Jocko Podcast - 204: Don't Volunteer for SOG. With Dick Thompson

Episode Date: November 20, 2019

0:00:00 – Opening 0:05:44 – Dick Thompson, SOG Warrior 2:38:26 – Final thoughts and take-aways. 2:46:45 – How to stay on THE PATH. 3:11:12 – Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 204 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. By virtue of the authority vested in me as president of the United States and as commander in chief of the armed forces of the United States, I have today awarded the presidential unit citation for extraordinary heroism to the Studies and Observations Group Military Assistance, Command. The Studies in Observation Group is cited for extraordinary heroism, great combat achievement, and unwavering fidelity while executing unheralded top secret missions deep behind enemy

lines across Southeast Asia. Incorporating volunteers from all branches of the armed forces and especially U.S. Army Special Forces, SOG's ground, air, and sea units fought officially denied actions. which contributed immeasurably to the American war effort in Vietnam. Mac V. Saug reconnaissance teams, composed of special forces, soldiers and indigenous personnel, penetrated the enemy's most dangerous redoubts in the jungled Laotian wilderness and the sanctuaries of eastern Cambodia. Pursued by human trackers and even bloodhounds, these small teams outmaneuvered, outfought, and outran their, their numerically superior foe to uncover key enemy facilities, rescue down pilots, plant wire traps,

mines, and electronic sensors, capture valuable enemy prisoners, ambush convoys, discover and assess targets for B-52 strikes, and inflict casualties, all out of proportion to their own losses. When enemy countermeasures became dangerously effective, SOG operators innovated their own counters. high altitude parachuting and unusual explosive devices to tactics as old as the French and Indian War. Fighting alongside their Montan Yard, Chinese Nung, Cambodian and Vietnamese allies, special forces-led hatchet forces companies and platoons staged daring raids against key enemy facilities in Laos and Cambodia, overran major munitions and supply stockpiles and blocked enemy highways to choke off the flow of supplies to South Vietnam.

Sog's cross-border operations proved an effective economy of force, compelling the North Vietnamese Army to divert 50,000 soldiers to rear airty security details far from the battlefields of South Vietnam. Supporting these hazardous missions were Saug's own U.S. and South Vietnamese Air Force Transport and helicopter squadrons, along with U.S. Air Force forward air controllers and helicopter units of the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps. These courageous aviators often flew through heavy fire to extract SOG operators from seemingly hopeless situations, saving lives by selflessly risking their own. Sog's Vietnamese naval surface forces instructed and advised by U.S. Navy SEALs boldly raided

North Vietnam's coast and won surface victories against the North Vietnamese Navy while indigenous agent teams penetrated the very heartland of North Vietnam. Despite casualties that sometimes became universal, SOG's operators never wavered, but fought throughout the war with the same flare, fidelity, and intrepidity that distinguished SOG from its beginning. The studies and observation groups, combat prowess, martial skills, and unacknowledged sacrifices saved many American lives, and provide a paragon for America's future special operations forces. Signed, the President of the United States, George Walker Bush. And that is the presidential unit citation.

presented for those that served in MAC v. Sogg, the Studies and Observation Group in Vietnam. And for those of you that don't know what the presidential unit citation is, it's an award that is giving toll units. Who, and this is the way they describe it, I quote, display gallantry, determination, and espreedecor that sets them apart from other units. And you have heard about SOG on this podcast before. First from John Stryker Meyer, otherwise known as Tilt. And he was on podcast 180, 181 and 182. And then from his comrade in arms, the late great hero, Doug, the Frenchman, Leterno. And it is an honor for us tonight to have another SOG warrior.

here. Henry Dick Thompson, codenamed dynamite and later known as the Terminator, who served as a SAG-1-1 and as a 1-0, and then continued on with 21 years in the Army, eventually retiring and having a whole other career as a leadership consultant, author, and speaker. Mr. Thompson. And I know I should probably say Dr. Thompson, because I know you got your Ph.D. as well. In case everything else was enough, sir, welcome to the program. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for having me. Looking forward to it. So let's start at the beginning. Where did you grow up? South Carolina, a little town called Walhalla, not far from Clemson University.

And what year were you born? 1947 So you kind of grew up in the 50s Yeah, pretty much And then Were you in a military family or anything like that? My father, yeah, my father was World War II in Korea My mother had five brothers

All World War II, one was killed So I was around it, you know, like from the start because our family was together a lot, so I had a lot of discussion about the war and things that were going on, and I was always asking questions and how do you do this and how do you do that and how do you organize?

So I was interested right from the beginning. And your dad was in World War II and Korea? What was his job in the military? What branch was he in? Infantry. And he did work with the Rangers for a while in World War II. And so would you hear, him, would he debrief you on the types of operations that he did in World War II in Korea?

Some of it. He didn't talk a whole lot about exactly what he did, but he would talk in general about what was going on, about the kinds of operations and things. What theater did he fight in? He was in Germany, most of the time, in that area. And how long was he in the Army for? Army was about four years, and then he got out. And then when Korea came along, then they called him back in. And that's really where I started to hear about it, because I was old enough by then to hear people talk about Korea and about the war.

And he would write letters home and talk about how deep the mud was or how cold it was and things like that. So I was hearing about the war firsthand then. And were you thinking I'm going in the military? I was probably four or five when I started thinking about that. And interestingly enough, I did find my old log book because I also got interested in the Rangers. I wanted to be a Ranger when I went in. So I found a logbook that I created when, you know, I was about nine or so when I created it.

I had all the members of our Ranger company listed, which was primarily my cousins. But, you know, we had some other people we had recruited in. And we had the journal of things that we did, people who got promoted, people who had court-martial. So were you guys doing night raids and stuff? We spent a lot of time in the woods. I grew up in the woods. You know, when I was five years old, when I get a chance, I'd go off in the woods by myself. I would go play.

I'd track animals. I'd listen to the sounds. I'd learn how to move. By the time I was six, I had an army pup tent, and I would take up on top of the hill in the woods, put it up, sleep up there by myself that night, take some eggs and stuff with me. I built a little fire, you know, cook. As I got a little older, and had my BB gun, take out some birds,

roast them over the fire. So doing things like that that I thought Rangers did. You were the six-year-old Ranger. Yeah. Company commander, getting after it. Well, the logbook said General Thompson. Hey, that works. And then what about high school?

Did you play sports? Football on track. What was your athletic capability? I was better than average on the team. I wasn't, you know, college material because I was relatively small, but I could hit really hard. My senior year, they even moved me from running back to defensive end, which I was on a line that weighed over 200 pounds and I was 140.

You didn't want to come around my end. My other skill was, you know, it was very fast. So when the quarterback had dropped back, he'd see me in his face because I could get there really quickly. And then, so when you graduated high school, did you know you were going to college or what was your plan? Yes. Yeah, I started college, and after about a year and a half,

you know, Vietnam was going hot and heavy. You saw it on the news every night. What year did you graduate high school? 65. Okay. So yeah. From what I can tell, because I wasn't alive then, but from what I can tell, the Battle of the I Drain Valley was in 1965, and that was kind of where the real, hey, we're in combat all the time now. It seems to, that seems to be the pivot point that's noticeable when you look at it historically.

Well, that was when I think we discovered the North Vietnamese had a real army. and they were very good, much better than anybody thought at the time. And over the next few years, I mean, you could place them probably in the top four in the world in terms of armies. Plus, we were fighting in their backyard. They knew the terrain. They knew how to operate there. They didn't stop. They just keep coming.

Their biggest disadvantage was they didn't have the technology that we did. They didn't have air superiority. And there's a lot of things they didn't have that held them back, or it would have been much worse than it was. So it's 1965. That's when you said you graduated high school. Right. And when you graduate high school, you go to college. Where'd you go to college?

University of South Carolina. And then you said it was like a year and a half. What did you end up doing? Well, I made a decision that what I wanted to do is take a break from school because Vietnam was going on. felt an obligation, you know, to go do something, do my part. And actually was on my way to the Marine recruiter because that's who you saw on TV every night. But stopped by the Army recruiter who was next door just to see what they had to offer. So I went with the Army and I knew that would give me a chance to do the Rangers if I decided that's what I wanted to do.

By then I was also a chemist. About 13, I developed a passion for chemistry. So in addition to all the outdoor stuff, you know, I set up my own laboratory in the barn at home. I spent all my money on chemicals. And I know you like this, but back in the day, back in the day, you could go into a pharmacy and buy all kinds of things. I mean, you could buy nitric acid and all, I mean, just unbelievable chemicals you could buy, particularly if you got your mother to sign for you and say, yeah, it's okay to let him have that stuff. And I would stock my lab with it and do all kinds of experiments.

I was getting close maybe to a successful brain exchange between birds and frogs. I could get it in there. I just couldn't get them, you know, to start breathing again afterwards. So I have a lot of... That sounds close. Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway.

So were you studying chemistry in college? Yes. Yeah, I went to school on a chemistry scholarship. The intent was to be, you know, get a doctor in chemistry and be a researcher. But then I decided to take the break, do three years in the Army, and then come back and finish the degree. So is it 1967 now? Went in 67. So it's 1967.

How strong were the sentiments in America against the war in 67? Very strong. So that was already there. Yeah. What about in South Carolina? Not as much as some of the other parts of the country, but it was still there. It wasn't something that everyone thought we should be doing. And what about?

your dad who had seen combat in World War II and in Korea, how did he feel about you going in? He supported it. My mother didn't. You know, she wanted me to finish school. I said, you know, I'm just taking a three-year break. I'll come back, finish the doctorate, and everything will be fine. She said, no, you want.

I said, yes, I will. I'll be back. Unfortunately, when I got in, they started talking about, man, you got to go to airborne school. You need to be airborne. And they said, you need to go to OECS. You need to be an officer. So at what point, so you go to boot camp? Right. And is it in boot camp where they're like looking at you going, hey, we need airborne soldiers? Yeah. And was that a pretty easy pathway to get to? Yes. I mean, they asked you day one when you go into an induction center. You want volunteers to be airborne? My response was no.

That's not what I'm here for. But then once I got into boot count, I ate that stuff up. Did you still, so when you were, when you went in, what was the predominant part of your brain that was functioning? Was it the, hey, I'm going to do three years serve my country and looked for a job that'll be similar to being a chemist? Or was the primary part of your brain that was functioning was the I wanted to be a ranger and go get after it? It was when I first entered, the first couple of days, it was, you know, three years I'm out, go back to school, be a chemist. I guess it was maybe the first morning. We were in the barracks.

And, you know, about 3.30 or 4 o'clock, the lights come on. Somebody starts yelling and screaming and hollering to get out of bed, fall in, you know, get in formation in front of the box. And then I hear, you know, we're in double bucks. I hear them start crashing onto the floor. I jump out and I look and here's this guy smaller than me. And there's a big, you know, smoky-de-bear hat on the Ranger Tab. And I said, wow. And everybody there jumped when that guy said to do something.

And I said, okay, I need to start rethinking here. There's got to be something innate. in men to that's just that's just what happens you see that and you go yes I'm in for that yeah I mean this guy was impressive and you know that brought back all the Rangers stuff and it started to override the chemistry you know so then we get out we're on the firing range you know I was an expert marksman before ever you know went in so you know I'd max out to marksmanship I was in good physical condition, so everything they were doing I could do. And I learned it really fast.

One night I was on CQ duty. I had to work in the orderly room with the person who was there all night. And I saw this book laying on the table. It was FM22-100 drilling ceremonies. And I picked it up and I started looking at it. thought this tells you everything about you know right face left face when to call the command all this I said it's all written out right here I mean if I'd had this book for last couple weeks so I read the book that night you know I read pretty fast the next day

I could see the mistakes that the drill sergeants are making and I don't I made the mistake one time of pointing it out so you know I get to work on my triceps and pecks a little bit as I pushed Fort Gordon a little bit close to the China. But I found this stuff was all written down. You can give me access to it. I'll learn it. And so I was put in charge of my platoon as a platoon guide because physically, mentally, everything I was doing great.

So I had a good time. And then you volunteered. Was it, did you have a job designated when you went in? Were you going to be infantry when you went in? I was going to the chemical core. Oh, so the chemistry brain was legitimately winning when you went in. It was for a few days. And then did you change your specialty to infantry?

Yeah. You walked in and said, yeah, hey, I know I showed up to be a chemist, but I want to carry a machine gun. How hard was it to do that? Not hard at all, because I was so fired up. I love the things that we were doing. And I figured I can do this for three years. I can still go back and be a chemist if I want to.

But they let you change. They said, okay, cool. If you want to change the infantry at that time. It was no problem. No problem. Anybody that would volunteer for that, I mean, you got it right away. And then next up, how did you volunteer for airborne school? Same thing.

Yeah. I mean, I just had an opportunity to volunteer. Well, after boot camp, you'd go to, in my case, I went to advanced infantry training. AIT. Yeah. So, you know, in there, you're volunteering for different things. So I volunteered, you know, for OCS.

I volunteered to go to airborne school. So I went to OCS first. And they sent you to OCS even though you hadn't completed college? Yes. And they didn't care. Neither at that time. They're like, hey, you're smart. Lieutenant's were getting killed so fast.

I mean, they couldn't produce lieutenants fast enough. Lieutenant had a life expectancy of about a day and a half in Vietnam. So, you know, that was easy to get in. And, you know, I did that. I did, you know, really well in OCS. So it was easy when I said, okay, I want to go to airborne school. And I want to go to Special Forces. So you made that decision as well.

Yeah. Now what about being, going from officers to Special Forces? any challenge in making that happen or was it still just open wide open they took me right in you know you know i had done well i i got uh accepted to that you know so i had to how are you at this point um 19 20 so you're 19 years old you have a year and a half of college you're an officer in the army going to special forces airborne and this is all just tracking you to go to vietnam yeah I mean, you're on that track. But go ahead.

Well, I was going to say when you, so airborne school, you know, is airborne school. I went to airborne school. I was lucky enough to have been in the Navy when we still went to Fort Benning, Georgia, and did airborne school. But what about Special Forces School? As you were going through that, what was your impression of what was going on? What was the instruction like? How well was that preparing you from your perspective for what you were going to be doing in Vietnam?

I think it did a, it didn't prepare me for solid. necessarily it gave me a lot of the basics special forces is not just about going in and conducting a raid or something like that it's really about going in and working with the people we did a lot of training on insurgencies how governments are overthrown different things like that so particularly since I was an officer I was on the officer track so we were doing a lot of the bigger picture stuff. Plus, officers get trained in all of the primary skill sets of special forces. Whereas if you're enlisted coming out of the qualification training, you go to be a weapon

specialist or to be a medic or whatever. You go into a specialty area. Officers have to be trained in all of them so that you understand what the people are talking about if you're going to lead them. So I enjoyed that. Did what? well in it, volunteered for Ranger School. And then you went to Ranger School after? Went to Ranger School after. So a lot of harassment.

My Ranger buddy and I, you know, we'd been together forever. So we'd go there. And was that Bob? Yeah, that was Bob. And we have to, you have to go knock on the door to get in, to report into Ranger's

school, and you can't knock on the door hard enough. So Bob and I got back and ran into it and just knocked it off the hinges almost and then reported in and you know the instructor that's there he looked at us he looked down to paper and he told the other guy that was with him he said we've got two snake eaters here we're going to have to keep an eye on them to make sure they don't crap in the street out there or something and you know it went downhill from there because then it became, Ranger School kind of became a tug of war

between S.F. and the Rangers. So every time you did something, they dropped you for push-ups, then you had to do one more for the big ranger in the sky. So Bob and I would do for the big ranger in the sky. And two, for the big S-F trooper, it looks over the big ranger, you know. Then they'd put us back down again.

So, you know, we tried to have as much fun in ranger school as we could. Yeah, because it was tough. And being able to put a lot of humor in it as you went along. Now, was Ranger's school in terms of preparation for what you're going to be doing in SOG a little bit closer? Yes. Because now you're doing light infantry. Well, it's really infantry, but it's patrolling operations, raid ambushes, you know, those kinds of things that we're doing in SOG.

In fact, you know, when I first got to SOG, when I went in with my group, everybody that I arrived with went to what they call the one zero school, the SOG team leader school. And I'm standing there and everybody else is walking away. And I said, what about me? And you don't need to go to a 104 school. You're a ranger. You're going to a team. So tomorrow you'll be on a team. So at what point did you hear about SOG?

You heard rumors. you know, when you're at SF at Fort Bragg. Every once in a while somebody who would mention the term SOG, and you'd say, what is that? What do they do? Oh man, it's top secret. You know, nobody can tell you what it is, but they really do some really cool missions.

I mean, that's the elite, but nobody can tell you, you know, what they really do. So you, how much, all this schooling must have taken, what, two years for you to get through all the schooling? It's a year and a half at this point probably. Year and a half. And when you get done with Ranger School, do you finally check into a special forces group? No, I'd already, we were in, there was a little interim in there before Ranger School.

So we were already assigned to an A team to a B team. I was already targeted toward Africa and actually in mission preparation to deploy to Africa for a mission that were going on there. But I had volunteered to, I had put in the paperwork to go to Vietnam. So right after Ranger School, that came through. And you went to all these schools with your friend Bob? Yeah.

How did you know him? Where did you guys meet? We met in advanced infantry training right off the bat. So, I mean, it was unreal. We just, every school, we had the same metrics. So, I mean, we went to every school. school together, you know, the whole time. Where was he from?

California. Okay. But you guys just hit it off. Yeah. You guys were both had the same motivation. Had that same mindset. We're going to do it. So then at what, so you get your orders changed and was that hard to do?

Again, I mean, if there is, if there's a choice in the military, if there's a choice between sending someone to Africa or sending them to Vietnam, at that time, Vietnam was going to went, it always went out. So as long as you wanted to take the hardest jobs and do the toughest things, it was pretty easy to get that path opened up for yourself. The Army will accommodate you. So, all right, let's head over to Vietnam. When you show up there, I remember Tilt saying they kind of showed up in Vietnam and they

said, hey, who wants to volunteer now for SAAG? Is that what happened to you or did you already volunteer and know where you were going? I knew I was going to special forces. I knew I'd get a special force's assignment. And then when we got there, there was a guy who was already there working at a mic force, but he was there in the train. And so we linked up with him. We went to a bar that night, and he kind of updated us on things that were going on.

And one of the things he said was tomorrow, toward the end of the day, one of the last things they're going to do is they're going to ask you if you want to volunteer for SOG. And he said, whatever you do, don't do it. Just tell them no. They'll say thank you. And, you know, you move on to your special forces assignment. So the next day, toward the end of the day, where Bob and I are setting in the office waiting to go in to see Colonel Jones or whatever. And he said, what do you?

you got to do? And I said, I'll make my decision. You have to make yours. Yeah, this is not a joint decision on this thing. So I went in and he asked me about SOG, told me just a little bit, and then said, you know, if you want to do that, you have to sign a bunch of papers here. You're volunteering for six months, basically go anywhere, do anything. And you said, you've got to understand I'm saying anything. Okay. And then, you know, you have to sign this other thing. You can't tell anybody for 20 years, you know, what you do, stuff like that. It's all volunteered. He sent me out the back door and brought Bob in the other door. I went back over to the little bar to meet up with our friend. And I came walking in and he said, you did it. I can see it

on your face said you are a dead man walking I told you not to do that and you know when Bob shut up it was the same way you could say I knew he was going to do it but yeah so now you too so so that that was the attitude was the casualty rate was so high in SOG that when someone volunteered for it it was like they were a dead man walking I mean the chances of survival if you ended up on a team right if you went to you know staff position and it's a little different, but if you were on a team, you knew, a minimum of you're going to get wounded. And you knew that?

Obviously, is this what the guy that was telling you, don't go to SOG? He said, don't go to SOG because you're going to get wounded or you're going to get killed. That's guaranteed. And most likely, you're going to get killed. He said the highest casualty rate in Vietnam is there. Those guys don't survive. I'm not sure exactly what they do, but they don't survive. You got one note in the note you gave me.

It just says blackbirds. So we had to fly from the train up to Danang the next day because if you're going to Sog, you had to go to Danang. So when we go to the airfield, they take us to a restricted area of the airfield. and the C-130s and 123s that came into that part of the airfield were black. And he said, wow, that's a little different than everything else. And you get on the aircraft, there are no seats. There are seatbelts on the floor.

So the plane is gutted except for the front end, and there's a line up there that says, do not go beyond his line, classified area. So something was happening in the front of those planes that we were not allowed to go see. So we sat on the floor, and we fly up there, and we get off, escort picks us up, and he says, there'll be a bus here to pick you up

in a few minutes to take you over to CCN. And so this school bus like thing shows up that's black. The windows are shot out. There must have been 200 bullet holes in the bus. bus and you know we're looking at the bus thinking oh geez what have we gotten into the guy driving the bus he said we'll leave in a few minutes we're picking up a team here today too and I what happened to the bus he said well there's a pass that we have to go through and we get ambush there sometimes so the main thing for you you to

remember is if you know the stuff starts you get on the floor or the bus and do whatever the team tells you they'll take care of everything you just do what they tell you if you want to live and we think man this is not looking good we might not even get there so but we did and we got there what was the team did you guys pick up a team uh no when we first got there um you know it was late afternoon. They assigned us to a bunk and told us that we would get briefed the next

morning on what we were going to do and told us just, you know, get something eating in a mess hall, relax. There'd be a movie showing that night, and we're thinking a movie. So they had constructed some kind of like bleachers at this little open area,

nailed up a few sheets of plywood, and had a movie projector, and they would get movies from somewhere and they would show a movie out there. So we went, let's go watch the movie. And behind that screen was Marble Mountain, which juts up out of the sand 450 feet, just out of nowhere.

This thing is jutting up there. And there's two peaks. Each peak up there has a combat outposts on it. Because if the bad guys got up there, they could shoot right down into the compound. So we're watching the movie, and all of a sudden, red and green tracers are going everywhere.

I mean, it's just criss-crossing, Bob and I are starting to hit the ground, and everybody else just watching the movie. And I asked one guy, I said, what's going on? And he said, don't worry about it. That happens every night. And he said, every night,

they've got to get the guys off to the combat outposts, and, you know, they put on a little light show up there. It'll be fine. They don't shoot down here because they're getting shot at, and they shoot back at those people. Wow. Well, that's interesting.

So then what happens? When everyone else got sent to one zero school, did Bob get sent to one zero school? Or is he the same as you? Well, before that, the next morning we got our briefing. We went into the headquarters, into the briefing room, and, you know, the colonel came in and said, okay, let me tell you what Sog's about. Let me tell you what you're going to be doing. And he uncovered some maps on the wall.

and started talking about the kinds of missions that we would be going on and that, you know, we would be put on teams and we'd be leading those missions. And he kind of explained that, you know, we had three major areas. You had the northern area, which was CCN there, but the forward operational base was up in Fubai. And so he explained where the different camps were.

And then after that, he, you know, he'd, you know, told me I'd be going to Alpha V1 up north. Bob would be going down to Central, down around Contum, you know, so we went our different ways at that point. Did, uh, when he started briefing you on what the missions consisted of, did you, did you have any, was your guess anywhere close to that? Did you, did you have any idea and say, yeah, that's probably what I thought we would be doing? Was it close? I had heard rumors that maybe they operated outside of the, of the, of Vietnam. You know, so it didn't surprise me that much when he started talking about the countries we were going to actually go into. The kinds of missions didn't surprise me too much. I mean,

a few of them did, but for the most part, it was, wow, this is pretty cool. It's crazy, but it's pretty cool. Did he talk to you all about casualty rates or anything? No, no. All right. So then what happens? You get a signed? So I went to Fobie 1 at Fubai with a group of other people. And when we got there, they grabbed everybody but me and said, you know, you guys are going to one zero school. So a week-long course to teach them how to be a leader, small team in the jungle. There were a few things that they probably got that I hadn't done already, but not much. so I was assigned or told I'd be assigned to a team the next morning

told me to go report over to the supply room they had a mission for me first that I needed to do so when I got there they told me that we had had some casualties and that their personal effects had to be inventored by an officer before they could be sent home so he said you know their duffel bag are in there. You know, if you just dump them out, go through them, look for anything that might

be classified, a map or anything like that. If there's any correspondence in there, read it, make sure it doesn't say anything about any of the missions. If there are pictures, you know, get all the pictures out. So pretty well, you know, sterilize their gear. So, you know, if first bag I picked up when I read the name I thought wow you know I know him so this was a guy that you know we had run around with some at Bragg so I already knew him and he came over you know about a month before me and now I'm remembering to earn your stuff so kind of got my attention so wow the casso rate you know probably is pretty high here but then the next day I was you know assigned to a team as the 1-1, the assistant team leader.

And, you know, we started mission prep to get ready to go out. And who was the team leader? Sergeant Deck. So it's very cool that even though you were an officer, you were going to be second in command. No one was going to walk into a team, regardless of your rank and just, you know, say, I'm here and I'm the team leader. You had to, regardless of your rank, you had to go out. as an assistant or lower and learn how to lead a team, learn what's going on out there,

and eventually get checked off by the team leader. He would, you know, like Sergeant Deck, had to say, okay, Thompson can lead a team now. And that put me on the list to take over the next team, you know, that was available. So what did the team consist of? myself and you know sergeant deck myself and another American and then you know we had probably nine indigenous members on the team and who were the first indige what kind of indige crew is the first crew were they Vietnamese were they Vietnamese okay and then did you did you go through any training protocol to be ready for your first mission or what with the team I mean we just

we started training right away once I was assigned you know Deck grabbed me up and started talking to me, this is what you've got to do. Here's what I'm looking for. Here's where we're going, what are we going to do? We took the team out. We started doing immediate action drills in preparation for what we were going to do on the mission. How long did you guys have the train before you guys rolled out on your first mission? It was probably eight to ten days before we actually went out.

So I had a little time to get to know the team better. to learn all the drills and the way they did things. What was the level of English speaking for your Indige troops? Very good for the interpreter. And the others, they understood some words, you know, the common words that you would use, get down, stop, you know, things like that that you used all the time. But, I mean, you couldn't carry on a conversation.

And what was your, how good was your level of focus during this time? I imagine you must have been just as focused as a human being could get. This is real. So totally focused. There was nothing else on my mind. In fact, we had a little theater there at Fubai. Had a little top on it. So if it rained, we didn't get wet, but some old benches we were setting on a piece of plywood.

The movie was on. So I went to a movie after a couple of days. I went to the movie that evening when I'm sitting there and I hear this loud, pow, and the guy next to me falls off on the ground. I'm thinking, yeah, because we're setting outside. We just have

a little top on. He falls over on the ground, hitting the shoulder. Wow. It didn't matter where you are. That puts a downer on movie night. Yeah, I wasn't that much in the movie night. All right, so

now what's the first mission that you guys get assigned. They were doing some testing among other things in addition to just send in on a mission. They were trying to figure out what was the best time to put a team on the ground. Should you put them in right at first light so when you get off the aircraft, you can move out and head to wherever you're going to go. You're getting away from the LZ quickly, you know, because the bad guys would figure out that you had been inserted and they'd come out and start looking for you. Orr was the best way to do it, go in at last light. So it's dark. You get off the LZ, you set up in your remain overnight position, and then head out at first light. So if the

NVA or trackers are coming after you, then they were having to do it in the dark. So our team had been selected to be a last light insertion to see how that worked. So, And I had already been briefed on some things like we go in high, we go in 3,000 feet or so when we're flying to the LZ to avoid the small orange fire coming up at us. And then when you get out there to the LZ, he's going to bank the aircraft on the side, and he's going to put it in auto-rotate, and it's just going to fall out of the LZ. he's going to bank the aircraft on the side and he's going to put it in auto-rotate and it's just going to fall out of the sky in a spiral until he gets to where he wants to make his short final

coming into the LZ and then he'll put the power back on and slow it down and will come in. I was not quite prepared for that. I mean, I understood the concept from what he was saying, but I didn't realize that when he put that thing in auto-rotate, I wasn't going to be sitting on anything.

And then I was on the side that it was turned toward. So I'm just hanging out the air in the air, holding on the side of the aircraft, looking down 3,000 feet and saying, this is not good. You know, my stomach's up in my throat, and it's like a thrill ride at the fair or something, and this thing is falling.

And I'm just trying to hang on and stay in there. So we spiral them down, we come around, and we're coming in on a short final. It's on the ridge line, and they had dropped what was called a daisy cutter, 2,000-pound bomb, to blow a hole in the canopy big enough that we could set the helicopter down here. And we're coming in, we're flying over a little pond on the ridge line, and I'm climbing out on the skid of the helicopter myself. and the other American, the team leaders on the other side.

So we're climbing out on the skid, and I'm thinking, man, I mean, we're going really slow, and I'm just a setting target. I mean, they could just knock me off of this thing anytime. That's not good. So we come up, and we had to literally go straight down into the bomb crater. So the pilots trying not to clip trees as we're setting down. It's just getting dark. And we're going in and myself and the other guy are on the skid.

And we're close enough and he slowed down enough. I said, okay, this is it. We're going to have to jump on, you know, down into the bomb crater. I bent my knees to jump. And just as I did, I saw the sky pop up on my right about 10 feet. you know, kind of off to the side with an AK-47. And just instantly, instead of jumping, I push back, jump back up on the edge of the helicopter.

Just as I jump up, you know, he opens up with the AK. And then the bullets come right across where my legs were, but now I moved, and they hit, you know, the other American on the other side of me, hit him in the legs. So he starts the fall. So I'm grabbing, the back of his harness with my left hand,

and I put a half a magazine in the guy that's right there, I hosed him down. And I managed to jerk the other guy up onto the floor of the helicopter, and then I could turn and put a, you know, I could just see muzzle flashes right in front of me, so I put the other hand of the magazine there. So now I'm empty, you know. And when we'd go in, when you'd go in,

you would have gunships who would come, come in alongside you. So in case something happened. So we're in a full-fledged ambush now all the way around us. Two copper gunships open up with their mini-guns, 4,000 rounds a minute coming in, looking like two hose pipes just spraying red water all around us. And what, you know, a lot of people don't realize is bullets don't just hit the ground

and go into ground. They're ricochay. They bounce all over the place. And if there are trees there, they're hitting trees, they're going around. So I'm trying to pull him back up inside the helicopter. I've got the doorkner on my side, full blast. The cobra's coming in, and they're also shooting 40-millimeter grenades at 250 a minute. So we've got that going on.

I got two team members behind me using me for cover. So I've got a muzzle on each side of my head right here. I'm getting powder burns from the muzzle flashes coming out of that. I've got hot brass coming from them, coming from the door gunner going all over me. The floor is now covered with blood, blood squirting out of his legs. And my magazine is empty. So I'm trying to get the magazine out of my pouts that I've guided in. And one of the things I talk about in the stress book is that when your stress level gets really high,

you lose your fine motor coordination. Things that you can do very easily when you're not stressed just don't work for you anymore. So I'm having trouble getting the magazine out of the pounce to start with. I finally get it out and then I can't get it in a weapon. And I'm sitting there and I'm just seeing hundreds and hundreds of bullets and tracers coming. Green tracers crisscrossing inside the aircraft. So green tracers crisscrossing inside the aircraft. Let me just explain to everybody that doesn't know.

what that means. That's insane. That means that enemy bullets, in Vietnam, the Americans used red tracers and the enemy used green tracers.

And unfortunately, it's not really like that anymore. Everybody uses red tracers. And that was what it was like for us in Iraq. And then I had some guys hit me up and said it's the same thing in Afghanistan.

Very rarely would they see green tracers. But for enemy tracers to be crisscrossing inside of your helicopter, and this was a Huey, right? Yeah. This is not a small, this is not a big aircraft. This is a tiny aircraft.

You're packed in there. So for rounds to be crisscrossing inside that thing, green tracers, that is completely insane. I was thinking that myself. That's a little voice in the back of my head is saying, you know, this is great. Not only that, but I am not happy. I mean, this is my first mission and I'm going to die on my first. I mean, you know, what kind of deal is this? I came over here to do something.

So that little Boris is going on back there and the other one saying... Yeah, this is like 15 seconds into your first mission. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's right there. Ricochets are going all over the place from, you know, from the cobras and things. And, you know, the other guy is rolling around, screaming, a hole in his leg, and, you know, the blood's squirting around. And you're also hearing this metallic clang, just clang. clang with the bullets hitting the helicopter and you know you're thinking too if this thing's

going to go down we're going to end up in this bomb crater right there so all of that's going on I finally managed to get the other magazine you know in so then I can start to shoot at you know the muscle flashes that I'm seeing and you know the second time I go to reload I was a little better with that one got it in there a little faster the aircraft starting to really vibrate now because he's trying to lift up, you know, out of that little hole in the canopy. So I'm thinking at least we're trying to start up, but this stuff is still coming, it's still hitting us. You've got the, you know, cover's making more raids. And now what's also happening, I can't really see it, but the A1E Sky Raiders that are out there on station with us, they give us

some protection, they're starting to drop 500-pound bombs just a little ways from us because those little thatched roof huts that I saw out there as we were spiraling in, turned out to have tanks underneath them. So they had just put that thatch stuff around and make them look like a, you know, a little hoots, but really there was tanks. So when the tanks started moving, you know, the Sky Raiders went after them. And so you got all the bombing and strafing of those guys going on. You've got the gunships hitting all, shooting all around us.

We're trying to come out. And eventually we managed to get up out of that hole. The fire just shifted now. The tracers are going up. But as we pulled away from it, then, you know, that fire stopped because now the cover was really opened up, you know, on the ambush site.

And I look across at Sergeant Deck, setting over on the other side, and he looks at me with a big grin on his face and giving me a thumbs up and I'm thinking, oh, what is wrong with this guy? So, I mean, he was so excited. I mean, he thought that was the coolest thing and I'm thinking, man, I almost died.

This was my first time. I experienced a level of fear that I didn't know existed. I mean, I tried to imagine a lot about, you know, what's it like? You know, when people start shooting, shooting at you. Of course you're going to be a little anxious. So what is it going to be? I had no clue. I couldn't even imagine a level of fear like that. But, you know, fortunately, I was able to control that part of the fear. I could still shoot. It didn't stop me from

returning fire and doing what I needed to do, but man, it scared me. Having those two weapons right next in my head, I mean, my high frequency hearing was steadily going away permanently, getting burned with the muzzle flashes coming out of there, kill my first two people, for sure, the guy down below and the first guy I shot out in the tree because I saw him come out. I know I took those two out, and I hit several others, saved the First American's life, because if he had fallen in the crater, he had been gone. A second later, we'd have both jumped in that crater and we'd have both been gone. That's bad tactics on their part, right?

They should have held for another two seconds. They should have had you on the ground and they would have been able to possibly damage an helicopter. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I earned my combat infantryman's badge. Yeah, you did. I had a whole series of first that occurred right there and, you know, survived that. And, you know, a couple of minutes later, I'm thinking, man, we got out of that.

And I looked down, and here comes a stream of tracers coming up out of a 51 caliber or something. They were trying to hit the helicopter. They were, you know, ways from us. But I think it's not over yet. I mean, we got to get out of here and get back. And I told the door gunner, I said, you know, we've got to go straight to the hospital. You know, we got to drop this guy off. he's got to have medical attention right away

so we did that we dropped him off then we went back to the launch site to drop the team off and I asked Sergeant Deck I said I'm just curious how many magazines did you fire

when we were back there and he said I emptied five I had the six put in I was getting ready to start on that I threw two fragmentation grenades and a smoke grenade. And then he said, Lieutenant, you need to practice so you get faster reloading

when people are shooting and after you, or you're going to die? I said, okay, I'll practice. Yeah, because when you talk about the fine motor skills disappearing, but if you practice them all the time, you'll be able to maintain them. To some degree. Yeah, they won't be as good, but they'll be better. Yeah.

because it's you know and that's part of the problem with training you you train you train to get a good site picture side alignment and all that and you squeeze the trigger and hit your your target that's not shooting back at you and then you know you get in a firefight like that and your stress level sky rockets and when it does you can't see the sights on a weapon I mean you train to use those sites And now all of a sudden, your vision changes as the stress goes up, you can't focus on the sites. So you can't do it the way you trained. You can't reload the way you trained. You train to turn sideways and shoot.

And all of a sudden, when all the stuff is coming at you, your body, your brain takes over and says, face the enemy. And your body's going to turn you toward the enemy. So you've got to train to shoot at the enemy. You've got to train to shoot without aiming. so to speak. Now I had been through a pretty extensive course on something that we call Quick Kill where we trained to shoot from the hill.

We started with BB guns and shot at little miniature silhouettes on a 2x4 shooting from the hill with a BB gun until you could knock them all down and then we started throwing a disc up in, you know, 3-inch disc up in the air and you shoot with a BB gun until you could hit that moving disc and then the disc would get smaller and smaller and then we would go onto a course where the targets popped up and it was live fire in terms of you're using your weapon

and shoot from the hip and get so you could hit all the targets. So we practiced a lot. And with the teams that I had, I just drilled it in their head. You've got to be able to shoot without aiming. You don't have time to bring up and try to look through a sight. It's happening too fast. You'll be dead before you can get it up there. So there are a lot of techniques that I had brought in that I had learned before I got here,

and then kind of developed across time and always trained the teams. Do this, do it like this, quick. One of the NCOs had told me one night at Fubai said, you can't hesitate. There's no hesitation. You've got to understand, Lieutenant, where you're going. everybody is the enemy you don't have to worry about shooting

a friendly by mistake they're all enemy and the person that shoots first has the highest probability of surviving pull the trigger and never ever shoot anybody less than three or four times and if he still moves you shoot him three or four more times

there's no one shot and move to the next guy you make sure they go down So that was kind of the strategy I adopted and practiced to be able to do that. And I can go from the safety position on the selector switch to fully automatic faster than most people can pull the trigger with the safety already off. I used to practice it going down. I also discovered that with an AK-47, it soon as they start to shoot after the barrel rises. If they don't hit you with that first or second round, if you can get down, you've got a chance to survive. And I used to practice shooting on the way down and put silhouettes out, hit them all before I hit the ground as I'm going down.

I didn't do that magazine. So anyway, that's kind of getting off track here. No, that's actually right on track. So you come back from this first mission. What was your – what are you thinking now? You've got to be thinking yourself. There's no possible way I'm living through this. this? Well, actually, the way my mind works, I was critiquing. What should we have done? What should we

have trained on beforehand? What did we do there? Were we prepared for an ambush like that? Was there anything else we could have done? So I was playing through our preparation, playing in my mind through what we actually did. What could we do differently next time? So in my You've got to get better every time. Every time you do something, you need to be better than the last time that you did it. You need to understand it's going to always have to adapt. Whatever you plan, you're going to have to adapt. You know, war is just not predictable.

The predictability is that it's going to change. Yeah. And you've got to be able to do that and you do it on the fly. Yeah. I was telling you I had just had a guy on the podcast hasn't come out yet, but I had a guy that was, he went into, he was a Marine, he wouldn't Guadalcanal Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian got wounded in Tarawa, gut shot while he was still 500 meters from the beach trying to get across that hell that they were walking through. But we had that discussion around, you know, always thinking it's like nothing will happen to me.

And I always use the example of like I always think if I'm on a commercial airplane and it crashes, I'm going to live. Like I'm going to figure out a way and I'll do a good free fall position and I'll look, scam. and find a pool somewhere or whatever. Was there any of that? Because it seems to me like that kind of operation right there, you got to look at that and say, even if you have the attitude of it'll happen to someone else, when you've got green tracer coming through your aircraft,

that might change even my mind and start thinking, okay, probably not going to make it through this. Yeah. You think that? And I've had, I've used that more lives than a cat. just during that time period. You used up nine lives that night. I never thought that I would...

In those two minutes. Yeah, I never thought I'd see my 21st or 22nd birthday. I thought there's no way. You just can't get there from here. Okay. So there you go. You got to a point where you said, okay, I'm probably not going to make it. Yeah. And that's the way it is.

But my attitude is I'm going to take as many of you with me as I can. You might get me, but you're going to pay for it. I'll be really upset if you knock me off with the first round and I don't get a chance to get some of you, but you better do it quick because I want to take as many as I can with me, because I'm coming. Okay, so you guys get back from that mission. You guys do a good debrief. You're going through all the points of what you thought you could do better. You're wondering who is the person that came up with the idea of doing these night inserts

and maybe if last light inserts aren't the best? I don't know. Because that's another thing. You don't really know. Yeah, you don't. It seems to me like if you drop a daisy cutter and the enemy at least says themselves, well, they drop the daisy cutter.

They must have done that for a reason. Let's go surround it. I mean, why would you drop a 2,000 pound, one 2,000 pound bomb out here on a ridge line and not do anything else unless you're coming? Yeah. Unless you're going to come in here. At least drop 15 of them.

Yeah. to make the enemy have to spread out a little bit, not put their entire force surrounded the one crater. Yeah, there were a lot of things like that. I thought about, you know, once I got back, you know, I was making a list. Unfortunately, I shared some of my lists with the commander of the camp because he was excited and telling me,

I told you we could get you out. you know, if we put you out there, we're going to get you out. You saw how it worked, right? And I said, I saw it work. Let me share some thoughts with you. Unfortunately, I probably had talked to Mr. Jack Daniels two months before I had that conversation, and I shared a little too much of my thoughts. He wasn't exactly, you know, happy with some of the things I had to say,

because it reflected on him too. But I still think they're right, you know. You put one, like you said, you put one day's gutter out here. You know, why don't we put up a flag for everybody to say, hey, you're coming here soon, you know? All right, sir, then what's the next mission looking like? Let's see. I think the next one, the next one we actually had to spend the night. So we did a lot, a lot of planning.

and at this point Sergeant Dex starting to listen I've got more credibility now I've been shot at and you know we did okay so we put a lot more

planning into it a lot more rehearsal into it and went in got on the ground uneventful and when you would get on the ground you would move 100 meters or so

into the jungle. You would stop, set up a security perimeter, and then you adapt. You listen. Do you hear any bad guys? What do you hear? You got to adapt to the sounds of the jungle. Because the last 45 minutes an hour, all you've heard is just wop, wop, wwop of the helicopter. And, you know, so you've had a temporary threshold shift, and you hear, and you can't hear as good. You can't smell as good, because you've been smelling the JP4 in the helicopter all the way out there. So you have that security halt and you adapt to the sounds, what's out there? What do you hear? What do you see?

In my case, I was very fortunate that I had spider senses, so to speak. I didn't quite have spider hearing that first little episode but I still have the rest of it I could smell you in more than one case I sniffed out an ambush I could smell them I could smell their body odor

I could smell what they had to eat I knew they were up in front of us I could just feel things like that so we had that we sent in Team Okay We had a code word that we just transmit that meant, you know, one of them meant Team OK moving north, moving whatever direction. Was this a daytime early, first light insertion? It was this last light?

Late afternoon, but yeah, it wasn't the last light thing again. You know, so we had time to move for a ways and then, you know, eventually stop, you know, for the night. And typically what we would do is do like we call it a fish hook. You'd move along a little ways, and then you would make a turn, and you would come back down 50 meters or so. So if someone was tracking you, you'd hear them go by because they're falling your trail. And I would put very quickly, I learned to put out what we call toe poppers. It was a little small anti-personnel mine, plastic, and, you know, I had C4 in it, and it would take you. your leg off or most of your leg if you stepped on it.

And I had a lot of experience in the woods. I know how people are going to track you. I know where they're going to walk. I know where they're going to step. And particularly, if there's a log for someone to have to go across, they'll always step right on the other side of it. And that's where I'd put it. You know, I'd put it right where they're going to step and I cover it back up.

And sometimes I'd put my foot, just a light footprint on top of it. And then if they came, you'd hear that thing go off, and you knew you got one. And he was probably going to die. He'd bleed to death because they didn't have a hospital or anything out there. So you had him, and if he was leading a larger group, typically they would open fire. They didn't know where you were. They'd just start spraying the woods. But, you know, you're way back here.

They're up in front of you now. So that gives you a chance to decide if you're going to move out or not. Anyway, we set up in the jungle, the jungle just swallows you as it starts to get dark. It just closes in all around you, and if you're under double canopy jungle, it gets dark, fast. If you're under triple, it's pretty dark during the daytime, but at night, you can't see anything. It's just totally dark. and I was thinking as it was getting dark at first I thought I'm a little nervous

because I can't see even though I had tremendous night vision like an owl but I couldn't see and then I thought they can't see either and the difference is between us and them is we're not moving they have to move without making any noise and if they make any noise we know where they are

We know they're out there. So what I did was I created, for me, a 4D bubble around me. So I would just start with whatever direction I was facing, and then what's out there? What sounds do I hear? What bugs do I hear? What noises do I hear? And I'd take a next quadrant, the next quadrant,

until I'd gone all the way around. So I knew the sounds in all four quadrants, and then I would raise it up because up above you, I mean, you got birds, you got monkeys, you got different things that were happening in the trees, different sounds up there, and you incorporate all this together, and now you're used to a particular level of noise in each one of these quadrants. And then the sound of silence was the trigger. I developed to where I could actually wake up. If any quadrant went quiet, it would wake me up.

If anybody moves in one of those quadrants, the bugs in that area will stop chirping. They'll just get quiet all of a sudden. And if they get quiet, something's out there. And that alerts you where they're coming from. And it might be a tiger. It might be some other large animals. but something just stopped them, scared them. So I decided, you know, the dark's my friend.

They can't see me. And I've got area weapons out there, claymores. I can set off the claymore. They steal a big ball of fire, and I take out a bunch of people, but they don't know where I am. And then, you know, the next level of the frag grenades, you throw a grenade,

big ball of fire, a lot of fragments, but they don't know where it came from. So they still don't see you. As long as you don't pull the trigger on the weapon, they don't know where you are. So I decided this is pretty cool when it gets dark. You know, I'll find you if you're out here. How long would it take when you guys would settle into a perimeter?

How long would it take for the noise, the silence that you had created to escalate again to normal jungle levels? Within 30 minutes, once everybody's down. And the rule was, Once you're down, you're down. You do not move again until morning. Because anybody moving is a bad guy. And we would all position ourselves so that, you know,

I could reach Echo over here or the guy on the next side of me to wake him up or alert him something was happening. And Echo's arm's so big, I can't really do this, But if I could have your arm, if you want to wake somebody up without terrifying them, grab them right there and just slowly squeeze. And if you just slowly squeeze like that, what you'll see is their eyes start to open up, and they just come to. And we trained to do that.

So people knew if you get squeezed, you open your eyes. That's the only thing you move. Start listening. What do you hear? And it might be your turn. to be on guard or it might be there's any me out there. Yeah, that's crazy. I just got chicken skin from that.

I can only imagine. I can feel that. It's crazy, man. How long? Would you guys do 50% security and 50% sleep and? Would you guys do less than that? Because you didn't really need it. Yeah, sometimes we drop down to 30%.

But, I mean, I know teams that everybody go to sleep. But I'm not with me. I'm not going there. Somebody's going to be awake and we're here. And, you know, sometimes you had to sleep. You wouldn't sleep on top of the ridge. You had to get off on the side. And you try to get into a thicket.

You try to get into a steep area. So you learn to sleep straddle trees. So you straddle it. So you won't slide on down the hill at night. It's a little uncomfortable at first. You've got to get set up right. But once you do, you know, you can sleep like that. keep your arms through your rucksack because you wanted your rucksack to go with you if you had to leave in a hurry.

Your load bearing equipment never came off. The weapon was always fastened to you with a cord that went through a snap link on the shoulder of your load bearing gear. You'd have it laying across your lap. So, you know, you could put your hands on it real easy and turn it and shoot it if you had to. You had your knife where you could access that. easily, quietly in case you needed it. And then nobody moved. And then that first overnight mission that you did,

what was the purpose of the operation? We were going to find this relatively small, the Italian-sized element. And there's how many of you guys? this mission is probably seven so there's seven of you looking for 500 enemy north Vietnamese

regulars one of the things I think I know it sounds a little crazy one of the things you have to know a lot crazy one of the things you have to understand

about a SOG team is sog teams were small but they carried a really big stick given the stick might be 30 minutes away before you could use it and sometimes an hour. But man, you had a big stick

because if you engaged the enemy, as soon as you transmitted the word prairie fire over the radio, everything flying within a range of that team was diverted, everything. Any aircraft that had ordinance on, any mission that was going on was set aside, it all came to you. It was unbelievable. I mean, I had a mission one time where I had 14 cobers in orbit waiting on their turn to come in because I had to bring them in

in between the L-4s that were coming in and the sky readers that would come. They were all, I mean, it was just unreal. You know, what would show up once you got in trouble. Yeah, I guess that is the security blanket. Although, bad weather. Then you're in trouble.

Nighttime? You could do do some at nighttime. But, you know, we didn't have the night vision. The aircraft didn't have the technology that they have today. So nighttime was a problem for them. You could do something called combat sky spots where the L-FORs could come in and drop 500-pound bombs,

but they were doing it based on radar. So you had to start them like 2,500, 3,000 meters away and bring them in because you didn't know where they were going to land. They would be somewhere, you know, in that circle, but you had to let something hit and then start to work it. So, yeah, the nighttime, you know, could be a problem. Yeah. You got a book here.

You mentioned it really quickly. It's called The Stress Effect. And it's about leadership and decision-making, but you have some stories in it that are worth talking about. I want to read one of them right now. So it says for almost two years I'd been training to lead a special operations team into combat during those two years I had successfully completed U.S. Army Ranger School Special Forces Training become a member of the most elite military force in the world when I got to base camp in Vietnam

1968 I erected a six foot tall two by four board in the dirt and wrapped hemp rope around the top eight inches of the board to provide a striking surface Every day in camp I pounded the striking pad with my fists and my feet continuing to a improve my accuracy and power. I'd been trained in Ranger and Special Forces as a hand-to-hand combat, and it earned a black belt in the Korean martial art of Taekwondo. I'd become an expert with all special operations

weapons as well. I quickly found myself. So you guys, you had some introduction to martial arts. And they were teaching you guys some striking capability. Did you guys learn any grappling at all? Yeah. I mean, you did that

in special forces and in ranger school you did the military version of a hand-to-hand but I had trained in taquando when I was in college I broke my hand one night in a little pub and I thought there's got to be a... You broke your hand on a pub

or you broke your hand on a pub attendee? There was an attendee that ran into ran into my hand and broke it. And I was thinking, there's got to be a better way than this. You know, I've seen these guys jumping around doing kung fu or whatever on movies. So I found this taquando place, you know, right off campus there. And I went in and I said, you know, I need toughing up a little bit.

I'm tired of, you know, getting hurt. So, yeah. Right on. Back to the book. I quickly found myself deep inside enemy territory, leading my elite team. of three Americans and four mercenaries on a classified mission. Every human within 100 miles was the enemy. The temperature was 110 degrees of humidity was 100%.

The salt from our own perspiration constantly burned our eyes. Mosquitoes swarmed. Each of us carried 35 to 40 pounds of ammunition grenades and water on our load-bearing harness and a 75-pound rucksack on our back. No one wore an armored vest or a helmet because these would add too much extra weight and would be too hot. We were operating under triple canopy jungle that allowed very little light to come through and no air movement. It rained every day.

Everything was wet. The bushes in the ground were covered with small leeches that began to move up and down frantically when they sensed our body heat thinking they would have a meal soon. They attached themselves to us without our noticing them. The next day we would find them on our faces, chest, arms and legs filled with blood and the size of our, and being the size of our thumbs. The physical and mental stress was very high. This type of mission required complete silence, no talking for days, just hand-in-arm signals or notes. There could be absolutely no noise while moving. We were traveling along at a snail's pace of 100 yards an hour.

Every step and every foot placement were pre-planned, toe down first, then slowly the heel. This technique was designed to muffle the noise of any small branches that might be broken if we accidentally placed our weight on them. Each team member had an area of responsibility for maintaining vigilance as we moved. We were always looking for booby traps, ambushes, enemy personnel, poisonous snakes, and tigers. We couldn't forget the 500-pound hungry tigers. We knew a North Vietnamese army force was very close to us. We just didn't know exactly where. We spent most of the day moving up to the top of a ridge, one step at a time without making a sound.

Just as we neared the top, the point man's signal to us to halt and get down. He could hear a large group of enemy soldiers just over the ridge. Our hearts began to race and a journal and spiked. Our seven-man team was about to come face to face with over 180 trained North Vietnamese Army soldiers. Our stress level soared and our attention became focused. We knew everything could literally explode at any second. The closest help was an hour away. We could make no mistakes and we could not be discovered.

I moved forward into a position to observe the enemy soldiers who were less than 40 yards down the other side of the ridge from our location. They appeared to have finished eating and were getting ready to move up the ridge towards our location. I signaled the team that we needed to move quickly. Although the ground was muddy, slippery, and steep, we tried to move as quickly and quietly as possible. It was going to be very difficult to avoid contact with them, and contact would be deadly.

I was about 20 feet behind the point, man, moving deliberately, tightly gripping the handle of my car 15 machine gun with my right hand while using my left hand to steady myself. by grabbing bushes as I moved. It started to rain hard, making it even more difficult to get us help if we were discovered. We could hear the enemy talking on the other side of the ridge.

Then, out of nowhere, I was hit so hard from the high side of the ridge that my weapon was knocked out of my hand and my feet left the ground and I was falling backward down the side of the steep ridge. Instinctively, I grabbed my attacker as I fell and took him with me. My stress level was so high that all my hand-to-hand combat training automatically kicked in.

As I tumbled down the incline in the rain and mud, I literally ripped my attacker limb, biting, pulling, and breaking any part I could get my hands on. I used every deadly move I knew and actually heard the sounds of bones breaking. Although the entire event lasted only a few seconds, it appeared to pass in slow motion. A stream of thoughts and questions went through my mind. Where did this guy come from? How did I miss seeing him? Does he have a knife? How can I get my knife? Is he alone? Will he call his comrades before I can silence him?

Then it was over as quickly as it began. We were wedged hard against a large tree that's large tree that stopped our tumble down the ridge. The impact momentarily knocked the breath out of me. The attacker was not moving. Apparently, I was the winner. All my hand-to-hand combat training had paid off. Looking up the ridge, I saw some of my team members looking down at me with sheer horror. and shock on their faces. It must have been almost as terrifying for them as it was for me, I thought. Everyone's life hung in the balance, but I had won the fight. Mano e Mano. I had saved the team. As I began to untangle myself from my attacker,

the world suddenly came back into focus. Now I had the same horror and shock on my face as my team members did. I had just used all my expert hand-to-hand combat techniques. on a banana tree. In that part of the world, worms eat around the bottom of the banana trees, which weakens them and cause them to fall without warning. I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time

and be blindsided by a falling banana tree. Fortunately, two components to this event ultimately saved us. First, I was hit so hard and unexpectedly that my weapon was knocked out of my hand, preventing me from firing at the tree and giving away our position. Second, it was raining so hard that the enemy soldiers did not notice the commotion. We completed our mission and returned to Vietnam unharmed, except for my ego.

I have heard, however, that banana trees in that part of the world still tremble at the mention of my name. Good times. It was a little embarrassing, but, yeah, you know, stress level was so high. It just, you know, you're locked, loaded, you're ready to go. something triggers you and you go for it, you know, you react. It's just the instinct. Somebody had me and it was me or him. And, you know, I just unleashed everything I still had until I killed a banana tree. Yeah, I can walk by one today, even in other countries and they tremble. They know. They know. The legend is real.

Yeah. You can see the little limbs turn and watch me to make sure I go on by. It is amazing, you know, the point of you telling that story, talking about stress and, you know, I, one thing that I noticed about it is when we are anticipating something, oftentimes we will see what we are anticipating. So when we are predicting enemy combat, then that's what we're going to see. And you have another great vignette in here about a shooting that took place in New York. and it was, you know, a guy that was standing in the stoop of a doorway and the police officer see him and he looked kind of suspicious. And eventually, well, when he moved, they said, oh, he's trying to run from us. So now they draw their weapons. And the next thing he does is reach into his pocket.

They start shooting. And once one person starts shooting, they all start shooting, and they end up putting 40 plus rounds into the guy and into the surround. because they didn't shoot very accurately. But, you know, it turns out that the guy was just a normal citizen that fit the description of, you know, fit the description of a person that had conducted some crimes in the area. But, you know, it wasn't like he was, it wasn't like a specific description.

I think it was like a black guy in this neighborhood. Oh, looks pretty close. But what they anticipated seeing and what they got kind of mentally ready for, And then he makes a move to get away from them. In their mind, he's making a move to get away from them. In his mind, he's just trying to get out of the way. Who knows what these cops are doing, but they can't be after me.

And then the next thing is, they're yelling at him, oh, I better get them some ID. So he reaches into his pocket. What do they think he's reaching for? They're anticipating he's reaching for a weapon, so they kill him. So that's a great lesson learned. And, you know, you talk a lot in the book, The Stress Effect, about, you call it a way,

being aware of what's going on, I always use the word detachment, being detached from all the chaos and emotion and what a great power it is to have that, you know, it's the same word, or different word, same meaning, the awareness that you talk about. But that example right there, what you're anticipating, there's a good chance that what you're anticipating you're going to see, you're going to see regardless of what reality is. Yeah, it's not a banana tree. That's a North Vietnamese soldier, highly trained and skilled, and he's, trying to take me out and doing a good job because I'm falling backwards. I can't shoot him.

And, yeah, I mean, in the story you're talking about is they approach him and start shooting, you know, the first two guys that get there, one starts shooting. And what happens is some of the bullets are hitting on, you know, different parts of the stoop there and start to ricochet back. That's right. In their mind, he's shooting at him. I mean, the bullets are coming back out of him. They think he's shooting.

The other guy with him trips on the steps and falls. So his partners think, man, they hit him. He's down. The other two were up there. They think he's down. And, you know, they all just continue to shoot an innocent guy. So we see what we're expecting. I have to be careful with that.

And it happens, you know, it happens all the time. When the adrenaline starts flowing, you're going to do a lot of things that you need to keep it under control in their ways. Part of it, I'm probably getting off track here, but some of it is practice, practice, practice, you know, go through the immediate action drills.

You keep doing it and doing it and doing it. One of the things I used to make my guys practice that they really didn't like was when we were going on a mission because you're going to be out there for so long. The one zero carried a medical kit, so I'd have a medical kit with me. Everyone there carried, came in a can back then, just a little can about that big around. You had it taped on the back of your web gear and had a bag of ringer solution in it, a blood

expander. You know, because when you get hit, most of the time what you die of from a gunshot woman is you bleed to death. You can't get the blood, you know, stopped in time. So we all carried a bag of ringer solution so, you know, you could get an IV right there on the spot. Now, my thinking was, especially after that first incident when I having trouble getting the magazine in the weapon, I don't want one of my guys trying to put that needle in my arm in that condition, and he's jabbing all over my arm, and I'm laying there bleeding to death. I need the blood, so I said, okay, guys, here's what we're going to do.

We have a little practice. So I had been over to the dispensary, and I had gotten some needles, and I brought them over, and I said, we're going to practice putting the needle in each other. So we're getting shot at. You've done it before. It won't be the first time that you've tried to put a needle in the vein. They did not like that. Okay, now swap partners.

Let's do it again. Let's do it again. And every so often we would go through that drill. Let's practice open in a can. You don't want to have never tried to open that can before. When somebody's shooting at you and your buddy is bleeding to death, you have to have been through the whole process. Let's do it. Well, these lessons that you learned that you passed on, I mean,

everything from, you know, getting on the ground and patrolling 100 meters and then waiting. That's what we were trying. Now, I will say that once you got night vision, things are different because you didn't need to wait a half an hour to let your night vision adjust. You could go. But, you know, we used to do the same thing. We used to give each other IVs with red lens flashlines at night underneath a poncho because that's what you're going to have to do. And so those are the kind of things that you have to train. You have to train.

and people that think that that horrible thought that creeps into your mind that, well, when the time rises, when the time arises, I'll know what to do. That is not the truth right there. I got a quick question for you. How did you get the name dynamite? Was that your nickname? Did they assign that to you? Because I'm surprised at this point your nickname wasn't banana tree. Fortunately, you got your code name on day one.

So after we got the briefing, the dengue, then we had to select a code name. I wanted Ranger. Ranger was already taken. So they said, here are some others. And I saw dynamite and I said, you know, I really do like to blow things up. I'm small. And, you know, dynamite probably works for me. I mean, I blew my neighbor's windows out when I was a teenager one time with a rocket that exploded on my launch pad.

I didn't intend for that to happen, but, you know, I was always blowing things up. And then when I was there in Southeast Asia, yeah, I blew things up all the time. I blew bridges up. I blew up all kinds of things. And I always carried a lot of demo with me. Good nickname. And that was your call sign, too. Was that your call sign when you're in the field?

No. No. Well, it would be my call sign if I was wounded or something like that. Got it. But call signs that we use were always three-letter groups. Okay. Got it. All right.

You mentioned in your notes here that you gave me an op where you guys hit with, you guys got hit with gas. Yeah. That had to be unexpected. That was still with Dex team. Yeah, we. We had planned and rehearsed for everything. And we went in. It wasn't a hot LZ or didn't appear to be.

We didn't draw any fire going in. We got off the aircraft. The aircraft, you know, took off. We're on the ground. And all of a sudden, you know, we couldn't see. You couldn't breathe. This stuff is coming across the LZ. And, you know, we're coughing and gagging because we didn't have masks with us.

Masked were like helmets and plaid jackets. That's extra weight you got to carry. And unless we were intended to use gas, we didn't carry it because it was just very, very rare that the NVA would use gas. And in this case, we're on LZ. Here comes to gas. We're not prepared for it. We had to call for the aircraft to come back and get us out. It creates a real problem for pilots.

If they don't have mask, and now all of a sudden they're getting all of the gas coming in, you know, it's hard for them to see the instrument panel to be able to fly. You know, but they came back in and they got us out. It was, it wasn't a pleasant experience. And it was one of those things we didn't plan for it, you know, because it was such a rarity, and we just didn't do it. I was surprised we went through a gear list with Tilt, and they always carried a gas mask. And of course, because they always carried a gas mask, you know how many times they came across it?

I think the number was zero. Murphy's Law. Yeah. You know, a lot of times we would carry gas counters. We'd carry regular, you know, like a CS grenade. Yeah, CS grenade. But we'd also carry the CS rounds for the M49, the 40 millimeter. So we could shoot those.

But if we carried CS or the grenades, then, you know, we'd carry the CS rounds. then, you know, we carried the mask too. But it was, the masks were because we were going to use them. And, you know, if you use gas, you better have a mask. Are you going to be as bad off as the other guys goes? Without fail, the wind's going to change. And it's going to come right back on you and you're in trouble. Murphy's Law.

You got another note in here about a mission. It says tree roots. This was, I think this was my last mission with R.T. Alabama with DEC. And we had gone up, we made the little fish hook, we came back. It was early afternoon, and we were going to take a break for a little while. So we had put out the claymores. I had put a tow popper out. And there were some strange trees in that area.

I'm still not sure what they were called, but. they almost looked like rockets with fins. The roots kind of came out. I mean, you know, they'd grow up the tree, maybe two feet or so, and they'd come out like fins all the way around. So we were taking a break, so I thought, you know, I'll just lay down between, you know, these roots. And, you know, you won't be able to see me

because I'm kind of down in there. And that's where I'll take my break. And then we hear the tow popper go off. I heard that loud scream. And as soon as the tow popper went off, it's just this barrage of AK-47 fire coming. Some of it, you know, in our direction, some of it in other directions. They didn't know exactly where we were. But in that first barrage coming through, I had three AK rounds come through the route on my left side.

Right across my shirt, I had just exhaled. and through the root on the other side, if I had just inhale, it would have taken the top of my chest off when it came by. So it just grazed me, you know, coming across, and I said, hmm, I probably should get out of here. So, because the roots are not providing any, you know, actual cover for me, just the little concealment.

So I jumped around behind a tree, and, you know, we set off the Claymore's, had a full-fledged, you know, firefight going, on eventually had to work gunships and things and get extracted. But one of the things that I also did was got another taste of the impact of adrenaline because when I came out from behind the tree, I had taken my arms out of the straps on the rucksack, so I had to grab it with my hand. And I grabbed it with my left hand, you know, and it weighed probably 75 pounds.

but I'm not a big guy, but I'm tossing that 75-pound rucksack around like it's a pillow and, you know, it's going to go with me as we fight our way down the ridge and toward the LZ. But I paid for it, you know, later on, you know, after we got extracted, I realized I had pulled muscles in my shoulders because, you know, the muscles weren't designed to handle that much weight,

but I had so much adrenaline of pumping through my system. them then. So as soon as you guys get contacted, as soon as those rounds start coming, you're calling Prairie fire or emergency. Prairie fire. And then how long is it taken before aircraft show up on station? Usually you'll have something within 30 minutes

that you might be able to work, a gunship or something like that. But for the extraction ships, it might be an hour depending on how far in there you are. And it might be longer than that. but if you had bad weather nobody's coming because they can't find you

how good was the weather prediction at that time you know if you guys were you guys able to look out in a day and say like hey there's there's going to be storms moving through here tomorrow we at the different C&Cs we had our own Air Force meteorologist that tracked the weather

gave weather briefings you know two or three times a day you know, to the command group. The teams would get them. We would get them before we would go out so that we would know kind of what to expect. And, you know, we didn't launch unless the weather looked like it was going to be good, you know, for the insertion because you didn't want to get out there

and all of a sudden you couldn't use the assets that you had with you. So, but still, it's kind of like today, the best weather predictions that are made are the ones the day after. We can tell you what probably happened yesterday or at least with a high probability of what happened yesterday.

But the weather change, you know, it's where we were up north most of the time is a rainforest. I mean, it's going to rain every day. So it's going to rain. Every day, it's going to rain. And the clouds would roll right down on top of the mountain

and just totally conceal it, conceal all the bridge's line. So not only are you under triple canopy jungle a lot, now you've got a cloud cover over it. I mean, up above that, they can see fine, but they can't see where you are. You can't fire the flares out. They won't see them because they're in the clouds.

Is it always the one zero that's carrying the radio and talking to the aircraft? Or who usually was doing that for you? I know that Tilt said he did it. He would be like, yep, I'm going to talk to the aircraft. Most of the time I carried the radio. I mean, you had a guy. One of the three Americans was supposed to be carrying the radio.

Usually the one-two, if you had a one-two. But I carried mine almost all the time. But even if I didn't carry it, I wanted to talk. So bring it over here. I want to tell them what I need. to have done. So, you know, that gave me another 25 pounds plus, depending on how many batteries I carried, more weight to go in my rucksack. And that's if we used, you know, the PRC 25 or 77. But I think Tilt mentioned at one point we had a commander takeover CCN who said, you're going

to carry the KY38, a secure radio, which you know, the PRC 77 was about 25 pounds and then it had to connect into the KY 38, which was the same square, but thicker, you know, and they had to fasten together. So some people would stack them on a rucksack, one under the other. Most people were wearing the 77 in the back

and the 38 in the front to help you balance. You know, going up and down the hills and the mud. It's a good theory. But, you know, I, to me, and my experience said, the more you can look like an empty pair of fatigues laying on the ground, the greater your chance of survival when somebody's shooting at you. So the more stuff you put on your chest or around your waist

that raises you up in the air, makes you more of strong. I mean, I get my rucksack shot up all the time. I mean, I'd be laying there in bullets and just zinging through the rucksack because it was sticking up, you know, above me. But when you put that KY38 on your chest, that pushes your body up another six

inches in the air. So now the chances of you getting hit instead of the rucksack go up. So I didn't like to carry it. I only used it a few times. I mean, it had a pretty high malfunction rate. Yeah.

And then... Because it's not just on you. You got to make that the aircraft that you're trying to talk to is running their encryption. Everybody has to have that same encryption, which is an interesting story. We may get to a little later about that, but yeah, it was a pain. But I wanted to talk on the radio.

And you guys didn't, I know Tilt, they didn't carry like a belt-fed machine gun in their elements. I think he said they never did, which to me was surprising. Because like a sea, you talk to Vietnam seal platoons and even like my seal Patoons in Iraq, we carried as many belt fed machine guns as we could. Like we wanted to have massive firepower.

But I guess for you guys, the jungle, the weight, it was too much. My, my team carried one, an M60 machine gun. M60s are heavy. They are heavy indeed. My team carried one one time because, I thought it would be cool. I carried the machine gun because I thought,

man, the firepower I'll have with this thing, I can show those guys on the other side here what war is all about. And we made contact and I opened up with that baby. And I learned

a lesson really quickly. And it made sense when it happened because we always teach you've got to take the machine gun out ship you fire to wherever that machine gun is take that joker out and that's what they did and all of a sudden everybody's shooting at me

on the other side you were the most popular target out there I mean this stuff is just coming in on me and it's just eating everything up and I'm getting behind the tree and keeping my head around I'm shooting the machine gun around the side of the tree but I can't really see what I'm doing but I couldn't take my head around there

they'd take it all and so after that mission And that's enough of that. I mean, I'm not carrying one again. Now, you know, when we put team, if we put two teams together to make what we call a spike team, you know, where we were going in with the intent of engaging the enemy and not running, then we would carry, you know, two M60s at least. And then, you know, when you carry an M60, everybody on a team has to carry M60 ammo.

I mean, everybody's got it at least 100. underground belt with them, you know, plus the machine gun is carrying all that extra weight. So, I mean, it's, it doesn't just weight down the machine gun. Everybody on the team now is still going to carry all those 40-millimeter, you know, grenades with them for the M79. You still got to carry that. You still got to carry your extra claymores. You've got to carry all your mission equipment.

And now I'm giving you another 15, 20 pounds of machine gun ammo to carry along with you. You know, there's only five or six of you. the weight just goes up so fast that we didn't do it. Yeah, and I guess another note I'm sitting here thinking about it, the fact that you guys were generally enclosed terrain pretty tight, it wasn't like you needed massive cover fire to cover ground to put, you know, you didn't have to fire maneuver because you take three steps and all of a sudden the enemy can't see you anymore.

So that makes a little bit of sense too. What was your op temple like, you know, we're talking about these missions? How often were you guys going out? That's an interesting story and that it varied by team and like well in the 12 months that I was there I went out 18 times which was way beyond way beyond what an officer led team would do. I don't know that the other teams were going out that frequently, you know, in that short of period. The paper that you signed when you joined SOG said, you know, I volunteer to go anywhere to do anything for six months or six missions, whichever comes first. Got it.

At the end of the six missions or the six months, I've got to say, I volunteered to do it some more. So you had this, you know, a little safety valve in there to give you a chance to kind of wake up and say, this is not a smart. thing to do. And here's my ticket to do something different. Right. Well, that's like sort of like the bombers in World War II that had to do 25 missions over Europe. And if they did 25, then they could go and do something else. Go home. Right. Most of them didn't make it. But yeah, that's pretty telling when they say that you only have to complete six missions. That doesn't sound like a big deal. You must be thinking yourself if they only want me to do six of these things. They got to be pretty hairy.

If I only have to go out six times and six months, I mean, I've got a good deal. You know, the grunts are going out there every day and fighting, you know, or doing something or being exposed. And, you know, so you had that. And remember that SOG missions, a SOG mission really is an out-of-country mission. You know, as Tilt says, across the fence, you go into another country. When you see the casualties, you know, the KIAs of SOG, at least in the beginning, they all said South Vietnam. That's not where they were killed.

So you were going out. But in between those missions, you might do something in country. like Lynn Black, one of Tilt's big buddies They were on the same team and stuff For a while, Lynn was You know, just

Unbelievable 1-0 And he and I You know, kind of became friends And in between missions We would do things like Why don't we take some of our guys tonight And let's go with the Marble Mountains

Set up an ambush I guarantee you we'll catch somebody here And let's go do that What about tomorrow afternoon? You want to take some of our guys? Let's go search some of the caves in Marble Mountain. Those jokers are in there. We just have to find them.

So we would do a lot of things like that just for fun, so to speak. You know, because, you know, compared to a regular mission, I mean, this is an old-brainer. You just go there and you shoot some people. You know, you catch them in the cave and hose them down. Compared to 40 miles deep into Cambodia alone. And when we, you know, we can be back in time for lunch. I mean, let's go do this. So, and then you had, you know, Marble Mountain, the two combat outposts,

teams would rotate up there. You had to keep, you know, two teams up there all the time. So in between missions, you know, you might go up there for a week or two weeks at a time and then come back down and start mission prep, you know, for another mission and to go back out. So it wasn't like you were just setting around in between the missions. You were always doing something, plus you've done a lot of time. training and preparation for the next mission that you had coming up. So you stayed pretty busy. How long would it take you to brief a mission when you were going on?

We might start with the initial briefing as a day. Briefing, this is what we're going to go to do, is where we're going to go do it. And depending on what the mission was, I might say, okay, so we're going to go over to a place that was called Monkey Mountain. We're going over to Monkey Mountain because it's a good place over there for us to rehearse the actual mission, the raid, the ambush, whatever it was we were going to do. We can go over there and get in some, you know, realistic rehearsals. So we might go spend a few days over there just doing that. And while we're there, we rehearse our RON procedures, putting out to Claymore's, where did we put them? I would put the team in a different place every night

so that you had to, okay, let's look at the terrain we're in now. What's the most likely approaches? What do we need to defend the Claymore's? Where do we put to tow hoppers? What's our avenue of egress? How do we get out of here? If they come at us from this direction or this direction, where do we go? And where are the closest LZs that we're going to go to?

And how do we get there? Everybody needs to know that. You know, whether you're American or indeed, you've got to know where it is. You've got to know how to get there. So we would do the training like that, but particularly mission-specific for what we're coming up on. And then as you got closer, you would get much more specific, and then when you got to the launch site, you would have the mission briefing where your air assets would be there. So the pilots who were going to fly your insertion, the gunship pilots,

Air Force representative for the A1E's that were going to be there, the L-4. that were going to be there, you know, so you would have the big briefing there and everybody would agree on everything and make sure you had all the call signs and everything down and contingency actions. The Covey, I haven't said anything about him, we'd always have a Covey out there with the forward air controller that we could talk to and could look down and tell us what, you know, he was seeing. Might be able to see the bad guys coming to us or whatever.

He could get more assets for us. It was a big deal, I mean, because you might have four gunships, two to four A1E Sky Raiders, two to four L-4s, you've got Covey, you've got the insertion ships that you're going in with, you've got trailing ships in case those get shot down that are flying empty so they can drop down and pick you up. sometimes you might have a ship with the medics in it because you're expecting casualties you know so it was a it could be a big air shell sometimes going and put in if you were going

if you're going to north Vietnam you had to have the F-4s you all I mean it was just required for the mission some of the others Laos Cambodia you could go without the LF-4s and you just use the A1E Sky Raiders but if you're going north Vietnam you better have the L4s with you because they could send a mig down there after you if they wanted to.

So you had to worry about air cover as well as hitting big targets. And L4, you know, it can get your attention real fast. And the Sky Raiders do too because they fly low, slow, and they're carrying their own weight in ordinance. And they can put it right next to you. You tell them where you want it, that 20 millimeter is hitting 10 feet over there and ride along beside you or whatever the ordinance they're carrying. You get your attention. I mean, those chokers are good.

All right. So you, so how many emissions did you do with RT Alabama? Four. And then after that, did you get the up check from deck to become a one-zero? Yes. So I had gotten that, I mean, I already, I had it before we did the four, but we knew that F-O-B-1 was going to close down. And when it closed down, the teams were going to get scattered around. So I knew I would get a team, but I would get one somewhere else.

So we just stayed together, you know, for those four missions. And then when we moved, when I moved, to dengue. name to CCN, then I took over R.T. Michigan. And R.T. Michigan was the one that had, I don't remember who the one zero had been on that one, but Eldon Bargewell was the one-one on that one. So I took over that. and you know And he was a big listening guy at the time He was a back four I think

Yeah I mean And he was already a legend Well he he already had A good reputation A good reputation You know so we I mean we got along well

Because I had to ask about him Because I didn't You know he was a different camp I didn't know about him So I had asked about him And everybody I talked to said Man you know this guy was good He had, he was asking everyone else about you too.

He was asking about me and he, he told me. And I said, well, what did they tell you? And he said, well, I talked to, you know, Sergeant Jones. And, you know, it was impressive because he said, and, you know, I had total faith in him. He said, Thompson is the only lieutenant I've ever met that you could give a mapping compass to and he could tell you where he was. And he could navigate you to any place you wanted to go. And he said, you just don't find lieutenants like that.

So, you know, Bargeville said, that was good enough for him. If I knew where we were. Yeah. So. Isn't it surprising that that would be a skill that's so needed and that people didn't actually have it sometimes? It's crazy. And these days, well, you know, kids, kids are relying on the GPS. And they forget about some of those land nav skills.

And it always cracked me up because now they're to a point where they really rely on the GPS. I don't know their pace count. And, you know, I'd be walking on a training operation, you know, and say, okay, you know, just not even thinking about looking at a GPS because I did a map study and know where we're at. And those younger guys, you know, they just don't have this. Not all of them, of course. You know, we still get some guys that are great at it. But it's just a different time. So you take over this new team.

You got Barswell, which I'm sure you heard me talking about it with Tilt, but, you know, he was, when I was a young officer, I just got picked up for a commission and I went to Germany and he was the guy in charge over there. And so, and my boss, who was an outstanding guy who was a great mentor to me, but he would kind of tell me, you know, about about the old man. He'd say, Barswell said this. and Bargewell said that, you know, so that was pretty neat for me to make this connection. And here you are sitting here that actually he was your one-one. Yeah, and he, I mean, he was very knowledgeable, very good. And, you know, I was impressed with him right from the beginning. And I thought, I mean, this guy is good.

And, you know, when we went out on an operation, he's just cool and calm. You know, when the shooting started, I mean, he was good. But, I mean, he had experience. I mean, he was at K-Sin with the team there, the siege of K-San. I mean, he was there. I mean, where they just got hammered for, you know, several weeks there. He was, you know, there with that Special Forces detachment. He had recruited, actually had recruited some of the team members that we had.

And this was a yard team. they all liked him they all had a lot of respect for him and he he was a smart guy I just never thought then you know where he would end up

I figured if he doesn't get killed he's probably going to be somebody at some point but I didn't expect to see him I don't know, I guess it was in the late 70s. I saw him at Fort Bragg.

No, I guess it was in the 80s. I saw him at Fort Bragg, and he was a captain. And I'm thinking, you know, how can you be a captain? I'm a major. You were a spec four the last time I saw you, and now you're a captain. And I, you know, I thought that was a captain.

great. So we hung out a little bit. He was in Delta. So we chatted about Delta for us and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, I had some good times all we were there together to brag. And then I guess the next time I actually

saw him, he was a major. And he was that going through the command of general staff college. And I'm thinking I'm about to get promoted, but I'm still a major. too. How's this guy doing this? And you know, then the next thing, he's a lieutenant colonel, and then he's a full colonel, and, you know, ends up a major general. And he's just constantly going. And everybody kept telling me, get out of special forces. Special forces is a kiss of death

for an officer. You stay in special forces, you're not going anywhere. Well, he did. I mean, not only did he did great on that tour with Sog he did a second tour he ended up command not just being in Delta

he came back and commanded Delta force and then overall special operations and all this kind of stuff I mean just unbelievable do you notice any qualities I mean you said you looked at him and you were like oh yeah this guy will do well if he lives

was there any qualities that stand out if you're a young enlisted guy in the army right now or in any branch and you say to yourself I want to be a good soldier is there anything that you noticed about him that you would give us like guidance

to a young, young trooper out there? He's mission focus you tell him this is what you need to do or where you need to go I mean he's going to make it happen cool, calm and he was a smart guy I mean, he didn't brag about it.

When you talk to him, just very humble. But you could tell, I mean, he's smart. I mean, he's thinking about what you're saying and what he comes out with. And when he makes recommendations and talks about things, you need to be listening because he's thought to step through. But no fear from a combat perspective. I mean, if the bad guys are coming, he's going to be listening. and take them out.

And, you know, demonstrated that, you know, on several occasions with me, demonstrated it later on. I think he got, I think he got hit the next mission after he was with me. But he had put on AK-47 vest, you know, so. Got shot in the magazine or something. Yeah, it went in the magazine. You know, he poked through, enough to make a little hole in him, but it didn't go all the way through, you know.

But, and then he, you know, on another mission, he got shot a couple more times. Another mission, he B-40 Rocket hit the team. Everybody was wanted it. He had a piece of shrapnel go in through his cheek and kind of lodged over behind his eye. You know, so he's bleeding like a stuck pig, and, you know, the bad guys are coming, and, you know, he takes out 20 of them. because he's got an RPD, you know, the Soviet kind of a light machine gun. And he just taking people out right and left, you know, everybody wounded, including him.

But that's what he did. The only general on record that for a personal firearm carried an AK-47. An AK-47, I mean, he's walking around as a general officer instead of having that little, pop gun on his hip. He's got an AK-47 slung over his shoulder and he's telling, you know, his aides and bodyguards, hey, if we get in trouble, you don't worry about me. He said, you guys take care of yourself. I'll take care of me. And, you know, just unreal. So, you know, we, we spent a lot of time up on a marble mountain together. with the rotation and stuff.

So we spent time there. So we'd have those little fights most nights. The bad guys trying to come up and get us. The snipers would shoot at us just before dark. There was one cave opening that was almost on our level, I don't know, 50 meters away from us, that if they worked their way up to that opening, They could shoot just about into us at night.

I've got videos of that cave, and you can see how the marvel is just chipped off all around the opening of that cave where we were shooting out of them at night, you know, when they're up in there and stuff. So we did a lot of stuff together. It was a good relationship. So one of the things you got in here in your notes

is you guys did a mission. R.T. Michigan, and you guys inserted into the Laotian border with 101st airborne. It sounded like a pretty good trick, you know, kind of a... It was kind of a... When they told us what they wanted us to do, I thought, this sounds like Ranger School. This is exactly a scenario in Ranger School. What did they tell you they wanted you to do that?

This was going to be a walk-in mission. So we would start on the Vietnam side of the border, and we would walk over into Laos to the area they wanted us to go to. And they wanted us to do that from a position where the 101st was currently located. So there was a battalion from the 101st that was set up right on the border. And so they coordinated to have us have our team put on steel pots, all that kind of stuff, get on the resupply helicopters. We came in with a resupply like we were, you know,

new troops coming to be there when we jumped off. And then they put us inside the perimeter, but in a section, and said, do you need to dig in? You know, and all the little guys are looking around saying, what? You need to dig a hole. Foxhole to get in, a fighting position.

and the response, we don't dig. So I don't, yeah, you need to dig. I mean, we're out here where people are going to get, you know, bullets going everywhere. You need to dig in. So it was a good thing we did because it got a little hairy, you know, that night. And it was nice to be able to get down in a hole. And then I met with the company commander and platoon leaders, and they're forwarded observer.

And I gave them our plan. You know, here's what we're going to do. But what shocked them was, I said, okay, these coordinates, I want you to pre-plan that as an artillery target, and here's the name of it. And I want one here and here and these are the names. All I'm going to do is call that name out. Target, Roger. I'm not going to give you coordinates, you've got to have that already plan.

And when I say, Roger, I expect the artillery. I never had artillery before. So this was great. We were never in range of artillery. And all of a sudden, I got it. I planned that stuff all over the place. And so what we did the next morning was at first light, we went down to the stream with the water resupply team.

They'd go down and fill all the canteens and things up and bring them up. So we went down with them, dressed like the 101st. And when we got down there, yeah. We changed into our Batman suits and gave them to helmets and flat jackets and all that stuff. And they threw them in bags and carried them back up. And we just went on across the river and the jungle there on our mission. So hoping that the bad guys thought, you know, nobody had come in that way. So went out on our mission.

There was a hatchet force platoon that had been inserted, you know, much further out in the valley. But we went in and it was just, you know, different and a cool way to do something. And then, you know, when we got in contact, I mean, when I call for those targets, they put it right on them. So that was a cool thing. It was interesting that we had Bardswell and the one two that was on the team. with us. We had a little disagreement about our exact location. And I'm telling those two, no, I'm telling you, we are right here. And I said, no, you're 200 meters off. I said, there's no way. So anyway, we didn't contact. And I told them, I said, you know, if we're where I am,

or where I'm saying we are, there's a fork in the stream, and there's a little footbridge going across one right out there about 150 meters in front of us is a road and there's a stream out there i said i'll take you down there 12 but then we made contact and we had to come out on strings so when they're listening was that your first time coming out on strings uh no i'd been out before okay so they're picking us up and they couldn't see me because they're in front of me but i'm important there it is we're right there You're getting ready to get shot, but you're like, hey, I was right. That's right.

That's right. Yeah. Those are, you know, 10-digit grid coordinates, and they were right on, you know. So when you were you, were you just using pace count and? Use the pace count and terrain. Yeah. You know, I'd spent a lot of time in the woods growing up. So I, and particularly in the dark, and I love the dark, I can feel the change in the terrain.

I know if I'm going uphill, down. downhill, if I'm on a little side, whatever. So I would take the section of the map that I thought we were going to operate in. I just memorize it. Did you guys have one to 50,000 maps? Or they were one to 24? Yeah, they were, well, we had both, but what we, depending on the distance that we were going to go. But I could just, I mean, usually we didn't go very far, you know, so you can memorize if you were used to doing that.

the section of the map. I could see it in my mind, you know, when we were moving. You knew where we were. I knew what the pace counts were. I knew what the terrain should look like, you know, where we were. I had checkpoints set up that, you know, if we're here, we'll see this. If we're here, we'll see this. So I could track it, plus I used the pace count. So I knew where I was out there. That was one thing that I thought was critical, because eventually you're going to have to call for help and you need to be able to tell them where you are. And under triple canopy jungle,

you're not shooting Asmus to hilltops and things like that. I mean, you've got to know where you are on the ground because you know the topology, what it feels like, what it looks like, and how far you've gone. And, yeah, that was just the skill set that I had. No more important piece of information on the battlefield than where you are.

If you don't know where you are, it doesn't matter where the enemy is because you can't call for fire, you can't maneuver on them because you don't know where you are. When you guys were, were you guys just getting overwhelmed? Is that why you guys had to come out

on strings on that one? Yeah. How big was the enemy force do you think that you rolled into? In your notes here you said, lots. It says lots of NVA. I typically used the term

lots, meaning, you know, a hundred or more. So. How did you guys stumble across them? I'm sorry Where did the contact come from? What did that contact start like?

It really started because headquarters decided they needed to resupply us because they wanted us to stay longer and I was saying no don't bring a helicopter right here

and hover over our position don't do that you got to get resupplied and they did it anyway. So, you know, once you have a chopper hovering above the canopy there dropping stuff down through it, the bad guys, I mean, they were all over the place anyway. They said, oh, there must be somebody down there. If nothing else, they're going to go get whatever fell out of that helicopter.

And they did. They came down there, and there we were. So it kind of, you know, messed up the afternoon in terms of what we'd planned to do. But we got out. but it's an extraction on strings through, you know, double canopy jungle. It's rough because you're being dragged through the limbs of the trees, through the treetops. The aircraft will always start to go forward, and then you're being drugged through them. Well, they want to get the hell out of the line of fire, right?

Yeah, because they're getting shot at. They don't want to stay there along. you're getting shot at and it's hard for you to shoot because you're twisting and turning and hitting leaves and you know now they're behind you and it's hard to shoot that way and you know they're only going to take um maybe four people at a time out anyway so that means you've got another chopper coming in the bad guys know you're going out on strings now and you've got another aircraft coming in to pick up the rest of the team you know i'm the team leader yeah i'm a team leader i'm always first off first one on the ground the last one on the ground you know so I'm coming out with that last aircraft I'm the last one you know to come up off the ground and you know they've got you pretty well zeroed in by them even though you know you're starting to work some gunships and stuff but yeah and the pilots don't like stay in there and then then they get over the in this case to

over there at an aircraft fire. I mean, all of a sudden, we're 7,000 feet. Freezing. A.G.L. Not sea level. A.G.L. Hanging on the end of a rope. Covered in sweat.

And freezing to death. And I'm looking up, you know, and I'm swinging back and forth. So my rope is rubbing back and forth on the edge of the floor of the helicopter. And I'm thinking, we got a long ways to go. And it's starting to fray the rope up there. and, you know, are we going to get to a place they can set us down before that thing breaks or not? So that runs your arousal level up a little bit and, you know, place your shiver. And then, you know, after about 30 minutes, if your legs are asleep, you can't walk because it's cut the circulation off.

So even when you get to wherever they're going to set you down, you can't stand up, they have to come out and get you and pick you up and put you in the helicopter. It's another day at Sog, huh? Yeah, another day at Sog. You did a snatch mission, you mentioned in these notes. You did a little, a little, you set up and set up the ambush, tried to capture someone. It doesn't seem like you mentioned a couple times. You weren't very successful at capturing people. Yeah.

To get a... Is this how you got your second nickname, Terminator? You know, if they don't cooperate, you know, sometimes. times they get terminated. So, you know, in this one, I mean, we had rehearsed, we had practice, and one of the techniques of the prisoner snatch is if you have a trail that people are going to move up and down in small groups, you practice setting up an ambush that has a dead spot in it. So in the middle of the ambush usually, no one's going to fire into the,

that zone. The clay moors are angled out so that it creates a dead space there. You put a big block to C4 there that you're going to designate or detonate. At the same time you set off the clay, everything's going to go off at the same time. And everybody's firing. And, you know, what happens is whoever's lucky enough to be standing in that dead spot, They didn't get hit with a bullet, but the concussion from that C4 stuns them. Yeah. And, you know, we practice. So it stuns them.

And then I've got a guy with me that's designated as Thumper. All right. So he and I are going, we're coming out of the bushes as soon as that stuff goes off. And thumper's job is to see this guy standing there kind of days and just take him down. You know, thump him in the head. And when he hits the ground, I'm going to hit him in the thigh with. the morphine charret. So I'm going to pump him full of morphine

and then he'll do whatever we say. You know, he's just, you know, he's just calm. But in this case, we ended up killing that guy. How many, at this point, you've done however many missions, had you guys take any casualties in your teams yet?

Yes. But I took most, I mean, a lot of people got hit. But I didn't have anybody killed on one of my teams until I got to RT, Virginia. And, you know, the portman was killed. A lot of people were wounded right after I left Virginia on their next mission. They just got hammered and lost some people. Americans got shot up really bad, both critical.

So they were through with SOG. But at this point, you're being, continuing to be pretty lucky. Yeah. And it is. People ask me all the time, you know, how do you survive that? So you've got to be lucky. I mean, and you can call it lucky. You can call it God.

You can call it whatever you want. But there's some kind of intervention that prevents you from getting hit. You can't sit in a helicopter like that first one with that many bullets, crisscrossing in there and not get hit. You know, and I, like a fraction of a second between me being hit and, you know, the other American being hit on those skids, I mean, I had just pushed back when that guy pulled the trigger, missed me, hit the other guy. And that happened on a regular basis where, you know, I, when I go speak, a lot of times

people if it has a this kind of flavor to it uh if they say something about you know being in special forces is something uh it's not unusual for people to come up to me and say i really thought you'd be taller and i'd say if i'd been taller i'd be dead i'm a lie because i'm not taller my head has been creased so many times yeah i just wouldn't be here yeah so i'm So then did you, did Barswell took over for R.T. Michigan? Yeah. Eventually we got to the point where, I mean, Barswell was ready. He could have taken over before me.

But so we got to the point where I had to leave to go do something different. And I told him, he's ready. He can do this. He's a spec four. Yeah. With all those assets, all that responsibility. And somewhere in there you've got E5, I think. think but yeah but if you if you were to go back and look at SOG-10s across the board you

would be shocked at the age they're so young but as I've looked at why would people do that and it used to be that neurologist thought that your prefrontal cortex out here where you make decisions but it's also the part that controls risk-taking

they used to say yeah it fully matures somewhere around 18 to 20 years old and now we know most people don't mature until about 28 to 30 years old. So what's happening... Is that primarily men that don't men reach that level of maturity a little later?

A little bit. The women are a little behind, but in terms of the SOG leaders, most of them had not, definitely had not matured. And I don't mean that the person was immature. I mean, they're talking that part of the brain that controls risk-taking. So you're young You think you're bulletproof You think you can do anything

You think you're going to live forever Man this is a cool thing to do There's a SOG mission So I think there's something there I just haven't had time to explore it Well there's something there might be that the guys that are 30 years older Like I'm not doing it Like the guy that told you don't volunteer for SOG

Because they're saying yeah The survivability's not high I've got to get a I'm not going to do it But the young kids are all in. How old was Barswell? How old were you at this point?

Bargewell, I was about four or five months older than Barswell. And how old were you? When Bardswell came along... This is 1969. So you're 22, you're born in 47. Yeah. I had just become 22,

which I didn't think I would make. And I thought for sure, I won't see he's 23. Because, I mean, we obviously skipped over a lot of stuff here. We used a lot of cat lives up. But, yeah, I mean, we were just a few months apart in terms of age. Well, every single one of these operations just about you're going to use a certain number of cat lives.

Yes. Did you ever go on an operation where you didn't get contacted by the enemy? No, if you count the gas, then no, we made contact. 100%. You're going to get into contact with the enemy. All right, what was Operation Shiloh all about? And is this why you left RT Michigan? Yeah.

Okay. So you get called away from RT Michigan. They need somebody to do Operation Sino. What was that all about? MacVSog and somebody higher up. decided that they needed to stop the influx of supplies and troops coming down from the north. And there was a place called the Mugia Pass, big, deep valley. But there was a point where it really narrowed up.

The banks were really steep and high. And, you know, so they had to funnel through that pass with their truck. and people and whatever to come on down into the south. And, you know, you send a forward air controller out there. I mean, they see it. So they pull off and they hide because they know that forward air controller has a bunch of L4s over here in orbit, just waiting on him to find a target, and they're going to come in.

So somebody came up with the idea of, what if we put a team out there up on the ridge, up on the crest of that valley looking down, and they'll be able to see far enough that when they're coming, they can call and say, okay, they're on their way, scramble, you know, get the L4 out here,

and the L4 can be on them like a chicken on a geneberg and just eat them up, you know. So they decided, let's do this mission. We'll sneak people, sneak a team out there, put them on the ridge, let them set up there, and just interdict this place like crazy. But it has to be a super team,

has to be officer-led, has to, all Americans have to be approved by name by the president to do this because of where it is and what they're going to do. So they needed somebody, a 1-0 officer who could take over a team that we had there. and lead it, and they put me on it. I wasn't happy about leaving Michigan, but I thought, well, this sounds cool

until I learned more about what they were going to do. And I went on a visual recon. I went out and rode with a forward air controller of why he was putting in airstrikes with L4s, and I'm looking at this place, and I'm thinking, there's got to be somebody up there. It's the high ground. not leaving this place undefended.

Yeah. And when I brought that up, they said, no. There's nobody there. We never receive any fire from that area. And I said, if you don't want people to know you're there, you don't shoot at them. So I'm sure there's somebody there. And anyway, so I had some disagreements with the people down in Saigon about that. I had to go back and forth on a lot of briefings about it.

the mission and we took the other team or I took the team and we trained and we'd go to Monkey Mountain and we'd practice all the stuff and our surveillance techniques and we had starlight scopes we had long range lenses on our cameras and all the state of their art binoculars we had a plan that said I thought it was funny that we're going to drop pierceipts out in an area over away from there with blocks of ice in them So the parachutes will open, descend, hang in the trees, the ice will melt. So when the NVA go over there, you know, they'll think we parachuted some people then, and they moved out. Got it.

Because they won't see anybody. I'm saying, they're not stupid. Anyway. So for four weeks, we get ready to go do this thing, and then finally somebody listened and said, no. call it off. We're not going to do it. And Tilt talked to you in one of your podcasts

about where he had this special mission that he had to have an officer with him. Later on, after I left, it came back up again. They decided to do it and they put an officer with his team and said you guys are going to do it and they were out on the helipad with the

rotors turning when the mission got called off because they discovered there were a bunch of people there. And if they had put either one of those teams in, we'd have lost right off the bat. How about Dick Meadows? Legend. Now, this is all, he's a legend at this time. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, everybody already knew Dick Meadows. Meadows had been, he got to the point where he'd done all his super secret stuff, and they said, okay, we're going to get. you a choice. You can, we can promote you to Sergeant Major or we can promote you to captain. Which one do you want? And he worked out a deal that said if you promote me to captain, then I get to stay, you can't, you can't force me out. I get to stay in until I can retire, you know, as an officer, whatever rank I get to. Yeah. So anyway, so he shows.

So this is, I don't know if this is the Army or if it's just Vietnam. I think it's a little bit of both. That kind of thing just doesn't happen anymore. Where they take a guy like that and go, hey, we're going to either promote you to the senior enlisted side or make you a captain, which one do you want? Yeah. That's epic. Yeah. And Meadows was an epic guy.

Yeah. I mean, so, you know, I came back from a mission. and I was told that we got a new company commander and he wants to see you as soon as you get cleaned up so I got in to see him that night it was probably 2,200 and actually he was the quarters were it was a quonset hut with the wall I was on one side of it he was on the other side

so I go over and report to him and you know he told me good job and all this stuff I've been looking at your record and he said, effective right now, you're the recon company Ex-O. But I don't want to give a team. And he said, you can keep a team. I don't care about that. But you're the X-O, and you're going to help me.

And he said to start with, tomorrow morning, we're going to have a meeting with all the Americans in the recon company one at a time. my guys I've been going through the records and I think some of them's beret has gotten a little too heavy for them and we're going to send them back to the train tomorrow

they don't need to be in SOG they can go play with special forces but they're not going to be in SOG what do you mean? He said there are people here who were not going out on missions very often and going out on missions

and every time they get shot off the LZ they never actually complete a mission so you know those people need to go somewhere else and we need to replace them and Meta's a hard dude

I'm hard and you can tell when he's talking to you he is this serious of a hard attack so he said here take this stack of files with you, go through them tonight, tomorrow morning, 0,700, you know, they're going to start coming in, you know, the retirement orderly room, and I'm going to have a talk, you and I'm going

to have a talk with them. So you tell me which ones you think you need to go home. So we met in there the next morning, and, you know, I'm looking at the list that he's, the stack he's got there to eat plants that send back. I said, we're not going to have anybody left. And he said, I don't care. if we have to, you and I will lead all the missions. You know, and my heart's not beating it this point because I'm hearing how serious he is and his wars. And he said, we'll do them all.

Yes, sir? We're going to be kind of busy. But anyway, he wasn't going to send him all home, but he sent a lot of people backed in the train that day. He just told him, you know, a helicopter. leaving this afternoon, be on it. And he started shuttling people back down there. You know, if you had been, you know, dragging your feet,

finding ways not to go on missions, you were sick, you were, you were whatever, and you get shot off the LZ. I mean, he looked at, you know, over the period of time you had been there. How many missions had you been on? How many times have you been in contact? How many days have you been on the ground? And all this kind of stuff. and he had his own little equation

and these people needed to find something else to do. He was hard. Big time Ranger, special ops, mindset, and he started to look around right away. There's some things here we've got to clean up. We should have an isolation area. When a team gets a mission, you go into isolation. That's the way it's done special forces.

That's the doctrine, and we're not doing it. Why would we not do that here? A lot of things like that. Training. In fact, you know, he told me, let's go the next morning. He said, you meet me down on the beach the next, you know, tomorrow morning. The beach was just right outside the concertina. So I met him down there.

And he said, we're going to go for a little run. And, you know, he considered it will be older than me at that point. So we take off down the beach at about a seven-minute pace. and I'm thinking, oh my God, I haven't been running. I mean, I'm starting to suck a little wind here, and this joker's not slowing down. So when we get about the two-mile point, you know, I told him, I said, sir, I'm going to go ahead

and turn around here and go back and take care of some things. You do that, Lieutenant. I'm going to keep running. And he kept going, and I'd look back every once in a while until he disappeared out of sight down the beach, and he's by himself and he's unarmed. And, you know, later on he came back. I mean, physical fitness was a big thing for him.

You keep your body sharp, you'll keep your mind sharp. And, you know, we started to having PT in the mornings for the teams that were not out in the field, things like that. So you made a lot of changes. How did that affect the attitude around the camp? after his house cleaning at the beginning everybody else says yes sir whatever you want

I mean we need to do this stuff and we need to do it right and he was out there and everybody knew I mean he's a guy that would say you've been out twice to get a prisoner I'm going with you this time and show you how to get one and he'd go out and get one

and bring him back I mean, whatever the mission was, he could do it. And then say, now I want the rest of you do it that way. And, oh, wow, cow. Roger that. Whatever you say. So he said, you can keep a team, but here's how we're going to start. We've got a group coming over.

The first group in Okinawa were sending people over temporary duty. They'd send four teams of Americans over. and he said, I want you to train them. So when they get here, you get with them and their teams and you put them through some training on how to run these operations and what to do. And then I want you to go out with them with each team. You take them out.

You walk right alongside the 1-0. I guess we call that skin in the game. Yeah. You're going to train them and then you're going to go with them. Yeah. And, you know, when you get a team that you think is ready to go, you tell me we'll sign a mission to them and you take the next team are these the snake bite teams is that what these are called yeah so you know i was going out on regular races with with these guys you know particularly once i got

them trained and you know we were going into um the marine forced recons area of operations you know they would put their teams out there within two or three days you know they'd get run out we were going out and the objective was to stay seven days and excuse me we'd eventually make contact

sometimes we'd make contact before that but it was a live fire shootback target kind of certification so can you lead our team out against real bad guys and get shot at

and do it right and then I give them the check mark then they get a sod mission. So those are the Elephant Valley operations? Yeah. Is that what those are? So you had an AO that was a little bit calmer, it was a little bit closer. You still had some real bad guys.

This is just like the ultimate in training operations because it's actually real. Yeah, because the target shoot back. I mean, and we had several of them wounded, you know, from going out on those missions. But, you know, they always did a great job. I mean, when they were there, they did a great job. So he kept me busy with that. So I was technically still going out with teams. I wasn't happy, but I said I'm real SOG missions.

I don't want to, you know. And those did those even count as your SOG missions? No, no. Those are just day-to-day stuff. You know, you go do it. And, you know, try not to get killed while you're doing it. But, yeah, you just go do that. And, you know, ironically enough,

that was very similar to what it was like, you know, when I came home and went to the Ranger Department and became a Ranger instructor. That's what I did. I was walking along, you know, with a team of Rangers students grading and evaluating the patrol leaders. So except the targets didn't shoot back. So that's a little bit of a difference. Yeah.

And then when did you take over RT Virginia? Was that your next one zero? Yeah. We finished with the snake bites and he said, okay, I got one more mission for you before you get your real team back again. He said, we've got a team that we want to convert over to a Vietnamese-led team.

So it's going to be a team that's going to operate with no Americans on it. We've got a Vietnamese Army captain that's coming in here. So he'll be the team leader. And we've got RT Virginia, who has nobody right now. So I want you to train them with him. And then you can take him out on a mission and make sure he does okay. And if he does okay, then he will take over the team.

and they'll start getting SOG missions. So as soon as I got with the team, they were saying, no, no. We don't want a Vietnamese captain. And I don't know, there was just something about them. We bonded very quickly.

And then they started saying, we want you. I said, it can't be me. It's got to be this guy. So we're going to go train. And they were good. And I liked them. We got a long.

well but they did not like the captain so in the end and Meadows said okay you take the team you know you spend all this time with them you take them and go with them and then what were those missions then you started doing it's sog missions yeah because they were good and how many times did you go out with with RT Virginia a bunch I don't know I'd have to go back and count them now but yeah I mean, that was the last team, you know, that I was one zero. And so these missions are the same, you know, you're going deep in enemy territory, across the fence, as Tilt says, inserting, and trying to do recon, trying to find intelligence, trying to plant sensors, and trying to avoid hundreds, if not thousands of NVA. And sometimes, sometimes you went out looking for a large unit.

I mean, that was the mission. You go find them, and once you find them, now you've got them located, you bring the world. I mean, you introduce them to, you know, what we call later, chalk and all. I mean, you bring all this stuff on because they can't get away once you know where they are. So some of those were just straight up patrol to contact. You're going to go in there and you're going to patrol until you find some enemy, and then you're going to call the funder. You go do that.

And I think we, I had an in-country mission with Virginia, but I think that, you're going to, the first out of country was what we sometimes call a suicide mission. We'd put in two teams. Once we got on the ground, we'd separate. For you to be calling on the suicide mission is a real statement about things. So we would separate. This should be called the guaranteed death mission, but okay, we'll go with it. Suicide mission. And one team would be the real team that was going to stay out there. The suicide team, uh, the suicide team, uh, would be the one that was going to go make contact as soon as possible. Go find them, pounce on them, do as much damage as you could,

bring in the world, get extracted, and go away. But the other team's still out there, and nobody knows that they're out there now. They think, you know, that was who got extracted. So, you know, it was go again. So we went out, and, you know, sure enough, it didn't take as long to find, you know, a platoon or so of people. And, you know, so we're online and we opened fire on them. I mean, we would normally just start out like that,

but I could see them and, you know, and I started shooting at them. You know, they started shooting back. And it was funny that what happened, we were online, and as soon as all the bullets started coming back, it was, they were all right here with me. And I'm saying, what are you doing? And I said, spread out.

You can't be here with you. with me. I mean, you know, one B40 take us all out. And it's, you know, so I had to smoke them a little bit and spread back out. Dispersion is what we call that. And we'd also say don't bunch up. And I would think about the psychology of what makes people bunch up like that. And part of it, I think, is just fear. And like you want to be next to someone else. You want to have your buddy. And so as soon as a bullet start flying, it's like, I'm going to go get next to you because we'll be together. And I feel better when we're together. And the other thing I think is just, communication, people want to hear what's happening,

people want to know what's happening. And so they figure, well, the boss is right there. I'll go get with the boss. Then I'll know what's happening. And then that's what everyone else on the team thinks. And next thing, you know, you're too close. Yeah. You can't do that.

They knew I had the radio. So were you the suicide team? Were you the assault team and that someone else is going to stay out there longer? Yeah, we were the suicide team. You know, so we hammered that group, which grew once we started hitting them. Uh-huh. You know, and then we just kept bringing in enough air power. to eventually we suppressed it enough that, you know, we could get extracted.

But so that was, but we'd already, we had been in contact once before the end country mission. But, yeah, I mean, that was a little issue, but we got that resolved, you know, maintaining the dispersion and following whatever the immediate action drill was. But they were a good team. I mean, they react. normally very well under fire. And were those, were those, Vietnamese?

Those were Vietnamese. Yeah. So with that, you wrap up with R.T. Virginia, and you get some R&R, and you actually have a document that you gave me about, about this R&R, and R&R, if you don't know, is rest in recuperation. And we're actually going to cover that on the next podcast.

So thanks for coming on. and we'll fill these people in on this insane operation that is titled rest and recuperation. So thanks for coming out. Thank you for having me. And we'll talk to you on the next one. Okay. Thank you. And with that, Mr. Dick Thompson has left the building.

And once again, it is an honor to be able to sit down. with such incredible men and do have the opportunity to hear and to preserve their stories and their lessons. And it's actually crazy for me to be sitting here and to have this opportunity and to be able to share it with anybody that wants to hear it, anybody that wants to learn. so I am very thankful for this opportunity and one of the things that allows us to do what we're doing here is you because by listening you can take these lessons and apply them to your life and make yourself better and if you want to help us while you make yourself better that seems like it would be a good thing to me agree we could you can help us help you help us help you

do you know what movie that's from yes I do what so you feel like you know no where it's from I do I just recalled it all right lay it on me Jerry McGuire interesting doesn't seem like the type of movie that you'd watch yeah I guess it doesn't really seem about it Maybe it was just a movie that was so popular that at some point I watched it. Got in the on the grid. Gotcha.

Cool. Well, help me, help you. Help me help you. That's how you said it. A little bit more dramatic. Unless, yes. Help yourself. That's kind of the real deal, right?

So what are we doing to help ourselves? Jiu-Jitsu. Anti-stress activity. I was in the locker room. Good point. Not necessarily changing in the locker room, but I was talking to. one of my many friends in the locker room. And when you think about it,

Jiu-Jitsu is like the most efficient. Well, I don't know if efficient is the word, but it's like it's exercise, competition, friendly, and how should I say, what do you call? Aggressive. Aggressive, but like what's like beneficial competition? You know how there's like unhealthy.

We'll just say healthy competition. Exercise, healthy competition. So there's a social element to it. These are all things that you get out of it. therapy, physical and mental, by the way. And stress relief. Stress relief. Which we didn't really hit it on this initial podcast, but Dr. Henry Thompson,

also known as Dick Thompson, who we just spent time with. His book is called The Stress Effect, and it talks about stress. And I concur that Jiu-Jitsu is a stress reliever, big time. Yeah. It's kind of like... Like you get small levels of stress in Jiu-Jitsu to the point where it doesn't feel like stress, but technically it's stress. Just like exercise. You know, like there's stress in your muscle.

Yeah, exactly right. So, yeah, so that's, I think that's sort of how it works, mentally, physically, you know, a little bit of stress on there. And then, boom, the result of that stress is no stress. Yeah. It's the way it goes. Anyway, when we're doing Jiu-Jitsu, what do we need? Gis and Rash guards. That's the uniform, for lack of a better term.

What kind of geese we're getting? 100%. 100% or 100%? Yeah, making the best geese in the world. Yeah, factually. Made in America? In America. Yeah.

From American, from American ingredients. Ingredients. The masterpiece, that is the key. Yeah. Everything else too. Also, you know, shirts and jackets and joggers. Jeans. I saw you in jeans for the first time.

I think ever. When? I don't know. It was like we were going somewhere. Oh yeah, Washington. We were both representing. Representing big time. Yeah, I look good.

I felt like I looked good. I wasn't telling you on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not going to ask you your opinion on that matter. Nonetheless, yes, I was representing big time with my American jeans, American denim. Yeah. From dirt to the shirt, as they say. Nonetheless, jeans, joggers, supplements.

Joint warfare. I'm back on discipline. That's like two weeks already. Like night and day, man. You know how you, sometimes you slip off for whatever reason you run out, whatever? Yeah, I'm not. You can get a subscription. Yeah.

So you can get a subscription that way you don't run out. You can go on to origin main.com and you can subscribe so that every, whatever, monthly, you get your resupply. Yeah. And that way you don't fall off. the train. Yeah. And you save money too.

It's cheaper. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. So a little discount. Yeah. And that's like, there's certain things in life

that are like that where like you eat them or use them or whatever like every day. And to go on, especially if they save money, to go on those little subscription, it's just, it's a,

that will improve your efficiency in your life. One less thing you have to think about. Oh yeah. And it just comes. And you don't have to. And you don't get that disparaging no, it's just not disparaging.

It's just despair. Yeah, that despair of that moment. Yeah, yeah. It's going to be three days. Yep. Even if I fed exit. They got to get the order. Yeah, no.

Subscribe. Exactly, right. So what supplements joint warfare, krill oil, these are for your joints and general health, really, curcumin, that's general health right there.

Also, discipline and discipline go. Finally, I got the DAC, Doc. Dack Savage. That's the Dakota. Savage.

That's the quote, Myers signature signature drink signature drink uh I like it it's compared I haven't done a side by side comparison you know as far as like which one I prefer but it I won't be surprised if that is my favorite one oh your new favorite yes because your old favorite was tropic thunder tropic thunder yes the lemon lime was kind of too basic to be my favorite it's still fine still great that's weird because the basic one that you're over there disparaging no no no no no Lemon line is my favorite at this time. Well, you're a simple person.

You know, I get it in a good way. My wife kind of curiously asked me, she was like, how many of these can I drink a day? Because it turns out my wife is really into the discipline go. Yeah. So she's drink, yeah. So anyways, I'm thinking four cans is around the limit per day that you want to be drinking. I've done three and I'm great.

Yeah. You know how like, because like if you drink, even like a coffee. scenario where you get to a point where you drink too many coffees and you're like, I don't feel good anymore. You feel weird or off or what a fidgety, you know, all these little symptoms. You know, I've never actually taken a complete sip of coffee in my whole life. No, kidding. Yeah. I don't like the smell of it, which means I don't like, I don't even have people, well, haven't you ever tasted it?

I'm like, well, I suppose at some point I'm guessing I put a little sip into my mouth. But even the smell alone, I smelled it. I don't like this. Yeah. What about coffee, like flavored stuff? Like ice cream. Don't like coffee ice cream. But have you tried it, though?

Yes. Okay. But even then, you know, sometimes there'll be some kind of special treat. Sure. Like some kind of a, wait, does Tiramisu? You know what Tiramisu is? Doesn't that have some coffee flavor in it? I don't know.

Okay. Well, it seems to me. But that's the only one. Taramisu. Yeah. That's one dessert that's, it's sort of like, take some skill to make. Sure. And if it's on the menu at a really nice restaurant,

sometimes I'll have a little scenario happen where I get my tiramisu on. Partially, and this is sort of rationalization, partially because, well, what I tell myself was like, well, you know, I kind of need to see what it tastes like because there's some tiramisu. One of the best things I've ever tasted in my life was tiramisu. It was in Canada at this little,

Jeremy Stevens just got done cut and wait. We went to this, yeah, we weighed in, and we went to this Italian place. his homemade Italian place and the guy he fed us so much food it was just I was sick how much food we ate and then he goes I'm making you my term soon and I said no no I'm not he goes I'm making it for you know I'm just I'm gonna do it you just be quiet so it took like 40 minutes he like made he brings it out you know you know once you've eaten a lot you still think you can eat more but then after like 15 minutes you're like no I can't yeah yeah so it was like 40 minutes so now I'm just

thinking of myself, I cannot eat anymore. He brings out this termoste and he's like, hmm. And I forget what kind of accent he had, but he had an accent. It was either French or Italian. I think it was French. But, you know, he just put it in front of me. And I took a bite and it was definitely

one of the best things I've ever had. Dang, that's saying a lot. Because it's one thing if like you're hungry and the first time you had it kind of has that impression and it imprinted in your brain, but you're like basically the worst conditions to have that experience. Be so good. Oh, yeah.

Dang. Because everything else was good, too. So anyways, maybe I need to make a taramisu mou milk if that's even a thing. But wait, what is to, is there a teramisu, like a flavor to it? I don't know, man. I got to do research. I know. I got to do research.

Yeah. See, you know what that means? Gotta eat some more terramisu. Sure. Gotta do some market. Yeah. So speaking of milk, you can get milk. That's protein.

It's another dessert, which is as good as teramisu. Sure. It's as good as 94% of tiramisu. Because there's only 6% of TeraMusu's that are mind-blowing. The rest of them, you know, they're okay. Is it because of the coffee? I have no idea. I don't know any idea what's in Tarramuu.

I don't even know what it is, but it tastes good in 6% situations. Mulk, 100% taste good. How's this? Last night, speaking of milk, I ran out of milk. So do I just be a savage and put water in it? Because it wasn't that serious. Keep in mind, and this is literally true. I was eating steak, rice, broccoli,

and that was sort of it. What to drink or whatever. Yeah, I need a little something, right? But here's the thing. When you're eating steak, rice, broccoli, you don't need additional protein necessarily. Unless the steak is small, I get it. But at that moment, you don't necessarily need it.

I just wanted it. But I'm out of milk. So you see my conundrum, right? Is it kind of not worth it kind of situation? But I found some, you know, the one in the can, evaporated milk, you know, that thing? You ever tasted that before? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bro, it doesn't taste good. Yeah. It tastes pretty whack, actually. But you put it in the mulk. It makes it like more creamy. Oh, it was good. It was surprisingly good. Yeah.

So it was like a, it was like the same deal, the dessert, a little bit extra creamy. I put some peanut butter in it too. It was a dark chocolate one. So yes, Mulk, you are correct, 100%. Be little. I was talking to B little the other day. And I said, you know, I've only actually had the darkness, milk, a couple times.

You have. Yes. And he said, you got to try it again. It's really good. And so I went home and I was like, okay, I'm going to have the darkness. It's good. Oh, yeah. That's my main jam right now.

Oh, really? The darkness, you know. Yeah. So I've kind of disparaged that flavor a bit of milk. I've been like, well, you know, everything else is so great. And then there's chocolate, the darkness. Now I'm sort of thinking I underestimated the quality and the taste of, the darkness.

Okay, so you get milk. You can also get strawberry milk and chocolate milk for your kids or your kid, milk, so that they're healthy. For the strawberry one, I'm not saying do this, but do this. Just try it. How about this? Just try it. Add a half a banana

in it. Just do that. My report back. Did I tell you my daughter the other day she's in college and she sent me a Snapchat? Yeah. Sure. Yeah, you're on Snapchat. All good, dude. Yeah, well. Yeah, man.

That's closed scenario with the fam. Oh, close, sir. I got you. And anyways, because she's a 18-year-old girl, she sent me a snap of her shake. And it said, it said, you could just know exactly what it said. It said literally a peanut butter chocolate milkshake. That was the text written. Oh, yeah.

And then she called me. because I don't really check snap that often. Of course now. I don't think I've got it live for notifications. But then she said, you know, she sent me a text, check your snap. And I said, why? What is everything okay, you know? She's like, I literally just made the best.

It's literally, so anyways. I think it's complete hilarity, not 99% 100% hilarity, how witnessing secondhand, by the way, You navigate your way through the current trends of 18-year-old Snapchat lingo scenarios. It's very funny to me. And I'm sure I'm not the only one, by the way. Also, Jocka White Tea. Yes. Not forget about the Jocco White T.

You know, once you kind of deadlift all that weight or whatever, we tend to forget where, you know, how you got there. So let's just not forget that. Yeah. And plus winter is here, kind of. Sure. Kind of fall-ish. Yeah, fallish. But what that means is warm drinks.

There's one, well, there's two drinks to drink warm. Mulk warm. Sure. Like chocolate mulk warm. Where you're kidding, milk is better warm. Interesting. Yeah, and I did that experiment. It was a while ago.

Right when the worried kid came out, it's better warm. Or you can drink jaco white tea. Warm. It's good. If you haven't been already. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, you can get all these amazing.

I shouldn't say amazing. Amazing is one of those words that it started off as a joke because people would say, oh my gosh, amazing. But you're not amazed by this. Just say good or whatever. Unless that was a joke, so I'd say it as a joke, mocking everyone. But not you're serious. Yeah, you know how it rolls into your normal lingo after all?

It did that. Anyway, these items to keep you on the path, help yourself, help others, all that. OriginMane.com. That's where you get them. Also, Jocko is the store. It's called Jocco store. So you go to jocco store.com. What can you get there?

Rash cards. Rash guards. This is like representative of the path. You're on the path. You represent on the path. They're kind of like if people know, if you listen and you know, you see somebody representing in the wild,

but you know they're on the path. 100%. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Even at the gym, I'll see people wearing the rash guard. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of people wearing the ranch guard.

at our gym. Yes, you know, there is. And, yeah. And to me, that tells me 100%

like that person on the path. You know, when I see somebody that's wearing, you know, that's representing, I just give them

like a little head. A little something. Yes, sir. Me too. Yeah. Because it's not, it's not acknowledgement. It's unification,

right? Yes. It's like, I'm with you. Yeah. We're together. Oh, yeah.

We're in this fight. Oh, yeah. I feel it too, man. And I think that's a common thing, you know, Like, I'm sure Pete could tell you, too, like, if he was at the post office or wherever, and he sees, like, somebody with the, you know, there's some origin boots on or something like this.

He just kind of look at him. Look at the boots. Yeah. Yeah, man, 100%. If you get some, you know. T-shirts, truckers hats, beanies, hoodies. What else? Good stuff.

Decal's on there. We replaced some stuff. Yeah, just go jocco store.com. If you like something, hey, man, get something. Represent. Good spot. Don't forget about this podcast if you want to listen to it and when you want to know when it comes out, then you can subscribe to this podcast, wherever you subscribe to podcasts, which is a good call because Echo doesn't think you've subscribed to it yet.

I factually don't think that. Okay. There you go. So we don't need to say it anymore? No, uh, well, you know, I think it's a, people subscribe. No, it's a cool reminder. You just got trapped. It's a cool reminder for sure.

Yes, wherever you listen to podcasts. Yes, subscribe if you would, if you want fully. Also, speaking of subscribing, it's another podcast that people seem to like called grounded. Keeps you grounded. Kind of jiu-jitsu theme. It's not really a jiu-jitsu thing. It kind is. It's just more, what, exploring certain elements of life in a little bit more loose way.

I guess, yeah, that's a good way of talking about it. Yeah. It's just kind of a little bit more mellow-o version of the Jocko podcast. Yes. Just got to talk about stuff. But when you listen to it, like, it kind of feels like the feeling, right? Because you have a certain experience when you listen to a podcast. The feeling you get, because I listen to it.

I don't get feelings, but go ahead. We get feeling. It's kind of like, okay, a conversation is going on about a certain thing. and you kind of want to chime in more. Like that's how I feel, you know, like when I'll listen to it. It's like a conversation going on kind of with you. It's what it feels like. I don't know.

That's one of my prelim experiences with it. Unless called Grounded Podcasts. Same deal on iTunes, Google Play, all that stuff. Also the Warrior Kid Podcast. Don't forget about that one for the young ones. Don't forget about that one. And we have two in the bank. I got one more to prep and we'll get another three Warrior Kid Podcasts.

out there. So working it. And then don't forget about the warrior kid soap from Irishoaks ranch.com. If you're going to support a warrior kid, it's a good way to do it. He's running a business at age 13. No big deal. Yeah, with legitimate products, by the way. Because it's one thing, again,

I said this before, like, you know how your friend or your neighbor, whoever, they give you the soap wrapped in the little decorative plastics and ribbons, you know that soap? Not really, but continue. Well, they'll do it from time to time. And they're like, hey, here's your gift item, you know?

Soap. It's like, cool. That's a hint. You would think, but it's not real soap. It's real soap, technically. But like you use it and you're like, brother, this isn't for use. This is like a decorative piece.

You put on the sink on the side or something like that. It's like that's what it is. But this one. Shape like a Claymore Mine or something. Yeah. It should be. Usually it's shaped like a turtle shell or like a, you know, raindrop.

I don't know. Abrams tank. Typically no. Nonetheless, this Jocko soap. The one the Aidan makes is like good. It's you, it's soap soap. Like you use it. You're supposed to use it.

It's not a wall hanger. It's not a wall hanger. It's not a decorative piece. Got it. It's functional, as you say. It'll help you. Also, YouTube channel, if you're interested in the video. video version of this podcast.

If you have a smart TV, like hanging in your wall in your gym or in your house, whatever, office, whatever, you want to play this podcast, boom, put on the YouTube version. I say that because I hear that people are doing that. I've seen videos of people doing that. Me too. Which is pretty cool. Plus, you can see Echoes videos that he, well, it's up for debate whether he goes overboard or not. I think some that's clearly that it has gone overboard.

I think they're like, what do you call? Borderline, pushing the envelope. Oh, man. I see the perfect amount of modulation with fire explosions, sound effects. And cello. And cello. Yes. Yeah, check that out.

We also got psychological warfare. If you need a little mental support, that's me giving it to you through your MP3 platform. Then there's flipside canvas.com. This is visual support. run by my brother Dakota Meyer, who's making graphic art representation of the path. Cool stuff. Check that out, flipsidecanvas.com. Okay, we got some books.

Number one, the stress effect. Look, we got two more podcasts with Dick Thompson. He wrote a book. We'll cover it in the third podcast, but it's called The Stress Effect. If you want to get ahead, you can order it now. We've got it listed on the website. Why Smart Leaders Make Dumb Decisions and what to do about it. the stress effect. So check that out. Of course, we also have leadership strategy and tactics,

which is my new book coming out January 14th. I was flipping through the index. It's a heavily indexed book so that you can quickly find what you're looking for, but it's pretty cool when you are looking through the index. Here's some things. Communication with bosses, forms of complaints complex problems compromise condescension confidence construction sites contingency planning counseling countenance it's got some it's got some very interesting topics all about leadership check that one out then of course there are the warrior kid books one two and three to get kids on the path we got mikey and the dragons for the littler kid teach that to overcome fear.

We have the Discipline equals freedom, field manual, the first field manual, about how to be on the path. If you want to know about workouts, there's a bunch of workouts in there for you. If you want to know about martial arts, there's a bunch about martial arts in there. If you want to know about food, it's in there.

Sleep, it's in there. All that stuff's in there. And then there is the thoughts. And then there's extreme ownership. And the dichotomy of leadership. These are the two leadership books that I wrote with my brother Laif Babel. and if you need help with your leadership,

you can check those out. There's also Echelon Front. This is our leadership consultancy and what we do is solve problems through leadership. Go to Echelonfront.com for that. If you want to get some of that training online, check out EF Online. You don't need someone from Echelon Front

to show up at your business to give you the instruction. You can get it from EF Online, online training, interactive online training. Then we have the muster. The next muster is in Sydney, Australia, which is happening now. This is probably already done. So look at Extreme Ownership.com for details of the forthcoming musters in 2020.

And then we have EF Overwatch and EF Legion. This is where we are taking folks from the military and placing them into civilian companies that need leadership. and if you want to continue to hear from us, then you can interact with us on the interwebs. Dick Thompson is on Twitter, by the way. He is at HPS underscore CEO, and he also has a website H-P-S-S-Y-S-S-com. That's high-performance systems.

That's his company. So if you want to check out, or you want to interact with Dick Thompson, incredible human being, check him out. And then also we are on Twitter as well. We are on Instagram and we are on Ye Old Feisenberg. Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks once again to Dr. Henry, Dick Thompson

for sharing his wisdom on this program today. And more important, thanks to Colonel Thompson for his service and sacrifice to protect freedom and democracy around the world for his whole career. And thanks to the rest of our military men and women that are out there today doing the same for us now. And to all the police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and border patrol, secret service and all first responders, Thank you for protecting us here on the home front and to everyone else out there. We all want to do better. Everybody wants to be better.

Everyone talks about becoming better, but I'll tell you right now it doesn't just happen. In fact, it will not happen on its own. It will not happen on its own. You have to make it happen. You have to lead yourself. You have to make yourself. better by attacking every day in spite of whatever challenges you face every day go out there and get after it and until next time this is echo and jocco out