Jocko Podcast - 289: When The Call Comes, It's Time To GO. Seawolf Pilots, John Farr and Carl Nelson

Episode Date: July 7, 2021

0:00:00 - Opening0:10:34 - Seawolf Pilots, John Farr and Carl Nelson.2:27:12 - How to stay on THE PATH.2:52:08 - Closing GratitudeSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 289. As the seals from Zulu platoon inserted into a rice paddy near where they had taken fire, Nelson's Huey, a UH-1 Bravo gunship, commenced a right turn at 80 feet above the ground to cover them. Lieutenant Junior Grade Carl Nelson, a fire team leader at Hal 3, Detachment 1, commanded two Seawulf gunships during Zulu's last mission. He already had flown more than 600 combat missions. His co-pilot, Lieutenant Junior Grade Earl Shout, controlled the M-134 mini guns, while petty officers Michael Dobson and Tom Claveon fired the left and right, respectively M-60 machine guns from the doors.

Lieutenant Jr. grade, Edward Dyer, would pilot the Huey UH-1 Lima C-Lord Transport that would insert and later extract Zulu from a very hot landing zone. Shout worked the LZ's edge with his mini guns, while Dobson and Claibon fired their M60s. The seals patrolled northeast and then east on a dike separating two rice patties, and then moved north to one perpendicular to the first. As they advanced, the enemy began firing from well-concealed and dug-in positions on a dike covered with heavy vegetation.

The SEALS and Nelson's gunship immediately returned fire. As the patrol continued closer toward the tree line, the SEALs took accurate withering fire from both sides of the dike. Pointman Roland fell, shot through the groin. He was hit again as he crawled for cover. Seconds later, Telfer was shot in both legs. Both seals managed to return fire despite their wounds, but the severity of their injuries and the immediate necessity to extract them soon took them out of action.

Lieutenant J.G. Richards immediately radioed Nelson for fire support as he and Lawrence advanced under fire to assist the two seriously wounded seals. Christened the Hulk by his fellow seals. Lieutenant J.G. Tom Richards was well liked and respected, and he enjoyed a reputation as a highly capable operator. He was a native of Brightwater's New York and a graduate of Bayshore High School where he wrestled and played football. Following graduation, he attended Villanova University on a Navy ROTC scholarship. There, he lifted weights and routinely benched press 400 pounds. He was commissioned an ensign in the Naval Reserve in 1969. As Lieutenant J.G. Richards dragged Roland to cover, one round passed through Richard's right hand, hating the stoner machine guns pistol grip.

Nevertheless, Lawrence Hedge and Foutrell returned fire. Richards continued to expose himself to enemy fire to drag the wounded to cover. When the automatic weapons man Futrell was shot in the chest, he cried out, I'm hit, I'm hit. Lieutenant J.G. Richards, sensing the rising panic in Fuchrell's voice, suspected the man was going into shock. To distract him, Richards ordered Fuchrel to shut up and return fire. Futrell briefly did so with his M60 and did not go into shock.

As Futrell became semi-conscious, Richard pulled him back as well. When Lawrence and Hedge ran out of ammunition minutes later, Richards passed them the linked 556 ammo for his now inoperable stoner machine gun. The squad regrouped behind a dike, and Richards urged the seals to keep pouring fire into the enemy as he radioed for emergency extraction. As the battle raged,

extraction became imperative, including himself, Richards had four wounded men, three of them critical. For Lieutenant J.G. Nelson and the Sea Wolves, there was no hesitation. He said, quote,

my crew knew that leaving anyone behind was not an option. When Nelson saw Richards dragging the wounded seals to cover, he alerted Dyer to get ready for extraction and descended to cover it from an altitude of about 50 to 70 feet. From the ground, Lawrence and Hedge

provided covering fire with their stoners. Nelson's gunship hit the enemy with devastating rocket and mini-gun fire while Dyer urgently searched for the seal's exact location. On his second pass, Dyer spotted them huddled next to a dyke and came in hot, bleeding off airspeed during his approach, As the slick hovered, skids wet in the rice paddy,

Richards dragged each of the three wounded seals in turn over the dike, then through the rice paddy to the helicopter, lifting each aboard with his one good hand. Richards later wrote, With one hand, it was probably my heaviest lift I ever made. Best one, too. Enemy fire intensified during the loading. Lawrence, still providing covering fire,

was about to climb aboard when Dyer began to, pull pitch for liftoff as enemy rounds hit the fuselage. Lawrence grabbed the slick skid and held on for dear life until the Hulk reached down with his uninjured hand and hauled Lawrence aboard. Having flown more than 600 combat missions with scores of those flights in direct support of two seal teams, Nelson vividly remembers the scene unfolding below his gunship as the platoon struggled to survive. Nelson recalls, Nelson recalls quote, watching a wounded Tom Richards under intense enemy fire, drag each of his wounded seals to safety across a series of rice,

Patty Dykes, and load them into the sea lord Kilo. It was the most heroic act that I have ever witnessed. Tom Richards' heroism rates a Navy cross at a minimum. He directly saved the lives of his platoon. And that's an article from the Navy. Institute you can find it online and if you fast forward from that event which took place in 1971 fast forward about 20 years to 1991 and I was a new guy at Seal Team 1 and it was a Saturday morning and I was in the gym at Seal Team 1 alone cranking some Metallica on

the stereo system and when I say cranking I mean it was ear damaging levels of noise because I was young and stupid. And then the Hulk, the Hulk walked in. And he was wearing his gym clothes, and he was there to get a workout. The same guy. Who was Lieutenant J.G.? This is now Captain Richards' legendary seal

that you just heard about. It's now 20 years later. And of course, I knew who he was. We all knew who he was. He was the Hulk. Then he walked into the gym to get his workout on. And so I respectfully walked over to the stereo and turned it down, turned the dial about halfway back to bring it to a normal listening level.

And as I did that, the Hulk shouted, hey, I looked over at him and he said, turn that back up. And I said, yes, sir. And I did. And you fast forward another six or seven years on top of that. and I was walking in to the Admiral's office. Now Admiral Tom Richards, the Admiral in charge of all the SEALs. And I was going to interview you with him,

hoping to get a letter of recommendation for selection so I could get my commission and become a SEAL officer. And he gave me that recommendation, and I did end up getting selected. And I'm certainly thankful to Admiral Richards for that, but more important, I'm thankful for what he did for America and for the teams and for me in the end and therefore I am also thankful for those helicopter pilots and crews for getting him and his platoon out of there and these are the same helicopter crews that risked their lives time and time again to get the seals out of the worst possible situation. These were the legendary sea wolves.

The U.S. Navy helicopter attack squadron three. And this is a unit. It's the most highly decorated naval aviation unit. Collectively awarded in Vietnam, five Navy crosses, 31 silver stars, two legions of merit, 219 distinguished flying crosses, 156 Purple Hearts, 101 bronze stars, 142 gallantry crosses, Over 16,000 air medals, 439 Navy Commendation medals, 228 Navy Achievement Metals, six Presidential Unit Citations,

and two meritorious unit commendations. And we have had the honor of having a Seawolf pilot on this podcast once before. Dennis Rowley, Podcast 153. If you haven't listened to that, go and check it out. But tonight, it is an honor to have two more Sea Wolf pilots with us. John Farr and Carl Nelson,

the same Carl Nelson you just heard me read about, who provided cover fire while Zulu platoon extracted from a serious gunfight. Our relationship in the SEAL teams with the Sea Wolves in Vietnam will never be forgotten, and therefore it is an honor to have you two gentlemen with me here tonight. Thank you. Thank you for coming.

Happy to be here. So I know, well, I know I could sit here and just listen to you guys tell stories about Vietnam for the entire time, which we will get to. But to start off a little bit, let's start a little bit about where you guys came from and how you grew up just so we have some background. What do you think? John, you want to start? And John, you're the reason was your son connected us, right?

Yes, Eric, my son. He was one that's a Marine. and he's big into Jitsu, so he would love this place. So he does quite a bit of that. But yeah, he's the one that was in the military. Well, thanks to him. Thanks to Eric for linking us up, and it's outstanding to have you. So where did you guys grow up, John?

I grew up in the Chicago area, north of Chicago. I went to high school there, and I went to a small college in Indiana, St. Joseph's College, which is in Rensselaer, about halfway between Notre Dame and Purdue. Okay. And my senior year, there was a Navy recruiter came down looking for, recruiting for the Navy flight program. So what year is this? This would have been 1968.

Okay. So Vietnam is full on. Yes, yes. And that was the year they had the lottery for the draft. Okay. And I got the paper. I started at 365 looking for my number. And I said, geez, I missed it.

So I started at the top. went through it again. I said, they don't have my number in here. I flipped the paper over. The first number picked, I believe, was May 8th. The second number picked was April 24th, which was my birthday. So there's no doubt where I was going. And at the same time, I was looking for a job, you know, graduating from college and everything. And one of the first questions they asked is, well, what's your draft status? And I said, well, it's a say one. And most of the people say, well, why don't you come back after your service? And then I interviewed with Burroughs Corporation, They never asked the question and I never provide the information.

I got hired. So I got hired by Burroughs, graduated, started working with them. In the meantime, I passed this flight exam down in college and he said, well, now you need to go up to Glenview for an interview in a physical. And I lived probably 20 minutes from Glenview in North of Chicago. So I said, this is great. So I went up to Glenview. My real reason for going up there was on Saturday night I'd go down to Rush Street for the night. And so I was back home.

So I did that, went through the physical, and everything went fine. And I didn't hear anything for a long as you got to take something go through the process. And then I started working at Burroughs. And what kind of company was Burroughs? Burroughs was a computer company. Sold calculators, adding machines at a time. And so I started working with them. Yeah, I was going to say a computer company in 1968.

It's a little bit of a stretch, right? Well, they calculate errors, add to machines, things like, but they did become one of the larger computer companies competing against IBM. In fact, later in my career, I had sold the largest computer that Burroughs made at the time to the University of Chicago Medical Centers just before they merged with Speary. Got it. But that's, we're up the track on that. So anyway, I started working. Then I got a notice from the Army to come in for my Army induction physical. about a week after that I got a call from the Navy saying congratulations you've been selected for the Navy's flight program and I says well I just started a job I can't do this and the guy says son you're in the Navy when would you like to report and I said well what's the latest date you could give me and it was October I think October 18th I says okay I'll take that so now I got to go in and tell my boss I'm going to go in the Navy so I went in early one morning because he was always in her

and sat down and talked to him, says, Joe, I went through this program and I've been selected for the Navy flight program. As it turned out, he was a Marine fighter pilot during World War II. And he says, hey, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You can't pass it up. Burles will always be here. So I worked the summer with them, and at the end, they had a little party for me, had this big cake, they had a bunch of little airplanes on, and gave me a kind of a nail-clipper kit that I have to this day. And so that's how I ended up in the Navy.

When you were growing up, so you were going to high school in like the early 1960s? Yes, I graduated 63 from high. And it sounds like you were pretty, you had a plan. You wanted a job. You kind of had a, you knew what you, you knew

that you were going to move forward in a positive way. Yes, very much so. Yes. Well, and my father was in a corporate world. business and as a side story he was actually Eisenhower's personal mess sergeant all during World War II he went over his Patton's mess sergeant Eisenhower found out about him brought him on his staff and so he was with him for four years and I might as well tell this story yeah finally got no wonder is that cool I there was some conflict between Eisenhower

and Patent he took his best freaking cook and so and finally before my dad Pat the way we got him to write his memoirs just for the family and Carl many of our friends have read it and in there at one point he was coming back to the states and so he asked people on his staff would you like to come back to the states and of course all his movements so this was Eisenhower was coming back to the states to meet with Roosevelt for just like a week or so of course all his movements are top secret so he wrote a letter to my mother and says meet me at d.c at this hotel and it's all coated. So he came back, and of course, nine months later,

and I'm around. And, of course, my mother lived in Elmira, New York. That's where I was born. And, of course, nobody knew my dad had been home. We're talking in the neighborhood. Yeah, talking to the neighborhood. Over the bad fits. So anyway, Eisenhower bought me a war bond.

And at some point, it cashed that in. I wish it would have kept it had been really worse something today. But I do have the letter signed by Eisenhower authorizing to purchase. of that war bond when I was born. Outstanding. But my dad served on his staff for about four and a half years. I was probably a year old before I ever saw my father.

But he thinks the world of Eisenhower and says he's never saw Eisenhower do anything that would challenge his integrity, his honesty, or his reputation. It's impressive. You don't hear that very much anymore these days. No, you don't. We could use Eisenhower now. That's nice. All right, Carl.

Yes. Where the heck did you come from? I was born a poor black child. I actually Believe it or not, I was born and reared in the panhandle of Texas between Memphis and Turkey, Texas in Hall County. There was a little pot of dirt and that's where I was born. And Maggie and Dudes number three child and I was the first Nelson male to graduate from high school. So I went to college They thought I was a flipping genius I mean a kid must know everything

Right So What did your parents do for work? They were children of sharecroppers And sharecroppers themselves We didn't own anything But raised cattle and yet a cash crop Which I always got a kick of the term

Cash because we never many money on it And that was cotton And there aren't many people That you know I'm sure that drug a cotton sack at 5, 6, 7, and 8, and 9 years old every fall. Our school started early like in August, let out for a month in September, October, whenever the cotton was ready to harvest. And, of course, we needed all the family to pick the cotton

because there just wasn't enough labor. And so dragging a cotton sack was, and of course, the rate-going wages those days was when you paid somebody and that wasn't often was a dollar or a hundred a penny a pound for picking cotton and my dad picked a thousand pounds one day a long day most I ever got was like 200

but I was a little guy so that's my roots and we moved to Oregon when I was in grade school and it was a great relief getting away from that damn cotton but the downside was I'm chopping and cutting wood. The old story goes, I was 15 before I knew my name wasn't get wood.

I had to get wood all the time. And, of course, being a very wealthy family, I carried water, too. We didn't have a well. We had to get water from a couple miles away, so I'm carrying water. And it sounds like a lot of racial elders stories. My kids yawn and rolled their eyes. They've heard them. But I'm really proud of my roots, and it's interesting.

My goal was to be a high school football coach. First of all, I thought I was going to be a professional athlete. I was sure I was going to be an NFL as a mental linebacker. Well, I did get drafted, but the real world was there was a war going on. I had just gotten married, and I thought, you know, I had a younger brother in the Army in Vietnam. and this is 1966 when I graduated. And you're after John?

I'm surprised by the way to hear. I was very surprised to hear that Tom Richards finished high school and John Far. That's breaking news on the same program. You did it, Jocko. But I got a dream job. I thought if I don't, if I don't, I'll do the tryout in San Diego. I would do the tryout if.

if I don't get a real job that I really first-class job, I want a first assistant job in a high school and a large high school in Oregon. And I got that job, so I didn't go to camp. But then I had the guilt setting in all year long, and my brother's still serving, and he's going for another tour in Vietnam, so I resigned my, I was to be the head football coach

of Springfield High School the following fall, and it was like April May and I just, I couldn't do that. I resigned that job. I went to my department head. I taught Boy's P.E. and chemistry in high school. My chemistry department head was a guy named John Vote and John was a naval aviator. He says, what are you going to do? And I says, I think I'll probably join the Marine Corps.

I don't know. He said, no, don't do that. Go fly. So Sandpoint Naval Air Station was open in those days, up in Seattle, Washington. He says, come with me to resolve. weekend and and I went flying with him and then we hung out in the old club and I was on the stage dancing with some Polynesian ladies and I thought I could do this I could do this job so I took the test and did the interview and and I was in class 3268 and the fall of 68

in Pensacola officer at aOC class and John you were 38 38 38 he was six weeks later. Okay. Okay. So, there you go. So did you guys meet each other after that when you got into the actual aviation training program? Yeah, we met in Vietnam.

Yeah. We got to be friends there. He was always enough, far enough behind me that I didn't really get to know him. Only three months. But, you know, as you go through, it's pretty intensive training. And not a big socializer, nor was John, I don't think. And we worked pretty hard. And so I really got to know John in Vietnam.

I mean a fact I think we looked in a logbook today my logbooks somewhere in a bottom of storage in Sanger, California, but I think we flew together probably a couple dozen times. Oh yeah. And he was my, as we call it, today we called it a Clarence Pumpkin. I'll call about it. He was my Clarence Pumpkin. And a damn Goodman, by the way. I don't want to make him feel too good about himself today, but he, you know, it's critical. Every job in a cockpit is a critical thing.

bad or not. But getting where you're going and all systems being switches in the right position and when you roll in and put me hot, that means we know what we're going to do with the intervalometer, whether we're going to fly a fire pair or two pair and keeping an eye on things as a co-pilot besides operating the mini-guns or whatever else he does. So John was excellent. And then and having a co-pilot knows what he's doing. More than once you have to fly with guys and you're probably have too, John. Sure have. You look over and say, don't touch a dang thing.

Just don't touch anything. I'll let you know when I want you to do something. But John wasn't that kind of guy. He was in the mode. He was a good guy. So when did you guys figure out or get assigned helicopters as opposed to whatever else the Navy has to offer? Is that happening at flight school?

At the end of flight school? Well, you go through flight school and you go through primary training, which is flying to T-34, the advanced training, which is flying to T-28. It's after that, if you've done your carrier landings and your instrument flying, your formation flying, stuff like that, either go multi-engines, jets, or heloes. In my situation, my class, they were needing helo pilots for Vietnam, so they took my whole class and said, you guys are going heloes. And for me, it didn't, it wasn't a burning desire for one or the other.

There were some people that wanted multi-engine because they wanted to go with the airlines or people that wanted to go jets because they wanted to go jets. And I told the guy, he says, well, I'd like to fly the big transports. And he said, well, then you should have joined the Air Force. So going on with heels was fine with me and got through the program. I'm glad I did. And I think flying in hell three was probably the last of the World War II type flying. As long as you brought the plane back in one piece, they really didn't care, you know, what you did.

There was a lot of, there were rules and flight rules, but, you know, you know, You know, the job was to get the mission done, and that was the main thing. And whatever it took to get the mission done, that's what you needed to do. I was in flight school. I had my primary flight instructor was a guy named Amal Say's name, Johnny Henkel. Johnny's retired in Florida. I just called him another day to thank him. I haven't talked to him since 1969.

And so on the Seawolf mail list that you get comes in with addresses numbers, I said, there's Hankle. That's the same guy, I bet. I called him up. A lady answers the phone. Who may have said, tell him, Carl Nelson's calling, like he knows, like he remembers 42 years ago.

And so, more than that, 52 years ago, I'm sorry. So he comes on a phone cautiously like, I'm not buying anything type of voice. Hello? I said, Johnny Hankel, he says, who's calling? He didn't admit to anything. Well, I said, hey, I'm a flight student years from February of 1969.

softly field, T-34, and he says, Jesus Christ, really? And I said, I'm sure you remember me, and he said, actually, I don't. I said, I know you don't. But here's what he did. I was getting ready to solo, and I thought I was going to fly just because I joined, I left my teaching and coaching job,

I went in the military because I wanted to serve in Vietnam, where my brother was serving. And he was serving, actually, back up the clock. When I got into officer Canada school, he was serving. Sadly, he was killed in action in November 23rd, 1968. So 22-year-old young man, second tour, infantry, 25th infantry. And so anyway, I was in a hurry to get there. I wasn't trying to get even.

That wasn't my goal. I just wanted to serve, and I wanted to get to Vietnam, and I thought Jess was the only way to get there. I knew I couldn't do it in the transport. I didn't want to fly mail to Saigon. Oh, God bless the mail guys. And so I read about there was a pool in advanced training in Mississippi. I thought, oh, my God.

And then Nixon's trying to stop the war. Good Lord, that guy is trying to ruin my plan. So I got, I was pretty depressed. What was the pool? What do you mean there was a pool? Well, in flight training, they tried to keep them moving through quickly. They're on a schedule to get students through with a syllabus, every flight from primary to advanced.

And after advanced, I mean, after primary, you go to, you go to Meridian, Mississippi to advance jet training, or you go to the... Ellison for... Yeah, the T-28 flying, where they're preparing you for fixed-wing or helicopter, or for a multi-engine helicopter. And so that's where the decision was made

after you finish primary and it's softly filled VT1, they called it, the T34 mentor. So I was, you know, I'm getting down to about three or four more flights to go, and a pool would be where there was a weather hold up or a maintenance hold up or whatever, and the students were backed up. Got it. And so instead of getting through Meridian, which was kind of intermediate training, instead of getting through Meridian in six weeks, it might be three,

four or five months. And I thought, good Lord, I will never get out of here. Because after Meridian, you've got to go to Kingsville and Beaville, and then you get your wings, and then you go to a rag, and it's a long time. I didn't have much time. From the time I

started flight school until I got my wings, it was 11 months and 9 days. I was in a hurry. It was an 18-month program. John went through pretty quickly too. I was in a hurry. Well, that day, Hinkle says, what's wrong? You seem a little down.

So I'm way down. Here's the deal. They've got a pool and Meridian. I'll never get out of this damn place and the president's going to stop the war. What am I going to do? This is awful. And I gave up my great coaching job. And he says, what are you doing tonight?

I'm studying, sir. I wasn't studying. He says, come to my house. He gave me the address. I go to his house. My wife and I, and this is, you know, he's a J.G. Pretty important guy when you're in Enson. And he's got his wings and everything.

And I thought, wow, you know, I'm going to an officer's house and he's a senior officer. I got there. And we have, I don't know what we had for dinner. I didn't remember. I was just nervous, you know, and what do I do? How do I act? Try to remember all the charm school stuff they told us.

Well, he brings out eight millimeter movies, Hal three movies. And I went, oh, my God, where, what is that? And he told me, and I went, man, I flew out of his house, and I flew all the way through to get my wings of Ellison. And then I sweated Ellison because at my week to get my wings, they're only two slots for Hal 3. Can you believe that? Two slots.

Buzzie Bezell and I, Buzzy Passed, great guy, great friend, but Dick Buzzle and I got the orders. So was that the first time you heard of Hal 3? First time I heard of Hal 3 was from Hankle at V. T1 when he showed me the home movies. And I didn't tell anybody about it. My secret. I want to make sure I got the job.

I'm not giving any leads to anybody. So it was a blessing. And I'll tell you, I'm talking too much, and I'm supposed to be for John here, but greatest thing that, probably not, outside of the birth of my two daughters, the greatest thing that happened to me because the mission was incredible,

incredible guys to fly with, and working with seal teams and with the boats. Really a mission, we were needed, and there's not a better mission on Earth than that. I thought. It was. When you get assigned to Hal three out of flight school, where do you go? Well, the first thing we had to do is we had to go to Fort Rucker

for three weeks for gunnery training because the Navy didn't have any gunnery training for the heloes or anything. The Army had that. So we spent three weeks in Fort Rucker, which is in Alabama, went through gunnery training. Then we had to go through Sears School for escape and evasion and that. So we went through that, and that was interesting.

And I did mine in Little Creek and actually was out in the field in Coronado. And you can remember after that, and you're out there for about three or four days. And coming back, they were on a bus bringing us back to the base after this. Then they stopped at this hamburger place. And I hadn't had anything to eat for three or a day. So I went in and got a cheeseburger, and I can taste that cheeseburger until today. The best cheeseburger I've ever had. But then we got back and then you got orders.

It was actually about six months from the time we finished flight school before I got to Vietnam, which was the first of August. And I got my wings in February. It was two of us that got our wings. was a Marine pilot, and he was flying Coburs, and he was actually killed in Vietnam. Did Hal Three have any presence in America? Like, was there a headquarters here or anything?

So you didn't even, you was, that's it. You were just kind of on your own, working through the system. Actually, the squadron was commissioned and decommissioned in Vietnam. Yeah, yeah, that's, it's like the only one that's commissioned and decommissioned in a combat zone. Right. So there's, but there's no presence. There's no headquarters back here, not. Nothing. No.

So you don't even meet your team until you get to Vietnam. Yeah, you got there. Tooey, right. I just had the pleasure, by the way, I go back to Louisiana annually because, and I'll say it here, one of my name to be unnamed, but one of my doorkunners, unfortunately, is in prison in Angola, not a good place to be, Louisiana life. And while on this trip, I got to meet a guy 92-year-old. old Robert Spencer, retired Navy captain, the first commanding officer of Hal 3. He stood the squadron up.

Yes, he did. And if you saw the scramble the sea wolves, he's in there. And quite a character. And he'd go to his house and he'll smoke 25, 30 cigarettes in an hour and I was there and drank eight or 10 bottles of beer right there, a little cooler right next to his chair. Or next to his chair. great guy, great guy. What's the, oh, go ahead. Well, I was going to say he was in 92. He's about he doing pretty well. But, so my first, when I got to Hal 3, then we got to Ben 2y,

and then the first part of you, you have these fam flights just to get familiar with the area. And one of my first flights, I was just telling Carl about this today, that one of my first flights was to hoist a three-holler down to debt six. expand on that so so so then Carl says well we built our three-huller so the three-huller was the outhouse okay they didn't have one down at that six because that six was just kind of forming up and so went there and dropped it off and it was a that's your first combat mission I guess one of my first missions yes I was in a combat zone he was hauling the crap yeah slinging But then, so when my later flights was about a month later was when we had one of our hilo's

get shot down. And this was at B.C. Lake was down near where that 6 was down by Sanandak. And I was flying with a guy that was in his last couple weeks in Hal 3. And most of the time, they're just doing easy stuff. We got this call, the Gila was down. We went in to get the people out. Everybody was killed. It was in kind of a swamp area.

We were able to get one of the bodies out. And we're at the hall, this time we're taking fire. And I was shooting an M-16 out of the, and I was a copilot, I'm shooting it outside. You finally get the one body, when we get out, some cobras came and able to get us out. Then they brought in some VAL-4, the black ponies, and they kind of cleared the area. And then they were able to secure it and get them out the next day. But when we get back and landed, probably a foot behind where I was sitting. There was a round of five rounds right behind where I was sitting.

So that was my very first combat. You'll hear about VC Lake. What was that date, John? That was September? September 15th. Big, major, major operation. We lost four sea wolves that day. All from debt six.

Yeah. So then two weeks later, I was assigned to debt six as one of the replacement pilots. So it was funny, first I take the three holder down there. Then they got this mission where they lost some of the pilots, and then I am assigned to that six. So I was destined to be there. And you said to them? I was the guy that brought you your first three-holler.

I showed up and I said, I brought your three-haller. I'm John Farr. Oh, okay, come on. And so we were there, and actually, San and Doc got blowing up, so we wanted to go into that story on the 20th of October. I got there the 8th of October, and we got mortared. And the son and dock was on the river, and we didn't have any perimeter around where the helipad was, but they had all the barges and that for the swift boats.

So all the swift boats were down there, big barges with fuel and everything. It was about, you know, 20, 30, a couple hundred feet from where the helipad was. And one night, it's very distinct sound when you've got the incoming. So we heard the incoming, ran to the bunkers, and it was late, early evening. and I was actually reading Catch 22 was about halfway through it. I still haven't finished. Well, that's ironic.

Yeah, exactly. So there was a little lull in the action. We ran to the, and I was on flight status and I ran to the heloes, and we got airborne, and we flew the rest of the night. And we called, then health, we scrambled that one.

They were just down. I was there. And Earl and Carl, we flew all night long, just putting in strike after strike, going back, the morning we kind of got it secured we went back and landed on the pad and they had come in and ransacked their shacks and everything we wanted to make sure you get the see if the people were

still in the bunker they actually got into the barges and got on swift boats and got out to see so everybody I think there was only one person that was killed that was on one of the barges but halfway through the night they finally hit the fuel barge you see this huge fireball come up and you could see it from down where debt one was which was probably 50 clicks away or so. Easy to navigate there. Look at a big bite flight, yeah. And then the next day we found out

there was five rockets pointed at the helos because if you're most vulnerable, just as you're starting to lift off. And for some reason, he messed up. They didn't work, but they didn't go off. And we found out afterwards, we were the first detachment to ever take off during a mortar attack and make it.

Another record. And so then, so now, Did you ever start to feel like you had some kind of black cloud over your head? Because right now we got rounds hitting behind you, replacement the guys that were killed. You got the first person to take off during a mortar attack. This is only in the first two months, three months. No wonder you didn't finish reading Catch 22 because you realized you were freaking crazy.

Yeah, for sure. But the thing is, Carl and I were talking about this the other day, says, you know, we were there to do a job and do a mission. So you never thought about those things. You never thought about the negative, you know, what could happen. You may be years later, I think, boy, had some close calls, and we did. But not when it was happening. It's just like the air, you know, when they see the pilots are always so calm,

you're always flying the airplane. And that's all you're focused on is to fly the airplane. What the engines go out or that is it. Why aren't they screaming or anything? Because they're focused on doing their job, we're just to fly the plane safely and land it. How well did you guys feel you were trained when you showed up there? Highly trained. I think we were some of the better pilots.

because we were very trained and we'd done us a million times and flying in combat it was a little more intense and you're focused on your job I think the Navy does a great job by training their pilots just doing the carry landings

was a piece of cake and says what's so hard about this course we did it on a beautiful day calm seas but we had shot probably a thousand approaches simulated at land so you get out to sea

and it was nothing hard about it at all Of course, at night in rough seas, that's a different story. The Hal 3 had nine detachments in throughout the Meccawong Delta, strategically placed, all over from the Cambodian border down to where I was, down in the lower Camille Peninsula. And if you got in trouble at night, you needed a MannerVac at night, or an advanced tactical support base in ATSB, kind of a triangle shift, shape and they got Constantine and all around it and they got hit all the time at night. They scrambled the seawolds and we would fly.

We were all weather pilots. In those days, most of the Army guys were not all weather pilots. They were VFR daylight pilots, not all of them, but most of them. I was going to say by all weather, that includes nighttime. Nighttime and rain. There would be monsoon season you can barely see in front of your face. We're flying instruments in an old UH1B, but we were all instrument training. and we were heavily instrument trained.

After we got our, through our primary training in T28, we had instrument training there. We went through another squadron, VT6, nothing but instrument training. So we got all, we got transition to the aircraft, precision and acrobatics, and then we got over to do instruments, and then went to do FCLPs,

field landing carrier practice, a lot of them, before you go hit the boat. And those days, every naval aviator had wings on was the carrier qualified. Not anymore. We're saving money now. So not anymore. And obviously the Army's just not even landing on carriers at all.

And you don't, I mean, just in a regular Navy, you've got to fly a helicopter to do a resupply at sea. And there's that deck's moving and you've got to do all weather anyways. And there's no horizon half the time and everything else. Whereas you don't. You don't necessarily have to contend with that in some of the other services. It was always interesting to me. When an air cab package would come down to where I was, solid anchor, sea float,

but solid anchor wouldn't have the runway. They would come and get there by nine, and they usually would buy five. Got to get back. And when it gets dark, okay. But to be fair, when you mentioned Sangha, Doc, I had a memory as I was a co-pilot in those days and I was co-pilot for to go unnamed an O&C and we usually flew at 800 feet and he had to be 1,200 feet that night. I said, sir, we're getting nosebleeds up here. Our rockets are burning out before they hit the ground. But, you know, that's what song and talk reminds me of.

So after that they brought in an LST and we did, we flew off an LST. the rest of the time that we're down there at Sanandak. After that, so that base got kind of overrun then? Yeah, but they got it secure and they still kept the shipboats there and everything. But they did overrun that night, didn't they? Yes, they did. They did. And then they left.

I'm assuming they left? Well, we secured the area. We got the area secured again and we went back in. But then they moved the helo pads. Well, we didn't keep the helipad. They brought in an LST and we flew off the LST the rest of the time. So going back to showing up, you show up there, you feel like you're saying you were well trained. And then what was the kind of on-the-job training procedure to get you guys where, you know, you start off as a co-pilot every time?

Every new guy starting off as a co-pilot? Yes. We didn't have enough time. Your minimum time for our aircraft commander was 500 total flight hours. Most of us showed up out of training command with 250, 260, 270, 270. So you transition in any squadron in the Navy when you get there new, you have to transition to the type. You go through what's called a rag.

A lot of acronyms, as you know, replacement air group. And so you go to the rag, set you up on all the systems, fly the airplane, and you're a cop on it. When you have enough time and you qualify, you become aircraft commander. And with Hal 3, once you show the capability to manage and control two aircraft, aircraft and tactically be unknowledgeable, you become a fire team leader, FTO, another acronym. So John was an FTO. Yeah, most of us were.

Yeah. And then what, at what point did you realize who you were supporting? When you saw that, when you saw the 8mm home movies, was he saying, hey, we're supporting the seal teams over there and let me tell you what the seal teams are? Yeah, he did, and I never heard of a seal. I had no idea what a seal was. and I forgot what it wasn't, had to ask him the next day.

What did you say they were? And he said, well, they're like Frogman. I said, yeah, I know what movies in World War II. I knew what Frogman were. And he said, well, they've evolved from that from UDT. There's still a UDT, but they're, and that was 1968. The Seals hadn't been around a long time as seals. And, yeah, and I remember going to, first of all,

sea float was a bunch of barges tied together. and the Boday River, I think it was, and the Comal Peninsula. And it was great because they had two sail patoons there. We lived on these barges. The Johns were, the river was rushing down below this way morning and this way in the afternoon. And all night long, you couldn't sleep at first

when you're a new guy because they're setting off concussion grenades all night. And the next morning, many mornings, there'd be a sapper that was trying to get there to blow the place up, laying over on the bank, blowed it up in the sun, you know. And a couple of times they got sappers on the boat, but they got them. The seals got them before they did any damage. But it's amazing the perseverance of some of those characters.

I think the primary mission was we were the close air support for the swift boats going down to canals. and if you ever go I've gone to places and talk to somebody and he was on the swift boats and he found out I was in Hal 3 and he's buying me beers rest of night so they

the swift boat guys really and the seals as well supported the sea wolves oh yeah it's a legendary to make sure you give nothing but full respect to the Sea Wolves when you're in the SEAL teams for sure

so what's the normal mission look like how are you getting the asking, are you, are you meeting with guys beforehand? Are you meeting with the seal platoons and going over, hey, here's where we want to get dropped off? Well, what's that look like? Well, Carl can speak to that because he had, he was with the seals. On that six, we didn't have any seals with us. We just had the swift boats. And there wasn't a lot of coordination with the swift boats, except when they got in trouble. They call us up and scramble us for

close air support when they got in trouble. But the seals, those missions were coordinated. And I'll let Carl speak to that. had many types of missions, as you know, Jocko. And many times they would just be advising us, look, we're going to go in at night. We're going to go by boat. You know, they've got a Kit Carson Scout that's going to lead them in. Intelligence says XYZ is here, and they would let us know where they're going to be, and then coordinates of where they're going to be.

And I'll tell a story here about John Sandos. username, John, and outstanding officer. And the good news on him is he operated often and heavy and nightly it seemed like, I don't think he got it, there was one Purple Heart in his group, but he was a heavy operator and hats off to him on that one. But he did a night operation. One night, he let us know where he's going to be, and I was, we were on Brady 5, the scramble aircraft, our gears all in, we've done all the checks, we've cranked it

once it's ready to go and you literally hop in there and you're airborne and like, you know, I've heard term three minutes. We made, we got off a lot quicker in three minutes lots of times. And we got airborne and it was black, literally black. Well, we pre-brief John, we gave John, what the strobe, what was the strobe called that we had, John that we carried? The little strobes that, it had a guard around it and it was. Oh, a directional strobe?

Yeah, it was a direction. And he had one. and he had a prick 90 radio of mine that I gave him because it was small and it was easy to operate. And so John himself, tough seal, he's out there and the enemy is over here and freedom's over here and John is between both of them and he's going to defend. And he's out there, see Wolf 1-3.

Put some fire in northeast, about 3, about 0-30, and just walk it in, and I'll tell you that when to stop. Okay, so we, I rolled in and started laying rockets in. And it was hilarious because he goes, okay, a little closer, a little closer. And his voice starts raising, a little bit closer. That's close enough. And I could hear rockets going off in the background.

And I was, here I am safe and sounded 800 feet or whatever I was, 600 feet. and it was hilarious. And I never let him forget that, ever. So when you're flying at, I mean, it's really how black it can be at night. Like, it can be so dark outside. So when it's that dark, you're just flying pure instruments. You're just looking at yours. You're not even looking outside because there's nothing to see.

Unless you're looking at fire coming up at you. Okay. And then it's real bright. Sometimes you get lucky. and there's a moon out. If there's a moon out, then you get flashes of light off the squiggly

and rivers and streams. But yeah, there's nights out there when you're like this, and that's when you have to have a co-pilot who knows what he's doing, who can navigate, because you're busy as hell, keeping that thing on altitude, on heading,

and realize you've got a wingman who's got to have discipline too. He's got to know the heading you're on and the altitude. You've got any collision light, top and bottom. so you can keep track of each other but it's

it can get hairy out there at night and it's you know some guys you look over one time I mentioned Earl's name where Earl was co-pott of mine many time

good guy but he was over there like this you got the liens pretty bad because the semi-cirker canal is kind of getting messed up and you think you're level but you're not

when you start when you started getting vertical he's over there like us I said okay Earl it was just we weren't in combat or anything we were just flying and he's over there

leaning sideways. I said, okay, Earl, you got it. He said, oh, that's okay. And I'm over there laughing, the crew's laughing, but Earl, excellent pilot, but once in a while you can get them like that. No, it is dark and it's like, how do you say, the inside of somebody's rectum, how do you say that nicely? It's dark. I think you just did it. Okay. But once again, if you do it enough, you know how to do it and you're comfortable doing it. it. So what were the swift, let's talk about the swift boat operations, because those guys were pushing up and pushing the envelope into enemy territory. What was that opt tempo like? Well, there's scrambling on you to go to where the coordinates were, then you were just putting in fire. And once again,

they would say, shoot right over our heads and say, well, why don't you pull back a little bit, just to make sure. But those would get intense. And I think you saw quite a bit of that when you did the documentary on Scramble of Sea Wolves. And that's, and that's, you know, and that's, you know, It was like we were out there supporting them, putting in close fire to them just so they could get back out of that situation. And you mentioned, John, you mentioned the World War II attitude when it comes to flying and fighting. And I mean, I get that. But can you talk a little bit more about, I know that you, the way you all felt about, A, your gunners, the guys that were on your birds, but also your maintenance crews that were keeping your birds up and running.

and using beer cans to patch them up and whatever else. So that's sort of the World War II mentality that you're talking about where you said there were rules, but. But you had to do the mission. Right. And I think that was part of it. It was a team effort. So you talk about the gunners and the maintenance people.

We all worked very well together. We all had our part to do, and it was all coordinated, and it all came together. And we had to make the gunners do their job. maintenance people. And it just, it was a team effort. And everybody supported the team and all had the same mission to do, even though it was a different part. It's like a football team. You know, you got your job to do, and it doesn't work unless you're doing your part of the job. And that's what we did. It just worked. I was going to say, and you ought to know, Jock, is that a fire team and most of the attachment would come on for 24 on, 24 off.

For 24 on, you're on for scrambles. You get your meals and you get your rest when you can, but you're on duty from noon to noon. Usually we did it. And anything that happened during that time, your crew is at the radio. You're all briefed, and by briefed, you go down to what we call T.O.C.

see with the Army, the operation center, we know where there artillery's at. We know where the units, all the units are. We know what their radio frequencies are. We know what the planned operations are. We have a general idea where the bad guys are, but most of the time, when we weren't actually involved in a combat operation, we'd be patrolling and basically looking for trouble. That's what we always did, and we'd usually find it. And sometimes people get, it's never, I can't, I have a hard time thinking about a flight that I was on that we didn't get shot at. I'm sure there were some, but it was rare that we didn't get shot at. And we wanted them to shoot at us, because we could shoot back. We could know where they were. Didn't have to call for a clearance

that shot at you. You could just return fire. In my AO, our AO, Don of Dead One before I went to that six was John. And the AO we had was literally a free fire zone. We could shoot any eligible age male. Now, we didn't. We were, and that's not how we operated. You don't go, we didn't go blowing up hoochers and shooting randomly and shoot her to,

we didn't shoot her to ammo. We didn't do that, honestly, ever. I mean, you do that in somebody's crew and you're going to get your butt kicked off and back to home guard and heartbeat. We were professional, but eligible or the male

could be that we just we might just take his sand pound out from under him you know because he's in a wrong area we don't kill the guy but he's swimming

and if it's a guy who gets stupid and started shooting back well then we erase that guy but again we were pre-brief we knew where everything was what was going on and more often than not

we could brief TOC as well as they could brief We get the frequencies from them, but the intel, we could feed to them. We knew what was going on everywhere. So in a 24-hour period where you're on, so you said you do 24-hour on and then 24-hour off? In the 24-hour period that you're on, how much time are you in the air? Depends on what kind of operation you have, but I, honestly, I flew a lot because I was at opinion. The more airborne I was, the better pilot I was, a better.

my crew was because everybody's doing their job. They loved it. I loved it. And the better we knew our area of operations. I have many times flown, if you say every other day is 15 days, I've flown many months for 100 to 130 hours a month. And during a day, maybe eight to 10 hours. It wasn't unusual.

We were looking at your lot of book today. And we flew together that first month at death six. All day long. Yeah. All day long. And every time... That was our job is to fly. Sitting in the hooch, we're not doing our job.

So we were out flying, just... Even if it was just training, looking for action or looking for something. When you're day off, what are you doing? You're doing your job, whether it's ops or admin or maintenance or whatever your job is or sleeping because you know the next day you may not get any sleep. So you sleep. and no it was we were JGs and I remember I was getting a fitness support debrief from my O and C very nice man I didn't know what a fitness were I knew what it was I saw it in class

sometime but I barely know what the fitness support wasn't and he was stroking me and I didn't know it but he he says now Carl I know you're really like this mission you're really enjoying oh yes sir I mean I was just he says but the real Navy's not like this. You're not going to go to a squadron and have this much authority and responsibility. I mean, we're out there deciding who lives and who dies every day. And we're trying to make the right decision every day. I think we did. And he was right. We got to Lake Hurst and what was it like? I know. So we were JGs and you're a fire team leader. You're responsible for that whole flight. You're in charge of it. Even if you got a lieutenant commander sitting next to you, you're the

one that's calling Shots as a JG because you're in charge of it and that was important I think and I look at people say what's the best period of your life I'm saying oh it was high school or college I can honestly say the best period of my life was the six years I spent on active duty in the Navy the rent the friendships you make during that period especially in combat are so close closer than any other friendships I have so like Carl and Earl and Tim Zimmer we know We're all there. We've done the same thing together. And we had a reunion, what, 10 years ago now?

It was 2009 at my house up. 12 years ago. 12 years ago. Up in Chicago. And Carl, well, first of all, I invited Earl and his wife up to Chicago because his wife had never been to Chicago. He said, oh, come up. We'll show you this big city and the bright lights and everything.

And then an hour later, I get a call from Carl. Well, thanks for inviting me because Earl to talk to him in the meantime. And I said, well, Carl, you're going to talk to him in the meantime. And I said, well, Carl, you know. you've been here before you're always welcome. The next thing I know, I had my house full of people coming up for a reunion. We had 14 guys showed up. This was on the 4th of July.

Farr's got free food and booze. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So we've got a big tent, put it up in the backyard and everything, and we had this little reunion. And John Santos says it was always had a seal that every one of our union is very small. It was just a small group of people that were together. What I found interesting about it, the first time that we did it,

some of these people I hadn't seen in 40 years. And so where you started was a common denominator was Vietnam. Remember this mission? Remember that guy? Remember that incident? By the end of the evening, it was like we'd just seen him last weekend. I was amazed at how fast you could catch up with somebody. You should do a study on that.

Well, it's like your family. These guys know all your crap and they still like you. And they know you on bad days and good days. And I'm going to tell a story. It's one of those, this ain't no, no, but it's true. He talked about being, when you're in charge of a fire team, you're in charge, and rank matters, but rank on the cockpit goes away. You may say, sir, but you're in charge the airplane.

You're co-pilots, the captain, okay, captain, sit there, don't touch anything, that you're in charge. And it's Navy regs that your aircraft cannot be commandeered by some guy on the ground, saying, fly over here and do this. No. The only person that can doma, condombe your commandeer of your aircraft and your aircraft commander is a flag officer, a line officer in your back sitting in a seat. It's the only guy that can override an aircraft commander, flag officer. So, that in mind, one night at that one, Captain Martin Twyke, great guy.

He's passed on now. He was our seal. He came to fly debt one. And you know, you start flying and you don't mean it in a bad way, but you get your chin out and your chest out and you're aggressive and no BS. You can laugh and have fun, but the mission's serious. It's no screwing around. So Captain Trite wanted to go on a combat flight, so he came down, and he was my cope on it.

Of course, I sat in the left seat and respectfully let him have the right, which aircraft man in a helicopter. My wingman was two other guys. I won't use their names, but Lieutenant Commander and a Lieutenant. And I'm a J-J, a very green, but not green. So you're the junior guy in rank, but you're the flight commander. I'm the 15 leader. Got it.

And we're down there at TOC, and there was this Army guy who I didn't like anyway. He was a captain. He didn't like me. He was just too goody two shoes and didn't know squat what he was talking about. So he's up there. And he's briefing those eagles on Captain Twight. He kept, you know, kissing up, and I just said, stop, stop. Brief me.

This is not the Army. This is the Navy. The Navy, it has nothing to do with Rankets. It's who's the smartest guy here. And on this mission, I'm the smartest guy here. Brief me. Captain Twight shook his head, looked down, and said, Carl. He was so nice to me.

He should have slapped me, but he didn't do this. And that army guy was mad, but he's nothing that he could do about it. But that's kind of how it is. The aircraft commander is the ultimate. It's like the captain of a ship. What you say goes, and your job is to do the right thing. I want to try and get a little bit better feel for some of the operations. And I mean, just the first operation that you were talking about going to V.C. Lake,

and you're going to recover a helicopter. Like, talk us through from you get the call to you're leaving the scene and you've got the body recovered. What is it, you know, you're sitting in your, you're sitting in the ready room and all of a sudden the call comes in? What does that look like? No, I was on a fam flight. So we were out flying just in the general area.

And we get this call that the helo was down. We got the coordinates and we were close to the coordinates. So we were there fairly quickly. So we got in. And you have, are you always, you're always flying with a section of birds of two birds? You're always flying together? No, this was a single bird. Okay.

Because it was a, it was a, you, was a, John was new in country, and you were flying an admin flight, right? Yes. You were flying a slick, flying a slick. So flying a slick, you still had, you still had doorgunners. You still had the crew in the back. But you might fly alone if you're doing an admin mission. You might fly with just one bird. Like when you hoisted the three-hole or down, it was just a single flight.

That's right. Because you weren't looking to be a mission of combat mission per se. You were just trying to get familiar with the area. But if something happens, you've got to respond to it. And we didn't. This Bill Bels was his last week in country. And he flew in and tried to get these guys out as best we could. So Bill Beltz was your?

He was the helicopter commander pilot. The one that went down or the one that you were in? The one I was in. Okay. So the one that you're in, it's his last week in country. Last week in country, he's getting ready to go home and everything. But he was showing me around the area, stuff as a new pilot. And then we get this call that it heals down, respond to it.

And the crewman in the back, once we got down low, they jumped out. How long does it take you to get to find the downheelow? Those minutes. You have coordinates. You can see smoke. Well, there wasn't any smoke or anything, but it was down. It was a kind of swampy area, so there wasn't any fire. But we were close to the area.

They gave us the cord and said, we were kind of right there. So we were there within, I want to say, we were, you know, five, ten minutes after. Within five minutes, easy. And so we just flew in. And, you know, there wasn't any fire at times. So we're down there.

The crew jumps out to try and get the bodies out. But they were kind of, the heel was turned, and they were kind of pinned under it. They were only able to get one body out. We got that in the heel. In the meantime, we started taking fire from the tree. line, and that's when I was shooting the M16 at the tree line, and then we got nothing,

we got the body in, and then we just, then some cobras came, because they had heard about the coordinates, and then they covered us as we came out. Let me ask you, John, we're on the fly here. Two guys from debt one. We were down to one bird, because every hundred hours we had to get a new aircraft from maintenance, the major maintenance done in Bentui. So we would do the oil changes and filter changes and so forth, but they did all the heavy stuff. But two guys from debt one were Mike LaGal, I'll get rid of Mr. Lambert, they came up and they got shot down that day too.

Were they already shot down when you got there? You got their first, probably, didn't you? I think we got there first. You've got their first. They came in, scrambled up and went in, and they had a gun ship. And the bad guys, I think, had a 51 caliber. And they were knocking them out of the air. It was like a setup.

It was like an ambush. Because once the first one come down, they know we're going to try. and come and get people out. So they kind of... You were lucky. You guys weren't shut down. Yeah, very lucky. When you were flying and Carl, you mentioned that you can't even remember operations where

you didn't take fire. How often is your aircraft getting hit? You know, you post-flight really heavily when you get back. And you can, you know, when you're a new guy, you can't hear certain things. But when you've got experience, you can hear. gunfire. You can hear it from 800 feet. You can hear it. You can dang sure you hear it when you're breaking off target at 200 feet. But anyway, the bottom line is that we would get back on post-flight and more often than not, by the way, we found, we would find the seals

would bring in intel stuff and it would be a drawing of a helicopter and it would be a drawing of a helicopter And in Vietnamese, telling the bad guys where to aim so they could hit the aircraft. Because most of the time, they'd shoot at us and hit the tail section. Most, all of my hits, not all of them, but most of them were aft of the cabin. There were some in the cabin and they were uncomfortable. And sometimes I know John got a Purple Heart and you can tell that story. And I got one, Earl got one. I mean, it's no big deal.

I mean, you get it because you got shot and it's not nothing necessarily heroic. People think a Purple Heart's a big deal. It's not a big deal. I'd give a mind of In May once it if I can have the hole back, period. So since you brought the topic up, this is something about... Yeah, let's talk about your Pearl Hearts. I talk about this all the time. And so we, Carl was on debt six at that point, and we were out, and that one only had one of their birds.

They had one in maintenance. So we went down to Debt One, and we formed a three-plane formation. And so I was a pilot of one. Carl was a pilot one that's Earl shot was a pilot of the third. So we went out, took some fire found a target, and I'm not sure who was the first one in. I think

me. He forgot to add there was a heavy fire team and I was a fire team leader. Those two guys are doing everything I asked him to do most of the time. So Carl's a first. So heavy fire team means you got three birds? Three birds. Okay. So Carl's the first one in. And you're going in to do what? What are you going in to do? We put in a

strike in. Putting a strike in. So far as... When you say putting a strike in, meaning you're going to lay fire down onto... Is it close air support necessarily or is it some pre-demeated to target? We had just taken some ground fire and we're going to put it out, basically. And so you're rolling in, and then Carl was the first one in, Earl was the second one. And so Carl peels off and Earl's putting down fire. So as he's peeling off, that's when the plane's supposed to be doing, the second plane is supposed to put down on fire. So Earl put down the fire.

By that time, Carl's supposed to come around. then when Earl comes off to Target, I'm putting fire down. I came off the target, and that's when I got hit. And so we argued today, I said, Carl, you didn't cover me coming off target. And he says, well, you were out of position. I said, I wasn't out of position, you were out of position. And so I got hit. So where did you get hit?

I got hit in the foot. So the round came up and knocked the tips of my toes off, tips of my right foot. And then you saw the Scramble of Sea Wool's. Mike Gunner that day was... He got hit the same time. Kid. He was what? Kid.

And the Scramble of Sea Wolves at the end, where the round came up, cut his mic cord, came out, dotted his helmet, and dotted the eye on kid written on the back of his helmet. He was in the movie. It was in the movie.

And it cut the back of his neck like he cut up with a knife. Yeah. How's that? So he gets hit. I look back, and I'm trying to call him and he's not responding.

look back and all I see is blood. Like, oh, geez. He gives me a thumbs up, a big smile, and start shooting again. And around just, you cut the mic, cord, just graze the back of his neck. And, of course, when you cut your neck or head, it just bleeds like crazy. And then, so then we go back, land. Carl comes over, picks me up and carries me into the infirmary. The real story? Should we hear the real story?

Well, that's, so until this day, we argue. who's out of position, but we're the best of friends. It's interesting. That's like in a seal platoon, that's one of the basic maneuvers we do. Like one person shooting, as that person rolls out, there's someone that's picking up fire right behind him. As that person rolls out, there's someone picking up a fire right here. That's the way it's supposed to be, Carl. That's the way it's supposed to be.

In a racetrack pattern, in a racetrack pattern, this veteran at that time I probably had 800 missions and fire. It barely knows how to pre-flight. Yet he's in position and I'm not. But what's funny is, we got back. And I didn't know that Purrington was wounded. And we got back and landed. And John was, oh, oh, I thought, my God, he probably has a body shot. Chuck his body, check his body, check the blood.

And I couldn't find any blood anywhere. I'm looking, nothing, nice, dry. I'm thinking, patting down. And I picked him up and gently carried him 600 yards down to infirmary, the length of the base. He's moaning the whole way. Meantime, Burrington's bleeding and he's walking chatting the whole time. But John's moaning, not that he must have a brain wound I can't see or something. It's just so what I put up all the time. And we get down there, he takes his boot off,

and he's shot in the big toe. So Earl calls you, Earl calls you, Earl calls him nine toes. That's his name. So then I get medevaced up to Ventui to the Third Surge, which is the Army Hospital up there. And obviously I wasn't that badly wounded. And they put me in the back room. And that night, everybody came over to see me. I had a little nightstand table. I must have had 30 scotch and waters on that little table because everybody brought me a drink.

Did you save your boots? The boots? I do. I do. And I was very lucky. The doctor said because he had steel-toed boots, but it came up to the butt. but he came up to the bottom, and he said, it just missed the steel toe.

If it hit the steel toe, they would have to ricocheted around and taking all your toes out. John has the boot on a nice little stand in his living room and enter where there's a sprinkler around it and music and so forth. He's got a plaque there. But I do, and actually I have the round that came up. Okay, where's to recover the round from?

He's got the round. So it came up, went through my foot, And then hit me on the side of the leg. And I didn't, you know, you can only feel one pain at a time. Well, hit me on a side of leg. When I was getting out of the helo, I saw this round down by the collective, so I picked it up and put it in my pocket. It was two days later, I was getting out of bed, and I bumped my knee.

And I go, geez, that really hurts. And I had a big welt about this big round on the inside of my thigh there. And so you can only feel one pain. I was just feeling my toes at the time. A couple days later, I was feeling the other one. But that was around. Who was the CO then? Oh, so it was a change of command.

That day I got shot was a change of command, and Captain Bergstrom was taking over from Captain Twight. And the tradition was that the first guy that got shot, the CO had to buy him a bottle of scotch. So he did it for a bottle of scotch. So we had an officer's meeting a month later or something like that, and sure enough, he gave me a bottle of scotch. Brought it back to that and shared it with the team.

Was it cheap? I can't remember. I know. Drewovers or something. something like that. So what about you, Carl? When did you get shot? What happened to you? Oh, Earl and I were together, and we just, we just, it was minor.

It was minor stuff, but I bled a lot. I used, we took a round through the cockpit. What was the operation? You know, actually, we were just on a patrol. We weren't actually even put in a strike. You could take a round randomly. And it happened one time when we were taking a platoon to insert them, the radio and got shot on the way in with one of Richards guys, Tom Richard's guys.

But we just took a random around, as I recall, and Earl and I took, both took flack in the face where it bounced off of the center divider and the windscreen. So we got glass in our face and metal in our face. And it looked pretty bad until we shaved the beard and it actually wasn't bad at all. It was minor. So I didn't limp anywhere. where I didn't have to be carried down to third, third, search. Nobody bought me booze at all.

Nobody cared, you know, and I didn't care. But when they treat you and you're wounded and they treat you and they stitch you or whatever, you get a purple heart. That's what the Honorable Joan Kerry figured out. It hurt more getting sewn up than it did getting shot. It's because they had to pull the skin around my toes and stuff. And I had to soak my foot for about a week

to make sure there's no infection and everything. him tons of grief over that and we love john he's a great guy one of the best guys i know and a gentleman i don't have many guys i can call a gentleman that i know least not seawalls anyway but i was back flying in two weeks and at what point so at what point did you guys link up and start were you at the same debt was that debt six you said yes and what caused that what caused you two to be to start working together what it happened well i i was a very experienced fire team leader and what they do is when you first get to Hal 3 in those days, you had a month or two in the Home Guard and you kind of transitioned, you already transitioned to the H-1 because you flew the H-1

in flight school. But you transition to the mission and build your time, get to know the area of operations, you fly to every debt, taking mail and parts and people, and that month or two, you do that, and then you're in the detachment, you make aircraft commander, and then you make fire team leader. And after a period of time, before you go home, they bring you back in, you fly at Home Guard again for a couple of months, as the aircraft commander like Bill Belts did for you. And when you went to VC Lake. And so the executive officer was one to bring me back to do that. And I said, it was March. And I said, hey, I got two months, March and April. I I don't want to go back.

I'm just getting good at this. Leave me alone. And so I whined and whined and whined. And finally he demoted me. He took me to death six. Pardon me. So they didn't have a fire team leader. One and got killed.

And one had reached the end of his tour. And so they had some really, really good aircraft commanders. and you were a co-pilot I first got there, I think, and you became a man. Maybe you were an aircraft commander. I was an aircraft commander. Oh, you? Okay. Well, there were three or four or five good guys, and I'll name them, John Farr, John Barnes,

Mack Hemman, Paul Waters. Who did I miss? That's it. Mac Hemman, did I miss him, Mac? No, he said Mac. And Super guys. And the XO said, go get those guys. Those guys are all just, they need a little leadership, they need a little experience.

And go do it. If you got any, the O&C, not so much. He had a bad case of Lieutenant Commander, which is do nothing. I tried to figure around when he went to the Navy. I tried to avoid Lieutenant-Comander. If I could go from Lieutenant to Commander, I'd have been very happy.

But anyway, so I sort of had to be me and a little put my chin out and chest out and had these great guys that took about, 30 minutes to fire up and get going, and all of a sudden, we were flying all day every day, like we're supposed to, not sitting back at the boat waiting for meals. And then what's on at the movie? We don't give a damn once in the movie.

We're going to fly it, period. That's what you do. That's how you know your A-O. That's how you support the people out there in the boats, and that's how it happens. If somebody gets shot down, you're right there on the spot. That's what we do. Are you guys flying the same helicopter all the time?

do you have a particular one or are you just whichever one's ready well whichever one's ready and able to fly so you got them on debt the two you have on debt you're flying nose obviously and then you have to take up once a month or ever so many hours

to do the annual maintenance on it then get another one back how much difference is there between you know this one and that one none you know physically flying they're all the same just like driving a car you know what to do they're all You know, I was in the training squad

and With Earl and BT3 after our helicopter. We went back fixed wing for a while. And I remember guys fighting over a aircraft that was smoother, and it was a bravo model instead of a charter model, and it's faster. And, I mean, who gives the crap? Just go fly, you know? And that's what we did.

We didn't have our name on the aircraft. That's top gun crap, you know. We didn't put you. You know, I'll tell us a joke. When I became maintenance officer VT3, I was a boot, Lieutenant Commander, unfortunately. And we had 400 airplanes, and we were starting to downsize, taking these old Charlie models that were made-for-carry landings, and they were all beat up from hard landings, and they were towing them over and scrapping them.

Well, my assistant maintenance officer is a guy named Russ Combs, great guy, and he's, boss, you're my new boss, you're going to put him your name on one of these airplanes. I said, you put my name on those airplanes, Combs, and I will break him. gave a bone in your body. Don't you do it. So one day I come back to my flight and he says, I got your plane parked up in front, sir. You see it?

And I said, where? I go out and all the line guys around laughing. He took one of those old Charlie Milds scraped off the exhaust, painted Lieutenant Commander C.D. Nelson, rotorhead on it. And old Charlie Mild right there in front. And it was a big ha-ha. And so they're going to take it to the main side and just scrap it anyway. So who cares?

Well, pretty soon I get a phone call from the guy. I said, hey, I was just in a Navy Leaf Museum, and your airplane's in there. They took that plane just at random and reworked that Charlie model and put it in the museum, and they left my name on it. The museum down in Pensacola. Yeah, but I think it's gone. I couldn't find it last time, and thank God for that. But anyway, no, we didn't want, we didn't care what we flew.

We were going flying. Let Tom Cruise get his name on something. We did have nicknames for each other. I can't tell you John's real name name because his family's going to see this. I was Sea Wolf 6-8. There you go. That sounds like the Fiji version. So you're talking about the last weeks in the squadron,

and people would just come up and kind of chill out the last two weeks before they left. And I actually flew the last two weeks that I was in the squadron. The CIA had sold something on the black market. And this was down in the human force. There was some kind of communication center in the military. human force and they couldn't quite figure out what it was or where it was. So they sold something on the black market. They wouldn't tell us what it was, but they knew it would end up to this headquarter area.

And so they had to, they picked a signal or a frequency that wasn't being used by any other friendlies in the area, put that at home unit device, and we wished to follow it. And we did this for 10 days. And then this went on a sign, and it just goes slow, it'd go a couple hundred miles and spend the night, go a little further, spend the night, and they finally got to an area, oh, we were getting a stray signal. We never got a real strong signal. So we talked and said, one night we just followed the signal back, and it flew over this church, and the needle just did a 180. So we went back, told the seals about this, and they went and raided that church, and they found a huge communication

center in the basement of the church. So once they knocked that out, we had this real strong signal. So we flew it and we said, I hope this guy gets a place before I have to leave country. So the last day I was in country, we finally decided, well, this is, it hadn't moved for three or four days. There must be the place. It wasn't exactly where they thought it was, but it must be the place. So we were to fly in throughout smokes and they had a couple flights of F-4s off the coast. So we went in, 100 feet, throw the smokes out, pull back, and that was the best air show ever in my life. And the F-4s came in and just

bombed the place. And so then I flew back to Bintui, literally jumped out of one helo. They had my bag packed in another helo, jumped in another helo, flew to another helo. Futa Saigon. The next day, I flew home. So I flew omission my last day in country.

When you guys were there, you know, like when we, like my generation looks at the Vietnam War and the late 60s early 70s, you know, it's all this protesters and hippies and controversy about being in Vietnam. How much of that stuff did you guys actually experience or think about when you were over there? I didn't think about it at all. Not at all. We're doing our job, doing our mission.

We didn't think about what's going on back in the States, to be honest with it, at least for my part. I remember going to R&R. I didn't go to R&R until like in my 11th month. I didn't want to miss out of either flying. That's terrible. I'm awful fly dog. That's what they used to call me. That was the nice name they called me. But I remember we were flying over to Honolulu.

I'm going to meet my wife, my then wife then. She liked me then. And see girls, I mentioned your mom. And so guys were all chatty and all excited. And we get on this old bus and we're going. They're taking us to Fort Jerusi there on Wai, and all the women are all lined up. And as we drive through

Alamoano Drive past the park and everything as we're going to Fort Drusie, you could hear a pin drop on that bus. All that chatter all of a sudden died. And guys were all agape because women weren't wearing bras. We'd never seen that. And men

had a ponytail longer than mine. And they looked funny. They had beards and they were funny, tie-died-type stuff. I'd never seen. So in 10 months, I didn't recognize where I,

honestly, I was in shock. And I also remember, I don't know what the hell I was doing, but we went to a movie in Honolulu, one of the times. And it was the movie version of MASH. Okay. And I was so offended by the,

disrespect for officers in the military, I got it and walked out in about 10 minutes. It wouldn't stay. It's funny how, you know, so offended. And then when you mentioned up, I remember going in, and this is 1970, going in leaving and saying goodbye to people, and they're all gung-ho, rah-rah.

But when I came back, same guys were, was it really bad? No. Oh, gee, kill babies over there? No, but some of that stuff. And even 50 years later in my living room, one of my relatives asked, told me, gee, Carl, I didn't know you were in Vietnam? Yeah.

Oh, well, were you, what she used the term? What term did she use? Made a derogatory term, she said. And whatever it was, were you disappointed or were you ashamed or whatever she said? I said, no. Matter of fact, I wasn't. my son-in-law's giving me the cut sign because it's his step-mom, and he doesn't want me to blow her away with my fire and fury, but I didn't. I restrained, and I said, matter of fact, I don't know anybody that I

serve with who feels that way. Matter of fact, and this is interesting, friends of mine that didn't serve and didn't go to Vietnam, I've yet to meet one and talk to one who, not sorry they didn't. And I've yet to meet one who served that was sorry they did. So that's my little world, I guess. That's the people I hang around. I hang around mostly good people. Did you see anything like that, John? When I came home, I was welcomed home because, you know, from a family perspective, I got to the house and, you know, my parents picked me up at the airport and I was in uniform. Got back to the house and they had a sign. It was an eight-by-four board, particle board.

They had written on it, Welcome Home, and my sister had painted, and she was an artist, the Seawolf Signia on this, was an eight-by-four-foot board. And so it was sit up in the front yard, in the front yard, up, welcome home, John. So, in my, of course, my dad being in the Army, and his history was very supportive of that.

But I did have one incident where they had me go on some recruiting duty when I first came back for about two months, and they had to go down to the University of Illinois. And we were down there for a couple of days doing some recruiting duty. Not that we got a lot of people signed up or anything, but I went to put my pants on one morning the legs on my pants just fell off. So when I was there, apparently somebody had thrown some acid or something on my uniform.

That was the only incident I had with that, but other than not recruiting very well or getting a lot of people into the Navy at that time. What about, you know, it's a question that comes up a lot, and I'm working with draftees. And from what I've, when I've talked to Vietnam vets and when I read about them, the common thread is that people that were good leaders and took care of their men, they would either not know who the draftees were because they just, they just were good. Or they liked the draftees and could tell who they were, but they had no issues with them because the draftees would say, they kind of had to step up and the draftees say, I don't like that we were doing this. And say, well, how do you want to do it? And they would kind of engage them into the planning and listen to their input. And then you can read some negative

opinions of the draftees when you get someone that's, you know, it's almost like an excuse, well, the draftees didn't want to do what they needed to do. What did you guys, did you guys, did you guys notice any difference between draftees and guys that were, I guess, for lack of a better term, lifers? I don't think I did. I think if you were drafted in, it was, maybe it's specific for the Navy. I think it may be a different situation because most people they drafted went into the army. I think the people that ended up in the Navy were more volunteers and wanted to be in the Navy. If they were going to pick a service, I want to be in the Navy or the Air Force, I don't want

necessarily to be in the Army. Got it. If there's Sea Wolves, they volunteer. And they volunteered to be Sea Wolves. I read a book one time. I had to give a speech. I was asked reluctantly, of course I did, to give a speech on Memorial Day. You had to come out of your shell for that?

Yeah, I did for that. And so there's a sense. cemetery in a little town of Gridley, California, up north of Sacramento about an hour. And they've got a really a many Arlington in the back. And I was really overcome. It was neat. Didn't know this, but I don't know how they know, but supposedly the first sailor killed in the Pearl Harbor Act was from Gridley, California. Now, I don't know how they decided who got killed first.

That's configuration, but they did. And so they built it around that. And they have a celebration every year. Well, I met the manager because a friend of mine was on the board of directors. I thought the board of directors of a cemetery? What do you do, fight over spots? I mean, what do you need a board for that for? A lottery for a plotter.

Anyway, and I met her, a nice lady engaging. She says, you know, you serve. Nothing way I did. And she says, we need a speaker. This was like November. And I said, when? She says, oh, it made Memorial Day. I'm a bit.

Yeah, I mean, I'm busy. I was farming those days. I was raising olives for olive oil. 500 acres, that's how to stick your toe in the water, your good toe. And so I got this thing, oh, God, how long did me to talk? She said, whatever you want, I said, realistically. She said, 20 minutes. I said, okay.

And I said, do you want to read this piece before I give it? Because, you know, I don't want to be cut. No, she says, whatever you want. So I started reading books and kind of going through stuff. And I read a book that was pretty neat and well, it was well documented and well referenced at all the pages. And it was written by a guy named B.G. Burkett. And the book is called Stolen Valor and about guys who pretend to be a rank or not or pretend they serve and they didn't. And it mentioned our friend, former senator and secretary of Jay John Kerry and other people like that.

And it was really interesting book because I learned a lot. And what I learned was that if I ask you what percentage of men volunteered for Vietnam, what would you say, John? 10%? 76% according to this research, okay? Oh, really? Yeah, a big number. And a big number not only volunteered, but, you know, it would,

was a lot of shocking things and about drugs and, you know, people say, gee, you're in Vietnam, you must have a problem with drugs. I didn't smell marijuana until I was in a John Demer conjure in 1975. I had no. I mean, if somebody did drugs and did that, I swear I would

know. We were close. We lived side by side. We're like a family. We'd have known. I'll agree with it. I had no none of the enlisted, nobody did drugs. I never saw any of that in Vietnam. It might have been some of those guys chasing women with Bynum T's in

Saigon, I don't know, but we didn't have any women to chase where I was, and just a bunch of butt-ugly guys. I think they may be part of that is because of the squadronry, and it's a different level. You're in the Navy, the training, and people who were selected to go, you know,

were just quality people, and they weren't into those things. The country changed, Jacques because that day I remember my opening line of my speech and by the way I walked

I went to thank God I put a suit on but I went to give that speech on Memorial Day in Gridley 2005 I think was a year I had my daughters drop me off and I got to walk and do this thing you don't have to stay and I walked past this big hedge and this big mini Arlington they had 500 people in there

and they had every miss whatever county sing in a song and they had a flyover from the air base in Sacramento, and they had even had a guy from World War I who could barely walk in his uniform, and I mean, and they had an honor guard there, and she called it a fire squad, but it is an honor guard. And so, and I remember my opening line,

and I'll end with that, was the last battle of the Vietnam War was fought and won by the swift boat veterans against John Kerry. and people got on their feet and clapped. That's what kind of crowd I had. How's that for change in the country? Amazing. So that's coming a long way from 1970.

That is definitely heading back in the other direction for sure. You know, before we, I know I opened talking about that operation where you were, where Carl you were supporting Zulu platoon. What other, what do you remember about that day? I mean, that had to be sort of, it sounds like that had to be one of the more, you know, more, I guess, dramatic operations that you supported. We had some, we had, with the SEAL teams, we had some exciting, most of them were night, but that was a broad daylight one. And when the ONC of Zulu came to me the night before, and we sat down and you mentioned about communication, we, we live within 50, 75, yards of those guys. And so, yeah, we'd pre-brief the night before and talk about where they're

going. And most of the time, you know, they didn't, wasn't daylight. It was a night op. And we would stand ready to scramble if they got in trouble. And, but this was going to be a daylight off. And he had intelligence about some supplies or equipment or ammo or something that was north of our, of our base, probably, you know, maybe 50 clicks. I'm not sure. 20 clicks. And, uh, We briefed it and what he was going to do, and he had a sea lord slip coming. Ed Dyer was flying that, as you mentioned. And Ed was a former fire team leader of a dead nine, well experienced, understood fire team tactics and so forth. And so we briefed it and so forth, and we took off.

And my co-pilot, my co-pilot was Earl, and he was well-experienced, ready, Earl was ready to be, I think he was about this far from aircraft commander, and obviously was a very successful fire team leader retired as Navy captain, hell of a guy. And, but our, but my wingman to go unnamed was questionable. But we put him with a new, with a newer co-pilot who was a pretty solid guy. So we always tried to put a solid co-pilot with a pilot, maybe not all pilots or aces of the bases like John, but some guys, there are some guys who were good guys, but they, you know, God didn't give them those skills. So that's the fact. So, so I knew my wing one was questioned, but we briefed off the op and what we're going to do,

we're going to escort the slick in, and, and I would lead, I would lead it into the LZ, into the landing zone, I'd lead it in, and I decided it was going to be a, it was going to be a, left because I wanted the right door and was Mike Dobson gunner to be the outside of the circle we would go down to about a hundred feet or less and circle low orbit while the seals exit the slick and cover them we literally lay cover fire down not wait for any fire and and then once they're all out and clear and in position and the slick wanted to pull pitch and he would call and warn me we would escort him out I'd lead him out

The wing would follow him out. Well, as I made my turn, and I'm looking across Earl, I made a left-hand turn, so I'm looking across my co-pilot, and I'm saying, Earl, do you see, C. Wolf, whatever his number was. I know he's number, but I'm not saying it. No. Call him. Stay on the radio, find him. Meantime, I've got a seal team on the ground.

I've got to escort a slick out, and my wingman's missing. So you had to be shot down or had a mechanical failure or something, but I ended up trying to raise them. Earl's trying to raise them. I'm communicating with Dyer. We get Dyer out. We get him over to a safety area at altitude where he could orbit and wait until we need them, because they've got to come out sometime.

So, meantime, we're calling for my wingman. He's not answering. No answer. Can't find him. Well, then I get a call from Tom Richards, and Tom's on the ground, and he said, when you're flying over here, did you see, you know, after you put your strike in,

you want to put a strike in, I put a strike in, single ship, which is against squadron policy, do single ship strikes because, you know, but I had no choice, obviously, that guy's on the ground, and they were taking fire. We were taking fire on the way in and on the way out. So it was pretty, they were not happy, folks on the ground there, the bad guys.

So, Tom asked, you know, do you see anybody? I said, after I put the strike in, I said, yeah, I got 10, 12 guys dead there, and we, and what else you see? And I says, there was a big dike. They were on it, they were on, the dikes were kind of running east-west, and they were flooded. And they were little dikes, and there was a great big dike, and beyond that, a tree line. And that's where the fire was coming from, was from behind the big dike and the tree line.

Well, we knocked out that big dike pretty quickly, but the tree line, we had a hard time stopping the fire, and we laced it pretty good. I mean, Earl Walsh the mini-up and down there many times. But I'm starting to get concerned about conserving my ammo and making sure it counts, and we've got to find my,

but I couldn't worry about those four guys that were my trail ship, and I lost them, but I had six seals on the ground, my own four guys, and four guys on the other airplane, diars. So, you know, we got 14 guys I got to worry about

of my own before I worry about four more. And all of a sudden, and Tom and I were talking, and all of a sudden, they started taking the heavy fire, and I didn't know who it was, but it was Grant Telford that went down. He took a round in one leg,

and it went up in mists, and missed the family of jewels and went down the other leg. I mean, you may have heard about that. And he survived it. No femoral artery puncture. I mean, he could have been gone on there. And those wounds, there was a guy shot in the chest. I'm not sure which guy.

There was a guy shot in the lower abdomen. Tom was getting the hand and just, it disabled his weapon. And I'm talking to Tom, and it was obvious to me. I'm sitting there at low level. I'm doing pedal terms. Literally, the aircraft, and you know what happens when you're going slow, you get retreating blade stall, it's called, and the aircraft starts kind of bucking.

But I did that because I wanted to have a flat profile on the aircraft so that my right door and my left door, and Earl could shoot, because we needed every weapon firing. Meantime, it looks like, you know, and before Tom even asked for extraction, I could see that they were in extremists. Absolutely. more than I'd ever seen on any mission.

Guys in trouble, you know. How many guys total did they have on the ground? That's six. And so that was the slick carried in all the six seals and one bird. And I, in my haste, I mentioned there, I forgot the first part of the story. On the way in, I'm in front, edge in the middle, and my trail ship's behind, and we're transiting up in about 10 clicks short. of the LZ, the kid sitting on there,

I think it was the right side of the aircraft, got hit in the shoulder, radio men, got hit the right shoulder. So, and that happens when you're flying in a hostile area. So we turned around and flew back. We went back, landed, got the kids some medical help. And Tom, wasn't even part of the operation. And Telfer said, let's go back. I said, okay, I'll cover you.

And he says, and Richard says, I'll go. And I know that a couple guys, and I'm not sure I won't use their names, but a couple other seals said don't, but they wanted to go. So Tom hops in and off we went. But the story got kind of muffled over 50 years because we never got to debrief the op. The guys got wounded, went to third surge, went home, they were at the end of their tour. most of them had already packed up all their stuff, except for their favorite weapon.

So we never debriefed it, ever. So, come back to a mission here, we got loaded, got Tom on board, and off we went back again. Now, the story over the years, I remember hearing from other SEALs, well, you guys went to the LZ and then you went back to the same LZ.

That's why they got hit. That's not true. It didn't happen that way. We did not even get to the E's LZ the first time. We didn't even make a lot. approach to it because again we just got hit transiting the area so we went back inserted they got in place i could see i'm coming back to the extremist part and uh and i called ed in and ed was already on his way in and thank god that ed was a former fire team leader he knew the story he knew he knew he

knew how to fly he had a slick with a lot of power and uh because i was about a quarter of an inch from and picking them up myself. Now, that would have been the last possible situation because, as you all know, John, on a hot day, a sea wolf loaded with armament, the probability you're putting six people in and taking off is 1%, if that, if you could even get airborne at all. And you have to understand that these UH1 brawones were 8,000,000-pound airplanes, and we had them loaded with fuel and loaded with armament and four people in it. And on a hot day, sometimes we couldn't even hover. We had to take off, skip along, before we got translational lift.

We had to be into the wind and very careful and be smooth. We would say, I'd say to my cup out, you want to hold this collective and this stick like it's a beautiful woman. You don't want to offend her. You don't want to be rough. You want to be gentle. And just ease this. Think it off the ground is what I would say. Don't pull the bitch.

Think it up. and it'll get up, okay, and then we did. Yep. And sometimes you hear the RPM start going down at 6,000. Red light comes on and you get an oral. And then you've got to be kicking out boxes of ammo in the river, throwing out your rocket pods and hoping you don't crash. I never did. Did you?

Nope. You had some close calls? Well, on the LSTs, you know, the same thing. You could barely hover. We'd get it over the edge and then you would dive for the water to get airspeed. hope you got the airs before you got to the water. And you used the water to push off the air to get a translation of lift.

And so we were that heavy, so I thought, crap. You know, and I, my guys knew, we may be dumping rockets to the bad guys, and a lot of, we may need to get these people. Well, Ed came in, he got them all. I didn't see the kid hanging on to the kid, basically. I was busy. We were putting fire in.

But thank God for Tom Richards on that flight. But I did see Tom dragging guys across several levees under fire. And the two guys that weren't wounded did a heck of a job laying down fire. And Tom will tell you, to cover the extraction of those wounded guys. Grant Telfar is lucky to be here in this world. And whenever I see Tom Richards, it never fails. he hugs me, which is not all that nice, but he thanks me for him being on the green side of grass.

Did the same thing at your house last year. Sure did. And that's a, and one of my crewmen, Mike Dobson, who he is, a heck of a guy, a stellar, one of the best, and we had some good ones, Gunners ever. And he says, why didn't we get more awards on that? And I said, well, our reward is that there are six guys that got wounded and they survived and they got families. And most of them, I think all of them got back on active duty.

That's a big award. So my wingman, what happened to my wingman? Didn't answer. Wouldn't answer. So we're escorting the slick back to the base with wounded people. And that's on my mind. I'm calling to get the ambulance down and get the guys ready. and so forth.

And Earl's still calling him on the radio. No response. And all of a sudden, Dobson says, sir, C. Wolf, Blank, blank, just joined up on us. He joined up on us. Well, my temperature went to, I don't know, a thousand. And we landed. And first of all, we had to get the seals taken care of,

and they were. And, you know, and you're kind of coming down from a high, after that much adrenaline's going. And I talked to you there, Lethercraft Commander. And he says, I don't know what happened. We just got stuck on the ground. And that's all I'll say.

But supposedly they just went. When we were going in low, he just lost it and flew into the ground and got stuck in the mud and couldn't get out. That's the story I get from the coal pot. It's now dead. He passed away. from the crewman.

It is a sad day for sea wolves because, and I reported that happening to my ex-o, not to seal with the X-O, who I knew pretty well, and nothing was done. Pretty embarrassing. If one of those, I promised the aircraft commander that was my trail ship, that if one of those seals didn't make it,

he wasn't going to make it either, and I meant it. But they all made it. So that's kind of a story that hasn't been told. And when Mike Slattery wrote the award recommendation, and I was talking to Gordy Peterson, who was also a Seawolf for a while, debt one and debt two. And Gordy says, you mean, he abandoned you and the face of the enemy?

And I said, damn sure did. Now, again, the guy was suspect. We certainly didn't think he would do that. So I'm conflicted by that. One, I want to kill the guy still. On the other hand, everybody made it out. Everybody did their job. My four guys, Tom Clavon's passed on.

Mike Dobson, I just saw last week. Earl shot. I'd just talked to him a few days ago. He's close to us. really good guy on 100% auction by the way C-O-P-D problem but

what a guy he's probably going to outlive us both John and you and I talked and I know you're still connected to Tom Richards who you know as I mentioned they played a role in changing my life for me

and hopefully we can talk to him and I can get him out here to sit down in this room and that would be just a honor to be able to do that Tom's changed a lot of lives One time he was speaking at a Seawoke invention in 2004. And somebody, is the camera on me now? Yeah.

Oh. And so somebody says, Admiral. It's been on you for two hours. Admiral, show me your wound. He goes, his finger. He got shot in the finger. But what makes it clever like this, you know. Tom changed a lot.

He's one of the, again, one of the bravest, nicest guys I know. And it's all because of Jackie, I'm sure, not my, not Tom. just a good guy and happy he's a friend of mine and happy he's here. Any other, John, any operations that stick out in your mind as sort of the pinnacle of your tour over there? I think the one when Ben Tui got hit, or Sanandak. That one, that was the big one. It flew all night long, you know, we've got for like 12 hours just putting strike after strike after strike. So you're sitting there

and the base starts to get attacked. And is it the first call? Is that a contingency plan that you all have? Hey, if we start getting attacked, we're going to get these birds out of here? Well, the first reaction was to get to the bunker just so it, you know, then assess the situation. And then there was that lull.

And I said, now's the time to go. And we just ran out to the heloes and hopped in and took off. And how many guys? were on base defending the base or did everyone get into either helicopters or swift boats and get out of there well the base was was an open area there was no perimeter around debt six and and i'm not sure there was a perimeter around the the bargers that were on the river they just just had a whole string of barges right there down the river and it wasn't a big village or anything

but we didn't have any perimeter or guards around where we were and we were just a couple hundred yards off from where the barges were. So we just got in the bunker and after we took off and then we went back because we weren't sure about the rest of the people that were there, the crew, the other pilots and so, but we found out that they had gotten to the boats and got out. How much fuel, how long can you guys fly for in the Huey when you're loaded out to bear? A couple hours. Yeah.

Hour and a half two. Most flights are pretty short, but an hour and a half of the long flight. Yeah. And the 20-minute fuel light is very accurate. I had one mission where we came back, and we literally, the 20-minute fuel light came on, we went back up to Kamau, which was where Debt 3 was, and as we touched down, the engine shut itself down. We ran out of fuel as we were touching down. Were you flying with me when we had to land and send out for fuel because we ran out? No, I heard about that.

We literally got an ammo can of... Yeah, well, this is in Scramble the Sea Wolves, right? This story. Yeah, tell us about that one. Mike Dobson was my recruitment again. And we didn't run out of fuel, but I landed at Hathi Inn because I was at the end of the 20 minutes. And that light gets bigger and bigger. And at nighttime, it's huge.

It's like sun. At daytime, it's still pretty damn big. What was the mission that you were doing? We were covering seals that day, and I don't remember what the Pacific operation was. The missions all come together. I remember Mike Slattery asked me on the phone one time, how about blah, blah, blah. And I said, you know, they all kind of blend together. It's hard to separate them out.

I remember the Zulu one in detail. I dream about that one and thank God about it every night, not every night, but most nights. but we were covering seals and Mike Dobson could give you more detail, but we had to make a call about whether we ended up with less fuel than my wingman, and we ended up swapping stations and refueling one time to cover back and forth. But I got so low I couldn't go back at the time the seals were already in. We were safe. So you stayed on station to support the?

them, even though you were low on fuel and you had enough fuel just to get them and then make it to a rice patty somewhere. Well, it was a little place called Hotian. It wasn't no fuel there and it wasn't really a landing pad there. It was rice paddy near a little town, yes. And so we set a perimeter up and we sent out for fuel. And by sending out for fuel, you grabbed ammo cans. Ammo cans.

And it's pulled fuel from the other bird. Yeah. And it's pretty embarrassing. You think about how can you let yourself run out of fuel? Well, sometimes you don't have, and, you know, the big thing is contamination. You worry about getting fuel contaminated, but it worked out okay. We made it. But that was, it takes Mike Dobson to tell the story.

He can tell it without any alcohol. He's a better storyteller than I am. Mission-focused, that's for sure. So then when you guys get home from Vietnam, what happens with your careers at this point? Because whichever, whoever was counseling you, Carl, that told you, the rest of, The best of the Navy ain't like this. He was definitely right. I know I had some new guys that were on their first deployment when I was in the Battle of the Battle of Motti.

And it's kind of a corrupting thing to be in this situation where there's very limited bureaucracy. We have total control over what's happening. You're doing the job you always dreamed about. And I remember some of the older, more experienced guys saying, it's not going to get any better than this. This is the best deployment you're ever going to do, so enjoy it. And it sounds like you guys got some of that advice, but what was the reality when you got back? How many of us, we went from Hal three, how many went to Lakehurst? Well, what I did is that I wanted to go to Lakehurst, but I had orders to KwansoPoint.

What was Lakehurst? Lakehurst, New Jersey. It was a naval air station. And that's where the LAMS program started. And what was the LAMP's program? all about. Light airborne multi-purpose systems. And we were, they, we had

heloes, the H-2s, could track submarines. And that was our submarine warfare. As Dennis says, and so what? So the detailer was actually in Vietnam. And Earl and Carl had already left, and they were going

to Lakers. And I had orders to Quance a point. And so the detailer wanted to go out on a mission so I put him in the co-pilot seat. And we went out and found some targets and let them shoot the mini gun and everything. And I told the crew, if he ran the mini guns dry, he had to buy the crew a case of beer

because it was so hard to re-string and everything. It was easy to just clip the next one around and go. So I told the crew, let him shoot as much as you wants, I'll buy a case of beer if he runs it dry. Well, he ran the mini guns dry, get back, and he says, you know, I'd really like to go to Lakehurst. And he says, I can't promise anything, but, I'll see what I can do.

And about four weeks later, I get my orders and they're to Lakehurst. Beautiful. And then I'm in Lakehurst. That mini gun solves a lot of problems on both ends. Yes. But I'm in Lakehurst now, and I'm walking through the hangar, and I see this commander coming the other way, and I salute him. And I'm still a J.G. at the time.

And he sees my name tag. He says, far. And he calls me over and says, I think you were supposed to be in my squadron. And I said, I don't know. They gave me orders to come here, and I'm just following orders, sir. But that's how I ended up in Lakehurst. And then that's, you know, and the three of us were still real close and became closer even then. We got to Lakehurst, a bunch of Hal three guys.

Yeah. What was almost embarrassing was most of us had three, four rows of ribbons. We didn't know what most of them meant. We just, we've got us all these metals. You know, somebody asked me with them, well, were your write-ups? And I said, I don't know. Where were your ribbons? I don't know.

Where are your ribbons? I don't know. I know it's in a story somewhere, but we're at this basin. There's a bunch of guys that either dodged to Vietnam or they, let's give them the benefit of the doubt. They just didn't get a chance to go. But they're on the East Coast, and they were resentful. They were resentful, you know, and they were awards someone.

Awards were following us. There was always quarters, and you're always getting another award. And I was like, oh, crap, maybe I should take leave. I don't want to get the and, you know, sour grapes and, you know, I show up there and I got 11, 1,200 hours or whatever, and most of those guys got, haven't you made aircraft commander yet?

Because we've been flying our butts off and they've been on a, and most, well, I think the guys from hell that came back to the squadron like that from hell 3, we had been in combat, we'd seen a lot. And you mentioned in the book that you've written about tactics and strategy, about filling the void and just taking charge. If you see something's not getting done,

you've got to step in and take command. And I think the guys from Hal 3 stepped up and they did their jobs better than anybody else. We just stepped up and started getting stuff done. I can remember at one point I was a night maintenance officer in the squadron. And there was always birds down. I was night maintenance officer

and one night we got every single aircraft in the squadron and was up and ready for flight the next day and I went in a wardroom and put on the board it says all aircraft are ready for flight today and I think that was a nice

accomplishment to have all the birds up but I think taking charge and working with the chief and the maintenance people and we worked late hours actually we were past midnight one time just to get this last bird up so you could have them all up on that next day. That is, when I got the Lakers, they had 10 birds and one up forever. And our CO was a guy and a nice guy.

The first one I had when I was there, Mr. Peanut, I told you about him. He looked like the guy on the planters peanut chart. And I was a line division officer. I mean, I was in charge of nothing, but a bunch of guys that were yelling at women and doing that, I tried to keep them all under control. High school guys, well, I really worked on them. We trained, and we got pretty damn good.

And they looked almost like a troop. Well, there was one bird up, and I had them all trained up, and I'm watching them from the line shack on the end, which is out in the end, the big blimp anger, and the commander comes out there, C-O, and he pre-flights aircraft, and it passed the pre-flight. All right. He climbs in, go up out of it, climbs.

in, they got through the checklist, okay. They plugged the power in, start one, start two. All right. Sounds perfect. Everything is good. They had the guy out here, playing captain in front, he had the wands, and he's holding the guy short here and so forth. We had a guy who was on the APU their auxiliary power, you know, it's like a four-wheeler. And he turns, you know, and the, and the seal sluts him. He sluts. He sluts. He's sluble. loots him, hops back on and drives off, yanks the plug out of the side of the airplane. It's down. And I ran and hid.

So when we were flying the H-2s, we were assigned to a destroyer. So we were landing on the back of destroyers. And you were like the third dead. I was on sixth dead. I went over. We had lost a bird in the med. And they put an H-2 and a H-C-5. or C-5, we flew it over, and there was just the replacement cruise,

so there was two pilots and a crewman. And so we got to sit in the cockpit of the C-5 flying across the Atlantic. We flew over, and I was sitting in the cockpit, and they got a warning fuel light on one of the engines and had to shut it down. If I hadn't been sitting in the thing, I would have never known they'd shut an engine down. We had to land in Madrid, waited a week for a part,

to finally come. And then we finally got over to Naples, and that's where they unloaded the helo. Then that flew on the bone. And then that flew in the med doing ASW work. Well, John didn't tell you. Tell him what happened. What you didn't tell him was the crew that you replaced what? The guys you replaced, the aircraft.

Yeah, they had crashed in the Met. Lost the entire crew. Lost a bird and a crew in the Met. We had we were our planes were starting to drop like flies at that time and he's going over there with another bird. Got to be on your mind, John. No, I wouldn't. I didn't, you know, you don't think about that.

You know, you got a job doing you, you're thinking about doing there and I was happy to be in the med. And we were flying, you know, working the med. And the only place you really wanted to go to was Greece. And so we're pulling into Greece, dropped anchor, and we're going to go on Liberty, all of a sudden there were some Russian subs coming out of the Adriatic. We had to pick up anchor and go chase them.

So we were chasing them across, and we were actually at one point, they surfaced all their subs. And we think they were trying to sneak some nuclear subs into the Med. So they had all the surface when the diesel's up on. And we were like in just perfect formation, the 10 Russian ships, 10 U.S. ships in formation going across the mid. All of a sudden they all their subs went under. aircraft were flying every which way

because we're trying to keep track of them and so we're flying but you could never get a confirmation of where they were because there was just so much noise in the water with all the ships and everything but they're flying around and their helicopters taking a picture of us on our hangers we're flying around taking a picture

of them on their hangers and stuff like that we go all the way across the med and the admiral from the Russian ship calls up our ambulance and says thanks for the escort across the bed and they peeled off and went into Alexandria. And that's, of course, when we didn't have good relations with Egypt.

But it was an interesting tour across and then with the Russian ships, to say the least. And then how long did you guys end up staying in the Navy for? I stayed on, well, I did a tour at Lakehurst. And then that's when I met my wife at the end of my tour. And I got out of the Navy,

went back and worked for Burroughs. So that job was still waiting for me. Job was still there. Like you were told, Hey, Burroughs will always be here. It was. I went back and worked for Burroughs. And then I joined the reserves.

So I spent 24 years in the reserves, so I actually got 30 years in and retired as a captain. And I know that you were in Guam for a chunk of time. When were you in Guam? When were you last in Guam? Oh, man. I was probably lasting Guam in the 80s. I went over there as a maintenance officer,

and we did our two weeks. We consider a good planning to leave. Chicago in February and go to the South Pacific in Guam and do our two-weeks active duty. Good plan. So we did that. And the unit I was in, it was the Ugana Guam unit, and Aganag was where the Naval Air Station was there. And we won the Bartol Trophy one year, which was the best reserve unit in all the Navy. And we won that one year.

I think when I was the training officer, we got that. And then I became, I was CEO of the Midway unit. Actually got to fly out to Midway on the P3. Okay. Landed on Midway Island. Not many people can say they've been on Midway Island. Then it was the CEO of the Com Nav Air Land, which was down in Norfolk. And that was a nice tour for me.

And then the Agonagwam unit ran into some tough times, and they fired the seal, and they brought me back in. And we turned that around. And I found this marine poster. It was a couple A4s, and it said, on top. And so I took this poster, and I redid it a little bit, and I said, put this poster up. We're getting back on top. And we took the Ghana-I-Guam unit back up. And then I went out there as a CO with the unit to a Gondaguam.

and Captain Butterfield was a CEO out there, and he was involved in that debacle when they tried to get the hostages out of Iran. He says, we could have used some good helo pilots on that mission. For sure. So that was like the late 80s that was in Guam. I just know I was in Guam in like 1990, late 1992 or early 19,

93 is when I got there. I was thinking maybe you and I were in the Navy at the same time. You're a baby. You're a baby. You're a baby. You're looking at two 75-year-old guys. I'm 70s. We're 76.

Yeah. So. Oh, go ahead. But I love Guamwa's a great place. Yeah. And I had a nice tour with the reserves. In my last four years, I was on the Admiral's staff as a deputy for training in readiness up at Great Lakes.

Because they closed Glenview at the time. I thought he had actually talked him into keeping Glenview open. But I think, because we met with some of the senators, and that was when Brack was going on and everything. I had to give a speech about why we should keep Glenview open to these people. And then I had lunch with them at a table. And I thought I felt I had talked them into keeping Glenview open. But I think they went behind doors and said, well, you can have Glenview

or you're going to have great lakes. So the Navy had to make a pick, and they took great legs. which now, today, is the sole training center. If you go in the Navy as enlisted, you're going through Great Lakes. 100%. Yeah. But I was on the Admiral staff up there for about four years. And then I retired out of there.

And how long did you stay at Burroughs for? I was at Burroughs until it merged with Speary. And I actually got my picture in the last Burroughs annual report because I had just sold the largest computer that Burroughs had to the University of Chicago Medical Center, which was the A-15, and it was a big deal. Then it merged with Spiri. Then I went to digital.

And I ended up working for SAIC, which is just up here in La Jolla. And I worked in telecommunications, and we did all the software development for the R-Box. And I had Ameritech, then SBC bought Ameritech and bought Pack-Bell. So I had offices in Chicago down in San Antonio. I actually had an apartment, because that's where the main executives were,

then out in San Ramon, where Packed Bell was. And I can remember I was with our president one day, and I said, you know, if I put all my offices together, they'd be bigger than your office. And he looked at me and said, you know, I could fix that. So I was having responsibility for all the ARBox, you know, kind of software operations for their back-end systems and stuff. Got it.

And so what about you, Carl? How long did you make it in the Navy after you? got home from Hal 3. John admitted the part about Glenview that's really important. And that was I'd grab a T-28. I was in a squadron for a while and we'd take off Earl and I. Several times. And one time, Earl Schott and I, another time, got him Tim Zimmer and Zip, as he's referred to you by some.

Zip and I would fly up and we'd go up and just stay at John and eat and sleep for free and give him a hard time. but yeah I I I I was in Lakers there and I I wasn't sure what I was going to do I was

still a USNR I hadn't augmented but I was thinking about it and and Steve Schroeder and I were both on track to going to believe it or not going to the FBI Steve actually went in I didn't

I was my interviewie and never forget, his name was Jay Wallace LaProd. He ended up running the New York office. One of my questions in my interview, I thought it was being funny. I said, well, you got, you know, Chad Gouver, and you got Jay Wallace LaProd, and would I be Carl Dean Nelson or C. Dean Nelson? He didn't laugh. But he's a good guy. He afterwards. He said, that was funny. So it came down to go back to school or teach or whatever. So, but I went down and was a flight instructor and went to West Coast did Hs. All 35. Got picked up early for Lieutenant Commander,

commander, did my last tour on Op. Five. I got offered a job by a guy on a ship my last cruise and my wife who at that time and rest of her soul, she's passed on, but she was not a fan of the Navy and didn't like being a naval officer's wife. As you know, that's some work. It's not easy. And And so, but we end up getting divorced later, but I always kidding to say that my, I got up

because my wife didn't like the Navy, but it turned out she didn't like me. I can't imagine that. So I did 10 years, 11 months, and 9 days. Navy was great to me. I can't imagine anybody was treated better than I was treated by the Navy, just a kid from Cous Bay, Oregon, and literally, and John was saying today, the Navy's got a great system of evaluating and promoting the right people. with some exception he was looking at me.

But other than that. But I met my wife when I was stationed at Lakehurst. Oh, yes. So I was just getting ready to get out of active duty Navy. And I met my wife. We dated. And then the CO wanted me to be the O and C of it to take a detachment out. And it was a North Atlantic cruise at a detachment.

on the bow and I says I went to him and says you know there's people that are more qualified to take this attachment out than me and he says he looked at me he says you're the most qualified and you're going and he knew I was dating Jean at the time so I just met Jean so we dated for a couple months and I hit was gone for two months on this North Atlantic cruise on the Bowen and and Carl was on was and C of a debt prior to me. And so we both knew the seal of the ship, which was just a great guy. And we were pretty close to him.

And came back and got out of the Navy in December, got married in January, and started back at Burroughs in February. And somebody says, you know, you shouldn't do three life-changing situations like that in succession. You should put some time between them. So we dated for eight months. I was gone for two of those months, and we got eight months later we got married. And we just had our 47th wedding anniversary last January. Outstanding.

Great. What did you end up doing, Carl, and the rest of your, once you got out of the Navy? I got recruited to a train corporation. I ran an office there and lived in Huntington Beach, California, and Newport Beach. and then got recruited to Boise Cascade Corporation Office of Pradesh Division. I was general sales manager and never sold anything by life. I bought some stuff, but I didn't sold anything. So then I ended up getting recruited to the Hershey organization.

I loved in Western States of a snack and beverage. And then I did a tour of craft. Matter of fact, a couple times in Chicago. John and I had dinner there with his dad. He was a great man. John F. F. F.R. Senior was no reason, no wonder that he and Ike stayed close and communicated through the 50s when Ike was president. He still had time to communicate with your dad to make a couple of phone calls for your aunt, was it? They had a risk.

Yeah. And just a good guy. And his dad was absolutely a class act. I always sat by him at John's way. and other times, I always was trying to pick that man's brain because there's a lot there. And just, he was a senior executive at Canteen Corporation, which was a contract feeder for auto companies and so forth. Vending machines, right? Yeah, and vending machines and so forth. Just a good guy. But anyway, I did craft, and then I got recruited in a guy on an airplane,

and he had my seat. I had a lot of frequent flyerpoints, and so I had 1A. first class in those days united and i could roll in after a long week and i commuted from california worked in chicago how about that and uh beat myself up and uh he had my seat and got chatting and he hired me to be my first CEO job and so running instead of running a three a 300 million dollar section of craft and on uh health care food service i had a three million dollar muffin company i ran but it took more work and paid less money and that's That's how smart I am.

So I got to be part of a company going public after that. We sold that company. Garden Burger was a vegetarian garden burger. I had a 600-acre ranch. They thought I was a cattle ranch. They thought I was an ideal candidate with my food background to run a veggie burger company. And all my employees had earrings and flip-flops. and what do they wear those shoes, those leather shoes.

Birkenstocks. Burk and stocks. They all had burk and stock. I know who you're talking about. And so here I'm sitting there in a three-piece and start shirt, almost as much starched John's got. And anyway, it was a great deal. It was a lot of fun.

And I ended up last year, it did was start my own company, made olive oil, up to 300,000 gallons a year. We were the second largest in the U.S. when I sold. I got lucky. Some guys came along and made me an offer I didn't understand, and they came back and doubled the offer, and then I understood. So I sold.

I've been the luckiest guy on the planet. I got two grown daughters, three grandchildren, and the grandkids helped me in the plant. They were always, a cubby was born when I poured concrete. They think they owned that plant. But great kids, great life, luckiest guy on the planet. I live on a houseboat on Pine Flat Lake, six miles, from Sequoia. How do you beat that?

Tough to beat. I was talking to Dick Couch. We were talking and I said, and I hadn't got back to him for a couple of weeks. He said, what happened? I said, I'm sorry, Dick, I dropped my phone in the lake at Pine Flat. He said, you know what? If you drop your phone in a lake, something's going right. That sounds like a good plan. Yeah. And that's it. It's been great. And it's great to be connected with John. John and his family, all of them.

Gene didn't get much ink, but Gene is the real brains of the outfit. And the reason he was nervous about going cruising, the real story, behind the back story, the Manuskwan Inn is where Gene worked. And she was a school teacher working the Man of Squawain Inn in the summertime. Good looking woman. And she still got it. And she had lots of suitors, and John did not want to leave her unattended. I left my car with her when they went on the cruise because I didn't want to leave it with my other roommate.

John's got a great family. When I first went to, got orders to Lakers, I said, well, New Jersey. I just want to get in and out of New Jersey without meeting a Jersey girl. She changed my whole perspective of Jersey girls. We have three lovely boys and eight grandchildren. So now I'm tired, and we're just traveling the country because one lives in the Chicago area that we're spending some time with. One lives in Boulder and his family. We just spent a week with them.

We're out here in California because my oldest son and his family are out here. So we're out there, out here visiting them. So great family. If I can add about Gene, if I add one little trivia thing, she's sort of a celebrity. Other than the fact that on her ID card, a military ID, it says Commander Gene Farr. I don't know how she got that. But other than that, you ever go to Jersey Mike's subs? There's a picture in there of the original.

He's laughing. The original Jersey Mikes, it was on in Point Pleasant, wasn't it? Right, yes. And it's the first jersey, first sub I ever had in 1970. And there was a picture of the original Jersey Mikes. And the guy owns it now, worked there and bought it out. But there's a picture there at the beach at Point Pleasant. And there's a girl, is it yellow or red, the bathing suit?

I think it's red. Yeah, anyway, it's a girl in a two-piece bathing suit. That's his wife. Well, that's outside. That's going to be the most Googled picture after this podcast comes out. You're welcome, Gene. Well, look, we've been going for a little over two hours now. Probably a good, I mean, this is just a good place to wrap it up.

Barron, you got anything else, John? I just like to say that I think my time in the Navy, it was the best part of my life, especially that six years on his active duty. And it's been a privilege and an honor. to have served and supported the United States. And I think more people should feel that way. And to go through and do that, and the people we had that we led,

hopefully we made a positive impact on other people's lives and made it better. But it's been a privilege and honor to serve our country. Carl. Ditto. I remember as you talked about the question about people's attitudes and we came back and so forth my brother was killed in in action in 1968 I was in my last week off for Canada school I hadn't we were getting ready to put on the bar and be for real and then they extended us four

weeks and we went 16 instead but I met his body in San Francisco and escorted the body from San Francisco to Cuse Bay, Oregon. And in spite of what was going on in the country then, it was the most moving experience you can imagine. The way the airlines handled his body with respect, how they put him on first, took him on, I'm sorry, put his body on last and took it off first when we landed,

how the captain held all the people in their seats until my brother was off until I was actually the aircraft. And since I've been retired, I've done a lot of traveling, John. She's more of eating and Earl and Tim more than me they'd like. But I see a lot of good in America, in spite of what the news programs may put out even today, the 24-hour news cycle is our problem. I see good people out there that are, and I don't see racism at all.

I see good people doing good things, being kind to each other, and particularly to an old man, who they have got no reason to be kind to, and that's me. And I see it in every state I've been. I have no bad experiences, and I've driven probably 200,000 miles the last five years around our country. I've even been to Honduras.

Still met a lot of good people. I just like to say, I've enjoyed this, and I'd like to thank my son, Eric, he's the one that talked me into doing this. I'm not big on going out and touting what I've done and things like that. So I'm glad he took the, you know, took charge of it and came through and, you know, talked to Helen and got this arranged. And I've enjoyed the two hours that we've spent here with you.

And I've listed some of your broadcasts and enjoyed them as well. So I want to thank you for having us. And I want to thank Eric for helping arrange it for me. Absolutely. Thanks to Eric and thanks to both of you. Obviously, thanks for coming on and sharing your story and sharing the story of what you all did. More important, thanks for what you guys did for America and for going out and holding the line. And on top of all that, a profound thank you and a solemn salute to the 4,000. members of the Sea Wolves, pilots and gunners, that were killed in action in Vietnam,

and who gave their lives for us and to take care of my forefathers in the SEAL teams. We will not forget their sacrifice. Thanks for coming on. Thank you, John. Thank you. And with that, Carl Nelson and John Farr, Sea wolves have left the building.

Always good to hear those stories, man. I'm glad we're able to capture them. This is a unit that was founded and commissioned in Vietnam and then decommissioned in Vietnam. The whole life of the Sea Wolves was in Vietnam. That's it. I'm pretty sure most highly decorated Naval Air Squadron in history,

which is also kind of crazy. So good to be able to pass on these, capture these stories. Appreciate them coming on here. And well, these guys were always ready to go. Echo Charles. Yeah. I'm thinking that we should probably do our best. So we are also always ready to go.

What do you think? Do you go? Yes, I agree. We've got to stay capable. That's kind of the deal. That's the gig. Mm-hmm. So what are we going to do?

We're working out. We're reading, obviously. We're doing jiu-jitsu, thankfully. Come on, you've got to be thankful for that. I always thankful for that. There was a time where we were doing a lot less jiu-jitsu. We don't like that at all. Capability hit some challenges.

All good, though. We're back. We're doing jihitsu. We're reading. We're working out. We're maintaining relationships as well. Forget about that kind of stuff. So through this path that we're all on, you're running to some pain.

Yep. Unfortunately, it's the truth. It's reality. Pain is part of it. We'll say pain and suffering. Okay, I'm overstating that because it isn't a level of suffering because you're going to suffer regardless. If you're not on the path, you're going to suffer those consequences of not being on the path. If you're on the path, you're going to suffer what the path gives you to suffer.

So you're going to need some help. We got help. Jocko fuel, supplementation for your body and for your brain. So first thing we have is Jocko. Discipline go in a can in a powder and in a capsule. So speaking of the cans, these are your energy drinks of today. The real energy drinks are. Modern.

Updated. Updated. Upgraded. Beneficial. Benevolent. Benevolent. That's what they are. They're good.

They are. They're good for you. Energy drink, that you get all the front end benefits of energy drink. And then you get back end benefits. rather than back in detriments, as it were back in the day. Like where you're going with this. Not like that. So yes, Displingo.

You can get them at Wawa. You can get them at Vitamin Shop. You can get them on jocco peel.com. Also, what Jocko has is stuff for your immunity, stuff for your joints, stuff for your additional protein that you might need. Keep in mind this additional protein. Mulk, it's called Mulk, is the best tasting protein. that there is.

In fact, even if you were to start ranking just straight up desserts, like if you just started ranking desserts, straight up, it's in the game. I mean, it's beating. There's a lot of desserts, in my opinion, it's straight up beating, right? Oh, yeah. And legit desserts, too.

Yeah. That it's beating. Let's see. There's a whole genre of cakes. In fact, most cakes are getting beat by milk, in my opinion. I usually think cakes are dry. Okay. So you're correct. actually, and usually a little case study. So my mother-in-law is in town, cool.

And she likes these things. They're almost like shortbread cakes. Okay. And they come in this lavish, like, container. And like half of them are, like, coated with, I don't know, what do you call, icing or whatever you call that. You know, one that at some point, it was soft and now it hardened. And now it's a shell, but it's like, anyway, I forget.

I forget what they're called, but they're whatever. So I'm like, okay, cool. Yeah. She's, and so my, did you get that hitter? You know, I got into them. Okay. Just to see what up, you know, they look good. Yeah.

So I was like, cool. And I eat one. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah. It's like, of course, good. Keep in mind, I wasn't evaluating it like this at the time. But I'm like, cool, good. Thinking back on those things, whatever they were called, moke is better.

Moke is straight up better. Oh, yeah. And I'm talking about this front end taste straight up. Oh, yeah. Just straight up. Oh, yeah. Just the sheer pleasure of drinking mold. is better than those cakes.

The thing is the cakes weren't like, oh, these are like surprisingly junk. No, no, no. They're legit. They came through for what they were doing. Yeah. This is what I'm saying. If you start graphing all desserts,

yeah. Like, moch is in the upper percentage. Correct. And there's, and it's absolutely good for you. Yep. Yeah.

So there you go. That's the good news right there. I think, uh, the, you know, be little for the, for the,

design is going to get a Nobel Eat Prize. Sure. The Nobel Eat Prize, hell yeah. Right. Hey, man. You got to put that stuff together. It's hard to make that stuff taste so good. It's not easy.

Yeah, we go through iteration after iteration after iteration to make it taste that good. It's not like, oh, cool. Here's, you know, the ingredients put them in there now. It tastes good.

No, it's hard. What's weird is like I didn't think about that. And when belittle was kind of explained it, I was like, oh, that makes sense. And then I realized, oh shit, that applies to a lot of stuff then because, okay, so we're doing like flavor testing.

Is this for your drink? You know, mango mayhem. We're doing some tasting and stuff. So he's like, hey, what do you think about this is before when we're doing grape or whatever? He's like, what do you think about this? I was like, yeah, I want it to be like more more. Like I need more of this particular flavor or whatever. He's like, okay, cool.

Here's the. But keep in mind, that in turn does this to it. And it's like, oh, man, this is like a balance. It's a balancing act. So you got to balance it perfect. Yep. And sometimes straight up. And this is what happened with that particular flavor.

He's like sometimes it simply won't work given what you're trying to do. Yep. Just simply won't work. Otherwise, you got to either add sugar, which that's the main thing. You just got to add sugar, right? Which we're not doing. We're not doing. Exactly.

Right. So the same thing for milk. Same thing for like those milk bars, like everything. I was like, oh, man, you guys got some, you have a task in front of you. It's a hard job. Oh, yeah. But I. I think the Nobel Eats Prize is going to go to belittle.

Yeah. And the Jock Fuel, what are they? The food team. They're making the, they're making it. Yeah. Mixing it up. FedExing it to me. So if you want any of that stuff, go to joccofuel.com.

Hey, by the way, look, we know that shipping can be expensive. And we know that there's other, let's say, global organizations in the world that offer free shipping. if you're a member of their little club. Okay, cool. And that's good. I'm not taking away from that. That's a good business model. We know that we have to offer something

so that we can also give you the equivalent value. So check it out. If you subscribe to any of these things, you don't have to pay for shipping. Shipping is free. You know what I thought of actually just now about some global organizations and their free shipping situation?

Yeah. You pay a membership fee. for that. Oh, so we're not. It's not even free. It's, yeah,

it's not feet free at all. If you buy nothing. Yeah, they scammed you. You still pay. You're still paying. Guess what? You're still paying.

So that's kind of the better, what do you call it, like the superior element in this. Hey, if you don't, isn't that weird? They trick you. Pay us money and it's free.

It's one of those switcheroos, you know? It's like, no, no, you got free shipping. Now, just for the ability need to have free shipping, just pay us

a membership fee. That's very strange. All right. I see what you're doing. The catch. Yep, there you go. Vitamin Shop. You can also get it at,

you can also get it at Wawa for the drinks. And people are asking a lot about a lot of other retailers across the country. We're working on all of them. We got, the team is out there all the time. We're getting our, our phone rings all day long,

which is awesome because people want the, The distributors, the stores want to have it in there. And we are getting it in there. We're being strategic. We don't want to outdo our supply chain right now as we build out our logistic capabilities. This is a military operation, right? This doesn't mean we're going to be overly cautious. I mean, we're going to push the envelope.

And we've been pushing the envelope. You know, there's been sometimes a little bit thin on the logistics train, but we're still pushing forward. But we don't want to totally overwhelm our logistic train. So we are. We're getting there. It's taken a little longer than we wanted to, understood, but we want a solid base to get there. So if you, we're working on it and we will be worldwide. We'll be nationwide pretty quick.

We're working on it. So everyone can have the benefits. Yeah, yeah. It's true. I feel kind of bad with all the benefits just in my cupboard. I know, but. Also, origin, USA. This is where you can get your American-made stuff.

denim for jeans. Yep. We've got boots, got wallets and belts and whatnot. Jiu-jitsu stuff. Yeah. By the way, since we're talking about NOM today, if you don't know this, the seals in NOM

much of the time wore jeans. Why do they wear jeans? Because they were more comfortable, more durable, and better. So you can see all kinds of pictures of the seals in NOM. You can see them in the Mekong Delta. wearing jeans and guess what we have a pair of jeans based on that history and they are called Delta

68 and I'm talking about 1968 so yeah is there anything cooler than Delta 68 the genes it's gonna be very hard to find some there they're they're the most comfortable genes you will ever put on your body and by the way they're also as comfortable as whatever else you could put on your legs as a human there's nothing more comfortable I probably would agree with that if I had some But oh that's a bummer That's completely my fault by the way That's my fault I should have had the whole world revolve around you more

Probably right Well actually technically All I wear is shark fin shorts Which are from origin by the way I don't know if they I think they might be sold out of those So that's a whole nother story Unless they do have geese and rash guards

For Jiu Jitsu as well All kinds of Jiu Jitsu stuff Compression stuff like all kind of All Made in America too by the way I know I said that one time but the way I said it is indicating that it's not as big of a deal as it really is. Not to get crazy here, but if you need a ghee, get an origin gee for sure. Get a Rift Ghee because it's next level.

It's another thing. It's another, it's a complete elevation from whatever kind of ghee you've ever worn in your life. The Rift Ghee is a totally new ballgame. It's freaking awesome. So if you need a Gie, get yourself a Rift Gie. Oh, yeah. So, yeah. Again, origin USA.com.

Check out all their stuff on there. Because there's a lot of stuff. For me to go down the list right now and say all the stuff, it's going to take a long time. So go on there, check. I don't have that kind of patience right now. No. And believe me,

I'm patient to be sitting here with you freaking time and time again. You've put me through this, but it's all good, bro. I understand fully. Nonetheless, that's what it is. Also, Jocko is the store is called Jocko Store. The OG since day one,

day five. Not day one, day five. So you go to Jocko Store. dot com is where you can get discipline equals freedom shirts and hoodies and hats some rash guards on there get after it shirts hats tank tops good if you know what that means you say good if you know what that means you want to represent that's where you can get your shirts and hats and hoodies we've got shorts on there as well so yeah a lot of good stuff on there um we also have a free shipping subscription situation and it's not the kind you got to pay for a membership just to have it

You get a shirt every month. A little bit different designs. Free shipping on that one as well. But yeah, it's called the short locker. So that's on Jocco store as well. So yeah, if you want to check out, check out that. If you like that, get that. And by the way, all the stuff that we're talking about,

if you want to support, want to give that support to the podcast. This is how you do it. Otherwise, it's like, oh, we'll run, you know, people are out there running advertisements for stuff. Yeah. Stuff that you actually don't want. Registry cleaner for your computer hard drive.

Look, nothing against registry cleaners for your computer hard drives, but you don't want to hear about that when we're talking about freaking Huey gunships. And we don't want to tell you about that. What we're talking about, Huey gun chips. So all the stuff, jacofuel.com, jocco store.com, originuisa.com. If you want to support, we appreciate it. You know what's interesting. And this, I was talking to jail.

Our boy, Jill. Joe. Joe Moss. Yeah. And he reminded me of this. And I know this. I know this. Like it's the back of my hand.

Is that the expression? Anyway, I know this. But every once in a while, when I'm reminded of it, I'm reminded of the, like a better term, interestingness of it where all this stuff, origin jeans, jaco store stuff, jocco fuel stuff.

This is all stuff that we actually use now and have before even, like these exist. This is it. This is like just the better version now. Like shirt you're wearing right now? Oh, that's from Jocco store right there. The hoodie that I wear, Jocco store. The shorts that I wear literally like these shorts are so worn out

because they wear them every single day that like it has the outline from my cell phone like on the pocket or whatever. Or drinks that we're drinking. Oh yeah. Origin shorts though, by the way. Like it's all. I have JoccoStore.com shorts on right now. Exactly right.

With the digital pattern. Oh, yeah. So it's not like... Digit camo. Oh, yeah. That's one of the options for sure. So it's not like, oh, yeah, support the podcast by buying some keychains that we sort of just made up or whatever, which would be kind of cool, I guess. Keychains are cool because I use keychains.

But they're not arbitrary things is what I'm saying. You're running around with your black belt keychain now. That was a gift. Yeah. Eggo, Charles, if you see him, maybe you forgot he's a black belt. Don't worry. You want for you for him for long because he's got it on his keychain. He's like, hey.

Do you want to Here, let me put these keys on the table Where they're visible Okay, okay There you go First off, that was a gift from Mike From Jiu Jitsu magazine Okay

I want him to do disrespect him By putting it somewhere All I'm saying is We know We will all know you're a blackout When your keys go on the table Which is where they always go In front of everyone

Anyway What I was trying to tell our people Is that this is stuff that we use Anyway even before it existed. So it's not some arbitrary thing. We're saying, hey, support the podcast, by the way, we'll give you this moderately valued thing.

You know? It's like these are things that are like when you're in the game on the path. They're legitimately there. Check. A, subscribe to the podcast. Also check out a Jocko Unravelling Podcast. That's me and D.Rle Cooper, D.C. Talking about all kinds of stuff.

Grounded podcast. We got the Warrior Kid podcast. We got Jocko Underground.com. That's our own platform. Right? We can't just be we can't just be parasites on these big platforms because guess what the the big platform might decide they're going to scrape you off And now what are you going to do starve to death die? We're not going to let that happen. We got to have a contingency plan if the big platforms decide to scrape off us because we're over there No, we have our own platform. It's called jaco underground jaco underground.com. You are helping us build it But just in case these people get squirly and they start injecting their behaviors into what we're doing.

See, that's a cool thing about a podcast. The cool thing about a podcast is you can do it. Well, if you are doing the podcast in an old school way, which is, hey, we're just going to do what we want. Then you can do whatever you want. We can literally do whatever we want on this podcast. But what if platforms said, well, actually, we don't want you to do that. We want you to do this. Or we're going to put an advertisement in there,

whatever they're going to do that can do. Right? Yeah. So we don't want to allow someone else to control what we are doing. So therefore, if you want to help us out, you can go to jocco underground.com. And we're making another little podcast for that. We're talking about interesting topics, adjacent topics.

It costs money. It costs $8.18 a month to keep it rolling. But look, if you can't afford that, we get it. We're not trying to. to exclude you from the team. We're not trying to exclude you from the movement. You can email assistants at jocco underground.com and we'll take care of that.

Appreciate the Sop porch. We also have a YouTube channel, by the way. Yep. Speaking of platforms, we have a YouTube channel. This is where I put in a lot of work creatively as the assistant director to many of these videos, the good ones. And if you wanna check out my work,

you wanna see what, What the the Really the pinnacle of assistant directing You can check some of these videos out on Jocko podcast YouTube channel Yeah the epitome is that we said or the pinnacle Pinnacle of assistant directing

So my daughter she's eight by the way so keep keep that in mind Okay Before he fly off the handle So she you know she's like oh yeah you and Jocker are YouTubers And I'm like oh Okay uh you know maybe maybe not Depends on what you mean or whatever So she's like hey

what is like well what does jaco do then you know well he writes books or whatever he's like yeah but he already wrote those books like what do he do yeah what is he doing now yeah like what does he do and you know eight years old you hear what do you do you that's what you think right you think what do you do what do you do when you wake up like what does he do she knows what I do I play on the computer all day she knows that you know kind of thing she understands me and her so anyway so I was like oh you know whatever he

does his thing. She goes, Jocko hardly does anything. She goes, she said straight up, you do most, like you do pretty much everything. And then so I kind of laughed.

I was like, yeah, you're right. Jocko just talks. She's like, yeah, he just talks. Like,

you're the one who has to film. You're the one who has to come on with the side. You're the one of the, because she sees everything I do, you know. Yep. So next time she says something like that,

I'll be like, well, you know, he is the assistant director on some of these videos. So, you know, So now we know I am I am I am an employed individual Yeah My my work is is the pinnacle

Yeah of effort Yes you're doing your part that's Jack so yes YouTube channel we do have one Also we have psychological warfare It's an album we made jaco made technically Of him helping me through moments of weakness that I might have from time to time Then we extended it to other weaknesses that others might have from time to time to time so what you do pop that in you're feeling the moment you're gonna skip that workout you put it in

he's gonna tell you why you why you should not do that it's good on if you want someone to hang on your wall get something cool to hang on your wall from dakota mire flipside canvass dot com is gonna send you a bunch of cool designs check them out and you're supporting dakota mire and if you're doing that like your whole day is good in my opinion uh got some books final spin this is not a book about leadership there may or may not be some leadership lessons in there it's more a book about life and death and the and the journey that human beings go through and the pitfalls that they fall into and how they rise out of those or don't you can check that out it's coming out if you want to get the first edition you get best order now because you know the publisher's like well you know we

don't want to invest too much in that's become yeah it's like okay cool so they're not gonna print enough you're not gonna get one unless you're in the game get in the game also leadership strategy and tactics field manual the code evaluation of protocol discipline equals freedom field manual there's a new version out that has my head on it but it's bigger than my original head my head is grown way the warrior kid one two three and four Mikey and the dragons about face by hackworth which I was honored to write the forward Extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership.

The first two books I wrote about leadership with my brother, Laf Babin. We have Eschalon Front, which is a leadership consultancy, and what we do is solve problems through leadership. We have an online training platform, eFonline.com. On there all the time. Courses on there. Get your team aligned. I don't need to come out to your location.

Good deal. Dave Burke doesn't need to come out to your location. Laif Babin doesn't need to come out to your location. We're in your location, virtually. Check that out. We have some live events that we do. One of them is called the muster and is two-day leadership seminar. The next one is in Phoenix, August 17th and 18th.

And in Las Vegas, October 28th and 29th, go to Extreme Ownership.com if you want to get in the game there. We have something, I don't even know if this will be out yet. We have the FTX, which is a field training exercise. You learn tactics. You apply the tactics with laser weapons. You apply the leadership tactics that we talk about all the time, and they will be ingrained into your brain when you are done with the field training exercise. Massive lessons learned.

And if you want to help, service members active and retired, their families, gold star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom. She has a charity organization. She gets one of the things that she's doing is getting medical treatment. for service members that the government doesn't cover, and she'll cover the whole bill. So if you want to help service members get those medical treatments, you can donate or get involved at America's mighty warriors.org.

And if you want more of my grueling ruminations, or you need more of Echo's hypnotic hypotheses, you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on the gram. And on Facebook, I go out of Charles. I am at Jocka Willink. And thanks once again to John Farr and Carl Nelson. Thanks to John's son, Marine, for getting us linked up. Thanks for sharing your stories, gentlemen.

And thank you for your incredible service to our great nation. And thanks to all the sea wolves themselves that flew in Vietnam and risked their lives and sometimes gave their lives for their brothers in arms on the ground. and to all our military personnel and veterans around the world, thank you for what you do and what you have done to protect freedom and our way of life. And the same goes to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all first responders, thank you for protecting us when we need you.

And to everyone else out there, you never know. when the call will come and you never know how much time you will have. In fact, you don't know how much time you have. So don't wait, don't hesitate, don't procrastinate. Instead, like the mighty sea wolves of helicopter attack squadron three, go out there and get after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jock. Out.