The Team House - 82nd Airborne, Special Forces, Army Ranger HOF | SGM Tommy Shook | Ep. 229

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

SGM Tommy Shook has had a storied career that has spanned 50 years from Vietnam to Iraq (1960-2010). He was in the 82nd Airborne, Pathfinders, Special Forces, the 75th Ranger Regiment, and as a State Department contractor. He also has done 2 cross training deployments with the British 22SAS and was integral of Project Greenlight during the Cold War. In 2016, he was inducted into the Army Ranger Hall of Fame (1 out of 474 all time). He is a legend. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's sponsors: PIA VPN If you want to enjoy all the benefits of Private Internet Access, now's the time to subscribe. Head to https://PIAVPN.com/TEAMHOUSE and get an 83% discount! Seriously… 83%! That's just $2.03 a month, and you also get 4 extra months completely for free! But you MUST go to https://PIAVPN.com/TEAMHOUSE Rocket Money⬇️  https://ROCKETMONEY.com/TEAMHOUSE Stop throwing your money away.  Cancel unwanted subscriptions – and manage your expenses the easy way – by going to https://ROCKETMONEY.com/TEAMHOUSE 4Patriots⬇️ You can go to https://4Patriots.com and use code TEAMHOUSE to get 10% off your first purchase on anything in the store, including the amazing Solar Go-Fridge. Don't let a power outage catch you off guard. Just go to https://4Patriots.com and use the code "TEAMHOUSE" to get 10% off.  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: ⬇️ https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️  https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️  https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [e-mail] #armyrangers #specialforces #vietnamBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, folks, I just want to take a minute to ask you to go in rate this podcast, let the Teamhouse know how you think we're doing, go and rate us on whatever platform you're listening to this on, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or whatever else. Those ratings really help us out, and we really appreciate the feedback to let us know what you like and what you don't like. And if you do like the Team House and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page and you can actually support the stream and well as get access to our team house. and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page, and you can actually support the stream and well as get access to our bonus segments and bonus episodes. Yeah, if you're going to give us a great review, please do. And if you're going to give us a not-so-good review,

why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Special Operations, Covert Ops, espionage, the Team House, with your hopes, Jack Murphy, and David Park. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to episode 229 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here tonight with David Park. Our guest on tonight's show is Tommy Shook,

who has the distinction of being both a retired sergeant major as well as a retired captain. He is an inductee into the Ranger Hall of Fame and spent many decades in the airborne Ranger and Special Forces communities from service in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, all the way into Afghanistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. So we're very excited to have Tommy on the show. Before we get started,

I'll flip it to you, Dave. So we would just want to say thanks to our first sponsor for tonight. For those of you who don't know, when you stream all these different services, you don't always get all the programming. And, you know, for somebody like me who likes a lot of good Korean flicks, for somebody like Jack, who loves Bollywood, you don't always get the best selection when you're streaming because of the regional settings with P. VPN, private internet access, you can bypass your regional settings, set up a region anywhere. And, you know, plus having a VPN on your computer is just good practice. Anyway, it keeps you from men in the middle of text when you're at your favorite coffeehouse or whatever. You've got to check out private internet access.

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Okay, I grew up on a dairy farm. My parents were tenant farmers. I started working at the barn, working with cattle when I was five years old until I got old enough going to the Army and that was 18 years old. I went to a small school, very, very nice community, very good people. And all 12 grades were in the same school and graduated from there in 1960 and joined the Army.

You had mentioned to me that before the show that you found Army life kind of easy by comparison to farm life. Well, yeah, it was, you know, on the farm, there's, back in those days, they were, no virtually no practices of safety. We did not know that kind of stuff then. So, yeah, climbing the outside of 40, we had four silos, 40-foot silos, 50-foot silos, no safety whatsoever. Tack a block tied around my waist with a long rope to pull the pipes up to the tops of the silo. So, and then working seven days a week and cultivating corn.

behind the mule all day long. So when I got in the Army, it was more like a vacation, got to sleep a little later, and didn't have to walk far, had the obstacle courses and ropes were maybe 20 feet high, 30 feet high, something like that.

So nothing was really a challenge. It was just my rural life as a boy made the Army very easy for me. And what, What MOS did you join the Army as? 11 Bravo. Infantry. And what was your first assignment, I believe, was the 82nd Airborne Division?

82nd Airborne Division, yeah. And we, I love the 82nd Airborne Division. I thought it was extremely efficient. Back in those days, there was no Delta Force, Rangers, Seals. It was the two airborne divisions, 82nd. So whatever happened in the world we got to play. And first thing was, of course, Cuban Missile situation, and that didn't materialize into anything.

Then a couple of years later was the overthrow of the government in Dominican Republic and 82nd was sent down there. And I was in the division reconnaissance unit, Calvary, And I was a platoon in the Calvaries has scout section and they have one infantry squad. I was in the infantry squad. I was a fire team leader. And shortly after we got down there to Dominican Republic, my squad leader got shot, was seriously wounded. And I was elevated to squad leader, which I remained for the rest of time down there.

but it was a really fast-paced job. Exciting is all get out if you'd never gotten to do anything like me. And we were, we had machine gun jeeps, and of course all the rest of the 82nd was jump boot mobile. They didn't have jeeps and stuff. So we were just raced here and there. Whatever was happening, we got sent there. And what impressed me a lot, it reminded me of World War II when just a few paratroopers would take a town.

So it was nothing to be sent off by myself to take a water well on a hilltop in the hold in order to do a foot patrol and find the president's yacht, take it and hold it, four of us. the first aircraft ever saw shot down in in combat was a P-51 Mustang Dominican aircraft and we were being fired on by

a 50 caliber machine gun from across the river and we jumped in a ditch on the river bank and just about that when we did there's P-51's attacked and as the first one climbed out black smoke came out and he turned to the right go over the river. He bailed out right in front of us

in his plane crashed. And so it's just one thing after another. We get to the, we find the yacht, ship, whatever you want to call it. And they told us stay there. So we stayed there a few days, two days or three days.

I thought the president's bed was comfortable. And, you One of the things, tasks you guys were given, didn't it have something to do with evacuating the president from the country? No, not the president. I captured the commanding general of all the armed forces because he was causing a lot of trouble, attacking towns with air and tanks. and there's a lot.

We had many, many incidents where we had to corner the tanks. We're in machine gun jeeps now looking at tanks. And then that was one day then the next day, they told me to go to the airport and stop some aircraft that were going down the taxiway to take off P-51 Mustangs because he was using them to bomb place. So we jumped in our jeeps and two jeeps, my two jeeps, and went out there.

And they're coming down a taxiway. And so we're going toward them. And I'm waving for them to stop and they're waiting at me to get out of the way. And so I gave my other Jeep, which was to my right, the really excessive directions with my fingers with my hands so that they would know what we were doing. So we got within about 20 yards in front of him. And I knew he was foul because that's a wheel dragger and his guns are pointed toward the air. Mine's pointing right up in the belly of his aircraft.

So that's where we stopped. And they turned around and went back to the hangar after about 10 minutes. And then a few days later, what they do is move one platoon of us back to the intelligence officer to work. with him at the vision so he came out there this colonel and yelled for me to get a machine gun and come over there and there was a big a asphalt pad there big enough for parades and landing helicopters and all and he's he told me put my machine gun down on that pad and he said here's a key for that gate back there go open and there'll be a white Mercedes come around through there in just a few minutes and let it through don't let anything else through so i took my fire team

leader we went down there open the gate and let the Mercedes through and there were three trucks of soldiers behind them standing up and looked 40 rifles sticking out of each truck and so I told him don't even look at him our job's to lock the gate so then when we did that the Mercedes started on up to where the colonel and our platoon leader was and the colonel he'll get up here so we went right up there and he jerked the door on and said get his ass out of there, so I jumped in and grabbed him. He was a great big, fat man. And my fire team leader, in there with me, we jerked him out about that time. A helicopter came up over those trees and slammed down, and the colonel was helping by that time.

He said, threw him in that helicopter. We dragged him through him in the helicopter, and I think it was two special forces sergeants on the helicopter, I think. They had to C-130 running over to airfield. They ran over there, threw him on the 133 and put him in exile in Florida. It sounds like a wild adventure. I mean, how long were you in the Dominican Republic for this deployment? Seven months. Wow. So, Tommy, you were facing down tanks and P51 Mustangs in a gun jeep? Yeah, M60 machine guns.

Are these like the old Willie jeeps? yeah well no they were the M-15 once okay it won five once yeah we didn't have shields on them we never we didn't even have

we in shields on them when we went down there because we trained hard in the 82nd they were they were pretty well beat up but yeah we

we stopped these tanks in this paved road they were coming over a little hill we had to probably let's see 12 jeeps and one,

106, we call us rifle. These tanks had twin 50 calibers. Long story short, we stopped 26 armored vehicles with jeeps. And we pulled our 106 up about 30 yards in front of the tank. So they're sitting there, and we sat there all day, too. Finally, you got some more people out there to help us at about 5 o'clock in the evening. So after you're tour to the Dominican Republic and you get back home, what's the next assignment for you? And when does Vietnam, the Vietnam conflict, start to come on your radar as a young NCO?

We came back from Dominican Republic at midnight on the 22nd of 27th of November. and I'd been down in the minute longer than any other sergeant in our troop or B-trop 17th cavalry and we were supposed to come back based on that whoever had been down to the longest where everybody started crying for this that and the other I ended up being on the last load coming back and everybody that got back before midnight got sent straight to Vietnam everybody got back after midnight, didn't. And they just had a yellow legal tablet out there taking names, and that's how they were sent to Vietnam.

So then just a week or so later, they started a Halo Test Platoon, and I got chosen for that, and it's completely Tone by rank. Everybody, every job was Tone, except for me. I ended up being a squad leader as a E5. And then they closed that down and they sent me to Raider School as an instructor. And I had gone to Raider School, which was the best school in the Army that I ever attended. It was a lot harder and a lot better than Ranger School. It just wasn't as long.

It was 32 days instead of 63 days. but it was the best school I attended. So I ended up out there as instructor for about two months then I got sent to Vietnam. What was Raiders School? Like if you were to compare it to Ranger School other than the duration, what was the curriculum like? Same thing, only a lot better, a lot better instructors, instruction, a lot faster pace.

They had Reader School in the 101st and Raider School in the 82nd. got you it was a patrolling school strictly patrolling and then you got sent to Vietnam and landed with the pathfinders

I was assigned the 173rd airborne we got to Oakland California they said all paratroopers fall out over here to the right in a formation they told everybody asked we're going to dismiss

you for the day we got we got to get these paratroopers to Vietnam they're running out of paratroopers over there. So the rest of you're dismissed. So they processed this real fast. Let me just on aircraft. I was assigned to the 173rd Airborne Brigade and civilian aircraft. And they flew us to Vietnam. And the same thing happened there, basically, when they got us in formation. They said, we won't care where you're assigned. 173rd, 100 first, what, you're all going to the airborne brigade of the first cab. Most people didn't know the first cab had an airborne brigade.

The first brigade was airborne for the first years plus. And so they loaded us on aircraft and sent us to Anke, and they were under heavy fire artillery when we got there. So we didn't have weapons or anything. So there were sergeants right now, they were sergeants right now grabbing us and rushing us to bunkers. And so that night we slept up on the side of the hill. And the next day they had us in formation.

And they said, be back at 10 o'clock and we'll tell you where you're assigned. And the first name, Paul, was my name, so you're assigned the 11th Pathfinder Company. And there's a staff sergeant in charge. I was still in E5. I raised my hand. I said, not me. He said, what do you mean? I said, I'm an airborne infantry.

And I came over here to fight a war. I'm not going to rear echelon stuff. And he said, these are pathfinders. Of course, I knew what pathfinders were. I was in the 80th Second Airborne Division. They were in my platoon, but I didn't think there was an organization of Pathfinders. Well, they said, finally, he said,

well, you see those two men down there? There's black baseball caps on. Go talk to them. If you don't want it, let me know, and I'll put you in the infantry. So I went down and talked to them. I asked them about five or six times, you really, really pathfinders,

because I was a Pathfinder Qualifier. So, yep, we are. so they took us to took me and this other man over there to the pathfinder company and that's how we got in there and can you tell us a little bit about both what pathfinders did at at the 82nd and then also what they were doing what their mission was as an element in vietnam well the pathfinders in 82nd were individuals they'd go to pathfinder school and come back and be you know just be back in the squad or whatever they were in there was no organization of pathfinders. In Dominican Republic, we made some air assaults,

and they were run by Pathfinders, but as a raider, I was put with them also down there. But in Vietnam, the Pathfinders, we were a 15-man team, 15-man detachment, two officers, 13 enlisted. And we tried to always have two Pathfinders, pathfinders together. We went in ahead of ever, ever on ever assault. We went in first, which was many days, three times and one day assault in with a company, jump off.

We always jump off, running and shooting and talking to the pilots, and then run and get on the last chopper, go pick up another company, get off, run, get on the first chopper, get in a new magazine of ammo, assault in again, do that three times in a morning. We did several parachute jumps, three men up to six men. We, the worst thing was two of us being put in somewhere like at midnight to light a landing zone at just before daylight for the infantry. That was long nights. That's that's that's that's just the unknowing just two of you. You know, you know they're hunting for. for you because they'd fly us in a midnight on a hughy with all the lights off and we'd jump off and run and hide and try to crawl around and figure out where to put the lights over the next day so that was challenging and then when we got on the ground we became infantry we walked with the infantry we we helped them out with map reading we did anything that there was to do we took care of all the aircraft medevac directing air strikes what we did so we might be walking with

your company and get an order to an aircraft in a route to get us, pick us up and take us, put us with another battalion say 25th, 50th division got in bad trouble out here, we need to go get them out. So we jump on choppers and go do that. Hunter and first got Bill Corpenter called Napalm in on his own unit.

We've got to go help them. so we were with the 327 fighting in Tuiawa, so we flew that 125, 150 miles to Docteau and assaulted in there and got carpenters, people out at the 502nd. Then attached to special forces. We got run off of a mountaintop there. I was by myself, then I was only pathfinder there, and then went into Laos to blow up helicopter and get the people get a couple of people out of it just non-stop like that all the time never went never went in the rear i was inside a building one time and took a shower in uh special forces camp at the phantom where ccc was and uh that's where we live just like a out of land down on the

ground and getting we didn't get to sleep we got naps that was all could uh could you Could you tell us? Month after, month after month. Could you tell us a little bit more about the operation in Doc Tao when you guys got, you know, ambushed? Oh, that was in the Adrian Valley. Oh, okay. That was, if you saw the movie, we were soldiers, it was one of those, it was the A company of their, of the first of the seventh cavalry. And that fight was right on the edge of, it was.

the x-ray, some of the people that air landed come in to help us said they landed on x-ray, so I guess they did. And at that time, we were attached to the 7th Calvary, first of the 7th Calvary, two of us.

And we had taken that mountain and if you saw, again, you saw the movie, so that mountain in that movie is, the name of it was Chupon Mountain. We took that mountain. about three days, I think, before this other fight. And I went out there and ran a recon on that mountain by helicopter.

I didn't. I wasn't up ground. And the colonel told me where he wanted to land and wanted me to select him a landing zone. So I did. And so I selected the landing zone. Went back. We loaded up in helicopters.

And I, I told the colonel where it is, what formation I went to helicopters to land in and so on. And we assaulted in there on top of that mountain. And it took us about two days to sweep down and clear that mountain. And then we got to the bottom of that about 2 or 3 o'clock in afternoon. And they picked us up and we flew across this bunch of rice fields and assaulted the top of another mountain and repeated that same process.

So then we went back to the where the battalion headquarters was located on the LZ. I don't remember the name of the LZ right in there. And then we walked out of that LZ with Company A, 7th calorie. And for about three days, we were getting in a fight about four or five times a day with about six people. And what they actually were doing was suckering us into a horseshoe ambush. So I told the company commander, advised him not to go across this clearing area, which is a danger area until he put recon over there. I don't have time. I don't have time.

I said, we'll at least put some fire with those. I shoot some artillery. I don't have time. So anyway, we went across that field. We went into that, down the end to the woods across that field. And we were, got caught in a horseshoe ambush by a reinforced battalion with 50 caliber machine guns and light machine guns, of course, 500 AKs. When I heard the 50 caliber fire, I heard three. When people said there were more, but I heard three. And the Sergeant Major, whom I was walking with, got hit right in the, right there on his right eyebrile, right with the 50 caliber round.

Took his head. And when, like when you're on the ground crawling, 50 caliber rounds coming at you. And everybody knows there's a tracer, wherever a fifth round. it looks just like a beer can, the bottom of a beer can coming at you. It looks like it's going to hit you right in the face. And just it gets to you, it looks like it goes like that over your head. So we got knocked down by, I guess, a mortar around. But there was an anthill, and we got around behind that ant hill.

And that's what saved us. Everybody else that dived in around that ant hill, probably a dozen people during that three-hour fight. were all killed or wounded. And then finally, we had constant A1E's firing us, firing for us, F4, and a whole skyfall at first cavalry helicopter gunships and whatever. But the fire never lit up until the infantry came in. They flew the infantry right over from where I was. They went right over to our front and down really low.

And when that happened, contact was broken and everything went silent and the North Vietnamese were gone. Back then, we didn't call them what Vietnamese are called Pavin, People Army Vietnam. And so I yelled at the company that came in there to bring the wounded in a certain direction. I'll go set up an LZ. So we went about 100 yards, maybe more than that, just the two pathfinders. and we were still shooting people that were around North Vietnamese that were around us

we didn't have any other security with us and set up the landing zone and started getting people out and there were 26 bodies that were a kill there were more than that kill but that was their official count

and they lay in a pile there for two days because we couldn't get them out due to rain and other things. And I'm pretty sure there were 87 wounded. And there were 27 that were not one of that, 160 or so. Wow. 160 people because there's a rifle company almost full strength, less attachment,

is like mortar and artillery. and artillery forward observers, two pathfinders, Sergeant Major, and not been a couple of others, but anyway, I was putting them out on one chopper at a time. The only thing I could get in there is one chopper at a time. And I had this,

that place was so small, I had to put my hands on the front of the chopper to try to keep them back off of a stump and get their tail down between stumps. And so I was able to count. So I know there was 27 that got out that were not killed. And you said, you had mentioned when we were talking before the show that they went through like 1,200 or 1,200 120 rounds and another what, 400, 600, 500, 155. Okay, they fired 1,4006 rounds.

I mean, this is in a book that a gentleman called me. about and he was the artillery officer so he knew and he had in his logs how many rounds he fired so he wrote wrote this book called x-o into the i drain and that the i-drain valley's where the we were soldiers that fight was too so anyway he fired 1,406 rounds of 105 and approximately 800 rounds of 1-55 wow And, of course, the noise with hundreds of weapons, firing, machine guns, hang grenades, mortars, artillery, unbelievable. And everywhere you look at all times, 100% of the time,

you can just see the tree limbs falling. So that when that fight was over for about 50 yards, 40, 50 yards to my front, it looked like you'd gone over it with a bush hog about set too high and everything was cut off and our basic load it was 30 magazines 20 round magazines i don't know how many magazines we took off of the people laying around us dead touching us we fired up all of our all of our eminations their ammunition i imagine there between the two pathfinders there were 80 to 100 empty magazines thrown up on that an hill behind us and they were shot full of holes how we didn't get hit i don't know it's unreal it's like surreal unbelievable yeah yeah everybody would try to

in around that ant hill they would come flying over a dive on that ant hill they'd get killed and somebody grabbed both feet drag about drag about dive in there they get killed and we did. Tommy, I've got to do a couple ads here. I'm sorry to interrupt and we'll jump right back into it. I want to tell our listeners about Rocket Money. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending and helps you lower your bills all in one place. Most people think they're spending $80 on their subscriptions when in reality the number is closer to 200. When you're signed up for so many things like streaming services you use to watch one show or free trials, you don't use, it's easy to lose track of what you're paying for. With Rocket Money,

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You can find them at Casa Catarbeo.com. Really recommend them. Good friend of mine. So Tommy was... I mean, this must have been like pretty much the worst experience of your career. I mean, dealing with this firefight and the aftermath of it, I have to imagine. Yeah. Well, everybody was evacuated but me.

So I sent my other pathfinder in. He was a little bit shook up. Not bad, but I mean, he was just, you could tell he's not looking right. So, yeah. Then the generals and the photographers got. out there the next day to look over things and I think I stayed there to one more day maybe two more days and then I got I was told to catch a ride in I went in that's the one time I spent the night slept on the cot actually instead of on

the ground and they sent us I got I got the other my path funder partner and we were sent down farthest down south through a task force, second of the battalion, 7th Calvary. And we made three parachute jumps down there. And we did, well, I have the after-action report from the aviation unit supporting us, and they made 40 combat assaults in seven days. So we were making two and three combat assaults a day. And I didn't have enough patent, whether we were only four of us pathfinders down there.

So it got down to, just one pathfinder instead of two like we wanted to have. We got another presidential unit citation out of that. We got, I think I got three presidential unit citations. So it was a cat and mouse game. We knew we were outgunned and outnumbered down there. And so we had to keep moving fast and not get cornered. And so I got promoted to Staff Sergeant, he six down there.

And then I got one. wounded and set the back to the water reed. Tell me a couple of questions. One, with the Idrang battle, did you ever receive any of the battle damage assessment in terms of, do you know, was there any assessment on what type of casualties you inflicted on the enemy during that battle? Well, they counted 106 bodies, and that was before they started. already lying about how many of the killed. So they counted 106.

We captured eight. And it was right on the Cambodian border. There were tons of blood trails going across the border. So we inflicted a lot of casualties. That was the day I realized if you're going to attack an American rifle company, you might already bring your lunch and a lantern because it's not going to be easily done. because they had us and they could have killed every one, should have killed every one of us.

We're surrounded. There's about 160 or 70 of us and over 500 of them and all the guns and stuff they had going. They should, they should have killed us all, but they couldn't outdo us, you know. And then when you guys, you mentioned at least three combat jumps,

you know, in your follow-on operation, when you guys, were doing these parachute operations in Vietnam, were you going in with the main body or were you going in to do a survey prior to the main body coming in via air assault or whatever? We weren't going in with the main body. We were going in just two or three of us. In fact, two times that I jumped, there were three of us one time it's six of us. And my, the company claims 13 combat jumps. I didn't claim I didn't keep any records. I thought it was just another

day at the dang office, you know. They told me they brought parachutes out and told me what they wanted to do. We didn't have any jump masters, so I appointed myself as a jump master and we went and jumped in. Did what told us to do. And we were not make any contact on any of them actually and like I said I just thought there's no the office I didn't write anything down or do anything now the people that

did keep records and they know who did what and how many people the names of the people that jumped with them and so on they count those at the 13 and they put up a monument for us last year or this year

I guess it was last year at the Fort Benning at the Infantry Museum. They put up a really nice monument for the 11th Pathfinder Company because we're the only Pathfinder Company ever existed in combat in U.S. forces. And before you got injured, you also had this experience where you got attached to a Special Forces unit. That was up at Doe. Yeah, dottoe. Well, it's just me with the other pathfinders are busy doing other things. So I ended up.

Well, let me back up a little. Anybody, Koreans, mountain yards that didn't matter who, that were using First Calvary helicopters, they had First Calvary Pathfinders on the ground. So in this particular case, it was about, where there were three special forces sergeants, in about the 160, 180 mountain yards, something like that. And we assaulted onto this mountain. This is after we'd helped the hundred first.

This is a day or two later. We assaulted onto this mountain. We'd been up there a couple of days. We didn't do anything just along this ridge. And I remember they were cooking ants and something. That's what we eat. I didn't have any other chowel. Anyway, it's my experience of eating ants.

So one of the sergeants came to me one day, and he said we were surrounded, because this is right on the Laosian border, that we're really surrounded, and we know we're not going to be able to hold his heels. See if you can get us off of here, get some helicopters. So I did, and I got three Chinooks.

And we were up above the clouds, and they were below. the clouds. So, but I had looked at the approach going in at the mountain and I knew it was pretty steep, straight off mountain and basically no ridges on it. So anyway, I told the pilot, I said, I can talk you up through the clouds if you want to risk it and they'd always come back and see, am I talking to a black hat? Because we didn't wear helmets. We wore black baseball caps, so the pilots could identify us on the ground from all the people with helmets on. So they call us black hats.

He said, am I talking to a black hat? Roger, I'm a black cat. He said, okay, talk me up. So I started talking up. So he's coming toward me, the mountains on his right. And I'm listening, and I would periodically, I'd tell him, steer two degrees to your left and keep climbing. So in a little bit here came to those big rotor blades through the clouds, which was a relief. Yeah.

And the other two behind him, there was not room for the blend. I had them landing on just a very hilltop ridge line. The other two, I had them hover back there. And so the Special Forces Men had their little mountain yards lined up in 10 men lines. So they sent 40. And the pilot lifted the first aircraft down east by the foot. And he said, send me 10 more. So it's 10 more.

Send me 10 more. So he ended up putting 80 on there. That's rivals, machine guns, all their packs. Wow. 80. In the first Chinook. And so he said, okay, he lifted up and he said, okay, I'm loaded. Request departure instruction.

So I directed him where I wanted him to go and call the next one up. I said, how many want he? He said, how many take 80? Send me 80. So loaded him 80. and that left about probably one of the Special Forces sergeants had gone out. That probably left about 40 mountain yards, the two SF sergeants and me. We got on the third one and left the Mount, left it to the North Vietnamese.

Wow. Could you talk about the mission where you went into Laos? Well, that may have been the next day, actually. Oh, wow. you were busy the colonel came over there for that battalion we were attached to

and I don't know what battalion that was I don't know if he's the first cavalry battalion actually but he came over and said would you think you could lead us into Laos this morning we got a helicopter down over there with a couple of men in it sure let's go so

the two men had gotten out and gotten up on a hill and got picked up the evening before and they knew just about where that helicopter was. So we went in there and I'm on the skid looking, going really, really slowly in there, but I couldn't see, I didn't see it, nobody else saw it. So we got on the ground and we started, I started walking back to the direction I thought it would be in, I smelled the fuel, JP4, so I found it.

It was lying in a creek on its almost on a, right top and the two men were pinned under it and I got the infantry around there and got them the lifting on the chopper and pulling and we got the two men out. I don't know about the pilot because I was working back where the door gunner was and that kid had been laying in that creek all night long with the water running right right here right by his mouth and nose. night. If you were to rain, he would have died. So I had the infantry get the radios and the machine guns and everything off the chopper. And somebody told me to blow it up. So they said,

we're going to drop you in everything you need. So they did. And I never had blown him a dang helicopter before, so I didn't know how much, I didn't know much about what demolition to you. So they dropped me in a case of C4. And in those days, it was 24, 200, you know, to 24 kilograms of, in a package, looks sort of like a package of sardine crackers. I mean, salting crackers. So I didn't have much use. So I told Callum to, I said, hell, just, you start packing it around the front and tying it together,

the deck cord. I was starting back, so we put that up. We put that up in the case of C4 on that thing. And I was burning time fuse, testing the time and different things. And we got it ready. And we got it. Charlie, everybody else had gone. We go to the top of the mountain.

Everybody's gone. We're the only two there. But they had six gunships around us working, working, working. Because the NBA were right on us at that time. So the gunships were keeping them beat down. And when it came time for it to explode, I'll call it on the radio. fire in a hole, fire in a hole, fire in a hole, so the choppers could break off

so I wouldn't blow them out of the sky. And there were big teakwood stumps about two feet, three feet in diameter and just about shoulder high. So when there's bullets flying all around you, just naturally hover up to something like that. So I was behind one stunt. Callum was behind another stunt. And when that sucker went off,

there was a ball of fire. Now we went about 200 meters up this hill and about 200 meters down this ridge. So we were that far away from it. The first thing when it detonated, the heat hit my face. So I dropped to the ground, of course, and Callum did too. And there was a ball of fire and went probably 200 feet or more over the top of that hill, the top of that mountain. and you could laying on the side

I'm looking up and there's you can see particles of helicopter rolling in it fire this and burned out altitude and then all those pieces came raining to the ground

so of course the gun ships what the hell did you do down the black hat so they ran back in started you know firing all around the woods and they sent a helicopter in to get us and they they jumped on he started off I said wait a minute turn this thing around I got to go back and make sure I

got all that so he turned it around and where we flew over at that morning or a couple hours earlier didn't see it we went back there and hovered down in the hole that it had blown big black hole and teakwood trees about two and three feet in diameter, the root systems were laying up on the side of the mouth. So there's a lake over there now. Tommy's Lake.

Tommy, could you tell us about, you know, the incident where you got injured and ended up in Walter Reed? Well, I was firing a machine gun out of a helicopter, gunship. And we were following up on a B-50.

strike and we were in a field that looked about like Texas, just sparse trees and grass, and there were about a regiment of things what we were dealing with. And they were running across that field and we were making gun runs on them. And those days, the gun ships were steam model hughies. They had two guns on each side that the pilot could control and then they had a bit of door gun on each side where the machine gun hanging on a bungee cord. I'm in the right door. So we were making passes over that field down at just above those little tree top levels. So we were getting grazing fire on that whole field. And we made several passes. And the targets were getting fewer all the time, of course, because we were doing good job on them.

and when we would get to the end, the pilot would run out of targets, of course, before we would, because we had, you know, our vision was way back behind his. And when he would turn and go up and make a left-hand roll, come back to go back across the field, if I had just done my job, I would not have gotten shot, but I was shooting between this, I was shooting straight down on them because they're laying on their back shooting up at us. and kneeling and everything else. So I'm shooting between the skid and the aircraft and when I got hit.

And it knocked me up against the top of the aircraft and turned me around, land on my belly and the floor where everybody else is shooting their guns. And I sat up and couldn't see out of my eye. And my machine gun was flopping around in that bungee cord. backup got my machine gun and started firing but then i couldn't see for blood and tears so i sat down picked up a piece of brass through it across and hit the other man and pointed out my eye and they took me in and that started me to walter reed and i was in walter eight five months recovering

i've been in the hospital in eight different countries plus the united states uh and and how extensive were were your injuries that you were you were there for five months. I lost my total vision in my left eye and spent several of surgeries. I don't know how many in the Philippines and then in Walter Reed. And that's it, I'm totally blinding my left eye.

But you were allowed to, I mean, I have my notes here were not even halfway through your career. You were able to serve a long career with, you know, without vision in one eye. And nobody knew it. So what you're telling us is that you're right eye dominant when it comes to shooting? And I made honor, I made honor graduate of every school that was in the system.

Jumpmaster, Halo Jumpmaster, German Jumpmaster. And nobody on my team ever knew. It's more obvious now back then it wasn't, but now it's changing colors. You can see that it's not. Yeah. Yeah. I went through, when I came back from 509th Airborne, I was, they recommend, they recommend me for a direct commission. And I'd gotten promoted to E7 again.

And I was assigned to post headquarters operations Fort Devons, Massachusetts. I wasn't going to go there because I was an infantryman. That's why I'm going, airborne infantry. That's what I'm going to do. So when I got my car, I went straight to Fort Bragg to Special Forces. and went in and saw the sergeant. I got to go in and see the sergeant major of Special Forces. Carlos Lille, he got killed later, but he was the commensar major there.

Then I told him exactly what my deal was. And, of course, I was real young, and I had all the badges and trinkets and everything on my little army costume. And he called some of the master sergeant, and he kept off his office. He told him and said, this boy looks like somebody we could use around here, fix his profile. So he did. So he just, he kind of erased the part of your medical record that. Well, you know, you've got one, one, one, one. Right.

He just erased that one and, I mean, that two and put it in a one or raised it for whatever hell it was. I don't know. Right. Magic of military paperwork. Right. Back when they're still using whiteout, right? Right. Right.

People were the computer systems. Yeah. So Tommy, you, you mentioned getting to the 509th airborne in Germany, three years there, making E7. You said you had a good time in Germany, right? Yeah. Well, we were really active. We were the U.S.'s NATO commitment for airborne unit, two battalions of airborne infantry. And so we went a lot of places.

We were in Norway, Denmark, Greece. The day after Russia invaded Czechoslovakia, we jumped the next morning in northern Greece up on the Bulgarian border. Wow. And at that time, I'd been moved to a recon. I've been a platoon sergeant, and patunly, I never had a lieutenant. and I'd been moved to recombatoon sergeant. So I was a jumpmaster on the lead aircraft going in there.

And we walked around there for two or three weeks, flexing our muscles. And I don't know what we're supposed to been doing. But then we went back to Germany. So the 509th was it was after you, so you went to SF. What group did you go to when you went to Bragg and got an SF? Fifth group. Okay. They just were coming back from Vietnam.

Just as I got, as I was getting finished, SF training and was going to a group as sixth group. And we were still the old, you know, A-B, A-team, B-team, C-team and all. And the fifth group came back to Vietnam. They deactivated the sixth, and so I was in the fifth group. I was a team sergeant of three different teams. teams there. That was during the time we were changing over to companies and battalions. I don't know what was going on, but most of the Sante Raiders were, or many of the Sontay

Raiders were on the same B team with me. And I don't know why that they kept changing me around a different team. Anyway, I ended up with three teams there. And then I had been working on my education for years I got selected for to go to college I went to I graduated in college oh and the other the other thing that happened there that when they first started the NCO for those that don't understand the sergeant's educational system in C-O-E-S and they hadn't started the Sarton Major Academy yet. The first NCOS wasn't Fort Benning, infantry of course, and they selected, the board in the D.C. selected the first two classes, and I was selected in class, or class two. So I went to NCOS

at Fort Benning. And then I wasn't back but three or four months. And during that time, when I told you about no I was talking to somebody I said anyway about a bunch of submachine guns but that's not important then I went to college and when I got a graduate from college I went to 10th group well you can tell us about the submachine guns we'd love to hear them hear this

hear about it we have time yeah yes sir I can't remember all the things that happened and I don't know why things happen a lot of times you know how it is in special forces so I went to Florida to train some people at the Florida

Ranger Camp and when we finished that training they sent the C-47 aircraft from Space Force Center to pick us up and the fuel truck ran into it somewhere

along the way. So I was able to get our two officers to Indonesian officers and two of our our enlisted men out on an aircraft. And we'd been in fire, and we had beers, and we were dirty, and we hadn't had the showers. And finally, the fifth group told me, said, just get a ride some way and get your boys home.

You've been gone too long. You've been gone over Thanksgiving holidays and all this stuff, just any way you can get out of that. And I said, you understand that we have a bunch of machine guns and submachine guns with us. And they said, well, take care of it, just get home. So we get on an aircraft, and I don't remember where we were, actually, somewhere in southern Florida. And we were going to Atlanta, and that pilot had me put the, we had 12 foreign submachine machine guns, Oozys, Stenz, Swedish K's, Danish Madsen, and three M60 machine guns. left with the six of us. And so he had the setup in first class.

So I went in the cockpit and said, when we get to Atlanta, what can I do? He said, well, while your boys are getting the guns out, because they put them in the hole in the bottom. So while they're getting the guns out,

go inside, there's a white phone in there, pick it up and somebody in answer and tell you what to do. So when we landed, he asked everybody if it be seated until the Greenboro, Ray's got off and got their guns, and we looked like hoodlums were so dirty. And so while they were doing that, the man in the terminal told me to come up to the ticket counter and I said, sir, did you hear that, pay attention when I said we have a lot of machine

guns? He said, yeah, I understand, just come up to the ticket counter. So we tied two submachine guns on the back of each one of our rucksacks, six of us. And three of them threw M60s on their shoulders. And it's Thanksgiving holiday. Atlanta, everybody knows how busy that place is. We walked from the tarmac all the way the ticket count, always through Atlanta airport. Three men with machine guns on their shoulders.

Each one of us are two tied on our rup. sex. And so we get up the ticket counter and he said he wanted us take them up disassemble them and put them in boxes. Okay. Well, there got to be so many people around us that they had to get some policemen in there to keep the crowd back. So we put them in boxes. And then we get a flight to Fredericksburg, where at Fayetteville. And the pilot there basically told the same thing because I talked to him. He said, ask the people, when you go into the carousel, please stand back to these green berets, get there, they got some weapons, they got to put together.

So we're in there, all of us down underneath, slamming all these machine guns together. And everybody is standing back, like, quiet as they can be, you know, waiting, very nice. We took us maybe two or three minutes to put all them back together. That's so wild. Tommy, if you tell us a little bit more about your 10 years in fifth and 10th group. You had some interesting experiences on a free fall team and then going on to a SATEM team. Yeah, I was in 10th group. I was on the Halo team.

And of course, being Halo, we were assigned the atomic weapons team, Saddam, where we parachuted atomic bombs for our hand placement. Of course, none were ever used. So don't, everybody thinks you had atomic bomb. Yeah, we had them. We just never used them. And so,

we, of course, Halo team is a free fall team. So we jumped from high altitude, 25,000 feet up to 35,000 feet. And we had to jump the bomb. We went through the training every quarter. We operated in, four-man teams so the A team could carry in three bombs.

And so we went through the training and jumped in that recorder and set them up, set them up where they were supposed to be, set the timers and so on. You were telling me that when you got called in for these greenlight teams, you didn't even know what it was. You thought, oh, am I learning about a new weapon system, a new rifle or submachine gun or something? You get in there and they show you the film and it's like, oh, I wasn't expecting that.

Well, if you read about it online, which you can read about it online now because it's been declassified as ultra top secret thing. We didn't even talk about them in the team room, and we didn't know anything about them. I'd heard of special weapons teams a lot. And, you know, you might be loading on an aircraft

and way over somewhere there'd be another group, and they'd see a special weapons team over there getting ready. Well, I didn't, I don't do something like submachine guns or something. I had no idea. And they would tell you, if you read online there,

they would tell you everybody, specially selected volunteer and all that. I wouldn't, didn't volunteer. I was voluntold. The sergeant major told me to have my team down for special weapons training on Monday morning. So we went down there. There was a little concrete building out setting well by itself. And they had master sergeants out there with M6.

off the corners of the building garden. And so we go in there and they tell us the do's and don'ts. And they showed us a film of atomic weapon. And that's first we realized. We were not going to be shooting submachine guns as we thought we were going to be doing. So that's what we did for years. And it was declassified, I think, in about 1989, something like that.

But it was done for about 30 years. Could you tell us a little bit about what that mission was? Because I think when people hear this, it's almost like stunned disbelief. But, I mean, there was a method to the madness. Thankfully, it never had to be executed. But can you tell us a little bit about, like, what the mission was? Well, I think that some of my targets were big water dams. in Fuller Gap in Germany to flood those big wheat fields.

Because we knew that Russians would get to the English Channel in six days. We knew we couldn't stop them. So our job was the parachute in behind their front lines, and somehow four of us going to attack a target that's really, really important, so one would think it was guarded pretty heavily. So four of us somehow was supported. I was supposed to fight our way to the target, set the bomb, fight our way away from the target, get away from there. And they told us if we could get 11 meters up wind and in a ditch, we might could survive it.

And if we got all that done, then we were supposed to start. We knew there'd be hundreds of overrun soldiers from different countries that we would start collecting those soldiers and build an army out of them and start fighting. what ambitious yeah what what was uh what was like the team attitude like and what was i mean i imagine that there's there's some pretty dark jokes about a team jumping in a portable nuclear weapon and and getting away from it in time well actually we didn't talk about it even in the team room yeah that was a hush subject yeah and We didn't, I mean, we stayed so busy. The 10th group was not like fifth group at all.

Now the fifth group changed over the years, but the 10th group was really busy. So, and from the 10th group, I went, as in the SES, two different tours, British SAS, two different tours, for example, advanced German mountain climbing school, all kinds of other things over in that part of the world. I'd love to hear more about that if you can tell us about the exchange with the SAS and what it was like working with those guys? Well, it was really nice working with them. They were just, they were just good people, good, good, you know, tough because they had to go through some tough training.

And when we got there the first year, they told us, they assigned each one. There were six of us, six Americans. And they, we were each signed to different teams. So we might not, well, we went for a couple of months or have a loan, three months and maybe not even see each other until we were getting ready to come back to states. But like first day, they said, okay, draw your kit and so on and be here at 7 o'clock on Wednesday morning for exercise hard tab. Well, I didn't know what tab meant. Tab means walk like how else what it means. And they gave us six single space type pages of English,

teaching us how to speak English because we don't use the same words that they do. And so they loaded us on buses and took us to Wales and gave us a map and said, you're here, you're going here where it's 83 miles, 83 miles. So several mouth sheets. and four men teams. So we walked 83 miles and it took us 42 hours. We stopped the first night because it rained so hard

and the wind blowing so hard we got in a barn for about three or four hours. The rest of the time we walked, 42 hours. And then we deployed to a country and that year was static line and we had I don't remember I can't remember much about what we did then I can remember we didn't have anything to eat

we were walking through cornfields eating raw corn at night and then the next year they asked for me back by name and so I went back for a Halo mission and one of the really interesting things about that was the air mission and you all were, you each were in a range of battalion, so you know what the preparing to make a parachute jump was like.

Well, in the SAS, we saw nobody all the couple of weeks or three weeks we were in isolation doing our thing. Nobody checked on us, just there were seven of us. And so it came the night before we were, going, the three-stop sergeant in charge gave us our air briefing. And he said, okay, mates, we'll be flying north to south, zero, two hundred hours, 25,000 feet. When you get out of the aircraft, there'll be a big city to your east.

There'll be a road running laterally from that city going to the west. There'll be traffic only at night. You'll be able to pick it up very easily. look straight below you and you'll see three villages on the first two are about as wide as are long

the third one's long and narrow our DZ is five kilometers east of the long narrow village. Questions? That was air briefing. And we jumped with we had the Danish Matson

Ingram submachine guns I just shiver when I think about this now. We just stuck them behind the reserves and tied parachute cord to them and put them around their neck. Real, real intelligent move. And it was, of course, cold, 40, 50, below zero up there. And I jumped in jungle fatigues. And I didn't think about my collars.

I thought they were going to be holes in my throat before I got down. So I brought my hands in like this, holding my collars, and flying with my collars. with my elbows. And in that deal, we had, we were on the ground there for seven weeks. We had two meals. We had the choice of mutton or beef curry for seven weeks. Was this a, it was a reconnaissance training mission, I take it?

I don't know for sure what they were doing. they had caches in that country and I think they were servicing them we had several targets to hit do different things too but I got left behind on some things they didn't let me go with them so I don't know what they were doing oh interesting so

they're probably going in for like like tea and and biscuits someplace leaving you out there hanging. No, I'm just kidding. They probably were. Yeah. They're like, he thinks all we have is mutton and curry.

Yeah. Yeah. Had you pissed anybody off the year prior, so they set this entire operation up for you a year later? No, they wrote a letter and asked for me to come back. I come back in the second year. Yeah. And it's kind of funny that,

the boy picked me up and they walk so fast you think they're playing with you so you walk two steps and you run three and you walk two just to keep up with him that's just the way all of them walk the same way so he's taking me to the parachute place to get my uh oxygen masks and goggles and all that kind of stuff because we made some jumps before we went in too yeah training jobs. And he said, we've been experiencing experimenting with bicycles this year. And I said, oh,

good. I thought nothing about it. So we're going to rigor shed and turn to the right and up on the walls a great big picture about three or four feet wide. Some joker riding the bike, with oxygen masks all along, riding the bicycle

off the tailgate of a C-130. And the next picture, he's upside down on that bicycle. and free fall then I started a thing riding bicycle Tommy

about what year was this that was that year was 75 I was over in 70 if I were to speculate it sounds an awful like they awful lot

like maybe they were validating stay behind networks somewhere in Europe well those were yeah that was going on in a lot of places

yeah yeah servicing the cash and maybe it sounds like maybe when they left you behind, they were meeting with people. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. That's interesting. Of course, I ran several, with our A team,

I ran several missions in Europe too. And there were several things going on over there at that time. Yeah. Some very interesting stuff, very interesting period of history. And so after your second exchange with the SAS, you come back to the United States and you started the Sergeant Major Academy? Let's see. Or am I jumping ahead?

Well, let's see. I think one of the next big things that we did, we had beacons to control like F-11 bombers. Beacon bombing. The beacon bombing. The beacon bombing. Beacons. Yeah, we had beacons. And I was the guru on training on those.

And I read in a magazine about the Red Flag exercise out in Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. And that's where the Air Force, Navy, and Marines, they have a real war. They got Russian jets and all kinds of stuff out there. So I read about that. And we had started this beacon program. We had two beacons, one for the F-11s and Navy A-6s and one for the C-130. You know we had Black C-130s, right? Nobody saw except us, basically.

Did you ever see Black C-130s? I don't think so. No, can you tell us about it? Well, they were a highly electronic aircraft. They were combat talons is what they were called. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. a little bit of green in them and they would fly hands off

back in the 70s because I was we went into a place that were there were two teams two four men teams and the other team got out of the aircraft about an hour two before we were getting out

so I'm up in the cockpit and that thing would fly around a radio towers at night. Wow. Hands off. And then I went back and rigged up to, and jumped where we were supposed to go. Very impressive, but we, we went, so I read about this red flag thing. And so I caught me in the aircraft and went to Vegas and started coordinating and I, I actually went out there three times. times and it was my idea to get the army involved with these beacons and I got it done.

So we left Fort Devons one morning on 141 about 1 o'clock and went to Fort Bragg, picked up two teams because when I got myself involved in this red flag thing with our beacons, I got all of special forces involved. So we went to Bragg and picked up two teams. We parachuted into the desert out there and then each team went to their mountain. And long story short, the accuracy of that thing was unbelievable. We had to provide almost, I mean, very little information. Where are your location, target location, direction, and if you were up on a tower, had the device elevated, you needed to give them that height.

First target, we hit, was 32 kilometers away across the mountain, and we had nine aircraft. We had eight direct hits on first pass. That's fascinating, Tommy. I didn't know that about you because the beacon bombing mission became like a big thing for special forces in subsequent years. It was a good deal. It was, like I say, the first time we used it,

eight out of the nine had first round hits. And then we, We went to Utah, we jumped into Utah and same thing. We set up a device and did our thing and F1-11s came in. First round hits. And then with the other device, a smaller beacon that the blackbirds could use. I went in with, well, that was the time there's four of us went in. So I went in 10 days ahead of the rest of the team.

And in Special Forces, we had to surveil anything we were going to do 24 hours before we moved in on drop zone target or anything. So I did that. And I'm in civilian clothes. And I'm by myself. And this beacon is about the size of a kitchen match box. And I was supposed to turn the switch on one minute before time on target. and if they didn't come, turn it off and start running. So I'm standing out there and some being closed.

It was so black, dark that I couldn't see a thing. And I flipped that switch on. And in a minute that black bird went over me about eight feet, I couldn't even see it. They had no lights on it. And if I would have done it again, I'd have been running when that happened, because now all my jumpers are landing all around me.

And I could have gotten killed. to stay in there on the drug zone. Of course, I'm with the CIA boy that I had linked up with. And we picked a, we had a little, he got a little bus. We picked up the team and went to a safe house and started our thing. Unreal. And yeah, I mean, geez, which, what can I even say? I mean, I'm frankly, we don't know about, but I mean, burying those beacons in certain

places around the world became a big deal. They were 100% accurate. Yeah. They just gave them the right information. Yeah. And so... Another thing we did out there in Nevada, when we came in from two weeks in the desert, some general there, they had a Russian fensong two radar system.

And he wouldn't know if we would make a halo jump against it and see if they picked us up. So I was a game for anything. Yeah, well, we will. So we had nothing. There were no medics, no D.C. party, no anything. Of course, this is illegal, but I didn't really follow all the rules. But we flew strictly time and distance, 25,000 feet, 2 o'clock in the morning, and we bailed out of the, of course, we had our rucks action rifles, all that.

We bailed out of that C-130 in the next day. They took us in to see the video. They picked us up. It sent a helicopter, I think, out there and got us. And we took us to see the video audio of that radar system operators. And they picked us up as we came out of the back of the aircraft. Wow. It picked us up.

Yeah. As we came out. The radar system did. Yep. Wow. It looked like a little ball of jelly about the size of you thumb, little green ball, just like it was. working. I don't know where this camera is, just like it was jello working, so what we look like in

free fall. And one, uh, and nobody knew anything about what was happening except us, that general and that was the air crew. And that one of those radar, where he said, what the hell just came out of the back of that 130s? I've never seen anything like that. And the other one said, it looked like it defecated to me. And the other one said, well, I'm taking it under fire. I don't know what it is. So they picked this up. That's a little unnerving.

Yeah. And about this time frame, this is when you started having sort of like a back and forth about with Charlie Beckwith about maybe going to Delta, right? Well, actually, he had maybe. maybe two years before he had, we were at Fort Bragg getting ready to go to Denmark for a Halo MTT. And he was a special force, he was a commander of special force of school. He came over and said, Tommy, you boys, he knew, we knew each other. He said, anytime you want to bring your boys down here, you bring them. We'd love to have you. You need any support, yada yada. He walked away and then

he walked away about maybe 20 meters. And he turned. turned around and he said, Tommy, come here, me. And so I went over there and he said, where are you staying? I said, Moon Hall. He said, where are you going to be doing tonight? Nothing. There's a little patch of pines out there off of the corner of the building somewhere. Meet me out there at $2,100.

So I met him out there and he told me that he was starting this new unit, classified, you know, all that stuff and said, you probably won't be a career and no promotions, no medals. You probably have a 50% chance of coming home in the box. I said, that sounds like what I want to do. So, time goes by, and then I got selected

for a Sergeant Major's Academy, and he came up there to Fort Devins. They called me up the group commander's office, so Charlie was in there, and he starts his spill, and I told him there's some changes since we talked. What's that? Sartner Majors Academy.

So long story short, he said, what do you want the certificate of the training? And I told him. And he said, what, okay, I'm like, hey, you go out there. You'll be out there about three months. I'm going to give you a call. You're going to get in your car, drive away, don't clear quarters, don't do anything, don't see anything, and meet me at Fort. Right.

Okay. So then months or two later, he called and said, we've got to put on hold again. And meanwhile, the first range of battalion had called me, sergeant major head and I told him I had a job so Charlie called back and said we got we're on hold again I've got you assigned a second airborne division as the first sergeant and so on kind of a little argument went on there and so after a week or two I decided this is too shaky so I call sergeant major back and totally him might come over there if he would guarantee me a rifle company if he still wanted me he'd guarantee me a rifle company the whole time I'm there so he did he guaranteed it so I wasn't there

maybe a month or so I missed to be enclosed with Charlie back with off with Delta so when they were then they were that's when they were first starting their training and so I did a little that with him then and so you end up becoming the first sergeant of Bravo company first Ranger Battalion. Yeah. And what was that experience like jumping from this sort of world of special forces and secret projects and programs and then going and taking a rifle company in Ranger Battalion? I don't think he can really explain the Ranger Battalion.

It was awesome. Just unbelievable. The way the way it worked, the discipline. the great people that were there. Just unbelievable. When I first got there, they had a tower up over where they were doing, what they call it, close for combat where they were clearing rooms.

And not one special team, every ranger was going through that all night long, shooting within a foot of their faces. We had MP5s then, submachine guns. And I'm standing up there, thinking in that tire, I was thinking we were going to kill every one of these kids before done that I get here. I had never, I'd been in S-A-S and 80-second and S-F.

I'd never seen so much shooting in my entire career. And I probably shot my rifle more in two months, each two months I was there, and I did the whole 10 years I was in and special forces. Just unbelievable. We were everywhere. Panama, Fort Lewis, 29 Palms, Fort Bragg,

Virginia, Minnesota, just everywhere, just nonstop. And so I'm guessing this is like 1980, 1980,

by this time? No, that was 78. Oh, wow, earlier. Okay. Left there. And the battalion was four years old at that time.

I was 78 to 80. I was there and I came out I got on the sergeant majors. And could you talk a little bit about like historically that that time, that period of time? What was going on with American sort of like what was going on with with Ranger Battalion in your company? Like what were you training for? What were you preparing your men to do? You know, should they be called upon?

Well, as you all know, because you were in your battalion. Your battalion was later than, where Second Battalion was doing the same thing. Your battalion was a little bit later, but we were, everything we did was live fire. Just about everything we did was live fire. So we did a lot of shooting, blowing roads into, engineers were building back, blowing up, blowing Mappetis, trees down. But the main thing that my company was doing, this just a B company, was water operations. and there was no SOP in all of the military for helicasting with combat load. So when the company commander and I assumed the company the same day,

he had been in the battalion as S4 or something for some time, and he said first of a sudden we got to develop an SOP for helicasting, water operations. And I said, well, I probably get some boys from SF come down here and help us. He said, nope, I already checked. He said, everybody wants to come and train us, SEALs, Force RecON, Air Commandos, SF. You know what? One problem, I said, what's that? He said, they all do at Hollywood, meaning no equipment.

And I said, yep, well, I remember when I did it, we did it in shorts and tennis shoes. Yeah, yeah. No weapons. And so we started the program. And of course, as you all know, we had no limit on money. So we had Chinooks there every day, helicasting 30, 40 times a day, with everything in the Ranger Battalion. And we had rubber boats that were used sometimes.

And we graduated on up to where we were helicasting four miles offshore. swimming in and that's with machine guns and live ammunition and for the first case of the M60 ammunition we rigged in an RB15 we lashed it down like a spider web around the horizontal air thing in the front of the boat and we went out of the back of the Chinook we had castmasters and so on that test master would line up the aircraft and then then push the boat back enough he could lower the motor and then we'd tie a climbing rope on a round of a ranger's wrist he'd be in the middle and two on each side when he got the word that shoved the rope the boat out the back of the boat he's tied to it there were some incidents

tell me how does that go working out an sop for a full load out helicast is it like let's try 40 and 40 no all right let's try 30 and 30 Like, how does that... Just get us down to five. How about that? Yeah. Until guys aren't like, splayed out everywhere.

The first time, the first case of ammunition, M60 ammunition, we've tied in that boat. I don't know where it went. We hit like a spiderweb of a parachute corridor. It's still going somewhere. We never,

we never, never, ever figured out what where it went. And so the next, day, next day, we got a one of the next day is right after that we got a Swiss seat you know, the

repel rope Swiss seat. So we lashed it in there with that and it worked. It's helped. So that and that ranger would, that's tied to that boat, he would, of course he'd hit the water

and he'd start walking, hand-walking that rope toward the boat. And the rest of us would go out and we We put our rifle, our rucksack on a right shoulder, our rifle in a right hand, tied to us with a suspension course and helicast. And then when we hit the water, we just turn it loose and the rucksack would be held on by the rifle. You just pull them in. I mean, in less than a minute, we'd be in the boat and going. Wow.

Wow. He pulled into the boat. We're swimming for the boat. We cranked it up. We had those silent running motors and crank it up and go. Well, we kept advancing until we'd go to Jackal Island and stay like three weeks at a time, helicasting. I got so sick of that, the mighty just constantly. And after four miles, we swam in.

Well, we got the tides wrong sometimes. That was another learning process. So you swim for hours and the beach is getting no closer. And then we kept going until now we're going to jump 12. We're going to helicast 12 miles offshore. So I'm going to go set up the drop zone. We had a 26-foot Seahawks boat with 285 motor on it. And we couldn't figure out how to determine what 12 miles was.

and we got looking at the maps and the company commander came up with. He said, look here first, sir, and this said these channel markers are all the same distance apart. Measure it, look here on the map. So he said, hey, let's go out there and set you a speed and take the time between all the channel markers and turn that damn boat east and go 12 miles. out we go. So we had these orange milk, yeah, a gallon milk jugs painted orange.

And so I put one out at the beginning of the drop zone and one down, you know, 100 yards down. And so they came in there just before dark and in Chinooks and V-O-V formations, like three Chinooks and then three Chinooks, three Chinooks, And I don't know who all was upstairs, but there were four huries up there. I know the secretary of the army was up there. And so the pilots were also learning.

And the first ones that came in, as the rangers started out, they started climbing, and they got up high and they got five rangers. At backs and nicks, which we had some hurt just about every day, but we had five out of that first, the lead choppers. when I saw that he was climbing, I'm on radio, I'm telling him to come down, you're climbing. So we, you know, you know how it was the rangers. If you didn't get it right, you just turned around and went back until you got it right. Just over and over to it right.

So we went back a few times and got it right. It's a helicoptering 12 miles offshore. And what was it that you guys, I mean, did you guys kind of work out that like 10 meter, or not 10 feet or? like 10 feet or like what was the height that you found that wouldn't get those guys injured that those helicopter pilots needed to stay yeah we didn't we didn't need to get more to about 15 18 feet high yeah how they do it even lower than that yeah videos of them doing it lower than

that Tommy there's a there's a one little detail that I forgot to cover here about your time and ranger battalion you also had to attend rangers school, didn't you? Yeah. At the age of... I had been on orders for Ranger School so many times. Something would happen every time. I came back from the SAS.

One time I was supposed to be going to Ranger School four days later and my company commander said, Tommy, I didn't think you'd want to go to Ranger School after all this shit. I said, you've got to be kidding. I'll knock your ass out. And so anyway, I'd always been wanting to go to Ranger School since I've joined the Army, actually. I joined the Army to be a Ranger airborne infantry.

And so anyway, I went to Ranger school. That's just like walking around in the woods two more months. And you were like 37? That's 35. That's around in there too. I was 35. I retired when I was 38. Okay.

Okay. I've been doing that same crap all my military career. Piece of cake. And matter of what I am. And so after your first sergeant time, you pick up Sergeant Major. Do you want to tell us about being a Sergeant Major and then a CSM? Yeah.

So while they were waiting on my CSM job, they sent me at that time, somebody had a really great idea when the Vietnam War wound down. And the ROTC programs in the nation had gone apart. And a lot of the ROTC buildings were closed. They didn't even have it. So somebody came up with a great idea. We got all these excess sergeant majors from special forces, and they are trainers, put one in each university.

So we get special forces sergeant major in hundreds of universities around the United States. So I got sent to Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, and I was an assistant professor of military science. So this Colonel Dave, the sister got the Medal of Honor. Yes. I did that. I got that started in 2011 when I was working the State Department. got that Medal of Honor.

When I was in E7, he told me when I make E6, I mean, 06, you're going to be my command sergeant major. I'll either have a special forces group or an armored cavalry regiment because special forces didn't have a branch then. You could be anything. The officers could be. So one day when I'm in, I don't know why that actually one day I was in my office because that didn't happen very often and the big company first range of battain.

phone rang I answered he said hey this Paris Davis hey sir how you doing he said we got 10th group and I said well congratulations I'm happy for you he said you didn't hear me he said we got 10th group I said sir I can't be your sergeant major I'm not your group command sergeant major I'm not even a sergeant major he said what you don't know is you're going to be very soon and I said that still I can't I can't go up there I'd love to be a B team sergeant major for you, but I can't be the group sergeant major. Those old sergeant majors deep bond launch up there. So I don't know what happened from there, but I got the ROTC and I get a letter from a general

officer telling me that I'm going to be his command sergeant major. And he sent me out of, he had about 10 bullets in which direction we want to take the command, things to do. What's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what your, your, what's your, you're response. My response was I didn't answer him. So he sent me three letters. I didn't, I never answered him. I knew damn well. I wasn't going, I spent my whole career carrying a rifle. I wasn't going to some support unit. And so that's when I went and took my, uh, physical and they said, you can't be in the army or bond. Really? I said.

Shocking. I said, really? They said, no, Sergeant, you can't be in it. How you've been doing this? And you're blind. So they retired me. And then they called me back in. Then they retired me.

So you said that you got, you retired and you were out on a hunting trip for two weeks. And you come back home to find out, you're actually being recalled back in. to the Army. Yeah. And what was that like? Well, I went to airport and met that general. And he, well, when we got back there, my friend came out and told me that you're back in the Army, you've got to call this Major.

So I can't pay back in the Army. So I called the Major and he said, he said, don't shoot, sorry, Major, don't shoot the messenger. I am just a messenger, but sending a General down here to talk to you. He wants you to meet him at the airport and wear your dress uniform, and I'll meet you there for support. So we met, and the general had his camera crew there and got me, stood me up there and penned a legion of merit on me. And I started to say, you think I'm an idiot? I know that's the carrot to get me to do something. Because they don't give a little 21 years in the Army, Sergeant Major's Delegious of Merit.

You know, that doesn't happen. And so he told me that they would give him, let me go anywhere when to go, especially for his Rangers, eight, second, or whatever. And I thought, no, that's the way you want to run your army. You do it. So that was it. Then he retired me again. So you retired first as a sergeant major,

and then the second time you got retired as a captain, right? Yeah. That's like a very, that had something to do with, um, during the, the war or when was it that they offered you a direct commission and it was still on your paperwork? Well, um, I had been written up by the 509th. It's just performance based. I didn't. I mean, it wasn't war or anything. It's just performance based. And then, um, I got commissioned and I said then they I was in special forces then and

the group commander car they had me up under group commanders office and they pinned my captain things and my infantry things on me and told me go get my ID card made and so at first I didn't know what to do but then I told them I didn't want to be called to active duty in my in the captain's rank I wanted to, because I want to stay on 18s. In those days, there was not a branch for special forces. So the officers, most of them only got to stay there a couple of years, long enough to get a

special force of his license plate on the front of their car to drive around with. And so they jacked around and came up with a dual component. So every time I got any free-stress report, I got an officer report and a sergeant report. and then when I retired, you know, that story. And so your post-service life, I mean, you had a great second career as a business owner, you know, running a hunting fishing shop, became an insurance agent, went back to Vietnam, business took you back to Vietnam. I mean, briefly, do you want to talk a little bit about, you know, your time after the military?

Well, it was a, I was very successful. I ended up hunting and fishing high-end sporting goods store. Ended up with, you know, where all the lawyers and doctors and rich people came by all their hunting and fishing stuff. So it was lucrative. And then I bought a wholesale hunting fishing business. I became an alligator hunter for professional alligator hunter for nine years. That was a really, really good deal. I had girls running my story about 10 employees running my store.

And fur trapper, you know what steel traps are? A little bit, yeah. Man, another man ran over 800 steel traps every day. Wow. We were making about $14,000 a week every two weeks. What were you trapping? The main prey was southeast Texas has a black muskrat. And we would catch around 359.

Wow. And seven days a week. We didn't take food with us. We just took water. He was tough as I was. we had to skin them and wash them, and then we turned them over to, we had some Mexicans who are still my friends today, best friends. They washed them and cleaned them up and got them ready to go.

They sell. So we had a rat sale about every two weeks, and we'd make about $14,000 each. Alligators, the last, I was getting 50 to 54 alligators a year. It's a two-week season. Neither say, that was really lots of hard, heavy work to get that many alligators in two weeks. And I don't know how much I made each year, and I had big, you know, we all had big airboats and all that. And by the last year, I made my half. He gave, the man we worked for gave us half, which he didn't have to do, but he did.

Anyway, my part, the last two weeks was $26,000 for alligators. Wow. A little bit better than tenant farming in North Carolina. Yeah. Then I did the thing in Vietnam. Did I tell you that? Yeah, yeah. Go ahead, please.

Well, I was, well, I became an insurance agent. Well, I got, I got a wholesale fishing, hunting business, and I just was working about 20 hours a day. I got in exhaustion. got put in the hospital for exhaustion, 16 days. I sold my store in the hospital bed. And then I became an insurance agent. I did that for 10 years.

That was really good. And then I started working in Houston and construction. And these people from Vietnam were going around the world trying to determine how they wanted to build Vietnam. and they didn't want French and German. They wanted America or somebody, a person I knew contacted me. So I formed a company.

I went to Vietnam and took a couple of years to get everything coordinated. Then I formed a company and went over there and started manufacturing and building. And then it was boring to me after I got, after I did all that work. And I got an email one day asking me they're telling me that they were trying to recruit former special forces and rangers to work in Iraq.

So I took that job. I went to Iraq thinking, well, I might do a year over here if I can make it. And I ended up staying 10 years over there in Iraq and Afghanistan, a security contractor. Yeah. And I was, I didn't know anybody when I got over there, but within about, a year I was over the whole country of Iraq for all the U.S. Embassy sites, so I traveled a lot from all the regional embassy offices, consulates, from Urbiel to Basra and Gila and all over Iraq. Oh, one thing that happened when I was in that job was I was responsible for bringing cash money into the

into the international zone and the TV is called the green zone. So, and I estimate that I was responsible bringing in $342 million during that tenure. So we would get like, you know what aviator kit bags are?

You put your parachutes in after you jump. So we, two of us would get an aviator kit bag, throw them over, go across the Tigris River bridge. I tell the Army boys there that we're going out in the red zone, we're coming back in and you're not going to be able to look in our bags. Okay, okay, sir. So we'd go out past the U.S. Army, past the Iraqi Army, meet a banker.

He would have, and we, a new, a million dollars and new $100 bills weighs 23.3 pounds. So we could carry about three and a half million dollars apiece with their body armor and everything. So we and it was in bricks of $100,000 so we would count out the $100,000 bricks signed for him from the banker, inter kit bags, throw them on our shoulder, walk back across the Tigris River, and then take them to finance, stack them out on the desk, big stack of money on the desk, $100,000 bricks, and then they would divvy it up to go to Fallujah and all different places and then I'd get the ambassadors helicopters because you had to fly had to have two helicopters and I send email out to my all the different camps

that I'll be and we'll bring you a chart out there such as such a time be out the be on the LZ so I'd get the ambassadors helicopters and I have all all these different bags of money and I'd fly in like your LZ and you'd run out the helicopter I'd throw a sack of money off, no signature, nothing, fly on to the next camp. And this was to pay for the security at each camp? No, this was to pay for subcontractors. And they were paying cash. And I got that stopped.

I finally got it to worry that they had to go through a bank because there was a lot of money being, we never lost a dollar, period. But, yeah, if someone found out how much money you were moving around with, that could have been ended badly. So, yeah, that was a pretty exciting job, actually. And I didn't do it all the time now. I just was responsible for it. Yeah.

But I did look frequently so I knew that it was going right. Yeah. And then later you picked up a contract with Special Operations Command, right? In Afghanistan, yeah. Yeah, I did. And I had to travel out to the special forces camps. And they ended up, well, I was at the main special forces camp in Kandahar, Camp Brown. And, but I couldn't get close to the special forces teams in C-130.

So I had to get close enough to use helicopters. So I went to the Marine bases, the Marshock bases out in northwestern Afghanistan. stand and I would operate out of there and and do the do my thing going to the special forces teams. Well, I mean, what was your job at that time? I was an interpreter manager. Ah, I said. What I would have to recruit interpreters. There's three different levels of interpreters.

There's one that speaks, one that's an American that's fluent in their language that can get a top secret clearance. And then there's one that can have a secret clearance. And then, but they have to be, both of those have to be Americans. And then there's this local interpreters. So many of Sutherfeller go outside the wire and recruit them. And we had physical fitness tests and we had language test. We test them and either pass them or fail them and give them a PT test.

Lodombe, and I'll take them to all these places. Tommy, I would love to hear any, like, observations you have because you'd been working with special forces since the Vietnam conflict. Now seeing special forces in 2009, I mean, all these decades later, I mean, do you have any observations about, like, the type of people? Like, are they the same type of guy that they were? Are they different? How are they different?

I mean, I'd just be really interested to hear your thoughts. Well, I think the U.S. custom culture has changed a lot. I think that special forces is a lot better now than it was when I was in special forces because there were so many things that had happened, which one was Vietnam, you know. And the officers were not special forces. They went through a little tiny course, but they, they went back to their branch. Most of them, there were very few

that got the state of B colonels and whatnot, you know. And I don't know if that was good or bad because everything was run by NCOs back in those years. And now I don't know how many generals are in special forces at Fort Bragg and elsewhere. In those days, there was one brigadier general.

The, all of the departments and training training group was run by soldiers and then they started getting up to a major or lieutenant colonel in some of those departments and then like the department head was a full colonel that was Charlie Beck with at one time and I tend to think that things were certainly not worse because of the way training was conducted when sergeant majors ran everything but the emphasis changed from hating special forces to respecting them. Because when, you know, when the Vietnam War wound down, they deactivated three groups like bam, bam, bam, like that.

Because they wanted to get rid of special force, because they were kind of out of control in a lot of ways. In Vietnam, you know, the Vietnam 10 years or 12 years or whatever just caused a lot of radicalism. among any other things specific forces, they just got, they were wild. So I think that some things are better, some things are not as good, I think, but I think overall that it's better than it was back when I was there. Because he didn't have super duper team sergeants always, you know,

alcohol was a problem with some. And, and the team sergeant ran everything. I mean, all the team leader and exos were was somebody to carry the load. You know, we had those great old, those radios had 10 components. I mean, five components each, we had to carry in two sets. So like you jump in in a four-man team, you're jumping in 10 pieces of radio. Do we have any questions for Tommy? Let me check real quick.

And Tommy, I mean, again, I really appreciate you spending and so much of your time with us tonight. I mean, you got to do a little bit of everything throughout your career. It's pretty wild. It's also amazing to hear about the Pathfinder, you know, because that's something, you know, it was something that didn't, you know, it's not been in the Army for a long time.

It was a very specific solution in a very specific setting that worked. And has not gotten a lot of, lot of attention, I feel like. Yeah, well, you know, they had that air mobile, the 11th air assault did two years of training all over southeastern United States. They used to second and first were aggressors against them. And that culminated in, when they finished that air assault training, they were very quickly changed

from 11th air assault. They went to the second infantry division for just a little while, but then they were reflagged First Calvary Division and sent straight to Vietnam. And they learned in that 11th Air Assault training that they had to have somebody control in all the aircraft. And so the Air, the Pathfinder Unit was born. And that's where it came from. We just actually have one donation from Kat Chaser, who's like, You know, thanks, game.

I came over much. Oh, I think he was commenting specific. Oh, Dog Point. Thank you very much. Did you cross paths with Rick Merritt? Do you have any stories about him or other Rangers in the Hall of Fame? I did not. No, I don't remember that name.

I have several friends in the Ranger Hall of Fame, the battalion commander of the First Ranger Battalion when I was there and the Command Sergeant Major when I was there. there and they're in the Ranger Hall of Fame. The Command Sergeant Major became Sergeant Major of Army. There were two sergeants major of the Army in a row out of the first Ranger Battalion. So, yeah, I know a lot of people that are in the Ranger Hall of Fame. What was it like when you were inducted?

And what year was that, Tommy? When he's 16, I was inducted in this unbelievable honor just. I couldn't believe that some peasant like me was getting inducted in the Ranger Hall of Fame. But others did think that. So it's a big deal. The treat is so nice there, too. They have a Ranger Hall of Fame building. You all may know of it.

And we're treated like royalty when we go there. It's manned all the time. They really, really are good deal. you. That's fantastic. Yeah, rightly so. I mean, and, you know, I'm glad they did it and that you were recognized. And I'm glad that I'm really glad that we did this interview because when I was trying to research you a little bit on the internet to prepare for this interview, I found a few things about you, but I didn't find anywhere where you had really walked through your entire career and all these amazing things that you had done. So, I mean, it means a lot to me that

you came on here to talk about your career and your life. And I hope. I hope it means a lot to the people who watch this. Yeah, we're very honored and deeply humbled. We appreciate you spending a Friday with us. Thank you. And the people should know the Ranger Hall of Fame goes back to the continental army. And there's only been 464 Rangers inducted in the Ranger Hall of Fame as of this date.

That's hundreds of thousands of Rangers, Merrill's Marauders, Mosebys Rangers. Yeah. Back 464 to this date inducted in the Ranger Hall of Fame. So, yeah, it's a big honor. Incredible. Tommy, before we let you go tonight,

I mean, is there anything else that we failed to cover that I didn't ask or anything else that you really want to talk about? I don't know. I don't know of anything. Don't right? We will. covered it quickly but pretty well covered it. Well, again, Tommy, thank you for doing this.

I really appreciate it. We're always happy to have you back on if you feel like this quick. Like we went two hours. We're happy to go another two hours with you. Like, we are super happy. You're always welcome back. You're welcome. And I think this is a good thing to be done,

getting the messages out to people that can see it. because there's there's been some soldiers that have done a lot of good things for the U.S. that don't get recognized. Yeah. Record that history. We have one last question. Of all the things that you've done in your awesome military and service career, what were the few things as a fighting man that you didn't get to do that you would have wanted to do?

You will make me say something really bad. I'd kill more people. I don't know how anybody could ask for a career different, I mean, better. I got to serve in every one of the Army's elite forces. I advanced very rapidly in each job I had. I loved it. I don't know that I had made any enemies. everything went well for me.

I filled an officer's position almost all of my career because we didn't have platoon leaders and 18 leaders. I ended up being the team commander of the HALA team, in fact, for about the last year that I was there, they wouldn't put an officer on my team. So they gave me, I had to have more radio men, And so they gave me a couple of people for carrying radios. We used to Angrybren 109, and it was all Morris Code.

The only communication we had was Morris Code. The radio was five components, and they were heavy components. So that meant every man was jumping in a piece of radio equipment. Or if you're on a four-man team, you're jumping in two big monster radio equipment. So I just got to do. somebody thought I was able to do it I guess well you did do it you know like one of our primary goals on this show is recording history and you are the only uh interviewee I believe we've had to talk about the Dominican Republic and and the US operations

there like we've never talked about that on this show before you know well it it was a quite an experience. You know, we were in recon and we did what recon is supposed to do the day before the big attack. We went into the city of Santa Domingo and we had one man killed and about a dozen, maybe half a dozen to a dozen wounded. But we did what we were supposed to do. We learned where the machine guns were set up and places to a bunch of. void and so on and we we came back and across that bridge which is about 600 meters long. When we went across there were burning tanks, trucks burning, we're just going left

and right and zigzagging through the traffic which is pretty nice because people were shooting at us and we had that provided some cover and just all the things do down there. I didn't tell you near all the things just Like I said, like World War II, you hear two paratroopers taking over a town or something. That's how we operated. That's amazing. Because we're mounted in jeeps, we could go. You know, we were fast.

Where we went, we weren't walking. And the infantry was pretty much in buildings along the corridor through town. We cleared a three block wide corridor all the way through the big city of Santo Domingo to the U.S. Embassy on the L.S. embassy on the other side. And of course, we had to escort a lot of people over there, a lot of trucks and come old people and so on. So it was fast and furious. And when you're down in the street in jeeps and people start shooting and those bullets

and ricocheting several times down every street, it gets injured. My leader got captured down there, actually. Oh, my God. He and his gun crew got captured. And we were running on flat tires, but the street was full of bodies, full of glass. It's amazing. Just being paratroopers, you know. So folks watching out there next Friday, we're going to have Aaron Schwartzbaum in studio.

He's a Russia expert. So we'll be talking about a lot of, you know, we had him on once before, like two weeks after the invasion. So we'll be talking a lot about Ukraine with Aaron. He'll be here in studio. Tommy, again, thank you, man. Thank you so much, Tom. We deeply appreciate it. And thanks, Chuck, for the donation, Chabal.

We appreciate it. But thank you, Tommy. Yep. You're welcome. Thank you all. All right. And we'll see you guys next Friday.