:23] You can do it.
[02:43:24] Also YouTube.
[02:43:26] YouTube channel, you're interested in the video version of this podcast.
[02:43:31] Or excerpts from the podcast.
[02:43:33] You know, necessarily want to watch the whole thing all at once all the time.
[02:43:39] Or let's just say you might think that the world would be better place if as the world
[02:43:45] unfolded and things happen.
[02:43:48] That part of the world exploded or caught on fire.
[02:43:51] Because echo, because he has command of virtual reality, he can make my words make things
[02:44:00] explode.
[02:44:01] He can make my kettlebell make things blow up.
[02:44:07] Yes.
[02:44:08] He can make his own magical powers be revealed in forms of like sparks.
[02:44:16] I think I'm so inclined.
[02:44:18] Yeah.
[02:44:19] So that's echo troughs.
[02:44:20] Not be able to control everything in the world.
[02:44:23] But on the Jaco YouTube channel, he can make things happen.
[02:44:27] Yeah, sure.
[02:44:28] And video.
[02:44:29] He's proud of that.
[02:44:30] I mean, he's explosions in a while, but you know, yeah, we're going to continue that
[02:44:34] from time to time.
[02:44:35] I think.
[02:44:36] I hope.
[02:44:37] We also got kind of now called psychological warfare.
[02:44:39] It's a little psychological hitter if you need a little bump to get you over a bump.
[02:44:47] You can check that out on iTunes, Google Play or any MP3.
[02:44:50] We got flipside cambets.com where Dakota Meyer is making visual representations of discipline.
[02:44:57] Pure, distilled onto a canvas that you can then hang on your wall and it will keep you
[02:45:06] on the path.
[02:45:07] Also got a bunch of books, leadership strategy, and tactics, you know manual.
[02:45:11] May the warrior kid got three of those books, got Mikey in the dragons for the little
[02:45:18] kids, got the discipline equals freedom field manual.
[02:45:21] The audio version of that is on iTunes and Amazon, music and Google Play as an MP3.
[02:45:28] We got extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership, the fundamentals of combat leadership
[02:45:32] that I wrote about with my brother, Dave Babin.
[02:45:35] We have Eshelon Front, which is our leadership consultancy and what we do is we solve
[02:45:40] problems through leadership.
[02:45:43] Go to Ashelonfront.com if you need to help in your organization with that.
[02:45:46] We got EF Online, which is online leadership training to get you up to speed as a leader.
[02:45:52] Go to EF Online.com for that.
[02:45:54] We've got the muster, which is our live conference, gathering seminar.
[02:46:00] I gotta think of a better word because it's better than all those three things.
[02:46:06] Everyone that we've done has sold out.
[02:46:08] This year we are doing Orlando, we are doing Phoenix and we are doing Dallas.
[02:46:14] If you want to come, go to extremalorship.com every one of these that we have done has
[02:46:19] sold out and these are going to sell out too.
[02:46:21] So get there early.
[02:46:22] And also if you need leaders at any level in your organization, check out EF Overwatch.com
[02:46:31] for executive leadership, check out EF Legion.com for Frontline Leadership.
[02:46:38] These are our platforms to connect the vets that have experience leading with companies
[02:46:46] that need experienced leaders.
[02:46:48] Go check out those platforms.
[02:46:50] Also wanted to say, talking to Ike, asking him about any charities he wanted me to mention
[02:46:57] and he said the Semper Fife fund, which does a bunch of stuff for Marines, for Marine families,
[02:47:03] for Marines that are transitioning outside of the Marine Corps and also helps them out
[02:47:09] with their health and wellness.
[02:47:11] So that's Semper Fife fund.org and also you want to do check out the Fisher House, which
[02:47:18] is when troops get wounded and they're in the hospital for an extended period of time.
[02:47:24] The Fisher House provides them with a place to stick.
[02:47:27] That provides their families with a place to stay in the area so it's Fisher House.org.
[02:47:33] It's both these organizations are great organizations to check those out.
[02:47:37] And if you feel like you want to hear more from ECHO and I, you know, for whatever reason,
[02:47:44] if you want to throw a correction notice that we made a mistake, which is entirely possible,
[02:47:50] we probably need it.
[02:47:51] Well we're there, we're on the interwebs.
[02:47:56] And we're also on Twitter, we're on Instagram and we are on ZFrosion Book.
[02:48:06] And you can find ECHO at ECHO Charles and I am at Jocka Willink.
[02:48:12] Thanks once again to Charles Robert, Bobby Bob, Eisenbach, Ike, an absolute honor to me
[02:48:23] with him today to talk to him and to hear his incredible story of service to America and
[02:48:30] the rest of the veterans out there that are on active duty.
[02:48:36] The ones that have already retired that've left the service, all of you that have put
[02:48:40] on the uniform.
[02:48:41] Thank you for your service.
[02:48:43] And of course, the same goes out to our police and law enforcement and firefighters
[02:48:46] and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and border patrol and secret
[02:48:51] service, you take care of us here on the home front and you are appreciated as well and
[02:48:58] to both those groups.
[02:49:01] Thanks to your families for the support that you give to the folks that are wearing the
[02:49:08] uniform.
[02:49:10] And everyone else out there, you know when you think about when you think about the challenges
[02:49:20] that you face that I face that we all face, what challenges are we up against?
[02:49:26] What external power is trying to hold you down?
[02:49:31] Go into your little battle, your little battle in the world.
[02:49:36] And then if you can, you can remember someone like Ike and you can remember what he did
[02:49:47] facing these challenges shot in the head wounded, paralyzed, hospitalized.
[02:49:58] And you know what?
[02:49:59] Anyone of us can fold under those challenges of life.
[02:50:06] You can do that, you can fold, you can give it or you can do what Ike did.
[02:50:14] And what Ike does every day which is take on those challenges by getting out there and
[02:50:19] getting after it.
[02:50:23] So until next time, this is Echo and Jocco.
[02:50:30] texture