Shawn Ryan Show - #260 Dale Hanson - Why MACV-SOG Had an 85% Casualty Rate and 1-in-4000 Odds

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

Dale Hanson is a highly decorated Vietnam War veteran and Green Beret who served three years as a commando in the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG), conducting extremely dangerous reconnaissance missions deep behind enemy lines. Born in Queens, New York, and raised in Saco, Maine, with family ties to Minnesota's harsh winters, Hanson was influenced by his family's military legacy—his father, born in 1894, served and died when Dale was eight. Given the name "Kam Baw Ya Chin," meaning 'eternal life, never die,' by his Chinese mercenary counterparts, he led recon teams facing high casualty rates and earned numerous decorations. Hanson is also an accomplished sculptor, MENSA member, black belt martial artist, author, pilot of fixed-wing and glider aircraft (including aerobatics), and Special Forces underwater diver. He shares his experiences through his memoir Born Twice: Memoir of a Special Forces SOG Warrior (2016) and SOG Missions to the Well, highlighting the challenges, heroism, and lack of recognition for SOG soldiers. Hanson advocates for honoring veterans' sacrifices, preserving military history, and using personal stories to educate on the realities of covert warfare. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Receive 30% off your first subscription order. Go to https://armra.com/SRS or enter SRS to get 30% off your first subscription order. Right now, you can try Aura free for 14 days when you visit http://aura.com/SRS Our listeners get 10% off at https://BetterHelp.com/SRS. Head to http://DRINKAG1.com/SRS you’ll get the welcome kit, a Morning Person hat, a bottle of Vitamin D3+K2, and a AG1 Flavor Sampler for free. Dale Hanson Links: Studio Website - https://www.dale-hanson-studio.com Amazon Author Page - https://www.amazon.com/stores/Dale-Hanson/author/B001KD7KE0 SOG Site - https://sogsite.com/product/born-twice-memoir-of-a-special-forces-sog-warrior Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Sir. Welcome to the show. Thank you. It's an honor to have you here. So I started interviewing your generation of veterans this year. And I've had, I think, three Vietnam vets on this year. And I just want you to know that, you know, I was in the military, went to Iraq, Afghanistan, did some contract work for the agency all over the Middle East.

And I just want to say that your generation is the Vietnam era is what was really the motivating factor for me to enlist in the seal teams. And I watched all the movies, read a lot of the books. books. I mean, I just was infatuated with the Vietnam War and what you guys were doing over there. So it really is a true honor for me to be able to interview you guys. Thank you. And he came very highly recommended from John Stryker Meyer, our mutual friend. And here you are. He was a good man, too. Yeah. How long have you guys known each other? We didn't always each other in Vietnam but we knew each other after okay dnc north i was seen central so we were only a couple hundred miles apart but our missions were you know parallel rather than at the same

time so i i knew him at the first army reunions the special forces ones and uh got to be friends right away you know yeah who can not be friends with tilt right yeah such an awesome guy all you guys are awesome people man but um well everybody everybody starts with a introduction here. So, Dale Hansen, welcome home. Thank you. A born a green Christian since the age of five, a special forces operator in Vietnam War veteran who served three tours in the secretive MACV SOG at command and control central. Innovator behind the adoption of the 30-round magazine for the CAR-15 in SAG, solving a critical battlefield issue through personal initiative. author of numerous books including Born Twice and Sog, Missions to the Well,

which you detail your missions and those of your comrades. Pursued martial arts, black belts, pilot training, police work in Alaska, and a successful career as a sculptor. Currently, you're a pastor of a small Baptist church, you're a husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and servant of Jesus Christ. Amen. Welcome again to the show. well thank you thank you so so uh i'd like to do a life story on you where you grew up what childhood was like getting into the vietnam war how you got into macfizog and then um you know i think an important thing for all generations of veterans who went to war is uh is the transition

home and and how you got over some of the traumatic events and how you got back into into the civilian life and yeah but I'm just curious are you from Alaska no a northern Minnesota northern Minnesota the northernmost town in Continental the United States the cold spot the United States and I was mentioning to one of the guys that 30% of Canada is south of northern Minnesota and Maine and Washington State are 300 miles south if you go to longitude and latitude. And it seems to come down right there at my hometown is pretty cold.

Wow. Really cold. So how did you wind up in Alaska? Is that getting the hell away from everybody? It was after the war, after a whole bunch of stuff. I think my wife wanted to go more than anything else.

That's probably it. And she went to college in Sitka, Alaska, and the president and his wife just made her into a daughter, you know, and she was a Miss Alaska kind of a thing, too, beautiful woman, very, very smart, smarter than me by a long ways, and it was difficult in California after the war, and I don't know exactly why. But anyway, she says, let's go to Alaska, and she called the president, and we had a job. right away and we went up there and we've been there ever since and it's a beautiful place it's small conservative I don't know we've just been there forever a lot

started in Minnesota where we grew up a small farm town house a clapboard and my dad came out of World War II he was at Iwojima Guadalcanal Tinian and another one, the big one, but he was Army because Marines get all the credit for it, but they would attach this one regiment of Army on all the attacks. And so he wound up at all the big battles. And he came back, and basically, he wanted to be a farmer,

get away from things, be quiet. And so we were on this single-story, clapboard house, no electricity, no running water. I remember as a young boy, we had a well, and my dad took me out to the well, and I was pretty small, a couple years old, and he took me over to the well. And he says, this is where we have our butter and our cheese and stuff, and we put it in the well. He said, never go there, never go there, because you'll drown, we'll never find you. But then after a certain amount of time, my dad and mom moved to International Fund. you couldn't make a living on the farm and so forth so he got a job in the mill and

and that's where he stayed until he died yeah wow working hard there wow yeah well before we get two in the weeds here got a couple of things to knock out so everybody everybody gets a gift here so well those are vigilance league gummy bears. I love coming in the USA. Perfect. Legal in all 50 states, good to go. Perfect. And then just one more thing. We have a, I have a Patreon account. It's like an online community. And then they have been with us since the beginning when I was doing this in my attic. And so one of the things I do is I offer them the opportunity to ask each and every asked a question because they're there are literally the reason that I get to sit here with you

today and so this is from Moose how is our country how is our country different before you left for Vietnam versus when you came back it seems the country has changed in many ways as it was during Vietnam what do you think of the state of our country now and are you hopeful for our country's future an extremely good question and And I think we seem to notice things when they happen quickly and violently and great degree. We're losing our country incrementally piece by piece, and most of it is the moorings that we have. When we were founded in your own recollection, we were founded on the Judea Christian ethic. We were a Christian nation, specifically we didn't believe in forcing someone, so therefore you had a privilege of not believing as well.

But all of our documents that, you know, we hold these truths to be self-evident. We are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, pursuit of happiness and stuff. Everything about our country was on those moorings. And if you look at the media and so forth, those moorings have disappeared. and sometimes I think the only thing that holds it together, the glue and so forth, is well-being. People figure, as long as I am happy and well-being and my bills are paid and all that stuff, I'm happy with the country, and we watch and let it dissolve. And some of the old preachers from years and years and years ago would say that apart from revival,

you know, our country will be lost. I mean, what will it take to save America? You know, in every state in the United States, the major city is left-wing to the point of almost being socialist. So I have a lot of concern for America. And like the old time, it's going to take revival. People are going to have to turn back to the moorings,

which made us great in the first place. I don't think I could have said that any better myself Thank you Thank you for saying that Man It's uh It's just I don't know It just makes it more real when somebody like you says it

Really does But All right Let's move into the interview So Where did you grow up? Is that once more? Where did you grow up?

When did I grow up? Where? Mainly, International Falls, Minnesota. I guess some of the foundational things about life and who made me, or what made me what I am, I think it's kind of instructive. You see the end result of who you are. You know, what made you into that, you know, what was the ingredients in that recipe? And there were a couple of them for me that were foundational that made the character of Dale Hanson, who I am.

And the first one was when I was five years old, I became a Christian, which sounds kind of strange, maybe to some people, but I apparently had a good mind and I could converse with adults on pretty much a straight level. And I was hearing the preacher and he was, I remember so clearly, He was so intense on the sermon. And his head was sweating, had thin hair, and his head was down. And it was almost like he was preaching at the pulpit instead of us.

And in his heart, it was just exploding in his heart. And he says at the invitation, he says, you need to stand at the bridge of decision and look into the churning waters and dive to yourself and die to yourself. and die to yourself and come up a new creature. And I wanted to be a Christian at five years old. And I understood it from my Sunday school teacher. But when he spoke that, it was a foundational thing to me. And so all week long, I had nightmares about it.

Because as a child, I can understand straight literal language, but I didn't understand metaphor and simile. and comparisons and allegories. You know, I didn't realize that he's making word pictures to make it clearer to people to understand. Well, as a boy, I remember the one place that there was a bridge was between International Falls, Minnesota and Canada, that place, and all the gigantic lakes of northern Minnesota,

rainy lake and all the rest of them would pour through that gully and the lake of the woods in the western half of the state. And down below that bridge it just churned and it beat against the rocks. It was like almost a yellow as it wore the rocks away. And in my mind, I kept thinking, this must be where it happens. And so I wrestled with it all this week.

If I wanted to be a Christian, I have to be willing to do that, not understanding, you know. So next week, my parents weren't there, but I sat on the edge of the pew. And when the pastor gave the invitation, I went forward, and I was only five years old, and the pastor thought I must have gotten away from my parents or something.

And he said, what can I do for you, son? And I says, I'm ready to have you throw me off the bridge. And I thought that morning, when the church was dismissed, we would go over there to the Canadian border, and that's what would happen. And all of a sudden he realized his metaphor was way over the head of a young boy. And so he looks to his wife and he says,

Mabel, this young boy would like to know how to become a Christian. And so we went back into the back room and I sat in a little red chair. I just vividly remember it. She sat in the chair next to me. And she told me the plan of salvation, which I already knew, that we are born sinners, that man is a sinner by choice and by character and that we are separated from a holy God. and there's nothing of our own merit that we can do to earn that,

but Jesus Christ came. And he was God, and he took a, what was born of a virgin, and represented me in the human race. And so he died on the cross with Dale Hansen's sins. And so I get saved by believing that and accepting. The Bible talks about the gift of eternal life. I accept Christ's gift that he did on the cross

and I became a Christian but as a young boy at the age of five? Yeah at five and it must have been one of the first things of definitive courage that I did because beyond just the spiritual thing I physically thought

that I was going to be tossed off that a bridge or jump off myself but you know obviously it was wrong because I was understanding the metaphor for. But that's been who I am the rest of my life. The Bible says you're born again, which is how I got the title for my first song book, you know, is that the experiences in Vietnam. And what we went through was horrendous. Our odds of living was one in four thousand. And it was so unique that when you come out on the other end, you're not the same person again. And

So anyway, that was kind of the first. That's a vivid memory for a five-year-old. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Remember, I don't know what happened to my brains, you know, but I remember being across the breakfast table from my grandma Hansen and one of my uncles, and I would be talking to them, talking to them, and they would just be smiling and listening to me talk,

you know, and it never occurred to me until much later, you know, that, what that was like, you know, but there were a couple other cornerstones in my life that made me who I was. Perhaps the third one, I didn't say a second one, but as a young Christian, you want to be as Christ-like as can you know you want to I mean you're a new person you want to emulate or emulate one is burn one is copy I don't remember which is uh me neither yeah but you want to emulate Jesus Christ and be as much like him as you can and I was reading the Bible and I think I was about 12 13 years old and I came across a verse in the New Testament Luke 2 52 in the gospel of Luke chapter 2 52 and it talks about Jesus he was 100%

God and 100% man had to be God or he'd be a sinner just like us and he had to be man to represent me so yeah I'm forgetting where I'm at seeing the age 13 You're reading the Bible. It goes like this. And Jesus grew and waxed in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man. And of course, the word wax means increased and increased. And I was really captivated by that verse. It said, Jesus was perfect in four different areas.

If I'm going to emulate them, I should be also in those four areas. So often in Christianity and spiritual things, we think of just the spiritual. But he says, and Jesus grew and waxed in wisdom and stature and favor with God and men. And so I was looking at that as a young teenager, he was perfect physically, intellectually, socially, spiritually. And so I tried my best to be as close to perfect as they can in all those areas. So physically, I worked out hard. I don't know if anyone in the high school ever did, but I worked out hard. I might pull-ups three sets of 35, and the dips was three sets of 50,

and so when I worked on it really hard, I jogged and all that kind of a thing. And then intellectually, I tried to read good literature, I read the classics and all that, and books on logic and thinking and so forth, so you could actually reason clearly. And, of course, socially and spiritually, I'm a little bit clumsy socially, a little bit shy, but I'm nonetheless, try, you know. And so that is one of the things that you made me as well-rounded as I am today, if I am at all, well-rounded. Because I tried to encapsulate all four of those areas in my heart.

And, of course, the third thing is getting shot. you know I was 13 years old and you know the first one kind of gave me a certain amount of courage a lot of people asked me what is the number one ingredient

to be a green beret you know and I always think well people expect me to say and they're true like physical strength intelligence is in there and there are several

a bunch of them but after three years of combat I think that number one thing of a leader especially in that kind of a war is being able to make a decision under pressure you know probably more than anything when it is so violent and wild and turmoil that you can't even think you've got to come up with the right thing to do and um i was hunting with my uncles

i had my i was there my brother was a year and a half younger and then my cousin was two years younger and two of my uncles. And my uncles, we were, young guys were going to do a drive and they were going to go on the other side of a pretty large forest area. And so they went around and they left the cars

or they were in the field. And so they said, well, give us at least a half hour. So they were walking around to the other side. And I looked at my cousin. I said, let's go for spin in the car and my uncle all cars back then would go a hundred all of them did before I don't know what they do nowadays but they don't and my uncle waltz could do 120 like nothing he was just fast but anyway I went over there my brother was having

none of that my uncle got in but I had a 30-30 Winchester lever action and so I opened the lever of the 30-30 and slid it across the seat you know barrel toward me but it's inoperable you know with the thing well I didn't notice but my cousin who was a couple years younger than me said well that doesn't look right and he shut it and that left it not only loaded prime but cocked you know so it's cold Minnesota I'm driving across the highway and all the bumps where the furrows were where the farmers were the year before and it just bouncing bump bump bump and then a railroad tracks I'm coming on the highway bump

bump you know it was just as i hit the highway that went off and it went through my hip the cheek part and out my tailbone a quarter inch out and um uh my leg shot out just stiff as the board just just totally stiff it was like it was made out of wood you know on the accelerator and i'm heading down the highway and this car is going breakneck speed going faster and faster and i got boat hands trying to pull my leg off the accelerator I couldn't it just would not come I was pulling I'm pulling pulling now I'm instead of steering with my elbow I've ever get a hand on that steering well and I'm steering trying to keep it on the highway and I'm grabbing the cloth on my pant leg and pulling trying to get my foot off

the accelerator and if and we're going 120 and we're going down the highway and my cousin jumped out right away he knew something was dreadful but then I the shock came out and I was able to pull it off the accelerator and so we pulled off to the edge down there and got it out of gear and I just sat there and I knew this this was significant and before I knew what my two uncles ran over they found out what happened they ran over I slid over to the other side my uncle went behind the steering wheel and the other one in the in the back and we had headed for a little hospital, 12 miles down the road in World, Minnesota.

And he was driving full speed, 120, all the way down there. And we got to the hospital, and the road is separated from the hospital doors by 150 feet, maybe, maybe a little bit more, with a long sidewalk. And the uncles ran out to carry me to the hospital. And it's like, definitively, I needed to appraiser the situation even at 13 years old I said no I got a walk because by trying to walk I could assess how bad I was I just knew that that's the thing you know

more than what a doctor can tell me I'll tell me if I'm broken broken bones you know all that stuff and I walked all the way to the door and at the door I all straight was gone my weakness was there and they grabbed me put me in there and I remember that night you probably haven't had occasion to think of it but when you have a lot of bleeding they put a rubber sheet on top of the mattress so it doesn't get ruined and the nurse came in and I asked the nurse that says am I supposed to slosh and she said what that I said am I supposed to slosh and I

turned my body sideways and you could hear the blood it was sloshing oh we out and she just dropped her stethoscope and took up running and it seemed like an instant and the doctor was there and uh i was definitely bleeding out you know and i spent probably a week there my parents brought me home to international falls it's a hundred miles from world and uh had all the blankets and pillows in the car i remember the first week after i got home i said i got to go to church i don't know i didn't want to make a spectacle on myself but i just thought i should be in church And so my dad dropped me off. He says, are you sure? Because he wasn't a church-going guy. And he says, you sure? And I said, yeah. And I didn't realize that until they left, but there were steps going up.

Oh, man, I got to walk up those steps. But I walked up those steps, and I had a Bible in my left hand and a pillow in my right. And I went to the back pew, so it wouldn't disturb anything. And put that pillow down and sat down on the pew. But it was only in retrospect from years later that I kind of thought and realized that, you know, even at that young age, I was making decisions under extreme pressure. A 13-year-old can't handle much more pressure than that, you know. Yeah. And so anyway, those were three events just growing up that I thought were formative in my life and going and getting all.

older, you know, college and all that and the military. You know, you realize that I can handle stuff. Maybe other people can't, but I know I can, you know, and it gave me a comfort. And even the simple thing about being a Christian, going to combat, knowing that you're going to kill people and all that kind of thing. That was resolved in my mind, too, and that is permissible to take a life for self-defense, capital punishment, war, you know, and that's not a problem with me. And I looked at all of the characters, Moses, was adopted by Pharaoh's daughter to be perhaps the next Pharaoh. And he would have been a general in the Egyptian army. And then David, you know, King David, the shepherd boy who killed Goliath.

They used to sing, Saul hath killed his thousands, but David is 10,000s. And all the way down the line, there were heroes. And in the New Testament, when it talks about the Christian life, Ephesians 6 talks about putting on the armor of God and all this kind of thing. So the metaphors of war are there. That's interesting. So you actually, you did all the research before you went most of the time. I was actually in college.

I'm a ministerial student. And I think it was in my third year, a year to go. And I believed in the war. I'm very anti-communist. And anyway, I kept thinking being in the newspaper, so many GIs have been killed and all that stuff. And I'm thinking, I'm ready to die, you know, if I have to. You know, I'm not eager, but I'm ready.

And, you know, the least I can do is do my part. What a shame it would be at the end of this war, being healthy and intelligent that I didn't do my part. So I quit and enlisted with the pre-visal that I be able to try for special forces. Wow. So you wanted special forces, right? Yeah, it's the only thing. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to be the best there is.

That's all there is to it. I'm not going to be anything else, you know. How old were you of when you made that decision? Probably 21. 21? I think so third year of college. What were you in school for? Major.

Yeah. Theology. Theology? Yeah. Of course, you take all the other stuff. What was the one thing that you saw that made you decide to go the military route? That's a good question because it makes me think. It was probably atrocities I saw from the other side.

How horrific communism. I knew philosophically how bad communism is and how bad communism is. and how they enslave and murder people. But to see it firsthand, and of course you had the one American who did this atrocity for the whole war, Cali, the time Cali. But it was routine fair for the enemy. They would wipe out entire villages and so forth or leave one alive so that he could tell people who did it, you know.

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No, no, I enlisted. Actually, I had a perfect deferment. Students got 2S, ministerial students got 4S. They couldn't touch you, you know. No, I'm going to go in this thing. So I drove down to Minneapolis and took all the tests and enlisted, and I wanted to see it in writing. I have the right to try for special forces.

They can't give it to you, but I can sure try for it, you know, and I did well. I was an undergraduate out of Basic and got promoted, and then it was an undergraduate out of AIT and got promoted. it. And then AIT is interesting to Camp Crockett. And I don't know if you've ever heard of that, but it was a secret military installation in the United States to train people to fight. And it was outside of Fort Gordon, 10 miles in the woods, and it was paid for by excess funds, is what the euphemism was. And there were 600 of us there.

It was all people who were going to go commando, airborne, and things like that. And we took the special forces test there, and there were 600 of us, and only three of us passed it. Are you serious? And I was one, and Mike Buckland was another, and there was another guy, I think his name was Sorensen. 600 people and three individuals passed it.

It was an interesting test, and I don't know if it's a routine one, but they had three tests. done at exactly the same time one was oral and they read it on microphones but the minute the scenario was read they go to it immediately to the next one you had to immediately put down the answer and then one was literal where you were reading the words and then there was another one that that was a visual where they saw in pictures but three of them were at the same time so you had to divide your attention at three different tests at the same time and then

And in most cases, you had no time to really deliberate the answers. You had to intuitively put down the right one. You know, so it was an interesting challenge. I've not seen that they've done that sense. Interesting. Are there a lot of people that went through that? This is the first time I heard of this. I don't know if we were, I can't imagine we were the only class

because it seemed like everything was set up, but it was like Quonset huts and so far. It was wild. It was very, very basic. I used to do numchucks and throw my knives. And at the end of the training day, I'd go out behind the Quonset Hutton. And I'd throw my knives.

You know, I had a little spot. I would go in. And I looked on the ground all over the place were stockings with Kiwi shoe polish in them. And these people were taking shoe polish and taking the lid off and put them in a sock and anywhere getting high. on shoe polish.

What? Yeah. So they were all over the place. I guess it was the only high they had, you know. So it wasn't too long until I realized that we weren't all top tier of recruits up there. Damn.

So you passed that. Yeah. Then what happens? Got to leave. Then went to training in Fort Bragg for special. of course, finish phase one, which phase one is designed to make you quit or weed you out. That's it.

Phase two, I forget what that was, but anyway, and the third one was for 11F, and that was never done to someone who was not a high-rank NCO, E-7 or above. we had a lecture by a major I think he came in and he I remember him saying SOG other people say no they said a highly classified unit but I remember SOG but anyway he says we have this program in Vietnam in his special operations group And you need to be 11F to go, and that was your MOS. And that was hard. You had to be a senior NCO, but we were going to let this small group of us do.

There's 37 of us. But then the proviso, at the end of it, he says, at the end of this, all of you people, all graduates, are going to be sent directly to Vietnam to SOG, and 85% of you will be dead in three months. months. So the first thing I did is I went back and said, well, how many do you have to start with if every three months, 85% die? And it's over 4,000. So the odds of living a year in Sog back then was one in 4,000. Assuming, you know, he wasn't just trying to scare us,

but it seems fairly accurate in the sense that of my class, you know, most of them were killed. Wow, one in four thousand just to live for one year. Yeah. Yeah. And it was a super good class. Intelligence and spies and all this kind of thing. It even had safe cracking. I mean, all that part.

You could be James Bond coming out of this thing as well as a commando. And so at the end of it all, we got her leave from flew off to Vietnam and landed up in the train. the headquarters of Special Forces, and C.C. North, command and control, it went by several names. Command and Control. It went by SOG, Special Opsic. It went by Studies and Observation Group. And it seems to me there was a couple others, too, euphemism that he kept changing the names, you know. But the first day, North and South flew out, and the next day, my group was that contum. Wow. Let's just rewind real quick. I mean, what is going through your head when they tell you 85% of you will be wiped out? You do the math. It's one in four thousand. I mean, what's going

through your head? For some reason, it might be a characteristic of youth, but you're kind of indefatigable. You think that if there's one that's going to live, that's going to be me. And I don't know how to say it. You want to be in the most worthwhile program of all accepting the idea that there's going to be tremendous risk involved in it. And you're willing to take the risk when you're young. You just think nothing's going to get me, you know. As it was, it popped more than once in my tours. Did they tell you what McVe-Sogg would encompass what the job description was?

what you'll be doing? Pretty much. We know mainly it was going to be intelligence gathering a lot of that. Now we had the mic forces too, you know, the strike forces as a part of us, perhaps to exploit things that we found and so forth. But that was a part of it too. So you get there. And the person who I met first was Bob Howard, and we hit it off really well.

He was first starting to recon because they wouldn't let him go in the field anymore because for the third time they were going to put him in, he's supposed to get his Medal of Honor. It's funny because in college, I knew Greek because the New Testament was written in Greek. I had to learn Greek, you know, and I'm walking by the team house, and there's an outline of a horseshoe up there, which in Greek is Omega. and Bob Howard said me he said what are you looking at and I says Omega up here

I said was there a project here called Omega and he says I need to paint that building that's all he said but Bob was his wife taught Sunday school in Alabama and a little tiny Baptist church and he's just

a great man you know and we talked you know and he says Well, I think I've got the guy for you. And we left the headquarters, and there he is. Norm Doney was my one-zero. And Norm had a silver star and seven bronze. And it was his third or fourth tour. And Bob Howard Sillsdony, he says,

I think I got the man for you. And talk with Norm Doney. And some of those guys can, take your measure pretty quickly, and they know what you're going to be like, whether you're going to falter in the field and all that stuff. And he took the measure. And it was great.

And it was interesting because he had come from the mailbox, and his wife had sent him a magazine. And the cover, the magazine, was Men's Magazine, and the cover was Sergeant Donie, six-man Mission Impossible Team, drive out and kill 200 VC. And that was my team leader. Holy shit.

What's the backstory behind that? Yeah. Well, he was doing his recon, and he caught them doing PT on a riverbank. And he just called in the airstrikes and stuff and just nailed them, you know. Wow. Wow. Would that feel like to be, have that guy as your leader? Yeah.

But Donnie was not only was a team leader, but he, he, He just, he was going to teach me everything he knew. I was going to be a sponge. And he wound up being my team leader, my father figure, my mentor, and my friends. And after the war, I would see him in Oregon, you know. It's just a wonderful man, a great man. And he retired after, I don't know, 25 years or so in the military. How big was your team?

Say again. How big was your team? There were three Americans, and I think we had, I think it was five or six in Dij. And my team was a little bit unique because most of mine were Chinese, so Chinese and Vietnamese. And we started to lose some wounds, you know. So we were down to like six and three, you know. Damn.

How much training did you guys do before you went out on operations? Oh, constantly. Only, of course, you'd be prepared well enough that they could grab me and say, we need you go in right now, and they would be confident. But when you get a mission, the first thing is the talk, the headquarters, would find Donie or me if I was leading it. And they say, this is your warning order. And you've got a mission, and the briefing will be tomorrow at 2 o'clock.

And so now you know something's going on. so you make sure your people don't go town on leave or something like that and then the next morning you get your warning order i mean the mission briefing they'll say this is where you're going this is what you got this is what your mission is all that kind of a thing and uh you kind of appraised it is just like one where um i'm going to need more defensive things or uh you know you key it to the mission and so forth and then if the required special training, then you take your people and you go to the range or whatever and do that specialized training that they don't normally do. And then you give a brief back in which it's in a briefing

area and all the people are there. The commanding officers there, the S2, the S3, S4 is there. Everybody's there and anybody can ask you any questions they want about the mission, you know, and the captain and then the colonel and all the rest, you know. And when they're totally satisfied that you're ready and you've got a degree of success looking ahead, then they'd okay it. And then you'd have a time when the choppers are out there and you meet them out there and get inserted into the target area.

A lot of people talk about, you know, I did 40, 50 missions. I don't know how you can do that. If you go through the, you know, warning order and all, all that kind of thing. And that average intelligence mission is seven to ten days. Damn. You know, my missions overseas aren't that many. It's less than ten. But I had a lot of them in country, too, which we didn't count.

You know, the old-timers wouldn't count it. Only counted SOG. because SOG missions were deep into enemy denied and controlled territory, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, those were our missions. Anything else that we did, we kind of regard it as just training missions, you know? Interesting.

Yeah, and Dooney, I remember Doni, I used to talk about, it was just a training mission. Doni says, don't forget, 50,000 people have been killed in those training missions, you know. You had to remember that because it's in Vietnam, It's still dangerous. What would some of the missions be in Connus? Over the fence.

Intelligence was probably number one, you know, and sometimes it's strike action. My team in particular was specialized to be a prisoner of war snatch. That's what we did. And usually you'd want to have a couple extra people because you have the snatch, you know, the attack element, and then you have somebody behind you with a radio in case something goes south.

And then you've got the two wings, you know, security. So the wing can say the common or something like that. Or, you know, so you're talking about two on each wing in an attack element and then somebody behind. So ideally you'd have about 10 people. But it's hard to hide 10 people too. you know um but uh we would have the attack element and um i'm not sure if i'm getting carried away here but uh a lot of times you would have a couple claymores and we have a claymore here claymore here

and in between we have a dead not a dead space but an empty space and uh that's where we would time it so the prisoner was right there and we blow the claymores everybody down there's done then we ran out there and grab the prisoner while he's still in shock you know and tie him up search them the whole deal and get off the road quick and then get your people to come in. But that's one of the big ones, our specialized in POWs. And a lot of them did go for POWs. How many POWs did you guys? Well, we got two, but they both died.

I had one died in the, in the medics in the bed. He just, just plain died. And there was one that, I believe, an NBA sniper shot him at the helicopter he could have been shooting us but i think they popped him because we were ready to just lift him on and and uh he took the shot he went down just like that and i think i think they took their own guy so that he wouldn't talk you know yeah and of course you guys were taking were getting our POWs no you were taking we were trying to catch P-O-Ws.

Yeah, I'm sorry, yeah, yeah. Yeah, usually when we are trying to get our own P-O-Ws, that's a pretty big unit. Okay. Yeah. What would you do with, when we're taking prisoners of war, what are we doing? What would we do?

What would you guys do? Well, you want to interrogate if you can. We don't torture. I've never heard of torture. But interrogate, all that kind of a thing. And let the S2 people figure out how to do it. do it. I remember, I can't remember what mission it was, but took out this guy and he was alive and all that stuff. And he looked at me and he said, we think you'd be dead already, green,

you know, all that stuff, coming from the ground and come up, and we think you'd be already dead, you know, and we know can kill, you know. And so I remember I mentioned in one of the books, but I was going to go on a mission that I didn't think I was going to survive it. And so I took the camouflage, and I reversed the protocol because usually, you know, the shadowed areas, you kind of lighten them up a little bit,

and I reversed it. I took the shadowed areas, and I made them dark with that dark green, and then the highlights your cheeks. I made them with the lightest, and then I took a bunch of horizontal, that beige kind of a color. And I put horizontal ones out here.

So I looked like a death mask in green. And I didn't think I was going to live. But boy, if they came after me, they were going to think there were someone to deal with, you know. Oh, shit. Yeah. So. Why didn't you think you were going to make it?

I don't remember. I don't remember which one that was. That's probably one of those things you try to forget. Yeah. I think it was simply the intelligence we had, the people who had been there before, things like that. You know, I remember. Did you paint your face like that often?

Did I think like that often? I did. You talked to the SAG guys. They were a little bit reticent to tell you their anxiety. I don't think many of the guys talk. I'll admit it. There were many times I didn't think I was going to live. But it's not cowardice at all.

What it is is that when you're going to go anyway, it shows the opposite. I remember my friend Doni, Novi, he fought in World War II against the Germans. He was in the Czech resistance, and then he fought in another war in Korea. And then he came to our war. He was old. And I got to know him, actually, a training group. And he ran the mortar pool because he's too old to go to the field, you know. No shit.

And I was doing martial arts big time. Huh? You were serving with World War II guys? Yes. Yeah. That's incredible. I know if he fought the Germans from the Czechoslovakia deal. He's a big check guy.

He told me once that he couldn't remember how many times he swam the Rhine. It's amazing, you know. But Anovi was just amazing. I'll get sidetracked, but Anovi, Novi says I was always stealing his employees because I was really into martial arts and doing that, Nunchako. You know, well, we had this teak from Vietnam.

It was really hard. And I would always get his guys to mill it on their milling machine, you know, and you keep taking my guys. But I remember I was getting ready to go on one of these really rough ones, and I think I was talking to Novi. And he gave me a book of poetry, and I was reading it. It was poetry of the wars, you know. And as one was, I memorized it.

I was really nervous about going out the next day. And the poem was all night long thrown against a buddy slain with his gnashing teeth, Bair to the full moon, I was writing letters full of love, never had a hugged life so dear. Wow. Yeah, and things like that. Novi would give me something like that. He'd never, never suggest for a moment that you're nervous, you know, but he would do something

to encourage you. Novi was interesting, too, because Novi was a friend, you know, and he had the mortar pool, and then there was one who ran the mess hall and there was another one who ran the club and they were going from Contum to play coup six miles away to buy stuff for their needs and Novi was in the Jeep too

well on the way the NBA or the VC attacked the Jeep and blew it up I mean it flew up in the air upside down and Novi landed sitting up like I am this morning with his back against to tree. And the bullet creased his forehead and just blood was coming down. And the one who's

driving the Jeep couldn't get out from the steering wheel and they shot him. And then the other one when a jeep flipped over, he was under the Jeep. And he could see the MVA and he tried to move his foot so that they wouldn't see it. And they saw the movement and they shot him in the head. Well, they went to Novi and all the blood there, and Novi's eyes were wide open, just like that, and he's just frozen, you know, and anyway, the one Viacomacom says, him die, him died, so they went over and they saw his ring. They tried to pull off his ring, and he couldn't get the ring off,

so one of them grabbed a knife and they started song on his finger, And they saw his finger off, and they held up the ring to the light, you know. And Novi, who is totally cognizant to what's going on, wouldn't move if he could, you know. But he kept, I cannot move because these guys will finish me off, you know. But he watched them do it, you know. And I went and I saw him in the hospital in Plague, just a good man, you know, old. He gave us a couple of classes.

in 11F school in Fort Bragg you know what's it like to be able to serve with two generation city in what's it like to be able to serve with the world board two generation I mean I would imagine that good it was really good there were a couple of them I don't I think they thought of it more in terms of of service and it was only the unique aspects of it that related to what we did that they would mention at all um girl warfare and all that kind of a thing and they would mention that but it was never in the context or it never seemed like they were trying to show that they um had an experience that was better than us it was bigger and all that kind of a thing uh because

of the world war as opposed to you know into China but there was so much I got from them and Novi was one but they never bragged about it talked about it really they just this is a thing that they knew and they did the experience and went through and there were lessons to be learned if you as a young guy would talk to them about it and they'd say you know I went through something like like that but there were people I it's like my own father you know he did the entire war against the Japanese you know and never talked about wow yeah wow yeah there were some good ones there very interesting let's talk about

your first mission first mission first mission oh boy what was it it would have been recon would have been with Doni and Jim Morris. How long were you in country before your first mission? Oh, not long at all. Month and a half, maybe. Month and a half? Almost right away, because they got a team right away. Some of the other guys took a while to get a team.

I don't remember which is the first ones. Do you remember waiting for your first mission? mission? Yeah, and it wasn't fear. It wasn't nervousness or anything like that. It was anxious. Are you excited? I'm ready to go. Yeah, I want to go and get this done, knowing full well, of course, that the danger is there. But Donie and my team leader had such a confidence in his demeanor and stuff. You know, he knew what he was doing, and I was confident he knew what he was doing, and we're going to do this. And, boy, I did maybe three with Donie. I think the one that kind of stands out,

but I don't know if it was the first one, was Ben Hat was under siege. The communists, of course, would siege major places like the French Dan Ben-Fou. That broke their back. You know, it was like they had no more will to fight and so forth. And they tried to do the same thing to the Americans.

And, of course, Ted Offensive was a disaster unless you looked at the news. You know, then they made it out of, oh, they attacked 200 places in Vietnam. And what they don't say is they lost everyone. But I was with Donie, and we were doing a reconnaissance thing on the Ben Hat. We were way behind the lines. And our thing was to gather into. And our motto that people don't mention to you is that break contact and continue mission.

A lot of times people get in contact and then they want to get out. And the real motto in SOG is you break contact and then you continue missions, you break contact, you avoid the enemy and all this stuff, and get some distance between you, then continue the mission, you know. With Doni and there were enemy everywhere.

It just totally, I just saturated. And they were all going toward Manhattan. The big siege was going on. And it seemed like I had been watching the siege for quite a while. And anyway, we come across the trail system. And Donie and I went on to the trail. The other guys were security. And it looked really well traveled.

And I looked down here. And there were footprints in the mud. that was so new that the water was just starting to seep into the footprint so it had to be like a minute or two minutes ahead. Wow. Yeah. And so anyway

now we're hearing movements down the line and they're coming again from the other end and I had the camera and I took a picture of that footprint with the water just starting to seep in there and I just barely got off that trail before the first people

started going by but we don't fire them up because their job is intelligence you know so you let them go by your job is intelligence and so we're continuing on we're looking for enemy and finding this intelligence we are when for the night remain overnight you know that you use the same term you know arwin we are in for the night and as I'm in there I can hear the communists walking all over the place I even could hear the truck down the highway farther away and even tailgates going and sometimes that's not a good sign because it means they're unloading troops to come after you you know but uh uh as as we're kind of waking up and all this stuff you know I had this smell that brought me back to when I was a boy mowing lawns and it was the grass green grass has been mowed and it was like it just was so familiar to me so I got up and well we maneuvered to this trail area

and it was probably from me to you probably six feet wide eight feet wide maybe wider where the people the NVA were going by battalions toward Manhattan trying to take them out had mowed it down and walked through it so much it was all the grass was broken and you know that smell from grass being down and stuff. It was just strong, really strong.

And I'm looking, and it's like they are saturated in this area. You know, we're going to be in trouble freezing. Well, anyway, Donie and I in the team were maneuvering along this road. We're about to come off the road. And all of a sudden, I looked down and I saw comma wire. It was hidden quite well, but I found comma wire. as soon as we got safely off the trail, I mentioned the Doni,

you know, whispering, I said, common wire, you know. And we went over and sure enough, there was commonware. And so I said, there has to be a headquarters up here somewhere. Of course, I'm just whispering, you know. And so Doni and I leave the team,

and Doni and I start following where the comma wire is, trying, because we figured the whole team, we're not going to get there quietly. So Doni and I start working away along where that common wire is, and it goes for quite a while. And all of a sudden, I get to like a low area where there's like an old river or something like that.

And then on the other side, I hear the artillery that they're using to bombard Ben Hitt. It was, I don't know, 50 artillery pieces, 105s, 155, that kind of thing. And they're going boom, boom, boom, and the camouflage. But I can see the leaves blowing every time the shell comes out, you know. And we get closer, and I start getting close. And I can see where scores of artillery pieces are left along here. This is what was bombarding Manhattan. And it is the place where all the artillery was.

So anyway, we start looking for landmarks to get it really, zeroed down to exactly where that would be on a map. And I saw, like, where that old river was where there was kind of a cliff face. And I said, that's it on the map and so on. And we isolated. We got, and we knew exactly where it was, you know. So we make our way, join the team,

and do a sit-rep back to the FOB and said, we found the artillery, basically what we're saying, that is bombarding Ben Hat. And they said, immediately go, and I forget what it was, the nearest LZ, and they said as fast as you can go. And so we get to this LZ where a chopper is going to pick us up.

Well, at the same time, we were there, our mic force, our strike force from Fob that's out there with a company, but they're a few miles away from us. And I was talking to a couple of the guys after the war, because what they wanted to do, they're going to bomb it. And they wanted us out of there, you know, because it was going to be a saturation bomb. Well, anyway, they told them, because they could take a recon team out quite quickly,

but they couldn't likewise do that to a company, you know. So the order that came to them was a maneuver, and I think they said seven clicks, fast, as south as fast as you can go. And anyway, talking to the guys afterward, they were going so fast, they could hardly breathe. and about the time they got seven clicks away and we were off in the choppers 100 B-52s hit the place and I didn't know there were that many in existence

but the word came down 100 B-52s hit the place holy shit and I didn't know we had that many you know. And either. And maybe it's hyperbole yeah so anyway we get out get back to base

and that is the day the siege of Benhead ended that intelligence flying that we found and they dropped in all the B-52s that ended the siege at Ben-Het Wow. Interesting, yeah. Wow.

You look back and say, we did something. Yeah. And that was the first one? I think it was. Holy shit. We may have had some locals probably.

you know close by you know that we call locals and of course donia had to constantly tell me 58 000 have been killed in locals you know you know in country you know don't get overconfident you know wow what can you um could you would you mind what was the mic force the mic force well we had companies of people that would attack targets of opportunity they went by different names dependent mic force uh strike force i forget what they all all were hatchet force, I think is what we called ours. And I was on a hatchet force for a while. It just went by different names depending on who you were attached to.

So were they, you were attached to them or they were attached to you? They were part of the FOB. So were these maps, were these SOG guys as well? Some guys, yeah, they're all SOG. Usually there were 15 Americans in about 120, usually Montan Yards. You know, in the old days, and these days were about done just before I got there. We had battalions of Chinese, and over the years,

the Chinese had about been wiped out, and I had four Chinese on my team, and they might have been the last fighters, as far as I know. You know, who knows, if they retired to Pensacola, who knows. Wow, wow. But anyway, it wouldn't be mark your tribesmen, huh?

That's a hell of a first mission. Yeah, yeah, it was. Holy shit. Yeah, yeah. Did you develop any patterns or rituals or anything in particular that you or you and your team would do before operations? I don't think so. Not spiritual or anything like that. I think I would always try to encourage our people.

I had a closeness to our mercenaries that I don't think anyone else really had. But I mean, I'm one of the guys that I could put my arms on them and I can hug them or I can tease them and all this stuff. And it never interfered with my command because they knew when the time came, okay, what I said was it. But I think prior to all these missions and all this stuff, I'd always make sure my people were emotionally and ready for the missions.

They weren't Christians, per se. Most of them were Buddhist, I think. How would you prepare yourself? Well, day by day, I always prayed. I tried to read the scriptures every day. But with me, I'd always do the prayer, but it wasn't like a lot of praying. It was almost, I don't want to diminish what I was doing.

As you would perhaps say grace to yourself when you eat a meal, you know, you prayed and it's not a long prayer. A lot of times going on a mission, unless there was something unique about it, I would pray. God, you know, be with me. Help me to be wise. Help me to be courageous and things like that. Protect me, things like that. But I didn't pray a long time. I think my time there was in a readiness platform emotionally and spiritually.

Gotcha. Did you carry any sentimental stuff, pictures of family? Yeah, yeah. Anything. Yeah, usually never told them what we were doing. Once in a while, I might say if somebody died, I would probably be more prone to tell my dad or my brother. Definitely not my mom, you know, or someone like that. Now, what I meant was, did you carry any sentimental type things on your person during operations?

Maybe a small Bible or pictures of your family or anything that you thought would keep you. Totally sterile. Totally sterile. Totally sterile. I mean, absolutely. But the only thing about me that would violate the sterility of it all is when my Chinese would write my name in Kampabu, Chin on my back. I don't think we mention it, but my name is Hansen, which renders well if you're Chinese. It's Han Sun, you know, and they said we have to go to the witch doctor, see how best, the most suspicious way to write your name.

And so the first half was easy. The Han Dynasty was the warrior dynasty of China. And I forget now after these years about what the sun was. But then they would write Kambayu Chin, which means never die. So I could go out in the field and my Chinese would run over, oh, Hanson, we forgot. And they'd on my back. And usually above my collar, where God could see it, or their God could see it, they would put the Chinese characters, Dill.

the hand son come by your chin never die and um in their mind god is going to be looking for me on this mission wow yeah i didn't didn't discouraged so you got pretty close with those guys oh yeah yeah go to go to lunch in town with them or something like that you know yeah yeah good good people yeah and and and they never they never took it took advantage of it Never. You're just good people. Let's take a quick break. Okay.

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the best deals. That's A-U-R-A.com slash S-R-S. Certain terms may apply. See the site for details. from the break. Nice shooting, by the way. That was a damn good time. Try that. But we just wrapped up your first mission with SOG. And so wanted to move into some of the other missions that really stick out in your mind. I mean, I know you did three different tours over there. I think you said 50 missions, 20 of which, if I remember, correct, are in combat or in uh south east asia right and um and so i'd like to talk about the mission that you did for the australians okay um of course sienna south vietnam was divided up into sectors the koreans had some australians had some in americans of course and it might have been and someone else in there too. In that mix, the Australians somehow

had been very much infiltrated in their headquarters or whatever it was. So anyway, we were tasked with a mission for the Australians. And it was an all Greenberry team, all five of us. And when it came time to get the mission, I don't remember how we got there if we went by chopper or by a truck or something, but it's definitely far away from anything. It was in the Tully somewhere. And we went across fields and stuff from when the French were there. And

when we went across several of these fields and so forth, there was a huge tent like they had in World War II and so forth, the squad tent or bigger than that even. And that was a makeshift headquarters for the head of the operations for the Australians. So the five, the five, of us went in there and the Australian commander came out. He was a major and he's built, he's looked exactly like Hollywood. He had the shorts and all that stuff and the knee high socks and all that and he came out to see us and he had the hat and he had that really trim mustache and he was quite formal as Asian or I mean European people are. But Anyway, as it turned out, there was so highly infiltrated

that this major didn't think he could get any mission started from his own people, from his own headquarters and so forth, because someplace along the line there were people who were double agents and so forth. So anyway, he gives us this message, this mission. He said that Kostfen, the headquarters for the communists in South Vietnam, they were quite certain had their headquarters centered inside of a rubber plantation from the French. And people were bought off.

The French didn't want anyone to know about the presence of the NBA in the Viet Cong because they didn't want the rubber plantations bombed. and of course the Kosfen the communists certainly didn't want it known by anyone and so we were tasked with this mission

and the other thing was South Vietnam and some of the other people were being bought off so there's this triple thing here someone is paying the money to look the other way they have the headquarters in the rubber plantations the French know it and so forth

so we were given a mission to find that headquarters and report only to that major and so we were in that tent and he was giving us all the parameters of the mission and of course it's intelligence gathering is not about getting a spy or anything like that so we start on this this mission and we're making our way toward what we think is the the rubber plantation and uh there's a lot of enemy around although a lot of it is It's ex-farmland and things like, so hard to find places to hide and so forth. But we start making our way toward what I think is the headquarters. And I was on the team leader, and I took point.

Were you commingled with the Australians? Was this a joint operation? No, not a joint operation, just for that major. And once we got the information, we'd give it to him, and he'd take over from there. But the closest we would get would be a helicopter. one of theirs and he would give us only one and some of the parameters were about what you could shoot and not shoot at things like that so anyway we're going through the bushes and all that kind of a thing and I've never seen so much bombs and booby traps and stuff all over the place

it couldn't believe it and it would be really moving slow it was on my knees and stuff like that And I got to a place I could just sense the enemy was there. I just knew it. And the ancillary sounds or hum or something, there's something big close by. So I'm on my belly. I'm crawling through my belly through the really thick tangle that's there. And I'm really going slow because I know somebody's in front of me. And I get to a certain spot in this time.

tangle and I smell something and I freeze I don't move or anything like that and as it turns out it was the breath of their century that was there on the edge of the line and I am so close I can smell his breath and so anyway it's like now it's taking me hour hour and a half to crawl this far without being heard now it's enough information to know that that which I thought was really the headquarters for the Cosman so now I need to back out of there and I could barely go forward quietly and now here I got a guy who's breath distance away and I got to go backwards and boy how do I do that and I kind of gave a signal to the guys behind I could get my hand back there and I could see his

shadow once I located his man by smell I didn't move until I could kind of see him and then I could see his head move in the shadow slightly on the other side. So anyway, I prayed and I did that quick prayer and I says, God, there's no way I come back out of here quietly. Can you cover the sound? And about the time I said, amen. A jet took off from someplace 50 miles away and went directly over the top of this. Are you serious? Yeah, absolutely certain. And so I backed up as quickly as we could. We got our, tried to make our way back to an LZ and lessons learned too because I know I'm going to give the major his information he's going to drop the big bombs you know all that assuming his headquarters will let him but as I'm going back

just a lesson learned as I'm going back and trying to lead my people to a place where we can pick up I find an LZ and it's actually a little bit too big it's too enticing you know it's too big but they said that they would not pick us up in any LZ unless we have had recon all the way around it. These are big LZs. I said, this is crazy. By the time I worked my way all the way around, what's to say somebody didn't go where we started from, you know? It was crazy. And it was an hourglass shape LZ. So it was wide on the two ends and narrow in the middle. And I thought the best I can do is to set up right in the middle of it. I can watch both hemispheres and calling for my extraction. And as I'm there,

all of a sudden I see movement across the hourglass from me and it's NVA, big, big time movement accompanied or battalion, big time coming across and I could read their mind almost they didn't want to cross an opening either and so they would go across the narrowest place right over the top of me

and so now it's one of those things of praying that they'll go by and be ready to take out this minute and they had a front element, a patrol element, in the front. And I think there was about seven or eight of them, and I thought I was pretty certain I could take that element out. But then the rest of them, you know, we would put them under fire. But, you know, once they collected themselves, but they'd overrun us, no commit, no problem.

Damn. So anyway, long and short, we called for the extraction. Same kind of a thing. God help us to get through this thing. and same thing, an aircraft came by. And the point element took off running as fast as they could, went right past me, and I'm shorter than here to you, and went right past me without looking and took off,

and then the rest of the element followed suit. So we're ducked, we're in the mud, and we got as low as we could go, and then we sunk into the mud. And then the chopper came in, and they wouldn't go if we were at. under fire, et cetera, very strict rules of engagement, but they got us out. And I gave the debrief and gave it to the major, and I have no idea what happened. You know, you hope that they took

out the place, you know. So. You never got confirmation? Never got confirmation that they did anything. No shit. I suppose enter different countries or something. What did he say when you got of the intel um very prussian if that's the good word um strict and all that's not formal you know um british or you know that kind of a thing um they took our information so forth and thank you yankee and it was it we're gone no shit yeah did you do any joint operations with any foreign guys no no not that i remember anyway yeah that wasn't was that a thing back then or everybody was pretty segmented into their... Yeah, they had their own areas of operation and all that.

Got you. Yeah. Gotcha. Let's move into Lima 50 mission in Cambodia. The Lima 50 mission in Cambodia. Which we call them the biggest intelligent find of any small unit of the Vietnam War. That takes a backstory to bring you to it. The communists had infiltrated headquarters in Saigon significantly to the point where a lot of people were being informed of what we're going to do and so forth.

We had a special forces had a project called Gamma, one of the Greek letters, Alpha Beta Gamma, BC, in our one. It was called Project Gamma, and actually a couple of names you would probably know, the Finnish, number one command of, was on that and actually was killed coming out on one of the missions anyway we were at the place

with this intelligence flying that so many people and teams were being compromised that they actually scrubbed the team, Project Gama which was really bad. At that time, Gamma supplied 75% of all intelligence for the Vietnam War, those special forces guys that were up to the fence and some of them over the fence

and the other countries. But 75% of all intelligence came from them. So it was a real gut-wrenching thing to cancel the program. So anyway, Project AMMA gets canceled. And then I went up on a mission. It's Lima 50. if a number ends in two-digit, it's Cambodian, if it's a single-digit, like India's six, it's Laos.

So this was in Cambodia and that tribe border area where things were really hectic. So this was Lima 50, and we were on this mission, and it was just dense with enemy all over the place. It just couldn't believe how many there were. My roommate was from Minnesota as well. And he, because it was, it was his team to start with, as he came back from leave, he took over the team. And then I was there, and Bob Garcia was there. And then we had our indigenous people.

And we were sent on this mission to gather intelligence and so forth. So we're on the mission, two or three days, really, really hectic stuff, real thick stuff. And bumped into some communists. and one of them was when I lost my fingers on my hand, a whole bunch of them, and we got into a firefight. There was a lot of them, and I was throwing grenades, and we had the M-79 grenade in the Algear's really going like crazy,

and shooting as fast as I could. Well, anyway, three of them jumped up in front of me, and the M-16 had the 20-round magazine, then the 30 round wasn't invented yet so i got three nva soldiers each of whom have 30 rounds in their magazine and i managed to get two of the three but the third one still had 10 rounds in his magazine he's expended 20 of his rounds so he fires at me and um i was reaching for another magazine so as i'm reaching for the magazine his bullets went about there it took off the little uh the middle finger and it was just hanging by skin

and then blew the different bullets of course and then one blew the knuckle out of the forefinger and then a series of bullets took the ends of all the fingers off and all the fingernails wound up in the back of my hand so I took a long time to get the magazine

and I'm changing a magazine trying to put it in a magazine well of the M16 and the finger keeps flopping into the well and I can't get it changed fast enough and finally you know I swing it into the palm of my hand and slam the magazine

in there and we another guy arrives at the scene and then I'm there we took out the third guy and there were lots and lots of enemy all over the place you know and as it

I'm thinking as the next day we took out the agent I'm trying to remember this get it categorized right in my mind but anyway long and short we are in the night and set up a small perimeter and in the night if we stayed on the ground and in the night I could hear the shouting I could hear the trucks coming I could hear the tailgates

coming down so I knew they were lining up and the Hoachiman Trail and below us and I heard dogs so I knew they had tracker dogs coming at us and so on We're sitting there waiting to be overrun and I've got four Claymore mines in front of me. And I didn't think I could push the plunger well. So I found something solid on the ground and I had four Claymore Mine plungers right in front of me. And as they were coming up the hill, I had the heels of my hand on the four plungers ready to take them out and the dogs are coming up. And again, on that mission, I pray God, plug up the noses on those dogs. I could hear him coming, and Ba was my tail gunner,

and one of my other guys was on the other side of me, and they come up, you could tell in the dark, Visi come, Visi come, they're really, really nervous. And I know Ba put his Buddha in his mouth. He thought if he was killed, died with Buddha in his mouth, he'd go to heaven, so I could tell the way he was whispering that he had Buddha in his mouth. And so anyway, they came by and they went right up the hill.

I could hear the graph. and the twigs breaking right in front of me. And then it was kind of quiet. I'm ready to pull these plungers. Next thing I know I can hear them passing on the back side of me and never heard us, never saw us. And the dogs never smelled us. Wow.

You know, it's just incredible, you know. So anyway, so I, next day, we get up, we start our own, relieving the area and all that. And we find a pretty extensive trail system. and coming down that trail system are several NVA and we decided to take them out. Two of them were Chinese and they were couriers and they were on the way to South Vietnam. And they were the highest ranking people ever killed behind enemy lines in the war. And we got them. They were both colonels.

How did you kill them? Huh? How did you kill them? Firearms, automatic weapons, just shot them all. And actually, I was shooting along with Ken Woodley, and we put them all down, and then I could hear more of it. Actually, I was throwing grenades with my hand, and it was really messed up because I had an ace bandages wrapped around it,

but it dried like a cast. And so I only had the tip of my little finger and my thumb sticking out. But I was trying my best of throwing grenades with that, and it seemed to manage, and then killed them. and then it was pretty evident right off the bat that they were high-ranking Chinese NBA type people and they had a huge satchel and so we ran over there and we started undressing them totally

taking every bit of intelligence we could Langley could look at the pants and say well the cotton was grown over here and on down the line they could do a thorough thing we took samples of hair you know everything they take his health everything And then we looked in the satchel. In the satchel, and I missed some things, too, that you really need to know. In the satchel was, I think they said, 200 pages of top secret orders and so forth.

Wow. The siege at Ben Hatt had just finished, and he had the names of 52 NVA soldiers who shot themselves so they wouldn't have to fight on Ben Hat, you wounded themselves. and he was administering discipline. And then there was a location of two underground factories in the Coochee Tunnel system and the coordinates of how this guy could find them to give them their awards.

And then there was one underground field hospital in the Coochee Tunnel system and how to find them. So we had all of that. And there was a couple American IDs. And I don't know exactly what all happened. But to back you up, just a slight bit, We found the double agent, basically, we thought, who was turning in all the people and caused Project Gamma to fold. And the problem then was how to get him, because when the project folded, he kind of just disappeared.

So what's CIA, you know, this SOG is basically under the CIA. They came up with a bogus brand new program, and they were looking for people to work in it. And this guy, Chuin was his last time, volunteered. Oh, I'll work for you, Americans, ready to do the same thing he did before. So once they got him, and he was not in the wraps, they grabbed him, they arrested him. And they gave him sodium pentothal, they interrogate him. They didn't torture.

What is sodium pentothal? What is sodium penitol? True serum. Does that work? Huh? Does that work? Apparently it does, yeah. Sonny Penetal?

Yeah, truth serum. Yeah, and they, anyway, he was, I'm not going to tell you Americans anything. You know, he knew he was compromised. All help is done, you know. So the thing then is America, the CIA had two projects, the same project, just the names change, Peru and Phoenix. And once it was called Phoenix, the Phoenix program. program. And then when press started to find out about it, they changed it to a provisional

reconnaissance unit. It sounds innocuous, you know. So anyway, their job, their specific job was to eliminate the fifth column in South Vietnam. The people who don't wear a uniform but are fighting, their job was to put them out, to kill them, you know. So our people bring Chewitt over there and say, we've got him, we're going to deliver them to you, and you can do your thing. And they said, he's your baby, you take care of them. And so they just dumped them back in her lap. So Colonel Roe was the new commander of special forces,

had only been in country a month. And then several of his chief of staff, they said, it's up to us. So they took chew, gave him sodium pentadol, so he was asleep, put him inside of a gunny sack. And then they took him over to Nutriang Harbor and started going out to sea. And when they got significantly out to sea and the sharks were thick, they lifted them up so that his head was shown.

And they, with a high standard with a silencer, they put two rounds in his head, stuck him back into the sack, and dumped him overboard into the ocean, ended the problem. But somehow the press got word, and I don't know how. and the United States government and arrested Colonel Rowe the commander of all special forces in Vietnam and they put him in stockade prison

in Longbin outside of Saigon along with seven of his people and they were there in Longbin jail for a long time. No shit. Anyway, they were and even to back up further Abrams hated special forces

and he didn't like him at all, for one thing, the people in special forces would have been his officer corps because they were the top echelon intelligence and character and all that stuff, you know. If you don't wear no green berets, he'd have an officer corps, you know. But anyway, he put him in stockade and kept him there. Well, the mission that we were on when we killed the Chinese couriers, and we brought that back, and actually the mission isn't done yet because the communist, when we took out those, Chinese they knew they had something really big we had something big because there's

their two dead bodies and one of them is stripped skin and the whole thing they knew and the and the satchel charge is gone so it's like every communist in that part of the country was just charging trying to get us and we were trying our best to get out and and then the next afternoon we had more fire fights and then this one i got shot in the back of the head and the bolt went across my head you got shot in the back of the head yeah but i didn't pass out i i remember just as if it was yesterday the sound i made was gha you know i just gna i just i don't know why you remember some things but anyway i reached back with with my good hand and with my fingernails i raked it across and

and and the shrapnel came out you know and um so there i was again so then i was again so then we get to an LZ and the communists have got us surrounded there's several hundred of them and they figure 600 to a thousand of them and we're holding them off big time you know as long as we can and so we're fighting

we're trying to get air strikes and all that to get us out and it's getting pretty wild I went off on one edge to hold up a flank that they would come up one flank the rest of the guys were on the other end and I was shooting

as fast as I could, you know, and then aiming and all that kind of a thing. And one of the guys on the other end, his M16, wasn't working right, Car 15. And so they thought, well, Hansen is so slow, we need to gun on this side. And when I should have been, we got that. I got the carbine and so forth. So I had the carbine and my own rifle and so forth. So they come by. We need to get your rifle for a while. We're being overrun. So like a fire. I give him my rifle, and I'm holding them off with this M1 carbine, which is interesting, and I mentioned it in the book, three smells where it's just like smelling the guy's breath and the thicket. I could smell his sweat. It's like the extreme, I don't know how do you explain it, that duress of the sweat.

I could smell the sweat, and I could smell the sweat, and I could smell the fear. his fear. I just right there when I had his gun to my face. And then I could smell his thoughts. It was all on the smell. If you've ever heard anyone talk like that. But the minute I started shooting with his weapon, I knew exactly what he was thinking and feeling. It's incredible. But it's true. And I'm not a psychic or anything like that. What was he thinking? Yeah. So I'm holding them off with an M1 carbine. And they're charging from this side. and they're charging from my front left. And all of a sudden, the bullets come from my front left

as I'm aiming, because I only got so much ammo. And as I'm aiming, the bullet goes between two fingers on this hand and goes right through the comb of the rifle and essentially breaks the rifle in two, although it's just holding together by a couple pieces. And so it's not my day, you know. And so anyway, in the middle of this firefight, one of my people, blah,

my Vietnamese guy, Ba'a, he comes running halfway to me and he stands up straight in the firefight. It's just the anguish of his voice. And he says, Hanson, Hanson, worthily him die, worthy him die, which was the acting was zero. And you think about thoughts, and you've done it yourself in combat, and you think, what made me think of that?

The first thing that went through my mind is that Ba wanted me to bring them back to life. and I yelled I said what do you want me to do about it you know like I can't make them come back alive then I realized okay I understand and I ran over there a chopper was coming in

and I said take the rope wrap it around Ken Mortley you know a Swiss seat and wrap it around him and take the satchel and put it down his shirt and you and he get out of here because I wanted that out of here so he did

he did and then one of the the other Vietnamese from the other end ran to the helicopter to and got on. And so then I went back to my place and I, oh, and I get my rifle back. I think it was from him. So I got my rifle back now. So I'm fighting with a one-piece rifle and a wounded rifle, you know, and I'm fighting. And things are getting pretty well. But then all of a sudden, Ken Worthel, Bob Garcia runs over.

And he says, where's Ken? Where's Ken? And I said, he's dead. I just sent him out. And then Bob and I are from here to your wall apart. And he gets on the radio, and he looks at me for confirmation. He says, I want, I think it's hard. The big bombs, whatever it is, 500, whatever it is.

I want it right on me, and I want it right now. And he says, it's too close. And he says, you'll be killed. And he says, I want it right now. That's an or he looks at me. That's okay with you. Yes, because we're about to be dead anyway. And so he runs to his end,

and then the bombs start coming like crazy all over the place, you know. And the enemy is still around. You can't kill them all. And so then the chopper comes, another chopper comes, and I hear yelling for me. And I run over there, and it wasn't that far away, maybe 50 feet, 75 feet. And Bob Garcia and the other Vietnamese are already hooked up.

and they say, Hanson, come on, come on, hook up. And I thought, in that interval of time, I was the only one left on the ground. I thought they were dead because I was hearing nothing at all. And this is before the second chapter come. And so I got on the RT10 radio, the survival radio, which you probably have yourself,

or whatever the radio is now, but it used to be a two-piece, then it was a one piece. And I got on the radio, and I think I'm the only one left, alive. And so, again, I don't know who to call. I don't know any call signs and all that stuff, you know. And all I know is that when I push that button, every aircraft in the Southeast States is going to hear it. And so I push that button and I say, is anybody out there? And it was so

cool. And the Covey Rider was a dear friend of mine, one when I prayed for and he lived. And he says, I got you Dale. I got you down. The calmest voice in the world. That's what I wanted to hear more than anything else. They've got me. We're going to be okay. We're going to get out of this thing, even if I'm the only one left, you know.

Then I hear them calling. And there's two of them left. They're already hooked up, ready to go. And then I get in, go over there. And then with my wounded hand, I can't tie the knot. You know how that knot is. Bring it through yourself. It's like I don't have a hand to do it with.

And so I thought, the only thing I can do is I can make the biggest overhand knot and pull it through the loop, snap it in, and hope I did it. You know, it worked. And the chopper lifted off and it hooked. You know, it's tightened on itself, and that was good. But then it never ends this mission. Then the chopper is taking heavy hits. and so instead of going straight up until we left, cleared the forest, he went horizontal and drug us through the foliage.

And I hooked up in the branches of the trees that I was about to be pulled off. And my first assumption, and I'm sure it's what would have happened, is that the crew chief would have seen the dilemma and he would have cut the rope. No use to losing the chopper and us, you know. So about the time he was probably thinking that in his head, I got the last branches done and we sprung 100 feet into the air. It was like it was a bow and arrow. We just shot into the air.

And then we headed toward a base duck peck or bent hat, one of those. And I remember a couple of things. One is that I was spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning. Because the other guys were hooked together on two ropes. Oh, another thing, too, is that when that chopper came in, there were four ropes. And as I'm looking up, looking for one for me to hook on, the fire was so intense that one of the ropes got shot in two. And I watched it fall to the ground like a snake, you know. And so I got the one made the biggest overhead lot stuck in.

Then I'm stuck in the trees, and the tree is just bending. It's just a second or two before he cuts it. But then when I get the last branch done, you know, and I got the rifle over the shoulder and cutting with my K-bar, you know. And boy, when they gave, we just shot into the air like a bone arrow. And on the way back, they were low on fuel, so they couldn't make any detours.

So they drew us right through a hail storm. And I remember we were about beat to death by that hail. It was awful. There's one thing after another. And then when we landed, I think it was Ben Hat. But Norm Doni, my old team leader and father figure and Mike Buckland, who went through all the training with me, 37 of us, and he's about the only one left alive besides me, you know.

And they're there waiting for me and hugging and all that kind of a thing. And so glad to see us. And I remember, too, because the guys were so glad to see me and hug, I remember I got some Vietnamese there too and I'm like I'm half drunk you know being twisted in the air you know spinning and spinning as far as it'll spin

and then we go the other way and oh I'm so sick and everything else but I went over and I hugged my Vietnamese they're important too you know and I went and I hugged them and I said you okay and made sure they were good you know and that was the mission And we were, I was at a Placu hospital, field hospital.

And Norm Doney and Mike Buckling came to see me. They drove six miles from Contum to Placu and to see me and all that stuff. And we went outside and found a table outside under the sun. And he gave me the heads up, this is what you guys found, you know. And they're not highest intelligence find of any small unit. Vietnam tailwind was gigantic, but there was about 140 people getting it, and it was a whole complex, but what we got was significant. And after that, they had no choice but to release Colonel Kerr Roe and his people out of Long Bend jail, but they still insisted on trying them and

all that kind of thing, just a mockery thing, a control thing, because they wanted to control special forces, and it bothered Abrams because he didn't have control over special forces. We were under complete different auspices. Damn. Holy shit. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. The holidays are here, and you know what that means. Traditions.

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Say it once more. When you said you could smell his thoughts before you killed him with his own weapon. Oh, the guy with his weapon, I could do that. I don't know what is what we transmit, perspiration and all that kind of thing. I definitely smelled his personal. inspiration, for sure. And in that, I could smell adrenaline, the fear, adrenaline. I could smell it just as clear as can be. And the thinking auspices. Of course, you can't write down the sentence that he said, but you can sure factor out the concept of what he's going through

his mind. It was amazing. Yeah. Is that the first operation he lost anybody? I think so. I think so. We had several when we lost people, though. How did you get through that? It was difficult with Ken Worthley from, he grew up in place just 150 miles from me and all the stuff. And I met his, when I was in the hospital, I went and I met his parents and all that. It was so difficult and really difficult.

And there were times I know I was coming back from either the hospital or one of the missions. And I remember Mike Buckland met me and he says, so-and-so died and I was on the middle of the compound and I started to weep. And I just started to cry, you know. And that happened more than once. Yeah, damn.

Dale, what advice do you have for today's generation who's lost people in war who are trying to get over? Of the families. Families, friends, people that have lost teammates. Yeah. If the Christian, they believe in an afterlife, okay, you're going to see them again. And we're in sorrow now.

But if they don't have those kinds of feelings about all you can share with him is, well, he didn't suffer long, or it was for a good cause. And though you love your son, a grandson, you know, what he did sacrificially is incredible. Actually, the second Sog book is Sog Missions to the Well. And in the Old Testament, King David was a shepherd. and he was raised in the town of Bethlehem and he wound up to the note of the king when he went to visit his brothers

and Goliath was out there and David killed him with a sling but ultimately he winds up being the king of Israel and the people praise him they said Saul has killed his thousands but David his tens of thousands But David came from Bethlehem, and the Philistine army had invaded the land and got between Bethlehem and David's army. And he's sitting down at a day of fighting, and he says to himself, not realizing anyone heard it, he says to himself, oh, what I would give for a drink of water from my hometown in Bethlehem.

and three of his people heard it and out of their love and loyalty to David they fought their way through the entire Philistine army went to the well in Bethlehem and got a flask of water and fought their way all the way back to David and presented it to him and that's how I came up with the title of the book Emissions to the Well

is when we do things so selflessly at great cost and sacrifice and perhaps permanently maimed in some way or give our lives, you know, that's what David did, and it's missions to the well where sacrificially you, at cost to yourself, do something for someone else. And that's probably the kind of thing I would share to a family. I'm not sure how many of them would take it,

perhaps not at the beginning, put down the line they might. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. Do you remember the first time you killed another human being? An enemy? I don't. You don't?

I don't. I don't. And I think because of my ethic on taking a life, it's okay to kill for self-defense, capital punishment, and more. And so I don't have that guilt matrix to rule. to really make me, you know, cry, sorrow, whatever it is. Perhaps sometimes when you take out the first one or two that you got, you figure you got them because the fighting is diminished, but they're on the other side of the branches and stuff,

and you know you got them, but you didn't see the dying, you know. Yeah, sometimes you go back and think, you know, he came from a family too, and he probably didn't want to go to South Vietnam and fight for Ho Chi men, you know. It's really hard to give comfort in that time. Did it ever bother you? No, it doesn't. Only philosophically when you realize that that person probably didn't want to be there or

may not have wanted to be there, but as far as my part in it, it didn't bother me. It needed to be done, it had to be done. And so, yeah, there were times, I don't know how many I took out, but there were lots, you know, and I just don't think about it. Yeah, yeah, we got plenty of things to worry about on an upcoming mission, then, you know, yeah, same thing with you. Did you, did you ever, did you stay in Vietnam the whole time, or did you come back home at all?

Yeah, I came back for a couple months of that. Five months leave, so it was in three hospitals and one up in Fitzsimmons Hospital in Denver and one in Japan and one in in Saigon, I think it was, but three different hospitals and then convalescent leave at home and what I did when it was time to go back, I could pick one place to go to en route. And so I put my finger on International Falls, Minnesota, and I put the other finger on the other side of the globe. And it said, Cape Town, South Africa. And I said, I only go there. And then every time the plane stopped, whether it was Greece, Rome, Africa, or whatever it was,

I traveled in there. Did you have anybody to come home to? Did you have anybody to come home to? A brother to come home to. Did you have anyone? to come home to married yet no i wasn't married um my family was there my brother my brother was there he had a year and a half and a hundred and seventy third airborne yeah that's interesting on the break you had told me that your brother was also vietnam yeah it's interesting

i called my mom from japan and said i had been shot in vietnam and uh my brother and my brother was in the room and she says mom i know where and she said it was in the head and the hand and she's how'd you know that she he said i felt it yeah he said i felt it we were pretty close but he said i felt it wow is he still alive oh yeah yeah he's a couple years younger are you guys close yeah yeah really close very good man do you do you guys talk about the war often do you relate with each other or um some but quite limited um i don't think some of his missions were quite as hairy as mine were although he had some um but but sometimes usually it's in connection with me writing something or trying to find something out you know um you know writing the

other two books you know in the immense amount of time it takes to to find the witnesses and the documents and all that and I remember I was trying to find a witness to see J. Benhead actually and I called the day he went into hospice you know and that's the kind of thing it was more difficult every year I'm I'm sure you know man man so we talked about talk about the the car 15 30 round magazine car 15 um and of course i what i mentioned before was you know changing the magazines is that um they had uh after the ted offensive the vietnam was essentially wiped out 35 000 vietnam so it had to be and their primary weapon was the SKS or the uh this the captured american

the carbine so the NBA came with theirs the RPD and the AK 47 and all the the rest, you know, but the AK-47 had a 30-round magazine, so that was one help. We had, well, the M-16, but we couldn't carry it overseas for a while because we had to go sterile, no tattoos, no laundry marks, no nothing, completely sterile. And because if we were captured, granted, the United States will disavowing any knowledge of us, you know, the old adage. So in that one firefighter was that, three of them stood up.

There was a whole bunch, but there were three right in front of me, and we were trading bullets, and the one guy emptied his rifle on me. The other one was just about done, but I got the other two, and I don't know if they were finished with their magazines or not,

but I got two of them. And then the third one still had ten magazines, and I'm reaching for the magazine. And that is the, we, already started trying to find a producer to make them because we saw the need when the AK-47s came in and so we all put in $50 toward it. John Plaster headed it up and he started finding manufacturers all over the world who can do this for us quickly and by the time I got back from the hospital and all that we had each

of us had at least one 30-round Megasas And it wasn't very long after that the United States followed suit, and we started having 30-round magazines. But it was crucial for us, you know, just like the RPD with the drum held 50 rounds. You know, and if you're in the initial firefight, and you've got 50 rounds to lay down that first assault, that's significant. That's significant. Damn.

Well, I still can't believe you're the reason. We have 30-round magazine. Yeah, and did not be able to carry it in the first place. Yeah. The magazine, the weapon. Yeah. Yeah, finally, we really complained. We went to our CEO, whoever loved, Colonel Apt, ABT, a great man.

He should have gotten his star, except he had a heart attack after the war. But we said, look, sir, this is our situation. We're out of ammunition when they're still shooting. And he says, I'll look into that. And I don't know if he orchestrated the wordage of it all. But basically, they said that the communists had captured enough M16s that the M16 is no longer sterile. And so it doesn't readily identify you as an American.

So that's how we got the okay to use it, you know. I mean, it is kind of interesting, right? I mean, if they had 30-round magazines, why would they be picking up? weapons that only have 20 round magazines, you know? Yeah. But did you have any downtime in Vietnam?

We had R&R. What would you guys do on R&R? I went to Bangkok every time. I love Bangkok. Nice people, friendly, courteous people. I totally enjoyed it. You could go to the beach and all that

kind of a thing. And it was nice. I totally enjoyed it. You got totally away from the war and everything else. And anywhere with the other guys, CCN, CCCC, CCS, you know, the other three units, they would come in and how are things in the north, you know,

what do you do differently, stuff like that? Well, I mean, was it welcoming in Thailand? Yes, yeah, yeah. Not the Cameroos, but the Cambod's and the Thais are the smiling people. very beautiful friendly people what people would would the enemy send in spies or i mean was i would i would imagine there was that was that was that was a hot spot for r and r from yeah and to catch a drunk guy and be his friend and find out what he has to say i'm sure that would happen didn't it's not one

of the things that happened to us no no reports of it no warnings nothing like that i think our people were a little bit smarter than that you know if you ever gone back over there since uh no i haven't haven't not anywhere near it no would you would i would you i think it would i think it would um but i don't think i would but i don't think i would though you know a lot of the guys that that I go to Vietnam afterward, they say, well, they're basically, communism needs capitalism to survive. And so they're into business and all that kind of thing and welcoming the foreigners and all that.

So I don't think they're anti-American in their sentiment, at least when they talk to us. A lot of our guys go over there, especially ones that are looking for MIAs and stuff like that. Let's talk about the post-hospital work in S2 intelligence, Fort Drum. At Ford Drum, when it got back the second time, we had been, in a way, and I'm going to insult people, but we had, in a way, had lost so many of our special forces people. We were somewhat decimated, and our ranks were filled with rangers and so forth like that.

have quite our training. And when we would go on a mission, if it was intelligence, we broke contact, continued mission. And I remember one of our guys, Mike Buckland, he said, don't go back to recon yet, because there's a new batch of people out there, and they don't seem to have the same ethic that we do. And so... The same ethic?

Yeah, well, ethic in the sense of your job, your job, you have to go out and collect the information. A lot of our guys would go out. They see the enemy. They get in a firefight. Usually they initiated it. And then they would ask for an exfiltration. So the missions were being cut off simply because they didn't break contact and continue the mission. And so they were saying that our old guys are kind of disappearing. You need to sit back and watch for a while. So I did. And what was happening was for drum. It was a secret program that only about six of us, special forces, and six or eight pilots ever knew. They flew bird dogs and all that.

And our job was going behind the lines, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and look for intelligence. And if it was fruitful, you wouldn't have to send a recon team in there, expose them to being killed. or if you did send one in there, it was to confirm or deny or find a vulnerability. So we were, Ford Rum, one of us would fly about 4,000 or 5,000 feet and the other one about 10, 20 feet.

And so the top one up there would say there's a villa in a highway out there that looks like trucks. And so we would come down in the low level, sometimes below the trees. and actually tilt wings to get between trees. And we would, I would be out of the window, taking the pictures, snapping pictures,

and finding enemy intelligence. It would be new segments of road, truck parks, things like that, really important things. And that's what we did. And there were, I think there were four or five of us special forces. And I was doing intelligence, because I didn't wanna, go on the ground right away until we factored this out.

So I was on the ground and briefing, debriefing teams so they could go out. And having been on the ground, I certainly knew what they needed to know and so forth. So that was good, you know, as far as intelligence. But as a, and we shared the same office. So that morning, one of the pilots got a pilot's, the backseat observer, was killed. He was taking pictures out of the window and boy that looks lucrative. He tells the pilot to go back and I want to take another picture. The pilot says no, no, you don't go back twice, you know, that's lethal, you know. But he says, no, I insist this is really good and he

goes back a second time and he gets shot in the head and dies. So then the major who was in charge of intelligence was a little bit concerned. He says, well, no, I wonder what we're doing now to replace him. So I told him, I said, I'll do it. So I started doing the bird dog stuff. Mike Buckland, some of the other ones would teach me what to do. And we had the Laika cameras and all of that. And so it was quite hairy. We were definitely way behind enemy lines for sure. And, of course, he had Enornam Sienok, the emperor of Cambodia, and then I forget who was in North, basically leased or gave North Vietnam and China the western 30% of his country to do their thing,

which is where Saug missions were. We knew where they were. So that's what we were monitoring. And so it was densely, with enemy, the Hoachiman Trail, the figures and all the stuff. And we could put it on a map really, really clearly. And we could find the truck parks and so forth, then underground, underwater bridges in the rivers. They make a bridge underwater.

And you could see on the shore, you could see where our truck was. And then on the other side, there's an exit, you know, in between there's a bridge, you know. we did that for quite a while. It was extremely lucrative, intelligence-wise, you know, is a very good one. And I did that, I suppose, only a couple months. My other, my roommate that I was with and training group, he stayed with it. And I said, I got to get back on the ground. I feel like I'm not doing anything, which was probably silly at that point, you know. So rather than go back to recon right away, I went to a company. And that's a story in itself.

We had a, I went to a company. There were only two Americans instead of 15. And I was a captain and a first sergeant. And now there was me. So the three of us each took a platoon and we were it. And then just before my first mission out with them, we got one more American and we put him in charge of mortars. So we had mortars with us now.

But it was kind of an interesting deal. The captain was German and from Germany, was a German special forces, made his way to the United States and joined special forces in the United States. I was, we'll test your World War II memory here. I used to go get the mail, I'll go to the post office, and, you know, if the other guy's got something, I'd drop it up.

Well, anyway, I was picking up a letter for the captain. His name was Jaime Roche. And anyway, as I'm picking him up, you know, because you look at the back to see who it's for, and I said, that looks like my grandma's handwriting. You know, she was in Germany from the old country, turn of the last century. And so I look at the writing, and it's Otto Scorzini.

I don't know if you know him. He is the most decorated commando of World War II. He's the number one guy of Germany. He's the one who parachuted at Normandy, turned all the roadsides backward. He's the one when Tito was in an impregnable fortress prison on the top of a mountain. He's the one that got him sprung,

went up there, flew up there with a small plane, busted him from jail and got out with him. He, I can't remember all this stuff. It's in the book for sure, but a dozen things that he did. Unbelievable. And after the war, he was a personal bodyguard for Ava Perron, was in South America there. And one time he was in Egypt, and two Israelis came up to him. And of course, he's on the guard because he figures, you know,

German Nazi, all that stuff, you know. And he says, are you here to kill me? He said, oh, no, no, we're not here to kill you. We want to hire you. And he says, what do you want me to do? He says they have six Egyptian scientists that are about to make a nuclear bomb to drop on Israel. We want you to get rid of those scientists. And apparently it was very close to being finished.

And he says, okay, what do I get out of this? He says, what do you want? And remember the Nazi hunter, the Jewish guy who caught so many from, well, anyway, he says, I want you to get my name off of his hit list and I'll take out these scientists. They said, okay. And within a week, six dead scientists. No. And Otto Scorzini's name was off the list.

And there were so many more. I wish I could remember them, but we're in this company, usually 15 or 16 Americans in a company. And he's the captain, and he's Prussian in his attitude. You don't talk to enlisted men and all that. He's very Prussian, like old-time Germany, you know. And he, we would have a mission or something like that, and he would call the people to attention, and they would turn to the First Sergeant and said, First Sergeant take over

and they would salute. The First Sergeant would take over. The captain would go to the Officers Club. Then the First Sergeant would turn to me and say, Sergeant Hansen, take over the company. And then he would salute. I would salute. He would go over to the club and sit in the same bar stool. He always sat in when we weren't going to the field. And so basically, for six months at least,

I had a company all by myself. And it was great. They were botanyar tribesmen, loved them, you know, and it was a reciprocal thing, too. You could just see the affection that they had as well. And we had one bad mission as a company, and we had 17 firefights. And I forget, three days or something like that. That's a lot of fighting. You know, 17 firefights.

And we come back, and Captain Grim, goes to the officers club and first sergeant goes to the bar and then i got the company well anyway i go um uh someplace around the campus and they find me uh an operations center and they find me and they say dale says we got a mission for you and we just got out he says that mission you were just on sagon says was so lucrative they want you go back in there and so oh man we had 17 fireflies So on the way to the officers club, to tell the captain so he can take charge, I go by the dispensary

and I ask whoever the guy is in charge. I said, we're going back in a difficult mission. I said, do you have a medic that I can take with me? And he said, yeah, so and so. So I find the captain, and he stands at attention, you know, it's like, you know, you're never at ease among the enlisted swan. line. And anyway, I said, sir, we got a mission. We're going in the same place. And I said, and I passed

the dispensary. And I says, we can take a medic with us. And he looks at me and he stands Ramrod straight. And he says, Sergeant Hansen, you're messing Vitvivore machine. It's just crazy. Damn. But it was interesting stuff. You know, it's just a crazy mission, difficult. about mission, lots of finding. And there was a place in that mission, too, where Vietnamization was going strong. That's years and years before your military, but Americans wanted Americans out,

but we didn't want to abandon the South Vietnamese. So they had Vietnamization more gradually. We would teach them, and they would take over our jobs and stuff and so forth, and then leave them, at least capable of a, of doing the missions and so forth. Well, a lot of the Vietnamization was really good. Now, there were three of us, plus the guy on the mortars,

four of us with this company. And we find this huge complex. It looked like a western fort, except they had trenches all the way around it, logs, and all that stuff. And it was formidable with the fighting pits and everything. So when we found that area, my people were the ones that cleaned that out and so forth.

And anyway, the next morning, it was a difficult time, we actually went down the hill and charged them as they were about to have their breakfast and all this stuff, and we basically wiped them out and took over their position. The captain and the first sergeant, decide that they're going to go all the way around back up the road system to the back side and then

do a push and push the people to me back at the old site and that's fine so i get my people so we're all ready for the attack and i'm confident that we can hear them when they come through and we'll take them out well anyway um now i'm hearing them come i can hear the brush crackle and all that stuff and there's some shooting up above and and they're coming toward me and I know any minute now we're gonna have a big firefight because I look left and right and I get my people and I say you know giving the heads up this is gonna happen and all of a sudden I hear shouting and I look back beside me and there's two Vietnamese lieutenants who I never saw before and I how in the world did

get there well it turns out we had an ammo resupply and And Vietnamization and Saigon says, we have to have these two guys. So they're here and they're in my element. And I didn't even know they were there. Then all of a sudden they start yelling and shouting in the radio as loud as they can. And I know exactly what they're doing.

They don't want to get in a firefight. And they want to warn off those people so they don't have to be in a firefight. I yell at them as much as you can yell, you know what I mean? Get it very sense, and they know, and oh, they keep yelling and ignoring me totally and I get closer I yell at me you know and they ignore me again and so I went over there and I grabbed their radios and I

threw them over the embankment and then I went back to my position because there are so close you know within two minutes we're gonna have a fire fight you know and I look back at the sky and you know I look behind because I'm not sure that they're not gonna try shoot me you know so now I got to watch my back as well And I look behind me and I have three of my Montere tribesmen, each facing those of the Vietnamese with their rifles out. Oh, shit. You do not touch hands on, you know. It's great.

But a lot of that stuff toward the end of the war. That's loyalty right there. Yeah. No kidding. Yeah. And we had a lot more firefights. That mission to, 17 is a lot. 17.

Yeah. Firefights. Yeah. We had on that same mission, the first night. How did that firefight go down? We won everyone. Hands down. I took minor wounds. That's it. Nobody killed or anything like that. So we did well and so forth. On the night before, we slept right on the road, which I think that was Cambodia. I don't think it was on the Vietnam side. I think we're in Cambodia. And I think part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail is gone by. And it's really well-traveled. that kind of a thing and uh we're we're there um and uh the first sergeant says we stop here and we are on top of the hoaching man trail right on top of the highway system and so i'm here i'm thinking

if i don't get shot i'm going to get run over by a truck one of the two you know and so we did we spent the night there and and then the next morning i assaulted with my platoon down at that at that site where the big bunker complex was you know interesting stuff yeah wow damn how long were you in that unit or the companies yeah it wasn't that like i don't think it was six months um well maybe it was because it was a full year what did you like better sog or that um well uh most gratifying but also So the scariest was RECON. I mean, you know, over there with a half a dozen people in the middle of bad guy country

with thousands in between, you know, that was downright terrifying at times. Yeah. You know. I'll bet it was. Yeah. And, you know, interesting. You look at the guys, and they never showed it, really.

I don't think any of us really showed it well. But nervousness, not fear. Some kind of an apprehension. and appreciation of what you're about to go through. And, you know, this is not going to be easy. And you're well-trained. Your assets are there. They're fine.

They'll come and get you no matter what. You know, we had good support all the way through. The people in operations and some of these other places, they're good people. the Colonel Apt just a sweet good band

you know you know he's like you could be a commander without being a gruff like you know what I mean you don't have to be

unlikable just know let your people know that what you say is that and when they understand it why yell and you shout at him

and treat him poorly he was not that way you know I remember we made the first ladder in Vietnam, Exville, I forget what you called the ladder. It was the rungs that went across and the three ropes, and Doni and I made the first ones.

And he said that when they were in Delta, which is Delta Project, not Delta Force, he said they used them over there. And Doni and I on Sunday afternoon, we made Doni ladders. We always called them Doni ladders. and we made those things that they were good, they were really good

to climb a rope ladder your feet go straight out you know, it's hard but these would work and if you're wounded and so bad off wherever you happen to be in the ladder you just snapped off right there

and the people up above could roll the ladder up underneath you it's like you're in a stretcher it's just perfect you know and we made the first one and I remember we wanted the CEO of the camp to see it. And so her lap came over there and, oh, he says, this is just great, you know.

And so we had everybody over there. And it got to be the preferred way of getting in and out. Of course, you still did the rappelling, and some of them did the parachuting in, you know. Damn. Yeah. How did you wind up on the hatchet force? Hatchet force. That's when I came back from the hospital.

and I wanted to get back on the ground per se and not just in the bird dog I actually physically wanted to get on the ground and fight I don't know if I felt guilty for not being on the ground I don't know what the reasoning was but it just seemed that I wanted to be there you know with the guys where the fighting is and so it didn't take long to get on it

because when I mentioned it to the The seal, he says, you know, a company really needs you, you know, only had two Americans, you know. A lot of the other missions, you know, 15, 16 Americans, you know, squad leaders and platoons and companies and all that. Any significant stuff with the hatchet force? Yeah, yeah. It's a good bunch of guys. We had two for a while. and then it was down to one and then there were mic forces and then uh some of these other ones

depend on who you were attached to mike force would could be to the b team you know when we were on the a team and um or or in the projects you know so um so this the hatchet force is basically a reaction a quick reaction force for or you're looking for trouble one of the two um and we could go out as a platoon or or a company. So by the time you got into the hat, I'm just curious, by the time you had gotten to the hatchet force, you had said that the SOG was kind of being infiltrated with, with inexperienced operators. Yeah. And I don't want to offend people by doing that. And so kind of where I'm going with this is, you know, by the time you were at the hatchet force, had you already

seen the inexperience infiltrate the SOG? And so, what? What was that like being a reactionary force for a SOG unit that is less capable than when you were at? I think in some ways that showed up in the recon first because the adage that we had in SOG was, okay, you get in a firefighter or something like that. And the adage was always break contact and continue mission. So as much as you can, you overwhelm them, broke contact. you need to get them out of the way and then continue the mission if you can because your job is gathering intelligence and the fact that unless it was overwhelming force and it's imminent

disaster for you you don't call for an exalturation you continue the mission that that ethic didn't seem to carry over to the new guys because so many of them were getting a firefight and then they pulled out and then went to A&D and got their Bronze Star or whatever you know and we would we we had some missions but that we are it was so dense and so forth and you had to sneaky peat so much and yet you were so successful at it that you didn't have a firefight and then you come out of the thing and people would think well you had a dry hole and nothing happened you know, because you didn't get in a firefight. And it's like, man, we did what we were supposed to do

and didn't get in the firefight, you know. How would the hatch of force work? Would you be, how, would you be co-located with a SOG unit that's on a mission? They could. In other words, if they found something significant, they could radio the information, they could send in a reaction force.

So they would turn it over? Yeah, they could do that. Okay, okay. Yeah. What kind of significance, I mean, I have there that you did a significant cross-border operation. Yeah, things that needed to be acted on right away where they're going to lose their significance. Perhaps something that stalled the enemy movement going south or wherever they were, that gave you an opportunity right there. If you act right now, you're going to do all right.

you know um yeah i i think that's about it just it has to be significant for the recont team to pass it over because when the when the reconting gets pulled out they may be compromised simply because of the helicopter and all that how i'm just curious so how i'm trying to i'm just trying to figure out what the dynamic is between the the hatchet or mic force to the song unit i mean would this be the way i envision it is you know when when i would go out with with a seal team or every once in a while with uh with um at the agency if there were air assets if there was a blocking force if there was anybody else involved everybody sat in with the same for the same exact brief right but i mean with what you guys are doing i mean i think you signed like it was it was

like a 20 or 30 year waiver like non-disclosure agreements and I mean you know and so I don't how I guess what I'm asking is how in tune was the hatchet or mic force with the SOG unit did they know everything where they're going everything or were they just in a they waiting just to get called secret you knew your own mission that's it yeah so if you were captured and tortured that's all you can tell them yeah so um yeah you for the most part you wouldn't know um what the next team is doing so the hatchet force have really has no idea what the SOG unit is doing right unless yeah they're part of song are part of we yeah we had a reaction for us a different names for it but we had one in the compound okay yeah so they were very in tune with what you guys yeah yeah and they could

turn out uh everything uh locations the action the actual mission set the objectives all that the the hatchet force would be right into that would they be out in the field at the same time the sog unit was they could be uh you know like uh um sag recon people they would like to have six or seven like in cc in my area they would like to have six or seven teams on the ground all the time okay so um it's possible all of them can be in trouble and that happened and i wrote about it in the in the book um but um but um And then there will be a company as well. Now, if a company or a platoon gets in trouble,

a recant team gets in trouble, they're more vulnerable because of their small size. So air action would be deferred to the small one or the most vulnerable one with, you know, I suppose a platoon with half casualties or something would get some precedence. Gotcha. Yeah.

Gotcha. Well, Dale, let's take a break. Okay. When we come back, we'll talk about leaving Vietnam and coming home. Hey, everyone, if you're like me, this time of year heading into the holidays, life gets busy. My routine can get totally thrown off in trying to maintain a balanced diet and give my body the nutrients it needs can be a real struggle. That's why I rely on AG1. I drink it first thing in the morning, and it's become the single easiest daily health habit that helps me stay. consistent. I use this, and you should too. Ag1 is the daily health drink that combines your multivitamin, pre-and-probiotics, superfoods, and antioxidants all in one simple green scoop.

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and people were excited. When we come home, it was in the matrix of dissatisfaction and hatred and things like that. And I think people come in back from the war, in some regards, we're almost treated as criminals by certain aspects of the country. And most places, not really regarded at all. It was kind of a sad thing.

I remember I sat down at an airport and the first person I saw tried to steal my beret. It was just kind of crazy stuff. But, yeah, and I guess the only thing is, what now? You know, I think we all have that kind of a feeling. I suppose if you were coming to retirement, And you thought, okay, I've always wanted to have a farm.

You know, but now I got it figured out already. And a lot of us are coming through times in which emotions are at a crescendo. Extremely exciting things are happening all the time. And now you're coming home. And it's like, what now? You know, it's interesting. How old were you when you came home? Um, 25, maybe.

25 years old? I think so. Holy. Yeah. All that by age 25. Yeah. Wow. And we only touched the top of the Arsburg.

The rest of it is in the books and so forth, you know. What, I mean, what did you, what did you hide out when you got? came back. I mean, we've all seen, we've all, I mean, we haven't experienced it. And I wasn't alive back then. So I don't, you know, I don't know exactly what that was like, but I, you know, from the people I've talked to and what I've seen and footage and the way, the way Hollywood betrayed it, which, who knows if that's fucking realistic or not. But it looked horrific. The way that you guys were greeted when you came home looked horrific. I don't know how anybody could handle that.

I don't know how I would have handled that. I probably would have left the fucking country. I would have been so disgusted. And it was that bad, wasn't it? It's kind of. And I think you go home, if you got a home, like my parents, because I wasn't married, and you go home to your parents and so forth.

And you see all the people, that you're glad to see and so forth and it's always what now what now what's next you know life is hasn't ended it's starting it's a new you know not matrix but it's a new thing that is happening and it's a little bit difficult and you kind of don't want to go uptown to the store and bump into people you kind of don't know what to expect in your world you know I thought of going back to college again and I really didn't want to I don't know I think it's Teddy Roosevelt he who knows the scriptures thoroughly has a college degree in his mind yeah so anyway I never went back to

college I studied all my life but it was on topics I wanted to learn you know and became well versed in some things, you know. What did you get into? I mean, what was reintegration into civilian life like? Yeah, civilian life like. Who did you gravitate to? Yeah. It wasn't too long, and I figured I needed to work.

It's a reality thing. And so the old paper mill where I worked in, college you in the summertime you know that was one one thing to do you know it's like I don't want to spend my life yeah in the woodroom watching peel a bark peel off of logs you know there's something better in life than that it's a difficult transaction some people had no choice you know they they they went home they they took the welcome home and then they had to go to work and that was it they continued life from that point you know It was kind of difficult in a way, hard to explain, too.

You know, one of those things you experience but don't articulate. So you got into martial arts. Yeah, still did some of the martial arts. I didn't teach it, though. But I kind of kept up with it personally, you know, remembering the katas and all stuff. I couldn't tell you Akata today. It's just so far removed. but back then I did

yeah when I got back that's right I was a cop I think that's after I got back yeah it was

didn't you use the GI Bill to become a pilot I did I did I did I used the GI Bill to become a pilot with the idea

I'd be an airline pilot and I took the courses and got my commercial in San Francisco area and I passed the commercial and the only thing left was instrument and whatever else you had to do. And when I was doing that, they discovered that the guy who gave me my commercial check ride

had also given me a lesson at some point in the past. And there was some kind of a conflict and they wouldn't count my commercial test because he had given me a test, I mean a lesson. So anyway, I had to wait until we got to Alaska to get it done. And went to Alaska and signed up for this guy who's going to give me the pilot check ride. And so I'm sitting at the airport waiting for him to get a student in front of me. And I'm waiting for him to give the test whatever he's doing or lesson to this student. And I watch him take off.

I think the student was driving, flying. and I watch them take off and it goes straight up in the air into a hammerhead stall and it crashes on the edge of the runway into the ocean and they never ever find the plane and they never find the pilot

but the girl comes up and she actually becomes two broken legs and she comes up and becomes an Alaska Airlines pilot and then it took six months before they had somebody to replace this guy and when I would go to get my sign off on the test he never show up he's just not reliable and after a while I said this is this is just crazy it's not going to work and so I'm I was still teaching martial arts in the college and all that and uh over time uh all the cops and the state troopers

were my students. And so there was an opening and it was in the police department. They come and got me. They all but kidnapped me. He said, Dale, you got to be a cop. You got to be a cop. And so I went down and took the test. Where is this? Sitka, Alaska. Yeah. And it maxed the test. You know, I got it maxed the test. And of course they thought there was something wrong with the test. but I passed it and then I went through the academy and they had four categories academic physical fitness

driving and shooting and I got number one in all four never been done before what a badass that's when I was shooting more never been done before no no people get one but not two you know something like that

so anyway I got out of the I became a cop My problem as a cop is that I enforce the law. If you wound up speeding 20 over and I got you, you got a ticket, period. And they hated me for that. You're not supposed to enforce the law. But anyway, I was there one day, and to give you a background leading up to it, Vietnam War, and communism was really big in the United States.

It still is. But I believe it's sub rosa. but they had the Black Lives Matter was a big thing. Martin Luther King was a member of over 120 Communist Front organizations, the most of any American. And so that was going big. The fifth cone dividing America. Well, in Alaska, they were trying to segregate the natives from the rest of the people.

And it was kind of an easy thing. fix for them because we have 300 villages and some of them only have 100 people and stuff. There's no way they could have school, high school and stuff for all of their kids. So Alaska has regional schools, had five regional schools. And one of them was in Sitka. Well, they had people inside who would try to indoctrinate them into communism. And I would go as a cop, I would go into these rooms to see something from a student, you know some complaints or something and i'm going there and and there was these red and black

that's the native colors the red and black posters they're all the same size and everything and they would be in a row either in the hallway or in a room it would be geronimo chief joseph red cloud and they would be two or three more and that would be stolen and moutsy don't and all the rest in other words these are your heroes red cloud and all the rest of them and it's just factored right into the rest of it. In other words, Stalin and all the rest of those people are equally your friends, and they were getting this big deal. Well, anyway, in the Dakotas about that time, there was an uproar in one of the reservations, and they were barricading themselves against everybody, and the citizens were furious. So they had, it was surrounded by,

believe it not special forces i know how they got that and uh state troopers and they surrounded the camp and everybody said oh they're under siege but no they were facing outward so that citizens wouldn't come in and end the problem well anyway i won't say the name because he's still alive and and i've had contracts on me uh this man headed it up well in sitka alaska his sister headed up the native uprising in alaska and uh she um uh was really wild virulently anti-white and all the rest and pro-communists and so forth her boyfriend uh parked his car along the highway uh just before all the people would go to work the the mill site was three or four miles down the road along the ocean And he parked his car there, and every time a car came by,

he would stand out of the car, stand in the highway and put his gun out with both hands. And then when they stopped, he would go like this and urge them out of the car. And it was absolutely clear in everybody's mind they were going to be executed by this guy. There was no question in their minds. And so they would gun it, and they would take off,

and he would empty the gun on the car. And he shot eight car loads of people. and so I got the call and the call was this guy shooting at people he had a rust-colored pickup and canopy and he was heading toward town

at a certain speed and I had this image in my mind rusty old truck rust-colored they said you know and so I was looking as I went and I had a maroon car it was the investigator's car that they gave me because I was a shift commander

so I'm heading down the highways as fast as the car can go. And all of a sudden, I see this car at one of the turnoffs, where people can pull off and watch the sunrise, you know. And it was not rusty, it was rust-colored pickup in canopy. And I looked at it, I thought, it's got to be him, and I stopped about 35 meters away. And in fact, I know that it's 35,

because they paced out the scene. And off to my right, I would have got closer probably, but off to my right was another car. And I didn't know, but that the two of them were together on what they were doing. So I had to make sure I wasn't between the two cars. So I stopped, what, 35 meters? I got out of the car, and he did the same thing to me.

Come out, put the guns up, and started to do this number. And I yelled at him, went to drop it. And he started to shoot. And one of those bullets hit the sign above my car. And then another one went whizzing by. And I yelled at him, I said, drop it. And he started to shoot. So I was kind of lucky in a way, standard auto-bake transmission,

but this shift is in the right. I'm left-handed so I can get the car stopped. I can get it into park. I can throw the door open with my elbow. And with my good hand, I can pull a gun out. And it's only just a couple seconds. And anyway, he's still shooting at me. So I yell, drop it.

And I shot twice, and he went down, straight down. And it was kind of an interesting thing because Army experience, Special Forces experience, I always kept my eye on that other one. He went down with both hands underneath him, and I didn't see blood. And I thought, this guy's faking. So I basically rolled across the road

so that when he came up, I wouldn't be where he saw me last, and I'd take him from there. and so anyway another squad car comes he's so fast he's so fast he slammed down the brakes and was skidding sideways and he comes out with a shotgun you know and in the meantime

I got traffic coming from the mill and I don't want them in the middle of our ambush you know so we're stopping these cars an ambulance finally comes and we haven't even checked them out yet and I won't let them through there my scene is not done yet You know, I don't want this guy to go over and get shot,

and I just held him back, you know. So anyway, when the other cop came, he had the shotgun on him, I rolled him over, and his hands were underneath, but the gun was off the side. When he went down, it went just a few feet to the side, I didn't see it. But anyway, he went down and all that stuff.

I called for the ambulance, and, you know, called the ambulance, you can have them now, and we put him in the ambulance. And at the hospital, the surgeon, who's a friend of mine, I knew him pretty well, a very sharp man. He said both my bullets went in the same hole and came out an inch apart on the back,

which I was glad to hear that. And so anyway, he's down there. And he also said that by denying people to come to him for his aid, which what could they do? He said, if he was in the surgeon's gown, with his gloves on, and he was shot on the bed, he couldn't have saved him. That's perfect, you know.

And so there he is, and of course, I got a certain amount of time. I got to deal with the crime scene and all that, you know. Then I get back to the station, and it's about seven o'clock. And I call my wife, because I figure she's gonna hear something on the street, you know, and I want her to be assured that this is a good shoot, you know. So I called her up and she answers the phone. And I says, Katha, I just don't want you to worry about, you know, what you might have heard.

But I said I had to kill a man last night. And my wife, Special Forces wife, says, I just have one question. Why did it take you two shots? Holy shit. Are you serious? That is perfect. That is just absolutely perfect. You picked a good wife.

A good woman. Oh, wow. It was perfect. She knows exactly what you need, you know. Damn. And then it's seven in the morning. I couldn't think of a better question to ask. I should have thought of that.

Yeah, I couldn't either. I should have thought of that as an interview. It's seven in the morning. Why did it take you to? Huh? I wanted to see if I could get both in the same hole. Nice. Then seven o'clock in the morning.

1130 on Alaska Airlines, three hitmen. come to kill me that fast they were coming on a private jet they got on to this one and uh it wasn't l s airlines they came on a private jet and they were flown here specifically to kill me and they made it here within four or five hours of the shooting and uh the the gal who was heading up the uprising so to speak in sitka her brother was the one that headed the one up into the codas and and uh so they They are very anti-white, anti-American in a lot of ways and so forth. So then the bullets started flying for a year, probably a year. Had contracts on me.

Once they almost got me, my wife and I would help in the Trooper Academy, and she would play the harassed wife or the beaten wife or something, and the new students would come in and interview her and all that. And she was at the graduation ceremony, which was across the road from me about 100 yards in. And their graduation was now. So she was asked to be there for the graduation. And so we have a new baby.

And I was carrying the baby in my arms. And as I'm walking past the window, my dog barked. It was a funny bark. It was like something, warning type bark. And I turned like this to see what my dog was. to see what my dog barked at. And the bullet went through the window and right where my head was.

And we had a stained glass seashell in an opposing window. And it went right through the center of the seashell. So he thought the seashell was my head. So it went just like that. So I would have run them down, except I had a baby. You know, what do you do? I would run them down without a gun.

I would have taken them out. But then I asked one of the, I called the dispatcher. I said, someone just tried to shoot me. And I said, but I'm worried my wife is across the road at the graduation ceremony for the police. And I says, could you make sure she doesn't come back until this is all solved, you know? So one of the cops, a friend of mine,

his name was Ernie Starr, went over there. And he was walking down the aisle. And my wife was on the aisle seat. And serendipitous is the way things happen in life. He goes up to her, and he's going to whisper to her that Dale, they just shot at Dale, don't go home now. And it was that auspicious moment

when the entire place just happened to be totally silent at that second. And the entire place heard it, they just shot at Dale and don't go home. But this is a trooper and cop graduation ceremony. So within two or three minutes, we had 50 cops and troopers charging into the woods across the road for me.

trying to get this guy. You know, they never did, but then like you, you know, I've had the contracts on my life and all that stuff too. And for a whole year, I had to have the mirror that goes around so you don't have bombs under your car and be careful. But the big thing with me is

you can give them a victory by acting scared and nervous. You know, act confident and they haven't got a victory at all. And I just took the normal scares. God will take care of me, I hope. And I just took the normal precautions and carried through life.

And I think my confidence kept people from trying things that they would otherwise want to do. They did crazy things like, invite me to go snowmobiling. Guy I didn't know at all. He wants me go snowmobiling with him, things like that. And lots of stuff.

stuff that happened for about a year, you know, and then the department says I'm politically hot, you know, not that they did anything for me, really, and I should look for more work, and I quit, and I got to tell you this too, how we got into carving and so forth. I was, you know, what do you do? What do you do when people don't, are afraid to hire you and figure their business would be assaulted or boycotted, you know? Start your own business. Yeah, it's pretty difficult. I carved a lot when I was a kid.

My mom says I carved up all the soap. But I was carving, and four things happened in one week, and one was my friend. He was one of the best painters in Alaska, my hunting partner. And Keith came by, and I was carving a soapstone seal. I was going to make it for my wife. I don't want to where I got the soap sound or anything, but I'm carving that.

And he goes, oh, he said, that's really good. He says, that's worth about $1,200. Whoa, and that's the first time I ever put a dollar value or figured that there was a monitor value on something I did, and never thought of it, you know. Then about two days later, I was carving a whale in ivory. Again, I don't remember where I got the ivory, but I was carving this whale.

and I must have done a pretty good job because I didn't have it on a base yet and I didn't have an accent under it and he said, Dale, he said, that's really good. He said, let me have that for a minute. He went down to one of the gift stores and he sold it to them for $100. Come back, gave me the $100

and he called me up that afternoon to say the gallery had already sold it for $200. And then there was a fourth thing that happened that same week a guy I never met before who was the premier carver in Alaska

a really great carver a good man and he came by my house he knocked on my house I never met him in my life and I opened up the door and he came in headed for my table my kitchen table and he says my name's Jim Fleshman

and he walked over there and he had a lard can those big ones they had in the old country, full of lard, and they're about that tall. They must hold five, ten gallons here. It was full of ivory scraps, and he dumped it all on my table. And he says, pick up what you can use, pick out what you want. And I had no idea how much this was going to cost, you know.

So I picked out as much as I dared that was labor conscious rather than material conscious. That makes sense, what I'm saying? So I picked out a whole bunch of pieces. And he says, well, you're going to need some accents and basses. He started pushing a whole bunch more stuff to me. And I said, well, how much is this going to cost? And he takes his arm, and what I didn't pick, he slid it all back into that big metal can. And I said, how much is this?

And he says, nothing. God told me to bring it over here. And I told my wife, as dumb as I am, after four things happening in one week, I said, Kat, there's something to this. But I said, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do an honest show of it. This guy is the best carver in the state. And people call him all the time. But he's a peddler.

And the rent comes to, he does a carving and sells the carving, pays the rent. I says, I'm not going to be a peddler. I says, I'm going to carve faithfully all winter long. And when spring gets here, I'm going to ask all the stores to come by and see what they want to buy. And I did it. I carved all winter long. And when spring got there, I could fill the table pretty much

with carvings and invited the store owners come by. And they picked out virtually everything. And at the end of about three hours, four hours, something like that, there wasn't a single piece on the table and I had orders for 450 more carvings. Whoa. Yes. And it stayed like that for the next 20 years.

Just I never caught up in 20 years. just order year after year and I would do a show maybe or call a store and they said can you get this this this and they knew the quality level and they knew I would deliver and all that it was like that for 20 years and I basically I raised the family on carving and I still carve it's been great and with everything there's little anecdotes that you can pick up in life you know It's like, I see people that do carvings with ivory. And I look at the carvings, and they're not necessarily good. He's got some years to go, you know.

But I look at that, and what's going to happen, and it does happen, is that the media, the ivory carries over poor work. You know, so people desperately want an ivory carving. And if anything, the store can say, it's primitive art. And excuse the poor carving. you know and so that that works and i i can sell things that way um but when i started doing wood i did soapstone and and i actually started doing bronze and silver pewter and all the the cast pieces too and uh about 250 casts but um when i started doing uh um the wood carving

uh my greatest gratification was there because um I'm starting with something that is intrinsically worthless. You burn it in your stove and so forth. And I take this thing and it's only what I do to that, that makes a difference, that makes someone want it. And that is the gratification I get on the carving. Is that you? It's the ultimate reward.

When I was the cop, I don't care how many crimes you did. they let you out on your OR and it's worse today by far. It's like there's no, I feel sorry for the cops and some of these other people who can see no reward for their labor, but the wood is the one that I can see. I look at the piece and I say, that is good and I'm satisfied. And for me to say, I'm satisfied,

that's a unique word, you know. I pulled up your website. Those carvings are incredible. That's about 15 years old, too. Man. Yeah. It's, you have a lot of talent. Yeah.

How long, how did you meet your wife? It's interesting, I was just telling him. When I was in San Francisco, we were going to flight school to be an Alaska airline pilot. And I was working in a mill, Frazier Johnson, I think it was. just assembly line stuff and anyway Mike and I were out flying and I said I got we're flying together we were doing touch and goes on that bank of San Francisco Bay just on the bank and I said I got to go to work and he says well I'm gonna do one more touch and go and go in so I went to work and I'm punching in the clock and the foreman comes out he says

Dale he says your roommate just crashed his plane and he's at at the emergency room in the hospital. He wants to know if you could come out, of course, you know, and he let me go in that time and all that. So I went to the hospital, and he was messed up. It really was. He said his leg was broken. I said, the other one doesn't look too good either, you know,

and not what he wants to hear. But he had cuts on his face and all over and broken this and that, you know, it was a pretty bad shape, you know. But he says, could you send for Kathy Carlson? Maybe she would come up from Seattle and see me. I said, sure, you know, and I did, and I called her. And I said, Mike Buckland was in a furious plane crash. He was wondering if you'd come and see him. And Kathy was a beautiful, gorgeous

woman. She was like Miss Alaska and all this stuff, because the college president and his wife wanted her to do it. She's not that way, but I'm brilliant, brilliant lady. And anyway, she came down and picked her up at the airport, went straight to the hospital and all that, and would take her to dinner and then you know and when the time came to take her back to the airport and she went next weekend she came again and uh and mike is starting to slowly get a little bit better um and in the third week uh she comes up and i'm seeing my mike is starting to improve a little bit and and i'm sitting in the kitchen as she's packing up with last of her things to go to the airport and um i had no idea i was going to say it but i said kath marry me and she says okay

that's it wow no flowers no nothing just and uh just a good woman beginning to end you know and we've been married 52 three years i think 53 years yeah what's the secret to a successful marriage what's the secret to a successful marriage she has to obey me i'm kidding i'm kidding cut that part out oh man ever sees that um i don't know um we we love each other uh very much um she's um consideration maybe i don't know because they don't know what i do right you know what does she do right what does she do right oh she just kept you around for 53 years she's just a good She takes care of me for everything. If I'm doing something wrong,

like on this trip, she says, Dale, you're dehydrated. You need to drink more water. You're not thinking, clearly. Okay, hook me up to a hose. Always watch it out for you. Always watch it out for me. Yeah, yeah, good woman. And you became a pastor at a small Baptist church.

Probably for at least 25 years. Are you still doing that? I'm still doing it. I love to study the Bible. And my sermons are really Bible-based. And there's a website, Sitka Bible Baptist Church. And the sermons out there, not the last 10, 15 years, because I don't know how to do it myself,

but we have maybe two or three hundred sermons on there. But my people are just great. They want to hear truth from scripture. They want to hear the scripture. They want it articulated in a fashion that. that's understandable, logical, and so forth. And I haven't lost anybody other than moving away from town. That's about it.

But just good people. You know, I just so honored to be their pastor. And we're small because we're on the college campus. And sometime later, they closed off vehicular traffic on the campus. So you can't have a sign. out that people are going to see come to church you know so it's word of mouth things like that you know yeah but um just i have just good people you know all down the line you know what is what is what is one truth from scripture that you one truth uh everybody know um

since you say one truth from scripture i would have to relate it to not not the plan of salvation I'd have to relate it to the starting point. The scripture is true and reliable. So when you look at it, you can count on it being true and then find all the other answers. Does that make sense? It does. Yeah, because I see so many people,

sound reasoning, logic, some of these things that are missing, they're not taught in school. People don't know how to think. They listen to the propaganda and all that kind of a thing. and they believe it without thinking and it's so sad that America's beginning as it was

no longer has the ability to think clearly even Ivy League colleges you're getting propaganda mills rather than how to think logic I taught logic a couple times logic and thinking and it is a

it's sad it is critical things is departing this country at a rapid pace and you know but I will say that that it looks like the younger generations are smartening up to the ship so that that gives me hope for my kids yes it could be a good dad how old are your kids how old are my kids they're both toddlers they're both what toddlers toddlers yeah Four and two. Cool.

That's that beautiful age, too. It's a fun age. Oh, gee. Going camping this weekend. Yeah. Oh, good. Good. Yeah.

Well, Dale, once again, I'm honored to be able to share your story, and it was an honor to meet with you and shoot with you and get your story, and I just get to know you. Thank you, and I appreciate it, and I hope there's something of help to somebody out there. Yeah. A lot of nuggets in there. Good. Thank you.

God bless. You too. No matter where you're watching Sean Ryan show from. If you get anything out of this, please like, comment, subscribe, and most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. If you're feeling extra generous, please leave us review on Apple and Spotify podcasts.