Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 188 - John Stryker Meyer and Mike Glover

Episode Date: July 5, 2021

John Stryker "Tilt" Meyer is an American author and U.S. Army Special Forces combat veteran of service in covert reconnaissance with the Studies and Observations Group, also known as MACV-SOG. Meyer has published two works of nonfiction related to his experiences in the Vietnam War. Meyer's first book was a nonfiction memoir, first published in 2003, titled Across the Fence: The Secret War in Vietnam. Mike Glover spent 18 years in the US Army and as a government contractor for OGA (Other Government Agency). He served as a SGM (Sergeant Major) in Special Forces in various positions and deployed multiple times to combat theaters. He is an expert in Counter-Terrorism, security, and crisis management operations and is the host of the Fieldcraft Survival Podcast on iTunes and Soundcloud and the CEO of Fieldcraft Survival. https://www.Babbel.com https://www.TenThousand.cc https://www.Magicspoon.com/clearedhot https://www.Grammarly.com/clearedhot  

Ladies and gentlemen, got a hell of a show for you today, but before we get into that, please join me as we discuss briefly the brands that make this podcast possible. This episode is brought to you by Babel, and perhaps you have travel abroad plan for this year or this summer, and you need to learn a language for your destination. You can do so with Babel, the number one selling language learning app. From ordering in restaurants or asking for directions or just to gain a deeper understanding of the culture, BABL makes the whole process of learning a new language addictively fun and extremely easy.

Bight-sized lessons you can actually use in the real world, Babel is a can't miss travel essential. A lot of things I like about this, my favorite those short 15-minute lessons that make it a perfect way to learn a new language on the go. Unlike the language classes we likely all took in high school, Babel is designing their courses with practical real-world conversations in mind, stuff you need for everyday life.

Many other language learning apps use AI for their lesson plans. But not Babel. Theirs were created by over 100 language experts. The teaching method has been scientifically proven to be effective. With Babel, you have a choice of 14 different languages, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and many more. Babel's speech recognition technology helps you improve your pronunciation and accent. And there are so many ways to learn with Babel, in addition to lessons you can access podcasts, games, videos, stories, and even like live classes. Personally, my preference is to do this while in the car. It's not going to say it's mindless, allows me to get where I need to go and brush up on my Spanish a little bit. Right now,

when you purchase a three-month BABIL subscription, you'll get an additional three months for free. That is six total months for the price of three. Just go to babble.com and use the promo code cleared hot. That's B-A-B-B-B-B-E-L-com code cleared hot for an extra three months free. This episode is also brought to you by 10,000. The makers of the highest quality, best-fitting, and most comfortable training shorts that I have ever worn in my entire life. I wish I got to issue these things when I was in the military. Whether you're into training, lounging, or everything in between, let me just tell you, these things are awesome. Right now, my favorite, the seven-inch tactical short. Now, let me just tell you, I'm not doing anything tactical in these shorts, but I love

them. They're the ultimate combination of durability, mobility, and versatility. It was develop and tested with over 50 special ops members who put it to the test by rucking, swimming, lifting, and just about everything in between. We're talking EOD, Raiders, Army Green Berets, Army Rangers, Army Air Force, special operations, and unfortunately, Navy SEALs, which actually might be a reason not to buy it. They're chock full of features to stand up to your toughest sessions. The tactical short was created to withstand the demanding and ever-changing requirements of military fitness, ultra-light rip-stop fabric, tough as nails waistband, permanent anti-oader treatment, no-bounce pocket, medium compression, anti-chafe liner, side slits and four-way stretch for maximum range of motion.

I highly recommend their lightweight and durable shirt as well. Like I said, from rucking to Olympic lifting to obstacle course training, these tactical short They stand up to the challenge, and they are just incredibly comfortable. The first thing I put on when I get home. 10,000 is a direct-to-consumer company, so no middleman. You're going to get premium fabrics, trims, and techniques that other brands simply cannot afford. They have a collaborative product development. A team of over 200 athletes is out there testing their stuff.

Over 9,500, five-star reviews and free shipping and returns in a lifetime guarantee. 10,000 is offering the listeners 15% off your first purchase. Go to 10,000.cc and enter the code cleared hot. receive 15% off of your purchase. That is 10,000.cc and enter the code cleared hot. This episode is also brought to you by Grammarly. If you use electronic devices to communicate, listen to me right now, you need to get on board with Grammarly. If you're like me, double checking, turns into triple checking, or it even sometimes leads to starting all over again. I get confused sometimes with the tense, the spelling, you name it. And I don't like to have doubt when I'm going to send an email or a

message or a project and I will take all the help that I can get. I use Gramley every single day specifically attached to my email software. It provides for me real-time clarity suggestions. So as I'm typing, if there's something where I could do better, perhaps the tense is wrong, it underlines it for me and I can go right back and correct my error as I am working through the project. It has vocabulary suggestions, and let me just tell you, I need those all the time. If you're a fan of synonyms or you're looking for them, Grammally Premium is going to offer suggestions to replace overused words. and phrases, and probably my favorite part of this, the tone check, which allows you to determine how the reader could perceive what you're saying, but it goes beyond that. There's a plagiarism check,

like I said, a vocab suggestion, overall writing score, clarity checks. It's a great integration to any type of writing that you have to do. Like I said, I use it on every single email that I send. There's a free version of Grammally, and it's going to help you with your basic spelling, grammar and punctuation mistake. And then there's Gramley Premium, a feature-packed edition that is going to help streamline your workload with integration into Microsoft Office or your internet browser, your phone, and more. And you don't have to worry about a thesaurus tab or research because there's going to be vocabulary suggestions. And you can get straight to the point with those clarity suggestions that are going to eliminate unnecessary or redundant words

and phrases. I am not joking. I use this every single day and it has helped my written communication. If you're interested in cutting down on editing time and writing more confidently with Gramerly Premium, you can get 20% off Grammarly Premium right now by signing up at Grammarly.com slash cleared hot. That's 20% off at G-R-A-M-M-M-A-R-L-Y.com slash cleared hot. Lastly, this episode is brought to you by Magic Spoon. The only cereal that I'm aware of on the face of the planet that will actually change your life for the better. I have loved cereal my entire life, but as I age, I don't really like what's in the cereal. This is my number one go-to snack food. It's in the pantry.

It's actually on the counter. It's in my car. And I've actually found it sometimes in my gym bag. Didn't get there by accident. Of course, I put it there. Why do I love this stuff so much? And actually, I've got message after message after message from friends saying that they love it as well. Why do you love it?

One, it's ridiculously delicious. But with that, zero grams of sugar, 13 to 14 grams of protein, and only four net grams of carb in each serving. 140 grams per serving. and it's keto-friendly, gluten-free, grain-free, soy-free, low-carb, and GMO-free, but doesn't taste like cardboard. You can also build your own box or get a variety pack with available flavors like cocoa, fruity, frosted, peanut butter, blueberry, and cinnamon. My recommendation, build your own box, and then play around with combinations. You can even go two or three types of combinations, depending on what kind of game you're bringing. Go to magic spoon.com slash cleared hot to grab your delicious cereal and try it today.

and be sure to use the promo code cleared hot at checkout to save $5 off your order. MagicSpoon is so confident in their product, it's backed with a 100% happiness guarantee. So if you don't like it for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember, you can get your next delicious bowl of guilt-free cereal at magic spoon.com slash cleared hot. And use the code cleared hot to save $5 off. That's it. Let's talk about my guest today. God damn, this episode was amazing.

I was linked up with Mr. John Stryker Meyer through Jocko. Actually, I'll take a step back. I was introduced to him by listening to him on the Jocko podcast. I couldn't believe it when we started directly communicating, and then he agreed to come up and record an episode. Now, he was a Green Beret, specifically a Green Beret that served in the MacV. Sogg in the Vietnam era, which I know very little about. But I know another Green Beret.

I know quite a few Green Berets, actually, but this one, Mike Glover, a repeat guest on the podcast, phenomenal human being is more of what I would say is the modern era of Green Beret. And I could think of nothing better than getting somebody from the Vietnam era and somebody from the Global War on Terrorism era, getting them together and talking about whatever we want to. And that is what episode number 188 is all about. Let's get into it. Cleared Hot, episode 188 with John Stryker Meyer, also known as Tilt and Mike Glover. Enjoy. I'm looking at danger close now. They gave me a commission at the 12-year mark.

If you can believe that, that's how I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the military advancement system was completely broken. Did Jock get a commission too? Yeah, but he got, well, I guess both of the commissions were real. He got an education before his commission. Oh, okay. He went to college. And I think the Navy paid for his. But was he a seal before?

He was. Oh, wow. He was an enlisted seal before. I think he started off as a com guy. Oh, wow. Okay. So he's an old school, dude. Kind of old, like 80s.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We're talking full Oakley Blades-era team guy. Wow. Yeah. And then that's before Ramadi. Yeah, oh, yeah.

This is before 2000. The tightest of the tight shorts. Is this Charlie Sheen era-ish? He was post-Post. Charlie Sheen. Yeah. Because Ramadi was 2006. That's where.

That was 06. But he came in, I'd have to say the 90s. He came into the military. Okay. Oh, okay. That would be my guess. Early 90s. Yep.

Yeah. That makes sense. That would be my guess. Where the hell do we even begin? Well, this coin is amazing. It is. Thank you so much for that, John. It's my honor.

Tilt is your call sign, right? Yeah, that's my nickname. Tilt. That's so awesome. Goes back to pinballs. Yeah, rattling pinball machines when you are not appreciative of the result. Well, you see, when you guys lose, you walk away pissed. When I lose, I shake this shit out of to see my name in neon, and then I walk away.

Fair. Indeed. I mean, the best way I think to describe that coin, Mike, you let me know is if you could, John, perhaps, give us a history of Mac V. Sog, where it actually comes from and what it was. Sure. We can give the quick thumbnail sketch to get in. Yeah. Our government, in its infinite wisdom in the early days of the Southeast Asia conflict in Vietnam, it entered into a treaty or a pact in a court or some kind. because after Dian Bien Fu fell in 1954,

the communists were still moving people south because South Vietnam was independent, corrupt issues, of course, but anyways, that was our future ally. So our government entered an agreement that we would withdraw all of our combat troops from Cambodia and Laos. And in North Vietnamese, the communists being the honorable scumbags that they are, had all guys.

agreed publicly on it. And of course, by that time, they had been coming down to Ho Chi Minh Trail for several years, bringing down the trail, expanding it, because they knew that things were moving forward. And our presence was continuing to support South Vietnam. They continued to influence anything they could to work against the city and government. Because, you know, the communists, they'll do anything to take it over. So, um, it's a lot of it. So, um, it's a In 1964, by that time, our government withdrewed troops, our operations, White Star, our Green Berets that were in Laos, were all withdrawn. Were they there publicly at that time?

This was, like, I don't want to say, I guess it would be an unclassified operation, like everybody knew they were there? Yeah, they knew they were there, but there was, you know, they didn't talk about it much. This is under Eisenhower before Kennedy gets in. Then under Kennedy, they withdraw because Kennedy and his administration believed whatever they thought. But anyways, the bottom line was by 1964, they said we need to have cross-border operations. And of course, the communists in our state department tied our hands in the very beginning. And for across-the-border missions into Cambodia, they said, you can only go with five men.

You can't carry American weapons. and even in Cambodia, as late as 1968, we still had no attack air. The majority of times with just helicopter gunships. That's Cambodia. So 64, the sequel war kicks off. It ends in 72. It's an eight-year secret war. Had Chief Sog, who was the overseer of it, always worked with the Air Force to get our assets in.

And by the time I arrive in 68, the war had been going on for four years. and by that time they were developing Saug, Hunter, Killer teams that were designed and trained when we were on the ground in layoffs of Cambodia, their job was to find us and kill us and anybody, and just to kill the Americans, not the Indige. That's an interesting mind fuck. Oh, yeah.

To sow discontent, distrust. Sure. Weird, the indigenous people came back, but the Americans are dead. Yeah. That'd be a tough one. You're taking trust equity out of the bank account probably unintentionally, but that's going to be very effective.

Amen. So on January 1st, 69, our first team got hit. On the morning of January 1st, 69, three Americans are wiped out. And the indigenous escaped. They went back, picked up the bodies, and then that psychological impact hit. And like in my case, we were lucky because our team was really tight. Our team, I entered the sequel war in May of 68, came into camp. our ST Idaho

disappeared so there's an instant opening in Recon and that's how I started Spider Parks had been the team leader so he was on the old team he just got promoted

so he missed that mission and fortunately for the team our interpreter Hep and Sal who was the counterpart they were they didn't go on that mission so we built the team around them in SOG itself

the MACV SOG was that built from the Green Beret community? Is that the inception of that? Right. In the very beginning, there were Navy SEALs that ran some recon and saw I got a cantoon

in the early days. And then there was like a photo shoot and they're like, we got to get out of here. No more hair gel. We're out of here? Like, what? I'm not getting a book publisher

immediately. I'm out. We don't have the small mirrors. Oh, those are for signaling, not like, hmm, like. So I'm not sure, but yeah. And of course, the seals at that time, doing the missions on the coast.

Yeah. Taking teams up, going in there. You had your two Medal of Honor recipients, Norris and Mike. Yeah. Oh, man. If you hadn't, yeah, I know, damn it. It'll come to us right away. But anyway, so they were doing their thing up north.

And in fact, a guy I grew up with in Trenton, New Jersey, and when we got our SOG briefing, I met him there, and he was getting briefed. He said, I've been out with the seals. They kept going up north and they needed the commo guy. So he was riding with the seals as a commo guy going up north on whatever those little boats were that they had with big engines. So my dad, interestingly enough, I just did a podcast with a guy who wrote, You'll Dig this book. It's called The Hardest Place. History of the Petch Valley, Kuhnard, Korngal, all of that.

And he had heard my dad was in the Brownwater Navy. So my dad, those boats were probably Mark I's. So when I left the SEAL teams, we were working with Mark Vives, my dad was cruising around with probably at the time a glorious handlebar mustache, but two twin 50s and just foot pedals to mow shit down. Nice. And that's how I ended up hearing about SEALs was from him. They were an insertion extraction platform,

brown water navy going in and out of the Delta. And we have one of our teams that was on a, quote, training mission in country on an island. We couldn't get helicopters to them, and they got run into the sea. and the Navy came in and saved their ass. They got to run into the sea on a training mission. Yes. I've been on plenty of training missions all in the U.S. And the biggest threat that I had was tripping and falling

and hurting myself because we were shooting blanks. Yeah. There was a stump on that mission that we talked about outside, the tailwind. There was a Tom Stump. Somebody, I heard, Jop. Oh, no. This is Stump.

Oh, okay. without the last letter. But he's an A1 Skyrater pilot. Okay. And he literally saved the SF team. Yeah. Because it was on day four of mission. They've been in.

And at that point, they got the full attention to the NBA. And they were up against wave attacks. And they ran out of Claymore's, and they were getting ready to get overrun. The weather was bad. And the 1-0 was talking directly to Tom and said, save us. Yeah. And, of course, I learned this after the. book is written. Yeah. But so Tom found a hole in the sky, came down and made the gun runs and

broke the back of the wave attacks. Yeah, he said he was so close you could see that he had, you know, you could see his shave status in that morning because he was so close to him. And like, so, and this is A1 Sky Raider, close support. My last mission, we had some gun runs with A1s. And on one of the gun runs, he was so close, I could tell you that when he came in, he flipped on the side a little bit, he was smoking a Philly Sharoot. Of course. Yeah. Of course.

I salute of the course. That's so awesome. Oh, yeah. Can you even imagine, Mike? Like, I grew up in a world where, I mean, my world as a young man. And me and Annie have talked about this, was reading John Plaster's Secret Commandos and Sog. He's the godfather of Sog writers. Absolutely.

What's cool is I met him when I graduated at Q-Course in 2003 at a book signing at the Airborne, Special Operations Museum, he came and he signed a book. But my whole premise for like understanding what the military was going to be was from a SOG experience, right? Really? I wanted to be a SAG guy. And it was all from that, like the first book I read really in depth and in detail that made me want to be a sniper was the ultimate sniper that plaster wrote that was available at Fort Bragg and, you know, General Jackson's and Ranger Joe's. You could pick it up. But I'm a 12-year-old. year old, like reading through this stuff. No.

12 years old. I was telling Andy, like our generation now, when we got out and started doing just even having these conversations like this, a part of the community that we belong to just as yours is, it's like, dude, why are you talking about anything that we did? And I'm like, well, one, it's helping people. Yeah. And it's educating them, but also a lot of things are lost. And so if you have an in-depth conversation about it, you're also inspiring a next generation.

So I was inspired by saw guys like you who were coming out like plaster and telling their stories. Yeah, 20 years later, we waited. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was the role, the NDA was 20 years, right? Yeah, yeah. And then when you guys started coming out, that inspired a whole generation of warriors. And my fear is, like even now, there's only a few select guys that are coming out talking about stuff, especially from the early GWAT era and inspiring a next generation.

And if we don't keep doing that, who's going to be the next generation to fight for this country? I don't know who that's going to do. I mean, if I think back about the first books that I was ever able to get my hands on, it was men with green faces. So even my generation. So I joined the military August 1st, 96. And almost all of the information I could find was Vietnam-based and not specific at all. And actually the teams, Vietnam was actually really the first time that the teams were tested in their medals. you know, the maritime environment where they would start from the water, go operate on land and come back to the water, which we slightly deviated from an Iraq and Afghanistan.

Well, but Team One earned their spurs down south. They did, but it's the same thing about Mike reading about your generation and inspiring. I read about the guys at Team One. Literally, I remember reading when I'm like 12, 13 years old about ambushes where they would, you know, again, the men with green faces and they'd paint their face up, which is, I mean, you probably have worn camo face paint. I'm going to say Mike and I probably have not for real. I did it a lot in training evolutions. And Garrison and training a lot. But that is what spurred my desire, those stories of hearing about that.

Well, actually, I mean, I think it got it hooked. It's hooked into me early, but those stories that I were able to find, it was unbelievable. I do agree with you that I think that you have to continue to have those conversations. Well, let me say at a footnote, thanks to what you're doing and Jocko, and now I understand you're doing some podcast. Yeah, yeah. See, this is the next wave of the future because there are people responding to that. My first Jocko podcast two years ago, if you haven't seen it yet, Jocka Podcast number 1A

0. Yep. But since then, I've had responses literally from around the world. That's so cool. And there are young people to say, in fact, I got to answer a kid now, he's waiting, saying, hey, I want to do it. So I tell them, you know, go online, read what you got to do, get in shape, and learn land have.

That's your advice? People reach out to me saying they want to be a seal. I'm like, just quit now. It's easier. Start working on your publishing. Start writing, man. Do you have an outline for your book yet? No, you're trash.

Like you go into the seal teams with your book written. I can say whatever I want. You can. It's kind of true, though. There have been quite a few seal books. And, you know, here's the thing. I think it matters how. you talk about it.

You know, 30 seconds out, right? The clothing brand, Sean Evangelista. He's been on the podcast before. He's coming up on Saturday. We're going to do another episode. Oh, cool. And he wanted to open with, when is sharing too much? You know, at what point does it become, you know, a negative consequence to the community?

You know, when is the juice worth to squeeze? And I think a lot of it has to do with how you talk about it, because we can sit here and talk about all of our experiences and not give away the TTPs. That's where I think it is too far, where people try to monetize the actual tactic, technique, or procedure that we are taught. Oh, yeah. That, I think, is a bridge too far. But talking about the experiences or the lessons that you learned about yourself, that is

invaluable. And I think that's what springboards the next generation as well. I mean, I hope it makes an impact. I'll be honest, completely selfishly. It is incredibly cathartic for me personally to sit down and talk about some of the past experiences. It has helped me address them and then work my way through them. So if other people benefit from it, that's great. But, I mean, full disclosure, I'm probably benefiting the most from it out of anybody.

Yeah, I feel the same way. Since I've been, my podcast, my personal podcast is actually called Mike Force. Oh, is that right? Yeah, my name is Mike, but Mike Force. No, I understand. Obviously, the QRF elements you guys had. But everything in my mind about. Well, let me just say interrupt for a second to say Mike Force, because this is from our ear,

but one of the veterans of Mike Force, Jack Tovin, he explains. It says, you saw guys went out and you were a clandestine. You watched, look for the enemy. And then you tried to avoid contact with Mike Forrest. We hunt for those fuckers. That's awesome. I just assumed you were super arrogant to name it after yourself. I had my own, I had no idea that it actually, I'm like, wow, Mike is at a different fucking level.

And the Mike Force, they saved many lives. When the A-camp would be overrun or in a process of being overrun, who do you send? Mike Force. That's so awesome. Oh, it was incredible. I should probably clarify that because maybe she would all know. I read that. I'm like, God, what an arrogant douche.

But also, I love him, so I'm listening. There we go. Man, I don't even clarify. Oh, man. Clarification never won, Michael. I just, like, the idea of, I mean, I'm almost at a loss for words because looking at SOG growing up, everything that I wanted to be as a Green Beret, tied back to that experience.

That's amazing. That I read about it. And I always, like, I was always disappointing because I, like, guys would always, the hard hitters in special forces, the green berets that were like there and they had been built around a culture they read about or their grandfather or father fought in. They were there and they wanted to be a sod guy. And we talked about, I remember having conversations in the fire base in Conor province. Really?

Thinking, like, how do we reinvent these reconnaissance type operations and use some of the, your guys as TTPs that we knew about and kind of do some of the things that we were doing, which were cross-border at the time, to enact and to facilitate all the things that we were doing the right way. And we actually had, I remember in on my first ODA, my first attachment, 366, a lot of the guys that were there like Ben Bittner, who was killed later, a good friend of mine, we were all about Mac V. Saug. And so we started doing recon missions on our own, not our own accord, but as an ODA to do small indigenous operations because, you know, the recon answer for the military is like you need 15 guys, you know, you need a minimum of a 240, two saws, air support and all these

things. And I'm like, these guys were doing recon missions in Vietnam, sometimes without any support, right? Their QRF in one case with an indig mountain yard commander, I believe, was like one guy. Like nobody was willing to go. So this one dude hops on the bird and he's like, I'll go. Just send me. I'm going to be there. So it's like I constantly live this vicariously through you and your experience is unbeknownst to you, obviously. But it's so, what's really cool, Andy, the fact that, you know, you had me come out here because you told me John was going to be here is there.

By the way, I'm here because he told me you were going to be here. Just so no. Is that how he works? Man, this just got. This got awkward. This got awkward. I think that your generation is now passing away, right? It's like your generation growing up and seeing World War II veterans go.

And we are losing all of this information and experiences and stories that's such an impactful thing, including transitioning, which I want to talk about later, including like a simulating and culture and then coming out and talking about stuff. I reached out to an SFA. It was a Facebook Special Forces Association page. And I said, hey, my name's this. I'm a green beret. I don't think I'm a douchebag. You guys can vet me. I'm trying to talk to MacV Saw guys or Vietnam Air SF guys

because I want to start archiving the history. Not even for a podcast. I just want to put it on a microphone so we can record it and so we could hold that, put it in the Smithsonian and save it for future generations. Because once you guys are gone, all of that is gone, which means, you know, we got to extract everything we can and John. We got to interrogate the hell out of them, get it all out.

You know, you said something interesting talking about being up in, you know, the northeastern province, literally walking distance from Pakistan, trying to figure out how you replicate what your units were able to do. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. We're talking two U.S. service members and three to five indigenous personnel that would launch with you guys. It would be two or three. Okay, so. A few of our guys ran soul. by themselves where they're indigge.

But those are separate stories, but they're... So let me tell you what would happen if you submitted over PowerPoint, which is how we got mission approval, something like that in the modern military. I don't even know if they would bother to respond to you. They, at least in every battle space that I ever worked in, they would never even consider that level of risk. I mean, I wasn't joking when we were sitting out in front of the restaurant

before we came up here. I cannot believe that every single one of you do not have a Medal of Honor. Like the things that you guys did and the risk you were willing to tolerate is something that I have a hard time wrapping my head around it because it is so completely different than the military world that I grew up in and operated in. Mike's not joking. 15 people, you may even still get told that that's not enough. And then you're going to need to have...

Body experts, huh? Yeah. Well, by somebody who's going to actually bottom line it, right? Expert or not. As opposed to SF guys thinking on their own. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But the solution became more numbers, not less. You know, I remember my first rotations to Afghanistan, we were in Hylux. The best vehicle on the face of the planet. It's basically a forerunner for people listening. But I believe they could go vertically. And then it was crazy what they could go over.

And my first tour there, we weren't armored at all. I mean, you could punch a hole through this thing with a butter knife. And then it went mandatory humvees. mandatory up armored home vs, then mandatory MRAPs. And every time that you do that, it requires, you know, an MRAP's going to hold like maybe six people plus a driver, a gunner, and a vehicle commander. And a mechanic. Yeah, you're going to need that. Or you're going to end up in the field, which is also fun sometimes, too. Yeah.

Really? Yeah, oh, yeah. But then you go from needing one vehicle, now the minimum forces you've got to take four out of the door. And then you need to have a QRF on standby. and then you need to have mandatory assets over ahead, a predator or a reaper, or fixed wing, close air support. There's no, hey, I'm going to take another American

or just myself and a few of the A&A or A&P and go solo Mish. You would get laughed out of that mission approval process. It went the other direction. It became a matter, in my opinion, and I can only speak for myself, but what I saw is it became a numbers game and I made an escalating numbers game,

not a decreasing. because even the first steel stuff in Vietnam, small units, and they would go and just disappear into the vegetation. They would do the reconnaissance, ambush, grab it until they could and get the hell out of there. I'd never got to do a mission that was like that. Never. Oh, yeah. I almost, there's a, there's a, almost a guilt in me because I'm a historian of war,

so I've studied all wars, and I'm very passionate about the understanding of strategic warfare and how we fight it. And when I see guys from Vietnam, especially MacBissau guys, and in my own context for, you know, I have four, four and a half years of combat, nine combat rotations, and I feel guilty because I know it's like it's nothing like what these guys have gone through. Agreed. And so like I can't even, there's, there's maybe a handful of times where I felt like, like this might be it. And those were very rare, even in specialized units, even more so because the more special you are, the more support assets you have. You don't even have to pull security because you've got a fleaer system that could see the heat that you can't see with your naked eye. And so in war, it's very rare, even in the global war and terror, to kind of even get close to the replication of even one combat operation.

I mean, that operation that you talked about with Jock-Telwin was a four-day op. Yeah. And you had, I mean, each person, which was 16, I believe 16 Green Berets, was injured twice, at least, because they had 30 plus Purple Hearts and, you know, a couple indig that were killed. But when you think about just that operation in comparison to like my experience, yeah, I've killed a lot of bad guys. I've got a lot of combat. But that is a completely different level. And so I want people. to understand like when they're hearing this like you don't get the opportunity to sit in a room with a guy that that has experienced this kind of thing around that culture that's really war like I don't consider the GWAT war more people were killed in Chicago and then the then in the same time period

than the war that was fought in Iraq and there's one more sidebar to what you just said about Operation T.L. Wend and how the military does not retain its history or learn from experiences because this is September 1970 Marine Corps air assets and we had Air Force Army all supporting that team on the ground about 10 years later you had the debacle in the desert where the Marines couldn't even talk to the Air Force yeah which started J-Soc yeah Desert one yeah of course even there it took seven years to get J-Soc yeah so what a feat what an accomplishment that was right for tailwind And I remember, listen to the story, there was CNN 1998, which a couple years after I went in the military report on...

AKA the Communist News Network? Yeah. Well, it's crazy. Like when you, when you guys were, like the discontent for CNN was early on because they wrote that article where Ted Turner wrote apology letters or at least one letter. to the captain. But that's insane that you guys, it was twisted even decades later that it was some kind of...

28 years later. Yeah, there was some campaign to launch chemical weapons and then hurt her own, right? There was a... Well, yeah, they said that we, that that team used the sarongas and they said the mission was

to go into Laos to find dissident Americans who had deserted and that we went in, the team went in and killed Americans. And of course, they killed women and innocent babies and children, too. Like, they always throw that line in at the end, which is completely false. They used tear gas to break that last attack. Yeah, CS.

Yeah, CS. And that's what saved their bacon literally, because the wave attacks continued like they did. Yeah. And the final day, there was three helicopters. First one left with auto-mooned it. Second one left, with more ground, fire. And the third one, that's where Mike Rose was got, the tear gas was still in the air.

And the NVA were coming out of it, a little bit off balance. That gave them enough time to get on the C-H-53 Delta and to take off. As it's taking off, the doorgunner, Sergeant Stevens, I think it was, gets shot in the neck through and through. And Mike Rose saved his life as they were leaving.

Yeah. And then they crash. Oh, yeah. Right over the next visual lines. They go over the first mountain. The first engine goes out. And they go over the second mountaintop, and the second engine goes out.

And the pilot has to auto-rotate in. They never trained on auto-rotation with a fully loaded helicopter with green berets and Intel and everything they got from that mission. Wow. And when they did crash, auto-rotating in, the team captain

crossed 14 of his teeth into dust. Yeah. Gene McAucarly. And Mike Rose gave me that. number yesterday a couple days ago. Yeah. And I never realized it. And they got thrown out of the helicopter, of course, several of them. And but they survived it all. They came back. Crazy. Good God. Indeed. How do you get selected? Sorry, any of them. No, I was going to ask, I was going to, I think it was more, you were going to go

the selection for Mac V-Sog? Yeah, yeah. I was going to, well, so along with that, did you get any additional training for what you were going to be doing in Vietnam? Or did you go from the Greenberry pipeline and it's just like hey here's your new job figure it out on the on the fly no we're well in my case again uh i was very fortunate if we're done with a regular s f training uh i was in i was a commo geek so i set a bunch of us down to fort gordon uh we were down there t d y for three months on rtt they wanted sf top secret c clearance to do that r and r then we came then we went to nom so we had traditional in-country training learn how to work with tack air helicopters.

They had a couple of experimental helicopters we worked with. So they wanted to make sure that when you use these, you didn't chop your head off, getting on and off the birds and stuff. In-country training and patrol, I don't even remember that. And then when we had gone through training, we had guys that had been to nom two or three times. And they said, after you're in-country training, a little guy's going to come out and say to you,

we're looking for volunteers. Don't do it. Go to an A team. Learn about the people, the country. go see what it's like. Well, hell, this is 1968. John Wayne was in the Green Berets. They just showed it while we were going through the in-country training.

So sure enough, in-country training is done. How comes the little guy. We're looking for volunteers in Johnny McIntyre. My buddy goes, for what, Sarge? Can't say. Either you're in or you're out. God damn it. I'm in.

Yeah, and that's it. So we saw the movies. We jumped out of our chairs, me, Rick Howard, a bunch of our guys, McIntyre. But do they give you additional? So obviously, you volunteered because here we are. Right. So we do that, go up, get the top secret briefing. And again, we've been students for now 15 months.

So we go in, we get our pens and pads out, ready to take notes, and the sergeant major walks that put that shit away. This is a top secret briefing. That's when everything changed right there. And so he says in front of you is that, what do you call that, the non-disclosure? Yep, NDA. Yeah. Yeah, so we said you got to sign that first before we say anything further.

So either you're in or out. If you don't want to sign it, get out. So we all stayed. We signed it. And he pulled it like one of these black curtains, pulls it down. It's Vietnam with all the cities. And across the fence, Laos, with target boxes. And Cambodia with target boxes.

And we go, welcome to the Secret War. This is where it is. But what about additional training? Like, hey, now we're going to put you in the pipeline? It's like, welcome to the show. here's your car 15. Well, everybody was individual. Yeah.

So when you came in, like in our case, the team gets wiped out. We get a new one zero. And then we hired four or five new Vietnamese. And three of those were 15 years old. Oh, fuck me. Brought them in. And so we all trained together. You start out with the basics.

Every day you go through all the drills, live fire. How much time are we talking? Well, we had monsoons also. So we were training, dealing with monsoons. So in my case, we didn't get on the ground for a real target until August. So the team has formed up at the end of May into June, train through June, deal with some monsoons, July, and then we trained for a special mission to put it in the Air Force Centers in the Ashaw Valley,

which for us was our premier target. Did the mission, no gunfire, they fought when they wanted to fight, then we put it in the same Air Force sensors up at Kaysan, And again, no ground fire, nothing to speak of. And then we had a practice mission. Again, minimal contact. And then Spider-Parks then left the team to go fly Covey. And Don Wilcom became the team leader.

I was assistant team leader. And then we had our first mission at CO4 where we've been on the ground for the second day. And we made contact. They kept coming at us. Maybe you have to wave. So you get to train? so when you're when you showed up and you got selected and you say hey i want to be in this and the guys that are with you that just came there with you do they try to train you together

to be in the same recon team oh yeah go through your training well first thing was you would get selected for the team yeah now here's another example tom cunningham came into our camp in the early week of august it would be at the end of july so tom cunningham constantly he's gone through the pipeline volunteered for SOG, comes in. ST Louisiana, the 1-0 was Pete Boggs, the 1-1 was John Walton, the medic. And they trained up quickly for two days. I think it was a Saturday, August 3rd, 1968.

They'd go in. That's his first mission. So he was in camp less than a week. But he had some experience, and they trained him up enough, where John knew him. He says, I know Tom, he's a, He'll be a stand-up guy if we get into a firefight. Where they got overrun three times.

The third time the team gets overrun, the 1-0 called in an A-1 Skyrater gun run on the team. The 20-mic-mic rounds hit Tom twice. One round hit the pre-RC-25, wounding the 1-0. The second round sent Tom flying through the air with his leg blown off, hanging on just by some sinew. And so that's another example. And John Walton, the medic, to his credit, brought Tom back alive.

They had an indig that been shot four times. John brought him back as well as the one zero. Now, one of the little people was killed. They had to leave him there. Because, again, here's the first helicopter that comes in. It's a king to be South Vietnamese Air Force. They pick up the peat bogs and the wounded and ditch take off because the second helicopter is going to come in.

And the second helicopter, helicopter gets shot out. The third helicopter gets shot out. The first one comes back with Captain Tin and he picked up John Walton and Walton had the, he and the one in the Dis that had not been wounded

are there by themselves on the ground, get on the King Bee and take off. It was so high and so hot that he couldn't take off vertically he had to do a run to get enough lift just to get over the trees and then he did the laps in the valley and the day before he came back

all while under enemy fire. Mike, do you know of a single story that even resembles that in the last 20 years of warfare? There's been like a, there's the one that happened in Shock Valley, where the whole team, a Green Beret team, one of the guys, John Wayne Walding. Yeah. One of the guys lost his leg, pinned it to his, he lost his leg from the knee down, pinned it to his thigh and stayed in the fight. one of the team sergeants, what was in the SIF with me,

and extraordinary acts of heroism, but it was like one instance of combat, right? And then... I feel like that was a Thursday. That was like a normal day. Yeah, and then like Friday, they're like, hey, guys, get your stuff, we're going again. It's insane.

So the... How come they don't do that with us? I've always wondered, how come they don't... Like Band of Brothers, right? You got guys who are trained. They go to Sand Hill. they get all their training together and then they deploy as a baton.

You got recon elements that are MacBissau guys that are trained as a volunteer get selected together. But in our community, you don't have that. You're typically trained. I was a half Korean guy speaking French

getting deployed to the Middle East. You know what I mean? Like they don't, it's very randomized. There's no, like I would want, I want to go to basic training with dudes that I'm going to serve with in combat, you know, that we're going through the pipeline together and we're going to be a recon team or a platoon or a squad or a troop. And we don't do that.

We don't do that very well at all. It's like a numbers thing. Yeah, I was going to say it might be the end result of the size, of the growing size of the force, and maybe it hits a tipping point where they can't do things like that. But, I mean, what you're just, I mean, so that's a week after the guy had been, you know, raised. Yeah. Came into camp on a Monday.

I think it was a Saturday. He's gone forever. But, you know, thank God to John. He kept him alive. Tom went out, got married, had his wonderful wife. They had two children. And sadly, he lost his wife years ago, but the kids are still going on. He's up in Grand Estate. Crazy. Oh, yeah. How was your first experience in combat? Was it what you thought it would be? Oh, no. Because you guys got into what I'm going to call a doozy. Yeah. Well, see, don't forget, like, we got into our firefight at October 7th, 68. On October the 5th, we had ST Alabama, the nine-man team that went in up against 10,000 NVA. And the only reason why we noted a number, because Lynn Black, who was the assistant team leader in that, who became the team leader, talked to the guy to ambushed him. Really?

Five years later. Wow. Yeah. How did that affect your headspace when you were proximal to all of that happening? And maybe it hadn't happened to you yet because you were early on, like you said you'd done. Oh, it's still green as grass. Green as grass. But you're like, you're like, oh, my God, like this is 100% real because Alabama's happening and all these other things.

What's going through your head when you haven't experienced it yet, but all these other units that are around you were going through this? Well, John and I were good friends. So after the August 3rd mission, the first thing we talked about that night and the next day was, what did you learn? and he had gone down TDIW to Contum also and when he came back they had some lessons down there they picked up so we always talked to each other at least on the basic level you know

so on October the 5th when they get into this world of shit and the reason why they did they had an inexperienced team leader he had rank they made him the team leader pulled off the team leader who had experience in the AO first major because he didn't have as much rank he was a lower lower ring yeah so he came from

Germany a 10th group and they because he had the rank he made of a team leader. He goes in. Lynn Black, who had a tour of duty with the 173rd, was familiar with the NBA. And they saw an NBA flag. He says, hey, there's at least 3,000 people here. Let's get out. They took enemy fire. And the team leader goes, no, we're going down the path.

Again, that violates the first rule. So they got ambushed. Sadly, the point man was killed on contact. The 1-0 was killed. And another team member was wounded. And they walked into an L-shaped ambush. Well, that NVA troop, they had 50 NVA up there. And they fought, they finally eventually pulled back.

And so 20, 25 years later, they went back, try to find the body of the 1-0. After that effort, that's when Lynn Black talked to the general. And the guy was a colonel on the day they came in. He said, yeah, we had 50 NVA up there, and they talked back and forth, and the colonel told him, We had a division. Lin said, we thought it was a battalion of the 3,000.

And they had between the Air Force, our gunships, Marine Corps gunships, the muskets. They went all day, literally. They lost a jolly green giant, and another jolly green giant crashed afterwards. They lost a King Bee, which was a South Vietnamese Air Force. So we were on standby to go in as a bright light, and the bright light was to go in to help a team out. Well, the Covey said there's too much shit going on. There's too many enemy. If you go and it's going to get worse.

So then we changed to go back because October 6th, we got inserted. So in answer to your question, our mindset was, right now we're bright light. Get ready. So you put away all food and water, just guns, bullets, and body bags. And bright lights, bright lights whoever's designated QRF for a search and rescue for like a, for like a, shit hits a fan. For downpilots or for a team in trouble or whatever. That's what that was

for. So we got withdrawn for Nats. We went back, changed our gear to get ready for the mission. First light the next day we're on the bridge going in. So we were on the ground for a day. And second day we had trackers. We knew we had trackers a day before. We just couldn't shake him.

So 2 o'clock they hit us. But the 1-0, Don Don Wilkins, was smart enough. He puts on top of a little knoll. And so we're in triple double canopy. And when they came out of the jungle, our knoll was small enough. They only sent so many. We just kept blowing them down the hill. And then finally, at one point, Don says to me, look at that. And I couldn't see because the jungle is just dark. And what they were doing was stacking up the dead bodies because they want to get on top of the

dead bodies to shoot down at us. Get some, Mike. So they're stacking bodies to get defilade to be able to They want to get a little elevation. They want to achieve high ground via corpses. Yeah, I'm going to integrate that into my next gunfighter carbane course. Yeah, and so here's the other one. You talk about tunnel vision. So at one point, we had a wave attack going. I'm going into the jungle and fuck, our point man, open fire.

Now, I thought he was shooting over my shoulder into what was coming up the hill at me or coming out of the jungle. We got back to base the next day. I said, you know, my ears all. It was because you had a full blast on full automatic of a car 15. And I said, man, why were you shooting over my shoulders? You dumb shit to the right, the NVA were coming up. They were just getting ready to kill you.

So I'm looking here. There's a guy right there. You didn't even know it. Until post brief. Right. What was your... We're so spoiled in the military, man. Like, they didn't have earpro.

Like, you know, there's no ear pro. No. I mean, we had noise canceling, electronic palators. I got to tell you, I want to run over your mother to get those nods you have today. Oh, yeah. No kidding. That would have changed some things, right? It would have changed some things.

Oh, yeah. Oh, crazy. So what was your, talk to me about your kit set up, because I know, like, a lot of MacB Saw guys preferred, like, RPDs that were cut down. That was later. That was later. Yeah. What was your, so Car 15? It was my sweetheart.

Yeah. Yeah, I had three during my time, my two tours there. Yeah. So, yeah, we had 600 plus rounds for the car. 600. What is that? That's over 30 mags because we're talking about a lot of mags. Wow.

20 round mags. And sometimes we always had a couple extra, you know, those little brown packages with the bullets in a bulletin. Yeah. And then about 10 to 12 frag grenades and maybe 10 to 12 rounds for the M79, which included one CS and then we always carried at least one Willie Peter. And I carried the radio and then a battery for that. The rest of it was H. For the 40 mic mic.

Yeah. So we used those thumpers, like Vietnam era thumpers. Oh, yeah. You always made me proud. You saw it down? Yeah, we saw it down. All right. Yeah.

I got some kills with a thumper. Pirate guns. Those things are badass. Yeah. Oh, I got to tell you, I had a guy at a Navy SEAL who ADDed a thumper. I know of one. There was an area four in Iraq, Baghdad, Task Force mission. We just got back.

And it was a SEAL-SIF Task Force mission. And we came back and we were getting in the stage area, dropping off puck. the task force and I heard kudunk and everybody was like looking around like dude does somebody just AD a 40 mic mic and then and then the lull kind of everybody was like no it didn't happen and all of a sudden you hear because on the distance biop it hit it landed on the airfield and then it's incoming incoming yeah so everybody gets their CIB and their cab badges and their combat badges but what happened was what had happened was One of the NavSoft guys had M79 loaded on his back, which, whatever, to each their own.

I would never do that personally, but we just came off the target. So he might have had it hot. And we were in engagement as well. So he has it on his back, and he gets hung up. And at that time, we were running open back Humvees. So no armor, but we were sitting on like benches, right? And he got caught up on something, and he pushed through it, kunk, and then shot around off his back. Well, he goes, we have this brief

and everybody's like pointing fingers and talking about stuff. And one of the armors comes in and sure is shit, that M79 was a Vietnam era 79. All of ours were we found out later. They weren't like upgraded. And you could put it on safe

and push through the safe. You could pull the trigger on safe the whole time. So he apologized to the entire troop and everybody was like, hey man, shit happens. Like no harm, no foul. And he moved on.

And I was like only in the GWAT with task force with that circumstance specifically, could you do that? I was on a target once where a green beret 80 to 40 mic, Mike twice. Really? No, not at all. I'm just trying to outdo your story because we're talking shit about seals. Wasn't it on a ladder? No, I'm just joking. You got it bad.

God damn it, he's talking shit on seals. I got your answer for you. Here's your answer. My first self-inflicted wound was when we were cutting back the M-79s. Oh, really? Good, because the question was, if you cut them back, how far can you cut them back? have the round still rotate enough. Got it.

That it activates. Yeah. It has to rotate. Yeah. For people listen, it's, what is it? 33 yards. Yes, it's 33 yards. It's piezoelectric fuse that is activated by the twist.

Yes. So you can ADM into the ground in front of you, not recommended. Yeah. I've seen it, though. A hot grenade. Yeah. And it not go off. It will not go off, but also you shouldn't soccer kick it after that.

Also have seen that. It might go off. It never went off and we called EOD shortly there. Well, so in my case, we kept trying. trying. So finally we had it down to the absolute minimal length. Yep. So, boom, bong, it goes off really quick. And so I turned to Rick Howard at my buddy and said, hey, Rick, I think a bee just stung me. He pulls my shirt. You, you dumbass. You just shot yourself. Yeah, shrapnel from the round. Because that was, as we were cutting

him back. So that way, so there's your Harry dumbass story for today. Going back to, what was it, Alabama that was in? Oh, yeah. What was the criteria, as long as they had radio comms with a unit on the ground, would they continue to provide air support? What was their criteria where they would stop doing that and assume that they were lost? Oh, if they stopped talking. Okay. Which could suck because radios suck up around sometimes too. That's what I'm thinking.

I'm just trying to figure out. Well, they lost comms. And then you also had the NVA that came online interfering with the comma. And the classic example, the tragic example was the first time the Kingby came in for resupply. And they said, we're going to pop smoke. Well, the tradition is don't say the killer. Yeah. So as he's coming in and say, okay, we're going to pop white.

Well, whatever they pop, the NVA guest and popped the same thing. So the Kingby went to the NVA gas and got blown out of the sky. To an ambush? Oh, yeah. Can you hear me on this? I can hear you. Oh yeah. You can't hear you loud and clear. I can't hear anything.

No, it's dead. It's just that new budget set up, man. How is your headset dead? Yeah, I don't know. It can't hear myself through the headphones. It's weird. I can hear you. Yeah, let me fix it.

Test, test, test. Test, test, test. Test. I could hear static in my headphones, but I can't hear the voice through the mic. Oh, there goes. You're back. What'd you do?

Test, yeah, it's good now. That's really. good now. I just added five minutes to editing. An hour. You said an hour. I don't edit the podcast. Oh, sweet. What did I do? I unplugged it. Did I say it weird? No, I am plugged it plugged it back in. You high tech wizard you. He's good at this. I am super limited. I go off switch, on switch, and if it doesn't work, I immediately start

Googling like technical support. I can't do any of it myself now. Smart. So you, like on the kit thing, can I go like the kit just real quick? Yeah, please. So on the kit, were any of the kit that you had because we used to have we had a you know me and uh uh andy had a black side dotics right you can get black side uh specialized equipment whether it was munitions ammunition guns we had that also okay so you were able to get specific types of weapon systems that you weren't able to get right and we also had experimental stuff of course the car 15 was new yeah so when i first got in in 68 they were a rare commot body the FOB1. What were they using before that?

Anything. Like M16s, basically? No, no, no. Well, some guys carry 16s, but they had the Swiss K, the grease gun. A couple guys carried a sten. Which, like, I don't understand that at all, but that was the early days. And, of course, you know, they said they didn't want to have weapons that were U.S. made. Attributable. Right.

So the Swedish K was a weapon of preference. And, of course, it fired from the open bolt, which is like, that's just nuts. Yeah. But then along came to Car 15. Did you have any problems with the Corps 15? Never. Never. I had three.

My last tour of duty got a brand new one right out of the wrap, the box, and everything. Yeah. Took it down to the range. It was perfectly zeroed. Really? Oh, yeah. I know what happened to one of them, which I bet Mike hasn't heard this story, but we'll have to get to that. Not today, no.

It's an unbelievable story. How'd you lose the first one? Or was your trapeze incident? was the first one. Flying through the air without the greatest of ease. Yeah. How'd you lose the second one?

End of my tour of duty. Okay. Turned it in. Then came back to the second tour. I got the third car. How long did it take you to start getting, or maybe you never got comfortable? I guess the better question would be,

how long did it take until you started clicking with that environment that you were in? Like I always found with me, first five to seven operations, have this level of hyper awareness, right? Everything is a threat. And then the last five to seven, nothing is a threat.

It's like very equally dangerous sides of the pendulum swing. One is because you're not in tune with your environment. And the other one is because you're just completely complacent because you're kind of over it. How long did it take you to get comfortable in that environment you were operating in? Well, after that target on October 7th, from that day forward, I was comfortable.

More comfortable in the jungle than back at base camp. Didn't like the bullshit at camp. Really? And that's why we're there. That's why we signed up to BSF. Yeah. You wanted to fight. Yeah.

And to do the mission, preferably, if I have my drugs, I prefer to go run a five-day recon, do wiretaps, take pictures, and come home. Right next after-action report, go downtown, get a steaming cream or something like that, or whatever, and then go back to work to take five days off. But by November, our attrition rate was so low that there were days when our team was the only operational team in camp. And when I arrived there, they had 30 recon teams. So by November, which is four months later or five months later, they're down. That's being the only operation.

That's between teams being wiped out, wounded in action, sick, illness, transitions, guys going home. And so we had days where you just go out and go to S3 in the morning. Here's your target. Were you guys involved in the targeting at all, or were you just receiving targeting packages? We would come out of... Holy shit. The chain command came from the White House to our headquarters, then we get it. And then any of our reports would go back to our headquarters in Saigon, then right to the White House.

They had a special SAG envoy there that was picking up the reports and stuff. Holy shit. That is not how my reporting Chintiffman went. Yours is a little different, a little more sink pack involved. It was just e-bails. You know, I would do some emails and send it up. First off, the operational tempo that he's describing is insane. Maybe not the operational tempo, but what was occurring during those operations.

Yeah. And the tempo associated with that level of activity is mind blowing to me. It's like bomber. It's like World War II bomber statistics. Exactly. It's like the same thing. That's a great analogy. Every time you go out, you're definitely going to lose a crew or two or three maybe.

Oh, yeah. Did you notice the NBA changing and adapting their tactics as you guys? had more time in country? Yeah, and of course, we heard the rumors about them having the sappers and the killer teams. And those were specifically designed by them to track Mackie's SOG members? Right.

And by the end of the war, they had it up to a battalion that they were training up for those missions. What kind of training were they given them, do you know? I don't know. We're just beginning to learn about that. And stand by to stand by. Okay.

I just noted that they were trained up, and we were told that initially they would just come in, nothing but a loincloth. And of course, August 23rd, 68, the day of the greatest green beret casualty in our SF history, we lost 16 green berets. They planned for a year a Sapper attack on a moonless night, which was August 23rd, 68, on our base camp, which was F.OB 4 in Denang.

They came in, and they planned on the day we had a promotion board, and we had also the headquarters that had been at the airbase of Danang came into the buildings on our headquarters area at CCN, FUBFWB. before. Sounds like they had some inside baseball knowledge. Oh, absolutely. To plan that, yeah. Yeah, and they even did their final briefing that night in the base, in the indigenous mess hall. And they had, in the morning, they found what they, they had charts and their maps and things on that for their final briefing, their commanders and the Sappers and stuff. Two of our loyal indigs went up, saw them, saw something suspicious, they got their throats cut.

and they hit the hit and they were under that firefight all night it was one of those tragic episodes but the sappers were real and that that told us right there that they're dead serious and they wore headbands we came to die really and they did I also enjoyed operating in a loincloth oh I know that sounds freeing playing water polo not in the military but this is essentially what a speed it is. Did you, when you guys operated, did you know how big this whole thing was? Or were you so mission focused and kind of basically you were operating unadribbed to anything?

Were you just like in your own little world operating? Or did you know like, hey, this is a big deal, these things that we have going on? This is making very large strategic, you know, The gates that you guys are meeting is very strategic because it's at the White House. But did you know that at the time? Or are you just mission focused in doing your job? No, we knew that the reports went to the big house.

And we knew that this was the, that was our tip of the spear then. Yeah, you're the Super Bowl. This is. Right. So we knew that. But on the other hand, we also knew the reality of on the ground. Yeah. And how they're working against us.

And so we end on top of that, we'd never realized how completely compromised we were in that they had a spy in our Mac V-Sahawk headquarters in Saigon and don't forget too the additional thing was that when a USS Pueblo was seized by North Korea in November of 67 they did so at the behest of the Russians and when that ship came in it was an Intel ship they had the latest state-of-the-art encryption equipment and radio equipment which the Russians took to Cambodia and at the time the Johnny Walker spy ring was also operating, and they would get the cat codes and the other codes

and get them to Russia, which would get them to Cambodia, so that they were able to listen to a lot of our top secret commo, Army, Air Force. I'm not sure about Navy, Navy, yes, and maybe the Marine Corps. And they had that insight. Now, how well they used it, but we know they had it. Of course, we learned this years later. Well, it almost seems like when you guys would insert, it was almost a matter. of an afterthought that there were going to be people expecting you, tracking you. I mean, so they obviously knew you were coming. That almost became part of like the expected portion of operation. The classic example, we're going into an LZ with the South Vietnamese Air Force.

At the last second, I forget one of my, I think it was Sal, who my counterpart, yelled to the door gunner in Vietnamese and the helicopter pulled away. Sal saw, how I'll never know, a wire across the LZ. that was attached to a 500-pound bomb. Had he not told them that to avoid that wire? Yeah, vaporized. Yeah, yeah. We'd be fertilized in Leos today.

Now, they knew we were coming. Yeah. And they had time to put that together. Wow. And then the other thing was they always had point people. So when we took off, people there would say which direction, which athletes we were on. At the border, they had watch stations.

So when they would continue the helicopters, So that was their additional intel network. We knew about it. And the key thing was just to get on the ground to try to avoid the trackers. When there was that incident of seeing the wire across the LZ, did that send any like red star clusters

up inside of HQ? Like, hey, maybe our ship has a few leaks? Because WTF factor was multiplied in our minds, the guys on the ground. All the reports go back to Sondon. and even like we wanted better radios as far back as 68, begging for radios,

which never really happened until later. And we later learned from CIA guys that talked to Russians who were there who were part of the Russian secret war in Vietnam, who said, hey, we're amazed those Sosag guys never got more sophisticated radio equipment because they RDFed us all the time.

So we got to the point where if we were on the ground, no comma unless it was time for... Emergency. Yeah. Yeah. Because we just, if they come by for a comma check, would be just two clicks on the handset. Oh, interesting.

Yeah. Because their RDF was sharp. So how did they RDF you guys? Did they just triangulate you? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, in the classic example, we had a team that was,

Pat Eddington was the one zero. He looked Asian. And I forget what his true ethnicity was, but he looked Asian. Mike was Asian too. Yeah, look, man. He had that look. See, you could have.

He had it all NVA team. Two Hoyes. They all came over to our side. One mission was to go to an American PLW camp. Pat's on the ground with his team, going to the camp. Up on FM comes a voice in perfect English. Pat Ennington, we know you're the 1-0 of RT Cobra, which it was. You're going to this POW MIA camp.

I'm telling you, if you continue with the mission, by time you get here, every American P.O.W will be dead. I will personally kill them. So you got a choice. You can continue with the mission or go to fuck home. Well, Pat says, I think I'll go home now. Holy shit.

Can you imagine that? What? Another time, Lynn Black and Doug Littornell, so Doug's got the radio, the Frenchman, my buddy, right? This is between my tours of duties. I'm back squandering a 10th group at Fort Devons. But the Frenchman's on the ground and in clear English,

a guy comes to says, Frenchman, we know where you are. We know where R.T. Idaho is. You and Lynn Black are there. Now, the interesting thing about that first comment is a week earlier, the third American on the team went home. He de-rozed.

So the guy talking to him, who he believed was a Cuban, knew, his intel knew that there was only two Americans. And he talked back and forth to him and said, we're going to come get you. And so Lynn, here's Doug talking to the guy. And Lynn gets on the phone and talks to this guy.

And the guy goes, we know where you are. And when Lynn goes, well, he says, yeah, we got your six-digit cord. And Lynn goes, well, here's my eight-digit cordons. Come get me, motherfucker. And so then at the top, here's the top, this is the part you like. He goes, you know, your mother was a piss-poor hooker. Because if she was a good hooker, you'd be in the States now. You wouldn't be stuck in Laos.

Power move. How's that? Power move. And by the way. In the J. Yeah. Flexing in the J. Hooker flex.

And so by the way, they never came for him. Because he had high ground. Oh, shit. I mean, the world Mike and I came from encrypted radios. I mean, you could switch it over to be in, you know, in the open if you wanted to, but there be no reason to. So we're talking encrypted or purely digital or or iridium. Yeah, or iridium.

It's like, I can't even imagine. I mean, I guess we could have gotten on the Icom. That's cool. See, I would have... Yeah. I mean, I may or may not... I may or may not have been around when an interpreter got on the Icom a few times

and talked a little bit of... Smacks. Shih Tzu. I like that. Shih Tzu. Those are my favorites. But, I mean, there's no way they were getting hold of the ability

to talk to us over our radio networks. I guess they could have already FTA, but I don't think they had that technology available. But what you're describing... And that... Man, there are some red flags in that. obviously the specificity of the information. Like that to me, I feel like in the modern era

would be a dead stop, re-compartmentalize everything, figure out, I would hope that that's what they would do, figure out where the fuck the leak is coming from and then build from there. Because that's insane. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's the most inside baseball you could have on what's going on there. That's crazy. And this is where the 1-0s are talking to each are saying,

these are the problems we know we've got. Fuck. When you guys were doing operations, is it like a bomber crew goes out in World War II, they do a specific run and they get retired, right? They do 25 missions. 25 missions, right?

What is the criteria for you guys? And then how is that experience and working up and leading up to it? How do that feel? Because I imagine when entire teams are getting wiped out, what's like the psychology of you guys to stay sane in it? Because I know you're in the fight, but you're like, hey, this, my buddy just got, you know, he just got killed.

with his entire team. So it was getting serious. Was there? Well, keep in mind, keep in mind, I landed there in May of 68, so around 20th May, 22nd of May, and by that time, we had at least four or five teams wiped out. You had Roy Benavides that had his experience, May 8th. That's a CCS case. Yeah. At that time, we didn't even know about it because he's down south, we're north. And we had another team. Everybody was killed us up for the 1-0, who E&E for three days, John Allen came back, and we had another team that was wiped out on the 27th of March, a second team, the one zero is on the ground, and the helicopters come in, they can't lift the full team.

He puts a Monty yard on, a helicopter lifts and leaves him on the ground. They don't come back. And he's, he. This is just in the first five months of 68. So, you know, what the, like anybody, It's like, we got to get on with the next target. You try to learn what you can. You get the mission and answer to your question

because you've got to continue on. That's why we're here. So I'm assuming there's no risk mitigation. Like, there's like you guys are all in. It doesn't seem like the pace of SOG's. Well, the other thing was you served in SAG as long as you want it. The thought was if you get on a team when you first get there, you'd run a recon for eight or nine months.

The last couple of months, you would have light duty somewhere. You didn't have to stay on the team. Or any time you wanted it off. Like we had a gentleman that came on our team for Echo 4. He came in front of 173, had a tour of duty outstanding soldier. And after that mission, he finally came up to me and said,

hey, I can't do. I've never seen anything like this in my life. I can't do it. Wow. And I said, hey, thanks. I'm about you tell me now. And then we got him a good job and worked with him. and said thank you for being honest.

Yeah, all volunteer. All volunteer. And also, you know, again, we were hurting for men. So they were bringing people for the 173rd, 101st, and then at some point they even brought in some legs just to have a manpower to see if they get run or not. Really? I'll let you describe what a leg is, you army folk.

Indeed. Well, I don't know where it originates from, but I know... Traditionally a dirty, nasty leg. Yeah, dirty nasty. It used to be a huge thing, right? When we had maroon berets and it was only about airborne, it was a big deal. If you were a dirty leg and you had non-airborne qualified. Non-airborne qualified guy.

Indeed. So when you're doing these operations and the pace is going to what it's at, what are you guys doing to kind of keep morale back at the fire base, back at base. Are you guys allowed to, you said you have mentioned R&R, are they allowing you guys to decompress to come back to stay healthy? or is it just constant? Well, in our case, because of November, December of 68, the Opt Temple, they just needed people on the ground. Yeah. So at some point, by November,

we had the team trained up well enough that I could rotate the little people out. So Bubba Shore was with me. He was my assistant team leader. He came on in October, and Don flew Covey with Spider. And so we had days, three or four days in a row, where we go out in the morning,

get shot out of the primary, secondary, and alternate. The low on fuel, go back, get a new target, do it again. And so this happened like two or three days in a row. The third day, we finally get inserted in the afternoon. And even then, the weather's questionable. And I went on the ground, and it was a little bit more of an open area. I put the team online, and we just went up this hill for, like, a long period of time. because usually we'd do a 10-10.

You know, move for 10, wait for 10. Well, this day, I just pushed everybody. We eventually got to a road, a double-lane highway that you couldn't see from the sky, crossed it, set up a wiretap, had a perfect ambush in place, and when we were getting ready to blow it, Spider came back over a couple hours,

literally two or three hours later and said, I gave him the code for a PLW, and we'll meet you back at DLZ. And that's when he said, Don't move, don't fart, don't do anything. I'm at 10,000 feet and I can't see them out in your own. Wow. Yeah, the Pucker Factor went to minus zero.

About then, we heard the tanks above us. And the people who were ditty bopping up and down the trail were taking pictures of them on the trail. They had their AKs on their shoulders, officers. We should clarify, he's talking about the Hocuman Trail. Yeah. It's not like a little foot, it's not a footpath. Yeah. And it had varying size, but this one was really large.

And of course, just getting across the trail like that was fun. But we had trained up on our little people were just great. Yeah. So we were there. And then that was the beginning of five days of just, that was the night the guy came in and tossed my boot. You haven't heard that story. No, I want to hear this. We got to hear this.

Well, and so I have a question that maybe could lead into this. Out of all the things you guys launch on an operation, obviously you volunteer to join the military, The volunteer to go down in the Green Bray pipeline. You volunteer for someone. Oh, yeah, I read the book, the Green Berets. Of course. I flew out of college. My dad goes, hey, dummy, you know.

So I knew I was going to go in. And I didn't want to get drafted. And I read that book. I said, that's it. I'm going with these guys. If I can qualify for this. And luckily, they lowered the standards. So I got through it.

That's how it worked for me as well in the standards section. Indeed. But you get in country and you start doing these operations. Out of all the things that in involve the risk, you know, getting shot out of your LZ, contact with the NVA, shit, weather rolling in and you being isolated, no overhead, you know, air support, getting into firefights, having the trackers. Out of all the things that you were exposed to, what put the hair up on the back of your neck

the most? Those first two seconds of a firefight. Of just in general, of every firefight, yeah. That's that moment in time you trained your whole life for. because again we had to get that fire superiority within those first two seconds and my little people were just the best

How often would you see the enemy? You know what? We didn't see them as often you think we would because a lot of times our people were so good that they would fire. We never got ambushed. We would hear them coming for us so we would usually launch

the first series of rounds and then we gained fire superiority over on top of that because they could just switch those magazines out and continue to go and that would be the long and the short of it if you don't get that fire superior artist for us four or five seconds you are dead meat yeah the momentum works in both directions because if you gain it you can steamroll a larger force but yeah being on the receiving end of that that's got to be just

so that was it I mean for me that's the moment you know yeah which you didn't get into one of those the night that an NVA man touched his boot, which I'm sure that Mike would love to hear him. Well, we had the amp was set up. By the way, we had a wiretap running for over an hour. Sal had climbed a telephone

pole, put up the wire tap, covered the wire with mud, so anybody from the trail would never see it. And we had the ambush set up with Claymore's, C4 in the middle, so at six feet, any person would be knocked out. Everybody else is killed. Security Claymore's

and one in the back for good luck. So we had to pull it all in after we talked to Spider. And then the trail activity picked up. Everybody's nervous now. We hear the tanks. Short while later, we hear the dogs. We moved into darkness. Just about dark because we came to a stream or a brook or something.

But it was running water, had banks on about 10, 12 feet. We went in the stream for an hour at night. It was noisy, but we knew the dogs were down there. And within the water, the water covered our noise. and the team, I had the team go up, back, up and back, and then we put down mace and black pepper for the dogs and fuck up their noses. And then finally we went up to the bank,

team put up the RON, I'm facing the bank, long story short, they were coming out with hundreds of people, all with lanterns and the dogs were coming up the mountain. They didn't realize how far up the mountain we had gotten, and that's the only thing that saved us. And so around 1, 2 o'clock in the morning, two guys, NVA, go up the stream.

And I'm watching them, we'll walk past. How far away from you? Do you think they were? God, I don't know, 15, 20, 25 feet. With lanterns, though. One lantern, ran out of fuel, turn around, and they come back. And when they walked past, hep, my interpreter coughed. Fucking new guy.

Yeah. That's my interpreter now. And I didn't even give him the cough medicine, just keep the cough down. But anyway, that's another story. So I would make a long story short. Whenever the wind blew, this guy came up the hill. Wind would blow, and I'm sitting there with my feet spread, Car 15 pointed. And you're basing this off of sound, right?

You can't see this guy? Oh, yeah, you do this. It's nothing. You can feel the air, but you can't see your hand. So we're talking pitch, pitch black. So a guy comes up, and eventually he touched my 10-R regular boot. Jungle Boot. I heard he go,

I'm just sitting there. If he moved one more step or did anything sudden, it would have been Arriva Durche. And so he waited for the wind to move. And when the wind blew,

he moved back down and he and his body left. We got up the first light and went north. So they would move with the wind. Yeah, he was so good. He knew his... Damn.

Oh, yeah. That's the name of your book. That's the name of Annie's book. Is that it? He moved with the wind. I like that. Subtext. With fantastic hair.

He moved with the wind. That's incredible. So like there was very, a lot of the recondo school was stood up during this time period, right? Right. But you guys never had the opportunity to go. You know, I'm not sure to be honest. We got our in-country training. It may have been the recondal.

I just don't remember. Yeah. To be honest. Yeah. Some of it was like the original recondo was, hey, you go out and do. Because when you mentioned those, when you mention those training missions, the original recondo school, which I believe started in 60s. late 60. But they did do training. They did the training missions. And then they had the one zero

school later. Yeah, long time. They did the live hit as part of their training in Vietnam for a part of their qualification. Damn. And they often made contact. Yeah. Sure. As part of their... And so here's the sidebar to this story. The next day, we moved all morning, all day, up this mountain. By near the end of the day, Sal and Fook ran into...

because we were really spread out because it was less vegetation. And they saw woodcutters. And so the woodcutters left, we left them alone because they weren't armed. They didn't bother us. Woodcutters, isn't people cutting wood? Yeah. Okay. They were harvesting or doing something and we heard them, but we wanted to get up this mountain.

So at some point we said, we had eye-eye contact. This is what Sal said. I never saw them. What tools are you guys using to navigate through this terrain? Are we talking map and lens out of compass? Are you talking just relying on your life? local nationals. At this point, we just wanted to get to the top of the mountain that we were on. Yeah. No, I mean, in general, though, like, what did you guys take in the field?

Oh, yeah. No, we had a map. We'd have a target box, a six by six that would be cut out of a real map. Yeah. So if your target would be center, they would cut out the box. So that if we got killed or captured, they couldn't tell anything beyond that. No GPS, though. We're talking. No. I challenge anybody. We had our compass. Well, see, now, man, I'm a city slicker. I have my little people. I go to Sal, we want to go here, we're going to do this. For sure. And we're cool, totally cool. Mike, how would you describe the complexity of map and compass navigation in the jungle? Oh, man. It's almost impossible. It's dead reckoning. You can't use, you don't use a lot of terrain association at all. So a lot of it is moving literally from terrain feature to terrain

feature, which could be a tree. Yeah. Or, you know, as far as you could see, which anytime I've done it. far yeah yeah it's like I look up and that's my azmuth and then what I see I'm walking to getting on the other side of it and they continue movement you got to do that quite often yeah repeat adenosium yeah almost an impossible task very impossible well very impossible to stay especially in terrain that you don't know very with a standard topographical map I don't know what scale you guys were using but i'm assuming 150 it's a standard scale for us yeah but but it's like man to be able to do reconnaissance in those kind of in conditions and environments without the technology. Because I'm trying to, in listening to your stories, I'm trying to extract all of the things

that we would have that would have made that. I'm doing the same thing. I'm doing the same thing. I'm walking on an electronic GPS, a Samsung phone tethered to my forearm. And I'm like, this is easy. I can do this. With overhead sensors, you probably might have a fusion goggles, so you got thermal and night vision through the jungle.

Yeah. So easy. Like, why are these guys bitching? This is my four-ounce solomons. Oh, I got a little rough spot on my shoe. Here's your two fun little sidebars to this mission. The first night we're on the mountain, we heard Russians talking on the radio, and we heard an aircraft fly over our target.

And two or three mountains away lit up like Broadway. And it was the NVA getting a resupply from the Russians. Wow. And while we were on that mountain, the second sidebar is the people, the cardiographers that made the map forgot a mountain. A mountain was missing because we were up,

we knew what mountain we wanted to go to, but there was another mountain in the way of our objectives. And they forgot to leave that little guy. That's an interesting conversation between like, no, dude, it's this one. It's like, no man, it's this one. Like, fuck you, dude, that map. There's supposed to be a mountain there.

Yeah, yeah. And this is the one where, like, talking this morning or about the rice on my tooth. Yeah. My tooth, one of my teeth fell apart. Really? In the middle of this, yeah. So I was packing it with rice. Wow. And then when we left, we left under heavy enemy fire. Yeah. And this is like standard. This is, I imagine. Yeah, it was always, most usually we always left under enemy fire. Only question was how much. Is your standard SOP for reacting to contact and especially in reconnaissance in this case, always break contact? Oh, yeah. Or are you at all?

trying to flank maneuver. This is not Ranger tactics. Yeah, your break. Our move was to break contact, try to continue, or at least to survive, because with the jungle, you don't know how many people are behind the folks firing at you.

With the Rangers, you attack your ambush, it was as a rock-solent tradition. Yeah. But in our case, we trained just the opposite, to break away. Like move, break away. Did you have like a,

I know, I'm asking this because, you know, I went to Ranger school as a child. I was 18 years old. Yeah. But we learned things. like black and gold. Like you select a black and gold,

which are contingency movements where you would break contact too. Like I believe it was like a standard terrain feature away and out of sight and out of sound of the enemy. Did you create your breaking contact points along the way? Or did you just bug out from where you were at and you stayed on azimuth together? The first thing was survival and the break to contact. Yeah.

And then from there, because we were compromised, to be on the radio. The mission's over. I mean, a lot of times headquarters we do, break contact and continue mission, which is like, Colonel, if you get your dumb ass down here with me, if you want to do that, we will do that. But right now, I'm no one zero and I'm calling a prairie fire emergency could we're in contact. Wow. So then you go from surveillance to survival. Got it. So making contact meant compromise. Finito. Which a criteria to send in the, right. Wow. So heavy on air assets. Absolutely. Without the air assets, I mean, I'm fertilizer and layoffs a long time ago. Wow, man.

Has there ever been, has Russia ever been open about how much involvement they had in that area? I'm curious if they had their own version of MAC visa operating in the areas that you were. And if so, how many people were actually there? No, they, there's an old YouTube out there where the Russians held their, Russians had their own Vietnam Secret War reunion. And the numbers they put out there. On YouTube. Yeah, yeah. On YouTube.

Now, so this came out now, maybe 15 years ago. And it came out and it's just, they were mostly cannon cockers, anti-aircraft folks. Now, we do know from fact we had Marine Corps gunships that saw Russians in the DMZ and we had other recon teams from Khantun that ran into Russians further south. We ran into the Chinese that were bigger. and other teams ran in some Chinese that were there. And of course, we had the Cuban dude that was talking to Lynn Black. So their foreign advisors were there,

but the majority of guys were cannon-cockers. And like, here's another sidebar from Operation Tailwind. The NBA by 1970 had the ACAC, which is like World War II. When the bombers are flying, you see the ACAC in the air. Turns out. And the aircraft was flying. And the straploidle goes out for the aircraft. Yeah.

Well, the helicopter, when they went in to the target, and when they came back, we're getting ACAC in the air. And one of the medics on that, he was up in one of the stands 15 years later. And he's up there in a capacity of some diplomatic service, but he had his SF pin on. And they're at a briefing, and some young Russian lieutenant comes up to him and says,

I see your SF thing. Were you in SOG? Yes. The bottom line was this lieutenant's dad was on a Russian, ACAC unit in Russia, I mean in Laos, that probably was the one trying to shoot down, Doc Padgett. Insane. Small little sidebar. Oh, yeah.

So you guys signed 20-year NDAs. Yes. What did you tell your friends and family that you were doing in Vietnam? We were busy, very busy, and we earned our paycheck. And remember, when you came home in 1970, nobody really gave, other than your family, and a couple of friends, they were fairly, you're glad at your home, what was it like? Well, you know, it was pretty bad.

We had good days and bad days. Okay, you want a beer? Yeah, cool. These are deer hunter days. Remember that movie? Yes. Oh, man. So even inside of the Green Bray community,

how many of them even knew about MacV-Sogg? Was this something that was a closely held secret even inside of the community? Not too closely held. I mean, like the guys who were in, with me in training group, the Como guys, guys, guys, they all said, you know, go to an A camp first. Yeah. Do not volunteer for projects. That's where people die. Interesting. So, yeah. And I mean, life in an A camp in Vietnam was nasty. Yeah. I would rather

run SOG missions any day than being an A camp because you're just static. You wait for them to come get your ass. So when did you first start hearing about SOG from people other than those that were actually in the unit? When did it actually peek its head out into public recognition? Oh, well, I started doing a couple articles for Soldier of Fortune magazine, but I did it. I had to use a Gnome de Gere because the newspaper I worked for at the time, had they known I was writing for Soldier of Fortune, and they would have fired my ass in New York City second. So I had a Gnome de Gere for that, and I started doing stories like in the mid-80s. Okay.

And so those were the first stories about it. And Soldier of Fortune had done an independent thing on SOT. So that's the first time of surfaced that I saw it. And then Dave Mauer did a book, but it was called Fiction, The Dying Place, which is just a brilliant book. And he starts off with this guy on the first page. He's got a guy on his gun site getting ready to kill him. And so that was the first book.

And then John Plaster. The Dying Place. Yeah. Yeah, the Dying Place, David Mauer. and the plaster started working on his books, and he came out of his first book. That was the first non-fiction book. And then John had also worked with Operation Tailwind

when CNN and Time magazine did their erroneous, inaccurate, scandalous stories. There were suits, law action, and then John learned more about SAG itself. and so he helped to get and worked with the Army Brass to get a PUC that was awarded to SOG and that was awarded April 4th 2000 at Fort Bragg so that was the first time officially other than the litigation that they said this is SOG we were there we were acknowledged they had a little service everybody got your coin you went home wow I mean

correct me from John's books came out Correct me if I'm wrong when you were getting your briefing where they're saying no notes, no diaries. Your recollection of dates is fucking startling to me. How do you, I mean, how did you retain this knowledge? I'll be honest, I forget what we had for breakfast this morning. Me too. So it's like, you know, it's like. You had to sell it.

Me or you. Yeah. But I mean, I look back through my career, which, I mean, it's, I feel like at this point we're comparing oranges to bowling balls. Yeah. And I can't remember dates of operations. Maybe a, maybe a month, maybe a year, but there's a good chance I'm going to be wrong. Your recollection of these exact dates is fantastic. Well, two things.

When I started working on the soldier of fortune stuff, we learned these, I learned about the Special Operations Association, which was formed by recon guys and hatchet force. And then it was expanded to all the air assets, the helicopter units that just saved our ass every day. Then we brought in the SPAD pilots too. Offered the F-4s, but you know how Air Force jet jockeys are. Okay, fine. So those were unions. So we got to meet the guys. So when I do a story, I talk to guys.

Oh, that collective knowledge. And then when I worked on across the fence, my first book, which, by the way, I couldn't have done it without my wife because we had four teenagers and a newborn in the house. She goes, you got to write the book. So with her support, we did it. But going through the interviews and now talking about it again, it comes back and you work on it. Because I was able to interview all the guys that were there. Some guys have better memories than me.

But now, thanks to the books with Jocko podcast, talking about it and going back trying to get the factual patterns on these things. Have you heard, Mike, that John himself is doing SOGCAS? I saw it, yeah. I already subscribed to it. Hell, yes. So awesome. Yes. So awesome.

Well, thank you. Well, what's cool is it's the same experience that we're experiencing now, just in a different form factor, right? Because with a latter time period of catching up, so like I, you know, when I see all of the guys, especially the aviators that are a huge component to SOG, getting them out and seeing if they're alive and having the conversations to put pieces together,

it's so important to do it now. I mean, the time is now, right? We have, we don't have time on our hands, and it's not going to be on our side. We have to get these conversations had. How, when you wrote your first book or even did the Sulture of Fortune thing, did you have a hard time,

where people like talking to you about like, hey, you shouldn't be doing this? Or was there any, I mean, it's less popular as far as numbers-wise. I can imagine it was more narrow, but did you have a problem with that? There was always a few people, but basically it would be like

you pretend you're talking to an officer. Fuck off. I'm doing it. Yeah. No offense, Andy. Yeah, nothing personal, sir. No offense, bro. Sir, you can call me, sir, if you want to. We love the few good officers that were out there.

I'm sure you would have been in that category. You never know. Jury's out. Yeah. Hey, after 17 years, man, you're in your spurs. That's not necessarily true. White House liaison right there. Don't forget.

Liaison to the urinal, perhaps. By the way, we're not leaving today without you talking to me a little bit about Pakistan. Oh, yeah, Pakistan. If you can. I can, yeah. Pakistan was a shithole. Because that's why we're here, man. The passing of the torch, if you will.

Indeed. The next generation, you kidding. You guys' generation. But see, you thought about it, though. You thought about that experience. And this is the great thing about SF, and even with the SEALs, that when the people that are doing the operations

talk about it, they're always looking for a better way to do business. Yeah. How to improve it. Now, you've got stuff today. You've got more lawyers over it, and you have combat troops. At times, it seems like it.

The rules of engagement are far worse. I was going to ask that. What rules of engagement were you operating under? Well, we're supposed to get fired at first, but once we went across the fence

was fuck the rules. Who told you you need to get fired at first because that's idiotic? Of course. But that's just, you know, backyard bureaucrats. And this is in country stuff.

I mean, they had bad incidents. You have young soldiers or young Marines that would fire people. And we had cases like one time our Idaho came out of a target

and they landed at one of the Marine air bases on one of the hilltops and the Marines came up to our South Vietnamese started giving them shit. That's not going to fly. Yeah, yeah. And so Hep

spoke really good English and he told them and no uncertain terms. And I forgot. I was there for that. But most of the shouting was done by the time I got and I heard I went over and correct the situation. But we had a recon team that came into contact on an in-country drill with Marines and they fired them up. The Marines opened fire on our guys. Oh fuck. And we fired

back. Call that. What would that be a green on blue? Yeah. Or yeah. That's a Crayola palette you don't want to fuck with. Yeah. And then earlier we were talking about the team for SciOps where all the Americans are killed, the Vietnamese E&E to the border. And when three break out, one was killed by a Marine because they were envy, they looked like there were South Vietnamese carrying guns. Wow. And the Marines didn't think about what were they carrying a car 15s. Yeah.

What was your, I mean, in the wars that Mike and I fought in, you know, they talked about Geneva Convention, you know, expectations of people that we would detain and likely expectations, at least, of what we could expect if captured ourselves. what was the expectation if you guys were to be captured? I had the last hand grenade right here. And that's it. I'm not going to be a P.O.W. By that time, we knew we had heard the stories of horror.

What kind of stuff? I mean, I'm not familiar with the stories. What kind of things were happening? Oh, they started with the Navy and Air Force pilots that were POWs up north. Gotcha. That were shot down. Hanow Hilton type stuff. Correct.

And they were just treated wretchedly. and inhumanely, of course. And so we heard that. And then, of course, Nick Rowe, who was a green beret, captured early in the war, he was captured, tried to escape several times, finally did escape, and we heard stories from him, not directly, but stuff that came through channels. So myself and McIntyre and a few of the other guys, we all just carried the last hand grenade. If we got wounded, if we're going to go, we're going to take as many assholes with us as we can.

It's kind of a power flex. That is. You know, Colonel Nick Rowe, he wrote the book Five Years to Freedom. What incredible book. Oh, yeah. But he started our schoolhouse. It probably started the Air Force schoolhouse as well that spun off the Army schoolhouse because I know our schoolhouse, which is ran by Special Warfare Center,

that taught, started teaching right after Nick Rowe's experience all the guys that went through the pipeline. But then that broke off into different secondary. which included the Air Force and JPR8 joint personnel recovery and all the stuff. But that experience with you at that time, nobody knew except for the handed down information and you guys are learning every single day. I can imagine like, because I know when we're in the GWAT, you know, we show our kits all screwed up, right?

Everything we're doing is like, what are we doing? And then you look at us now, it's a completely different. Yeah. And then you take it back to that time period, and you guys were inventing warfare because it's very different from World War II and Germany. And here's our lesson. When McIntyre and I went through our combo train,

we got recycled. I had the hardest time getting up to speed for Morris Code. The guy who brought us in on weekends and at night worked with us day and night on this stuff was Paul Villa Rosa, SFC. he had three tours of duty we loved the guy and he was a comma whiz he could send and receive at the same time

and he used the bug and he was super fast anyway he trained us he earned our respect we get to Vietnam during or shortly after our top secret briefing we learned that Paul Villarosa died on the first mission SOG mission out of FOB4

in Denang which was the January 1st, 2nd or 3rd, 1968. Wow. And additionally, what they did to him, they fried him literally with a napalm. The fire, you know, the flamethrower? Flamethrower. Thank you. And they forced one other Americans stay alive to watch it.

Wow. When they fried him and they killed another team member of somebody in Dij, E&E. But I forget who the American was, but when he came back, They took them right to Saigon, and that was part of Sciops that we were up against. So we knew what happened to Paul, who was our hero, and our hero who had bid three tours of duty is fried on the target. Yeah, so they're not following. You're talking about SIOPs.

Oh, no. None of the rules, Geneva Convention. No. But first of all, everybody in America doesn't realize today that the Congress, the first rule is you will lie. You will say anything you want to the media. The media will report it that way, but it will not be the truth. And that's the way it was then.

They said that they had no combat troops and liaos lying through their ass. Yeah. And today they lie. Yeah. What was your relationship with your indigenous guys? I grew up as a Green Beret in many countries building rapport. And my favorite experiences were working with Indage. It was like I posted a picture the other day on Instagram.

Well, how many sets of Indies do you have? I only have one. Probably got how many? I got like 10 sets. I love the term sets. Yeah. One of my favorite sets was in Coenar province. I had civilians that we transition into Afghan special forces before Afghan National Army.

Probably Kunari's. Yeah. Was that right? Just locals, yeah. Locals that were just super pumped and motivated. They wanted to be there. They were hungry for it. We paid well.

But I posted a picture of me. On an op, it was a long, long range operation in a place called Cochia Valley, which was some of bin Laden's old stomping grounds. We had an MH47 that was shot down. All kinds of crazy stuff happened. And I'm smoking a cigarette. And it was the, it was a blue box, it's a white and blue blocks. It's like pine or something like that. Or, like you could take a puff of that cigarette and blow it into a, you know, a napkin or something.

And it was just black tar. Just disgusting. And I don't smoke. I'm not a smoker. But that day. Yeah, somebody asked me, they said, I didn't know you smoked. And I was like, to build rapport with these dudes, I would do anything.

I hung out with them. I drank tea. I wouldn't do anything. I was just going to have some interesting questions for you. Thursday night, I was done. You noticed where the question would come from. Yes. Oh, yeah.

Okay. I mean, I did serve in the Navy. It was a seaman. But did you have a good rapport with them? and then what happened to those relationships after you guys left? Well, the first part of the question it was spectacular.

I mean, I was so fun. That's why when the tour of duty ended, I felt guilty as hell leaving. Yeah. And of course, it helped to have Lynn Black and the Frenchman go on the team. And they ran a shitload of missions. It was five months I was gone.

You know they were in good hands. Good hands, yeah. And likewise, the Indigent would take great care. them and so when I came back it was like oh it was like old homecoming so it was great the rapport was um you know but I had to earn it like you know when spider parks introduced me to the team I go in and the and the counterpart was Sal who was like 98 pounds soaking wet 50 pounds of heart and he looks at me he goes to the interpreter hep he goes he's too tall his feet are too big and he looked stupid.

Yes. Oh, yeah. And that was the assessment. So this is June, early June. I met Sal, and maybe even at the end of May. So it wasn't until October 7th on that mission. You proved yourself. Did it.

There. Wow. And the most significant moment was we're on the Kingby flying home now, right? I look at Sal and he goes, he gave me the nod. That's it. That was it. That's all you got. I mean, I would take that moment in time.

That's so amazing. Oh, yeah. But it took a while. Yeah. And he had me pretty well accurately assessed. Feet it too big. Looks stupid, you know. Yeah.

And Sal was the head of the Indige element. He was our zero one. He was the team leader for the V&M side. So he and Hep, when the team got several members lost, they recruited the young people, brought them in. Yeah, train them from them. Train them up. Yeah. And we trained together, and they took care of them.

We took care of the American side. and when it came to the mission, everything came from us. We talked to Sal, what we wanted to do, who's going to do what? He would make it happen. He would make it happen.

What happened after? Well, April 30th, 1975, one of those most saddest days of my life. Wow. Because that's the day to Vietnam, Saigon fell. Yeah. And just sitting there going,

like, fuck me to tears. All of our people that saved my life, the King Bee Pilots, the team members, they're still there. And then, and decent interval came out

when Frank snapped at the story on how the CIA did not destroy their documents and the NBA had full run of their documents about this top secret operations they had the names and addresses of all the people on top of that oh yeah

did they wind up hunting down all those some did now like Sal was just so savvy he went to Saigon and and blended in and I'm not sure how he did I never talked to Sal after I left. Really? Yeah, sadly. The only person I talked to was Hep. Have you ever tried to go back and see if any of those guys were around? Nope. Well, first of all, I was just a, you know,

just a simple reporter had gone from paycheck to paycheck, north of grass around, and then got involved to have my family between the family and work and living paycheck to paycheck, it's just you go to go on with life. Yeah, man, I always wonder about my end. And there was the back of my head. So the good news with HEPP was the History Channel did a story on SOT called Suicide Missions. It came out in 2000 and in it the picture from across the fence was there. I had it and long story short, HEP's nephew saw it called the History Channel. They called me. I called him. He was nine miles from my house. What? And he gave me Hep's phone number And I called up Hep in Houston, and we finally got together, happiest day in my life.

We got to see if those guys are still around. No, they're gone. Are they gone? Yeah. We buried Hep three years ago. What about Sao? No, we lost him on Valentine's Day seven or eight years ago. Okay.

And then Doty Kwong, who was with Lynn Black on October to 5th, one of the staunch NBA with Cowboy, we recruited him to Idaho, and we lost Kwong, I think, was. five years ago. Oh, wow. I heard about this all from Hep. He was able to keep, and we sent money over, we tried to get sound and back, but between the corruption and, you know, we're just poor, poor soldiers. There's a guy named Omar in Texas, who's a truck driver. This guy's a truck driver, and his brother is a truck driver. He was one of the original operators that we trained in the Iraqi counterterrorism force. So this is the closest thing that, I think modern green berets had to MagVSog,

which was the commander's in extremist force, which I was in, is a specialized direct action, special reconnaissance unit that works with specialized special missions units. And they're like the, think of it as like the regional SWAT team in the area that responds to crisis responses and then hands it off to the tier one unit.

one of the original missions that we got tasked for is take a bunch of Iraqis, pull them out of Iraq, train them in Jordan, train them to be specialized operators, and then go in in small units and conduct counterterrorism operations in Iraq. And we did that in 2003. And so from 03, 2004, all the way through the GWAT until 2014, we operated with the Iraqi counterterrorism force. every green beret that rotated that was a SIF member including task force that were using them

at the tail end of our part of the GWAT and Iraq up until 14 we were doing that Omar was an operator his brother was an operator and they left Iraq to live the American dream and stand up here and this fall

I'm trying to get Evan involved for black rival coffee because this fall I'm going back to Iraq I got five trips to Iraq but I'm going to go back there for a six trip to document the Iraqi counterterrorism force and all they accomplished

Because they're hot shit If it wasn't for the ICTF That were started by Green Berets They wouldn't have destroyed ISIS in Missoule Or Or Bill They're the sole reason There's documentaries out about it

But there's sole reason That they sack half of the ICTF That we trained up are dead In the fight against ISIS about 10% of them we lost in combat operations overseas. But I want to go back, interview the main dudes that stood them up, that helped that. I have four rotations with them, or three rotations with them, and then tell their story, but also highlight guys like Omar, who's still alive.

We're still young. We're still able to tell this because I hate to hear that these guys that played such a significant role, because we've done it. We've left these guys behind in Afghanistan and Iraq. And we're doing it again again and again. Even the Wall Street Journal had a hell of a story yesterday on it. It's insane. It's insane.

It's a heartbreak. It is heartbreaking. It hurts bad to know that those dudes, I mean, even the Afghans that I served with, they were with Robert Miller, who was a third group guy who got the Medal of Honor posthumously. I worked with those indig, handing them over to Rob, who was an 18 Bravo, just like me. And he got killed fighting uphill against the enemy. but some of our Indige that were there got killed as well

and those guys are still there I mean they live war you know their life they don't get a rotation out they don't get the you know high five out and I just there needs to be more done about that yeah I mean and you know and the other thing just getting back to to the Indige for a while

there's much more of an intimacy nothing sexual or anything but just that they're closer yeah you know you play poker the guy sitting next to you have his hand around your shoulder or on your leg. Yeah. There's nothing fancy-smancy about it,

but it was really close. And I got, I really enjoyed that. My second tour of duty, I ate my meals at night in the Indies Mess Hall with the team. Yep. Yeah. And that was just great fun.

And then I left camp suddenly because me and the CEO had this disagreement. And that night we had a party, drank everybody, everybody passed out eventually. HEP was the last one awake, my interpreter, right? And so we're outside.

It must be two or three o'clock in the morning. and he goes, my, and he, they never say my or just my. My, you need anything else? I said, no, HEP, we're done. He laid down and passed out right there in the sand. But that's how loyal he was right to the end, you know. So I picked him up, dusted him off, carried him into the team room, put him in bed. Yeah.

And then left, I had two weeks left in country, and then I deer rose down. So you never saw him again? I saw HEP, but nobody else in the team. Gosh, man. When you left after your first. rotation there. Did you know you'd be back for a second? No. No, I didn't know what the future held. Did you want to go back for a second?

Yeah, I did, but I did, but I did. At that time, I was engaged to a gal, and the way things worked out, I told her I was going to go back, she ended things, and I said, fine. So let's go, and went back. And just seeing the team again, seeing Lynn, and being back where special forces belong, which is doing the hardest missions, getting out there mixing up with the bad guys to try to help have an impact somewhere. How was your transition out of that life?

I lucked down. You know, when I went back, my family was there. They've been praying for me from day one, grandmom striker. I'm convinced that one of the reason why I'm survived is because of the prayers by divine intervention, like what Sal said, you know. and my friends from church were there went right back to school because I had to get

I flunked out I had to make up the classes and then I wanted to get my degree so I figured to go back to school and that was my mission to really focus on that transition and I mean it gnawed at me feeling guilty about leaving behind a team

occasionally guys had come through Trenton like Eldon Bargewell when he was heading OCS he stopped by and we had meal he goes, you thought about coming back and Lynn and I talked about trying to get a job with the agency, but then Lynn landed a great job at a TV studio. He's getting paid

tons of money for his artwork. And I just kind of went with the flow. And we ran a PLWMIA Center at college. We started that for over two years, selling the PLWMA bracelets, the bumper stickers, raising awareness about our PLWs. What year was that? 71 through 73 until he came home.

So probably not a, popular year to be selling those things. Oh no, no, no. Crazy. Oh yeah, but again, there were those who didn't like it, but nobody was opposition enough that would go to the administration and say, we put this thing in the school student newspaper office, and we had the PLWMIA Concern Center. We had, whenever we get the story out there, we worked on it, to raise the concern about the MIAs. I mean, as up today, we still have 50 green berets that are missing in action in layoffs alone. Then you threw in 80 plus 80 years that died supporting them. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. And, in fact, our SOA reunion this year is going to acknowledge all of the KIAs that are still MIA. It's a big number. Yeah, it's huge. Think about your word. I mean, you had one or two people at MAA and everybody went shipwined until they got them. Yeah. And today we talk about ours.

Yeah, still at 1,500 or 1,000. Over a thousand. 1,584 as up today. Wow. In Vietnam? For the Vietnam War, it includes all of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, China. A few in Thailand, and there's a couple in China were 80 years, I think.

Wow. How much time from your second rotation until you started school and dove back into the after of your military career? Next month. I came home in May. Of course, I came home in May. My dad got me got me a job driving school buses for some pocket change. and the first week

my first drive is I got a school bus full of black children taking them into a white neighborhood in Chambersburg in Trenton which was an Italian section of town it was part of the integration and we got stoned and rocked windows broken on the school bus

and me straight out of Vietnam do that and me without my car 15 man because I saw a couple of people I really wanted to hurt I just came from Trenton Trenton Trenton's are a Not the best place in the world today, even today. Well, the things have denigrated a little.

I trained the state squad team or state patrol SWAT team. State, New Jersey State Police? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Good people, good guys. Oh, yeah. Good guys.

And they're getting it. It's like war there. For sure. They're busy in that place. Oh, yeah. So when did you start telling your family exactly what it is? Never. Not until the book came out.

I was going to say. Wow. So what was there? reaction to what old tilt was up to in Vietnam. That's kind of funny. You know, Mom never talked about. I don't know if my mother ever read it because it was so hard, particularly when I went back, when I told her I was going back,

I was out of leave time. So I had gone down to the Pentagon, got my orders cut, cleared base, came home, said, hey, I'm going back to Nam. And mom was really heartbroken. But dad just said, okay, let me know if you need anything. and went back. And that was really hard. That was the hardest part of how going back.

And so after my little brother knew, we talked, Dave and I talk all the time. So even there, it's like he read the book first, then the questions would come off the book. Yeah, I bet. Across the fence. Until that point. What year?

Did you write the book? It came out in 2003. Yeah, so it came out. 30 plus years. Yeah. And then I redid it. You should know the math on that month. like you're the quant.

I know. I got it. A nice round number, 33. Yeah. But so Dave and I talked, and we still do it to this day, my little brother, who's taller in me.

And then we redid, we did the expanded edition of cross the fence about 10 years later. We threw in 50 pictures, three different chapters, including the one where the Frenchman got shot in the back four times and lived to talk about it.

Wow. Yeah, the four rounds go through his back, through the radio, through his fatigue, and each round broke the skin on his back and ran out of energy. Wow. Put him right on his face, and Doug goes, I jumped up, I wanted to fight those commie bastards.

And they left, they all thought he was dead. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh my gosh. And he had his pants taped, so that night he's in the shower, and he goes, ah, his back hurt, and they realized that the rounds had broke the skin on his back, and he threw the four slugs out in the sand.

Wow. I told if that had been me, I would have come up. at least one. At least one. For sure. Oh, yeah, just for who knows what. Good God. Oh, yeah. When you were part of Mac V. Saug in that year that you were over there, how many operations do you think that you went on? Well, in my mind, when you're going into the LZ and getting shot out three times, twice a day, that's almost a mission. I'm going to go ahead and count that one. That's counted. And if you did it in the evening and the morning, I'm going to give you two on that. You're big heart

You know, I never I lost count Do you have any estimate? I'll have to think about that And it sounds like it would be hundreds at least Oh no no It wouldn't be that high Because just the turnaround time

Because there were a few Where we were actually on the ground For several days You know like that one there We're socked in The coldest time in my life Was in the DMZ We get inserted

Again there's questionable weather We go in And my point man when he came off to King Bee almost broke his ankle and so we went in with two Kingby's so I think Soam was on the second one I forget now but he really hurt his ankle

and we couldn't move and so I called for an distraction to come back and get him and we would just run without him well in that short period of time we got socked in and they wouldn't come back there was a lieutenant flying Covey with our fact and he said no you guys

continue to miss him. I said, well, one guy can't move. We're not moving anywhere without him. The weather closed in and we were on the ground, five days and five nights, and the DMZ were rained. How much food would you guys take with you on an operation? Usually carry rations for five. Okay. But in this case, we cut it a little bit short, figuring that the weather's bad, and we hadn't, we've been shot out of so many targets. Yeah. What about water? What about water? Are you procuring off the land? Right. Usually just, well, just try to, yeah, have the sauce. the purification pills.

iodine. Right, yeah, exactly. Taste-est water you'll ever have. Indeed. And it had that... So, yeah, we try, depending on where we were gone, because usually in Laos,

there would be stream or something that we'd get water out of. And even there, it'd be very careful, you know. So, yeah, we just carry one canteen for water. We had the Lurps, which were dehydrated rations. And so you put the

water in, wrap it up, put it next to your body, and a few hours later it would have body heat. Heat it up. Yeah, and then eat it that way. And then when we ate, they had indigenous rations too, which were rice, and then they had shrimp, fish, and things like that with special flavoring. And again, these were developed by our special operations department, where when they designed them specifically for indigenous troops, they put vitamins in there. So it helped them with their health.

Yeah. And so that would be just a bag with rice of flavor And you mix it up a little bit Yeah What was your lowest point During that year there with Macfey's Sogg That mission where the boot was touched Because that next day

When we went straight up the mountain all day And right near the end Before we got to the top After we had contact with the woodcutters And there was no shots fired I mean Sal had gone out with of sown, I think it was, and they had seen them, and the woodcutter saw them. So they went that away, and then we went more to the right around that mountain,

trying to get to the top before dark. And we had been on the move since first light, and it was getting around maybe three, four o'clock in the afternoon, and we took a break, and when I went to get up, I fell down. Lily just fell and went on my face, and I was just sitting there for a minute, lying there going, I'm like, oh man, I just want to roll over and go to sleep. But I also knew that every eye on that team was all my dumb ass. So I went to get up again. It happened again.

Went down, I hurt my bad knee, landed on my face, and I'm there. Terra firmer with that shit on my face. And that was my worst moment right there because I just really wanted to go to sleep. But I knew that I was the one zero. Yeah. And just got my ass up. and we finally got to the top of the mountain and the last light, thanks to Sal.

He got us up there. What was your most rewarding moment in that year that we were there? There's a few. No, having successful wiretaps, and again, you know how it is with the CIA. You give them 10,000 things. You never hear anything unless you fuck up.

And they want to blame you for the fuck up. Okay, that's the way to CIA operate when it comes to us. Mike, do you have anything to add? No, that's true. No, yeah. I've been there. That's why I'm not there.

Yeah, you got integrity. Yeah, it's a pain in the ass. Oh, yeah. And there were, no, we had that mission on Thanksgiving Day at 68. The mission was find three NVA divisions. The first, the third, and the seventh NVA divisions were MIA, literally. And we had done a whole Intel study that night, had photographs for the first time, which I'd never seen before.

High elevation photos. Maybe it came from Blackbirds or YouTube. I assumed they were blackbirds. Anyways, we picked out where they were. We had a Thanksgiving dinner before we went to the target. We go in and we're on the ground, maybe an hour or two, walked right into a base camp.

Fire still lit. One still had a pot on the fire. And what we figured out was later was that one had just left and another one was coming in. So the point element and the tail security all came at us. Now we're in Cambodia.

Much more wide open. 200, 300, 400, 400 feet, you could see. And the image I'll take to my grave is the NVA running at Port Arms towards us. And we had to make it back to the LZ. So we were doing a fire, our rotations. And then the Claymore Mines put them down. Then we used the Claymore Mines with a five-second fuse as we continue to move back. And then the 20th SOS Air Force, the Green Hornets, got there in time.

time. With the gun runs, the five seconds on our claymores, we got back and got out under the just right the last second. And we went back at a second Thanksgiving dinner, got back to base, had a third Thanksgiving dinner. That's how you do that. Indeed, indeed. S-S-O-P. Have you ever used a Claymore mic that had a five-second delay? No, I don't think I have. No, that shit's not authorized. Yeah, oh, it's not, right? There's a reason for that, right? I'm pretty sure the minimum is like 30 seconds on the time fuse, because there's a pluser minus factor with that stuff. We did get in trouble for wiring Claymore's to the front of our vehicles. Like we had the GMVs in Afghanistan and we had them on the front. Oh, cool. We took a picture

during, like it was actually, what do they call those pictures where you send them to headquarters and they give you a thumbs up? It's a storyboards. Yes. So we gave them a storyboard and was us doing a knob and we had Claymore's rigged on the front because if you got into a situation where you had even breaking in contact, you could at least clack off the front end of your vehicle, directionally towards the bad guys front towards the enemy and then bring contact and they were like you can go to jail for that

like oh what that's not a thing it's crazy and that misses what I called a jaco mission because jaco goes you know he says you found him I said yeah that's a jaco mission the good news is I found him

the bad news is we found him yeah it's double-edged sword you guys did the Australian I saw on the Discovery Channel. Oh, hell yeah. That's what you guys are known for. The Australian pill, which is the, where you, like, open fire and then you break contact and the discovery channel.

That's all you guys do. That's your thing, right? I do that everywhere. I do that inside a hallways, in rooms, actually. That's how I quit a rooms. Sometimes aren't. You're in a staggered file. Yeah.

And everybody goes to their field of fire, and it's just the first guy shoots to start with, runs back, and then everybody just peels back. Yeah. It's fancy. I noticed when he said that, you pegged into that. You were like, yeah, yeah, we know that. Ours wasn't a sophisticated user. We're just linear going back.

So it's one guy opens up and then rolls out. Traditional center peel. Center peel. And then we had our M79 guy, and then Bob and I used our M79s too. So we'd fire off the car 15, fire off the M79 round and reload during the peel. Did you use auto? Full auto. In the beginning, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Huh. And then you have... 20 rounds goes quick on full off. I was like... Yeah, you're done. Well, we were told that the 20 rounds of two seconds.

Wow. I'd be surprised if it took that long, to be honest. Probably not, but it's... Yeah, it's... To this day, just thinking about that firepower, so like, oh my God. Did you... We never had 30 round mags. Did you ever feel like you were out gunned with 760 by 39 in the jungles?

Like, did you want more? and what grain bullet were you guys using? Do you remember? I couldn't tell you. I'd go to S4. Give me bullets, and they did. Okay. Yeah.

But I don't know, but no. Never fell on a gun, the car. And that's a baby on a fool. Oh, yeah. So at that time, what was the manufacturer? It was a Steiner, Colt Steiner. I think so. Well, ours had the cold emblem on.

Armolite. I had some Car 15s as well. Yeah. Yeah. Time period. Well, the whole book now, This is called the AR-15 by Larry, Larry, Larry, and then James Wupperly. But they have a huge book on it, and they have all the history of the CAR-15s.

You guys were the first unit in Vietnam to use the CAR-15, right? Right, and the Air Force had them before we did. The Power Rescue Man. Okay. Really? Yeah, interesting. The Air Force gets everything first. Sometimes.

Interesting. Well, yeah, in this case, they had them. Times have changed. Yeah. Well, the Power Rescue is still outstanding troops. Oh, yeah. The guys are just amazing. Spectacular for sure. In one of your podcasts, you're talking about the 53s, the CH53s. Delta's, yeah. So I did the last op in 2008 of one of the 53s that we were told historically and significantly

was used during your time period during SOG missions, yeah. They actually, they actually... Is this just a two-engine version? instead of three because the new ones had three. Yeah, it was a two. It was a two. Because Jaco had mentioned it, but he used, you used the 50 threes as well. Is that right? But these ones in Iraq, we were landing on the X on the on these like front door, like right in the middle of the thicket. And we had used them for, I think, because they were a marine, they were flown by Marines. Right. And we used them for one rotation. And the last flight, I remember we did a

op where we were very successful. And they said the lineage on this bird, they did Mac V. Sog missions during Vietnam. And I was like, what? I couldn't believe it, man. I was like in the bird like, I don't, this is amazing. Like we get to fly in this bird that was infilling or X filling MacVe Saga as during Vietnam. Well, you know, we talked to the doorkunners who talked about how they go back to base tonight

and Navy used beer cans to plug up the bullholes on those CH53s. I believe it. Oh, yeah. Well, I noticed you guys are doing a lot of drinking. So our era... Dustin Marines. We provided them with a cold beer. Because you guys could drink.

There was no general order number one. Which is no alcohol in theater. That was our general order number one. No, we... Strictly adhered to at all times. You guys could burn it down. I mean, you guys get... We had our clubhouse, man.

God, damn. And then at one point... In fact, I just learned this little tidbit from a guy that ran recon, who became the club manager, and when he took over at the end of 68, he was $25,000 in debt from the club somehow.

So he went out, made these deals, wielded deal, got all these expensive liquors and things, bought it at base price, and then sold it to the Air Force and the Marines, and anybody nearby F-O-B-1, and within the two months he made up all the money, so we had a profit. Nice.

Oh, yeah. I like it. And some of our guys were very big, You guys, you didn't do a lot of drinking down range. I've heard about it. I heard stories. In all honesty, I drank. I got drunk once.

Yeah. Before mission and we never, I never drank. I wanted to be awake. For sure. Yeah. I was the same way. If we got hit a night, it's like, I want to be ready. Yeah.

I never toyed with any of that. If we had some downtime due to weather, perhaps we would watch Band of Brothers and have cocktails in Ambien. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. Yeah. John, how much of your experience?

in Vietnam, how much of an impact did they have on your life going forward? And I asked through the lens of my dad, one of the reasons I first came to Montana, we lived in Missoula when I was very, very young. Yeah, yeah. Like, I remember it snowed and I got in trouble for throwing snowballs at cars and shit. You too. Yeah. I mean, I just think that's what boys do. But my, my mom basically gave my dad the ultimatum. You will go work on yourself and fix yourself or I'm out and the kids are coming as well. And his experience, I mean, again, Brownwater Navy, the things that he was tasked with doing hugely different than the things that you were doing. And I could only describe, I would describe your experiences as very intimate with your enemy, the proximity going into

their backyard. Similar in a lot of ways, I think that the units that Mike and I came from, you're going to the place where they would maybe least expect you where they may feel the most comfortable. it's very up front in your face. Did you notice any impact on your life, things that you needed to work through based off your experiences in Vietnam? Well, you missed the adrenaline more than anything. Yeah.

And so you wind up doing little things like in the middle of a snowstorm doing 120 miles an hour because there's a couple highways where there's lighting so when you're doing 120, you can see the snow in the back. That's really cool. Wow. That's a new one. An inverted snowstorm?

Yeah. So it's like just trying to. Yeah. And we and I don't know. I missed that part of it. And of course the guys and the Vietnamese film guilty all the time. But just try to get on with life. And there were, you know, just other things that were going on between school, a social life a little bit.

And it was able to move forward. Now, I thought it was pretty cool and squared away. But I went to a party, a family party maybe 10, 12 years ago. And I heard somebody talk to my sister. She said, what was John like when he came home? He was pretty messed up. Sounds very familiar. Yeah, yeah.

I trust my sister more than I do me on something like that. Maybe talk to Linda. She might give you a better scoop. Did you feel it internally, though? And I asked that because I struggle to remember who I was when I was 18 when I joined the military. And people will ask me, you know, do you feel different? post your military service than you did going in. And the answer is, of course, yes, but I also went in as a teenager.

And I came out in my late 30s. So fuck, absent combat, I'm still going to be a different person. But I know it had an impact on my life. I do notice differences in myself. And I actually will take the feedback from people who have known me during that time period more than my own self-assessment because I think we're really good at lying to ourselves. Probably. And in my case, I was 20 years old when I went here.

So even there, I was an immature 20 years old. And so when I went in, I came out as a better man. So I felt like I raised my platform for my internal self-appraisal. I had been with the best unit in that war. And I used that as a self-assurance factor. And there were many times we had shit that was going wrong at the student newspaper or later in professional life. going through divorce, whatever.

No matter how bad it was, nobody's firing AK-47s or RPGs at us. Yes. That's what my dad says often. He uses a slightly more colorful language, which I'll leave out for the purpose of this podcast. Indeed.

It's so true, though, right? And, you know, we never had anybody putting Willie Peter in front of a Claymore just to make it more effective. I had not thought of doing that. We did that a few times. And now I regret not having experimented with that. It can light up the end.

before you as you're getting pulled out on ropes. We did that once. But so that's, but for me, that was the bottom line. It was like the pride. And of course the country at that time was so crazy. And you get that idiot, John Kerry,

who was just a lion scumbag. And that has such an impact to this day we're still suffer from his lies. Yeah. And so personally, I just took pride in what I'd done, like typical SF guy, which to be my examples,

Spider-Parks and the men I served with, who I judge every man I meet you all, I judge you compared to my guys. Pat Walk and Spider-Parks. And, you know, John McGovern, Lynn Black, are you kidding? Doug, the Frenchman. Those are our guys you went to war with.

And so I always had that factor there. And the family. You know, mom and dad just support us down no matter what. And during those early years, just going to college, it was like a real rat race between college, not doing very well. It's got enough to get the degree at least. And then working, driving school buses

and doing a P.O.M.A. thing, because that was a conscience drive, a hard issue. Glenn Lane, Robert O. are still M.A. to this day. We tried to do the best we could with the limited resources at that time to get public attention to it.

And that's still going on today. Yeah. Did you keep in contact with a lot of the guys from the unit? Or did you just lose contact because obviously everybody's doing their thing? There were a few guys. Lynn and I were in contact for a while,

the Frenchman, and then Eldon Bargewell would write occasionally, because we were really close. And then, as time went on, that disappeared, and there was like a void. Because, again, I was married, family, wanted to be a good dad, just blessed with the amazing girls,

who, by the way, my second daughter gave me my second grandson today. What? Yes. Good timing. How did you arrange that, Andy? That's weird. It's practice. Really just practice.

We're kind of lining stuff up. They talked with these Navy officers, but anyway, my daughter came through with his beautiful grandson and seven pounds, 19 ounces. Congrats. That's awesome. Anyway, yeah, he's back there. He's shining. So just try to do that mission, you know, get the work.

And then we got it working on the books. And then Spider-Parks told me about the Special Operations Association. And this was 1983. I'm still in Trenton. Didn't do anything much. I just became a member. And then we moved to California. That's only 300 miles from Vegas where we had to be unions.

So finally, for a couple years, me and Jeff Juncker's, we were together. And we used to drive to Vegas, get there in the morning, hang out, wait until the security guards left, sneak in, fake a badge. so we'd have to pay admission or anything get the free food, crafts with one of the guys in this hotel room that night and then drive home. What? And we'd get the seated guys, you know?

Would you ever go back? So when I, I just saw this yesterday. When I, I went to, I went to E7 school, which is A-K. It was called A-Knoch. And real young E-7,

and I got the leadership award. And when you get the leadership award, they gave me a book, a MacVSog book. I was trying to think of the author who wrote it. It was a Medal of Honor recipient. Oh, and it's a black book with a MacVSog. Oh, WTF. Is that what it called?

Whiskey, Fock truck. No. It's something on leadership. Oh. Anyways, Medal of honor. I don't know anything about leadership. Yeah. Medal of honor recipient, MacVSog guy.

They give you that book and they give you an SF Association Lifetime membership. right and so I have that in an envelope that I never opened inside the book and when you told me what to do this podcast I started picking up all my mac v sog books and I'm like oh this is cool and I was like what the fuck I was like I was like oh yeah whatever an open invitation yeah I would never so I would never go to that but I feel like there's a period of time where you just lose everybody like everybody you walk away you kind of find yourself and then at some time at some point you kind of come back and gravitate towards the community. For you guys, it's maybe the Navy Seale Foundation or maybe a local chapter. Or an organization, but I think you hit the nail on the head. I think

you have to find yourself first and then come back to it. Yeah. I think the people that struggle the most, and this is just completely my opinion, are the ones that don't take the time to find themselves and they just define themselves by what they used to do. Yes. I don't think I'm ready for it. Like, I even thought about entertained, because the Green Bay, the Green Beret Association or the Greenberry Foundation, like the Navy Sale Foundation is incredible, like the things they do. It's very big scale, like, and they're helping an impact because of that scale. Yeah. Green Beret Foundation, I've seen them fail a phone call. You know, I've seen them fail like a thank you for a $25,000 to our nation, you know, to a, like, I've linked that up and went,

hey, let's do, and then they didn't even send a thank you, not even like, hey, thanks for your $25,000. Which is a guarantee you're not going to get another $25,000. Exactly, exactly. So I. Sad but true. So I look at myself and I go, well, if I'm going to do that, I'll just do it myself because I feel like I could do that right. But even I wouldn't do that right now because I'm not ready. And I don't know what that is.

And he even said in 83, this is 83. So this is way post-war, which we're still in. And remember, there's two. There's a special operations association formed by SOG. Oh. And SOG was formed that because there was a special forces association that was formed by the A team guys. Yes. And so in the very dark days, right after during Vietnam War, they were recruiting wanting

SF guys to go in. So I joined, but they didn't pay much attention to SOT. And to young guys, they had the career SF guys. They had been in the decadators. They'd been 10, 15 years. No, I was only in for three and a half years, 19 months in country. Running missions, a lot of A-camp guys didn't want to run. Yeah.

So we had the SOA. and that's the one that's the special operations and we're recruiting today. Otherwise, if they don't improve the recruiting, it will be like the Doolittle Raiders. They'll be down to the last man standing and he gets the bottle, Scots gets drunk and goes home. Yeah, that's absolutely right. Do you personally, are you going to get involved to that? I am not part of any association. I've never been to a single seal reunion.

They do a West Coast and East Coast one, COVID, obviously. changed some of that. I've never been to one. I don't have an interest yet to go. I need to figure out my own path a little bit more, I think. It's hard to find your own men. If you can have a guarantee to see the guys you serve with, wouldn't that make it more compelling? So I got invited to a tomb guard reunion. I was a guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier when I was 18. Get out. Yeah, it was a crazy thing. I don't even know how it happened. I'll send you pictures. Yes, that's real weird, real skinny. You was spit shined, huh? I was, I was. Whoa. But I, when I, I'd never had, I'd never want to do any of that. And just recently, a buddy of mine, Austin, he was actually one of my new

guys at the tomb. I trained him as a young E3. And he asked me, said, hey, this is like the 80th anniversary. He said, hey, come to the 80th anniversary. And it's the last time you could wear your uniform, because you could wear your uniform in it. And the Army finally went back to like a squared away uniform, like the World War II era uniform. I forget the name of it, but away from the blues. And then I was like, oh man, my family's never seen me in uniform. I never had a reason to be in uniform.

But maybe I'll just do it just for that for my family so I can hang that up and give it to my kids one day. And I expressed an interest, and he signed me up for it in November. I still haven't committed personally, but I'm like, but I'm like, there's a greater cause, which is the family, right?

But it's also connecting with those guys that I really had an affinity for because there's a lot of SF guys that I just don't like, man. Same in my community. And I'm sure there's plenty in my community that don't like me either. Exactly.

Yeah. And I think that's what it is. Is inner community, there was a lot of rivalry and a lot of, we like to eat our own. Well, yeah. his own A-type. Yeah.

They're running around. It's bound to happen. It's just sad but so true. Yeah. But I like the reconnection idea stepping away after the transition and being a civilian and going, how can we interoperate to help each other advance our businesses,

our lives, our families, whatever it means moving forward? That's huge. And then you get to the history. You've got to get the history from your era. Yeah. And for no other reason, you do it for your children. Yeah. That's what I've been telling him, right? Because he's like, I'll never write a book. And I'm like, look, your responsibility is impacting not only the lives of people, young people who aspire to be you, but also that legacy that you leave behind in archives for your family or for generations to come. And, you know, we don't think our stories are extraordinary, especially when compared to a man like you. But it's a story. It's a story. story and that experience in some context is going to help some kid go, man, I want to be a

Navy SEAL. I don't know why you'd ever want to be a Navy SEAL over Greenberg. Well, but no, but, you know, chiseled features, rugged handsomeness, above average hair. I mean, do you mean to keep going? The best cone in town. Yes, it's true. It's so true. You might forget the gun, but then never forget the comb and mirror. That's true. No, I'm only kidding. How can you forget? It's got a pocket on your belt for it. That's first line gear, gentlemen. That's DECC. That's First line gear. Pistol magazine, co-beer. That's his new product line, first-line gear.

But see, and here's we are. I move like the wind and first-line gear. And like today's podcast, these are the kind of things that reach the younger people because I too, like your story about you when you were 12 years old, looking at and reading a sog something or another, whatever it was, and plastered books.

He's the godfather of Sogg writers. Yeah. And then we have, the seal side of it, everybody's story is different. And I think that if you do think about it, you should think about it from the approach of your story, not the I. I.I.I. So much, but how I got involved

and then the people you deal with along the way. I mean, my God, not many people get shot with an AK, what, 10 to half feet, was it? Yeah, somewhere between 10 to 15 feet. Most people are better soldiers than me, so they would have not fucking been standing where I was. Yeah, enemy marksmanship back. Seriously, I'll take one over here, enemy marksmanship on aisle one. Here we are.

Can you see me? Am I in enough light right now? Thanks. Bang. But that story, and the way you've bounced back, I mean, those are the kind of things that inspire our youth. There are people out there, and this new medium, what we're dealing with today, podcast, and Jocko and a couple other people to do podcasts, that has an impact.

I've seen it. Now, since the first podcast, as I did with Jocka, that's when I've seen the outreach is from literally around the world. Australia, New Zealand, Poland, a couple dudes from Russia. Say, I'm here, but, you know, I like your stuff. Okay, fine. But that's the way, and there are people from SF. In fact, January, went down for an SF graduation. And our SFA chapter 78, we paid for the barbecue before the graduation. I had breakfast

with a young man who read across the fence. He wanted to go to SF. And he was down there in between. He had gone through the assessment and was waiting for the first day to start SF training. We had breakfast together.

Oh, that's really cool. And there's many examples like that. So in your case, and you're going to write a book too, you said? Oh, Mike's going to write a book. I'll answer for him. Fuck, yes, he is. He's right.

It's not preparing it right now. It's on prepared. But see, when you do these things, by Mike Lover. You won't, you won't, yeah. Oh, man. But you don't know who will impact. And I don't know. I mean, I mean, Instagram, every day, I'll get at least one note for somebody who's been impacted by the podcast.

And then some will be kind enough to say, hey, I saw you on Jocko. And, oh, yeah, I read your book too. But either way, that's, you know, we're talking about the future. And hopefully we can get, there are young people out there. bond. Yeah. How did they wind down Mac V-Sog? Like everything else, clandestinely, because they had to shut it down officially, but then

they stayed in there. There was the acronym I never remember, but they had to wear black hats for a while. So they changed the name probably. Of course. Change the name. The uniform, kept the same mission. Right. And then by that time, several of the guys were all carrying salt off and RPDs. And multiple rounds,

magazines, just going in super heavy. And Nick Brockhouse's book, We Few, just talks, goes into some more detail about that. Just an incredible book. His time on the ground was, he got there in 1970, 71. Right at the tail end. Oh, yeah. And they were, but again, they were able to get in sometimes, and oftentimes they didn't. And when they did, they made contact.

But again, the guys in the ground working well with TAC Air. I mean, like, you guys talk today, you have your Air Force A-TAC. I can't imagine that. Me, it's like, I'm controlling the airstrikes, and, you know, it makes me hinked with somebody else to direct an air. Because you guys use Kovie, like, FAC controllers. FAC-A's, basically. FAC A's, yeah.

Well, we had, yeah, the code name was Covey for our facts, but the secret was, had an Air Force pilot and a green beret in a right seat. That's crazy. And that guy had been on the ground. There's no rookies here. The Covey riders were the men who've been there So they could talk to you And John Plaster

There's at least one tape out Where they recorded John Talking some young radio operator down The guy was freaking out on the radio And John said, you better settle down I forget what his wording was But he said settle down Or you're going to die

Now trust me Do this, do this, do that The kid did He got the fucking team out That's so awesome That's John Plaster And John had been on the ground He ran missions, many.

And he had, I think John had three tours of duty. Did you ever meet Bob Howard? Talk to Bob on the phone once. Yeah. But remember, Bob was put in for three medals of honor. Yeah. And he was putting in for- Did he at least get one of them?

He did. He got one, finally. Yeah, he was, again, he earned the award as a sergeant. He was an S-4 at the time. And I don't think he was ever assigned to a recon team. But he always went out on strap-hanging to help other teams in trouble. The worst missions he went on would be bright lights.

And he was put in for 11 Purple Hearts. He only got eight. Yeah, got commissioned as an officer too. Yeah, now here you go. He earned the Medal of Honor as a sergeant. But then he gets promoted, so the day he gets awarded the Medal of Honor. He's an officer, sir. I mean, that's the way it should be a natural officer.

She get an M-O-H forever. Yeah, of course. I'm stuck on this, Covee. You know, pilot left seat, Greenberry, right seat. I want to see him switch one day. They're like, hey, dude, it's Thursday. You want to swap seats? You want to get on the ground?

You talk me through flying this thing, and I'll talk you through talking on the radio. Well, see, even there, they cross-trained our people. So if you're in case something happened to them? In case the Pollock gets shot, they wanted the Green Beret to be able to land it. And they did so a few time. Yeah, there's a little bit of that going on. I went to, I was one of the first snipers to go. They forced me to go to J-Tack.

school which was called special operations TAC terminal air controller school. Yeah, something like that. And so we were cross-training SF, Green Berets. So if I was in a I know I was one of the first SIF guys to go because I was the only one in third group that was J-TAC qualified

because we had to do a requal as I was the only guy showed up. It was that, dude, it was, it really was one of the hardest things I've ever gone through. It's a tough course. Technically, it was super difficult. And you're talking Lat long, which is a different language than MGRS, I could speak MGRS, but Lat long is completely different. And then the engagement of you and the bird is so important

because that's your lifeline. Oh yeah. And it's so, and each bird varies, depending on who you're talking to and what service they belong to. But it was incredible to hear, like, even in SOG with John Plaster, all of the communication and all the stories they have are all bird and pilot related, but you never got to see those guys after the fact. Never. They flew away into the horizon and you never saw them. No, and that's why the great thing about the SOA, my last year as president,

we brought in this bad pilots, the A-1. Oh, my God. The stories. Really? Because, yeah, we, the classic is one where the team is in a world of shit. And the one's just says, bring it in close. He does a gun run and says, no, bring it in closer. He comes in and he was the wingman.

So the squadron leader said, don't do it. And he went in anyway and did what the ground commander asked for. And when he did it, the way he explained it was he did the gun run or napalm run so close. Then when he pulled out, there was radio silence. He goes, fuck. Did I hit the team? And he said it was. And he said it was the longest seconds of his life.

Wow. But then he came back and said, thank you, do it again. Wow. Now, he got his ass chewed out for not listening to his squadron leader. Yeah. But the man on the ground, he saved. Do you have any regrets looking back on your career and SOG and kind of all the things that you transition into in your civilian life?

I've got to think about that one for it. Can you ask me another 15, 20 minutes? Give a little time to think about it. That's a good one, though. Oh, yeah. So here's a question. of you would have some time to think because I got a question for you Mike in the modern era we still haven't heard about Pakistan oh that's true yeah so in the modern era is there

I mean do they teach the modern green braes in the pipeline about SOG do they have their place their legacy and their history I mean basically they need a fucking shrine built to them which in army speak is probably a building dedicated to them but is it is it taught the way that you think it should be yeah so it's interesting when when you go through special Warfare Center now or when I went through in O2 I went to selection during the invasion of Afghanistan and I went through the Q-course during the invasion of Iraq. So everything we were learning was from Vietnam. All of our instructors were not Vietnam era guys, but they were taught. They were in that low period in the 80s. And so a lot of the doctrine that we had in hand,

for example, the book on firebases, which I still have, which supposedly you could sell for $1,000 on eBay. I've been making copies in my basement. Of course. But we'll be launching that out of the store. Every the entrepreneur. And he's private labeled them. So it's just his cover on it. It's those documents and that doctrine is all Vietnam mirror. In fact, the Firebase book, which is fascinating, is all from handwritten accounts from guys and firebases in Vietnam or Saug guys. That's what we were told. And if you look at it, everything from the a pungy stick, like how to counter an attack or an ambush, how to build a fire base in the

perimeters of security, how to set up a patrol base and a recon operation. We were told we're all based on a lot of ODA tactics in Vietnam, even doctrinally and even with the literal hands. Yeah, that'd be more acamp than saw. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And then when I've noticed, like even in the SWIC, the Special Warfare Center halls, even in leadership. You know, we have a lot of the people who talk to us during our graduations and leadership schools and a lot of the things that are taught us, taught to us culturally are all

SOG related. There's some A-camp stuff related, but most of it's SOG related. So SOG is like the Tier 1 tip of the spear culturally for building green berets. In Robin Sage, in small unit tactics and all the things that we've done. And it's even it's even there in the the branding. I mean, I remember instructors having Mac V-Sog, you know, books, T-shirts, hats, all my ODA, my first ODA in Afghanistan, we all made the MacV-Sog patch and would wear that on our ball caps with Velcro because it was just like reliving. And we would have recon teams that were named instead of states. They were just named after, uh, guys that were killed in combat.

Right. You know, we have recon team Bittner, and we go out and conduct operations named after Ben. But it's part of our culture, for sure. 100% of this. We've had third group guys that were in Afghanistan. Yeah. They started wearing SOG recon team patches.

Yeah. And they called them. Stolen Beller. Yeah. Oh, no, no. This is third group. I'm totally joking. Yeah.

I was in third group for a period of time. Sure. Yeah. Well, and the one guy, I still talked to him. today he's a he's now a warrant on his ODA and he said send me do you have a patch and I said yeah I'll send you a patch but you got to get it dirty and he did really and he had the team so we had pictures we did a couple things for for our local newsletter and for the drop yeah on those guys wearing that was just so cool they called him their shield yeah my my team sergeant he was late he was killed but my team sergeant

his dad um I don't know his first name but his last name name was Booth was on RT Maine. I believe R.T. Maine. Yeah, out of contune. Yeah, he was R.T. Maine, and his granddad was an OSS guy. And he has the lineage. OssS. McVe-Sog, and he was a Green Beret and was killed.

It was crazy, man. His son right now is in the army right now. Oh, is that right? Yeah, his son's in the army. It's crazy. What a legacy. Crazy, man. Crazy. So look, before we shut down, you got, you talked about Pakistan.

I'm dying to hear about I didn't do anything cool Only tell us the classified things Yeah yeah Yeah Why I did So all of my My career

I wanted to be a ground branch guy My entire career Was like Paramilitary operations That's what I want to do Like I wanted to be I interviewed the Special Activities Division Chief

Well be just like Evan Hafer Yes Yes I wanted to do that But taller But taller or more handsome, more ripped and chiseled. More swab and deboner. Yes, yes.

Evan's going to, he's, don't remove my stuff from BRCC, please, if you hear that. Just return my phone call, Evan, please. I always wanted to be, since Mike Span was killed early on in the GWOD, I got the opportunity to interview his boss

who was the Special Activities Division Chief on 9-11 this is months ago. But since that time period, I wanted to be in the CIA. Sure. So I knew a course, curriculum, and career field. I knew exactly what I needed to do to achieve that as a PMO, a paramilitary operations officer.

Yeah. And so I went through everything. The only thing I was missing was my degree. I got my college degree as a team sergeant, like Knickling Diamond online courses. No kidding. Yeah, like it was very difficult to do. Your college edgimicated? 15 years of all.

I don't know if I'm educated. He majors in mathematics. on abacus. I specialize in advocates, major in abacus. So I got my degree. Yeah. And then I transitioned. And, you know, one of the duty stations that I had with the agency was Pakistan. And I had a transitional phase where they, they, the sequester happened when I went to get hired as a staffer for the CIA. And they put a stop loss or not a hiring freeze on all positions for the CIA. Isn't that mostly just to tax classification though? It is, it is, but they said they couldn't hire.

So like they wouldn't, they wouldn't allow me to go, they wouldn't allow me to, or anybody to go through a process to end process, even though I had basically been recruited. I was recruited in Libya. I was ready to go. So they'll pay you via 1099 opposed to W2. Yes. So they want to, basically. They made me a contractor and I did, I did GRS work for as a contractor.

And then realized in, in some of these countries, including. Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, the politics that are all involved in at the agency, especially because the agency is so close to the government, right? I mean, policy drives intel collection, which drives operations or intel priorities, which drives operations. So being on the operational side my whole life, I'm like, well, I want to be on the intel collection and warfighting side of the agency and realized it's even closer to the flagpole. And the difficulties I was having in Libya operationally were compounded and more profound in being a CIA guy and realized I wanted to step away. In fact, really? And when Pakistan, I think I told you this, Andy, my partner,

my riding partner in the agency was Ryan Owens brother who was killed, he was a dev guy and was killed on a hostage rescue in Africa. But after all that stuff transpired, I'm like, dude, I want to start, I want to have like a life because my in committing to being a paramilitary operations officer you have many of my friends are chiefs in divisions of the central intelligence agency and their entire life is that and I love them for it thank God there's men like that who have committed their lives but I felt at that time period which was at this point 22 years into it I've given enough I walked away as a sergeant major in special operations and special forces and and had the CIA job was like, I'm done.

And I actually decided that in Pakistan. No kidding. Yeah. In Pakistan, you know, Pakistan is like, if you could take the Team America movie and then the bullshit stereotypical theme of the guys running around and with the big, big beards, that to me was Pakistan, especially with Peshawar. Team America combined with Tropic Thunder. With Tropic Thunder.

Every stereotype, I was like. This place is crazy. But I actually enjoyed, I was in Peshire, but I enjoyed Pakistan. But I had a whole myriad of experiences there. So what kind of a mission would you run in Pakistan? A whole bunch of different stuff. I mean, we...

Can you talk about any? Just the one to tease us a little bit? It's nothing sexy. I don't care, but you did it. I didn't. So the world, that world, which exists between Afghanistan and Pakistan, that world exposed me to, like me going like in shock going there's this thing that exists.

Do you know what's your stand? Like politics? No, no, no, like technical capability. Oh, got you. Yeah, like technical capability going, ho shit. Like I thought I was exposed on the army side, on the green side. Right. That there was all this world got in the agency world and went, holy fuck, man.

Like this is crazy. But all of that said in Pakistan, that's where it decided to hang it up. We had a fucking, I've been in two earthquakes in my life. One in Afghanistan in 2005, which was a major earthquake that killed thousands of people from Pakistan that originated. And the second one in 2015 in Pakistan, 10 years later, which was another record breaker that killed a whole thousands of people in Pakistan. And I was like, it wasn't because of that earthquake, but I was like, I'm fucking done. But I can still shake you up a little bit. It does.

Like I was tired of living in shipping containers and babysitting fucking case officers. That was the bottom line. It's fair. Yeah. I'm a master at babysitting case officers. So you have successfully avoided answering my question, which is tell me one little missing, Mike. I did go back and get a brick from a Bodabat, from your boys, from the bin Laden hit. Ooh.

Yeah. But I failed to get it into. to my bag before I left country. I had the brick from Osama bin Laden's compound and was like, fuck yeah. And then I left it on the bookshelf as a book, what is it? Bookend?

A bookend? And it's probably sitting there because somebody's like, who the hell would use a brick for a book? Or they hucked it and they're like, this piece of shit. So for the third time, what one little mission you did?

He can't tell you? I can't. Just say I can't. I'm in the 20 year window. You're in the 20 year window. Okay, now we're covered. Okay, good. Now I feel better.

I'm five years in the 20-year window. There we go. But to be honest, nothing is sexy as sock. Well, I don't know about sexy, but anyways. You guys did it though. See, that's the next generation. That's why you've got to get those stories down. Write him when you're fresh.

Here's what I propose. Oh, he's writing. Here's what I propose that I do the voice for your audible for your book. Oh, if I can do the voice for yours. He's going to write. You can be the voice from my book. Of course. I'll do it.

He has a voice for radio for sure, and a face for radio. Yeah. Absolutely. Of course. I got the best face for radio. No, man. This has been an awesome experience. Yep. One hanging question, though.

Biggest regret. One hanging, Chad. Oh, yeah, the regrets question. The biggest regret. Oh. If there are any. There's got to be one. There's one.

Well, I mean, the regret was just the way I left suddenly. because I really, at that point, my, my, I had to stand in my enlistment to go back. And I, the paper had been put in for a direct commission, which I didn't care much about, but it's just like, okay, if I'm going to go on with the career here.

And the way life worked out for me, that it's just funny how life unfolds. Yeah. So I regret leaving them. And on April 30th, I regret that I wasn't in a position where I could go back and get my people. Yeah. The guys that saved my ass so many times.

Both the Vietnamese on my team and those Kingby pilots. I mean, some of the stories, again, Jocko podcast with Cowboy. Oh, they're crazy. I've listened to him. Yeah, which is 258, or 247, which is cowboy. No, 258 was cowboy.

He was on with Alabama. And he was in country for 16 years before he got out. incarcerated, reeducated. Yeah. And then Captain On, who was the Kingby pilot, who lost both hands after a Kingby crash. Wow.

And the reason why he lost his hands, when he got shot up, the fuel tank got ruptured. There was fire in the cockpit. He could have landed right away and saved himself in his crew, but he would have landed with the communists. He would have become an instant POW. He flew over one mountain and landed, where he was safe and lost his hands.

Yeah. He still has hooks today. Wow. Oh yeah. And he still smokes a pack of cigarettes every day with his hook. Wow. If you have two hooks for hands, you can smoke as much as you fucking want. Indeed.

He's the guy I was telling you about that, did that one rescue mission where nobody would go. Right. And he just, he went. He's like, I'll go. Yeah. And he also, we had a night mission where a hatchet force had been extracted under heavy gunfire. The last helicopter out with a team leader. on it, get shot down, crashes.

The team leader gets a broken back. And on, Captain On, flew Lynn Black and Idaho in at night by himself to an LZ. And then Lynn was able to get in and they had a medic with him, Williams, who was strap hanging.

And he could move in a jungle at night. And they got to the 1-0, the team leader, Dave Gordon, got him out and On came back for him and pulled him out at night. Wow. Oh yeah. I'm assuming he didn't have night vision goggles or anything. Well, you know what he said?

What? He told Jocko, he said, he said, Jacco asked me, how can you fly at night? He says, I've flown in Vietnam for so long. I know the terrain. I know Laos. Wow. So he could fly it blind, basically.

Oh, yeah. Because, you know, what the South Vietnamese did, they took a lot of the radio equipment out. The only radios they left in, was the ones they talked directly to Covey and to their base, I guess. Yeah. Because how do we know that?

In our clubhouse, and Fob1, the Marines would come in, and the Cape E Pops would come in. Of course, the Marines are always kind of like, hey, you guys, you know. So one day they said, when we're in Denang, we'll race you to FOB1

and we're going to beat you. And the Marines go, no, you can't. They go, yeah, we will. And so what the Vietnamese didn't tell the Marines was they'd taken all that. extra weight out. So they flew directly from Vietnam the Nangamine over

the high van pass straight to F-O-B-1. The Marines had to go around it because they couldn't get the elevation. Oh, wow. And they beat him. And then they also said, we can back up the Kingby. And the Marines go, that's not an A-Tops. There's nothing there about backing up in H-34. And they go, bet you 100 bucks. And they won.

Of course. Oh, yeah. Good God. That's amazing, man. Our Kingby Pops. We love us. I'm here. So the regret is, that's the biggest regret that, A, not to do more to get them back and between the team and the King B's. Okay. Mike, we got to get you to the airport. How long have we been podcasting for? Close to three hours. A couple of minutes. Three hours? Okay. No, serious? Yeah, yeah. I knew this was going to be a long one. I'm glad you pushed it left for my timeline. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, thanks for doing that. Generally, check fillet on the way out or what?

Oh, I'll probably crush them away. You used to making accommodations for the green side of the house. It's no big deal. It's true. It's true. John, thank you for sharing so openly with your experiences. It's unbelievable. And thank you for everything that you did in Vietnam.

Well, thank you. It absolutely, it's hard to describe how, I mean, I'm at a loss for words for how impactful and how unbelievable it is to me the things that you guys were doing. it's a order of magnitude greater than anything I was ever exposed to in my military career. Really? Yeah. Well, it's my honor because, see, as I'm looking at it from my perspective, for you, what Jocko's doing with the podcasting, you gents are doing the next mission, which is to get our stories out.

And your stories, and your stories, sir, when you can talk about them. But that's really important. That's our history, and that's where the future will come from. There are young people that listen to that. They are listening, and there'll be more, particularly as our education system, continues to fail, at least in pubic schools. Yeah.

Mike, closing thoughts. No, I just, it's been an honor. Andy, thank you for invite me on to this, and thank you for sharing your experiences today. I think it feels very full circle to me. Like there's a lot of things that me and Andy have talked about on the podcast. that I talk about in my podcast and build in my business

and company that having this experience here with your generation of warriors that fought in Sogg and Vietnam where it feels like right. Like it gives me the, I hate to say it this way, but it gives me the affirmation and the validation. I need to feel good about moving forward with my mission, with our missions, of continuing to tell your,

stories without filling this burden of whatever it is, right? Because, you know, quiet professionals has always been our motto and special operations. But there's a, there's something to be said about after you do that, and like Andy said, sharing experiences without sharing TTPs that are so important in life now because of the failed broken systems and family unit and the list goes on that we need to inspire our next generation. And you inspired me without you even knowing it. The band of brothers that you served with and Mac V. Sau inspired me and all the warriors that I fought with, all of them were inspired by Macfey Sog. Even the seals that I served with knew about Sog and their missions and all the men who fought in Vietnam. And without you guys doing it and leading the way, I don't think I would have got off my ass and did anything about it.

Well, let me add this then. From your story and your story, which I saw the first interview with you with Andy, that took courage. your story talking about what you've been through during the wars and afterwards finding yourself that takes real courage and I think that's more inspirational than anything and that I really salute that personally on a personal level and I think that shows the spec ops a spree to core itself for you to bounce back like that and to be today and Andy for you to bounce back I I'd still be feeling sorry for myself

and I'd pay to sell somewhere if I took that AK round. That's what I do on Fridays. Okay, well, you still am that, but that's my slew to you. I think from one generation to the next, and even today, that's why I really enjoy going back to the graduation to meet the new SF men. And to meet each different generation. And I've read some of these books about your wars,

and you guys did it. You carried on. You took our tradition and moved forward and made it better. Hell yeah, gentlemen. Amen. That's it. Thank you. Thank you again to 10,000 for supporting this episode of the podcast.

10,000 is a direct-to-consumer company. No middleman, so you get premium fabrics, trims, and techniques that other brands they simply can't afford. Get 15% off of your first purchase when you go to 10,000.c.c. Not.com.com.c. And enter the code cleared hot. Thank you again to Babbel for supporting this episode. Right now, when you purchase a three-month Babel subscription, you'll get an additional three months for free.

That is six total months for the price of three. Just go to babble.com and use the promo code cleared hot. That is B-A-B-B-B-B-E-L.com code cleared hot for an extra three months free. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. Thanks for taking the time to tune in, whether you're listening on an audio-only platform or you're watching on YouTube. I appreciate that you take the time every week to tune in. People ask me a lot, what can they do to help me spread the word? And the answer is actually embedded in the question.

The biggest thing you guys can do to help me if you enjoy the podcast and you think would be helpful to others is subscribe and share it with other people. And if you have the time, go on to Apple Podcasts and leave me a rating and a review. If you think the podcast sucks, tell me it sucks. and leave a zero star review or the lowest stars possible. If you have a question, comment or suggestion, you can go to clearedhotpodcast.com. And there is a contact me button right there, which will land in my inbox. And the last thing, people are interested in helping out what you can do is fly the old flag.

And by that I don't mean an actual flag because they don't have any of those. I'm talking about t-shirts or sweatshirts or hats, whatever it may be. again cleardotpodcast.com click on the shop tab and hopefully something in there looks like it would be an item you would like to wear around town and then you can tell people what it is when they ask you but that is it the biggest thing I can say is thank you I truly appreciate it until next time see you