Jocko Podcast - 105: Discipline, Guts, and The Will To Win. "We Were Soldiers Once... and Young"

Episode Date: December 20, 2017

0:00:00 - Opening 0:08:26 - "We Were Soldiers Once... And Young", by Gen. Hal Moore and Joe Galloway.  2:01:16 - Final Thoughts and Take-aways. 2:03:34 - Support: JockoStore stuff, Super Krill Oil and Joint Warfare and Discipline Pre-Mission, Origin Brand Apparel and Jocko Gi, with Jocko White Tea,  Onnit Fitness stuff, and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes). Extreme Ownership (book), The Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual.  2:17:04 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 105 with Echo Charles and me, Jocker Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Specialist Vieira was witness to scenes of horror. The enemy was all over. At least a couple hundred of them walking around for three or four minutes. It seemed like three or four hours. They were shooting and machine gunning are wounded and laughing and giggling.

I knew they'd kill me if they saw I was alive. When they got near, I played dead. I kept my eyes open and stared at a small tree. I knew that dead men had their eyes open. Vieira continues. Then one of the North Vietnamese came up, looked at me, then kicked me, and I flopped over. I guess he thought I was dead. There was blood running out of my mouth, my arm, my legs.

He took my watch and my 45 caliber. pistol and walked on. I watched them strip off all our weapons. They left, then they left back where they came from. I remember the artillery, the bombs, the napalm everywhere real close around me. It shook the ground underneath me, but it was coming in on the North Vietnamese soldiers too. All this and more, much more, took place between 6.50 a.m. and the and 7.40 a.m. on November 15th, 1965. The agonies of Charlie Company occurred over 140 yards of the line. But men were fighting and dying on three sides of our thinly held American perimeter.

In the center, I held the lives of all of these men in my hands. The badly wounded Captain Bob Edwards was on the radio now asking for reinforcements. The only reserve I had was a reconnaissance platoon, 22 men. Was the attack on Charlie Company the main enemy threat? Delta Company and the combined mortar position were also under attack now. Reluctantly, I told Captain Edwards that his company would have to fight on alone for the time being. The din of the battle was unbelievable. Rifles and machine guns and mortars and grenades rattled, banged, and boom.

Two batteries of 105 millimeter howitzers, 12 big guns located on another landing zone five miles distant, were firing nonstop. Their shells exploding no more than 50 yards outside the ring of shallow foxholes. Beside me in the Battalion Command Post, the Air Force Forward Controller, Lieutenant Charlie W. Hastings, 26 from LaMesa, New Mexico, radioed a special code word, broken arrow, meaning American unit in danger of being overrun. And within a short period of time, every available fighter bomber in South Vietnam was stacked overhead at 1,000 foot intervals from 7,000 feet to 35,000 feet,

waiting its turn to deliver bombs and napalm to the battlefield. Among my sergeants, there were three war men, men who parachuted into Normandy on D-Day and had survived the war in Korea. And those old veterans were shocked by the savagery and hellish noise of this battle. Choking clouds of smoke and dust obscured the killing ground. We were dry-mouthed and our bowels churned with fear and still the enemy came on in waves. And that right there is from the opening chapter of the book, We Were Soldiers Once and Yewomen.

Young by General Hal Moore and Joe Galloway. And the book, which was turned into a movie, which I saw when it came out in 2002, Mel Gibson, it's a good movie for sure. But it's also a Hollywood movie. And Hollywood movies, they're forced to fit into two hours, and they got to follow some kind of a plot and they can't dig into the details

and they can't really give you a comprehensive understanding of the events and I purposely did not watch this movie again while preparing for this podcast because I didn't want it in there. I don't want it in my brain, the movie's interpretation of the characters in it and the way that they were portrayed. And the book is so good

and it's so packed with detail and drama and action and an utterly incomprehensible heroism. Everyone should read this book. Everyone. It starts off. It explains the way the battle unfolded, and it talks how it went tactically, operationally,

and strategically goes through all those levels of warfare. And you can see in the book how strategy unfolds at the tactical. And how tactical situations impact strategy as well. You can see it on both sides and there's also Which is interesting there's significant commentary from the Vietnamese enemy leadership That they went back and interviewed after the war was over Which just makes it an incredible book and like I said everyone should read it so it tells the story of operations in the Idrang valley in

1965 from November 14th until November 18th so five days But the fighting, as was noted in that opening chapter, is absolutely brutal. Leadership is tested over and over and over again. And this battle took place with battalions and companies from the 7th Cavalry Regiment. And if you remember the books we covered on General George Custer, he was a officer that led 7th Cavalry troops in the battle Little Big Horn, where he was surrounded. And he was killed along with 267 of his soldiers all of them dead by the Native American warriors on the Sioux side from the Lakota and the Dakota and the northern Cheyenne and the Arapaho tribes and cavalry in those days meant horseback. That's what I meant. That's what mounted cavalry. That's what it was. And in 1965, they adopted cavalry to a a new kind of steed, a new form of transport, and this was the helicopter.

And in 1965, they converted the 11th Air Assault Test Division to the first cavalry division. And the first and second battalions of the first cavalry division soon took on the historical name of General Custer's unit. And by the way, General Custer's, Cav, even though that's kind of the most famous, along with this, I guess, along with the I Drink Valley. But the seventh Cavs served in World War II and Korea, all kinds of incredible service there.

And a lot of that is covered in the book. But again, we'll have to move through this a little bit more quickly. Otherwise, go read the book, which I highly recommend. But let's get into it starting about where Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore takes over the First Battalion 7th Cavalry. Going back to the book. On Monday, June 29th, as scheduled, I took command of my battalion. I was 42 years old, a West Point graduate of the class of 1945 with 19 years commissioned service, including 14-month tour in Korea. The combat tour in Korea.

We've talked to the troops afterward. I told them that this was a good battalion, but it would get better. I will do my best, I said, and I expect the same from each of you. Before taking command, I had a long talk with the most important man in any battalion, the sergeant major. Basil L. Plumley, 44 years old and a six-foot two-inch bear of a man hailed from West Virginia. The men sometimes called him old iron jaw, but never in his hearing. Plumley was a two-war man and wore master parachute wings with his five combat jump stars.

He was what the young airborne types called a four jump bastard. Plumley had survived all four combat jumps of the 82nd Airborne Division in World War II. Sicily and Salerno in 1943. And then in 1944, D-Day at Normandy and Market Garden in the, Netherlands for that matter he also made one combat parachute jump in the Korean War with the 187th Airborne Infantry Regiment he ended World War II a buck sergeant and was promoted to sergeant major in 1961 so let's think about that for a minute let's think about that I mean we've talked we've definitely talked about Normandy we've definitely talked about Market Garden he jumped into both

those and jumped into Cicely and Salerno and jumped into combat in the Korean War. Unbelievable. Going back to the book. The Sergeant Major was a no bullshit guy who believed, as I did in tough training, tough discipline, and tough physical conditioning. To this day, there are veterans of the battalion

who are convinced that God may look like Sergeant Major Basil Plumley, but he isn't nearly as tough as the Sergeant Major on sins, small or large. Privately, I thanked my lucky stars that I had inherited such a treasure. I told Sergeant Major Plumley that he had unrestricted access to me at any time on any subject he wished to raise. After the ceremony, the company commanders and the battalion staff got a look at their new boss and award on my standards. They were fairly simple. Only first place trophies will be displayed, accepted, or presented in this battalion.

Second place in our line of work is defeat of the unit on the battlefield and death for the individual in combat. No fat troops or officers. Decision making will be decentralized. Push the power down. It pays off in wartime. Loyalty flows down as well. I check up on everything. I am available day or night to talk with any officer of this battalion.

Finally, the sergeant major works only for me and takes orders. only for me, he is my right hand man. So he's set in the stage. Pretty interesting. No, only first place trophies. Second place, no. Not happening here. Back to the book, the officers of my new battalion

were the usual great army mix of men who had come to their jobs, come to their jobs from West Point, ROTC, officer candidate school, and military schools like the Citadel. Most of the young second lieutenant's had come through OCS and college ROTC programs. There were three rifle companies in the battalion,

Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie companies, each at full strength, supposed to have six officers and 164 enlisted men. They were my maneuver elements. Each rifle company had three rifle platoons plus one platoon of three 81 millimeter mortar squads for fire support. Each rifle platoon, in turn,

had three rifle squads, plus a weapon squad of two M-60 machine guns for fire support. So there's the breakdown right there. And they also had another combat support company, Delta Company, which had a recon platoon, a mortar platoon, and an anti-tank platoon. And they converted the unneeded anti-tank platoons into machine gun platoon for duty in Vietnam because there was no enemy tanks going up against.

So that's what the battalion was looking like. Going back to the book, during those first 14 months. So now he's going to talk about their workup a little bit, how they got ready for combat back to the book. during those 14 months before we sailed for Vietnam, we spent most of the time in the field practicing assault landings from helicopters and the incredibly complex coordination of artillery,

tactical air support, and aerial rocket artillery with the all-important flow of helicopters into and out of the battle zone. Commanders had to learn to see terrain differently, to add a constant scan for landing zones, which are called LZs and pickup zones, PZs, to all the other features they had to keep in mind.

We practiced rapid loading and unloading of men and material to reduce the helicopter's window of vulnerability. Total flexibility was the watchword in planning and attitude. There was one bit of sobering reality that I insisted be introduced at every level in this training. We would declare a platoon commander dead and let his sergeant take over and carry out the mission. Or declare a sergeant dead and have one of his PFCs take over running the squad. We were training for war and leaders are killed.

killed in battle. I wanted every man trained for and capable of taking over the job of the man above him. So they're working a whole new gig here. They never, no one had really done this before riding. Everyone's going into combat on helicopters. And obviously helicopters give you great amount of maneuverability. You can be up vertically and take off and travel a great distance and set down anywhere, or not anywhere, just about anywhere. You can sit down in a lot of places, I should say, because you can't set down anywhere, especially in the jungle where you've got trees and all kinds of obstacles.

And then you've got enemy on top of that. And helicopters are pretty vulnerable flying machines. And so this idea, what they were practicing was this massive movement, move all the troops into the combat zone very quickly, and the enemy doesn't expect you, and you can just show up there. So that's what they're practicing over and over again.

And clearly, you know, a Korean war veteran, like Hal Moore was, he knows that leaders can get killed in combat. And so he's sometimes killing the leaders in training. And that's a tradition we still had. We do that all the time when I was running training in the SEAL teams. The minute the leaders started to get a grip on things, it was like, okay, you're dead. Next man's got to step up.

And sometimes that would just wreck a platoon or a task unit. The leader dies. If they're a good leader and they're not, and no one is used to stepping up, it'd be problematic. But sometimes it would actually be beneficial. Because you get some guy that's a micromanager, kill him, and then watch everything run smoothly. And you come back and you go, dude, you better back off a little bit because this guy's running a better show than you are. And it's really clear. So sometimes we teach guys lessons that way.

Back to the book. Unfortunately, my battalion and every other in the division now began to suffer the consequences of President Johnson's refusal to declare a state of emergency and extend the active duty tours of draftees and reserve officers. The order came down. Any soldier who had 60 days or less left to serve on his enlistment as of the date of deployment, August 16th must be left behind. We were sick at heart. We were being shipped off to war, sadly under strength and crippled by the loss of almost 100 troopers in my battalion alone. The very men who would be the most useful in combat, those who had trained the longest and the new techniques of helicopter warfare, were by this order taken away from us.

It made no sense then. It makes no sense now. So again, I talked about the strategic kind of implications that these guys felt, and this is one of them. And obviously, I'm jumping through the book. They talks more about the workup and what they did to prepare, but now he's getting to this point where President Johnson doesn't declare a state of emergency and keep these guys in.

And so, you know, that's a political decision, obviously. But where does it impact? Sure, it impacts the guys on the front line. that's where it impacts. Now, like I said, this book is written not only by, not only by Lieutenant General Howmore is how he retired in this book. I'll refer to him as Lieutenant Colonel or sometimes I guess I'm just disrespectful and call him Howmore. I don't mean it disrespectfully.

But anyways, Howmore wrote the book. But he also wrote the book along with another guy named Joe Galloway. And you know what a ghost writer is? Yeah, Ghostwriter. Well, this is, so Ghostwriter writes a person's book, but no one's supposed to know it. And then there's people that write the book, but they get credit for it. And you might think that's a situation here looking at the title because you've got Lieutenant General Harold Moore retired and Joseph L. Galloway. Like, you know, it doesn't say any service thing.

Well, in this particular case, that could give you an absolutely wrong impression because Joe Galloway was a reporter, a combat reporter who, was obviously he was very courageous and and basically got after it for lack of a better word. So I'll go on where they introduce him a little bit. Back to the book, UPI reporter Joe Galloway, a 23-year-old native of Refugio, Texas, marched with us. When he hooked up with us, he carried on his shoulder an M-16 rifle, which the special forces commander, Major Charles Beckwith, had handed him when the fight was over. Galloway told Beckwith that, strictly speaking,

under the Geneva Convention, he was a civilian non-combatant. Beckwith's response, no such thing in these mountains, boy, take that rifle. So if you know anything about Charles Beckwith, major Charlie Beckwith, it's the guy that created Delta Force, complete, badass warrior.

And he was a special forces commander in Vietnam and was one of the first people that apparently Galloway worked with. And Galloway said, you know, you better arm yourself. So here's Galloway talking. Galloway remembers. My first time out with Hal Moore's first battalion, 7th Cavalry was a hellish walk into the sun

to remote Montagard Mountain Village. We got into a patch of brush and wait a minute, vines so thick and thorny that every step had to be carved out with machetes. We covered maybe 300 yards in four hours and forded a fast-running chest-deep mountain stream just as darkness fell, then huddled in our ponchos,

wet and freezing all night long. At first light, I pinched off a small piece of C4 plastic explosive from the emergency supply in my pack and used it to boil up a canteen of water for coffee. If you lit C4 very carefully, you could be drinking hot coffee in maybe 30 seconds. If you were careless, it blew off your arm. Over a first cigarette, I watched Moore's men. First, they shaved. Shaved? Up here? I was amazed. the colonel himself blonde jut-jawed and very intense a son of Bardstown Kentucky and West Point walked by on this morning rounds with the sergeant made with Sergeant Major Plumley more looked to me over and said we all shave in my outfit reporters included my steaming coffee water

went for a wash and a shave and I gained a measure of respect for the man daily discipline in all things you know that's another thing that I failed to mention but it's very clear when you read the book is this is 1965 and the war had not escalated at all and it wasn't the the meat grinder that it turned into so these guys you know in their workup all they they knew that they were going to fight but they didn't they didn't know it wasn't the vietnam that we think of now where there's a lot of casualties happening it hadn't gotten there yet and as a matter of fact this battle is really the first one where that where you start seeing very significant American casualties The guy that's in charge over Hal over how more is a guy named Colonel Brown and he shows up going back to the book.

Not long after Colonel Brown flew in, checked on the situation with Alpha Company and then called me aside. Hal, I'm moving your battalion west tomorrow morning, he said unfolding his map. Here is your area of operations north of Chu Pong in the Idrang Valley. Your mission is the same one you have now. Find and kill the enemy. He rapidly outlined the scope of operations and the resources he could spare. 16 UH1D Hueys. So that's a Huey helicopter.

It's the most, I guess, the most iconic helicopter, probably of any military. And certainly of Vietnam, the Huey helicopter is completely iconic. 16 Huey's to move my troops, 2.105 howitz or batteries within range to support us at least two days on the ground patrolling. He added that Alpha Company of the 229th assault helicopter battalion would provide the helicopters. The 229th A company commander,

Major Bruce Crandall, was on his way now. One more thing, Hal. In that area, be sure your companies are close enough for mutual support. So the reason I highlighted that, a lot of times people have a tendency in combat situations, especially when planning

to get too far apart from each other. And I would see this all the time. And what happens is it seems to make sense because you cover more ground or you have better angles and it seems like a good idea. Like, hey, we'll just split up and you can take care of your guys

and I'll take care of my guys. But you always need to stay within a position where you can mutually support each other where if we get in trouble, we can cover and move. That's what it is. You want to be able to cover to move. Cover and move.

So the minute you're out, of sight, out of line of sight, out of radio, out of the out of a distance where your weapons can be used to support you're alone. Mm-hmm. That's the thing. You you get away from line of sight, radio contact, the distance that weapons can be shot effectively

from the other unit that you're out there with, now you are alone. Mm-hmm. So when you're planning, make sure, and he's saying in that area, I always use that rule. always as often as possible. Are there times where you can, you can,

you can flex that rule a little bit? Of course there are. There are situations you can get into and you can, it might be a better tactical call, but always keep in mind what you're doing and what you're sacrificing when you can no longer mutually support

the other units that you're out with and they can't mutually support you. You're alone. So he knows this is gonna be a little bit of a hot area. At least he expects it, going back to the book, how ready was my battalion for comment? We had never maneuvered in combat as an entire battalion, although all three rifle companies had been in minor scrapes.

So they've been in Vietnam for a while. They've been in a little bit of contact, but nothing too major. And like he just said, none of them had been, they hadn't been out as a group as a battalion. Back to the book, most of the men had never seen an enemy soldier dead or alive. We had killed fewer than 10 black pajama guerrillas in the get-acquainted patrols and small operations since our arrival. The four line companies had 20 of their authorized 23 officers, but the enlisted ranks have been badly whittled down by expiring enlistments, malaria cases, and requirements for base camp guards and workers back in NK. Alpha Company had 115 men, 49 fewer than authorized.

Bravo Company at 114 men was 50 short. Charlie Company had 106 men, down by 58. and the weapons company Delta had only 76 men 42 fewer than authorized. Headquarters company was also under strength and I had been forced to draw it down further by sending men out to fill crucial medical and communications vacancies in the line companies. I didn't like being short-handed, but things had been no different in the Korean War and somehow we may do. You just suck it up and do it.

And we would do the same, we do the same way in the eye drag. The officers and NCOs would do what they could to make up the slack just as we had done in Korea. So my point of reading that, these guys are heavily under manned. They're supposed to have 150 people and they have, you know, 100, 105, whatever. And there's nothing they could do about it. And it's also interesting and worth noting that he has a headquarters company. So you've got the battalion commander and he's got a group of, guys that do weapons for him and also communications and he's pushed those guys out. So instead of

keeping those guys and making him his his own team all fat and happy, nope, he makes his team thin and gives as much as he can to the to the forces that are out in the field. So another good note on leadership. Now they're getting ready to roll in and we will talk about he's kind of going through the plan a little bit. Here we go back to the book. I would personally land on the first helicopter piloted by Bruce Crandall and Bruce Crandall is the commander of the helicopters that are flying them in. That would permit me a final low level look at the landing zone and surrounding terrain and with Crandall in the front seat and me in the back we could work out on the spot any last minute diversion to an alternate landing zone if necessary and fix any other problems with the lift.

In the American Civil War, it was a matter of principle that a good officer rode his horse as little as possible. There were sound reasons for this. If you are riding and your soldiers are marching, how can you judge how tired they are, how thirsty, how heavy their packs weigh on their shoulders. I applied the same philosophy in Vietnam, where every battalion commander had his own command and control helicopter. Some commanders use their helicopter as their personal mount. I never believed in that. You had to get on the ground with your troops to see and hear what was happening. You have to soak up firsthand information for your instincts to operate accurately. Besides, it's too easy to be crisp, cool, and detached at 1,500 feet, too easy to demand the

impossible of your troops, too easy to make mistakes that are fatal only to those souls far below in the mud, the blood, and confusion. So this is something we talk about all the time from a leadership perspective you cannot be you know it's it's the it's the dichotomy of detachment right it does pay and there's certain times where you can tell in these situations if you're in the command helicopter that's up above the fighting well you're you're de facto i mean you you are detached from the situation and you can see what's happening and you have you have a good view of what's going on but even though you have a good view you're also missing a bunch you're missing what it's like down there you're missing what the men are seeing, you're missing what it looks like to them, you're missing the

communication breakdowns that are happening down there. So you have to find that balance between these two. And he clearly is aware of that. He's preparing for this and he's got a book called Street Without Joy by a guy named Bernard Fall. And it's a book about Vietnam. It's a book about the tragedy that the French troops went through fighting the Vietnamese. And he says that he took one lesson away from that book. And this is the lesson. Death is the price you pay for underestimating this tenacious enemy. So he was aware.

And like General Mattis said, you know, not too long ago they were talking about General Mattis and how come you read so many books. And he says, because I get to see. I get to learn. And this is a classic case. he knew he read books about the French that had fought the Vietnamese, what, 10 years earlier, 11 years earlier. And that made him more prepared. Now, talking a little bit, like I said, there's great information in here about the enemy.

And like I said, they went and interviewed and got reports from the enemy. And here we go, a little bit about the enemy. Back to the book, the soldiers commanded by Brigadier General Chu Hu, Mann, had been training for more than 18 months. When they joined the People's Army, each recruit was issued two khaki shirts, two pairs of khaki trousers, a sewing kit, and a pair of Ho Chi men sandals cut from used tire trucks. Those uniforms were expected to last five years. Basic training lasted 13 weeks, six days a week, 6 a.m. to 9.15 p.m. The instructors emphasized weapons and tactics, the house of warfare, while the political commissars had time, had time, had,

time set aside each day to lecture on the wise of this war. The recruits were reminded constantly that their fathers had beaten the French colonialists. Now it was their duty to defeat the American imperialists. They were imbued with Ho Chi Minh's dictum. Nothing is more precious than freedom and independence. After basic training, some were selected for six months of NCO school and would emerge as new corporals. For the rest, advanced infantry training included familiarization with all weapons. the use of explosive, ambush tactics, reconnaissance tactics, adjusting mortar fire, and patrol tactics.

In June of 1964, manned soldiers moved up into the mountains of North Vietnam, terrain similar to that in western highlands of South Vietnam. Here, physical conditioning was emphasized. They scaled steep slopes while wearing rucksacks loaded with 50 to 60 pounds of rocks. Their advanced training now also focused on the art of camouflage. When the time came for them to begin the arduous two-month journey down the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos, General Mann's regiment broke down into battalions for security purposes, each moving separately at least three days ahead of the next.

Each soldier carried four pounds of rice, seven days rations, plus another eight pounds of food stuffs that were expected to last him the whole trip, two pounds of salt, two pounds of wheat flour, and four pounds of salt pork. one man in every squad carried the aluminum cook pot that the squad's rice would be boiled in. Each man also carried 50 anti-malaria pills, one for each day on the trail, and 100 vitamin B1 tabs to be taken at the rate of three per week. Despite the pills, virtually every man who walked the trail contracted malaria, and on average, three or four soldiers of each 160 man company would die on the journey. Malaria, diarrhea, accidents, poisonous snakes,

and American area raids took their toll. Man's soldiers marched nine miles each day, the distance between rest camps where they spent each night. Every day, every fourth day they stayed in camp, taking the day off to rest up, wash their clothes, and tend to minor medical problems. So this is a legit enemy we're looking at. Legit enemy, organized, well-trained.

hard tough well led and and ready and you can't ever you know this is one of the biggest problems with fighting a counterinsurgency is you're going against someone that's fighting on their home turf and that is just you can't how do you overcome that advantage well you overcome that advantage with firepower and with some technology but that is a hard advantage to overcome yeah and here's a quote from general and when you landed there you landed right in the middle of three of our battalions of the 66th regiment, our service, our reserve force. It was the strongest we had. At full strength, the battalions each had about 450 men. Also, there was a

headquarters battalion. The regiment's total strength was about 1,600 men. So they're kind of by chance set up on the same spot where these guys are going to go in, which is LZ X-ray, landing zone x-ray. And here, these, they're flying in into the LZ X-ray. Captain John Heron, whose Bravo Company troops filled, the helicopter recalls it was a cool, it was a misty cool morning with some low-hanging fog when we lifted off. But shortly after takeoff, we broke into the clear, and you could see the 105 artillery pounding the areas around the LZ as we headed in.

Vietnam, even in war, was scenic, with green jungle, heavy forested mountains, and wild looking rivers crisscrossing the terrain. Now the helicopters of the aerial rocket artillery slam the perimeter with rockets, grenades, and machine gun fire using 24 of the 48 2.7 inch rockets they carried. So it's the same thing that we've heard before. It's a cover move, right? As you come into a landing zone like they did in D-Day. What do you do first?

You bomb the crap out of it. You hit it with naval gunfire. And they're doing the same thing here. prepping the landing zone by dropping a bunch of 105 howitzers into the around the surrounding area around the landing zone and then the helicopters once it's too close and the and the howitzers have to turn off then the helicopters start shooting and they do their best to clear the area around the landing zone that's what's going on back to the book the people's army commander on the battlefield then senior lieutenant colonel nguan who on says when you drop troops into x-ray i was on chupong mountain we had a

strong position and a strong mobile command group. We were ready. We were ready had prepared for you and expected you to come. The only question was when. The trees and bush limited our view of the helicopter's landing, but we had an observation post on top of the mountain and they reported to us when you drop troops and when you move them. So, man, you know, I talk about all the time about having the high ground, well, when these guys are landing in a valley and they're surrounded by high ground. So it's a, you're at a

tactical disadvantage there. Right as soon as, just about as soon as they hit the ground, they're there for a little while and they get a prisoner. The Americans get a prisoner. And here's there's a translator and he translates the prisoner's words and here's what

the prisoner says. Or here's what the translator says. He says there are three battalions on the mountain who want very much to Americans but have not been able to find any. Now, you take that with a grain of salt because it's coming from a prisoner, but it's not nothing. I'll put it to you that way. It's something. Back to the book, suddenly a few rifle shots rang out in the area where the prisoner had been captured.

Sergeant Gilrith's men were in contact. It was now 12.15 p.m. We had to move fast if we were going to survive, had to get off the landing zone and hit them before they could hit us. Only if we brought the enemy to battle deep in the tree. and brush, could we stand even a slim chance of holding onto the clearing and getting the rest of the battalion landed? That football field size clearing was our lifeline and our supply line. If the enemy closed the way to the helicopters, all of us would die in this place. So that's one of the hard things about helicopter warfare, especially in Vietnam, well, actually anywhere, is you, yeah, that's great.

You can go a long distance and get in there. But then once you're there, if the helicopters can't come get you out or they can't rest, supply you, you're in real problem. You're back to the word that I said earlier. You're alone. Back to the book. Even as the first shots rang out, I was radioing Heron to saddle up the rest of Bravo company. The rest of his, his Bravo company meant to move out fast toward the mountain to develop the situation. Turning to Nadal and he's, again, I, there's all these characters. I mean, there's, there's all the company commanders, the platoon commanders, the the platoon leaders, the platoon sergeants, there's the ground troops. There's all these characters. And, and the book does an

outstanding job of detailing who all these individuals were, what their background was, where they came from. And I just don't, we can't do that right now. But that's why you buy the book and you read the book. But this guy, Nadal, is one of the company commanders. So here we go. Turning to Nadal, I told him that the original plan was out the window, that his alpha company should immediately take over LC security and get ready to move up on Bravo

companies left when Charlie, when enough of Charlie company had arrived on the next lift to assume the job of securing and clearing. So classic, you hit the ground and now all of a sudden the plan is out the window, right? Out the window. We're going with our standard operating procedures, which is, hey, we're going to move a company here. You're going to set up perimeter security and go. Back to the book. And the small cops, the other two platoons of Bravo company men had opened C ration cans and were grabbing a bite when they heard the first shots in the brush.

The older sergeants glanced at one another and nodded. Eat fast, they told the men and get ready to move. The battle of LZ X-ray had just begun. And it doesn't take long to begin going back to the book. Says Sergeant Gilreith, we were virtually pinned to the ground and taking casualties. Lieutenant Dennis Deal remembers that moment. Devney's platoon was taking moderate fire.

We could all hear it through the foliage and I heard it crackling on my radio. Al was in some sort of trouble. The firing increased in volume and intensity. Then I saw my first wounded trooper, probably the first American wounded in LZ X-ray. He was shot in the neck or mouth or both, was still carrying his rifle, was ambulatory, and appeared stunned at what had happened to him. When he asked where to go, I put my arm around him and pointed to where I had last seen the battalion commander. So it's immediately on. And you, of course it is because there's, there's three battalions of Vietnamese soldiers there.

And this is, this is Hal Moore talking back to the book. The military historian SLA Marshall wrote that at the beginning of a battle, units fractionalized groping between the antagonist takes place and the battle takes form from all of this. Marshall had it right. That is precisely what was happening up in the scrub brush above landing zone X-ray this day. And no other single event would have greater impact on the shape of this battle than what Lieutenant Henry Herrick was in the process of doing. Herrick charged right past Lieutenant Devonese men, swung his platoon to the right in hot pursuit of a few fleeting enemy soldiers, and disappeared from sight into the bush. Says Sergeant Ernie Savage of Herrick's orders, he made a bad decision, and we knew at the time it was a bad decision. We were breaking contact with the rest of the company.

We were supposed to come up on the flank of First Platoon. In fact, we were moving away from them. We lost contact with everybody. So, again, this is what I just talked about. And you're going to see throughout this book, all these principles that we talk about all the time that we taught and that we live through, you can see that these types of things happen.

And here's a classic thing I was just talking about. Like when you get out of distance from your supporting elements, you're now alone. And that's a bad situation to be in. Back to the book. Now John Heron was up on my radio reporting that his men were under heavy attack by at least two enemy companies and that his second platoon was in danger of being surrounded and cut off from the rest of the company. Even as he spoke, mortar and rocket rounds hit in the clearing where I stood. My worst case scenario had just come to pass.

We were now in heavy contact before all my battalion. was on the ground and now I had to deal with a cutoff platoon my response was an angry shit captain captain John Heron's estimate that his Bravo company men were trying to deal with two enemy companies was slightly off one full enemy battalion more than 500 determined enemy soldiers was boiling down the mountain toward Herrick's trapped second platoon and maneuvering near al divinney's pinned down first platoon again here's something that I failed to talk about with helicopter warfare. So he's got a battalion of 500 guys, 550 guys.

You can't fit all those guys on 16 helicopters. So you've got to do multiple laps. And that's what he's worried. He was worried about it going in that, hey, I want to get my whole battalion on the ground before the fighting starts. He's already failed to do that. Or, I mean, he hasn't failed to do it,

but it didn't happen. Back to the book. I was tempted to join the Dolls or Edward men but resisted the temptation. I had no business getting involved with the actions of only one company. I might get pinned down and simply become another rifleman. My duty was to lead riflemen. So there's a, you know, we talked about the detachment that he said, hey, look, I'm not going to be up in the helicopter. But right now he's saying, look, I'm not going to be in the helicopter overhead at 1,500 feet. But I'm not going to be sitting in a platoon as a rifleman slugging it

out with the enemy. That's not the right place to be either. You have to lead. In order to lead, You have to take a step back. You have to detach. And he does that to the best of his ability. Then here we go back to the book. Just now the snaps and cracks of the rounds passing nearby took on a distinctly different sound like a swarm of bees around our heads. I was on the radio trying to hear a transmission over the noise

when I felt a firm hand on my right shoulder. It was Sergeant Major Plumlee's. He shouted over the racket of the firefighter. Sir, if you don't find some cover, you're going to go down. And if you go down, we all go down. Plumley was right as always. Anyone waving, yelling, hand signaling, or talking on the radio was instantly targeted by the enemy. These guys were quick to spot and shoot leaders, radio operators, and medics.

I had never fretted about being wounded in combat in Korea or here, but Plumley brought me up short. The game was just beginning. This was no time for me to go out of it. The Sergeant Major pointed to a large termite hill, six or seven feet high. located in some trees in the waste between the two open areas of the landing zone. It was about 30 yards away and three of us turned and ran toward it with bullets kicking up red dirt around our feet and the bees still buzzing around our heads. That termite hill, the size of a large automobile, would become the battalion command post. The aid station, the supply point, the collection area for enemy prisoners, weapons and equipment, and the place where our dead were brought. casualties were now beginning to pile up. As we dropped behind that termite hill, I fleetingly thought

about an illustration, an illustrious predecessor of mine in the 7th Cavalry, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his final stay stand in the Valley of Little Binghorn in Montana 89 years earlier. I was determined that history would not repeat itself in the Valley of the I-Dang. We were a tight, well-trained, and disciplined fighting force, and we had to be a tight, and we had. had one thing George Custer did not have fire support. Fire support plays it. It's beyond critical. I mean, they would not have been able to do this without fire support.

And that's the one thing that's going to save them. I mean, obviously the discipline, obviously the training, obviously the bravery, but the fire support is a gift. Back to the book. Sergeant Steve Hansen was behind and to the right of lieutenant. Taft. He says, we moved at a trot across the open grass toward the tree line and heard fire up on the finger to the west where we were headed. My radio operator friend, specialist for Ray Turner, Ray Tanner and I crossed the stream bed. Captain Nadal's party and the two other platoons were

off to the right. Lieutenant Taft was well forward as we crossed over into the trees. Sergeant First Class Lorenzo Nathan, Ray Turner, and I were close, maybe 10 yards behind. We were moving fast. Specialist Speck 4 Pete Winter was near me. We ran into a wall of lead. Every man in the lead squad was shot. From the time we got the order to move to the time where men were dying was only five minutes. The enemy were very close to us and overran some of our.

are dead. The firing was heavy. Sergeant Nathan pulled us back out of the woods of the stream bed. Bob Hazen, Bob Taft's radio operator recalls Lieutenant Taft got out in front of me. I was off to his left. He had the radio handset and his left hand connected to the radio on my back with that flexible rubber wire. It got tight and I pulled back on the lieutenant and hollered. We're getting offline. He glanced back at me, turned back to his front and took four more steps. then he fired two shots at something I couldn't see what then he dropped face down on the ground lieutenant taft was hit I didn't realize how bad until I rolled him over he was shot in the throat and the round had ricocheted down and come out his left side he was dead and it was difficult to

roll him over even though he was a slightly built man captain the doll says the enemy on the mountain started moving down rapidly in somewhat uncoordinated attacks they streamed down the hill and down the creek bed. The enemy knew the area. They came down the best covered route. The third platoon was heavily engaged and the volume of firing reached a crescendo on my left. At this time, I lost radio contact with Taft's platoon. In the center of that fury, Bob Hazen struggled and rolled his dead platoon leader over. He was gone and there was nothing we could do. The first thing I thought of was what they taught me. Never let the enemy get his hands on a map or the signals code book.

I got those from Lieutenant Taft and was kneeling over to try and pull his body back. That's when my radio was hit and the shrapnel from the radio hit me in the back of the head. It didn't really hurt all of a sudden I was just laying face down on the ground next to Lieutenant Taft. I felt something running down my neck, reached back and came out with a handful of blood. Carmen Maselli was on Hazen's right. We knew what had happened. The word passed fast. They got Lieutenant Taft.

Again, we're talking within minutes of these guys arriving. This is going completely sideways. Back to the book. Captain Nadal, out of radio contact with Taft's platoon, moved toward the furious firing on his left flank to find out what was happening. Nadal says, my radio operator, Sergeant Jack E. Gell, the company communications chief who had volunteered to carry one of my two radios, ran with me out from my two radio.

out of the creek bed and into the open area toward Taft's position. We ran into Sergeant Nathan, and I asked him what was happening. He said the platoon had been attacked on the left flank, the left squad had taken a number of casualties and had pulled back out of the creek bed, refusing their left flank to the enemy. Nathan said Taft had been hit and was left in the creek bed. That made me angry. We had been taught never to leave any wounded or dead on the battlefield. Sergeant Gell and I crawled forward of our lines to that creek bed where the enemy were to find Taft. We came under grenade attack from the west side of the creek bed, but had some cover from a few trees. We located Taft, dead.

While bringing him back, we saw another soldier who had been left behind. After leaving Taft's body with his platoon, Gal and I went back again, and we picked up the other man. Back to the book, Dennis Deal remembers. We moved online for about 100 or 150 yards before the volume of firing forced us to stop. We were taking too many casualties. I radioed Herrick's platoon and said, I think we're getting close to you. Shoot one round off, wait to the count of three and shoot two more. The radio man or whoever was on the radio did that.

So we had a pretty good fix on where he was. We got up and started the assault again. We went about 10 yards and the whole thing just blew in our faces. blew up in our faces. The enemy had infiltrated between Herrick's platoon and us and now we're starting to come behind us. So that platoon that had gotten separated,

this element with Dennis Deal was going out to try and get contact with them and bring them back inside the perimeter. They're assaulting. They go 100 yards, 150 yards, and they started getting mowed down. And now they realize that in between, they've got bad guys in between

where Herrick's platoon is. and where the rest of the perimeter is set up. Because they do have kind of a rough perimeter on this, on this landing zone. And the landing zone, apologize for not explaining this. I mean, in order to bring in helicopters in the jungle,

you need some open space. So the landing zone, LZX-ray, is an area where there's not much foliage for whatever reason. And so that's where they've kind of consolidated their forces, only because they can't go anywhere else. They hit the ground.

They start getting shot at. So now they're setting up what's called a perimeter. And obviously, Herrick's platoon is outside the perimeter. back to the book, Lieutenant Deal adds that he and the other two platoon leaders now began planning yet another attempt to break through and rescue Herrick's men. Leaders were running back and forth coordinating when all of a sudden firing began. The lull dissipated quickly.

It was at this time my weapon squad leader, Sergeant Curry, the chief, was killed. His last words were, those bastards are trying to get me. He was caught rolling around on the ground. Later on as my men were carrying him back, I had them put him down and turned his face toward me and looked at him. I could not conceive of the chief being dead. Staff Sergeant Wilbur Curry, Jr. of Buffalo, New York was 35 years old. Herrick and the other two squads were holding precariously to the small knoll near the bottom of the finger. Savage, so a kid named Savage.

is out there with Herrick's platoon and he ends up running a lot of stuff and you'll find that out. But here we start hearing a little bit of him right now. Savage teamed up with McKenry squad, which was pinned to the ground. Herrick was with that squad. Sergeant Zalin squad was off to the left rear. Savage checked on his men when he tied up with McHenry. He knew that spec for Robert M. Hill, M79 Grenadier was no longer with them. He got killed in there somewhere.

He had his M79 and a 45 caliber pistol, and he was firing both at the same time. The 23-year-old hill came from Starkville, Mississippi. And here's Sergeant Savage talking, explaining some more. Back to the book, The enemy was past the machine gun before it ever quit firing. I could hear Sergeant Hurdle down there cursing. Even over the firefight, I heard him. He was famous for that. Motherfucker, son of a bitch.

I could hear him hollering that down there. Then they threw grenades on him. Hurtle 36 was from Washington, D.C. Barrenbaum, 24, was a native of New York City. PFC Donald Roddy, 22, hailed from Ann Arbor, Michigan. The three of them died in a hail of rifle fire and enemy grenades. The enemy down below turned Surgeon Hurtle's M60 around and began using it on the enemy.

Americans on the knoll so that causes all kinds of confusion you can tell the difference between different types of weapons by the way they sound when they shoot and when someone starts shooting a friendly weapon at you it's caused a lot of confusion and the M60 is a beast of a weapon belt-fed machine gun and it's when I got in the seal teams that was the that was the machine gun that we used was the M-60 machine gun and it's a devastating weapon back to the book the enemy More than 150 strong now attack the knoll from three sides, north, south, and east. And soldiers on both sides were falling.

Lieutenant Herrick ran from trooper to trooper trying to get a defense organized. An enemy volley cut across Herrick, his radio operator specialist, John R. Stewart, and the artillery recon sergeant, Sergeant John T. Brown, wounding all three. Herrick and Brown seriously. Stewart took a single bullet through the leg. Herrick radioed Bravo Company Commander John Heron and told him he had been hit and he was turning the command of the platoon over to Sergeant Carl Palmer.

Herrick then gave explicit instructions to his men to destroy the signals codes, redistribute the ammunition, and call an artillery and if possible make a break for it. Heron says, I give Herrick all the credit in the world for pulling that platoon together so they could make their stand. So should we all. Savage and Zalin paint a clear picture of a green young lieutenant who did a superb job in a hailstorm of enemy fire.

His platoon stopped a very large North Vietnamese unit clearly heading down to join the attack on the landing zone. I long ago concluded that the very presence of this platoon, so far to the northwest, confused the enemy commander as to exactly where we were and how far we had penetrated in all directions and thus helped us helped us as the battle built. Sergeant Savage recounts the final moments of Henry Herrick's life. He was lying beside me on the hill and he said, if I have to die, I'm glad to give my life for my country. I remember him saying that. He was going into shock, hid in the hip and in a lot of pain.

He didn't live long. He died early in the fight next to a little brush pile. Spec 4 Charles R. Lowe's 22 of Mobile, Alabama. Was the new platoon medic he joined the platoon only a few days earlier Lieutenant Herrick was kneeling when hit he had a bullet wound to the hip He told me to go help the other wounded Yeah, it's we have to remember that This guy Herrick is like 22 23 year old fresh out of him. He's the first he might even be 21

And he made that majorly offensive move and pursued and got out of touch but But what Hal Moore is saying, hey, that confused the enemy. Even though it confused the friendlies too, it confused the enemy as well. So there's some good that came out of it. Back to the book, Sergeant Rubin Thomas was struck by a bullet above his heart that exited under his left arm, bleeding heavily. He grabbed a rifle and fought on. The encircled infantry men of the lost platoon refused to give up. Here's what specialist Dorman said.

We were all on the ground now, and if you moved, you got hit. Our training really showed then we shifted into defensive positions. We had five men killed in 25 minutes. Then all of a sudden they tried a mass assault from three directions, rushing from bush to bush laying fire on us. We put our M16s on full automatic and killed most of them. Another guy named Galen Bungman, Bungham said, we gathered up all the full magazines we could find and stacked them up in front of us.

There was no way we could dig a foxhole. The handle was blown off my entrenching tool in one of them. my canteens had a hole blown through it. The fire was so heavy that if you tried to raise up to dig, you were dead. There was death and destruction all around. By now, eight men of the platoon's 29 had been killed in action. Another 13 were wounded. The 25-yard-wide perimeter was a circle of pain, death, fear, and raw courage.

Medic Charlie Lowe's crawled from man to man throughout the raging firefight, doing his best to patch the wounded with limited supplies in his medical path. Although he himself was wounded twice Loz never slowed his pace. He would keep all 13 of the wounded alive for the for 26 long harrowing hours. Loz says on several occasions I had to stand or sit up to treat the wounded each time the VC fired heavily at me Loz used his 45 and M16 rifle to help defend his patients of getting attacked from three sides of 13 wounded, eight dead, was it nine dead? Unbelievable. Back to the book, command had passed.

So this is talking about, you know, when someone, if the leader gets killed, it goes to the next person. That person gets killed, it goes to the next person. So here's what's happening in Herrick's platoon, the lost platoon. Back to the book, Command had passed from Lieutenant Henry Herrick to Sergeant Carl Palmer to Sergeant Robert Stokes and each in turn died fighting. Now it was the turn of Buck Sergeant Ernie Savage. Sergeant Savage came up on the radio, Captain Heron recalls. He said, Herrick, Palmer, and Stokes were dead to give him more artillery, and he would direct it in as close as possible. We could never establish the platoon's exact position, but Lieutenant Riddle could adjust fire on Savage's sensing, and he began to do that.

The extraordinary, unyielding resistance that the dozen or so effective fighters were putting up, plus the artillery barrages, that Ernie Savage was bringing down, finally beat off the heavy enemy attack. Ernie Savage and his small band hunkered down, determined to hold their ground to the end. Yeah, and these guys are calling in to Danger Close. Have we talked about Danger Close? No, not to be.

Okay, Danger Close is when you're calling in fire support and you want it to be very close to where you are and you on the ground have to take responsibility for it. So in other words, The person, whether it's artillery, whether it's aircraft, you have to call in, say, Danger Close. Yes. Send the rounds.

We know it's close. We take responsibility for what happens. And by the way, going back to the book, as this fifth left lift of the day roared out at treetop level, the landing zone was suddenly turned red hot. So they haven't even landed everyone yet. So this is going on. They haven't even gotten everyone on the landing zone yet. And here's Crandell talking.

And again, he's the pilot. unbelievably heroic pilot and commanding officer of this helicopter unit says Crandall as I was flaring out to touchdown we started receiving heavy heavy ground fire I had three dead and three wounded on my board bird the wounded included my crew chief who had been hit in the throat when we landed we saw that every bullet had struck the wounded in the head or neck excellent markmanship by the other side and not a happy thought for a helicopter pilot to say the least. So the enemies taking headshots. Back to the book with Crandall, flying serpent yellow three were chief warrant officers, Ricardo J. Lombardo 34 of Hartford, Connecticut, and Alex S. Pop

Jekyll, 43 of Seattle, Washington. Pop Jekyll was a father of nine children. During World War II at the age of 20, he had flown B-24s out of England and B-29s during the post-war years until he left the service in 1950. Pop Jekyll re-enlisted in 1952 and had been flying helicopters since 1963. Pop Jekyll keyed the intercom and said, I flew 31 missions in B-24s in World War II, and that's the closest I've ever come to swallowing my balls. So these landing zones were crazy with these helicopter pilots flying in there. You're getting there as fast as you can, but there's not much.

you can do. You know, you bring it in as fast as you can. You try and get loaded up quick and you try and take off, but it's not like you're able to shoot back. Even once you're on the ground, you're machine gunners and the hughies. They can't shoot anymore because you don't know where the friendly troops are. So you're a sitting duck, literally a sitting duck. And these pilots going in time and time and time again. This goes to the Delta Company commander, Lafebvre. And here's what's going on. Lafebara seriously wounded was fading, was fading fast. I had lost a lot of blood. I could see people shooting, but I couldn't hear any sounds anymore.

I told John Heron somebody had to take over. I called again Colonel Moore and told him that I was going to turn over the company to Sergeant Gonzalez. Then the medic arrived to bandage my wound. Shortly after, I remember someone putting me in a poncho and hauling me over to the area of the battalion command post. When I saw Lieutenant Tobota again, later, we never did talk much about it. It was just too damn close to the real thing. Ray LaFevera and his handful of Delta Company troopers had unknowingly joined the Alpha Company fight at a crucial moment. About 30 North Vietnamese were flanking Nadal's men on their left, and Captain Lafebvre, LaFevera's party ran smack into them and killed most of them.

Nadal's men dispatched the rest. Unknown to LaFevera, Sergeant Gonzalez had been hit in the face by an enemy bullet. Gonzalez simply said, Roger, when LaFevera told him he was now in command. And for the next hour and a half, he ran Delta Company. Sergeant Gonzalez. Shot in the face, no factor. I'm still going to take leadership right now. Going back to the book,

it was during all this horror that Beck remembers fear coming over him. And here's Beck talking. While Doc Knoll was here with me working on Russell, fear. Real fear hit me. Fear like I had never known before. Fear comes. And once you recognize it and accept it,

it passes just as fast as it comes. And you really don't have to think about it anymore. more. You just do what you have to do, but you learn the real meaning of fear and life and death. For the next two hours, I was alone on that gun shooting the enemy. Enemy were shooting at me and bullets were hitting the ground beside me and cracking above my head. They were attacking me and I fired as fast as I could in long bursts. My M-60 was cooking. I had to take a crap and a leak bad so I pulled my pants down while laying on my side and did it on my side, taking fire at the time.

Now, we're going back to Hal Moore talking here. From my command post at the termite hill, the enemy were clearly visible 100 yards to the south. They were damned good soldiers, used cover and concealment to perfection and were deadly shots. Most of my dead and wounded soldiers have been shot in the head or upper body. The North Vietnamese paid particular attention to radio operators and leaders. They did not appear to have radios themselves. They controlled their men by shouts, waves, pointing, whistles. and sometimes bugle calls.

It was 2.45 p.m. All three of my rifle companies were heavily engaged. We had lost the use of the larger clearing for the helicopter landings. Wounded were streaming into the command post-aid station. We were in a desperate fix and I was worried that it could become even more desperate. By now I believed we were fighting

at least two people's armies battalions. Turns out it was three. They were very determined to wipe us out, but a major difference between Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen, Who on of the People's Army of Vietnam and Lieutenant Colonel Howe Moore of the first cavalry division was that I had major fire support and he didn't Air Force Captain Bruce Wallace and his fellow A1E Sky Rader pilots as well as the jet fighter bombers from all three services help provide that edge flying 50 sorties in close air support that Sunday afternoon says Wallace the importance of airplanes in a vulgar brawl is to be down among the palm trees with the troops putting ordinance on the ground at the exact time and in the precise place that the

ground command needs it. And then, so they're in these old school, uh, Sky Raiders, but then Captain Wallace is talking about what it was like watching the helicopters, back to the book with it. It was different with a Huey to watch four or eight of them at a time maneuvering up and down and laterally and even backwards boggles the, the fighter pilot's mind. Those guys swarm a target like bees over honey. I had to hand it to those Huey guys. They really got down there in the trees with the troops. Then this is Hal Moore talking again.

The field artillery, what we called tube artillery, to distinguish howitzer folks from the helicopter rocket folks, proudly calls itself the king of battle. The brave cannon cockers and LZ Falcon went without sleep for three days and three nights to help keep us surrounded by a wall of steel. Those two batteries, 12 guns, fired more than 4,000 rounds of high explosive shells on the first day alone.

Says Barker. On the first afternoon, both batteries fired for effect directly on target for five straight hours. One of Bruce Crandall's Huey Slick pilots, Captain Paul Winkle, touched down at Falcon briefly that first afternoon and was astounded by what he saw. There were stacks of shell casings at least 10 feet high and exhausted gun crews. They had fired for effect for three-state. straight hours by then without even pausing to level the bubbles one tube was burned out two had busted hydraulics that's some shooting No matter how bad things got for Americans fighting for their lives on the x-ray perimeter we could look out to the scrub brush in every direction into that seething inferno of exploding artillery shells 2.75 inch rockets napalm canisters 250 and 500 pound bombs and 20 millimeter cannon fire and thank God,

And our lucky stars that we didn't have to walk through that to get to work. Yeah. So like I said, the close air support is absolutely, or the close air support, the artillery is absolutely what. And that's, that's been happening many, on many occasions for, for American soldiers, sailors, Marines, overseas fighting, you know, the Air Force, the Navy pilots, the Marine Corps pilots coming in. And actually the guy on the ground controlling these guys is an Air Force pilot as well. So having that air superiority is a wonderful thing. Now, speaking of the aviators, going back to the helicopters, chapter nine in this book is called Brave Aviators.

Again, these sitting ducks coming in is crazy to read about. Going back to the book, over the 20 months of air mobile training, a bond had been welded between the infantry and their rides, the Huey helicopter pilots and crewmen. Now the strength of that bond would be tested in the hottest of fires. If the air bridge failed, so the meaning the helicopter's ability to get in there, if the air bridge failed, the embattled men of 1st Battalion 7th Cav would certainly die in much the same way George Armstrong Custer's cavalry men died at Little Bighorn, cut off, surrounded by numerically superior forces, overrun, and butchered to the last man. I asked Bruce Crandall's brave air crews of Alpha Company, the 229th Aviation Battalion,

for the last measure of devotion, for service far beyond the limits of duty and mission, and they came through as I knew they would. And so again, you're basically asking these guys to get shot down every time they fly in, and this is interesting. Back to the book, this was early in the war, and the Medevac commanders had decreed that their birds would not land in hot landing zones. In other words, that they would not go where they were needed when they were needed the most. Even before I asked, Bruce Crandall had already decided to begin doing everything that had to be done. Staying with it, Crandall now dropped as Huey

loaded with casualties on the red dirt strip. And this is, this is Crandle talking. When we hit the ground, we were met by medics and infantry troops still waiting to be lifted into X-ray. So that's another crazy thing to think about. You're, you're unloading wounded men and you're, and you're getting on that aircraft that's going to go pick up more wounded men, but you're going to stay. So the troops that aren't on the ground yet, think about what's going through their minds. They remove the dead and, and you want to know what's going through their minds? I actually, I actually know what's going through their mind. They're going, most of those guys are saying, get me in there as fast as you can. That's what they're saying. These are their brothers out there.

Back to the book, they remove the dead and wounded from my bird, and this act is engraved in my mind deeper than any other experience in my two tours in Vietnam. A huge black enlisted man, clad only in shorts and boots, hands bigger than dinner plates, reaching to my helicopter to pick up one of the dead white soldiers. He had tears streaming down his face, and he tenderly cradled that dead soldier to his chest as he walked slowly from the aircraft to the medical station. I never knew if the man he picked up was his buddy or not. I suspect not. His grief was for a fallen and for the agony that violent death brings to those who witness it. More about the helicopters.

Back to the book, one of the ships brought in Larry Lytton, who immediately took over command of Delta Company from the wounded Sergeant Gonzalez. I told him to add the four Delta mortars to consolidate mortar position set up by Captain Edwards and to control all seven mortars from a single fire direction center. Principal direction of the fire was towards Alpha and Bravo companies and the Ordermen would also have the mission of defending our two chopper landing zones from the east. And the reason I highlighted that is, even though I talk about decentralized command all the time and Hal Moore starts off the book talking about how important decentralized command is,

he's right now in that moment he's centralizing command. He needs to get control of all the mortars so that they can use it correctly. So again, that's why it's the dichotomy of leadership because you can, there's times when you, most of the time you decentralize, but you can actually decentralize too much. you don't coordinate the efforts of these mortars, you're not going to use them effectively. So he centralizes the command of the mortars, brings them all into one location, and starts using them effectively. So that's a good note for leaders to remember. Now here's another platoon commander, Joe Marm.

Joe Marm describes the situation in his platoon. My platoon medic was a short timer and did not accompany us to Chupong. Sergeant First Class George McCulley, the platoon sergeant, carried the aid kit. And we plan to use Staff Sergeant Thomas Tolliver as our. our medic when the need arose. He had been a combat medic during the Korean War and was well qualified. Still, we did not have enough medics to go around, so we sent down specialist Bukknight and specialist Charles Lowe's, a senior medical aide man, as platoon medics to Bravo Company.

Now, Calvin Bukknight, still alive but mortally wounded, was laid gently on the ground and his blood-filled rubber poncho before the medical platoon sergeant. Sergeant First Class Keaton, his friend and comrade for the last two years. And here's what Keaton says. Buk Knight wasn't dead. He was shot right between the soldiers, right directly between the shoulders. He reached up and took my hand and said, Sarge, I didn't make it.

We got an IV started on him and put a pressure bandage over his back wound. There was just no hope. We were able to get him on an Evac ship, but he died. The scriptures say that there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends. This is what Calvin Book Knight did in that fire-filled jungle. He sheltered the wounded he was treating with his own body, his back to the enemy guns, completely vulnerable. And here's how more.

It was now 3.45 p.m. And except for the predicament of Sergeant Savage and the cut-off platoon, I was feeling a good deal better about the situation. We had all of our men in. Massive firepower had been deployed. A company of reinforcements was on the way. Our two chopper lifeline landing zone was secure. Most of our wounded were either evacuated or awaiting evacuation, and we were holding tough. I was determined to make one more attempt to rescue Sergeant Savage and all is wounded and dead on the slope. I ordered Alpha and Bravo companies to evacuate their casualties, withdraw out of close contact with the enemy under covering fires, and prepare to launch a coordinated attack

supported by heavy preparatory artillery fire to reach the cut-off platoon. I was tortured by the fate of those men and the need to rescue them. And chapter 10 is called fix bayonets, which can give you an indication. Back to the book, Alpha and Bravo companies,

the first units to land, had now been locked in violent battle for more than two hours, had suffered no small number of casualties, especially among the sergeants and radio operators, and it shot up most of their ammunition. That's another thing we got to remember. The movies, they never run out of ammunition, right?

Unless it makes some theatrical point. Yeah, plot point or something. They also, in the movies, there's plenty of water. Oh, they're in the jungle. They got plenty of water. These guys don't have water out here. No water, no food, and now they're running out of ammunition. The two commanders, Tony Nadal and John Heron needed time

to evacuate their dead and wounded to reorganize and regroup their diminutive. platoons and designate new leaders and to replenish stocks of ammunition and grenades They would have 40 minutes to accomplish this then heavy artillery fire would lane down ahead of them as they kicked off one more attempt to break through the ring of enemy troops and rescue the survivors of Lieutenant Henry Herrick's second platoon Meanwhile help was on the way back at third brigade headquarters in the tea plantation the orders were going out our sister battalion the second battalion seventh cab was informed that one one of its companies, Bravo was being detached and sent to landing X-ray, landing zone X-ray to reinforce on arrival in X-ray. Bravo company, second battalion, would come under my operational control for the duration

of the fight. So there's two battalions. Each battalion has a number of companies in them, and they're going to take one of the companies from the other battalion and let them come in as reinforcements. Captain Myron, Didyric. Bravo company troops won the toss hand down. So there was a bunch of different companies there, and they were all doing various things.

But Myron DeDyric's company was actually, I think they were standing guard, or they were closest by, and so they were the ones that were going. And it's probably a good thing because this guy, Captain DeDurich, is a complete badass, as we'll see. Bravo Company

Second Battalion had good solid professional non-coms and its troop had served together for a long time. It was a good rifle company and I was happy to get it. Captain DeDurik was 27 years old, a native-born Ukrainian who had come to the United States

with his family in 1950. He was an ROTC graduate from St. Peter's College in Jersey City, New Jersey and was commissioned in July of 1960. He'd completed paratrooper and ranger training and had served tours in Germany and at Fort Benning. DeDiric was made.

married and the father of two children. While our reinforcements were saddling up, my Alpha and Bravo companies were about to launch their second attempt to break through to Lieutenant Herrick's trap platoon. John Heron and Tony Nadal had pulled their men back to the dry creek bed during the lull so they would begin the attack from there. Platoon Sergeant Troy Miller remembers the scene. Our morale was very high after the first contact. Before we went off, before we went after the cutoff platoon, Captain Nadal got us together

and said, men, we've got an American platoon caught off. out there and we're going after them. The replies word, yeah, and let's go get them. And Gary Owen. And Gary Owen is the, it's like the war cry of the cavalry. So, and there's a, comes from an old song and it's, it's just a historical thing. And that's why you read the book. You can find out about Gary Owen.

It's their marching song. Back to the book, Captain Tony Nadal, Alpha Company, was the first man out of the creek bed leading first platoon in the assault. He recalls we moved about 50 yards when we ran into the enemy force which had come down the mountain. I presume they were preparing to launch their attack about the time we launched ours. The fighting quickly became very vicious at close range. We took many casualties. Lieutenant Wayne Johnson, the first platoon leader was hit. At least three other squad leaders were also hit.

Two of them killed. One while going forward in an attempt to rescue one of his soldiers against direct orders. Against direct orders. I'm going out to get my buddy. Tony Nadal had ordered his men to fix bayonets for the attack. Bill Beck, firing a burst from his M-60 machine gun to his right front, was transfixed by what he saw just forward. A tall, thin sergeant bayonetting of North Vietnamese in the chest.

It was just like practiced against the straw dummies. Forward, thrust, pull out, move on. One, two, three. Captain Tony Nadal had four men in his command group as he charged into the brush. There's two radio operators, Sergeant Jack Gell and a 25-year-old native New Yorker and specialist. Spec 4 John Clark of Michigan, plus the company's artillery forwarded observer, Lieutenant Timothy M. Blake, 24 from Charleston, West Virginia. And Blake's recon sergeant, Sergeant Floyd L. Reed, Jr., 27 years old of Heth, Arkansas.

As they moved up, Nadal had the radio handset to his ear. A burst of enemy machine gunfire swept across the ground. Sergeant Gell was hit and dropped without a sound. Nadal kept moving until the long black cord pulled back on him. He was looking around to see what was wrong the same burst that killed Sergeant Gell and also killed Lieutenant Blake and struck Sergeant Reed who died shortly thereafter. Sergeant Sam Holman native Sergeant Sam Holman Jr. A native of a native Pennsylvania knelt beside his mortally wounded buddy Jack Gell and heard him gaffir. Tell my wife I love her.

Tony Nidal had no time to mourn Jack Gell, a man he greatly respected. Too many other lives were in his hands. On the right flank of the Bravo line, Lieutenant Deal was now rolling around on the ground, desperately trying to dodge a valley of machine gun slugs cutting through the grass all around him. Suddenly, 25 yards away, Deal saw an American get up and charge forward while everyone around him was flat on his belly. says deal i saw him throw a grenade behind an ant hill and empty his weapon into it then he fell to his knees i said to myself please get up don't be hurt i didn't know who it was i couldn't make out the form there was so much battlefield haze dust and smoke it was lieutenant joe marm he had spotted an enemy

machine gun dug into a big termite hill it was chewing up both bravo company platoons after failing to knock it out with a law rocket and a grenade and a thrown grenade, he decided to deal with it directly. He charged through the fire, tossed a hand grenade behind the hill, and then cleaned up the survivors with his M-16 rifle. The following day, Lieutenant Al Daveni found an dead North Vietnamese officer and 11 enemy soldiers sprawled behind that termite mound. Says deal, Joe Marm saved my life and the lives of many others.

Lieutenant Marm staggered back to his position with a bullet wound to his jaw and neck. He joined a growing stream of walking wounded flowing back toward the battalion aid station. Sergeant Keaton treated Marm's wound and one of Bruce Condell's Crandell's Huey's evacuated him to the rear. Within days, Lieutenant Joe Marm was recuperating at Valley Forge Army Hospital near his home in Pennsylvania. In December of 1966, Joe Marm reported to the Pentagon were the secretary of the army acting on behalf of President Lyndon Johnson presented him with the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for valor.

Joe Marm's heroic action unfortunately failed to open the door to the cutoff platoon. Bravo Company had progressed only about 75 yards, Alpha Company a bit further. All through of Nadal's platoon leaders were now either dead or wounded, as were many of his non-coms. Worse yet, Alpha Company's first platoon had gotten out ahead of the two other and was heavily engaged with perhaps a hundred enemy. Some of the North, some of the Alpha troopers bypassed the enemy in dense brush and those North Vietnamese had opened up on them. Not only were we unable to punch through to rescue Herrick's platoon, we were now in danger of having another platoon cut off. And again, I apologize.

That's one of the things I should have talked about was the way this terrain is. set up. It's a lot of grass. Like I would say waist high grass, maybe a little bit taller than waist high. And if you take cover, you can't see anything. Because you're in grass. If you stand up, you get shot. Yeah, yeah. So it's a terrible catch 22. Do you stand up so you can see what's happening and see where people are going and see where the enemy's maneuvering and you might get shot or do you lay down where you take cover and you have a better chance of not getting shot but you can't see anything? Captain DeDyric ran up to me and shouted Gary Owen sir now this is this is awesome

So Captain Deerick is the guy that's coming into He's from 2 7 He's coming in as reinforcements And like I said Gary Owen is like their war cry Yeah So here we go Captain Deerick ran up to me and shout out So this is Hal Moore talking

He's on this embroital war zone Been taking so many casualties And here's what Hal Moore says Captain Deerick ran up to me and shouted Gary Owen sir Captain Deiric and Bravo Company 2nd Battalion 7th Cavalry, 120 men strong reporting for duty. His eyes sparkled with excitement and the challenge of the situation.

I told the Dyrr to assemble his men in a clump of trees, 30 yards northwest of the command post to act as a battalion reserve for the time being. It's awesome. Come in and report. Gary Owen, Gary Owen, sir. Captain Dundal says, the fight continued for another 20 or 30 minutes with neither side making headway. It was getting dark and casualties mounted and I decided we were not going

to be able to break through. I called Colonel Moore and asked for permission to pull back. And here's what Colonel Moore says. With night approaching, there was no real choice. I did not want to get into the hours of darkness with my battalion fragmented with the company's incapable of mutual support and subject to defeat in detail. Word came over the radio in this. And so now this is a specialist, Gailen Bungham, who's out there with the loss platoon.

Back to the book, word came over the radio that we would have to hang. on till morning I could not believe what I heard I thought there was no way we would be able to do that others thought the same thing Clark kept asking me do you think we'll make it I didn't know but I said we have to pray and pray hard it was a big question mark in all of our minds we had to keep our cool and bear down and now we hear from Hal Morgan I now considered the toll this day's fighting and taken Tony and Didal's Alpha Company had lost three officers and 31 enlisted men killed or wounded. And now reported effective strength of two officers and 84 enlisted.

John Heron's Bravo Company had lost one officer and 46 enlisted men killed or wounded and was down to four officers and 68 enlisted men with one platoon, Herrick's trapped outside the perimeter. For almost eight hours, I had been involved in the minute-to-minute. direction of the battle. Now I wanted to personally walk the perimeter and check the preparations for what promised to be a tough night and another tough day tomorrow. Just before dark, Sergeant Major Plumley and I broke away from the command post and set out to check the perimeter talking with the troopers and getting a feel for the situation on the ground. What concerned me the most was the morale of the men, how well the companies were tied in, their defensive fire plans and the situation with ammunition and water supplies.

Moral among the men was high, although there was understandable grief over the friends we had lost. The men and I talked, the men I talked with realized that we were facing a fierce determined enemy, but he failed to break through our lines. They knew the fight wasn't over. I heard weary soldiers saying things like, we'll get him, sir, and they won't get through us, sir. Their fighting spirit had not dimmed, and they made me proud and humble. In every one of my companies that had landed in this place this morning,

there were 15 to 20 soldiers who had less than two weeks left to go in the army. Some of those men now lay dead, wrapped in ponchos near my command post. The rest of them were out on that perimeter, standing shoulder to shoulder with their buddies, ready to continue the fight. 37 miles to the northeast Bruce Crandall and big Ed Freeman finally shut down their hughies at a large helicopter pad nicknamed the turkey farm outside the wire at Camp Holloway they had been flying non-stop since 6 a.m. It was after 10 p.m. when Crandall

shut down and tried to get out of the aircraft. That is when the day's activities caught up with me. My legs gave out as I stepped on the skid and I fell to the ground for the next few minutes I vomited I was very embarrassed and it took some time to regain my composure Someone slipped me a bottle of cognac into my hand and I took a big slug It was a waste of good booze. It came up as fast as it went down I finally quit shaking and made it to the operations tent to recap the day and plan the next The aviation unit had quite a day We had not suffered a single fatality and we had not suffered a single fatality and we had not

left the mission undone when our infantry brothers called we hauled the standard for combat assaults with helicopters had been set on this day I wondered about tomorrow would it be worse I wasn't sure I could handle another day like today then again I thought about the troops in X-ray and the choice was not mine to make and here's is how more talking about the wounded. Back to the book, all of the wounded, all of our wounded flown out of x-ray by Crandall's Huey's ended up at Charlie Company, 15th Medical Battalion,

first cavalry division, which was temporarily set up in tents at Camp Holloway. The executive officer of Charlie Medd was Captain George H. Kelling 28 from St. Louis, Missouri. Charlie Med's five surgeons tried to stabilize the soldiers coming off the helicopters. The treatment we provided says, Kelling was designed to keep the blood flowing through the patient system until he could be gotten to a hospital, which had the personnel and equipment to perform definitive surgery. Charlie Med's doctors tied off perforated blood vessels to stop the hemorrhaging and then

pumped in whole blood. Kelling recalls that many of the casualties were rapidly bleeding to death, so it was a race against time to get blood into the soldier faster than he was losing it, even while the surgeons were trying to tie off bleeders. We threw caution to the wind and gave a patient four cutdowns, which is an intravenous tube tied into blood vessels, with four corpsmen squeezing the blood bags as hard as they could. It was not unusual for the patient to shiver and quake and lose body temperature from the

rapid transfusion of so much cold blood. But the alternative was to let them die. So they're giving blood directly into the vein. And they've got Corman standing there squeezing the bags of blood to try and keep people alive Back on LZ here's Sergeant John Stedelin talking they probed us all night long we had a few men wounded I'd never been in a situation like that when they would come at us they would come screaming and we could hear bugles As darkness fell Savage was on the radio with lieutenant Bill Riddell Heron's artillery forward observer observer

walking the high explosive barrages all around the cut-off platoon. All of us were lifted off the ground by the impact and covered with dirt and branches. Bungham recalls. Savage told them on the radio, that was right where we want them. We hollered that it was too close, but I looked back where those first rounds hit and saw three men running towards us. We opened up. They must have been crawling up on our position when that artillery came in.

They would sneak in as close as 10 yards or less. And many times just stand up to laugh at us. We would mow them down. It begins to work on your mind. What are they laughing at? I couldn't believe it. The North Vietnamese launched three separate attacks to keep the pressure on the trapped second platoon

during that long night, each time sending about 50 men against the Americans and each time being beaten back by artillery and rifle fire. Savage had seven men unhurt and 13 wounded. Nine others were dead. Some of the lost platoons wounded continue to fight, including Sergeant Rubin Thompson, who had been shot through the chest. The platoon later heard still another large enemy force moving down the northern trail toward X-ray and again brought artillery fire down on them. This was followed by a flurry of hand grenades back and forth at about 4.30 a.m.

Within an hour, the first light in the eastern sky revealed dozens of khaki-clad enemy dead scattered all around the little knoll. The trap platoon and survived the longest night any of them would ever know. They checked their ammunition and prepared to receive a dawn attack. And here's one of the platoon sergeants talking. Platoon sergeant Robert Jeminson. Jemison. At first light, we sent out a patrol. Staff Sergeant Sidney Cohen,

spec for Arthur L. Bronson, and three other men were picked to go, says Jemison. They saved us from being surprised. They spotted the enemy on their way back into an attack position. They came running back with Bronson screaming. They're common serge. A lot of them. Get ready. I told them machine gunners to hold their fire until they were close.

PFC Willie F. Godbolt, 24 of Jacksonville, Florida was hit while firing from his position. 20 yards to Sergeant Jemison's right. Jemison remembers. Godbolt was hollering. Somebody help me. I yelled, I'll go get him. Lieutenant Joe Jagan yelled back, no, I will. Joe Jagen moved out of his position in the foxhole to help Godbolt and was shot.

This was 10 minutes or so from the time the firing first broke out. Struck in the back of the head, Lieutenant John, Lance, Jack, Joe Jagan was killed instantly. The man he was trying to save, PFC Godbolt died of his wounds shortly afterward. The enemy was now closed to within 75 yards of Edwards line. They were firing furiously, some crouched low and at times crawling on their hands and knees. Others no taller than the elephant grass they were passing through, came on standing up and shooting. They advanced, screaming at each other, and Edward's men. Leaders were blowing whistles and using hand and arm signals.

A few were even carrying 82-millimeter mortar tubes and base plates. This was clearly a no hit and run affair. They'd come to stay. And here's Joe Stetland talking. Or Sergeant John, sorry, John Stetland. Here's John Stetland talking. It seemed like half a battalion hit us all at once. He hit us headlong and he hit us strong.

I thought we were going to be overrun. When Charlie hit us, he had this strange grazing fire. He shot right at ground level trying to cut off your legs. Or if you weren't deep enough in your foxhole, he shot your head off. When he started firing at us, it came like torrents of rain. You just couldn't get your head up, up long enough to shoot back. You just stuck up your weapon, pulled the trigger, and emptied the magazine.

Lieutenant Charlie Hastings, our forward air controller, had already swung into action. Sensing disaster, Hastings made an immediate instinctive decision. I used the code word broken arrow, which meant the American unit in contact was in danger of being overrun. and we received all available aircraft in South Vietnam for close air support. We had aircraft stacked at 1,000 foot intervals from 7,000 feet to 35,000 feet, each waiting to receive a target and deliver their ordinance. And here's how more. By now I was convinced that the enemy was making a primary effort to overrun us from the south and southeast,

and I alerted the reserve platoon for probable commitment into Charlie or Delta Company sectors. The noise of the battle was unbelievable. Never before or since in two wars have I heard anything equal to it. And here's specialist Arthur Vieira. The gunfire was very loud. We were getting overrun on the right side. Lieutenant Kroger came out into the open in all this. I thought that was pretty good.

He yelled at me. I got up to hear him. He hollered at me to help cover the left sector. I ran over to him and by the time I got there he was dead. He had lasted a half an hour. I knelt beside him, took off his desk. dog tags and put them in my shirt pocket. I went back to firing my M79 and got shot right in the elbow. My M79 went flying and I was knocked over and fell backward over the lieutenant.

Vieira now grabbed his 45 pistol and began firing it left-handed. And he says, then I got hit in the neck and the bullet went right through. I couldn't talk or make a sound. I got up and tried to take charge and we shot with a third round. That one blew up my right leg and put me down. It went in my leg above the ankle traveled up came back out then went into my groin and ended up in my back close to my spine just then two stick grenades blew up right over me and tore up both of my legs i reached down with my left hand and touched a grenade fragments on my left leg and it felt like i had touched a red hot poker my hands just sizzled unbelievable attack and i think that script description right there really spells out how intense this was.

And obviously when you got Colonel Moore saying that this is the loudest thing he's ever heard in two wars, that also confirms what we're dealing with here. Back to the book at 7.45 a.m., the enemy struck at the left flank of Tony and the Dahl's Alpha Company at the critical elbow, where Alpha and Charlie companies were tied in. We are now under attack from three directions. grazing fire from rifles and machine guns shredded the elephant grass and swept over the battalion command post and aid station leaves bark and small blencers branches fluttered down on us several troopers were wounded in the same command post and at least one was killed my radio operator spec for robert p.aulet 23 years old had a bespectled of a speckled six-forter from madawasca main was hit and slumped over in a sprawl unmoving and seemingly dead. I kept the handset to my ear.

And here's Joe Galloway, the reporter. The incoming fire was only a couple of feet off the ground and I was down as flat as I could get when I felt the toe of a combat boot in my ribs. I turned my head sideways and looked up. There, standing tall, was Sergeant Major Basil Plumley. Plumley leaned down and shouted over the noise of the guns. You can't take no pictures laying down there on the ground sunny he was calm fearless and grinning I thought he's right we're all going to die anyways so I might as well take mine standing up I got up and began taking a few photographs plumley moved over to the aid station pulled out his 45 chambered around and informed Dr. Carrera and his medics gentlemen prepare to defend yourselves so

plumly thought they were getting over on too or at least going to get close you're in the station that's in the center of this whole perimeter and he's pulling out his 45 and saying prepare to defend yourselves you can't make that up specialist willard f parish 24 years old and a native of bristow oklahoma was an assistant squad leader of one of charlie company's 81 millimeter mortar squads paris was one of the mortar men who had been outfitted with the spare machine guns and rifles collected from our casualties and put on the delta company perimeter. Parrish recalls when we were hit I remember all the tracer rounds and I wondered how even an aunt could get through that. Back to our right, we started hearing the guys hollering. They're coming

around. They're coming around. I was in a foxhole with a guy from Chicago, PFC James E. Coleman and he had an M16. I had my 45 and his 45 and I had an M60 machine gun. We were set up facing out to the tall grass. I was looking out front and I could see some of the grass going down like someone was crawling in it. I hollered, who's out there? Nobody answered and I hollered again.

No answer. I turned to Coleman. Burn his ass. Coleman said, my rifles jammed. I looked at him and him at me. Then I looked to the front and they were growing out of the weeds. I just remember getting that machine gun

from there on out and the training takes over and you put your mind somewhere else because I really don't remember what specifically I did. I was totally unaware of the time, the conditions. On that M60 machine gun, according to the extracts from his Silver Star citation, Specialist Paris delivered lethal fire on wave after wave of the enemy until he ran out of ammunition.

Then, standing up under fire with a 45 pistol in each hand, Parrish fired clip after clip into the enemy who were 20 yards out, and he stopped their attack. Says Parrish, I feel like I didn't do any more than anybody else did up there. I remember a lot of noise,

a lot of yelling, and then all at once it was quiet. The silence out in front of Willard Parish was that of this cemetery. More than a hundred dead North Vietnamese were later found where they had fallen in a semi-circle around his foxhole.

45 in each hand. that's that's crazy actually I mean you yeah he's he's going through a whole other level yeah because you can't reload you know you can't reload your pistol so maybe he maybe he would stand up fire both just dump a mag in each round and each pistol get back down reload them both but then he got well that's after he used all of his 60 ammo George Fox 25 and Nathaniel Bird 22 were slumped across their silent M-60 machine gun surrounded by heaps of empty shell

casings and empty ammunition cans they had died together shoulder to shoulder sergeant jemison pays them the ultimate compliment of a professional soldier bird and fox did a great job they kept firing that gun and didn't leave

it they stayed on it to the end so all this close air support's coming in this whole time artillery's coming in the whole time And all of a sudden they get a situation where they start they see aircraft coming overhead with jets coming overhead low pass and they're they're heading towards them And they drop some napalm So here's how more I yelled at the top of my lungs to Charlie Hastings the Air Force fact call that son of a bitch off call him off

Joe Galloway heard Hastings screaming in the radio pull up pull up Matt Dillon says I can still see the canisters tumbling toward us I remember thinking turn your eyes away so you won't be blinded. I put my face into a reporter's shoulder to hide my eyes. It was Joe Galloway's. I could hear good time Charlie Hastings shouting into his radio, pull up. The second jet did.

The napalm from the first hit some people and caught some ammo on fire. Sergeant Major Plumley jumped out to put the fire around the ammunition. I ran out into the LZ to put an air panel out. Sergeant Nye says two of my people, PFC Jimmy D. Nakayama and specialist five, James Clark, were on the other side of me several yards away. Somebody was hollering and Colonel Moore was standing up there, hollering about something about a wingman and I looked up. There were two planes coming and one of them had already dropped as napalm and everything seemed to go in slow motion. Everything was on fire. Nakayama was all black and Clark

was burned and bleeding. And here's Joe Galloway. Before I had walked over and talked to the engineer guys in their little foxholes, now those same men were dancing in fire. Their hair burned off in an instant. Their clothes were incinerated. One was a mass of blisters. The other not quite so bad, but he had breathed fire into his lungs.

When the flames died down, we all ran out into the burning grass. Somebody yelled at me to grab the feet of one of the charged soldiers. When I got him, the boots crumbled and the flesh came off and I could feel bare bones of his ankles and the palms of my hands. We carried him to the aid station. I can still hear their screams. Spec 4 Thomas E. Berlisle, a medical man from Bravo Company 2nd Battalion, rushed out into the clearing with his kit bag to help the napalm victims. Burlis was shot in the head and died within minutes. in Lieutenant Rescorla's arms.

An Oklahoma man, Burlisle, turned 23 years old, just four days before he was killed. Back in the command post, our Air Force fact, Charlie Hastings, was stunned by all the consequences of the misplaced airstrike. Hastings recalls after the napalm strike, Colonel Moore looked at me and said something that I never forgot. Don't worry about that one Charlie just keep them coming. Yeah I mean he knows what he's got to do he's got Hastings that just killed some of his own men wounded some of his own men by fire And he's freaking out probably doesn't want to call any more bombs on and Howmore realizes that's what's keeping him alive Don't worry about that one

Just keep him coming Charlie company first battalion seventh captain had begun its day with five officers and 106 men by noon had no officers left and only 49 men unhurt a total of 42 officers and men had been killed and 20 more wounded in two and a half hours of vicious hand-to-hand fighting the bodies of hundreds of slain vietnamese north vietnamese littered the bloody battleground spec for pat selik 24 and a native of mount kisco new york says i remember one guy had a small American flag on the back of his pack when I saw that I felt very proud that's something that always stuck with me this American flag was put on top of a blown up tree just like a Rojima another battle we had won for the United States that little flag flew over

landing zone x-ray for the rest of the fight raising all our spirits and now there's a lull in the fighting and here we go to the book during this lull the saddest most painful and hardest duty to endure was collecting our dead and loading them on board the helicopters there were so many that the brigade ordered the big choppers the CH 47 Chinooks one such helicopter lifted out all 42 of the dead from Charlie Company they came in together died together and now left together wrapped in their green rubber ponchos spec 4 Vincent Cantu says we were picking up our dead and placing them in the choppers some of these guys I had known for

two years yet I could recognize them only by their name tags their faces were blown off it was hard not to get sick we would look at each other and without saying a word just continue putting our dead on the choppers now colonel that's in charge of the both both battalions he makes a very very visit and here we go. Mid-morning before Tully arrived, Colonel Tim Brown flew in for a visit. Plumley recalls Lieutenant Colonel Moore saluted Brown and said, I told you not to come in here. It's not safe. Brown picked up his right collar lapel and waggled his full colonel's eagle at Moore and said, sorry about that. Dylan and I gave him a situation report. Brown asked whether he should stay in

X-ray, establish a small brigade command post and run the show. We recommend it against that. I knew the area and Bob Tully and I got along just fine. Brown agreed. Lieutenant Dick Merchant says Colonel Brown had trust and confidence in his commanders. I'm aware that some felt he should have landed an X-ray and established a command post. I've never accepted that. The first battalion, 7th Cavalry was probably the finest battalion in Vietnam, well-trained, superbly led with outstanding officers and NCOs throughout the unit. Brown would have been out of place in X-ray. Besides, there was no room for a brigade C. I recall it being rather crowded behind that ant hill.

So the reason I put that in there is because here's the guy that's, you know, Halmore's boss comes in to check on the scene. And some people say, oh, he should have stayed there because it was a bad fight. And he, in this,

Dick Merchant said, no, like he shouldn't have stayed there. He did the right thing. He came, visited, and left. And by the way,

you want to set up a brigade command post? You need to find your own little ant-hill, because this one's all this one's you know the size of yeah it's full and it's the size of a car we got dead wounded everywhere and so but it's it's the important point there from my perspective is you know the key thing is that he had trust and confidence in his officers he didn't need to go out there and micromanage them and i'm not saying you could never do that i'm definitely not saying that's the dichotomy of leadership you know sometimes you might look out there and say there's something going on i need to get out there need to get in the weeds and get this problem

handle that need to come out there in support in this particular case probably wouldn't have been a good idea how more had it under control at this point that's why they're landing a uh a chinook which is a c h 47 giant helicopter much bigger than a hewey needs you know it's slower and at least on on approach it's slower so yeah there's a time to get out there in micromanage and there's a time when you let your teams lead okay going back to the book in myron didyric and lieutenant rick rick rick rick So these are the two guys that came from the 2nd Battalion 7th Cav. And he just talks about him a little bit. I think it's worth mentioning Rick Raskola and Myron Diderick.

Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, had two foreign-born officers whose accents and gung-ho attitudes lent a touch of foreign legion flair. The Ukrainian Diderick and the Englishman Rescourla was, were destined over the next 72 hours to become battlefield legends in the 7th Cav. as much for their style as their fearless leadership under fire. And yeah, it's, it's, it's, you can see what these leaders do and you do get to see it. But here's when, when DeDyrick, remember he touched down and he was told, hey, go, go set up security and here we go. Myron DeDiric and his soldiers had not yet been sorely tested, but they soon would be.

During that lull, DeDiric made certain that fields of fire and observation were cleared out to beyond 200 yards. that good fighting positions were dug, that machine guns were placed in positions that assured flanking, interlocking fire, that trip flares and anti-intrusion devices were installed as far as 300 yards out, that every man was locked down, loaded down with ammunition, and that ammo resupply points were designated,

that all radios were checked and double-checked. Then DeDurik worked very carefully with his artillery forward observer, registering pre-planned fires across the front. The officer, the officer Lieutenant William Lund had four batteries, 24 howitzers, registered and adjusted.

on call. So that's, you ever wonder what, uh, what a military leader does? That's what he does right there. Dials everything in. And here he's talking about, uh, so one of the Durek's platoon leaders was Rick Raskorla. And here's what he says about Rick Raskorla. Rick Raskerla, first platoon leader was six months out of OCS at the infantry school at Fort Benning, but he had arrived there with a wealth of good training already in under his belt. He had served in the British army in Cyprus and with the colonial police in Rhodesia and he knew what sold. was all about what he did to prepare his position and his men speaks for his professionalism so here's what rescorla did rascarla walked the terrain and tried to see it

from the enemy's point of view that's critical what's the enemy thinking scrub brush elephant grass and hills and some ground cover stretched to the front the ground was not as flat as it first appeared but had seams and thick rut stretching off to the south with a slight incline away from his positions the hasty prone shelters dug by Charlie Company First Battalion had been dug after nightfall under enemy pressure. Rescourla moved his men back 50 yards, which not only shortened the sector, but meant the enemy would now have to leave the trees and cross 40 yards of mostly open area to reach Bravo Company foxholes.

Rescora recalls, because of our shortened lines, I decreased the number of foxholes. Three-man holes were constructed. The M-60 machine guns were set on principal directions of fire from which they could switch to final protective grazing fire, interlocking with each other and with the machine guns on our flanks. Foxholes and parapets were built in detailed. I tested the holes.

Some were so deep the occupants could not even see over the parapet. In these cases, firing steps were built back up. Two hours before dusk, Sergeant Eskbach, A27, and Sergeant Thompson organized a booby-trap detail. Carefully, they rigged grenades and trip flares

far out on the main avenues of approach. Claymore minds would have iced the cake, but somewhere they had been lost. A screw up, but I felt we were ready to tangle with the best of the North Vietnamese. And again, these guys are luckily, there's a lull, and they have all the time to prepare this and get it all set up. And that's a big difference from what happened when these guys hit the LZ, and they didn't have any of this stuff.

They didn't have any of the terrain figured out. They didn't have a chance to set any of their personnel up. And these guys are taking advantage of that tactical situation to get up there and make things right and you know both those guys you can see that's what a leader does that's what a leader does they make sure things are right they make sure you're ready to win and you can do that and that applies to every every leader in every position in every industry and every team in the world the leader is stepping up and making sure we are going to be prepared to win and by the way this Rick rescorla and this is a little bit of a side note he ended up

Working for Morgan Stanley as the head of security for Morgan Stanley and they worked at the Twin Towers in New York City. That's where Morgan Stanley was and He felt like they needed to do drills like they needed to prepare and that like what happened if the towers came under attack and they ran a bunch of drills and When September 11th came they ran those drills and got everyone evacuated and Rick Rescorla was last scene on the 10th floor going back up into the building to do a final check and make sure that everyone was out and the tower collapsed at 9.59 a.m. And he saved a lot of lives that day, not only through his actions on the day of, but through his actions in preparing. Now, the Vietnamese come, the North Vietnamese come and they bring it. Here we go. The first rush by at least 300 North Vietnamese was beaten off in less than 10 minutes by small arms machine gun and artillery fire from the alert and well-prepared Bravo Company second battalion troops. At 4.31 a.m. 20 minutes later, they came back.

De Diderick said the intensity of their attack increased and I was under the under assault aimed at my three left platoon sectors. Screams, shouts and whistles split the night as NVA swept down the mountain. and straight into the smoke-clouded killing ground. Now all the mortars of my battalion and Tully's were turned loose, adding their 81-millimeter high-expulsive shells to the general mayhem. Rifleman John Martin, who is in DeDierich's lines, says, we kept pouring rifle and machine gun fire and artillery on them, and they broke and ran.

I don't think we had any casualties, but they were catching hell. So now it's a totally different story. These guys are dug in. They have all their artillery dialed in. They've got their fields of fire set up. And the attacks come. Well-organized acts with 300 people. You can't, they don't make it happen.

The Vietnamese don't make it happen. Yeah. Back to the book. Over on the perimeter, Raskorla's men fought on. Our M79 switched to direct fire. Fire delivered to a visible target and lobbed rounds out between 75 and 100 yards. Still, the shadowy clumps moved closer. RPGs and machine guns crackled as they blasted us from the,

dark line of ground cover across open fields they came in a ragged line the first groups cut down after a few yards a few surge right on sliding down behind their dead comrades for cover an amazing highly disciplined enemy a trooper cursed and pleaded in a high-pitched voice god damn it stop the bastards so here they are they're attacking and when the when the North Vietnamese soldiers get hit their their buddies are coming up behind them taking cover behind their bodies and continuing to assault so this is an indicator you know like I said this was early in the war this is nineteen sixty five and you know we didn't know that's determined enemy yet we

didn't understand that yet and here we're seeing it for the first time this is what this is what this is how determined these guys are they're going to attack they're going to attack through whatever we put at here's another situation Stettelin this is a Stedelin whispered orders to his squad telling men on either side of him to hold their fire not to shoot until the enemy stepped out into that open space right in front suddenly a flare and a booby trap went off and they were there in the grass shooting at us. I took around just above the elbow, nothing really, just a stitch or two and a piece of tape

after the fight. Nobody shot back. Then they stepped into that open area. The flares were burning. They were lit up and it was easy. We opened up and picked them off. It was a light attack. Then they hit us harder 30 minutes later, blowing bugles, blowing whistles.

We killed them all. Then some white phosphorus came in about 15 in front of my hole. and I lost most of my web gear in my shirt, had about eight burns on one arm. John Stetland sat there under the light of the flares and used the point of his bayonet to quickly dig the still burning Willie Pete fragments out of his flesh.

So white phosphorus is a type of munition that we use and it's white phosphorus and it hits and blows up and it's on fire. It's a little pieces of burning hot metal. And he's picking it out of his arm. During the two and a half hours of the attack against Adiric sector, the rest of the X-ray perimeter had been quiet, too quiet. Dylan and I discussed the possibility of conducting a reconnaissance by fire to check for presence of the

enemy elsewhere on the line. We had plenty of ammunition and what the hell the enemy knew where our lines were by now, as well as I did. We passed the word on the battalion net. At precisely 655 a.m., every man on the perimeter would fire his individual weapon and all machine guns for a full two minutes on full automatic. The word was to shoot up trees, ant hills, bushes, and high grass, forward of and above the American positions. Gunners would shoot anything that worried them.

By now we had learned to our sorrow that the enemy used the night to put snipers in trees ready to do damage at first light. Now was the time to clean up out front. At the stated time, our perimeter erupted in an ear-splitting uproar. and immediately a force of 30 to 50 North Vietnamese rose from a cover 150 yards forward of Joe Sardini's Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion lines and began shooting back.

The mad minute of firing triggered their attack prematurely. Artillery fire was instantly brought in on them and the attack was beaten off. When the shooting stopped, one dead sniper dangled by his rope from a tree in Fort of Diderick's leftmost position. another dropped dead out of a tree almost immediately forward of John Harron's Bravo Company First Battalion Command Post A third North Vietnamese sniper was killed

an hour later when he tried to climb down from history and run for it Sergeant Stedlin's arm speckled with white phosphorus burns began hurting him now I was sent back to the aid station where my arm was bandaged and I was waiting to be medevacked out

the more I sat there the more I realized I realized I couldn't in good faith get on a chopper and fly out there and leave those guys behind. So I took the sling off my arm and went back out. Somebody asked, where are you going? I said, back to my foxhole. Nobody said anything else. So obviously these guys now have gained some good fire superiority, the upper hand in the battle. Back to the book, Rusk Orl and his men had been watching the air show appreciatively.

We gathered for the last sweep. Suddenly a fighter bomber plowed down on us from above. We buried our noses in the holes. An express train screamed down and the explosion shook the earth. The bomb landed 30 yards from our holes. We came up cursing in the dust and debris. The call came to move out. Every available trooper, including Colonel Moore, pushed the perimeter out.

This time it was no contest at all. We killed 27 more enemy and crushed all resistance. I looked over the field, littered with enemy dead, sprawled by ones and twos and heaps across a torn, gouged land. Blood, body fragments, torn uniforms, shattered weapons, littered the landscape. It was a sobering sight. Those men, our enemies, had mothers too, but we had done what we had to do. aside from wanting to make certain that diderick and his men did a clean safe job i had one reason for joining the final assault personally this is this is colonel more talking and then it goes to

rick rascorla rick raskolah watched colonel more in our sector was rushing up the clumps of bodies pulling them apart what the hell is the colonel doing up there sergeant thompson asked i shook my head later we saw him coming back at the head of men carrying ponchos by ten 30 a.m. Colonel Moore had found what he was looking for. Three dead American troops were no longer missing in action. Now they were on their way home to their loved ones. By now, late morning, Tuesday, November 16th, the personality of landing zone X-ray had changed. What previously had been a killing field had become something else. We moved without impunity in places where movement had meant death only hours before. Except for our own artillery and air, there was nothing to be

heard. It was just too quiet, too sudden, and it made me uneasy. That old principle, nothing was wrong except that nothing was wrong. Where was the enemy? Headed back to Cambodia, still on the mountain preparing to attack again, headed north to the eye drain in its precious water? And again, the old question, where were the enemy 12.7 millimeter heavy anti-aircraft machine guns? If the enemy commander brought those weapons to bear on us from the mountain above, LZ X-ray with three American battalions crowding the clearing would present a beautiful target. I told Dylan to step up the harassing artillery fire and to keep the airstrikes coming in the slopes above us.

I told him I wanted a picture perfect helicopter extraction covered by all the firepower we could bring to bear. So, yeah, tides have turned completely. And in fact, they've turned so completely that a Chinook, which is the big helicopter, flies in with a bunch of photographers. and television crews and reporters. And they surround, they surround Colonel Moran, here we go,

back to the book. The other reporters now clustered around me. I told them that this had been a bitterly contested battle, that clearly we were up against a brave, determined, and very tough enemy in the North Vietnamese soldiers. But that American firepower, discipline, guts, and will to win had carried the day at LZX-ray. Brave American soldiers.

and the M-16 rifle won a victory here, I said. My voice choked and my eyes filled with tears as I told the reporters that many of my men who had been killed in this place were only a matter of days away from completing their service in the army, but they fought and died bravely. As I stood there, I knew that the telegrams that would shatter the hearts and lives of scores of American families were already being drafted.

Now came the body count. And if you remember, we've talked about this before, Everyone was always, they wanted to talk about the body count in Vietnam, even at this early stage. And he was thinking about that. Back to the book, now came the body count. From the beginning of the fight, I had known that higher headquarters would eventually want to know what damage we had done to the enemy. So after each major action in this battle, hating it, I asked my company commanders for their best estimates of enemy killed. With the battle raging back and forth over three days and two nights, it was anything but orderly.

There was no referee to call time out for a body count. We did the best we could to keep a realistic count of the enemy dead. In the end, it added up to 834 dead by body count with an additional 1,215 estimated, killed, and wounded by artillery, air attacks, and aerial rocket attacks. On my own, I cut the 834 figure back to 634, a personal allowance for the confusion and fog of war, and let the 1,215 estimated stand. We captured and evacuated six enemy prisoners on our side. We had lost 79 Americans killed in action, 121 wounded, and none missing. And at this point, they get extracted off the battlefield,

including Colonel Moore. He's the last man to leave from his battalion. And here we go back to the book. It was a short, fast ride to landing zone Falcon. Just five and a half miles east of X-ray. As we landed among the artillery pieces, I saw 75 yards away a group of my troopers off in the northwestern edge of the LZ.

Dean Brelis, an NBC news correspondent, was in LZ Falcon that afternoon. He captured the scene in his 1967 book, The Face of South Vietnam. And here's what Dean Brelis wrote. How more was the last? last man to come out of the battle. It was the biggest battle he had ever fought.

He was a lieutenant colonel, and he carried himself like a proud man. His sergeant major was at his side. It would need a Shakespeare to describe what happened then, but it was something that was love and manliness and pride. It was the moment of the brave. How Moore turned and went from group to group. of his men and only a few bothered to get up because there was no exclusivity now no rank and Hal Moore did not want them to stand and salute he was saluting them he talked with

them he thanked them he was not solemn and he did not bring to his greetings the salutations of a politician there was no poverty of spirit in his handshake shake and he shook every man's hand. It was a union of men who had met and defeated the enemy, not forever, not in a victory that ended the war, but in a victory over their uncertainty. When their hour had come, they had done their job. And it was this thought too that Al Moore, Hal Moore, had in his mind. And he said that if they had won no one else's gratitude,

They had his. And I think that these men, all these men have our absolute gratitude for fighting for freedom, for fighting for each other, for fighting for us. And actually, the story doesn't end there, nor does the book. And we're going to save it for the next podcast, but we're going to hear about the story of LZ Albany, which is a few miles to the north. And still inside the I-Dang Valley where second battalion of the seventh cab moved in and fought. And it's there's so much that I didn't cover in this in this what I just covered. There's so much I didn't cover me. I didn't even cover the lost platoon who does eventually get recovered.

Read the book. I should have left that out. Spoiler alert. But there's so much in there. There's so much, so many lessons learned, so much action, so much good description, and so many heroes and so much sacrifice. I don't even think gratitude. I don't think gratitude's enough. I think we owe them more than just gratitude.

We owe them our best. We owe them our lives, our best lives every day. Every moment to remember this sacrifice and what we owe them is we owe them to live our best lives. And I think that's all I've got for tonight. So Echo, yeah, while I decompress over here, maybe you can give some input on how to support this podcast or support yourself if you want to. Sure. Yeah, if you want to. So, of course, the first way is supporting your joints.

I always talk about supplements. Jocko has supplements. Best kind. Jocko Joint Warfare and Super Cruil oil. Omega-3s, very good for you. If you want some of that, get it at origin, mane.com. Right there in the front or you just click on labs. It's right there.

Also, there's some good geese. But before that, you have a new product. We do. A new product. Out. Yeah. A new class of product. Class of product.

Pre-workout. You're on it right now. I'm on it right now. It's buzzing on it right now. Yeah. So, discipline. It's a pre-workout. Wait.

Are you just saying that's a cool word or that's the name. Both. Both. So it's called discipline, right? So it's pre-technically they call it a pre-workup. but we're calling it a pre-mission supplement. Well, pre-workout would help you with your physical activity. Sure.

But the discipline has cognitive enhancers in it as well. Right. Because when you're on a mission, you just don't need physical strength. You need mental strength. Yeah. So this gives you both. Yeah. So if your mission is the workout, boom, there you go.

It's a pre-workout. If your mission is an exam, it's a pre-exam supplement. If your mission is a mission, well, you're good to go. Pre-mission, there you go. Boom. Yeah, get that one. I too can vouch for this because I'm on it too. I guess it should perform well to, you know, display its effects.

Also, geese and rash guards at origin, Maine, all made in America. The more I think about that, the more of a big deal that is. It's a real big deal. Yeah, because it's from like I always say, the cotton. to the the ghee or the you know the other stuff that there's a lot of cool stuff on their geese rash cards even apparel all made in america origin main dot com this is about to get them if you want them i want them i like them it's funny like every once in a while i'll find myself just wearing all origin stuff not on purpose too it's the kind of okay my favorite shorts even though

they don't have them i know wearing that it wear them every other day approximately and um you You know, you just find yourself in the stuff because it's so good. That's my opinion. Also, for fitness gear, cool fitness gear. You want to, even if you're just doing kettlebells, I say get the artistic kettlebells from Onit. Onit.com slash jocco. That's where you get them. There's all other creative workout stuff on their maces and cool jump ropes and battle ropes and whatnot.

Pretty much anything, if you're getting bored with the workout and you want to enhance it. in some creative way. Go there on it.com slash jocco. Don't get addicted to the website because a lot of good information. So it's kind of a catch 22 good. You can get info on there. A lot of good info.

Interesting info. But you might spend a lot of time there. So be careful. Also, when you buy this book, we were soldiers once and young. By General Halmore and Joe Galloway. You know what I was thinking? I have no idea what you're thinking.

something tells me I'm about to hear though if you watch the movie a few good men I think it's Demi Moore yes She plays a like She plays a Jagal Lieutenant Yes I've seen the movie Her name the character name

Is Joanne Galloway Buckhuller Jill So her name is Joe Galloway I notice that Anyway when you buy this book We were sold just No there's no layers that they're Those are interpreted layers.

No, those are not layers. Those are coincidences. There's a big difference. It's a fine line. Charlie Beckwith, that formed up Delta Force. Sure. Being in this book, that's layers. That's layers.

Yeah. Yeah. I would confirm those layers for sure. That's layers for sure. I don't know. I still feel like Joe Gallois's layers somewhere. Negative. I don't know.

What if they... Negative. No of this. Negative. Negative. And they named the girl. They could have. Negative.

Maybe, maybe not. And if they did, they failed. They failed. Yeah, because Joe Gallagherly got after it. Yeah.

So. Well, Joanne Galloway kind of got it. Well, no, not really. Wait, she convinced. No.

All right. Either way. I still think it's hilarious. Either way. When you buy this, when you buy this book, we have it listed on a website along with all the books

that Jocco reviews. It's on the website Joccopodcast.com. In the section, open the top menu, click books from podcast, boom, it's all there by episode. Click through there. Good way to support. Get from Amazon, you know, all that stuff. And then, you know, continue, do more shopping

if you want, if you want. Just carry on. There you go. Good way to support. Also, subscribe to the podcast. iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, confirmed. Someone sent me the actual link I saw it visually visual confirmation Spotify boom and other podcasting providing platforms

just subscribe I know you have already but let's say in the unlikely unlikely chance that you didn't subscribe good subscribe good way to support if you want also subscribe to YouTube if you like the visual the visual the video version of this podcast you want to see what jocca looks like

don't see what I look like if you care about that sort of thing. Boom. Most people don't care what we look like. No, I don't, I don't think so. It makes sense that they don't care. It doesn't matter. They just care about the content of your character. Subscribe to YouTube.

That's the point. If you do care about what we look like also, there's excerpts on there. Good way to get little bits of lessons, messages from Jocco. Shareable, so you don't have to share the whole two and a half-ish our podcast.

You can just share the excerpts, pass them on, you know, let someone else learn these lessons with you. Also, Jock was a store. It's called Jocco Store. Named after him.

Jocco store.com. That is where you can get the cool shirts. I think they're cool. And I think it goes beyond just my opinion because people have emailed me and been like, hey, these are cool.

because I made sure they're not the low quality. You know, people, when they start a shirt, brand, or if they're printing shirt, they're like, hey, let me get the cheap ones. So I don't have to spend a lot of money, play it safe, all this stuff. I didn't do that. I got the good ones. Stuff that I would actually wear, regardless of what's printed.

Like, wearable, they're wearable. That's how I put it. Anyway, that's how I know they're good. I'm wearing one right now. Yeah, correct. Me too. Boom. See, I wouldn't wear it if I didn't want to wear it.

So anyway, they're very good. That's where you can get the shirts. There's women's stuff on there. Also, there's rash guards on there for activities such as surfing, Jiu-Jitsu. Warrior Kid Rashgard out there, yeah. Warrior Kid Rashgard should be on there. Should be on there. Good.

I vowed to get them in in time to ship for Christmas. So that would be like today. So go on there and, you know, that's the, my vow. Is that the right word? vow? I vow to do this. That means you better succeed. Yeah, you know, that's my vow.

Okay. So anyway, yeah, yeah, some rash guards on there for jih Tzu surfing, kind of cool activity, cycling, whatever. Anything you want range of motion to be maintained 100% and performance be increased by 19%. I think it's up to 21%. Reports back from the field. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that kind of average, because some people a little bit more, you know, so those people, they push the average up. I think that's how it works. cool stuff on there check it out nothing get something but if you want something then you get something and it supports podcasts good way to support

hoodies on there as well thicker ones they might be running well I might have to get some more it is winter I get it but they're the they're the the thicker ones like how you said also psychological warfare what that is if you don't know I know we all know what it is already it's been number one

and I too well might not be number one one anymore. That's a long story. Anyway, if you don't know what it is, the unlikely event that you don't know what it is, this is what it is. It's an album with tracks, Jocko tracks. Each track is designed to help you through moments of weakness when you're on your path. When you're on your war path. I haven't used that way. Maybe I have, I don't know. Nonetheless, when you're on the path of discipline, right, you're on the program, you're on your campaign against weakness. You're You hit little, it's not just one smooth road. And it's not one straight road either.

And it's riddled. Riddled. Every day. Probably every minute, literally riddled with distractions. Every once in a while, you'll hit moments of weakness, whether it's a speed bump, distraction, lack of energy, boredom, repetitiveness, tediousness. tediousness that's a word right that's what psychological warfare is for it's a little

spot for those moments you don't want to wake up early every single day ah we got the solution for that listen to the little track jocco pragmatically telling you I can't get over that little moment of weakness same thing with wanting to skip the workout for the day that was mine that was mine not anymore check and yeah there's a bunch of them for all kinds of Still skipping on the diet. It's a good one. That's what psychological warfare is very effective, 100% effectiveness. That's a bold statement.

You can get jocco white tea on Amazon, which will make you deadlift 8,000 pounds, factually. Confirmed. You can get some books on there. Way the Warrior Kid. Good Christmas gift. And it's also a good whatever gift. So get a kid on the path. Get them on the path.

Got so much great feedback on that. Extreme ownership. This is for leading. at every level in combat, in business, and in life, extreme ownership, written by me and my brother Laif Babin. Also from an individual perspective, if you want to get yourself on the path,

there's no better gift than discipline. The discipline equals freedom field manual. Everyone that asked me for workouts, that's where they are. Everyone asks me what I eat, that's where it is. Everyone asks me how much I sleep, that's where it is. So get that. If you want the audio version,

the audio version is not on audible. The audio version, of Discipline equals freedom field manual is on iTunes Amazon music Google Play and all those other mp3 Distributing platforms There's another muster The muster Which is echelon front leadership conference. There's two of them going to be only two of them in 2018 We don't have enough a room in the schedule to fit three

One Washington DC or sorry this is actually not one. It's number five So number five, Washington, D.C., May 17th and 18th, and then number six, San Francisco, October 17th and 18th. Come and get it. You can register for those at Extreme Ownership.com. Are they going to be bigger? You know, like you'll have two now next year. Are they going to have more people? We have a little bit bigger capacity.

Yeah. Yeah. But we just, we don't have time on the schedule anymore. Yeah, I dig it. And we are going to do the roll call for law enforcement, military. Firefighters. We're going to do that as well, but we haven't locked a date on that one yet.

Also, for leadership, in addition to this podcast, in addition to the books, in addition to the muster, we have a leadership in management consulting company and you can hire us to me, Laif Babin, J.Bahnel, Dave Burke. Email info at echelonelonfront.com.

If you want us to come and speak at an event, don't call a speakers bureau. Don't call a speaker's agency. Just go to ashlonfront.com. Yeah, they've been calling me sometimes. Yeah, don't do that. That's what we do. And if you have comments or questions or answers for us,

we can be found on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on the Facebook people. Echo is at Echo, Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks to those people, those soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines that sign up, that sign up, and volunteer to make the ultimate sacrifice. Thank you all for protecting us and our freedoms. And to police and law enforcement,

thanks for protecting us from crime and criminals and terrorists right here at home to paramedics. Thanks for coming to us in our time of need when we call. And to the firefighters right now, out there on the line, especially in our state right here of California, Cal Fire. Thanks for your service and your sacrifice and my condolences to those who have fallen in recent days

in weeks and our thoughts are with the families of the fallen. And for everyone else that's listening, when you see what men can do when pushed beyond the limit of human capacity, when you see that, when you hear about it, when you read about it, well, then remember to push yourself. Push yourself every day, every moment. Get out there and get after it. And so until next time, this is Echo and Jocko.