Jocko Podcast 269: Don't Just Go With The Flow. Take Action. With Dave Berke.

2021-02-20T10:01:46Z

Underground Premium Content: https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @echocharles @davidrberke 0:00:00 - Opening 0:02:00 - The Squad Leader Makes a Difference 2:21:44 - How to stay on THE PATH JOCKO UNDERGROUND Exclusive Episodes: https://app.redcircle.com/shows/64a89f88-a245-4098-8d8d-496325ec4f74/exclusive-content Jocko Store https://www.jockostore.com/collections/menApparel: Jocko Fuel: https://originmaine.com/nutrition Origin Jeans and Clothes: https://originmaine.com/durable-goods/ Origin Gis: https://originmaine.com/bjj-mma-fit/ 2:45:15 - Closing Gratitude

AI summary of episode

And I called my parents on speakerphone and, and, and, Lafes like Santa and their list, I'm like, hey, I just want to let you guys know, you know, we made New York Times bestseller and us, you know, with the book that I wrote with Lafes and my mom's like, oh, we'll see how long it's on their phone. But, but it does create that that it helps perpetuate this scenario, just describe and, you know, to whatever small percentage there are leaders in the military, just like every other organization that got their way, they, they, they got their way through and it, and they're not good leaders because they do exactly this and, and I'm, I'm thinking too of of not just a scenario where you're my subordinate leader and I go, hey, I want to done this way, Jaco. Even though he would go and interview people, like those quotes he's going to, he would interview people absolutely, but still he's going to, he's going to make that story kind of the way he wants it. Like hey, you guys all got to know this, this, this, this and know it good. And he was breaking into the landing zone can't trail out no way of knowing that these were enemy rocket rounds not American rounds coming from other bases the dark suit and men up slope he identified as enemy he knew that he knew that camouflage rig which from a distance made made them to him look like so many turtles. I would like to know if Lieutenant Colonel Rutland Beard was ever charged with negligence for ordering Charlie Company commander Captain Don Warren to leave his mortar platoon behind in a vulnerable position with no infantry support while the rest of Charlie moved out. And I rebutted that guy and said, well, if what you're going to do is just, you know, bark to them, shut up and do it, whether you believe it or not, that's not going to have a good outcome and here's why I went through the whole thing. It's kind of like college in a way, you know, you have like all these prerequisites. And the article, I mean, this book didn't paint Kirby in such a bad light as the manual did, which made him just sound like a complete, you know, Lacks a days ago guy that just let all the stuff go and didn't have any discipline and didn't follow any good protocols. Because right before that, you're looking at your fingernails and like you're, you know, I don't know if you worked out today, whatever you're looking at. See, see, right, you're not like, you know, really understanding, like, okay, seven, one range. And when you in your own mind predetermined the way the outcome is going to be it makes you so much less flexible and adaptable and incapable of maneuvering the way you need to and you know it's all on retrospect. Are we going to push back or we're going to, you know, Are we going to fight back up the chain of the end? So, yes, I know for that, if you think that that's cool, if you think you want to represent that way, that's a good deal. But at the same time, I'm reading this book thinking, well, you know, SLA Marshall, he's not necessarily a guy that's going to, he just wants a really good story. Well, it happened because of you because you as a leader demanded things happen the way that you want, and I'm picturing, I mean, and I was struggling early with this guy with, with the company commander, not being able to reconcile, and that's just me piecing things together. I think in two days, you know, and burned through it was like 10 o'clock and I get's in the bed and she says up way too late and finishes in two nights. There's a panic of hey, like you know if you call me Dave you're on the on the else you call me a hey, John, I need to put right now. What if I just said, hey, you need more people going to be like, all right. It's like, you know, I think it was, it was a book you're reading a long time ago where they'd have a name. And you think of science, I think of like all this research and all this analysis and all the things, you know what the science of organizations is? When you when you was a leader get something in your head when you kind of create what you think is the outcome when you when you get comfortable with what you think you know the outcome or the situation is and you sort of solidify that it's really hard to change that. But I'm sitting on this kind of LZ, we're kind of, it's almost like a little bit secure, and these guys are going to go on patrol. You got to make sure that they know they're going to give you that support, that mutual aid if you need it. Kirby Elsa's friends are ready to warn and tell them they are under attack and need immediate immediate air and artillery support a stunned warn acknowledges immediately calls battalion for fire support and orders is company to turn around head back up the hill. So this is a I know it seems crazy to think that you couldn't tell the difference between you know American soldiers and Viet Kong. They're just a little bit more like gal to, like, man, I just, I kind of just shouldn't have done that. And the other thing that's interesting about this is, you would think that we could be sitting here saying, as to, you know, military leaders that you and I were, it's very easy to say, we could, you and I could be sitting here having a conversation where look, discipline is paramount. So, I'm saying, look, if you have discipline, you go to freedom, or you have good, or you have like one of the hoodies or something like this, you don't run that risk. It's all that informal training that and maybe I'm wrong about the doctors because I don't know what medical schools like, but I can only imagine that you get a heck of a lot better. Even this guy who's looking for problems, he's got that attitude where I'm going to go look for problems and we're not going to find him. So like, you know how you have basic training, right? This guy wants to go find people facing death, but then he says they don't worry about they're going to be in any problems, because I'm so lucky that nothing's going to happen. And we're going to push through the last few pages of this book that we didn't cover last time, but then we're going to dive deeper into the last example, which I actually moved to the end.

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jocco podcast number 269 with echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening echo.
[00:00:06] Good evening and also joining us tonight is Dave Burke. Good evening Dave. Good evening.
[00:00:12] The last podcast with Lave we covered the first part of this Marine Corps manual, which I don't even know if it's not really a manual.
[00:00:22] It's like somebody made this. It's called the squad leader makes a difference and I know who made it actually. Lieutenant M. M. Abalday and Lieutenant A. M. Attaro.
[00:00:35] They made it at the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab in August of 1998.
[00:00:42] And we're going to push through the last few pages of this book that we didn't cover last time, but then we're going to dive deeper into the last example, which I actually moved to the end.
[00:00:55] And if you've ever wondered where these podcasts come from, where my mind is going, if you've ever wondered how I'm thinking through these things, this is an opportunity to follow me down a path of discovery.
[00:01:08] To learn more about leadership, to learn more about human nature and about war and about history and about fear and about sorrow and about life and about death.
[00:01:19] It's an interesting ride.
[00:01:21] And it all starts by picking up where we left off with this manual.
[00:01:26] The squad leader makes a difference. The subtitle is readings on combat at the squad level.
[00:01:31] This book is a book that by its very nature simultaneously establishes and then reinforces a culture of maneuver warfare.
[00:01:44] It enforces that, it establishes it.
[00:01:49] It is decentralized command. It's literally a book about the front line leaders making a difference and stepping up and leading.
[00:01:57] So, here we go. We're going to go back to the book right now.
[00:02:06] This one is Sergeant Joe Hooper, US Army Vietnam 1968.
[00:02:21] Sergeant Joe Hooper was a squad leader with D company, second battalion, five hundred and first infantry, hundred and first airborne division, near Way City.
[00:02:34] Big salute right now, obviously, to the second of the 50 first.
[00:02:42] In January of 1968, Way was captured by the North Vietnamese in the Ted offensive. US forces fought desperately deliberate.
[00:02:50] Vietnam's ancient Imperial City on February 17, D company was assaulting a defended position along a riverbank outside Way City when it was attacked by rocket and machine gun fire.
[00:03:01] The company had run into a defensive position, manned by two North Vietnamese companies in dugout bunkers.
[00:03:07] With the company pinned down by fire, Sergeant Hooper located the source of the enemy fire. He rallied his squad and attacked across the river.
[00:03:16] He overran several enemy bunkers. This bold maneuver inspired the rest of the company to join the attack.
[00:03:22] During this attack, some of Sergeant Hooper squad had been wounded.
[00:03:27] He ran out into the open to retrieve them, but was seriously wounded himself.
[00:03:31] Sergeant Hooper refused medical treatment and returned to his men. Enemy fire continued to hamper the attack.
[00:03:37] Sergeant Hooper led his squad through the bunkers and buildings clearing a path for the company and mortally wounding a North Vietnamese officer.
[00:03:45] When his squad came under direct fire from a building to their front, Sergeant Hooper assaulted the building himself and killed the enemy with grenades and rifle fire.
[00:03:56] Upon reaching the final line of the North Vietnamese defenses, Sergeant Hooper destroyed fire bunkers by running the length of the position tossing grenades into each of the dugouts.
[00:04:08] The enemy soldiers began to withdraw from their positions.
[00:04:12] Sergeant Hooper then led his squad in destroying the last two Vietnamese bunkers with white phosphorus grenades.
[00:04:20] After the last pocket of resistance was eliminated, Sergeant Hooper organized his unit into defensive positions.
[00:04:26] When the remainder of his company caught up, Sergeant Hooper allowed himself to have his wounds treated.
[00:04:32] Sergeant Hooper played a major role in defeating a large force of North Vietnamese.
[00:04:37] D-Company's attack forced the withdrawal of North Vietnamese reinforcements attempting to enter the city. This action outside the city weakened the NVA defenders inside way.
[00:04:50] Easing pressure on the besieged city and leading to the eventual liberation of the Imperial capital.
[00:05:01] In oddly enough, it doesn't talk about him receiving the metal of honor or anything after he's charging bunkers by himself.
[00:05:08] This is just who?
[00:05:11] I guess that's just what we're doing.
[00:05:15] Lessons, Sergeant Hooper displayed exceptional leadership. His endurance despite being wounded served as an example to his squad and his company.
[00:05:24] After taking initiative to assault across the river Sergeant Hooper squad assumed the role of the company's main effort and spearheaded the attack.
[00:05:31] His exceptional courage under fire inspired the remainder of the company.
[00:05:37] Sergeant Hooper's combat decisions and tactical leadership at the squad level contributed to his company's success in this better fight.
[00:05:45] With the North Vietnamese attempt to reinforce the city halted other forces were able to clear the city.
[00:05:53] This is obviously the kind of initiative. This is the kind of bias for action that the Marine Corps talks about all the time.
[00:06:05] This is the kind of initiative that we try and train leaders to have at every level.
[00:06:12] But they are going to make things happen.
[00:06:15] That's what we want.
[00:06:17] And they followed up this quote. I've actually, we actually hit this quote before, but I'm going to hit it again.
[00:06:24] We covered it a while ago on podcast 62, Ardent De Peake, his book Battle Studies.
[00:06:32] Listen to this though. Listen to this and think about this.
[00:06:38] Four brave men who do not know each other will not dare to attack a lion.
[00:06:45] Four less brave men, but knowing each other well, sure of their reliability and consequently of mutual aid will attack resolute me.
[00:07:00] There is the science of the organization of armies in a nutshell.
[00:07:07] When I was in South Africa, late in the South Africa, we worked with some companies down there.
[00:07:16] But they were talking about how back in the day the African tribes would hunt lions with spears.
[00:07:23] But they would say, you know, be like three or four guys that would be able to take a lion because they could maneuver in from different angles and they could eventually kill the lion.
[00:07:34] And this was after the conversation that I don't know if you know this in South Africa.
[00:07:39] There's no lions living out in the wild. They're all in these big giant gamers' nerves, which are like the wild, but they're not in the wild.
[00:07:49] Why is that? Because then you have freaking lions roaming around, killing people. I mean, you're no match for a lion. No match.
[00:07:57] But if you got some friends, three friends, I mean, if you think about the, okay, what are the odds if you were to do this?
[00:08:05] The odds of a human beating a lion in a fight? What are the odds? What do you know? Like it is not, it's almost zero.
[00:08:12] How is it? How is a human going to kill a lion in a fight? Right? Okay.
[00:08:17] Okay, you give him a spear. He has some kind of a chance. But it ain't good when a freaking lion's coming at you.
[00:08:24] That thing's going to, just, it's a slaughter. But as soon as you got some friends, and you can make some maneuvers, now you can not only can you win, you are confident enough that you do it on a regular basis.
[00:08:43] That's decentralized command. That's not only decentralized command. That's what a good team is. A good team was he calling it.
[00:08:53] If you're sure of the mutual aid, if I know you got my back, that's the strength of the team.
[00:09:02] I like how he used the phrase in that quote, the science of organizations.
[00:09:06] And you think of science, I think of like all this research and all this analysis and all the things, you know what the science of organizations is?
[00:09:12] I got relationships. I got your back. That's the science. That's all you need to know.
[00:09:17] I think that quote, that word actually, I wrote that down, because that that run loudly of, there's actually it's not complicated.
[00:09:25] This is not complicated. You have to have someone that you trust.
[00:09:29] If you trust that person, you'll do so much more with just one other person that you trust than what you do as a on your own.
[00:09:35] Yeah, and before I jumped on and completed your sentence for you, you were going to say relationships, right?
[00:09:41] And I was already in the combat mode if I got your back, because that's, you know, what do you, you don't, you don't tell a, a Lance Corpel.
[00:09:47] Hey, you need to build a relationship. Now you say, you got to make sure they got your back, right?
[00:09:51] But if you're talking to a business, which is what we do, it's hey, you got to make sure you're building good relationships.
[00:09:57] You got to make sure that they know they're going to give you that support, that mutual aid if you need it. That's what we're doing.
[00:10:03] And if we have that, we're unstoppable. If we have that, three of us can take a lion.
[00:10:09] Corpel Gregory.
[00:10:19] Corpel Gregory was a squad leader. This is Vietnam 1971, US Marine Corps.
[00:10:25] Corpel Gregory was a squad leader assigned to the first combined unit pacification platoon, third battalion, first Marines.
[00:10:34] The unit was the northern most marine unit in Vietnam. Corpel Gregory's combat experience had made him an extremely proficient infantry leader.
[00:10:48] He placed strong emphasis on training in the field.
[00:10:52] Where? Wait, back in the rear? Were they at plenty of time to train? No, in the field. He placed strong emphasis on training in the field.
[00:10:59] He took every chance to conduct opportunity training with his Marines.
[00:11:05] There were numerous duties required of Corpel Gregory squad.
[00:11:09] Each day, Corpel Gregory assembled the squad and instructed them in a single practical infantry skill.
[00:11:19] I'm gonna say that again. Every day, well, we got all these duties.
[00:11:22] The reason I'm saying this is, we hear this all the time from companies. We don't really have time to train. So, so guess what? No one has time to train.
[00:11:30] And if you think that this Marine Corpel in the field has, quote, time to train, you're wrong.
[00:11:34] So what does he do? Every day he assembles the squad and instructs them in a single practical infantry skill.
[00:11:42] How long does that take? 10 minutes, five minutes, seven minutes.
[00:11:46] While in a patrol base, Corpel Gregory instructed his men in such skills as helicopter medevacs,
[00:11:52] Closer support and call for fire.
[00:11:55] Corpel Gregory required that his squad members continue their professional development.
[00:12:00] Every day after returning from patrols, Corpel Gregory squad would work on their Marine Corps Institute correspondence courses.
[00:12:08] PFC Kirby, a member of Corporal Gregory Squad, finished the Marine Corps NCO MCI in the field in Vietnam.
[00:12:19] In the field in Vietnam, Corporal Gregory took the initiative to train his Marines in the skills required by his units mission and environment.
[00:12:29] His training exceeded the basic requirements established by the Marine Corps and created a squad that was particularly well prepared for combat.
[00:12:37] The Corpel used scenario-based training to run his men through multiple repetitions of probable combat situations.
[00:12:47] He made sure that each Marine in his squad understood their commanders intent, their role in the mission, and how each man affected the outcome of events during battle.
[00:13:00] Corporal Gregory is freaking square away.
[00:13:04] By the way, everything that I'm saying right now, apply it to what you're doing in your company, in your business.
[00:13:10] Think of how much you could do to help, how much you could do to train your people.
[00:13:15] Not because you've got two weeks allocated to train your personnel, but because you've got 20 minutes to review with them how this product works or how this piece of equipment functions or what to do in an emergency situation.
[00:13:28] Or how to handle a client.
[00:13:32] It was not long before Corporal Gregory's training proved vital.
[00:13:38] On the night of February 14, 1971, Corporal Gregory and his unit came under heavy attack.
[00:13:48] Corporal Gregory was killed.
[00:13:52] Yet, because the squad was so well trained and understood what it had, what had to be done, the squad was able to meet the challenge and skillfully engage the enemy.
[00:14:03] Corporal Gregory's exemplary leadership in the weeks prior to the attack at prepared his Marines for this firefight.
[00:14:10] The enemy was repulsed and the squad held its position.
[00:14:15] In the morning, over 30 dead NVA were found in the area surrounding the squad's position, every Marine in the squad realized that it was Corporal Gregory's training emphasis that had won the battle and saved their lives.
[00:14:32] Lessons. Corporal Gregory displayed outstanding initiative in training his Marines.
[00:14:46] He assumed the responsibility for preparing his Marines for the demands of combat.
[00:14:51] This training greatly exceeded the established standards of the Marine Corps, which by the way are no low standards.
[00:14:59] And directly contributed to the combat success and survival of the unit after Corporal Gregory's death.
[00:15:06] Corporal Gregory, and by the way, if they ended up with 30 dead NVA, over 30 dead NVA, that was a big force that attacked his unit.
[00:15:19] Corporal Gregory used whatever time was available to instruct his Marines and hone their professional skills.
[00:15:25] This aggressive opportunity training was necessary because few units could conduct formal training in the combat zone.
[00:15:32] I talked about this on the F online the other day.
[00:15:35] I absolutely learned more from informal training than I did from formal training during my time in the Navy without questions.
[00:15:44] Not even close.
[00:15:45] If you were to remove all the informal lessons I learned, I would be an idiot.
[00:15:50] Do you find that the formal training is like kind of sorts itself out to be more valuable early on?
[00:15:58] Explain.
[00:15:59] So like, you know how you have basic training, right?
[00:16:02] That's where you learn like all the formal protocols that were everyone has to essentially do the same thing under very similar circumstances.
[00:16:09] And then the informal training seems to, and I'm totally just thinking about you, just to know.
[00:16:15] And it work I guess, where when you get informal training, that's when you're trained up on all the basics.
[00:16:21] It's kind of like college in a way, you know, you have like all these prerequisites.
[00:16:24] Like hey, you guys all got to know this, this, this, this and know it good.
[00:16:28] And then later on, then maybe we'll send you out to a specific company or whatever to learn kind of what they do.
[00:16:35] And then you can start to apply these things in specific situations.
[00:16:38] I think the example to use would be let's say you went to some kind of a technical school like being a doctor, being a mechanic, being a air conditioning repairman.
[00:16:50] You're going to learn some technical stuff in the classroom, but when you really get good, it's doing the job.
[00:16:56] It's when someone pulls your side and says, oh yeah, when you see this, here's the problem.
[00:17:00] Right.
[00:17:01] When you when you go here, here's what you need to do.
[00:17:04] You see this symptom from a patient, here's what's actually happening.
[00:17:09] It's all that informal training that and maybe I'm wrong about the doctors because I don't know what medical schools like, but I can only imagine that you get a heck of a lot better.
[00:17:20] By once you're in the field and you're doing surgeries and someone says, hey, here's a better way to do this.
[00:17:26] Here's the technique and you do this there. Here's something like that.
[00:17:29] Yeah.
[00:17:30] Yeah.
[00:17:31] It's like, you know, I think it was, it was a book you're reading a long time ago where they'd have a name.
[00:17:37] Should it might have been one of our guests, I don't know, but they'd have a name for the people who don't do.
[00:17:43] I think it was in the army where they don't do it. They just do all the theory and they call them something like nerds or something.
[00:17:49] Those, I don't know.
[00:17:51] Anyway, but yeah, there's a people who know and they essentially, they know what to do and what the protocols are in a vacuum.
[00:17:57] Once you start when you get out out there in the field and the real world kind of thing, that's where that informal like, no, this isn't by the book over here.
[00:18:05] You've got to watch out for this because you know,
[00:18:07] And there's also a difference between just learning from experience, which is, hey, I did this operation.
[00:18:11] Here's something mistakes that I made and all and that's just experience classroom is classroom.
[00:18:17] I'm talking about in between where you're, you know, someone's pulling you inside and say, hey, Jonko,
[00:18:21] when you start to see this develop, that's not a good call.
[00:18:23] Here's a call that would be better to make and here's why.
[00:18:25] It's not formal training. It's my platoon chief telling me something.
[00:18:29] Yeah.
[00:18:29] It's my LPO, my leading petty officer saying, hey, hey, new guy.
[00:18:33] Here's what you need to do when you see that unfolding.
[00:18:37] And you go, okay, Roger that. It's not formal training, but that's where you learn.
[00:18:41] And it's not just experience either.
[00:18:43] Experience alone would take you way longer than informal training.
[00:18:47] Like how many, okay, Jjitsu example, here you learn the armlock.
[00:18:51] Now we're rolling.
[00:18:53] Yeah.
[00:18:55] And you try an armlock me and I say, hey, echo, if you, if you don't squeeze your knees together,
[00:18:59] it's really easy to get out here.
[00:19:01] Put, look at me your arm, boom, oh yeah, you feel that.
[00:19:03] Try and pull your arm or oh, I can't. Okay, yeah.
[00:19:05] That's because it's all because I'm squeezed my knees.
[00:19:07] Okay, look, the instructor guaranteed the instructor said squeeze your knees.
[00:19:11] Yeah.
[00:19:12] But you need that informal assessment of your actual situation to realize,
[00:19:17] oh, I see what I need to do.
[00:19:19] Yeah, exactly right. That's exactly what else I can do.
[00:19:21] Did you get it?
[00:19:23] What was the, I mean, you have to get informal training once you're in the,
[00:19:29] once you're done with the rag.
[00:19:31] Yeah.
[00:19:32] I think just how you described it.
[00:19:34] The, you talked about like being on cider being in the field or doing it like that.
[00:19:39] You talked about even just the interconnection of repair man.
[00:19:41] What that looks like.
[00:19:42] The way you described what life would be like if all we ever did was formal training,
[00:19:46] you'd have no context for anything.
[00:19:48] You wouldn't even know how it applies.
[00:19:50] So I think that's true.
[00:19:52] And certainly in my case, in aviation,
[00:19:55] I don't think it's any different.
[00:19:56] Like everything is taught by the book.
[00:19:58] Everything is formal training the beginning.
[00:20:00] It's all these things.
[00:20:01] And the many you get in the airplane and get up in the sky.
[00:20:03] And you are feeling things in a different way.
[00:20:06] It's really hard to apply them because you learned it on the ground.
[00:20:10] And the context of the informal, hey, hey listen, look,
[00:20:14] you see that? Yeah.
[00:20:15] That's what it means in the book when it says this.
[00:20:17] That's what it looks like.
[00:20:18] Oh, man, I would never be able to understand that from reading it in a book.
[00:20:22] They have to train.
[00:20:23] You have to get a translation.
[00:20:24] Yeah.
[00:20:25] You do.
[00:20:26] You have to be able to see and feel it.
[00:20:27] And that will not happen in formal training.
[00:20:31] It's important to realize if you have some experience.
[00:20:36] And you have people that are on your team.
[00:20:39] The amount of knowledge that you can transfer to them is so valuable.
[00:20:45] And the reason I'm pointing this out is because a lot of times you forget that.
[00:20:50] You think you can do this for a long time.
[00:20:52] You think it's a big deal.
[00:20:53] Hey, this is just what you do.
[00:20:54] You forget that you've learned all this.
[00:20:57] But taking that and saying, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,
[00:21:00] now come over here.
[00:21:01] Let me show you some.
[00:21:02] Let me show you better way to do that.
[00:21:04] Let me show you a little trick.
[00:21:06] It's very powerful.
[00:21:07] Not to mention when you invest in people like that for 10 minutes.
[00:21:11] For 10 minutes.
[00:21:12] You're helping them.
[00:21:14] And you're building that relationship.
[00:21:17] Which is what this whole thing is that we're talking about.
[00:21:20] Yeah.
[00:21:21] And I wrote down while you're talking that telling that story of that corporal is.
[00:21:26] I just wrote down.
[00:21:27] I always take notes.
[00:21:28] It's all I do in this podcast.
[00:21:29] I just take notes.
[00:21:30] I take these things.
[00:21:31] I write them down and I keep them.
[00:21:32] And I find places where they apply.
[00:21:34] And as you know, they apply everywhere.
[00:21:36] And this idea of this guy training is people is actually the best thing he can do to take care of them.
[00:21:40] It's the best thing he can do.
[00:21:41] It's the best thing any leader can do to help them.
[00:21:44] Not give you a break and not give you free time.
[00:21:46] And yeah, of course there's a balance there.
[00:21:48] But the best thing he could do is prepare them to be in a position.
[00:21:53] And I think the reason that stuck with me is that when we talk about decentralized command, which we talk about all the time,
[00:21:58] when business.
[00:21:59] The scenario that always plays out is the reason why decentralized command is so important is that your people have to know what to do when you're not around.
[00:22:08] That's pretty obvious.
[00:22:10] But the scenarios are usually your on vacation.
[00:22:13] You're on a different shift.
[00:22:15] You've got the day off.
[00:22:16] Not that you're dead.
[00:22:18] So when you kind of think of it in these context that these of what he was doing is being able to prepare them to be successful.
[00:22:24] That him being around is in the worst possible situation.
[00:22:27] If literally him dying in that situation is the best thing he can do.
[00:22:31] So so the same thing doesn't happen to them is train them.
[00:22:35] Even if it's five minutes at a time.
[00:22:38] That's how we kept those guys alive.
[00:22:40] And that is something that you can you can translate to almost any situation.
[00:22:44] You're family.
[00:22:46] You know we talk about this in the code, the protocol.
[00:22:49] The evaluation.
[00:22:51] It's like hey, what can you do your family?
[00:22:53] Can you give your family five minutes of training to pass on knowledge that you have?
[00:22:58] More lessons here.
[00:23:00] Corporal Gregory realized that combat is a dynamic environment which takes a heavy toll on leaders within an infantry company.
[00:23:07] He trained his subordinates to be able to assume his role.
[00:23:11] This saved the lives of his men during the chaos of battle.
[00:23:15] After his death the men of corporal Gregory squad performed well performed well because they had confidence in their training and in themselves a confidence that was instilled by corporal Gregory's leadership.
[00:23:28] You know when we were talking when we talk about confidence how do you get confidence?
[00:23:31] You confidence to work.
[00:23:33] You know when we talk about confidence by doing something.
[00:23:37] You know when we talk about confidence by doing something.
[00:23:41] Doing it well doing it again doing it better doing it better.
[00:23:43] That's where confidence comes from.
[00:23:45] Otherwise it's false confidence.
[00:23:47] Maybe I should just stop talking because the way he that was written.
[00:23:51] Because a lot better than the way I said it.
[00:23:53] Well here's what's really cool.
[00:23:55] So they have a if.
[00:23:57] We he mentioned he mentioned Kirby in this PFC Kirby.
[00:24:01] Remember of the of corporal Gregory squad that finished this NCO MCI in the field.
[00:24:07] We'll have a quote from him not from Vietnam from 1998.
[00:24:11] And now Sergeant Major RB Kirby said the very worst night of my torn Vietnam when we were involved in a major firefight and we were losing marines.
[00:24:21] Our squad survived as result of the corporal's training.
[00:24:27] We are alive today because of him.
[00:24:30] Next one.
[00:24:31] Corporal Abolz British Army.
[00:24:44] Foculons.
[00:24:45] 1982.
[00:24:46] In 1982 Argentina invaded the Foculons.
[00:24:49] Foculons in the South Pacific South Atlantic Ocean.
[00:24:52] The island had been British territory since British days as an imperial power not willing to give up its territory.
[00:24:58] Britain sent a task force to the islands in order to reclaim them after an amphibious assault.
[00:25:03] British forces pushed their way across the islands.
[00:25:06] The second battalion of the parachute regiment known as two parah of the British Army was ordered to attack the Argentine forces of Goose Green.
[00:25:15] It was to be the first pitched battle between British and Argentine forces.
[00:25:20] The land bridge between Goose Green and the town of Darwin was the only way for forces to move between East Foculon Island.
[00:25:27] And Lafonia Island.
[00:25:29] If two parah could not break through to Goose Green, the British would have to spend valuable time mounting another amphibious assault of the Foculon Islands.
[00:25:39] Corporal Abolz was a section leader equivalent to a squad leader in a company to parah.
[00:25:45] A company's mission was to attack along the battalion's eastern flank and assault the town of Darwin.
[00:25:51] On the night of 27 May 1982, two parah attacked Goose Green.
[00:25:57] The Argentineans were well prepared for the attack and the paratroopers could advance only yards at a time.
[00:26:03] As the sun rose, the battalion was left in a precarious position.
[00:26:07] Two parah was stalled pin down in the open by Argentinean mortar and machine gunfire.
[00:26:15] A company was trapped in a crossfire between the Argentineans on Goose Green and those in Darwin.
[00:26:21] This is a nightmare scenario.
[00:26:23] You're in a crossfire receiving both mortar and machine gunfire.
[00:26:29] Realizing that the trap could only be broken by persistent aggressive action.
[00:26:33] Corporal Abolz decided to continue to lead his squad in assaulting enemy positions,
[00:26:39] seeking to break the deadlock himself.
[00:26:42] The commanding officer of two parah charged the machine gun nest.
[00:26:46] And we shot dead.
[00:26:48] The commander of a company kept the event quiet, not wanting to demoralize the troops,
[00:26:54] whose predicament seemed to worsen at this critical point in the attack.
[00:26:58] At that moment, Corporal Abolz led an assault upon an Argentinean position.
[00:27:03] He decided to fire a 66-millimeter shoulder-launched anti-tank rock that into the bunker.
[00:27:08] The penetration of this rocket caused such a magnificent explosion, which was followed by silence.
[00:27:12] The first flags of surrender then began to surface from the Argentinean positions.
[00:27:17] The Argentineans had been demoralized by the utter destruction of this single bunker
[00:27:22] and the ruthlessness of Corporal Abolz resolved.
[00:27:26] This allowed a company to turn its full attention toward Goose Green.
[00:27:30] Momentum gathered behind the British attack in the next 24 hours.
[00:27:34] The parah opened the route to Lafonia Island.
[00:27:39] Corporal Abolz persist in aggressiveness had broken the will of the defenders.
[00:27:43] This action proved to be pivotal in a company's attack to parah.
[00:27:47] Two parah's victory at Goose Green assured a British victory for the Falkland campaign.
[00:27:52] Lessons.
[00:27:53] Corporal Abolz squad level action effectively turned the tide of the battle at Goose Green.
[00:27:59] This is an example of how an aggressive tactical action can have effects out of all proportion
[00:28:06] to the size of the action.
[00:28:09] His command decisions fully supported both his company and battalion commanders intent.
[00:28:15] His spectacular assault of that particular bunker affected the morale of both sides.
[00:28:22] Crush the spirit of the Argentineans and pass the initiative and momentum to British forces
[00:28:27] and prove to be the action needed to continue the British advance.
[00:28:31] After this action, Argentineans soldiers began to surrender rather than die in combat.
[00:28:35] One person, a corporal, makes a one move and it changes the tide of this battle.
[00:28:45] By the way, moments after his commanding officer was killed, heroically assaulting a machine gun nest.
[00:28:54] Corporal Abolz courage leadership and determination propelled him to persevere and achieve decisive results in extricating his unit from a desperate situation.
[00:29:05] When all else fails, persevere and prevails.
[00:29:09] And if you want more on the Falkland Islands, podcast 88 excursion to hell.
[00:29:16] Sergeant David C. Freeman, US Army, Vietnam, 1966.
[00:29:27] During Operation Crazy Horse and pay attention to that name, Operation Crazy Horse.
[00:29:34] We're going to go deep.
[00:29:35] In the Vin van Valley in June of 1966, a company of Montenegro troops led by special forces
[00:29:42] advisors, landed at LZ Monkey for a search and destroy mission.
[00:29:46] Sergeant Freeman, a member of the command element was the fourth senior man in the unit.
[00:29:50] Soon after landing, the company attacked and secured a bunker complex.
[00:29:54] The company suffered some casualties and a helicopter met a vac was requested.
[00:29:57] The company moved back to LZ Monkey with their wounded.
[00:30:00] At the LZ, the company began receiving heavy, small arms fire.
[00:30:04] The command element around Sergeant Freeman was devastated.
[00:30:09] The situation demanded rapid action.
[00:30:12] Sergeant Freeman grabbed a radio and took command of the company.
[00:30:15] He called and helicopter gunships, coordinated supporting arms, and reorganized his defenses.
[00:30:20] The helicopter pilot's flying above the battle were amazed at his coolness, under fire,
[00:30:24] under Sergeant Freeman's competent command, the perimeter held all night and the enemy eventually withdrew.
[00:30:33] Stepping up.
[00:30:38] Lessons, Sergeant Freeman, a well-trained NCO was prepared to lead his company in combat.
[00:30:43] He knew the techniques and procedures for air support supporting arms, met a vac, and company defensive positions.
[00:30:49] And knew they kind of rattle that off.
[00:30:51] And one thing that the Marine Corps does really good in this manual is they hit on the fact that you got to have the skills.
[00:30:57] You got to have these fundamental skills of combat leadership.
[00:31:02] The technical and tactical skills of combat leadership, meaning how to call for air support,
[00:31:07] how to call for supporting arms, how to call for artillery, how to call for met a vac.
[00:31:11] These are technical skills that you have to have, and they reinforce that throughout this book.
[00:31:16] So if you're in a leadership position, you think, well, I'm not going to have to do that.
[00:31:20] No, actually, you better go and dig in and figure out how to do these things.
[00:31:28] In addition to his technical knowledge, he was able to match these abilities with strong leadership and cool competence in the face of disaster.
[00:31:36] Because of his experience and situational awareness, Sergeant Freeman knew that rapid action was required.
[00:31:43] Once again, what do we see? We see someone that's taking action.
[00:31:48] He immediately took control of the situation, making decisions and issuing orders, and extricated his company from a perilous situation.
[00:31:57] And here's a little cloud squids on war, which we haven't covered yet.
[00:32:04] It's sort of one of those ones.
[00:32:07] Is it like not playing the obvious one? You know, I haven't done that one yet.
[00:32:14] The end for which a soldier is recruited, armed, and trained, the whole object of his sleeping eating, drinking, and marching is simply that he should fight at the right place, and at the right time.
[00:32:29] Check. All right. Now, here we go. Here we go.
[00:32:35] So this section that I'm about to read actually came earlier in the manual. I pulled it out and I put it at the end.
[00:32:43] This is the last one of these examples.
[00:32:46] And there's a reason why. And it immediately struck me when I saw it.
[00:32:50] So the title of this section is just Sergeant 1st class, US Army Vietnam, 1966.
[00:32:58] So as soon as I read that, I was kind of surprised because I had all the other ones to give the person's name.
[00:33:02] Something in why why why aren't they saying this guy's name?
[00:33:06] This is a top secret mission. Well, no, this is 1998. There was no no more secret missions.
[00:33:12] So why aren't we explaining this? It becomes obvious when I read it why they just called this individual Sergeant 1st class. So here we go.
[00:33:24] In May of 1966, C company of 1st Battalion, 12th Cavery, 1st Cavery Division established a mortgher fire base at LZ Harford in the Ving Fan Valley.
[00:33:38] So this is actually part of and I'll get into this.
[00:33:42] This is part of that earlier operation that we mentioned.
[00:33:46] The position was 150 meters long and 40 meters wide. The upper slope was covered in six foot high elephant grass.
[00:33:55] The mortgher section was led by a sergeant 1st class, no name given.
[00:33:59] His position lay on a hill which had previously been occupied by Vietcong Gorillos.
[00:34:06] He formed his men in a weak perimeter.
[00:34:11] We're not off to a good start. Arrange in a U shape with the curve facing uphill and set up the mortgher's in order to provide support for the company.
[00:34:22] The main body of the company went off to patrol the valley below leaving the 22 man mortar section to defend their own position.
[00:34:31] The men fired off a few rounds to seat their base plates. The sergeant decided to give the men a break.
[00:34:37] It did not order anyone to dig in or examine the area around the perimeter.
[00:34:42] No security patrols were sent out. The men lounged, eight sea rations and walked around in the open.
[00:34:52] In the jungle heat it seemed like a day at the beach.
[00:34:57] At 1330 an enemy machine gun opened up at a range of 50 meters from the elephant grass uphill of the mortgher position.
[00:35:06] A 200 man unit of VC had been waiting to ambush the laks mortar unit.
[00:35:12] Machine gun fire was followed by rifle fire and grenade attacks.
[00:35:16] The rest of the company which had gone down the hill on patrol.
[00:35:19] The rest of the company took 35 minutes to rush back to the devastated mortar position.
[00:35:24] The enemy had withdrawn and left only a handful of dazed survivors.
[00:35:30] The failure of the sergeant to properly lead his unit.
[00:35:35] In force basic security measures or prepare for enemy contact led directly to disaster.
[00:35:45] With its support element eliminated, the company was not able to establish its patrol mission,
[00:35:51] which in turn negatively affected the battalions mission in the Vin Tham Valley.
[00:36:01] I read that and I think about what is this mean.
[00:36:09] They hadn't given away any names, right?
[00:36:13] They didn't give this guy's name, but they had given away a date may of 1966.
[00:36:19] They'd given away the lz, lz hair effort.
[00:36:23] I started to do some research and it turns out that this battle, this specific battle,
[00:36:33] was written about in a book on Vietnam called Battles in the Monsoon.
[00:36:37] This is an outer print book, but I was really curious.
[00:36:42] What happened?
[00:36:44] What happened?
[00:36:48] I found this outer book, print book, ordered it.
[00:36:54] The book Battles in the Monsoon is a book full of basically a bunch of short little stories.
[00:37:04] This particular section in this book about this battle is called Men Facing Death.
[00:37:16] So let's hear a little bit more detail about this situation.
[00:37:24] By the way, this is all Operation Crazy Horse.
[00:37:28] By the night of 21 May, the Battle of Vin Tham Valley appeared to be slowing to a stop with the enemy fractionalized and everyone running for cover.
[00:37:37] Well, landing zone, hair effort, that well worked over slope where the initial explosion has occurred, had occurred, and I'm skipping to this specific.
[00:37:46] They give a little bit of background.
[00:37:47] This lz hair effort had been used a bunch.
[00:37:50] It looked like one of the safest places in the fire zone such had been the consistency of armed traffic in and out of it.
[00:37:57] So this was a lz that was getting used all the time.
[00:38:00] That was about how Colonel John Jay Hennessey thought of it when he decided on a special mission for Charlie Company.
[00:38:08] First of the 12 for the following morning, it was a courteous gesture.
[00:38:12] The main object being to return Charlie Company to its parent Battalion, but before doing so, a Hennessey plan to ask a small favor in return.
[00:38:21] The company under Captain Don F. Warren, a taciturn Georgian who had been with his same unit since winning his gold bars in 1961.
[00:38:31] So this guy's been in the same unit since for five straight years.
[00:38:35] He was on the perimeter in Hill, on Hill 766 several ridges beyond hair effort.
[00:38:40] The airline distance was about 3,000 meters.
[00:38:42] Hennessey directed Warren to sweep back over the high ground to hair effort after son up.
[00:38:48] One worried about that passage, he was most concerned that Charlie Company should reconnoiter the lower slopes beyond the landing zone, which thus far no one had proud.
[00:38:59] That taciturn it could rejoin the battalion in the valley not far away.
[00:39:03] Hennessey had no reason to be suspicious. He was merely being cautious.
[00:39:07] The ground around hair effort had not been worked over carefully for several days.
[00:39:12] Captain Jack Cummings and Alpha Company were in perimeter on the landing zone at the same hour. They were not left wholly.
[00:39:20] They were not left wholly undisturbed, but the occasional sniper rounds and grenades that innoculously bitten to their ground were attributed to enemy stragglers.
[00:39:28] So there's a company there. They're getting hit occasionally, but there's just a bunch of stragglers is what they're assuming.
[00:39:33] Alpha Company needed to be back.
[00:39:35] So they send in Charlie Company.
[00:39:38] Word of that was a foot and that reached major Charles Siler at the on at on K shortly after Hennessey gave his order the divisions.
[00:39:47] Public information officer was entertaining a visitor and a weighing problem all his own.
[00:39:54] Relatedly drawn by the news that Operation Crazy Horse was racking up a score, war correspondent Sam Caston, a 32 year old senior editor of Look magazine had just arrived in camp pursuing a theme worthy of Hemingway.
[00:40:12] Caston was the only correspondent drawn to the battle.
[00:40:15] He said to Siler,
[00:40:17] I wish to know the thoughts of men facing death. So that's what this war correspondent says Sam Caston.
[00:40:25] Siler voiced an honest doubt that the quest was logical, men's fears and reflections not being all of one kind,
[00:40:31] and the soldier hardly knowing how he thinks about death until he feels he is dying.
[00:40:38] It is just not the subject that makes for easy talk among combat men.
[00:40:42] So that kind of weird, right? We got this reporter saying, hey, I want to go get some men facing death.
[00:40:50] At the time General Norton had put the on K position on semi alert.
[00:40:55] The whole camp was a stir, siler, and the staff were in the bunkers around the press camp, re-aligning some of the sandbags.
[00:41:01] You don't have to worry about this ground tonight.
[00:41:03] Said Caston, I'm the luckiest reporter alive wherever I go, nothing happens.
[00:41:08] Even this guy who's looking for problems, he's got that attitude where I'm going to go look for problems and we're not going to find him.
[00:41:17] Siler remembered the words, thinking them slightly ironic and view of what Caston was looking for.
[00:41:22] This guy wants to go find people facing death, but then he says they don't worry about they're going to be in any problems, because I'm so lucky that nothing's going to happen.
[00:41:29] There's a big hill not far from here where a lot of men have died in the last few days he said.
[00:41:34] Then I want to get up there first thing in the morning said Caston, and by the way I intend to follow the subject all the way through, see the coffins in which you place the bodies.
[00:41:43] We put them in rubber bags, said Ciler grumbling, hoping to close the conversation,
[00:41:48] but Caston continued to fret about getting up to hair referred soon after dawn, siler broke off work to arrange for Caston's certain departure.
[00:41:55] These were the circumstances which resulted in Caston being delivered to hair referred by the same helicopter that carried ammunition coffee and a hot breakfast to Cummings and Alpha Company.
[00:42:03] His first hours were unrewarding that the unit was too busy stacking supply equipment for an early getaway to talk with Caston about death.
[00:42:10] Besides the morning was disarmingly fair and quiet.
[00:42:14] Warren and Charlie Company meanwhile were beating their way along the ridge on the way back from Hill 766, having broken camp at 100,
[00:42:23] at 100, a fairly wide trail runs from the top of the scarf, the entire distance. Fast forward a little bit.
[00:42:32] Alpha Company was lifted from LZ, hair referred when Charlie Company arrived at Hynoon.
[00:42:38] Caston stayed. On the landing zone, Warren talked briefly to Lieutenant Colonel Ruff-Rutland-Peard Jr.
[00:42:48] The Battalion Commander and his S3 Major role.
[00:42:54] It was arranged.
[00:42:58] That Warren and the main body of the company would continue their stroll down slope through the trees and across the river.
[00:43:05] Now, I just want to call out these words, it was arranged because we're going to get some more information.
[00:43:12] So you've got the Battalion Commander talking to the company commander and they come to, this is what it says.
[00:43:20] It was arranged.
[00:43:22] That Warren and the main body of the company would continue through the stroll through the down slope through the trees and across the river.
[00:43:28] The mortar platoon would remain unharaford to cover its further advance with fire from the 81 millimeter tube.
[00:43:36] So now you can see where we're going, the sergeant first class of the mortar platoon that we talked about from the squad leader makes a difference.
[00:43:44] This is the guy.
[00:43:46] This is the guy.
[00:43:50] The platoon 22 strong was led by Sergeant Robert L. Kirby, a 29 year old Negro from Los Angeles.
[00:44:02] The light of frame, solemn face, Kirby is rated one of the stoutest, harded fighters in his brigade.
[00:44:10] So that's a little different, right?
[00:44:12] Now we're calling this guy one of the stoutest, harded fighters in the brigade, but in the reflections from the manual, he's not going to do a good job.
[00:44:26] And by the way, they're going to get left with 22 people in a mortar platoon, which is again, we'll dive more into that.
[00:44:32] Few of numbers, his men seem to sufficiently armed.
[00:44:36] Each carried 300 more rounds for other M16s and from two to four hand grenades, the one heavy weapon was the 81 millimeter mortar for which Kirby had only 18 rounds.
[00:44:50] That with the tube was as much weight as the men could carry.
[00:44:54] But efficiently armed is an interesting way of saying it.
[00:44:58] Because we know that at M16 with 300 rounds and M16 is fine, a mortar is fine.
[00:45:04] But if you get into a legitimate gunfight, there's something that you need called a machine gun, and you need a few of them.
[00:45:10] And they don't have any.
[00:45:14] Not good.
[00:45:18] Moreover, it had been agreed that is promptly as the descending company passed beyond the range of the platoon.
[00:45:22] That the platoon would be lifted out by chopper.
[00:45:24] Alpha company had 100 or so mortar rounds behind Kirby reckoned he would not need them.
[00:45:30] Casting the reporter had decided to stay on her referred instead of moving with the company called.
[00:45:36] It's an interesting decision.
[00:45:38] It's an interesting decision because if you would think if you're looking for to get in the fight, you would, oh, they're going to go with the trigger.
[00:45:44] But I'm sitting on this kind of LZ, we're kind of, it's almost like a little bit secure,
[00:45:48] and these guys are going to go on patrol. I would probably think I'm going patrol. Casting for whatever reason.
[00:45:54] He says he decides to stay up there on her referred.
[00:46:00] And it's Kirby, the sergeant who says it will happen here if anywhere.
[00:46:10] No, sorry, that's casting that says to Kirby, it will happen here if anywhere.
[00:46:14] Like the working in combat, Kirby says about that, your dead wrong.
[00:46:18] And he honestly felt that way though, as he looked about what he saw this position hardly
[00:46:22] Weren't such a serence. It was all wrong from any reason to tactical view. So now this is Kirby.
[00:46:28] He's looking at the situation, even though he says, yeah, it's not going to happen here.
[00:46:32] He knows it's all wrong from a tactical perspective.
[00:46:36] The landing zone at Herford was by then a burned off trampled and rumple,
[00:46:40] rubble strewn about the size of a professional basketball court running length wise down the edge of a ridge.
[00:46:46] It scorched earth and grasses were less apparent than the fox holes distributed more or less evenly around the oval shaped perimeter.
[00:46:52] Originally these had been enemy spider holes, and were subsequently enlarged by American occupancy.
[00:46:58] The trouble was that Kirby did not have enough men to round out his holding.
[00:47:02] So the position became a you pointed, a you pointed up an up slope.
[00:47:08] And this is where there's there you can see the similarity here from from the manual.
[00:47:12] The uphill open and fronting toward the high ground was not covered by weapons present since the platoon was sighting its pieces down slope.
[00:47:22] The company having gone that way and weapons.
[00:47:24] So they have a U shape and they're like, well, the platoon went that way.
[00:47:28] So we don't really need to have much there.
[00:47:30] And that's where he decided to put light, not any protection in that direction.
[00:47:36] In neither direction was the prospect of a fight was a prospect good if a fight was to be forthcoming.
[00:47:44] There was beauty everywhere, but there was beauty everywhere for the to sue the eye, up slope, and bordering the very edge of the defended ground was a sea of elephant grass standing six to eight feet tall.
[00:47:56] Down hill there was a shear and rocky precipice extending 30 feet and giving away to an extension in the field of tall grasses, which also invested the flanks.
[00:48:04] Greenness was all about except where the men looked to their weapons.
[00:48:08] The company took off down, so now here goes the company the company took off down the steep clutching to the rocks, creepers and creepers for balance.
[00:48:14] No preparatory artillery fires or air strikes had been put on the slopes around herford because of Lawrence movement.
[00:48:20] The earlier presence of Alphacompan and the all-round feeling that crazy horse operation was slowing to a halt.
[00:48:26] This operation had been going on for a pretty long period of time.
[00:48:28] There's been all kinds of activity. They didn't feel like they needed to do any preparatory fire for this patrol.
[00:48:34] Kirby worried less about his platoon than about the movements and enterprise of caston.
[00:48:40] The reporter, the men had gone to ground.
[00:48:44] The correspondent was moving from position to position standing erect, taking photographs and asking numerous questions.
[00:48:50] Wanting to protect caston, he did not know how to object his freewheeling, though he realized that his movements were describing the limitations of the force.
[00:49:00] In fact, these things little matter.
[00:49:04] Caston was enjoying himself hugely. He asked Kirby, how do you feel about these things?
[00:49:10] Kirby answered, if you think you're going to get a story out of this platoon, you're wrong. Nothing will happen here.
[00:49:16] Caston continued with his rounds of the perimeter, snapping pictures and asking the men, how do you feel?
[00:49:22] Kirby lost interest in caston kept moving.
[00:49:24] The position of the mortar of one mortar was near the bottom of the slope LZ.
[00:49:28] Just inside the U where the crew had dug a little pit.
[00:49:32] At approximately 1,300 the platoon began supporting the descending company with the fire of the 81 millimeter mortar.
[00:49:40] The range 800 meters, it takes a while to hack through the jungle, Captain Warren got Kirby on the radio and told him to bring it closer, which Kirby tried to do.
[00:49:48] So now you got the platoons up there, they're dropping mortars in front of the platoon that's driving through the jungle.
[00:49:56] An hour later, Warren called Kirby again.
[00:50:02] This time the message was an uplift, said Warren, choppers are incoming to take you out within 30 minutes.
[00:50:08] Just about done so. Just to recap, you've got the platoon, you've got the mortar platoon in this landing zone.
[00:50:16] You've got the rest of the company pushed down the hill and they're just on a patrol.
[00:50:20] And eventually they're so far away that there's no point in the mortar platoon being up there anymore.
[00:50:24] So now helicopters are going to come grab them and take them out.
[00:50:30] 30 minutes. That was what Warren and Kirby both fought, but the choppers had put down at landing zones.
[00:50:38] Avoid Hennessey's command post in the valley just to make certain orders that the orders given still stood from their delay.
[00:50:46] Holy unfaltable came rocking general Jack Norton rocking the high command rocking us all.
[00:50:53] Kirby got off his 17th mortar round in support of the advancing company.
[00:50:58] That being the last one he fired.
[00:51:02] Remember that 18 rounds. He just fired 17th round.
[00:51:06] Then the thing happened.
[00:51:08] There was no advance warning.
[00:51:10] Sergeant Lewis Buckley and PFC Wade taste were still collecting the company water cans and other material for the flight.
[00:51:20] Moving carelessly in the open even as was corresponded cast in.
[00:51:26] Including Kirby stayed put in their foxholes that they did so as less a sign of their alertness than of their forthcoming operational routine.
[00:51:34] Once lodged in position, they had not moved to scout its surroundings.
[00:51:38] The long trek via the jungle trail had half had them half busched.
[00:51:44] So they're tired.
[00:51:46] Over much of the distance they had to move.
[00:51:48] They were crouching because the tiny overhang there was no shade where they were sprawled to sunbeat directly down on them.
[00:51:52] And it was not less than 100 degrees.
[00:51:54] The word was passed from hold a hole that they were returning to home base.
[00:51:58] Nothing much else.
[00:52:00] Not even the eccentric movements and questions of cast and interested them.
[00:52:04] The hour must have been about 1330 from up slope and from not more than 50 yards away came a.
[00:52:11] Came the fire of a heavy machine gun.
[00:52:13] Its bullet stream was dead on the mortar.
[00:52:16] The first rounds ripping through the tube as if the weapon had already been zeroed in.
[00:52:19] Thereafter it beat directly on the mortar put pit with never a pause.
[00:52:24] So came Kirby's first warning that he was engaged.
[00:52:28] He yelled out fire.
[00:52:31] But it was superfluous though he did not know it.
[00:52:34] Being too close to the mortar, a split second before Kirby had reacted.
[00:52:38] His own men had started the fight.
[00:52:40] On the left of the inverted you it would have been the right flank.
[00:52:43] Had these men been facing uphill.
[00:52:45] Once the fire was specks four Paul Jay Harris and then Charles Stucky had seen three enemy
[00:52:52] skirmersers moving in through the elephant grass, not five meters beyond their foxholes.
[00:52:59] There m16 there m16 fire signal detection of movement to which the enemy machine gun instantly responded.
[00:53:06] A swiftly as those three weapons spoke from the elephant grass on three sides of the perimeter rifle.
[00:53:12] Fire cracked and Kirby sensed that his position was almost totally enveloped.
[00:53:16] So he gets the feeling that worse around it.
[00:53:19] He yelled to his radio man.
[00:53:21] Speck four John F. Sprains a call company get them back where being hit.
[00:53:27] As the message was relayed to Captain Warren and as he remembered it, the words were come back we're being hit.
[00:53:38] Though the main body moving through the jungle was too far down the slope to get the sounds of the fight.
[00:53:44] Warren had his movement of agonized, had his moment of agonized shock.
[00:53:50] And that's an interesting tidbit.
[00:53:54] A moment of agonized shock.
[00:53:57] Almost as if he may have expected that this would happen.
[00:53:59] He knew Kirby as a thoroughly brave soldier.
[00:54:05] And this is the unnamed person from the manual.
[00:54:10] Two steady two seasons to be stampeded by a little random fire when he called for help the thing had to be fully desperate.
[00:54:18] The confidence between the white captain from Georgia and the Negro sergeant from California was complete.
[00:54:24] So these guys had trust.
[00:54:27] Wasting not an instant Warren called back on the radio to attend Robert McClillin of first platoon,
[00:54:35] bringing up the rear of the far stretch column, get your ass back up that hill.
[00:54:39] All hands reversed and started scrambling upward, men clutching at rocks, tearing their palms on foreign vines,
[00:54:45] sliding, falling and panting and desperate effort to race up the steep.
[00:54:49] All did not fully understand the reason why there was no attempt to observe security.
[00:54:54] Had they been without knowing moving into an ambush the disaster that too soon followed could have been even greater.
[00:55:00] Far above them on the slope of hairford, men who still moved,
[00:55:04] crouched below to escape the sheet of fire beating from all sides.
[00:55:08] Most of Kirby's men had died in the first 10 minutes, though he did not know that yet.
[00:55:13] The return fire from his people grew steadily fainter.
[00:55:18] Sergeant Isaac Johnson, a 27-year-old Negro, had been sitting with a plat board at the mortar pit when the fight began.
[00:55:26] He heard someone yell they're coming out of the woods.
[00:55:29] In his agitation he tried to turn the mortar around to fire it up hill, not even noticing that it had been drilled through.
[00:55:35] The incoming fire was too great and his strength too little.
[00:55:38] So he slithered up on his belly to the left flank and dropped into a foxhole.
[00:55:42] He could see 40 to 50 men at a run out of the trees into the elephant grass where he lost sight of them.
[00:55:52] They were partially camouflaged in their shirts where of all colors.
[00:55:55] Looking down how hill he saw many more of the enemy moving through the grass.
[00:55:59] Some crawling others hunched over firing as they moved in.
[00:56:03] It came to him as a sudden idea that he should fire too.
[00:56:07] He thought he thought as he fired he had dropped at least four enemy skirmishers with his M16.
[00:56:13] So by the way, I mean we're already talking about a totally outnumbered force.
[00:56:20] This in one flank he sees 40 or 50 bad guys.
[00:56:25] From the next foxhole above him, PFC Henry Benton and Joe L. Tomato were ultimately firing up slope and downhill.
[00:56:32] Helling as they pulled the trigger Johnson saw his last of them when he ran out of ammunition and crawled back to the mortar pit in search of a magazine.
[00:56:39] Inside the pit there were four men heads down.
[00:56:42] The enemy machine gun and at least two automatic rifles were bearing directly on the hole and smashing its rim.
[00:56:49] Johnson could not be sure whether the men were ducking or dead.
[00:56:56] Sergeant Buckilloo, Paul Buckilloo, 22 years in the army was having his first go in combat.
[00:57:06] The opening barrage cracked him wide open. He bolted straight across the perimeter, vanished into the elephant grass and was never heard from again.
[00:57:14] Sergeant Johnson couldn't find his spare magazine so he picked up an M16 with 15 rounds in it from the dead hand of Sergeant Edward Shepherd, who had no business being there that afternoon.
[00:57:25] Though he ranked Kirby and might have taken command, he was overdue to be lifted out by chopper for an appearance before a promotion board.
[00:57:32] So he passed up the honor and died inconspicuously from a bullet through his brain.
[00:57:39] Another long time soldier under fire for the first time he had stayed motionless petrified by personal terror as boundless as the horror exploding all about him.
[00:57:50] His 15 bullets gone, Johnson crawled toward the mortar pit screaming, come out, you'll all be killed.
[00:57:56] There was no response. It was minutes too late for that. The hole held four corpses.
[00:58:01] Heads bashed in by bullet fire.
[00:58:05] In the nearby hole with Kirby was another bloody welter, a rocket. The Russian made p40 round of so slow of motion.
[00:58:13] At the Ieasley Falls, the trajectory came arcing in dead center of the mark. Kirby sought in flight and yelled, watch out.
[00:58:20] So did his foxhole mates.
[00:58:22] Spectre for Austin, Eldrumman and David S. Crocker, who cried warning in the same split second. Before any man could move the rocket exploded just to the left of the hole. Crocker died instantly from a shard that crushed in his skull.
[00:58:36] Drumming took heavy fragments and left arm and left egg. Leg.
[00:58:40] Such gouts of blood spouted from him that Kirby, who had taken four pieces of steel in his head, but remained conscious knew that Drumming couldn't not last long.
[00:58:50] In physical torment, Drumming tried to rise. Kirby pulled it in. Drumming screamed, let me go. I'm hurting.
[00:59:04] Kirby pulled him down within a minute he died under Kirby's body.
[00:59:10] Blood from Kirby's paint was streaming into his eyes, but the little sergeant could still see and think.
[00:59:17] He yelled to his RTO, Spectre for Sprainsa, call company, say I'm being hit by mortars and rockets. We got to have gunships and Arty.
[00:59:29] Sprainsa did his part, Captain Warren struggling uphill, remembered this piece of the message coming in. We're hit by rockets and mortars.
[00:59:38] He later could, later he could not recall that Sprainsa had also asked for gunfire and air artillery. But anyhow, he relayed that message to the command capsule at LZ Savoy and Sprainsa got the word back from him. It's on the way.
[00:59:53] Those words find words, right then communication between the company and Paltoon ended. Both radio has worked. The mass of the originals intervened.
[01:00:07] They were using radio, they work when you can see them. They work a line of sight. They don't work. Whatever the terrain was, they kind of dip down the terrain and all the sudden they lost communications.
[01:00:23] At that moment, the front men in Warren's column were halfway back to Harraford.
[01:00:29] They got double-dwarnts anxiety, though he was already doing everything possible. He had asked that artillery replaced on the slopes alongside the perimeter, not on Harraford itself.
[01:00:39] For Kirby had passed on nothing about casualties and Warren was still thinking of 22 live men holding the contested ground.
[01:00:47] The double-time climb had begun to slow from sheer exhaustion. Men stumbled, dropped in their tracks, were pulled to their feet by their mates and reeled upwards again.
[01:00:57] Warren realized now that if he continued the pressure, the company would reach the scene of the fight deadbeat.
[01:01:05] About that, he no longer gave a damn.
[01:01:12] Passing information on the radio is so freaking important and so hard.
[01:01:21] But if you always think that you're trying to paint a picture for the person on the other end, you've got to think that way. They don't know what's happening.
[01:01:30] If you've got casualties and if you can give any additional information, now look. Obviously these guys are in such a horrible way.
[01:01:40] But that's what's happening. That's what's happening. He doesn't know that anyone's been wounded. He has another one's been killed.
[01:01:46] He thinks that they're in that position and he's saying, hey, start to put artillery on the outskirts of the LZ.
[01:02:00] The sounds of the struggle had not carried to LZ Savoy in the distant valley bottom. The control point was a throb partly because of Warren's call for help. Still more because of the monitoring of the conversations between eyewitnesses who were viewing the fight from platforms directly overhead.
[01:02:17] What they saw and what they said in no way less than the confusions. Colonel Beard. So this is the interesting thing about Vietnam is that a lot of times there would be aircraft because they had air superiority for the most part.
[01:02:31] There would be helicopters that would just get up, CNC helicopters, command and control helicopters that would just get up and fly around and be watching this stuff. I have a friend whose dad was in Vietnam and he was a silver star recipient.
[01:02:45] The whole thing was photographed. This whole event, you know, there was a gunfight broke out and his dad sort of jumped into a a diekin and then crawled along and flanked the enemy and the whole thing. It pictures the whole thing is, but that tells you what it's like.
[01:03:02] What do you got to do? Look, I got all sorts of things going on in my head right now. This is a brutal scene that you're reading. This whole thing is it's playing out and describing these different things is brutal.
[01:03:14] Because we already know we know the outcome and I'm describing these little pieces. But when you're talking about the inability for the and I think it's the company commander. That's kind of Warren Warren's trying to visualize was going on with with Kirby and his in his platoon.
[01:03:33] When you when you was a leader get something in your head when you kind of create what you think is the outcome when you when you get comfortable with what you think you know the outcome or the situation is and you sort of solidify that it's really hard to change that.
[01:03:47] So if I picture this guy leaving and there's just complacency slipped into all these comments that you've read through these little pieces of complacency of. Yes, not going to happen. Yeah, I know it's going on. This is my best guy or all those little pieces are helping this guy warns solidify in his mind what he thinks is is going on.
[01:04:07] And it's impossible for him and the part that I'm connecting to on my mind is how hard it is to for him to visualize things are nowhere near what you think they are and he can't get it in his head that this whole thing has been wiped out his best guys getting over run.
[01:04:21] And when you in your own mind predetermined the way the outcome is going to be it makes you so much less flexible and adaptable and incapable of maneuvering the way you need to and you know it's all on retrospect. I'm just thinking myself.
[01:04:40] You don't presume how this is going to go. Yeah, it's one of the worst things you can do and you can you can almost hear this guy's brain struggling trying to accept what's going on.
[01:04:51] So it's interesting that you bring that up and as we start to hear more sides of this story.
[01:04:59] This guy warns who's he doesn't really know he knows that his guy is a good guy and that he's calling for help and it says that's enough for him to realize that there's something really, really bad.
[01:05:13] There's a panic. There's a panic of hey, like you know if you call me Dave you're on the on the else you call me a hey, John, I need to put right now. I'll be like, okay, hey guys listen, we're going to start taking the they almost immediately go into.
[01:05:28] So get your ass back up he's literally says get your ass back up the hill now. So there's a level of. Let's say urgency that he gets to almost immediately.
[01:05:41] We peeled this onion back. You're going to see that you're right, but the picture that he's painted is what's happening he knew something was going to go wrong. And as soon as it starts to happen, he's like, get back up there because he didn't feel comfortable with it.
[01:06:01] It's like you said it's just freaking awful. Yeah.
[01:06:08] Back to the book Colonel Beard, the Battalion commander, Major Roll, his S3 and Captain Robert offer artillery liaison where at the brigade CP when the news came in. They took off in a Huey to view the fight from above.
[01:06:24] This is a cat worth would get on the ground just kind of FYI just said everybody knows hack worth would get in the helicopter. He land. When it made sense obviously. Before they could reach the scene out of sheer happenstance, major auto can trail the Battalion executive officer of 112 was already hovering above it.
[01:06:44] So he's flying in the area. He arrived at the opposite peak when he heard Warren's voice in the earphone saying that a platoon was being overrun on herford. So Warren didn't know that the platoon was being overrun at this point. So he flew to station directly above and began orbiting low enough to see people milling around and firing on the ground below him. Cantrell was yet too high to determine whether they were friend or enemy.
[01:07:12] Then it william D. Fessendend. An artillery observer in another age 13 had flown the same way and was circling near Cantrell. He asked Cantrell. Sir can I bring in fire? Cantrell replied, no, I can't tell where our people are. Cantrell then flew lower.
[01:07:30] And about that time, beard the Battalion commander and his party arrived. They could see 40 or more men pressing close to the perimeter. They must be VC called beard.
[01:07:42] Either that replied Cantrell or GIs with uniforms soaking wet.
[01:07:48] So this is a I know it seems crazy to think that you couldn't tell the difference between you know American soldiers and Viet Kong. I'll tell you when you're in a helicopter and you're looking at things on the ground. It is not obvious.
[01:08:02] And you don't need to be miles away. You can get 50, 60, 70 feet away and things get really hard to tell what's going on. I was I learned this. I was up at found and we were calling in helicopters to pick us up. And I'm sitting there. I'm standing you know the terrain in found Nevada is not there's no trees is just dirt.
[01:08:23] And we're standing there and the helicopter I'm sitting there looking at the helicopters. It's like the wind is hitting you. That's our close it is and they can't see me.
[01:08:33] And I was just like what do you mean you can't see me I'm waving. They're like who coming around we'll come back around we can't and so I had to get out the red smoke or the orange smoke or whatever.
[01:08:43] We are violet smoke because red smoke was emergency. I think I tried to orange. Orange panel wasn't big enough.
[01:08:53] So that's where these guys are at back to the book his words his words merely aggravated doubts all around can trails troubles that he simply could not make himself believe that one whole American platoon had been wiped out.
[01:09:07] There and he was right now this is where what you were talking about you have this idea how could a whole American platoon get wiped out.
[01:09:17] And it says in the book you're there and he was right and it is right why.
[01:09:23] When we'll get to this later this American platoon look 22 guys is not a platoon right that's not a platoon you think of a platoon you think of multiple machine gunners you think of 40 guys.
[01:09:39] And he dropped to 100 feet for one swift pass the phenomenon of those few seconds doubled his perplexity on the ridge crest above hair furtive saw company of men and dark suits marching to marking marching to the to the fire.
[01:09:53] And he was breaking into the landing zone can't trail out no way of knowing that these were enemy rocket rounds not American rounds coming from other bases the dark suit and men up slope he identified as enemy he knew that he knew that camouflage rig which from a distance made made them to him look like so many turtles.
[01:10:12] But where were the Americans if not on hairford.
[01:10:16] Friendly voice on his FM radio please please you must hurry. They was sprains of getting off his last message but can't trail had no way of knowing that either beard viewing from the same height was for a moment equally in the dark from the start of the fight with good reason curbion forgotten cast in.
[01:10:34] Correspondent he remembered only when cast and slid into his position to ask when are we going to get the hell out of here. Curbied in answer then cast and said I've got to have a weapon.
[01:10:48] Curbied silently handed him his own 357 magnum. Quiet now he briefly fitted into the whole beside curbied. He spoke only once to say sergeant shepherd is dead so now cast in the reporter is in the fox hole and he's got a 357 magnum.
[01:11:07] All curiosity about the thoughts of men facing death was gone from cast and he had been eagerly questioning shepherd when the first shots were fired that that soldier's swift moral collapse and sudden death were his first shot contact with the realities which mocked his quest.
[01:11:24] While cast and opening words to curbied wrinkled they also rang a bell almost anywhere seemed to be better than the exposed ground to which the survivors clutched now under a dust Paul kicked up by the grazing fire.
[01:11:37] The fight had been going somewhere between 20 and 25 minutes and the fire was vastly becoming wholly one sided. Next to curbied's position the enemy skirmishers crawling through the elephant grass were not more than 15 feet away. The fire buildup suggested they were bunching probably for a rush. Curbied saw them fleetingly and vaguely as through a haze.
[01:11:58] The flash of an arm of the bobbing of a head curbied got off three hand grenades and that direction is rapidly as he could throw the explosion seemed to damp the close up fire but not for more than 60 seconds.
[01:12:10] In this moment of decision curbied did not doubt that the ring had been closed and that all the skirmishers waited on the lower slope amid the tall elephant grass between him and the company poised for the kill.
[01:12:22] This sitting there thinking okay worse around it and I know the company is down the hill but there's bad guys in between us.
[01:12:29] Still he yelled out let's make it. With that he rolled out of his hole and down the slope cast and jumped from the hole just ahead of him and was running upright and in the clear.
[01:12:41] PFC Bob tastes and spec for AV spikes from the fox hole above curbied went past curbied one rolling the other sprinting then sprans a dashed by him.
[01:12:52] As he rolled curbied thought he glimpsed Isaac Johnson off to his left firing two m16s.
[01:12:59] He was wrong about that. Johnson had heard someone not quite echoing curbied.
[01:13:04] He should have moved down the hill. His own weapon was empty. He paused briefly to pick up another only to find it in like condition.
[01:13:11] Curbied seen him in that fleeting second when he clutched two useless pieces before throwing them both aside.
[01:13:17] Johnson's face was already a bloody mask from three superficial grenade wounds. Such was his tension. He knew you're heard the blast of the grenade nor knew that he had been hurt.
[01:13:28] Now in panic because he was unarmed he made a running dive at the rocky embankment giving him getting him off her referred lowers side.
[01:13:37] Then he rolled on and on down slope till his body could take no more beating in that spinning descent he covered 150 meters of rock stream trail.
[01:13:49] Then in where he stopped a twisting V shaped cleft and the ridge back gave off to the left along this slit that trickled the stream no water in the palm of Johnson's hand.
[01:13:59] He crawled into the bed of it 20 yards or so to where the jungle growth stopped them. Then he gathered bushes and vines down around him and lay with his face flat in the water.
[01:14:09] So he's hiding.
[01:14:11] Dov off a freaking cliff fell down 150 meters and now he's hiding in this little ravine not too far above in the ordeal of the other few survivors continue to grow worse.
[01:14:21] Of this Johnson felt and remembered nothing. Thought paralyzed by the grip of exhaustion.
[01:14:27] He had closed his mind to the sounds.
[01:14:31] Getting out separately some running others rolling Kirby's men had stayed that way during the first few yards of flight through the short grass just off the LZ coming to the rocky steep.
[01:14:42] They began to converge toward the center.
[01:14:45] Wence the trail ran downhill. It is always so with men against fire.
[01:14:51] Fear and herd instinct brings them together which is the worst which is the worst thing that can happen since it just shapes up a broad target.
[01:15:00] Sprainsa was the first to get it as they approach the steep Kirby still rolling others crawling cast and standing.
[01:15:10] I'm hit. Sprains a yelled and screamed like a panther.
[01:15:15] Three bullets one in each leg and one in the head but marvously he still lived and now he was erect and walking cast and the reporter yelled back.
[01:15:25] Hell everybody's hit. That was news to the others cast and taking a bullet in one arm and several grenade frags in the back saying nothing.
[01:15:33] In his last moments the correspondent had the courage of a lion. Here was a man and they knew it.
[01:15:40] Spikes yelled I'm hit. It was a bullet through the right arm. They then moved 20 feet down the rock bank when sprans a yelled again. Hold it up. They're in front of us.
[01:15:51] Expecting it would come Kirby froze right where he was cast and kept moving in long strides straight to the trail which led downhill through the elephant grass.
[01:16:00] He had made up his mind and Kirby did not bow their dish out of warning standing clear on the trail was an enemy shoulder rifle aimed Kirby heard a scream as cast and went down.
[01:16:14] Though casting was not 15 yards from him he could not see the fall as the body was enveloped by the sea of grass. He heard the whack of the bullet and the thump of the body the bullet had drilled cast and through his left temple.
[01:16:29] Cast and personal effect were looted as soon after he fell. The camera films and purse were later recovered from the bodies of the enemy in the fight that soon followed.
[01:16:40] Many of the next of kin get not even that grain of comfort. It is an agonizing matter for the commanders having to explain why the dead soldiers most prized possessions and pictures cannot be returned.
[01:16:57] Kirby could now hear enemy soldiers moving up slope toward him. They're chattering the clang of metal from their weapons being worked.
[01:17:06] He was down on his haunches and so were sprains of spikes and taste. None was firing.
[01:17:11] There only thought was to hide in the grass which rose to feet taller than a standing man. They all new taste was slowly dying. Two bullets in his neck. Multiple mortar shards in his back.
[01:17:22] Though conscious he made no complaint only asking for water of which there was none.
[01:17:28] The skirmershers were moving up now and beating the grass on both sides of them Kirby saw seven of them coming right toward him not ten feet away.
[01:17:37] And he knew he was discovered. He still held an M79 grenade launcher, so did spikes.
[01:17:44] They fired right together and the blast killed five of the enemy. The other two crawled away leaving blood trails. Another skirmershershers closed in from the left spring.
[01:17:53] The ground between them with automatic pistol. Kirby had his M79 croaked in his arm. He had just taken another bullet through the right wrist and was feeling the wound.
[01:18:01] The skirmershershers came on and looked through the grass straight at them. Spikes fired his M79. The range was so short that the grenade didn't arm.
[01:18:09] But the sheer velocity it blew the man's head off.
[01:18:13] Had it armed, it would likely killed both spikes and Kirby. A second VC closed in from the left only to turn his back as he almost stumbled over them. Kirby killed a metter range of five feet.
[01:18:24] Together two more groups closed in on them from the right and left. Kirby took two hand grenades from Spraenza, who by now was wholly down and throwing them in both directions with his wounded arm.
[01:18:34] He drove them off. He had no impression of how many he had killed or whether he had even him scored a hit.
[01:18:40] He simply knew that they had faded back, easing the immediate pressure momentarily.
[01:18:45] While this deadly hide and seek game went on down slope, Harraford LZ was being pounded by 105 and 155 millimeter Howard Cers from the valley bases.
[01:18:56] Colonel Beard had called for it from his perch aloft and still earlier when worn asked for it.
[01:19:03] Whether it might have been brought in sooner and done any good is an open question. There was no right moment for its use until the Americans declared away, which movement could only be guessed that.
[01:19:14] Now it had come and the perimeter was being cratered.
[01:19:18] One of the effects was to drive more of the enemy to the grass field lower down where Kirby and his mates crouched. The game was still on.
[01:19:27] From down slope, a machine gun opened fire and skydred the grass beside them. Kirby went flat in the nick of time and the bullets is being directly over his head. Spikes didn't make it.
[01:19:37] One burst caught him in the head. The sound was enough. Kirby, two feet from him, didn't have to look to know he was dead.
[01:19:44] And he did not wish to look.
[01:19:47] Kirby crawled down slope about 10 feet now looking for a weapon.
[01:19:52] Thinking that the enemy might have dropped one. No luck. He was wholly out of ammunition and had no arm left but a flare pistol.
[01:20:02] So we lay flat on his back wondering what to do. Another skirmisher came up. Part of the grass and looked directly down on him. Kirby rolled over on his side and the same motion fired his flare pistol upward.
[01:20:13] The rounds smashed into the glaring face not three feet above him. Getting him right between the eyes. The body was spun completely over by the blast with the figure kicking.
[01:20:23] Kirby did not wait to see more than that. He crawled back the way he had come to get sprainsa. The impulse was that if he had to die he would rather not be alone. Both men were silent now.
[01:20:34] There was nothing to say.
[01:20:36] Time it about run out. They thought they were the only survivors though. This they were slightly wrong. Johnson was still face down in his private cleft.
[01:20:46] Spectre four Charles Stucky who swift reaction had started the fight had moved obliquely to the others and getting away from the perimeter.
[01:20:54] Hidden in the tall grass alongside the knob. He had rare fortune.
[01:20:59] Until the final minutes he came under a grenade shower.
[01:21:03] The blast of the survivors to get hit.
[01:21:06] Directly towards Kirby and Sprainsa. Another enemy group moved down the slope. Kirby didn't wait for them. Having nothing to fire he crawled upward through the elephant grass.
[01:21:15] Leaving Sprainsa and passing the skirmishers undetected.
[01:21:19] They fairly stumbled across Sprainsa. He played dead. His head being gory from a bullet that had entered his left ear and emerged through his nose.
[01:21:27] It is less remarkable that the deception worked than that he stayed conscious and was capable of thought.
[01:21:34] They rolled them over, searched his pockets, took his wallet knife and cigarettes and continued on.
[01:21:40] Having gone inert, Sprainsa stayed that way. Kirby had no sense of the barraging of her referred.
[01:21:47] Though the fire had been going on all of ten minutes. Now as he crawled upward he heard at last heard the explosions and knew what they were.
[01:21:55] That determined him. He would crawl to the fire and try and hug it.
[01:22:00] Two thoughts weren't his mind. Charlie will get his far away from this as possible.
[01:22:04] And if he had to die that was still the preferable risk.
[01:22:09] Halfway back to the perimeter. His ear told him that the shelling and suddenly ceased.
[01:22:14] Not knowing what that meant. He still crawled on. It was a tortured, most labored movement.
[01:22:20] As his last reserve of will and strength was draining away he got within six feet of the first foxhole before he looked up.
[01:22:27] What he saw almost numbness senses and he felt as if he would faint.
[01:22:34] Sitting in the foxhole pointing M16 directly at his head was PFC Morgan of First Platoon.
[01:22:41] He crawled a few more feet forward, still prone, looked around. Every hole at hairford was occupied by an American.
[01:22:49] Captain Warren and the company had returned to the hill.
[01:22:52] Sergeant Owen L. Lewis and James W. Edwards came over to help Kirby to his feet.
[01:22:58] No words pass between them.
[01:23:01] They were not merely choked up. They were sobbing convulsively.
[01:23:07] And seeing them Kirby knew tears for the first time that day.
[01:23:12] Later Warren said if my men cried it was because they were so damn mad.
[01:23:18] Kirby knew better than that. They were burning morning the death of the platoon.
[01:23:25] Kirby told them where to look for sprains and not knowing that the company had found them on the way up.
[01:23:30] Or that he'd already been evacuated from hairford by the chopper.
[01:23:33] Stucky appeared about that moment and he and Kirby were phoned on Kay aboard the same Huey.
[01:23:38] It was some time later that Johnson came in. When the hill went quiet he started crawling upward.
[01:23:43] Coming to the tall grass he saw his friend, Sergeant Wallace W. Hood standing in the clear on the forward edge of hairford.
[01:23:51] And that sight brought him to his feet.
[01:23:53] Days later he was still in the state of shock. Kirby taken to the hospital of his own choice.
[01:23:58] Return to the company duty within ten days still convollescent.
[01:24:03] On Mike Johnson he was fully coherent with his emotions under tight control to the smoke of seeing the company in tears.
[01:24:12] Warren in the company had made that frantic uphill climb to hairford in exactly thirty five minutes.
[01:24:20] They descend over the same trail of taking them an hour longer.
[01:24:25] If a record march it was too little avail. They saw dead Americans in all but six fock holes and fought at first sprains.
[01:24:33] It was the only survival survivor.
[01:24:36] The platoon weapons had been taken. Everybody had been stripped of personal effects.
[01:24:43] Warren deployed two of his platoons for a six hundred yard sweep to the eastward along both flanks of the ridge.
[01:24:49] The hunt proved almost barren of result. Though blood trails were numerous and heavily marked.
[01:24:54] Only five bodies were found and they all too obviously had been feld by artillery.
[01:24:59] The fanatics must have hauled away larger count of dead than was lost to the company.
[01:25:05] So in the end they departed as they had come more suddenly.
[01:25:10] Then mysteriously how the trap had been sprung was easy enough to figure out in retro-spect.
[01:25:16] This enemy force of about two hundred was much too fresh to have followed in along Warren's wake.
[01:25:23] As he came over the trail from hill seven sixty six the time intervals not long enough to have permitted a cent from lower levels.
[01:25:31] Toward which Warren had kept moving. If there had been an assembly and movement still no sound had been detected.
[01:25:38] Last the enemy's main weapons were sighted dead on target.
[01:25:43] Thus the enemy force must have been there all the time. Some yards off the trail and along the ridge sides as Warren's column had walked through.
[01:25:54] Had Warren stayed in full strength on her referred there might have been no fight.
[01:26:00] He carried out his orders of that came the most melancholy episode in operation crazy horse.
[01:26:17] Now you may have noticed that I didn't mention the author of this book that I'm reading.
[01:26:26] The reason I didn't mention the author of this book is because I didn't want to cloud your impression.
[01:26:35] The author was a guy by the name of SLA Marshall.
[01:26:41] And I talked about him on podcast 142 where we covered his book, Medigins Fire, you heard him use that phrase in here.
[01:26:52] And SLA Marshall was a famous military man.
[01:26:59] And he ended up being a general. He was a historian. He was a writer. He was a reserveist.
[01:27:07] So he was a civilian writer and wrote a bunch of articles. It was work for a newspaper.
[01:27:12] He was also a very controversial figure and hackworth. Tor did a tour with him in Vietnam and kind of reveals the guy's character. He was very e-cautistical.
[01:27:23] And he also made claims about his experiences in war that were not true.
[01:27:33] He lied about his experience. He lied about his combat experience in World War I.
[01:27:43] And then he also wrote in a way that supported his own theories and his own hypotheses.
[01:27:54] And in Medigins Fire, there's a lot of people that went back and broke down what he wrote in that book.
[01:28:00] On this podcast, like I said, because we didn't want to throw away the baby with the bath water.
[01:28:05] But there's a lot of things that were very controversial and some of them just straight up wrong.
[01:28:10] And on top of all that, he never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
[01:28:16] So when I read this portion of battles in the monsoon, this was on my mind.
[01:28:25] And the article, I mean, this book didn't paint Kirby in such a bad light as the manual did, which made him just sound like a complete, you know,
[01:28:40] Lacks a days ago guy that just let all the stuff go and didn't have any discipline and didn't follow any good protocols.
[01:28:48] But at the same time, I'm reading this book thinking, well, you know, SLA Marshall, he's not necessarily a guy that's going to, he just wants a really good story.
[01:28:57] So he's in my opinion, and just based on the things he's written in the past, this isn't something, this isn't a reliable source either.
[01:29:06] Even though he would go and interview people, like those quotes he's going to, he would interview people absolutely, but still he's going to, he's going to make that story kind of the way he wants it.
[01:29:16] And so I was still not satisfied with the information that I had in front of me.
[01:29:23] And so I did some more research, and I found another article.
[01:29:30] And I found an article on a website called historynet.com.
[01:29:35] And there's an article written by a guy named Michael Christie.
[01:29:41] So Michael Christie enlisted in the Marine Corps out of high school.
[01:29:46] And then he joined the army.
[01:29:48] They became an officer, probably went to college, came an officer served in the fifth special forces group in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968.
[01:29:56] And in 1970, he was the commander of C company, first battalion, 12th cavalry regiment.
[01:30:05] The very same company involved in the battle at L. Z. Herford. So he wasn't there, but you know, you're going to have some connection to you.
[01:30:13] We'll put some things together. You're going to hear some backfill.
[01:30:18] And he eventually retired and became a writer and he produced a bunch of documentaries.
[01:30:22] And then he made a series of leadership videos for the 4th of the military.
[01:30:26] So the military hired him to make leadership videos.
[01:30:29] Some of those were hosted by Lee Marvin, which is pretty cool.
[01:30:33] But he wrote this article.
[01:30:37] And this article is called Last Stand at L. Z. Herford.
[01:30:44] Soldiers shield themselves as best they can from the dirt and debris stirred up by a hewie, squeezing into tight one ship landing zone around noon.
[01:30:55] The pilot touches down in two officers jump from the helicopter and land in a large mud puddle.
[01:31:01] One GI chuckles, pokes his buddy and laughs quietly at the officers in fresh jungle fatigues stamping the mud off their polished boots.
[01:31:12] A dirty unshaven captain greets them wearing torn jungle fatigues and mud covered boots, toting in M16.
[01:31:20] So there's one.
[01:31:22] So now we're starting to get a little better picture. You know, you've got the stereotypical sort of officers rolling in with their
[01:31:30] brand new fatigues and polished boots and outcomes.
[01:31:33] Warren, who's been out in the jungle now for a while on this just this operation.
[01:31:41] The trio moves to the edge of the landing zone where towering elephant grass offers a bit of protection from the early afternoon sun.
[01:31:48] The major unfolds of map and the three begin discussing a mission within minutes.
[01:31:52] There's strong disagreement over the plan.
[01:31:56] Lieutenant Colonel Rutland Beard, commander of the first battalion, 12th Cavalry, first cavalry division, and his operations officer Major William Roll are insisting that Captain Don Warren,
[01:32:08] Charlie Company commander, leave his 20 man mortar platoon alone on landing zone,
[01:32:13] and then move down the steep precipice toward the valley below.
[01:32:27] Warren is equally insistent on keeping at least one rifle squad behind to provide security.
[01:32:33] Sir, my mortar platoon is down to half strength because of malaria and has only M16s and a couple M79s.
[01:32:40] The first time I'm going to have a gun force security.
[01:32:44] Beard tells Warren that the mortar platoon will be on the hill for less than an hour before it will be lifted out and taken to another LZ.
[01:32:52] Warren's eyes lock on Beard's.
[01:32:55] Anything can happen in hours, sir.
[01:32:59] Eritated at Warren's near-in-subordination.
[01:33:02] Beard warns, Captain, if you don't do as I order, you will be in more trouble than you can imagine is that understood.
[01:33:09] Warren has a date to moment before answering, Tursley, yes Colonel, will that be all sir?
[01:33:15] Beard indicates, yes, and Warren spins on his heels and walks over to his rifle platoon leaders to pass the orders.
[01:33:21] Beard takes a sideward glance at Roll, shakes his head, and returns to his helicopter.
[01:33:28] So, all automatically we see where this is going.
[01:33:32] By the way, look, I love this book. The squad leader makes a difference.
[01:33:39] But the squad leader's getting put in a bad situation right now.
[01:33:45] Warren has every reason for concern about the safety of his understrength mortar platoon.
[01:33:50] Herifords topography makes it nearly impossible for even a fully armed rifle company defendant from a determined enemy.
[01:33:57] It is a small saddle, 165 yards, long by 45 yards. Why this partially encircled by Paul Taule,
[01:34:05] I'll have to grasp beyond the elephant grass, it's completely surrounded by rugged unforgiving landscape.
[01:34:09] The most hostile being the steep Razor-back, Rajeline, reaching northeast toward a towering mountain near the near-lea thousand feet high at the base of the ridge.
[01:34:17] Herifords northern boundary begins to slope gently downhill.
[01:34:22] Herifords are on explaining what we already know. Herifords is also the center of fierce fighting that began seven days early on May 15.
[01:34:29] So, now they give a little background to this whole operation crazy horse.
[01:34:34] When word of that battle filtered down to first cavalry leaders, they then decided the next day to conduct their major operation in the area.
[01:34:43] And that's what they're doing. Sitting on the edge of his foxhole on LZ Heriford.
[01:34:48] Staff Sergeant Robert Kirby watches as Captain Warren leads three platoons from his rifle company off the mountain and down a steep slope in search of the enemy.
[01:34:57] When the last man disappears over the rim, Kirby checks his watch, it's 140 pm less than 45 minutes.
[01:35:04] His mortar platoon is to be airlifted, off-hair referred to LZ Savoy, where it will continue providing fire support for Charlie Company.
[01:35:13] To ask occupy a company size defensive perimeter with only 19 men.
[01:35:19] So now we're talking company size perimeter. That's 150 people. Yeah, he's got 19 guys.
[01:35:26] Kirby figured the best way to do this was to form a U-shaped defense and place two men into every third foxhole.
[01:35:33] This however, left the top of the horseshoe open.
[01:35:36] Knowing his men are spread to thin, Kirby, a 29 year old native of South Los Angeles, scans the perimeter from his foxhole at the bend of the hershoe beginning.
[01:35:46] With the gun crew directly behind him inside the pit is Sergeant Charles Gaines and Spectre for Austin, drumming a former golden gloves champion with fast hands,
[01:35:56] Perfect for dropping rounds into a mortar tube, Sergeant Isaac Johnson sits on the ground nearby with a potboard on his lap.
[01:36:02] The one crew is ready to place supporting fire, went and wear the company commander.
[01:36:06] Needs it.
[01:36:08] Most of the mortar platoon have been together since fort-bending Georgia, but a few are replacements who have never been in battle.
[01:36:15] So Kirby has no idea how will they react on their fire.
[01:36:19] One of his new men is Spectre for David Crocker, a 21 year old medic who sits a few feet from Kirby reading a paper back.
[01:36:27] His medical bag ready at his side. In the foxhole next to Kirby is longtime a radio operator Spectre for John Spraenza.
[01:36:35] Who is the platoon's linked to the outside world and is never more than an arms length away from Kirby communications are unreliable because the high mountains in deep valley.
[01:36:43] How's the combo ask Kirby so far so good answer Spraenza, but who knows from how long Kirby focuses on the western section of the perimeter.
[01:36:50] Holding down the most forward position at the top of the open horseshoe are two men who have fought bravely in previous firefights.
[01:36:57] Private Solani sleepy Williams, who's deep sleep often resulted in heavy snoring and clearance Gomer Braim, a good natured hillbilly who looked and acted like TV's Gomer pile.
[01:37:10] Two empty fighting positions below them are combat vets, Robert radar, rotor and PFC Harold Mac Jr. in a fierce firefight a few months before Kirby had been wounded and pinned down.
[01:37:23] When 18 year old rotor ignoring heavy fire ran out and pulled him to safety, Mac and rotor have been close friends ever since airborne school.
[01:37:31] So we didn't know that about Kirby that Kirby's been in combat he's been wounded and he's still out there doing his job.
[01:37:37] This guy has combat experience and I want to think that he's going to be an accidental in this scenario.
[01:37:42] In the last defensive position on the western side Kirby assigned a competent and respected leader Sergeant Lewis Buckley with PFC Henry Benton who joined the platoon only two weeks ago Kirby knows little about Benton and the two new privates covering the southern sector a few yards away from Kirby's position.
[01:37:58] Joel Tamayo and James Francis Brooks Jr. both of whom joined the platoon just a few weeks earlier.
[01:38:04] So he's got those guys that he doesn't really know too well kind of close to hand. Kirby decides to walk the eastern side of the perimeter.
[01:38:10] But before he goes he tells Buckley to collect and stack water cans food containers and other equipment and preparation for the helicopter pickup.
[01:38:16] Roger that, Sarge says Buckley as he springs into action.
[01:38:21] As Kirby walks away he hears sprans a take call.
[01:38:24] Take the first call for reconnaissance fire and advance the company's movement in the valley below.
[01:38:29] So why is Kirby walking the perimeter because he's doing his job as a leader?
[01:38:34] And he's also prepping to leave because when you when the helicopters come in, is it that the good time to stack up stuff and get it off the DZ?
[01:38:42] The LZ? No, you want to have it prepped. So the helicopters don't spend a bunch of time there and you want to get all the stuff off the LZ so the enemy can't use it.
[01:38:51] Sitting in the nearest position to Kirby Kirby's on the eastern sector is spec for AV spikes who is complaining about something to PFC Wade taste.
[01:39:04] Spike stop bitching and keep your eyes open.
[01:39:06] Warn's Kirby as he approaches.
[01:39:09] Spike's 26 to 7 year veteran who's disregard for authorities well known looks at Kirby but says nothing.
[01:39:16] Kirby orders 18 year old taste to help Buckley who's already picking up scattern cans and containers.
[01:39:20] So he's stopped bitch and he can keep your eyes open.
[01:39:23] This is what a platoon sergeant should be doing.
[01:39:26] Kirby moves the next position where look magazine correspondent Sam Cassen is interviewing
[01:39:31] spec for Daniel Post and PFC Roger Robert Benjamin.
[01:39:35] Cassen came out of the field a day before to write a story about death.
[01:39:39] He had chosen to stay on her referred with a more to Patoon rather than travel with company Post known as
[01:39:44] Patoon's practical joke or feeds cast in mischievous responses while Benjamin only respond and yes or no answers.
[01:39:51] Kirby queries the two troopers on what they will do if attack they tell him they plan on throwing hand grenades down the rocky preposis
[01:39:58] below their position and firing interlocking fires with their positions on their left and right.
[01:40:07] So that's Kirby Kirby's like okay what do you gonna do if we get hit they say we're in the third
[01:40:10] grenades over there and we got interlocking fendered fields of fire with these other position.
[01:40:14] Satisfied Kirby heads for the most forward position at the top of the eastern sector,
[01:40:19] man by Paul Harrison and Charles stucky both battle tested specialist Harrison and stucky of established
[01:40:26] interlocking fields of fire across the open end of the U.C. perimeter with Williams and Braim on the western side.
[01:40:32] So he set the positions he went out inspect the positions make sure people understand their field of fire.
[01:40:38] Squawed leaders actually doing his job.
[01:40:41] On the way back to his position Kirby Nides nods to Sergeant first class Edwin Shepherd sitting on the rim of the fox will not far apart from the morta pit
[01:40:48] Shepherd 38 is the only soldier there who's not in the morta platoon he stayed behind to catch a helicopter where he is a.
[01:40:54] To appear before a promotion board. Kirby sits on the edge of the fox will watch his sprains of talking on the radio with Captain Warren who's calling correction on where to place another
[01:41:03] Brown sprains of yells back correction to the gun crew and it then fires a few more rounds shortly after two p.m.
[01:41:08] Warren radio sprains of that the helicopters are on the way and that word spreads from hold the whole.
[01:41:13] What Warren does not know is that the helicopters are actually delayed and still sitting on the ground at L. Z.
[01:41:19] Savoie in the valley.
[01:41:22] Around 2.15 five minutes before the anticipated arrive at the helicopter.
[01:41:26] Stucky spots three well camouflaged north Vietnamese army soldiers watching him from the elephant grass he opens fire with his M16 and Harrison joins in the three enemy drop either dead or wounded.
[01:41:37] So you're if you don't catch well camouflaged NVA if you're not paying attention these guys are paying attention.
[01:41:46] Then in the next instant. A massive volume of automatic fire and smaller fires on least from the high ground to the north and a ravine to the east shepherd sitting on the rim of the fox holds killed in the first valley.
[01:41:57] Vali within seconds the rocker propelled grenades more to rounds explode near each occupied position men bro deep inside their fox hold under the terrifying.
[01:42:04] Shrapnel slicing through the air and bullets cracking overhead the platoon is surrounded outman and now gun.
[01:42:10] Kirby Elsa's friends are ready to warn and tell them they are under attack and need immediate immediate air and artillery support a stunned warn acknowledges immediately calls battalion for fire support and orders is company to turn around head back up the hill.
[01:42:24] So to your point earlier.
[01:42:27] Warren the reason he was able to turn around and head and go is because he didn't even want to leave in the first place.
[01:42:37] In the open stacking equipment taste falls to ground with two bullets to the throat buckly his shoulder covered and blood dashes across the open perimeter screaming get off the hill get off the hill and disappears in the elephant grass.
[01:42:47] Harrison yells for stucky to go to the mortar pit while he stays behind a hold off the enemy.
[01:42:51] Stucky takes a few more shots at the enemy turns and zigzags for the mortar pit when an RPG round explodes in front of him throwing him to the ground after the sharp no and dirt stop falling.
[01:43:00] He raises his head and looks to see where post of Benjamin had been trying to make an escape both or dead.
[01:43:05] He sprints towards a large rock right just outside the perimeter as he turns the corner of it.
[01:43:11] He encounters an enemy soldier about to throw a grenade into the LZ spotting stucky the NVA tosses the grenade directly at him at stand instead.
[01:43:19] The grenade sails over stucky's head hits the rock behind him and explodes wounding him.
[01:43:24] Managing to stay in his feet stucky fires three rounds in the NVA's chest killing him instantly.
[01:43:29] Stucky then moves around the rock face finds a narrow crevice and squeezes into it hidden from the enemy.
[01:43:34] Paul Harrison slapping magazine after magazine to his rifle fires at every charging enemy soldier he can see when he runs out of ammunition he jumps up from his foxhole and charges the NVA using his M16 as a club.
[01:43:47] Cracking a few heads before the blood-covered rifle slips from his hands.
[01:43:51] He then wades into the enemy with his fist until he falls dead from dozens of bullets.
[01:44:01] As North Vietnamese burst through the elephant grass, Sprains opens up with his M16 on full automatic tearing three of them apart.
[01:44:11] He manages to fire off a few more shots before RGB rounds, RBG rounds visible in their slow trajectory, plunged toward the mortar pit.
[01:44:20] One round slams in front of Sprains' foxhole, shouring his back with strappin'l.
[01:44:24] Another explodes to his left killing dock-crocker instantly.
[01:44:28] The third round cent strappin'l into Kirby's arms head in chest.
[01:44:31] The last round hits the rear lip of the mortar pit, tearing off drubbins right arm and mangling his left leg.
[01:44:37] He dies in a pool of blood.
[01:44:41] Gains his killed with a bullet through his head.
[01:44:48] Johnson, the only gun crew member alive, takes shrapnel in the face, but continues firing on the advancing enemy.
[01:44:54] As attackers fall, others jump over them, running toward Johnson, who keeps firing until he is out of ammunition.
[01:45:03] He makes a running dive at the rocky embatement on heraford southern edge, and rolls down the slope,
[01:45:08] carining off rocks and over tree roots until finally coming to a stop. He spots a V-shaped depression hidden in thick vegetation,
[01:45:19] with a stream running through it, pulls himself into the stream, and gathers brush and vines to hide his body grip with fear and exhaustion.
[01:45:23] On the western perimeter, Williams and Braim, frankly, fire their M-16s on full automatic at the waves of NVA, as do rotor and mack.
[01:45:31] A few NVA fall dead, but most brave the wall of fire over running the position in killing Williams and Braim before turning toward rotor and mack.
[01:45:40] Mack pops up to get a better shot when he takes a bullet to the head, crumbling back into the foxhole dead.
[01:45:45] Rotor fires his M-79 until he is out of ammunition, then picks up M-16 and continues firing until it is empty. He throws two grenades at the charging enemy, forcing them to fall back, then jumps out of his fighting position at heads for Benton's foxhole.
[01:46:00] When he tumbles in, he finds Benton dead. He crawls out, and with bullets trailing, is every step, races over to the foxhole of Brooks and Tamayo, but there dead as well.
[01:46:13] The western defense is crumbled. Figuring everyone else's dead, Rotor does what he is trained to do, escape and evade.
[01:46:21] He tears down the side of the hill into the elephant grass, followed by several enemy, with bullets zipping over his head, he runs deeper into the elephant grass as fast as he can, until he's overcome by exhaustion and drops to the ground.
[01:46:32] When he is gasping, when his gasping for air subsides, he realized the enemy is no longer following him. He stays hidden, silently praying that he will be spared.
[01:46:43] Still in his whole, sprains a sees at figure running toward his position. He fires off a quick burst, somehow missing his target.
[01:46:50] Don't shoot for God's sake, it's me. Sam cast in screams as he drops into the foxhole. The reporter looks over at Kirby and yells, we need to get the hell out of here. Kirby shouts back where,
[01:47:01] we're surrounded.
[01:47:04] Get six on the horn. Kirby tells Sprainsa. Tell him to hurry or we're dead. Sprainsa screams into the head set.
[01:47:14] Please hurry, we're being overrun.
[01:47:17] But Warren doesn't get the transmission as communication between hair for in the company no longer exists.
[01:47:22] Sprainsa turns to the artillery frequency and repeats the message. The artillery artillery all passes the call to Warren, who now pushes his company even more ordering his men to double time up the hill, a murderous pace in the mud and tangled vines.
[01:47:37] By this time, the battalion executive officer Major Cantrell is circling above hairford and his observation helicopter in Colonel Beard is watching the battle from his command and control Huey.
[01:47:47] The swarm of enemy they see below is so intermingled with the mortar position neither officer can distinguish who to. Rather than kill the defenders by mistake, Beard holds off on artillery requested by Kirby.
[01:48:00] Meanwhile, Kirby sees four enemy crawling towards his position less than 15 feet away and tosses three hand grenades as fast as he can stopping their advance. Kirby now realizes cast in his right.
[01:48:10] They're only chance for survival is to get off the LZ. He cubs his hands to bark the order when the badly wounded taste suddenly drops into his foxhole. Kirby ties a dressing on tastes, bleeding throat and yells over the enemy fire.
[01:48:24] We got to make a break for it. Call, already on the hill.
[01:48:29] Sprains are reaches the artillery net shouting into the handset. We're getting out of here. The place is covered with enemy just about everybody is dead.
[01:48:40] He is told artillery is on hold.
[01:48:48] With bullets kicking up dirt all around them Kirby entased low crawl over to Sprains and castin.
[01:48:54] We'll go over the rim in the direction the company will be coming in Holler's Kirby. Let's go. As Sprains are struggles with his radio while he climbs out of the foxhole Kirby screams forget the radio blow it.
[01:49:04] Sprains are pulls the pin of a hand grenade and throws it in the foxhole with the radio. The three soldiers and castin move is quickly away from the blast and a few steps later come across a wounded.
[01:49:14] Wounded AV spikes clutching his M79. Kirby and Sprains have their M16s but very little ammunition. Castin who is also wounded has a 357 Magnum that Kirby gave him. Taste is unarmed.
[01:49:26] The five wounded men now move toward the slope, descending into a deep ravine to the east. Kirby tastes spikes and castin run crawl and roll into the elephant grass while Sprains act as a rear guard before rolling down the hill to join them.
[01:49:42] As they reach a small ravine they hear the enemy coming down from the LZ and Hopper suit they lie down figuring the Americans are hiding. The NVA began beating the grass. The first North Vietnamese to spot the Americans is shot in the face by Sprainsa. Kirby kills another standing nearby Spikes fires his M79 near the group killing five the other two crawl away wounded.
[01:50:02] Seconds later another group of North Vietnamese spray the ground around the American Sprainsa takes three bullets in his right leg one smashing into his kneecap severing the tendon. Another bullet rips through his left leg.
[01:50:13] I'm hit Sprainsa screams as he falls into a heap on the jungle floor. Kirby sprays the advancing enemy with the last of his ammunition causing them to retreat.
[01:50:21] When he bends down to check on Sprainsa bullet smashes into his right arm he's now losing blood from many wounds. Kirby eyes and NVA peeking over the grass and pulls out a rusty French flare gun. He'd found on an old battlefield and fires hitting him between the eyes. The soldier falls backward screaming in agony as his flesh burns away.
[01:50:44] In the meantime taste silently boot bleeds to death from his throat wounds. Hearing something behind him, Sprainsa spins around just as a bullet enters the back of his skull, travels through his jaw and excess out of his nose tearing away the cartilage teeth tissue and skin. Eyes filled with blood, Sprainsa goes down badly wounded but somehow still alive.
[01:51:14] Possibly to regroup the enemy stops firing. Kirby tells everyone to head farther down the ravine quietly the four-group survivors crawl then walk down the slope with help from Kirby and Spike Sprainsa manages to keep up.
[01:51:27] Feeling somewhat safe with an NVA about a hundred yards behind they move a little faster, suddenly spotting a small group of enemy coming up a trail to their flank. Sprainsa signals to get down.
[01:51:37] Sprainsa's chest is not seen as sprainsa's warning and keeps going running straight into a group of North Vietnamese coming from another direction. One of the NVA shoots casting the head killing him.
[01:51:49] The enemy now opens fire into the grass from two sides. Spike takes several bullets in his chest. Kirby checks his pulse but cannot find one.
[01:52:00] He gets to meet troops slowly wade through the grass toward Kirby and Sprainsa. Kirby's out of ammo. Sprainsa's rifle is jammed but he has two grenades left and he gives them to Kirby who tosses them into the advancing enemy.
[01:52:13] Just then, friendly artillery rounds begin pounding LZ-Hairford. The deafening explodes and stop the enemy's advance.
[01:52:22] Kirby and Sprainsa take advantage of the situation and begin to move slowly back up the hill but it's too much for Sprainsa. Go without me he gas. I can't move any further. I'm dying. I'm not leaving you alone. Says Kirby.
[01:52:35] Go now. Sprainsa yell save yourself. I've made peace with my Lord. Just go.
[01:52:46] Kirby, believing Sprainsa will die for sure reluctantly, exceeds to the RTO's demand and crawls away back towards Hairford.
[01:52:55] Sprainsa, although growing weaker from loss of blood, finds the will to take off a scabbard knife, strapped to his leg by a leather thong. He places the knife around on the ground.
[01:53:07] Next to him uses the raw hide as a turn to get to stop the bleeding in his right leg. He then somehow manages to open his first aid kit, find a gauze bandage and begins wrapping around his head and eye.
[01:53:18] Before he can finish however, he hears rustling of men coming toward him through the grass. He takes his knife and do his hand and rolls over face down in the dirt.
[01:53:27] Playing dead, Sprainsa doesn't move a muscle as three or four NVA slowly approach. He smells their bodies and stale breath as they search him for anything of value.
[01:53:36] One man turns him over and roughly strips off his signature ring. Another's take his wallet, cigarettes and dog tags, unable to stay motionless another second.
[01:53:46] He's about to jump up with his knife when he hears a helicopter rapidly descending. It sprays the ground with bullets, some so close they spatter dirt in his face, screaming frantically, the NVA run for cover.
[01:54:00] Still afraid to move, Sprainsa continues to play dead and seconds later he hears someone carefully moving toward him. He grips his knife a little tighter and when he feels a hand grab his shoulder he musters all the strength he has left and tries stabbing the man.
[01:54:13] But the large shadowy figure bat-lick by the sun drifting through the trees quickly grabs Sprainsa's knife in hand, screaming, hey it's me Carlos Carlos Cruz.
[01:54:27] Charlie Company had made it back up the hill.
[01:54:32] The last of his energy drained, Sprainsa lays down his head and slips into unconsciousness. Kirby is halfway up the slope when friendly artillery cease is falling, uncertain what it means.
[01:54:42] He keeps crawling, his many wounds are taking their toll but he keeps going until he reaches the top of the hill where he sees Charlie Company troops everywhere.
[01:54:53] Unable to control his wounded body and freight emotions, he slides to the ground, a medic gives him a shot of morphine and stops his bleeding.
[01:55:02] When the wounded stucky comes crawling into the LZ and other medic rushes over, lays him down and treats his wounds.
[01:55:08] Sprainsa is carried up the hill and a stretcher made from ponchos and shortly he, Kirby and Stucky are placed in a meta-vac helicopter and flown out.
[01:55:18] Passing the meta-vac flying out, helicopters begin delivering reinforcements who pile out onto her referred.
[01:55:26] A look of horror passes over their faces at the sight of so much death and destruction, one soldier throws up.
[01:55:36] Hearing the helicopters coming and going, Johnson, who got off the hill and evaded the enemy slowly approaches the LZ, only to face the muzzle of an M16 held by PFC Morgan.
[01:55:46] He drops to the ground out of relief when he is recognized by Morgan.
[01:55:53] The last mortar pulled to and survivor to get back to the LZ as a dazed rotor.
[01:55:59] Company pulled to and leader asked Rogan to identify the bodies, all of which had been stripped of personal effects and shot in the head.
[01:56:08] He is able to name a few before the weight of the massacre takes its toll.
[01:56:17] He cannot look at another dead friend.
[01:56:22] As he sits down, the afternoon monsoon rains begin pouring down out of the dark sky.
[01:56:31] Rotor shivers as the rain pelts his sobbing body.
[01:56:40] So much death in such a small place.
[01:56:45] So there's another view of this battle and clearly,
[01:57:00] the difference is immense the leadership issues.
[01:57:08] There's a whole discussion to have about that.
[01:57:12] What point when you're being told to do something that doesn't make sense?
[01:57:17] What point do you say, or not doing that?
[01:57:22] And this is leadership strategy and tactics.
[01:57:25] The whole assessment of that.
[01:57:31] And it's not like I'm not saying leadership strategy and tactics tells you the answer.
[01:57:36] But it gives you the options.
[01:57:39] And it's heavy options to weigh.
[01:57:42] And you could look at Warren and say, well, if it wasn't safe, I wouldn't do it.
[01:57:46] Okay, well, then he fires you on the spot.
[01:57:48] He puts the young lieutenant in charge of the bulltune.
[01:57:52] Now, you can also say, hey, Roger that.
[01:57:56] By the way, give me a fire team over here, give me a machine gunner.
[01:58:00] This is what we're doing.
[01:58:01] Once the boss leaves, you can do that.
[01:58:03] That's good option.
[01:58:04] I like that option.
[01:58:07] You can, and you don't know what kind of relationship we have.
[01:58:10] Because there's also, I mean, I guess we could say the peers that you relationship is great.
[01:58:15] I guess we do know that much.
[01:58:17] But sometimes, if somebody is very convicted in the way that they're offering advice, it can be convincing.
[01:58:27] And this is something that I have to be careful of.
[01:58:30] Because I know I can be convincing.
[01:58:33] I know I can't be.
[01:58:34] And I have to be careful.
[01:58:36] In fact, that's one of the probably original reasons for me being such a listener.
[01:58:42] As I know that, if I say, I think we should do this.
[01:58:45] A lot of people just get a Roger that.
[01:58:47] Like, if that's what you think, we're on board.
[01:58:49] I mean, that's kind of something I had to watch out for.
[01:58:52] And it'd turn me into more of a listener because I didn't want to subdue people's thoughts.
[01:58:58] I didn't want to tamper with their ideas.
[01:59:00] And I didn't want to override how they thought something should go.
[01:59:07] So we have to be careful of that as a leader to make sure that we aren't just being so overbearing that people don't.
[01:59:14] That people don't push back against us.
[01:59:23] The three different versions, I do if you want to call them versions, just a three different perspectives of that.
[01:59:28] You know, paint each one paints such a unique picture.
[01:59:32] And, you know, I wrote down on my notes again, everything that I write down,
[01:59:36] and just the things that I'm thinking in real time.
[01:59:38] And it's really frustrating to sit here and listen to this,
[01:59:42] knowing the outcome and seeing all these pieces play out, knowing that this was a totally,
[01:59:49] this was a preventable, this is a leadership failure.
[01:59:52] It is a leadership failure at a lot of different levels.
[01:59:55] And this last one really paints a more clear picture of how this predicament happened.
[02:00:00] But knowing that this is not an unsolvable problem that they were just,
[02:00:05] you know, way could this have been prevented, this is just simply not true.
[02:00:09] And the frustration of that. And when I picture just the conversation of the,
[02:00:15] of the person in charge telling a subordinate do it or else,
[02:00:20] just the philosophy that I lead through my authority.
[02:00:26] And the catastrophic events that happened that has, in this case,
[02:00:30] we're talking human life, I mean, this is a, a catastrophic thing,
[02:00:34] but those same, that same approach and how often leaders are in fact,
[02:00:40] and what they want, not recognizing just how destructive that is to them as a leader.
[02:00:48] And then I'm sitting and trying to picture these guys up,
[02:00:51] and I have a couple of looking down, and the seconding feeling they must have had,
[02:00:54] this is what, what did I create, how did I, how did this happen?
[02:00:59] Well, it happened because of you because you as a leader demanded
[02:01:03] things happen the way that you want, and I'm picturing,
[02:01:07] I mean, and I was struggling early with this guy with, with the company commander,
[02:01:11] not being able to reconcile, and that's just me piecing things together.
[02:01:16] And, and I imagine this feeling of the entire time walking down the hill,
[02:01:20] knowing, knowing he didn't want to do that.
[02:01:25] The, pat, you quote, front line, the front line, the leader in the field,
[02:01:30] is always right, right? So you're coming from your,
[02:01:33] how will it come through? You're getting off and you're telling me what to do.
[02:01:36] That just sits so foul for me.
[02:01:40] And the other thing that's interesting about this is,
[02:01:43] you would think that we could be sitting here saying,
[02:01:47] as to, you know, military leaders that you and I were,
[02:01:52] it's very easy to say, we could, you and I could be sitting here having a conversation
[02:01:56] where look, discipline is paramount.
[02:01:59] Obviously, we could sit here and say,
[02:02:01] jocco, jocco is saying discipline is paramount.
[02:02:03] No one would question that for one millisecond.
[02:02:05] Discipline is paramount.
[02:02:07] You have to, you have to get people into a point where they will obey what you say,
[02:02:12] and you, they need to do it.
[02:02:14] That's what military training is.
[02:02:15] That's what you learn in boot camp.
[02:02:17] That's what you learn in officer candidate school to,
[02:02:19] to instant obey orders.
[02:02:21] Like, that's what we want.
[02:02:23] And that's just just so wrong.
[02:02:26] It's so wrong to think that it's so wrong to feel that way.
[02:02:31] And you know what?
[02:02:33] Like, I'm so thankful that I had the luxury of being in the military
[02:02:40] and being able to experience this.
[02:02:43] And then on top of that, getting to see it while I was training people.
[02:02:46] And then on top of it, getting to see it with all these companies that we work with.
[02:02:49] Because occasionally, to this day,
[02:02:53] someone will say to me, somebody at some company will say,
[02:02:57] yeah, but sometimes don't they just need just showing up and do what they're told to do.
[02:03:01] I get that.
[02:03:02] I get that.
[02:03:03] I still get that.
[02:03:05] And what they think I'm going to say is, whoa, you hell, yeah.
[02:03:08] That's what everybody thinks I'm going to say.
[02:03:10] And it's like, actually, no, you don't want that.
[02:03:15] And I actually, I actually had a good situation like this.
[02:03:18] I was working with a client.
[02:03:20] And I had two people on the call. There's more than two people, but there's two people that kind of rose to the conversation.
[02:03:26] One of them was, you know, but they just need to do it.
[02:03:29] And I rebutted that guy and said, well, if what you're going to do is just, you know,
[02:03:35] bark to them, shut up and do it, whether you believe it or not,
[02:03:38] that's not going to have a good outcome and here's why I went through the whole thing.
[02:03:41] And when I got done with that, the other guy said, that's what we need to do.
[02:03:46] We need to actually listen what they have to say.
[02:03:48] We have to take their input and all those things.
[02:03:50] We need to make their plan, all those things that we talk about all the time,
[02:03:53] which is it's just shocking that people still, you know what?
[02:03:59] They think tactically because tactically, if I say Dave shut up and do what I told you to do,
[02:04:04] you're going to do it.
[02:04:05] You're just like, this guy did.
[02:04:07] It's a tactical in, hey, the Italian commander says, hey, you shut up and do what I told you to do.
[02:04:13] Yeah, Roger that.
[02:04:14] Okay, you just won the tactical battle, but what, what happens?
[02:04:18] Look what happens.
[02:04:19] You won that little tactical battle and you lose these other people and look,
[02:04:25] could there have been no one waiting on that, I'll see you absolutely.
[02:04:28] There could have been no one waiting, there could have been no one waiting.
[02:04:30] There could have been no one waiting on that, I'll see you and everything would have gone fine.
[02:04:32] And that guy's tyrannical behavior would have been reinforced as the right way to lead.
[02:04:38] And in an eight the right way to lead is not the right way to lead.
[02:04:41] This guy's a battalion commander, he's probably been leading like that through his whole career with with with with no consequence.
[02:04:48] Certainly no nothing like this to this degree, this story.
[02:04:52] And you know what makes that happen and I brought this up with a client the other day.
[02:04:57] In the military, because I say, look, you can be effective with that kind of brow beating tyrannical leadership for, for whatever,
[02:05:06] for an hour, for a week, right?
[02:05:08] I can just y'all Dave shut up and do what I told you to do.
[02:05:11] And actually in the military, I can get away with it from my whole career.
[02:05:15] Why is that?
[02:05:16] Because you Dave, you're working for me, you know, you only have to work for me for 18 months.
[02:05:21] You know, it's going to take me a couple months to figure myself out.
[02:05:24] By the time my tour is starting to look coming to an end, you're not even going to give me resistance anymore.
[02:05:29] You're like cool, he's gone and whatever.
[02:05:31] So these guys can bounce from job to job to job being in charge of this group.
[02:05:34] By the time he leaves, they hit, he's hated.
[02:05:36] But he's accomplished, he's quote accomplished the mission, right?
[02:05:40] He's got his good fit rep. He's done his job. He's accomplished the mission.
[02:05:44] He's hated. They don't want to do it. They're sabotaged.
[02:05:46] And they're, they're, they're sloughing him off. They're doing all those things.
[02:05:48] But no one knows it.
[02:05:50] His, his chain of command above him thinks, oh, yeah, well, did a good job.
[02:05:53] He got the mission accomplished.
[02:05:55] First of all, they never got tested.
[02:05:56] Second of all, it doesn't know the moral of the troops because that guy's able to hide it.
[02:05:59] So that's how these military leaders sometimes they get through their whole career.
[02:06:03] Yeah, and I mean, whole career. I'm talking 34 year careers where they never actually led anybody.
[02:06:08] All they did was bar quarters and they retire as an admiral. They retire as a general and they don't know how to lead.
[02:06:15] They don't know how to lead. Obviously, there's some incredible generals and animals.
[02:06:20] Obviously, and captains and kernels. Obviously.
[02:06:23] But just because you became an admiral or you became a kernel or you became a captain or you became a general.
[02:06:31] That doesn't mean you know how to lead. And you know what? You if you were a tyrannical leader.
[02:06:37] You, you can get away with that in the military. You can get away with it because only a two year command.
[02:06:43] No one wants to, they, well, I guess what? Everyone below you actually also wants a good fit wrap.
[02:06:49] So you want a good fit wrap. So you're going to bark in everyone and everyone below you just wants a good evaluation.
[02:06:54] So they're just going to kind of follow your lead and put up with it.
[02:06:58] That, I mean, that's that self preservation. I saw that in my career all the time too.
[02:07:03] And we had a term for it. We called it a run out the clocks scenario.
[02:07:07] And we'd sit, you know, and we'd have, you know, young captains.
[02:07:10] The junior guys would sit around and it was just us and we'd vent and we'd get frustrated.
[02:07:14] And I'd see people complain and I'd see my peers getting this off their chest and and when you do the calculation,
[02:07:19] Hey, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to push back or we're going to, you know,
[02:07:23] Are we going to fight back up the chain of the end? The conclusion is always
[02:07:27] just run out the clock man. This guy's gone in seven months or whatever or just,
[02:07:32] Yeah, this guy's gone in seven months and by the way, we have a, we got a two month trip here.
[02:07:36] He's not coming with us. We got this. We got that. He's going to this thing and it's really what is it going to be face to face
[02:07:42] and him for another month. Don't worry about it.
[02:07:44] And I don't know me to paint some picture that we just sort of resigned yourself.
[02:07:48] Really what it was was, you know, I'm going to focus my energy. Oh, my guys.
[02:07:51] Yeah. I'm going to, I'm not going to waste my time with this guy.
[02:07:54] But, but it does create that that it helps perpetuate this scenario, just describe and, you know,
[02:08:00] to whatever small percentage there are leaders in the military, just like every other organization
[02:08:05] that got their way, they, they, they got their way through and it, and they're not good leaders
[02:08:11] because they do exactly this and, and I'm, I'm thinking too of of not just a scenario where
[02:08:18] you're my subordinate leader and I go, hey, I want to done this way, Jaco.
[02:08:21] And you're not like, well, me, you know, I was kind of thinking maybe plan B is better than plan A.
[02:08:26] You're saying, Dave, no way, man. What better position for me is a leader to have a guy who, who,
[02:08:34] the more infatric you are about what you're doing more likely, it's likely that the more loyal you are
[02:08:40] and the more you want the outcome to be good. That's why you're pushing back.
[02:08:44] And if you're in a leadership position and your people are pushing back aggressively,
[02:08:49] that's even more of a reason to listen to them because this clearly is something.
[02:08:55] And what always happens is we meet, we see people meet resistance with resistance.
[02:09:00] The more resistance I get, the more I should stop resisting them.
[02:09:04] Or I want to listen. Now, if you go,
[02:09:06] well, yeah, I mean, I guess so, okay, according to Stu Mayway, and that's kind of the end of the story.
[02:09:11] But if you, if you go to the mat with me, no, this is a bad idea.
[02:09:16] And I'm not going to listen to that as a leader. Why is this person pushing back?
[02:09:22] Because they, because they don't care about the mission.
[02:09:25] They don't care about the people. They don't care about the outcome.
[02:09:27] And it's, yeah, it's, it's Jockel pushing back because he doesn't,
[02:09:32] because he doesn't care about his people because he doesn't want to be successful.
[02:09:36] Why, why would Jockel possibly be drawing a line in the sand right now, right?
[02:09:41] Yeah, there's a read, you want to know what the reason is.
[02:09:44] There's a reason. There's a reason. There's a damn reason.
[02:09:47] And you need to figure it out. And also, in this thing, this scenario we're painting where you're my subordinate leader.
[02:09:53] I also have to give you a little bit of credit that you recognize, you are putting your career at risk.
[02:09:58] What, you're going to bow up to me, Junior subordinate.
[02:10:02] I have to recognize that you even realize that this is a sketchy move you're making right now.
[02:10:07] You're going to the boss and tell him, no.
[02:10:10] You don't think the subordinate leader recognizes the risk that he's taking by digging in.
[02:10:15] In a little bit, and going boss, this is a bad idea.
[02:10:18] I mean, of course, I'm sitting here with the luxury of having benefited from all the things that
[02:10:24] Eschlan front has done and all the things you've written about and all the podcasts I've listened to.
[02:10:28] It doesn't make it any less easy to hear the story and picture that conversation.
[02:10:32] And know that that tyrannical leadership is widespread in its all over the place.
[02:10:37] And it doesn't work.
[02:10:40] It's frustrating to listen to that story and you think about the catastrophic outcome.
[02:10:46] But even the subtleties of people leading through, hey, at the end, we can go back and forth.
[02:10:52] But in the end, you're going to do it my way.
[02:10:55] What a devastating approach that is to leading the people around you.
[02:11:01] Horrible in every possible way.
[02:11:06] So digging a little bit deeper on this.
[02:11:11] There was some, there was some people that wrote in to historynet.com and asked Michael Christie for some more amplifying information.
[02:11:21] Here's one of the letters that got written in.
[02:11:23] The article last handed LZ Harraford by Michael Christie had me living the experiences as if I were there.
[02:11:29] I served in Vietnam with the Marines, including 40 days under siege at Caun Pin in 1967.
[02:11:37] We always feared a human wave attack like experienced by the soldiers in Harraford.
[02:11:41] I would like to know if Lieutenant Colonel Rutland Beard was ever charged with negligence for ordering Charlie Company commander Captain Don Warren to leave his mortar platoon behind in a vulnerable position with no infantry support while the rest of Charlie moved out.
[02:11:55] Also, I was curious to know if Staff Sergeant Robert Kirby was recognized for his harrowing attempt to lead a small group of soldiers and journalists Sam Cast and to safety.
[02:12:07] I have to wonder how John Sprainsa who was badly wounded and played dead before his rescue and the other survivors are doing today after their dreadful experience.
[02:12:16] Well, for one thing, we know that Staff Sergeant John Kirby, though not named, was written about in a very negative way in this other manual.
[02:12:24] But guess what, Michael Christie respond?
[02:12:27] And here's where here's his response.
[02:12:30] As one would expect, the horrors of the massacre at LZ Harraford had a tremendous impact on the lives of those of all those involved.
[02:12:40] Captain Don Warren became an alcoholic and eventually committed suicide.
[02:12:49] So the decision that we're sitting here toiling over.
[02:12:57] He toiled over it too.
[02:13:02] Sergeant Robert Kirby retired from the army and refuses to talk about LZ Harraford claiming he remembers almost nothing about it.
[02:13:09] Although he did receive a silver star for his part in the battle.
[02:13:13] God bless him.
[02:13:15] Bob Roter has a severe case of PTSD.
[02:13:19] But still managed to succeed.
[02:13:21] He married his high school sweetheart raised a family and operated in multi-million dollar medical supply business.
[02:13:26] John Sprainsa overcame his physical injuries.
[02:13:30] So Bob Roter was the last guy to be recovered.
[02:13:34] He got broke down trying to identify his friends.
[02:13:37] John Sprainsa got shot in the ear.
[02:13:40] Exit wound in the nose.
[02:13:42] John Sprainsa overcame his physical injuries but suffered from emotional damage.
[02:13:46] His drinking lead to three divorces yet the same determination that saved his life.
[02:13:50] 46 years ago, allowed him to work successfully in two long careers.
[02:13:54] First in the printing industry and then as a rural postman for 20 years.
[02:13:58] He and his wife for 26 years are retired in the vignore than Georgia.
[02:14:02] Charles Stucky died of cancer six years ago.
[02:14:08] No one has heard from Isaac Johnson since El Zihar referred who's overrun.
[02:14:12] No official record exists on Rutland Beard receiving any reprimand.
[02:14:16] He retired from the army as a colonel.
[02:14:20] As for the company members who rushed to the rescue,
[02:14:24] all are still horrified by the carnage they witnessed once they reached El Zihar referred.
[02:14:30] There's another letter.
[02:14:40] The story of Carnage on El Zihar referred as a riveting piece of work but as noted it very
[02:14:46] clearly in spots from the SLA martial narrative published 46 years ago.
[02:14:50] Nonetheless both authors accurately capture the overall horror of the event.
[02:14:54] About a week before the attack described by Christy on a company from another battalion had been
[02:14:59] overrun at Herford.
[02:15:01] And my company from the one five-cap first-cav division was airlifted onto the El Zihar
[02:15:07] the following morning to assist.
[02:15:11] In his book Battles in the Montsoon Marshall claimed that all that the KIAs had been evacuated
[02:15:17] the previous evening but I distinctly recall seeing the poncho covered bodies of the US soldiers still ringing.
[02:15:25] And there's one more little, maybe not so little.
[02:15:29] There's one more detail that I want to go into.
[02:15:35] So Sam Casten.
[02:15:39] The journalist.
[02:15:53] He was married when he was in Vietnam.
[02:15:59] And his wife, a woman named Fran Casten, had moved to Hong Kong while he was working in Vietnam.
[02:16:07] So they were close flight.
[02:16:13] He figured, well I still want to see you.
[02:16:15] So we'll move to Hong Kong and then we're going to go working Vietnam and then we're not working
[02:16:19] on coming back. And they've been there for about a month before he was killed.
[02:16:25] And they had a 13-month-old toddler at the time.
[02:16:31] They were in Hong Kong and after he was killed, she packed up, she went back to the states.
[02:16:43] I mean, devastated obviously and not only devastated but now what?
[02:17:01] Whatever plans she had are now obviously gone.
[02:17:13] So she had to put her life together as best she could.
[02:17:17] She had been a school. She'd studied English, I believe.
[02:17:23] And she went and started knocking on doors and eventually got a job at the New Yorker magazine.
[02:17:29] And then she moved over to the Scholastic magazine.
[02:17:37] And eventually became a teacher at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.
[02:17:45] Teaching right again. And that is when at age 40 she started the right poetry.
[02:17:57] And she wrote a poem about her husband, Sam Castan, the brave journalist who was killed on that
[02:18:08] awful day. And the poem is called Operation Crazy Horse.
[02:18:15] And here it is, a grand Calloun Hotel, a hedge of red
[02:18:25] Habiscus, a tiled pool.
[02:18:29] A masseuse who pressed fragrant oil of almond into my body in the full heat of the sun.
[02:18:39] Elsewhere, northeast of Saigon, a man beheld you and fired.
[02:18:55] At the undertakers, you were all made up.
[02:19:01] And your hair was parted wrong, so I smoothed it the way you would have liked.
[02:19:11] Someone shouted, stop.
[02:19:13] As if we were caught making love on the couch and my father's house.
[02:19:23] God knows what they feared.
[02:19:27] Unfamiliar streaks in your hair must have pailed at the moment of terror.
[02:19:35] And grown longer in the time since.
[02:19:41] Eerie as strands of ticker tape still printing.
[02:19:49] Such dark hair shocked white.
[02:19:55] How afraid you were.
[02:20:03] All I could do was hold you.
[02:20:25] And there you go.
[02:20:29] There is more to every story.
[02:20:37] And more for us to learn.
[02:20:47] And what we need to learn here.
[02:20:53] And what we need to learn here is to learn from our opinions from all of this.
[02:21:03] Is that your decision and your actions make a difference and have an impact on the world.
[02:21:09] Again, like this is an incredible manual.
[02:21:13] The squad leader makes a difference.
[02:21:21] It doesn't just apply to squad leaders and applies to all of us.
[02:21:27] Your actions make a difference and have an impact on the world.
[02:21:31] You're going to leave a mark.
[02:21:37] You leave an imprint on the world and you leave an imprint on the people around you.
[02:21:49] So make it a good one.
[02:22:03] Well echo Charles.
[02:22:05] Yes sir.
[02:22:07] Go ahead man.
[02:22:09] Well it's true.
[02:22:13] We do leave an impact on the people around us.
[02:22:17] And we do make a difference.
[02:22:21] And to make a difference, we need to be capable.
[02:22:25] We do the right things for ourselves.
[02:22:27] So people around us.
[02:22:29] We start with our physical health.
[02:22:31] In my opinion as I always say.
[02:22:33] So on our journey through the improvement and maintaining physical health.
[02:22:37] You know.
[02:22:39] We need supplement.
[02:22:41] I give you hard time about just being able to press record.
[02:22:45] It's like a very hard job.
[02:22:47] But what I just did to you is kind of a shitty thing to do isn't it?
[02:22:51] Well you're throwing that challenge and I understand.
[02:22:55] You don't have to come to understand these things.
[02:22:57] Which is okay.
[02:22:59] For those of you that might be joining us for the first time.
[02:23:03] Sometimes the podcast can be a little much.
[02:23:07] We'll have you.
[02:23:09] And so early on we realize that maybe a little decompression would be good.
[02:23:16] I know I needed.
[02:23:18] Yeah.
[02:23:19] I know I needed sometimes.
[02:23:21] So so I'm sorry for setting you up with the freaking horrible job of going from that conversation that we just had.
[02:23:30] Into whatever it is you're talking about.
[02:23:33] I'm sorry bro.
[02:23:35] It's okay and you know what in the spirit of understanding and how should I say.
[02:23:41] Doing my part.
[02:23:43] I should have took what you said and really gave my thoughts on it because my thoughts can be a little bit lighter than your general.
[02:23:51] So it would be a little bit of a trans a little smoother transition.
[02:23:56] Because you just went straight into talking about you know.
[02:24:00] Yeah.
[02:24:01] Yeah.
[02:24:06] Still true.
[02:24:07] What would your thoughts have been?
[02:24:09] Oh man that's like that's why I didn't go into it because it was like dang.
[02:24:14] I should just be quiet just for a little bit.
[02:24:16] Yeah.
[02:24:17] Maybe.
[02:24:18] Yeah.
[02:24:19] That's part of the thing.
[02:24:21] That's part of the deal is.
[02:24:23] That could just be the end of the podcast.
[02:24:25] I get it.
[02:24:26] Right.
[02:24:27] But I actually don't want to leave anyone.
[02:24:30] That way to be honest with you.
[02:24:32] I don't want to leave.
[02:24:33] Look.
[02:24:34] The point has been made.
[02:24:35] We get it.
[02:24:36] Right.
[02:24:37] It's true.
[02:24:38] Yeah.
[02:24:38] I don't want to leave.
[02:24:39] So I don't want someone to press stop walk out and like that's what's going through their head.
[02:24:43] Yeah.
[02:24:44] They walk through the work also.
[02:24:45] Right.
[02:24:46] We need to little.
[02:24:47] We need to bring it back around.
[02:24:48] Right.
[02:24:49] The world has darkness in it.
[02:24:51] Right.
[02:24:52] We just saw that.
[02:24:53] We just saw that.
[02:24:54] Yeah.
[02:24:55] By the way, the author.
[02:24:57] The his wife, Fran Castan.
[02:24:59] She's alive.
[02:25:00] She's in like East Hampton or something.
[02:25:03] She's out there.
[02:25:05] Right in poems.
[02:25:07] Yeah.
[02:25:08] Maybe we're here from her.
[02:25:10] You know.
[02:25:11] Yeah.
[02:25:12] I mean, given the circumstances, it's like, okay.
[02:25:16] It's what he call like good to meet you.
[02:25:20] But not under these circumstances.
[02:25:22] Yeah.
[02:25:23] That's what he'll do.
[02:25:24] The common.
[02:25:25] Anyway.
[02:25:26] All right.
[02:25:27] Well.
[02:25:28] How can we make a difference if we're not capable?
[02:25:31] Right.
[02:25:32] True.
[02:25:33] We'll just say it's hard.
[02:25:34] I would say where we want to make a good mark on the world.
[02:25:38] Yeah.
[02:25:39] How do we do that?
[02:25:40] What?
[02:25:41] How do you suggest us doing a better job of leaving a positive impression on people and on the world?
[02:25:48] I say, keep your stuff together.
[02:25:50] Cool.
[02:25:51] Got it.
[02:25:52] Keep it together.
[02:25:53] Clean.
[02:25:54] Yeah.
[02:25:55] You know, get it together.
[02:25:57] Did you get a break of your support?
[02:25:59] He's reading freaking cans.
[02:26:00] He's reading me greedy.
[02:26:01] I'm not saying you're wrong.
[02:26:04] He's looking at that.
[02:26:05] That's like a what he call like a vanity.
[02:26:08] But he's looking at his own can.
[02:26:09] He's like, oh, my can.
[02:26:11] He's a notice.
[02:26:12] I've to forever.
[02:26:13] If why I do, I've just happened to notice that these are two different cans.
[02:26:17] So it caught my attention.
[02:26:18] Oh, really?
[02:26:19] Oh, I see that too now.
[02:26:20] See?
[02:26:21] So.
[02:26:22] I guess I could be more vain than I am.
[02:26:24] Honestly, I'm just.
[02:26:25] No, just now barely noticing.
[02:26:27] These are different cans.
[02:26:28] The same drink.
[02:26:29] Yeah.
[02:26:29] Because right before that, you're looking at your fingernails and like you're, you know,
[02:26:33] I don't know if you worked out today, whatever you're looking at.
[02:26:35] You're physique.
[02:26:36] I saw the whole deal.
[02:26:37] I saw the whole deal.
[02:26:38] So all good and all or or he could be bored whichever.
[02:26:42] Well, I think you've successfully lightened the mood.
[02:26:45] All right.
[02:26:46] Well, I'm done.
[02:26:47] You know, a press record.
[02:26:48] I do things from time to time nonetheless.
[02:26:51] When we're working out, we need supplements.
[02:26:53] So, you know, it's joints get.
[02:26:55] Take a beating.
[02:26:56] Sometimes we've got supplements for you joints.
[02:26:58] You need protein.
[02:26:59] Okay.
[02:27:00] So if you're working out hard and hard, isn't, you know, depends on who you are, whatever.
[02:27:04] You need a certain amount of protein to facilitate the gains.
[02:27:07] Or should I say the results?
[02:27:09] Okay.
[02:27:10] Ah, you said games.
[02:27:11] I haven't.
[02:27:12] You said games.
[02:27:13] I'm a little bit with the.
[02:27:14] I saw it.
[02:27:15] The point is you need a certain amount of protein.
[02:27:18] Otherwise, we'd buy now going to recover.
[02:27:20] We recover correctly.
[02:27:23] Do you know the protein range?
[02:27:26] Yeah.
[02:27:27] I see that.
[02:27:28] Yes.
[02:27:29] One gram.
[02:27:30] What?
[02:27:31] Go ahead.
[02:27:32] You're like shaking your head.
[02:27:33] I'm sorry.
[02:27:34] I'm sorry.
[02:27:35] Interested.
[02:27:36] You're going to.
[02:27:37] What?
[02:27:37] One gram.
[02:27:38] One gram per pound of lean body mass.
[02:27:41] Yeah.
[02:27:42] I think that's.
[02:27:43] Do I know correctly?
[02:27:44] I think that's the old school.
[02:27:45] It's actually less than the new school.
[02:27:47] Okay.
[02:27:48] I'm going to arrange from point six.
[02:27:50] Okay.
[02:27:51] I mean, one that's high.
[02:27:53] One gram per, you know,
[02:27:55] fainter.
[02:27:56] Stuff.
[02:27:57] It might.
[02:27:58] It starts to level out.
[02:27:59] I think it like point eight or something like.
[02:28:00] Okay.
[02:28:01] Nonetheless, not everyone knows that is what I'm trying to say.
[02:28:03] So, and furthermore, not only do not do not a lot of people know that,
[02:28:10] it's hard to do that.
[02:28:12] Unless you're like just that's your jam.
[02:28:15] You know, you're planning the week and all that.
[02:28:17] You know, I didn't realize that.
[02:28:19] So, look, let's say you have 180 five pounds of lean body mass in.
[02:28:24] And you're trying to get the point seven.
[02:28:26] We'll say, it's a lot of protein.
[02:28:29] Not for you.
[02:28:31] I know.
[02:28:32] But I'm just saying for the rest of, you know, like,
[02:28:35] I don't think about it.
[02:28:36] But I'm everything up that echo is trying to say,
[02:28:37] you need more.
[02:28:38] Okay.
[02:28:39] See, see, right, you're not like, you know,
[02:28:44] really understanding, like,
[02:28:46] okay,
[02:28:47] seven, one range.
[02:28:48] That's what you're talking about.
[02:28:49] No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[02:28:50] Mulk is needed.
[02:28:51] Let's say I didn't say any of that.
[02:28:53] Okay.
[02:28:54] What if I just said, hey, you need more people going to be like,
[02:28:55] all right.
[02:28:56] You have failed.
[02:28:57] Point to describe why you need more.
[02:29:00] I'll stand down.
[02:29:01] But can you hurry a little bit?
[02:29:03] I'm standing down, but can you just, like,
[02:29:05] we get the mass.
[02:29:06] Do you want to?
[02:29:07] Do you though?
[02:29:08] Do you get the mass?
[02:29:09] I think we get the mass in the ground.
[02:29:10] I obviously don't think you do, and that's why I'm here.
[02:29:13] See, if you do it.
[02:29:14] Yeah, between, you and Dave, you are too awkward.
[02:29:16] I think I Bet, you know, I think I'll ask,
[02:29:19] take good.
[02:29:20] Anyway, take them all.
[02:29:22] Yeah, this is too bad.
[02:29:23] Can I ever see a more brilliant, like this?
[02:29:25] I like it anyway.
[02:29:27] Speaking of discipline, go.
[02:29:29] Okay, and bear with me here, bear with me.
[02:29:33] So discipline, go, it's a thing.
[02:29:35] It tastes good, it's a little drink.
[02:29:37] Kind of like a soda.
[02:29:38] Mmm-hmm.
[02:29:39] I mean, okay, it's not like a soda
[02:29:41] but it's like a soda.
[02:29:43] So, and I'm gonna tell a little story short.
[02:29:46] So, you know how like when you go to the movies, right?
[02:29:48] You go to the movies.
[02:29:49] Yep, do you get no?
[02:29:50] So, the in popcorn at the movies.
[02:29:51] Sure.
[02:29:52] They've broke.
[02:29:53] So, the popcorn?
[02:29:54] Sometimes, right?
[02:29:55] Yeah, that's the thing.
[02:29:56] So, you go to the movies, you get your soda, you get your popcorn, you have the
[02:29:59] wash the movie, but your kids, it's awesome, right?
[02:30:02] You come home and you kind of remember whether it be later that night or the next day,
[02:30:06] you're like, oh yeah, that's a cool movie.
[02:30:07] I mean, man, but I ate that whole thing of popcorn.
[02:30:09] You know, many calories are in popcorn and junk calories, too, by the way.
[02:30:12] There's a difference.
[02:30:13] I have no idea.
[02:30:14] It's like 2000, it depends on how big the popcorn is.
[02:30:17] And then you got the soda, right?
[02:30:18] And there's a small tinge of guilt that comes with you.
[02:30:23] Same thing with the brownies, same thing with the other stuff that you eat, don't
[02:30:27] actually eat.
[02:30:28] Oh, the pretzel wrap, pretzel wrapped hot dogs at my wife made for me on Superb
[02:30:31] Balls Sunday.
[02:30:32] I somehow, I forget where everyone was, but like, they came out of the oven.
[02:30:37] And my fam wasn't around.
[02:30:38] And I was like, oh, I just have one or two while my family's not around.
[02:30:41] I racked it half a track, half a tray.
[02:30:44] I crushed them.
[02:30:45] How big was the tray?
[02:30:47] I don't know this, but it's like a cookie type.
[02:30:50] Oh, like a sheet like a regular standard.
[02:30:51] Yeah, the standard.
[02:30:52] It's a lot.
[02:30:53] It must have been a nice good.
[02:30:56] I'm going to go and say 20, 20 of those things.
[02:31:00] You figure like no, like no factor.
[02:31:02] That's probably like 300 calories per probably.
[02:31:04] I have to.
[02:31:05] They're real small.
[02:31:07] But those are like sausages with freaking straight up biscuits.
[02:31:13] Yeah, like, oh, that's who knows.
[02:31:15] But I bought it there.
[02:31:16] Oh, yeah.
[02:31:17] It sounded nice.
[02:31:18] And you, I get it.
[02:31:19] Like you'll just go punish, you know, you'll pay the price in X-in.
[02:31:21] They're just a little bit more like gal to, like, man, I just, I kind of just shouldn't
[02:31:28] have done that.
[02:31:29] You know, anyway, the point is when you drink the discipline, go and the milk, too, by
[02:31:33] the way, you get that same sort of satisfaction that you would have had with the soda
[02:31:37] or the freaking Oreo cookie shake from the drive through or wherever.
[02:31:43] You get that same front end, but you get a way better back end.
[02:31:46] You do the same thing.
[02:31:47] You get actually positivity.
[02:31:48] Exactly.
[02:31:49] It was actually better.
[02:31:50] What was weird was I kind of thought about it because I had a milkshake with a banana
[02:31:53] by the way.
[02:31:54] And the next house like man, last night I had that dessert.
[02:31:57] I was like, wait, the dessert wasn't something junk.
[02:31:59] It was something good.
[02:32:00] Yeah.
[02:32:01] So it's like you get the refreshing.
[02:32:02] You got a double positive hit.
[02:32:04] Actually, we're protein getting to your 0.7.
[02:32:07] Yeah, I guess.
[02:32:08] And then you got a guilt for not even guilt free, but positivity.
[02:32:11] Yeah.
[02:32:12] So this is like across the board, win, win, front end back end, tactical strategic, all
[02:32:17] good stuff.
[02:32:18] Okay.
[02:32:19] Appreciate that.
[02:32:20] You got a bunch of other stuff there.
[02:32:21] Super grill, vitamin D, three cold war, war your kids, mo, mo.
[02:32:27] You got all kinds of good stuff.
[02:32:29] You can get it from jockelfuel.com.
[02:32:31] And by the way, if you subscribe to any of these things, the shipping
[02:32:34] is free because we know that that was kind of an issue.
[02:32:37] People are like, I want this stuff, but shipping is expensive.
[02:32:42] We're trying to allow people to more easily stay on the path.
[02:32:46] And also, if you're just a person that doesn't quite stay on track, that doesn't
[02:32:53] quite.
[02:32:54] It's a thing.
[02:32:55] Two things that they're supposed to do and they end up saying, well, I actually ran
[02:32:58] out and doing more fair.
[02:32:59] Whatever.
[02:33:00] Just subscribe.
[02:33:01] That's what I'm talking about.
[02:33:02] That's what I'm talking about.
[02:33:03] If you subscribe, it's coming.
[02:33:05] And it's free shipping.
[02:33:06] Get some jockelfuel.com.
[02:33:09] Also you can get the drink at wall wall.
[02:33:16] Chain wide, by the way.
[02:33:18] Chain wide.
[02:33:19] Apparently there's some insurgency happening.
[02:33:21] Some other brands are trying to maneuver and they're getting ambushed.
[02:33:30] So I appreciate everyone going in there and just getting after it, clearing shelves.
[02:33:35] Yeah, and it tells kind of good story.
[02:33:38] Did you see Corey?
[02:33:39] Did Corey?
[02:33:41] He went in with a cooler.
[02:33:42] He literally cleared.
[02:33:45] He posted it.
[02:33:46] He literally cleared the the the the the fridge out.
[02:33:51] Yeah, you can imagine the guy at the front desk or the cashier guys like Broadway.
[02:33:54] Why do you have a cooler here?
[02:33:56] He's like, oh, because I'm going to go.
[02:33:59] My current favorite thing to do is I get tagged on on Instagram all the time of people doing
[02:34:05] that.
[02:34:06] And I just put it on my story and it's just story after story people going in, tagging
[02:34:10] wall wall and just emptying the shelves and like buying everything they can.
[02:34:14] It is awesome.
[02:34:15] Yeah, appreciate everyone getting after that.
[02:34:18] And you can also get all the supplement, the whole line at a vitamin shop.
[02:34:21] And like I said, free shipping.
[02:34:25] If you subscribe, if you might also need juttu gear.
[02:34:29] Or the juttu gear, you might need a rash guard.
[02:34:32] You can get all that stuff from origin USA dot com.
[02:34:35] By the way, implemented.
[02:34:37] Implemented origin USA dot com.
[02:34:40] You can get that there.
[02:34:42] All this good stuff.
[02:34:43] If you if you ever are off the mats of justice and you need something to wear, because
[02:34:48] we know what we're wearing on the mats, right?
[02:34:50] We're wearing our origin G or our origin rashcraft.
[02:34:54] But if you're off the mats of justice and you need clothing, what you do, you can get
[02:34:59] jeans, you can get boots, you can get.
[02:35:02] Dang, we got socks coming.
[02:35:03] What?
[02:35:04] You can get everything.
[02:35:05] We're getting them.
[02:35:06] We're getting them.
[02:35:07] All of it's all this made in America, made in America, which is, which is what we are
[02:35:13] doing to rebuild manufacturing in this country.
[02:35:17] So go to origin USA dot com.
[02:35:20] Get whatever you need.
[02:35:21] Also, if you need more stuff, you know, to wear off the mats and on, by the way, go to
[02:35:28] jockelstore dot com.
[02:35:30] Now, here you can find your more discipline themed.
[02:35:35] I don't like the word theme, but more disciplines that slanted skewed a pair of
[02:35:40] pair.
[02:35:41] Here's the thing.
[02:35:42] You do want to represent one when you're on the path.
[02:35:44] You do.
[02:35:45] Think about what you are representing, no.
[02:35:49] It's facing.
[02:35:50] You do run the risk of representing the same thing.
[02:35:53] Your neighbor across the street, who's not on the path, by the way.
[02:35:58] These are represented.
[02:35:59] Are you a deletes?
[02:36:00] No, no, no, no, no.
[02:36:01] Where's my neighbor across the street?
[02:36:02] It's a badass.
[02:36:03] Well, then, okay, then there you go.
[02:36:04] That's cool.
[02:36:05] But I'm saying you do run the risk.
[02:36:06] Got it.
[02:36:07] So, I'm saying, look, if you have discipline, you go to freedom, or you have good, or you
[02:36:11] have like one of the hoodies or something like this, you don't run that risk.
[02:36:14] You seem to say, so if you're going to represent on the path here, this is a good place
[02:36:17] to get this stuff, and it's a good move over.
[02:36:20] Where do you get it?
[02:36:21] Jockelstore dot com.
[02:36:22] We have a little subscription situation going on to call the shirt locker.
[02:36:26] That's a different.
[02:36:29] It's not different, but it's kind of different.
[02:36:33] Jack, it's a shirt every month.
[02:36:36] Cool new design exclusive.
[02:36:37] You can't get them on the store, otherwise.
[02:36:39] Can't.
[02:36:40] These new ones.
[02:36:41] You're new to this elite.
[02:36:43] Kind of elite shirt wearer.
[02:36:45] I'm just letting them know.
[02:36:47] Let in everyone know.
[02:36:49] Nonetheless, call the shirt locker.
[02:36:50] It's on jockelstore.com.
[02:36:51] So, yes, I know for that, if you think that that's cool, if you think you want to represent
[02:36:55] that way, that's a good deal.
[02:36:57] We're out of there.
[02:36:58] Subscribe to this podcast.
[02:36:59] Also, we got the jockel unraveling.
[02:37:01] We got the ground in podcasts.
[02:37:02] We got the warrior kid podcast.
[02:37:03] We also have the jockel underground.
[02:37:07] Jockel underground.com.
[02:37:09] Where we give some of amplifying information.
[02:37:12] Other things, different topics, different subjects behind the scenes.
[02:37:15] We're setting up for a Q&A.
[02:37:17] Yeah, and that's like questions.
[02:37:19] Okay, so I get it.
[02:37:20] Dave Burke, Jockel, excellent friend.
[02:37:22] Again, there you can say, hey, how do I?
[02:37:24] How do I get by in from the team, right?
[02:37:26] That's a common one.
[02:37:27] It doesn't have to be pro questions about like work, what did it work?
[02:37:31] It can be outside of work.
[02:37:33] Yeah.
[02:37:34] Anyway, we're setting that up.
[02:37:35] Yeah, it's set up.
[02:37:36] So, go to questions at jockel underground.com.
[02:37:40] So, be your question.
[02:37:41] So, mid-Audio or video question, too.
[02:37:44] Dude, that's proactive.
[02:37:46] You just made that happen.
[02:37:47] The squad leader makes a difference.
[02:37:49] That's a good difference, yes, sir.
[02:37:50] I'm trying over here doing a bit.
[02:37:52] Are you the troopers squad leader?
[02:37:54] If you want to get all this and you want to support us, you can go to jockel underground.com
[02:38:03] across $8 and $18 a month, which is a number with layers.
[02:38:09] And that just protects us from.
[02:38:12] Number one, having to be a slave to sponsors.
[02:38:19] Protects us from people saying they didn't want to host us anymore.
[02:38:26] They can try it.
[02:38:27] We got it.
[02:38:28] We'll be standing by.
[02:38:29] Execute contingency plan.
[02:38:31] So thanks everyone that's supporting on that.
[02:38:33] We got a YouTube channel.
[02:38:35] We got a YouTube channel that echo Charles.
[02:38:39] He makes videos and I am the assistant director of the Good ones, which is important
[02:38:44] to know also origin BJJ has it.
[02:38:49] Some cool videos up as well.
[02:38:50] Check that one out.
[02:38:51] You got that one.
[02:38:52] Okay.
[02:38:53] Also, psychological warfare.
[02:38:54] Now, I'll don't forget about this, okay?
[02:38:58] Sometimes we can shy away from the support that we need.
[02:39:03] As you can see, sometimes we need the support.
[02:39:06] We want to slip on the diet, skip the workout, turn a workout into a rest day, let's
[02:39:12] face it, that's a thing.
[02:39:13] Anyway.
[02:39:14] Project Warfare is an album where Jack was telling you why you just shouldn't do that.
[02:39:19] And then you won't do it.
[02:39:20] So you know, you can find that on Amazon.
[02:39:22] And you know, where everybody MP3's boom, psychological warfare is there.
[02:39:26] Also, flipsidegames.com.
[02:39:29] My brother Dakota Meyer making cool stuff to hang on your wall.
[02:39:34] The coolest stuff to hang on your wall.
[02:39:35] You're going to hang something on your wall is if you're going to hang something
[02:39:38] on your wall, don't you want to look at it and say that's from Dakota Meyer.
[02:39:42] Yes.
[02:39:43] That's 100%.
[02:39:44] I can't believe I've never said that before.
[02:39:46] Yes.
[02:39:47] That's 100% what I want.
[02:39:48] I'm hanging something on my wall.
[02:39:49] I want it to be from Dakota Meyer.
[02:39:51] Yeah.
[02:39:52] I agree with that.
[02:39:53] Flipsidegames.com.
[02:39:54] If you want that, we got a bunch of books.
[02:39:56] Final spin.
[02:39:58] What is it?
[02:40:00] It's a, it's a knob.
[02:40:02] Dave, assessment.
[02:40:04] You've read final spin.
[02:40:05] Oh, I have.
[02:40:06] Assessment.
[02:40:07] I'd actually kind of secretly want to know where I sit in the log of readers where I'm.
[02:40:12] I actually, I know what I haven't got.
[02:40:14] You haven't got you the final version.
[02:40:16] The final version.
[02:40:17] So I finally got it.
[02:40:18] It is not just a book.
[02:40:21] I can tell you that for sure.
[02:40:23] Interesting.
[02:40:24] It is, they're going to have a hard time figuring out where to put this one on the
[02:40:27] bookshelf.
[02:40:28] Yes.
[02:40:29] They put it over there and they put it over there and the, yeah.
[02:40:31] Like where does it go?
[02:40:32] They have a hard time.
[02:40:34] My validation that it wasn't just me just digging what I was reading is I shared it with my
[02:40:41] wife, which I got to be honest, I don't, there's not a lot of crossover in my world that
[02:40:46] I'm doing that.
[02:40:47] I don't share all this up with my wife.
[02:40:48] We got enough stuff going on.
[02:40:49] I don't like, you know, bum barger with the work stuff.
[02:40:52] You're not talking about battles in the bond soon.
[02:40:53] Nope.
[02:40:54] I'm not, how is the podcast?
[02:40:55] It was awesome.
[02:40:56] Okay, cool.
[02:40:57] What do I need to do around the house?
[02:40:58] How can I help?
[02:40:59] I know it's been gone for seven hours.
[02:41:01] I shared this with her and she just burned through it.
[02:41:04] I think in two days, you know, and burned through it was like 10 o'clock and I get's in the
[02:41:08] bed and she says up way too late and finishes in two nights.
[02:41:11] She just like, that was really good.
[02:41:12] That's when I knew like my version of it being good had to be validated by a totally
[02:41:16] disinterested third party with no bias.
[02:41:20] She was totally still.
[02:41:22] Well, interestingly, my mom.
[02:41:26] So you would think what you just said, like, oh, bias, right?
[02:41:29] You'd think, oh, I send it to my mom.
[02:41:32] That's a given, right?
[02:41:34] You know my mom.
[02:41:35] My mom knows like, it's because she was an English teacher.
[02:41:39] And so she's just there to just, she's just there.
[02:41:41] I would say throw darts, but she's not there to throw darts.
[02:41:44] She's there to hook machetes at your work.
[02:41:46] I got my work, right?
[02:41:49] And so I sent it to her for a final read and she sent me a text that said, like, halfway
[02:41:56] done, I am loving this book.
[02:41:57] That was complete shock.
[02:41:59] Yeah.
[02:42:00] In fact, I don't lay for about it because life was with me in New York City when extreme
[02:42:05] ownership made number number one New York Times bestseller.
[02:42:09] Which is like sort of the thing, the cool thing for a book, right?
[02:42:14] And I called my parents on speakerphone and, and, and,
[02:42:18] Lafes like Santa and their list, I'm like, hey, I just want to let you guys know, you
[02:42:20] know, we made New York Times bestseller and us, you know, with the book that I wrote with
[02:42:25] Lafes and my mom's like, oh, we'll see how long it's on their phone.
[02:42:30] I was like, cool.
[02:42:32] Yeah, I guess we will.
[02:42:34] So a positive review.
[02:42:36] Yeah.
[02:42:37] And it will be interesting, you know, you go into a bookstore and have, I guess categories,
[02:42:41] whatever they, yeah, yeah, I'll be interested in seeing where they put it.
[02:42:44] I will too.
[02:42:45] It's going to be, it's going to be very interesting.
[02:42:47] So we got that.
[02:42:48] If you want to pre-order that thing, it's also, it's all, let way, why pre-order?
[02:42:52] Well, so you can get it because once again, we don't want you to not get it.
[02:42:56] We don't, you want definitely don't want you to not get a first edition.
[02:42:59] Let's be, deal.
[02:43:02] When you, you want that first edition.
[02:43:09] And here's the other thing.
[02:43:10] The publisher, my publisher.
[02:43:14] Do you think their nervous about this?
[02:43:16] They are nervous.
[02:43:18] They're nervous because they're like, you, you, you, you just wrote a Swiss write leadership books.
[02:43:22] I'm like, what about all this?
[02:43:23] Well, yeah, that too.
[02:43:24] You're going to write a novel.
[02:43:25] Don't you want to just want to stay in your little lane over here?
[02:43:29] No.
[02:43:30] So, put them at ease before they freak out.
[02:43:38] So, final, smooth leadership strategy and tactics field manual.
[02:43:41] The code, the evaluation, the protocols.
[02:43:43] Discipline, criss-free, them, field manual.
[02:43:45] The way of the warrior kid for field manual.
[02:43:48] The way the warrior kid one, two and three.
[02:43:49] Mike in the dragons about face, like David Hacworth, Extreme Ownership, and the dichotomy of leadership.
[02:43:57] Excellent front. It's a leadership consultant. So, you can hear David and I talking about it today.
[02:44:01] So, what we do, we solve problems through leadership, go to www.ashtonfront.com for details.
[02:44:05] EF Online.
[02:44:07] It's leadership training for everyone.
[02:44:13] EF Online.com.
[02:44:15] It's where you can get your whole team training tomorrow.
[02:44:20] It's tomorrow.
[02:44:21] You have to do something crazy enough to contact that.
[02:44:23] You can go to www.ashtonfront.com.
[02:44:25] EF Online.com. You can start training tomorrow.
[02:44:28] The Muster in 2021, we got these things lined up.
[02:44:32] Go to extremownership.com. It's our live event.
[02:44:35] All these have sold out. These are going to sell out to EF Overwatch.
[02:44:39] If you need leaders inside your company, go to EFOverwatch.com.
[02:44:42] And we have leaders that understand the principles we talk about.
[02:44:45] They can go in your company and help you win.
[02:44:48] And if you want to help service members, service members, active, retired.
[02:44:54] You want to help their families. You want to help gold start families.
[02:44:57] Check out Mark Lee's mom.
[02:44:59] Mom and Lee. She's got a charity organization.
[02:45:02] If you want to donate or you want to get involved,
[02:45:04] go to americazmedioriors.org.
[02:45:06] And if you want more of my protracted parables,
[02:45:11] or you need some more of ECHOS perplexing postulations,
[02:45:17] or you just crave some more of Dave's super serious suckas.
[02:45:23] You can find us on the other web on Twitter on Instagram,
[02:45:28] which echo only knows as the Graham and on Facebook.
[02:45:33] Dave is at David Arborke. Echoes at Echo Charles.
[02:45:35] And I am at Jockawilling and thanks to all the people out there in uniform.
[02:45:39] All of you.
[02:45:41] All the military, the police, law enforcement, fire fighters,
[02:45:45] paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correction officers,
[02:45:48] a border patrol secret service, first responders, and all of your families.
[02:45:55] Waiting at home.
[02:45:57] Thanks to all of you for making a difference every single day with what you do.
[02:46:04] And everyone else out there, keep learning.
[02:46:09] Keep evolving.
[02:46:12] And never forget that your decisions and your actions,
[02:46:18] they make a difference, not just in your life, but in the lives of other people.
[02:46:27] And don't just go through life.
[02:46:29] Don't just go with the flow.
[02:46:31] Be intentional about what you're doing.
[02:46:33] Set things in order.
[02:46:36] Leave a positive mark in the world.
[02:46:41] You do make a difference.
[02:46:47] And until next time, this is Dave and Echo and Jockaw.
[02:46:56] Out.