Jocko Podcast - 459: No Matter What Happens, Keep Moving Forward. w SOG Warrior, "Dynamite" Dick Thompson

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

>Join Jocko Underground<Henry L. (Dick) Thompson, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized consultant, educator, speaker and author. Over the past 30 years, he has gained valuable experience developing and leading teams—from the battlefield to the boardroom. He uses his vast experiences and knowledge to help leaders and organizations improve performance.CareerDr. Thompson is the founder, president and CEO of High Performing Systems, Inc., an international management consulting and training firm he founded in 1984 to help leaders, teams and organizations achieve high performance. The philosophy of HPS is based on a systems approach to performance improvement. Clients are Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and a diverse group of public, private and international firms. These include AT&T, Georgia-Pacific Corporation, Shell Oil Company, Johnson & Johnson, Apple, Owens-Corning, Delta Airlines, Wipro Technologies, Mohawk Industries and Titan America, to name a few.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 459 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Every time I led my team on a mission, it was a kill or be killed event. Each time, hundreds, sometimes thousands of people would die. It was not about rules of engagement. Was this person an enemy? Does this person have a weapon?

Is this person about to kill me? or the many other questions and rules today's special operators might have to deal with. SOG rules of engagement were very simple. Everyone was the enemy. The enemy had to be terminated or you would be. And if the enemy caught you, the United States government would deny any involvement with you or what you were doing. You had no protection under the Geneva Convention. you are a spy.

You are on your own. The death rate for SOG operators was high. After five months in SOG, I had lost 16 friends, teammates. There were many other SOG operators killed in action and mission in action that I did not know personally. Being a SOG operator was not conducive

to long-term survival. At this point in Sogg, I had been hit with shrapnel on six missions, splattered with small amounts of napalm twice, shot three times with an AK-47 in the radio on my back, hit by a large piece of shrapnel in my URC-10 survival radio on my chest, suffered two concussions, and survived a fixed-wing aircraft crash landing site, and eight prairie. Fire emergencies, but I was alive. And that right there is an excerpt from the preface to a incredible book called SOG, code name Dynamite Book 2 by Special Forces Officer and SOG warrior Henry Dick Thompson. Dick Thompson has been on this podcast before. episodes 204, 205, 206, 401. He's been on the SOG cast with John Stryker Meyer.

He's written eight books, and we've covered two of them on this podcast, the first one being the stress effect on episode 206, and we covered SOG code name Dynamite Book 1 on episode 401. And those are certainly well worth listening to, but for the song. this new book. It is an honor to have this special operations legend back with us again to discuss this book. Dick, thanks for joining us again. Thanks for the opportunity to come back. That's very excited about this one. The door is always open for the SOG Warriors. As an echo is just saying before we hit record, the door is always open for the SOG Warriors. It's been a little over a year since you were last on. When did that, when did you? did you release this book, this new one?

I came out earlier in the year. Yeah, I think it was several months ago it came out. How's the response been to the new book? Very good. It's doing well. How long did it take you to write this one? Well, I wrote book one and two as a book to start with. And then it was so long I went back.

cut it in half and then, you know, made some tweaks to it because it was an individual book to start with like that. I guess all together it took a good three years to do this. And part of that was there are sections in here where I had to, you know, sometimes stop and say I need a break for a week or two before I go back in there. because every time when you're working on it, you're going back into the jungle. And, you know, your heart rates up

and, you know, you're experiencing everything. John Stracher Meyer and I were talking one day about one of his books, and I told him, I said, Tilt, you got to understand that, you know, when a sog guy reads a sog book, it's not just words. We hear everything.

all the sounds all the smells everything is there we can't read it without hearing that and i saw a meme somebody posted not long ago of a of a huey helicopter and what the guy was talking about was you cannot see this picture without hearing it when you see that picture you hear that helicopter everything in there i hear feel tastes smell. So sometimes I had to take a break and then come back to it. One of the things before we hit record you were talking about and it's, that's in the book, is this progression that you're making as you're going on

operation after operation after operation after operation after operation. And you're starting to get a wider aperture of what you're seeing. You're starting to understand it better. I know the first free fall parachute jump I ever did felt like it was four seconds long. You know, you're not, and the only thing you see is your altimeter and maybe, you know, your rip cord. And then as you do more and more parachute jumps, it's longer and longer and you see, you know, you actually see that there's a horizon and you see that there's an aircraft. You see there's other parachute jumpers. So I imagine you're feeling that.

And that's what I started feeling in the book is you're just starting to be much more aware of what's happening, much more aware of what the enemy's doing. And then you talk about making changes to the way you guys are operating based on that. Yeah, when you first go out on a combat mission and, you know, people start shooting at you. Your stress level sky rockets and everything becomes very focused on where they are and what you're doing. But as you continue to go out, you start to see more and more of the battle space and what's going on. You start to hear things you didn't hear the first time. and in the book you can see when it dawned on me one day I don't like the fact that they're shooting at us with a RPD machine gun

but that's information if they have an RPD that's giving me more information about how large the force is that we're up against I hear two of them this time there are a lot of people out there now if they have two machine guns coming, and they're moving. If they're moving, where are they going? And now I'm beginning to sense of wider battle space, the movement of the enemy inside the battle space,

what they're trying to do. And across time, I started thinking, wait a minute, they're trying to force me to go to where they want me to go so they can ambush me or keep me away from the landings on. Why don't I do that to them? I know the terrain. I memorize it before I go out. I can see that map in my mind.

There are places I can cause them to move to that makes them a better target when I bring in the close air support. So why don't I start maneuvering them because they will react to the way I go? They have trackers out, you know, firing individual shots or clacking, bamboo together to try to get us to go.

I'll just let my team continue to move this way. I'll just fall back and I'll wait on this guy. And when that tracker gets close, I'll take my 22 pistol with an integrated silencer and I'll silence him. And, you know, so I can start doing those things to them. And, you know, it's a, it's not just me having to go out there and have them pounce on us.

I can bounce back. Yeah. If I play the card's right. Yeah. And again, in the book, you kind of see this transition. Book one to book two. And it's also not only the awareness of the battle space, the enemy,

but also a hyper sensitive awareness of yourself and what the stress is doing to you, what your reaction, what time is, what time is doing in your head as these things are unfolding. So you end up this sort of hyper-aware, enlightened human being out there on this battlefield,

and it's pretty awesome to see and awesome to be able to learn from it. Yeah, as you start to become more self-aware of what's happening with you, you can become a more effective warrior. But then to go to the next level is becoming more aware of what the enemy is doing. And realizing some of the things you see them doing every time you're in contact, they're doing because they're human. I'm not just shooting animals. I'm shooting at humans. Humans have a reaction to being in combat. There are certain things they do. And you'll see in the book, one of the things I told my guys, I said, you watch. When we initially engage, if they

die behind a tree or a rock or something like that, almost every time you will see the muzzle of that AK-47, come around the right side of the tree. They all will go shoot from the right side of the tree. So you know they're going to do that. So you can be waiting on them. As soon as that muzzle comes, you get ready to put a three or four round burst right behind it because a hedge coming, you know, right around behind the muzzle. And they started watching this.

They do that. In fact, I had a guy in Italy that's in a SOG group where they go out and reenact and, you know, play. and to do it with paintball. And he read that. And then he emailed me and he said, we were out, you know, in contact this morning in our sod group, and I was watching. We do that with paintball.

The guys we were going against were shooting around the right side of the tree. They're human. That's where they're going to go. So, you know, then you have to realize we're human too. And if we don't train that out of us, will go the same way every time. And they can figure that out, that you're going to come around that side,

or you're going to hit the ground and you're going to shoot from right where you are. If they see you go down to vegetation, they're going to shoot right there. You need to move. As soon as you hit the ground, you need to roll right or left. Don't be right where you went down

because they're going to get you. They just shoot into the vegetation. They'll get you. So those things, part of the learning process, and then you teach your people and you practice it. Yeah, it's very fascinating to watch that progression through the books. So as we get into book two, to set this up, you know, book one, from what I figured,

it's probably about halfway through your year-long deployment, your tour to Vietnam. You pick up in March of March of 1969 is where this picks up. And going to the book, you say, I just returned. to CCN from a tough B-52 strike bomb damage assessment in northern Laos with RT Michigan and Eldon Barswell as my one-one we've talked about Eldon Barswell the legend on the other podcast it was late and I was tired hungry and injured I needed to go to the dispensary and have the medics repair some wounds before getting cleaned up and meeting Barswell at the mess hall for some much-needed nourishment Barswell and I did a quick pre-AAR while we were

eating so we'd be ready to do a team AR in the morning. When Barswell and I finished, I went back to my hooch, cleaned and reloaded my car, 15, web gear. I lay across my bed to rest for a few minutes. I started to drift off to sleep and I heard a loud knock on my door followed by Lieutenant Thompson. Are you in there? Yes, what do you want? We have a new recon company commander, Captain Meadows. He wants you to report to his hooch at 20 hundred hours. When he told me, I said, you got to be kidding me. No, sir, 200 hours. That's eight minutes from now. Careful what you say, sir. He's on the other side of your plywood wall.

Crap. It's just another day of N-Sogg. Some people are fortunate enough to spend time under the mentorship of a legend in their career field. This was my first time. You know immediately that you are in the presence of a legend because the things they say do and tell you to do scare the crap out of you. They are so far beyond anything you have experienced before that it can be terrifying but at the same time exhilarating. You know you're in for the ride of your life, and if you survive, you'll experience a new way of thinking and performing as a result. Captain Dick Meadows was already a special operations legend.

Everyone in the special operations world had heard the stories. Meadows had fought in the Korean War as the youngest master sergeant. He had been in super secret operations most of his career. He had reached a point in his service where the army gave him a choice. He was told he could be promoted as Sergeant Major or captain. Meadows became the first direct battlefield commission that General Westmoreland awarded during the Vietnam War and had a guarantee that he could retire as a major.

That's pretty impressive. He's the first battlefield commission in Vietnam and also got a guarantee. That's kind of nice. I don't know if there's any stipulations on what kind of trouble he might cause. At 20 hundred hours, I knocked on Meadows' door, and reported to him. He invited me in and said in a calm, serious voice,

good job out there, Thompson. I've been looking at your record. I like what I see. You're a warrior. You are relentless and not afraid to mix it up. You always have a high body count. I like that. Effective right now, you're the recon company XO.

I said, that's great, sir, but I don't want to give up my team. He said, don't worry about that. We'll find you another team. You're the XO, and you're going to help me fix some things around here. To start with, coming to more, or to start with tomorrow morning, you and I are going to have a come to Jesus meeting with all the SOG operators and recon company one at a time. I've been going through their records. I think some of the operators berets have gotten a little too heavy for them.

And we are going to send them back to special forces tomorrow. They don't need to be in SOG. They can be with special forces, but they're not going to be in SOG. I asked, what do you mean? He said there are people here who are not going out on missions very often and others going out on missions and getting shot off the LZ every time. That's bullshit. they never actually complete a mission. Some people never go on a mission.

They're always sick, lame or lazy and can't deploy. They need to go somewhere else and tomorrow you and I are going to send them there. Captain Meadows did not play around. It's like, welcome aboard, we're going to clean house. And he was just serious as a heart attack all the time. I mean, it didn't matter if he was getting shot at what was going on.

He was just having a conversation. All right, you move over there, you take those guys, come with me we're going to go this way and just as calm as he could be but he was yeah and he was a and he was a physical stud too you you got a little story here so he's 16 years older than you because what are you what are you at this time 21 21 what was so he's 37 so he's 37 years old you guys going to a little beach run and you say in here he'd been 16 years older than you He'd been shot several times.

He'd been stabbed. He'd been hit with shrapnel. And he takes off on a seven-minute pace. And then he started running faster. In the soft sand. Not down on the compacted sand. You say Meadows was not slowing down. And we got to the 2.5 mile point.

I said, sir, I'm going to turn around here and head back. I have some things I need to take care of. Meadows said, you do that, Lieutenant. I'm going to keep running for a while. And he kept going. He used to say you keep your body short. sharp, you keep your mind sharp. So how were those conversations with the troops that you had to get rid of?

Not pleasant for them. And if they're at SOG and they don't want to operate, why would they want to stay there? Because there was not many eyes on them. They could kind of sneak through the class. No, it's a status thing. Some of it's a status thing. You don't want to have to admit that you don't want to go out anymore. even though you volunteered to do six missions or six months, whichever came first,

you could come back from your first mission and say, I'm not doing that again. This is not my thing. I didn't realize this is what I was volunteering for. So you would have some people just say, I want a different job. I don't mind staying here, but I don't want to be an operator. It's a different world on the other side of that border. It's not like combat inside Vietnam. And the other thing could happen is your 1-0, your team leader could say,

I don't think this is your thing. I don't want you out with a team anymore, so I'm going to have you taken off the team. So you could remove people. But sometimes, you know, you'd built a friendship with them and you just let them hang around, even though you knew that. they're going to get sick before, you know, time to go on a mission or whatever. And how often are you getting new guys coming in? New guys coming into SOG?

On a fairly regular basis. Two guys, three guys at a time. Sometimes one guy shows up. And there was the once they came to SOG, I forget, are they doing any, they're basically going into the team and that's where they're getting their additional training. There's no like other SOG pipeline. Yeah, it depended on, to some degree on your rank. A lot of people got to go to what was called one zero school. So you went to a week of special training on SOG missions,

how missions were run, the rules when you went out, how you did a remain overnight position, things like that. So you picked up on some things that you probably hadn't gotten anywhere else. And then it's on. Well, this book then really gets right into just starting to execute operations. There's one here, Operation Shiloh, which, by the way, 40 years later, your youngest granddaughter was born and named Shiloh. That's coincidence? Or was that?

Coincidence. Synchronicity. I mean, because no one knew anything about that mission. I mean, for the most part, except for my wife, and when he knew I was in Sog, they knew I was in Special Forces. So, yeah, I just thought that was interesting that that name popped out. I, you know, when the decision was made that that's what she was going to be named, I thought, oh, that got my attention.

Where did that come from? Well, I'm glad I don't have a daughter named Ramadi. Yeah. So Operation Shiloh's mission was to stop the flow of support. flies coming from North Vietnam through the Mu Guy Pass and establish a physical presence on the high ground above the MGP and coordinating airstrikes day and night. So this is a pretty, this is a, this is a, this is a common mission for SOC like they're bringing stuff through and we're going to stop them. Except this the difference being here is about 75% or more of what

came down the Ho Chi men trail came through that pass. When it left Vietnam, North Vietnam, it came through that pass to start its journey down troops, supplies, everything coming down through there. So it's a very dangerous space. They had a lot of anti-aircraft positions set up around where they would start to enter into it to try to keep it from being bombed. in fact later on a documentary was produced that was actually titled

the most dangerous airspace in Southeast Asia and it was right there but in the book you'll hear what I was being told you know we're going to put you up there yeah yeah and again you know obviously I can't read the whole book even though it's very

tempted to read this whole book on the podcast. We were talking about the beforehand. Trying to figure out what to actually read. Just get the book so that you can hear all these details. The details are incredible. And you get such a good understanding of what you guys were doing. And one of the interesting that things that you guys were due is you would do, your pre-mission training was real operations against a real enemy.

So talk a little bit about that training on, you know, going to Monkey Mountain to train. for a mission. So you get your team, you know you got a mission to do, and you go to train in real combat. Yeah, one of the things that I said after my very first mission when I came back was that it would have helped me before I went on the mission if I could have had some actual training in a jungle environment. I mean, you can go out in a you know, on the beach, and you can run immediate action drills, and you can see where everybody is,

and you make sure you don't shoot anybody because you're firing live ammo. You can do all that stuff really easy there. But when you go into the jungle environment, now you've got trees, you have vegetation, you have logs, they're holes, you're falling over things, you're trying not to shoot anybody, your own people. It's much more difficult if you do it in the jungle. So once I've got, you know, my team,

I suggested it on this one, and we started doing a little bit. But I suggested let's do pre-mission training in a jungle environment, and when we got down to CCN, Danang, we had Monkey Mountain, which was a jungle environment, and, you know, had some Viet Cong out there, had a few NBA running around out there. So you couldn't just go out in a jungle and walk around and not worry. about it. You had to be on your toes all the time, or you're accepted to get shot, but you could go out there and practice, and that really made a difference in the skill set.

Because now we know how to move much better in the jungle. We know what it's like at night. We set up an RON out there, and we have to have security because somebody may stumble into your position there. But you start to learn the jungle, and that was part of what I wanted my my people to do was understand the jungle. What does it sound like? What does it smell like? What changes? When you're about to make contact, what changes? Because you'll hear people talk about, you know, I could feel it. I could feel something was about to happen. And I used to ask myself, what do you feel? I mean, I get a feeling like that. Where's it coming from? And from a chemical

background, I'm starting to think about what are the different chemicals that are being released into myself, and why? Why am I starting to feel this way? Well, the smell changes. The sounds change. All of these things collectively

come into, I just took all my senses and put them together as the sense and its information is coming in there and you feel different. You know something's going on here. and then learning how to use that and start to differentiate. What I'm really experiencing right now is smell.

I'm smelling something. When you get scared, you sweat, but it's a different kind of sweat that comes out. It has a different smell to it. It's a much stronger smell, more pungent. and once you begin to recognize, wow, that's human fear that I'm smelling right now. And it's coming from up in front of us. There's somebody up there that knows they're about to have contact and they're sweating and they're scared. I need to know what that means.

You know, my father, he told me one time when he was little I went to pick a dog up and it tried to bite me. And I said, what's wrong with the dog? He said, he knows you're afraid of him. He said, how does he know? I was trying to pet him. He said, he can tell. My father never said how he could tell. He just said, animals can tell.

They can sense fear in a human. They were smelling. You know, my smell changed. So you can use that against humans. If you know it, you know what it smells like. But anyway, being able to get into jungle, and practice there really increases the skill set. Yeah, the seals train out in the desert in Imperial Valley, California,

and so we do all of our immediate action drills on the desert terrain. But in the specific area where we are, there's waterways, and they have a lot of vegetation around them. So depending on where we're fighting, like in Vietnam, the seals would in that desert training area would go to this specific area where it's very closed jungle like terrain and it's the same type of iads that you would or same type of immediate action drills that you do in the jungle because it is a jungle but it's it's so the mechanics are the same but the some of those there's there's things that have to adjust when you get into closed terrain and and and for you to be able to go out there and patrol through that is very necessary because if you've never done it in closed terrain. You've only done an open terrain because in closed terrain you take seven steps and you can't see a person anymore like they're gone and so you got to tighten up the The spacing and everything but you can't make it too tight because now we're all vulnerable to one shot So yeah, I just that the whole fact that you guys would go out there and train for missions in

Combat is that that says a lot about what was happening in Vietnam at the time Fast forward a little bit in the book the snake bite training missions reinforced my belief that many SOG missions could be accomplished more efficiently with less loss of air assets and lives if we used much smaller SOG teams. It appeared to me that on most missions I could be inserted or extracted alone with one helicopter. I began to build my case for an RT Dynamite. And RT is recon team. So recon teams, they have names after stage. This one is RT Dynamite, is what you're recommending.

discussion with Meadows. I had suggested that this, that I be inserted alone as a one-man team to Chief Sog with the Shiloh mission, but it had not been received well. I became more and more convinced that I could move with more stealth and speed as a one-man-sog team, RT Dynamite, because that's your call sign, your code name was Dynamite. When I finished my last night by mission to Elephant Valley, I approached Meadows and laid out my plan. Meadows listened as long as he could and then said, you're totally effing crazy, Thompson. I responded, that's what all my teams had told me, and I agree with them.

That's why I can make this work. Meadows said there's no way I'm sending you across the border alone. You would do it. I thought through it all the contingencies, I replied. What if you get the crap shot out of you with no one to help you? If I get hit, the worst case scenario is you lose one crazy sog guy. This mission does not require a bright light, team no one to pick me up unless I signal you if you don't hear from me you'll know I'm dead or I'm

walking back across the border you've been out in the sun too long I'll put you back on a team but it will have other people in it what about a team with me is the only American talk to me in the morning yes sir so you had this plan that you're going to that you could do these operations alone yeah I was convinced I could I could be more stealthful I don't have to carry all their equipment. I'm not going to make any noise. It's just me. You know, if it was a mission where what I was doing was going to locate an enemy force or observe, you know, what was in a convoy, things like that, where it wasn't a kinetic-type mission where I was going to go out and actually intentionally attack someone, I mean, I don't need a bunch of people with me. Just put me out

I'm not carrying a big radio either. That thing's heavy. You know, I've got my survival radio if I need to talk to you. You know, I'll come up on the emergency frequency and talk. So that lightens me up. I might not even carry a car 15. I'll carry, you know, a stand gun or something with a silencer on it and my 22 pistol of a silencer.

So if I do make contact, they don't know what happens to me. I just disappear all of a sudden. But if they shoot me, then I'll try to survive and get away from them and once I'm able I'll start working my way toward the border so yeah

I can imagine Captain Meadows just thinking about the risk profile there of like you know to one little thing happens and that's it yeah well I'm gone I mean we lose people but for your point it'd be only one

yeah just be one And they won't know I'm there because you insert me at night by parachute. You know, here he goes flying across the top of the canopies and stuff. Crosses a little clearing and keeps going. When it hits that clearing, I just slide out of the aircraft. I don't need a reserve because I'm only about three or four hundred feet above the ground when I jump out anyway. Parachute has enough time to open. I hit the ground, bag it, move off into the jungle.

You know, you can do it very quickly. And later on, when I was with the Rangers, I demonstrated that, that I could do it with Halo, but I could also do it, you know, static line, just going out low like that. And anyway. Well, as we'll find out later in the book, RT Dynamite does make a run. We'll get there. Fast forward a little bit in the book.

I went back to my room to think through more of the details. The next day I received a letter from a friend of mine and Bob Sheridan's. Bob was my best friend. The letter started off with, I'm sure you have heard by now, and I'm so sorry about Bob being killed on 26 March. I was stunned. Saga operators rarely heard about what was going on at the other FOBs.

I had no idea. that Bob had been killed. I requested immediately to fly down to CCC before Bob's remains were shipped back to the U.S. Meadows' reply was, not going to happen. If you go down there, his body is not going to be at CCC. Graves' registration will not let you see him. Even if they would, that would be one of the biggest mistakes of your life. You need to remember him the way he looked the last time you saw him, not the way he looks now.

Besides, I'm giving you a new mission tomorrow. Go to the club, have a few drinks in his honor, and get some sleep. See me at 0,700 in the morning. I was not happy with his response or him, even though he was right. It took a few days for me to realize that it was a great piece of advice Meadows had given me. I used it with many others, many times after that. I found Barswell, went to the club, and made several toasts to Bob. Bargewell listened to my thoughts and placated me by agreeing that he would go with me the next day and together

we would kill all the NVA. He did a really good job of consoling me, but I became more determined to add a second objective to all my missions, terminate as many NVA as I could after finishing my primary mission. So that loss of Bob Sheridan definitely changed your mindset. Yeah. And, you know, barge well was great. As we sat there and consumed some of the philosophical nectar at the club,

and he was like, oh, yeah, you know, tomorrow we'll go together. And we'll take them out of you and I together. I mean, we can do some damage out there and all this kind of stuff to keep me calm down. So that was great. Got me through that, and the next day it's time to go do some things. things, but, you know, I had continued to think about it. I mean, once I accomplished the mission, and all these guys are trying to, you know, terminate us, terminate the team, I'm going to do whatever I can to take as many of them out as I can. And some of that is, you know, particularly after

I learned more about me maneuvering the enemy rather than the enemy maneuvering me. And I start moved them in a position where it's easier to get them with attack air and stuff that's coming in, I can take a lot of them out as we're leaving. You also say this on 17 March, 1969, my good friend, Sergeant First Class, Ricardo G. Davis wanted to talk to me about his upcoming mission. He'd been on many successful missions, but this one had him spooked. This one was scaring him and making him feel like it was his last. I tried to encourage him, but he was really down.

Before R.T. Copperhead was flown to Thailand launch site, Davis gave Lamont his 1-1 a letter and his ring and asked him to deliver them to a particular person after the mission. R.T. Copperhead was overrun on 20 March, and Davis's body was not recovered. And that's the first in this book where guys are telling you this happens overrun. over again, guys are telling you they got a bad feeling about a mission, and they end up not making it. You know, at what point in this deployment did you start to see that trend? Well, early, I mean, with Bob, when what happened was, you know, we got to SOG together at Danang, we were briefed on what SOG was and everything, but then that was the first time

Bob and I got sent in different directions. So I went north to Fubai, and he went south to CCC. That was the first time in two years. We'd been apart. You know, Thompson and Sheridan are really close in the alphabet. And the Army did everything alphabetical. So we would always be in the same platoon, same squad, the ranger buddies together, everything.

you know, we did everything together. But I had that feeling, you know, that day when he left, I think this is it. I just, I don't feel good about this. And, you know, and he didn't come back. So, but then I had other people, you'll read about in a book, tell me that. And in one case, the one zero, you know, a friend of mine was telling me, the 1-1 was telling my 1-1

that he was concerned about them coming back. So, I mean, I didn't know, you know, my 1-1 was talking, you know, to the other guy. Wait, your 1-1 was telling the other 1-1? The other, yeah. So there was a team going out. Dennis was my roommate. And Dennis and I had a conversation right before they left to go up to the launch site.

And he said, I've never felt like this before. And, you know, so we had that conversation. At the same time, he and I were having a conversation, his 1-1 met with my 1-1 and said, I'm really scared about this mission. So they both had a bad feeling. They both were having it at the same time for the same mission. And they didn't come back. we'll get to those stories here in a minute and you got a bunch of quotes in the book throughout

the book but this one is one that's worth covering whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons that's Douglas MacArthur just to go to a little lighter note here next mission you go through the man the mission was to conduct a reconnaissance beginning 28 April along highway 22 in Laos you could start prepping again get the book If you've listened to this podcast, get the book. There's so many details in here. One of the things that you do is you break stuff down, almost in an operational type format.

And here's some basic SOPs you talk about as you're preparing for this. No soap during the last three days prior to the mission. Obviously, you guys wanted to smell like, not like perfume. Right. Only selected spices during the last three days prior to the mission. If we had a smell,

if we had a smell, it had to be an NVA smell. So you guys, did you just eat just nothing but Vietnamese food? The final few days? Particularly what the NVA ate, particularly the spices they seem to have access to. You know, I told the guys, when we were out there, at some point, you're going to have to poop. And when you poop, I want it to smell like NVA poop. You know, so if they find it, I want them to say, oh, yeah, that's one of us. So let's be careful what we eat

And You know Because in the book You'll also see I finally started teaching them about How to be invisible And that became our big thing You know, the signal

Be invisible I won't go into it here But You have to be invisible Invisible Invisible in all of your senses So if I'm going to be invisible, I can't smell. If I do smell, I need to smell like you,

so you don't recognize it. I don't make any sounds. So everything was taped, fastened down, and just prior to getting on the helicopter to insert, you had to do the jump up and down test. Could I hear anything rattle, anything flop? Did you have any shiny piece of metal on you? If you had shiny metal, it had to be spray painted black or it had to be covered with black tape.

Yeah, nothing could shine. And so all of those little components really focused around the different senses. So don't smell like soap. Another one, the inside of boony hats would be covered with the orange side of a VS17 panel. This is a trick that we used up until we started wearing helmets all the time. which but in the in the 90s we did the same thing inside of our floppy hats we put uh orange vs 17 panel so we could turn them inside out and let the helicopters or air support see us um everyone would participate in iv and tourniquet training everyone would carry 10 frag grenades and three claymores

and six 40 millimeter h e rounds that's a good load out that was not received uh oh yeah The boys were not happy about that. Not happy about that. But if you think about it, if you have a seven-man team, you take seven guys out, that's 70 frag grenades that you've got, 21 Claymore. And I like the daisy chain to Claymore's. And I like to have on the main avenue of approach coming into our RON at night, I like to have seven Claymore's Daisy Chained covering that avenue of approach.

and sometimes a couple of white phosphorus grenades in front of it just for fun. And if you approach us, that's 10.5 pounds of C4. 4,900 still balls traveling at 4,000 feet a second. When that thing goes out, just the blast wave from that, even if the balls don't hit you. And, you know, the NVA would say, this is different. this guy's crazy this is not a normal

sock team these guys are crazy one claymore mine is a deterrent seven claymore minds is a whole other ball game yeah and then there's three more after that yeah so if your survivors decide they are

going to come on down to try to get us there's three more daisy chains and now they're thinking this guy really is crazy nobody does that and there must be a lot of them too, right? They're thinking there's a lot of you.

Yeah. You mentioned in the book, what do you say, keeping up with the Joneses or something like that. Like, you got to, oh, keeping up appearances. You got to keep making them think that there's a lot more because there's only six of us or seven of us. Yeah.

If they knew how small of a group we were, they'd just come down and take us out. Yeah. But if they think you're big, then, and you're taking a lot of them out in the process. Yeah, and this is where you talk about beginning to train them to be invisible, which you just mentioned.

You do a visual recon flying over it. You set up the insertion. Again, there's so many good details in here. Going out on this mission now, you've been out there for a few days in the field. Get the book to get that. Day three, the rain stopped and the sky began to clear around 10 on day three, and Covee was on station at an RP rendezvous point several miles away from our location.

Our observation team returned from the road just before 12 and was giving a quick silent briefing on, what they had seen on the road. Suddenly, a tow popper exploded, followed immediately by a scream and a barrage and roar of AK-47 fire directed away from us at a distance of about 50 meters to our east. The NVA thought we were close and fortunately made a bad guess as to our location. Based on the number of AKs firing and at least two RPDs,

we estimated it was at least a platoon-sized force of 40 men. Now we knew exactly where they were and that they were that they had a dying tracker or point man with them. Again, these are all things that you know. Now that you have all this experience, you know that that first person walking to the tow popper was either a point man or he's a tracker. You hear two RPDs. You hear the number of AK-47s and now you can make an assessment that probably six months ago you wouldn't have been able to make because you just didn't have the experience. Now you go, yep, this is probably a platoon-sized element. we hit their point man and or a tracker.

All right, so you're calculating all that thing. You say, I always got a rush when a tracker stepped on one of my minds, but I contained my excitement. We needed to be more concerned about all the NVA that were descending on us and the others running to assist them. It was getting very crowded. We knew we were well hidden and should not move or fire on them. We wanted to get as many possible with the Claymore's. The NVA expected us to be directly behind the Claymore. Yeah, because two of the five Claymore's on their most probable assault path had Willie Pete in front of them and were angled so we were not directly behind them.

This would create the illusion that we were in a different location than we were. The NBA expected us to be directly behind the Claymores. The Claymores would cut through a swath of the NVA assault line and the Willie Pete would add a lot of pain, fear, choking and smoke and block visibility of the survivors. Ben had the detonator for our first layer of Claymore's and made eye contact with me. I had Duke send the code for enemy contact to Covey. When the NVA turned toward our position and began firing into our general location, I gave Bin the signal to detonate the Claymore's, sending 3,500 steel balls traveling at 4,000 feet per second at the NBA with the Willie Pete right behind them.

When they regrouped and started advancing again, Ben detonated a second layer of Claymore's, and we began to withdraw quickly. The NBA were stunned and suffered considerable losses, but regrouped quickly and continued to advance all the time placing heavy fire in the direction of the Claymore blast. When they got the right distance from the second Claymore layer, I gave Ben the signal to launch. It was a smaller explosion than the first. This one was three Claymore's, 4.5 pounds of C4 and 2100 steel balls, but it got their attention. And again, I mean, a Claymore, when a Claymore goes off, Echo Charles. You know what an M80 is?

You know like the fireworks thing? Yeah, yeah. That is nothing compared to a Claymore. Like a Claymore rocks your world. It's a massive, sharp explosion. And to have first seven of those things or five of those things going off at one time is like the fact that these guys advanced through this

is impressive. It's impressive. And these things have steel ball bearings or something like that? Yeah, they have. It's basically a piece of C-4. and then literally the whole front of it is stacked with just ball bearings. Yeah, the front towards enemy scenario. Yeah, front towards enemy.

That's exactly what it is. That's a Claymore mine. And that right behind that layer of plastic is 2100 steel ball bearings. And then behind that is the C4 that's going to blow up. So kind of like a wide angle shotgun kind of scenario. Yes, very much like a wide angle shotgun. Yeah, that's brutal. Yeah.

Fast forward a little bit. We needed air support right then. Judging from the fire we were receiving it as we withdrew the envy. Force had built back to about 40 NVA directly engaging us. My concern was I could still hear at least two RPDs, multiple firepower multipliers. The Car 15 AK-47 and RPD each had a very distinct sound. Duke contacted Covey and told him we were in heavy contact and needed gunship and extraction aircraft ASAP. Covey told Duke it would be approximately 45 minutes before you could have gunships,

gunships and slicks on site, but he would have two A-1s in about 20 minutes. So for those you guys that haven't listened to the other podcast about SOG, Covey is the overhead special operations guy, a SOG guy that's overhead flying and coordinating everything from the air. And that's really the lifeline

that just is connecting the guys on the ground with the rest of the world. So that's what and they're the ones that are coordinating all this air totally critical to the mission and you guys are in this heavy contact and you get yeah, it's about 45 minutes before we can get you some the support that you need. But we can get the A1s, which are awesome close air support aircraft in about 20 minutes. Fast forward a little bit. I signaled Kim the point man to continue to head for the extraction LZ and for Khan to begin. And again, I'm throwing out these characters. Kim, Khan, bin, bin, like these guys, you explain. who these guys are in the book, you give the character of their background, the relationship that you had with these guys. So get the book. I signal for Khan to begin leaving

Claymore's behind on 30-second fuses. That's another neat little trick. Because not only would you set them up when you're in a remain overnight position where you'd intentionally and deliberately plant the Claymore's on the most likely avenue of enemy approach, you guys would also rig

Claymore's that you could just stick in the ground and with 30 second time fuses on him. So Echo Charles, on a Claymore mind, there's a, there's little feet on it. And they're little stakes. They're like little, there's little stakes that you can, you can flip them out and bend them down and you can just jam the thing right in the ground. It's the most convenient, like, device ever. And so they would set little 30 second time fuses, boom, stick it in the ground, pull the time fuse. Now 30 seconds later, if someone's following you, they're going to get blasted. we continue to move low and fast toward the extraction LZ.

The tracker on our left, this is a tracker, someone that was trying to hunt you guys down, was continuing to get closer to us and trying harder to turn us, meaning he's trying to pressure you in a way where you'll turn in a certain direction that they want you to turn.

Right. And this is a key component that you've been talking about today. I told Duk to continue moving the team toward the extraction LZ and keep talking to Covey. I would rejoin the team in a few minutes, and I put Bin unofficially in charge of Duke. I slipped away from the team and moved quickly and silently toward where I anticipated the tracker on her left would be when I got to him. I went into a one-shot, one-kill mode, and put a silenced 22 long-rifle bullet in the tracker's left temple. He flinched and dropped straight down.

I ran to the body, made sure he was dead, and searched him. I took the documents I found on him. So that's exactly what you were talking about earlier. Whereas maybe earlier in your SOG career, you might have said, oh, there's a tracker over there. We need to go in the other direction. He said,

oh, I know where he's going to be, and I'm going to go kill him. Soon I was back with the team and slowly taking over coordinating air support. The A1s were very helpful in holding back the NVA, but the NVA numbers were increasing so fast,

we had to stop our movement toward the LZ. The automatic fire was turned, Turning up the ground knocking bark off trees and limbs were falling. We had to stay low and go from tree to tree. The NVA fire was steadily increasing and becoming more accurate and the area around us was becoming smoky. I told Covey we might need to try and get the team out on strings. Then it happened a loud screen from Duke. He was rolling around on the ground screaming and holding his leg.

He was screaming and yelling hit hit and something about someone's mother in Vietnamese. I crawled to him as fast. as I could. He had not only taken around on the thigh, but through the femur. Not good. I could see bones sticking out of the exit wound in his thigh and he was bleeding profusely, but fortunately not arterially. I called Covey and declared a prairie fire emergency, told him the one zero was hit and continued to work on stopping the bleeding and stabilizing the wound. Dook could not keep quiet. Broken, shattered femurs are extremely painful. It always spooks the team when they hear one of their own screaming.

The NVA could hear Duke screams above the gunfire. They knew where he and I were. They focused their fire on us. I asked Covey to keep working the assets. We had and to find some napalm ASAPE while I worked on Duke. If he could not get napalm quickly, the NVA were going to overrun us. I knew if we stopped moving, the NVA would quickly surround us, then we would be dead. But we could not move Duk without splinting his leg, slowing the bleeding.

and as much as I hated to do it, giving him a morphine injection. The NVA could hear him screaming and focus more of their fire in our position. They could tell we were not moving. I could not keep him quiet without morphine. He was in the excruciating pain, and we were going to split his leg and drag him to the LZ with the NV shooting at us. I gave him the morphine. Good news came from Covey.

Napal was on the way. It was time to put some NVA on the Barbie. The new plan was to make two Napalm runs, and have the second extraction helicopter trail the first by 60 seconds. I inserted Ducks IV for his ringer's solution while we were waiting. Fast forward a little bit. We were receiving withering fire and quickly running out of time. Every time I fired five to six rounds at the NBA, they sent hundreds back at me from different locations.

So this is a, it almost feels like an untenable situation. That's what I felt like. Got wounded guys. You're almost surrounded. You've, with the amount of destruction that you've unleashed on the enemy and they're still coming after you.

Nightmare. Yeah, I kind of felt like it was, in these situations, it was like what happens when you kick the top off of an ant hill. And they just come, swarming out after you. You make contact with that small group

and all of a sudden, And they come from everywhere, you know, because they know where we are now when they come after. And they also know that you're, you know, you're back behind enemy lines. Like there's no, you, there's nowhere to run. They got to, they got to be thinking, oh, we got, we got them cornered. We can get them. Yeah. Fast forward a little bit.

Dynamite, Covey. Covey and I were friends. He started using my code name in place of my mission call sign. He knew it was a constant reminder that I had a friend above working hard to get the team out. Dynamite, go. Dynamite. You the one zero now? Roger that. Sometimes in the heat of battle call signs got temporarily dropped in the constant back and forth communication. Congratulations on your promotion. Thanks. Do you have NAEP for me? We're running out of time down here. I've got a flight of fast movers with NAEP. I need you to mark your location at ASAP. I fired a white flare through the

canopy. Roger ID flare. Identify white and that's just a protocol to go through. You mark your position and then they identify what color it is. Dynamite, Roger that. Put the nape 100 meters southwest to my position, flying southeast to northwest, danger close. Second nape 60 seconds later, same position in Asmuth.

Covee, nape 100 meters southwest to your position, flying south east to northwest, danger close. Second nape 60 seconds later, dynamite, Roger that. Dynamite, nape is one, nape one is 60 seconds out, danger close.

Get your head down. Roger that. I yelled to the guy. above the gunfire. Virginia, get down, nape in 30 seconds. As usual, the jungle canopy made the napalm very messy, but most of it landed on the NBA and none on the team. Great job, Covey. Roger that. Nape 2 in 30 seconds. Followed 60 seconds later by that extraction bird. Heads down, then stand by. Virginia, get heads down. Nap in 30 seconds. Virginia, orange hats. another great job covey first load ready but it's very smoky difficult to see and breathe smells terrible still a lot of ground fire don't shoot the orange hats

bin bow and chin placed as much supporting fire on the nva positions around the lc as they could while i stood up with a vs 17 panel to guide the extraction bird to the first extraction load location i had to drop to my knees because so much fire was coming at me i would have gone all the way to the ground but But the grass was too high to be able to see from the prone position. So you're trying to get these helicopters to be able to see you and know where to land. And in order to do that, you've got to pull out a VF17 panel, which is a bright orange piece of material. And you've got to mark your location exactly. And there's so much gunfire you're on your knees.

You can't go all the way to the ground because you'd be in the grass. They wouldn't be able to see it. The helicopter had to come to us because we could only move Duke a few meters, especially with all the automatic fire coming. at us. The ground fire in our position and helicopter was steadily increasing. Once the first load was on the helicopter, I gave the pilots a thumbs up and signaled to lift off. He was receiving so much fire he was already lifting off the ground before I gave the signal. The door gunners were destroying the NVA. The barrel on the one door gunner's M60 was so hot it turned red. I could see that some of the tracers were going in strange directions because it was so hot. Some were tumbling end over end.

The first extraction helicopter with Duke and the other three team members lifted up and out of the LZ with the enemy fire all around them. Above the cracking and popping of the bullets, I could hear some metallic clangs as the helicopter took hits. I had to drop to the ground and crawl back to the tree line where Bin, Bao and Chin were waiting. Once the helicopter was headed for the launch site, Bin, Bao, and Chin, and I made a run for the extraction point in the LZ. Bao was leaving Claymore's with time fuses in our wake to slow the NVA. Bow was firing his 40-millimeter high explosive rounds of the NVA as fast as he could. Chin was firing his car 15 on auto. Covey worked the LZ with Napalm and had gunships attacking the NBA who were chasing us.

The bad news was the heavy rain with low clouds was moving back in quickly. The rain had already started. The wind was picking up and I could see the clouds rolling in like a big black wave towards us. It would be a close race between the extraction helicopter and the clouds. At best, we might get this one chance for extraction if we could survive the withering fire coming at us. Then out of nowhere a loud, boom, intense heat, a blast wave and shrapnel coming from about 30 meters east of us. The NVA had introduced RPGs into the game. And I could hear an RPD firing.

Everything was going sideways. So, again, if you haven't listened to any of these SOG podcasts or the SOGcast, if you don't have good weather, if the clouds come in, you're screwed because the because the air assets are going to go away there's just not it's just becomes impossible especially in vietnam they'd have thick ground fog or thick ground clouds and it's just game over if that happens and here you can see that these clouds are coming in back to the book covey dynamite abort the pickup i say again abort the pickup the ground fire's too heavy they have RPGs and an rpd casper this is a Covy abort abort abort this is Casper Roger we took a few hits but seem okay

Sandy lead this is Covey I need another nape run north to south a hundred meters west of the LZ ASAP this is Sandy lead rolling in with hot with nape Casper follow close behind Sandy lead and pick up the team watch the smoke and only pick up the orange hats Rod Casper Roger turning on short final now to pick up the orange hats Casper this is tango six Dynamite. We are taking a lot of fire. Be quick on your pickup. Tango 6. We're coming in fast for a touch and go. You guys jump on the skid as we are lifting off up This is tango 6 copy that tango 6 start running toward touchdown point now Stay low be fast. Don't run in front of the door gunners

Roger that orange out orange out The four of us were getting hammered as we ran for the touchdown point Just as we approached the helicopter chin was hit and disappeared into the grass I could hear chin screaming for help hit hit Trang Wei, Trang Wei. He thought he was going to be left behind. And Trongway is, that's saying is Dai Wei, right? No.

Trung Wei is the lieutenant. Right. So what's Trongwei? Trongwei is lieutenant. I don't know about Trongwei, but Trongwi is, was me. Okay. Well, that Trunwe is just my bad view to me. See what that is.

Yeah. Yeah. Diway is captain. Yeah. Okay, got it. That's what I was trying to think of. He thought he was going to be left behind. I signaled for Bin and Bao to get on the helicopter.

I ran as fast and low as I could to where I saw chin go down, found him. He was hitting the shoulder and arm as I was picking him up. I heard Ben above the unbelievably loud noise yelling for me. Chung Wei, Chong Wei. Ben and Bao had not gone to the helicopter. When Ben saw me, I smiled. I yelled, I told you two to get in the helicopter. Ben said, you stay, we stay.

That's the camaraderie right there. He wasn't going without you. But you had a question about that a little later. Go ahead. Ben was an interpreter, and Ben said, we're on the helicopter, and we're flying back. And he said, Bao wants to know why us too have to come out last, with you. And I told him, I said, well, you tell Bao, I think this is really Ben's question

on, but anyway, you tell Bell that if I become the one zero, the three of us are coming out last every time together because I need you, you can speak Vietnamese, and I need him because he's got that 40 millimeter. So we'll come out together every time. They were not happy Yeah, I mean, okay, Ben, help me carry chin to the chopper. Bow, cover us. As we stood up and turned toward the chopper, we saw it lifting off. We missed our ride. There had been a lot of radio traffic, but I had been too busy to listen.

Covey Dynamite, guess we missed our ride. We're going back to the tree line. This grass is not stopping bullets. Dynamite negative. Stay where you are. A backup bird is your last chance to get out today. It's on short final now. If I were you dynamite, I would not let anything stop me from getting on this one.

This is dynamite. If he gets within 10 feet to the ground, we'll be on it. Copy that. Our ride was descending fast. I told Ben about to get in, and I would hand chin to them. Once they started dragging chin up onto the floor, the helicopter, I grabbed the skid as it was lifting up and forward, swung my legs up and got over the skid as I watched the ground rapidly moving away. The door gunner and Ben grabbed my hand and arm and pulled me up onto the floor. I put a tourniquet on Chin's arm and pressure bandage on his shoulder.

He was still bleeding. I had been given a ringer's solution IV. The hard raining clowns hit us as we were lifting off. It was rough and wet, but we got out, and the air assets were continuing to pound the NVA. One of the things that I was learning about tourniquets. When you put a tourniquet on someone, you have to really tighten it down,

really tighten it down. If the person is in an auto accident or whatever you encounter today, if the person is not screaming and hollering about it hurts, it's too hot, too tight, you've got to loosen it. If you're not making them scream and holler, it's not tight enough to stop it. And that's one of the first things, you know, the EMTs, I'll tell you, you've got to sense that baby down.

You know, most of them have a handle you can twist, and you've got to really tighten that thing down, or it won't stop arterial bleeding. A couple of the lessons that you got here. Using a sand, and again, I'm reading like just a couple of these. Using a sand table for rehearsals, studying the terrain, memorizing the terrain, and making a simple drawing of the terrain

increases the one zero's ability to manage the battle space during the contact. It's too late to learn once you're on the ground. It had to be difficult because how big of an area are you looking at? When you're looking at insertion, you know, you're looking at a map, what are you looking at like a square kilometer? Yeah.

Something around that big? And it could be more than that, but usually about that, and you build a sand table to represent that with the bridge lines, the streams, the clearings, or whatever. But, you know, now you can see it. You can see it in three-dimensional. And, you know, from my perspective, what I'm trying to do is memorize that. I don't want to have to pull the map out when someone's shooting at me

and try to figure out where the ridges and different things are. I need to be able to see it in my mind three-dimensionally, you know, in the battle space. While we're shooting, while I'm talking to Covey, while I'm telling people to get down, telling people to shift their fire, I'm listening to 10 or someone. You know, I train them. If you're hit, start yelling. Hit, hit, hit. I need to know, first of all, you're still alive, and I need to know where you are,

because you're probably down into vegetation. So I need to try to hear you. I know you're alive. I won't come get you, but I got to know you're down there. So hit, it's a secret word. Everybody can say that. And, you know, so we would practice

because it's so loud and there's so much going on. Yeah. I'm going to fast forward a little bit to next mission. This is aptly named, technique, the suicide technique. Insert two small teams together on one LZ. The teams would go in different directions. Have one of the teams make contact and be extracted.

The second team would stay behind and continue their mission. This is, yeah. Seals would, in Vietnam, sometimes they would, the extraction bird would land. Guys would get in one side and get out the other side. And that bird would take off and they'd still be a on the ground or at least some of them would still be on the ground. But this is definitely an interesting idea. And in this one you have RT Virginia, your team, and then RT keelback,

which is a different team that you're going to, one of you is going to be the suicide team and the other one's going to do the work. I'm not sure which one is more work. Insertion goes smooth. Fast forward a little bit. After we moved about 150 meters away from the trail. We heard a tracker used bamboo clacker signals 75 to 100 meters behind us. When you're going in on this, did you designate who was

going to be the suicide team that made contact or was it just by chance whichever one runs into the enemy first? So you've got two teams and the first one usually goes in. That's the team that's going to stay behind. We're visible.

We've got at least two helicopters. We're visible in the helicopter coming in. And we get on the ground, go to the woods, and we separate. So the team that's going to stay behind, you know, save this, stay low, stay out of sight. And then in this case, my team went looking for trouble. So we want to make contact.

We want them to know that we're there. We take out as many as we can. We want them to see us get extracted with two birds. Again, some of us in each one. So it looks like the two teams have come out together. Actually, the killback was still there on the ground. Well, it didn't take you long to find trouble, actually, in this case. After about two minutes, I could see him about 15 meters from me, but I couldn't see his head.

I wanted a headshot. Suddenly he turned and started to move away, giving me a view of his head. He must have heard or smelled something from my direction and quickly turned and faced me. I put 422 long rifle bullets in his chest and two in his head before he drew. dropped to his knees, fell slowly to his side. The target practice I had been doing with the high standard pistol with integrated silencer had paid off.

And you talk a bunch about the training that you do in here, in between operations. You end up in a remain overnight location. There's a bunch of rain. Fast forward a little bit. The weather was too bad to get support. That's what I was just talking about. We didn't know how many NVA were coming.

They were searching the thick vegetation for us To do this, they had divided into small three to four person teams, and one team was coming right at us. So you guys are in this, you guys are in a perimeter trying to be quiet, sitting in this position where you're going to, where you're planning to remain overnight. And you can hear these small teams bushwhacking looking for you guys. Fast forward a little bit. Then suddenly our worst nightmare happened. Two NVA stepped inside our small perimeter. Perminor is about six feet in diameter.

We all froze in place and literally held our breath. Manikins. Freezing and scared mannequins. We could not fire our weapons for obvious reasons. It would take too long and make too much noise to attack with our knives. I had my 22 high standard with integrated silencer in my hand. I always kept it out and easily acceptable in the remain overnight just in case we had visitors like now. The rain would cover most of the noise, but the small muzzle flashes would say,

Hey, here we are. Shoot us, especially shoot me. We held our breaths as they passed through our perimeter without stepping on anyone. I could feel the weight of a large blood-filled leech hanging on my back. I could smell the spices on the NVA's breath. The NVA were about 15 feet out of our perimeter when one of them felt his foot catch on a wire. And Ben felt his detonating wire jerk. The NVA soldier told his teammate he had found a wire and he was going to follow it. And for his teammate to follow the wire in the direction they were traveling.

The NVA soldier was coming toward it. So these guys are walking. They walk right through your perimeter. They're out of your perimeter, which is a miracle. But then they hit one of your Claymore wires that you guys had set up. And now he's tracing that wire back to see where it leads. The NVA soldier was coming. But he was smart.

the one that's talking. He was smart. He sent his buddy to go to the other end of the wire because he figured that's where the Claymore was. You walked down there. The NBA soldier was coming toward our perimeter and right at Ben. I whispered to Ben to stand by. When the NVA was about 10 feet from Ben, I whispered now.

Ben set off the close layer of Claymore's. I simultaneously fired four long rifle bullets into the NVA soldier. The loud explosion, blast wave, very bright flash of light, flying debris, body parts, and screams, random firing covered the small flashes and sounds from my pistol. The two NVA and others close to us were down for good. We then set off all the remaining Claymore's with a tremendous explosion and thousands of steel balls going away from us in all directions. The NVA who were not killed or wounded were stunned, confused, and firing randomly even at each other. I threw two frag grenades toward the closest group of NVA and gave the code word to withdraw. We began to slip and slide away from the RON site and the NVA who were firing in our direction.

We had to slip by another search team that was firing randomly. I threw a frag grenade toward their muzzle flashes. They stopped firing and I heard screams and moaning. Fast forward, I radioed Moonbeam using the whisper technique and sent the Prairie Fire Emergency Code. And if you don't know, again, listen to the SOG class, listen to this podcast when we've had the other SOG Warriors on here. Prairie Fire Emergency, when you guys would send out that code word, every air asset in Vietnam that would come to aid you guys because it meant you were in threat of being overrun. Fast forward a little bit. Covey had scrambled two F4 Phamombs and it extremely.

Action King B's and gunships on standby. Covey was about 10 minutes out, but he was already running the air show. We had to evade and survive until air support arrived. One of my immediate concerns was to make sure we, R.T. Virginia, did not put any airstrikes or gun runs on R.T. Keelback. At that point, I didn't know their exact location, but I was sure Covey did. So you've got, this is the suicide mission. So you've actually got friendlies that are out there doing their thing and you obviously

need to be cautious about dropping air. Fast forward, dynamite. This is Covey. I'm on station and working the valley with fast movers. We are getting secondary explosions in the valley. Cobras are getting close. Hang in there. Dynamite.

Roger. This is Covey. I'm going to need to know where you are when the snakes arrive. Dynamite, Roger. This is Covey. I've got a second set of fast movers. I'm going to work them north of your position until the snakes arrive. The cobras were getting close, but were not to us yet.

And it was very dark, making it difficult to use them. We were completely surrounded by over 200 NVA and more. were coming. They were tightening the noose. If they had known there were only five of us, they would have come down and killed us. This is one of those cases where we had to keep up appearances. That's what I was talking about earlier. And luckily, you guys all carried 10 grenades each, which is ridiculous and awesome. Fast forward a little bit. This is Covey. Snakes are coming in hot with fangs out. Stay down. Dynamite. Roger. The Cobra's receiving a lot of ground fire, but the NVA were getting the worst end of it.

Thousands of 762 millimeter rounds were raining from the sky along with a mixture of rockets and 17-pound high-expulsive warheads and 40-millimeter high-explosive grenade rounds. Bullets and shrapnel were going everywhere. The smell of gunpower was strong and the smoke was irritating our eyes. The NVA bodies were literally stacking up. Of course, the NVA, they're determined. Fast forward a little bit.

The NVA mounted their next assault right into our Claymore's and 40-millimeter grenades. Bowla launched his 40-millimeter grenades in rapid succession. As they got closer, we began to use three-round burst toward their muzzle flashes and sounds and tossed frag grenades. We were taking a lot of casualties, and I'm sure they thought they were facing a larger force than we were.

Yeah, that's another thing, just in case you haven't been tracking these sogg missions, or just general combat. Especially at night, if you start shooting, the enemy's going to know where you are. but if you're just throwing grenades, you have plausible deniability about where you are, right? That explosion could have come from. It not only could have come from anywhere,

but it kind of could be different things. It could be a booby trap. It could be a landmine. There's only one thing with a shooting gun, and that's a person shooting a gun. So you're giving your position away. But if there's an explosion happens, it could have been a booby trap.

It could have been a landmine. Could it be a claymore? You don't really know. And so that's what you guys are trying to minimize shooting as much as you can. because you don't want to give away your position. Right. Yeah.

When you pull that trigger, you light up like a neon sign. And then, you know, the NVA would light you up. Fast forward a little bit. Give me 20 millimeter danger close. 30 meters north of our position. Fly east to west. Identify my flare. And again, just from a close air support perspective,

there's a reason that you have to give. the azmuth that you want the aircraft to fly on because you want to make sure that if their shots are short or long they don't strafe you. So when you're in

control of those air assets there's so much thought that has to be happening very rapidly to make sure that you keep your team safe on the ground. You know when you're flying an aircraft shooting whether it's 20 millimeters or rockets or machine gun out of it, the slightest little movement, that round can go 100, 200 meters in the opposite

or in a different direction. So you've got to keep these guys on a azmuth that keeps your team safe while they're shooting. Yeah, during the, it's much easier during the daytime. Because in the daytime, my left palm and my right. right thigh became my information center writing call signs writing asthmus I can see the terrain I've memorized it but now I can see it you know so it's easy for me to come up with an asthmus to tell you to go on without having to pull the compass out and start looking at it but at night it's difficult to see that you're having to estimate distance differently so everything becomes

much more complex. I can't read things on my hand because I can't turn my flashlight on, but look at it. So I'm having to remember all that stuff. So it becomes a little more difficult. Yeah, that sounds a lot more difficult, actually. But you're making it happen. Identify my flare. Roger. Roger. That. Spad's 60 seconds out. Spad's another term for that AE1 aircraft. Get your heads down. Roger, I yelled. Virginia, get your heads down. The 20 millimeter high explosive rounds literally cut down trees. Limbs were falling and debris was falling all around. They were ripping us, they were ripping into the NVA,

even though the NBA were trying to hug us. And this is something that you talked about, I didn't mention, but they're going to, the enemy will try and get so close to you that we can't use close air support. And that's what they're trying to do. Dynamite 2A1, 30 seconds out. Roger, I yelled. Virginia, grenade, then stay down.

Everyone threw a grenade toward the NBA to slow their assault, then hug the ground. The 20 millimeter ripped through their bad guys. Covey, they're hitting us from both flanks. Run napalm on both sides of us 100 meters out. Now, danger close. South to north. Roger, can you send up a flare?

Sure, I don't have anything else to do. Flair up. Yeah, I got a little snarky every once in a while. This is Covey. ID yellow. Boom, an RPG hit 15 meters away and showered us all with shrap on. My ruck was shrew. The PRC 77 radio took the brunt of it and was not working.

Somehow the shrapnel missed my blasting caps and two Willie Pete grenades. If it had hit either one of those, we would all have died. Khan was yelling, hit, hit. He had the worst shrapnel wound of the team. A big piece of shrapnel had gone into his right leg causing severe bleeding. I crawled over to him and quickly put a tourniquet on his leg to slow the bleeding. I got my URC10 emergency radio out and called Covey using the guard emergency frequency. Covey, this is dynamite on guard.

You copy? I'm on guard. Covey, you hear me? Dynamite, Roger, on guard, IID, yellow. Get your heads down. Napalm, 30 seconds out. Roger. Virginia, grenade, then stay down.

The gates of hell opened on both sides of us. An unbelievable heat wave and ball of orange, red flame, and light came across us from both sides, burning everything in its path, a roaring fire of them black smoke, followed by air without oxygen. The stench of burning flesh and terrifying screams of agony. The screams continued as human torches stumbled around and fell, consumed by the jellied gasoline. Bow and Khan began to vomit uncontrollably. Kim's leg was on fire, and I had a small fire on my side. We got the fires put out and engaged the NVA survivors.

The napalm had opened up the terrain significantly, providing us with light from the fires it started, and good fields of fire. The NVA were determined to destroy us but seemed to be dazed, making them easy targets. That napalm saved you, huh? Oh, yeah. When I discovered Napalm, fairly early on, I realized that was the most brutal thing I could use against them. The thing that terrified them the most was Napalm. When they saw their buddies staggering around, just human torches, and they were dying, they could smell their buddies cooking.

If they survived, if they didn't get hit, they wanted no part of it. Let's back away clean, Jack. Because these guys are serious. That's some bad stuff. And it's so bad that your guys are, they can't stop throwing up from the smell. The smell of the cooking flesh, you know, it's just, yeah.

I mean, it's hard not to throw up when you smell all that stuff. Fast forward. The lovely King Bees are 60 seconds out. And they could come and get you. I threw a red smoke grenade as we lifted off. I could hear the metallic clangs of the aircraft. We were taking hits as we were lifting up. The King Bees kept climbing.

As we flew away, looked down at the aftermath, and knew that RT Keelback was still down there and that they would be on the ground for four more days completing what would be a very successful mission. But Virginia was out. Some days at Sog were more difficult than others, and this has been one of those days. Yeah.

Yeah, you guys had this signal where when you dropped red smoke, that meant last guy was out, and they were cleared hot. They aircraft were cleared hot. One of your AAR points, when you get soaked to the bone with cold rain, it makes your teeth want to chatter and your leg shake. If you add a little fear to the cold,

it becomes much more difficult not to chatter and or shake. It's weird because people, when they think of Vietnam, They don't think of freezing cold. When you get wet. But when you get wet. And then throw a little fear on top of it. You know, your leg just starts hopping on the ground and you push it down.

Because you know it's my name. And then you start to chatter. Holy cow. Next one. This is where RT dynamite, meaning recon team dynamite, meaning a one man, a one man evolution. The one man mission happens. And it kind of happens by chance. You're going on R&R, rest and relaxation, and a bright light call is coming in.

So a bright light, explain a bright light to us. A bright light is a team that goes in. When you have a team in trouble, maybe they've been overrun, maybe they've disappeared, but something's happened to them. This is a standby team that launches to go out to try to find them, rescue them, bring them in. Is there always a team on bright light standby? Most of the time. Or did you have to spin one up?

But sometimes, yeah, sometimes they'll grab a team that's already at the launch site and just change their mission and send you in as a bright light team. Was it SOG only or could a downed American pilot, you know, any downed American crewman, was that considered a bright light as well? It was a bright light term for just SOG. If you didn't have, you know, if it wasn't a SOG, you know, if it wasn't a SOG, team that was in trouble. I had been overrun or whatever.

It could be a downpilot that somebody had just gone in. And you could launch the bright light team to go in and try to recover. Got it. So it's really any American in massive threat of being captured or killed or overrun. In Laos or Cambodia. The Vietnam SEALs told me that if there was a seal element in trouble or a downed aircraft, they were going no matter what. Like, that's what they're just, like, we're loading aircraft and going.

If that's happening, we're going. And that's what I always think of when I think of the bright light situation. You got your teammates. Yeah, and sometimes it is. I think Lynn Black's got a good example in his book of where they, they just pulled guys together all the side, get on the aircraft, we've got to go now. And they just put a bright light team together and launched them out there. and sometimes you have one standing by or sometimes it's you take a team that's already there

like in the book later on you know our mission was changed at the launch site we were getting ready to launch on a different mission and a team got overrun and they just brought me in and said your mission's changed this is what you're doing now you're the bright light go for it well in this particular case you're just kind of getting ready to go on R&R for the first time in a while Yeah, take a day break. Yeah, take a day break. And you see a helicopter, and then there's a guy kind of sees you, and he comes running, and he's kind of yelling something. You can't really hear what he's saying to you, but he finally gets over to you, and he says, hey, L.T.

You know how to set up a Maguire rig? A Maguire rig is basically a rope system that you can drop it down, and people can hook their carabiners into it, and you can pull people out without having the land. So this guy comes over and you do know how to do it. And so now you're going to help him rig this McGuire rig inside the helicopter. He says, we ran to the helicopter. The sergeant told me that we had a team in trouble with casualties in Elephant Valley, a Marine Force recon area of operation.

We used for training ground for some of our missions because it came loaded with plenty of live fire shootback targets that moved aggressively. Yeah, it had a lot more shoot back targets than Monkey Mountain. So if you really wanted, you know, some training, you'd go out there. One of our CH34 helicopters had gone to the area to attempt an extraction of some SOG team members. During the extraction attempt, it had been shot down, crashed through the 120 to 150 foot high jungle canopy, and had exploded and burned on impact with the ground. There appeared to be two or three survivors. A MEDAVAC helicopter had left a few minutes earlier to try and help.

There were no LZs in that area, just a very high and thick jungle canopy. McGuire rigs would be needed for the extraction. I took one quick look at the gate, about 150 meters away as we continued to run. Again, you're running towards the helicopter. The plans I had for the day were quickly put on hold as my adrenaline levels climbed. In my mind, I could see the smoldering remains of a burned CH-34 helicopter, dead and wounded crew members, and the bad guys moving in for the final kill. Time was of the essence.

I had to rig the helicopter quickly so they could go get the survivors out. As I approached the helicopter, I leaned my car 15, an ammunition bandolier against the conex container. You're going to be rigging something. You're going to be on the ground. You're going to be working, tying knots, and you've got your weapon. And so you just set it down outside the helicopter, so it's not bothered you when you're in the helicopter. I climbed in the cargo compartment of the helicopter, began working feverishly to attach the McGuire-rig nylon ropes to the floor. After a few minutes, the crew chief leaned over and yelled to me, the team is an enemy contact.

We have to go. At that point, I realized I had been concentrating so much on what I was doing. I had not noticed that the pilot had turned up the engine RPM and the aircraft was beginning to vibrate. In fact, we were lifting off. I pulled the crew chief over to me and yelled, I'm not supposed to be on here. He looked back at me, shrugged his shoulders and yelled back, sorry about that. As I looked down, I saw the CCN main gate pass under me. I sat back against the firewall, fastened a seatbelt around my waist, and resigned myself to the fact that my R&R would be delayed a couple hours.

As we flew, I began to realize that I didn't know where I was going, what I was going to do. And I was naked. I had left my weapon and ammunition leaning against the connex. I was flying into combat without a weapon. The only things I had were my fatigues and boots and a pounding heart. What a Friday afternoon of R&R this was turning out to be. so that's just got to be the most horrible feeling that you could ever possibly have in your life it wasn't exactly what i wanted to do that afternoon but not having your weapon yeah i i never went

anywhere without a weapon yeah until that day yeah and the conex box is probably 15 feet away you know like what you're i'm going to go rank this thing i don't want to do it to be in the way about 15 minutes into the flight, I had an epiphany. I had previously asked Chief Zog, Colonel Kavanaugh, Lieutenant Donahue, the CCN commander, and Dick Meadows, a recon company commander, to let me do an RT dynamite mission, a one-man team, just me. They all said no, but fate just said yes.

This was my chance. Are you already thinking you're going in at this point? Yeah. Fast forward a little bit. A few minutes later, the crew chief with a shock look on his face pulled me toward him and yelled. It's happening. The helicopter is in front of us. The helicopter in front of us has been shot down.

The team is still in contact and cannot go to the crash site. We'll be there in 10 minutes. So there was another helicopter, rescue helicopter ahead of you. They got shot down. So there's a helicopter that had crashed. Now the rescue helicopter gets shot down. And you're the following helicopter. He looked at me and shook his head in disbelief.

my puck or factor increased significantly. RT dynamite had just been activated. Fast forward a little bit. We circled around and came back to the METAVAC crash site for a closer look. This time I could see the crew members were injured and trapped inside the aircraft and fuel was spilling out on the crew. Any spark from inside the aircraft or a trace around would ignite the fuel and burn them alive. And what elevation are you hovering at? well we're you know three or four hundred feet you know above the canopy but you know i can see down through

that hole and you can see the aircraft is down in a ravine so it's elevated the fuel is spilling out kind of running down across them fast forward i yelled to the crew chief to tell the pilot to go back to the medevac crash site and i would drop a maguire rig down into the canopy climb down down to it, then climb down a tree to the ground. So this is already, you know, superhero activities. I just sound like a good plan. I don't have any other way to get down there. I mean, this is simple.

Climb down the road, climb down the tree. When he, the crew chief, told them, both the pilot and co-pilot looked around over their shoulders at me as if to say, are you fucking crazy? The crew chief leaned over and yelled. The pilot says, you're fucking crazy. I told them to tell the pilot that I might be crazy, but his buddies were going to die a horrible death in a few minutes if we didn't do something. He quickly turned the aircraft around and flew back to the MEDAVAC crash site.

I pushed out one of the McGuire rigs and the bag of sand quickly took it to the canopy. We were still receiving ground fire. At this point, we were approximately 100 feet above the canopy. I happened to see that the crew chief had an M-16 strapped to the wall. behind him. I told him to give it to me. He was a little hesitant at first, probably because he thought he would never see it again. He handed it to me along with a bandelier of four magazines. I checked the safety chambered around and thought, great, I'm going into the middle of a firefight alone with five magazines of ammunition and a weapon that may or may not be cited in, definitely not cited in for you.

I stepped out onto the skid of the helicopter confident that I had a workable plan. Okay, fair enough. I was 400 feet above the jungle floor as I looked down and took a quick mental picture map of the terrain crash sites, location of the sun, etc. that I could use to navigate by once I was on the ground. As I grabbed the rope with my bare hands, I remembered that the ropes were new white nylon ropes. New nylon ropes are very slick. I knew it was going to be very tough to hold on to, but I figured I could wrap my feet around it and make it work. The crew chief leaned over to me and yelled the pilot says we're receiving too much ground fire. We have to leave. I knew it was. time. Some situations do not give you decision alternatives. This was one of those cases. More men were about to die. Going down the rope was the only way I could influence the outcome. I stepped off the skid and quickly began to discover some flaws in my plan. Even though I

squeezed the rope as tightly as I could, I was not able to hold the slick rope tight enough to prevent the rope from sliding through my hands. A nylon rope will cause severe burns if it slides across your skin. The rope began to slide through my hands at a faster and faster rate. After about 30 feet. The white rope had turned blood red from sliding through my hands, literally. It had burned the skin off the inside of my hands, fingers, and thumbs. I was bleeding badly and could not slow down. To make matters worse, the rope no longer reached the canopy. The aircraft was beginning to move because of the ground fire and had lifted the end of the rope about 15, 20 feet above the 150-foot tree tops. My rate of descent was increasing rapidly, and the only thing I could do to prevent my

death was to be able to hold onto the McGuire rigged strap when I got to the end of the rope. Unknown to me at this time, our tactical operation center at CCN was monitoring the helicopter's radio frequency, and I found out later that about this time, a fourth aircraft had arrived in the area and was observing my descent. He radioed my aircraft and asked, who the hell is that? The reply was classic, something crazy special forces guy. At the time, that would probably have been my reply, too. where the operation was spreading fast

and CCN recon people including Barswell, Dick Meadows and other friends were gathering around the CCN talk to listen to the radio transmissions on the outside speaker. So here you are, you're sliding uncontrollably fast down this McGuire rig rope. And that's probably what, 100 feet long, 75 feet long?

No, 150. Oh, so it's a long one. You're sliding down that thing. You are planning to get into the jungle canopy on that, but now it's 20 feet above the jungle canopy and increasing because they're taking fire. And you're getting towards the end of the rope. When I hit the end of the McGuire rig at the end of the rope,

I closed down with every ounce of strength I had left and I stopped. The pain in my hands was excruciating. Blood was running down my arms. It seemed as this the NVA. It stopped shooting at the helicopter and we're now shooting at me. As I looked up, I could see the red streams of tracers coming down from the door gunners and green tracers going up. The loud cracking sounds of bullets were all around me.

I was also now swinging on the end of a long pendulum about 15 to 20 feet above the canopy. I knew the canopy was about 150 feet above the jungle floor. My strength was gone. Once again, it was decision time. I took one last look at the battlefield to validate my mental map and decided that as I swung over the center of the next treetop, I would let go and try to grab hold of something as I crashed through the canopy. I looked down and as I centered a tree top, I let it.

go, the fall brought my stomach into my throat. The sensation was quickly overcome by the impact of the jungle canopy. I grabbed wildly as I crashed through the tree limbs, but I just couldn't seem to hold on to anything. I was moving too fast and bouncing off limbs, leaving blood and skin on each one. Finally, I hit a large limb with my stomach and wrapped around it. The impact knocked the breath out of me, but I had stopped falling. After a couple minutes, I was able to begin my descent. I had crashed through 100 feet of canopy, leaving only about 50 feet to go before impact with the ground. Climbing down with no skin on the inside of my bloodied hands, fingers and thumbs, with visible cuts into the muscles and ligaments, was very painful. So that jungle canopy is thick.

And you drop down into it, what's the first thing you hit? So you hit some leaves on top and it. Is it, like how violent is this fall? It's pretty violent, and it becomes more violent as you get underneath. At the top, the tree limbs are small, and sometimes you have some vines or something there, but they're small, and they bend easy when you hit them. So it starts to slow you down, but then it gets thinner, and you start to bounce off of big limbs, and you're moving so fast.

I mean, you can grab, but you just can't hold on to it, particularly if the skin's gone off the inside of your hands. So I'm just kind of hitting limbs and bouncing and bouncing and then fold around that one big one that stopped me. So then worked my way over and went down the tree. You know, and there's some conversations going on in the background about you, idiot. Was any of those conversations?

conversations going on inside your own head at this point. Oh, yeah. That's where they were. You idiot. What made you think you could grab something going through the tree that fast? Fast forward a little bit. I could hear the firefight. The RT team was involved in about 200 to 300 meters from me.

This reference point helped orient me where I was and where I needed to go. More bad guys were probably moving around the jungle. A feeling of excitement crept over me as I realized I was a one-man bright light team, RT Dynamite. and that not only would the NBA be shooting at me, but so would the team, because they probably didn't know I was on the ground. I moved out rapidly in the direction of the second crash site.

There was no time to waste. I had moved only about 50 meters when I heard a twig break to my left. As I looked in that direction, I saw two soldiers with AK-47s about 20 meters away moving parallel to me. Just as I turned my M-16 toward them, they both saw me and began to turn their AK-47s towards me.

Everything went into slow motion. In the next fraction of a second, I had to decide if they were really NVA or two of the RT team members dressed like our NVA. I'd practice an immediate action drill for just such an occasion, hundreds of times on our firing range

and had used it in previous encounters. I decided to take them out. As I dove for the ground, I emptied a 20-round mag at both of them. I mean, this was something I had done a lot. I mean, every time, you know, between missions, when we would go to the range, one of the things we do is set up silhouettes

and I used to set five up fairly close and then you know use that technique of diving for the ground emptying the magazine and making sure I hit all five of them on the way down you know so but that's on a range and and they're not standing there or they cage pointing back at me but I had done that so many times you know I was confident I could do that.

So I just executed that, and I could tell I was hitting them because I could see them jerking around as the bullets were hitting. And there's only two of them. You know, with two, firing on automatic, I'll hit both of you less than a second. You know, so if you're spread out and I have to shoot at you first, and then I have to go, you know, aim over here to hit, echo, then I'm in trouble.

Because I've got to make all of you get hit within less than a second. Because whoever's not getting hit, they're going to return fire. I'm in trouble. And that's one of the things, you know, close quarters combat. When you go in, you're clear in a room. You want to use that V when you get in there. You want to be separated. So if there's somebody there, he has to pick one of you to shoot at and the other

is going to get him. And you also had the thought in your mind that these could be the Americans. Yeah. Because sometimes we saw guys because sometimes you guys would get dressed up like NBA. Yeah. We didn't normally do it, you know, in Elephant Valley, you know, because the Marines operated out there. They saw us dress that way. Yeah.

You're going down. Yeah. So I, you know, those things went through my mind, but very quickly, you know. Fast forward a little bit. after moving about 150 meters, someone fired a shot at me. I thought it sounded strange as I dove for cover. It wasn't a rifle. It was a pistol, probably a 38 caliber.

AK-47's made a different distinct sound. The helicopter crew was shooting at me. The co-pilot had managed to crawl out of the wreckage, had seen my movement, and had begun firing at me with his 38. I yelled to him that I was a good guy. He did not believe me and continued to shoot. My experience had been that helicopter pilots were very cool, calm, and control when they were in the air.

The jungle was a different matter. He continued to fire me until he had to reload his revolver. At that point, I rushed him and got the drop on him. The pilot, co-pilot and crew were battered, wounded, bloody, stunned, confused, and going into shock. They kept asking me where my other men were. I told them, it's just me, but I will get you all out of here. They found it hard to believe that I was their rescuer and I was alone. Confidence was not super high with him.

one guy with bloody hands. I mean, three mags left at this point. I look like the person who needed rescue. They had been extracting two men with a jungle penetrator when the air, this is what had happened to them. They had been extracting two men with a jungle penetrator when the aircraft lost power and they started going forward and down. The jungle penetrator hung on a large tree limb and the cable snapped dropping the two men

100 feet to the ground and launching the aircraft through the 150 foot jungle canopy into the ravine. So that's the situation that you're dealing with. Yeah. Once that cable, I mean, they were already headed toward the canopy. Once that cable snapped, I mean, he's like being shot out of a slingshot.

They just went right on through the canopy. Fast forward. I told the co-pilot that I was going to get help and for him to keep everyone quiet and hidden and not to shoot at anyone unless they physically stepped on them. I moved quickly towards the CH-34 crash site.

By this time, the firefight had stopped and I was not sure where the SOG team was or where the NVA were. My movement was extremely cautious because if the SOG team detected my movement, they would open fire and they would not miss. As I neared the other crash site, I heard movement a short distance up from the CH34 crash site and muffled voices. I moved very slowly and deliberately. I heard an American voice. At this point, I could only assume the enemy had captured one of the survivors from the CH34 crash. My plan was to move in as close as possible and look for an opportunity to attack and free the the American. As I crept closer and closer to the group, I eventually got close enough to see an

American sergeant that I recognized. He, Staff Sergeant Jones, was the one zero of the SOG team that was on the ground. He was still armed and obviously not a prisoner. I got down behind a tree and yelled to him that I was the bright light team and coming in for him and to have his people hold their fire. After he told me he was okay, I stood up holding the M-16 in the air with one hand and walked toward the group. Once inside their perimeter, I discovered that the loud American voice was that of an American Air Force Lieutenant Colonel who was down, who said he was the downpilot of the first aircraft that had been shot down. I informed the Lieutenant Colonel that I was the Bright Light Team and senior ground commander

and was now in charge of the operation. That went over, well. Yeah. The fact that a lieutenant colonel significantly outranked a lieutenant did not matter because he was Air Force and we were on the ground. that meant I was in charge. He became very upset and began to threaten me with what was going to happen to me if when we got to safety. About that time, the yards on the SOG team had heard enough.

And the yards of the mountain yards, the locals that are part of the SOG team. They'd heard enough. Several of them turned their weapons towards the lieutenant colonel and made some very cold and serious remarks. The interpreter told the lieutenant colonel that Chungway, lieutenant, was in charge and everyone would what he said. I told the lieutenant colonel that they were ready to kill him and bury him in the jungle, never to be seen again. He could see they were ready to kill him if he did not submit. That ended the entire discussion. That's wild.

Yeah. I mean, it is. What kind of? It would really scare you. I mean, teams were very protective of their Americans. And the looks on their faces when they were getting ready to kill somebody. And they do it all, they kill people all the time. This is no different. So, you know, we can take you out. It's not a big deal. They'll never find you. Yeah. So it finally hit him that, yeah, I better go along.

Not to mention he's an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel on the ground that's just lost his health. I mean, you think he was in some kind of a weird panic ego mode or something? He was still in shock. You know, because, you know, the aircraft had crashed and it burned. And he survived. Two other members on the aircraft survived. But they were wounded or busted up pretty badly. And those are the two that the MEDAVEC helicopter was trying to pull out on the jungle penetrator.

So when the cable broke, those guys fell 100 feet and were killed on impact. So now he knows he's lost those guys. He's the only survivor, you know, from the aircraft. So Well, so now you go into action I took 14 members with me to find the jungle Penetrator and the two men strapped through We found the penetrator and unhooked the bodies from it

When we picked up the American And put him over my shoulder The air rushed out of his lungs I was engulfed in the smell of death As we worked our way back up the hill it began to rain Once inside the main perimeter We laid the bodies down alongside each other Since American SOG members wore sterile uniforms

The American Sargent did not have a name tag I did not know who I had carried up Hill so I asked Lieutenant Colonel who the young sergeant was. The already sickening feeling in my stomach increased tremendously when I heard his name. Magisman. Fred was a friend of mine who I had joked with the day before. I felt no remorse for the two NVA had killed an hour before, but the sight of the dead American, especially a friend, created a range of emotions from deep sadness to extreme anger

toward the enemy. One of the first rules you learned when you arrived in Vietnam was not to get close to anyone but there's no way you can prevent it we covered them with ponchos and wondered where the bad guys were so the guy that you recovered is a buddy of yours um my next problem was the crew members from the hughy that had crashed they were still out there where i'd put them alone i took four the sog team members and moved consciously to their location and established a security perimeter around them to get the 17, to get the 17 of us out, I would have to use some demolitions to blow down some trees and bring in a helicopter gunship to suppress enemy fire while everyone

was hoisted up into a marine CH-46 helicopter. I had been able to contact the rear using the SOG team's radio and had the necessary demolitions on the way. By the time the extraction helicopter arrived with the demolitions, the weather was closing in. The rain was coming down harder and the clouds were moving down from the mountain. We would have to work fast just to beat the weather. The Marine CH-46 crew chief dropped the demolition through the jungle canopy. The enemy had been quiet until the arrival of the CH-46. Now we could hear them all around us shooting at the helicopter. About the time the demolition came crashing to the ground, gunships arrived. We signaled our location and had Sergeant Jones begin to work the gunships around us. While the gunships were

keeping the enemy busy, a couple of the SOG team members helped me carry the 50 pounds of C4, blasting caps, a roll of time fuse, a time fuse igniter, and a detonation cord near the Huey, but far enough away to not injure them or detonate the aircraft. I placed the C4 on several trees and dropped them. This opened up a large enough hole in the canopy to give us a better chance of not having a repeat of the last jungle penetrator incident. The CH-46 that dropped the demolitions returned and hovered over our hole as it began to lower the jungle penetrator the enemy ground fire increased dramatically

and both door gunners opened fire with their 50-Cal machine guns. We could see large red tracers penetrating deep into the jungle. The two gunships were now raining bullets through the trees with their mini guns, up to 4,000 rounds a minute, firing 40 millimeter grenades and 2.75-inch rockets

with 17-pound high-explosive warheads. The popping and cracking sound of the bulls bullets and explosions of the grenades and rockets were exacerbated by the falling tree limbs and shrapnel flying in every direction. The darkening sky made the tracers appear very bright. The hot, wet jungle air was getting smoky, filled with the smell of burned rocket propellant and gunpowder. By the time the C.H.46 jungles penetrator reached the ground.

We had carried the pilot and crew chief over to where it landed. We strapped them on as quickly as possible and signaled to pull them up. The ride up took about two minutes. We sent the other wounded crew members up next. followed by the injured crew members, the lieutenant colonel, and the two dead. The CH-46 left to take them to the hospital. The CH-46 returned about an hour later with a fresh set of gunships to continue extracting the rest of us. I began putting the team members on as fast as I could while Jones continued to work the gunships.

The jungle floor had become mud and was making the job of hooking people up much more difficult. Eventually just Jones and I were left on the ground. Unfortunately, some NVA had moved up close to our position and were beginning to fire at the helicopter. We knew we'd be exposed to their fire if we ascended. We had two options. Find them and take them out or chance being hoisted up with them shooting at us. The pilot narrowed our options by saying the clouds were beginning to cover the hole and it was now or never. We strapped ourselves on and fired behind each other's backs as we slowly move skyward, spinning slowly, swinging back and forth and watching the tracers come by.

It seemed like it took an hour to make the trip up, although it only took about two minutes. Once inside and unstrapped from the jungle penetrator, I rolled over on my back, closed my eyes, and said a prayer of thanks. Upon arrival at the CCN compound, we were greeted by a small group who welcomed us back. Eldon Bargewell and Dick Meadows were in the group. With a big smile on his face, Bargewell said, I heard you did some crazy shit out there today. Great job. Meadows looked at me and almost smiled when he said, R.T. Dynamite.

Good job, Thompson. It was really a good feeling to be back and to pick up my weapon and ammunition that were leaning against the Connix container where I left them. We had been taught in Ranger training to never get more than an arm's length from your weapon. I would not make that mistake again.

Lieutenant Donahue, the CCN commander, was sitting at his table with a full colonel, non-special forces, and seemed to be having a heated com. conversation. Lieutenant Donahue congratulated me on doing a good job and then told me what he and the other lieutenant colonel had been discussing. He said we had left a crew member in the first crash on the ground. Apparently a crew chief in the CH 40, CH 34 had allegedly been killed and burned in the wreckage. The Air Force Lieutenant Colonel pilot had not told me that his crew chief was missing.

Lieutenant Colonel Donahue told me to get a team together and be prepared to launch at first light to go recover the crew chief's body and destroy the Medevac helicopter. There was concern that the helicopter's communication equipment and codes were intact. These needed to be destroyed before the enemy could make use of them. On the way to the shower, I found Bin and told him to assemble as many team members as he could while I showered. The shower was great, even though I found three fat leeches that had crawled under my shirt and attached themselves. to my body. They were having a feast at my expense. A squirt of insect repellent made them turn loose.

So you come back from this totally insane mission. And they tell you, cool, good job. Get your team together because the lieutenant colonel left this crew chief out there and didn't tell you, by the way. And there's sensitive cryptological gear in the helicopter that needs to be destroyed along with the helicopter. Can I get a freaking breakover here? or what?

Wasn't what I was expecting to be told. It would never mention that a crew chief was missing or that they even had one. And they're telling you you're going to go the next day. Yeah. Your hands are trashed. I'm still dripping blood everywhere. And your response is, Roger that.

Get the team ready. Exactly. And I went and had my hand. You get back out. I'm just going to fast forward. You get back out there to recover this body and destroy this helicopter and equipment. The helicopter was nose down in a ravine, a very undefendable place. I quickly photographed the aircraft from different angles to show the condition of the records and numerous bullet holes. Just as I gave the order to move our team, our five team members to the top of the ravine, burst of AK-47 from three to five NVA began. hit around us. The team returned fire as quickly as they quickly move to the top of the ravine and away from the NBA since there were only a few NBA decided to stay with the helicopter and plant the demolition charges.

So you're in this helicopter. You guys start taking fire. The team moves up the top of the ravine. But since you're already there, you have the explosives. You're like, well, I might as well get the job done. I'm already in there. They don't know I'm in there. They think everybody went back up top.

They don't know what I'm doing in there. and I'm, you know, putting all the C4 around. And, you know, and it's taking a hit every once in a while, but, you know, C4 can take hits. Yeah. That won't set at all. But once I put the blasting cap in there, if that thing gets hit, everything goes.

So, you know, it was a little tense once I said, okay, I got to stick to these two blasting caps in there, pull the fuse igniter, and then I got to be able to get out of this thing and climb that bank. And a lot more were starting to show up. Yeah, so as that's happening, R.T. Virginia, so you're in the aircraft, you're rigging this demolition,

getting it ready to blow. Finally, they've realized that you're in there. You've got to make that decision. Do I put the blasting caps in and roll the dice if they're going to, how much they shoot at me? You decide you're going to roll the dice. I mean, you should have played the lotto in these couple days. RT Virginia had increased their volume of fire to help cover me as I rolled up on top of the bank.

This is you after you leave the helicopter. I look back to see three to five NVA. I thought there were three. My team said there were five run up behind the helicopter. If I had waited a few more seconds, they would have had me. So you bailed out of that helicopter at the last second. Now you get up the ravine. You look back and you see them getting into the helicopter.

Several of the team members look quickly at me with the same expression of disbelief that I had. What happened next was beyond words. A tremendous explosion produced a giant black, yellow, and orange fireball, followed by a shockwave that literally dazed us all and exposed us to tremendous heat. There was a momentary lullin gunfire as it began to rain pieces of metal, helicopter parts, rocks, dirt, tree limbs, trees, and the remains of the NVA who had been hiding behind or near the helicopter, the jungle is full of black smoke. So as you leave the helicopter, they go into the helicopter.

helicopter taking cover and probably going to start looking around well they didn't look around quickly enough because your your charge went off and killed them all yeah and and we were we were very fortunate because the helicopter was in a ravine so it was nose nose first in in the ravine so you know the ravine has walls on the side of it and you know it's long so when it exploded most of the blast went straight up or down the ravine on each side. If we'd have been on level ground with it, it had taken us out to 40 pounds of C4. It will get your attention.

You bring big buildings down with that. Just talking about your demolitions calculations, you did not need to bring 40 pounds to destroy this helicopter, sir. Well, it was already there. Oh. Oh, so the day from the day before. Yeah. Yeah.

That was left over from blowing the trees down. So it was already there. You're just like, oh, this is what we're doing. We'll just use it. And I'm not going to leave any behind, you know, for the bad guys. I just do it all at once. Yeah, 40 pounds is all. Yeah.

Man, this is going to be cool. When in doubt overload. Yeah. I don't think I'd ever set that much off before. The enemy fire picked back up quickly with a new twist. They had moved an RPD machine gun in a position on the other side of us, so we're now in a crossfire. We were pinned down and couldn't move. We had to get rid of the machine gun and we'd all be dead.

The problem was getting across 20 meters of open terrain with a withering fire coming from both sides without getting hit. The NVA had also brought an RPG and it fired two rockets at us. Three team members and I were hit by some small pieces of shrapnel and pieces of rockets. Time was running out. I told the team to cover me, and I went across. the ground like a mole watching mud being dug up all around me the only way I could explain not being hit was that God put a force field around me he did not allow him he did allow my ruck to take a few hits just to remind me to stay close to the ground fortunately the bullets did not hit the blasting caps

or white phosphorus grenades in my ruck the NBA began to shift fire away from me as they near as I neared the rocks this seems strange but I was so glad that I made it I didn't think much about it the rocks did not provide as much protection as I anticipated, the machine gun had to be dealt with quickly. I pulled myself to the edge of the bank and I looked over. I quickly discovered why the enemy had shifted most of their fire away from me. Less than three feet from me, an NVA soldier was crawling up the bank to get me. I didn't know which one of us had the biggest look of shock on his face, probably me. Time began to move in slow motion and what in reality was two or three seconds seemed like minutes.

In the next fraction of a second, the NBA soldier squeezed the trigger on his AK-47 and fired a five-to-six-round burst that just missed my head by what must have been an inch or two. Burning powder coming out of the barrel was hitting me in the face as the bullets streamed out. AK-47s have a tendency to rise up when they're fired on automatic so that the other bullets were going over my head. I squeezed off a burst of six to eight rounds from a distance of less than three feet. they all hit him in the face and head and caused it to explode sending brain matter bone debris yellow fatty tissue and an arterial spray of blood all over me especially my face as his torso

tumbled down the bank i could taste his blood that it hit me in the mouth this was a lesson that i was in a process of learning um if you shoot someone that close to you close your mouth because you're going to get hit in a face with a whole bunch of stuff and if your mouth is open, you're going to get a mouth full of it. Yeah, six to eight rounds at one foot. That's going to make a mess. About this time, fast forward a little bit, about this time, two gunships arrived. I marked our position initially with a flare gun, then purple smoke grenade.

After they identified our location, I directed their mini gun, 40 millimeter grenade and rocket to fire it onto the enemy. The gunships were literally ripping the trees ground. an enemy apart, even though we, R.T. Virginia, had already killed four or more of the enemy, at least that many or more were still shooting at us. The gunships had killed a lot and were attacking another group coming up the ridge after us. The NVA were having a bad day. I worked the airstrikes in as close as I could to our position eventually was able to suppress the enemy's fire and crawl back to the team. So far, Khan was the only team member who'd been seriously wounded. Shrapnel from a B-40 rocket had hit him in the back. It was not life-threatening at the moment, but he was bleeding and in a lot

of pain. We were using a lot of ammunition and the NVA force was increasing. The time had come to break contact with the enemy or die in place. Once again, the weather moved in on us very quickly and the rain came down hard. Before we were halfway up the mountain, the clouds had already covered the upper half of the mountain, including the ridgeline. We could not be extracted that day. The team was tired and somewhat demoralized as we continued to climb toward the top of the mountain. We had at least temporarily broken contact with the enemy. Eventually, we found a dense rocky steep peak. We thought we could defend.

The rain continued the rest of the day and throughout the night. The good news is this provided us with a lot of drinking water and we were really thirsty. Being stuck there overnight did not go well with the team. It had a significant negative impact on their morale. We really thought that once we got to the top of the ridge, we could get extracted. But not once the weather rolled in. I knew we were going to be there at least until the next day. Sometimes things just didn't work out the way we wanted them to.

we had to keep adapting. Times like this really tested my leadership skills. I had to keep their morale up by congratulating them, pumping them up, and telling them how well we did. This was another successful heavy firefight as a team and we destroyed all the NBA, got the body we weren't after,

and blew up the helicopter. I told them you really did a good job today, except Huang, and I didn't mention this earlier, but he had brought a fucking Coca-Cola out on the mission. What a bottle of Coke? Is that what a can? A can? Yeah.

Don't ever thinking about bringing a soft drink on a mission again. I also told them we had to keep our guard up and pay attention. We couldn't dwell on what had happened. The weather would clear when it cleared and when it cleared we would get out. In the meantime, we had to stay sharp. We were in a good position. If the NVA tried to come up, we would take them out. We spent almost 48 hours on that little peak, constantly watching, listening, and feeling for the enemy.

Before the weather cleared and we were extracted. Everyone was excited to climb on board the helicopter and head home, even though the smell was terrible until we got in the air. When we got back, I was told to report to Lieutenant Colonel Donahue's office. The aviation colonel was with him and immediately asked, you blew up my helicopter? I said, that's what you told me to do, sir. Destroy the helicopter. He said, I didn't tell you that. You were not supposed to destroy it. Destroy it. Just put a thermite on it or something on the radios, but not destroy the helicopter. Well, the aircraft is a million pieces and merged with the NVA body parts.

It's gone. I wanted to hear, hey, man, you did a great job. Not why did you blow up my helicopter. That's another ridiculous thing. Three months later, I was awarded the Air Medal with V-Device, second award for heroism during the aerial combat and a Vietnamese cross of gallantry for my actions on May 9th, 1969. I was also awarded the Bronze Star Medal with the device for heroism in ground combat for my actions on May 12th, 1969. Both American awards had been downgraded from Silver Stars. My Purple Heart was never found.

So there's, you mentioned in this book, and I wanted to ask you about this, you mentioned in the book, there's strange things about this whole event. One of them was this American pilot piloting this particular. type of hell. There was some things that didn't seem to make sense to you in the book. What do you think that's all about? I'm not sure. The Air Force had what they called H-34s. It was the same aircraft. It was just made by a different company. The King Bees, the Vietnamese pilots, had the CH-34, the same aircraft, painted a little different. The Air Force flew a small group that they had, had nothing to do with us. But all of a sudden, this is what appears to be a King Bee, one of the Vietnamese CH-34s.

It's got an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Pilot, has a Vietnamese. Lieutenant Colonel pilot and had a crew chief and then it had one of our saw guys in it. And it's just a strange mixture. I mean, nobody at the time could explain what was going on. He got, the aviation guy got so upset about the helicopter being blown up. I mean, he was really upset about that. so something was going on there they tried to initially ride it up

as the helicopters just lost power and when I turned in the film to be developed I didn't get the pictures back showing the ones I had the pictures I had taken of all the bullet holes in the aircraft I got the one of the aircraft down in the ravine and then the remains of the CH34 that had burned up.

So I was missing some pictures, no one could account for it. Well, we developed all you gave us. You're missing some. The awards got downgraded. I mean, it was just a whole series of things about this mission that were strange. And I never managed to get answers to that. I was just told, here's your next mission. you know go do it yeah it's very strange the fact that those awards got downgraded they should

have been completely upgraded to the top crazy and there are other incidents you know in the book where strange things happened you know like the mission being counseled the shallow mission being counseled at the last minute um and some other things that later are in the book where they said, no, you didn't see that. Well, I took pictures of it and they gave it to you. No, you didn't.

We have no record of what you saw in that convoy. You know, all my little guys saw it. This is the female drivers where you're talking about. Yeah, the female drivers. And I can understand now why they were saying that you didn't see it. We're not going to put that out.

If the American public at the time, with the attitude toward the war, knew that on a daily basis, we were killing women, truck drivers, it would not have gone over well. Even though they were enemy, they were women. And at that time, you couldn't do that. I mean, you remember, you know, later on when Obama was president, he wasn't. let us hit the convoys even though the bad guys were driving. They were saying, well, these guys were forced

to do that. We're not going to hit those convoys and kill those drivers. So he stopped a lot of attacks on the convoys. But, you know, for whatever reason there. But, yeah, they just said, you didn't see

the women. Well, I'm going to go get one. No. Don't you dare. pull one out of a truck. Some of the lessons that you learned on this one, obviously you already pointed out, keep your mouth close and you shoot someone up close. Here's another one that I really liked.

A burning fuse drives everything for a while. And that's because when you pull the fuse on that, but I thought about that from a life perspective, because we, obviously we do target rates and stuff. And once we pull the time fuse, like, it's going to drive every decision you're going to make.

Like you've got to get out of there. So that was definitely a good one. Designated to IC. So make sure the second in command knows who he is. Never underestimate luck, good or bad. And what I liked about this is this is coupled with success and failure come from mindset. So I thought that was an interesting pair of lessons learned. One is that never underestimate luck.

And the other one is success and failure depend on mindset. So there's going to be good luck. there's going to be bad luck, what are you going to do with it when it shows up? Because both of them are coming. Yeah, might be a brand new Nile on rope. Just luck of the draw. You got a brand new one.

And, you know, it smoked your hands. Yeah. So the mindset is, in a lot of cases, is do I do this or not? And I think a lot of times in the special ops community, that's one of the things, in general that separates special ops guys, you know, from, from the regular people. It's the mindset.

We're going to do this. It might sound crazy, but we're going to go do it, and we're going to do a good job at it. And, you know, so you go do it. Do you think that, you know, and again, we're going to get some more of these friends of yours that would say, hey, I got a bad feeling about this mission, how much of that is like, if your mindset is, things are going to go? go wrong and they start to go wrong and you have the mindset that they're going to go wrong and you have the mindset that I don't think I'm going to come back as opposed to the mindset of

like it doesn't matter what they bring we're going to kick their ass how much do you think that plays into it I think this is just me I think there are times when you know people know that they're not going to come back from this. That this is it. I don't know why, but I think this is my last mission. I'm going to go out there and I'm going to do my thing, but I'm probably not coming back. And I think there's sometimes when you have an opportunity to change that

because you feel that way, because you know that, You know, like with Dennis later on in the book, I told him, Dennis, if you feel that strongly, don't go. You can say that you're not going. You can come up with a reason not to go on this mission. If it's really bothering you that much, then you probably shouldn't go. And, you know, he just brushed that off. No, you can't do that.

I've got to go. is my mission. So I don't know. And with the other guys. With the Cheney. I mean, they were out there. They found 15 NVA in a little group, and they were watching them.

And he decided that we can take them. They were a lot more formidable than he, estimated and in addition to them putting up a stronger fight when they brought in the gunships there is a rocket that went off course and he got hit with a shrapnel from the rocket and it appears at least from what they were saying was that the pilot didn't shoot it in the wrong place he shot several but one of them veered off from the rest of them.

Crooked fan or whatever. Sorry. Yeah. So. You also have this one when the enemy, when you can't locate the enemy, they are maneuvering, which is a very important thing to remember.

Once again, not only in battle, but in life. Yeah. All of those things apply to life. And then in the end, I summarize some of them as Saug imperatives.

You know, never stop moving. You keep moving forward, even if it's one step at a time. You know, and I tell you guys, you run as far as you can. When you can't run, you start walking. When you can't walk anymore, you get on your hands and knees and crawl. When you can't crawl anymore, you get on your belly in your crawl. When you can't crawl anymore, you start doing push-ups until you decide you're going to start moving forward again.

But you always continue to move forward. Once you stop, that's it. And I tell senior people age-wise, never stop. When you start sitting in your favorite chair and not getting up, and you sit there and do things in your chair all day, pretty soon you can't get out of that chair. You've got to keep moving. Even if it's walk around the driveway, walk around a block,

you've got to move forward. Don't sit around. You got to use it or lose it, as they say. Yeah, exactly. Just an interesting part of the book where you talk about this guy, Mike Hammer, how you say his name? Hammer.

He's like a buddy yours from high school, just showed up at the gate with a couple of his buddies. And you guys. And gets in. Yeah, rolled out on some operations. I mean, he was a Navy CB. And they had a little compound there in Danang. And at some point, I don't know, cousin Carl told him, somebody told him,

I was over there in that compound, and here he comes. Top secret, the existence of the compound is top secret. Nobody knows it's even there. And certainly no one knows who's inside that compound. Here he comes. And he gets in. You know, cousin Carl, he walked in. I had to come down off the mountain and get him.

him and I took him to the S4, we loaded him up with gear, took him up there. He spent a week up there with firefights every day. Oh, there we go. Fast forward a little bit. May, 1969, the 101st Airborne Assisted by Arvin Forces was ordered to assault and take Hill 937. That's Hamburger Hill, if you don't know. Unknown to U.S. forces, the NBA were moving a 10,000-man NBA division towards Hamburger Hill with the intent of crushing the 101st. US intelligence picked up information about the force headed to Hamburger Hill,

and Mac V. Saug was tasked with finding and destroying the NVA force. I couldn't help but wonder, how do you lose a 10,000 man unit? So, yeah. Do you start talking here? That's your mission. Your mission is to go and stop this 10,000 man, you know, division of enemy that are heading to fight. the 101st. You start talking about this human combat reaction.

We were talking about this a little bit before and also even before we hit record. You know, some of the things that you say here, most humans do not want to die in combat. Under high stress, fear people have a strong survival instinct which caused them to react in a certain predetermined, unconscious way. Approximately 90% of humans are right-handed. Right-handed shooters tend to shoot around the right side of cover,

trees, rocks, etc. When an enemy soldier goes behind a tree, he will most likely look around the right side of the tree from his perspective and fire from that side. We needed to be ready to fire at that side of the tree instantly when we saw the moment. The chance of hitting him before he could return fire or react to us was higher. The team's instinct was to react the same way as the NBA. We spent half a day talking about and practicing how the NBA reacted and how we could make

sure we did not react the same way. And we started practicing that in between missions. every time I'd you go to the range and shooting with the opposite hand. Offhand shooting, yeah. Yeah, because it's just unbelievable. You have to try it to get the effect. The Car 15, M16, everything you'll set up,

select a switch with your thumb, if you're right-handed, magazine release with your index finger. You put it in your left hand. Everything is wrong. Now, even trying to get a magazine in when you put it over there, you know, you can change it. You know, the armor can reverse it if you're left-handed, but you ain't do it in a middle of a battle.

You can't even figure out how to get a new magazine in in the middle of a battle. So you've got to practice. So I started putting that in about 20% of our range time between missions. Shoot with the other hand. You've got to learn how to do it. Not when people were shooting at you. We definitely, I would say there was a whole kind of dynamic that we went through.

Like when I first got in the SEAL teams, which was in the early 90s, we would shoot offhand, you know, in the event that we were wounded. We wanted to be able to shoot offhand. We wanted to be able to change mags with our, with one hand, with our weak hand. And so we did a lot of that. But then at a certain point, we started shooting ambidextrically. How do you say that with Charles? Embedex trees. Yeah.

We started shooting with both hands. Yeah. And it was because as we started doing more and more urban and close quarters combat, you know, you come to a corner. And if you want to look, it's somebody's got to change. Yeah, it's beneficial to be able to put that weapon in your other hand. And we kind of went back to the trend of or the, the mindset of, well, you can kind of maneuver your body a little bit more and still shoot with your strong hand.

but I think just people need to get comfortable with what they're going to do and be ready to do it because what I was telling my guys is where are you the most likely to get hit when you're shooting if you're shooting around the right side of the tree what are you sticking out around the tree your right arm your right shoulder and right hand and left hand you know to some degree but you got a high probability of getting hit here so now it's not a matter of just opting. If you're going to continue to shoot, you've got to shoot with the other hand.

And you probably don't have this one to put a magazine in with now. So we've got to be prepared to go either way. And the same with a pistol. You've got to shoot. I mean, special ops guys now do that. Really. Go to the range and they practice.

You know, it just, and anyway, you know all that stuff. But back then, we didn't do that. And I thought, that's crazy. You know, we've got to learn how to do it and do it that way. Everything. You know, when's the last time you threw a hand grenade with your left hand or your off hand? We don't practice that.

Otherwise, you'll drop it. Well, we can't learn how to die. Don't you drop it in a middle of a firefight. You know, you've got to chunk that thing. You've got to learn how to do it with both hands. All of these different things that we do, I mean, you've got to be ambidextrous out there. So at first my team thought, you're kind of crazy.

And I said, yeah, I am. But we're going to survive. That's why we're going to give each other IVs. You've got to learn how to do that before you give me one. What people are shooting at us, I don't want to bleed to death because you can't get it in. This mission that you're getting ready for, you say it was a humbling feeling to know that over the next two days, literally thousands of people would die as a result of what RT Virginia was about to do. There was also a very high probability that some or all of us would be among the dead.

Was this a mission that you, that seemed even more intense and higher probability of getting killed than the other missions you went on? Because you're going out against 10,000 or did you kind of measure them all like it is what? it is. And I think somewhere in there I say there's only so many people. You got 10,000 of them out there. All 10,000 can't shoot at you at one time. You know, a small group's going to come at you. So in terms of engaging them, until you run out of ammunition, you know, you can probably deal with what's coming at you, although it's a lot. But so 10,000 makes them easier to find. and my plan at this point my experience has been I can take out a lot of people with close air support I just need to find you once I know where you are I'm gonna smoke

you so and and part of the mission too was not not just finding them but identifying where they are and drawing a target box because the B-52s needed to have the corner coordinates of that target box because that's where they were going to get them. So if I could find out where they were hiding to stay out of sight so we couldn't see them during the day and draw a box around that

and then send it to the B-52 guys six B-52s dropping 110 500-pound bombs apiece within a time span of like two minutes, 660, 500-pound bombs are going to hit inside this target bomb. It's going to leave a mark.

There's not going to be much left. I won't have to deal with those guys. I just need to find that where they are. Send the coordinates back, and those guys are coming. They won't hear them. They won't know they're up there. It's just the whole world all of a sudden. starts exploding.

Yeah. Yeah, those things, the arc light missions from those bombers were something else. But like you said, somebody's got to find them. So I'm going to drop those bombs

and that's where you come in. Yeah. You know, so, you know, I figure six or seven guys, we can go take on a division. It sounds cool, but, you know, we're not taking on the whole division.

We're just stirring them up a little bit so we can figure out where they are. I'm a fast forward to you guys are getting inserted. This is King B2, 30 seconds to final. Covey, Roger, King B2, Dynamite, 20 seconds to touchdown. Stay alert. Dynamite, Roger. Mike King B was about 200 feet above the ground,

250 feet above the ground aligned with the LZ when suddenly the jungle came alive with a heavy volume of automatic weapons fire. Green tracers came at us from every direction. I could see smoke trails from B40 rockets going by us. The King B was taking small arms, hits, and immediately began to vibrate. violently I could hear the metallic clangs of bullets hitting the aircraft and saw bullets coming through the floor and sides of the cargo compartment of the King B. I heard a loud scream and Bao yelled Triung, Tri-Yu-A-Tru-A hit hit one of the bullets coming through the floor hit bow's right thigh. He was bleeding profusely but I couldn't get to him. Bullets were cracking all around us. I could hear the radio through the headset and I heard Covey say King B1 abort abort. Do not go to the LZ. I say again abort. Abort.

but it was too late. I felt the bottom drop out from under us and felt my stomach come up into my throat. I heard our pilot. Captain on. King B. 1. Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. Go down. In the background, I heard Scarface. This is Covey. King B1 going down. Put immediate fire on the north side of the LZ and Ridgeline. Dynamite. You guys brace for impact. King B2.

Abort, abort. Return to Romeo Papa. I yelled at Ben to sit down and both of them to hold on as I pulled my legs inside because your legs were hanging outside the helicopter. I heard a scream from the cockpit and saw blood splattered all over the bottom of the cockpit and growing stream of blood running down from above. One or both of the pilots had been hit and we were falling. I could see a swarm of red tracers from Scarface mini guns going past us under the tree line. Covey was still talking but I was losing my ability to hear. I was also experiencing time dilation. Everything was moving in slow motion and becoming quiet. It was surreal, dreamlike. The aircraft was vibrating.

and rocking violently. We were being tossed around inside the aircraft as we plummeted toward the ground. My pucker factor was so high you could not have driven a greased needle up my rear end with a 32-ounce ball peen hammer. I could see the ground rushing up towards us in silent, slow motion.

I saw green tracers going by us and felt more bullets hitting the King Bee. Then came the ground. I don't remember hitting the ground. Everything just went black. Quebec Tango. This is Covey. King B-1 is down on the LZ,

receiving heavy fire. I can see three team members lying in the grass outside the King B. They're not moving. Dynamite, this is Spider, which was Covey. Can you hear me over? Dynamite, you copy, over? No response from dynamite.

King B1, you copy? No response from King B1. Quebec Tango, this is Covey. I'm declaring prairie fire emergency. King B1 crew and three team members down on the LZ under heavy fire. No communication with them. No one moving. Everyone focused on my voice.

Quebec Tango, alert bright light team to standby to launch. So this is the start off. of this freaking mission right here. You're going into the LZ to get dropped off and you get waylaid attack. Guy gets hit in the leg. He's bleeding. You think one of the pilots is hit.

The pilots calls out, and this is Captain Oni's been on the podcast, a heroic guy. He's doing his best to get this thing under control, but he can't stop it from going down. They are trying to abort it from landing. They can abort it from landing. They abort the other helicopter from coming.

coming in, but you guys crash into the LZ and you get knocked out. I guess you get knocked out is what it seems like. Everyone's just lay in there and Covey sees this crash happened. And he calls for a prairie fire emergency because it's already as bad as a gate. And he alerts the bright light anticipating that you guys might get overrun. So this is the first 40 seconds of your mission. Yeah. You wake up, you know, am I dead or alive?

The king bee is sitting on its belly because it did a hard landing. You crawl towards bow, hail of bullets flying all around you. You hear Bing yell, Tringway, Tringway. You yell back to him. We have to get in the crater. So there's a big crater down there that you end up positioning yourself in. You get the guys to the crater. I'm going to fast forward a little bit and get the book so you can see the details of this insanity.

King B1, this is Covey. Get out of your aircraft and dynamite will get you to the crater. This is King B1 and this is Captain On talking. No. We fix. Co-pilot hurt bad. Captain Adan had been shot down several times on saga operations. He had no fear.

Dynamite. The crew is staying in the Kingby. I see three or four NVA crawling in the grass 40 meters at 11 o'clock. They're trying to get in within hand grenade range. Roger, keep your eye on them and see how they like this. If I could just give you a break in the action, two things. One is the cover of this book is the crater. That's a museum painting of us in the crater.

Okay. And the other is I gave Mr. Hahn a copy of the book. He thought it was great. He loved it. You know, and he emailed me and he said, since I got shot down the last time, my memory not so good, I love this book. That's awesome.

Because he's in there, you know, several other places too. He was doing all kinds of stuff. Yeah, and for those of the other people that didn't listen to the podcast with Captain On on there, he was eventually shot down as his aircraft was on fire. He had to let go of the of the yoke because it was so hot it was burning hot and when he let go of the yoke now the aircraft is totally out of control So he has to overcome the pain of grabbing onto the yoke to get control of the aircraft again and give it a A hard landing and when he did that it it destroyed his hands so he lost both of his hands in in that accident eventually he ends up in a communist prison

camp eventually got out of there and escaped to America, but one of the most awesome humans ever. And this is the type of thing that he was doing, which is his aircraft crashes into the LZ. They tell him, hey, get to the crater. And he says, no, I'm not, I'm going to get my aircraft back up and running, which is incredible. So that's what happens. And meanwhile, you've got people approaching and you say, you know, the Covey tells you there's enemy crawling within the range and you say let's see how they like this you

took bow's m79 stood up and put a 40 millimeter round right where covey said they were while bin sprayed the area with 18 rounds from his car 15 this is spider looks like they're all dead or wounded good work dynamite but there's more they keep hitting you with the rpds firing the AK 47s rockets they had fired an RPG almost and almost got the rocket in the crater all three of us were with shrapnel and covered in dirt. Luckily, nothing serious. This is Spider. You guys, okay?

I saw all the smoke trail. It came from 1 o'clock, about 50 meters out. Scarface is coming back around. We'll see if he can take out the RPG. Keep your heads down. Roger, looks like they brought plenty of rockets. Roger, get your heads down. Scarface is 30 seconds out.

About 20 seconds later, we heard Scarface open up with a mini gun in 40 millimeter. Adrenaline cortisol were losing their ability to keep my pain manageable. My back was killing me. Obviously, you impacted super hard and you hurt your back. and I couldn't take a deep breath. My broken ribs from the last mission,

which we didn't cover, but yes, you broke your lips in the last mission, had been rebroken so much for using deep breathing for stress and pain relief. My arms and legs were bruised and wounds of my hands were open and bleeding. My gloves were soaked and blood was running out of the cutoff fingers.

Even though King B. 1 had taken a lot of hits and crashed, Captain On used the distraction of Scarface gun runs and got it flying again and quickly lifted a few feet in the air and dropped down the side of the ridge before the NVA realized what was happening. The Kinby pilots, especially Captain On, were amazing.

He was able to get it into a small clearing in the valley. One of the backup King Bee's picked up Captain On and his crew. So the co-pilot was wounded, but he's able to at least get this thing off of ground zero and to another clearing where then they got picked up immediately. Didn't. You're still in the crater, though. of course

just intense more intense fighting massive air strikes more more air support coming in all those calls happening get the book get the details

you say I got a little irritated okay maybe it was a side of fuck of too much adrenaline I thought I need to get one of these jokers

I know they're crawling around in the grass I'm going to crawl out there and get one spider dynamite I'm going out in the grass to get one You're talking about an enemy fighter.

You know, there's been, and it's in the book, people are wanting to capture one of these enemy, one of these NBA, and you decide, I don't know why, but you decide now's the time to do it. Negative dynamite. I don't think that's a good idea.

There are too many out there. I'm running out of steam fast. This might be my last chance. I want to snatch one. If we could take one back, he could give a lot of intel about where they are and what they're planning. Which way to the closest live one?

3 o'clock, 30 meters. Roger, watch me. I'm leaving the radio with Ben. Yeah, see, that's one of those situations today that we would describe as, hey, Ben, hold my beer. I'm going to go get one. That's exactly what you said. Not smart. Fast forward.

Suddenly I could hear, so you start crawling out, trying to find, trying to capture someone. In the midst of all this freaking chaos, you decide you're going to go capture prisoner. Suddenly I could hear an NVA that seemed to be crawling directly toward me. The grass was about two and a half feet high, and he was on a collision path with me. Even with all the background noise, I could hear his panic, breathing, and fearful grunting as he crawled on his belly. He was alive. I didn't know if this was the one spider told me about, but I could smell his last meal. No pun intended.

Bin and Bown were still receiving a lot of fire in the crater. Ben was returning fire. The NVA did not realize I was out there with them. I could smell and hear one in front of me. I slowly crawled toward him thinking if I could get the timing right so he didn't see me immediately. I could probably wound him, drag him back to the crater and he would be ours. I was in the prone position, coiled with one leg cocked, ready to strike through the grass. My fingers were like of snakes, fangs as I shot my hand out and bit into, grabbed the shoulder of the North Vietnamese Army soldier.

He gave a startled yell when he felt my fangs penetrate his shoulder. Our eyes made contact and he saw me, he saw the smile on my feet. I grabbed and pushed his AK-47 barrel away from me. At the same time, I realized I was in trouble. I didn't have enough strength to pull a greasy string out of a car's out of a cat's rear end. The pain in my back was excruciating. It was difficult for me to breathe. We were grappling, and he was terrified and determined to kill me.

He yelled for his teammates who were crawling in the grass approximately 400 meters from us to help him and pulled the trigger on his AK-47 trying to shoot me. The bullets just missed me. but the burning powder hit my face. I was getting weaker and having more difficulty breathing, but now I was determined to take him prisoner. I was no longer smiling. Now I was staring right through him. He rolled on top of me and started fighting harder.

I managed to get my car 15 pointed toward him and shot one round into his shoulder. I thought that would take some of the fight out of him, but he was still overpowering me. He kept yelling for his teammates and firing off rounds trying to hit me as we continued to wrestle. I was about to pass out from the excruciating pain in my back.

He was holding the best. barrel of my car 15 and I couldn't get it pointed at him. He could see that he was beginning to overpower me. I knew I was about to become the victim. Then suddenly, he turned loose of my car 15 barrel and punched me really hard in the nose. Blood spattered over my face from my nose. My eyes crossed and got blurry. I grabbed his wrist with my left hand. Then our eyes locked again. This time I could see the look in his eyes that I'd seen before in people who knew they were going to die. He had realized that in the turning loose of my car 15 allowed me to point it towards his face

And that would be what killed him He knew he had about a second to live I had moved the muzzle of my car 15 so it was pointed toward his head about six inches from his cheek At this point there was nothing he could do He knew he was dead He had not been cooperating with me I had only one option left I had to terminate him He closed his eyes an instant before I squeezed

off a four to five round burst on full auto directly into his face. His head literally exploded, covering my face and head with gray and white brain matter, yellow fatty tissue, and bone fragments followed immediately by a hot stream of blood from his carotid artery. Once again, I did not have my mouth closed and found myself with a mouthful of blood and other matter. His mostly headless body went limp as it collapsed on top of me and his blood and life continued to pour out on me.

The sounds of the firefight and reality came back very loudly. You've got to close your mouth. You've got to close your mouth when you're shooting people in the close range. Guy was freaking, uh, the guy was tough. He's strong. Well, I had a broken spine. I didn't realize that at the time. I knew it hurt.

I just didn't realize how seriously I was hurt. Um, fast forward. Spider and I put together a plan. We decided to have the extraction helicopter follow the A-1s on a strafing realm, drop the McGuire rigs and snatch us out. Scarface gunships would strafe both sides of the crater woodline as we lifted out.

Air Force FAC fired two Willie Pete Rockets just North. King B-3 followed the strafing A-1s with Scarface gunship on each side laying down suppressive fire with their mini-guns. The gunship door gunners played a critical role in putting accurate M-60 machine gun fire on the enemy. The door gunners were totally exposed to the enemy fire

but had a great view of the battle space and of the enemy. And you guys prep your Swiss seats with your 12-foot nylon rope and you clip into the Maguire rigs and they take off. You say, I fell backwards as we lifted off the ground. It was almost upside down, hanging on to the sides of a large strap with both hands. We swung way out on our ropes and descended fast with our feet and head flying just inches above the jungle canopy in some areas and swinging wide as we turned and headed back to the river. with the NVA shooting at us the whole time.

What a ride. Even with the excruciating pain, I managed to hang on until we got back to the launch site. Major Roberts said, good job out there today, Thompson. The body count was close to 3,000. But we still have several thousand left. I need you to go back in at first light tomorrow.

I explained to him that I had some significant issues with my back and ribs. My ribs were broken for sure and maybe my back. Major Roberts explained that time, was critical. If the remainder of this NBA division got to Hill Hill 937, the 101st battalions would be wiped out. There was no other teams that could be deployed fast enough to stop this division.

There was no way I was not going. I was excited about going back in with my back injured but understood the urgency. Or I was not excited about going back in with my back injury, but I understood the urgency. So once again, you go through total mayhem. and you get out of the field and they're like, good job, you got to go back in. Some of your lessons learned, stress causes temporary hearing loss. Stress can cause time dilation. Once again, keep your mouth closed when you shoot someone up close.

In hindsight, going after a prisoner in my physical condition was probably not a good idea. I almost became his prisoner or dead. I did not make a smart decision under the stress of the situation. And this is obviously something that you focused on for the rest of your career. We covered your books and on those in some of the earlier podcasts. Captain On was a famous King Bee pilot who had flown numerous sog missions in the hottest areas across the border. At this point, he had already been shot down twice and managed to survive later in his career. He would lose both of his hands in another crash.

Much later in his life, he would receive his American citizenship. As the writing of this book, he lives in the U.S., and has appeared on the Jocko podcast number 259 with John Stryker-Meyer. And then you also, another lesson was, I'm beginning to see a correlation between high stress and dumb decisions. And this is stuff that you, you know, again, you wrote the stress effect, why smart leaders make dumb decisions and what to do about it. So what do we do in the next day? The next day?

Going back. Right back into it. Fast forward. Two NVA appeared in front of us and above us. Kim, open fire, killing both of them. Unfortunately, they were not alone. The other NVA with them launched a heavy burst. Mirage of fire toward us to include an RPG.

Kim was hit in the arm and leg and went down. Khan was hit with shrapnel from a rocket grenade. Both reeling hit hit. Spider wearing heavy contact. Two redheads. That's wounded in action. Need gun chips now. Over?

And it just, the cycle starts again. Scarface 1. Roger 60 seconds out. Dynamite. This is Cuddy. Pop Smoke. Talk to Scarface. Roger, Scarface.

Smoke out. This is Scarface. I identify purple. Negative Scarface. I say again. Purple smoke is NVA. Have your wingman hit them hard. I de my flare.

This is Scarface hitting purple smoke. Identify a red flare. Roger that. Make a gun run north to south, 100 meters east of the flare. Roger, get your heads down. Roger, great job, Scarface. Run it again.

Same place and mix in some 40 millimeter. I just wanted to read that section because there's a reason why you do this eye mark you identify. And here was one where you said identify the smoke and they see purple. Because the enemy was throwing smoke trying to confuse things as well. Between RT Virginia and Scarface,

we'd quickly stacked up over 100 NVA bodies that could be seen from the air. And then you bring in the napalm. I continued working the gunships to keep the NVA off of us while Covey was hitting the mountaintops with the F4, 250-pound bombs, and A-1's dropping napalm

and CBE, which are the cluster bombs. And then six B-52 bombers carrying 110, 500-pound bombs had left Guam Air Base several hours before en route to our little party. The B-52 pilot's unofficial slogan was, put warheads on foreheads. Oh, they love that. They just love it.

And then, believe it or not, you know, maybe we're not learning the lessons we should be learning. I feel better today. I'm going to get one. I left bin with the radio and crawled into an unknown area to search in search of prey covered by fire from bin and scarface gunships i crawled to an nvae soldier but he did not want to cooperate and i didn't have the strength of man handle him under normal conditions i could have brought him back but i was in too much pain so i terminated him with a

quick punch to the neck with my k bar to keep from giving away my position wipe the arterial blood spray off my face and look took another potential prisoner so you went and tried to get another one but you had to give him the k bar instead yeah It's just no strength. Yeah. How much did you weigh at this point? Oh, 140, maybe. How much do you think the average NVA soldier weighed?

Same? No. Less? Oh, yeah. 120, 110. I mean, there were a few bigger ones, but most of them, you know, they were short. They were smaller. How much, like, martial arts training were you guys doing?

In terms of the SOG people, later on, Captain Wants assigned me to do combatibs with every morning for a while with the teams that were back. But it was, I mean, it was combatives primarily focused on killing your opponent. So gouging your eyes out, crushing your throat, anything to kill you with whatever you could find was the focus of it. No high kicks. All the kicks were low. Things that you could probably get away with and you could do fast. And it was going pretty well until the company commander came out. He was a black belt and something.

he hit one of the yards right in the eye strong hard punch he got a little carried away swelled up so the yards got upset said we're not doing this anymore so so our combatage program you know kind of stopped um well meanwhile back to the book here things were heating up and ben knew Ben and I knew we could not last much longer. We had to get out. I had what I thought were good coordinates to mark the corners of the target. That's what you were talking about earlier.

About an hour later, Spider said he had a King Bee for our extraction. Using all our assets we had available, we were able to suppress the NVA fire long enough for a King Bee to come and extract Bin and me on strings. We received a lot of heavy automatic fire during the extraction.

Fortunately, extraction was quick and we were not hit. I left Red Smoke grenade on the ground as we lifted off indicating there were no more good guys and the area was cleared hot. I'd been on the ground for most of the day and we had a constant up-close NBA interactions. Four NBA had died in the hand-to-hand combat with me that day. I knew Ben had pulled the trigger on well over 2 to 300 NVA,

most of whom died and directed airstrikes on several thousands. It was a very long, bloody, and deadly day. When Ben and I got back to the launch site, we were examined by the medics. We had a lot of cuts and bruises, but nothing serious from that day. But the medic said to me, We think there's more wrong with you than fractured ribs and a hurt back. We need to get you to the hospital and get checked out.

Yeah, I think so too, but not today. Do it tomorrow. I need pain, meds, and sleep. I went to a sleeping tent to sleep on a cot. Just before my eyes closed, Bin looked at me from his cot with his head, face and arm bandaged and said to me with a smile on his face, Lieutenant, just another day at Sogg. I gave him a thumbs up as my eyes rolled back in my head.

The next day, the medics determined I had fractured my spine and two vertebrae, compressed two vertebrae, and refractured my two broken ribs from the previous mission. I had a broken nose and my hands were a bloody mess. They couldn't believe I had actually gone on two missions back to back like that and was able to do what we did. I got a few days down time after that and I ate ibuprofen like it was candy. I chose pain overtaking the hard stuff, but by the time the next mission came around, I would be a little better. Our top secret mission had pretty much decimated a 10,000 man NVA division on their way to crush the 101st units at Hamburger Hill, and no one would ever know what happened. The NBA division never made it

to Hamburger Hill. That's why the 101st battalions were not wiped out. The 101st did finally make it to the top. Once they got up there, they were told, okay, come back down. When we SAG operators heard things like that, we thought, what are we doing? Why would the U.S. do that? Why would you sacrifice that many lives. The 101st lost 72 men killed in action and 372 wounded. That's a lot of Americans killed trying to get to the top of a hill just to turn around and walk back down. I know it wasn't just that.

It was a big political move, but I don't think it's worth losing a single life for politics. That kind of knows news had to drive you freaking crazy. Oh, yeah. Joe, everybody crazy. Do you guys even think, like when you talk about this political, stuff, how much are you thinking about that? Like, you see these things happen, you see all these guys get killed, you hear that they walk, do you hear that while you're there, or is that like an afterthought that you saw years later?

Occasionally, occasionally you will, if you get a hold of the stars and stripes or something like that that might show up every once in a while. But we don't hear a whole lot, you know, because all of our stuff is classified. I mean, I don't even know what's going on at the other two compounds, except they're running SOG missions too. But I don't know the success rate or anything. And so you keep working. Yeah, just keep doing it.

Yeah. Next mission, Air Force had recently dropped sensors into an area just inside North Vietnamese border and was picking up an NVA activity. RT Virginia was assigned the mission of searching the area, determining what activity was taking place and destroying the NVA battalion. And, you know, at this point, I could have walked in and said, I'm done. I'm done. I'm way past my six missions, way past it.

I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore. That's not what I do. That's not what Dick Thompson is doing. I still want to go out there by myself. Yeah. And I've got to get this book. There's so many things. I mean, like I said, I don't want to read this entire book because that would just be an audio book, I guess.

but like here's one example from this mission i was lying under under a bush watching the nva when i noticed movement in the peripheral of my right eye there was something moving in the bush then i realized it was a snake a big snake seven to eight feet long coming in my direction but it was not just any snake it was a cobra i froze held my breath and watched watched it crawl by me within two feet of my face it seemed to be in a hurry for a minute i was literally caught between a proverbial Rock, which was the 100 NVA you were watching, and a hard place, the eight-foot cobra and did not want to tangle with either. It appeared that the cobra went by, glanced at me, did a head nod, stuck out his tongue, and did not slow down. He was gone quickly, but the NVA appeared to have

finished eating and we're ready to move up the ridge towards our location. So like, not only you fight in the NBA, you're fighting Mother Nature out there, including you've got to, we've talked about this before, but you've gotten to a pretty serious hand-to-hand situation with a banana tree that fell on you when you were out on patrol. And the reason I wasn't going to mention that again, because we covered it on one of the other podcasts, but you did kill your first banana tree. You know, now you say, I've heard, however, that banana trees in this part of the world still tremble at the mention of your name and kind of joke about it. But one thing you did say is the enemy's not always who and what you expect and stress can change what you see and experience.

So that's, you were at such a heightened state that when this tree fell on, you did. you just was a random tree fell on you in the jungle, you fought this thing, thought it was the enemy. Like that's how your perception can get twisted. I've been setting there for 45 minutes and so observing 40 or 50 of them and see them coming up to ridge. And then all of a sudden I'm blindsided and knocked off my feet and I'm falling down to the thing.

But I took him with me. Yeah. So I was going to deal with him once I got a chance. And I did, you know. I broke bones. did all that stuff and finally it was over and yes you know my poor little team standing up there looking at me they're in the state of shock and I'm thinking yeah you're probably shaking up over this as I am and then I realized I got a tree on top of me where did this thing come from

no wonder they're in a state of shock I'm battling a stupid tree Another mission, you're doing an underwater bridge raid, meaning there's a bridge. It's like slightly underneath the depth of the rivers. It's hard to see. This wasn't really good. Again, you can read about it in the book. It ends up being really, you say it's the smoothest operation that you conducted.

No enemy contact, no team members injured, and you got the mission done. Awesome. You get, you end up for your next mission, you get a couple additional Americans on board. Craig Stephenson. Stevenson, Craig Stevenson, and Sidney Schaefer. And then you got to get these guys trained up. You go on a mission here. You know, the mission was to find and destroy an NVA battalion moving from Laos to

South Vietnam. Insertion goes, well, you get the dogs tracking you. You see S power. Again, awesome read. Just before they found us, you say, we made conduct with a platoon-sized element of 40 men that quickly grew into a company-sized element of 150 men. 1900, I called Prairie Fire Emergency. Here come the A1 strikes.

Here come the F-4 strikes. And one thing that's interesting about this is you say these two kind of a little bit opposing things. You say, it was easier for me to communicate with Stevenson and Schaefer because we shared a common language, English, right? Of course, that's real obvious. But then you say, it was more difficult to communicate under fire because Stevenson and Schaefer did not understand the nuances of how the team responded.

to NVA attacks based on terrain, et cetera, they would learn with experience. So even though you could speak English to them, it was harder in some ways because they weren't used to predicting what you were going to do and what calls we were to make. And if I could just inject something here,

Craig Stevenson and I finally got a chance to talk a few months ago. I mean, I tried to track him down before, never could, you know, round him away. But eventually his son was listening to your podcast where we were talking about one of the missions and, you know, said his name. So he called his father and said,

you're not going to believe this, you know, so anyway. So he gets us link back up. And we're talking. And he said, you know, there's something that I never told you. So I just want to tell you this When Schaefer and I joined our team, Virginia, when we came to the team, for some reason, both of us thought that you were just a lieutenant,

and this was really going to be your first time out as a one-zero. We didn't know who you were until we got out there, and we got in a prairie fire and we thought holy crap this guy's crazy and he said we were in shock and then we realized this is not his first rodeo yeah you use the term dinky dow which means crazy that's one of your last stephenson and schaefer learned that this was not my first rodeo and i was dinky dow a little bit crazy um you use you um you You link up with Lynn Black, another legend, codename Blackjack. And you guys do some, you know, we covered his book on this podcast, his book, Whiskey Tango, Foxshot, covered that with John Striker Meyer on 247.

And he also did do a SOG cast with John Striker Meyer, which if you haven't listened to those, listen, it's, maybe it's cool to have me sit here and read your books and talk to you guys. but there's nothing better than the SOGcast where you guys talk to each other as teammates that went through the same thing together. So if you're out there and you haven't listened to the SOGcast, just go look it up. It's available wherever you listen to your podcast. It's SOGcast, John Stryker-Meyer going out

and finding all the SOG legends and his old buddies and his old teammates and capturing these stories in a better way than I ever could because I wasn't there. I'm just sitting on the sidelines, watching the game going, damn, these guys are awesome. So if you want to hear the real deal, go check out the SOGcast.

It's freaking amazing to listen to. And yeah, so you got you, you end up with Lynn Black. You end up doing some what you called hunting expeditions, trying out some new techniques and technologies. Awesome to read about that. Lynn was a master warrior, no fear, and I always learned from him. You guys started using suppressed weapons, which is pretty cool. some of that starlight stuff.

And then Captain Dick Meadows, eventually he leaves. And another guy named Captain Bill Walsh takes over. You got a picture of the sign, the recon company sign. And I got a kick out of it because it says, we kill for peace, which I thought was pretty awesome. You mentioned this name earlier, Captain Dennis Neal. He ends up being your roommate. Dennis had already been shot once.

He, like many operators, had caught the SOG bug. He was addicted. He needed the adrenaline rush that the across-the-fense missions were famous for giving SOG operators. Fast forward a little bit. He shared with me he had a bad feeling about his upcoming mission. He did not know how to explain it. It was just a feeling he couldn't shake. He said he never felt this way before, but was sure everything would be okay.

I did not realize it at the time, but Captain Bruce Lombard was having a similar conversation with Michael Burns, Dennis' one-one. This mission had Michael really scared. Bruce reminded him that Dennis was very experienced and he should follow Dennis' lead and things would work out. At this point in my SOG tour, I had had this conversation with several other friends just prior to the mission from which they did not return

and would have similar conversations with others who would not return. These conversations centered around the idea that something very bad, like not coming back, this time was going to happen. I had this feeling as my best friend Bob walked away, headed for a command and control central. In addition to Bob Dennis and Michael, I also had this conversation with my good friends, Sergeant First Class Ricardo Davis, First Lieutenant Peter H. McMurray and Captain Stephen Cheney. And each one of those guys were killed in action. In each case, the conversation happened only once. It was one to three days before their last mission,

a premonition of what was going to happen. I was convinced that sometimes you know things before they happen, especially your death. I also believe that often you can choose your fate. I suggested to Dennis that he tried to find a way not to go on the mission. Of course, a suggestion like that to a sog warrior was a waste of time. So I changed the topic to things he could do to reduce the risk. For example, the mission is not over until you're back at CCN.

Getting the extraction LZ does not end the mission. For some reason, it seemed really important. for me to emphasize that point. So you're at this point in the book, spun up to do a P-O-W recovery mission. And you were mentioned this earlier. As you were spinning up to do this mission, there was a situation that unfolded.

You guys are listening to the Tactical Operations Center. Suddenly we heard those dreaded words that make chills run up your spine. We heard a high-pitched, fast panicked American, voice yelling into the radio handset. This is tango alpha. Prairie fire emergency. Prairie fire emergency were being overrun. All of us on ST Victor India had experienced at least one Prairie Fire emergency. At this point, I had experienced 14. What was happening was that Dennis had sensed maybe he, but maybe he could survive it. Then the Covey out in the area heard a transmission on a URC 10

radio. He heard what he described as a high-pitched, panicked American voice saying, help me, help me, help me, for God's sake, somebody help me. Then nothing. Radio silence. This Covey did not personally know Neil or Burns so he could not identify which one, if either might have transmitted the message. Dennis's team was not only a prairie fire emergency, but was now a missing in action. And fast forward a little bit. R.T. Rattler's extraction team was quickly briefed on the situation and cleared to launch. I was looking at the extraction helicopter, spinning up to go rescue the survivors of Dennis's team. That little voice in the back of my head was saying very loudly, you need to get on that

extraction helicopter. You need to go with them. So another team, you guys were getting ready to do a POW rescue mission. This other team gets tasked to go help them. You're watching them and you start basically thinking you're going to go join them. You want to go join them. I immediately started running in the direction of the helicopter as I ran. I thought, I have to lead my own mission to get the POWs out in a couple hours.

I can't just jump on this aircraft and fly off on a different mission. That's not going to work. I slowed to a jog, stopped short of the helicopter as it lifted off. In hindsight, I think this is one of the days I was supposed to have died. Even the granite memorial wall in my hometown has an empty space where my name would have been. It's there. Yeah. Well, they just had that.

There just happens to be an empty space on the people from your town. that were killed in Vietnam, and there's a space for your name? Alphabetically. That's where we go. Well, their rescue mission doesn't work out too great. And then the commander comes in. Your mission has changed. ST. Victory India is now the Bright Light Team 2.

That's you guys. Bruce and I got the team together, and I told Ben to repeat after me, warning order RT Rattler is missing. The HF Bright Light is pinned down on the LZ by a large NBA force. Our mission has changed. We will now do the POW mission later. We are now Bright Light Team 2. We can expect anti-aircrafts fire to start

approximately 20 minutes out from our insertion. It's going to be a hot insertion against a large NVA force on the ground. Cobras will be prepping the LZ and a tree line with mini guns and flichet rockets. Expect your aircraft to be taking heavy machine gun and AK-47 fire on short final. RPGs were fired at some of Jordan's aircraft. Your aircraft will probably be taking small arms hits on the way to the LZ.

Team members wounded inside the aircraft will be left on the aircraft. If you're hit on the LZ Jones, the medical take check on you and put you on the next aircraft for extraction, we can expect to be in heavy contact the whole time we're on the ground. While we had a lot of air support, we have to be careful where we put it because we don't know where the NVA had Neal and Burns. So you're going into,

it seems like this going in is going to be the hottest landing zone insertion you've ever gone into. That's what you're hearing for Intel. You go in, you search again, get the book so you can read that story. Eventually, we had not been able to find any sign of Neil or Burns. If we were in the right area, Neil and Burns would have been moved. If we were not in the right area, there was no way we could expand our search. The day before had been my opportunity and I had not taken it.

I could never go back and change that event. I had to live with it. And eventually, we were extracted under fire, but it was a lot of, lot lighter than when we were inserted. We were very fortunate on both the insertion and extraction that the NBA did not use RPGs against us like they did with RT Rattler. Neil Burns and the two yards were never found. There's no doubt in my mind that the two survivors, Pan and Komen, gave us the wrong

location of where the team was when it was overrun. So there's, again, this is in the book, but the yards that were with them that made it out described where they thought Neil and Burns were, but it just didn't. makes sense. And you say, I don't think they did it intentionally. I think the stress of being wounded, chased, and trying to survive. I think they lost track of how far they traveled trying to get to the extraction LZ. We searched the ridge thoroughly where it happened. Nothing was there. We were initially debriefed at the launch site. Then again, when we arrived back at CCN, it was always crushing disappointment to lose a team member, and in this case, almost a whole team. Families had to be

notified. I found a particular emotional. When I walked back into the room, I shared, with Dennis, seeing all his personal effects on his side of the room, knowing he would never return. I made the decision to wait until the next day to pack up his personal effects. It brought back memories of the inventories I did at FOB1 when I had first arrived. This was even more personal. Dennis and I had shared the same room, fought together and worked together. We were good friends. I was at the launch site, heard his emergency call, and led his bright light team.

I felt very sad for their families. They would be notified that their sons were mission and action in Vietnam. The news would devastate their families and leave them hanging on to the hope that one day their sons would walk back into their lives, but it would not happen. They would never have closure while on this earth. Their parents would not live to see the day their sons remains would be repatriated. You say, I did not go on the recovery helicopter for Dennis and Michael. Not going turned out to be the biggest regret of my military career. I have almost always felt,

I have always felt that not getting on that helicopter almost certainly saved my life, but I might have caused Neil Burns or both to have been retrieved had I gone. Nine years later, the day before Mother's Day, 1978, while sitting in my living room, I had to look Dennis' mother and father in the eyes and explain what happened to their son. They were on their way to Washington,

to start the process of having Dennis's status change from missing in action to presumptive finding of death. Michael Burns' status was also changed. Their remains have never been repatriated. A lot has been posted on the internet over the years about what happened to RT Rattler and the Bright Light team. The majority of what is written, even an official report, is incorrect. Bruce and I were there. We were all the guys on the ground. We personally searched that area and know what was there and what wasn't.

Dennis Neal was my good friend, colleague, and roommate. We talked a lot about missions and tactics. He was an outstanding warrior, friend, and human being. I had a personal stake in finding Dennis and his team. I just wasn't able to do it. And of course, the war doesn't stop, and the missions keep coming, and now you have that POW event, you know, that you're looking to go execute. And, you know, strangely enough,

and we've talked about this on one of the other podcast. You hear your name being used on a encrypted radio by a woman with a Vietnamese accent. I mean, it's very, very disturbing and very eerie when you talk about that. Again, get the book to get some of these, get these details of these operations. There's so much heroism that takes place. Fast forward a little bit.

My good friend, First Lieutenant Peter McMurray came to talk to me. We had attended most of the same schools, training, and assignments for most of our time in the Army. Once again, Pete told me he did not have a good feeling about his upcoming mission. He said he never felt this type of fear before he typically experienced normal excitement associated with a mission. This one was different. We spent time talking about his feelings, what he could do to help mitigate them. One of my recommendations was to avoid exposing himself. Don't get out in the open.

When Pete left that evening, I think. the sickening feeling that I had with other friends before their last mission. Late afternoon on the 27th, RT Virginia, flew to Kwongt, launch site shortly after arriving there, we learned that Pete had been killed that day when he was hit by the main rotor blade of a crashing CH-34 helicopter. The news really had an impact on me. I had to grieve quickly and set it aside until after our mission. Easier said than done.

When you guys go out, you execute that mission, you execute a mission where you take out a pipeline, a bridge. There's just so much, so much happening. And he had the same conversation with Captain Steve Cheney. He told you had a bad feeling. Three days later, Steve died of shrapnel wounds from a friendly rocket. That's the one you were talking about earlier. Heavy casualties in the SOG teams.

It's unbelievable. Fast forward a little bit. Lieutenant Colonel Donahue assumed command of CCN. at the end of September, he took me off RT Virginia, which is an operator job, and made me AST South Operations Officer and CCN Operations, which was a non-operator job. I transitioned from being a one-zero operator to being a remf. It was a very important job, and I might live longer, but it was not what I signed up for when I came into country.

And that's where you kind of wrap up your time going in the field as an operator. How long did you spend in that position, the REMF position? Maybe six weeks. So it was right at the end. You get done with that and it's time to go back, you know, to the world, as you guys called it in Vietnam. I thought this, what you wrote about flying home was really a great exercise. of what that was like for you say I was sitting on a plane full of soldiers some of whom seemed really happy to be alive and going home back to the world but most seemed to be engaged in

deep thought or self-reflection I saw some soldiers with tears in their eyes wanting to be left alone perhaps thinking about the friends they lost the fear they experienced or the unforgettable scenes of horror that they had been burned that had been burned in the recesses of their minds forever many of these men died on the battlefield yet they were sitting on the plane pretending to still be alive and some would end the pretense with death by suicide at some point in the future. What was I experiencing? It had been along 12 months. I'd been down the black hole and come back out.

34 of my SOG friends and teammates were killed or missing in action. I had escaped death more times than I could count and knew I could not begin to describe the past 12 months in terms anyone could possibly understand even if I were allowed to. I had 20 more years to decide if I would tell my story and how I might do that. What I did know was that I felt guilty leaving my friends and team members behind. I knew I would volunteer to return to SOG in the near future after I had time to heal. And then we'd get into these SOG imperatives, which are... If I could say.

Yes. One more thing. reference that comment about, you know, I would return. So my plan was to come back to the States. I'd been told within eight months after you get back, you're going to be sent back to Vietnam. So what I thought was, okay, so I've got eight months, I'm going to start SOG-2 training.

So I'm going to use the next eight months to see how much I can improve my skill set on, you know, solve kinds of things. So that was one thing that helped me be able to write these two books was I came back and started reviewing all the missions, all the things that I've done, you know, the people, skills, those kinds of things. So I was working on that. So that helped me when I started to write the book.

I was able to go back, find notes, a few notes that I had taken in country, particularly one with dates. Someone had told me early on, every time you get on an aircraft and fly a mission, write it down. When was it? What type of aircraft? So I've got a list of dates of, you know, when I was going out there, so I was able to set up a timeline and things like that.

Um, so anyway, I prep for SOG 2. I just didn't get to go back and do it. Mm-hmm. These, uh, yeah, and this is where the SOG imperatives that you talk about, you're, you're prepping this stuff and, you know, the SOG imperatives lead by example, practice, practice, practice, mindset drives success. High stress equals bad decisions. Adapt, adapt, adapt, adapt.

Don't stop moving. Here's one of my favorites, one of my favorite sayings I've heard in a long time. Today started three days ago, which you can also say today started three years ago. You can say this month started five years ago. Like where you are right now is based on what you did. So make sure that right now you're doing the right things. Battle space is dynamic. Change requires a reboot and practice.

dominant response hierarchy equals first response and make critical decisions before stress is something that we try and always do in special operations is you have a plan that if this happens, we already know what we're going to do. If we get contacted from the left, we're going to do this. We get contacted from the right. If we get hit from the target building, here's our response. We're not going to have to make these critical decisions during the stressful moment. We already made them.

We already thought through them. So those are really good. And you expand on these things in the book. It's one of the best things in there in the book. And again, you know, you go through what you do when you get home. You talk about you become a Ranger instructor. They eventually say, hey, we need combat veterans to be teaching Rangers school. So we can't send you back to Vietnam.

And so you end up for what a normal person would be, they'd be happy. about but for Dick Thompson, he's not happy because it gets stuck in stateside. You end up, you know, company command in the second infantry division in Korea. Then you go to graduate school, you go to command and general staff college, you end up a professor of military science. And then in 1986, you say, I took an assignment in 1986 and retired in 1998, having completed 21 years in the Army. The goal I set back in 1970 was to complete at least 20 years of active service and retired from the Army at the rank of lieutenant colonel or higher mission complete.

I launched a veteran-owned and operated international management consulting form, High-performing Systems, Inc. HPS in January of 1984 as my next career. The company provided a platform to apply all the skills I had developed across my military career and teach those skills to executives around the world. And that's, you're still doing that today. It's 40 years old in 2024. And just to, just to close out the book and again, get the book, I've read probably 4% of the book today. It's an amazing book.

Every page has incredible action and also incredible lessons. But I'll close out the book with this. Across the eight years of SOG's existence, approximately 4,000 men served in the U.S. Of those 4,000, less than 600 were operators, men who participated in the cross-border operations. Over 300 of the operators were killed in action. As I write this book, there are currently over 50 operators and aviators supporting SOG operations still missing in action. Out of the killed and missing in action, 34 of them were my friends and teammates during my time. as a SOG operator from 1968 to 1969.

They are all American heroes, and I think of them every day. I still go out and work with law enforcement, swipe teams, military special ops, and teaching things. And I was doing a presentation to historical society a few months ago. and the audience, about 60 people, were probably, almost all of them were 50 or older. And I made the comment like that that I still go out and work with them.

And a guy asked me, he said, how could you possibly help today's special ops guys? You know, what you were doing was over 50 years ago. I mean, technology is advanced, all this stuff is advanced. advanced, what could you do to help those guys? And I said, well, they do have tons of technology. And the one thing they asked me about when I go talk to them is, how could you guys have done what you did without the technology? And what I tell them is that in today's environment,

all of your technology can end in a nanosecond. All you need is electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear explosion, and all of a sudden your night vision goggles, your thermal energy, all the radios, all the things that you guys use is gone. And their question is, so how do you do it? And I tell them, you have to develop the sense. And I said, let me give you an example. Take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and just relax.

My assistant is going to turn the light off. So just relax. The light goes off. It's dark. You can't see you in front of your face. I said, okay, just follow what I'm saying. Imagine that you're in this room right now alone. You're in here all by yourself.

You can't see anything. But you also know I'm in this room. And my mission is determine at you. You don't know where I am. You don't know how I'm going to do it. You don't know how close I am to you. But I know where you are because your sweat smells different and you're really starting to sweat right now.

Because you know I'm here. and I'm coming after you. Your heart rate is starting to beat faster and faster. And it'll get to the war, so I can hear it. You're starting to breathe faster. You're starting to get uncomfortable. You're going to move your foot in a minute, and I'm going to hear your shoe on the floor when you move it.

You're going to start grunting as you're breathing because your stress level is going up so high. And you don't know where I am, but I know exactly where you are. and you can't hear me coming. And all of a sudden, everything's going black. But it's... I said, I know how to do that.

I learned how to do that. I can do it in the woods. I can do it in a building. I don't need thermal imaging. I know you're in there. I know how to find you. I know how to move so you can't hear me. I know how to take care of you when I do find you.

And today's guys want to know. How can I learn to do that? Because you can't learn it instantly. It's something you've got to train on, you've got to practice on, and be able to do it because it's coming. And I'll tell you, even with all that technology, behind all that technology is a human. That's right.

And that human is going to have behaviors that will betray them to a person that understands those behaviors. So being able to do that is, is it doesn't matter how much technology put out there. You know, you and I both have night vision, but I'm noisy. You're going to get me. You and I both have thermal,

but I'm moving in areas where it's comfortable for me to move, and you know what those areas are. Guess what? You're going to get me. So, yeah, the technology is there. The technology plays a role, but it still is, at the end of all technology, is a human.

Yeah. So important to know and understand. And obviously important to honor our fallen. And I think, you know, these books that you've written, they just continue to share the memories and keep the memories of all the SOG warriors alive. So can't thank you enough for writing these things. Does that get us up to speed as far as, you know,

what we're doing right now? You still have high performance systems. That's HPSYS.com. Right. You're on Twitter at HPS underscore CEO. You're on Instagram, HPS underscore CEO. So I know I follow those. That way I can always get a little,

a little SOG hit when I need it. And you're on Facebook at Dick Thompson. And I know, I know you. and I, we were talking for a little while about doing some stuff together, maybe on the, on the echelon front side. So it's been a little bit crazy. So hopefully we can have, maybe I was looking through some old emails to have some of those conversations again, because, you know, the, the knowledge that you have is not only apply to combat. It applies to interacting with other human beings and understanding, you know, what, what people are thinking and how they're thinking and all that

stuff is really powerful. I know I've got one of your old books here called Young's Functioning attitudes explained. And I know we don't have time to do it today, but at some point, you know, we got a lot of people right now that are young has become very popular. Jordan Peterson is a big fan of young, and so young has become very popular again. And here you are. I think this book is from the 1990s. You're old school.

You got the knowledge. So at some point, we'll bring you all back on it. We'll talk about young and function attitudes explained. looking forward to that. We would enjoy that. Echo Charles, you got any questions? Real quick. What's an RPD?

Because it's RPG, which, you know, it was what they call the machine gun, the Russian machine gun at that time. What does it stand for? Russian. Some Russian names. Okay. Okay, but it's a machine gun.

Yeah. Okay, so it's not a rocket propelled. No. Something that starts with a deal. It's a machine gun. You use as a drum. in fact oh like a drum

like a Tommy gun yeah like a Tommy gun I have I have mentioned before that when Bargewell and now

we're out on a mission and we got attacked and the guy had a RPD machine gun after it was

so we got in and we were talking and Bargewell said man that thing is powerful I would I'd like to

try one of those I said well just get it And you know, in our post-mission train, we're going over to the mountain. So let's get you one and take it over there. You see how handles going through the jungles. So we got one. He took it over.

And when we came back, he said, now, it hangs on everything. Too big. It's too heavy. It's got a tripod on it. You can't take off. And, you know, a long barrel, all that stuff, can't do it. A while after that, um, down at CCC, somebody had said, hey, let's just saw the barrel off right here.

That takes care of all this extra weight on the end, gets rid of it, makes it shorter, it's easier to maneuver. So they started playing with it, so Bargeville got one. And that was the machine gun, the machine gun he had with him on the mission where he got his DSC. You know, the whole team got wounded from a B40 rocket. But Bargewell took a big piece of shrapnel through the side of his head lodged behind his eye. And that really irritated him. That makes sense.

And when they jumped up and tried to assault to finish the team off, 20-something-old Bargewell stood up with that RPD and just took them all out. Oh, dang. So it worked after he sawed it off. It was kind of more practical. Then it was easy. It's heavy. You know, when everybody on the team carried a drum,

an extra drum for him because that thing shoots fast but it's just a hundred round drum so then when Bargewell was leaving another guy Ken Bowray

had come in and McKin said man I like that I'd like to have that my Bargewell take it I can't take it back with me you take it

so he went out and used it and then I think Bargewell retired as a two-star general. Ken Bowray retired as a two-star general. Both of them

spent the rest of their careers in special ops. I could have said, Barge, well, I'd like to use that gun. You know? And maybe I could have been a two-star general. It's a little correlation. So there was something going on. Yeah, yeah. Actually, I think

I don't think it had to do with the gun. I think it was, you know, those two guys that had a special touch. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, I had my chance. and I blew it. Yeah. So is there, like, you ever watch the movie Predator?

Junk, obviously? You know the guy with a minigun, right? Blaine, Joseph Winter. Is that, do you guys look at that and be like, bro, that's so unrealistic? Because it's like not practical, or is that even practical? There are versions of that.

No shit. I mean, I saw a video on one of the sock sites in the last couple months where a guy is standing out there. With a mini gun. and firing it on the range and he's got a big backpack on it. It's got the ammunition and speeding out

coming around to the side. But you know, you're walking backwards when you're pulling that trigger. We had guys that would make, what they called them, you'll appreciate this, Echo Charles, Predator packs,

which was maybe 800 rounds of ammunition linked together. But it wasn't quite as high speed as, at least I never saw a version that was high speed. It was more like the guys would, When they'd get set up in a in a position like a base element to to assault the target They would take the backpack off and set it next their gun so it would just feed in there and you kind of have to like help it feed a little bit

Maybe a couple times guys tried to like shoot it off their back and they have to reach back and like pull the ammo out You know pull it out so it would yeah go and and get assisted going through the weapon But so yeah the minigone takes power too like it needs it needs power oh like a power like a battery source. Oh shit. To make it spin. Yeah. It would seem like the more

comes with it, the more impractical it becomes. Yeah. Seems insane. But pretty dope. That RPD was, oh, it was brutal. Legit.

I mean, things were shooting so fast. But, you know, I mean, in fact, that Delta Park, the one they set up for Bargewell with a statue and everything, that's what he's

got. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's epic. Oh, hell yeah. Cool. Good to see you again, as always. Good to see you. I appreciate the opportunity to come out and chat with you.

Any other closing thoughts, sir? No, I just appreciate what you're doing and, you know, getting a word out about things that you can do to be successful. Because I think I talked to a lot of vets, particularly vets who are struggling and trying to help them understand. And just because you were in combat, it doesn't mean you can't move into civilian life and be successful. And, you know, I can always point at you and say, look at Jock. Look at what all he did. And he's successful in business. You can still do it.

You know, the Army or military, whatever you're in, teaches you all kinds of skill sets. the problem is a lot of times when we leave the service we think that was all military stuff just like with the sog imperatives paint them with a pinstriped suit or whatever or put blue jeans on them it still works don't stop moving you've got to keep moving forward practice practice whatever you're doing

you've got to practice and you've got to adapt that everything you plan is going to change when you start executing it and you've got to be prepared to adapt when I'm standing on a skid the chopper coming in I'm standing there thinking about what I got to do when I'm on the ground but I'm also thinking when my foot hits the ground I'm going to have to start adapting because they're not going to be where they're supposed to be something's going to happen and I've got to be ready and we've been rehearsing different options different immediate action drills so that we're really ready to adapt, you know, when situation changes. Because I think I might have mentioned this once before, but when we would be doing our mission planning, I realized one day why you have to start adapting, why you have to change everything once you get on the ground. There's an empty chair sitting here.

The NVA guy is not at the planning table with us. So when we plan this thing out, nobody's telling him what he's supposed to do. So when we land and we get out there, you know, this guy, he doesn't know what to do, so he starts empathizing, doing his own, and screws the whole plan up. You know, if we just put him at the table and say, this is where you're going to be on the LZ when we come in,

this is how you're going to maneuver. Things would go a lot better, but that doesn't happen. And it doesn't happen out in the real world, out in the, you know, business world or whatever. You have to be ready to adapt. Yes, sir. Anyway. Well, the enemy gets a vote.

Yeah, he does. Well, sir, thanks for joining us once again. It's always awesome to see. It's always awesome to hear your experiences, read about your experiences, get the lessons learned, which you have so many. And, of course, thank you for your service, your sacrifice, and also thank you for sharing the stories of your brethren and continuing the legacy of your fallen comrades,

we will not forget them. Exactly. Thank you. Thank you, sir. And with that, Dick Thompson has left the building once again. Awesome to have him back. These guys, the SOG warriors. I just was talking to them.

Anything that I can do or we can do to support SOG, we're in. So the SOG cast, if you haven't tapped into the SOG cast yet, just go. Go check it out. It's John Stryker Meyer. He's been traveling around the country. He goes and he links up with these SOG legends and interviews and talks to him. And it's different, you know, like when Dick Thompson is talking to a saw guy, it's two bros just hanging out talking. So you're going to get some stuff that you're not going to get when you listen to him with me.

I'm holding them. in awe and reverence. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. So they're just bros. Yeah. They're like, well, of course we were stacking bodies and hiding behind them.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Fully. So of course we were, you know, well, of course we were just going to kill 10,000 NVA man division. Of course.

That's what we're doing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, when Tilt is going back and forth with them too, it's like, yeah, they're browing out. They're, you know, they're two guys. And a lot of times he'll add to the very story that. guys talking about and give a lot of this like additional context as well because he's like there yeah so it's kind of like yeah it's like it's like are you positionally when you kind of listen to it or

whatever it's like you know how you said you you hold them in reverence or whatever this other guys like kind of right there with them almost like they're kind of tandem kind of tag team in the whole story it's it's actually very interesting that song so check out the sog cast and and then like from a perspective you heard dick meadows another song legend in the book here You have to keep your body sharp. You keep your mind sharp. I recommend you do that. Dick Meadows recommend to do that.

Dick Thompson recommends you do that. That means you're going to have to put in the work. It also means you're going to need the right fuel. I recommend Jocko Fuel. We had our first 434 tour stop in San Diego. You missed it. You were at a birthday celebration for BC. Yes, sir.

Good celebration? celebration yeah. Did things get wild, crazy, mellow, heart fell. At the end, yeah, kind of all of the above. I mean, wild. Well, you know. Anything get broken? No. Okay. I lost my Bluetooth speaker. I didn't lose it. Okay. That's a little wild. You know what I mean? It's a little wild. Yeah. Not quite broken. It's one level below broken is lost. Yes. Yeah. That was it. It was good. Very successful, we'll say. Successful operation. Good times. Well, while you were doing that, I was with several hundred troopers in the Walmart parking lot here in San Diego and got an awesome PT hung out, met everybody.

It was just killer. So that's kind of our launch point. We're doing a bunch more of these. How many is it in a bunch? I don't know. If you said five, I'd be like, yeah, it's a little bunch. That's the plan right now.

It was like five or six more. And yeah, it's just letting everyone know where in Walmart. Junkofield is. in Walmart. So you can get it. You can all, hey, look, Walmart, Wawa, vitamin shop, GNC, military commissaries,

A-fees, Haniford, dash stores, Shoprite, Wakefern, H-EB, down in Texas, H-EB, all day. All day.

Up in the Midwest, Meyer, all day. Out in the east, Wegmans, all day. Also, Harris-Teter, Lifetime Fitness. So we're in a bunch of different places. But we just went into Walmart.

So accessible to a lot of people. There's a lot of Walmarts. So check that out. That's if you need protein. That's if you need hydration. That's if you need, you need joint warfare. I talked to a lot of people.

Give me feedback. Yeah, sure. After the PT. One woman was like, I could not run until I started taking joint warfare and krill oil. She's like, I could not run. Never mind doing burpees. Yeah.

She's like, we just did. hundred or so burpees. Thank you. So, joint warfare, super cruel, protein. We got it all. Joccofuel.com, check it out. Go to the stores if you need it.

Check it out. Appreciate the support, and we're supporting you back by giving you the best possible products you can get. So check that out. Also, you probably are doing jiu-jitsu as part of your

keeping your mind and body sharp. That means you need jihitsu clothing. Sure. It means you need a ghee. It means you need a rash guard. It means you need shorts. You need stuff to train in. You want that stuff to be made in America,

not made in a communist country. We had our Saug warriors and the rest of our people in Vietnam fighting against communists. We had our people in Korea fighting against communists that enslave people. Don't buy from a communist country.

Buy from America. You can get jiu-jitsu. gear you can get jeans boots t-shirts hats belts belts what else wallets some wallets for sure some hunt gear yeah rain jacket i mean we got it going on so check out origin usa.com get american made boots yeah and everything else that you need to wear check that out yeah it's true a lot of those uh you say you talk about the jeans but they got a bunch of other kind of pants as well like if you're into moab pants oh yeah the various uh types of pants of pants functional pants you know look are there dress slacks yet maybe maybe not but I will say

this if you wear those you can wear those black jeans yeah anywhere oh yeah I'm talking to a dress event now look are you gonna go to the freaking I don't know ceremony or whatever maybe not but yeah you could I could it's exactly what I mean you know but like work wise functionally no matter what you're doing there's gonna be some pants over there for you yes I'm saying so yeah very impressive array of pants options. I want to throw it in that in there. Good point. Hey. It's been hitting me lately. We are thankful.

Yes, sir. Cross the board. Speaking of being thankful, Jocko has a store called Jocko store. So you go to jocco store.com. So discipline equals freedom, which is true, by the way. If you want to represent that, that's where you go. So jocco store.com, you get Dispintuitive freedom, good. We've got some rash guards on there, some T-shirts. Shirts, that's kind of the main thing. Yeah.

Very shirts for representation. No, we got some shorts on there too, though, functional. Made for a lot of stuff. They're board shorts, but they're also grappling shorts and running. They're a little bit more like, like they're not as. Not with those pockets on them. Yeah, here's the thing. They're like kind of roomy a little bit.

I mean, you've got to be into shorts to understand all the little subtlety. So it doesn't matter. Just know that these are made for a lot of stuff. But they have pockets on them. Yeah. Not the kind of pockets, like a cargo pocket that like Velcro's shut, but just pockets. So you can't wear those grappling. I mean, I've worn them before a couple times, but that's not.

Yeah. Maybe not in a competition, but no, I wear them for years, for sure. 100%. You never got someone's pinky caught in that pocket? Oh, I don't know. Maybe I did. I don't care about that and stuff, though. Well, think about this, though.

Here's why that matters a lot less than you might think. If you ever wear a t-shirt grappling, which I know you do because freaking it's a thing, and I'll get my toes caught in your t-shirt. It's real, but we still wear a t-shirts. You're saying? I'm not saying it's ideal. Is it ideal? No, but it's available.

to you. See what I'm saying? As far as an option to wear. You're going to wear that and not jeans. That's true. Good point. Or cargo shorts. Noted. So you're what you can still wear them to the mall. Put your wallet in the pocket. Okay. Strong man. I'll give it. Anyway, nonetheless there's also a

we'll call it a scenario called the shirt locker. This is a new shirt design every month. It's a subscription situation. So yeah, check the website out for maybe little hints and sneak peaks of past designs and current designs. Check. Also, primalbeef.com, Colorado craft beef.com.

You need steak in your life and you need a lot of it. You maybe need some ground beef. Maybe you need some jerky. Maybe you need some beef sticks. Got all kinds of good stuff. Check out primalbeef.com. Check out Colorado craftbeef.com. Get what you need for protein steak in your life.

Also subscribe to the podcast. Also check out jocco underground.com. Also check out the YouTube channels that we've got. We got one for Jocko Podcasts. You made a Jocko podcast clips. John, we made a few. Oh, we made a couple? Oh, a clip's channel.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a channel. Yep, there's a channel of Jocko Podcast Clips. And then Origin USA has one and JoccoFuel has one. All putting cool stuff on there. Check out psychological warfare. Check out Flipsidecanvus.com. Dakota Meyer.

Putting cool stuff into the world to hang on your wall. Books. Obviously, we got the SOG code name Dynamite Books. There's one and two. We also have the stress effect by Dick Thompson. He also wrote Young's function attitudes explained because he's a PhD in psychology. Is it psychology? Yeah, I think it's psychology.

But that's going to be a hard one to get. I got one. Anyways, check out the books by Henry L. Dick Thompson. Dynamite. They're awesome. I've written a bunch of books too. You can check those out. Check out the kids' books that I've written.

You might be hearing more about those in the future because they're being turned into a movie. the movie is being filmed. Currently. The movies, yeah. How's it coming along? So far, so good. You like that one. Take it from me.

So far so good. Now, is it hard for you to assess how good the movie is when you're in it like you are? Well, you know, yeah, just being so close to it. It's hard to get kind of a bird's eye view perspective for sure, detached perspective, as one might say. But from what you could tell, what's your assessment? So far, so good. here's a thing.

It's a good thing, you know, being on the production set the way I am from time to time. You can see the, you know, the monitors, right? So you can get a pretty good view of how, at the very least, it's going to look. Obviously put together, it takes on a whole different thing, 100%. But at the very least, you get little hints of how it's going to look, how it's going to feel visually and stuff. And, oh, yeah, very well done. I think we got ourselves a big one coming. So, Way the Warrior Kid, check out those books.

Check out the Mikey and the Dragons. And then I've written a bunch of other books for adults about leadership, about life. I've written a different novel. So that's called Final Spend. So anyways, check out the books. Also, Eschelonfront. We have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership.

We, if you want to help your organization and help their leadership. And when you solve the leadership problems, you solve all the problems inside of an organization. Leadership solves problems. So go to Escalonfront.com and we will help you solve all the problems that you have in your business, in your company, in your team. Also, we have an online training academy, Extreme Ownership.com. The skills that you heard Dick Thompson talking about today for combat, for interacting with other human beings on the battlefield, there's also skills that you need to interact with human beings in a meeting, in an email, in a relationship, whether it's your wife,

your husband, your son, your daughter, your peer, your boss, your subordinate, these are skills and you can hone these skills and if you want to you can take some of our courses extreme ownership dot com go and check it out there's a free course at least take the free courses just take them they're free no factor if you want to help service members active and retired you want to help their families you want to help gold star families check out mark lee's mom mama lee she's got an amazing charity organization if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to america's mighty warriors dot org also check out micah thinks got an incredible organization heroes and horses dot org and for

Finally, Jimmy May has got an amazing organization that you heard about from Sean Murphy the other day, beyond the brotherhood.org. If you want to connect with us, first of all, Dick Thompson, if you want to check out his website, it's HPSYS.com. He's also on Instagram and Twitter at HPS underscore CEO. And he's also on Facebook at Dick Thompson. for us, I'm at jaco.com and we're both on social media. I'm at joccoe Willing echoes that echo Charles. Just be careful because speaking to ambush,

you'll get ambushed by the algorithm. It'll take you out. Once again, thanks to Dick Thompson for joining us. All these dog guys are my heroes and true American heroes. It's an honor to be able to talk to them and share their stories. Also, thanks to all of our soldiers, sailors,

airmen, Marines. And tonight especially, thanks to our Vietnam veterans. Thank you for stepping up. and answering the call in such a brutal war. Additionally, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, all first responders.

Thank you for stepping up every day to protect us here at home. And to everyone else out there, heed that guidance from Dick Thompson, Dynamite. Today started three days ago. Today started three days ago. The situation you're in right now started to develop three days ago. And again, we can put all kinds of time frames on this. What that means is be prepared.

What that means is think about the future. What that means is think long-term, strategic, don't think short-term tactical. What you are doing right now impacts where you are going to be. So don't wait, don't put it off, do it now, don't stop moving. That's all we've got for tonight. Until next time, this is Echo and Jocko.