Jocko Podcast - 89: The Critical Importance of Taking Care of Your People. And They Will Take Care of You. Medal of Honor Recipient Mike Thornton

Episode Date: August 20, 2017

0:00:00 - Opening 0:12:57 - Mike Thornton 0:19:26 - Why the Military? 0:24:42 - The Teams and Leadership. 0:26:58 - Vietnam. 1:54:58 - SupportSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 89 with Echo Charles and me Jock Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. I was sitting in my tactical operations center in Ramadi alone. I was staring at a document on my computer, and I had to keep wiping tears from my face as I read it. The document had been submitted to me. me by the Delta platoon commander. It was an award recommendation for Michael Monsor. The award was the Medal of Honor for Mikey. He had been sitting on an outcropping of a roof

in South Ramadi on an overwatch and a grenade which had been thrown from an unseen location actually hit him in the chest and fell to the ground in front of him and he could have jumped away from the grenade and he could have saved himself but if he had done that his teammates that were positioned next to him they would have been exposed to that blast so instead of moving away from the grenade Mikey jumped on the grenade he smothered it and he absorbed its lethal explosion thereby saving our teammates and at the same time sacrificing his own life the morning that had happened September 29th 2006 I got a call from the battalion commander from the first of the 506 an outstanding officer and leader

that I respected and admired and this element from Delta platoon had been in the field receiving fire and returning fire most in the morning which was nothing new or nothing unusual but it had escalated and I knew that there had been trouble and when the colonel called me he told me that there had been a bad fight and then he went down the list of my men describing quickly what their wounds were and what their status was and and pretty much telling me that they were going to be okay until he got to Mikey and I could hear a shift in his voice it became very grave and very serious and I could hear the the sympathy in it and I knew what was coming Mikey got hit bad he got hit really bad jocco think he's going to make it

and my heart jumped through my chest and then it sank back down to my stomach and then erupted into my brain in a maddening rush of anger and horror and gut-wrenching sadness and I grabbed all that insanity and all that emotion and I pulled it back into my mind and I held it down there while I uttered the only words that I could muster. Roger that, sir. And when the Delta Platoon Commander, who's one of my best friends and a very close friend of Mikey's, when he called me, we were mechanical. We had work to do. He debriefed me. I listened. and we discussed the follow-up and the next steps and the resupply and the operational impact of the casualties. We held it together. And the next day, I talked to one of the SEAL officers that Mikey had saved. I talked to him on the phone because he was in Germany already.

With the other seal that had been wounded badly on the rooftop, both of whom would have been dead if it hadn't been from Mikey. Wounded, and because of that, they were heading home. And when I talked to this young officer, he explained to me what happened with perfect clarity. Mikey could have jumped away and saved himself, but he did not. His only movement was toward the grenade. Mikey did not hesitate. What kind of a man does that?

And when I was a brand new guy at SEAL Team 1, I began to learn and understand what kind of man did that. You see, as a young enlisted SEAL, at SEAL Team 1, there were two pictures on the quarterdeck, just two. The pictures were of SEAL Team 1's Medal of Honor recipients, Lieutenant Bob Carey, and Petty Officer, second class, Mike Thornton. And we young guys, we memorize their names, as well as the name of the SEAL Team 2 Medal of Honor recipient. Lieutenant Tom Norris, and we read their citations over and over again and debriefed them amongst ourselves. We young enlisted seals, we focused on Mike Thornton. He was an enlisted man like we were, and we had heard about him. And he was a legend not only for his actions, but for his reputation as a scientist.

as an operator as a leader as an all-around badass frog man that we all aspired to be as a young enlisted seal he was the mark he was the example he was Mike Thornton and a few months after checking in to seal team one I was in Virginia Beach I was going to a school at the Navy base there on Little Creek and one day after work we went to place called Papa's Pub now mind you I wasn't even old enough to get in but the the chief snuck me in there and as we were sitting there having some food and talking a handful of other seals walked in and they were wearing their full dress choker whites and one of them was a

big monster of a man and he had a rack of ribbons up to his shoulder and the metal of honor around his neck and I knew exactly who it was It was Mike Thornton right there in front of me the ultimate seal the ultimate hero standing there in the flesh And my chief looked and he he saw how awestruck I was and he told me to go over there and say hi Which I did now Again, I was a new guy I didn't have my trident yet and at seal team one at the time as I have accounted over and over again We knew guys pretty much got treated like worthless scum But when I introduced myself to Mike Thornton

He slapped me on the back and said welcome to the teams and then he told me I'm from team one too And then he bought me a beer and treated me like I was his brother the man himself Treating a pathetic new guy like me like I was one of his long lost buddies and I never forgot that attitude and that humility And I would see Mike Thornton occasionally over the years and I swear it always seemed like he remembered me and I never forgot me and I never forgot me and I at least in my mind but years later he actually did get to know me a little bit when Mikey Monsor's parents received the Medal of Honor from President Bush in the White House I was with Mike Thornton again and after that solemn ceremony and we drank and we raised hell and we raised our glasses to Mikey into the rest of our

fallen brothers and Mike Thornton treated me and the rest of our task of The same way he treated me when I first met him like we were all brothers and that night Now that I had seen combat myself and seen with my own eyes the bravery and the selflessness and the sacrifice That is the very core of our community finally understood why Mike Thornton Treated us all like brothers it's because we were and we are and with that it is an absolute honor to have here tonight a hero a legend a patriot and someone I'm so proud to be able to call brother retired seal and medle of honor recipient Mike Thornton sir welcome aboard thanks chakos thanks all And it's my honor to be here too.

You are an unbelievable warrior as Mikey Mansour. I tell you, my love goes out to George and Sally and everybody there. But that was an unbelievable day to have Tommy and me there and Colin and Todd Seneff and all the other teammates there. It was a lot different than when I received my medal. So, but it, it was an honor that these young men are getting their respect that they deserve so much. And then to bring the whole team on, when I received my medal was only Tommy, and Tommy received his medal was only me. So God bless the Navy.

They're finally getting it right. And honoring these great young men like Mikey Mansour and Ed Byers. So you recently had a book come out. Which is awesome and you wrote it with your fellow teammate and and fellow Medal of Honor winner Tom Norris and also with another sealed Dick couch and and the book is called by honor bound and you know for me You know I was talking about this before the podcast before we started recording You even though you want to know to get these really good debriefs in the seal teams and you'd think that there was a a vault with all these great debriefs and that explained to you everything that happened on certain missions especially Highly important missions you think that that existed but it actually doesn't exist and for me this book was like the the detailed

debrief that I always wanted to have you know not only of the operation that you did with Tommy but also the one that Tommy conducted by himself and and both of them are just so well detailed in here and it's just just Just a phenomenal book to get that kind of granular detail of what you live through that, like I said, even being in the SEAL teams myself for 20 years, I never had as good of an understanding at all as I have of these operations now. So thank you for writing it. And, you know, I want to dive into it a little bit because that's kind of what I do on this podcast is dive into these books. And so it's, you know, I had to jump around a little bit, but just talking about your background. and where you came from growing up in in South Carolina. Yeah, correct.

I was born and raised in the hills of South Carolina, and my father was my hero of all times. He only had a sixth grade education, and my dad was in the Philippines from 39, and he got left in the Philippines after McCarthy after MacArthur pulled out, and he was one of the Raiders over there. They did a movie, and actually he only had a sixth grade education,

but he was a guy that everybody respected. He had his own company, and I used to ask guys, why you've been working for my father for 30 years? You know, he said, because he, and my dad always told me this, and that's what I tried to do when I was in the team. Take care of your people. Your people will take care of you. And my mother gave us love and religion,

but daddy was hard as rocks, but you had the greatest respect for that man, and everybody else that knew my father. father had the same respect for him. Now, you mentioned that your dad, you know, had a sixth get education. Obviously, he was a hero to you and a successful guy and was able to put things together in his life. And, well, did he ever talk about what he did in the P.I? Not until I had been wounded several times and during my second tour overseas. And he said, he said, I think you'll understand this. And I said, Daddy, I understood the first time I was ever wounded. So, you know, wounded.

in 1939 or wounded in 1969 or wounded in today's war, I think it brings a reality that war sucks anyway you look at it. Yeah, there's no doubt about that. I guess your dad wanted you to earn being able to hear good stories from him, but you've got to get wounded before I'm going to tell you anything. More than once. That's a hard man right there. Now, I'm going to the book a little bit.

This is you talking. I didn't do that well in school. I couldn't read and I still have problems with it. I'm dyslexic Back then they didn't call it that you are just dumb For me it meant that I simply couldn't keep up in school I did okay in math, but that was probably the only thing. I loved history Otherwise I did poorly I had to repeat my sophomore year in high school and that really hurt my pride So it's no wonder I got in with the wrong crowd and started getting into trouble Nothing serious but we were mischievous

Southern country boys drinking beer and making bad decisions. The sheriff was out to the house a few times and there was a time or two in juvenile court. And I caught a lot of classes. I had 72 absences in my senior year in high school. That's a pretty, pretty legit record. Well, you could only miss 30 and you automatically failed, but I didn't think they'll want them to see me coming back. So, you know, to that, dyslexia, and thank God we found out what it really is. And actually, I've never even read the book.

My wife's read it to me five times, and I'd make the changes and stuff like that. But I do have it on tape, and if I hear something, I understand it. But what I'm trying to say in that is let young men know you may have it tough, but you can redo this. I've been a successful businessman. I went all the way through the ranks, and I got a commission, and I did this, and I'm just trying to say,

there's only one, and that's what I tell these kids when they go through training, but you know that. There's only one person that's just going to stop you, and that's yourself. There's always to get across that obstacle, under it, around it, on top of it, one way or the other, so don't let something stop you and for you to move forward

and make a better life for yourself and your family. Awesome, awesome words right there. Now, speaking of moving forward, you had like the classic case of the judge telling you, all right, son, you can either join the Navy or we're going to find a place that you're not going to like so much as home. Well, I didn't know this. 20 years later, my father finally told me him and the juvenile judge was, there were friends with each other. And he said, I'll let you make your first major decision, you go to juvenile. basically six months in a juvenile hall or I could turn around and make the first major decision in my life

and I saw that crazy movie, the five Solomon brothers during World War II then I saw the movie The Navy Frogman with Richard Whitmark. And I turned around, I said, I've always wanted to be a UDT frogman, and I saluted. And the guy that enlisted me was a second-class machinist mate and Ned his name was Ned Johnson and when he retired he was back

as an E9 he was the senior enlisted for recruiting the state of South Carolina and he tells everybody how he he made Mike Thornton who he was today that's outstanding so you come in and did you just went boot camp and then straight to buds or you guys didn't have buds you guys called it you didn't know T training replacement underd underwater demolition recruit training I was supposed to go on. I was trying

to go straight from there. They said, no, you have to go to outside. Like I say,

my dislection was pretty bad. And I had to get a 10-point waiver just to get into the teams. And they must have

needed people pretty damn bad because I finally got my waiver. And I was in Hawaii and I came back to Coronado and

went through training. And I was thinking about, you know, going through training. Here's a quote from you coming through

We had some instructors who were not only good teachers, but they were real characters. There was Vince Olivaera, who was part American Indian and a plank holder at SEAL Team One. He called us pale faces, and we stood in awe and fear of instructor Olivier. Then there was Dick Allen, a black seal who was the Navy boxing champion. He once sparred with Muhammad Ali. When Ali was asked once who hit him the hardest, he said it was a chief petty officer. in the U.S. Navy named Dick Allen. And then there was instructor Terry Moy, who we called Mother Moy.

It seemed as if he was always watching us, making sure everything we did was that we put out 100%. So what I was thinking about during this was when I went through, I went through in 1991. And there was clearly there were some rules in place, but also the instructors kind of did what they wanted to. And the command wasn't watching them. clearly there's more rules and oversight now. I've seen that with my own eyes. But I can't even imagine what it was like when you were going through. The instructors must have just been able to do whatever the hell they wanted to do to you guys.

I tell you, Vince Oliver are the most sadistic son of a bitch ever met in my life. I tell you. And I was just with Terry Moore the last two days. Of course, this is reunion weekend. Terry still looks like a gladiator as he did back then. And Dick Allen used to hang us from the pull-up bar, and he'd punch you us in the stomach. But I tell you, if you didn't keep your hands loose, I mean, if you didn't keep your hands loose, he'd kill you. And, of course, Dick and Vince and Dick both have passed, but their memories.

And it's a funny thing about life itself, you know, and it's not what you've done. It's the respect you want to gain from the teammates. Dick and Terry and Vince all gained my respect and my love. And all the long as Mike Thornt is alive, the stories will continue going on. So that's all I want from my peers to remember who Mike Thornton is. And that's what those guys taught me. Yeah.

Were those guys Vietnam vets? Were they Korean War vets, both? A little bit of everything? Vietnam bats. Then there was Tommy Hatchett in there too. They used to call Tommy and I after I got in the teams of salt and pepper guy. He's a great big old black guy and as strong as a damn ox. And, you know, actually Vince was one of the original seals in 1962.

And he went over to Namba. Of course, back then they didn't know what they would do with the seals during that period of time. So you get done with buds, and I'm going to the book here. there were 22 guys who graduated in my class 18 from the original 129. I remember how lucky and proud I felt as I was given orders to seal team one. Even back then it was no small thing being a Navy SEAL, but it's one thing to be a SEAL and yet another to do the work of a SEAL. I thought that was an important little highlight there of like when you get done with buds,

it's just the beginning, really. Correct. It's just, you just cracked open the door. Then you got to go through the damn door. And after you get through the door, you got to prove yourself. And like you were saying, we were a nobody back then. You know, if you hadn't had a couple of tours of Vietnam, you were just trashed as far as they were concerned. Yeah. So going to the book, my first platoon was Charlie Patoon.

We were in country from 1969 through, or from December, 1969 through July 1970. We worked out of a place called Dong Island, and it was a great deployment. We had solid platoon officers, and our platoon leading petty officer was Barry Enoch, one of the finest seal operators at Team One. When I made my first deployment, he was my C-Dady. It was the same for all of us on our first combat tour, and it was an active tour. Seems like every other night we'd be out, and most of the time we made contact. I remember we took down a few province-level Viet Cong cadre types, and one time we had a good intelligence. we were able to take down an entire VC grenade factory.

It was great. So that was your first deployment. When you talk about Barry Enoch, and actually Hal Kukendal talks about him as well, he says, us as new guys, even the veterans, we worshipped Barry Enoch. He was a great leader and a great teacher. What was it about him that made him just,

that made you guys remember him and revere him so much? Well, I think it's like you were talking about me in your great introduction, which I don't deserve that. But Barry was a leader. He took care of everybody. And he's the guy, kind of like I looked up to my father. He was my C-Dady, and he was always there for all of us. And me and last night, Tom Boykin and me and Wayne Hampton and Mike LaCroix

and Hal Kirk and Doll, we're all getting a picture together and remembering the great guys. And we're all talking about, Barry, of course, Barry felt passed away a few years ago. and he's another guy. You know, it's like I say, he'll always be in all our conversations and somebody we all looked up to, you know. So it's a great leadership. I mean, he showed us. And not just the leadership as a leader,

but the leadership he showed us to try to be a better person. And that deployment, what were you guys doing? You guys were you guys deploying off of boats? Were you guys going in helicopters? Are you guys going on foot patrols? A little bit of everything? A little bit of everything. Foot patrols, basically sampans, whalers.

By that time, we finally got the LSSs, which were in the late, and then the medium support, seal support craft. Of course, we had the Mighty Mo. A lot of our stuff was... What was the Mighty Mo? Oh, it was a big Mike 8. And it had the, you see it had all the rebarb about 20 inches out. So if you got hit by an RPG, it exploded there instead of going through the hole.

We did a lot of, like I was working down the Seafloat with Steve Frist with the KCSs, because back then we didn't have that many seals, so we would help each other. If they say we need help, we'd converse our people right around, and Tom would send the guys that he felt should be going. So we'd, like Rich Solano, myself and a bunch of other guys, we'd go out and help other patoons and stuff. And were you a 60 gunner? I was a 60

I had a stoner 60 and I carried a car 15 but I always carried a Swedish K with me all the time and a pistol I always had a backup as I called

Backup and a backup to your backup So you know We have funny things You know And you learn from each other So it's like that

That When we hit that Gernade factory Mikey Sands jumped out and he had a 60 and he didn't lock down he didn't lock down his his hitch and his

as he jumped out of the boat his barrel fell out in the water and the river and he's down there digging he's yelling give me one of your guns and I said hell no I'm keeping all my guns so you know as we all learned and Mike was a great M60 guy he saved our asses many times

but everybody did their job just as you were saying It was a team effort. And my life was saved by people like Mike La Coss and other people in our platoon. And we backed each other up all the time. And that was a super active. Actually, Hal Kirkendahl was talking about you here in the book.

This is Hal talking. I can remember more than one firefight where we were shooting and ducking, sometimes more ducking than shooting. But Mike would be right there working that 60 with a big grin on his face. There were plenty of times when I was really scared, but I'm not sure Mike ever was. He was reliable and brave, but I'm not sure he ever knew or understood fear like the rest of us. He was a great teammate, and my God, he was strong. None of us could believe how much ammo he carried.

Sometimes he'd go out with a thousand rounds or more. That's close to 80 pounds of just ammo. And he'd swim canals with that load. He'd just shrug and say, you don't want your 60 gunner to run out of ammo, do you? We got through a pretty active deployment with no one getting killed. Then a couple of guys stayed behind to break in the new platoon while the rest of us packed up and left. They were two of our best and one of them was killed in a helo crash with three other seals. We took it hard when Rich Solano was killed, but I think Mike took it the hardest.

Mike was a guy who really cared for his teammates. So even with all that action, you guys, you guys, you guys, went through the deployment with, you know, did you take a few wounded guys, but no one got killed? Yeah, we had a few, but nobody was killed. And actually, we were, I was down at Seafloat, and Rich Salano was working with a Gulf Patoon, I think. And that was when the helicopter went down. And, of course, when you come off a hot LZ, you're supposed to shut down your aircraft and check the rotor blades. Because back then, the rotor blades could have a hole, and it could last for 30 minutes or 45 or an hour. and the

the pilot of the Hilo wanted to get back for a birthday party or something. And the Hilo found and actually Rich was killed and Dirlin was killed and Toby Thomas was killed. What else was there?

Gardner was killed. So that was one of our biggest. We lost five guys at day not four. We lost five. And I went down and identified the bodies. And it was, you know, I only had one bad dream of my whole life, and it was after identifying that, because Richhole face was completely gone. And the other way I could identify me, he had a scar on his arm.

But, you know, a loss of any teammate, as you know, as well as I do, that like Mikey. And every time, you know, every time I lose even a new kid today, which I've been out speaking to their class and stuff like that, you lose a little bit more of your heart. I don't know how much more of my heart I got to lose, but it takes it out of you. I mean, I don't want to see anybody ever get hurt,

or especially a loss of a loved one. And their life's suggestion is important to me with the new kids today as rich and all those guys were important to me back then. You come home from that deployment, and you go into a seal team one cadre which we actually have talked about on here with Roger Hayden because we still when I was a at seal team one and I was in training cell we still called it cadre and that was I don't know 20 something years later and I never even can made the connection and and Roger and I talked about the fact that

you know some of the training that you guys implemented back there the the the point man course where you're walking through and the trip wires are there and all We still did that a lot of the demo we still did And so that's what that's what you did when you got home You went into that training cell being cadre and teaching and you know you mentioned here that you learned a lot being an instructor and I always I always agree with that in fact when when I was in the SEAL teams no one wanted to go to the training department right? We all wanted to just deploy just deploy So when I took over the training I always told guys look if you want to be you know if you want to master what you do you got to go and

And you also mentioned Al Huey in here. And when I went through Buds, when we were at San Clemente Island, every night when the sun goes down, we'd sing the song, good night, Al Huey, good night, Al Huey, good night, Al Huey, wherever you may be. And I never knew and still don't know who Al Huey is. Well, Al Hugh. Other than the camp is called Al Huey. It's called Camp Al Huey out there. And honestly, I make my kids sing this song.

When the sun goes down, me and my kids, we sing this song. Well, I'm sure you've heard of Dave Shibbley, Commodore Shibbley, and Al and Dave were best of friends. And Al was another mentor like Barry Enoch to me. And they went through class two of UDT back in the 50s and they were all in Korea and stuff. And he led by example again, you know, but I mean, it's kind of like, When he talks, you better be like E.F. Hutton, you better be listening, keeping your ears wide open. And just as Al told me one day, he says, you know, good Lord gave you one mouth, two ears and two eyes. So you use 80% of that and keep the other one shut for 20%.

You'd be all right. And then you, from cadre, you had a chance. You went back and deployed again, but you went to Thailand. And what we do teaching the Thai seals? We trained the Thai sales. I was along with Dick Flanagan, and one of the finest officers, as Tom Boykin was, a great officer, great leader.

And Al was with us on that. That's the reason why Al and I were so close. And we trained the Thai UDT and the Seal Team Tactus, and then they went up and worked off the borders. So that's all I can say about that. Yeah, and understood. And then you got home from that, and now it looked like the Warren Vee.

Vietnam was kind of winding down, and there weren't full seal platoons deploying anymore? No more seal platoons. Basically what we were doing over, we were sending enlisted LDN advisors, and like a bunch of the guys that were over there with me on that tour was at the reunion, and it was kind of funny to get together and talk with all of them, you know, and talk about. but we've lost a lot of those guys which have passed in through age or cancer or something and you know it's just it's one of the good thing about the reunion you know none of us are getting any damn

younger so you better get out and see your shipmates anytime you get a chance so yeah um the LDNN you mentioned and just to everyone knows what that those are like Vietnamese South Vietnamese seals seals and the LDN instance for lewing and die is what it actually is In Vietnamese. Was that mean like a warrior from the sea or something like that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's type, yep. So you get a chance to go back again, and this is funny because typical seal, you know, it's like, oh, we need you go back on deployment again.

Yes, I'll go. He sent me. I'm going back to the book. So when I got to Vietnam this time, I spent close to a week at Naatrang, working with the LDNs there, getting a feel for what they were doing in the field. I'd work with the Vietnamese seals on my first tour back in 1969 and I saw a few familiar faces You have to hand it to those guys for them there were no combat rotations Life was combat 24 7 year in year out They fought until they were killed or as it worked out in the end we lost the war

So those the guys you're working with and I think it's, I mean, you get into the relationship that you formed with these guys, which was, you know, they were all their brothers. Yep, they were, you took care of them, they took care of you. And, of course, the reason I feel that Tommy and I are still alive today is because of Dane and Kwan, which I explained in the book. They were, I'd worked with them on previous chores and many operations. And they were there, there's just like one of us. I mean, they took care of me. So that's the reason I handpicked those two guys.

That was Deng and Kwan. Those were guys that you had worked with before. Yeah. Vietnamese seals. And so you get to Tui Nahn. Am I saying that right? Tewan, yes. Tewan.

Okay, so you get to Tewanan. This is where you're going to be working out of. And again, you're not in a seal platoon. This is a totally different situation. And what you had there in Tewan, if I gathered it all correctly, you had five enlisted seals from SEAL Team 1. And then you had two SEAL Team 2 officers. And then plus, with those.

those two SEAL Team 2 officers who were, sound like they were more junior guys. Maybe it was their first deployment. But then Tommy Norris showed up as well as the OIC. Yeah. Shibbley, Captain Comdor Shibbley had all the Seals, UDT, EOD, divers, everybody. And then Tommy Nelson was our lieutenant commander in 03, and he was the head of all the seals. Tommy was the senior seal operator in the country. Then we had Ryan McCombie and another lieutenant. It was there.

And they were all East Coast guys. We had, actually, I think we had more like 18 enlisted guys. Oh, okay. And we broke it up. And Gary Chamberlain and Harry Connaclea went with Lieutenant Huth. down one thing, then Ryan McCombie was our boss and I stayed up. So everybody had had many tours that went down south and I had the most tours and I stayed up north with Ryan McCombie. Then Tommy would go back and forth to run operations.

Of course, it was hard to get AOs approved because, you know, it was pretty. At that time we were fighting in Quintree and Way City and all that stuff and they were trying to, overtake it, but we're still able to get our opposite. And you had what, two squads of LDNN? And what made up a squad of LDNN? Approximately, I think we had more LDNs than we did, but we separated those guys too. I know when we went on the operation, Woody, we always had a seal, as you know, on an insertion extraction craft.

And Woody had a, we only had three LNNs. is on the op with us, but he had another six or eight on the boat, the boat if we needed resupply. So, and I got to mention this because, again, it's half the book of By Honorbound is we've been throwing Tommy Norris's name around here. And when he showed up to work with you guys, he had been in country for some period of time, and he had done this, this multiple pilot rescue operations. The Bat 21 mission. And Tommy was, let's say that I knew about his reputation, and he knew about my reputation.

And it was kind of funny. Tommy and I only operated one time, and that was that operation. But we were, of course, still best of friends. And I know when we resubmitted, Tommy was put in for a medal, and it was resubmitted. And then he was upgraded to the Medal of Honor later on. and greatest friend any man could ever ask for. And I look back on the officers, the leadership we had on, like I was saying, Tom Boyhead and Captain Shively and Tommy and Ryan McCombie and Norm Carly.

And, you know, even when we were in six with Marcinco and stuff like that, it was we had some great leaders, you know, and all those guys took care of their people. That's what I really looked up to them before. We're always being there for the troops. You know, they may chew your ass out, but nobody else is going to. Now, once Tommy shows up, they, you start getting the mission tasking for this mission that becomes, you know, the mission. And the Paris peace talks were going on, but, you know, Tom was saying that there's no, at the operational level, you guys were like, oh, that's great, but it's not changing anything for us on the ground. Meanwhile, they're, you know, they're attacking Way City and it's just hard.

And so Tom goes down, he gets called down by the Commodore. Shibly. Shibly to get a mission tasking. And this is, this is Tom Norris talking. Uncle Dave had me take a seat in his office. That's what you guys called the Commodore apparently. Uncle Dave. I never called any of my Commodore's uncle, at least not to their faces.

Uncle Dave had me take a seat in his office and I could tell he had something on his mind. Tom, he said, the Vietnamese commander of the LDNN wants to run a seal reconnaissance mission to the mouth of the... Quantry. Quintry River. Is that right? Quantry River. Specifically, he and his superiors want to know about the defenses and enemy disposition around Quantry Naval Base. And he wants a Vietnamese LDNN officer to head up the reconnaissance.

I want you to run the operation to ensure the mission gets done properly, but this needs to be seen as a Vietnamese operation. So that was the tasking, doing a reconnaissance. Correct. Pretty normal operation. I mean, it's pretty standard. It sounds like you guys were running those type of operations fairly regularly. Yeah, basically the NV8 already moved across the Kwa Viet River, so that was the, we knew that, and we knew, and they were trying to take over Kwan Tree again. and they attacked on Way City.

That was in April, and this was in October when this thing was going down. So we knew it was hot and heavy up there. But Tommy said, yes, you know, you never said no to Uncle Dave. And so you guys decide, or Tom, you know, let's you know, hey, let's do a small group. You're going to take five guys. Correct. Two Americans and three Vietnamese seals. Right.

Obviously the two are you and Tom Norris. and then the three guys that you're going to take with you, the three Vietnamese that you're going to take with you, two of them were your hand-selected guys. Dang and Kwan. And then there was another officer. The other guy was an officer, right?

Correct, correct. And he was lieutenant. I've heard you tell the story in here. He's called Lieutenant Thuan. Yeah, we got a different. You always call him Thai. Well, yeah, but we put a different name in there because he kind of made the operation go south.

Got it. Got it. So here's the basic concept of operations. Well, it's really the funny part of it. Tommy said, I'll do the mission if you let me choose who I want to take. Back then we had a rotation, basically, where everybody get a chance to go in the fill. And I always went in the field with the new guys and stuff. And he said, I'd like to make a choice.

And Uncle Dave said, well, I bet you I know who it is. And he said, well, we've never. operated together and he said I bet just Mike Thornt and he said yes sir that's who want to take with me on an operation and actually Woody was supposed to be going in on that operation and but we took Woody on the the insertion extraction means of transportation and that's that's that's that's Bill Woodruff Woodruff who you talk about yeah yeah and we'll get into what his role was here's the here's the overview of the mission and this is this is this is Norm North talk and it was not a particularly difficult mission and it was certainly something we'd done before

So we knew the drill in general was about a 50 mile transit From Tui Nahn up the Kuivet River in our boats with a max speed of about eight knots That was a little more than six hours. So you're talking about a six hour transit the plan was to get well out to sea So no one on the beach could know which direction we were heading north or south once we turned in this case north We'd make our way up the coast then turn west back into shore and then we hope to be on station off the southern bank of the Cui Vett River, soon as possible after dark. We'd then leave the junks and paddle in close to shore on rubber boats and then swim the last swim ashore from the rubber boats. We'd insert, do our job, and get out before first light.

We didn't have to be back at Tewy Nond before first light, but we sure as heck wanted to be back across the beach and away from the coast before sun up. I was told I'd have offshore Navy support in the way of two destroyers. So if we were running a little late in getting out of there, I'd have some friendly on-call fire support. So that's a real standard mission that, you know, when I first got to Team 1, we did that, not the exact same thing and not real, but we train it all the time. You're going to get on, you know, Mark V's, and you're going to have your Zodiacs on there, then you're going to get a little closer to the beach. And once you get close to the beach, you drop off the Zodiacs, then you get a little bit close to the beach. Then the last thing you do is get out the boat, swim in, you go do your operation. So kind of standard stuff.

And, you know, he says it's not something you hadn't done before. All right. Here's what you were talking about when you're talking about the LDNs. Going back to the book, the LDNs came in all varieties of experience and capability and courage. On this operation, we had three very good ones. Lieutenant Kwan was a first-rate LDNN officer, and Deng and Kong. This other Kwan is an enlisted LDN, no relation, were two guys I'd work with on my first tour and was with them again in Tui Nond.

Dang and Kwan were good to go, but the problem was Kwan, the officer. Well, Kwan was hurt, and that's the reason the other officer. Yeah, the problem was that Lieutenant Kwan, he liked to get after a little bit sometimes? Well, it's like all of us. Maybe he had too much to drink the night before. And so, what did he get in, some kind of accident? Yeah, he was riding, and a whaler ran into the pier. He hit his head and he busted both his eyes, and he couldn't see his.

They were both completely shut. So this is how we got the other due officer, which I've never worked with. But I had worked many tours, I mean, not many tours, but many operations with the other two guys. And I'd worked with Kwan, and he was really good. But of course he was unable to make the op. So we brought in another young officer, which I'd never operated with. And this other, just so everyone knows as we're going through this, the other officer that you now brought on that you hadn't worked with before. His name was Lieutenant Thuan.

Yeah. Am I saying that right? No, but I'm not going to give this real name out. Got the Vietnamese speaker in here tightening me up. So you had the Navy who he was out to sea. the two things the Navy was supposed to help you with was helping you guys do navigation because in this time no GPS

it's so easy now. I'm embarrassed by how easy it is. And obviously fire support if you need it. Yeah. Basically what they were supposed to do is vector is saying and that's where each ship takes a radar plunge and they shoot it in and they see

where we are in the junks which are 39 foot concrete junks is what the and then they would see where we were, then they'd shoot us at Asmuth, and then we would take our compass, and we'd go in there. One of the ships shooting is they were trying to overtake Kwan Tree again, and he left and went down south to help give gunfire support

to help the Vietnamese Army and Marine Corps to hold off the NVA. And when that one guy shot the azmuth, and he was about three degrees off, but when you're 15 miles off the beach, three degrees is a lot. Yeah. And everybody said, the CEO said,

that's the river, right? Actually, it was the Ben Ha River, which was actually in North Vietnam. So when we went inserted, we were way north of the Quadrae. Now, you had talked about Bill Woodruff,

Woody, you're referring to him as an important point here, and this is something we always tried to hold true to, you won't always put like a seal with your assets if you can manage it. So you got a seal out there on the boats that are going to be recovering you because it's a guy that you know, it's a guy that you trust, and you know he's not going to leave you hanging. They're going to lose hanging.

That's right. And, you know, that's a good lesson learned for anybody doing operations right now. I don't care what unit you're with. If you're in the Marine Corps and you're using an Army asset, try and put a liaison officer with the Army. If you're in the Army and you're using a Marine Corps asset, try and put a liaison officer. Same thing with Special Operations. because those are the guys that speak your language, they're going to be able to predict what you're going to do

if things are going sideways. It's just a smart move to do. And then, you know, you talked about how these things started going wrong, and you're off the coast, and instead of being where you thought you were, you're at the Benhai River, which is basically... South of the Ben High. And Tommy and I discussed it,

and he said, well, we'll go ahead and go in. And we'll do what we call a horseshoe out. We'll go in so many clicks and go north and then go back to the east, back to the ocean. And try to, if we can pick up, you know, if we could do it. We were doing a body snatch too. Of course, by a body snatch, you get your best intelligence that way. Man, we used to do direct action missions to go capture bad guys. But we didn't call them body snatches.

And I'm kind of wishing we did. It sounds a lot better to do body snatch. Maybe I should have named those body snatch in operations. I would have felt a lot better about it. So, and tactically, you're going in. It's pretty normal. You swim in. It's pretty normal.

You get on the beach. And here we go back to the book. This is Utah, and I was carrying the Starlight scope, a bulky first-generation night vision device that allowed you to see relatively well at night. It was the size of a loaf of bread and weighed eight pounds. Tomi told me to scout the beach area to see if I could find any of the features we were looking for expecting to find like the mouth of the river I went north about 200 yards from our position in the same distance to the south and with the starlight scope I could see a good ways up and down the beach no river mouth and nothing looked familiar Tommy moved inland just a short distance to look the area over with his binoculars neither of us saw anything

that indicated we were supposed to be so and then like you said you know you're in the wrong space but You might as well do in reconnaissance while you're there and that's kind of the decision that's made And I was thinking about this too so I was thinking you guys only have five guys and the the idea behind that must have been hey Let's travel light and we can maneuver really quick and then I got to this list of what you were carrying Here's what Mike was carrying Mike talking I was the mule on a recon patrol I carried a car 15 carbine and just over 800 rounds of 556 ammunition along with an assortment of a dozen fragmentation CS and smoke grenades I also had three law rockets and a starlight scope all of us carried a medical kit and inflatable UDT over the head life vest I also had

our silenced weapon a 22 caliber automatic pistol with a suppressor attached the barrel we called it a hush puppy so not exactly light for for Conno sense and moving I was thinking you guys would try and stay all slick but that's that's no joke what you were carrying Now as you're patrolling you start seeing fires and Eventually you see movement you see bunkers and and Tommy says I think it's about time we get the heck out of here You say Roger that sir. It's about zero three hundred you got about three hours of darkness left and You get into a stream right and start moving towards the beach well for three different reasons.

One that keeps you a low silhouette. We knew that we were within a battalion of NVA at that period of time. Then we saw tanks and gun emplacement. So we knew that we were way north of where we were supposed to be. So by getting in the stream, the tide range is 18 feet over there. So the current was running out, so we knew it was going out to the ocean.

So we got in there. By keeping our low silhouette in there, we can move a lot faster in the water, and hopefully we wouldn't bump into any of the enemy out there, which we're starting to move around at that time in the morning. Now you start hearing something. Correct. And, you know, you halt the patrol,

and you see, what you see is NVA soldiers, a bunch of them. it's like an encampment of NVA soldiers. And correct me if I'm wrong, but from their position and where you had moved to in the stream, now you're looking at them and as you move to the water, you're going to be exposed. Is that the situation? Well, actually, they were in a base camp type deal,

and it was a quick reaction force. We knew the main force was behind us. Of course, that exposed us, kind of cut off our southern, route. So to the north of us, which we knew we were going farther north, there was that big lagoon as the map show. And so we would have, to our eastern flank, we had the ocean to the western flank. We had the lagoon. And then to the south, we had the bad guys that we knew of. And to the north, we had some sand dunes. But we could see after you pass this one big bunker. You could see nothing but flat beach, so we figured that would be our best objective to move up there.

And Tommy got on top of this. We thought it was a big sand dune, but actually it was a bunker built, and actually had tunnels down inside of it. And that's the one that you did a recon and you found that bunker? Yeah, found the bunker. And then you brought Tommy there. Tommy went up there with the radio and which was dang. And that gave us, you know, of course, back then the radios for PRC 77's line of sight, which you, so, yeah.

Yeah, and he's trying to make comms back to Woody and or back to the ship, back to the ship. The ship was in Newport and used in USS Morgan. That's what those ships were then. We had, we finally got Woody, but Woody was down off the mouth of the quavit. He thought, you know, after he got their bearings, so they were a long ways off from where we were. So at this point, Kwan, you guys are, you guys are in that. bunker and Kwan comes running back and he says die way Norris with the starlight scope

I see two men coming down the beach they're quite a way off but they're heading our way so then you seem like you come up with a plan right there of what you're gonna do yeah which to me I'm like thinking well I'll let you brief what your plan was but you see two bad guys coming down the beach yeah and your idea is cool it's time to do our body snatch that's correct and I figured the officer, which name is mentioned, he was a good side. He's like 5'9.9. He was a strong, I mean, the athletic guy.

Right. So this is the other Vietnamese, or the Vietnamese officer. He's a big guy. Yeah. So I put him down on the beach because the high water line, and these guys were walking up and down the high water line. And the other guy was about 100, 100. 50, 100 yards ahead of the guy because the other guy was walking up in the sand dunes.

And I figured, we've got to make sure we knock him out, let the other guys just walking by because he's just tootling down the coastline looking around. And so I sent Kwan down with the hush puppy, not Kwan, but the officer. And I sent him down, and I said, this guy's going to walk by us. But when the other guy, I'll take him out. And then I had Kwan there with me. And Kwan, after I knocked him out cold. And when Kwan got him, he taped him up and secured him.

So the two guys are, the two enemy are walking down the beach at a pretty good distance apart. Correct. And you say, okay, me and Kwan will go get this guy. We'll capture him. And then Lieutenant, or this Vietnamese lieutenant, you go and get this other guy. Correct. And you said kill him, right? No, I said if you could take him, take him down.

Okay, got it. But he's right on the shoreline, so the waves are breaking that's making a lot of turbulence and noise. And then the other guy's up in the sand dims. He's at the high water line walking around looking like that. I knew he would be the last one there, but we had to make sure we took him out for sure. Right. And then I told the officer he could go up and take this guy out or eliminate him or just make sure he didn't go back to the village

because the village is on down the beach. And he stood up and yelled Lide A Mile in Vietnamese. I mean, stop, come here. He's got an AK-47. The bad guy does. He's got a 22-long hush puppy, which is about from here across this room. And, you know, he's out there like that.

And the guy opened, fired on him. He's running back towards Tommy. I mean, and I'm running past him because I know he's on his one of the village. And as I say in the book, they have radios like everybody did. So sometimes they would, the way they would send information, they'd shoot so many rounds in the sky and somebody to answer back, but they changed all the time. But at that period of time, he only shot off two rounds. So hopefully that didn't mean something bad or good. and we got to the opening of the he went across the creek bed and he was heading straight to the

entrance to the village and I dropped down to one knee hit two shots hit him in in the back he fell down and the next thing all hell those 50 to 75 bad guys were chasing us down and and I was heading back to Tommy and we got back and I moved out on the point as the ball. book explains so I'll let it go from there so when you when you grab or now you're heading back to Tommy and that's in that big sort of bunker doom thing yeah yeah and so now all you are co-located in the big bunker no actually I'm out on the very point okay and Tommy was up on top of the bunker got it dang and they had taken our the guy we did capture up there and he was up there so I move the officer to rear security and told him if he sees anything let Tommy go

and I put Kwan over on my eastern flank, which is the side of the ocean. So I was about 50 feet ahead of him, 50 yards ahead of him. So I could cover. I could see everybody coming in. So I was kind of like the point. But I kept Kwan over to on the ocean side if they tried to flank me. He would knock them off. Then I could see the lagoon over here.

I could see the lagoon. And so I can see everything out in front of me. And now the enemy starts coming from. for you. Coming forward. And you start, you know, engaging them, taking them down. And engaged them. And what I'd do, I'd come up over here.

I'd roll over and come up somewhere else. I'd throw a grenade over here. I'd move back, throw another grenade. I'd move forward up where the grenade hit because I'd by that time. And I gave them a frost pretense as how many people we had. They didn't know if we had 12 or 15 or all they did. And Tommy and them were shooting from up. But Tommy was on the radio trying to get communications.

And what Tommy was trying to get communications from, and just to kind of lay this out a little bit, the ships have been told, hey, we might need fire support. Correct. Well, whenever you set up fire support for yourself, you always set up what we call pre-designated firing position. So, hey, you know, you name them, whatever you're going to name them, A, B, C, D, 1, 2, 3, 4, you'll give them girls names, whatever, car names.

Top for Bob and Charlotte. Yeah, it's real easy to jump on the radio, say, hey, fire at position, Bravo now. And the, you know, whatever fire support can start hitting that. That's great if you're where you're supposed to be. And that's the issue. So Tommy starts doing its best and saying, hey, fire rounds at this predesignated spot. They fire rounds at that predesignated spot. Guess what? Couldn't even see it. So they started moving north at that period of time. And they were shooting smoke in the air. And the firefight went for almost three hours, actually two hours and 55 minutes. And we had eliminated a lot of these

guys and they started falling back. So there's five of you that are making like 30, 40, 50 guys fall back? Well, just four of us because got it. The other guy never shot a round out of his weapon. And that's just you're taking good fire discipline. Correct. One or two rounds at time making good hits making sure what I'd do I'd shoot in the sand about an inch and I'd see their heads come up then I'd shoot about an inch below the sand and I'd get a head shot every time so you could tell that and then you'd roll over you know then with the grenades you were knowing that we were getting as you mentioned what our grenade of course we have a four second delay in hours and and their their grenades we had pulled those things before and they wouldn't go

anywhere from 14 seconds to 28 seconds. They don't have good quality control in their grenade factories like we do. Let's see. Yeah, you're talking about that. You're sending guys off. Now, you continue to shoot. You're continuing to hold your position. You're about halfway through your ammo at this point.

And then, speaking of these grenades, you're in one of these positions, and boom, in comes one of those grenades to your, to your spot. What'd you do about that? Well, I yelled grenade, and I grabbed it and threw it back. I was going $1,000, $2,000, $3,000. About the time I hit $8,000, the damn grenade came back over, and I'm going $12,000, $13,000, because, of course, we do it in thousands, and I gives you a good second, and I threw it back,

and the grenade went back and forth five times, and I was at $21,000, $22,000. I said, this thing's got to go off, and it went off, and I was hit six times, and my back was wrapped them. And I just yelled out, I didn't say nothing else. And when I yelled out, I just stayed there, and I looked up, and there was four guys coming across, and I eliminated all four of those guys. And that's when we found out they started falling back.

And Tommy said, they're falling back. And I said, are you okay? I said, you know, I'm wounded, but I'm okay a week. I'm still very, very mobile. And, of course, the adrenaline's pumping, like God knows what, and you don't worry about yourself. You just, you know, you need to get out of there. That's all we knew.

Now, at this point, it seems like they're falling back a little bit, and it looks like from the way it's described, there's basically another dune that's a little further back from where you are. Approximately 500 yards. And that's to the north? To the north. Right. By itself.

I mean, everything else is flat except for that one dune. And so what you what you guys hatch the plan real quick all right. Let's get to that thing. It's further away It's create some distance and then from there we can eventually get in the water and get out of here and You know I talk about cover and move all the time and and that's like the fundamental Principle of of how we fight and in in a normal situation You would just get little terrain features and you'd move back a little piece at a time because Because that's how you support each other in this one. There was nowhere to hide in between those two. No So you guys made the call of Tommy and who's going to stay up there?

Tommy and Dang the Ray I'm going to stay up there. And Tommy said, you fall back. Because at that period of time, I was the only one that had any been wounded. But what we did, I looked across, I had a pair of binoculars. I looked across and I said, I couldn't understand why. Because I counted almost 100 guys. And Tommy said, there's a lot more than that. And it was a NVA battalion.

They were trying to encircle us. And by the time I got done. back as the book says, Dane comes back by himself because Tommy had been shot in the head at that period of time. So you guys, they put down cover fire for you. Correct. And then you fall back. You're doing what you're supposed to do.

And you got the Vietnamese lieutenant and you got Kwan with you. You get back to that position. And that means Lieutenant Norris is still. up in the big bunker getting ready he's waiting for your fire support and and while that's happening I'm gonna go to the book Right here. I was asking for naval gunfire Right on to our position And he says those rounds could have hit dang and me just as well as the bad guys, but I had no choice

The guy on the radio came back and said understand fire for effect and I said absolutely put it on us and he said are you sure? And I said just give it in here and so they had actually as they were calling in this naval gunfire Tommy was like seeing guys coming and like through the grace of God a one big round hit there they hit them and got a lot of bad guys and then again going back to the book I went back to getting the law ready to fire that's a law rocket I could hear the ship shooting but that's the last thing I remember and then the narrator comes in and says at that point in the fight tom norris took an AK-47 round to the left side of his

forehead the bullet entered his skull at the orbital socket of his left eye tore a section of his skull exposing his brain and cut a shallow furrow along the brain itself dang saw his officer go down and the extent of his head wound his lieutenant had been shot dead knowing there was nothing he could do he made for the others who had just taken a position on the next dune to the north as he ran he took a round through the radio he still carried on his back knocking him down the round destroyed the radio and saved his life but fragments carried through into his back dang picked himself up and kept running it took him close to ten minutes to reach mike where's tommy mike asked dang when he reached him where is daway die way is dead dang replied This is it so you know your trusted Vietnamese fellow seal says hey look the lieutenant that's dieway is lieutenant he's dead And this is what you do I'm going to the book here I told Kwan and the others to wait here that I was going back for Tommy

They tried to stop me saying it was no use. He was dead I believe them I too thought he was but I wasn't going to leave him behind we never leave anybody behind so no way was I going to be the first to do that had I been wounded or dead he'd have come back for me that's who we are dang said he was dead and I had no reason not to believe him it didn't matter and what if by chance he was still alive I could not have lived with myself if I had left him behind not knowing or what the NVA might do to him if he were still alive that whole area south of the bunker was littered with bodies

and they would be looking for revenge I had close to a quarter of a mile to cover and the last part of it was uphill but I ran all the way the initial salvo from the Morton that was the ship out at sea although I didn't know it at the time that it was the Morton shooting had made the bad guys think twice about advancing on the dune with the bunker When I got close, I saw them moving carefully toward the bunker. From where I could see, they were flanking the bunker and moving in from the east or the beach side as well as from the south. I saw Tommy lying on the west side of the bunker.

Two guys were climbing over the top as they moved in from the east. They moved cautiously and got within a few feet of him. I shot them both and moved to where Tommy was. He had an unbelievable head wound. The whole side of his forehead was gone. his brain was visible you could actually see it the front lobe of his brain was kind of pushing out through his skull I could see why dang said he was dead I sure thought he was I picked him up put him over my shoulder and started running I also grabbed his AK 47 as I knew I was getting low on ammo I hadn't taken

more than 10 steps from the bunker when there was this explosion behind me from naval gunfire round The concussion picked us both up in the air, lifting Tommy off my shoulder and tossed us forward 10 or 15 feet. I literally saw him move my shoulder, leave my shoulder, and fly through the air. When I landed, I sat there for a moment stunned, trying to orient myself and catch my breath. Once I sorted myself out, I crawled over to where Tommy was lying in the sand. Once I got to Tommy again and started to pick him up, he spoke to me for the first time. He said Mike Buddy and that was when I knew he was alive. I said can you run and he says I can't see But he really couldn't run then he blanked out again

I put him in a fireman's carry and took off for the dune to the north where I'd left the others I heard him talking now and then and I guessed he was fading in and out But I knew he was alive and I put all my energy and focused and focused and I heard him talking now and then and I guess he was fading in and out, but I knew he was alive and I put all my energy and focused to covering the ground between where we were and the other dune. Well, like I said, you and I've talked about the camaraderie and the respect we have for each other. And even though Tommy's much smaller than I am, he would have done the same thing for me, and I know that.

So it's like you say, you know, if you die, which we're all, we understand what our job is, as being Navy Sills, but I could have never lived with myself, knowing that if he was dead. I thought he was dead, but with the grace of God, he's still with us. So as I was running back with him, I got shot through my left calf, and through my left calf, and I fell to the ground, and we got back in there. It was Kwan and Dane giving us cover fire. Were you, like when I've done stuff that was maybe not the safest,

things in the world. I never was really thinking like, oh, this is dangerous. Were you thinking, oh, this is really dangerous? Or were you just, oh, he's over there and I got to go get him because that's what we do. That's what we do. So that's what it is. You don't, you know, fear is a good thing, but you got to focus. I mean, if, you know, I could have sat down it today.

We go, I'll go die. I'm just going to lie here and do it. But I said, I'm going to take as many of those SOBs down as I can. and the thing is, is that it's like we go back to what we are in the camaraderie and going through training and why we do things and things like that. I think that the brought up was my father. As I go back to, I look about it because my dad never would have left me behind or anybody else behind. That's what's instilled in us as we go through training, and that's what's instilled us.

you know, I know Tom Boyhan was saying last night he said, you know, I don't think you ever knew what fear was. Well, I knew what it was, but I mean being afraid, you know, if you worry about being afraid of everything, you should never be in the field because you're not focused on what you're trying to do. So that's the whole thing is, you know. So we're out there to do a job, so let's get the damn job done. Yeah, it's interesting to me. I think guys would feel more afraid when we were getting ready. to go in the field when even me you know you when you have time to think like oh we're going down this street which has had you know 17 iEDs on it the last four days and there's guaranteed to be

another one on there tonight with a question is is it going to hit you or is it going to hit someone else and that's i would see the look on guys faces while we were getting ready to go out and you could see a little bit of that but once you're in the field everyone's doing what they do They're just doing their job. It's like flicking the switch, you know, light switch. You get your mind and what you're supposed to be doing. So if a guy doesn't have his mind in the game, he's going to stay at home. He ain't going out in the field with Mike Thornt.

I promise you that. Now, this is one of my favorite parts of the book that is, well, I'll read it. This is you talking. When I got back to the Dune, Dang and Kwan were waiting for me, providing cover fire lieutenant thwan was nowhere in sight he'd already made it for the water to escape but god bless dang and kwan they waited for me and were still in the fight even though dang was wounded they said mike what do we do now and i said we swim which is the classic seal scenario in that the water is our salvation you know

You know, it's like we have that special experience in the water and people aren't comfortable in the water and it's our home. And that was just the classic answer, these guys are saying, what do we do now? Remember we're combat swimmers, not combat runners, but the running does help. So now talk about when you're getting, now you're moving to the water. You're carrying Tommy. What goes on then? Well, I didn't inflate Tommy's life jacket, as some of the stories said. I was using Tommy like a surfboard, and every time a wave would break, I'd push them underneath the water and bring them up the other side,

because the worst thing you could do is have a wave, and we had six sets of waves coming in, and that's how Kwan ended up getting injured. You got shot. And so after I got Tommy out, that's when I put, and I could never find Tommy's life jacket. And he had it in a pocket down on his calf. And I said, why? He said, I wonder if I get a bullet hole in it? I said, it's good because we can put a piece of tape and then, you know, if you have a, you know, sucking chest wound, I could have to take.

So I took my life jacket off me, put it on his head, and I took the, you know, the old UDT, I took the harness. But I just put a little bit of air and I started breast stroking out to sea. And that's when I saw Kwan was not going anywhere. anywhere and I could see dang out in front of me and so I swam over and grab quan and I put quon in front of me and Quan had been shot too he had been shot pretty bad in the yeah in the back femur and also his buttocks was completely kind of gone so he couldn't so I so you're wounded you got shrap on your back you got shot in the leg like you got lieutenant Norris who's basically unconscious dying and now you got Juan who he can't move

himself. He's immobile as well. Correct. And Dang is leading point as you guys are padding out and you're carrying both these other guys through the water. So what I did, I took Kwan and put his arms, I put my arms underneath Kwan's arms and he held Tommy like this and I started

breaststroke and two we got out past the range of their weapons and at that period of time I inflated Kwan's life jacket with a little bit then I actually tied his life jacket to my waist and I towed Kwan and swam with Tommy on my back.

Here's, again, a typical, I think this exemplifies the seal attitude right here. This is you talking. Every time Tommy woke up, it was Mike. You got everyone? I could only count four of us. Where's the other guy? I'd say, I got them.

I got everyone. And then he drift off again. Then when he woke up again, it was Mike. You got everyone? Do you have all of them? And I'd say, at Tommy, I got them all, okay?

They're accounted for. But I just love the fact that, you know, you got a guy that's clearly close to death. And when he does become conscious, his number one concern is, does he have his guys with him? His troops, that's it. And that's the way great leadership is. Sometimes people surpass that because, you know,

but it goes back to the thing that you and I were talking about earlier. You take care of your people. Your people will take care of you. now you get out you know past like you said past the small arms fire and and again dangan kwan keep asking mike what do we do what do we do and each time you said we swim we just keep swimming we'll swim south all the way to tui non if we have to that's correct and that's what you did you start you kept swimming and kept swimming and kept swimming and kept swimming and and you're out there for three hours swimming and and just to put that into some

perspective for people that have never swim in the open open ocean before the longest swim that you do in seal training is 5.5 now nautical miles which is 6.2 statute regular land miles and that takes depending on the current depending on how good of your swimmer you are that's the longest swim that they actually make you do And that takes like three, four, sometimes five hours. That's the longest swim that they make you do. And by the way, they give you a little water break in between. So here you are swimming this and you're wounded, shot on the leg.

Like I said, you're dragging these other guys. Now, luckily, Bill Woodruff, when we talked about this earlier, you had. He saved our life. I mean, Billy wouldn't give up on us. He would not give up. He kept looking for us. And actually the Morgan thought they had killed us all. They thought, and they never knew until several years ago that we were still alive.

No, that's actually a great, and again, obviously, I can't cover the whole book on this show. But get the book because Dick Couch did a great job of actually going out and talking to the people that were firing, talking to people on the Morgan. And you're right. They fired rounds and all of a sudden they didn't hear anything. They could fire danger close rounds, meaning like rounds that we know are going to be very close to our friendly forces. And then they never heard another word. So their thought was, you know, horrible. We must have hit our own guys.

And but luckily, and the other thing that's interesting about Bill Woody Woodruff is the other lieutenant, the Vietnamese lieutenant, had actually gotten out to them and told him, hey, this is what happened. The lieutenant got killed. Mike went to go get him and never came back. That's what he got told. So the word got back to Woody and he called the Newport News and they went out with the Navy Blue. Tommy was dead and I was missing in action and they were still looking for Kwan and Dang. Okay. So here's actually here we're here in the book.

And again, Dick Couch did a great job getting back with all the guys that were there, or at least a lot of them. And he's talking to Woody here, Bill Woodruff. He says, it was about 11.30 and I saw the Newport News begin to move off to the south. Then my junk skipper got a call from the other junk that was off to the north and slightly inshore from us. We were about a half a mile apart so as to better search the area. They said they had swimmers in the water and were going to get them. You can't know what that meant. So there it is, because Bill stuck around.

Yeah, yeah, and I have the greatest admiration and respect for Bill. I'm glad that Bill found us because Bill was going to do a counterattack, and then we had Ryan McCombie down in Tewan on getting a bunch of guys, everybody else that was left to come and find us. So that goes back to the things about taking care of your teammates, you know, and thank God they did find us, because none of those guys would have made her because, I mean, they had over 600 bad guys up there. So, you know, sometimes you don't want to leave nobody behind, but sometimes you've got to take your losses, too, you know.

It was the two things, and I've heard this from other SEALs from Vietnam, two missions, there's no question we're launching on is downpilot and SEALs in trouble. We're going. Yep. And that's what those guys that were still in Tewy Nond were doing. and they were getting ready to go. They were coming after us, you know. And I hate to say it, but I figured we'd have lost to everybody trying to get in to get us at times.

Because, like I said, they had the gun emplacements, they had tanks in there. We weren't the heavy-duty guys. But that goes back to even what we have today with, you know, like Eric Critchson trying to go in and losing the guys that, you know, we're going to go in and get our boys back out. And, you know, we passed a paton on back from where I am. And these young men who serve us now have the greatest admiration.

They're a lot smarter than I am because they, you know, you've got these kids going through training now. They're all got college education, but they're enlisted guys. They just want to be in the teams. And the training they do is awesome. Oh, yes. It's amazing. Way better than I had it when I went through. And they have very high standards, great guys coming through.

So you guys now get back on board, but obviously this isn't over yet because you got severely wounded, especially Tommy Norris. And you actually told them, bring the Newport News back because there's a... Correct. There's a doctor. I knew there was a doctor on board because it was a Navy Cruiser. And they had a lieutenant commander on board. And I called Woody and I said we have four WIA and one critical. And they, Newport News did turn around and we started steaming. And our job, and our job, junk, Woody was on the other junk. Our junk got there first, and we passed down a boats and chair, then we passed down a rigger, then we put Tommy inside that and got him up there. And I actually picked Tommy up out of it and carried him down because the thing was too wide to get through the

hatch, so I picked Tommy back up, carried him down, and laid him on the gurney in the doctor's office. And then I got called to the bridge to debrief the admiral. This is, again, a great find by Dick Couch, another seal that wrote the book, another Vietnam seal. And he found a guy named Chuck Zender. And Chuck Zender was a corpsman on the USS Newport News. And I'm not sure why Dick Couch found him or how that worked, but he's the guy that he found. And he's talking about when you guys came on board. And what was interesting was that a few months before, actually a month earlier, they'd had a turret explosion on the USS Newport News.

And it killed 11. Killed 11 and wounded 62. And so the medical staff on that was they were kind of primed. Luckily, they were used to. They had just been through basically a horrible mass casualty drill. and they were somewhat ready for it, which, you know, again, by the grace of God, they had some recent experience with dealing with wounded.

And so that's why they were ready for this. And that's according to Chuck Zender, this Corman. And here's Chuck Zender talking. When they came aboard, they were a pretty scruffy lot. My job in handling casualties was triage. I saw them first evaluated them and sent them onto a senior medical person, Corman, or doctor for treatment. I remember seeing this one American I couldn't believe his head wound his forehead was simply blown away

I had two thoughts one it was a good thing he was in salt water or he had bled to death my second thought was this man will not be alive in the morning he went straight to dr. Fulchirio for Chiro who was waiting for him in surgery There was this big guy who was with him and he carried him from the fantail to the sick bay We had to force him to let go so we could treat him He wanted to go into surgery with him So that was you. Oh, obviously and He also said that when when they came out and said hey we need to check you out and you looked and you said no

Tommy comes first the rest of us can wait This is Chuck Zender talking again. While we were treating the Vietnamese seals, I kept my eye on the big American. I finally got him to sit down so we could look him over. I saw blood on his pant leg and I cut into his trouser. I saw a bullet hole in his leg. My eyes got big and I called another Corman over to look at it.

I said, we better treat that. And the seal said something like, yeah, whatever. He just didn't seem to care. But he did care about the others and kept asking about them, especially his lieutenant. We knew he was a lieutenant because the other big American seal said he was. He had no rank insignia on him. So, again, your number one priority is your teammates.

Sure. Another person. So you guys make it back. The ship gets you back to land. Tommy eventually gets casualty evacuation to the Philippines. Yeah, I got on the radio and Ryan McCombie. and we metivac Tommy off by helicopter to Danang, and Ryan flew down on a helicopter,

and he was waiting in Danang. And Ryan stayed with Tommy the next. He sent up 141 because we knew we had our POWs, Admiral Stockdale, Bud Day, people like that, out. And so all the top doctors, you know, neurosurgeons, all those guys were over there because they had already pulled their, everybody out of Vietnam with the exception of just general practitioners.

And by the time we got Tommy through the whole operation, got him to the Philippines, to Clarks, it was almost 19 hours long. Madovac, then his operation lasted 19.5 hours his first operation. And they stayed in touch with us. But I stayed on board of the Newport and used to the following day to take care of. The Vietnamese spoke English, but I spoke pretty, I mean, I was fluent in Vietnamese, and so I stayed on there until we got them all passed up. This is the doctor-talking, Major Walter Grand.

He's the neurosurgeon that they had to get Tommy Norris too in the Philippines. And he says, when he arrived, we took him directly into the OR. At the time, General Military Battlefield Protocol held that the patient needed to be, needed to be or should be conscious going into surgery and I was surprised that someone with this serious of a head wound would be conscious and conversant fortunately he was he was still dressed in his operational gear which were blue jeans and a black t-shirt of some kind as I was conducting my initial examination I remember that he was conscious but but just barely I could tell he'd been through a lot then he seemed to come more alert and ask sir can you

tell me about my men I know we got them all off the beach but can you tell me if they're okay till the end yeah now they get done with the surgery that you're talking about incredibly long surgery and here's the doctor talking again on removing the bandage and inspecting the wound we talked and I sensed that he didn't know that he no longer had a left eye I was reluctant to tell him as he had endured a great deal, but he was a pretty tough fellow, so I told him that we were unable to save his left eye. He thought about it for a second, and then said,

do you think they'll kick me out of the Navy because of that? I said that I couldn't really answer that, but I took it as a good sign that he still wanted to be a seal. And the funny part, it wasn't the eye as much as it was the loss of the front lobel part of his brain. I actually don't think that's funny, sir. I don't think it is either. So when you say that, what do you mean? What was the, you're saying, hey, they're not going to kick you out of it, even though you've lost part of your brain?

Yeah, well, I think that was one of the, we talked about it because he wanted to stay in. He was already chosen to be a lieutenant commander at that period of time. And, of course, he owned medical hold. That does, that goes to stop. But Tommy would have been a great, he would have been a great admiral. I mean, he really would have done us proud, as of Ryan McCombie, too, and a few other guys who didn't go up through the ranks to the top. But we've had some great leadership up there.

And Eric Olson, Bill McCraveman, Joe Kernan, McGuire, Burke Callan. I mean, the way you look at it, I watched the teams grow from this. O-4 was as high as you could go and still be in the teams, and now look at the thing, and the guys are just amazed me every time I look and read something or something, how much I'm so proud of each one of these young men and who serve this great nation of ours.

Yeah. It's amazing, again, that the attitude is just constant. And, you know, I had this with my guys that got wounded, none of them wanted to go home. They wanted to just stay. They didn't care if they just had to sit and stay and watch. They wanted to stay with us in Iraq. Well, you know, I mean, how proud all you guys were when we were there with Admiral Olson

and you guys were receiving your awards in the Pentagon, you know, after Mikey Mansour. And, you know, you look at the guys and Job and those guys that, you know, of course, he lost his life in a very basic operation. But, you know, even though when they had the diversity against them, they continued to strive to make. their life better. Well, Ryan Job's the classic example. He was blind in both eyes. He was telling me he was already back in America and he's on the phone telling me, can I please come back to Iraq? I want to be with the platoon. Yeah. Yeah. And goes in and gets his college education and has a beautiful family. And he's, I remember there when I was able to put the purple heart on him. And Tommy and I were there with Admiral Olson, of course. Was that at Bethesda? Where was that? Was that in the hospital?

No, no, no, he was at the Pentagon. Oh, okay. Oh, at the award ceremony, the big awards ceremony. We had for you guys, the big ones, and then we went down and he gave other from the team three. We gave, Colin Greene was there. Yeah, it was awesome. It was the task unit bruiser award ceremony at the Pentagon. Yeah.

We were all pretty surprised to be there doing that. But yeah, Ryan Job, so you guys put the purple heart on him there. Yeah, got it. Yeah, he's had the same. attitude that you hear from Tommy Norris. Hey, can I stay in? Can I be there? Be with the guys. How much longer were you in Vietnam after that operation? That was October 31st, and I came home on a break in November, and then I came home for good in January. So then everybody left in March of 73 and Woody and the rest of the guys they stayed there and they came back

as a final thing. Brooksie and Woody Chamberlain and Harry Conachua and all those guys, Bill Bradford and stuff. And that was the last sales, of course, then we got involved with Delta Battoon, you know, with the Cambodia issue and all that kind of stuff and the Philippines and stuff like that. You talk about coming home here. I'm going to the book. Coming back to the team this time was different from my first Vietnam tour when you were labeled a one tour wonder, which is by the way still what you get called in this day and age when you come home from your first deployment or even from my Thailand tour at SEAL Team one you were not a maid man until after your second combat rotation It was not so much respect from the team veterans as many of them had been on four or five combat rotations It had more to do with acceptance

I was now one of them when guys like Gary Gallagher and Walt Gustaville and Doc sell came up to you and said Nice job over there or good work getting your lieutenant back off that beach It really meant something There was also getting to know my kid who thought I was something stranger which I was and getting reacquainted with my wife I've been gone more than I was at home since we were married and there was the absence of combat both the worrying of having to go in the field and in some ways missing the anticipation of getting ready to go on an operation and the rush that comes from combat I looked at all this as normal for any seal coming

home, but it was still an adjustment. So you guys, same stuff the guys go through now. El Carte, correct. Same exact stuff guys go through now. And our spouses don't get enough credit for what they do. I mean, they raise our kids, families, they take on, you know, stuff that we should be there to try to help them with. But, you know, we have amazing spouses, you know, in the teams, too. And we have a lot better, you know, the first thing I mentioned my wife, they said,

Did the Navy issue her? No, now we have a whole different outlook, thank God. And, you know, they're our part of our lives, and they should make it better for all those. The military wives, all the military wives. Oh, yeah, each and everyone on. What they do, yeah, they're raising the kits, but they're also fixing water heaters and, you know, repair and plumbing,

and they're just doing everything in the house. Like you said, stuff that we're supposed to be doing if we're home. If we're home. So they had to put up with all the BS with a man taking a car in there trying to. Hell, I know how to change oil. They say, you know, they try to pull that one over my eyes. Now, going back to the book, this is you talking. I was notified in September that I would receive the Medal of Honor.

A lot goes through your mind when something like that is going to happen to you. You try and play it down in your mind like it's no big deal, but it really is a big deal. Everyone in uniform knows it's a big deal. I felt humbled and undeserving. And I swore that I was not going to change me. Well, you know, Mike Thorne's always been a renegade and probably always will be a renegade and I wasn't going to let it change me.

And so, you know, when I went back to get the medal, they wouldn't let Tommy out of the hospital, so I kidnapped him and kept him for four days. So Tommy was still recovering from the head of the wound. Yeah, he was still going. And this is, this is what, a year later? A year later. And Tommy still, I mean, he's just going through all these, all these surgeries and everything else.

I mean, Tommy went through surgeries for six and a half years and it still goes even now. So, you know, it's unbelievable. I mean, so. But they wouldn't let him out of the hospital go to your ceremony. No. So I said, hey, this is not, I said, I'll bring him back, you know. And they said, no, I said, well, I'm going to get in trouble when I take him out. So I kept him for four days to put in my hotel in their famous name.

And everybody in the world's looking for it. And the Surgeon General of the Navy, which is a three-star, put me on report. And I'd go to Admiral's Mass, but that's, okay. It's not my first one. You know, Tony Fratty, who is the Charlie Patoon Chief, we used to talk about Mike Thornton. And we'd say, you know, just on random days, we'd say, hey, you know what Mike Thornton's doing today? Whatever Mike Thornton wants to do today. So you just smuggled him out of the hospital against orders.

Went to Admiral's Mast. You talk a little bit about the ceremony here. Going back to the book, we showed up at the White House for the ceremony. Then we were all taken to the Oval Office, and I was presented with the medal. I'll never forget President Nixon saying, Mike, what can I do for you? And I said, well, Mr. President, you could break this medal and have. and give the other half to this young man, which was Tom Norris you were pointing to, standing behind me because he saved my life too.

So again, even in the end there, you are looking out for your teammate. All the way through. We still look at it for each other even today after 46 years. So, I mean, it's a job that you never give up. Well, the book, like I said, I mean, we've covered a fraction of the book and it gives so much more detail. It goes on to talk about the rest of your Navy career. It goes on to talk about and obviously it talks about Tommy Norris's career as the FBI as the FBI agent by the way went into the FBI and was an undercover operative. I mean just unbelievable.

Unbelievable. Yeah. You got to get this. so that you can get the full details of what I'm talking about. And, you know, the last thing I wanted to read from the book is the citation

from your Medal of Honor. Please don't. They can go online and read it. But the book's called By Honor Brown, ladies and gentlemen, and I tell you, I never felt I deserved the medal. I'll never feel. I would deserve the medal.

But, you know, I wear that with the honor of the men and women who serve before me, serve with me, and serve after me. But a lot of people don't know. We've lost 2,000, 853,000 people. This great nation does enjoy our freedoms today. And that's who we can never forget, and freedom is not free. And we must honor each and every one of them, and they all deserve the medal. It's given their lives for this great nation. And, of course, Mikey Mansour, like I said before, what a great young man.

I knew Mikey. And I feel for all our Gold Star families, because I've never, knock on wood, I've never lost a child. But I've lost a lot, a lot of close, great friends. And I know what part of that they're going through, but, you know, until you lose a child of your own, God's blessed you to give. It's hard of people to understand, but freedom is not free. It's written in blood, as you know, Chuck. Yeah, and, you know, I can't even fathom what it's like to lose a child.

I know, you know, it's, I can't even fathom. And, you know, when I hear people throwing the word hero around, you know, I always, I always say what I hear a lot of veterans say and that is the real heroes didn't come home. I agree with you. But at least we did get them home and we still continue to try to get the ones

the remains of the ones home. Well, you know, the like I said, if you go and get this book you can read it, you can learn a lot about these operations you can learn a lot about people and what people are capable of and what real sacrifice looks like and you know mike again um like everyone's going to want to tell you and tells you all the time thank you for the service that you made

for our country but as a seal i want to say thank you for setting the example That we followed and as a person and as a human being Thank you for showing us That we're all capable of more than we thought and no matter how dire the circumstances No matter how many enemy forces are advancing no matter how many rounds they're firing at you know how many grenades they throw at you No matter how big the problems that you face in life life, never quit on yourself and never quit on each other. Very well put there, Draco.

Sir, I think we've kept you here long enough. Well, Echo, I'm sorry you didn't get a whole lot of speaking time there, buddy. No, enjoying the listening. That's what Echo does. He gets the lucky job. He just sit back and listen to awesome stories. But thanks for coming on. It's my honor.

Thank you for what you're doing and getting the word out to the public. Because, like I say, freedom is not free, ladies and gentlemen. Freedom is written in blood. And please don't take advantage of this, you know. Give back to the ones who are giving so much. And that goes back to what you and I are talking about too. I mean, the wives, the children, the sacrifices they make for their spouses to go overseas and keep this nation free.

And what's the organization that you have now? It's called the Michael Lee Thornton Foundation. It's the Met Fund. We give out money. I don't give out, you know, 50,000 or 100,000. I give out 10,000 here, 5,000 there. And our Met Foundation basically, or I'll give out 20,000, you know. And just a couple examples.

One was a young Marine. Came back. He was a corporal. They retired him. Of course, now it takes anywhere from 19 months to two years to get into the VA. He had these bad headaches, but he'd have enough money to pay for his co-payments. So I write a check to the MRI, to the hospital. I write the check.

They do an MRI. Find out he had a brain ameurism and was able to save the young man's life. Another one, we had a guy in special ops. He was an Air Force major, Intel officer at J-Soc. He was overseas. His wife got done with stage four cancer. We put her into Duke University. They tried to save her life.

A friend of mine goes back to the day when we started SIL Team 6 and along with, started J-Socke in 1980. He was our chaplain. He was a Catholic chaplain and he calls me and said, Mike, I hear you get a great foundation. I have a problem. I said, what is your problem? I do, I do diligence. We were able to get their kids into this, back to this. Christian school, which all the kids, they're raised from the age of seven to 10 or 11, I can't remember.

And there's three of them, but they had spent their whole school time there. But the father causes the coal payments, which they had already built up to like $100,000-thousand-thousand-dollar with the cold payments. I paid for the kids' tuition, wrote a check, which was a little bit over $18,000, you know, for all, put them back in there. but at least they had a stable platform and everybody knew what was going with the mother. All the teachers knew the kids and stuff like that. And then at that period of time, I go back and I make some phone calls to some good friends of mine

in New York City, and they took care of the over the $100-something thousand dollar co-payments. So I put a Band-Aid on the problem, and then I try to go other. You call for fire support. Yeah, fire, yeah. But, I mean, I work with the Navy Seal Foundation. the Navy Seale Family Foundation.

We work with keeping our history of the museum, which John Lee does a great job that we do up at Pebble Beach, the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation, which is the number one foundation. In the nation, you give her 99 cents of every dollar raised. And I give 97 cents of every dollar raised. I do have one administrator. I pay for so my wife and I can travel around

and take care of that. But there's some great foundations out there. I just tell you make sure you do your due diligence on their foundations. You just go online and check them out, and if they're a four-star or five-star and find out. But all the foundations I work with, it's got to give at least 94 cents of every dollar raise out for the calls. Where can they find your foundation?

Just pull up the M-T fund online. M-E-T fund? Yeah. The Matt Fund or the Michael E. Thornton. I put my name on it. The buck stops with me. If somebody's pointing fingers, they only got one finger to point.

I'll take full responsibility of what I do. So I always have. You know, don't do. And I have people like Bob Kerry, Congressman, there used to be a Medal of Honors on my board. I have an admiral on my board. I have two really great businessmen on my board. And I have supports of people all over the United States,

which helped support their calls. They said they used to give money to other foundations, but they didn't like the money was being supported, so they give me the, and I, and like I say, we make sure we take care. I mean, if somebody blows up the engine, having a bad month, they got laid off, and we pay for their rent,

but we write the check too. We don't give it to the person. We give it to the complex, or we give it to the hospital, or we give it to the doctor. So that way I know the money's going where it's supposed to be going so they can get to take care of their problems Well, obviously your service isn't quite over yet. You're still serving and still helping veterans and seals across the board and once again, sir, thank you for coming on.

It's been an honor knowing you. It's been an honor talking to you. And I look forward to talking to you again sometime. Well, we will, Jocko. Just keep doing what you're doing and I'll go keep them out of trouble. Yes, sir. Thank you very much for having me on. Thank you.

All right, we just took a technical break, and Mike Thornton has left the building. Yep. And went to go do what Mike Thornton does. Whatever he wants. Which is pretty much whatever he wants. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was awesome, obviously, having them on.

Agree. And when Mike Thornton tells you, don't read my citation, you don't read the citation? Simple as that? That was awesome. No factor. Yes. No factor.

Yeah, yeah, go online and read it. But awesome having them on, obviously. And now we want to keep having people like Mike Thornton on the podcast. If somebody wanted to help us have people on this podcast, sure. Do you have any suggestions on how they could maybe lend to that effort? Echo Charles. The support. Sure.

Oh, yeah, like basically that's what I'm saying, a way to support you. Yeah, yeah. Of course Here's a way And support yourself That's kind of the thing You know What's good for the goose is good

You know what I'm saying Maybe Origin We're in league with origin As you put it Yes I do put it that way Sure yeah so Origin Maine

So Origin Maine the state Just so to be clear Yes origin M-A-N-E Oh you mean it like You might be like Maine M-A-N Okay no

You know, like, that's the main one kind of, kind of, which makes sense, by the way. Yeah, because it is the main one. Totally. And so, you know, a lot of times, like, okay, we'll take the geese. That's how I first heard of origin, by the way, the geese. Like, oh, these geese are dope, check the, you know. And of course, you know, but that technically is kind of a matter of opinion as far as like, okay, I'm going to look at this guy.

Okay, no, I'm going to look at this one. Because someone might like Ford more than Chevy or whatever. Yeah. Or the look, especially with geese, like, you know, the subtle differences kind of, you know, it's to each their own kind of thing. Yeah, I guess you're going to like full on fashion realm here, which I don't go into.

Potentially, yeah. I'm looking for functionality. You probably could have guessed that. Yes. So yeah, and you look into it. So the functionality part, yes, all that, of course. But when you say made in America, this is like the epitome. This is the, basically the defining situation.

Mm-hmm. So you know how they'll be like, hey, made in America, but then, you know, it's clothes or whatever. We'll say in this case closed. But then you say, oh, okay, dang, those are good shirts. You know, where do you get your blanks from or whatever? Oh, we get them from, you know, somewhere other than America kind of thing. No, the cotton. Get the cotton from America.

That's what origin did. That actual cotton. Yeah. Well, when you do talk about functionality, just kind of FYI, when you have a guy that's making the geese and therefore is going to weave the material to make the geese with, he's going to make material that is specifically the best to have for a ghee.

Right. That's a situation with origin. That type of commitment. Yes. That's why we're in league with origin. Yeah, totally makes sense. Because we're kind of, we have that mindset over on this side.

Makes sense. So, yeah, Origin, that's the one. I'm looking forward to my ghee. and I'm down for geese by the way but yeah so I'm looking forward to that one origin main O-R-I-G-I-N-M-A-I-N-E just to be clear just in case and it's not just geese yeah

you can get the hash guards the hash guard yeah and we're gonna be making everything there yeah we're gonna be making everything there everything that I utilize in my life yeah I'm gonna make it's like the

so you're gonna kind of come out with almost like a life kit is really what it is it's a kit oh don't use the Reebok terminology bro that's Reebok yeah because the Reebok calls it like the UFC fight kit uh okay but I didn't know that man no not kit like the word kit is a universal no the word kit is a universal word yeah which I do concur with right but what did you call it the kit that's what I called it I guess so so you could call it the Brits the Brits call it kit they call their op gear like their web gear yeah they call it kit yeah which means that we all Also, because we have interoperability with the Brits and with the Aussies.

Sure. So we also tend to call our gear kit. Right. So, yes, in fact, you are correct. If you were to say, I'm going to make all my kit there. Right. The answer is yes. But there's a fine line where people might think of the UFC fight kit, which didn't go over real well when they first came out.

Yeah. Hey, and, you know, we're going to let that be their thing for sure. as far as it going well or not going well. This one, what would it be? Kind of like the unofficial discipline equals freedom kit. How about we just call it gear? Yeah, we could just call it gear, I guess. That's my vote.

All right. I don't rule the world. So if you want to call it kit on your side and I'll call it gear over here, let's do that. You know, that way you're comfortable. I'm all about everyone being comfortable with what they're saying. Technically, it'll be a kit with gear in it. Okay.

You know what I'm saying? Because the kit is like the collection. That's a traditional use of the word kit. Right, right. That's what I meant. Like, hey, okay, you got like... Like a survival kit. Yeah, I got a survival kit when I was six years old, and it's got a compass and a whistle and a pair of matches in it.

What happens if you use both matches? You're in trouble. So that's a survival kit. Why do you have a whistle? You just said whistle, by the way. Yeah. Because, you know, when you're a little kid, you get lost in the whiz, would you're supposed to blow on the whistle for a while? No, bro.

No, right. No, right. That didn't happen in Kauai. No, not that ain't. What'd you do in Kauai when you got lost? You just keep heading in one direction And it'll bring you to the ocean Yeah

Or up in the mountains So it's kind of they call it Mauka and Makai Makaa is mountain Makai is ocean So that's kind of the directions Yeah So otherwise you just keep walking Oh That's a good lesson for life too

Bro, we got lost in the mountains one time Long story Maybe some other time Back to Origin Please another time So boom Origin Maine All Made in America

Rash guards Gis all that stuff. This is like, yeah. And by the way, supplements there too. Yeah. Supplements.

Origin labs. Yeah. Yeah. So you can find it all there. Yeah. It's dope. And we are going to make basically what we're talking about here,

Jocko supplements. Because again, what do I specifically want? I'm pretty particular. Let's make that thing. Yeah. And then we go forward. The good part about that is, too,

is you're kind of one of these guys you can rest assured. You're not going to have like, These weird extra things like I don't know Hair dye or something like that we will not be selling a hair die Yeah yeah or something like this So yeah that'd be good the good stuff for sure or jamein. Yes, also Support yourself so on it

I'm not gonna go into my kettlebell situation again this time Actually yesterday I worked out. I didn't do kettlebells I did I saw somebody tweeted you that was it was like an article That said that those little goblets squats We're not building. Yeah, and that was a funny article for sure. I kind of laughed. You know what the title was called something along the lines of, I'm trying to make, remember it exact, it was called.

14 ways to avoid being big or strong. To remain a puny little weakling. Oh, puny. I think. No, dweeb. Dweeb. Pune little dweeb was in there. So apparently, given number or whatever number that was,

I'm going to remain a puny little dweeb. Apparently, here's the thing. Are those really goblet squats though? Because goblet squats No, I know what you do. You do the, you basically do a front squat. Yeah.

Double rack. Double rack, yeah, because goblet is like, because this is the form of the shape of a goblet right here and that's how you hold it. It is kind of, I mean, but what if you used like a huge ass kettlebell?

Well, then maybe. Part of a Metcon. Yeah, that could work. In fact, I mean, respect to the author that, I forget who wrote it or whatever, but it was a real subjective, really, you know. I think it was more of like a shock article kind of. Yeah, you know, it was like,

it was a laugh, it was for a good laugh, you know. But if you take that seriously I don't think it was out like a serious directive out there trying to help people that have skinny knees Proud of them maybe you see real proud of that look at you Anyway I didn't really like the article on that level, but for a laugh. It was good and and factually Here's the deal Cattlebells are legit yeah, and they are goblets squads are legit and goblin squads are legit, but here's the thing there was a good point

Hey, yeah, I'll tell you what you know we're talking about what you what you used to? You're gonna Yeah, what you're used to, yeah, yeah. For some reason, I hurt, like, my wrist or something. Yeah. Or I hurt something, and I couldn't do back squats or front squats. Oh, yeah, yeah. So I was, yeah, it was my, maybe it was my shoulder. Anyways, I was doing goblet squats with the, uh, with my big kettlebell, which is 40 kilograms.

And I, I had put on the schedule of what I was going to do, like 25. It was a bunch of, it was a Metcon scenario. I was, so, but the first number was 25. It was 25, 20, 15. Oh, the reps. Yeah, those are the reps. 25 hurt. Yeah.

Yeah, I was like, dang, because it's only, it's only 88 pounds, right? That should be, that should be pretty insignificant. Yeah. But you really do, when you do those goblet squats. Yeah. You're using your whole body to keep that thing aligned. Yeah. It's good.

Let me think my, yeah. I think I'm used to it now. I think that. Yeah, and I got used to it in a pretty short period of time. Yeah. That's what was cool. Yeah. So on it.com you can get that kind of stuff there if you want the cool ones

I think I and I don't know because you know I haven't ventured out and I don't think I ever will venture out to go see where I can get other kettlebells from No need really because you can buy the regular ones or the the dope ones and let's face it man you take enough pictures of the dope ones for your Instagram Or wherever you take pictures for and you kind of can't go back you can't Mm hmm so keep that in mind You painted yourself into a kettlebell corner. Exactly right. And you and your social media. Yeah.

Have painted yourself into this corner. Which is not a bad thing necessarily. Onid.com slash jocco, that's where you get these things. I painted myself into a corner with my social media. I'm going to wake up every day at 4.30. Yeah, you got to post it. Guess what? The other day I got home at 3 o'clock in the morning, or I didn't get to sleep until like 1.30.

Yeah. When I woke up in the morning, I was really tired. Yeah. And I was, you know, what am I going to do? I'm painting in the corner I had to say hey guys I'm I'm going back to sleep and I actually went back to sleep I told everyone yeah see that's good though you took accountability though yeah like that's just lying which I don't support oh if you didn't do that if I said if I woke up took a picture of my watch which I've had people say like I bet you just wake up oh did you ever sometimes just wake up in the morning take a picture watching you go back to sleep no actually I don't do that

yeah it doesn't seem like you could ever bring yourself to do no why would even want it you You wouldn't want to do that. It's a horrible scenario. It kind of defeats the purpose, really, the whole purpose. So the other day, woke up, took a picture of my watch, and I was like, I got to go back to bed. I'm too freaking tired. So I'm going back to bed. No, no, no, you posted it, but you said, I'm back to bed.

I'm going back to bed. Got it. I'm sorry. Hold the line for me. Yeah, I dig your honor. Cover for me. Actually, that one time we got home. Cover and snooze.

Do you guys cover and get after? I'm gonna be over here snoozing. Well, hey, that's the freedom part, though. What we always say, discipline. You have the freedom to, hey, man, you got to sometimes. You can't, like, especially if you're working out and you don't, you straight up don't get enough sleep. I'm not saying you don't.

You don't, but that's not what I'm saying right now. But if you, you, the proverbial, you, us, when we don't get enough recovery, which sleep is recovery. Right, that's not a good thing, man. So every once in a while, you got to. exercise that restraint in the form of

the freedom to sleep in. Yeah, well, I did. Amen, that's part of life. Anyway, on it. Also, the whole painting yourself in the corner, okay, so I got this jump rope, and it's like, you know, I don't know how up to date you are

on the new jump rope technology. Yeah, I know they're getting better. Yeah, they're dope. And here's the thing, if you just buy a regular jump rope, like, you'll see the difference. And I mentioned that because I got an on it jump rope.

I told you about the time that my neighbor taught me how to do the crossover thing. And that's what it really hit me like, this is a dope jump rope. So if you want to upgrade your jump rope, boom on it, that's the one. In fact, just go on there, see what,

see what they have. They have a lot of good stuff, a lot of good stuff. Also, good way to support when we get this book by honor bound. Tom Norris, Mike Thornton, and Dick Couch. When you get this book,

Go on our website, joccoopodcast.com. There's a book section. Top menu, boom, click on their books from podcasts by episode, by the way. This is episode 89. Click through there. It'll take you to Amazon. You get your books there. Or even if you can do some other shopping, if you're going to buy a lawn more, duct tape, whatever.

Click through there. Good way to support. You know, small little action, just one little click through big reaction by way of support. Also, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. iTunes, Stitch, or Google Play, all these podcasting providing platforms and YouTube for the video version of this podcast and excerpts and some other various little video things. That's a good way to support. Also, Jocko is a store. It's called Jocco store.

Jocco store.com. There are hats there. Good hats, trucker hats, flex fit, three colors. Wait, flex fit? They're flex fit. Wait, they don't have the little like thing in the back where you, the snap back? Yeah, the snapback. no I think they're flex fit

they don't make trucker hats that are flex fit I don't think they do now oh okay pretty sure I'm fairly positive well they're hit their hats basically yeah and they're they're dope yeah I thought you were gonna bring me nine of them yeah yeah I didn't do that that's a bummer jaco has a store but jocco has no hats

there's a you know what there's this other kind of hat I think it's called like an operator hat it's like real simple anyway I'm thinking about you know doing that one too interesting in the event of you not being as into the trucker hat is maybe something

else we'll see flex fit as well that's my thing is flex fit cool is that good yeah flex fit has purpose I just have never seen a trucker's hat flex fit yeah and I doubt I'm gonna see one now no man it's the new stuff apparently but yeah some other stuff on there some shirts

on there cool stuff jocco even has a shirt that he designed which is cool layers if you will I like the way you promote the shirt that has your picture on it. You're proud of that, aren't you? No, I'm not, actually, because I didn't wear that one. No, I didn't want my picture on there.

Yeah, actually, that's true. I got to give you that. Echo did not want to have an Echo shirt. Because it doesn't, it didn't make sense. Yeah, vetoed it. It is called Jocco Store. I got some pull. Yeah.

Jocco store. And I'm not saying to buy the shirt. I'm not saying to buy a hat. I'm saying, go on the store. Jocococcoor.com, again. If you like something, get something. Good support. also psychological warfare if you don't know what that is it's an album with tracks jaco tracks

and these tracks help you get through moments of weakness in your campaign against weakness every once in a while when you wage these hard campaigns against weakness against your you know waking up early sticking to the diet workout all this stuff sometimes you get moments of fatigue Sometimes. Even the strongest have their moments of fatigue. That's affirmative. So this, psychological warfare, these tracks, they're like little spots for those moments of fatigue get you through it. No problem. Psychologically.

Then you act. Boom. So yeah, that's a good one. So if you're, you know, waking up really. Like I said, you're waking up early. You feel like hitting the snooze. Listen to psychological warfare. One of those tracks on there.

I think it's called Get Up and Get After It. You will not hit the snoo. Good one. Yep. That's it. Psychological Warfare. Jococcal. We'll link anywhere iTunes

Uh, where else, Amazon music. All these places where they sell on V3s. You can get them there. Yep. Uh, yeah, this book that, that we covered today by Mike Fortin, by Tommy Norris, and by Dick Couch, you can get, you got to get this book. Um, it's a great book. It's a great read.

And that's a good place to start. So much more detail than I went over today. Yeah. When we just, as I was walking out, Mike and his wife and I was telling her that I was explaining to him that it's like the debrief I wanted since I was an E4 in the Navy Yeah, that wanted to know what happened Wanted the details yeah, well now we got him and those some crazy details by the way Yeah, yeah, it's crazy he's he's he's he's talking about how

Yeah, you know my friend gets his like forehead blown off or whatever you can see his brain all this stuff Even in a movie that that'd be pretty graphic scene even in a movie that'd be unbelievable Yeah, like you beg, oh, well, that movie wasn't really realistic because the guy had his head blown off and then he lived. But that was a crazy part though, right? On that movie, you know? But yeah, well, it really happened. Oh, so he has him. His other guy, he shot, by the way.

And he's like, and he's going, you know, through the ocean, all this stuff. And trap and all his back from the grenade that he threw back five times. Yeah. I know, man. It's so crazy. Yeah. And then we're sitting here and he's sitting right there. That's the guy who really did that, you know?

He's not, I mean, of course, acting is. Cool and dope for a but that's not an actor. That's the guy who really did it. Heavy, but that's heavy. Yeah, it's crazy. So get the book, read about it, read the rest of the details that we barely even scratch the surface on. Also, some other books you can get,

you can get a book called Extreme Ownership. It's about leadership. Yeah. It teaches you how to lead. Sure. It's a book that I wish I had when I was a young leader. But I didn't have it. I wasn't old enough to have written it

and given it back to myself yet. Yeah, it doesn't work like that. Also, speaking of being young, you can get another book called Way of the Warrior Kid, which is awesome because kids all over the place, like parents now, when I'm speaking somewhere, they bring their kids. Yeah.

So I get to meet these kids. Yeah. Kids that are getting after it, which is pretty awesome. So Way the Warrior kid, so many kids are like doing pull-ups now. Yeah, so I was just gonna say, It's a real thing. My daughter would be like,

she's bothering me, dad, that I want to do pull-ups. She doesn't want to go, you know. She didn't get that from reading Cinderella. Cinderella did not make her want to do that, right? I did tell her the story of Cinderella. Last night, coincidentally. She really liked it. She wouldn't want to do any pull-ups about it, though.

No, it didn't compel her to go do any. Did it compel her to eat better? No. Did it compel her to study hard? No, she just said it was beautiful. Okay. So it compelled some thoughts of beauty. Yeah, yeah.

But it didn't compel any change of direction in life. No, no action taken. I'm going with the way of the warrior kid. Yeah, yeah, me too. Also, Discipline equals freedom field manual is coming out. That could compel you to get after it. Yeah. It could.

I'd check it out. There's no books like it. No. And it's like a manual. That's the good part. You know how like when you listen, you're like, okay, I can, you know, you can't, you know, you can't. to get a feel but I like the manual part of it there's nothing vague about the manual it tells you what you do yeah and it also talks about some thoughts better in my head

so it is interesting you can get it appreciate it also origin main you already covered that which is good that is now us by the way we're partnered so when you start your jiu jitsu journey or if you're on your jiu jitzu journey check it out get it if you're on the path of getting after it yeah do it with us at origin and also if you want to partner with us from a leadership perspective in your business our business echelon front leadership consulting that's what we do me Lafabe Babin J.P DeNell Dave Burke info at echelonfront.com don't Google and look for jocco speaking because that's going to give you a speakers agent that's going to charge you more money is there something like a

like a bureau speakers bureau speakers agent that's okay okay and and they're trying to provide a service they're trying to get they're trying to connect speakers with people that need speakers but we don't need anyone to connect us with people that need speakers you can go straight to echelonfront dot com so that's that also the muster september 14th and 15th in san die go just to clarify the first three musters were based on the same material because we did it on the west on the east and then in the center of the country just to clarify now that now this muster muster four is new material so it's different new approaches new stories it's not sold out yet but it will be so if you want to come register now extreme ownership dot com and while you waiting for the muster if you have a quest for us you can ask that quest on the interwebs we're there on the Twitter the Instagram and that's facey boha echo is at echo Charles and I am at jocco Willink also snapchat are you on there I am on

there and I posted ah Snap so far once one snap and it disappears after 24 hours Yes, so you can't go and I've got I'm still working to figure out like how I'm supposed to utilize this thing Yeah, so we'll continue working on that one Yeah, and that's it That's how you can get in touch with us and finally To anybody else that's out there who Thinks maybe you're being overwhelmed

or you think the deck is stacked against you or you think you can't go on anymore think about Mike Thornton and remember that you are capable of so much more as long as you never give up and keep getting so until next time this is echo and jaco out