Jocko Podcast - 512: Into the Delta. Charlie Platoon, SEAL Missions in Vietnam. With Hal Kuykendal and Tom Boyhan

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

>Join Jocko Underground< From boat insertions under monsoon rains to surprise assaults on hidden VC camps, this episode takes you deep into the Mekong Delta with SEAL veterans Tom Boylan and Hal McNulty. They reveal the challenges of intelligence, leadership, and survival—plus the hard lessons carried into life, family, and business long after the war.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko Podcast number 512 with me, Jocco Willink. One of the few daytime operations we went on took place on Dung Island. We got information that the VC were operating a factory that built junks. We went there to blow the thing up. Mike Thornton was driving the Boston whaler, and as usual, we wanted to get in there quietly. We were in this little bitty canal that went right down alongside the junk factory. We were running on a single engine to make less noise, but it was really hard to drive the whaler when you didn't have enough speed.

They just didn't go where you wanted them to. We kept running into the brush. And finally, since we were making so much racket, we decided to gas it and get on down there. We gassed it, and we were just going balls to the walls. I saw the VC at the junk factory, and they were not running for cover. They were just looking up the canal,

like they heard something and they were thinking what in the hell is that they were shocked when they saw us and started running everywhere but before we got out of there we ended up in a big gunfight we detonated the explosives we had and just blew the hell out of everything there so that right there is an excerpt from a book called the men behind the trident which is a compilation of stories from seals in the Vietnam War. That particular section was written by a man by the name of Hal Kirkendahl, who was a member of SEAL Team 1,

Charlie Platoon in Vietnam, which is a legendary platoon, including a legendary group of seals that greatly contributed to the proud history and the feared reputation of the SEAL teams. These are the stories that I grew up on. This is when I was asked a little while during an interview if I could go back in any time in history and do anything in history. Where would I go?

And I said without hesitation, I'd be a frogman seal in Vietnam. Well, that legendary history was written by guys like the guys in Charlie Patoon, SEAL Team 1. And it's an honor to have two of those seals here with us tonight. Hal Kirkendal and Tom Boyan, the, and Hal wrote the section that I opened with, and they're here tonight to share their experiences and lessons learned from combat. So gentlemen, it's an honor to have you guys here.

I've been reading about you guys for, I guess, maybe 35 years. So it's awesome to sit down with you guys and talk to you. It's an honor to be here. Thank you for having it. And we're here just a little, Side note, we're here because there's the UDT Seal Museum is opening in San Diego, California. And so you're in town. Tom, you're in town for that.

Yes. Hal used live here in San Diego. So we did a little event last night and went and checked out the amazing UDT Seal Museum here in San Diego. It's opening up October 4th. There's already a UDT Seal Museum down in Fort Pierce, Florida. If you haven't been there, you should absolutely go there. It's amazing. It's also in Fort Pierce, Florida,

which is a little hard to get to. This one is right in downtown San Diego, and it's awesome. So they've got it here. They did an incredible job. It's incredible tribute to the history of the SEAL teams and the underwater demolition teams and the scouts and Raiders and the NCDU. So everybody go check out the Navy SEAL Museum

in San Diego, California. So you guys are, like I said, said, you guys are why I joined the SEAL teams. You know, you guys are the people that did the things that made me want to join the SEAL teams. So I guess let's get into a little information about you all and kind of where you grew up and where you're from. So Tom, I guess you're a little older, right? Yeah, I'm 81. Okay. How old are you? 76. Okay. So that's why you got a head start on them going, well, you ended up at the Naval Academy. That's right. So how did you end up at the Naval Academy? So my dad was in the Merchant Marine prior to World War II, and then he was in the Army during World War II.

And in high school I was looking at the Military Academy, the Naval Academy, and the Coast Guard Academy. I said, what do you think, which one? And he says, go in the Navy, he says you'll always have a clean bunk and good chow. That didn't work out so well. Didn't work out with Charlie. How's that clean bunk on Dung Island? And so you end up going to the Naval Academy? Yes.

And what year was it that you got there? 1963? 62. 62. So Vietnam's not really going yet. I didn't know anything about it. I've had guys that were at the Naval Academy in 1965 and they didn't know anything about Vietnam. You know, so...

By 65, I knew about it. And the Bridget Thanwa, which the Air Force and the Naval Aviation was trying to knock out, that was in the horizon. So you were definitely hearing it while you... Oh, yeah. Yeah. And did you try for the jet pipeline? Is that right?

Yeah. You wanted to be a fighter pilot? Yes. And then what happened with that? that. We have to go warts and all right now. Okay. So I went down and went through basic training, was selected for the jet pipeline, did my carrier quals in the T2B, went to Kingsville, did my carrier quals in the TF9, and I was two hops away from getting my wings when I had an accident. I, brought a plane in with one main gear hung up,

and I broke the squadron safety record, which very much pissed off the CO, the squadron, and so I got kicked out. Dang. And you had know, so what did you know about the SEAL teams? Because SEAL teams got started in 1962. You started at the Naval Academy in 1962, but Draper Kaufman was what, the superintendent at the Naval Academy?

He was the superintendent, my last year or two, at the Academy. And I knew about his involvement with NCDU and UDT. And I knew he had a Navy Cross. I didn't realize he had two Navy crosses. And you said Wards, I had a company officer at the Naval Academy who had been enlisted in the Navy and then gone through the Naval Academy. And he had told us he had been in UDT. Now it subsequently turned out, and I checked this out with DJ Shipley, he was not telling truth.

Oh, dang. But we thought he was a cool guy because he gave us seniors unlimited liberty, which was against the school rules at the time. But my primary reason for going to the team, though, was just double hazardous duty pay. I mean, after getting flight pay and training. Oh, that's right. And that used to be a huge difference. Like, I remember, I know I've talked to guys where their base pay was like $150 a month and airborne pay was like another $100 a month.

So it was like doubling your pay. So you saw that. Another thing to do. And I also didn't like shipboard duty. Check. Yeah. You were telling you wrote some notes about going to talk to the detail or in D.C. Oh, yeah.

Sounded like that was a positive experience, too. So they kicked me out, and I knew I was going to go to a ship. So I flew up to D.C. on my own dime and got in front of the detailer, and he said, oh, I got a great deal for you. I got a destroyer out of Pearl Harbor. Great duty. You'll love it. He said, no, I want to go to the training unit.

and he says you'll wash out you won't make it and it took me about two hours to convince the guy he'd get a phone call he'd do his business and i'd get right back at him and uh i just kept working on him and he finally finally his parting words was when you wash out you won't be going to hawaii you'll be going to someplace like Alaska. And what class were you in then? So I was in class 45. Okay. And we were Augment class.

We started training right after class 44 finished Hell Week. Okay. And why did it need more seals or something? Zumault was in Vietnam and had said we need more seals on these rivers. So they had ramped up. and that's why they started putting more classes through. I talked to some old time who said the first time that they decided they wanted to put more than one or two classes a year.

They said, well, it can't be done. And he said, what, they figured out real soon that it could be done. And the only thing was the personnel pipeline hadn't caught up with the ramp up. So we only started with like 40-some guys. I think we had maybe started out with maybe six, maybe seven boat crews. And then we paired down real quick. We started Hell Week with 12 guys. Dang.

Dang. Did you even have two boats? Yeah, you must have two boats for a little while. Yeah, we had two boats. We had two boats for the whole thing. but we finish hell week with eight guys. Two guys got rolled back for medical reasons, and then we got a roll back from class 44, so we graduated nine.

So what year is this now? Was it like 1960? It was just 68. Oh, that's right, because you started Naval Academy in 62, graduated in 66, a couple years in the flight pipeline. So now it's 68. So now the Vietnam War is going on. Oh, yeah.

And you guys all know. Ted of 68 was going on. while we were going through training. So you guys all know where you're going. Yeah. And it's a riverine, like coastal environment. There's no doubt. Yeah.

Now, at that time, they, I know it, I know that certain times they didn't take guys from BUDs to SEAL team. You had to go to UDT first. Well, they, they, I'm thinking it was probably in the late 30s classes. Mm-hmm. They started taking guys right from Buds into SEAL team. Got it. Because I know Bob Kerry went directly from Buds to SEAL Team.

And my classmate at the Naval Academy, Gary Gray, he was in class 44. He went directly to SEAL Team from Buds. But they had just commissioned UDT 13 in June or July of 68. So when our class graduated, all nine of us went to UDT 13. Oh, okay. And when you get to UDT 13, what is your, are you immediately just put into a UDT platoon and you're getting ready to go to Vietnam? How'd that work out?

Yeah, we had to train up, do the operational readiness inspection in order to deploy. And I got tasked with the sub-ops platoon. And what did that consist of? Well, at that time, the grayback was the operational submarine. I don't remember the sub we trained on here off San Diego, but we did your lockouts and through the Ford Escape Trunk and popped up IBSs and then practiced being snagged by the periscope and all that stuff. And then...

Were you sitting in the bus? boats banging pipes together so the sonar could find you? I know I had to do that because I was a communicator and that's how you communicate with the subs hanging over the side of your zodiac banging pipes together. Or banging on the tanks. Yeah. But then when we deployed, we were in Subic and we were literally on the pier, getting ready to load stuff into the submarine to go.

go out and chief of the boat came up to me and he says we just discovered about a 12 inch crack in the pressure hall we're not going out and so

we were it's like all dressed up no place to go I was chafing at the bit and when Bob Peterson who was the Exo Team 13 we had a morning muster and he says we're They're looking for volunteers for SEAL team.

I was the first one to step forward and say, send me. Nice. So now, Hal, let's get a little background on you. You grew up, what, Texas? Yes. And then how did you end up joining the Navy? It was kind of an embarrassing story that... Like I said, we're doing warts and all.

I was in the first semester of college, and a long-time girlfriend broke up with me. And so I decided to punish her. So I drove over 30 miles away to Palestine, Texas, to the recruiter's office, and I wanted to be a Marine. And the Marine was out to lunch, so the Navy recruiter said, well, you're joining a Navy. So I did.

I was very impulsive. And so I went home. My mother and my sisters and siblings were crying. My dad tells my mother, he says, oh, hell, Alice. And this war, the safest place to be is in the Navy. Well, so then I went to, you know, boot camp. Did you know anything about the SEAL teams when you joined the Navy? No, I'd heard something about Frogman, but I didn't know anything about SEAL teams.

But my dad knew about a frogman because he was a commanding officer of a little subchaser. And so he was around Saipan and all those areas. And so he saw all these frogmen clearing the beaches for Marines coming in. And he basically, you know, I'm going to A school now, radio and school and all that other stuff. And what happened is the SEALs sent over two instructors that did a film, showed it. And again, I'm impulsive. I've never thought about joining a sealant. In fact, I remember sitting there wondering, I wonder why in hell anybody does that.

But anyway, they asked if anybody wanted to, you know, try a screening test. And so the guy next to me said, well, let's do it. I said, oh, okay, well, I did it. And so what happened is I passed a screening test. Did the other guy? He did. Okay. Rob Wogsland.

He passed it. And so, but what happened is, so they told me I needed to, you know, there was a class starting up in Coronado and I needed to, you know, get over there. Well, I could, the Navy told me, well, I'm sorry, you know, we've already got, you're going to Yucca. So I get on a telephone, like a pay phone, and I call, I thought the training unit was at North Island, so I called North Island information, asked them to connect me. And they gave me the number of the amphibase.

So I get on the phone, I went through about three, I think, trainees who were answering the phone. And basically, finally, a lieutenant named Dan Spurk, he was in charge of the training unit at the time. He says, well, I could get you over here. I could get you a speed letter. But he said, it's not worth it. I said, why not? He said, well, didn't you say you're a radio man? I said, yes.

They all quit. You're sitting the hook. And I said, I'll guarantee you I won't quit. I mean, I don't know if I can swim. You know, I grew up in Texas. there weren't any polo, water polo teams or swim teams. So I said, and I told him, I said, and I'm not sure I'll jump out of an airplane, but I will never ever quit.

And he said, well, I will promise you this. If you get through training, you'll damn sure jump out on an airplane. So he, I would love to find him, you know, and thank him for writing that speed letter and getting me over there. otherwise I'd have been out on you know gray monsters floating around in the ocean how was buds well we it was tough you know uh olivera and moi we've heard some we've heard some good stories about them so by the way i was raised uh you know church going catholic and uh this guy comes out walks out, it's Olivera. And on his name tag, it says, God. I remember thinking, what have I

got myself into here? But anyway, and then mostly Moy stayed on. But, you know, those are two very interesting people. And of course, it's great to still see Moy come to reunions. And he's got to, he was tough, but he had a great sense of humor. really liked him. Yeah, apparently he's the one that invented the bell or made the bell a thing. Yes, that's right. So did you have the bell in your class, Tom? No. No bell. No. You and you quit. You had to go, that was when it was still on the amphibase. Okay. And you went to the back door, the little hut where the instructors were and you pounded on the back door. Yeah. And apparently Moy thought that if it was made more public, you would, would, would,

less people would quit out of the shame of having to ring the bell. Yeah. And that's why he brought it on, made it into a thing. It wasn't a big enough speed bump. Because the range still is same. People still ring that bell. And your class, did I get this right, that your class was like the last class that was the UDT replacement class as opposed to called Buds or was you're the first buzz?

We were the first Buds class. And I got the pictures to prove it. I showed it to crudad, Crawford because he said, I heard this. Is this true? I sent it down to him and he says, yeah, you're right. He was my first X-O at Team 1. Ah, wow. You know, by the way, you asked how the training was. The short answer to that is we started with a 129 gung-hole people who were very, very fit and we graduated with 19. So it was pretty tough.

It's weird when you think that every single one of those, what did you say, 140? 129. Every one of those 129, every single one of them thinks they're going to make it 100%. And they sign up for the Navy and they show up at that thing and they tell their girlfriend they're going to be a frog man and it gets cold and miserable. And they ring that bell. So you get done with training, but you went straight to Seal Team 1. Yes. So there were a number.

So I went to Seal Team 1, Mike LaCaz went to Seal Team 1, Mike Thornton went to Seal Team 1, Wayne Hampton went to Seal Team 1, and Kenny Meyer. Kenny Meyer. She had a pretty good crew of guys. Yeah, we did. and and this is when you guys link up there are do you have to go to sbi yes okay do you guys go to sbi together no so you you were ahead of him yeah okay so yeah we went to you know after training we went to what's now called sbi called cadry then and so we did that but i mean you know

obviously went to jump school and serious school and all that kind of stuff too so you did a jump out of an airplane. Yeah, I did. Okay, so then you go to SBI. It was called Cadre then. Yeah. So, Cadre, then it became SBI, then it became STT, and now it's called SQT. But it's, it was run by SEALs at the SEAL team.

Absolutely. And do you guys remember any important lessons you learned when you were at SBI? Well, that's, actually, it was the first live fire with other guys that around, not on just a range. Yeah. And learning how to drink beer out at an island. But we also, I remember, you know, we had all those canals out there. So they'd get us in boats, you know, just IBSs and go down at night and just get a feel for what it was like to be in Vietnam.

They also, they had a situation. They had these helicopters come in. And so they would talk like a man's down. And of course they picked Mike Thornton to be down because he was big. And so the helicopter doesn't stop. It's like moving. And we're myself and a couple other people carrying supposedly dead or wounded Mike Thornton. We're running and trying to chase down the helicopter anyway.

So we did a lot of things like that, but it was a great place because you could, as Tom said, you know, you could call in, you know, helicopters, jets, whatever. And so it was a really good place. But the one thing that I remember thinking when I was there, they would show us all these type of operations that we're going to do. And they would say that, you know, we're going to be going in these hooches. at night and find him some province chief or district chief or whoever and we're going to like you know take him with us and i remember thinking i don't actually believe we're going to be doing that well but

it wasn't too long before that's what we were doing but i just remembered these things that they were telling us we're going to do i'm thinking damn it's going to be hard to live through this i think so So anyway, the great news is about being a seal is that we were really, really well trained. You know, I started boot camp in March of 68, and I finished in somewhere around, you know, summer, you know, June or something, and then, you know, I went to, I went over to the, to the teams. and so then we just trained and trained and trained and trained. And so anyway, I was always very appreciative of being well trained. When I read some books like the class of 66, these guys from West Point,

when some of the officers had written a book, and when I read that book about how they had a whole bunch of people that had been drafted maybe gone through six weeks of training or something. I mean, when I read the book, I'm turning a page, and I'm thinking I might have, I might have just walked off and said, I'm getting out of here. I mean, I've never been a quitter,

but I was thinking, this would be awful. So it was a wonderful thing about SEAL team. We did dangerous operations, but we were so well trained, it really made a difference. Yeah, and also you had, guys that were doing the same job that you were about to do from Vietnam coming right back running the training and setting it up you know we would do that when I was running training

you know we'd be getting reports of what was happening three days ago on the battlefield and when the enemy would make a tactical adjustment we would add that into training so that the guys were as ready as they could possibly be and I think that's something that's always been always been part of the kind of the core ethos of the seal teams is to train as hard as you possibly can. And obviously it starts in buds, but it's the same thing when you get out to Nileland or any of these training sites. You are going to train excruciatingly hard to be prepared for the worst case scenarios. Then that's the way it's got to be.

Yep. So now, Tom, you end up getting assigned platoon commander. Yes. And how did you feel about that? you must have been pretty pretty excited about that oh yeah you know from the time that I was in team 13 and then to come over to seal team yeah I was chomping at the bit and then uh because you basically had like you went on you did an entire workup sub lock in lockout you go all the way on deployment you're getting ready to go do your missions sub breaks down and you and they say

hey we're not doing anything yeah so you're freaking crushed yeah And, you know, after getting kicked out of aviation, a sub-breakdown. Your naval careers, not what you wanted to be at this point. I was definitely chomping at the pit. And back in those days, in Team One area, at the end of the hallway, you had the captain's office, the X-O's office, ops office. and then there was a big office that was called the training office. And they had like these almost floor to ceiling whiteboards that they wrote on, okay, here's the guys going to the different training schools.

Here's the Patoons that are being formed up. And I can remember going in there and see, oh, there's my name, Charlie Patoon. And yeah, I want to get after it. And I, I, because I was my academy classmate, Gary Gray, who was in the class ahead of me, I, I'd plumbed his knowledge. There was a couple of other junior officers who I was friends with, yeah, what do we do? Who should I go after? And so I don't, I don't remember how Enoch got in the platoon, whether that was a Captain Shib,

thing or but he got in there and and then i know i did go after like our point man salano and and a few other guys that they said yeah these would be good guys to have yeah that's a very similar thing in the seal teams now they have something called we all i don't know what they really call but everyone calls it the wiji board and it's it's basically a big white board but it's a magnetic board and everybody in the team has a magnet with their name on it a little picture of them and it's usually in the command master chief's office and so they'll organize those platoons so there's been times i've heard that people have gone in there and moved magnets on that board to get people they wanted it sounds like you were doing some of that activity a little bit so okay so you mentioned

barry enoch and am i correct and do i understand this correctly that he was not a platoon he was not a chief yet no he was not he was first class but he was going to serve as you were chief or did you have another guy that was your platoon chief. No, we did not have a platoon chief for that, for that platoon. So he's your senior enlisted guy. Right. And he's coming from, he was a plank owner at Seal Team 1. Plank owner.

He'd been to Vietnam already. He's a couple of times. Silver star recipient, a bronze star recipient. So he's a, he's an experienced guy with an awesome reputation. And he'd been an instructor, so he'd put a bunch of guys through. Yeah, he was well known throughout the teams and very respected. You end up with a guy named Doc Brown. He's your corpsman.

Yes. Now, is Doc Brown, I know that there was some corpsman that didn't go to buds, but were that integrated with SEAL teams, and they're considered SEALs and no one questions it. Actually, most of the corpsmen had not gone through training. There were only like a handful of guys' corpsmen that had gone through training. So was he, had he been through training? No, he had not been through training.

He'd done a tour with the Marines in Vietnam, and then he'd done a tour with a platoon in Vietnam. Okay, yeah. And just to make it clear, I know talking to many people, like you considered those guys just as much as Frogmen as anybody else. Oh, absolutely. So you have this guy, Doc Brown, and then you get your new guys, which you went through some of the new guys, but you get Hal.

You get Mike Laques, am I saying that right? LaCaz. Lacos, Wayne Hampton, and Mikey Thornton. Yep. So there's your new guys. You get a couple guys from UDT-13. Yes. Mike Sands and Joe, how do you say his name?

Twittic. Twittick. Oh, I never would have guessed that one. Well, it's also pronounced de Verdeck. Okay, that's what I would have guessed. Lou LaCross? Ludecrosse. Ducrose.

who was he'd made several tours uh rich salano and rich doyle these guys are all your experienced seals your kind of experience what we we'd call these guys the kind of the e5 mafia or the shooters you know these are kind of guys that are going to get to work done yes uh your a o ic your assistant platoon commander is john dougar dougar and he's a guy that went to cornell Yeah, smart guy. So he's smart, but he already did a tour with the UDT-11. Yes. And another good guy that you knew and you picked out.

Yeah. So this is your crew. And, you know, reading in the books that you guys, like, clicked, which is awesome. It doesn't always happen. That's true. I had three platoons. I got to say Charlie Petun was the best. of the litter.

Sometimes, you know, there's something that happens called a stacked platoon where, you know, they'll take and pick and they want this platoon and, you know, whatever. The platoon chief's a guy that knows, has good connections. He'll pull all these, all the best, you know, heavy hitters into a platoon. And sometimes it's a great platoon and sometimes it's a total disaster

because when he pulls into the platoon is a bunch of people with big egos and they can't get along. Now, so you guys got a great crew. You start working together. Now, Tom, you had been doing some assessments, and we were talking about this a little bit before we started recording. But the records of what the platoons were doing in Vietnam and the operations that they were conducting,

they were all recorded on what, little index cards? A little three by five cards. Every after-action report was referenced as a barn dance number. I don't know. That went back to the very beginning. So a barn dance was an operation and you had a number and you preceded the number with the letter of the platoon. You know, the West Coast guys had lettered platoons,

the East Coast guys had numbered platoons. And in the Intel was kind of a side thing. So in the electronics shop, there was a file cabinet that had these three-by-five cards of all the operations that have been on since 1967. How much detail did they have on these cards? Very little detail. It was basically, you know, date, insertion, extraction grid, results, and a barn dance number. I think that was about it.

You can't get much on a three-by-five. No. And you, but you started going through those. I took the time. I went in there with a yellow legal pad. And there was, it was over like 3,000 ops. And I just went through and I had a little grid and check off. Did they make contact?

No contact. And it statistically turned out that 30% of the time they made contact. And 70% of the time, they didn't. It was called negative intel is still intel, right? Yeah, yeah. You know there's no bad guys here. But I'm thinking maybe you didn't like the sound of doing 30% only contact 30% of the time. It just set me up in terms of context of how things were going.

Because, you know, over a beer, if you listen to the stories, it sounded like every time you went out, you got in this giant gun battle. And obviously that was not the case. Now, Barry Enoch wrote a book, and the book is called Teammates, Seals at War, and it's a fantastic book. I've got three books sitting here today, the men behind the Trident, Teammate Seals at War, and UDT Seal Operations at Vietnam. These are books that I had for a long time, and you can look at them. Let's see how old they are.

But he goes into some pretty good detail about what your workup was like. and, you know, we kind of already talked about the fact that seals trained as hard as we possibly can. And one thing that's interesting is it's, you know, the platoon has to push themselves. And, you know, at 10 o'clock at night, you can either say, hey, do we do this again and do another iteration or do we, you know, go have some beers and go eat dinner? And it's real easy to say, let's, you know, have some beers and go eat dinner as opposed to let's do this a couple more times and make sure we get it right. And that's really the difference between what will end up being a good platoon to what will end up being an average platoon. And it sounds like you guys would do the extra iterations,

push yourselves really hard. And Barry Enoch goes into some significant detail about your workup. And some of the, again, just taking things that were happening in Vietnam, things that he'd experienced in Vietnam, and applying those to your training. Is there a cadre that's running your training for you guys? No. So it's just you guys running it yourselves.

That's one thing that changed over the years is eventually they put a training cell in the SEAL team and then I guess that's what cadre was, right? The cadre was that. It was. Yeah. But eventually they put a training cell in the SEAL teams and then eventually all the SEAL team training cells

got confirmed together or put together in one big group called trade at and there's a trade at west coast and there's a trade at east coast and the trade at would then train the seal teams and I think at that point you kind of needed it because you had more platoons, more teams you needed to run some more centralized training there's

you needed to get control of ranges ordering ammunition there's just a bunch of logistics that we could scale when we brought it all together and it plus it made it allowed us to you know unify some of our tactics, techniques, and procedures and make standard operating procedures that didn't matter what platoon you were in or what troop you were in or even what team you were in. You know,

you could still basically count on a guy to know what you were doing. But for you guys, it was you guys kind of training yourselves. Yes. And I'm guessing that Barry Enoch as the senior enlisted guy was the guy pushing the gas pedal on that. Oh yeah. I mean, really, that had it been stupid not to listen to that experience. And fortunately, I had not been imprinted too heavily from the Naval Academy on relationships with enlisted. Meaning that in the regular military, there's a definite, clear and oftentimes fairly wide separation between the officers and the enlisted guys.

And in the SEAL teams, that isn't very prevalent. But it sounds like you and Barry were. And, you know, he talks about it in the book. You know, he talks about the fact that you guys were so close. But he also says you always called him chief. And he always called you, you know, LT or, or, you know, mister, which is kind of the traditional thing. Well, you know, what I said to the guys,

especially when we were in Ben Luck and Dung Island was, look, we're here in our hooch talking planning on tom yeah but if somebody from the navy or the army or anybody military courtesy because otherwise that makes me less effective in dealing with them yeah that's a great rule to have and i know like even for for me i would have guys you know when we were in camp on our camp, I didn't care what you wore. You wore flip flops and a pair of surf shorts and no shirt. I didn't care at all. When we rolled out to go meet with a battalion, meet with a brigade, everyone was in a squared away, as squared away as a team guy can get with his uniform. But, you know, no, because guys would get wild, you know, they'd want to wear their dumbest, you know, metallic a T-shirt

and a pair of jeans to, you know, battalion meeting. It's not happening. It's not happening. So you get you it's it's important and you we were talking about that yesterday at the museum You know some of the some of the guys were talking about just the reputation of the seal teams You have to build that reputation you have to maintain that reputation and if a Marine Seas guys that look like slabs they don't have basic military bearing You can't unsee that a Marine cannot unsee that an army guy cannot unsee that and so that's something that you knew you understood and that's the way you the way you ran things any any Any significant things that you guys remember from the workup and as you're getting ready to go on deployment?

Well, one big thing was Barry and I had talked about because he was he was in the armory. We went up to China Lake and we did that for a couple of reasons. Barry had heard about, oh, they're working on this 50 caliber sniper rifle. and they had all these whiz-bang gadgets that you could booby-trap things with, which scared to hell out of me. Because, oh, here's a Kodak camera. Click, boom. Click, bang.

Or here's an AK magazine. You fire three rounds and then it blows up. But the other one they had was they had developed this science. Ayalume grenade. It looked like a smoke grenade. It looked like a standard smoke grenade. And you could clip on a bullet trap that you could then launch with regular standard 556 ammo off the end of an M16. And that device wound up saving our butts one night.

And a great group of guys. I mean, they were like the, who's that called the Q section in the Jane Bond film that come up with all the whiz bangs? These guys, you know, they had their pocket protectors and their crew cuts and they just were having a blast figuring out things, toys for boys. How are you feeling as you're getting ready to go to Vietnam? I mean, there's, you know, obviously there's people getting wounded and killed every day there. seals are taking casualties. How are you guys feeling about it? How, what's going through your mind,

you're getting ready to go to Vietnam? I wanted to go. Yeah, I was eager to go. And I was eager to go, especially because of the platoon that I was in. I trusted every single platoon mate, especially Tom and Enoch and, you know, and others. So I was, you know,

we'd been training for a very, very long time. It's like training for football, and now you finally get to go play the game. So I was very excited to be in the platoon and to go to Vietnam. I had a Marine from World War II on Dean Ladd, and he was, he'd already, I forget what island, he went into one island and fought and then he was getting ready to go into Tarawa. And, you know, as I said, you know, they were telling them, hey, there's going to be a bunch of casualties.

You keep going no matter what, you know, leave Marines behind until the assault's done because we're expecting significant casualties. hey, you know, were you nervous? And he said, no, that always happens to the other guy. Of course, he ended up getting gut shot 500 yards off the beach. And his Marines disobeyed orders and swam him back to a boat. And he saved him and he was able to heal up on Hawaii for six months. And then guess what he did?

The next island. Yeah. But yeah, so I think the young testosterone-filled men, we never think anything's bad. That's going to happen to us. how do you guys get to Vietnam are you guys on chartered aircraft no how'd you guys get over there well there was a squadron called VR 21 and they they were basically like a ferry squadron they were based in Hawaii and so we it was uh I forget the day it was a four-engine turbo prop plane and my recollection is that plane flew at a

speed that it took about. My recollection is somewhere's around 40 to 48 hours of flight time to get from San Diego to Vietnam with obvious stops in between for refueling. Hawaii, Midway, Guam, Guam, Hawaii, Philippines. But the planes always seem to break down in Hawaii for some reason. Oddly enough, huh? How's it when you show up in Vietnam? What are you guys thinking about when you get on the ground there?

Well, we wound up going to a Navy support base in Ben Luck, which was at the confluence of two rivers. The Vanco Dong and the Bamco-Tai rivers formed this giant kind of slingshot. If you looked at a map, and from the U.S. perspective, it looked like a slingshot. from the North Vietnamese perspective it looked like a funnel I think because it was right at this they called it the Parrots Peak

and the boundary between Cambodia and Vietnam and that was one of the main exits off the Ho Chi Men Trail was into the Parrots Peak area and they funneled men and material down in there which of course is why

Admiral Zumwalt had said we need to to concentrate on this area. It's a riverine environment, and we need more seals. And fortunately, I also had the sea wolves and black ponies, the OV-10s. You guys deployed December of 1969, and I'm going to go to the book here. This is the book, Teammates, Seals of War. It's written by Barry Enoch, legendary seal, who passed away, I think, in 2012.

2012. But it's a fantastic book. It's out of print. If you're looking for it on eBay right now, it's going to be a lot. So here we go. This is from Barry Enoch's book, teammates, Seals at War. It says, working on our own intelligence network, the second squad ran an operation on January 13th, 1970.

It gave us our first contact. The squad inserted after dark by LSSC. And that's the light seal support craft. which I have another book here called UDTCL Operations in Vietnam, and the picture on the cover of the book shows an LSSC, and that is actually a picture of you guys in Charlie Patoon in Vietnam in an LSS. So the squad inserted after dark by the LSSC, and this is just like a small, it's a very small boat,

and it's got a pretty low profile. Yes. And I notice it's got a little sloping metal around the, around where you sit. So hopefully that'll deflect some of the bullets, maybe. I don't know if that was the plan, but... Had a little bit of ceramic armor on it. Okay.

They patrolled 1,500 meters through rice patties and tree lines. They came upon five large bunkers, and soon they heard voices. They were approximately 30 VC in front of our teammates. The squad moved forward and observed nine armed Viet Cong coming out of a hooch. The VC began using a bullhorn. telling those who could hear them that they were going to be operating that night. It was pretty clear they felt totally secure in their own backyard. So here's a, you come up on this Viet Cong camp, and they're actually putting out word on a bullhorn, like, hey, guys, we're going to do some operations tonight so everyone can start getting your gear ready.

Lieutenant J.G. Dugger. Is I saying that right? Dugger. Dugger. Lieutenant J.G. Dugger called for the sea wolves and then initiated small arms fire on the enemy soldiers and their bullhorn with the gun ships. overhead Hal Kirklandall directed an airstrike on the main body of VC. The sea wolves were also used cover used to cover the squad's extraction by LSS. Charlie Patoon had drawn its first blood that night with five VC KIA and at least five more

accounted for in the same straits. Now this was the way it was supposed to be. So there you go. Hal, that's your first, your first operation, your first contact and you're calling for fire. I don't remember it was the first or not. We went out on two orientation ops, which were basically cakewalks that the guy who, we weren't relieving them.

We were filling in. We were an augment platoon, so we didn't relieve a platoon. But there was a platoon there that said, okay, we'll take you out and just get your feet wet and muddy. So we did two of those, and then this was really the first op solo on our own. Yeah. How'd you feel calling for fire for the first time?

Good. You've done it a bunch of nylon? You've done it a bunch of China Lake. That's what we do. It's all about training. So I felt very comfortable calling for it. And I was glad for them to come. Continue on the book here.

Two days later, the first squad drew more blood from intelligence provided by a chew hoy. We inserted by LSS and the Chuhoy led us up a VC communications trail. Lieutenant Boyan, am I saying your name right? Yeah, Boyan. Boyan. Lieutenant Boyan set a guard post at the fork in the trail and we settled in. Soon afterward, we heard voices and saw two VC with weapons in their hands walking along the trail. The lieutenant opened fire with the rest of us joining in when the enemy soldiers were within four meters of the seal guard post.

So this is you initiating an ambush. you can see these guys. What are you guys doing? You guys sitting in ambush? Are you camouflaged? How far off the trail are you? We were about three to four meters off the trail. I mean, this was, if you were going to write a textbook about small unit tactics,

this was a classic ambush. There was this trail dike line, and we were in these tall reed grass. type thing and you could have been three feet from the trail in this stuff and nobody would see you I mean it was just how long were you guys sitting on ambush for um my recollection was it was probably less than an hour and you guys had inserted you've patrolled a little bit you get to this position and and you set up off the trail do you set up claymore's yeah we set up we set up claymore We had our seven bad squad. We had some LDNNs with us.

We had overkill on this thing. The Intel had said there's usually two or three guys that come through here. And this is kind of a side note. So, Barry had got this information, actually, from his seal buddy Al Huey. and Al Huey was a PRU advisor down in Mito. And we were out hustling Intel wherever we could, but Barry had actually got that from Al Hewley,

and it was dead on. It wasn't three guys, it was two guys, but man, they just, we hit him so bad that the weapons they were carrying them, were destroyed Al Huey another legendary seal and I think I want to say it was Admiral Richards

when he was on the podcast and he was saying that Al Huey he never raised his voice but everyone just did what he said because it was Al Huey I think he was exactly right yeah

yeah he was definitely Barry Enoch caliber guy yeah heck um continuing on with this, the count was two dead VC with two recovered AK-47 rifles and 90 rounds of ammunition. The dead men's backpacks contained letters from North Vietnam to NVA in the field. Also, NVA money was found on both bodies.

Recovered documents would lead us to other operations. It was a good hit. On January 25th, the platoon ran an operation meant to target a VC squad leader. Inserted by LSSC after darkness had fallen, Charlie patrolled only 600 meters before citing 10 armed. Viet Cong. The VC appeared to have entered a hooch. And Mike LaCaz...

LaCaz... Mike LaCaz scrambled gunships overhead as we moved on the hooch. Only one VC was spotted about 15 meters from the large hut, and he was taken out of the picture with two stoners. We found a blood trail indicating a second man had been wounded and dragged or crawled away. A search showed the VC had been moving to a weapons cache. Where the VC had fallen, we uncovered three eight.

AK-47's, two M-26 grenades, and one kilo of documents, all of these wrapped in plastic. During the search, another VC was discovered lying dead, adding to our body count. We wrapped everything we could carry up and moved back to the river. An airstrike was called in on the area we'd spotted the 10 VC, and the Sea Wolves covered our extraction by LSSC. Tai, who's one of your Vietnamese counterparts, Ty told me the two VC were killed. on the commo trail were actually NVA because the mail and money they had on them. So this is like, that is two, that is a page and a half from this book. And you can already see what kind of an environment you guys in.

And I thought that gave a pretty cool picture of, you know, kind of what those operations look like for you guys at this time, what you guys were doing. And, and, and, and, and how it looked. You guys, what was the, uh, op tempo like? when you first got there. So how often would you guys be going out on these operations? Well, so the setup here was, again, we were an augment platoon. Now, there had been a platoon there at Ben Luck. That platoon had not done a lot. The platoon that had been before them had had some fantastic success. Again, my classmate Gary Gray from the Academy, he had run that

platoon, and they had actually taken out a Cosvin, Central Office South Vietnam-level VC. And for some reason, the platoon that followed them, I think part of the issue was Gary's platoon had basically caused the Vietnamese to lose face. You know, you had this Vietnamization program starting up, you had a pacification program. The numbers that people were putting in were saying, oh, this province is, it got up to like 85% pacified, which was, you know, I'm going to make this look good because it's going to make my fitness report look good.

But in actual fact, again, it was a giant funnel coming from Cambodia into this province. and so when we showed up, we were having a hard time getting area clearances. And I actually wound up working a deal with the Army Rangers in Tan Ann. So you guys put in for an A.O. clearance and we'll use it. And then we'll, if you need some extra guns, when you go out on an op, we'll send a couple of three guys with stoners.

to boost your firepower. And so they would put in for aos for us because every time we put in for an AO, we'd get denied. Dang. Because it was the army that was clearing the AOs. Yeah, they could get them, and we couldn't a lot of times. And so that was the context of where we were at there. How many stoners would you guys carry with a squad?

Thanks to Enoch, because he had been in the armor we had at least I'd we had at least three stoners in a squad dang and then how many 60s one 60 or two 60s two good lord no wonder the one of those enemy weapons were damaged and and one of those um 60s was carried by Mike Thornton who typically carried 800 a thousand or more rounds. God. That's 70 pounds, just ammo. Yeah.

I know I won op. He had 1,500, 15,600 rounds. What a beast. He was. But you like having that beast in your squad? 100%. Yeah. That's so much firepower.

You know, we carried, we carried a significant amount of firepower. And we eventually switched from the M60 to the Mark 48. and then the Mark 46 was kind of our equivalent of a stoner. It's a 5-5-6 belt fed. So, and we'd have, you know, a couple 60s and a couple saws. We'd call them saws. But, yeah, to have a seven guys to have two 60s and two or three stoners, that is, that is, that is beast right there. So you end up, you're in there.

Any other significant things happen when you were down at Ben Luck? The other one was the op where we ran into the mortar company. And how'd that go? Well, it went well from our side. Fortunately, we had planned an op to go into this. There was a village that was cut by a stream. And we had intel that there were Viet Cong leaders on both sides of the stream. so we wanted to hit him simultaneously we decided we'll both squads will go in second squad will go

into the north side first squad will go into the south side of the stream which by the way barry talks about this and he even mentions in the book it was so dangerous for us to split squads yeah and i've been telling guys forever if you can avoid it at all never split your forces and i had a guy who's a saw guy in vietnam john striker mire and you're he was telling he was telling a story and he said yeah so we ended up having to split forces and i said you know hey i always tell guy don't don't split forces he goes oh you're going to find out why that's you should never split force and he told the story and it's always bad so just to point that out if you can avoid to you young young soldiers sailors airmen and marines out there splitting

forces is something you occasionally have to do but if you can avoid it avoid it try not to split your forces all right but you guys have to it's two two villages at the same time yeah or on two villages or two parts of the same village split by a river. So you end up splitting forces. Yeah. And obviously, we never even got there. So first squad inserted, we started patrolling. And then second squad got ready to insert.

And they got ambushed. I mean, Hal can talk about this. We figure it must have been like the point element or something for this. company that we accidentally ran into. And, well, I think they knew we were coming. I do. Yeah, I mean, we're in this LLC, and we're being real, real quiet. And all of a sudden, the bank of the river lit up.

I mean, lit up. So I don't know, we had probably seven or eight of us. us in the boat. And I think, I don't know how many there was, more to year. It was a huge number of them. And they shot so many holes in our boat. You can't believe it.

If you see the boat, and we have pictures of it somewhere, I went down and looked at it the next morning, and I'm going, how in the hell did we live through this? I mean, you couldn't put your hand any place on that boat that didn't have a bullet on. wounded? We had one guy that got some shrapnel from his metal from the boat in his hand. That was rich doyle for appointment. Yeah and and how'd you guys respond to the ambush? Lay down

fire, did you? We laid down fire, but also we weren't that far from Ben Luck where there were Sea Woff pilots. And so we had a code, you know, code three I guess was you know or one let's call it one you know we're getting near

you know our operation you know be ready code two is like you know go ahead and warm it up code three is

we're in a world of trouble don't even warm it up just get over here so they did they came over and I will tell you I don't

I don't think that we would I don't think I would be alive if it hadn't been for sea what pilots. And the reason is, while all of this is going on, we had a problem with our boat basically broke down. And so, anyway, the sea whiff pilots came in. And, of course, we're in the water, but they laid down. Like how many minutes would it take them,

did it take them to show up, you think? They were on a scramble status that night. And so I believe, I never did check this up, but I believe they were literally sitting in the birds. And all they had to do was press the button and 30 seconds later they were airborne. Because they probably were overhead. Our distance was not that far. And I would guess probably within two minutes. They got there in a hurry.

and we were really, really, really glad to see them. We were getting the crap shot out of us. I mean, when I came down the next morning and the boat was there, I mean, you basically couldn't put your hand anywhere that there wasn't a bullet hole. I mean, it was just, we were just getting shit-pounded out of us, you know, and they came over, and they ended all that.

Yeah. And so, anyway. And then, but you guys are on the ground. Squad 1's on the ground. We were on the ground. And we hear this big gunfight going on. And we start receiving what I'd call probing fire. And I need to set up.

So on this operation, before we deployed, Captain Shibli had pulled me aside. He's the CEO of SEAL Team One? CO, a SEAL Team 1. He said, Boyin, so you go over there, I want you to make sure that Enoch gets a meritorious promotion to Chief. Yes, sir. And so this operation, because it was complex, and because we were splitting up, Barry, I said, Barry, I want you to run squad one. I'll switch positions with you in the patrol. I'll run rear security.

You run patrol. we plan this op this is your op now on the way into this op we had gone down the river and then we'd come back up and like we were I don't know two three

four kilometers away from the op we actually encountered a sampan and took them under fire he had weapons and it was like okay do we go or do we not go? And Barry and I talked about it, and he's,

we're far enough away, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on in this province. Let's proceed. So we went in. Pretty cool. He talks about that in the book, and he says, you know,

you had told him he could run the op, and that happened. You get this enemy contact. It's four clicks away. And, you know, you guys are having that talk, and you looked at him as like, you're up.

What do you want to do? And he said, we go. So there you go. And that was music to my ears because I like being aggressive. And so we started, I don't know, we'd gone in maybe half a click or so. And we were in this old abandoned rice patty with clumps of weeds. And we started getting this probing fire.

And right away word comes back the line. hold your fire, don't want everybody fired. And to me, that was a pivotal decision because they didn't know exactly where we were. And if we'd have shot back on them, which would be your natural reaction when someone shoots at you, we'd have revealed our position. And subsequently, with the seawolfs coming overhead

and bailing out the first, the second squad, the fire started picking up on us, like really picking up. And we started some B-40 started whizzing over there. And this is some mortar rounds started dropping in. And again, Barry, hold your fire. And this is where when we were at China Lake and we got that, they call it a Tierra grenade. which sounds a little too princess for me, but that sialume, that glow-in-the-dark stuff.

And Michael Cos was a radio man with that squad. So he's up there with Barry, and Barry says, okay, mark their position. And by this time, we were receiving what I would call pretty heavy fire. I don't know how the heck Mike wriggled around and got himself and he popped that deer grenade and marked where the center of the fire was coming from. So when the wolves came over, they made one run. On their second run, they fired rockets.

They got a gigantic secondary, which allowed us to get up and get the hell out of there. And they covered us going out. But Barry's decision to hold fire, we didn't shoot back until we were running out, and we had the Seawolf's cover. Then we did fire back. But that alone to me exemplified the leadership, and I wrote him up for meritorious advancement to achieve it. And he got his advancement and had his. chief's initiation while we were in Vietnam. And he well deserved it.

Yeah. Yeah, that's to have that kind of experience and patience and tactical prowess to be taken, and you know, a little bit, you know, little recon by fire, maybe you can hold off, but when it starts picking up and then to think, you know, because it's difficult to identify where, you know, where one shot comes from, and a loom comes from. Like, where is that, you know, for the enemy to pinpoint where you are. but to be able to do that and mark the target so now the sea wolves can take him out that's yeah that's epic battlefield leadership right there well and speaking of battleship of battle leadership one of the reasons that uh barry had made chief is you know he he he uh i don't say anything he could he wasn't a good reader and therefore he had a hard time

making, you know, passing test. He knew everything there was to know about guns, but he couldn't pass the test. And so he absolutely deserved, you know, the meritorious chief. And that's the kind of guy Tom has that put him in the position and plus. Anyway, that's why we all loved him.

The CEO of SEAL Team 1, he's still backstate side. You guys, he didn't deploy, did he? No. Yeah. So he had told you get this guy meritoriously promoted. That's awesome. Eventually, so February 1970, you guys are directed to move from Benlock to another place, which is Coastal Navy Base 36, in Long Fu.

Yeah. What was driving that decision there? You know, looking back at the time, it's like, we're going here and Ben Luck. Things are happening. We're making good, good operations. Yeah, the numbers in the book said you guys had done 17 operations at that point. And, you know, you'd racked up a bunch of good intel, killed a bunch of bad guys. So it's been a good run so far.

Yeah. Feeling comfortable, you know, the neighborhood. Yeah, that's a good feeling. So now, this is hindsight supposition. I believe that the people on the staff, they knew about this. naval intelligence liaison officer in Sock Trang, who had an interpreter who would go to the Chuhoy Center where the VC would turn themselves in to come over to the government side. He would go there every day.

He'd bring them cigarettes and treats, and he'd drink tea with him, chat them up. And he had compiled this a bunch of folders on VC. I, the Viet Cong infrastructure, and there was a lieutenant commander who was a naval intelligence officer on the staff in Saigon, and he probably saw all this and said, this is what seals really need. And somebody said, okay, well, again, I'm biased. I'm thinking, hey, these guys in Charlotte Batoon, they know how to get after it. Let's send them down there.

I don't know if that's the case or not, but that's my story. Yeah, we'll stick with it. It's the case now. And so they sent us down there, and it was true. The Nilo, the Naval Intelligence Officer, and his, I really give the critical. credit to the interpreter, Mr. Locke. He was just with the people in that Chuhoy Center every day. He knew how to elicit information and make friends.

And, you know, a good agent handler. And so when we got down there, they not only – they also sent – the first time I know that it happened, They actually sent a photo interpreter guy from the Navy down there to help us with the intelligence stuff. When we were up in Ben Luck, John Dugger and I, we'd spend, we could spend eight hours a day, sometimes 10 hours a day, just chasing around trying to get Intel in order to start to run ops. and we got down there and here's this big folder of targets and they'd done photo runs of the area we had 3D photos but this was high-tech stuff for us back then

you know you'd put these little platform of classes so you could see 3D what was down there on the island you didn't have to get on the horn and try and coerce the army into, hey, can you give me a visual reconnaissance of this area? So that was great. I mean, we spent a lot more time planning operations rather than trying to get the intel to plan an operation. Yeah, no, you know, fast forward how many years it was when I was in Iraq, you know, we have like in time, you guys would be pissed because.

you'd see the freaking intel support that we had. You know, we had like whole, they gave it a name. It was like the fusion cell. They'd have people that were doing interrogations and people that were running sources and people that were looking at images and people that were correlating all the data. Like we had really good systems in place. So we didn't, you know, we, we definitely, I'd say we were like people that were shopping in a store. You know, we'd kind of get to look at all the intel and say, like, we like this one, develop this one more.

But they were just great, great people. And that's their job. You know what's really nice too, because, man, when you're going to the field, you have to be thinking about what you're going to be doing in the field. And it's hard to come back from being in the field and put your Intel hat back on. And for the same, for the guys that are doing Intel.

And I had, in Ramadi, we had a group of both seals and Intel people that were working together and they were freaking great. They would just, because the seals knew exactly what we needed. And we, those guys would come. in the field with sometimes, you know, like, okay, dude, like, you know this target better than we do. Hey, come, you know, they just load up and come with us. So, yeah, we, we had a very luxurious, luxurious life compared to you guys. Well, so, so Tom, I want you, before you get two off, make sure you talk about our living quarters that we were in and that you, we got sent

down there with no food, no, anyway, go. No, I got some pretty good. By the way, you guys both sent me like long emails of notes. So some of this stuff is coming from notes. I refer back to it. But yeah, you have some pretty significant notes about nowhere to live, no food. Like it was terrible. Terrible living conditions. And my biggest blunder, we're getting ready to leave Ben Luck,

loading up trucks so we can drive up to load the stuff on a plane, to fly down to Ben 2. to take it on a boat down to... And the steak truck is loaded, and I look on the back, and here's a couple of pallets of sea rations, which I know they've stolen. And I'm thinking, there's going to be another seal platoon here on this base,

and if we steal this stuff, that'll leave a bad taste in the Chow Hall's mind about seals. and I think you need to take that stuff back, guys. And they did. They were good sailors. They did what I told them. I was a stupid officer for saying that. Because when we got to...

Now, we had an entire Army field kitchen. We had pots, pans, silverware. We had these big pots that were like two, three feet across. You could feed a 150-man company with it. stuff, but somebody in logistics forgot the food to go in it. So it was like five weeks. We were whatever we could steal, beg, go out on the local economy, cough up our own money and buy baguettes. And I'd send the guys up the river, three guys up. up the river to Bentui, one guy to distract the guy in the chow hall and the other two guys

to steal, number 10 cans of mayonnaise, tuna, peanut butter, and jelly. Yeah. So that's what we basically lived off for about five weeks until the CB showed up. And by the way, so I think I weighed, I don't know, 180, 85 when I went over there. When I left, I got dysentery. When I got left, I weighed like 148. Mike La Cazza is an inch taller than me or so. And he got down to 138.

And we're still going out on operations. I mean, we're in a POW camp. So it took five weeks to get food before you got, started getting food down there? Yeah, when the CB showed up, I love C.B. Oh man, that's the best thing it ever happened to us. They started building barracks and

all kinds of stuff. We were living in these, they called them porta campers. Basically it was, you had this big wooden box that you opened up and that became the floor. You had these little Masonite sides and then a tent top. And they said, this was a Vietnamese

Navy base. And they said, you guys are on the perimeter. And we were literally, there was this little dike line, and then here was scrub jungle. We were on that dyke line. And they loved it because they'll get those brown eyes first if they come and attack the base. And we had a conax, a small conax box that we had all the ammo in, which we spent, I don't know, We spent a few days filling sandbags. Barry said, we got to get that thing covered up.

This is where you gave him his nickname, right? Was that you? Yeah. You got the nickname, what, Mama Knock Knock? Muck. You felt he was scared for you guys to get hurt. That's why I had you built this bunker for your ammo. Yeah.

I also called him my C daddy, you know. He was very important. As long as he lived, we stayed very close. You guys also had no boats to operate from when you got there. Yeah, when we got there, the U.S. advisors, there was two U.S. advisors to this Vietnamese Navy base. One was a lieutenant who was scared to death. And then a boatswain made, a first class boson made, he was a Panamanian guy.

He was squared away. The lieutenant was worthless. But we, because we, okay, you guys are on the perimeter. of the base, I went over to them and I said, hey, you've got this little skimmer. It was like a 16-foot fiberglass, kind of looked like a Boston whaler, had 240-horse outboards. I said, I'd like to borrow it so we could operate. Because otherwise, we could get swift boats, which really had a hard time going into the small canals. Pretty big, right?

And we, in that area, we couldn't get PBRs, which were designed for the smaller waterways. And so right away we saw, yeah, we'll bar your skimmer for operation. And just one boat? Just one boat. Jeez. And Solano outfitted it. It had these little aluminum rails above the gunnels. And I don't know where he got him, but he put flack jackets on those aluminum rails.

That was our armor. Yeah. But we ran some pretty good ops just using that one boat. And then finally, my take was I love the boat. there was a guy in Ben Tui who was the officer in charge of all the boat people in Vietnam and I know for a fact that his part of his evaluation as an officer how many boats are up how many boats are down you know and he was afraid if he sent a boat down to podunk that it was going to be down and that would reflect poorly and he wouldn't get it so

I finally sent Mike Thornton and Mike Sands up there, and I said, I want you to go up to this guy's desk. I don't want you to stand in from him. I want you to sit on his desk. And don't let up until he says he's going to send the boat down to us. And so he finally sent a skimmer down. And then a few weeks later, we got an L.S. SSC. And that, man, we thought we were high-gotten. Yeah. And you also, when did the platoon of LDNN, which is the Vietnamese SEALs, they showed up, were they living in the same compound as you guys? No, they came down, oh boy, that was probably, probably right around the time we got the boat, I think. I think so. And they had a, They had an advisor from SEAL Team 2 with him, Ron Rogers, good man.

And it was the same SEAL platoon that we had operated with up in Ben Luck. Okay. So we knew that. We knew them. So it took you a few weeks before you finally felt like you could start running stuff, but you had a fat target package or a bunch of target packages, and it was kind of go time. Hey, did you guys go, did you get liberty anywhere?

Did you go, you know, you see like people in Saigon and Vietnam or whatever and they're like, they're out drinking and there's, you know, girls in the whole nine yards? No. I think the only, no girls on Doug Island. No, I think what happened though is, you know, we would go up to get paid and been to week, right? So we'd take a boat up there and it was a much bigger base. you know, we'd go out and have a few drinks, but we didn't, it wasn't really liberty. Yeah.

Longfoo was the end of the line, really, in a very literal sense, actually. Yeah. Do you guys wear jeans? Oh, yeah. How come you wore jeans? Well, that was jeans. the pants, the BDU pants. Just didn't hold up.

They were noisy. Yeah. If you bloused them to keep the leeches out, then you had these little weep holes. So you'd get in the water, you'd get out. Now you've got a pant leg full of water sloshing around. So if you didn't blouse them, the leeches could come up your legs. And jeans just work better.

And you're working at night. So. Yeah. You don't really need camouflage on your legs. The jeans were, they were the way to go. I don't, maybe one or two guys wore cammy pants, but most everybody was wearing jeans. Another thing about that is that a lot of times when we were on patrols

to try and avoid booby traps, we would get down. in the streams and walk in there and get lots of leeches on our legs. But anyway, we, you know, I don't know how much time we spent in canals versus, you know, trails, but, you know, quite a bit. Well, we are a frog man. Yes. All right, let's get into some of these operations once you get down there. One that you guys mentioned in some of these notes is a boat facility on Dung Island that you guys had intel about.

And they were building, they had like a little boat factory. And they're building ocean going sandpans and a junk boat. And these are obviously being used to infiltrate, you know, supplies and people. And so you guys decided to go and go and handle that. And this is kind of the one that I opened up with with your little, I'm pretty sure it's the same operation. Yes. That you wrote about how were you guys. This is, these are the, you know, if you haven't heard this beautiful.

name for the seals in Vietnam is like devils with green faces. And these are the operations that get that nickname. Like the one that you talked about where you're three meters or four meters off the trail and out of nowhere you slay these VC and this is the same one where

you know, they just have no idea that you're going to be there. And sure enough, you show up. So what was the overall in that op? Well, like Hal was talking about, we're going down this, we had two skimmers on that out. The one that we'd borrowed and the one that had come down and was our seal skimmer.

And I have this vivid picture in my memory of this one guy just, he was working on something and he looked up and his jaw literally hit the deck. It was like, who and where the hell did these guys come from? And before. And this was a day. daytime off? Yeah. Yeah. What made you guys do it in the day? It's because of the tides. Oh, got it. Yeah. We couldn't. It wasn't going to work out because of the timeliness of the information versus what the tide schedule was. This was the only time we were going to be able to get in there. And it was, it's, so we had. We had to be able to get in there. And it's, so we had, hit him. I took a group out to a secondary area. So I wasn't with Barry when he was loading up

the junk and the sandpans. With explosives. Yeah. And I remember taking my little group out, and we cleared this hooch. And when I went into this hooch, I was the point man. And there was probably a 400-pound sow in a little pen inside this thing that scared the Jesus out of me. I didn't shoot it, but scared to hell out of me because it woke up out of sound sleep and gave a big woofing. That was about the most chaotic.

entrance that I remember. I mean, we're coming down, you know, fast. And I remember I can see one guy looking like, who the hell are these guys? And pretty soon they found out who we were. But it was very, very chaotic. And it was a good op, you know, we destroyed the thing. But, But anyway, it was really. So we would do operations that we would call it a roll-up, meaning we would drive our vehicles right to the target. And it sounds like, and we would do it fast. It would be like a fast, hard approach and just take over before they could react.

Sometimes we would stop, you know, blocks away, get out, dismount quietly slowly, and approach target. So since this one was a daytime for you guys, you just said, balls to the wall, let's go. Yeah, that's it. And then you're taking fire as you're leaving, but you had the, there's a quick reaction for us, like the whole nine yards. This is, this is mayhem. Yeah. Well, the VC owned this island complex area.

It was like an R&R area for them because they had access from the sea. They were still, even though they had Navy boats patrol in those coastlines, these guys were still getting stuff down via water. water, seawater, not river water. There was a quick reaction for us that came after you guys. Yeah. You guys know the time fuses are burning, which has got to be a good field. But also when we're going out, you know, people are, you know, they hear us. They're shooting at us as we're leaving.

So when we turn to get out on the big waterway, the planes, the boats up on step. and it's and we took around right through the bottom of the boat we heard it hit but we didn't know where it hit it wasn't until we got back to the base and pulled up to the dock started unloading

and the boat's starting to fill up with water and it was the borrowed boat so real quick Solano said I'll take care of that boss don't worry about it so we pulled the boat out and you put fiber glass patches on it. And then you guys called for airstrikes, and I think you gave me notes that it took

them like an hour to get the airstrikes because the Vietnamese were at lunch or something. Yeah, yeah. That was because the OV10s were overhead, and we couldn't get clearance. It was like hit him while it's hot, man. Ridiculous. As far as the daytime operations, am I wrong in saying that, like, you know, we would hear about Vietnam that the Vietnamese owned the night. Like the VC on the night, they would travel at night,

and most of the most normal conventional units would not do work at night because the VC were more adept at night. That's correct, right? That's correct. And then that's what made SEALs different was, oh, the enemy owns the night, we're going to go out at nighttime. And that's a huge, you know, there's a, it's a, There's more risk in some ways, but there's less risk in other ways.

Yes. It's interesting. So when the last appointment I did to Iraq, the we owned the night. Americans own the night because we have night vision. We have lasers. Like the enemy knew that it was just useless to go out at night. So guess what? They didn't go out at night.

They went out in the daytime. And they used the local populace to mix in with. Yeah. So we ended up, we went out in the daytime. So it was sort of the role reversal. And I think you can even go back to World War II where they did all the early beach clearances at night, but they realized they couldn't really clear the beaches at night

because they couldn't see anything. And so they ended up having to go during the day. So, you know, those people, when you're in these situations, you might have to do stuff that's, you know, to use a word that gets used a lot. But this is truly like you're going to do stuff that's unconventional. You know,

you guys going out in the nighttime is unconventional. For us going out in the daytime was unconventional. And, you know, it's easier to go out at night. I mean, it's immensely easier to go at night. We probably only killed,

we probably only killed a handful of people at night. And we killed a lot of people in the day, you know, because that's when the enemy would come out. So that's a little interesting historical, uh, dynamic that happens. March 12th, Hal.

What's special about that day? This is my birthday. It's your birthday. So there's a cool, you didn't tell me about this. It wasn't in your notes, but it's in the book, Teammate Sales at War, where you had, like, the day before your birthday, you had a bad dream. It's actually, yeah, the day before my birthday, but it's at night. And there was a Marine from my hometown.

who had been killed in Vietnam. And it was on the headlines of the Jacksonville Daily Progress that Lon Turn had been killed. Not on his birthday, but he'd been killed. Well, this night, I'm sleeping. You know, we did our patrol order. We were ready to go, but I'm asleep, and it looked like a pretty hairy, crazy operation.

So I dreamed that last night, that the, headline in Jacksonville Daily Progress said Hal Kirkendahl killed in Vietnam on his birthday. And so then, I figure if I missed this one night and I'd be a coward and never go. Anyway, then Mike Thornton, who still called me Cuzz for Cousin, he said, because I don't think you ought to go on this operation. I had a bad dream of this year. I went on it But anyway

It was a bit unsettling Oh check Now we get this This operation April 9th 1970 This is operation where Barry Enoch earns the Navy Cross

This is Four seals And 10 Vietnamese seals targeting leaders on on Aung Cha Island. Am I saying that right? Yeah. And it's part of the Dung Island group

and you gave me a great map but shows what this area is like. And it's what you think Vietnam is going to be like, rivers, islands everywhere, jungle. What do you remember about this operation as you're planning for it and whatnot? Well, because it was

when the Vietnamese seals came down of Dung Island. They integrated with us. We'd go out on ops with them that they had planned. They would come out on ops with us that we had planned. So Ron Rogers, who was the advisor, he said, hey, we got this op going and Barry and a couple other guys went with him on that. and when they patrolled in and engaged and we're listening back at the base, back at Longfoo. Are they like two or three clicks away from you guys?

Probably farther away than that, but not more than maybe 10 clicks at the back. But you can hear on, you can hear the radio. Oh, yeah, yeah. Easy. Okay. And so we hear. Okay, things are, oh, good, they made a hit.

And then, oh, it's not going so good. And then they were calling for Medevac when Tick got killed. And at that time, my recollection is they tried to get some gunfire support from a couple of swift boats, but they were too far away. And I got on the radio and said, you get those swift boats over here along foo, rallied up everybody in the platoon load up we're going to do whatever we can to help now did you guys we

would one squad always be on standby when the other squad was out for to go reinforce them not in a formal sense and it broke down how were we going to get there because we didn't have the boats or we had no air support

like helos or anything. So it was like... There wasn't much you could do. So the only... Fortunately, in this case, I could summon those swift boats over to pick us up. And as the fight wore on and they were trying to get a helo extraction,

I directed the two swift boats, okay, we're going to go over to this one section of the island and clear an emergency NCLZ so they can hop out of the target area, drop off, go back, and pick up because it was going to probably take two loads to get them out. And, but the whole fight is unfolding. And we're hearing, we're hearing a lot of it, not all of it, but definitely with the overhead planes, we can hear their transmissions.

It was a heck of a fight. Yeah, I mean, Barry Enoch got shot in the radio that was on his back, three rounds to the battery pack. Yeah. And one round to the antenna. And somehow miraculously, the radio was still working. They don't make radios like that anymore. But the radio was still working. You know, he had to mess with it a little bit.

Another really interesting thing that I read in the book and in your notes was that Barry said, don't come to us right now. and this was very interesting because he knew that it would be a potential blue on blue, like a potential friendly fire situation because he was surrounded. They ended up surrounded. And, you know, you guys were wanting to go help him. But at the same time, he goes, hey, don't come here right now because if you're shooting at them, you will be shooting at us. Yeah.

Again, so his tactical prowess on the battlefield was just all time. Yes. Really? Yeah. Yeah. So Tick is the guy who was killed. And he was, he was he the leader of the LDN.

He was the LDN and a platoon leader. And he, you know, Barry was close with him. I guess he had worked with him before in the past. Yeah, on his other tour with Alpha. And this was interesting.

He wrote in the book is they tied Tick's hands together. And then Barry was able to, Barry carried him like a backpack, put his arms around his neck and he's on his back. So he's got his radio, he's got tick, and he's surrounded by enemy. And eventually,

what he gets the aircraft to do is he sees that the area that's going to be the only way he's going to be able to get out of this is, I think it was to the east. There was some like marsh and bad ground, but it's where there was the least concentration of enemy. And so he had called in the air support and they came in and just strafed and crushed that area

and then he buried actually he didn't lead the guys out he said the guys told the guys go that way and he did rear security and picked up the rear as he's heading and I'm guessing he's heading toward the LZ that you guys had said at this point no this was they had one bird that got in and pulled out okay so we already had him out yeah okay and then it was they were starting to close in they're starting to run low on ammo and the black ponies had got there at first we were working with the medevac helo and army gunships out of sock trang when they

ran low and they refused to cover another slick that could have come in and potentially pull them out, but they said it was too hot. We're not going to do it. We had set up that hasty LZ. We hear all this stuff going on, so we said, okay, we need to proceed up this little waterway, which the swift boats didn't want to do. But after a spirited discussion, we convinced them to do it. But that was when Barry said, don't come up.

Don't come up too quick because we're surrounded. And then the OV-10s got there. And that was, the OV-10s were just absolutely amazing. I mean, they were like crop dusters. Yeah. Come on, man. And so a high school classmate, academy classmate of mine, flew OV-10s in Vietnam.

And I was telling them about this story. and I said, yeah, they call them in 20 meters of their position. He said, Tom, no way. We were never supposed to go that class. I said, well, they did there. And I sent them the damn op and showed it written right out in the post-op report that they'd come in within 20 meters of the friendly position, the OV-10s. Yeah.

And it was accurate. It's incredible. Yeah. Yeah, and this is another point that goes back to training. is they had worked out in training how to mark position on the ground with this silk tea. Yes. And sure enough, Barry has to get out that silk tea and put it on the ground and call for fire. You know, like you said, within 20 meters of his position so that the VC could not continue to close.

Yeah. Eventually, like you said, or how does it eventually come to an end? So the OV-10s cleared a pathway, and then they went in, and they blew the heck out of that area. And Barry and the LDNs, they pushed through that area. We moved up with the swift boats and the LSSC. And as we moved up, okay, Starboard's side, which was to the, west, no east, to the east. I said everybody shoots in that direction because this side is our guys, but I want to sound like the entire freaking army is coming. And that, so we came up just making

noise is all we were doing. We weren't, we weren't preventing anything. It was the OV-10s that were clearing the way for them. And, uh, and they came out and we picked them up. and got him back. Barry Enoch, Navy Cross. The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to Chief Gunners mate, Barry W. Enoch, United States Navy for extraordinary heroism

on 9 April, 1970, in connection with operations against enemy forces in the Republic of Vietnam. While serving with a detachment of SEAL Team 1, Chief Penny Officer Enoch, was the senior advisor and radio man grenadier to a combined U.S. and Vietnamese SEAL Combat Patrol against

Viet Cong infrastructure leaders. After insertion and patrolling to the target area, Chief Petty Officer Enoch observed sixth armed Viet Cong attempting to evade, rushing forward and exposing himself to hostile fire. He succeeded in accounting for three enemy casualties. The SEALs then came under intense B-40 rocket and automatic weapon fire, realizing that a small force was surrounded. Chief Petty Officer Enoch deployed his men in a defensive perimeter,

and although under intense fire continually shed, shifted position to more effectively employ his weapons, relocate his men, and survey the enemy locations and tactics. Although his radio was damaged by enemy fire, Chief Petty Officer Enoch directed fixed wing and helicopter airstrikes on the enemy's positions, some strikes as close as 20 meters to his position. With his men running low on ammunition and still encircled, Chief Petty Officer Enoch directed air strikes on the shortest route between his position and the river, and then led the

patrol through the enemy encirclement before the latter could close the gap caused by the airstrikes. By his heroic and decisive efforts in the face of almost overwhelming odds, Chief Petty Officer Enoch was directly responsible for the safe extraction of the patrol members and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service. Ooh yeah. Outstanding. Outstanding. So I guess Lieutenant Commander Shabley was happy with that too. Oh, yeah. Got this guy promoted and he's awarded the Navy Cross.

Yes, which he absolutely deserves. There's no doubt about it. Bright light. Tell us about this bright light operation. And for those of you that don't know, bright light is either downpilot or POWs that need to be rescued right now. Yes. Here we are down at this coastal, Vietnamese coastal Navy base. I get this flash message.

Get up to Saigon to the staff. ASAP. That's it. So I go up. These guys stay back there. They're still running ops. I go up there and I did not dress in my class A uniform either. Probably had camo on your face.

Well, I had a pair of jungle boots that had been polished by the Delta mud. And instead of black, they look like suede tan, desert boots. Anyway, I got up there. Staff said, you're going to go see the Admiral. Com Nav 4V? I'm an 03. Yes, sir. And so they had information from the U.S. Army.

It was a U.S. Army intelligence asset, had said there's this P.O.W. camp. It was to the north of us, not in the Dung Island area at all. And this guy says there's some American prisoners in this camp. and I'll brief this down a little bit. Anyway, the bottom line was, here I am talking to an Admiral who's talking to a general, who's getting the information from his Army intelligence. And ultimately, I hear all this information. I said, Admiral, I really would like to take this agent.

with us on the operation. And so he talks to the general, and the general says, no way. And I said, Admiral, it's so much more effective, and we've got a much higher chance of success. If I please go back and talk to him again. And to the Admiral's credit, he went back to that general and asked him again. But the guy said, no way. So you wanted to take the source of the information. Yeah.

Oh, there's someone saying that they know where there's a POW camp. Okay, great. We will take him with us. Yeah. Which is infinitely better. Yes. I mean, first of all, if the person doesn't want to go, that's a red flag. You know, that's a big red flag when the person that's telling you where there's bad guys doesn't want to go on the end.

It can happen where he's just scared and he doesn't want to do it. And that's need to be taken into consideration. Right. But also, it's also a little bit of a red flag because what are you getting walked into? Yeah. So you're weighing all that. And the Admiral goes to the Army General twice and says, let us take the guy with us in both time. He says no.

Yep. So ultimately, though, it's like, okay, if there's a possibility of a U.S.P.O.W, we're going to go. And I do remember the Admiral saying, so what's your... chance of taking casualties going in on something like this. And they had said this camp is ringed with concentric circles of booby traps to protect it, to protect the camp and to keep guys from breaking out. And I grabbed, I said, yeah, with that scenario, there's 50% chance somebody's going to get hurt going in on this.

But I said, we'll go. Everybody that goes will be a volunteer, and everybody volunteered. There was no question about it. Fast forward, we planned this big opportunity. And this was, again, my first seal tour, this is the most assets I ever saw involved in an operation. We tagged along with a joint army, Vietnamese Army, operation that was going to go somewhere near that area, and they were going to go way away from that area and do a sweep.

And they were going in by boat. And was that operation set up as a decore for you guys? Or was it just something that was already taking place in the general area? I think it was something that had already been planned. and it just happened, oh, okay, we could tag along with these guys, we could peel off at the appropriate time and then patrol in, which was away from where they were going, and try and hit this target.

And they said, okay, well, you'll have airborne assets all the time. You're on the ground in the water. and it's like wow you know here we were down at dung island where we it was a hard time to get a helo gunship to support us and now you can have anything you want lad so i get left sagon came back down got together with the guys barry salano de crows and okay let's plan this thing out And so the plan was we're going to peel off from this big operation. As they're motoring up this waterway, we're going to do a slow motion cast off this boat and go up this waterway in the water, not swimming, but you could touch bottom most of the time,

and get up to an area where we could logger. and then wait and then go in the next morning. And again, they said, you know, we'll have air assets all night long until you go in. And they had already run photo reconnaissance of this thing. And I had pictures of, okay, somebody, some photo interpreter someplace that said, yeah, here's this down, nipapam, fron, and there's probably a sandpan hidden underneath that thing. And here's this.

Do you see any people in the pictures? No, no. And there was no kind of infrared imaging or anything like that. It was all based on this agent. The source. Yeah. and we did the patrol. We waited, rained like crazy.

It was a miserable. It was the most cold, it was the coldest night I ever spent in Vietnam. Yeah, it was by far. And the rain was like. The rain was like biblical. Yes. Biblical, yes. Yeah, that's, I mean, Barry talks about it in the book.

He's just insane rain. Mike said, at one point goes over to Doc Brown. He says, my hands, look at my hands. They're all shrivel up. They're all white. Doc Brown says, God damn it, Sands. My hands are white and I'm a black man.

Yeah, you guys had two black guys in a d'neple-toot, huh? Yeah, actually, that was, to my knowledge, we were the only platoon that had two African-Americans. And they were both good. Oh, top-notch. Yeah. Yeah. So we get in.

Oh, yeah, because that's the story that's why I brought that up because the story that Barry tells is like their lap, like everyone's, it's raining so hard that when, who is it, when Doc Brown says, you know, look, look at my hands and I'm black. And everyone was laughing out loud because it was raining so hard knowing that here. The noise would not have carried 10 feet. Okay. The rain lets up. The rain lights up. It's getting close to the day break. We're moving out to hit the camp area.

And by God, here's that nip-a-pam fron, just like I saw in the picture. Nobody had been in this area for 50 years, I don't think. That agent, I am sure. It was known that if you were an agent and you just said the word American prisoner, you are going to get extra pay. And I don't know why the Army didn't vet this guy more strongly, but it was a complete dry hole, which was unfortunate. Another thing I remember about that night is, you know,

we were in the Colton Canal's a lot trying to avoid booby traps, and you'd get a lot of leeches. but that night right under my gene, right in here. When I got out, I had a leech about a little bit longer than my index ringer. I remember just being bigger, actually. Yeah, well, it was huge. You know what a banana slug is? Yeah, yeah.

Pacific. It looked like a freaking banana slug. Yeah. It was huge. Did you guys ever wear a panty hose? Some guys would wear panty hose to keep the leeches off. You ever hear that? I heard about it.

I didn't. I guess my male ego was too. Just blue jeans is it. I got a company we make blue jeans. Do you know that? No. I got a company. It's called Origin.

And we make American-made 100% American-made genes with 100% American-made materials. And we have the genes, one set of the genes, our most popular genes, are called the Delta 68 genes. and the reason I named them Delta 68 was for you guys being in the May Kong Delta in 68. That was this, I thought it was the best name for a pair of jeans. I'll have to order some. I guess I got to get so. I think I can get you guys some Delta 68 jeans

since their name for you guys. So a dry hole, how's morale after that? Just another dry hole. I mean, it's not that big of a deal, but it's a pretty big deal with you missing Americans. There's a letdown because of that. It was a big letdown. And the reason is we were so excited that we were going to be able to get an American or two or three or whatever it was.

We were really gung-ho thinking that this was really going to be great for those guys. Yeah, I mean, we kind of skimmed over it. But when the boss is telling the team, hey, listen, we're going to take at least 50% casualties, you know this is volunteer only and everyone volunteers you know that's that's what frogmen do um another one that you talk

gave me notes on was the frogman I have frogman boat boat insertion this was like a willing guide that was going to take you guys to a VC camp yeah how'd this one go down well I'm sure there was some skepticism in the ranks on this one so we

we started out in, what was it, I think we started out in a Coast Guard boat and then transferred to a Vietnamese junk and then the skimmer. The problem with the skimmers was they didn't have enough range to get all around the Dung Island complex area. And so you had to tow them or they'd run out of gas to get to some place.

So you'd get a tow boat to get. you someplace so you could start the engines up to get you in and get you back out and then tow back. Geez. Anyway, this one was the final little waterway that led in towards this target area was deeply constricted with vegetation and we figured the only way we're ever going to get in there was the classic old IBS, the rubber boat. Get your boat crews together.

Yeah. And this is what you're picking up. up from imagery. Is this how you're, do you're planning the operation? Do you have overhead? Did you guys do flyovers of the air and take your own photographs? No. It was so hard. So hard to get a helo. To get a helo because you'd have to drive into Socktran, which recollection served me. That was like an hour and a half, two hour ride to get to Socktran, which is where the Army had assets. So it was either the photo. The photo. runs that they'd done with the 3D stuff.

But this was so heavily canopyed that there was no way you could see. So we were relying on what the guy. Yeah. Got it. And he was right. And we had a hard time finding this little waterway. We actually started up one and then, oh, no, this isn't the right one. went back out

re-inserted and it was... What are you guys using for nav? Oh, just the... Just the map and compass? Map and compass and that was it. Because the LSS didn't have anything.

And it wasn't until right at the end of the tour we got a medium which did have some kind of... Some radar. Yeah. So you're...

out there at night, this is a night, nighttime operation? And you got to, you're on a waterway. Are you just, is the point man looking at his map the entire time? Are you looking at the map the entire time? We were relying on the guide. Oh, okay. Yeah, got it. Got it.

Because it's like this black wall here. Yeah, it's totally dark. Yeah, you couldn't. I don't know how the guy found it. Just because he lived there all. Yeah, well, that's, that's what I was trying to figure out, like, how would you be able to navigate like I've been navigating jungle rivers with a GPS and it's easy to get lost. So just being out there with a map and compass at night, there's nothing to shoot bearings off.

Like that's that's that's rough. You know, you can get a little terrain nav. You know, when you go around the bend, you're like, oh, I know where we are right now. But that's tricky. And so you guys get up this small little river and then what happens? So I actually, I actually I actually had to get out of the IBS and tow it. And I had Solano up there at the bow with his stoner. And I actually felt safe in the water. It's like if anybody opens up on us, I'm in the water. That's good.

Those guys are in the road road. So we got up there, we found this camp. It was a deserted base camp. Nobody was home, which was good in a way. But it was like, I couldn't believe, here we are. It's like triple canopy jungle. And there's no way you'd see this from overhead. And there was sleeping areas, cooking area.

It was like we just stumbled into a mini-camp penalty. Was it freshly used or was it like, had anyone been there recently? Not freshly used in the sense that there wouldn't any warm cooking fires or anything, but it had been in use. obviously. And the guides said, well, I know that there's some leaders that are over. So we just kept on patrolling until we came down this little tree line and there was a target who, just, just luck, just luck. They've been holding a meeting and we showed up. Beautiful. And It was just a mad sprint.

Solano and I and the guys following behind and broke up this meeting. So are they got a campfire going? Is it night? No. By now, we'd gotten through the night. It was early morning. So now it's early morning. And these guys are, they're awake?

Or did you wake them up? They were actually literally having a meeting in this hooch. You know, it was like, here's the county. council. The VC county council is having a meeting. And you guys, you know,

this is like when I, so when I got to team one, you know, they would teach us, you know, try and teach us to patrol through the jungle, right? Quiet.

But I never feel like we really got that skill down, you know, because we were, we just didn't get enough time doing it. But for you guys to be quiet enough

to get close to an enemy hooch. And they must have no, suspicion whatsoever that anybody would be in their a.O. Because this this area that we had come through was dense jungle, triple canopy jungle. I don't know, no normal U.S. force could have ever come through that. And so they actually had, this is Devils with Green Faces Activity right here. They actually had the security force

for the meeting, but it was positioned around. the areas where they thought conventional forces would have come from. So it was like they were guarding the front door and we came in the back door. So as there, how far away are you when you see this hooch? We're probably, I was, probably 50 yards. 50 yards? Do you get closer? Do you get online?

What's your call as a platoon commander? My call was, there were, there were some kids. Okay. And these kids were playing. And they looked up and they saw us and it was kind of like that junk op where it's like, where the hell did these guys come from? And literally, Solano and I took off at a dead sprint to the hooch. And the squads following us.

And Solano carried a stoner. with a drum feed, so he could have 150 rounds. And he typically, like the first 25 rounds, he made every other round to tracer. So when he opened up, it was kind of like a laser beam. Anyway, we just hit that thing full bore. Guys were spilling out, and we just took them under fire. and started policing things up.

And then, of course, as we started policing things up, the security force woke up and started reacting. I do remember one guy where this hooch was located, there was a small irrigation ditch. I remember he had a felt hat on, and he was making his way down the irrigation ditch. I don't know why he wasn't using the dike line, but he was making his way down the irrigation ditch.

And I could clearly cite him. And I didn't hit him with the first round, but I hit him with the second round. And then they said, hey, come on. There's all kinds of documents and stuff here. And I believe there was a radio. There was a pistol that was the exact replica of a, 45 9-11, but it had been made in some jungle gun shop.

And the two halves had been brazed together, but it was a functioning 45. That was the weirdest weapon I ever saw. It was a dead replica of a 1911-45. Was the reaction from the guards, did you guys just kill that? them too? No, they were covered enough. They were shooting at us and it was like, there's a bunch of these guys. We need to get the heck out of here. So then you started your break contact drill. Yeah, yeah. So we did, yeah, we did the classic, broke up into two elements and cover, move. Now we cover, you move.

And fortunately we had the, again, the OV-10s. We did get some gunships from Socktrak Army gunships. They came in, and they helped us out to get out. And they covered us all the way out. We got back in those rubber boats. And, of course, now it's broad daylight. And we even got a picture of the guys in the rover boat a gunship about 50 meters above the water.

Dang. I think that I remember trying to get an Army helicopter called in. And I can't remember if it was in this operation. It was definitely one operation where they said, no, it was too hot. And OV.10s, who we didn't even know they were in the air, they could hear us. My call son was thread bear It says thread bear, thread bear, Black Pony,

we can't come pick you up, but we'll blow a hole out of there for you. And they come in like these crop dusters. I mean, it was the most wonderful, glorious thing I never seen. I don't know if it was that op or a different op. What would those guys shoot? Did they have, what would they shoot?

Oh, the OV-10s. They had a combination of rockets and guns. So, you know, the sea wolves had 2.75 rockets, and the OV10s had 5-inch rockets. And they also had, they had a 20-millimeter cannon pod. Wow. And they also had the 762 guns. Oh, so they're getting it done. Yeah.

And I actually got a ride with an OV-10 in Vietnam that supported a seal platoon on an aisle. While you were in, while you were with them? Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's epic. It was. I mean, because of my aviation. Oh, that's right. I forgot your background.

Your storied aviation career as a naval, almost aviator. And the connection we had with the guys in Ventua had gone up there and said, yeah, I think I could get a back seat, right? And they took me up, and it just happened that there was a platoon hitting a target, and I got to watch these guys work out, and it was just awesome. Awesome. And they got to go home and sleep in a regular bed. They're not covered in leeches.

And good chow. So talking about black ponies, I remember being on an operation. Barry was there. We were in a bad situation. I don't remember what the operation was. I hope you do. And so they came in and they were going to help us, and they asked us to pop a, you know,

pop a, you know, flare, and then also to tell them how far from that. Anyway, they were, so they said, how far do you want it? And I gave them some number. And Barry Enoch said, no, make that, I don't know, some very short distance from us. I can't remember the operation,

but they blew the hell out of everything, and then we got out of there. Anyway, I don't remember. I'd have to look through spot reports, I guess. Did he cut your number in half? He did. I mean, it was like crazy. I thought, sure, they were going to kill us.

How hard was it for you, when you were up with the black ponies, how hard was it for you to see where friendlies were versus where the enemy was? It was crystal clear. It was a daylight out. The platoon had gone. in on a VC radio listening station where they monitored all the US frequencies. And it was interesting, the stuff they pulled out of there was they knew, you know, back in those days, the prehistoric days, guys, yeah, I'm on the little blue.

Well, I knew the little blue meant that was a little waterway. And they had a whole glossary of terms that U.S. troops would use to try and code things. They knew what it all meant. It was like, oh, my God, we better clean up our act here. Yeah. Yeah, I remember reading about, I think they called them parakeet ops, when the seals would go in on helicopters and just hit targets. And usually daytime and hit them, you know, land.

to basically right on the target, which is something again. I never did any helicopter operations, but I know like guys in Afghanistan and Iraq, they would do that where they'd fly in like, land on the target, land right next to the target, land on top of the target. So that tradition carried on. So that's where you were supporting

one of those parakeet type operations. Well, no, these guys had patrolled in. Oh, they patrolled in. They had patrolled into this target. and the parakeet ops kind of, we had a hard time getting helo support once we moved away from Ben Luck. Yeah, I was going to say, it's just your location wasn't optimal, right? Yeah. And you guys were just full frogmen in boats and water.

Yeah. Do you guys ever do an op where you were dry? No. Because you had to go on water to get to wherever you were going to get and you were going to get wet and money. full on what'd you wear for footwear jungle boots

both jungle boots we Barry on a previous tour had gone barefoot on a number of operations and I don't know I never tried it my feet are too tender

yeah yeah that's that's the American thing you know this is that we got soft feet but I did hear about guys going barefoot. I know like getting told like

hey when you run on the beach run barefoot so your feet are tough so you can so the VC won't they'll take your boots if they catch you and of course this is 1990 but you know like you guys thought you were going to Vietnam when you went into 1960 whatever I thought I was going to Vietnam

in 1990 I read those books I'm like there's got to be going on somewhere so now as we're getting good opt-tempo are you starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel of deployment

you know yeah any did what did the opt-tempo did you do you stay steady did it pick up did it start to taper off as you guys get towards the end of deployment I would say it stayed steady we ran some more ops

after that bright light not a lot though I think that was really towards the end the bright light and then that's kind of I remember things the bright light

the letdown but we still ran some and I don't know where it fell in that thing the time that La Caz got when we were doing the insertion and that

Oh bit by a Catfish He didn't get bit He got stung Yeah I don't never ever forget that operation. But I don't remember what the timing was on that. But I just remember, you know, we were on an LLC. We go in. Anyway, we're now extracting. Oh, I know what

it is. We'd been in. Now, I think it was, it was, I don't know if it was an LLC or something very much. It was an MSSC. It was an MSSC. And it was coming in to pick us up. And so all of a sudden, Mike LaCobbz goes completely great. He is screaming, bleak, blue bloody burner. And are you guys, like, quiet at this point? Or have you just been in a big gunfight? We're now, or are you guys like, where's going to pick us up? Everyone keep quiet.

I think we were being quiet. I think I wasn't about waste deep water when this happened. All of a sudden. Michael Gost, started screaming, Blue-blooded murder. And what had happened is he was wearing jeans, and a little catfish had come up in his jean pants, and it had a little prong on it.

And so he didn't know it was a catfish. He hit it, that damn thing yet. I mean, and it scared our interpreter. He got so scared, because there's a lot of, you know, poisonous snake. He climbed a tree. I don't think he climbed it. I think he shot up out of the water.

So anyway, Mike, he gets up on the bow of the boat and he's flopping around, and Doc Brown had to give him more. Hit him with morphine. Yeah. Oh, gosh. And that still didn't make it. I think maybe the darn spike hit a nerve or something. and he was in serious pain.

Well, and he thought he was going to die. He told me when I got up there, his first wife's name was Jill. He said, tell Jill a lover. He doesn't like it when I tell that story. So now it's packing up and time to go home. Yeah. And so my AOC, AIOC,

A-I-O-C John Dugger had left the platoon early he was getting out of the Navy I don't know how this happened but he had a plan time to get out of the Navy

and it was before we completed our tour so I think we were I don't know how that thing was like it was over a month six seven weeks before he took off and again Captain Shively CEO's SEAL Team 1 he sends me a message he says well I'll send somebody over to act as your assistant and I sent him a

message back and I said cap'am I really don't think that's feasible because I'd have to break the guy in we got only six or seven weeks to go said Barry Enoch is a chief now. He's totally capable of being my assistant. And Shively came back and said, okay. So Barry actually wound up being the assistant officer in charge of Charlotte Baton for the last six, seven weeks. And so when it came time for the platoon to head back to the states,

I said, Barry, you take the platoon back. I'll stay back and break in the next platoon. And Rich Solano, my point, man, he volunteered to stay back with me to be this second person to break in the new platoon. And so I'll take off, go to Saigon. Solano, typical, he was not a drinker. and he said, I got buddies that I went through training with and that I deployed with on my first trip. I want to go down and see them at C-float, which was down at the tip of the delta down in what they call the NAMCAM.

And he had been stationed down there during his first tour before they built that C-Float base. So he wanted to go down and see that. He went down there. He guest operated with a couple of the platoons down there and then he was going to catch a helo back up. And that was when the helo went down and there was five seals on that helo. And they lost everybody on board. It was so heartbreaking and shocking that he had been on a point man on all these damn operations. And the op is over. It landed on the sea float.

And now they take off. I mean, we were still in Vietnam when this happened. Yeah, we were up in Saigon. We got the word. We got the word. And they asked us to go to the moor to identify. And I took Cal and Barry and maybe one other guy. Did Michael Koss go with us, I think?

I thought it was Michael Thornton, but I don't know. Okay. Yeah, maybe it was. Anyway, we went and I-Ded the guys, and that was really a bitter end to a successful tour, to lose, especially that way. I mean, I know it's a bit of false pride, but the VC never would have got him.

He was that good. Yeah. Toby Thomas, James Gore, John Dirlin, and John Donnelly. Yeah. The other guys that were killed on that helicopter crash. So we knew all of them. Yeah. Because there's only, what, 150 guys that team won or something like that?

actually at that point we'd gone through that augmentation thing so there was probably my recall was there was it was probably like 250 guys in the teams seal team one

yeah yeah which is still I mean compared to what I've lived when I you know we had seal team one still team three still team five seal team seven seal team two

seal team four seal team eight so there were still team ten So there was eventually, you know, you wouldn't really know everybody on the West Coast. You know a bunch of them, but you wouldn't really know them. So for, you know, of that small group of people, that's just a huge, huge loss. And then you, so you stayed Tom to do some turnover operations with the platoon that came in? Yeah, yeah.

And didn't you do a bright light in one of those? Yeah, yeah. So the typical thing was the new platoon had come in, and the old platoon would take them out, take each squad out on one op. And my mindset was I wasn't ready to go home. So I broke them in, I took them out on two ops, and then I went to other platoons

and started guest operating. with them. And I actually, I think I went out on three or four ops with three or four platoons. And then I came back to Longfou to Dung Island. And they said, oh, we got this prison camp out. And here was the one where it was like, Mr. Locke, the interpreter for the Nilo, had made friends with somebody at the Chuhoy Center, and this guy is willing to take us in. And not only that,

but Mr. Locke had built a model of the prison camp. And it was like, oh my God, this is what we needed back when we had the bright light out. And the new platoon, One of the guys was sick, and he carried the 60, he said, Tom, you carry the 60. And we went in on the op. It was ringed with concentric circles of booby traps. There was a hooch that was built over this irrigation ditch, and the hooch was built over the irrigation ditch and extended out.

And they kept these guys at night in leg irons. They had these basically a shackle, and they'd run an iron rod through the shackle to keep their legs secure. And so we thought, well, if we come up the irrigation ditch which they can't booby trap because of the tidal influence, and we hit him in the dark. The guards supposedly slept over the irrigation ditch and the prisoners were off here that we could hit the guard section. And I gave my input and said, you know,

let's get in there, logger over, because it's a long enough slog to get in there that you can't get in there and still be sure you're going to hit them while it's dark. So log or over for a day. Well, the plan changed, and we wound up going straight in. And the ditch was so muddy that they got up and started using the dike line. We found the first couple of booby-trap tripwires, but the third one they missed. Fortunately, the thing went low order.

So the point man and the interpreter got peppered with some shrapnel. But of course, the guards initiated their emergency procedures. And they sent a guide towards us in this little irrigation ditch. He's coming down in this little bitty sandpan. He smoked him. And then I moved up with a 60 and we hosed the place down. We had air assets overhead. The fortunate thing was that there was, I forget whether it was three, four, six people in the chaos of the evacuation.

These guys escaped from the guards and made their way to friendly. So we got some debriefing about there were no U.S. POWs at the camp. So those POWs were Vietnamese? They were all Vietnamese. Got it. Mostly Arvins or local force guys. It's so incredible.

Yeah, yeah. And at least some of them got away. And what amazed me again, though, was Mr. Locke's model was just spot on. I mean, it was, it's the kind of intelligence that you dream of and hope for. Yeah, that's pretty impressive. Yeah. And then you end up going home sometime after that operation? Yeah, it was shortly after that operation, actually,

Captain Shibli showed up for a tour of Vietnam. And he shows up and I was there. He said, Boyin, what the hell are you doing here? You better beat me back to the Strand or you're in trouble. Nice. What a great, great commanding office. He was. He was a Mustang. He was he was he was he was revered. Well speaking to your commanding officer you guys get back and he he wrote this and your fit rep. He said as a seal team won platoon commander.

He established the most impressive combat record of any seal platoon ever deployed to the Republic of Vietnam. Lieutenant Boyan deployed with his platoon to the Republic of Vietnam in December of 1969 and has established a most impressive record of aggressive, determined action against the enemy. Completely isolated from supporting arms normally available to U.S. units in the field, Lieutenant Boyan and his platoon nevertheless regularly conducted clandestine night operations deep into the surrounding enemy base area returning with valuable intelligence material that has resulted in inflicting heavy losses of men and material upon the enemy. End quote.

I just would inject that that was Charlie Petone. What I said. No, no, no. I mean, I know what the words say, but it was Charlie Petun. It was not Tom Boyne. It was Charlie Petun, and it was the mix of people in that platoon that made those results possible. You know, that's why we call it the SEAL teams. Yes.

I agree with what he just said, but sitting here during this interview, you can understand why I wanted him here. And, you know, he was just, he was the best OIC you could ever imagine for a SEAL to. You know, we all loved him. We all loved Enoch. We just had a, we just were, I guess we weren't just lucky because you kind of handpicked most of the people that we're going to be. be in there, but we were pretty darn lucky. Yeah. Hard work makes things, makes good luck, that's for sure.

That's true. You had your success rate from 1966 to 1969. You talked about those cards, the barn dance cards, the success rate had been for enemy contact was about 30%. Charlie Patoons was 46%. With seal intel and with the guides, it was 70. it was 77%. With good intel,

a no guide, with good seal intel and no guide, it was 54%. General intel, no guide, 26%. So there's the lesson learned there.

Make your intel. Yeah. What I did my end of tour report, it's not like I discovered that this was the formula, but I didn't feel like anybody had said, hey, here's metrics that bear this out that people should be focusing on in guiding the development of the teams, that you need this intel package to go along

with the men you got in the direct action platoons to really make it work. And obviously, not just me, lots of, I mean, Bob Peterson. from SEAL Team 2 was a great example of the importance of the intel and the operations. Yeah, we had the same type of thing going on

where occasionally we would get Intel from like up the chain of command. Like here's this target, hit this target and I didn't never did the percentages of it. Quite frankly because we didn't get too many of those most of the time we would not get hey here's a target you guys go hit it that happened to me probably a handful of times most of the time it was our intel seals

and the intel shop that were working human intelligence other forms of intelligence that would then like I said it was like going to a store but they'd always have a sale like you know they'd come in and go hey we got this one right here this is a source we've used five times before he's been on every time he'll go with us same exact thing and if they were going with us we felt really good about it. It's the same exact thing. So what's nice is I would have liked to have known this before I went on my first deployment to Iraq. It would have been very helpful for me to hear this because there were sometimes where we hit tar, we hit dry holes or we hit target buildings. We later, like one, I remember one we found out later that the, we hit this target. I walked

into the target and was like, this is a really pretty nice house. And, you know, we end up finding out the guy's a doctor and we're going, what the heck's going on here? And it turns out that his, he had fired like some housekeeper or someone. She was pissed at him. Well, she was pissed enough to tell the U.S. military that he was a bad guy. Yeah. And so, you know, we had to, you know, repair that situation that we did. But again, it was one of those times where I started saying, okay, let's figure out where

this intel actually came from. And that's what you figured out is, you know, if you can have that guide, a trustworthy guide that's been proven out, that's going to be much, much more. effective and the seal team one detachment golf administrative superior lieutenant Bruce Dyer he said this the analysis of intelligence support versus operational results was well thought out and takes into consideration most of the important parameters that influenced situation one factor however was modestly overlooked this is an important one too given the same outstanding intelligence for

support a less aggressive platoon would not have realized the same This is another thing that seems in the in the sealed teams in special operations The leadership has to make things happen like you're not getting told hey go do this operation go do this mission You know working with the army company commanders and platoon commanders they're getting a mission tasking This is what you are going to do tomorrow you are going to go out you're going to patrol this area You're going to clear these buildings and of course you know they're not being told exactly how to do it and those guys are incredible the way they execute on their missions. But for us, it's like we can kind of, at least for me,

and it sounds like for you too, you can kind of pick and choose what you want to do. And it's a different type of pressure because the Army guy's going, the Marine Corps guy's going because he's been told to go. And that is a type of pressure because you've got to accept the risk of what you're being told to do. For us, we say yes to a mission

and we approve a mission and we go on a mission, it's 100% on us. I mean, most 99% of the time it was my call that we were going to go and execute a mission. But it also could have been my call not to go an execute mission. It would also be my call to say, well, you know, my buddy had a dream about me last night.

Maybe I won't go on this mission right now. And, you know, that stuff adds up. And I also had, and I wonder if you had this as well. There would be times, you know, we would joke, half joking, half real. You know, you hear the, the term no-go criteria. So if this happens, we're not going.

If this happens, we're not going. And I would jokingly, half-jokingly say, we have go-go criteria because we're going. And that being said, sometimes it'd be like, oh, we lost this support asset. Okay, well, we're still going. We just got intel that there might be more bad guys on target. Well, we're still going.

Oh, it looks like the aircraft that was going to be able to cover us from this time to this time is not going to be able to be there. someone's telling me I shouldn't be really doing this op right now. Maybe it wasn't Mike Thornton having a dream, a bad dream about me, but you start getting the multiple, multiple no-goes, and you start saying, okay, this is the big frogman in the sky trying to tell me this is not a good mission for you to send your boys on and for you to go on. So you might want to rethink this one.

So did you experience that as well? Yes. my last tour I had a actually the platoon had finished up and we boxed our weapons up

and we were getting ready to fly back and I had a seal contact me on an unsecure line and say I want you to get your boys ready because we've got this operation that we want to go on. And I, first thing I said was, can we talk about this some other way?

So you ended, but you ended up going back to Vietnam. Yeah. You're a platoon commander again. Yes. Charlie platoon again? No. What platoon was Romeo platoon. Romeo platoon. Okay. Anyway, in this case, I've got, he's not my operational commander, but he's telling me they've got this seal up. And it actually, I saw it written up in a magazine. Here was the premise. And as soon as I tell you the premise, you're going to start laughing.

They had captured a VC carrier pigeon. Okay. And the plan was, we're going to go up in a helo, and we're going to release the carrier pigeon and follow it in to where it goes. And I'm thinking, I'm sorry, I know a little bit about poultry, and there's no way you're going to release a pigeon out of a helo and follow it anywhere. If it doesn't get sucked into the intake of the engine, there's no way you're going to follow. it. There's no aircraft maneuverable enough to follow a pigeon. And I wound up, I wound up telling

this guy, there was no way I would do that. And he called me a cowardly Boy Scout and questioned my heredity, but I said, no, sir, not going to do it. And there was no, that never hurt me in any way. And that's the way it should be. And I was given, I've talked to Army vets, I've talked to Marine vets, and the autonomy and latitude that we had as SEAL-Patoon commanders in Vietnam was just incredible. I mean, basically, whoever was operationally in charge of us said, you know, I really don't know what you do, just go do it and stay out of my hair. Except for Ben Luck, and then on my second tour, which was over on the west side of Vietnam, I didn't even have any kind of physical or even message contact with my superior, my operational superior.

That was on your second tour? Yeah. Where were you on your second tour? I was over in Rocksoi, Rockjaw, which is on the Gulf of Thailand coast up near the Cambodian border. And what year is this? That would have been 71. Did you get home and do a complete workup? I got home in, it was early August of 70,

and deployed in December of 70. And I had to lobby hard to get that platoon. I actually lobbied Captain Shibli to go over with X-ray platoon as the assistant officer in charge. Fortunately, he didn't do that. So how was the second tour in Vietnam? So the second tour was that was the point where things were really winding down. And so having air support was a lot more sketchier. The Army was turning everything over to the Vietnamese.

The Navy was turning everything over to the Vietnamese, so all the PBR boats were being run by Vietnamese. Fortunately, we had a good boat support group there, and it was harder to get A.O. clearances again after being down at Dung Island where that was not a problem whatsoever. and again it was that they had the pacification program the Army Colonel who was the Province Senior Advisor I still remember that guy he was a white-haired staunch gentleman my my province is 85% pacified and I I can drive from the west side over by Cambodia to the east side. I don't even need to take a weapon. And then he took a boat down to the southern part of the province,

which was into the Umin forest, and he got blown away. He and a couple other guys got, I mean, they were living in a fantasy world in that respect. and so we did have some decent hits but we didn't have the same and I had great intel support within the platoon I had two guys that had been PRU advisors and they were heavily into Intel but the lack of support was a big problem. Yeah. So what did your op tempo get down to? Like were you doing?

We probably did two-thirds of the ops that we did with Charlie Patoon. It was like we'd go sometimes three, four days without an op. Yeah, because what Barry says in the book about Charlie Patoon, we'd conducted 70 combat operations netting 91 VCS. NVA KIA by accurate body count. There were 11 VC NVA KA is probable. 30 VCNVA wounded in action confirmed by intelligence report. 15 captured.

And then numerous documents, weapons, supplies taken. And he also credits you. All of this was the result of Lieutenant Tom Boyan's aggressive and imaginative operational planning. He was above all else a professional warrior and the finest officer I ever served with in my 20 years of naval service. Some high praise right there. High praise from a very important. Yeah. High praise from a true warrior.

But you did not mention on that last op. What happened? Oh. Is this the bright light op? No. This is the last op you did on your second tour? No. Well, it wasn't the last op, but it was.

So the Lester Mo. was a point man and we went on on the Sop down to the Umin forest and we hit the target and he moved out to a secondary air we had come in from the Gulf of Thailand through jungle and first of all to come in from the Gulf of Thailand there was about a quarter mile mud flat just to get to the shore and we'd previously done an op in that area where we had some SAS guys with us. By the time we got to shoreline, those guys were puking their guts out and saying, you guys are crazy. Anyway, we moved in on, so we got into the target area and hit the target area.

The tax collector wasn't home, but all his tax receipts were there. And Les had moved out to a secondary area, and unfortunately that area was booby-trapped, and he was killed on that op. So he was the last seal killed in the jungles of Vietnam. You know, later 72 Spence Dry was killed on that op out on the water where they were going in. They were going to use an SDV or something to go into a... Mokey Martin was on that. Yeah, Mokey Martin was on that.

that was like a problem with the SDP something went sideways with the well he were jumping out of a helo at night and Spence broke his neck on the jump but so yeah that was the we ran some more ops after that but that that was the that was my last tour and then we were not relieved there was they were cutting down this I had I had Charlie Head Platoon had been an Augment Patoon that did not relieve a platoon. My recollection was Seal Team 2 had two platoons in country, and Seal Team 1 had four, and they jacked it up to six or seven, and then by 71, that was all winding down. And then 72, they were just...

down to guys going over as advisors. So when you got home, Hal, was that your time in the Navy was done? No. When we got back from Charlie Patoon, you know, Barry Enoch, my C-Dady, he went out to something called SAT, Sill Advance Training in Quiamaca, and he got me to do a lot. along with him. And then after that, he was made a cadre instructor. And so he told Captain Shably, he thought I should go be a Cadbury instructor. And so I, that's what I did for the last two years, was be a Cadre instructor out at, mostly out at Nileland. And what made you

decide you wanted to get out? Oh, it's kind of a long story, but basic. Another girl broke your Hart? Kind. I'm very lucky that I ended up with who I did. But my dad, well, first of all, about that time, I just remember. As a cadre instructor, somebody told me that I was supposed to tell the guys that we were training that we weren't supposed to shoot at the enemy unless they shot at us first. So, seriously, I'm not kidding you. This actually happened. This actually But, you know, so, but the other thing is, is my dad, I was the first of six kids. He was a huge influence in my life. And he, you know, he just said, hey, I really think that you are meant to be, you know, a family man.

And basically, he said, yeah, I just, I don't think this is a great career for a guy with a family man. But something else that also happened, and that is, at that time, I think they now call it a sailor to Admiral or something like that program. At that time they had a program called a NICEP program, Navy Science Engineering Program. And so I passed a test for that. And then this guy comes and has a talk with other people that had passed it, not in the seal teams, but other things. And at the end, he says, anybody got a question? And I said, I have a question. I want to make sure that after I go, you know, back east to college and get my degree,

I just want to make sure I'm coming back to the seal team. He said, well, I can guarantee you're not going to go back to the still team. You're going to have to go be riding a ship or somewhere in the Navy for two years. which, you know, for the whole social ostracization between me being an illicit guy and coming back at an officer which. So anyway, that and my dad's advice, I left. But I will tell you that, and I think I've already told you, and Tom Murray knows this, you know, being in the SEAL team, it was a short period of time, you know, four years and I was out. it was a really, really, really huge part of my life and it continues the things, the lessons that I learned. You know, I'm 76 years old.

I still feel like, you know, I have a lot of lessons learned. And, you know, somehow another I ended up after I got out of the Navy with several crash and burns. Remember that all ABC sports thing that said The thrill, the victory and the agony of defeat? Well, I experienced those. But, you know, I recovered from that, and I just don't think, yeah, so after all of that, I eventually, the last many years of my career, I had a very successful career, and I just don't think it would have happened

if it hadn't been my SIL team training and all of that. that and so and you were you actually um you were like several million dollars in debt after you what was it the the crisis of the of the interest rates in the 70s yeah I wasn't several million dollars in a bit what had happened is so yeah in 19 in this I guess it was I think about this for a minute about 1977 myself and a couple of other guys we thought we knew something about home building. And so we started building homes and San Diego Federal gave us lots of construction loans

and everything was just hunky-dory there for a while. And then all of a sudden, about 1979-ish, somewhere in that area of time, interest rates just skyrocketed. Yeah. So they prime rate, you know, prime rate like that's the good rate. They give the good borrowers. It went to 21%.

Well, I had, San Diego Fed was our lender. And we had a whole bunch of, you know, had millions of dollars of construction loans. So those construction loans were at prime plus one, 22. But you can't pay off the construction loan until you sell the house. Mortgage rates were 15%. You can't sell the house when it's 15%. So anyway, it was just a disaster.

We lost everything. I mean, we sold our home. We, yeah, I was a home builder and better than the real estate business. Denise and I had to sell our home, and we had to go live in the house with another guy who was a bachelor. Denise didn't like living in somebody else's house. But anyway, it was a terrible, terrible mess. You can't even believe how bad it was. But anyway, somehow another, I did recover from that.

And so a few years later, so we were at very much of a negative net worth. We didn't have a home. It was terrible. Oh, and oh, by the way, the only job I could find, Finally, I was making $29,500 a year there for a while. But at least it was regular, and we had health care. That's what Denise cared about. But anyway, so, yeah, so I eventually was able to pay off.

I bet I had about $965,000 that I owed. Not quite a million. That was, you know, at a very high interest rate. So anyway, I got lucky, actually, but I also had some skills to go with it. And so anyway, in a few years, so I started a business in May of 1984. And in 1987, it was back to a zero net worth. hallelujah he paid everybody off though yeah nobody no he doesn't know anybody he paid him off that's to me that's the measure of a man yeah indeed and you don't live in a uh someone else's apartment

anymore no i don't uh we on our own home we own home now for quite a while uh so anyway and how many kids you got i have four kids and I have 10 grandkids and I have one great grandson and one great granddaughter and so Denise and I've been married for 51 years. That's amazing, amazing. So what and what about you Tom? So you get done with your tour of your your second tour to Vietnam and what comes after that? So when I came back from that second tour I was I became the ops officer SEAL Team one I also had the collateral duty of nuclear safety officer.

Back in the days when we had the hand-delivered nuke. The tactical man-carried nuke. Mark 54 Saddam, small atomic demolition munition. And there's a change of command, new commanding officer. We were undergoing an admin inspection and a nuclear safety inspection. and they were downsizing the teams. I remember at one point the Master's Arms old Claude Willis literally had, I don't know where he found all these push brooms,

but he had the guys out in the parking lot, line of breast with push brooms, sweeping the parking lot simply to keep them busy. He sent guys to the fleet too. Oh, yeah, there was the Dirty 30, I think was called, where they sent guys. Yep, to a ship. Went through training, and you're going to a ship. And anybody that had any kind of infraction, it was like, you're out of here.

It was some difficult time. So I, and I knew that I was not going to be, I was either. going to a staff or a ship. You told me you did not want to be a desk jockey. Yeah, yeah. I just couldn't see that. So I got out and I got it. Initially I got on my motorcycle.

It was February and I was decided I was going to do a cross-country trip on a motorcycle in February. Starts good in California. Yeah. When I got to Texas, I hit an ice storm. I spent three or four weeks there. When I got to Atlanta, they had a freak snowstorm. So I finally got smart, rented a van, took the motorcycle back up to New York. And then I got ready to go on a backpack trip on what was then the Pacific Crest Trail that was mostly a dream.

I did 800 miles of that and then went back to school. I was going to be, instead of a veteran, I was going to become a veterinarian. And I went back to school to pick up all the chemistry and biology, microbiology credits I needed. And when I went to Cornell, the admissions officer said, you're too old. How old were you? I was 31. And if I had been persistent, I could have got in, I'm sure. But it was like, well, I just spent a year and a half in Buffalo, New York,

living in a basement apartment through a winter. I think I've had enough school. And I wound up going into farming. And I wound up managing the largest commercial. hog operation, New York State, did that for about 15 years, and then wanted to change careers and gears and got in contact with an old seal buddy who was living in Seattle because I was thinking about going to New Zealand, and he says, hey, come on out, stay with me. I'm going on a backpack trip up in the Cascades.

And when I went on that backpack trip is when I met my wife. Nice. And we met in 86, got married in 88, been together for 37 years, done a lot of backpacking. And we got into llamas. We had llamas that we packed in the mountains with. Didn't another 800-mile trip in the Sierras one time. for three months. And then, because I was on the West Coast now,

I wound up going to work at this little company that made Stoneharth Pizza Ovens. And so my tagline is I was a frogman, a hog man, and a pizza man. He's humble. And I know you're humble too, Hal, because, you know, you've been very, very successful in your world with what you've done. And I know you're being humble and, you know, you tell your story, but you're extremely successful, a businessman.

And generous, I would say. You know, when I talk to you guys, and I kind of talked about this a little bit before we hit record today, but, you know, a lot of times veterans have the image or the reputation. And I will say, you know, I said this before the podcast. I said especially Vietnam veterans. But I think it's actually my generation of veterans has an equally, an equally, an equal reputation of really having problems adapting back to the world when their time in the military is done. What was it like? I mean, both you guys kind of carried on and, you know, carried on with your lives

and had businesses and families and jobs and did normal stuff. You know what I think is that again so a lot of Vietnam veterans never had a welcome home. When we came home,

we came back to Coronado and team guys gave us a welcome home. Yeah. Seriously. And so I just think that we were very, very lucky that we had that kind of support when we came home. I, for a long time after I got out,

I really didn't have anything to do with the military. Finally, I went to a reunion down in Naval Reserve or something in Pueville Beach. That was the first one that I'd been to. And I go in there and John Ware and leave Pittmutter in there. And I laughed and laughed and laughed. And so I, you know, I started going to reunions and then actually Frank Tom's used to host

a Vietnam UDT seal reunion at his house out in kind of by Pine Valley. And then his wife had L.S. and then he sent out an email to all of us that he couldn't do it anymore and I took the email into Denise and I said read this she read it she looked up at me she said are you wanting to move this reunion to our house I said well can we so we lived in Benita we had a great big yard and everything and so we had it there for in fact Tom came down and helped us set everything up what years are these I guess this is helped me out. Early 80s.

No. No, it was past early 80s. It was somewhere around 86 or 87. Okay. Well, you had a house, a big house with Benita. So we were at least out of the... We had a small house of Benita, but we had a great big yard. Got it.

And so anyway, we hosted it there for a few years. And then what happened is my daughter and her husband moved from the Bay Area down to Carlsbad and they had twins that just graduated from high school and now they're both in college. But I was working and I was having to commute to New York City at that time because now we had sold our business to Citibank and now I'm having to go back there like every week. And so Denise was in Benita. They were in Carlsbad, 41 miles apart. and Denise can't drive at night.

So when they needed help, you know, they had some child care, but they always needed Denise to come do something. So she just couldn't do it anymore. So she said, I think we didn't need closer to them. So we sold that house and we moved to Benita. And I mean, Salana Beach. Excuse me. And so then we didn't have a place to have it.

So then I'm running all over the place. trying to figure out where we can have this party now. And so I was talking to Paul Plum, and he said, you know what? The Commodore, the Coronado Yacht Club is my neighbor. Maybe he can help. So we started hosting it there. And we did for many years.

And then what happened is, is, you know, I talked to Bob Schultz, the old frogs and seals, saying, how about you take this thing over? And so he did. And so he's done a great job. So you're the origin of the Old Frogs and Seals Club? No, I'm the, no, I was in Old Frogs and Seals with him.

And I went there all the time. But no, I got him to take over the, it was called the Vietnam Arrow Seal Party. Got it. At the Cornade Yacht Club. And we did that for a number of years. But then, you know, I just couldn't do it anymore. And so I was just too busy. So I asked Bob to take it over.

And he said, well, I'll take it over if you get on my board of old frogs and seals. So that was a good trade. And then he changed it because, you know, the old frogs and seals used to have a party in April call the spouse's dinner. And so he now calls it the spouse's dinner because he moved it around. A lot of the old seals do not like it being called the spouse's dinner. But I'm thrilled that he took it over because he does a great job and it's good. Yeah, yeah. And then there's the UDT SEAL reunion, which when I was a young SEAL, I would go to.

And it would be no young SEALs there. I would be like me and my run inmate and roommate at the time, Chris, who was another SEAL, and we would go. and we would sit around and like little flies on the wall. This was when I had even deployed yet, but I heard that we could go. And so I was like, let's go. And there's going to be a bunch of old Vietnam guys there. Of course, old Vietnam guys at the time were like 40.

You know, but we'd sit there and listen to you guys talk and ask you guys questions about, you know, whatever we fantasized about because that's what it was for us, you know, sit around and talk to you guys. And now we've got this, the museum, the museum, again we were all there last night and walking through man they did a terrific job with the UDT CLE Museum in San Diego California walking through there what was your what you guys what was your impression of it well I was blown away that I've never been to Fort Pierce

it's on the other side of the country and it's not a convenient place to get to for me. So I'm super glad that they've done this because, number one, it's going to be accessed by a lot of people outside the community. And the message about the history of seals, the origins, Vietnam, on through to global war on terror. I mean, just. the exhibitary is really great, and it's going to impact a lot of people, I think, as a result. People outside the community, which is what you want to do is communicate about this history and about the – I really like the concept about the service to community. If I was running things, we'd re-institute a draft, but it would be a national service draft.

And that would include teachers and health care workers and garbage collectors and national park service and everything, just to bring people to have a sense of value for the country. And that contribute to something that's bigger than yourself. Yeah. Yeah, that's the theme. Well, I think, you know, I spent years in a lot, a lot of time and treasure working on that. And early on, we got several seals together and talk about what do we want to have in this museum? What do we want it to show? And, you know, one of the things that we wanted to do is when we were in, we were called it quiet professionals.

And then along came some people who weren't so quiet. And so anyway, we just kind of want to reclaim the narrative of what really seals are. and we wanted to be able to explain that this group of people, frogs and seals have been around for 80 years. Not many companies have remained for 80 years somehow. But, and then talk about,

why have they been able to change with the times for 80 years and remain relevant, you know, and doing a very tough job? And so, you know, we think that has a lot to do with selection, training, training, training, training, and teamwork and all that kind of stuff. So I think what I believe is going to happen is I believe that our visitors are going to leave there. And I'm talking about, you know, people from out of state, from wherever. I think people will leave there with sort of a contagious patriotism, good patriotism about being a good neighbor in serving some way.

As you said, you know, there at the end on the call to action, serve. Everybody can serve. You can do something, you know, help a neighbor, you know. And I really like that message. And I don't think that we in any way. acted, I don't think it comes across as, you know, we're a bunch of mean old warriors and blah, blah, blah, blah. I really liked the way it came out.

And so I'm very, very happy. I think we did a really good job of being able to show through these exhibits, all of the history, all of the, you know, the wetsuits and people who use. long ago and far away and all that kind of stuff. All the old dive rigs, all the old weapons. Yeah. And so, and I just think people learn a lot. And, you know, you were there last night, my friend Doug Alrid was there.

I mean, you know, he was in class 22, you know, before there were seals. He was just so proud and so blown away. I mean, I'm getting texts from, you know, this morning. He just loved it. And I mean, so I think I think everyone in our community will love it, but almost more important. I think civilians and, you know, people coming in from Iowa or Texas or wherever they are. I think they'll be motivated by it. And so I'm really excited about it.

Yeah. It's incredible to go down there. If you're listening to this and you're interested in it, Navyseal Museum.org is the website. where you can check it out. It's also on social media, Instagram, and Twitter X is at Navy UDT Seal Museum. And then on Facebook's, it's at Navy, National Navy UDT Seal Museum. And it's awesome. There's one in Fort Pierce, Florida.

The original ones in Fort Pierce, Florida. That's where the original underwater demolition teams and NCDU's trained down there to get ready. And so that's where they put the first museum. And that's an awesome museum as well. It's incredible. And then we got this one out here on the West Coast. It's by the USS Midway, which is so you can go and do a tour of the USS Midway, which is an incredible, you know, living museum.

And you walk a couple blocks and you can be at the UDTC Museum, which you can learn about the history of the SEAL teams where we came from. And it's really, really a powerful place. And I'd like to give credit to the Midway, because they were very hopeful to us. decide all kinds of things, you know, ticket pricing, you know, estimates of how many visitors we'd have a year, all those kind of things. But one of the most important things they did is they, you know, they have docents on the midway. Every time I go to the midway, I think the docents are

what make the tour. And they are, and they turned over their whole dosant program to us. and we are using their same docent instructions. And so I really, really appreciate all of their help. They've been very, very good. And I was an English major, and when I first heard the term dosin, I had no idea what they were talking about. That's a tour guide. And I'll have to figure out what the etymology of the word docent is.

Do you know what it is? I don't know. Where it comes from? I never heard anybody say it until I heard Todd Perry say, you know, well, these people are going to be docents. I'm like, okay, I have to go look that one up. But that's a tour guide. And if you go to the USS Midway,

they have these tour guides that know all this information, and they walk you around, they point all these little details out to you. And so they'll have the same thing at the UDTCU Museums when you're looking at the Stoner 63, which they have there in the M60 with the stock sawing off. I mean, it's just, it's epic. So that's it, UDTC Museum.

Yeah. Well, one other thing I want to say, I greatly appreciate you and Lave Bavin. leading from the front and making very, very generous donations. Thank you very much. Well, as I told you when you said that to me, the SEAL teams, I tell people all the time the SEAL teams gave me everything,

and I try and give back what I can and know that you do this exact same thing because you feel the exact same way. So likewise and back at you. Okay. Does that get us up to speed? Yep. Yes.

Hal, you got any final thoughts? No, except that I hope that everyone understands why when you've asked me to be on the podcast before, I insisted on having him here. And I'm so glad, and I'm sure you're so glad that he was here. No doubt. And I can see we've only touched on the second tour that you did to Vietnam, so I'll have to come back and we'll rehash that one. And then maybe come back with you, Hound, give some of your business lessons learned, because, again, you were real humble about going from negative 965,000 to where you ended up,

which is in a much different spot. So maybe we need to learn some of those lessons as well, how you applied the seal leadership and seal lessons learned to your business world because it worked. It did work. Tom, you got anything? Anything else? Well, just thanks for having me. I'm impressed with your operation here.

and I'm going to give a shout out to Echo Charles and his biceps that have their own zip code. I'm telling you, you're going to make him so happy with those comments. Awesome. Well, honestly, it's such an honor for me to sit here with you guys. Like I said, I joined the SEAL teams because of guys like you. That's what I wanted to do. That's when I saw what you guys did, the reputation that you had,

that's that's that's why i joined the navy it's because of guys like you and um well then you make us all proud really well we did you know my generation i started off living off your reputation you know got to live off your reputation and i've told this is some young guys you get to walk around with that trident and you get to be proud of that trident you didn't do anything anything for it and um you know i lived off your reputation that you know at mcpeas all those years being a badass frogman i wasn't a badass anything, then I'm happy and lucky and honored that my generation got to do, you know, we got to do our best to uphold the reputation that you all built. And we won't forget that.

It's an inspiration, you know, to me, it's an inspiration. It was an inspiration to us. And it's a continuing inspiration for all the guys out there. And not just the guys in the SEAL teams, but just to American servicemen and women and just Americans in general across the board. Thank you for what you did. I did you want to add? Because you mentioned one of the things that's very important to us is we want all veterans,

all military, all walks of life, no matter where they came, we're not claiming to be better than any other military force. We want everybody to come and everybody to enjoy it. No. You know, it's one of the, it's one of the most important things, you know, I had, you know, you guys mentioned, how many times did you mention the Sea Wolf today? How many times did you mention the black ponies today? You know, I know for me, you know, especially in the Battle of Ramadi, we could not have

conducted an operation without the support of the Marine Corps and of the Army. And not to mention that, you know, it was a Navy, the, the, the, the, uh, Charlie Medd, our field medical Center was run by a Navy doctor. There was Air Force people on the staff. It was a true combined fight. And I, you know, for us, the grunts, the infantry men, they were going out. You know, we kind of talked about this from a leadership perspective, but it's not just a leadership perspective.

The grunts are going out there. They're going out there every day. They're at massive risk. They suffered massive casualties. They took the fight to the enemy. They were incredibly courageous, incredibly brave. We were Hamilton on to be able to support them. and and and our roots our roots are tied to the Marine Corps tied to the Army Rangers and when you read

Ben Milligan's book by Water Beneath the Walls you really learn about all those things so certainly you know this this museum is not just about us it's it's about everybody that served this country and protected freedom and it's an honor to sit here with two of the legends that did exactly that. Tom, Hal, thanks for joining us. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much. And with that, Tom and Howe have left the building. I tried to maintain my composure talking to those guys as the best I could. Sometimes I didn't really pull it off. Yeah. Because I was a little bit giddy. And as they were leaving, you know, I reiterated the fact that I, so I join the seal teams because of these guys, right?

But it's not like I just joined the seal teams for these guys. My whole life is steered in a certain direction because of the Vietnam era seals. Yeah. So some legends, so awesome to have them on here. So awesome to talk to him. And I hadn't met Tom before I've hung out with Howell before because he's a San Diego guy.

And I see him around it stuff occasionally. And he's, he's friends with Laif as well. And, um, but that was my first time meeting Tom. I actually met Tom last night at the museum, at the UDTCL Museum. And he came up and he said, you know, hey, I'm Tom. And I said, oh. And I said, hey, I know more about you than you do right now because I've been reading all of your stuff, you know, going through the folders and checking things out.

So very cool. honored to have those guys thanks for coming on and yeah so appreciate it also physical fitness you hear about you hear about mike thornton carrying 1500 rounds yeah bro that's next level that's next level badass full capability full capability that's beyond capability that's that's extra capability yeah yeah and you know you hear like a legend legendary guy like Mike Thornton and you know in the you know maybe you think to yourself well hey I get it he's a legend but what's that really mean you know say what it means it means 1500 rounds of 7662 on your person for operations and he said he regularly carried it

800 to a thousand so hell yeah get some be strong that that's that's what we learn from that Be strong. Gotta be strong. And if you want to be strong, you got to lift. Got to work out. You got to train. And if you're going to lift, you're going to work out. You're going to train.

Guess what? You need fuel. We recommend jockey fuel. And by the way, today, normally at this moment in time when we get done with a podcast like that, I'm immediately going for 30 grams of protein of ready to drink. We don't have any in the office right now, which is very upsetting to me. And I feel like I'm going catabolic. It's an emergency.

I took the last one. Sorry to say. Yeah, that's great. So you're over there getting stronger and bigger and faster. And I'm over here just in a catabolic state. Discipline muscles are being in a way. Don't let that happen. Hey, Echo left me hanging.

Bummer. Don't let it happen to you. Get yourself some protein. Have it on standby. Don't leave home without it. You shouldn't do that. You can also get energy drinks. Supplementation.

Cold War. If you're on the road, keep you healthy. Time war every day I take time war every day Some people Some people don't take it on an empty stomach My wife for instance She doesn't she takes it like after breakfast

Yeah all about I don't eat breakfast I wake up the morning I drink I eat time more No worries No factor No factor and by the way I'm working out hard in the morning Doing sprints

Doing lifting Doing pull-ups Working back We're recovering We're in recovery mode right now We've got situations happening, but we're pushing through. That's what we're doing.

So you need help. Recovery. You need help. Be strong, fast, smart. Check out joccofuel.com. Also check out your local store, whatever store you go to. There's a decent chance they have a jaco fuel there. If they don't, let them know.

Say, hey, we want to get that jocco fuel. We want to get it right here. So there you go. joccofuel.com. Get some. Also, you heard me today. Talk about something, talking about something called the Delta 68. Those are a pair of blue jeans.

Yep. And you heard these guys say their whole platoon was wearing jeans. Yeah. Well, they said maybe there's one or two guys that didn't wear jeans. Right. But everyone else is wearing jeans in the Delta. Yeah. Damn, dude.

This is Frogman activity. So Origin USA, we make our jeans and our hoodies and our boots and our clothing and our t-shirts, all of it, 100% made in America. Because it's real ironic that you might today be like, oh, I'm going to be patriotic. I'm going to, I'm going to think about the guys and the Vietnam. I'm Delta and I'm going to get a pair of jeans and put them on made in America and you get a pair of other brand. If you get one of the iconic American brands, iconic American brands. If you get one of them, they're not made in America.

They're actually made by communists, which is who these men were fighting against. Communists. So you're trying to be cool, trying to mentally get on board with the program, and you're literally giving money to the communists. So don't let that happen. Here's what you do. Go get a pair of Delta 68's. You want to get in the mindset of the frog man in Vietnam waist deep in the water? Bro, these guys got wet every single time.

Every single time waist deep water, chest deep water, every single time. Just miserable. Miserable. Miserable sitting on ambush. Miserable sitting in a boat. Miserable walking up on a hooch. V.C. everywhere bro let's go

that was Mike Rittland Mike Rillan's like if you can go back any time in any time and do anything in history what would you do I was like seal in Vietnam he's like yeah I go yeah 100% 100% all day that's what we're doing so if you want to get your little

like fantasy like I have of being a seal in Vietnam at least get yourself a pair of Delta 68's and these are the real deal made in America they they're better than whatever these guys were wearing because they got a little bit of flex to them right you know fully or you could get the new 100% cotton if you want to go old school maybe we should have called those like delta 64s just keep you real check all right

there it is origin USA 100% made in America origin USA.com check it out it's true speaking of mindset so jockel store this one equals freedom that's a mindset good that's a mindset so when we represent these mindsets we can represent as far as what we wear anyway we have shirts and hats hoodies apparel merch, all this kind of stuff. We've got some new versions of these designs. This 1 equals freedom. Good.

Damn. Stand by to get some in the next week or two. Get after it. Like I said, all mindsets. So if you want to represent, that's where you go, jocco-storatcom. Also, something we call the Shirtlocker. New design every month. A little bit outside the realm as far as, outside the box, as far as creativity.

But people seem to like it. Anyway, you want to check it out. Click on the job. Join the short locker. It'll open up. You'll see, you know, kind of examples of what it is, what it's all about.

Anyway, it's all on jocco store.com. Check. Also, Dave Burke. It's got a book out. I believe it's out when you hear this. It's called Need to Lead. Order that thing.

ASAP also, teammates, Seals at War, written by the great, legendary Barry Enoch. So get that book. Hard to get. Also a book called The Men Behind the Trident.

Seal Team. one in Vietnam by Dennis J. Cummings. And then there's this book here, which is called UDTCL Operations in Vietnam, which is a book that's like a big account of AARs. So those are the books that I kind of referenced for this podcast today if you want to check them out. Also, Eshlam Front, we have a leadership consulting company. We talk about the principles that we learned in the military and how they can be applied

to your world, whatever that world is. It needs leadership. It doesn't matter if you're in charge of a Girl Scout troop, a peewee soccer team, or a giant Fortune 50 company or anything in between. You need leadership in those situations. Your family need leadership. Your band, you're in a rock band, you need leadership inside that thing. Leadership is not a blessing from on high. It's not an inherited trait that you got from your mom or your mom.

your dad. It is a skill that you learn. Eschlonfront.com. We teach those skills. And we also have an online training platform that can be found at extreme ownership.com. If you want to help service members active and retired gold star families, check out Mark Lee's mom. Mom. Aalish got an amazing charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org. Also, there's an organization called Heroes and Horses. And finally, Jimmy May's organization beyond the brotherhood.org. Check all those out. Also, we have the Ramadi reunion. If you are with the 11-A-D and you know who you are in any capacity. If you were there or you're a Gold Star family of someone that served with the 11-A-D, check out

Ramadi Reunion 20.com, January 16th and 17th down in Texas. If you want to support the seal Museum. Check out Navy Seal Museum.org and check out their social media, Instagram, and Twitter X at Navy UDT Seal Museum, and then Facebook at National Navy UDT Seal Museum. And for us, you can check out jocco.com and then on social media, I'm at Jocko Willink. Echoes at Echo Charles. But you should get pissed. You should get pissed. If you scroll more than four screens or what's it called more than four posts on the gram you should be a little bit pissed maybe even a lot pissed by the time you get to eight you should be like oh i'm throwing my life away so don't get caught by the algorithm get in there get out don't even go in there don't even go in there

if you don't have to thanks once again to tom and how amazing to sit down with you guys sharing your stories. Charlie Patoon is a legendary platoon from Vietnam. This is one of the important platoons, one of the Paltunes that really built the reputation of the SEAL teams. And there's others. We'll try and get the rest of the legendary platoons on here. But thanks to you two for coming on board and talking about that platoon, Charlotte Patoon. Thanks for your service to the nation and to the teams. And for, as I said, giving us the reputation that we got. God to give our best shot in carrying on. Also, thanks to all of our service members around the world with a distinct salute to those

who served in Vietnam. It was a brutal war with an incredibly high cost. And there was very little thanks when you all returned. Unless you were returning to Coronado as a seal platoon, then your brothers were going to be there to say thanks and welcome home. But a lot of veterans from that war didn't get that. So from our current generation to yours, thank you for what you did for freedom and for America. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol secret service as well as all other first responders.

You also receive very little thanks. So let it be known that we are grateful for your service and sacrifice to keep us safe here on the home front. And everyone else out there, there's something that might not apply to everyone directly, but it's worth. considering it comes from the seal ethos and it's the last paragraph and it says brave seals have fought and died building the proud tradition and feared reputation that I am bound to uphold in the worst of conditions the legacy of my teammates resolve steadies my resolve and silently guides my every deed I will not fail so you heard tonight from two men that fought to build the reputation of the SEAL teams but I think this is the

connection there's people in your history there's people that have fought for you there's generations of people that have fought for you they've hunted they've built they've worked they've suffered for you to be here so think about them think about your ancestors who sacrifice for you think about what you can do to pay them back and there's no better way to pay them back than to live a good life so go live it and that's all I've got for tonight and until next time this is Echo and Jocko oh