Jocko Podcast - 469: Dangerous Secret Missions. With Army Col (Ret) Bill Reeder.

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

>Join Jocko Underground<COL (Ret.) William S. Reeder is a legendary aviator who has made contributions to survival, evasion, resistance, escape (SERE) training and the attack helicopter community. His 30-year career included two combat tours in Vietnam flying armed OV-1 Mohawk reconnaissance airplanes and AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters.On May 9, 1972, he was leading a team of AH-1 Cobras supporting two Vietnamese ranger battalions and their American advisors. He was shot down, his co-pilot/gunner killed. Severely wounded, he evaded the enemy but was eventually captured spending nearly a year as a prisoner of war (POW).Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 469 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. The war raged. It had been raging for some time. I arrived in the country in the middle of the night on Halloween, 1968. I was young, a 22-year-old, newly promoted U.S. Army captain, eager to find by manhood to learn what I was made of.

I was anxious over the explosive light displays I'd seen in the distance as our world airways flight abruptly dropped into a steep spiraling approach, landing at Banja, airbase just outside Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam. As I walked toward the military bus there to pick us up, I noted, with some concern, the heavy gauge wire mesh across the windows. Our escort told us it was to prevent anyone from throwing grenades through the windows as we drove down narrow streets on our way to Longbin Army Post a few miles northwest. Welcome to the combat zone, I thought.

Little did I know how far this was from the reality of war I'd soon come to know. I'd heard the unit I was going to, the 131st, flew special, highly classified missions, some of the most hazardous in Southeast Asia. many of its aircraft had been shot down far behind enemy lines only a few crew members ever recovered general westmoreland the commander of all forces in vietnam authorized the black flight suit for the aviators the only army unit in vietnam given that honor and that right there is an excerpt from a book called we dared to fly dangerous secret missions during the vietnam war written by retired armed Colonel William Reeder Jr. This is the third book written by Colonel Reeder. He wrote another book called Extraordinary Valor about Special Forces Major John Duffy,

Medal of Honor recipient who fought lead and saved a South Vietnamese battalion from being completely overrun and obliterated. And Colonel Reeder flew his cobra attack helicopter in support of Major Duffy. And that was before Colonel Reeder was shot down over the central highlands of Vietnam, was captured by the North Vietnamese,

placed in a jungle prison camp, was starved, tortured, beaten, subjected to mock executions and eventually forced to March 200 miles on the Ho Chi Minh Trail to Hanoi, where he spent months in the Hanoi Hilton prison camp before finally being released on March 27, 1973, and he detailed that experience in his book

through the valley. My captivity in Vietnam. and Colonel Reeder has been on this podcast twice before. Episode 63 where we discussed his book through the valley and his experience as a prisoner of war. And then on episode 342, where we talked about his book, Extraordinary Valor. And it is an honor to have one of my heroes back again,

Colonel Reeder, to discuss this latest book, We Dare to Fly, which describes his first tour in Vietnam, flying harrowing missions over Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the Grumman OV-1 Mohawk observation and attack airplane. Colonel Reeder, thank you for coming back. It's great to see you and an honor for you to come back and talk to us one more time. Jocko, Echo, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much.

And you kind of wrote these books in reverse order, right? How'd that happen? Oh, there's definitely a story behind that and so many things. The first book that I wrote through the valley, My Captivity in Vietnam, was about my prisoner of war experience. I was really driven to write that, motivated to write it, because I felt there was an important story to be told about my prisoner of war experience,

but even more than mine to use my story to get the account out of the entire, southern experience, prisoners who were captured in South Vietnam. Most of the information, most of the books written, most of the publicity about prisoners of war when we came home, dealt with those guys shot down and captured in North Vietnam. The Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps fighter and bomber pilots and went down there, moved immediately into the prison system in the north and then eventually finding their way to one of the major prisons like the Hanoi Hilton. There have been very little, very few accounts of what happened to those others who were captured in the South. So I thought that was an important story to tell.

I wrote my account. I tried to, well, in each of my books, but this one particularly, to include the story of the other prisoners who were captured in the South, what they endured for much longer than I did until their release. I got the manuscript written, and then I found that writing is a difficult chore, but that's only half the project. Once you get the manuscript written, you have to find someone who's going to publish it. Or you can self-publish.

I mean, a lot of people do that. But I really wanted to find a reputable publishing house to publish my book. That took about another year. Eventually, I got connected with the Naval Institute Press, and they published the first book. So that was done. That was out. Now, in my story of my captivity, I start with my arrival at Vietnam on my second tour of duty and go through the deteriorating situation as the Easter offensive of 1972 erupted,

and then how I eventually found myself, well, I was in harm's way every day, but a particularly horrendous battle on May 9, 1972 that I got shot down and captured. In laying out that account from my arrival at the end of December until getting shot down in May, I described this deteriorating situation in some of the battles that I was involved in that led up to that. some of them pretty hairy battles one took place at a location called firebase charlie on rocket ridge i shared that in my first book it takes about i don't know a few paragraphs no more than a

page page and a half as in all my work i want to be sure i get my facts as absolutely correct as i can dust off my old memories and all those many many years long ago and be sure i've got them right So in trying to describe, though briefly, that battle at Fire Base Charlie, I talked to guys in the unit that flew the mission with me. One recommended if I really wanted to get all the detail to fine track down the American advisor who was on the ground with that Vietnamese paratroop battalion, of which, and as I found out and found the advisor, John Duffy, I found out that battle was even more horrendous than I thought. that airborne battalion went into that fight with 471 South Vietnamese paratroopers and their one single American advisor, Special Forces, Major John Duffy. After two weeks of battle, three very intense days at the end, there were 36 paratroopers that survived and Duffy to get off of that hill and get rescued. Duffy wounded five times during the battle. So that was pretty spectacular.

Now, in talking to John Duffy over many times to get those facts right, he started dropping hints. And if you come to know John, you'll understand this. He said, hey, you know, that was really a big battle, a very significant battle. Nobody really knows much about that battle. Someone ought to write the history of Firebase Charlie. So I said, oh, finally, okay, John, I got it just, I'll do this. And I had envisioned, you know, do some maybe 12 to 20 page monograph, get the facts. And here, John, look, you got the history.

of the Battle of Fire Base Charlie. But as I started researching, talking to him, talking to the senior surviving Vietnamese officer who had made it to the United States, and he had assumed command in the middle of the battle when the battalion commander got killed in shelling, there was a story to be told. So I started taking notes, interviewing people,

doing archival research, and that ended up with the book, Extraordinary Valor, the second book that I wrote. That book's phenomenal. And yeah, we covered that book on podcast 342. It's, like you said, it's such an insane battle. Yep. And the amount of detail that you have, and I remember we talked about it last time

you were on the podcast, you were able to sit down with some of these survivors and pull out battle maps and go through the terrain and talk through. So you have detailed. And there's recording of radio calls coming from Major Duffy and, you know, calling the aircraft in. It's just, it's, it's incredible,

incredible book and obviously, and when you were on the podcast, he was just awarded, his distinguished service cross was upgraded to the medal of honor. Yes. Finally, after however many 30 or 40 or whatever, 50 years,

yep, got upgraded and he received the, the medal of honor. He was awarded it. Yeah, for that battle. And it was, the timing was interesting.

That book was not the reason he got the medal upgrade. to the Medal of Honor because the book was in work, the Medal of Honor was already approved. But the book was published in July of 2022. On July 5th, he was standing in the White House getting the Medal of Honor and hung around his neck. I had the privilege, the honor to be invited and join him at the White House. That was extraordinary. But yeah, so I got that book written and published and thought that I was probably done with my publishing career, which I had never set out to become any kind of an author other than get that first Vietnam POW book done, which led to that.

And the same thing with that. I got the manuscript done. Naval Institute Press was, I'll go ahead, Naval Institute Press was not, they wanted to publish it, but they didn't like the narrative style that I incorporate in the book. I recreate a lot of the dialogue just to make it an interesting story. But the dialogue is true to the memories of the guys that I interview and true to my recollections. That was okay in my memoir. They didn't particularly want it in this next book. And they told me, they said, if you'll just get rid of some of that narrative and make this more just a factual historical account, we'd love to publish it. I said, no, no.

I'm a storyteller. I want to tell the story that's not getting changed. So once again, I'm off in search of a publisher. And it took me another year or so to finally get kind of. connected with Lions Press who agreed to publish it. They were very happy with it. And after this was already published for some time, my editor came to me and said,

hey, we really like what you did on this book, Extraordinary Valor. We'd love to work with you on another project. Do you have any ideas? So I guess I've arrived when a publisher comes to me and says, would you write a book for us? So that led to this third book. We Dared to Fly. I popped out a couple ideas.

One was a fiction novel thing as no, no, no. We want another nonfiction true story. So then I came back to my first tour of duty, flying the Mohawk. I knew there was some good stories there to tell, but my concern, that mission, well, both books have classified missions. And my first, through the Valley, we had been supporting Mac v. Sugg, and all those missions were very highly classified. So for years, I couldn't say anything about what I did on that tour,

other than I flew cobras. But thanks to a guy named John Plastra, he wrote a book, America's Secret Commandos, about the SOG missions and got permissions, and so that all got declassified. The Mohawk, though, those were secret, some top secret missions, and I could never talk about those.

But with the invitation to write another book, I started doing a little bit of research and checking, and to my amazement, I was coming across unclassified document, or declassified document after declassified document, including on the CIA website CIA documents

were stamped undeclassified so I found that there was material there that I could use I could finally tell that story

including some of the stuff we did connected to the CIA in Laos and wrote the manuscript and sent it to the publisher and

here's the book so that's how I came to write all three books in reverse order if someone was to start from scratch and wanted to read

all three of these is readers Vietnam trilogy, they should read them in exactly the opposite order that I wrote them. Start with the third book, then the second, then the first. Yeah. Well, the book came out awesome. It's an incredible book,

and I guess we can jump into it. We read about your arrival at Fubai Airfield, where you're going to be working with the 131. And the 131st was originally called something else, A-S-T-E-S-A or something like that. It was, yeah, not to go too deeply into the whole Mohawk history. The Army acquired the aircraft. It was originally a Joint Army Marine Corps project.

The Marines, well, the Marines didn't want to drop out. The Navy, who controlled Marine Corps funding, put those Mohawk funds against something else. So the Marine Corps couldn't go with the project anymore. Army got the aircraft. The Army tested the aircraft. Originally, it was designed and intended for use as both a recon surveillance platform and a gun platform. It had the capability to hang a good amount of ordinance on the wing stores on the aircraft.

And tests were done in the early 60s at Fort Benning, Georgia, and this new concept of air mobility. The Mohawk was included and used for both recon and strike aircraft. Eventually, the Army started deploying some units to Vietnam. The first unit to deploy was a 23rd Special Warfare Aviation Detachment, 23rd Swad, went down to Vung Tao and worked in southern part of Vietnam, and they had armed Mohawks, did recon and attack. The next unit to go was the 20th Asta, the 20th Aerial Surveillance Target Acquisition Detachment.

It went first in the Chang and then eventually moved up to Weifu Bai. Both the units had successes. Both the units had a number of losses. The 20th Asta took the most losses because its mission. became primarily outside of Vietnam. With all the losses, though, because of the criticality of the information that was being gathered, the Army kept resupplying aircraft, new replacement aircraft, more crews, and by 1960, let me get my dates right, I think it was late 66 sometime,

decided this unit needed more capability, so they increased its size from a detachment up to a full-blown aviation company and re-designated it from the 20th Astata of the 131st Surveillance Airplane Company, went from six aircraft, up to 18 aircraft with all the crews and support personnel to run that operation. And that's what you show up into.

And let's get into this. You show up there. It says, the building was painted a dull gray, 55-gallon drums stacked too high and filled with sand, line the outside, save an opening for the entry door in the front and two exit doors, one on the far side, another onto a small concrete patio out back. The sand-filled barrels were there to provide some protection from the frequent mortar and rocket attacks that pounded the base. Our enemy lurked close by. I stepped through the door to see a couple dozen people standing in front of the bar. These were the pilots not outflying missions that night, along with the intel officers and civilian tech reps supporting the unit. Many of the aviators wore black flight suits. Others' standard jungle fatigues.

They all smiled. I saw three familiar faces straight ahead. John and Joe Loudermilk, identical twin brothers, and Billy Wood. We were flight school classmates. The three of us were among the six top graduates in our class, picked to go directly into the qualification course to learn to fly the Grumman-built OV-1 Mohawk, the most sophisticated and expensive aircraft in the army.

The airplane I'd now come to Vietnam to fly. The louder milks and I had carpooled together every day for the first half of flight school. We were close. Good friends. The group faced me in a crescent. My friends in the middle, they supported the biggest grins. John put out his hand. I began raising mine as I walked toward him.

I'd only taken a few steps when everyone began to chant. He's on the hawk. On the hawk. New guy stepped on the hawk. I heard the bell over the bar ring loudly. He's buying the bar. I looked down. My feet stood squarely on.

top of a large black hawk inlaid into the club's tile floor right in the center of the room. You'd only miss stepping on it if you knew it was there and understood the penalty imposed on all who dared tread upon the sacred image. Or as I would later learn, we're thrown onto it. Welcome aboard, Wild Bill, John said, laughing. You're paying for drinks. That's what it costs when you step on the hawk. Wild Bill, I inquired.

Yes, Wild Bill. We remember your antics in flight school, so gave you that nickname. Everybody's here got a nickname. That one is quite appropriate for you. Okay, wild bill it is. So that's your welcome aboard. How rare was it? How awesome was it that you showed up

and these buddies that you had from Flight School there? I never heard of anything else like this in my life. First of all, the Army assigned two twin brothers to the same combat unit. That is not supposed to happen, but it did. And it ends up that more guys show up. there were six of us in our flight school class, and only six of us were selected to go into the Grumman OV-1 Mohawk

from our flight school class. Flight school class are around 100 people, I guess, something like that. So six of us, top grads in the class. We get picked for the Mohawk. We get qualified training at Fort Rucker, Alabama, training at Fort Wachuk, Arizona, off to Vietnam with orders just to Vietnam. Nobody knew where we were going. I had no idea those guys were there.

So I get there, three of them are already at Fubai, and that's when I, my first night, just arrived in the unit in the story, drop my stuff in a hooch, walk to the club, and there's those guys, hey, hey, I'm happy to be, okay, now I buy the bar. Later on, there's going to be two more guys from our flight school class show up. So we had a total of six guys from flight school into the Mohawk course

and all of us in the same unit in Vietnam. There's so many good stories in here. By the book, of course, we're going to cover a little bit of it. But the nicknames, everyone's got them. So you got sweet and sour, louder milk. That's who they were. Yeah, the guy that was married got sweet. The guy that was single got sour.

Billy Wood was sack rat because I guess he slept a lot. Pretty soon a tall major walked over and it's the CEO, a guy by the name of Gary Alton. As John introduced me around, Joe asked, what are you drinking? You're buying. I'll have a scotch and soda if they have it. Oh, yeah, and Major Alton's nickname was Mr. Clean. Yeah, he's a tall ballheaded guy. He looked just like Mr. Clean in the cleanser heads, yeah.

Back to the drinks here. I'll have a scotch and soda if they have it. How about Chivas Regal? How do you say that? Shevviz Regal. Yeah, that was a response back to me. How about Cheves Regal? It cost you all of 25 cents a shot.

The cheaper stuff is a nickel less. Cheves it is. The bartender and off-duty sergeant named Joe Jack Ballet. Open beers and poured drinks. I put $10 on the bar. That would cover things for a while. We drank away the evening. My classmates celebrated my arrival.

and I chatted with strangers who would soon become my brothers. It got link. Late. I got drunk. I went to bed. The beautiful prose. Oh, yeah. Jacques ballet.

I think he was originally French-Canadianian French. And one of our NCOs. So, yeah, one of our NCOs is in there tending our bar, seeing all the nonsense going on in the officer corps. Fast forward a little bit. Before you start flying missions, you have to do a checkout. Yep. We met the aircraft.

I was still in awe every time I looked at the Mohawk. It was unlike any other airplane. It was fast by Army standards. The plane was acrobatic capable of loops and rolls and any number of other slights of aerial ballet. It was strong, able to sustain punishing G forces and keep on flying through battle damage that would bring other aircraft out of the sky.

The Mohawk was built by Grumman aircraft, whose Long Island factory was popularly known as the Grumman Iron Works because of its long-standing reputation of building nearly indestructible airplanes, which is normally what they call shipyards, like bath iron words, so I hope that can mean.

Some said it was not a pretty airplane. They likened it to a bug-eyed pregnant guppy. And it is a very unique-looking aircraft. I found it beautiful. I'd seen my first Mohawk a year earlier while in flight school in Fort Stewart, Georgia, about 40 miles southwest to Savannah. Fast forward a little bit.

One student pilot bragged, that's what I want to do. I want to do. I want to be a Mohawk pilot. A class might snidly jabbed. You'd better worry about graduating from flight school first. The test pilot heard and proclaimed to all, only a few of the very best ever get to be Mohawk pilots.

He turned and pointed at the three vertical fins at the back of the aircraft. It takes quite a superb aviator to be able to handle three pieces of tail so close together. That was a wise crack about the Mohawk I'd hear often over the years. What's the purpose? Why do they have three tail fins like that? Is there any reason?

the first prototypes were built with just a big single tail. And they found they could get better stability with the aircraft with three control surfaces back there. So it's got a triple tail, you know, like the old Constellation airliner. Jack. I asked the pilot if I could step forward to touch the side of that marvelous thing. He nodded sure. I walked over and put my hand against his olive drab metal skin. I fell in love.

That's a little corny, but absolutely positively true. I love that airplane. And I just, and I had no idea I'd ever be allowed to fly it at that point. But I saw that and just really fell in love with it. So you're going through flight school with like 100 people in your flight school and most of them are going to get helicopters in the Army aviation or was this fixed wing? This is an interesting time. Back then, this is 1967, the Army had two flight schools.

Helicopters were just coming to their four through the Vietnam War. We had two flight schools, a fixed wing flight school and a rotary wing flight school. I got selected for fixed wing flight school. So we were all just going to be fixed winged. pilots. And generally speaking in the Army, that would be like C-130s and cargo aircraft? No, no, it would be generally 01 bird dogs, which is a small little susan, two-seater, tandem seat. That was most of the Army aircraft were bird dogs. We also had some U-6 beavers, which I will mention it here. We had one for resupply aircraft, but as I describe in the book, that looked kind of like the

spirit of St. Louis. It's a whole big radial engine propeller airplanes, got room for a little bit cargo or some cargo behind the pilots. And then we had the, that was the U6. I think it was a U1 was otter. It was just a bigger version of the beaver, but an old clunky high wing built by De Havlin and Canada airplane. And that was almost,

we had a couple larger fixed wing that were on some signals intelligence missions, some VIP twin turbo property. That was at those smaller fixed wing aircraft. Got it. So it's all the little ones. Okay. All the little ones. Yeah, the Air Force did the C-130s.

Got it. That makes sense. You're doing a check flight. You take off. You're flying around. You're getting to know the operating area, kind of getting to figure it out. The guy that's taking you on the flight, Ed.

Piquet. Ed Piquet, right. Ed offered, you know you will only see South Vietnam for takeoffs and landings, don't you? I'd heard something like that. Yeah, our missions are all out of the country over the border into North Vietnam and Laos. We don't have a mission inside South Vietnam.

Those are for the four other, Mohawk companies. There's one in each core tactical zone. The battle space in South Vietnam is broken up into four sectors, four core. There's one Mohawk company for each of the core, and then there's us. We flew a bit more and he continued. We are the fifth company, the bastard company, the special unit. We're assigned directly to the highest headquarters in the land, MACV. That's Military Assistance Command Vietnam. Their intel section owns us, MACVJ2. All our operations are classified at least secret and our mission results are not are sent not only to headquarters here in the war zone but also to the Pentagon State Department and other

national agencies this is important stuff we're about he paused before adding but there's been a cost for what we do we've had a lot of airplane shot down lost too many air crews you be careful I will so that's kind of your intro to what you're going to be doing yep then there's the call sign spud You, where, where's the call sign spud come from? Not, not sure exactly. An iron spud is supposed to be some sort of heavy construction tool used on the railroad. That's our official call sign, iron spud.

We just use spud on the radio. It's a good call sign. Brief, unique, and easy to understand. You won't find any prouder unit than us. We're all spuds. Yeah, and that became a noted call sign. Yeah, particularly out over Laos, most everybody from all the Air Force and an army units, well, the Army didn't fly out there except us, but the,

Air Force units, Air America, most everybody knew the call sign spud. That was us. And you guys called each other spuds. That was your aircraft. When you were reporting on, it was spuds. Yeah, and it still is. I'm still in touch with the louder mokes. You know, he'll call me or I'll see you, hey, spud.

What's the name of the bar? The spud lounge? It was a spud club. Yeah. The spud club, that's it. And the thing you were describing at the beginning with the gray walls and the 55-gallon drums filled with sand. That was the spud club we were talking about.

It was our little tiny officers club in our unit area. Here's another funny one. Two things to remember, Ed said, Fubai is all right, and the wind never blows heat there. It always sucks. That was Fubai. I've got a couple different models of the Mohawk,

the alpha, which is a suite of cameras, and it's used for visual recon. And that's the one that you actually end up putting weapons on, right? Yeah, those were the, and by that time, the other units in Vietnam had lost their armament. We were the only unit left with arms authorized. There had been some Air Force Army agreement that the Army agreed that we wouldn't be striking

and would give up. But we kept our armament. So yeah, the A models were armed because we flew two aircraft visual reconnaissance photographic missions out over the Hoechaman Trail during daylight hours, took a lot of fire. And it was the A models in the visual reconnaissance platoon that lost most of the aircraft and most of the pilots were lost out of that platoon. Yeah. The Bravo is a side-looking airborne radar, slar.

Right. And then the last one is an IR infrared equipment. So it's the A, B, and C, Alpha Bravo, Charlie. Those are the different aircrafts that you're flying. And as you mentioned, the visual recon one, which is the ones that are armed, that's the most dangerous mission, daytime and close combat.

Yep. Striking people on the ground. So you don't get to do that out of the gate, which you learn. They got to get some experience before you go into that role. Yeah, that was our most experienced pilots flew. Our most experienced and those that had the mindset to do it. There were a lot of pilots who wanted nothing to do with that VR mission. The side-looking airborne radar that you mentioned,

which looked out to the side for 10, 15, up to about 30 miles out, would pick up anything moving along a road, highway, or trail. going more than three miles an hour. And this was valuable information. But they flew that mission at 5,000 feet AGL above the ground. So that was a little bit safer altitude down right at. And quite a ways away from the target that they're using the radar. Yeah, usually right along the coast of North Vietnam.

Though we did lose one of those aircraft with a Sam missile and the crew was lost. The sea model is a more dicey mission, but it was a nighttime mission. Infrared had to fly below 2,000 feet, preferably about 1,000 feet or lower above the ground at night over Laos through dark mountain valleys and lost a few aircraft on infrared missions out there. But the most crews were lost flying A model

visual reconnaissance. We'll get into that. Fast forward a little bit. I flew my first tactical mission a day after my new guy checkout with Ed. So one day checkout, you're getting out there. And you're by yourself, then it's single pilot

and an enlisted observer in the right seat. I was assigned a morning, side-looking airborne radar run-up the north coast of Vietnam. Operations paired me with our most experienced law operator specialist fifth. How do you say that in the Army? Specialist 5? Spec 5, right?

Spec 5 is what we call me. Spec 5, Ed McCarthy nicknamed Iqabod. He'd be in my right side. McCarthy got that nickname because of his tall slender appearance. Our enlisted right-seaters had all earned the military specialty of airborne system operator. We referred to them all as TOs, technical observers. They trained to operate all three Mohawk systems,

side-looking airborne, infrared and visual reconnaissance. Each specialized in one specific system after arrival in the 131st. Some able to manage two. Fast forward a little bit. Did these guys, some of the aircraft had controls on both sides, right? But which one had the controls on both sides? The A models. Okay.

Just the daytime visual photo reconnaissance missions. And how much did you let these guys? Did you let your TOs fly very much? Yeah, I let them fly a bit because we want them to be able to at least fly the aircraft, not land the aircraft, but if the pilot got wounded, I don't know that this ever happened, but this was our attitude. I would think so. If the pilot gets wounded, you can at least take the controls and fly that aircraft back to Fubai, get somewhere over the airfields at Fubai, point the aircraft towards the water, which is very close. To eject. And eject.

Yeah, and get out of it. Is it that hard to land one of those things? It's a tricycle gear, so it's not that hard. I mean, the bird dog with conventional gear is more difficult. It's not that. I mean, there's some things you have to go through. You need to know what you're doing, yes. But for a pilot and experienced pilot, the Mohawk's not particularly difficult to land.

So it's safer to eject. For a guy that's like a T.O. It's safer for him to eject? Yeah, I would want to, I don't think I'd want to have any of the TOs land me. No kidding. That's interesting to me. Because it always seems to me like eject is such a last, worst-case scenario. It is.

never for whatever reason I mean probably particularly it would be absolutely illegal to do it to let them actually land the aircraft to get practiced landing the aircraft so they could do it I never never did that with a T.O interesting uh fast forward a little bit once I took off all I had to do is check in with the combat aircraft controller a call sign water boy climbed to 5500 feet switch on the autopilot and turn to whatever heading McCarthy directed we flew up we flew along north Vietnamese coast to our sign turnaround point, largest city central of North Vietnam and almost halfway to the communist capital of Hanoi, the United States placed critical importance on our North Vietnam Slar missions.

Only days before my arrival and flew by, President Johnson declared a bombing halt in all North Vietnam. That was on October 31st, 1968. He hoped to energize peace talks. No one flew in the airspace after that. only us as far as I knew alone unarmed and scared shitless that's a recon pilot's motto fast forward a little bit more missions followed we became the principal source of intelligence to track north Vietnamese convoy movements as they push men supplies equipment southward toward

the demilitarized zone and across key mountain pass into louse and onto the hocheeman trail you're on one of these things fast forward a little bit a rattle snakes sounding audio alerted me. So you're flying. You're doing a mission. At the same time, a dashed strobe appeared on the scope. One of the blocks on the rectangular box lit up. I sat straight up. McCarthy glued his eyes to the ECM. You know the drill? He asked, I do. I remembered back to my training flights in the Mohawk course at Fort Rucker. My instructor pilot, Major Max Davidson, crammed so much into my head that I started my, so that I might survive my combat. tour in Vietnam. Max was tough. He was demanding off times demeaning. His intentions were always

clear, though. Make me the best pilot I could be. Mold me into what I needed to be to live through a tour with the 131st should I be assigned there. He pounded the procedures and flight skills into my mind and muscle memory. Drilled me over and over again. Max had served in the unit. He knew the risks, but he loved the spuds. He spoke so reverently of the unit and its classified mission that there was no doubt that's where I wanted to go. I sought assignment to the 131st, because of Max and now I was there. I'd made it. Yes, I remembered the drill.

Max had described the ECM gear, the escalating series of warnings. First, a dashed strobe with a rattling sound and a yellow warning light on the box. Then that yellow warning light then indicated that you were being tracked by enemy radar. That's gotta be freaking nasty. Next, a solid strobe with a continuous tone

and an orange warning light on the box. That orange warning light meant the enemy They had their missile to the radar track ready to fire. Finally, the bold, solid strobe with a screaming tone and red warning lights on the box. They'd launched a Sam and it was coming at you. If the ECM went through the sequence and showed a launch, the drill was to immediately push the stick down and dive into the direction of the strobe, go straight toward the missile that was coming for you, and gain as much speed as possible. your eyes looking ahead searching for the telephone pole-sized object hurtling toward you to

blow you to pieces at night hoping to see the propellant flame at its tail the instant you saw the thing roll left and pull back hard on the stick making the highest G-turn you could bear the theory was that the missile could not match the tight turn and would tumble harmlessly out of control and crash to the earth our strobe stayed dash dashed the warning lights didn't advance the The sound never went beyond a rattle in a few minutes. All fell silent again. No missile launch. I relaxed and lit a cigarette.

Specialist McCarthy picked up a Coke. He brought along and took a sip. He breathed deeply and said, You know we had a crew shot down here a while back. No, I didn't. I heard several 131 crews have been lost, but nothing specifically about a route pack mission. It was about two years ago right off the city of Vinn,

Lieutenant Jimmy Brasher and Bobby Pittman. They'd flown the same track as us, but a late-night mission. Waterboy saw several missiles fired in the area, announced warnings on guard, called Spud 09, Brasher and Pittman. No reply. Never found the aircraft or the crew.

A Sam missile got him right here. Yeah. Those were a dicey few moments. That was the first time that I experienced that radar warning system come on and definitely makes you sit up straight in your seat. Oh, McCarthy over there, he'd been through it a few times, so he just, as I said there, took a sip of his coat and made that comment.

We later find out that we frequently got radars locking on us up off the North Vietnamese coast. Only rarely did it go beyond just a track, but occasionally it did, and we had lost that crew up there. And that sounds exciting, and it was. But I think, and I think we get into it. That mission became one of the most boring missions I ever flew because you'd fly for four hours plus just making tracks up off the coast of North Vietnam, but getting some essential intelligence off of the traffic activity that was taking place up there.

But the T.O. would keep track from his system. He could see he got a depiction in the cockpit of where you were and where the movers were. and so he'd give you the navigation, the heading information. You'd just follow his commands and sit there and smoke cigarettes and drink coax for four hours plus and then go flying back at Fubai. And that Martin Baker, MK5, ejection seat was hard as a rock. Oh, God. Check.

Fast forward. That night, like most, I spent in the spud club. Fast forward a little bit. Well, you popped your cherry. You're now officially 131st combat aviator. you're a spud. You know what that means? I raise my eyebrows.

You buy the bar. You weren't saving much money. I guess you were saving it. There's always reason to buy the bar. Here's where you notice something. I noticed a small cluster of black-suited guys standing separate from the rest of us at the right side of the bar.

They appeared to be a little older, more seasoned with battle-hardened furrows on their brows and a slightly crazed look in their eyes. Joe Lattermelk caught me staring. That's the VR platoon, he said. They fly the daytime visual reconnaissance missions and take aerial photographs over the Ho Chi Minh Trail across the border in Laos.

They fly in pairs of old A models all armed with rockets for self-defense. That's the most dangerous mission in the 131st. A lot of aircraft have been shot down. They've lost many crews over the past couple years. Some killed outright. Others mission in action. Very few ever recovered.

And of course, you're thinking and that's what you want to do. That's what I wanted to do. What are you, 22 years old? And a captain. I got commissioned out of Officer Candidate School when I was 20 years old. I made second lieutenant,

got commission as a second lieutenant. The war was cranking up. Promotions were accelerating. I only spent a year as a second lieutenant to first lieutenant. And then the promotion times kept coming down, coming down. So promotion to captain then

was only one year as a first lieutenant. I got promoted to captain. I was a 22 year old, 22-year-old captain showing up. in Vietnam flying the most sophisticated airplane and armed that the army had. But no, that's what I wanted to do. I was a young kid essentially at that age wanting to get over there and see what war was like and how I would react.

And that was my goal, flight A model Mohawks. Cook Waldron shows up. Cook M. Waldron, Mitch Waldron. This is your fifth guy from your flight class that shows up to the 131st. This is, again, just crazy that all you guys are. have shown up there. Yeah, nobody knew he's coming.

Mitch shows up, yeah. Fast forward a little bit. I got into a daily pattern of work and flying coastal slar missions. That's kind of what you're doing. And eventually, you start talking about Laos.

It was a bad guy territory out there, at least in the eastern part of the country, where we flew surveillance of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Thousands of enemy soldiers occupied that turf. Many thousands from North Vietnamese troops moved along the route. It would be a good place. It would not be a good place.

place to go down. The Ho Chi Minh Trail was much more than trail. It was a heavily defended network of roads and footpaths crossing the Anamite Mountains from North Vietnam into Laos and stretching southward over a wide geographic swath before reaching into South Vietnam along multiple infiltration routes. The network delivered a logistical and manpower support to the North Vietnamese army and Viet Cong forces fighting there. And then you go into some pretty good history about the other people that fly over Laos. other American air assets flying over there. More than 600 daily airstrikes pounded the zone with a variety of aircraft.

That's a lot. And then you go into the OV1, OV2, OV10 spotters, the F100 Super Sabre. You got a whole list of them here. Then you get search and rescue elements over there, Jolly Greens, Sky Raiders, which we've talked about a lot on this podcast in support of the SAG assets down there on the ground. AC130 specters, A-26, propeller airplanes, B-57s, A-4s, A-6s, F-4s, B-52s, like it's all going on. There's a slew.

I did that for a couple of reasons. One, I didn't want to have this book try to even imply that we're the only ones flying this Harry Mission out there in Laos. There are a lot of people flying in Laos. And what was at the time and for years after, a secret war. I mean, we got 600 air strikes a day. going in this classified, all the missions were classified, secret. We weren't in Laos.

It was a neutral country by UN proclamation. So I wanted to show there were other people flying out there. And then I wanted to give an idea of the variety of the aircraft for me. And I think I mentioned it somewhere in here, one of my first time I landed out at Non-Confonom and looked around. This was like something, and I had my first take was it was like something out of Terry and the Pirates. My wife says, nobody knows who Terry and the Pirates are. She's right.

She's right in my concern over here. It used to be a cartoon thing. It was in a paper every week. But no, I'm a little older. So, yeah, so I think we put, I don't know what I put, but it wasn't tearing the price. But yeah, just a bunch of old exotic aircraft that were World War II Korea era aircraft that were out there operating and supporting not only the strikes against the Hoachiman Trail, but then what I'll get into later, the very secret, very special war up in northern Laos, supporting the Hmong tribal peoples up there. So, yeah. At any rate, that was my intention.

just to show, A, we're not the only ones, and B, though we were the only U.S. Army unit operating in flying airplanes in Laos. There were, as I did on my second tour, the unit I was with my second tour, supported McVe Sog and flew Cobras and Hueys, and then some Air Force lift aircraft putting in the SOG teams.

Those were on the eastern parts of Laos. So, yeah, all right. Yeah. There we are. Getting into Laos here, you say it's, it only seemed right that on this first mission into Laos, I should be baptized by fire, a stream of tracers. What kind of mission was this, your first mission in Laos? That was, I'm still flying slar.

I'm still the safer mission, up at altitude. So up off the coast are 5,500 feet, AGL. We're still about that distance AGL, but it's 7,500 feet on the altimeter. So it's high, but it is over Laos. There's a lot of anti-aircraft, and I'm going to experience some of it. A stream of tracers reached toward us through the dark sky. I snatched the controls off autopilot and slam the stick hard right. Pushing the intercom switch, I said,

Taking Fire 10 o'clock. I surprised myself with the calmness of my voice. This was the first time I'd ever been shot at in my life. McCarthy simply replied, Roger, as he pulled his face away from the screen and glanced toward the fireworks show. Obviously not his first time. The enemy fire continued like beads of water streaming from a hose, bending in arcs as the gunners moved the tracers searching for us. Hard for them to see us at night,

sir, McCarthy sounded only somewhat anxious. They just shoot at the noise and see if they can hit anything. He paused and added, there are some radar control guns out here, but we got nothing on our ECM, and he wasn't that close, not radar controlled, or at least he wasn't using it. I took a deep breath, double-checked that the position lights on our wingtips were off and the tail lights were off so the enemy would not see them. After four hours of flight time, we landed back at Fubai. The crew chief welcomed us home

and began his maintenance task after I completed my post-flight inspection. I always respected our crew chiefs. They worked so hard to maintain their assigned airplane toiling all day and long into many nights to be sure their plane was ready for missions. So somebody out, you get to the spud club, the bar,

somebody asks how to go out west. You get shot at tonight? I answered, yeah. Not that close, though. Well, you know what that means, don't you? First time you take fire. Drinks are on you once again. By the bar again.

You know, my wife read my manuscript. She says, you know, you sound like a bunch of drunks over there. And I said, well, I got it. So somewhere in the book, what I try to point out is the, and we were talking earlier, we don't drink on deployments today. And that's probably a good thing. But we did during the Vietnam War. Whenever you could find some alcohol in Vietnam, you drank it, it helped us mentally.

cope with going out there day after day. I mean, these are all, these are daily occurrences. These aren't things that happened two or three times during a tour. We were getting a shot at almost every single mission that we went out and people were getting hit and aircraft were going down and losing crews. So a way that we could deal with that would be to come back at the end of a day or if you're a night mission late at night and go to the club and just throw down some drinks and relax and have fun. And so there was that aspect. to it. There was also the aspect of just building a spree and camaraderie and fellowship among the crews and sharing wild stories, but it really did bring us all very, very close together.

I'm still quite tight with some of these guys, the Loudermil twins, and one of the observers that's mentioned there, Steve Easley, we still get together at reunions almost annually and stay in touch. In fact, I think two days ago I had a text message from each of the louder milks. Sweet and sour. Sweet and sour. Yeah, both of them are married now. Fast forward a little bit. You're in the spud club.

Artwork plaques and posters hung on the walls. The two most prominent pieces were framed, a framed picture of an armed mohawk firing of five-inch zuni rockets at night and a large board with several small brass plates affixed to it. The picture was a striking image of the awesome firepower that could hang under the wings of our birds. I noted, however, that we never carried those large Zunis. Instead, RA models loaded many smaller 2.75 inch rockets a little over half that size. We could strike more targets that way. I'd already had a close look at the engraved brass plates on the board.

Each was about two by four inches. There was one for every pilot who had served in the unit. those going home ceremoniously nailed their plate to the board the night before they left the commander nailed a plate for anyone who was killed or missing in action each plate for the pilot's name and dates of his service in the 131st for those lost the plate listed the date of the loss and killed an action or mission to action yeah and those those missing in action i had the names I had them all memorized at the time, and I forget most. I do remember Lafayette was one that there was a thought that he might be alive and held somewhere

because he had been on the radio on the ground and had reported enemy was moving close to him. So when I was shot down and captured and found myself in the prison camp system up when I finally eventually got up to Hanoi, I went over. And the guys in captivity all memorized the list of the prisoners. that were there in the camp, so if anybody got released, they could bring it home. At any rate, going through all the lists of POWs that people had, none of those missing were on those lists.

In the end, when we came home and the war was over, none of those Mohawk MIAs showed up. They were all either killed when their aircraft went down or killed shortly after they were captured. If they were captured, none of them survived to come home at the end of the war. And as you mentioned, he's a lot of pressure. And in this particular case, John Loudermilk is telling you about Miggs coming after him.

He's got two Migs came after me. You asked what happened. I grabbed the stick and did a quick 180. There was a big fluffy cloud a bit below. I dove into it and kept barreling south as fast as that Mohawk would go. I knew I couldn't outrun them, run them. I just hoped for a miracle. I got a brief strobe on my E-CM gear.

Then it stopped. Crown came back up on guard and said the Migs. turned north it was over yeah yeah it's got to be another horrifying scenario yeah we had the migs to worry about not not so much in laos because there was a lot of a lot of other u.s. air out there but that that mission up north uh north vietnam coast that was a real real thing to be concerned about up there uh lots of again the book is awesome lots of wild characters lots of wild times um you got another guy named major joe kennedy yep he's um he's um he's um he's on his second tour there.

What does he take over? Yeah, he takes over as your new boss as the, what is he going to be ops? He takes over his ops officer. Eventually he'll become the VR platoon leader. There's a whole story in here about Captain John Pfeiffer and Fifer's gully, which is, I'm sorry, Pfeiffer's Gulch. Yep, Pfeiffer's Gulch. It's a big long gults gully just outside that side door, the sput.

the spud club where everybody go out to pee off the edge into the gully. And he ended up in there one night. That's how it got its name. John saw horrendous things during his tour of duty with the 131st. The unit originally came to Vietnam as the 20th ASTA detachment. In the opening days of 1966,

they brought six mohawks within three months. Five of those six aircraft have been shot down. Replacement birds arrived after each loss On June 1st, 1966, the Army enlarged the unit dramatically, and this is what you were talking about earlier. By years end, enemy gunners down four more Mohawks, nine aircraft lost in one year with 13 pilots and observers killed or missing in action. Yeah, John Pfeiffer was a one-of-a-kind in the 131st.

When I was there, I knew a Pfeiffer's Gulch, and we never knew the story about how it got its name. I met John Pfeiffer after coming back many years later and got some accounts. And then the details I have in the book, I got a hold of John. And we had several wonderful interviews. And what a great guy. So I got the history of Pfeiffer's Gulch. And John was one of, we had some of our guys near or absolutely total alcoholics during the tour.

Most of them came out of it when we got back. But John had all those tales, plus a lot of history of the Mohawk. and then I think the last time I talked to him for an interview was about less than a week before he passed away. So it's just too bad the book couldn't have been finished. But he knows everything that was written about him in that book. I read back to him to be sure he was going to be okay with it and he was perfectly happy because he gets described for what he was.

A wild crazy guy saw some of the most intense combat of any pilot in the organization, saw people die, aircraft get blown out of the sky, drank a good deal to compensate. for those missions and just a real, a real legend in the Mohawk community, John Pfeiffer. Yeah, get the book, get those details. It's just awesome to read. And it's awesome to read.

It's like, you know, it's like when you're watching a movie and they got all these crazy characters. That's what this book is like. It's just awesome. A quick aside. So when the publisher wanted me to write, and I told you he didn't want any fiction, so my original idea,

if I was ever going to write this Mohawk book, Are you familiar with the book? Oh, shoot. Oh, yeah, okay, the book, and then they later made a movie, Catch 22. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, this is a lot of Catch 22 activity going here. And I didn't want to embarrass anybody.

I didn't want to destroy any marriages or anything. So this was going to be a historical novel. I was going to have about a half a dozen fictional characters. Everything in it was going to be absolutely true. I go to a little more detail than I even have in this of some of the shenanigans. but no the publisher was not interested in historical fiction at all. So I had to be a little bit careful. But yeah, there are some crazy characters.

You got Fife, I don't know if you're going to get to Buick Bingham here later on. Yeah, okay. And Buick has read everything that I wrote about him too. But yeah, we had some real characters. But what a great bunch of guys. And this all led to the espree that we had and what the unit was. And just it was out of that insanity and some degree of, of drunkenness in the club on occasion.

Yeah, the occasions weren't more than daily, but on occasion that made the 131st what it was and made the spuds what they were and a unique unit, a fantastic unit doing a valuable mission for America and leaving all of us with memories that we will have until the day we all die. Yeah, and there is that catch-22 element of like if you are crazy, you'll go fly.

And if you say you're crazy, That means you're not crazy because you're trying not to fly. It's a lose, lose, or a win-win, depending on how you look at it. Fast forward a little bit. It's been a busy morning in operations. I glanced up from my work to see Major Hank Brummet, the VR platoon commander standing in front of my desk. I stood up, yes, sir. He looked at me for a moment and said, I've had my eye on you, Wild Bill.

Let's start your gun checkout. Not every pilot is cut out for this. You are and you're ready. My heart raced. My expression laid bare my excitement. I tried to regain my composure before blurting out. Now? No, not now. We'll fly tomorrow. We'll start with some basic skills and go from there for today. I want you to read up on the armament system. Here's some stuff to go over. He handed me a small

stack of relevant gunnery materials. I talked to me. I talked to Major Kennedy and Major Alton. They're good with this. Let's meet here at 0800. Go do some shooting. Yes, sir. So this is where it begins. Fast forward a little bit. It'd been my dream to come here and become a visual recon gun pilot. Our airplanes have been armed with both rockets and 50 caliber machine gun mounted in the underwing pylons. The 50s were great weapons, but repair parts were hard to come by. In time, they'd become impossible to maintain and had to be removed. Now we only had rockets, but those were terrific.

Depending on the type of rocket pods installed, we could carry anywhere from 24 to 60 rockets per airplane. Major Brumman was a gun ship guru. He'd been in the Mohawk program since the early days. Five years earlier back in 1964, he'd filmed in the 11th Air Assault Division at Fort Benning, Georgia. and you go through some of his history, just making this thing work. And this is the guy that's going to take you out. Yep.

First thing you do is he does a little demonstration, and then it's your turn. You do a dry run. The dry run, you're looking like, you know, maybe not too great, but not too horrible. And so then he gives you a target. There's some bridge, like just a random bridge out there that gets for practice. Yeah, this was from Fubai.

We'd take off and fly over some mountain peaks to the south, and then it was kind of just no man's land out there, all deserted war zone and, yeah, a bridge in the middle of nothing that we'd use for target practice gun checkouts. That's kind of awesome just to go out to shoot rockets for target practice. Your first will run. You missed by a wide margin.

He tells you the rockets will seek the relative win, get the nose steady and on target before firing, not moving up or down, left or right. He took the stick. I've got the controls. Let me show you one more. Roger. and he's just making it happen.

4G pullouts. He tells you you got to get in there, shoot the rockets, and then pull out as hard as you can. He asked you about the, if you've done any aerobatics or acrobatics, I guess.

Right. And you've done a little, but you go into the history of this guy that was sort of your mentor back at flight school. This guy made your Max Davidson. Absolutely. What a freaking story this guy has. I owe my life to Max for what.

what he taught me and instilled in me, and I would not have survived that. Of course, I wouldn't have asked to go to the 131st without him either, but I would not have survived that tour without what he taught me. So he was a Marine Corps pilot. Yep, fighter pilot.

A Marine Corps fighter pilot. He was on the Blue Angels. Well, he got selected from Blue Angels, yeah. So, I mean, this is the top of the, you know, the top of the skill in the Marine Corps. Yep, shows you what Young Love will do to you. Yeah. So then he's in that position,

and he meets some Japanese woman while he's over there, gets married and he's like, what, they want to send him back? Well, he couldn't get permission to get, for some reason, or whatever, couldn't get permission that Marine Corps had sent him back to the States. And so he said, well, screw this. He got out of the Marine Corps, went back to Japan and married this girl. She was adorable and the love of his life.

But they got married and he was out of service. So maybe you're going to pick up from there. And then he ends up joining the Army. and he enlists in the army, right? Yeah, I guess he needed a buck. I don't know. And then eventually someone looks at him and is like, hey, you know, you know, oh, he had his flight wings on.

He's standing in formation as a specialist five or something with Navy flight winnings on. And one of the sergeant or officer, something comes up. I said, what is this, Bosco? What are you doing with these Navy wings on your uniform? And so he ends up getting getting into the. the flight community in the Army. Yeah, he's moved to a direct commission and some minimal training to proclaim him an Army aviator.

So, pretty good outstanding. So this is your mentor, and we talked about him earlier. He's drilling you, making sure that you're ready. And you get talked through the same thing here. You start getting, you start getting on target, getting closer, getting better. And again, read this thing. On the third day, fast forward,

on the third day of gunnery training, as we flew out to practice area, we spent some time discussing the challenges. I might face on visual reconnaissance missions I'd have in Laos. The losses we'd experience and lessons learned, we'd talk through the anti-aircraft threat at low levels.

I'd have to fly and the techniques that would help maximize my chances of survival. If you get hit and the aircraft won't fly anymore, get out. Eject. Don't hesitate. That'll get you killed. Very important information. You fired more rockets,

you do more camera runs. And then fast forward as we wrapped up in the late afternoon, Brumet said, I run this as a five-day gunnery checkout. This is only the end of day three, but you're done. Ready to go. The rest you'll pick up on missions. You've got a pass for your VR gunnery checkout.

I'm putting you on the flight schedule starting day after tomorrow. And there I was. I had arrived. How many months had you been in country? Oh, just a few, two, maybe a couple, two, three months. And were you just a naturally skilled pilot? Boy, I don't, let me say that. Yeah, I think I'm the greatest aviator that's ever.

Thanks, Jaco. I had this guy, you know Dave Berkus? Good deal, Dave. He's a friend of mine, and he's been on the podcast a bunch, but he was a Marine Corps pilot, F-18 pilot, top-gun pilot, top-gun instructor, top-gun senior instructor. He flew the F-18, the F-16, the F-35, and the F-22. And he's kind of the same way. I'd be like, oh, and by him. By the way, he was selected to be the first operational commander of the F-35 squadron.

Right. And I'd be like, so you were a good pilot. And he'd like, well, yeah, I mean, I was pretty good. I was okay. It was okay. But there has to be like, okay, when you're in the SEAL platoon and you go to the range and you shoot. There's a guy that's like a really good shot with his pistol.

And he can beat the other guys. And then there's a guy that's number two and there's a guy that number three. Maybe there's a couple guys that are kind of tied for fourth place. And then you get the rest of everyone else. Right. So could Major Brumet recognize? I mean, yeah, he could. And I was a good pilot.

You know, I'm kidding about the best pilot. Mr. Mohawk was a guy named Mike Blacker, who was not in our unit, but he flew the Mohawk for his whole career as an officer. State fixed wing flew mohawks and was rather renowned. I did well. I think I did have a natural leaning towards flying. I loved, part of it was just where your love. fly. I love to fly. And I always felt very comfortable flying. And they'd take us on the flight

check rides and put you in unusual attitude, turn the aircraft all weird and give, and you have to close your eyes, and then you open them and you try to recover. I could always do that immediately, look at the instruments, get the aircraft back. Yeah, and I was the top graduate out of our flight school class, number one. And there's a reason why this is happening. And you are. And I'm crazy. I'm a crazy, crazy young guy that was going to say dumb enough, but, you know, I'm trying to be nice. You were a guy that would say, like, I want, had you told him I want to do VR? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, from the, yeah, from when I left the Mohawk course with Max, if I could get into the 131, I was going to go to the 131st to be a VR Mohawk gun pilot. That's what I wanted to do. Okay. Though I blame, you know, Hank Brumman, who you mentioned, I blame him. I was given a talk somewhere to Mohawk group, and I looked out and I said, and that's the guy that is why I was a prisoner of war. What?

And Hank, because I tell Hank, you check me out in guns. loved guns. I fell in love with guns and then later we may get to it, but that led me to try to get to Cobra Attack helicopters in for my second tour once they took the guns away from the Mohawks. Right, right. I wanted to continue to be a gun pilot. So here we go. For my first few VR missions, Major Brumet paired me with one of the experienced VR pilots in my right seat. There's a whole new world out there in the daylight. I could see, but the enemy could also see me. I honed my formation flying skills. I'd done a little in the qualification course, but none since. Now I was flying daily. Two ship missions, a lead aircraft and a wingman, the most experienced pilot flew

lead. I'd be flying wing for a while. As such, I needed to get damn good at formation flying. We did everything in synchrony from getting into the cockpit to starting the engine and taxi. We took off with only a short separation and formed in a tight flight as soon as we were airborne. How come you want to stick so close together in formation like that? So I would think you'd want a little separation so that whoever's shooting at you has to pick between two targets. Yeah, you do on the mission. get out doing the mission, we'd separate. Got it. And you just keep the other guy in sight and keep yourself in a position where you can provide fire support.

And usually the missions would be one aircraft would go low to get a required photo or do some visual recon. The other guy's watching him. And if he takes fire, his high wing would put suppressive fire down to let him break contact and get out of the area. That was the principal reason we had the ordinance on the aircraft. We call that cover and move. Yeah, yeah, cover and move. but for takeoffs and landings we always we just took pride

I don't know and the fighter guys do the same thing taking off out of Ubon or Udorn or wherever they are with their flight of F4s they'll get pretty close for takeoffs and landing so it was just a matter of pride and make it look real nice and professional so we did that yeah am I even going to say this yes I'm going to say it

so we would my first deployment to Iraq we'd line up our Humvees before a mission and no one, I don't know, this was just a thing. Everyone would get in the, like, stand by, load them up, everyone to get in, and then it'd be three, two, one, start them up. And all the, we'd start at the same time, and we'd roll out the gate. So, yeah, it's like the same, you must have some weird psychological thing

where you're kind of unifying as a group when you do stuff together. And I think so, because you are tight and you do all that together. And you can do that so you know that you got each other's back when you're out in the combat zone, though. You're going to do everything exactly as it needs to be. done to survive. Yeah, it always made a good show, particularly coming back in and landing. I described that in there somewhere.

I don't know if we'll get to that, but our very neat-looking 360-degree come and tucked real as tight as we could. In fact, and I think I mentioned that in the book somewhere. I came back from one mission, there was a dent in the top of my wing. And we figured it was, and I think it might have been Buick, or Waldron. One of them was flying wing and got so close that they tapped my wing with their wing and put a little dent in the top of the wing. Okay.

Here's a little bit more from the book. The missions were dangerous. I got shot at almost every day. The first time I came home with bullet holes in my aircraft, I felt I'd passed another milestone. Strange, I know, but a feeling I had nonetheless, I'd been shot at. The sting of death came close enough to hit my airplane, only feet away from me. The threat was real.

It was personal. Still, I was ready to go out again the next day. Injury and death occurred, sure, but always to the other guy. I got shot at. Yes. But it was the other guys who got wounded and killed. Not me. That sense of invulnerability bolsters some young men in war.

I guess it needs to for them to do what they must do over and over again. I found I was one of them. I never hesitated. I was never bothered. Good thing for me now facing the perils of these VR missions that had taken so many spuds lives. Of course, nightly doses of alcohol at the spud club helped as well. Yeah. And I think I've talked to others who have that same feeling.

You're a young guy, and somehow there's this feeling of invulnerability. Yeah, invulnerability. People are getting killed blown out of the sky, but that happens to the other guy. Somehow it's not going to happen to me. And I had that same feeling second tour, and then I get shot down and front seat killed, and I get captured. But, yeah, in fact, I have a, I don't know if you saw it at the very beginning page or two of the book. I got an Ernest Hemingway quote in there.

Did you see that? Yeah. I saw that and I said, hey, how true that is. When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Ernest Hemingway. I had a guy named Dean Ladd on the podcast, and he was a Marine in World War II on the Pacific campaign. And I forget which island he hit first, but he'd done like an opposed enemy landing, like in one of those crazy. combat island assaults and then you know whatever it was three months later he's getting ready to go again

and he's going into tarawa and they had all this horrible intel about tarawa and he's sitting there and he said yeah so we're climbing down the things getting in the boats and I go you know I said were you were you nervous about you know getting wounded or killed he goes and he goes no that always happens to the other guy yeah it's a strange attitude yeah And I mean, not everybody would experience that, but I think if you're going into the jaws of combat, if that's your job and you do that routinely, you have to have that attitude.

I mean, you couldn't go out every day getting shot out thinking, oh, today's going to be the day I'm going to get killed. No, that's the, I don't imagine that you could, you'd go crazy, I think, if you couldn't just say, yeah, well, either that, it's, yeah, well, I might die. I always had to think, well, today could be my day, but if it is, it is, there's not much I can do about that. We trained, we prepared, we studied our intel,

we have good immediate action drills, we got good standard operating procedures. Okay. That's where I can control. The rest of it, well. And that's good too. And that's a good lesson in life. You know, when I wrote that first book,

I think I told you before, almost didn't finish. My wife said, yeah, you should go ahead because I said, this is nothing but a series of unfortunate events. She said, no, but there's some lessons to come out of that. It has a good ending. You need to finish it.

And I did. And I think that's part of what comes out of that. and maybe all of my books. And I hadn't really thought about it. You just mentioned it. But what you can control, you can control. And do your best to do that. What you can't control, you can't control.

And, yeah, the first tour and into the second, I was kind of, yeah, things happened to the other guy, and it's not going to happen to me. That first book about my POW experience, it had happened to me. And now I'm a prisoner. Or even before a prisoner, I was shot down. I evaded for three days, and I'm trying to evade that first day, and I collapsed and there's B-52 strikes coming just right up so close that stuff's coming down.

And I think my attitude at that time was very much what you just said. You can control what you can control. I have no control over this at all whatsoever. So this is not something that I'm going to spend any of my time worrying about. And that's where I had that thought. If I die, I die. It's in God's hands. It's not mine.

There's nothing I can do about it. So I'm not going to drive myself crazy over that. I'll just control what I can control and not worry about what I can't control. And again, I think that's a message through life for anyone who's facing anything. Don't get all crazy about what you can't control. It's not going to do you any good. Just worry about what you can control. You say this.

On our low passes for photos and visual reconnaissance, one bird stated altitude ready to pounce with suppressive rocket fire if the enemy shot at the low bird on his run. Again, this is just I love talking about this because it's the same principle that we use on the ground, cover and move. My sense of invulnerability was tested from time to time. You are on an early VR mission. You're flying wingman for Captain Frank Griswold. Fast forward a little bit.

On this mission, Frank completed the initial photo runs while I stayed high covering him. He climbed up and had me go low to finish the final two. On my last run, I took heavy fire. As was our practice, after I climbed back to altitude, Frank flew close to check me over for damage. I held a steady heading and altitude as I watched him carefully slide his Mohawk around me, giving my plane a good look. You took some hits there, Wild Bill.

I see holes under your right wing. There's some fluid there as well. Let's head home. You lead. I'll follow. Roger, hydraulic pressure is low. This always kind of surprises me because, you know, I grew up in a more technologically advanced world, but your plane got, you took.

fire so your buddy has to fly around you and look and see if you took hits or not. Yeah, that was our standard practice. Frank would later get the nickname Jinks over. And yeah, my worst incident, I'm flying with Frank. You have this. Frank made the radio calls. After an appropriate controller handoffs, he called for landing foobai tower. This is spud zero five.

We are two OV1 Mohawks for landing. Lead has battle damage and requests a straight in. I'll follow with a low pass. and pitch up for downwind. Copy. Roger Spud, flight, you're cleared for approach and landing as requested.

Fast forward a little bit. So I mentally opened the checklist in my mind. Hydraulic failure. Flaps up. They are. Performing no flap approach and landing. I'm set up, but no landing gear.

Landing gear, system failure. Hydraulic pressure. Check. It's zero. Gear, recycle, done. Gear, check. Checked. Still no landing gear.

I went in the final backup procedure. Emergency gear extension, air speed, reduce. I have. Gear down. The handle is. Emergency landing gear release handle pull. Gear indications.

Check. I reached across the central cockpit pedestal. Took hold of the yellow and black striped T handle and pulled, hoping the emergency backup system would work as advertised. I drew comfort knowing that if it failed, I still had the option of making a wheels-up landing on the long 10,000 foot runway at Denang Air Base 40 miles southeast. We had the fuel. Added benefit was that the Air Force could cover the runway with foam. Odds were my observer and I would walk away fine. I glanced over at him.

He sat stoic, calm, not overly concerned with the situation. He trusted me. He had confidence in my ability to deal with the situation and bring us both down safely. I was always moved by the faith our technical observers had in us. No matter the mission, no matter the circumstances, they strapped into the right side ejection seat and did their duty off times in the face of daunting enemy fire. I felt the weight of my responsibility to him and his loved ones. Indeed, I did always with every observer.

I flew. The emergency backup high pressure air cylinder worked. The landing gear clunked down. The warning light went out in the gear handle. The indicator showed all three down and locked. I could see the left main solidly down in my left side mirror. My observer confirmed the same in the right side mirror. Without hydraulics, I had no wind flaps available, so I had to make a somewhat faster approach than usual. Still, we touched down right by the numbers. On rollout, I knew that without hydraulics that brakes would be limited and nose wheel steering would be tough. I relied on the reverse thrust of my engines to slow down and the asymmetric application of power to clear the runway and taxi to the spud ramp. What a day. Yeah, I thought a lot about your technical observers. So in the

seal teams, you know, we dive and when you dive, it's very tedious. But one person has something called the attack board, which is a compass, depth gauge, and a watch. And you're basically just doing bearings, headings at a depth for 10 feet, you know, 45 minutes on this bearing. You turn, you run another bearing. And so when you're holding that thing, it kind of keeps you compact and it kind of keeps you, you have something to focus on. The other guy that's your buddy, he's just like hating life, doesn't know where he is,

barely keeping track of stuff. It's hard to swim. And it just sucks. And this is like that times a lot. Just getting in an aircraft and going, okay, boss, I hope you can get this stuff done. It's a lot of pressure on you, but also, man, these guys studs. They are. And I wanted to make this a story about crews, not a story about pilots.

Because those young men that sat in the right seat. I mean, we were young. I described myself 22, turn 23. when I was over there. A lot of these enlisted right seat observers were like 18 years old. One Steve Easley, I talk about in there. He was 18 years old. This is a kid sitting in the right seat.

They had their absolute trust and faith in the pilot to do what needed to be done to bring everybody home safely. I don't know. And the B and C models, they had no controls over there. They just sat there and ran systems. Well, we did whatever. And I point out later, I mean, I did a lot of growing up during this tour. I showed up as a kid doing stupid stuff and ended up coming home as a man who had put some of that stupid stuff behind me,

still very eager for combat and to do what I needed to do in war, but not some of the insane, ridiculous things that I did. And after one, and I don't know if we get to a flying low level down in the river. Yeah, if we get to that. Go ahead. Tell the story. Well, we can wait. We can wait. Okay.

We can wait. But that just showed me. I have a responsibility for the lives of those guys in the right seat. And I don't need to be doing stupid stuff that's going to increase our chances of getting killed. If I don't care about myself and think I'm invulnerable, I need to think about that poor young man in the right seat. Yeah. Steve Ward shows up, and now you have six graduates from your flight school, all in the Mohawk. All in the 131st, all spots.

That's wild. Well, he was there in time for me to bring that airplane home with the landing. You're all blown down. I mean, he became our, that's why he was late arriving. He went to aircraft maintenance school, and he shows up as our maintenance officer. And one of the first interactions after he arrived in the unit was I show up with this busted-up airplane to get back to him. Later that evening you're at the club, night carrier landings, somebody shouted. The singing stopped and people started moving tables, assembling several in low and a long row,

extending from just inside the front door all the way to the bar, right up against its stone front. someone doused the tabletops with quantities of beer while others placed lighted candles along the edges. On command, the lights went out and the fun began. The idea was to stand just outside the club, get a running start, and do belly dive, do a belly dive onto the end table, sliding the full length along the slick glistening beer all the way to the bar without knocking any candles off and potentially burning down the club. This is just what's happening. Another night in the spud club. Uh, here's another spud club activity. A frog followed, um, Buick into the bar.

Um, Buick threw down a drink talking with Major Kennedy. Someone stepped on the frog and dropped it in Joe, in Joe Kennedy's glass. Kennedy fished it out, put it on the bar and continued drinking. A black suited spud nearby said, oh my God, you're not going to drink that now, are you? Another pilot chimed in. You'll make Buick sick. He's a slar pilot. kind of a derogatory shock.

He was still flying his radar missions. Yeah, he wanted to be a gun pilot, but he was. Buick took offense. He was aspiring VR pilot. He wanted it badly. Buick's action was immediate. He picked up the frog and said to spud. With that, he threw the creature in his mouth,

crunched in between his molars and swallowed him with some difficulty. The noisy room full of drinks fell silent. After a few seconds, someone yelled, he ate it. Buick ate the frog. About that time, the frog started to come back up with one of the best one-liners I've ever heard. Buick calmly said, excuse me, I've got a frog in my throat. With that, he picked up his beer and watched the little amphibian down.

Billick could have a few beers before that happened with the frog too. And there's, he ends up, they end up enticing him to like eat frogs regularly. And after he got to three, finally said, hey, I'm done. eating frogs. If someone eats more than three, if someone else eats three, I'll eat four to maintain my superiority here, but I'm done eating frogs. What's lucky some of those frogs are poisonous over there. It's lucky he never got a poisoned frog, yeah. Fast forward a little bit over the next week. There's a passing of the guard. Old time VR pilots

rotated home, Major Brummet, the platoon leader, Big John Kelly, Harry Shorty Durgeon, Jim Traveler Parish, Mark, Smiling, Jack, Bellamy. Neil Uncle Nils Ostgard and Larry Foxhauer Had departed shortly before your arrival Neil Ostegarde had been shot down on a VR mission He'd actually been recovered Mark Bellamy was the only Mohawk pilot Who had ejected out of a Mohawk twice

Those were some of the adventures the outgoing crew Now it was time for the new guys to takeover Major Joe Kennedy replaced Hank Brummit Becoming our beloved VR platoon leader his team of pilots included me, Mitch Waldron, sweet and sour, the Loudermilk Twins, Buick Bingham,

Frank Griswold, who became my boss, replacing Joe Kennedy as the operations officer. And of course, our company commander, Spud 6, Mr. Clean, Major Gary Alton,

would continue to take his share of the riskiest missions flown. Together, we'd carve out our own legacy over the months ahead. It's a crew. Yeah, we were the crew.

A place called Chipone. Am I saying that right? Yeah, Chapone. Chapone. Shapone represented the worst of the war in Laos. It mocked us like a beast lying in wait. A serpent, coiled, ready to strike and kill in an instant.

Communist anti-aircraft positions dotted the landscape. Sandbagged and cleverly camouflaged. They hit among thousands of bomb craters. The pock marks of incessant American airstrikes. More airplanes had been shot down there than any other place in Laos. So there's a terrible place that's very, very well protected. Yep, dirty, deadly

Shepone. Dirty, deadly Shepone is the name of the chapter. Now, you got a warrant officer, Kurt Astronaut Danger, and he's astronaut because he took his plane up to like max altitude or something. What do you do? Well, he was there. Early on, he was flying a slurmish,

and I think it was a new pilot. And the weather was bad, some thunderstorms. So he took his airplane way up to, I don't know, 18,000 feet or something to get over the weather. And the guys found out about it. And so he got, Yeah, we all got nicknames for one reason or another. He got tagged with astronaut.

So he comes up with the mission plan. Yeah, I would say he was, he ended up being the finest infrared pilot in the unit, probably in the United States Army. He came to the unit as a young warrant officer, one, with a real good understanding of our infrared systems. He had worked as a civilian before he came in the military for Texas instruments and worked on infrared advances in their development of infrared systems. So he was a real, became an infrared guru in the unit.

So he's now moved from Slar into flying infrared missions. And he would ride in the right seat as an observer as much as he would fly to get the tweak the system, get the most out of it. So he and I are scheduled to fly one night. He's going to be my right seat infrared observer and I'm flying pilot. Yeah, and he's got a plan for you. Yep. A mission plan to get into Chipone and get some footage. And you say, sounds intriguing.

but you know we're forbidden from getting anywhere near Chapone unless it's assigned as a priority mission for some special purpose. Looks to me like the fact that it's turned into intelligence, Black Hole justifies getting some coverage. I've got the mission all laid out for a 10 by 10 mile box. Flight paths, turns, Doppler updates, everything. I can get us overlap on each run,

so we'll have good coverage of the whole box. We can get our assigned IR missions finished and still have plenty of time left for this. I figure we can get it done in less than, an hour. What do you say? I took a deep breath and let rationalization get in the way of sound logic. It needs to be done. Let's do it. It kind of crazy. This is a crazy idea from him to go and do this without permission in a forbidden zone. Absolutely. Yeah. Rather than say, hey, we need to check with the commander or anything else. Yeah. And off we went. So you guys go and do your standard mission

and then you go and you go to execute this thing. We completed several tracks before the guns started shooting. Most of the fire initially came from a rising hill just northwest of Chapone. The other guns joined in, firing from positions all over the area. They seem to be lobbing shells at our sound. Nothing came that close. Rounds exploded behind us and well off to our side. The gunners threw big stuff at us, 37 millimeter, 57 millimeter, possibly larger.

Most went off well above us. Thank God it's a pitch black night. I felt we were low we were low okay I felt smug as we headed home we'd done something pretty extraordinary and I hadn't even gotten a scratch I don't think either of us really realized how insanely lucky we had been until we heard a chilling call on the radio mayday mayday mayday Mayday this is Covey 410 yellowbird 52 has gone in I say again yellowbird five two is gone in he's crashed I cleared him on a pass then saw an explosion fire still burning just north of route 9-2 to about 10 miles west of the border.

Fast forward a little bit. The next morning you're at work. Flight operations clerk says Intel wants to see you in the two shop ASAP. I went in. The analyst had our mission film spread out across their light table. It filled the entire surface. The analysts beamed. This is the best coverage of Chapone we've ever seen.

Look at all the stuff you found. One analyst pointed out some key points of interest. And you got the entire area. That's never been done by anyone. My flight operations clerk came through the door just as the analyst added. We've already sent an intelligence summary to MacV. They're excited. The film is going to them on a special courier flight later today.

Good job. My clerk interrupted. Captain Reader, the CEO wants to see you and Mr. Dengar. Am I saying that right? Degner. Degner right now. Oh shit, I thought. I headed to the company, orderly room.

Astronaut was already there waiting for me by the first sergeant's desk. As soon as I walked in, the first sergeant said, go on in. Kurt and I knocked on the door jam and entered Major Alton's bark. Entered on Major Alton's bark. He was red-faced, obviously anger, angry. Kurt Gett Degner looked sunburned from the incident at the club, but he paled in comparison to the crimson ire we witnessed on the face of our company commander. I'd never seen him like that before or ever again since.

Major Alton bit his lip and said in the most measured tone he could, I just heard about your mission last night. I understand you did a complete area search around Chapone and got complete coverage of the entire area, including tracks directly over the town. Is that right? Kurt and I responded in unison, not knowing what was coming next. Yes, sir. Our commander fixed an angry glare right into each of our eyes, shifting from me to Kurt and back to me. You are aware that I put Chapone off limits except for the highest priority missions and then at higher altitudes and get right in and get out again together.

Yes, sir. His measured tone was gone. He yelled, well, what the hell did you think you were doing? Flying a low altitude area search, going back and forth and back and forth all over the heaviest concentration of anti-aircraft in Laos, I started. We thought, you thought, you didn't think. That's the problem. You disobeyed my direct order. I should rip your wings right off. I should rip your wings off right here and put you both up on court martial charges. But I won't. Get out of here and don't ever do such a stupid fucking thing again. Once more in unison. Yes, sir. I added awkwardly, no, sir, we won't. As we turned to leave, I could see his emotion was more than anger. It was his fear that we could have been killed, the same as a father's fear for the safety of his children.

Gary Alton's restrictions on our operations around Chapone were driven by his desire to protect us, at least as much as he could in this raging war, taking the lives of so many air crews over Laos. Our unit had lost too many great guys. He didn't want us to be two more. Yeah, hard for me not to get emotional about Gary Alton. And that was just one example of what he thought of us.

Yeah, he was our dad, and we were his kids, and sometimes we misbehaved. But he was always looking after us. He was so proud of his command of that unit for the rest of his life, and some of that's captured at the end of the book. but yeah, finest commander I ever had in any of my assignments of 30 years in the United States Army. Wonderful, man. Of course, even with that, where does it end up at the spud club? We go back to the Spud Club.

Once again. You get in there, it's a little bit subdued. Frank Griswold walked in the door. He just left the ops. He came with bad news. The cat killers have a plane down, no comms, no good location. It's dark, and he'd be out of gas a while ago. Who's the pilot?

I asked. Frank looked at a piece of paper. He held in his hand. Captain Macbird pilot. Lieutenant Kevin O'Brien artillery observer in the backseat. Oh shit, not Mac Bird. I looked at the louder milk standing nearby. My glance shifted to Mitch Waldron.

We were all classmates. All went through nine months of flight school together. We drank with him at the cat killer club. Stunned, shock, numbed my expression and my heart. I saw the same expression as I looked into the eyes of my classmates. We grabbed four drinks, moved close, and said nothing. There was hope, but not much. We all assumed the worst.

It was dark. The weather was bad. Mack was out of gas. And that was the cat killers were the unit right next to ours, and that was one of the, it was a bird dog unit. It had those two-seat spotter, small, light propeller observer planes. They operated inside of South Vietnam, but all the way in the DMZ area, very hostile mission out by Kaysan and some more of my flight school classmates were over in that unit. Macbird was one, Charles Fence was another, and that was the night Mac went down.

His wreckage has never been found to this day. His body never recovered. And then you guys, of course, you guys go up and on your flights, you check and search and you guys do what you can and you search and you found nothing, as you said. Macbird left a lovely wife and a beautiful baby girl, a gloom-hunter. over the 220th and 131st. We all searched and searched over the days ahead. Never found anything.

No. Time for grief is short in war. Ho Chi-Men's quest for victory in the South never slowed. Our missions didn't end. I flew nearly every day for the rest of the month. I flew mostly daytime visual photo recon. A third of the time

though I flew infrared at low level on dark nights in rough terrain. My sense is sharp. and it's exactly how that the way you wrote that in the book is exactly it goes from the little memorial to MacBird straight into

time for grief is short and war and it is like I've told many people the war doesn't stop the war is going to keep going the enemy's going to be missions that have to go and you're going to get your gear back on and go back to it fast forward a little bit I'd learn much about my young self during those first months flying Mohawks in combat

it's not that I was unafraid quite the opposite. I was afraid on almost every mission, but I was able to overcome it. Courage came from my ability to contain fear, push through it, and do what had to be done even with angst swelling in the pit of my stomach.

On Fridays, our VR missions ended in Thailand. You guys would land at the Thai Air Force Base in Ubon. Does I mean saying that right? Yeah, Hubon. And you guys would deliver intelligence to the Wolfpack, which is the eighth tactical fighter wing. Next stop was the 497th tactical fighter squadron,

the night owls. And by the time you finished with the eighth wing and the 497, the crews were just starting their day. And this is what, so this had to be kind of crazy going to Thailand because Thailand is a totally different world. Every Friday, our VR platoon got to take the Intel products. And the 492nd night owls, we operated with them a lot. We flew night. They flew night on our slar infrared missions over the trail. We'd feed targets to them.

So we had a relationship. The Intel product went there. And anybody could have taken it over, but the VR platoon was selected as the guys that took it over. just because of the risk of our mission was kind of a reward. So every Friday we'd have crews that crews we're flying would stop and remain overnight, R-O-N and U-Bahn. It is like being on the other side of the world. You know, and even though the aircraft flying there are all experienced in the same combat over Laos,

living conditions in Vietnam compared to living conditions in Laos, and we'd go check into a local hotel and Ubon and go out to dinner and just have a grand time. That's crazy. Yeah, that's crazy. That's crazy. The war is so different for different people in different situations. Like even my first deployment to Iraq,

we were in a really good spot right by the Baghdad at an international airport. We had our own little camp, but it was, you know, it was relatively Spartan, but you'd go to some places like the green zone. These people are in actual, what seem like mansions.

And they have this incredible food and they have chandeliers over the dinner tables and candles. And like, that's really weird. And then, you know, like I said, We were in a, you know, we were in hard buildings. We had at least attack operations.

We had tents that were pretty nice that we had built out. We'd go out to some random outstation where there be some conventional army unit or some special forces ODA team. And they're literally eating one MRI a day and, you know, just living in terrible conditions. And they're going to do that for nine months or 12 months or 14 months. And that's how it is. And meanwhile, the people over the green zone are having, well, um, they would have like socials.

It'd be like, oh, Tuesday's Taco, you know, Taco Tuesday. You're like, what is happening here? So, I suppose rolling over to Ubon occasionally. It was quite nice, quite nice. And then while we end up and we'll probably get to it later in the book, we had a whole detachment go up to Udorn. And they were living in a hotel in town getting credit for combat tour, their Vietnam tour.

Yeah, they were living in Thailand flying in Laos. But they had a very hazardous mission too. So, yeah. Well, you know what's weird. too is now you have guys that are flying UAVs or not right now but during the wars. Out of Las Vegas. Yeah, flying UAVs killing people. Go kill, you know, 38 Taliban confirmed dead.

Right. And then you go home and pick up your kids from school. Yeah, that's got to be hard. Yeah. I mean, the conditions aren't hard, but the mental going from killing people in combat to being home at your kids flag football game or something. Yeah. Um, so we're talking about the night owls here going back to the book.

The night owls flew. Yeah. Yep. No. Night owles flew one, two, three ship missions at night looking for trucks to destroy. Sometimes they found their own targets. Often they got assistance in locating or illuminating targets from the C-130 flare ship, blind bat. They also had a working partnership with spectrae C-130 gunships and of course our spud, uh, slar or IRBirds.

The F-4s, when the night owls were in our area, they always, appreciated the lucrative targets we passed their way on one occasion on occasion moonbeam the nighttime airborne controller would pair one of our slar or i r birds with a blind bat flare ship when he had a couple of f4s in tow from night owl our mohawks found targets and called them into the blind bat who illuminated the air with flares before working the 497th aircraft in a strike the results were often studying there's a lot there's a lot there's a lot every day every night um fast forward on February 15th I was with my observer getting ready for our afternoon VR mission I'd be flying as Frank Griswold's wingman frank approach just heard some bad news what stand Clark

stan Clark went down last night the 497th ops officer we saw him last month in ubon yeah good guy yeah are they making a rescue they got his backseater early this morning they don't think Stan got out no emergency be beeper not much hope worse yet the lead A1 covering the rescue went down, hit by 37 millimeter, no shoot, no beeper, aircraft exploded on impact. He was one of the Sandys from here. Those are the guys we've been drinking with in the club. And that was a non-confidenton.

We'd been moved over to non-confident on then. So, yeah. And guess what? We strapped into our Mohawks and took off. We listened for beepers on the emergency frequencies, made a few calls, and the blind, flew over the area looking nothing, no luck. Two more guys gone. Yeah, that was Tet of 1969.

We evacuated our aircraft from Vietnam because they were worried about the Tet offensive in Vietnam. And I'm not being as bad as 68, but no one knew. So we took half our aircraft to Nankatham, Thailand, and half our aircraft to Ubon, Thailand, and got to, yeah, spend some quality time with the Air Force guys over there in Thailand for that period. Yeah, it was really sad to see Stan Clark go in. Fast forward a little bit. I rolled down the runway and pulled smoothly into the sky. Joe not far behind quickly joined up we flew in tight formation Joe close under my right wing

We headed west through the wispy clouds climbing to 5,000 feet the morning sun at our backs We passed just north of the Aesha valley before hitting the Laotian border my senses peaked every time I entered Laos Yes war raged in Vietnam but Laos was an altogether different place It was the layer of fire breathing beasts lying in wait ready to shoot us out of the sky I called to loosen our flight formation and Joe fell back to trail several hundred feet behind You go over the anime mountains get above Route 92 of one of the major roads of the Ho Chi Man Trail You're going in take a photo I keyed the intercom and said start

Observer activated the camera taking a series of vertical shots So that's what you're doing you're kind of like you'd set up and tell the hey, we're going to be going in to take these shots. After that, you go across the river, you go, you see Route 96, do the same thing there. Call to my ring man. You want to do the next two? Roger that. Okay, go on down. I'll climb and keep you covered. Joe made the final two photo runs. On his last, on his last, a muzzle flash has erupted. I called, you're taking fire, taking fire, get out of there. The rounds came up behind him. Not worth expending any rockets. We might need them later if anything serious happened. He was past those meat heads by the time they started shooting. He was okay. My observer

dutifully noted the position on his map and gave the coordinates. I called the gunside into Hillsborough. A fact could put in a flight of fighters if he didn't have anything better. I made a sharp right turn to avoid entering forbidden Cambodian airspace. Now you're along the Xi Kong River. We'd never taken any fire in this area so I dropped down on the water. I love to do that along this stretch of river, banking sharply, trying to follow the river's course as closely as I could, staying below the trees that grew along the banks whenever possible and getting right down on the water when I could. Stupidity personified, but it was great fun. You're too low, wild bill.

Your props are making wakes in the water. I double-click my mic button. Too rapid clicks me neither yes or that I heard and understood the last transmission. I hugged the water, continuing to make wakes a bit longer, then pulled back hard on the stick, ballooning up and climbing out for some altitude. So you guys are, you're having a good time. That's, the stupidity continues there. Yeah.

You flew flying north west, a place called Adipu. Adipo. Adipo. The town's main street served as an airstrip used by the clandestine CIA Airlines, Air American Continental Air Services. It looked to be in good shape. From Adipo, you flew north. On previous flights, you'd seen a small air strip atop an impressive

Bolivans Plateau now towering above our left above the river. I decided to check it out. Close it up. We're going to make a low pass over that strip on the plateau. Tuck in tight. A call came over the emergency radio frequency that all-aircrows monitor. Aircraft buzzing PS-38. This is State House 01.

Oh, shit. I worried I screwed up but replied confidently. State House 01. This is Spud. Hope you enjoyed the show. Roger that, Spud. Come by any time. You can give me a call on 121.5.

Roger State House, see you again. I transmitted a jail. That sounds like an American. Yeah, I'm sure he is. The airstrip showed on our map as Ban Kong Hang. I asked the observer to market as PS38. I suspected it was some sort of a clandestine base that I'd spoken to the CIA agent running the operation

during our stay at Nakan Phnom. Right. I'd heard stories of the CIA involvement in the Civil War raging in Laos. So this, again, I had to bring this up because this is just so random. You're like flying over a random Laotian village and a dude comes up on the guard frequency. Like, hey, you know, aircraft buzzing. How's it calling? This is like the Wild West.

Exactly. Exactly. And those guys. And I came, you know, and that was a CIA operation. And we suspected at the time, we didn't know a lot. We weren't read on to the CIA's operations over there. We suspected they were taking place. We'd heard some things when we were over at Non-Confanom.

And now this American's up on the radio, and there was no doubt in our mind, he's some CIA guy out there in the middle of nowhere. But, yeah, there was one lone American there at PS-38 with these indigenous Laotian guerrilla units operating all over southern. And there's several of these guys operating all over southern Laos. It's wild. Back to it.

end of February you're at it again Mitch Waldron flew your wing pleasant day clear weather unlimited visibility hey how about a run about the how about a run up the Gijon jicong and a past it's Zicong yeah that makes it easier yeah so this is uh so I had done that that other day I forget who I was with but this is my first day making this run with with Mitch and I really thought it was cool we'd get down there and just do a low run up this river okay but go ahead uh Waldron responded enthusiastic he was game for anything. Roger, let's go. We came upon the river slightly north of the Cambodian border. I settled right down on the water, happily churning wakes with my prop wash. Man, you must have felt like a

badass, huh? Mitch shouted on the radio, shit, wild bill, did you see that? See what? The cable you just flew under. No way, you shitting me? No, sir. You just flew under one big fucking cable strung across the river. I was so low that I flew right under it and didn't see it. Must have been strong between high trees. I figured the bad guys had seen my screw-off river runs. Because this was something you were doing like regularly. Yeah, too regularly. And decided to snag themselves a dumb pilot and his airplane.

I knew I was lucky to be alive. Stupidity personified. And my poor observer, he trusted me and enjoyed my antics. Childest games that could have gotten both of us killed. I never flew low along a river again. I think I grew up a lot that day. Young men facing death mock it. They taunted, feeling invulnerable.

I was not far past adolescence. When I got to Vietnam, only 22, I'd been given an agile flying machine with rockets to shoot and loads of excitement to be had. Things happened. Sure, people got killed, yeah, but not me. Death stalked the other guy. Nothing would happen to me. That all changed that day on the river.

I was shocked into manhood at the ripe old age of 23. I was not invincible. I was nearly killed. But for the grace of God, that cable could have sliced right through the cockpit. It should have. I was damn lucky. I knew it. I would always remain an aggressive young pilot doing what needed to be done in war,

but I'd never be so stupidly juvenile again. I felt I'd changed when I landed back at Fubai. Yep. And the fact that you're putting your observer at risk is like... That's what really hit home. Fast forward. Here's another mission. We'd been asked to look for improvements along a road running east from Chavain.

Is that right? Chavain. We found lots of fresh road work. the communists obviously intended this to be a major throwaway from Route 96, north-south spine of the Ho Chi-Men Trail, the funnel supplies to the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong guerrillas inside South Vietnam. And by the way, you've got a whole bunch of history and explanations of the different situations that are going on.

It gives a really good strategic look and historical look at what was happening on the ground in Vietnam, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. So you will learn a lot when you read this book. It's just an outstanding book. Frank dropped down for a closer look to get some low-level photos. I stayed high, keep him in sight, ready to pounce if he drew fire. As he pulled up, he announced, there's a bunch of fuel drums stacked under the trees on the south side of the road,

got good photos. I'm going to put some rockets on them and see what we got. Cover me, then come on behind me and hit him. I'll cover you. Roger. Frank rolled in. fired a pair then another before pulling up. His rockets hit and exploded, detonating bigger explosions.

Flames erupted and roared through the trees. I followed. I keyed my radio. Nice stuff, lead. I'm in. Hit about 100 yards short of mine to the west. I saw more stuff in there. Roger, I did a slow wing over, letting the nose of my Mohawk fall steeply toward the

earth before leveling my wings, lined up on the target. I fired two pairs of rockets. The tree line burst into flame. That's enough, Wild Bill. Save our rockets. We still got the rest of the mission to fly. Looks good. We did plenty of damage here. I fell into loose trail a few hundred feet behind Frank as we climbed heading north. I relaxed congratulating myself. Nice strike. We did good. Wham! And explosion rocked the aircraft. I saw a bright flash to my right, heard the boom, felt the concussion, all in the same instant. The airplane snapped onto its left side, then rolled violently back to the right. Fragments tore up into the cockpit, ripping superfutable. officially into our flesh.

Debris world about. Flames blazed outside. Smoke billowed inside. Foul in my nostrils with the smell of burning fuel and hydraulic fluid. And where is the fuel in this aircraft placed? The main fuel cell, 3,600 pounds of JP4 is right behind the bulkhead behind the pilot's heads. So your bird's on fire. There's smoke everywhere.

Chaos engulfed my consciousness. my senses overwhelmed reality became so unreal i arm wrestled the stick in the fight of my life i pulled the power back on the right engine and then the lever that feathered the propeller i struggled to get the thing flying caution lights flashed instruments tumbled the number two firelight glowed red i glanced right past armstrong he stared straight ahead terrified poor guy flames engulfed the wing i pushed my foot hard against the rudder rudder pedal slipping the airplane away from the flames. I pulled the fire handle stopping fuel flow to the right engine. I hit the fire bottle switch activating both extinguishers. The flames stopped. I looked at the remnants of what had been my right

engine. The propeller was gone. The engine cover was blown away. Only a few smoking parts remained. The wing was a mess of holes. We needed to get the hell out of there, away from bad guy territory, and we needed to land soon. I turned southwest and headed for PS 38, the nearest safe haven. I called Frank. I spoke as calmly as I could, so I'd be clearly understood. Five, this is six. We took a hit. I think 37 millimeter, barely flyable, turning toward Southwest, trying to get to PS38. Roger, coming around to find you, a few seconds later, got you, I'll come in to give you a look.

Can you hold steady? Not able to maintain altitude, single engine, damage to right wing. Every time I try to level off, plane starts to roll onto its back, have to stay in a decent, in a descent, keep up air speed. Roger, I'm making May Day calls to get things moving. We'll get a rescue package cranking just in case. I quickly saw that I couldn't make it to PS38. I wouldn't have enough altitude. I'd be below the elevation of the plateau before I got there.

I set my hopes on an alternate, almost the same distance, but over 2,000 feet lower. I'm not going to make PS 38. I'll be too low. Turning towards Saravane. Roger, I'm on you. Doesn't look good. You've got holes all over your right side. I don't see an engine.

just a gaping space, your entire right wing leading edge is shredded. Roger. So this is not a good feeling. No, no. Of course, I was busy as hell, so there wasn't a whole bunch of chance of opportunity to reflect on much other than fly that airplane. Yeah, just going through the protocols. Yeah.

The closest thing I've got, which is not even close, not even close. But I did have a parachute malfunction. and I mean I guess you could get really freaked out when it happens I only had one but I was just going through the procedures that you go through when you cut that thing away and you pull your reserve and hoping yeah again you know you're not even hoping you're just doing the protocol you're not even thinking you know I'm just like doing the things that I was trained to do and doing it and it's that's that's that this is clearly a very desperate situation a lot more complicated and intense than mine back to the book I flew northwest

steadily losing altitude. I crossed the Zekong River, seeking the lowest ground, following a valley that seemed to be leading towards Saravane. Frank confirmed my course in between making emergency radio calls. He worked to get a rescue package going. That would normally be a jolly green search and rescue helicopter covered by a flight of A1 SkyRater attack planes. Still, I plan to land on the airstrip at Saravane. I prayed that it remained in friendly hands. Frank would hopefully be able to confirm that before I got there. When I made my my next call, my concern was no, that concern was no longer an issue. We're not going to make it to Saravane.

Losing altitude too fast. I'll get as far west as I can before we punch out. Roger, I've got you in sight. So you know you're not going to be able to land. You're just trying to get as far as you can, as close as you can to friendly territory. And even then, we weren't sure if Saravane was in friendly hands or not. It changed hands, but hopefully it was and I was going to get as close as I could. And I wanted to land there, but that, you know,

became impossible. Yeah, that became impossible so that it didn't matter anymore. I talked to Armstrong. We're not going to be able to land anywhere. We'll have to eject, get ready. Remember to grab your upper handle with both hands and pull down towards your knees when I give you the command. Don't worry about the canopy. We'll go through it.

The Mohawk did not have a command ejection. In other words, I could not eject both of us. We'd each have to fire her own seat. Armstrong reached up and held the upper firing handle with both hands waiting. The jungle rose quickly. A few hundred feet above the ground, I keyed the mic and said, eject, eject, eject, Armstrong sat there.

We always told our observers that if we ever have to eject, we'd give the command three times, then they'd be sitting there by themselves, staring at an empty space where their pilot used to be because we'd be gone. Easier said than done. So you would tell them, you're going to tell them to eject, and then you're ejecting, so they better freaking eject too.

Yep, yep, or they'll be by themselves. I don't know why Armstrong didn't go. I thought he'd just frozen, but if I pushed the mic switch to radio instead of intercom, perhaps he didn't hear me. Regardless, he sat there. I held the stick in my left hand, turned toward him and pounded him on the shoulder with my right. As we approached the trees, I pulled back on the stick. The Mohawk slowed and began to roll right, settling into the treetops.

With branches slapping across the windshield in front of him, Armstrong finally pulled his handle and left the airplane. In one motion, I let go of the stick, reached up with both hands, and pulled my handle. problem my handle problem was my head was cocked to the right my neck bent slightly when i went out the ejection seat trainer gave me quite a jolt when we'd used it in the qualification course in alabama the instructor mr meadows told us that was nothing though the trainer was only a small charge that gave us about seven gs he told us an actual ejection would fire us out at 18 gs that's 18 times the force of gravity the ejection seat in the mohawk was a martin baker mark five

first produced for the Navy in 1957, it employed an ejection gun. Bang, you shot out at 80 feet per second. When I pulled my upper ejection handle, it brought a fabric screen down over my head. I remembered the blast of the punch of the 18 instantaneous G's momentarily blacking out, seeing green foliage, feeling the jerk of the parachute, and hitting the ground with a thud. There was not time for full shoot deployment or even a single swing under the canopy, but I was alive. I made it.

I tell them, you know, I've been doing some work with NATO Special Operations Forces here the last year's when I run into my special ops friends who have all their parachute jumps, hey, I've only got one parachute jump in my life, guys, but mine's a combat jump.

And an involuntary one. It worked. Thank God and thank you, Martin Baker. Actually, I was, I was, just looking through the internet and there's the whole Martin Baker page on their web page of people

that have ejected. There's stories that you're on there. You found me. Yeah, I found you. And all these people saying, thank you Martin Baker for making these ejection seats. And I get a free tie out of the deal.

I got a Martin Baker tie. Oh, nice. That's all you got to do is eject. Yeah. I got out of the parachute and surveyed my situation. How strange for a piling? to sit in the cockpit one instant, as messed up as that was,

then suddenly be on the ground in a strange foreboding place. It was the most unreal sensation I've ever had. Yeah. It's about to get more unreal. Ratat tat, tat, ratat tat, tap machine gun fire. Yeah. I heard voices in the distance shouting and screaming. I pulled my 38 caliber revolver from my holster of my hip.

That's what they give us a six shot revolver. I held it, looked at it, six shots. then fumbled to load six more bullets one at a time no way this will not be another this will not be another luster's last stand i stuck the pistol back in its holster and pulled on the radio from my survival vests i extended the antenna and transmitted spuds spud five this is six on guard six this is five have you loud and clear are you okay if you got comms i side of relief yeah i'm okay listen to me i'm going to fly over you i want you to move in that direction as quickly as you can we'll do what an awesome freaking wingman.

Yeah, all my life to Frank Griswold. So he, it's really a very heads up for him to recognize that when you get on the ground, you're going to be disoriented. You're not going to be able from, you're not going to know which direction to go. So he immediately tells you, I'm going to fly over you, head in a certain direction, go in that direction. Yep. Which was to move me away from the bad guys.

Right, which you don't know where they are. No, to sort them around. Frank made a low pass over me. That was the direction I needed to go. I heard more gunfire. Voices closer. I called him again. I've got bad guys down here.

They're shooting at me. Sounds like they're shooting at you too. Roger, there's a village in the opposite direction from where I'm sending you. I saw people coming out with the weapons keep going. I moved as fast as I could. I was a bit busted up but confident I could get through the jungle faster than a small guy's chasing me. I broke into a run crashing through the undergrowth.

Frank turned sharply just above the trees. I heard his rockets fire. Felt them impact a short distance behind me. Then he made two more runs before climbing to a safer altitude. That slowed the enemy and brought. brought me and bought me time. It seemed like forever, but it was less than an hour

before Frank had good news. I've got a helicopter inbound. So an hour goes by. Did you keep moving that whole time? Yep. I've got a helicopter inbound. Should be only a few minutes out. See if you can find a break in the trees

and move to it. Roger, I'm looking for that. How's my right seat? No comms yet. We've been trying. We got a good fix on a shoot, though. A moment later, he called again. Chopper's close.

He'll call you on this freak. Soon I heard. Spud 6 this is Pony Express we see your crash site and parachute we are looking in the direction your wingman said you are moving can you pop smoke roger popping smoke now i took a smoke marker from my survival vest remove the cap and pulled the pin it spewed smoke this is pony pony express i've got orange smoke that is me confirm orange smoke roger spud we're dropping a penetrator through the trees just lower the seat and grab hold we'll pull you up i never seen anything like it before the army did not have survival training on par with the navy in the air force i had no

idea what to expect. A metal cylinder came through the trees at the end of a steel cable. It hit the ground. I went to it, pried down a hinged flat arm, and stood by and called on my radio survival, my survival radio ready. As the penetrator lifted, I sat on the arm hugging the cylinder. I grabbed hold of the cable with my right hand. I continued to rise. I held on tight. I got close to the helicopter. It was a Huey, not a jolly green. A crew member leaned out of the open door and screamed, let go of the cable. You'll smash your fingers. Hold a around the penetrator. I did and watched as the part of the cable I'd clung to just above the top of the cylinder rolled into a pulley that would have been nasty. The one who'd been yelling,

a big burly guy grabbed hold of me and pulled me inside. The seats had been removed from the back end. Just open space remained. I collapsed on the bare floor, thankful to be alive. The crew member shouted, we see your other pilot. We're coming around to get him. He kicked me with his foot to get my attention and handed me an M-16 rifle. Here, take this and shoot out the left side. We're taking fire. I complied. Good times. Small arms and machine guns and machine guns tracers zipping by. Frank gave close air support with his rockets as a helicopter crew called enemy positions to him. The pilot held steady as he flew the helicopter toward Armstrong. Apparently my crewmate had not moved far from his parachute. He had problems with the radio and

could not figure out how to how could not figure out the smoke marker. Luckily he'd come down beside a small clearing and move to it. When he saw the helicopter, he stood. He stopped. He stopped. He was a stepped into it with open in the open and waved his arms the crew saw him on their final approach to get me There'd be room to land after they'd hauled me on board they circled back they picked him up in a jiffy Pulled power and headed west a second helicopter which had remained high fell into trail and followed I stopped shooting and sat with my back against the rear bulkhead Breathing deeply and smiling at young Armstrong so thankful he'd been saved so grateful we were both alive I'll tell you, I owe so many people in my life. I'm thinking through.

I definitely owe Frank Griswold of my life. But then in my book about captivity, all I owe people there in my life, I'm so lucky in this Air Force crew. Pony Express was an Air Force Special Operations Unit, the 20th SOS, 20th Special Operations Squad, and operating out of Udorn, Thailand. They just happened to be operating not that far away in southern Laos, working on a navigation aid site there and were available to respond.

I'd always wanted to find that crew that picked me up and just thank him, and I had no idea how to track them down. And then a guy, what's in a, Jason Collins just published a book about the 20th SOS, and in an annex at the back of the book, and I think that's the title, Green Hornets, 20th Special Operations Squad. In an annex at the back, he has a history of the unit and some of the significant activities is in chronological order, and I'm thumbing through there. vet and I come to March 1st, 1969, and it describes this rescue of this OV1 Mohawk and

Laos near Saravane, and it has the crew members' names. I should have brought them. I can give to you later. But he's trying to help me track down these guys. And if they're, if they're still around, I'd love to just say, hey, thank you guys. I owe you my life for pulling me out of the jungle that day. Yeah, you say in the book, the Huey flew to the military, hospital on Ubon Air Base a little over an hour distant. Along the way, my savior gave me his helmet so I could speak with the cockpit. I thank the pilots about eight times. I was so appreciated them risking their lives to save ours.

The pilot told me his unit was U.S. Air Force 20th Special Operations Squadron. Medics met you on the hospital pad at Ubon, X-rays, exams. Diagnosis is cervical compressions with a cervical sprain, along with a bunch of cuts and bruises and bad hair. Medical technician put a neck collar on me Took me to the ward Frank Griswold had stayed on station too long He covered me with rocket fire and slowed the bad guys

So I could get away He wouldn't leave the scene until Armstrong and I had been rescued He provided close air support to the rescue helicopter Throughout by then he was about out of gas He didn't have enough to get back to Vietnam or Thailand So he headed to PS 38 which is that little airstrip It all comes around he lands out there randomly and they pump they pulled gas on freaking 55 gallon drums and get him back airborne and get

him home and he meets the CIA guy I don't know if you got that part yeah yeah yeah just just I mean that it is he meets the CIA so so and and and yeah and I guess it's because I like to do research to be sure I got all my facts right so I'm pushing pushing trace and tricking things down and I thinking oh wouldn't it be great if I could track any of these CIA guys down and one CIA guy had written a book, and in his book he mentioned something about PS38, and I got a hold of him, and we determined that he wasn't at PS 38 when this took place, but eventually he got me in touch with another CIA guy that was, and so I talked to him a number of times on the phone and got his addition of the account of Frank Lannon there to get gas. In fact, his pictures in the

book, too, quite a renowned CIA guy involved in a whole bunch of stuff, and and happened to be at PS 38 that day that Frank went in there for gas. And yeah. Going back to the book, Two old friends came to my ward the next afternoon. Buick and Frank. Major Alton had made them,

or had them fly a Mohawk from Fubai to check on me to be sure I was okay. They walked into my hospital bed with Irene, the lovely young bartender from the officers club. The club is only a short distance away. They carried a bottle of champagne and four glasses. The ward nurse turned her head, pretending not to see.

Frank popped. the cork, filled the glasses, and made a toast. Here's to you, Lightfoot. We all four drank and Irene gave me a big kiss. Wait, Lightfoot, what's that about? That is about you outrunning the bad guys through the jungle for almost an hour. No more Wild Bill. You are now and forevermore,

Lightfoot of the Spuds. And that remained my nickname Forevermore. Now you end up, fast forward. fly back to Fubai. We landed at Fubai and taxed off the runway. Major Alton had formed the entire unit on the ramp. He stood at the front with a soldier holding the company guide on. As we came abreast, he snapped everyone to attention, brought them to a smart salute. I opened my canopy and saluted back. Their eyes stayed on me. Their care touched my heart. Overwhelmed, emotion rose inside me. My eyes filled with tears. I'd come home. I climbed out. Champagne flowed, handshakes and

Greedyx followed. The guys from the seat shop came up. They were the ones who maintained our ejection seats, inspected the explosive charges, and packed the parachutes. Their sergeant proudly handed me an upper ejection seat handle with its attached face curtain, just like the one I'd pulled to punch out of my airplane.

Each of the guys had signed the inside of the curtain, a momento I would cherish forever. Yep. Yep. Still have it. I bet you do. Amazing. And meanwhile, you would think a normal human would echo he's going to call me normal. You'd think a normal human would say, okay, I just got shot down.

I have cervical compression. I've got all these problems. You could probably milk that. I mean, you could probably milk it and get back to America, I'm guessing. Probably could have. Maybe you could milk it and get some downtime in Thailand or Hawaii or something. Or maybe what you do. is and this is what you do you do you go into the orthopedic surgeon at the 22nd surgical hospital

and you go through some tests and he had me move my head around and tested the strength of my neck by pushing mildly in different directions i clenched my teeth and complied trying my best to mask my pain you're an obstinate son of a bitch captain reader here you go he handed me a piece of paper with something scribbled on it that i couldn't read i took it right to the flight surgeon it was good enough for him they gave me my up slip meaning you could fly yep I got scheduled for a flight the next day. I flew a VR mission into Southern Steel Tiger. I flew VR into Laos for the next three days, then three nights of IR missions,

then either VR or IR every single day for the rest of the month. I didn't take a day off. Yep. Back in the game. I don't know if you're going to get to the IR missions that I flew or not with the young man Lacey. Go ahead. Okay, but I'll give a comment on that. So yeah, so I got back from being shot down.

I'm flying some VR, some IR, some IR. And this new kid reports to the unit, brand new out of his training to be a T.O. He's an infrared T.O. And they put him with this pilot. I didn't even really remember that much about it. And somehow my research, I got connected with him. And so here's the story. He's just in the unit.

They're going to put him out on his first mission into Laos with a guy who has just been shot down and is back-to-flight dude. Turns out to be me. And what I didn't remember, and he refreshed me on all of this, It took, we had two aircraft malfunctions. We went out the first night and the thing malfunctioned, went out, the second night of malfunctioned. We had to come back. Finally, the third time out, we got out and were able to do a mission.

But here's this poor kid sitting there with this guy that's been shot down. He was a nervous wreck. But turned into a good, Bud Lacey's his name and turned out to be one of our really good technical observers. When we finally did get out and do the mission, I think I managed to get the aircraft shot at and brought him back. So what an introduction to his tour of duty. with the 131st. Yeah, and one of the stories about Bud Lacey's, he ends up asking you like,

hey, everyone says I'm bad luck and my bad luck. In the middle of all this chaos, you actually and the military would send guys on R&R. Yes. And so at this point, you get sent on R&R and R and you end up going to Hawaii.

Right. I'm going to read a little bit here. It felt strange to be on a commercial airliner high above the Pacific Ocean. We landed a Hickham Air Force base just outside Honolulu and boarded buses for the drive to Fort DeRousie on Waikiki Beach. In the same day, I'd gone from the midst of war to the tranquil beaches of Hawaii. The world seems strange.

Bright, colorful life swirled around me, yet I didn't feel a part of it. It was as if I watched but wasn't there, an odd sensation. Then the bus stopped, and reality returned. A group of women waited nearby. I got off and found my wife. Amy, we hugged. Then she stepped back, looked at me, pointed at my chest, and asked, what's that? I managed a guilty smile.

It's a purple heart. I had two ribbons on my khaki uniform. One that everyone got simply for being in the military at the time, and the other for injuries had gotten when I was shot down. Amy's dad had two purple hearts from World War II hanging on his wall. She knew what the ribbon looked like. How did you get that? I got shot down, nothing major.

I'm fine. She frowned. And you didn't tell me? Didn't want to worry you. Sorry. Already the tensions that had strained our marriage for some time began to surface there in paradise. Still, we enjoyed our time in Hawaii.

You talk a little bit about being in Hawaii. Right, right. Then my seven-day sojourn in Hawaii ended. I returned to Vietnam, curiously comfortably back among my fellow spuds. Even amid the hazards of war, I was ready to be back to work. It was a family. It was like returning home. with those guys.

It's odd. In some sense, a very comfortable, warm family feeling. But at the same time, everybody just wanted to have their tour done and be the hell out of there

and back to the world. Yeah. You say, I'd return to a bloody page in American history. A big battle had raged in the Aeshawe Valley, 30 miles west on May 10th,

1969, the 101st Airborne Division launched an attack, and you go through the details of what ends up being Hill 916 and Hill 937. They finally took the hilltop on May 20th, 72 American soldiers died, 374 wounded, seven mission and

in action. The American press called Hill 937, Hamburger Hill. Yeah, yeah. That was a dark, dark time, a lot of casualties. And, you know, we weren't directly involved in the battle out there, but we'd fly over back and forth going on missions. And I think I'd describe in there, we'd be taken off from Fubai and hearing helicopters calling, and they'd be in holding over the hospital.

helipad waiting for the one helicopter to drop off casually so the next one could come in. Yeah, that was tough. And then how do you guys feel when like we take the hill and then however many shortly thereafter we leave it? Yeah, and the enemy's all back in Asheaw Valley again. That's got to be. There were, there were, you know, parts of Vietnam, I believe strongly in, particularly at the time.

And parts of it, I just roll my eyes and wonder what the hell are we doing. And even back then. Even back then. And Hamburger Hill was one. And the whole Ashau Valley thing. The 100 first going to clean that out, took casually, captured the hilltops, and we're out. And the enemy's got the valley back. You also, you know, there's a KC130 that goes down, collides with some F4s.

It was just terrible, terrible scenario. An AC130 Specter gets shot up. Yep. Let me read that one real quick. The pilots ordered the crew to bail out once safely over Thailand. They attempted to land the battered airplane but skid it off a runway. A wing struck and tore off. The mighty ship exploded into flames.

The 11 crew members who bailed out survived. The two pilots attempting to land the battered gunship died. May, 1969 was a tough month in Southeast Asia. The war raged, awful as it ever been. I'd gotten away for R&R leave right in the middle of the chaos. turmoil flamed before I left it blazed after I came back I'd enjoyed my rest and recuperation But I now had months more of war ahead along with responsibilities for a new unit mission getting underway in Thailand And this is what you mentioned earlier these guys

Earlier in May major Alton brought two visitors to operations they looked out of place they wore dark suits with white shirts and ties They had fancy black wingtip shoes like the ones I'd made in I'd made in Thailand Mine were already quite dusty just sitting in my locker theirs looked clean and freshly shined, an amazing site in Vietnam. I'd never seen anything like it. Both walked with purpose, exhibiting an air of importance. Who are these guys? I shook hands with the visitors.

Major Alton added, Colonel Duskin is the army attache at the U.S. embassy in Vienti, how do you say it? Vienchen. Vienchen, Laos, Mr. Smith, on the embassy staff as well. There to talk about putting some of our 131st Mohawks at the Udorn Air Base in Thailand. They will be there to fly special missions into northern Laos, highly classified and very sensitive. It's all approved. We'll be working directly for the embassy.

So this is just... And this is where we got right smack in the middle of all the CIA stuff over there too. Yeah, there's some descriptions of all of that that comes. Yeah, we sent that detachment over there, several aircraft to operate out of Udorn and fly missions up into northern Laos and the barrel roll area. And, yeah, the guys living like kings and hotels and good... foods and restaurants and partying and having a grand time. But still, as I said before, they were some very hazardous missions up there as well. And we lost a, lost a crew up there.

Yeah, again, the historical and kind of overview that you give is awesome to read. A little excerpt of it here. In the north, the war was a different beast. At the same time, the North Vietnam pushed men and material south down the Ho Chiman Trail. They waged a wider conflict in the north. There they aim to directly confront the Laotian government and turn the country, into a communist state, a communist Laos would be an ally on North Vietnam's western flank. It would serve as a buffer between them and their historic rival Thailand. Fast forward,

the lines between the battling government and communist forces wavered back and forth as a seesaw with much of the fighting taking place in and around the plain of jars. The plane of jars was an archaeological treasure. Ancient peoples chiseled stone cylinders of various sizes. Thousands lay across the huge 500 square mile plane. The vessels played an important role in the burial customs of an Iron Age civilization that disappeared nearly 2,000 years ago. During the 19th century French colonial rulers

named the place the plan de jars. Many led this to referred as the PDJ. Yeah, that was the common that everybody wouldn't say plane of jars that said, yeah, we're in the PDJ. That's going on in the PDJ. One indigenous group found itself caught in the middle, the Hmong.

They drew their identity, their sense of being their homeland, the hill, from the hills and valleys around the plane of jars. They were animists believing that animals, plants, and places have an interconnected spiritual essence. It was into that environment. Fast forward a little bit. There's into that environment. And again, you give the entire layout.

Well, you get the one you're dealing with a guy that earned a PhD in history after he retired, you got to put up with some of them. Yeah. No, it's not putting up. It's actually fascinating. I'm not going to read it here, but it's really fascinating, informative to be able to understand the broader context of what's happening. It was into that environment that I, as company operations officer, was to establish the 131st presence at Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base to work for the U.S. ambassador. Things were about to get very interesting.

Embassy officials told us to bring an airplane with no U.S. markings. Right. So that's interesting. These guys flying to an airstrip deep inside, deep in Laos in the village of Longteng. They called it LS 20A. And you in here, that day I learned a difference between PS and LS. PS is Pasky site? Paxay site.

What does that mean? It would really because they were orchestrated and managed out of the town of called Paxay in southern Laos. Got it. So everything that the CIA managed out of Paxay. Hocke were PS sites and everything that they managed just otherwise, particularly up in Northern Laos, were L.S., which is just landing, landing site. Landing site. Fast forward a little bit.

A familiar face approached. Colonel Duskin came to greet us. He looked like a senior official should, but were casual clothing appropriate for the jungle. He shook our hands. Welcome, guys. He turned and waved us on this way. We passed a large cage with an Asiatic black bear inside. That's Floyd.

he drinks beer they're just careful not to let him have too much this is like apocalypse now it is it is exactly exactly and just the appearance and you know duskin was a guy showed up in this suit and shine shoes and fubai and now he's in it was still nice looking but very casual jungle type attire and then the rest of these guys are yeah like something out of apocalypse now wandering around this place uh he told us that the mung were the the centerpiece of ground operations in the north. The plane of Jarro was the prize and the goal is to push the North Vietnamese army

and the path at Lao off the plane. That's what they were trying to do. And then they gave you guys the mission, you know, flying slar and infrared missions around the PDJ, also run the May Kong River up to the Chinese border, getting some serious taskings. He then looked at Tom,

he looked at Tom then shifted to me. Remember, you work for the ambassador. This was his, this was his point. plan. Day to day, the CIA station chief and I will oversee your operations. We'll stay on top of your performance and make any adjustments the ambassador might direct. I will be your principal point of contact at the embassy. The 713th Air Force will provide your routine mission support on Udorn, on Udorn. The point was perfectly clear. We were to fly secret CIA missions in northern Laos under the control of the U.S. embassy. That was it. And that, you know,

You know, that's the essence of what I was not allowed to talk about or utter a word about for all of my life since Vietnam, since that first tour in Vietnam until just recently. But, yeah, it's been declassified, and there it is. And here we go. So get the book and read all this now recently unclassified information. Our air, fast forward, our air crews at Udorn made a name for themselves both in Raising Hell and boldly flying some of the most harrowing missions in Southeast Asia. They flew night after night, dodging anti-aircraft fire and weaving through valleys and

high mountain peaks. They funneled information to airborne command and control centers. They passed targets to strike planes and gunships. They did what the ambassador had hoped in support of the CIA's secret humong army. Among those missions were terrifying. Some of those missions were terrifying others, not so much. So you get this thing going. And you weren't one of those pilots that flew out there.

You sent a detachment out there. That's when I would go up from time to time and check them. You know, you got to go to Thailand to check on the guys. I'd be sure everything's going okay. And then I would occasionally fly on a mission with them. But no, I was never one of the routine pilots that stayed up there. Fast forward a little bit. In June 1969, our much loved commander, Major Gary Alton,

and it is one year tour of duty in Vietnam. Spud 6, Mr. Clean, headed home. I'd never worked for a better man than Gary Alton, nor would I ever again. He was the best. And if you were to talk about why, what made him the best, what would you, what would you tell me? Well, I'd go back to my ass chewing I got for flying over Chapone. He just, he loved us. He was a father image to us.

We were a kid's image to him, probably rowdy teenagers. And he just really loved us and took care of us. He was a good commander. He did well. We got the job accomplished. I think that we took casualties, minimal casualties, because, He took such good care of us. Yeah, a caring commander who still got the mission done.

I mean, he didn't baby us, but, yeah, he was just a really good guy. And he stayed in that role for the rest of his life. We'd get together periodically for reunions, and he was always there, always spud six. Yeah, I was to tell people from a leadership perspective, if you take care of your people, they'll take care of you. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And he, you know, he set an example, and he was there. He flew these hazardous missions. He was right there with us, never shirked from any of that. Unlike another, I won't even narrow the unit down, but I did have another commander at another, I'm going to have to narrow it down because it was helicopters, but another commander who just wouldn't go out on combat missions at all. And the guy, well, not the guy that immediately replaced Gary, but a guy who ultimately came in as a commander, one thing. 31st, didn't want to go out and fly combat missions at all. He just wanted to train people in the pattern to get his flight time.

So there's guys that will shirk the dangers of combat and send their other guys, their people out to do it. Gary Alton was always right there with us right at the front, leading by example and leading by personal courage in combat. Yeah, that doesn't even, if you're not willing to step out there and go do the job with the boys, then they're going to see you right through that. That doesn't take much time. Buick Bingham went home in April.

Round Ranger Thiel, round Ranger Thiel, departed not long after. So now guys are starting to rotate home. There's another guy that tried to fire some rockets and he actually dropped all of his stores off his wings and he became known as, that was Mitch, the mad bomber.

Mad bomber. Yeah. Oh, he had trouble living that out because everybody thought that he'd screwed up, that he had selected bombs instead of rockets, and that's why all that stuff left. And he swore, he was a very good, very good pilot. Swore, no, no, no, no. But when they got the aircraft back, they checked it all out. Yeah, there was some kind of short in the circuit.

He had everything said exactly correctly. But when he pushed to fire rockets, all the pods dropped off the wing stores, and he'd had to bring it home clean, and they called him Mad Bomber. And then there was Bill Siden. Sliding Siden Siden. Slyden Siden. Heavy rainstorm, slippery runway. His Mohawk slid off the narrow runway, caught a ditch, breaking the landing gear and bending both propellers, earned him the nickname Slyden Siden.

Of course, you were lightfoot. You end up going to survival school. After I was already shot down in the Philippines, which is a typical military scenario. And what that really shows. showed you was how lucky you actually were. How much more trouble I was in than I thought. Yeah, because when I was shot down, as I was like, you read, I'm moving through the jungle away from these guys.

Frank Griswold flew the direction I was supposed to fly. And I said, yeah, I just got these little guys chasing me. I got a mate. I was a track star in high school. Yeah, we got to the Philippines for survival school and they had the small indigenous negritos there teaching survival skills. We couldn't keep up with those guys in the jungle. They just, they move out.

So then when you return. from the Philippines, from that going to that jungle survival school, one of these, there's this new mission, the code named homing pigeon. And it involved signals intelligence, which is always highly classified, which means the interception of enemy transmissions and communications.

And I'm just going to go to the book here. The mission required a top secret security clearance that involved a special in-depth background investigation. The Army expedited the process, the clearance arrived and I got cleared onto this special access program. And the reason you had to do this because Jeff Hillis was going, where is it going on leave or something? Yeah, and he was the only guy in the unit that flew this special mission

with a radio research signals intelligence unit tasking the missions and everybody, oh, Jeff, wow, wow, wow. So now he's going on leave. They read me on to take over the mission. I'm going to see what this gee whiz wow mission is all about. So Jeff left and I flew. each day until he came back. I found it quite boring compared to everything else we did,

but allowed me to smirk as I walked around the company area with an air that everyone should shrink with envy because I was doing such super secret spy stuff. I even got a homing pigeon patch sewn on my party flight suit, just like the one Jeff wore on his. After he returned from leave, we'd walk past each other and give a knowing wink. We were the guys.

This friend of mine before I would He was in the SEAL teams, he was in the SEAL teams. And, you know, we started using lasers to designate targets. Right. And it was a big thing you had to carry. And they were going to the, for the first time, they were tasked with using this laser out on, on the range. And so you had to wear these special glasses that in case anything, any of the laser reflected back. But protect your eyes.

Yeah. Protect your eyes. So they only had one set of the glasses. And he was the operator of this laser thing. And so he they get in position. They set everything up and the aircraft's overhead and he puts on the protective glasses and everyone else has been told pre-brief like, hey, when we're going to go hot with this thing, turn your eyes, look away. Don't look at it. You can injure your eyes.

And so they're out in this, you know, this hide site somewhere and they're looking and he turns on the laser and he's looking through the glass. He's like, oh my God. this is oh my how does it and just echo charles you can't even see it doesn't look like anything let me look let me look let me look he's like no no i got to make sure it's designated yeah well kind of reminds me of the of the homing pigeons yeah this big to-do mission was nothing um fast forward a little bit time past days weeks and months the intensity of combat remained our missions are always exciting often scary yet there was a sense of belonging of purpose We were close in the 131st.

We fought for each other and for those who depended on us. We did a job that we felt in our hearts needed to be done. The war had lost luster at home. Protesters filled America's streets. But there at Fubai, we lived as a brotherhood. We were doing something important, something bigger than self. We were in it together. We faced risks and we raised hell.

Somehow this crazy place had become a world we loved. We were addicted to war. to fear the fright the exhilaration adrenaline rushed in our veins we lived in the moment our senses tingled with intensity of the chaos that spun us around that spun around us war was the most intimate life experience any of us had ever had such a strange pole we all wanted to go home to be with our wives and girlfriends to see our children again and pick up where we had left off we dreamed of it. We sang songs about it. At the same time, we knew we'd miss the fight, the camaraderie, the insanity. But few opted to stay. We only hope we'd adapt. We'd adapt okay

when we got back to the world. This was interesting. One day, our flight surgeon, Doc Miller, asked if I'd like to go with him to weigh. The old imperial capital of Vietnam only eight miles up the road. It's off limits, I said. Not for official business. I've got doctor stuff to do there. There's a requirement for two people in the Jeep. You can ride shotgun literally at least M16 in your hand. Yeah, okay, I'd love to go then. We drove to away. We drove the way. I watched the scenes pass by storing impressions in my mental scrapbook. I'd never been off base in Vietnam, saved the short bus ride in the dark from Benhoa to Longbin post the day I arrived in country. I'd never seen poverty like that in my life. People living in hovels were sitting and

lying on the side of the road, packs of dog shitting and fornicating in the street. So I thought that was pretty uninteresting note. You never even left base because you're a pilot. Why would you leave base? Well, and town was off limits. So this was Fubai, the town outside the gate. There were no young men to be seen. All had gone to war. Soldiers in the South Vietnamese army. Fubai was a place of old people, women and children. Our huchmaids came. from there, as did our barbers, cooks, and labors. This was their world. How blessed by luck of birth.

It was not mine. I thanked God. I've thought about that often in my life as I've traveled the world and been Vietnam, other places. Just we are lucky to be Americans. We are so lucky to be born here. There is no doubt about that. Just as easily I could have been born in Somalia or something and be some tribal person

and just trying to survive to see the next day. I'm lucky, and I will always appreciate how lucky I am. No doubt about that. Fast forward. The end of my year-long combat tour was in sight. I'd go home. South Vietnamese soldiers fought for decades. They'd still be fighting long after I'd gone.

The beginning of the end came with my exile to Saigon. The 131st kept a liaison officer with headquarters in the 7th Air Force. over my strong protests, I left on a C-130 to serve my penance sitting behind a desk. Yeah, that was not, I hated that. We were, as I say in the book, under the operational control of the highest headquarters MACFE, their J-2, their intelligence section determined our missions. But 7th Air Force controlled the air-tasking order, the frag for all the missions that would fly. So we'd have to be integrated into that frag-o, and we kept a liaison officer at that.

seventh air force headquarters and their out-of-country reci shop to be sure that that all worked out well. And on occasion, if they had some mission that they couldn't cover, they'd say, hey, where are you guys flying today? Can you handle this? We'd pick up a recon mission for them. But, yeah, and some guys, I guess, would love that. Go to Saigon, live pretty good down there. It's still not Thailand, but it is the big city in South Vietnam. I hated getting down there, and I couldn't wait to get out. Well, you say in the book, I couldn't wait to leave that place. I was anxious to get back to Fubai and flying.

They must have tired of my repeated messages arguing why it made more sense for me to return to flying than to stay here. I finally got permission. I packed my bag and headed for the Air Force terminal to get a flight to Foo by. Shortly after I returned to flying, I learned that at least one of the pilots in our Mohawk qualification course was lost. He'd gone down on October 3rd flying infrared with the 225th Mohawk company about halfway down the coast of Saigon. Lieutenant Paul Graff and his observer, Sergeant Ken Cunningham, never came back from a mission in the mountains of Central South Vietnam. Officially, reports said they were missing in action.

Most felt they were dead. Their bodies were never recovered. Two weeks later, tragedy struck the 131st. Shortly after midnight, early on Friday, October 17th, I was awakened in the night and told that Captain Larry Booth had not returned from a night slar mission out of Udorn. There wasn't much hope. He'd been operating over the plane of jars.

He'd called at the end of his mission en route to Udorn at 1015. That was his last transmission. High mountains stood between him and safety. If he'd lost an engine, they'd be tough to cross. The area had a few friendly airstrips. Those were treacherous even by day and impossible in the dark of night. The region was remote. If he'd been shot down or crashed, few would have seen.

An extensive search got underway at first. light on October 17th, both Air Force search and rescue and our own spuds out there looking. No trace. I got permission to fly to Udorn at the end of my VR mission later that day. We never found anything. We mourned. We drank. We sang our crazy songs.

And we got on with flying missions. And Larry is another one. They've never found the craft site. Never found the bodies. A few days later, our new commander, Lieutenant Colonel Frank Newman called me into his office with an assignment. reader we've got an mission I want you to take. You will fly infrared. You will fly an infrared bird to Tan Son Noot for a special task, highly classified.

We chose you because you have the needed top secret clearance. You're one of the most experienced IR pilots, and you're the right guy. I want you to take one of the Super C-Smore airplanes. We're sending our best for this mission. Yeah, that was just a newer aircraft with some advanced infrared systems that they wanted to dedicate to that mission. And you go to learn about. this mission, we caught a ride to Mack v. Headquarters, Colonel escorts you through the door,

your Tio stayed outside, and he briefs you. I'm going to bring you on a specially compartmentalized, classified program. This is above top secret, very close hold. Your right seat is being briefed on the sensitivities involved. He will not be briefed on specific mission details. We'll keep his understanding as general as possible. He is only to operate the infrared equipment and never talk to anyone about what you did here. Understood. Yes, sir. You'll be going into Cambodia.

Cambodia is not the same as Laos. Laos is a secret war, yes, but the Laotian government wants us there. They're fighting for their freedom. We're helping their cause. We give them military aid along with CIA advisors and air support, and we're battering the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the process. Cambodia is entirely different. It is an independent, sovereign country.

Prince Sinahook, Cambodia's ruler, allows the North Vietnamese to operate freely in his country, openly using Cambodia's principal port to move supplies to Vietnam. He opposes any American operations on his soil or flights in his skies. That's why the mission is so much more sensitive than anything going on in Laos. No one can know you are there. He went on. After the briefing, you'll be asked to sign documents agreeing to the mission and its risks.

You don't have to sign. You don't have to take this mission. It is not an order. You volunteered for this. I hope your decision won't change. you know what you're asking us what we're asking you to do yeah the vision in my mind is almost like a the mission impossible where they play the tape and that itself distracts that's what i felt like at the time yeah and uh it's pretty kind of cool here as you near the border air call air traffic control and just

say this is army give your tail number going on french leave that's all you need to say going on french leave lets them know to disregard your activities they'll know you are cleared by the highest authority to do what you're about to do. Don't use your spud call sign. Just play an old army so-and-so. That's it. Got it, sir. Great.

And know that you're on your own over there. No one can come to get you if you get in trouble. Understood, sir. So long as my observer is fine with that, we're good to go. We took off right after sunset the next night. Pretty wild, that French leave thing. You had to feel like a badass coming up on the radio, taking French leave. I was excited about that whole thing.

And then it was just kind of weird to go out. there and then actually do that. I'm with the air traffic controller, who we work with air traffic controllers all over the place. And then I say, this is Army so-and-so going on French leave. He just says, Roger. And that's it. And I'm off doing all this strange exotic stuff crossing the border into Cambodia.

Had you ever heard some weird pro word like that? Never. I had no idea. And I questioned. I might have mentioned that in the book. Why am I going from Fubai all the because Tonseneut Air Base is in Saigon all the way in the south to fly this mission in Cambodia? The 73rd Mohawk company is right there in Vung Town near Saigon.

Why don't they get the mission? And it was because we were the special mission unit, Mohawk unit, that flew all the out-of-country weird, bizarre, strange stuff. So, yeah, here we go again. As it turned out, I don't know if I mentioned this or not, that turned out to be an early collection effort of getting information that would be available later for the Cambodian invasion in 1970

when we went across with a major force that Nixon put us across. you execute the mission and all went well no one shot at you and eventually you go back to fu-by yeah flew the mission a few times and then and then went in some strange weather on that last mission back to sagon and then back to fu-by yeah they did i read that right that when the storm hits they give you direction like all right you can come back now oh i could i could actually come back any time i wanted And we'd usually just got out the weather. I don't ever remember doing anything stopping for weather,

even the one flight earlier, and we won't go into it. But it was horrible weather, and I had to get back from Udorn or Ubon to Fubai, and all the Air Force planes were grounded. Nobody was flying. It was horrible, horrible thunderstorms. And I had a guy with me, one of the louder mokes, but I had arranged with some donut dollies who were Red Cross workers, Red Cross volunteers, young ladies,

who did wonderful things to be it up. At any rate, I had arranged to give them a little tour of our Mohawk ramp. So I told Joe, I said, no, we've got to get back to Fubai and through this horrible, horrible thunderstorm we went. So, no, we didn't let weather stop us. In this case, I was done with the mission, I think, and just heading home, and the weather turned awful

and had this bouncing around, which was fine and normal, but then lightning hitting the aircraft. And then we got this thing that was just, there were a few bizarre experiences. this was one, started getting bluish yellow glow around the propellers and the rain hitting the windshield was glowing like phosphorus and some of the rain coming through the vents would hit and sting.

And I didn't, we got through all of that and got back and I described it to someone and then looked it up too and it sounds like it was something they called St. Elmo's fire. It's rather rare. I'd never experience it. But yeah, another bizarre circumstance flying, at night through a storm. It's almost like we're going into the twilight zone or something.

You know, just strange. But yeah, that was my end of that mission and then back to Fubai. Fast forward a little bit. I returned days before the louder milk milks departed. They flew their last flight together on the same mission, the only time they'd been allowed on the same mission together their entire time in the unit. Yeah.

That's wild. Fast forward a little bit more. Mitch and I flew our last mission together, a photo recon over Laos. On landing, throngs of spuds met us on the ramp with cheers, popping corks as they doused us with champagne. We turned in our gear and spent the evening in the spud club. There we nailed our brass plaques to the board, bid our friends farewell, and stumbled late to bed.

We rose early in the morning, shouldered our duffel bags, and climbed aboard the trusty beaver for a ride to Danang. There we boarded a C-130 to Cameron Bay, where we'd catch the Freedom Bird home. We checked into the passenger terminal to find we'd not depart for two days. That meant two days of waiting. It was an impatient time, a somewhat anxious time.

We ate, we drank, and we waited. The night before we left, we both hung our khaki uniforms up in our room. Each had been carefully folded and rolled, but the duffel bags took their toll. We hope the wrinkles might fall out by hanging them overnight. I looked at them side by side. Both had Army Aviator wings pinned above the left breast pocket. Each had a distinguished flying cross ribbon, just. below the wings for some heroic deed. Mine also had the purple heart. I laid my hands on the bed.

I laid on my bed. The back of my head cradled in my hands of my pillow. I took it all in and beamed with pride. We reported early for the manifest call, checked our duffel bags, and waited. I looked at the big, beautiful civilian airline there to take us home. A soldier called my name. I sure you're the designated senior officer, the ranking person. You'll be responsible for the passengers on the flight wait i countered pointed to the major standing minute nearby what about him he outranks me he's a doctor sir the designated senior officer must be a line officer no doctors or lawyers he made an entry by my name on his clipboard real fine i picked a a seat way in the back by a window the rest of the loading followed Mitch found a seat by the window on the other side of the plane across from the aisle

across the aisle from mine the plane filled quickly a young nurse took a seat beside me Mitch leaned forward and looked over. I grinned. I'll close out the book with this. We took off. It was dawn. The pilot made a steep climbing turn out to sea and pointed east toward the rising sun.

I was homeward bound. I thought of what I was leaving, a friend still there and those who'd never return of all that I had done. I'd grown over the past year. I wasn't a boy anymore. The war made me a man. I looked at the world differently, more jaundiced to be sure.

But in the intense cauldron of war, I found a joy that dwelt in every moment lived, whatever lay ahead. I'd grab hold of that joy, bring it close, hold it dear. I'd learned that life is precious and often far too short. No part of life should ever be taken for granted. I love my friends and live my life to the hilt. And I've tried to do that. I certainly have.

And, you know, that's, there's still quite a bit more in the book. Obviously, the 131st continued to fly secret missions for another three years. And eventually, we talked about this earlier, but the Air Force demanded that the rocket pods be pulled off. Right. Which sent you to another aircraft.

the cobra then the 131st supported the Lom San 719 which you mentioned earlier this is a we covered that on podcast number 294 but that incursion eventually

overall 27 Mohawks were lost in combat and 29 spuds these are the pilots and the technical observers right were killed in Vietnam and you memorialize them in the book. And you also do a really awesome kind of mini bio, a post-war mini-bio of all the lead characters in the book.

From Mr. Clean and John Buick Bingham and Max Davidson and Sweet and Sour Loudermaine. And the rest of the team, you talk about what they did after they got done with the war, what they accomplished, what they achieved. It's just an amazing book. and that's an amazing tribute to showing, you know, what people do after war.

You know, recently I got interviewed on, on Veterans Day. And I was just talking about the fact that, you know, there's a narrative, you know, that once the war,

you come home from war, you're all crazy and you got this terrible PTSD and you can't function anymore. And it's like, you know, your book points it out. There's all these guys. They all go on and carry on,

and they stay in the, army they get out of the army they do great things they create things invent things and carry on and and uh you know it's funny we were talking about during the break it's like you're saying you we had a flashing red light in here and i kind of made a joke about you know your ECM going off and you said you know you don't really think about that stuff anymore yeah yeah yeah i don't really think about that stuff anymore yeah yeah and you know you have an occasional uh occasional bad dream or whatever which you know i i had occasional bad dreams when i was when i was 12 yeah yeah for sure so So I have occasional bad dreams now.

And yeah, I think just it was really nice to see, to read through that and see what guys did after the war. And obviously, that includes you. You stayed in the Army for over 30 years. But, you know, you transitioned to the cobra. You ended up getting shot down. Obviously, you did your time as a prisoner of war. But once again, you could have probably milked that a little bit, you know. You need to take a course in how to milk things better.

I've never been a milker, though, and I've never been one to just sit on laurels either. I remember I was being considered for a job in Washington, D.C. at one point, and the guy that was doing the hiring said, he's a former prisoner. I don't want him because he had had experience with another POW who was just, that was his thing. Well, I've been a POW, so the Army owes me, the world owes me. But I was never like that. And I'd never, this is not going to sound right with the books, but I'd never been one to look back, which is probably why I didn't even write that first book until 2016.

For 40 years. Yeah. Because it was always looking forward. What's ahead? What's the challenge ahead? Let me get on with it. And that's been my impetus now. Yeah, these books have caused me to relive things and look back.

But it's because I thought they were important stories to tell. And, yeah, they're my stories. But as I said, in the first one, that's also the story of the experience of the southern POWs. Piot was captured in the South. This latest book on Flying Mohawks, we dared to fly. Sure, it's my story, and I was in the middle of it,

and it had some horrendous moments. But as much or more than that, I wanted it to be the story of that unit, that special unit, so the world would know about the 131 spuds and about those guys that I flew with. That's been my intent. Yeah, and then, I mean, you carried on your career. You are a squadron commander, you're a Italian commander, you're a brigade commander.

You end up getting your PhD in history, which is what makes you write a lot of detail in these books, which you seem a little bit cautious about doing. But I think it's awesome. So what's the next book going to be? Are we going to go back to pre, you know, pre that first tour? What's the next book? What are you working on? No more.

Vietnam is done. This is now in three books. It's my Vietnam trilogy. Okay. No more Vietnam. I am working on a book right now on the 24th Infantry Division in Operation Desert Storm, the first Gulf War. And if you remember Desert Storm, we were trying to get the Iraqis out of Kuwait and successfully waged that war to not just be throwing American manpower against the entrenched Iraqi positions in Kuwait. General Schwarzkopf came up with the idea to move forces west.

We had the 18th Corps far to the west. and the 18th Corps did a envelopment maneuver actually that became known as the left hook for the First Gulf War. The 24th Division was at the spear point of that left hook. 101st Airborne did the longest air assault in U.S. history, and then the 24th Infantry Division did the armoured, mechanized armor attack that did that left hook. So I'm focusing on the 24th Infantry Division and the left hook, and have been doing a lot of research to date. I've finally started putting pen to paper,

but up until now it's been mostly research to get ready to write this. And interestingly, I mean, these guys were in that war, and particularly looking at the 24th Infantry Division, I've interviewed the division commander, his brigade commanders, many of the battalion commanders, key staff. Most of the people I've talked to were lieutenant colonels,

colonels, majors at the time, I don't know what percent, but the vast majority of these guys are retired three and four-star generals now. And it's just been my honor and privilege to do Zoom call sessions and phone conversations to interview them and get the information I need to write this book.

What was the original hook that got you interested in the 24th Inventry Division left hook in the first Gulf War? Duffy. There's a whole story behind this. But no, John Duffie. Duffy had talked to General Retired McCaffrey and said, hey, that left hook was quite a maneuver. You're, you know, America's fighting general, probably the greatest fighting general since Patton in World War II.

And wouldn't it be great if Bill Reader wrote a book about that? And so it was decided. I mean, that was where the idea sparked from. But as soon as I heard it and had the honor to talk to General McCaffrey and interview him and lay out what I might do with the it's really been an exciting, exciting trip since then, and that's where I'm going with this. And how far along are you with that one? I'm done with the interview phase. I'm got the outline of the story.

I've got a lot of chapter one done and some of chapter two done is where I am. So we've got, yeah, we got a few months of work ahead of us. Awesome. So does that get us up to speed? That brings every, that's where we're at. thing up to speed. Yeah, I thank you for having me on the on the podcast and and again. Yeah, each of these books I think tells an important story that's, that's worth reading. You can buy these books anywhere, you know, anywhere you buy books. We'll link them to our website here.

You have a Facebook page. I do. That is the, I was, I was very hopeful opening up, doing research that maybe you had wandered into other areas of the interwebs and social media but you haven't there's no uh william reader junior dot com there's no uh you know light foot reader you know or anything like that maybe we'll have to get something like that set up for you you are the social media that you are on is william reader and it's it's a little easy to find if you put william reader junior right and then it then you can find you and um yeah get these books and yes read them in reverse order uh i actually went back and and listen to the podcasts as and then read through the books again,

not the whole books, but I was reviewing the books. And these are just incredible books. They really are incredible books. And, uh, you get details in there like John Duffy bringing a freaking aluminum beach chair on this opera.

I just, you know, the first time when I read the book, I was like, that's really, that's really crazy. And then sure enough. He almost gets killed.

Yeah. And his, his lowest point on the whole op is the day that, then they're getting hit by one. 130 millimeter enemy artillery shells. People are dying. There's dead bodies all across the battlefield. And something hits and blows up his lawn chair.

And he is so upset about that. And then clearly, you know, the last book of the trilogy, this is like Star Wars, Echo Charles. Yes. Echo Charles, you know, he's a Star Wars type individual over there. To a degree. Sure. But because those movies came out in all random order, right?

Like if you were to watch them in order, it would be not the way they were, came out. Yeah. So similar thing, but by the time you get to through the valley, man, what an incredible book that is. And what you went through as a prisoner of war and coming up through the jungle camps. And, you know, I was reading through that book again,

and they originally told you these, these, whatever, prison guards, they say, you need to be ready for this 11-day walk. It's going to take 11 days. I recommend you make it. and it's going to be really hard. And at this point, you're thinking to yourself, you weren't sure if you were able to make it 11 days.

Yeah, I didn't say how I did. All kinds of injuries. You were starving. You were broken. You were infected. All this kind of horrible stuff. So you prepare. You sat out on this 11 day walk and it ends up being like a four month.

That was over three months, just over three months. And several hundred miles up the Hoachman Trail, climbing up mountains and winding around and people dying. Because, yeah, six. I was with 25 South Vietnamese presidents. and one other American. Before we completed that journey and I got to Hanoi, six of those South Vietnamese had died or been executed because he couldn't keep up on the march and the other American Wayne Finch died and I made it. Yeah, it's, I am so lucky and so blessed. I thank the good

Lord just about every single day. In fact, every day of my life I do get out of bed and look outside and just tell myself it's a wonderful day. My poor kids when they were little, they had to put up with that. I'd go wake them up for school and I'd say, Ted, Chelsea, get up. It's a beautiful day. You know, we live up in Washington State. Sometimes it's drizzling rain and dark, but it's still a beautiful day. It's still a beautiful day. Yes, it is indeed.

Echo Charles, you got any questions? No. Oh, what's the Jolly Green Giant? Oh, it's a green man and a TV ad for peas and corn. You may have sitting there. So he's saving you guys in. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Jolly Green Giant was a large Air Force rescue helicopter.

Oh, helicopter. Yeah, with the pair of rescue guys, and they'd go out with usually A1 propeller-driven Skyrater support and rescued down crews. Just very heroically, we lost a lot of Jolly Greens in the war, and a lot of people got killed

doing that, both Jolly Greens and the A-1s. So cool to see you again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me back, yeah. If I get this other book done and I'm still able to travel, I turn eight. 80 next year. Can you believe that? Well, we have a rule on your fourth podcast. If necessary, we come to you.

We'll make that out. You might have a deal. Come out, come out to the farm and ride a horse while you're up there. Sounds awesome. Sir, it's just such an utmost honor to be able to talk to you again. And thank you for sharing these incredible stories and these incredible lessons learned and for your service, for your sacrifice, for risking your life over and over again to to push the war effort to help troops on the ground. You're suffering as a prisoner of war. And then your leadership throughout your 30-year career

where you never rested on your laurels. You just kept, didn't milk anything. Just thank you for all of that. And for writing these books that chronicle, you know, like you said, not just your story, but the heraldic men that served and memorializing the lives of those men who did not come home.

Thanks to you, we will remember them. Thank you. And with that, Colonel William Reeder has left the building. Obviously, such an honor to have him here and be able to talk to him and lucky to be able to talk to him, as he pointed out. And we're all lucky to be here, as a matter of fact. So let's make sure that we do not waste our time. In fact, let's be getting after it. So go out there, get after it.

When you get after, you need some fuel. Check out joccofuel.com. We have the best products available, clean fuel for whatever you're doing. Protein, energy drink, hydration system, joint warfare, super krill. Take that stuff. Take it. It's going to help you in everything that you do. Jockofuel.com.

Check it out. You can get it at joccofuel.com. You can also get it at Walmart. You can get it at vitamin shop, GnC, military commissaries, Afees, Haniford, dash stores in Maryland, Wakefern, ShopRite, H.E.B. Down in Teas, Mier, up in Midwest, Wegmans, Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, Shields. You know where we can get it. Get out there.

And if you got a gym of some kind and you want to have JockoFuel there, email JFsails at joccofuel.com, we can hook that up. Also, look, these guys fought communism and sacrificed in order to fight communism. And then communism is still alive. And people in America are paying for communism to enslave people and prepare to try, and take over the world. So don't do that. Don't buy products that fuel

the enemy or that fuel our adversaries. Instead, go to origin USA.com and get American-made products. Jeans, geese, t-shirts, hoodies, boots. What else?

Bills. Belts. Wallets. Bealts. Workout shorts hunt gear just just go there and check it out Origin USA.com OriginUSA.com anti-communist Anti-slavery

pro freedom That's what we're doing originusa.com check it out Don't forget about jacostore.com So we can get your apparel representing the path Discipline equals freedom good we all like that one That's a good it's a good good good is a good thing to adopt, you know, when you run into, you know, those trials and tribulations. Anyway, you're going to represent on the path.

That's where you get your stuff. Jocco store.com. Also, a short locker on jocco store.com still. New design every month. A little bit outside the box. But you get one new design every month. Subscription scenario, online jacquistore.com. Also check out Coloradocraftbeef.com and primalbeef.com.

If you need steak, which you kind of do. Yes, sir. Kind of need steak. Check out. Colorado craft beef.com, primal beef.com, awesome stakes, awesome people, awesome companies. Check them out. Also, subscribe to the podcast. Also, check out Jocko Underground.

Jock Underground.com. We also have several YouTube channels, Jocko podcast. Jocko Podcast official, Jock Fuel, Origin USA. Check out those. Eshlon Front has one, too. Eshlon Front. Check out that YouTube. Psychological Warfare, Flipside Canvas.com.

Dakota Meyer, making cool stuff to hang on your wall. Books. William Reader, Jr. We Dare to Fly. Read them in this order. We dare to fly. Extraordinary Valor and Through the Valley. That's going to tell you about William Reader's experiences in Vietnam.

Check those out. Also, I've written a bunch of books if you're interested. Not just adult books, but kids' books as well. If you want to get your kids on the warrior kid path, check those out. Also, we have a consultancy, leadership consultancy, where we solve it. problems through leadership. Check out echelonfront.com. If you or your organization needs help with leadership, go to echelonfront.com. You can bring us into your organization. You can come to one of our events. Our events always sell out. The next one we have coming up is San Diego

February 23rd through the 25th. So if you want to come to one of our events, go to ashlandfront.com. Also, we have an online training platform, extreme ownership.com. We have magic to teach you. Magic skills. Jedi mind trick type magic? No, magic. It's not Jedi mind tricks. It's not mind tricks.

It's actually functional maneuvers that are going to help you, help your team, help the people around you, and it's going to make your life better and your business better and your family better. So if you want to learn the magic tricks that we have to teach, go to extreme ownership.com to help you every aspect of your life. Also, 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.org.

There's also Heroes and Horses.org, Micah Fink, heading up to the wilderness with our veterans helping them find their soul. And Jimmy May's organization Beyond the Brotherhood.org. Check that one out as well. want to connect with us. Colonel Reeder, check out his Facebook page, William Reader Jr. Also, you can check out jocco.com and social media at Jocco Willink and Echoes at Equitral's. Just be careful because there's a demonic algorithm there that's going to grab your soul and waste it. So be careful.

Thanks once again to Colonel William Reader for joining us. Thank you for your service, sir. Thank you for the example you set as a soldier, as a leader, and as a human being. We appreciate it. Thanks to the men and women in the service out there, in the uniform, with a salute to the aviation community, the pilots, the air crews, the maintenance teams that win the wars in the sky. We thank you all for your service. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol secret service, all other first responders. Thank you for your sacrifice to keep us safe at home and to everyone else out there. Let's just remember those words from Colonel William Reeder

Life is precious and often far too short No part of it should ever be taken for granted. No live your life To the Hilt. That's the plan. So go get after it a And until next time, Zekko and Jocko. Out.