Jocko Podcast - 193: Operational Excellence. The Last Vietnam SEAL to be on Active Duty, Kirby Horrell

Episode Date: September 4, 2019

0:00:00 – Opening 0:03:58 – Master Chief Kirby Horrell 1:42:00 – A new Mission 1:59:56 – Final thoughts. 2:00:46 – How to stay on THE PATH. 2:22:14 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 193 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. I often say that I was raised in the SEAL teams. And I was, actually. I mean, I didn't join the Navy until I was 18 years old. But once I was in, the teams was the only thing I knew. And when I got in, what happened when you got in?

what happened when you got to a team was you got in line you got on board with the program you got taught how to act not just how to fire and maneuver not just how to shoot move and communicate you got taught how to act how to carry yourself the attitude you're supposed to have you got turned into a frogman now there was no there was no explicit course of instructions. No one's given classes on on mental toughness or anything like that, but you were you were indoctrinated in other ways. You were taught the old ways. Then you heard stories and you'd read stories about the NCDUs, the naval combat demolition units and the underwater demolition teams. You'd hear about their incredibly brave ones.

work in World War II. You hear about the massive casualties that they would suffer, making the beaches safe for amphibious landings. And that frogman heritage certainly ran deep. But at its core, the lineage that we followed, that we emulated and that we worshipped. as young seals was the Vietnam seals they were the standard without question

and I was lucky because when I got to the teams there were still some Vietnam seals around some of them were on active duty they were at the teams they were in training departments or they were master chiefs or warn officers or some of them were senior officers matter of fact the admiral in charge

of the community when I got in was a Vietnam guy. But there weren't that many. And when they spoke, we listened. And when they taught us something, we took notes. And they taught us the things that we needed to know, the tactics, the techniques, the immediate action drills, the standard operating procedures. And they also kept us honest because this is the 80s

and this is the 90s and there's no war going on. And there were some flare-ups around the globe. and seals got some flashes of combat action, but there was no sustained operations. And we could have slacked off. But the old breed knew. They knew that it was only a matter of time before war would come again.

And they wanted us to be ready. And when the time came, they were ready. And we were ready because of them. Because of those Vietnam-era seals that had continued to serve continue to pass on the lessons and the knowledge to the younger generations and because of them we were ready to take the fight to the enemy and we did like our forefathers that's what we did and it is an absolute honor today to have one of the longest serving seals clocking in

that 47 years the last Vietnam seal to be on active duty, and he's here with us tonight. Master Chief, Kirby Horell. Master Chief, welcome to the show, and thanks for coming on, man. Hello, guys. How you doing? I'm honored to be here and honored to talk to all of your supporting people out there and let them know what my story is and what a great story it is and what a wonderful life I've had. As I told the vice president the other day, I said, you know, I'd still be doing this job if I wouldn't have got old. So that's the only drawback, man. We all get old.

It's the John Wayne theory. And if you know what that is. What's the John Wayne theory? None of us get out of here alive. That's the deal. But where do I start? Let me go up. Where do you start?

Let's start with wherever you grew up. Where'd you grow up? I grew up in Missouri, a farm boy, moved to the big city, started building hot rods. Which big city? St. Louis. Okay. That's the only big city. They think other ones are, but it's not.

So what year was this that you were moving to St. Louis and built Nott? Probably around 62, 63, you know, and that's where I went to high school. Okay, so I was going to say, so you're in high school? Yeah, in high school at the time. And COE was a big thing in those days where you go to high school in the morning, get your math, arithmetic, English, and then you go work at noontime. at a job site, right, and get a trade. Kind of something they're coming back to now because kids need trades, right today.

So I had a trade, but I worked at county speed shop. So it fit perfect with my county what? County Speed Shop. Oh, okay. So got it, yes. That build drag cars, build track cars, everything else. And I had a 55 Chevy that I had built up, had run liquor from dry counties to wet counties.

counties when I was living in Arkansas. It paid the bills, so that was good. And so when I got back to Missouri, I started building bigger and faster motors, and I would take the car down and race for money down on the river flats, right? Well, I got caught one too many times, and the judge said, young man, I have some options for you. Well, I'd just finished reading the book, Frogman, and I said, you know what, Your Honor? I think that going to the Navy thing is going to be a good deal. So he said, here's my number. If your recruiter doesn't call me tomorrow, I'm putting a bench warrant out for you. So I went to sign up for the Navy the next morning, was on an airplane that evening headed for San Diego and the change of my life, right?

This is what kids think it's going to be like nowadays, and it's not like that anymore. No, it's not like that. As a matter of fact, if you get in trouble, you're not getting in the Navy and you damn sure aren't getting in the SEAL teams. If you have any kind of record, they don't want you. The other thing that happens is guys think, oh, well, I'm just going to join and then I'll be going. on the next day. It's like, no, you're going to have six months, eight months of waiting around before you go. Completely different world. And you got to remember the Vietnam War was So how old were you? I was 18 when that happened. And how close attention were you paying

to Vietnam at the time? Not really a lot. I was paying more attention to hot rods and building fast cars, you know. And then when this thing came up and I had to kind of shift gears, realized that I was in the Navy now. This is 1967. 67. So Vietnam's full. I mean, Vietnam's on right now. It's on.

It's going. So I got out here and went to boot camp at NTC here in San Diego. And in those days, you had to go do a ship tour or a Westpac tour before you could come to the teams. It wasn't coming right out of boot camp and going to butts, right? So I had to do a Westpac. And, you know, my job on the Westpac was a fireman because I happened to be the shortest guy and could crawl inside the boilers. And I went, wow, what a good deal. What did you weigh back then?

Oh, probably about 1.30? Yeah, 130. I'm strong as bull, right? I could do 30 pull-ups and not even bat an eye. And I'll tell you how that worked out for me when I was in training. So then the – so I was on the ship. And the cool part about it is I didn't stay in the fire room a long time because the people that were taking care of the captain's gig didn't know how to set the rack on a slant six Detroit diesel. Check.

I knew how to set that. So they got me out of the fire room to come up and be the captain's gig. So engineers. So that was a good deal. So are you an E1, E2? E2 at the time. Yeah, yeah. Big, man.

Big rate. Big rate. So it's very cool. got the job, the boat was running great. The first day, the job, right, and I was on the USS Piedmont, you had to run out on the big booms that swing out from the ship, so they tie up all the captain's gigs and all of the officers motorboats and stuff like that. Well, the first day, I just had taken my white tennis shoes out of the washer. They were still pretty slippery. I'm running out on the boom, slip, do a backflip from about 30 feet in the air into the water.

swim over, jump on the captain's gig, and stand in where the engineer stands all the time. And Captain Davies, who was also a short captain, he starts applauding off the quarterdeck. And he goes, Jesus, that was the best, man. So needless to say, him and I became great friends, great friends. And that lasted for six months. And then when I got back, I did my Bud's training qualifications over in the piece. I did those over the PI. When I got back to San Diego, I was expecting to go right to class, right?

Not the case, because my lieutenant had hidden the chit that I'd pushed through. And I, fortunately, I knew the captain, so Captain Davies kind of made that all right, but I still ran from 32nd Street over to Bud's training many times trying to get all that started out. It was just good training. But then I got over to the training, and Captain Adi, who was over. over there goes, man, you just made it just in time to start class 49, right? Well, all the pre-training that we have nowadays that kind of prepare you for all that stuff, eh, wasn't there. So like three days in the training, my legs are like ready to fall off. And so was everybody else's, right?

Class 49 started. So what? You checked in on what day? Like how long was it before you actually classed up and went? I started on, I got there on a Thursday, but we started training on a Monday. Okay, so that was the pre-training I got. The weekend. Get your ass ready. Yeah, yeah, that was the whole thing, man. So it was very cool, very cool. And all this stem from the fact that you had read the book to Frogmen.

Oh, absolutely. And you said that's what I'm going to do. Yeah, yeah. That's exactly what I wanted. Were you a water guy? Did you in the lakes or anything? Not really. The first time I was in the ocean was here in San Diego.

And I had a couple of surfers guys that were in the class because I was trying to jump over the waves because the only swim I'd ever done is rivers and lakes, right? And was okay with that. But I hadn't dealt with surf before. And the surfers in the class go, no, Kirby, you've got to dive underneath the waves. And I went, oh, shit, okay, got it. So underneath the waves, I went, and it was great, man. I think once I got my fins, I felt like, you know, I was a water baby then because I could fly with the fins.

I never go near the ocean without my fins anymore anyway. So it was very good. cool. So we got started. I mean, there was 225 of us and started Class 49. And my nemesis was Oliver and this came out at my retirement, right? Olivera was this big hook-nosed Indian guy that ran like 100 miles and he was strong as an ox and ugly as an eight. Was he an instructor or was he another student? Total instructor. Total instructor. Him and Mother Moy. Mother Moy was also an instructor. Our class 49 was Mother Moy's first class, right? So we're all standing out in front, you know, of the building over on the old amphib base, and we're all lined up there.

Well, Olivera comes out and starts looking up and down the line, and he goes, hey, you're too short to be here. And I went, I'll be here when you're gone. Dang. Oh, that hurt. I ate half the mud in the bottom of San Diego Bay, man. It was why, But Oliver and I, we grew a relationship while I was going through training. So being the shardest guy that ever went through Bud's training, right? I felt all the... How tall are you? 5-4.

All the, some days. Other days, I'm 5'3. Now that I'm getting older, I'm probably going to push 5-2 pretty soon. But he had some more stories about that. But so Olivera walks in the back of the main office and tells us, mother moi hey mother moi i think you got a troll in this class and and mother moi goes no you're shitting me goes well go out there and look and and there i was man it was wild that that started the whole cascade of of situations right so you talked shit to an instructor that's oh yeah i just

want to advise people that could go okay it could also go terribly wrong oh because if you piss off an instructor, they will, they will, they can crush you and destroy you. So that's, he obviously saw something in you that he liked. Right. But if you wouldn't have seen that, you know, they'll eat you alive. Well, I can only tell you that every day of training, every day of training, I was in the goon squad. So, so that may have been part of that, what you're saying, he didn't like me kind of thing, because no matter where I was at, if I was running in the middle of the pack, everybody from me back was in the good squad, you were the cut off for the goon squad. I was the cutoff for the squad. I was the off. I could, one day, we just said, okay, I'm going to run in front of the pack, right? And everybody

in the class goes, okay, that's great, because we had whittled the class, not a lot. So I was in the front of the pack. No shit. The whole class was in the Goon Squad. Oliver, he was great. He was a hard, hard man. But, and I'll tell you, the, and it goes back to what I was saying earlier about pull-ups. So we'd do PT, and I could, I could run hard and do a lot of PT. And when it came to pull-ups, I could knock out 30 pull-ups with nothing flat. Well, Mother Moy and Olivero used to make me hang on the pull-up bar, and that hit me in the stomach and see how high they could make the swing. And I go, man, everybody in the class will tell you that.

Mike Thornton was in my class, he'll tell you that. So some of the other tidbits about going through training, Mike Thornton, because the dirty name is built for big guys, tall guys, because I'm short, I got a big chest. the top log on the dirty name, I couldn't get over sometimes. I just couldn't do it. Well, Mike Thornton would come up there and throw me over the top log. And the instructors would get pissed off and go,

Thornton, you stop doing that. Where would he stand? Would he stand on the log? Stand on the log. You know, he'd stand on the lower log and throw me over the top log. It was great. That's great. And the days I couldn't do it, the instructors made me go through the weaver twice.

But all the rest of the, no problem with any of the rest of the obstacle. but that was part of it. You know, and the personality, I think my personality kept me going because it was a good thing. And the instructors, even though I was pissing them off, they enjoyed having me there. Because when it came to being, you know, making sand cookies and volcanoes and stuff, well, if they got too close, they became part of the sugar cookie in the volcano. And they're going, we hate you. So it was very cool.

Oliver bought me a steak after graduation. Oh, that must have meant something, right? And Mother Moy, today, one of my best friends. He comes to every event. He was at my retirement. You know, when I retired from the Navy, I had like five speakers that all came up and shared their comments about Kirby as he went through training, and Mother Moy was one of them.

So it was classic 1,500 people at my retirement. Yeah, yeah, huge, huge. But anyway, after we got through buds, you know, then we went to, we went to SBI. How many guys made it through? In our class, there were 22. So you started with 220 and you ended with 22? Yeah, probably 10%. But I got rolled back into class 50.

Same kind of thing. What did you get rolled for? Because there was a chief, Chief Rose, who was one of our instructors, good guy, but he had come up with this little thing called the Little Olympics, where you had to do. all these different exercises like swim. You had to swim 500 yards in your clothes. You had to push-ups, set-ups, pull-ups, and run a mile-and-a-half or a mile-a-half in your clothes.

And you had to do that all in a thousand seconds, right? So I missed it by like 12 seconds. And he goes, sorry, we're going to have to roll you back. And I went, oh, crap. Well, I wasn't the only one. There were like five guys in the class that got rolled back. How far along were you in training? Oh, we went through second.

phase we had to go through second phase dive phase again and then go into the third phase but you know third phase to me was you know that was like a vacation because of land warfare because a great I'm great shot I'm good on the land because I was a hunter and you know I was a country boy so I knew about all that stuff and Mike Martin was in your buds class as well yeah class 50 and rolled back in you rolled into his class yeah yeah yeah and then Mike Thornton to Mike Martin yeah oh yeah that's good I never thought about that before from one mic to the other and mike uh mike and i were swim buddies i mean we did all the dives together everything else he was a hoot when it came to doing ocean dives because he'd always get above me and i couldn't you know when you're diving you're looking for your swim buddy to the

sides right not above you and mike could screw with me all the time and hide up there in the kelp and i go i just lost my swim buddy where the hell is he right but that was when we were out in point loma were you guys diving the emerson rig oh absolutely You mean, yeah, the one that bubbled the way everything? Yes, I don't know. I've only heard they called it green death. Yes, yes. Because it was not a good rig.

Well, because all of the bags, see, the bags that they had on it were built to keep, you know, the air. But because of your rubbing on things and operating and everything else, they'd always get a wear pattern at them. So you're always off-gassing in those bags. So you always had to charge them. And if you didn't make sure your bags were charged, that's why they called it the green death. So, yeah, we, we, we, we dove those a lot, a lot. But we made it. We made it through.

And then we all went to San Clemente Island, which was another hoot and had a great, great time out of San Clemente Island, blowing up stuff, shooting stuff. I mean, you know, it's a dream. It's a dream. It's a dream. It's a dream. It's a dream. Coming across the beach at night, you know, it was, it was definitely, definitely a good thing.

And once we graduated, but our graduations in those days were certainly not what the graduations are today. We were out behind building 401, and they came by and gave us our certificates and goes, congratulations, you guys. You know, we all felt 10-foot tall because we graduated buds, but at the same time, there was no crowds. There are no nothing. It was just us. So different. And you, how did you not go to a UDT team?

I was great at land warfare and I was a great shot. So they kind of, that's the way it worked in those days. If you were a good swimmer, if you were a real good swimmer, and you were kind of trended towards that, then you would go to UDT. If you were good at land warfare, good at blowing up things and shooting, then you'd go to Seal Team. And that's how I got picked to go to Seal Team 1 because I was much better on land than I was in the water. So that was the, that's what brought us over there.

Mike and I went there. We went through SBI together. And now when you get to SBI, now there's just one seal team on the coast. So obviously, Seal Team 1 is run in the SBI, which is the training to get you. She'll bake. The actual skills to be a seal because in Buds you don't learn a lot of those. Right, right. Yeah.

And who's running that? The cadre. The cadre. The cadre. I mean, we had Moki Martin. you know and he was there and we had a number of other excellent guys that had been to vietnam several times they were our instructors the and they took us out to our famous location is nilin you know when there was nothing there we lived in we had trailers that old the stream

Silver Stream trailers, stream trailers. That's what we lived in. No windows. It was 120 degrees. You know, we'd get up every morning and have our protein breakfast, which was fruit cocktail out of a can because there was nobody cooking anything. And then we'd go work in the desert all day and come back in that heat. And then we'd have dinner, which was fruit cocktail in a can and kipper snacks,

which was another good deal. And then they had the irrigation ditches up in the desert where they'd irrigate all the fields. Well, that was our shower because we didn't have any running water. So we would fill our canteens up to go train and in the desert at the filling station in town. And off we'd go. But we had a lot of bullets and that's all that mattered. Bullets, but the heat was unbearable. I mean, it's unbearable.

120 degrees. So it got us ready, basically. for Vietnam because when we got the Vietnam it was kind of like shit this place is cold so SBI how long was SBI SBI was like six weeks okay six weeks and and that got us up the speed and then they got us into our Patoons and then so what what year was this now this was 1969 1969 yeah and what platoon did you go into at SEAL Team 1 at Foxtrap Patoon I was appointment of Foxtrap at

squad one and Mikey was point man of squad two. Mike Thornton? Mike Martin. Mike Martin? Mike Martin, I mean, Mike Thornton had already been over with another platoon. Because he was in class 49. Class 49. Yeah, and since we were kind of six weeks behind those guys, that's why we rolled.

But there was no, we didn't have the time lag they have today about going to war. When you finish SBI, you were going right now. So I remember the day when they go, okay, you guys, you're deploying. and we went over to North Island Air Station. Did you do any kind of workup as a platoon? A couple weeks. You know, a couple weeks. So you finish SBI and then it's into a platoon.

You spend a few weeks into the platoon. And then off. Off your home. And I guess there wasn't really, because there's so many less seals, there was only what? On the west coast, there was about 100 seals? 80 seals. Okay, so everybody's kind of uniformed anyways

because you're all learning from the exact same cadre. That's right. And that's why when I came back from Vietnam, that's why they put me right into training cell because we had new guys that had to be trained up. And there was no time leg to get that going, right? So that's what they were doing. The guys that were really good in the field, they would take them and put them right into the training department and get the guys that are ready to go into it and off they go.

So how long was it? So how long were you in your platoon? You were in Foxshot Patoon for like a couple months? Then they said, all right, you're going on deployment? Probably nine. We were in there three months prior to deployment, and then we'd deploy. We'd be over there six months and come back, and then they'd break the platoon apart and off it goes. Was there any, I mean, was there any like this anti-war stuff that did you even think about it? We were all way too busy to even think about that. I mean, we saw it when we got home, you know,

because of the, because of the anti-war stuff and all that kind of stuff. And we were too hardened to even care, right? We didn't care. And so that we just kind of blew right past that. We never got into anyone. I mean, when we got home, there was kind of a demonstration outside of North Island, you know, about that kind of thing. But we drove right by it from us. So it was no big deal.

So how old are you now right now? Are you like 19, 20 years old? Yes. So you're 20 years old. You're going on your first deployment to Vietnam. Yeah, yeah. I turned 21 over there. What was your thoughts flying over to Vietnam?

Well, we had like a C-17, which was like a World War II plane that we were flying in, and it seemed like we flew forever. And the cool thing about it is when you left North Island, they gave you a box lunch. Then when you landed in Hawaii, they gave you a box lunch. Well, you know, the box lunch was like an egg, an orange. You had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. and then a meat and cheese sandwich and some milk. So that was your box lunch.

And off you went, man. We went in high style, you know? And we landed at Tonsohnute Airport. We landed there, and we hung out there for a while. And then even before we had to fly from Tonsonut down to Ben Tuey, because the Special Operations Office or SEAL Team Office was at Ben-Tui, so we flew into there. I flew into there because I was like,

the part of the pre-party to go to sea float and start setting up for the new Patoon and run the first ops and stuff with the old Patoon and stuff like that. So that was, we flew from there. The rest of the guys stayed in the Victoria Hotel, you know, in Saigon at the time. And we took off and flew down to Ben Tui, got ready to catch a bird and go on down to sea float. And were you pretty much just completely amped to go and get some? Oh, absolutely. We all are.

I mean, hey. Yeah. But that's who we are, right? Yeah, we wanted to get with it. We wanted to get with the program and get there as soon as possible. We did our breaking up, you know. What about older guys that were on there? Who in your platoon had been on like three, four, five deployments already?

Well, the chief that we had, Chief Jones, had been on it. He'd been on a couple of deployments. My radio man, Lee Pittman, who had been there. We had another guy, Al Yutz, who was our rear security guy, you know, and they're all good guys. All good guys. And what was their attitude like going back? Let's rock. Let's get it.

Yeah, let's rock. So legit. Lee Pittman was the best. He was the best radio men you could ever want, right? He was in there calling him and just, hey, get over here, you know? But they were all, you know, I think probably the biggest guy, the gun shy one was the chief. He just had seen a lot of war. And I don't think that he really, he knew he had.

had to be there because he was the chief, right? But some of the shit that we got into, you know, he just, it was time for him to go home, right? And so we did. We sent him home because the shit we got into, man, I mean, one night when we got ambushed on the damn doy, and Mike probably told you this, but we were going in, and I had, I was going in on a sandpan. We had like four sandpans on the bow of the seal light support craft. And I was asleep in the sandpan. And I was asleep in the sandpan. right we hit this canal called the damn doi something woke me up i think it's a guy upstairs you know the lord was going kirby it's time for you to wake up so i woke up and i go holy shit and i jump i start to jump in the boat and a b-farty rocket blows the bow of the boat off i roll and come up right

behind right i'm holding on to the 50 caliber machine gun we're right in the middle of the kill zone of an ambush everything we learned right if you're in a kill zone blast your way out of it. So that 50 swung around and it just started blasting. And I had a couple of guys on the floor, which the chief was one of them, and they were linking that 50-Cal ammo.

And that 50-Cal was going for everything it was worth, man. People on the banks, guys were shooting flares, and every time I saw a guy that 50-calibur took them out. So it was like we were doing damage. But by then, the first boat that Mike was on,

Miss Mike Martin, they had called in the Sea Wills. So the Sea Wills were scrambling. Here these guys come flying over, mini-guns blaring. The doorgunners have got their white BVDs on and flack jackets. They never even took time to get dressed. And they're blowing the shit out of this place over there, right? So by the time we got all that settled, I had had bullet holes through my clothes that had burned my skin, but no through and through. Everybody, the boat was, we had to scrap the boat because it had so many bullet holes in it was unbelievable.

Mike's boat, the medium support, had to us a line, and then we had to make a circle and come back out of the dam. Hell of a firefight, hell of a far fight. It went on for a long, long time. And when we got back to sea float, you know, the boat that I was in was almost ready to sink, right? So it was very well destroyed, but nobody got shot, nobody got killed. I got burn marks. That was the biggest. That was the biggest deal.

But that was a wild time. And the coxon, whose name was Willie Williams. That guy was, he was an older guy, right? And every time he'd go out with this, he needed to take a shot of whiskey just to keep himself sane. Get the edge off. Take the edge off. And he was like going, ah. Yeah, that was one crazy night for Willie.

But we all made it home safe. You know, and ready for the next day. So when you got there, what was the primary, what was the mission that you guys were tasked with doing? What were you guys doing? Well, we were, you know, when we got there, Admiral Zumwal had towed a bunch of barges up, right? Thirteen barges.

We called it C-float. You can go online and look at it. It's a bunch of barges that supported all of the riverine boats and all of the air squadrons in South Vietnam. So it set, they anchored it right in the middle of the Sanco, Kulon River with these giant anchors, right? So it was probably about, I don't know, 100 yards, you know, on each side of it on the river banks until the tides, you know, when the tides changed over there because there were a 14-foot tide change. Then you'd have mud banks and stuff like that.

So it worked out perfectly. The problem with it, and that's where we were all stationed, the problem with it, was that the zappers would use the current and tie explosives on a line, and let the explosives float down with the current and hook around your anchor chain. And then these explosives would come into the side of sea float and try to blow you up. So all of the guards that were posted 24-7 at the thing would have to watch out for that and shoot it out. So in the middle of the night when you're trying to get sleep and all of a sudden this big charge blows up, and you go, whoa, cool. Well, that one didn't get us.

And so that was life on seafloat. I mean, every night. And that's where your birthing was and everything? Everything. Everything. Yeah. Burthing, showers, food, everything. That's where our offices were at and all that kind of stuff.

So it was an experiment to do that. Very successful. Was that your whole deployment on that thing? Yes. Well, except when I was working Phoenix program. If I was work in Phoenix program, then I would go to different locations, right? But we usually would launch off of there. And some of the Phoenix stuff we would do were two-man, San Pan Ops,

where myself, Leon Rous, rest his soul. Him and I would get in a sandpan and take a KCS scout with us, and we had paddled 10 clicks into bad guy country and snatched the sky out of his hooch and bring him back because he was a bad guy. Like a high-level VC. Yeah, high-level VC. Where would that intel come from? From the Kid Carson Scouts, from Navy intelligence, you know, from a lot of different areas, and we would bring it all in because we sent a lot. We did a lot of own our own intelligence gathering, in the southern region down there. Explain the Phoenix program for people that don't know what it is.

Well, the Phoenix program was designed by the agency and probably several other people. And what it was was to root out the bad guys in villages that were working, kind of like double agents, that were working for the South Vietnamese government, also working for the Viet Cong. So what we relied on, what the Phoenix program relied on,

was intel from the locals that this guy was a double agent. And then when we got that, then we would send teams in to snatch the guy and bring them out and do further interrogation on them by not only us, but by other groups, you know. And that worked, it worked well until the bad guys started fingering good guys, and now the intelligence was all mixed up. So, you know, in the beginning of it, it worked fantastic, because we got a lot. lot of a lot of bad guys, you know, basically out of the jungle. But then the bad guys.

And it was like psychological operations too, because these guys who thought that they were safe and thought they could get away with it, all of a sudden they disappear in the middle of the night. Absolutely. Absolutely. And put the fear of God into them. That's right. That's what the men in the green faces did was make them disappear.

And you were running two-man operations. Oh, yeah. Getting in a sandpan and you were paddle. How far would you guys paddle? I think the furthest we ever, the deepest we ever want was probably 10 clicks from a safe zone. Would you care for radio? Where would you carry your radio? We carry regular radio.

Prick 25. Yeah, yeah. And I carried, I carried a. But you're dressed like a Vietnamese guy. Oh, absolutely. Black pajamas, you know. But it's nighttime so they can't see that you're a white boy from Missouri. That's right.

That's exactly right. Probably the hariest opt. I tell everybody about this up because it's, Leon and I went on in the Zop and we captured this high-level VC and we're paddling back out. So if it's a good one, let's talk about it. So this is Phoenix Program Operation? Phoenix Program Operation. And you get Intel on a bad guy.

Right. They tell you, okay. Now, how detailed was the intelligence that you would get? Would they say, okay, here's the village. Would you get overhead imagery of that village? No, not in those days. So you just would look at a map? We would look at a map.

We would talk with our KCS and the KCS. were kind of guys that we paid on our side to that knew the local area because we had captured them, but we had switched them over to our side. We were paying them. We also had a village with their family that we supported. Okay. And so we made sure that they weren't going to go to the other side because their family was visiting us, right? So that was the whole thing. So they would help us decide exactly where this we're at. And they were good guys. And for the most part, They were wonderful, wonderful operators. So you'd be looking at, okay, there's a village at this grid coordinate or whatever.

You'd look at it. You'd do a map study looking at the river. Sure. And you think, okay, when this river turns to whatever, 280 degrees, then we have to go another 200 meters. And the village will be on the left side of the bank. Absolutely. And then work the tides, because remember, the tides are 14 feet. So you've got to move with the tides.

There's nothing moving against the tide. You can move at ebb, but you've got to. You've got to move with the flow. Would you try and time it so you were going in with the tide and coming out with the tide? Oh, yeah. That was key. And if you didn't do that, you're kind of screwed. Yes.

Well, you were very slow, one way or the other. And then you're going into a little, like this is just your stereotypical Vietnamese village. Oh, absolutely. With a bunch of little hooches set up. Yep. And you would know, hey, third hooch from the water on the right-hand side, it's got a whatever, a freaking. That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

That's how we would target. And then, okay, so you go up, you paddle, you're tracking, are you using any night vision at all? No. Are you trying to do it with moon, with half moon, with starlight? Did you want it completely dark? What did you want? What was ideal?

All the half moon would have been ideal. But you don't always get that. So that was the whole thing. So that was a roll of the dice sometimes, depending on what the moon coverage was at, you know, in tides, you know, what was going. And so you always had to work those two, especially with a two-man team. Two-man team, you don't have a whole lot there.

I mean, you got everybody on standby. What are you carrying for a weapon? Stoner, man. Come on. I didn't go anywhere without Betsy. She was with me all the time. She was a great equalizer. How many rounds would you carry?

Thousand. And what? Like two canteens of water and a K-bar and you're good? Some grenades? Maybe one canteen of water, a K-bar, a medical kit and four grenades. And I was good. That was my black pajama outfit.

Yeah. And so... A body armor. Body armor was a t-shirt with a bullseye painted on it. And you're in black pajamas. And so you get, so you paddle up and then you, do you just beach the boat? Yeah. Coast right in.

Coast right in. It's quiet. Is there any other activity on the water? at night? And if it is, isn't it another VC activity? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I'll tell you a story about coming out of one of the villages where there were. You know, I mean, they're moving the same way you're moving. They're moving with tides and everything else. If they're moving at night, are they VC? Yes. Okay. Yep. Only people out there that were friendly were us. And the philosophy goes. Everything on this op, everybody that's on this op's coming home safe,

everything else is not, right? So that's what it was. So we slid into a village one night. So we slide in, we take the people we want, knock them out, throw them in the bottom of the boat. What would you do to knock them out? Hit them with the hammer, hit them with the whatever. Just standard operating procedure.

Carry the slapper. You know, the slapper always works, man. Slapper on the jaw, you'll knock a guy out right now. Do you carry any suppressed weapons? I did. 22s. That's all we had in those days. We didn't have any knives.

Yeah. And we did those mostly for dogs that were in geese that were, you know, that were put out there to act as. Shooting headshot on a geese? That's impressive. Well, yeah, it is. But you usually shot him in the fat body. With the 22 long, they go, what? What was that?

But the stoner one night were coming out. We met some VC going in. And we were just kind of laying up, waiting for the tide change. And we were laying in the weeds, right? And a VC sandpan came by. And I put my stoner up, had my stoner pointed at him following on the sandpans. And he reaches out to knock all the weeds away and touches the coal steel. Well, his eyes were very big at that moment, but they weren't big for very long.

So we eliminated those boys and kept on moving. Yeah. So once you get in a contact like that, now everybody knows you're there. Everybody, everything gets scrambled, everything. Okay, so now you're scrambling the seawolfs. Absolutely. And they'd come out at night to try and help you? Oh, yeah.

We had a guy from, we had a Dennis Rowley on here from, he was a seawolf pilot. And he just was just awesome, awesome talking to him. They didn't care about anything. Oh, they were going. They were going. know, if you guys called them, they were going 100% they were going. Oh, they were full on. And if you haven't seen their new video, you got to see it.

We put out the word scramble the sea wolves. Yeah, scramble the sea wolves. You got to do it. It's a great, great film, man, talks about those guys, and you can't say enough about those guys. They're coming now to our Vietnam, you know, parties, get-togethers that we have because they were so vital to our survival, you know. And they saved our ass them way more than we can even.

even count. Yeah, crazy. He told a story they were, they, they stayed on station so long. They, he goes, look, we're going to run out of fuel. Oh, well, they run out of fuel. They land in the middle of a rice paddy. And they're using ammo cans to transport fuel from one. Total insanity.

They were all garage mechanics. Those guys were unbelievable. I mean, I was a hot rod mechanic, so I understood the mechanism. but what they did to get those birds airborne in the beginning was phenomenal. I mean, they took pieces and parts and pieces and parts and did it. And to see them do that. And then, you know, as the war carried on, people at the Army actually started copying what they were doing. They're going, how come those guys do that?

We can't do that, right? So now there's mini guns on way more aircraft than they ever had before. And that was because the Sea wolves were the ones that started it. And they put their rocket pods on there? I mean, hey, man, you know, it was all good. It was all good. So you whack this feces that touches the barrel of your weapon in the dark. Yeah, yeah.

You kill him. Now it's on. It's on. Because it's been completely silent the whole night. Whole night. And all of a sudden there's a burst of 5, 5, 5, 6 rounds, and now everyone's awake. Yep. So now you get on the radio?

Oh, yeah. And you've got to go, hey, we just. We're in contact. The VC, our KCS is paddling like a wild man. Leon is on the radio, and I got the stoner out of the front of the sandpan and we're going. How far, how far away are you from getting picked up? We were probably like three, four clicks inside BC country, so that's how we had to go 4,000 yards to get off. I mean, everybody knew where we were at, so the launch was good.

It was hairy to say this thing. The good thing is they don't have night vision. That was a good thing. We didn't have night vision either. Yeah, but I mean at that point I'd take that trade because I don't want them to have night vision on a river. It's a night. It's scary.

Oh, yeah. I've been on the river. It's like in a combat zone, you feel real naked. If the enemy possibly has night vision, even when they don't have night vision. Well, you're getting on the moon. Your whole instinctive reaction is heightened, right? The hair on the back of your neck, everything's going, right? because you know they they are feeling exactly the same thing you're feeling like they're going holy

shit man where's this person at because they don't know exactly where you're at all they heard was a burst so they're coming and they're cautious and you're moving as fast as you can right so that was the whole thing we knock on wood the lord was with this that night and we got home safe right and so what's what's your what's your extract point do you get do you meet a uh in the main canal the main canal and there's a there's a boat of some kind yeah yeah yeah what kind of boats were you you guys using? The MSC, we had light seal support craft, which was the one that we got ambushed in. We had medium seal support graph, which were aluminum boats that had a step on the back of them, had two twin 427 Chevy motors in them with holly carburetors. I put the holly carbureters on.

So, and these things, I mean, they were fast, man. They would do 50 miles an hour plus on those rivers. So if once you got them on step, get out of the way. There wasn't anything stopping. And then we had swift boats. and we had PBRs, then we had the big junks that were down at sea float and everything else. So there was more than enough coverage to pick us up once we were on the big river. So you're paddling out, do you stay close to the edge of the river? So you're in the dark? Oh, sure. Shadows, man.

So you try and stay in the shadows. Yeah, don't get in hurry and rush something, right? Take your time. I mean, you just, you had a burst. Nobody knows what that was. but they know there's something, right? Because there's not fliers or anything. And if you had one burst,

it's hard for them to even triangulate by sound where it was. Yes, totally. Is that true in the jungle too? Like in the city, it was really hard to tell where one burst. It'd be hard to tell where it came from. Same. Because you have the same situation. That sound is bouncing off of everything.

So, you know, that's why they have, they invented the, when we were over in Bosnia, you know, the Brits had the triangle. thing where when a mortar would go off, they would contragulate right where the noise was at. And then we could drop stuff right on that. That was an excellent thing. We didn't have that in Vietnam. We're kind of going, I think it's over there.

Yeah, yeah. Maybe over there, right? And as soon as you're, I mean, you scramble out of the immediate area, but you get 200 meters away. And then it's like, okay, let's get quiet. Yep, yep. It's pulled to the edge. Same thing as you do is an insertion, right? You move off that noisy spot.

You move in, you set, you wait. Is anything moving? Is anything coming at us? No, it's not. Okay, let's move, right? Get going. That's where the word black came from when you go black. Go black. I came from, guess who? That was a Vietnam thing. Go black. Nobody knows what that word means, only you, right? So when all the shit's going, everything else is going, go black, boom. Now where does everybody, nobody knows where it's all coming from. They suspect it, but they don't know. And are they brave enough to stick their face out there to find out? Not really. So that was one of many. So is that the op? I cut you off and then we kind of ran off on another story. Is that the one you said, this is a story I always tell?

It was Phoenix program. It was in a village. Oh, one of many. Okay. Yeah, one of many. So that's the one where you had that guy, you got that contact point blank range. And then I'll go to another one that was down south when we inserted because we had some VC, we had intelligence, the VC was coming up south.

We had done all the sensor planning to, in the jungles to make sure we could pick up movement in the jungles and stuff like that. And we got movement way down deep, but we had to go in and set. So Alpha Patoon of Foxtrot, we went down to set up on a river that we thought they were going to be coming across. So we moved in late in the evening. So you're setting up an ambush? We're setting up an ambush.

And it's an ambush on a river. On a river. And this is straight up the same thing that you guys taught us when I got out of the team. Do you put out Claymore? The same thing. It's absolutely the same thing. Claymore is on each flank. Claymore are in the rear.

Let's watch, see what happens, right? So I'm on the left flank, right? I run my Claymore out, come back in, I'm sitting. Right? And all of a sudden I hear movement, right? So I'm watching the tides. The tides are going down. down and I see this bridge start bubbling up from the water. So they have a hidden bridge in it.

So I see that. The only saving graces were on high ground. They're on low ground. I see all these guys. There's like 80 guys down there that are trying to come across that bridge to do a ambush on sea float on the San Coulon River. So I let the first guy, right? I tell the O get the black ponies and the sea wolves. So he scrambles those guys, right? So this guy comes walking across, and it's a point element. What's the range from you? Probably when I initiate, probably five feet.

So he's got to walk up like this, up the bridge, right? Well, I'm right here. So the old stoner comes over and I go, and we light them up, right? Grenades, boom, boom, boom, light them up. And overhead, OV-10s, right? And one of the pilots lives right here in town. We call them.

We had tiara, which was kind of the early stages of Kimlight juice that we could throw in the water that marked our line. So we threw that in the water, marked our line, and the OV-10s come flying out of the sky. And they're coming from like 3,000 feet directly at the ground, letting loose the Zumi rockets going, wham, wah, wah, wham! And they're getting kind of close. And I'm going, blow the claymores and get the hell out of here. So we're blowing the claymores, and we're getting the hell out of there, right? And these guys are just tearing it up across the river.

And so we're taking off, and all of a sudden we hear this. And I go, run! So we're taking off. Well, what it was was our lieutenant had just pulled his life jacket just enough in the frenzy. To where the CO2 carty was just was weeping. I'm going, get away from him. He's going to blow. So we're hauling ass.

We're hauling ass back up to canal. It was what a night that was. Holy shit, man. And then we sent down a group of Arvins the next morning to check it out. And there was like 80 dead bodies down there. So it was a while. So on op like that, how did you guys insert? We inserted a boat up the river where the river turned.

So up the river, how far away would you guys patrol? Probably click. Okay, so pretty close. Yeah. And you patrol in, what are you wearing? Are you wearing blue jeans? I didn't wear blue jeans at night. I did wear blue jeans.

But that night I didn't wear blue jeans. How about barefoot? Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Jim Bird is the only one that does barefoot. No, I wore my boots, and I'm glad I wore my boots. Yeah, that always seemed crazy to me, but I know those guys that did it.

Oh, man, I know. And I know guys that did it too, but when I'm moving, I'm moving way too fast to worry about stepping on something, right? Yeah, because it was, that was a busy night. And so for a night like that, since you're not wearing the black pajamas, you're wearing web gear, you got your stoner, you're still carrying a thousand rounds? Thousand rounds.

Offensive operation, are you bringing more grenades? We would have, probably. You know, in smoke. I mean, since I was an appointment, I would have carried whatever the red or the green smoke. And the radium would usually carry the red smoke. If we need to mark something, if we need to mark an LZ, they would have it. Somebody else would have yellow and purple, you know, out through the out through the squad. And then in the squad, how many 60s would you have in the squad?

Two. Two 60s. And then would the rear security be carrying a stone or two? You bet. And nothing like fire superiority. Yeah. So what about would you would be, so there'd be two stoners and two 60s? Two stoners, two 60s.

Sometimes three stoners and two 60s. The lieutenant would carry M16, right? AOIC would probably carry and they would probably have, you know, M79s are have a 203 underneath of it. Uh-huh. You know, that's probably what would have went on. And were you guys in, in, in, or eight-man squads?

We were in eight. Yeah. Yeah, eight men squads. Right? So it was, yeah, that was... How long would you guys plan for these missions for? Oh, that's, you know, I mean, we had our own intel. So, I mean, when we get something, we could put together an op in a couple hours and ready to go.

Because, you know, just as every seal knows, you know, once the, you get there and you get the routine down, everybody knows what their job is. That's what makes us what we are. and so we can put together an op very, very quickly, you know. And, you know, just in Germany, when I was working in Germany, you know, N-plus-2, that's what it meant, man, N-plus-2. When you get the call, you got two hours to get the airport, get on that airplane, and get going. And that happened more than I want to. We can shift gears.

But that was the Vietnam War, and then I came back. So just hold on the Vietnam War. What was your opt-tempo like? Like how often were you guys working? we ran probably in that six-month period of time well over 100 ops. So, I mean, there were days when there would be three ops a day, you know, other days where there's two ops, one op. Did you do any of those parakeet ops flying in the daytime, like just pouncing on a village or something? Sure.

Sure, we did that. And I'll tell you a good story about that. We did one of those when, because I was appointment, I was a guy that hung out the door and located the village, right? because we didn't have GPS in those days. So I was hanging out the door, and I'd find the village where the bad guys were at, and I'd tell the birds sat down. So we're flying down this canal. I mean, we're doing every maneuverer following each bend in that canal.

I'm hanging out the door, and I go, that's the village right there. So he flares, we jump out, hit it. We're in a skirmish line. We start taking fire from the village. Not long or close behind us are the sea wolves. So we get in the skirmish line, we start moving on this village, right? And taking all the bad guys down in this village, and we call in the sea wolves. Well, the sea wolves come in probably 10 feet over our head with the mini guns and just start breaking the village, right?

Needless to say, we looked like wild men running at the village, and that was because all the hot brass coming out of the mini guns were going down the back of our necks. and we were going, help us! So I was going to kill anybody that was in front of me. I didn't care who it was. We all got back. We all got back to sea float, and all of us had like 20 burn marks on our back where the hot brass had fallen out of that minigone. I went, that's probably the last time I'm going to do that.

But it wasn't. But it worked out. That worked out fantastic. And that was like the same, what you're calling, parakeet. Absolutely, yeah. Any kind of ops, stay behind ambushes. all that kind of stuff. We did all that.

We incorporated all that in our tactics. How often would you guys get contact with the enemy on an op? So if you did 100 operations, how often would you guys get contacted with the enemy? You know, I want to say 70% of the time because we did most of our own intelligence. So we were always involved in contact. You know, it wasn't, there were a few times where we walked and walked and dry hole. And dry hole. Yeah.

That wasn't where it was supposed to be. But the majority of the time we had contact, which kept us all kind of, you know, jazzed and ready to go pumped. That was the whole thing. But it kept it real because we were all, we knew when we'd go out, we were going to have contact, so you better have your shit in one bag. How did you guys do for taking casualties? Well, you know, everybody in Fox Drop A-Toon,

except for one of our officers who I have to laugh because Mike Martin pointed out a booby trap to him and he turned around to tell somebody about the booby trap and walked into the booby trap and it put some BBs in his butt so he so he was a casualty so we had to we had to fly him back to sea float and get the get the holes in his ass patched up but but other than that everybody I think I mean we all got hit. but nobody got hit so badly that they had to be medevaced off. Now, our group when we were there, is when we had the biggest loss of life in Vietnam, when the helo went down, that we lost five guys.

We got off of that bird, and that bird, that operation was an operation that we had just come off of because we went after a Russian advisor to the Viet Cong. We had him in a village. He was able to run out of that village and run into the forest. You know, that was at the end of a rice paddy, so we decided to go after that. But going after that, we got met with like 500 V.C because they had a whole company size element down there. So we kind of got it handed to us in a bit, but nobody lost their lives. We were able to get back.

Get back, break contact, get on our birds and get home. But the bird took some hits, right? So when it landed at Seaflow, we told him shut it down, let's take a look at it. The Army pilot said, no, no, all my gauges are good, it's good, and everything else. Well, our five guys, Jack Donnelly and Toby Thomas and Sparks and Ritter and Gore, got on the bird to go up to Bentui. And in like a thousand yards out from Ben Tui, the bird spun in. its rotors and inverted. And the guys, all of them were skydivers, so they all left the bird, you know, and tracking across the sky. But what happened is they, from what I know, is they

hit the, hit the rice paddies and stuck in the mud and drowned in the rice paddies. They couldn't get themselves loose from the, from the mud. So that was a, that was a crime. We all cried about that. They were all great, great team guys. That was a bad day. day in our lives. What'd they do with that platoon? Just backfilled it. Backfilled it, you know. And the, and then we all kept working, because when we got to sea float, there was one platoon, Foxtrot was there. When we left, because there was so much action, we had four platoons at, they're trying to cover down on on everything it was going on, right? So it was a very active, active place.

Another good op I'll tell you about that was a Square Bay, Square Bay Op, which was a location right up from the entrance of the San Coulon River. And it was at night. The VC would run supply trains down across Square Bay in Sampans and deliver it to the VC, which were down south of us, that we were always hitting. So we found this out, so we decided to set up an op on Sampans. Square Bay. So we built a I built a twin 60 mount for the Boston Wiler, which we had silent running, you know,

25s on. And we took that up the square bay and we parked in a little cove up there and just waited that night we had night vision, our great big night vision glass. And we're watching these sandpans as they're coming across Square Bay and there was like

25 of them. And we said, wow, this is the wow, wow west. So we got on the boats. The boat driver was there, got on the 60s, and we hit it. And we hit it because the Square Bay, very shallow, probably 10 foot of water. And we come across there blazing them 60s and all those guys in that whole sandpan sticking out like dogs balls. So we just let them have it.

Let them have it. With one Boston Whaler. One Boston Whaler. With 60s. Twin 60s mounted on it. Well, yeah. And there's how many sandpans? There's, I think there was.

like 40. So, I mean, we had other team guys in the boats with stoners and stuff, right? So we hit these guys, devastate them, devastate them, and now we got 40 sandpans full of fish, rice, you know, guns, everything that the bad guys need down south. We waited for daylight, which was probably about 45 minutes, so we just let them set there, right, waiting for any guys that kind of pool blood that wanted to get up and shoot again. So we just, just set. Then we approached once it started breaking daylight, right? So the only person that was alive was this old woman that was chewing beach nut, had like three teeth going. So we made her drive. So she drove all the sandpans back to sea float. It was wild. I know there's helos because

there's helos over the top of us. Somebody was taking a picture of that, but it was a magnificent thing. and bring it all these sandpans back to seafloat. And then we gave them to, we distribute them to the village that we had started, which was upriver. We had captured so many people at seafloat that we started a village upriver probably about, probably about a half a mile from seafloat. And we just, that was our village, right? So we, anything we would recover or anything else from the Viet Cong, we would give to the village. It was a fishing village.

Started with like five people. By the time we left country, it was like 1,500 people. Who were these people? They were just innocent fishermen and, you know, and innocent citizens that had gotten caught up in the war. Right? And they were trying to get out of the war zone. So we moved them up there.

Great fishing where it was at. And the, you know, they would go to market, you know, which was up in Bungtow and not Fungtow, but Bintui and sell their fish and all that kind of stuff. So they were just trying to make a living. So we would take everything to those guys. So that day, they got all kinds of fish and brand new sandpans and everything else. They loved us.

I love those Americans. So it was very, that was very cool, very cool. The old lady, we took the old lady up there too and said, you have a new home now. She just kept going, chewing her beach nut. Crazy, crazy, man. But that was one crazy op that made the history books. So it was good. But, yeah, we all got home safe, which was a blessing, you know, except for our five guys.

We lost, they lost their lives. And, you know, and then we had the Mighty Moe got ambushed when it went down south. We lost, Mikey got hit then. Should have got a Purple Heart didn't. Wogsland got hit in the eye with a piece of shrap metal. What happened with that? What was the? Well, the Mighty Moe was a big Mike boat, you know, had all kinds of armor on it and everything else.

and what they were doing, which they shouldn't have done, we were trying to punch away through a canal down to VC country. Well, the VC had grenades and had mines and everything else on it. So when the boat would go down there, it would catch on cables, right, and then snagged their props so they became immobile. So they were setting ducks when all these mines started going off and they got hit from all sides by the VC. So the VC really shot the boat up.

Again, sea wolves got us out of there. Came in, black ponies. Got us out of there. We had to go pull the boat out. But the guys that were on the boat, you know, were inside, and the rockets were going inside, and the hot core was bouncing all over the place. So we lost, I think, two guys that day,

and Wogsland got his eye put out, and then a lot of other people got shrap matter wounds and stuff like that off of the mighty mo. But that was not a good day. day and it probably shouldn't have happened, but it did. Right. So a lot going on when you're out there pushing. How'd you decide when your last op was going to be? Gosh, you know, I can't answer that question because we were working so hard, you know, and everybody goes, okay, we're going to, we're going to stop operating two weeks, right, before we take off. Well, that didn't happen.

We just operated up. I know that when I got home off an op, I got my gear and put it on a helo and flew off. That's when my last day was. And I know the rest of the guys were probably very close to the same, you know, because I was one of the last guys to take off. We did the turnover op with the new platoon coming in, you know. And that's when we moved off of, we moved off of sea float and moved. moved into solid anchor because they had built the base over on, we had, you know,

stabilized the situation enough where the CBs could come in and build the base, you know, over on the shore. I always felt like it was a jinx to say, okay, this is our last stop. Oh, yeah. I never said that. No. I just, we just kept going. And then one day it was like, guess what?

We're going to go home. So we can't do anymore. That's right. That last op that we just did, that was our last stop. And I feel exactly the same way. Dog jinx it and go, okay, you know. No, and, you know, because our world, it's push, push, push. I mean, we're all jacked up to do everything we can, and you want to do that.

I mean, the time to sleep is on your way home. I know I came off of one of the Africa ops that we did down in Sierra Leone, right? And we had saved probably 3,000 people, you know, in that particular thing and got them back safe and stuff. And when I jumped on that C-145 to come home, and I looked at all the guys that were there with us, I go, man, this hero shit is really hard. And I went to sleep, man. I went, see you later. I was gone until we landed in Stuttgart, Germany. Yeah, it was wild.

That was wild. But Vietnam was a great, and it's just what you said earlier, Vietnam was a huge learning ground, a huge proving ground for SEAL team. If we would not have had Vietnam, we would not be where we're at today. It's that simple. It's that simple. And, you know, the guys, the personalities, they came from all walks of life, all walks of life. And we have that same thing today at Naval Special Warfare. I mean, I see it in every young man that I see it.

Every one of them has got a different personality, but the fire in their gut, the fire in their eyes, is there. And they want to do the job and they want to do it the best they possibly can. Right? With all the other crap that's going on, I mean, you've got to give it to the men, the men. And we're so fortunate to have the quality of men, both officers and enlisted, that we have in naval special warfare. Because they're professional, they get the job done. Every now and then they drop the ball, but for the most part, they get it done. Yeah. So you come home from Vietnam? I come home from Vietnam. I get on my Harley.

Sounds like a plan right there. It was. It was a plan. It was a plan. Well, I had a chopper shop. So I came home. I had a chopper shop before I left to go to Vietnam. And I had still had the chopper shop. Somewhere in San Diego? Yeah, in Imperial Beach. Oh, okay. I beat. So I built a bike. I built Mike's first bike. Mike took off and went back to Ohio. I said, you know what? I'm going to build the bike and I'm going to go for a ride.

So I built a bite, toured around the United States, met Americans again, which was a real eye-opener. Because, you know, like today, a lot of guys have a lot of mental problems adjusting from the war and stuff like that. I used to travel around the country to adjust myself, right? I didn't have a lot of money. I had a great Harley, and I would stop, I'd work, get a job for a day or two, get some gas money, get some food money, put it in the tank, and I'd hit it again. And I made around the country and enjoyed the hell out of it. Are you on leave at this point? No, no, out of the Navy.

Oh, so this is, so you came home. Yeah. What did you do just when you got home? When I just got home. Just got home from Vietnam? I went back to the training cell. I was on active duty for another two years after I got home. Were you planning to get out?

When you got home, we were like, okay, when Vietnam ended? You know, I didn't know. I was there for, you know, and the whole thing was I got out. I was out for like 90 days, did this trip around the country, and then came back and got back on active duty, you know, and I said, well, you know, it's the only thing I know and it's the only thing I love, so I'll do that. And then I got off of active duty cleanly and went into the reserves in 75. And in 75, that's when we started the SEAL Reserve Unit in San Diego and also on the East Coast. And so I was in the reserve unit, you know, as a second.

third class, second class petty officer, made first class in the reserves. And what was your civilian job at this point? I had a couple of civilian jobs. I had a boiler shop that worked and did Navy repair ships over at the 32nd Street, Long Beach, and then I go up to Swan Island and do stuff up there because I repaired boilers because it was easy mechanical stuff, machinery stuff. And so I did that, had a company of probably about 15 guys. We did that for a while.

Then I had got another company that did it, and that grew to about 90 people, you know. And then I got rid of both those. I sold those, and then a friend of mine came to me and wanted to start another company with the, it's called the takeoff and estimating system. The company was called Texanics, and we came up with and devised a system where if you put a set of building plans, on-sided on the top of a digitizing board. We had a guy that wrote the algorithm that would tell you,

if you touch that stylus in two different points, it would give you the dimension of that eight-foot wall, tell you all the pieces that you needed to build that, tell you what your labor costs would be and everything else. So we sold about 5,000 of those systems across the world, and we sold that company to a group of Canadian guys. And that's when I went to reserves in 1990. and they said, hey, we need some volunteers to come back for Desert Storm, Desert Shield.

And I went, I think that's me. So that's what I re-engaged. That's when I re-engaged with... So you came back on active duty at that point? But you had spent that whole time in the reserves. 15 years I'd spent in the reserves. Which is one weekend a month, two weeks in the summer or something like that? Weekend in a month, yeah.

Weekend a month and two weeks during the reserves. And we were very creative about that. We would do cold water training in the Colorado River and a big raft. Yeah, that was good. And then we do cold weather training and mammoth or something. Mammoth, yes, yes, trying to get down the hill as fast as you possibly could. Yes, it was hell, but somebody had to do it. But we always got to shoot and we got the blow up things, keep our qualls up.

We got the jump, which was better in the reserves than it was on active duty because you always had assets. So that was very cool. So for those 15 years, that's pretty much what I did. And then 1990, I went in. I got called back to active duty. He went to SEAL Team 3, started working at Training Cell with Mike Martin and KBarr and a couple other guys that were there. Were you a master chief at this point?

No, no. It was a first class. Dang. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Because in the old days, Rank never meant anything. I mean, some of those ops I was telling you about in Vietnam. Tom, we ran them as second-class petty officers.

You know, I mean, so the rank was never a big deal. And so not until I got back on in 1990, did I realize that rank was a big deal? And I went, Jesus, I guess I better study. So when the chiefs test come around, I took the chief's test, we were injuremen then, not, you know, and there wasn't anything I didn't know about injuremen. So I passed the test. How fired up? How fired up was Mike Martin to have you? you checking back into Seal Team 3.

Oh, he's great. Well, Mike, when Mike originally came back, he lived with me. You know, he moved in the house. So after Vietnam, Mike got out. Yeah. And then what did he do? Because this is a good story. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Mike got on the bike. I built him and rode back to Ohio. That's where he met Gail, his wife, right? So Mike went to work at the steel mills back in Ohio, working the steel mills with his new Triumph motorcycle. So he'd ride it there, and he was working there. That's where he'd learned to tattoo. You know, he ran into a guy back there that was also a biker

and learned how to tattoo from this guy, and that became his new career. Well, the steel mills, after 13 years, the steel mills were going to close down. So Mike went to a reunion in Florida and saw Steve Frisk, who was one of our, who Mike worked with in Vietnam. He was one of the two-man ops, right? Him and Steve would do the two-man-ops together, and myself and Leon would do the two-man-ops together. We went down there, saw Steve,

and Frisk was a commander, I think, in the teams at the time. And Steve goes, hey, if you want to come back in, I'll help you. So that's how it happened, right? Got back in because of a something vet, like an M-Vet or something like that. I don't know what it was, but it was a program they had where they were trying to bring you know, vets back on that had skills and stuff like that. And Mike got it and fell into that category.

Well, then he calls me, you know, and I'm still in the corporate world doing business and stuff like that. He goes, hey, hey, it's me, Mike Martin. I go, I know a lot of Mike's, ooh. Me, you. And so he starts going off on me, and I go, all right, Mike, I got it, I got it. So he came out, hung around. I gave him one of my bedrooms, and he lived with us until he got back on his feet and got

his family moved out here, everything else. but what a wonderful deal for him, right? Because the steel malls were down. There was no job for him back there, and he was able to get back on active duty and come back on active duty, and everybody knows what a stud he was. So that was just cool besides a wonderful personality.

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful man. Great brother. Great, great brother. So we had tons of fun, you know, rehashing the thing, and then all the new personalities at Team 3. like Shirazi, you know, like, you know, and they were like on and on, like the Chang, right? So it was a welcome, you know, a thing for me to come back into because being in the business world, you don't have that kind of camaraderie that you do with the guys, right?

So the guys are there, and that's what it's all about anyway. It's about the brotherhood. It's about the camaraderie you have with one another coming back. And I know Mike and I missed both of that. And when we came back together at Seal Team 3, it was just happening. So we let it go from there, you know, and it proved to be fantastic. So I was in Seal Team 3 from the 90s until 95. 95 I got Otters, which I was a chief now, over to Stuttgart, Germany,

to move Unit 2 from McArhanes, Scotland down to Stucard, right? I get over there and I'm going, holy crap, Germany, right? And my wife was going, wow, Germany, because she's starting to travel and she loves it, right? So we got over there, and then we got into the world of moving from McRahaney, Scotland. We had to go get all the stuff from the base at McRahany, Scotland, which is a story all its own, and drive it down to Stuttgart, and they gave us the work. base in Stuttgart to fix up, right? At Panzer Concern, yeah.

Which was Rangel's old tank garage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and that goes a whole other thing. But we... They still have the cranes in the bays there to pull the engines out of the panzers. Yep. They're in there.

They're in the bays. It's like part of the building. I know, I know. All those cages that you see in there, guess who put those up? I'm reckoning you did. Yeah, yeah. So it was wild.

But I had the ordinance department, training department at the time when we were moving then. So that was a good thing. And then we got onto the ESAT team and the RST teams where we had to start doing. One second. You threw your wife into this scenario there. Yes, yes. When did that all start? Oh, yeah.

Well, I probably should discuss that. My wife was my biggest supporter, right? So, you know, as we were going through this and going back on active duty in the 90s, She had never been involved in the Navy at all, right? So Mikey and I are going out to Nilean to train the guys at Nilean, and I'm going, hey, honey, I'm going to be gone for a couple weeks. Well, she was a professional. A woman had her own career and stuff like that, and our son was, John was old enough to kind of take care of himself.

So she'd say, okay, well, just call me, let me know what it is. So it wasn't that big of an affair. So we were going, and then she worked for Sandale Gas Electric. So when I got orders to Germany, she retired. hired from San Diego Gas Electric, and this was a new adventure for her. So she was all excited about going to Germany and everything else. And so it was great for her. I mean, she absolutely loved going there.

Was your son old enough that he went to Germany or not? No, he turned into a college boy. Oh, okay. College boy in my house paid for it. Yes. All my neighbors were calling me in Germany going, they're wrecking the house. They're wrecking the house. I'm going, holy crap.

Oh, you left him here going to college in your house? Yes, yes. Yay. Yeah, big mistake. But, you know, what we lived through it. That's the whole part we live through it. So she was very excited about it. So it was a fun move because it was her first one.

As we go on through the career, she's going, this is not getting to be as much fun as I thought, right? So she got there and we got moved on to Kelly Barracks, right? Well, because I was a chief, I got the top floor, right, in the barracks. Well, there's four floors, 90 steps every time you go up, no elevators. So every time she would buy groceries, the groceries would be waiting at the bottom of the steps for guess who to carry up when I got home, right? Laundry, she would bring the laundry down. I'd take the laundry back up.

And it was like, oh, my God. So now I know why the Germans have such strong legs because they were up and down those things. It was crazy. So it was a good move. We got into a real rhythm over there where we really justified General Lambert was the general there and he loved, you know, naval special warfare. So we justified by being on the ESAT teams and being on these RST teams, we justified our existence there and everybody wanted us to be there because anytime we would go

on an operation and the operation would work perfect. That's where the NEOs came into how we started doing the NEOs in Africa. That's a non-combatant evacuation operation where there's something going wrong in a country, whether it's civil unrest, it could even be disease, it could be disaster, could be anything. But there's a problem, and somebody's got to get basically the Americans out of there. You know, and so, you know, you've seen them happen all over the world, and you did, you did one where? Liberia or Sierra Leone? We did Liberia.

We did one in Liberia. We did one in Brazaville. We did one in Sierra Leone. And we used, I mean, you used all methods. And the reason, this is the reason why they wanted us on it. Because we were the marine piece to it. So if there was any landings that had to come, I had to survey the beaches before the guys got there, had to make sure they had access on and off of the beach, all that kind of stuff.

It was secure. That was my job. Plus, go into the embassies, find out what kind of supplies they have, what kind of food, what kind of medicine, all those kind of things. So when they called us to go down and do this, you kind of took control. You worked at the ambassadors Hess pretty much, but the military guy could take over at any time. Yeah, because these operations are so vast in the responsibilities because you've got security, obviously, but you've got logistics, you got medical, you got food supplies. I mean, there's all these things that have to take place.

I mean, it's a massive undertaking to get 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 people rounded up, that's right, marshaled into an area and then extracted from that area. I mean, that, and keep them comfortable the whole time, at least somewhat comfortable. Otherwise, you're going to hear about that too. Yes, you will. I'm going to call my representative. But that's the whole thing. I mean, we had to go out in town.

I'll break it down just like the first one. The first one we went on was into Liberia. Liberia was, we landed in Sierra Leone. I used Sierra Leone as a safe haven. And that was the best place to do that because we'd just surveyed the airport and stuff like that. And you know when Sierra Leone is your safe haven, you know you're going into a rough neighborhood. Sierra Leone is nasty. That's right.

It's not the safest neighborhood anyway. So we flew in the Liberia and the embassy was basically under siege. So we had to shut the siege down, closed the gates up. take care of the bad guys that were there and start, you know, vetting people coming into the compound, the embassy, because the ambassador wanted to save as many people as possibly. He said, that's great, but they're not bringing everything they got, especially people with American passports to coming in. So we were, we probably flew 90 chalks out of people with, with, I mean, where you're

flying in, you're flying in low, a rocket team tried to take us out going in. and the door gunner with the mini gun got pointed in the right direction, and that rocket team disappeared. So that was very cool. And so we flew in. We had to chop trees down. We had to move light poles. We had to do all this for this evacuation.

Plus, we had to catalog everybody coming in, take care of medical stuff coming in and everything else. So our job was big. And the ambassador loved this, but it was a big job. So we were on that siege probably for about two and a half weeks, right? So we evacuated, I think, close, well, 90 chalk, so probably close to 1,500 people on that thing and getting them on there. And they were all people with American passports are tied to an American passport,

one or the other. So we turned that whole thing over to the Marines when the Marg got there. That's their job. and everything was pretty well done. We had to go back in the country, fly in. We'd run security. We'd pick up people and bring them back. We had to recover the ambassador's Egyptian daughter,

the Egyptian ambassador's daughter that got taken away by bad guys, so we had to go convince them that they didn't need to keep her. So we helped them with that decision. And then we got her back, so he was quite grateful and everything else. And then the news media started showing up and they wanted it going. But in Liberia, they have a cannibal community. So we used to call them the street sweepers because during the day when the battles were raging and stuff like that, all the dead people would be removed at night because the cannibals would come in and go, whoopee.

Roadkill. Roadkill for dinner. It's exactly. It just happened to be human. It happened to be here. That was classic, man. That's the first time I ever see anything like that, but it was something I think every human being should see

and realize that it's out there. But it was wild. So we were able to successfully close that down and move on. A lot of first came out of that. That was the first time that a P3 had a camera mounted in it and was flying overhead, and we could get the images from the city. So that was very, very cool. And that was 96.

So, and you know how that's grown today with all the drones and everything else today. So, yeah, it was, it was, it was quite an operation for a seal team to be there. And then you stayed, so you stayed in Germany and you did, the other thing that you mentioned, I mean, in order to prepare sort of logistically and just for planning purposes, you guys would travel around and go into countries and say, okay, if we have to do this in this country, here's some contacts, here's some people, here's some recons, check these things out. And then also at this time, Bosnia was going on. It hadn't kicked off yet.

It was still kind of bubbling up. You know, in the 90s, it was still going. We would fly around. We did probably like 11 different embassies where we put together packages on that and knew exactly what needed to be done if for some reason the Americans in those particular countries had to be evacuated. So that's something that's a standard type of operation. They just got us involved in it because we did a good job with it.

it. And we had a team of army guys, Air Force guys, and everything else, you know. And then I left, and then I left Germany in probably 98. And I'm trying to think I probably had my first, we were in Bosnia because we were going to Bond Steel all the time. And I probably did, I don't know, like four months over there before I took off and headed back. But Once I came back, then I went to Group 1 and I was the weapons officer there, and that's when we put the Mark 46 and the Mark 48 into a contracting play and got those two weapons. God bless you.

Oh, yeah. Those are hell of the weapons right there. The best, man. As we call them, they're fire breathers. Yeah, they are. They are fire breathers. So we got that done. And as soon as I got that off and running, and they started the manufacturing.

those. Then I got sent to Spain. And that's when I took over the training department in Spain at Unit 10. And what year was that? That was 2000. 2000, 2003. I went over there. And we, that's when we started running Bosnia. We did a couple of African gigs then. But Kosovo was there. Kosovo was still in Germany, too, because we were running it then. And that was, let me back up a little bit. But The Kosovo War, as well as Bosnia, they were filthy wars. Horrible. Yeah, the guys that were there, they were just the Serbs were fucking, you know, they were horrible people, horrible, horrible people.

I don't know what possessed them to be the way that they are, but they were horrible people. They had no qualms about shooting innocence, none at all. And we had no qualms about shooting people with guns. So it was good. You always heard the story about the building where the 130 blew the corner of the building out because we couldn't find a sniper that was in it. Okay, I was there when that happened. And I also was there when we went, we re-listed on the paper building steps.

There was like 10 of us, and we were flipping off to the snipers when we're doing our re-enlistment. It was great. It was great. And so, because we had our counter-sniper's up, all we wanted to see was a barrel. Please, let me see a barrel. And so that was, that is actually when sniper alley just lost all its support. After we blew that building down, killing, trying to kill that one guy, there wasn't any other snipers that really were on sniper alley after that.

So it kind of lost its weight because they knew that we weren't going to hesitate to take the buildings down if we couldn't get the guys. if we couldn't get the guys. They would ask us in Ramadi, you know, for good counter-sniper technology. And we'd say you guys have the counter-sniper technology. It's called an M1 Abrams tank. That's right. That's the best counter-sniper that I've seen. Oh, you want to shoot a snap from that building or at least one of those buildings over there?

Cool. Watch this. That's right. Those M-1s, man. Those things stop the snipers. They, yeah, they do the trick. It's called overload and there's a reason for it. Right? That is so cool, so cool. But that was a good thing. And we would fly back and forth to Bosnia all the time. And then Kosovo was exactly the same thing. We'd be in the woods with chasing those guys down in the woods. And it was, you know, that was our business. And we did a good job of it. Everybody loved having us there, all the United Nations people.

So you were in Spain when September 11th happened? I was. I was in Spain when September 11th happened. And I had just come back from the range, walked in to, the training department and was watching this on on the TV and I go what movie is that it was no movie that really really sent us home and we had to move back on base after September low we had to move back on base and everybody started started going how are we going to prep for it where are we going we had a couple people come by and talk to us that we were going to be doing different things and And we did those different things, right?

But none of us, I don't think any of us at the time left to go to Iraq. I think it was more of a supportive kind of thing that we had at 10 because I was still doing Africa gigs going down to Africa at the time. I think most of the Iraqi, you know, Afghanistan kind of thing at the time was still happening from East and West Coast. That's what they broke it off. And Admiral Wilson came by and told us that it's going to be. be a slow crawl. We're not going to

get for the long term. We're going to take our time. We've got to plan. We're going to make sure we don't burn out our guys. Right. So that was good information. Good information. Then I left Spain. You think he was thinking 20 years at that time? I think that he's a smart enough guy where he was going, yes, I think so.

Yeah. Yeah. He's a very smart guy. I love Adam Olson. Great, great guy. All the senior officers, especially the officer detailer, who I called. Yeah. And said, hey, get me to a SEALT. please right now, he was like, this thing is going to last a long, long time. Yeah. You know, and yeah, he's right. So then where did you go when you got done with Spain? Then I came back to, because that was like 2003, I came back to trade at. That's when Ronnie Cooper,

Joe Byrne, all the boys we put together trade at one. Got it. And I was the ops chief for trade at one. So Mike Turcott was, if you know Mike, he was the boss in the op shop. So we started putting together that, which was fascinating. And I did that from the inception of Trayette to like 2005. And then I got a call from a good buddy of mine, Doug McNutt. I don't know whether you're doing or not, but he was a detailer. And he goes, hey, because George Young had gotten hit over. when he was over in Iraq.

And he needed a place to kind of settle because he was getting retired. I said, well, you'd take my shop, my spot here, and I'll find some place else to go. So that's when Doug McNutt, I thought I was going to stay on the West Coast, right? He goes, I got a hard-to-fill billet. I go, hey, where is it at, man?

He goes, Hawaii. I go, Hawaii? Hard-to-fill billet in Hawaii? He goes, yeah, I need an ops chief over in Hawaii. Why? I said, well, you know, I'll go not knowing I have to go to SDV school to go to this billet, right? So now I'm a senior citizen almost. And Doug's going, yeah, you got to go to SDV school. Are you a master chief yet? I made master chief at SDV school. Okay. Because interestingly, George was my third platoon chief. Right. And then when I took over trade at was when he,

was the master chief of trade at. Oh, okay, okay. So that was pretty cool. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, so that's probably his, what he did have when he went to the hot, took my job, and then he became, because I think Ron Cooper was the Master Chief of Trade Ed, and he probably relieved Ron Cooper. Yeah, probably. Probably. So anyway, off to 2005, off to SDV school. SD school in Panama City, Florida. How old are you? I was like 56 at the time. Oh, yeah. For those of you that don't know what an SDV is, Echo. Yes, sir.

It's sealed delivery vehicle. It's a miniature submarine, but it's not a submarine that keeps you dry. It's called a wet submarine. So it's got a motor on it, and it's enclosed, but water comes in and out of it. So you wear a scuba rig inside of this thing,

because otherwise you know you'd have to worry about pressurizing this thing. It'd have to be this hole, and you have to get in and out of it. All that would make it too complicated. So they just take a, basically a shell, put a motor in it, and then you get inside the shell and you drive this small underwater submarine. Is that that like real claustrophobic one? Oh yeah. If you're, yeah, it's very claustrophobic. Yeah, my friend Jeremy. Tell me about that. Especially if you're a big guy.

Yeah, yeah. It's not it's it's it takes a lot of skill to drive them and that and when you have a driver, you want to keep that driver that's real good at it. I was not real good at driving the boat because I needed my glasses. That's what they gave for sending a 57-year-old year old school. That's right. That's exactly right. So anyway. How long is that school?

The school is three months. At least it's in Florida. Oh, yeah. But still, you're doing what, eight-hour dives and a show like that? Oh, yeah, all the time, all the time. Taking the boat apart, putting the boat back together, doing it. I mean, you're just, you're doing what you have to do. At least you got your motorhead, your motorhead stuff got satisfied.

I could take the boats apart and put them back together, driving them was a whole other thing, right? And keeping them level and all that kind of stuff. Hey, when you can't read the numbers on the depth gates, that's going to be a challenge. Get me worse my glasses. That's why I always let somebody else drive. And I would ride in the back going on. But it was interesting. It was an interesting time.

It's something I kind of enjoyed. I wish I was better at it. But I wasn't. But I still went the SDV team in Hawaii. So I went to the team in Hawaii, I became the combat systems officer over there because Jim Morel at the time was retiring. And so I took over his job. And that is where we started working and doing a whole lot of very, very cool things that they're doing today. And so it was a fun gig.

I mean, it was a fun tour over there. And then when I left that, I actually went to work on our dry suburb. Marine that was over there and it kind of burned up so I kind of lost my job over there, which really pissed me off because I was really getting good at paddleboarding. And so the, so, so I had to come back to Warcom and that's where I took the program over in N8. And that's kind of where I wrapped up my career, was running that program and running the palms and the funding lines and everything else to keep the new SDVs because now we have a new one. And keeping that and keeping the boys trained and getting them the gear that they need.

And it's evolved a lot since I had that particular job. So it's been very, very interesting. It's been a very interesting career. So 1967, you joined the Navy, and now it's 2014. Yeah, the end of 2014. Is when you finally retire. after 47 years. Oh, yeah.

Wild. That's wild. And just for to note to all of your clients. I was retired for six months and then they sucked me back in. So I still work over there. Yes, every day I go into do things. And now I'm working analyst stuff that's for Naval Special Warfare. And it's very exciting.

I mean, I think, and Jocko will tell you the same thing. I mean, once you work for the boys and you're working for the boys and for their health and their benefit, you want to keep doing that because they're out there on the front lines, and they require people just like us to keep pushing and keep doing the best we can do because we're speaking for them. They've got more than enough to do when you're out there in the war zone. Yeah. You know, I was the Admiral's aide for 13 months, and one of the things that my boss,

would say in these big meetings, he'd say, what does that, what does that do for our SEAL platoons? That's right. And that's always the reminder for all the guys that was at Warcom, because Warcom's really elevated. They're looking at things. You know, I remember I'd go to a meeting, they'd be talking about what kind of boat engine are we going to have in 2020. Right? Right. And I'd be thinking myself, how does this matter? And that's what he would say. He'd say, how does this affect the SEAL platoon? Like, how is this going to, because you know what? The SEAL teams are going to be here in 2020. And you know what they're going to need? A boat engine. And so if we don't plan for it and don't figure out what the best one is right now, smart guys looking at it that have operational experience and that care, then they'll end up with a piece of shit.

But if you do it right, that's how we got the Mark 48 and the Mark 46, right? Because someone like you was saying, okay, this is what we need. Yep, yep. Yeah, yeah. It's very true. And if you don't have people doing that and pushing the future envelope, then you'll always be behind the power curve. All of our peer-to-peer competitors are doing exactly. that. And some of them are doing a better job than we're doing at it. So we have to push harder.

That's our job. And so there's your retirement, there's like 1,500 people show up for your retirement. Right. There was more, but they couldn't get in. It was at the, at the Lowe's Hotel. Yeah, there was, I mean, people are piling in from everywhere. And I didn't know I knew that many people, but evidently I did. So it was wild. It was wild. And you had five people speak. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And they were all great.

I mean, they were all people that had a very important part of my career as I went through Naval Special Warfare. You know, I mean, the guys that were E5s with me that were now two-star admirals, they spoke. Right. I mean, I think I'm one of the only guys that's had an instructor from their training class come and speak at their. retirement, you know. I had... Who is that? Mother Moy. Oh, no. Mother Moy. I mean, the best CEO I had, John McTie was there. He spoke at it, you know, it was, it was fantastic, you know. So it was, it was very cool. It was very, very cool. Retirement couldn't have asked for it to be any better. 47 years. You, you wrap up that career. Yes. Go ahead. No, that's what that was with

waivers. Yeah, no kidding, a lot of waivers. A lot of waivers, a lot of waivers. And then you still are working for Naval Special Warfare, but at some point you realized that there was another mission that you wanted to get out, you wanted to attack. Absolutely. How did you get involved with your next mission that you got involved with?

I will, yeah, let me go into that. I had an old team guy. It seems like it always happens with an old team guy. Jeff Bramsted, who was a sky god. I know Bram. Jeff came to me when I, right after I retired and says, hey, I need your help with this particular project that I've taken on. And I went, well, what's the project?

And he told me it was child trafficking. And I said, well, you know, I mean, I've dealt with that all over the world. And we've saved thousands and thousands of kids all over the world because of, you know, assholes that want to abuse them and use them. And I said, you know, we've done that. He said, but this is American kids on American soil. That kind of piqued my interest. He had one of the PhDs at USDA had written a white paper.

Amy Carbner, she had written a white paper. I read the white paper and I just went, wow. I had no idea that 3,000 children a year in Southern. California were being either kidnapped or put into human trafficking in one form or another. And I said, you know, I have to get involved in this some way. So I met Joseph Travers, who is the co-founder of Saved in America. Saved in America is a nonprofit organization. We don't charge the parents any money at all to go locate their children. The children have, or the parents have to come to us.

They give us the power of attorney of the child. And then the child becomes ours to locate, to find, locate, and identify, which they do. Many of them have. We've recovered over 200 kids so far. We will take that power of attorney. We will find the child, we'll locate the child, identify the child, and then we work with local law enforcement and have local law enforcement come in and recover the children, and give the children to us so we can take the children to medical care, get any DA evidence off of them,

and then we will take them into a counseling-type thing or a safe haven, so that they can come down off the drugs. The majority of them have heroin in them. They have some type of drugs that keep them, you know, in a very lethargic state so that these pimps and predators can do whatever they want with them. A very, very sad state and a heinous crime. When you're dealing with these situations, where are these children coming from? How does it happen?

They come from many different areas. The Southern California is one. They've come from all over the country. They come from poorer families. They come from rich families. There's not any demographics on exactly how they get there that we've been to determine yet. So we're only into it a little bit over 200 kids so far. We've been working in Southern California.

That's where our main location is at. We get a lot of support, philanthropic support from the community, philanthropic support from the government. So it's the local government, I mean. And that's kind of where we've been focused at. Now we've gone all the way to Florida to recover kids. We've gone to Utah to recover kids. We've gone to Phoenix, Arizona, to recover kids. And so that's what we're doing now is we're expanding, saved in America, from San Diego.

We're over in Las Vegas at the end of the month. They had recovering kids. We've probably got four kids over there that we've got information and intel on that we will go seek and find. call in local law enforcement and have them recover the children, just as I mentioned. Local law enforcement loves us because we're a huge asset to them in helping them find, you know, these kids because they don't have the time. They're so overworked, so over barren by, you know, runaway kids or kids that gets, you know, into trafficking.

They don't have the, they don't have the resources to do as much as they would like to do. So it's very frustrating to law enforcement. So when law enforcement hears about us, they are totally in tune to say, hey, come in and help us. All of us are private investigators. We're all insured and licensed. We all are CCW carriers. We have a whole network of private investigators throughout the United States that we can call on, the NEMAC people. So if we know that a child's been taken to another state, we will call a PI in that particular state.

He will volunteer his time to go see if he can locate that child. at a particular address or where we kind of direct him. If he finds the child, then we will fly a team from San Diego here to go set up, do the surveillance, do the watching, and everything that's required to identify that child to call in local law enforcement. That's how we've been working to date to recover these over 200 kids. Now, this is a heinous crime.

It's a crime that I have to ask everybody in your audience. I have to ask every grandparent, every parent that's out there to please be on the watch and be able to identify what's happening with these child trafficking things. These pimps, these perverts are taking these kids. They have to take them in public every now and then just to keep them. They keep them locked up most of the time in houses. And if you see them out on the street, don't be afraid to go seek law enforcement and ask law enforcement.

something is not right with this particular situation because you may be saving that child's life. And that's what we want to do. That's why we're here. It's all our whole organization is about the children. That's why we are bound not to charge the parents for doing this. People have charged parents in the past thousands of dollars and never found their child for them. And how heart-wrenching is that to be a parent? You've already lost your child and now you're paying thousands of dollars. to some unscrupulous person.

And they're not locating your child. We'll locate your child. Usually the day, it takes three to four days to locate a child, no matter where they're at in the United States. We've got, I've got great computer people. I've got great people that work behind the scenes to assist and help us, even in Mexico sometimes, but we hardly ever go outside the United States because we work so well with law enforcement and supporting them.

So this is the word I want to get out. We need your help. We need your support. Please go to our website, which is saved in America.org, and the whole story is there. It's all about the teams. We're made up of retired special operations guys and retired police officers, some FBI guys, some old agency guys that I've worked with in the past. And I have a whole slew of IT guys that support us with.

chasing the internet because that's where it all starts from. So that's what I was going to ask you. When you see what are some warning signs for parents to look out for, grandparents to look out for, obviously the internet has got to be a huge one right now. Oh, totally. The internet is the media that gets them started, right? And a lot of them, we call it the Don Juan guys. So you have an older guy that is pursuing a younger girl.

promising error all these kind of things that's one thing you've got to watch out for when you're if your daughter or your son shows up with expensive purses or different gifts and things like that where are they getting it they're getting it from these pimps because these guys are trying to lure them in to what a good life that they can show them if as long as they can possess them and the donwans will keep them for two or three months you know as as a girlfriend or something like that then one day they will sell her, she'll be gone. Then if she's gone, they will sell her on the weekends, only the weekends, because they'll bring them home so you can feed them all week long.

And then on the weekends, you won't see them because the pimp will have them out selling these girls. And I have to remind you that, you know, one person that these pimps do that is worth, and they sell them throughout that weekend in a year's particular time, $150,000 to $200,000 a year. So that's just an idea. It's better than any drug that pimp or that drug dealer could push because they use them, they bring them back. They let them go back to either a community home during the week because they don't have to feed them, they don't have to keep them, or your house. and then on the weekends, they just call them up and off they go.

The kids are 14 years old, so you know, you kind of say, what does a 14-year-old know? A 14-year-old doesn't know a whole lot, right? And they don't listen to their parents as well as they should. So it's kind of up to the parents to be able to be ready for the morning signs, be ready to do something. And if you have any questions at all, go to our website, save them, America.org and ask the question. And we can get you steered to a counselor, get you steered to something that's going on in the cities.

Like I say, if we're in, if one of the cities that we're involved in, we have counselors, we have people that you could talk to in those cities. Man. You said 3,000 in Southern California? Yes. Shocking. That's why I got involved. So imagine if that's what you're.

have in Southern California, imagine what you have nationwide. That is, it's a crime and it's a heinous crime that nobody wants to talk about. You, I mean, they're talking about child trafficking. They're talking about the immigration problem and everything else, but nobody's talking about the child trafficking inside the United States of American kids, right? And it's done by all kinds of unscrupulous people. I mean, the first ring we busted here in San Diego was run by Russians on Pacific Coast Highway. And I was blown away when I went there.

So these guys are, they got multiple girls, underage girls. And they've somehow gotten them off wherever they pulled them out of their houses. They've lured them in somehow. Yes. They've gotten them on drugs. Yes. So they've got them in a flaccid state of mind where they're not thinking straight. and then they're just selling them.

Yep, they're a tool. And let me go back a little bit, but in every middle school that we have here in San Diego, which is going to be shocking to many of the people that are listening, is that they are recruiters, the gangs have recruiters inside the middle schools that are trying to recruit these girls for the Don Juan's so that the drug cartels and the gangs have these as income,

sources. So if you go, the only, I mean, the schools have been real slow to recognize that this is happening, and they are still real slow to get programs in place to teach these kids about these recruiters that are in the middle schools. I have middle schools. It's 14 years old, 13, 14 year old, that these recruiters are trying to recruit these girls and boys into this gang style life, or style of life. that they can sell them on the weekends, bring them home to mom and let them be school girls during the week, and then traffic them on the weekends. So that is, that's something that's going on today. So everybody has to be aware of that. And that's why I asked parents and grandparents to

please keep your eyes open and be aware of these kind of things, because there is that evil out there and it is happening every day in our world. Yeah, and these kids these days, like what you're talking about, is exactly what the, I don't know what the trend, I guess you call it the trend of, you know, with social media,

oh, I'm going to be rich, I'm going to be mature, I'm going to have a cool car, oh, there's drugs, cool, I'm going to be, I'm going to be mature girl, even though I'm only 14 years old. And so they see that and they get offered that. And that's, you know,

I could imagine, that's how a girl gets lured into these horrible situations. That's exactly, exactly right. I want to be older than I am, and I want more stuff. My family can't provide this for me, but my honey over here can provide it for me. He gets me new dresses, new purses, all that kind of stuff. Those are the kind of things, and those are kind of the red flags that every parent needs to be aware of. Man. All right. So saved in America.org is the website. You got your team on there. A bunch of old team guys too.

A bunch of guys I know on there. Oh, yeah. Awesome. And all guys that now have their private PI license. So you guys are actually out doing the recon work if needed. Oh, absolutely. We're doing all the, where the rubber meets the road, we're there. And that's how we find these kids. I mean, you know, the police department, if they had, the resources to do it. I know they would be doing it, but they don't have the resources. And that's why we're holding a fundraiser in November on November 7th at the Estonia Hotel in La Jolla. Please go to our website. Everything is on there. If you can afford to come to the event, it's going to be fantastic. How many seats you got? We probably have about 500.

Okay. What was the date on that? November the 7th, it'll be at 6 p.m. Our website has all the information on it, and you can buy tickets off our website. If you've got any questions about it, please just go to the website, send us a question, we'll answer that. It's for corporate people. They can buy tables of 10 for all of the other people that they have are all their employees. They can donate. They can do. There's so many things that they can do to help sponsor us and help support it. Awesome, awesome. Well, I'll tell you what, we've been going almost two hours right now. I think this may be a good time to wrap up.

I'll tell you right now, I'm going to listen to this, and I'm going to have about a thousand more questions for you. Okay, that's good. Because I was just getting warmed up. You know, when we start talking, I mean, the stuff about Vietnam, and, you know, the fact that you did 100 missions, you probably debriefed three of them, four of them maybe here briefly. I'm going to start thinking about those,

and I'm going to come up with all kinds of new questions, and it'd be awesome if you could come back on because I guarantee everybody that's less than this is going to want to hear more. Oh, absolutely. And there's, you know, a long time ago, a friend of mine put together a book. I got like 20 guys from Vietnam to all write a story

called the book was called The Men Behind the Trident by Dennis Cummings, and there's like 20 different stories of, you know, the people's the first contact action. that they had in Vietnam. One of my stories is in there, but it's a great read, and it's out on Amazon. So if you guys get a chance, go spin through that. That's interesting.

I actually have that book. Oh, good. I was looking at it today. What I'll do is we'll do it. Next time you come on, we'll go through your story. We'll talk about some more stories and that way. I seldom give out books that I'm going to cover on the podcast prior to covering them. I don't think and and sometimes people get mad they go please tell us what books you're going to cover

and I and I don't do it because I don't even know what books I'm going to cover because there's so many books that I'll be I'm reading five six books at a time and I'll go okay this one I like this part and I'll and I'll cover that book because I cover a lot of books in the podcast sure sure but yeah so now everyone has a heads up it's it's men behind the trident men behind the trident and it's by Cummings yeah coming and we'll cover that next time you come on all right beautiful that will be awesome you guys Got anything else? Anything else you want to add? Just I want to, before I jump off, I want to thank all of you for your support to save in America. We definitely need it and make yourselves more aware of the human trafficking that's going on in the United States of America of U.S. children. They're not foreign kids.

They're U.S. kids. Yeah. Well, once again, Master Chief, Kirby, Sir. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for what you did for the country. Thanks for what you did to the Navy. Thanks for what you did for the teams. As I already said, it was your generation of seals

that built the foundation of the tactics, of the operational excellence, and of the standard of will and of perseverance. That's never going to be forgotten. It's what gave me my life. It's what gave me my life. It's what gave me my life as you guys. So thanks for doing that.

Thanks for coming on. And it's an honor to be part of a brotherhood that you're a member of. And thanks for having me. And we love the brotherhood. Long live the brotherhood. Indeed, sir. Thank you. And Master Chief, Kirby Horell, has left the building.

Real quick. He didn't mention this for social media for Saved in America is at Saved in America on Twitter, at Saved in America on the Instagram and at Saved in America on Facebook. So there you go. Check that out, follow that, support that situation. And, you know, we started off, I started off talking about learning how to act, learning how to get better. Echo. Are you looking to get better?

Yes. Are you trying to learn how to act better? Trying to. Yeah. I even worked out today. How do you feel about that? I feel good about that. I hope you did.

I did. Any other things that we can do to get better in our lives? Oh yeah. Big time. We can, immersion camp coming up. I know sold out. But my point is you do Jiu-Jitsu. It's what you do.

Highly recommend. Well, we were, yeah, just the other day when we were waiting before we recorded. And we're sitting there. Jiu-Jitsu is going on. Your boy's there doing his J-Jitsu, other friends doing J-Jitsu. And I'm sitting, standing there, looking at it, listening to you, of course,

and just watching people do J-Jitsu. Even watching people do J-Jitsu when you understand J-Jitsu is good to go. It's like, filling my heart, just filling it to the brim. And I'm like talking to you. And then I even said, I was like, you just is so good, man. I'm just watching people, you know, beginners, whatever. high level guys, whatever.

It's so good. Unless, when you do it, it's even better than watching it. You'll know. Ask the people who do it, you'll know. They'll tell you. When you do it, you're going to need a ghee. Of course.

And what gear are you going to get? None of the than the best ghee. Unless you want the worst ghee. I don't know. But if you want the best one, you get the origin ghee. Get the best ghee from origin, mane.com. Made in America from the dirt to the shirt.

Yes. From the seed to the ghee. So we got a bunch of awesome craftsmen up in Maine Craftsmen up in Maine making these geese. They're also making geese. They're making rash guards for no geese, I meant to say. They're making shirts, t-shirts, sweatshirts. They're also making jeans right now. Jeans. Is there, I mean, jeans are as American as Apple Pie. Right? Sure.

Blue jeans. So get yourself some blue jeans. You want American jeans. Yeah. Right. Are there even any American, I mean, there has to be, I don't know many, though. There are some. And you know what they do?

They make these hipster American jeans, and they sell them for $280. Yeah. That's what they do. Okay. So you don't want those jeans. Yeah, unless you do, I don't know. No, you don't. But these are not that.

So origin, maine. dot com get yourself some some clothing of all kinds including clothing for training including clothing for working and for cruising cruising yeah all good of course also you want to keep your body intact as well while training or while just cruising whatever but recovering how about that yes you do yes joint warfare yes just go read the reviews on joint warfare and then get some. Because I can sit here and tell you that I take joint warfare,

three in the morning, three at night. You take, you take three in the morning, three at night? Three, I was doing that when I had like... When you were injured. Now you backed off. I'm back on the... Yeah, I just do three. Okay.

Read the reviews. See what other people say. Because there's people that are like, oh, my mom had bad arthritis, whatever, arthritis, problems. Yeah. And they go on joint warfare, which has active, proven things in it.

Curcumin. Right. Tumric. Tumaric. All those things. So, yeah, Joint Warfare. Get the krill oil. That's the combo right there.

That's the combo. That's the dual hitter. Get that dual hitter. Oh, yeah. Big time. And I'm not recommending to do this, but for sake of this kind of experiment, for lack of that term.

If you're already on joint warfare and krillow, try to go off it. See what happens. I don't recommend that. Yeah, yeah. Don't really do it. I mean, that's just,

it's more of a dare than anything, but Brett, I've done it out of complacency or whatever. It's no good. Okay, when you do legs, when you squat, guess what you're going to need?

Additional protein. Because the steak ain't going to cut it. So when you squat, when you do clean, you ever do heavy cleans? And like the next day, your whole posterior chain is like sore. Yeah.

It needs, you know what it's saying to you? It's going, mulk. send us malk. So listen to your body. You know what people say that? You got to listen to your body.

You know what your body's saying? Your body's saying, give you some of boy. All right, well, there you come. So get yourself some of those mok. Get yourself a, you know what I do? When I do, when I do legs, when I get done, I don't normally do this because it's pretty early in the morning. I'm usually not hungry in the morning, but when I do legs, a lot of times I'll get done,

I'll have a little handful of nuts. You know, we're talking seven o'clock in the morning, a little handful of mixed nuts, which people got a kick out. I don't have the way I say that. Sure. And then I'll do a little one scoop hitter. Okay. And is this right? This is like an hour. Yeah, maybe like two hours after. Yeah. So me that's kind of. So you don't believe in the anabolic window. You know what that is?

Yeah, I know what it is. I wouldn't say I'm not a believer, but it's just not something that I eat when I'm hungry. I listen to my body. My body wants milk. Well, here's the thing, though. I have thought it was to me in my mind, it was proven the anabolic window. Right when you're done working out, you go into recovery mode. Then I read like all this stuff. Oh, that's not true. Your hormones do this and do that and growth hormone and all this like good stuff as far as you go. It's weird.

So check this out. The things that I've been saying, okay, like I used to say, I go eat steak all the time, right? Hey, I eat steak, steak, steak. People. And then people all of a sudden, that's an actual thing now. The carnivore diet only like it's a real thing now. Yeah. Same thing with me.

I'd be like, I don't eat breakfast. I don't like to eat until, you know, 10, 11 o'clock. All of a sudden it's called something. It's called intermittent fasting, right? This is just stuff I just kind of live that way. Right. So now of a sudden, same thing with people saying, oh, uh, uh, your, your, your discipline depletes throughout the day. Wrong.

It's actually wrong. Now it's proven wrong. I was right. Well. So anyways, what I'm saying is listen to your body. The people say this. Listen to your body. I'm saying that too.

Well, I'm staying it right now. Listen to your body. You know what your body says? Your body's saying mulk. Yeah. My wife. My wife mixed up. A strawberry milk with the, do you have one of those nice blenders?

Yes. Like the power blenders that has like a 40 horsepower engine in it. Yes, sir, I do. My wife mixed up a milk in there. And I come home and she's like, I mixed milk in those things. And she was talking like almost in a sensual voice, right? And I go, okay. And she goes, she said something she never said.

She goes, it was next level. Which she never says that. And then she goes, it's the best thing I've ever tasted in my life. That's what she said. She said those words. It's the best thing I've ever tasted in my life. This is a protein shake, right? Let's face it.

That's something, right? Nothing. That's nothing. Tell you that. So yeah. And don't forget we got a warrior kid milk because sometimes your body, you kids. Oh yeah. You know what their body?

Their brain is saying give me sugar. Yes. Right? Their brain's like, give me a chocolate chip cookie. Yes. Right. To answer that call, answer that call instead of giving them the poison, give them something that answers the call but makes them help stronger faster smarter better yeah give them some

warrior kid mulk although I would not recommend that you tell your kids to listen to their body because the kid would be like hey my body's telling me I want some fucking candy well if my kids no indicated that's you listen you you you feed them the right thing so milk yeah because kids listen to their taste buds they don't listen to their body that's what I'm saying yes you're right so when your kids taste buds call out for that that little sweetness hitter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give him what, getting something good.

Slides right in. Slides right in, no factor. Easy money, good. So there you go. Right on. And don't forget about white tea. Yeah. Jock white tea.

Taste good. Did you notice when Sean Parnell was on the podcast? He's like, this is how fat has so much caffeine in it. And I was like, no, actually it doesn't. There's only 60 grams. Yeah. What you're feeling is the antioxidant kicker. Well, and he did drink four or five.

Drink four of them. Yeah, that's what I was saying. And here's the thing. I've drank four of them too. Oh. Before. And the caffeine sneaks up on you. Because you keep, you're just, it's like a steady dose of caffeine.

You're like, oh. Yeah. So, and he's, you know, when you're in conversation and talking about stuff or whatever. So, oh, yeah, he got hit with a double triple whammy situation. Check. Also, Jocko has a store. It's called Jocko Store. And this is where we, we collectively.

Mm-hmm. We can get rash guards there. Oh, yeah. Let's say get after. When you do ring workouts using your rings, you need to, you kind of need to wear a rash guard. Yeah. Because you'll get, you'll get like, what is it? Rope burn, basically.

Strap burn. Chafing on your arms. Yeah, I got that. I don't do, mine's not as intense as yours, the workout, but, you know, you do like dips in some push-up situations or whatever, you know, various things. And I felt the chafing. My workout wasn't long enough on the rings. It wasn't long enough to actually get chafing, but I understand. chafing indication.

Yeah, india. So you get rash cards. You can also get t-shirts. The t-shirts that I wear, J.P. D.NL sent me a picture that he's cleaning out its closet. Getting rid of shirts. And I was like, that's why all my shirts are the same. It's all my shirts are the same. Yeah.

If you like the shirts that I wear or you like the shirts that I can just get the shirts there in jocco store.com. Yeah. Discipline equals freedom, represent. Defcore. Defcore. Representing Defcore. Someone was representing Defcore the other day.

And I had a little bit of stuff. sort of a of a little connect, right? Because you're kind of stepping up. Oh, yeah. And JP, speaking of JP, he posts a picture of one of the troopers representing big time in the wild at the UFC. Oh, yeah, that's right. There was a guy at the UFC.

I saw it too. I tried to take a picture, didn't get there quick enough. And my little daughter, who was watching the UFC with me, check. She was like, oh, you didn't get a picture. I go, someone's going to post it. Watch. And someone posted even before. JP. My little brother text me before JP texts me with it.

Text me. Hey, someone was at the UFC wearing you guys shirt. Yeah. He said someone's at the UFC wearing the shirt that you designed Echo Charles. No, he didn't say that. But nonetheless, he did indicate. So the point there is, yeah, when you see another person in the wild representing hardcore.

On the UFC. Oh, on the UFC or otherwise. True. But you will, you'll feel that connect. And Jack will, I feel it too, man. Bonafetes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, connected.

So that's that. Also, you can also get a trucker hat. Or flex. Or flex. Or you can get a beanie. Winter is coming. Yeah. And heavy. Medium light. I think they're heavy. Medium heavy. I think they're heavy. They're heavy. They're normal hoodies is what I'm saying. And like. Yeah, a lot of cool stuff. I got a new design coming out. Didn't even tell you. Boom. Oh, that's a big surprise. But it's probably lame. No. It's not lame.

I predict that you will like that one. There's a 50-50 chance. Well, there's no... Seriously, 50% of the time when you show me something, I'm like, dang, that's dope. 50% of the time I go, I don't like that at all.

Dang, bro. All right. Well, there you go. We're going to see about that one, and I predict that you like it, but whichever, you know, it's out. It'll be, yeah, it's out, big time.

Right on. Anyway, yeah, jocco store.com. There it is. Boom. Also, subscribe to the podcast. If you haven't already, Google. Play.

iTunes Stitcher, you know, wherever you get your podcast. Don't forget about the Warrior Kid podcast. We got that as well. If you're if you got kids or if you're an adult that just wants to get after it more. Yeah. Go to the Warrior Kid podcast. And you can also support a Warrior Kid by going to Irish Oaks Ranch.com and getting some, getting some jaco soap made by Aiden from goat milk on his farm.

In America. Stay clean. Stay clean, big time. Also, why are you staying clean? If you want to watch some YouTube videos, don't watch the drunk girl fail videos. We have a YouTube channel. We have excerpts on there from the podcast.

I'd be watched those excerpts. Because every once in a while, they'll miss this two-hour podcast about, you know, something. Maybe they didn't have the time of whatever. Maybe it's happened before. I'm saying that. But they'll catch the excerpts.

So they can really get many of the lessons. You need to make BTF Tony compilation. That's three minutes. long of him just saying awesome stuff. It'll be longer than three minutes. Please. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm saying just take the top highlights of a lot. It still might be more than three minutes.

It might be an 88 minute video. Yeah, that is a good idea. But unless the point is, yes, we do have a YouTube channel and a lot of cool stuff. If you want to see what Kirby Horel looks like. Yeah. Then you can watch the whole podcast. This whole podcast will be on YouTube. You can see what he looks like.

See his expressions. We also have psychological warfare, which. is a little sonic boost for your brain that will make you think the right thoughts that you know you're supposed to be thinking. It's called psychological warfare and it will get you over the edge of weakness and into the realm of strength.

The winter circle. Yes. That's a good way to put it. That's a good explanation. A little bit esoteric. A little bit, but good nonetheless. Yes. Flipsidecanvus.com.

If you want visual representation of the path that you can stare at every day when you wake up in the morning hang on your wall. My brother Dakota Meyer is making art. No, he's making graphic representations of the path that you can get, Flipsidecanvas.com. So get some of that. Also, on it. Onet.com.

Go to onet.com slash jaco. This is where you can get. Work out here, various other things. Some good electrolyte. light, magnesium, I don't know, all the little minerals or whatever, but that's a, to me, that's like a go-to. As far as recovery performance, I don't know, it's good for a lot of stuff, but that's a daily one as well.

Anyway, but the kettlebells that I get, 100% on it, 100% artistic ones go there. There's a lot of cool stuff on there is what I'm saying. Got a bunch of books. Right now, I have a new book. It's available for pre-order. If you want to let my publisher know that they should print a lot of these books, then go and pre-order leadership strategy and tactics field manual. Not to mention, you know you don't want to get the second edition.

You know, how many chances do you get to get a first edition? You get one shot. Don't blow it. Don't blow it. As soon as humanly possible, I'm going to have them make a slight change to the cover. Second edition, I'm going to make it different. Oh, so they missed out. Just so I can tell.

I D-I-D positive identification from a distance. Oh, that's cool. I see you got the book. I'll sign it for you. But I realized where you were at when the when the when the chips were on the table You weren't there you're in the back. Which is fine. Order that first edition. Leadership strategy and taxes field manual Way of the Warrior Kid three that just came out where there's a will It is live. So bust them and of course we have way of the warrior kid one and two and you know, me, you know, me? bad reviews I've gotten on those books? Zero.

Yeah, it's, man, well, you did get a bad review from someone who didn't, not only didn't read it, but didn't even know what it was about. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That one guy called, said it looked like a bunch of toxic masculinity for children or something crazy like that. Yes. I could just reposted that about 10 million people ordered the book as soon as they saw that guy, whatever that idiot's name was.

Well, you know, in his defense, I mean, he did speak too soon. He that's all that was his mistake. He spoke too soon like without looking into it. You seem to him saying like that. And actually, you know what I did as I, I of course just said, hey, if you want, I'll send you once. You can actually read it. Yeah. Make your judgment.

See, that's what he should have done. And then what really happened then is a lot of people jumped on and said, hey, I'm a woman. My daughter loves this book. And then someone else said, hey, this book teaches people how to be respectful. Hey, this person teaches everyone. And he finally relinquished his, he recanted. Yeah. And apologized.

Had to. His own fans. Like his own fans were like, hey, bro, I love your stuff. You're wrong on this. Yeah, that's right. People just came off the top. That's what's funny. Even my comical sort of overreaction of that guy being an idiot.

I didn't do that, of course, because I'm, you know, not going to do that. But that, if I would have reacted that way, you know, people would have said, hey, Jocko, you know, you're being too aggressive with he. You know what I mean? Like, I would have been the bad guy. So it's something to say, man, I'll send you a copy if you want it. Yeah. And then you can read it. But then everyone else, it wasn't me that convinced it was everyone else.

Yes. It was the, the, the, the, the, it was the troopers from coming. Well, it was. Troopers coming at him hard kind of. Yeah, you mean, the people. They were all, everyone just, everyone, I mean, there was a couple of people that took a little stab at him. It was varying degrees of hardness.

Yeah. But a lot of people were just like, hey, you should, you should actually check it out because it's, it would help you. Yeah. Actually, as a human being, be better. So he essentially got, got corrected by people who actually read the book. And I'll give him a little bit of credit. He re-he recan, he recam.

I said, okay, cool. I'm wrong. I shouldn't have jumped the conclusions. Okay, cool. So technically, is that a bad review? Technically, no, because you didn't read the book. Good point. You can't review something he didn't experience.

That is true. So there's that. There's Mikey and the Dragons. This should be with every child. The book should be with every child. Mikey and the Dragons. Get this book for every kid that you know. Get it for the library.

Get it. The field manual. Discipline Coast Freedom Field Manual. Get that book for anyone that you know that you actually care about as a human so that you can keep them on the path. And then, of course, there's extreme ownership. There's the dichotomy of leadership, the first books that I wrote with my brother, Laif Babin, about leadership and how you can take leadership that we used on the battlefield

and apply it to your life. We got Eschalon Front, which is my leadership consultancy, where we come into organizations and solve whatever the problems that they have, through the one thing that matters and that's leadership. Go to Eschlonfront.com for details on that. EF online. That is since leadership training is not an inoculation, you need repetitive training to get the skills down.

So we made EFonline, EFonline.com interactive training in leadership through the interwebs. We also have the muster Chicago's done Denver sold out Sorry Sydney Australia is next December 4th and 5th so If you want to come to that Register now so you're not

Emailing Jamie And saying hey we we didn't get to put our Things in in time is there any more seats? Because there's not Sold out means we sold it out We're not like well you know We'll we'll sell it out But we have a hundred more seats No it's literally sold out

So if you want to go, then go to extreme ownership.com and register. And then of course we have EF. Overwatch where we are taking leaders from special operations and combat aviation and putting them into the civilian sector. So go to EFoverwatch.com. If you're a company that needs leadership, which you are, or if you're a spec ops guy, combat aviation guy, that is looking to. move on to their next mission in the civilian sector, go to eFoverwatch.com. And if you feel like you need more than the 500 hours that we have spent talking on the podcast,

then you can find us on the interwebs on Twitter, on Instagram, and on Dufaz Bach. Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocco Willink. And like I said, if you want to help out saved in America, you can follow them. They are on the same platforms at saved in America. And thanks once again to Master Chief Kirby O'R. for his service in the teams. And it's literally like I told him, it's given me everything that I am right now. That's what these old team guys did for me.

And also, obviously, thanks to Kirby for what him. and his team is doing right now with saved in America.org. They are out there rescuing children, and I don't know if there is a more noble cause than that. So thank you, Master Chief Kirby Harell. The rest of our military out there, that also gives us everything that we have. Thank you for doing what you do

so that we can freely do what we do. And to our police and to law enforcement, and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and border patrol and secret service into every other first responder Thanks for what you do as well for being on call each and every day to protect us And to Everyone else out there when I think about someone like Master Chief Who has given so much, but you know what? Just keeps? I just keeps a on giving.

And I ask myself, what else can I give to the world? Ask yourself that same question. What else can you give to the world? Whose life can you make better? How much more can you give? Let's find out. Get up, move forward, and get after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko.

out