Jocko Podcast - 153: When You're Called Upon, You Get The Job Done. The Seawolves in Vietnam, With Dennis Rowley.

Episode Date: November 28, 2018

0:00:00 - Opening 0:04:00 - Dennis Rowley and The Seawolves. 1:48:00 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 1:50:00 - Support. How to stay on THE PATH. 2:14:00 - Closing gratitude.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko Podcasts number 153 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Congressional resolution honoring the veterans of helicopter attack Light Squadron 3 and their families. Whereas helicopter attack Light Squadron 3 here and after in this resolution referred to as Hal 3 began its history as detachments of Navy helicopter combat support squadron 1, H.C.1, which began helicopter gunship operations in support of Navy-Bronwater special operations and army units in the Maycon Delta of South Vietnam on September 19, 1966. Whereas the detachments of H.C.1 adopted the name Sea Wolves. Whereas Hal 3 was officially established on April 1st,

1967 in Vong Tao, South Vietnam, and was the only active duty Navy helicopter gunship squadron in the history of naval aviation. Whereas during the squadron's existence, nearly 3,000 veterans of Hal 3 displayed extraordinary courage in support of United States, military, and political objectives in Vietnam. Whereas 44 veterans of Hal 3 gave their lives in support of military operations in the May Kong Delta Vietnam. Whereas the extraordinary performance of the veterans of Hal 3 earned numerous unit citations, including six presidential unit citations, seven Navy unit commendations, one meritorious unit commendation, a Republic of Vietnam meritorious unit commendation, and the Vietnam service medal whereas the valor of the veterans of Hal 3 earned five

Navy crosses 31 Silver Stars two Legion of Merit medals five Navy and Marine Corps medals 219 Distinguished Flying Crosses 156 Purple Hearts 101 Bronze Stars a 142 Republic of Vietnam gallantry crosses over 16,000 air medals 4,000 39 Navy Commendation medals and 228 Navy achievement medals making it possibly the most decorated Navy Squadron during the Vietnam War Whereas the maintenance and administrative personnel of how three contributed greatly to the success of the nine Hal three detachments operating throughout the Macong Delta providing the detachments with superb maintenance support and logistics Whereas how three flew over a hundred and thirty thousand hours of combat and logistical support whereas Hal 3 inflicted several thousand casualties on enemy forces

whereas how 3 performed 1,530 medical evacuations whereas how 3 delivered over 37,000 passengers and over 1 million pounds of cargo and whereas how 3 was disestablished in March 172 at Bing 3 South Vietnam as part of the Vietnamization program leaving behind it a combat and humanitarian record recognized as bringing great credit upon the United States Navy and its role in the Vietnam War now though therefore be it resolved that the House of Representative one honors the service courage and sacrifice of the veterans of Hal three two honors the family of Hal 3 veterans for their support

3 expresses its condolences to the families and comrades of those killed in action and 4 recognizes Hal 3 as a unique squadron in the history of naval aviation and that resolution of recognition

was made in 2010 actually 38 years after the Sea Wolves were disestablished in Vietnam and that is a long time to wait for recognition and this is because well for one thing they weren't looking for recognition but also to much of the world the sea were sea wolves were relatively unknown for me having grown up in the seal teams I actually knew about the sea wolves I knew about the sea wolves I knew about the reputation from the Vietnam era seals that held them in the absolute highest regard

possible then they were considered extremely courageous courageous sometimes beyond courageous they were incredible pilots and highly aggressive gunners and the teams that maintain and kept the aircraft flying in really horrible conditions they were known for getting the job done and there's one thing that always stuck in my mind when I heard stories about the sea wolves in Vietnam and that was this simply if you called them they would come and it didn't matter if it was day or night sunny skies or typhoon rains a calm extraction or a hot landing zone filled with enemy fire to the sea wolves none of that mattered what mattered is that the

troops on the ground needed help and if you called the sea wolves they would come and it is an honor today to have one of these men here with us to tell us about this relatively unknown but at the same time legendary squadron of naval aviation helicopter attack squadron light how three the sea wolves and we have Dennis Rowley naval officer Naval Aviator, and, of course, Sea Wolf. Sir, absolutely honored to have you on the show. Thank you for coming. Jack, I thank you and you, Echo, for the opportunity to be here.

It's something that I didn't want to do. You know, you hear the old saw about you don't talk about the war. And I think that's true of most all of the guys that I knew and flew and fought with. We just don't talk about it except over a beer in a bar somewhere with guys we've trusted our lives too. However, my wife, Stinky, and my son and daughter, when they heard about this opportunity, told me you've got to do this. You got to help keep the reputation of the sea wolves alive. And I don't think that reputation needs a lot of build up on my part. But I'm here to honor the 44 of our brothers who weren't able to come on back with us.

And I'm here to help share a little bit of history about the squadron. And I'm here to thank every one of you swinging dick gunners who helped me get my little pink body back without any additional holes in it. Those guys are phenomenal. I mean, they're really something. But we'll get into that. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm looking forward to the conversation. I'm still scratching my head as to why I'm here

because you guys have giants on this show. You just had a fella who was a highly decorated Marine Infraity Officer. He went on to get a law degree. He went on to work in the VA. He became the Secretary of the Navy. He became a congressman. from the great state of Virginia. And, oh, by the way,

it was a little-known candidate for president of the U.S. And party politics aside, this country would have been better off if Jim Webb had been our president. Totally agree. Yeah. And I can say that not from,

you know, just a casual reading of his bio. I know Jim because it was a class made of mine at the Naval Academy. I know Jim because it was a company made of mine at the Naval Academy. me. And I know Jim to be the kind of a man that I would hope my son would become. Just a great guy. I can also say that I know Jim, because for a brief time, plebe summer, we room together. So you're looking at one of the only guys that you'll ever meet who is proud to share the fact that he slept with the Secretary of the Navy. So yeah, we're here to spread the word and have a little fun.

The one thing that was really important about recent past is a C. Wolf reunion. We have reunions every couple of years and now many reunions more frequently. But this one was pretty special. It was about two months ago. We were gathered on the flight deck of the Midway for the premier of a, a documentary called Scramble the Sea Wolves. They had a big inflatable screen on the flight deck, and we were all up there laughing and scratching.

One thing that I noticed about the entire experience is, man, oh, those guys look old now. I mean, yeah. But the movie, the documentary was very well shot. It's actually being released on K PBS and PBS, and I assume that shortly I after that'll be available on YouTube. But it gave us a sense of pride. And I think I can speak for everyone that it gave us a little greater sense of belonging

based upon the fact that our story could now be told. Yeah, no, that's a, I've watched it. Anybody can watch it. If you Google Scramble the Sea Wolf's KPBS, it'll pop up and you can watch it just, you know, there's no email to sign up for, it's free, that's how you can you can watch it let's let's talk about the sea walls let's talk a little bit about

your past because I think you're I mean starting with your your dad being a pilot and yeah let's start with that and what that was like growing up well my dad would really be pissed off at you for calling him a pilot because dad was an aviation ordinance chief and he knew that the guys in the back were doing the job and the guys up front were just steering the bus No, my dad, William John Raleigh, was a hell of a guy. He was an interesting man, and that's the nicest thing you can say about somebody, I think.

Dad was kind of a guy who could walk into a room and full of strangers and an hour later walk out, and everybody thought to who was their new best friend. Good guy, great guy. But he comes from a long line of warriors. My grandfather, who married my grandmother from Hilo, yeah. He fought in World War I. I have a wonderful picture at home of my mom and her three brothers taken during World War II. And Uncle Walt is there in his Marine Corps uniform.

Uncle Bob is there in his Navy Blues. And my uncle Jim is there in his Army Air Force uniform. Yeah. And then when World War II broke out, my dad and his brother, my Uncle Herb both joined the Navy. Dad went on into aviation ordinance and came out the other end of the pipe after peace as one of the last of the Tojo chiefs, a guy who made chief in a little over three years. Yeah, he's an interesting fellow. And leadership lesson number one for me was the way he helped me grow as I was coming up. You would think that a chief petty officer in the Navy can be very gruff and directive.

And they can, and they are when it's required. But dad never told me, go do this. He'd say, have you ever considered, have you ever thought about it? Have you ever? And he brought it into practice one day when I was just getting ready for college and trying to decide where I was going to go. He had just come back from a Med Cruz. And he had one of his J.O.'s, a pilot, a Naval Academy grant,

invite me over to his house for dinner. I thought that was a little strange, but I was pretty excited about it. The guy came and picked me up in a brand new yellow corvette and took me over to his home and introduced me to his drop-dead gorgeous Swedish wife. Now, Dad didn't have to say, you should go to the Naval Academy for the experience in learning leadership. He brought it down to a level that I could understand. Yeah. You thought you'd get issued a Swedish wife? Well, actually, what I wanted Jocko was somebody 58, 59, long straight, blonde hair, goodhead, bitch, and bod.

Woody, completely intelligent and imbued with the mating instincts of a wild minking heat. But what the good Lord Zaw fit to fire me up with was stinky, and she's a stumpy little brown-haired girl that's just ornery as a sack of wildcats. So, yeah, ain't it funny how it all works out? So you go meet this pilot and did that flip the switch in your head? Well, I always knew I wanted to be a naval aviator. It's just something that I wanted. I had initially had dreams of going in and flying spads. That A1 was just a hell of a weapons carrier and a close air support mission that was non-parallel in my way of thinking.

They got a lot of guys out of the shit. But that didn't work out because the aircraft was being retired as I was going through flight school. The thought of going to the Naval Academy was always intriguing to me. I didn't know that I'd be able to make that. But I was one of the, you know, I'm sort of large. And I was one of the only Navy dependents who were into athletics at Cubasaki High School on Okinawa. where I went through all four years of high school. And the senior naval officer on the island had roomed with Wayne Hard and the football coach at Navy.

They did a quick scout and told me to take a competitive exam, and I'd be considered for the academy. I had a year to waste while I was waiting to get into the academy, so I went to Berkeley. This is in the 1963-64 school year, which was very colorful. Mario El Salvador was up there doing his dirty word movement on the steps of the administration. But it was ugly.

My parents lived across the hill in Walnut Creek, California, and every time the news was over, I'd get a frantic call from my mother. Are you okay? Are you okay? Yeah, Mom, I'm okay. Yeah. But at any rate, following that year at Berkeley, I received a presidential appointment. And even though he was he had been assassinated,

John Kennedy's signatures was on that. Yeah. And I went back to the Navy, fell in love with a crew, and I can honestly say that if it hadn't been for rowing at Navy, I probably wouldn't have made it through. I probably would have quit, which is something that you would have been pissed off about. I would have been. Yeah.

And why is that? because it gave you something to focus on, it gave you an outlet? Exactly. Crew is hands down the greatest team sport that you can imagine. If even one person is not pulling their weight, is not exactly in sync, the rhythm of the boat suffers, it'll be dragged down, and everyone will know exactly the reason for that. You can tell by the size of the puddle the way the boat is set, it's phenomenal. So it's a great lesson in group leadership in that everyone has to be a leader in that shell to put the maximum that they can into it to make the boat move.

If you get a chance read a book called The Boys in the Boat. I've heard of that book. Yeah, it's got great insight into what Royne's all about. And you guys should be up on other sports. And so you row at the Naval Academy. How was your, how is your, since you kind of grew up in the Navy, your dad was a chief, you must have been at least somewhat prepared for the, you know, the shock and awe of drill instructors and upper classmen and all that stuff. It wasn't the, the drill instructors or the, the upperclassman.

It was the chicken ship. I had a guy in my, our company, the chicken ship. just hated me. And he'd stand me up in the passageway and he had a plastic baseball bat and beat me in the chest with it. Yeah, it's a non-event, you know, funk, funk, funk. But if I saw that guy again, I would rip his head off because it was just so juvenile. I was a couple years older than my classmates for a number of reasons. I flunked kindergarten. But at any rate, it was, you just don't do things like that. There's no, there's no leadership lessons There's no benefit to be had from some of the stuff that was going on in there.

But when I got out there on the water with my teammates, you know, it all just went away. Yeah, there's something to be learned from having to put up with such crap. And I think there's two ways people go with it. Sometimes they go with like, oh, I'm going to be able to do that one day and give people a bunch of shit about whatever. And some people go, okay, I'm never going to act like that. You know? Yeah. And then how and and and um so you were Jim Webb's roommate plebe summer?

Just for a few days, but we were in the same company for all four years. Yeah. And then he's a heck of a guy. Yeah. No, it was awesome. It was a real honor to have him on here. And, you know, he, he told a similar story. And he wrote about it in his, in some of his books, which was, you know, a guy just smacking him in the ass with, uh, some kind of bat. It was our song book. And, and they're telling him he, he knows. needs to say you know just admit that it hurts and he wouldn't admit it yeah but same thing you know he's kind of like if he he he what do you say he said you know I don't hold anything against those guys that did that to me but I remember their names so I think they made the list for Jim Webb yeah and then how did you end up pick it so you you already automatically knew you

wanted to be a pilot yeah absolutely and was that hard to get selected for that no it was service selection is done based on class rank and I graduated in the top 10% of the bottom third of my class and that was sufficient to get me into aviation. Since I couldn't fly the spad, I really wanted to go jets. Sorry guys, I have to admit that. But due to my size and my anthropometric measurements, if I had to punch out, I would have left my knees on the glare shield of the trainers. How tall are you?

Six-four. Yeah. Big. This was, you know, clearly, and Jim Webb talked about this when he was on the podcast. You know, he's, he was the guy in charge of hanging up the names of the guys that had been killed. And, and yet when I had Charlie Plum on who graduated, I think, in 64, or he showed up in 64. No, graduated 64. Vietnam wasn't even on the, on the radar for them.

And for you guys, it, you know, 1967, 1968. it had to you know you had to have known okay I'm going to fight in Vietnam when you walk into mother B Bankroft Hall you go into the rotunda which is a very large open area and when we started losing our former classmates the graduates I'm sure Jim explained but you put a poster board up there with the picture out of the lucky bag and a brief bio and not a description but where they died. And initially it was just onesies, twosies, but pretty soon the march went all the way around the rotunda and they had to move it up into Memorial Hall.

It really brought home the fact that this is serious. You're making up your minds whether or not you want to dedicate your lives to the defense of this country and it might come at a considerable cost. And for 44 of our brothers, it certainly did. 44 C. Wool's didn't make it back. And I'm sort of an emotional guy that one of the few times that I've really cried openly and unashamedly was at the wall. Seeing a couple of my gunners up there just really brought it home to me. Amazing people gunners are

So that's That's what you know you're getting into Upon commissioning And so you get commissioned and you graduate in 68 Your class of 68 Right And then you go to Pensacola, Florida Is that where you go to flight school?

That's right And That's what you talk us a little bit through The flight school path You show up, you learn to fly what, a T-38? Is that what you learn on? No, you start out on a T-34.

Okay. And there's been a change in the way they instruct naval aviators now. When we were going through, you had to do the fixed-wing flight syllabus first before you could get into helicopters, and then you'd go through the helicopter syllabus. And then after that, those of us that got orders to Vietnam would go up to a Fort Rucker and the Army would instruct us in tactics in armaments, systems. They did a good job in prepping us and then sent us overseas and the rest of it would be done in country. So the training that we received along the way was excellent, but a lot of it was just like

back at the academy. They told us that, hey, guys, the education you receive here at the United States Naval Academy, cost the taxpayer approximately $250,000, which was a lot of money back then. And our reply was, yeah, but you're sticking up our butts a nickel at a time. So, you know, you know. Had you, so now you're in the pipeline for helicopters. Had you heard of Sea Wolfs at this time? Were you hearing about it?

Is it something that you said, oh, I want to go do that? We were just starting to hear about it. And, you know, it wasn't fully developed in my mom. That's where I wanted to go, but it quickly became, there is a purpose for every element in the military, from the guys who swabs the decks all the way on up. But I didn't want to be a bus driver. I didn't want to be a guy who board holes in the sky. So this being a seawolf immediately appealed to me as an opportunity to be able to, I don't know, to pay back. It's a funny thing.

And I'll jump ahead a little here. But I have a cousin who is very close to me. She's like a sister to me. And I'd never really thought about questions like you just asked. but immediately after I got back from Vietnam, she was driving me on out to family home in Walnut Creek, California. And without taking her eyes off the road, she said, how can you do it?

And I thought about that for just a minute and said, well, it was pretty easy. I went over there to bring as many of our guys home safely as I could. And in some ways I failed, in some ways I succeeded. But that's it. I was enough of a student to understand the domino effect, certainly. But that wasn't in my thinking. You know, you're thinking sort of 10 yards, 10 yards.

But in the air, it's a little more expansive. It's the guys that you're flying with, the guys in your fire team, the guys on your debt, the guys who are the maintainers back in Ben Tui. They're the guys you think about. And that's why you do it. Okay, so did you get to select? You get done with the training. Did you get to select, hey, I want to go to the squadron in Vietnam?

Pretty much, yes. Was there a long list for that group? There were. I'm sure there were more volunteers than got accepted. I don't know the mechanics of that. I asked for it, and I got it. And how did that look like showing up in Vietnam? I was the only officer assigned to the sea wolves who took that reverse freedom flight on into Saigon.

And I got there and they shuffled me off to the Annapolis Hotel, which I thought was a little unusual. But, you know, I had a couple of days to kill because there wasn't any transport down to Bintui. And I knew a dear friend of mine who was in debt too at Naba, and he'd got over there before I did. So I figured Nabae, that's not too far away. I'm going to go visit him. And the next morning, I check out of 45, put it in my gym bag. I'm in civvies. They didn't like us roaming around town in onesies in uniform.

So I jumped on a Navy bus out to Nabe. And I was having a great time talking to the guys at the debt there and learning a little about what's going on. And it comes time to leave. And it's probably about 1630. And I say, well, I better get back. And they say, well, you just missed the last bus. But don't worry about it.

You can take a petty cab. So here I am. Brand new in country. I've got the zipper on my gym bag open with my hand very close to it. And this Vietnamese fellow is pedaling away, taking me back to the the hotel. It took us about an hour to get back there. And I tipped him generously because I'm not a light fellow. I was a lot lighter then. But, you know, here I am. My first day in country and I'm going to get greased. So, yeah. Tell us, if you wouldn't mind,

about the formation of the Sea Wolfs, because it's a very cool story about the May Kong Delta, about the way things, the way the enemy moved through the May Kong Delta, and things, and through the Rung Sat Special Zone and there was no roads and the only way to get around with water. If you wanna maybe expand on that just so people can kind of get a feel for what started this whole thing off. Sure, sure.

The Mekang Delta is fed by waters from the Himalayas. It comes on down and spreads out into a broad quasi-oceanic area. Basically it's mud and crap and brown water. And hence the brown water. Water Navy, but at any rate, there are very few roads that do anything but connect major cities in the Mekong back then. And consequently, just about all the traffic's moved by Sampan or junk, and that's the way people got around.

the infiltration that the NVA and the VC practice came largely either on foot by bicycle or by boat. In order to counteract that, Task Force 116 was put into place. Game warden was the operational mission, and we were there to interdict that traffic and personnel, ammunition, and food logistics that was moving down into the Delta. The Army took that mission on first, actually flying off a couple of LCDs that were rigged with a makeship flight deck. But that didn't work out too well. And this is not saying anything against the Army.

But in their syllabus, they weren't trained on instruments. In Navy, we were rigorously first in fixed wing and then in helicopters. So we were used to flying in the shit, and the Navy and the Army was not. And that's because the Navy has to fly at sea and land on ships. That's right, different missions. That's it. Different missions at the time. The Army outgrew that, but it was painful.

They had a different mission than we did. So they had a unit that was assigned to our op-con, and they would fly cover for the small boats. Now, those were primarily the PBRs and the Swift boats. We didn't see many Swift boats up at Ben Luck. We were working with the PBR sailors. PBR Patrol Boat River is a 32-foot fiberglass luxury. boat that was stripped clean and it was highly maneuverable, but it was, I say, stripped clean of everything that was non-essential.

They were very lightweight, had little armor at all, but they were very heavily armed. And these boats, you talk about guys with brass balls, they'd poke up into these impossibly narrow canals and up little riverlets just looking for trouble and it frequently came their way. So the Army was attempting to work with them. There were all sorts of minor operational problems to overcome. Who's calling out the missions? What the support area is. It just wasn't working well. So the Navy decided that we needed a Navy squadron. And they turned, to H.C.1, the Fleet Angels, to put a few debts in place to help provide cover for the Brownwater Navy. And by Brownwater Navy, I mean the small boat guys, the seals, any Navy

Navy vessel that was down in the Mekong. And it wasn't working well with the Army. H.C.1 picked it up. It started working very well because they understood the Navy's mission much better than the Army, and they were equipped with the capabilities to fly both at night and in bad weather. And I don't know if you've been in monsoon before, but it's shitty flowing. I'll take your word for it. Really bad. So, as you've already mentioned on April Fool's Day, in 67, they decided that the in-country squadron was required, and that responsibility was shifted

from HC1 to Hal 3. We grew to having nine detachments that were scattered throughout the Delta to give us a quick reaction time to virtually any area in the Mekong. And each detachment had two aircraft assigned. It had two full crews for each aircraft, and that was about it. But let me give you a little info on the noble UH1 Bravo. I love that aircraft. It was a piece of crap. It really was. But it got us out of a lot of trouble every time we flew it. Just for people that are Listen, that's the classic Vietnam Huey aircraft. That's what you see. That's what you see in movies.

That's it. Yeah. There really was sort of a McAil's Navy. Cache that was attached to the Sea Wolves. The Army was just getting rid of their Bravo models to go to the Charlie's, which had several hundred greater horsepower, more maneuverable, blah, blah, blah, blah. and they had some old Bravo's sitting around, and rather than shipping them back to the bone yard

or destroying them in place, they gave them to the Navy. So frequently, we had a lot of rebuilding to do before we turned these guys loose, but God bless the Army. They gave us our aircraft. Support for the Bravo and the Navy chain was not the best. So it's easy to say Begbar or Steve, steal. Borrower steel is what we did quite well.

Quite well. Our guys were incredible. We at chief had grab a couple of guys and go out and come back with exactly what we needed. And you don't ask a question about that. You just put it into play. So the nine debts, two helicopters in each, each Huey was basically configured with two seven-shot rocket pods. 2.75 folding thin aerial rockets. We had a pair of 60s that were mounted with a flex gun. They co-pilot control those. But the thing that really made us unique and powerful was our door gunners.

When I first got there, and just for a very short period of time, our door gunners were still firing 60s from the shoulder. And that was just an incredibly powerful tool in keeping the bad guys' heads down during our break and prepping the area for the next aircraft to roll in. So we typically have a door corner on one side and on the other side, if we were lucky, a 50. Eventually this grew. We got some mini guns. Most all of our dead birds eventually had mini guns,

and the guys in the back would fly them, and it did wonders for keeping heads down, as did the 50 cows that we had. When we went from shoulder-haired, held 60s to, there's a lesson there. Our guys would, it wasn't unusual to see, them standing out on the skids firing cover for us. That was a great good thing, but it also resulted in brassing, the sink elevator and the

or it just wasn't really, really acceptable. If you brass a tail rotor, you'll know about it. It's a rough ride going back in. But they decided that, no, we can't have that. And sort of tied the gunner's hands by putting what they called a pusses. pole in the in the door and mounted the 60 to it. Well, the guys got more than a little inventive and decided that if one 60s good, two would be better and mounted two.

One, yeah, here we go again. Hayden, thanks. Yeah, but mounted two 60s there and found out that they were brassing the tailroader still. So what they did was they rotated each 90 degrees in opposing directions, and all of a sudden, brassing was no longer much of a problem. Did essentially the same with our 50s. They mounted that so that it would fire 90 degrees longitudinally. And that was a very powerful weapon for not only keeping guys down, but also

gave us a great degree of flexibility in the in the brake. And perhaps I should explain that by the break, we typically would fly in a wagon wheel type approach, two helicopters, roughly flying 180 out from one another. So one is rolling in on the target as the other is coming around behind it. So when you then break off the target, the next helicopter is in there laying down its fire. And that 50 would really help us out in both identifying problem areas and taking care of the problem. Yeah, that's a great background. And even when you watch Scramble the Sea Wolves, all the footage is just on

It's unbelievable footage of the way you guys were flying and what the gunners were doing. Gunners hanging out and shooting underneath the bird back in the other direction. Hanging out by a gunner's belt. They might have invented the term gunner's belt. I was... Go ahead. There's a rite of passage that most of the FNG's got. And when I was in that FNG seat, I learned it one dark.

and stormy night. We're flying along in the, and the hack, the aircraft commandered, diverted my attention off to the left. And when I turned back, right here in the window of the Huey was one of my gunners who had mooning me. So, hey, this is going to be fun. That and the other was if you were new to the debt as a pilot, you were going to get a collar full of brass. And it was really easy for them to do when they had the free guns. They got a little more in the fend of later on. That's freaking dangerous. Smart.

So speaking of fun, one of the things I pulled off of the website, C-Wolf.org, is you guys had this thing that you called the Wolfgram, which was sort of, sort of like a sit rep for all the different elements that were out there. And I think it paints a pretty good picture of the overall attitude. And I pulled out one of the clips, and I'm just going to read it. So this is your debt, debt for from beautiful downtown Ben Luck. The fog cutters of debt four would like to wish everyone a merry monsoon season. Only 10 shopping days left. We'd better start with Lieutenant JG who white before we forget him everyone else has he he uh he though he was leaving in May but bupers forgot to assign him a new duty station admin forgot to request a flight

booking for him and operations forgot to inform him that this that his FTL papers had been signed but we're sure we'll finally that we're but we're sure things will finally turn around for what's his name lieutenant deacon John Johnson left on R&R to Hawaii and Lieutenant J.G. Rookie Rich can't read the name. Farmer. Farmer? Yeah, Farmer was called in to straighten out bin Tui, bin Tui, cutting us to three FTLs and ANX. Commander Hammond will still have to fly every day even after the deacon gets back. Boku Map, as Lieutenant Johnson is referred to by Mamasson, won't be much good for anything after coming back from Hawaii. Rookie rich's talent for hiding should be of great value in bin tui.

Lieutenant J.G. Czech Carlos Steele has opened a chain of combination taco stand slash minigun exchange outlets with branches in Koochee, Tan-Anan, and Ben Luck with others soon to be opening in Long Ving Long and Vietian. Lieutenant J.G. Weird Harold Black is still looking for his... mysteriously vanishing M60 bolts. Latest debt for basketball casualty was Lieutenant J.G. Buckets Coffee,

named after his golden touch on the court, who got four stitches in his head after going for a rebound. Who will it be in April? Three editions arrived this past month. Lieutenant Tom Robola and Lieutenant J.G. Denny Rowley, which is you, sir. Our new in country and Lieutenant J.G. Bill belts was shafted shifted from debt eight. Oh, well, with TV booze and all the attractions of the big city, what more could you want? As one of our departed pilots used to say, going home is for sissies. So, and you guys, these are all alive. They're fantastic to read. I read that to my buddy Dave Burke, or I sent him a copy of it. And he said, that's the best sit rep I've ever read in my life. So you guys had, you know, it's good because, you know, I always talk and every vet that comes on here, we kind of talk about how we have fun. And that shows that, and I guess getting mooned through your side window also shows that you guys were having fun. I don't know if the hot brass is fun.

But you guys were having a great time and you guys were making it fun. And at the same time, man, it was very intense and very dangerous. One of the things that, you know, you kind of threw it out there. You said, hey, we put these debts all over the place so we could have a quick response time. And what that meant was you guys were spread out in these debts so that you could get two guys on the ground within a matter of minutes. Tell me about that opt tempo and what it was like when they scrambled the seawolfs. Well, we had two full crews for each one of our two birds. And what that meant was you were 12 hours on, 12 hours off, 365, 24, whatever.

In order to support the Brownwater Navy, when they got in the shit, they needed us right away. And we could literally get off the deck in about three minutes. and that put us out there quickly enough that we could probably get them out of trouble. The worst thing that could happen to them in my estimation, other than losing someone, is losing their engine. Because then they were just out there with, they were a grape. No place to go. So all they could do is just absorb the incoming.

And with that in mind, what we would do, is go on out and try and first get their heads down, and then two, start working the target. We had a very close relationship with the PBR sailors, very close. Those guys were sticking their necks out every day, and the times they got in trouble, we were happy to go and try and extricate them no matter what. But one of the great questions,

boats that I saw in the in the history that I was reviewing is the first contact that HC1 made. The two boats had gone out on patrol and had stumbled across a battalion-sized element with about 80 sampans and junks that were trying to cross a river. And the boats came under, obviously, intense fire. When the sea wheels got there a couple of minutes after this, the incoming fire team lead contacts the chief of the boat and says, where do you want us to put in our strike? And he said something like, hell, I want you boys to go in there and hold field day on those guys. And that's sort of the attitude that, you know, it is.

It's an overused term, but it's a brotherhood. It truly is. We'd do anything for those guys. They were putting it all out. Did you guys pre-brief with them for missions, or how did you figure that out? How did you figure it out? So did you know where they were going? Did you know what their target was?

Did they pre-brief you? Unfortunately, we had intelligence that was. To put a kindly, generally a piece of crap, it wasn't very good for a number of reasons, for a number of reasons. But what we'd do is we'd talk to the guys on the boats. We'd know what the tactical situation was in the OA, and we would know where they were going and what they were doing. That is, are you going out for a bunker? Are you doing an insert with seals? We'd get that information from the team that was there.

actually we didn't have a team it was a just a squad yeah but we'd share the share the information so we'd know about where they were going and what we do as soon as we got airborne is head for the the pre-bree spot and then get update the info en route so that by the time we got there we knew that where the fire was coming from what the situation was with the boats and where we were likely to put in our first strike So the deconfliction, as far as where you were shooting and friendly fire and all that, was, I mean, as long as they'd tell you, hey, north side of the river or something like that, is that how you would deconflict? And did you, when you were supporting ground troops, how the hell did you know who was who down there? We'd have them pop smoke.

And that generally worked, but the worst thing that could happen is when you say pop red, and one shows up right where you expect it. and one shows up 100 meters on down. So the bad guys had our freaks. Well, I don't know if they had our freaks or not, but they could certainly see a smoke, and they'd pop it also. Right. Same one.

And that could create a little confusion, but it also gave us a locus points that we could talk to the guys on the boats and they could direct our fire. And one thing, It's important about that. The 2.75 folding fin aerial rocket was a great tool. I didn't like it much because it wasn't all that uncommon to have one of the fins not open properly,

and then it would just go squirrely and go anywhere. If you had the aircraft trimmed up, it could be an effective weapon. But I didn't like to use it too far out because that gave it more of an opportunity to develop a mind of its own. I use it more as a close-in weapon. So you'd be sitting in your hooch or whatever and you'd be just standing by. It was your 12-hour shift. And then all of a sudden the radio call would come in. They'd tell you guys go.

What was the procedure like from there? assholes and elbows out to the aircraft, one of the other crew's first, first guy there would be suddenly, the aircraft was pre-coct, but they'd go ahead and set the rockets up for us and jump in, hit the button and go.

Every, I think that it's safe to say that practically every, operational mission that we flew, we took off over Max Grossweight. You'd pull it up enough to get it out of the revetment and get it out there. What we'd do when we were really seriously overweight is just sort of inch it ahead and get a little forward momentum on the helicopter, and then drop the collective, which puts all the weight down on the skids and spread the skids, and then pop it up a little, and the aircraft would be slingshot up to, oh, about three feet.

And then, you know, hopefully you'll get across the B-40 fence at the end of the runway. It was colorful. But had to do it in order to carry enough ordinance to get guys out of trouble. And then, I mean, when we were in Iraq, we always felt like the helicopters, which, when Ramadi, the helicopters, they wouldn't really fly over the city of Vermont because it was it was too dangerous for them The couple times that they came in it was like it was like a just massive machine gun fire at them and they didn't really Enjoy that too much But you guys were just so so my point is that helicopters and actually vehicles as well

They're they're like bullet magnets right everywhere you see a helicopter come in the enemy just sees that and focuses on it But you guys must have been, you had to be taking fire all the time. Yeah, all the time. You get used to it. One of my gunners reminded me of the first time that we saw a 51 cow coming at us. It was night. And these things, you know, it's as big as a basketball. It's as big as a freaking basketball coming up at you.

We started to see the tracers come up at it. And he says, damn, you did the right thing. I said, yeah? And he says, lowered the collective immediately, got down on the deck and then came around and we could adjust. But those things are frightening. Oh, yeah, that's cute. But it goes with the turf.

You're 20 years old. That was 23 at the time. And it's, you think the mission. You think the pride that you take in the guys and the, the pride they take in you and it's frightening you know there's that was terrified at times I think we all were that you get by that you get by that you think about the guys down there who are really in the ship and it's easy to apply what you know tactically and get the job done that's that's another thing that that's why I was kind of asking you about meeting with the

guys on the ground because you guys are doing this and and I'm sure in some situations you had never met the people that were down there and you're still risking your lives to go in there and give them the support that they need Yeah It's what we did There's a there's a counterintuitive thing to to helicopters that you just mentioned which is When you're getting shot at from the ground if you get lower It takes away some of their field of fire right right? So so you would think oh there's someone shooting at me. I'm gonna get up and go away when the reality is if you get lower you know that that person there's gonna be trees or

whatever terrain features in between that's gonna take a little bit of time to to get your instincts going to that direction yeah yeah it certainly does but it's amazing how quick those instincts are developed when you got somebody shooting at you and then the maintenance crews the birds are I saw pictures of birds they were just like it looked like they'd been used for target practice coming back. You go watch that movie Scramble the Seawolf. It looks like Target Practice was used. That's what they were using the boards for target practice. That's what some of them looked like. And the maintenance crews would just, they said they were making

patches from beer cans. That's true. That's true. And the guys were proud of that. And the patch that was a beer can would not be painted over generally. Yeah. No, and there's one thing that I want to say, and this is going to sound like I'm a one-trick pony and my love for the gunners, but those guys not only fired the weapons. They serviced the weapons. They serviced the helicopters.

They performed all the dailies. They were all qualified plane captains. They kept that thing up and running for us so that we could walk out with our silk scarves and strap the thing on and take them out to where they needed to be in order to get the job done. No, we're not Air Force. We don't believe in silk scarves.

Sorry, Air Force, brethren. And then, so you're doing this. This is a crazy op-tempo, operational tempo, of 12-on, 12-off, 365 days. Yeah. That's insane. You get used to it. You know, it's funny. I mean, you got eight hours of sleep, okay, and then you got four.

hours to eat and then the other 12 hours you're on standby to go fly into into gun battles I got for 365 days yeah I got nervous though when I wasn't flying you know a decent aviator wants to fly and it's hard sometimes just sitting around waiting for your turn we played lifted a lot of weight played a lot of volleyball played volleyball with and against the the seals and sometimes the the boat drivers it just it was 50 meters from the aircraft and that kept us right there so we could respond quickly. And then how often were you guys doing casualty evacuation?

Only one needed. Yeah, it wasn't a primary mission of ours. If somebody got shot up and needed a lift out of town, we'd provide that. And occasionally we'd get a call that someone was wounded and we'd go out and pick a up. But generally, that was a job that was done by some certifiable idiots that I love the dust-soft pilots. You got 19, 20-year-old kids that are out there, given the keys to a Maserati. Of course, this was only a Huey, but still, you get the idea. They were crazy. They'd fly into anything. My hat really goes off to them because they'd fly into areas where they shouldn't.

that's another thing I talked about with Colonel Bill Reeder who was on this podcast and same thing I mean he just said that the pilots back then and maybe it's because the aircraft were very inexpensive compared to the you know to what they fly nowadays they don't want to risk the aircraft now

but he said these guys they would just fly into like it was hey your your aircraft is just going to get hit that's the way it's going to be deal with it And if you ever get the opportunity to read some of the citations for the congressional medal for these helo pilots, it's incredible what they did. Now, I always, and always on this show, give the same praise that you give to the machine gunners. Because the machine gunners, in ground combat, it's the machine gunners that are going to allow you to be able to maneuver and get away from a situation. or maneuver towards, you know, they're going to allow you to move.

And same thing with your gunners and what they were doing. So you had a gunner on each side. That's right. That would protect the flanks. That's right. One of them on either a 60 or a dual 60 and the other one on a 50-Cal. Or eventually a mini-gun. Oh, and then you guys got the mini-guns.

Yes. I looked at there was a real A real fast flash on the screen in Scramble the Sea Wolf's. There's a mini gun and it's actually it's upside down. You can't, I had to pause it to read it. It said,

The Lord giveth and the mini gun taketh away. Yeah. It was a formidable weapon for a closer support. Yeah, for people that don't know what a mini gun is, it fires, it fires what? 5,000 rounds a minute. I mean, it's absolutely ridiculous what it shoots. I don't know what the rate is, but it's

It gets your attention. Yeah, and it just it's powered. It's it's powered it's it's powered it's electrically powered so it actually feeds the ammunition Faster than than a than a normal mechanical weapon could fire but it just it's crazy how much and how much how many rounds because I think it's 5,000 something like that. It's a ridiculous yeah and then you guys got those so those were on your birds while you were on deployment that's right yeah as far as the the mini gun goes you know it doesn't go bang bang bang bang it goes at the rate of fire is phenomenal and the gunners loved it but you know there's a little John Wayne in all of us and I think every one of them would like to go back to the to the free guns one thing that I do want to point out is that we were not very well equipped so when we were up and around, you know, on patrol or actually out there engaged and had to fly into a

gas up and rearm. We'd go into an army base because the army had all the fuel and they had nails. The 2.75 makes a boom, but if you can load it with flichets, you can really keep the enemy down. So we'd go on up there, depending on the tactical situation. If we had a cause, they're anti-personnel, something developing on the ground, we'd load up there. And that's where I saw my first cobra. The snake was an impressive aircraft. It had so much more firepower than any one of our Hueys.

But where do you put the gunners? You know, it's four and a half seating. They don't have any suppression for rolling off target other than your wingman. And it, you know, it was intriguing, but it just didn't make sense to me. Did I remember this correctly that at one point, whoever the commander was at the time got offered, hey, do you guys want some cobras? And the answer was, nope, we need to stick with the Hueys.

I'd heard that story. I don't know whether it's true or not. It's verified. Yeah. Yeah, we like that. But, you know, one of the guys you mentioned in the Wolfgram, and I will mention his name, Chuck Steely. Upchuck was quite a guy, and he would go out to requisition parts for us. At the time, the Army had a contractor, Dine Electron, that was doing the work on their aircraft.

And, you know, they're bored out of their skull when they don't have anything to work on. So they got a loach and started rebuilding it from spare parts from here and there and got it to be fully functional. And, you know, to have an observation helicopter like that, to go out and snoop and poop with us, that would be incredible. Chuck engineered a deal where for a refrigerator full of beer, they'd give us this aircraft. You know, it was written off the rolls. They're closing it. But, you know, they said, hey, if you have a problem,

let us know, we'll come down and take care of it. I like to think that Chuck was unplugging our refrigerator when the dead O&C came in. And not just no, but hell no. But, you know, that sort of thing was not unusual over there. Yeah, God bless Chuck. He did everybody a lot of great service. The, speaking of beer, apparently.

the wolf on the sea wolf insignia is somehow based on the low and brow beer can. That's what they say. Allegedly. That's what they say. I can either confirm or deny. You know, strangely enough, I didn't drink much beer at all when I was over there because they seemed to treat it with something that just put the taste off. We all thought it was for amalgide.

That was the going rumor. But they told us that in Gu when I was in Guam, my first deployment, they told us the same Yeah that there was formaldehyde that rumor's been that rumor survived from Ninety nine to two and I was on my first deployment there was formaldehyde in the beer that had the beer But how did the beer taste awful and I kept trying to see if I could make it taste better But I didn't succeed there's so some of the stuff that you're talking about You know from a leadership perspective you got you got guys that are risking their lives every time that

call comes how how did you did you see guys that's that got to a point where they couldn't take it anymore did you did you have situations where you had to send guys back to the rear what did you do when you saw a guy kind of start to start to get too nervous to to go this may sound self-serving that I don't care I didn't see anyone in our debts and I did not see directly anyone who behaved in a cowardly manner, an overcautious manner. We didn't have anyone that was sent back to the rear. There was a camaraderie that you just can't explain to somebody who hasn't enjoyed it.

It's an honor to serve with people like that. And we all took pride in our reputations among our squadron mates. so it wasn't hard at all. And that was so clear. When you watch Scramble the Sea Wolves, it's so clear. And there's this incredible, like you can see the camaraderie. And you can hear it when you read through the wolfgrams. You can see that guys are having a good time and there's this, I mean, what I would consider,

and you can tell me if I'm wrong, but like a peer pressure of, hey, we're going to, we're going to, We're gonna do this. You know, I've often said that when you get to a good seal platoon, it's not a team, it's not a platoon. It's like a gang that you have. It's a gang. And we just don't allow for that bad attitude to creep out. Yeah.

Yeah. I feel the same way about the sea wolves. And this might be a good time to share with you, the fact that I, at one time, after returning from Vietnam, was so fed up with the mission that we were flying. It was an aging aircraft. It didn't have systems that were required to do the job. The job itself was not that important.

And, you know, you come from living on adrenaline for a year and then come back and you're expected to, I don't know, figuratively put your boots up. on the table. One day I got so pissed off. In the middle of the morning, I jumped in my Corvette. Remember that? Hey, I learned. I learned.

Jumped in my Corvette and tore on up to Coronado. And two of the seals that we operated with friends were there. And I walked into the office. They had their LSDs pulled up face to face. And I said, guys, I've had it. I want to join up. And they looked at each other, and they locked up their secret, and each of them grabbed me by an elbow and took me up to the little club in Coronado. And we started pounding beers that tasted great, no formaldehyde there.

And by the middle of the afternoon, they'd convince me that being a peacetime seal wasn't everything that I would expect, and that the Navy had put an awful lot of investment into making me what I was, and I could make them a far better contribution by continuing to fly. And I turned my back on my opportunity to find out whether I had what it takes to become a seal. I'm surprised that those guys,

well, I'm surprised they didn't talk you into it. Those must have been, those guys, they must have, I'm surprised once they got enough beer at them, they didn't have you, down at buds with a log standing over your head. Is there any particular missions in, when you were in Vietnam, that stand out as, you know, one of the ones on Scramble to Sea Woolst that they talked about.

This was absolutely ridiculous. They're talking about the helicopter was, the helicopters were there supporting a unit on the ground. There was no one to relieve them. They needed more fuel. They were running out of fuel. The fuel lights on. There's still no.

No one to relieve the helicopters and provide support. They say, you know what? Screw it. We're just gonna stay until we run out of gas. And that's what they did. They stayed until they ran out of gas. The other group came in. They used ammo cans to refuel, to carry, once the fire on the ground had subsided, they

used ammo cans to refuel the helicopters that were out of fuel so they could get back to base. That's freaking crazy. Well, you know, we never really took time to think about whether it was crazy or not. You got a job to do. And, you know, that's probably a natural way to explain it. That was the job. You went out and did that because that's what was expected. That's what the guys in the boats expected of you.

That's what the seal team that we had, the seals that we had operated out of Benlock expected. And when they call you, you go. You know, that's another thing I think is really impressive about the Sea Wolves. Well, first of all, they took volunteers to go do the job. And like you said, a bunch of people volunteered. But the other thing is, and I heard some of the vets talking about this, some of the Seawolf vets talking about the fact that they'd say, oh, I was in the Navy and I was, you know, in the shit.

In Vietnam, people said, you were in the Navy, you weren't in the shit. But the reality is people, you were. I can't imagine that there was any of the gunners that when they joined the Navy, they thought to themselves, what I'm going to be is a door gunner in direct combat with the enemy. These are guys that were joined the Navy for whatever reason, and they end up in that job where they're doing this day and day out and risking their life, day in day out, not really what they signed up for. And yet they held the line over and over and over again. All of them volunteers. Yeah. Yeah.

It's, it humbles me to have been able to operate with guys like that. And, you know, I, the pilots, yeah, the pilots brass balls. It was expected. It was the job. The gunners had those balls and then some because they kept us up, kept the aircraft up, kept the systems up. I had a leadership lesson when I first got there. Growing up, my dad, you know, we'd hunt and fish. I had fired our, we had two 14s for each bird.

They hung on the back of the pilot seat. And I'd taken one on out. We had a little makeshift range and fired it and brought it back on in after I was done and took it in to the crew area. to clean it. You would have thought that I had just stepped on a baby rabbit. I mean, it was more like, it was plight, it was respectful, but give me that thing. And the guys had that feeling about the armament, you know, this is my job.

I do this. So, you know, it took a little getting used to. It was easier to let him clean my 45. Then I just kind of want to you know when you're when you're there You start to get to know these guys really well and I don't you didn't lose you didn't have anyone killed from your debt while you were there is that correct? That's correct But obviously other guys in other debts were killed while you were there Did you guys have any kind of and this is something I've talked about before is Americans and I think it's just um Because we have so many different cultures here

We don't have a good protocol to deal with to deal with death and you know other other Cultures around the world if someone dies you know you you you do this for a day you do this for a day You say this prayer you you go through the ceremony and then you move on and Americans we have so many different cultures here that are all mixed together And death isn't something that happens all the time so we really don't know a lot of times Hey, what am I supposed to do and I think that's what that's what causes people problems is they don't know how to handle it. They don't know how to put closure on it. And so it just kind of sticks around. When you guys would learn that someone in your debt had been killed, was there any protocol that you guys set up? Was there anything that you guys did to try and take that on board and then move past it? I probably miss out on a leadership opportunity. And when guys got killed

and other debts in combat or even just faring an aircraft in for maintenance. I didn't sit down with the guys and talk about it. I internalized it and being Irish would reflect on all the good times we had. Didn't think about what went wrong. Didn't want to know initially. Eventually you do because it's important for your trade. But I just think about the good times that we shared together. I lost a couple of academy classmates.

I lost some great friends that I made while I was in country. One young fellow, and I don't want to mention any names. But he and I were both bicyclists. And the one thing that he wanted to do when he got back home was build himself the Primo bike and start competing. And he never got that opportunity. And when you personalize something like that, when you think about the opportunities that are lost in a heartbeat,

it makes you very thankful to be alive. It makes you very thankful to have known that person. And it makes you feel like you should redouble your efforts to get the sons of bitches that took that life away from him. It can help focus your aggression, and that's a good thing. Yeah, no doubt about it. And that was, I guess, my way, again, I was uneducated. No one never taught me, but one thing I did is, okay, we're going to go to work.

That's the thing that I knew how to do. That's what I still know how to do is, like, go to work. And, you know, there's, I guess you could say there's some, You know, eventually you got to deal with it. You got to feel it more in the future. But man, when I was overseas, it's like, yeah, okay, we're going to work. And that's where the focus becomes because, and also from my perspective, it was like, you know, your guys, that's what they would want you to do. That's what they would want you to do.

So. Let me share something with you based upon what your guys would want you to do. Came home from a mission one night. We were in contact, and you know, you're decompressing. And I walk up to my rack, and there's this manila envelope for Lieutenant J.G. Rowley's eyes only. And I feel, oh, no, somebody back on, back home has died. And I opened this thing up with trembling hands and pull it out, and it's a standard Navy message.

And I said, hi, honey, I'm going to be in Tanzanute. in three days time, come on up and see me. Sean's mom, the love of my life, call sign stinky. It doesn't have anything to do with personal problems. It's a matter of attitude. Yeah. She was a flight attendant for Braniff,

and she was flying freedom birds in and out, and she had one coming in. Ben Lux only about 40 clicks south of Saigon. And, okay, and, you know, We're immediately spread like wildfire throughout the debt. And my guys, God bless them, they slept in a sandbagged bunker or enlisted crew. And it was normally pretty ripe. But it was also the only place that had a little bit of privacy.

Well, they had determined that I was going to bring stinky on down for lunch. Pick her up in Tonson, bring her on down. So they had that place spit-shyed. I don't know how they did it, but it was all right. It turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. We flew a helicopter on up to Tonsanute. And, you know, we're going over a bad guy country, so it was armed. And I land the thing in front of, no, I didn't land it.

I wasn't flying it. But we land in front of the terminal there at Tonsanute. And immediately this Air Force truck comes on out with it. It's cherry chop going. And this sergeant says, you can't land here. And I put it out to him that we already had and that we were just waiting for the arrival. And we solved the problem by saying, listen, this aircraft is armed. Why don't you stay here and watch it for us?

And we'll just be a little while. So we walked on over this big old green Braniff jet comes on in. And everybody gets off. And, you know, the incoming guys aren't nearly as. gay and festive as the outgoing guys. So they get off and there's Gail standing up at the top of the ladder just waving at me. So it turns out she can't get off the aircraft, but they didn't see anything about us getting on.

So, you know, my crew goes on up the ladder and we're in there and Gail's introducing them to the other stewardesses and they're loving it. And we go to the back of the aircraft and sat there for 45 minutes just talking with each. other but when we got back and Gail wasn't there the guys were just crestfallen they were so excited about having somebody there and you know they I don't think the place was ever cleaned again but that was my experience of dating my hometown honey in the zone yeah then what was it like was it standard Vietnam just replacements would come when it was time for a guy to rotate out a new guy would show up

pretty much like I mentioned earlier I was sort of kind of drift at the Annapolis hotel and happened to run into a got weird Harold who you referenced in that wolfgram he came just walking through with the debt for O&C Colonel Hammond we called him a colonel he was a Navy commander and Dave introduced and say, hey, this is a great guy, we should have him. And as it turns out, they had an opening, and within a matter of a few days, I was in debt for. So it was sort of a roll your own environment.

You know, obviously, they put guys into slots where they needed them. But it was fluid. So then your time's coming up to head home. Was it a one year, 365 days? Yeah, pretty much, yes. And then did you You stayed right on Doing your 12 on 12 off until it was time to go

What they normally do is for the last Week or two that you were in country Send you into Ben Tui for the For the out processing And we'd fly with the sea lords So you know you didn't stop flying It was just a different mission And then you get back

Then you then you get okay your time's up And it's time to go home Yeah pretty much Well you know there'd There'd be a bit of a party A drunk ex, but other than that, yeah, yeah, that was that was it. Then how was that transition going from Vietnam and then what, how many hours later you're back in America or how many days? It was a straight through shot.

We stopped off in Honolulu. There was one other stop, maybe Guam and then Honolulu and then home. It straight through. And so wait, so were you married? You weren't married yet. No, no, we got engaged on R&R and Hong Kong, and that's a two-bears story. So you got R&R from Vietnam, met your bride to be in Hong Kong? That's right.

And proposed? Yeah, you know, we'd already talked about it. We knew it was coming. I got down on a knee in Jimmy's kitchen and all of a sudden. But it was pretty interesting. when I arrived in Hong Kong, I booked a room at the Hilton. So I'd go on down there and, you know, I'm checking in, and I'm in my uniform. So the manager happens to be walking behind the desk and says,

ah, Mr. Lowley, Mrs. Lowley is waiting for you in your room. I figured, shit, Gail's getting here tomorrow. What's Mom going to think? Well, of course, Gail had gotten in a day early. She was in there, but you know, times were different back then. So your transition from, from Vietnam back to America, all of a sudden, and you were, you know, people, people use the term wild west sometimes to describe various military situations where it was, oh, it was like the wild west. I don't know if it gets much more wild west than being Sea Wolf of Vietnam. I mean, it just doesn't seem the way you guys were running things, the way the support.

that you got or didn't get the, I mean, just the fact, like, you guys didn't even have flight suits, they wouldn't issue them or something like that, and you guys were just wearing kind of what you, what you could get a hold of. Everything was sort of Wild West. It took longer to get into a flight suit than it did to pull on a Nomex shirt and certain bands.

And frequently it wasn't Nomex, and as they say, you know, I've flown missions in my tennie runners. Just, we leave our, our, gear there in the seat and if I was playing volleyball and if they scrambled us you don't think about anything but getting in that aircraft and getting it cranking so yeah it was wild west thank God yeah and then and then you get back to America and you're still in the Navy right yeah how was that well I got through training you know first of all you're just decompressing I was newly married Gail and her getting used to

to living together. She's dealing with my unique personality. And it was sort of a scramble. We partied our tits off when we got back. A couple of seals. One of them

was connected to a family that owned one of the mansions there in Coronado on the waterfront. I think that was first street, front street, at any rate. Just a man. It was a beat up whole place, but it was truly a mansion.

And they had a couple mattresses on the floor, and they had a table in the kitchen, but no furniture, and they had a tapar. And we'd go over there and just party like crazy. And where I'm going with this story is through all of that time and through all the craziness and through all of the drinking, there was only one person who got hurt as a result of overindulging. He ran his car into a telephone pole, didn't kill him, didn't even hurt him very much, but that was the only instance that I know of.

And the only casualty we had to alcohol was that same guy who turned himself in for AA. And was cashiered out of the Navy. And then for 10 years he was sober, clean and sober. and he applied to get back in and the Navy, God love it, let him back in. But more remarkable than that, this is one of our pilots now from the sea wolves,

they gave him his wings back and he finished up his career flying. Oh, that's awesome. The point is we had a really great time when we got back and all that was sort of a haze. But when I checked into the squadron after I completed the rag, learned to fly the Nobel

H3C slug? Our commanding officer took me in and in my checkerboard interview says, I know where you've been. I know what you've done. You aren't going to get away with any of that crap here. And that there was a leadership lesson there. I knew that I never wanted to be like him.

That had to be intimidating for a guy, though, that's taken on these pilots that have been doing what you had been doing and all of a sudden they got to try and rein these guys back into the world yeah i hope i'm not going into too many sea stories but uh great friend about the only guy names i'm using are guys who were deceased but that chuchannis was a co-pilot and uh we were sent off to uh uh for uh to guam for some uh specialized training and he and i are there in our uh in our uh poopy suits at the bar, the O'Club Bar at the Air Force Base on Guam. And we're enjoying a couple of beers which tasted good.

And all of a sudden this bell rings like crazy. And in come these guys in pressed flight suits with ascots. And everybody in the bar, all the Air Force guys are standing at attention. This B-52 crew coming back from a mission. And we're just sitting there with our elbows on the bar, and the crowd didn't know what to make of us. But they didn't get too close to us either. Come on, guys. We all have a mission to you, and Rolling Thunder was very important.

If taken to its conclusion, we might have not have lost that war. And I use the words loss and war carefully there. That's not a slip of the tongue. They've got a mission to do, but I mean, yeah, the war from 40,000 feet, and they're worried about Sam's because they turn in it. I don't want to go there. I'm sorry. I'd like to apologize to the United States Air Force and all the noble men and women who fly for the Air Force. Yeah, that's actually, you know, those, when we got back from Ramadi, we got after it in a very similar way for.

several months and I don't know how long you did but yeah there was a lot of beer and other things that were drank and and I don't know you know there's it was sort of it was sort of it seemed like the normal thing to do I don't know it seemed like we were going to kind of get it out of our systems for a little while and you know get over it because it is it is you know it's not that big of a deal I don't want to make it sound like it's all crazy but you know you're over there and it's like okay, it's a little bit of, it's a different, it's a different scenario. And you got to kind of process through the fact that everything that you just were doing, whatever, a week ago, two weeks ago, three weeks ago, is now completely different. Your life is completely different. And there's

no one shooting at you and there's no one, not, not, you're not going to lose in your guys, which was the, the weight that I felt lifted off of me about a month after I got home. I was, I just, you know, woke up one morning and I just kind of felt different. And I kind of, I was like, why do I feel, I felt different in a good way. And what I felt was, oh, I was thinking about why do I feel different right now? And as I sat there and thought about it, it was like, I'm not worried about any of my guys getting killed right now, which was the first time in months that I hadn't been thinking about that all day every day. And so, yeah, when you come home, there's definitely that.

And I think you've got to pay attention as a leader to everyone in that group to make, sure that guys are staying within the box and staying within what's what's I guess possibly normal for those situations because you can definitely be you can there will definitely be individuals that they'll they'll they'll go too far and that they're not making the transition and what they need is you know some help someone to come alongside pull alongside and say hey man let's let's take it back a little bit or you know let's let's readjust and you know life's gonna be normal again and all that yeah Unfortunately, the way we were rolled in and out of the squadron, when we left and came back

to the world, it was pretty much an individual effort. So that and I also temperate with the fact that your war was entirely different than ours, I would imagine. Yours was more up close and personal than ours. Tell you the truth, I don't recall ever reflecting all. on whether my guys were going to come back from this mission or not. You know, it's something that we just all did.

We all did it together. And I don't mean that to sound callous. It just isn't, wasn't part of my thinking. And that goes back to what cousin Kim asked. You know, how did you do it? Yeah. You're trying to bring everybody back whole. Yeah, I definitely, without question,

thought about that every day. That was the biggest thing that I thought about every day was because there was guys getting killed every day, basically. There was memorial services every day. There was, you know, one of the things, I've talked about this a bunch, but there was a vehicle graveyard outside. It was on the way to the gate to leave Camp Ramadi.

There was a vehicle graveyard where all the vehicles that had been blown up and destroyed by IEDs. And there was, I would say, 50 or 75, maybe even 100, but a massive area. And so in order to leave the gate, you drove by that. It was a pretty harsh reminder. And, you know, my guys would go out on missions. I wasn't always going on missions because I was overall in charge

and there was multiple units. And so a lot of times I'd be just saluting the guys as they'd be leaving. And that's a worse feeling of like, okay, you know, you just got your damn fingers crossed and you hope you've done everything you can and you hope you've mitigated the risk. But that was the heaviest, the heaviest,

weight for me was just that daily thought every because then there was also there was the fact that there was always guys in the field almost always there was almost always one of my you know little detachments of guys was out there with seven guys and 20 Iraqi soldiers and there was gunfights going on and and that's the way it was that was the that was the heaviest thing um from a leadership perspective for me and yeah so when i got home it took about a month month, you know, before I was like, and the other thing is I didn't, everything that I'm saying about that feeling, I was barely conscious of it while I was there. I was like, it was there, but I was more focused on doing the job. I was more focused on. It kind of cooked me like,

you know, when they say the frog, they put the frog in the boiling water, you cook it slow, whatever you, it was like that. It was more like that. Like over time, it just built up. And what I did was just focused on working, working hard. But then when I got home, it was like I said, It was like a month after I got home. I woke up one day and just felt like a weight lifted. And I was saying, what do I? What is that? What is that?

And then as I thought about it, I'm thinking, what am I not? Why do I feel like this? You know, I just had a big smile on my face and was, you know, walking around my house and thinking myself, oh, this feels good. What is this? And then I realized, oh, you're actually not worried that one of your friends is going to die today, which was a totally. So like I said, it was something that crept up on me and was just there.

It was just part of being over there. And it felt good to have that weight come off. But, you know, again, I think I dealt with it pretty decently. And, you know, did I get drunk with my friends? Yeah. Well, there was some significant T.U. Bruiser activities that were fun and we let off a lot of steam. And I think that's a lot of.

fine but again you know what worries me about saying that is that there's some people that take that as like oh okay now I'm cleared hot just to go and and get drunk and get crazy and it's like no actually you're not um you got to keep that in check and especially from the guys that are in leadership positions hey man you got to keep a close eye and step back and detach and look at the guys and say okay I get it we're going to let off some steam I get it we're going to adjust back to the real world but we need to make sure that everyone is staying inside the box and make sure that they're going to come back out of this thing okay. Because, I mean, we all know it nowadays, man,

the vets, veterans come home, and that's a hard transition to make from combat to, you know, the civilian world and even the world that you're talking about, going from being a seawolf in the Wild West, coming back to your commanding officer saying, look, you're not going to get away with that crap here. And, you know, we definitely had our share of little stories like that from T.U. Bruiser, where, you know, guys would,

Not quite be ready. You know as a matter of fact J p. Donnell who is with me at echelon front My brother when he came home when we came home he was in another platoon got hurt They sent him to our basic training school so buds. He's gonna be a buds instructor And he didn't last very long over there because you can't take a guy that's 23 years old that just been through what JP had been through and say okay now you're gonna go go and be in charge of training these guys that are Trying to make it through buds. It wasn't a good fit. I just, you know, luckily had friends and was able to just pull him over and he worked directly for me again getting guys ready for the more advanced training and combat training, which he was perfect for. But that was an example of where, you know, I is I had to look out and say, okay, this is not a good job for him right now, you know, JP's already an intense an intense guy and coming home from Ramadi you know it was it was a it was a tough deployment you know he lost friends and as a young kid he wasn't ready to be teaching these young you know he's looking at these kids like you know you're

are you kidding me I'm gonna I'm gonna freaking decimate you guys and so I had to pull them over to a little bit more advanced training my brother JP so you get oh So now you're staying in the Navy. That's it. Never doubt in my mind. And you end up, I mean, you end up doing the anti-submarine warfare, which is the job that kind of annoyed. Is that the job that annoyed you? We called it, ah, so what?

We were given a mission without the means to prosecute the mission, and that annoyed me. And then you went on to become a test pilot. Is that right? Is that correct? The steely-eyed granite-jawed test pilot. and look at me now. So what is that job like? It's fascinating.

You know, I'm living proof that nothing harms of that person more than too much formal education. But I get off on that. And it was brought home to me once when we were having a raging party at her home in Patuxent River, Maryland when I was there at the test center. And most of the guys would have a copy

of Playboy magazine on their night table. Well, a couple of guys had gone back to take a leak in our bedroom and found that I had some technical reports there on mine. And I didn't hear the end of that for a long time, but I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the technical aspects of it. I've often said there are only two topics that are worthy of conversation between men,

and that is flying and fornication. And, you know, I lived to fly. Having said that, since I retired, I've flown very little. But at that point in my life, it was all about flying. And it was a wonderful experience. The flying we did was not experimental flying. It was engineering flying. We'd test out weapons systems.

We'd test out new aircraft. I was fortunate to lead one of the three prongs of the biggest helicopter acquisition that the Navy's made when we're looking for the new lamps helicopter. Two of my great good friends were flying the Sikorsky and the Boeing products. And they were pretty well through their test program, which took, I think, about a year, when Bell helicopter piped up and says, hey, we've got one too. Well, they didn't have a really logical contender, but they needed somebody to go on down and leave the test of that aircraft.

And that was me. And boy, that was fun. Now, you literally are flying a test card that takes out to the edge of the envelope and, hey, are you good enough? Sure, I'm good enough. Yeah, just don't go too far and don't bust your ass. There's a lot of investment that you're sitting in right there that you want, they want you to keep in one piece. But, no, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Lifelong friends there.

And just keep me to a story. The two guys that were flying the Boeing in Sikorsky, dear friends. One of them was a Naval Academy classmate, and he and I flew in Vietnam. And the other guy, Greek, is just a wonderful guy and still a lifelong close friend. Well, Duck was unfortunately, fortunately for Hughes became their chief test pilot. He got out of the Navy and was flying for Hughes and was killed in a horrible accident. And Greek and I sort of closed ranks and decided that we were going to try and send a duck off in good stead. So if you're familiar with San Diego now, you know about the Point Loma Lighthouse and the area up there.

That's where the family was waiting. Hughes had given us a 500 to scatter the remains in. Greek took it upon himself to do this. Now, at this time, he probably had 2,500 flight hours. He knew his way around a helicopter. He's in his navy blues. He gets in the aircraft. He's got the cremains in his lap,

and they're flying out along, well below the point, on out over the ocean. And he looks up and sees the family up there, and he's so emotionally wrought, that he reaches down and takes the lid off of the cremains. Well, if you've ever been in a helicopter, you know that it's not a very stable place to have cremains. And immediately, he said it was IFR inside that cockpit with duck everywhere.

And fortunately, the family didn't know what was going on, and everything came out fine. Greek could call me up and said, Hey, I had to make mustard today. And I said, yeah. And he says, yeah, and when I got my blues out, I'm still brushing Duck off of him. So, yeah, there's ways you accommodate that. I always think of the great good times that Duck and Greek and I had together.

And I miss him, sure. I miss him all the time. But life goes on. Sounds like he had the final say at that way. Yeah. You were OIC during the Iranian hostage crisis. What was that like? That was self-made.

You know, yes, we were the only helicopter out there that wasn't on the large gray boats to actually fly the mission that could provide combat search and rescue. So we took full advantage of that. got the armament that we thought passing through Guam. I didn't like the sidearm I had, so I went on down to buy one and I know it's going to take two weeks. And it took me about two hours to get in touch with the local authorities, and I had my sidearm on that going over the horizon, which is sort of silly. You know, I mean, really.

You're flying an over-water mission, and you need to say, well, you never can tell. It's always good to be prepared. But at any rate, we'd go out there and just train for that. When we weren't actually out there in support of the boats, we'd go out and train for that. You end up doing your 20 years, and then you called it at 20. Is that how long you did? 20? 21.

21 years. And then you went off to the civilian sector. Yes, we did. Started working a bunch of various jobs. That's right. Started out in high tech. Our company had a professional staff of 200, 60% of whom were PhDs. And I had enough technical background that I'd go out to a customer with one or more of these PhDs,

and they'd make their presentation, and I'd say, Thank you. What the doctor meant to say was. I just had a great, being surrounded by smart people. It just is a lot of fun. It can be very frustrating at times, but it's a lot of fun. But it's a lot of fun. Yeah.

We have a curious insult in the teams, which is someone will ask you about a guy. And the guy's not a bad guy, but someone will say, oh, you know, he's a really smart guy. Which is, you know, he might not be the best most common sense. He might not be the best leader. You know, he's a smart guy. So, yes, it can't get frustrated to hang around with people that are super smart. And when did you move to Hawaii? About 14 years ago.

I spent five years in range operations, and then they created a new position. And for my last five working years, I was the environmental manager for the Pacific Missile Range. My daughter, when she learned of that, said, Dad, you hate those guys. And I said, yes, Heather, but now I'm in a position to say, no. And I just had a lot of fun. You know, the local environment and community, great people, but they were not strong supporters of military training. And that was my cause to help them explain why we needed to train out there and that we were out to kill the whales. Yeah.

Yeah. And then how long ago was it that you retired, retired? About four years ago. that's that's retirement has been very very good to DJ yeah

and uh I mean I got I got one more quote that I that I wanted to read um because I know we've been going at it for a bit here but uh this is this is another quote

this is a quote from um from a Vietnam seal um and here we go not only does many a seal owe his life to the sea wolves but the units often operated together as a team very often located at the same base of operations we

developed friendships that are still alive today operating well outside standing standard operating procedures the sea wolves have lifted seals out of enemy encirclements and I have known them to land in a hot LZ to lift out cash is too large for the seals to pack out they also evacuated our wounded when medevac helicopters were not available most important they were always there for us when we were down in the mud and darkness the night illuminated with red and green tracers the vc behind every shadow many times after we were out of danger they stayed with us until we were safely extracted in the middle of the river and out of the range of enemy fire and that's

chief barry enoch who's a legendary seal from seal team one navy cross recipient and i think that that quote just really exemplifies the bond between seals and sea wolves and like I said it was something that I heard about as a young seal and it's a bond that still exists when I talk to the Vietnam seals and it's a bomb that's that's always going to be there and um I'm into that do you have any uh you know I know I like I said we've been at it for a while and I like I told you before we started, I could sit, I'll sit here and, I could sit here and listen to you all day. But do you have any other, you know, any other closing thoughts that you want to, that you want to mention? Hand salute to the 44 that didn't make it back with us. Anyone who hasn't been to the wall, anybody who's served who hasn't been to the wall, you ought to make that trip.

a shout out again, and I know it sounds like a broken record, but to the guys that are responsible for getting me back in one piece are gunners. Great human beings. And to the guys I flew with, hey, next time we get together, the beer's on you. Yeah, I should share with you that as a technical person, I have developed what I call Rowley's theorem. And Rowley's theorem says that all the truly great ladies hook up with all the truly big buffoons. And Stinky, if you're out there listening, I sure am glad that you did that.

Love you more than pork chops, baby. And, well, also, thanks to your son, Sean, for connecting us. And when he came up and asked me, he's like, oh, would you have a CWO on your podcast? I'm like, uh, let me think about that for 0.2 seconds, absolutely. So yeah, thanks to Sean for connecting us and and it's been an honor to sit here and listen to you and Thanks for what you and all the sea wolves did for our country for our Navy and specifically Thank you for the support that you and your brothers gave to my brothers and my forefathers on the ground in Vietnam

We'll never forget what you and your brothers did I will never forget the sacrifices of those those brave sea wolves that made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom Oh man and Dennis Rowley has has left the building and obviously awesome to have him on and Incredible opportunity to talk about this the sea wolves and go check out this website. It's seawolf.org Really cool website to read through one. of the coolest things on it is I read that example of the wolf gram they got all the wolf grams and they're all just funny They're good. They're worth checking out they've also got all the awards that well not they've got the list of the awards But they got the Navy Cross awards and they're just an awesome website. So go check it out seawolf.org

And with that if you want to support you know yourself this podcast etc Echo what do you got stay on the path okay Synopath, talk about jujitsu. Yes, jiu-jitsu. Get a ghee, we know we're getting geese. Origin geese, do we all know that yet? That's origin. Do we know that?

Yes, you should know that. So go to origin-main.com. That's where you get your ghee and rash cards for jiu-jitsu. 100%, bar none. I'm almost tempted to say don't even get any other kind of ghee or rash card. I would agree with that. Yeah. Boom.

100%. Also. If you're warming up or cooling down or just cruising, they have joggers. And you got into the joggers. Yeah, so my son got some of the joggers, which he's totally stoked on. I tried them on just to see. It was so horrible. They are so not my situation.

Well, here's the thing with joggers, depending on how you wear them, for sure. But they're more of a... Should I put this kind of acceptably? they're kind of form fitting from time to time. Right? So they're kind of, you know, so they don't flap around. So they're form fitting. You in form fitting joggers, yeah, I could see how that could be a violation for sure.

But if you're not jockers, most comfortable joggers in the world, probably in the history of joggers, maybe ever. Origin main, origin joggers. Also, we got some supplements on there that you can take. You got joint warfare, which will keep your joints intact. Yeah. Yeah. Crill oil. Same thing.

Kind of universal substance. Yeah. That's to maintain the joint. I went off the joint warfare for a little while. Why? Long story. Long story being. Yeah.

You know, lapse of discipline. You know how the kind where I'm like, oh, I don't feel the pain, you know, or nothing. So I just don't, I'm not like. compelled as much oh you know when you I mean you make it like a routine though right like that's just the thing I get up every day yeah take it before I get I take I take curle oil and and joint warfare when I wake up in the morning and before I go to bed at night period end the story every day yeah like not you haven't even train that day still the hundred percent joint warfare everything train that day but

yeah well so discipline is not 100 percent because I don't take that every day I take it when needed yeah but I will say I've been using, I feel like that's a little bit of a crutch right out because I've been using it a lot before. Yeah, well, still, you can take it every day. Yeah, you can. But no, the joint warfare, like your mindset, I think I actually, I think I should incorporate that where it's just that's just how, every day. So with joint warfare, I'll be like, well, you know, like it'll be in my mind, not even necessarily heavily, but it'll be in my mind. Oh, did I train hard enough to warrant, like, joint warfare kind of, kind of attitude.

It's more or less like that. So I wasn't feeling any kind of inflammation or pain or nothing. So I was like, uh, you know, so I skipped it one day and then I sort of, you know, it just wasn't in my mind. Sure enough. And I'm still lifting, still doing it. Still in the game. Freaking elbow comes back. Because I'd get elbow from, you know, from pressing, you know, and I'd get little elbow things.

Nothing terrible. You just got to warm up more or whatever. But man, it came back. And then did you go back on the joint warfare? 100% this was just this was just the other day so usually it takes a few days to like kind of get back how's it right now it's fine but when I started if I started to do a push-up like a close grip push-up right now I'll feel it probably maybe I don't know because it's been a few days so that's joint warfare krill oil discipline and then you got mulk which is just the food that you need in your body

that's what it basically is yeah and it tastes good and also for your kids you got warrior kid Molk strawberry and chocolate they're both really good but let's face it the strawberry is a whole another deal Brian is working on adult strawberry mulk will be coming out with that can I ask you this yes the regular milk dark chocolate is good right yeah after a certain percentage of what is it what is it what means dark chocolate better right it's like a certain percentage of oh you're talking about in general life yeah in life yeah yeah because there's no If you just get straight dark chocolate right but then there's like 80% 80% that's like the threshold let me let me put you this way 80% is is good when you get to 72% you're like you're

like oh that's just a tasty you know you're just eating dessert 80%'s not quite it still gives you a chocolate satisfaction but it's not like the same let me put you this way if you eat two squares of 80% chocolate you won't desire more if you eat to eat two squares of 72% chocolate you're like I'm gonna have a little bit more yeah okay just like that tasty okay perfect so so the the mok with adult milk my question to you in your opinion your jocco disciplined opinion if I put a chunk because like last night I put this chunk there's this chunk I don't know why it was there it was there chunk of chocolate it wasn't 80% in the blender I didn't put the whole thing I broke off a little piece so it's maybe like the size of a two you know

little baby Snickers bars two of those I would say that's how big the chunk this block of chocolate two of the baby Snickers yeah it was pretty big yeah it was a big monk shake though it's like three scoops okay you know like you know the 30 ounce you know the mugs that we have full anyway put it in with a peanut butter chocolate monk and it enhanced it oh yeah well of course so so the question is is like how much of a violate like if it's 80% chocolate or dark, 80% dark chocolate. But you didn't put 80% dark chocolate on there. Just sugar chocolate.

Doesn't matter what I did or didn't do. I'm saying theoretically. If I did 80% or more chocolate, that's good. That's still within the confines of being on the path. In the game, right? I'd say you're in the game and on the path. And 80%. So if when we come across 80% chocolate,

let's add that, just collectively. Let's add that and see how we all feel about that. That's what I think. Check. You get the little chips at the bottom of the cup, too. It's pretty cool. Check. Also, I just talked to a guy, strawberry or for the warrior kid, mulk.

If your kid is lactose intolerant, you put them on the almond milk. Right. So get some of that. Do you get. Also, if you want to represent on the path, Jocko is a store. It's called Jocco store. It's where you can get shirts, hats, hoodies, tank tops, more rash guards recommended still within the confines of being. the game or rash cards as well.

If yeah, if you want to represent in the wild, on the path and in the wild at the same time, jocco store.com. That's where you can get some cool stuff. All jaco approved, all of it. Women's stuff on there. By the way, there is counterfeit jaco stuff. Yeah, but here's the thing about the counterfeit.

Here's the thing about the counterfeit ones. They're like, like, if you, all you have to do, here, I dig it. Like, you'll see a cool design that, that seems new because that's really the what do you call it the visceral not visceral that's negative right like the immediate response is like oh new design on amazon or wherever these counterfeits exist you see the new design so you kind of oh cool and you in your in your haste you click on it but here's the thing if you just stop for one second you can be aggressive but not foolhardy right

that's the deal yeah so you take just one moment to recognize the design you'll know there's violations all through every single design on there. First off, the font is like the completely wrong font. It's completely wrong. Then I saw one like the good one, right? That's on like, you know, one of these websites that you can go to and you submit your PDF or JPEG and it generates a shirt for you. It's like it's a super cheap thing.

So there's one of those. I forget what it's called, but it's one of those where it's like obviously. cheap and the design's wrong it's backwards ours is backwards the good says is backwards it's how it's supposed to be oh there's ones all front words like just some person who didn't pay attention is trying to do it it's real obvious if you take that second to notice it though so the counterfeit ones hmm you know there you go so just look out for the counterfeit ones yeah yeah they're out there also you don't get counterfeit ones at jocco store.com correct yeah factually factually um also jaco white Is there a counterfeit jaco white tea? There is not. Yeah, so that's that one's gonna be a lot harder to

counterfeit. You gotta you'd have to put some effort into that one. Yeah, you'd have to get labels done. I would actually be kind of impressed. Like, like slightly just in your mode of getting after it would be high level. Yeah. Because it's not easy to make tea. No. Not easy to make cans of tea. No. And it's not easy to deadlift 8,000 pounds unless you've been drinking your tea. So get some of that. Organic too, by the way. Certifying just saying also subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already on iTunes and Stitcher in Google play and wherever you listen to a podcast because there's a lot of Podcasts there's a lot of podcasts too yeah. Yeah and if you're listening to this one dang in a way it's kind of like man thanks well definitely thanks There's also the warrior kid podcast yeah which is getting a lot of hype right now. Yeah, why? Because we talked about it on the last two podcasts go here people kind of recognized and they didn't

this is the thing I'm not real good at the whole like like hey everyone look at what I'm doing that's not really you know I'm like hey there's a podcast if you want to check it out check it out so with the I posted it and talked about it and so a bunch of people went and check out the the warrior kid podcast the feedback is awesome and I appreciate it and also if you want to check out some warrior kids stuff you can check out Irish O OaksRanch.com where Aiden, who's a warrior kid, is making soap on his farm just for real. And if you want to get some of that soap, Irish OaksRanch.com, that way you can follow the motto of Aiden's soap. And that motto is stately.

So check that one out. Also, we got a YouTube channel, which is called Jocko Podcast. And that's where these videos. are of this podcast if you want to see what Dennis Rowley looks like how tall he is how tall he is can you tell that from a video where he's sitting down he was kind of going out of frame like yeah like sit up yeah so yes he's a big dude yeah he's a big dude full of aloha by the way yeah way full of aloha but yeah if you want to see what what Dennis Rowley looks like and you can come on there you can also see Echo's enhanced videos as he likes to call

him he thinks it's an enhancement when he adds stuff to him You think it takes it away? It takes away from the message. The raw message is just there. Actually, I've heard that, yeah. Oh, really? People have actually told you that? Well, I don't agree with it.

I'll tell you what totally changed my attitude is the, is the Mikey and the Dragon video. Okay. That video is sick. The video that you made is sick. Cool. And that video I said to myself, even this is more powerful, even like, you know, you never really think about, well, you think about it, but like the background music. Right. Like when, when it says the king dies and this like cello kick.

see it in the background. I'm like, dang. Somber. Yeah. Well, that, that is a good point. And you are kind of advanced in your thinking because to put kind of, to put it kind of precisely, the goal is it's not necessarily to be like, hey, what's the background music supposed to be?

It's like, what's the feeling supposed to be? And, you know, certain instruments or music or whatever will provide certain feelings. And, you know, that's kind of the goal to line them up. That's it. So, man, you recognize that. So that video has definitely impressed upon me that videos can have a positive impact and positively enhanced, to use your term, what's going on with the words that are in the video.

Yeah. But what about if I put, like, the walls crumbling and crashing down? See, at first. And you just do that over and every single thing that happens, explodes? Yeah, yeah. Does that take away from the message? You were like one of those people that got carried away with CGI on that video. Yeah.

Which I you know you got to explore the boundaries. Yes and sometimes you go out. I see on a recent video that I did I'm not gonna say which one But I did the same thing but now with crumbling and crashing noises and effects I did it with lens flares You know lens flare is right? Oh yeah Optical lens flare somebody puts a light in front of the camera Yeah, well it's the the aboritions or I don't know whatever the word you want to use that that a light going directly at the camera will create these Yeah, yeah, you know little and you can do it on purpose right It's like a look. It's like an epic look when you get what's called anamorphic lens. It kind of does this thing. It compresses it to the second kind of thing and then when you when you when you to put in layman's terms basically when you put what video did you do this on? I can't tell you. Now I'm gonna go watch all my damn videos. Yeah, go watch all the videos. You tell me but here's why I don't want to say it because now people will be paying attention to it. And they'll be like, oh yeah, you're right. Because okay, not to go into a whole long thing, but okay, so there's a guy named JJ Abram. He's a director and I think a writer too, but anyway, he does he did like the new Star Trek movies

He did the new Star Wars. You know, he's like kind of a sci-fi guy And he got a lot of he got a lot people had an issue with the amount of lens flares he allowed in Star Trek the newer star So they're everywhere. I thought I looked dope man I really liked that look but he got a lot of you know a lot of shit for it Right. Nonetheless, I don't want to be in that same boat with these videos, with that particular video that I'm talking about. So if they don't notice, then good. If so, then bad. Seems me same. I'm going to go post about it. Nonetheless. Psychological warfare, too, which is an album with tracks where I tell you what you should do to push through the moment of weakness. And that's all we're going to say about that.

Okay. It works with 100% certainty. I'll add. that are you still batting 100% right now well here I'm gonna call I'm gonna call oh yeah oh 100% every single time I've ever using here the thing I haven't used it recently because it's like are you scared of it I didn't I didn't need it I don't have many moments of weakness nowadays see I'm like forged in the fire of discipline no transgressions are you trying to set yourself up to make a video with flare for yourself that's what that's that's a

No, no, no, no, I'm reporting back to you my current status on my discipline. Unless, I haven't had to use it recently. So, yeah, I mean, it doesn't matter. If every single time that I've used it, it, yeah, it helps. Like, what am I going to do? Listen to you telling me and then, like, oh, yeah, I'm stupid. You know, to me, just making the effort to open my ears to you is already, you're already, like, on the way to, like, power through.

Yeah, exactly, right? Check. So, you know, 100% on that one. my experience. Also, you want to vary up your workout. Onet Fitness gear is at Onet.com. They got a lot of cool stuff on there, a lot of good stuff. So

if you want to improve, enhance very increased variables, increase stuff in your workout. If it's getting boring or something like this, go to Onit.com. Get something from there. Like kettlebells. Or rings or battle ropes.

I think if you add one or more, of those things into your workout, it'll be enhanced greatly, results-wise. That's my opinion. My prediction. Also, books. What do we got? Well, first of all, we got Mikey and the Dragons. Told you about the video.

Go watch the video, and then you'll want to get the book. Why? Because Echo did a really good job. And because the book is legit. Am I allowed to say that about my own book? Or does that make me arrogant? Yeah, no. From what I've been told.

It's legit. Everyone appreciates the book. And a bunch of people have now started posting reviews on Amazon, which is very cool. I appreciate it. I read them and I'll read some next time live. But yeah, so Mike and the Dragons, here's the deal. Is it sold out at this moment in time?

Yes. Will it be sold out when you hear this? Probably not. Actually, we got more books coming in. I'm getting them printed as quickly as they can possibly print them. And I apologize for not correctly estimating how many books everyone would buy. That is my fault and I apologize for it but if you do want Mikey and the Dragons Order it as soon as you can so that you can get it as quickly as possible also the way the warrior kid books

way the warrior kid and Mark's mission those books are good for kids and adults and really anyone and you know just got done

talking to talking to Dennis rally downstairs and he's like yeah I read those books they're awesome so he's a he's a what I don't know how old he is

but he's a Vietnam veteran pilot and he read Warrior kids and was was down for the cause that's weird you said down for the cause because I was thinking in my head down for the cause yeah well he is clearly

Yeah, you know, down for the cause. Yep. Dispne equals freedom field manual. Good one. Outstanding one, actually. Really? I think so. Again, and I said this before,

and say it again, because this is a constant thing. It's like one of those things, like a manual, like an actual manual for life. Right, but so, okay, you said that, I get it. But yeah, you refer to it. That's what you do. It's like a reminder.

And we do this all the time, by the way. But this is a good one to just remember, because that's part of the, The actually it's the majority of the challenge right there is to remember this stuff like say hey You shouldn't freaking drink a soda right now with your sushi Don't do that you know that already but if it's just part of the habit it's like boom you might forget because you're thinking about some other stuff You know some edits or whatever that you had to do you're saying So you got that manual there this time and you just refer to it kind of maybe even daily

Semi daily I recommend daily Daily, yeah, and you just remember all this stuff. It just keeps you on the path, man. That one is in print, by the way. There's plenty of them, so you can order that one. And it's a good Christmas gift. Yeah. For people that you know who needs it in your world.

You know what I mean? And I don't think it's insulting. And by the way, if someone is offended by it, just get them to crack it open. Yeah. Because they'll realize, like, hey, this isn't meant to offend. This is meant to build. Yeah. And actually, you know what?

now that you think of it, that book isn't like, extreme ownership might be that kind of book that if you get it for someone, they'll be like, like, what do you said? You know, like we'll elicit, what do you call? Defensiveness. Yeah. But the field manual won't.

Because like first, when you first see it, you're like, oh, this is awesome gift item. See what I'm saying? Like, looking at it. But it's like, yeah, it's like a cool, like, field manual. It doesn't scream like you need to take responsibility for stuff. That's why I'm getting, it just, you don't get that. feel but even if even if that person might feel that maybe you got to do it with like a

certain type of card or something seems to me yeah thank you for everything you've ever taught me and then like give it to them you see what I'm saying yeah yeah well speaking of extreme ownership there's extreme ownership and there's the dichotomy of leadership both books they're about leadership and they are available of course and those are those are books that will pragmatically teach you how to lead that's all there is to it echelon front speaking of leadership that's our leadership consultancy we solve problems through leadership it's me laf babin jp dinell dave burke flin kockren mike sirelli and mike bima go to echelonfront dot com if you want us to come to your business and align your leadership or

you want us to come and do a keynote speech Go to Eschlonfront.com and get the details there. The muster is coming up. 2019 video soon to be released. It's going to be in Chicago, Denver, and Sydney. Yes. Three musters. Sydney, Australia.

Are you familiar with that area? Yes. Yeah. So Chicago, Sydney and Denver, check out Extreme Ownership.com. That's where we'll post the details. All of them have sold out. And all of them will sell out. You might not think that in Australia

We're gonna sell out but we will So you're saying all of them have sold out in the past? In the past? Yes, oh sorry, yes They haven't these ones haven't sold out yet, but they will so register early Everyone down under We know when I was in Brizzy Sure, brizzy I was in Brizzy and we did a little book signing I did a little book signing and there was people from all over Australia there They came to Brizzy did you know when you were in Brizzy? that the Australians tend to do that very thing with words.

They'll shorten them and then put an E or a O at the end. Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know? Yeah. Yes. The Aussies do that with their names. See, right there. Ozys.

Boom. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there you go. I kind of incorporated that when I've been there twice. Right. And yeah, I noticed that and I liked it. The first SAS guy I worked with.

You know what his name was? What? Well, there was two. The first one's name was Dutchy. Dutchie, what was his whole name? I it was a long Dutch name and the other one's name was Tomo and then Nikki right so yeah it's 100 we're batting a hundred yeah bad at a thousand I was doing it well I guess what would be called a mini documentary one of the times I went there and one of the guys names

Jason Robig it's a black belt under Hicks and Gracie so it's with him and he you the way he'd explain what people like hey what are you guys doing he'd be like oh we're making a little daco for you know for this thing or whatever and um people understood oh they do exactly and i was like taco i like that it's good yeah man so yeah incorporate that into your thing so yeah australia will be down there chicago denver uh also we have eF overwatch now if you're looking to bring experienced and tested leaders into your organization on the civilian side we've got military spec ops and combat aviators that are leaders that have been trained and have been tested and they're moving into the civilian sector to come and help your company go to eFoverwatch.com and if you want to keep you know sort of kicking it with us we're available on the interwebs on Twitter on Instagram and on Facebook eBoha Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocka Willink and thanks to all our military personnel out there

That are out there protecting our freedom and to all the vets that have served and have protected our great nation And a special thanks to Hal three the Sea Wolves for doing what you did 24 hours a day to support and save troops on the ground Thanks to all of you and of course to Dennis Rowley thanks for coming on it's amazing to meet you and thanks for sharing your history and the history of the sea wolves with us can't say that enough thank you thanks to police law enforcement firefighters paramedics EMTs correctional

officers border patrol first responders of all kinds thanks for holding the line for us 24 hours a day here at the home front and to everyone else out there if you're feeling a little outgunned by the world think about think about those words scramble the sea wolves and then go out on the attack no matter the weather or the environment or the enemy fire you got problems going hot and get after it until next time this is echo and jaco out