Jocko Podcast 331: Don't Just Stand There and Do Nothing. Look For Work. W/ Ben Milligan Pt.3

2022-04-27T11:30:18Z

Underground Premium Content: https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @echocharles @BMilligan3 0:00:00 - Opening 0:01:20 - By Water Beneath The Walls with Ben Milligan. 3:02:38 - How to stay on THE PATH. JOCKO UNDERGROUND Exclusive Episodes: https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Jocko Store Apparel: https://www.jockostore.com Jocko Fuel: https://jockofuel.com Origin Jeans and Clothes: https://originmaine.com/durable-goods/ Echelon Front: https://www.echelonfront.com 3:11:33 - Closing Gratitude.

AI summary of episode

It's not that kind of war I mean this the you know the example that you just used about you know getting to her body and You know expecting to contact the enemy and night and do everything like the one thing that I learned about frogmen or least You know this modern you know interpretation of them is They're gonna adapt to find the enemy and this is one instance where we don't and we we almost are the the seal team is almost You know got turned turned away at the front door And Barnes comes in like you said you know he finds that there's nothing that they've trained for And their and his response you know not not really you know not not having ever done this before or not having you know any real It's a really apparently compelling you know myth I don't know why because you know Kennedy dies in November of 63 the seal team is our established in January of 62 and If there's anything that we learn you know in the preceding chapters of this book is that you know all of these units They could have been you know killed in the crib you know They could have you know strangled the death and an infancy or smothered You know by a pillow is how I describe it like these all of these units could have been you know Dispanted How do you find these groups and You know soviet societies or societies where you know you have a an aggressive You know Gestapo type police force you know you don't have a free society like and the only place that you're going to find You know a ready pool of candidates to you know join a thing like this is and You know sort of ungoverned spaces where there aren't you know these You know state police secret police what's the deal with yarboros daughter? but they are you know two a man they are You know they all express you know how pleased they are that you know Bob's Contribution you know Bob Gallagher who's you never Never you know Toud of it is on achievements I mean if anybody's going to you know Capture the you know the attention of that era I mean that should be him Is it an interesting thing about him too that I mean he like I say he's the anti So now all I'm only was trying to do is just kind of one you know Further solidify you know how that had happened and you know I discovered some stuff along the way like you know the The night or the night the vision being heck of you know the night one of the the most interesting things to you know show You know how the the Navy had become you know So when The leadership at Seal team one is trying to you know adapt you know their naval commando force to be You know to have more you know hard army skills who do they turn to you know outside of you know their traditional Avenue for support with you know the Ranger school and things like that they turn to a former soldier guy stone guy stone sets up a curriculum It gets smart on all of his old army Manuels and he sets up training for seal team one and starts putting all the guys through it before they're going to be a nom they got to go through guys stones course and they finally tell us you know about face start marching to the ocean we start backing up Guys are getting online, you know You know putting fins on Pete's having you know a little bit of a tough time getting those those fins on I'm starting to see the the line you know kind of edge away from us a little bit like We're starting to be like all right we're in Peter starting to get left behind here a little bit like I'm starting to wonder You know the waves are pretty big for Florida. I mean wars changing at this point so you know the the sort of the The the the chapter structure that I had settled on in World War II and the Korean War you know Where I focus on one main Operations kind of gone at this point in the book because you know there's no one there's so many battles that are a Carrier so many little small skirmishes but you know I focus on yarboros because he's the person who He creates the special war fair center or the the schoolhouse for green berets um and and marries you know the green berets to this this new Operation of counterinsurgency so there's no more commando operations for the special forces No rating or anything like that. So they they present this whole problem to them bucklo Appeals to the commander of Macvee's Understanding of the naval tradition of leadership Change the leader you're gonna change the rest of the organization so Barnes has removed After buckloos intercession and an entire new detachment replaces That Delta that is deck golf and deck golf the commander of deck golf is Juner officer by the name of of main requires comes in and Completely over halls what the seals are doing not over halls the mission Because you know the mission up to that point and really just been to You can go out into you know the country set ambushes where you could you know see if you could find the enemy Although they hadn't had any success but just because they hadn't had success Wires doesn't say that you know that's an excuse like I said you know in the book his His message to his man at the time was this is the only war in town. It's you know, it's still controversial like You know the navy like I said the navy hadn't been involved in a war like that for Over over a hundred years Um, sir, Shane it's controversial because of that it's controversial because he's advocating for you know this this this this river reenforce This this force that's going to take us away from the blue water away from you know the navy's emphasis at that point which is aircraft and air care and and aircraft carriers and And nuclear subs and everything like that you're you're I I I spent you know a long time a long time trying to figure out where that transition had occurred You know that transition from Where the seal platoons were you know Patrol and ambushers to you know capture kill commandos and you know Marcinto he makes all these claims and his you know Rogue warrior buck That it was his platoon that was the eighth platoon that made that transition but you know the marine core deciding that they aren't gonna fight in the Mecon Delta And the the marine force recon deciding that they're going to support special forces on the on the CIDG camps and then the marine core deciding well, we don't really it's too risky to have those guys out there at the CIDG camps We're gonna keep them with the divisions then it's about the the lurps or the the creation of reconsons Troops to support the divisions whether it's the you know project Delta with the green berets or whether it's the the lurps with the individual Divisions both of these units are you know there they look like seals they probably act like seals They probably would have had the same sorts of missions as seals, you know in different parts of the country to go out find the enemy He left the seal t's one of the last things he did he took a Commission Which no I don't know that anybody I He took a commission as a as a warn officer I'm one of the first things he did was he or he had to leave the seal themes he had to go to an aircraft carrier and And work on this aircraft carrier with fleet sailors and Every but every seal that he ever met afterwards he To a man he told them it was one of the things he was most proud of he was able to see you know the US Navy at work And see how committed you know the is fellow shipmates and sailors were you know they weren't seals Maybe these guys couldn't you know couldn't couldn't run and couldn't do the things that frog men can do But you know the emphasis of all of the divisions is to get these main these big forces into combat with the enemy so all they send them these guys out to do It's fine the enemy tells where he is and we'll send guys to you I mean, it's it doesn't work because you know, it's Vietnam and they you know small pockets of enemies You know if you don't contact them if you don't you know engage them whether they're 499 times you know, I think a lot of it was just because I mean You know some of the things that are said, you know They're talking about this you know this revolution That's that's undergoing With naval warfare that's about to you know undergoes naval warfare But I mean I found the seven platoon because I was just methodically going through these platoon You know platoon at a time operation by at a time and I noticed in the seven pltunes, you know this They started out like everybody else you know they they got to you know via nom and they would get a little bit of intel and they would go out They said in ambush. And I knew the point that I was trying to make so at least I had the you know the bones of the chapter the structure was good You know whether or not I was gonna come back and add stuff on you know the The Cuban frog men or something like that or um Gosh Where are you leaning towards your next book you must be must have an idea in that I have an idea It's very private Private all right, you know, no one's gonna steal it every idea is I is not that because no one has enough time and I've fortunately Through a lot of counseling Through some distance from the book I've been able to you know take a take a pause I kind of gave myself you know mentally a year You know from the data publication Until you know so for a year so July 20th when it came out I'm giving myself till July 20th of 2022 before I really start you know buckling down or start beating myself up about what's next It was tough to find the character and this I always tried to you know When I was working on a chapter working on a different unit I was always trying to find you know one you know the operation that was You know most consequential to driving you know that missions either success or failure They're their their continuation I mean Like the thing that never you know ceases to amaze me is the fact that the Seal teams Were the recipient of all of that accumulated knowledge of all that All that legacy you know Darby's legacy in the Kabanato and legacy in the point to hawk all that You know all that knowledge got compressed into the Ranger School and There are no Rangers so the Seal teams became the biggest You know collection of Ranger School graduates in the US military But his his ability to you know You use everything all the all the tools that he has and his personality everything from straight force I mean he in the course of his Creation of the PR you camp lots of different entities come into trying to steal this from him and he uses a variety of Ways to keep them out one you just threatens to kick their ass to He you know like I say in the book he threatens just you know pack up his bags and go home Which you know convinces the CIA planners to push everybody else aside he no questions asked That's a That's that's an attitude that stuck through you know till this day something's going on like that we're going I mean and Whatever I don't know if it was pulled from you know the sea wolves, but I mean we we saw it carry through I mean in our time I mean the Seal team ten

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jockel Podcast number 331 with Echo Charles and me, Jockel Willing. Good evening, Echo. Good evening.
[00:00:06] Also joining us for the back-to-back episodes, Ben Milligan, author of the book by Water, Beneath the Walls.
[00:00:16] If you haven't listened to podcast 330, go back and listen to that one if you really want to start at the beginning of the Ben Milligan experience.
[00:00:24] Then you gotta go back and listen to 298 Ben Milligan, former seal teammate of mine who has written this incredible book about the history of special operations and how from this convoluted,
[00:00:42] distorted history, there ends up being this random group of men from the Navy that become the go anywhere, commando of choice for the military.
[00:01:00] So, there you go. Ben. Well said. Thanks for coming back, man.
[00:01:05] Better than I could. So we got barely in three hours on the last podcast. We got through World War II in this convoluted crazy story of hits and misses of surfaces and gaps.
[00:01:21] And we're going to roll into now the post-war period. Post-war, career.
[00:01:29] When I was writing the book, I really didn't want to have a book that was half World War II and half everything else but it's kind of out of it.
[00:01:39] No, we just had enough with a podcast that's half World War II and then half World War II.
[00:01:43] How can you not though? When I was thinking about it, I cover six chapters on World War II and then there's nine chapters of everything else.
[00:01:53] But the third of the book is World War II and justify it, and World War II is everything else that we have ever, most horrible war in history.
[00:02:05] And in my World War II section it covers six different theaters of operation.
[00:02:11] So it makes sense that it would. So I don't feel as bad about it when I set out.
[00:02:17] Yeah. All right. So let's jump into chapter seven, which is the US Navy's post war plate and the sailor Raiders who led her back to significance in Korea.
[00:02:35] We'll continue. You can see we continue Ben with his long-winded chapter titles. So there's only even subtitles, right? They're the actual chapter title.
[00:02:45] Each chapter title is the chapter one. That's the chapter title. And then the subtitle is that.
[00:02:51] Yeah, because this chapter could have been called chapter seven, post war.
[00:02:57] And my defense, I had much tighter chapter titles until my editor got a hold of these. I like how you're taking ownership of that. I like how you're blaming your editor.
[00:03:07] It is not the person's fault. I have your like my chapter titles. And for some of these, I spent more time writing the chapter title.
[00:03:15] Trying to compress 30 years of a chapter into a single sentence. I mean, you're doing the absolute best that you can. One, give your reader some idea of what's about to what they're about to undertake.
[00:03:29] But two, you don't want to give away anything. You don't want to say like, I mean, I think the only chapter that I really give away.
[00:03:35] I sort of, I give you some foreshadowing. You know, the raid that wasn't the chapter on the rangers. You have some sense that this isn't going to go the way that they think it's going to go.
[00:03:47] And then, too, the first chapter on the raiders, the rise and the violent demise of the Navy's first raiders. You're kind of, you're giving your reader like a little taste of what's about to come.
[00:04:03] And I know I can be a little bit of a, what is it a dart throw from the back of the room about your, about your titles and stuff, but as I said, and this book is phenomenal.
[00:04:17] This book is, is when I, when I read through this book, look, the details amazing, but you're a fracking hell of a writer too. It's funny.
[00:04:30] There's the, the things that you capture the things that you call out, the dialogue that you've selected and what's cool is the dialogue that you've selected.
[00:04:37] This is dialogue that's documented. This isn't like your authors. You don't do that anywhere in the book. You don't do anywhere in the book.
[00:04:44] You do the, you know, this is basically what was said. You don't do that anywhere. Do you? It's all, this is what was actually said recorded in this document.
[00:04:52] There's only one time where I, I try to synthesize a conversation. I think that's when I have two different, at two documents.
[00:05:00] One was Donovan's account of a conversation and then Miles is count on a conversation. And they both, you know, are sort of like confirming what the other said.
[00:05:10] That's the only time where I tried to synthesize, you know, two separate conversations.
[00:05:15] There was another time when I was synthesizing, you know, the conversation that Halon Mad Smith has with Kelly Turner about Tinian. And then there's a third
[00:05:25] account where a Draper Kaufman is listening it on this conversation. I'm trying to like do my best to like squeeze these three things into trying to relate the different perspectives and trying to come up with something.
[00:05:36] It's a little bit of a sense of, you know, something that's going to last. Essentially like agree with each other though. I mean it's like, you know, you kind of know when something's true when it doesn't exactly agree. Like if you know, your platoon commander and you know, two of your guys show up for an up and they both have black eyes, you know, like what happened last night.
[00:05:57] And if they both have the exact same story, you know, they're lying. Yeah. You know what it means though. If there's a slate if there's, you know, they both kind of rhyme with each other, but they're not exactly the same. They were just told from a different perspective.
[00:06:10] Well, it's it's an unbelievable book. It's a fantastic read and it's kind of book also you can kind of pick up. This is this is sort of in the vein of about face.
[00:06:20] Where in about face you can pick up that book and you can start to read it and in four pages three pages you go, oh, that's a good little lesson. There's something to think about.
[00:06:29] And this is this, this is the same way that this book works. Yes, absolutely read it from cover to cover, but you have it sitting on your, you know, on your nightstand and you're not quite tired yet opens book up anywhere read three or four pages and you get a little lesson, a little piece of history and also some kind of a leadership lesson.
[00:06:49] And there. So phenomenal from that perspective as well.
[00:06:53] All right, let's jump into this a little bit. So.
[00:06:58] Tell me more about the revolt of the admirals. What happened with that? So after World War II, the.
[00:07:12] Joint Chiefs or there's a there's a huge budget, you know, cut. I mean, there's nothing's ever happened like World War II and World War II like nothing's ever happened like the end of World War II where, you know, the military, the US military prior to World War II has always had this sort of cycle where they, they build up to deal with whatever conflict,
[00:07:37] the American Civil War or the first World War or the second World War. They grew from sort of a nucleus force to this massive industrial, you know, mobilized, you know, military.
[00:07:49] And then after it, you shrink back down to that nucleus force again, so you can rebuild again later after World War II.
[00:07:58] The US military or the the the US public is finally learned its lesson. We can't shrink back. You can't be in this industrial or this era of total war and not field planes and massive ships. You have to keep a residual force a float and in the air.
[00:08:22] But there's still you can't continue to spend what they were spending in World War II. So in the military shrinks drastically. So all of the military entities are competing for very limited resources.
[00:08:36] But now that all of the you know, worlds are all of the United States's enemies have been defeated. The one that still exists is the Soviet Union and planners don't expect that this is going to be a massive naval effort.
[00:08:56] The Soviet Union at that point doesn't have a you know, a particularly big navy or anything like that. We don't anticipate that we're ever going to need to land ships in the Soviet or land troops on the Soviet Union because we have this, you know, huge presence in Western Europe.
[00:09:14] So planners in the army and the air force are claiming that they need more of the resources that the navy doesn't need resources because we're never going to have amphibious warfare again.
[00:09:26] It's just just not going to happen anything that the navy could have done all the troops that the navy could have transported the air force can do it with planes.
[00:09:34] So take the money from the navy, give it to the army, give it to especially give it to the air force. So the air force and the army have convinced, you know, the most of the top decision makers in the Truman administration that they're going to, you know, pull money, you know, rather than Peter Paypal.
[00:09:56] The navy sees this prospect of what is about to be done to them, about to be done to their service. And not only are they about to lose all of this money and all of this status, but they're about to be sort of de-clothed.
[00:10:10] You know, the navy's not going to be like a force and offensive warfare force anymore.
[00:10:15] And the navy planners are, you know, they're they're panicking. Not just panicking for their service, but they realize how how difficult, how complex expeditionary warfare is and they're doing everything they can to save their service and by saving the service saved the country.
[00:10:34] So they stage essentially stage a coup. They, not a coup, but they, they start leaking pressure leaking stuff to, to the newspaper columnist.
[00:10:51] I talked about merit, merit, Edson, Red Mike, Edson, he resigns from his commission in the Marine Corps, so he can get out and start protesting publicly.
[00:11:02] Eventually, the clamor gets so bad that they have to call a committee hearing in the house in Congress.
[00:11:09] And it's, you know, for several days, it's a, it's a big to do like they, they bring in just about every admiral, every, every famous admiral from World War II to testify in front of Congress.
[00:11:21] Yeah, I got to, I got to list the names here.
[00:11:24] Lahi, Blandi, Nimitz, Halsey, Spruits, Conncade, Connly, Carnie Burke, every blue water hero, save Kelly Turner, save Kelly Turner, Faragant, John Paul Jones.
[00:11:40] That is just basically everyone you could, every pipeting, naval leader goes in and makes their case makes their case for not taking all the money away from the Navy and giving it all to the Army and primarily the Air Force.
[00:12:00] No other force and no other nation then field proclaimed could concentrate aircraft like the Navy could seize advance bases could defend those bases could promigate underseason amphibious warfare could bring to bear its underwater demolition teams.
[00:12:15] It's mine sweepers and its radio telephone operators to control air and naval gunfire.
[00:12:22] At the conclusion of Danfield testimony, a red face speechless, Matthew stood and thundered from the committee room for a moment it appeared the Navy had won.
[00:12:31] Interestingly, even mentioned that underwater demolition teams.
[00:12:35] That's I mean, they're so, I mean, important in the Navy's order of battle at that point, that absolutely they go and, you know, they grew.
[00:12:42] They say in the book, they grew from three teams to forty teams and each of these teams is a hundred, as a hundred guys, plus each one is a side its own ship and not only that, but they have a sorted.
[00:12:57] All the all the protection that each one of these teams requires almost each one gets an LCIG gunboat plus all the battleships that came with that.
[00:13:06] The UDTs have risen to the front rank of the Navy's amphibious warfare plan.
[00:13:13] So, but it fails, the whole revolt fails.
[00:13:16] And that's that.
[00:13:18] Sort of.
[00:13:19] I mean, it's that until we go until a completely unexpected event happens, the North Koreans invade the South.
[00:13:29] That's what we always need to be ready for that unexpected event.
[00:13:33] That no one, no one anticipates.
[00:13:36] One of the things that we've been doing as we've been going through this book, the second time here is talk about some of the characters that you are forced to cut out because of just the prudence and and sympathy for your readers, what you tell me.
[00:13:52] sympathy for the reader because you would, you could literally make every one of these characters its own book.
[00:13:57] So, talking about Louis A. Johnson.
[00:13:59] Louis A. Johnson is, I mean, he's he's a villain out of central casting.
[00:14:05] He's I mean, he's a total politician.
[00:14:08] He's, I think he's a West, he's a West Virginia attorney.
[00:14:13] He's a, uh, Truman's campaign director in his second campaign for office.
[00:14:20] His reward for getting to a Truman a second term is he becomes the Secretary of Defense.
[00:14:28] A position he's not particularly suited for.
[00:14:32] He doesn't have a huge military record.
[00:14:34] He did serve in the first world where I think he was a supply officer.
[00:14:37] One of the things he did one of the last things he did when he was still an active duty is a, as an army supply officer is he issued a fairly.
[00:14:46] Fairly scathing report of the sort of the army's logistics efforts.
[00:14:51] He's always kind of been, um, not an outsider, but sort of a, you know, like the guy with the flames or he just, he's just a bit like a,
[00:14:57] he does not like the institution that he was a part of.
[00:15:00] He thinks it could be run so much better.
[00:15:02] And when he sees the, um, the US military, he sees redundancies everywhere.
[00:15:06] Not just redundancies, but waste waste, waste.
[00:15:08] He wants to get rid of all of it.
[00:15:10] He wants to come in, like I said, with a blowtorch.
[00:15:12] And he wants to, he stops production of an aircraft carrier.
[00:15:16] While it's, I mean, after it's killed, is all already been laid.
[00:15:19] He's taking money from the Navy and giving it right to the Air Force, almost $400 million in one fell swoop from the Navy to the,
[00:15:26] to the Air Force.
[00:15:28] Um, he is, I say, he's a person who never saw an arm without thinking how to twist it.
[00:15:35] I don't know, my favorite lines from the book.
[00:15:37] Like he was, um, and, uh, yeah, I mean, he's, he's, he's the, he's the,
[00:15:44] uh, called, he's the, he's the, he's the, he's the villain of the Navy.
[00:15:48] He's the, he's the antagonist.
[00:15:50] He's, uh, he's the guy who sees, you know, the Navy is just a, you know, a waste of manpower,
[00:15:54] resources, the Air Force can do everything, particularly with with atomic weapons, nobody
[00:15:58] else has them.
[00:15:59] There's no more war.
[00:16:01] This is the end of history for a lot of people.
[00:16:02] They think everything's...
[00:16:04] We're done, perpetual peace.
[00:16:07] You know, when I first got into the Navy, when I was a kid, I remember at some point, you
[00:16:14] know, I got to the team because it bugs your still, in boot camp and then bugs, you're still
[00:16:19] kind of like isolated to what the Navy actually is and how it actually works, right?
[00:16:23] I remember going on my first trip at the SEAL teams and for some reason we had to like get
[00:16:29] gas for our vehicles.
[00:16:33] And we had to pay for the gas from the Navy like supply depot thing.
[00:16:39] We had a special card.
[00:16:41] And I thought, well, you think, you think just like, hey, man, it's the Navy.
[00:16:46] Like they got gas, it's Navy gas.
[00:16:48] Like we're in the Navy there in the Navy.
[00:16:49] Hey, cool, or oh, we need to fly to some other state.
[00:16:54] Cool, what the Air Force is going to pick us up and then we don't have to pay for that.
[00:16:58] They're in the Air Force.
[00:16:59] We're in the Navy, but we're all in the same big team.
[00:17:03] And you realize it's not like that at all.
[00:17:06] And that's why these budgetary discussions that happen, they're so...
[00:17:11] You wouldn't think that they would be a thing, but they're...
[00:17:13] They're nothing.
[00:17:14] So not just that they're offing, they are of nothing, and the way this money gets
[00:17:19] dived up and luckily, luckily it ends up being a...
[00:17:25] For the most part, a positive sort of competitive cycle of people trying to do good so
[00:17:32] that they can get more money, which drives better results, right?
[00:17:39] But when you talk about efficiency, like if you were to look at the military, just straight
[00:17:44] up from a pure efficiency, what is the Army have boats?
[00:17:47] Why does the Army have helicopters?
[00:17:49] Why does the Navy have helicopters?
[00:17:51] Why does the Marine Corps have fighter jets?
[00:17:56] Why...
[00:17:57] You could just say, well, this doesn't make any sense at all.
[00:17:58] This is all redundant.
[00:17:59] If you're going to have one group in charge of the sky, make it the Air Force.
[00:18:02] You make one group in charge of the ocean, make it the Navy, got one group in charge of
[00:18:07] the land, make it the Army.
[00:18:09] There's all kinds of efficiencies that you could kind of think and say, yeah, that makes
[00:18:14] some sense.
[00:18:15] But the reality is, there's these seams and the seams need to be dealt with and then you
[00:18:22] want to have in a positive way, you want to have the Marine Corps that has fighter jets,
[00:18:29] and the Navy has fighter jets, and the Air Force has fighter jets.
[00:18:34] And the Army, well, they have eight-tens.
[00:18:36] So I think that's what I'm saying.
[00:18:38] You shoot them same, but they all have...
[00:18:40] No, I mean, you're like Bradley fighting vehicles and armored vehicles.
[00:18:44] Well, one of the Army has them, but so does the Marine Corps.
[00:18:47] You just go down these lists of where these things cross over, where the efficiencies
[00:18:51] are.
[00:18:52] And so this battle that we're talking about, that's a economic battle for the various
[00:18:57] forces, is a real thing that needs to be contended with.
[00:19:01] And that's sort of another thing as we go forward, that's going to continue to drive
[00:19:07] the seals to be coming, to get created.
[00:19:11] Because as...
[00:19:14] You mentioned all of it seems like World War II was sort of the end of war for some
[00:19:18] people.
[00:19:19] Well, if you want to talk about naval battles, Navy versus Navy, it gets pretty close to
[00:19:28] say in that World War II is the end of war.
[00:19:33] But it does.
[00:19:34] For the Navy.
[00:19:38] So then what's the Navy doing?
[00:19:40] What we saw at aircraft?
[00:19:41] Okay, that's cool.
[00:19:42] But that still is one step back from the people that are on the front lines making things
[00:19:46] happen.
[00:19:47] So, I just wanted to bring that up from the perspective of where this all goes and how
[00:19:52] this all plays out.
[00:19:56] Ted Fielding.
[00:19:57] What's to do with Ted Fielding?
[00:19:59] Ted Fielding, Macboying, Georgia, and these are all characters that are UDT.
[00:20:04] Officers who are almost lost to history.
[00:20:09] They are...
[00:20:11] That first rank of Frogman that...
[00:20:18] It kind of got to go back real quick.
[00:20:20] So when Korea kicks off, Korea, the geography of Korea determines a lot.
[00:20:28] The Korea is a peninsula, it's accessible everywhere, on every coast of it, by naval
[00:20:38] guns, navy ships.
[00:20:41] But the mountains of Korea kind of preclude the highways being driven or built right
[00:20:51] down the center of the country.
[00:20:52] So most of the highways in Korea, most of the railroads in Korea, all major traffic is
[00:20:58] going to go up and down the skins of the country.
[00:21:00] So on either coast, within 15 miles of the coast, the major arteries of the country are
[00:21:07] going to be established.
[00:21:09] So when the Inmangan are the North Korean Army, when they attack, they push the South
[00:21:17] Korean military and the U.S. advisors, they push them into the little pocket down to the far
[00:21:22] south-east corner of the country, what we call the Pusan perimeter.
[00:21:26] And the North Koreans are supplying their forces that are attacking this perimeter up and
[00:21:33] down these railways that are on the flanks of the coast or on the flanks of the peninsula.
[00:21:40] So the U.S. military having disbanded, the Army Rangers having disbanded, the Army
[00:21:46] or the Marine Corps Raiders, the Marine VAC recon company, all of these special operations
[00:21:50] units that had been created in World War II, none of these units exist.
[00:21:55] And all commanders want is to start fielding something that can help cut these supply lines
[00:22:03] to the North Korean Army and the first entity to see the opportunity there and to see the
[00:22:11] good that they can be doing on that, or the commanders in the U.S. Navy.
[00:22:15] They see these, but they don't have the troops to do it.
[00:22:17] And the only troops that are in country that they have are their frogmen, the underwater
[00:22:23] demolition teams, and they've never done any missions like this.
[00:22:26] They've never gone ashore.
[00:22:27] The furthest the U.D.T.s have gone ashore are in Okinawa, a couple of guys went inland
[00:22:33] to do a handful of things, but nothing serious.
[00:22:36] So when we get to Korea, because there are no raiders, there are no Rangers, the Marine
[00:22:43] Recon are still on their way to the country.
[00:22:47] The opportunity falls to the only unit that's there, and that's a detachment of U.D.T.
[00:22:51] has gone on, and they figured out they start going ashore, and they do their, they find
[00:22:58] these real ways, and they try to blow them up with the, I mean, the, well, one thing that
[00:23:02] the U.D.T. has is a ton of explosives.
[00:23:06] We've got some bombs.
[00:23:07] They've got some bombs.
[00:23:08] I mean, I think the first raid that they actually undertake is in Yosu and it's by George
[00:23:15] Agis and Hose. He's a relatively new frog, and he's not, he wasn't a frogman in World
[00:23:23] World War II, but he's a, he's become a really good problem solver in his, you know,
[00:23:32] four-year career in the U.D.T.s.
[00:23:34] He's one of the, one of the first guys to participate in what's called the sub-ops,
[00:23:40] Platon, he, he started to, instead of being just the, the frogman who's swimming on the
[00:23:45] surface, he's, he's perfected, lockouts from submarines.
[00:23:50] He's driven underwater submersibles.
[00:23:52] So he, he, he might not be a raider or might not be somebody who's trained in, you know,
[00:23:58] inland demolition raids, but he is somebody who's adaptable, and he leads one of the first
[00:24:02] raids, a shore to, to blow up a real, a real, real way.
[00:24:07] And those subsequent guys that come in, fielding, bointing, they, they only take the U.D.
[00:24:11] Teasing further.
[00:24:12] I'm going to take it to the book on that one.
[00:24:15] Uh, below the sea wall, an out of Atchinson's view, Foley had likewise heard the
[00:24:21] hand cart, and was already splashing into the surf, his legs and arms straining against
[00:24:26] the slow motion of sucking water, and the bad dream unfolding behind him.
[00:24:30] When he reached the rubber boat, he gave a, a hushed alarm to the crew, grabbed the
[00:24:35] Tommy gun, and splashed back through the surf, swimmers lie me, Austin and McCormick, waiting
[00:24:42] behind to keep up.
[00:24:44] Under the bridge, Atchinson held his breath, waiting for an opportunity.
[00:24:48] Suddenly a shadowy figure rested the sea wall, and charged the tunnel firing a machine
[00:24:53] gun from the hip.
[00:24:55] Instinctively, both the North Koreans and Atchinson opened fire at the same target, apparently,
[00:25:00] at the same time to hear the figure yelling, hang in their L.T. omcoming.
[00:25:06] It was Foley, whether or not Atchinson realized his mistake, the flash of gunfire unfrozen.
[00:25:12] Grenade in hand, he pulled the pin and threw it toward the North Koreans, then he threw
[00:25:17] another, and another.
[00:25:19] The sequence of explosions all of unknown origin chased the North Koreans back into the
[00:25:24] tunnel.
[00:25:25] Using his moment, Atchinson tore himself from cover and sprinted to the sea wall.
[00:25:31] As soon as he reached the top of the wall, one of the arm swimmers huddled at the bottom, spotted
[00:25:36] a human head poking over the lip, and made the same mistake Atchinson had, and stitched
[00:25:42] the wall with fire.
[00:25:44] One of the rounds tore a hole in the bill of Atchinson's hat.
[00:25:48] Half a second later Atchinson identified himself, you idiot told your fire, it's me.
[00:25:54] Poked his head over again, then scraped down the wall, and onto the rocks.
[00:26:00] At the bottom, he found the rest of his men, having rolled himself away from danger and over
[00:26:05] the sea wall, Foley was now alert, but gritting his teeth, shot through the hand and
[00:26:11] thigh, a kneecap smashed by his fall.
[00:26:15] Once they were together, McCormick scooped up Foley in his arms, and everyone ran for
[00:26:20] the surf.
[00:26:21] That medium, that until this mission, the UDT, had always considered the furthest limit
[00:26:29] of their operations.
[00:26:34] So that's it.
[00:26:35] That's the first venture out of the surf zone and onto the land.
[00:26:41] Foley goes home, Foley goes to the movie The Frogman comes out a few months later,
[00:26:52] and Foley, who's recently returned from Korea, he goes to the premiere, he's wheeled up,
[00:26:58] and a wheeled chair, he gets to meet Richard Woodmark, who's the star of the show and
[00:27:04] everything.
[00:27:05] That's pretty cool.
[00:27:06] One of the few things, that would have been a totally missed episode, had I not gone to
[00:27:13] the UDTC on the museum.
[00:27:14] That's one of the walking through that thing.
[00:27:17] I think I know everything.
[00:27:18] I walked past a picture, Richard Woodmark, and Foley, damn.
[00:27:24] They did a good job on the frog, man.
[00:27:26] They really did.
[00:27:27] On the frog, yeah, the movie.
[00:27:29] They catch you some good attitudes.
[00:27:31] You're like, oh, I know these guys.
[00:27:34] The first opening 10 minutes where you're catching the attitude of these UDT guys, you're
[00:27:40] like, oh, I recognize this attitude.
[00:27:42] I freaking had to hang out with these idiots my whole life.
[00:27:46] They're really cocky.
[00:27:47] They're just getting after it.
[00:27:50] They do a good job with that.
[00:27:52] Then after you say that you're feeling now on Boint and they start pushing in and continue
[00:27:56] to push.
[00:27:57] It doesn't have operations.
[00:27:58] It doesn't happen right away.
[00:28:00] When the Marine Recon gets in country, the Marine, they create this unit special operations
[00:28:07] group or a sag.
[00:28:09] It's another one of those entities where the Marines take the front rank of it.
[00:28:15] The UDT take the subordinate role of just being in charge of the explosives.
[00:28:19] The Marines are going to go ashore.
[00:28:21] They're going to, with guns and everything like that, they're going to clear or provide
[00:28:27] a perimeter for the UDT to come ashore with explosives, set those explosives onto the railways
[00:28:31] and then they escape toward it.
[00:28:33] Now, they have a couple of these sort of, the go sideways.
[00:28:39] A couple of Marines are wounded badly once paralyzed on the last of these raids, a force
[00:28:47] of frog men have to paddle back into shore to rescue their Marine comrades.
[00:28:53] I think, as a unit of them are hanging out in the water and water up to their next because
[00:28:59] they can't swim.
[00:29:00] The UDT's have to, they hand them straps on the boats and they just pull them out
[00:29:06] back out to sea.
[00:29:08] But that doesn't stop there.
[00:29:10] This sort of system, the sag is broken apart, not long after.
[00:29:15] I think they have a three week operational lifespan.
[00:29:19] Maybe this, the sag, the special operations group there in Korea has a three week operational
[00:29:25] career.
[00:29:26] Yeah, it takes it from all the way up to September, right when the in-chon invasion happens.
[00:29:35] Once, after in-chon, that the imperative to cut the supply lines doesn't exist anymore
[00:29:41] because we've cut the enemy in half.
[00:29:43] So once we take in-chon, the North Korean siege of the Pooce on perimeter falls apart.
[00:29:51] So that's not to say that UDT's are no longer involved in raids for the rest of the war.
[00:29:57] What I found the point of the whole chapter was less about the UDT's and more about
[00:30:03] the Navy's preoccupation with partnering with any force that would be able to provide
[00:30:14] them raiders.
[00:30:15] So they partner with the, they create sag.
[00:30:19] They partner with Korean partisans.
[00:30:21] They convince the army to release the Royal Marine Commandos for one commando.
[00:30:30] They essentially steal the Royal Marines away from the army they're supposed to go
[00:30:35] serve with the army.
[00:30:37] Admiral Burke was the Chief of Staff under Turner Joy.
[00:30:40] He convinces the army to let him go and creates a one undersea raiding force attached
[00:30:46] to the USS Purge.
[00:30:48] But he also just creates a raiding force to partner with his UDT.
[00:30:52] So every point, all these entities are, they partner with the U.S. Navy to create coastal
[00:31:01] raiders.
[00:31:02] At different points, all these units get plucked away, plucked away, pulled away for various
[00:31:06] reasons, but the Navy is sort of in a telegraping.
[00:31:12] It's interest, it's intent, it's desire for its own raiding force.
[00:31:16] As soon as these groups are pulled away, they partner with another one, partner with
[00:31:20] this one.
[00:31:21] At every point, and always sort of the common denominator in that process are the UDTs.
[00:31:29] UDTs never really become like the, they don't become seals.
[00:31:34] In fact, there are guys like Doug Fain who writes the book, Naked Warrior.
[00:31:41] His position is that the UDTs futures under the water.
[00:31:46] We're going, I mean, he has no interest in inland combat and the contemporaneous documents
[00:31:53] that I found.
[00:31:54] I mean, several of them are saying that the several naval officers are writing that
[00:32:00] UDTs, the UDT, a chain of command really does not like doing this.
[00:32:05] We, I mean, the UDTs would much rather stick to the water.
[00:32:10] They've only done this as an exigency, and we shouldn't rely on the UDTs as an inland
[00:32:15] raiding force.
[00:32:16] We need to create something different.
[00:32:18] So all the way back in 1953, you can see some reluctance by the UDT, whereas the Navy
[00:32:22] sort of pushing the UDT into this, because the UDT, or the Navy, realizes there's real
[00:32:27] strategic potential here and having a force that can do that can project this raiding
[00:32:32] power from the sea.
[00:32:36] One of the other forces that we see surfacing to fill this gap again is talked about in
[00:32:43] chapter eight.
[00:32:44] This is the resurrection of the Army's Rangers and the guerilla raid that failed to force
[00:32:49] all their second death.
[00:32:52] I'm going to go to the book here.
[00:32:57] On November 21, Puckett or Pukett?
[00:33:02] Pukett?
[00:33:03] Pukett.
[00:33:04] On November 21, Pukett's Rangers were loaned to Task Force Dolvin, two battalions of mostly
[00:33:10] tanks and reconnaissance troops intended to range ahead of the rest of the division.
[00:33:16] For a unit whose motto in the last war was Rangers lead the way.
[00:33:20] The promotion from rear guard to skirmishers was an improvement, but still not what it
[00:33:26] had been intended.
[00:33:29] On November 24, the 2 p.m.
[00:33:31] Machine gun fire force the Rangers off their tanks and into the scrub.
[00:33:35] On the valley for Puckett, led the daytime attack to season hold Hill 224 during which one
[00:33:42] Ranger was mortally wounded.
[00:33:43] In the chaos, TF Dolvin's tanks fired on Puckett's men, killing two and wounding six.
[00:33:51] The next day during TF Dolvin's phase movement north, enemy fire again opened up on the
[00:33:56] column this time from behind, realizing they were suddenly surrounded.
[00:34:00] The Rangers bundled off the tanks into the middle of a frozen rice paddy and sprinted
[00:34:05] up Hill 205.
[00:34:07] Enemy fire wounded three more Rangers and convinced one of Puckett's two platoon commanders
[00:34:12] to desert the company and hide behind and hide in the valley command post.
[00:34:18] As darkness fell, the Rangers clawed out frozen fox Hill holes amid the hills emaciated
[00:34:24] pine trees and Puckett scratched down in artillery support plan.
[00:34:28] His roster numbered 58 souls.
[00:34:33] At around 10 p.m. the sound of drums, whistles and pupils rattled the night silence.
[00:34:40] A moment later a cascade of sparks crackled forth from the slope below, followed by the
[00:34:46] hard thud of mortars and grenades, then a wave of attackers in tan, winter padded uniforms.
[00:34:53] The fight that followed was not one the Rangers had been promised.
[00:34:58] Under the ghostly loom of waning red flares, the men fought from the lips of foxholes
[00:35:04] like trench soldiers, relying on artillery to splash their slope clean.
[00:35:11] As with rising tides, every wave inched closer and eroded a bit more, bullets, grenades,
[00:35:18] courage, men.
[00:35:21] After five hours and five waves, no Ranger had more than a few rounds left.
[00:35:28] Any man who had not already done so, fixed his bayonet.
[00:35:33] Then came the sixth wave.
[00:35:36] Shot through the chest with strapped on a shoulder, Puckett ducked into the bottom of
[00:35:40] his foxhole, wrapped white knuckles around his radio handset, cupped the receiver close
[00:35:46] to his mouth, and begged for another salvo of artillery.
[00:35:50] The response get in line.
[00:35:54] I have second after Puckett's last transmission.
[00:35:57] Two mortar shells exploded next to him, killing his remaining west point classmate and
[00:36:03] peppering holes from his feet to his shoulders.
[00:36:06] When he woke up, he laughed.
[00:36:10] There was nothing else to do.
[00:36:13] All around Puckett's men either snake down the hill or fought to the death.
[00:36:19] Holy Mary of Goddamn this rifle, one Catholic Ranger was heard to curse as he wrenched
[00:36:25] to open his frozen bolt.
[00:36:27] The last report of Wilbur Clinton, one of the U.S. Army Army's first black Rangers, was
[00:36:33] the unmistakable sound of him roaring in rage as he charged a cluster of enemy troops
[00:36:39] with an empty rifle.
[00:36:42] He was never seen again.
[00:36:45] Three private first class nearly made it to the valley floor when they were stopped, not
[00:36:50] by the enemy, but by the wind that fills their sails of bravery, their duty.
[00:36:57] Past looters and battlefield executioners, the three stalwarts crept over scrub and
[00:37:04] bodies until they found Puckett alive, but reeling on his hands and knees.
[00:37:11] As they dragged him away, he was heard, muttering the same thing over and over.
[00:37:15] I'm a Ranger.
[00:37:16] I'm a Ranger.
[00:37:19] Months later, McGee would pen a letter to Puckett in the hospital, commending him in the
[00:37:23] 8th Army Rangers for carrying forth the fullest interpretation of duty, honor and country.
[00:37:33] This personal satisfaction of doing the job concluded McGee is the highest and often
[00:37:38] the only reward of a soldier.
[00:37:42] In the entire letter, McGee betrayed not a trace of bitterness at the Rangers' misuse.
[00:37:50] Of Puckett's 57 men who started the battle on Hill 205, 17 were wounded and 11 killed,
[00:37:57] their bodies destined for the same fate as those at Sisterna.
[00:38:02] The enemy was estimated to have numbered around 600 and they were not North Koreans with
[00:38:09] some 300,000 troops, China had entered the war.
[00:38:20] Ralph Puckett was just a well-known just, but a year ago, two years ago, there was a war
[00:38:25] in the middle of honor.
[00:38:35] I've always wondered what happened to the three that rescued him.
[00:38:39] If they were appropriately honored.
[00:38:43] That's no small thing to creep back up that hill with the Chinese soldiers.
[00:38:48] That's crazy.
[00:38:53] Is this the raid that failed to first all their second death?
[00:38:57] No, that's not.
[00:38:58] That's an example of the army's misuse of the Rangers.
[00:39:05] The 8th Army Rangers are created in country.
[00:39:10] They're created by John McGee, who is the central character of this book.
[00:39:15] He was a prisoner of war.
[00:39:18] He fought at Paton.
[00:39:23] He was a prisoner of war for most of World War II.
[00:39:26] He tries to create a partisan force, fails to do that in World War II, but this is his
[00:39:30] second chance.
[00:39:32] He is ordered to explore the idea of creating a partisan force at the beginning of the
[00:39:40] Korean War.
[00:39:41] He doesn't find an opportunity for that, but he does a stab-lush an idea for the Rangers.
[00:39:48] The same time he's doing this, the army back in the United States is also getting the idea
[00:39:54] to reconstitute the Rangers.
[00:39:58] So there's sort of two parallel things that are happening.
[00:40:00] One, there's the 8th Army Rangers that back in the United States, they're back at
[00:40:07] fort-bending.
[00:40:08] They're recreating the Ranger company model.
[00:40:11] But nobody really up top is thinking about how to employ these Rangers and one, how to
[00:40:16] create a command to make sure that the Rangers do Ranger missions.
[00:40:21] So once these Rangers are created, unfortunately, all of these Rangers companies get attached
[00:40:27] to divisions.
[00:40:28] Once the divisions have them, they don't really know what to do with them.
[00:40:31] So they just treat them like regular infantry.
[00:40:33] So they've been trained for these behind-the-lines raids.
[00:40:36] Only a couple of behind-lines raids happen.
[00:40:39] So the only thing that could have really first all that second death would have been
[00:40:45] a raid that showed the potential of these Rangers.
[00:40:50] And the raid that could have done that almost succeeds is the Virginia One raid, which
[00:40:55] is sort of a combination of McGee's partisan entities and his Ranger entities.
[00:41:03] He creates this Ranger-led partisan mission to sneak 25 miles behind enemy lines to a inland
[00:41:12] mountain tunnel to destroy that tunnel to cut the enemy supply lines.
[00:41:17] And as you'll find in the book, it's a complete disaster.
[00:41:21] And how's the research on that?
[00:41:23] Did you run into some issues with the research?
[00:41:25] Yeah, it was a tough one to research.
[00:41:29] I knew that this was the raid that I wanted to cover in part because it did so many
[00:41:35] things.
[00:41:36] It did so much work for me.
[00:41:37] I found these sort of two wings of the armies, one their reconstitution of the Rangers,
[00:41:44] but also the armies interest in partisan or guerilla operations into a single mission.
[00:41:51] But I couldn't find a ton on this.
[00:41:54] I had communicated with a guy who'd formally served with McGee in the partisan command
[00:42:00] who'd written a book on this mission.
[00:42:05] I had Evan Howe, I talked to his son, got notes that his dad had used to write his book.
[00:42:11] I wasn't until I was doing my research for research.
[00:42:19] I came across a POW report for McGee.
[00:42:22] So McGee had been a POW in World War II and I knew that one of the members of the Virginia
[00:42:27] One raid had also been a POW.
[00:42:30] So knowing these POW reports existed in the archives, I did a FOIA request to see if there
[00:42:37] was a POW report of similar length for Martin Watson.
[00:42:43] Now, the POW report that I had for McGee was like two pages long.
[00:42:47] I anticipated that I had a two page report for Martin Watson as well.
[00:42:53] After waiting a couple of months, I finally got an email back saying, yes, we have the report.
[00:42:59] I was like, great, can you email me the copy of the report?
[00:43:03] It's like, no, it's in another report.
[00:43:04] It's about 750 pages long.
[00:43:07] What can you just pull Martin Watson's section out?
[00:43:10] Well, they said no, it's 750 pages.
[00:43:12] Okay, right, clearly there's a miscommunication here.
[00:43:15] I'll get at the next time I'm in Maryland.
[00:43:19] Next time I was in Maryland, I spent a whole day researching something else.
[00:43:22] I had moved on from the Virginia One raid.
[00:43:24] I was like, I'm never going to find anything on this.
[00:43:26] I'm going to have to recalibrate, come up with something else that shows what I'm trying to show.
[00:43:32] And to the day, I was like, oh yeah, there's that Martin Watson POW report.
[00:43:36] So I requested it.
[00:43:37] They, you know, wheeled out in the box.
[00:43:39] I had opened the box.
[00:43:41] I pulled it open.
[00:43:42] There's this huge binder.
[00:43:44] And I'm expecting to leave through it and find the Martin Watson section of this POW report.
[00:43:50] One in fact, every single page in this 750 page collection of papers is all about Martin
[00:43:54] Watson and the Virginia One raid.
[00:43:57] It was, they wrote the chapter for me.
[00:43:59] It was, everything was there.
[00:44:01] So let me go to the book on Martin Watson because this guys, well, these Martin Watson raised
[00:44:10] in Hartford, Connecticut's Frog Hollow District by the competing last stripes of an Irish
[00:44:16] Catholic diocese, a German grandmother, and local French bullies, Martin R. Watson,
[00:44:22] a hered fair skinned and small, had survived by learning the languages of each group.
[00:44:29] By building his body until his back was the size of a dinner table and his legs could not
[00:44:34] fit into store-bought swim trunks and by joining up with a gang of local Irish toughs
[00:44:39] who were destined for the usual options of East Coast Irish Destiny, law enforcement
[00:44:45] or crime.
[00:44:48] With 75 arrests by the time he was 19.
[00:44:52] The last one requiring seven police officers to detain him, Watson's future would have undoubtedly
[00:44:58] been the latter if the Japanese had only stayed on their island.
[00:45:04] A member of Darby's first range of Italian since North Africa and thus a veteran of blazing
[00:45:09] heat, bitter cold, three amphibious landings and more than a few mountain top alimos,
[00:45:15] Watson and his echo company Patoon had been among the few groups to reach Cisterna's Outers
[00:45:22] Outskirts.
[00:45:23] There with all hope lost, Watson at just 21 had volunteered to stay behind to cover
[00:45:30] his squad's retreat.
[00:45:32] A sacrifice that resulted in humiliation in the streets of Rome followed by 15 months
[00:45:39] at Stalog 2b situated on the northeastern fringe of the Reich and known
[00:45:45] all above a known above all for its cruelities.
[00:45:50] Watson had responded to captivity by murdering the camp Comodance German Shepherd and by
[00:45:57] attempting so many escapes that the guards had nicknamed him the Hase German for Rabbit.
[00:46:05] Upon liberation Watson had vowed that he would never be a prisoner again.
[00:46:10] Who is a promise, his personality was only to keep for just five months, whereupon, he was
[00:46:15] jailed for 30 days in east Hartford for inciting a riot and resisting arrest, crimes that
[00:46:23] preceded six more similar episodes, breach of peace, assault and toxicated assault and
[00:46:30] assault and battery of a police officer.
[00:46:33] Sorry, I forgot this guy is a freaking maniac.
[00:46:38] For the last charge, Watson would have faced as much as nine months in jail, had he not
[00:46:43] re-installed in the army, then volent revone tiered for the Rangers.
[00:46:48] At that interview for the Virginia One mission, McGee had seen in Watson a man physically
[00:46:53] distinct from the others.
[00:46:55] At six feet four, 240 pounds, a chin haped like a fist, hands the size of country ham's,
[00:47:03] a reddish brown Cadillac mustache with ends as sharp as Tomahawk's.
[00:47:08] The real difference in Watson, however, had lane just below his eyebrows, a gaze so comfortable
[00:47:15] and confident that he looked 15 years older than his 27 years suggested.
[00:47:21] There was only one issue.
[00:47:22] Imposing experienced eager, a predator natural fighter, Watson had ended World War II with
[00:47:30] a rank of T5 technician fifth grade, essentially a corporal.
[00:47:35] In the five years since, he had advanced not a single rank, a fact that belied his leadership
[00:47:42] potential, which was ample, but spoke volumes about his exposure to a military leader's
[00:47:48] responsibilities from mission planning to command and control.
[00:47:55] As you mentioned, he ended up getting captured again.
[00:48:02] He gets captured again.
[00:48:05] Not before he manages to get all three of his Ranger Comrades safely evacuated.
[00:48:11] He winds up escaping from the mountain top, you know, Alamo, that they fight their way off
[00:48:19] of a Navy pilot had crashed, so it's him, a Navy pilot and six Korean partisans, and they
[00:48:26] are making their way something like 87 miles to the coast.
[00:48:31] Not to the coast to friendly lines.
[00:48:35] The Navy pilot gets captured, most of the Koreans get captured only.
[00:48:41] Watson gets captured, I think, two miles from friendly lines, almost makes it.
[00:48:47] In the two Koreans, the do make it back to friendly lines, they ultimately are discovered
[00:48:54] that they had only made it back because they agreed to spy for the North Koreans and
[00:48:59] they are executed.
[00:49:00] I'm going to fast forward a little bit.
[00:49:08] On July 27, 1953, the armistice that effectively ended the Korean war was signed and within
[00:49:13] days the Chinese and North Koreans began publishing daily lists of UN prisoners of war
[00:49:19] earmarked for release.
[00:49:22] For a printing press operator at the New York Times who received each list directly from
[00:49:26] the front, this initiated a high, a nightly series of breath-holding paper-clutching searches
[00:49:33] through line after line of names, not one of them belonging to his son of whom he had
[00:49:40] no had had no information for two years, five months and twenty-six days.
[00:49:48] So this is Watson's old man.
[00:49:52] After 32 nights of this routine and having recently been informed that only one more list
[00:49:57] of 110 names remained to be published, this father left his coworkers and his post behind
[00:50:03] and made for the Connecticut Shore to be alone.
[00:50:06] There, hours later, he was found by local police and informed that the North Koreans had
[00:50:13] at the last minute added a hundred and eleventh name to their final list, a name the
[00:50:20] local police knew all too well.
[00:50:24] In the twenty nine months since his capture, Corporal Martin R. Watson, a soldier no guard or prisoner
[00:50:30] believed was actually a corporal, had set an example for captivity that to this day has
[00:50:35] never been exceeded.
[00:50:37] Thirty days after he was captured for eighteen of which he had been starved in a cave to
[00:50:42] make his 240-pound size, somewhat easier to handle, Watson and a South Korean comrade had
[00:50:49] knocked out a guard with a rock and made for the surrounding mountains where they survived
[00:50:54] for five days until their pursuers had disabled them by rolling or grenade into their
[00:50:58] hideout.
[00:51:00] Never medically treated, except with some shreds of brown paper to cover his wounds, Watson
[00:51:05] had never the less escaped again.
[00:51:07] This time by wriggling out of his rope restraints and jumping free of removing truck
[00:51:11] as it slowed around a bend.
[00:51:13] This time he survived a week before inadvertently walking right past a wide-eyed North
[00:51:18] Korean patrol.
[00:51:20] For these attempts and one other, plus an attempted suicide with a broken piece of glass,
[00:51:26] he had been relentlessly beaten with rifle butts and boot heels and periodically starved
[00:51:31] and almost always isolated, once in an unsheltered hole for seventy-two days with rations
[00:51:37] described by the record as sparse.
[00:51:42] Rightly suspected as an OSS spy and saboteur, Watson had also been subjected to almost daily
[00:51:48] interrogation by the North Koreans, the Chinese, even the Russians, who had drilled him on
[00:51:54] his exposure to the Gestapo in World War II, but especially on the organizations, methods
[00:51:59] and tactics of the paratroop unit to which they knew he belonged.
[00:52:06] Watson's response to these and other questions had been a mixture of stony silence or intentional
[00:52:12] contradiction, responses that had invariably earned him a switch across the eyes, a pistol
[00:52:17] barrel across the face, or hours of kneeling with his nose pressed against a wall and
[00:52:22] a stone on his head.
[00:52:25] Throughout these deprivations, Watson never lost his bearing nor conviction, once standing
[00:52:31] during a packed camp-lucked lecture by a British speaker from the London Daily Worker
[00:52:37] to say that he, quote, didn't know what communism was and didn't care to find out.
[00:52:43] And quote, nor did he and his fellow POWs want to listen to this trainer, Tommy Son of
[00:52:51] a bitch.
[00:52:54] Or this a front, and as his example to other prisoners, he was eventually frog marched
[00:52:59] before a military tribunal, informed of the armistice, then sentenced to death by firing
[00:53:04] squad.
[00:53:05] He still didn't talk.
[00:53:09] In the end, after having been starved from 240 pounds to 120 pounds, his was an example that
[00:53:16] earned him the final distinction as the second to last UN POW to be released across the
[00:53:23] Freedom Bridge.
[00:53:27] On the other side, he learned that the Rangers, he had so steadfastly protected from
[00:53:32] exposure no longer existed.
[00:53:36] I have a hard time listening to that part of it as Dad still.
[00:53:43] I found that newspaper article, and I don't think any Dad can read that without getting
[00:53:51] choked up.
[00:53:54] But not just that.
[00:53:55] I mean, every, I mean, the all 750 pages of that document, I was all there and you just
[00:54:00] do your best to compress, compress, get as much in there as possible, because nobody else
[00:54:05] is writing about this guy.
[00:54:07] You know that you, I mean, at least I suspected, you know, this guy's lost a history.
[00:54:14] Well, last time we, you were on, and we talked about this.
[00:54:18] Actually, the first time you were on, and we talked about this, I said, that's the next
[00:54:21] book, right?
[00:54:22] I take those 750 pages, get it down.
[00:54:25] Let's chop it down to, you know, 500.
[00:54:28] Yes.
[00:54:29] Yeah.
[00:54:30] There, there would be problems to do that, but I think you're right.
[00:54:32] What would be the problems?
[00:54:33] Because I'll just go and photocopy that thing.
[00:54:35] No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[00:54:37] That's the, the way that the documents are aligned out.
[00:54:40] It's a, each one of these things are each of that 750 pages.
[00:54:44] All of these are, most of the things in there are interviews with inmates, other
[00:54:49] inmates, and there's no, like, chronology to them.
[00:54:51] So what I've done, which is, I mean, it's kind of a wrap-up or, like, a montage of things,
[00:54:58] that's the best I could do considering the timeline that I had available to me.
[00:55:08] But what else is not in there?
[00:55:09] I mean, the, I mean, the entire epitaph for Martin Watson is, you know, what comes
[00:55:15] after the war?
[00:55:16] And that's, you know, what comes after the war for so many of these guys.
[00:55:20] You know, I've talked to, you know, a number of his, you know, family members, and it's
[00:55:27] tragedy.
[00:55:28] I mean, though he survives the war, and, you know, he comes back and, I mean, he's honored,
[00:55:36] you know, he's not sufficiently, I don't think.
[00:55:39] I mean, if there's anybody in the book that, you know, is deserving military member
[00:55:44] of the Medal of Honor, it's, it's Watson.
[00:55:46] I think he was, he received, right, I know he received a silver star for that, which I think
[00:55:50] is completely insufficient.
[00:55:53] But what happens after the fact is, you know, he comes back to a wife, comes back and he
[00:55:57] has children, and he's not capable of managing that.
[00:56:03] Ultimately, he is because of his demons, he leaves his family, escapes to Alaska, you know,
[00:56:10] works on an oil pipeline for years.
[00:56:14] Only sees his son, I think, like, two dozen times, and, you know, after he leaves, gets
[00:56:23] cancer, and dies, I think, when his son is about 12 years old.
[00:56:28] One of the last memories that his son has of him is in the hospital bed, and he's
[00:56:34] drunk from, you know, the monster of him, and that he used to be into this emaciated figure,
[00:56:41] and every time his son would come to the hospital to see his dad, his dad, the password
[00:56:46] that he had to knock, or he had to give before he came into the hospital room was courage.
[00:57:02] So again, unbelievable detail in here.
[00:57:09] Although you did mention there's a raid that you've cut from the book.
[00:57:16] Yeah, the witch on the camera.
[00:57:17] On the witch on damn.
[00:57:18] What was that all about?
[00:57:20] So the witch on damn raid is, it's another, you know, failed attempt.
[00:57:24] It's probably the one, if the Virginia one raid wasn't the raid that would have convinced
[00:57:33] our replanters that, you know, the Rangers had a purpose to play in this conflict, then
[00:57:39] it was the, the way John damn raid, and that was a happening almost the exact same time
[00:57:48] as the, as the Virginia one team was escaping south along with peninsula, but it was,
[00:57:57] it was a, it was not well planned, but it was a, it was supposed to be a raid on, to see
[00:58:05] his a dam from the North Koreans or from the, from the Chinese that were holding it,
[00:58:09] and they had to row across a lake.
[00:58:11] They had to collect, you know, what, what little boats that the army had, I mean, within
[00:58:19] 24 hours, they threw this thing together, and the Rangers had to paddle secretly across,
[00:58:24] land on an enemy shore, and then climb up a mountain to try and get around this dam, and
[00:58:30] in the process of that, they're contacted by sort of a readout, you know, there was positioned
[00:58:37] well away from the dam.
[00:58:38] They didn't even close to the dam.
[00:58:39] So before, you know, the morning is even out, they can't, they can't retreat, they can't
[00:58:45] advance, they can't receive supplies.
[00:58:47] Eventually, they are, another force comes and, and relieves them and rescues them, but
[00:58:54] the raid itself is a disaster.
[00:58:57] It's not until later that the dam is actually pummeled by Navy, Navy fighter bombers,
[00:59:06] that the raid is dismantled or taken.
[00:59:11] But that was the one raid I thought, you know, if I couldn't do the Virginia one raid,
[00:59:15] and I couldn't show how the army, you know, had turned its back again on this radar concept,
[00:59:19] and it would have been the way John Dam raid.
[00:59:22] It's, you know, equally, you know, dramatic and it's equally important.
[00:59:28] It's just one of those things you have to make a choice as, you know, as a historian,
[00:59:32] what are you going to focus on?
[00:59:33] You've got to, you know, keep moving the reader into the next, you know, the, you don't
[00:59:37] want to just jam him up and create, you've got to keep moving forward.
[00:59:40] So, and so ultimately we end up leaving the Korean war with still no real commando unit,
[00:59:49] correct?
[00:59:50] And moving in past the Korean war into chapter nine, Arlie Burke, the Bay of Pigs, and the
[00:59:58] launching of the Navy's limited war seals.
[01:00:03] And I'm going to the book on this proposed as separate and distinct from the fleets,
[01:00:11] UDTs, the recruits for the new, for the two new seal teams, one on each coast would,
[01:00:19] like Adam's rib, be drawn from them, ten officers and 50 enlisted men per team, all
[01:00:26] graduates of the training first conceived for the Scouts and Raiders, then modified by
[01:00:31] Kaufman for the NCDUs.
[01:00:34] The specialized training needed to create the seals, said the memo, would occur at existing
[01:00:41] Army and Navy schools, or could be added to the present UDT curriculum as required.
[01:00:49] The four long rumors of a naval commando unit began to hover so thickly above the UDTs,
[01:00:56] that many took the clouds for smoke of their own making.
[01:01:01] It would require another six months of CNO level conversations, meetings in Memoranda,
[01:01:06] to allocate funding, to carve out basing, to hammer out organizational plans and chains
[01:01:11] of command, to purchase commercial watercraft and fund new research for silent motors,
[01:01:16] to resurrect six mothball, mothballed APDs from retirement, to study the country of
[01:01:22] South Vietnam, and there to embark on a type of riverine warfare, said one memo that the
[01:01:27] Navy had not seriously attacked since the war between the states.
[01:01:33] And at the end of that six months, the Navy would quietly, without any ceremony, commission
[01:01:40] seal team one on Corn, Ottawa, and San Diego, and seal team two at Little Creek in Virginia
[01:01:47] Beach.
[01:01:48] So, this is where starting to get to that culminating point.
[01:01:55] Yeah, I mean, the, I mean, you touch on the controversy there, I mean, there's this whole
[01:02:04] period after the seal teams are created, where guys start coming out of the woodwork,
[01:02:13] I say, this was my idea.
[01:02:15] I did this, I'm going to go on the road to memo, let's see it.
[01:02:20] Let's see the memo, you know, Roy Ballum, who was, he wrote an entire book called The First
[01:02:27] Seal.
[01:02:28] I mean, he makes the case that it was him that put this thing together, and he based,
[01:02:33] you know, his idea in part off of Mary Miles's book, a different kind of war, a different
[01:02:40] kind of war didn't come out for five years after, after one, the seal teams are created.
[01:02:45] Oh, I don't think to use Mary Miles is like, his book is the, anyway.
[01:02:51] But yeah, there's, I mean, there's, oops, yeah, oh, yeah.
[01:02:57] But, you know, it's this whole thing, that's none of this would have happened without,
[01:03:03] like we talked about in the last episode, not without the effort, without the foresight
[01:03:08] of Burke.
[01:03:09] And, you know, there were lots of, you know, folks in the UDT's that they had no interest
[01:03:17] in going in this direction.
[01:03:19] There were some that did.
[01:03:20] I mean, there was a, there was a contingent of folks, and like I talked about fielding
[01:03:23] point in, atchison.
[01:03:25] There were guys that had experienced those, you know, those raids in the Korean war,
[01:03:29] and they knew that there was something that more that they could be doing.
[01:03:32] But I don't think anybody in the UDT's was proposing this, this, this, this force,
[01:03:38] this go anywhere force.
[01:03:39] And, and the, and the, the idea that this would be a go anywhere force.
[01:03:44] It's, it's there in the, in the original name.
[01:03:46] I mean, nobody had really thought that, you know, they were going to be creating this
[01:03:50] capture kill command of force.
[01:03:52] But they had thought of that go anywhere capability.
[01:03:55] And that's there from the beginning.
[01:03:56] That sea, air, and land capability.
[01:03:59] Mm-hmm.
[01:04:00] And that was all derived from the series of committees.
[01:04:05] And, you know, memoranda and meetings that Burke had convened with his senior staffers.
[01:04:12] And they had pulled that from all the ideas that they've been collecting from the fleet.
[01:04:16] They've been interviewing and talking and having people write white papers and just develop
[01:04:22] ideas.
[01:04:23] And, I mean, the one, you know, genius of Burke is that he realizes he's not a genius.
[01:04:29] He's pulling ideas from every place he can possibly get them.
[01:04:31] So one, you know, these guys say that it was my idea.
[01:04:34] You know, I'm not necessarily, you know, so confident that they didn't send these memoranda.
[01:04:39] We just don't have it.
[01:04:40] We don't, I mean, there's only one person who's responsible for that, you know, final establishment.
[01:04:45] That's him, Burke.
[01:04:50] The strange thing about this is, you know, you say, well, there's a lot of UDT guys
[01:04:55] that were sort of like, hey, we don't want to do that.
[01:04:59] And if you were to, if you were to ask probably the entire time that I've been that
[01:05:05] I was in the SEAL teams up until today, the percentage of people that, if you gave
[01:05:12] them the choice of what type of operation they wanted to conduct.
[01:05:17] Yeah, right.
[01:05:18] I know you know where I'm going.
[01:05:19] This is right.
[01:05:20] Puzzle.
[01:05:21] Like everyone would say, hey, we want to be on land.
[01:05:26] We want to push another land.
[01:05:27] We want to push another land.
[01:05:28] Look, it's, is it cool to come over the beach?
[01:05:30] Hell yeah, it is.
[01:05:31] It's awesome.
[01:05:32] But we want to go over the beach.
[01:05:33] We want to get from the water to the land.
[01:05:36] That's where the, the cool things are happening.
[01:05:40] It's interesting to think that it's, it's interesting to think that you would back in
[01:05:47] the day.
[01:05:48] Like, I know, if it wasn't, if it wasn't for the SEAL teams, if I didn't see pictures
[01:05:52] of freaking guys dressed up like commandos with machine guns in Vietnam, I'd never
[01:05:59] would have joined the Navy ever.
[01:06:01] Not a million years.
[01:06:02] A few had only seen a picture of a guy in swim trunks with a dive knife.
[01:06:06] Yeah, I mean, yeah, it was that is, yeah, what is that?
[01:06:08] What are you doing?
[01:06:09] I don't know.
[01:06:10] But the thing is, like everybody who, you know, joined the SEAL teams in that era, that's
[01:06:14] what they were joining for.
[01:06:15] They weren't joining because of the SEAL teams.
[01:06:16] Nobody knew what the SEAL teams were.
[01:06:17] It wasn't until, you know, they got there and they were like, oh, there's this other
[01:06:21] thing?
[01:06:22] Mike Thornton, he Norris, Peter, some Bob Gallagher.
[01:06:25] They didn't join the SEAL teams.
[01:06:26] They joined the UDT.
[01:06:27] They joined the UDT.
[01:06:28] Yeah.
[01:06:29] And, you know, regardless, they created this institution.
[01:06:34] The other thing that's interesting about this is, when you think about the senior leadership
[01:06:41] in the Navy, including Burke, being on a ship off the coast, unless you're in World
[01:06:49] War 2, you're going to attack by Kamikaze, being in a ship off the coast of combat is totally,
[01:06:56] it's a world away.
[01:06:58] If you're in a ship off the coast of a combat zone, you are a world away from combat.
[01:07:05] Like I said, unless you're in World War 2 and there's freaking Kamikaze coming at you,
[01:07:08] God bless you.
[01:07:09] But if you're not in World War 2, or whatever this next war is going to be, or whatever
[01:07:13] this next war is going to be, possibly.
[01:07:16] Yeah.
[01:07:17] Yeah.
[01:07:18] You're in a different scenario.
[01:07:20] So it's interesting to think that the senior leadership thought, let us get involved in
[01:07:29] that.
[01:07:30] Let us the Navy get involved in that stuff over there, over the horizon, onto the land,
[01:07:38] where there's bullets and bad guys and snakes.
[01:07:41] It's, you would think, part of the Navy would say, hey, look, that's not really our business.
[01:07:45] That's not our thing.
[01:07:46] We're staying our lane over here.
[01:07:47] It will get you to the beach.
[01:07:49] You take it from there.
[01:07:51] So if it wasn't for this void that the Navy had seen over and over and over again, where
[01:07:56] they couldn't get someone to do what we needed them to do, the Navy couldn't get
[01:08:02] Kamandos to do what they needed Kamandos to do.
[01:08:06] Anybody could have stepped into this role?
[01:08:08] Anybody could have?
[01:08:10] Yeah.
[01:08:20] When I look back and you can almost use the example of aviation as a counter to my whole thesis.
[01:08:22] You could say, well, just because the army in the Marine Corps failed to do this doesn't
[01:08:29] mean that Navy wouldn't have done this as well.
[01:08:33] You could have had the Rangers.
[01:08:35] You could have had the Green Berets.
[01:08:37] You could have had all of these entities.
[01:08:38] The Navy still would have created this field teams.
[01:08:40] I say, that's wrong.
[01:08:41] I don't think so.
[01:08:42] The reason I think that that's wrong is because of all these episodes of the Navy attempting
[01:08:48] to partner time and time again.
[01:08:51] The Navy is constantly saying, we will support you.
[01:08:55] We will just let us partner with something, stop taking this away from us because all
[01:09:01] through the Korean War, all through World War II, the Navy is sponsoring various Kamandos
[01:09:06] units.
[01:09:07] I don't think that argument, it's not an argument that's been made back to me, but it
[01:09:13] was an argument that I was thinking about when I was writing this book to confirm to
[01:09:18] sort of means test my own thesis.
[01:09:22] None of this would have happened without that neglect, but it would not have happened without
[01:09:29] that mentality, the Burk had.
[01:09:33] There was a combination of two things.
[01:09:38] It was the neglect of the Army in the Marine Corps, but it was also not just neglect.
[01:09:40] It didn't just create that space.
[01:09:42] It was also, you have this person who is this person of Burk who can't stomach a Navy
[01:09:50] that is not connected to combat.
[01:09:53] If those two things hadn't collided, there would not be a seal team.
[01:09:57] Here's a hypothesis, and I don't know how this is going to land, but I'm taking a shot
[01:10:06] at it.
[01:10:08] The water, the water sucks for operations.
[01:10:15] It completely sucks for operations.
[01:10:18] It ruins your weapons, it ruins your radios, it makes you cold, it can kill you.
[01:10:25] And the water absolutely sucks for operations.
[01:10:30] And throughout all of these opportunities for all these other units to say, hey, we got this,
[01:10:36] I think it seems like at least it might have been a little bit of a factor, just a little
[01:10:43] tiny bit of a factor for everybody.
[01:10:47] When the big Navy says, hey, we need somebody that can stay in the water and also go
[01:10:50] up on that, and everyone goes, hey, what's it take to land part of it?
[01:10:53] They go, we'll give it a try, but then damn, that sucked.
[01:10:57] We were freezing, our weapons didn't work.
[01:11:00] We lost two guys that drowned, right?
[01:11:02] That's what happens.
[01:11:03] And there's no enemy there.
[01:11:04] Yeah, absolutely.
[01:11:05] Without any wants to do back there.
[01:11:08] I mean, there's some things that maybe you want us to blow up from time to time, and you
[01:11:13] may want us to figure out how deep the water here is.
[01:11:17] A lot of us just, the whole gap of the animals are the revolt of the animals.
[01:11:26] They want to prove their relevant.
[01:11:27] Everybody wants to be relevant.
[01:11:29] Institutions are just collections of people.
[01:11:33] Institutions are going to make themselves relevant, whether it's in the market or with government
[01:11:39] agencies.
[01:11:40] We're going to find opportunities, there are no opportunities.
[01:11:45] We're going to make them.
[01:11:48] I mean, everybody wants to earn their paycheck and feel like they've done something.
[01:11:52] I mean, if there's nothing to do, well, you're going to find it.
[01:11:55] Yeah, I'm going to find something.
[01:11:59] You talked about Berks CNO ceremony a little bit when we kicked this thing off.
[01:12:04] I mean, were you going to, what else were you going to say about that?
[01:12:08] The whole chapter had started.
[01:12:10] I found, I actually found Berks CNO ceremony on YouTube.
[01:12:15] I don't know how many times I watched it.
[01:12:17] I mean, I don't know how many times.
[01:12:19] When he became CNO, that's on YouTube.
[01:12:23] That's on YouTube.
[01:12:24] I think there's 500 views.
[01:12:28] I'm responsible for 485.
[01:12:31] How long is it?
[01:12:32] I'm like, well, I mean, they compress it.
[01:12:34] It's like I think there's a couple of different versions of it.
[01:12:38] Maybe 30 minutes. Okay, but there's different speakers and everything and I'm watching this thing like time after time
[01:12:45] I remember watching this thing like you know in the middle and night like
[01:12:49] You know, I'm not doing anything bad. I'm watching 50 year old maybe see you know
[01:12:56] Did he give a powerful speech or something now his speech is terrible?
[01:13:00] He's not a good speaker. He's sort of choppy
[01:13:03] Is a couple other speakers that get up in the process that are actually they're that are better than him
[01:13:07] So why are you so hyped on this thing that you watched it for?
[01:13:10] 499 times you know, I think a lot of it was just because I mean
[01:13:13] You know some of the things that are said, you know
[01:13:15] They're talking about this you know this revolution
[01:13:18] That's that's undergoing
[01:13:20] With naval warfare that's about to you know undergoes naval warfare and when Burke gets up he articulates sort of you know his ideas and you know
[01:13:29] So many of his ideas are you know
[01:13:31] The the navies at the cusp of this technological revolution and so when Burke comes into office my you know
[01:13:38] Any any person who listen to that speech would think alright well
[01:13:42] The navy is going to evolve
[01:13:46] They're going to go deeper. They're gonna go further up. They're going to you know start taking advantage of nuclear weapons
[01:13:52] It's gonna be a technological revolution in the navy and that's what where it will stop
[01:13:58] But that's not what happens. Burke's
[01:14:03] Burke's interest
[01:14:07] Burke's emphasis does not stop he yes. He modernizes the fleet
[01:14:11] He takes he puts nuclear weapons on submarines
[01:14:15] He stretches the navies reach from you know the bottom of the ocean to the edge of the atmosphere
[01:14:20] But in between that gap
[01:14:22] He also does a lot of things. I'm you know, I think the most consequential is the establishment of this unit
[01:14:31] You wouldn't predict that or you would not have seen you know a
[01:14:39] He would not have you know conveyed any plans like that in that that presentation
[01:14:44] So are that initial speech I was so I was watching it not just for what was said for what for what was not said
[01:14:50] How much credit are you given to Kennedy in this old gig so Kennedy? So there's a lot of you know old for argument that you meet
[01:14:57] Who they still think that the seal team is would not exist without Kennedy
[01:15:05] It's a really apparently compelling you know myth I don't know why because you know Kennedy
[01:15:12] dies in November of 63 the seal team is our established in January of 62 and
[01:15:16] If there's anything that we learn you know in the preceding chapters of this book is that you know all of these units
[01:15:25] They could have been you know killed in the crib you know
[01:15:27] They could have you know strangled the death and an infancy or smothered
[01:15:31] You know by a pillow is how I describe it like these all of these units could have been you know
[01:15:36] Dispanted I mean the seal teams are only two years old at the time of Kennedy's death
[01:15:40] So even if Kennedy had been responsible and I don't think he is because
[01:15:44] All of the committees that Burke has convened
[01:15:49] Before Kennedy's even elected, you know, they proceed you know they proceed as is election. They're already mentioning
[01:15:54] You know the word seal before Kennedy's elected they have these plans already in place
[01:15:59] Kennedy's supportive of them, but he's not they he's not the reason that they're
[01:16:06] Put into place yeah some of some of Kennedy's speeches
[01:16:09] You know he's talking about unconventional warfare
[01:16:11] He's talking about all these command O type of things and he wants everybody to get involved in us
[01:16:15] He does but the Navy was and
[01:16:18] The Navy's already forward leaning into this. I mean the the army to the army. I mean and when Kennedy comes in you know his
[01:16:27] You know he has a love affair with the concept of you know counter insurgency and the
[01:16:31] His favorite you know unit of all time which is the army special forces
[01:16:36] But yeah, I think I've read up speech of his at West Point
[01:16:40] That's real actually I've read it on this podcast because it's sort of sort of how
[01:16:45] It indicates so much the whole idea of the special forces special operations and how big it's gonna be for him
[01:16:52] What about going as you're trying to research the Bay of pigs you know you got the CIA was there
[01:16:58] How available is information about that? It's a black hole to this day
[01:17:03] Just I don't know how many requests I made of the the CIA's archives
[01:17:07] For information I would find you know a thing here there, but not not very much
[01:17:14] There I was able to find
[01:17:17] Several of the frogmen that participated in the Bay of pigs. I was writing up until the final days
[01:17:25] Before the the publisher literally you know rip the book out of my hands. I was I was talking to
[01:17:31] Korean frogmen or a
[01:17:33] Cuban frogmen
[01:17:35] And you know found one I couldn't believe I found him
[01:17:39] Interviewed him and then he gave you know me a number for another guy
[01:17:43] I couldn't believe you know
[01:17:44] He did and I talked to him gave me a number for another one before I knew it. I was talking to all these guys
[01:17:48] I was like oh my gosh. This is incredible didn't never expected you know to find any of these
[01:17:54] You know me covert operatives, but you know here they are and they wanted to tell their story. So it was pretty cool
[01:18:02] Awesome
[01:18:03] So we get through that time anything else you want to cover in that chapter
[01:18:08] I mean you could now I think I've raised an lunch and and rip Robertson. I mean these are
[01:18:14] These are guys that you cut I didn't cut them they're in the book. I mean they they they could be their own
[01:18:20] Yeah, they could be their own books. I mean they're both you know they're both the CIA
[01:18:25] You know not case officers. They're the paramilitary officers that are leading
[01:18:30] Not just the reconnaissance not just the Cuban frogmen or the raid the Cuban frogmen do
[01:18:37] But they're also you know running the entire
[01:18:43] The mission they're they're back on ships
[01:18:46] You know reeling information doing everything they can to support the invasion they're held you know back and then when
[01:18:53] the
[01:18:54] Brigade forces collapse both Robertson and Lynch they spend two weeks sleeping almost not at all
[01:19:02] Doing everything they can to rescue as many Brigades survivors as they can
[01:19:07] So when they finally do get pulled or when they finally do get pulled in the Navy supporting that entire effort
[01:19:13] The Navy doesn't support the the initial raid almost at all despite
[01:19:18] Berks repeated protests and has repeated attempts to get Kennedy to to let the Navy intervene
[01:19:25] But the Navy does not abandon the the Cuban brigade members they they
[01:19:31] Night after night the Navy sending whale boats ashore
[01:19:35] Do anything they can to rescue survivors and the most compelling
[01:19:40] Characters and the whole testimony that are a rubber Kennedy
[01:19:44] Convenes in the aftermath of these two guys when they they show back up
[01:19:49] To testify in front of this committee and they're there's completely sunburned black almost
[01:19:55] They show up and boots that are salted or crested white with salt water. I mean
[01:20:00] Pretty pretty convincing
[01:20:03] And and Grace and Lynch, you know, he goes to his grave, you know
[01:20:07] Hating anything you know, we're remotely related to Kennedy
[01:20:11] He goes on to another career. He was an Omaha beach. He was at Omaha beach
[01:20:15] He became a was a green beret
[01:20:17] They joins the CIA. I think he ends his government service with the DA starts the DA
[01:20:22] You're a believe it
[01:20:25] That brings us up to chapter 10
[01:20:29] Which is titled
[01:20:31] Kennedy's Army of gladiators and the counter insurgency that blunted their swords then cleared the way for another
[01:20:38] Contender that goes getting to kick out of that one
[01:20:44] and
[01:20:46] You know you talk about the fact that this was a really hard chapter chapter for you to write
[01:20:52] And you
[01:20:54] This is this is the and it makes sense that it's hard to write because you got the special forces
[01:20:59] Yeah, which
[01:21:01] By all means look if the Marine Corps isn't gonna make some kind of a
[01:21:05] Maritime special operations go anywhere forced then if the if the Marine Corps is not gonna do that
[01:21:13] Then certainly the Army special forces should become
[01:21:18] This capability and
[01:21:20] It's a very bizarre
[01:21:22] I could bizarre as a strong word. It's a very interesting
[01:21:26] Thing that drives them in a different direction right
[01:21:29] Yeah, I mean it's it's totally unpredictable. I mean they they create them in 1952 sort of right after the failure of the Virginia one raid
[01:21:38] But they see the potential of partisans or they see the potential of guerrilla forces. I mean
[01:21:43] The one disadvantage that the West has
[01:21:46] Compared to the communist forces
[01:21:49] The Soviet Union are you know, we don't have as many men we just don't have the man power so
[01:21:54] or at least in the in the military we don't so
[01:21:57] Our idea or the the idea of special forces is to be able to you know parachute
[01:22:03] You know behind enemy lines and raise a guerrilla force to
[01:22:07] Ray the enemy's vulnerable spaces
[01:22:10] The problem that they you know discover in this period between
[01:22:14] 1952 and 1962 as at the Soviet Union is not like other countries. It's not like the West
[01:22:19] If you want to you know create a partisan force and central Colorado you might be able to do it
[01:22:24] You might be able to find some you know wing nuts out there and raise a militia and you know go attack
[01:22:29] You know oil plants or whatever you could probably do that because we have an open society
[01:22:33] That's because I that does happen. Yeah, right
[01:22:36] Yeah, but you know you can't do that in
[01:22:39] In a
[01:22:41] Gestapo state or so
[01:22:42] You know because they know they they've got identity cards on everybody. I mean you can't
[01:22:47] There's just not there's not the
[01:22:49] Infrastructure to be able to do that so the special forces
[01:22:52] You know have you know this idea that you're gonna have behind the lines Raiders made up of indigenous forces
[01:22:57] It's ridiculous so
[01:23:00] they
[01:23:01] Sense that they know that and they start to
[01:23:04] you know
[01:23:06] Of all of themselves they transform themselves into a completely sort of different unit which Kennedy finds out about or
[01:23:13] Sort of you know
[01:23:14] These two things are sort of happening at the same time Kennedy is discovering this
[01:23:18] Concept of counter-insurgency and the winning of hearts and minds and the
[01:23:23] the least if not
[01:23:26] the creation of a American freedom fighters at least denying
[01:23:31] Tribesmen and indigenous peoples to the Soviets
[01:23:34] So why don't we support these people why don't we you know give them weapons? Why don't we train them out of fight?
[01:23:41] And it becomes you know the perfect you know marriage of
[01:23:44] Capability and an opportunity
[01:23:48] Counter-insurgency and the special forces so
[01:23:52] They're married together and that leads us into Vietnam
[01:23:56] Yeah the the
[01:23:58] Transition these guys started off
[01:24:00] Where they started you know in the early 1950s
[01:24:05] Um
[01:24:06] It looks like they could hand up just be in a good commando force or a the creative commander for absolutely I mean
[01:24:12] I'm going to the book here you say established in 1952 the special forces had been intended to replicate the experiences of its founder and first commander
[01:24:19] former OSS operative Colonel Aaron bank in 1944
[01:24:24] As a 41-year-old Jedberg he had dropped in a France led resistance fighters
[01:24:30] Then in 1945 his impropers at sounds had almost let an operational group of
[01:24:35] German POWs into the alps on a mission to capture Hitler
[01:24:40] Hell yeah
[01:24:41] Guided by these examples bank and his successors had erected and an
[01:24:45] Organization to match their mission 2000 airborne qualified soldiers spread across three forward staged
[01:24:51] Battalion-sized groups one in Okinawa one in Germany one in Fort Bragg North Carolina all ready at a moment
[01:24:57] Notice to drop into an enemy country and lead a ready band of resistance fighters to physically create these groups a special warfare
[01:25:05] Sender had been hacked out of a remote corner for Bragg in the mid 1950s and volunteers had been recruited
[01:25:11] Plenty of former Rangers old jockstrap type commandos
[01:25:17] No first enlistments or second lieutenant's permitted to apply the and ushered through a three month course in guerilla warfare with a staggering 90% drop-out rate
[01:25:27] This was followed by language instruction and individual courses in one of four specialties weapons
[01:25:32] Demolition radio communications and longest of all medicine the pipeline culminated with a multi-week exercise in which candidates infiltrated on a
[01:25:42] Notional enemy country linked up with a band of dissidents which are other can candidates sent up a hinterland base camp
[01:25:49] Imparded their individual specialties and it led their guerrillas on a series of raids and ambushes all why avoiding a
[01:25:55] Gresser force of local deputies National Guardsmen and state police
[01:25:59] There you go man
[01:26:04] That's special forces. I mean that's what is it robin sage? Yes, it's
[01:26:10] And they still have it and they know still the ideas that you're gonna be able to
[01:26:15] lead or find these groups. I think that's the that's the that's the trick. How do you find these groups and
[01:26:22] You know soviet societies or societies where you know you have a an aggressive
[01:26:26] You know Gestapo type police force you know you don't have a free society like and the only place that you're going to find
[01:26:35] You know a ready pool of candidates to you know join a thing like this is and
[01:26:40] You know sort of ungoverned spaces where there aren't you know these
[01:26:47] You know state police secret police what's the deal with yarboros daughter?
[01:26:52] I was one of the you know things that I was uh
[01:26:57] So yarboros he he's the
[01:27:01] It was tough to find the character and this I always tried to you know
[01:27:06] When I was working on a chapter working on a different unit I was always trying to find you know one you know the operation that was
[01:27:14] You know most consequential to driving you know that missions either success or failure
[01:27:19] They're their their continuation their disbandment but then once I found the the operation or the the program or something
[01:27:25] I was always trying to find the character
[01:27:27] That was most important to that missions success or failure
[01:27:31] um
[01:27:32] yarboros
[01:27:33] This this chapter is distinct in one way. It's not there's no operation
[01:27:38] I'm covering lots of little mini battles. I mean wars changing at this point so you know the the sort of the
[01:27:44] The the the chapter structure that I had settled on in World War II and the Korean War you know
[01:27:50] Where I focus on one main
[01:27:52] Operations kind of gone at this point in the book because you know there's no one there's so many battles that are a
[01:27:58] Carrier so many little small skirmishes but you know I focus on yarboros because he's the person who
[01:28:05] He creates the special war fair center or the the schoolhouse for green berets
[01:28:09] um and and marries you know the green berets to this this new
[01:28:17] Operation of counterinsurgency so there's no more commando operations for the special forces
[01:28:21] No rating or anything like that. It's only coin or counterinsurgency
[01:28:25] So he's training guys not to just you know lead ambushes and things like that but he's teaching his guys to
[01:28:32] Dig wells and you know how you know animal husbandry and how do you how do you convince you know
[01:28:37] Tribal people you know to to join your your group you have to you know
[01:28:41] You've got to do med checks you've got to do all the sorts of things that nobody really likes to do
[01:28:45] um
[01:28:46] But in the course of him you know overhauling the special warfare center
[01:28:51] And in the course of him preparing to showcase this to
[01:28:55] Kennedy for Kennedy's visit to Fort Bragg
[01:28:59] his daughter who is about to
[01:29:01] Mary get married to another green beret officer she's in a terrible car accident dies
[01:29:09] She's killed and
[01:29:12] Yarbro is a month away from you know his you know career making
[01:29:18] Presidential visit this is going to you know this visit is going to either make or break the the special forces everything and he's worked for
[01:29:25] Um and in that period he I write in the book he cinches down his grief and he gets back to work
[01:29:32] The first thing he does I managed to talk to
[01:29:36] I interviewed Yarbro's daughters fiance he never married after she was killed
[01:29:43] She would
[01:29:45] But he said the first thing that he didn't he talked to the the general
[01:29:50] Several times after his fiance was killed but the first thing that Yarbro
[01:29:54] Yarbro did after his wife died is the same day he went through the house and he took down every picture
[01:29:59] Or you mean after his daughter died after his daughter died he went through the house
[01:30:02] Yarbro did and he took down every picture
[01:30:05] God rid of every trace of her couldn't handle the grief
[01:30:08] Shut he just shut it down and then he
[01:30:13] Spent the next month
[01:30:14] doing everything he could deport himself into
[01:30:18] Getting ready for that presentation
[01:30:20] And Yarbro drove the special forces as you just said into not being a commando force
[01:30:28] But being up countering search is he force right which creates another gap of which which leaves the gap the gap remains
[01:30:36] the gap remains
[01:30:38] Now we end up with
[01:30:41] Chapter 11
[01:30:43] The first seals their search for a mission and the report that found it for them
[01:30:52] The bucklrew report
[01:30:54] What's going on
[01:30:56] So
[01:30:57] um, 1964 the navy
[01:30:59] um
[01:31:01] The navy seeing that there is you know trouble in south of East Asia and once to contribute but does not know how
[01:31:08] the navy is run by
[01:31:10] um, traditional
[01:31:14] Blue water sailors as it always is and
[01:31:17] And
[01:31:19] Is trying to figure out how to contribute to this, you know conflict and they and they they gather together
[01:31:25] seven seven naval officers led by a
[01:31:30] A blue water sailor animal savage they
[01:31:33] Send the survey team to Vietnam to you know get away at the land figure out how the navy can contribute
[01:31:42] It's
[01:31:45] The group itself is you know comprised of a lot of the navies kind of unconventional thinkers
[01:31:53] David Del Jutus who is the first commanding officer of seal team one
[01:31:57] He's there sort of acting as a contributor slash
[01:32:00] Ademnol's aid
[01:32:02] There's a former UDT officer a silver star winner and there's
[01:32:07] Phil Bucklrew and several others who have spent considerable time in Vietnam
[01:32:12] So, Philip and Phil Bucklrew at this point is he he's a captain or no six
[01:32:18] He's the second in command
[01:32:20] They're there for less than a week when Admiral Savage has a not sure the record is unclear he has either a heart episode or he
[01:32:30] He gets into an alcohol-related incident and is forced to
[01:32:35] Retire back to the states
[01:32:38] Regardless it leaves Phil Bucklrew in charge of the survey team now what would have happened if Admiral Savage had
[01:32:44] Remained in his position as the as the survey leader. I don't know
[01:32:48] But what we do know is what did happen and that's Phil Bucklrew who is the
[01:32:52] the most
[01:32:55] Forward leaning or
[01:32:59] You know the the person who's still in the military who has
[01:33:04] experienced every unconventional
[01:33:08] phase of the navy sort of inland adventurism
[01:33:10] He's now in charge of this the survey team
[01:33:13] They spend six weeks you know going around the entire country they go to civil
[01:33:17] Special forces camps
[01:33:19] They they travel up the Mecon River
[01:33:22] They examine
[01:33:24] Where supplies are coming in if they're as the navy is contending or as the navy argues that they're being
[01:33:30] sailed down
[01:33:32] Around the coast and infiltrated
[01:33:35] along along the the ocean coast
[01:33:39] And what they figure out is that none of that is happening none of the the navy's claims are are true
[01:33:45] All of the
[01:33:47] Contraband all the weapons that are being funneled to the insurgency are coming right down that Mecon River and they're being
[01:33:53] Injected throughout the country through various waterways
[01:33:57] He discovers this and says we are not going to have an impact if the navy
[01:34:03] Doesn't leave blue water and starts doing what the
[01:34:07] The fleet did in the American Civil War and that's hitting hitting the brown water rivers
[01:34:11] um
[01:34:13] And it in the report, you know, he makes a point to say that you know there's lots of opportunities for rating along these rivers
[01:34:21] He only mentions the seals once never really connects them to that idea rating
[01:34:26] But he he does you know say explicitly in the report
[01:34:32] The navy
[01:34:34] Should be in charge of that inland rating mission and
[01:34:39] And when the reports delivered
[01:34:42] It's sort of the in the whole process of this like everybody's trying to get a hold of his report before he
[01:34:52] Publishes it before he takes it back to the navy Paul Harkins who's in charge of
[01:34:57] Mac Vee at the time
[01:34:59] His deputy William Westmoreland they're all trying they're having lunch with him Henry Cavitt lodge is the
[01:35:03] The ambassador to Vietnam everybody's trying to get a look at Phil Buckley's report
[01:35:09] Phil Buckley to his credit. He does not want to let this thing out of his hands until he has a chance to let his
[01:35:14] Navy superior see it first. It's you know, it's still controversial like
[01:35:20] You know the navy like I said the navy hadn't been involved in a war like that for
[01:35:25] Over over a hundred years
[01:35:27] Um, sir, Shane it's controversial because of that it's controversial because he's advocating for you know this this this this river reenforce
[01:35:36] This this force that's going to take us away from the blue water away from you know the navy's emphasis at that point which is aircraft and air care and and aircraft carriers and
[01:35:46] And nuclear subs and everything like that you're you're you're putting us back in the weeds
[01:35:52] But having been you know the
[01:35:54] A veteran of the scouts and raiders and then veteran of sake. And then a
[01:36:03] In charge of the navy's
[01:36:06] Relationship with the CIA during the Korean war and all the various CIA raids
[01:36:11] With the UDTs in the Korean war. I mean he is he's positioned. I mean he's he's
[01:36:17] He's taking his biography and he's saying well, why shouldn't we be doing this?
[01:36:22] I've experienced two wars where we've done this already
[01:36:25] We we absolutely should be trying to support this effort as much as possible if the government or if the country has decided this is worth
[01:36:32] American lines then it should be
[01:36:35] It should be a mission worth
[01:36:37] Navy lives as well and he delivers that report to just unmelt and
[01:36:42] They Commander and chief the Pacific fleet. They're they're head over heels in love with this thing. No
[01:36:48] They're not head over heels. They they this report gets
[01:36:51] Past back and forth. I mean it becomes like I said in the book it becomes a bit of a hot potato
[01:36:55] Where does it get traction?
[01:36:58] It all I'm not sure where it ultimately gets traction because it takes two years for the really the navy to
[01:37:04] You know put this thing into effect before they field you know the navy river reenforce or CTF 1116
[01:37:10] Combine task force one six was there a champion for an above
[01:37:14] Phil H. Bucklew not that I could find
[01:37:17] interesting but everybody
[01:37:19] I
[01:37:23] If if I had to guess I would guess it was probably somebody like Norville Norville Ward who becomes more important later
[01:37:31] But I'm not sure I didn't find them one other part of this chapter that I wanted to run through because it's
[01:37:40] Pretty freaking awesome is this at some point the navy sends down some some
[01:37:46] Like
[01:37:49] Academics and some some psychologists and so so I got to read this part
[01:37:55] When the navy's academics had arrived in 1955 to observe UDT training
[01:38:00] Their purpose had been to validate the courses
[01:38:03] Individual selection tests the soft sand runs the ocean swims the harassment of hell week
[01:38:10] And short of invalidating any of these to develop what they called
[01:38:14] Realistic selection standards that would reduce what the navy admitted was the courses
[01:38:19] excessive
[01:38:21] attrition
[01:38:23] Subjecting students to a battery of personality tests and classifying their individual traits
[01:38:28] Age education intelligence and so on the academics hopes not only to predict the candidates like the hood of success and training
[01:38:36] But also his success in an actual underwater demolition team
[01:38:40] In the course of these assessments they learn that the students below the age of 21 were 8% more likely to fail
[01:38:49] Roughly the same rate as high school dropouts
[01:38:53] While students from broken homes were just as likely to graduate as anyone else
[01:38:58] Based on the number of times a student had volunteered to visit the dispensary
[01:39:04] Which is medical assessors determined that a candidate in moderate health who
[01:39:09] Minimize the psychological importance of pain, fatigue and intense discomfort
[01:39:15] Study much higher chance of success than
[01:39:18] quote the most physically fit who were over concerned about their injuries
[01:39:24] So you're better off just being a tough
[01:39:26] Son of a bitch that maybe can't run too quick, but I don't care if my knee hurts. I'm gonna keep going
[01:39:32] The least common traits among successful frog men seem to be restraint
[01:39:41] Fautfulness sociability and cautiousness
[01:39:48] The most common were responsibility
[01:39:51] Emotional stability
[01:39:53] Original thinking
[01:39:55] Objectivity and most of all masculinity
[01:39:58] So you know as I read through that, I mean, it just you just
[01:40:04] Picture every team guy that you know and you know where the bell curve is and
[01:40:10] Yeah, I mean I
[01:40:12] I have a
[01:40:14] I knew that this had to get in the book. I bounced it around from section to section because I had about you know 15 years
[01:40:20] You know to play with I finally you know found a home for it here and I was I was really happy that I did
[01:40:25] There's lots of these little like assessments that they had put together over the years and they were trying to like understand
[01:40:31] And they still try and understand but still they still do and they still have no idea no idea
[01:40:35] That's that's why it's so great because it's just I mean
[01:40:38] This is a report down in 1955 we're still at this we still have no like the Navy still says hey
[01:40:44] Why can't you figure out who's gonna make a wise nutrition rates or how they still said?
[01:40:47] I mean the trussian rate right now is insane but it did say at the
[01:40:52] 10-15
[01:40:54] Are making it through it continues on later studies had gone on to test a variety of variables
[01:41:01] Including the benefits of wheat germ and a student diet which proved predictive
[01:41:05] Preditably negligible and a series of warshacked tests and psych psychiatric
[01:41:10] Interviews to determine the effective sexuality on a candidate success or failure
[01:41:15] Successful frog men said the sex reports author appeared to require this specific rather
[01:41:20] masculine at adventurous occupation with all of itself destructive and massacistic implications
[01:41:27] Because and this was just the author's speculation of their magical attraction to the depth of the sea and the security of the womb
[01:41:35] And an unconscious motivation to prove their masculinity coupled with a fear of involvement with women
[01:41:41] Ha ha ha ha
[01:41:46] Setting aside the psychoanalyst tendency to project their own insecurities onto their subjects the Navy had not been able to argue with the UDTs results
[01:41:56] That was not the worst thing
[01:41:57] Call it in there
[01:42:00] I have never met a group of more self-reliant health-releather
[01:42:04] Characters wrote reporter Bill Stapleton after accompanying a UDT to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands in 1955
[01:42:14] Besides their typical raconicence exercise
[01:42:18] Exercises submarine lockouts and test with miniature submersibles the frog men had also
[01:42:24] Salvaged a 50 foot yacht from a reef twisted the tails of passing sharks and when an American sailor had disappeared into the harbor on a moonless night
[01:42:32] Had common deer to truck road to the worst edge and as if they'd been scouting the contours of an enemy beach dove online until they found the drowned man
[01:42:43] In their free time they spearfished drank untold amounts of beer erected beachside bonfires and in overflowing pots of sea water
[01:42:53] And vinegar boiled lobsters and astonished the superstitious natives by broiling barracuda steaks
[01:43:00] U.E. barracuda barracuda e.e. you they had said
[01:43:06] Promises replied a frog band nothing but promises
[01:43:10] So exclusive were the UDTs said one observer that even rank met nothing to them
[01:43:17] When seen in their standard swim trunks and belt nifes surrounded by charts and diving equipment and asked by passerby
[01:43:24] If they were indeed in the navy the frog men would invariably reply regardless of the askers rank nope
[01:43:32] We're all in UDT
[01:43:40] So there you go
[01:43:42] I went to St. Thomas one time
[01:43:45] Yeah, and it sounds about like this
[01:43:47] We've rented a room so we were doing training in Puerto Rico and I think we got
[01:43:55] We got a little we chartered a plane and bro this is like nineteen ninety whatever
[01:44:01] I mean this is not when you people are chartering planes. I don't know who pulled this together
[01:44:06] We chartered a plane we go to St. Thomas
[01:44:10] We get there that place is beautiful by the way
[01:44:12] But we went we've got an 18 man we were we're an arg puttune we've got an 18 man puttune so
[01:44:19] I'm pretty sure everyone went but most of us went we got a bunch of guys most of the puttune we ran one
[01:44:27] Hotel room
[01:44:29] For everyone to stay and because you know we're all cheap and besides who's planning on sleeping when we're gonna be
[01:44:35] Long story short when I get back to the hotel room at seven or eight o'clock in the morning on Saturday morning
[01:44:42] There's all these guys are sleeping
[01:44:45] There was someone that had pulled because it was air conditioning in the little hotel we were saying
[01:44:51] So two guys had pulled the curtains off like ripped the curtains off the curtain rods and we're rolled up in the curtain rods
[01:44:58] I'd like it some more
[01:45:00] I can punch it just sandwiches
[01:45:04] So really not that much has changed the young UDT spirit survives
[01:45:10] um
[01:45:15] And meanwhile this report that you that you talked about is is circulating and now we're starting to get some
[01:45:23] some traction and
[01:45:25] starting to figure out
[01:45:27] What's going on
[01:45:29] chapter 12
[01:45:31] chapter 12
[01:45:32] Which is called the damn break of conventional war in Vietnam and the following flood of raiders that failed to beat the navy to the
[01:45:40] Macon delta all but one
[01:45:45] That's impressive right now. Go
[01:45:50] Let me get into this one a little bit
[01:45:53] The CIA had already discovered there were challenges at attempting to break a wild herd of mustangs
[01:45:59] These are Vietnamese soldiers that they're trying to train chain into wearing a warriors award
[01:46:04] Cheeriet yoke the CIA's initial solution to this mustang breaking was as usual to outsource the job to the
[01:46:10] US military's trainers at advisors in this case however the CIA's planners did not offer the job to their stand-by-pool
[01:46:17] Special forces a teams but instead took a long shot chance on a three-man element from seal team one
[01:46:23] A gamble due to the elements leader a man who had convinced the CIA planners that he was the equivalent of an entire special forces a team
[01:46:31] He
[01:46:33] Almost was with a boxers jab that could part the red sea said one who saw it and a six foot three inch frame that could have waited through it
[01:46:43] It had been natural to assume that storekeeper first class Robert Wagner's most likely
[01:46:49] Contribution to the seal teams would have been in pure
[01:46:53] Pugilistic combat
[01:46:55] His instincts for it were undeniable driving a Jeep through a Mac V compound and passing
[01:47:01] So close to an army sergeant that the offended man had taken a swing at Wagner's lieutenant
[01:47:07] In the passenger seat
[01:47:08] Wagner had responded by slamming on the brakes then beating the sergeant so savagely that the lieutenant had feared for the man's life
[01:47:16] I never saw anything like that the lieutenant said later
[01:47:20] Not an uncommon expression whenever Wagner was around
[01:47:24] As one of the only enlisted UDT are graduates of that period to be selected to skip the mandatory
[01:47:31] Stn and UDT for a direct assignment to a seal team Bob Wagner despite a wife and four young children had
[01:47:38] Predictedably risen to become one of the team's most eager volunteers for repeat deployments to the ben high and
[01:47:45] LDNN
[01:47:46] Three six-month tours in three years
[01:47:49] In his role he had earned a reputation among superiors that had swung between the
[01:47:55] Supportalatives of
[01:47:56] Perfectionist advisor and perfect seal
[01:47:59] Reputations he had cultivated while simultaneously building a name as a weiler dealer for his part ownership of a
[01:48:06] Beachside bar in Denang called the blue moon
[01:48:10] Clean cut for a seal even by 1960 standards his face a graph of hard angles and straight lines
[01:48:18] Below a flat top deliberately raked to attention his only physical feature that suggested he was anything more than a lockstep
[01:48:26] Conventional where his eyes
[01:48:28] Hard focused a bit like a predator in pursuit of its prey and implying a similar pace
[01:48:39] Dude you're a good freaking writer, man
[01:48:41] I mean that's just an awesome
[01:48:46] An awesome little
[01:48:48] Little section there so we got the Mac Vsog we got four Sri Kahn going on we got the lurbs we got the PR use
[01:48:55] Yeah, it's a tough one. This is a tough
[01:48:59] Period to cover because all this stuff is happening all simultaneously this is the one chapter that sort of stands alone and the
[01:49:06] And all my chapters. They don't focus on one person I focus on you know four distinct
[01:49:14] Junus probably the most important being the one you just read Bob Wagner who is
[01:49:22] He is he's a tough character to to
[01:49:27] Compress and to you know it's it's
[01:49:30] It's difficult you know to you know highlight seals that were you know standouts or I mean it's a it's a it's a standout group already
[01:49:42] I mean the you know the guys that are selected from UTT to come to the seal teams they were the they're the best guys in UTT
[01:49:49] And then to you know figure out who the best guys in the seal teams were at this point is also difficult
[01:49:55] But then you know look at somebody like Wagner who kind of stands above everybody
[01:49:59] You know in his
[01:50:03] One his foresight
[01:50:05] But his his ability to you know
[01:50:09] You use everything all the all the tools that he has and his personality everything from straight force
[01:50:15] I mean he
[01:50:17] in the course of his
[01:50:20] Creation of the PR you camp lots of different entities come into trying to steal this from him and he uses a variety of
[01:50:27] Ways to keep them out one you just threatens to kick their ass
[01:50:32] to
[01:50:33] He you know like I say in the book he threatens just you know pack up his bags and go home
[01:50:37] Which you know convinces the CIA planners to push everybody else aside
[01:50:41] he
[01:50:44] So he's
[01:50:46] You know all while he's doing that while he's building this program and nobody else is building and he's just
[01:50:51] I mean he's running from place to place to place he's participating in missions
[01:50:55] He's conducting rifle range training himself. He's managing his own bar
[01:51:02] He you know he doesn't I mean he he created the one bar the blue moon and the Nang but he also creates a separate bar down
[01:51:08] He's like franchise and liquor places. I mean he's like in some sense he's the you know
[01:51:13] He's the the 1966 version of jockel
[01:51:17] He's just I mean he's completely
[01:51:21] But he's
[01:51:23] And you know the whole time he's got you know family with the five kids, you know
[01:51:27] You know home but he's like he'll come home for six months. He'll deploy for six months. I'll come home for six months
[01:51:31] I mean he's just he's relentless and by this point you know in his career he's already done six
[01:51:37] separate tours to Vietnam
[01:51:39] like he's he's incomparable
[01:51:44] While he's doing that while he's where did you get most of your information about him from?
[01:51:48] there were
[01:51:50] um decent amount of well he he did a recording
[01:51:56] To capture this entire creation he did it with a Franklin Anderson so Franklin Anderson was
[01:52:04] his commanding officer at Celté one. He finds out what Wagner has been doing and
[01:52:10] things that Wagner has been kind of
[01:52:13] You know exceeding the boundaries of what he was been allowed to do so
[01:52:18] Wagner
[01:52:20] sits down with an interviewer that he commissioned himself and he explains the whole thing
[01:52:25] He's not gonna take his time to write down everything he did but he's like
[01:52:28] you want to talk to me about this bring an interviewer here and then you can take the
[01:52:31] transcript back to uh Anderson and he does it he he
[01:52:35] Trans the the whole thing is recorded he transcribes the thing and passes it back to the Celté one commander
[01:52:41] Anderson Anderson reads the thing and becomes his greatest advocate at that point
[01:52:46] So yeah he did break all the rules to make this happen but he didn't
[01:52:49] It's a good little leadership thing sometimes when you're in a leadership position
[01:52:55] And you're watching something happen from the outside and it looks a certain way
[01:53:00] And it's pretty easy to get caught up in it
[01:53:02] You don't necessarily even have to be a leadership position but like you know let's say you're watching a different unit
[01:53:06] You know I'm watching a Marine Corps unit see what they're doing from afar and I think what the hell of these guys doing
[01:53:11] And you if you don't if you're not careful
[01:53:14] You can look at someone from a distance and start to be very judgmental without actually understanding anything
[01:53:19] Of that that's going on in the ground
[01:53:21] So that's something I always tried to be very careful of if I was watching a unit
[01:53:25] They were doing something that didn't seem to make sense to me instead of me going to bend over there like an idiot running these operations
[01:53:31] I would actually reach out to them
[01:53:34] Did you say hey Ben can you explain to me what's going on?
[01:53:36] It looks like you're doing some wild stuff. Can you talk to me talking me through why it's happening?
[01:53:41] That's a mistake that
[01:53:43] That that people make and
[01:53:45] You have to be careful of it and that's a great example of what do you do if you think somebody's well
[01:53:50] Well, you should do it go talk to him go find out what's going on and you know what maybe you do see something that maybe I do say hey Ben
[01:53:56] You start telling me how you're doing it. I say hey, but you might want to think about this
[01:53:59] You're well, that's a good point. You know, or maybe I say oh wow
[01:54:02] I I understand now what you're you know
[01:54:04] We had a little bit of this with doing daytime operations in Ramadi
[01:54:08] Uh
[01:54:09] Why the hell are seals doing daytime operations and it's like I could completely
[01:54:15] Understand someone thinking that right what what you doing why you giving up your advantage of doing operations at night when we have night vision in the enemy doesn't
[01:54:23] You hate that's a great point. Here's the thing we are our our actual mission
[01:54:30] Tasking from the siege of Soutif is to train and fight company and puttune sized elements of Iraqi soldiers
[01:54:36] Guess what they don't have
[01:54:38] night vision matter fact
[01:54:40] They would have about one flashlight for every four guys
[01:54:45] So taking these guys out in the middle of the night was dangerous and
[01:54:51] Did we do it? Yes, we did we did it usually
[01:54:55] In direct action raids where we could set up a situation where white light was okay because we had already
[01:55:02] You know set off a breach or whatever and now we're just clearing buildings or they're just clearing buildings
[01:55:06] But we we we we had to get the in order to fight these guys in order to get them out on the battlefield
[01:55:12] They're gonna have to do stuff in the day. That's part one part two is
[01:55:16] We owned the night and you know who knew that the enemy knew that and so guess what the enemy did at night
[01:55:20] They didn't do anything at night. We'd go out at night. There'd be no one out there
[01:55:23] Literally no one doing anything but as soon as the day came out or as soon as the the sun came up and they're called a prayer went then it was oh
[01:55:30] Here comes the enemy because they know they it's a more even match and now they're out there moving amongst the civilian
[01:55:36] Populous two who's also awake and has to go you know down to the down to the corner store to grab some
[01:55:43] Date from the from his neighbor whatever they start moving around so now the enemy can move around
[01:55:48] with the camouflage of the local populace
[01:55:52] Now if I was on the outside see and what the hell is tasking a bruiser?
[01:55:55] After doing daytime operations it might not make sense as soon as you get an explanation like that it's like okay
[01:56:00] Okay, I get it. There's some there's some reason for this happening
[01:56:05] So that's a good lesson that got learned right there someone's doing something that seems a little bit crazy
[01:56:12] Ask him find out ask him why they're doing it
[01:56:16] What's it happens if we're gonna I mean Frank Lann Anderson is still around like he's and he is
[01:56:23] He's in his late 90s but he's still sharp of the tie. I talked to him
[01:56:28] Maybe a week ago cool what's get him on the podcast? He remembers
[01:56:33] Everything that's awesome. He's in Durango, Colorado and anytime I call
[01:56:41] You have to you know start leaving a message on the machine and just start talking because eventually his wife is gonna pick up and
[01:56:49] In variable he's gonna pick up and she's gonna like I didn't know who this was
[01:56:53] He's in the field you know clearing cows or something. He's always working what a beast
[01:56:58] He's incredible and he's a little guy. He's a but he's and he's still out there
[01:57:03] And he's still like if I talked to him if I ask him a question. Okay, so was this guy at the team in
[01:57:08] 1960s oh that guy was an E5 in
[01:57:10] 196 I will he told you he was an E6 no
[01:57:13] How do you know this that's awesome? I use a he's a character but I got so
[01:57:19] The other answer to the other question about how I got some of this information about
[01:57:23] Bywagner I spent a lot of time talking to all the folks that he had done this with guy stone
[01:57:28] Retalked his son I talked to a lot of the a lot of the people that were you know sort of surrounding him at the time and he
[01:57:37] Not only is he you know does he build this PRU program
[01:57:41] And be a nom but he comes home and he builds you know sort of the counter part to the PRU program in the hills
[01:57:48] You know 200 miles away from the ocean
[01:57:50] in the chocolate mountains he you know
[01:57:54] Manages to convince
[01:57:56] A local real estate magnate to give like 12 hundred acres of mountain territory or mountain scrub
[01:58:02] He overhauls the entire area
[01:58:04] names that can't make him and then he
[01:58:09] He just creates a mini PRU camp to train guys how to train other people and delete them into combat
[01:58:17] He goes back on his last deployment
[01:58:20] he he's killed
[01:58:22] and
[01:58:25] and the
[01:58:27] Navy recognizes his contribution is you know he's a store he dies is a storekeeper first class
[01:58:33] Which for any of your listeners a storekeeper first class means he's essentially a
[01:58:38] Sergeant he's in the six
[01:58:42] Staff Sergeant staff Sergeant right he's a staff Sergeant and
[01:58:46] For his contribution for you know creating the period you know the Navy's contribution to the PRU program
[01:58:51] for creating everything he did in the United States
[01:58:54] The Navy awards him a legion of merit which is a totally like unheard of award for a first-class petty officer
[01:59:01] You know to get a two but the Navy authorizes the V of her valor with it. But she never happens
[01:59:08] So I mean one of the most highest you know awards that you can get you know one to a you know a storekeeper first class seal
[01:59:15] Um his family who I was able to interview they
[01:59:21] His last child was born
[01:59:23] Just prior to his last deployment
[01:59:27] There they were struggling to you know just comprehend you know their father's
[01:59:32] You know death and you know not having him anymore
[01:59:35] The Navy contacts them let's them know that he's going to be you know given this you know incredible honor
[01:59:40] And the Navy asks how if they would like to come out for the presentation of the the ceremony
[01:59:48] The wife asks the oldest son the the oldest of the the children who 16 years old if and leaves it in his hands
[01:59:57] Would you like to go out and receive your dad's award
[02:00:00] the son decides I
[02:00:02] Too much and says
[02:00:04] Just mail it
[02:00:06] I get it in the mail a couple weeks later
[02:00:13] Bang
[02:00:15] But this chapter is is not just about the peer use chapters all about the neglected not the neglect but you know the marine core deciding that they aren't gonna fight in the Mecon Delta
[02:00:24] And the the marine force recon deciding that they're going to support special forces on the on the
[02:00:30] CIDG camps and then the marine core deciding well, we don't really it's too risky to have those guys out there at the CIDG camps
[02:00:37] We're gonna keep them with the divisions then it's about the the lurps or the the creation of reconsons
[02:00:44] Troops to support the divisions whether it's the you know project Delta with the green berets or whether it's the the lurps with the individual
[02:00:52] Divisions both of these units are you know there they look like seals they probably act like seals
[02:00:57] They probably would have had the same sorts of missions as seals, you know in different parts of the country to go out find the enemy
[02:01:05] You know kill them capture people and bring them back
[02:01:08] But you know the emphasis of all of the divisions is to get these main these big forces into combat with the enemy so all they send them these guys out to do
[02:01:16] It's fine the enemy tells where he is and we'll send guys to you
[02:01:20] I mean, it's it doesn't work because you know, it's Vietnam and they you know small pockets of enemies
[02:01:24] You know if you don't contact them if you don't you know engage them whether they're they're gone
[02:01:29] They're gone. They're gone. When you make that
[02:01:32] Radio call now you got what however long it's gonna be they're gonna be gone. Right. They're gone
[02:01:37] And most important thing about this whole period is that all of these units that are created
[02:01:42] They're created in other parts of the country. They leave the one area of the country that has the most water as the most
[02:01:48] You know reason for the navy to be there completely
[02:01:51] Open open for another unit to come in
[02:02:00] Hoping for one unit to come in let's go to chapter 13
[02:02:05] The derailing of the first direct action seals in the wrong sat and the detachment that restored their prospects
[02:02:14] Going to the book here real quick
[02:02:16] When the seals of detachment delta or debt delta as it was called arrived in February
[02:02:22] 1966
[02:02:23] They numbered just three officers and 15 enlisted men not much more than a single enhanced platoon
[02:02:29] But a platoon so important to seal aspirations that it was led by lieutenant James Barnes
[02:02:36] Seal team ones commanding officer
[02:02:38] Known as a friendly and capable administrator the ideal sort for foraging partnerships and acquiring
[02:02:45] In country assets Barnes was a firm believer in the seals traditional interpretation of direct action and upon arrival set to gathering
[02:02:54] Intelligence on all the enemies command posts radar dishes and bridges
[02:03:00] Barnes's problem
[02:03:02] These simply did not exist
[02:03:05] On a map the 400 or so square miles worth of rivers and canals of the wrong sat special zone
[02:03:12] Look like the splitting curving
[02:03:15] Broncos seen in the cross section of a human lung
[02:03:19] On the ground this lung was a putrid tide water swamp that went flushed left behind a morass of boot sucking mud flats and twisted root
[02:03:31] Penicillus the high ground of which could mostly be measured above the water line with a yardstick
[02:03:36] Called the evil place by the locals or the forest of assassins by the Americans and was and known as it as a past hideout for pirates
[02:03:48] The wrong sat was by the time of the seals arrival
[02:03:52] Reinforcing all of these reputations
[02:03:54] Saved with since it was the source of an increasing number of rocket attacks on side gone plus river bank ambushes along sidegones main shipping channel
[02:04:06] So there you go
[02:04:08] Here comes this guy a Barnes rolling in like hey, we know we're gonna to take out their radar positions
[02:04:12] We're gonna take out their bridges
[02:04:14] That's what we're gonna do. Yeah, where are they they don't exist. It's not that kind of war
[02:04:18] I mean this the you know the example that you just used about you know getting to her body and
[02:04:25] You know expecting to contact the enemy and night and do everything like the one thing that I learned about frogmen or least
[02:04:32] You know this modern you know interpretation of them is
[02:04:36] They're gonna adapt to find the enemy and this is one instance where we don't and we we almost are the the seal team is almost
[02:04:43] You know got turned turned away at the front door
[02:04:46] And Barnes comes in like you said you know he finds that there's nothing that they've trained for
[02:04:52] And their and his response you know not not really you know not not having ever done this before or not having you know any real
[02:05:01] You know playbook you know to to work from he decides you know we're we're this isn't for us
[02:05:10] and
[02:05:12] The
[02:05:13] series of liberty incidents and Sue and the Navy is already you know kick the the kick the seals out of the country
[02:05:20] One you're not you're not engaging the enemy like we expected you to and two you're causing problems
[02:05:25] So what what do you want so they turn you know to the commander of all the
[02:05:32] Seals in country who just so happens to be the person responsible for putting them there fill bucklo
[02:05:37] So they they present this whole problem to them bucklo
[02:05:44] Appeals to the commander of Macvee's
[02:05:48] Understanding of the naval tradition of leadership
[02:05:53] Change the leader you're gonna change the rest of the organization so Barnes has removed
[02:05:59] After buckloos intercession and an entire new detachment replaces
[02:06:03] That Delta that is deck golf and deck golf the commander of deck golf is
[02:06:11] Juner officer by the name of of main requires comes in and
[02:06:16] Completely over halls what the seals are doing not over halls the mission
[02:06:22] Because you know the mission up to that point and really just been to
[02:06:27] You can go out into you know the country set ambushes where you could you know see if you could find the enemy
[02:06:32] Although they hadn't had any success but just because they hadn't had success
[02:06:37] Wires doesn't say that you know that's an excuse like I said you know in the book
[02:06:43] his
[02:06:45] His message to his man at the time was this is the only war in town. We're not going to let it go to waste
[02:06:53] And so he sends his guys out every night. It goes with him. I mean they're out in the muck in the misery of the the wrongs at special zone
[02:07:01] And
[02:07:03] Night after night whether you contact the enemy or not
[02:07:05] We're going to be going out
[02:07:07] So adapt yourself to that expectation and and that's the detachment that restored their prospects
[02:07:14] It does they I mean by the end of that deployment. I think they have something like 80 kills
[02:07:20] Most of them are from one single contact, but they I mean they
[02:07:24] They they they make things easier for themselves. They they create like a house boat
[02:07:29] Of a old world war two air landing craft
[02:07:33] They make it so they don't have to you know return to base so often they improve their living conditions
[02:07:39] They essentially just start going out for a few hours at a time
[02:07:43] Finding the enemy where we're we're possible
[02:07:46] Responding to
[02:07:48] Reports of an enemy contact and then you know patrolling to those areas
[02:07:53] And they get you know they're not you know this you know they're not what we understand to be this
[02:07:57] Heels today, but they're they're off the close
[02:08:01] What was the operation jacks day?
[02:08:03] Operation jacks day is a attempt it was a sort of a Marine Corps Navy mission right at the beginning right when
[02:08:11] debt
[02:08:12] debt dealt it gets in country and it's a
[02:08:16] Sort of a Marine Corps lead mission to sort of sweep this one
[02:08:20] Suspected corner of the rung sats specials on and it's a I
[02:08:27] Think they claim it you know to be this you know
[02:08:31] Huge success what in fact it's it's a bit of a disaster
[02:08:35] There's multiple heat casualties in the process
[02:08:37] There is a there are a couple of enemy kills and I think the only thing real that they find in the entire three week long
[02:08:44] mission is a
[02:08:46] A Vietcon hospital sort of a built-up section of a
[02:08:52] Log pathways and little huts and other than that they don't find much
[02:08:58] Seal teams try to contribute to it UDT is contribute to it the UDT is bring
[02:09:03] I cut a bit of a section of the book on operation jacks day
[02:09:07] It was it was mostly a litany of of failures by both the seals and the UDTs they had bad gear they had you know
[02:09:16] They just they they their contribution wasn't significant
[02:09:20] So and you mentioned Guy Stone
[02:09:24] When you're talking about Wagner what what was his guy stone he didn't get much in the book he gets a he gets a a brief
[02:09:33] You know nod and that's
[02:09:35] He
[02:09:37] Helps
[02:09:40] He's he's Wagner's best friend who's Wagner's best friend in the world
[02:09:45] He helps set up the P.R.U. training camp
[02:09:49] But he's also important because he was a Korean war soldier. He was a forward observer in the U.S. Army
[02:09:55] So when
[02:09:57] The leadership at Seal team one is trying to you know adapt you know their naval commando force to be
[02:10:03] You know to have more you know hard army skills who do they turn to you know outside of you know their traditional
[02:10:11] Avenue for support with you know the Ranger school and things like that they turn to a former soldier guy stone guy stone sets up a
[02:10:18] curriculum
[02:10:20] It gets smart on all of his old army
[02:10:23] Manuels and he sets up training for seal team one and starts putting all the guys through it before they're going to be a nom they got to go through guys stones course
[02:10:30] So
[02:10:34] So they manage to and again
[02:10:36] I mean this song that you have so many good stories in there about what what happened what this look like who these characters were
[02:10:46] Now we move into a chapter 14
[02:10:49] The direct action seals who dodged the version then perfected a mission that propelled the teams past the river banks
[02:10:57] Into history
[02:11:00] Go into the book here
[02:11:03] In the winter of 1956 Robert T. Gallagher joined UDTR and I said that already today one time
[02:11:12] But this is what buds used to be called was UDTR which is UD universe so
[02:11:17] Unwater demolition teams replacement training
[02:11:20] So Gallagher joined UDTR class 17 at little creek a class comprised of
[02:11:27] 97 personnel including five Navy officers five US Army soldier graduates from Ranger School and one black sailor from Ohio who remarkably had taught himself to swim in a creek after a town
[02:11:37] Order to integrate the local pool had prompted the owner to fill it with rocks
[02:11:43] How did you dig up that piece of information?
[02:11:45] I mean that was from Bill Goynes he was the first
[02:11:51] First black seal he'd been one of the plank owners at
[02:11:55] Seal team too and he's you know
[02:11:58] Just I mean he's he's still still alive and still
[02:12:02] Contributing he's helping with the navies recruitment efforts of of black sailors. I mean he's
[02:12:07] You know minorities he's he's an incredible person and there's not a trace of you know bitterness
[02:12:13] I mean he's just
[02:12:15] He has every every right to be better you know for you know everything that he went through and he's just
[02:12:20] Talking to him is just it's just such a you know, it's a pleasure to talk. Let's get him on the podcast
[02:12:27] At one point in the first few weeks of the temperature had dropped solo that Gallagher and his classmates had been forced to break the ice that it
[02:12:35] Crested the edge of the chest of peak base so their instructors could torture them in it
[02:12:40] And ritual not unheard of in UDT's east coast winter classes after four weeks of this
[02:12:46] Four weeks of heaving logs over wind swept sand dunes four weeks of wet fatigue
[02:12:52] Freezing to their skin four weeks of elephant marches with boats on their head
[02:12:57] A misery that had rubbed Gallagher's thinning weed already thinning widows peak raw
[02:13:02] More than 50% of the class had quit including one of the Navy officers and all five of the Ranger school graduates
[02:13:09] It was just too psychological for them one man remembered and there had been so much farther to go
[02:13:17] After a total of 16 weeks class 17 had shrunk to a mere shadow of itself
[02:13:23] Of the 97 who had started only 14 graduated
[02:13:27] One of those incidentally was the undontered black sailor from Ohio another of course was Gallagher
[02:13:36] Gallagher's subsequent career in the UDTs was more than commendable
[02:13:41] Whenever he went he excelled and more
[02:13:45] This reputation plus his standing as a sturdy drinker had made him a natural choice for the first batch of frogmen to join seal team too
[02:13:54] There he excelled again undertaking the most difficult assignments including a course to qualify as an explosive ordinance to disposal technician
[02:14:05] or EOD tech one of the militaries more cerebral ratings and an eight month overseas advisory billet to Istanbul
[02:14:13] Where he helped train the first all Turkish Navy UDT class
[02:14:18] From these assignments it was possible for Gallagher's peers to assemble a portrait of his personality
[02:14:23] Hard charging in intense yet entirely devoid of pretense
[02:14:28] When deployed it was only on the rare occasion he was seen in anything but a rumpled pair of UDT shorts
[02:14:35] He was above all known for his quiet confidence the oxygen of of his leadership
[02:14:41] But with the emphasis on quiet
[02:14:44] He had all the sensitivity of a rock remembered one teammate unless at a bar the only place he seemed to allow
[02:14:51] a sense of humor to walk around off leash
[02:14:54] He was just more pulled into himself than others remember to teammate just tough to get to know
[02:15:02] For the first of it for the force of his personality first combat experience
[02:15:06] Gallagher was from the moment he joined the seventh platoon's unofficial leader
[02:15:12] No one argued with him said really Matthews about to depart on his first deployment
[02:15:16] You might win the fight, but you never want to go to sleep again
[02:15:20] The reality was actually
[02:15:23] slightly less severe
[02:15:25] Certainly Gallagher was all the aforementioned was remote intense almost humorless
[02:15:30] But there was another quality that would soon help him become one of the best combat leaders in the history of the navy
[02:15:36] Essentially an orphan from the day Gallagher had joined the seals
[02:15:40] They had been whether they knew it or not
[02:15:43] his family
[02:15:44] Nothing matters nothing mattered as much to him nothing except maybe the mission
[02:15:51] A mission whose evolution would have no greater contributor than Gallagher
[02:15:59] He's a
[02:16:03] I don't even know where to start with Gallagher. I always I say that I don't like the term hero
[02:16:09] But if I have to if you had to pick one or if you had to pick a person
[02:16:13] that you know to kind of
[02:16:16] You know set up as a as an example for young frogman. This is that he's the anti-Marsenko
[02:16:25] you know the he's the
[02:16:27] He's not
[02:16:29] boastful he's not
[02:16:33] He never never
[02:16:35] Never stretched the truth on anything the day ever did
[02:16:37] Partly because he just never talked about what he did
[02:16:43] I mean he
[02:16:45] I managed to talk to you know I may I interviewed a lot of people for the book
[02:16:50] And I'd always find a way to you know convince somebody to to talk to me
[02:16:56] I when I when I finally was able to track Gallagher down
[02:17:01] You know I kind of
[02:17:03] Took deep breath the hour the number
[02:17:08] He answered the phone
[02:17:10] I'm hastily rather than this is Ben Milligan. I'm writing history that I'm former seal
[02:17:15] Little I'm trying to get through like you know my introduction
[02:17:20] Tell them you know
[02:17:22] Gonna be writing about the 7-platoon would love to hear your perspective. I've talked to many of your teammates
[02:17:26] I talked to Pete Peterson. I talked to Rehmati. I talked to the you know all these guys
[02:17:29] Um would love to get your perspective if you have time
[02:17:33] He right here
[02:17:36] Takes a pause and he goes I don't think I want to do that any hangs up
[02:17:42] All the work that I had done that was that huh? That was your interview. That was it did you ever get anything out of them?
[02:17:48] Nope never did talk to everybody. I mean everyone in his orbit
[02:17:53] Learn I mean learned as much about him as I've learned about anybody he had
[02:17:57] When you were reading through that you know there was stuff that didn't make the book like when I say he's essentially an orphan
[02:18:03] I mean
[02:18:04] He's essentially an orphan and I hope that you know a reader or listener
[02:18:08] You know has this you know some sense of what that means like his childhood was nothing less than heartbreaking
[02:18:15] his father abandoned
[02:18:16] uh him
[02:18:17] No and his sister him and his brother and his sister to a
[02:18:21] And and their mother who had tuberculosis essentially to a sanatorium when the mother died
[02:18:30] Both
[02:18:32] Bob and his sister replaced into separate orphanages
[02:18:36] Bob who at the time and believe was only around four years old his sister was two and a half and they were so close
[02:18:42] inseparable that every night Bob would escape
[02:18:45] His dormitory in the orphanage sneak across this really really wide expanse of a
[02:18:51] Field between the girls dormitory sneak into the girls dorm and sneak into her bed just so she wouldn't have to sleep alone
[02:18:58] And this one he was four years old. Yeah. How did you get this information from his niece who was essentially raised like I mean
[02:19:06] Not I don't know if you she was very close to her uncle
[02:19:10] um
[02:19:13] He uh
[02:19:15] But he had he I mean it wasn't just the war that you know made him or just combat that that made him
[02:19:23] You know insular and you know shut off from everybody he was
[02:19:28] I think you know the fate's kind of contributed you know to to create that person and he was
[02:19:34] Not a broken person but he had a real hard time relating to the folks is you know he's had a you know a bad relationship with his own children
[02:19:43] His
[02:19:44] It was a strange from his wife's wife never divorced him but he was a strange drum her
[02:19:50] And he you know he had a just really you know tough time
[02:19:54] I think the only person that he was really close to and life aside from you know his teammates
[02:19:59] Aside from you know somebody like Pete Peterson
[02:20:04] What is his sister
[02:20:08] As a side note this last
[02:20:11] Muster
[02:20:12] Down at four peers they had you know because of COVID
[02:20:16] You've ever been to four peers and they do the mustard they hasn't been to the mustard
[02:20:20] But but I know about the ashes when but tell it till everyone that's awesome
[02:20:23] So they were doing an ashes when they
[02:20:25] Every year at four peers once a year they will do an ashes swim so if anyone
[02:20:32] Connected to an SW has died in the previous year and they would like their ashes to be
[02:20:37] Committed to the the ocean they will that they do a sunrise
[02:20:41] swim
[02:20:42] out into the
[02:20:44] Atlantic and
[02:20:46] To your teammates will score your ashes out into the sea and they'll release release their ashes
[02:20:52] I've never been to one of these things
[02:20:54] I've heard about them
[02:20:57] This year I was invited down to to give a talk on the history of the teams and
[02:21:03] They asked me if I would you know participate the next morning and one of these
[02:21:07] You know swims I knew Pete Peterson was gonna be there met you know I'd interview Pete a number of times for the book and
[02:21:16] I knew that he was going to be swimming bobs ashes Bob died several months before
[02:21:21] And he was going to be swimming bobs ashes
[02:21:26] In addition to bobs ashes there were two other members of the seventh platoon
[02:21:31] That were whose ashes were going to be swam out
[02:21:35] So I you know I told Pete if you need you know a swim buddy for this
[02:21:40] I'm happy to have you to join you and he was more than happy to accept so the next morning we're out there
[02:21:46] You know for a m they want to install mustard
[02:21:48] You know kind of backed by the museum away from the ocean and
[02:21:53] It's November and it's pretty cold. It's probably the high 40s and
[02:21:58] You know we're just out there and swim trunks with you know flippers and you know they're going down the roster
[02:22:03] Okay, all right here's the here's the name you know
[02:22:06] Bob Bob Gallagher swimming Bob you know Pete you know he's in his mid 80s at this point. He raises his hand
[02:22:12] You know got
[02:22:14] He's an old guy
[02:22:16] But he's a I'm just a little Bob it's like all right who's swimming with Pete like I shot my hand up so fast
[02:22:22] I'm just a little Pete
[02:22:26] But after you know your assignments, you know right you know before sunrise they march you out and I was not
[02:22:33] Expecting
[02:22:35] You know sort of the spectacle of what was out there they had a shadow box set up for
[02:22:40] Every person whose ashes were being swam out so about 40 different shadow boxes with a you know flag and then
[02:22:49] Behind that you know facing the ocean probably out 50 50 people
[02:22:54] per shadow box
[02:22:56] Of family members that were all assembled there to watch their loved ones ashes being swam out to
[02:23:01] So I'm not to see
[02:23:02] You know bagpipes at a Navy band they had a flag team
[02:23:06] It was it was a huge huge click of thousands of people on the beach
[02:23:11] They do a flag ceremony
[02:23:13] So they kind of they they
[02:23:15] Position the swimmers you know behind the shadow box facing the family
[02:23:21] They go down one by one and they'll do a you know presentation to the flag to the family
[02:23:26] Now they you know set us up man, you know me and Pete behind Bob's ashes
[02:23:31] But right next to Bob's family
[02:23:33] They
[02:23:35] They had
[02:23:39] Roy Matthews who is also in the seventh platoon and they also had Ron Yaw Ron Yaw's family right there too
[02:23:45] And they were both members of the seventh platoon and I'm standing there with Pete who was you know
[02:23:50] They're OIC you know in the you know in Vietnam and you can see Pete's getting
[02:23:55] Pete's getting emotional here and I'm blaming my would have been to
[02:23:59] And I'm starting to think you know seeing Pete
[02:24:02] And
[02:24:04] They finally you know they have to the flag presentation they handy the ashes and they hand you know hand Bob's ashes, you know to us
[02:24:10] Bob's at least 20 pounds. I mean the the bag of ashes. It's pretty heavy
[02:24:14] From looking at you know Pete and they finally tell us you know about face start marching to the ocean we start backing up
[02:24:20] Guys are getting online, you know
[02:24:23] You know putting fins on
[02:24:25] Pete's having you know a little bit of a tough time getting those those fins on
[02:24:29] I'm starting to see the the line you know kind of edge away from us a little bit like
[02:24:34] We're starting to be like all right we're in Peter starting to get left behind here a little bit like I'm starting to wonder
[02:24:39] You know the waves are pretty big for Florida. I've never seen waves that big in Florida
[02:24:43] But we're starting to back into and I'm looking at Pete and I'm like Pete
[02:24:47] We're not do this man we can find somebody else to just win
[02:24:50] You know Bob out we'll take care of this if you can't do this Pete looks at me
[02:24:54] He goes like I think there's really only one thing to do here
[02:24:57] And like all right I start to grab his arm like we're gonna head back in he takes off like he dies through that way
[02:25:05] He went from being like an 83 year old man to a 25 year old frog meant like that
[02:25:10] I couldn't keep up with him. I'm doing everything I can to so I'm dragging Bob
[02:25:14] through the sir
[02:25:17] and
[02:25:18] finally
[02:25:19] Get out there through the breakers son comes up
[02:25:23] Command comes out
[02:25:25] And I am Bob to Pete Pete. Let's him go
[02:25:31] I mean the whole whole thing
[02:25:35] That's all ten years of work on this book
[02:25:40] It was worth it in that moment
[02:25:42] Hmm
[02:25:56] But I mean you you can see it like you see it there like you see like
[02:26:03] I mean even the guys I've been talking to guys that are you know
[02:26:06] From that era
[02:26:10] Guys that her and even mentioned in the book but they are you know two a man they are
[02:26:15] You know they all express you know how pleased they are that you know Bob's
[02:26:22] Contribution you know Bob Gallagher who's you never
[02:26:27] Never you know
[02:26:29] Toud of it is on achievements
[02:26:31] I mean if anybody's going to you know
[02:26:36] Capture the you know the attention of that era I mean that should be him
[02:26:41] Is it an interesting thing about him too that I mean he like I say he's the anti-Marsinko
[02:26:45] He's he's not you know he's not a
[02:26:49] He he had such pride and the rest of the the Navy like him in a way that I you know
[02:26:54] I when I said out to write this book I always assumed that I'd be writing a book that you know confirmed all the myths about us
[02:26:59] That we did all this ourselves you know and then the Navy you know was always the you know the the branch of
[02:27:05] The the parent command that was trying to keep us you know assigned to the water
[02:27:09] When I found the opposite to be true and then when I discovered Bob Gallagher Bob Gallagher's last thing legacy
[02:27:13] If anything is you know how much pride he had not just in the seal t's but in his parent service too
[02:27:19] He left the seal t's one of the last things he did he took a
[02:27:23] Commission
[02:27:24] Which no I don't know that anybody
[02:27:26] I
[02:27:28] He took a commission as a as a warn officer
[02:27:32] I'm one of the first things he did was he or he had to leave the seal themes he had to go to an aircraft carrier and
[02:27:38] And work on this aircraft carrier with fleet sailors and
[02:27:43] Every but every seal that he ever met afterwards he
[02:27:46] To a man he told them it was one of the things he was most proud of he was able to see you know the US Navy at work
[02:27:52] And see how committed you know the is fellow shipmates and sailors were you know they weren't seals
[02:27:59] Maybe these guys couldn't you know couldn't couldn't run and couldn't do the things that frog men can do
[02:28:04] But they still had pride in their work and they still you know had a mission to do and and he was you know
[02:28:09] Everybody's proud of that as he was of his you know career in the teams when did you what stood out
[02:28:17] How did you get to that that pulled to
[02:28:21] You know I I
[02:28:24] I spent you know
[02:28:26] a long time a long time trying to figure out where that transition had occurred
[02:28:31] You know that transition from
[02:28:34] Where the seal platoons were you know
[02:28:36] Patrol and ambushers to you know capture kill commandos and you know Marcinto he makes all these claims and his you know
[02:28:43] Rogue warrior buck
[02:28:45] That it was his platoon that was the eighth platoon that made that transition
[02:28:48] And and I went through and I I was gathering as many you know barn dance cards or after action reports as I could
[02:28:56] And you know I was going through operation by operation platoon by platoon trying to see like
[02:29:01] You know who had made that transition I went through eight platoon
[02:29:04] You know among others I was you know I was plotting insertion points extraction points actions on a objective
[02:29:10] Points for every one of their missions and you know after you know doing three months worth of Marcinto's missions I realized
[02:29:16] Every claim that he had made and Rogue warrior is bullshit
[02:29:20] Like what what she said because you know what his platoon did was totally commendable
[02:29:25] It was it was incredible like what his platoon did and their contribution to child doctor in the tetaphan's amazing
[02:29:31] But you know he was making you know outlandish claims and you know and
[02:29:36] Not only burnishing his legacy but doing it at the expense of other folks too. I couldn't understand why he was
[02:29:41] But I mean I found the seven platoon because I was just methodically going through these platoon
[02:29:47] You know platoon at a time operation by at a time and I noticed in the seven pltunes, you know this
[02:29:53] They started out like everybody else you know they they got to you know via nom and they would get a little bit of intel and they would go out
[02:29:59] They said in ambush. They'd
[02:30:01] They'd be trolled to contact
[02:30:03] But by
[02:30:04] Into the three month mark and they're deployment
[02:30:06] They're their their their operations take a noticeable turn and that's is when they meet
[02:30:12] Their interpreter
[02:30:13] Min who's a a former or who's a Vietnamese sailor and they enlist him into the organization
[02:30:18] He's not just an interpreter though. He's like a it's a source of intel
[02:30:22] Like he's he's able to connect them to
[02:30:25] You know institutions in the country that you know provide them a wealth of information and then they start going out
[02:30:29] And they they're not just going out for via calling. They're going out for via calling with names
[02:30:33] They know who they're going after so you know that the seven I'm seven pltunes makes that
[02:30:39] Makes that turn and by the end of that platoon
[02:30:43] By the by the by the summer of 1968 the platoon that that followed the the the the seven pltune
[02:30:50] They're you know they're they're doing what the seven pltune did but but better better
[02:30:54] I mean Rudy Bosch, you know rolls in with the ten pltune and
[02:30:57] Every platoon then it just it franchises at that point every platoon whether it's a seal and he's co-spotune or a west coast platoon
[02:31:05] They're all doing it. They're all you know relying on this capture kill mission and it doesn't really start to trickle off until
[02:31:13] You know the the war really starts to
[02:31:16] drive the the end of
[02:31:20] The the the funnel the the money starts to shut off, you know they stop getting you know rounds for their
[02:31:25] M16s
[02:31:27] They they don't get any more gas money for their jeeps. They take jeeps away from they make them start doing
[02:31:33] Watch standing on various bases that they're on so all the intel collection that they've been doing up to that point in the war
[02:31:39] It's starting to get you know they're not able to do it like they were and like you know 69 70 71
[02:31:47] Well first of all
[02:31:49] You want to you want to get some seals mad make them stand watch
[02:31:52] Oh
[02:31:54] I read that guys get so bad we had it we we had a
[02:31:59] To stand watch we had to stand watch on people we captured actually when my first opponent to Iraq and
[02:32:05] You would have fought like I'd say hey guys get jacked up we got a QRF to do wherever
[02:32:10] But get your gear on we're going into freaking hell guys be that cool
[02:32:14] But you say hey I know we just did that mission
[02:32:17] You got to stay at watch at five o'clock in the morning you couldn't me
[02:32:20] He's so pissed off
[02:32:23] I would take that I would take there the two o'clock in the morning to fork on me myself
[02:32:28] The N the a o i c would take the worst watch of the night the one that you had to wake up in the middle of the night, you know the other ones
[02:32:34] You kind of sleep until
[02:32:37] No, not a spot gas don't like stand watch the other thing that's interesting about this is
[02:32:41] You know having talking to having having talked to a number of sog guys
[02:32:47] Man they were so compartmentalized
[02:32:52] They would get like no turn over things would happen they would never tell anybody right and I mean
[02:32:58] I'm talking like less and learn from an operation
[02:33:01] Hey don't use this type of weapon in this situation. They'd never hear that
[02:33:05] It was well not never but it was very limited
[02:33:09] To to how much they would be able to pass on or that they would receive it was all be kind of centralized like maybe to be one guy
[02:33:15] That would debrief him
[02:33:17] So the fact that the the seals were sharing hey this is a better way to do operations here as well
[02:33:22] Who are we can make an a huge impact that's important from a leadership perspective when you're out there working in a company in a business and a team
[02:33:30] When you learn something pass it on so everyone can benefit the other thing that was like
[02:33:35] I mean totally benefit of the seals at this point is you know this
[02:33:39] Policy that the rest of the military had of individual rotation. They thought that having you know
[02:33:45] You know constant you know presence there, you know was was easier to you know keep all the equipment there
[02:33:51] But we'll just you know feed guys onesy two is easy into into a unit that's horrible. It's terrible. Yeah, they get to country
[02:33:57] Nobody knows them nobody trust them. They don't know anybody else nobody wants to train never never never work together
[02:34:03] The green berets did that lyrpest did that. I mean all of these special units the weed call special
[02:34:07] You know they are learning together as they operate all the time all the time
[02:34:14] Never end best guys are getting pulled out
[02:34:16] Whereas the seal teams they were always
[02:34:19] Deploying as a group they were coming home as a group. They were training together and they would read deploy as a group
[02:34:24] Yeah, and by the way you get turnover operation. I like this everyone shows up and now no knows what to do
[02:34:28] You get turnover operation in the spirit to be period. Yeah, so it's not like you're wait
[02:34:33] Those are kind of make sense to have new guy cyclin that way still got some experiments guys. No, it doesn't got to work together
[02:34:42] Moving on to chapter 15. And I think this might be echo's favorite title right here
[02:34:51] The Navy's skeleton key to inland combat and the final
[02:34:56] Against the current achievements in the wars abtide that exposed the seals preeminent as
[02:35:02] The US military's go anywhere commandos
[02:35:08] I've got you laughing at this bed you're editor
[02:35:12] Well, I
[02:35:14] Editors defense I'm the one that wrote the
[02:35:21] But as you said it kind of explains us, you know what's going on here a little bit
[02:35:28] Let me go to the book
[02:35:30] Within two months of his arrivals zoom wall that's the Admiral's almost strategy
[02:35:35] Zomalt strategy had pulled swift boats from the coastal blockade to take over the PBR patrols
[02:35:41] In the lower delta and had reclaimed some 90% of the vessels assigned to the mobile river reinforced
[02:35:48] To push into bloody alley of the parrots beak that portion of Cambodia that stabbed the insurgency supply lines like a knife into the delta's heart
[02:35:57] With Zomalt's arrival the seals went from being the fleets project
[02:36:03] Productile stepptile to raiders to the fleets skeleton key to inland opportunities
[02:36:10] Opportunities for navy boats navy ships navy fighters navy helicopters navy gunships
[02:36:17] Navy intelligence officers even navy seabees
[02:36:21] To goose the navy's involvement in seal operations zoom wall
[02:36:25] Always wearing forest green fatigues and occasionally accompanied by a camera and crew and reporters
[02:36:32] Routinely dropped in on his platoon and always posed a
[02:36:37] Variant of the same question how can I help?
[02:36:41] In short order that help was showing up in
[02:36:45] P. Aster's for Hoi Chans and interpreters navy jeeps to meet with sources daily grocery drops by the navy's helicopter transports
[02:36:54] After the friendly fire death of lieutenant junior grade David Nichols zoom wall took less than three days to invest in
[02:37:01] Invest one seal compound with an actual navy physician
[02:37:05] All told it was the kind of self-serving that helped infuse the seals with an even greater operational capacity
[02:37:13] So much so that within six months of zoom wall survival the headquarters of the seals task group commander in Vietnam
[02:37:20] Was finally upgraded from a cluttered desk at CTF 1116 to an entire quantum hut
[02:37:28] I need 15 more 20 more 100 more seals remembered
[02:37:33] Three war veteran frog man Frank Kane of zoom walls repeated calls to increase his complement
[02:37:40] When such request collided with the reality of seals actual manning numbers no
[02:37:45] Levels nowhere close to the green berets zoom wall even enlisted the efforts and advice of the commander of US naval forces in the Philippines
[02:37:54] none other than the bull frog himself
[02:37:57] Admiral Draper Kaufman
[02:38:01] So that's a huge turning point when you start getting this massive support from zoom wall
[02:38:07] Yeah, I mean the seals are no longer like it. They're no longer at the fringe of the navy's operations are the
[02:38:17] They're the they're the the the harpoon
[02:38:20] That you know not only is you know striking
[02:38:23] You know into the heart of the enemy but just like a harpoon at the attached to a rope it's pulling the rest of the navy inland
[02:38:30] Yeah, that that little detail that you got in there of zoom wall always wearing camis or always
[02:38:36] Where verdeges that's just like yeah, I mean it's a you're always on the lookout for whatever
[02:38:42] You know that little detail that's gonna you know it's gonna say something else to your rear
[02:38:48] I mean just just the fact that
[02:38:50] You know hit
[02:38:52] His sideburns alone like convey to the rest of his sailors that I am cool cool like you
[02:38:59] You know like I mean up to that point and you know in the navy
[02:39:04] The
[02:39:06] There's no beards allowed. I mean when when he becomes seeing how you know what's back in you know back in fashion in the US Navy beards
[02:39:13] He brings it all back
[02:39:15] But I mean he's he's totally you know he he's like he's a I mean he has the
[02:39:20] Bonafide is to do it he's
[02:39:23] He's a junior officer all through the
[02:39:26] World War II he's one of the only sailors to to take a ship
[02:39:30] Up the Wampo River and to Shanghai he actually sees what Soko is doing at the tail of the world war two
[02:39:36] He turns over he does a prisoner exchange with with Phil Bucklew in
[02:39:41] 1945 and he's seen even if he's not participated and he's gotten the glimpse of what the navy's capable of and when he gets there to Vietnam
[02:39:50] He knows the navy could be doing more
[02:39:52] And
[02:39:54] Then you know not not only
[02:39:56] Is his role as the commander of naval forces and be a nom important, but he's the one that ultimately becomes a chief of naval operations
[02:40:04] He's
[02:40:06] The seals were you know important before I mean when he becomes a CNO
[02:40:10] I mean you're vaulting the seals a preeminence now with it along with him
[02:40:17] Pretty neat the zoom wall class ships you know this Mikey monster or oh it's incredible
[02:40:22] Just I mean that that connection is yeah, that's it's so cool
[02:40:29] How about as this is you know you got but we're trying to put together like
[02:40:35] Bob Carrey's mission
[02:40:37] How hard was that it's not Bob Carrey's mission it's sort of it's sort of a one-off
[02:40:44] Like and I thought you know I thought about focusing on Bob Carrey's mission for the chapter, but it's
[02:40:49] It's it's not a
[02:40:51] It's not like an indicator of like the navy's inland adventurism because of the right on the coast
[02:40:57] It's right not trying bay what what signifies that it's
[02:41:03] important and you know like the
[02:41:06] The seals sort of like elbowing out its competitors is the fact that it's right around the corner from
[02:41:14] Where the green berets are operating like that's there that's their corner of the war
[02:41:18] So yeah, that's coastal, but it should have been in the green berets territory and here comes
[02:41:22] You know seal team one along with CTF 115 CTF 115 is the coastal squadron
[02:41:29] Or the squirt the coastal task wars
[02:41:31] They get their first seals and what do they do with them they start sending them everywhere and it is it's one of the
[02:41:38] I mean you look at that that mission and it is it's so different from what the the rest of the seal
[02:41:43] Teams are doing in the me calling Delta, but it's so indicative of
[02:41:49] You know this this transformation that the seals have gone through they're not
[02:41:54] A you know patrol and ambush force anymore now they're going after individual vehicles
[02:41:59] So they can capture them flip them and or ransack them for you know other locations
[02:42:05] So the whole mission is not a this is an entrepreneurial. This is not a you know
[02:42:10] Let's see let's see what we get they know who they're going for they've got good information and they you know they plan
[02:42:17] I really cool
[02:42:19] Special operation to go get them
[02:42:23] Did you feel tempted to get sucked into the sea wolves at all? Oh, yeah, because oh, yeah, I've had the sea
[02:42:30] I had to keep them at arms like I was like I don't have time. I was like I would find
[02:42:35] I found so I had I had a lot of documents about the sea wolves too. I was like man
[02:42:42] And there I mean navy just the
[02:42:45] Navy you know gunship squadrons alone. I mean they've gone through you know very very similar you know
[02:42:53] You know experience of let's bring them back let's just expand them
[02:42:56] Bring them back to spend again like well you and I experienced that I mean we have the the reserve squadrons that were
[02:43:02] Working pretty much as the sea wolves if they were like at the back and call of the seals
[02:43:06] You know my first deployment to Iraq it was we work with those guys all the time
[02:43:10] They were our full support and they were fantastic
[02:43:14] Fantastic
[02:43:15] But the sea wolves and mom man
[02:43:18] Commissioned in Vietnam and decommissioned the only squadron ever to be commissioned in combat and decommissioned in combat
[02:43:26] there's that one story
[02:43:27] they they
[02:43:29] They're running out of fuel. There's a platoon on the ground. They're like we're not leaving one birds like hey
[02:43:34] We're not leaving. I will just run out of gas so they they have enough gas to get in there and grab the last few guys
[02:43:41] But they don't have enough gas to make it back to base they land in the middle of a rice rice patty somewhere and they're using an ammo can to
[02:43:48] Siphon fuel into an ammo can import into the
[02:43:52] To get that thing back to base bro
[02:43:55] These guys when you talk to and the Vietnam guys that the Vietnam seals have had in the podcast like you they they just
[02:44:01] Absolutely without question love the sea wolf guys because those two will guys
[02:44:06] They took so much risk to support the seals on the ground. We know when I was
[02:44:12] There were a couple episodes when I was
[02:44:14] I would come I would see like a report of an army's like who you know
[02:44:18] It said we're not gonna land or something like that and then the report of a sea wolf pilot saying well if you don't land
[02:44:23] I'm gonna shoot you down and I was a little skeptical of that. I was like I don't know if that's that's
[02:44:28] Cricket and then I found another one. I was like wondering if this happened maybe a couple of times
[02:44:35] Maybe three into the buck. I mean not to you know every diminish what those
[02:44:39] Army slick pilots did they were I mean they were doing the lords work too, but yeah and then and then as you're trying to get like the last three years of the war
[02:44:48] Yeah, I can press that how hard was that that's tough
[02:44:51] And I had to you know I realized that I made my point. I knew that you know I had to accomplish what I said fourth the
[02:45:00] To do a established which is you know the moment when the seal became what we are today
[02:45:04] You know
[02:45:05] So now all I'm only was trying to do is just kind of
[02:45:09] one you know
[02:45:10] Further solidify you know how that had happened and you know I discovered some stuff along the way like you know the
[02:45:17] The night or the night the vision being heck of you know the night one of the the most interesting things to you know show
[02:45:24] You know how the the Navy had become you know so
[02:45:28] You know important in the Mecon Delta is you know finally the ninth the vision starts copying the seals the the lurps
[02:45:35] Start to decinflect
[02:45:37] areas and take them away from the seals and the seals you know they want to go out and you know do this raid and they can't because the army is already there
[02:45:45] And it the very good chance that if the war had continued on you know for a little bit longer
[02:45:53] That the army would have you know taken all the Navy's missions and the seals would have had to either move some place else a
[02:45:58] Dap again not sure what would have happened but
[02:46:00] Is a good chance that the army's a special operations would have gotten a lot better a lot better a lot faster
[02:46:07] But they pulled the night division out of the country altogether leaving the seal teams
[02:46:11] As the only all American command of force and the entire fourth core for two years
[02:46:19] Which I mean
[02:46:20] Talk about opportunity
[02:46:23] You know going back to the
[02:46:26] The sea wolves and them being
[02:46:29] Answering the call you know that's a something that I learned out of the gate when I got to seal teams was that hey in
[02:46:35] Om if it was a platoon in trouble or if it was a down pilot we were going bright light no questions asked
[02:46:48] That's a
[02:46:50] That's that's an attitude that stuck through you know till this day something's going on like that we're going
[02:46:57] I mean and
[02:46:59] Whatever I don't know if it was pulled from you know the sea wolves, but
[02:47:03] I mean we we saw it carry through I mean in our time I mean the
[02:47:10] Seal team ten
[02:47:12] I mean they came to the you know rescue of a you know their STV squad
[02:47:21] The
[02:47:22] Gold squadron seals
[02:47:24] I mean they were on their way to you know come to the aid of army Rangers you know
[02:47:29] Like are they in trouble yeah
[02:47:33] As a dangerous yep you're gonna go we sure are yeah
[02:47:42] I don't know I mean it's
[02:47:45] I think Americans are in trouble and then you're gonna go oh
[02:47:50] I mean that's
[02:47:52] You know when you start talking about Tommy Norris and his activities
[02:47:55] Yeah, I mean that's it that's exactly right like you I mean how much did Tommy risk
[02:48:03] You know to come to to rescue somebody you never know I think 11 other Americans had died
[02:48:09] Attempting to to rescue you know those those two bat either the pilot and the navigator
[02:48:14] He
[02:48:16] And not I mean he had you know he was there with
[02:48:20] His Vietnamese Rangers okay I mean
[02:48:22] Like the thing that never you know ceases to amaze me is the fact that the Seal teams
[02:48:29] Were the recipient of all of that accumulated knowledge of all that
[02:48:35] All that legacy you know
[02:48:37] Darby's legacy in the Kabanato and legacy in the point to hawk all that
[02:48:41] You know all that knowledge got compressed into the Ranger School and
[02:48:45] There are no Rangers so the Seal teams became the biggest
[02:48:49] You know collection of Ranger School graduates in the US military
[02:48:55] And then you know not only you know is there that connection with Tommy Norris you know leading Vietnamese Rangers but the
[02:49:03] The Seals and the the 7-platoon Seals during the Tetaphence of it Mito
[02:49:10] Bob Gallagher leads a squad of seals you know through the streets of Mito to
[02:49:14] To help call in airstrikes for the the stranded Vietnamese Seals or Vietnamese Rangers
[02:49:24] But yeah Bob Gallagher
[02:49:26] Tommy Norris coming you know risking everything and and he and his Rangers had undergone
[02:49:32] You know a pretty pretty terrible mortar
[02:49:36] Attack the night before he went out on that raid or went out on that rescue mission
[02:49:40] I don't I can't remember us atop my head how many of his of his Rangers were killed in that attack
[02:49:46] But I mean
[02:49:47] It would combat ineffective he only had a handful of Rangers left and him and kid you know
[02:49:53] Still decide there's an American in trouble. We're going to get him
[02:49:58] Just remarkable to me it goes out and
[02:50:02] Talking to
[02:50:04] So you asked the question how do you compress you know essentially was a three year period of history into a single you know 15 page chapter
[02:50:15] And you know you have two of you know the most
[02:50:19] You know iconic seal missions of the war that occurred during this period are not too
[02:50:24] But multiple I mean you've got you know Bob carries mission you've got Tommy Norris is mission you've got
[02:50:29] Thornton's mission to rescue Norris
[02:50:33] At some point I had the idea like I can't cover all that and it's not not necessarily it's not outside the scope of what I was doing
[02:50:42] But it's redundant to what I've already shown so I don't need to do that
[02:50:45] But I do want to cover it and some and you know pay it a nod or you know
[02:50:50] Describe it in a way that
[02:50:53] Other folks probably haven't and I had read you know the books on
[02:50:56] Tommy and Mike Thornton and I read the book on
[02:51:01] Tommy rescuing
[02:51:02] Or the most recent books on
[02:51:04] Those events and things that I noticed that they didn't cover were the metal honor ceremonies
[02:51:11] For each event I thought no wouldn't that be an interesting way to you know wrap up the book with this
[02:51:16] You know with Tommy Norris is a metal honor ceremony because Mike Thornton's metal of honor ceremony happens several years earlier
[02:51:22] Tommy doesn't happen until 1976
[02:51:27] Vietnam wars over fall of Sagan's happened
[02:51:30] You can capture all of this here the history that's happened if you you know we use that that moment as a vehicle
[02:51:37] So that's what I did I
[02:51:39] contacted Tommy Norris and he was
[02:51:43] You know I caught I
[02:51:45] I have Mark Robbins who was on that deployment
[02:51:48] Lost his eye to a machine gunner's bullet
[02:51:54] Tommy had been
[02:51:55] Tommy had helped counsel him through you know the
[02:52:00] You're losing the eye and
[02:52:03] So Mark had Tommy's phone number so I just called called him one day got him with a phone and
[02:52:10] Had a you know kind of a series of talks with him but he just couldn't have been you know
[02:52:15] So to more accessible more
[02:52:18] More friendly guy just a humble humble guy you know considering everything he's been through everything he's done and
[02:52:24] You know what was funny is he always you know he didn't minimize what he I mean
[02:52:30] He did minimize what he did but he also like was so proud of you know his post war
[02:52:35] You know career in the FBI he had this like
[02:52:39] I mean he had a I mean this in addition to his you know
[02:52:42] See okay, yeah, there's legendary FBI career he was you know he was a under cover agent
[02:52:49] He was going after international terrorists as an under cover agent and his his
[02:52:54] Cover was that of like a one-eyed arms dealer and nobody ever doubted him
[02:53:00] he was a
[02:53:02] He was you know he went after white supremacists and I Idaho he wore the best stories that I heard about him was that the
[02:53:13] He was up on a wire
[02:53:15] many had been
[02:53:17] listening to this white supremacists for a few months and he knew that this guy won
[02:53:23] Had this this big rot while that it was his pride and joy he loved this dog
[02:53:28] And he was taking him to the vet
[02:53:30] Um
[02:53:32] Not serious issue but he was going to leave the the dog there overnight
[02:53:36] So Tommy you know having listened to this guy's voice for like a month he could imitate him pretty well
[02:53:41] So the night the dog was there Tommy makes a phone call to the vet he's like hey
[02:53:47] While the dogs there why don't you go ahead and neuter him
[02:53:53] I don't know if it's true
[02:53:55] I don't know I don't know this is an accurate story with his soul
[02:53:58] I didn't get in the book because I couldn't verify
[02:54:03] The other story that I heard and this was from a Vietnam era seal who was one of the first team leaders at HRT
[02:54:09] So he would
[02:54:10] Tommy wasn't one of the founders of HRT but he was one of the
[02:54:14] Plank owners he was one of the first guys to go through the HRT selection
[02:54:20] And so HRT was in
[02:54:22] They were conducting one of their very first operations in 1985
[02:54:26] It was against day or they were trying to
[02:54:29] apprehend a
[02:54:32] Puerto Rican nationalist to a semi it was essentially it was a terrorist
[02:54:38] But they were conducting a I believe in a restaurant and they were going up this guy the the stairs to this guy's house
[02:54:45] It leans over the balcony with a machine gun and stitches the entire assault team and shoots one operator in the eye
[02:54:53] They the the team backs out and
[02:54:55] You know Charles or Sandy Pro Proty because a silver star seal himself
[02:55:02] The team leader for for HRT
[02:55:05] He's trying to you know come up with a plan to go in and get this guy
[02:55:09] Tommy comes running up to Sandy
[02:55:11] I got a plan to get get this guy he's like all right Tommy what's the plan? How about I run upstairs and kill him?
[02:55:16] Yeah
[02:55:22] Check
[02:55:24] Freaking outstanding
[02:55:27] I don't know if we could find a better place to wrap it up than that
[02:55:31] The book is awesome
[02:55:35] You know we've we've been in and out of different stories
[02:55:38] We're not even touching what's in this book this book is just absolutely
[02:55:42] filled with incredible stuff
[02:55:46] It's incredible story so get the book
[02:55:50] Echo you got anything
[02:55:52] I don't sure
[02:55:55] I'm sure all right Ben I've kept you captive speaking of hosted rescue
[02:56:01] I think you're gonna get busted out of here in a second somebody's probably looking for you so
[02:56:07] Appreciate you coming. I can't thank you enough. This is a
[02:56:09] Uh
[02:56:11] This is a treat for me anytime we get to talk about this stuff is uh that's great. Thanks for the support of the book to this is
[02:56:20] I can't thank you enough. Well
[02:56:24] The amount of effort that you put in this book the product is just outstanding and I can't even have
[02:56:28] Fathom that there would be someone else that would go through the effort that you did
[02:56:32] To to do this you know you're like you got issues dude. Yeah, that's true that but so do you
[02:56:42] I think about like I'm leaving the teams as a is a dramatic event
[02:56:47] That's dramatic which you have proved look at this look at the I mean the the infrastructure that's surrounding you at this point
[02:56:54] It's a you have to do something
[02:56:56] To account for that trauma and I always used to think that I was immune to you know
[02:57:02] You know leaving leaving the teams and I was never going to you know fill it with anything else and you know
[02:57:07] I'd never gotten any tattoos. I'd never you know I didn't get into triathlons or anything like that
[02:57:14] I just had this huge blind spot creeping up on me that I didn't know about and uh
[02:57:20] Once once this thing
[02:57:23] found me
[02:57:24] I mean I was
[02:57:26] I was hostage to it like there wasn't anything I mean it was
[02:57:29] Adominated my life I mean it was
[02:57:32] You know I don't I'd try to really you know curtail the amount of time that I put into it
[02:57:36] I only work in the morning and work in the evening you know after the kids were in bed
[02:57:42] But what I found was that I would leave off
[02:57:45] Writing or researching and then throughout the day this thing would just be on a loop in my head and I couldn't break away
[02:57:53] And it was like that for 10 years
[02:57:55] When you when it got published where you already thinking about your next book. Oh, you just like
[02:58:00] You know I know I breathe there so I when I was writing the book I had kind of a I was I
[02:58:06] If I wasn't thinking about a paragraph or a specific
[02:58:10] You know issue I had this sort of mental loop going on in my head and it was always like
[02:58:15] What's the point what's the point what's the point what's the point of this book what's the point of this chapter what's the point of the sentence?
[02:58:19] What am I doing what what's the point what's the point what's the point what's the purpose and that that question is always on a loop in my head and then when I
[02:58:26] Turned the final manuscript and I was done and I
[02:58:30] Didn't have that question to think about I
[02:58:35] I was a little lost
[02:58:37] And I found myself like I took a walk in my neighborhood and I was just and all the sudden I found myself
[02:58:45] Sort of subconsciously
[02:58:47] Thinking I started to say what's next next what's next what's next?
[02:58:53] What's next yeah, just and I just I and I've fortunately
[02:58:57] Through a lot of counseling
[02:59:00] Through some distance from the book I've been able to you know take a take a pause
[02:59:05] I kind of gave myself you know mentally a year
[02:59:08] You know from the data publication
[02:59:10] Until you know so for a year so July 20th when it came out
[02:59:14] I'm giving myself till July 20th of
[02:59:18] 2022 before I really start you know buckling down or start beating myself up about what's next
[02:59:25] So I'm a psycho because we might once I get done as soon as I get done in turn the final manuscript
[02:59:34] Well first of all before that even happens I'm already plotting I already got that next book
[02:59:38] I'm of one of them is bubbled to the surface and I'm ready or rock and roll and so by the time the book comes out
[02:59:43] What I want to warm one one one of my books gets published the art other one is already
[02:59:49] It's already being formulated and kind of being written which is really annoying because I also have like the
[02:59:57] Repweet loop in my head like oh this could be got this weird and this is that angle there's no there's no moment to go
[03:00:03] No
[03:00:05] Yeah, so I mean there was maybe a
[03:00:08] Afternoon I did reward myself at the end of each chapter. I would get I would get drunk
[03:00:16] And I wouldn't go out drinking or anything like that and every day I would just I would you got done with the chapter?
[03:00:21] Would it be like that's the rough chapter or is that like hey?
[03:00:25] I mean yeah, it was the first draft. I'll give it always coming back. Yeah, yeah, but I mean just getting you know
[03:00:32] Putting that flag in the ground and being like I'm done with that chapter like I felt like you know
[03:00:36] Even if I knew that it wasn't perfect and if I knew if I was gonna have to come back at least I knew the meat was there
[03:00:41] Meat was there the content was there and the and I if I had let myself
[03:00:46] You know get that far then I knew what the point of the chapter was I knew why that chapter was important
[03:00:51] And I knew the point that I was trying to make so at least I had the you know the bones of the chapter the structure was good
[03:00:57] You know whether or not I was gonna come back and add stuff on you know the
[03:01:01] The Cuban frog men or something like that or
[03:01:03] um
[03:01:06] Gosh
[03:01:07] Where are you leaning towards your next book you must be must have an idea in that I have an idea
[03:01:11] It's very private
[03:01:13] Private all right, you know, no one's gonna steal it every idea is I is not that because no one has enough time
[03:01:19] No, I mean it has nothing to do with that is that I need I need that in my head
[03:01:24] I if I say it out loud for for whatever reason it will it'll be like I
[03:01:28] Need the motivation of it. I need the the unfinished quality of it to motor baby
[03:01:35] That's one thing I noticed is in
[03:01:39] Seal training
[03:01:41] Guys that were like saying like oh I'm in seal training. I'm in seal training. I'm in seal training
[03:01:45] Those guys didn't seem to make it. Yeah, so maybe it's the same kind of thing for you
[03:01:49] You don't want to get it out there because that's I don't it's almost like you get rewarded for it
[03:01:53] You get a little mini reward right?
[03:01:55] Oh, that sounds awesome already got paid. Yeah, not allowing yourself to get paid. That's a good move. I like it
[03:02:01] That's it. I like it don't allow yourself to get paid
[03:02:04] But I don't go credit don't take credit. So you're not even taking any credit for me from echo just taking nothing from us
[03:02:10] Yeah, I just have to earn it over here. That's in here. I was gonna say because no one's gonna take your idea about some random
[03:02:16] document written in
[03:02:17] 1953 about some you know new nuclear warhead that
[03:02:23] Lead to whatever how do you know?
[03:02:29] Well awesome man. Thanks for coming down
[03:02:31] You welcome back here anytime. I've got some ideas in my head for like some kind of a something to do with some sort of podcast scenario with you
[03:02:38] I don't even know what it is yet, but yes, yeah agree. We'll work something out like that
[03:02:45] I'm I'm committing. Oh, right on. Yeah. Well, you know, I kind of feel like I already did it because I just said it
[03:02:50] So it's kind of like I got the reward egg and some will want it. This you know, it's pretty much done
[03:02:54] Hey, if you want to support the spot to ask you some jockel fuel
[03:02:57] We support the spot cast today. You're tracking and stacking some jockel feel been a long bay
[03:03:01] Even for echo Charles who's usually in the cruise mode over there. Are your vocal cords tired?
[03:03:07] Handled and get some get some stuff from jockel fuel back come get some bulk
[03:03:12] I'm so see see we have an eaten today. So my moke
[03:03:16] Detector is high order right out
[03:03:18] Yeah, I don't want anything else. I don't want a steak. I don't want a cheeseburger
[03:03:24] I don't want a turkey leg. I want moke right now plus as far as your macros going to need that help
[03:03:32] Yeah, did I go catabolic earlier?
[03:03:34] You're still the risk in that big camera
[03:03:37] We're not gonna let that happen. We get home. We get some milk moke up in the system and so we're good there
[03:03:43] So check that out jockel fuel.com. I'm gonna go to wall off you want to get some of these drinks that are freaking awesome
[03:03:50] Cuz you know, did we get jittery today? Did I get jittery? Did you get jittery? No, you felt smooth all day good for you too
[03:03:56] By the way good 100% good for you not gonna pay any price in the future
[03:03:59] You are you thinking you're gonna get like type two diabetes because you drank some sugary drink because you're not because that's sweetened with monk fruit right there
[03:04:05] It's true
[03:04:07] That's what I'm talking about so much statement. I mean, this is my first energy drink ever. Yeah, I don't think I've ever had a
[03:04:16] No, yeah
[03:04:18] Good move that's weird. Would drink and I rack coffee. Okay. Yeah, that'll do it your coffee guy
[03:04:26] Light of in shop too origin USA dot com if you want to get some jeans if you want to get a belt
[03:04:32] If you want to get a wallet if you want to get a pair of boots if you need a jiu jitsu geek jiu jitsu is going high right now
[03:04:39] It's going to high order everyone's training. I feel it. I feel it. Oh world straight. Are you training man?
[03:04:45] Turn in the jiu jitsu no, I don't have time
[03:04:48] You can say in an archive somewhere with your nose in a book
[03:04:53] I mean, yeah, for all the fans out there. Yeah, I'm training a lot
[03:04:56] Yeah
[03:05:01] Origin USA dot com go get yourself some cool stuff all of it is made in the United States of America look we spent
[03:05:08] Trying to fight communism
[03:05:10] We we we we fought against communism and we're still fighting against communism, but it's it's not the jungles anymore
[03:05:17] Right now it's it's it's in it's in your wallet
[03:05:20] You can give your money to a communist country literally you can do that. I recommend you don't
[03:05:27] I recommend you don't give money to communism
[03:05:30] I recommend you give it to democracy and America and hardworking American people
[03:05:37] So we're talking about origin USA dot com go get some freedom son
[03:05:42] As opposed to supporting uniquely affordable labor
[03:05:46] Oh
[03:05:48] That's what they call slave labor that's what they call slave labor true. Yeah, we're not down for that cause
[03:05:53] Jockel store boom
[03:05:55] Represent run the paths we're working out we're lifting sometimes we want to represent you want to shirt that says discipline equals freedom money
[03:06:01] hoodie hat
[03:06:04] The word good
[03:06:06] Sure locker sure locker sure locker that's a uniquely unique unique
[03:06:11] So that's okay to talk to yourself to your corner. No, okay. No red no no. No such thing
[03:06:17] Either way, the what that is it's a different unique shirt with new unique designs very
[03:06:25] Good feedback on those
[03:06:27] Good feedback what's the latest?
[03:06:30] Can you say what the latest what's what was the last the this past one?
[03:06:33] It's April right now so March was the one that you came out with long time ago everybody must get stoned
[03:06:39] Oh, yeah, that one was controversial then controversial controversial I made it we made a shirt
[03:06:44] So I heard from the nom guys one nom guy in a particular was like yeah
[03:06:49] He went to get his gun from the armory after he had been home and he went to check out his weapon someone else had taken it to Vietnam his stoner came back
[03:06:58] So a guy took his stoner on deployment did a six month opponent came back when he went to pick his weapon up from the armory
[03:07:03] Eched in the butt stock it said everybody must get stoned and I was like that's the best thing ever
[03:07:11] You know the stoner machine gun if you don't know the stoner 63 that's what the that's what a lot of guy a lot of seals carried in Vietnam
[03:07:20] And it's a badass weapon so we made that t-shirt so you could get a cool teacher like that some people didn't like it on well
[03:07:25] They scared they were they were thinking we're talking about the mat why not they they were sensitive to the controversial nature
[03:07:31] Yeah, some people don't like marijuana some people don't like guns. It's true. You know they had more to do with guns in marijuana
[03:07:37] Had actually nothing do it well yeah, I love folks. Yeah, the friction because it was the marijuana not the guns. Yeah
[03:07:44] That's my feet don't you feel like you're kind of in a stoked situation with someone's like oh, yeah, bro
[03:07:50] Everyone must get stoned, but what's the gun? Well it's a stoner 63 nom what
[03:07:54] It's a conversation starter anyways sure locker if you want to get cool stuff check it out jockel store dot com subscribe to the podcast
[03:08:03] Subscribe to jockel on or ground dot com so we can be
[03:08:06] Standin strong in the event of a
[03:08:09] Total meltdown of our democratic society also with that and you know that is true that is true
[03:08:16] But you get life advice every week from jocca, but tell me come on every week life advice
[03:08:22] You need life advice boom ass jocca every single yeah answer questions. I answer all there's like a special way to contact us if you're part of the
[03:08:29] Of the joc on the ground then you can submit questions. We're an answer them
[03:08:32] So get some of that YouTube we got a YouTube channel you can see the videos that I am the assistant director of therefore
[03:08:39] They are awesome and even ones that echo just work so by himself. Okay
[03:08:45] Psychological warfare footside canvas to coat a Meyer
[03:08:48] You guys cool stuff to hang on your walk dude if we made a if we made a ben milligan t-shirt what would it be?
[03:08:53] Oh, I mean you sell it doesn't
[03:08:57] You imagine I wonder what could we do what would it be?
[03:09:01] I mean
[03:09:02] Help pale in my it have to be something to capture you know
[03:09:07] This is a tan as I am
[03:09:09] This isn't black and white it only gets worse. Yeah, the shirt comes off. It's only works
[03:09:13] So it have to be something super white
[03:09:16] Yeah, I mean it's just like a vague outline
[03:09:19] Do like do like a white t-shirt with like a white on white
[03:09:23] Yeah, with like golden like
[03:09:26] And then it could just say Mulligan
[03:09:32] You'd be surprised man people be stoked to represent that you like oh
[03:09:38] Books by by water beneath the walls again
[03:09:42] Bra I know you like the title I get it
[03:09:47] I get it next time you're gonna title a book just come and consult coming consult you got it coming consult hit me up
[03:09:54] With spent a 50-minute conversation
[03:09:56] There's a beautiful a beautiful and amazing and powerful and strong context behind that title
[03:10:03] That four people get
[03:10:05] That it's and it is as I said this is to me the most important historical book about the seals and I'm gonna also say for me
[03:10:18] the most important historical book about special operations and
[03:10:23] You write about everyone in there the Rangers the special forces the scouts and raiders
[03:10:29] It's all in there. It's just an outstanding book
[03:10:32] So pick up that book by water beneath the walls
[03:10:36] You know what do me favorite right now as you're listening right this down by water beneath the walls because there's no way you're gonna remember that
[03:10:44] So there you go. Hey, I've written a bunch of books to final spin
[03:10:48] That's that's the novel that I wrote
[03:10:50] Leadership strategy and tech is field manual the code the evaluation's protocols discipline because freedom field manual
[03:10:55] Way the warrior could one two three and four get those books for the kids that you know, please please do that it will
[03:11:03] legitimately guaranteed make their lives better make them better into better human beings make them more capable for the world
[03:11:10] And the world is not an easy place Mikey and the dragons get that for the little
[03:11:15] Munchkins running around the house about face extreme ownership
[03:11:19] dichotomy leadership check out those books as well echelon front dot com if you need some help with leadership inside your organization
[03:11:28] Online training at extreme ownership.com
[03:11:30] This is not the only place to learn leadership and leadership is not an anoculation that you get and now you're good to go
[03:11:36] You got to train just like the gym. That's why we got extreme ownership.com
[03:11:39] So you can train you every single day and you want to ask me some questions going on there
[03:11:43] I'm on there. I'm on a zoom call talking to me
[03:11:46] I'm five inches away from your head answering your questions if you want to help
[03:11:51] Service members through an incredible organization go to america's mighty warriors dot orgets marklies mom
[03:11:58] Mom-alie
[03:12:00] Helping in so many different ways she's tremendous and it's a tremendous organization don't forget about horses and heroes Mike of think horses
[03:12:07] heroes and horses dot com
[03:12:10] Mike of think he's doing cool stuff on horses
[03:12:14] Run it right right north is through the wilderness
[03:12:18] 41 days
[03:12:20] Legitness
[03:12:22] We're on
[03:12:24] Social media
[03:12:25] We're right in there inside the algorithms don't get sucked into them. I'm at jocca will like echelos at echelotrols
[03:12:31] Ben is that being miligan three on Instagram and then Ben age miligan on Twitter. What do you post on Instagram?
[03:12:39] Anything yeah, I post on there. I'll try and put on like a post a week
[03:12:43] Come not to I'm not super active. I don't I'm not super good but I'll if I'm
[03:12:52] Usually I try and tie something back to you know American history or something like that
[03:12:56] I just I was down at the World War II museum which is incredible
[03:13:02] there was a
[03:13:05] Right outside the world we're too amazing the statue of ant Frank and they just happened to position it
[03:13:09] Directly in front of a shell packed a section of Utah Beach that they had brought back and that seemed like a well just an incredible like
[03:13:20] It just I mean it made the whole the whole effort the whole thing seemed worthwhile like
[03:13:25] What do you guys do and what did they do it for? It's right here everything's right here. Awesome
[03:13:31] Cool stuff so check out his Instagram and
[03:13:34] Ben thanks once again for coming on I really appreciate it appreciate I appreciate what you've done for the teams
[03:13:42] Not only through your service and the teams but also for this book and
[03:13:46] Thanks to all the military personnel out there that are writing history as we speak by keeping us free around the world
[03:13:55] to the
[03:13:57] police law enforcement
[03:13:59] Firefighters paramedics the M.T.'s dispatchers correction officers board of patrol secret service all the first responders
[03:14:05] Thank you for what you are doing right now to keep us safe here at home and
[03:14:11] once again
[03:14:13] There are opportunities out there
[03:14:17] But they're not gonna just they're not gonna beat down your door you got to look for you got a there's a
[03:14:23] expression we used to have in the teams
[03:14:25] Look for work remember that expression look for work
[03:14:28] So when you're a new guy and you're hitting a target a training operation and you don't really know what to do
[03:14:34] So you're kind of standing there with your weapon at high port not doing anything and some freaking platoon chiefs
[03:14:39] Gonna look hey, will it look for work and that means you pick up your weapon and you go look for an angle to cover
[03:14:44] Well, that's what you that's what the seals did
[03:14:47] That's that's where we came from we came from a position where we were just out there looking for work
[03:14:53] Don't do what everyone else is doing
[03:14:55] First of all don't just stay in there and do nothing, but don't just do what someone else is doing there
[03:15:00] It's already getting done look for the angle that's not being covered look for the job that no one else wants look for the job
[03:15:07] That is harder that's more complex. That's cold and wet and miserable
[03:15:13] The job that requires more effort than anybody anything else and more than anybody else is willing to put up with that's where the opportunity is
[03:15:23] And then go and get after it
[03:15:27] Until next time this has been milligan and echo and jacco out