The Team House - From LRRP in Vietnam to Commanding Delta Force & Ranger Regiment | Dave Grange | Ep. 365

Episode Date: August 21, 2025

In a wide-ranging discussion, Major General David Grange recounts his extensive military career, from his early days as a Ranger in Vietnam to his time in Delta Force and commanding the 1st Infantry Division. He shares stories of his experiences, including lessons learned, unique training philosophies, and his role in major operations like Eagle Claw and the Grenada invasion. Finally, he discusses his transition to a civilian career, where he applied his military expertise to logistics and security challenges around the globe.Subscribe to our new newsletter!!!!https://teamhousepodcast.kit.com/joinToday's Sponsors:GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 10% off! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouseTo help support the show and for all bonus content including:-live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video-early access to shows-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured__________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️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/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 - Start01:06 -  Background and family history.05:02 -  LRRP platoon leader in Vietnam.13:06 -  Lessons from combat.29:26 -  Decision to stay in the Army after Vietnam.41:58 - Operation Eagle Claw.52:58 - SAS selection course.59:49 -  Squadron commander in Delta Force.1:16:50 - Battalion commander in Korea.1:27:55 -  Deputy commander of Delta Force during Desert Storm.1:38:10 -  Regimental Commander of the Rangers.1:49:49 - Commander of the 1st Infantry Division in Bosnia and Kosovo.1:58:52 - Retirement and civilian career.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Special Operations, Cobert Ops, espionage, the Team House, with your hopes, Jack Murphy, and David Park. Hey, everyone, welcome to episode 365 of The Team House. I'm Jack, here with Dave, and our guests on today's show, we're very happy to have Major General Retired Dave Grange on the show. General Grange served in Vietnam, served in special forces, and Ranger Battalion commanded the Ranger Regiment, served as a squadron commander in Delta Force, and then later the deputy commander, deploying the Desert Storm. I mean, a very extensive career,

finished his time commanding first infantry division, and we're going to get into all of this. But first, Dave, thank you for joining us on the show today. Well, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. So to kick it off, I'd like to ask you about, you know, sort of your upbringing, your origins. I know you have an interesting family background that goes back into the Army. Tell us a little bit about how you grew up and how that kind of took you towards military service yourself.

Sure. So, yeah, the family kind of runs with OD Green Blood, you know. I was an Army brat almost right away. My father was a private war war II as a paratrooper. In Korea as a paratrooper and then infantrymen and then Vietnam with a hundred first and special forces advisor and that. So we moved around a lot just like all army families do. And I did a lot of hunting with him, fishing, you know, moving around the woods. Which actually helped me out quite a bit even at that age, you know.

becoming a soldier. But he never put any pressure on me about me going to the military, but I just kind of liked what we were doing. I mean, I'd be in my little Bergen or my little German rucksack in Bavaria going up with his A-team, reconning the terrain that they were going to use as an insurgent force against conventional units in Germany at that time with his A-team, which no one spoke English in the team except for himself. Everybody was from Eastern Europe or someplace. And it kind of just was a bug I got.

I went to North Georgia College, which is a military college. Barely got in because my grades were terrible. But I went there and I got a hook into me and I finally did well. And commission as an infantry officer. And that's kind of how it started. with my dad and then North Georgia College. And what year did you commission? Well, I was supposed to commission in May of 70,

and I actually got out early December of 1969. See, I went to North Georgia in academic probation because I was kind of a wild teenager, and they squared me away right away. And so I started going to additional summer schools, and actually did very well in the school and first in summer camp and with all the colleges. And so that's how I got to Vietnam because I graduated early.

And when you got to Vietnam, you served with Lima Company, the reconstituted Ranger companies? I started out as a grunt in the 506 infantry, band of brother unit. In fact, the same baton that Winters, Lieutenant Winters and many brothers commanded during World War II, they call it different. It wasn't an echo company, as you know now. It's ABCD, ABCD through each battalion, but it was actually the same platoon. And so, and then I got wounded kind of bad.

And when I went back, I actually saw a major guy. got me back into Vietnam. I was supposed to go to VA hospital for 90 days or something. And he got me back in. And my father picked me up in a helicopter. He was there then. He was on his third tour. And I was on my first tour.

As a lieutenant, he was a brigade commander. And he got me back in there. I painted my cast and my shoulder down on my wrist OD green. So I could move around in a juggling hat. But he, then I went to L Company. Once I got better, I went to L Company Rangers. Yeah, as a Lurp. Tell us a little bit about that. We've interviewed some of the Lerps on this show in the past. I'd love to hear from your experience as a platoon leader or a company commander at that time.

Sure. Now as a platoon leader, a guy replaced tennis Sautel, great guy. It's shutting ahead in the Ashire Valley putting out a Claymore. Ho Chi Ventrail. And that's the butune I took over, Second Mattoon, Lima Company, 101st Airborne. I'll tell you that, being an infantry guy, a grunt first, and then going to Lima Company kind of shaped

my whole career, how I thought. Probably more in the mistakes that were made, made a difference to me than how great we did. It was a great outfit. Super guys, men with painted faces, as they called them then. And so that kind of shaped how I trained, how I trained myself and self-discipline myself, but also what I instilled in those that I led

was L Company Rangers. And we were deep and, you know, out of artillery range. He relied on overgun ships or I think you call it Stinger and Spookies End or whatever, just like the AC 130 today. They're using, I think, 47s, but also using 123s. And then the airstrikes, of course. And it was a great learning experience, very decentralized. we had a selection process not as good as it is today,

but it was a selection process, none the least. And I still communicate with some of those guys. A lot of them are dead now. And it set the base for me for rangering, probably even more than ranger school. And tactics, techniques, and procedures. like movement, fish hooking back around the ambush shoes

following you how to put out the playmowers the right way, not the way you tested really on EIB. And so, yeah, it was a wonderful experience. Got wounded there my second time with a 12-man hunter killer team, which we did periodically because we bumped into quite a large force.

Seven medevaced, with myself, which we did ourselves. But yeah, it was a great experience, Jack. I loved it. I reminisce about it periodically still. Could you tell us a little bit about that experience when you got wounded and cast vac out? We went into find a way station slash hospital in a pretty tough area,

the area we hadn't operated in for at all. And we did a false insertion. We came in on some UIs that extracted an infantry unit, laying down on a chopper a little bit, just trying to keep a lower profile. And we were able to do that because we had, there were so many ships coming in and get the infantry company out right before dark.

And that's how we, that's how we got in. And then we moved as far as we could that night. And then, you know, because of booby traps and everything, we RON set up. And just to see if anybody followed us off the LZ. And I'm trying to remember exactly what a couple days. And then we got to near where the objectives were. So we ran into the OPs of what I was told later of a battalion size force. And it was security elements that were.

protecting this waste station for ammunition of the supplies as well as taking care of the wounded. It wasn't as far west as the Ashaw Valley, but it was right on the edge there. And we got the firefight and they're shooting grenades, different things, RPGs, things going off. and we ended up with seven injured, two killed, and five of us wounded. It was in a third brigade, not third brigade, first brigade commander's A-O-R. Trying to think of his name, but he wounded in Korea, tough guy, tough brigade commander. On radio with him the whole time, he helped us a fair support. which we used a lot because we got caught in a saddle and uh we you know kind of on the front of us left

and right and um and so the main thing to end us to evacuate the wounded because we were there's only five guys that remained you know that were operational to fight um you know one interesting thing about operating as lieutenant Vietnam is that a lieutenant and hopefully Hopefully you were trained on fire support. Just your initials, you could, without going to any higher headquarters than that, even as an advisor, I'm a second tour or whatever, a lieutenant in the infantry, I could call on an airstrike artillery. I didn't have to get approval from anybody.

You know, it was myself and my team sergeant or student sergeant, whatever. We did it. That's kind of how it was run then. and that saved our ass. But yeah, Ui came in, old Medevac Ui's great, you know, the signature helicopter, right, from the Vietnam War, great helicopter. I flew them later doing a little stunt

as an additional skill identifier, you know, flying helicopters for a while in 100 first. But, you know, they pull us out with a hoist, two guys at a time, one would sit on the little seat kind of thing that came down and the other guy would be on your lap and pull him up that way. The guy had to be in a basket. They'd do that. And they were periodically under fire.

We kept that down momentum because of the airstrikes. And finally, after I was the last wounded guy out, then I put my team sergeant. actually I put a corporal in charge now I remember with Quigley Oprah Quigley because they put in a rifle company to reinforce it and then

to exploit what we had found but our mission ended then because we had somebody wounded and KIA and I take it that was sort of the end of that tour for you after being wounded no I didn't leave country in that one

the first one I left country I went to Guam, which is really a Navy place. Why I was the only Army guy there, I have no idea. But, no, I stayed in 85th of vac right there and Fubai. Wow. And we're back to my unit. Yeah. And what were, you mentioned that, you know, you almost learned more from the mistakes than the successes.

What were some of like the big bullet points that, you know, whether they were improved or sustains for your time with the Lerps that you took away and took with you through the rest of your career? Yeah, let's say a couple things. So one, let's talk about the environment first. I mean, you have to be one with the environment, desert, jungle, mountains, Arctic, whatever it is. You cannot fight the terrain.

You have to be with the terrain. You have just like a hunter. You know, you're stalking, deer hunting, whatever, duck hunting, whatever you're doing. You have to be a part of the terrain. The VC, the NVA, the NBA. they were part of the terrain. They knew how to live in it, move in it, eat in it, believe themselves in it,

whatever the case may be, monsoons, you know, bugs, snake, whatever. They just, they were comfortable in it. And in Lurps, you learned how to do that. I mean, we could smell the enemy. Our acuteness on hearing and sight was phenomenal. or noise discipline. You didn't have a poncho because if it rained and reflected, you had a ponchillon or you had a half of a poncelain.

On your lurp rations, you didn't tear open to make noise of cellophane, all the stuff they're wrapping. Before you went out, you carefully opened them up to the last piece that the food was in and you put a piece of black tape on it. You didn't snap your rucksack pouches. You used 550 cord in a, carved piece of stick and hooked it just like the NBA back uh rucksex everything was quiet and you move like like a like an animal like a like a like a lion would move a tiger a cougar whatever you were

quiet and and uh and that's why if somebody got sick it coughed and you know that you didn't take him out of patrol you just couldn't you couldn't do it i mean i remember where my team started almost smothered a guy to death keep holding his hand over it you know that you didn't take him There's a mouth. So you had to be part of the terrain. So you could focus on killing the enemy, not worrying about whining about, oh, it's raining, I'm tired, you know. The bugs would bite me.

I'm slapping the ski. You can't do that. So the self-discipline involved in living in the environment to fight is extremely important for reconnaissance organizations. Is that something that guys came with or is it something that they were able to learn when they were there. They had to learn it. Yeah.

You didn't learn that back in the United States before you left. Yeah. You had to learn it there. And the young sergeants, you know, corporals, E5s and that, they taught them all that. They taught me that. And it was easier for me and some of the other guys because they used to hunt a lot. Right. You know, I used to always tell guys, you know, a hunter makes a good soldier better.

A soldier makes a good hunter better. It's very true. So that's one thing, being a part of the environment. I just, we'll talk about it later maybe, but I just, I learned that in the last three years in Ukraine off and on with my guys doing the training. We're doing all right by the front lines. You got to what they had to do to live with the terrain and what's going on. The discipline of stuff that you forget in special operations, the more elite you get. So, and as an example, you get to the Rangers,

the Rangers make a good infantry better as an example. You go to special forces. You go to Delta Force. Whatever the case may be, you get a little cocky. You've gone through all these different hoops and you made the cut. It's like a pyramid. But if you forget where you come from, the basic effort for tasks you screw up so most of the guys i've seen wounded or killed in my career

was not the sexy stuff it was basic screw-ups noise and light discipline dispersion tie downs on equipment no one just like the just like long-range patrol and sass and north africa patty main just quoted saying When I was in a Jeep, kidded out to go behind German lines, my guys had a new one. They reached back on their left side, there was a torch, meaning a flashlight. I reached back on my right side. There was a machine gun belt for my victor's machine gun. I knew everything was there.

The discipline, the small stuff that in a firefighter at nighttime and the confusion, when people are scared, get screwed up. And so it reinforced in the Lurps because, you know, there may be six guys, right? Sometimes five, usually six, sometimes a hundred killer team, but 12, which really meant you got a few more guys than an M-60 machine gun with you. You have to depend on the discipline of that. You remember Dick Meadows. I knew Dick Meadows very well when I was a ranging couple of times.

commander for Eagle Claw and Hard Rock Charlie, Savannah, first bat. He was the advisor to Delta then. Later on, his son was my reconpetuelator in Korea in the 503. But he was really good at this. And you remember he was direct commission of Vietnam, D.S.C. winner. Mac V. Sogg. Yeah. I mean, the guy had.

his shit together. And he was one of my mentors. And he loved the Rangers. He served down in the Florida camp on the Beckwith. That's how Beckwith knew him and he picked him for Santee and all that stuff. Or not Beckwith, both assignments of that. So he was really hard on that. And he knew how to instill that and that.

So I try to copy him as best I could. And so that, that attention to detail, when you're in a fight, you don't have time to try to correct those things. They have to be automatic. They can't be, oh shit, did I do this, did I do that, whatever. You have to focus on the enemy and where your guys are, those kind of things. And so that's kind of a second point, I think, I'd bring up. Let me just add one more on the LERP thing. I really learned about the importance of Intel. One, we had to find Intel,

but the Intel even for our patrols, how important it is, because you rely on those guys that provide that intel, stay alive and to accomplish your mission. And also we had the responsibility to gather Intel ourselves. And you're not going to gather Intel if you're a bunch of goofballs running around a jungle out there

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Shout out to our brothers in Canada. they rock check them out i love ghostbed thanks guys i'm going to add one more that's the training thing everything's about training uh i don't train is a continuous process and it can never ever ever stop and i carried it all the way through division command train train with whatever you got you train and i got to where my mind i was so convinced of this the importance of training that the training requirements, let me say it this way. I would take a nine man, a 12 man, whatever it is, squad with M1 Garan rifles that was heavily trained that knew their stuff and training, then all the sexy equipment you can have and I'd kick your

ass because my guys are trained. Training is everything. Everything. And I carried it on through even the Ranger. We'll talk about that later if you want as a Ranger, the RCO, where every one of our battalions deployed live ammo, parachute in. Not everybody got a chance to parachute in with the live ammo, but how many people have done that unless it's in combat,

which it shouldn't be the first time you do it. You know, it's like twice the wait. It really sucks. It's tough. And so it's all about training. And so I lived or died on training. That's why Mangadai. The officer's being trained.

I want to talk about that a little bit if we get a chance tonight. Why that's so important. So I think those are some that come to mind right away, Jack. Yeah, no, thank you for sharing that with us. And you mentioned you did a second tour as an advisor? I did. So first tour is infantry rifle platoon leader. Second tour is alert the platoon leader.

Where I was in a hospital part of the time that kind of disrupted it somewhat. Second tour, 81st Airborne Ranger Group, a visor which is attached or op-con to the Vietnamese Airborne Division. 81st Airborne Ranger Group was the old Project Delta that Charlie Beckwith commanded. and these were really good Vietnamese fighters. The only ones that compared to them was a group called the Hockbow. The Hock bow was the Black Panthers. That the ranger, the Lerps, we'd go on missions with them.

One American lieutenant or a platoon sergeant with a Hockbow platoon, and they would go in, to the worst areas in Vietnam to destroy, kill, whatever they could find. I only wore LCE. There was no rucksacks, nothing. They went in, and then after they killed everything, they came out. And I had the opportunity to go on two missions with them. They were pretty fanatical.

And the reason being is every member of the Huckball, a family member had been killed by the VC of the NBA. That's how they got in the unit because they wanted people that were vetted, they were sure that were loyal to the South Vietnamese military, and they were tough, tough guys. A little fanatical, but really tough. And most of the targets were NBA, deep, deep targets.

Anyhow, as the advisor on the 81st Airborne Ranger Group, that was a great unit. And I was with them for the second offensive. Not as popular, obviously, or famous as 1068, but it was nonetheless pretty bad. And it was because we were drawn down. And this would have been 71 slash 72. Because I got over there in 70.

Yeah. So 71, 72. and they again went kind of deep for the division up in iCore as we're operated summit two core and lock outside of duct toe places like that and we operated at company size units and I was the advisor to the recon company of the 81st Airborne Battalion. So the guy that I worked with was really a tough guy. He was a weightlifting champion for middleweight. A long, long time ago before the war in South Vietnam,

they called him a tiger man, and he was tough. He got killed later on. But he was really, really tough and that was a great job. A lot of reconnaissance blew up a couple bridges. It was just a enjoyable fight me and I had a platoon sardin with me or E7 and that was when they were overthrown a lot of the fire bases. Vietnamese firebases. Be one American advisor or two or a couple and they all got rolled up. fast.

They were moving in regimental size units. We were in companies. And they had tanks, PT 76s. We didn't have artillery support. And very little, remember, the Americas are drawn down. 72. It was like May I think in 72, something like that. And the only thing you had really was Sky Raiders.

now and end, which is a great, great fighting airplane prop, good fighting airplane. I love them. I think Socom is actually working on a program and bringing some of these back. Yeah. I like those as much as I like eight-tenths. I like them both a lot. They should belong to the Army. Anyway, so the, a lot of fights.

Actually, we've got more fights than I did with, 101st. And I remember one fight we went in with, then I got, some recond company got shot up pretty bad. They reassigned us. I went to, I went out outside of analog with a rifle,

rifle company, 110 guys and we came back. There's only 19 left. Wow. And it was because we had, that was by myself, I didn't have a sergeant, nothing. We had,

again, they were operating like regiments. I mean, they would do a B-52 prep on an LZ where you walk on it, you come into it and knee-deep and like powder from just the ground being totally destroyed. And there's still be guys coming out of the ground, bleeding out of their nose, ears, eyes, delirious, but they were, you know, still running around. But they, so that company got kind of decimated. and then I went to, I think, another one, but I caught malaria on that one. I had to go into hospital for a while in Saigon.

And was that kind of the tail end of your Vietnam experience? Oh, the tail end? I just, you know, after that tour, I just deployed back to the United States. My time was up. I didn't come back to the States and go back again. I just stayed the whole time for two tours. And so at this point, there's sort of, I have to imagine a bit of an inflection moment. that, you know, you went through all of this experience, three tours in Vietnam, basically.

But at that time, post-Vietnam, it was not popular to be in the Army or to stay in the Army, but you chose to stay and pursue a Special Forces career. What was sort of that experience like for you after the war? I got to admit, it was a little disappointing initially. Special Forces was not what I remembered as a kid. pumping up a rucksack in Germany with this A-team. There was no money. If you remember, they had the oil crisis.

You know, they always, you know, you hear the jokes about picking up pine cones at Smokebomb Hill. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it kind of was like that. And so I went to as many schools as I could because we didn't train very little. I had a, I was fortunate because I guess it was better than a lot of people experienced because I went to the acute course, which is much better now than it was. was then, by the way.

I was disappointed in it then. But I went to Halo school, went to Halo Jump Master School. Then later on, I went, I was in fifth group there. Went to, assign me to another, oh, I assigned me to a scuba team. I went to scuba school.

So I got some schools in, and it was actually great because it was training. I mean, I didn't, we didn't train a whole lot because there was no money to train. It just was disappointing for me initially and it got better. We got a mission to go to Iran. And going to Iran, it was with an A team, the train with the Iranian special forces. They have to understand that those days, the Shah ran the country. Very, very, I mean, he did some bad things, we found out later, but.

very close to American presidents and, you know, members all about their support just like Turkey and that line there because of the Soviet Union. But the experience there helped me later because not only did we train with them, jumped in with them, did a big exercise in a desert outside of Esfahan or someplace. But one of the missions was to link up with the curves. and the Kurds were on the border of Iraq and Iran.

And our job was to have them support Iran, not Iraq, because Iraq was in the Soviet sphere. It changed later for me. It was the opposite. At that time, we support the Iranians. And that was a great exercise. And they were wild guys where I met the Kurds, the first time, which paid off later during the ISIS invasion.

I, as a civilian, I went over there to help encourage ISIS. And that paid off because I told them that stories. And we talked around, you know, fires at night and stuff drinking tea. And it helped me out. But they, that was an exciting trip. And I really enjoyed that. Understanding a little bit more of the geopolitics, even though it's, I think I was still a lieutenant.

Yeah, so that's how he got into the special forces part. We did a few exercises, but it wasn't like they do today. Today, the units do a lot more. And then the other interesting thing here is that you made the jump to Ranger Battalion, and this was like a period of time in the Army where officers and senior NCOs, it seems like they could kind of cycle through special forces and ranger battalion in a way that you really wouldn't see today. Correct. So remember there was no branch.

There wasn't an 18 branch for officers. It was an additional skill identifier. Right. So I didn't go right to the Rangers. I went to the 101st. No, I went to flight school. Tell us how that happened. I was injured.

Yeah. Well, I just, I was bored a little bit to be honest with you. someone came around and said if you want to go to flight school a buddy of mine he wanted to go he said if we don't go now dave we're not going to be able to go because we're going to be too old they want lieutenants warrant officers they don't want captains and and so um i said what the hell i'll do it my father you know he was still in the army he said what the hell are you going to flight school for what do you want to do that i don't know i just want to try it out so i did go to flight school I went down to Rucker, learned how to fly Ueys, went to COBRA transition,

who had to fly Cobra's. And I got stationed up in Campbell, flying helicopters in a 158th aviation. And remember that, that was also an additional skill identifier, which is kind of dangerous as a problem. The ward officers, they knew that, right? So they'd have to kind of watch it kind of close. I only did about, I just stayed at two years,

only did about 550 hours, something like that. But I enjoyed to fly it. Don't get me wrong. In those days, it was all nap of the earth. If you didn't come back of leaves and your skids, you're a whip, you know, that kind of stuff. And it was a great experience for me. But where it really helped me out, I transitioned back to the infantry to command an infantry company. And it helped me out coordinating with aviation.

Remember this? Yep. The first Airborne Division Air Assault. You had to know helicopter operations, your mobile operation. You had to know it. So being a pilot and being going back to the infantry, it helped me understand. And we trained our ass off. And when a guy would tell me how you can't take this many guys, you've got to have the doors closed not open, whatever.

I'd say bullshit. I know you can do this. Do it. And we really were good. in that. And so I enjoyed being a rifle company commanding the first and five, second, five, third there in Campbell. And I went to, I guess I went to the advance course.

And from the advanced course, infantry advanced course, I was selected to go to the Ranger, First Ranger Battalion. So that was something the Army decided you needed to go do now. No, they didn't decide. I never let the army decide where it went until I got higher ranks. Then you don't have a choice. I, because they'll send you where you don't want to go. I know.

Right? And you know you're supposed to salute and do it. I just, you know, most times, you know, I didn't want to go to a leg unit. I didn't want to go, you know, but certain things I wanted to do. It haven't been in Rangers of Vietnam. I wanted to go back to the Rangers. And the Ranger battalions were like kind of brand new at that time. Well, first batten was the only battalion.

Yeah. There was no second or third. There was no regimental headquarters. So Joe Stringham hired me. And great guy, great battalion commander. He's only about that tall. But he's a fastest road marcher on earth. And tough guy.

And yeah. So he hired me as an adjutant, which I didn't know anything about. So I never had a staff job. Remember I was a platoon leader for or attachment commander or a platoon commander. Now, the whole time in the army, I never had a staff position. So I was very ignorant of that. I didn't realize how stupid that was to as a division commander. But I enjoyed the hell out of it and I got a lot of ground time.

And so then I took over. Hard Rock Charlie. Now, it didn't happen right away because I started the rugby team at the Rangers to play Sevian against Sevian teams in the southeast on off-duty time. I broke my leg and so they wouldn't let me take the command. But I ended up getting it later because the guy got relieved and I got hired. I don't know if you know Doc Donovan. Yeah, we all know of him if nothing else. Yeah.

I mean, great medic. He was, he was an E6 at the time, not a PA. But he was a good friend of mine, very good friend of mine. I was a company commander there. And I remember I was the S3 air because I had a broken leg and I went and got an operation and shrapnel taken out of my elbow at the same time, got it all, you know, trying to get all done as fast as possible. And they were out of 29 palms training in the desert,

the company that I was supposed to take. And someone called back and said, we need 200, two-court canteens? Can someone bring them out? So I volunteered to go out there, even though it was the S-3 air. Lipping through the LA airport with a duffel bag and 200 collateral canteens

and crutches and not a damn civilian would help me. Went into the airport to the other. I remember that. And then flying in a Palm, I guess it's Palm Springs. And then the guy picked me up in a Jeep. took me out there, went to the CP in a desert, limping around. I remember Stringham chewing out this company commander's ass,

and the guy was arguing back to him, and he fired him on a spot. He was there with his ex-o dick pack. And who the hell is going to take that company? What are we going to do? He looked over me, and I looked like a rag bag with two ass on. On the arm, what in the leg? He goes, Grange, where are you going to get that shit off you? tomorrow sir

Roger that all right you're going to take Charlie Company so that Doc Donovan it cut off

from both cast and yeah I got the company so that was just fortunate good luck I was

the right place at the right time kicked in out stuff a bag full of canteens and we got back and I was

still a little weak there but I got better pretty quick and I remember had to jump into Panama about a month or two later and I like I was still messed up so I had a tape like the bottom ankle you know with a hundred mile iron tape around a German you know the German leather boots parachute boots the tanker boots they weren't tanker I'd never be quite dead in a

tanker boot no jungle boot at one foot and they were like German leather boots but they were very thick and soft. Anyway, so then I jumped up in Panama and broke it again and then I had to keep it quiet because I, you know, I didn't want to get fired out of the company. A different battalion commander than Williford. I didn't want to get fired out of the company. And so we, after the drop zone, Kudu Kunu drop so whatever the hell it is in Panama, we had a road march 12 miles to Fort Sherman. That sucked with the broken ankle. but I just kept my mouth shut.

We went out in the jungle, just kept taped it every day and humping around. Then I'd cut the tape at night and that hurt like hell to get the blood going. You know, you know how you do. And you're trying to repair your shit yourself. Doc Donovan kind of nursed me. And, but yeah, that's how that company. That's how I got the heart drug trial. You know what was great about it?

We were able to train her asses off. We did a lot of urban training, mount training. And we were selected. to be the Eagle Claw Company for Desert One. Tell us how that started to come about how Charlie Company got brought into Eagle Claw and you got wound up with Dick Meadows and Beckwith and all those guys. Yeah. So that was a great experience.

I mean, that shaped a lot of what I did, obviously, after that. I went ahead and I was asked to go to selection before that. when I was the S-1 and Springham had me do a little special ops group. And that was down there at Key West. We did an operation down there near where the scuba school was. But anyhow, on Eagle Claw, I was at my dad's place. He was in the division. He was the Fort Benning commander.

and he I was there for Thanksgiving and I got a call and they said to get my ass back to Hunter Army Airfield Savannah and they said a little plane to beachcraft or C12 or something I don't know to a loss of Army Airfield

flew me back to Hunter and the company had been selected to be the security company for the mission with Delta and And then that's where all the training started. I mean, that's all we did. We were locked down hard. There was very strict obsec.

The equipment we would get would come from different units, which was pieces of crap that we had to fix, all the maintenance we had to do ourselves. That's where we really kind of used the OSS technique of take the whole company and find out what everybody's abilities were in civilian life it matter what their MOS was in the unit or you know what they were trained to do it was civilian life who was a farmer who was a mechanic who was whatever and that's how we were able to fix jeeps do on the airfield seizures how we'd be able to hot start stuff like bulldozer

and other pieces of equipment, how we, I mean, everything, we were able to innovate everything ourselves with what we had on hand. We had no augmentation. And so we developed how to do the gun jeeps, how we were going to do the gun jeeps on these kind of airfield seizures, how to do the motorcycles, how to do the night landings with the MC130s, which they really could not do right.

You know, PBS5 goggles just were new. We'd fly over a drop zone. to throw out one door I'd throw out a bundle with chem lights all broken the light would tape around it the other door first started to throw out a bundle and we'd

mark the leading edge of a drop zone or I'm sorry a landing zone that way and then in the next pass the MC would land that's how rudimentary or even at one time there was a parachute option so we had to rehearse that

so we rehearsed all the way until April. That's a long time. Locked down all over the West, all those airfields and everything. And you know, you know from the books and everything else about, you know, some of the problems on the rehearsals

and working together and the jointness problems. There's never a full mission profile rehearsal, right? Right, right. But again, here I'm a captain. I got kind of blinders on with what I had to do. I didn't really know all the big picture. I'll tell you, one thing that was great, though, that really got my attention.

We, one time we had to go up to the Pentagon periodically. So as a young, I wasn't a young company captain. I had equivalent of four company commands, you know, with the attachment, rifle, Ranger, air, a battalion, air, air, air mobile battalion, which is a captain. So I've been around a little bit, but I go up there with Beckwith. the Ranger Battalion Commander who at the time was Shirm Wilford and Bucke Burroughs. Good guy. I like him a lot.

He's a wild man. I love him. I die for him. We almost died together a couple of times off duty. But anyway, so we go up there. We do these briefings. That's where we saw Marsenko, you know, the seal in the hallway. And he was, you know, he didn't have a SEAL Team 6 yet.

Right. So, you know, he's a wild man. And he, you know, he's kind of jealous of what the devil guys are doing. It's kind of funny. I'm trying to take it, understand where everybody kind of sets in this arena. So, Decliffe takes us back to this hotel over Crystal City or wherever the hell it was. We go in there and he opens a briefcase up. I thought he was going to bring out this plan back to talk to us.

There's a bottle of Jack Daniels. He's got a 45, 1911, half cocked, and a map. That's what he had this briefcase. And so he kind of briefs us up a little bit and this update because he had been over to the White House and a couple other places. It was funny as hell, but I thought, God damn. It was kind of a new thing, but I love these guys. They really, I mean, there's a lot of stories about they did this and that. They were crazy and wild.

But I'll tell you what, they knew their shit. They knew how to, if it wasn't for those guys at the time, the units would not have been created. It's no doubt of my mind. And correct me if I'm wrong, Dave. But when Eagle Claw actually happened, you guys didn't take a Ranger company over there. It was more like a couple of squads, if I recall correctly. Yeah, there's both. So we got an eight-man team in one of my E-6s and Little John, started a little John.

and they went they were on the uh desert one mission and go in at the aircraft uh and uh secure the road that they were desert one was near they're the ones that you know at the law blow up the tanker truck and yep things right which you know they were told i mean they had the job was to stop whatever they did it like just good rangers always do but uh i was in wadikina in a russian airfield old Russian airfield in Egypt with the rest of Charlie company and the battalion headquarters. And so we never took off. We're getting ready to load the planes, go ready to go, and they abort it. Because we're going to take Manzaria Airfield, which was a bitch.

That would have been a tough mission because right across the road, we had, you know, 100-something guys. Biggest weapon we had was in a tank was a law. I had 60 machine guns, a couple in each Jeep, motorcycle teams, they had the laws of stuff, two-man, you know, two bikes, two guys, security perimeter. Across the road was an armored division. But, you know, we were having air support and all that,

but we didn't have much on a crowd at all. Yeah. So that would have been, because they would have been, you know, everybody would have known that they hit the place, right? They hit the embassy and they were extracted by the, the 53s back to the Manzaria extraction airfield. And then we had the C-SAR mission to pick up anything that went down. So we were thin.

And you know, you figure accountability of all the hostages and all the Delta guys. But that's where all this airfield seizure and all those things started. And that's why they're today, it just was rudimentary compared to what they do today. But that's how it all started. But let me tell you a sad thing. when we found in Wadi Kinea, we were like sleeping and cots in these nigg bunkers. Big, they're large. I mean, I must have held several, I guess, at the time.

And the mission was canceled. And I remember sitting in there. Almost every guy was crying because the mission was aboard. And I can remember to the day. And it's the worst sound. I can't stand it. The only sound I don't like, I hate worse than this sound. well thump of mortar

snip around those scary too right but stripping ammo out of magazines into a steel pot to return home you talk about

a heartbreaking experience yeah yeah I mean it was terrible terrible that that that that

and all the way back flying back we were all okay what are we going to do now again, you know, I even drew up a plan myself and took it to the Botanic Marine. Let's get this, let's talk to these guys.

Let's do something. Yeah, because everybody was, all that, keep in mind, all that rehearsal, all that training, and then it doesn't happen. Yeah. And we were, I mean, cocked strong, ready to, ready to kick ass, confident, even though that there was so outnumbered so much, we knew we could just do it. Anyhow. By the way, we just had a reunion in our training facility at my farm.

this may with a lot of the 40-some guys that were on that mission. Wow. It was great. Yeah, it's incredible talking to those guys and hearing all those experiences because, I mean, that really is like the birth of modern special operations came out of Eagle Claw. Like the units that were created, the commands that were created and everything sort of flowed out of that, I think. You're right. And what happened is that it did start there, because that's when they started J-Soc.

And then Grenada, we can talk about that later, but Grenada then kind of finished off a lot of the stuff that had not been done yet. So calm. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that and communications. Yeah. So tell us the next thing. I mean, you went to the special air survey. of selection at one point, right?

Yeah. That was a great experience, too. So, Dickworth wanted me to go to selection, which was honored that he would say, try this out, Grange, you know. We, you know,

our selections, January, no, our selections in the spring and the fall. And this was like December, he asked. And it wasn't a course at the that time. So he said, no problem. Get your ass over to Sterling Lines and Hereford Wales in U.S. in U.K. and go to the S.S. selection. So I said, hell yeah. So I went over and they kind of

screwed up on the dates because they, their selection, they start off of an NCO week to weed out a lot of NCOs early on. And because of the numbers. And it was kind of brutal. I just thought it was part of the course. So I was only officer there for that. And no one really knew as an officer. You didn't wear any rank or anything. And as a major,

it just got promoted in a major. That's when I left Charlie Company. And so went through that. Then it actually, it started. Then all the officers showed up about 20 different kinds of berets and all the stuff from the guards and this and that. So I went through the course, and then they have, you know, as you know, just like our course, there's an extra week for the officers. A lot of people don't know that.

And it's patterned after OSS type stuff. And went through that and then stayed around for a little while, got badged, what they call it, you get your beret off a badge on it. You can go through the course and not get badged. I didn't know that at the time. But great training. I was a pretty good shape. I come back to the unit. I'm in the S3 shop as an assistant S3 for Bucky Burris.

A couple of the NCOs go, hey, sir, great job. You know, I understand you just finished SAS. That's how you got in the unit. I don't know. You know, you didn't go through our course. I mean, I mean, this is equivalent. Our course is patterned after their course. Well, whatever you think, sir.

they said F it so I went ahead and told the deputy commander said I think it was Burris at the time I got to go to the course

I can't take this shit so I went to our course then and went through our selection now that sucked but doing both but later on when somebody goes oh this one's harder than that one no they do this they do that

And I said, bullshit, here's the real answer to that. Could you expand on that a little bit? Like for our viewers. Yeah, what's the real answer? Yeah. Yeah. So they're very similar, by the way. Terrain's different.

You know, Breck and Beacons and whales, it's the only place that I've been in a world where swamps are on top of the mountain. And you're wet five minutes after you start no matter what day it is. It just sucks. And it was in January, so you know, it really sucked because it was snow and ice and rained every day and it was terrible. But the maps, the British maps are immaculate. They're perfect. There's an orchard, a tree line, a dirt road, and it's there.

It's exactly like it. The Roman roads, it's perfect. Lovely maps. And you know, it's all about Orienteer, and it's not really, you know, it's not a, time and distance type thing or base camp thing. So I, um, uh, that,

that is, that is different than West Virginia, where there is a lot of changes in the terrain because of logging or, um, building things, whatever the case may be. Uh, and the terrain is not as open.

More forests. and stuff. So you really got to understand when you're in saddle or a finger off a ridge or, you know, whatever. You've got to really know your stuff on that. In the SAS, you come back to every night to the camp.

So you get some hot chow and sleep in the barracks. You know, you spend half the night driving back in a lorry, a truck, you know, to get to the camp. And you get up early as hell to get back out to the training sites. But it's still not.

nice to be able to dry your shit out in a heating room, in these special rooms that dry your stuff like in a 30 minutes. We're in our course, and I don't want to get too many details because some of the stuff they don't put out, but, you know, you sleep out there, your camp out. You know, you're taking care of yourself in your own little tent and you don't go in. But other than that, they're pretty much the same. The officer week's kind of the same. we don't have a prior NCO week.

They all start together. I think they pass more people than we do, at least then. My class, he had seven pass out of 100. Some classes, they had one or zero. Some they would have 20. You meet the standard or you don't. It's pretty simple, really.

You do it or you don't do it. And I, And nowadays with GPS and everything, I mean, guys really have to get their head on right to go to it because, you know, units don't do that. Mapping compass. Now, they brought it back, but I mean, it kind of, you get pretty good at that stuff. So you graduate from both selection courses. And now you are out of the S3 shop, I take it. and they give you a job, or I should say a job, a command.

Yeah, B Squadron. So what was that like landing in B Squadron? Oh, it was wonderful. Great guys. We did some reorganization when I was there. That was, I don't want to go into, but some of the sort of majors wanted to do, and I wanted to do it as well, obviously.

We did Grenada. The funny thing about Grenada, I mean, when it was getting ready to start, I wouldn't there. We were going to do a training operation in New Zealand. En route to New Zealand, I took a week's leave early and went to the, did the Iron Man competition, Hawaii. And my first Iron Man. And near the end, halfway through the marathon, the last event, my father was out there. My mother, they were my support team. They took some vacation Hawaii, and so they were my support team for the race.

And my father met me at one of the water stops, and he said, your commander called, so you get your ass back to break now. I said, shit, and I'm almost done with this thing. Ask him if I can just get another two hours and then I'll get in the first flight out of here. So he called him and he said, Roger that, run faster and get back here. So I did that, finished. got on a plane, got off to Big Island, got into Ohio, and flew to San Francisco and whenever they picked me up,

I think Atlanta on a little plane and took me back to Bragg. Again, I can't go into all the details, but we went to Grenada. So I call that my fourth event of the Iron Man. Well, what can you tell us about kind of like getting activated getting spun up for an invasion of this island in the Caribbean. Yeah, so a lot of that's out for people to know now, so I can go into some of it. So, you know, my deputies had already, XO had already done a lot of the work,

sort of majors, most of the stuff was all done. I just got briefed up and kind of did a review of the outboarder, and then we left, landed up Barbados, Well, first of all, getting out of brig was a pain. And he asked because loading ammunition and helicopters on the same planes. It was a little bit of turmoil there. We got out of there anyway and landed at Barbados. And then they wouldn't let us take the shit off the planes.

And so remember, we're supposed to go in at night. Daylights coming up. So the guys, the higher than level than me, we were arguing about getting in and out of there to get on there. and so we went in the daylight. We flew over the Marines that were doing the landing craft. I remember seeing a Marine landing craft in the Caribbean there. We're flying over as we're flying in to the area.

Some people are at the Hudson at a point in AKs at us like they're going to shoot. Some are the guys who go, what are we supposed to do? The rules of engagement were not very good. clear. It changed where we're going in. We ended up going to, so let's go into Frederick. We go in and we get shot all the hell.

And they would go around, come back around, get shot all the hell again because we can't land. This was the prison where Jerry Boykin got injured. Correct. Yeah. Okay. He was on,

yeah, he was with the tank commander or the, uh, Delta commandant as a three he was a three then and A squadron

their mission the other place they got aborted Fort I can't think of the name right now you may have it in your notes that got aborted so they didn't go there

we were the only squadron that got in and then we landed and one bird go down and then the other landed at Salinas Airfield

on the end we regrouped we had like 17 guys wounded some like Jerry Boykin they went on to landing some of the LPHs or whatever out there Navy ships

landed there and then they joined us back in Salinas the one aircraft that went down pilots got killed burned up all our guys got off went out of 42 assaltors we had I think

whatever he had 17 wounded so that's a lot of wounded for that size force and I can remember at the end of the runway the Rangers are jumping in now 500 feet

whatever they're jumping in and they're landing some of in between the Black Hawk rotors. They're trying to tell them, steer away, steer away. Luckily, no one got hit by a rotor wheel being shut down. But that's how tight that was. And then we were going to have another mission, hopefully, to go in and do some stuff. Because again, here we go.

We wanted to complete the mission, but we weren't allowed to do anything else. So I took care of a wound. linked up with the Rangers. Some of the guys that were hurt worse, you know, stayed on the ships, obviously, with the Navy care because they had to advance next level of care. We did not. And we ended up doing a lot of calls for air support for the seals,

because I think, as I recall, they only had MX radios at the time. on the mission because they fast-rooted into the governor's mansion. And there was a radio problem that several different units had talking to each other. That's why I was saying earlier that once J-SAC was set up, they had not matured to the level where the jointness of communications and all the different functional areas were tied in tightly like they are today. So that was another good learning experience.

I mean, the mission pretty much was accomplished. We didn't get to do Fedrick, but I mean, for the overall task force down in Grenada, I mean, the mission was accomplished. I wish we could have been able to do better. I'll tell you this, though, haven't been a pilot, I should say an Army aviator. If we would have been in Ui's, maybe bird would have went down. I don't think, I think one of the guys was counting one of the crew chiefs or someone on the birds that were on the Salinas Arafriot,

none of them because they all assembled there except for the one I caught on fire had less than like 40 holes in it if you didn't have the leakproof bladders fuel bladders and that

and stuff sealing things like that it would have been really bad I don't know why more people didn't get hit there was a lot of fire against luckily

there was no RPGs that I recall like Mogadishu. There was no air defense type weaponry. There was no, as I recall, 51 Cal's stuff like that. It's almost all AK-type fire. There may have been some media machine gun I don't remember. But I mean 17 out of 42 operators, that's a mass casualty situation for sure. It is. They weren't all severely hit, wounded, though.

But still, that's a lot of that wound. I know because, I mean, we had the Purple Heart ceremony. And so what was it like winding down that operation and returning back home? I felt a little bit like I did on Eagle Claw. Because, you know, they wanted to get us out of there and get us back to Bragg. We had no follow on mission. Remember the SEALs had that, they hit the radio station, they hit the governor's mansion.

They had that one recon team lost out at sea. I'm sure they felt kind of the same way. They had some tough fights. I knew the guys very well. Gromley was, I think is his name. C-L-Team 6th commander. I did some training up a damn neck with them on fast ropes and, you know, on the ships. You know, we did some good exchange programs.

We knew the guys pretty well. But I know we got in a C-1, I think it was a 41 that landed then because we had the whole Salinas Airfield was secured. We flew back to Bragg. I remember I said my sword major, Mark Gentry. I just passed out then because I had slept since the beginning of the Iron Man. That's unreal. Yeah, it was, but again, good lessons learned.

More, I think, at the higher level, because, like I said, of the jointness, you know, requirements. It was the Goldwater Nichols Act came after that, right? Well, let's see. That was, I'm trying to think of the year. They get Program 11 on the books. I don't recall the year, but it may have been that. I don't remember. And so at the end of this, I mean, is this pretty much the end of your time as a squadron commander

and they're looking for you to go back to the conventional army? We got spun up on different things. I mean, not all these have been released, but I think TWA 847 hijacking Beirut. I did that. You know, a few others. Was that the one where you guys surrounded the aircraft? Are you sure that's not Sigonelli in Sicily? I might be thinking of that one.

Where they had to kill, Keillara, whatever the ship was. That was the ship, yeah, yeah. No, this was, they hijacked it in Greece. Okay. They killed the seal. Remember on an airplane in Algeria, I think it was. And then they flew to Cyprus.

We chased them. Then they flew into Beirut. TWA. 847. There's pictures of the pilot, you know, the pilots hanging out the window, Hezbollah all over the place. That's when, you know, Beirut was really bad. Hisbaah and the mall and, you know,

had a green line and all that stuff. Was, did you guys get, or did you feel that you got pretty close to being launched to do the aircraft assault? Oh, yeah. Really? Wow. Yeah. Yeah, good training up, you know, just, on the go training.

Just rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsals. Yeah, it was good. But I don't, I don't know if that's been released yet. How was that situation ultimately resolved? Reagan. No, wait a minute. Yeah, I don't recall. I think it was, because you know what they did?

They learned from Iran where, remember they dispersed all the people. Yeah, moved them around. Yeah. So they learned from that, and they had people hidden all over when they took the passenger, They had people hidden all over the place. So the only people on a plane were the pilots and flight attendants. My point was, who cares? It's get them.

Yeah. You know, worried about there'd be retribution now of killing, you know, the others, wherever they were. We did a lot of, you know, Beirut was a tough, tough area to work in for a long time for a lot of units. You guys were sending people there quite often back in those days looking for hostages, not just them but others, right? Yeah, I've had guys wounded and killed there. Wow. But Special Forces did a lot of work there. I mean, you know, they did a lot of work on the north side of the city with the Christians.

Yeah, they started doing the MTTs in like 82, I think. Yeah, 82, 3 all that time when you had the bombing, you know, the Marine Barracks and you had the grenade and all that happened kind of at the same time. I'd love to ask you, you know, as we're talking about all. all this sort of your reflections about that period and that era of counterterrorism because I think that the unit was really kind of like writing the book on counterterrorism through no fault of your own.

Nobody at that time really knew how to do counterterrorism and the things that existed during the war on terror simply had not been developed yet. I was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about that development a bit. Yeah, so the beauty about having an organization like Delta or Steel Team 6 of that. I mean, there's

things you've got to be careful of because you can get this cocky attitude and you know what I'm saying? You got to, like I told you earlier, you got to really watch the discipline. But you were allowed to, your guys would say, hey, sir, we can't do this.

All right? And I'd go get the resources and have the guys figure out how to do it. Could it be explosives, could be breaching, it could be sniper, day-night scope. it could be body armor, it could be rope work, waterwork, you know, air and search, whatever. You were able to get the resources and figure it out.

And because you had guys that had a lot of experience. I think when I was at an average age was like 35 years old, that's old for a unit. and you were able to figure out how to solve these problems. It was wonderful. But, you know, eventually it's always new things come out, just like the drones now, right? Right. But there's only so many ways to get in an airplane. There's only so many, you know, there's only going any further than that.

But I'm just saying you've got some limitations no matter how much stuff you're sold. But anyhow, that was what was so wonderful about it is because all ranks were involved and figuring out how to solve problems. And whether it be airfield seizures, extractions, or how to reach different kind of targets, working with different agencies. All those are great experiences.

And, I mean, we really have some people that know their stuff and how to figure this out. I mean, it's just so proud to be in these kind of units. Yeah, they're literally writing the book. It's pretty cool. No, it really is. I mean, they still are. I don't want to take away from the newer generations that are doing that.

But I'm just saying there was so much to do. I mean, you think about it, we had blue light with SF and a couple of the units kind of had an extremist type requirements around the world, but not a dedicated. that dedicated forces that was just so specialized in this. And we're allies, just like the SAS, you know, they did. Are there any other alerts or events that you want to get into before we move on to the next part of your career?

You mean from that time? Yeah. No, I think that's fine. So the next stop for you was Korea, second ID? Yeah, I left the unit to take a battalion in Korea, infantry battalion, on the DMZ. Yeah. And what was that like being a battalion commander in Korea in the mid-1980s? It was wonderful because everything is training there as well.

There is no support cycle. And they have to let you train your people because the troops are only there for one year. So, you know, it takes a while to do unit training. People don't come to a unit in Korea. with enough capability to perform properly in combat so you don't have post support you don't do it

I mean you get a couple of details but basically you train constantly so I loved it and as a battalion commander and some of the other like majors and above you stay there they want you to stay like two years

they don't want you just to stay one year So your leadership, same in the Sauron Majors. Leadership is pretty well trained up. But that's where I started Manga Dai because I wanted to, it had such an impression on me about how you train a special unit because of my background. But more importantly, how do you train your young officers to perform to your expectations or those are your troops

in such a short period of time. The given responsibility not only signed for all the equipment, but to lead these GIs in combat if called upon. So I took that very seriously. So I said, I'm going to do something special for the officers.

Here's another reason. You get a second lieutenant in a unit in Korea. And who's his Ranger buddy? It's really his platoon sergeant. Here's a 16-17-year rucksack carrying NCO. And so that NCO and that officer has to connect. And that officer has very little time to gain any kind of respect

from his troops in that short period of time. Very difficult for a lieutenant. So I knew I had to help the lieutenants. It was a part of my responsibility because I was a direct report. And when you're right, I know where you are, officer report or NCO, same thing. When do I see those guys perform?

I go to the rifle range. I go to the motor pool. That may be an R-TEP or some exercise. I see them here and there a little bit. But if I do a manga die, I do a 72 to 96-hour training cycle. And I'm with them the entire time. I know that guy inside.

and out. So I'd set up an exercise where I'd take all the lieutenants and set up almost like a ranger school patrol, like a platoon, because you have a platoon of officers, basically. And I'd go with them. I'd put my ex-o in charge of all the support. In other words, how to support the exercise. And it was, I locked, locked them down like isolation. So I'd give them missions, one, you know, three squad leaders, plus a weapon squad leader, aatoon sergeant, platoon leader. That's how it organized. They would carry every piece of T-O-&E equipment

that the battalion had, except vehicles. A dismounted tow, they'd backpack it. A 50-cal machine gun, they'd backpack it. An 81 mortar, they'd backpacking. And all their other stuff, machine guns, whatever. other stuff. And we go out in the mountains in Korea and there's some good mountains over there.

And we do three full days of training live fire and blank fire. We would do helen cast in a river up there at a DMZ. We'd do ambushes. We'd do patrols.

Fast roping from helicopter. So all kinds of stuff. And I wouldn't feed anybody, and I wouldn't let anybody sleep. Now, I'd go through the same thing. And the reason I had to do that, because I was the lane rater. The reason I had to do that is because I had to know where the red line was. Because you think about it, it's a little bit of a safety thing as well. Because, you know, 72, 96 hours, that's a long time.

And you're humping your ass off the whole time. No sleep, no chow. they'd have one shall break at the middle of the exercise and I had the platoon sword and calling a helicopter to bring to chow and everybody's all fired up there in a perimeter of a guy we're going to eat and the rations for the baton came in one

556 you know large ammo cans it all fit in that can and every troop got a ball of rice a kimchi leaf and a sardine and that was a chow for that 72 96 hour period It wasn't to be a hard ass. It was just to induce stress, hunger, lack of sleep, and the unknown to develop these guys

and see what kind of grit they had. Now, we came back from this training, and it was constant, constant training with opt-for, or if it was live fire, obviously, it was regular targets, whatever. I'd bring them into a small missile, one of the old Korean War-type missiles. and I give them a steak dinner and I had a keg of beer. Initially, they thought they were going in there to get another, you know, Charlie Mike, you know, continue the mission. I bring them in there and after they ate and they had a couple beers and that,

it'd sit them down and give everybody a blank sheet of paper. And I would say to them, I want you to do the follow. And you have to understand their minds are in a different mindset now. They work with these guys the whole time. They know everything about them because this was miserable. It's harder than Ranger School. It's harder than SF selection. It's very difficult.

This training. I want you to write down if you're the battalion commander, what you would do right now to make it a better battalion. Question two. What are the three top resources you don't have to do your job right now? I want you to write down the five guys in this room that you would go into combat with. Now, in this situation,

they're not going to necessarily say their buddy that they went to West Point with or ROTC or OCS. They're not going to mention their buddy. They're going to mention the no kidding who they wouldn't go to go to combat with because their mind is set on who can handle it. Who has the, who has the,

as Beckwith would say, who's the right cut of cloth? I would take that information, and it was only for me. And I could look at those guys and compare it to what I saw in a motor pool, the range, whatever, in regular training, and figure out who the studs were, who's dependable, who's not a bullshit, who's reliable, all that stuff. You know, you just get, you just, it comes together, for it. Now, when they left the mess hall, they were told you do not, you do not talk to any

troop in the battalion about what you went through. You keep your mouth shut, fully knowing that as soon as they say, get out of there, they're going to talk shit. But that's okay, because psychologically, I want the troops to know what their lie lie lieutenants went through. And in respect that they would have for those leaders, knowing that it was harder than anything we'd ask anybody in the battalion to do what during their tour in Korea made all the difference in the world. That's Mungadai. I can see how, especially in a peacetime army where these lieutenants or captains are not getting combat patrols, they're not getting that kind of real life experience. That in 72 hours, this is a way for you very quickly to assess your guys.

I also do this sensing session with them to figure out who the guys are and how to make the unit better, but also to build that cohesion. That's kind of difficult to do in that environment. You can imagine, you know, this, you know, team, like a team room, right? You get all these people together for a Friday night beer call or something, right? The camaraderie was through the roof. They loved each other. They would die for each other.

and they felt really good about themselves and what they accomplished. Now, when I was a regimental commander and the Rangers, they did the same thing for the captains. And here you're already a guys at a pretty high level of fitness, experience, because you can't be a ranger company commander unless you've been a conventional company commander first.

That's how they do it, just like platoon labor. So you already got a pretty high-notch guy of experience. So I had to make it harder. And then from battalion commanders, They did it as a division commander, which was a little more difficult because of the little bit more variety of MOS's, you know, combat, combat, combat support, combat service support, the Italian commanders. But you know what gets the American soldier? What's harder than anything? This is my, again, philosophy, is the unknown.

Here's why I say that. everybody's used to be in the first sergeant formation and told what to do that day this this blah blah blah blah all the way down the line if you stand behind the formation which I used to do all the time as a division commander to listen to what was put out

I'd just be in PT gear you know could tell in the dark who it was anyway and it's amazing how it just they have to have that guidance where in a soft world you don't have to do that right I mean, you get intent and it's, it can be in a convention, you know, but normally it's not.

I mean, I try to do that in Big Red One. So there had to be a way to get these battalion commanders to think a different set of what to do and develop in their people and getting them ready to the unknown of combat. See, everything's about training and everything is about preparation for combat. nothing else really matters because if someone dies gets killed or hurt badly and you go talk to their wife or their mom or whatever the case may be you never forget that right and so your responsibility is accomplished the mission to keep them alive when the smoke clears you want your guys to get back up so it has to be hard and it has to be continuous and so that's why I had to do those things It was my responsibility to do it. And I know a lot of guys are doing them now still. And then after Korea, your battalion command, you went back to, or you went to for the first time, special operations command? War College, back to Delta as a deputy commander.

Oh, okay. I got it out of order. I'll tell you what, I had the best, you know, when you're in the war college, I think, and I can't remember it, right before graduation, everybody gets your orders. And what did you get? Where are you going? And I was so embarrassed about my orders because they were so good. I felt like drop it to my knees and praying to God.

I mean, what happened here? I had orders to go to be the deputy commander of Delta, followed by the Ranger Regimental commander. Wow. I mean, what is there to complain about? Right. Yeah. It was wonderful.

And so anyway, so I went, I was able to go. back to Delta for a year, Deputy Commander. Luckily, that's when Desert Storm happened. I got the Command Task Force Marine. Can you tell us a bit about that? Yeah. So, I mean, it was a combination, scud hunting. We had, it was two missions, the scud hunting and it was, you know, cutting,

uh, communication cable, you know, underground, cable from, in Iraq, going west to east. and east to west and a couple of the places and getting rid of the scuds because they didn't want Israel to come into the war. Right, because Saddam was lobbing those into Israel to try to draw Israel into the conflict. Right, to break up the Arab coalition. Right, right.

Exactly. So that was a good experience. I'm not sure all that's out yet, but that was, we lost some guys, we accomplished some good missions. Now, SAS was there as well. I do want to say this one part, though, what helped me out so much

with working with the SAS who were our neighbors, they had had everything from the Frades, whatever, to Jordan was ours, the largest part of Iraq. I mean, it wasn't as many enemy units, but it was the largest part. And they had, The first 200, I think it was kilometers from the border, and we had the deeper 200.

So it was tough for us to get to the AOs, but that's where a lot of the stuff was. But I had such a good relationship with the SAS because of going through their selection in the exchange program that they call it cross briefs that our unit used to do with their unit a couple times a year on TTPs that we just divided up the AO ourselves. they and the other colonel. I talked two years ago. I think it's General Wells was the brigadier commander

of the SAS at the time. Well SAS is, no, he would have been he would have been with the ground command or what they call it, ground group command, who the SES reported to.

SES is always commanded by a colonel. So Wells would have been one level up. Gotcha. Yeah. And which is a key position. Don't get me wrong.

But our, we were at our base and air base and they were down at Al Jouf. But think about that task force green. What a love I can get. I guess I can talk about a couple things. So we had two of our squadrons. We had agency support sprinkled here and there from different agencies. We had a Ranger Battalion Minus.

We had 3rd Battalion Task Force 160. And we had unlimited access to an 8-10 squad. It was a wonderful task force. That's where I really fell in love with the 8-10s to do that mission. And we were able to accomplish the mission. That was a good one. We had a couple problems as the SCS. as well, but it was, again, a great, great deployment.

There was a pretty sizable firefight that one of the squadrons got into, wasn't there? Yeah, Bargewells. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, a good friend of mine, rest of peace. But he, yeah. And I remember that night well when they getting them back, yeah. Yeah, any recollections from that that you can share? there's always controversy about do you extract somebody or not, right?

Sure. And I don't want to get into the decision-making process on that. But it's a good example. You've got to trust the guy on the ground. If he says, I need to be extracted, you've got to believe him. We had one of the SAS guys on this show a ways back, and he told the story about how, you know, Bravo 2-0, all know what happened to them and they had to E&E.

He said there's another team that went in and the team sergeant on the ground saw that the terrain didn't support a reconnaissance mission. It was just flat in every direction. They weren't expecting that. And he made the call to abort the operation. And that was very controversial, he said at the time, because there's a very, there's a lot of pressure for these guys to go out on operations. And that was a very controversial thing.

But in retrospect, he was the guy. on the ground then he absolutely made the right decision. Yeah, and I can understand it. So take the higher commands position. It was very difficult to insert. It had to be at night. We didn't have the night vision capabilities that we had them, but not like we have today.

You have to understand that. I mean, I just go, and I thought about that because I remember in Vietnam, bringing in helicopters at night, no GPS, no nods, or in the middle of a monsoon. And you would talk them into an LZ by voice on your PRC 77 radio, by noise, and a postage stamp LZ. Think about that in a minute. To pick up a wounded guy or drop supplies, ammo, whatever. So in this case, going in that deep for us, it was over 200 kilometers one way.

Yeah. So you're in danger in a crew on the assumption to some people, and you can understand why they would have an assumption that they really have to get out or not. I had to send a Black Hawk in to get a sick guy out. Didn't have to, but I made a decision to do that in a plant, and it crashed in a sand dune right outside the base coming in and killed everybody. So I understand that decision-making process how hard it is. And summon questions, do we evacuate this unit or not?

Now, I heard the radio calls. I knew that it was in the rest, but it's a tough decision. That's what you get, I guess, while you wear the wreck. But I can see where the SES, they ran on the same issue. But that team probably would have been rolled up in that kind of terrain. So it was a good decision to get up. Yeah. So after Desert Storm, you are already slated to go and be the regimental commander.

Correct. What was that like being the RCO? Now, what year is this? Do we have three Ranger battalions by this time? Yes, we must. Yeah, we have three Ranger Battalions. Roger that. We don't have like the big support battalion I have now, the dogs.

Yeah. They don't have all that, which I think is great. We didn't have all those vehicles. But I was the seventh command of the Ranger Regiment, which was quite an honor. Because number one was Darby, number two was Merrill, number three was Downing, number four, stringham. Yeah, six was Kurnan. I'm trying to think. Taylor was the other one, and then myself.

They're up to 22 or three, I think. But that was quite an honor. And, again, a great experience. my my my uh how do you make ranger training better it's not easy right um but it could be done and we did here here was how i had to start off of my mindset because we weren't at war but we had to prepare for a lot of things so i said to my office was i said look what's her area of operation you know looking at me like what a stupid question. But if you think about what the

Ranger area of operation is, it's the globe. Right. It's the whole world. You don't break it down regionally. It's like Delta. So who runs those pieces around the world are the Sanks, or now the combatant commanders, then they changed the name of it, which used to be Sanks at the time, right?

Commander-in-chief, whatever. Anyway, they, we didn't know them. They didn't know us that well. So in my mind, what we had to do is get a mindset of the sinks to say, not do I need rangers to do something in my war plan. The question is, how many rangers do I need? I wanted them to want us in every theater. To do that, we had to be innovative to set up exercises everywhere we could.

Every Marine Expeditionary Force also, First Beth. Atlantic, or second meth, Atlantic, first meth in West Coast, and then third meth in the Pacific. So Roosevelt Rhodes, second meth, 29 palms for first meth, Korea for third myth. Then we wanted Ucombe and one us. We wanted Southcombeau on us. We wanted sent comden one. So we set up exercises that we had no money for in all these places. And to do that, we had to go there and talk to him with Nader 3. and Sor Major say, look, we want to get involved in this operation. Like when I went to U-Com, it was easy because they had Dick Potter.

Oh, yeah, Dick Potter's great guy. Great guy. Good friend. And so he convinced U-Com to do an exercise. And they paid for everything. I couldn't afford all those airplanes to parachute in a battalion here and there. Every battalion would go a couple times to a different place. Padawawa, Canada.

Then they had their special force. you know, special ops command up there or special forces community. Korea, just all over. And to get our name out or the word out, the Rangers are here. We're part of your team. You need us for your fight. So that was the philosophy. And I had really good guys at the commands higher than me that had supported the hell out of me. Like Steiner is a good example.

All those guys helped. And so the Rangers was, regiment command was a great, great command. I mean, I just was lovely. So at the time it sounds like it was, a lot of it was trying to sell the regiment to the big army, so to speak. Yeah, so, yeah, the big army, but the, but remember now, also these joint commands. and also the Marine Corps. Marines loved us. Really?

That's surprising. It is. It is. But, you know, I had like 29 fire support guys from Lejeune that worked for us in the regiment. Wow. For support. Then you had Anglico. You had, you know, battleships.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You know, we parachuted in with live, live ammo from Savannah, Georgia, into Kuwait, right after Desert Storm. as a show of force mission with seven C-141s, all our air support in a live fire. It was a battalion life fire. It's great. That all came from the Eisenhower and the F-18s.

I mean, there were marine pilots. They were Marines doing, they did other support force on it. Same in Korea. Did the same thing on a team spirit exercise. Anything. Doesn't help to keep Rangers in the garage. I mean, you got to get them out. Yeah.

They're rambunctious a lot too, so you need to keep them busy. Were there any alerts or call-ups or any other like memorable experiences from your time as the RCO? Regrettably not. That broke my heart too because I was hoping that, you know, we'd have a mission. Obviously, that was like some of the Afghan Iraq missions that we recently went through 20 years. we had some contingency ones yes but nothing happened and then the next stop for you was the deputy at socom yeah deputy commander ee usa sock

okay yeah and that and there were a couple things went on I had to go down to Guantanamo Bay with the with the Marine ready ready company and seal blue, red team or I can't remember which one it was. And AFSAC, the 53 is to evacuate the embassy in Haiti. But that was called off at the last minute. We trained at Guantanamo Bay to get ready for that.

And then it broke my heart also not to be able to help in Somalia because they had just left the regiment when third bat went over, you know, the company did third bat in Battalion Minus with Delta. And I remember Garrison, the J-Soc commander called me and said, come on over. He didn't know he was going to have to get forced out of there to leave, you know, and they drew down. But, uh, uh, uh, use of sock was just to help me out a bit, you know,

just to learn about. the Usasak requirements because they do the admin log for the for like the Rangers and the other, you know, Delta whatever where J-Soc

is a combatant commander to do it. Usesak is the support, there's all the support and training and everything. So it helped me understand that a lot better than I knew before. And then there's maybe a bit of a homecoming going back to

Germany where you kind of started off patrolling the hills with your dad and his A team. Yeah, I went back to Bombberg, a little north of there, but yeah, I was an assistant division commanded for the third infantry division, Rock of the Marne. And I realized that I had missed something along my career as an infantry guy, soft guy. I probably in sophomore than infantry, but still my infantry most, a lot of the time, and all of a sudden I'm in a heavy, heavy infantry division and realized they had never been in an American tank. I've been in a Russian tank, you know, like PT76 is in Vietnam,

but I've never been in one of our own tanks. So I had a big learning curve. And luckily the DISCOM commander helped me out quite a bit on the maintenance requirements and that. And I had a great division commander, General Holder, who ran Leavenworth later on and wrote 3.0, you know, the manual on maneuver. No, on operations, 3.0 operations.

And he taught me about the maneuver and all that. He was in Desert Storm as a Cav commander, a very good, very good leader. and he taught me everything about heavy stuff that he could. So I started off as the ADCS, which is support, and then I became the ADCM for maneuver. So that was a great learning experience, and I got an appreciation for the heavy side

a little bit better than I knew before because I had missed all that in my past experience. And then you took command of first infantry division. I did, but back to the three, One other thing, though, is I got to do a partnership for peace operation in Ukraine, working with Ukrainian prior just recently Soviet heavy unit. And so that helped me out what Holder did that trained me. But also now that I go back to Ukraine doing these medical operations,

training medics and EOD guys, I understood the Ukrainians a lot better. So it helped me out quite a bit. But you're right. So then I came back to the Pentagon. My only tour there, Desops, did that for a while. It was a good job being a Pentagon, even though I hated it, the Pentagon it is.

But it was operations mobilization of readiness, so it can't be dead for a job at a Pentagon. And learned a lot there as well, because I didn't know anything about the big army in that regard. and the big red one the history of that is phenomenal and again I didn't understand that until I prepped and went to that command and what was very interesting about being a division commander there almost immediately went down to Bosnia, Herzegovina.

as the third rotation that they had to run test force Eagle. And that was quite an experience. We had, I think, 27,000 soldiers, including the, I think it was 14 nations that were on our team. You had a French sector, you had a British and you had US. And of course, we had the US sector. And that was a tremendous tour, And it was peace enforcement, thank goodness, not peacekeeping. Big difference. Chapter 6 and chapter 7, big difference. So we had to use force we did.

Any times that stand out for you where you did have to go guns hot? Yes. So a couple times we had to shoot tires out on vehicles moving. Special police and derelicks up to cause riots. or overthrow mayors and different things that they were doing. See, the Dayton Accords covered the military, but they didn't cover the special police very well. So that gap is where they did all their black marketing,

all their abuse to other factions, whether it be Croatians or Muslims. And that sector, most of the special police, it was Muslims and Serbs. The Birchko riots happened then. That was a very bad time. time. That one, we had, I remember Apache hit by fire.

I remember one of our outposts by the bridge there was almost overrun. I had a pretty company commander, give him a order of fire. He had to. We did fire on some windows where snipers were in and the buildings. we had to seize a lot of equipment, search stuff. A couple of things that we did that I want to get into for the public. Yeah. One thing I found that was invaluable is that they had special forces out over there

working some of their teams on some of the missions that they had. And I knew some of the guys obviously very, very well. So I incorporated them quite a bit of my operations in my sector, which helped us prep certain areas we're going to do things. But, you know, we'd have things where they would have a riot and they would, with Molotov cocktails, catch mechanized vehicles on fire and you'd tell your partner country, I won't mention the country. You know, you can't fire. That is a threat of death.

You can, by rules of engagement, you can engage. They wouldn't do certain things. So they'd have to use an American unit to run tanks over cars or whatever we had to do to suppress the riots because they were using deadly force. During a big red one time, I had remember the hostages taken up in Macedonia. and three, three, uh, cavalry troops taken hostage

on patrol. So that took some time getting them back. Um, I don't know if you remember that. I don't. I don't either. Yeah.

So what happened is, you know, it's kind of an interesting thing. There's different maps. We work it off three different kind of maps. The borders aren't all the same. Just, who may,

made the maps and who honors what. But it was a very interesting time there. That's after Bosnia, that's during Kosovo. And we had the sector down there. And that's where when we went from Blue Helmet, that was a peacekeeping, that peace enforcement, to a peace enforcement. So you went from Blue Helmet to Kevlar.

Now, we didn't have all the, equipment they needed to work you know peace enforcement so we had to move some stuff down there quickly but anyway we had a cavalry patrol vehicle patrol they were ambushed three guys were taken hostage and it took a while to get them back jesse jackson believe or not was the one that uh went to bill grade survey to argue about getting the guys released we met them in croatia and they got out but that could have went bad. Very interesting tour in regards to walking, but, you know, he spent a lot of time going down once a month

walking on patrol with the squad on the border. They had a tough go at it. It's one of those situations where you've got to tell you guys, look, we've got a lot of rules and engagement. You have to honor them. You know, there's no war crimes here. you know, watch civilians. You got to really be careful.

You know, you do what you have to do. I said, if you're in a bind and you've got to make a decision as a corporal, you're going to take care of the guy in your right and your left. You made the decision and executed and I'll back you up. I mean, because people put some very tough situations like that. You guys know that. Definitely. It's not easy.

That's the only thing you can really do because in a second or two, decisions have to be made in life or death. and you can't pull out a card and read 13 rules of engagement. If you recall during that time, we had Pristina Airfield, where the Russians came out of Bosnia, came down and took the airfield, they would let the Brits or anybody else in there. I don't know if you remember that.

There's a big standoff, I remember. I do remember that part. Yeah, a big standoff. And some other stories I'd love to tell you, but I really can't. But one thing that I can tell you is that we were ordered to, do something about the Russians and Pristina. There's a lot of talk about a big fight, all that. We ended up taking one Black Hawk, flew up, landed, got surrounded.

And everybody thought we were crazy, but I actually had a plan because I knew the commander that was on the ground for my intel guys that I worked with in Bosnia. Because I had that, I commanded 3,000 Russians in Bosnia. 3,000 Russian paratroopers. And those are the guys that took Pristina Airfield. And because of that relationship, not because I was tough, just that relationship, we were able to make a deal with them after a couple shots of vodka and some slices of fat. You know, the typical Russian way they shrink,

made a deal that the Brits, the Germans, Italians, can use that airfield. They could be in charge of it. They could even have their flag higher on the terminal than we do. But you've got to make a deal with these guys because we're both superpowers and you've got to behave like one. And by the way, your battalion commander

that's down here in Kosovo with the force, gave the Germans and Italians a lot of crap about following orders. I understand day after tomorrow you're going to go to see our American commander. You see that American commander, you better salute. You better do whatever he tells you to do because he's working. You're working for the Americans. And we're both the superpowers.

And I'll make sure you have wood for your stoves. And if you need food and water and all that, that, oil, whatever you need, I'll take care of it. But don't screw around with the American commander, do what he tells you. And we got it solved. But, you know, it wouldn't happen, I don't think, if we didn't have that relationship where they worked for us in Bosnia. Because we established, you know, we parachuted, even I was in a leg unit.

We parachuted together, stuff like that. I don't know if you ever used a Russian parachute. I wouldn't recommend it. I know. Yeah. Anyway. So tell us about kind of the run up to your retirement. And it sounds like you've stayed quite busy after your military career.

Yeah. So I got out of my own accord. I didn't have to get out. It was a tough decision for me. I spent an old night with my dad talking about it because he was my main mentor. Sure. All those years, he was in 40. two years.

But I had young kids. I mean, you know, most of my peers, their kids are in college or whatever doing civilian work or in the military themselves. My kids were in grade school. So, and they wanted to send me all, that's one reason. The other is they wanted to send me back to the Pentagon. I didn't really want to do that. I wanted to go to Fort Benner or something and train lie lie lieutenants and

sergeants and stuff like that. I was probably spoiled. I got to admit it. And I just thought it was the right time to leave. And I did. It was not an easy decision. But that's why I did it. I don't regret it except for 9-11.

And when 9-11 happened, in my mind, I thought I should be leaving some kind of an attack on Baghdad. I felt that, you know, maybe I didn't make the right decision. But what if I was in a Pentagon and couldn't go on the field? That'd be even more miserable. True. So it's probably a good decision. I mean, it's an incredible career from what, 1968 or 69 to about 2000.

Is that in the ballpark? Yeah, I actually, I actually went to the 82nd and 70, like January 70 of, and then retired at the beginning of, 2000. Yep. With conventional infantry, special forces, airborne, Ranger, Delta, back to conventional infantry. I mean, it's incredible. Tell us what you've been up to since retirement. You've mentioned training. You've mentioned going and working with the Kurds, working with the Ukrainians. What's keeping you busy since retirement? Well, actually, I ran a McCormick Foundation in Chicago for nine years. And that was a great

transition from the Army. Because a lot of people say, how can you be a philanthropist when you used to run around the military killing people? Well, as you know, in the military, you don't kill that many people. 90% of your time, you're protecting people. You're doing that type of work.

You're not killing people. And you're doing something for humanity, which is what a philanthropist does on profit in a charity or whatever the case may be. Whatever you want to call it. So that was a good transition. And then I was on several boards and I went and ran a big medical company, 11,000 people, a clinical research organization here in Wilmington,

North Carolina. That was for the for-profit. So I went from government to nonprofit to for-profit. Then I ran two other medical companies after that. Then I started my Osprey Global Solutions Company, which does training in remote area logistics and medical work. I bring together tier one, mostly some tier two operatives, and we do things around the world, and also at a training facility outside of Wilmington, North Carolina, about an hour south of Fort Bragg. So the first, we did three major missions.

He did a lot of small ones, but the one major one was ICE is coming in Iraq, 2016 and 17 off and on, I went to Kurdistan and worked with the Peshmerga on some advice, but mostly in medical training. We brought supplies over plus medical training

because they didn't have anything. But remember, they're the only guys that held the line. So I loved them. And so we did that. And then we went to help to displace Christians from north of Mosul and a couple of the churches there, they were destroyed inside.

We brought over the bells, you know, church bells, big 300-pound bells. And so on. So one of the most memorable accounts I had was in 2017 on Easter. We had mounted two bells and two, one church about 800 years old. the other one, gosh, it had to be, it was older than that. Some say 1,100, I don't know, but it was old. And on Easter, all those families came back to church in that village. Every building was destroyed.

Every home was destroyed. But they went to church just north, just outside of Mosul, north Mosul. And they rang those bells and I know the ISIS could hear it, which was like, you know, one of those things. And they, and, because the persmeregribor reoccupied the area. You know, they kept advancing, just like the guys in the South with American advisors did. And so that was a good experience. And then after the airlift happened in Afghanistan, evacuating people, we were a little bit involved in that. But where it really got hard, we continued to work for two years on the ground evacuating HPTs,

you know, these high-value targets of ISIS, Taliban, al-Qaeda, or al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda, al-a-Qaeda network. That was hard. you can imagine from your backgrounds, the network required to evacuate people by ground out of country into other countries that are not so friendly either, right? Tajikistan, Pakistan, and Iran and move and hide others that stayed in country continuously for two years.

It sounds almost like a non-assisted recovery route, you know, like you're getting down to air fighter pilots back to friendly lines almost. Yeah, it is. And luckily, they had a couple underground railroad type things for Christians in the old days. And then there's some other means, but I want to get into it because it's actually that's still going on. But we never lost anybody. And, you know, it's not just getting a principal out. You've got to get the wife.

And usually, you know, the average is four kids per family. So there's six packs right there you've got to get out And you're going through several different areas of control of bad guys And people rattling on each other We even did want to buy small air and ground together out of country That was very tough I didn't think it would work but it did And it's because of the assets were so good

So that was and then Ukraine started So when the invasion happened in February 22, we were doing both. We were helping evacuate people out of the front lines in Ukraine, orphanages, elderly, and disabled to Western Ukraine or Romania, Slovakia, Poland, whatever. And then it transitioned into over the last several years. So now we've been operating about three and a half years over there. to trauma training T-T-T-TCCC, you know, medical training, and specialized EOD, not conventional wheat fields, slumfowl fields like that, big thousands of hectares. But villages that change control by Russians and Ukrainians,

where Wagner Group or Chesdians or other bad guys, you know, would put insidious booby traps, IEDs, whatever you want to call them, in soccer balls, dolls, refrigerators, baby cribs, terrible things. To terrorize the locals, you know, helping their EOD and those type of IDs. So that's been very rewarding. And we're supposed to go back over here pretty soon again for the 13th time.

So, I mean, I'd love to ask you the question, Dave. sort of what I asked you about your LERP experience in Vietnam, but now older, wiser, a lot of experience in the government, out of the government, the nonprofit space, the commercial space. Any big reflections, big takeaways that you'd like to share with people? A couple. So just like it's hard to do a mission, unless it's a very specific like a hostage rescue as an example. But even those, it's hard to do any kind of a military. I would start there. Military mission, unless it's joint, especially today, and it makes a heavy light and soft.

Or air, ground, and sea. It's some kind of combination. And if you have experience in those, you can understand it and do it better. Just like I told you about the aviation and ground, that experience helped me on a lot. Water up, the seals. and Delta and Rangers, they're working together. That helps you out a lot.

And a tank, sometimes you want a sniper at a point, checkpoint, over watching it. Sometimes you want to in one tank. Depends what you want to accomplish. Kinetic, non-kinetic, whatever. So that, that makes really help me out in the military. And I look at the civilian life the same way. The experience in the government,

experience working in the nonprofit, sector. You know, nonprofits are all over the world. These international organizations are everywhere. You're going to bump into them. You know that. When you're doing government ops. And then if the for-profit, understanding the economic requirements. So when you go to war college as an example, they teach in doctrine the acronym D-I-M-E. I think it's changed a little bit. But just use that. Diplomacy. information with slash intel, military and economics.

We don't always follow that, doctorate. I don't think we did in the last administration. But if you don't combine that all the time, you're at a disadvantage. So as an example, what's in the United States of America, I look at the conis here in the United States as a rear area of operations. Then you look at the close fire. you look at the deep fight.

Just like Ukraine has got the close fight with the trench line, the deep fight, the blowing up strategic bombers, the blown up bridges, the Black Sea fleet, whatever. And their rear areas, of course, their homeland was not occupied and protected that with first responders and everything else from the gun strikes, sheaed missiles, etc. In the United States, we have actually the same problem. first we had the open border

so now we got sleeper cells in the United States and stuff that you probably wouldn't have you're going to always have some but not like we have now but what is the biggest vulnerability on a war machine if we go to war of China or Russia

or the American people just a way of life and that is first medical with the amount of drugs that are made overseas and controlled by China and some other

places and rare earth minerals and rare earth elements the magnesium the graphite the nickel the copper the germanium guillium all the stuff that's for night vision goggles that's for x-ray machines and cat scans in hospitals the stuff for the f35 fighter your cell phone your computer the batteries and whatever we are on our ass on that For the last four decades, China's monopolized that. Now, haven't been a assistant division commander for support, without certain things, you can't run tanks and APCs and helicopters and all that. Well, it's the same thing in the industrial military base of the United States.

You cannot do it without access to these raw materials. There's been six presidential directives put out, on this subject I'm talking about. And we're just now trying to get our stuff together. So the United States of America is in a tough position right now. You know, China just cut off, I think, seven rare earth elements. They don't have to fire a missile. They just pull the lever.

You think COVID was bad on what happened to the general public. I mean, if you had something like this go with the medicine supplies, it'd be like 5X. Yep, yep. And, you know, the industrial base to make all these drones and Patriot missiles and all the things that we have to do, you cannot do without raw materials. So we're playing catch up right now in secure supply lines.

This is a big deal. So in a civilian, I'm working on some of these projects in D.C. and other plate with other companies on this matter. And I didn't realize, I've been doing for about three years, three years ago, just how serious it is. Now, luckily, President Trump's doing something about it.

But you just can't dig a mind and build a process and plant and all that overnight. So it goes back to readiness. No difference than the Army. It's readiness. Country has to be ready, just like the military has to be ready. So this is a big deal. And I'm trying to contribute where I can. And American people have to be aware of.

Dave, is there anything else I failed to ask? Anything else that you'd like to mention before we wrap up tonight? No, I think that, you know, a show like yours and the others is just another way to get some awareness out and some opinions. You know, not everybody's going to agree with what I say, that something will agree. But it's good to share this, and I appreciate what you guys do, and I think it's really important. And I appreciate, you know, the opportunity to be on with you. Yeah, thank you, Dave. We really appreciate your time and spending your evening with us.

It's been a great widely all-encompassing interview here as we went through as much of it as we could. Tell folks out there where they can find you if they're interested in working with Osprey Global Solutions or some of your other endeavors. Where can folks go to find you? Yeah, so there's a website of Osprey Global Solutions. They just go to that website and it talks about some of the stuff, contact numbers and that. And again, you know, we operate in our training site. We do a lot of R&D there, drones, robots, tied into satellites, armament, a lot of medical training, life tissue training, things like that that units do that makes a difference. A lot of civilians, we rehearse everything here before we go overseas, just like you would in the Ranger Regiment.

You know, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, and then we go. and it's 95% veterans. So we'll have some links down the description of this podcast that you guys can go and check out. Anything, Dave? No. Thank you so much for your time tonight. We really appreciate it.

I appreciate you. Thank you so much. Feel free to stay in touch. And everyone else, we will see you guys next time. Thanks for joining us tonight. Hey, guys, I want to tell all of you today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the Teamhouse podcast, the Aiz On podcast, and the high side news outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor.

The newsletter is going to be once a week. It's going to come into your inbox, and you're going to get the most current podcasts on Aiz On and the Team House and whatever's topical or current on the high side. So it's another way for us to get the information out to you as social media algorithms are pretty iffy and you never really know what you're going to get. So this is a once-a-week email. It'll slide into your inbox and it will have, you know, the greatest hits of that week. It's really good, man. I'm checking it out. The website for it is teamhousepodcast.com slash join. Teamhousepodcast.com slash join.

You go there and you enter into your email list or you enter your email into the little thing on the website and you're good to go. and that'll be it. So we really appreciate your support and hope you'll consider signing up. Where's the link? The link will also be down in the description if you're looking for it there. And that's teamhousepodcast.

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