The Team House - Green Beret and Special Forces Historian Chuck Woodson, Ep. 58

Episode Date: September 5, 2020

Chuck Woodson served with Special Forces in Vietnam, having joined the military reluctantly because his Dad was a career Navy man who ran a tight ship at home. However, he caught the Special Forces bug in Vietnam and after a break of service came back for more rising to the rank of WO4. In our interview we discuss his career, adventures, and his research of Special Forces history including many interviews conducted with the founding members. Support the stream on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouse SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Okay, guys. I think we are honest to goodness live this time episode 58 of the team house. I am Jack Murphy. I'm here with co-host Dave Park. We are here with our special guests tonight, Chuck Woodson. Live now. Oh my gosh. It happened. So a little bit of background, just real quick. Chuck's about to have a heart attack. We were out of the studio for like six months because of COVID.

We went remote. Little by little, we've been back. We have been improving the microphones, trying to improve the audio and video quality, improving the lighting, building up a little bit of a set here, trying to class this thing up a little bit. I might have to dial down the light a little bit. I actually look a little too pink. But hey, that's a work in progress.

at least we're actually streaming this time. So Chuck, he was a draftee. He served in Vietnam. He was down in Denang, and he went on to have a long Special Forces career, and he's also a Special Forces historian. He has interviewed a lot of the original members of Special Forces. So we're really excited to have him here today.

Chuck, thank you so much for your time tonight. Thank you so much for being patient with us as we go through the paces here. happy to be here and thanks for the invitation and I'm happy to participate and support your program thank you so much um you know we kind of start off the show a lot of times just kind of a real simple question like who are you where did you come out of how did you find your way into the military how did that come about well uh that's a good question I was in high school in the Monterey, California, Central California on the coast, Monterey Bay Area, graduated from Monterey High School, started going to a local community college,

and at the time, this was in the early 60s, early to mid-60s, I got a draft notice because I was fooling around in college. I wasn't taking it seriously, and at that time, if you, you could get a deferment while you were going to college, but if you were just fooling around in college, they said, no. How did they know if you were fooling around or if you're taking it seriously? They somehow had some tabs on me, and I was fooling around. So I got a draft notice in 1965 and was asked to show up,

I think we went up to San Francisco, as I remember, and went through some medical examination stuff. And I remember my dad. My dad was a Navy man. He was 25 years in the Navy, and he said, son, I told you, join the Navy. And I said, yeah, you did, Dad.

I remember, but I didn't really want to join any of the services at the time. And so I was drafted into the Army, ended up at Fort Art, California, 1965, basic training, very unhappy, drafty, wanted to because the Monterey Bay area is my home and my hometown and I wanted to just sneak out the window and cave. Sure. Of course, at that time, you know, there was, we had, I think we had some kind of a, I can't

remember what the, what the, some kind of a disease or something that we were forced to stay in the barracks and we were isolated. I can't remember what it was now. But anyway, so we were cut off and I was drafted, 1965, June, 1965, basic training, trying to flunk, tried to flunk the entrance exam, wasn't cooperating, my head was in the urinal or I was in KP, I was that guy doing all that stuff for about the first week or so until a drill instructor took me inside and said, you know, I've been watching you. and you know you're you're not dumb because you're thinking about stuff and you're rebelling and

what's going on with you and actually at the time I was so upset I started crying like a bit I want to be in the service and I and he was listening to me in his little room at the end of our our basic training barracks and he said to me he said you know he says I'll tell you something you're here. There isn't anything you can do about that. Right. What if we reverse this whole thing and what if I told you that you had some opportunities if you started performing and he said, and he's the one that mentioned special forces?

He said, you know, there's a unique unit in the Army and he started talking to me about special forces. And I'll be damned if I was like, wow, those guys sound cool. Yeah. He said, now you've got to retake the test and you've got to, you know, start performing with the training and stuff. But he said, this could turn around and this could give you some choices. And I'll be damned if that Special Forces recruiters showed up at our basic training barracks. And I remember he was in, he was in Tiger Fatigue. He was in Tiger Fatigue's, had a beret on.

And he was standing in front of us and he was giving us one of these, you know, know like probably most of you guys wouldn't make it with special forces and you know it's not the kind of thing you know reverse psychology right you know and I just he got me hook line and sinker man wow that is the coolest guy ever saw and that sounds like something I want to do and so I signed up I performed the rest of the basic training I was one of the top in the program and ended up being assigned to special forces out of basic training and set my entire career on an entirely different path. In fact, that decision and that interface with that drill instructor changed my whole life

from that point off. Sure. And, you know, it's very interesting. You're the first person we've had on the show that had that resistance to the military, I think, you know, that didn't sort of dream of it. But I also think that it's something that is more common than people acknowledge, maybe not as common in an all-volunteer military like we have now, but people still sort of go through that at times.

And it just takes sometimes that one person to sort of set you straight, you know? What was it, do you know what it was, that was your reluctance to be in the service? Was it having grown up around it? Was it the war and not wanting to be there? I mean, obviously it wasn't that because special forces drew you in. No, yeah. You know, it wasn't the common things that you think about back at that time. I think the fact that having been brought up with a Navy chief petty officer who had a specific way you cleaned the bathroom, right at a specific way you did chores had a specific way and and i just i have been brought up with the military and so uh in high school i just in my thinking i thought that's the last thing i want to be

doing is going to the military because i have been in the military right right yeah you've been in basic training for 17 years exactly so i didn't have anything about you know uh the war or any of that kind of stuff. In fact, I ended up volunteering not only for jump school and special forces, but I also volunteered to end up to go to Vietnam. So it wasn't those things. It was just the idea at my immature age of accepting what the military might do for me, which, by the way, looking back, I really need it. Sure. So it turned out to be a great thing for me. And I'm so thankful. looking back to that drill sergeant

that took the time to say, you know, there's something about you that's not ringing true with your whole performance thing. Right. That turned me around. It was great. Do you remember, was it, do you remember specifically or what it was that caught, was it just him taking the time to talk to you,

or was it his description of special forces and what that might be? Do you remember what it was that kind of created that shift for you? I don't think it was just one thing. I think it was the combination of him taking time to talk to me. And when he said Special Forces, the things that got me were, as he talked about these small teams, doing these, I can't remember the terms he used. Of course, I think of clandestine, all this stuff.

But I don't think he was using those terms. But he was talking about, like, you know, the sneaky Pete stuff that they did, that they think outside the box, and they operate in these small teams. and those kinds of things just rang my bell. Right. Wow. No, that sounds interesting.

But he said to me, he said, you have to be able to qualify for this. So this isn't just a given that you're going to, you know, be able to get right in. You're going to have to perform at a level that says you're exceptional to be selected. And he got that. So when I, after I left that thing, I start thinking, okay, you want me to perform? You want me to, you know, I remember taking the test over. Of course,

I tried to fork the test, so that wasn't hard to do better on the test. Right. But, you know, the PT and the training and all that stuff, I just, I went out of my way to not only perform well, but kind of outperform, you know? I was, I was, I was driven after that. That's it. So how did that work out as far as, like, the selection? at the time and you know going out to camp mccall i mean it was a whole different world back in what we i think it was 65 right yeah six well i got there in 66 uh by the time i went through a it and jump school i got there i think early 66 or late yeah early 66 i got there and uh i remember uh i remember when we arrived we literally they put us on a bus from jump school to brag and there was a

bus load of us and and I remember the bus had all these guys and we didn't know each other. I think there was a couple of us that knew each other that were SF guys are a potential going to be as a guys. But every, all the rest of the bus was 80 second airborne. So this bus pulls up, it's O Dark 30, smoke bomb hill, you know, we arrive in front of the 80 second airborne and this big old badass senior NCO jumps on the bus. All right, you, get your rest of the bird. We're like, holy shit. Our life is about to end here,

and we're all grabbing our rucksacks, or not our rucksacks, but our, what do you call, duffel bags, grabbing our duffel bags and trying to keep us off that bus. And the first thing he had us, we're all in the front-lating rest position, all of us off the bus, in front of the 82nd Airborne. And, you know, I push them up, God damn. And we're in our, as I remember, I think we're in our greens,

I remember. Yeah. But we weren't in our PT stuff. Right. We're down there pushing up the ground and, you know, scared shitless. And the bus driver comes up to the big sergeant. He says, hey, Sergeant, so-and-so, he says,

listen, I'm supposed to be taking some guys over here to smokebomb Hill. And he go, what are you talking about? He goes, well, I've got some guys that are supposed to go to Smokebom Hill. And he's like, what? He goes, you know, are some of you guys, going over to, I can't remember what he called it, but it wasn't a positive. And some of us, there was a, you know,

a handful, a couple handfuls of us like raising our hands, you know, from the ground. And he goes, get the hell out of my forehead, get your shit and get back on that bus, you know. And I'm like, holy shit. So we're grabbing her shit again and scrabbling back on that bus. And I remember at that time thinking,

I never forgot this, I'm thinking, if this is the 80-second airborne, what are these next guys going to be like? I'm like, okay, because the bus, you know, wasn't that far from the 82nd Airborne to Smokebom Hill. And so we pull up in front of there, and I had my duffel bag, and I was like, before this guy even opens his mouth, I'm going to be off this goddamn bus,

and I'm going to be ready to go. And here comes this SF guy on the bus, and he goes, he goes like this. He goes, oh, my God, you guys must be exhausted. He goes, you know, you've been up all night, and you've been, you know, and this real calm, calm voice, and he goes, you know, I'll tell you what, he says, grab your gear and come on with me. I said, you're probably hungry, too. He says, Jesus Christ, he goes, you know, we got your rooms all made up. They literally had our rooms, our beds made. Our rooms were all ready for us. They held the goddamn cafeteria open, the mess hall,

and it was open. We got to eat. He goes, and by the way, he goes, tomorrow, take the day all, get yourself, you know, situated. We got some paperwork you got to do. And I kept waiting for, okay. This can't be that, you know. He's setting us up. But it was just the opposite of the 80-second airborne. And I never forgot that welcome.

I never forgot that welcome. I guess it was good motivation to make sure you pass the training and didn't get sent back to 82nd. Exactly, exactly. So what did special forces training consist of what MOS were you, was given to you or did you select? How did the kind of doling out of MOS's and assignments kind of work back in those days? Well, the one thing was, and I think it was one of the reasons they accepted me looking back was they needed radio operators in Vietnam. They were short radio operators.

And so they were looking for radio operators. So I think, you know, our proficiency tests and all the things we took for SF, I think we're looking for guys that were capable. I'm talking about draftees now. That was the only time that I know that SF was grabbing draftees. And I think they needed radio operators and they're looking for guys that were going to be proficient with code and all that kind of stuff. And so I didn't have a choice. It was, I was a radio operator. That was the path I was on from the time they had me in or they accepted me.

So, so at the time they were just, you know, they were hurting for radio operators. I'll take care of. No, it's okay, Dave. Don't worry about it. And then you said you volunteered for Vietnam. Oh, and before that, back in the day, I mean, it was all Morse code, too. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And let me tell you, Morris Code and I weren't best of friends. I got in and that whole ditty-dum-ditty stuff and my brain was like, you know, it was hard for me.

And I reached this point where I was at, I can't think how many groups a minute, but it was, but it was, you want me, keep going? Yeah, keep going. He's just working with the light over here. Oh, okay. So, so, so I was having a tough time, and we had to be like, I think we had to have between 15 and 18 groups a minute or something at the time. And I was, I reached this point where I was in like between 10 and 13, and I just couldn't get it. And my whole class had moved on, and they kept me there, and my brain was like, you can't do it. I mean, you've reached your limit. Right. And at the time, I, in the meantime, all my friends and buddies that I'd been with so far in the course had moved on,

and I was still back there with the class behind me at this 13 or 15 or whatever it was. Uh-huh. And I remember this sergeant at the time, and he was, he was telling me, he goes, you know, he goes, I'll teach you a trick. And I remember he was an old SF guy, been around a long time, and he says, I'm going to teach you a little trick. And the trick is, I'm going to put you at 18 to 20, and we're going to skip where you're working. Because I was at this 13, 15, you know, I was just hammering this thing. And he jumped me up to this faster speed. And at first I'm like, my brain's like, okay, no comprendo.

I had no idea what this is. But pretty soon, I started to pick up these characters and stuff at this faster phase. And I'll be damned if that didn't help me go back and pass. I went back to almost 10, and then I went up to 12, and then, you know, 13, 14, 50,

you know, and it was funny because he pushed me way up beyond what I could comprehend. And my brain started adjusting or something. It was weird. He kind of tied you to the truck to teach you how to sprint, right? I don't remember him threatening my life, but he was like, you know, there's a waste. Let me teach you this little trick. Right.

It was so funny the way he did that, and I'll be damned if it didn't work, and then I ended up in a class behind me, and then graduated, and I was fortunate for a couple of things, number one, this guy, and there was Ed Coffey, who was one of the instructors, at training group and Ed Coffey ended up going to Vietnam and actually being killed in Vietnam when I was over there. He was my mentor and he worked with me with the hand-to-hand and the martial arts stuff and and the operations planning and tactical stuff and all that stuff. He really mentored me through that whole thing and was a reason that I got through training group

And then when I finished training group, I think Jack was asking, well, how the hell did you end up going to volunteer for Vietnam? And when I graduated, most of the guys, they didn't send you right to Vietnam on a training group because we weren't ready to go to training. Right. We needed team time and a lot of other training and stuff. But they were short radio operators. And I remember this big black E7, big black sergeant that was handling assignments. And I went in there and he says, okay, Woodson, we got a problem with you. And I thought, oh shit.

He says, well, you're only in for two years. You're a draft team. And you were supposed to re-up. And you haven't re-uped. And you only have, you know, a little over six months left. And he goes, I don't know what to do with you. Now get your ass down there and re-up. or you gotta make some decisions

and i'm standing there thinking you know what no one no one ever mention anything about re-en-up to me i had i didn't have that discussion right he said so here's your choice re-up and he goes frankly i'll send you anywhere in the world you want to go or

uh... i'm putting you back into school god damn it i'm just gonna cycle you back into one of the schools and you're just gonna spend the rest of your or your career here in the school or he goes i got a third off for you. He goes, if you don't want to re-up or you're not sure you want to re-up yet, he goes, I'll tell you what, you extend for six months, and I'll send you to Vietnam.

And I was sitting there, I remember standing in front of him thinking, okay, I could re-up, which at the time I didn't know I wanted to do. I sure as hell didn't want to go back to school. And I thought, go to Vietnam. Why not? That sounds great. You know, six months. what the hell, you know, I can hold my breath for that long. So I signed that paper, and he was so excited. And he had me go home, and this was the end of 66. I went home for a month or a month and a half or whatever, and then I got on a plane, and right out of training group,

ended up in Vietnam with a whole other big challenge as far as comms go, but ended up in Vietnam after that individually. When you went home for that period of time, how did your... How did your folks sort of respond? Like, did they know you'd gone this special forces route? Did they know what that was? You know what, honestly, I don't think they really knew what even special forces was at the time. I remember my dad going, you really missed it.

I told you should have gone in the Navy, you know. And my mom was kind of like, well, you know, you did this special forces thing, and she goes, how do you like it? And I said, well, so far, you know, I like it. It challenges me and they push me. And, of course, that time I spent at Bragg, I mean, those guys worked me pretty thoroughly. So when I was coming out of Bragg, I was a whole other guy than the guy that went into Bragg. Sure.

And, but I remember kind of being out of it because I've been in school all this time. I'm about to go to Vietnam. And the world around me at home had no relationship to what, was going on, you know, in my world. So I was kind of like, I remember my dad was at the time he had retired and he was working in this, at this hotel, and their sewage system had broken. And he's down in a trench digging up the goddamn sewage system with poop and everything all around.

He goes, son, why don't you come and help me dig up this trench? And I thought, why not, you know? And I remember standing there and smelled. And I'm down there about to go to. Vietnam. I'm down there in a trench digging poop and I'm wondering what the hell am I doing? You know, shouldn't I be like

doing something else? Right. Besides this. But I was with my dad and I was a nice time spending with my dad but I'll never forget that being down in some galoshes digging poop before I went to Vietnam.

Well, you were in the shit before you were in the shit. Yeah, I got in the shit before I got it right but so then you were on your way to Vietnam when did you find out where you were going well I knew I was going from before I left I mean what part of NAM being when you knew what fire base you had I had no idea and I have to tell you guys when I got to Vietnam the radio operators were using what they called a speed key and and it's it's it's a as opposed to pushing a button and going, da-da-da-da-da-da-da, that, that, that, that. You're going left and right,

you know, with your thumb and your forefinger, and you're pushing this key, and the thumb is, is the dots, and the other side of your hand, the forefinger is the, is the dits. And they were doing 20, 22, 24 groups a minute, and I'm coming in at 18. And number one, I'm a, now understand, I'm a PFC in Special Forces. I'm arriving in Vietnam with no application of my training. I'm right out of training group. And I remember the senior guy at, I think the fifth group was at the Trang, as I remember, if I remember right, the C team.

But wherever the headquarters were, I was down there with the head of the comms guy. and he put me on the desk and started copying something, and I couldn't keep up with it. And plus the rhythm of that speed key was the whole different thing. And I said, he goes, I said, what the hell are these guys doing? He goes, what do you mean? And I said, I can't copy this. And he says, what do you mean you can't copy this?

And I said, I can't copy this. And he's looking at me. And I remember the junior NCO, the E7, was so pissed off. What the, are you doing here? We need radio operators. And they send this kid, what is you? Right out of high school or something that's chewing my ass off. And, of course, I couldn't, I couldn't copy the, I couldn't do the comms.

And so, thank God the senior guy goes, okay, he goes, first off, you know, we don't have PFCs here. You're the only PFC I've ever seen in Special Forces. He goes, secondly, we need somebody. can put on these teams. These teams need radio operators and you can't even operate as a radio operator. He says, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to stick you up at Danang, which was the B team at Danang for I-Corps. And I want you to spend some time and pick up your speed and get this speed key down. And so for the first couple of months, that's what I did. I mean, day and night, I'm doing code and practicing the speed key. And I did that for a couple of months

because I was worthless to him. Sure. I mean, did you notice gradual improvement? Because it was a system that you weren't used to using, so did it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was one of those things. You needed to listen to it. You needed to spend time with the key.

And it took me a couple of months. And thank God, I got it. And right after that, they sent me to an A detachment up in ICOR. I was at A103 in Geovac, which is a little burgh out in the... middle of nowhere, one of the camps. If you're familiar with, at that time they had these, I think they had, I don't remember how many camps they had, but all up and down, and they put them, they situated them in places

where they could keep either secure or keep track of Charlie and the NVA and the Ho Chi Men Trail. And if you've seen any of those maps and you see those things, all these eight camps were placed in these key locations where they put 12. of Americans and normally three companies of, in my case, it was two companies of Molting Yards and one company of South Vietnamese and then we secured that area and we watched what Charlie was doing on that piece of the Ho Chi Minh Trail that came down. Could you tell us a little bit about some of the other guys on your A team when you showed up over there and what type of people you were working with?

You know, that was funny. I showed up and they were like, they were just like, like the C-team was. Here comes this PFC kid, radio operator, to pick up the radio things for the team, and they were looking at me like, what the hell is this? You know, because they had never seen a PFC either,

you know, in Special Forces, and here I am, and luckily, Luckily, the team sergeant took me under his wing, and it was like I was his son. He goes, okay, first off, you know, because he had me pull up my rig, and he says, all right, let me see your harness and your rig and stuff. And I showed him, he goes, where'd you learn to do that? And I said, well, that's what we did at Bragg.

He goes, Jesus Christ, that isn't what you do out here. And, you know, he started. And then, of course, he took it all apart and rebuilt my thing and re-rigged the way I carried my 16 and issued me a shotgun and a whole bunch of other firearms i was like what the hell are you doing with all these firearms you go you'll see you'll see just give it time you know but you want to be proficient with all these things because i'd never fired a shotgun in combat i never carried i had a he issued me a walter ppk uh i think was nine millimeter to hide you know for a hidden weapon in my back and uh i thought why the hell would i

You know, I remember this little gun. I was like, Jesus Christ, this is like a sport gun. What the hell are you going to do with something like this? He goes, you just, you know, you just carry this around. I want you to shoot it, you know. And anyway, he took me under his wing and just became my mentor while I was over there and changed my whole thing with going out on patrols and working with the mountain yards and all the stuff that I was doing there in addition to my radio operator responsibilities.

And so you said you had two companies of Mottn Yards there? Yeah, we had, we were, the area we were in was the Ray tribe, which is spelled H-R-E, H-H, yeah, H-R-E, pronounced Ray. And they were, their little, fierce little fighters. I mean, they were brutal out there. And they did not want Charlie messing with their areas and their hands. and stuff like that and they were perfect because I remember when I went out on my first patrol and we got ambushed and I ended up diving on the road. We were just right outside the camp and we got ambushed on the way back in and I dove down

on the road, you know, and of course, you don't dive down on the road. Everybody's diving off to the side in the bushes and shit. And that's the first time everybody was no shit really shooting at me. I just went flat and I was frozen. I was scared shitless and I remember the, I think was the senior weapons guy that was out on patrol with me. And I remember pulling out my 45 because I was laying with my cheek down in the road, you know, and I was looking at him and he pulled out his 45 and he had been yelling at me,

and he'd get off the road, get off the goddamn road. What did he get off the road? And I just was frozen. I was scared. I was so scared and he had his 45 back and he was aiming at me. And I thought, and I looked in his eyes and I thought, shit, he's going to shoot. me. He's really no shit going to shoot me. I remember going to scramble off the road real quick and diving off the side of the road. But I was so scared, man. I mean, just, you know, having bullets

flying at you when you're a kid for the first time. Yeah, yeah. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and family resource network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them

on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. That's a sound like nothing else you've ever heard. And for me, that was my wake-up call. Uh-oh, I'm in the shit. I'm in the real shit now. So what was your team's mission in that operational area? I mean, was it just to pull security, keep the VC out?

Well, it was a combination of reconnaissance of what, the Ho Chi Minh Trail was doing. I called the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Of course, the trail was further back, but these little sprigs that came off of it were bringing supplies and men and, you know, troops, manpower going back and forth and et cetera. And so our job was to monitor what they were doing and keep track of them as well as secure the area that we had. We had, in our area we had these hamlets in and around us. And the VC were coming in and taking the young men. And they were kidnapping them. And they were threatening the lives of the chiefs of these hamlets.

And so our job was to secure that area. And our mission ended up being that we couldn't, in a wide out kind of an area, secure all that because we didn't have enough manpower. So we ended up trying to relocate them in and around. the camp where our our indirect fire in direct fire support which was

which was all come on brain mortars you know we had mortars and we could only range out so far right for fire support without calling in air so so we brought him in close enough that we could secure that area

and of course these people didn't want to be pulled out of their hamlets that they've been in all this time and move into the in and around the camp and and and and and this was the strategic hamletting yeah exactly exactly that's the term and so uh so it was tough i mean we literally had to force them out of their hamlets bring them in close and then we ended up burning uh burning their hamlets and oh yeah that didn't make friends that that uh that system of what they were using as support. So how did it, I mean, that must have been hell on you guys and the mountain yards who worked with

that you have to go to the civilian population and force them out of their homes. Yeah, yeah. I hated that. And from the first time that I was involved with relocating these people, and of course, Charlie would, when we started doing this relocation, and Charlie would come in and start ambushing and probing and stuff. And so we ended up in these, in these, these firefights. And in some cases with the civilians getting caught up in the middle of this stuff.

And it was a horrible experience for me. I loved the motoring yards. I stay in touch with some of the motoring yards here in the United States. And I loved them. I just developed a real deep love for these people. and I hated that. I used to go into the I used to go into the

hamlets and play with the kids because I, you know, we always have goodies, candy and all this stuff and I'd go in and I love playing with the kids and stuff. And so I had this relationship with the families and stuff and I hated that. How did that initiative turn out

in the end? Well, you know, it worked, but did it work. Right. You know, I mean, you know, we look back and we think, well, you know, I mean, when you read the history of SF and Vietnam and stuff, you say, well, you know what, it was successful. Well, yeah, it was successful, but it wasn't successful. And I think from a sustainability standpoint, it wasn't successful. Right.

I mean, from the immediate, you know, we're pulling those people out of Charlie's grasp and stuff like that. Yeah, that was successful. but that was not a good, that was not a good strategy for what we were doing, the way we're doing. And of course, you know, we can all sit back and armchair this, the whole Vietnam thing. But I think from a special forces standpoint, it was a solution that met an immediate goal. Right. And we look back and go, okay, that works. Right.

You know, Charlie can't, can't take that. but from the standpoint of looking at it in the broader sense, I'd have to say that wasn't a good one. Well, it's sort of unfortunate because you say that we can sit there and sort of armchair it now, but we can't really because Afghanistan and Iraq showed us that we still hadn't learned the lessons from Vietnam. Yeah, and our counterinsurgency doctrine to this day is, you know, like step. one safeguard the local population because otherwise they get driven into the hands of the enemy and we've tried to do that in different ways we had village stability operations in afghanistan we had the surge in iraq where we sent all these troops to try to exactly that safeguard the population

so they weren't going to al qaeda yeah i mean i i think me and you both have our opinions about it. Chuck, you were involved in special forces to continue to be from Vietnam to today. If you were to look at, I mean, did we learn lessons from Vietnam? I mean, why the hell do we keep doing the same thing over and over again? Well, you know, it's interesting because I've been fortunate to have the opportunity to have served after that period when I went I went back in in 1985 and then retired in 2006. And when I retired, I ended up in graduate school in 2013 when my late wife passed away. And from 2013 till this last December 2019, I've been in school full time.

And while I was in school, I was involved in, in, in a study of special forces. Now, looking at it academically, which I had never done, and it was a real eye-opener to me to, and by the way, I did a lot of interviews, and one of the guys I interviewed was David Petraeus, and having him talk about coin, you know, counterinsurgency operations, and how the impact of what he did with doctrine at the time that he was he did, he was he got involved with Iraq. And the look at, because he even wrote a paper, if you're familiar with this, he wrote a paper on Vietnam while he was in school.

And so he had that experience of studying what we did in Vietnam and what worked and what didn't work. And then looking at what was going on in Iraq, and even, you know, getting involved, I guess he did a little bit with Afghanistan. And you look at that, looking at, you know, when we go in. into, you know, in a coin type of operation, and we're dealing with a population, a culture, and we're trying to deny an enemy of taking over that population, what works and doesn't work. And so I got a chance to go back in and really study that with some very smart people that were looking at, you know, Afghanistan.

And I unfortunately, well, unfortunately, a lot of my friends go, Chuck, you didn't miss anything, not being in the sandbox. Trust me, buddy, that was a good one for you. However, you missed that. Good for you. But I didn't end up in the sandbox. But I ended up looking at some of the stuff that we were doing over there. And the whole, one of the Petraeus's big things was, and we didn't do this in Vietnam, we brought the population to us, and we remained in a secured area. populations around us, so they're kind of with us, but they're not with us.

We're not embedded with them. And when a Petraeus's thing says, we've got to be embedded. We've got to be a part of the communities. We've got to be like, I think he referred to the New York Police Department. You know, we've got to get a baton and walk the bead and get to know the businesses and get to know the neighborhood and let them get to know us and really live with them. And that was interesting because now how the hell we would have done that in Vietnam, I don't know. Right. It's also not going well for the New York Police Department right now.

I just want to put that out there. I probably shouldn't have brought that up from the New York Police Department. But you guys know what I mean as far as embedding yourself into the community. Right. And letting them get to know us and we get to know them and really be a part of that culture. and you know language and and studies of culture and and embedding with them are are our big things that for coin at least from an academic standpoint seems to make no make sense now i've not been on the ground in in afghanistan and so uh i don't even want to comment yeah what for people who want to

sort of study up on it and for people who who you feel have done it right in the past What resources, books would you recommend? What units or countries would you recommend studying? Well, you know, the, and of course, the Middle East is such a great, a great learning platform for us to look at and go, what's worked and what hasn't worked more recently. But those of us that are kind of sitting back now and we're looking at the world and what's going on in the world and we're thinking,

Okay, so what do we need to do in the future? How do we win these cultures and these populations to see things our way and be able to support them in a way that has some sustainable period of time? And not this, because one of the problems we have just, I'm going to say this so I get it off my chest, is our leadership, and I'm not commenting on the current leadership, just our, leadership in general country right makes the final decisions you know people go well you're in the army why didn't you guys do this and when you're in the army you don't make the decisions on necessarily where we are what we're doing where we are and and how we're how we're prepared for being where we are

one of the things that that I've had some discussions about some some academics is like you know there's special forces and you guys are all over the world you're in 80 countries and I said yes and that's one of our problems. Right. We're like a thin layer of butter all over the damn world and in some cases we're being misused, misdirected, we have the wrong missions. And in other cases they're expending stuff and one of the things I've always felt about

special forces is we're trained before we go in to study and prepare and learn and you know language and culture and all this stuff we do. before we go in. And we're pulling teams from one part of the damn world and putting them in the other part of the world. And we have this whole thing of, you know, let's put some SF guys in there and everything's going to be okay. Mentality. And that's, number one, that's not the answer anyway, but that sure isn't the answer for SF. And then you have these, between the State Department and our government leaders, these people don't even understand special operations. And they sure as the hell don't have a good grasp on these various areas in the world and the cultures and that kind of stuff.

And they want to throw something out, throw some money and throw some teams in there and then it's done. Right. And then they want to pull us out. Right. And leave people essentially. Exactly. Exactly. And you have that, don't get me going on this.

I just, I get so fired up. We'd like to get you going on this. the political leadership of the United States and how that leadership uses the military just burns my butt. One of the things I noticed, too, that I observe is wherever we send special forces, we train the indigenous population like right out of the Ranger Handbook in most cases. It's American infantry, American military tactics. And it's like, hey, this is a,

a tribal culture, this is a little clan, this is a militia in the Middle East. They don't have the table of organization and equipment that we have in the United States military. I mean, just for instance, our infantry tactics are predicated around having indirect fire, for instance. Yeah, and strong NCOs. And strong NCOs and air strikes. And we work in a joint environment with all this intel, everything else. you're training now a foreign population, a foreign militia, they don't have any of that.

They have guys wearing flip-flops with rusty Kalashnikovs. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Jack, was that a question? I was curious what your thought is about how we go around the world and we try to create like a mirror image of ourselves rather than tailoring the training towards that specific environment and that specific conflict. Right, right. And I guess what I would say to that is there isn't enough study and spending time.

One of the things that I came up with this concept that they actually want me to write and present to, Socom, with the idea of how do we solve this relationships with these different cultures long term? and my answer was, you know, you rotate these teams in and they're there for six months or they're there for a year or the length of time that you leave them there. And then you rotate them. And so the culture there is like finally getting to know the team leader and the team sergeant and the various team members and they develop this relationship. And pretty soon, boom, they're out of there and then there's a new team and they're starting all over. That doesn't work. And as you bring it up, some of these cultures have these relationships.

these tribal relationships that go on for centuries and then this you know the SF guys these American soldiers come in there and go we got the answer listen we've got the beans we got the bullets we got everything you need and all you got to do is listen to us and get our training boom we're gonna take control of this area and then you know the next one comes in and he might get a shit or not give a shit depending on how he feels about the culture being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting

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college savings. So we have this constant disruption. One of my answers was, let's take some guys that are out but have this background and have this experience and put them into these various areas with this depth of experience and training and culture and leave them there they stay there and then if you're rotating teams you're rotating teams but there's somebody that's constant right you know so you've got this thing that goes no no no no no we We don't do it that way. We use the camels or we do, you know, we use them. Right.

And they're, because they teach us stuff, as you know. You know, we learn a lot from these cultures. Because they've been doing this for hundreds and thousands of years or whatever, right? And then we're going in there and telling them, okay, you wear a six gun and you shoot them plate out of the sky. And boom, everything is going to be great. And they're not like, well, wait a minute. They fight in these mountains this way. and they know how to fight in these mountains.

Right. And maybe we don't know enough about how you fight in these particular mountains. That kind of stuff. So anyway, so one of my solutions was that we just move some leadership and some constant teams in that stay there. And we got guys that will do that. Okay, I'll go to Afghanistan and I'll stay there for five years, let's say. And you have that relationship there and you have that knowledge

and everything that they learn that you pass. because one of the other things we don't do real well is handoff. I've been here for a year or six months. Here's what I learned. Here's the do's and don'ts. We don't do that homework really well for these handoffs. Never mind we're pulling a team from, you know, Southeast Asia, and we're putting them in, you know, goddamn, you know, over in Afghanistan.

You know, and they don't have that preparation. that trading and stuff. You guys have talked about the sort of the hard skills, right? The, you know, how we fight war versus how they fight war and things like that. When you were going through this academic program, when you were in school, did you find that academia or academia in general that they didn't get the idea that we can't go there and turn them into America, that we can't that there are moral systems in place, religious

systems in place that we're not going to talk them out of a 200-year-old blood feud with their neighboring tribe based on our ideals. I mean, because there's a lot of cultural stuff that goes into that too that I think that a lot of our politicians and a lot of our, you know, university people just don't understand that these people are completely, completely different than us in so many ways. Well, you know, that's interesting that that came up. One of the things I did when I was, when I went back to school, I ended up getting a joint bachelor's and master's degree. And part of that program forced me into culture studies, cultural competence. And at the time, I remember going in this class, this first class, you guys would love this.

I'm sitting in this class with all these kids, you know, obviously I'm a little older. I got all these kids and we're holding hands and singing kumbaya and all this shit. And I'm thinking, okay, I'm in the wrong class. get the hell out of here because this isn't going to get it. But then when they started getting into the actual study of culture and the significance of culture, and I realized through my almost 25 years in special forces, I got Zippo in cultural training. You know, and the only cultural training I really got was when I was deployed, and I'm in and amongst the culture, and I'm going, holy shit, you know, you don't, you don't shake hands.

with your right hand and you don't do this and you don't do that and you don't say this and you stand back and you you know wherever part of the world I was you know I was I was like clueless and I realized wow imagine if we would have been trained culturally as much as we are and in fire and movement and all that kind of stuff you know weaponry and and the stuff that we're that we're trained for that's important, of course, but if we don't have a relationship with these people and where we are in the world, we've got a real problem. And I learned that firsthand. And so when I started taking these classes and I started looking at this stuff, one of the things that I started asking in these interviews I was doing is I started going, what could you have wanted culturally before

you deploy? And how important is culture? And what I found, is like, oh my God, it's like number one. You know, it's like hugely important. And without it, we end up missing the nuances and the understanding of these various peoples in the world that we miss. And we're always in a hurry. You know, it's like, get in, get out, bump, you know, we're out of there. And it's like, you know, these cultural. have been around a long time and they're going to be around a long time.

And how do we help them help themselves in a way that's sustainable for them? Right. And not got this agenda that we get from our leadership that wants us to, you know, a short little fuse. You've got this much time. Get the job done. And then I'm pulling you out because your funds are stopping. And we're going on to whatever else the priority is. Chuck, we have a viewer question here.

They're asking, did you tell them that we don't do viewer questions? I'm just kidding. We do when they donate. He's asking a question from the class. Do you think using conventional forces to try and do FID, advised, train, assist has negatively impacted our ability to develop smart cultural strategies? Well, you know, this came up as part of my schooling because I had some students with me that were also in special operations. I had some guys in civil affairs, and they were talking to me about the use of conventional forces with special operations and how effective that might be in the cultural impact.

it's back to you know how effective is the team itself yeah first before you bring somebody else in and you train them and normally hopefully the team is training them or the teams are training them so there's there's consistency and continuity there because if the team is not focused culturally the conventional guys aren't going to be focused um culturally. And that whole, you know, back to that cultural stuff is number one. If I were president of the United States right now, I would tell special ops, okay, listen, we're going to back off of a whole bunch of stuff we're doing out there because it's not special operation centric. Number one. Number two, when we go in, we're going to go in to stay

or we're not going to go in. Because this whole go in and then we pull them out and, you know, and then two presidents and then we're back in. It's like you backslide 10 years every time you do that. Exactly. Exactly. And let's be honest, how many units in the military are trained like special forces are? And I'm not trying to brag about special forces. It's got a unique mission for most of the other services. But we're trained to go in and have a lasting impact.

And the only way we can do that is go in and stay in. and structure it that way so we can not only make a difference, but ensure that it, the continuity in the future, the sustainability of what it is we've done. It's sound, Chuck, you sound very similar to, and I don't know if you know each other, but Mark Boyat, he has a very similar view about special forces and would talk about how we should have SF guys in every embassy,

every American embassy essentially around the world. You know, we, we, I'm trying to remember, I might make sure I'm not speaking about sensitive stuff, but we did that in Southeast Asia, where I retired from. And we started embedding SF guys in the embassies for that very reason, because they're going, okay, well, wait, wait, first off, you know, don't throw some SF guys at this issue. This isn't, this isn't conducive to what SF does or special ops overall. And so we saw that happen. I'm not going to name the country right now because maybe somebody's going to call me and go, Mr. Woodson, you're talking about stuff, but it's no secret. Right.

Putting SF guys in embassies is a great idea because one of the things that we can do is educate. Educate and have a little oversight over where the teams are, what the teams are. are doing, you know, et cetera. And I think one of the things that we don't do very well, as far as I'm concerned, is we don't educate Washington, D.C. Because, and even the Pentagon, for God's sake, the Pentagon is notorious for for misusing, you know. Isn't part of it also that it's just difficult to explain, like, look, we're going to deploy

special forces to this country over the course of 25 years, and they're going to have a very slow impact in shifting the culture, tilting the needle a little bit this way or that way, predisposing them towards American policies. It's like very difficult, I think, for a short attention span society like ours to understand. Like they understand the Ranger mission. They understand the SEAL mission. Like, I got it. These guys come up out of the water. They blow something up, or they save some hostages. The Special Forces mission is a little harder to articulate. Yeah, no, there's no question about that. And let's be honest, Americans have a short commitment of focus.

And subsequently, our leadership does. And the answer is not, let's take this out 25 years. And if we're going to go do whatever it is we're doing in the part of the world, we're going to spend 25 years. Right. And educate the American people. okay, that's right. If we're going to have some impact in this part of the world, we're going to have to commit long term. Or let's not do it. Right.

You know? But, but, you know. Yeah. And it's tough to do when we change administrations every 48 years. Exactly. And think about it. When the voter sits there and goes, you know what this guy said? This guy said he wanted to go in and commit to the Middle East for 25 years. I'm not voting for him. for brother. This guy says, we're going to be in and out of there in three years or two years. I'm voting for this guy. So that's a guy that goes up there and goes, you know what, the American, and God bless Obama, you know, he did some wonderful things. But he drew the line. He's like, nope, we're not, we're not spend any more time than that. In Iraq.

In the meantime, you know, we got our military leadership going, we've got to spend more time there. This is going to take longer than this. This isn't going to be a short fuse kind of a thing. And Obama's thinking about, wait a minute, my voters said to me, you said, so we're looking for you to get in and get out of there, and we're not doing that. And so, you know, it's just we can only do in the military what our leadership either allows us to do or supports us to do. Right. And part of that also, because a lot of our politicians are in politics for a very long. period of time. But it was really explained to me by the analysts really well one time that most American politicians don't understand that in other countries, their politicians don't know if they're going to be in power in office the next day. So when Americans, you know, sort of give

them the wink, you know, when American politicians sort of give them that wink or whatever, they think, oh, America's on my side. But they don't understand that. Right, right. Our government will set up not just military relationships, but economic relationships with foreign countries. And they jump through all of these hoops to make it happen for us. And then our president switches over. And I'm not just talking about our current president, but all throughout contemporary American history. And foreign countries feel betrayed. I mean, you know, even countries like China, like, oh, we did all this work to meet your guidelines and then you changed your mind on us. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The interesting.

thing about special forces is it's it's almost like it's two different jobs right so you have the selection that teaches you the hard skills trains you on your physical ability and i know they have robin sage to sort of test the cultural thing but that's different than if you were to take people with no military training dump them in a foreign you know dump them in another country and see who sort of thrives right see who gets along with people who immerses themselves in the culture because that's almost a completely different i don't want to say skill set but personally personality type. And then finding the type of person that one can do the hard skills and then two can thrive and enjoy themselves or really wants to learn about another culture, it's a rare

find. Well, that's my comment, but do you find that that's true? Or did you see that in Vietnam? I think, personally, I think that the leadership in Socom has to have, to be able to step back I look back to a class I had at school back to school here I talk about school hopefully you guys are like okay let talk to us a little bit about school but when I was in school here this last the year before last I'm with this Marine this he's out now but as Marine and he's we're talking about counterinsurgency and he goes you know the Marines really taught some lessons about counterinsurgency and he started talking about what the Marines were doing

which have you guys heard about fourth generation warfare and has it yeah well you know the the whole back to the embedding you know embedding the troops with with the communities and he was talking about what the Marines were doing it and and I had no idea I was at first I thought he was bullshit me I said bullshit Marines assault beaches okay I know that because my dad taught me that. You know, the Navy's not going to do it. The Air Force can't do it. The Army doesn't want to do it either.

Their Marines will take the beach. And, you know, they go on the beach. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey.

Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Talking about, you know, this long-term relationship in these communities, and he's telling me these stories. And then he starts bringing up this history, and I'm like, holy shit. And you know what that taught me is you can be a shooter and you can still be culturally competent. Right.

You can be both. Right. And I think you have to be. I think, you know, the whole thing about, you know, the public looks at all special operations and think we're all got a knife in our teeth and we're knocking down a door. Right. You know? And I'm telling them, I never had a knife in my mouth, number one, because I might cut myself.

Right. And I didn't swing from a vine and come in all cameied up and, you know, the Rambo kind of a thing. I said, I never did that. I said, I was sneaking around and all that kind of stuff, but, you know, I wasn't this husky, you know, knocked down the door and, and now, I've had that training. Sure. But that was this much of my training compared to this much of my training. And a lot of my training was in relationships and, and, and interacting with, and, and, and I always tell

people, what do is special forces do? We're teachers. We're school teachers. We teach. And these are the things that we teach. And because we're force multipliers. Right. Our mission is to go in with 12 and end up with a battalion or two, you know, and disrupt. And, you know, that was why we were, that's our original mission. Sneak in, build the force, disrupt things, and get the hell out of there if we can't alive. So did you feel that the training... Dave, did I answer that question? Yeah, and I'm just going to kind of ask you to clarify that. Did you feel that the training that you went through, did you, in Vietnam, did you see that almost all special forces soldiers because of that training had those skills?

Or did some soldiers adapt better than others? Well, yeah, well, they're all... We're personality. Sure. You know, I mean, you know, I've, I've, I've, I've, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I remember I had a guy on my team and all he could think about was getting the hell out of there. And most of us, you know, when we were in Vietnam,

it was time to go home after a while, you know. But he made decisions about what he did as far as the team was concerned based on that. And of course, when I was there, I worked a lot with the, because I was the kid of the team, I worked a lot with the CA officer. We had a captain there that was doing civil affairs. And he was going into the into the communities and doing all of the interface and setting up the midcabs and all that kind of stuff.

And helping support the community. That was my exposure because I was the youngest guy on the team and he grabbed me and said, Woody, you're with me. Let's go. We're going into the hamlet and we're going to interface with the community and we're going to support him and that kind of stuff. And so I did a lot of that kind of stuff. But this other guy, he wasn't, not only wasn't into that, he was kind of withdrawn. You know, I mean, he was, I don't know, maybe he, maybe he was, I can't remember if he had had more than one, one, if he was longer there than a year.

Maybe he was. He might have been, you know, maybe, but he was tired, obviously, I could see. this guy has got this kind of outlook on things you know and but other than those personalities I mean our team was interested in securing supporting networking I mean these recons we did I remember this first the first recon I did with the team sergeant he was like he It reminded me of he was a wiry guy, and he was a little older. He had been in Korea, so he was a Korean vet, Korean War vet. Wow. But, you know, I went on patrols with the different older guys, right?

So I got an opportunity to go, because we just rotated as team members when we went out on these patrols, and we'd go out and see what Charlie was doing and all that kind of stuff. This guy, he goes, he goes, Woody, I'm taking you out on patrol with me, so get all your stuff ready, and we're going to leave a couple of days, and we're going to go. I thought, oh, cool, let's go out with a team sergeant. This is the first time I went out with him. I'll tell you, as a mountain goat, I wouldn't have survived. This guy never touched a trail, never touched the road. we were I swear we were climbing Mount Fuchiyama

we were in the in the goddamn Pampas grass and the you know I mean we were you know the jungles and I was I remember just trying to just get through the stuff you know with your backpack and your and your weapon and stuff and trying to get through that stuff you know triple canopy and I remember that first

that first night I was a and I'm a kid I'm what 23 years old all right I'm a kid and I'm a kid and I couldn't keep up with this guy and his answer was he was going to go look at charlie the back wing you know and come in in a way that was like oh my god and i remember after i went on that patrol and and we ran into charlie two or three times different patrols they had and they didn't even know we were there the way he did stuff i was like no goddamn that's the way you

recon yeah there's the way you recon yeah there's the way you recon this guy. And when I learned that, I thought, okay, there's a reason he lived through Korea. And I think he was on his, maybe his second tour in Vietnam and maybe his third tour. But there was a reason he was around because the way he thought about it was, I'm here to win. And I'm going to do this in a way that you're not even going to know I'm even there. And I was like, God damn, I learned some stuff from him about, you know, moving through, how you move through stuff and where you went and all of that stuff that was just like. Now, and then the other guy was like, I went out on patrol with him. We went down the road.

In fact, that's where I got ambush on the road, went down the road, went into a couple of hamlets, slept in the hamlet, you know, did a little recon around it, slept in the hamlet. again because we were out there for three days on that way you know what i mean and then came back down the road and of course i got my ass ambushed and would have got it shot off yeah yeah half-assed patrol uh chuck i wanted to ask you one of a viewers wants to ask you too about your experience working with the australian military and specifically did you work with the australian army training team in vietnam or the australians at uh ricondo school yeah i i had an opportunity I, when I finished my tour, that's a good question, by the way. Probably my daughter asked me that question.

How many people know? No, no, some dude named Brendan. Who's paying an Australian dollars. I probably know of Brendan. Anyway, the Aussies. Okay. I'm coming back because they pulled me out of the jungle, I think about a month before it was time for me to come back home.

And I'm back at the thing. And by the way, I got to, to bring this up sergeant major uh done away command sergeant major done away was the fifth group command sergeant major and he was one of those sergeant majors when you saw him you detoured around the whole thing you know you see him coming you go back in you go back out the back door you're good so i'm running into him and uh he sees me on the thing and he goes he goes what's it come there I thought, oh, shit. You know, this can't be good.

He goes, I want you to come in the office with me. He goes, Jesus Christ. He goes, you're getting ready to go back home. I said, yes, Commander Sergeant Major, I am. He goes, well, what the hell are you? Because I was, I went over her as a PFC, and I made spec four, right? And I'm a special forces. Speck 4.

Brain Barreie, Com's guy, now with the CIB, I had a Vietnamese jump wings, you know, I'm a guy, right? And I'm a spec for. He goes, you're going to embarrass the goddamn entire Special Forces community. He goes, he tells the guy in his office to cut me orders to promote me to buck sergeant, right on the spot. He goes, I want your uniforms, everything. When you go home, I want you to go home as a buck sergeant.

And I said, I'm like, I didn't know what to say. I was like, okay, I guess he can do that, you know. So he promoted me to a Buck Sergeant. But while I'm in there, the comms, the head of the comms thing said to me, he goes, hey, he goes, listen, when are you going home? And I said, well, I'm supposed to go home. He goes, how would you like to go back out? I thought, what do you mean to go back out?

And he goes, well, we got an Aussie team that's doing a, what were they doing? They were doing recon and blocking force and stuff with some conventional forces and stuff. And there was, I think there was, as I remember, there was like eight or ten of them. I can't remember. But they didn't have a radio operator. They said, so could you set up their cons thing for them? And I thought, well, yeah. And I thought, the Aussies, that's got to be, that's got to be fun, right?

Aussies. You just think Aussies and you think, you know, those guys are going to have some fun. There's going to be some beer at that fire base. Yeah. Which they did, by the way. So they took me out with, I went with a S.F. Lieutenant, as I remember, who was doing something with them. And they put Connix underground. And they were along, as I remember, Highway 1,000.

and they were sitting up this security thing there, and they put a conics in the ground, and they wanted me to set up a radio thing for him, so they had comms there. And so I'm with these Aussies, and it was the funniest goddamn thing because these guys were crazy. I mean, they just, the way they thought was, like, for me,

was, like, crazy. Like, real cowboys. I mean, no shit, cowboys. You know, they, they did this, they went out to, Highway 1, this little road running up and down South Vietnam, you know, along the coast. And they stopped the traffic going both ways. And they're, you know, they had their shit on and stuff, and they're out on the road.

And they had, as I remember, they had, as I think they had some yards with them, too. I can't remember what part of the world they were from. But anyway, they had some yards with them. and they asked me, he says, do you want to go out on the road with these guys? And I thought, yeah, okay, you know, not thinking, well, wait a minute. Wait a minute.

You're out in the middle of the road on a major thoroughfare and you're stopping the traffic and you're inspecting for whatever. I don't even remember weapons or whatever they thought they were looking for. And it was the craziest goddamn thing. And it was just the way they were, you know,

just like, You know, Bukaroo Bonsai, man. It was nuts. And so I was only with him for a couple of weeks, but I'll tell you, I had so much fun with these guys. These guys were fun. And they were business, but they just had this, and I don't want to say unprofessional, just this loose way that they looked at things that I never forgot. I never forgot those guys.

But I was only with them for a couple of weeks, and I'm still here to talk about it. So we were okay. Yeah. So when you came home from Vietnam, did you decide to leave the military? How did that all shake out? Yeah, they asked me, obviously, they wanted to get me to re-up, but I decided not to. They put me in this reserve thing that I never participated in. And I was pretty shaken up when I came back from Vietnam.

I lost Ed Coffee, my mentor over there. There was a couple of guys that went over when I went over at the same time. We didn't fly over it together, but we were sort of in. And one of them went into Sog. What did he go into? He went into one of the cross-border units that was running across-border. Probably Sog. they were really the only unit

going across the border, I think. Yeah, yeah. And he got killed over there. And another guy, and the three of us were talking about, you know what we had to do when we get out is let's go in the CIA. Why we thought that was a good idea or why that made sense, I don't know. But it sounded interesting.

And so our plan was we're going to get together and we're going to all go into the CIA when we get out. And of course, they didn't make it. And I just I thought, you know what? I don't have any any drive. I was, I was, I got to tell you, from the time I come off of,

off the team and I spent a couple weeks with the, with the Aussies, I got home, I was, I was, I was pretty, I was out of balance. I was, I was, I was hypervigilant. I was, you know, I was, I was in this, I call it like a battle rhythm, you know. And I remember, you know, a couple of weeks and almost. sudden I'm at this Christmas party and everybody's drinking and Merry Christmas and all this shit and I'm standing at the side of the room and I'm looking at everybody thinking, what is it matter with you people? Right. You know, we got people dying and we got shit going on here and you guys

are, and I mean, they were clueless. I had friends of mine asked me where I was and seen me in a couple of years and I said, well, I just came back from Vietnam. And they were like, you know, nothing. You know, they were clueless. Like, you know, that was the end of the conversation. You know, and I didn't have anything that I could relate to at the time when I first came home. That made any sense, you know, that kind of wrapped things up for me and gave me a, oh, okay, now I see how this all fits. And, you know, I see my little place in the world and whatever. I remember standing there on the side of that room in that party,

and I was like, holy shit, let me out of here. Right. And, of course, I felt guilty and shame because I came home, and some people were lost, and the team was still over there. Our camp was going under a huge, almost being overrunned after I left. You know, there was this stuff going on that when I left and I felt like, shit, I should have stayed there with the guys. you know, I'm coming home and while I've done my time and everything and I felt excited about being home,

there was part of me that's like, you know what, I don't feel good about this. This doesn't feel good to me. I had a hard time with that. Were you, I mean, because this is obviously before the internet, this is before people understand post-traumatic stress. This is before a lot of this. Did you have other soldiers around? Did you have other veterans as a resource? How did you manage that?

or how are you dealing with that? You know, that's an excellent question, and no, I did not. I'll tell you what I did have. And a friend of mine, who at the time was sort of a high school friend of mine, he got me involved in horseback riding. And actually, I played Polo, if you're familiar with Polo with the horses, you know, Polo. And he got me into these horses, and pretty soon I'm cleaning out stalls and I'm brushing horses and I'm cleaning out their hooves and I'm out there trying to stay on the horses back

and, you know, a guy with mallet running up next to me and doing all this crazy stuff we did that that consumed me enough that I got absorbed in it enough that it was like I didn't realize it at the time, but looking back it was healing. Right. Because I had to care for these animals. Right. And these animals had these moods like, no, I don't feel like, I don't feel like going that way. Or, you know, horses, you know, horses were doing what horses do. And I had to make this adjustment to respect the animal, care for the animal, and be able to learn from the animal while I'm learning for myself, you know.

And it turned out to be therapeutic. And I did it for a few years. And thank God I did it. Looking back, it was like, you know, like the big guy upstairs goes, You will ride horses now. What? Right. I don't even like horses.

You will ride the horses and you will care for the horses and you will heal. And it really helped me at the time. Well, it's fascinating that you found your way to that because now equine therapy is a very real thing. Yes, and I hear about that and I've met some people that do it. It's a great thing. Anything where you can do where you're caring for something, especially bigger than you are. Right. you know

is a good thing and we need that I have so many people that say well I hear about PTSD but you know World War II they didn't have PTSD though they didn't

my dad had it now I didn't know it at the time but I was brought up with it and and most you know I don't see how you can go into the military be programmed in the military

to do what we do in the military and come back out and not be different. Right. And not be changed and not have some issues. And you need help with. And one thing that Veterans of War II had that veterans since then haven't is a sense of closure. And not saying that they didn't have their own post-traumatic stress and they didn't have their own challenges. But they did also have like a parade to say it's over.

You're done. Go be somebody else now. or you know plus everybody in their generation shared similar experiences or most of the people in their generation shared similar experiences where if they went to a party almost everybody there or a lot of people had also served and they would have that yes so yeah that's a good point that's a good point Dave so what did they I mean after you had this job working with the horses I mean what what was the trajectory of you know the rest of your life as a young man

And I mean, you ended up back in the military, right? I went back in in 1985, and it's kind of funny because I had this guy that I ran into in the Monterey area, the Central California area, who was in one of the reserve groups. And he found out that I had been in S.F. He goes, you know, what do you think about going back in? And I immediately said, I think I did it. I think I pretty much checked that box. I played that game and moved on. And he goes, well, you know what we're doing?

And he gives me one of these, you know, goddamn Tiger Stripe with the bray on, with the hookout, you know, the gaffing hook out. And he goes, you know what we're doing? We're doing this harbor thing, I think it was in San Francisco, where we're going in and helping them with security. And we're sneaking onto these ships. and pretending like we're going to blow them up. And he started giving me this story about the sneaky Pete stuff

these guys were doing with security, with Harbor Security or somebody, as I remember in San Francisco. And I thought, no shit. That's interesting. He goes, well, yeah. And he starts telling me these stories, and I'm like, wow. He goes, and you only have to, it's not full time, and you only have to come in and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

on and I said wow and I remember I remember thinking and that's when inside me it said once a green beret I always agree with that pull that out that old filthy man and put that sucker back on and you're good to go you know and I so so I'll be damned if I didn't go talk to the to the unit and and went back in the reserves and they took me back in as a radio operator, back to a corporal. When is a radio operator and then served, went on some active duty time and stuff after that. But yeah, got back in and then I retired in 2006 as a chief warrant officer four with a very rich military career that I still carry on through the research and stuff I do academically

looking at policy and military doctrine. So you, what year did you get out, 60, or what year did you get out? I came home the end of 67. Okay. And I was officially released three years after that. So, but I wasn't serving during that time. So whatever that three year period was after that, that would be like 68, 69, I think 70, 71, they took me off the books. So from 67 to 85, you were out?

I was out for, I think somebody calculated it out. I was out for 17 years. It was so funny that one thing I want to mention here, I don't know if we're running out of time. No. The one thing I want to mention is I come back in and they put me on this, this A-team, this Reserve 18. And the first thing these guys say is,

hey, God, you're here just in time. we're going to jump into the Florida Everglades. I'm like, what? Yeah, we're parachuting in a night jump, full equipment, the Florida Everglades. And I'm like, do you guys realize I've been out for a period of time here? I don't even think I know how to parachute anymore. Oh, yeah, you're going to be fine.

And they had me jump off the ass end of a damn pickup, you know, for PLFs and stuff. And the next thing I know, I'm going out the door in the middle of the damn night. You can't even see your hand jumping into the Florida Everglades. And the only reason I didn't kill myself, frankly, was I ended up right in the water in the Everglades. And I remember, I remember going, thank you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus. You saved me. This is how I was going to die.

You know, I lived through combat. but man this is how i was going to die splat right in the florida everglades but i was i was i was back out out of the uh of the c-130 in the middle of the middle of the night in the florida everglades that was so so weird man what was the re was this 12th group in california at the time uh this was no this was a this was the 11th group 11th group i didn't know yeah because i ended up going out to uh florida okay with with the 11th group out in the third battalion 11th group out of 3rd Battalion

A company out of Tampa, Florida. And what, so you come in as a corporal, right? Or as a corporal. No, corporal. Came back in as a corporal. We came back in as a corporal, which I assume there weren't many corpals with their long tabs

at that time. No, no. No, no. Everybody was asking me, okay, either, well, because I had CIB. Right, and that's what I'm saying. You're a corporal with all, I mean, with all this stuff, Did these guys, how did they respond? I remember one of the sergeants said, either you're the biggest screw-up in SF,

or have you been out for a while? You know, he asked me. I said, yeah, that was it. I've been out for a while. Not that I wasn't a screw-up, but I've been out for a while. So, yeah. Did they, do they, I mean,

did they want to hear all the stories from Vietnam? Because a lot of these guys, I'm sure, were younger. No, yeah. Well, yeah, we didn't have, we didn't have, I'm trying to think, I think in the whole company, we had, we had three or four veterans, you know, combat veterans from, from Vietnam. But pretty much these were, you know what's the interesting thing about the reserves that I, that I really had a lot of respect for was the diversity of these guys they have in these teams. I remember we had a goddamn scientist from over on the, over on the, the Cape, you know. And we had, you know, we had a doctor. And we had all these people that were, that wanted to do SF stuff, but had these other wives.

And so here you can have these guys on the team. I remember we get these assignments and you guys have to sneak in here and you have to capture this so-and-so-and-so device. And we got this scientist, goes, all you have to do is dismantle it. And we're all like, what are you talking about? He goes, well, that's a so-and-so and so-and-so. And you know, all you do is take this device out and it's worthless. It's a piece of junk. And I'm going, holy shit.

Thank God we have this guy here 100 days. Chuck, was this the Grizzly Hitch mission that you guys were working? You mean which one? Well, Grizzly Hitch was the way of red-teaming infrastructure in the United States. Oh, yeah. You mean way back when, yeah. I can't remember what it was called. I ended up not doing it because I didn't stay with the 12th.

I ended up going over the 11th. But yeah, they were doing, they did stuff with the power companies and stuff, checking security. Nuclear security. Yeah, it was really cool. And actually, we did some of that when I came back to the 12th later on because I moved back to California. But some of the stuff that the reserves guys were doing was just like right out of a goddamn, a novel for Christ's sake. It was crazy. and so from there

an 11th group and moving forward I mean where did your adventures take you in special forces I mean you said you're a warrant officer for I mean you must have been in for quite a while you know what was interesting the most interesting thing was

when I came across I came across Robin Moore and you guys know Robin Moore from the book and I came across him and he was he was telling me the stories about you know how they how they brought him in and putting through the training and stuff and and got him involved in this but before they'd let him write the book about and support him writing the book and he introduced me to general

Sydney shack now you ever you ever oh yeah I spoke to him on the phone before he passed away yeah wonderful wonderful guy and and got a rich history and he wrote a book I can't remember the name of his Oh, it's like Strengthen Honor or something like that. The guy was amazing in his history and stuff. But anyway, I ran across him

and I was telling him about the idea I had about interviewing some of our older troops and stuff on video camera. And he goes, oh my God, he goes, I love that idea. He goes, so what are you going to do?

And I said, what do you mean? He goes, well, let's do something. Let's get it going. And he started opening these doors and introducing me to all these people. And he had me brief of the commander of Yusak. I can't remember his name, but I hated that son of a bitch. It's probably good I didn't remember his name, but I hated that son. But he goes, this has got nothing to do with beans and bullets.

And if it doesn't, it's not a priority. Next. Oh, like, holy shit. You know, the guy was, I wanted to punch his lights out, you know, because collecting history is something that we only do. But anyway, thank God I don't remember his name. But anyway, so, but with Sidney Shack now, I briefed then the commander of SWIC.

And you know Andy Anderson, Colonel Andy Anderson, who... I don't. Anyway, a bunch of guys, including the, the, SFA, the Special Forces Association, all these people got behind it, and I started interviewing, and the Yusatok historian was tasked to bring me in, get me a camera, and start interviewing legacy guys, the legacy guys, the guys that were around when they first stood up SF. And so I got, I interviewed, dear, dear brain, don't leave me now. I just got to remember some of them.

Aaron Bank was one, right? Yeah, well, yeah, I was trying to think of Aaron Bank. I interviewed Aaron Bank three times, and I interviewed Clyde Sincere and Charlie Norton and Cibatello and names that may or may not mean anything to you. But guys that were around when they first stood up Special Forces back in the 50s and became the first guys in the 10th group. All right, all right. You got my attention, Chuck. Okay. Tell us that tell us their story. What did you learn through these interviews? How did it happen? Well, one of the things that that was really great was they all were very comfortable having an SF guy

behind a camera talking to them about SF stuff. That was number one. So I was I was not only in, I was welcome, and they were real open to talking about stuff. Now, for some of these interviews, I had the historian, And this guy had a pencil up his butt. He was a pain in the ass. He was a historian. That sounds familiar. That sounds very familiar. But he had no, he had no, he had no relationship or ground truth with SF guys.

And, and, and, and so these guys that I interviewed were talking to me. And, of course, he'd go on now, and they would kind of look at him. So I had the wonderful opportunity of relationships with these guys. And when they talked, one of the things I learned was there were down-home guys, man, that just happened to be where they were kind of like me. I was where I was because I just happened to end up there, not because I said, you know what I'm going to do with my career?

Right, right, right. Then I'm going to go do this, and then I'm going to, you know, know, and then I'm going to end up here. I don't know. Maybe you can do that in life. I haven't been able to. I just, somebody else is playing the board. I'm one of the pieces, and they're moving me around, and I go, oh, well, okay, here we are here now. So how can we make the most out of that?

But these were all wonderful guys and their experiences and what they left us with, with their legacy, is to me what's in our blood with those of us that have served after them. Because those of us that have served and spent time in the force, we kind of pick up on that. We carry that forward. You know, it's a part of why we do it in the first place. Because I noticed that when they selected me to go into SF, there were three of us or five of us, I think, out of maybe a hundred guys.

and all of those guys the guys that I thought they were going to pick and the skinny little guy next to me I figured he and I were never going to make it because these guys were you know they had the build and they had the thing and you know and they you know and they had that whole thing

they didn't get picked the skinny guy and I and a couple other skinny guys are the guys we got picked that got selected and I thought back about that and I thought you know what it was it wasn't how strong we were, it was

the way we thought outside of the box and the fact that we could handle endurance. We were willing to stay in it to get it done. And we had that kind of drive that they recognized through

however they evaluated us. And I think you asked, I think Jack, you asked, you know, how did they pick you back then? I don't know. I have no idea. But it wasn't because I was the most stellar guy around or anything. It was just there was something there that they go,

you know what, this guy might be the guy we're looking for, you know, kind of a thing. Chuck, I want to know more about what you learned through conducting all these interviews. I mean, these are the original guys that were like, I assume literally put on the boat and sailed over to Germany to stand up 10th Special Forces Group. Yeah, exactly. Can you tell us about their story, about how that came together, about how that happened,

and what you learned about these different personalities and who they were? Well, one of the things that I picked up from these guys was they were starting from scratch. I mean, Aaron Bank was building something that he had experience from World War II, you know, that he brought forward into what. what was to be what he envisioned at the time, what they envisioned at the time. And these guys had, Herb Bricker and all these guys that were doing that stuff originally, they had to build this from scratch. And I mean, literally, they were going out and going, you know what?

I mean, some of these interviews were like, you know what we got to do? We've got to be able to traverse a goddamn mountain in the winter. And we've got to be able to ski out of there. Right, right. You know, how are we going to do that? You know? Well, we need to. rope. Probably need to get some skis. I mean, you know, when you

listen to how they did it. I mean, nobody was there. Okay, we got this all figured out. Right. With a manual, throwing it down on the desk. Yeah, here's the training manual, and it's DD7543M, version 6. You know, we just follow this. You know, they had to build these things, and they had to teach each other. And the great thing they had is they pulled some of these guys from Europe. that are in these units that were in other units and had this background in all of this stuff

and they pulled them in and said, how do you ski down a mountain in the goddamn middle of the, you know, da-da-da-da. And how do we climb the side of this hill, you know, with this cliff and, you know, do this. And you hear this. And I mean, I mean, Clyde was, you know Clyde sincere? I've heard the name, but I don't know.

Remind me, I got to introduce you guys to him because he was one of these guys. and and he by the way he was over in Vietnam also and doing the sog stuff but but he was telling me that they would people would die from this stuff because they didn't know how it was gonna work right now they didn't know well if you if guy goes down the rope and he does the thing I mean he goes down the side of the clip and he you know I got a bit we just lost bill oh Jesus you know and I mean just you know because they're there they're They're learning to do something that they don't know how to do, but they have to do it for it to work. And the parachute, well, I mean, we had a paratrooper capability, but still parachuting relatively new, scuba diving.

And where they, where they, where they parachuted and, you know, all that stuff was just, you know, rudimentary. Yeah. I don't know, does that answer you? It begins to answer it, I think. but I'm interested if you have any other anecdotes about these guys and their experiences

and what they did and how they kind of brought it all together. Well, I think one of the things that I would say about them and by the way, these guys would be wonderful on your show here and have these guys talk to you

about what they actually did and so you're not here in general. Yeah, we'd be very excited about that. Yeah, and I'd be happy to help you round up some of these guys Okay, that'd be amazing. Some of them I know that are still alive. Yeah.

But one of the things that I got from them was the determination to make it work, no matter what. Whatever it took, they felt the commitment of the mission to do what special forces needed to do from the very beginning, and they were all willing to put everything into it to make it happen. That's the one thing that all of those guys that I interviewed all said was, you know what, in a lot of cases, we didn't know if we could do this, but we knew we had to do this. Right. You know, we had to be able to have these capabilities. And all of this stuff that today goes into the foundation stuff of special operations in the training and stuff goes back to these guys and their determination. and commitment to follow through and take it to a place where they could actually execute it.

And the learning curve must have been so phenomenal because they had to, not only did they have to learn what capabilities they needed, right? I mean, they had to kind of create it. Well, we need this capability. But then, you know, you mentioned like, you know, going across ravine or down a cliff or whatever. Well, now we need to learn how to tie knots. Now we need to learn basic climbing. Yeah. And then...

What kind of rope works? Right. You know, what will survive the scaling the side of a cliff kind of a thing? You know, all of these kinds of things that today, you know, we just, we know we use this rope because there's a real... Back then they didn't know. Right. Well, this rope work?

You know, where'd we get this rope? Right. You know, kind of a thing. And And the same with the parachuting, where they parachuted, when they parachuted, what did they parachute with, what equipment did they care, all of that stuff was. It's amazing. Because what their reference was World War II. Right. Right. This we did.

Now we're in the 50s. You know, we've got Korea just starting to go on. They're actually starting to deploy teams over to Korea to do some of the offshore stuff and the stuff they were doing over there, recon and et cetera. But, I mean, that break of time is, what, 10 years or more? Yeah. And now they're back and they're going, okay, you know, what? I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this truck, but one of the things I know more from interviewing the Vietnam generation

is that it struck me as they were really blue-collar guys. The military was not a cool thing at that time at all. it was as one guy remarked to me it was not it was not popular to be in or to stay in at that time in Vietnam and after the Vietnam conflict what really struck me was that

the green berets of that era they really really wanted to be there it was not so much about like the prestige or eicholites of the public that didn't exist there were you know it's so it really struck me

that they were all there because they loved special forces. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's true. And I was fortunate to be there as young as I was and be around the guys that I was around. Some of the team that I served with is still around today and we stay in touch with each other. But we're dropping like flies, obviously.

but these guys that that that really brought me in to special forces and and and provided me with that that oversight and that schooling and that training was I couldn't have asked for a better group of guys at the time both through training group and while I was in Vietnam because that stayed with me when I came back in in in 1884 because I had that anchoring that said, this is what SF is about. Yeah. This is why in my heart I'm here.

And I could always make decisions and have influence on the team in a way that said, no, no, no, no, no. That isn't the way we approach this, you know. Because one of the things that I always remember was, was the scenario of we need to take hill number 755 and that's our mission take hill number 755 well a conventional year to go

oh yes sir who are we go we're going to go take that hill and SF team's going to go why are we want this hill again because you know well we need this you know and we need to you know down okay we need the hill but is there another

way we could do the mission without taking the hill. And by the way, if we take the hill, do we need to firmly assault it? How about if we go around the back and come in the back door or through a cave or, you know what I mean? Or, you know, or a nuke it with a, you know, whatever. Right. You know what I mean?

That they taught us to think like that. Where it's like, okay, that's the mission. Why is it important? And then if it's important, how's the best way to do it without, you know, jeopardizing the entire team? and you know what I mean, that kind of stuff. One of our viewers asks, what did you do from the 80s to 9-11,

which I think we talked about a little bit, but I'd definitely like to hear more. And what changed with SF in that time? Do you see parallels from that time to now with the slow of the global war on terror? Well, a lot of, okay, first off, Let me say that a lot of what I did when I went back in, I injured myself in a parachute jump. I can't remember exactly when after I went back in.

It wasn't the night we went into the Everglaze, however. That's when I should have killed myself that night, but that wasn't the night. But anyway, I injured myself, and I was off the team for a period of time. I broke my ankle in four or five places, doing a night jump at Benny. and yes, it was my fault. I anticipated the ground. It was a knife drop and I screwed up. And anyway, so they pulled me off the team and they put me in headquarters as an operations guy.

And they found out that I could type that I knew operations and that I was good at interfacing and interacting with the different teams. And so I ended up being a headquarters puke for a fairly long period of time until I became a warrant officer. And then when I became a warrant officer, I continued. I moved from company-level operations to battalion-level operations. And when the ball did a lot of exercises and stuff, and then I subsequently went active for almost three years in the Pacific Theater. again was at a special operations command Pacific, again in operations, doing operations planning and coordination with first group and stuff that were in the Pacific theater. So I did a lot of operation stuff.

And one of the things that I noticed was the relationships, you know, because now we're back in the military and we're dealing with these socks. and and the teeth socks yeah yeah theater socks and a lot of people don't understand what those are but basically they're co-located with the theater commanders of the different each of the different theaters and that and the socks responsibility the theater sock is a responsibility to oversee and manage special operations activities in that theater for the theater commander and he's supported and coordinated with socom but he reported directly to the theater commander and advises and coordinates and in some cases

directly overseas special operations activities in that theater and so all of a sudden I'm in this I'm a warrant officer now and I'm in this operation center at a SOC and I'm dealing with the theater operations and now there is a place to throw your warrant officer. Throw him right in the middle, like a grenade, open the door, throw the war officer, and close the door, and watch what he's going to do with a theater operation center representing special operations. And one of the things that I found out through that experience is, is the, in some cases, and I want to be very careful the way I say this, but in some cases, the lack of understanding of special,

operations through the leadership of a theater command. And my job, I wasn't the commander of the T-Socq, but I represented him, and I was involved in operations planning and coordination. And it was interesting to me how these decisions are made because that theater commander makes those decisions. And he's directed by either the Secretary of Defense or the president, and he is the man. He's the man on the ground.

And he's deciding go, no go, how we go, when we go, who we go, who goes, all that stuff. And I was fortunate enough to work with some very, very smart theater operations planners. as well as theater socks and their operations leadership. And I also was thrown in the pool with some guys that had no clue how to use special operations. And man, I was like, holy shit. So this is how decisions are made. And this is who's making these decisions. And this is the impact it has on the end result from those decisions.

decisions. What were some of the more like shocking examples of that of people who didn't know how to use it, not by name, but by how they... Yeah, yeah. I want to be very careful because I know I'm already going to get some phone calls. What the hell were you talking about? But, but, you know, some examples were, you know, like a good example was we had this incident, I won't say in what part of the world, and we had, and we needed, we needed some eyes on on the ground. And of course, that's a perfect use at that time, either the seals or the Marines or SF.

Now, a recon kind of a thing is you start narrowing it down. Do we need an SF team to do recon? You know, might the Marines be better or might the seals be better, but, you know, what do we need? you know that's the way i'm thinking i'm stepping back going okay you know what what do we need there and and then after we recon what what is that team going to do and what do we need done there and blah blah blah blah and that then you can start weeding out you know who would be best for this and who's available who's who's near you know that kind of stuff they didn't have that

they didn't even think about that stuff they're like what's part of s f team in there that's the answer you know i get an sfti and thank God the head of the operations senior officer was prior SF. And so, you know, we had this general in there that was like, well, now, you know, this came from, I won't say even what branch of service this came from, but the branch of service, the guy was like he had no clue. And I was already thinking, now, wait a minute, you know. you know, this looks like something that would be good for, you know, for me, for those, either the Marines,

you know, the Rangers, you know, and who did we have nearby that we could, you know, blah, blah, you know. But I just, and, and they were making decisions because this was like, no shit wheels up in the, in the next 10, 12 hours, and, you know, we need to, and it was that kind of stuff. That was like, you know, thank God. They have theater socks, and that's their purpose. You know, that's why they're embedded with the theater commanders, and that's their responsibility.

And so, yeah, without name and names and point their figure, it's that kind of stuff where they have no clue. It's like me stand, well, let's send the Air Force in. Well, yeah, who from the Air Force? Right. You know, what are you trying to do? And, you know, send some jets over there. Right.

Send a plane. Yeah, exactly. drop some bombs I don't take care of them Chuck is far as your historical work on special forces

is it possible for the public to like use these resources that you developed and go and see these interviews well unfortunately no a lot of the interviews

that I've done are housed in the in the Department of Directorate of History at Usasah Oh yeah they'll never give those up yeah yeah they're they're like yeah come on bring the public down and we'll show and tell um the interviews that i've been doing uh for the special operations

association uh over the past few years those interviews are not uh released to the public either uh because therefore that um body of people that have served and those are not uh publicly access. The interviews that I've done for what's called the Special Operations Research Database, which I started with Professor Orion Lewis from the Middlebury College in Vermont, we have about 50 of those interviews. Those interviews are currently unavailable to the public because they're for the military and lessons learned and policy and military doctrine. And and the academia that research and study that stuff. So, however, having said that, I have some interviews that have been released to me personally

of some of those interviews, and those interviews I plan on making available because I have permission to, and on some format which up to now I don't have currently and is not available. So that's the bad news and that's the good. Let us know when you get that up and we'll definitely let our viewers know about that. I know the people who watch this show are 100% interested in hearing it straight from the horse's mouth like that. Oh yeah, exactly. Yeah. We'd be happy to plug that.

Until then, the team house is kind of. It's your only source, folks. Stick with us. Chuck, no, this has been awesome, man. And I think we could do it again. We've had you for about two hours now, and I was going to ask if you can stay like an additional 10, 15 minutes to do the bonus segment with us after the show, if that's okay.

I have a question for you. Do you have anything, Dan? I actually have, we have one viewer question. Oh, actually just a viewer comment from Gordon Bribery. Thank you very much. He said you're a great communicator. And he just said, good to see you, Dave, by the way. Thanks, guys. It's great to be back. And it's great to, you know, Chuck's been a fantastic guest to come back, be my first one back.

So my question is kind of two parts. One, were you ever able to tell that drill instructor the effect that he had had on you? You know, that's one thing I've always regretted is not being able to go back and give that guy a big hug and thank him. And I think it would have warmed his heart to see what happened with me from his guidance. Sure. But I'm hoping that wherever he is today, he has some connection that would provide the fact that he knows that he had that kind of an impact on me because that decision has stayed with me through to today. and had an impact on the fact that I'm sitting with you guys talking about this stuff. Right. So pretty amazing.

But unfortunately, no, I didn't. And the second part of that is having gone from sort of this intentional ne'er do well, right? And somebody who was intentionally self-sabotaging yourself. I like that, Dave. Go ahead. Self-sabot. Yeah. So whether it was in the military or out of the military,

was that ever an influential piece for you when you were dealing with a person who is maybe in a similar position or did it change how you viewed people in general that what kind of nudge it might sometimes take them to self-correct well you know that's that's a that's a really by the way that is the most awesome question of the night and the answer to that is yes that's that stayed with me because going back to school uh at this time in my life on spending the last seven years in school full time. I've been around a lot of young people. And young people tend to go, oh, okay, we've got a grip in the class here. Let's, you know, make sure we've got some oxygen on in case you can't hang on with us or whatever they're thinking. But through the years, I found that both young men and women have come to me and said, hey, you know, we heard the way you answered that question or we heard your comment. And I'm curious about this or that or the other. And I've ended up offering advice to young people in varying areas of their life anywhere from,

should I dump my boyfriend? He's a real. And I'm always like, yeah, dump him. I wouldn't hold on to him. You know, to more, you know, with my career and what I'm planning to do in the future. and you know what you think about what maybe I could should be thinking about at my age and that kind of stuff and so I've always think back to that drill sergeant and think you know what would he have done with this young woman or young man and what he would have said you know and I've done that for young people and I can't

sit here and go well thank God I helped him or whatever I you know in a lot of cases I don't know but I've I've been free to offer what in my life experience, I hope will help them at an age that I was in my younger life when I was trying to figure it out. Because let's face it, even now in my life, I'm still trying to figure it out. Right. I think that's the great secret is that we're all constantly trying to figure it out at any given point. Some of us just look a lot more confident when we're trying to do it. Yeah. Yeah.

It's also the natural state of humanity. It's like, we're not designed to live in utopia and like have it all figured out and be comfortable all the time. We don't do well in that environment. Exactly. And that's, there was one. No, I think we're down. Yeah, it would just, Woody, what happened to John Nettles? Lost track of him also.

That's from Raoul Rivera. Okay. I don't know. John Nettles was one of my mentors at, at the, 11th group. And I don't know. I remember he was a sergeant, no, he was a master sergeant in operations. And he was a great mentor for me. And then when I became a warrant officer, he again schooled me and trained me. Because when I first came out of warrant officer school, I was like, I didn't. remember i was supposed to salute you know people were saluting me he goes god damn it he everybody dressed me down i can't remember where we were he goes god damn it when somebody salutes you that's a that's a that's a that's a poignant of uh express of of respect and you better

so you know and he chewed me out i was like holy shit i forgot that you know i'm a wobbly one right now i'm supposed to be you know i'm supposed to be saluting these guys right and i remember he was that kind of a guy he was like hey this is military um What's the word I'm thinking of? Discipline, etiquette. Yeah. Yeah, military etiquette. That's the word.

Military etiquette. And so he kind of helped me go from a sergeant first class to a warrant officer won. And he was around at that time and really was a tremendous help to me. And I have a lot of respect for him for this very day. Well, guys, thank you. everyone for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it. Please remember to like and comment on the video and hit the subscribe button if you haven't already and remember to hit the bell icon also so that you get notified when we go live. There's also a link down in the description for our Patreon

if you want to support the stream and keep us going. It's actually thanks to all you guys that we kind of built out the set and fixed our audio and it's still a little bit of a work in progress. but it looks a hell of a lot better than it did. And that's kind of because all you guys out there who supported the stream, we really appreciate it. Next episode, episode 59, next Friday, it's going to be on 9-11. And we have a FDNY firefighter or retired firefighter

who is there that we're going to interview. He'll be here on the show, and he has a hell of a story to tell. So we're excited for that. Thank you again, Chuck. We'll do the bonus segment with you. I just want to say we're at 9,000 subscribers now. Please share these videos because when we get to 10,000, Jack's hair comes off.

Jack's hair comes off. Dave bravely volunteered me to have my COVID hair buzzed off. I'm selfless like that. Yeah. No more of that after that. Yeah, yeah. This is the longest I've ever had my hair in my life. Once we hit 10,000 subscribers, it'll be the shortest that's ever been since basic training.

Yes, I will buzz cut Jack's hair right here on set. So, Chuck, thank you so much for your time. It's been amazing. Well, thank you guys too. I enjoyed it. All right.