Jocko Podcast - 181: "WE CAME TO DIE". Mayhem, Bravery, and Leadership "On The Ground" in Vietnam w/ John Stryker Meyer.

Episode Date: June 12, 2019

0:00:00 - Opening.  0:05:05 - John "Tilt" Stryker Meyer: "On the Ground" 2:37:57 - Aftermath and Lessons learned. 2:50:47 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 2:53:07 - Support: How to stay on THE PATH. 3:31:17 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 181. With Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Giddy Mao. We were in Cambodia alone with no fixed wing aircraft. Sow's eyes were as big as saucers. I told Bubba to give me a Claymore mine with a five second fuse.

I gave Bubba and fuck the move quick signal. As we moved back to the LZ, I stayed at the rear of the formation with Sal and hastily, with sow hastily covering our tracks. We'd only gone a short distance when Sao hissed Boku V-C, Boku-V-C. I could see the Piff helmets in the distance coming from the south. I radioed the Green Hornet's C&C helicopter and told them to return with their gunships

and to pick us up at the primary L-Z ASAP. C&C said they'd have assets on site in 10 minutes or less. Now, even 10 minutes seemed like a lot. time Tuan and I fired our M 79 as two high bursts which slowed the NVA down for a few seconds sow open fire shooting single single shots and moving backwards no longer bothering to cover our tracks I yelled to Bubba to move out at double time the race for life was on sow and saw and saw hissed a hip and pointed north damn there were pith helmets and NVA

forms coming at us from the north to and at a dead run. Sao and I placed a Claymore behind a tree, pulled the fuse lighter and ran. The NVA were now running and shooting wildly. We sprinted to catch up to the team as the Claymore exploded. The NVA kept on charging. Sao quickly placed his Claymore in front of a tree and ran while Twan and I provided covering fire. We sprinted toward our team as the second Claymore detonated. We felt the blast on our backs as we ran.

As Fok and Bubba pushed toward the LZ, HIP, Twan, Sau, and I fired back using the immediate action drills the entire team had practiced for hours on end. Twan's M79 rounds were deadly effective. Those combined with my M79 rounds and the Car 15 fire from HIP and Sao temporarily star stalled the hard charging NVA troops.

We reached the LZ quickly in comparison to how cautiously we had exited it. As the team set up a hasty perimeter, HIP placed another Claymore in the path of the NVA that were charging us from the south. To the north, Bubba rigged a Claymore with a contact detonator on a tripwire. As the tide of Pith helmets flowed toward us, Bubba and I opened fire with our M79s, and Sow and Hip opened up on full auto with their car 15s More NVA emerged from the smoke of the M79

High explosive rounds and tripped Bubba's Claymore That's when the first Green Hornet gunship arrived I popped a smoke canister and directed a gun run to the west of our perimeter Within seconds the gunship roared in front of our perimeter Shredding the NVA ranks slowing them down for a few seconds The Green Hornet's firepower was incredible. Finally, the Green Hornet slick that inserted us into the target area arrived on the LZ as close to our position as possible, with his left door facing us, the nose pointing north or northwest. Fortunately, the Air Force had made it to us in less than 10 minutes.

The relentless NVA kept coming after us. As Twan and I each unleashed one more M79, high explosive round at the NVA, bubble-legged. the team toward the Air Force Huey we always had an American lead the team's approach to an American helicopter To avoid any confusion in regard to South Vietnamese team members on ST Idaho I fired the last Claymore as the wave of NVA troops got in front of it The last Claymore blast gave me a few precious seconds To make it to the Huey and that right there is another glimpse Into the insanity

that John Stryker Meyer, known as Tilt, lived through as a Special Forces soldier in Vietnam, a recon team leader for MacV. Sogg studies and observation group command and control. And if you have not listened to podcast 180 yet, then go listen to it. Tilt was on that podcast. And as soon as he walked out of the studio, I knew that I needed him to come back as quickly as possible. And I asked him and he graciously agreed and here he is once again John Stryker Meyer tilt. Good evening, sir. Good evening.

Yeah, you know you kind of mentioned that that one operation right there when you were out there facing three divisions. After you got fat, dumb and happy on Thanksgiving Day with a big meal, then you guys rolled out into the field, right? Indeed. And then, so how did that operation go down? You guys got inserted. How did you end up in that situation

where you're running away, putting five-second fused Claymore's face in the enemy? What led up to that? Well, we had a briefing the night before, and they were hyper-concerned because the three NVA divisions, 30,000 men, were MIA, literally. And the CIA, DIA, whoever else is out there

had lost contact. So that night, myself and the CEO and S3 went over the maps, latest reports, all the intel reports. We were up until after midnight. So they came to you and said, hey, we're missing 30,000 men, three divisions of NVA. The first, the third, and seventh NBA. And we've got the CIA looking.

We've got the DIA. We've got spy planes and all that stuff. We can't find them. So then they come to you. Yeah. Okay. And you're like, cool, we got this. Well, yeah.

And at the time, I was still a spec 4 in E4. So, and I hadn't met the CEO yet. So the first thing was, he looks at me, he says, you're an E4. This is an E8, E9 billet, what, WTF? I go, look, sir, long story short, I said, look, I've run a bunch of missions up north. We're here TDI. How can I help you? And he settled down.

Then we were up all night looking at those intel reports. And then they also had pictures that were from 70,000 feet. We had never seen anything like that. My mom was a piano teacher, and one of her students' dad worked on lenses for aircraft to shoot from 70,000 feet. He talked to me about when I was a young kid. I go, oh, that's really cool. Well, now I knew what he was working on and why he couldn't really talk about it much. But that was the first time the SR-7s would use overflights.

Got it. And I said, where the hell these come from? It was like, this is mind-boggling. You used to have seen, you know, little pictures close by, people smile, but for 70,000 feet, we had a good estimate as to where they might be. And they said, we can't tell you this stuff. Shut up. You haven't seen it.

And so we put it all together. Let's try this area. And we went in, we're only on the ground, a short while, maybe an hour or so. And then all hell broke loose. And did you, didn't you, you stumbled upon their camp or like a camp that they had recently left? Yeah, well, they have, they would have waste. stations along the way. And so we walked into them before. We found some, but never with fire is burning. The one still had a pot on it. And so, and when we got back, Sal and guys estimated

that one division that just left, and their point, their tail ommet was what came back at us. And the other from the north was just moving into the base camp. Oh, little sandwich. Yeah. Little NVA sandwich. There we go. We were to, we were to bologna. Your basic balloon. Yeah. Did you go into that one real heavy in terms of, is that, because if I remember correctly from the book,

how common was it that you carried the five-second fuses on the Claymores? We started doing that a month earlier, earlier part of November, I mean, because we had a couple of targets where the numbers were just incredible when they came out of it. So I always wanted to have those just in case. So here we took a few extra fuse. John had his fuses and Sal and fuck.

They all knew how to work those. And so here I said because we saw how open the area was. We were used to triple canopy up north. So now we're in Cambodia. You could see three or 400 yards away, maybe 500 yards, WTF times two. And then you see the Pithelma's running at you. It's like, whoa.

How does it feel when you see the NBA in an open run towards your position? arms yeah good Lord it was it was an experience it I'll take it to the grave with me that's a nightmare is your worst one how did you did you did you in a situation like that you're you've got I mean thousands of potentially thousands of enemy soldiers some of them are both blatantly running towards your position what are you thinking in the back of your mind are you thinking hey we're not going to get out of this or you just I know for me in my experiences, which are nothing close to that, but I was always just thinking about getting my job done. Like, okay, this is the best thing I can do right now. Hey, we need to put some people over here.

Let's get some machine gunners up on the roof. I would never get to a point where I was, or maybe I didn't have enough time or I wasn't smart enough to think about what big consequences were coming. But when you see, when you see those helmets running towards you at poured arms, you got to be thinking this isn't looking real good for, this isn't looking real good for tilt and the boys. Well, no, I had my first jaco moment, which was the good news is we found. these fuckers. The bad news is they're coming to kill my ass. Billy it's like well I'm glad we did our homework last night. This really worked out well, maybe a little bit too well. Yeah. And just thank God for the green hornets. Man,

if they didn't get back there, it's just the only quest of the time. And they could, you would, you would keep them on station generally for like 10 or 15 minutes. Well, this is Cambodia. Everything was different there. First we had no, uh, no fixed wings. All we had was the helicopters, but they were the Greenhorn's Air Force. At that state, at that point in time, November 68, they were, they had the state-of-the-art hughies. They were the fastest, they could carry more loads and their mini-guns. I think they had mounted mini-guns that they could handle manually. Some of the early ones we saw were mounted. And so the helicopters would have limited maneuverability, but the one of the Air Force was just really on top of the

Well, that's what came in. And when they came in with their mini gun runs, that really bought us a couple of valuable seconds. Seconds. They were coming. And you could see them. It's just like, whew. And I was looking at some pictures of you yesterday,

and you guys still had 20-round mags. Oh, yeah. Which you load out to 18 rounds because you didn't want to compress the spring too much and cause a jam. Right, and we would have run over your mother to get one of those 30-round jobs. Oh, man.

Oh, yeah. It was different. So we always had at least 600 plus rounds, all in the magazines, and a couple extra bandoliers just in case. And you guys did make it out that time, obviously. Well, yeah, and then, you know, here too. When we left, the chopper pulls out,

and as we're lifting off, the NVA come out of the jungle, the thin jungle, and it was muddy. It had rained a day before, and these guys are coming out. They're at Port Arms, and they're trying to stop, and the mud comes up from their boots

as they're trying to stop and come down to Port Arms so me and a doorgunner and I forget it was sour fuck we're just getting these guys and they just stop like a cartoon and they go back this is what happened

and just blew these guys back and the mud from their boots is going up into the props as they're trying to stop and they hit them and they just go back into the jungle and then we got the hell out of there it strikes me as strange

because as I keep reading about the NBA well I mean we know that these, you know, this is an insurgency. These guys are looking to not fight when they don't have to, right? That's why it always surprises me in your stories, how determined they were. Like those guys, hey, look, okay, the Americans, they're getting on the helicopter, we'll let them go, whatever. We'll come back next time. You know, we don't want to die right today because we don't have to.

We can wait. We can wait 10 years. We can wait 20 years. You know, we're going to be here forever. For them to have that kind of determination where they were just common and common and common and common. And like you said on the last podcast, literally statutes. literally stacking up bodies so they could get to you. That would have been just a crown jewel to capture a little special forces team.

Oh, yeah. They had to kill an American award. So if they confirmed that they killed one of us or got the body of a dead body, they would get their killed an American award and they would get a bonus of some sort and they'd be world heroes up north for the rest of their lives. Awesome. Okay, so that book, and we talked about it on the last podcast, and I said it last time.

We touched less than 10% of the book. The stories are completely insane. And you can get that book on Amazon. But that's not the only book you've written. You've written another one. Another book is called On the Ground. And this book, again, it's just the same level of insanity. It feels strange for me to be sitting here talking to you

because every time I read one of your stories, I'm like, how's this guy making it out of this? this. There's, you, you kick this one off with an interesting story. These guys, one of the, it's, you're not with them, but it's a recon team on the ground. A guy named Watkins is in charge. Pat Watkins. And they're set up on a road and they're doing a recon.

And I think they set up an ambush too, like an ambush to take out some troops. But they end up with this massive NVA convoy. And when I say massive, I mean massive. It takes hours to get by. and there's people and there's trucks and there's bulldozers and there's tanks. Yeah. And again, I got to point this out. So we're probably talking, you know, a thousand enemy soldiers at least that are patrolling by you for now.

For three hours, they're walking by you. And meanwhile, you've got a team of six guys, eight guys, something like that. Yeah, I think the winner was seven or eight. I forget. But yeah. And they're monitoring this. And Pat was familiar with all the Russian tanks. so he knew what the Russian tanks were

and he had it all the intel together and just one of those another night and Sogg Another night in Sogg So they're sitting there waiting And they eventually They go by And eventually

Now one of the One of the Indid soldiers That was working alongside Wackens One of the members of the team Was named Wrong R-O-N-G And he comes up After this convoy goes by

He comes up and this is what happens I'm going to the book here Wrong said he'd been watching the road traffic just like Watkins and it had been taken, taken, as taken with it as he was, meaning he was lost in like, oh my God,

I can't believe there's so much stuff. While he was staring at all the vehicles passing by, a hand had reached out and given his arm a shake. A mountain yard soldier, one of those the NVA had pressed into unwilling service, said, it's your time for guard duty. Is that close to the enemy or what?

That's nuts. Oh, yeah. Completely nuts. The mountain yards, which you guys called yards, the Nungs, the South Vietnamese, even sometimes former NVA soldiers. What was it like, who did you mainly work with, what were the differences between the different groups, their different ethnic personalities? And I know we didn't talk about it last time you talked about in the book,

but those different ethnicities didn't always get along. Oh, no. Especially when it came to playing poker, apparently. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Because my first, like the first few days at Fubai, they had a poker game that went awry, and the Cambodian lost, he goes to his room, gets a fried grenade,

comes back and dumps it on the Montagnars. So we had an instant fireflight in the compound. And, you know, you always, going through the training, you turn about the different groups. Well, at that case, we had the Cambodians, Montigniards, Nungs, and my team was South Vietnamese,

which included at least four guys that came south in 54. when there was an 18-month truce where anybody in the north could go south, when thousands did, the Navy had a special operation where they had ships going up to Hanoi and shipping thousands of people south.

Nobody went north. Nobody wanted to be up with the commies. But we had four of them on my team. They were just outstanding troops. And so that was Fubai. And his team was the brew, which was the lowest of the Montiard tribes. Cute.

They couldn't throw a handgun. any words of shit, but fearless. And they hate the North Vietnamese. That's one of the key points that you talk about in the book is how much, you know, what the North Vietnamese had done to the Montaneyards and how much they fiercely hated them and how fiercely loyal they were to you guys. Oh, yeah. Amazing troops.

And they would just fight to the end. And there's more than one guy who, like a one zero who had a, we call, we call it. called them effectively, our little people. The little people said, I'll take a bullet for you. That's how dedicated they were. And they proved that over and over again. Over and over again. Now, some teams had troubles, but we never had it.

Like my team or with the Frenchmen, most majority of teams, the little people took care of vetting their own. So like when Idaho was wiped out, Sal and HEP went out and recruited. And they were young kids, 15 years old we brought on the team. But they vetted him, and we never worried about them.

So we didn't have to worry about the friendly fire or what they call today, with the blue fire? Yeah, they call it, they call it... Friendly fire. Yeah, they have another word for it too. I can't think of what it is. Because friendly fire is like a mistake, right? Right.

What we're talking about is when, you know... One of your own. Yeah, one of your Taliban forces or one of your local forces is actually a Taliban person in turns on you or is actually a... a Mottie militia guy and turns on you. So those things, those things are scary.

Very. Because he build up trust and all of a sudden the guy turns on you. Yeah, because early on, some of our A camps had trouble with that. With the Montanayorat that turned, who had been more loyal to the communist for some reason. But then there was others that had issues because they like special forces, but they were pissed off working with the South Vietnamese. And they didn't, they were just, they don't kill.

They would have to kill South Vietnamese. our allies or the colonies up north. And sometimes you had like, guys, don't kill our allies. Not today, please. But I never had that. My team was all South Vietnamese. Ah, man. So one of the other crazy parts of this book that you open with or you start one of the early chapters is this attack on F-O-B-4, which was just sound completely, completely,

horrible and here's a quote from the book the entire compound this is after this attack happens the entire compound was now a swirling battleground with dozens of small but ready deadly dire firefights in progress it was difficult to tell the scantily clad americans and indigenous personnel from the enemy and there was no command coordination just a lot of individuals struggling against uncertain and overwhelming odds the air was filled with enough chaos to Overload the senses screams shouts bullets dust smoke the smell of cordite burning wood rubber and fuel and lastly the smell of seared flesh And this this attack resulted in 17 special forces soldiers were killed and I don't know the number of of indigenous forces that were killed

But this sounded like just a complete I mean it's obviously it was a big win for the enemy and I know it was a What was your perspective on all that? Where were you when that happened? I was safely ensconced in FOB1 because FOB4 had opened at the end of 67 and at the base of a mountain, and there's a whole lot of political reasons

why they're at the base of a mountain. But anyways, they were there. They had a test attack by the Via Kong right around Christmastime of 67, and on August 23rd, after the dust settled, the men who were there, like Pat Watkins, estimated that that attack in December was a test to see what. Could they have minimal defenses up, minimal wire.

The internal security force was riddled with Viacom. And they planned this attack for over a year. The sapper attack with the NVA sappers, as well as Viacong, highly trained sappers, and the conventional troops that went in, just putting a loincloths and carrying a weapon or a satchel charge. and hand grenades. And so I was at Fubai.

They hit after midnight. There's always a discussion about what time they hit. And since then, we've had a military intelligence officer that came back and one of the people that we said was 17, it's actually 16, but still the highest number of green berets killed in one battle in our special forces history. And fortunately, we had a recon team up on the hill on Marble Mountain that night that took out.

took out the mortars because the enemy were just dropping mortars off the mountain until they camp on top of everything else because they don't care about friendly fire speaking of friendly fire the enemy doesn't care no they don't care if they're dropping motors on their own people as long as they're killing some of their enemy as well and some of them had their bandanas and said we came here to die and they did what did that what what were the repercussions that went through your community after that happened everybody You know, it's one thing to talk about being hit by an enemy force at night. They fight when they want to fight.

That's a classic example of them doing it. They planned it for over a year. They even came in and took over the indigenous mess hall for a final briefing in the base that night before they launched the attack. And so that's how well planned it was. So they went in to the indigenous camp, the friendly camp, and gave their final briefing for the attack inside of the friendly camp. Yep. And they had two of our loyal indigenous troops

that saw something suspicious. When they went up, the NVA killed them right away and left their bodies lying there. And so it was really well planned. They knew to camp. We had a promotion board. So all of the, at that time, there were six FOBs, one through six.

This was FOB four in Denang. And so all of the people up for promotion came in that day. Most of them stayed that night. On top of that, they had monthly command and control briefing. So every CO, as well as the S3 or the XO from each of the FOBs was all at FOB4. And then we had a command and control element that was based at the Denang Air Base. And they had just moved on to base.

So it had increased population, and they knew it. And that's the way they planned it. And they planned it on a night when there's no moon. Got to always respect your enemy. Always. And then we always carried a weapon no matter where we went. There's one thing to be like F would be one. We had a good security there.

But even then, you don't know. Because the Viacom would come and we found mortar markers on the roof of the clubhouse. And they had come in and walked it out. There's part of their Viacom would come in and help do whatever it was in base, but they were also there marking targets for a few. mutual mortar attacks on our on our compound yeah that would happen that my first deployment to Iraq I was in Baghdad and we would they would occasionally roll up guys that had their GPSs you know the little contractors guys that did everything

from empty out the porta potty's there was guys that cut hair these were just you know there's there was civilians Iraqi civilians that worked on the base and occasionally they'd get rolled up they'd look at their phone or look at their what do they carrying they'd have a GPS with them and sure enough they're out there trying to figure out where you what where's a good place to drop a mortar. I actually like kicked all the contractors

out of our compound completely. And that's something that I had heard from the Vietnam vets was like, nope, you don't, you don't know who's who. You just don't let them in. And so when I showed up,

we actually moved the porta potty's outside of our compound. We had to go outside if we wanted to use. They were still in American's area, but they were not inside of our compound. So there was no locals inside our compound. at all zero. That's what we did when I showed up.

And that's why I did it because I had heard, hey, look, there's going to be people that will be gathering intelligence on you. If they're in the compound, you can't vet every single civilian that's going to come out there. The contractors, scary. It is.

Yeah, I was, that's, that is, the chapter that you, you actually cover it in two chapters because it's such a horrible incident. But that's an incredible read to see what those guys went through. Oh, yeah. How many, did you just go interview?

people, how did you get all that information? Well, several of our guys, MFOB1, were there that night. So on the 24th, after, by noontime, everything had settled down. They had, you know, they had failed in their attack. We had control the camp. A relief force from FOB1 went down, led by Colonel Barr, Lieutenant Colonel Barr, and they went through and cleaned up any of the left pockets of enemy soldiers. And there was a POWW camp right next to.

to us. And Nisley, there was an effort to free the 500-so POWs that we're going to break loose to come in to further help overrun our base. But a couple of people made a key effort along that line to the north to stop the pending escape of the NVA there. Don't have been a tipping point in the wrong direction. That's a good one to miss. So anyway, in answer to your question. We had a lot of things in my mind. And then we closed that for B-1 in January. I went south.

So several of the guys that had performed that night or survived it, we're all there. So I talked to them, just had mental notes. And then when I worked on the book, we came back. And I did a piece for Soldier of Fortune. I usually wrote under a Nome Day Plume, and we did a first story written about that back in the day. And the Soldier of Fortune printed back in the 80s sometime

or early 90s. So I used that and then build on it. And then John Peters, the co-author on that book, on the ground, he was there at night. And he was in the Hooch. He and Doug Gottshall, S.F, were too drunk from that night, like many of the people that were there. But the young Bill Brick charged out of Hooch.

It was gunned down immediately because they had machine gun position set up. So anybody came out, they would gun him down. and that one element that was up on top of the mountain there and there was one American with multiple is that right there was one American? No, there's two. Ed Ames was up there. He was the one zero

and the Larry Trimble was actually the one doing a lot of the operational stuff because Ames was monitoring the radio and it was he, Larry and his people that took out the mortars that night or the caster rate would have been much higher. And then their indigies said, hey, we're going back down.

The next day. The next day. Because Ed Ames went out. The king came in and lifted him out. They put it in a replacement who sprained his ankle or something, getting off the helicopter, so he could not move. So he worked the radio. But Larry was the guy taking care of everything on top. And, yeah, so the Indies said they wanted to go down the day.

And Larry said, well, you might run into ambushes going down Marble Mountain. Because what we didn't know was underneath Marble Mountain, there was layers of stories. they had hospitals down there, Viacong, training grounds, everything else, which we learned about years later, right along with the Buddhist monks that were all down there. They co-o-existed peacefully. And so, yeah, they went down,

and Larry, for a while, was by himself up there. They got into a firefight. Yeah, those guys get a firefight. They come back. Yeah. But when they left, he's up there by himself. He's just, hey, I got this. He's the lone ranger.

Lone Ranger going to defend this thing until he's dead. That was his attitude. That's Larry. Freaking unbelievable. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. You got to get this book and read these parts. They're epic.

Epic heroism. I mean, and crazy. And incredible lessons learned as well. And I know you and I were just talking about lessons learned and how easily lessons get forgotten in the military. And it happens in any organization, but in the military for sure, you know, because guys are going there in a command for two or three years

or maybe four years and then there are somewhere else. And then someone else comes in and different experiences and no one agrees on what's right and what's wrong and the lessons are gone. You forget them. So these books right here capture some incredibly important lessons for anyone on the battlefield or even close to it. I want to get down to kind of the end of your first tour here.

And I'm going to the book. When I, when one April, 1969 arrived, I was a conflicted man. The end of my tour was slated for 27. April so far I had avoided the short timers attitude because after all it was Vietnam and we were engaged in guerrilla warfare across the fence Nonetheless, I couldn't believe I was still alive I looked forward to going back to the world and yet I felt incredibly guilty about leaving Sow hepp and Fok and the other men at CCN behind which is CCN is what they renamed FOP4 before I

believed in the SF mission, but how long could RT Idaho go on without a casualty? We hadn't lost a man to hostile fire since May 1968 when the previous incarnation lost six men in Laos. RT Idaho had run a lot of missions, been in a lot of firefights. It wasn't a stay-behind team that schemed to remain in camp. I was alive thanks in large part to the skills and courage of Hib, Tuan, and the other Vietnamese team members, as well as to the courage and flying skills of the Vietnamese King B pilots and the American pilots, the Marines and Scarface, the Judge and the Executioner, as well as TAC Air pilots who always responded to our calls for help. We were alive because the recon gods had smiled on the reassembled R.T. Idaho.

Somehow the magic elixir of trust, training, instinct, guts, timing, and God's good grace had fallen into place. There were other things that were collectively wearing on me toward the end of my first tour of duty. By April 1969, both Lynn Black and I were frustrated with having enemy soldiers shooting us out of so many targets as the helicopters approached LZs for landing. And when we weren't in the field, we found our... RT Idaho getting frequently assigned to guard duty atop marble mountain because black and I had continually Butted heads with the rems to add insult to injury There conveniently were never any choppers available to airlift us to the top we had to hump all of our supplies ourselves Which was still a dicey business in the light of all the VC activity in the village to the south of the mountain and that in the caves deep inside it

We always moved up Marble Mountain on full alert on one on One such trip, Sal was training Hung to run point. Hung earned his pay that day as he found and deactivated more than a dozen booby traps, including a Claymore mine that had a pressure released firing device on it. So you're sort of downtime, like, hey, we're back in camp. We're just going to pull a little easy duty here, just stay on some guard duty. Oh, we got to go up to Marble Mountain. Oh, there's no one to take us up there.

So we're going to have to patrol up there. and you're going up there and you find on your way up there more than a dozen booby troughs. Oh, yeah. That's trying to get to your guard duty. Yeah, I guess that could wear on you a little bit. That was a significant day. We didn't sleep well that night. And so this Marble Mountain, how long was the patrol to get there from base?

Well, it was close by, and we would usually walk around to the south side of the mountain, and there were stairs that you'd go up before you get to the train. because it was so steep to get to the top that there's only a certain number of ways you could walk up. And we, you know, you always try to alter how you go, but there's only so many times you can alter it. And so that day, the way we went, Sal and Hung really earned their pay.

I mean, and they fell all these damn things. But that had been me. Now, Lynn was a little bit more sharp and keen-eyed to me. But that had been me, I would have been hamburger meat on that first Claymore. And so that stuff, like I said, it's wearing on you. Obviously, it would wear on anyone. But that's the end of your tour.

You get done with that tour. And we touched on this a little bit on the last time. But I wanted to go a little bit deeper on it. You're coming back to America after your first tour in Vietnam. How old are you? Let's see, 69, 23. 23 years old. And when you get back, again, you touched on this a little bit.

But they assign you to. like a signal company, meaning you're not an operational guy and you're in with some, and you're just coming out of Vietnam, and you're hearing people are saying like, hey, what do you, you know, was it even, was it even,

there's guys that are actively avoiding going to Vietnam. Oh yeah, this is the 10th Special Forces Group, and they've been in Germany since 52, and they had, they were actively involved in a Cold War, And those guys earned their pay there. In fact, one of the first books just came out on Dead A, which was there in the Cold War. But this is a special forces unit. So companies A through D were active.

E, because of my MOS, comma. Oh, because you're a radio man. That's a radio man. They stuck me there. And we had four or five patoons. And there are new officers. They're butter bars, like right out of O. OCS. They're young and they treated everybody like was basic training. And my first thing was,

excuse me, this is an SF unit, even though it's signal. So we had- So the signal, the officers inside that platoon, they're not, they're not SF guys. They're like communications officers? You know what? I'm not even sure. I just know they're young and dumb and not respected. And then we had the other platoon swords, each one was fat and out of shape and had avoiding. going to Vietnam and was proud of it and made fun of me and a couple of guys from D Company because we weren't smart enough to figure how to get out of going to NOM. I'm going like, wait a minute, what are you wearing on your head? And so we had some difficult moments dealing with those guys.

And so we had routine training. The Cylent Company with trucks and all this stuff to go and do these things. I said, whenever we do one of these little practice runs for a weekend or a mission, we will win because we're going to get out of here and let everybody else do the KP and stuff and that just pissed everybody off all the more and I pushed our young guys

and pushed them hard in base because we do these training missions you're out there three or four days oh this is just commo but the way we did it I can't even tell the details now because I just hated it but we won

we were the first ones back to the base we had the most signal contact all the criteria we met and we beat the fat rents now and so you're back where where were you stationed at that point Fort Debs Massachusetts so then you got it I mean some people that weren't ever in the military don't realize this but even when you're in the military when you're back in America you go and interact with normal civilian you know you go to restaurants

you go to bars you live a normal life except for your job you know whatever the hours you got to work your job then you're living how was that transition like now you're just going out for a pizza on a Thursday night. Now you're going out to have some beers on a Friday night or a Saturday night. How was that transition? It was difficult because actually we didn't transition. Basically, I hung out mostly with the SF guys up there because it's Massachusetts. Didn't know much about the small towns.

And I bought a 442 W30, had to get a job just to pump gas on weekends just to get extra cash, so hopefully to be able to pay for the insurance. Did you buy it brand new? No, used. Even used. Oh, yeah. That thing was expensive, huh? Oh, it could go.

I blew it up on the turnpike at 130 miles an hour, but it was a great car in between. And so I'm working. And what was your side job? Oh, pumping gas. Oh, okay. They had a local shell station at one of the little towns outside of Fort Devons, and the guy was a, he was a World War II vet, and he had put up a sign. I bought gas and there's a sign to help want.

I said, hey, I need cash. Can I work for you on weekends or if I get a day off? He said, yeah, come on in. So I was highly trained. I could do oil changes. I could grease them up. And it was fun. So here you were, Green Beret, Special Forces, Vietnam,

just got done with your first tour, and you're pumping gas on the weekends. That had to be a little bit of like a tough thing to swallow. It was, but you know, we swallowed it. Yeah. That's like I got to survive and at the time I was just, I still had a sweet thing down south. Okay. And so she was dealing some issues. I'm up there. This whole thing's falling apart. And Boston, Boston was so anti-military. I mean, it's just peace freaks galore. I went to town twice. I never went back because it was, they could tell that we were in the military because our hair was still shorter than the average hippie in Boston.

not a good time. So we just stayed with our guys. There were bars. We had a few engagements in the bars, but yeah, I was glad to get out of there. And you ended up getting in trouble for some of those engagements in the bars. Yes, we did. I'm told that the MPs came by cleared base the day before they got there, and I can, that's all I know. Taking the Fifth Amendment on that one.

This is the SOG operation that will remain secret. Indeed. So you were a little bit on the lamb. You were a little bit on the run. Yes. And so you run to this woman in D.C. Is that where she was? Oh, yeah, at the Pentagon.

There was a woman in charge of S.F. orders for Southeast Asia. Her name is Billy Alexander. She's one of our saints. Yeah. Patron saints. There was a woman that ran the officers that detailed the officers in the SEAL teams for a long, long time. I want to see she did it for 40-something years. Really?

And, yeah, I mean, it was the exact same thing. Like, if you knew her, And she was always great to me. And I mean, she was very nice to me and she took great care of me, probably because I was just lucky enough to have some senior people that knew me and, you know, put in a good word. But she was always very nice to me. But I saw what happened to some guys that maybe she didn't like so much. It was rough. So it sounds like, you know, you showed up with some flowers.

And a bottle of wine is she like? And you went, this is independent, in the puzzle palace at the Pentagon? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, same thing. Yeah, same thing. Yeah, no, this woman, and like I said, this woman was always super nice, but she wielded a lot of power, you know, inside the SEAL officer community. Wow.

Because if she didn't like you, well, she was right in your orders. Oh, yeah. And if she liked you, then, you know, it was like, you know, and if you were neutral, then what, you know, she's going to do what she's going to do. But, yeah, it sounded like Mrs. Billy Alexander was the same type of thing. Oh, yeah, I drove down all night, got there right in the morning, the Pentagon opened, walked in, this is before any metal detectors, walked in, asked the guy where she was, went down, gave her the wine, the flowers,

please give me orders, came back at the end of the day, drove back all night. How many people were just going all the way to the Pentagon to try and get orders back to Vietnam? Not many. I'm told not many. But there were some. There were other SF guys that really felt more comfortable, and they wanted to be there. And there's, I wish I could line up the stories, but there's like Billy Wall and others that have gone to her over the years and gotten her assignments they wanted.

She took care of SF. Yeah, that's, I've told the story the other day. I was kind of, there's an, there's, so there's, that woman who's the civilian that handles the detailing. But then there's a, there's a seal officer that would kind of work with her side by side. And he would get rotated out every couple years. Well, when 9-11 happened, I knew that guy. And he was a, he was a guy that I had worked for. He was an officer and he was a great guy.

And I had a lot of respect for him. And we got along very well. And as soon as 9-11 happened, I called him and said, hey, you know, I was going to college at the time. I said, sir, please get me out of college. Send me back to a team right now. I don't need to college. I'll finish it online or whatever. I said, just please get me back to a team.

And, you know, he said, listen, this war is going to last a long time. But I was having a conversation with him a few months ago with him and his wife, actually. And I was saying, oh, yeah, remember when I called you and I asked you to please send me? And he said, he said, everyone called him. And it made me feel like that's pretty awesome. Like it wasn't like, you know, I guess in my mind I didn't think I was special. But in my mind, I thought, you know, I really wanted to go. So did everybody else.

Every other seal that wasn't in an Ad-a-Seal team, everyone wanted to go. When the war happened, everyone wanted to go do their part, you know. The espri decor. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And he was right. The war lasted a lot longer than any of us thought it would. So you get your orders back to Vietnam.

What did you do with the car? Well, I had to get rid of 4-4-2, traded in, got a little F-85, three-speed on the It's a survival vehicle, right? And so I just parked that, and dad took care of it when I was gone. And so I went back, I just went home and said, hey, I'm going back to NOM. I had no leave time because I burned it all up previously. And so I went home and broke my mom's heart and told Dad, I'm going back. My sister ran me to the airport the next day.

And then we're heading back to Vietnam. Yeah, your mom must have been. What did your dad think? Well, you know, dad was, I'll support your son. And that's to, he was, to his credit, he never had an opinion, never asked him for an opinion. Because he had a, he had deferment during the war, family deferment, because he had to run the family business. And then my uncle flew over the hump. So we had family service.

But he says, good luck. If you need anything, let us know. And then mom was just like, she's a little bit more emotional, but tough old farm, girl from central Jersey, the Dutch farm girl, you know. And even then, did they know anything about what your last deployment was like? No. No, we never talked about it. Just glad you're home. Yep, glad to be home. They had no idea what kind of situations you had been in.

No, we really couldn't talk about it. And like, I don't know if I mentioned this before or not on air, but, you know, many years later, my dad came up to me and said, you know, I finally read across the fence. And it says, now I know why. this guy came by and took our trash. So he said, yeah, so they got to notice guy. He's a tall black guy. He'd come by and pick up our trash.

So he had to be from the FBI because they were checking my trash to see if I wrote anything that was a violation of the agreement that we signed in Denang, the 20-year agreement. You won't talk about it, it won't write about it, and they checked on you.

So this guy picked up the trash board at once because dad recognized it. He saw him down at the a post office once near the FBI office. So he figured, oh, an FBI guy's checking on my Johnny. Oh, man. That's a... Sidebar.

Yeah, no, that's kind of crazy that they're putting all that effort to do that. And yet, you're out pumping gas. That's crazy to me. Yeah, yeah. But I gave a great lewd job, though, buddy. You came, you could have dropped the grease you needed. Yeah, that's all. Awesome.

Yeah. That's crazy. You know, like, that's, that's, that's, I guess when I'm older now, like, you know, when I was a kid, I worked at fast food restaurants.

You know what I mean? Yeah. And now I think, man, I would not want to do that right now. You know what the funny thing was? I had a little 25, like a little brownie 25, always carried my pocket.

This is Boston. There's still some people that were like less than friendly up there. I said, I hope I get robbed. I just want to kill me a robber. But, no, it didn't happen.

Well, what did happen? We got you back to Vietnam. Indeed. So you get back to Vietnam, going back to the book here, the casualty rates for SAG recon teams were the highest for any unit in Vietnam. We all had our close calls, and thus each of us was given ample opportunity for the truth of this observation to be incised on his soul. None perhaps more so than the young, hard-charging 1-0 of RT Michigan. Sergeant Eldon Barswell.

No one who ever met him doubted his professionalism or determination. He was not only meticulous when preparing his team for a mission and a fearless leader went on the ground, but he also possessed a biting wit and an absolute intolerance when it came to fools and rems, fools and ramps being a redundancy to his way of thinking.

So this was interesting because you talk about Barswell and in the story that you tell, they're out on an op and he finds a vest, an AK-47 vest, and he wants it, and he wants the AK. He just found him laying around in a bunker or something. So he puts on the vest, and he gives the AK to one of his,

one of his indig guys. And then he ends up getting shot in the chest, and that vest actually saved his life because it hit one of the magazines that was in the vest. Correct. Crazy story. And what was interesting, so when I was in,

I was in Germany, in 1998, I was stationed at Naval Special Warfare Unit 2, just outside of Stuttgart. And my boss, who is the commander of Naval Special Warfare Unit 2, he obviously directed to the guy that was in charge of Special Operations Command Europe. And my boss, who I had a ton of respect for, who's an incredible guy, a great guy, and taught me a ton, he would tell me, hey, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. Commander, this guy, he's awesome. His name is Barswell. He would tell me stories about him. He just absolutely loved Barswell and talked about him with the highest respect possible.

And it was awesome. And I mean, I knew about Barswell. I mean, I basically learned about him initially from him. That's amazing. And then later on, you know, I would read about him. Small world. And what a, you know, a great guy he was and what an epic soldier he was. And what a great example.

And, you know, so many people say he's the. Like one of the foremost examples of how you'd want to be as a soldier just a great guy and I was lucky enough to have a little degree of connection to To have my boss work for him when and he must have been he must have been a two star at the time I think it was a two star billet at the time. So there he was and I think he did 40 something years almost 40. Yeah Couple months shy. Yeah So that's pretty awesome to to to read about barswell. Oh yeah? You get to this point here where you're talking about how crazy. And I often try to explain how in combat unexpected.

Things happen. Things that you can't make it up. Things happen are so crazy. And you've got a section in here where you're talking about Lynn Black, who's, you're running mate for a while, for a long time. Yeah.

Then when I left, he took over the team. He ran it. And when I came back, I went on a team. Then he, we brought up to speed, what the AO had changed in five months.

Yeah. And then we took turns and then they said, hey, you guys got too much experience. So Lynn went to did some more snooping and poop and then I took over Idaho again. And this is when he's solo on the ground. Or you're not there. He's not solo, but he's with his team. He's in Laos and they're on patrol. They're deep in enemy territory, which is just like just the way you guys rolled.

And he, you know, the team starts to hear people following them. And now they start, you know, stepping up their pace. They're trying to move. They're trying to do things to disguise their trail and all that. And finally, they really like, okay, we're definitely getting followed. After two days. Yeah, after two days of being followed. Yeah.

And so here we go, going back to the book. However, before Black could give the word to change course, the noises suddenly returned. Only now it sounded as though a large number of enemy soldiers was headed straight for them, and the troops were not in the least trying to hide their movement. This is it. Fought Black, the trackers have linked with reinforcements, and they're about to try and overwork. run us he immediately told the team to head for the ridge form a line and get ready for a fight claymore mines were putting quickly into place and black dug out the radio handset in

anticipation of calling covey black was totally convinced he would soon be declaring a prairie fire emergency back when black was with r t alabama he had faced a he'd faced massive frontal assault waves by determined nva so he knew what to expect and he knew what to expect and he knew knew what needed to be done. Having moved the team up onto the ridgeline, he knew he had the tactical advantage. If the enemy wanted a bloody fight, and it certainly sounded as though they did, the NBA could charge uphill and RT Idaho would give it to them. Everyone had placed their weapons on full automatic and begun unbending the metal pins on their

hand grenades. The ends were bent in order to keep the pins from accidentally being pulled should the ring and hang up on a branch or something else. high explosive rounds in the M79 were replaced with rounds containing large buck shot capable of blasting a devastating hole in any in the enemy's ranks with everything in place and ready RT Idaho faced the jungle and waited for whatever was coming the Frenchman caught sight of something approaching but the vegetation was such that he couldn't get a clean shot at it he figured it was someone moving in a crouch because it only stood about four feet off the ground he could

see other similarly poised figures behind it all moving noisely toward the team in a few more feet they would reach a point where the jungle thinned out and he'd figured he'd have a good shot at them like any recon man le tourneau had thought about such a moment the moment when an outnumbered team was forced to make a stand thus like all the other r t idaho members he was very tense but ready for anything anything that is but what stepped into the clearing he couldn't believe his eyes he found himself staring not an oriental gentleman in pith helmets armed with AK 47s but long-armed hairy reddish-orangeed creatures with the decidedly human features it was a small band of orangutangs probably a family of them they had been tracking the team out of natural

curiosity trying to figure out what these hairless apes were up to in their terror Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's probably the happiest monkeys they ever saw. Oh, yeah. Can you imagine? Yeah, yeah. For sure. I was in Sri Lanka and we got to see that. They would, they, you'd hear them coming and they would be moving through the trees and it was really cool. Yeah, just how, but they, yeah, you'd hear all this noise and it would be a bunch of monkeys coming through the trees and we had that. Surround you. Yeah. We got online. We were ready for the assaultants. It's like we got overrunned by monkeys. All right.

Now we're getting to the point where you, so that was, that was Lynn Black working on his own. And now we're getting when you return. When I returned to CCN at the end of October, 1969, I immediately reported to Sergeant Major John Hobbs and asked if I could rejoin R.T. Idaho. He said that LaTerno had just completed his tour and returned state side. There was an opening for an American. and I could fill it. But Lynn M. Black Jr. is still the one zero, and you two are both experienced one zeroes.

I reminded him that I'd been away for five months and needed some time to get back in the flow of things. I added, I'd be happy to serve as Black's 1-1 for a while because I respected his judgment. Now you go and meet with the team. As I approached, I saw Black and Sal leading the team away from the range. Once they caught sight of me, their faces lit up, and there was a rush of feelings, of greetings. As I shook Black's hand, the team surrounded us dancing about almost like children, and the good-natured taunts instantly began flowing hot and heavy. The gross insult being one of the most accepted ways a recon man can show affection.

I was subjected to a whole litany of them, aimed at everything from my intelligence to my sexual orientation. In the midst of it all, Black, totally cool as usual, asked if I was back on the team. Yes, Sergeant, I replied. I'm reporting for duty. I am your new one-one. I know more about the team, the A-O, and the bullshit in camp. Sorry, you know more about the team, the A-O, and the bullshit here in camp than I do. I want it Black to understand I was willingly putting myself under his command

and that my goal was not to challenge him, but to learn from him. A recon man who thinks he knows it all is a recon man headed for trouble. And if I could capture those, that attitude. right there and distill it among every person that's moving into a leadership position. Like this, the humility that you show here, the willingness to subordinate your own ego is like the best sign of a great leader when you check into a situation. You go, oh, you know what? I don't know everything.

And by the way, if I think I know everything, I'm wrong. And oh, there's someone that's been here for a while. Guess what? Cool. I got no problem working for you. I'm here to support. I'm here to look out for the team. I'm here to help the team win.

not here to look out for my own little agenda. So that was awesome. And that was Lynn Black. He's just an amazing man. And so I totally respected him and was glad that it worked out. Thanks to Billy Alexander, orders to cut, get over there pretty quick. And with Lynn, you know, he had done a tour of duty with the 173rd. And he lost a brother there.

And he still came back because he wanted to get his fair share of NBA dead just to take some personal revenge. And, you know, he had that mission where he came up against the 10,000 and survived amazing, one of our amazing heroes. And so, yeah, I respected him. And then later on we began, there's no SOP. The Sergeant Major Hobbs, he asked us to do an SOP. Yeah, that sounds like, that's something that we need to start doing the SEAL teams, too. There's another section in here where you start talking about, well, it appeared to me, And we were actually talking about this before we started recording. And that's when you go to meet the new commander.

And here we go back to the book. Because I hadn't met the CN Commander, I polished my jump boots to Spitshine, hoping they might make a positive impression when I met him. Later that afternoon, the call came down to meet him. I put on the last pair of starched fatigues I had in my possession, put on my new Green Beret and the Spitshined boots. So there you go. You're getting squared away.

And again, this is one of those things where you're in your second tour in Vietnam. You know, you're an SF guy. you've been in all kinds of really tough situations, but you're going to meet the commander? Okay, cool. Be humble. Get squared away uniform on, try and make a good impression.

The commander of CCN made it a point to say that he ordered recon teams to break contact with enemy forces and continue the mission. I knew that several other recon teams had been unsuccessful in getting the tanker. So this guy's a tanker. This guy was a tanker. I don't know. You want to give us a little briefing on what the new commander was like? Yeah, he was assigned there, and he was a friend of General Creighton Abrams, who was the overall commander.

Abrams had seceded Westmoreland as the top commanding officer for all of Vietnam. And so he was one of his buddies. And so in order to build up his career, Abrams sent him to an SF unit, so he'd build up his medals, get to time. And at that time in the Army, if you served as special forces, or anything much longer, six months as an officer, your career was done. You would not get to promotions, the West Pointers, and the other guys that would get. Your career was just finished.

But if you had a certain amount of time, and he came up there, which we learned later, was to build his metal portfolio, and we had some other stories that go on later on. So he never really adjusted, nor did he apparently understand SF and the way we worked,

particularly on the recon teams. And the whole thing about break, contact, continue mission, well, sir, if you're with me on the ground and you want to say that, that's cool. But if you're up there at 5,000 feet and telling me to break contact, continue mission with a six-man recont team, we've got 10,000 guys want to party, no. But you can't quite say it that way. Yeah.

So you go into extreme PC mode. Yeah. And we're just meeting each other, too. It's like, I heard he was lacking compared to this previous commander we had there. Yeah. And the idea, you know, I think it's Patton said the commander in the field is always right, which is a great thing to lean towards from your perspective when you're up at 5,000 feet or back in attack cooperation center. You've got to assume that your guy in the field is making the right call and try and support them. And there's so many times where I read the stories that you write or the stories of the other guys that you're writing about, the difference between the team being overrun and killed is a minute.

it's two minutes. Sometimes it's seconds. You know, it's like these, the time when you got, when the fire, as you're taking off, the fire consumes the area. We're just, and that's followed by the NVA. So often these situations, as soon as they started to go bad, even in the slightest way, it's like, okay, we got to start figuring how we're going to get out of here. Because if we try and fight, by the time we make the decision, so if you try to do this idea of his, which is break contact and then continue the mission.

I mean, is it really possible for you to break, so you lose a bunch of your ammo? What do you figure? A third of your ammo, half of your ammo, and a quick gunfight, and now you think the enemy's just going to walk away? And the fundamental flaw here is this is a secret mission. It's a clandestine operation. If you made contact with the enemy, quote, you've been compromised, but somehow that didn't compute with the tanker. Yeah. Yeah.

So you're in there. You're talking to him. And here we go back to the book. I knew that several other recon team members had been unsuccessful in getting the tanker to change his mind on that topic, so I approached it from a different angle. I asked him to place himself in the one zero's position in the field

because most of the one zeroes I knew would do anything within their power to successfully complete a mission if the tactical situation was conducive to it. But once compromised, it was often militarily difficult to do so with a six-man recon team against large numbers of NVA soldiers.

He promised me to think more on the topic. I saluted and returned. to the team room, leery of the new CO. So you did, you, even at a young age, you had the kind of understanding, maybe I'm not going to approach things head on. Hey, you're not trying to, sir, you're dumb. That's a bad idea.

No, it's like, hey, you know, sir, from my perspective as a one zero, this is what we see. It's a little bit different. I just was impressed with the fact that you were playing the game a little bit, try and build a relationship with this guy, try and get him on your side. Well, my time was Spider Parks and Pat Wacken said,

that would be one. We had a couple officers there that are real dickheads in the beginning. And when they took over command, they would be making bad decisions and didn't understand the situation. But at least the majority of the senior officers, meaning a major or a lieutenant colonel in our case, majority, once they'd been there and saw what we were up against in the field, it just took a while. It's a little time gap from when they land. They want to prove they're a hard-ass. They want to be a good CEO.

And they've got to worry about their career, too. and between that reality and what we're dealing with on the ground. And usually most of them came around. This guy was not one of those that didn't have that capability. You just seen it in his own perspective. Yeah, and I learned from the pros, you know, Spider, Pat Watkins, John McGovern, these were all senior NCOs. And I watched them in situations dealing with Sergeant Majors and S3, particularly on mission stuff, before the mission and afterwards, how they would talk. And I picked up a lot of, I like to think I exhort some of their PC skills because I had none.

And what would you say the goal was from a leadership perspective as you're talking to these guys? I mean, I always say, look, if I got a boss, my goal is to try and form a relationship with me so that he listens to what I'm saying. Because if I go there and bud heads out of the gate, they're not going to listen to me. If I tell this boss, this tanker, hey, you don't know what you're talking about. Well, he's not going to listen to another word I say. But if I say, hey, sir, Roger that, I want to give you some perspective on this that I've seen, you know, whatever. Just trying to talk to them respectfully, try to build a relationship. That's what I tried to do.

Yeah, and with the CEO, they just tried to stay a hell away from. Deal with the sergeant major because they all have been on the ground. They had experience and they appreciated what we were doing. They knew what we're doing day by day. Our sergeant majors were squared away with exception to one, but most of the ones I dealt with. And we were just really lucky. So I try to deal with them, keep the C. site stay away from is the best way officer avoidance sir officer avoidance that's a good one

moving forward a little bit in the late afternoon as black and I went over the final mission preparations junkins came running into our hooch with bad news r t maryland has been hit walton browner down jesus h christ i can't believe it wald told me they that they told him it was a dry hole give me your PRC 25 someone said They heard Brown on the radio as I screwed the long antenna into the PRC 25 black-ass Junkins any word on a bright light team he turned to me with a frown on his face no word yet replied Junkins but I want to go if there is one we all moved outside to get better radio reception on our FM radios the news got worse

Junkin said he could hear Covey talking to Brown all the Americans were down and being overrun said he heard Covey's last conversation with Brown when a wounded Brown told Covey they were being overrun. He said he heard AK-47 firing. And then there was radio silence. All communications with RT Maryland were lost. The weather over the target closed in,

precluding any bright light missions for 10 days. When a bright light finally went in, team members found only American web gear near the last loan location of RT Maryland. No further evidence of the team was ever located. Wald, Brown, and Sergeant Donald Monroe Shoe, the newly appointed team member, were listed as presumptive killed in action.

The loss of Walled, Brown, and Shue was a reminder of just how deadly the A.O. continued to be in SOG. As always, the recon men talked to each other afterward, to see if there were any lessons to be learned from their loss. While the weather was bad, Sergeant Major John Hobbs suggested to black myself and a few others in recon that perhaps a recon book should be written containing and documenting the team's standard operating procedures. So there you go. That's when you got started on that.

Yeah, in our spare time. Yeah, Lin was a phenomenal, he is a phenomenal artist. And so he would do a lot of sketches. and then we worked on every SOP from everything from just getting pre-mission what you would carry break it down between the Americas

and the indigues, batteries, claymores five-second fuses and then adapting to the AO you're going in some of the areas in layoffs they had a lot of water so you only carry one canteen of water and purification pills other times if it was dry you had to carry more

water which is more weight so always try to stay low as a possible and that as one of the fluctuation weight factors that we had some control over. How much were you usually carrying? At least 80 to 90 pounds back then. And we waited. What was your body weight?

I think it was about 170, soaking wet, maybe 175, but the most. After R&R. And you were carrying 80 pounds, 90 pounds? Yeah. Because I carried the really. radio plus the 600 plus rounds for the car, M79 rounds, and the frag grenades. And you guys wore no body armor.

Oh, no. No helmet. The body armor back then was just clunky stuff. Yeah. And it was just, you know, and the helmet just made too much noise. And it was weight. And in the jungle would just get caught up and stuff. Whereas I just wore the cravat all the time.

And then try to cover my blonde hair. again this is uh you know every time i read one of your one of the stories that you write about you know you made it out you know you you had that extra claymore that gave you enough time to get on the bird you laid down that extra fire the the the the airships showed up in time to put down cover fire and and here with these guys with r t maryland like those seconds didn't happen those aircraft didn't show whatever the case may be and that's what was at stake every single time you guys went out there. Right, and just like we said in across the fence,

all the Americans were killed. The Indige were left alive. So they were hit by, we assume, Sappers. And with the Indige, that's just a psychological thing on all the troops in camp. You had to deal with that again. But like with my team, we just pulled a team together and said, hey, tell us what you heard.

We don't have a problem with you guys. But when this happens, just be advised, keep Lynn and I appraised of anything you hear that could be negative or, troublesome, and we'll squelch it right away or deal with it. In this case, did the Indige make it out? Or did it never heard from again? No, two out of three made it out.

One was killed as they came out of the forest. They were near a marine compound of some sort. And because they were in Dij, when they came out armed, the Marine took them out. And the other two were able to surrender and make gestures of some sort that they were able to get picked up, came back, then he took him down to Saigon for the full debrief and everything. And did you guys ever get word on that debrief? Way late. Way late.

The only thing we heard was from Covey, and Covey said that the team had set up for his rest overnight spot too early, and he thought it was a dangerous spot, but the 1-0 didn't listen to him. And so everybody was surprised that he did it because Walt had been a 1-0 for a few months. he had been in Marine Corps first, came to SF, and then he ran a few missions out of F-O-B-1, an F-O-B-1 shutdown. He came down to F-O-B-4 CCN.

Would you guys always know who the Covey was, who the Covey rider was going to be? No, no. Sometimes it fluctuated, particularly after we went down to F-O-B-4 because the Air Force changed their pilots and all the cubby riders we had the F-O-B-1

got reassigned somewhere else. So none of them carried on its cubby riders. Now Pat Watkins came home. He de-roasted out. Spider-Parks came to CCM, but he had another assignment, and I saw a spider very little

because I couldn't even tell you what his assignment was. We just saw each other so little there because Lynn and I were busy running. Would the Covey Rider do all the mission planning with you? No. The Covey Rider and the Puffey Riders and the pilot would be in for the final briefing at base or at the launch site.

And it would just talk about LZs, any anti-aircraft, because they continue to bring down more anti-aircraft, everything from the 37 mic mics to the heavier anti-aircraft artillery that came in later. Did the Coveys ever get shot at and shot down? Always. We had several and went down. and there is a what altitude would they fly at?

Well they would do everything from way up high when they're just doing a general recon to when the team would be on the ground they would have to spot the team either through smoke or mirror or from a location you'd be on a prominent point that they could pick us out

well most of the times it'd be signal mirror that we'd flashy up to them they'd lock in on us that way but once they got to doing actual coverage, they would come down really low. And sometimes nap to the earth stuff. And there would be 02. They're slow movers.

The little pushpool. Yeah. We lost several coveys. It seems like those, I mean, I can't imagine being the covey rider in this one for RT Maryland and you're there and you're basically watching your guys get overrun. And I mean, it isn't after you maybe made suggestions that they move somewhere else. but, you know, they don't, but you're still supporting them. I mean, what a helpless feeling that's got to be. Rough.

And most of the Covey riders were guys that couldn't operate for whatever reason? No, they were, well, they were former SF. So sometimes there would be SF men that have been in country for eight or nine months, and then they would be signed a cubby rider. So they had experience on the ground. They were short-timers, so it was viewed as a job that was not quite as dangerous as being on the ground, but it had its own hidden dangers. Yeah.

Yeah, and it seems like you would just want like someone that you really knew and trusted as your Covey Rider. Right, and so like in my case, we had a bunch of new ones. So this Covey Rider was great. He just picked everybody up, ran us well. We had a couple others that we dealt with. And some of these guys like Spider-Parks, there's a couple times when there's no error available.

So you say, how low did they get? they would make a gun run with a car 15 Spider would hang out the window firing his car 15 at the NBA. I don't even know what to say to that. Yeah, yeah. And he wasn't the only cover rider that did that. I mean, other guys who dropped around for an MCD9

that's what they try to do to give us support while we're waiting for the Air Force and the other Air Force had to get there. You know, I always thought, so when I went to Sear School, you know, they taught us how to signal with the mirror. And in my mind, because I'm dumb. I would think like, how well is this really going to work?

And I can't believe every, that's like your primary signal device. Absolutely. Was the signal mirror. Yeah, every time that we had been on the ground for a period of time, had to reconnect, everything was all signal through the mirror. And we had to get the flash, you get the cubby on the right side so he could see us, get on, you know, everything. Oh, yeah.

How big is that mirror? It was just a regular signal mirror, like a maybe five, by three, three by five. Yeah. Like a cell phone. Did you have, I had this, even though I didn't really believe in signal mirrors, I guess, I had this like special signal mirror that when you pointed it at the thing, it got like a little shade.

There was a little circle in the middle that got a little shade on it when you be in the right spot. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. I don't know. I never figured how that quite worked. Okay. I want to get the flash help so they could see it.

Did you do like the technique where you're aiming at your hand and pointing at the thing at the aircraft? No, I would just make sure we had the flashy and just point it in general. I didn't get that high level training you had, sir. Well, thank God I did never have to do it because I probably would have been able to pull it off. Well, triple canopy is a little different than the desert. Yeah. Yeah, and so in the triple canopy, that had to be a challenge too.

Well, yeah, you had to find a hole in the jungle to get through with the flashing in the first place. Then you had to get the cubby lined up with your hole and then with the mirror flash. you would you would look at us nowadays and think we were we were weak with all the crap that we've got we got laser pointers we got little signaling devices transponders i know we envy your equipment there's no question about that not to mention your nod we were to run over both of our mothers for those nods yeah yeah for sure oh yeah and you guys had some starlight scope didn't you guys have some starlight thing they were big and heavy we never carried it in the field no we only used them for well a couple teams did and i couldn't even tell you which ones, I never heard about it much, at least with F-O-B-1 or our time, CCN. But we used it for ambushes. And they were so bright, and they ruined your night vision. So one eye would be blown out from the green sensors that they used to amplify the light.

And then your other eye was for night vision. Okay. Awesome stuff. you after this after our team Maryland disappears going back to the book next morning Hobbs asked me if I would courier a packet of sensitive information to MacVSog

headquarters in Saigon you end up going to Saigon you end up doing a little bit of Thailand a time in Thailand as well because you had a little pass sounds like you had a good time there of which you don't remember a lot true you get back to Saigon and you're waiting for a return flight to Danang you'd spent all your poker money

Which remind me never to play poker with you and here we go back to the book for some reason I couldn't fall asleep that night in Saigon I lay there on my bed looking at the ceiling watching the ceiling turning still not believing that I had returned to Vietnam And to Saug at some point I remember thinking when I was in Nam during my first tour of duty I dreamed of returning to the states When I finally got home I found myself drawn back to Nam. Of course, there were pressing legal matters at Ford Devons that contributed to my leaving the US of A. As I lay there, I found myself asking myself, what the hell are you doing here? You could die. It's like realization. Yeah, that's an identical scene from Apocalypse now. It is. It is. The Martin Sheen. Yeah.

That mental tape replayed many times in my mind that night in many different forms. But the essence of the issue was, when I was in NOM, I wanted to go home. When I was home, I wanted to go to NOM. Once again, I thought of home where, other than my family, there was no compelling reason to return. I had no job waiting. I had no career to speak of. I imagine going to one of those county employment centers and saying, hi, I was a one zero in a secret war that I can't talk about I can fire my car 15 from the hip real good and I can hit a target at 400 meters with my sawed off m 79 and I can bring napalm so close that it'll suck the air out of your lungs

Thus at the age of 23 I had my midlife crisis There's a A picture that one of my platoon chiefs told me about he had this mentor Vietnam seal who was a mailman in Imperial Beach, California. And, you know, he had come home from Vietnam and become, you know, what am I going to do? He became a mailman. And he had, and my platoon chief said that that guy had a picture on his wall, and it was a, it was taken from the behind of a guy in fatigues with his web gear on and his weapon slung.

and he's looking at like a corporate guy in a desk. And the corporate guy is looking up at him. And the caption underneath it says, I'm sorry, sir, we don't have a job here for point men. Exactly. Which sounds like how you are feeling. It's perfect. On point.

Yeah. Yeah. And you got this. And this is, you know, it's interesting. I was just talking to one of my buddies. And he was saying, look, you know, sometimes I hear people say, oh, I loved being in combat And when they say that

I kind of get pissed at him And I think, you know, if you loved it so much Or he says, I don't love it so much You know, I had a hard time with you know, it was hard And I'll do I would do it again if I had to But I'm not dreaming about it And so we had this little conversation What I ended up saying to him was I said

Well, when I was on my last deployment to Iraq And you know there's you know we had some guys wounded We had had had one guy killed at this point and there starts to be like you start seeing those negative feelings start to start to grow a little bit you know guys start start questioning stuff guys start hey you know what do we do in this op who who's who what why are we doing this mission and then and you start to feel that and then guys start can be start to become negative and one of my platoon commanders came to me and said you know hey man you know this is going to be rough When we get home, these guys are going to be, you know, we might not, they're going to be mad about this.

They're going to be mad about that. They're going to be mad about something else. And I said, let me tell you what's going to happen. I said, when we get home, when you talk to them three days after we get home, they will have forgotten 10% of the bad stuff. And in a week, they'll forget 30%. And in a month, they'll forget 50%. I said in a year, the only thing they'll remember about this deployment is the fun, cool stuff. And that's kind of what I think makes guys like me say, man, I had, it was awesome.

I would love to go back, of course. Because we block out, you know, some of the hard memories. And for me, I also always say the absolute best time of my life was being a task unit commander in the battle of Ramadi. And the worst time in my life was being a task unit commander into battle Ramadi because there's nothing worse than losing your guys. And so it sounds like you, that was hitting you sort of. mid deployment of hey look or when you were home when you're back in America

you got you got money problems you got girl problems you got law problems you got what all those problems and they can all go away yes and they can all become insignificant as soon as you get on that C-130 and fly back overseas and I thought about Hepsal Hung at Tuan and the team I genuinely had that guilt feeling of them there me not being there with him. I felt as a green beret I should have been there with him all long but we had a tour duty as you know and so I was in a way I was really glad to be back on the team but yes a little bit more mature now and thinking a little bit maybe too much but that night in that hotel and then 20 years later when apocalypse now comes down I go like how the hell they get in

my head for that scene you obviously you you get through that that apocalypse now seems of staring at the ceiling and thinking, you know, every minute that I'm in the bush, every minute I'm in this hotel, Charlie gets stronger because he's out in the bush. You get back and you're on another mission and I'm jumping into it right now. As I snapped out of my snooze, you're asleep in helicopter. As I snapped out of my snooze, I looked at out the starboard door just as we flew over the two star to Laotian farmers, a woman and two water. Buffalo the big chopper then hopped over the hedgerow and landed in an adjacent field as Ingalls and I frantically awakened the rest of RT Idaho I was mad as hell it wasn't bad enough they hadn't bothered to alert us as we approached the target area but now they were

compounding that faux paw by flying too close to indigenous farmers and then depositing us in the middle of an open field far from our primary LZ and farther yet from the bridge that was the primary objective of our mission. That this particular mission was a pretty simple one, at least on paper, which I take it with a serious grain of salt when you say a mission is a pretty simple one. Yeah.

By early 1970, the brass had become aware of something new and rather creative on the part of the NVA, underwater bridges. These were being put in place at strategic spots along the Ho Chi Minh Trail where it ran through Laos. from the air, it would appear as though the trails were interrupted by water in some places several feet deep.

Yet it was apparent that the trucks heading south were crossing these streams with ease. A closer review of aerial photographs, however, had revealed that the ever-inventive NVA had come up with an underwater structure that could support heavy trucking while remaining virtually unobservable from the air. It was a devilishly clever idea and well-executed to boot. So that's pretty. They just built these, where they're like maybe like six inches underwater, the bridge? Yeah. And looking at the pictures, you couldn't tell.

They had really done it well. And so that was the mission. Simple going, find out what they are, take pictures, and blow them the hell up. Simple mission. Yeah. It could be more fun to blow them up with a truck on it. And you were, you guys were sleeping the helicopters heading there.

No one woke you up. And the reason why we had launched from Thailand. The weather had been socked in in Vietnam, so it was a bad weather spell, which was February of 1970. And they flew us by blackbirds, which were the clandestine service airlift for us. It flew us to Thailand. We land in Thailand, which is neutral at the Air Force base, and the black truck comes up. We get in, it has curtains, they can't see us. We go back to the base.

And my old commander from F-O-B-1 was the CEO at that launch site, which was the... the 46 Special Forces Group. And they were there just to be in country, but they had their side of the Secret War. Spads came out of there. They had cubbies out of there. And so we launched, and the Air Force had the H.H.3s,

the bigger helicopters, like the Jolly Green Giant, but a scaled-down version without the armor plating. So we launched from there, and we flew for two or three hours because it was a long flight from Thailand across Western Laos,

and then we launched, we landed at a fuel dump in the middle of Laos. Yeah, it was run by the agency. Oh, okay. So we land. Yes, we refueled. But you get off, you go like, hey, man, who are you? He goes, I'm not here.

I go, welcome. I'm not here either. He says, have a good day while you're not here. And we continue to go in, and then the Air Force put us down on that canyon. And that's one thing that's always interesting when you're using helicopters. The helicopter, when you're supposed to insert at one spot, for them, they missed that spot by a minute or whatever. For them, it's no big deal.

Like, hey, they just flew a minute a little bit long. For you on the ground, that minute is a long time. I mean, that can be a kilometer. It could be like a really massive amount of space that you just missed. Oh, yeah. And this is like the dip between the valley and the peak that we wanted to go in on so we could run at night a little bit because there's some open areas that we could cover and then get down, maybe at the middle of the night,

to check this thing out in the morning at first. light, that's what our plan was. It just didn't happen. We're in the valley. And it's like, okay, we've flown out here. I certainly don't want to just fly back, pissing everybody off. Let's give the shot. We're here. We're on the ground. Let's go. So we had to get out, put our gear on first. We didn't even have a routine insert where everybody goes out on full alert. We get out, put the damn equipment on. And then we're

like, okay, we're in the valley. And the mountain we want to be on several thousand feet above us. And we're in this valley. Are you carrying a regular topographic map? Is that your primary means of navigation? Yes, and they would have a big map, and then our target, where we'd plan to go, they would cut it 10 by 10, cut it out, and that's all we carried. So if we got caught, there would be nothing else besides just that grid that we were in. And did you ever use any imagery as well to, to complement that? Nope, strictly map the Covey Pile.

if they did a VR, visual reconnaissance prior to the mission, but here it wasn't. The cubby had told them, here's the target area, and for some reason, the Air Force just went down to the valley and dropped us there. All right, continuing on, given the rather undistinguished nature of our arrival, or sorry, undisguised nature of our arrival,

we knew it was only a matter of time before hundreds of NVA troops, trackers, and dogs would be purring down on us on that road looking for us. So you know, so we get to work with dogs? So, like, I can't imagine knowing going in that I'm going to be facing dogs that are coming after us. And obviously, you guys were because you guys carried mace and pepper and all this other stuff to throw them off. But what a nightmare that is. I still hate dogs.

My wife loves him, but, and the kids love him. Do you have any dogs? Yeah, we got a flea bag running around the house. His name is Gunny, by the way. It's just like, we got him from a gunny. You're okay. Ours was no tourist jaunt. Furthermore, it's very unsettling to be moving through this beautiful valley in broad daylight.

At what, for a recon team passed at breakneck speed. It was not a comfortable way to proceed. We took no breaks, not wanting to spend a moment longer than necessary in such an exposed position. So you're just hauling ass. Oh, yeah. Trying to get out of this valley as fast as you can. And you end up going up a hill, a big hill. And we split the team, too, for a while.

I put the angles on one side of the valley and me on the other. It wasn't that big in terms of width, but wide enough that I could see him. He could see me. Just to want to divide, and then the tail gunners took care of our footprints. And what was your reason for that call?

I just wanted to split the team up to see what was on the other side of the valley. We couldn't tell either side what was there. So I figured if there was any enemy, we wanted to find out on both sides at once and try to get to a point where we could begin to find, a spot to get up the mountain could be we were going to run out of daylight.

Got it. So it was a little bit of a panic, not panic move. It was, hey, we're in a tough situation. One of the best ways we can get out of this is we put teams on both sides of valley. We're looking for a way to get to the top of this thing. I knew you talk about this earlier and I used to warn guys all the time about splitting forces. Oh yeah. And it's like really risky. Really? Really risky.

It's the one rule you never do. I did it twice. Okay, so I just wanted to confirm that. Oh, yeah, no. Absolutely. and the situation was such that we couldn't tell what was on either side. So I figured if we're going to have a firefight, at least now there'll be minimal forces. Our four, we went in on an eight-man team that time.

So it was four and four. Four and four. And John had been on the ground with me previously, so I wasn't worried about John. And so if we're going to have a firefighter, let's do it with minimal forces. We can survive and then get the prairie fire and I'm worried about getting out of here.

Otherwise, this precede, and the cover is much ground because in that mission where we set up the ambush, we had a great success by not stopping. Because the NVA knew that we would go 10, stop 10, so they would anticipate how far we traveled here. It's like we covered maximum ground. Hall and ass. Yeah.

All right. Now you end up finding a place to go up this hill. And here we go. Back to the book. By now we are out of breath. The grueling climb with all our combat gear was starting to wear on us. And each additional steps seem to bring an increased in the steepness of the incline.

It was growing painfully clear that those periodic volleyball games we had played back at camp weren't sufficient physical training. Did you, would you guys, what'd you guys do for PT back then? Not enough. Volleyball, get some.

Yeah, that was it, yeah. Because we were so busy, you know, between the mission, mission prep, and then they started sticking us in isolation. I was going to ask you that. Would you, would you be tired tired when you were going into the field or would you be well rested?

because like on this one you fell asleep, you guys were all asleep. Oh yeah. I'm going to tell you right now, like when we would go in the field, most of the time when I would go in the field, especially in Ramadi, I would be exhausted by the time I went to field

because we'd spend all this time planning and de-conflicting and briefing and doing all this stuff. By the time I went in the field, it was like the time for me to go, okay, hey, someone's staying watch. I'm going to sleep for an hour or two hours. You know, that happened a lot.

Yeah, we usually had a nice rest prior. Yeah, it's nice. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Oh, yeah. It's a luxury. Very nice. Going back to the book, However, any thoughts of letting personal pain slow us down were not so subtly overridden by noises we could hear from the north of us.

The menacing sounds made us forget our dry throats, heaving lungs, pain knees, and aching backs. The enemy was out there and the game, as they say, was on. The forces might not yet be joined, but the fight was in the offing. So you knew it was coming. And then you guys go into like a serious, the sow will lead you guys into like a serious thicket. of vines, thorns, undergrowth. Yeah, we went in, and then we went in deeper, and then he pushed us the third time.

I was pissed because I tore my fatigues. I'm going, Sal, you know, dinky dahl, like you're crazy. You're pushing it. He was right. I was wrong. We went in the third level. Yeah. And then you get in so deep.

Eventually settled down and tried to get as comfortable possible on a 40-degree slope. Around 2,200, we have. heard numerous trucks on the main road. In just a few minutes, several had driven slowly past our remain overnight position. Unfortunately, the happy times were spoiled when we soon heard the barking of tracking dogs. Around 0-100, we heard enemy troops moved north on the road. While on the east side, someone opened fire with a few AK-47 bursts. The distinctive bark of the Russian-made weapon jar-dust into full alert.

How long could they keep it up? In which direction would they move? We sat in the inky darkness, a darkness so complete I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. It sounded as though they were making their way north. That's how dark it is. And you have no night vision. It's just pitch black. Again.

It didn't take long before we had enemy troops on both sides of us. As dense as our cover was, we could see the flickering light from the lambs. the NVA carried as the enemy soldiers began probing the bottom tip of the finger we were on vehicle activity on the road picked up noticeably this gave us a very uneasy feeling had SAU not driven us on the NVA might well have spotted us but as it was we were ensconced so deep in that god-awful thicket that that the one enemy soldier who approached our position hesitated and then gave up defeated by the thorny vegetation we could almost feel him thinking better of it and deciding to return to his comrades little did he appreciate

how close to death he'd come with five car 15s and an m79 aimed in his direction slowly the NBA troops tired of their frustrating and uncomfortable search and called it off r t Idaho could finally release the collective breath it had been holding the danger was not gone not by a long shot but just briefly retired from the field of play So thank God you were deep in that bush. Oh, yeah. And I, you know, I forgave Sal. Because it's like, this is, we don't need to go that far.

It's like, look at my fatigues. I'm bleeding here. He's right. Sal was always right. I always listen to him. So the night goes by at first light. Our options were severely limited. We couldn't move north, south, or east, which left us one choice,

not wanting to spend another day and night tied to trees on the side of a hill, we opted for the obvious and moved out in a westernly direction. For the rest of the day, we climbed the side of the steep mountain. Did you guys ever move at night? Or did you guys try pretty much to remain in one position at night? Try to stay in one position, particularly in a triple canopy, because just too much noise. In Cambodia, when we were on flat territory, we could have moved.

We thought about it. But no, not in Laos. Several times the rock face was so steep we had to tie together six foot strands of rope we used for Swiss seats to make rope long enough to advance up to the next level of rocks. So we're talking serious terrain. Oh, horrible. Just as last light was fading into darkness, we reached the top of the mountain. I was physically beat. My pants were torn in my hands, knees, and legs were covered with cuts, scrapes and bruises.

We were a mess. We set up our RON quickly and took turns eating rations before settling into the night watch rotations. After the previous night's RON, this mountain top site was paradise. We could see enemy trucks moving south but did nothing about it. We were almost too tired to think. An extremely dangerous condition to be in when on the ground. Rest was what we needed, not confrontation. You guys are exhausted.

Beat. And when we climb, we did take our web gear off, rucksacks. Oh, really? And we tied all the Swiss seats together because we're going straight up. So one guy would go up, and then you shipped up the backpack, then the web gear, put it back on, go to the next level. We had to take that, we had to shuck it several times. And just to get up because it was so steep. But it was covered with enough vegetation that they couldn't see us in the valley.

So they weren't quite sure where we were. And we had put out the mace and stuff. and other locations which fouled some of the dog's noses. So it's an all-day climb, and with only a couple, well, we broke for lunch and whatever, but yeah, that was a nasty, nasty climb. When morning came, we awoke to a beautiful sunrise and found that we were atop an unbelievably gorgeous Laotian mountain range. The next few hours were the most spectacular ones I ever had spent on the ground in any AO.

Moving north or wrong, the ridge line, we began gradually descending, often encouraging one beautiful new, encountering one beautiful new vista after another. Around 1,200, we found an area overrun with thousands of wild orchids in full spectacular bloom. Back home, each plant would be worth $5 to $50. We decided to take a break in the field, and soon everyone, with the exception of Sal,

was in the middle of them and acting like a delighted child, picking the flowers and sticking them in their hair, teeth, and behind their ears or in the buttonholes of their fatigues. It was like a spontaneous outburst of happiness. And while it was somewhat foolish, it was also refreshing. I think we all felt better for it. Did you take any pictures? No.

Oh, man. I'd like to see those. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You had the camera for the underwater bridge. You didn't get the orchids. But Sal was all business. Oh, always.

We were on the ground. Come on. What was your nickname? Did they call you Tilt as well? No, they usually called me My because the Vietnamese couldn't handle ours. So instead of Myer, it was My. Got it. I could see him looking at you thinking,

My, what are you doing with that damn flower in your hair? Their phrase was Bukudinky Dow. Very stupid. Very stupid. Very crazy. Yeah. How good did your Vietnamese get? It sucked. I had Hep. And that was why we didn't have language training because they knew that with SF,

but four years, like from 64 to 68, there were interpreters in place. And we just lucked out with Hep. It was the best one. He spoke good English, and he corrected my English. And he spoke French. What was his background

that he had all that good language skill? His dad is sent him to school in Paris. So he has some education in France. They spoke four languages. And now he's an interpreter, NAM. Yeah. Going back to the book, we came to a narrow strip of land.

that headed down from the hill I singled Ingles and Chow to set out to scout ahead while the rest of us remained in place Chow was 16 years old He'd been on the team nearly two years so these kids had been on the team since he was 14 years old Yeah, when the team got wiped out Chow Cal and sown Were the three that we'd hired and brought on and we let a couple others go He'd been on the team nearly two years ever since spider parks had helped build rebuild the team in 68 Chow's sensitive ears heard the NVA moving up the mountain he warned Ingles with hand signals and the two of them abruptly stopped moving with the enemy less than 10 meters away Ingalls quietly broke squelch on his u rc 10 emergency radio several times alerting me to the danger

The rest of us were about 50 meters away The shit was about to hit the fan because we were so far removed from all air support there was no time to waste none at all We needed the jump on we needed all the jump we could get on things so I quickly contacted a nearby OV10 Bronco and declared a Prairie Fire Emergency, setting in motion the string of responses that could save our lives and get us out. Does everybody, did everyone know, is that like a pro word prairie fire emergency? Did everyone know exactly what that meant? Tack Air knew it.

Right. And then we also had the airborne command control, but they weren't always over our AO. They couldn't pick up the Fox Mike FM. So in this case, we lucked out that OV10 was. was, I think they were one of the Ravens who had, they were probably supporting another CIA operation. It was further west into Laos. And he had been up, heard the call, and came over. That was the first time he worked with OB-10s.

Man, lucky. Very. While I was talking to the pilot, Chow, Salle, and Ingalls sprang a hastily arranged ambush that startled, on the startled enemy troops. when their point men was less than a meter away, Chow hit him with a full automatic burst from his car 15 blowing him backward. Chau Siao and Ingalls then hit the remaining enemy soldiers so hard and fast that they didn't have time to fire

a single return shot. Ingalls threw down a hand grenade down the hill to discourage anyone who might be around. So this is all of a sudden that's happening. A meter away? there he was really close man he came up the hill he was white because that was the

first really real firefight that chow had been in and because he had trained up like he had the earnest spot in the team so this was his mission and that was he was down and with john and he was ahead of john as the fight began

to unfold I took stock of the situation there weren't too many places for us to go within minutes of the bronco's arrival the pilot had spotted us he said he could see more enemy activity north of us along the hill angles and sow were on he made a run on the enemy concentrations firing his rockets into their position then he said somewhat laconically i've got two bits of bad news for you first nom is socked in no assets can launch from there to extract you which means Thailand assets which means at least three hours before the birds arrive on

station. Second, to your south, there are approximately a dozen troops about 800 meters out and moving towards you. I think you better sit tight until we get some help. By 1430, a Covey aircraft replaced the Bronco and repeated the sit tight suggestion. He agreed the eastern and western faces of the mountain were too steep to descend. He also confirmed the NVA were coming at us from the south and north. They were clearly visible as they moved cautiously through the the sparse vegetation. For the next half hour, the enemy troops try to locate us. To discourage them, I directed several A1E Sky Rader gun runs south of our position.

So this is another one of these things where I got to, like, when you get, you got the NVA move into your position and you get told, hey, the closest extract, the earliest we're going to be able to get you out of here is three hours from now. Yeah, we're up on an area where there's, minimal escape routes or the jungle because everything was so steep on several different sides of that little we were like a little bit of a plateaued there had been like a trail that came down and then John

and Chow had gone down further another little finger and that's where they had the firefighting. He came back up. We put a perimeter out and luckily we made radio contact right away so the OV-10 went in with his rockets just to say it was 2.7.5s And then that's when he gave the good news.

Yeah, good news that it's going to be three hours at a minimum before they can get you help. Yeah, that's why we carried a lot of bullets. Yeah, that's a lot of bullets. It could be a long day. I don't know if you can carry enough bullets

for a three-hour firefight. That's a nightmare. A 12.7 millimeter enemy gun in the valley opened up on the A1E's. I was sitting on the east side looking down at the valley floor. After making another gun run, that A1E pilot told me

He was pissed because the enemy gunner was coming too close to him and his wingman. He wanted to nail him ASAP. I gave the pilot what I thought were clear verbal directions to where the enemy gunner was located, but he couldn't find them. So I told him simply to watch the ground for my, and follow my tracers. At that, I fired a short burst toward a clump of trees in the valley that were maybe 500 meters away. The pilot had no trouble seeing where my tracers hit. Thanks, partner, he said, in a low southern draw, and then rolled in a low southern draw and then rolled for the kill. It was the most beautiful napalm dive I've ever seen. The pilot came out of the sky

pointing straight down his engine screaming. It reminded me of dive bombers I'd seen on the television series of Victory at Sea. I really thought I was watching a World War II movie. Because I was so high up in the mountain, I was looking down on the Sky Rader when, at the absolute last second, he released a napalm canister and pulled out of his gutsy dive. It was a perfect strike. The impact generated a secondary explosion, which was probably the gunner's spare ammo going off around him. Black, oily smoke billowed up. There was not a whisper of sound from the former gun emplacement. For the next three hours, I directed airstrike after airstrike around our position and in the valley.

At 1730 hours, we heard the very welcome sound of the HH3s coming our way. As they approached in the distance, the NVA pushed up from the north and hit Salas Claymore. Further south of us, another machine gun opened up from the valley. As I gave Covey the compass heading to its position, I caught sight of an enemy soldier climbing a tree about 100 meters away. He had handed his RPG launcher to a nearby comrade while he got into that position. It was clear he was looking for RT, Idaho, or hoping to nail an Air Force chopper. I was too far away to shout and alert to the other team members.

For the first time in my 16 months of running missions, I extended the collapsible stock of my car 15. Normally it remained compressed to minimize the length of the weapon, but now I wanted it extended to help stabilize my aim. Once I was ready, I carefully put the NVA soldier in my gun sight. In that fleeting moment, I felt like God. I had the power of life and death concentrated in my fingertip. As I grounded my elbow to steady my arm, I found myself silently hoping the NVA troop would be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be. be unable to find the team and simply climb back down the tree he didn't see either me or my car 15 in a troubling way it seemed unfair or unsportsman like but war is not designed to be a

sporting contest if the situation were reversed I had little doubt what he would opt to do although these reflections took less than a moment to form they caused deep soul-searching on my part. I found myself recalling my third grade Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Myrtle Reichert, and her treatment of the Ten Commandments, especially the one that proclaims thou shalt not kill. Hell, if I had met this treed soldier on the streets of Hanoi,

without guns and beyond the rhetoric of politicians, we'd probably be able to find lots of common ground between us and dozens of purely human things to talk about. But that could not be, not now, not at this given moment. Also in my mind was the knowledge he would receive a medal if he ever managed to kill me or one of my team members. As I watched and reflected, his comrade reached up and handed him to the rocket launcher. I could tell it was unloaded. What I had come to think of my personnel, my personal NVA moved a little farther up the tree.

craning his neck to find us. From the corner of my eye, I could see Sun move towards Sal. And at that very moment, someone passed up a round for the RPG. I still refused to yield to the inevitable. I continued to hold on to the stubborn hope that he would abandon his cause, climb down the dam tree, and walk away. Instead, he fitted the round into the end of the launcher. I still watched.

Still I waited, even after he'd put the weapon to his shoulder. as he nestled his neck against it and began to take careful aim toward us I leveled my sight on his head I pulled the trigger a single yet timeless shot he dropped from the tree out of sight

but not out of my mind one of those moments how far was he away what was the range he's well over maybe a football field and a half two fields because I was like on the cusp of the hill

and he was around on the side because he was like a tree he climbed up that was above the regular vegetation so I'm not sure how high he went but I could see him in the beginning and then just waited because and then when he got that damn RPG

Yeah then it's time to do what you got to do Oh yeah and once again I'm going to make this claim I'm not reading this whole book I'm jumping around and you should read this whole book if you're listening to this because I'm getting 10% of what's going on in here this part continues on seconds later one of the approaching HH3 pilots broke into my reverie by commenting

somewhat frantically on the heavy ground fire he was taking from the mountain south of our position there was a moment's hesitation before he sadly announced I I think we have some mechanical problems. We're going home. We could see the helicopters and they looked fine to us. They were less than two kilometers out when they turned and disappeared into the fading sun. Our morale sank as they vanished.

After cursing our lack of look and the pilot, I told the team to take a nap. There's going to be a long night. So there goes your ride out. You've already been there for freaking ever. And you see those. This guy say, we've got some mechanical problems. We're out of here.

Yeah, it was a very unhappy moment. So you guys, you tell the guys to take a nap. You take a little nap. Yeah. And back to the book, around 1930, Ingls roused me. Wake up, you're not going to believe this shit. As I came around, he was pointing south up the mountainside from about 30 meters from our perimeter. And as far as we could see, there were dozens of.

And dozens of lanterns bouncing and swinging along. Each lantern was carried by an enemy soldier, and between each lantern were many more soldiers. The same scene was unfolding to the north of us. The NVA were coming up the hill en masse. We could see at least a dozen trucks unloading hundreds of NVA troops in the valley. Also across the valley and up on the plateau to the east. There were hundreds of lights moving everywhere,

like swarming fireflies flitting around in the night. In a smaller valley west of us, still more lights, more NVA, more trouble, just more, more and more of everything we did not want to see. I felt the tremendous weight of just how small R.T. Idaho was, how terribly isolated and alone we were, how incredibly vulnerable. All of a sudden I found myself praying. For reasons only he understands, my prayer was answered. As a few minutes later, the first Specter C-130 gunship arrived on target

with its two 20-millimeter cannons and four 7.62-millimeter mini guns ready for action. That had to be the most horrifying thing that you could ever think of. you wake up and you see these enemy lights surrounding you hundreds of them and you know that they're looking those hundreds maybe thousands of enemy personnel are looking for you and your six-man team oh yeah they're coming for us and it was just like yeah i mean i'd never forget when john woke me up i mean it's just one of those moments he's just like oh my god fuck me to tears and help me lord Yeah, please. Wake up.

You're not going to believe this. Grandma, keep praying right about now. If you're not praying back in New Jersey, please start praying now. And then, do you have any idea? Did you ever find out where the C-130 came from, where the Spectre came from? How to be out of Thailand.

And so it just randomly showed up? Oh, no. Somebody. The Covey that we had talked to earlier, who brought the helicopter us out because the Covey was still trying to work with us for other air assets. And when it got dark, we lost everything.

conventional. So all the A-1s, phantom jets were gone. And they didn't have helicopter gunships out of Thailand, just transport vehicles, aircraft. So we had that quiet spell. And so they had notified Spector, and they had told me that they're going to try to get a Spectre out. And had you worked with the Spectre before? Yes, we used before, but nothing like this night. So for anyone that does know what a C-130 Spectre gunship is, it's a, it's a C-130, which is like a big transport aircraft, but they put some big weaponry, in this case, two 20-millimeter cannons and four 7.62 mini-guns, which fire 6,000 rounds a minute.

Correct. Something crazy. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's like a, it looks like a laser beam when the tracers come out of these things. Or a dog piss it from the sky. Yeah, or that. And so these guys show up and here we go back to the book. This was this awesome array of weaponry could be made to form a magic link with my emergency strobe light.

Once that link was established, the gunner could dance the incredible firepower of his four mini guns, just 24,000 rounds per minute total within five feet of us. It was wondrous. It was miraculous. It could save us on this particular. night however we were faced with a highly unusual if not unique problem the pilot circling over us reported he couldn't pick out the team's strobe light because there were so many other lights surrounding us the myriad of lanterns must have made the

dark earth look like a pincush and illuminated from within no problem I said I'll turn off mine you get the rest hit the ridge line west of the valley give me a minute to put my team on the safe side of the mountain The specter commenced to putting on an amazing display of firepower. Once again we gave thanks for being on the right side of the fight, the one that had Uncle Sam's Air Force and Specter on its team. After ripping up scores of body and carving out large patches of empty darkness on the ridge line, the Spector directed his deadly fire into the valley.

More lanterns were snuffed out, and the darkness spread like a stain as lights and lives were extinguished. The Specter crew finally expended all of its ordinance, and the Piper apologize for running out of ammo. The next specter arrived seconds later. See, they were just, they knew you were in a bad way and they were coming. Oh, yeah. We were so happy that the second one showed up because now the lights were out so we could

turn a strobe light on and have direct commo. Did they have night vision back then in the spectres? Oh, yeah. They had everything. It's the Air Force. Yeah. Yes, it is. Yeah.

I mean, the Specter gunship is just the most awesome. set to have overhead for ground support because the capability, the visual capability that it has, and then the accuracy of fire. Yeah, and this is 1970. You think how accurate that was. It's what they can do now. Oh, yeah, yeah.

The next specter arrived seconds later. He quickly locked onto our strobe and worked the southern slope with a vengeance, marching his guns right up to the trail, right up the trail to the top of the ridge beyond our line of sight. Then he worked the valley and the southeastern mountain.

Ridge a third specter arrived and worked our southern perimeter again systematically walking its fiery lead up the mountain around us there was no longer any light above us no moon no stars the only sound was the roar of the C-130 overhead in the absolute darkness he could not be seen until his guns opened up then tongues of fire seemed to erupt out of nowhere like spontaneously generated bolts of lightning and the outlines of specters fuselage would appear in brief flashes as a pale and ghostly silhouette, an airborne grim reaper. When Spector moved to other targets, we could hear the enemy dragging away his dead. At 0.045, Sow said some NVA were in the grass about 20 meters south of us. A few minutes later, he blew the Claymore's. We all instinctively flinched. For some reason, Claymore's always sounded more thunderous at night and caught you by surprise. After the dust settled, we again heard NVA truce.

Troops dragging away their bodies. They never spoke. We heard no cries of pain. Their silent execution of grim duty was at once eerie and admirable. Jesus, they were tough. They fought hard and died hard. So you'd hear these guys getting wounded, getting blown up, and they wouldn't even scream.

They wouldn't cry. It was just silence. It was amazing. To his day, it's mind-blood. I think that all those guys that were wounded or just dead. Okay, the dead we know. But there had to be some wounded in here. Of course.

Not a sound. But you can hear him dragging, the bodies. And I don't know how many we killed that night. Back to the book shortly before the next specter arrived, I moved my team away from the edge of the slope and into the high grass as Sal placed one more Claymore down on the northern slope in short order specter locked on to our strobe light. He reported that cloud cover was beginning to roll in the AO. When Spector dropped, when Spector then dropped illumination flares over us, Sal's eyes turned as big as pizza tins.

NVA troops were within five meters of us, all of about 15 feet. Blinded by intense white light, they could not immediately make us out as we nestled into the high grass. But this was of little real consolation. They would spot us soon enough. I whispered into the radio asking Spector just how close he could bring the ordinance to my strobe light. As close as you want it, he first replied. I want it five feet in front of my southern perimeter, I responded. Well, he hesitated.

I can't bring it in any closer than 25 meters from your perimeter unless you're willing to accept responsibility for any casualties we may accidentally inflict. We have to record you saying it. I wanted to scream, you dumb fucking. idiot they're five meters away and you're going to quote and you're quoting regulations to me just kill the fuckers before they kill us instead and feeling like a complete fool i whispered that i was fully willing to accept responsibility for any and all casualties that may or may not result from his efforts to save our lives i followed up by saying now bringing in as tight as you can to the light i'm holding it up now move south from my light i'll take my chances with you the gun crew finally

open fire and their in the fusillade cracked over our heads the ground in front of us erupted as thousands of rounds ripped into it kicking up stones and dirt and tossing NVA soldiers around like rag dolls again Spector slowly marched his stuff southward from our strobe light moving up the ridge danger close oh yeah so the flare goes off and Sal sees that the enemy are five meters from where you're at. Yeah, I didn't realize they were that close. They were that quiet. I mean, they kept coming all night.

And because it was pitch black, and they were just so quiet, and they just probably moved during the wind or moved during when rounds were hitting or whatever, and they made it to within five meters. I mean, that's, when you're making this radio call, it's a miracle they couldn't hear you when they just didn't start shooting towards your direction when you make the radio call.

That's what I was waiting for. I was waiting for that next AK to open up. on my voice especially when they're asking you for the oh yeah oh you talk about moments that's insane totally I wonder what the I mean that's I'm actually surprised that they could pull off five meters it was just for anyone that's listening that doesn't understand this this aircraft I don't know what what altitude were they at Do you have any idea? There had to be at least two, three thousand feet above us.

So, and I don't know what the height of the mountain range, or that, that little plateau that we were on here. But several thousand feet above us, they locked in. They locked in and put rounds within five meters of you. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I could see they do it now because now they've got computers and they've got all these, I mean, just incredible systems up there. I mean, I've been in the modern AC-130. they're ridiculous. Oh, is that right?

You've been in them? Yeah, yeah, they're crazy. Like, they're, the, the, the capability that they have is just completely ridiculous. But I can't, no, I mean, I know there's no way they had that same technology back in 1970. It's impossible, you know. There's more technology in my phone than is in a 1970 bird. Well, those Air Force guys were good. And, you know, we just kept the strobe light, right pointing at the aircraft.

So when it circled, whoever had the M-79, I did it for a while, then we'd take turns with it, but we always followed the aircraft. So it would be directly linked into that strobe light. That's right, because you had your, you put the strobe into the M-79, right? Yeah. So it was only directional. Right. So we'd go straight up.

Yeah. So anybody in the ground wouldn't see it. So that's what's happening as these guys are five meters from you. Oh, yeah. This is ridiculous. That's what I thought that night also. Send me a kingby, please. Yeah.

Back to the book. Between bursts of fire, he dropped more flares. This time, the illumination revealed no movement south of us. Instead, Chow Gleafly reported that there were Boku dead V.C. With a south quiet specter started on the northern flank and marched his fire down the finger of land. When I reported hearing more trucks in the valley, the gun crews pounded them into science. Another spectre circled us and laid down its deadly ring of fire again bringing it to within five feet of our strobe light Somewhere around zero four hundred some early morning fog and haze moved in as the last specter moved out

Once the specter was gone the NVA started moving toward us once more from the south only this time with real vengeance Spector killed a lot of their comrades and they were in no mood to back off But we managed to hold them off by employing what we called our guess whether I'm throwing a grenade or not tactic, which had a way of making almost enemy, almost any enemy think twice. What was that all about? I didn't cover it in the book, but you wrote about it, but what?

Well, it's another version of hide and go seek with, because we only had a limited amount of grenades. We had used some already. And so we knew that when we threw the grenade, when it landed, you would hear them run. That you would hear. So we knew we were getting, low, so Sal went out and got stones.

And the team went out and got stones somehow. They came back, so we'd wait until he would tell us. Somehow, Sal could just tell where they were. I didn't have that kind of definitive skill set. So on his signal, he would let us know, or he would just throw the rock. He'd throw the rock and hear him scurry away like rats, because they thought the grenade was coming. So we'd throw another rock.

so it would be less scurring. So then we wait, throw another rock and it would be less scurring, and then we throw it another hand grenade. So this went on for quite a while, you know, we always carried at least 10 hand grenades. I always carried these 10 our ditch had. You carried 10 yourself?

Oh, yeah. Sure, I had a cup on a strap and always in the rucksack. And that's why, just for that mission. Yeah, apparently. Little did I realize. You needed 30. Yeah.

We abstained from firing our weapons because the muzzle flashes would have marked our position too clearly for the RPG gunners who had fired several inaccurate rounds at us during the night. Fortunately, they hadn't come very close. We played these deadly games with the enemy until sunrise. At one point, we broke a major thrust by tossing a white phosphorus grenade, one of the most fearsome things I know of. We couldn't see them, but we could smell burning flesh. at around 0630 we heard an NVA officer or senior NCO calling roll in the distance it appeared few people answered him as the sun finally burned off the fog we worked tactical airstrikes with phantoms and sky raiders a couple of machine gun positions open fire and hit one of the A1 E's a phantom blew one of the gun crews

to hell with a 500 pound bomb the A1E knocked out the second one minutes after it opened fire because there were no more specter aircraft to call on I continued to working with a pair of A1 E's having them make run after run I could talk directly to the lead pilot and he and his wingman executed my every request or direction flawlessly damn you had to love those A1 E pilots finally we could hear in the distance the sweet sweet sound of approaching helicopters big A and H-H-3s churning their way our way. It was time to pull out all the stops. I used every available support aircraft, F-4s, and A1E's to raise hell and suppress enemy fire. As they roared in with

guns blazing, we could see the H-H-3's tagging along in their wake. I told Covey to have the H-H-3 gun crews focused their fire on our southern perimeter, and we'd handle the northern side. I also requested they land as close as possible to the north slope and not pay any attention to the Claymore's explosions we'd be setting off. I didn't want to spook these guys off. So the Helo's land. Every one of the team once aboard immediately went to the starboard window or faced out the tailgate and began firing on full automatic as the HH3s revved up to full power. I was the last to leave and before heading for the LZ I set off the last Claymore we had put on the northern perimeter. Then I ran like hell, bent over like a cripple and cursing the prop

washed I was trying hard to push me backward as I made my dash I remember being surprised and not seeing a single dead body although I passed a slew of blood trails and saw a lot of dark wet stains on the ground the second I was through the door the HH3 lifted off the ground there was nothing but sporadic small arms fire coming at us and in the end the extraction was a relatively calm one it seemed as if the enemy was dispirited and just going through the motions I had a feeling they wanted us out of the AO as badly as we wanted to leave. Nonetheless, we all continued firing on full automatic. We also launched at least one M79 round as we gained altitude.

I dropped my last hand grenade into the underbush. A little something for someone, I hoped. Then, just as suddenly and miraculously, all gunfire ceased. The only sound was that of the churning Sikorsky H.H.3 engines and the increasingly cold air rushing through the aircraft. I looked over my shoulder towards Sal, who was retrieving warm Air Force blankets for the long ride. When I made contact with him, he gave me that quick nod of his and a slight smile. We made it again.

That's just, this is just an insane mission. Oh, yeah. And I'm sure you, you know, why don't you just break contact and continue mission? So, yeah, crazy. They need to, yeah, I know that you're putting some of these books on audiobook. We're working on it. You're in the process of doing that, and these are going to be great when you release those. I know you talk about it a little bit in the book you were putting for, you requested one of your guys be putting it for a Silver Star for this operation.

John Engel. And then you. You got put in for a Silver Star as well, and actually the CEO said he was going to upgrade that. Yeah, he said he going to upgrade, which I didn't agree with, but I'm not going to argue either. Yeah. To a Distinguished Service Cross, which, if you don't know what that is, that's the second highest military award for valor. And so, but at the same time, and again, this is, I kind of have to just tie this back into the book. a little bit, but you had been going through this kind of hassle with the commanding officer

about carrying the, uh, carrying a new encryption device out of the field. We didn't have it for that mission. And you didn't have it for this one. Correct. But you had, but then it, he started turning up the heat like, hey, you got to carry this thing. And this thing is no joke. I mean, I was looking at, I used, even when I got the seal teams, we used a PRC 77. Were those around for you? Yeah, that's what we started with. Okay. For that, uh, encrypted transmission. So there you go. Oh yeah. The PRC 77 is. It's an old radio. It's an FM radio. And it's, how big would I say it is? What's something you're similar to a prick 25? Yeah, but I'm trying to think of something that a civilian would know.

So I can describe it. It's like a big, it's like two lunchboxes maybe. Maybe like a briefcase that's a little bit more square, a little bit thicker. So it's like that. Maybe two shoe boxes. So you go. That's better. Something like that. That's how big a PRC 77 is. The K.Y. 38, which is the encryption device, is basically the same size as that. Right? It's like, again. And it doubles the weight. You got to carry double the batteries. It cuts down your range because it takes away from the penetration of the radio waves coming out. And you had to carry the encryption punch.

So that's what you're getting told to carry. And you keep coming back and saying, hey, this isn't that great. Hey, we've been trying it. It's not working. You keep getting told, nope, carry it, carry, carry. Finally, you say to your boss, you say the commanding officer, hey, look, I'll carry it. But if we get in one of these bad situations, I'm going to destroy this thing. If it doesn't work.

If it doesn't work, I'm going to destroy this thing. Yeah. And he kind of says, okay, whatever, you know, but you carry it. Yeah. So you go on an operation. And you actually were going to leave it in the helos. You asked the helos to take it. You asked him to come back and get it because it didn't work.

He said, Helos, come back and take this thing. because it's 50 pounds. Yes, the weight. And we had, I wanted to try, the target was the ashaw. And there was something specifically in the asphalt. They wanted us to confirm. So I went in with a four-man team. The theory being would go in light, we can move quicker

because the Ashaw Valley didn't have triple canopy, at least the part that we were looking at. So it was like single or double canopy. And a lot of open areas, because there's been so many bombs, there have been eight camps that have been overrun, deserted. And I've been in the ashaw, we put the sensors in, and plus we fly over it every time. So generally familiar where we were gone. So I said, I want to do a four-man team.

Please don't force me to carry it. Well, we had to carry it. And that's when I said, if it doesn't work, we went in, tried it, didn't work. Try it a few times. Yeah, and they wouldn't come back. And you've been trying it on other operations as well. We tried it on one, and it was just a complete failure, but I brought it back. And so this time you start getting tracked.

Yeah. And you say, okay, I'm not carrying this thing anymore. So you put a thermite grenade. Did you put a thermite grenade on it? Yeah. So you put a thermite grenade on it. You destroy it. And then you, again, by the skin of your teeth, you get you and your guys out of there.

And when you are coming back to, you're flying back to base. And just so you know how close they were. At one point, I'm looking to the north. And I see a young face come through the jungle at me within two or three. three feet or so. So I can see his outline. I can see his AK is down. He sees me, and we just stop and look at each other.

And it's all through the jungle, the grass. He backed out. I just kept my car at him, but he didn't open fire. And he was young. I mean, a young kid with a gun. He backed up, he went away. So I knew that this, okay, this mission is now compromised, and we hit the thermite.

Yeah. Like I said, this is another man. mission where you are getting out of there by the skin of your teeth. It's a damn miracle that you bring all your troops back that you don't get overrun that no one gets killed. It's crazy. And the CEO was flying in a helicopter close by and we asked for a tactical withdrawal. That's right. He goes, break contact, continue to miss your favorite words. So we destroyed the encryption device. Roger that, sir. Yeah. And we had more contact. Well, he finally ran on fuel, went back. We on the ground for a few more hours. We continue to move, but we hear more activity, particularly

after we had to be thermite at the damn radio. I thought we'd be getting extracted. He didn't. So now they know where we are, because anybody within 10 miles can tell there's the thermite grenade, and any of ours, it's those guys, and they were coming for us. But there weren't a lot. But we had a new cubby rider came out, Dallas Longstreet, and we started running A1s across me, because we can hear the enemy to the west. And so the A1's made a couple of gun runs. And the last gun run, the pilot came in, and then he flipped his aircraft. So, like, I'm looking at the A1 making a gun run.

And earlier, you can hear him when they go by. You know how the aircraft makes these noises, these cracked noises, when the wings change and whatever the structures in the plane are? So I'd heard him go by before. This one, he came by. He wanted to make sure where we were. He came by so close as I could tell you he was smoking a Philly Shrew. He looked over.

He nodded. I saluted it. And he did a couple more gun runs, and they brought in the – and they – Slicks couldn't land. So they dropped the ropes and pulled us out on ropes. And, of course, whenever you go out in ropes, they're shooting at you. It's like target practice for them. How do no one never gets shot on the ropes?

I mean, it seems like your team never got shot on the ropes. Knock on wood. Just luck. Oh, sure, luck. I mean, I always felt like they're just coming through your legs to get your balls. or Mr. Happy worse. Brain damage.

I'm worried about brain damage here. So you go through all that. And again, people need to buy this book so they can read that full story because even what you just said is a portion of it. You get back, you get taken out on strings, which again, that's something we didn't talk about a lot, but a lot of times when helicopters couldn't land,

they'd drop down the ropes with the sandbags on the end and you guys would clip in and they drag you out through the jungle and get you up the altitude and get you out of there. And that's what happens here. Finally, you get back, and here we're going back to the book. When we landed on the helicopter pad at CCN, the CO's biggest remf, a rude, arrogant, a rude ignorant sergeant major told me to report to the COASAP with the KY38 and all attachments for it. When I walked into the CO's office, the REMF Sergeant Major ordered me to stand detention, which I did.

Then the CEO asked the $64,000 question, where is the KY38? I explained to him that per our earlier conversation when we had made contact with the NVA since it didn't work I destroyed it he flew into a rage telling me that I had violated a direct order from him not to destroy it under any circumstances I stated once again what I had said prior to the mission because this was a four-man team he simply said he didn't remember it that way it was just me him and the Remp sergeant major who knew that the CEO was of course telling the truth.

So the Sergeant Major's support and Skipper of course. He's telling the truth. I didn't like the way this was going. So, as I had in the past with the CO, I tried to explain my actions from the position of the man on the ground, which was different from a man sitting in a command

and control helicopter as he had earlier in the day while ordering me to break contact and continue mission. Then he got really pissed and told me that he was going to write me up for an article 32 criminal allegation onto the military code of conduct for willfully destroying U.S. government property in direct opposition to his order not to destroy the K.Y. 38 under any circumstances. The Remp Sergeant Major then whispered something to the CO. As they whispered back and forth to each other, I found myself growing extremely calm, unbelievably calm.

Finally, the CO stepped from behind his desk, leaving the Rempth Sergeant Major behind it. I'm going to ruin your Special Forces career. I want you out of CCN at first light tomorrow. He went on to tell me to report to Fifth Special Forces Group headquarters in Na Trang, where he'd have me drummed out of SF within the next month. Privately, I smiled because the CEO hadn't done his homework. He failed to realize that my service in the Army ended in two weeks due to the fact that I had extended my time in service to return to CCN. The CO only knew the date when I had arrived at CCN and had assumed I had a traditional one-year tour of duty that would end in October, not April 1970.

My SOG days ended right there. I knew that when I went to Naatrang, I could get it. Assignment in Vietnam where there was an opening for an experienced SF soldier but as I stood there I believe that God had sent this asshole into my life for a reason Granted it wasn't a reason I didn't completely understand Granted it was a reason I didn't completely understand at this precise moment in time But maybe it was time for me to get out of Uncle Sam's army altogether while my body if not my mind Was relatively intact

Who knew what the future held for SS? in Vietnam finally he finished and asked me if I had anything to say you're a disgrace to West Point fuck you sir I turned and exited without saluting the Remp sergeant Major caught up to me as I exited the door and told me to return and salute the CEO I bent toward his ear and quietly said fuck you too sergeant major before leaving the CCN headquarters area I stopped by the awards and decoration desk to see if the CEO had begun paperwork for flying that day east of our team embarrassed the clerk simply nodded his head in the affirmative meaning that the CEO was in the process

of getting himself written up for an award for telling us to break contact to continue the mission while he was flying out of harm's way safely in South Vietnam that was him yeah wow oh yeah just don't Unbelievable. But, you know, it's just like you knew it. I just felt it. And Pussy had a reputation already by that time. And we had talked to the A&D people previously about some other things that he put himself in for or had somebody put him in for. And, yeah, so it's just a total disgrace. And it's just the luck of the timing was the fact that you knew that you could get out of the army in a few weeks. Yeah, because at that point, I was juggling the thought of re-enlisting, a friend of mine who was. was a captain who we had run one mission together. He was in the process of putting me in for a direct commission to lieutenant. And so the paperwork had been placed.

And I don't know if it ever got to Saigon or not. But I know that he had a separate office. The paperwork was done. We had completed everything. We had letters of recommendation, all that stuff. And so in fact he and I had talked about what we're going to do. I was going to stand for a few months to see if the direct. Commission, even though the reductions in fourths were coming, you know, because they had already

start the Vietnamization process. The maximum manpower we had in Vietnam was at the end of 69, I believe it was we had 543,000 Americans in Vietnam. So by April 70, when this all happened, we had reduced the numbers. You could do more of what was coming, even within SF. And so all those things were being juggled. So if I got the direct commission, I thought about that, two years of college, I knew I had to get two more years

if I was going to try for a career. And I didn't want to go back to Fort Devons. So those were the things I was juggling at the time. And when this all happened, I just, like I said, I was really calm. I just thought God gave me an answer here. Yep.

Going back to the book, I continued down to the team room, where I gave Sal $500 to buy food and drink for the biggest party, RT Idaho had during my tenure on the team. We partied late into the night. One by one each team member passed out until it was just HEP and me standing outside RT Idaho's Vietnamese team room. Hep asked me if I needed him for any more interpreting. When I said no, he passed out in the sand. I picked him up, dusted him off as best I could and carried him into the team room where I gently

placed him in bed. Before I turned the lights out, I stood in the doorway for a moment longer, reflecting on my 18 months with these men, with a special affection and admiration for Sao, Hep, Falk, Quang, and Hung. Then the guilt pangs washed over me. What did the future hold for them? That had to be the hardest part of this departure. Brutal.

It really was. And these guys were just doing this continually for years. They didn't rotate out. No. That was their job. Well, HEP had rotated up to headquarters. He asked for permission to go there for a better paying job. And after three and a half years run a recon, said, sure.

And we had a, the guy who was interpreter of Virginia came over. Not as good as HEP, but he was a good interpreter. And by that time, we had worked on two other South Vietnamese. It hung and a chow were speaking good enough English, where if I got shot, they could pick up the radio and take over because we cross-trained them on radio procedures, SOPs, how to run everything. So HEP knew how to do it, then hung and then chow later.

And they must, from their perspective, this must have seemed completely insane. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And they were like, really? But they knew the way, but this is 70. So SF had been there in force for six years by then. And they knew enough from talking to each other, plus being in the Secret War, how things were operated.

And that, you know, we all reported to a commander somewhere. And it was still one of the points that's a sticking point. It was like, oh, God, I'm alive thanks to you and now I'm leaving you guys here. And so this is April 70, without ever thinking about what April 30th, 1775 would be like the day of Saigon fell Just horrible

So you you finish with that you know you you pack up you reported to not train During during the next two weeks the most traumatic event was having the ice cream stand severely damaged by enemy mortar fire That was serious That's really messing with your head destroyed ice cream stand The rips had to go They got PTSD from that one. Oh, yeah, they had to go downtown for their ice cream. On April 25th, so that was April 1st, so now it's April 25th.

Yeah. I mustered out of the army at Fort Lewis, Washington, again with mixed emotions. I flew to Denver, Colorado to spend a few days with my sister Linda and to enjoy some spring skiing in the Rockies. At the end of April, she got a rental car for me to return to New York City. I drove from Denver to Sutherland, Ohio, to visit my cousin, Dung Conrad and his wife, Sandra, before heading home to Trenton. The drive was about 1,300 miles, including pit stops and a long wait in Ohio for food and few phone calls.

I made it home in less than 15 hours. So you were averaging over 100 miles an hour, basically. That's all it could do, though. It's just a rental. When I arrived at 20 West Paul Ave, that's your house, where you grew up, it was around 3 a.m. Times had changed in my absence. My parents now locked the front and back door.

of the house so wearing my jump boots in class A uniform I went around to the back of the house where I climbed up to the window grab the metal roof of the shed and stepped on the metal clothes line hook to push myself up to the red metal roof dampened by the morning moisture after I climbed through the back window I went over to my little brother David and gave him a big hug hell he was taller than me then I went down to my parents bedroom moving first to my mother's side of the bed I touched her face but didn't say a word groggy she murmured David is that you then she reached up to my face and felt my beard John she said as she stirred from her sleep John is that you John you're home Henry it's John he's

home she reached around my neck with the urgency and pain only my mothers know and said Johnny's home. Johnny's home. Oh yeah. So, made it home. Only buddy, grace God. And what came next? What, I mean, what did you do after that?

Well, went to, went back to school because it took me two years to flunk out. So that summer, I, uh, I, uh, took. and then my dad got me a job right away driving school buses and so like within the first two or three days of me getting a driver's license this is Trenton New Jersey there's still some race riots that were going on so things were they had curfews which was like this is like mind boggling in Trenton of all places and so they said we got to run for you you're going to go to Chambersburg which was the Italian section of Trenton and they were just starting new integration program. So I picked up a busload of young black kids that were mostly elementary

school. Pick them up, take them into Chambersburg. On the way in there's protests and I'm getting rocked and stoned. And I don't have my car 15 because those Italians are whoever they were that were hitting us with those rocks. It was really making me very unhappy. But here it was like, this is Trenton. I go for one more zone to this and they're doing this integration stuff. And so the curfew So we had all that going on And within a couple weeks The church softball team was reactivated

Softball season was there So did that school Did some driving And eventually got involved In the school newspaper Became editor We had a period of time Where the student government

voted itself out of office We had the SDS on campus The Communists were in there Doing their thing behind the scenes They burnt down a couple of buildings Just for good luck played dominoes in the library, knocked over all the books there.

Stupid stuff. And then... You had to just be thinking yourself. Are you serious? Yeah. This is what I just, you know, saw my friends get killed, took risk my own life,

saw what the Vietnamese people were actually fighting for, what they wanted. And you had these people back here in America acting like this. And we knew the SDS were backed with the communists, and they had all their propaganda, but it was never reported. They were just like, well, here's like another group protesting in the streets

without any kind of active definition as to who these people really were, what they really hated America. And so, you know, we're involved with school, trying to get going. And, you know, during this time, we got very active with the paper. I was editor for two years. So I worked on the paper for every day, for two straight years. And we had our moments, you know.

They had the first faculty strike in the state. So before that, I was really excited because me and two other SF buddies were going to shut the campus down. Because the faculty there and the teacher unions told us, we will support you students and we're going to get things for you

and they made other promises, which, okay, I'm all for it. And it would be the first strike in history in New Jersey. And so me and the guys put together a plan because there's basically three major entrances in one couple of clandestine routes. So we had everything planned.

We're going to overturn an empty fuel tanker at one gate. The other gate, we were going to just close it down with cars and things. So we'd take them at least a day or two to clean it up and clear it out. We shut that school down. So we're putting our plans together, right? So now here comes Mr. Editor.

I get a copy of the state, I go to the state department of a higher education, and the chancellor gives me what the state is proposing. He says, look at this, read this. It says, have the union give you their proposal. Well, they wouldn't give it to me, nor would the chancellor. He felt it was a violation of their fiduciary, whatever the hell was, that they're dealing with these union people. So the union guy had his Volkswagen in the parking lot. Long story short, I borrowed his contract. I borrowed his contract. I got it, photocopied it. When I'm photocopying it downstairs at the administration building, he walked by.

I salute, say hi, continue to photocopy his negotiating paper, which is many pages long. I went back and printed them side by side. There's two mentions of what the union was going to do in over 20 or 30 pages of documents. One was to give them more time off, and the other was for class size. That's all they had in those pages. printed it, did an editorial, and said, screw the union, and opposed it. And then we went to war with the union editorially.

And they went on strike, but they didn't close the campus down. I pulled our, I pulled our truth. I was broken hearted, man, because I really wanted to get some good little of little warfare here at Trenton State College, you know. But they lied to us. What were you studying at the time? Well, you know, I remember, I was a freshman in 64,

and I finally graduated in 74 with a political science degree with a minor in English. Because English was still my foreign language at the time. And did you, I know you were working at the paper, again, that's what you ended up doing for your career, your second career. Yeah, most of my amazement. Because at the Signal, that was our school paper. I did everything, photography, editorials, news stories,

and went down to the Trenton Times, a local paper. They were owned by the Washington Post. Dick Hardwood was the editor. And during the Watergate stuff, he was the voice that was skeptical of Woodwarden Bernstein. But he was my editor. So I go down and I went in for an interview. I said, my hair is on my shoulders now. I hadn't had a haircut for a couple of years.

Blue jean jacket, t-shirt, jungle boots, old blue jeans, going for the first interview. He's interested. He says, come back for a second. I went back for a second interview. Had a clean t-shirt this time. Step it up. Yeah. I even thought about polishing the jungle booths, but I said nah.

So I got hired. Went to work to Trenton Times. I was there for 10 years and then went to San Diego for 10 years with the San Diego Union, which is about eight years. Moved out to California, 1985. What made you decide to move out to California? The Washington Post sold to Trenton Times and the quality of the newspaper just diminished incredibly. I was fighting more with the editors to get stories into the paper because I covered the courts

and I was doing investigative stuff. We did a story about the, we broke the story about the FBI investigating Philadelphia Police Department corruption that went to the top. Wyatt interviewed a Marine who was a Vietnam vet who was the undercover guy working with the fan belt inspectors for 18 months.

I see this guy at night. He said, we did this today. did this. He made fun of the FBI. And so he told me when they were getting ready to go out, get the search warrants, and do the raid. So I called up the fan belt inspectors and said, hey, heard you got a little case going on. I don't want to jeopardize your investigation, but I'm going to write about it before you guys do it. Let's talk. Turns out the chief FBI guy was a specter pilot. Oh, geez. He had flown in layoffs. Now, we couldn't determine if he was my savior that night on February of 1970 or not, but we had an interesting exchange. So I gave

them two days and they put all the paperwork together and they put up wiretaps on the key suspects in the Philadelphia Police Department. Monday morning I broke the story, scoop to Philadelphia Inquirer every major paper in the world. This is before the Communist News Network and Fox News and all this stuff. Did the story and it was amazing. And they, and, and, And they did the whole thing with the follow-out. So that was one of my major coups. We had the other story about the Philadelphia Phillies that were under investigation. So we had law enforcement was my main source.

I did the courts. And in between we do these investigative pieces for fun. Came to San Diego. I was there for eight years doing law enforcement, covered our beloved border patrol. And then from there went to North County. And I always lived in North San Diego County. and they had a paper called the Oceanside Blade Citizen.

So I went to work there. The editor's job paid $10 a week more than a reporter's job. So I was like became an editor. Assistant City editor up in Oceanside, which eventually became the North County Times. And so I went to work there in October, met my future bride in December. She had two boys.

I had two girls. Ten months later, we're married. And so we'll be celebrated our 25th anniversary. this October and we went for the tiebreaker so the tiebreaker she's 22 now and I worked at the paper until 2008 that I've worked at a couple of nonprofits helping veterans over the last 11 years in between that a couple books for good luck yeah well no awesome books it seems like and this is something that I always do like obviously you know you you went through some just completely insane intense stuff you come back it seems like you got back into society fairly well fairly quickly be you

and and what I always say to guys is like you need a new mission like because what happens when I think guys fall apart is when they come back from wherever they're deployed to and they don't when they come back they don't know what to do they don't they don't they don't go on to the next mission whereas you're like okay I'm going to go to college I'm going to work at the newspaper oh I'm going to organize these you know we're going to fight this fight and it seems like you got focused on what your next mission was where I think that's when a lot of guys don't do well. And I was wondering if you saw anything with your friends, other Vietnam guys that you served with, the guys that seem to get back on track and carry on with their life as opposed to guys that don't. Yeah, majority of our

guys, I like to think, came back and they adjusted one way or the other. We had a couple tragic cases that didn't. I mean, when I went back for my second tour, I went back with Jeffrey Jenkins, who was going back for his fifth tour of duty, second or third with SF. And so we howled on the plane going across, went back, we landed in Cameron Bay. And instead of going through the process, we got our duffel bag, went out and stole Jeep, drove to the Trang, but didn't go to headquarters, went downtown,

and partied for a little bit, then we poured it to the Trang, and then went up to CCN there because we were both returning. So there's no in-country training, none of that stuff. and my order specifically said CCN and I got back to the team right away which you covered earlier. And the other sidebar, which really helped was at Trenton State College,

I was a point man for the PLWMIA Concern Center. They came out with the bracelets and the whole thing that was that effort. They had American citizens that were and the family members. It was the first time American family members petitioned an enemy to treat our prisoners better. And so our prisoners weren't released until February of 1973.

We had two years that I worked at the PLWMIA Concern Center. We had a PLW, an Air Force PLW from Trenton. We supported him, well, his family, wrote letters, everything we could do in our spare time between classes, putting out newspapers and things like that. So it was like a really a sub-rose mission. And when the prisoners came home, that was just a great moment. And so, but it really was helpful. Like they said, another mission that we went into, the newspaper, going into it.

And there was a period of time the student government voted herself out of office. So the paper was the only student voice. So we took a must-per pro. What does that mean the student government voted themselves out of office? What does that even mean? Hey, this is 1971. We had people that were just too busy. They didn't think the student government was could address issues

that were apropos to true needs of students or whatever hell that meant. I forget their real reasons, but they just disbanded themselves. So the signal was the only voice on campus. And so we became much more active. And of course, we had affirmative action that was starting then.

and the teacher strike, we had an outbreak of meningitis. We killed three students, had to cover that. And, of course, deep in my mind, I wanted them to strike. I wanted to go out and shut the campus down. But it didn't work out. How about the, you know, how was the treatment, you know, you know, as a modern day veteran myself, like we get treated just unbelievably ridiculously good.

Well, that's the benefit from Vietnam. We weren't treated well. But today, our citizenry treats our soldiers, sailors, appropriately regardless of the politics. They thank you for the service, mostly. Yeah, we had cases. I mean, I wore my fatigue jacket for years just to say, fuck you.

I'm wearing it if you don't like it. Talk to me about it. And we had a few parties with the newspaper. And so everybody, almost everybody, except for one or two people, were very liberal, of course. This is a college, in 1971, too. And we had this one freak. He's like 6'3, had his long hair.

And he came up to me and said, you know, you guys, I know about you green brace. You're fucking baby killers. You know, he's going on. The whole party comes to a stop. So it's mean as creep. And so he said a few more things. And then finally says, aren't you really a baby killer?

And I said, look, the only time we killed babies when we ran out of rations. Whoa. He just, that kid was never the same. And everybody else was kind of like laughing, realizing how ridiculous this asshole was. So it's like, why get your hands dirty? Yeah, yeah.

So yeah, we had someone at it. Like Lynn Black, when he came back, he was trying to get out of the airport quick and took the door, got outside. and wound up in a long quarter. Well, three or four guys came up to him and said, hey, man, you're back, you got cast. We're going to relieve you with that burden.

So Lynn pulled out his 25 caliber Browning, the little ones, you know. You put it in your palm. Yeah. And Lynn goes, no, no, I'm not giving it to you. And the guy goes, I recognize a cigarette lighter when I see one. Lynn put around between his legs right there at the airport. Dang. They left.

But again, there's no respect, you know. Lynn just didn't want to get his uniform Where was that? Where was Lynn? See, up in Seattle. Dang. Yeah. Yeah. And then how did you start getting re-involved

with like the special operations group that you're with now? I got a phone call from Spicer. Well, there's two. I got a phone call from Spider-Parks in 1983. I'm living in Trenton, my first wife, first daughter. And he said we got this group, Special Operations Association.

It's our guys. It was formed by Green Berets that ran recon, and we had some hatchet force guys. They were the platoon company-sized operations like Mad Dog Jerry Shriver. And they had formed up a few years earlier. So I signed up. I'm living in Trenton, and their reunions were at different places. So I didn't bother to go for several years. But Spire and I talked, paid my dues, and finally went to – and they started having them in Vegas. me and Jeff Jenkins would drive, go to Vegas, get into the hotel,

wait to the security guard left, and sneak into the reunion, hang out with the guys for a day, pick one of our guys, crash in their room for the night, and then drive home the next day. But we get to see the guys and no money. We get to free food, free drinks, little gas, right? So we did that for a couple years. It was a lot of fun. And then when I finally met Anna, my current wife and my sweetheart forever,

that kind of came to a close. I took Adam one time, and the first time was not a really completely good experience. Some of our guys are still pretty wild, and then the hotel wasn't that cool. But now, it's more of a... Our guys are slowing down a little bit.

We've lost some along the way. So we happen to reunion. This will be our 43rd reunion. Then I'm also involved with the Special Forces Association Chapter 38 up in Orange. And I went to a restroom two years ago at Christmastime.

I came back. I was president. So I'm wrapping up my second year of duty with those gentlemen. And what's the nonprofit group that you have? We have the Veterans Affordable Housing Program that's out of Orange. And then we have a separate nonprofit called the American Veterans Assistance Group where we work with programs within our communities. We have 45 communities in the five Western states that are owned by our company

and by our nonprofit. And so we encourage to help veterans that have fixed income to get them into affordable housing. You know, the manufacturer homes less expensive than stick houses. And then we have programs through the AVVAG program.

We have programs for meals, meetings, have bringing guests speakers and things like that. And we're doing that in about nine of our communities now. So that's what my other job is then do, the newsletter. Busy. Always.

Always busy. Like Clint Eastwood, they can't let the old man in. Well, I'll tell you what, we just hit three hours or something close to that. Oh, wow. I know I need to let you get out of here, obviously. Anything else? Any other closing thoughts? No, just as I said the first time, I could have done any of the books without my sweetheart, my dear bride.

You know, we had four teenagers and a relatively newborn. born in the house. She said, go right. And God bless her. Without her, I couldn't have done it. And then found me today. We just learned we got two of our three girls are pregnant, so we're getting excited about being that grandparents. We're practicing. And we're still working with our nonprofit. So moving forward. Can people donate to that nonprofit? Do you have that kind of thing? Is there a website or anything like that? Or does you guys just run it locally? No, they, I'll have to check the website, but they could, um, I've got my email, my website, sog chronicles.com,

and they could punch in there my emails there, and I'll be glad to afford them. We're going through some changes with our website, red designs. You know how that goes. But sog chronicles.com is how people can talk to you, reach out to you through that. Gladly. Awesome.

And, yeah, come on in and we'll say hi and take it from there. Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you for this opportunity and your books, man. We love it. Thank me at all. Absolutely. This is, the honor is 100% and completely all mine to hear the stories, which are completely insane to learn from your experiences. Obviously, or maybe it's not obvious, anytime you want to come on the podcast, you shoot me a text, you let me know, and we'll just open the door.

You can come in. I don't need to say anything. You can just talk. It's fine with me. I'll just listen. Like a bad dream. I'll be back. I look forward to every second of it.

Likewise. And, you know, so thanks for coming on and, you know, more important. And of course, thank you for what you and what your teammates did for the service of our great country. Likewise, sir. Thank you. We're always indebted to you and men like you. So thank you for what you've done. Appreciate it. Airborne.

All the way. Until next time. And once again, John Stryker-Meyer-Meyer tilt. Tilt. has left the building. What an incredible human being. And it's a complete honor and just lucky to be able to sit here and talk to him and hear his stories and hear him reflect on stuff. And it's been a while.

It's been three hours. So anyways, if you liked this conversation, this podcast that we just did, if you got something out of it, which I know I did, if you want to support the podcast. Sure. While you actually support your own self, I think Echo can give you some help in making that happen. Yep.

Yes. So let's go into it, Jiu-Jitsu, obviously. Doing Jiu-J-Zitsu, if you're not doing Jiu-J-Sitsu, I would say Jocco and I strongly recommend. I thought you were going to say we were disappointed. No, see, yeah, maybe part. But not really. At the end of the day, there's some understanding to be exercised here.

Because not ever, okay, you ever rolled, you're different. But sometimes people roll into a jiu-jitsu gym or see it on TV or even think about it. Two people wrestling all hard or whatever. Some people just don't automatically want to go do that, you know, just automatically. On its surface, you might think, oh, well, that's not really for me. I don't really want to grapple with some other dude. Oh, yeah. What you don't see is what's beneath the surface.

Yes. Because what's beneath the surface is fitness, flexibility, mobility, mental stamina. Yeah. Physical stamina. Yeah. Cardiovascular improvement. Strength improvement. On top of all that, guess what you get?

A legitimate skill. Yes. That you can actually choke another person that's bigger than you. That's stronger than you. Yeah. You can take them. Yes. So.

And, you know, if I speak for myself, the reason I started and continued with Jiu-Jitsu is because it's the skill that you're talking about that you learn. That skill is this. If someone, if someone insists on fighting you, you can win the fight. Yep. You win the fight. And before you learn how to fight, and I'm speaking, generally speaking, before you learn to fight, you think, you know, I'll just do this. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I'm stronger than that guy or I'm bigger than that guy or whatever.

Yeah, you know, and you don't realize how untrue, how un... You know how I've said we lie to ourselves? Yes. Like, we lie to ourselves. This is a whole other category of lying to yourself. Yeah. Because one category is like, we lie to ourselves, like, oh, it's just one donut. It's not that big of a deal.

That's just a lie. You're lying to yourself. Or, well, I don't, I can't make it to the gym today because, you know, my, you know, it's getting a little late. That's a lie. You know it's a lie. But an even bigger lie is, I'm more capable. I'm capable.

Yeah. In certain situations. And you're not. And you think, and you still talk to people like this. Oh, yeah. Like, oh, you know, well, if it really came down to it. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, and I lift, too. Yeah. And I got strong cardio. Who's going to be able to take me? I'll tell you who. A 14-year-old girl that knows how to, you know, choke you. Yeah. That's who.

Yeah. Just like in pool. right here play pool bucket pool bucket billiards billiards snooker sure

and it's like yeah I know I see what's going on all I do is hit this ball to hit that ball and go in the thing yeah that's no problem for me

who wants to put money on this me I'm pretty smart I'm pretty coordinated you know I'm just like that's just on my mind how hard can it be exactly right and you go play against

the guy who really who knows how to play pool you'd be like bra how do you even do that like how did you even like figure that but they know they just know

it's not like it's this magic thing. They just sort of know. Same thing with Jiu-Jitsu. It's like, man, in fact, it's such a mystery when you actually do it, how easily they beat you. It's such a weird magic mystery that at first, yeah, at first you're like, oh, oh, oh, I just slipped. No, man, you didn't slip. He put you there on purpose. Yeah, yeah. And you think, well, next time I'll just stop him from putting his arm there. Yeah, no, no, no, no. He's got one billion other things that he's going to do. Yeah, exactly. That you don't know nothing about. Same thing with basketball, by the way. Yeah, same thing with all sport.

basketball, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it goes deep. Anyway, when you do jujitsu, when you do jiu-s-too, because you're doing it. We're doing it. And you're going to do it. You should get a ghee because you want to do ghee and no geese. So the kind of ghee that you get is an origin geese, best geese in the world factually and made in America, which is a huge deal, by the way.

Also, origin, the brand that makes these geese, they make jeans American denim. You didn't even get yours yet, did you? No, I didn't. No, I totally haven't. And I talk to B little all the time. Yeah, B little just got his. Yeah, we short. You know why we take care of the customer first?

Well, you're not really the customer. Mine were T and E. All right. You know what that is? Research and development. Test and evaluation. Yeah, yeah. QA.

Quality of shares. Yeah. And I just got another test evaluation for the next phase. Yeah. Because I'm making another phase. We lie to ourselves as a wise man once said. Anyway, no, I don't have genes. but from what I imagine, from what I see and gather, you know, from the field, they're good genes.

Z now, this is a good psychological, good flanking maneuver you just did right now. No, man, I'm just saying. Because Pete and Brian will hear this and they'll be like, oh, Echo doesn't even have jeans? No, no, I will get 100% better get them to them. Nope. Did you text them and say, hey, can I get a pair of jeans, size or whatever? Me and Brian share text and pain, by the way, how like, we're the last, we're the only ones that we literally know that don't have the jeans. You know and then so he texts me the other day or or even worse

Tags me in the Instagram story about his jeans and you know me I'm over here Well then again I'm I wear the the shark fin short you know what do you call the shorts that they make that's all I wear True whatever represent representing representing big time but they happen to be the best shorts Do you wear jeans very often me? No, no Maybe that's why not why you're too vocal about it yeah, but you would be if you had them on if I knew be like, yeah. Maybe I'm just sour grapes. Like, I don't even want any.

Cool. All right. Well, I do have them. How are they really good? They are totally good to go. They're the next level. Squared away. Awesome.

Yep, you can get jeans. You can get T-shirts. You can get supplements. We have supplements. We got joint warfare, which you should take. We got Criol Oil. We got discipline and discipline go. Discipline Go is like, get your cognitive wheels spinning.

turning, moving, quickly, sharp. So we have discipline going a can coming out. I think he's actually out right now. Yeah, the little, yeah. Yeah. See that those are the same formula, the one, the test one that they, yes. Okay, good.

Yeah, that's, that one's good. Yeah. Here's the thing about all of these, right? So you have joint warfare, krill oil, right? The combo, that's the best way to go free joints and stuff. And then, you know, discipline and the mulk and everything. Okay, consider this, right? as you get older and you still want to fight because man I got to I got to be honest with you

I'm you know you know how you catch the wave of just consistency I know you're a consistent person and discipline I've been on that wave okay that's a tsunami right so you're the you're the poster child of understanding I do have the ding knee right now yes which is we're almost there yes but you know how okay you know how some people can catch various levels of how should they say flourishing flourishes of activity, you know, where they'll catch the wave of consistency, meaning like everything they're doing in their life is like, I'm being disciplined and I'm in the zone where it's like just second nature now, boom, boom, boom,

everything, right? So if you take all of these supplements, that's going to keep you on there. Yeah. Especially as you get older. Oh, I don't know about the older part because I'm just kind of the same as I was. Right, right. That's just how for you.

But take it from someone who's getting older. actually getting older I think as far as my workouts like they're hard they're harder than most of the workouts I did when I was young and I'm just maintaining big time as far as like staying in the game you're saying anyway you get the consistent combo that's

in my opinion how you do it also I mentioned milk additional protein in the form of a dessert in the form of a delicious drink that's just so tasty who was it was telling me like they were saying, oh, it was Dave.

Good deal, Dave. Yeah, good deal Dave was saying he's at a point now where he's drinking strawberry milk. He goes, listen, it's one thing to be, okay, it's time for dessert or, hey, I'm a little bit hungry. It's another thing to just be sitting around or walking through your house and be just, just think for no reason other than I want to taste the goodness. I'm just going to go have a strawberry milk.

strawberry slayer right now. And you know why I understand? Because I've done that before. And this is what I thought to myself. It's a game changer. The thing is there's no guilt in that. But here's the thing. The concept kind of made me feel a little bit guilty

when I was doing that. Because you know how the kind of where you're like at home bored and you see the cookies and you're like, it was an easy path and you took it. It was a desire that you succumb to. Yes. And that can be a bad pattern to go down. Yes.

So you got to be careful. Don't get, don't allow the goodness of Mulk to start to train your brain to accept things that you just want. Yes, exactly. You can make an exception with Mulk. You can be like, hey, I really want this right now just for just for the sake of wanting it. Yes.

You can get it. But don't think, hey, donut. Yeah. There's a slippery slope, bro. It is a slippery, right? Yeah. It's kind of, yeah. It's true.

So just beware of the mindset, essentially. There's other flavors too. If you don't like strawberry, which some people don't. Who is it? Jason Gardner. Jason Gardner. Jason cycle gardener. Don't like strawberry.

Good job, Jason. He's over there, but he takes that little hitter with his coffee in the morning. He's got his little, he's got his little ritual scenario. He's got going on. That makes sense, though. Strawberry and coffee. Yeah, strawberry coffee is no good. No, the vanilla there.

Then you got mint, peanut butter. The peanut butter is also off the hook. So is the mint. That's the OG. Yeah. Did we just say OG? Yes, we did. We did.

Big time. And then don't forget about the warrior kid milk, which the warrior kid milk for your kid. Either that, you can give them poison. You can give them poison, which, oh, you got a bunch of corn syrup in this drink. I'm going to give it to my child so that I give them type 2 diabetes. Or you can get them something that makes them stronger, smarter, faster, or better. Yes. Warrior kid.

Warrior kid milk, strawberry and chocolate. Get some. Also, Jocko White Tea. Certified organic, by the way. Very good. Micro, I would even call it micro doses of caffeine. There's like many, many doses. Yeah, what it is.

Yeah. There's 60 milligrams per can. It's sort of like a cup of coffee. It also has the antioxidants and there. It also tastes good. Yes, sir. Refresh. Very refresh.

So there you go. And, well, obviously. Obviously. Yeah. If you want to deadlift 8,000 pounds. Obviously, yes. The jaco white tea. That's the one.

Also. Certified. Certified. Yep. Yeah. Also, we have a store. Jocco has a store. I say we have a store.

We all have a store. If you want to get your merchandise. I haven't said that word. Merch. I don't really say that word that much. You just said it. And you said it in a real kind of explicit kind of way. You know why?

Because my daughter watches YouTube videos, which I had to block her. Oh. Not block her, but you know how you got to put the block on YouTube so only they can only see certain things? Anyway, I had to do that. She's like, you're like, okay. The only thing she's allowed to watch is jujitsu videos, Jocco podcast, Warrior Kid Podcast. I don't know, man. She can take it to it.

Anyway, the reason I did that was because she was following some girl on there who was really, she was just real sassy. She wasn't, it wasn't like derogatory. She just had a sassy way of talking maybe 15, maybe 16 years old. That's my estimate. And my daughter's six. So this girl is talking about this and that. My daughter is starting to say this stuff, which is cute at first, in my opinion. But after a while, you're like, hey, you can't talk like that.

This is not. This is not what we're doing over here. what we're doing exactly right so she anyway so recently within last past like two days we had to block her anyway one of the things she kept saying was like merch and she'd say it all sassy like i'm not gonna do it again i'm not going to say it again but that's how she was saying it so it just slipped into your head slip right out of your mouth right out of my mouth so you're talking about the moor so that's why okay so what can you get at yeah oh at jocco store dot com yes so jacocco store dot com is where you can get discipline equals freedom shirts lightweight hoodies which are really nice man I had it on the

other day and everyone's all flash into it and be like hey this is good you know what's interesting about jocco store.com what's that is we sell t-shirts sure for one thing we sell discipline equals freedom t-shirt we sell t-shirt we sell t-shirts there's also people that come up to me and say oh i just got an awesome t-shirt I got one of your t-shirts and I'm like oh sweet man and I just had a guy say to me hey I just got one of your t-shirts I wish I was wearing it right now and I was like cool he goes it's the don't talk just get after it shirt oh okay and I go cool man we don't have that I don't have that shirt yeah so there are what do we call him knockoffs knock off yeah they're knockoffs they're what do you

call like yeah there's like a word for it. Disapproved. Yeah, they're disapproved, but they're kind of worse than unapproved. They're like worse.

This is why because people will, they don't know the layers. You know how like, remember the layers. You just bought a shirt and you paid $19 for it and has no layers. It came with no layers. No layers, man. And that's bad.

That's really, and it's a piece of crap shirt. Yes. So it's kind of like when you buy something for the, okay, you have a reason to buy something, right? And this is generally speaking.

I know different reasons vary from just person to person. But you have a reason you buy something, right? Let's say there's two reasons to buy a shirt, one of these shirts. No, let's say there's one reason, straight up one reason. The main reason is the layers. You can't, you know, literally you can spray paint, Discipline Equal Freedom on your shirt. If you want Discipline Equipal, you can do that.

You can do that. You can have one printed. You can go to a website and whatever font you want. You can make it look however you want, literally. So why won't you do that? Right? Because you want more than just that. There's something else. Whatever that reason is, you're in the game.

Whatever that reason is, we'll call it X, reason X. If you go by stop talking, get after it shirt, you literally bought something else. You didn't buy an X shirt. Check you out, bro. You've been thinking about this one. You know, there's a whole reason I was thinking about it. But nonetheless, here's the thing, though. No, because I saw something.

As a shirt kind of creator, you feel like people are. Kind of. No, maybe. Kind of offending you. In this way, though, because there's a shirt thing called, like, it's T, red spring or, I don't know, something where basically you can go online, take a JPEG of a picture. I can get any one picture of you online. Submit it to this website. It'll make a mock up of the shirt.

Like, you know, the cheap shirts, you know, the buy in bulk, maybe secondhand, whatever shirts. make a mock up and be like, hey, guys, buy my shirt, right? And I saw your face on it and it was like kind of a literally the wrong design, right? They were trying to copy exactly, but there's like... You've already seen this? Yes, I saw this is a while ago, yeah. And I saw it and I was like, man, you know how down in TJ like they'll knock off like Louis Vuitton purses and stuff?

At least it looks like the Louis Vuitton logo, you know? And you got to look close to see, you know, the quality, the lapsing quality. But this one was like flagrantly wrong design, you know, whoever, meanwhile they're like selling it like their thing. Yeah, it was offensive for sure. And it's offensive on two levels because offensive kind of to us is like, hey, that's not our stuff. Don't misrepresent. That's A. B, the person who doesn't quite, you know, they're just new and fired up.

They're going to be like, hey, there's one. Here's the first one that popped up on Google. They're going to get the junk one. They're going to go out, try to represent in the wild. And that's just not going to work, man. That's a bummer. That is a bummer. And there's no support.

No support. And, you know, I get it. support isn't the primary reason when you think about it. Like you got to go out there. Someone buys a shirt. They want to represent. No, but that being said, there are some people that they don't really need another shirt. They're literally just to support.

Yes, sir. Plenty of people that are just, hey, we appreciate the time, the effort, the whatever, appreciate it. Here's a little thank you, little support. Yeah, nothing wrong with that. That's appreciated. That's, you know, that allows us to, that allows us to have. go make all these videos. Sure.

Of the various things. Nonetheless, the jocco store. By the way, you know who's listening to this right now? No one. We're three hours, three plus hours deep.

This is just you and me dogging. Yeah. All right. Well, whatever you're going to say, you might as well say it. No one cares. Well,

it's all still true. How about that? And yes, the stuff that you really want to represent the authentic certified. There's no certification process.

Approved. Approved. Approved. Yeah. Is all on jocco store.com. IWA active.c.o. If you're in the UK, that's where you get it.

Dang. Yeah. So I, and here's the thing I meant to say this. Someone needs to buy another URL for that. Well, it's dot co. U. U.K. Still.

Yeah, it's got to be like that. Okay. Anyway, because, you know, because shipping, certain parts in like the UK, the shipping is crazy from here, is what I'm saying. So, boom, you want to sidestep the shipping a little bit. You can do that. It might take a little bit longer, I think, maybe.

I'm not sure. I don't live in the UK, but nonetheless, some people were asking me about that. Yeah, anyway, hoodies and stuff, all the legitimate, approved stuff. Check it out. If you like something, get something. Also, subscribe to the podcast. If you haven't already on iTunes, Stitch or Google Play, wherever you listen to, iTunes or whatever you listen to podcasts. That's what I meant to say. And the Warrior Kid podcast, which is not dead.

Is not dead. Yep. Which is more episodes are brewing. They're brewing in my mind. Should I, you know I make for the Warrior Kid podcast, I do the last, I don't know, six episodes, perhaps I've done the story from Uncle Jake. Yeah. That takes not just time, because it takes a little bit of time to prep, but it also takes the spark of inspiration, right? Okay, here's the deal, right?

And you can't manufacture inspirato, as we know. So sometimes I'm like, well, I could just do a Q&A for the kids, which is what it started out as, which is fine, which I get it. So but sometimes I feel like I'm letting everyone down if I don't do the story from Uncle Jake's childhood Yes. Because I really like doing the stories from Uncle Jake childhood So do I. Now I will like I said, we're back on it. Maybe I'll release some with no story from Uncle Jake's childhood just to because I get so many good questions from young warrior kids around the world and I mean that

Think about that the world little warrior kids all over the place getting ready to get up and get after Do some pull-ups. So yeah, check out the world Warrior Kid podcast and also if you want to support a actual warrior kid go to irishoaks ranch.com where young aiden is making soap that allows you to stay clean check also we have a youtube channel jocco podcast YouTube channel if you're interested in the video version you're what John striker meyer looks like tilt a.k.a. tilt or if you want to see what jaco looks like if you don't already know more if you don't have a shirt with it.

his face already on it. And you want to see what he looks like on, you know, YouTube. And also there's some excerpts on there. You know, if you want to listen to or revisit specific ideas or concepts, lessons, you know, individually. And share them with your friends. You know, the higher likelihood of them watching it. That's where you get them on our YouTube channel. So, yeah.

Echo thinks his videos are good. You can leave a comment on his videos. He does read them. I read them. Allegedly. Everyone likes to say that echo is jacked So check that out psychological warfare That's an album with tracks where if you got a little moment of weakness you might be approaching and you want to get out of bed or you want to get your workout done or you want to say no to a donut

Donuts Press play psychological warfare iTunes Google play mp3 Don't forget about the visual version of psychological warfare warfare from Dakota Meyer Flipside canvas Dakota Meyer is making art You know that you can hang on the wall that says all your excuses are lies Makes all kinds of cool stuff. He's stepping up his game with that. It's really cool stuff and if you haven't listened to podcast 115 with Dakota Meyer check it out and then go get some of his gear From good old flipside canvas.com

Yes, that's a very good one. I was talking with both John Bozac aka illustrator of War Kid book series and Mikey and the Dragons yeah what was he saying no word we're he was talking about yeah I got some good stuff that you know I'm going back and forth with Dakota Meyer West so he's going to be designing some of those yes so we have some warrior kid posters canvases wall hanging stuff from Mikey and the dragons yeah which Mikey the Dragons's artwork let's face it this stuff is legit yeah you you consider yourself kind of an artist right yes I do yes you do no doubt about it you and Pete right Roberts are just over there creating color palettes. Right? Yes, you are. I see you over there with your color palettes. You know, your point, sir. My point is that we have to admit that Mike and the Dragon's artwork is awesome.

I will. We're taking it. We're putting it on to some legit size canvases and you can hang it up in your kid's room. So your kid learns to overcome his or her fear check. Agree. Also, on it. So on it.com slash jojo. So this is where you can get any kind of like additional fitness gear, awesome fitness gear, including kettlebells, which I recommend.

Battle ropes, maces clubs. So I've been talking to some of the guys there. He was telling me about the, you know, the mace or a club. You have both, right? Yes. Which one is the one with the longer is mace. Okay. Yes.

Club is short. Yes, the mace. So I was like, yeah, no, I don't. I don't really do that workout, but I looked into it. And that one might be beneficial. The mace is definitely beneficial. Yeah. Well, the mace and they're both beneficial.

The thing that's beneficial about them, they're awkward. Yes. They're hard to handle. Yeah. You know? Bro, I've been doing like a lot of kettlebells, like heavier for as many reps. You know, it's like that kind. You know how there's different, you know, you can do a light kettlebell for a longest.

Anyway, the more awkward kind of the thing, and you've been doing those sandbags. too, huh? Yeah. You were sandbag. I was sandbag in the other. Yeah, man, those awkward things. Here's a good exercise with the sandbag. You just take your sandbag.

Just heave it over your head. Turn around, heave it over your head. Turn around, heave it over your head. That's actually tiring. Oh, yeah. You're going to find that to be more tiring than you expect, especially because the first one, you're like, oh, Jocco said this was going to be tiring.

It's not. Then you do number three, and you're like, Jock was not right. You're number five, and you're like, why am I breathing hard? And then you do it like seven times. You're like, why I'm even doing this? Yeah.

because it's too painful. Oh, that's my experience. Nonetheless, I've been doing it and consistently, kind of for the first time in life where I'll be like, oh, yeah, I try the workout. It's cool for a week or two. And so, it's a cool workout. It's a good workout.

I get it. But I've been doing them for, like, long time now. Cettlebells, like these awkward things. And in jujitsu, I feel this, it's not weird. It's weird because it's new. So it's this new, like, lack of tiredness. You know how there's, like, different tiredness is in jiu-tit-to where you're like, okay, I'm windy.

Well, you know, various people, you know. Yeah, not you. Your knees out. I get it. And, you know, when you come back, we can roll or whatever. And maybe I can really put my non-tiredness to the test. But, like I'm saying, you get a few different types of tirednesses. You have the kind of where you're breathing.

You're like an Eskimo that has nine, like 150 different names for snow. You have different styles of tired. No, negative. No, because there's, think about it. There's the kind of tiredness where you're breathing real hard, but, you know, you can still generate kind of force with your muscles. You know, your muscles aren't like noodily and weight. But you're like, You're not talking muscle failure.

Yes. Which is different. It's different. And then what do you call that type of tired? Muscle failure. Muscle fatigue. You need to make up Eskimo words for all these different things. All your different forms of fatigue.

Anyway. Or you can be like, dang, I'm not breathing hard, but I just, I'm just so weak. My body can't lift my arms. You know that. How much have you trained with me? I don't know. Infinity times. What, what, how do you describe my tired?

All right. I'm trying to. think have you ever seen me get tired I have with me no no I've been tired I'll tell you that there's there's a couple times I totally remember getting tired I was we did key no gee holiday training here one time we started with no gee we went to gee we had six I think it was six 10 minute rounds no it was six six minute rounds no gee six six minute rounds gee and I was tired at the end of that everyone's you know Everyone does the like I'll take a rest round

And then I'm gonna go get Jocko Yeah yeah I was tired that's not fully But nonetheless I didn't After doing all these workouts I don't feel the like body tired You know like a dog Don't feel it like not even nearly

It's like I really gotta get pushed To feel it but so anyway Anyway point is yeah Go to onet.com slash jacco Look at all the cool stuff on there Grab something from there That'll really help you I'll keep you in the game big time

Books Jocco What do we got? Got a bunch of books. Will, where there's a will, that's the latest way of the warrior kid book, Where There's a Will, getting some really good reviews from people. Have you finished it yet?

No. Oh, you're still working through it, huh? Anyways, if you want to help your kids or any kids that you know get on the path, these are books that everyone tells me, and I will tell you, I wish I had these books when I was seven years old, eight years old, nine years old, 10 years old, 100%.

Way the Warrior Kid. Mark's mission and where there's a will check them out they're in multiple different languages to check that out if you speak a different language or your children speak a different language you can get that also got Mikey and the Dragons Mike in the Dragons is the book that should be read to every kid at least once a day from the ages of one until six I agree I just read it in a first grade class you went in the first place I went into a first grade class. Dang. And read it. How'd that happen?

I went in there. I got nuts. I told all the kids because, you know, it's like they're trying to, their goal of a teacher is to keep the kids calm, right? I come in there. No, it's not happening. So I'm like, good morning, children. And like, they're like, good morning.

And I'm like, what? Good morning. What? I can't hear you. What? I'm not sure what you're saying. Can you please be louder? And they're like, ah!

So they're amped. And as I was getting them all amped up, I started getting nervous. Because I said, wait a second. I'm getting these kids completely. completely just jacked up and getting crazy and hyper yeah and then I'm gonna expect them to sit and listen to me read this book which is a 15 maybe an 18 minute read it's not it's not short it's not short and so I was I was like ooh I might have overstep my balance I might have done I made a wrong tactical

call so then I crack open the book and this is after you know I'm answering a couple questions I crack open the book I read it boom silence and total attention for 18 minutes while I read the book. So that book. And I was explaining to the kids that I put, I put words in there. I said, listen, there's words in this book that you, when you read them, people were saying,

that word's too big of a word for a little kid. I said, these people want to make you stupid. I want to make you smart. When you see this word, and I opened up poise, there's a thing where I use the word poise. I rhyme it with noise. And I said,

these people don't want you to know what. The word poises and I read it to him again that little section as a what do you think that means and You know some little kid little little little Billy up front Is it mean like he said something really smart. He says does it mean you keep your feelings inside Yeah, and I said yes Billy That's what it means Don't let the man keep you down They want to key they want to give you the dumbest book you can read

This book's got a couple words you're gonna you're gonna have to you have to try and figure out what they mean, but you will poise you just figured it out Billy you said an example for everyone in this room yeah salute salute William I know dang yeah that's advanced man so that's Mikey and the Dragons get that for the library this is what you did there what is my theory hypothesis you know okay so you're you're I made you train the next belt level up yeah wait okay what we're were gonna say no with with with the kids when you're getting them all fired up here's what you did you didn't necessarily get them there's a difference between being loud and fired

up and being at attention so you got like the the trouble from what I understand that teachers and babysitters or what if you're looking after big group of coaches and stuff like just looking after a big group of kids is they don't they don't you don't have their attention yeah they're fired up and a lot of the time with kids they're so fired up that they can't give you their attention yeah their attention is going somewhere but yeah exactly right

So what you did is you just basically wrangled like a big horse wrangler And wrangled all of that fired up in this that these kids naturally have anyway But you got their attention so they you didn't have to like go against the grain with them at all All you did was sort of funnel it funnel it towards you so all that fired out was towards you so when it was time They'll do anything you say now you're telling you actually you've actually seen we do this before And the effects lasted like weeks afterwards which is weird I'm gonna show you both videos side to side. Oh, yeah, that's right.

Yeah, okay. So I'm going to tell the people if I haven't already. I don't know. I might have said it before. Okay, so we're at Dave Burke's house. Good deal, Dave? Good deal, Dave Burke's house. Exactly right.

And we're leaving. It's time to leave. So it's like my kids, my two kids, your kids were not there. One of my kids. Yes. Your youngest was there. Dave Burke's kids. Jamie and Flynn Cochran's kids.

and who else was there anymore? It was a lot. This is a lot of kids. Yes. And Jock was there. You did the exact same thing. You did the exact same thing with them as you did with the kids in the class.

See, I see what you're doing here now, which is good, by the way. So you're going. You're detached. You're detached. You're giving your assessment. And I have the video to revisit too. I have one. And my wife has one.

So my wife's one, she's videoing you and it cuts in where you're going like this. You're going, hooka, hooka, hooka, hooka, with your hands side to side. And you're going, hooka, hooka, hooka, And the kids are trying to keep up. They're like, oh, what are we doing? Okay.

And slowly they start doing it. And then you start yelling at them. Yeah. You're not doing it loud enough. Yeah. And then same thing. Hooka, hook. And they all start doing it.

They fall in light. They're doing it louder or whatever. And you're like louder. And of course they want to be louder. So they can, and they fall in light. And they do it. You're like, good. And then you give them high fives, right?

Good job. Give one high five. And you're like harder. Give one high five. Just to whichever random kid. So you say harder. Then they hit you with a harder. Then you go, ah, real loud.

And you go, mean. Of course, that gets everyone else fired up, like they wanna do the same thing. So you're like going from kid to kid, high five, saying, ah, mean, everyone's trying to do it harder than the last kid or whatever. Meanwhile, when other kids, if you notice, when other kids are giving you high five,

the ones that are not giving you high fives are just watching, full attention, just waiting, waiting for the next thing. Now, the point of this story that made it significant to me was because two, not even two weeks later, It may be like a week later, right? My son, who's two, my daughter who's six, my daughter accidentally, and my wife has this on video too, because they're playing and doing little dances, whatever.

On accident, my daughter steps on my son's wrist, just on accident when they're kind of, you know, in the scramble. So my son gets up, he's like, he goes, ah, and hits my daughter, right? And goes, mean! And we were like, what the heck? That was kind of weird. You know, that was a weird outburst right there. So I'm like, cool.

And then, but my wife, clever, she kind of remembered something about it, right? So she revisits the video that she took of you going, ah, mean. So it was like a hit and then a point. Ah, me, right? That's what you did. They hit in your version with a high five. Sure enough, I see my son's little head watching the whole time. Just in the corner.

He didn't do any high five. He was watching the whole thing. Go revisit my son and daughter's version. Same exact thing. Boom. Incident, right? Steps on the wrist. Instead of high five, he does a hit to her.

shoulder or whatever in a high five fashion, it goes mean the exact same tone is you. Your children are always learning. Yes. So if you want your children to learn properly the right stuff, read a Mikey and the Dragons. Yeah, but see what you did there

with the attention wrangling. It's totally effective. That's a good note, man. That's a good little anecdote. Technique. I'm going to use it. I'm going to use it. Check. Don't do it before bedtime. By the way. Don't forget about the discipline. Freedom Field Manual.

This is the graduation gift, right? Get it for your kids. What are they? 15, 17, 19, 22, 24, getting done with their masters. Get them to Disciplineers Freedom Field Manual. They got work to do. We all do. If you want it on audio, it's on iTunes.

It's on Amazon music, Google Play, and all that. Then you got extreme ownership and the dichotomy leadership written both by me and my brother Laif Babin. They are books about. leadership and they will give you some principles that you can apply to every single situation you are in in business and life dichotomy leadership and extreme ownership speaking of Leif we have a leadership consultancy and what we do is solve problems inside organizations and we solve them through leadership because

that's where the problem is so it's me it's Leif Babin J. P. Denele Dave Burke Flynn Cochran Mike Sorrell Mike Baima and Jason Gardner, if you need help in your organization with leadership, go to Ashlandfront.com. And also we have EF Online. Because leadership training is not an inoculation. It's just like Jiu-Jitsu. You can't just show up one day.

Now you know Jiu-Jitsu. You can't just show up, read one book or go to one seminar, and now you're a good leader. No, you have to continually train. And that's what EF Online is. interactive leadership training new modules coming out monthly it's got me and the rest of the echelon front team working with you to give you pragmatic skills go to eF online for that also the muster chicago done it was sold out next up Denver it's going to sell out Sydney Australia December 4th and 5th the Denver one is September 19th and 20th go to extreme

Ownership.com if you want to come to these events because they are going to sell out So go there early and EF overwatch Where when you're looking to hire someone Don't think oh, I got to find the person that has the specific skills that I want No, what you want is to hire the right person with the right kind of character and the most important skill that they can have is leadership skills And then you can teach them the technical skills that they need to know for the job We have people with character and with leadership capability from special operations and combat aviation and we can put them into your organization It's our company EF overwatch. It's eF overwatch.com if you need

leadership in your business or team and if you want to hear more from myself and echo Charles we're on the interwebs or on Twitter or We're on Instagram and we are on that. I'm at Jocko-Charleson. I am at Jocka Willinkin once again. Thanks to all the veterans out there, men like John Stryker Meyer, who fought for the American ideal and who himself represents that ideal. True American hero, humble to sit here and talk to him. And to those of you that are out there on the front lines right now,

thank you for fighting for our ideals. as well and also thanks to police law enforcement firefighters paramedics EMTs dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret service first responders thanks to you for living a life of service and sacrifice so that we can live our lives in safety and security into everyone else out there remember John Stryker Meyer has written about and told us stories that he lived through and some of them are just hard to believe but also remember that for every story of bravery and heroism that he tells there are an infinite number of stories that never got told stories from the men who did not come home soldiers

sailors, airmen, and Marines, who gave away all their stories. Past, present, and future. They sacrificed all those stories, the stories of their lives for us. Never forget them. Until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.