Jocko Podcast - 329: The Son Tay Raid. Operation Ivory Coast, With Terry Buckler.

Episode Date: April 13, 2022

0:00:00 - Opening0:03:35 - Terry Buckler and the Son Tay Raid.2:33:27 - How to stay on THE PATH.2:554:59 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 329 with Echo Charles and me Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. At 1800, the Bull and Lieutenant Colonel Sidner walked on the stage. The room got dead silent when the Bull began to talk. Bull was a man of few words. The briefing theater was a short walk from our barracks. Inside it had simple rows of wood seating like two.

by 10 boards on short metal poles no seat backs it would seat around a hundred there was an elevated stage with a screen we had watched a movie there just a couple days prior bull reveals a large map and says quote we are going to rescue 70 American prisoners of war maybe more from a camp called Sontay the target is 23 miles west of Hanoi. This is something our American prisoners of war have a right to expect from their fellow soldiers. We are all part of the same military family.

We want these men to know that they are not abandoned by their military family. No man should feel that way. That's why we are going in there after them. You are to let nothing, nothing interfere with the operation. Our mission is to rescue prisoners. not to take prisoners. If there's been a leak, we'll know it by the time the second or third chopper sets down.

If we're walking into a trap, if it turns out that they know we're coming, don't even dream about walking out of North Vietnam unless you've got wings on your feet. We'll be 100 miles from Laos. It's the wrong part of the world for a retrograde maneuver. If it happens, I want to keep this force, together. We'll back up to the Song Kong River. If we have to, and by God, they're welcome to come across

that damn open ground. We'll make them pay for every foot across that son of a bitch. For about four seconds, you could have heard a pin drop. Then, like a cannon shot, everyone bursts out, shouting, whooping, hollering, slapping each other on the back, rearing like Broncos, yelling, let's go get them. Bull tries to bring us back. to earth by explaining in no uncertain terms that he estimates each man has a 50-50 chance of returning alive from this mission he states that this is strictly a volunteer mission if any man has a reason that he should not go on this mission he should decide now not a single man backed out the whole meeting including lieutenant colonel sidner's portion lasted no longer than 10

minutes and that right there is an excerpt from a book called who will go into the Sante P-O-W camp written by Terry Buckler and is about one of the most famous special operations missions of all time the attempted P-O-W rescue on the Sante prison camp in Vietnam and the author Terry Buckler a special forces source of Gereen Borey was on that raid. He was actually the youngest man on that mission. And we have the honor of having him here with us tonight to share some of his lessons learned

from this incredible mission and from his life. Terry, thank you for joining us. My pleasure. It's an honor to have you here. This is something that I've heard about for many, many years. Anyone that's in the special operations community knows about this raid and the impact that it had, not just on the POWs, but also in the history and the continued evolution of special operations as a whole.

So it's pretty, pretty humbling to be sitting here talking to you that you were actually on that raid. How did you end up coming on this podcast? Was your daughter? My daughter. She's acting like my agent. She had told me about you and I started looking up some of your podcast that you had done. I thought, wow, and then started looking at your following.

My goodness, you're better than Trump. I don't know about all that. She's the one who got the ball rolling for it. Well, I'm definitely glad she reached out and this is just an incredible story. the had an awesome time reading this book um and we'll go over some of this book today i'll start off by saying obviously i can't read the whole book um get the book yourself if you want to hear the entire story but i want to hit some wavetops of it because it's just an incredible story and um well you usually like to start off in the beginning kind of where you came from and to introduce those

topics i'll i'll go to the book okay so it says here i was born in a two-bedroom house on a small 72 acre farm in central Missouri in 1950. We were six miles from Clark, six from Renick, and six from Higby. Our mail came through Clark. I went to school at Renick, and our phone came through Higby. Clark happens to be the birthplace of famous World War II General Omar Bradley. Our house had been built in 1870. We didn't have indoor plumbing until 1962 when I was 12. So that's a little different that people grow up now, huh? Just a little bit. Tell me a little bit more about, you know, growing up in those conditions.

Well, you know, we were by ourselves. Our neighbors were in the same boat that we were pretty much. We had one neighbor down the road that actually had indoor plumbing. And it was always kind of nice. They had three kids and one of them was the same age as me. We grew up together. And, you know, sometimes we'd spend nights at each other's house. And it was always nice to go to his house because you get a bath and hot water.

So what, you guys? Did you boil water to go and take a bath at your house? Sometimes. Sometimes we boil water. Other times we set a tub out in the sun in the summer. Okay. And then we'd bring it in the house. One of the stories when I was growing up, and my parents had gone to town,

and I was taking a bath and we had a stove, and the stoves we had back in those days didn't have the metal surrounding. It was just there was the heat and there was the fire. And I lost my balance and my butt fell back into the net against the stove. And needless to say, I had a nice little burnout of it and couldn't go to school for about a week

because I couldn't wear any clothes. And it was embarrassing to me to go to school. school and when people start saying, why were you out? I said, oh, it's just one of those things, you know, hurt my butt. So that's what you call burn-ins, I guess. You say in here, dad was a hardworking man, but he also enjoyed having fun. When he returned from the war in 1946, he worked as a coal miner alongside his dad in Rock Springs, Wyoming.

After he was injured in a mine cave-in, he decided he was not interested in a mine. minor's career and moved back to Missouri where he had been raised. In 1947, he purchased the 72 acres. I came to know as our farm. He attended classes on agriculture at the technical college under the GI Bill. And you say this, let me pause to tell you about my father's service in the Army. World War II was when he served. He never talked about the war until one Saturday in July 1997 after he had had his stroke

and was recovering in the University of Missouri Hospital. Dad and I started talking about what he did in the Army from basic training until he was released from active duty Dad spent 36 months in the South Pacific we talked about what it was like to get shot at and how it felt to shoot another person Dad was a very laid-back person it was hard to imagine him shooting someone we compared the food the army fed us and the types of weapons we had we both carried a cult 45 our long rifles were very different we talked about fear while in combat You say your dad didn't really talk about that until 1997. Right. So did you hear, did you know he was in World War II growing up?

Yeah, I knew he had been in World War II, but we never talked about it. And when I volunteered for the draft. And when I came home and told my parents what I had done, you know, my mom, of course, she broke into tears. And dad kind of understood the situation. And I remember he took me to. to the bus station to go to Kansas City for the induction or take my physical. And that was really the first time we talked about what it was like and war. And he told me, he don't volunteer for anything.

So I really listened to me. Famous last words. Yes. You say when I turned 15, I spent most of my summers working for a neighbor who'd farmed about 500 acres. My brothers had worked for him until they graduated. Then I took their place. You were class president. You had a really small school growing up 19 in your graduating class.

Yes. You were class president. Yes. You played the only sport you had was basketball. Correct. Which you were not genetically engineered to play. I wasn't the tallest guy on the team by any stretch of the imagination. But you played, did you play varsity?

Well, we didn't have anything but varsity. So you were just playing it. We had one team. You played on it or you didn't play. And when you only got 19 in your class, you can't be real picky. You say after graduating from high school, I moved to Columbia to work this summer for my uncle Rodney, who owned a tree service since 1950. In the fall of 1968, I moved to Louisville, Kentucky to attend trade school for electronics. I had a job work in construction in the mornings and went to school in the afternoon.

I did this until January of 1969 when I ran out of money. It was the end of February, 1969, when a couple of my high school buddies and I were riding around the big town of Moberly and decided to stop at the draft board to see where we were on the draft list. We'd all been in technical school, and back then, when you lost your draft deferment from college, it seemed like you jumped up on the draft list. The lady at the draft board told me that it would probably be April before I'd be draft. I asked her when the next group was scheduled to go and she told us it would be March. I asked her to add me to the list. So that was it. I just volunteered for the U.S. Army. Correct. So this is 1969. I mean, the Vietnam War is clearly going on and you're seeing this in the news every day. I've had quite a few people on the podcast that when they were joining the military, it was 1965, 66. The Vietnam, the Vietnam

wasn't a guarantee like it must have been for you. You must have known 100% you were going to Vietnam. That was exactly right. I mean, in those days, they needed troops. And, you know, it cost me another year. I volunteered for a two-year, but to get into special forces, I had to extend another year for training.

So I became a three-year commitment. Were there like hippies where you were in mobile? or was there not? Not so much in morbidly, but at Fort Bragg, where I ended up after a basic in AIT and jump school, yeah, we had our Drain Fonda's and those people that like to protest. But it seemed like for you and your group of friends, just patriotic, this is what's going on.

Yep, exactly. It's a rural area. I mean, you know, hippies were kind of, thought of as weirdos. Still are in my mind, but, you know, that's just the way it goes. Summer of love, I guess,

was a little bit different for you in Mobile. Yeah, just a little bit. You say on March 17, 1969, the day to report to the Mobley draft office, my mom got me up early and dad and fixed dad and me a big breakfast before she went to work. There in the kitchen, my mom gave me a big hug

and we kissed. She told me she loved, me she told me to be safe that was a tough day for mom as she walked out of the kitchen door to go to work I could she see she was crying dad had taken the morning off to drive me to Mowberley so I could catch the Missouri transit bus to Kansas City from my physical and my swearing in it was bright sunny morning driving to Mowberley dad had a nice talk to me about what to expect the Army basic training he advised me to take it all with a grain of salt that had served in the Pacific theater during World War II and had seen his share of combat in the Philippines.

Standing at the bus stop, we hugged and he gave me some more good advice. Keep your nose clean, your head down, and don't volunteer for anything. Dad wiped back his tears as he walked back to his car. It's got a little bit of a different meaning when the war's going on in Vietnam and your dad had actually fought himself in Southeast Asia. He knows exactly what you're getting into. Exactly. And he gave you some good advice, which we're going to find out you did not listen to.

You're right. Boot camp here. We were issued our new nice green uniforms and all the good stuff that comes with it. Underwear, socks, boots, and blankets, our new friends, the drill sergeants marched us, or at least we called it marching over to get our first Army haircut. It took about one minute, but it was free. And you know what they say? You get what you pay for.

I'd only been in the Army a few days when our company was brought into one of our training buildings. There was this big, bad-looking Rambo guy who was looking for volunteers for the Green Berets. I didn't know a lot about the Green Berets, but I did know they were one of the most elite fighting units in the Army. This guy looked as though he could have kicked any 10 of us at once. I thought if I'm going to war, I want to go at the best. So I raised my hand when he asked if anyone wanted to volunteer for the Green Berets special forces. I knew this would cost me another year of service, but I figured another year is worth the price to pay to be among the Army's best. I guess I was a poor listener when it came to my

dad's advice about volunteering. So how much did you know about special forces? Not a whole lot other than the Green Beret, you know, the song, Barry Sadler. Yeah. Had that out. And, you know, I knew that Special Forces was special. And, uh, and, uh, I knew that Special Forces was special. And, uh, But I really, I knew no one at that time that was in special forces, but I had done a little reading on them when I was thinking about joining the military before I actually volunteered. But I always felt like if I was going to go, I'm going to go with the best. How many guys from your boot camp company do you think volunteered?

Me. Yeah. It was kind of, you know, I was kind of, you know, I thought, well, you know, that's why it's special maybe. What percentage of your boot camp company was draftees, would you say? Oh, probably 90%. Wow. Yeah, we had it.

Most of us are all draftees. We had a few guys that were in a reserve or National Guard, but the rest of us were just draftees. And, you know, we were there because Uncle Sam needed us there. And so we took on the role of a soldier. What was the What was the kind of shock value of boot camp for you

Having grown up on a farm You've been working hard your whole life I mean Were you you're getting You might have been easy for you I had one of my guys Worked on a dairy farm up in Minnesota And for him being in the military was easy

It was a vacation I agree You know It wasn't I remember that You know We had a when my DEI, who was a veteran of Vietnam, found out that I was going to jump school,

and there was another Palmer, 17-year-old Palmer, and that guy got me in more trouble. He was going to jump school. And so anytime he messed up, I had to pay for it. So I started messing up, so he had to pay for it. And we had a run in battle, and Drill Sergeant Dunham was our drill sergeant. And he just, I remember we were doing the Pugel sticks. And he called our number and we'd go out. And then he'd call somebody else's number and they'd come in,

but he wouldn't leave us. He left us out there, you know. And then when I got tired, he'd call for Palmer's number. And it got to a point where the guy felt sorry for us. And, of course, Dunham said, you guys either start smacking him or we will start smacking you. And so, you know, they didn't have a really good choice. And those little helmets we wore weren't worth a peed pot for nothing.

But I remember coming out and thinking, man, my head was ringing crazy. You know, that was the way it was. And why was Palmer going to airborne school? He just wanted to go to the 82nd. Oh, awesome. Yeah, he didn't want to go to Special Forces. And he wanted to go to the 82nd Airborne. But he was a stocky young kid.

and 17 years old, smart knew everything he thought. I think we're all blessed with that at age 17. I kept thinking, keep your mouth shut, right? How long was boot camp? Do you remember? Eight weeks, yeah. And did you get any infantry, or is it just very basic kind of indoctrination military?

Pretty basic, you know. And then my AIT, I was a combat engineer on my AIT, which is at Fort 11 or Leonardwood as well. So I spent Basic and Leonardwood and I spent my AIT at Litterwood. So that's just an extended period of time. You're there. Now, how did you end up getting an MOS of combat engineer?

Did that get assigned to you? Yeah, that was a sign. In case you didn't make it through special forces training? Exactly. Yeah. You went through your basic, whatever the Army, you know, whatever your military occupation is going to be. and then once you got into special forces,

then you decided you had a choice of, you know, medic, you know, we had the best medics, and then weapons, communications, and intelligence, and all that was, and you were cross-strained on all that. Yeah, same thing they have now. Yeah, they have the same system now. Right. You took your first airplane ride after AIT.

You say, experienced my first airplane, It took me from Fort Leonard Wood to Fort Benning, Georgia. Jump school, as much as I expected, a lot of running and push-ups. And when you screwed up and morning inspections, I went through jump school in August. Fast forward a little bit here. You said, I had the good fortune of going through jump school with some Navy SEALs from Team 2, if I recall correctly. When they learned that I was headed for Special Forces Training, they had decided they would adopt me into their ranks. the water troughs we had were about a foot deep and 18 inches wide the seals stopped up one of the troughs and filled it with water then about six of them grabbed me and dunked me in the water until i thought i was going to drown from then on they deemed me an honorary seal i guess you might say i had my first taste of waterboarding

they were actually a great bunch of guys one day we were headed back to the barracks after a day of training one of the seals was made to run around the platoon while we did the airborne shuffle. Well, the seals have a very high degree of esprit decor. If one of them was dropped for push-ups, they all did push-ups. So if one seal had to run around our platoon, they all would. Think about that. The seals were running circles around us as we soldiers did the airborne shuffle. Now, to say this pissed off the cadre as an understatement,

the next thing I knew we were running what felt like a sprint as the seals ran around the platoons. By the time we made it back to the barracks, we were all exhausted. The cadre then had the seals do it. push-ups for the next 10 or 15 minutes. I developed a real appreciation for the level of camaraderie the SEALs have. I went to airborne school.

Seals don't go to airborne school anymore in Fort Benning, Georgia. They go through the Navy has their own little program now. Oh, really? So I was, I don't know when they stopped it. It was quite a few years after me, but it was definitely that situation when we go down there. You know, we were, like you said earlier, we were, so we were young, so we thought we knew everything.

Right. But we were definitely in good shape because we were just coming out of seal training. Right. And airborne school, especially this is like 1990, 1991, I think, is when I was going through airborne school. So at that time, there's all kinds of people from the army going through airborne school. Right. And the Air Force.

It wasn't there wasn't high standards of physical training, not very high. So, you know, we come out of basic seal training where we're like animals. Right. And we're just having fun. They can't do anything to hurt us. But I had some really good memories of the black hats down there. They were awesome. They were very cool.

Yeah, it's too bad they don't join us up for that anymore. It was kind of fun. Even though I'll tell you, I had a kid asking me about it the other day. Man, that's where I really learned about the hurry up and wait like never before. I mean, you get, you know, we'd meet at 2 o'clock in the morning to start getting your parachute on. At 4 o'clock in the morning, you're getting your first inspection. At 6 o'clock in the morning, you're taking a bus out to the plane. At 8 o'clock in the morning, you're getting on the plane.

At 10 o'clock in the morning, the plane takes off. And at noon, you jump. I've been doing this for 10 hours. This is a 30-second evolution. And that hasn't changed. Good times. You finish airborne school and you roll into September, 1969, Special Forces Training. You say one certain night in September, 1969, 74 top-notch soldiers out of 100's screen,

jumped into the DZ at Camp McCall near Fort Bragg with all our equipment and one change of fatigues. That's all we would have for the next few weeks. We were about four miles from what would become our base camp. It was about 10 p.m. and the welcome committee was ready for us. Now, you could tell these guys really look forward to our arrival. The cadre quickly assembled and started marching us to camp up on this dirt road with our rucksacks and our weapons. So this is your start of special forces training. You're jumping into school.

Right. Correct. Camp McCall. And you just have what you have on you, an extra change of camis. Yep. And your gear, your regular gear. Yep. what kind of brief did you get before this? Did you get a brief before this?

I don't recall any briefing, you know. We said we're going to Camp McCall and we all knew that's the year. That's where the washout started, you know. And so once you start, once you start this section of Special Forces training and people start washing out, are they quitting? Are they failing? What's going on? Combination, some guys, you know, just on the night in that first night, we lost.

probably 15 guys just it wasn't for them I mean they couldn't take the harassment and the guy you know I mean those the cadry out there were you know they they knew how to get under your skin and and in a very short time I remember seeing some guys get so bad you know they take a swing at them and it was like oh you don't want to do that you know wrong wrong wrong and And next thing you know, you know, that person isn't around anymore, you know. But that's the way, one way of weeding them out, you know, and getting people there that really wanted to be in special forces

and knew that there was going to be some ups and downs to the training part of it. And then all through, I think we were out there like eight weeks. And, you know, you learned, you know, all the basics of, you know, patrolling, things like that. They went into a little more advanced, you know, how to set up ambushes, and then, you know, different types of medical deals and going on a raid, you know, or a mission, and you had to write your mission reports and things like that. See, it was kind of an overall view of everything that you would need in an A-team. And, you know, at this point, we weren't medics, we weren't weapons, we were just,

green, green berets that, you know, we're just hoping to get through the next level to where they could then select the MOS we wanted and go. That's when the training really started for special forces. This was, we're going to weed you out. We're going to make sure that this is what you want because if you don't, can't handle this, you're not going to handle anything else, then we don't want you. I forgot to mention that when you were in boot camp, you scored a perfect 500 on the physical fitness test.

You were just a good athlete for sure. Yeah, I was in good shape back then. And a fast runner. You mentioned that specifically. You were a fast runner. And then are you doing a lot of patrolling, like, long, long marches during special forces training? Because I think it's different now. Yeah, I was going to say, they weren't long marches, but, you know, you'd go out and camp out overnight, you know, and kind of make do with what you had.

you know, everybody had their little tents, but, you know, a lot of times we didn't even use them. We just unroll the sleeping bag and sleep out under the stars, so to speak. And that was part of it as well. How much were you eating? Well, you had, back then, we had the old sea rations, you know, so they would bring in the meals. I mean, those were our meals for all three meals. You know, we had pound cake. Ham and Mothers was a favorite, and then beans and weanies, you know.

Of course, they'd bring it out in a big, you know, 50-gallon or 25-gallon full of water, and they put the heaters in them so they'd heat your food. And then you had your P-38, open the can, and then, you'd, that's and you hear guys trying to barter with you know some ham and motherfuckers were the first you know nobody wanted them and you hear some guy I'll trade this for a pound cake the pound cakes for rotten tooth but you know that that was before C rash or uh Lurps came out for us so yeah it's it's always uh but you know I went through basic seal training and there you get to eat and you get to eat actually a lot most of the time you're getting three meals a day and

usually one or two of them are in a chow hall where it's basically all you can eat and i always feel you know the rangers that get one m r a day for whatever that is you know 85 days and you know those guys always lose 20 15 20 25 pounds i gained i gained 11 pounds going through seal train yeah i went from 174 to 1 8000000 And that's working out however long you're working out, you know, doing a ton of physical activity, but I was just eating a ton. And you could get like get done at night. I would be ordering pizza at 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock at night. I'd order pizza. Dominals would deliver. We would eat pizza just about, well, we eat up pizza on a lot of nights. So we're getting a lot of calories. But I always found that the army has a little bit more stringent about what they're going to let you. eat their special forces schools. I remember the first time I ate at the Air Force. Oh, yeah.

My God. Next level. Oh, yeah. I mean, I remember they asked you how you want your eggs. And I'm thinking, and you're asking? You know, normally it's scrambled, you know, and I told them how I like my eggs. And they said, okay. And I thought, I'm going to like this place.

Yeah, the Air Force definitely puts a priority on. Oh, yeah. On comfort. I will say on comfort. They do. I've always heard that the Air Force, like when they design a base, the first thing they build is the barracks. Then they build the recreation. Then they build the gymnasium.

Then they build the pool. Then they build the golf course. And now they're just about any out of money. And they say to the government, well, we still need an air, you know, we still need an air strip, you know, and some hangers. And they go, well, we don't have any choice but to build it. So that's what I've always heard. I don't know if that's true. Pretty smart idea, really.

Was there anything that was really hard for you going through the initial special forces selection? No, I kind of breezed through it. I remember the first time I was ever exhausted where I couldn't do push-ups was the night we landed. And we kept up, another guy, Law and I kept up with a cadbury all the way into the base camp. And then when we got there, you know, of course they asked you a question, are you tired? and we knew it was a trick question and we said no and he said drop and do push-ups

and literally I could not do another push-up you know I mean I thought oh no this is it they're going to flush me but you know when the other guys all got in you know they said get up and get in and fall in so I thought we got a blessing there so

you say this in the book I always tried to add humor to anything that I do one early morning the company was in formation waiting for the cadre to join us on that day. I was the student company commander. While we were waiting, I shouted out a command that anyone that can't tap dance must be a sissy. Well, the entire company started tap dancing in place.

All of a sudden, they all stopped. I had my back to the cadre building, and it was at that time that I realized I was the only one still tap dancing. I stopped and slowly turned around and there stood there stood the cadre. They did have a sense of humor and got a chuckle out of it, but they told me to drop and start doing push-ups. And here you have one of your first life lessons in this book. Life lesson one, add humor. It really helps when things are getting tough. Sometimes it's not easy to find it within you, but even the POWs somehow found a way to pass some slivers of humor through the cracks in the prison walls.

The soul needs it. Make sure you contribute some for the benefit of the people. people around you. Yep. You know, I mean, it's interesting that we're sitting here laughing about these stories anyways, because you've got to have fun doing this stuff, even when it's miserable. Exactly. You get done with selection and you say, I was sent to my special forces MOS.

In special forces, there were five MOS options, weapons, engineer, communication, intel, and medical. And you ended up with communications MOS. Now, is that because you, is that right? Yeah. Oh, I thought you did. I did communications on the raid. Okay.

But my MOS was 12 Bravo. I was an engineer. Okay. Weapon or demolitions. So they kept you, and you were an engineer anyways. You'd been through AIT or that was as an engineer. So they put you as an engineer. Yes.

Okay. They did some things, right. And would you learn about, so talk a little bit about engineers. What are you doing in that specialty? We learned how to build bridges, you know, across rivers and things like that. And then, of course, part of that was demolitions, you know, how to use debt corps and how to build your own bombs for, you know, soap dishes and dust initiators, things like that that were used. And then, you know, how to basically use debt cord to knock down trees and stuff. And it was, I remember the class after me, we lost about eight or nine guys.

an accident out on a demo range. What happened? We had a, the guy that was doing connecting, we did what's called a ring main. And in the ring main, the last one that connects is then connected to the hot wire on the battery. And we were using the electric blasting caps. And they forgot to disconnect the other side. and we lost about eight or nine guys on one at the end of the day and they were all kneeling over there working on it yeah it was a it was a real shame but you know somebody forgot and lost some good men man yeah that's awful yeah those uh you got to pay attention when you're working

with demolitions. Oh, you just have to. Yeah. One little error like that can put an end of your career, that's for sure. Man. And I bet the guy that was actually near the blasting machine, he wasn't by a charge, right? So he lived. Yeah, he lived.

Yep. And had to live with that the rest of his life. Man. So, yeah. Fast forward a little bit. You say here, after I can. completed special forces MOS training in March 1970, we were all then assigned to a group. At this time, fifth group was responsible for Vietnam, and as warriors, everyone wanted to be

assigned to fifth group, including myself. However, there were two groups at Fort Bragg, sixth group and seventh group. I was assigned to seventh group. Like any good soldier, you do as you're told, and make the best of it. I was proud to be a green beret. That summer brought me to the Nottinghala. Am I saying that right? Not in Haley National Forest,

from which I was picked to be part of Bull Simon's mysterious mission. So on September 2nd, 1970, as a member of the advance party, we loaded on the C-1-23s southbound. So Bill Simons, this guy is a legend. World War II, he fought in New Guinea. He was a ranger. He conducted a raid. That was a P-O-W rescue.

They rescued in the Philippines over 500 POWs, many of whom had participated in the baton death march. Then he'd gotten out for a couple of years. And then came back in. He was in Special Forces. He was in SOG. I mean, this guy was a legendary guy. And how did that happen that you got picked for this mission?

How did you hear about the mission? How'd you get picked? Well, I was up at Nata Haley and I was training. I was working with a bunch of master sergeants and being the E5 and we were teaching mountain climbing and rope-tie into officers and some of the guys in seventh group. And we needed some supplies. So colonels told me to go into town and pick up supplies in which Nata-Haley is about probably 250, 300 miles from Fort Bragg.

So I went back down to Bragg And a couple of my buddies said When I got down there They said hey do you see where Bull Simons is looking for Volunteers and of course Bull Simons I mean just I mean that wasn't enough to Excite you then you didn't want to be there

So I said well I'm gonna go down to see what he's talking about Because they said if you wanted he was gonna be down at the we call it a little white house There for Bragg got down there it was packed I mean there was probably 500 plus special forces guys there and Bull came out on the stage and he always had a little cigar in his mouth

he never smoked it I don't know he just chewed on it you know but he and I had never seen the guy so that was kind of my first introduction to Colonel Sinnott and he looks like a legend his physical appearance he looks like a legend yes he is a

legend. I mean, he's, yeah, there's no doubt about that. And so when he came on stage, you know, he said, I was looking for some volunteers for a moderately hazard dismission. And I always wondered what he called hazardous compared to what we were getting ready to go do. But he said there's no TDI. So, you know, that eliminated some guys. You know, everybody wants temporary money, duty money. And he said, if you're interested, get back here and we'll start the interview process at 1,300 hours. So I went back and put my name on the list, and the next, I came back to, they had two sergeant majors doing a lot of the interviewing, two command sergeant majors. And we were in line at the seventh group facility, billets. And it was probably about 5.30, I guess.

And I was sitting there, and nobody's called me, nobody's called me, and everybody else pretty much gone. And out walks these two sergeant meters. And they're walking out the door, and I'm thinking, well, they didn't interview me. And so I ran after him and hollered at them. I said, you know, hey, you guys didn't interview me. And they said, what's your name?

And I said, Buckler. And they said, well, and he had a clipboard on. And he looked at it and he says, I don't have your 201 file. That's the military and army. That's your file. It tells you everything about who you are and what you've done and your records. And I said, they said, well, I want to interview. And they said, well, you get your 201 file.

I'll be back here first thing in the morning and we'll interview you. So, okay. So a buddy man at that time was one of my roommates, a bunch of us lived off base. We had seven of us in the sixth and seven of us in the seventh group. So the only time we were together was payday and holidays. And so we kind of, the neighborhood, I think, was glad to see us move. But, you know, he was the deputy sheriff lived down the road from us,

and he was always stopping by and said, guys, can you just hold it down. just a little bit yeah so but anyway I went in for the interview you know they asked me if I could weld and I said I grew up on a farm and our neighbor Sam welded everything we ever broke because I looked at that I thought I can do that so I said yeah I'm a welder and you so you felt like you could weld because you watched your buddy well okay I like it I like your attitude that's good attitude Yeah, they didn't have a welder, so I wouldn't have to prove myself yet. And then they want to know if I did scuba.

And I hadn't at that point done scuba, so I said, no, I don't know scuba. And then they just asked me some general questions, you know, how much combat have you been? And I'm thinking, they got my 201 file. I have no combat experience. And so I said, no, I've never done. So they said, okay, well, thanks. I thought, well, at least they let me interview. you, so, you know, thank you. And I walked out the door. Got back up to Natahaley then, and a couple

days later, a colonel from our, called me into his office up at the Natahaley there, and he says, pack your bag. And I said, well, okay. He says, you made Bull Simon's list. And I said, really? And he said, Yep. So I said, okay. And down I went, you know, I'm very excited, not even knowing what we were going to do, just the fact that we made it. Did you have any idea why they selected you to this day? The only thing I could figure out is they needed some, in special forces. Aside from your crack welding skills. I never thought about that one, you know. I think what they needed was some grunts and Special Forces.

And E5 is the lowest rank. So I was on the advanced party and we went down and set up the compound. And when they swept the building, we put the Constantino wire around and put the field phone out. And then I pulled guard duty on the, we had to guard that building 24 by 7. And I thought it was a little unusual because when we pulled guard duty at Bragg, you got an M-16 in one round maybe, you know. And this one we had an M-16 in full round and orders, if something goes south shoot.

And I thought, there's something serious on this mission that they're not telling everybody about, but, you know, we did what we were told to do. And I pulled guard duty, and when I wasn't pulling, guard duty. I was either sleeping or training because I had to train with the other guys during when I wasn't pulling guard duty. You say this, so you fly down there. And where's the location you fly to in, in, uh, Egglin Air Force Base? So you say, now Bull wasn't the only legendary officer attached to the Sonte raid.

Captain Dick Meadows would lead Blue Boy assault group, which would land directly. inside the P.O.W. Camp walls. Enlisted in 1946, a paratrooper in the Korean War in the early 60s, Meadows served a stint with the British Special Air Service. In Vietnam, Meadows captured video footage proving North Vietnam Army was infiltrating South Vietnam and impressed General Westmoreland so much that in 1967, he received a battlefield commission directly to captain. He was the commanding officer of Ranger School when Bull Simon's recruited him for the Sontay raid. Lieutenant Colonel Bud Sidner was selected by Bull Simons to serve as the ground forces commander,

whereas Bull Simon's role would be the on-scene eyes and ears of the joint contingency task group in constant contact with General Manor. Lieutenant Colonel Sidner had the reputation of a gentleman and a consummate professional. One day, Brigadier General Blackburn from the Pentagon, Brigadier General Manor, Bull Simons, and Captain Dick Meadows showed up as a group and requested access to the operations center. I checked their IDs and called in for someone to come out and escort them in. Lieutenant Colonel Sidner comes out the gate. Can you imagine how I felt, here I am, a 20-year-old Buck Sergeant standing in the midst of some of the most notable Special Operations Forces officers ever. I remember they treated me as one of them, making small talk with me. After a while, Lieutenant Colonel Sidner took them inside.

This was one of the great things about special forces. The officers and enlisted men treat each other with respect. I believe this is because you have to depend on one another when you operate in small teams like special forces. So they were super strict about who's coming into this building. Yeah, I mean, it was you didn't get into the building. I don't care how many times you've been in that building. when you went back in, I had to check your ID or whoever the guard was,

call in and we had a field phone set up. They'd call in, somebody would come out and verify that they were who they were and let them in and escort them into the building. Were you getting to go into the building? No, no. So you didn't even know what you're guarding. We used to laugh about that because we'd say, what the only got in there, you know, that they're so privacy about, you know.

We kept thinking women. But we knew that couldn't happen because none of us had escorted them in. So, but, yeah, they were very strict, I mean, on that. It was, they didn't want anybody in that building. And there was only a limited amount of people that could get in there. And I'd say probably maybe 25 to 30 at the most that were ever allowed in the building. Well, you're standing this guard duty and you're doing the best of your ability, which leads us to another life lesson you have in here. Life lesson two, your life is significant.

So be excellent in everything you do. No matter how insignificant you think your job is, it could turn out to be a life-changing position. One of the reasons Captain Dan eventually selected me to be paired with him was that during all the time I spent pulling guard duty and training, I never complained, but always did what was asked to me. I credit my dad for instilling this attitude in my brothers and me. He always told us if you're going to do anything do your best Correct. That's an important one You go on to say here as the member as a member of the advanced party another one of our tasks was to build this large mock up of buildings Using target canvas as the walls with doors with cutouts for windows

We began constructing it on Thursday September 10th and it took us several days to complete We didn't know why we were having to build it. It It wasn't until we did our first walkthrough during our initial training that I realized how it would be used. Even then, we had no idea it was a dimensionally perfect replica of all the buildings and walls of the POW camp in Sante, North Vietnam. So you guys built the full-sized two-by-fours or whatever jammed two-by-fours into the dirt and then build little buildings, full-size walkthroughs. It looked like toilet paper wrapped on a tube-for, so it reminded me of, you know. But, and one of the things we finally clarified in the book was everybody said we used to take it down every night. Well, you know, it took us a week to build it, and we weren't going to take that down every night.

Because they, I mean, we trained, most of our training was at night. And so there's no way we could take it down and put it back up. And one of the Air Force guys that actually guarded it and said that confirmed that force in the book. We were kind of trying to find out who could we talk to. And the Air Force guy said, no, he said it was even up after you guys left. But they did fly over it and take pictures. Right. So they wanted to confirm that the whatever, the Russians couldn't see it from satellites or from flyovers an aircraft or whatever.

Exactly. Yep. But somebody had started the rumor that it was so secret that you would take it down. Yeah. Every day. Yeah. That's exactly right. Fast forward a little bit talking about some of the training you were doing.

On Wednesday, September 9th, about a week after we arrived as the advanced party, the other 78 or so green berets arrived that we started our training. The first 30 days of training were intense. Each day started with PT, followed by running the Meadows Mile. Dick Meadows loved to run and he led many of our runs. Now, I like to run, but not like Captain Meadows. If you were not in shape, you soon would be. I think this was one of the reasons I was selected as one of the Raiders.

I was by no means the biggest man. In fact, I was the second shortest. The shortest raider was also the oldest NCO. Master Sergeant Gallin Pappy Kittleson. Pappy was no stranger to combat. Pappy and I had several things in common. We were both short and stocky built. We'd both grown up on a farm in the Midwest.

In World War II, Pappy was the youngest man in the raid on the P-O-W camp in the Philippines. I was the youngest man on this raid, 25 years junior to Pappy. That's pretty awesome. So he's, what, 45 then? Because you're 20. He's 45 years old. And you're working with all these legends, with all this combat experience. And, you know, what's interesting to me was none of those.

guys ever let on like they were greater than anybody else. I mean, they were right there with us and if you had a question to answer it for you, and I mean, they wanted to. And I remember when we told Packer Bag we were leaving, and we didn't have a, at that time, we didn't have a minister or anything. So Pappy was a Christian, and he said, I'm going to have a prayer service over in the building. If you guys want to anybody wants to come, come. And when I walked in there, I was amazed that I made these guys that I didn't think could

spell God were there. You know, they were on their knees praying and Papi was leading us. And I made an impression on me to know that, you know, you're not in control of anything you just think you are. And the man upstairs

is the one in charge. So Getting into some of this training, you say our training began with us walking through our positions over and over again in daylight. During the first month, there were several changes to how we performed our mission. Each person had specific tasks to perform. Not only do we have to know our own role, but we had to know the role of the man to our left and right and where they would be when the firing started. Captain Dan and I were a two-man team. As the RTO for Redwine Security Group, my job, as Captain Dan put it,

I want you at arm's length from me or I will be the one to shoot you. And if you knew Captain Dan, he would have. So you can bet I stayed damn close to him. The primary job of our two-man team was to make our way to the communications building as fast as we could to neutralize the people inside before they could radio for reinforcements. We had two buildings to clear before we could get to the communication building. The technique we used for clearing a building was different from what our troops used today. As a two-man team, we would first toss a concussion grenade into the building.

Why use a concussion grenade and not a frag grenade? The answer is very simple. The buildings were, we were clearing of bad guys, were not made of concrete, but of a thin material that a piece of frag would fly through. Captain Dan would stand to one side of the doorway, and I would position myself on the other side across from him. from him when the concussion grenade exploded it would generally blow the door open or in some cases completely off as soon as the grenade exploded captain Dan would dive to the floor at the threshold firing in the room from the top left to the bottom right at the same time I would step over him

firing top right to bottom left by this we created an X covering all the space in the room Captain Dan would remain on the floor and I would back out and shine my flashlight into the room so Captain Dan could confirm that we had neutralized everyone. I would then put in a new clip depending on if I'd fired any tracer rounds. Captain Dan taught me that in combat, you don't have to, you don't have time to count how many bullets you fired. The technique is to first load five tracer rounds and then finish filling the magazine. When you're in a firefight and you see tracers smoking out the end of your barrel, you know you need to change magazines. That's a wild way to clear rules.

And I got to make a note here. So when you say concussion grenade, so a lot of times, like what we use now, we use something all the time called a crash grenade or a flash grenade or a flash bang. And those create a boom and a flash. But a concussion grenade is big. It's a different thing.

It's not the same as a flash bang at all. It's a big. In fact, they're a lot bigger than a frag grenade. They're really big. And they create a mess. massive explosion. Now, there's no fragmentation, as you mentioned, but it is a massive explosion. And when that happens inside of a closed room, you know, even if the doors or the walls aren't that strong, it's going to create an issue. What did you think the walls were going to be made of

there in the camp? Well, we anticipated being made just kind of like a fatch, you know, maybe an Adobe. The compound itself was kind of a brick wall. But, you know, remember the French were in there before, and we were there, and they had built the compound. But the buildings on the outside were, and the doors weren't really on there as far as the solid doors. You know, they were pretty flimsy. So you toss a concussion grenade into the room,

then Captain Dan dives to the floor in the doorway and unloads a magazine on full auto from the top left to the bottom right while you, while he's doing that, you straddle him in the doorway and fire a full mag on auto going top right to bottom left. Yep. This is, this is serious business. It was our own technique. When we were trying to figure out how to best do it, this is Dan's idea. He said, I'll hit the floor. You straddle me. And then when you're all fire this way, you fire that away and we'll create it the X.

And hopefully that would put everybody down. And we'll see our mission was not to take POWs. And we had to go through that same area coming back. And Bull Simon said, I don't want anything. holding us up so you neutralize everybody on the way through and that was our orders and that's what we did and you know the our way of clearing a building is quite different than the way they clear today we didn't worry about the collateral damage you know you were the bad guy and that's what it was going to

be so we made sure that we neutralized and moved on to the next building now Were you worried about where you're, or did you guys plan in such a way that your bullets that were going through this building, that there was no friendlies on the other side? Did you guys have the whole thing kind of mapped out to avoid that friendly fire? Yeah. In fact, even when the choppers came in and took out the guard towers, we made sure that we weren't shooting into one of the cells of the POWs. In fact, in order to do that,

one of the PJs said he could fire and not hit the cell so what they did they put a sheet up and tested him and the guy did exactly what he said he did you know I mean took out the guard tower but didn't have anything near close to the cells so when they when we flew in in live mode that's what they did to take out a couple of the tower and then there was one tower that we had to, the Blue Boy had to take out because it was in a situation where we didn't, couldn't fire into it and not think we might hit a POW. So that's how we did things and it was, it worked. The only thing that was bad about it is the hearing that, you know, like you said, those concussion

grenades are brutal. And we didn't have, I had a headset, and I had my headset where one was on and one was off. But, you know, you'd stick your finger in the ear and hope that you could hear something. But after I came back, for probably a good couple of months, I was just, and my hearing today is gone, you know, from it. And I, a bunch of it was from the concussion grenades. Yeah.

Because, I mean, the idea of the concussion is blow your eyes, not ears out. Yeah, that's what it's supposed to do is blow people to your drums out. And it does. And it does. I can tell you. It's interesting because when I first got in the SEAL teams, we didn't have a very big budget. And some of the training that we would do for our kill houses that we would set up, they were just made a plywood. So it was actually harder in some ways because you had to be aware of where everyone else was in the house.

house or in the building because if you shot around into a target or you missed the target and we would have bullet traps sometimes we'd have bullet traps but a lot of times we'd just be suiting paper silhouette and so the bullet would go through the whole house yeah and so we had to organize these things that you were all kind of staying online even as you move through a clearance of a building in order to be safe and and then eventually we ended up getting really nice ballistic walls and then you get a lot it's a lot easier to do and luckily where we were your fight And in Iraq most of the time, you know, it was it was concrete walls or whatever. So you could you could actually shoot in rooms and they wouldn't generally go through the walls.

But it takes a different level of planning when you have to account for your rounds just continuing down range. You know, the building that you're in. Yeah. I mean, the collateral damage on something like that could be pretty high if done wrong. I mean, when I, we got Terry Buck and Lieutenant Dan. Spray in 30 round bags. If you don't, if you don't have a good plan, that's going to, you're going to shoot your own people. So you guys had to think through a lot of these things in a lot of detail.

And the good thing is where you were training was the same thing. It wasn't like you were training in a ballistic house. You were shooting through, you know, just, just whatever, paper or whatever. Paper cloth. Yeah. Exactly. From all this training, you put together life lesson three. You say, in your work, always be training and improving.

During the first month of our training, there were several changes made to how we approached our positions. I learned a very important lesson. Invest timing, time and training. It pays off. Just like a football team trains for the big game, we were training for our big game. The major difference our lives depended on how well we performed. Training sometimes gets boring, but when the bullets start flying in both directions, you're sure glad that you know what is expected of you and your team members.

And you know, that probably is one of the more important messages that I think could come out of this book. Because I think the training that we did saved our lives. Because we had, I mean, we had 177 rehearsals. And part of those were alternate, you know, like if red wine went down, it was red wine, alternate red wine. Greenleaf went down, it was alternate green leaf. When we were setting down that night in Sante, and I'm listening on my radio, and I'm hearing alternate plan green. And you think the fucker factor didn't jump up then.

Because you just lost one third. We'll get to it, but at that moment you lost one third of your assault force. But our training and the training that we did paid off. in spades because we knew how to react. And it wasn't like, oh, now what do we do? We know what to do. We trained for it. And the planners of this Sante have done such an immaculate job of thinking of all the different scenarios.

The only one they didn't think about was the P.O.W.'s not being there. That was the one that we just, I mean, floored everybody. Yeah, but, you know, and even I thought through that, and we'll get to the actual rate itself, but as much planning went into it and as much they tried to think of all the different scenarios that could take place, something happened that they didn't plan for, which is, what is it, Greenleaf? Greenleaf came back to the target site. So you had to do a link up, which is one of the hardest things to do in a combat zone is linking up with friendly forces. In fact, I think it's the hardest thing to do. The hardest thing to do in combat is linked. up with friendly forces. Yep. And particularly like they got off just like we did. Anything in front of you was open game. Yeah.

And, you know, we were, and for a few minutes there, it got pretty testy. And, you know, I have to compliment some of the guys that were on Greenleaf. You know, they knew they were coming back in on a hot LZ, but they also knew that, you know, there's friendly guys out in front too. and they had to restrain themselves. Absolutely. It was a pretty good. Yeah.

And they were coming from a firefight themselves. Exactly. So they got hot weapons. They're amped up. They hear you guys shooting 400 yards away. Now they're landing their helicopters. And so it's a testament to the training, not just to the rehearsal of,

hey, this is exactly what's going to happen. And here's the contingency plan, but here's something that we didn't expect to happen. Exactly. But we still have the good standard. operating procedures, the presence of mind to make the right decisions. And that's a testament to all this training. Oh, it was.

I mean, and that's when I speak to military groups today, I said, I know we all hate to train, but I can tell you, I am living proof that what we trained on probably saved a bunch of lives. Yeah. And. Awesome life lesson. Going back to the book here, you said, as one of the six guys assigned to guard the tactile Operation Center, I started to see that I might miss out on some of the key training. If I wanted to have a chance of getting selected for one of the assault force teams, I had to

train when I was not pulling guard duty. Security was so tight that we didn't know who we would be rescuing or in what part of the world the mission would take place. There was a lot of speculation that it might be an attempt to free prisoners in Cuba based on the three-hour flying time of the mission. I had been training and pulling guard duty for about a month when I got my chance to speak up. I was checking Colonel Bull Simons for access to the talk building. While we were waiting for an escort to take the Bull in, he asked how things were going for me.

I knew that he was only going to pick some of us for the actual mission. So I said, sir, I didn't volunteer to come here and pull guard duty. If I wanted to pull guard duty, I would have stayed at Fort Bragg. Now, Bull always had a two-inch cigar that he chewed on. He looked me right in the eyes and said, young man, hang in there. Things are going to change pretty soon. After that, he went into the building. I thought to myself, what the hell did I just do?

First, I chewed out two Sergeant Majors back at Fort Bragg trying to get on this mission. Now I just told a colonel, and not just any colonel, but Bull Simons, that I was tired of pulling guard duty. I just bitch to the bull about pulling guard duty. I thought, well, I'll probably end up pulling guard duty for the rest of my time in the army. However, what he said was true. Within the next week, things did change. The first cut was made on Friday, September 18th. They selected 51 men and an additional 10 men were identified as backup that could be used in any of the different elements.

I was selected to be a part of the Red Wine Security Group. I would be the RTO for Captain Dan Turner. No more guard duty for me. The three groups were each placed in their own areas in the barracks building to help the team concept. You know why do you think you got selected? I sent an email to Dan Turner. Dan has passed away, but before he passed away, I sent him an email asking him that. And he said, basically I didn't bitch about whatever I was asked to do.

And he said, you always had a great attitude that, you know, I can do that. and whether I could do it or not, I took the attitude that I could get it done. And he just felt like I was older than the 20-year-old that he was accustomed to. And I think that's attributed to just growing up in a farm, and, you know, you do things that, you know, I started driving a tractor and I was six years old, you know. And, you know, it was just had to keep it between the bales of hay when we were picking up hay. And that was about it, you know, but that's, you do things on a farm back in those days that you wouldn't have thought about doing. But I was confident that I could do the right job for him. And hopefully I did.

This also leads to another life lesson. Life lesson number four, you say have patience and aggressiveness and contentment. Guarding the talk, we are not allowed to know the why. As I saw my opportunity slipping away, I was aggressive, hungry to be in the middle of the action. That's okay. It's not a fault to be aggressive.

It's a virtue if you can choose in your heart and in your mind to be at peace and to be thankful, trusting God with the outcome. So you've got to know, You got to be patient at the same time. You know, sometimes you've got to approach the bull. Yeah.

Yeah. And he, I could tell you, he wasn't offended by it, you know. He just, he asked the question. And I thought, here's my opportunity to tell him, you know. And if he said anything, I just got to go with it. I mean, that's what you're looking for when you're in charge of a team. You want someone that wants to go that wants to step up. And that's the impression you gave him for sure.

You say in our training at Fort Bragg, we used blanks. But for our training here at auxiliary field three, we used live ammunition. I remember one day we were throwing frag grenades and one of the guys got hit with some shrapnel. It was only a minor cut, but it drove home the point that we needed to stay sharp. By the end of the first month, we had practiced until every person knew not only his own position, but also the job of every person around him and the alternate plans. then we started practicing at night. This is serious rehearsals going on.

You go on to say when we first started training using the helicopters, the plan called for Captain Dan to be the first man off and for me to be the second. Now I had watched enough war movies to know that the first men off any vehicle get killed. For a couple of weeks, we trained this way. I thought, oh shit, we aren't even going to make it off the chopper. I can now admit that every time I stepped off the chopper, the thought went through my mind of getting zapped before my foot even hit the ground. Then after a few rehearsals, the plan changed to where Captain Dan and I were the last two off the chopper. All of a sudden, I thought, damn, now that I'm the last guy off, the bad guys will have their sights locked on.

I will get nailed for sure. Eventually, I had to admit that if the good Lord wants me, he doesn't care if I'm the first, the last, or the middle. my maker is going to bring me home when it's my time. That's some good young paranoia, right? Either way, you're getting shot. Yeah, that's right. You say life lesson five, and this is an important one, be prepared for death.

Don't worry about it. You can't completely control it. Make sure that the day you meet your maker is not the first time you've been introduced. If you are prepared at all times, you're free to live life fearless. And that was your attitude eventually. You had to say, you know what,

whether I'm first, whether I'm last. If it's my time, it's my time. I can only control so much. And, you know, that point was really driven home last week when my wife passed away. That, you know, she was prepared to meet her maker. I know that. And she's in a better place today because of that.

So it holds true. in my mind. Well, I mean, it's a testament when you can say that, you know, that your wife who lived an amazing life. Yep. And she passed away. And, you know, we were talking before we started that you said, well, we're going to come out here anyways.

We're going to record this thing because she would want me to carry on with the mission. Yep. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It's an important part of the book, you know. And I think that happens with young guys going into combat. You have to get to a point where you say, well, you know what?

This could, I could die tonight. Yeah. But you could do that walking across the road. Could do that walking across the road. And you can only control the things you control. You can train hard. You can prepare. You can study the plan.

You can mitigate the risk. There's some risk you're not going to be able to mitigate. Right. And if you concentrate on those things, it's going to drive you crazy. I'm going to say it takes away from everything else. Yeah. Exactly. You talk more about some of the training that you did.

Again, you've got to buy the book to get all the details. You talk about some of the Friday night fights, which was they would bring like a band and booze and women and they had like a bar set up. and so you do that on Friday nights and again it's crazy to think that you guys still didn't know where you were going you guys had no idea where you were going you thought you might be going to Cuba

I think there was somewhere else you thought you might be going there were planes hijacked on tarmacs around the world that we thought we might be going in to rescue you know people on hijacked planes so you have no idea what you're doing no which and everybody you know it was we didn't know

we just knew we were going to do some type of rescue and we trained for it. Did you know that it was real? No. Okay. Because I know sometimes we would get spun up in such a way where they'd be like, hey, we've got a mission. And we think, actually, this is the very first deployment I went on.

We got recalled. We had little beepers. I was in Guam. And we had beepers. And they said, hey, if this thing shows up 911, you know, you got 20 minutes to get to base. Because something's going on. So we get there and I'm, I guess I'm 19 or 20 at this point.

Maybe I'm 20 or 21. But anyways, I'm young and very dumb. And I also think that I'm, you know, I think I'm going to Vietnam. You know, I think I'm going to be like the combination of James Bond and Rambo and everybody else. So we show up in Guam on deployment, my Paisal platoon. It's 1992 or 1993. But I think there's just you know this is it we're going to war So we go out we get all we go out the range we get all of our weapons dialed in and I'm just

Totally ready and then Doing something and I get that the 9-1-1 on my pager and I'm oh there you go here it is it's on it's go time And we run you know rush into back to base we're sitting in our platoon space and my leading petty officer comes in and says, hey, they went and inspected the range. We didn't do a good job cleaning up. We got to go clean up our brass. So, yeah, not exactly what I anticipate. It's funny.

Yeah. So you guys are doing this Friday night. Oh, my point was that we would sometimes get recalled to do something, and they wouldn't tell us it was training until like we were ready to launch or and we some guys would know some guys would go this is just training

but of course I'd be like no way man it's real you know but you guys so did some of you think maybe this is just a big training operation in the beginning we kind of did but with Bull being in charge and all the

you know we saw a lot of brass around us. You know, this was the first mission ever to be under the direct control of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We didn't know that at the time either. I mean, we knew that there was guys in Washington coming down every once in a while, and they would go into the building, and we'd think, why are they there? You know, but, you know, nobody ever explained to us that, you know, they were doing the same thing up in Washington, D.C. But it was, it was, it was, you know, it was, we just kind of kept in the dark and fed on bullshit is what we were and that's the way it started

and we were just told to do our job and that's what we were doing speaking of friday night fights you say there's one in one interesting incident that sticks in my mind our barracks were two stories world war two style with one big open bay for all of us i was on the first floor and our beds were lined up on each side of the room. It was about 1.30 a.m. when I was awakened by crashing noises, just four bunks down from mine. It was three NCOs wrestling a master sergeant to the floor in our barracks.

Apparently, the master sergeant, after quite a few drinks, had a disagreement with Bull Simons at the bar concerning how the team should perform their mission and was frustrated that the troops were being kept in the dark. The discussion got heated, and the NCO came back to his barracks to get his weapon to persuade the good colonel to use his ideas. The guys in the barracks held the NCO until he eventually cooled down.

The next morning, the Bull and the NCO were on the PT field. The bull had the NCO, heels locked at attention while he chewed his butt up one side and down the other. The bull convinced him that he should not disagree with him again, at least not with a threat of bodily harm. But the bull did not let this affect his relationship with the NCO or anybody else. The bull always said he didn't want a bunch of Boy Scouts. We always look forward to Friday night fights. And this is classic. The following entry was made into the official talk record of events.

I believe this is the very discussion with that master sergeant. And so this is a quote from the actual record. It says 27 October 1715, Colonel Simon's discussed grievances with operational personnel and discussed progress, end quote. Yeah. Yeah, that was an interesting evening and more importantly the next day. We were all looking out the window thinking, well, wouldn't you like to be a little mouse hearing what that conversation is about. But, I mean, it was over, and he went on the mission with us.

And he, but the bull said, you know, he didn't want Boy Scouts. And he didn't have any. Yeah, as a leader, you want to have guys that are going to push back if they disagree with you because you might have a bad idea. Yeah. Now, you don't want them to go to their barracks and try and grab a weapon. No, to convince you. But you do want to hear what they're going to say and why they think that.

Exactly. Fast forward a little bit. Monday, November 16th, 1970. We were told the Packard gear that we were leaving Eglin Air Force Base for our new undisclosed location the next day. We didn't have a chaplain in our group, but we did have Pappy. Pappy announced that he would be holding a prayer service in the barracks. Pappy was respected by all the raiders and officers from the bull down the chain of command. In World War II, Pappy had been an Alamo scout, just like Bull Simons. They had both been on the raid that freed 500 POWs. There's a 2005 major motion picture called the Great Raid. Pappy was pretty famous in the army, particular in special forces. When I walked into the barracks where Pappy was holding the prayer service, It really struck me how many of these seasoned soldiers were there to pray on their knees to our Father in heaven.

I can tell you there were no atheists in our group. The next morning, you guys get on board of C-141. First place you land is California. Next place you land is Alaska. And you still don't know where you're going. No. They still have not told you where you're going. The next stop would be our new home for a few days.

It was a long flight. We didn't get much sleep, but at least we touched down at our final destination. It was November 18th at 3 a.m. When we stepped off the C-140 directly into a large hangar. They loaded us into what I thought were bread trucks. The air in this dark land had a sweet tropical smell, warm and humid. The old warriors thought we were in Southeast Asia, but we're not certain. We never knew it until many years later, but this was the CIA compound at the Tackley.

Is I saying that right? Tackley Royal Thai Air Force Base. When our trucks arrived at some barracks, most of us went, straight to bed. Our trip had taken 28 hours. So you even know where you are. And some of the old timers are thinking, hey, it kind of smells like Southeast Asia.

That's about all I got. Yep. That's right. We were awakened at 6 a.m. Had breakfast. It went about our morning as normal. We were told to be at the mess hall at 11 a.m. a little earlier than normal lunch. During lunch, we were told to go to our barracks immediately after we finished

eating and get some sleep. To ensure we got some sleep, Lieutenant Colonel Joe Cataldo, our doctor who would be going on the mission and into the compound with us, required every one of us to take a sleeping pill as we exited the mess hall. As we walked toward the barracks, the old timers explained that they had never had to do that before. It was pretty clear that this would be the night. I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the compound and talking to the other

Raiders about what they thought was going on. The time passed very slowly that afternoon. By 5 p.m., everyone was awakened from our bunks and told to get to the mess hall for dinner then meet in the theater at 1800. By 1730, we started filling the theater. You could tell everyone was getting pumped for what we were about to learn. And this is where you get the speech

that I opened this whole thing up with where you finally find out where you're actually going because you had no idea. And the way you write about that, that reaction that everybody had, would you say, I mean, I would imagine that all these other possible missions that you could be going on, there would be none more favorable than going to actually rescue other American service members in Vietnam.

I mean, that's the that's the pinnacle. Yeah, that's what we thought too. I mean, we were ready to, had they been there, they'd have been home that night, all 70 or more. So you get that speech. You say at 2,100, the bread trucks took us to a hangar that we used as our staging area. We checked our weapons. I carried a Colt M-1911, a 45-caliber pistol.

My machine gun was a car 15 with 8, 20-round magazines and 5-30-round magazines. I used the tips I'd learn from Captain Dan on how I should load my magazines. I strapped on two frag grenades and 10 concussion grenades. Captain Dan told me that if we ended up needing to use frags, well, we were probably in some deep shit. So I hope that did not have to use them. We use the concussion grenades in clearing the buildings. My next task was to check the batteries on both my radios. I checked my handset and my headset on my prick 25.

That's the way we were to communicate with Lieutenant Colonel Sidner's ground command team. The headset allowed me to listen to the radio traffic and still fire my weapon and toss grenades. Each raider carried a survival radio, a prick 90. When you turn on these radios, they send out a warble tone that allows SAR search and rescue team to pull you out of a hot situation among the 56 raiders we had 92 radios so you're getting your gear ready and you go through some you get's pretty cool in here you know for people that are going to get the book which I'm sure is a lot you go through like a gear list of absolutely

everything that you're carrying every all the specialty gear that you had um chainsaw yeah chains saws the guys were carrying welder uh... Arc welders, which even though despite your incredible welding skills, you didn't get assigned, they assigned it to somebody else. Tiny. Tiny was probably about 6-2, 6-3, and he could hoach those pretty easy, but nobody wanted to be around tiny. You get shot. The tanks get shot.

It's going to be a disaster. Time to go. C-130 landed at Udorn at 2,300. You guys are ushered out to your. H-H-53 choppers. And here we go at 2317 with all the green berets aboard Apple 2 lifted off, forming up with the other

five helicopters and Lyme 1 and Lyme 2, the four engine C-130 Hercules tankers that would take us to the border of North Vietnam. During our training, we had only made the full three-hour-long flight twice. The idea, I think, was to keep us from trying to figure out where we might be going.

What I remember about that night was how hot it was and that the sky was very clear. On that long chopper flight from Eudorne to Sante, I spent a lot of time in prayer. You can learn a little bit about yourself, seeing what your mind latches onto when you know that in a few hours, you might be meeting your maker. God has an important part. God has been an important part of my life as long as I can remember. My mother's side of the family attended church pretty regularly compared to my dad's side.

The bucklers like to drink, dance and party. Not to say they don't believe in God. They just like to celebrate a little bit more. After about an hour of flying, most of the guys were lying back against the sides of the chopper. Some guys had their eyes closed, either praying or sleeping. I thought to myself, these men are true warriors. Many of the raiders were married. Some had kids my age or older.

There was a lot of small talk. I figured each man was thinking, there was not a lot of small talk. I figured each man was thinking of his family. Each one knew the risk he was taking. We were no different than other warriors before us. Our military is filled with men and women who are willing to risk their lives to protect this great country. I sat back and had a nice little talk with the big man upstairs. I asked him to protect us tonight.

It was the longest three hours I had ever experienced. I thought about my mom and dad and how they would feel if I didn't make it back. I wondered what they would think when they read the letter I had written to them before I left. I thought about what my dad told me before I left for the army. Don't volunteer for anything. What did I do? I volunteered for airborne, then special forces, and now for this raid. I thought mom and dad would be heading to Moose Lodge this weekend for a Saturday

outing. I thought about Doug, my oldest brother, who served in the Navy submarines for nine years. I thought about how my brothers and I fought and the crazy things we had done on the farm. I thought about the times I hunted squirrels with dad. I thought back to the first squirrel I killed. I shot him about nine times. And when dad and I were skinning it, he said, we might get lead poisoning when we eat this one. I thought about my buddy Charlie Cottingham and the fun we had as kids.

I thought back to the times Mike and I spent riding our horses into the woods around our farms. I guess I was trying to take my mind off the mission because I couldn't stop mentally rehearsing my duties for the mission over and over and over. I got up to stretch my legs and look out the window. I could see the other choppers in the moonlight. It was like we were doing just another rehearsal so prepared. we were. But this was the live run. We were actually going in.

I sat back down and said another prayer for us and waited for us to arrive at Sante, North Vietnam. It's a long flight. That's a long flight to be sitting there thinking about this target that you're going into. Yep. It certainly was. Were you, and there's so many details in this book that I'm not covering, because I don't want to read the entire book, but how well aware were you?

of the possibility of surface-to-air missiles? Well, we knew they had brought several of our pilots down, but we weren't, that wasn't on our mind. You know, we were grunts on the ground, so that, you know, Sam's don't affect us until we had one fire status, and we realized just how damn close it got. So you guys were,

blessed with a little bit of, or at least you were, of being a little bit naive. Yes. And I know that we've lost a lot of our naive attitude about helicopters because we've taken some horrific hits in helicopters and lost a ton of incredibly great people. Yep. But for you guys, you weren't really thinking about that too much. No, you weren't.

And you knew we knew we had everything. cover with the A1E's. And, you know, we had A1E flying over us all the time when we were on the compound. So the bridge, we were supposed to blow it because of the alternate. We didn't blow it, but the A1E took out the bridge force. So we knew we had good cover there. And then, of course, we weren't that aware of what was going on at the same time from the Gulf of Toccan. You know, there was 116 aircraft coming in, which, I mean, that's the largest air raid in Vietnam history. Did they brief you guys on any of that? No. We had no idea about it until we got back.

Because they had basically set up a massive diversionary operation on the other side of Hanoi to distract from what you guys were doing. And I think it really worked if you, you know, some of the after-action reports that came back said that, you know, some of the, and the Migs didn't even get off the ground because they were confused as where they were coming from. And, you know, we were dropping flares over Hanoi and while we were sneaking in the backside to Sante. So all their attention was coming from the Gulf of talking. And there was a Sam site just south of us and any aircraft as well. I mean, I think we had a toll of 20 Sams fired at us at night. And one of them, the first one, the first and the only one I really remember,

was the one when we had landed, done our deal, and we were coming out. And we got on the bird, and our count was off. So we did another count and it was still off. And so we did a third count. And then this time Dan Turner counted himself, which was kind of in the excitement, I guess, you know. But anyway, so we got up and we were setting there. We had a PJ between us and Dan and I were on both sides of the tail

as we were leaving North Vietnam. And the chopper, as it turned, and we were looking over the lights of Hanoi, just like you'd be looking over the lights here in San Diego. I mean, couldn't believe how big it was. And then we were flying. We thought, well, we got it made, you know, we're back on the boat, and we're heading home. And about that time, our chopper just dropped, and we thought, oh, we got hit or something. And about that time, big, look like a light pole flying up our rear. And it probably missed us, I would say, no more than 200 meters.

It was, I mean, it was close. And, of course, our pilots, we had the very best pilots that the Air Force had. Those guys, I swear, they did a fantastic job of getting us in and getting us out. And it was a little bit of, that's where, that's where, that's, That's where I really got scared, honestly, because, you know, I kind of had control of everything on the ground, but when you're up there, those pilots, man, I have a lot of respect for those guys. They're sitting ducks.

And, you know, they, and we lost one, not one of the choppers, but one of the jets was taken out by that night. But the pilots were recovered the next morning. So, but it just shows you how quick it can happen. As you're going in, are you thinking, what are you thinking your chances are? You know, my thoughts were, okay, the good Lord is with me and with us, and we're going to be all right, but I got to do my day, whatever it takes, you know. One of my biggest fears was what I free.

freeze, you know, having never been in combat, you know. I mean, I've heard of guys that have been in combat before freezing, even guys had been in for a long time, you know, but that was a concern of mine when I'd be able to. But all the old-timers kept coming up to me and said, don't hesitate. Don't hesitate. Don't hesitate. Whatever you do, don't hesitate. Was there anyone else that had no combat experience? There was four of us that had never been in combat before. Yeah. Out of how many?

out of 56, four of us, and never been in combat. So it was an eye-opening experience. Dan Turner told me one time afterwards, he says, you saw more combat and I saw in a year in Vietnam. Really? He goes, oh, yeah.

So here we go. 0-220, Saturday, November 21st, 1970 when we were just about to land I heard through the chatter in my headset the voice of Sergeant first class Howell came through he was the RTO for Lieutenant Colonel Sidner the ground force commander for the raid alternate plan green I repeat alternate plan green do you copy This was only the first of the bad news I would hear tonight I responded say again Sergeant first class howell Alternate plan green, alternate plan green, over.

I said back into my hand, Mike, Roger, alternate plan green, over. I thought to myself, holy crap, this can't be real. I turned to Captain Dan and told him we were going to alternate plan green. Captain Dan gave me that, oh shit look, and calmly told me to pass the announcement onto others in red wine. Alternate plan green meant one thing to all of us on the red wine chaper. We knew that we had 22 fewer men. There would be a lot less firepower as we hit the ground.

Whether Greenleaf Group had mechanical problems or had been shot down, we knew the mission, including the alternate plans. With or without the 22 men of Greenleaf Group, we were going to execute the mission and would now have to perform their role as well as ours. So what had happened here, and again, you go into these details in the book. But Greenleaf, this one other chopper, had landed in the wrong. wrong spot. There was a school yard that was

400 yards to the south and it looked kind of like the POW camp, like a little school compound. Right. And that's where they landed. The colonel, Colonel Bull Simons was with them. Yes. So you get this call that, hey, we're

going, we're still going. They're in the wrong spot, but we're still going. You still need to execute the mission and this is where you have life lesson number six. Don't be indispensable. always be training a backup person for your job and always be learning to be a backup for your teammates. This applies to any job in life. The graveyards are full of indispensable men. But yeah, that's a sketchy situation.

All of a sudden you got one third the troops. And as this is happening, I'm going back to the book. At that moment, the mini gun in the door to our right fired off a few hundred rounds. For those you not familiar, the mini gun, it's a gun that fires 4,000 rounds of ammo per minute. It is electronically driven rotary breach to feed the ammo belt at lightning speed. Now my heart was already pounding, but the sound of that mini gun firing two feet from me really took me to a new level. I adjust my headset on the prick 25 on my back and feel for my ammo pouches. I check for frags and my concussion grenades.

I place my finger on the safety and make sure I have the safety off and my car 15 is set on auto. I make sure to have the 30 round magazine well-seated. I chamber around. In training, I've done this a hundred times, but this is it. My first time in combat. This is no game. I'm not as scared as much as I am excited. This is the moment I have trained for.

The reason I joined the Green Berets, I can't let Captain Dan down or the other Raiders. As the RTO for the Red Wine Security Group, my job is to stay close to Captain Dan. He's the commander of Red Wine, and I am expected to protect his backside. The tailgate is lowered. the choppers feathering to the ground. We are about to touch down on the enemy's homeland, and there is no rescuing us if there has been a security breach. I feel the chopper settle as it has done so many times in training.

Red Wine Group is unloading exactly as we have practiced over 170 times. The major difference is that this time, the bullets are flying in both directions. It is amazing how fast you can exit a chopper. Captain Dan and I start off the tale of the chapter, the last two men off. I am literally one step to his right side as we run. Our boots have just started splashing the rice patties when a North Vietnamese army soldier fires at us from the very building we were to clear.

A couple of bullets zip by us. A natural reaction. I placed the green dot from my armolite single point sight on the guard's chest and fire three rounds. He immediately falls to the ground. In that instant, I don't hesitate. What the seasoned warriors taught me really paid off. Don't hesitate.

I imagine most of the warriors in your first time down range, wonder in the back of your mind how you respond to that moment. Would I freeze when I faced with the decision to kill or be killed? I'd only just stepped onto the enemy's ground and I had my first kill.

There'd be more to come as we cleared the buildings. Out of the gate. You know, I watch a lot of fighting and they always talk about, you know, who's got the fastest record knockout in a fight? you might have the fastest kill on enemy territory that you step off and you're immediately engaging a guy. That's kind of crazy to think about.

Yeah, it is. I hadn't thought about it that away. Yeah. You go on. Captain Dan thanks me as we charge towards our first building. I am following Captain Dan with bullets blazing and men moving to their positions. Alternate Plan Green is proceeding. We hear our chopper apple two loudly lift off the rice patties to wait about a mile away until they are called.

back in to take us home with the POWs we came to free in the back of our minds if these birds get battle damage it will be a long way back to friendly lines no time to think about that we move forward to clear our designated buildings nearest nearest to us master sergeant joe lupiac and his red wine element two which includes him sergeant first class tyrone adderly and sergeant first class billy martin each of us knew this was going to be much more difficult than it was during training These are buildings that Greenleaf Group would have neutralized according to the original plan and they would have had 14 of their men on this task under alternate plan green five of our team were now going to have to do it They also had more firepower

Sergeant first class Jake Jacavanco was carrying an M60 bipod machine gun which we don't have on our team What we did still have was the element of surprise Bull Simons told us if there was a security leak we would know it by the time the second chopper landed. We turned out to be that second chopper, and we are operating like a well-oiled machine. Captain Dan is redirecting our red wine group comprised of four elements, and is making sure we are getting the job done.

As a virgin to combat and as Captain Dan's RTO, I stay close to him. You have to respect and trust the men with whom you go to battle. This is where the months of training pay off. We know what we have to do next. Alternate Plan Green means that the bridge north of the POW camp will remain open to enemy reinforcements crossing it since we didn't have enough raiders to send someone to blow it. Over the radios, Lieutenant Colonel Sidner directs the A1E Sky Raider pilots to light it up with rock eye missiles. If anyone tries to cross it, the A1s will open up with 20 millimeter cannon.

Those flyboys are cocky, but damn, they're good at their job. What amazes me is that in all this chaos, the only one green beret gets wounded. That is Sergeant First Class Joe Murray. Joe is a member of Master Sergeant Herman Spencer's team, whose job it is to secure the area south of the south wall. That's the wall closest to where the helicopters dropped us off and will later pick us up. Master Sergeant Spencer is carrying a 40-pound block of C-4 explosives slung over his shoulder. It is to be used to blow the bridge. It turned out to be a good shield for him.

As we landed and spilled out of our helicopters, Spencer and Murray immediately rushed towards their objective, the guard shack, by the south wall. Spencer took a couple rounds from a guard with an AK-47 in the block of C-4 he was carrying. Joe Murray would not be that lucky. That's something that surprises people is that C-4. is relatively stable when it's when it's by itself right that's why you have blasting caps or detonation cord because those things will blow up and then they make the C4 blow up right but but C4 by itself is relatively stable yeah um back to the book when Spencer was dealing with that guard that delayed Spencer just such that Joe arrives at the guard shack alone the

building needs to be cleared immediately before the enemy troops inside can all all emerged. So Joe decides to use a frag grenade instead of a concussion grenade. As he is about to toss it in the window, he feels his leg push forward with a burning sensation. Joe tosses the frag grenade in, neutralizing the guard shack. He then turns to eliminate the threat. Spencer now arriving, fires his machine gun first and eliminates three guards. Joe is the only army raider to receive a purple heart. That's crazy. That's, and there's like, is there just a massive amount of Gunfire at this point? Yeah.

Yeah. It's everybody's letting loose with everything that we got, you know? And you have one guy get hit in the leg. Yeah. In the back of his leg. Going on. For Captain Dan and me, the objective is to get to the communication buildings as fast as possible to prevent them from calling for reinforcements.

It's a good 50 meters ahead of us, and it's an open area with no cover. We have two buildings to clear before we clear the communication. Building. We were told that we would not take any North Vietnamese army prisoners and neutralize everyone. We will be coming back through this same area and Bull doesn't want anyone preventing us from getting back to the choppers. To do this, we have to ensure that there is no one alive to ambush us on our way back. Captain Dan and I are getting closer to the communications building. We can see the main guardhouses on fire and people are running away from us. Clearing the main guardhouse was the job of another red wine element and they apparently are

succeeding. We still have two more buildings to clear. The first one is empty. The second one has a few North Vietnamese army soldiers. I toss a concussion grenade into the room and as soon as it explodes, Captain Dan drops to the floor and I stand in the door straddling him. We create a crossfire with me firing fully automatic from right to left and he from left to right. He yells clear and I back out and shine my flashlight so he can confirm we've neutralized everyone. Because there are a number of them, we do a closer check that they are all neutralized. In the clearing of the buildings at Sonte, Captain Dan and I are the only two-man team. Depending on how close you are to the grenade when it explodes, it can bust your eardrums and pretty well mess you up. And building 12, as I'm confirming

everyone is dead, it's a grim task. Whatever you're thinking right now, it is far more grim than that. A guard raises his weapon behind me. Captain Dan neutralizes him. There is no doubt. With that decisive action, Captain Dan saved my life. So you're sitting, you're going through the buildings, are you just doing security rounds in these guys? Yeah. And then one of them that you haven't gotten to yet? We just, you know, we just put a bullet in everybody's head and made sure. And while you're doing that, one of those guys that you hadn't gotten to yet, decides he's going to take a shot at you. Yeah. And Captain Dan sees him and kills him. Yeah, I had my back to him when he did. I. And when Dan fired, scared me.

I thought somebody was shooting, you know, but it was, it was Dan shooting all right, but shooting the guy that was going to take me out. Approaching 0228, Lieutenant Colonel Sidner received notification that Greenleaf Group is not out of commission. We can hear Apple One landing and are told to hold fast until Greenleaf elements get to their original plan positions. With 22 men of Greenleaf team, including Bull Simons, we are back. back on track. Within one minute, Greenleaf has secured the guard quarters per the plan and takes over their roles that the Red Wine team members have been handling for them. Again, that's a comp, that seems real easy.

But when you got all this shooting going on and now you got friendlies moving into positions where there's other friendlies and you got enemy shooting at you, this is a sketchy thing. It was very intense right there. And we were kind of away from it because we were going toward the communication building. And over here was where they were coming from. Of course, you know, Adelaide was, he had an M-79 grenade launcher, so he was booping them right in the windows. And he, you know, old Kentucky Wendy's worked real well for him.

In fact, Tyrone is getting the Bull Simon's award from Socom in May. Outstanding. Yeah. So well-deserved. Yeah, that's outstanding. You go on here at 0229. We had just reached the communication buildings. When I heard on my headset, negative items, I told Captain Dan, he asked me, are you sure?

It was the code word for POWs. It didn't make any sense. The next radio call I heard was at 0.2.30. Begin extraction to chalpers. We entered the communication buildings without tossing a grenade. It was empty. At this time, we started to move back to the LZ for extraction. We still moved with the assumption that there could be more enemy soldiers lying in the bushes.

While the helicopters were en route returning to extract us, one of Red Wines' rolls was to clear the planned LZ by cutting down certain light poles. That task revealed one frustrating surprise. We had brought a chainsaw to cut down certain wooden telephone poles, but Sergeant First Class Charles Maston and Sergeant First Class Ronnie Strahan were to blow up a tall concrete light pole the moment that Maston and Strayhan finished placing the four one-pound packets of C4 explosive were ready to blow and were confirming confirming that they should activate the fuse Apple One was

arriving they waited until Apple One had landed offloaded Greenleaf and departed insured of safety they detonated the C4 as the pole rose into the air a huge flash of light Maston and Strayan could see that they This was not a light pole. It had four large high-tension power lines. Dancing sparks were everywhere as the four huge power lines hit the rice patties, the very rice patties in which our soldiers and POWs would be marshalling to load the returning choppers. We were going to have to find a new location.

Were we going to have to find a new location for the LZ, Maston, Strayhan, and Captain Jim McClam, as the marshalling area control officer immediately set about ensuring they understood the location of all the and whether they were hot. After assessing the situation and ensuring there were no other potential hazards, they began placing the beanbag lights in an area suitably distant from the power lines. As everyone returned to the LZ waiting for the helicopters, we had a few minutes to gather people and equipment to load on Apple 1 and Apple 2.

You snuck one of your life lessons in here. Don't be a complainer. The world is moving on and needs people to solve. Problems. Evaluate your situation, make a decision, and execute any new plan without complaining and feel sorry for yourself. It's not going to help. Not going to help the situation. You've got to make things happen.

Exactly. No POWs was not something we had spent time thinking about. I could hear chatter on my headset. I heard the RTO for Bull say that Bull was coming into the compound. Bull had to verify with his own eyes that there were no POWs. As 0237, Apple One landed facing east toward Hanoi and loaded Red Wine Group and Blue Boy Group. Captain Dan and I were the last ones to board. The two of us sat in the tail of the chopper, loading the door fully down and open with a mini-gun

mounted right between us manned by an Air Force PJ. At 024, we lifted off and turned west. Looking out of the tail, we had a front row seat with a bird's eye view of Hanoi. I will never forget that view. I couldn't believe how big Hanoi was and how close we were to it. It looked like any major city in America. We were only about 20 miles from the capital of North Vietnam. Never before had the North Vietnamese army been violated like this.

That's when it really hit me what we had just done. We were rising only a minute or two after liftoff. Suddenly our chopper took a hard dive to the left. What looked like a telephone pole with a bright red fireball shot by. us I yelled over to captain Dan what the hell was that before he could answer the gun or standing between us yelled that it was a surface to air missile a Sam now I was scared while I was on the ground but now I was really scared and this is what you were talking about before on the ground I have a fighting chance but being in a chopper at 600 feet you

feel like a sitting duck thank God for some of the best pilots we could have these guys knew how to handle it we were soon out from the threat into the dark jungle mountains and headed for Udorn. During the next three hours on the flight back to base, I had plenty of time to replay what we had done that night. Like the rest of the Raiders, I was very disappointed that we came home with no POWs. I kept thinking what went wrong?

Why? When had the POWs been removed? That flight returning to Udorn seemed a lot longer than the flight to Sonte. We'd been so pumped up about our mission. To find no POWs was the last thing that would have ever crossed our mind beyond the two wounds received. U.S. Air Force Tech Sergeant LeR. Wright's ankle was broken during one of the crash landings and Sergeant First Class Joe Murray, America's only casualty our night.

That night was our morale. And that's something, again, you covered these details in the book, but one of the aircraft actually crashed landed on purpose into the compound. Right. Blue Boy. Yeah. And the reason for that was the people making the planning, initially they thought we'd drop in a C-130.

But they didn't know if the guards had orders to shoot the POWs, if there was a rescue attempt, or exactly what. So they planned on having control of the guards within 60 seconds a minute. I gave us a minute to have complete control of the guards inside the compound. And that meant taken out to the two guard towers and the third went up by Blue Boy, and then controlling the guards and being in there. And that's what we did. I mean, they did a great job on their end.

It's just that there was no POWs in there. And, you know, people say, well, why were their guards? and, you know, we don't know if they were, why they were guards, but they were still in the towers. And we, I say we, the red, green, our blue boy took care of them. So our job was outside. We were really, teams, Red, Red, White, Greenleaf, and Blue Boy all had specific tasks to accomplish. And that's what we did.

We worked on our task to get that done. And if everybody did their task, like we had practiced and rehearsed so many times, it would be a great success. And it was a success from the standpoint of doing the job of eliminating the threat and controlling the POWC camp and the guards. We just didn't anticipate the PODW is not being there. And that was the heartbreaking part of it. You say this to say we were disappointed would be an understatement.

Some of us talked about how maybe we should have gone into Hanoi. We were thinking crazy thoughts like that. That's how confident we were. We got some rest at you doing for a couple hours. We flew a C-130 and we were briefed again in the auditorium, what to say and more importantly, what not to talk about. We packed our duffel bag, secured our equipment and had a few hours to relax. The C-141 that we boarded was one that had been prepped for. Medevac ready to bring POWs home.

Now its mission was just to bring us to Eglin. All the after-actions reports were finalized at auxiliary field number three, and we spent two days before heading home to North Carolina on C-123s. So that's it. You do like a debrief. You fill out your paperwork explaining what exactly you did. And then you wrap up at that training site where you had spent all this time preparing for the mission. and then you say this,

landing at Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina, a couple days later was a very happy time. It was happy for the Raiders and for all the people awaiting us, families, friends, and the Army support personnel there to process us back to our normal world at Fort Bragg. In fact, for me personally, that is the most memorable moment.

It was not the training or the day or of the launch or the landing at Sonte. For me, it was the landing at Pope Air Force Base. I will never forget what I witnessed that day. I was a single guy, so a couple of my buddies came to pick me up. But standing there on the flight line, when I looked around at the men unloading from the airplane, I saw their wives and children's running out to meet them. It really hit me.

The bull had warned us that we had a 50-50 chance of not coming home, a 50-50 chance of this moment never happening. If there had been a security breach, it was unlikely that we could have been rescued. These warriors had laid their lives on the line to rescue fellow warriors. Four days after the raid on Wednesday, November 25th, 1970, President Nixon honored the Sante Raiders by having raider representatives in a televised ceremony in the White House's East Room. That had to be pretty...

It was pretty cool. Pretty crazy. So it was on the news and everyone now almost immediately knew what had happened. Right. And the only reason for that was the fact that Hanoi had come on and said they had been bombed. And what they had been not bombed, but they had flares dropped out over the city. And that was the diversion process. And so the United States had to come on and say, no, we didn't bomb them.

We did a POW raid. and these were aircraft that were dropping flares to offset the Sante raiders coming in on the backside. So it was kind of a political, but, you know, to justify what we had done. And the fact that the attempt was made to free POWs, which went a long way in that arena back then. this is uh how how would you say this level of uh of media attention compared to the bin laden raid hmm i mean the the thing about the bin laden raid was we weren't the the war wasn't intent as intense at that point as vietnam was i mean vietnam was right full on so it would have gotten a little bit less attention i mean the bin laden raid was yeah compared about as about as

big of a news story as there's ever been, I think. Yeah, yeah, that's true. And, you know, the good thing, if you look at the Bin Laden raid compared to the Sante raid, they were, they copied what the Sante raid is about. And that's the good part about the Sante raid is the impact it's had over the years on all the raids that have been done since then, have been monitored. after the Sante Raid because not because of the success it had of getting in and getting out but the way the the way they planned it and all the information that went into that and how they

how they planned it made an impact on the success of it yeah I mean I know I know you know Admiral McRaven he wrote it was sort of like his thesis when he was at the postgraduate school about all the most important special operations missions in history. Right. And he wrote about Desante Raid. And then he was also one of the guys, one of the senior guys conducting the planning for the bin Laden raid. So, yeah, there's a direct connection.

Connection between the lessons learned and the protocol that you use to get this done. And, yeah, no doubt about that. It's pretty interesting to see this. read in history. Yeah, it is. I mean, and today, the Santey Rae has taught at all the military schools. And, you know, Socom, in fact, they're making a movie on this. It's a, and.

Is Socom making the movie? Or is Zykolywood making the movie? It's a group of people that are doing a documentary. Okay. But the seventh Special Forces is going to, my understanding is they're going to, participate in having the Sante Raid as a training film for a future. Because what they've done, they've interviewed a lot of the people on the raid, and they've interviewed the POWs, and they've kind of combined it all together.

In fact, in May I'm going down, they're doing a screening on it at Socom, and I'm going down to see the screening and make sure we always told anybody that's going to do this, we want it to be authentic. We don't want Hollywood. So last year I went out to Phoenix and did a group that's building this movie on it, and they actually built the compound,

and they used, they had one of us from each group, Red, Wine, Green, Green, and Even Blue Boy, and then navigation, John Gargis, Colonel Gargis, who was Air Force, the navigator that took us in. And they made all of the, they wanted to know how we cleared a building. They wanted to know all that stuff. And had shown the bomb, you know, throwing the hand grenades in and all that stuff.

And they did a really good, have done a really good job on it. And they're shopping it, I think, to Netflix and everything right now. But they're very close to having it completed. But they've really done a nice job of making it authentic. as to what actually took place and how it happened. So it would be a good training film, definitely. Yeah, that'll be awesome to see. You say here, I remember being told to report to the parade field in my dress greens.

This is December 9th, 1970 for an award ceremony. It was a nice, sunny, cool day when Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird personally presented the medals to the members of the Sante raid. There I stood, spit, shine, jump boots, jump wings. Expert Rifle Badge and the seventh Special Forces Group Ribbon. Brigadier General Henry Emerson, the commander of Special Forces at Fort Bragg, thank the Raiders for their courage and dedication. We had reflected well on the Green Berets. And then you all were awarded.

It was, I think, six distinguished service crosses. Five Air Force crosses were awarded. There was a total of 85 silver stars, which included all of the Raiders. Right. And the following comments were made by Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird. He said this, We are here to honor the brave and dedicated men. We confer on them today awards that express their gratitude, their country's gratitude and admiration.

The mission for which these men volunteered called for undaunted courage and deep compassion. They were asked to go deep into enemy territory to search for and, if possible, to rescue their comrades in arms who are prisoners of war. They performed their mission flawlessly. From the outset, the president, the nation's top military leadership, and I gave total and unqualified support to this mission. I knew, as these men did, how grave were the risks they willingly undertook. I knew as these men did that there was a chance of disappointment and even of failure. But the reasonable chance to return to freedom, Americans held captive, made this mission well worth the risk. If a similar chance to save Americans were to arise tomorrow, I would act just as I did in approving and supporting the effort at Sontay.

Man, that's not too often. The Secretary of Defense shows up at your command to start handing out 85 silver stars. Yeah, huge deal. After that, I'm going to the book here. You say, they gave each of us 30 days a leave, uncharged against our balance. So you got 30 days of free leave. That's nice. So I went home for a whole month of December.

Back home in Missouri, we talked about a little about the mission, but not too much. It's funny how some people don't understand the significance of a combat raid. I wasn't going to try and impress it upon them. Most of my friends had not gone into the military, so I didn't have any significant conversations with them about the raid. Some had gotten married and were busy with their own lives. My dad was a good listener for me. He expressed his pride.

And after a few beers at the East Seine Tavern in Moberly, he even told me some of his friends, even told some of his friends what I had done. But to tell you the truth, after about four or five days, I was ready to head back to Bragg and my army buddies. And you've got life lesson eight here It says veterans we all have a mission Listen to your fellow veterans

It is important for the veteran But it's also important for the listener It is important for America Good stories and bad They need to be told Please take my request to heart And talk with a veteran And that's one thing that you have in this book

You've got a whole It's over 140 pages of this book Is all the different perspective We've just told your person perspective. And it's very interesting to hear your perspective as the youngest guy on the raid, somebody with no combat experience, but you have the perspective of a bunch of different people, not just the Raiders, but the support people, the aircraft, the pilots, the crew, you've got an incredible amount of stories to be told that are told in this book that every one of them gives a

different angle of the story. And now that came about when I started writing my, I started writing the book in 2012. My daughter went to Afghanistan that time. And she was asking, you know, what old you do? And I thought, I'm on a document. There's been several books on the raid, but none by anybody that was on the ground.

So that's what prompted me to do it. So, but the thing that I got out of that was in the process, I realized that

I wanted more than my opinion. So we have an email chain that we go out on. So I send an email out to all the PLWs and the raters and the support guys. If you have something that you would like to put in the book, you know, send it to me. I'll put it in, unedited into the book. And I got about 40 of them. And some are one paragraph, some are three or four or five pages, you know. but it's their memorable moment on the raid or about the rate or whatever it might be.

And it just gives a whole different perspective, you know, from a POW standpoint to a guy flying, you know, mid-cap over us. And it really, I think, rounded out the book. Yeah, it's not going to read it today. I get the book, but the story about the guys got hit with a frag from the surface to air missile and ended up punching out, just hearing that story with him talking about, you know, they're just having a conversation. Like, we're about to, we're about to eject from an aircraft, which, by the way, is a life

and death thing. Yeah. When you eject from an aircraft, there's, I don't know what the chance is that you're going to die, but there's definitely a strong chance that you're, you're, you know, ejecting through the canopy going 400 miles an hour or whatever it is. That was Ted Lowry. Yeah. Yeah.

There's a decent chance you're going to die just from that. And then you're going to land in wherever, Vietnam, Laos, the ocean. You don't know what the hell is going to happen. And these guys are talking about it. Like, hey, I think we're going to have to punch out. Yeah, okay. Well, let me know when you're ready. They're doing it like this.

Yeah. Freaking calm, cool, and collected. Ten Lowry's rolling on a great guy, too, to get to meet him. Man. And then, of course, they end up having to get picked up, you know. Next day. Yeah, the next day. They spend the night.

It's like a little afterthought of the book, but it's its own story in itself. So you're taking your own advice on life less than eight And getting these other stories out there So check that out check to get the book for that stuff as well You say here life goes on the next week I was back at D company Seventh special forces group at Fort Bragg that's it back to back to normal life Right you end up You end up getting involved in the sport of orientering which is like map and compass right while you're running

basically the next year you spend time doing this or like as part of the team of seventh special forces group you say by December of 1971 our team had represented special forces in several orienteering meets I finished 15th in the U.S. military championship seventh in the U.S. championship 45th in the Canadian championship so you go through that and then you say when I heard in December 1970s that the Army was offering early outs that really appealed to me. I felt ready to do my own thing and not to be told what to do all the time.

I took advantage of the opportunity separating January 5th, 1972. Started back at junior college, January 7th, back home. So how long was your total service? Well, I was active three years and I was in reserve for four. I stayed in. Okay, so were you actually doing reserve duty on the weekends and whatnot? I was making money to go to college. So you go to school.

What did you study in school? Business. Bachelor of Art and Independent Study of Business. And then you graduate and you're not, you know, it's 1974. You're having a little bit of trouble finding a job. Oh, yeah. But at one of the Sontay Raiders reunions, you get kind of. connected with Ross Perrault.

Yes. He had a reunion in 1974, I guess, with all the POWs and the Raiders at San Francisco. And we had an afternoon. He brought all the Raiders and the POWs together, and he said, you know, if there's anything I can ever do for any of you, let me know. And as a result of that, I thought, you know, I'm out of college. I don't have a job. I need help, you know, so I wrote a letter to Ross Faroe, and I got a response back that they flew me down for an interview.

And I was hired to work for EDS. And so he kept his word. That's pretty amazing. And then how long did you do, how long did you work for EDS for? I worked for EDS for about three years. And then you end up with another job? And what was the next job you got? I went from there to selling computer furniture.

and worked for a company called Rightline. I worked for them for about five years. And then I was hired away from that company by Greg Kales, who was my old boss at that time there, and selling United Micrographics. And he sold the business, and I decided to start my own. So I went into my own business of document imaging.

Document imaging. Mm-hmm. Where we scan document. and storm digitize them and is that still running today yes what's it called delta systems delta systems nothing to do with delta force it just happens to be the name of the company we're in kansas city and we and you were doing that in the late 80s you were doing that mm-hmm 19 you want to jump start I mean because everything is digital now I know and it's amazing how much is still being printed though today yeah it's crazy

And that's still running right now, dealt the systems. Yep. How big is the company? Well, there's only about five of us, so we're a small company, but we do a lot of work. We're in probably,

you know, maybe 15, 20, 30 states. And we have resellers that sell our product. And then we do a lot in the health care medical. But you name an index where we probably have a system installed in it so um whether it's government or we just uh you're out there anybody's got paper I want to get rid of it we can help and you you know you mentioned earlier your wife marcia um when did you meet her I met her and what was that what was the arc the story arc there we were uh I at the time I was a member of the

Data Processing Management Association in Kansas City. And I was on the board of directors for that, and we were down at a bar after a board meeting one night. And Marcia and her girlfriend walked in, the place was packed, and a couple of the guys that were on the board happened to get up and leave just as they walked in. And so we had two open seats. And we said, come sit down here with us, and they did.

And so I met Marsha, that was, September of, let's see, that would have been 80. 84. Yeah. And so we ended up getting married and she had a little boy, Aaron, who is down in Texas and my daughter, which you met here, Hannah. And so we're, we got married in October 20. of 1984 and I started the business in 1989 so it was uh what was the deal was there some story about scuba diving in here do you guys get married underwater or something or engaged underwater what was the story we were got engaged i had a we were in hawaii in a place called witchers brew which is in around hanama bay on the island of oahu and um i have a friend over there that

was a dental hygienist, and she had some, that red dental floss. So I wrapped the ring and that, tied it on it, put it in a little remember when they had the 35 millimeter camera cases, put that down in my web suit. We swam out the place

called Witches Bruin. We went down to about 30 feet under, and I stopped her, and I said, I pulled out and I dangled it. Of course, everything's three times bigger of your water, you know? She thought she was being a real rock. Of course, it melted when we got on the surface.

She went from 1.5 carrots to 0.5. Exactly. And then you had a son. Aaron. And then your daughter, she ended up joining the army. Yes. She was a... So you got third generation army.

That's true. And she actually shipped off to Afghanistan at one point. Correct. Right. She was a chemical officer. How hard was that for you? That was tough. That was tough on her.

It was tough on me. You know, I just, you know, it's one thing, you know, when you go, but when your daughter goes, you got a lot of other thoughts going through the mind. And she's a very strong woman. She was with a college at Warnsburg, and she was the first ROTC. a female battalion commander. She was the first female to go to jump school from there, and the first one to go to Afghanistan. And now she's a deputy sheriff in Johnson County, Kansas, and she loves her job. Must be the daughter of Asante Raider. She's kind of dynastly, I guess.

You know, or her mother always worried about her, but I tried not to show my concerns. But it was when your daughter's in harm's way, you've got to be a little crazy. I worry when my daughters, one of my daughters goes to the grocery store where I can't even imagine you're going to Afghanistan. God bless you. And, you know, that's the last life lesson that you have in the book. you say life lesson nine sacrificial living that scene as we arrived at Pope Air Force Base back in November 1970 really made an impression on me

it's not only the soldiers but also their wives who are heroes these families are the type of people our world needs people who know this life is not just about their own convenience I am thankful for what these families and also those of first responders in civilian life do for our country and for freedom around the world. And that's your, that's sort of your final life lesson there. And like I said, the story's in the book, and we only covered a fraction of the book today, but it's packed full of more information.

It's very powerful. and there's one thing I wanted to cover which we haven't really touched on yet, which is the impact of the raid, right? Because clearly you go on this operation, the operation is to rescue POWs, and as we've covered, there was no POWs there. And it'd be easy to think, well, then that must be a failed mission. But that couldn't be further from the truth. there was a huge impact for the POWs.

And part of the section of the book where you have other people stories, you have a bunch of commentary from some of the people that were POWs in Vietnam. And we've had some of these heroes on this podcast, incredible human beings. You have some, I'm going to just read some of these highlights. U.S. Air Force First Lieutenant J.H. Spike Nazmuth, P.O.W. from 1966 to 1973. He says I was in Hanoi six and a half years After the raid the guards were clearly shaken by what they heard They were digging holes like mad it was a real show to watch at dawn the NBA were still running around

You've heard of a Chinese fire drill they're digging foxholes right outside our cell They've got machine guns set up all over the prison yard. They're digging in foxholes real deep. I can't believe all the freaking foxholes First time I'd seen the little bastards work up a sweat U.S. Air Force First Lieutenant Joe Kreka, P.O.W. 1966 to 1973. On the night of November 21st, 1970, I was at P.O.W. in Camp Faith, a camp just about 10 miles south of Sonte and about the same distance west of Hanoi as Sonte. It didn't come out until a few days later what had happened. Within 48 hours, we were all packed up, placed onto six by six trucks, and ferried into Hanoi so this is an impact direct impact of the raid they started consolidating these

prisoners which is a massive morale boost he says whereas before we had been held in much smaller groups one two three four or even eight or ten there were now 50 of us all together in a room of about 35 feet by 70 feet new faces new stories to tell and hear and putting faces of fellow Americans we only knew by name language classes were taught in German because they they organized like a educational system. Once they were together, they had a, just, they started being more productive. Language classes were taught German, Spanish, and even Russian. Math classes were divided into three levels, appropriately X, Y, and Z. We also had courses in history, sociology, politics, religion,

wine selection. Yes, we had a wine tasting class, meat cutting, and lumber selection. And I taught a course in physics, automotive theory and practice as well as one on classical music. themes and composers. He said we were still being held captive, but since the raid on Sontay prison camp by the incomparable Sante Raiders, life was so much better. Hats off to all the Raiders and those who supported the raid, Air Force Navy Marines and all those at their support bases on land at sea. Bravo.

Another one, U.S. Air Force Captain Leon Lee Ellis, Sante POW camp from 1967 to 1973. The night of November 20th and 21st at Camp Faith, we POWs were awakened in the middle of the night, hearing explosions, aircraft, Sam's launching, and several minutes of chaos. We could not have guessed that our old camp at Sante, just a few miles up the road, was entertaining guests, uninvited guests for sure.

The next morning we saw fear in the eyes of the guards and turnkeys, and within 48 hours we were loaded up and moved back to Hanoi. For the first time ever, we were in large groups. but we were not rescued by the raid in many ways our sanity and teamwork were saved by that event we will always be indebted to the raiders for what they did for us U.S. Navy Lieutenant Junior Grade Porter Halliburton

P.O.W. 1965 to 1973 at Camp Faith on November 21st we heard gunfire and jet noise from somewhere close by but had no idea what was happening. The elation we felt knowing that our government had tried to rescue us was the most powerful moral Moral booster imaginable. We were especially thankful to the guys of the Sante raiders who had volunteered for this mission and risked their lives to try and rescue us. Another one. U.S. Navy commander Paul Galante, Sante P-O-W camp.

He said the Sonte raid itself was the most memorable moment of my captivity. We knew Uncle Sam wouldn't forget about us. The Sonte raid proved that. U.S. Air Force First Lieutenant Mike Burns, P.O.W. 1968 to 1973. We were all jubilant because after so many years of waiting, something finally happened. Fighter pilots like to make things happen and are probably the worst, probably worse than most people at doing nothing. U.S. Air Force Major D.W. W. W. W. 1967 to 1973. You guys made the biggest positive change in our sojourn in North Vietnam, and we can never repay you for taking that. risk thanks and I'll read one more this is US Air Force First Lieutenant Larry Lucky Chesley Sonte P.OW camp 1966 to 1973 I was captured in 1966 and spent the next 2,495 days just short of seven years as a P.O.W I was at Sonte we had prayed for months that God would move us to a better camp he did on July 14th

I guess a person needs to be careful what he prays for. He might get it. We loaded in the trucks and went to a better camp which fulfilled our prayers. Then the raid came. We were blessed once more. We were moved to a better camp in Hanoi where we had big rooms, about 48 of us in a room. We could now teach each other things such as languages, choir, movie. We told movies.

And we had programs on each Sunday and also for Christmas, Easter, 4th of July, Marine Day, etc. when we got packages, and that was not very often, those who got packages shared them with those that received nothing. I never received any packages or letters for four years. Yes, for four years, my wife and family did not know if I was alive or dead. I am eternally grateful to the heroic things that the men of the Sante raid did for our country and those incarcerated in Vietnam. I don't know that came the fourth Allied Allied command.

Their motto was return with honor. Yeah, it's outstanding. Yeah, and as I said, I was just hitting the highlights. I didn't even cover all these POWs, the impact that you all had conducting this operation, which, by the way, I haven't mentioned, the operation name was Ivory Coast. That was the name of the operation.

But, you know, the impact that you all had was just incredible and amazing to be able to sit here, and talk to you someone from a raid that I've studied and read about for many, many years and just an incredible opportunity to be able to sit here and talk to you and hear these stories from you. For everybody out there, the book is just an incredible piece of history, and it's available on Kindle if you're one of these digital people. There's an audiobook, traditional print, you know, whether you want soft cover, hard cover, but just an incredible book.

Go out and get it. We just covered a fraction of the stories today. It's an amazing, amazing piece of history. Thank you. Probably a good place to wrap it up. Echo, Charles, do you have any questions? I got nothing. Outstanding.

Good to meet you. Thank you. That's a rare occasion. I was going to ask about the wine tasting, but that wasn't your thing, right? No, we'd have to ask Captain Charles. Charlie Plum or maybe Will Reader, Bill Reader about that one. Do we know what we learn in a wine tasting class? Do any of us know that?

Probably different ways that wine are made to taste different ways. No, I think he goes deeper. When you talk to the POWs, and we've talked to POWs, the deal. That's come next time because I don't know. The amount of focus that they have on food is incredible. They go through everything that they've ever eaten in their whole lives. Just literally they have, they'll talk about menu. They'll prepare a Christmas Eve dinner menu for months.

Right. And just think about what they're going to eat. I mean, because those guys were getting fed, you know, these little little balls of rice with pieces of wood in it. Yeah, yeah. They'd be happy if there was a bug in there because they'd get a little extra protein. No kidding. Yeah, that's amazing.

I know I'm due to have those guys back on the podcast. It'll be, it'll be awesome to be able to ask them, you know, what they remember about about this and how it would. impacted them but amazing story Terry you got any final thoughts you want to share no I you know it was a team effort from the guys that's supporting us I mean when you think about how many people were involved in the Sante raid 56 guys were on the ground but we had I'd say 5600 helping us guys that were on the ships you know we had their aircraft came from three different air-proying carriers, and I think it was six or seven bases.

And it was a joint effort. I mean, there were so many people involved in it. But what's interesting is nobody knew what was going on. They were all compartmentalized. They were all compartmentalized. Colonel Sidnor or Colonel Simons and General Manor had a letter from the Joint Chiefs of Staff that said if these guys need anything, give it to them, no questions ask. And that's what they hand carried to every base they went to. and there was no questions.

They never was turned down on anything they requested. And, you know, so that's how high in the echelon it went, but also how many people lower in the echelon had an impact and helped with the Sonté raid. And some of them probably didn't even know they were doing it because of the secrecy. Well, you barely knew you were doing it until a few hours before. Yeah, that's the part, you know, an hour before,

we took off is when we knew where we were going. But security was for her own benefit. Absolutely. So, you know, I've never questioned why they kept it a secret. I was just glad they did, you know. Well, I'm glad we can hear about the secret now, and thank you for joining us out here. My pleasure. It's been a real honor to be to all the veterans out there.

Thank you for your service to this great country. I know we got some ruffery roads out there, but we also have been through them before and we'll survive. We just have to pick up our bootstraps and chug on. Well, you all have given us lessons learned, and thank you for your service and for your contribution to America and for your contribution to special forces and really to special operations as a whole. as I said you and your brothers in arms that conducted this operation

you made a huge impact not only like I said to the POWs but you made a huge impact to the morale of the country and you made a huge impact to special operations and our trajectory in history

so thank you for coming on and thank you for everything that you and your fellow Sontay Raiders have done. We will not forget you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. And with that, Terry Buckler has left the building.

Pretty awesome to be able to sit down and talk to him, Echo. Yeah. How did you feel about that whole scenario, not knowing where you're going to execute this massive mission? And you don't know where you're going until an hour before you go. Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, kind of, there's a lot to think about it to start with where it's one of those things where it's almost like I would imagine anyway, that your mind just kind of goes to, okay, I'm here to essentially do a mission. And so it kind of blocks that.

Of course, you can be wondering. I would imagine. I don't know. But of course you're imagining what you're going to do. But either way, it's like it forces your mind to just be prepared for kind of anything. but it's still very off-putting to know. This is what I thought about even more so, though, than that is.

So you know how he started his business afterwards? Right? And it's like, oh, digitizing, like, documents. It's like, oh, bro, you didn't start, like, some tactical shooting course or, you know, something like, but it just goes to show where, like, even Tilt, wasn't he, like, a reporter afterwards? Yeah, TIL was a reporter?

For a full career, by the way. Yeah. So it just goes to show like how a military man, kind of like a jiu-jitsu man, is like, bro, you don't know. Like he can be anybody. And he can go and perform and do these crazy things. Hold the Guinness Book of World Records for quickest kill and whatever you said there.

And then go to his quote unquote normal life and just start printing or digitizing printed documents. Just like in Jiu-Jitsu, you're like, Like, man, this guy, he's kicking my ass. He must be some sort of a, like, I don't know, construction guy or maybe like some real hard job. And he's like, oh, no, he's an accountant. Okay, all right. And it just paints that picture more, you know. And there's something to be said for, that's the way veterans have done it for a long time.

I mean, the World War II veterans came home and they went and got jobs doing things, you know. They went back to school. They did the GI Bill. Like, you don't have to, you know, not everyone's going to come home and start a tactical shooting company. You know, like that's not, that's not the normal thing. What makes it seem normal is you know when someone owns a tactical shooting company that they were a veteran.

So you're like, oh, well, everyone that's a veteran must start a tactical shooting company. That's not necessarily true. That's how it feels. It feels that way. It feels that way because there's no one that went to college and, studied, you know, studied economics and then started a tactical shooting company, right? That's true. So you don't have that data in your head.

Yeah. So you think, well, oh, this guy's got a tactical shooting company. He was a veteran. Another guy has a tactical shooting company and he's a veteran. Another guy has, so all veterans must start tactical shooting companies. No, a lot of veterans go and start, well, data processing companies. And I work with, I mean, I work with a lot of companies where I work with veterans all the time. that, you know, we're talking about their business.

We're talking about what they do. And then occasionally, oh, yeah, well, I was in the Army or, oh, I was in the Marine Corps. And they have a totally separate job. And they have a different career. And that's very normal. Yeah. It's not abnormal. Yeah.

It's actually more normal. It's more normal to do that than it is to start a tactical shooting company. Very, it's more normal. Yeah. And even, and there's more to, I don't mean to put too fine of a point on it, but of course, tactical shooting, okay. But like any kind of adventurous, and this is brought just my experience, like the bias that came from my experience with meeting all these guys where you can Micah Think, doing all these,

all these adventurous things now, you know, where it's like you go through these crazy missions or all these crazy military experiences, you come home and boom, let's switch missions into some other, quote unquote, adventurous scenario, you know? And a lot of people, a lot of us, or not us, but a lot of people do that. Yeah. We see that, you know. I think it's your awareness. bias.

Yeah. Because when you become aware of something that sounds like that, you go, what's that person's background? Oh, they were a veteran. That makes sense. You don't look at an accountant and say, whoa, I wonder what military branch they were in when they probably were. There's a decent chance that they were in the military.

There's all kinds of veterans out there working. I mean, I meet veterans all the time when I go and work with companies. Companies, just so you know, companies have veteran programs inside their company. So I'll work with a financial company, and inside their financial company, they have like a veterans group. And they'll say, hey, can we spend 15 minutes doing a Q&A with you? And I go, oh, with who? And they go, oh, we have a veterans group. We have, you know, of our 2,000 employees, we have 274 veterans.

And we sell insurance or we manufacture widgets or whatever, but they have a bunch of veterans at work there. And that's every, I mean, when I work with big tech companies, they have veterans. When I work with financial companies, they have construction companies. Everyone's got veterans. It's just that it stands out in your head when someone owns a shooting company because you think it's cool. So it's normal for a veteran to come home and do what they're going to do. That's the way the world works. And this is a good example.

The interesting thing about his career was just it's almost like this guy was in the NFL for one season. and he didn't play any games except the Super Bowl, right? Like that's the kind of incredible. And then that was it. He retired after the Super Bowl, one game. And went out there, won the championship, and then carried on with the rest of his life. Did three years. Yeah.

Three years. Like, and doing that such a high profile mission, probably one of the most, well, the most high profile mission for special operations at that time. Yeah. It's amazing. That is. It's crazy. So, good stuff.

Awesome to be able to talk with him. And this is a hugely influential mission for special operations. We appreciate you supporting us, by the way, out there. If you want to support us and you want to support yourself. Go to joccofield.com. Get some of these beverages, by the way. Freaking. I did not get a lot of sleep last night.

I got stuck in my. in my roller coaster of brain thought, which is a, which is not, I can't stand it. Yeah. You know, I can't stand it. And I, the, here's what was a bummer was I, I had bad sleep the night before and I was like, oh, I had a good workouts. And I thought, I'm going to be asleep like a baby and I'm going to bed early, like, you know, 930. I'm getting ready to go to sleep.

I'm thinking, oh, this is going to be great. I'm going to feel great. I went to bed, but, you know, 10, 10, I'm laying in bed in the day. darkness and I've got the eyes are shifting back and forth, you know, counting the walls and thinking about this and thinking about that and thinking about this and thinking about this. So that happened until one o'clock in the morning. Wait, so when that happens, then, okay, so this, because that happens. That's a real thing where, but is it the kind where you're thinking about one or two things

over and over and over and over again? I can describe this. This is the way it feels. Have you ever been to Disneyland? No. Okay. There's a ride there. It's called Space Mountain.

And in Space Mountain, you're on a roller coaster, but you can't see very much in front of you. It's in the dark, basically. So you're suddenly you're going in one direction, then you'd go in a different direction, you'd go in a different direction. So that's what my mind is like. I'm on a roller coaster.

It's dark, but I just keep seeing, like a new idea comes up, then another new idea, then another new idea, then another new idea, and it just doesn't stop. And maybe sometimes it does circle back to the original idea, which just starts the whole process again. but I am getting, I probably slept two and a half hours last night, which sucks.

I wanted to sleep more, but here I am. Here I am. So, and I drank, this is, I normally don't have two goes in one podcast, but I did today. So you may need some clean energy in your life. You don't need to have necessarily some jittery energy. You don't need to have, you don't need to have sugar intake. You don't need to give yourself type 2 diabetes. No.

You can just get yourself a go. Get yourself a go. Joccofuel.com. Get yourself some milk. I'm going to go home and have milk, by the way, because I haven't eaten yet because I fasted. Yeah. So we're feeling that.

Yeah. And especially I said this before. If you're lifting weight or exertion. Which I did lift this morning. By the way, bad workout. Not a great workout. Like, I mean, I was borderline. Hey, am I going to get the benefit from this workout right now?

Yeah. The answer was finally yes. So how many days of like shitty sleep do you have to go through to actually get a bad because you can go one day junk sleep and still get a sick workout? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. But I will get good sleep tonight.

That's the nice thing. Bro, for me two days. If I go the second day, bad sleep, sorry. Workouts, workout. Might as well not even do it. Yeah, junk workout. It depends on what I kind of, if I go into it and get kind of like a little bit. of anger going that I'm pissed then I might get jack some more steel but I did a weak workout

but you do you are any of your work because it's different kind of workouts but are any of your workouts um like based on I for lack of better term like a bodybuilding scenario okay so put it this way then and tell me if this applies to you your workouts are you so if I do I don't know chess Monday where we at and then I don't feel the pump and I'm tired that is like there's something wrong with me physically whether I didn't get enough sleep I didn't eat enough I'm not hydrate or whatever but if you don't get the pump that's a big indicator and then there's other stuff where it's like you just feel weak and just not into it mentally all this stuff there's other other factors but do you have any workout where it's like

you're you feel the physical like pump versus if you don't I'd say I kind of feel that on a lot of workouts yeah you know yeah like dips you feel dips you feel good but muscle ups too like when you get done with muscle ups you feel like kind of of jacked all the way around oh for yeah so you know what when Jason Gardner said the other day that he takes a one discipline go pill in the morning that's seen I haven't tried it yet but that seems like a good move yeah just to get a little a little kicker yeah I haven't tried it yet I I have them before I'm like going to speak and I don't want to have a bladder filled with liquid yeah distracting your

but you can feel those things yeah feel those things for real so there you go You want some milk, you want some joint warfare, you want some krill oil. Go to joccofuel.com. You can get the drinks at Wawa, by the way. We're moving to some other convenience stores right now. Also some other, some other big news coming on the front for Jocko Fuel. Vitamin Shop, you can get it there as well. So check that out.

Joccofuel.com. What else? Also, origin USA. Yeah. American manufactured goods, durable goods, as it were. I didn't know what that meant, by the way. Durable goods. It's like clothes, work clothes, pants, shoes, that kind of stuff.

The new hunting line thing. Yeah. When is that going down? Because look, do I hunt? You know, it's debatable. Probably not. I don't even think it's debatable. Right.

Well, either way, it can be used for other stuff. We will have the hunting line this summer, late summer, to be prepared for the hunting season in September. That's hunting so well there's there's other hunt but the the hunting season we're aiming for is that September hunting season So yeah, we're coming is there different hunting seasons for different places different places different animals Oh, okay. Okay, all right so there's a whole bunch of things and it can go You know in it Yes different different animals different weapons different seasons you got a bunch of stuff to contend with And we'll be making stuff for all of it

A very cool venture working with some great people Working with Cam Haynes which is awesome I mean he's just a machine so it's it's that guy is possessed and obsessed with hunting and so it's great to have him Giving guidance on making the gear exactly As it should be made. Yeah, no compromise hey it has to be able to perform if you're gonna keep up with Cam Haynes Yeah, in the woods Like that clothing has to keep up with campaigns that clothing is thinking to itself all right

I'm gonna be put through the ringer yeah so that's what we're talking about it's like the highest possible standard yeah and like as it applies to actual hunting because let's face it when I'm looking at that thing I'm I'm pretty much only concerned on about how it's gonna look on me well when I'm doing whatever I'm be doing with it but um yeah that make that makes sense campaigns I recently connected with him on all my online too so there you go got a new friend do yeah hell yeah boys so origin usa.com if you want to check some of that stuff out yeah also jih Tis stuff oh yeah by the way of course all made in america this big deal that's a huge deal main and north carolina we're we're making it

unbelievable bringing it back also there you go jaco has a store jaco store dot com that's where you can get your discipline equals freedom shirts and hats and merch it's good stuff this quality it's not just It's not just like My daughter always says that stuff You know, it's weird how kids nowadays Well, let's face it My kids and their friends I'm sure it's, you know, most kids were

Their terminology is like You know merch is like obviously we know what that means It's short for merchandise Which is a specific thing So we know the translation They don't even know They're just like merch It's merch

That's the official word, you know My daughters speak in a kind of their own language And I went and saw one of my daughters up at my middle daughter up at college and got to listen to her and her friends. And they have their own words, their own language. And it's pretty funny to listen to. Oh, yeah. Suss.

Oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is it? Suspect. Yeah, which is suspicious. Like, right? So we know that. We know Suss, like, oh, that looked kind of suss.

So I'd be like, okay, obviously that girl meant suspicious. Suspicious. Also like, oh, that's a suspect situation. But even one of those things could be suss. But suspect is a slang term derived from suspicious, right? Because suspect as a word is a person. No, but you could also say, oh, that chair is suspect whether it's going to. You wouldn't say suspicious.

You'd say that thing is suspect. No, you'd say suspicious. You could say that. You could say that. I'm pretty sure suspect is a noun. Well, I guess we'll have to go to the OED. I know you're an English major, but we might want to revisit that. Here's my hypothesis.

suspicious is the adjective suspect is the noun suss is like could go both ways the amalgam of the whole deal all right well your whole english literature understanding is suss at this time either way jocco store dot com is where you can get all this merch yeah but it's more than just merch it's like good it's quality it's like it's stuff you're supposed to actually wear and it's it's also uh you know part you know it's part of the game it's part of like you know if you're in the game it's part of the culture yeah it's part of the game part of being in the game I remember when we first kind of had the podcast that I would say like oh how'd you get into the game I still say that

I've been said in a while maybe I need to bring it back yeah how'd you get in the game and they oh I heard you on Rogan you know I heard you on Tim Ferriss or whatever you know how'd you get in the game my uncle told me or whatever it's real so there you go if you want to get the game Joclestor.com and represent. It's true. Also, subscribe

if you haven't already leave a review and you can subscribe to a bunch, not a bunch, but other podcasts as well that we're doing if we don't know

which ones. Jalco unraveling with Daryl Cooper. We're getting kind of crazy sometimes on those. Yeah. Getting kind of crazy with D.C.

That's how you got to roll. D.C.'s got a long trajectory of thought. I understand. By the way, I try to explain that to people. Yes. D.C.'s got a long

trajectory of thought he's he's gonna make his case over a extended period of time so if you if you hear him say something and when I say say something when you hear Daryl Cooper say something for three hours yeah he's only represent he that's like the warm up for him right you got to keep listening so keep listening to that and then you'll see that there's probably a more balanced overall picture but sometimes he seems a little bit you know you got to take got to get to listen to D.C. you got to listen to the man so Check out, check out that one, Jocko Unravelling, grounded podcast, Warrior Kid podcast.

We got the Jock Underground. Appreciate your support there. Jock Underground.com. If you want to support freedom of speech, you got to kind of pay attention to that. Right now we know we got Elon Musk. He just bought a chunk of Twitter. Hopefully that's a positive sign in the world.

Yeah, maybe he bought it to maybe influence more freedom of speech. I mean, that's the concept, right? Because that's what kind of he's about. that and putting rockets into space and making electric electrical cars made in America so there you go that's doconderground.com if you want to help us out there check out the YouTube channel check out psychological warfare check up flipside canvas Dakota Meyer Dakota Meyer we got to get he just went to Ukraine by the way whatever is Dakota Meyer he's a metal of honor recipient I was talking to him yesterday

he's like I just got back I'm like oh how was Ukraine he was in Kiev right dude I mean I was getting after it. So if you want to help support Dakota Meyer and all of his madness, go to Flipside Canvas.com, buy something cool to hang on your wall. That's what you should do, in my opinion. Got a bunch of books.

Check out the books, Who Will Go Into Sontake, P-O-W camp? That's what we covered today. We covered a fraction of it today, Terry Butler. Check that out. I written a bunch of books too, if you want to get some more of the conceptual ideas that I speak of. You can check out any of the books that I wrote,

You can check out. We have a leadership consultancy called Escalonfront. Escalonfront.com if you want to come check some of that out. We have an online academy for human beings that have to interact with other human beings. Go to extreme ownership.com. You got a question for me. Come and ask me. You can ask me on a Zoom call.

I'm there. You can just ask me your question about your boss, about your employee, about your girlfriend, about your boyfriend, about your kid, about your jihitsu tournament. whatever you want to ask me. We want to hear your questions. Go to extremeownership.com. We got a bunch of courses to take about how to utilize the dichotomy of leadership, about how to utilize cover and move.

Lots of important things. Extremeownership.com. If you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help out their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom. Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. It's a wonderful thing that helps out in incredible ways.

If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org. You can also check out Heroes and Horses.com, Micah Fink, who I think you mentioned a few minutes ago. Yeah. Because you're like, what is Micah Fink going to do when he gets done with his time in the SEAL teams? He's probably going to do something badass.

Yes, sir. So Heroes and Horses.com, check that out. As far as Echo and I go, we're both on. We're on Twitter, on the gram, we're on Facebook. We're possibly going to pull you into the algorithm, but we don't want you to get pulled into the algorithm. We want you to cut away from the algorithm. Echoes at Equichrall.

I am at Jocka Willink. You can also check out Terry Buckler. He's got a Facebook page. If you want to check out his Facebook page, see what he's up to. Facebook at Terry Buckler. And thank you once again. To Terry Buckler for coming on for sharing his experiences.

And thanks to Terry and the rest of the Sante Raiders, the mighty special forces, Green Brays, and the other support personnel, the pilots, the air crew that took the risks to attempt to rescue our fellow servicemen. And thanks to all the military personnel out there right now, who are willing to take risk to protect and secure freedom around the world and thanks for the work done by our police and law enforcement firefighters paramedics EMTs dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret service and all first responders who

sacrifice to protect and secure us and our way of life here at home and to everyone else out there remember some of the key lessons from Terry Buckler today add humor to your life Especially in tough situations. Be excellent in everything you do. Always train and improve. Be patient, but know when to be aggressive. Don't be a complainer. Don't be indispensable.

Be thankful for those who sacrifice for our freedom. And be prepared for death. Make sure the day that you meet your maker isn't the first time you've been introduced. because if you're prepared for death, you are free to live life fearlessly. And that is a good plan. So go out there and get after it. And until next time,

Zekko and Jocko. Out.