Jocko Podcast 76 with Charlie Plumb - 6 Years a POW at The Hanoi Hilton

2017-05-24T22:07:07Z

Join the conversation on Twitter: @jockowillink @CaptPlumb @echocharles 0:00:00 - Opening. 0:03:59 - Intro to Capt. Charlie Plumb. "I'm No Hero" (book) 0:16:43 - Vietnam War and Flight Training. 0:29:15 - Deployment to Vietnam. 0:44:14 - Shot Down. 0:59:07 - The Hanoi Hilton. 2:26:35 - Release from The Hanoi Hilton. 2:30:44 - Life after Imprisonment. 2:38:40 - Reflections and Lessons Learned. 3:01:06 - Support, Cool Onnit, JockoStore stuff, with Jocko White Tea and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes). Extreme Ownership (book), (Jocko's Kids' Book) Way of the Warrior Kid, and The Muster 003. 3:12:25 - Closing Gratitude.

AI summary of episode

And the, and this, the flight commander, tightened you up and said, You know, you know, you know, you know, you know, My, my best buddy there, Danny wisely, had already shot down two airplanes by that time. You've got little decisions to make and if you can make that right decision, if you can do the right thing at that moment in time, it's not going to change your life, that one decision won't change your life, but then you're going to three minutes later, 30 seconds later, and now we're later going to make another decision. The chain of command that you guys, you know, hear you are in this prison camp and you guys all, you know, you figured out, you realize we need to have a chain of command, and you put that structure into place. And so if a new guy came into the camp and we knew who the president was, you know, lots of, we had no information at all or knew who on the world's series, for instance, why that was really big deal, you know, to get out there and and chop the wood in the radio station and tell the entire camp who was the president. You talk about it in the book, but, you know, just to kind of point out the fact that whatever two minutes earlier, you were part of this giant powerful force with a multi-million dollar, you know, aircraft under the water. So whether they were extras, like you get a guy that's going to exercise while you're trying to sleep or you get a guy that's snores, which if you've ever dealt with somebody that's snores, they can't help, but they don't even know that they sound like a chain saw in your room. Like a lot of the guys did, you know, you had Bill Reader on this on your podcast and he was dragged for, I don't know, weeks. But, you know, I think I started out with this mentality that it's always going to happen to somebody else, you know, never me. And it had a little suction cup, you look the suction cup and you put it on the windscreen, and this fan of him, you remember the white wire, you know, down underneath your G-suit, your sort, torsual harness under your oxygen mask and finally into your air, you know, you get your air bud in there. The day is probably going to come where you're like, you know what I'm going to hit this news. So, you know, I'd like to see their job on tell you that all these great dreams, you know, of being a fighter pilot in the admiral and commanding ships and squadrons of the military. You know, we could also support, you know, guys like you on the ground, that with all kinds of various kinds of weapon rate. As a matter of fact, when we got home, University of Maryland gave us credit for what we had, you know, the courses we had taught, you know, without books or paper, PowerPoints or instructors or professors or anybody. And when you have so little and for you guys to take that attitude, then there's so many people, you know, and I hear from people all over the world that will reach out to me and talk about the situation that they're in a bad situation and negative situation. And, you know, like I got all these little, um, these little, I guess these little ediosyncrasies, right? And I remember feeling really proud, you know, man, you know, just to be a part of this, doing something that very few people in the world would ever do. And a lot of guys did it much better than I. They could tell you, you know, what was going on this day last year, the year before and the year before. And so, little things start to bug you, you know, and not the least of which was, was our toilet, you know, the toilet was a two gallon bucket in the corner. It was, it was glorious, you know, to find because, you know, he, of course, had all of the stories and he had the movies that he could tell you about and the things that he had learned and that he could teach you. But you know, like you said, you guys were in good, relatively good mental status. And you know, like I said, this whole thing just came out a few years ago that this was the big reason that we did so well and that we're so healthy mentally and physically today was because we had this chain of command. He has the right to speak for a long, you know, hours about, you know, this stuff. And when there was a little bit of a administrative situation when it came time, because you guys had all knew that you're going to follow the order that you were capital, the sick and injured, we're going to go first. You know, and I get to come home and be cool and have all my girl, you know, all this stuff. And boy, you know, you started to turn and jink and, you know, you're head went on a swivel trying to figure out where this missile is. You know, off the aircraft carrier, climb to 80,000 feet, shoot down the Russian bombers and, you know, at 45 degree angle of bank, turn, return to the aircraft carrier. That would last for maybe a few months until you're in other things and then it became almost like a marriage, you know, where you've got those periods of time money moved periods over. You know, and thinking back at it, you know, I think well, where were my dreams? And I saw this opportunity, you know, five days to go, you know, this is my, this is my day. It went away from the most part, you know, after, I don't know, four or five months. Now, as you're going through the motions with the doctors and the physical people and the the the the the the the the public affairs people, you're saying, hey, you know, what do I see my wife? And so he, and you know, I mean, that's what every fighter pilot wants to, you know, to have a megg to his credit. And everybody was interested to took a government test, you know, to for a G rating, you know, a government service rating, a G S test. And that was a great revelation in my mind, you know, to know that I wasn't the only one that had given in. Yeah, you know, when it's level two or lower on the Richter scale of emotions, you can't behave your emotions, your behavior can't be based on you know what? And I know we had another pilot on Dave Burke and he was talking about how each step of the way he kind of looked around and said, I think I can actually do this. This guy that I'm talking about in the book, and I didn't know his name at the time I wrote the book, Earl Kobiel, was actually tortured to insanity. So far, I haven't been able to get a straight answer from anyone and I want to know about my wife, would you please be kind enough to tell me what's going on? I think for these, these cops to see these two little guys, you know, we were 13 and 14 years old. You know, unlike someone who's diagnosed with cancer or, like someone who just lost a job or just lost a child or just had a car accident, I mean, there are similarities in normal civilian life, I think that can be just as impactive as being blown out of the sky.

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jocco podcast number 76 with echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, echo. Good evening.
[00:00:14] Freedom.
[00:00:18] That's something that you hear me talk about all the time.
[00:00:24] And I say little things like don't take it for granted.
[00:00:30] And I say be thankful for your freedom.
[00:00:34] And I even say things like you don't appreciate your freedom until it's gone.
[00:00:43] Pretty common statements you hear from people.
[00:00:49] But how many of us have actually had our freedom taken away?
[00:01:01] And not metaphorically speaking and not some self-imposed and thereby self-controlled way.
[00:01:11] And not in some way trapped by a situation in our life that we don't have the courage to get out of.
[00:01:19] But I am talking about an actual loss of freedom.
[00:01:29] Caged, controlled, starved, beaten, tortured.
[00:01:39] And I say how long can you take that for?
[00:01:45] But our day, what about a week or a month?
[00:01:57] What about a year for six years?
[00:02:03] What do you do?
[00:02:07] How do you survive?
[00:02:13] How do you get up every day and face the awful reality that you live in?
[00:02:35] Fear, oppression.
[00:02:44] And how do you take that darkness and that fear and that oppression and turn it into something good?
[00:02:57] Well, it is my honor today to have with us a man that can answer those questions.
[00:03:13] Retired, Navy Captain, Charles Charlie Plum, Naval Academy graduate, F4 Phantom Fighter Pilot,
[00:03:25] and prisoner of war, men North Vietnam, for six years, six years.
[00:03:45] Sir, it is an absolute honor to have you on and thank you so much for being here.
[00:03:53] Thank you, Jack. It is a pleasure to be with you.
[00:03:57] And let's just start from the beginning of Captain Charlie Plum.
[00:04:05] You were, I know you are born wearing.
[00:04:09] As I was born in Gary, Indiana, during World War II, my father was about to be inducted.
[00:04:15] And so he moved us to a little tiny town in Kansas where he thought my mother and I and my big sister could live there while he went off the war.
[00:04:25] Well, as it turned out, he couldn't pass the physical, so he didn't go to war.
[00:04:29] But that's where I grew up in a tiny town in the middle of Kansas.
[00:04:33] And I know you did, you went to work pretty early age, throwing papers.
[00:04:41] And you referred to that in the book and that, I just, that's just an nostalgic thing, isn't it?
[00:04:47] No one throws papers anymore. It doesn't happen.
[00:04:49] There's no kids with paper roads anymore.
[00:04:51] I guess that's true. I read a statistic one time of all the successful people in the world, most of them were paper boys.
[00:04:59] But not anymore. You know, see that.
[00:05:03] Yeah, now they're throwing up Twitter posts.
[00:05:05] That's it. Now, I, I, through the, that's a, to pick a daily capital in this little town of 300 people.
[00:05:13] And I had about 55 customers.
[00:05:17] The, the route was five miles long.
[00:05:19] And on a cold February morning in Kansas, that was a, a long way.
[00:05:25] I finally convinced my father that I could, that I could buy a motor scooter with all of my earnings.
[00:05:31] And so we went across the river where there was no bank in town when across the river to Perry, Kansas.
[00:05:37] And borrowed enough money to buy a Kushman motor scooter.
[00:05:41] And I was only 14 when that happens.
[00:05:45] Yeah, so I got arrested one night.
[00:05:49] Trying to make a good up to no good.
[00:05:52] What were you doing that you got arrested on the motor scooter?
[00:05:54] Well, I was trying to go to the county fair.
[00:05:56] Because can you even speed on a motor scooter?
[00:05:58] No, no, no, no, no, no.
[00:06:01] But I, I was small for my age.
[00:06:03] So at, at 14, I, I know I wasn't five feet and, and, and, and, and, and, my buddy on the back, and he was even smaller than I.
[00:06:09] And I think that the cops just didn't saw these dude look kids on a motor scooter.
[00:06:14] And the middle of the night.
[00:06:15] And we were arrested.
[00:06:17] And, uh, at some point, I think it was, you had a basketball coach.
[00:06:21] There were coach of your school that was a pilot in World War II.
[00:06:25] He was, he was actually, he, he was a vet.
[00:06:28] If it not a pilot, he was a, a doughboy in World War I.
[00:06:32] Wow.
[00:06:33] Yeah.
[00:06:33] And he had trapped Nolan and his leg from his war and he walked with a limp.
[00:06:37] Um, and, but, and he was quite a disciplinary in.
[00:06:40] Yeah.
[00:06:41] And he, he tried to make that little basketball team work, but we, we were just really not, not very talented.
[00:06:47] What is it about?
[00:06:48] I don't know.
[00:06:49] When I was a kid, and I would see, you know, a Vietnam vet.
[00:06:52] For me, that's primarily what I would see as an old Vietnam vet.
[00:06:55] And I'd say, hey, that guy's got shrapnel, his leg, and walks with a limp.
[00:06:59] When I grow up, I want shrapnel in my leg.
[00:07:02] I want to walk with a limp.
[00:07:03] That's my goal.
[00:07:04] Is that just, is that just part of, you know, boy nature?
[00:07:10] It, it may very well be.
[00:07:12] Yeah.
[00:07:13] So, so, what did he tell you about about pilot's, did he explain that to you?
[00:07:17] How to get the idea from, you know, being a doughboy to being a pilot?
[00:07:21] Well, quite a long transition.
[00:07:24] See, this was early on in my career.
[00:07:26] And I had a coach later in high school that had been a pilot in World War II.
[00:07:30] Okay.
[00:07:31] So, Bill Johnson had been a pilot.
[00:07:34] In fact, he flew F-8s off aircraft carriers.
[00:07:39] And I was fascinated by that whole idea.
[00:07:42] But I will tell you that being a hay seed from Kansas,
[00:07:46] I never even dreamed of flying an airplane.
[00:07:49] I've never been in one.
[00:07:52] I've seen them fly over.
[00:07:55] But the whole idea I've ever even riding in an airplane,
[00:07:59] let alone piloting one, was beyond my grasp.
[00:08:03] It really was.
[00:08:04] So, how did you end up then transitioning from high school and you end up going to the Naval Academy?
[00:08:10] Well, that was kind of my accident, too.
[00:08:13] I needed an education.
[00:08:14] My parents were too poor at sending me to college.
[00:08:17] I started looking for scholarships.
[00:08:19] And my older sister was dating a guy who was an NROTC student at University of Kansas.
[00:08:28] And he gave me a book that says, here's how you apply for the NROTC in Kansas.
[00:08:34] Well, the back page of the book in fairly small letters said,
[00:08:38] Oh, by the way, it's the same qualifications to go to the Naval Academy.
[00:08:41] Well, what the heck did you even know what the Naval Academy was?
[00:08:44] I figured out right there.
[00:08:45] I didn't know about the Army Navy game.
[00:08:47] I didn't know anything.
[00:08:49] Now, my closest relative in the military was a cousin in the Coast Guard.
[00:08:53] And so, I was just ignorant about the military and total.
[00:08:59] So, you know, I'd like to see their job on tell you that all these great dreams, you know,
[00:09:05] of being a fighter pilot in the admiral and commanding ships and squadrons of the military.
[00:09:12] No, it was all by accident.
[00:09:15] In fact, when I applied, you know, you get appointments from Congressmen.
[00:09:21] The Congressman of my district in Kansas did it by a competitive method.
[00:09:27] And everybody was interested to took a government test, you know,
[00:09:33] to for a G rating, you know, a government service rating, a G S test.
[00:09:38] And there were about 35 guys that took the test.
[00:09:42] And so, he nominated five of us who got better scores than the test than the rest.
[00:09:48] And then he appointed one guy to the Naval Academy in an alternate.
[00:09:55] And I was the second alternate.
[00:09:57] Okay.
[00:09:58] Well, the first guy also had an appointment to the Air Force Academy.
[00:10:03] So, he took that.
[00:10:04] The second guy discovered girls.
[00:10:07] That's all you have to write.
[00:10:10] I'm going to be the Naval Academy.
[00:10:13] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:10:15] So I was actually the second alternate to go to the...
[00:10:18] And so I got to that gray-hunt bus in Kansas City, Kansas, and the two days later,
[00:10:22] took me two days to get to Washington, at E.C.
[00:10:25] And of course, I was seen country I'd never seen before.
[00:10:28] And that's when I raised my hand as you did and pledged to defend the constitution.
[00:10:34] And I did states against all enemies foreign and domestic.
[00:10:37] And then, at some point at the...
[00:10:40] Did you... did you know about Naval Aviation?
[00:10:43] I guess you did from Bob Johnson.
[00:10:46] Yeah.
[00:10:47] He told you about Naval Aviation.
[00:10:48] Did you have that fought in your mind of Naval Aviation at that point?
[00:10:51] Not really.
[00:10:52] I still... I still kind of assumed that I could never qualify to do that.
[00:10:57] You know, and thinking back at it, you know, I think well, where were my dreams?
[00:11:01] But kids that grow up in little towns don't usually have big dreams.
[00:11:06] We don't know how to do that.
[00:11:08] And my parents, my father had completed the eighth grade.
[00:11:13] That was his education.
[00:11:15] My mother had, in fact, completed high school.
[00:11:18] But I was one of the first in a family that ever go to college.
[00:11:22] And so, you know, it was...
[00:11:26] It wasn't even a part of the thought process.
[00:11:29] So, once I got to the Naval Academy and, you know, thought back to Bob Johnson and that kind of experience.
[00:11:37] And saw that there was a possibility of doing this.
[00:11:40] Then my energy is an effort stirred turned towards Naval Aviation.
[00:11:46] And it must have been... I mean, that's always been ultra competitive at the Academy.
[00:11:51] And I know we had another pilot on Dave Burke and he was talking about how each step of the way he kind of looked around and said,
[00:11:58] I think I can actually do this.
[00:12:00] You know, it's kind of the same thing.
[00:12:02] You look around and say, I think I can get the best grades.
[00:12:04] I think I can get this position.
[00:12:06] At some point, you must have said,
[00:12:07] I think I can do this.
[00:12:09] There was, as a matter of fact, and there's a great revelation.
[00:12:12] And when you're completely finally talked to yourself
[00:12:15] into accepting the fact that you do have the talent to do this.
[00:12:19] And until that point, you don't really try as hard, I guess.
[00:12:24] And while you're at the Academy also, is this when you've gotten involved with Anne for the first time?
[00:12:30] Is that at the Naval Academy?
[00:12:32] And was my high school sweetheart?
[00:12:34] Yeah, we played the French horn in the band together.
[00:12:37] The girls with the French horn.
[00:12:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:12:41] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:12:43] She was a beauty.
[00:12:46] And was a beauty.
[00:12:48] And she showed up at our school.
[00:12:50] She came into our town in Kansas from Indiana.
[00:12:58] And she had a boyfriend in Indiana.
[00:13:01] She wasn't telling me about, you know, for the first time.
[00:13:04] Charlie don't care about that boyfriend.
[00:13:06] No, and his name was Bart.
[00:13:08] And then I called him black Bart.
[00:13:11] So Bart was, and she wouldn't kiss me.
[00:13:17] You know, I mean, we dated for months, and it's the girl wouldn't kiss me.
[00:13:21] Yeah, dang, you know, it's tough.
[00:13:24] I mean, it's the most reaction I've ever seen out of echo.
[00:13:27] I don't remember podcast.
[00:13:28] I think he's been there.
[00:13:29] He's just heard of it.
[00:13:30] He gets a bad memories on that one.
[00:13:32] Finally, it's a black off-lost.
[00:13:34] That's hard.
[00:13:35] It's hard.
[00:13:36] Maybe we should talk about your story.
[00:13:39] Oh, it's a one of the times.
[00:13:41] Oh, God's a kissing denial.
[00:13:42] It's going on over there.
[00:13:43] That goes to our own.
[00:13:45] So finally, I think it was Thanksgiving.
[00:13:50] Yeah, yeah.
[00:13:52] It was right at Thanksgiving, and I intercepted a letter that she got in from Bart.
[00:13:59] And how do you intercept the letter?
[00:14:02] I get an outbreak in the trip.
[00:14:05] No, it was a lot of bombardment.
[00:14:08] So we'll leave it at that again.
[00:14:11] So just we're going to leave that one.
[00:14:13] Okay, I can find it her.
[00:14:15] You know, it's Guy Bart.
[00:14:16] Oh, no, it's a no, we're serious.
[00:14:18] And we're going to get married someday.
[00:14:20] In fact, he's coming to Kansas for Christmas.
[00:14:23] I said, I'm making a deal with you.
[00:14:26] I said, I don't think he's coming for Christmas.
[00:14:29] And so if he comes, I'll back off.
[00:14:31] And you don't have to worry about me trying to kiss you anymore.
[00:14:35] But if he doesn't come, then you and I go steady.
[00:14:39] Well, he didn't come.
[00:14:44] Yeah.
[00:14:45] And so that started a wonderful relationship.
[00:14:49] We then went steady in high school.
[00:14:52] Of course, then I go off to the Naval Academy.
[00:14:55] Fur piece from Kansas.
[00:14:57] And she went to the University of Kansas for her first year there.
[00:15:02] And but we continued to communicate.
[00:15:05] And I was, well, I saw her Christmas time when I came home.
[00:15:09] And then she decided to move to Washington, DC, to work for a senator out there.
[00:15:14] And so she spent the next three years, the last three years at the Naval Academy.
[00:15:19] They're close enough so that we could continue to see each other.
[00:15:23] So it was, I knew it was one of those, you know, one and only kind of a thing.
[00:15:28] Because I didn't really date a whole lot in the high school.
[00:15:30] And she was yet, for sure.
[00:15:33] So then you guys got married. Did you wait to graduate from the Naval Academy?
[00:15:36] Yes, yes.
[00:15:37] You can't get married.
[00:15:40] Well, you're at the Naval Academy.
[00:15:42] At least you're not supposed to.
[00:15:43] A couple of guys did.
[00:15:44] And I didn't.
[00:15:46] And so the day after I graduated from the Naval Academy, we were married.
[00:15:50] And my six buddies held up their swords.
[00:15:53] Well, one was a Marine.
[00:15:54] And so he held up his sabers.
[00:15:56] We came down from the chapel through the arch of swords.
[00:16:00] And it was a beautiful day and a beautiful wedding.
[00:16:03] And from there we went immediately to flight training.
[00:16:06] Did you, sir, when did you find out you were getting picked up for flight training?
[00:16:10] Our senior, so the last, last part of our senior year, you could apply.
[00:16:15] And then you go through all of the hoops that you go through to try to qualify for an Naval Aviation.
[00:16:22] So I found out probably a month or six weeks before I graduated.
[00:16:27] I graduated that was going to be my, my tour.
[00:16:30] Do you graduate in 64?
[00:16:31] Yes.
[00:16:32] So when you graduated, did you guys, were you guys thinking Vietnam already?
[00:16:37] No, it wasn't just too early.
[00:16:38] And it was limited operation.
[00:16:40] So it wasn't really something that you guys were thinking about front of mind.
[00:16:44] I don't remember ever hearing the word Vietnam,
[00:16:47] while I was just in the Naval Academy.
[00:16:49] Wow.
[00:16:50] Yeah.
[00:16:51] So you rolled to flight school.
[00:16:53] Just thinking, hey, we're going to fly around.
[00:16:55] We're going to go to regular deployments.
[00:16:57] We're too to hurt about, but you weren't thinking about Vietnam.
[00:16:59] Yep.
[00:17:00] So at what point was that in flight school when you first started thinking yourself?
[00:17:02] Yes.
[00:17:03] Here we got guys over here drop bombs.
[00:17:05] Yeah.
[00:17:05] Well, Evapera, Ev Alvarez was shot down the first, the first,
[00:17:09] a period of it to be shot down on August 1964.
[00:17:13] Okay.
[00:17:14] So it became a reality that while I was in flight training,
[00:17:17] another Naval Aviator was in prison in Vietnam.
[00:17:21] Now, I didn't understand the politics.
[00:17:25] I didn't question the politics of it at all.
[00:17:27] I just did the best I could in flight training and enjoyed it.
[00:17:33] You know, I mean, it's a kick.
[00:17:35] Did you guys, did your attitudes shift it also for my generation?
[00:17:41] When all of a sudden September 11 happened,
[00:17:44] it was like a paradigm shift and everyone's mentality.
[00:17:47] That day, it was such a clear, clear,
[00:17:50] demonstration and we all knew that we were going to war.
[00:17:53] And that was an immediate attitude shift.
[00:17:55] Did you guys start to have a shift in attitude?
[00:17:58] Or was it so?
[00:17:59] Because the way Vietnam escalated more slowly,
[00:18:01] was it more of a slow escalation in your minds as well?
[00:18:04] No, it was very slow.
[00:18:06] You know, the ill story of the frog in the pot of boiling water.
[00:18:13] You know, he jumps out in the air.
[00:18:14] But no, it was just warmed up very slowly for us.
[00:18:18] And I didn't even, as I went through fight training,
[00:18:22] you know, I mean, I learned to drop bombs and shoot guns and all that stuff.
[00:18:25] And it was challenging and it was exciting.
[00:18:29] But I didn't see the reality of it.
[00:18:32] I didn't really picture myself as being in combat.
[00:18:36] And so, of course, when I got my wings and then was assigned the F4 Phantom,
[00:18:42] which at the time was a hottest airplane in the world.
[00:18:44] I mean, we had the time to climb records and speed records.
[00:18:47] And it's a twice as speed to sound airplane.
[00:18:50] And it was felt very fortunate to have been assigned that airplane.
[00:18:55] And so I came out here to San Diego to fly.
[00:18:58] And you were talking about in your book,
[00:19:00] you'd done a midshipment tour where a Phantom went down,
[00:19:04] both pilots killed.
[00:19:06] And then you got assigned the Phantom.
[00:19:09] I did.
[00:19:10] That gave you any reservations at all?
[00:19:12] I don't remember being afraid of the airplane.
[00:19:16] But I certainly gave it a lot of respect, especially around the ship.
[00:19:20] Because I saw this thing go down.
[00:19:24] At the Naval Academy, in the summer time, you get exposed to the possible
[00:19:28] buildings you might have in the future.
[00:19:30] So we go play Marine for a while,
[00:19:33] and we go to submarines for a while,
[00:19:35] and we go aboard ships to be line officers for a while.
[00:19:40] And we go to Pensacola.
[00:19:43] And so I got a little touch of it there of actually being in airplanes.
[00:19:47] And then my senior crews, between my junior and senior year,
[00:19:51] I went aboard the constellation, the aircraft carrier constellation.
[00:19:55] And we were out of Sassabobu, Japan.
[00:20:00] And I'm watching flight-offs from the bridge.
[00:20:04] And so I'm looking down at this airplane launching and recovering
[00:20:11] on this aircraft carrier.
[00:20:13] And a Phantom came in and actually broke the wire.
[00:20:16] The pilot did okay, but he broke, he picked up the wire,
[00:20:19] and the wire snapped.
[00:20:21] This cable that traps an airplane is two and a half inches in diameter.
[00:20:27] It's a very thick steel wire around.
[00:20:29] K1 is a really, really strong.
[00:20:31] Because it has to stop this 35,000 pound airplane going down the
[00:20:36] shoot at 170 miles per hour.
[00:20:41] But for whatever reason, the cable broke.
[00:20:43] The cable snapped around and it cut off the legs of three different
[00:20:48] guys who were on the deck.
[00:20:50] It was so fast that I couldn't even see it.
[00:20:54] My eyes couldn't even follow this cable because it was just,
[00:20:57] I mean, there's so much pressure, so much energy involved.
[00:21:02] And then the airplane, the F4, was slowed down to the point where the
[00:21:06] guy couldn't get it back in the air.
[00:21:09] And so it just dribbled off the bow of the aircraft carrier and
[00:21:13] into the water.
[00:21:14] Well, of course, then I turn my view to the stern of the ship to see
[00:21:21] if I could see what had happened, what had happened,
[00:21:23] what had happened, what had been the few seconds that it took from
[00:21:26] when it settled in the water until I could see out the back of the
[00:21:30] ship.
[00:21:32] It was gone.
[00:21:33] There was no debris.
[00:21:34] There was no oil.
[00:21:35] There was nothing in the water behind this ship after this airplane
[00:21:39] had gone down.
[00:21:40] So it was a shock to me, of course.
[00:21:43] But, you know, I think I started out with this mentality that
[00:21:48] it's always going to happen to somebody else, you know, never me.
[00:21:51] And I'm, you know, whatever happened, I'm going to do it better.
[00:21:57] And, and I think that's, well, you know, it's better than I.
[00:22:02] You have to kind of have that mentality in combat.
[00:22:05] You can't go in thinking you're going to get killed.
[00:22:07] And so, so I, I wasn't reluctant to fly the F4, but I gave it.
[00:22:14] I, I think, respect.
[00:22:17] So you get that and you come out your station in San Diego.
[00:22:21] Is that what's that San Diego, right?
[00:22:23] For when you, when you deployed for the first time?
[00:22:25] You're in the near-marnable air station.
[00:22:27] Yeah. And that's where I helped start top gun.
[00:22:29] That was kind of an interesting experience as well.
[00:22:31] There was a, there was a, a pool of students to fly the F4 Phantom.
[00:22:38] And I showed up here when they had about a six month waiting list
[00:22:42] for me to find this airplane.
[00:22:44] Well, six months was a long time, you know, for a 23 year old kid.
[00:22:48] And I wanted to get in the air.
[00:22:50] So a buddy of mine, Paul Krooky, and I had gotten our wings at the same time
[00:22:55] and been assigned the F4 Phantom.
[00:22:57] And we came out here and so we were both going to have to wait for six months to fly this airplane.
[00:23:02] So we wandered down the flight line at Miramar and found the instrument training squad
[00:23:09] and was flying the same airplane that we had flown in, in flight train
[00:23:13] to the old F9, a Cougar, a Bentley airplane.
[00:23:17] It's a jet that it's light and slow and kind of stodges.
[00:23:23] It's a Korean warping.
[00:23:25] And they were, they were using it in flight training to teach instruments.
[00:23:31] And the way they did this, the instructor would sit in the front seat
[00:23:34] and they'd sit in the back seat and they had it, a bag.
[00:23:39] That covered all the windows covered you up.
[00:23:42] All you could see was the instrument panel.
[00:23:44] You're under this bag.
[00:23:46] And so we signed on to fly this airplane for test tops and check rides
[00:23:54] and this kind of stuff, just to fly it, just to stay in the air.
[00:23:59] Because we were already qualified to the airplane.
[00:24:02] Well, Krooky and I would save a little bit of gas.
[00:24:06] Okay?
[00:24:07] Each time we'd fly these students around, then at the end of the hop,
[00:24:10] we would lurk off the coast of San Diego and wait for the phantoms to come out.
[00:24:15] And so these guys would come off the runway at Miramar.
[00:24:20] And they were heavy.
[00:24:22] You know, and they were stodges and they were slow as they came off.
[00:24:26] And they'd get about four or five miles out in the Pacific
[00:24:30] and we would pounce on these guys.
[00:24:32] And it was all kinds of fun because we were lighter and could turn quicker
[00:24:37] than the phantoms.
[00:24:38] You know, we were a smaller, we had a better wingload than they did.
[00:24:42] And so we could turn inside these guys.
[00:24:45] Of course, they were much, much faster.
[00:24:47] We were not super-signing and they were.
[00:24:49] And so they could get away from us in a heartbeat if they wanted to.
[00:24:52] But we started this air combat maneuvering with these guys.
[00:24:57] Well, that went on for, I don't know, a couple of months.
[00:25:01] Until one day, Krooky and I, I mean, we played the role.
[00:25:05] We had white scarves, you know, and Snoopy goggles and the whole works.
[00:25:09] One day we came back and the instruments quadrant and checked in our
[00:25:13] airplanes back in and it was signing on the Baltimore Board.
[00:25:17] Plum Krooky report to the F4 Commanding Officer immediately.
[00:25:23] We were in trouble.
[00:25:24] So two guys and there's sweaty flight suits,
[00:25:29] not gonna door of the Commanding Officer of the Phantom Squadron.
[00:25:33] I'll never forget this scene.
[00:25:35] They got a comment and we opened the door.
[00:25:38] This guy sits at a long desk, okay.
[00:25:41] And he's got glasses.
[00:25:44] And of course, he's an old old guy.
[00:25:45] We were 23.
[00:25:46] So, you know, he was probably 30, but he was the old guy.
[00:25:49] You've ever talked to him.
[00:25:50] Yeah, right.
[00:25:51] And so he's sitting there talking to over the top of his glasses.
[00:25:54] He's in a sweaty flight suit also,
[00:25:57] which should have been our first indication.
[00:26:00] He said, you guys out there and he F9s.
[00:26:04] Haslan, my fighter pilots, yes sir.
[00:26:07] We were.
[00:26:08] Did you follow a Phantom through an entire loop?
[00:26:12] Yes sir, in fact we did.
[00:26:15] Did you have your gun sights on that Phantom the entire time?
[00:26:19] Yes sir, we did.
[00:26:22] He said, do you know who was in that Phantom?
[00:26:25] He said, I was.
[00:26:27] He said, I just came back from Vietnam.
[00:26:29] Our kill ratio over there is terrible.
[00:26:32] They're eating our lunch.
[00:26:34] We need to learn how to fight this airplane.
[00:26:38] See, the F4 was designed in the coal war as a supersonic intercept.
[00:26:42] I was never called a fighter pilot.
[00:26:44] And in fact, I trained in a space suit.
[00:26:47] So I could go above 50,000 feet.
[00:26:49] You know, off the aircraft carrier, climb to 80,000 feet,
[00:26:53] shoot down the Russian bombers and, you know, at 45 degree
[00:26:56] angle of bank, turn, return to the aircraft carrier.
[00:26:59] That was my job.
[00:27:01] I wasn't supposed to be out there.
[00:27:03] I have a gasoline because it was a cold war.
[00:27:06] We did not expect to have a Korean war war two-type
[00:27:09] of the hassle of the fighter pilot.
[00:27:13] Well, of course Vietnam came around and suddenly, you know,
[00:27:16] they're flying these older airplanes that were eaten in our lunch.
[00:27:20] So the CO looked at us and he said, you want to fight with me tomorrow?
[00:27:25] Well, you're sure that'd be fun.
[00:27:28] So for the next two or three months, Paul Kruk,
[00:27:32] you know, with our white scarves and our snoopy goggles, we're getting
[00:27:36] out of the left.
[00:27:37] We had to start about an hour ahead of time, you know,
[00:27:39] just because they were so fast.
[00:27:41] But we'd get out to see, we'd go out to 40 miles out to see
[00:27:45] and turn around and here they come.
[00:27:47] And we'd have these two on two engagements.
[00:27:50] And that became a syllabus within the replacement air group
[00:27:55] that eventually became the top-gence goal.
[00:27:59] That's awesome.
[00:28:00] Yeah, it was the start of retraining.
[00:28:03] Well, and it was very successful.
[00:28:05] We turned our kill ratio around by teaching pilots how to fight
[00:28:09] this air for a fandom.
[00:28:11] Yeah, clearly that's it.
[00:28:13] Without training to fight, how are you going to know how to fight?
[00:28:16] That's right.
[00:28:17] And you got to beat that's outstanding for the commanding officer
[00:28:21] that squadron to say, you know what?
[00:28:23] Instead of being mad that you were doing it, instead of
[00:28:26] you homelom said, you know what?
[00:28:27] We need to get better with this.
[00:28:28] Yeah.
[00:28:29] Let's keep training.
[00:28:30] Yep.
[00:28:31] That's awesome.
[00:28:32] And you eventually do get your time in the F4 fandom.
[00:28:35] You learn how to fly that.
[00:28:36] And now it's time to go on deployment.
[00:28:39] You're going on deployment.
[00:28:40] Now November 5th, 1966, you kiss Anne goodbye.
[00:28:45] And you go on deployment on the on the Kitty Hawk.
[00:28:49] It was her birthday.
[00:28:50] Oh, if that's a great birthday present.
[00:28:52] That's right.
[00:28:53] Very nice of you.
[00:28:54] It's like my first daughter.
[00:28:55] My first daughter was born.
[00:28:57] Actual birthday.
[00:28:58] Like actual birthday.
[00:28:59] Yeah, I went on deployment the next day.
[00:29:02] Everyone was really happy with me on that one.
[00:29:06] When now when you were going through the flight training, you were getting ready to
[00:29:10] deploy.
[00:29:11] Now are you thinking about Vietnam and all?
[00:29:12] I mean, you must have been getting feedback.
[00:29:13] You got feedback from commanding officer.
[00:29:15] So now are your focus had shifted some.
[00:29:17] Yeah, it's certainly head.
[00:29:18] And the squadron that I joined was just coming back from Vietnam.
[00:29:21] And they'd had quite a few casualties.
[00:29:24] And so they were talking about, you know, the guys were.
[00:29:27] The guys were, we're giving us instruction on how to work.
[00:29:32] Another thing about the fandom was that we had, we had no indication when a missile was in the air.
[00:29:39] Because we were faster than the missile for the most part, our higher than the missile.
[00:29:44] And so one of the things the guys, the guys told me that the fellows coming back from Vietnam said,
[00:29:49] go down to radio check by yourself, a buzzer, buzzer.
[00:29:52] You know?
[00:29:53] Oh, like police detector.
[00:29:55] Yeah, yeah, yeah, the old buzzer, buzzer, yeah.
[00:29:58] He said because the Russian-built Sam surface to air missiles are on the same frequency as a California highway patrol.
[00:30:07] True, true story.
[00:30:11] And so we have found that, because we have no indication in the air,
[00:30:17] we're playing with the missiles in the air.
[00:30:19] And so I did, now the radio check by myself, a buzzer.
[00:30:25] And it had a little suction cup, you look the suction cup and you put it on the windscreen,
[00:30:30] and this fan of him, you remember the white wire, you know, down underneath your G-suit,
[00:30:35] your sort, torsual harness under your oxygen mask and finally into your air, you know, you get your air bud in there.
[00:30:43] So here I am flying this $20 million airplane being protected by a $29 buzzer.
[00:30:50] So it worked, but the problem was there was no direction capability you couldn't tell where it was coming from.
[00:30:58] And so, you know, that's almost worse.
[00:31:02] It was like, you know, it was like, you heard the verbal.
[00:31:05] And boy, you know, you started to turn and jink and, you know, you're head went on a swivel trying to figure out where this missile is.
[00:31:12] But you get overseas and you're flying, you start flying missions.
[00:31:17] You're doing mostly strike missions.
[00:31:20] Is that primarily what you're even taking out targets in North Vietnam?
[00:31:23] The F4, of course, again, was considered, was configured and built from the keel up as an air to air combat machine.
[00:31:36] All right, the powers that be decided, eight, there's an airplane we can hang a bomb on it.
[00:31:42] They put on an extra, I believe, four hard points on the bottom of this airplane.
[00:31:46] Maybe five.
[00:31:47] Can't remember.
[00:31:48] So that we could carry bombs on this fighter airplane.
[00:31:52] What we were supposed to be, you know, interceptors.
[00:31:55] We were supposed to be carrying bombs around, but we found out that sure enough, this big old airplane was a pretty good platform for dropping bombs.
[00:32:03] And so we could carry, you know, we could carry 12, 13,000 pounds of bombs into the target, which was a pretty good load.
[00:32:11] You know, we could also support, you know, guys like you on the ground, that with all kinds of various kinds of weapon rate.
[00:32:20] And so what happened was we had a sister squadron on the aircraft carrier.
[00:32:25] So for a month-line period, we would be fighters for two weeks.
[00:32:30] And then we would, we would reconfigure our airplane to be bombers.
[00:32:35] And we'd be bombers for two weeks.
[00:32:37] And we would go back to fighters and then back to bombers.
[00:32:40] So, to ask your question, half the time over there, I was dropping bombs.
[00:32:44] And half the time, I was doing the air to air mission.
[00:32:49] And the air to air mission primarily would be doing combat air patrols to support the other elements that were flying in with bombs.
[00:32:55] And you'd be protecting in case any make showed up.
[00:32:57] Exactly.
[00:32:58] Yeah, it was a CAP, a cap, combat air patrol.
[00:33:02] So, you're pretty much almost done with deployment.
[00:33:08] Where we're talking, you spend, you did what 74 missions at this point.
[00:33:12] You've been there for five or coming up on six months.
[00:33:16] And on the 19th and May 1967, you get a phone call.
[00:33:22] And you guys get like a strike mission comes in that you are supposed to execute.
[00:33:27] It was a big deal.
[00:33:29] And it was called an alpha strike.
[00:33:31] An alpha strike was the top priority.
[00:33:34] And we knew that it would be a lot of airplanes in the air.
[00:33:37] And we have some pretty important targets to hit.
[00:33:40] And it was sanctions straight from the Pentagon.
[00:33:42] It was JCS stuff.
[00:33:44] And which of course is one of the problems in that war was that most of our instruction came from the guys back in the puzzle palace.
[00:33:55] And they wouldn't let us decide targets or altitudes or anything else.
[00:34:03] It was pretty well planned by the time we got the go.
[00:34:08] And I got a call.
[00:34:11] I suppose three in the morning something like that.
[00:34:14] Saying that I was to schedule this flight.
[00:34:16] I was a schedules officer for the squadron.
[00:34:19] And so I was the guy that figured out who went on what strikes and who went with who and
[00:34:24] the air planes had to head.
[00:34:26] And so I got up early to start planning this strike with the airplanes and the pilots and the back seaters are radar intercept officers are co-pilets.
[00:34:39] And so I did.
[00:34:40] And we went to the briefing room and got about a hour brief on these targets.
[00:34:45] I later found out that the reason for the whole thing, the reason why we are doing it in alpha strike in the 19th of May,
[00:34:52] was it was the birthday of their president Ho Chi Minh.
[00:34:57] And again, the, you know, the brilliant of our, our side, our side war.
[00:35:07] Great.
[00:35:09] It was that we would catch them in celebration of their, of the big day because they,
[00:35:15] it was like our president's day.
[00:35:18] They have picnics and that kind of stuff.
[00:35:21] And so we were going to catch them with their pants down.
[00:35:24] Well, as most things that happened to Vietnam, they knew we were coming for whatever reason.
[00:35:30] And that day they were eight F4 fanom shot down.
[00:35:35] But I'll never forget the beginning of it because, you know, I took off and,
[00:35:40] and I ran to boot with a tanker and took on an extra 3000 pounds of fuel and then joined the squadron.
[00:35:47] And it was, in fact, the cat mission, it was a combat air patrol.
[00:35:51] I was not carrying bombs.
[00:35:53] And so we had four of us on one side of the strike group and four of the other.
[00:35:58] And just to look, because it was, it was three aircraft carriers and five air force paces.
[00:36:04] All, it was just throwing everything we had at the end of me that day.
[00:36:07] It was, it was an amazing armata.
[00:36:10] And I could see from one horizon to the other, these airplanes.
[00:36:14] And I remember feeling really proud, you know, man, you know, just to be a part of this,
[00:36:21] doing something that very few people in the world would ever do.
[00:36:25] And flying this airplane at age 24.
[00:36:30] And so that was how it all began on the 19th of May.
[00:36:35] One of the things that we were talking about just before we hit record was the kind of the sense of humor
[00:36:42] that you have in the military and what that's like.
[00:36:45] And one of the, by the way, I haven't even mentioned that referring to a book that you wrote called
[00:36:50] I'm No Hero by Charlie Plum.
[00:36:53] And that'll be that's available on Amazon, get it through and be link on the website.
[00:36:58] But also book, actually better on my website because I sign everyone that goes out.
[00:37:04] So my website, CharliePrem.com.
[00:37:06] Okay.
[00:37:07] Well, there you go.
[00:37:08] Even better.
[00:37:09] Go into the book here. You guys are getting before you launch, you're getting ready to launch,
[00:37:14] kind of getting ready for the briefing. And here we go.
[00:37:16] The pilots of the fighter planes gathered in their own briefing room and read from a television screen
[00:37:21] and tell a type, the weather information and the position of the ship.
[00:37:24] We reviewed once again the switches we would have to throw and I coordinated with the maintenance officer,
[00:37:29] the weapons we would need, the volume of the fuel, etc.
[00:37:33] Serious thoughts were in the back of all our minds, but outwardly our mood was light.
[00:37:39] We laughed and joked, drank coffee and smoked.
[00:37:42] My regular Rio, which is the radar intercept officer, is their backseater because the F4 Phantom has two people,
[00:37:48] was up to his old habit of manipulating his slide rule.
[00:37:52] Being a self-styled math wizard, he again pinpointed his likelihood of getting bagged, shut down.
[00:38:00] This was based on some speculative formula he had found somewhere.
[00:38:05] Today friends, he proclaimed, my bag factor is 019376.
[00:38:13] And then you replied to him, then save me a room at the Hanoi Hilton.
[00:38:18] Again, I'm glad you're still laughing about that sir.
[00:38:23] The rest of you as we go through this book, we'll see the true irony in that joke.
[00:38:28] Back to the book, here we left our reddy room and entered the central briefing room.
[00:38:34] We're all the pilots, reels and standby crew scrutinized their master plan, which included maps and photographs of the targets and intelligence,
[00:38:40] reports of enemies, fire capability.
[00:38:43] After our central briefing, we returned to our reddy room, meditated, last-mitted instructions, and put on our flight gear.
[00:38:49] All together, these briefings took as long and sometimes longer than the mission itself.
[00:38:54] I looked up at the screen, pilots, man, your aircraft, we gave each other.
[00:38:59] We stopped each other on the back, exchanged a customary, give them hell, dialogue, and padded the posterior of our good luck girl hanging on the door.
[00:39:09] It was time to go topside.
[00:39:12] You guys are now getting ready to take off.
[00:39:16] And again, just some of this humor back to the book, engine run up is good.
[00:39:21] Take off checklist is complete. I'm ready to go Gary, you ready? Y'all ready?
[00:39:25] Okay, I'm mocked. This is your captain speaking.
[00:39:29] Welcome to Flight 403 to Hanoi, North Vietnam.
[00:39:32] We'll be flying an altitude of 11 grand and we have a high ceiling.
[00:39:36] Make sure your seat belt is fastened.
[00:39:38] No smoking, please.
[00:39:40] So that's the attitude going out.
[00:39:44] And legitimately, this is your 75th mission. You've flown 74.
[00:39:50] You're feeling pretty comfortable. I mean, even though of course, you've got thoughts in the back of your mind, but you're feeling pretty comfortable about how you do your job and what you get done.
[00:39:57] I am feeling bulletproof.
[00:39:59] I wasn't going to go that far, but let's just go there.
[00:40:02] I know that feeling too.
[00:40:05] Yep.
[00:40:07] As you push in back to the book, all this coordination.
[00:40:12] So it's what you just talked about this massive effort going forward.
[00:40:16] The captain doesn't have aircraft. All of this coordination of men and machinery during the refueling was done in complete silence.
[00:40:22] We called it Zip Lip. Although enemy radar would have already detected us, we were careful not to give radio spooks any additional information.
[00:40:30] It was gratifying to experience such close rapport with my air wing.
[00:40:35] I knew and they knew what each was doing in this intricate maneuver yet not a word had to be spoken.
[00:40:42] And that's, I've actually talked about that on here when we would train.
[00:40:46] And when I was running training for the seals, I would tell them, hey, you're not allowed to talk during this train machine.
[00:40:51] You can't say one word to each other.
[00:40:53] And it was amazing. After you do that a couple times, how much better people get because they're reading, they're anticipating what other people are going to do.
[00:41:00] And you guys are just so far ahead at this point, five and a half months into deployment.
[00:41:05] You guys are doing this whole thing without saying a word to each other.
[00:41:08] It was amazing.
[00:41:11] Yeah, I think that's one of the one of the incredible things about the military is even though you're just a little piece of that big machine, this big powerful machine.
[00:41:21] It's, it's pretty awesome to experience when that stuff's going on.
[00:41:28] And you kind of talked about what you were doing, you were positioned on the flanks and anticipating makes, how often do you guys see a meggzover there?
[00:41:36] But not often, I had seen meggzover probably four or five times up to that point.
[00:41:42] And so they, they really were, they were really good about not showing up until they knew that they could kill something.
[00:41:51] You know, of course they were, they had the advantage, they had the home field advantage.
[00:41:56] And so they could wait on their bases until we came to them and then they would launch.
[00:42:01] So if you didn't get close to a meggzover, you probably weren't going to see one.
[00:42:05] They were, they had a very short range.
[00:42:08] And they didn't see in the air very long.
[00:42:11] And so we didn't see him very often.
[00:42:14] And on this one, you get a call though, you hear, they don't, they give you call for those meggs.
[00:42:18] What is it, meggs is 20, 20 West.
[00:42:21] And you start to get a little aggressive start leading out that way a little bit.
[00:42:26] Yep, yep.
[00:42:28] And the, and this, the flight commander, tightened you up and said,
[00:42:32] You know, you know, you know, you know, you know,
[00:42:37] My, my best buddy there, Danny wisely, had already shot down two airplanes by that time.
[00:42:44] And he shot down another one after I was shot down.
[00:42:47] And so he, and you know, I mean, that's what every fighter pilot wants to, you know,
[00:42:52] to have a megg to his credit.
[00:42:54] And I saw this opportunity, you know, five days to go, you know, this is my, this is my day.
[00:42:59] You know, this is Charlie Plum Day.
[00:43:02] So I started to ease out of the squadron so that I would be the first to go after this megg.
[00:43:08] And, you know, we plumbed, we're going to get his.
[00:43:11] What happens?
[00:43:14] But no, that, that, that's how it began.
[00:43:17] And they, and they taught you back up.
[00:43:18] So you fall back into formation.
[00:43:20] And now, there's a, is there a Sam call?
[00:43:25] Did you pick it up on the, on the buzzbuster?
[00:43:28] I did, but there were a lot of them in the air.
[00:43:31] And, and, and, and so that thing was warbling all the time.
[00:43:35] Um, they were, they were, they were salvoing their Sam's that day.
[00:43:40] They just, they just shoot a bunch of them off at the same time.
[00:43:43] And so every time they shot one off, and every time their radar would scan me,
[00:43:47] I would get to buzzbuster.
[00:43:49] But we also had, you know, we had the, um, the, the big radar airplanes in the sky at the same time.
[00:43:57] And, and, and, and they would call us.
[00:44:00] And, and that's how I got that call.
[00:44:02] The 20 mile away call was was was from our, our, our electronic folks that were flying well above us with the radar.
[00:44:11] So you know that there's Sam surf Sarah missiles up there.
[00:44:16] And here we go back to the book, Gary, that's your, that's your real sitting behind you in the plane.
[00:44:21] He said, Gary, do you see it?
[00:44:23] And he says, I don't see a thing Charlie.
[00:44:25] We had both seen Sam's before.
[00:44:28] They resembled flying white telephone poles with huge fourth of July sparklers, spring, silvery orange glow from their tails.
[00:44:36] If we saw them in time, we could dodge the missiles by letting them close in.
[00:44:41] At the last second, pulling the plane into a high G barrel roll, six G's or so,
[00:44:46] and letting the poles pass harmlessly underneath.
[00:44:49] Because if it's designed, the missile could not follow us without cracking into.
[00:44:54] But we didn't see it.
[00:44:57] Boom.
[00:44:58] I felt the bump in the impenage, the half section of the airplane.
[00:45:03] Red instrument lights jumped across the panel indicating that I had two engines on fire.
[00:45:09] That wasn't good.
[00:45:10] This plane only had two engines.
[00:45:12] I yanked the throttles back to idle, and the bird seemed to come to an immediate halt in mid air.
[00:45:18] Charlie, where hit, how bad is it?
[00:45:20] She still flying.
[00:45:22] Then the aircraft started to roll, and while I madly scanned the instruments,
[00:45:26] I looked up and found that the F4 had suddenly overturned.
[00:45:30] Ground was where there was where there should have been sky,
[00:45:35] and the nose was heading downward, ripping air at 500 knots.
[00:45:40] The Altimeter needle collapsed to 4,000, then 3500, then 3000.
[00:45:45] We had to get out, but being inverted, we would be rocketed by the ejection seat right into the rice patties.
[00:45:51] I had to roll the plane upright.
[00:45:53] I tried this stick, it was frozen.
[00:45:55] The only manual control was the rudder pedal, not normally used to roll an aircraft.
[00:45:59] I stepped on it as hard as I could, adrenaline surging through my veins.
[00:46:04] The plane shuddered once, and again slowly hit, it began to write itself.
[00:46:10] Rear view mirrors reflected a screaming fireball, 12,000 pounds of flaming gasoline and 30,000 pounds of
[00:46:17] fissionable aircraft.
[00:46:21] You want to eject?
[00:46:23] No way to min it, I shouted back.
[00:46:25] The plane struggled, then the sky was where it should be.
[00:46:29] Gary, let's go.
[00:46:31] I jerked my face curtain to eject, the rocket slammed me out of the aircraft.
[00:46:36] I tumble a couple times, and the shoot caught just as advertised.
[00:46:40] All kinds of debris filled the air around me, as wadding from the shells whistled by.
[00:46:46] Son of a gun, they've bagged my airplane, now they're after me.
[00:46:51] I went to the concussions from the exploding shells, sonic booms battering my ear drums,
[00:46:57] rockets of heavy smoke, clouded the sky.
[00:47:00] Gary and I had ejected, ejected so near the ground, however, that enemy guns could train on us
[00:47:05] for only a short time.
[00:47:07] I checked my parachute canopy, it looked good, torn in only a couple of places.
[00:47:12] I fought of escape, but where?
[00:47:15] Looking away, I saw my buddies and their aircraft blending into the horizon.
[00:47:20] Below, my landing zone was nothing but bear in rice patties.
[00:47:25] Down to my left a huge cloud of black smoke, billowed at the outskirts of a peasant hamlet,
[00:47:31] punctuating a row of four or five huts, my plane had it wiped out of family.
[00:47:37] If so, the villagers would certainly be unhappy.
[00:47:41] I wasn't happy either, I hadn't intended that to happen.
[00:47:45] I later learned that the plane had impacted just beyond the last shack on the road.
[00:47:51] There was precious little time before I could touch it down, before I would touch down,
[00:47:56] and I had much to be done.
[00:47:58] I grabbed my two-way radio and tried to counter Gary, but I received no answer.
[00:48:03] Then I called my skipper, Lynn Field Lead, Lynn Field Lead, this is Lynn Field 2.
[00:48:09] We've got two good shoots.
[00:48:11] We're going to be all right.
[00:48:13] Request no-sar effort.
[00:48:17] And Sars searching rescue for those either don't know.
[00:48:26] And when I read that part right there, I'd stop them by tracks because here you are.
[00:48:33] You shot down, you're going to parachute, you're going to obviously be landing in these rice patties.
[00:48:38] Surrounded by enemy.
[00:48:41] And you had the where we're fall to understand that if you requested for a search and rescue to come and get you,
[00:48:48] it was just going to get more people killed.
[00:48:51] Yeah.
[00:48:52] And that had happened before.
[00:48:54] I had seen that happen.
[00:48:56] And we were so far behind enemy lines.
[00:49:00] I mean, it was impossible.
[00:49:02] A jolly green was a call sign for the helicopter that would come get us off the aircraft carrier.
[00:49:08] And they would have to go through a probably 75 or 100 miles of enemy territory before they ever got to me.
[00:49:17] And I was in such a populated area that I could see that they were, that I was going to be captured immediately.
[00:49:25] And so to get those guys, the butthemen harms way was kind of silly.
[00:49:29] So that's why I did that.
[00:49:32] When you know, I've experienced a couple times in combat where things slow down.
[00:49:37] And the time starts to really be different than it normally is.
[00:49:41] And they say it's because you get this big adrenaline dump and all of your sensors, all your perception awakens to such a high point that things actually slow down.
[00:49:49] Did you experience any of that when you were once that Sam missile hit?
[00:49:53] I did.
[00:49:54] Yes.
[00:49:55] It was almost like slow motion.
[00:49:57] And I, you know, I remember thinking this is unreal.
[00:50:02] I've never had this happen to me before, but it was almost like I was in a, it was in a movie and everything was slowing down in my life.
[00:50:11] And I, you know, I tried to sense every possible thing because of course I'm thinking to escape now trying to get it out of here in some way.
[00:50:21] And so I'm trying to memorize all the little roads I could see in all the little trees and all the little huts and where are they and where am I that situ situational awareness?
[00:50:30] How far from the water in the ocean where you at this level?
[00:50:33] I was 75 miles.
[00:50:34] No chance.
[00:50:35] No chance.
[00:50:38] We won the outskirts of Hanor the capital city.
[00:50:42] And, and that was the bad news good news.
[00:50:45] The bad news was that I was going to be captured immediately.
[00:50:48] There was no chance whatsoever. I mean, they were shooting at me from the ground while I came down.
[00:50:53] The good news was that I didn't have to go very far to a formalized prison camp.
[00:50:58] Like a lot of the guys did, you know, you had Bill Reader on this on your podcast and he was dragged for, I don't know, weeks.
[00:51:06] And because he was, he was captured in South Vietnam.
[00:51:10] Right.
[00:51:11] The guys that were going to allow Sir Cambodia who were brought to our prison camps were all just really torn up.
[00:51:17] Not just because of the enemy, but just because of the rigors of the travel.
[00:51:26] So, and you're going to, you're going to talk about this.
[00:51:29] You talk about it in the book, but, you know, just to kind of point out the fact that whatever two minutes earlier,
[00:51:39] you were part of this giant powerful force with a multi-million dollar, you know, aircraft under the water.
[00:51:46] You know, aircraft under your command is a 24 year old as part of this group that of many, many multi-million dollar with this huge, destructive power,
[00:51:55] launching off of these ships and airfields, and to go from having all that.
[00:52:02] To now you're under a parachute and you're about to have all of that just absolutely taken away.
[00:52:08] It was a major transition in my life.
[00:52:13] You know, unlike someone who's diagnosed with cancer or, like someone who just lost a job or just lost a child or just had a car accident,
[00:52:25] I mean, there are similarities in normal civilian life, I think that can be just as impactive as being blown out of the sky.
[00:52:34] You're floating down to earth and I'm going back to the book, and then I bowed my head, well Lord, here I am.
[00:52:42] I'm really in a bind now, and I need some help.
[00:52:46] Give me strength and give it an strength.
[00:52:50] I was surprised at how calm I was when I should have been pan-extricant, but there was too much to think about and do.
[00:52:57] I couldn't let myself become irrational.
[00:53:00] It would all be different now. I tried to envision myself in this new world and prepare for it.
[00:53:06] I had a lot going for me. I was in good physical condition, and I could probably withstand torture.
[00:53:13] I didn't believe I would be killed because I was too much of a blue chip for the enemy, which, again, for you to say,
[00:53:23] you're shot down, you're about to land an enemy territory, and you're statement as I had a lot going for me.
[00:53:28] It's a positive attitude, sir. It's a positive attitude.
[00:53:31] That's your philosophy of saying good.
[00:53:33] That's my notes right there.
[00:53:35] Good.
[00:53:37] Good.
[00:53:38] That's not this before.
[00:53:41] So you touched down a plunge backward into the mud and water.
[00:53:47] Trying to get my bearings. I took off my helmet and mass and crawled out, crawled without direction in the quagmire.
[00:53:52] With slimy hands, I tried to wipe mud from my eyes. I saw that I was about 10 or 15 yards from an embankment.
[00:53:58] I looked over to see that Gary, touching down her in adjacent patty about 100 yards away, had disappeared behind the eight foot embankment.
[00:54:06] A barefoot peasant wearing khaki shirts, shorts and t-shirt, ran at top speed down the path toward me grimacing with excitement and anger.
[00:54:15] Above his head, he waved a double-edged axe with blades about eight inches long.
[00:54:21] My instructor's never documented that type of weapon.
[00:54:25] I heard him scream, hand up, hand up.
[00:54:28] I didn't understand what he meant and I kept working with my gear and shoot.
[00:54:32] I had a 38 revolver strapped to my chest and as long as he stayed in the embankment, I would not touch it.
[00:54:39] It wasn't long however before 10 or 12 more peasants came rushing toward me, yelling and waving their shovels and hose.
[00:54:46] Now there was power and numbers and they charged out in the water after me. I raised my hands away from my body.
[00:54:52] They started ripping my g-suit, found my survival knife and proceeded to cut away at the suit and the torso harness.
[00:54:59] I tried to tell them to use the zippers and even attempted to show them how to do it, but they knocked my hands away.
[00:55:05] The more certain they were that I was harmless, the meaner they became.
[00:55:11] The shovel and whole blades flailed at my body to prove to me that I was there to load the captain.
[00:55:17] Captive.
[00:55:19] Strangely, the peasants failed to see my revolver.
[00:55:22] Probably because it too was covered with mud and the 38 rested in my holster at least three or four minutes before a peasant finally spotted it.
[00:55:31] He yanked it out of the holster and sloshed a few steps away.
[00:55:36] A moment later he returned and screamed for special attention.
[00:55:40] He fixed the barrel to my head.
[00:55:43] I could see that at least two of the chambers were empty.
[00:55:47] I had always kept five of the six chambers loaded so I knew that he must have removed at least one of the cartridges.
[00:55:55] There was little I could do as I felt the muddy barrel against my temple.
[00:56:00] The peasant pulled the trigger.
[00:56:03] Click. He could fall and sneak away wiping off his unexpected prize.
[00:56:20] Your...
[00:56:23] As far as your thoughts about being killed at that moment,
[00:56:28] did you accept them? Were you used to stinking? He's not going to do it.
[00:56:35] What you're out of to at that point?
[00:56:37] I never...
[00:56:38] In the entire experience and never thought I was going to be killed.
[00:56:41] And I didn't think so at that moment.
[00:56:44] Of course, I was very happy that I heard the click of that revolver.
[00:56:49] But it was actually very encouraging to think that they were going to fain this execution and not go through with it.
[00:57:01] Right.
[00:57:02] And it was encouraging to think that they were going to hammer me around and get me pretty bloody.
[00:57:08] But they probably weren't intentionally going to kill me.
[00:57:11] I guess I worried more about that they would kill me accidentally.
[00:57:16] But then intentionally.
[00:57:19] But there were two or three times during the entire experience.
[00:57:22] One of them as well as being tortured.
[00:57:25] When I felt like I was losing that I was close to death.
[00:57:30] And they loosened the ropes because they saw.
[00:57:36] I think that I was getting pretty close to death.
[00:57:40] And that again, that was good.
[00:57:44] Because I thought, all right, this is her.
[00:57:47] It's a lot.
[00:57:48] But it looks like they're not going to kill me.
[00:57:50] I may wish I was dead, but I don't think they're going to do it.
[00:57:54] Now you guys are blindfolded.
[00:57:56] They take after Gary as well.
[00:57:58] And you're blindfolded.
[00:58:00] But at this point they put this kind of marginal blindfold on you.
[00:58:04] That's not working really well.
[00:58:06] So you can actually see.
[00:58:07] And again, I'm going to go to your...
[00:58:09] Go ahead and highlight your twisted sense of humor here.
[00:58:13] So here we go.
[00:58:15] You're in the back of an old Russian Jeep.
[00:58:17] Back to the book.
[00:58:18] Gary was held captive in the Jeep ahead of mine.
[00:58:21] At the instant I recognized Gary, I started calling
[00:58:23] Historically for a doctor to attend to his burned arms.
[00:58:26] The guards restrained me violently, screaming foreign
[00:58:30] But distinct warnings to attempt no more communication.
[00:58:34] I did however shout one more thing.
[00:58:37] I don't know why unless it was from a rail.
[00:58:40] I shouted out these people are a thousand years behind in blindfolds.
[00:58:44] It says later the POWs who were nearby cells heard, heard you screaming
[00:58:52] that and still laughed about it.
[00:58:54] So I'm glad you kept your sense of humor.
[00:58:57] You know, sometimes I look back on that and think that I...
[00:59:00] That I was in some form of shock.
[00:59:03] Right.
[00:59:04] Because I mean, who would come up with that?
[00:59:07] Who would write this stuff?
[00:59:09] And they bring you in.
[00:59:14] They kind of parade you guys around and you hear cameras clicking
[00:59:19] and eventually you get put into new guy village and you get put into,
[00:59:24] you know, a torture basically a torture room.
[00:59:27] So here you go back to the book.
[00:59:28] Several torture cells in the prison.
[00:59:30] The green knobby room.
[00:59:32] So called because the walls and ceiling were covered with gobs of plaster
[00:59:36] and the size of golf balls which looked somewhat like mud dober nests.
[00:59:41] The globs had a particular function, acoustics,
[00:59:45] to muffle human sound.
[00:59:50] Now you get through this day sunset.
[00:59:53] I had difficulty in seeing what was beyond myself.
[00:59:56] So I began reminiscing about the world of active life.
[00:59:59] I had loved so much.
[01:00:02] Outside, my every minute had been filled.
[01:00:05] Outside, I had been king of the skies.
[01:00:08] Outside, I had been continually learning, doing,
[01:00:12] accomplishing.
[01:00:13] I had been proud.
[01:00:16] So very proud.
[01:00:19] And now I was tired.
[01:00:21] So tired, so perplexed, so confined, so very lonely.
[01:00:28] The trauma of overwhelming changed,
[01:00:31] caused my mind to reel with this orientation.
[01:00:36] I was afraid.
[01:00:37] I stared at the emptiness.
[01:00:39] Shadows crept up the walls gradually becoming more pronounced.
[01:00:43] Curiously, a vague ghost-like impression materialized.
[01:00:48] The image took the appearance of the master
[01:00:51] with arms outstretched, a symbol.
[01:00:55] It was strange, yet something I felt I should expect.
[01:01:00] I began to utter the first lines of the 23rd Psalm.
[01:01:05] The Lord is my shepherd.
[01:01:06] I shall not want.
[01:01:08] He makeeth me to lie down in green pastures.
[01:01:11] He leadeth me beside the still waters.
[01:01:14] He restoreeth my soul.
[01:01:16] He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name, sake.
[01:01:22] I repeated it aloud several times,
[01:01:25] not because of any deep religious drive,
[01:01:28] but because it simply seemed the thing to do.
[01:01:33] And then I prayed.
[01:01:35] I considered making a deal with God,
[01:01:38] but rejected the idea.
[01:01:42] I made no big promises and asked for no miracles,
[01:01:46] just strength.
[01:01:49] Strength to endure the hardship and strength from my wife and
[01:01:54] my wife.
[01:01:59] It would be difficult for her to.
[01:02:02] Yay, though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death.
[01:02:07] That was certainly where I was.
[01:02:13] An interesting point here is that in Colonel Wieders podcast,
[01:02:18] you found the same thing that he went to the 23rd Psalm.
[01:02:23] And again, it was just almost like,
[01:02:27] well, this is what I should do.
[01:02:33] Well, I say there's no atheists and foxholes,
[01:02:37] and I guess there aren't any in the prison camp.
[01:02:40] Although you do talk about some atheists in the prison camp.
[01:02:43] I do, it's a matter of fact, a couple of guys,
[01:02:45] consider themselves atheists.
[01:02:48] And you also talk about faith and one of the things that I will get to this,
[01:02:52] but when you talk about faith, you talk about faith,
[01:02:57] not just in God, but faith in your country and the one that I think
[01:03:01] that regardless of what someone's religious beliefs are,
[01:03:04] faith in yourself.
[01:03:06] Absolutely.
[01:03:07] And I think all three of those are whatever one of those faiths,
[01:03:10] where you find strength in time like this, lean on it.
[01:03:15] Absolutely.
[01:03:17] And faith in the team as well.
[01:03:20] And we had to have faith in each other.
[01:03:22] And then that was awfully important to be a part of a group like that,
[01:03:26] that could trust one another.
[01:03:28] How quickly did you realize that there was,
[01:03:31] that you were part of,
[01:03:32] I guess we'll get to it.
[01:03:33] But I mean, when you first got your in this room,
[01:03:36] did you feel completely isolated at first?
[01:03:38] There's no one out here?
[01:03:39] No, no, I knew that two other prisoners there.
[01:03:41] I could hear them.
[01:03:43] Some of them were being tortured as I was.
[01:03:45] I could hear the torture.
[01:03:47] But I could peek out sometimes and see them walking by myself.
[01:03:52] So I knew there were other prisoners in the area.
[01:03:55] They just wouldn't let me, they wouldn't let me talk to them.
[01:04:00] So the interrogation begins.
[01:04:05] The torture begins.
[01:04:07] We're going back to the book.
[01:04:08] We read Copy Regulations, You Obey.
[01:04:12] You live.
[01:04:14] No trouble.
[01:04:15] I did not respond.
[01:04:18] First regulation, you answer all question.
[01:04:22] The way that the North Vietnamese justified torture was peculiar.
[01:04:27] When they asked me questions and wanted military answers,
[01:04:30] I was not tortured to answer questions,
[01:04:33] but punished for disobeying camp regulations.
[01:04:37] What, what airplane you fly?
[01:04:40] I'm sorry.
[01:04:42] I can't tell you.
[01:04:44] Lamb, and they were calling you lamb.
[01:04:48] What airplane?
[01:04:50] To answer this question was of course, not in my rules.
[01:04:53] I'm sorry.
[01:04:54] I can't answer that.
[01:04:56] The officer again reminded me about the punishment for disobeying camp rules.
[01:05:02] Okay.
[01:05:03] You talk to me or you talk steel to which you responded,
[01:05:10] bring it on.
[01:05:13] The two higher of ranking officials left.
[01:05:16] The remaining officer with one word ordered the guards forward.
[01:05:21] They brought it on.
[01:05:23] The steel mentioned by the interrogator consisted of iron manacles,
[01:05:27] shackles, and a leg bar.
[01:05:30] The shackles were cylindrical.
[01:05:32] Iron bars shaped like horseshoes, but rounded at the end so that the five foot leg bar
[01:05:36] could be slipped into them and locked.
[01:05:38] The prisoner's ankles could then be forced to the openings
[01:05:42] and secured by the bar.
[01:05:45] The junior officer walked out.
[01:05:48] Guards blindfolded me, forced my wrist behind my back and placed the open jaws,
[01:05:53] the manacles around them.
[01:05:56] These had obviously been intended for the more modest Vietnamese arms.
[01:06:00] They were so small that they had to be forced together just so the screw
[01:06:04] could be seated in the bottom of the threads.
[01:06:07] With what looked like a roller skate key, a guard began to turn the screw.
[01:06:12] My skin was pinched between the metal and quickly succumbed to the vice.
[01:06:18] I screamed in agony.
[01:06:21] Surely the guards wouldn't get these things much tighter.
[01:06:25] Blood oozed down my hands and still the guard kept turning the key.
[01:06:30] Like powerful magnets, the iron was finally set flush.
[01:06:35] Circulation stopped.
[01:06:37] My hands burned.
[01:06:39] Grayish blew.
[01:06:41] Tangled.
[01:06:42] And became numb.
[01:06:44] A guard then wrapped the rope first around my left elbow and then around my right and drew my elbows together behind my back.
[01:06:51] My shoulder muscles writhed.
[01:06:55] And I feared that my sternum would separate.
[01:06:58] I gasped for air.
[01:07:00] Then I was thrown abruptly to the floor.
[01:07:03] Shackles were jammed around my ankles and the leg bar was fastened and padlocked.
[01:07:09] Electric wire similar to the kind that I had hidden underneath the table was brought forward.
[01:07:15] I thought that the guards were going to use this to shock me, but typical of the Vietnamese.
[01:07:19] They didn't have anything else to use for rope.
[01:07:22] And it torn the wire down from some light fixtures.
[01:07:26] This became the apparatus to wrap me up.
[01:07:29] It was first tied to the manacles, then thrown over my shoulder and at last secured to the shackles around my ankles.
[01:07:37] Guards forced a bamboo pole under the wire and started rotating it so that the wire contracted,
[01:07:43] bringing my wrists up high on my back and drawing my face completely to my ankles.
[01:07:50] I was a human pretzel.
[01:07:52] A teacup with arms for a handle and the rest of my distorted body for the ball.
[01:07:58] Circulation was impaired throughout my limbs making them extremely painful to the touch.
[01:08:05] The guards apparently drugged, exhibited wide and glassy eyes.
[01:08:10] They maliciously kicked me in the sides, the limbs, the back and the head giggling, and having a great time.
[01:08:19] They picked me up a few feet from the floor dropped me.
[01:08:23] Since I was on my side most of the time, they especially enjoyed standing on my head, symbolically victorious.
[01:08:31] The rubber tires saw sandals tore up my ear.
[01:08:35] My face already target for abusers repeatedly subjected to fist-to-cuffs and kicks.
[01:08:40] I remember staring at the floor and seeing my tears drop and pulls the blood coming from my nose.
[01:08:47] The louder I screamed, the more they flailed.
[01:08:51] After about an hour, the junior officer returned.
[01:08:56] You talk now?
[01:08:59] Yes.
[01:09:01] The guards loosened the wires and ropes, blood rushed back into my veins with knife and pain.
[01:09:07] What airplane you fly?
[01:09:10] I hesitated a moment at the thought.
[01:09:13] Well, they know the airplane I'm flying, and so ridiculous to undergo such torture for information they already have.
[01:09:20] The F4B.
[01:09:36] That part right there, I mean, will you hesitate for a moment?
[01:09:41] And then you say to yourself, okay, these guys shot me down in an F4, which crashed into this patty,
[01:09:48] and they know exactly what I was flying.
[01:09:51] This is not makes sense for me to get this kind of abuse and torture for something that they already know.
[01:10:02] And when you came to that conclusion, how did you, did you, was it pretty,
[01:10:07] were you feeling comfortable with it in your mind when you came to close your look?
[01:10:10] This is stupid.
[01:10:12] No, I was really never comfortable at all in that, I felt very guilty.
[01:10:17] I was really, really, it was very remorseful that I had not been as strong as I wanted to be.
[01:10:25] And through the, you know, the first several months of that experience, I felt like I felt very guilty about having given up.
[01:10:36] You know, fighter pilots are not supposed to give up.
[01:10:39] You know, we were, but this, and the code of conduct, of course, name rank, serial number data birth.
[01:10:45] And I flew over this, the enemy thinking that I was strong enough, and I was good enough.
[01:10:51] And suddenly I was thrust into this situation.
[01:10:55] And I even wondered, would I, would I ever be able to go back to my country?
[01:11:01] Can I face my fellow fighter pilots that were stronger, you know, a tougher?
[01:11:07] And I found out that that, that feeling was across the board.
[01:11:14] Every, every POW that I ever went into felt guilty.
[01:11:19] And some guys even considered suicide because they felt like they could, they could never live with the guilt of having given up.
[01:11:29] And it was, it was quite a revelation to me when I finally made contact with another prisoner.
[01:11:37] And confessed to this guy, I remember that my first contact, and I said, I need to confess something to you.
[01:11:46] And when I tell you what I've done, you mean not want to communicate with me.
[01:11:51] You may hate me. And if our roles were reversed, I would probably hate you if you did what I did.
[01:11:57] Because I assumed that I was the only one that ever gave in.
[01:12:01] And so he said, this is Bob Schumacher.
[01:12:04] He said, what do you do, Plum? I said, well, I broke.
[01:12:09] I tried to be strong, but I was my broke.
[01:12:13] And his response, and we're talking on the end of a wire.
[01:12:18] We're talking on a wire to communicate with each other with this secret code that he had just taught me.
[01:12:26] He said, hell, everybody broke.
[01:12:29] He said, there's not a man in this camp that is as strong as he wanted to be.
[01:12:32] He said, so get over yourself.
[01:12:35] And that was a great revelation in my mind, you know, to know that I wasn't the only one that had given in.
[01:12:45] As you continue this, and again, you might have felt like you broke at this point,
[01:12:56] but there's still some unbelievable spirit that you show.
[01:13:02] And I'm going back to the book around the courtyard in a nearby room.
[01:13:06] My copilot Gary Anderson was undergoing about the same treatment.
[01:13:11] As soon as I heard him exploding obscenities, I knew he was near.
[01:13:16] Hey, Gary, you all right, I called the guards or immediately on top,
[01:13:23] kicking and striking. Gary heard me and yelled back.
[01:13:27] It was four years later that it came across a POW who had been in a cell close to ours at the time.
[01:13:34] He said, boy, that was one of the craziest things I ever heard.
[01:13:37] You yelling, hey, Gary, are you all right?
[01:13:40] Bang, crunch, fud.
[01:13:42] Fine, how about you?
[01:13:43] Smack, crash, crack.
[01:13:46] Yeah.
[01:13:51] You eventually get, they're going to take you and kind of parade you in front of Vietnamese people.
[01:13:59] And going back to the book, the officer briefed me once more.
[01:14:05] I was to walk with my head down until he gave me the command, let people see face.
[01:14:10] The guards removed the cops and I pump my hands and twitch my shoulders to restore circulation.
[01:14:15] The guards carefully directed me to the door, removing the blindfold and warn me not to look around.
[01:14:20] They then prodded me down the hallway line with photographers and journalists.
[01:14:24] A group composed of orientals and a few Caucasians.
[01:14:28] With the officer at my side, I walked out of the building onto the patio where a battery of motion cameras started worrying.
[01:14:35] The officer shouted to me, let people see face.
[01:14:39] Slowly and deliberately I looked up, staring blankly into space, bow deeply to the cameras and lowered my head.
[01:14:46] I was uneasy about this entire charade, feeling a combination of resentment and embarrassment at being featured as a side's show attraction.
[01:14:56] And what I didn't know at the time was it was Ho Chi Minh's birthday.
[01:15:02] And so that was part of the celebration was I was being presented to the president of their country.
[01:15:11] So it was birthday gift popping out of a cake.
[01:15:17] And the good news was that I was in the media that they were taking pictures of me.
[01:15:26] And so after a few months my family saw those pictures.
[01:15:32] And so that was the good news about being shot down in the 19th of May.
[01:15:37] So that was the first indication that people knew that you were actually okay.
[01:15:41] Or you were alive.
[01:15:42] Maybe not okay.
[01:15:43] The stronger it didn't mean to say okay.
[01:15:45] You were alive.
[01:15:46] The picture that was taken and transferred to my family has me with my eyes closed.
[01:15:54] And my face was pretty well swollen.
[01:15:57] And my little brother thought that I was dead.
[01:16:00] He thought that was a picture of a dead man.
[01:16:03] So but I think most people thought, yeah, no, he's alive.
[01:16:09] So you actually got, how did you get stabbed?
[01:16:14] Beineted.
[01:16:15] So you were about to fall or something?
[01:16:18] Actually I was being prodded to walk faster by these guys.
[01:16:25] I was hurting at the time.
[01:16:27] I was injured from the ejection.
[01:16:31] And I wasn't able to walk very fast.
[01:16:33] And I was blindfolded as well.
[01:16:35] And so I hit a, I hit a rut in the road.
[01:16:38] And these guards with their bayonet fixed behind me,
[01:16:42] stabbed me in the thigh.
[01:16:45] And so that was, in fact that was the worst wound that I had.
[01:16:48] And it festered for months because I had no medical care.
[01:16:53] And, but I never really knew if it was intentional or if it was accidental.
[01:16:59] But that was, that was how I got that wound.
[01:17:02] Now you get back in and they're going to give you,
[01:17:05] they give you the rules for the first time that you're supposed to follow.
[01:17:11] And the, the guy reads into your, and I'm just going to,
[01:17:14] I got to read these rules because I think they give a good indication as to what you were facing.
[01:17:19] Here we go back to the book.
[01:17:20] You are the blackest criminal that this country has ever seen.
[01:17:24] But due to the lenient, he made policy of the Vietnamese people.
[01:17:28] You follow regulations you live in peace.
[01:17:30] Regulation number one, criminals must give full and complete answers to questions asked by Vietnamese guard or officer.
[01:17:37] Number two, criminals must make no noise in room.
[01:17:41] Number three, criminals must keep room clean and neat and must not mark room so graciously given by Vietnamese people.
[01:17:47] Number four, criminals must get up and go to bed at sound of gong.
[01:17:52] Number five, criminals must get under bed when imperialist aggressor bomb and stray from the city.
[01:17:57] And stray from our sovereign country.
[01:18:00] Number six, criminals must say, Baal Kao, when they want to ask anything.
[01:18:07] Number seven, criminals must go only in area that guard orders when they go outside of room.
[01:18:14] Number eight, criminals must bow to every Vietnamese guards, officers, and people.
[01:18:20] Number nine, criminals must not bring anything into room from outside. Number ten, criminals must not communicate with or look at other criminals in any other room or outside.
[01:18:34] With minor variations, these were the rules for the next six years.
[01:18:41] Big one was the communication. They didn't want you guys talking to each other.
[01:18:46] They didn't, and they did all that they possibly could do to keep us from communicating.
[01:18:52] But we got very clever.
[01:18:54] And we had a lot of ways to communicate.
[01:18:57] Now, you spend some time in solitary confinement.
[01:19:00] And here we go back to book.
[01:19:03] During this period of solitary confinement, I had much time to think.
[01:19:06] From the start, I established a definite schedule for personal reflection and a praisele.
[01:19:12] This included a two-hour worship service in the morning into similar one in the evening.
[01:19:17] I spent much time praying talking informally with God and recalling as many scriptures, verses, and Bible stories as I could.
[01:19:27] I also revived the words and tunes to songs from a Tennessee Ernie Ford album that I'd enjoyed on the Kitty Hawk.
[01:19:35] Once in a while, I would start humming too loudly and a guard would bang his rifle against the door. I spent more and more time thinking about intangibles.
[01:19:44] The purpose for living, ethics, the supernatural, faith, pride, because the tangibles, which I had identified with,
[01:19:55] would no longer present.
[01:19:57] My aircraft, my ship, my personal possessions.
[01:20:02] This was the onset of a thorough re-examination of my life, often these intricate thought processes ended in slumber.
[01:20:14] One of the interesting things that are really most difficult to understand is how we had nothing going on.
[01:20:24] The average American has hundreds of thousands of inputs every day, cars and sounds and smells and touch and all these things.
[01:20:35] When you're in a little prison cell, especially if you're in solitary confinement, you might hear a bird.
[01:20:43] That's delightful. That's a big deal. You don't hear a bird.
[01:20:48] The good news and the bad news is your mind goes internal.
[01:20:55] You have to create things on your own.
[01:21:01] You think about these intangible things and you go back through your life and you think about the things that sustain life and why we are here.
[01:21:11] Because there's nothing else to do. Did you put some kind of structure around your thoughts?
[01:21:19] It seems like people might have a tendency just to let their mind wander and maybe it wanders into places they don't want it to wander into.
[01:21:25] No, there was a lot of structure to it.
[01:21:27] And in fact, one of the things I did was to go back through my life to the very first memory that I ever had at three years old in Lee Compton, Kansas,
[01:21:36] when my grandmother came through and wanted everybody to go with her.
[01:21:41] I remember that date and then I went from that to the day that I was shot down.
[01:21:47] And tried to remember every book I ever read, every friend, every girl I ever dated, every teacher, books, movies, experiences.
[01:21:58] And it took me about, as I recall, maybe three months working pretty hard on that total autobiography in my mind.
[01:22:09] And after that, then I would continue to go back through those individual days and try to remember something else.
[01:22:17] You know, a different color that I'd forgotten, or a different person that was in the room.
[01:22:21] And whenever I would, when I would discover something that I hadn't discovered the first three months, it was like it was like meeting an old friend.
[01:22:30] I could think about that one person or that one book or whatever, you know, for an entire day.
[01:22:37] And so it was just, it was a way of of of of using that time and making the time go by by working in our minds.
[01:22:47] Did you somehow catalog the days in your mind?
[01:22:50] Oh yeah, yeah, it was a, it was a chronology.
[01:22:53] It was, and most, everybody did that.
[01:22:57] And a lot of guys did it much better than I. They could tell you, you know, what was going on this day last year, the year before and the year before.
[01:23:05] They, you know, they, they could remember everything.
[01:23:10] And it had, had it all packed away. But yes, it was very well categorized.
[01:23:15] So you finally get some, pair pants, a couple pairs of pants, a couple shirts, some underwear under shirt, toothbrush and some soap.
[01:23:31] And you are going to use it for the first time. I stripped and with my little drinking cup, douse myself with water, lathered with my new bar of soap and rinsed, shedding a two week layer of grime and sweat.
[01:23:44] Then I shaved using a double edge razor, which had no handle.
[01:23:49] And last I was clean. No itch beard, no reaking body.
[01:23:53] I put on my new clothes and wondered what impressions I would now make on the newly captured POWs.
[01:24:00] Dressed, in fresh hablement, I experienced a sublime physical and mental catharsis.
[01:24:07] Even the pain of my wounds seemed to wash away with the filth. Fifteen minutes later, I was back in myself, reinspired to outlast any Vietnamese endeavor to debase me.
[01:24:20] The door opened. I waited for something to happen. And then, in the doorway, centered in a tall man, back-hunged and forehead deeply lined.
[01:24:30] He studied me with uncertain eyes and American, another American. I rushed to the doors quickly as I could and grasped his hand, the hand which was completely numb from inadequate circulation at the elbows.
[01:24:43] Hi, I said. I'm Charlie Poem.
[01:24:47] So now you're linked up with another American.
[01:24:50] I am. K Russell was shot down the same day I was. And so he and I were, he was my first roommate. And, you know, I was in the same cell with a lot of different guys.
[01:25:05] And they moved us around a lot. About every six months, it moves around. But they would give us different roommates every few months.
[01:25:12] Or take them all away and that was in solitary confinement again. And we never really knew why. But we assumed that it was tried to destroy any fraternization with the guards and try to disrupt any unity within the prisoners.
[01:25:29] And so, so that, in fact, sometimes there's a little bit difficult to describe exactly what it was like because we were in different camps and different cells and you were different guys for the entire six years.
[01:25:45] And you, you, you, you like it when you got a new roommate because it's like, and you, you kind of explain it's like, now you have a bunch of stuff to talk about with this person. Absolutely. Absolutely. It was, it was glorious, you know, to find because, you know, he, of course, had all of the stories and he had the movies that he could tell you about and the things that he had learned and that he could teach you. So, yeah, no, it was, it was wonderful.
[01:26:10] That would last for maybe a few months until you're in other things and then it became almost like a marriage, you know, where you've got those periods of time money moved periods over. Well, exactly.
[01:26:20] Well, the fact of matter is you couldn't, in some of those cells, you couldn't be more than eight or ten feet away from a guy 24, seven for months and months and months at a time.
[01:26:30] And so, little things start to bug you, you know, and not the least of which was, was our toilet, you know, the toilet was a two gallon bucket in the corner.
[01:26:46] And lots of times it was rusted out of the top with no lid and it was just quite a, you know, it's stunk to high heaven and a lot of the cases. And it was quite an irritant.
[01:27:01] Yeah, you guys established a routine once you got in there and you know, there's a whole chapter in the book called routine and you're waking up at six thirty in the morning. You're doing prayer at that time.
[01:27:15] And you're at seven o'clock, you're practicing piano, which I like, right, you're practicing piano, and that was just from memory. You had you ever played piano before? I had, I had not. Now what I did know was that my span from my pinky to my thumb was not, I was, I could span nine notes on a piano.
[01:27:38] And I played out a keyboard on my board bed and the new where the black keys were and I had played in the band and also played guitar. So I knew a little bit about chords and scales and that kind of thing. And I thought, well, I've always wanted to play the piano, you know, now's my chance.
[01:27:55] This piece of wood looks good to me. Yes, this is this is a work.
[01:27:59] And at eight o'clock, you're doing pushups. Yep. And sit up some leg lifts and whatever else. So you're doing some some physical training and then you have school, the school bell rings at nine thirty a.m. And you guys are learning and teaching each other, whatever you can possibly teach each other.
[01:28:16] Whatever subject you were good at, you were going to teach. We did. And it was serious stuff. As a matter of fact, when we got home, University of Maryland gave us credit for what we had, you know, the courses we had taught, you know, without books or paper, PowerPoints or instructors or professors or anybody.
[01:28:36] Because we were so intent on using that time for something of value. And in these guys, most of them smarter than I would go back through their minds and recapture all of the subjects that they had learned.
[01:28:56] One of the guys, Joe Milligan, I was with him, I don't know, the first few months, I guess. And he taught, of course, on a chemistry. No no biology was biology.
[01:29:09] And I've never taken a course in biology. And I was very interested. And his course lasted about a week. And that's all he knew. But Joe, and I'll leave with him for a while would lay back on his rack about an hour a day and just think.
[01:29:25] About biology. And after being there for six years, his course lasted six months. And you know, everything from protozoas to medzoas. And all of this just because that was back there in his mind.
[01:29:40] He was able to recall that. He could recall that. And it is amazing. What's back in there in your human brain. And we found that out. If you think about something long enough and hard enough. And again, you don't have these distractions of everyday life that there's it is awful lot stored back in there.
[01:30:03] I had to bring this one up to it because you talked about how you didn't have PowerPoint or whatever you never pens and chalkboards. And here you go.
[01:30:11] Often in my dreams, I must admit, I envisioned leaving the noise help him going home looking for and finding a brand new yellow pencil and bringing it back to myself.
[01:30:24] Or I would dream of entering shops containing nothing but rose and rose of pencils. I've never since taken a pencil for granted.
[01:30:35] That's, you know, we take so much for granted. I mean, take so much for granted. And to think about that right there. And what what power of pencil gives you the power to take notes, the power to create the power to draw the power to write this incredible power comes from this little thing that we just gaff off like it's meaningless.
[01:30:53] And for you to have that much appreciation for it, that you would dream about it at night.
[01:30:59] True. It's incredible. Ten o'clock, you eat. And what was the food?
[01:31:06] Your food rice balls?
[01:31:08] Yeah, mostly rice. That was the main state. You get a small bowl of rice twice a day. Once about ten o'clock, once about two o'clock in the afternoon.
[01:31:18] And then you had a 20 hour stretch with that and to eat. Sometimes they'd give you a bowl of broth. And sometimes it would be some kind of vegetable turnups or weeds of some kind. One recall sewer soup.
[01:31:36] You couldn't identify this stuff.
[01:31:39] But I didn't need, you know, there was not enough meat to put in a coffee cup for a year. You know, there really was no meat of any variety.
[01:31:50] How much, how much did you weigh when you got out?
[01:31:52] I waited about 140 when it came home, but they fattened this up before we came home. And I figured most of the time I was there about 115 pounds.
[01:32:02] Did you ever, was the hunger, did the hunger go away? Did you, or you just grinding hunger or did you just get used to it?
[01:32:12] It went away from the most part, you know, after, I don't know, four or five months.
[01:32:18] Your stomach sort of shrinks. And when you know that there's nothing else to eat.
[01:32:26] And so, you know, that they, in all fairness, they gave us enough to keep us alive. And so that, you know, and rice is a pretty perfect food.
[01:32:39] This is unpolished rice. It wasn't the Uncle Benz that we have today. And there's a lot, there's protein in there and there's nutrients in the rice.
[01:32:48] So that can be live.
[01:32:51] At dusk, you guys would have, show time. And people would do what you're talking about describing everything and every movie they've ever seen, every book they've ever read and all that.
[01:33:04] And you mentioned in here that in the beginning of confinement, the movies that would get described or created because people are creating movies too, right in their head.
[01:33:12] Yes.
[01:33:13] Yes.
[01:33:14] And they went from PG to triple X over time.
[01:33:19] So, did anybody come out and execute on some of these ideas that they had? Is there anybody that came out and said, yeah, I've thought of this movie or his book?
[01:33:32] Oh, yeah.
[01:33:33] Yeah.
[01:33:34] In fact, Sarah, guys, had great plans.
[01:33:37] When, when guy was a farmer and he had planned a pig farm. That was, that was his whole thing.
[01:33:45] And he did, he came back and I live with guy by the name of Danny Glenn, who was an architect or student at the University of Oklahoma.
[01:33:55] And Danny and I were together for a lot of years.
[01:33:58] And he dreamed about building this home.
[01:34:02] And that's only a thought about was building this dream house.
[01:34:07] And he had several little things about this home that were very peculiar.
[01:34:12] One of them was that as the sunlight would come through the top of the wall around our prison, the wall was kept with barbed wire in electrical wire and broken glass.
[01:34:24] The glass was from bottles of various colors.
[01:34:27] And in one particular cell that then and I ran, the sun would come through the glass, the colored glass, and onto this tank of water.
[01:34:38] And then reflect up under the eaves of our fats drift into our cell.
[01:34:44] So that all these colors and it was a beautiful thing, you know, was a kaleidoscope of colors.
[01:34:50] And so he designed a house and he figured this whole thing out, you know, with the, with the asthma of the sun and in all the stuff and I was going to do this.
[01:35:00] But and he would lay this out and he would draw on the concrete floor with a piece of brick.
[01:35:08] And it was a great artist, you know, the guy could, could design all this stuff.
[01:35:14] And of course, he wanted me to be involved in this and, in Boramida tears.
[01:35:21] Charlie, what color do you think about bathroom ought to be?
[01:35:25] I don't know it.
[01:35:26] No, no, no Charlie green or blue. I don't know green.
[01:35:31] Okay, so we, we get home in about a year after we, I was living in Kansas and he was in Oklahoma and he called me up.
[01:35:40] Charlie, I got something to show you.
[01:35:42] And so I had a little airplane at the time and I flew down to Norman Oklahoma and he picked me up at the airport and we drove outside of town from about a quarter mile away.
[01:35:51] I saw this house that I recognized, but it never been a Norman Oklahoma.
[01:35:56] And I, I swear, I could have walked in that house and touched any faucet or any light switch.
[01:36:03] You know, the whole place because it was exactly as he had decided the prison.
[01:36:07] So I went to the bathroom and it was blue.
[01:36:12] He had gone back, you know, he had built it from building materials that he had remembered and over the years of the time.
[01:36:20] Over the years that we were there, they changed.
[01:36:23] And so there were some of, there was not available.
[01:36:26] And so he went to these old lumber yards and he would find the building materials that he had planned this house with and use those to build this house.
[01:36:36] But it was incredible.
[01:36:37] But yeah, a lot of the guys, a lot of the guys wanted to sail around the world.
[01:36:42] You know, a lot of us Navy guys and we had to sail and that was the big fantasy was to take a sailing trip around the world.
[01:36:48] And two or three of the guys actually did that when they came home.
[01:36:53] Awesome. The guards, some of the guards were pretty sadistic.
[01:37:00] And here we go back to the problem.
[01:37:02] The most sadistic practice of all was a game involving mice or puppies.
[01:37:06] Guards would gouse them with gasoline and set them on fire and turn them loose to squeal and scurry and search of relief from the heat.
[01:37:13] And the soldiers would chase them with sticks playing polo with their live fireballs until the little animals blackened and died.
[01:37:23] So you had some serious sados.
[01:37:25] Yeah, just doing evil things.
[01:37:28] And you say you didn't see anything.
[01:37:33] Book magazine, newspaper, lyrics of song, written speech, any billboard or anything while you were there that wasn't just 100% propaganda.
[01:37:41] That's true. There a music doesn't talk about love except for love of Ho Chi Minh and love of their country and dedication to that.
[01:37:51] It's really incredible how they just fill the minds of their people with this propaganda.
[01:37:57] And you tell somebody long enough and loud enough and they believe it.
[01:38:01] And that was the whole country.
[01:38:05] At one point, you got this propaganda newspaper and it's the front page headline was that there's been a revolution in rice planting technique.
[01:38:15] And you were thinking yourself, oh man, they must have invented some big machine that can like plan all the rice and now they don't have to be out there.
[01:38:21] And on doing the manual labor in the fields and here's the actual article.
[01:38:25] For 4,000 years, the Vietnamese people have been laboring, sweating and toiling in the mud and water of rice patties.
[01:38:30] We've discovered a revolutionary method of planting rice through extensive research. We have found that.
[01:38:37] Instead of grasping the rice sprouts and planting them with the palm of the hand facing downward is much more efficient to plant the rice sprouts with the palm of the hand facing upward.
[01:38:48] So there's the propaganda coming at you.
[01:38:53] And there's the advancement of the, you know, them trying to tell the people how we're moving forward in the world.
[01:39:00] And that was another thing that surprised me or it didn't surprise me, but how what they're understanding, you know, they're brainwashed and they're understanding of what American culture was like.
[01:39:11] And when you say, well, yeah, I have a car.
[01:39:13] And I have an air conditioner to them that was unbelievable because the only people that could afford that in Vietnam were the state itself.
[01:39:22] True. And they assumed that if you had a car, you could carry pigs or chickens or something in your car.
[01:39:28] I guess that was the whole purpose of any kind of transportation. It was the whole something around.
[01:39:33] And they, you know, they were really surprised that you could actually just get in the car and go where everyone to go.
[01:39:39] And they also thought that a third of Americans were starving to death.
[01:39:45] So that's, you know, something to think about always when you deal with these countries where people are being indoctrinated and be whether being fed information from the state.
[01:39:57] It's going to be, it's going to be lies.
[01:40:00] And you can't be surprised when they believe something like that. You just have to say, you don't even believe how do we re-educate them.
[01:40:07] I went back to Vietnam.
[01:40:09] And the first time in 43 years I had been back. And a lot of things had changed. You know, I mean, they still call themselves a communist country, but by the way, capitalism is alive and well.
[01:40:21] But the propaganda still exists there.
[01:40:25] And, and they'll, they'll, I took my family with me. My wife and three of our four kids.
[01:40:32] And in the 11 days that I was there, I never met anyone. And I was, you know, as to embassy. I spoke to the students at the university.
[01:40:43] I spoke to cab drivers and waitresses and anybody. And they really, really nice people and very, very nice to me.
[01:40:51] But nobody knew that Americans had been tortured in the Vietnam War.
[01:40:57] And in fact, it was just the opposite. They all would tell you that we got better treatment than the soldiers did.
[01:41:05] And better medical care than the soldiers did. And so, and in fact, and in one of the, and one of the last days I was there, I ran into a lady in a park selling card postcards.
[01:41:19] And she was missing one leg. And she was about my age. And so I sort of piece this thing together. And she said, one by postcard.
[01:41:28] Well, I'll buy a postcard, but I went to hear your story sitting down on this park bench and tell me your story.
[01:41:35] And she did. I said, how do you lose your leg? She said, linebacker 2.
[01:41:41] Linebacker 2 was the codename for the B-52 bombings that ended the war in the Christmas of 1972.
[01:41:50] But it was a secret codename, you know? And for her to say, it was, the shoots she didn't call an air raid or a bomb or anything else. She's called a linebacker 2.
[01:42:00] That was hard. You know, that was a pilot jargon, not her jargon.
[01:42:05] And I said, what, what, what was the date? She said 24 December 1972. So I knew that she wasn't lying to me.
[01:42:14] She said, be 52. Oh yeah. Well, so we talked for maybe 30 minutes on that park bench.
[01:42:24] And she spoke very good English. And at one point I said to her, you speak excellent English. You could be an interpreter.
[01:42:32] You could be a guide. Why are you out here making a living selling postcards in the park?
[01:42:37] She said, oh my, my country would never give me a permit because I've been invalid.
[01:42:46] Man, what a country. And then I said, well, do you know about the museums? Oh yeah, I know all about the museums and the handle of the museum.
[01:42:59] See, they've made a museum out of my old prison camp. The handle of the Hennoy Hilton is now a museum.
[01:43:04] And I said, well, how are the prisoners treated at the museum? Oh, they were treated great. They had great food.
[01:43:12] They played volleyball. They had ping-plong. I said, how do you know this? She said, oh documentaries.
[01:43:19] The government shows us documentaries. And so she finally figured out that I was about her age and she said, were you a pilot?
[01:43:27] I said, yeah, I was a pilot. She said, be 52. I said, no, I flew at four phantoms. Oh, so were you flying on the 24th of December?
[01:43:41] 1972? I said, no, I was right here with you. I was in the Hennoy Hilton and I was being tortured. She said, no, that's impossible.
[01:43:50] That can't possibly be true. I could not convince this lady that I would, that I'd be, or anybody else.
[01:43:59] So the propaganda is alive and well. They continue to tell that people the lies and the folks have no way of figuring it out.
[01:44:09] You know, it's another thing that you point out in the book on that culture or that system of government back to the book, the Vietnamese rarely exerted themselves. Why should they?
[01:44:22] If they were going to get a meal at all, they'd eat regardless of whether they worked for it or not. They didn't worry. They didn't have to. The state was responsible for their welfare as well as their guidance.
[01:44:32] Even the upkeep of state property was not their problem. So there's a scary thing when it really is. When folks are indoctrinated to that level.
[01:44:46] But it's so prevalent. And they tried to do the same thing with us. They tried to brainwash us. And it was more important. You were kind of worried about that too in the beginning, right? Like you thought it was something you needed to be concerned about.
[01:45:01] And then you saw the ridiculous all this.
[01:45:04] And they used a lot of the Russian military equipment, but they never invited the Russians into try to brainwash us. And we felt very, very happy about that because their brainwashing techniques were so silly.
[01:45:19] And they would tell us this unbelievable things that we laughed at.
[01:45:25] But you thought the Russians would do a better job. Oh, yeah. I'm sure they would have. But more important than the rice we ate or the water we drank and every prison cell I was in, the first thing they put in there was a speaker.
[01:45:38] And you know, lots of the prison camps didn't have any electricity at all, but they had speakers. And they were put well above our reach so we couldn't turn them off or adjust the volume.
[01:45:49] And several times a day they would come on with propaganda and telling us how bad we were and how terrible our country was. Now wonderful they were.
[01:46:01] And it was pretty easy to turn these guys off, you know, just to ignore the broadcast. But it was also very concerning, you know, to see that that's the way they,
[01:46:16] So any of the indoctrinated people horrible. You talked about a little bit earlier. You talked about the communication and and what that was all about. And you had this lift the first time you were in yourself.
[01:46:31] You hear a little scraping and eventually you go over and it's a little wire and eventually note comes through it and here we go back to the book. It had a piece of toilet paper tied to it. I unfolded it and found these words memorize code eat note.
[01:46:47] Code was easier to memorize than the note was to eat by did both. I reject the door sat back down on the honey bucket and talked on the wire. The code was a series of talks which represented letters the alphabet.
[01:46:59] And it's basically a five by five code ABCDG EFG and that is how you guys communicated.
[01:47:07] And that had to be how long does it take to have a conversation with that code because you give you know one two talks to go down and then one two three talks to go across how long to take with you these conversations must have taken long died.
[01:47:22] Well, that's true, but that was a beauty of it because that's all we had was time.
[01:47:27] And that was a very good way of of while in a way the hours is tugging on the wires tapping on walls and or or sneezing and wheezing it we had all kinds of ways to communicate and we took great pride in our communication effort.
[01:47:45] And the sneezing and the reason that just was it more is how do the sneezing and wheezing work is often it was the same kind of thing you know it was all based around this five by five matrix of the alphabet.
[01:47:57] And so a cough would wouldn't be one a sneeze would be two a weas would be three on and so forth so that so that two sounds would equal a letter.
[01:48:10] And we use this in a lot of different ways if a guy was outside chopping wood for a fire for instance, and he would chop in this code chopped chopped chopped chopped chopped chopped chopped chopped chopped chopped chopped chopped chopped chopped chopped chopped chopped and it was when we called it a radio station.
[01:48:26] video station because everybody could hear it.
[01:48:29] And so if a new guy came into the camp and we knew who the president was,
[01:48:37] you know, lots of, we had no information at all or knew who on the world's series,
[01:48:43] for instance, why that was really big deal, you know, to get out there and
[01:48:47] and chop the wood in the radio station and tell the entire camp who was the president.
[01:48:52] Did the guards ever catch onto that five by five code?
[01:48:59] Yes, occasionally a couple of guys were tortured to reveal the code, but they were,
[01:49:05] it was really interesting because they were so uncordinated that they couldn't replicate
[01:49:13] the code and they, on several cases, they tried to trick us and they would empty out
[01:49:18] a cell and they would go into that cell and try to tap on the wall or tug on the wire
[01:49:24] in the code.
[01:49:25] And we knew immediately, you know, that it wasn't an American.
[01:49:31] And you guys would get, like I said, it's interesting you count, you laid out two things
[01:49:36] that first the Vietnamese were like pretty much okay with stealing and so you wouldn't
[01:49:40] get punished for stealing that bad, but the communication thing is what they, is what
[01:49:44] they would definitely punish you.
[01:49:45] Yeah, true.
[01:49:49] I mean, that's the same thing.
[01:49:51] I mean, when we capture prisoners overseas, we don't want to talk to each other, we separate
[01:49:54] them and you don't want to talk to each other.
[01:49:57] And at some point you started getting letters and receiving letters and how did that change
[01:50:04] the environment?
[01:50:06] Well, in the first of all, we were just overjoyed to see that our families, you know, that
[01:50:12] my wife was okay.
[01:50:16] And that they knew that we were alive.
[01:50:21] And so it was a wonderful connection that we made.
[01:50:24] Now, we call them letters, but actually they were postcards and they were highly edited.
[01:50:36] It began with the postcards where just blanked out.
[01:50:39] And then the Vietnamese decided that that's not good enough, they actually would cut out
[01:50:44] certain words.
[01:50:46] And so you get a postcard, I'm six lines, and maybe of the six lines there might be
[01:50:52] 15 words that were just cut out with a pair of scissors.
[01:50:56] So that sometimes you really couldn't figure it out what they were trying to say.
[01:51:01] But, you know, that the fact that that was in the handwriting of a loved one was, was
[01:51:09] very comforting.
[01:51:11] And yet those bastards, and I use that term very specifically for this situation, the
[01:51:17] deer John letters, they leave those completely good to go and turn those over.
[01:51:21] Yeah, you know, I can say bastards for that kind of behavior.
[01:51:25] For bastards.
[01:51:26] Yeah, they were quick to tell us that our wives had filed for divorce or that, you know, our
[01:51:33] parents had died or that any bad news.
[01:51:38] They were very quick to promote.
[01:51:40] Yeah.
[01:51:43] The chain of command that you guys, you know, hear you are in this prison camp and you guys
[01:51:49] all, you know, you figured out, you realize we need to have a chain of command, and you
[01:51:53] put that structure into place.
[01:51:55] And when you did that, it seems like it would have, it seems like that gave you guys
[01:52:04] so much strength as a group to get in the chain of command to organize yourselves.
[01:52:11] It seemed like that gave you guys so much strength and fortitude as you were there.
[01:52:17] It was absolutely our survival.
[01:52:21] Was our chain of command.
[01:52:24] What you don't know and reading my book, because they only happened two or three years ago,
[01:52:28] a study was done of all the combatants of Vietnam, of all the million and a half people
[01:52:33] that were exposed to that war, 30.6% had PTSD.
[01:52:39] Almost a third of the combatants in Vietnam, post-traumatic stress disorder, of the prisoners
[01:52:43] of war, 4% of us had PTSD.
[01:52:48] And it's primarily the guys who were shot down near the end of the war, we're only prisoners
[01:52:52] for a few weeks or a month or two.
[01:52:55] And what we really believe, this is spelled out in another book called Lessons from the Hanway
[01:53:02] Hillton, which was written about two years ago.
[01:53:06] Lessons from the Hanway Hillton explains that the reason why we came back and are in such
[01:53:11] great shape is because of the unit that we had in the leadership that we had in the prison
[01:53:18] camps, because of the 591 guys came home and of the 590, and they thought would be in baskets.
[01:53:26] They would be vegetables.
[01:53:27] They had our families briefed to institutionalize us for the rest of our lives.
[01:53:32] That's what they thought was coming home and what can you expect.
[01:53:35] From 591 guys, we've produced 17 generals, 7 admirals.
[01:53:41] Most of us retired as senior grade military officers.
[01:53:44] We have doctors and lawyers and preachers and teachers and bishops and judges.
[01:53:48] We have a bunch of congressmen, two United States senators, two ambassadors.
[01:53:54] We have a vice president to candidate, a president to candidate, my old flight instructor
[01:53:58] John McCain.
[01:53:59] And they're telling this today where it healthier, mentally and physically, then if we hadn't
[01:54:05] been shot down.
[01:54:06] And it was primarily because of the leadership, the chain of command that we had over there,
[01:54:12] the unity that we found and the purpose.
[01:54:16] That's what the leadership in the prison camp did for us.
[01:54:22] Jim Stockdale was our senior, as our senior residing officer in the prison camp for a long
[01:54:27] time.
[01:54:29] And he said, we are no longer victims of circumstances beyond our control.
[01:54:34] We are not on the defensive here.
[01:54:37] We are military men.
[01:54:39] We are combatants.
[01:54:40] And we will pursue this war until our last breath.
[01:54:44] And so what that did was it gave us a reason to live, a reason to be a reason to unify.
[01:54:52] And the way we fought the war from the prison camp was to try to deny them any propaganda.
[01:54:59] Because as you've already said, John, that propaganda was the mainstay.
[01:55:05] I mean, that was the numeral Uno in their world was propaganda.
[01:55:12] And they felt that they could use us to tell the rest of the world how wonderful communism
[01:55:19] was.
[01:55:20] And now they were right and we were wrong.
[01:55:24] And so they would force guys to make tapes or write letters to the anti-war element and
[01:55:31] proclaim the wonderful nature of communism.
[01:55:37] And so our job was to defend against this.
[01:55:41] And so we set up all kinds of methods so that we would deny them any propaganda.
[01:55:50] Or even in some cases, we would even go farther than the other propaganda.
[01:55:55] We would use their tools against them.
[01:55:59] And that we would tell the world that all by the way, we are being tortured.
[01:56:02] And all by the way, you know, these guys are attacking our neighbor in South Vietnam.
[01:56:07] And so that was the big effort.
[01:56:11] And you know, like I said, this whole thing just came out a few years ago that this
[01:56:17] was the big reason that we did so well and that we're so healthy mentally and physically
[01:56:25] today was because we had this chain of command.
[01:56:29] And on top of that, and this is what I've really wanted a big point I wanted to talk
[01:56:34] about today was what you're just hitting on is that people have this idea that the military
[01:56:39] chain of command is this rigid structure.
[01:56:42] And that's why it survives.
[01:56:43] And that's what you guys were put into a position that it was yesterday's military chain
[01:56:49] of command.
[01:56:50] Just like I had in the civil teams.
[01:56:51] And if you think in the civil teams that I was, God, that was in charge.
[01:56:54] And I was barking the orders and everyone was following everything I said to us.
[01:56:56] It was like, no, it wasn't like that.
[01:56:58] It's a much more collaborative deal.
[01:57:01] And this really became clear one section of the book here.
[01:57:06] I'm going to read that what you were dealing with and how challenging this leadership position
[01:57:12] was for the people that were leading.
[01:57:14] So here we're going back to the book making sure that everyone was on our team was the
[01:57:19] first of many objectives.
[01:57:22] Understanding the rules of the game was the second.
[01:57:24] It was assumed that all of us had a basic knowledge of the military discipline and the
[01:57:28] code of conduct.
[01:57:30] This code, a very general document, was open to many interpretations.
[01:57:35] How we can shoot the code often dependent on severity of the situation.
[01:57:40] No longer could we pick up a telephone and call the Pentagon for advice.
[01:57:45] The broad spectrum of the code divided the men into at least two groups.
[01:57:50] Those who were disciplinarians by nature and interpreted the code strictly and those who
[01:57:55] were liberal and rendered the code loosely.
[01:57:58] We called these two groups the tough guys and the softies.
[01:58:03] But this is the key part right here.
[01:58:05] Softy was not derogatory.
[01:58:08] The name simply indicated a different approach to the code.
[01:58:11] Tough guys who referred to the line I will never surrender of my own free will sometimes
[01:58:16] flaunted their incuragibility and taunted the guards.
[01:58:20] The Vietnamese answered with torture and the tough guys occasionally relinquished more information
[01:58:25] than the softies who never committed themselves.
[01:58:29] Regardless of our attitudes, we were all in the same boat.
[01:58:33] Each of us had acquiesced the Vietnamese controlled to some extent, whether accepting cigarettes
[01:58:38] or bowing to guards.
[01:58:40] The line which separated the tough guys from the softies was often unclear.
[01:58:45] The important thing was to display unity.
[01:58:48] Regardless of our individual philosophies, we clearly understood that the Vietnamese would capitalize
[01:58:55] on any chinks they found in our armor.
[01:58:58] Unity didn't evolve automatically, learning its value required from us such introspection
[01:59:04] and sacrifice.
[01:59:06] How could a camp SRO appease the softies if he interpreted the code too strictly?
[01:59:12] Or if he was too lacks for the tough guys?
[01:59:15] He was in an untenable position, having little control over the actions of men and other
[01:59:20] rooms.
[01:59:21] He had excessive responsibility, but none of the tools of authority.
[01:59:27] The reduction of salary, suspension of liberty, court martial, indeed most of the fellows
[01:59:33] he had never seen.
[01:59:35] His only association being a tap on the wall or a scribbled message.
[01:59:40] To meet this impractical setting, the SRO wielded gentlesticks of diplomacy.
[01:59:46] They knew we were not boots, meaning boot camp, guys fresh out of boot camp, who asked
[01:59:52] how high at the command to jump.
[01:59:54] We were all trained leaders who acted independently.
[01:59:58] For the first few years, the SRO's authority was limited to advice rather than orders.
[02:00:04] Realizing the importance of unity, we respected his advice as the went or an order.
[02:00:11] What if we refused an order on the basis that it did not come from the commander, but
[02:00:14] rather from five men who interpreted through an error-ridden system?
[02:00:18] What if compliance to the order brought certain torture?
[02:00:22] We were very alone in answering these questions.
[02:00:25] Once I received an order, plum, request you communicate with Captain Abbott at all costs.
[02:00:32] What did the SRO mean by at all costs?
[02:00:35] Did it include being caught and put in legions for months at a time?
[02:00:41] So the way that that is laid out, it reflects not just leadership in a prison camp.
[02:00:48] I'm here to tell you, it reflects leadership in every situation because the minute that
[02:00:52] you is a leader, decide that you're just going to impose your well on other people is
[02:00:56] where you start to lose respect and people start questioning what you're doing.
[02:01:01] That's very true.
[02:01:02] I think that the way that this comes out, and that probably is one of the reasons why
[02:01:07] I didn't know about the facts that you just told me about the only 4% having PTSD.
[02:01:13] In obviously, you rattled off all the successful POWs that came out of this horrible situation.
[02:01:20] That openness that opened mind as leaders and as subordinates to say, look, I'm getting
[02:01:28] this advice, right?
[02:01:30] This is so called advice from the boss.
[02:01:33] I respect it.
[02:01:34] I'm going to act on it not because I have to, but because I understand the mission.
[02:01:38] I understand why we're doing this.
[02:01:40] And therefore it's not something that's being imposed on me.
[02:01:43] It's something that I am accepting and pushing forward of my own accord.
[02:01:48] That's a huge difference.
[02:01:49] It truly is.
[02:01:51] But I must admit that when I first heard about this, I was taking it back and I'm thinking,
[02:01:58] you know, this is really silly.
[02:02:00] I've got some senior officer down to the in-sell of the cell block and he's putting
[02:02:05] more restrictions on me than I already have.
[02:02:07] What you're going to do?
[02:02:10] Take away my liberty card.
[02:02:13] Can I go in the brig?
[02:02:15] Yes, I'm in the brig.
[02:02:17] I am there.
[02:02:19] And I had to be convinced that this was in our best interest.
[02:02:27] But it truly was.
[02:02:29] And obviously, that's the reason we came out as healthy as we did was because you say
[02:02:37] better than most discipline, discipline brought about freedom.
[02:02:43] And it was kind of crazy because we were being restricted even more.
[02:02:47] Because of the restriction, we had unity, which gave us the freedom.
[02:02:51] Yeah.
[02:02:52] And then you guys started taking the broad code of conduct and specifying it because you
[02:02:59] guys had so much time into these things that you called plums.
[02:03:02] And you didn't really know what the establishment of the word plums came from.
[02:03:05] But they were detailed tenants of how you all were going to carry yourself.
[02:03:12] And you called them plums.
[02:03:13] And they were things like the order that you were going to go home.
[02:03:17] You know, not eating the Vietnamese and in white Washington, the truths.
[02:03:21] The resistance, how what level of resistance you were going to give when you were interrogated,
[02:03:29] how much resistance you were going to give with, and Rescon 6 was just military bearing.
[02:03:36] And then Rescon 1 was straight up hunger strike.
[02:03:41] That was one of the greatest displays, I think.
[02:03:44] That really affected the enemy was when they found out that when our commanding officer
[02:03:51] of a camp could say, OK, Rescon 3, no more bowing to the enemy.
[02:03:57] And so throughout the camp in these individual cells, you know, there might be 75 different
[02:04:03] cells.
[02:04:04] And suddenly at the stroke of one button, you know, nobody would bow to the guards.
[02:04:11] And it really frightened them to know that we had that much control, that much unity.
[02:04:16] And it was a silly thing.
[02:04:18] But it really felt so good, you know, that we had that we had some leverage here.
[02:04:25] And the other thing was that how you stayed unified was by not accepting favors.
[02:04:32] And then you had to just the dichotomy leadership, right?
[02:04:34] You got a balance between, hey, if I can accept a favor and it's going to help us, it's
[02:04:38] going to make me healthier.
[02:04:39] It's going to then I should probably do it.
[02:04:42] But then they put this, then the commander, the SRO, would put a restriction or a reasonable
[02:04:49] time friend.
[02:04:50] So this was a classic example, because I already talked about how, how in love you were
[02:04:55] with pencils at this point.
[02:04:56] At some point, you got a pencil.
[02:04:58] Somehow you got to, they gave you a pencil.
[02:05:00] And you know, the word spread that you guys had a pencil.
[02:05:04] And the report or the direction came back was, okay, you have 30 days to get more pencils.
[02:05:11] So we're all equal.
[02:05:12] Or you got to give the pencil back.
[02:05:14] And you didn't get more pencils.
[02:05:16] And you had to give that pencil back.
[02:05:17] Yep.
[02:05:18] That's.
[02:05:21] But that you can see how, when you, how unified you are and how, just like you said, that
[02:05:27] shows the, the, the guards and the camp leaders, hey, we are unified.
[02:05:33] You can't break us.
[02:05:34] You can't give, you can't give somebody some special help, but not give it to everyone.
[02:05:37] Yep.
[02:05:38] Unbelievable.
[02:05:39] Now you started talking about this a little earlier.
[02:05:44] And I had to do the little bit deeper on it, because I think it hits a part message, right?
[02:05:48] So when you talk about living with somebody and how, when you're living with somebody, and
[02:05:52] the furthest you can get away from them is eight feet.
[02:05:56] Sometimes I feel like this with echo and we're, you know, we don't even live with this
[02:05:59] guy, but it's sitting in this podcast being for.
[02:06:01] And you start saying, okay, that's going to,
[02:06:03] what, what, things start to grind on you and you rotate you.
[02:06:06] So whether they were extras, like you get a guy that's going to exercise while you're trying
[02:06:10] to sleep or you get a guy that's snores, which if you've ever dealt with somebody that's
[02:06:15] snores, they can't help, but they don't even know that they sound like a chain saw in your
[02:06:20] room.
[02:06:21] And you're deal with, you might get roomed up with somebody that's snores every single night.
[02:06:25] And the worst thing about somebody that's snores is when you start thinking that it bothers
[02:06:29] you.
[02:06:30] It bothers you even for that.
[02:06:32] Right?
[02:06:33] That's the thing.
[02:06:34] Pacing was another thing that would, you know, I'm going to just get up and pace
[02:06:37] and hey man, just sit down.
[02:06:38] So all these things, some POWs ate rice a grain at a time, a grain at a time.
[02:06:46] And, you know, like I got all these little, um, these little, I guess these little
[02:06:55] ediosyncrasies, right?
[02:06:57] And what you eventually said was, I'm going to take those ediosyncrasies that bothers me
[02:07:02] about you and I'm going to take the blame on myself.
[02:07:05] I shouldn't be bothered by this and I'm the one that can't let it bother me.
[02:07:10] And that is a huge difference to what most people do, which is, hey, it's all about me.
[02:07:16] And if you're bothering me, you need to change.
[02:07:19] And your all's attitude was, no, you know what?
[02:07:21] My attitude's, you don't need to change.
[02:07:24] I need to change.
[02:07:25] I need to become more accepting of the way you are.
[02:07:28] That's a big deal.
[02:07:29] If you can make that transition in your life, you can be much happier for us.
[02:07:33] That's true.
[02:07:34] And I'm still trying.
[02:07:37] We all, and it's one of those things where it really is a gain changer because now,
[02:07:47] you know, it's extreme ownership, right?
[02:07:49] I'm not going to blame everything on you for annoying me.
[02:07:51] I'm going to take it on myself.
[02:07:52] And then sometimes you would, you'd have something that really like maybe you couldn't
[02:07:55] sleep and now you've got to talk to somebody else and have, have an indirect conversation
[02:07:59] and set a saying, hey, Echo is really bothering me, clicking his pen over there.
[02:08:03] It's going to drive me crazy.
[02:08:05] Can you?
[02:08:06] Maybe talk to him about his pen etiquette and have him stop that.
[02:08:10] He's not doing it today, sir, but there was an episode where you had the pen in his
[02:08:15] hand, things got a little bit fidgety.
[02:08:17] And yeah, I didn't let it bother me.
[02:08:20] You know what I did?
[02:08:21] Brought him a new pen that didn't have the clicker on it.
[02:08:23] That took ownership of that situation.
[02:08:25] Yeah.
[02:08:26] You know, in today's world, we have so many people.
[02:08:29] They're so offended by certain things.
[02:08:32] And it's the same principle there is that if you offend me, that's really more of my
[02:08:38] problem than it is your problem.
[02:08:40] I'm the one that decides if you offend me.
[02:08:45] So I need to change my idea of what's offensive.
[02:08:49] Yeah.
[02:08:49] One of the things that, you know, where it's easy to sit and laugh here a little bit about
[02:08:57] some of the stuff, but one of your chapters is called insanity.
[02:09:02] And I'm going to the book here.
[02:09:04] The first I knew of it was in the fall of 1968.
[02:09:08] And I didn't understand.
[02:09:10] And old beat up French ambulance, rattled into the courtyard in American wearing prison
[02:09:14] guard, crawled out.
[02:09:16] He weaved like a robot with head down and shoulders slumped.
[02:09:19] It was odd guards never allowed POWs to walk that way.
[02:09:24] We devil timed.
[02:09:25] Who was this man?
[02:09:27] He just come from the hospital.
[02:09:28] Was he tortured in the semi-conscious or was he faking when would we find out?
[02:09:33] The man was hallucinatory, insisting that his cellmates were communists, peace together
[02:09:39] with limbs and heads of dead Americans.
[02:09:42] Who's arm is that he asked?
[02:09:44] Is that my pilot's arm?
[02:09:46] How can you call me speaks such good English?
[02:09:49] Because this man was wasting away was necessary for his cellmates to force feed him.
[02:09:55] The hostile patient was still strong requiring four or five men to constrain him so that a
[02:09:59] bamboo stick could be forced between his teeth.
[02:10:03] Another prisoner masked rice down his throat.
[02:10:05] When they finished he would gag himself to regurgitate what he thought was poisoned from
[02:10:09] the communists, spewing rice all over the room.
[02:10:13] He was entranced.
[02:10:14] When the Vietnamese entered the room, he refused to bow.
[02:10:19] Angered, a guard screamed, bow, bow, and whipped his fist across the expressionless face.
[02:10:24] The man continued to stand, the guards continued to beat him unmercifully.
[02:10:31] Then you guys continued to see this every six months or so.
[02:10:33] We saw our sick POW comrade transported between solitary confinement and the hospital.
[02:10:40] We felt helpless.
[02:10:41] The only way we could assist was with prayer.
[02:10:44] After September 1970, we never saw him again.
[02:10:49] There's a little more to that story that I did not know when I wrote the book that
[02:10:54] he had been the part of an experiment done by a Cuban.
[02:11:00] The Cuban came over to the communist country and as news we could tell, his sole purpose
[02:11:06] of being in Vietnam was to establish the breaking point of an American fighting man.
[02:11:12] This guy that I'm talking about in the book, and I didn't know his name at the time
[02:11:16] I wrote the book, Earl Kobiel, was actually tortured to insanity.
[02:11:22] That is why he was insane.
[02:11:27] His roommates was a very belligerent.
[02:11:31] Here's another leadership principle.
[02:11:33] You've got a group of guys in that prison cell that were being threatened.
[02:11:37] Some of them had broken bones or lastrations because of this crazy man.
[02:11:42] He goes on a hunger strike and is going to kill himself by not eating.
[02:11:48] They had to decide whether or not they were going to force feed him and keep him alive.
[02:11:52] And bring him back to his belligerence or let him die.
[02:11:57] It was quite a dilemma in the prison camp.
[02:12:00] Quite a dramatic time when that was happening.
[02:12:05] They did.
[02:12:06] They forced feed him and brought him back to help and then the Vietnamese for a reason we never
[02:12:12] really knew.
[02:12:13] Possibly because they saw that we had some control.
[02:12:17] They didn't want to stand that control.
[02:12:19] They pulled him out of that cell, put him in solitary confinement and then he died after
[02:12:24] that.
[02:12:26] But it was a tragic event that a guy would be tortured to the point of insanity.
[02:12:34] And that was the purpose of the torture.
[02:12:37] That's exactly how you said you said they were the purpose of the purpose of the
[02:12:41] purpose of the torture.
[02:12:42] Yeah, to find the breaking point and they found it with cobeal.
[02:12:48] You have another chapter and we touched on this a little bit earlier about faith.
[02:12:54] Going back to the book, I will be done.
[02:12:56] I will be done.
[02:12:57] It seemed presumptuous to try to change God's will to make a deal with the omnipotent.
[02:13:04] If I promised to devote my life to the ministry extreme in exchange for freedom and failed
[02:13:09] to follow through, what then?
[02:13:12] No.
[02:13:13] Trying to bargain with God was unfitting.
[02:13:16] And at the beginning, I offered prayers of acceptance.
[02:13:19] I remembered the experience of seeing the Christ-like shadow in the green knobby room and
[02:13:24] the comfort I felt in that time of great need.
[02:13:28] That day I asked God for strength and do whatever hardship I might face and I prayed for
[02:13:33] Anne, not for her fidelity or success, but for tolerance, courage and most of all her happiness
[02:13:42] with or without me.
[02:13:45] I continued this daily prayer.
[02:13:51] Now this was faith was not just years, but everyone.
[02:13:57] And here we go again showing some of the power that you guys had as prisoners.
[02:14:04] Back to the book, thousands of Bibles had been sent to us from church groups all over the world.
[02:14:09] But the Vietnamese gave us none.
[02:14:12] Everything wasn't enough, so we decided to go on a hunger strike.
[02:14:16] Our senior officer informed the Vietnamese that we simply didn't want more food until we
[02:14:22] could have a Bible and uninterrupted worship.
[02:14:27] They retaliated by shutting off our drinking water.
[02:14:30] After a few days, the Vietnamese were ready to settle.
[02:14:33] And so were we.
[02:14:35] They would give us a church service if we abided by certain stipulations, the service would
[02:14:40] be held according to their schedule, no one could sing, no one could stand, and everyone
[02:14:45] would hear strictly to camp regulations.
[02:14:48] Every word spoken in the ceremony was to be written down for the censors perusal.
[02:14:53] After all the restrictions, we hadn't gained much.
[02:14:57] But at least the V had given an inch.
[02:15:00] After a few weeks later, the V saw that our services were not militant and relaxed restrictions.
[02:15:09] They permitted a foreman choir to sing to him's.
[02:15:12] Most important, they gave us a Bible for two days.
[02:15:18] So you guys decided to hold the line on that one?
[02:15:21] We did.
[02:15:22] And it wasn't easy.
[02:15:24] They an interesting thing, back to the leadership, was the guy who promoted this was a
[02:15:31] very staunch Christian guy.
[02:15:33] The number two in command was an atheist and really had no great interest in having a Bible
[02:15:42] in the cell.
[02:15:44] And so when the number one guy told the Vietnamese that we were going to go on a hunger strike,
[02:15:51] they all amounted out of there.
[02:15:52] They took him away so that the number two guy, the atheist, was suddenly in charge.
[02:15:58] It was interesting to watch what was going to happen here.
[02:16:02] It was very encouraging when the atheist said, continue the hunger strike.
[02:16:06] And we're going to get this Bible.
[02:16:08] That's awesome.
[02:16:11] You talk about their perception of the Vietnamese perception of religion in general.
[02:16:18] Back to the book, the large majority of Vietnamese were not Catholic, however, and when they
[02:16:22] discovered us in prayer as they did only the last year they asked, what you derived from
[02:16:28] this thing got?
[02:16:30] We tried to explain that we received strength, comfort, help, and promise of eternal life.
[02:16:35] These concepts were too difficult for them yet many seemed interested and did not mock
[02:16:40] our beliefs.
[02:16:42] To the diehard Vietnamese communist, the state was their god.
[02:16:48] Their truth, their way, their light, the controlling body in the government to create
[02:16:53] infallible canons without fear of correction.
[02:16:57] Whenever peasants asked, who is the state?
[02:17:00] They were told that they themselves were, and that they had control in making decisions.
[02:17:05] Each was told that he was part of the omniscient state.
[02:17:09] He was, as long as he didn't interfere.
[02:17:14] I consider my confinement in prison to be spiritually beneficial.
[02:17:18] I was given an opportunity that few men have the time to pause, to reflect, and to establish
[02:17:25] priorities.
[02:17:26] I found that my previous value system was unrealistic.
[02:17:30] Striped of all my material wealth, the only beacon I could hone, home in on was my faith
[02:17:37] in an unchanging god.
[02:17:45] And you also went very deep on thoughts around patriotism.
[02:17:53] Here's your talk about patriotism, some POWs were super patriots, feeling the United States
[02:18:00] could do no wrong.
[02:18:02] A few felt that we had made a mistake, and it was time for us to get out.
[02:18:07] With most of the prisoners, I accepted the fact that we were not perfect, but felt that
[02:18:13] we were fighting for a worthy cause and should persevere into the end.
[02:18:19] This is something I brought up on many occasions, the fact of how hard we, when I fought
[02:18:25] in the war in Iraq, and we went through extreme measures to try and protect the civilian
[02:18:30] populist and the civilian infrastructure.
[02:18:32] And here's your comments on that.
[02:18:33] Back to the book, great efforts were made to persevere the lives and property of civilians.
[02:18:39] Pilots were threatened with court martial if they failed to pinpoint accurate military targets.
[02:18:44] And to the extent that they would jeopardize their own lives by swooping just above treetops
[02:18:50] to preserve a peasant hut 50 yards from a Sam radar scope.
[02:18:55] The Vietnamese capitalizing on this made targets especially difficult by placing their military
[02:19:01] equipment in the middle of peasant hamlets or next to schools.
[02:19:05] In fact, several anti-aircraft artillery guns were stationed on hospital rooftops.
[02:19:14] And here, your thoughts about the involvement here, the most powerful free nation in history
[02:19:19] could not ideally watch.
[02:19:21] The communist world gobble up and dissolve sovereign nations.
[02:19:27] We had to play the surgeon to exercise the malignant disease of mind control.
[02:19:33] I don't condone war.
[02:19:35] I think there are few justifiable reasons for killing.
[02:19:41] In Vietnam, war was the last ditch effort of international diplomacy.
[02:19:45] It was difficult to justify my six years of imprisonment when politicians with expense paid
[02:19:51] trips to Paris should have solved the problems through negotiation.
[02:19:56] In this case, our negotiations were at the end of their rope.
[02:20:01] The communist didn't understand anything but the big hammer.
[02:20:05] In our B-52s shattered her noise defenses with thousands of bombs, the Vietnamese realized
[02:20:11] we meant business.
[02:20:17] In this thought here, we faced east once a week and pledged our allegiance.
[02:20:25] We contrasted our bill of rights and the constitution to the communist manifesto.
[02:20:32] Daily, we saw how big brother destroyed individuality.
[02:20:39] We compared our lot with that of the guards.
[02:20:44] While prisoners of war were behind bars, the Vietnamese were captives inside their own bamboo
[02:20:50] borders.
[02:20:53] We consider ourselves more fortunate than they.
[02:20:59] One day, we would leave ourselves.
[02:21:06] Powerful statement.
[02:21:08] That's exactly the way we thought was that they were the prisoners.
[02:21:14] We were always of the belief that we would go home.
[02:21:21] They had to stay there.
[02:21:22] They had to stay in their prison.
[02:21:25] We would eventually be released.
[02:21:29] And you were right.
[02:21:33] During the week of 2021 to 28 January 1973 for the first time treatment was actually humane.
[02:21:40] The Vietnamese set up a volleyball net and allowed us to play or to exercise.
[02:21:44] They gave us books and magazines from home.
[02:21:47] We knew something was happening.
[02:21:50] You guys started to sense that you talk about this in the book.
[02:21:55] I didn't go into it much.
[02:21:56] There was always some people that were, what would you call them?
[02:21:59] The people that would look at the amount of food you got.
[02:22:02] They would read the amount of rights you'd be given as to some for seeing the future of
[02:22:08] how long you could be.
[02:22:09] And therefore, what would you call them in the book?
[02:22:11] We call them food at Terri.
[02:22:15] I don't know.
[02:22:16] Gastrona.
[02:22:17] Gastrona.
[02:22:18] Gastrona.
[02:22:19] Yes.
[02:22:20] Gastrona.
[02:22:21] Yes.
[02:22:22] Then you were there.
[02:22:23] The game was more rice.
[02:22:24] We must be getting ready to be released.
[02:22:25] You were there that feeling.
[02:22:26] It sounds like once a year, once every 18 months.
[02:22:30] Oh yeah.
[02:22:31] Here it is.
[02:22:32] Oh yeah.
[02:22:33] Of course, the dependent on the person.
[02:22:34] But some of the guys were so optimistic.
[02:22:39] I was an optimist.
[02:22:41] I would think home.
[02:22:43] In fact, when I was first shot down, I thought we had finally given him a job.
[02:22:48] And the big blow.
[02:22:49] We finally brought them to their knees on the 19th May.
[02:22:54] And the first few days in prison, I thought, you know, this is going to be ironic because
[02:22:58] of the wars over.
[02:22:59] And I fly home.
[02:23:01] And my squattern has to take the ship home.
[02:23:03] I will be there to greet them when they come home.
[02:23:06] And that's seriously positive at it.
[02:23:08] That's right.
[02:23:09] There.
[02:23:10] That is optimistic.
[02:23:11] Those poor guys have to ride the ship back.
[02:23:12] I'll be home before them.
[02:23:13] Oh, man.
[02:23:17] That's like I was, I've said this before on the podcast.
[02:23:19] I always, when I'm in a commercial aircraft flying, I always think if this thing blows
[02:23:24] up in the sky, I'm going to live.
[02:23:26] I'm going to be that guy.
[02:23:27] Of course, I'm not going to go.
[02:23:29] Sure.
[02:23:30] Everyone else is going to die.
[02:23:31] Not me.
[02:23:34] And so finally, here we go back to the book.
[02:23:40] The camp commander once again called our group together about 180 of us old timers.
[02:23:44] It was the first time that all prisoners in the camp were gathered in one place.
[02:23:48] We lined up by buildings and military formation and were called to attention by our acting
[02:23:53] wing commander Lieutenant Colonel Norm Gattis.
[02:23:58] Although Vietnamese officials did not recognize our rank structure, they said nothing.
[02:24:03] Camp commander Redden announcement and the interpreter read the translation.
[02:24:07] It had been a long time since I'd heard English worded so professionally.
[02:24:13] When he finished and told us we could go, our wing commander again called us to attention
[02:24:17] and dismissed us.
[02:24:19] With bowed heads, with heads bowed, we walked quietly back to our rooms.
[02:24:24] We were stunned.
[02:24:26] Some had waited for these words for over eight and one half years.
[02:24:32] The war was over.
[02:24:34] We were going home.
[02:24:42] Did that even feel real at that point?
[02:24:44] You know, you're hopes up so many times.
[02:24:46] It really didn't.
[02:24:48] And they tried to trick us many times.
[02:24:50] They would call us in, hey, sign this confession.
[02:24:53] We'll send you home.
[02:24:56] And so even when it happened for real, we couldn't believe it.
[02:25:02] It wasn't really until we finally got a board that's C141 and it took off.
[02:25:08] The wheels in the well.
[02:25:09] And when there was a little bit of a administrative situation when it came time, because
[02:25:16] you guys had all knew that you're going to follow the order that you were capital, the sick
[02:25:21] and injured, we're going to go first.
[02:25:24] Then the enlisted guys were going to go and then order of capture.
[02:25:27] Exactly.
[02:25:28] And that was part of the plums.
[02:25:29] Right.
[02:25:30] That was part of all of the rules that we were binding by.
[02:25:36] And so we were in, we were numbered.
[02:25:40] Okay, second-inch of guys went home.
[02:25:43] And then it was our turn, but by number of the data shoot-in.
[02:25:47] And they pulled 20 of us out that were out of order of the shoot down date.
[02:25:53] And we made a big deal of this.
[02:25:56] And they told us, well, it just isn't your told us.
[02:26:00] We almost caused an international incident.
[02:26:02] And for whatever reason that we really never knew for sure, except that all 20 of us had
[02:26:12] some disappointing feature to our return.
[02:26:19] And we never knew if that was the reason or not.
[02:26:21] But we were either coming back to deaths in the family or disease or the voice or that kind
[02:26:26] of thing, all 20 guys.
[02:26:28] And so, but we were out of order.
[02:26:30] And we did not know why we were out of order.
[02:26:32] And so we told them we weren't going home.
[02:26:35] And it went back and forth for almost a day that we refused to go home.
[02:26:42] And then finally Colonel Gattas just pulled you and said, listen, you guys are going
[02:26:46] home.
[02:26:47] You gave us the record.
[02:26:57] And then you get to the airport.
[02:27:03] We extended solemnly through a crowd of people and by microphone we were told to walk to
[02:27:09] our receiving officer when our name is recalled.
[02:27:12] As I heard my name, I stepped past a table where Vietnamese and American representatives
[02:27:15] marked off the exchange.
[02:27:18] I salute the Colonel, then another and was escorted by an officer who was so excited he
[02:27:22] could have said nothing more than isn't it great?
[02:27:25] It's so nice to have you back.
[02:27:26] We've all been waiting for you.
[02:27:27] Isn't it great?
[02:27:29] I felt as though he had previously composed what he would say, but in his excitement
[02:27:33] his record stuck.
[02:27:35] He was right.
[02:27:37] It was great.
[02:27:38] I walked up on the ramp of the C141 and saw the first Navy uniform.
[02:27:43] The officer inside that uniform grabbed me and hugged me and told me his name.
[02:27:46] I didn't know him until he told me he was the briefing officer on the Kitty Hawk.
[02:27:49] The day I was shot down.
[02:27:52] Gary Moro and I had once worked many hours together and now we could joyfully recall old
[02:27:57] times.
[02:27:59] As soon as I was in the airplane and nurse kissed me and started the first of a long chain
[02:28:03] of flash bulbs we were given American cigarettes, magazines, and information sheets telling
[02:28:08] us what to expect at Clark Air Force Base.
[02:28:11] The pilot taxi down the runway pushed out, pushed the throttles and at the moment of lift
[02:28:18] off suddenly it hit us.
[02:28:20] We were off of North Vietnamese soil.
[02:28:22] We screamed above the noise of the engines.
[02:28:25] Minutes later, we were soaring above the Gulf of Tauken and saw some of our ships.
[02:28:31] The commander of the seventh fleet sent a message of welcome and Jim returned the radio
[02:28:37] calm with a thankful acknowledgement.
[02:28:40] By nightfall we reached the Philippines in Clark Air Force Base as soon as the doors opened
[02:28:45] and we could see and hear the enthusiasm from what must have been 5,000 people, banners
[02:28:50] and bands, coral groups and cheerleaders, everyone seemed to be there.
[02:28:55] I walked down the ramp, saluted a general and then an admiral.
[02:29:00] As I shook the admiral's hand I was so overcome with emotion that I hugged him.
[02:29:12] So you hugged the admiral.
[02:29:13] That was embarrassing.
[02:29:18] I didn't know why I did that.
[02:29:20] It was just a little bit of a circus.
[02:29:21] Maybe it's maybe they take us to the outfit that you could go for six years.
[02:29:26] I would have all given.
[02:29:27] I think I would have kissed him.
[02:29:29] It'd been on.
[02:29:31] Thank you sir.
[02:29:33] Yes sir, you're allowed to hug the admiral when you come home after that.
[02:29:36] I could tell when you wrote that you were sort of like, oh, what I just do.
[02:29:40] Exactly, overcoming the emotions and then you start kind of the in-processing thing.
[02:29:48] And I'm that out of it.
[02:29:49] When they start handing you magazines, cigarettes and food and all that, you go into that
[02:29:53] someone in here and they're just overwhelming as that.
[02:29:57] That was wonderful.
[02:29:58] It was joyful.
[02:30:01] I was reading through some Vietnam POW poetry and I got caught.
[02:30:10] You know, I was just looking for background.
[02:30:12] I want to learn more and people express themselves in poetry.
[02:30:16] I've got locked into probably a dozen poems.
[02:30:19] That was nothing but different foods.
[02:30:22] Raspberry cake and milk and chocolate milk and everything.
[02:30:28] There was like a dozen poems that were just about food.
[02:30:32] My favorite one was Jerry Coffee wrote a poem.
[02:30:35] It was called Ode to a Weevil.
[02:30:38] The poem was Little Weevil in my bread.
[02:30:41] I think I just bit off your head.
[02:30:45] That was it.
[02:30:46] That was the end of the weevil too.
[02:30:53] So you guys are, you know, that had to be somewhat overwhelming.
[02:30:58] But you know, like you said, you guys were in good, relatively good mental status.
[02:31:05] Wait, where?
[02:31:06] Yeah.
[02:31:07] Amazing.
[02:31:08] Now, as you're going through the motions with the doctors and the physical people and
[02:31:13] the the the the the the the the public affairs people, you're saying, hey, you know, what
[02:31:18] do I see my wife?
[02:31:19] What's up with my wife and no one's really answering that question for you and find
[02:31:24] you get the chaplain.
[02:31:27] And you say, going back to the book here, I looked up at him and said chaplain, I have a
[02:31:31] great deal with faith in you and I want you to level with me.
[02:31:34] So far, I haven't been able to get a straight answer from anyone and I want to know about
[02:31:38] my wife, would you please be kind enough to tell me what's going on?
[02:31:41] And he says back well, Charlie, there is a problem with your wife.
[02:31:46] She is well, but she has some misgivings.
[02:31:49] I'm not sure so the extent, but I'm sure that everything is going to be alright.
[02:31:54] She's written me a letter, but I didn't want to open it.
[02:31:58] I felt that you should.
[02:32:01] You get the letter and it's nothing crystal clear, but the message is clear enough that, you
[02:32:09] know, she's not want the stay married to you anymore.
[02:32:19] And you call her the next day.
[02:32:24] Actually, call my parents first, okay, back in Kansas.
[02:32:29] I tried to call her, but it didn't work.
[02:32:33] In fact, they were very protective.
[02:32:36] First of all, they thought I might be suicidal when I heard the news.
[02:32:43] So they were very protective of me.
[02:32:48] They wouldn't let me call home, even the chaplain in the psychiatrist and psychologist wouldn't
[02:32:53] call home, even to your parents.
[02:32:55] Even to my parents.
[02:32:56] Yeah.
[02:32:57] They had this plan of how they were going to explain this to me, I guess.
[02:33:02] But they wouldn't let me call.
[02:33:03] I finally found a social worker in the hospital.
[02:33:08] You know, hey, I want to tell a phone around here and so I found a phone.
[02:33:13] I call my parents back in Kansas.
[02:33:16] And they were the ones that actually told me.
[02:33:19] You know, never forget my mom's words.
[02:33:21] She said, I sent a gift to you.
[02:33:23] Here's my life if I didn't have to tell you this.
[02:33:25] But she's engaged to be married to another man.
[02:33:30] She's filed for divorce.
[02:33:31] And Judge wouldn't give her divorce.
[02:33:34] The justification was abandonment.
[02:33:39] You know, she's her husband and her.
[02:33:43] And the judge wasn't buying that.
[02:33:45] And so, but no, that was the first thing that was when my mother told me that she had
[02:33:51] filed for divorce.
[02:33:55] You know, I don't want back to the book here.
[02:33:59] A few days later, so you talk to Anne.
[02:34:01] But then some of the stuff you say here is, I actually, I just have to quote it, back the
[02:34:08] book, yet Anne had told me that she wanted to remarry.
[02:34:12] I would not become an obstacle to her happiness.
[02:34:16] I called her parents and they seemed quite unsettled about Anne's decision.
[02:34:20] A few days later, I called Anne again and she complained that many members in the news media
[02:34:24] had been harassing her.
[02:34:26] She said she'd often been misquoted and was the victim of character assassination.
[02:34:31] I then talked personally to some of the newspaper men and told them that I did not want
[02:34:35] her to be maligned in any way.
[02:34:37] In fact, I wanted them to say nothing at all about my wife.
[02:34:41] For the most part, they were receptive to my wishes.
[02:34:43] I gave them a quote which they could use if they felt they had to.
[02:34:46] The divorce is a regrettable, but inevitable drifting apart after so many years.
[02:34:52] By this time, my hope for reconciliation was dead.
[02:34:56] I was determined to take it on the chin and roll with the punches.
[02:35:01] Well, I may be coming off as a white knight here, but it wasn't at all that way.
[02:35:08] I really, to this day, believe that in many ways, the ladies had it worse than we did.
[02:35:15] And it's the family's back here.
[02:35:18] The military guys are over there and I'm sure you've seen this in your experience as
[02:35:22] well.
[02:35:23] We believe in what we're doing, we're dedicated, we focused, we're over there having
[02:35:29] a high-altime.
[02:35:31] The family's back here don't have that.
[02:35:33] And especially my wife didn't know if I was a live or dead from one day to the next.
[02:35:39] She went through the same years, 24 to 30 that I did.
[02:35:44] She was supposed to be faithful to me and she was supposed to believe that I'd come
[02:35:48] home, not knowing if I'd ever come home, and if I did, would I still want to be married
[02:35:54] or would I be a basket case and a burden to her or the rest of her life?
[02:35:59] And the other part of this, which was, which I didn't know at the time, of course, but
[02:36:06] she lost her support group.
[02:36:08] You know, they had a big wives club, the squadron pilots, all of our wives got together.
[02:36:12] And they would take pictures and send us cookies and make tapes and all these things.
[02:36:16] It was a very close net group, the wives of the pilots.
[02:36:20] Well, when I was shot down or when anybody was killed or captured, that wife was sort
[02:36:27] of similarly shunned by the rest of the group.
[02:36:30] Not officially, but just because they didn't want to, they didn't want to be associated
[02:36:41] with somebody who had that problem.
[02:36:43] They didn't want that to affect their life.
[02:36:46] So she lost her support group.
[02:36:50] She went back to Kansas and went back to school there.
[02:36:55] And then when she fell in love with this other guy, she lost what support groups she had
[02:37:00] at home, because her parents were upset.
[02:37:03] My parents were upset.
[02:37:05] I have a brother, 10 years younger than I am, that looks a lot like me.
[02:37:09] And he was of the, about the same age during this, the letter part of this experience
[02:37:15] that I had been when, when Anne and I met.
[02:37:18] And he would go over to Moher Lawn in Kansas and she would break out in hives, serious,
[02:37:25] emergency room kind of hives just at the sight of my little brother, because he looked like
[02:37:31] me.
[02:37:32] And so they finally, the doctors restricted him from ever seeing her because it caused
[02:37:38] her so much grief.
[02:37:41] So it was tough on the ladies.
[02:37:42] Anyway, you look at it and I saw that and I felt that and I felt like I needed to do whatever
[02:37:49] was necessary to give her a little piece.
[02:37:53] Well, you might not think you came off like a white night, but that's pretty, you know,
[02:37:57] awesome treatment of someone for sure.
[02:38:01] Well, and a lot of people, you know, didn't understand it then and even don't understand
[02:38:07] it today.
[02:38:08] You know, some people want to blame her, but I have no animosity, no blame whatsoever
[02:38:17] for what she did.
[02:38:18] I mean, it was, I have other people that will say, well, don't you wish that she had
[02:38:24] known early on that she was going to divorce you?
[02:38:27] No way.
[02:38:28] No, no, no.
[02:38:29] No, her, her, the thoughts of her kept me alive.
[02:38:33] You know, that was, I mean, that was my purpose was to go back and be with her.
[02:38:37] The fact that it didn't happen, of course, is somewhat incidental, but the six years
[02:38:42] I was there.
[02:38:43] It was certainly a positive for me to think about her.
[02:38:48] And you wrap up the book with a chapter called Reflections, which is just phenomenal.
[02:38:56] And, you know, looking back at kind of what you learned there.
[02:39:02] And I'm going to hit some of the parts of it because there's so much that everybody
[02:39:08] can learn from this.
[02:39:12] Going here to the book, our closed society subsisted.
[02:39:16] We ate, slept, breathed.
[02:39:19] We laughed and we cried.
[02:39:21] We were frustrated and we were gratified.
[02:39:24] We were embarrassed and we were proud.
[02:39:27] And slowly, almost imperceptibly, particularly patterns of behavior, edged into our daily
[02:39:33] activities and came until they became full-quies.
[02:39:37] There was nothing unusual about a man pacing the floor for hours like a cage tiger.
[02:39:43] No one, no notice was given to the man lifting his soup bowl and licking its spotless.
[02:39:49] There was no stigma in bearing our souls to one another.
[02:39:53] We had our own mourns and sense of propriety.
[02:39:57] Our microcosm was a petri dish containing its own strains and culture.
[02:40:03] Although we had not been hand-picked, we were, for the most part, out of the same mold,
[02:40:08] that of the professional officer and pilot.
[02:40:12] We were unique prisoners who acted differently from those of Korea, World War II.
[02:40:17] We had been exposed to a different selection process and a new era of lifestyles.
[02:40:23] Rather together in a dubious fraternity of Hanoi skydivers, we were a group of cocky individuals.
[02:40:31] We knew we were the best.
[02:40:34] Strip the personal possessions of million dollar airplanes, of rank and prestige.
[02:40:40] We suddenly found ourselves at the bottom of a dark pit.
[02:40:44] We could no longer look outward.
[02:40:48] Our only alternative was to make the best of what we had.
[02:40:58] And when you have so little and for you guys to take that attitude, then there's so many
[02:41:05] people, you know, and I hear from people all over the world that will reach out to me and
[02:41:10] talk about the situation that they're in a bad situation and negative situation.
[02:41:15] And you know, it's hearing from people like you that makes everyone realize, I need to make
[02:41:20] the best of what I have.
[02:41:22] I need to make the best of the situation on them because if you guys could do it, anyone
[02:41:26] could do it?
[02:41:29] Again, this sounds like Grand High Level Philosophy, but it was almost a survival technique.
[02:41:37] You know, if it's almost, hey, this is the way that we can make it through this is believing
[02:41:45] in the future and believing in ourselves.
[02:41:48] And I look back on that six years and it was probably the most important six years of
[02:41:54] my life because I came through this.
[02:41:57] So we experience with this kind of discipline, it's kind of thought process.
[02:42:04] Hey, it's not the end of your doubt.
[02:42:07] It's the way you play the hand you're done.
[02:42:08] You may not end for a sister's around, you know, you may have trash.
[02:42:15] But if you play it right, it can still be a winning hand.
[02:42:22] A little bit of talk about you coming home, back to the book.
[02:42:24] My first impressions of home were not too encouraging.
[02:42:27] Newspapers and magazines were devoted largely to the drug problem, permissiveness, the energy
[02:42:32] crisis, abounding, crime rate, and eroding, and eroding, and eroding family structures.
[02:42:39] I was worried, worried from a selfish viewpoint.
[02:42:42] I had sacrificed many years for my country and I didn't want some young whippersnappers
[02:42:46] destroying it.
[02:42:48] But I decided to give myself a one year moratorium before taking a firm stand on any of my
[02:42:53] observations.
[02:42:56] And I found that the news media in particular had exaggerated the negative.
[02:43:01] I didn't have my wallet stolen nor did I see opium dents or gang wars when I visited
[02:43:07] schools.
[02:43:09] Instead I was pleasantly surprised with student demeanor.
[02:43:12] Young people freely ask questions and show to genuine concern for answers.
[02:43:17] To me, they seem to have been unduly criticized by an inpatient adult society rather than
[02:43:23] given been given wise counsel.
[02:43:27] They have more freedom and I think they are generally capable of handling those freedoms.
[02:43:33] They are more mature than their counterparts of my generation.
[02:43:37] They have to be to survive.
[02:43:40] And one of the reasons I called that little section out is because guess what we hear about
[02:43:45] the millennials right now.
[02:43:46] We hear the same thing about the millennials.
[02:43:50] And maybe just everyone should give a little moratorium on themselves.
[02:43:54] I'm going to start imposing more moratoriums on myself.
[02:43:58] That's a great idea.
[02:44:00] We have to start definitely doing that.
[02:44:02] So for those moratoriums.
[02:44:04] Yeah, you hear me with a we work with a lot of businesses and companies and people ask us about
[02:44:10] we got these millennials and so hard to lead them.
[02:44:13] And I say, oh, why is that?
[02:44:15] Because they want to understand why they are doing what they are doing?
[02:44:18] Because they want to know what the goal and purpose of their job is.
[02:44:21] That's nothing new.
[02:44:23] Oh, because they're because they want to step up and run things.
[02:44:27] I want that person working for me.
[02:44:31] So yeah, put a little moratorium.
[02:44:36] Right.
[02:44:39] Back to the book.
[02:44:40] Wall and prison.
[02:44:41] I had a lot of time to think.
[02:44:43] The same question kept popping in my mind.
[02:44:45] What am I doing here?
[02:44:47] I'm 10,000 miles from home, cooped up in a communist prison camp, unable to enjoy all the
[02:44:51] wonderful freedoms.
[02:44:52] I was sent here to protect.
[02:44:55] My first answer was obvious.
[02:44:57] I'm fighting for my country.
[02:44:58] I'm serving the United States of America.
[02:45:01] I'd learned in school that America was purple mountain majesties and amber and brohaves
[02:45:05] of grain.
[02:45:07] That it was Congress and the executive and the judiciary.
[02:45:12] These were self-evident.
[02:45:13] But I had to get more personal than that.
[02:45:15] America had to mean more.
[02:45:18] It had to relate to my own freedoms, the product of nearly 200 years of a pioneering
[02:45:24] spirit.
[02:45:26] My nation is a skinny kid who climbs on his bike before dawn to sling newspapers.
[02:45:32] My country is a librarian who sits behind glasses with pencil in her hair and is quick
[02:45:37] to find answers to my questions.
[02:45:40] My homeland is a truck driver who smiles down from his cab and signals me through the
[02:45:46] intersection.
[02:45:48] My America is a personal friend and I am proud to serve her.
[02:45:58] And you go on to say that there must be a thousand definitions for freedom.
[02:46:05] Mine is simple.
[02:46:06] Freedom is the ability to walk through the door.
[02:46:10] It's not the act of walking through.
[02:46:12] That's proof of freedom.
[02:46:14] Not going to church or speaking ones mind or demonstrating in the streets.
[02:46:20] Freedom is the ability to choose whether to go to church to step up on a soap box to carry
[02:46:25] placards.
[02:46:29] Now that I am released again I move about it will.
[02:46:34] I say what I wish.
[02:46:35] I criticize and take criticism.
[02:46:39] I feel free now than ever before because I know what freedom is.
[02:46:45] I appreciate those freedoms because I was once denied them.
[02:46:52] Is there anything?
[02:46:53] Is there anybody that appreciates freedoms more than people that have had those freedoms
[02:46:57] denied?
[02:46:58] Probably not.
[02:47:00] Is there any way to transfer the appreciation for those freedoms?
[02:47:06] I mean I am doing my darn best.
[02:47:08] You are doing your darnest.
[02:47:10] You are in the same business.
[02:47:11] I speak a couple of times a week.
[02:47:13] All of the country has since I came up.
[02:47:15] Trying to impress this on people but the truth is there is no way that you or I can put
[02:47:22] people in that situation that we have been in and make them feel the way they feel.
[02:47:27] There is no way I could deny a person freedom.
[02:47:31] I do corporate workshops as you do and I will put it a person in a room by themselves
[02:47:40] with nothing there for 15 minutes and they go crazy.
[02:47:44] Do you take their phone away from them?
[02:47:46] You can cut that down to 5v8xx.
[02:47:48] They are going nuts.
[02:47:52] There is very little, well I should say this way.
[02:47:57] It is difficult to make that transfer to make a person that appreciate freedom when they
[02:48:01] have never lost theirs and all I can do is tell the story.
[02:48:06] I appreciate your helping me tell the story.
[02:48:10] Trying over here.
[02:48:12] How many occasions do I have to go a little bit of the distance on some stuff that I have
[02:48:18] to read here?
[02:48:19] I am one of those situations to wrap up because I think this is just such an important
[02:48:24] message for me for everybody.
[02:48:27] Back to the book, I am often asked how did you do it commander?
[02:48:32] How could you take six years of filth brutality and loneliness?
[02:48:37] I could have never done it.
[02:48:40] My answer is of course you could.
[02:48:43] As a matter of fact you rub elbows each day with people who have done it.
[02:48:49] We weren't the only prisoners, millions of Americans have experienced the manacles of the
[02:48:54] body or shackles of the mind.
[02:48:58] They have been bound by unfortunate external circumstances, automobile accidents, disease,
[02:49:04] natural disaster, paralyzing grief from the loss of a loved one.
[02:49:09] They have suffered deprivation and humiliation.
[02:49:15] In the midst of victims of misfortune many become too insecure to open doors.
[02:49:22] Instead they allow themselves to wallow in despair.
[02:49:25] They become alcoholics, drug addicts, unfaithful wives or husbands, unruly children.
[02:49:33] In the ability to face personal responsibility is often hidden and seemingly innocent pastimes.
[02:49:40] Golf, poker, television, sleep.
[02:49:44] These diversion spawn intense feeling of guilt and worthlessness.
[02:49:50] And some victims ultimately isolate themselves and become despondent.
[02:49:58] A few commit suicide.
[02:50:02] I had ample opportunity to dam society and curse my fate.
[02:50:10] But what good would that have done?
[02:50:14] To be sure the Vietnamese would not have released me simply because I felt sorry for myself.
[02:50:21] On the contrary they used every available means to make that happen.
[02:50:28] A despondent prisoner was a prime candidate for communist indoctrination.
[02:50:35] My secret for enduring six years of hell is really not a secret at all.
[02:50:43] Just in formal if I had faith in God.
[02:50:47] Knowing that his will would be done.
[02:50:49] I never doubted that I could persevere.
[02:50:52] I simply trusted God's promise to answer my prayers.
[02:50:57] I also loved my country, its people, and its freedoms.
[02:51:01] I realized that because of the human element mistakes could be made.
[02:51:07] And growing up I had discerned that most of the people in this great land are honorable
[02:51:13] and compassionate.
[02:51:16] Second, I had self-discipline.
[02:51:19] It would have been easier to avoid church torture by succumbing to North Vietnamese interrogation.
[02:51:26] It would have been easier to assume helplessness by blaming an evil world.
[02:51:32] I could have rationalized myself into mental and physical paralysis.
[02:51:39] However, strict self-obedience gave me the ability to persevere.
[02:51:47] Finally, I had pride.
[02:51:50] I was proud to know and am nipitant God.
[02:51:54] I was proud of my country and its heritage.
[02:51:57] I was proud of my family, I was proud of myself.
[02:52:03] Faith, discipline, pride.
[02:52:07] Each of these nurtured the others.
[02:52:11] Combined, they allowed me to endure.
[02:52:16] I have joined the ranks of millions of Americans who have applied heroic principles in overcoming
[02:52:23] hardships.
[02:52:25] Every day, a disabled veteran steps away from his wheelchair.
[02:52:30] Every day, a life is resumed after a death in the family.
[02:52:35] Friendships erase loneliness.
[02:52:38] AddX throw away the crutch of alcohol or drugs or obsessions.
[02:52:45] Every day, someone discovers how to love life.
[02:52:49] No matter what the obstacle.
[02:52:53] Every day, someone sees the light at the end of the tunnel.
[02:52:59] These ordinary Americans are not held in a steam as heroes, yet they have suffered grave
[02:53:05] misfortune and have recovered.
[02:53:09] Just as I.
[02:53:12] So you see, I'm no hero.
[02:53:22] And I think it's that very humility, sir, that makes you a hero because you are certainly
[02:53:29] a hero to me and certainly a hero to this great nation.
[02:53:34] Well, thank you.
[02:53:36] Thank you for that.
[02:53:38] And I am.
[02:53:39] So those okay's right back at you.
[02:53:41] You're one of my heroes.
[02:53:47] I don't accept sir, not at all.
[02:53:53] As you look at other people's struggle, with all the things that you mentioned, the drugs,
[02:53:59] the alcohol, the obsession, depression, after the loss of a loved one, how can people find
[02:54:08] the faith, the discipline, the pride that you talk about?
[02:54:16] What you think is that kernel that's starting point that allows those things to grow
[02:54:22] in someone's mind so that they can overcome these kind of challenges.
[02:54:28] I think the first seed that you have to plant in nurture in your mind is that you still
[02:54:35] have the choice that you still are in control.
[02:54:40] Because I think so many people that get bogged down with these challenges we're talking
[02:54:44] about assume that there's no way out that it's somebody else's problem or somebody else has
[02:54:50] to affect their lives and they feel like they have no control over the outcome.
[02:54:56] And so I think that's the beginning part of it is that each of us makes decisions every
[02:55:03] day that control our destiny.
[02:55:06] And it's truly not the things around us.
[02:55:09] It's our approach to the things around us.
[02:55:13] It's our definition of the things around us.
[02:55:15] It's our willingness to accept a challenge and make choices about the things around us.
[02:55:22] And so if you can nurture that, if you can believe that, yes, I have control of my life.
[02:55:29] I am the master of my fate and the captain of my soul.
[02:55:36] And if you can really believe that, then the rest is just a matter of the discipline it takes
[02:55:41] to work through it.
[02:55:44] It's an interesting, I was talking to your son, Alex.
[02:55:47] We were talking about how as he was growing up and he was hearing your philosophy of life
[02:55:54] in the world.
[02:55:55] When he heard me on the podcast and he started saying, wait a second, I've heard this kind
[02:56:00] of stuff before.
[02:56:02] And we were talking about how I've kind of said that now that there's some, I hate to
[02:56:09] go so far as to say universal truths, but there's certainly some things in human nature
[02:56:16] and human life that are very similar across the board.
[02:56:19] And when you take people and you put them through this crazy thing of life and you provide
[02:56:26] them with some similar challenges, they're going to come to very similar conclusions.
[02:56:31] And from what you just said, there's two things that you said that I say all the time.
[02:56:36] And number one, this perspective of, what's that initial spark to say, hey, I can take
[02:56:42] this one, I can take the first thing in my mind, you've got to say, it's like, okay, these
[02:56:45] problems that are happening, I can take ownership of what I can do, I can take ownership
[02:56:49] of my problems.
[02:56:50] I can't blame this guy, I can't blame that guy, I gotta take ownership of them.
[02:56:55] And that's the first thing.
[02:56:57] And then the other piece that you said that I say all the time is you've got decisions
[02:57:01] to make.
[02:57:02] You've got little decisions to make and if you can make that right decision, if you can
[02:57:07] do the right thing at that moment in time, it's not going to change your life, that one
[02:57:12] decision won't change your life, but then you're going to three minutes later, 30 seconds
[02:57:16] later, and now we're later going to make another decision.
[02:57:18] And can you hold the line and get yourself pointed in the right direction and can you have
[02:57:22] the discipline to do that?
[02:57:23] Can you have the faith in yourself that you're going to make that happen?
[02:57:26] And can you have the pride?
[02:57:28] And you know what, Dick Winner's talked about that too on the Lost Padcast, Dick Winner's
[02:57:33] from the first to five or six band of brothers.
[02:57:36] But one of the big things that he was concerned about with his men was if he saw them
[02:57:41] begin to lose pride.
[02:57:44] And how, hey, if I don't care what Eccle thinks of me, if I come in here, I'm not ready
[02:57:47] for this podcast and he's going to look at me like, oh, I guess Jocca was just letting
[02:57:50] it slide.
[02:57:51] And all of a sudden, if I don't care anymore, I don't care anymore.
[02:57:53] Now I'm not preparing.
[02:57:54] Now I'm not getting ready.
[02:57:56] And then you take someone in combat and they start to lose pride.
[02:57:58] And Elvis and they say, I don't care who sees me acting the wrong way, who sees me
[02:58:03] slacking off on a watch, who sees me not cleaning my weapon.
[02:58:06] If I don't care about that anymore, that's the beginning of that downward spiral.
[02:58:10] And pride is one of those things that you have to be careful of because just like any other
[02:58:16] dichotomy that we have, it's human beings.
[02:58:18] Yes, you can get so much pride that you no longer think you can do anything wrong.
[02:58:22] And we know where that leads.
[02:58:24] That's right.
[02:58:25] And you can have not enough pride to keep yourself on the right path.
[02:58:30] Amazing stuff.
[02:58:32] Eko, did you have any questions?
[02:58:41] Just wondering?
[02:58:42] Yeah, well, this one part I kind of wanted to reflect on that.
[02:58:46] I thought it was pretty important, even on a smaller.
[02:58:50] Like the part where you're regarding the guards as in their own prison.
[02:58:56] So you almost like you said that they had it worse than you did.
[02:59:00] So this one time my wife told me to story with her.
[02:59:03] She was in the checkout line, you know, in the store.
[02:59:06] You got it.
[02:59:07] A lot of stuff happens in the checkout line.
[02:59:08] A lot of things happen when the grocery store is at the end of the trial.
[02:59:11] A lot of lessons, a lot of lessons.
[02:59:13] So she found herself in the express line, but she had more than the 15 items.
[02:59:18] And the guy behind her started he was tripping the whole time.
[02:59:22] So she's paying, she's trying to hurry up.
[02:59:24] And he's like, you know what he's called.
[02:59:27] I was talking to the person next to him about my wife.
[02:59:33] So after the whole ordeal, it was kind of like a scene.
[02:59:37] So my wife afterwards was like, oh, I hope you have a nice day.
[02:59:41] Like a, you know, she left.
[02:59:43] So did she say it earnestly?
[02:59:45] Yes.
[02:59:46] And I don't know.
[02:59:48] I don't know.
[02:59:49] I don't know.
[02:59:50] I don't know.
[02:59:51] Yeah, she was probably salty for sure, but at the end of the day, it's kind of like,
[02:59:54] I hope you have a nice day.
[02:59:55] And so she told me that certain she was like, but you know what?
[02:59:58] A big part of me was like, he has to go home with himself.
[03:00:01] You know, and I get to come home and be cool and have all my girl, you know, all this stuff.
[03:00:05] He's like, dang, that's a good way to look at it.
[03:00:07] Because he has to go home.
[03:00:08] He's probably pissed for the day.
[03:00:10] And you know, she gets to go home with 17 grocery items, too.
[03:00:13] After I was in the big a checkout line.
[03:00:16] It's amazing.
[03:00:17] Right, too.
[03:00:18] It's true.
[03:00:19] Oh, yeah, one question.
[03:00:20] You know, when you got arrested when you bought that scooter.
[03:00:22] Right, the question.
[03:00:23] Yeah, you figured about this for sure.
[03:00:24] Because I've been in this experience because you get the scooter, you pack your
[03:00:27] friend.
[03:00:28] Yeah, right.
[03:00:29] And then the cops, they stop you.
[03:00:30] They've been to us all the time.
[03:00:31] But why did they arrest you?
[03:00:32] Those, I mean, is it like, hey, you guys can't do that.
[03:00:35] You're going to jail.
[03:00:37] Well, it was rather unusual.
[03:00:39] I think for these, these cops to see these two little guys, you know, we were 13 and 14
[03:00:44] years old.
[03:00:45] Very big to begin with.
[03:00:46] And the motorski, it was bigger than we were.
[03:00:49] And it's in the middle of the night.
[03:00:50] And we're, I think they felt, they felt like there was something suspicious.
[03:00:56] Yeah, you took it.
[03:00:57] You stole it.
[03:00:58] Yeah.
[03:00:59] Well, uh, all right, Echo, what?
[03:01:03] Sir, do you have anything else on that on that right there?
[03:01:06] No, okay.
[03:01:07] No, no, no further details on the scooter rides.
[03:01:10] No, no.
[03:01:11] We got that clear.
[03:01:12] Yeah, we got little, we got that.
[03:01:14] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[03:01:15] Echo, this, um, you know, do you think that you could maybe tell us how to support
[03:01:22] the podcast?
[03:01:23] Sure.
[03:01:24] To court.
[03:01:25] Of course I can't.
[03:01:26] That's what I'm here for.
[03:01:27] One of the many reasons.
[03:01:29] So, um, if you want to support this podcast, many ways.
[03:01:31] First way, you can support yourself.
[03:01:35] I said it before I'm going to say it again on it.
[03:01:37] Supplements, right?
[03:01:38] You're doing physical stuff.
[03:01:41] Supplements that get to you through.
[03:01:42] I'm not going to spend too much time on it.
[03:01:43] I want to, I want, I'm going to recommend the krill oil and the strunble.
[03:01:49] That's it.
[03:01:50] See, now just sir, I'm not letting this annoy me.
[03:01:53] I'm just going to, I'm just like, okay with it.
[03:01:55] It's my problem.
[03:01:56] I don't want to listen to him talk.
[03:01:58] That's my problem.
[03:01:59] He has the right to speak for a long, you know, hours about, you know, this stuff.
[03:02:02] But here's the thing.
[03:02:03] The part, like, let's say you were to get annoyed.
[03:02:06] The only reason you'd be annoyed, get annoyed is because you know this stuff.
[03:02:10] Some people, they don't know.
[03:02:11] There's all those people.
[03:02:12] They're on a hearing.
[03:02:13] You're on your everywhere.
[03:02:14] But the good thing about on it, you know, that's a good stuff because supplements can be
[03:02:17] kind of junk sometimes.
[03:02:19] But this one, 100% these are good stuff and there's stuff for everything in life, everything.
[03:02:25] We only talk about the krill oil.
[03:02:27] Some other stuff.
[03:02:28] But you go on there, protein, wellness, even like digest it, everything they got on there.
[03:02:33] On it.
[03:02:34] On it.
[03:02:35] That's where you get it.
[03:02:36] If you want 10% off on it.
[03:02:37] On it.
[03:02:38] Another way.
[03:02:42] Before you do your Amazon shopping, click through jockelpodcast.com to do your Amazon
[03:02:46] shopping and then, you know, do your shopping is normal.
[03:02:50] It's a good way to support small action, big reaction, takes what, three seconds, something
[03:02:54] like that.
[03:02:55] Maybe four.
[03:02:56] I don't know.
[03:02:57] Either way, do that.
[03:02:59] That's a good way.
[03:03:00] Also, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already.
[03:03:03] That's iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and other podcasting platforms.
[03:03:08] Subscribe to YouTube.
[03:03:09] Put some excerpts on there.
[03:03:10] Watch them last one.
[03:03:11] That was a good one.
[03:03:12] Good one.
[03:03:13] Two minutes.
[03:03:14] You're just saying, you know, you're getting outside the boundaries.
[03:03:18] I'm pushing it in the end of an excerpt.
[03:03:19] Man, I'm listening to it.
[03:03:20] I'm like, you don't want to eat your hours.
[03:03:22] It's right there.
[03:03:23] But I'm like, oh, wait, wait.
[03:03:24] That kind of helped.
[03:03:25] Was that like, what was it?
[03:03:27] It's a good one.
[03:03:28] It's 12 minutes long.
[03:03:29] Emotion.
[03:03:30] Oh, a hangry getting hangry.
[03:03:31] Oh, getting a controlling your stifling your emotion.
[03:03:33] That's why you need to be stifled your emotion.
[03:03:35] Yeah, exactly.
[03:03:36] That's one of our major meetings every month.
[03:03:38] Right?
[03:03:39] Yeah, you know, when it's level two or lower on the Richter scale of emotions, you can't behave
[03:03:43] your emotions, your behavior can't be based on you know what?
[03:03:46] Look at that little excerpt put more on the show.
[03:03:49] Whatever, I don't know.
[03:03:51] Stop it.
[03:03:52] I don't want to juggle podcasts YouTube.
[03:03:55] Subscribe to that.
[03:03:56] That's what you do.
[03:03:57] Yeah, you know, the jump.
[03:03:58] Sounds like a channel.
[03:03:59] YouTube too.
[03:04:00] It's like just like a channel.
[03:04:01] It's YouTube channel.
[03:04:02] Dunno.
[03:04:03] Anyone who knows what YouTube is going to know this.
[03:04:05] It's all good, bro.
[03:04:06] I think you're already subscribed.
[03:04:08] You get the notification.
[03:04:09] You're all good.
[03:04:10] You're all good.
[03:04:10] You're all good.
[03:04:11] 100%.
[03:04:12] Also, Joc was a store.
[03:04:14] It's called Jockel Store.
[03:04:17] JockelStore.com.
[03:04:18] There's some good stuff on there.
[03:04:19] T-shirts.
[03:04:20] If you like T-shirts, we wear T-shirts.
[03:04:22] I know I do.
[03:04:24] Some women stuff on there.
[03:04:25] Shirts.
[03:04:26] Patches, rashguards, hoodies.
[03:04:29] New rashguards.
[03:04:30] Out.
[03:04:31] Oh, maybe.
[03:04:32] Maybe, maybe not.
[03:04:34] You got to look.
[03:04:35] Get some good stuff.
[03:04:36] We got some kids stuff too on there.
[03:04:38] Yeah, that's right.
[03:04:39] You're wearing one of those.
[03:04:40] Some more.
[03:04:41] You're tough.
[03:04:42] That's right.
[03:04:43] You're new to both.
[03:04:44] Bunch people are hitting me up for war, your kid.
[03:04:47] T-shirts.
[03:04:49] And then immediately, people said, we want them for adults too.
[03:04:54] So we made some for kids.
[03:04:55] But then adults said, we want them.
[03:04:57] So now we got war, your kids.
[03:04:58] Because can you be a 45 year old warrior kid?
[03:05:01] I think I am.
[03:05:02] Sure.
[03:05:03] I say, I'm in the game.
[03:05:04] You're a kid.
[03:05:05] Yeah.
[03:05:06] And if you didn't, I mean, you're going to obviously talk about the work where the
[03:05:09] work could book.
[03:05:10] But man, when you read that book, you're like, dang, I wish I would have read this
[03:05:14] whether it be when I'm a kid.
[03:05:15] I wish I would have read it one day before I read it that day.
[03:05:18] That's how much you wish you would have known all this stuff.
[03:05:20] Because it's a real basic.
[03:05:22] That's so deep, man.
[03:05:23] Uncle Jake's got some info.
[03:05:24] Layers, man.
[03:05:25] Layers upon layers.
[03:05:26] Yeah.
[03:05:27] There's people now identifying layers onto it or by the way, which is a pre- there's
[03:05:30] been some really good identification of layers.
[03:05:34] There's some layers in that book.
[03:05:35] Yep.
[03:05:36] Yeah.
[03:05:36] They're going to get deeper too.
[03:05:37] Yeah, man.
[03:05:38] It's good.
[03:05:39] So yeah.
[03:05:40] Back to the story, Jockels start out coming.
[03:05:41] You can see what's on there.
[03:05:43] It's cool stuff.
[03:05:44] And if you want to support, get something.
[03:05:47] Also, psychological warfare.
[03:05:48] You can know what that is, which I know you already do.
[03:05:50] But it is in the small event that you don't.
[03:05:53] It is in Album on iTunes with tracks.
[03:05:57] And Amazon Music with tracks.
[03:06:01] Not music tracks.
[03:06:03] Spoken word tracks.
[03:06:04] Technically, it's what's called Spoken word.
[03:06:06] Number one, by the way.
[03:06:08] Yeah.
[03:06:09] Still.
[03:06:10] Number one.
[03:06:11] That's the only thing.
[03:06:12] That I mean, for good reason, because look, I think you put together psychological
[03:06:15] warfare too.
[03:06:16] And I got some really good suggestions from everyone on things that need where we need help
[03:06:21] groups.
[03:06:22] So if you got those, hit us up on Twitter to give suggestions for psychological warfare
[03:06:29] to tracks what you need, areas where we need help.
[03:06:33] We all need help.
[03:06:34] Yeah.
[03:06:35] I got some some some, you give me 47 requests.
[03:06:39] Yeah, they're on my personal.
[03:06:41] Yeah.
[03:06:42] I think I got 48 now.
[03:06:44] But yeah, if you didn't know what that is, it's like, it's Album.
[03:06:46] You get it.
[03:06:47] You have, you know, in your journey of what, getting after it, in your getting after
[03:06:51] it journey, but you, you're not strong the whole time.
[03:06:54] You're just not.
[03:06:55] Yeah, at moment.
[03:06:56] Most of a sudden, you're going to have moments of weakness.
[03:06:58] But guess what, in those moments of weakness, you listen to the designated track.
[03:07:03] If you're having a weak moment of weakness when you're trying to wake up at 430, remember
[03:07:07] that's early, 430 every day.
[03:07:10] Yeah.
[03:07:11] The day is probably going to come where you're like, you know what I'm going to hit this
[03:07:14] news.
[03:07:15] Guess what?
[03:07:16] Listen to get up and get after it.
[03:07:19] There's like two or three of those two.
[03:07:20] And I guarantee you won't hit this news.
[03:07:22] You'll get up.
[03:07:23] You'll get after it anyway.
[03:07:24] That's, that's what I think with 100% certainty.
[03:07:27] Anyway, again, it's called Psychological Worcester, Son iTunes, and Amazon Music.
[03:07:30] And some other places where you buy into a music, they're all up in there.
[03:07:37] Yeah.
[03:07:38] Good.
[03:07:39] And also, by the way, the book that we reviewed today with Captain Plum, it's available
[03:07:45] on CharliePlum.com, CH-A-R-L-I-E-P-L-U-M-B.com.
[03:07:54] That's where you can get it.
[03:07:55] It's called I'm No Hero.
[03:07:56] And also, you can get some Jocquite T on there.
[03:08:03] If you need to drink liquid in your life, you might as well drink a liquid that's going
[03:08:07] to make you smarter, stronger, faster, and a more dynamic human being.
[03:08:12] There's only one drink that does that, and that's Jocquite T.
[03:08:15] By the way, it's 147% double blind possible proved and treated in a laboratory with people
[03:08:21] wearing white outfits.
[03:08:24] So you know we're good to go.
[03:08:26] Way to work, you're kidding?
[03:08:28] And this is the book right there that's going to hit your kids from another angle.
[03:08:33] And it's going to get them to understand some things like hard work, discipline, honor,
[03:08:40] physical training, mental training, studying.
[03:08:43] No one think Jocquite was going to write a book of Teach Peel Hall of Study.
[03:08:46] They didn't think that did that, though.
[03:08:47] Tom of the truth.
[03:08:48] They didn't think that?
[03:08:49] No.
[03:08:50] They didn't see my college grades.
[03:08:51] They didn't.
[03:08:52] So you learn how to study, you learn how to get stronger in the book.
[03:08:56] Where the war your kid, get it for your kids.
[03:08:59] And you know what, you're going to read it first.
[03:09:01] And then you're going to get a copy for yourself.
[03:09:03] Where the war your kid, get that.
[03:09:04] Can I say something about one say some part?
[03:09:06] Yeah, sure.
[03:09:07] We have another four hours of space on the corridor.
[03:09:11] So that's the way.
[03:09:12] There's a part when he sees small progress.
[03:09:15] I think he's after one pull up.
[03:09:17] And he's like, yeah.
[03:09:19] Oh yeah.
[03:09:20] He's cleared up.
[03:09:24] The part when he said he scolded him small mild scolding for celebrating to early or too much to early.
[03:09:28] Jake says, hey, take it easy then.
[03:09:30] Yeah, good.
[03:09:31] But then he said, come over here, give me a high five and get back to work.
[03:09:36] We let him celebrate a little bit.
[03:09:37] That's good man.
[03:09:38] That's a good uncle Jake is a good man.
[03:09:40] Yes.
[03:09:41] Good man.
[03:09:42] He puts it out to it.
[03:09:43] Right.
[03:09:44] Also, you can pre-order the book.
[03:09:45] This funny cool freedom field manual.
[03:09:49] Which explains to you how to get after it.
[03:09:54] So get after it in order to the book.
[03:09:57] Of course, extreme ownership.
[03:09:59] This is for your leadership principles tested, testing combat, testing the business world.
[03:10:05] They're there for you to read, learn, lead, win.
[03:10:11] And if you need more than that from the book, if you need more than the book in the
[03:10:16] podcast or for your business or your team, echelon front.
[03:10:19] You can email at info on echelon front.com, leadership and management, consulting, training.
[03:10:29] Also, the muster number three, Austin, Texas, July 13th and 14th, I'm the Barton Creek
[03:10:39] Resort.
[03:10:40] I'm not going to say Spawnymore.
[03:10:42] Not going to the spot.
[03:10:43] No, I'm going to have that evening shut down while we're there.
[03:10:45] Good to be no spot going on.
[03:10:47] So come down, July 13th and 14th, join us in the pursuit of world domination.
[03:10:53] That's the goal.
[03:10:54] And if you can't make Texas, you can come to San Diego, September 14th and 15th, back
[03:10:59] in SD for number four.
[03:11:05] And in the meantime, while you're waiting for that, if you have questions or comments
[03:11:09] for us, you can get us on the interwebs.
[03:11:14] Now first of all, speaking of millennials, Captain Plum Sir, you are all up in the technology
[03:11:21] here.
[03:11:22] Well, you are on Twitter, at Captain Plum, right?
[03:11:28] Facebook, Facebook, what's that at?
[03:11:31] LinkedIn, yeah, same thing.
[03:11:34] Captain Plum.
[03:11:35] Just a social media junkie is what I'm hearing.
[03:11:38] My kids keep me honest.
[03:11:42] And you also, you mentioned quickly while we were talking that you do speaking engagements
[03:11:48] and all that.
[03:11:49] Where's the best place to contact you for those type of events or consulting?
[03:11:54] All on my website, CharliePrem.com.
[03:11:56] So it's all there.
[03:11:58] Awesome.
[03:11:59] So, and that's what we're making fun.
[03:12:02] You as far as Echo and myself, we are also cruising on the interwebs.
[03:12:11] On Instagram, on Twitter, Echo is at Echo Charles.
[03:12:17] I am at Jocca Willink and we are also in the Facebook.
[03:12:21] So you can check that one as well.
[03:12:23] Echo, you got anything else for us today?
[03:12:27] I don't think you so much.
[03:12:29] Damn, Charlie.
[03:12:30] And on there.
[03:12:32] And Sir, do you have anything any other closing thoughts you want to add?
[03:12:36] Well, I want to tell you about the rest of the story.
[03:12:40] Since people might be interested in knowing that my ex-wife married the guy she was engaged
[03:12:46] to and they've been living happily for the last 43 years.
[03:12:51] I remarry to wonderful lady at four kids, two grandkids, and one on the way.
[03:12:57] My daughter is married to a marine and they're pregnant with her first child.
[03:13:00] She would be doing, in fact, any day now.
[03:13:02] I'm a wonderful wife that supports me and it puts up with me.
[03:13:10] And I'm living the dream.
[03:13:13] I really am.
[03:13:14] I don't know how I could be happier in my life.
[03:13:16] I could not write a story that would bring more fulfillment to me personally than why I already
[03:13:23] live.
[03:13:24] I still fly airplanes.
[03:13:26] I have two airplanes.
[03:13:27] I have a home in a hanger as well, my man gave.
[03:13:31] And it's just, it's a delight to be alive.
[03:13:35] And I appreciate you for helping me tell my story.
[03:13:39] Because I believe it's an important story.
[03:13:42] Now, not everybody is going to be a prisoner of war.
[03:13:45] In fact, I hope it's not the people listening to this podcast, whatever, be in that
[03:13:51] eight-foot cell.
[03:13:52] But I was in.
[03:13:53] But we all get into our own little prisons.
[03:13:56] And we can be, I am convinced, just as confined in our little eight-inch box as I was
[03:14:02] in an eight-foot prison cell.
[03:14:05] And so if those challenges are the same, then the solution is the same.
[03:14:12] The solution to the prisons that we find ourselves in.
[03:14:16] The self-discipline that it takes, the believing that, yes, I am a control of my own life.
[03:14:22] I am a captain of my soul.
[03:14:27] And that I do make a difference.
[03:14:30] So you put all those things together and you can, in fact, live the life with the hand
[03:14:36] that you're dealt.
[03:14:37] I won't even try and make any additional points on that other than to say, when you have
[03:14:47] a hanger with two planes in it for your man cave, you win the man cave contest.
[03:14:52] Absolutely.
[03:14:53] That's unbelievable.
[03:14:56] And, sir, obviously, I can't thank you enough for coming on the podcast for writing
[03:15:02] the book for sharing the knowledge that you paid so dearly to acquire.
[03:15:12] And more important than all that.
[03:15:14] I can't thank you enough for your service and your sacrifice for six years for us.
[03:15:25] And for this great nation.
[03:15:28] And you dedicate your book very simply to the families of those brave men who will never
[03:15:40] return.
[03:15:44] And for those families.
[03:15:47] And for those brave men, we will live.
[03:15:55] And we will try to live as you have exemplified with faith and pride and discipline.
[03:16:09] To overcome whatever hardships we might face and whatever obstacles might be in our
[03:16:16] path and through those adversities, discover every day.
[03:16:32] How to love this life.
[03:16:39] So until next time, this is Captain Charlie Plum, Aneko and Jocco.
[03:16:49] Oh.