Jocko Podcast - 37: Vietnam Vet Navy SEAL Roger Hayden, War Stories

Episode Date: August 24, 2016

0:00:00 - Opening / Intro to Roger Hayden, Navy SEAL Vietnam Vet. 0:06:26 - Upbringing 0:08:29 - Into the Navy 0:10:13 - UDT 0:18:28 - 9th Infantry Situations 0:36:23 - Showing up at SEAL Team 1 0:41:26 - Back to Vietnam 0:48:19 - Blue on Blue Situation 0:52:44 - Leadership Take-Aways 0:55:20 - Canal Opp in '69 0:59:41 - After the Vietnam War 1:06:54 - ClosingSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

The names and the stories in this episode have been omitted to protect the privacy of the individuals involved. This is Jocko podcast number 37 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And with us tonight, I am honored to have retired Chief Warren Officer Roger Hayden here with us tonight as a guest. Now, unless you are in the SEAL teams or you were in the SEAL teams, then you likely don't know who Roger Hayden is. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and guarantee you don't know who Roger Hayden is. There's no book.

There's no movie. There's no social media. There's no one to Google. And I've talked before about how there's three types of guys in the SEAL team. The guys that built the reputation that the SEAL teams has the guys that maintain the reputation of the SEAL teams and then there's the guys that live off the reputation of the SEAL teams and usually those guys didn't contribute much to it in the first place But let there be no doubt Roger Hayden is without question without question one of the people, one of the men responsible for building the reputation of the SEAL teams. He did the massive heavy lifting and laid down the foundation of everything that the SEAL teams are in the jungles of Vietnam.

And he passed on lessons of combat written in blood that we carry to this day. one of the guys here Roger Hayden that truly forge the attitude that makes the SEAL teams what the SEAL teams are. And I'm going to tell you quickly how I first heard of Roger. So I was back, I was a new guy at SEAL Team 1. So it's 1991. And back then, no one, the SEALs weren't that popular yet. And the old SEAL UDT SEAL reunions were not that big of a deal. They were just kind of a small little gig down at,

down at like the Lions Club or something in National City. Real low-key. But the only guys, none of the younger SEALs went to them. It was all Vietnam SEALs, maybe a couple World War II guys. And I was down there with my running mate at the time. My good friend who was at SEAL Team 1, who I had gone through Buzz with a guy by the name of Chris. And we were just sitting around talking to some old Vietnam guys.

and we were getting pretty fired up. You know, it's kind of, there's, you know, once you pay the $10 fee to get into this gig, there's free beer, so we were a few beers deep, you might say, and we listen to stories. And again, we were new guys, this is in 1991. We never been in combat, so we were there to try and learn about the history and learn about the guys. And finally, me being young and dumb and pretty well buzzed, I asked these two Vietnam guys that we were sitting there talking to.

I said, hey, who was the most badass murdering motherfucker and seal in Vietnam? And both these guys looked at me and said, Roger Hayden. And I remembered that name. And when I actually met you for the first time, I'd met you a couple times,

but then when I actually worked with you for the first time, you were a lane grader on a platoon full mission profile. And that's actually the first time I learned, truly understood the concept of cover and move, which is a basic tactic which guys didn't know. No one had taught it to me. This was my second platoon.

I'd already been through a workup. I had the idea in my head, but hearing you say it, the way you described it, I said it clicked in my head and I never forgot it. And I actually wrote about it in the book, Extreme Ownership, and it's what I taught to all the seals that when I was putting through training, that's what I taught them.

One of those fundamental tactics. And so that's kind of my introduction to Roger Hayden. So Roger, I know you've actually literally never done an interview before. And I want to thank you for coming on. It's a true honor to have you on the podcast. So welcome. Yeah, Roger Hayden here. Thanks, Jock.

I really appreciate it, and you're one of my heroes, too. Different environment, different times that you kicked ass and took names too. I was just one of the boys in C.O. Team 1 when I got there and deployed a couple of times with them. And our environment was the jungle, and we got pretty good at it, and went out and hunted the bad guys. Nobody else in Vietnam, as far as I know, Army, Marines, or any of them were going to. go out at night, they would usually hold up in a base camp or somewhere like that. Well, we figured night times when they move around, that's when we're going to move around and see if we can find these guys and take them out. That's what we did. It isn't one guy. It's a team effort. Everybody

works hard. I had some great, great buddies in mine that were, I mean, my gun partner was a stoner guy, and I was a 60 guy. Between the two of us, he shot 1,000 a minute, 9, or 5, 5,000, I mean, a 7-62, my 60, it worked out well. Last platoon I was in, we carried four 60s and five stoners. And if you didn't carry a stoner or a 60, you carried a 16 with a 203 on it or XM-148 for back in the eight guys. Say those numbers again of how many guys were carrying 60s and stoners? Four of us were carrying 60s and five guys carried stoners out of a 14-man platoon. That's what we operated in.

So for those you civilians out there that are listening, that's a lot of fire. power. That's a way you bring the thunder. And so where'd you grow up though? Before you got in the teams, where'd you grow up? Basically my roots and what I look at, my dad was a carpenter, so he moved quite a bit around. But it was a place called Ronan, Montana by the Flathead Lake in Montana. Would you have the mission range in a real, real brief area? I grew up green breaking horses and stuff like that and building tree houses and just working on my grandpa's farm and my uncle's ranch and stuff like that. So that's kind of where I grew up at. I lived a while in Phoenix, Arizona and stuff like that and says here in the next thing, sports. So I played football outside linebacker. I boxed for two

years in high school and I swam. My dad worked on the tram in Palm Springs and when he was there, I went to Pond Springs High School, so I got on the water polo team there. So that's how you got a little comfortable in the water. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So at what point, what year was it when you actually decided you were going to join the Navy? It was 1965. And did you already know about the SEAL teams?

Well, no. Nope. Nobody knew about him. My dad, like you said, he was a carpenter, but he was in UD3, and it was at Swamon. the Incheon Harbor in Vietnam, but I didn't, I'm not Vietnam, Korea, but I didn't know anything about it because he never talked about it. So your dad was a frog bearer. Yeah, but I mean, that's, I knew guys that knew him, older, older guys. I mean, when I was a young guy, like you said, you were when you're talking to, you know, so anyway, but he never said much about it,

but when I was a kid, you know, I watched the bridge of the river Kwai and the guns of never owned. And I also seen the Marines hitting beaches and the Rangers getting wiped out. I went, okay, if you're going to fight, you want to get something that you think you're going to come back with. So that's why I became a frogman. And we didn't go through buds. It was UDTRA underwater demolition training. So. And then you got, so you joined the Navy.

Did you go straight to, straight to underwater demolition training? No, no. Back in the day, they wanted you to have an A school. Okay. So I got out of boot camp in 65, went to North Island in Coronado for about seven months. waiting for my radio men school and was lucky enough to go to 22 weeks of radio men school and then went from there to USS Paul Revere for about four months and then went to training and I started training January 6th 1967

and how big was your class when you showed up to that there was about I don't know 200 of us maybe maybe 150 how many guys made it there were about 30 of us that made it which was pretty good and it was colder than shit. I don't know how you guys did when you went to training jocco, but we made a pack that we weren't going to let anybody quit and we did everything we could to make that happen. And some guys did make it through that. We shouldn't have. Yeah. That's one of the things I've talked about with Laif is you see that. And I was never

instructor at Buds, but eventually you say, you know, you don't want to help people through. They're not going to make it through on their own. You don't want them. You know, you got to get guys that are going to get through it on their own. Yeah, but, you know, I mean. Yeah, I know. We got close and we just figured, you know, I know. I had a guy that was a previous fleet guy and he had been to Buds before and I became

friends. He was a second class, mature guy. And I thought, yeah, this guy, I'm going to kind of follow his lead a little bit, you know. Second night of hell week, he quit. I was just, I was laughing. I'm like, go, I'm like, here's a mature guy, 27 years old. You know, I was a kid and he's quitting.

Ridiculous. So then you, but when you got done with. the initial UDTRA, you went to, you checked into UDT, right? Yeah, UDT 12. It's really funny because me and a good friend of mine up in Flagstaffs where he joined in, we decided we're going to be Marines, you know, so, and his dad, you go out of Canal, you name it. His uncle's D.I. He's a Marine, but he talked me into it too, so we went up to join the Marines. Well, that office was closed, and right across the hallway was the,

Navy recruited and there was a boat's made of the line, you know, lean against the door and he goes, what do you boys do? Well, we're going to join Marines, you know, which, you know, it's all good. And he goes, well, ask the other guy, well, what your parents' background, everything, Marines, Marines, so he knew what he was going to. He said, how about you? Well, my dad was in the Navy, a chief, and he said, come here, son. So my buddy went off to be a Marine. I went in the Navy, that close. Yeah, yeah. I think we all have a. story like that I know really close though yeah I had a buddy Bruce we were we saw like some some ship pulled in and we saw guys in Marine uniforms and we were like let's go join let's just

go join that's how effective that recruiting tool is oh yeah it's a luckily it wasn't open you know but the Marine and the Navy office is open so recruiting office and so you showed up at UDT and then what was the schedule there I mean the Vietnam War was already on so now it's like is at 1966 now? No, I didn't got, got one into UDT 67. I graduated from training a single mile in 1967

and that's when I went over to have UDT12. Yeah, the war had been on. And then we had heard a little bit about CIL team, but still didn't nobody knew much about it because we're, everybody I graduated with, East Coast and West Coast, you went to a UDT team first.

Then you did a trip with UDT, then you came back and got in the sale team. And how was that, How was that first trip with UDT? Oh, it's great. We did a nine-month trip, and we had different debts that you went to in Vietnam. Like, the first thing we did is go to Denang, a place called Camp Tensha. And we worked up at Fuwe, Wei, Quangtree, Dung Ha, all over the northern part of South Vietnam,

doing demo work, different things, you know what I mean. And then we left that debt and went on the USS Dyshenko, and we did about 100. And then from there we went we went we some of us went down to a debt in the Will those hydrographic reconstit or were they just were you looking at the beach Perpendicur old school perpendicular yep you're right parallel not perpendicular but most of them were parallel we didn't do any perpendicular is that your combat off you know what I mean So so for those you that don't know the original job of one of the original jobs the UDT was to find out how deep the water is off of a beach so uh an obstacle And if there's any obstacles there that could trip up a boat that's coming in. And so you said you did 110 miles of that?

Yeah, three months. And so you basically have to swim with a lead line. So you have a cord with a piece of lead on the bottom of it. You've got different markings on it to tell you how deep, how long it is. And you sit there and you swim along. Every 25 meters. And you have a beach party on the beach. And it has a swimmer line going out.

and we had it hooked to an IBS in case we got it or something that IBS could turn and get us out of the rail to grab onto the of course it was only a nine and a half horsepower engine so you didn't go out very fast if you had it you'd be able to swim faster but every 25 meters you'd take soundings sounding sounding soundings when you got back to the Dyshinko then the cotographer which I was lucky enough to be one you'd do up a hydrographic chart right when I got the UDT 12 you know you're pretty regimented and I'll call it that was Udutari, but you're pretty regiment, bud. When we got there, our platoons weren't even formed up, and you were kind of lost at sea, you know?

I mean, nobody's really telling you what you have to do. You're not in the platoon yet, and it was kind of floating. You know what I mean? We went up and did lifeguard stuff for the Marines when they did landings up by Pendleton and stuff like that. It wasn't really a lot to do. You know, we're going, Jesus, you know, played volleyball a lot and stuff, you know, ran around your UDTs and.

coral boots and you know so then we started forming up and how uditk worked is that you'd they'd be home for nine months and then the whole team would deploy and relieve the team that was out there like we relieved udt 11 and 11 would come back nine months later they would come out and relieve us so it was nine month deployments and almost port and starboard he didn't have like a year and a half two years of workup it was about nine months nine months nine months home with a workup and there was the workup what did you do during the workup? Oh, we did everything. We did recons.

We did demolition raids. We did river recons. We just How many guys were in a UDT platoon? 18 or 20? Maybe it might have been 20. It was quite a bit because you got the swimmer line beach party and all that other stuff. That's why we did the old art platoons.

We always tried to get a couple extra guys because we needed him to cover more beach. Same deal. Yeah. And everything you did, did and we'd do just, it was just a lot. You know what I mean?

And it was a lot of physical work too. You know what I mean? Everything. UDT, actually, when we went through training, I think we did about 50 times more swimming than the guy's doing buds now because that's what we were.

We were a frogman, you know, so. And that's a lot of, if you do more swimming than we did in buds, that's a lot of swimming. I'm glad I went through buds instead of that. Well, the surf out there in January, where it's pretty cold. Yeah, there's no doubt.

When you were there, you were telling me before about some of the kind of hooking on to some of the conventional units on some of their operations that they did with, I think it was the ninth infantry. Yeah, so we were down in the Delta, and we were doing river recons, and I think we're the only ones that ever did it with this. They called them the darts, and it would look like a jet ski, but you laid on it, and you guided it with your feet. It had a 355 degree camera up on top and a fathed almanor on the bottom of it

and it had a piece of aluminum like this, of course, so you wouldn't get hit with the props and stuff and the handles were on the right and left. You know what I'm saying? And they went up to about 30 knots. What they would do is take two of us, either by chopper or something, drop us in a canal. We'd come down that canal.

Then we got back, we'd do a chart of that canal. And that would let the 19-10, cemetery in their riverine boats know if they could go up there and do a lanyer or not that's one of the things we did of course you only went down the river maybe once or twice and you didn't go down it anymore that was stupid would you care for would you carry like a sidearm when you're on that yeah we had a 45 in the front of the cover there and that's what we had we had a black jacket on a helmet udtis and tight it with her feet would you do it at night or in the daytime a daytime Oh, damn.

And then, you know, with that 350-degree camera across canals coming into pagodas, anything that was a known thing you could find on a map, we'd take a picture of as we went down. You tried to stay at the same speed all the way down because otherwise your chart wouldn't be good, you know. But we could, we only did that, and we couldn't do it too much. So, I mean, just the different rivers and different canals and stuff. So we got bored. So we started going out with the 9th Infantry on those river boats to be their demolition guys, blow up bunkers. And sometimes they'd put log dams across the river.

We'd blow those up and stuff. And we took some heavies on that doing that. So what kind of situations did you get in when you're riding up with the 9th infantry? Well, we got caught in ambush one time. They usually had about seven, about five, six, seven boats. They had a boat in the front called an Alpha boat. it looked like your old monitor in the Civil War and then they had like the landing craft

they had those with bar armor on the side and then they had 50s up on top and back they had that all built up and they had bar armor so that if a B40 rocket punched you and they had real thick styrofoam so that it would just be channeled into one area if they hit them from the sides

then they had 30s, 2 30s on each side each one of the landing craft type of boats that they put the troops in. And right in the middle of that was what they call a monitor. And you've seen that, that's over on Sism Field. That's a great big boat. And then at the back they had another alpha boat. And then all the ones in between.

So who was the, was it, were those Navy boats or were they Army boats? No, they're Navy. There's Navy guys doing that. I wouldn't have that job for anything. Yeah, no. So anyway, we was going up and a group had won up before us, dropped their people off. And they came right by us as soon as we got by them.

they opened up on us and it was a bad day. We had 30 killed and 70 wounded Americans, yeah. And like the Alpha boat ahead of us, everybody but one guy was killed on it and that boat was floating by and still had the American flag flying.

There's one guy on the back on the 30 still shooting. Damn. I mean, it was, you know, it still almost cracks me up and tears me up when I think about that. But it was just, that's the American fighting guy. You know, that's the way we are.

And I'll give those riverboat guys all the credit in the world on those tangle boats because they're just sitting targets, you know. And then after we got hit, of course, we all got, we were in the fourth boat back, and we heard number one boats hit. That was the alpha boat, number two boats hit, number three boats hit, we're number four boats. There were three of us UDT guys in that boat, and I remember looking over a guy named going, we're fucked.

Excuse me, I shouldn't have said it. Anyway, then we got hit, blew us all down and stuff, and one of my buddies had about 53 pieces of shrapnel, and so I crawled over to him and hit him with morphine, got up, and the Navy guy got blown off at 30, you know, so I was shooting that until I ran out of rounds and shit. Well, the other guy, no, that was B2. I got hit right.

The other guy saw Bucke all messed up, so he goes over and didn't see my pin through his collar, so he hits him with another shot of morphine. He lived, though. And then me and We got We just started shooting Over the sides

And the army guys Wouldn't get up and shoot They were handing us up Weapons to shoot Well sometimes And giving them to us And we were up there Hammering down

Yeah Sometimes you got a frog man up Yeah Then the Cobras came in Army Cobras And hoised everything down Real good So were they

Were they doing like an actual Landing That's what the purpose was And they were going to get A beach foothold And work an area For a while Work

Make a sweep through there And don't ask me why the Marines weren't doing it. I tell you why the Marines weren't doing it, was they were holding the DMZ up in North. Man. The Marines, that's their job. But the 9th Infantry did a good job.

They're good troops. You know what I mean? Well, I know you haven't listened to this podcast much, but I know you have read the book that Laif and I wrote, and you know that I have nothing but nothing but the most utter highest respect for the Marines and the Army units that we work with were just phenomenal. and the sacrifices that they made and the bravery they showed on the battlefield was unbelievable on a daily basis. So I know it's definitely something.

You think about this. Now, think of the training that we went through just for UDT to start with, and then I came back from UDT and went through SEAL team, so you get all the, what you guys call SQT, we called it Cadbury back in the day. And then you go over again, you've already had your feet in the gun. Now you figure these Army guys go through basic training. And a lot of them had right over to Vietnam. You know what I mean?

And they could be in Shao Valley anywhere. And where the crap really hit the brick. Can you imagine that? We had the training. We were volunteers. We volunteered for what we were going to do. We weren't just saying, here you go. We knew exactly where we were going to go.

And we wanted to go. You know what I mean. So big difference. You know, another weird thing about Vietnam. And I've talked a lot about Vietnam books from Vietnam, guys that were in Vietnam here. And, you know, the fact that these guys would rotate out, you'd be in the middle of a deployment. You just, you know, guys were just rotating out all the time.

You know, it wasn't like what you just described, which you did in the SEAL teams and in UDT, and what we still do in the SEAL teams now is you get with your guys, you go through a workup with those guys together as a team. Then you go on deployment together as a team, and you come home together as a team. And the Army guys, they would just, yeah, they're just filling in the holes. And a guy would go home and another guy would take his place. So you never work with us, you know. you could have a guy on a patrol with you, two or three guys,

you'd never work with before and you're going out on patrol with him. So it's, I don't like that system. I like the way we do it. Reminds me of Forrest Gump, you know, that was a pretty good little thing. What happened there? No, the new guys that came into the platoon and, you know, oh, yeah, when he was checking in. Yeah.

Everybody's already been there already, and they're just coming in. They hadn't worked up with these guys, nothing. They were just showing up, you know, popping in. We actually did take a couple guys in, when I was in Ramadi. we took a couple guys that just showed up new guys and we just had to slowly you know we put them well did you have people that were taken out that's why they came in yeah they were just guys that were filling it we did we lost guys but they were just guys that yeah they they got sent to seal team three from sqt and when they got there there's no one there so they brought them over on deployment

a couple guys it was like two or three guys and we just you know okay here's we made them work in the compound for a while and then maybe bring them out they'd be a turret gunner on an and maybe eventually let them do it a little bit more. Yeah, that's perfect. That's what you should do it. And so any other memories? Vietnam U.S.T stuff? Yeah, so another time we were,

we used to be on the front boat, the alpha boat, because there were the first ones that saw the log dams and had to blow up bunkers and shit, and we had about a big stack of C4 in the back, you know, the average action ships, you know. And all of a sudden the whole boat. shook like this. We got a B-40 rocket

right in one of the exhaust tubes and we started sinking. So we did the coxswain ran at the shore and everything and we were shooting back and everything

but the fucking boat was sinking. And if that had been about another eight inches higher to hit all that C4 but we landed and then we swam off

and got out in the river in this other they called it a zippel boat it was like the troop carrier bolt but it was all napalm or not napalm whatever they got in flame thores you know oh okay flamethrower boat okay and this thing just went on the beach you know and we

went and climbed up on that we got out of there dang us and the crewman that was that was another moment of excitement you know it's it's just to go off of what you just said too and with the training that you get in special operations seal teams whatever rangers s f because, you know, a lot of times we in special operations get a lot of praise for doing what we do and that's great and everything. But like what you're talking about, being in a conventional unit, it's the same thing over in Iraq and Afghanistan. Being a conventional guy, it's no joke. I mean, it's, in many cases, they're doing a much more dangerous job. I mean, even, you know, a logistics job, something like that where they're exposing themselves on a regular basis.

So anybody out there that's a civilian that thinks that the conventional guys aren't doing, you know, aren't taking as many risks as the special operations guys. I'm telling you right now, they absolutely are. They absolutely are. And of course, there's things that all special ops guys do that step it up as well. But everybody pays a price and everybody takes a lot of risk when they go over there. And it sounds like it was the same thing when you had the 9th infantry rolling up the river. Yeah, those guys were good.

They did do jobs. And if I seem to say anything derogatory, I apologize for it. Oh, no, you didn't. Those boys were good. You didn't know, I'm just pointing out. A lot of times, again, people, I'm sitting here thinking, I'm thinking exactly what you just said. Here you are, you're UDT, you've been through all this training,

and you know, when that boat starts sinking, you're like, hey, I'm going to jump on the swim. There's regular Army guys there. They're thinking they haven't had the training that you had, and yet they're still in the same, almost the same exact situation. Exactly. So one other thing in UDT were doing a beach recon, and I was a photographer, so I'm up in front with another guy,

and I have this big huge piece. a plexiglass I'm doing all the backshore information on but I'm ahead of them we're putting in the stakes so the guys behind us can hit every 25 meters and do their soundings and stuff well we didn't usually we had

Arvin which are your South Vietnamese Army or we had Marines that would do screening for us you know when we were doing the Beatricons we couldn't get either one of them so we had two of our own guys doing it so they were walking going behind It was all a lot of sand dunes and stuff like that on the beach, you know, trees, little forest and stuff.

Well, we almost walked right into an L-shaped ambush that they had set up for us, except the two guys back here. They had a spire hole back here so that when we fell back from the ambush, if any of us were still living, these guys would get us, right? They hit these guys. So it made them open up, which made them open up earlier, and then we leapfrog down and got out of their. but that was a few moments of excitement too. And that's when I got back to the USS Dysenko and I went, you know, screw this naked warrior shit. Demi S-16 camming me up and let me go out and hunt these guys at night.

I don't like running down the beach and UDTs and, you know, my coral boot shooting an M79 keeping heads down and shit. You know what I mean? Yeah. It was a, but I was just UDT then, so I didn't talk too much about it, you know. I wasn't seal. So you get back from that deployment. Oh, yeah.

Every month when I was on the deployment, me and a guy named B. We'd put in a chip to go to SEAL team, and they'd just chew our asses out. He ain't going anywhere until we get back, you know? All right. So we'd wait a month and put another chit in. Well, when we got back, boom, we went right to Cadry. We checked into SEAL Team 1 and went into CADRI. And the cadre training was what we call now SDQ.

S-Q-T, S-Q-T, S-T-T, S-I-T, all your IEDs, all that stuff. And actually, on the Alamo River and a few other places, they had it set up to be exactly like it would be in Vietnam with little watchtowers. And they had a whole village that was in amongst all the shit that's on the side of the Alamo River and stuff. It was really good training. Yeah.

And then we'd do, they'd ambush us. We'd ambush them. They'd come down in, you know, Sam. We had there and stuff like that. And just like on a, you know, when you do an ambush on a river, you always want to try to do it at a curve and hit him. That way the sandpans after you hit them and stuff were flowing to the bank, not keep on going down the river and you can't get nothing out of them. Just all kinds of little tricks. And what they did, our cadry that ran us through the, our cadry instructors were guys that had just gotten back and they pulled them out of the platoon to do that for about six months.

before they went back into another platoon. So we were getting continuous guys right out of the field in Vietnam, which is real good in different areas, too. The triple gannopee shit, your mangrove stuff, and, you know, the rice patties and all that stuff. Where would you do a bulk of the training? Oh, out of an island. And then we'd go up to Coimaca for map and compass and stuff.

And then a bunch of us went through what they called seal advanced training, which is for your proof program, which was five months long and that was all trade craft medical and stuff like that and really, really good got really honed in more even on the IEDs and stuff like that

and booby trap trails, intel trails, all kinds of stuff, yeah. It's interesting as you talk about that how much of that stuff carried on to you. When I showed up at SEAL Team 1 you know, we did that all, we did booby trap trails.

You know, there was no war. There hadn't been a war going on for 20 years when I got there, you know, than the goal for, but we still did booby trap tails. We did point man courses. We did the medical stuff. We did river ambushes. I mean, it's, it's awesome that that, and there was no, it wasn't really

written down anywhere. That's like, all. You should have had two weeks of advanced demo and kitchen table demo and stuff like that. Yeah, because we set all that up and SEAL Team 1, I know what you had. Should have still been going. But that's, that's awesome that it lasted that long, you know, with no, because the weird thing about

Seal Team is we didn't used to have anything written down. I mean, there was barely anything written down. And so all that, all that knowledge was passed word of mouth from guy to guy to guy. And that's, I think we've corrected that now, where we capture more of the stuff. Pretty much, yeah. But you know, you ever want to fight Rangers? Get the Ranger handbook. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the only thing I had against that a little bit. It still should stay in house. It should be rolled down, but you know what I'm saying? Yeah. I don't, you know, I can give you a Ranger

handbook and you can find out exactly how those guys are going to fight, what they're, methods are, everything. And another thing I've talked about on here is when you have doctrine and you get tasks with something that's not the doctrine, you get confused, you don't know what to do. That's one of the reasons I think SEAL themes have been very successful in the recent

past, and even in the longer past, is because we didn't have a book to look at. We had to figure out how to do it. So no matter what the mission is, we always had a fresh look at it. We adapt. We adapt. We're unorthodox. We adapt. I mean, you know, our guys, if you had pulled a platoon

right out of Vietnam and put them in Romadi or somewhere would have been lost at sea because we didn't have the training for the urban type of warfare. Yeah. I know you wouldn't have been lost at sea. I know you would because it's the same. Principles are the same

principles that you guys taught me was the same thing we did over there. We'd have figured it out. Cover move, take to high ground. Yeah, we would have figured out but you know we didn't have overwatches and stuff like that when it's pitch dark at night and you're working away through real quiet not making a lot of noise.

Everything you do is for, you know, being silence. Or just like you guys never had to do things. Like if you hit a real taunt line, the Point Scout did, well, he'd step over it, grab the guy behind him, bring his hand down, show him where that wire was. And he'd step over the wire. He'd put his leg over and grab the guy behind him, and that's how we got across until we got everybody across

and got a headcount thing. We'd move on. Damn. That's just movie trap stuff. You know what I mean? That's just the, and you did it, and you couldn't see. It was pitch black. That's why he grabbed the guy's hand and showed him where it was.

And if it's a tight one, you don't cut it. If it's all losing stuff, then, yeah, cut it. So how would the point man see that? Yeah, you know what they call it. We used, you take a twig, a long stick. Oh, you put the string on it? No, no string on it. But just like a fishing pole.

And you'd run that up and down like that. We moved and you'd feel it. You can feel it just. like you would if you got a trout or a bite and then you work your hand down you reach over there and feel and see what that is. Yeah. A ninja.

Yeah. You know what the other, the other interesting thing that when you started talking about single team and going out at nighttime and how that was all unorthodox and people were doing it is the opposite of when we were in Ramadi, we started going out

in the daytime. And the reason we started going out in the day, there was a bunch of reasons why we started going out in the daytime. But one of the main reasons was the enemy knew that we owned the night. We had night vision. We owned the night. And so they didn't want to go out at night until they went out at daytime. That's when they planted their IDs.

That's when they killed people. And so we went out the daytime because that's where the bad guys were out. Well, you know, daytime in Vietnam too. You'd see guys sleeping in hammocks and shit. We'd wrap them up because you knew they'd been out at night doing shit. So we wanted to talk to them. You know, just like rules of engagement shit. We got, my last platoon, we stopped in Saigon and went to Matt 4V and our LT got his orders, you know.

His orders were pacify the Vin Long Province. Wow. That was his orders, pacify the Vin Long Province. Roger that. And that's where we went off and did it, you know. No rules of engagement, nothing just pacify it. And then it was like, okay. Yeah.

And we didn't work for the Army, Navy, Marines, or anybody. we were our own entity. So if you'd been the OTO over there, Jocco, you'd have had the con. Matter of fact, we were at Dongtam. They had a naval base here, and then the big Army base here at Dongtam. They had us stay on the Vietnamese Navy base

in between them because the Navy didn't really want us on their base. Plus, their boats are right down there in the war, so it worked out perfect, you know what I mean? And we'd go to the Army to, you know, to test our weapons. And shit like that. Yeah, and they were doing that all the time. It wasn't like, you know what I mean? It wasn't anything unusual.

You know what I mean? So going back now, you get back from your first deployment with UDT, you go to the SEAL team, you show up, you're going through the training. What was the, what was the, you kind of talked to me a little bit about this before, but how were you getting treated? Because you got, you got, you got, you got, right? So here you are. You're a combat veteran. You've been in the shit. You've been wounded.

We call it a Viet Cong achievement medal. So you show up. seal team won. You're kind of like, hey, I'm an experienced veteran. I've been through the shit. And didn't mean shit. And they just, the guys there, how'd they treat you? Well, I mean, all right, just the same. I mean, I had a trip with UDT, but just about everybody that went into SEAL team came out of UDT, 11 or 12, into SEAL team. You know what I mean? Back in the day before they started bringing them right into SEAL team, the new guys, you know? So it wasn't any different. There were guys there. You just had to learn. I mean, I didn't.

You know, when I was in UDT, I'll tell you, I wish I really wanted to go. Like when we were at Dongtam, that was during the 67-68-10, and we got a call that the East Coast platoon, the Mito, which wasn't too far away from Dongtam, was being overran. Luckily, they were up in a tall building, so they held out real good. They were the tallest building, and they had a 57 recoilist, and you could hear the VC coming up the stairways that'd throw grenades down and shit like that, and they needed some help, and there were about 17 of us down on that dart patrol on the USS Benewa, right by Dongtam.

And we begged our lieutenant, God damn, let us go in there. We'd have been fucking killed. Our heart was there, but we didn't have the IED training, the immediate reaction. You know what I mean? None of that shit. I mean, we'd have been, it would have been stupid. So oldie, our lieutenants had known. We hated him, you know. then I got back and went to Cadre or SQT and did all that stuff and then deployed.

Next time I saw John Odish, I hugged him. I said, you were one smart son of a bitch, dude. Our heart was there, you know what to be, but UDT, you just weren't trained to operate on land. You didn't have the pre-restricted skills that you learn in SQT and stuff, you know what I mean? And you get more of that even in buds now than we ever got, because we were, trained to be a frog man. That was it. I mean, our last op we did at San Kumini Island was we swimmers scouted in by bird shit rock and I can tell you that you know I'm talking about. They gave us 40 pounds of demo, Haversack. We

went 26 miles down to the other end of the island, blew up a target, then come 26 miles back and attacked the camp. Guys as we were patrolling, they had ambush us and they'd pick out guys that had been killed. Pretty soon we'd all fall down and they'd go, God damn it, we'll tell you who he shot. Then they'd get to go back to camp and defend it when we came back and attacked it. But it was still just a demo raid. You know what I mean? It wasn't anything,

patrolling real good patrolling tactics and all that stuff that you learn. You know what I mean? I mean, like I went out with the Australian SAS, and I knew he did, and did a week out in the field. Oh, that was a week or was it two years? Was this when you're at Team One or at Team One? my second platoon, two of us, we had the Aussies come down and work with us, and they loved it. Then we went up to Newy Depp me and...

As a 60 guy, we went up and went out with them. We did a 10-day patrol with them, resupplying all that stuff. They never talked. He said one word. That whole patrol was all hand and arm signals. That's awesome. And they would get an LUP at night, everybody with their feet out, and you'd be laying on your pack, have your weapon right next to you,

pull what they call the silk gift, and you'd go to sleep. Well, we didn't sleep for about two nights because that's when we usually went out and worked, then we started to. Because the way they figured it was in a real noisy area, and somebody in that circle would be awake. And if we got sprung or something,

then you have 360-degree firepowering, and we'd get out of there. But they were the best I've ever seen. I went to Army Ranger school, Radford School, and everything. And that one 10-day patrol of the Australians, I learned more about reconnaissance than I did anywhere, anywhere.

Well, you know, we used to have guys from the SAS come to team one, as a matter of fact. Yeah, they did. We had that program for a long time, but the last guy we had there was an officer, and he wasn't worth the ship, but some of the sergeants we had. The guys that were there when I showed up were really squared away guys that definitely had their fieldcraft down. Oh, they're so good. That's what I was funny to say, the field craft.

In UD, you just didn't have the field craft. be out in the jungle looking for people and shit you know that's why in the UDT 13 some of the guys got killed and stuff down trails and shit like that they didn't you know what I mean got to kind of have your shit together a little bit yeah so so you go you go through the cadre training you check into your platoon and it's time to go on appointment you are you flying where are you flying out of flying out of North Island yeah we fly out of North Island and my first platoon we flew into Cameron Bay and then took choppers down to a place called New Namcan,

which is the very southern part of South Vietnam, right by a place that called the Umin Forest. And did you do some turnover ops with the other platoons that were there? No turnover ops. We didn't at that time. Matter of fact, most of our ops were dartboard ops. You ever heard of those? No.

That's where you put a map behind you, and you choose one of the guys in the platoon, and you throw a dart behind you, wherever that dart hits is where you're going to go into. because we didn't have intel, we didn't have shit. We were pretty isolated. We were in a Vietnamese base camp and BF Egypt, you know what I mean? So that's how we went out.

Is there what do you do in like a helicopter insert or a river insert? All river. And actually out of a new NAMCAM where we were, we'd take sandpans out because we didn't even have any MST support or anything. The guys down at C-Flow did, which is a ways away from us. Our other squad was there. And finally, they pulled us out of new Namcan because we were doing stuff, but it wasn't. Wasn't effective strategically.

So they brought us down to C-flow. Then we started getting some good ops down there. Then what were those ops like? We still did Viverine ops like we went down to a place called Square Bay. And because we heard there was a prisoner war camp and stayed down there for about three days, watching his trails, seeing if we could see them moving and stuff like that. We'd do ambushes. We'd get intel from our Navy Nilo, which still wasn't that good.

Oh, one of the things in 69, that was first platoon was in 69 was we landed at New Namcan, got her stuff off the old 46 that landed us there and put it in the bunker. And then this little loach came in and landed. Do you know? No, I don't. I know his name, but I don't know. He was a prue guy in that province that we were in down there. So he came in and told us, yeah, if you guys need anything,

just let us know. And as soon as that loach left, we got mortared for about an hour and a half. So we told him never to come there again because they knew what that loach was. He was a proo, you know, and that was the proo guys, you know. Now he was a proe, that long hair, you know, bearded, you know. And so the platoon setup was you had an OIC and AOIC, a platoon chief and an LPL, kind of like what you'd run, well, what we'd ran in. We had two squads.

the LPO and just like what you guys did in team one exactly yeah and then we broke it down you know what I mean you had your like I was with the AOC and the last platoon I was in was with was with was my AOIC really yeah what year was that that was that was that 89 damn yeah that's awesome but he was uh it must have been fun yeah he was He's a great guy. Awesome. But I'm just saying he was, he was the AOIC. It was the OIC.

Roger. We had the LPO would work with him. Then I would, you know, have, you know, have the kind of guy. I was a senior chief then. Yeah, that's awesome. I don't know if you knew any of those guys. Yeah. They're all in my platoon.

It was my radio one. Worst radio one I ever had in my life, you know. Yeah, I can imagine. Oh, you know, I went to radio school like I told. Jim, right? Guess he never carried a radio on the team. Really? You never carried a radio? No, I was a 60 gunner. Damn. Until I made LPO, then I went to the M14.

I liked the 7-6-2 round. Yeah, that's the, that's kind of the stand. When I went through SQT, they told us, if you're not carrying an M-14, you're wrong. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a great weapon. It's accurate. It's perfect. I loved it. And guys, a bunch of guys in Ramadi carried the M-14 as well. Yeah. Because they're shooting, you know, you're shooting at vehicles. You're shooting through buildings.

buildings shooting and they put the the arm of AP rounds in there and just that way you've got some you can dig through some stuff yeah we did six months deployment and I did three deployments I did um 1969 I was in a kilo platoon and then came back from that then I actually got out for a year and a half because I was married and my wife talked me in to get now so I did and worked for the phone company as a cable splicer hated every everybody and everything. We lived in Coronado, so I'd go down the trade winds, and all my buddies would tell me what great trips are having and stuff,

and I just went, yeah. What year was that? That was, let's see, 7071. That was when I got back in 69. So when you got back in 69, you got out for a year and a half? Well, about a year, maybe not quite a year and a half, but I went back in and got in another platoon, luckily, I went to Vietnam again, 7071.

And I had guys like that, and that was a great platoon. And what was that? What was that? Now, were you, you an LPO that platoon? No, I was still a second class. You're a 60-gunner, getting after it. Yeah, exactly. And what was that, was there any difference between that first seal deployment to Vietnam and the second seal?

Yeah, I wasn't real happy with the first deployment because we just didn't do a lot. I mean, it was okay. We did some stuff, but it wasn't my idea of what it should be, you know, as a seal. You know what I'm saying? Oh, yeah. And then it was better when I got down in the sea float, but it's still, you know what I mean? But that second platoon, that's the one that kept me in the Navy. You know, they were just, you know, we're a band of brothers.

You know what I mean? We were so close. It was unbelievable. I mean, I love those guys. And the difference in what you did, was it the missions that you got tasked with? Yeah, basically. Is it the way that the platoon commander kind of set things up so that he had a better vision of what to do and what to get after? Absolutely.

I was in my second platoon. That guy was just unbelievable. I mean, he was just really, really. really good. Our first platoon, it was and he was kind of nuts, and we didn't like him. Like, one time we're all cleaning our weapons on sea float and everything, and what we used to would come back on off

is grab a line, then you jump in the water and let it wash all the mud off you. Well, he grabbed the line and jumped in, and we had music real loud and cleaning our weapons and shit, well, the line wasn't tied off, right? So he just started going down the river, but they saw him in the watchtower and said, man over,

Gordon, got it. You know, something that, something that we talk about on here, and something I've experienced is having blue-on-blue situations take place. And it's,

it's really hard for people to understand how it happens. But I know that you had, you had one of those happen. You want to kind of give a quick debrief on that? Yeah, we're about ready to go home. We had a new platoon come in. They wanted to do a breaking up,

not mention any names of the officers, but they want to do a hammer and amble up, which you just don't do with a brand new platoon. And we'd been there, you know, we had our stuff together pretty well in that area. But what it was was we were supposed to push these bad guys, to the VC, into these guys that were in a tree line. And they inserted it's at the wrong place to start with. So when we started working our way in, we kind of came up to this tree line where it ended,

a rice patty, and then there was another tree line. I couldn't give you the, it was a halfway decent way. away, you know what I'm saying? But we had three Kit Carson Scouts with us. Kit Carson Scouts were North Vietnamese that had gave turn over to the South Vietnamese, and they put them in camps, and they called them Chuhoy camps, basically. And what we would do is we'd go to these camps, and we would get these guys that knew our area that we're working in, and through an interpreter and stuff. We had briefed and everything, and they'd come and work with us, and they'd work with us from a couple of ops until they became kind of trusted agents, and they were

pretty good, most of them were, not North Vietnamese, but VC, that were good fighters, you know, and then they lived with us, the whole nine yards, we paid them. We had money from NAP4B, they gave us a lot of money to pay these guys and stuff, so they weren't doing it just for free, you know, because they needed money for their families, and I don't know, the atrocities that happened to their families is one of the reasons they chew hoied and came to our our to the south enemy side anyway we had three of those guys coming out in front of us black pajamas AK-47s looked just like VC you know so the brand new platoon saw three guys coming out of the tree line that were VC so they opened up on them killed two of them and wounded the other one we swung off

to the left and laid down and they were shooting sixies and stoner's at us but shit was just falling on their heads because they were shooting high like new guys generally do before you. And it was a pretty new, brand new guys in that platoon. You know, they weren't experienced and shit. Normally you'd walk him in, whatever, you know. So we're yelling the radio, ceasefire, cease fire. And we had our officer that was with us got up on his knees to shoot back at him and got shot through the heart. Then we finally got him to stop and then we got him out of there.

He was dead, though. He shot right through the heart. Yeah. That was a blue and blue thing. That was pretty bad. And that was right before you went home? Yeah. Yeah, the confusion that happens out there. It was called a breaking up.

And like I say, the new platoon had about two guys, I think, their LPO, I can't remember his name, and then was with me on that beach where we got shop. He was also in my training class. He was either the OAC or AOAC on that. But most of the rest of them were all brand new guys. You know what I mean? Good training and everything, but, you know, this is their first. So, God damn, we're in a firefight.

You know what I mean? Yeah, anytime you get the opportunity to slowly work into the combat situations, you know, do a smaller patrol, do an easier patrol. That's what we normally did. Yeah. If you can override your officers that you got, you know, take them out in the daytime. That was the daytime up, by the way. But usually it's just to kind of get them oriented to the environment, what they're going to be in.

And then we all had these, I don't know if we had one. We're in the 69, but 7071, we had these barn dance files. And every opera we went on, we'd put a synopsis in this barn dance. So if you were going to go in that same area, he could pull out that barn dance file and read it and see what the guys had seen there, NME, what the terrain was like on and on. You know what I mean? It was pretty good, real good. And almost every platoon had those from previous platoons all the way up to you.

So you can kind of get an idea what you're going into if you didn't have intel on that area. What are some of the leadership, you talked about your second platoon being super tight and super close, what were some of the leadership characteristics that you saw from the platoon chief and the platoon commander that as you look back, you recognize that those were really good traits that really brought everyone together? Well, it was our chief. He meets senior chief. He'd been over about three times. And it was just very easy going, but very sharp. And he understood things really well. Our LPO was Gary Smith, Sheephit Smith, and he had been a Pruedvisor in that province.

So as far as getting intel and all over the other sides, it was perfect. And then, yeah, I won't say much about him, but our L.T. He was outstanding. He went on almost every op. In fact, one time he'd burn his hand with a smoke grenade. We're still going to go out, and he was going to go out with us. He just had his hand wrapped up and shit. So he is over at the officers club on the Navy side,

Eaton, and the officers are saying, your hands all bandaged up and shit. You're still going out? He says, yeah, if they get by my guys, I'm dead anyway. But he was really good. He had his stuff together. He was just savvy, just had his head on his shoulders, figured out things, quick thinker, you know what I mean?

And it was just innate. He was just good. And how about, I mean, you know, always obviously here now veterans get treated great now I mean from the Afghan war and the Iraq war we get treated really great by for the most part by America and by the public we get treated really well compared to what you guys had to deal with in Vietnam well how much of that did you see when you'd come home was it I mean Coronado is a pretty pro-navy town I mean in San Diego it's a pretty pro-navy town was it the same way back then was it relatively pro-navy or did you

see some of the some of the hippies and whatnot coming on and they had some demonstrations sometimes you know what I mean like downtown San Diego but not much and uh we basically just hung out here in san Diego or to other bars that we knew we'd fly out on North Island flying the North Island it wasn't like we were flying in the San Francisco or something so we didn't get hit with that real real heavily you know what I mean and if we did have issues at a bar somewhere we usually squirt it away pretty quick, you know. So it wasn't really a problem. We didn't really are guys here.

These coast guys, I don't know, but our guys here, we didn't really have a thing. I'll tell you not, though, in 69, we were going up this one canal, and we used to, PBRs couldn't get up it. So we had to take a Boston waiter up it with a twin 60s in the front, and one guy. I would sit and steer the steer it, you know. We'd take a squad up there, maybe five guys, you know. And whatever squad didn't have the opt-in night, they got to be the driver and the gunner,

which I got to be the driver once, and I wasn't happy. I covered myself with flack jackets. I mean, who's anybody going to shoot at? Oh, yeah. So we were going up real slow up this thing, and all kinds of filament lines and stuff like that that were cutting ourselves through

because it was low-tide. Luckily, it wasn't high-tide. You know what I mean? So we got up there and put the guys in, and we came back out, and the PBR said, put their boats into a bank, right? So we're sitting there on the PBR, me and my buddy that was the gunner, another seal. And all of a sudden across this river, we heard just pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, it was a sandpan. So we're going to go after that, some bitch.

But one guy driving, one guy in the 60, we needed a guy that could see, too. You know what I mean? Because you know. So we asked one of the PBR kids. guys, you know, who wants to go with us. And this whole time we've been with them, God damn, we'd love to go out with you guys. The only guy on that boat that volunteered was the guy that was married. The rest of wouldn't do it. So we jumped in sandpan. One after the

other one hose them down. They hit the bank, and then there was blood trails going into the, killed one of them. He was laying in the boat, and the other guy had gotten out and ran. And he could see blood spots, you know, following in. Well, we didn't go after him. We're not that stupid you know nighttime you know he's probably dying yeah i'll take these fucking guys out with me so he brought the sandpan back and god damn we had a whole big thing of intel and weapons and all kinds of shit and the other guys then we went up and got the other guys brought them out they didn't do a thing you know it's pretty

neat that's sketchy yeah i can't imagine the uh the that you guys would just hit go by these filament wires and step over these trip wires and just continue on your mission. That's sketchy. You have to. That's what we did. Anyway, so I wasn't on this off, but it was a and a couple other guys from the

other squad went down to Square Bay. And we'd gotten this intel that the sandpan, pretty good size one, almost like a junk, would go up the river at nighttime, up the main river where sea flow was up by that way, you know? So

George and those guys were down there. They again, we're in a Boston waiter. They had a couple of law rockets with them and stuff like that, you know. So they figured, well, shit, we haven't really been a dry hole here away at that goddamn the junk when it comes by, you know. So they go out after the junk and they could hear it and then see the silhouette of it, you know. So they got real close to it and fires a law rocket and hit the stern, not the exact rudder. and everything, then popped a flare so they could shoot and everything.

Well, after they popped their flare, about 15 other flares popped, and it wasn't us. So behind them was all this little flotilla sandpans and shit. So they took off and were shooting back with their stoner and 60 and stuff like that. Finally they called, and then a couple of PBRs came down and saved them. That was a pretty good offer. That's just so, that's one of the major differences, you know, Well, let's have a night vision now.

Yeah. The whole way that you guys had to utilize illumination. And we did utilize illumination for time to time. We actually, on big operations, sometimes we'd have the army firing, or the army artillery would be firing illumination in certain situations. But generally, we weren't doing that. Yeah, and ambushes, we always fired a flare-up. You know, to get good vision.

You have what we had, then we got out of there. You know what I mean? Put a Claymore's out and Claymore's behind us. You know, me, everything sat waiting for dudes that come down the river and then we'd hit them, you know. And then, so you get, you get back from your second tour in Vietnam, and is that the war ended, right? I mean, this is pretty much, that was it.

In fact, a platoon, that was at Ben Luck, which was 40 miles away from us, they were only over there for three months, and they came back too. So we were the last full-deployed, deployed platoon in Vietnam. That was November platoon. It was their chief, like you said, so a bunch of great guys in the platoon. And, I mean, at that time, there was a couple hundred guys at SEAL Team 1? I think there was about maybe it had boosted it up real high, so there might have been 250, 300.

I think there was only about 150 when I got in there. I don't know if the big push had started yet to build more guys up. It wasn't a lot. You knew everybody. I mean, it was a pretty tight group. One guy that we both know, he told me when he checked into SEAL Team 1 back then, he was like taking a shower after PT and like every guy was shot up. Like you could just see what every guy was, you know, you could see scars and their armed, leg, just wounded. Did you, were a lot of guys staying in at that time, were a lot of guys doing a couple of tunes getting out?

I think after the, no, most of the guys stayed in. That's what we did. That's what we loved. And then after the war, yeah, we had a pretty good exodus of people getting out. And when they getting out because there wasn't nothing to do. Yeah, that's what they were doing. That was their, you know, there's nothing else. I mean, what are you going to do, you know?

And I stayed in because I just liked the guys. I liked what we did, you know. Like when I was over at Buds, I come back in 71, and then I went over to Buds as an instructor. And I got bored doing that. So there's this guy called. I'll tell you, I would not want to be a student when you are bored. as a butts instructor. I bet you mean.

I was a nice guy there. But anyway, so, buddy doll was in UDT's a little bitty guy from Colorado and he was a rodeo rider, right? So he talks to me into going out this place called Burtons, which is out by, it wasn't lakeside, it was Lemon Valley. Lemon Grove?

Leaven Grove, yeah. And there was a place called Burtons out there and it was just all bulls, but they were dinks. They weren't real your rodeo bulls, you know. So I went out there and, hell, liked it and never got bucked off there so i went rodeo and went ira then prca and actually thought about getting out of the navy to ride rodeo because i loved it but then i got bored because rodeo's bowls are i rode bulls they were the last of the event right so i started riding bear back

on saddle bronc too but the um i got stepped on well i got 22 stitches in my left side of my face, 14 in the back my head, had both my shoulders dislocated. What else? Got gourd, and then I got stepped on and had five busted ribs and punctured lungs, so I figured, okay, that's enough. So I quit doing that and just aiding the teams, you know? The teams are safer than rodeo, right? Well, that was over a year and a half, almost two years, so it wasn't bad.

Yeah, and what about guys? I mean, how were guys doing as far as handling what they'd seem? and coming back and all of a sudden they're in Main Street. Dude, we didn't have that problem. I mean, I'm telling you, the guys that were crazy were crazy before they went over. I often say that. They weren't, I mean, I know all my buddies. In fact, Thursday, this Thursday night will have that UDT, Vietnam UDT seal get together on Thursday night.

Talk to those guys. You don't see anybody going, you know, I've got to go to the hospital. I'm mentally ill. Not that I know of, I tell you, maybe it did happen, but the only guy I know that really got affected was he was with that one platoon I can't think they were and they were taking a part of mortar and the mortar blew up

and he had just left to have a cigarette and all of his buddies got killed by that mortar and stuff including a guy named Bres who was just a superb guy and he wasn't quite the same after that and I can understand that I mean that you know what I mean but just being the fire fights and shit like that and stuff that happened,

you know, we just, it was the way it was, you know. And even when you, even when you got out for the first, so, so then you did,

you did 30 years. Yeah. In the Navy. And, you know, that was another funny thing. When you, when I talked about earlier,

when you graded our, lane graded me for the first time, I don't know how old you were. It was 19, 1993, maybe, 90. What platoon were you in?

I was in, uh, uh, Al-Fatoon at Team 1 with, uh, yeah, I was a good off. Yeah.

Yeah. you were, I don't know how old you were in that time period, but, you know, from my perspective, you were like 170 years old, right? And I'm thinking to myself, hey, this guy's, you know, this is this, Roger Aiden. And you were like putting on your wetsuit. Okay, put on the wetsuit, I guess you're going to get in the water, gets in the water, swim in, in the recons, do the recone, and they swam back out. Swam back out, you know.

That's what you have to do. If you're going to do all reeds, you've got to do them right, you know, go point A to point B. Otherwise, you don't see everything, you know. And that's what I liked. I was a warrant then, but that's what I liked my last three or four years, three years, I think, in the teams as I did ORE. So you still got to have your feet on the ground on the boys, you know. You couldn't be in a platoon.

We'd suck, but that's what I was. Yeah, there's nothing better than, there's nothing better than the, than the platoon life. Now, I know that, I know that you're short on time, and I rushed this, and I'm glad we were able to get. a little bit done. And I think maybe after this one, and we get to listen to it,

and I'll probably end up with a bunch of more questions. I know people that are listening to this, a bunch of team guys listen to this. They actually, a bunch of team guys sent me a bunch of questions. I didn't get to any of them. Yeah, we will.

Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. No, it's all good. It's just things that pop up in your head when you talk about them. You know, I mean, there's a lot of, I mean, I was a, you know, I was a frog man first.

Yeah. That was probably one of the best appointments ever had. That was great. Philippines is great and we were so glad to leave the Philippines and go back to a debt just to get out of for a while. We're going to die, you know. So we'll definitely get you back on here. And like I said, next time I'll get some questions from the team guys that they asked me to ask you and go through some of those.

But, thanks for coming on. I know, like I said, I know you've never, never been out in the public eye before. and that's just the epitome of a quiet professional that we were all raised on. And I appreciate it. Like I said, you're a hero of mine. You're a hero of the SEAL teams and you're really a hero to everybody in this country. And if anybody out there wants to continue this conversation, you can get Echo Charles and I on the social media. Echo is at Echo Charles.

I am at Jocko Willink. we're on all the different social media Twitter Instagram and the Facebook if you want to support the podcast Echo Charles how can they do it if you want some supplements

the kind that work obviously On It has the best ones so you go to on it.com slash jaco you get 10% off boom that's one way also before you do your Amazon shopping of course go to

one of the websites, right, Jockstore or joccopodcast.com, click through the Amazon link there before you do your shopping. Or to make that part easier, we have this, the trooper tool. It's just this little extension thing you can put on your browser. You get that on any of the websites as well. You just click on it. It's called the Jocco Store Trooper Tool Chrome extension. Just click on that, confirm it's on there. It'll automatically do it for you so you don't have to remember. It's good. also if you like the shirts that we have boom that's the one discipline equals freedom is a good one but yeah I get some of those that's how you can support

awesome and uh you can get the book that Laif Babin and I wrote that actually Roger did the security clearance on I just reviewed it for you know what I mean yeah but one thing I will say you know

I don't think I'm a hero. I just went over and then did my job, had a lot of fun, and it's with a great guys. You know, that's about it. Well, that's one of the things that makes you a hero. And thanks, thanks for coming on the show.

And also, if you don't know, we're having a little conference out here in San Diego, California, October 20th and 21st is not going to be for everybody. But if you want to get in the game, if you want to do something that's going to be intense,

to focus. We're going to talk about leadership. We're going to talk about getting better at what we do. Come on out. The muster, October 20th and 21st. Roger, thanks again for coming on the show. Thanks for everything you did serving this country in Vietnam and spending the rest of your life, supporting the SEAL teams dedicated to our country. And like I said, Roger is kind of an unknown veteran. and I would like to take a moment to thank all the Vietnam veterans that fought with courage and with honor in a hard war, in an unpopular war. And not only fought for freedom against the evils of communism, but also established and passed on lessons learned for the current generation of warfighters. We owe all of you a great debt of gratitude for what you did for us and for the United States of America. And everyone else out there, thanks for listening.

Thanks for spreading the word. And as you go through life, remember the sacrifice of these veterans that fought and sacrificed for us so that we can live. with the sacred freedom to go out into the world and get after it so until next time this is echo and jaco rightness true hero war officer chief warrant officer seal retired roger hayden out