The Team House - Hawk Recon Team in Vietnam | William "Doc" Osgood | Ep. 236

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

Doc would see combat throughout South Vietnam, spending much of his time deep in the bush far from the relative safety of base camps.With the less than encouraging words that “you’ll be dead in 15 seconds” still ringing in his ears, Doc embarked on an eventful and at times harrowing combat tour that pitted the famed 101st Airborne Division against some of the North Vietnamese Army’s finest troops on the battlefields of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Hamburger Hill, and the deadly A Shau Valley.Doc would serve as the head medic with legendary Colonel Charlie Beckwith’s (creator of the US Army’s Delta Force) 2/327th, 101st Airborne Division, Hawk Recon in what was arguably one of the most dangerous jobs in the deadliest part of South Vietnam. Doc also became an unofficial combat artist during the war.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Today's sponsors:---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------To help support the show and for all bonus content including:-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseTeam House merch: ⬇️https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Social Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter:https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleWant to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]#vietnam #101stairborneBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, folks, I just want to take a minute to ask you to go in rate this podcast, let the Teamhouse know how you think we're doing, go and rate us on whatever platform you're listening to this on, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or whatever else. Those ratings really help us out, and we really appreciate the feedback to let us know what you like and what you don't like. And if you do like the Team House and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page and you can actually support the stream and well as get access to our team house. bonus segments and bonus episodes. Yeah, if you're going to give us a great review, please do. And if you're going to give us a not-so-good review, why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Special operations. Covert Ops. Espionage. The Team House with your host, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Team House, episode 236. I'm Dave Park with host, Jack Murphy. Tonight

our guest is William Doc Osgood, a member of one of the Hawk Recon teams in Vietnam. Actually, quite a history. Doc has written this book, unfortunately, I take

the dust covers off them when I read them, and I forgot to bring it, but he wrote this book, Hawk Recon, which is a fantastic book. I mean, it's really kind of the day-by-day not even a day by day, but it's vignettes of what life was like for you and others in Vietnam. So, Doc, thank you very much for joining us tonight.

We deeply appreciate it. Yeah, pleasure to be here. Let's see. Yeah, it was, it was in the Hawk recon, the only Hawk Reconna. There was only one. There was Tiger Force. A lot of battalions had a battalion recon. And, yeah, so there's only one.

They were there for the whole war, and there were some really tough individuals in and out. Rangers, Green Berets, saw guys, whatever. They had them all. A bunch of drafted legs, you know. It was an interesting crew. So let's ask you about your origin story. What, you know, what was it?

Obviously, the draft was on, you know, it was 19, what, 67, 68, you know, Vietnam. We had been there since around 1965 in force. What was it in your upbringing or what led you to the military? Oh, yeah, it was 67. I joined in 67. I wanted to be a soldier all my life. That was my thing. I don't know.

We're Norwegians or something. We're biking. I don't know. I'm not sure. Anyway, yeah, it was what I trained for. I was, I don't know, probably a toddler. I worked on it, played it. It was what I was going to do.

And I was in the, And then I wanted to be a Marine. And then I saw the Green Berets. And then so he had to join to be a Green Beret. And I got in base camp, and within about four days, I knew, I wanted to be a CIA agent, too, of all the things, you know, James Bond was going on, you know, was just a young, goofy kid, you know. In two or four days and basic, I knew I wouldn't do any of that stuff. I didn't want to do it even.

So. So. I would continue. I would continue. I'd go airborne and go special forces with that. You know, that was, I'd be, I wish I'd been drafted at that time. And I just, I just go do my three years. That's fine.

Yeah. So, you know, and one of the things you talk about in your book is not only your story, but you tell the story of some of, you know, other people. And you also give, you know, kind of an interesting history of the layout of, you know, from 1965, the first brigade of the 101st going into Vietnam and, you know, the story that follows then. And, you know, Westmoreland and kind of forming the reconnaissance teams and then how that fanned out, right? See, I've lost complete video here for some reason. but I can talk away here. Yeah, we can see you fine.

We can see you and hear you. Okay. All right. Okay. What's the question again? A history of, Yeah, so can you give us a little background? Because we don't talk about this often on the show,

but the background of conventional forces going into Vietnam of Westmoreland, of the 101st being there, things like that, do you mention in your book? See, I don't know anything about that. I was just there for the adventure and the thrill, you know. Yeah, it was the first brigade, 1001st. And they were there for the whole war just about. They were there before the first cavalry wherever got there, Cowboys.

You know, they protected the first Caval and they flew in off the boat. So it was the first brigade. There was three, two other brigades. So it's just the first brigade there in the early part. And about the time I showed up, they all came over. So there was three brigades in there. And we called him waste more land. I don't know what, I don't know when he was in and out.

I don't know when he left exactly. I don't care. where he, so, but yeah, so we were all up there eventually up to Camp at Camp Eagle. But what's funny was, I was supposed to be in Green Beret school. In fact, all my buddies and we've gone through jump school after medic school, we were in, we were accepted into Green Berets. We were jumping there at Bragg. We were training. And somehow, I know it was because, I'm almost positive because we had a critical MOS, which is medic, and we were like gold brick.

We were like, you know, they dealt, they dealt us like diamonds in the rough or whatever. We were valuable. For some reason, and I think it was my commander was Charlie Beckwith. You talked about special ops as the king's special ops. Charger. We call them Charger. I'm pretty sure after Tett, a lot of medics were dead and he needed medics. He became an infantry commander. His paratrooper, but a battalion, a regular infantry battalion, the second 3-2nd of 7, and I think what he did was he needed medics and he's going to get him. He knew where to get medics. and he knew about Special Forces School.

I mean, he was a commander there at one time. And he knew. I heard he traded AK-47s for his pick of truth. But he was dealing. So one day they marched us down to the dispensary at the center. You know, it bragged. And they say, you can't read the eye chart up there without your glasses. You're going to know tomorrow.

Well, thanks a lot. Thanks a lot. I tried to put some guys' contacts into my eyes, but that didn't work. So we ended up in Nong. But the funny thing is, this just kills me. We got the Cameron Bay, and like good little boy scouts, we turned our orders in. We had our orders there. We hand-carried them. The next morning, I see, oh, there's a Green Beret office right in the back. So I go in here by myself, all my buddies are outside. I say, hey, we've got four medics from the center here.

Can we get in, can we get him hook up with you? And they say, yeah, you're sure you can. Yeah, where's your order? We'll set you right up. Where's your order? Okay, so just in, I swear, at that moment, I hear the speaker in the background. I said, oh, it's good, Maurice, back on 1001st Airborne.

So back on the bus to the 101st Airborne. They put us in the, they put us in Third Brigade. Miss Charlie's battalion, we've had in the third brigade. We're at Rockasons. All right, well, whatever. I don't like this, but we'll do it. They were in Third Brigade. I was put in Company D, third of the 187,

just in time to go up Hamburger Hill. Company D, third of 197, was the first one on Hamburger Hill, and they took the biggest beating up there. This was the following here. But we still had time. We would have been. I would have been there, no matter what.

And so we got out there and we were getting chopped up with booby traps every day. It's horrible. And the worst thing I've ever seen the whole time. And then about five days of that, they said, get on the chopper. Get on. Get on. You're lucky some little bit. Get on. You're going back to the rear. Okay. No problem. Go back to the rear. Going up to the Charlie Beckman's battalion now. and that's what I think happened. So we ended up there, spent our time with him. That's what I know about third brigade and second brigade and first brigade.

Was Charlie running Project Delta at that point? Delta, I think, Project Delta, that was Beck was invention, I believe, and that was earlier. Okay, gotcha. And you had, you mentioned that, like, there were four, SF medics, right? For SF medics, that basically got pulled out of SF training and sent over because there was a critical shortage of medics on the ground, of combat medics. Yeah, that's my theory. That was my theory that Charlie Beck was doing. It destroyed my career as a military man, more or less, and got a

shipped up there. That's the only thing that makes sense to me. Now, you know, you talk about booby traps. You mentioned in your book when you first link up with the Rakhassans that when you landed, you know,

they were there waiting for you. You went out and as soon as you guys started moving out, you almost fell in a pungy pit. Right. Right. I said within within I just met them had medic just a couple weeks ago in San Antonio at the meeting the head guy I reported to he almost fainted that somebody had actually sent him another medic and I just met him but anyway So he says yeah go over there and do what a medic does there was another medic over there you just follow him and this is in four minutes five minutes I'm shaking hands of the lieutenant

about 10 minutes a booby trap goes off in the hedge row nearby and we the lieutenant says I'll get your shit move out we're moving out we're going through the hedge row and there was a pungy pit I looked down there the thing was made like uh aliens had made it it was perfectly plum square and it appeared to go into the directly to hell I mean it was it was deep put it that way oh that was the tunnel and right next to it was some pungy sticks. Yeah. So I remember in your book,

you wrote that you almost step in this pungy pit and then to avoid that, like you kind of throw yourself back and all of a sudden, like you almost throw yourself into this like chasm into the middle of the earth.

Yeah. Yeah, something like that. And some of the guys are there the first time they call me Doc, he says, he mixed in Latin accent, hey, doc, watch it, doc. Watch it, doc.

Hey, Doc, look at this. They were helping me, so that was good. So, so, so was Charlie Beckwith's unit, was that the third of the 187th or 3-187? He said, I don't know, General Zays or the other general, said, what battalion do you want, Charlie? and he said the worst one. So he got the second 327, the no slack battalion,

the one that took the German surrender offer in Bastogne, that one. He got that one. So that was his. Yeah. So then what was it like integrating with this unit? Like you're this fresh face young kid, you know, I mean, you're a medic. And you, you encountered a lot. lot of a lot of things in Vietnam that like you're the combat medic course didn't necessarily

prepare you for correct correct you know well those first few days of the rockets on was pure hell pure hell you talk about terror or war on terror yeah we were dishing out terror and we were getting terrorized my my brain and soul and our was terrorized walking through booby traps. I mean, their psychological weapon, that's a terrorist weapon. And we were getting blown away by booby traps every day. I mean, people would just be split down the middle like a trout laying there. No, yeah.

So those are the easy one. Yeah. And so can you tell us a little bit, like some of the, you know, some of your first experiences with, you know, with this unit? that you're in now? Okay, I was only even in the Rockas on those few days, and it was just a lot of booby traps. Yeah.

And then we were up north. We moved us up north. Beckville's baton was up at Camp Eagle by way. Do you want me to jump up there? Yes, please. Yeah, okay, so somehow we got up there. It seems like we went to every little airport in the country. And we got up there and they put us in this insane Madhouse Battalion.

It was just pure chaos. First of all, we had brand new M16s. They took those away because, you know, he wanted those for inspection for his arm room and gave us some clunkers. Then we had a black fortuit sergeant. He'd lighten us from our wallets for a slush beer fund that we never got. And then they said, we'll go sleep over there in this tent. And we're sleeping in tents at that time with some sandbags around to protect us from the rockets.

It would come in once in a while. And a lot of the sandbags are falling down. There's just choked full of people smoking weed. listening to rock music guns hand grenades laying everywhere naked men you know dirty clothes all over the plate

welcome to the war sounds like Burning Man sounds like what like Burning Man like like a big like just psychedelic festival yeah if I could click to

see I got the camera I don't have any controls. Here we go. Can you hear me still? Yeah, we got you. Okay, good. I'm back in, damn, I'm probably going to cut us off here, but...

Please don't. Yeah, I can't see. That's no fun. Oh, you can't see us? That's probably down the lower left. There's the little video will come up. I know, but I'm off the screen completely. Well, let's try to continue.

We can see you just fine. I fixed it. Oh, great, great. Excellent. Working laptops drive me crazy. I mean, all these computers drive me crazy. I need a big, fat, solid 27-inch. Just talk.

Sorry, go. Let's, okay. So, when, so you mentioned, Hawk Recon, like the Hawk Recon. And a lot of these units, like you said, you had Tiger Force, you had recondos. These units were starting to put together.

They realized that they needed these reconnaissance elements. And so these reconnaissance can you tell us how they came on, how Hawk recon or any of the reconnaissance sort of came up on your radar initially?

Well, Gary Linder know a lot of stuff really good. He talks them up. He talks pretty good about him, except that interview with you. He made a little joke. I didn't appreciate it. But we always argue about it. That's funny.

Yeah, he explains that that was probably Hackworth's idea. I think Hackworth was in one of the, he was in one of the battalions of 100 first. 100 first were there from the Gipgo. So he's, I think he might have been. He said, we're going to out recon, we're going to out guerrilla the guerrilla. So battalions need these, need a recon element. So it started early. I think, well, eventually there was 10 battalions, 10 battalions in the division.

And each one had a recon element. And they were there pretty early and they were there in the last. And so Hawk recon, was that the recon element that was associated with the battalion that you were in at the time? Right. Yes, it was. That was like Charlie Beck was baby, sort of speak. And was that something that because you were a medic and there was a critical shortage of meddits, did they assign you to that or did you choose to go to that? No, I couldn't get in it. I was in the A company for a long time. to get out of there, blundering around in the Ashaw Valley with the blind companies. It was, you know, I tried to get in right away and there's laughed at me, but eventually, yeah, I got in.

So that's what happened. Why did they laugh at you initially? Oh, well, one guy. That same black platoon sergeant, I think. I told him I wanted in the hawks and he just laughed and walked away. And I can remember. Yeah, so anyway. And I don't, I don't think it had it.

He had a shortage of medics, I think. Right. He didn't care where they went. Right. So he wasn't in Hawk recon. He wasn't in the Hawks. He just, he basically was one of the line platoon guys and or the line company and was No, like we don't have enough medics.

You can't go anywhere. I can't go anywhere. Oh, the platoon sergeant? Yeah, the platoon sergeant. Yeah, he's just lazy. He didn't want to do the switch of paperwork or anything or or I'm sure that's what that's all it was. He might not have been the right guy to ask.

I don't really know if he was the top dog of the platoon. the medical platoon or not. So how did you eventually, how did you finally get into Hawk Recon? Well, we'd been in the Ashaw Valley and then we went down in the lowlands and we're down there. And I just went up to the,

to us, the real platoon sergeant, or the new Patoon sergeant, at least I knew he was the Patoon sergeant. And I said, well, it didn't know walks. He said, okay, pack your stuff. And so, like, how were you introduced to them? You show, can you just show up at their, like, little section say, hey, I'm here now?

Did they put you through any kind of selection or anything like that? No. No. And I think it was volunteer. You know, there's no, you didn't have to pass any tests. You didn't have to get two okays from two guys. You know, maybe it's sometimes you did. I knew a bunch of them because the baton leader and a bunch of them had been in company A, my first company, and they got in there and left me behind.

So I knew them. And my first meeting with them, we were down at Firebase Tomahawk, I asked my platoon leader, go on in the hogs and say, okay, go go down there. They're right down there in the flat. So I think they must have driven me down on a truck. They're sitting out in the middle of dry rice batting in the middle of open. And anybody in the world knows where they are can see them. And I just walked in there. And I remember the medic, my guy was replaced it.

He turns around it and walks rapidly to his escort over to the truck. I was happy to leave. Yeah, so that's how. And I knew a bunch of the guys. I didn't know the Patoon leader, but I knew them already. So it was cool. And so how was Hawk Recon set up? Like how many guys was the entire team?

Like what size elements did you guys go out in? It varied. I mean, you know, like an infantry company, they'd go, But they'd send little recon teams of five guys out sometimes. But the Patoon, it was a platoon. It was a, I would call it a heavy recon. There's a heavy team. You know, we had a couple of him 60s.

And it had fluctuated like 20. It could have less than 20 or more than 20 guys. And we usually stayed together like that. And Linder says, you're not, you guys were. You send me to think you're lurks. I don't think we were lurched. You guys were sure short range, you know, but we stayed, we stayed closer to a friendly unit, our own line companies. We were sort of close to them.

But as far as range, range can mean time also. We stayed out, we stayed out on mission, 40-day missions. Like Beckwith's thing was, his thing was Merrill's Marauders. Merrill's Marauders, they never stopped. They went halfway to China and then over, you know, how they did it. They went for months and months and months. Never went to the rear. Well, Hawks, we pulled over 40-day missions.

It was unheard of. Sog never did that. Lerps never did that. Nobody did. And there was some hairy missions. that way. Yeah. Yeah, that was one of things is

even if you guys weren't doing these long range patrols, you were outside the range of like friendly lines and you were out there for a very long time, right? Yeah. Yep.

And crazy things happened. Before I got there, the Hawks were out there. their Beck was was charging through the highway there

into the end of the Ashaw 547 and the Hawks somebody they hit a tank one of our tanks and I think they must have killed everybody in the tank and so the Hawks launched

I wasn't just that before I got there and they went out and they found a telephone a heavy duty one mounted on of insulators, personal insulators, a heavy-duty thing. You know, so they followed it and followed it. And they were out there 40 days and hadn't found it. And the end of it yet.

And they were pissed. They're highly pissed. So the last night, they set up, and these guys didn't give it down. They cooked. They cooked. They were suicidal, but they would cook, make coffee. dinner and breakfast. So the next morning, they get up, they make their coffee,

and they get up, and this is from my buddy Rick explaining him as the head RTO. He gets on the horn, they clean up all their gear, they're all they pick up all their crap, their litter. He gets on there and he calls back up to Beckwith or to the fire control somewhere. He says, Romeo elements moving. So they move out in line formation. They hadn't gone 50 feet. And Rixie's two NVA, full uniform, jumping down into a pit with an A aircraft gun,

some heavy, heavy mission. I don't know what size gun it was. And he can't shoot because the point and slack are in front of him. and the slack point man is like 20 feet away and suddenly suddenly he's 10 feet away from these two NBA and and Rick knows the shit's going to hit the fan at any second that he sits down behind a tree and before anything happens he calls Becklin says Romeo's in contact point man I got their names it's in the book he walks the point man takes on a stance like Frankenstein

starts walking like Frankenstein, goes right up to these two guys, and shoots both of them dead, and then the shit hits the fan. So they're fighting like all day. They run the NBA of 70 or so in this base camp, where they slept right next to them, right next to them, neither barb the other. And they finally ran them out. They called in jets and artillery, killed one of the other. the hawks and killed about they got 14 no 11 bodies NBA bodies and it was called a

ball and a hawk hill that's right in the out show that's typical aisle show up then now what are you drinking there he oh what are we drinking I'm drinking horse horse soldier and Jack is drinking few straight rye whiskey first soldier I like that oh that was us too you know by the way. I wrote a whole chapter about comparing us to Custer. Yeah. It's incredible because they changed the 101st to 101st Air Cavalry that summer. That moment when I was in there, when we first went into the Ashaw, we were at Calvary. And we mimic, we mimic Custer's battle. Exactly. Exactly. Except for the wiping out Right. One of the companies, one of the companies did get WhatsApp.

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Like, one of the things you mentioned was, even though the 1004,000, first was sort of an airborne unit. You got a ton of shit for wearing your airborne wings when you were in this so-called airborne unit. Yeah. Yeah, I noticed when I went through P training, called P training the first in-country and get, going to a few classes, you know,

I should have forgot all the classes. I should have gone over to the Lerbs right then. They had an office down there. And we're screwing around. around. There were so many legs. What are you drinking there, William? Is that the Belvenny? This?

This is a green spot, single pot, still Irish whiskey. All right. Let's do it. Cheers. Let's try it. I don't drink anymore. I don't drink. I gave it all. I gave it a Christmas, maybe on Thanksgiving, maybe Halloween party,

and special kids and friends. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, we are honored that you consider us friends and this is a special occasion. It's like Christmas come early. What I do like about Zoom, you get from friends, like Gary Linder. Gary Linder is my best friend. My best friend. I've never met him.

It's a wild man. I've worked with him for years. We were at Eagle at the same time, our tour. were the same times. Everything he saw, I was there, too. I mean, I was within a 10, 20 mile. Yeah, one of the, you interviewed or you talked to a lot of different people, a lot of different guys for this book, didn't you?

Because they're, like I said, there's not only your stories, but there are other people's stories. There are stories about the unit before you got there that other guys have passed on to you. It's really an amazing, Like some of the chapters are one page, but it's, they're, and they're almost like very interesting anecdotes, you know, and about the simple pleasures of a soldier, like getting ice, right? Getting ice.

Oh, God, yes. Yeah, yeah. A lot of work went in. This is no overnight thing. It's a 50-year work. Yeah. 50 years. I've been, you know, I took time off to be a bushpott in Alaska and smuggle electronics in the

Mexico and stuff like that, but all that time, I was still calling guys, writing letters, and collecting photographs. So I got, yeah, it's a lot of thought went into a lot of work. It's, it's, I've never seen a book that you, as you look through the pictures, you, you, you see the maps where we went in the ashore. There's no landmarks in there. There's no, there's a, there's a, There's a river, but there's no landmarks, but you can still follow us along where we went because I had a secret way of finding out where we were in the Forest Mountains. But you can identify the characters, all the characters, all the names, you recognize their name, you recognize their picture, you recognize the landmarks in the photos, they match the map,

The landmarks in the map. Everything matches. I've never seen that in the book. If you look through there, it ties it all in. Yeah, I mean, there are, you know, eight to ten, like back and front pages of just these amazing photos, like this incredible history that, like you say, hasn't really been captured in a lot of other places. Yeah, yeah, I don't think so. I mean, you look in the back in one of the back pictures, I call it anatomy of an ambush.

It was an ambush I blew. Right next to it was the map. You can go there today. It's right by Highway 1. You can take a bus and take your kids and take a school class from local school and say, yeah, that's how we did. No, you don't want to do that, I don't think. But you walk over from Highway 1 to that spot by using

the map and there's my picture the night before and the morning after blew this ambush and there's the results there's a picture and it's one picture is facing north you see the south China Sea the other picture is facing south

you see the slew in the mountains are quite evident they match the photos and they match the map yeah can you tell us about that ambush sure and what's funny about that when I was in company A we were in those mountains above the slu in the south China Sea we're up in the mountains there a whole company of clomping along like idiots you know that's what I say

and getting people well and we were up there so we get up early in the morning I'm not a real Even then I was the last one up. But I get up and you look at the map. I drew the picture where it was. I looked down on that spit. There's like a peninsula, the sand, goes right over to the mountains. But there's like a river right there

where it hits the ocean. You'd have to wait across maybe swimming. I look down there and I see a whole NVA weapons platoon. walking along. We got helmets, RPDs, AKs. We're just walking along

slowly, right in front of us. It's still, I mean, it's a quarter mile away maybe. You know, it's a long shot. Right there, I run over to the pituitzard. He runs over to the captain. The captain, it was embarrassing.

I don't know if they had an FAA. I don't know. They were basically trapped in front of us. And he yells at the gunner, the M-60 gunner, shoot, shoot, keep their heads down. Both the M-60s jammed. So they started running, of course, and they ran away. They just ran up that spit to the north. Embarrassing to say it at least. You know, I doubt he had an F-O pre-plot. The artillery were right there, only a couple miles away. you know he could have called for any birds in the area come uh could all he had to say was on get on the radio and say far for effect on the coast just due north or whatever and he would have had him trapped but anyway they got away so the next year maybe maybe my eye bought my spotting them did some good some clerk noted that and they said well gee that looks like a high high-speed trail. Let's put the hawks in there. So we're down there at the very spot they were.

I spotted them. We were there. And guess what? You see in the pictures, the bullets start flying in. Somebody's shooting at us now from the same place. They're up in the mouth. Oh, my God. That's in the afternoon. Unbelievable. So we stayed, the lieutenant, he sent out, he sent out of all the teams. They're all out and five-man teams, all spread around. And we were, we stayed right there, right there. A few little pine trees are for cover. And I'm going to spend the night there.

So somebody puts out of Claymore, and they take particular interest to where this Claymore is for some reason. And I bring the clacker to wire back. And so it's pitch dark now. And, yeah, so it's just like five or six of us there. Two Kit Carson and Scouts, and everybody's asleep. It's my watch. You know, that's why John Wayne and he always said,

all right, pilgrims, I'll take the first watch, the asshole. Right. Well, no one, you take the first watch, you can go to sleep. You don't have to worry about the rest of the night. Right. First and last watches are the best, yeah. Me, I had to get up at the 2 in the morning to do my watch,

and then I go to sleep, and then I got to get up again in the morning. Okay, so I'm on watch. It's about my 2 o'clock watch. I got the radio there hissing away. I got all my little, my 45, my M-16 grades, my buck knife. I guess I knew it was a high-speed.

I guess I knew it was a high-speed trail, obviously. And I didn't tell anybody. I don't think I'd tell a little lieutenant. And I didn't wake anybody up. So I see movement out of the corner of my eyes. I'm just coming down the beep. Oh, shit. And I didn't wake anybody up to Kit Carson's or nothing.

I said, nobody's going to screw this up this time. Nobody's going to screw it up. So the guy walks right in front of the Claymore. where I thought the claimer was. I wasn't sure now. I had to duck down behind my bag with a blast.

He did, he walked in front of me, the cloud completely covers a moon instantly like that. It's black. It's the inside of a dead water buffalo. I just, I couldn't see anything. But I detonate on a guess.

Time distance problem. I detonate. And then I see something moved to the left, I throw a grenade down there. And it didn't get kind of comical some more. Lieutenant, the tenant's over by me immediately over there. Doc, what's going on? What happened? I said, there was a gooner left or right coming down to be. What?

Shit. So he gets up and he's looking all around. We were kind of looking around. We're dark. We didn't want to go out. He takes out a poplar. It's like a little mortar, you know, it's got a top on it, put the top on the bottom. You hit it with your palm. A parachute rocket comes out. She goes up 500 feet and you've got a flare all of a sudden up there. It's the whole world know where we are. There's, I don't think there was a day we weren't surrounded on my tour.

We're surrounded somewhere. So here's is popular, still can't see anything. I say, well, he disintegrated and I'll hit him with Claymore. So I said, screw it. I'm going back to sleep. Did you're somebody else just watch? Fuck this shit. I wake up in the morning.

Excuse me. I'm going to use the F word. That's okay. Sorry. It's an 18 over channel. You can say, get up in the morning. I get up in the morning and look.

down the beach a little ways and there's a lieutenant standing over an NBA soldier with a lieutenant good, he's got an AK-47 for me. So that was that. Yeah, but there was

like that, he was like a courier, right? He had some documents. It was kind of a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He had a bag of stuff. He had some other stuff, but

I'm not one of my favorite. moments, but, you know, shit happens. Again, like I said, what's great about your book is, one, all the different, you know, people, because you do, you like, there are so many people mentioned in this book that, you know, either aren't with us anymore or, you know, I haven't had their stories told, and you tell a lot of people's stories. But also just, like I said, just the daily, like,

what a soldier like like I said getting ice or I want to ask you about the B incident the what? The B the B's. Oh yeah. See that my book has got stories like that you never see there. There's no clichés

there's no disrespecting civilians and I never saw that and I mean it was a horrible accident I think it was an accident there's no like Oliver Stone's movie you know, shooting, shooting it in and something. There's none of that, but I didn't see it.

And there's no clichés, you know. And so, yeah, I guess stories like the trees try to kill us one night. The trees are deforested, defoliated forest started to kill us because the wind came up and all the branches started breaking up and we couldn't go anywhere. We're going to go. And a hundred acres of trees in a hurricane. and they're all deciding to fall apart. That was bad.

And the other stories are the bees. We ran into bees twice. I ran in which one you want. Me, me taking a dump with the bees or the time they wiped our hole but the locks out. Tell us both of them because they're both great stories. Yeah. Okay.

The one with a, I was still an A company. So we're sitting up there in the, in the dead ass A show. Valley. I got to tell you the story about Custer's last night. It's just incredible. We were subject to Custer's last time. We were surrounded. We were surrounded every day we were in the Ashah and they had better guns. They had better guns, just like Custer. Custer had the single shop civil war antiques. The Indians, some of them, they traded, went to town, bought themselves Winchester's or Henry

assault rifles. Yeah, the repeater. Leverexed shoulder rifles. Henry's designed for 16 rounds. They had one round. Wow. We put 18 rounds in our 20 round clips

because we were told to well, Charlie, Sir Charles, I call him quite a bit. He had 30 round in 1847. Yeah. There's so many similarities to the customer. It's just unreal. Beckwith,

There's a Custer clone straight up. Custer like to show off his blonde hair. And Beckwithes like to show off his scar, his abdomen scar, huge scar. Anyway, but I was with the A company there surrounded and I had to go take a dump. So I go down to the, I go down a little ways outside the perimeter. And I find this big ravine.

I said, well, it sounds, looks good. I dropped my drawers. And I put my hand up to hold onto the street and hang out over the ravine. And about that time, I noticed my hand was in the opening of a murder wasp. They're murder was because I know now what a murder wasp looks like. They're invading Hawaii. but big, orange, scary. And they noticed right away something's wrong.

So they ended up, you know, I did the Boy Scout trick. I froze. I don't want to scare them. The attack here. The yellow jackets in California would, but these guys were much nicer. They just flew all around, and eventually I had a couple of each cheek and one of my nose. They're just walking around. I'm froze.

One walks down in my mouth and tries to get in my mouth. And then some are flying around, hovering in my face. I just freaked out. I didn't enough of this. I just, you bastards, just get away from me. I just let go of the tree. I fell back. My M. 16 is going, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.

down into the refrafinon, I'm falling right behind it. I'll kill every one of you. I'll kill every one of you. I kill your eggs, your pupil, your larvae, your adults, your workers, and you're clean. I'm going to kill her last. I was so maddened. But they didn't sting me. And then one time we were in the hawks, we got hit by little bees, little, like bumblebees.

and they did a job on us. They stung everyone. They stung everyone, except the guys who, the guys who ran, I said, don't run. Freeze, the old boy scout technique.

They, I got stung so bad. I was laying down. They were in my mouth again, in my mouth, stinging my tongue, my lips and my eyes. and finally they said, okay, that's enough.

You learn your lesson. I left. I felt really sick, you know. Somebody had to carry my ruck up the hill. Up this hill we were going up. And I got up to this little hill. I got up there and I went blind. I went stark, screaming blind.

I could not, completely blind. I couldn't see anything. I told him, I had a junior medic, I had a assistant medic with me, and I said, shoot, take that, this syringe and stick it right in my heart. Stick it right in through my chest, in my heart. Eject this epinephanophore, I think it was, which I didn't want to do. And then in a few minutes, ten minutes, oh, gray came, gray, and then the color came back. So you started going into anaphylactic shock, and he had to hit you with the epi? What's up?

You started like going to anaphylactic shock and he had to hit you with the epi? I just wanted, I didn't want to go permanently blind. Yeah. I felt okay. I was okay. I just couldn't see. Yeah. Well, I figured that would help.

When the first guy started getting hit with the bees, did you guys think it was an ambush that it was like a Claymore? Like, like, that had to be, had been terrifying in those like jungle conditions. Yeah, it was the way I described it in the book, and I got third, fourth parties on this episode. I believe Tick and Culver were on point. They were team. They were going up the hill. And Culver is the, is, his slack man.

Tick's a pretty new guy. He's in front. with a grenade launcher. But I think he had a shotgun around it. But anyway, Colver turns around and looks back the way they told me. And Tick, Tick looks up the trail and he sees a bunch of Oriental dudes and guns coming down the trail.

And he goes, Arvins, Arvins, you know, Republic of South R. L., I suppose. Culver spins around and, and they all realize their mistake and tick fires of high-expulsive grenade and they go sailing up right towards one guy's going to hit him right in the teeth but it just skimmed by, just missed them.

They all turned, ran. They're all gone. And that was it. That was the only shot fired. And we think maybe that they had a bag of the Horace in this event. And they threw it ahead of them. But I can't swear to it.

So while you were with Hawk Reacon, you also got flight qualified, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. That was funny. I got, yeah, I was getting short. You could extend. It was great. Yeah, the Army gave you a good deal.

You could do all kinds of things. You could stand for Lerps. I was invited in the Carrier's company, by the way, by some of the old hawks. I went over there. I had First Sergeant. I talked with First Sergeant and looked around. And you could extend for all kinds of things.

I was a medic, so I was qualified to fly on Medevac. And I could have got back in forces, too. Like right now, I mean, they were right down there at Fu Bai. Control command north was right there. And could have supposed to again. ended up on sod teams. Yeah, I went for the air ambulance. And after a little finagling, I got on that and flew quite a few missions.

I flew, I don't know, maybe 15, 20 missions. Yeah. I had to lie. What did you have to lie about? I had to lie. Well, it was funny. I plucked a hearing. You know, I still get bad ears.

the Claymore's and the law in training it blew my ears out of that. I couldn't pass the physical hearing test. And the flight surgeon, some doctor, he says, well, true, today's your lucky day. You just flunk your flight. He said, what? You want to do this? You want to do this? They just shot a medic the other day right through his chest protector.

I said, yeah. He says, well, if you do, if you don't care, I guess nobody does either. Go take it again, to take the physical again. So I passed it. So I got in and I flew with him. And what was that process like, like, you know, being on Medivax, being on Casabax? Yeah, that was a serious project. I flew with another medic, so there's five of us in there.

Eagle dust off. They had no M-60s. You know, you just had litter, aid bags. You had a litter hoist and you had a jungle penetrator. And I was with a medic. And we went out, we went up, big back. I see Hamburger Hill was over, but we flew around that same area back in the Isha on Malaysian missions flying it.

We flew into the trees. It flew into trees. The horse wouldn't hit the ground. And there was no place to land. And you're talking about a 30, 40 degrees slope with 150 foot trees on it. And there was a bunch of dead and dying there. What do you do? So these guys' pilots, the good pilots, would fly into the trees.

They find out an opening under the leaves and branches and dodge everything. And I see the coal writing little notes right on the windshield with a grease pencil. It looked like turn right, big snag proceed 100 feet, turn left, a defoliated area. make a half turn in the right and stuff like to get out it was like cave diving it was kind of spooky yeah and and you guys like you know the kazevacs took a ton of fire generally when they were because you it wasn't you guys weren't waiting until the action was over a lot of times like you were going in while the firelight was still going on yeah um yeah sometimes sometimes um We're back off.

Yeah, we weren't fools. But, you know, we had a serious thing with a, with one of the medevacs got shot down, you know, in the Hamburger Hill at the famous incident where they got shut down. And, see, the gods were funneling me. to be in the Battle of Hamburger Hill. There was no doubt about it.

They wanted me in that battle. First of all, I was in the D Company, the worst one. Well, guess what? D Company tries to outflank during the Battle of Hamburger Hill tries to outflank the NBA on top and go around and then go back up the hill wall. They didn't get off. They didn't get as far as the bottom.

The NBA were smart. They were on them, you know. So they were shooting them up. They had all kinds of casualties. They called a medevac. Well, just about that time, I can't swear it was the same medevac that I volunteered to be on. I was just a ground powder, but I was a loose cannon

and a fire basin. I really didn't have anything to do. Here comes this medevac, comes in fast, slams on the ground, is full of wounded and sticks, litters. field expedient litters with leaves and blood all over the place. They got all that out, cleaned it all off.

And I said, they said, man, there's some big shit going on there. So I knew that was Hamburger Hill. He'd just come in from Hamburger Hill. And I said, let me go with you. I'm a medic. I can help you. I'll go with it. He said, yeah, let me ask him.

So he asked him. They said, no, we could use you, but no. We need the space more. So they took off. And that could have been the same one. It goes into mine. There's some connections. This is like electricity.

It's connected to that company, key company. They call the medic. Sanders is the captain. He says, don't come in. It's too hot. Torbub as the captain of the Meredak. He says,

I was thinking we made it every time before. So he's coming in. He drops a hoist, the jungle penetrator picks up a guy named Pickle. Pickle. He picks up Pickle and some, I could say it, some bastard from Hanoi, I call him a hero from Hananoi, shoots an RPG down into the rotor disk from above, into the unarmed medevac and blows it out of the sky. And it comes straight down on pickle.

and everyone else was burned to death and killed except terrible. They got him out just in time, and he survived. He barely. They threw him in a pile of dead people and later noticed he wasn't so dead. But I kind of figured that was the bird I volunteered for. That was one time. And then, you know, when I was in A company, we went, and we were headed right to the hamburger hill in 1968

and there's other times I can't think of the exact one of the things about your book is you don't shy away from I don't want to say the horrors of war but the challenges of war and you know the the humor the guys get during war and some of the horrific events that happened during war, especially in a war where it's hard to distinguish sometimes the enemy from the civilians. Do you recall the Viet Cong princess chapter?

Oh, yeah. Can you tell us? Because I think it's a really good example of how challenging Vietnam was. God, yeah, yeah. Well, it's nice to hear you say these things. They're very unpointed. Yeah, that was basically to make a long story longer. Make a long story short, we shot up a boat load of civilians, women and children.

They were flying South Vietnamese flag. Now, how can that happen? We're the 101st airborne. But we took to surrender and yours. Germany, you know. Shit, by God, I was supposed to be in Gerdon Berets. I didn't, I don't, I'm not impressed with the 101st Airborne. I just went to their meet in San Antonio, you know, and I had to watch my mouth.

I mean, I love the guys. I think there was only two other ones that were in Vietnam, but anyway, how could that happen? How could that happen? 101st Airborne, shoot up a, that's, there was another shoot. That's the two, the two things, which, you know, don't ask me to go to war again, bro. As a matter of, that's the, I hope, the consensus in my book, what about the kids? Right. You got to think about the kids.

Right. All you, Navy SEALs, Green Berets, what, you want to go over there? You're going to, you're going to hurt what your kids. It's inevitable. What about them? And, yeah, so we shot this. we shut this boat up. From a helicopter.

They were in a free virus zone. Yeah. Well, we know it was a free virusome. We made it. But did every school and every hamlet put out pamphlets that we printed, oh, this is a free virus home. Don't go in there. I don't think that happened.

A lot of people didn't get the word. Right. So some bastard. the pilot radio is in and says, we got these people out there and have free virus on them. Probably some clerks says, fire them up. Right. Fire them up.

Oh, okay, so we started firing them up. And I couldn't see them very well. Well, I got up one round with my hand. I had an M79 for some reason. And I was trying to shoot ducks before when we were waiting to this bird. Anyway. Yeah, I got one round off. The gunners are going crazy.

The copilot shooting an M79 out of his wound. So it says catch 22. We turned into the rescuers. We land. The boat lands right next to us. And this beautiful 16-year-old, gorgeous girl, the only one that got hit, her thigh was split open. And it wasn't bleeding, thank God.

It wasn't a bad bleeder. And so I, you know, I fixed her up as best I could. And geez. What a catastrophe. And so in the book I described it about a month later, we're guarding a bridge down with my footlock close to that area. And I see this girl sitting on a bunker.

I can't, yeah. I go over there and I can't see her leg. And then I see her leg and just a big scar on her inside of her thigh. And, yeah, I'm the 101st. Dearborn, thank you for a month. And I felt I felt like shit. I just walked away. I couldn't say anything.

But four years ago, I went back to Vietnam. I went looking for her. And I didn't find her, but I was close. I could have. But I gave up for temporarily. I'm going to go back.

And just to be clear for people listening, it's, we're not talking about an event like My Lie. We're not talking about intentional form to civilians that you're in this guerrilla war where

a lot of the combatants were not uniformed. They were using certain routes and paths. And so when you guys see a boat, you're in a helicopter and you see a boat and command says it's probably because it could have just as

likely have been like Viet Cong or NVA moving things like it's the challenge of the situation. It's not from malintent. Yeah, it wasn't.

We could have been more careful. I mean, a pilot could have gone down and hovered right by and seen a bunch of kids and old men and women. But, you know, it didn't happen. So, yeah, right. Yeah, there was no

my lie is a real sore spot with me. I won't say too much about it. I get in trouble, but my lie, that's a disgrace for Americans, all the armed forces. Every human being, it's a disgrace, and it'll always be a disgrace. It'll never go away.

Yeah, I mean, you talk about it in you book and you talk about you know like a lot of your book is very gung-ho and it's very like what a soldier like any any soldier or marine or airman anybody who's been in combat

will get the reference they'll get a lot of the humor they'll understand sort of the dark side but also just how when war is your every day how that just becomes your personality so there's very gung-ho

sort of moments in this book, but you're also very, very, like, conscientious about calling out things like My Lie and the horrors that war can inflict upon Americans, upon other people, things like that. Hmm. Okay. Thanks. I haven't talked to too many people that have read the whole book. You know, it's gratifying to me.

No, it's, like I said, It's a great book from the, from the perspective of, like I said, I was kind of just your, that your one or two page chapter on getting ice, like getting ice in a combat zone. And the simple pleasure that a soldier gets from this, this thing that most people have, you can go to your refrigerator and get it anytime you want. Yeah. Yeah. I don't even have a refrigerator here in Hawaii.

You know, I use the neighbors, but yeah, I mean, it was so hot. It was so easy to write that because, I mean, it included all the census sites, everything. Tays, and it was just so hot. And that they brought actually brought us a chunk of ice. It was unbelievable. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

You did mention Delta Company, you know, and their troubles. Are they, they're also the company that got hit by Friendly Fire, correct? Or am I getting, or did I misread that? Am I misread it? No, no, that's right. That was our battalion. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. That has Delta Company.

They got wiped out. They got a bomb by our Air Force. That's my comparison with Custer's. It's straight on Custer's Last Stand. It's straight on. There's so many similarities. I just love that. I'm so glad you brought that up.

It's, it's, yeah, that was, where do I start? That was, first of all, we were just named Air Cavalry. And some of the officers, and I had black cowboy hats in the rear. We had those pin, swallow tail, flat cavalry flags. Well, I think the Army does, period. We had that. We had, I mentioned the Colts. We had Colts synonymous with the Indian Wars and West, West fighting.

We had Coles. We were armed with Colts and we had 19 rounds in them. They were armed with AK 47s, they had 30 rounds. There was a slight custer. He was outgun, horribly. those old civil, those carbines he had were prone to jam too, just like the M16s were rumored to jam. But they didn't even have ramrods. Oh, at least we had ramrods and punched a bullet back out.

But anyway, so here we come. This is August 4, this huge combat assault in the Ashow Valley. We come in there, were surrounded, flying through AA5. just to get in there, we're already surrounded. And all the helicopters are named after Indians dropped. Every one of them, except the COBRA. Is it here we? We had Indians with us.

We had American Indians with us. And so we dismount our mouths. And it's just how Custer fought. Custer fought, they get off their horses and make a skirmary line, one guy would hold horses and they'd go kneel down. So they're on foot. So we're on foot, too. And his, his biggest folly was, if you read, I read a couple of books recently, that's why I know. His biggest folly was dividing, dividing his forces, all right? He divided his furthest. He had two sub-lieutenants or whatever. He had Reno and the other guy who,

Well, he, and he goes up a river. They don't know what the river's call. You got to ask the Indian because they think it's a little big horn or the big, they call the big horn. Anyway, we'll call it the little big horn. He goes up the right hand side and Reno goes up the left hand side looking for camps. That's what we're doing. We're looking for camps. We don't know where they are.

Custer didn't know where they were either at first. We're looking for camps. Okay. We didn't know how many is in the camps or where they were. You know, it's kind of preposterous. And the cavalry back then, we're used to having the Indians run. They'd run usually. Well, so did we.

They'd run usually. Okay. So we follow a river too. There's only one big river there. It's just south of Hamburger Hill a couple miles. It's the island. and the low. It's in the map. It's in the book. And the lower. So on the right is A and B company. It's like Custer Slam. I was in A company. D. D and C were on the left side. It's like Reno. Split up. When Reno hit the Indians first. So did D company. They hit some NBA. And they spent all night. they didn't move the next morning he called in the air air drop there a bombing run and it blew them away

it just blew them away decimated just like reno reno hit the indians and they attacked him and i think he lost half his minute he retreated he ran a dog doc we just lost your sound i can see him oh i hear him i lost the sound oh your things it's unplugged oh Sorry about that. Please continue. Ignore me. It's going here. Yeah. So, what does I say? Yeah. So Reno runs.

Runs. He's getting. The Indians thought he was charging. What he was at first, but then he was running. And when they realized he was running, they took after him and he was murdered. So like us, we lost, essentially, we lost the whole company. Well, we're really split up now. D Company and C Company were miles away over on south of the Annaloa River. And we're on the north, just like Custer, and we turn due north, almost directly to Hamburger Hill.

It's directly where we started heading, just like Custer. And if we'd continued, and that's where I got, I walked into an ambush. me and the RTO, we won't within 20 feet of several NBA. And they let loose on us finally. Hart, the RTO, led loose on them. And so anyway, our lieutenant got to get the squad, and he starts chasing him for a while. And the higher Beckwith or Zays, the general is telling them,

well, give me a body count, give me a body count, pursue them, get them. and Lieutenant Viny, in his words, he said, he must have gone to West Point and studied Custer. And he says, if they want a body cat, they can go get them themselves. And he tells everybody, sit down, eat. And, well, General Zayas might have studied Custer, too. They pulled us out. They pulled us out before we got wiped out.

Um, you, uh, you know, you, like said, your, your book is fantastic. And there was, there was a real, um, you talk about a couple times, but there was a real disconnect between officers in the rear and the soldiers on the front. And, and I think one of the chapters that really, uh, signify that is your chapter, the last walk to a court marshal. Can you talk about that experience? Because it's fascinating. Like when you get off the bird, you're coming from the field.

Yeah. Yeah, that was, that was comical. This was when I was getting short. So I was like a little cocky son of a buck and somewhat. And let's see, I had I, I was wearing my jump wings on my boonie hat. And I come down. We just get dropped off. We were at a fire base for a few days, I guess,

and then we were coming into the rear. Cap Eagle, huge, you know, rear area, PX's, movie theater, our base area. So I get out, the chopper, the chopper's just dusting off the whole area, dry, dust everywhere, no trees, dirty, tired. So it's just me for some reason. I'm getting short. So I'm walking down the hill to go into the aid station in the company area or to our bar.

And I see this captain or a lieutenant standing in the shade over there. Well, he comes up towards me. Like, he's going to welcome me back. You know, right. Well, I was near this. And he goes, hey, troop, how's it going? I go, okay. He says, they should call me, sir.

Yes, sir. He says, oh, you know, your jump wings are pretty shiny. Are you airborne qualified? I noticed he doesn't have any wing. This is the battalion that's heavy. All the officers are rangers and airborne qualified backwards and all. And so they get a lone dog like him. you're going to send him out in a hot day.

Mad dogs and cherry lieutenants to go out in the midday sun. They're the only one. They're stupid enough to do that. Well, they send him out there. We'll go harass these guys coming in. Go and go see what their... He says, yeah, you've got shiny wings. You can't wear that out on the field.

I go, yeah, I always do. You call me Serb, by the way. Oh, yes, sir. Should it get in a sniper check, right? It grabs my weapon, pulls it out. It looks at it. It's dirty. Oh, shit.

No, shit, it's true. He throws it back to me. I got, yeah, so I realized I just got off a dust bowl out here, you know, a helicopter, you know, whoo, woo, woo, win, win, wind, dust. And so I said, I'm putting you up for charges. Oh, okay. I go in and get a beer. I didn't forget about it.

Charges. What are you going to do? Are you going to execute me? Yeah, what are they going to send you home? Yeah. What are they going to do? Send me to a bank on? Yeah.

Yeah. And the funny part is about I was really getting short. I wheezeled. I did weasel. I got a leave. I got a R&R. You just got one R&R. That's it. I got a lead too. Seven-day leave for some reason. I think because I blew away an enemy. I don't know why, but they gave me a leave. It was great. But I'm maybe trying to get another leave. I'm in the clerk's office. And he says, oh, Doc, by the way. you know that article 15 don't worry about it I said what's an article 15

it's not a judicial punishment it's like they don't commercial you anymore they take money away $101 in my friend's case or something like that and I go and he points to the trash can it dawned on me what he said

all right these ramps these rear enchilade mothers they're all right they're doing their job thank you and so that was that so basically he he filed that NJP that officer put on you in the

circular filing cabinet which what file that cabinet the circular filing cabinet that he taught he talked to the trash yeah the circular yeah the circular yeah he tossed it in the trash

that's what they call it now that's good yeah yeah so you know just to touch on the epilogue because it was interesting from your perspective the epilogue is who lost the war yeah yeah yeah

it's um I get a little there's some controversy I even say in there I have a you know I believe in a lot of conspiracy theorists and stuff I don't want to get into, but yeah, who lost the war? In my opinion, we didn't lose a war. We just left.

It was kind of, maybe you could call it chicken ship, but I don't call it that. We just left. We were invited over there by a criminal government. Our criminal government was invited over there by their criminal government. For money, it's all money. Just sell a whole couple of people. Check it out. who LBJ, LBJ, LBJ, Lyndon Baines Johnson was president.

He was also a big stockholder with his wife with Bell helicopters. Now, what's wrong with this picture? He's the president, and he's making millions off of that war gear, helicopters. Well, what's wrong with this picture? So, yeah, so anyway, a little bit off track here. that's my opinion of that so yeah it was all for money and so we were in war and it was time to go we were advisors we were supposed to be advisors and we gave it hell we gave it our best shot we're there for years and it's time to go so we left we i don't think we left we didn't lose it we just left

Yeah. And so when you got home, like, how did you adjust a post-Vietnam life? Well, I was lucky in a way. It was not too bad because I still had 14 months left in the Army, which I was not happy with. But I was still, it let me down easy. I was still in there. I went to the department. put me in the ranger, an actual lurp, I became an actual lurp at the stateside. And then I got a wonderful, wonderful trip to Germany. I still had time to go to, I went to Germany, I was going to go skiing and join the 10th Mountain, special forces, possibly as Greenberries and got garbage there, being a ski team and stuff.

So it wasn't too bad of a lot now. Yeah. And then after your military service, like, where did you, like, what did you do and where did you go? You mentioned being a Bush pilot, maybe one or two unauthorized trips with electronics to Mexico. Like, what route did your life take after that? Well, I got a discharge in Germany. And we were all smoking hats. I everybody smoking hell.

I didn't like it. I didn't like it. I just did it because it was one of the boys. So, yeah. All right. So I ended up in Switzerland. You know, party girls, night and day, skiing every day. I was the best skier.

I was a skier before. I was the best skier in that Swiss American in that Swiss town. And it was great. So I did that. Then I went back to the stage and I spent all my blood money on school and rent. that wasn't happening so I could take flight lessons. To get your private license, they pay for everything else, all your commercial licenses and all that stuff.

So I did not. Ended up in Alaska. I was a total adrenaline junkie now, as you might imagine, and traumatized. The medics were taught to kill immediately when they entered the service, and then they were trying to save lives. I mean, a little trauma there, little yin and yang, a little conflict. So I'm a total junkie. So I fly in a bush in Alaska, and that was great.

It was just what I needed for a few years. But then that war soon. And I ended up, I'm flying the Caribbean. I knew every smuggler from Miami to Barbados and all my friends, everybody. And great stories. I met a bunch of German kids. They'd come over from Germany and get their American pilot license, and they were flying with me, flying legit out of Puerto Rico.

And they hooked me up with a, they said, well, we got these old German guys down in Bolivia. Yeah, they'll meet them. and you can start a hunting safar business. That's me. I did that. I went down there. There's some wild characters down there.

Germans and Bolivia, I imagine. Yeah, like where do they come from? How that happened? Yeah. Huh? How did a bunch of Germans end up in Bolivia? That's crazy. Yeah.

And I tell people I met Adolf Hitler. I met him. He was there in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. No, I'm just kidding. I did not meet Edelph, Fiddler, but I could have because it was a long time ago. I'm an old guy now, and I met other characters. And my connection down there was Hans Stethfield. These guys, Bolivia had a, you could say, a volatile government.

They had a revolution every year, every year. So these guys, these old German, I don't want to say they're Nazis, but they were a bunch of German guys. Who'd serve them in World War II? They're going to take over the government. They're going to take over them. They want me to bring guns down and all this. And I kind of shied away from it. But I got involved in the animal business.

And I had the police come to my hotel. I had a client right next door. The first guy I took honey. I opened the door and there was a 38 pointed at my nose. And they said, oh, come, come with me. Come with us. A pretty girl, too. And there was like cannibal.

Just normal stuff. Just normal stuff. Bring your rifles. They really like the rifles. They just wanted the rifles. They let me go. But the German guy ratted me out. Fucking crowds.

It wasn't well with that. we got the same guys wanted to start moving cocaine and stuff. Shocking. Shocking. I can't believe that. Yeah, they wanted to move it up there to the stage, and they were doing it in suitcases, all these stupid ways. And I told them, man, you guys are going to jail.

And me, I found out there's this great book called Over and Back by Wild Bill Callahan there was a big industry in Texas, South Texas, they'd fly contraband, would be TVs and refrigerators and stuff. Legal. It's legal in the United States, but highly illegal in Mexico. And we do that in big old World War II bombers and DC3s and stuff. It was the greatest job I ever had. I did that. I did that, so I'm diffusing slowly, but sure. really from the war. We flew down there at night.

They'd come and shoot us down. They'd shoot us down if we went in the daytime. And so we go at night in these C-47s and stuff. It's great. He got $1,000 a trip. And six-hour trip wasn't bad. That's fantastic. And where are you now?

Like, you have Hockrecon. Is this your art? behind you? Yeah. Yes, it is. I'm a other combat artist. Questions for a... I was an artist before I went to Vietnam, so I call myself an unofficial, so the Army

tried to teach people how to be painter artists. They probably did, so what? I... And where can... So I've been doing that for years. And where can people find your art? your art where can they find you and find your art it's on um vietnam combat art vietnam combat art 101.com okay it's on that's awesome it's on the book it's on the book

no i love it it's in the description we'll put it down the description of this video what well so for the viewers who are watching this video uh we'll have a link down in the description so the folks who are watching this can go down and they can go and find your artwork. Yeah. And if you're listening on a podcast, it's It's really good artwork. Combat Arts. 101.101.com.

Yeah, it's fantastic. It's a lot of really cool stuff. So we have a done stuff. I got maybe 300 paintings. There are a lot of surfing and not just wars. stuff, a lot of water stuff. I mean, you can answer the question and does Charlie surf?

I love this, man. Like, firepower. Yeah. That's awesome. He does now. I was just over there four years ago. I never have a big surf thing in that. So do we have any questions

for William? We only have the one like somebody just gave us a sticker real quick. Oh. I don't know how much giraffe goes for it. There aren't any giraffe symbol of you. Just cat chaser. Oh, what were we going to show us?

Oh, this is a card with the address. Push it, push it to your left, I think. Up, up, up, up, up, up, up. Hold it right by your right eye. Hold it right by your right eye. My face. Yeah. And then just kind of push it up a little bit.

Up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up. A little bit further. There we are. There we are. That's it. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it.

Excellent. Perfect. That's a great business card. Yeah, it is. That's awesome. That's, I had a. Vietnam Combat Art 101.com. Yeah.

Everything is there. I carried an NBA skull on my rucks out because I was a medic. Yeah, I was going to leave that out. Like, it's in the book. However many drinks I've had on this show, I feel like I need one. Yeah, I mean, there's so much in your book and so many just like nuanced things, you know, talking about the school and, you know, the dude's joking about ears, like, just stuff. like that. I highly

recommend everybody if you want really like I said a really nuanced and very anecdotal tales about life in Vietnam in combat like your book captures that perfectly. Thank you. Thank you. That's what I say. It's a microscopic look at jungle fighting.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In Vietnam. Cook, Yeah. How to take a shit in a hammock in the hurricane, you don't want to go out from a hammock in a hooch. You take a machete and you dig a deep hole right underneath you and you hit it and you cover it up. It's medically approved. I medically approved.

There you go. There you go. Like, I mean, there are so many lessons like how to, like how to, you know, it's a medical approved. take a shit in a hammock and a hooch during a hurricane. I'm not going to stunting the death by bees. Yeah. No, it was just, it was, we had a sticker from Cat Chaser. We deeply appreciate it.

Thank you, guys. And Doc, thank you so much for joining us tonight. We really appreciate your time. And folks. Thank you, guys. Folks out there, please check out Hawk Recon. You find it on Amazon, get a copy of the book. Please check us out on Patreon.

if you want to have access to these episodes ad free, there's a link down in the description. And castercarabaeo.com, if you want to have some cigars, awesome cigars from one of our friends. And otherwise, next, this coming Friday, we'll have Robin Horsfall on the show

who served in the Special Air Service. And so we're looking forward to having them on the show. Nice. So, yeah. What about the 8,000, 8-7-5 Rangers and atomic bomb. Who was into that? Bro, we're working.

Well, I'm working on it. I'm working on it. We'll talk after the show. I'm actually working on a history project about all that stuff, about the Greenlight teams. Oh, okay. That's what I thought. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I'm very interested in that topic. And I'm happy to talk about that. And I think I'll have a lot more to talk about it in the future. Real quick, J.K., thank you very much for the donation. We deeply appreciate. Jake says much love to our vets. Thanks for sharing your story, Doc. Yeah, thank you so much for spending some of your Friday evening with us.

Hot Recon, Headhunters of the Aisha Valley. Check it out. That's my art. Oh, that's your art. Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah. I got it on the cover. I had to twist some arms, but it's on your.

That's awesome, man. Oh, thank you so much, William. Well, thank you, guys. That is real fun. It was really good. Very good. I'm glad you had a good time, man. Thanks, everybody.

That's great. Have a good night. We'll see you next time. All right.