Jocko Podcast - 269: Don't Just Go With The Flow. Take Action Because It Makes a Difference

Episode Date: February 17, 2021

0:00:00 - Opening0:02:00 - The Squad Leader Makes a Difference2:21:44 - How to stay on THE PATH2:45:15 - Closing GratitudeSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 269 with Echo Charles and me Jocker Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And also joining us tonight is Dave Burke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. The last podcast with Laif, we covered the first part of this Marine Corps manual, which I don't even know if it's yet.

It's not really a manual. It's like somebody made this. It's called the squad leader makes a difference. And I know who made it actually. Lieutenant M. M. Abaldi and Lieutenant A. M. Atero. They made it at the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab in August of 1998. And we're going to push through the last few pages of this book that we didn't cover last time, but then we're going to dive deeper into the last example, which I actually moved to the end. And if you've ever wondered where these podcasts come from, where my mind

is going. You've ever wondered how I'm thinking through these things? This is an opportunity to follow me down a path of discovery to learn more about leadership, to learn more about human nature and about war and about history and about fear and about sorrow and about life and about death. It's an interesting ride. And it all starts by picking up where we left off with this manual.

The squad leader makes a difference. The subtitle is readings on combat at the squad level. this book is a book that by its very nature simultaneously establishes and then reinforces a culture of maneuver warfare it enforces that it establishes it it is decentralized command it's literally a book about the frontline leaders making a difference and stepping up and leading so here we go We're going to go back to the book right now. This one is Sergeant Joe Hooper, U.S. Army, Vietnam, 1968.

Sergeant Joe Hooper was a squad leader with D Company, 2nd Battalion, 501st Infantry, 101st Airborne Division, near Way City. A big salute right now, obviously, to the second of the 501st. Awesome. In January of 1968,

Wei was captured by the North Vietnamese in the TED Offensive. U.S. forces fought desperately to liberate Vietnam's ancient imperial city. On February 17th, D Company was assaulting a defended position along a riverbank, outside Wei City, when it was attacked by rocket and machine gunfire.

The company had run into a defensive position manned by two North Vietnamese companies in Douglass. out bunkers. With the company pinned down by fire, Sergeant Hooper located the source of the enemy fire. He rallied his squad and attacked across the river. He overran several enemy bunkers. This bold maneuver inspired the rest of the company to join the attack. During this attack, some of Sergeant Hooper's squad had been wounded. He ran out into the open to retrieve them, but was seriously wounded himself. Sergeant Hooper refused medical treatment and returned to his men.

Enemy fire continued to hamper the attack. Sergeant Hooper led his squad through the bunkers and buildings clearing a path for the company and mortally wounding a North Vietnamese officer. When his squad came under direct fire from a building to their front, Sergeant Hooper assaulted the building himself and killed the enemy with grenades and rifle fire. Upon reaching the final line of the North Vietnamese defenses, Sergeant Hooper destroyed four bunkers by running the length of the position. tossing grenades into each of the dugouts the enemy soldiers began to withdraw from their positions Sergeant Hooper then led his squad in destroying the last two Vietnamese bunkers with white phosphorus grenades After the last pocket of resistance was eliminated sergeant Hooper organized his unit into defensive positions When the remainder of his company had caught up sergeant Hooper allowed himself to have his wounds treated

Sergeant Hooper played a major role in defeating a large force of North Vietnamese. D Company's attack forced the withdrawal of North Vietnamese reinforcements, attempting to enter the city. This action outside the city weakened the NVA defenders inside Hway, easing pressure on the besieged city and leading to the eventual liberation of the imperial capital. And oddly enough, it doesn't talk about him receiving the medal of honor or anything after he's charging bunkers by himself. It's just who I guess that's just what we're doing. Lessons.

Sergeant Hooper displayed exceptional leadership. His endurance, despite being wounded, served as an example to his squad and his company. After taking initiative to assault across the river, Sergeant Hooper's squad assumed the role of the company's main effort and spearheaded the attack. His exceptional courage under fire inspired the remainder of the company. Sergeant Hooper's combat decisions intact. leadership at the squad level contributed to his company's success in this bitter fight

with a North Vietnamese attempt to reinforce the city halted other forces were able to clear the city. This is obviously this is the kind of initiative. This is the kind of bias for action that the Marine Corps talks about all the time. This is the kind of initiative that we try and train leaders to have at every level that they are going to to make things happen. That's what we want. And they've followed up this quote. I've actually,

we actually hit this quote before, but I'm going to hit it again. We covered it a while ago on podcast 62. Ardent Depeak, his book, Battle Studies. Listen to this, though. Listen to this and think about this. Four brave men who do not know each other

will not dare to a time. a lion. For less brave men, but knowing each other well, sure of their reliability and consequently of mutual aid will attack resolutely. There is the science of the organization of armies in a nutshell. When I was in South Africa, Laif and I went down to South Africa and we worked with some companies down there. And I heard that.

They wasn't in this context. but they were talking about how back in the day the African tribes would hunt lions with spears but they would say you know be like three or four guys that would be able to take a lion because they could maneuver in from different angles and they could eventually kill the lion and this was after the conversation that I don't know if you know this in South in Africa there's no lions living out in the wild

They're all in these big giant game reserves, which are like the wild, but they're not in the wild. Why is that? Because then you have freaking lions roaming around killing people. I mean, you're no match for a lion. No match. But if you've got some friends, three friends, four. I mean, if you think about, okay, what are the odds, if you were to do this, the odds of a human beating a lion in a fight? What are the odds?

You know, like, it is not, it's almost zero. How is a human going to kill a lion in a fight? Right? Okay, you give him a spear. He has some kind of a chance. But it ain't good when a freaking lion's coming at you. That thing's going to just, it's a slaughter. But as soon as you've got some friends and you can make some maneuvers,

now you can, not only can you win, you are confident enough that you do it on a regular basis. That's decentralized command. that's not only decentralized command that's what a good team is a good team was he call it the the if you're sure of the mutual aid

if I know you got my back that's the strength of the team I like how he used the phrase in that quote the science of organizations and when you think of science you think of like all this research and all this analysis and all the things right you know what the science of organizations is

I got your back relationships yeah I got your back that's the science that's all you need to know I think that quote, that word actually, I wrote that down because that that run loudly of There's actually it's not it's not complicated. This is not complicated you have to have someone that you trust. Yeah, if you trust that person you'll do so much more with some with just one other person that you trust than what you do as a on your own. Yeah and before I jumped on and completed your sentence for you you. You were gonna say relationships, right? And I was already in the combat mode if I got your back because that's you know what do you you don't you don't tell a. Uh, you don't you don't tell a. A Lance Corporal, hey, you need to build a relationship. No, you say, you got to make sure they got your back, right? But if you're talking to a business, which is what we do, it's, hey, you got to make sure you're building good relationships. You got to make sure that they know they're going to give you that support, that mutual aid if you need it.

That's what we're doing. And if we have that, we're unstoppable. If we have that, three of us can take a lion. Corporal Gregory. Corporal Gregory was a squad leader. This is Vietnam, 1971, U. U.S. Marine Corps. Corporal Gregory was a squad leader assigned to the first combined unit pacification platoon,

3rd Battalion, 1st Marines. The unit was the northernmost marine unit in Vietnam. Corporal Gregory's combat experience had made him an extremely proficient infantry leader. He placed strong emphasis on training in the field. Where? Wait, back in the rear? Where they had plenty of time to train? No, in the field.

He plays strong emphasis on training in the field. He took every chance to conduct opportunity training with his Marines. There were numerous duties required of Corporal Gregory's squad. Each day, Corporal Gregory assembled the squad and instructed them in a single practical infantry skill. I'm going to say that again. Every day, we got all these duties. The reason I'm saying this is we hear this all the time from companies. Well, we don't really have time to train.

So, so guess what? No one has time to train. And if you think that this Marine corporal in the field has, quote, time to train, you're wrong. So what does he do? Every day he assembles the squad and instructs them in a single practical infantry skill. How long does that take? Ten minutes? Five minutes, seven minutes.

While in a patrol base, Corporal Gregory instructed his men in such skills as helicopter medevacs, close air support, and call for fire. Corporal Gregory required that his squad members continue their professional development. Every day after returning from patrols, Corporal Gregory's squad would work on their Marine Corps Institute correspondence courses. PFC Kirby, a member of Corporal Gregory squad, finished the Marine Corps NCO, MCI in the field in Vietnam. In the field in Vietnam. Corporal Gregory took the initiative to train his Marines and the skills required by his units. mission and environment.

His training exceeded the basic requirements established by the Marine Corps and created a squad that was particularly well prepared for combat. The corporal used scenario-based training to run his men through multiple repetitions of probable combat situations. He made sure that each Marine in his squad understood their commander's intent, their role in the mission, and how each man. affected the outcome of events during battle. Corporal Gregory is freaking squared away.

And by the way, everything that I'm saying right now, apply it to what you're doing in your company, in your business. Think of how much you could do to help, how much you could do to train your people. Not because you've got two weeks allocated to train your personnel, but because you've got 20 minutes to review with them how this product works or how this piece of equipment functions or what to do in an emergency. situation or how to handle a client.

It was not long before Corporal Gregory's training proved vital. On the night of February 14th, 1971, Corporal Gregory and his unit came under heavy attack. Corporal Gregory was killed. Yet because the squad was so well trained and understood what had, what had to be done, the squad was able to meet the challenge and skillfully engage the enemy. Corporal Gregory's exemplary leadership in the weeks prior to the attack had prepared his Marines for this firefight. The enemy was repulsed and the squad held its position. In the morning, over 30 dead NVA were found in the area surrounding the squad's position.

Every Marine in the squad realized that it was Corporal Gregory's training emphasis that had won the battle and saved their lives. lessons. Corporal Gregory displayed outstanding initiative in training his Marines. He assumed the responsibility for preparing his Marines for the demands of combat. This training greatly exceeded the established standards of the Marine Corps, which, by the way, are no low standards. And directly contributed to the combat success and survival of the unit after Corporal Gregory's death. And by the way, if they ended up with 30 dead NVA, over 30 dead. dead NVA, that was a big force that attacked his unit. Corporal Gregory used whatever time was available to instruct his Marines and hone their professional skills. This aggressive

opportunity training was necessary because few units could conduct formal training in the combat zone. I talked about the Sony F online the other day. I absolutely learned more from informal training than I did from formal training during my time in the Navy without questions, It's not even close. If you were to remove all the informal lessons I learned, I would be an idiot. Do you find that the formal training is like kind of sorts itself out to be more valuable early on? Explain. So like, you know how you have like basic training, right?

That's where you learn like all the formal protocols that were. Everyone has to essentially do the same thing under very similar circumstances. And then the informal training seems to, and I'm totally just thinking about Jiu-Jitsu right now. and at work, I guess, where when you get informal training, that's when you're trained up on all the basics. It's kind of like college in a way. You know, you have like all these prerequisites. Like, hey, you guys all got to know this, this, this, and know it good. And then later on, then maybe we'll send you out to a specific company or whatever to learn kind of what they do.

And then you can start to apply these things in specific situations. I think the example to use would be, let's say you went to some kind of a technical school like, being a doctor, being a mechanic, being an air conditioning repairman. You're going to learn some technical stuff in the classroom. But when do you really get good? It's doing the job. It's when someone pulls you aside and says, oh, yeah, when you see this, here's the problem. Right.

When you, when you go here, here's what you need to do. When you see this symptom from a patient, here's what's actually happening. It's all that informal training that, and maybe I'm wrong about the doctors because I don't know what medical school's like but I can only imagine that you get a heck of a lot better by once you're in the field and you're doing surgeries and someone says hey here's a better way to do here's the technique you need to use there here's you know something like that yeah yeah yeah it's like you know how you I think it was a it was a book you're reading a long time ago where where they'd have a name shoot it might have been might have been one of our guests I don't know but they'd have a name for the

people who don't do, I think it was in the army, where they don't do it, they just do all the theory. And they called them something like nerds or something. Pose. I don't know. Anyway, but yeah, there's the people who know and they essentially, they know what to do and what the protocols are in a vacuum. But once you start, when you get out there in the field and the real world kind of thing, that's where that informal, like, no, this isn't by the book over here. You got to watch out for this because of it, you know. And there's also a difference between just learning from experience, which is, hey, I did this operation. Here's some mistakes that I made.

And that's just experience. Classroom is classroom. I'm talking about in between where you're, you know, someone's pulling you aside and say, hey, Junko, when you start to see this develop, that's not a good call. Here's a call that would be better to make. And here's why.

It's not formal training. It's my platoon chief telling me something. Yeah. It's my LPO, my leading petty officer saying, hey, hey, new guy, here's what you need to do when you see that unfolding. And you go, okay, Roger that. It's not formal training,

but that's where you learn. And it's not just experience either. Experience alone would take you way longer than informal training. Like how many times, okay, jiu jitza example, here you learn the arm lock. Now we're rolling. And you try and arm lock me and I say, hey, echo, if you don't squeeze your knees together, it's real easy to get out here. Give me your arm.

Boom. Oh, yeah, you feel that? Try and pull your arm out. Oh, I can't. Oh, okay. Yeah. That's because it's all because I'm squeezing my knees. Okay.

Look, the instructor guarantee the instructor said, squeeze your knees. Yeah. But you need that informal assessment of your actual situation to realize, oh, I see what I need to do. Yeah, exactly right. That's exactly what I was thinking too, that you did. What was the, I mean, you have to get informal training once you're in the, once you're done with the rag. Yeah. I think just how you described it.

You talked about like being on site or being in the field or doing it like that. You talked about even just the air-conditioned repair man and what that looks like. The way you described what life would be like if all we ever did was formal training, you'd have no context for anything. You wouldn't even know how it applies. So I think that's true.

Certainly in my case, in aviation, I don't think it's any different. Like, everything is taught by the book. Everything is formal training in the beginning. It's all these things. And the minute you get in the airplane and get up in the sky and you are feeling things in a different way,

it's really hard to apply them because you learned it on the ground. And the context of the informal, hey, hey, listen, look, do you see that? Yeah, yeah. That's what it means in the book when it says this. That's what it looks like. And go, oh, man, I would never be able to understand that from reading it in a book. They have to trend.

You have to get a translation. Yeah, you do. You have to be able to see and feel it for the, and that will not happen in formal training. It's important to realize if you have some experience and you have people, that are on your team, the amount of knowledge that you can transfer to them is so valuable. And the reason I'm pointing this out is

because a lot of times you forget that, right? You think you've been doing this for a long time. You don't think it's a big deal. Hey, this is just what you do. You don't, you forget, you forget that you've learned all this. But taking that and saying, hey, hey, hey, pal, come over here, let me show you something. Let me show you how this works.

Let me show you a better way to do that. Let me show you a little trick. It's very powerful. very powerful not to mention when you invest in people like that for 10 minutes for 10 minutes you're helping them and you're building that relationship which is what this whole thing is that we're talking about yeah and I wrote down while you're talking that telling that story of that corporal is I just wrote down I always take notes it's all I do in this podcast I just take notes nice and take these things

home and I write them down and I keep them and I find places where they apply and as you know they apply everywhere and this this idea of this guy training his people is actually the best thing he can do to take care of them. It's the best thing he can do. It's the best thing any leader can do to help them, not give you a break or not give you free time. And yeah, of course there's a balance there. But the best thing he could do is prepare them to be in a position. And I think the reason that stuck with me is that when we talk about decentralized command,

which we talk about all the time in business, the scenario that always plays out is the reason one of the reasons why decentralized command is so important is that your people have to know what to do when you're not around. That's pretty obvious. But the scenarios are usually, you're on vacation, you're on a different shift, you've got the day off, not that you're dead. So when you kind of think of in these contexts of what he was doing is being able to prepare them to be successful without him being around, is in the worst possible situation, of literally him dying in that situation is the best thing he can do. So the same thing doesn't happen. of them is train them.

Even if it's five minutes at a time. That's how we kept those guys alive. And that is something that you can translate to almost any situation. Yeah. Your family. Yeah, we talk about this in the code, the protocol.

The evaluation, it's like, hey, what can you do your family? Can you give your family five minutes of training to pass on knowledge that you have? More lessons here. Corporal Gregory realized that combat is a dynamic environment, which takes a heavy toll on leaders

within an infantry company. He trained his subordinates to be able to assume his role. This saved the lives of his men during the chaos of battle. After his death, the men of Corporal Gregory's squad performed well, performed well because they had confidence in their training and in themselves, a confidence that was instilled by Corporal Gregory's leadership. You know, when we were talking, when we talk about confidence, how do you get confidence? You get confidence through work.

You get confidence by doing something. You get confidence by doing something, not doing it well, doing it again, doing it a little bit better, doing it again, doing it even better. That's where confidence comes from. That's where it should come from. Otherwise, it's false confidence. Maybe I should just stop talking because the way he, that was written in the book was a lot better than the way I said it. Well, here's what's really cool. So they have a, if we, he mentions, he mentions, uh, uh, Kirby in this, PFC Kirby, a member of the, of Corporal Gregory squad.

that finished this NCOMCIA in the field. Well, I have a quote from him, not from Vietnam, but from 1998. And now Sergeant Major, R.B. Kirby, said, the very worst night of my tour in Vietnam, when we were involved in a major firefight and we were losing Marines, our squad survived as a result of the corporal's training. We are alive today because of him. Next one.

Corporal aballs. British Army, Falklands, 1982. In 1982, Argentina invaded the Falklands, Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. The islands had been British territory since British days as an imperial power, not willing to give up its territory. Britain sent a task force to the islands in order to reclaim them. After an amphibious assault, British forces pushed their way across the islands. The second battalion of the parachute regiment, known as two para of the British Army, was ordered to attack the Argentinian forces of Goose Green. It was to be the first pitched battle between British

and Argentinian forces. The land bridge between Goose Green and the town of Darwin was the only way for forces to move between East Falkland Island and Laughonia Island. If two para could not break through to Goose Green, the British would have to spend valuable time mounting another amphibious assault of the Falkland Islands. Corporal Abols was a six. section leader, equivalent to a squad leader in A company, Two Para. A company's mission was to attack along the battalion's eastern flank and assault the town of Darwin. On the night of 27 May, May 1982, Tupera attacked Goose Green. The Argentinians were well prepared for the attack and the paratroopers could advance only yards at a time. As the sun rose, the battalion

was left in a precarious position. Two para was stalled, pinned down in the open by Argentinian mortar and machine gun fire. A company was trapped in a crossfire between the Argentinians on Goose Green and those in Darwin. This is a nightmare scenario. You're in a crossfire receiving both mortar and machine gun fire. Realizing that the trap could only be broken by persistent aggressive action, corporal of balls decided to continue to lead his squad in assaulting enemy positions,

seeking to break the deadlock himself, the commanding officer. officer of two para charged a machine gun nest and was shot dead the commander of a company kept the event quiet not wanting to demoralize the troops whose predicament seemed to worsen at this critical point in the attack at that moment corporal balls led an assault upon an Argentinian position he decided to fire a 66 millimeter shoulder-launched anti-tank rocket into the bunker the penetration of this rocket caused such a magnificent explosion which was followed by silence the first flags of surrender then began to surface from the Argentinian positions. The Argentinians had been demoralized by the utter destruction of this single bunker

and the ruthlessness of Corporal Abal's resolve. This allowed A company to turn its full attention toward Goose Green. Momentum gathered behind the British attack. In the next 24 hours, two parra opened the route to Lafonia Island. Corporal Abol's persistent aggressiveness had broken the will of the defenders. action proved to be pivotal in A company's attack. Two para's victory at Goose Green assured a British victory for the Falkland campaign. Lessence.

Corporal, a ball, squad-level action effectively turned the tide of the battle at Goose Green. This is an example of how an aggressive tactical action can have effects out of all proportion to the size of the action. His command decisions fully supported both his company and battalion. commander's intent his spectacular assault of that particular bunker affected the morale of both sides crushed the spirit of the Argentinians and passed the initiative and momentum to British forces and proved to be the action needed to continue the British advance After this action Argentinian soldiers began to surrender rather than die in combat one person A corporal makes a one move and it changes the the the bat the the

the tide of this battle. By the way, moments after his commanding officer was killed, heroically assaulting a machine gun nest. Corporal Abal's courage, leadership, and determination propelled him to persevere and achieve decisive results in extricating his unit from a desperate situation. When all else fails, perseverance prevails. And if you want more on the Falkland Islands,

podcast 88, excursion to hell. Sergeant David C. Freeman, U.S. Army, Vietnam, 1966. During Operation Crazy Horse, and pay attention to that name, Operation Crazy Horse, we're going to go deep. In the Vintan Valley in June of 1966, a company of Montagnard troops led by Special Forces advisors landed at LZ Monkey for a search and destroy mission. Sergeant Freeman, a member of the command element, was the fourth senior man in the unit. Soon after landing, the company attacked and secured a bunker complex. The company suffered some casualties and a helicopter Medevac was requested. The company moved back to LZ Monkey with their wounded. At the LZ, the company

began receiving heavy small arms fire. The command element around Sergeant Friedman was devastated. The situation demanded rapid action. Sergeant Freeman grabbed a radio and took command of the company. He called in helicopter gunships, coordinated supporting arms, and reorganized his defenses. The helicopter pilots flying above the battle were amazed at his coolness under fire under Sergeant Freeman's competent command. The perimeter held all night and the enemy eventually withdrew. Stepping up. Lessons.

Sergeant Freeman, a well-trained NCO was prepared to lead his company in combat. He knew the techniques and procedures for air support supporting arms, Medevac, and company defensive positions. I know they kind of rattle that off. And one thing that the Marine Corps does really good in this manual is they hit on the fact that you got to have the skills, you've got to have these fundamental skills of combat leadership.

The technical and tactical skills of combat leadership, meaning how to call for air support, how to call for supporting arms, how to call for artillery, how to call for Medevac. These are technical skills that you have to have. And they reinforce that throughout this book.

So if you're in a leadership position, you think, well, you know, I'm not going to have to do that. No, actually, you better, you better go and dig in and figure out how to do these things. In addition to his technical knowledge, he was able to match these abilities with strong leadership and cool competence in the face of disaster. Because of his experience and situational awareness, Sergeant Freeman knew that rapid action was required.

Once again, what do we see? We see someone that's taking action. He immediately took control of the situation, making decisions, and issuing orders, and extricated his company from a perilous situation. And here's a little Klauswitz on war, which we haven't covered yet. It's sort of one of those ones. Is it like not playing the obvious one? You know, we haven't done that one yet. The end for which a soldier is recruited, armed, and trained, the whole object of his

sleeping, eating, drinking, and marching is simply that he should fight at the right place and at the right time. check. All right. Now, here we go. Here we go. So this section that I'm about to read actually came earlier in the manual. And I pulled it out and I put it at the end. This is the last one of these examples. And there's a reason why, and it immediately struck me when I saw it. So the title of this section is just Sergeant First Class, U.S. Army, Vietnam, 1966. So as soon as I read that, I was kind of surprised because all the other ones they give the person's name. So I'm thinking, why, why aren't they saying this guy's name?

This is a top secret mission? Well, no, this is 1998. There was no more secret missions. So why aren't we explaining this? And it becomes obvious when I read it, why they just called this individual Sergeant First Class. So here we go. In May of 1966, C Company of First Battalion,

and 12th Cavary First Cavalry Division established a mortar fire base at L. Z. Hereford in the Vingfan Valley. So this is actually part of, and I'll get into this, this is part of that earlier operation that we mentioned. The position was 150 meters long and 40 meters wide. The upper slope was covered in six-foot-high elephant grass. The mortar section was led by a sergeant first class, no name given. His position lay on a hill which had previously been occupied by Viet Cong Gorillas. He formed his men in a weak perimeter, we're not off to a good start, arranged in a U-shape with the curve facing uphill and set up the mortars in order to provide support for the company. The main body of the company went off to patrol the valley below, leaving the 22-man mortar section to defend their own position. The men fired off a few rounds to seat their base plates.

The sergeant decided to give the men a break and did not order anyone to dig in or examine the area around the perimeter. No security patrols were sent out. The men lounged, eight sea rations, and walked around in the open. In the jungle heat, it seemed like a day at the beach. At 1330, an enemy machine gun opened up at a range of 50 meters from the elephant. grass uphill of the mortar position. A 200-man unit of VC had been waiting to ambush the lax mortar unit. Machine gun fire was followed by rifle fire and grenade attacks. The rest of the company, which had gone down the hill on patrol, the rest of the company took 35 minutes to rush

back to the devastated mortar position. The enemy had withdrawn and left only a handful of dazed survivors. The failure of the sergeant to properly lead his unit, Enforce basic security measures or prepare for enemy contact led directly to disaster. With its support element eliminated, the company was not able to establish its patrol mission, which in turn negatively affected the battalion's mission in the Vin-Than Valley. So I read that and of course I think about, okay, what does this mean? and they hadn't given away any names, right? So they didn't give this guy's name,

but they had given away a date May of 1966. They'd given away the LZ, LZ Hereford. So I start to do some research, and it turns out that this battle, this specific battle was written about in a book on Vietnam called Battles in the Monsoon. And this is an outer print book. But I was really curious what happened?

What happened? So I found this out of print book, ordered it. And the book, Battles in the Monsoon, is a book full of basically a bunch of short little stories. And this particular story, this particular section in this book about this battle is called men facing death. So let's hear a little bit more detail about this situation. By the way, this is all Operation Crazy Horse. By the night of 21 May, the Battle of Vintan Valley appeared to be slowing to a stop with the enemy fractionalized and everyone running for cover.

Landing Zone, Hereford, that well worked over slope where the initial explosion had occurred, and I'm skipping to this specific, they give a little bit of background, this LZ Hereford had been used a bunch. It looked like one of the safest places in the fire zone. Such had been the consistency of armed traffic in and out of it. So this was a LZ that was getting used all the time. That was about how Colonel John J. Hennessy thought of it when he decided on a special mission for Charlie Company first to the 12th for the following morning.

It was a courteous gesture, the main object being to return Charlie Company to its parent battalion but before doing so Hennessy plan to ask a small favor in return the company under Captain Don F. Warren a taciturn Georgian who had been with his same unit since winning his gold bars in 1961 so this guy's been in the same unit since for five straight years he was on the perimeter in hill on hill 766 several ridges beyond hereford the airline distance was about 3,000 meters Hennessy directed Warren to sweep back over the high ground to Hereford after Sunup. Unwired about that passage, he was most concerned that Charlie Company should reconnoiter the lower slopes beyond the landing zone, which thus far no one had prowled.

That task done, it could rejoin the battalion in the valley not far away. Hennessy had no reason to be suspicious. He was merely being cautious. The ground around Hereford had not been worked over carefully for several days. Captain Jack Cummings and Alpha Company were in perimeter on the landing. zone at this same hour. They were not left wholly they were left they were not left wholly undisturbed but the occasional sniper rounds and grenades that innocuously bit into their ground were attributed to enemy stragglers so there's a company

there they're getting hit occasionally but there's just a bunch of stragglers is what they're assuming alpha company needed to be back so they send in Charlie Company word of that was a foot and that reached major Charles Seiler at the on at on K shortly after Tennessee gave his order, the division's public information officer was entertaining a visitor and a weighing problem all his own. Belatedly drawn by the news that Operation Crazy Horse was racking up a score, war correspondent Sam Kasten. A 32-year-old senior editor of Look Magazine had just arrived in camp, pursuing a theme

worthy of Hemingway. Kasten was the only correspondent drawn to the battle. He said to Siler, I wish to know the thoughts of men facing death. So that's what this war correspondent says, Sam Kasten. Siler voiced an honest doubt that the quest was logical, men's fears and reflections not being all of one kind, and the soldier hardly knowing how he thinks about death until he feels he is dying. It is just not the subject that makes for easy talk among combat men. So that's kind of weird, right? We got this reporter saying, hey, I want to go get some men facing death.

At the time, General Norton had put the Anke position on semi-alert. And the whole camp was a stir. Siler and his staff were in the bunkers around the press camp, realigning some of the sandbags. You don't have to worry about this ground tonight, said Kasten. I'm the luckiest reporter alive. Wherever I go, nothing happens. So even this guy who's looking for problems, he's got that attitude where I'm going to go look for problems, I'm not going to find him. Siler remembered the words thinking them slightly ironic

in view of what Kasten was looking for. This guy wants to go find people facing death, but then he says, yeah, don't worry about they're going to be in any problems because I'm so lucky that nothing's going to happen. There's a big hill not far from here where a lot of men have died in the last few days, he said. Then I want to get up there first thing in the morning, said Kasten. And by the way, I intend to follow the subject all the way through, see the coffins in which you place the bodies. We put them in rubber bags, said Siler grumly, hoping to close the conversation, but Caston continued to fret about getting up to Hereford soon after dawn. Siler broke off work to arrange for Caston's certain departure. These were the circumstances which resulted in Caston being delivered to Hereford by the same

helicopter that carried ammunition coffee and a hot breakfast to Cummings and Alpha Company. His first hours were unrewarding that the unit was too busy stacking supply equipment for an early getaway to talk with Caston about death. Besides, the morning was disarmingly fair and quiet. Warren and Charlie Company meanwhile were beating their way along the ridge on the way back from Hill 766 having broken camp at 1000. A fairly wide trail runs for the top of the scarf for the entire distance. So fast forward a little bit. Alpha Company was lifted from L. Z. Hereford when Charlie Company arrived at high noon. Caston stayed. On the landing zone, Warren talked briefly to Lieutenant Colonel Rutland P. Beard Jr., the battalion commander and his S3 major role.

It was arranged that Warren and the main body of the company would continue their stroll down slope through the trees and across the river. Now, I just want to call out these words. It was arranged because we're going to get some more information. So you've got the battalion commander talking to the company. talking to the company commander and they come to this is what it says. It was arranged

that Warren and the main body of the company would continue through the stroll through the down slope through the trees and across the river. The mortar platoon would remain on Hereford to cover its further advance

with fire from the 81 millimeter tube. So now you can see where we're going. The sergeant first class of the mortar platoon that we talked about from the squad leader makes a difference. This is the guy.

This is the guy. The platoon, 22 strong, was led by Sergeant Robert L. Kirby, a 29-year-old Negro from Los Angeles. Slight of frame, solemn-faced. Kirby is rated one of the stoutest, hearted fighters in his brigade. So that's a little different, right? Now we're calling this guy one of the stoutest-hearted fighters in the brigade, but in this in the in the in the reflections from the manual he's you know not going to do a good job and by the way he's going to get left with 22 people in a mortar platoon which is again we'll dive more to that few in

numbers his men seeming seemed sufficiently armed each carried 300 more rounds for their m16s and from two or four from two to four hand grenades the one heavy weapon was the 81 millimeter mortar for which kirby had only 18 rounds that with the tube was as much weight as the men could carry. So sufficiently armed is an interesting way of saying it. Because we know that an M-16 with 300 rounds, an M-16 is fine. A mortar is fine. But if you get into a legitimate gunfight,

there's something that you need called a machine gun, and you need a few of them. And they don't have any. Not good. Moreover, it had been agreed that as promptly as the descending company passed beyond the range of the platoon, that the platoon would be lifted out by Chopper. Alpha company had 100 or so mortar rounds behind.

Kirby reckoned he would not need them. Caston, the reporter, had decided to stay on Hereford instead of moving with the company column. It's an interesting decision. It's an interesting decision because if you would think if you're looking for to get in the fight, you would, oh, they're going to go on the patrol. I'm sitting on this kind of LZ where kind of it's almost like a little bit secure and these guys are going to go on patrol.

I would probably think I'd go on patrol. Caston for whatever reason he says he decides to stay up there on Hereford and It's Kirby the sergeant who says it will happen here if anywhere No sorry that's caston that says to Kirby it will happen here if anywhere like that we're gonna get in combat Kirby says about that you're dead wrong and he honestly felt that way though as he looked about what he saw of his position hardly warranted such assurance It was all wrong from any reasoned tactical view. So now this is Kirby. He's looking at the situation, even though he says, yeah, it's not going to happen here. He knows it's all wrong from a tactical perspective.

The landing zone at Hereford was by then a burned off, trampled and rumble, rubble strewn about the size of a professional basketball court running lengthwise down the edge of a ridge. It scorched earth and grasses were less apparent than the foxholes distributed more or less evenly around the oval shaped perimeter. Originally, these had been enemy spider holes and were subsequently in the large by American occupancy. The trouble was that Kirby did not have enough men to round out his holding. So the position became a U pointed, a U pointed up slope. And again, this is where you can see the similarity here from the manual.

The uphill open end fronting toward the high ground was not covered by weapons present since the platoon was citing its pieces down slope, the company having gone that way and weapons So they have a U shape and they're like well the platoon went that way so we don't really need to have much there And that's where he decided to put light and not any any protection in that direction In neither direction was the prospect of a fight was a prospect good if a fight was to be forthcoming There was beauty everywhere but there was beauty everywhere for the to sue the eye up slope and bordering the very edge of the defended ground was a sea of elephant grass Standing six to eight feet tall There was a sheer and rocky precipice extending 30 feet and giving away to an extension in the field of tall grasses which also invested the flanks

Greenness was all about except where the men looked to their weapons The company took off down so now here goes the company the company took off down the steep Clutching to the rocks creepers and creepers for balance no preparatory Artillery fires or airstrikes had been put on the slopes around Hereford because of Warren's movement the earlier presence of alpha company and the all round feeling that crazy horse operation was slowing to a hole This operation had been going on for a pretty long period of time. There's been all kinds of activity. They didn't feel like they needed to do any preparatory fire for this patrol. Kirby worried less about his platoon than about the movements and enterprise of Kasten, the reporter.

The men had gone to ground. The correspondent was moving from position to position, standing erect, taking photographs, and asking numerous questions. Wanting to protect Kasten, he did not know how to object his freewheeling. though he realized that his movements were describing the limitations of the force. In fact, these things little mattered. Kasten was enjoying himself hugely. He asked Kirby, how do you feel about these things? Kirby answered, if you think you're going to get a story out of this platoon, you're wrong.

Nothing will happen here. Kastin continued with his rounds of the perimeter, snapping pictures and asking the men, how do you feel? Kirby lost interest and Kasten kept moving. the position of one mortar was near the bottom of the sloped LZ, just inside the U where the crew had dug a little pit. At approximately 1,300, the platoon began supporting the descending company with the fire of the 81 millimeter mortar, the range 800 meters. It takes a while to hack through the jungle.

Captain Warren got Kirby on the radio and told him to bring it closer, which Kirby tried to do. So now you've got the platoons up there. They're dropping mortars in front of the platoon that's driving. through the jungle. An hour later, Warren called Kirby again. This time the message was an uplift. Said Warren, choppers are incoming to take you out within 30 minutes.

So they're just about done. So just to recap, you've got the platoon, you've got the mortar platoon in this landing zone. You've got the rest of the company pushed down the hill and they're just on a patrol. And eventually they're so far away that there's no point in the mortar platoon being up there anymore. So now helicopters are going to come, grab a little. them and take them out. 30 minutes. That was what Warren and Kirby both thought,

but the choppers had put down at landing zone, Savoy, Hennessy's command post in the valley, just to make certain orders that the orders given still stood. From their delay, wholly unfaltable came rocking General Jack Norton, rocking the high command, rocking us all. Kirby got off his 17th mortar round in support of the advancing company. That being the last one he fired. Remember they had 18 rounds.

He just fired his 17th round. Then the thing happened. There was no advance warning. Sergeant Lewis Buckley and PFC Wade taste were still collecting the company water cans and other material for the flight moving carelessly in the open, even as was correspondent Kasten. The other men, including Kirby, stayed put in their foxholes. That they did so was less a sign of their.

alertness than of their forthcoming operational routine once lodged in position they had not moved to scout its surroundings the long trek via the jungle trail had half had them half bushed so they're tired over much of the distance they had to move they were crouching because the tiny overhang there was no shade where they were sprawled the sun beat directly down on them and it was not less than a hundred degrees the word was passed from hole to hole that they were returning to home base nothing much else not even the eccentric movements and questions of Kastan interested them.

The hour must have been about 1330. From up slope and from not more than 50 yards away came the fire of a heavy machine gun. Its bullet stream was dead on the mortar. The first rounds ripping through the tube as if the weapon had already been zeroed in. Thereafter, it beat directly on the mortar pit with never a pause. So came Kirby's first warning that he was engaged. He yelled out fire. but it was superfluous though he did not know it being too close to the mortar a split

second before Kirby had reacted his own men had started the fight on the left of the inverted you it would have been the right flank had these men been facing uphill once the fire was specs for Paul j harrison and charles stuckey had seen three enemy skirmishers moving in through the elephant grass not five meters beyond their foxholes their m16s their 16 fire signal detection of movement to which the enemy machine gun instantly responded as swiftly as those three weapons spoke from the elephant grass on three sides of the perimeter rifle fire cracked and Kirby sensed that his position was almost totally enveloped so he gets the feeling that we're surrounded he yelled to his radio man spec for john f spraza call company

get them back we're being hit as the message was relayed to captain Warren and as he remembered it the words were come back we're being hit though the main body moving through the jungle was too far down the slope to get the sounds of the fight Warren had his movement of agonized shock and that's an interesting tidbit a moment of agonized shock almost as if he may have expected that this would happen he knew Kirby as a thoroughly brave soldier And this is the unnamed person from the manual. Too steady, two seasoned to be stampeded by a little random fire. When he called for help, the thing had to be fully desperate.

The confidence between the white captain from Georgia and the Negro sergeant from California was complete. So these guys had trust. Wasting not an instant, Warren called back on the radio to Lieutenant Robert McClellan of First Platoon, bringing up the rear of the far stretch column, get your ass back up that hill. All hands reversed and started scrambling upward. Men clutching at rocks, tearing their palms on thorned vines, sliding, falling, and panting in desperate effort to race up the steep.

All did not fully understand the reason why. There was no attempt to observe security, and had they been, without knowing moving into an ambush, the disaster that too soon followed could have been even greater. Far above them on the slope of Hereford, men who still moved crouched below to escape the sheet of fire beating from all sides Most of Kirby's men had died in the first ten minutes though he did not know that yet The return fire from his people grew steadily fainter

Sergeant Isaac Johnson a 27-year-old Negro had been sitting with a plat board at the mortar pit when the fight began He heard someone yell they're coming out of the woods In his agitation he tried to turn the mortar around to fired uphill and not even noticing that it had been drilled through. The incoming fire was too great and his strength too little. So he slithered up on his belly to the left flank and dropped into a foxhole. Up slope, he could see 40 to 50 men at a run out of the trees into the elephant grass where he lost sight of them. They were partially camouflaged and their shirts were of all colors.

Looking down hill, he saw many more of the enemy, moving through the grass. Some crawling, others hunched over, firing as. they moved in it came to him as a sudden idea that he should fire too he thought he he thought as he fired he had dropped at least four enemy skirmishers with his m16 so by the way i mean we're already talking about a totally outnumbered force this in one flank he sees 40 or 50 bad guys from the next foxhole above him pfc henry benton and joe l tamayo were alternately firing up slope and downhill yelling as they pulled the trigger johnson saw he he His last of them when he ran out of ammunition and crawled back to the mortar pit in search of a magazine.

Inside the pit, there were four men, heads down. The enemy machine gun and at least two automatic rifles were bearing directly on the hole and smashing its rim. Johnson could not be sure whether the men were ducking or dead. Sergeant Buckaloo, Paul Buckaloo, 22 years in the Army, was having his first go in combat. The opening barrage cracked him wide open. He bolted straight across the perimeter, vanished into the elephant grass, and was never heard from again. Sergeant Johnson couldn't find his spare magazine,

so he picked up an M-16 with 15 rounds in it from the dead hand of Sergeant Edward Shepard, who had no business being there that afternoon. Though he ranked Kirby and might have taken command, he was overdue to be lifted out by Chopper for an appearance before a promotion board. So he passed up the honor and died inconspicuously from a bullet through his brain.

rain. Another long time soldier under fire for the first time. He had stayed motionless, petrified by personal terror, as boundless as the horror exploding all about him. His 15 bullets gone, Johnson crawled toward the mortar pit, screaming, come out, you'll all be killed. There was no response. It was minutes too late for that. The hole held four corpses, heads bashed in by bullet fire. In the nearby hole with Kirby was another bloody welter, a rocket, The Russian-made P-40 a round of so slow of motion that the eye easily follows the trajectory came arcing in, dead center of the mark. Kirby saw it in-flight and yelled, watch out. So did his foxhole mates.

Spec 4, Austin L. Drummond and David S. Crocker, who cried warning in the same split second. Before any man could move, the rocket exploded just to the left of the hole. Crocker died instantly from a shard that crushed in his skull. Drummond took heavy fragments in the left arm and left leg such gouts of blood Spouted from him that Kirby who had taken four pieces of steel in his head but remained conscious knew that Drummond couldn't could not last long In physical torment Drummond tried to rise Kirby pulled at him Drummond screamed let me go I'm hurting hurting Kirby pulled him down within a minute he died under Kirby's body Blood from Kirby's pate was streaming into his eyes but the little sergeant

could still see and think. He yelled to his RTO, spec for Spraenza. Call company, say I'm being hit by mortars and rockets. We got to have gunships and artie. Spranza did his part. Captain Warren, struggling uphill, remembered this piece of the message coming in. We're hit by rockets and mortars. He later could, later he could not recall that Spraza had also asked for gunfire and air artillery.

But anyhow, he relayed that. message to the command capsule at LZ Savoy and Spranza got the word back from him, it's on the way. Those were his final words. Right then, communication between the company and platoon ended. Both radios worked. The mass of the ridgnos intervened. And what they mean by that is these FM radios that they're using, they work when you can

see them. So they work a line of sight, what we call line of sight. But if there's a ridge line in between you, then they don't work. So whatever the terrain was, they kind of dipped down the terrain and all of a sudden they lost communications. At that moment, the front men in Warren's column were halfway back to Hereford. The breakoff doubled Warren's anxiety, though he was already doing everything possible. He had asked that artillery be placed on the slopes alongside the perimeter, not on Hereford itself, for Kirby had passed on nothing about casualties, and Warren was still thinking of 22 live men holding the contested ground.

the double-time climb had begun to slow from sheer exhaustion men stumbled dropped in their tracks were pulled to their feet by their mates and reeled upwards again Warren realized now that if he continued the pressure the company would know would reach the scene of the fight dead beat about that he no longer gave a damn yet passing information on the radio is so freaking important and so hard. But if you always think that you're trying to paint a picture for the person on the other end, you've got to think that way.

They don't know what's happening. And, you know, if you've got casualties and if you can give any additional information, now look, I mean, obviously these guys are in such a horrible way. But that's what's happening. That's what's happening. He doesn't know that anyone's been wounded. He doesn't know that anyone's been killed. He thinks that they're in that position.

and he's saying, hey, start to put artillery on the outskirts of the LZ. The sounds of the struggle had not carried to LZ Savoy in the distant valley bottom. The control point was a throb partly because of Warren's call for help, still more because of the monitoring of the conversations between eyewitnesses who were viewing the fight from platforms directly overhead, what they saw and what they said in no way lessened the confusions. Colonel Beard. So this is an interesting thing about Vietnam.

is that a lot of times there would be aircraft, because they had air superiority for the most part. And so there would be helicopters that would just get up, C&C helicopters, command and control helicopters that would just get up and fly around and be watching this stuff. I have a friend whose dad was in Vietnam, and he was a Silver Star recipient,

and the whole thing was photographed. This whole event, you know, there was a gunfight broke out, and his dad sort of jumped into a dyke and then crawled along and flanked the enemy. And the whole thing, he had pictures, the whole thing is, but that, but that tells you what it's like.

What do you got, Dave? Look, I got all sorts of things going on in my head right now. This is a brutal scene that you're reading. This whole thing is it's playing out and you're describing these different things is brutal, partially because we already know, we know the outcome, and now you're describing these little pieces.

But when you're talking about the, the inability for, the, and I think it's the company commander, that's kind of, Warren, Warren's trying to visualize what's going on with, with Kirby in his, in his platoon,

when you, when you, when you, kind of create what you think is the outcome, when you, when you, when you get comfortable of what you think you know the outcome or the situation is,

and you sort of solidify that, it's really hard to change that. So if I, I picture this guy leaving, and there's just complacency, slipped into all these comments that you've read through, these little pieces of complacency of, yeah, it's not going to happen. Yeah, I know what's going on.

This is my best guy. Or all those little pieces are helping this guy warn solidify in his mind what he thinks is going on. And it's impossible for him, and the part that I'm connecting to in my mind is how hard that is to, for him to visualize, things are nowhere near what you think they are. And he can't get it in his head that this whole thing has been wiped out.

His best guy's getting overrun. and when you, in your own mind, predetermined the way the outcome is going to be, it makes you so much less flexible and adaptable and incapable of maneuvering the way you need to. And, you know, it's all in retrospect. I'm just thinking to myself, don't presume how this is going to go. Yeah. It's one of the worst things you can do. And you can almost hear this guy's brain struggling, trying to accept what's going on.

So it's interesting that you bring that up. And as we start to hear more sides of this story, you got this guy Warren who's, he doesn't really know. He knows that his guy is a good guy and that he's calling for help. And it says that's enough for him to realize that there's something really, really bad. But there's a panic. There's a panic of hate.

Like, you know, if you call me and Dave, you're on the LZE, you call me a hey, Jocko, I need support right now. I'd be like, okay, hey guys, listen, we're going to start taking a back. They almost immediately go into, you know, go, get your ass back up. He literally says, get your ass back up the hill now. So there's a level of, let's say, urgency that he gets to almost immediately. And as we peel this onion back, you're going to see that you're right. But the picture that he's painted is what's happening.

He knew something was going to go wrong and as soon as it starts to happen he's like a get back up there Because he didn't feel comfortable with it It's like you said it's just freaking awful yeah back to the book Colonel Beard The battalion commander major role his S3 and Captain Robert offer artillery liaison were at the brigade CP when the news came in They took off in a Huey to view the fight from above This is like, Hackworth would get on the ground. Just kind of FYI, just so everybody knows.

Hackworth would get in the helicopter and then he land. When it made sense, obviously. Yeah. Before they could reach the scene, out of sheer happenstance, Major Otto Cantrell, the battalion executive officer of 112, was already hovering above it.

He'd been flying in the area. He'd arrived at the opposite peak when he heard Warren's voice in the earphone saying that a platoon was being overrun on Hereford. So Warren did know that the platoon was being overrun at this point. So he flew to station directly above and began orbiting. Low enough to see people milling around and firing on the ground below him, Cantrell was yet too high to determine whether they were friend or enemy.

Lieutenant William D. Fessenden, an artillery observer in another H-13, had flown the same way and was circling near Cantrell. He asked Cantrell, sir, can I bring in fire? Cantrell replied, no, I can't tell. where our people are. Cantrell then flew lower. And at about that time, Beard, the battalion commander, and his party arrived. They could see 40 or more men pressing close to the perimeter. They must be V.C. called Beard.

Either that replied Cantrell or GIs with uniforms soaking wet. So this is a, I know it seems crazy to think that you couldn't tell the difference between, you know, American soldiers and Viet Kong. I'll tell you, when you're in a helicopter and you're looking at things on the ground, it is not obvious. No. It's not obvious.

And you don't need to be miles away. You can get 50, 60, 70 feet away, and things get really, it's really hard to tell what's going on. I was, I learned this. I was up at Fallon, and we were calling in helicopters to pick us up. And I'm sitting there. I'm standing, you know, the terrain in Fallon, Nevada,

is not, there's no trees, it's just dirt. And we're standing there. And the helicopter, I'm sitting there, at the helicopter it's it's it's like the wind is hitting me that's how close it is and they can't see me yeah and i i was just like what do you mean you can't see me i'm waving they're like who coming around we'll come back around we can't and so i had to get out the red smoke orange yeah the orange smoke or whatever yep here we are violet smoke because red smoke was emergency i was thinking the orange panel but yeah you got some huge signal yeah well i think i tried an orange panel you know

wasn't big enough yeah so that's where these guys are at back to the book his words merely aggravated doubts all around Cantrell's trouble is that he simply could not make himself believe that one whole American platoon had been wiped out there and he was right now this is where what you were talking about you have this idea how could a whole American platoon get wiped out and it says in the book here therein he was right and it is right why we'll get to this later this American platoon The 22 guys is not a platoon, right? That's not a platoon. You think of a platoon, you think of multiple machine gunners, you think of 40 guys. Then he dropped to 100 feet for one swift pass. The phenomenon of those few seconds doubled his perplexity.

On the ridge crest above Hereford, he saw a company of men in dark suits marching to the fire. Shell fire was breaking into the landing zone. Cantrell had no way of knowing that these were enemy rocket rounds, not America. and rounds coming from other bases the dark suited men up slope he identified his enemy he knew that he knew that camouflage rig which from a distance made made them to him look like so many turtles but where were the Americans if not on Hereford just then he heard a friendly voice on his FM radio please please you must hurry they was spanza getting off his last message but Cantrell had no way of knowing that either beard viewing from the same height was

for a moment equally in the dark. From the start of the fight with good reason Kirby had forgotten Kasten, the correspondent. He remembered only when Kasten slid into his position to ask, when are we going to get the hell out of here? Kirby didn't answer. Then Kasten said, I've got to have a weapon. And Kirby silently handed him his own 357 Magnum. Quiet now, he briefly fitted into the hole beside Kirby.

He spoke only once to say, Sergeant Shepard is dead. So now Kasten, the reporter, is in the foxhole, and he's got a 357 magnum. All curiosity about the thoughts of men facing death was gone from Kasten. He had been eagerly questioning Shepard when the first shots were fired. That soldier's swift, moral collapse and sudden death were his first shock contact with the realities which mocked his quest. While Kastin's opening words to Kirby rankled, they also rang a bell. Almost anywhere seemed to be better than the exposed ground to which the survivors clutched now under a dust paul kicked up by the grazing fire

The fight had been going somewhere between 20 and 25 minutes and the fire was fastly becoming wholly one-sided Next to Kirby's position the enemy skirmishers crawling through the elephant grass were not more than 15 feet away The fire build-up suggested they were bunching probably for a rush Kirby saw them fleetingly and vaguely as through a haze the flashed of an arm, the bobbing of a head. Kirby got off three hand grenades in that direction as rapidly as he could throw. The explosion seemed to damp the close-up fire, but not for more than 60 seconds. In this moment of decision, Kirby did not doubt that the ring had been closed and that all the skirmishers waited on the lower slope amid the tall elephant grass between him and the

company poised for the kill. So he's sitting there thinking, okay, we're surrounded. And I know the company's down the hill, but there's bad guys in between us. Still, he yelled out, let's make it. With that, he rolled out of his hole and down the slope. Kasten jumped from the hole just ahead of him and was running upright and in the clear. PFC Bob Tastes and spec 4 AV spikes from the foxhole above Kirby, went past Kirby, one rolling, the other sprinting, then Spanza dashed by him. As he rolled, Kirby thought he glimpsed Isaac Johnson off to his left firing two M16s.

He was wrong about that. Johnson had heard someone not quite echoing Kirby, shout, moved down the hill, his own weapon was empty. He paused briefly to pick up another, only to find it in like condition. Kirby had seen him in that fleeting second when he clutched two useless pieces before throwing them both aside. Johnson's face was already a bloody mask from three superficial grenade wounds. Such was his tension.

He neither heard the blast of the grenade nor knew that he had been hurt. in panic because he was unarmed he made a running dive at the rocky embankment giving him getting him off Hereford lowers side then he rolled on and on down slope till his body could take no more beating in that spinning descent he covered 150 meters of rock strewn trail when and where he stopped a twisting V-shaped cleft in the ridge back gave off to the left along this slit that trickled a stream no wider than the palm of Johnson's hand he crawled into the bed of it 20 yards or so to where the jungle growth stopped him then he gathered

bushes and vines down around him and lay with his face flat in the water so he's hiding dove off a freaking cliff fell down 150 meters and now he's hiding in this little ravine not too far above him the ordeal of the other few survivors continue to grow worse of this Johnson felt and remembered nothing thought paralyzed by the grip of exhaustion he had closed his mind to the sounds Getting out separately some running others rolling Kirby's men had stayed that way during the first few yards of flight through the short grass just off the LZ coming to the rocky steep They began to converge toward the center whence the trail ran downhill It is always so with men against fire

Fear and herd instinct brings them together which is the worst Which is the worst thing that can happen since it just shapes up a broad target Sbranza was the first to get it as they approached the steep. Kirby's still rolling, others crawling, Kastin standing. I'm hit, Spranza yelled and screamed like a panther. Three bullets, one in each leg and one in the head. But marvelously, he still lived. And now he was erect and walking.

Kasten, the reporter, yelled back, hell, everybody's hit. That was news to the others. Caston had taken a bullet in one arm and several grenade frags in the back saying nothing. In his last moments, the correspondent had the courage of a lion. Here was a man, and they knew it. Spikes yelled, I'm hit. It was a bullet through the right arm. They then moved 20 feet down the rock bank when Spranza yelled again.

Hold it up. They're in front of us. Expecting it would come, Kirby froze right where he was. Caston kept moving in long strides straight to the trail, which led down. Hill through the elephant grass he had made up his mind and Kirby did not bother to shout a warning Standing clear on the on the trail was an enemy shoulder soldier rifle aimed Kirby heard a scream as Caston went down though caston was not 15 yards from him he could not see the fall as the body was enveloped by the sea of grass He heard the whack of the bullet and the thump of the body the bullet had drilled Caston through his left temple

Castan's personal effect were looted as soon after he fell. The camera, films, and purse were later recovered from the bodies of the enemy in the fight that soon followed. Many of the next of kin get not even that grain of comfort. It is an agonizing matter for the commanders, having to explain why the dead soldiers' most prized possessions and pictures cannot be returned. Kirby could now hear enemy soldiers moving up slope toward him. They're chattering the clang of metal from their weapons being worked. He was down on his haunches, and so were spanza, spikes, and taste. None was firing.

Their only thought was to hide in the grass, which rose two feet taller than a standing man. They all knew taste was slowly dying, two bullets in his neck, multiple mortar shards in his back. Though conscious, he made no complaint, only asking for water, of which there was None. The skirmishers were moving up now and beating the grass on both sides of them. Kirby saw seven of them coming right toward him, not 10 feet away, and he knew he was discovered.

He still held an M79 grenade launcher, so did spikes. They fired right together, and the blast killed five of the enemy. The other two crawled away, leaving blood trails. Another skirmisher closed in from the left, spraying the ground between them with automatic pistol. Kirby had his M79 crooked in his arm. He had just taken another bullet through the right wrist and was feeling the wound. The skirmisher came on and looked through the grass straight at them.

Spikes fired his M79. The range was so short that the grenade didn't arm, but the sheer velocity, it blew the man's head off. Had it armed, it would have likely killed both spikes and Kirby. A second VC closed in from the left, only to turn his back as he almost stumbled over them. Kirby killed him at a range of five feet. Together, two more groups closed in on them from the right and left. Kirby took two hand grenades from Spranza, who by now was wholly down, and throwing them in both directions with his wounded arm, he drove them off.

He had no impression of how many he had killed or whether he had even scored a hit. He simply knew that they had faded back, easing the immediate pressure momentarily. While this deadly hide-and-seat game went on down slope, Hereford LZ was being pounded by 105 and 155-millimeter howitzers from the vows. Valley bases. Colonel Beard had called for it from his perch aloft and still earlier when Warren asked for it. Whether it might have been brought in sooner and done any good is an open question. There was no right moment for its use until the Americans had cleared away which movement could only be guessed at. Now it had come and the perimeter was being cratered. One of the effects

was to drive more of the enemy to the grass field lower down where Kirby and his mates crouched. The game was still on. From downslope a machine gun opened fire and skyed the grass beside them. Kirby went flat in the nick of time and the bullets zinged directly over his head. Spikes didn't make it. One burst caught him in the head. The sound was enough. Kirby, two feet from him, didn't have to look to know he was dead. And he did not wish to look. Kirby crawled downslope about 10 feet, now

looking for a weapon, thinking that the enemy might have dropped one. luck. He was wholly out of ammunition and had no arm left but a flare pistol. So he lay flat on his back wondering what to do. Another skirmister came back came up parted the grass and looked directly down on him. Kirby rolled over on his side in the same motion fired his flare pistol upward. The round smashed into the glaring face, not three feet above him, getting him right between the eyes. The body was spun completely over by the blast with the figure kicking. Kirby did not wait to see more than that. He crawled back the way he had come to get Spranza. The impulse was that if he had to die, he would rather not be alone. Both men were silent now. There was nothing to say.

Time at about run out. They thought they were the only survivors, though. This, they were slightly wrong. Johnson was still faced down in his private cleft. Speck for Charles Stuckey, whose swift reaction had started the fight, had moved obliquely to the others in getting away from the perimeter, hidden in the tall grass alongside the knob. He had rare fortune until the final minutes he came under a grenade shower, the last of the survivors to get hit. Directly towards Kirby and Spranza, another enemy group moved down the slope. Kirby didn't wait for them.

Having nothing to fire, he crawled upward through the elephant grass, leaving Spranza and passing the skirmishers undetected. They fairly stumbled across Spranza. He played dead. His head being gory. from a bullet that had entered his left ear and emerged through his nose. It is less remarkable that the deception worked

than that he stayed conscious and was capable of thought. They rolled him over, searched his pockets, took his wallet, knife, and cigarettes, and continued on. Having gone inert, Spranza stayed that way. Kirby had no sense of the barraging of Hereford. Though the fire had been going on all of 10 minutes,

now as he crawled upward, he heard at last heard the explosions and knew what they were. That determined him. He would crawl to the fire and try and hug it. Two thoughts were in his mind. Charlie will get as far away from this as possible, and if he had to die, that was still the preferable risk. Halfway back to the perimeter, his ear told him that the shelling had suddenly ceased. Not knowing what that meant, he still crawled on. It was a tortured, most labored movement as his last reserve of will and strength was draining away. He got within six feet of the first foxhole before he looked up. What he saw almost numbed his senses and he felt as if he would faint.

Sitting in the foxhole pointing an M16 directly at his head was PFC Morgan of first platoon. He crawled a few more feet forward, still prone, looked around. Every hole at Hereford was occupied by an American. Captain Warren and the company had returned to the hill. Sergeant Owen L. Lewis and James W. Edwards came over to help Kirby to his feet. No words passed between them. They were not merely choked up. They were sobbing convulsively.

And seeing them, Kirby knew tears for the first time that day. Later, Warren said, if my men cried, it was because they were so damn mad. Kirby knew better than that. They were mourning the death of the platoon. Kirby told them where to look for Spranza, not knowing that the company had found him on the way up or that he'd already been evacuated from Hereford by the chopper. Stucky appeared about that moment, and he and Kirby were flown to On K aboard the same Huey. It was sometime later that Johnson came in. When the hill went quiet, he started crawling upward, coming to the tall grass, he saw his friend, Sergeant Wallace W. Hood, standing in the clear on the forward edge of Hereford.

And that sight brought him to his feet. Days later, he was still in a state of shock. Kirby, taken to the hospital of his own choice, returned to the company duty within 10 days, still convalescent. Unlike Johnson, he was fully coherent with his emotions under tight control till he spoke of seeing the company in tears. Warren and the company had made that frantic uphill climb to Hereford in exactly 35 minutes. The descent over the same trail had taken them an hour longer.

If a record march it was to little avail They saw dead Americans in all but six foxholes And thought at first Spranza was the only survival survivor The platoon weapons had been taken Everybody had been stripped of personal effects Warren deployed two of his platoons for a 600-yard sweep to the eastward along both flanks of the ridge The hunt proved almost barren of result though blood trails were numerous and heavily marked only five bodies were found and they all who obviously had been felled by artillery.

The fanatics must have hauled away a larger count of dead than was lost to the company. So in the end, they departed as they had come, more suddenly than mysteriously. How the trap had been sprung was easy enough to figure out in retrospect. This enemy force of about 200 was much too fresh to have followed in

along Warren's wake as he came over the trail from Hill 766. The time interval was not long enough to have permitted ascent from lower levels toward which Warren had kept moving. If there had been an assembly and movement, still no sound had been detected. Last, the enemy's main weapons were sighted dead on target. Thus, the enemy force must have been there all the time, some yards off the trail, and along the ridge sides, as Warren's column had walked through.

Had Warren stayed in full strength on Hereford, there mightn't have been no fight. He carried out his orders. Of that came the most melancholy episode in Operation Crazy Horse. Now, you may have noticed that I didn't mention the author of this book that I'm reading. And the reason I didn't mention the author of this book

is because I didn't want to cloud your impression. the author was a guy by the name of SLA Marshall and I talked about him on podcast 142 where we covered his book, Men Against Fire and you heard him use that phrase in here. And SLA Marshall was a famous military man, we'll say. And he ended up being a general. He was a historian. He was a writer.

He was a reservist, so he was a civilian writer and wrote a bunch of articles and worked for a newspaper. But he's also a very controversial figure. And Hackworth did a tour with him in Vietnam and kind of reveals the guy's character. He was very egotistical. And he also made claims about his experiences in war that were not true. he lied about his experience. You know, he lied about his military, about his combat experience in World War I.

And then he also wrote in a way that supported his own theories and his own hypotheses. And, you know, in Met Against Fire, there's a lot of people that went back and broke down what he wrote in that book. And we covered that book on this podcast, like I said, because we didn't want to throw away the, baby with the bathwater, but there's a lot of things that were very controversial and some of them just straight up wrong. And on top of all that, he never let the truth get in the way of a good story. So when I read this portion of Battles in the Monsoon, this was on my mind. And the article,

I mean, this book didn't, it didn't paint Kirby in such a bad light as this, as the manual did. which made him just sound like a complete, you know, laxadaisical guy that just let all the stuff go and didn't have any discipline and didn't follow any good protocols. But at the same time, I'm reading this book thinking, well, you know, SLA Marshall, he's not necessarily a guy that's going to, he just wants a really good story. So he's not, in my opinion,

and just based on the things he's written in the past, this isn't a reliable source either. Even though he would go and interview people like those quotes he's getting he would interview people absolutely But still he's gonna he's gonna make that story kind of the way he wants it And so I was still not satisfied with the information that I had in front of me And so I did some more research and I found another article I found an article on a on a website called history net com and there's an article

written by a guy named Michael Christie, Michael Christie. So Michael Christie enlisted in the Marine Corps out of high school. And then he joined the army. Yeah, became an officer, probably went to college, became an officer, served in the fifth Special Forces Group in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968. And in 1970, he was the commander of Sea Company, First Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment.

The very same company involved in the battle at L.C. Hereford so he wasn't there but you know you're gonna have some connections you're able to put some things together you're gonna hear some some backfill and he eventually retired and became a writer and he produced a bunch of documentaries and then he made a series of leadership videos for the for the military so the military hired him to make leadership videos some of those were hosted by Lee Marvin which is pretty cool but he wrote this article and this article is called Last Stand at L. Z. Hereford. Soldiers shield themselves as best they can from the dirt and debris stirred up by a hewy squeezing into tight one-ship landing zone around

noon. The pilot touches down and two officers jump from the helicopter and land in a large mud puddle. One GI chuckles, pokes his buddy and laughs quietly. at the officers in fresh jungle fatigues, stamping the mud off their polished boots. A dirty unshaven captain greets them wearing torn jungle fatigues and mud-covered boots toting an M-16. So there's Warren. So now we're starting to get a little better picture.

You know, you've got the stereotypical sort of officers rolling in with their brand new fatigues and polished boots and outcomes, Warren, who's been out in the jungle now for a while. while on just this operation. The trio moves to the edge of the landing zone where towering elephant grass offers a bit of protection from the early afternoon sun. The major unfolds a map and the three began discussing a mission.

Within minutes, there is strong disagreement over the plan. Lieutenant Colonel Rutland Beard, commander of the 1st Battalion 12th Cavalry, First Cavalry Division and his operations officer, Major William Roll are insisting that Captain Don Warren, Charlie Company Commander, leave his 20-man mortar platoon alone on landing zone Hereford to provide fire support to Warren's company as it moves down the steep precipice toward the valley below. Warren is equally insistent on keeping at least one rifle squad behind to provide security.

Sir, my mortar platoon is down to half strength because of malaria and has only M16s and a couple M-79s. If I leave behind a rifle squad, they will have at least one machine gun for security. Beard tells Warren that the mortar platoon will be on the hill for less than an hour before it will be lifted out and taken to another LZ. Warren's eyes lock on beards.

Anything can happen in hours, sir. Irritated at Warren's near insubordination. Beard warrants, captain, if you don't do as I order, you will be in more trouble than you can imagine. Is that understood? Warren hesitates a moment before answering tersely. Yes, Colonel, will that be all, sir? Beard indicates yes, and Warren spins on his heels and walks over to his rifle platoon leaders to pass the orders.

Beard takes a sideward glance at Roll, shakes his head, and returns to his helicopter. So automatically we see where this is going. And by the way, look, I love this book. The squad leader makes a difference. but the squad leader's getting put in a bad situation right now. Yeah. Warren has every reason for concern about the safety of his understrength mortar platoon. Hereford's topography makes it nearly impossible for even a fully armed rifle company

to defend it from a determined enemy. It is a small saddle 165 yards long by 45 yards wide. This partially encircled by tall elephant grass. Beyond the elephant grass is completely surrounded by rugged, unforgiving landscape. the most hostile being the steep razor-back ridge line reaching northeast toward a towering mountain or nearly a thousand feet high at the base of the ridge. Hereford's northern boundary begins to slope gently downhill. Continues on explaining what we already know.

Hereford is also the center of fierce fighting that began seven days earlier on May 15th. So now they give a little background to this whole operation crazy horse. When word of that battle filtered down to first cavalry leaders, they then decided the next day to conduct our major operation in the area and that's what they're doing sitting on the edge of his foxhole on l z hereford staff sergeant robert kirby watches as captain warren leads three platoons from his rifle company off the mountain and down a steep slope in search of the enemy when the last man disappears over the rim kirby checks his watch it's 140 p m less than in less than 45 minutes his mortar platoon is to be airlifted off hariford to lz savoy where it will continue providing fire support for charley company

to occupy a company-sized defensive perimeter with only 19 men. So now we're talking company-sized perimeter. That's 150 people. Yeah. He's got 19 guys. Kirby figured the best way to do this was to form a U-shaped defense and place two men into every third foxhole. This, however, left the top of the horseshoe open. Knowing his men are spread too thin, Kirby, a 29-year-old native of South Los Angeles,

scans the perimeter from his foxhole at the bend of the Hershoe, beginning with the gun crew directly behind him. Inside the pit is Sergeant Charles Gaines and Spec 4 Austin Drummond, a former Golden Gloves champion with fast hands, perfect her dropping rounds into a mortar tube. Sergeant Isaac Johnson sits on the ground nearby with a plot board on his lap. The gun crew is ready to place supporting fire when and where the company commander needs it. Most of the mortar platoon have been together since Fort Benning, Georgia, but a few are replacements who have never been in battle. So Kirby has no idea how they will react under fire. One of his new men is Speck 4, David Crocker, a 21-year-old medic who sits a few feet from Kirby reading a paperback, his medical bag, ready at his side. In the foxhole next to Kirby is longtime radio operator, spec for John Spranza, who is the platoon's linked to the outside.

world and is never more than an arm's length away from Kirby. Communications are unreliable because of the high mountains and deep valley. How's the comma? Ask Kirby so far so good, answers Spranza. But who knows for how long? Kirby focuses on the western section of the perimeter, holding down the most forward position at the top of the open horseshoe are two men who have fought bravely in previous firefights.

Private's Lonnie Sleepy Williams, whose deep sleep often resulted in heavy snoring and clearance Gomer Brame, a good-natured hillbilly who looked and acted like TV Gomer Pyle two empty fighting positions below them are combat vets Robert Radar Rotor and PFC Harold Mack Jr. in a fierce firefight a few months before Kirby had been wounded and pinned down when 18 year old rotor ignoring heavy fire ran out and pulled him to safety Mac and rotor have been close friends ever since airborne school so we didn't know that about Kirby that Kirby's bidding combat he's been wounded and he's still out there doing his job.

This guy has combat experience. And now we're to think that he's just going to be laxadaisical in this scenario. In the last defensive position on the western side, Kirby has signed a competent and respected leader, Sergeant Lewis Buckley with PFC Henry Benton who joined the platoon only two weeks ago. Kirby knows little about Benton and the two new privates covering the southern sector a few yards away from Kirby's position, Joel Tamayo and James Francis Brooks, Jr., both of whom joined the platoon just a few weeks earlier.

So he's got those guys that he doesn't really know too well, kind of close at hand. Kirby decides to walk the eastern side of the perimeter. But before he goes, he tells Buckley to collect and stack water cans, food containers, and other equipment in preparation for the helicopter pickup. Roger that, Sarge, says Buckley, as he springs into action. As Kirby walks away, he hears Spraenza take call, take the first call for reconnaissance fire in advance of the company's movement in the valley below. So why is Kirby walking the perimeter?

Because he's doing his job as a leader. And he's also prepping to leave because when you when you when the helicopters come in is it that the good time to stack up stuff and get it off the DZ of the LZ? No, you want to have it prepped so the helicopters don't spend a bunch of time there and you want to get all the stuff off the LZ so the enemy can't use it Sitting in the nearest position to Kirby Kirby's on the eastern sector is spec for AV spikes who is complaining about something to PFC Wade taste. Spike, stop bitching and keep your eyes open. Warns Kirby as he approaches. Spike's 26 to 7-year veteran whose disregard for authorities, well-known,

looks at Kirby but says nothing. Kirby orders 18-year-old taste to help Buckley, who's already picking up scattering cans and containers. So he's, stop bitching and keep your eyes open. This is what a platoon sergeant should be doing. Kirby moves to next position where Look Magazine correspondent Sam Kasten is interviewing Spec 4, Daniel Post,

and PFCR. Robert Benjamin, Caston came out of the field a day before to write a story about death. He had chosen to stay on Hereford with a mortar platoon rather than travel with the company. Post, known as platoon's practical Joker, feeds cast and mischievous responses while Benjamin only responds in yes or no answers. Kirby queries the two troopers on what they will do if attacked.

They tell them they plan on throwing hand grenades down the rocky preposos below their position and firing interlocking fires with the position. positions on their left and right. So that's Kirby. Kirby's like, okay, what are you going to do if we get hit? They say we're going to throw grenades over there, and we've got interlocking fields of fire with these other position. Satisfied Kirby heads for the most forward position at the top of the eastern sector,

man by Paul Harrison and Charles Stucky, both battle tested specialists. Harrison and Stuckey have established interlocking fields of fire across the open end of the Ushi perimeter with Williams and Brame on the western side. So he set the positions. He went out, inspect the positions, make sure people understand their field of fire. Squad leaders actually doing his job. On the way back to his position, Kirby nods to Sergeant First Class Edward Shepard sitting on the rim of the foxhole not far apart from the mortar pit. Shepherd 38 is the only soldier there who's not in the mortar platoon.

He stayed behind to catch a helicopter where he is to appear before a promotion board. Kirby sits on the edge of the foxhole and watches Spraza talking on the radio with Captain Warren, who's calling correction on where to place another mortar round. Spranza yells back correction to the gun crew and it then fires a few more rounds. Shortly after 2 p.m. Warren radio spraanza that the helicopters are on the way and that word spreads from whole to hole. What Warren does not know is that the helicopters are actually delayed and still sitting on the ground at LZ Savoy in the valley.

Around 2.15, five minutes before the anticipated arrive of the helicopter, Stucky spots three well-camifized, North Vietnamese Army soldiers watching him from the elephant grass. He opens fire with his M-16 and Harrison joins in. The three enemy drop either dead or wounded. So if you don't catch well-camifled NVA if you're not paying attention, these guys are paying attention.

Then in the next instant, a massive volume of automatic fire in small-arms fires unleashed from the high ground to the north and a ravine to the east shepherd sitting on the rim of the foxhold is killed in the first valley. Volley within seconds, the rocket propelled grenades, mortar rounds explode near each occupied position, Men burrow deep inside their foxhold under the terrifying shrapnel slicing through the air and bullets cracking overhead.

The platoon is surrounded outmaned and outgunned. Kirby yells his brand of radio, Warren, and tell him they are under attack and need immediate air and artillery support. A stunned Warren acknowledges immediately calls Battagin for fire support and orders his company to turn around and head back up the hill. So to your point earlier, Warren, the reason he was able to turn around and head and head. And go is because he didn't even want to leave in the first place. In the open, stacking equipment, taste falls to the ground with two bullets to the throat. Buckley, his shoulder covered in blood, dashes across the open perimeter, screaming, get off the hill, get off the hill, and disappears into the elephant grass.

Harrison yells for Stucky to go to the mortar pit while he stays behind to hold off the enemy. Stucky takes a few more shots at the enemy, turns and zigzags for the mortar pit when an RPG round explodes in front of him throwing him to the ground. After the shrapnel and dirt stopped falling, he raises his head and looks to see where Post and Benjamin had been trying to make an escape, both are dead. He sprints towards a large rock right just outside the perimeter. As he turns the corner of it, he encounters an enemy soldier about to throw a grenade into the LZ. Spotting Stucky, the NVA tosses the grenade directly at him instead.

The grenade sails over Stucky's head, hits the rock behind him and explodes, wounding him. Managing to stay on his feet, Stucky fires three rounds in the NVA's chest, killing him instantly. Stucky then moves around the rock face, finds a narrow crows. crevice and squeezes into it hidden from the enemy. Paul Harrison, slapping magazine after magazine into his rifle fires at every charging enemy soldier he can see. When he runs out of ammunition, he jumps up from his foxhole and charges the NBA using his M16 as a club, cracking a few heads before the blood-covered rifle slips from his

hands. He then wades into the enemy with his fists until he falls dead from dozens of bullets. As North Vietnamese burst through the elephant grass, Spranza opens up with his M-16 on full automatic, tearing three of them apart. He manages to fire off a few more shots before R-T-B rounds, RBG rounds, visible in their slow trajectory, plunge toward the mortar pit. One round slams in front of Sbranza's foxhole, showering his back with shrapnel. Another explodes to his left, killing Doc Crocker instantly. The third round sends Shrapnel into Kirby's arms, head, and chest.

The last round hits the rear lip of the mortar pit, tearing off Drubbin's right arm and mangling his left leg. He dies in a pool of blood. Gaines is killed with a bullet through his head. Johnson, the only gun crew member alive, takes shrapnel in the face, but continues firing on the advancing enemy. As attackers fall, others jump over them, running toward Johnson, who keeps firing until he is out of ammunition. He makes a running dive at the rocky embatement on Hereford's Southern Edge

and rolls down the slope, careening off rocks and over tree roots until finally coming to a stop. He spots a V-shaped depression hidden in thick vegetation. With a stream running through it, he pulls himself into the stream and gathers brush and vines to hide his body grip with fear and exhaustion On the western perimeter Williams and Brame frantically fire their M16s on full automatic at the waves of NVA as do Roder and Mac A few NVA fall dead but most brave the wall of fire overrunning the position and killing Williams and Brame before turning Toward and Mac Mac pops up to get a better shot when he takes a bullet to the head crumbling back into the foxhole dead Rotor fires his M79 until he's out of ammunition,

then picks up Max M16 and continues firing until it too is empty. He throws two grenades at the charging enemy, forcing them to fall back, then jumps out of his fighting position at heads for Benton's foxhole. When he tumbles in, he finds Benton dead. It crawls out and with bullets trailing his every step, races over to the foxhole of Brooks and Tamayo, but they are dead as well.

The Western defense has crumbled. Figuring everyone else is dead, Roder does what he is trained to do Escape and evade he tears down the side of the hill into the elephant grass followed by several enemy with bullets zipping over his head He runs deeper to the elephant grass as fast as he can until he's overcome by exhaustion and drops to the ground When he is gasping when his gasping for air subsides he realized the enemy is no longer following him He stays hidden silently praying that he will be spared Still in his hole Spranza sees a figure running toward his position. He fires off a quick burst somehow missing his target

Don't shoot for God's sake. It's me. Sam Kasten screams as he drops into the foxhole. The reporter looks over at Kirby and yells, we need to get the hell out of here. Kirby shouts back, where? We're surrounded. Get six on the horn. Kirby tells Spanza.

Tell him to hurry or we're dead. Spraza screams into the headset. Please hurry, we're being overrun. But Warren doesn't get the transmission as communication between Herrifer and the company no longer. Spranza turns to the artillery frequency and repeats the message the artillery RTO passes the call to Warren who now pushes his company even more ordering his men to double time up the hill a murderous pace in the mud and tangled vines by this time the battalion executive officer Major Cantrell is circling above Hereford and his

observation helicopter and Colonel Beard is watching the battle from his command and control Huey the swarm of enemy they see below is so intermingled with the mortar position neither officer can distinguish who's who rather than kill the defenders by mistake, Beard holds off on artillery requested by Kirby. Meanwhile, Kirby sees four enemy crawling towards his position less than 15 feet away and tosses three hand grenades as fast as he can, stopping their advance.

Kirby now realizes Kasten is right. Their only chance for survival is to get off the LZ. He cups his hands to bark the order when the badly wounded taste suddenly drops into his foxhole. Kirby ties a dressing on Tastes, bleeding throat, and yells over the enemy fire. We got to make a break for it. Call Artie on the hill.

Spranza reaches the artillery net, shouting into the handset. We're getting out of here. The place is covered with the enemy. Just about everybody is dead. He is told artillery is on hold. With bullets kicking up dirt all around them, Kirby and taste low crawl over to Spraza and Kasten.

We'll go over the rim in the direction of the company. We'll be coming in, hollers Kirby. Let's go. As Spraanza struggles with his radio while he climbing. out of the foxhole, Kirby screams, forget the radio, blow it. Spranza pulls the pin of a hand grenade and throws it in the foxhole with the radio.

The three soldiers in Casten move quickly away from the blast and a few steps later come across a wounded AV spikes, clutching his M79. Kirby and Spanza have their M16s, but very little ammunition. Castan, who is also wounded,

has a 357 magnum that Kirby gave him. Taste is unarmed. The five wounded men now move toward the slope descending into a deep ravine the east Kirby tastes spikes and cast and run crawl and roll into the elephant grass while Spranza act as a rear guard before rolling down the hill to join them. As they reach a small ravine, they hear the enemy coming down from the LZ in hot pursuit.

They lie down figuring the Americans are hiding. The NBA began beating the grass. The first North Vietnamese to spot the Americans is shot in the face by Spranza. Kirby kills another standing nearby. Spikes fires his M79 to the group killing five. The other two crawl away wounded. Seconds later, another group of North Vietnamese spray the ground around the American. Spranza takes three bullets in his right leg, one smashing into his kneecap, severing

the tendon. Another bullet rips through his left leg. Am hit, Spanza screams as he falls into a heap on the jungle floor. Kirby sprays the advancing enemy with the last of his ammunition, causing them to retreat. When he bends down to check on, Spranza, a bullet smashes into his right arm. He's now losing blood from many wounds. Kirby is an NVA peeking over the grass and pulls out a rudiment. Rusty French flare gun he'd found on an old batterfield and fires hitting in between the eyes.

The soldier falls backwards, screaming in agony as his flesh burns away. In the meantime, Taste silently bleeds to death from his throat wounds. Hearing something behind him, Spanza spins around just as a bullet enters the back of his skull, travels through his jaw and exes out of his nose, tearing away the cartilage, teeth, tissue, and skin. Eyes filled with blood, Spranza goes down, badly wounds. but somehow still alive possibly to regroup the enemy stops firing Kirby tells everyone to head farther down the ravine quietly the four-root survivors crawl then walk down the slope with help from Kirby and Spike Spanza manages to keep up

feeling somewhat safe with a NVA about a hundred yards behind they move a little faster suddenly spotting a small group of enemy coming up a trail to their flank Spanza signals to get down castan does not see Spranzas warning and keeps going running straight into a group of Norfolk Vietnamese coming from another direction. One of the NVA shoots cast in the head, killing him. The enemy now opens fire to the grasses from two sides. Spikes take several bullets in his chest. Kirby checks his pulse, but it cannot find one. The North Vietnamese troops slowly wade through the grass toward Kirby and Spranza. Kirby's out of ammo. Spranza's rifle is jammed, but he has two grenades

left, and he gives them to Kirby who tosses them into the advancing enemy. Just then, friendly artillery rounds begin pounding L. Z. Hereford. The deafening explosion stopped the enemy's advance. Kirby and Spranza take advantage of the situation and begin to move slowly back up the hill, but it's too much for Spraza. Go without me, he gasps. I can't move any further. I'm dying. I'm not leaving you alone, says Kirby. Go now, Spranza yell, save yourself. I've made peace with my Lord. Just go. Kirby, believing Spraanza will die for sure reluctantly, seeds to the RTO's demand and crawls away back towards Hereford. Spranza, although growing weaker from loss of blood,

finds the will to take off a scabbard knife strapped to his leg by a leather thong. He places the knife around on the ground next to him, uses the raw hide as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding in his right leg. He then somehow manages to open his first aid kit, find a gauze bandage, and begins wrapping around his head and eye. Before he can finish, however, he hears rustling of men coming toward him through the grass. He takes his knife into his hand and rolls over face down in the dirt. Playing dead, Spanza doesn't move a muscle as three or four NVA slowly approach.

He smells their bodies and stale breath as they search him for anything of value. One man turns him over and roughly strips off his signet ring. Another's take his wallet, cigarettes, and dog tags. Unable to stay motionless another second, he's about to jump up with his knife when he hears a helicopter rapidly descending. It sprays the ground with bullets. Some so close they spatter dirt in his face, screaming frantically the NVA run for cover. Still afraid to move. Spraza continues to play dead, and seconds later he hears someone carefully moving toward him.

He grips his knife a little tighter, and when he feels a hand grab his shoulder, he musters all the strength he has left and tries stabbing the man. But the large shadowy figure, bat licked by the sun, drifting through the trees, quickly grabs Spranza's knife in hand, screaming, Hey, it's me, Carlos Cruz. Charlie Company had made it back up the hill the last of his energy drained Spranza lays down his head and slips into unconsciousness Kirby is halfway up the slope when friendly artillery ceases falling

uncertain what it means he keeps crawling his many wounds are taking their toll but he keeps going until he reaches the top of the hill where he sees Charlie Company troops everywhere unable to control his wounded body and frayed emotions he slides to the ground a medic gives him a shot of morphine and stops his bleeding When the wounded Stucky comes crawling into the LZ, another medic rushes over, lays him down and treats his wounds. Spranza is carried up the hill in a stretcher made from ponchos, and shortly he, Kirby, and Stucky are placed in a Medivac helicopter and flown out. Passing the medevacs flying out, helicopters begin delivering reinforcements who pile out onto Hereford. A look of horror passes over their faces at the sight of so much death and destruction.

One soldier throws up. Hearing the helicopter's coming and going, Johnson, who got off the hill and evaded the enemy, slowly approaches the LZ, only to face the muzzle of an M16 held by PFC Morgan. He drops to the ground out of relief when he is recognized by Morgan. The last mortar platoon survivor to get back to the LZ is a dazed rotor. A company platoon leader asked Rogan to identify the bodies, all of which have been stripped of personal effects and shot in the head. He is able to name a few Before the weight of the massacre takes its toll He cannot look at another dead friend

As he sits down the afternoon monsoon rains begin pouring down out of the dark sky Rotor shivers as the rain pelts his sobbing body So much death in such a small place So there's another view of this battle And clearly You know the difference is immense the leadership issues you know and there's a whole discussion to have about that you know at what point when you're being told to do something that doesn't make sense at what

point do you at what point do you say we're not doing that and and you know this is leadership strategy and tactics and they got the whole assessment of that and it's not like I'm not saying leadership and strategy and tactics tells you the answer but it gives you the options. And it's heavy options to weigh. And you could look at Warren and say, well, if it wasn't safe, I wouldn't do it. Okay, well, then he fires you on the spot. He puts some young lieutenant in charge of the platoon.

And you get thrown in a helicopter and taken out. So what good did you do? Now, you could also say, hey, Roger that. By the way, give me a fire team over here. Give me a machine guner. This is what we're doing. Once the boss leave, you could do that. That's a good option.

I like that option. And you don't know what kind of relationship we have. Because there's also, I mean, I guess we could say that it appears that the relationship isn't great. I guess we do know that much. But sometimes, if somebody is very convicted in the way that they're offering advice, it can be convincing. And this is something that I have to be careful of. because I know I can be convincing. I know I can't be.

And I have to be careful. In fact, that's one of the probably the original reasons for me being such a listener is I know that if I say, I think we should do this, a lot of people just get, yeah, Roger that. Like, if that's what you think, we're on board. I mean, that's kind of something I had to watch out for.

And it turned me into more of a listener because I didn't want to subdue people's thoughts. I didn't want to tamper with their ideas, and I didn't want to override how they thought something should go. So we have to be careful of that as a leader to make sure that we aren't just being so overbearing that people don't push back against us. The three different versions,

if you want to call them versions, just the three different perspectives of that. You know, paint, each one paints such a unique picture. And, you know, I wrote, down on my notes again, everything that I write down are just the things that I'm thinking in real time. And it's really frustrating to sit here and listen to this, knowing the outcome and seeing all these pieces play out, knowing that this was a totally, this was a preventable, this is a leadership failure. It is a leadership failure at a lot of different levels. And this last

one really paints a more clear picture of how this predicament happened. But knowing that this is, this is not an unsolvable problem that they were just in no way could this have been prevented. It's just simply not true. And the frustration of that. And when I picture just the conversation of the person in charge telling a subordinate, do it or else, just the philosophy that I lead through my authority and the catastrophic events that has, and in this case, we're talking human life. I mean, this is a catastrophic thing,

but that same approach on how often leaders are emphatic and what they want, not recognizing just how destructive that is to them as a leader. And I'm sitting here trying to picture these guys up in a helicopter looking down and the sickening feeling they must have had

if this is what I, what did I create? How did this happen? Well, it happened because of you, because you as a leader demanded things happen the way that you want. And I'm picturing while, I mean, and I was struggling early with this guy, with the company commander not being able to reconcile.

And that's just me piecing things together. And I imagine this feeling of the entire time walking down the hill, knowing, knowing he didn't want to do that. The patent quote front line, the front line, the leader in the field is always right, right? You're coming from your helicopter, you're getting off, and you're telling me what to do.

That just sits so foul for me. And the other thing that's interesting about this is, you would think that we could be sitting here saying as two military leaders that you and I were, it's very easy to say, you and I could be sitting here having a conversation where, look, discipline is paramount. Obviously, we could sit here and say,

Jacco, Jock was saying discipline is paramount. No one would question that for one military. a second discipline is paramount you have to you have to get people into a point where they will obey what you say and you they need to do it that's what military training is that's what you learn in boot camp that's what you learn in officer candidate school to to instant obey orders like that's what we want and that's just just so wrong it's just so wrong it's so wrong to think that it's so wrong to feel that way and you know what like i'm so thankful that I had the luxury of being in the military and being able to experience this

and and then on top of that getting to see it while I was training people and then on top of it getting to see it with all these companies that we work with because occasionally to this day someone will say to me somebody at some company will say yeah but sometimes don't they just need to shut up and do what they're told to do I get that I get that I still get that I still get that And what they think I'm going to say is, well, hell yeah. That's what everybody thinks I'm going to say. And it's like, actually, no, you don't want that. And I actually had a good situation like this.

I was working with a client. And I had two people on the call. There's more than two people, but there's two people that kind of rose to the conversation. One of them was, you know, but they just need to do it. And I rebutted that guy and said, well, if what you're going to do, is just, you know, bark to them, shut up and do it, whether you believe it or not, that's not going to have a good outcome. And here's why.

And went through the whole thing. And when I got done with that, well, the other guy said, that's what we need to do. We need to actually listen to what they have to say. We have to take their input. And they're like all those things. We need to make their plan, all those things that we talk about all the time, which is, it's just shocking that people still, you know what? They think tactically.

Because tactically, if I say, Dave, shut up and do what I told you to do, You're going to do it. Just like this guy did. It's a tactical win. Hey, the battalion commander says, hey, you shut up and do what I told you to do. Yeah, Roger that. Okay, you just won the tactical battle. But look what happens.

Look what happens. You won that little tactical battle and you lose these other people. And look, could there have been no one waiting on that LZ? Absolutely. There could have been no one waiting. There could have been no enemy on that LZ and everything would have gone fine. And that guy's, that guy's tyrannical behavior. behavior would have been reinforced as the right way to lead.

And it ain't the right way to lead. It is not the right way to lead. This guy's a battalion commander. He's probably been leading like that through his whole career with with with no consequence. Certainly no nothing like this to this degree. Yeah. This story.

And you know what makes that happen? And I brought this up with a client the other day in the military. Because I say, look, you can be effective with that kind of browbeating tyrannical leadership for. for whatever for an hour for a week right I can just yell Dave shut up and do what I told you to do and actually in the military I can get away with it for my whole career why is that because you Dave you're working for me you know you only have to work for me for 18 months right you know it's gonna take me a couple months to figure myself

out by the time my tour is starting to look coming to an end you're not even gonna give me resistance anymore you're like cool he's gone and whatever so these guys can bounce from job to job to job being in charge of this group by the time leaves, he's hated, but he's accomplished, he's quote, accomplished the mission, right? He's got his good fit rep. He's done his job. He's accomplished the mission. He's hated. They don't want to do it. They're sabotaging him or they're sloughing him off. They're doing all those things, but no one knows it. His chain of command above him thinks, oh yeah, well, he did a good job. He got the mission accomplished. First of all, they never got tested. Second of all, doesn't know

the morale of the troops because that guy's able to hide it. So that's how these military leaders, sometimes they get through their whole career. Yeah. And I mean whole career. I'm talking 34 year careers, where they never actually led anybody. All they did was bar quarters. And they retire as an admiral. They retire as a general. And they don't know how to lead. They don't know how to lead.

Obviously, there's some incredible generals and admirals, obviously, and captains and colonels, obviously. But just because you became an admiral or you became a colonel or you became a captain or you became a general, that doesn't mean you knew how to lead. And you know what? If you were a tyrannical leader, you can get away with that in the military. Yeah. You can get away with it because it's only a two-year command.

No one wants to, they want, guess what? Everyone below you actually also wants a good fit rep. So you want a good fit rep. So you're going to bark into everyone. And everyone below you just wants a good evaluation. So they're just going to kind of follow your lead and put up with it. I mean, that's self-preservation. I saw that in my career all the time too.

And we had a term for it. We called it a run out the clock scenario. And we'd sit, you know, and we'd have, you know, young captains. The junior guys would sit around and it was just us and we'd vent and we'd get frustrated. And I'd see people complain and I'd see my peers getting this off their chest. And when you do the calculation of, hey, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to push back? Are we going to, you know, are we going to fight back up the chain?

In the end, the conclusion is always just run out the clock, man. This guy's gone in seven months or whatever or just just. Yeah. This guy's gone in seven months. And by the way, we have a, we got a two month trip here. He's not coming with us. We got this. We got that.

He's going to this thing. And it's really, what is it? We're going to be face to face with him for another month. Don't worry about it. Right. And I don't mean to paint some picture that we just sort of resigned ourselves. Really what it was was, you know what I'm going to focus my energy on my guys. Yeah.

I'm not going to waste my time with this guy. But it does create that, that it helps perpetuate the scenario just described. And, you know, to whatever small percentage, there are leaders in the, the military, just like every other organization that got their way, they, they got their way through. And they're not good leaders because they do exactly this. And, and I'm thinking too of, of not just a scenario where you're my subordinate leader and I go, hey, I want it done this way, Jocko. And you're not like, well, me, you know, I was kind of thinking maybe plan B is better than plan A. You're saying, Dave, no way, man. What better position for me is a leader to have a guy who,

who the more emphatic you are about what you're doing, more likely, it's likely that the more loyal you are and the more you want the outcome to be good. That's why you're pushing back. And if you're in a leadership position and your people are pushing back aggressively, that's even more of a reason to listen to them

because there's clearly something. And what always happens is we meet, we see people meet resistance with resistance. The more resistance I get, the more I should see. Stop resisting them, or I want to listen. Now, if you go, yeah, I mean, I guess so. Okay, cool, just do my way.

And that's kind of the end of the story. But if you go to the mat with me, no, this is a bad idea. And I'm not going to listen to that as a leader. Why is this person pushing back? Because they don't care about the mission. They don't care about the people. They don't care about the outcome. And it's, is Jock pushing back because he doesn't,

because he doesn't care about his people, because he doesn't want this to be successful, why would Jocko possibly be drawing a line in the sand right now? Right. Yeah, there's a, you want to know what the reason is? There's a reason. There's a reason. There's a damn good reason.

And you need to figure it out. And also in this thing, this scenario we're painting where you're my subordinate leader, I also have to give you a little bit of credit that you recognize you are putting your career at risk. Wait, you're going to bow up to me, junior subordinate, I have to recognize that you even realize that this is a sketchy move you're making right now.

You're going to the boss and telling him no. You don't think the subordinate leader recognizes the risk that he's taking by digging in a little bit and going, boss, this is a bad idea. I mean, of course, I'm sitting here with the luxury of having benefited from all the things that Echon Front has done and all the things that you've written about and all the podcasts I've listened to. It doesn't make it any less easy to hear this story. and picture that conversation and know that that tyrannical leadership is widespread and it's all over the place and it doesn't work.

It's it's frustrating to listen to that story and you think about, you know, the catastrophic outcome, but even the subtleties of people leading through, hey, at the end, you know, we can go back and forth, but in the end, you're going to do it my way. what a what a devastating approach that is to the to leading the people around you horrible in every possible way so digging a little bit deeper on this there was some there was some people that wrote in to history net dot com and asked michael christie for some more amplifying information here's one of the letters that got written in the article last stand at l z harreford by Michael Christie had me living the experiences as if I were there. I served in Vietnam with the Marines, including 40 days under siege at Kahnthian in 1967. We always feared a human wave attack like experienced by the soldiers at Hereford.

I would like to know if Lieutenant Colonel Rutland Beard was ever charged with negligence for ordering Charlie Company Commander Captain Don Warren to leave his mortar platoon behind in a vulnerable position with no infantry support while the rest of Charlie moved out. Also, I was curious to know if Staff Sergeant Robert Kirby was recognized for his harrowing attempt to lead a small group of soldiers and journalist Sam cast into safety. I have to wonder how John Spranza, who was badly wounded and played dead before his rescue and the other survivors are doing today after their dreadful experience. Well, for one thing, we know that Staff Sergeant John Kirby, though not named, was written about in a very negative way in this other manual. But guess what? Michael Christie responded.

And here's his response. As one would expect the horrors of the massacre at Elsie Hereford had a tremendous impact on the lives of all those involved. Captain Don Warren became an alcoholic and eventually committed suicide. So the decision that we're sitting here toiling over, he toiled over it too. Sergeant Robert Kirby retired from the Army and refuses to talk about Elsie Harris. He was claiming he remembers almost nothing about it although he did receive a silver star for his part in the battle God bless him Bob Roder has a severe case of PTSD

But still managed to succeed he married his high school sweetheart raised a family and operated a multi-million dollar medical supply business John Sparanza overcame his physical injuries this is the so so Bob rotor was the last guy to be recovered the guy that broke down trying to identify his friends John Spranza who's got shot in the ear, exit wound in the nose. John Spranza overcame his physical injuries but suffered from emotional damage. His drinking led to three divorces, yet the same determination that saved his life 46 years ago, allowed him to work successfully in two long careers, first in the printing industry and then as a rural postman for 20 years.

He and his wife of 26 years are retired and live in northern Georgia. Charles Stuckey died of cancer six years ago. No one has heard from Isaac Johnson since L. L. Z. Hereford was overrun. No official record exists on Rutland Beard receiving any reprimand. He retired from the Army as a colonel. As for the company members who rushed to the rescue, all are still horrified by the carnage they witnessed once they reached LZ Hereford. There's another letter. The story of carnage on L. Z. Hereford is a riveting piece of work, but as noted, it varied glaringly in spots from the SLA Marshall narrative published 46 years ago.

Nonetheless, both authors accurately capture the overall horror of the event. About a week before the attack described by Christie, a company from another battalion, had been overrun at Hereford. And my company from the 1-5-Calb First Cav Division was airlifted onto the LZ the following morning to assist. In his book, Battles in the Monsoon, Marshall claimed that all, that the KIAs had been evacuated the previous evening, but I distinctly recall seeing the poncho covered bodies of the U.S. soldiers still ringing the landing zone.

Den and me were everywhere. The Americans gave as good as they got. And there's one more little, well, maybe not so little. There's one more detail that I want to go into. So Sam Kasten, the journalist, he was married when he was in Vietnam. and he and his wife, a woman named Fran Kasten, had moved to Hong Kong while he was working in Vietnam. So they were, you know, close flight.

Then he figured, well, I'll still want to see you. So we'll move to Hong Kong. And then when I go work in Vietnam, and then when I'm not working, I'll come back. And they'd been there for about a month before he was killed. And they had a 13-month-old toddler at the time. There in Hong Kong, and after he was killed, she packed up. She went back to the States.

I mean, devastated, obviously, and not only devastated, but now what? Now what? You know, whatever plans she had are now obviously gone. So she had to put her life together as best she could. She had been to school. She'd studied English, I believe. And she went and started knocking on doors and eventually got a job at the New Yorker magazine.

And then she moved over to the Scholastic magazine and eventually became a teacher at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan teaching writing. And that is when at age 40 she started to write poetry. And she wrote a poem about her husband, Sam Kasten, the brave journalist who was killed on that awful day. And the poem is called Operation Crazy Horse. And here it is. A grand Calhoun Hotel.

A hedge of red hibiscus, a tiled pool. A masseuse who pressed fragrant oil of almond into my body in the full heat of the sun. Elsewhere, northeast of Saigon, a man beheld you and fired. At the undertakers, you were all made up. And your hair was parted wrong, so I smoothed it the way you would have liked. Someone shouted, stop, as if we were caught making love on the couch in my father's house. God knows what they feel. Unfamiliar streaks in your hair must have.

have paled at the moment of terror and grown longer in the time since, eerie as strands of ticker tape still printing. Such dark hair, shocked white, afraid you were. All I could do. More to every story. And more for us to learn. And what we need to learn here, in my opinion, from all of this, your decision and your actions make a difference and have an impact on the world. And like this is an incredible manual. The squad leader makes a difference and it doesn't just apply to squad leaders. It applies to all of us. Your actions make a difference and have an impact on the world.

You're going to leave a mark, an imprint on the world, and you leave an imprint on the people around you. Charles. Yes, sir. Well, it's true. we do leave an impact on the people around us. And we do make a difference. And to make a difference, we need to be capable.

Okay, so we can do the right things for ourselves, so the people around us, we start with our physical health, in my opinion, as I always say. So on our journey through improvement and maintaining physical health, you know, we need supplements. I give you a hard time about just being able to press,

record sure because that doesn't seem like a very hard job it's not but what I just did to you is kind of a shitty thing to do isn't it well you're throwing out challenges and and I understand you know I've come to understand these things which is okay it's okay for those of you that might be joining us for the first time sometimes the podcast can be a little much little heavy and and so early on we realized that maybe a little decompression would be good I know I need it

yeah I know I need it sometimes so so I'm sorry for setting you up with the freaking horrible job of going from that conversation that we just had into whatever it is you're talking about I'm sorry it's okay and you know what in in the spirit of understanding and how should I say

doing my part I should have took what you said and really kind of gave my thoughts on it because my thoughts can be a little bit lighter than yours generally so it would be a little bit of a a little smoother transition because you just went straight into talking about

you know drinking more yeah you know yeah it's yeah so it was kind of rough for sure still true what would your thoughts have been I don't know, man. I guess that's why I didn't go into it because I was like, dang, I should just be quiet

just for a little bit. Yeah. You know, maybe. Yeah. And that's part of the thing. That's part of the deal is, that could just be the end of the podcast. I get it, right?

Yeah. But I actually don't want to leave anyone that way, to be honest with you. I don't want to leave. Look, the point has been made. We get it. Right. It's true.

Yeah. I don't want to leave. I don't want someone to press stop walk out and like that's what's going through their head. Yeah, they walk into work also right. We need a little We need to bring it back around right bring it back the world has darkness in it, right? We just saw that Yeah We just saw that. Yeah By the way the author the the the the his wife Fran Kaston she's alive. She's in Like East Hampton or something. She's out there

Writing poems. Yeah, maybe we We'll hear from her. Be cool. I mean, given the circumstances, it's like, okay. It's, what do you call like, good to meet you, but not under these circuits. Yeah, that whole deal is a common one. Anyway, all right. Well, how can we make a difference if we're not capable?

Right. True. We'll just say it's hard. I would say we want to make a good mark on the world. Yeah. How do we do that? What, what, how do you suggest us doing a better job of leaving a positive impression on people and on the world? I say keep your stuff together.

Cool. Got it. Edit it. Keep it together. Clean. Yeah. You know, get it together. Dude, you got Dave Burke over here.

You're so bored. He's reading freaking cans. He's reading ingredients from go. I'm not saying you're wrong. He's looking at, that's like a, what do you call? Like a, not vans. But he's looking at his own can. He's like, oh, my gosh, my can is so awesome.

After burner orange. FYI, I just happen to notice that these are two different cans. So it caught my attention. Oh, really? Oh, I see that too now. That's it. So I told you. I guess I could be more vain than I am.

But honestly, I'm just now barely noticing that these are different cans of the same drink. Yeah. Because right before that, you were looking at your fingernails and like you're, you know, I don't know if you worked out today. You're looking at your physique. I saw the whole deal. I saw the whole deal.

whole deal. So all good and or or he could be bored whichever. Well, you've successfully lightened the mood. All right. Well, hey, you know, press record. I do things from time to time. Nonetheless, when we're working out, we need supplements. Joints get, take a beating sometimes. We've got supplements for your joints. You need protein. Okay. So if you're working out hard and hard isn't, you know, depends on who you are, whatever, you need a certain amount of protein to facilitate the gains or should I say the results okay uh you said gains I did you said gains you spelled it with a Z I saw it the point is you need a certain amount of protein otherwise not we by not going to recover recover correctly do you know the protein range

yeah yeah see yes one gram what go ahead you're like shaking you're like shaking you I'm sorry I'm sorry I interrupted you. Go ahead. What one gram per lean, one gram per pound of lean body mass. Yeah. I think that's like, correctly. I think that's the old school.

It's actually less than that. Okay. The new school is a range from point six to, I mean, one that's high. One gram per, you know, that's high stuff. Yeah. It might, it starts to level out, I think, at like 0.8 or something like. Okay. Okay.

Nonetheless, not everyone knows that is what I'm trying to say. So and Furthermore, not only do not a lot of people know that It's hard to do that Unless you're like just that's your jam You know, you're planning the week and all that Not all of us do that, you know, I didn't realize that So look, let's say you have 1805 pounds of lean body mass

And you're trying to get the point seven, we'll say It's a lot of protein Not for you, I know, bro, not for you, I know But I'm just saying for the rest of us, you know, like when you don't think about it. To sum everything up that Echo's trying to say right now, you need milk. You need milk. Okay, see, Bray, you're not like, you're not really understanding. Like, okay.

0.7.1 range. What? No, bro. No, bro. Look. Moke is needed. Let's say I didn't say any of that. Okay.

What if I just said, hey, you need milk? People are going to be like, all right. You have failed to describe why I even need milk. I'll stand down. But can you? hurry a little bit. I'm standing down, but can you just like, we get the message. Do you want to, do you though? Do you get the message? I think we get the message. I don't think you do. And that's why I'm here. See, if it was between you and Dave, you'd be like, oh, drink more. Okay,

tastes good. They'd be like, bro, you know, you think a lot of stuff tastes good. Anyway, take them off, bro. You had some discipline go. Take the more. Take the more. Bring it like this. I like it. Anyway, speaking of discipline, go. Okay. And bear with me here. Bear with me. So discipline go. It's a thing. It tastes good. It's a little drink.

Kind of like a soda. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I mean, okay. It's not like a soda, but it's like a soda. So, and I'm going to tell a little story short. So you know how like when you go to the movies, right? You go to the movies?

Yep. Do you get soda and popcorn at the movies? Sure. Dave Burke. Soda popcorn? I used to. Sometimes, right? Yeah, that's the thing.

I understand. So you go to the movies. You get your soda. You get your popcorn. You just have the, you watch the movie with your kids. It's awesome, right? You come home. And you kind of remember whether it be later that night or the next day.

You're like, oh, yeah, that was a cool movie. I'm like, man, but I ate that whole thing of popcorn. You know how many calories are in popcorn? And junk calories, too, by the way, there's a difference. I have no idea. It's a lot. It's like 2,000. It depends on how big the popcorn is.

And then you got the soda, right? And there's a small tinge of guilt that comes with you. Same thing with the brownies. Same thing with the other stuff that you eat. Don't act like you don't. Oh, the pretzel-wrapped hot dogs that my wife made for me on Super Bowl Sunday. Yes, sir. Somehow, I forget where everyone was, but like, they came out of the oven.

And my fam wasn't around. And I was like, oh, I'll just have one or two while my family's not around. I racked it. Half a rack. Half a tray. I crushed them. How big was it? Uh, I don't know this.

It was like a cookie type. Oh, like a sheet. Like a regular standard. Yeah, like a standard. That's a lot. It must have been at least. I'm going to go ahead and say 20. 20 of those things.

You figure what? Like no, like no factor. That's right. Like 300 calories per probably maybe two they're real small Yeah but those are like sausages with Freaking straight up biscuits wrap yeah, who knows but I put it there oh yeah it sounded nice But and you I get it like you'll just go punish you know you'll pay the price the next day The gym and that's the protocol I get it a lot of us we got a little bit more like guilt and we're like man actually I kind of just shouldn't have done that

You know anyway the point is when you drink the discipline go and the mold too, by the way, you get that same sort of satisfaction that you would have had with the soda or the freaking Oreo cookie shake from the dry-through or wherever. You get that same front end, but you get a way better back end. You see what I'm saying? Well, you get actually positivity. Exactly right. It's actually better.

What was weird was I kind of thought about it because I had a milk shake with a banana, by the way. And the next day I was like, man, last night I had that dessert. I was like, wait, the dessert wasn't something junk. It was something good. Yeah. So it's like you get the refreshing. You got a double positive hit.

Actual protein, getting to your 0.7. And then you got guilt free, not even guilt free, but positivity. Yeah. So this is like across the board, win, win, front end, back end, tactical, strategic, all good stuff. All right. Appreciate that. They got a bunch of other stuff there. Super krill, vitamin D3, Cold War, Warrior kids, Molk.

You got all kinds of good stuff. You can get it from jacofuel.com. And by the way, if you subscribe to any of these things, the shipping is free because we know that that was kind of an issue. People are like, I want this stuff, but shipping is expensive. We're trying to allow people to more easily stay on the path. And also, if you're just, if you're just a person that doesn't quite stay on track, that doesn't quite do things that they're supposed to do and they end up saying why I actually ran out of joint warfare or whatever, just subscribe. Echo Charles. Just subscribe.

If you subscribe, it's coming. And it's free shipping. Get some jacofuil.com. Also, you can get the, you can get the, the drink at Wawa. Chainwide, by the way. Chain wide. Apparently there's some insurgency happening. Some other brands are trying to, you know, maneuver.

And they're getting ambushed. So I appreciate everyone. going in there and and and just getting after it clearing shelves yeah and it tells kind of good story you see Corey could Corey he he he went in with a cooler he literally cleared he posted it he literally cleared the the can't the fridge out yeah you can imagine the guy at the front desk or the cashier guy it's like bro why do you have a cooler here he's like oh because I'm going to go my current favorite thing to do is I get tagged on Instagram all the time of people doing that.

And I just put it on my story. And it's just story after story of people going in, tagging Wawa and just emptying the shelves and buying everything they can. It is awesome. Appreciate everyone getting after that. And you can also get all the supplement, the whole line at a vitamin shop.

And like I said, free shipping with you, if you subscribe. If you might also need Jiu Jitsu gear, a Jiu-Jitsu Ghee, you might need rash guard you can get all that stuff from origin usa.com by the way implemented implemented origin usa.com you can get that there all this good stuff and plus if you if you ever are off the mats of justice and you need something to wear because we know what we're wearing on the mats right we're wearing our origin ghee or our origin rash

but if you're off the mats of justice and you need clothing which you do you can get jeans, you can get boots, you can get dang, we've got socks coming. What? You can get everything. We're getting there. We're getting where we get everything. All this, all of it's made in America, made in America, which is what we are doing to rebuild manufacturing in this country. So go to origin USA.com.

Get whatever you need. Also, if you need more stuff, you know, to wear off the mats and on, by the way. Go to Jocko store. Now, here you can find your more disciplined, themed, I don't like the word theme, but more discipline slanted, skewed apparel. Okay. Here's the thing. You do want to represent when you're on the path.

You do. Think about what you are representing, though. Just face it. You do run the risk of representing the same thing your neighbor across the street, who's not on the path, by the way, is representing. Are you an elitist? No, no, no. If my neighbor across the street is a badass.

Well, then, okay, then there you go. That's cool. But I'm saying you do run the risk. Got it. See what I'm saying? Look, if you have Discipline Eagles freedom or you have good or you have like one of the hoodies or something like this, you don't run that risk. You see what I'm saying?

Got it. So if you're going to represent on the path here, there's a good place to get the stuff, and it's a good move overall. Where do you get it? Jocco store.com. We have a little subscription situation going on to called the shirt locker. That's a different. it's not different, but it's kind of different.

Jack. It's a shirt every month, cool, new design exclusive. You can't get them on the store otherwise. Can't these new ones. You're into this elite, kind of elite shirtwearer. I'm just letting them know, letting everyone know.

Nonetheless, it's called Shirtlock. It's on jocco store.com. So yes, sign up for that, man. If you think that that's cool, if you think you want to represent that way, that's a good, good deal. Roger that. Subscribe to this podcast.

Also, we got the Jocko unraveling. We got the Ground and podcast. We got the Warrior Kid podcast. We also have the Jocko Underground. Jocko Underground.com where we give some amplifying information, other things, different topics, different subjects behind the seams. We're setting up for a Q&A, right? Yeah, and that's like questions.

Okay, so I get it. Dave Burke, Jocco, Eschlandfront. I get it. They're going to say, hey, how do I, how do we get buy-in from the team, right? That's a common one. It doesn't have to be questions about like work, what to do at work. You can be outside of work. Yeah.

We're setting that up. Yeah, it's set up. So go to questions at jocco underground.com. Just submit your question. Submit an audio or video question, too. Dude, that's proactive. You just made that happen. The squad leader makes a difference.

I make a difference, yes, sir. I'm trying over here doing it bad. Are you the trooper squad leader? if you want to if you want to get all this and you want to support us you can go to jocco underground.com it costs $8.18 a month which is a number with layers

and that just protects us from number one having to be a slave to sponsors and protects us from if we from people saying they didn't want to They don't want to host us anymore. They can try it.

We got it. We'll be standing by. Execute contingency plan. So thanks to everyone that's supporting on that. We got a YouTube channel. We got a YouTube channel that Echo Charles. He makes videos. And I am the assistant director of the good ones, which is important to know.

Also, origin BJJ has, has it. They're putting some cool videos up as well. Check that one out. You got that one. Also, psychological warfare. Fair, an album, don't forget about this, okay? Sometimes we can shy away from the support that we need. Is what I'm saying?

Sometimes we need the support. We want to slip on the diet, you know, skip the workout, turn a work day into a rest day. Let's face it, that's a thing. Anyway, psychological warfare is an album where Jock was telling you why you just shouldn't do that, and then you won't do it. So anyway, you can find that on Amazon and, you know, wherever you buy MP3s, boom, psychological warfare is there for you. Also flipsidecanvus.com.

My brother, Dakota Meyer, making cool stuff to hang on your wall, the coolest stuff to hang on your wall. If you're going to hang something on your wall, if you're going to hang something on your wall, don't you want to look at it and say, that's from Dakota Meyer? Yes. That's 100%. I can't believe I've never said that before. Yeah.

That's 100% what I want. If I'm hanging something on my wall, I want it to be from Dakota Meyer. Yeah. I agree with that. Flipsidecanvas.com if you want that. We got a bunch of books. Final Spin. What is it?

It's a novel. Dave, assessment. You've read Final Spin. Oh, I have. Assessment. I actually kind of secretly want to know where I sit in the log of readers. Where am I? Actually, you know what?

I haven't gotten you. I haven't gotten you the final version. The final version. The final version of final spin. It is not just a book. I can tell you that for sure. Dang. Interesting.

It is, they're going to have a hard time figuring out where to put this one on the bookshel. Yes. Do they put it over there and they put it over there and the, like, like, where does it go? They're going to have a hard time. My validation that it wasn't just me just digging what I was reading is I shared it with my wife, which I got to be honest. I don't, there's not a lot of crossover in my world that I'm doing. I don't share all this stuff with my wife. We got other stuff going on.

I don't like, you know, bombard her with the work stuff. You're not talking about battles in the bonsoon. Nope. I'm not. How is the podcast? It was awesome. Okay, cool. What do I need to do around the house?

How can I help? I know I've been gone for seven hours. I shared this with her and she just burned through it, I think, in two days. And burn through it. It was like, 10 o'clock and night gets into bed and she stays up way too late and finishes in two nights. And she's like, that was really good. That's when I knew.

My version of it being good had to be validated by a totally disinterested third party with no, no bias. Yeah. She was totally stoked. Well, interestingly, my mom, so you would think what you just said like, oh, biased, right? You'd think, oh, I send it to my mom. That's a given, right? You know my mom. My mom's because she was an English teacher.

And so she's just there to just, she's just there. I would say throw darts, but she's not there to throw darts. She's there to huck machetes at your work, like my work, right? And so I sent it to her for a final read. And she sent me a text that said like halfway done. I am loving this book. That was complete shock. In fact, I told Laif about it because Laif was with me in New York City when extreme

ownership made number one New York Times bestseller, which is like sort of the thing, the cool thing for a book, right? And I called my parents on speakerphone. And Laf's like standing there listening to listen. I'm like, hey, I just want to let you guys know. You know, we made New York Times best. selling us, you know, with the book that I wrote with Laif and my mom's like, oh, well, we'll see how long it's on there for.

I was like, cool. Yeah, I guess we will. So a positive review. Yeah. And it'll be interesting, you know, you go into a bookstore and they have, I guess, categories, whatever they, yeah, yeah. I'll be interested in see where they put it. I will too.

It's going to be, it's going to be very interesting. So we got that, if you want to pre-order that thing. It's also, it's all, hey, why pre-order? Well, so you can get it. Because once again, we don't want you to not get it. We definitely don't want you to not get a first a dish. When you, you want that first a dish. And here's the other thing.

The publisher, my publisher, do you think they're nervous about this? They are nervous. They're nervous because they're like, you just wrote, what's right leadership books? I'm like, what about all this? Well, yeah, that too. Are you going to write a novel?

Don't you just want to stay in your little lane over here? No. So, put them at ease before they freak out. So final spin, leadership strategy and tactics, field manual, the code, the evaluation of protocols. Discipline equals freedom field manual. The way of the warrior kid, four, field manual, way of the warrior kid, one, two, and three. Mike and the Dragons, about face. Like David Hackworth, extreme ownership, and the dichotomy of leadership.

Eschlon Front, it's a leadership consultant. So you can hear Dave and I talking about it today. This is what we do. We solve problems through leadership. Go to Eshalonfront.com for details. EF online. It's leadership training for everyone. EFonline.com.

It's where you can get your whole team training tomorrow. It's tomorrow. You don't have to do something crazy. You don't have to contact that. You can go to EFonline.com. You can start training. tomorrow. The muster in 2021.

We got these things lined up. Go to extreme ownership.com. It's our live event. All these have sold out. These are going to sell out to EF. Overwatch. If you need leaders inside your company, go to EFoverwatch.com,

and we have leaders that understand the principles we talk about. They can go in your company and help you win. And if you want to help service members, service members, active, retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families. check out Mark Lee's mom.

Mama Lee, she's got a charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org. And if you want more of my protracted parables, or you need some more of echoes perplexing postulations, or you just crave some more of Dave's super serious saccas. You can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, Which Echo only knows as the Graham and on Facebook.

Dave is at David R. Burke. Echo is at Echo Charles. And I am at Jocka Willink. And thanks to all the people out there in uniform. All of you. All the military, the police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, first responders, and all of your families. Waiting at home.

thanks to all of you for making a difference every single day with what you do and everyone else out there keep learning keep evolving and never forget that your decisions and your actions they make a difference not just in your life but in the lives of other of other people and don't just go through life don't just go with the flow be intentional about what you're doing, set things in order. Leave a positive mark in the world. Do make a difference. This is Dave, An Echo, and Jocko.

Out.