Jocko Podcast - 218: Pinned Down, Shot In The Head, Still Winning. With Ike Eisenbach

Episode Date: February 26, 2020

0:00:00 - Opening 0:08:40 – Charles Robert "Ike" Eisenbach. Silver Star. Vietnam. 2:17:39 – Ike's son, Matt Eisenbach. 2:28:17 – Final thoughts. 2:29:47 – How to stay on THE PATH. 2:47:50 – Closing gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 218. With Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. In the Marine Corps in Vietnam, first and second lieutenants made up about 65% of the Marine officers killed in action. Now, if you add captains, Marine Corps captains, O3s onto that, you get to about 85%. of all Marine officers killed in Vietnam were in these these relatively junior ranking officers.

These were the platoon and company commanders. And if you go to 1968, 1968 was the year with the highest number of Americans killed in action in Vietnam. 16,899. That's over 1,400. per month, 1,400 per month killed in action.

Now, to put that in perspective a little bit during the heaviest fighting when I was in Iraq, which was in 2006, there was 823 Americans killed. Now, obviously, every single loss is a tragedy. but during the Vietnam War, the tragedy was 20x that number, 20 times more people killed in 1968 in Vietnam than there were in Iraq in 2006. That is just a, it's just a different level. Now, in total, in Vietnam, there were 14,836 Marines killed. 1,387 of those were officers.

So that's basically 10% of the Marines killed were officers. And as I already said, 85% of them were these junior officers. Now, if you just run that math out a little bit, there's generally around going to be one officer in an infantry platoon. And there's going to be around 40 guys, which means that these officers make up for about 2.5% of Marines. And then, again, just by my estimation, just some rough math, that means that these young Marine officers

were about four times more likely to be killed than the enlisted guys. And if you think about that, you wonder why is that? How's that happened? Well, from a tactical perspective, first of all, the enemy knows what I say all the time, and that is that leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield. And because of that, the enemy aims to kill the leaders. And then on top of that, Marine officers are trained to be the first one on the ground, the first one that's off the helicopter, the first one that's out of the vehicle, the first one in the comment. that situation and then the last to leave the last to load the helicopter the last to get inside of an APC so right there your chances go up because you're in it longer and that might only be an extra 30 seconds but those moments when you're inserting you're extracting from the battlefield those are the most critically dangerous moments usually and then on top of all that you add to the fact that as an officer you generally lead from somewhere near the front of the patrol maybe you're behind the point man, maybe you're behind the point man and the first automatic weapons gunner. And since you're in the front of the patrol, well, that increases your exposure to booby traps. It increases your

exposure to ambushes. And then, of course, on top of all those things, when the time comes, you actually have to lead. You actually have to step up. You actually have to make decisions. you actually have to get your men to maneuver on the battlefield. That's what your job is. And by the way, that job description is not just some theoretical job description. This is what the young Marine officers in Vietnam actually did. And here's an example of what a young Marine. Corps officer did in Vietnam.

The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star to 2nd Lieutenant Charles Robert Eisenbach, United States Marine Corps for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action while serving as platoon commander with Company D, 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, First Marine Division, FMF, in connection with operations against the enemy in the Republic of Vietnam. On 4 July, 1968, 2nd Lieutenant Eisenbach was leading a reconnaissance patrol when the unit suddenly came under intense

small arms and automatic weapons fire from a numerically superior North Vietnamese army force and the lead elements were pinned down. Realizing the seriousness of the situation, he immediately directed the remainder of his men to maneuver to aid the belief. marines while he fearlessly moved forward to direct the fire of his men ignoring the enemy fire impacting around him he moved about the fire swept terrain deploying his

men into advantageous firing positions and directing their fire until he was seriously wounded although he was partially paralyzed and unable to move he continued to direct his men while simultaneously adjusting airstrikes and supporting artillery fire upon the hostile positions disregarding his painful injury, he resolutely controlled his unit throughout the remainder of the firefight. His heroic and timely actions were an inspiration to all who observed him and contributed significantly to the accomplishment of his unit's mission. By his courage, superb leadership, and unwavering devotion to duty in the face of great personal danger, second Lieutenant Eisenbeck upheld the highest traditions of the Marines.

Corps and of the United States Naval Service. Now when you hear an award right up like that, you kind of have to ask yourself, who are these men? Where did these men come from? Where did they learn this level of courage and bravery? And where did they learn to lead? Well, there's an honor to say that today we have one of those men with us. As a matter of fact, we have that man. The man whose Silver Star citation, I just read, his name is Charles Robert Eisenbach or Ike, as he was known. And he's here to share his story so that we can learn some of the lessons from him about leadership and about life.

Ike, thanks for coming on, appreciate it. My pleasure. Great to meet you. And luckily, your son and your daughter put together a bunch of information, kind of a timeline of your life, which made it really easy for me to prepare for this podcast, because that's normally what I have to go back and do. But Matt, appreciate you doing that. Not a problem. And it starts off where I always like to start off these podcasts. in the beginning.

So, sir, let's talk about your childhood. Let's talk about, like, what was young Ike doing? Where'd you come from? Young Ike wasn't around, but young Bob was or Bobby, because I was Bob or Bobby to the family before I went in the service. And about a week into the Naval Academy, Pleeb's summer, squad leader got us all out one night and gave us nicknames. Some stuck, some didn't.

Ike stuck. So that's the way that was. When Bobby was growing up, Bobby's dad was a career naval officer. And somewhere just to the right of Attila the Hun, I would say. He was a hard man. But we had an interesting childhood, moved every couple of years. Back and forth, the East Coast, West Coast, spent a couple of years in Lima, Peru, and ended up at Subic Bay in the Philippines, graduating from high school out there.

So it was an interesting childhood. So was he in World War II? He was a naval aviator. He out of the naval academy class of 36 flew PBIs. As he used to say, flying used to be fun. You know, he had put on the silk scarpe, go up for 45 minutes or so. And he said, then somebody invented this damn PBY, which stayed a law for 12 hours. And flying was not so much fun after that.

But that's what he did in World War II. He was in the Oongapo, in the Philippines, when the war. broke with his squadron, which I think was VP 101, they kind of got out just by the hair of their Chinny Chin, worked their way south down the Philippine Islands to Java, current-day Indonesia, and ended up in Perth, Australia. From there, he, I think he came back to the US for about a year and did whatever they did with folks in the World War II back then, and went back, picked up command of a seaplane tender the San Pablo and worked his way back up the specific with the MacArthur's group I think it was the Battle of Leite golf not as a combatant because there's seaplane tender isn't you know one or two five-inch

guns on it they didn't go out there and shoot it up with anybody we hope not no no yeah and they carried ab gas and the ammunition so that wouldn't have been a pretty picture. And after World War II, you know, came back. He didn't see me until I was a year old, I guess. And I didn't know what I looked like because he said my mom's pictures were just nothing blur. So, and we just picked up the family from there, started moving. Sister was born a couple of years later after I was born in Arlington, Virginia. I said we'd come back to Carnado once or twice. Before the bridge.

Before the Carnado Bridge. That's right. It was the ferry back then. And that was a big deal. Of course, when you're a little kid, it was fairies are fun, you know. When you're a parent, I guess, they're just a pain of the butt because you're trying to get back and forth to Carnado from San Diego on a time schedule. And so how long did he stay in for?

He was in for 26 years, had a heart attack out in the Philippines, his last duty station. And back in the 60s, a heart attack was, you were just automatic medical retirement. So they shipped him back to Newport, and he was retired probably up to about 27, 28 years. How old were you at this point? I was in first year of college, the University of Utah, when he had his heart attack. I went into the Naval Academy the following year. So when you were growing up, were you thinking about, I mean, obviously if you went to the University of Utah, did you want to go in the Navy at that point? Well, my dad being my dad, you know, he had prepped me for the Naval Academy.

You know, we had visited there when I was younger and everything like that. When I was about a junior in high school, he would start with the, well, Bobby, what are you going to do after you graduate from high school? And, you know, I didn't have a good answer. No answer was going to be just right. I knew what the answer should be. But eventually I started to say, well, Dad, I think I'm going to go to college. That kind of satisfied him for a few months, and then he came back and said, well, who do you think is going to pay for that? Well, that had me stumped for another couple of months.

But finally, by the end of my junior year, I said, Dad, you know, I think you're going to pay for it. And so that's kind of stopped that. So we got out to the Philippines, graduate from high school out there, had seven. 17 in my graduating class, all-time high for George Dewey Junior, Senior High School. And I still, you know, I wasn't going to go to the Naval Academy. I just wasn't in my scheme of things. So three of us got accepted to the University of Utah. I went to University of Utah because it was the one school that accepted me out of

high school. Not that I had bad grades or anything, I had decent grades and good recommendations, but That's just, you know, the way things worked out in the early 60s, this was 62 when I graduated from high school. So three of us went off from my graduating class off to Salt Lake City and were enrolled as freshmen at the University of Utah. There was a get-together of all the freshmen before schools officially started, and I don't know who was up there on the stage, but he was touting the diversity back then of their entering class. And so he'd have you stand up and say, and we have three gentlemen here from the Philippines, but just stand, please.

So us three gringoes kind of stood up. People were looking at us like, you're from the Philippines? Well, yeah, you know, technically we were. Which, you know, leads me to a really, what I thought at the time was quite a funny story. in Utah at the time that you couldn't get anything higher than a 3.2 beer. But, and, you know, you couldn't smoke unless you were older than 18, which you'd get tickets for if they caught you. The day being the Salt Lake City Police.

But somehow we liberated some beer one night, and we had a guy in the dorm who had a car, so we went up to Canyon Road that evening, and we were drinking beer up there. And next thing we know, there's a cop car right behind us, and the cop gets out. It says, all right, you guys, get out of the car. There was the three of us from the Philippines,

and a friend of ours whose dad was in the diplomatic corps. So he starts at one end and says, you know, where are you from? Philippines, sir. Next kid, Philippines, me, Philippines. And so he comes to the last kid, he says, I suppose you're from the Philippines too. And the kid says, no, sir, I'm from Saudi Arabia. So he said, you know, guys, if you go about half a mile up the road, we don't go that far up there.

So meanwhile, we had dumped the beer and everything. So, you know, that was just the deal of Salt Lake City. And then at what point did you start thinking I'm going to go to the Naval Academy instead of continuing with your career at the University of Utah? My career at the University of Utah was fading fast, shall we say. I had joined NROTC and really enjoyed that. but the rest of academics really weren't my forte. About Christmas time, my parents were back in Newport, Rhode Island, so I caught a train back to there for Christmas.

And that's when my dad and I had some serious talks about what I was going to do. And I said, okay, I promised him, I had to promise him, that I would apply to the Naval Academy. And I wasn't that keen on it, but I've got to keep the dad happy. happy dad and he kept that $50 a month spending money coming which typically was spent

long before it arrived so I applied to the Naval Academy took the SAT one weekend and it did surprisingly well and a couple of months later I get this little envelope in the mail and I'm thinking you know gosh

well actually it was a packet I guess it wasn't really an envelope and I was thinking I was afraid to open it in my roommate said you know if it was going to be if it's a rejection letter. It's probably just a simple letter. And he said, you get a packet. You're probably going to, you're probably end. So sure enough, I opened it up. I'd been accepted.

I had a presidential appointment from JFK. And it went off. I had some interesting experiences as an NROTC kiddo at Utah. And one came from a senior enlisted Marine there was a gunny. Just an outstanding gent. And he couldn't do enough for you. He organized the little programs. on the weekends where we go out and set up ambushes in the canyons up from Salt Lakes, or up from the University of Utah.

And it's really, so he kind of, I think that that's where I got the idea that I wanted to be a Marine from Gunny who's name, I can't remember. Was he an World War II guy? I don't think so. I think he was more of a Korean guy. Okay. You know, just outstanding. He couldn't do enough for you.

And he, in my speech class, he, in my speech class, I had to give a speech that used a prop. And so we had just had a class on the Thompson submachine gun. You can't imagine doing it, you couldn't do this today. No. So I had, hey, Gunney, can I borrow the Thompson submachine gun on Tuesday for my speech class? It'll be gone for a couple of hours. And I had a guitar case from somebody on my floor in the dorm that I carried.

in so I'm carrying I'm walking across campus with this guitar case with a Thompson submachine gonna didn't think a thing of it you know back then this again this was 60 fall of 62 got to the speech class and said you know kind of shut the class up I'm here to talk about you know my whatever I don't what I forget what word I used but I didn't my weapon here but my device here in the case of course everybody thought was gonna be guitar popp up with his Thompson sub-machine guy. The prof nearly keels over.

So I give my little spiel, it was very well received, I must say. I think I got an A for the speech, but he gave me a pretty good tongue lashing about bringing such a thing to a classroom. You know, much less. Probably nervous to give you any other grade. No, probably not, but, you know, it was fun. So when you, when you, how long was it between when you got your acceptance letter than when you actually showed up for a, please?

summer? I showed up for plebe summer on June 26th of 1963 and I probably got my acceptance letter in March, March, April, something like that. And were you mentally prepared for plebe summer? I believe I was, yes. In fact, I had pretty much come to all-stop academically at Utah when I got the acceptance letter because they had had my first semester grade. and that was all they were going to evaluate.

So I kind of ditched college for the next four or five months. There was a joke I heard later in the ROTC unit was later that they joked that the way to get in the Naval Academy was to flunk out of the University of Utah. Oh, no. But I did okay there. I struggled with academics at the Naval Academy, but I looked at it more as a leadership laboratory, I guess. And then, so. So now it's 1963, you said, when you started there? Started, yeah, yeah.

Are you guys even thinking about Vietnam at this point? No, we're not. I can't even recall, you know, hearing about Vietnam. At Utah, that fall, we had, you know, heard and not part of, but, you know, the whole deal had been about the Cuban crisis. That was all the news that fall. We followed that pretty closely, but no, I don't think we had heard. about Vietnam at all.

Yeah, I mean, things were not really escalated there at all yet. No, not at that time. It's no surprise. And you were in a, I mean, you had some pretty notable people in your, in your Naval Academy class. Well, this is true. I became friends early on with a fellow who by then, at that time, went by Larry, Larry North. He now goes by Ollie. one of my friends in the class after that was Jim Webb he was a boxer I was a boxer

North was a boxer a bunch of the guys I hung up with were boxers we had a fellow name Ray Smith that later on became a two-star seal I believe the first one to carry two stars I'm not sure about that but good guy captain of the track team had Pete Pace and the class first Marine to ever be chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, four stars. Pretty heavy-duty company.

Yeah, and then what about, was Staubach with you guys too? Stonbach was in the class of 65. It was two years ahead of us. But our plebe year, the first year there, was the year he won the Heisman Trophy, which of course argued well for plebs, because after a football game,

If you won, you'd have carry-on that weekend. And if you beat Army, you got carry-on, meaning you didn't have to brace up in the halls and, you know, chop around in the halls. And you didn't have to sit on the last couple inches of your chair in the mess of it. And I know you got another guy that have got some information on a guy by the name of Tex. Tex Harkins, a fellow from Texas, needless to say. Was my roommate Pleeb, summer, and Pleeb year.

one of several, met him when I first came into the room with a sea bag full of gear that I now had a stencil. He'd been there a couple of hours and introduced himself as Maurice. Well, I did a double take, because I didn't think Maurice was going to fly. And sure enough, a couple hours later, when I was worn out from hearing about how great things were in Texas, you know, he became text. And tech stuck, he still text to this day. Good guy. And there's some note about him trying to kill a firstie?

That wasn't text. Oh, that was North. I stopped North going into this firsties room early morning when we had window closing detail in the winter. You'd have to go in and close the upper class windows. And he was headed off to this first class room with a bayonet. Banet. And he was going to do this guy yet. This guy was horseshit beyond belief.

North you can't do that You'll get in serious trouble, buddy Yeah, you can't kill someone You're going to get in serious trouble That's good advice right there Pleibier was a little different back then I think Not quite the same anymore And then

So you talked about boxing And were you a boxer before you showed up there Negative, no, no You just got into it when you were I was not a particularly athletic Young man But boxing was something that most of Everybody started out from Brown Zero with no experience.

So that's kind of what I did, Pleeve Summer, and took it on to Pleeb year and boxed Pleeve year, some youngster year, which is sophomore year, and second class year, junior year. First class year, senior year, I was in academic trouble, shall we say. So I wasn't on the boxing team, but I did run the boxing sub squad. where freshmen and sophomores ended up if they failed boxing as part of the PT curriculum, you'd have to go to a sub-squad. This was for every sport until you could, you know, the leader of the sub-squad passed you so you'd get a D. Because you couldn't have an F at the Naval Academy.

Did they make you, I know guys that I know that went to Naval Academy, they made them box for a semester, they made them wrestle for a semester, they made them do judo for a semester. Did they make you guys do wrestling and judo? We did wrestling, boxing. Part of the PT curriculum was mandatory. You had two years of boxing lessons, two years of wrestling, two years of gymnastics. Okay.

And four years of swimming, and they fed in all kinds of other things, as squash and golf and track. But, yeah, first two years you had some mandatory things that you had to pass as part of the. The PT curriculum didn't have judo Well Still boxing and wrestling is an awesome base to have as a fighter

And then you throw judo in there Yeah, you're pretty good to go Yeah, we are And then what I know you did some cornering For some of the guys, you know, when they were boxing I did That was my senior year, first class year

And North was in the finals The boxing finals You could win your Navy N, your letter, in boxing, even though it was not an intramural sport so much, but it was more of a club sport, but we didn't box against other institutions. They do now, but it was all within the brigade, and we'd have champion, we'd have, you know,

quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals. And I was in North Corner the year he won his end, boxing against another well-known Naval Academy graduate Jim Webb, who I think you've had on your program before. Indeed. And shall we say it was interesting. Webb had a lot of experience boxing.

He'd boxed Golden Gloves, I believe, before he came to the Naval Academy, or at least city and county-type boxing and state boxing from wherever he was, his dad was stationed at the time. But he and North never, They were two folks that were bud heads, I think, their entire careers, whenever they would run into each other, certainly at the Naval Academy, and certainly when they were boxing. But it was an interesting night. So this is a legit grudge match? I think that probably would be fair to say. And how to go down? North won, much to everybody's surprise. North was the street fighter and the Webb was a more polished boxer. Yeah, that's, I mean, if you boxed, if you boxed certainly at the Golden Gloves level, even at like the county level, you're a, you're a really good boxer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's, that's a, that's a big achievement. Well, that somehow there's been, you know, people have looked backwards and it, that always comes up when you start talking about North End or Webb, you know, was the boxing match. Everybody knew it was a fairly good distance? It did, the distance being a long. only three rounds, you know, back then. Yeah. Are they two-minute rounds or three-minute rounds?

Because sometimes they have amateurs-a-minute rounds. I think they were two-minute rounds. So six minutes of fury. Boy, I'll tell you that, yeah. And I know wrestling can wipe you out in, you know, five, six minutes, but we were spent when, you know, at the end of a boxing match. You were spent. All you could do to pull yourself out of the ring.

And what did you, like, for box? for you since you were new to boxing and you weren't much of an athlete before, what do you think you took away from boxing? Well, don't quit. I went to the semifinals my junior year got knocked out of the ring by that guy, by my opponent, got back up, got back in the ring, took the standing aid count, and finish the fight. And I know I met a Marine officer a year later when I was you know, on service selection night when I was able to select the Marine Corps. And he said, gutsyest thing I've ever seen. Well, thank you, sir. But, you know, I learned you don't quit.

It ain't over until it's over, you know. And it was over that night for me. And you mentioned from the Gunny that you worked with at the University of Utah that you were thinking Marine Corps when you showed up at the Naval Academy. Was that, did you stick with that the whole time? I did. You know, my dad being career in Navy. maybe I knew I would I could never fill his footsteps and he just he was perplexed why I would want to go Marine Corps he he asked me straight out one time I think it was a

first year a senior said mommy what is it that the Marine Corps second lieutenant has that a Navy incident doesn't have you know they got three hot meals a day a nice bed with sheets to sleep in so what is it Marine Corps second lieutenant got that a Navy incident doesn't have I looked at him and said, yeah, I think it's respect. Ooh. Shots fired. Shut me.

Shut the old man down. Wow. Yeah, that's definitely, that's definitely shots fired for sure. And my grandpa was not somebody you would probably want to say that, too. I don't know about the time, though. He was not the nicest guy. He just was, like I said, a little to the right of Attila Hunt. And there was a couple of ways to do things.

There was his way, and there was everybody else's. He took me out for dinner before I, you know, got on the train to head off from the Naval Academy from the Providence, Rhode Island, where he could catch the train back then. And he said, Bobby, you graduate from the Naval Academy, and I'll buy you the car of your choice. Thank you, Dad. Four years later, I'm getting close to graduation. I said, Dad, you remember when I went. When I left for the Naval Academy, you told me you'd buy me the car my choice if I graduate. He looked at me and said, did you get it in writing?

No. And as you, as the other thing that's unfolding is it's in 1963, when you show up there, hey, I'm going to be a Marine, but you, there's no war going on. Now we fast forward. It's 19, well, 1967. No. And Vietnam is now, I mean, Vietnam really started escalating like 1960. 1965, 1966, even more, 1967.

I mean, you guys now know in the Marine Corps what you're signing up for. There are no mystery. Oh, no, no. We know precisely what we were signing up for. There was a board, I think this has been referenced in other places and books and articles, a board of, you know, those who've gone before, those have died, and it was starting to fill up with, you know, pictures and names from Vietnam. So, yeah, we understood that.

But, you know, I'm sure Ben, come back yourself that, as you know, it's not going to happen to you. Maybe the guy on the left or the right, but not you. You're bulletproof, at least in your own mind. And so, you know, you're worried about maybe getting maimed. I don't think we even worried about that. You worried about possibly getting killed, but then, hey, there's nothing after that. Your worries are done. And then your family picks up on it.

Or you thought you might get a little flea-ficker wound or something like that and get a purple heart. But you never figured, you know, you might come back without limbs or otherwise, you know, markedly impaired. That just never entered your mind. I'm sure if it did, you would have been useless to your unit. The guys that are all going for the Marine option at the Academy, it's competitive, right? It's like, it's hard to get that. Is it hard to get that Marine option coming out of the Academy? Well, I can't speak for today because today they'll have like 250 guys and gals going to Marine Corps.

In my day, in the years, in the 60s and before, there was a certain percentage of a class that could go Marine Corps. So we had some just about 900 guys in my class and we had 86 slots. And they were divided in half, they took half from the upper half of the class grade wise and half from the lower. So you could get in the Marine Corps, say, and being the middle of the lower half of your class when a fellow who was in the lower part of the upper half of his class wouldn't have got selected because those, you know, 43 slots were gone. and I got slot 86

when I went down for service selection night. I was sweating bullets, but I got it. In fact, a good friend of mine who was a couple of numbers behind me offered me two grand for my spot if I would give it up

because he wanted to go to Marine Corps, and I knew how much he wanted to go to Marine Corps. I said, you know, I can't do that. You know that. He said, yeah, I know that. But it was competitive in that respect. It was, you know, academics played a lot. Big part in it.

Yeah, the Marine Corps does that with the way they give your jobs in the Marine Corps too, like coming out of the basic school. I know they take like the class and break it up into thirds and like the first, you pick your job. So you can be the number one guy and you might, or if you get the number one guy, you can get your job. But you might be the top of the next third down and you get your selection. Then the top of the last third and you get your selection. So it's a way that they distribute to people so that not. Not every single, the top of the class goes, everyone's goes infantry.

And whatever job is at the bottom, we get a bunch of people that weren't the highest performers. Right, right, exactly. The Marine Corps is smart. It's about the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps. Marine Corps understands that it's about the Marine Corps because they haven't lasted this long without being able to put up a good fight, both, you know, in the nation's wars and back in the D.C. area when the time comes along for keeping the Marine Corps of the Marine Corps. And now is your dad talking to you any more about looking at you and saying, hey, son, there's a war going on. And he's, you know, obviously being in the Navy in World War II, he knows exactly what the Marine Corps does. And is he having any more talks to you and saying, hey, you might want to think about this a little bit more?

No, not a one. You know, he kind of respected my decision, I guess, and just, you know, let me go with it. Like I say, he's an interesting person. I got back to Bethesda after I was shot. I spent 12 months in Bethesda. see me once, which for him was probably enough. And actually for me it was enough, too. But I, you know, I later on found out that, you know, he obviously was affected, you know, by my being moved. I kind of joked in him one day. One day we were out, you know,

barbecue and some hot dogs or something. And I said, Dad, you almost collected on my life insurance. He said, what are you talking about, Bobby? I said, well, Dad, you know, you almost got that 10, 10 grand of, you know, servicemen's group life insurance from my demise in Vietnamics. Don't talk like that. That was it. That's the affection you got from the old. That was the, yeah, that was the understanding and the compassion that I got from bed. So you get done with the Naval Academy, you graduate, and now you're going to the basic school.

Right, right. Do you remember what rank you were at the academy? How close to the bottom were you? Oh, I think I was a, since on service selection, I went down in groups of 50, which is why I was sweating, getting a place in the Marine Corps, because, you know, they could have all been gone by the time. I got down there in the last group of 50, because I was in the last group of 50. Oh, there you go.

Answer side question. You weren't anchor, man, so you didn't. No, I wasn't anchor. I didn't collect any money. I didn't get the dollar from everybody, but... Oh, is that what the last happens with the last guy? That's right. Allegedly.

I've never confirmed, but the last person in the class gets a dollar from every classmate. So you can walk off with, you know, six, seven, eight, nine hundred bucks. The spot of distinction, I guess, or not. Well, we were... You still graduated. So I guess at that point, it doesn't matter. And you got paid. My class, we were kind of put out because our anchor man was a foreign national.

I think from a country that didn't even have a Navy. So we were like, do we even want to fork over this buck for this guy? And of course we did because that was just, that's a tradition. It's always been that way. So you show up at TBS and now it's 1968? No, no. Graduated in June of June 7th of 67, and I put in for the first basic school class that was forming, which is 1st of July.

That was the beginning of the fiscal year back then, July 1st. So, you know, I had a few weeks at home, boom, right back down to Quantico to start the basic school. Okay, so you started in the summer, sometime in the summer of 67. Right. And then how well did the Naval Academy prepare you for the basic school? I think pretty well. Of course, we didn't ever get into the tactical side of things at the Naval Academy for, for the Marine Corps but you know you were in good shape you obviously could wear your

uniform whichever it was a Marine Corps or Navy uniform well because you've been doing it for the past four years and I had gone to jump school between on my summer leave between junior and senior year and you know the physical requirements for that were pretty demanding you know we got down to Fort Benning in August after Cruz and man that baby is hot that red clay in Georgia reflects that heat up and You sweat. They saw those midshipment coming. And of course, you know, we were, we'd be running around with Navy chairs and any

cadre fellow, you know, a staff sergeant or something could pop up and, you know, halt us and drop us for push-ups and everything, which we loved. I don't think there were any UDT or SEAL groups going through when we went through, but they just ate the program up, you know. Needless to say. Yeah, I went to, I was one of the, eventually SEALs stopped going to air, school at Fort Benning, Georgia, and started running it in-house. Okay.

But, yeah, I was lucky enough to go to airborne school. And, yes, the instructors down there definitely appreciated our presence and let us know that. Sure they did. It's ridiculous, too, because we're coming out of, you know, buds literally a week or whatever. You know, we travel across country. We show up there. So we're in really good shape. So there was nothing that they could do to us.

Exactly. That would hurt us. And we just would. And, of course, that encouraged guys to be, you know, wise asses. And, you know, I'm going to make you do pushups. You can't make me do enough pushups. So there's that, that whole thing going. And now that you're at TBS, though, well, now you know exactly what's going to happen.

You know you're going to go to Vietnam. Right. Regardless of your MOS that you came out with, of course, I wanted to be in 03 and most of my friends did too. Oh, yeah, that's a good point. So it's not actually guaranteed. So I'm thinking you still have to do a service selection inside or whatever job selection inside the Marine Corps. Exactly, exactly. So you put in for your top three and you hope you get number one, of course.

And most guys did. You're pretty savvy about your capabilities and your likes and dislikes by the time you get to TBS, I think, regardless of where you come from. You know, we had a lot of recent ROTC grads and recent OCS grads and the Naval Academy grads, and you couldn't distinguish who came from what pipeline. You know, we were all pretty motivated folks back then. And I'm sure all the instructors must have been guys that were coming off of tourism. They were just back from their tours of Vietnam. They were all captains or above.

Yeah, very sharp guys. They didn't pick slackers to be instructors at TBS. And how, I mean, compared to the Naval Academy, was it just a totally different vibe of seriousness because they know exactly what they're preparing you guys for? It sure was. you know, you're out on problems, daytime problems, nighttime problems. It didn't matter when they ended. You know, if you got back and turned in any gear you checked out at 3 a.m. in the morning,

you're still up, you know, at O'Dark 30 the next morning. You didn't do that at the Naval Academy. You know, you had study hour and stuff like that. But now, there was a definitely heightened level of seriousness at the basic school. Again, all the instructors were giving you straight poop, you know, because they had just come back from there, or recently back. My platoon commander, we had a platoon of about 50 guys. He was a captain, two silver stars, well-decorated, big guy.

You know, they don't take, again, Marine Corps looks at you all kinds of ways. They look at how you did at basic school, your height versus your weight, some other factors, obviously other factors before they assign you someplace, like, If you think you want to get to 8th and I and be part of that in Washington, D.C., you know, you've got to be like six feet or higher and taller or whatever. Because, you know, they're sending the cream of their crop because, you know, you're representing the United States Marine Corps in front of the public on a regular basis. And rightfully so.

You know, all the services do that. You know, the guards at Arlington aren't, you know, four feet eight and sloppy. You know, they're all standing tall and looking good and very professional. needless to say. How hard was it to, you know, when you started picking your job, obviously you said you wanted to be an infantry infantry platoon commander. How much competition was there for that? Did you have guys that were like, oh, I'm not doing that.

I'm not doing that job. You can have it. Was there competition for it? I think there was only competition. We didn't feel competition, you know. Obviously you had to do well on the O course and all the different evolutions. and you had to pass the PRT, and you know, you had to do well in land navigation, daytime, nighttime, do well on the rifle range and pistol range.

But that was just part of the competition of TBS. You were always competing with your classmates. Classmates. Yeah, your classmates at TBS. But, you know, a lot of guys wanted to go infantry, and obviously not everybody was going to go infantry. I don't know what the selection process was, but I had a good friend from the Naval Academy. Not really a good friend, but he was the kind of guy that would go around and say,

are you going to go infantry too also, meaning also? And, of course, you had no idea. It depends on what the Marine Corps, their selection process was, and whether you made or not, and he ended up not getting infantry, which was probably a good move for him and the Corps. Is there anything that you had struggles with when you were going through the basic school? Oh, other than maybe, you know, the O-course or something like that, but that was just, you know, an eight-minute struggle.

And as long as you were doing the best you could, you know, they didn't beat you up too hard or mark you down. But no, I didn't really feel that there was anything that was going to hold me back. And they're training you with all the tactics, small unit tactics, naval gunfire, call. calling for fire, are you feeling like, were you feeling like you were getting good preparation for the battlefield? I did. What the basis school does is teach you everything you need to know as a company level officer, you know, from your time as a second lieutenant up to captain.

After that, there's another school. There's, I'm not sure what it's called, but, you know, for senior captains and new majors. But, yeah, I felt well prepared. They had a Vietnam village built up in Quantico, staffed, of course, by Vietnamese. Duh. And, you know, you practice that. You know, you did helicopter operations. You did, you know, walk-in insertions.

You did land navigation, daytime and night, which I'm sure you know is a different, a horse of a different color. It is indeed. But apparently was pretty proficient. Like right away, it's seventh in the class. Not first like Webb did in his class, but that's okay. Seven was good enough for a letter accommodation coming out of the basic school. And that's seven out of class of how many? About 240 or so.

Okay. So it seems like you were better at the field craft than you were at the academics. Well, this is true. In fact, you know, I got shot in the head, and I have classmates who said, who still say to this day, we think that made you smarter. because I did go on to graduate school and get a master's in a PhD, you know, after I was retired out of the Marine Corps. And maybe there's something to that. I don't know. So then, so the basic school is, what, six months long?

About five and a half then, yeah, they were shortened it up. Five and a half months long. You get done with the basic school. You get infantry. Right. And then what happens? I got selected for reconnaissance replacement training, which was a couple of weeks in Southern California, a week at Pendleton, again, for more supporting arms training in artillery,

that sort of thing there. And then a week at Coronado for learning about naval gunfire support. Did you use the board, what is they called that, the smoke board? Did they have the little fake terrain setup that you could call for fire on? I went to the Marine Corps Naval Gunfire School and they had this turrets. terrain board. And it was kind of like a, it must have been built in like 1975. And when you'd call for fire, if you got in the right spot, little smoke would come up through that spot. And it was like you were looking at, you know, through binoculars somewhere. It was pretty good. No, I never saw

anything like that. We were actually firing real live artillery at Pendleton. And at the Naval Gunfire support school, we had this big board, but it was, it was blue. It was ships in the ocean, per se. But that was interesting because I did one night get to fire the cruiser Providence in Vietnam, which was fun. They couldn't use their six-inch guns because they're too flat. So they used their five-inch, you know, bringing an indirect fire on. We had a bunch of lights below us. I think folks were trying to move their troops around the middle of the night.

but and we you know this was on call for us so we used it so you got to use the naval gunfire I did and I got like a dream of mine ever since I sat there on that little terrain board well it was a dream barsoor and uh you know I got to use my bravo zulu term at the end of it to like them for their fire

the real bravo zulu yeah that is outstanding that is outstanding I never even I never even got close to even remotely thinking about calling for naval gunfire for real. I probably weren't too close to, you know, big waterways. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know, there's always that thing where guys want

to fire, you know, a bunch of different weapons in combat, right? And I had one guy get shot in the chest, but it hit him in the chest plate. So I wasn't with him, but they actually had video of this. So he gets shot in the chest plate. And so he's all mad. He's mad, and he shoots a bunch of machine gun rounds.

and someone goes, hey, shoot your pistol at him too. And he goes, he looks at him like, why? And he says, we'll make you feel better. So he pulls his pistol out and shoots that too. And I'm sure if you would have had naval gunfire, who knows? Maybe he would have gone for it. I don't know about the pistol. You know, when we fired the 45 for qualification down at TBS,

I think our instructor actually told us, you know, in combat, if this is all you've got, you know, you're probably just better off. throwing the pistol at him than shooting at him because you have a better chance of hitting him, you know, the bad guy on the other end. Did you guys not have infantry officer course back then? Because that's like a, you know, multi-month course now after TBS. We did not. No, you are considered good to go, you know, after graduation on TBS.

Yeah, now they have a 10-week officer or infantry officer training course, which I think would have been outstanding. but we had what we had. So you go to this recon course, and so now are you getting jump, jump pay and all that stuff now? No, you know, even when it was jump qualified, if you're not in a unit that maintains your jump qualification in the core, you don't get jump pay.

In fact, we've got to Vietnam and first recon battalion. There was only one company that, maintain their jump status. That was Charlie Company and they were the force recon company. They did the same thing as the battalion recon companies did, but they did maintain their jump status. So they got jump paying every extra 75 bucks a month, which was a big deal back then. So you end up going through this recon training and then what happens? And is it time to deploy to Vietnam? It's time to get on a bus and head up to Air Force Base in San Bernardino.

Don't know the name of it, but, yeah, flew over to Okinawa. Spent a week there where they kind of dribbled you in. Are you with, are you with all different branches of servicemen? Are you just with Marines at this point? Just with Marines at this point, yeah, going over. Flew on Saturn Airlines, I believe, you know, a non-sched, non-skid airline to Okinawa. Oh, just like a civilian, was there civilian, what are they called, hostesses, stewardesses on that? Stewart is, oh yeah, yeah, a few stews.

Flight attendants. Flight attendants. But typically you wouldn't have anything to do in Okinawa while you waited for your assignment to be flown into country. But when we got to Okinawa, there was about five of us that were traveling together. We had been to the Recon Replacement Training together. And we were just milling around the receiving area after we got off to, the plane and somehow I got up above somehow higher up than the crowd below me and I'm watching and there's this young Lance Corporal with a clipboard he's going to each of the second

lieutenant said I had you know my buddies and asking him some questions and they're going no no so I said this poor kid yeah I've been in this position before so I'll find out what's going on so he he what he needed his uh his uh company gunner something had sent him down he needed a signature from an officer to run three plane loads of Marines through that little program on the on okinao where they you fam fired the m16 because never none of us had ever seen an m16 much less fired one before we went into vietnam and so you had fan fire familiarize yourself fire the m16 before you went in the country made sure all your shots were up to date and all your paperwork was up to date. So I said, sure, you know, so I signed for him. I'd have to get up

every night, every other night while I was there for about a week, meet an incoming plane at about 2 a.m. in the morning, find the senior, an illicit guy on the plane, form these guys up, take him over to a barracks, had him draw a mattress, you know, flop down, told him to be, you know, had to be out next morning at 7.30 in the morning, go to chow, and then we start them through the little program that you had to go through before you could get in country. So, I met my three planes in a little more than a week's time. I was desperately afraid my officer buddies were going to rotate into country before I did. It didn't happen.

We all went off together. But anyway, it was an interesting week. Would you shoot in the basic school, the M14? M14, you know. How did you feel about the M16 when you got it? I loved it. Lightweight, ammo's lightweight. Unfortunately, most Marines in Vietnam found out that they had pitted barrels.

And sure enough, I had to trade my, you know, one two after I got there, for one that was a newer one with a good barrel in it. That's crazy. You guys didn't even get, didn't even shoot that weapon until you got to Okinawa. That's right. And then was the other training course that were giving you like basic like preparation for Vietnam, jungle navigation or something like that? In Okinawa?

Yeah, you were just, you were just kind of on your own until you rotated in. Ksan was getting hot then. And so we used to go to some three shack, operations shack of some outfit on Okinawa and hear the morning brief about K-San and kind of look at each other and think, do you want to get sent there? No. No, no, no. So then you spend that, so you spend that one, is it a week in Okinawa?

Yeah, by a week. And now you guys all fly over to Vietnam. Right. And where do you fly into? Danang. And then when you get there, what's that process like? Like, first we get there in the evening, it's dark, again, somebody met you, took you off somewhere, you grabbed a mattress, flopped you down in some barracks at the end of the runway, and you slept until the next morning with all this F-4s taking off above you. No sleep. Did you have that stereotypical moment that people talk about, which is, you know, the guys that are going home, the guys that are rotating home after their year, and you see that, the contrast between the,

the new guys showing up with their brand new gear and the old guys that are heading home and they look like they've been through hell and back? No, never saw anybody that was going home, you know, down at the Nang airfield. You know, didn't seem. We arrived sometime in the middle of the night and it was dark and we had no. You know, you have that little kind of internal feeling of impending doom or dread or something. I don't know what it was. Maybe it was just your adrenaline.

and you know that you're finally going to get in country and you know what what's going to you know you're going to you know you're going to take incoming rounds while you're landing no answers no you know it's a normal landing you get off the get off the aircraft you know somebody meets you officers this way illicit guys that way you know drew a your mattress tried to sleep for the rest of the night do you know where you're heading at this point you knew the division you were going to first or third third was up north uh in north uh north uh north I-Corps first was down around the Denang area. I was going to the first division.

You didn't even know if you're going to get to the recon battalion. You went to division. The next day, we went to division. We got to introduce the commanding general for some reason. And we were required to sit down, gave us a big book, Rules of Engagement. You had to read that, sign that you'd read it and understood it. And then you got sent off to your unit. And about three of us were lucky enough to go to the reconnaissance battalion.

The other two, they went off to regular grunt units, infantry units. So when you get your assigned to recon and then what are you, do you guys drive up there? Do you take a helicopter up there? How do you get up to your actual unit? The actual unit, first recon battalion was located just below and across the street from division headquarters. So it was easy. So, yeah, you'll walk down there. And as I said before, we had the one company, Charlie Company, that wasn't with the battalion in Denang.

It was forward-based at Foo-Bai. They're the ones that kept up their jump status. And one of my buds, who had gone through the Recon Replacement Training, I was slated to go up there because I was single, up to the forced reconnaissance company. And he asked if I would mind giving that position to him if it was okay with the colonel because he was married and expecting their first kid. I needed that extra 75 bucks. I was just happy to be there. I said, sure. Take it if that's what you want.

That's no big deal. So he went up to the force company and food buy. I stayed there with the battalion in Danang. And then what was the, you know, what was checking in like? I mean, you're showing up there. You're a new guy. These guys have been in country. And this is something that, you know, always surprised me about Vietnam,

is that you guys would rotate, well, just one individual. Individual real placements. Right. Whereas for me, all my deployments were. The whole unit is going in and the whole unit's leaving. And so that's got to be a weird thing showing up as a new guy. And there's a bunch of people that have been there for between, I guess, between two days and 360 whatever days. Right, you are.

I mean, my working premise when I got to Vietnam was that anybody who was there a day longer than I had been there, was a day smarter about the situation, a day more experience, and by God, I was going to listen to this person, you know. But, interesting enough, my platoon wasn't even there. They were aboard ship with the afloat of battalion. And we all, Rinkar always kept a battalion afloat off the coast of Vietnam. They could jump into an operation, you know, at a moment's notice, give or take. And they always had a reconnaissance platoon with them, and they apparently used them pretty much as point for the battalion. was not a plum job. But my, my platoon with its outgoing platoon commander, it was aboard ship, so I didn't see them for two weeks. I just, I had nothing to do except I got tasked to sit on court marshals and, you know, I had unit grades, quarterly grades or something, something like that

were due. I had to go through all my guys' service record books and give them a grade for their performance over the last quarter without knowing and without having seen them. And this was going to be used for promotions. So I did the best I could. You know, I took in the service record book, how long the guy had been in the core in country, had he been wounded, what was a level of education? You know, I had to sign up a few points and then, you know, like one to ten. And then I added everybody's points up and I had a grade to give them and recommended the top three for promotion or something like that.

It was crazy, but I had to do it. That's what you did. We were just complimenting the brilliance of the Marine Corps. And then you got to tell a story like that. Okay, so then did you eventually get flown out to the ship to be with them? No, they came back. They rotated back. They were just filthy, dirty.

I think they came right from the bush. And the lieutenant, I got to talk to for about 10 minutes because he was like overdue to rotate out of country. So he just wanted to get a shower, get on a uniform, get back down to the, bang and fly out. What pearls of wisdom did he give you in those 10 minutes? He told me who the best guys in the platoon were and who I think he thought I might want to peep my eye on.

And that was about it. No tactical advice on anything. No, no tactical advice on anything. Well, it's interesting. I always say that leadership is the most important thing. And what he was trying to give you is a heads up on who is like, who's the best guys and from a leadership perspective. That's interesting.

He just wanted out. I didn't just want to get it. But I wasn't a hooch. Yeah, you know, with other lieutenants, second and first lieutenants who'd been there, you know, anywhere from maybe two months to four months. And they were filling me in on how the deal operated. Was there anything that surprised you that you were hearing from those guys? Anything that, you know, you said, oh, I didn't really expect that? Only thing that really surprised me, I think, once I got into recon and got working with them, was that occasionally.

you had to go out far enough and that you weren't under anybody's artillery fan. You know, you weren't under, rarely were we under the 105 fan and the 155 fan usually. And then there was Army 175s, which were very scary things because the word was they could click out a, they could, you know, bump out a click when they fire these things. They were big. We flew over them one time, and I looked at them, I swear they drooped. You know, 175 artillery base, they were huge. I swear they drooped.

And then, of course, if you were out past the 175 fan, you had nothing but air to call on. And that took about 20 minutes to get there. And pilots never really trusted ground officers to, you know, to bring them in correctly. So they'd always want to fly out an aerial observer, you know, in one of these little spitkit planes, you know, Paller into back and I don't know what they were OV-10s I think

But that was kind of surprising because But the artillery over there was fantastic. Great, you know They were on call 24-7 obviously Best thing I ever fired was Marine Corps self-propelled 8 inch They were like a big tank with an 8-inch you know fired an 8 inch shell. Boy, they were accurate to the endth degree unbelievable. But basically, artillery was excellent over there. Saved our bacon many a time.

So when you, it's been two weeks, your guys get back, you take over to the platoon commander. What's your intro meeting with the guys in the platoon? What did you say to him? Just kind of introduced myself. Probably told them the same thing I just told you. If you've been here one day long than I have, and you've got a better idea or I think you do, talk to me. You know, I'm here to listen. You know, I want you all to get back home.

obviously, you know, intact and not tacked in, as we used to say. In fact, the five and a half months, I was a platoon commander. We only took one serious casualty, and that was me. And I wouldn't have it any other way. We were extremely lucky, but we were also pretty good, you know. We didn't do dumb things. There were folks who would, like, harbor at night near a trail and hope bad guys would come down it just so they could try to set up a hasty ambush.

No, no, no. Once your troops knew that you were serious about their welfare, they would have done anything for you. And, of course, you'd do anything for them. I had 23 Marines of my platoon, maybe a couple of corpsmen. They rotated in and out, according to the will of the Italian aid station. The finest young men ever settled. I know most platoon commanders say the same thing, but these kids were average age, 19. average education, ninth grade, you know, but they were top, they were primo. If I'd have told them that we've been tasked to fly up to Hanoi, drop in with a river raft and paddle up and free the folks out of the Hilton, they would have been right there. They were just great kids. What was the, what was kind of normal? Well, first of all, what was your first operation that you went on with these guys? Well, first thing that I did was turned out to be a Tet 1968 broke on my first snap-in patrol.

They tried to get you on a snap-in patrol or two before you started leading your guy, so you're just there to observe and learn. And your patrol leader might be an E3. In my case, it was an E-5, Sergeant E-5. And we got up this ridge line. And after crossing this path, it looked like the I-5 of people paths in Vietnam. It was smooth. And we got up into a bad bunch of brush and some rocks. And we were looking up the ridgeline.

And pretty soon, four NVA come, poodling down this highway. It's four. And then there was eight. Then there was 16. 32. We stopped counting. And this is your first mission. This is the first mission.

Exactly. And is this your platoon? No, I was with somebody. You're just tagging along with someone else. And the leader, the platoon leader's an E5. Well, yeah, the patrol leader was an E5. The patrol leader's an E5. Great young man, great young man.

And so his rule of thumb was where there's four, there's more. Because when we saw these four guys come out of the jungle down the ridge line, first thing was, let's go sit up and ambush. No, sorry, no, no, no, no. Where there's four, there's more. We stopped counting at 400. And by now we had artillery coming in, we had air on the way, we had an aerial observer up there. We fired artillery all day, all afternoon, into the night, into the evening.

We had a puffed and magic dragon dropping flares with jets coming in underneath it, dropping napalm at night. Oh, it was unbelievable. And this was your first time. Were you doing the call for fire? No, no, no, it was sergeant. The sergeant was doing, yeah. Yeah, I was there to learn. and to the pucker factor was like this.

Guys would go on at one or two snap in patrols and never see anything, but, and they... Welcome to Vietnam. Yeah, and they maybe had a little too lawsuit, but this was my welcome to Vietnam, and I thought it was great. I mean, we were dropping artillery on these guys. They're running down the path toward our position,

you know, and they're in the brush. They're not on the path, but they're in the brush. we had brush we had rocks on like our north side and our or east side

and west side east side and south side west and north we just had brush and there's you know north Vietnamese they're in the brush

coming toward us they're crying they're screaming you know they're yelling for mom whatever whatever you do if you're

North Vietnamese soldier and they were they were going to run right into us so Sergeant brings an artillery behind us. A real close, you know, danger close. So we got shrapnel flying over our heads.

And, of course, this dissuades these bad guys coming toward us. Also, we had a kid sat up when he should have been laying flat like a mushy-pancake. Took a piece of shrapnel right into his face and knocked out a few teeth and cut open his lip and everything. And this shrapnel was dropping down. I didn't burn right through your utility shirt,

burn your skin. You just, you just endured it. It was a, it was a little hairy. So danger close rounds coming your first night out in Vietnam. Oh well, welcome to the war. And you guys, and you guys maintained your, your clandestine position the whole time? Oh yeah. How many guys were out there with you? Uh, probably about 10, 11. That was a heavy patrol. Yeah. Wow. All right. So now, at how many of those snapping patrols did you do? Two. What was the next one like? The second patrol. The next one was even, wasn't that interesting from a tactical point of view, but it was going to be a led by a lieutenant who had got a little tanked up at the O club the night before.

Hadn't given the patrol a patrol order. So we're down there waiting for on the LZ, waiting for the insert helicopters to get ready to take us off. Come down the hill with the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel. He comes over to our patrol, points to the lieutenant to pack, get back up, pack your gear. You're going to the grunts, you know. Boom, he was out.

Colonel says to him, he and is Lance Corporal System Patrol. You think you guys can run the patrol? Yes, sir, no problem. So we did. It was great. but shit can this guy is just right there on the spot and you could do that in recon

I had to do it once to one of my guys What the guy do that rated you firing him on the spot? I had My patrol was like cut in half my platoon was cut in half

I led half of it anywhere from 8 to 10 guys depending on who was not on R&R who wasn't that sort of thing. And I had a platoon sergeant, E6 staff sergeant, he ran the other platoon. We flip-flop about halfway through my tour when I was about five, five and a half months.

And so, you know, the guys I led, our code name was West Orange. We had an excellent reputation of the battalion. They were fast day. They felt like they were kind of distant cousins in the platoon. But I got a guy about pep talk that night with the patrol order. So, you know, you guys are just like West Orange, you know, no different. You know, again, ninth grade education, same age, you know, same skills. And so I went through my little spiel.

And you know my reputation. I'm a platoon commander, you know, administratively your stuff unit, you know how I operate. that anybody doesn't want to go a fast day now one kid raises his hand I'm saying okay you don't have to go pack your gear get out of here don't you're not sleeping the night with these guys you know and I don't know whatever happened to them was I never came back from that patrol you know but I'm sure it was taking care of so when you start getting into what was the kind of typical mission that you guys were doing typical mission was uh you know we'd go out on a six

seven-day patrol. We're just snooping and pooping. That's what we called it. Finding trails that the enemy would use, base camps. Would you guys insert on helicopter, or would you guys just foot patrol? Oh, always helicopter. Yeah. Always helicopter. So you pick out a spot and get dropped off, and then what was your SOPs once you guys got inserted? We got off the helicopter. We started. Hopefully it was where the insert LZ was where, where, the insert LZ was where, you know, the operations officer or the operations shack said it was.

Sometimes it wasn't there, but, you know, that's why, you know, as a patrol leader, first thing I did when I got in a helicopter was dump my gear, get up my little map, and insert myself between the pilot and a co-pilot, because if you didn't know where you were when you started a patrol, you weren't going to know where you were for the next six, seven days. Would you guys insert in the daytime, in the daytime, in the pre-dawn, in the dusk, when would you guys go in? We'd go in daytime. We'd be down in LZ waiting by about 8 o'clock in the morning. Birds would come in if they weren't being used for medevacs and stuff

on some operation that was going on about mid-morning. They'd go up and get a brief from the intelligence folks at First Recon. We'd be sitting around there and then they'd come back down from their brief. We'd pop on the aircraft and off we'd go. So like midday you're getting inserted? Yeah, that was pretty much probably about usual. Generally. And then what, you hit the ground and what would you guys do? As soon as you hit the ground, what was your standard operating procedures?

Our SOP was the DD and get out of that LZ as fast as we can. Nothing says Marines are coming in here than a bunch of helicopters coming in to land. What would you be on two Hueys? No, we'd be on 246s. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Army had Huey's, you know, transport troops. Marine Corps didn't.

Anytime in the Marine Corps, they probably probably. I had about 60 helicopters in Vietnam on any given day, about half of them would be airworthy. So we had Huey gunships. Hewis, I guess, carry the brass around, but we didn't use them as troop transport of all 46s. Big old 46s. Big old noisy. 46s. Would you guys just, like, we always used to do something, which was sit, look, and listen.

So, like, we would, you know, go two or three hundred yards away from the L.C. and then we'd all just stop and just listen. Get down. Yeah, yeah. Pretty much the same way. Yeah. And then would you guys have different areas where you were headed to specifically? We did. We had a patrol route that was pre-planned and an extract point that was pre-planned. Now, patrols rarely went, you know, according to the pre-planning, which the, you know, the operations shack did. We didn't do that. So they were actually telling you where you were going to go?

Where we were going to go in at? They had a recommended patrol route, which we'd stick. to if we could. Couldn't all the time. And then we get out at this point where they had recommended, again, sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't. What was it, how often would you guys be contacted by the enemy? You know, it wasn't all that frequently. Because, you know, we did, we were good. We, we were, we snooped and poop with the best. Your purpose of being there was to not be Right. You know, in recon, your job wasn't to, you know, find them, fix them and foxrot them. You didn't get online with nine or ten guys or eleven maybe and say charge.

Your idea was to gather information. But if the situation was to your advantage, you could, you could, you know, if the leader felt that it was worth the effort, set up an ambush. but normally we'd bring artillery on if we saw groups. And I probably ran 21 patrols, and I'd say probably good three quarters of them. We had fire missions on top of bad guys. Well, that's a high percentage. Well, I think what you got through when you were in Ramadi. Well, there was some of my guys in Ramadi that would get contacted a lot.

There was one group over in eastern Ramadi. And they did, I was actually briefing a, I was briefing the C.J.J. Sotom commander, who's the colonel that was in charge of all special operations. And I said, you know, sir, my group that's, you know, six seals that are over in Eastern Ramadi, I said, they've been, they've been an enemy contact, 23 straight operations. And I'm not kidding, I didn't plan this for dramatic effect, but my intel officer, who's running the attack operations center, comes walking in and says, hey, sir, just want to let you know that the guy's out of, you. are in contact right now and I looked at the colonel I said make that 24 missions in a row. So there was definitely some some hot, hot areas. Yeah, it was pretty much expected if you were going out in Ramadi that you were going to get in contact by the enemy and I don't know what the percentage was, but it was, it was a vast

it was very rare that my guys would come back and hadn't shot their guns, you know, very rare. Yeah, but 75. But I also, what was interesting when I came home from that department, and would talk to some of the Vietnam guys, depending on the platoon, depending on the seal platoon in Vietnam, there's guys that shot their weapons on a six-month deployment,

shot their weapons three times, four times. And there's other platoons in Vietnam where they shot their platoon, shot their weapons 100% every time. So it all depended on, and my first deployment to Iraq, I think I shot my gun. We got like four or five fire fights, so really not that big of a deal.

And then in Ramadio, the numbers, the numbers just very high for as far as the whole task unit getting into, getting into big gun fights. But three quarters of the time, you know, that's a lot of fire missions. Well, but yeah, but they weren't gun fights per se. You know, they'd be, you eyeball on somebody or some place or some trail crossing or some little bill that you might come across in the middle of nowhere. One time we came across a cornfield in the middle of the jungle.

I mean, it wasn't jungle per se because there was no high tree canopy over it but it was just a field, a clearing in the middle of the jungle with rows of corned. This is not your typical jungle plant. So we'd get up a little higher ground and we'd watch a see if anybody came in there and settled down. There was a few hooches there too.

Whereabouts were you guys operating in Vietnam? We are operating north, south, and west of Danang. First reconnaissance battalion's mission was to patrol the rocket belt around the airport of Danang, but that wasn't particularly that far out, so we ended up going a lot further out looking for, you know, main line NBA forces. Or where they camped out, the trails they used, et cetera, et cetera. But gunfights were relatively rare, which is a good thing. You can't see anybody in the jungle anyway. You're typically just firing blind.

So that was one of the nice things about the M16. It would put out a lot of fire for you. And that's what you needed over there. You know, you didn't need a heavy bullet necessarily to knock guys down. But the 7.62 or 5 point, whatever, was just fine. I went to 7.62. That was the big heavy blowup.

Yeah, that's the M14. When you were, when you would get these mission taskings kind of from above, above, from the, from the battalion. Right. They'd give it to you that how long would the planning cycle take for you guys to come up with a plan and do your briefing and all that? About 24 hours. It wasn't, it wasn't hardcore boilerplate.

No, nowhere near the detail that I know that you all went through in Ramadi, but, you know, it was just, we were out six, seven days back two or three, so that was a regular schedule. You knew. I mean, the kids were already, Marines were already, you know, their weapons were clean. If we had done things that we needed to do administratively, like, you know, go down to the gas tent and check all the gas masks and stuff that had all been done on kind of the 24 hours in between. Were you carrying the radio as the officer? No, I had a radio man. Primary radio man was. right behind me and I had a secondary radio man toward the end of the patrol. And you're taking what, seven, eight guys, ten guys? Something like that?

Ten guys. I usually went heavy, you know. So you got ten guys. How many damn batteries did you have to carry for an eight-day patrol? Would you get resupplied? Because were you using the 77, the Prick 77 radio? No. We were using one prior to that. We were on prior, I got Prick 25. The Prick 25. There you go. Not necessarily the best thing, but it was pretty good. The line as long as you were a line of sight.

Yeah, yeah. But, you must have had to carry a lot of batteries for that thing. We didn't. I mean, I guess the radio man had extra batteries, but we didn't typically, you know, go through that much battery. Man, I was a radio man, and it was ridiculous the amount of batteries in the early days

because we got much smaller radios later on. And then how about water? Would you guys just refill canteens on rivers and whatnot? We would if we could find water, but we went out with eight to ten canteens. Because you didn't know whether you were going to, find water. And if you found it, you didn't know whether it was going to be potable or not. But we were typically often, I say, more often than not in the mountainous type area,

mountainous being, you know, thousand meters or higher. And if we came across running water that, you know, was moving along, I thought it was fine, safe to drink. Until I went to this little one-day school put on by a chief corpsman who talked about how the leach larva could be expelled into the water and just bubbled down with the water. After that, iodine tablets every time we refill. Never had any problems. How about food? Food?

We had Korean-era sea rats. Did you say Korean-era? Korean-era. Oh, Korean-era. Yeah, yeah. You know, 1554, it would say on there. Just plain sea rats in cans. MRAs were brand new when I was there, and we occasionally, on two patrols, I think,

that we managed to steal some MRIs from somebody in the army. Fine dining. Yeah, yeah. But see, they used water, so they were a better meal, but they would use water. So it was a, you know, 6 to 1, half a dozen to another. And then would you guys patrol during the day and then lay up at night? That's affirmative, yeah. We'd find the nastiest, meanest vegetation at night and crawl in there and harbor.

It'd be in a harbor site. Did they use dogs to try and find you? Nope, never saw a dog in Vietnam, or in the jungle anyway. Apparently, Rekon had taken out dogs and handlers in the early days, and the dogs just couldn't handle the heat and the terrain. So the handler would end up carrying the dog out. So that was a... Would you guys bring Claymore's to set up around your perimeter?

We did. We did. We bought Claymars, Claymore's, and sometimes little antifersonnel mines, which sounded like a great idea until the next morning, when the guy who'd put them out, got to go retrieve them.

Yeah, you got to go retrieve them. Maybe he had six mines out, and it kind of like, what, five? Oh! So, we would be moving out in the opposite direction. Claymore was a good weapon. It sounds like your op tempo

was like, go, on a patrol, you're out there for six, seven days, you come back, you rest, you refit, you spend three, four days in camp, something like that. Two or three, maybe. Two or three? Yeah, yeah. It was a pretty

quick turnaround. You didn't have time to settle in and get comfortable anywhere. And then it's back out. Were you guys just skinny as could be? We were. I went over there weighing

150 pounds, 150 pounds, 555 pounds, which is my weight at the Naval Academy, came back. I was 123 when I got back. But part of that was the previous like 19 days or something after I was shot until I got back in the States. I didn't eat too much. I was being fed for one thing, and most of the time was red jello. And that wasn't real appealing. I couldn't look at red yellow for about five years after that. Did you, do you guys have any night vision at all? Like a starlight scope? we had fixed positions that we would go to for sometimes long as much as two weeks and they were essentially high points like a hill 800 meter high hill and they'd have a permanent radio we have a permanent radio relay station on there and patrols would just rotate there every couple of weeks to provide security for that guy because he was up there for like three plus months and on those we would take we had starlight yeah and and we'd watch the valleys and stuff below us.

But never used them that much, no. You know, going out in the field that much, you guys must have really been, I mean, you guys must have been really good and really efficient out in the field after doing a field op, after field op, after field op, for six, seven, eight days every time. Did you feel like you guys were kind of part of the jungle at that point?

Never felt really part of the jungle, but it certainly got more comfortable. in it. One thing that you always had to be very careful about in the work that Recon did was heat casualties. You know, you took a serious heat casualty. That's an emergency medevac, which is, again, you know, announcing the whole world that there's Marines out here and one of them, you know, down with the heat casualties. As a consequence, the days we were back in the area, first platoon Delta Company P-Ted every day. People thought we were crazy. I took my heat. I took my casualties on Freedom Hill Road, you know, running two and a half miles down, two and a half miles back,

including myself, you know, stopping to bar, never had a heat casualty. In the five and a half months, I went to patrol something I was very proud of. Yeah, you got to carry enough water for that, though. Really, right? You just had to ration yourself, you know, and each individual was... So you said eight canteens, you're bringing eight canteens of water. Eight to ten canteens of water, you bet. And that's going to last you eight days?

Six or seven. Unless we got extended, which was not unheard of. The Marine Corps helicopters would be, you know, some operation would start while you were on patrol. They'd be tasked for medevacs, and you couldn't get out the day you were supposed to. You prayed, I guess, would be the nice thing to say that you got out the next day. Because by then your food was exhausted. Your water was either gone or real short. Yeah, we used to have a lot.

We just have a heat casualties in training out here in California, out of the Imperial Valley where it's 120 degrees. And it's tough. And like you said, a guy can go from he's fine to all of a sudden he's like a legitimate, like a legitimate casualty. That's right. Yeah. Let's go to July 4th, 1968.

What was going into that operation? What was the overall operation that you guys were looking to do? We were looking to find. an old LZ, a place called Charlie Ridge. You said you had neighborhoods and areas that were hotter than others in Rambi. We had the same thing, of course, of Vietnam. Some places were known as hot spots, you'd almost guaranteed.

You know, somebody was going to shoot a few rounds at you, coming in or going out if they didn't find it during the, or you didn't find them during your patrol. But we were supposed to flip-flop. You know, we'd go in and another team would come out on the top of this mountain and the team had gotten lost. They didn't know where they were. So they finally somehow, you know, scraped their Sierra together and we went out and we flip-flop with them, but we were way far away from this, you know, they were three or four thousand meters away from this mountain top where we were supposed to flip-flop with another team. So I really

pushed the patrol to find, I think this place was really hard to find it. These guys couldn't fight it. No, no, they just were lost. But we found that thing on the second day, old, old fire base on the top of this mountain, you know, like three years of sea rats on the side of the mountain because we had NVA walking trail below us. I'd stop and have lunch there, eat old seas. Hammond, lima beans, I think, supplied half the NVA in Vietnam because Marines just always pitched those things. Nobody ate. We call them Hammond mothers. Nobody ate them. But so we had a flip-flop. So I didn't want to get too far away from this LZ

because I wanted another LZ within, you know, three, four clicks. So we were going to, you know, we harbored that night, moved off into the jungle outside the LZ, harbored that night, had some big rocks around us. I thought we were in a good position. And at night, I would pre-plot fires, you know, artillery targets north, south, east, west, around our position, in case you had to call them in the middle of the night. You know, you didn't have to figure out what the, what's our six, you know, numbers here.

No, these targets were already plotted in. So we woke up the next morning, and we were just going to kind of lay low all day long in that area. It wasn't something you really wanted to do, but, you know, since we were scheduled with flip-flop, and battalion really wanted us to do that because it hadn't worked, you know, when we had gone in. We weren't, we should have gone in where we were going out. But they wanted to flip-flop. So I said, but we're just going to lay low for it this day and we'll be out of here the next morning. Well, that morning, I guess some, you know, 12-man, NVA recon patrol walked close aboard or came by close aboard.

We never heard him. They either saw a flash of motion. We must be we were eating breakfast. Or they heard us, which I don't think they did, because they heard us. which I don't think they did because we were super quiet. But all of a sudden, all this automatic fire opened up. Fortunately, it was over our heads, you know,

because that's pretty typical happening in the jungle. You shoot high. But I had a big rock kind of behind me. So I'm getting guys maneuvered around, starting to call the artillery in. When a bullet apparently hits the rock behind me, comes about and hits me in the head from behind, goes forward.

Boom, I'm down. and I'm almost history. Next thing I know, my cormant is doing a pat down on me. Apparently the bullet had gone through my floppy cover and didn't knock it off. And it wasn't until he saw a bullet starting to run down the side of my face that they realized that the wound was up here because there was nothing visible. So he's doing a pat down and I knew what that meant. I knew I'd been shot and I knew he didn't know where it was.

But I never did figure out it was in my head or in the head. I concluded sometime that morning, because we were on the ground for about another four hours before they tried to get us out, that I had been bitten by a centipede. They had some nasty centipedes over there, whose venom apparently attacked your central nervous system. So that was my working theory that morning was that I had been bitten by a centipede, which really pissed me off. How long were you unconscious for after you got hit? I was unconscious just for a few seconds because one minute I'm kneeling, I'm a lean green, fighting machine the next moment I'm a laying down I'm a lean mean green stalk of

broccoli how much how much how much how much how much time it passed between the the initial fire incoming fire and you getting hit it was really just a matter maybe of three to five minutes okay you know I'm trying to get guys positioned in recon we did not want to fire back if somebody you know started firing at you they didn't really know where you were, especially with this fire going high. And the last thing you wanted to do really was fire back. Now we know where they are. And then they, you know.

So the deal was not to fire back. Just bring in supporting arms as quick as you could. But eventually, of course, the guy started to fire back because it was just a little too hot. And I just thought of this. I'm guessing you guys wouldn't carry like a heavy machine gun with you, like an M60 or something? No. We didn't. too heavy and then we had two more guys tasked with ammunition and you can't really

you know get one of those things set up quickly you know in a jungle but occasionally we did occasionally you know the the warning order that i would get from battalion would say you know you're taking an m60 on this patrol because we've had uh reports of x y and z in this area and you might need it so great you know obviously somebody had a volunteer to do that and My littlest guy, this nickname was Mouse. He would always want to carry the M60. Great kid, great kid.

Never really had to use it in the jungle, which was good. But occasionally we carried it. So here you are, you're five minutes into this gunfight. You get hit. You're unconscious for a very short period of time. And then you come back too. And how do you feel when you come back?

Again, didn't know what had happened. Again, my first thought was the centipede thing. but sounds were muffled, color was gone, things were moving in black, slowly and black and white around me, and sounds were very muffled. By now the artillery was starting to come in. We had a brand new second lieutenant with us. He was on his first snap-in patrol. He apparently assumed command, along with my experience, corporal, who was my, normally was the patrol leader for this patrol. and together they manage the situation. And we got everybody out. I was the only one wounded. Take that back.

Crew chief on the helicopter that picked us up was wounded. He was on a 50 caliber and got hit in the hand. But we were the only two wounded. I was the only guy on my patrol wounded. McCormon, outstanding, the second class hospital, he kept me alive for the next four hours. until it could get me into day.

How bad were you bleeding? Apparently it bled out. There's a cavity down the center of your head called the Superior Sagul Sinus. It's like an upside down triangle and it drains blood, your brain, and that was nicked by the bullet. It was just close enough to midline

to nick the Superior Sagul Sinus. I can remember my car. I just kept putting battle dressing after battle dressing on my head. It ruined my whole day, needless to say. Were you, like, passing back out and then waking back up. I was.

I was. I remember I knew I could hear the helicopter coming in, and I knew we were about to break out of the jungle, to run to the Z that the helicopter was coming in, that we had been on the day before. So I took all this strength I could, but to open my eyes and look up. And all as I saw was,

we're tracers converting kind of over us from all the points of the company. Damn, this is serious. I got some information that, that your kids gathered up. And one of them was a note from Captain Frederick, Rick J. Wilson, the third. And he wrote this little kind of description of what happened. He says, I was the pilot of the CH-46, YT, TAC-13, MMH-164 that rescued your team.

What you couldn't know was that a lot of people, including your recon team, are responsible for getting you to the hospital. I vividly remember the mission because my crew chief was wounded. That's the guy you just talked about. He, like you, also survived and prospered. He and I received Silver Stars for our actions that day. You tend to remember things like that. I flew 928 missions in Vietnam, and that one was my hairiest.

I first heard that your team was in trouble, and you were wounded when I was landing at the Nang Hospital with another medevac. Because of your head injuries, I was able to get a corpsman at the hospital before I headed out for the rescue. It turned out to be the corpsman Terry. Daily was from my hometown of Wakefield, Rhode Island. I found this out 20 years later when Terry's wife showed up at my sister's house with an old copy of Stars and Strifes that covered the mission. Your team evidently ran into an NBA base camp that no one knew was there and was greatly

outnumbered. Because of your wounds and the combat situation and extraction was requested and I was the closest to the action. The problem soon became apparent that the team needed to move about 200 yards to an old bomb crater where I could land. I called for gunship support and some fast movers. What I got was four flights of phantoms, dropping bombs pretty close to the team, and four Huey gunships. I was circling overhead for about an hour before the team got to the only feasible landing zone on the ridge. They did a good job suppressing fire until I was landing. Fortunately, the bomb crater also protected me somewhat, and we were getting, we were, we were able to get everyone on board. I was a little short on fuel, but that worked on my favor because I was

also about 2,000 pounds over gross, according to my co-pilot, who was wondering if we could lift off. In the meantime, your team and my gunner were engaged in a firefight. Your team knocked out all the windows on my bird, but I didn't object because they were covering my butt. We managed to take off and took a few hits out on the way. But thanks to the Huey's escorting me, I was able to dive off the ridge and get out of range. Long story short, we were able to get everyone to the hospital and the NVA got a beating. So he had to like just take off and just fly over this ridge, right? Yeah, apparently he just kind of dove off the ridge and, you know, Gainesville came back up.

I heard that this thing was so riddled with bullets, his helicopter was that the Marine Corps helicopter facility was across this highway from the hospital. to nag. They wouldn't fly it over there. They'd call for a tug to to tow it over there. And we're going to try to put that thing back in the air that day. Oh, man. He continues on it. This was a nice,

I'm taking bits of this from a nice letter that he wrote, but he says, I understand that you count that day as an alive day, which is a very good thing to celebrate. I was probably one of the few Marines who enjoyed their tour in Vietnam primarily because I was saving lives and rescuing recon teams. I also love the flying

since they would never let you fly like that back in the States. One of the best things to come out of Vietnam was the improvement of medical care. You are proof of that as the survival rates from Afghanistan, as are the survival rates from Iraq and Afghanistan. Hope you have a wonderful 50th, re-birthday. Happy birthday, Marine. And once again, that's Captain Frederick Rick J. Wilson, the third. And he was the command pilot that day,

and the bird that pulled me on the team out, saved all our lives. No question about We did Were you guys under the threat of being overrun At some point soon? I tell you the truth Jocko I have no idea really My memory of that day was pretty sketchy

I talked to him on the phone Last year and he said They had to circle overhead for an hour Because they just couldn't set it down There was no possible way and they estimated Probably 200 NBA On the ground And that's part of the reason why they weren't able to

fly it back to squadron because small arms fire through rotor blades. You know, as an infantry officer, I always felt very comfortable on the ground and very exposed on the helicopter. I just figured those were things were flying magnets that made a lot of noise. But of course, the aviators felt just the other way. They felt safe in their birds and never wanted to be on the ground. Never. I feel the exact same thing as you. I didn't ever like any sort of machine. I didn't like any of them. I wanted to just be on my feet. Exactly. You know? And yeah, that feeling that you have an helicopter where you're up flying and all you see is all you all I see when I'm flying in a helicopter is threats, you know, and you can't

even come close to cover them all. At least on the ground I can I can cover some of the threats. When you're in an aircraft, it's like, you know, I'm, I'm waiting to get shot down. That's what it feels like to me. When do you, when do you remember coming to or when do you remember what they do with you once you got in the hospital. Do you remember much of that? No, I, I remember the helicopter landing because my head bounced on the middle. I thought, damn, couldn't I put something underneath my head? And I remember them picking me up and put me on a stretcher because they grabbed my belt and picked up my middle. And it felt like, it felt like a rug just going right through me.

I faintly remember the sound of hearing this guy that sounded like he was another. side of a football field saying negative vitals negative vitals negative vitals and then the next thing I felt this crush on my chest I thought that's okay because you know they're getting the heart back up checking you know oh so they were like doing CPR yeah yeah well I was apparently resuscitated three times just after the helicopter landed at the NSA denying the hospital but my corpsman had been straddling me the whole time in a helicopter and was pushing on the heart to keep blood flowing. It was not my best day, but, you know,

hey, well, I'm here talking about it, so. Yeah, we'll take it. That makes out a huge difference, believe me, because there's no reason I should be. When I left Bethesda after a year, my attending physician was the chief of neurosurgery. And he called me in his office and said, hey, I can't, I said, I wish that medicine could take credit for this,

but, no, he said, we can't. He says, I don't know what, It's whatever we want to call it, you know, karma, luck, God, whatever you want to call it. I wish it was medicine, but it wasn't. I figured he was a pretty leading expert on head injuries. How long, so you get to the hospital and you're there, at some point they must have gotten you stabilized. They must have, yeah. As I understood that the chief neurosurgeon from the hospital ship just happened to be there that day, like giving an in-service or something like that.

and boom, they were on me like flies on stink. I just remember waking up being extremely cold and hearing a baby cry. Cry and cry and cry and cry. And I said, this can't be right. Maybe I'm not here. But sure enough, it turned out there was a... A courtroom told me later, a couple days later,

that there was a baby that had been burned, you know, due to U.S. force action. who was, you know, this was like a ward that was an intensive care ward, apparently. And there was a baby in there with a couple of mama signs, and the baby did cry most all the time. That's what I remember. My troops came to say goodbye. 22 of them, they led them in groups of two. All I could do was cry.

I just, I didn't have words for them other than say things like, keep your head down and stuff like that. because I knew by then that I had a head injury. And I knew it just slowly dawned me. No one told me that this left side was paralyzed along with my right leg. No one told me that it just came to me over time when I would try to do something. The only way I could get attention is I had this perfect left paralysis down the side of my face.

I would talk like that. I'd raised my hand. They tied it down, the bedrails, because all the IVs were in the right arm. Well, I was helpless. I was, I was, I've never been so miserable as that moment when he tied that arm down. And it's just the trauma to your brain that it caused you to be paralyzed in your left arm and, and was your left side of your body? Left side of my body and the right leg. It was a, the bullet had blown away about a three by seven centimeter defect in my skull. It had, it had penetrated the meninges, nicked the parietal lobe and the frontal lobes, and tore the spurious sinus.

That's a woman that's incompatible with life as we know it. But here I am telling you about it. You know, one of your guys, once again, your kids did an awesome job, gathering some information. One of your guys, Robert Wood Daily Baird, the third. Yep. And you're a third, too? I'm second.

Okay. I thought it, for some reason he says, he thought that you were third. But yeah, so he's the third. he was Lance Corporal in First Platoon Delta Company First Recombatalion And he talks about And he starts off kind of tell him What it was like for him to meet you

And how impressed he was with you as a leader And actually felt what you talked about earlier It was like you know that he could tell that you You cared about the troops And then it gets to this point where he's Coming they're coming to that this journey to say goodbye to you And so here's what Robert Wood Daly Baird, the third says.

He says, then that afternoon, the team made a solemn journey to the naval hospital to see the lieutenant. Everyone watched the scenery without really seeing it as we rode along in a six-by truck. We were too worried about him. We arrived and went to Neuro Ward Bravo 2. We could only see him two at a time,

and since I was new, I was last. I waited. When my teammates came out, they looked pale. Then it was my turn. I was nervous. I entered the world ward. It was lengthy with empty racks here at the near end. Each rack was covered with a crisp white sheet ready for its next visitor.

On a long shelf on the right, there were plastic models of planes, ships, and cars that the patients had made. I walked onward. One of the healthier men was putting together a model plane. On the left was an ancient Papasan with white hair. His beard, a dirty gray, contrasted with his hospital tunic. A nurse with an angelic voice attracted my attention. I noticed her face, firm with conviction and wondered how she could work in such a tragic place. She was feeding a baby, seeing that struck me deeply.

The baby was burned over 70% of its body. I pressed onward, but paused, wondering what I should say. Patients filled the beds at this end of the ward. Unhealed wounds, burns, scars. and vacant stairs stabbed out at me half of a face there no eyes and no arm legs here bodies covered with gauze seemingly mummified the morbid display made me realize how truly bad war is but the worst was yet to come I passed Harry Mundorf and Rudy Seville they were coming out somehow they didn't look the same as when I'd seen them a

short time ago there he was in the last raft on the left he lay on his right side glanced up with glazed eyes when I approached. A turban of bandages covered his head. His pale face showed no emotion except sadness and his eyes were red from crying. All the time we talked

he stared at the airborne parachute wings on my chest as if they were something he wanted very badly. He had told me when I'd first joined the platoon that he hadn't gone to jump school yet and that he was looking forward to it. He started by saying, hello, Baird, how you

I said, good afternoon sir, I'm fine. His voice was weak like a child who was afraid. At times I could barely hear him. He added again to the conversation by thanking all of us, and I replied that it had been the least we could do. Then I asked him if he'd be back at recon in three months or so. A tear came to his eye, and he said he would never be coming back. You see, he said my legs are paralyzed.

I choked up and my skin crawled and I was unable to speak. A silence cold and heavy, a silence cold and heavy prevailed. Finally, he broke the silence saying, Baird, you're a big man and there's something I want you to do. Keep your head down there. Keep your head down when you're out in the bush. This statement hit me and grabbed at my heart, and I screamed inside myself deep, deep down somewhere that I never knew existed.

I promised him that I would, would, and bid him my fondest farewell, turned and walked away. I wanted to run from him, from them, from the whole world. I wanted to run past those helpless men in those metal beds out to the street and far, far away, but I kept my control and walked at a brisk pace.

The echoes of that scream resounded inside me again and again, threatening to tear me apart. Suddenly the anguish melted away as I stepped out into the brutal, tropic sun. But the feeling that I had still ran like hot lava through my veins.

The ride back home was the same. No one looked at the scenery or at each other nor talked with anyone. Each was involved with their own memories of second lieutenant Charles Robert Eisenbach the second. He was a man with such brilliant mind and exuberance to be alive. Now he lay in a hospital suffering

a far worse fate to him than death. His once healthy body was now frail and flimsy like a person who had always been an invalid. Left only was his mind and he had too much time to think and reflect upon what had happened and what was going to happen It was a great strain and shocked to see him With hope he will work his way back because he does have Guts and what's interesting about that that's a that's a heavy You know rendering of what happened, but that's actually from his personal journal that he kept while he was in Vietnam

Those are the thoughts of a whatever probably a 20-year-old kid seeing this unfold. Yeah. Well, need to say, Alaskar-Roberd, I think he had a year of college. He was kind of a platoon spokesman. He became a writer and a poet. So he, you know, he obviously had a great command of the English language

and maybe saw some things or invented some things that weren't necessarily there, but that was his reality. And that's fine with me. I can't argue with it. Nothing he said in there I don't think was untrue. I was what we call a herting gator. In fact, I remember they told me that I was going to an Army hospital in Japan. Well, the only thing I knew was that Marines, when they got wounded in Vietnam, they went to a naval hospital in Yokohama.

So I just pissed a little hissy fit. Why are you sending me to an Army hospital? not knowing that this Army hospital in Camp Drake outside of Tachacaa Air Force Base in Japan was where all head injuries went. That was their specialty, was head injuries. So they finally got a dock in there to calm me down and tell me how this was the place I needed to be. And one hospital was just as good as another, which, of course, you don't believe when it's not your service's hospital. But hey, you know, I was 23 old kiddo, and, you know, I had been in naval hospitals before.

I had always gotten great care, and that's what I was expecting. And it turned out this general support hospital that I ended up at was first rate. I was there for like 10 days before I was stable enough to make the plane trip back home. And interesting place. So 10 days you're there, are they doing any, are they doing surgeries on you? Or are they just trying to let you heal up? They're just kind of letting me heal up. And they've started physical therapy on me.

I had tremendous spasms in both my legs and my left arm. So they had physical therapy, make some braces that they put on my feet. And they made a hand brace for me with my thumb sticking out like this. And on my arm would spas. This thing come and beat me in the eye. I have to hold this arm down. I was miserable. There was just a young kid to my right.

who'd lost an eye, was an Air Force airman, and had lost an eye in Denang, and that was his problem, that was his major problem. And he had been tasked to be my feeder and my smoker. I was a smoker then,

and I would just crave a camel, and he'd have to be around to handle it because I couldn't deal with it. But a terrific kid, and they took excellent care of me in this hospital, like I did everybody else. So the spasms in your, arms and legs, which we were all, admittedly, all of us just laughed when you told that story,

which is pretty disturbing. But that had to be a little bit of a good sign because some kind of spasm means that there's some nerve signal getting there. Well, exactly. And what it was was a screwed up signal, you know, it wasn't, you know, telling the thing to do anything useful. It was just, you know, telling these muscles to fire. You know, again, from the damage to area in my brain, as I understand it, you know, looking

back on it. But that was your was your mindset that you're going now from hey I mean when you said you were paralyzed when you initially got hit and now you know you can't move your leg you can't move your left arm right right but and did you in your mind did you think okay I might be this might be it you know I might be paralyzed like this forever? Well of course you don't know what the future holds I mean none of us do but the better you become the more aware you become of your limitations and yeah you start to think you know how long is this going to last is this forever what am I going to do for the rest of my life you know you know you're not going to be a marine because you know have a job description of Marines for you know in wheelchairs or something like that

but uh the one saving grace I always thought was while I'm single at least there's not you know a wife involved and a child on the way like most of my contemporaries have But conversely, the guys who were, you know, as I found out later on at Bethesda, the guys who were married felt it was much better to be married because you had this, you know, direct support system that you were coming back into and, you know, you knew this woman was going to be there. They weren't, of course, always. You know, things don't last a lot of times when you get big changes like that in your life, unfortunately. But the guys who were married, that it would much better to be married and those of us who were single thought it was much better to be single. Sure, you say. You know, that's the first question out of your mind is when you get to your final destination, which for me was Bethesda Naval Hospital, was, Doc, how long am I going to be here? Well, they don't have any idea.

They don't know how your recovery is going to unwind. So finally, my doctor said to me, hey, you could be here for two years, and I can't guarantee that you'll walk out even then. I thought to myself, well, damn, he didn't know who he's dealing with. My plan, you know, I got shot on the 4th of July. My plan was to be back in Vietnam by Christmas with my guy. That didn't work out, but that was my plan. And I worked hard to make it happen.

It didn't happen. A year later, I walked out of there under my own power with a leg brace and a cane and got an ambulance and was driven down the road, 95, to the VA hospital in Richmond, Virginia, where I stayed another four months. But you don't know what's going to happen. It's a slowly evolving kind of mental process you go through. You hit a point, I did, and I know what other guys did too, because we talked about this. Well, you'd say, why me, you know? Why me, God? Why this happened to me?

And I don't know if other guys got an answer to that question, but I did. Over time, this answer evolved, you know, and the answer was, why not you, Eisenbach? Who are you? You're no better than anybody else I put down that little blue planet. but you're no worse either. So you're just going to have to go with the punches. And that's the answer. Why not you?

You're no better, no worse than anybody else. I mean, that's a little hard, I think, for some people's stomach, but that was the answer I got. And, you know, it's served its purpose. Okay, why not me? This is it? This is the way it is. I guess I just have to take it a day at a time,

do my best to get better and see where I end up. And when I get to that point, you know, I'll make decisions about what I'm going to do for the future, which I, you know, I did. And now, I had a lot of vocational counseling from the VA when I got flushed, you know, out of the service and out of the VA system. I got a lot of, like I said, vocational counsel. I got interest tests that I take, you know, because the question now is, okay, what am I going to do for the rest of my life? Well, not surprisingly, I scored highest on military officer. Hoorah!

Gee, I just was one of those a couple of months ago. Second highest was FBI agent. Oh, that sounds good, but again, they don't have job descriptions for guys who limp, you know. And finally, I scored third on teacher. I said, well, that's interesting. And that evolved into thinking about becoming a therapist. And specifically a speech therapist. I had a speech defect that I just kind of overcame myself at Bethesda by slowing down and trying to think

about what I was going to say before I said it. I got the nickname Spock because my speech became very deliberate. But when I was just spontaneous, apparently, and I never heard this, but my roommate would say, Eisenbach, I said, what? He said, what was with that language?

I said, what language? You know, maybe had some visitors, a couple of gals from people I knew who were overseas in Vietnam. He said, it was filthy. I'd say, really? I never heard it. And he said, yeah.

So I started to slow down myself and think about what I would say. But speech therapist kind of stuck in my mind after this vocational counseling that I got. That's eventually what I became was a speech language pathologist. So when he's saying your speech was filthy, you mean that you were like swearing? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Just using every filthy word. Like a, what's that, Tourette's syndrome?

Is that what it's called? Yeah, well. A Tourette syndrome scenario? And I had no idea that I was doing that. I didn't hear it. Because what? You just did it naturally? Like that's how you talked kind of thing?

Or like why didn't you remember it? No, it wasn't how I normally would speak. It would just come out in totally inappropriate situation. You're not amongst the guys, but, you know, amongst visitors. And like I said, I didn't know what's going on. But you kind of glanced over the fact that dad, that you got the feedback, hey, you can't stay in the Marine Corps anymore. And it sounds like you figured that out yourself,

but at some point that's got to turn into a harsh reality where that's what you wanted to do. You're in Vietnam, you're a platoon commander. You've got the best guys in the world. And all of a sudden, in one day, it's gone. It's right. It's gone. And you don't know what's going to replace it. But yeah, eventually you get before a physical evaluation board.

and what I had hoped for because most of my roommates and most of the guys there I knew that had Marines, they had orthopedic injuries. You know, they'd gotten stitched up with a machine gun in their legs or whatever. They got put on the temporary disabled retired list. That allowed you five years to regain your ability. And if you could, you would get a chance to go back into the Marine Corps. On the other hand, if you got better, the VA could drop your disability rating down.

So it was kind of a double-edged sword. Most guys just wanted to get out. But for guys like me that they call lifers, because I wanted a career rent, and I argued that I could fly any desk. Well, that was fine, but that wasn't going to fly. I was going to be retired. But as long as I was on the TDRL,

the temporary disabled retired list, I thought, well, I got a chance. But I get a, I met the VA hospital, now. I've been through my physical evaluation board. They've asked me questions and I've got a transcript of it. My doctor submitted statements and stuff like that. And they said, well, we'll get you on the TDRO. And I said, great, because I'd have five years to work myself back in the core. Came through, my orders, for retirement orders, came through one day and when I was in the VA hospital. Permanent disabled, retireless, no chance of ever getting back. Boy, I was a piss beyond just talking about. I was on the phone to the Secretary Navy's office, which I got through to, and some nice older woman right there who obviously

had heard this story before. You know, I was promised that TDRL, but here I've been permanently retired. She said, well, Lieutenant, you've got to understand that, you know, we've done this a few times before, and we kind of know the history of these kinds of injuries, and your board did recommend the permanent retired disabled this not the temporary so you know we have to go with what they say and of course they were right but again you know i was you know i'm by now i'm old man at 24 right and i'm being retired excuse me that didn't that's not the plan but uh that's how it all worked how long did it take you to realize how long to take you to accept that so you you kind of got through the the why me why not right right how did you how long do take you to get

through this fact that, okay, now the Marine Corps, your sacred Marine Corps has made this decision. You know, I'm still thinking about that, Jaco, to tell you the truth. So 50-odd years. That's right. Yeah, I'm still, now I've got a new, why-mee question here. But, no, I adjusted. I went down to graduate school, got a master's degree in the speech department at the University of Florida, and they weren't quite sure what had walked through the door.

Apparently when I arrived, I wanted to know where the coffee mess was. And they're all looking at me like, the what? Well, you know, the place where you get, just drop in the morning, get a cup of coffee, pay a dime or whatever. Well, we don't have anything like that. Well, we're going to get one. We do now. We do now. That's right.

And most of my classes were on the third floor of this building, which had an elevator, went up to third floor, but it didn't work. hadn't worked in years. And so I went to my advisor. I said, look, this three flights of stairs has killed me through and three times a day. You know, we've got to get that elevator working. I said, oh, can't do it.

Like, no way, it hasn't worked since I've been here. The profs said, well, we'll see about that. He said, well, what are you going to do? I said, well, I'm going to go talk to the president. The president? What president? President of the university? He said, you can't do that.

Really? Watch me. So I did. He wasn't there, but his it's like chief of staff was, who happened to be a guy who had kind of an arm injury from World War II. And he said, oh, it can't be repaired, can it? I said, well, that's what they're telling me, sir. He said, I'll take care of it.

The next day, it was working just fine and worked for the next three years during my master's program. Didn't have a down day. How, we kind of jumped over this part. How long were you in Bethesda for total? I was in Bethesda for a little over 12 months. And throughout that time, you know when you showed up when you got wounded you couldn't move your right your legs or arm what was the progression like getting you back to to you know the the best that you got to yeah well it was a physical

therapy occupational therapy you know once a day which i decided if once a day was good twice might be better so i argued for that and pretty soon i got that by november my right leg had started to get remarkably better my left leg uh still wasn't real useful, but you put a brace on it and I could, by November I was walking. Now, granted, I had a crutch on one side on the right side, a loft strand crutch, you know, the metal things, we'd call polio crutches back then, but I don't know what they're, I think I call them loft strand crutches because that's the guy who invented. And a quorum on my left side, but I was walking, you know, and of course I went back to, I finally dropped the corpsmen and went to two loft strand crutches. drop the right the left one after a while back to the right one then drop that to a cane and the leg brace on my left and I did fine for about 42 years that way about eight years ago my right leg decided to take an early retirement on me and

So I had to start wearing a brace on that leg and and I was falling too much so they put me into a to an electric wheelchair which is what I scoot around the house and around town in that scooter over there is what But it flies. My wheelchair doesn't fly. It's 247 pounds, and it doesn't fly. But that flies, that breaks down into four or five parts of my wife. Can do it usually by our own. Of course, this weekend we've had the kids to help her.

Just throw it in the back of a... I know some of the notes... Speaking of you falling down, some of the notes had you wearing a football helmet while you were down there. And it sounded like that made quite an impact on some of the places that you'd visit with your football helmet on. Well, you know, I was falling.

When I started to walk independently at the hospital, you know, I had a left foot drop, which means the brace was supposed to bring it up, so it clears all the little obstacles and you don't ever pay attention to when you got two good feet. But I would fall into elevators because they wouldn't be exactly aligned, and I'd fall into everybody in there. So eventually I started to, they say, you need a football helmet to sit there. Yeah, because you got the ribs. Right, right. I've got a defect up there. You could put your hand in my defect and take it, take my pulse just like this, before I squeezed hard.

the thing would pop up. When'd you get a titanium plate in there? Oh, that was after about a year. At the end of the May year, they waited a year before they put a plate in your skull because it was considered a contaminated wound. I'm not sure what that meant to the medical people, but to me it meant you waited a year

and put the plate in. So this football film, my dad got it from the University of Delaware, where he worked, and it was blue with, like a Michigan thing, with yellow, stripes. So in occupational therapy, I got a can of olive draught paint. They'd make it, you do everything with my left hand. I spray painted this thing. Olive drab. My roommate at the time,

he had been there longer than I had. And apparently, that was the perfect roommate for him, because I had lost my sense of smell and taste. And apparently, he'd been in a body spike of cast from here, you know, down to his knees for like six months, and he stunk to high heaven. So, and I I didn't smell him, so I was apparently the perfect. His sister got this button book where he had a blank button and a bunch of things you could put on the button. But it also had some, you know, bullet holes with the shattered glass type of things. So I put one of those on the front of the football helmet. And I had a little badge, you know, maybe three inches around, said, my head is a depressed area.

said, and I'd wear that on my, my, my, my bathroom around the hospital. I, you know, people would stop and look at me, and they'd read that, and look at me, and they go, oh. And they just, they kind of move out of the way. They didn't want to mess with this guy. He might have been crazy. Dark humor is popular, our family. Well, dark humor, you know, at Bethes at that time, there was probably all, always about a dozen of us young lieutenants, you know, between the eighth floor and the 14th floor of the, well, they call it Roosevelt's erection, the tower. to Bethesda.

Anyway, and we didn't know it at the time, but we had a great group dynamic going on. There was always someone who was worse off than you. So when you started to feel sorry for yourself or started to get down, your buddies would come in and say, hey, what about Eisenbach over there? What about Batucci over here or so-and-so, Smitty? And sure enough, there was always somebody better off

than he was putting up the good fight. So, you know, you never got too down on yourself. Now, those are important lessons. for life right there. You bet. You bet. I mean, we can complain. I'll be the person complaining about, oh, I jammed

my finger and I'm all mad about it because I can't do something. It's like, no. What you need to do is be quiet. And as I always say, do what you can. Sure, sure. You do what you can. So you get down, so now we'll go back to college. You've got the elevator working.

You've got a, and how long is it How long it takes to get your doctor? What did you get your doctorate in? I got my doctor in speech-language pathology, you know, with a minor in psychology. But at first I had to get the master's. And I'm not sure how the University of Florida looked at my transcript from the Naval Academy and how they factored in, you know, weapons and navigation and courses like that that I took. But I had to do a whole lot of undergraduate courses before I could, you know, move in.

to the graduate level course. So it took me, I think, about three years to get the master's degree going to school full time. And the VA was, you know, picking up the tab for that. VA has been very good to me, very good. And I know there's a lot of complaints out there about the VA, and I'm sure some of them are warranted to some degree or another, but you've got to understand with the VA, you know, it doesn't happen yesterday, doesn't happen five minutes from now. It happens down the road. But as long as you, you know, check every box and go from A, B, C, D, instead of trying to jump from A to F, you know, it'll all work for you. Great outfit.

At what point did you meet Sherry? I met Sherry after I had my master's degree. I worked for a year down in Orlando at an Easter Seals community, and it was a great experience. One of my little profs at the University of Florida invited me to come back up to the medical center there and become one of their staff speech pathologists at the medical center. And I said, great, which so I did that. Sherry was a staff occupational therapist, had an office kind of across the hall from me.

We met and being dull normal about these things, like most men, apparently. I didn't catch on fast enough. So we had a mutual friend who was the other master speech pathologist there, and she had us over for dinner one night. It's great. and I still didn't get it. So we were at a convention one time, one summer, and we were having lunch together, myself and the other speech pathologist who was also a friend of Sherry's.

And she said, Ike, said, why do you think I invited you and Sherry over for dinner? I said, uh, uh, you like us? She said, listen, if you don't, when we get back from this convention, if you don't ask her out within two weeks, she's going to ask you out. Oh, God. So, you know, I asked her out and we went out. We did it for a while and eventually, you know, everything fell into place and we got engaged. Meanwhile, I had kind of given up on marriage.

I had dated a fair amount and, you know, I was just running into wall after wall. So, but I decided, you know, I wanted to be a dad. I love kids. I always loved kids. So I went to the Children's Aid Society of Florida and told them, I was a, you know, I was, I wanted to adopt a kiddo. Well, back then, and this was now the late 60s, early 70s, they looked at you like you had a hole in your head, of course, which I did.

So that was okay. But they said, look, they gave me all this stuff to read and all these exercises to go through and said, you come back in a couple of months, and if you still want to pursue this thing, we'll talk about it. Well, so I did. And this process took about nine months, but eventually I was approved. I mean, they, my, everybody in my family had to submit letters and all my friends. And they just, they sliced and diced me one side, up one side and down the other,

because they weren't going to let one of their kiddos get in a home some kind of freaky guy, you know. And which you totally understand. But getting engaged, all that went away. You know, if you're going to get married, that's what they, wanted it. They wanted obviously a two-person situation for their kids and a stable. So if you got engaged or something like that during this process, it was over. But I had been accepted. And sure enough, as soon as we got engaged, I called my casework and told her, it's a great Ike, way to go. And boom, the adoption's off though. I said, okay, that's fine. We'll do it the old-fashioned

way, which we did. And then, and as this time you still pursuing your doctorate at this time? I'm pursuing my doctorate at this time. That's right. And that was about seven years going to school, half-time and working half-time. You know, I'd get a fellowship at the VA and, you know, half-time research fellowship or clinical fellowship and stuff like that and go to school halftime. My VA money had run out by then, so I was funding this, which was fine with me. And then at some point, you finish with the marriage, you get married, and you start having kids.

This is true. Matt. Matt. He's the third kiddo. here we go. My time to shine. Yeah, this is your moment. What was it like for you?

You're growing up with a dad. You know, I don't think it was a typical childhood compared to my friends. He would charge in her. It probably felt like four in the morning, but it was probably more like 7 o'clock. Wake us up, he'd all be out in the hallway, in line, like formed up, ready to go prior to school. and he would do what he called belly busters. It was basically morning PT with the family. And obviously, like, it was very limited,

but we did like push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks. What else do you have us do? That's about the one thing I'm thinking of. Yeah. And so it was just like, I don't think anybody else's kids did that at the time. You ever met my kids. Right. Oh, there you go.

he would wake us up by like playing revely you know i knew what revely was before i joined uh the military um it was it was they couldn't chew gum it was somewhat control chaos there was a lot of discipline there that uh maybe other kids didn't have we got a we got put on restriction um which i didn't know what that was until i went to naps like as opposed to being grounded as opposed to being ground we got put on restriction and that's just what it was called and we had to explain what it was to our friends. Can't come to the movies. No,

the amount of restriction. Right. What is that? So we have to explain that's being grounded. Yeah, he was kind of like this, this hero to like a lot of our friends, though, because he was really good with our friends.

And he was just like kind of like a wild man. He was notorious throughout the school system of not being a guy to mess with if you were like a school administrator. I think the, you mess with my kids, I'm going to be talking to you. Not in the notes, but I'll tell this story. I think it was sixth grade, and I had a friend who would get in trouble in class regularly. And, you know, I'm the youngest kid, so a lot of teachers knew who I was,

and my sisters were probably better at school at that time than I was. And so, you know, the teacher pulls me aside one day, and she's like, you need to stop being friends with Chino. He's just a bad influence on you. And so I go home, tell my dad that. He goes, well, we'll see. Next day, like, it's, you know, the school that has, like, the loudspeaker that, like, clicks on from when the office calls. And I think, you know, one of the office staff was like, you know, Mrs. Schneiderman, I think Mr. Eisenbach is here. She's like, oh, great, I'll send Matt down to the office.

And you could kind of hear it in the voice of the office staff. And they're like, no, no, no, he's here to see you. And the whole class was just like, what is happening? So, yeah, it is clearly different. You know, it's growing up with like somebody that is like the essence of the Marine Corps, like discipline, kind of like iron-fisted is what people think. But fair. Sure.

Yeah. That's what we're calling it these days. Most of the time. Like, you know, there were things that, you know, you just have to. do because that's the way I want them done or that's what I said. It's how we do them in our house. Right, which is like, that's what he wants. So, you know, you kind of had to grow up learning just to like, you know, roll with that sort

of stuff, which is, you know, a lot of what you see in the military. It's like we do things this way just because it's the way we do it. Or it's because of the way I want it. But, you know, not everything is like that in the military. You know, you get, you know, input, which at like eight years old, I didn't have a lot of input in things. So at what point did you decide you were going to go to the Naval Academy? Like him, we would schedule trips around the Annapolis area to go visit friends,

and we'd wind up at the academy or... Psychological warfare. Right. We'd go to San Diego for spring break and go check out the Naval Station, things like that. And so, you know, I'd kind of known for a while, like, you know, I want to be a pilot. This is kind of what I want to do. and I think the best way to go about that is probably go to the Naval Academy. And so I had probably like early high school kind of had that idea in mind.

Like him, I probably wasn't the best student ever. I got better over time, but at that time I didn't really like put a lot of effort into school and homework. So I had to go to what was called Naval Academy Prep School, which is just, you know, basically an academic year to get you ready for the Naval Academy. I found out about restriction there. Restriction breathing was. Right. Well, I'll tell you, if I can, one of my favorite stories about Matt was when he was getting ready to apply for the Naval Academy, you know, I thought he had taken the PSAT or whatever that is, the preset.

And I thought, well, we've got to bump this up a little bit. So, you know, I'll challenge him. So I made a bet with him. I said, I bet I can score higher on the SAT than you can. He looks at me like, of course, that I got three heads and 14 ears. Oh, Dad. So I, meanwhile, had strategically bought some of these prep books that I was leaving around the house. Because we played a win over here in the rain court.

I'm hoping he would buy into those, you know. He didn't. But we scheduled the SAT, and we took it, and the results come back. And, you know, you got to be careful what you wish for. I outscored him, and I had like a 650 or 750. He had an 800 on the English side. And he said, Dad, no one ever gets $750 in English. So that all just came back to haunt me, you know.

I beat him on that. But he, you know, he had a lot of things going for me. He was an Eagle Scout. He'd lettered in a couple of sports at high school. And he did, he had a good interview with a blue and gold officer, a fellow who kind of recruits for the Naval Academy and, you know, around the area. And they got them all over the country. Probably else that he knows all those people, too.

well I don't think so but I didn't know anybody on the admissions board and it wouldn't have helped if I did you got in there yourself and you ended up being a a sub-mariner though you know the Naval Academy like any selection program

is going to be tough and there's only a limited number of spots and there's you know physical requirements that you have to meet you know I don't have 20-20 vision anymore so probably being a pilot was not in the works for me. So I just went, you know, I think I got selected as a surface warfare officer.

And then, you know, I didn't necessarily want to do that. I wanted to do something different or more challenging. And so I went asked to be a submarine officer. And you have to, you have to ask to get an interview with the naval reactors personnel. And so, you know, I went and saw the captain on the yard who was the head submarine officer there. And, you know, he looked at all the all my stuff and said, you picked the wrong major. I was an econ major at the time. Again, probably didn't have the best grades ever, but I was good enough in math and science that he let me through onto the Naval Reactor's interview. So it went from there. You got to go still kind of like old school where you used to have to go interview with Admiral Rickover and he'd

play mind games with you. They still keep that traditional alive. You still go interview with the four star that's head of Naval Reactors. but fewer mind games. More just technical interview and then go. And how many years did you end up doing? I did six. I got out in 2012, July of that year, so just a little over six years.

And so, Ike, what are you doing now? I am what I call fully retired and enjoying it immensely. After my speech pathology career kind of, it just kind of petered out here in the Pacific Northwest. It's a whole different atmosphere and ballgame for allied health professionals than it is on the East Coast, which was okay. So I, in about 95, I went into selling life insurance and mutual funds, which I enjoyed, but wasn't wildly successful at, but was successful enough to pay the bills and keep some income coming in. But finally, I ditch that and decided to live a life of leisure, shall we say.

But, you know, every day is a little bit different. You know, getting up in the morning, it's not typical. You've got to get braces on and make sure you don't fall out of bed. You know, one of my theories is gravity always wins and it always does. So everything's just a little bit more difficult, but it's okay. sure beats being at Arlington kind of looking up

with the sod which is where I theoretically should be well we are certainly glad that you didn't end up there and that you ended up here it's probably a good place

to wrap it up just awesome to sit and talk with you well likewise Jocko did you have any closing thoughts Matt anything that I missed I don't have any closing thoughts Well, it's just one thought. Absolutely.

We almost always miss in the service and, frankly, in any kind of industry or stuff like that. And that's the part that your spouse plays for you. My wife has been terrific over the last 41 years. She's, A, the love of my life and B, the mother of my children. And, you know, I don't think I could get through a week without her. she helps me she points out where I'm you know turning left when I maybe should

stay the straight and narrow you know she's a good cook she's pretty good at managing money and I love her dearly well that's that's awesome and yeah like we can often overlook the the

families you know whether it's the husband the wife the kids They all make a huge sacrifice, but for those that are still in the military, you know, they always make the sacrifice to support, you know, their spouse. So absolutely to the families out there that are out there supporting the spouses. Thank you to you all. And, sir, you know, it's just been an honor to sit here and talk with you. Thank you.

Thank you for coming on the show. More importantly, though, obviously, thank you for your service and your sacrifice. You as well, Jacko, and also you, yes. Yeah, well, we're waiting on that, Echo. Everybody serves in their own way. There we go. You just got a first vote from Echo Charles. We, you know, the sacrifice that you made, the efforts that you made, you know,

that's what allows us to be here today as a free people doing what we're doing. So thank you for for putting your own safety and your own life on the line for this country. And we deeply appreciate it. Well, thank you for your service again. And for all those out there who have served and are serving, you know, get some. Awesome. Thanks, I appreciate it. And with that, Charles Robert Eich, Eisenbach has.

left the building and honored to have him on to talk to, hear his perspective, kind of a crazy life. Start with growing up in the Philippines. Yeah, that's funny. His dad sound like a character. Yeah, yeah. A character. He's like, yeah, he's like from the Philippines, right? But not technically Filipino. So, you know, so they're like, oh, yeah, you're from the Philippines. It's like not computing. It's good. Interesting stuff. And it's just awesome. for us to sit here and of course get to get to talk with another hero another individual that it just steps up and overcomes reminding me reminding us right that we need to do more that we can do more is there anything echo charles that you recommend that we should all do yeah what is it jiu jit too okay course okay Okay. I think of the many reasons to do Jiu-Jitsu,

I think we've concluded, number one, is that it's fun. That should be, however, I don't know if it's the biggest reason. I'm not sure. It's the reason that will keep you with it. Oh, yeah. There's so many strong reasons, though. We'll just say fun slash beneficial. Here's the weird thing.

Like, on social media, somebody asked me all these different questions, all these different questions about what would you do if what would you do if you have trouble controlling your temper do jihitsu what do you do if you have trouble detaching or what's a good way to learn to detach do jiu jitsu what's a good workout to start getting in shape jiu jitsu

what's a good way to let off steam and not get stressed out jiu jitsu you see what I'm saying yes it's just answer answer answer answer answer so yeah pretty much across the board what we are saying do jihitsu when you do jih Tjitsu you gotta have a ghee for sure You're going to need a ghee.

So when you do ghee, this is the ghee you're going to get. Origin ghee. It's not just one origin geet. Get as many as you want, but you have different selections is what I'm saying. See what I'm saying? So one of the reasons to get an origin ghee, not that it's fun. It is fun to get an origin geese for sure. It is fun to get an origin geoff.

Oddly enough. They're factually the best. Is that how a normal person feels when they shop? Yes. What do they call it? Like some therapy? like shop therapy? Shop therapy? Is that what it's called?

Shop therapy, yeah. It sounds like what it's called. No, well, yeah, I don't know if it's, but it's that situation where it's like therapeutic to go shopping. Some people just go window shopping. I think what I, have you ever heard might me rage against consumerism? Because I'll do it right now. Well, you know. You people that buy everything, right? Yeah.

I think what happens is there's a certain level of gratification that you get from building something, making something. Yeah, yeah. whether it's a brick wall, whether it's a re-hanging drywall in the kitchen. Like it, there's a satisfaction that you get from it, from creating something. Well, I hate to say it,

but sometimes for some people, shopping starts to kind of replace that. Yeah. And they want to create something cool. They can just click on Amazon and it's coming and they kind of get a little dose of it. A little dose of it. It feels good.

So there is that. When you buy an origin key, I will say you feel a little bit. bit. What's better though is when you buy an origin ghee what you kind of feel you look when you buy some random thing off of amazon.com you don't know where that thing came from right you're not connected to it. When you buy an origin key you know what you know exactly what's happened you know exactly where it came from you know what it means it's true you know what it represents you know that it has soul so oh sir heck yeah so get yourself an origin

Well, what you're talking about is completely correct. So I had both. So, you know, you're saying making something or doing something. Creating something. So this may or may not count. So I switched some doorknops in my house. Big time. Right?

You see what I'm saying? But you got gratification, right? Yes, exactly right. Satisfaction. You felt good about it, especially you shut that door to cause. Yeah. Shuts were solid. Heck yeah.

Well, one of them, the locking thing was like jammed up. You had to, it was a thing. It was just giving me issues. Like given. Did you overcome? The state of my doorknob, that was like, that wasn't an acceptable state. Okay. It was in my room.

Fixing that whole situation was like that was something that needed to be done. And I did it by myself. Same thing with a different doorknop. It needed a lock. It didn't have a lock. Okay. So there's three altogether with different issues. So I'm saying?

But, okay, so it did it. Universally you overcame these challenges. came it, did it, gratification. But on top of that, I shopped for the new doorknobs on Amazon. And I got gratification from that too. So you're saying? But so that fact does remain. But with the ghee, you have the additional gratification.

Of course, they're the best geese in the world, but they are made in America. Imagine that. Like, you know when you're a kid, you want the best car. Yes. But it's hard to afford that car. Origin ghee. It's like, oh, you want the best. Gui, cool, you can afford it.

Yeah, yeah. You can make it happen. Yeah. Or you could go get the not the not best ghee. Up to you. But, I mean, it's, well, that's on you, though. Yeah, yeah. Let's face it, that's on you.

That's not encouraged behavior. Oh, no, man, come on. Nonetheless, get your ghee, origin gea at origin, mane.com. Yeah. And the good thing is, if you need other clothing items outside the realm of Jiu-Jitsu, outside the realm of geese, outside the realm of rash guards. Yes. Then you can get other clothing materials, such as t-shirts, such as hoodies, such as, yes, jeans.

American made, denim. Yeah. Same deal. And you might be thinking, why stop there? Don't worry, we didn't stop there. Because you can get, you can get boots too. You can get origin boots made in America. But you know where the leather's from, though?

Where? Oh, it's from America. You know where the stitching is from, though? Yes. Yeah, it's from America. But you know where they're actually assembled, though, to be honest with you? America. And then there's some supplementation.

Yeah. Yes. The most important kind of supplements, by the way. The ones that work and, well, in the case of milk, the kind that tastes like dessert. So, yes, that is the best kind of supplements, in my opinion. But joint warfare, creole oil, these are free joints, keep you in the game. That's a big deal. Like, doesn't matter how much you can dead.

Actually, that is the deal. It's the deal, right? Let's face it. If you're not in the game, then you just sort of not in the game. the game at all. Yeah, like, you know how like, you know, the kind of where you, like, you're super strong, but like your elbows are jamming you up so hard, like, Brad, you're not strong no anymore because your elbows can't take it.

See what I'm saying? So, yeah, joint warfare, cruel oil. Also, discipline. That's for your brain. Brain and body. It's a brain body sort of scenario. Look at you. That is becoming every day one for me, by the way.

Oh, you're on the D-trained. D-trained all day. Or way, way, D-plane, discipline, plain, the D-plane. Who said that? I think Dave Burke. Oh, is that? Really? Good dude.

Well, he is a... Wait, good dude, but I think... I'm pretty sure. I'm not sure. Let me confirm that later. But nonetheless, discipline, free reign every day. It helps. Totally does help.

Mulk helps every day, too, especially when you got that little post dinner. You want a little something. Let's face it, you... Let's face it. Steak is awesome. We all know that.

But let's just face the facts. Sometimes you get done and you got that little craving. That little want. You want something called dessert, but you know it's not part of the plan. You know, it's not on the program. You know it is not on the path, certainly. Cake is not on the path. But that's okay. We got you. You can have dessert. You get some shelf some milk.

Also for the kids, warrior kid milk. So same deal. Same deal. But more engineered for the kids, would you say, is that safe to say engineered for the kids? Speaking of engineering for the kids. You know what? I'm not even going to mention it. But there was an artifact, not an artifact. Artifacts wrong word. A product that we sampled at the vitamin shop situation. Are we allowed to talk about this because it might be like against some big reveal plan? You see what I don't know. Do you talking about milk bars? It's been revealed. Okay. All right. There you go. Well, nonetheless, look, that is going to be like another level even. Another layer of post-dinner dessert situation.

See what I'm saying? Yeah, I do know what you're saying. It is a candy bar that's straight up good for you. Yeah. Legitimately good for you. Oh, yeah. Think about that. It doesn't taste like it.

This is not normal. This is good. Yeah, it was different than what I was used to for sure. But unless, you know how many I have of those right now? How many? Monk bars. I have 200. Oh, you grabbed them all.

See, that's where they went. So I was wondering, where did those go? Because, you know, I kind of wanted some or whatever. I never want anything. Like, I'm always like, oh, no, keep it. No, you can have it. No, you know, because whatever. That's just kind of my personality.

Like, I don't even want to have the other stuff. Yeah. No, they were like, oh, I took them all. I put them all right in my car. Okay. All right. So I got all those. No, man, you did the right thing.

Yeah. But yeah, the mulch balls become, we're building a plant to make them, by the way. Because no one could make what we wanted. Yeah. So it's like, okay, cool. You can't figure it out. Cool. Watch this.

Mulk bars. As many milk bars as you need. Anyway, so yes. So, milk bars, not currently available, but on the horizon. On the horizon. Jaka-Y-T is available right now. Yes. If you need something organic in your life,

because you want to feel like one of those people that is, you know, healthier. All healthier than you are. Oh, yeah. Now you can come back at them. When someone's like, is that organic? Actually, yes, it is. Otherwise, I wouldn't put it in my body.

Certified. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Certified organic. What step? So there you go. And by the way, this stuff is all available

at the vitamin shop nationwide. Yeah. Which is pretty, it's convenient, bottom line. Yeah. And normally that's kind of, I'm a little troubled with convenience,

right? Because convenience, all of a sudden, you know, what, is there a slippery slope to McDonald's? Yeah.

No, there's not. No, there's not. Don't let that happen. Yes, sir. Also, We have a store called Jocko store. They always said this.

I said, we have a store. We do. And it's not just you and me. It's all of us. The whole group collectively. Everyone here has a store, your own store. Our own store. We could have called it that, but we didn't think of that back then.

A store. Could have just, you know, our store, the trooper store. Sure. For people that are just getting after it. Anyways, if you, if you're getting after it, maybe you need a rash card. Maybe you need a t-shirt. Maybe you need a hat. If you're echo, you don't need.

a hat because he doesn't wear a hat. No, very rarely. I've never seen you with a hat, not even for one second, not even in the cold weather. No. I don't think, wait, maybe I seen you an origin beanie. I think you've never seen me in cold weather. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was cold weather. 19 degrees is cold.

Oh, yeah, you must have had a hat on out there. I don't know if I did or not. Yeah, I had a beanie on you. Yeah, you're right. Nonetheless, jocco story.com, yes, represent while you're on the path. That's where you get all this cool stuff. Also, subscribe to the podcast. if you haven't already, I think.

It's important. Varing levels of importance, but yeah, do it. Leave a review if you're in the mood. It's kind of cool. It's kind of a cool thing to do to kind of like just confirm where you're at in your mental space. Yeah, I think so, sure.

Don't forget about the grounded podcast, which is part of the DefCore Network. You didn't know about that, did you? We got a whole network called the DefCore Network. Yeah. We're building a network. Sure. We got three podcasts on it.

Jock Podcast. Grounded Podcast and Warrior Kid Podcast. You can subscribe to all of them if you want, or none of them, whatever. You can also check out Warrior Kid Soap at Irish Oaks Ranch.com. There's a kid who's been a warrior kid since day one in the game, and guess what? He makes his own soap from goat milk, goats that he raised. And we have a new soap, a new soap.

It's called, well, it's got some active ingredients that help fight. against bacteria. I don't even know what I'm talking about. Bacteria, microbials. Microbes. Yeah, those funguses.

Fungi. Fungi. All these things, all these things. All those things need to be defeated. So we have a soap. And it's called killer soap. And if you use it, it will help you to.

Also YouTube. YouTube channel, if you're interested, in the video version of this podcast or excerpts from the podcast you don't necessarily want to watch the whole thing all at once all the time or let's just say you might think that the world would be better place if as the world unfolded and things happened that part of the world exploded or caught on fire because echo because he has command of virtual reality he can make My words make things explode.

He can make my kettlebell make things blow up. Yes. He can make his own magical powers be revealed in forms of like sparks. If I'm so inclined. Yeah. So that's Echo Charles. He may not be able to control everything in the world, but on the Jocko YouTube channel, he can make things happen.

Yeah, sure, on video wise. He's quite proud of that. Sure, I haven't used explosions in a while, but, you know, yeah, we're going to continue that from time to time, I think. I hope. We also got an album called Psychological Warfare. It's a little psychological hitter if you need a little bump to get you over a bump. You can check that all on iTunes, Google Play, or any MP3. We got Flipsidecanvice.com where Dakota Meyer is making visual representations of discipline.

Pure, distilled onto a canvas that you can then hang on your wall and it will keep you on the path. Also got a bunch of books, Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. Way the Warrior Kid, got three of those books, got Mikey and the Dragons for the little little kids,

got the discipline equals freedom field manual. The audio version of that is on iTunes and Amazon Music and Google Play, as an animal. in Google Play as an MP3. We got extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership, the fundamentals of combat leadership that I wrote about with my brother Laif Babin. We have Eschalon Front, which is our leadership consultancy, and what we do is we solve problems through leadership.

Go to Eschlonfront.com if you need help in your organization with that. We got EF Online, which is online leadership training to get you up to speed as a leader. Go to EFonline.com for that. We've got the muster. which is our live conference, gathering, seminar. I got to think of a better word because it's better than all those three things. Everyone that we've done has sold out.

This year we are doing Orlando. We are doing Phoenix and we are doing Dallas. If you want to come, go to Extreme Ownership.com. Every one of these that we have done has sold out. And these are going to sell out too. So get there earlier. And also, if you need leaders, at any level in your organization.

Check out EFoverwatch.com for executive leadership. Check out EFlegin.com for frontline leadership. These are our platforms to connect the vets that have experience leading with companies that need experienced leaders. Go check out those platforms. Also wanted to say, talking to Ike, asking him about

any charities he wanted me to mention and he said the Semper 5 fund which does a bunch of stuff for Marines for Marine families for Marines that are transitioning outside out of the middle out of the Marine Corps and also helps them out with their health and wellness so that's semper five fund dot org and also he wanted you to check out the Fisher House which is when troops get wounded and they're in the hospital for an extended period of time the Fisher House House provides them with a place to stay, provides their families with a place to stay in the area. So it's fissurehouse.org. It's a grip. Both these organizations are great organizations. So check those out. And if you feel like you want to hear more from Echo and I, you know,

for whatever reason, if you want to throw a correction at us, if we made a mistake, which is entirely possible, we probably need it. Well, we're there. We're all on the interwebs. And we're also on, that means we're on Twitter, we're on Instagram, and we are on Z. Froshenbach. And you can find Echo at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks once again to Charles Robert, Bobby Bob Eisenbach, Ike. An absolute honor to meet with him today, to talk to him, and to hear his incredible. story of service to America and the rest of the veterans out there that are on active duty, the ones that have already retired that've left the service, all of you that have put on the

uniform, thank you for your service. And of course, the same goes out to our police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service. You take care of us here on the home front. and you are appreciated as well. And to both those groups, thanks to your families for the support that you give to the folks that are wearing the uniform. And everyone else out there,

you know, when you think about, when you think about the challenges that you face, that I face, that we all face, what challenges are we up against? What external power, is trying to hold you down going through your little battle can remember you can remember someone like Ike and you can remember what he did facing these challenges shot in the head wounded paralyzed hospitalized and you know what any one of us can fold under those

challenges of life you can do that you can fold you can give in or you can do what Ike did and what Ike does every day which is take on those challenges by getting out there and getting after it so until next time this is Echo and Jocko out