The Team House - Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) in Vietnam | Gary Linderer | Ep. 224

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

Gary Linderer is the publisher of Behind the Lines, a magazine that specializes in US military special operations. He served in Vietnam with the LRPs of the 101st Airborne Division, earning two Silver Stars, the Bronze Star with V device (for valor), the Army Commendation Medal with V device, and two Purple Hearts. Grab Gary's books here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/stores/Gary-A.-Linderer/author/B001KHOOIG?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's sponsors: Rocket Money⬇️  https://ROCKETMONEY.com/TEAMHOUSE Stop throwing your money away.  Cancel unwanted subscriptions – and manage your expenses the easy way – by going to https://ROCKETMONEY.com/TEAMHOUSE Hello Fresh ⬇️ https://www.HELLOFRESH.com/teamhouse50 Get 50% off plus free shipping by hitting the link!⬇️ https://www.HELLOFRESH.com/teamhouse50 Vitamin 1 Water ⬇️ (VETERAN OWNED & OPERATED) Hydrate Your Health! https://www.amazon.com/stores/Vitamin1/page/EE9B1311-273B-4D86-B4D7-D8BD1CFE62F8?ref_=ast_bln ELECTROLYTE AND B-VITAMIN ENHANCED / SUGAR-FREE / CAFFEINE-FREE / DYE-FREE / GLUTEN-FREE / NUT-FREE / KOSHER / 4 DELICIOUS FLAVORS / JUST 5 CALORIES PER 8OZ. SERVING Buy Vitamin 1 here⬇️  https://www.amazon.com/stores/Vitamin1/page/EE9B1311-273B-4D86-B4D7-D8BD1CFE62F8?ref_=ast_bln --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: ⬇️ https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️  https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️  https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [e-mail] #lrrp #101stairborne #vietnamBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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Welcome to episode 224 of the Team House. So I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park. Our guest on tonight's show is Gary Lindwer. Gary served in the Lerps, a long-range reconnaissance patrol, which became Ranger companies later on in the Vietnam Conflict. He's the author of a number of different books. We have a few of his here, the Phantom Warrior series, amongst others. We're really excited to have Gary on the show.

We've had a few of his teammates on before, Larry Chambers and Ken Miller. So this is, I feel like a long time coming, Gary. So thank you so much for joining us tonight. Good to be here. So Gary, look, man, I mean, it's it's an honor and a pleasure. And I'm going to pitch you the question. I pitch all of our guests. You know, tell us about your origin story, about how you grew up what your upbringing was like

and what sort of propelled you towards military service. I was the oldest of eight kids. My father was a World War II B-17 pilot. And growing up, couldn't get him to tell a lot of stories. about his missions in World War II, but I aspired to be a pilot myself. When I graduated from high school, I had a primary appointment to the Air Force Academy.

And in May of my senior year, when I went to take my physical, they found out I had a brain concussion in a football game, my senior year in high school, and they informed me at the end of May that I was going to have to wait a year to attend the Air Force Base.

Cadetka. Back then, if you waited a year, you would be drafted. So I ended up applying at the last minutes of Missouri University. I attended Missouri University for two years. I was in Air Force ROTC. And at the end of two years, I ran out of money. My parents couldn't afford to pay for my junior year. So fearing that I would be drafted, I went ahead and enlisted. I tried to enlist in the Air Force Aviation Program. At the time, you had to have a college degree. Same thing with the Marine Corps and the Navy. So I went to the Army and is the last resort. And they told me, well, you could be a helicopter pilot, but you can't go to OCS.

For six months in 1967, unless you had a college degree, even the Army wouldn't send you to OCS. This was in the fall of 67. So I enlisted for airborne infantry. and I was told by my recruiter that they would probably remove the requirement to have a college degree while I was in training and I could reapply. So I went through basic training and AIT and I went to jump school and during jump school I reapplied. The Army took the requirement away. I reapplied for OCS. My orders came down for OCS the day after my orders came down for Vietnam.

So I was engaged at the time to my high school sweetheart, and I came home on a 30-day leave, and I tried to find out if I could delay going to Vietnam and go to OCS. They said there's no way Vietnam martyr supersedes everything else. So I came home, and my fiancé found that I was going to Nam, and she wanted to get married before I left. And I said, no, we went together for five years through high school and college. I said, let's wait until I get back. So anyway, I went to Vietnam. There were five guys in my group that went over from my jump class.

Only five guys I knew on the aircraft. We landed, and all five of us had orders for the 101st Airborne Division. So during P training, preliminary training, preparatory training, that the 101st offered, the week-long training course, they had different people come by and speak to us about joining these different organizations. volunteer organization. And they had a dog handler come by. And he talked to the whole group. There was 200 of us in the group.

And he gave this pitch about being a dog handler and going to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia for the training for two weeks. And none of the five guys I had served with volunteered for this. So I passed up on it. And I like dogs. Excuse me. I grew up with dogs. So I almost went that route.

The next guy that came was a real stud. He was a lurp. He had tiger fatigues on and a red scarf around his neck. Starched tiger fatigue really looked like a stud. And he gave us a talk about what Lurps did, and that we were the elites of the army, and we operated behind enemy lines and six-man teams and really made it sound exciting.

and all four of the guys I went over there with raised their hand to volunteer. And I, not wanting to be left out, I did the same thing. They flew us up north to Fubai. And there was a Jeep waiting for us that took us to the company reunion, or the company unit. And the first sergeant came out and said, gentlemen, come in here. I'm going to tell you what you're going to be doing. Well, he didn't make it sound so glorious. We went in and he explained that,

life expectancy of Lurps was, I'm sure he exaggerated it because we had lost that many people. But he made it sound very much akin to being a second lieutenant in a line unit. Didn't sound too inviting to it. I remember writing my first letter home to my fiance and telling her, I really screwed up. So anyway, they assigned each one of us to a team as a replacement. And that entire team trained with us daily for two weeks. And they told us any one man on that team could blackball us. And if they did, we'd go to an infantry company immediately.

No questions asked. I grew up doing a lot of hunting and fishing, and I was pretty comfortable in the woods. I was an explorer scout and a Boy Scout, so I could already read a contour map. And I think I did pretty good working out with my team. and at the end of my two weeks I was accepted as part of the team. Not long after I got there, we had a new company commander

that came to the unit, and he had come to us from a line company, and he wasn't very popular. He immediately made us have, we stood two formations a day. We ran in the morning, seven miles. We had to wear our uniforms,

our fatigues, jungle fatigues, with the sleeves were all down, even on work details and nobody like this guy. After about two weeks, he stepped on a toe popper mine going into his tent one night. And they almost disbanded our company because of it. That's crazy, Gary. I was still new to the whirps. That's crazy how the Viet Cong slip through your wire.

That's what we thought. Yeah. Especially in a warp unit. One should have been able to come in and do that. Yeah. Trying to take out your leadership. They had a hard time finding somebody that would bother. to be company commander after that.

They sent a black major over, and he refused to stay in the company area at night. He would come over and hold a morning formation and go back up to division headquarters for the rest of the day. We'd see him the next morning again. I guess it was almost three weeks later. Captain Ken Eklund volunteered to take our company. Captain Eklund had been with First Brigade with an infantry company with a 327th. And he had an excellent record. He didn't lose a man in a year over there in 1965, West Pointer.

He became our company commander, and he was an outstanding company commander. I didn't really go out on my first mission. I got there in early June of 68. By the time I trained, and we went through this rigmarole with the captain that stepped on the tow popper. It was August before I actually went out on the patrol. Gary, for folks out there who don't know or don't understand, can you explain what your unit did, what a work was and what your mission was? When I was there, primarily we were reconnaissance, long-range patrol.

We would pull missions that lasted anywhere from three to seven days. Most of the missions were 20 to 40 kilometers away from the base camp. So we were out quite a ways past where the infantry company, were working, as opposed to battalion reconnaissance units that worked in much closer. Normally, we inserted by helicopter. There were a few missions where we did a walk in or were dropped off along a highway by truck, but normally we were taken in by helicopter, and we either hovered just above the ground and jumped out, or we repelled in, or we had, there's a couple of missions we

actually went in by rope ladder. The insertions were normally at first light or last light, and we would hit the ground, usually in a small clearing, run into the jungle, and immediately set up a tight perimeter, and we lay dog up to an hour just listening. Normally, if the enemy had a trail watcher or we were close to a base camp, they would come to see what the helicopter was all about. We had a choice of continuing the mission or if we were compromised. The helicopters were standing off a few miles away.

They would come back in and try to pull us out. When we pulled a mission, it was usually in an area, we called it an area of operations, an AO, that was anywhere from four to seven clicks, a thousand meter clicks in diameter, or in dimensions. The cliques might be in a square, they may be oblong, it depended on the terrain. Before mission, the team leader and the assistant team leader would do an overflight and try to locate potential landing zones or extraction zones, where the streams were for water purposes, and where possibly the enemy might be hiding. So when we went on a patrol, usually our patrol route was predetermined.

We based it on contour maps and what we saw on the overflight. So when we went in on a patrol, we weren't locked into that patrol route, but we would try to follow it as closely as possible. A team consistent of a team leader, an assistant team leader, two scouts and two radio operators, a senior and a junior radio operator. The senior radio operator, his communication was with the, Either a radio relay team or the company Talk, Tactical Operations Center. The junior radio operator, his was set on an artillery base, where our artillery support came from.

We had a lot of communication problems. Our missions were usually back in the mountains. And where we were, the mountains were very similar to eastern Tennessee. Very rugged, very steep. A lot of double canopy. Water in most of the valleys, but that's where the enemy. usually was too around the water. So we had to be careful trying to resupply water on missions. So that's pretty well what we did. We didn't cover a lot of ground. We moved short distances,

very silently, did a lot of listening. We tried not to run trails. We would try to parallel a trail far enough off that we could see somebody coming up or down where we wouldn't make a lot of noise. Gary, I mean, where to even begin? I mean, do you want to tell us about your first mission that you started to get into a little bit? My first mission, we had an E7, was the team leader. I won't mention any names. I was pretty impressed by him. I thought he was very professional.

We landed in this Alpine country, not Alpine country, Piedmont Country, Rolling Hills, not a lot of cover. at the base of these tall mountains. We landed about, I think it was about seven or eight in the morning. And there was six of us. I was the new guy. The helicopter came in and was still moving when we jumped out. I remember I hit on my toes of my feet and did a somersault immediately,

not realizing that when a helicopter is moving, you don't jump out like that. Really, I felt like a total ass when I did my tumble and came back up on my feet. I thought they'll probably kick me off the team when we get back from this mission. Anyway, we ran about 100 meters off the LZ into a bamboo thicket right at the edge of the bottom of the mountains. And there was a trail, high-speed trail,

going up through the bamboo. I was walking slack for the point man who happened to be the team later at E7. We went up that trail about 100 meters and he announced that we were going to have a break and we stopped in the middle of this trail and took a 10-minute break. This is right after we inserted.

And I found that later that we were playing dog at the time, but in the middle of a trail. About 15 feet above us, above the point man, the trail made a turn to the right, 90-degree turn. And you couldn't see that out of it because the elephant grass and the bamboo was too hot. So we're sitting there in the trail, and all of a sudden, I look up and here's a, I think he was a Chinese communist. He was six foot tall.

Came around the bend in the trail. He had khaki fatigues on and a red bandana around his neck and a boony cap, and he had an AK-47 slung over his shoulder. And everything froze. Nobody moved. He stopped in mid-step and stood and looked at us, and we both looked at us. and we both looked at him. And the guys behind us, I'm not even sure. The farther down the trail, I don't even know if they saw him.

They were pulling security in different directions. And all of a sudden, the guy grabbed for the sling on his AK-47. When he grabbed on the sling, the E-7 ripped him just across the chest with his eight, with his, was that, did he have a, R-15? Okay. I had an M-16, and I had my finger on the selector. switch, thank God. I flipped it to fire and on full automatic and I ripped him again. And every time we hit him, he'd stagger backwards and you can see the dust come off his uniform. And you can

see the splotches of red coming across his chest. And all of a sudden the guy turns around and runs back around the bend in the trail. And we heard him fall. And we're sitting there, the E7 didn't say anything. The guys below us didn't know what was going on. They all stood up. And I'm still sitting on the ground. I had fired 20 rounds out of my magazine. And all of a sudden, it occurred to me, you better reload. I dropped the magazine and put another mag in, and a stick came flying over the elephant grass and the bamboo and landed in the trail.

Then pretty soon a rock came over. So the E7 figured he was a point man for an element, and he jumped up. said everybody back to the LZ. So we all jumped up and the E7 pull rear security and we ran 100 meters back to the LZ. The helicopters were still on station, so they came in and picked us up and took us back to the LZ. We went through a debriefing, my first one, and we all told what we saw the other four guys on the team never saw this guy, even when we fired. They didn't see So we reported what happened. I wasn't going to say too much.

I was still too new. And the E7 said, I think this guy was a Chicokech. He said he had, when we shot him, his hat came off. He said, he had a flat top, his hair had been cut recently. The guy was huge for an Oriental. So I agreed with him because I basically felt the same thing myself. That was my first patrol. I wasn't on the ground, probably 30 minutes at the most.

And I remember thinking, God, I thought these people were little. This guy was as big as I was. Gary was the first of my 28 missions. Gary, we're going to give a quick shout out to our sponsors here. We'll jump back into it with you. Dave, you want to tell them about vitamin one? Yeah, absolutely. So for, yeah, so vitamin one, our former guest, SF legend, Mike Daler, created this drink.

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And then another sponsor, we just want to give them a real quick shout out real quick. Thank you to HelloFresh, America's number one meal kit for sponsoring this episode. Go to hellofresh.com slash Teamhouse 50 and use code Teamhouse 50 for 50% off plus free shipping. And I want to tell you guys about Rocket Money. Are your subscriptions draining your wallet? The average person has around 12 paid subscriptions and they might not even remember subscribing to half of those. If you have no idea just how much you're spending each month, you need Rocket Money. It's a great app that tracks all of your expense. so you know exactly where your money is going.

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Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and manage your money the easy way by going to rocketmoney.com slash teamhouse. That's rocketmoney.com slash team house. Again, rocketmoney.com slash team house. So, Gary, back to you. So that was your first mission, less than 30 minutes on the ground, an encounter with an unexpected encounter there. It sounds like, what was the next step for you as you integrated into your team and get jocked up, I guess, for the next mission that's coming your way? Well, we normally would pull anywhere from two to four missions a month. Coming in from a patrol, we usually get a three-day stand down between that mission and another one, which was basically spent either resting if it was a long patrol, repackaging our gear, re-arming if we fired

any ammo on the mission, you know, replacing the lurp rations we took with us, We were always ready. Our rucksacks were always ready to go on another patrol. When you're first in country, you pretty well stay with your team. After you get a little bit of experience, you end up doing a lot of fill-in missions, where you might go out as an extra man on another team, or if somebody's at Recondo School or on R&R, you fill in on that team. I was surprised how well we all did the same.

same thing in the field. Normally on another team, you'd think you wouldn't fit. But after you had five or six months under your belt, it was amazing. You could go out with any team and pretty well be comfortable with them. How many, how many work teams, these six-man teams, how many were in your company? Our T-O-N-E called for two platoons with six teams in a platoon. Normally, we ended up with about four teams in the platoon because of casualties or ETSs, D-Roses, guys going to Recondo school, R&R, sick, wounded. We never could run 18. So this is a small, tight-knit 25-to-30-man unit, really.

Yeah, yeah. We had radio relay teams, which usually consisted of three to four men that would normally go out on a fire base or actually go out as another team. and relay our camo back to the rear, especially when we were a long way out, like in the Ashaw Valley. Sometimes they would send a spotter plane out at certain periods of time,

and we'd relay through that spotter plane. So it just depended on where we were and what kind of combo we had anyway. Bird dog. I was lucky. I didn't have a lot of hot missions probably until I was there for four or five months. I think my next hot mission, this was in August, that first mission,

I was on a mission the third of November that turned out to be very hot. Matter of fact, four of us were decorated on that mission. And then November 20th, I was on another very bad mission where we had four killed and eight guys wounded on a heavy team, 12-man team, everybody got hit. Let's start with the first one that was pretty hot in November. November. The first one, Camp Eagle, our division base camp, was in a huge cemetery in Vietnam. There were graves everywhere, big concrete graves, right off the highway one, probably seven miles southwest of the city of Way. From where Camp Eagle was, oh, maybe seven miles out, the mountains started. And there was rolling Piedmont up to the mountains. Right along the base of the mountains ran the Songbo and the perfume river. So there was a major waterway that came from the ocean into the city of Wei and came to the mountains and then ran south along the base of the mountains.

There were a couple of abandoned firebaces right at the near edge of those mountains. One of those was called Newey Key. There were still chopper pads up on top and bunkers. and it was in what we call the rocket belt. We used to catch a lot of 122 millimeter rockets from back behind Newee Key. Radarpe would pick them up as soon as they launched,

but the enemy kept launching them from that proximity. So they were going to put our team out there on top of the mountain, and we were supposed to walk off the backside and hopefully be available in that area when the rockets were launched. when we landed actually we didn't land the helicopter came in on top of Newee Key which was abandoned at the time

and for some reason our team leader said don't sit down on the chopper pad we'll jump off but we jumped off onto this PSP chopper pad jumped off of that onto the ground and we looked underneath it

there was a 250 pound bomb underneath the metal chopper pad if that chopper would have sat down they would have blown us all the hell. I don't know what told him, not to tell that pilot not to land there, but he did. This was about 10 o'clock in the morning, and there was two fingers that came down off the mountain top.

One ran down towards the river, and the other one ran down to the south. The other two sides were very steep. We started down the one to the river, and it was no vegetation. it had been cleared by the engineers when they opened up that fire base. A lot of big boulders. We got about halfway down that ridge line, and we started taking mortar fire.

And we could hear the martyrs launching from farther down in the valley and on the other side. So it was a very narrow ridge, and the rounds were straddling us. They were hitting on both sides. It seems like they couldn't put one on top. So we're sitting there, and Ray Zoshak, our team leader, He gets on the radio, the artillery radio, and starts calling an artillery on the mortar position. And after about three adjustments, he put it right on top of where those mortars were launching. I turned around and looked, and I saw four NVA going up that other ridge line.

And it was also pretty open. And they were trying to get to the top of the firebase. I hollered in Zoshack, and I said, we got company, and they're coming up the other ridge. He said, take the rest of the team and get them. get up there ahead of them. So four of us took off running and Zossack and the radio operator, Billy Walkabout. They stayed there and kept calling in artillery on the mortar positions. So we beat the enemy to the top of the fire base and four of us scattered around it because we didn't know where they were coming up from. And so we split up and each one of us took a different point

around that firebase, east, west, north, and south. About 15 minutes later, Zosok, Joe Jack and Billy Walkabout came back up to the top. And we stayed out there for two or three hours. And we were, the helicopters came in, gunships. They started taking 51 caliber fire from a couple different locations. We were still on top of the mountain. They couldn't get any slicks out to pull us off because they were involved in another team being extracted. So we were kind of stuck out there mid-day.

I was sitting there on the south side of that fire base looking down that ridge line where the enemy had come running up. And all of a sudden we had an F4 Phantom come in dropping bombs right across, coming in perpendicular to that ridge line dropping bombs right where the vegetation started. After he made his first pass, I saw four NVA soldiers break cover and run across the ridge line to get to the other side of the ridge. and I opened fire on them. They were probably 75 yards away from me. And I dropped two of them. And I think I hit a third one because he looked like he fell when he got into the cover. And I missed the fourth guy.

I hollered to the rest of the team. I had movement out in front of me. And we, Zohzhak called an artillery on that ridge line after that. The helicopters pulled out. They came and got us probably five, 30 the evening. We flew back to Camp Eagle. We went through a debriefing, told them what we had. And Captain Eklund comes out, he said, I got some bad news for you guys. He said, the vision called down. They want you to go back in where the martyrs were. And this was

off the ridge line, we had taken martyr fire from down in the ballot, heavily jungle. So anyway, one of the guys that was on the mission with us, he got kind of baked to the little he got heat stroke after laying on one of those flat rocks on that afternoon on the fire base so he was too sick to go back out so we had a guy volunteer to take his place it was probably 830 at night pitch dark the two helicopters came and let's send down on our chopper pad we loaded up nobody felt good about this mission uh they flew us back out they keep in mind we were only seven miles away from camp eagle and you can see our company area from from the Newy Key Mountain.

We flew out there, and the helicopter came in, this valley, the same valley we had taken mortar far from, and there was a huge boulder, probably the size of a house with a flat top on it. And the helicopter came in and kicked the floodlight on, a spotlight on, just as it got to the bottom of the valley. And when he kicked it on, that boulder was right there. So we all, he hovered over the top of the boulder,

and we all jumped out on top of this boulder, it was probably another eight to ten foot drop to the ground. Well, we got off the boulder. We set up security right around the base of the boulder, and the helicopters departed for Camp Eagle. It wasn't 10 minutes after the helicopters were gone, and we heard bamboo sticks clicking on the opposite ridge line over a distance of probably 400 yards,

probably six sets of bamboo sticks. And they were clacking them together, trying to stay on. line. So we're sitting there and Zolzhak radioed back to the company area and said, they know we're here. He said they're coming down the ridge forest now. About five minutes later, we heard a Chinese bugle blowing. And then we started hearing whistles, police whistles. And they were covered a pretty long distance. So we realized that Zoujak said, here's the story, guys. Here's the other thing.

The ridge line behind us, the one that we had taken mortar fire on, there was also sticks clacking up on that ridge line to our backside. Zodzac said the only chance we got, we set out three claymore mines pointing uphill in the same general area. He said, let him get on top of us.

We'll blow these claymores, and then we bust through them and fight our way back up to the top of Newee Key and get extracted. So that was our plan. We had radioed back and reported all this to the company area, and they said, we're going to try to pull you out where we put you in. And we're thinking, my God, it's pitch black in here.

They got gooks coming down both ridge lines on us. Those helicopters will never survive coming up this valley. What happened is Captain Meacham, one of our pilots, he comes out and he flies up the valley probably 150 feet off the ground and starts to take a heavy 51 caliber fire from two different locations and trace small arms tracers all over the place. While he was doing that, W.T. Grant, or other pilot, he comes up the floor of the valley, probably 50 feet above the floor of the valley,

below the ridge lines, and comes up with no lights on, and we pulled a pin gun flare, not a pin gun flare, a pin gun flare and we shot it and stuck a strobe light down the M79 we had and let he guided in on that signal and hovered over the top of that rock

that we went in on. Well, we had a hell of a time getting back up on top of that rock. I think only two guys were able to do it standing on the shoulders of the other guys. Well, Grant kicked out a ladder. And the ladder was at the base of the rock, so we We had to climb that ladder to get into the helicopter.

And the two guys on the rock, one of them was Zossack, the team leader. And the other guy was me. Well, I was the second and the last guy up the ladder, Zoshak was the last one. And while I was climbing up the ladder, Dave Bidron stepped on my fingers when he stepped back on the ladder and mashed the hell on my time. That was still six runs from the chopper. And, I mean, he mashed my fingers good. I finally got in the chopper that one of the doorgunners got out and pulled me in.

Zojak deranged himself on the ladder and hollered for the door gunter to get out of there. So he's riding the ladder coming out at night. And I remember coming out of there, the 51 calibers picked up on us because we had to climb to get out of there. I remember it looked like somebody was throwing lights through our helicopter. I mean, the rounds were coming all around.

The helicopter never took a hit. and there was two 51 calibers. They pulled off a Captain Meacham, started firing at our helicopter, coming out of there. We had to make a U-turn to fly back to Camp Eagle. So it was a purr, nobody got hit,

amazingly. Meacham's Chopper took two rounds. Grants didn't take any. With all the tracers coming out there, you know, I don't go to Fourth of July shows anymore, because I've seen a better one. It's like,

like Star Wars, right? It was a madmanit times 10. It was really something to see. We figured there had to be a hundred weapons fired at us coming out of there. And how we got, didn't get hit, I have no idea. That was November 3rd.

That was a one-day mission. What was the feeling when you... Two missions of one day. What was the feeling when you guys get back to the fob? And I mean, that's a close call, right? I'll tell you, I probably had six close calls in Vietnam where you know you're not going to survive it. When you come to that conclusion,

the experience I had is a peace came over me. You know, once you accepted, I'm going to die here. It's almost like you're not afraid anymore. You know, you've accepted the fact you're not going to survive that. I've had my share of close calls of my life. I told my wife, I just got out of the hospital three years. ago with a close call, I said, I think I got two left. Two of the nine left.

I'm going to guard these. I wrote myself all four times and not. Yeah. And then you mentioned, I think you said maybe it was later on in November. You went in with a heavy team? November 20th, we went out on a heavy team. I was the assistant team leader on the second team. The primary team, his assistant team leader, was it was the overall.

assistant team leader of the operation. We went out in the Run Run Valley, which was a big valley that, back in the mountains, that ran into the Ashaw Valley. And intelligence had reported that the second NVA regiment had just come into that valley. The second was the regiment that went into way during 10th 68. They were very, very professional, great fighters, bad, bad reputation. The reason we went out with a heavy team is this regiment had a reputation for hunting down warp teams. They didn't like us.

So we went in with a 12-man team. It was a first light mission. We went out in two helicopters, and we came into a landing zone that was all elephant grass. The helicopter was in a ravine on top of right at the base of a wooden ridge line. The first helicopter went in. The guys got out in the skids and they jumped into elephant grass. The elephant grass was 15 feet high. Plus, it was a ravine.

And the elephant grass was flat across the top. So we thought it was a flat area. The six guys went in and none of them landed on their feet. I mean, they all hit hard. We saw what happened. So when we went in, we actually got out and were hanging on the skids with our hands and trying to drop, you know, give another four or five feet before we hit the ground. My team leader, Jack Sires, he landed on a log, a teak log laid in that elephant grass, broke both his ankles.

And he didn't know it at the time, but he found that later they were broken. So all the 12 of us were on the ground. Several of us were pretty shaken up, me included. Jack couldn't hardly stand, but we got him up on his feet. we walked probably 30 feet through that elephant grass into the edge of the woods and immediately into the ends of the woods was a high-speed trail six feet wide. I mean, it was big enough for carts. No vegetation on it, pure dirt, and it ran along the base of the ridge.

The team leader stopped the team there and he said, Lender, he said, you and Susa go to the right up that trail and do a point recon and find a place to send up an ambush. And he sent two more guys to the left. Susan and I probably went 100 feet and the trail made a bend at 90 degrees and went up the side of the ridge. And it wasn't a very tall ridge.

It was probably maybe 80 feet high. And right at the bend was a trail watchers bunker. Empty. We checked that out. It was empty. And it looked like it hadn't been used recently. And it was probably 60 to 60 to 70 feet up that trail to the top of the ridge and it made another bend to the right and went down the top of the ridge the trail down. So we started up that after the trail watcher bunker, we started up the ridge line. We got about halfway to the top and we heard a gunshot, single shot about

300 meters away to the east. And Susa said, they know we're here. I said, yeah. So we went back to the team leader and they had heard the shot too. And we told him, well, we found a trail watcher bunker and right at the top of the ridge where that trail turns to the right again, there's a knob right there on top that looks down that trail. I said, that would be a good spot for an ambush or an observation post. So he called the other two guys back in and we walked up the trail and we got to that knob and he said, this is a good spot.

So we all pulled up on top of it. We sat up in a circle around that knob, which was probably only 50 feet across. No bigger than that. And it was probably three or four foot higher than the trail itself. On the back side of it was a bluff straight up and down, probably 80, 90, 100 foot, pretty steep, unclimable. To the west was a saddle that went up to a higher ridge. on the other side of the saddle and the saddle was probably

80 feet across below us was the LZ we came in on and the trail at the edge of the woods and to our east was the trail where it came up the ridge so we're sitting right on top of this knob the trail dog legs around us

there's a bluff on one side and a saddle on the other we spent the entire day there this was probably 10 o'clock in the morning when we got up there We spent the entire day There nothing happened That night There were about four or five groups of NBA

Came down that trail with lanterns No flashlights, just lanterns They were looking for us We don't blow ambushes at night Unless you knew what you were ambushed And you didn't do that at night So we let them go by And we reported it

With silent combo with clicks on the radio And The next morning sires, the guy who broke his ankles, his feet were so swollen he couldn't get his boots on. So we decided that we would take him back to the LZ, which was only 150 feet from us, and extracting, metavac him out. So Riley Cox, the guy we called Dozer, and Frank Sousa helped him down to the LZ. A helicopter came in, dropped the jungle penetrator, and hoisted him out. The two guys came back up to the perimeter, and we heard two.

two shots fired. Same area we heard that one shot fired. So we figured that they thought we all left. So it wasn't too long after that, maybe 8.30 in the morning. A single NVA came down the trail, whistling, making all kinds of noise. And behind him was about 10 more, about 50 feet behind him. Well, we didn't try to snatch the one guy. We didn't kill him. And then the others came by. He was bait. And they didn't come. back. They went on down the trail, never came back. So we're sitting there about, I think it was 11 o'clock in the morning, and the team leader said, I heard him whisper, we got company. And we could hear people talking. And I was, my Claymore was the first one in this ambush. And I'm laying back on my

back on the side of this knob. And I could see from here on up, anybody walking down the trail. I looked over, and there were nine NBA. At the time, I thought they were Arvins because they were wearing green jungle fatigues and boony caps. One of them had a tiger fatigue boonie cap on. And they were talking, making noise, they come walking down the trail. And I'm laying there thinking, this is an Arvin unit, South Vietnamese unit. What do they do at an R.A.O? Well, about that time, the team leader snapped his fingers, which was the sign to blow the ambush.

I blew my claymore and the other five claymore was one off simultaneously we had a six claymore ambush the final claymore fired down the trail well there were nine of them excuse me ten of them

and we killed nine of the ten in the ambush the point man had gotten out of the kill zone and he had an AK 47 slung over his arm and I had my car 15 of my right hand

I clacker on the claymore in my left but I blew the claymore I saw him through a gap in the trees running down the trail, and I had one hand and shot at him and shot over the top of him. Frank Susan jumped to his feet, and Frank opened up on him, and I saw the guy's, he had a towel at his neck, it flew off. So I thought, I think Frank, Frank hit the guy. And the guy was running downhill, and he towards where that trail watcher bunker was. And he'd go off the side of the trail on the left to disappear.

Well, we all ran, four of us ran out to check the bodies. Four of them were nurses, Army, NBA nurses. I immediately, I felt like shit because my claim were killed two of them. The rest were guys. One of them had a 45 automatic in a holster, and he had a mat pouch over his shoulder. We found out later he was the XO of the second NBA regiment. Wow. we took the map case, stripped all the bodies.

What made me feel better, all four of the nurses had 45 caliber automatics, 1911s, in their rucksacks. So we had five pistols and two A case we recovered. Two of the guys were not armed, and the point man who was armed got away. We pulled back up on top of the knob, and the team leader calls in a report, tell them what we got. and we're sitting there and normally when you blow an ambush

you get the hell out of dodge you don't stay there well he decided to stay there he called for a reaction force or an extraction and he was pretty proud of yourself having killed nine out of ten NBA including a major and we sat there for 15, 20 minutes and they finally called us back

since we can't get you extracted all of our helicopters have been taken for a battalion-sized combat assault So we have no aircraft available. It was probably going on noon when this happened. That's not true. We believe the ambush at 9. It was probably closer to 11 when this happened.

So we're sitting there and he said, we can't get a reaction force to you because the helicopters. We have no helicopters available. We had a platoon from the second of the 17th cab, which was our reaction force, our ready reaction force. they were tied up they couldn't get out to us so anyway the assistant team leader of the team leader

that was in charge of the whole team we saw him walk over to the team leader and whispered his air and the two of them got in an argument I mean the teamer kept shaking his head and we're sitting there and he went back to his position and Frank Susa Frank Susa and I

who were the ranking people on the other team we went up to him and said man we got to get the hell out of here. I said, you know, there's a base gap 300 meters away from us, and we just killed nine people. They're going to be coming for us. He said, we're staying here until they get a reaction force, then. The team leader said this. So anyway, I guess it was 1 o'clock in the afternoon, and he tells his assistant team leader, he said, Captain Eklund's out looking for us, trying to locate us, go down in the saddle where the trees open up and flash him when he comes over the top up with a signal mirror. Jim Venable was the ATL. He went down and he's down there

flashing his helicopter. We hear it at AK-47 open up and he goes down. He was hitting the neck and the arm, broke his arm, and went through his upper arm. Frank Sousa and Riley Cox ran down and grabbed him and drugging back up into the perimeter. And right after they got him in the perimeter, we about 15 NBA come charging up the hill from where we had come in, the original LZ, online. And we opened up on them, drove them back, killed a couple of them. They were probably 50, 60 yards away, not quite a little closer than that. And for the next two hours, they kept doing this.

They hit five, 10, 15 guys at a time. from different spots. They'd come across the saddle. Never did try to rush us in a large bunch. But we could tell from the gunfire, there was quite a few NVA around us at the time. And we were adjusting artillery as close as we had artillery busting, got 50, 60 feet away from us, walking it into us.

Holy shit. And I remember thinking, boy, we're going to push them right into us. They're going to try to get close to us. But they didn't. There wasn't enough cover for them, I guess. after the artillery we had gunships finally got four gunships out to us and we went through a total of eight cobras

in the next two hours they were firing rockets and hovering over the top of us doing pedal turns and firing rockets down all around us on the ridge line we had I think we burned up two sets of F-4s from Danang came in and fired support for us and while this was going on that bluff behind us

some NVA and somehow another climbed up that bluff and sent up a 40-pound right along the edge of it. There was a lot of brush right there but it was steep on the other side. We had one guy back to the pulling security leaning against this big tree.

His name was Mike Wright from Kansas City, Missouri. And I'm sure he was watching what was going on across the perimeter from him because we didn't expect anything to happen along that steep side. And Mike was right there. About two o'clock, three o'clock in the afternoon, the team leader said, everybody pulled back to the top. He said, I'm going to bring the artillery in closer.

And at the time, we had a cobra sit right over the top of us doing pedal turns and fire rockets all around us down the bridge line. I remember I turned around and looked, and several of the guys had gotten up into a crouch and were pulling their rucksacks with them, heading back to the top of the knoll. We had been spread out down and rounded. I started shinning backwards. My rucksack was in front of me, and I was pulling it with me as I shennyed backwards, and all of a sudden everything blew up. I remember turning my head and seeing this ball of black smoke roll over the top of this, dirt, and I couldn't see anything else.

Everything finally started settling down, and turned around, and nobody was up. Everybody was down. And I remember thinking at the time, I'm the old. only one left. And we had a pact in the lorbs that we wouldn't let anybody be taken alive. And I was going to shoot anybody that was still alive and didn't kill myself. I made up my mind to do that. And all of a sudden, Riley Cox across the perimeter from me, he sat up, a big guy. And when he sat up, his intestines fell out in his lap. And this part of his arm was broken right here and hanging down like an elbow right here.

Riley had a shotgun. He was armed with a shotgun on top of it. And he was on the other side of Frank Sousa around the perimeter from me and Terry Clifton, my best friend, who had volunteered, traded with another guy to go out on this patrol because he wanted to be on the team with me. Terry, he pushed himself up off the ground and his throat was ripped out. And when he looked up, blood just spewed out of his throat right in front of me. and Billy walkabout I heard he behind me said Are you hit? Are you hit? He was behind me

And he'd been hit through both hands When I realized there were other guys Still alive It took me a couple of minutes To get myself back together again Because I had made it my mind I don't even remember thinking I was just going to shoot the moon

And I saw Riley Cox over there He took the towel off his neck He pushed his guts back in his stomach and stuck that towel in her to hold his guts in. And he pulled a bandage out of his rucksack and tied his arm back like this and starts pumping that shotgun, one-handed and fighting with that shotgun if he could pump. The enemy didn't come for a while. When they did, they weren't attacking.

They were trying to walk up to see what had happened. And Riley starts duke it out with that 12-gauge, pumping it with one. hand, shooting the left-handed. And he had 40 rounds with him. I think he already fired about 10. With that shotgun run out of ammo, he got Mike Rife's

car 15 and started fire that car 15. I don't even know how this guy how he functioned. The radio operator, the team leader, was hitting above his ear with a piece of shrapble blew out the top of his head, but he was still alive. and Terry Clifton was dead by then.

Mike Rife, the guy that was sitting by the bluff, he got hit with a Claymore, he wasn't 10 feet from it. When they grabbed his arm to pull him away from the tree, he was pinned to this tree. His arm came out of his sleeve. It severed his arm and his shoulder. He was killed instantly. I crawled over to the radio operator,

and he had a chunk of meat as big as my fist taken out of his right above his knee. And he was on the radio reporting what had happened after he got hit. And he went into shock. But you can see him going into shock. I took the radio away from him. And I got on the radio and I, in the clear, I didn't use any code. I told him we're hit. Everybody's down.

I said, you better get somebody out here quick or don't bother with it. Billy Walkabout was the only guy that could walk. He got up on his feet, and he was, both his hands were hit pretty bad. They sent a MEDAVAC out, and it came in, well, before the MEDAVAC got there, I went over to Frank Susan. I crawled over to Frank Susan, and Billy came over, and Frank had a little hole right dead in the center of his chest, and I thought, well, he'd been shot. and I remember grabbing a plastic off a battery

and putting it over the hole to treat it as a sucking chest one and there was no suction. We rolled him over onto a poncho liner and he had a hole in his back about that big around and I could see inside his right lung and it was shredded. The ribs were broken

so whatever hit him just tore out from his whole shoulder blade area and it was gone. We rolled him back over on a on a on a Vietnamese North Vietnamese poncho ladder we had plastic one of the guys had it and we wrapped that around him and still tried to treat it as a sucking chest

on but we never did get suction on it and he was unconscious we got a medevac in and we decided to get Sousa out first because we thought he was hurt the worst we drug him over they dropped the jungle penetrator and we strapped him to it they hoisted him out and a gunshot

The helicopter's taking gunfire from surrounding Eric constantly. And they came back in again, and started taking more fire, and the dust off started drifting. And it was drifting down towards that saddle. Billy Walkabout ran down there and grabbed the penetrator with his arms and ran back up to the top of the hill, dragging that penetrator with him. And we got Contreras out that way. He did that another time. Before we got another wounded man out. He ran down the hill towards the enemy, no weapon,

grabbed that penetrator, ran back up the hill. So we got three of the wounded out, and I told Riley Cox, I said, you're going out next, Riley. He said, no, I'm not. He said, I'm staying here. And at the time, he was on the car 15. Anyway, it's probably close to 5 o'clock at the evening,

and two pilots had been listening to this on the radio. they broke formation, flew back to the company area and radioed ahead, have a reaction force waiting on the chopper pad. We're going to pick them up and take them out to rescue these guys. But when they got to the company, everybody in the rear in our company was down on the chopper pad waiting to board. 23 guys got on two choppers, 13 on one, 10 on the other.

Way overloaded. Yeah. These movies were made for six or seven guys plus the crew. Tony Tocero was going home the next day. He already turned in all of his gear and his weapon and was down on the chopper pad playing tag football

when the word came in. Tony went up to supply and grabbed a car 15 from the armory and, excuse me, an M-16 and a band-ailleer of ammo and he was in sharps and shorts and no shirt on. And he got on the chopper like that.

He gets out to the, When they got out to us, he found out that that band-lare of ammo was boxed ammo. It wasn't in magazine. Oh, no. They flew out. They had a hell of a time getting off the chopper pad because they were overloaded. One of the guys had his arm in the cast. And Bill Meacham, the pilot turned out and said, son, get off of the helicopter.

And the guy stuck a rifle in the back of his helmet and said, just take off, sir. So he comes out with his arm in a cast. They flew those guys out to the same LZ we went in on. which was now no cover. The airstrikes and everything had blasted all the elephant grass away. Where we had to jump 15 feet above the ground, they landed and let these guys out.

And all 23 of them as soon as they got on the ground, the pilot told them the direction they needed to run because they could see us up on top of the hill coming in. And they headed up the hill. Up on top, where we were, Billy Walkabout was behind me, And I heard him hollered, wharps, warps up here. I turned to him and I said, shut the hell up.

You're going to tell him where we are. The enemy. All of a sudden, I realized they know where we are. It went along. Clint Goothmiller came running up the trail over the dead bodies with an M60 and sat up looking down that ridge light on the top of the knob, then the rest of the guys poured it. They immediately started getting the wounded guys taken care of.

to get them out. They got Billy Walkabout and I went out together on a jungle penetrator. And they finally got Riley Cox to go as the last man. He was the last wounded man out. They had to force him to go out. It was dark by then. The 23-man reaction force had to go back down to the LZ in the dark. By the time they got to us, the first cab had come in, 35 of them wouldn't get off the landing zone. Not the first cap, second of the 17th cap. They wouldn't get off the landing zone. They stayed down there.

And when the helicopters came into extract everybody, they pulled them out first. Then our 23 guys went down there. They had no lights, no anything. They had to use zippo lighters to mark the landing zone for the helicopters. 11 of the 23 guys were wounded. None of them bad, thank God. But they got those guys out. I think it was 930 at night.

They got them out. That made me an advocate of the brotherhood. I mean, I still love those guys for what they did that day. My fiancé had sent me a St. Christopher medal. I remember holding it in my hand out there, realizing that the NVA were going to get this medal when they find my body. And I broke myself off. I'm not coming back from this one.

So I probably had three or four. more hairy ones after that as a ranger. He sent me to the hospital, triage me. Besides the shrapnel in the back of my leg and my calf, sometime during the battle I'd been shot in the left leg, too. But they think it was a ricochet. It was only, you could almost see the head of the bullet. They pulled it out with tweezers.

So all my wounds were leg wounds, which I had tribute to the fact that I was shitting backwards up that hill when this thing went off. And all that was on top of the hill was my legs. I spent a month in the hospital at Cameron Bay, almost got killed in a Korean riot. The hospital I was in, South Koreans had about, there were as many South Koreans at Cameron Bay as there were Americans.

They were there for rheumatism. They couldn't handle the weather. So they were used to cold weather. This hot weather made their cost rheumatism. So none of them were wounded. They were just there, you know, recovering in the heat down there. Then they were going back up to their unit. Well, there was a riot during a U.S.O. show, and I was on precious.

And these Koreans ended up over a can of beer. There's like 200 Koreans and 200 Americans. And the Koreans thought they're all black belts, and they're going to take this beer from this American. So they grabbed his six-pack of beer from this guy, and the guy jumped up and went over and took it back. Well, the Koreans didn't care for that. And they got up, was doing this stuff, ready to kill some Americans. And one of their NCOs came down and told them all to go back to their company area. So they're all back at the company area.

And, well, let me tell you what caused the riot. They were hollering back and forth. Nobody was going across the aisle between the two groups. And all of a sudden, from the back of the Americans, a loaded beer can, comes flying over and hits this Korean between the eyes and Doc drops him. Well, that really pissed them off, I'll tell you. They were ready to kill after that. Anyway, they sent them back to their company area.

About 15 minutes later, we were watching this Filipino U.S.O show. One of these Filipino girls was playing jello submarine. And we heard this roar in the background. There come all these Koreans back, and they got shovels and picks and baseball bat. Well, there was a bunch of us in the front two rows on crutches, and we all thought, well, they're not going to bother us. All the Americans jump up and take off running, although it's good. The Koreans come wading in and start beating the hell out of everybody with tools and stuff. I crawled up on the stage, pushed my Korean officer and a Korean senior NCO, and I crawled behind the drums on the stage.

And I'm left there thinking, well, they were going to hit me. I saw him take a crush away from a guy out in the audience and started beating him with his own crush. So I was glad I was behind the drums. Anyway, a few minutes later, five, six MPs come running up with a lieutenant. And the lieutenant's blowing a whistle and come running up the aisle. And he's hollered at these Koreans and he's got a couple of Korean officers with him. And a Korean buries the pickaxe at his turn. Holy shit.

Off to him. Oh. I'm thinking, my God, they send me here to recover. The next day, I talked to the colonel in charge of the hospital. I said, I want to go back to my company. And he said, well, he said, you need another two weeks here. I said, put me out of profile and send me back to my company. I want to spend Christmas up there, not here.

So anyway, he gave me a pass, and I flew back up to Fubai. I was on profile for two more weeks and ended up flying belly man on a distraction insertion helicopter for a month until my wounds here. And so, Gary, I'm trying to recall from reading your book many years ago now that that explosive, that 40 or 50 pound explosive that went off. I think that's maybe like what my generation would have called an improvised explosive device. And if I recall correctly, it was made out of the bottom of a 33-gallon barrel. And was it, was there were like nuts and bolts in it that they pulled out of some of the guys?

Any kind of metal. It was non-directional. You had plastic explosive C4 behind it. They just pushed it out, not in a fan. You didn't know where it was going to go. And so, and if I recall correctly from our interview with Larry Chambers, this is, you came back to the unit and find Larry there as a new guy, right? No, Larry actually came to the company in late August of 68.

Okay. So Larry was there when he was out with another 12-man team when we got here. Because I remember, there's something in my mind. remember like you had come back after being wounded you came back to the unit and he was there as like a more junior lurp well i'll tell you what you're confused with when i got back to the company i'd been there six months all the guys that came over with division who were the old guys when i got there they came over in november of of 67 well they were all they're all de roast while i was in the hospital i got you so when i came back to the company you know ken miller was the

first guy I ran into. Okay. It was like I went to a new unit. I didn't recognize anybody. Okay. A lot of new guys. Um, Dave, do you need to do this, uh, this read? Yeah, we just, uh, we want to, uh, hey, when you need dinner fast, don't call for delivery. Think HelloFresh. Their fast and fresh recipes are ready in 15 minutes or less. Go to Hellofresh.com slash Teamhouse 50 and use code Teamhouse 50 for 50 off plus free shipping. Um, hey guys, uh, you know, cooking is good. It's cheap. Like, don't order out. It's expensive and bad for you. Hello Fresh has over 30 meal plans, so you'll never run out of ideas. You know, even if you're not used to cooking, you get the ingredients, you get the recipe, you get everything you need, you can try new things. You'll be a stud, you know, or a studette.

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Go to HelloFresh.com slash T-Mouse 50 and use code T-Mouse 50 for 50% off plus free shipping. And while we're here, I want to give a quick shout out. This is not a sponsor of the show or anything. They're friends of the show that I just want to talk about real quick is Badger Six. We've had guys involved in this charity on the show before. Toby Hardin, Justin Sapp. Really, what the Badger Six is, it's a charity specifically to bring back the Afghans who worked with the CIA in special forces in the opening days of the Afghanistan War. And these guys are now working to help their former friends and allies immigrate to the United States. And so they're holding a charity event. It's going to be on September 8th at the Pauling Mountain Country Club. I think there's going to be some shooting clays. And then they're going to have a lunch and there'll be a talk. You're going to get to meet some of the original folks who invaded Afghanistan, David Tyson, Justin Satt, Mark Neuch, Bob Pennington.

Another former guest on the show, Alan Mack, who is a 160th helicopter. pilot. All those guys are going to be there. So I really hope you guys will consider going to this event, supporting this charity. You'll find out more about them at badger6.org. So again, that's that's going to be September 8th. So Gary, so then you come back to your unit after this very interesting stay, your recovery at the hospital. So you said that when you got back to the unit, it was sort of like a different cast of characters. almost. I had gone from being a middle guy to being one of the old guys.

I was an E5 at the time, and two-thirds of the company had de-roast while I was in the hospital. So there wasn't a lot of experienced hands on deck when I got back to the unit. What was that like? Were you now more of like a mentor and a trainer for some of the younger guys? I was there marked to be a team leader. Matter of fact, I had a recondo. school date for November 28th. And when I got hit, I was in the hospital when my recondo date came up. And then in the LRRPS, when you graduate from Rekando school, you've got to have six

months left in country or you don't get to go. Well, when I got back to the company, I only had five months left in country, so I didn't get to go to MacBee Recondo School. I got a team probably more because there wasn't enough qualified people in the company in late March of 69. They gave me my own team. I was fairly good at reading maps, as good as anybody else in the company. I could look at a contour map,

picture what that look like out in the jungle, and not look at that map again on a mission. Wow. Probably because of my scout trade. They gave me a team in March. I think I led five patrols. My last mission was the mission. Chambers probably told you about the one we got hit my lightning on.

I was supposed to be the team leader. We actually had four guys on that team that had been team leaders. And there was a shaken bag. E6 came into the company who was taking over my team. So I actually went out as his ATL to break him in. That was April 23rd that mission was. and that was I still had six weeks left in country when I got out of the hospital on that one

and I tell you I was I was done I wouldn't I wouldn't have gone out on another patrol after that I wasn't going to take an R&R because I didn't want to spend the money I was getting married two weeks after I got home so I didn't want to dip into my savings and I when I got out of the hospital I took my R&R and I was AWOL two days getting back I made sure I didn't

didn't have 30 days left when I got back to the company. I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, getting married, you know, four weeks or six weeks after that, I kept thinking, this is a bad time to get killed. And I didn't want to do that to her, so I just didn't want to go out again. Yeah, after that operation where the team got struck by lightning, I mean, I can imagine that that shook everybody up. Ken was out there on that one, too, wasn't he? No, Ken wasn't. Oh, he wasn't. Okay. Unfortunately, K was in the other platoon.

Gotcha. So I never got to go out with, we were good friends, but I never got to go out with him. Gotcha. So before leaving Vietnam, any other, like, significant ones, patrols that you'd like to highlight before moving on? Yeah. I was on a patrol with Ron Mother Rucker. As a matter of fact, I was a team there on that patrol. There was a cobra helenol.

helicopter had gone down south of Fubai, been shot down in the mountains. And a loach went out looking for it, and it didn't come back either. So there's two helicopters missing down by Fire Base Tomahawk. It's a pretty tall jungle, steep mountains, and it was in a fog on top of it. So we got a call with the company, and we had two teams on stand down, the rest of them were out in the field, and one of them was my team, and I was short, two guys. on the team and see the CEO came in and said, Sergeant Linder, he said, grab two guys and you're going to go out on a search and air rescue mission. And he said, Sergeant Fadley's team's going to go out too. He said, you're going to have to repel in. So he said, rig for a repel. So we did. We packed

our rucks. Excuse me, we didn't pack our, one guy had a rucks with a radio. We did. He said, don't take your rucksacks. You'll be out before dark. So we grabbed. our web gear, no maps of the area, nothing, one canteen of water apiece, no meals. We go out and they fly us out in the sunny weather to Fire Base Tomahawk, and we land on Fire Base Tomahawk, and General Melvin Zeiss comes out and his helicopter lands on the firebase and gives both teams a pep talk and tells us there's two helicopters down out there. We got a captain and a warrant officer in one of them, the cobra, and the loach went out looking for him with a lieutenant colonel, a major,

and a warrant officer at it, and they haven't come back. We think we know where they are. We're going to put you guys in on top of them to, if they're wounded, get them out. If they're dead, recover the bodies, get them out. So anyway, off in the distance, you could see the fog. Far base tomahawk was still in the sun. It was a mountain overlooking highway one out by the coast, and it wasn't in the fog at all.

So we got on our helicopters and we fly out and we fly into the fog. And I remember thinking at the time, looking down and seeing the tree tops, it looked like broccoli sticking up out of mashed potatoes. That's what it looked like. The chopper pilots who were not our chopper pilots either, they flew into this fog and they finally, Fadley's team went in first and repelled in. We had no idea how tall the trees were,

all we could see with the tops of them. So we didn't know if we had enough rope to hit the ground on. I couldn't see the ground at all. They bring my team in behind Fadley's to a different area. We were 300 yards apart. And I was the first one out of the helicopter, and my car 15 was slung over my back, and I repelled out of the helicopter.

I did a fast repel. I landed in the middle of a high-speed trail. I turned around. There's a freshly poured concrete bunker behind me. No camouflage on it. Well, you know, my butt hole had squeezed shut, I was soprano for that end. My radio operator comes down behind me on the same rope and gets tangled about 15 feet above the ground with his handset cord. And he's stuck on the rope.

I'm trying to wave the door gunter to bring the helicopter down lower. And he finally comes down low enough I can reach above him and cut the rope. And he fell about five, six feet and hit the ground. and the next guy down ran out of rope and fell about 10 feet down and then the other three guys came down the other rope on the other side. So we're all standing there and I'm pointing out this concrete bunker and we get off the side of the trail and we set up and they were supposed to put us in the same place Fadley's team on it. Well there's no Fadley's team there and we're going through the helicopter pilot tried to relay to Fadley's team because we couldn't pick them up on the radio. And we came to the determination, they put us in a different spots. So anyway, Fadley decides to fire his weapon.

And he fires one shot. And I could tell he was a long way from us, even with a muffled from the fog. And, you know, I had to answer him. I fired back twice real fast, two quick shots. And I told the pilot to tell him to come to me. So Fadley comes to me, it took him a good, 45 minutes to get to my location and it's like 5.30 in the evening. So we get on line, 12 of us, and we sweep up the ridge line and about 6.30 we stumble into the cobra. It had gone

down through the trees and the tail boom had broken off and the cockpit was open and there was a boot and a helmet laying next to the helicopter. Oh man. No pilot, no gunner. And it's almost dark by then. And we swept around that helicopter two or three times. times online trying to find those guys couldn't find them and we moved about 200 yards straight across the ridge not up higher not down lower and we found an area where there was depression and four big teak trees one on each corner with the depression in the middle and we just said just not big enough for 12 months so we got in this and it offered a little bit of protection in case we got hit during the night and we knew

there were gooks of the area because the cobra had been shot down there were bullet holes in it in that bunker, you know, I didn't have, that wasn't a mushroom. Somebody did that. We're laying there at night and Fadley, who was, he was in East 6, he decided we're going to have one guy on at the time, security. I always posted two guys if we were at enemy territory and we knew they were around. Anyway, Fadley post one guy for 45 minutes at a time. I had the 130 time, the 130, 45 minutes. And I woke the guy next to me who was a new guy's name was Gillette. And he was a radio operator.

He had my team's radio. He was laying next to me and I reached over and shook him away. And I laid back and went to sleep. But I think it was 10 minutes to 2. Something woke me up. And I was laid on my back. and I looked to the right, and I remember it looked like a shadow

disappeared off this way, across the perimeter. And I look over at Gillette, and Gillette's laying there with his, him 16, across his chest, shaking like this. And I reached over and I whispered his ear, and I said,

what's the matter? He said, two NBA came into our perimeter, and we're looking down at the guys and they just left. And I said, why did you shoot him? And he said, there's a sapling next to him, and I couldn't bring my weapon around. So he had to sit there and watch this go on.

Well, I woke up everybody. And for the rest of the night, we all stayed awake. The next morning, we went out and started sweeping again. And we got a radio message from the rear that said there was a line company, Charlie Company, first of the 327, was coming out to link up with us. They were walking in. So there was a ridge line above us that we didn't know at the time, but that bridgeline had been covered several times by U.S. troops.

There was a big trail going up the top of it, and it was pretty wide open on top. Well, we heard these guys coming, and we couldn't get them on our radio yet, but they were above us probably 150 yards up the hillside, and we could hear them talking. And all of a sudden, an AK-47 opened up, and we heard those guys fire. They fired a couple rounds. They were hollering, and we didn't know what was going on. They finally got to us on our radio and said, a trail watcher just shot our four-man lead element across the legs.

This trail watcher was in a bunker up on top, and he left those four point element guys getting across from me and opened up, shot every one of the legs. So we're sitting there in this depression, 12 of us, and we hear the brush breaking coming down this ridge line, right at us, I mean, dead at us. So we got one Claymore pointed uphill. It's all the moment we got out.

And all of a sudden, this NBA breaks through the cover right in front of us. He's not 15 feet away. He had his sandals in this hand with his AK-47, and he was running with this like this. When he saw us, he lowered that AK-47 and emptied that magazine right over the top of it. Well, I was sitting back against that tree with my car 15. And before I can shoot him, he fell behind a big log that was uphill from us. And it wasn't eight feet from us. Well, a couple of us jumped up and did this and shot behind that log.

I don't think we hit him. And Dave Bedron pulled a frag out and dropped it over the top of the log. That killed it. Tore up, he's AK-47 too. So of all the places for this guy to run, he runs dead into us, 150 yards down that hill. we called the line doggies he said we got we got your assassin he said he run dead end we told him what happened so we went up and linked up with these guys this was the second day of a one-day mission

we spent the next seven days on the ground yeah out there no food uh the only the only food we got is one we could moot from the line doggies which wasn't much uh we had plenty of water because it was raining almost all the time uh while we were out there they put in another team because another loach had come in and located that other helicopter. And it was three miles up the valley from where we were. It was nowhere near that cobra we found. So that was Rucker and Sires on that team.

Those guys were repelled in and the three pilots were all burned to death. And they landed on top of them, went right through their bodies. They were fried. They pulled the bodies out in body bags, pieces of them. and hoisted them out. And then they told them that you couldn't get them out. They had to walk down and link up with us three miles away. So they came down the stream that was down at the base of the ridge we went in on.

Well, we went down to the stream of the 12 of us, and 13 of the line doggies recon element were with us. So there was 12 of us and 13 of them. Because with that many enemy in the area, they didn't want 12 guys trying to link up with these six. So we got down to the bottom of the hill that night And we're going up that creek at night Following this creek up And we found a little knoll next to the creek And we got on top of the knoll

And laid there sleeping All 25 of us And that night, I don't know how many times We heard a tree crash. I don't know if it was in the rain or what But here's something waiting in the stream And we came to the conclusion later that the NBA knew we were in there.

If they had enough stuff in there, they didn't want us to find it. So they followed us, but didn't break contact with us. We also figured they probably had those pilots. So we end up linking up with the other team the third day and turned around and come back down the stream. And this was the, it wasn't the third day. It was the seventh day of the mission, the last day. We spent four days up on the ridge line with that line company.

We get down the, we're coming down. the stream and they told us we're going to have to walk out. They can't helicopter the infantry company up on top of the ridge, the rest of them. They were going to do another sweep and they were coming out. They were going to walk out too. So we get down to just about where we're down below that infantry company.

They're 500 meters up on this hill. And they tell us that the fog is lifting. They're going to get helicopters in and pull us out. So we're down there. We find a big spot next to the stream with a lot of dead trees and stuff in it that had been defoilated. And we took our clay moors that the line company guys had.

And we were knocking down the big trees with a backglass from the clay moors and clearing this area out so a chopper could get in. Well, we got it big enough for one chopper. And naturally, the line doggies got out first. And there was 18 of us still on the ground. And these choppers were coming in. One chopper would leave, fly down the valley. 10 minutes later, another one would come in.

So I was on the second and last chopper going out. and we had just got off the ground, and I heard the doorgunner on my chopper hollered, Gooks on the LZ. But what had happened is the last chopper had landed to pick up Rucker and Sars' team, and Rucker had just gotten on the helicopter and turned around,

and an NVA stood up out of the grass, about 15 feet behind John Sars, looking at him like this. Didn't have a weapon up, just looking at him. Well, Rucker killed him, and Sars turned around and shot another one. So they had followed him,

this to the LZ but weren't messing with us. So those guys got out okay. Didn't take any fire. The line company did that final sweep and found the pilot to the Cobra. He had been hiding that whole time. Wow. This Garner had broken his ankle on the crash. That's why it took his boot off.

He got him out of the chopper, took his boot off, carried the guy a little ways, and they got separated during the night because the NBA were looking for him. Same night those two found us. The same night, that's when they found those pilots. We're looking for the pilots. So we spent seven days in there with no maps, no poncho liners, colder than hell out there in that fog. And that was the most miserable time I had in Vietnam. I mean, it's, yeah, it's incredible.

I'm not going to sell any books out of this. You realize it. Well, once you start, yeah, once you start talking about a downed helicopter and your, your boss is telling you it's a one-day mission, we all know from Army experience, it's not going to be a one-day mission. They didn't tell us about the fog, and we didn't have time to pack in the roadside. Gary, can you, for people who might not be familiar with it, can you tell us about the difference between, like, the M16, the car 15, which one you preferred and, you know, how that development happened? I carried an M16 for, I guess, five months. They could tell early November of 68. That's when I got to, you couldn't get a car 15 unless somebody went home.

that had one. We traded SF guys for the car 15s, and the ones they gave us had the boring shot out of it. So, I mean, they were like a musket. They weren't very accurate past 50 meters. No bluing on them. So you can imagine what you know how SF guys are. Oh, yeah.

We all do. I know. So, I mean, they were pretty well shot up. We had a couple of Swedish caves in the company. I think we had four shot guns. We had a couple of, I think we had two grease guns, and it was up to you what you wanted to take as long as you'd get your hands on it. There was a couple of missions I carried a Swedish K, walking point,

because the Swedish K had silencers on it. They weren't much for range, and we couldn't get enough magazines. I think there was only four magazines per weapon, so you were limited on how much ammo you could carry with a Swedish K. Usually, if a guy took a Swedish K out with him, he carried a car 15, too. same probably we have with the grease guns. I think there was only three magazines for each grease gun. I don't think I ever carried a grease gun.

I don't remember doing it. I did carry a 45 pistol with me a few times. I used to carry, I was known to carry 1,800 rounds of ammo. I mean, I hump some ammo, and I used to carry 8 to 12 frags, too. my first team sergeant told me he said it's better to need and to have not than to have it or the need not than to need and to have not and I took that as gospel even when I go deer hunting I'll take 50 rounds with me

I'll put a good shot but you can't shoot 50 deer but I hate to be called with no animal was the Swedish K a 762 or a 556 was it was a it was a it wasn't a 5-5-6 it was a it's 40 like a 9mm oh was it 9mm okay I'm trying to remember myself yeah it was we had we had two stems gun send guns too look up Swedish K yeah I'm gonna pull it up right now yeah all I remember is it was we only had four magazines for each weapon I'm I'm embarrassing myself yeah it's a 45 oh no I'm sorry I'm sorry no uh Greece it's it's an M45 Swedish

K but it's nine by 19 miller meter. You were right. You were right, Gary. It's not nine mil. And that was the other problem we had. It was hard to get nine mill ammo over there. Yeah. Yeah. Did you have a 45 ammo and 5.56 was easy to get. Even AK ammo was easy to get. And we had a few guys that carried AKs. John Looney, who looked like an NBA, would often wear black pajamas on patrol of walk point because he looked like one. He would carry an AK 47. I didn't like him because you couldn't tell who was fired at who when one of our guys was using.

So, Gary, talk to us about coming home from Vietnam. I mean, you had quite an eventful tour coming back. Two weeks later, you're getting married. Yeah. What was it like coming back from NAM and getting discharged from the Army and coming back to civilian life? When I, when I eat at or de-roast, I had a, you know, I told you I got shot in the leg. Mm-hmm. in November 20th,

when they pack that wound, they removed the packing too fast and it formed an abscess. And when I got back from R&R in May of 69, my left leg, my thigh, swelled up, a big red spot on the side of my leg that stuck out about two inches. But when I was clearing nom, clearing records,

that thing was so painful, I got down to Benoit to clear Vietnam, I went to a hospital there at night to see the emergency room. And I met him and he said, Jesus Christ, he said, you can't go home like that. And he said, I got to lance that. When he lanced it, a plug shot out of my leg. Oh, man. About the size of my finger, it was hard pus, looked like ivory,

and hit the ceiling and fell down on the burning. And he said, man, that thing's under pressure. He said, you can't go home like that. I said, man, I'm getting married in two weeks. I said, I got to go home. I talked to him into wrapping it. And he said, as soon as you get back to the state, you go say the doctor.

He said, you got a bad infection. I got to, they flew us to Japan, and then flew me to Fort Dix, New Jersey, of all places. I flew all the way across Canada. And my next duty station was at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, with the 82nd. But I was on a permanent profile. I couldn't jump anymore.

And I thought, why in the hell he's sending me to an airborne unit? And I'm on a leg now. When I got to Fort Dix, I went to get travel pay to buy ticket to go home. The ticket was 36 bucks. A lot of money nowadays, but 36 bucks back then to fly to St. Louis from Philadelphia. They wouldn't give me travel pay because my next duty station at Fort Bragg was only less than 250 miles from Fort Dix, and they won't give you travel pay until you get to your next duty station unless it's over 250 miles. So here I am with $9 on me in Fort Dix, and I went to the Red Cross and told them my story, and they said, well, not much we can do about it.

So I had to call home and have my dad wire the money to Western Union in Philadelphia, take my nine bucks and pay for a cab to go down and get the wire and go back to walk back to the four Dix to buy an airline ticket to get. come home. So I was in the States two days before I got to leave to come home. Wow. Two days of my leave. So I had to call my fiance and tell her what happened. And I had the feeling she didn't believe me, but we're still married. So I flew home and at some reason I thought it was cool to be the last guy off the plane. And I could see them all out there at the airport setting and waiting for me. So I waited until everybody got off the plane. I waited a little bit long. I can see the look of dread on their face.

And I come walking off the plane, and I don't think she ever forgave me for that. My parents, her parents, and she were there at Lambert Airport in St. Las, waiting for me. I got home, called a bunch of my buddies. I had one of them to say, you were a nom? And I thought, where in the hell is he bad? I sent that 45. I took off that NBA major home in nine pieces.

the only part that didn't make it was the box or the magazine magazine didn't make it rest of it made it so i stopped by to get that weapon from him and he told me he said i never got a magazine you sent a magazine with ammo in it he said it never made it so i i salvaged that from mine and i sent a nva rucksack home and an nva flag in the signal mirror that was in my pocket when i got hit by lightning it shattered what it wrapped me around that tree So those are my souvenirs from Vietnam. We got married two weeks later. My hair was still too short.

They made us get a haircut the day before we left now. Everybody. I mean, they buzzed us too. So I wasn't happy with that. But I didn't run into a lot of, the only negatives I had, when we got off the plane at 11.30 at night in Philadelphia, there were about 200 hippies lined up on the other side of the cyclone fence with signs hollered at us.

And the MPs wouldn't let us out of them. I mean, boy, I wasn't a play and wanted to go after those people. Peace creeps. That's the only negatives I had. Nobody spit on me. Nobody really acted like they gave a damn, but... Yeah.

I wasn't put down for it. What year did you leave Vietnam? I left June 2nd, 1969. So you were in the... You were still in the Lerps, because you were still in Lerps right as they... transition to rager. Yeah, I was there.

We went to bed one night Lurps and woke up the next day and there were orders on our outdoor bulletin board saying you are now Rangers. Do you know how that happened, why that happened? I don't know if you have visibility on that, but how did that come about? I think they wanted the heraldry of the Lurps were all different units.

58th, MF3, 51st, 52nd. They wanted to give us a common bond. So somebody came up with a brilliant idea that all of a sudden we were Rangers. And our mission didn't change. I remember getting in an argument with a bunch of young Rangers at Third Bat in 92. We were trying to get the LERS accepted into the 75th Rangers Association, which my company started that.

Right. There was 101st Rangers that started that association in 1986. These guys said Lerps weren't Rangers. And I said, what the hell do you think we were in Vietnam? He said, oh, you guys were Rangers. I said, I went to bed one night and lurp and woke up the next day I'm a ranger. And I said, these guys did the same thing

we did. I said, if you accept us, you should accept them. Yeah. And we formed a Long Range Reconnaissance Association in 2015, which now has a thousand members. There are no more lurs, so it's an organization that unless they recreate

Lurce is going to die out someday. They will one day. They always come back. Oh, yeah. I agree. Drones don't do well in the jungle. Yes, sir. Anyway, the day we formed that association, the president of the 75th Rangers Association, called us and wanted us to bring that organization into the 75th.

And the guys voted at the meeting. There was a one-boat in favor of it. A lot of the guys that were worse were Rangers. Gary, the worse and warps have been accepted into the Ranger Regiment Association, though, haven't they? No. They haven't, really? No, we turned it down.

They tried to bring our association into it. I'm sorry to hear that. We rejected it. The only reason they did that is because, you know, their organizations are losing people, too. The Vietnam vests are dying out, and they saw a chance to pick up a bunch of new members. And, you know, I belong to both organizations. But I'll tell you, we host the annual LERP Association reunion right here in Branson every year. And we booked three solid hotels with a park between two of them.

And our event is in that park for seven days. So it's a good event. So as time goes on, I don't know if you tried to put the war behind you or if it was something that was always with you. But eventually you and your teammates kind of became, I don't know what's the term I want to use, like spokesmen of a sense for the Vietnam experience. And certainly the Whirp experience and all these memoirs that you published. Could you talk to us a little bit about how maybe your personal impressions changed or what led you into publishing and writing? In 1986, my unit was the first company from Vietnam, any kind of company, that organized a company reunion, 1986. I was contacted by our company clerk two years before that.

He asked me if I would help locate some of the guys that served in the unit. Well, you know, when you come home from the world, you promise to stay in touch. There were no internet back then. Right, right. So we had to find people by telephone. And I fortunately had a company roster with the original homes where everybody was from.

I told this guy I'd help him. We spent two years, and we put the first reunion together in 1986 at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. We had 186 guys show up. Wow. Plus 24 from other Lerf units that heard about this. They also can't.

From that reunion, we decided to farm the 75th Ranger Association. So Bob Gilbert, the next year, put that together, and we formed that association. Matter of fact, I think the first three presidents were from my unit. I had not thought much about NOM. I hadn't talked to a lot of people about it. I stayed in touch with John Sears and a couple of the guys from my unit were in my wedding, matter of fact. And I stayed in touch with probably five or six guys. When we had that first reunion, I remember telling my wife, I said, I don't think I'm going to go. I said,

hell I put on weight. It's been 20 years. I said, they won't recognize me. I won't recognize them. I remember their names. And she said, I saved all the letters you wrote me. She said, they're in a shoebox. Once you read through the letters and it'll refresh your memory. So the night before the reunion, I sat there and read 243 letters. Wow. You come to find out I had described every mission I was on and not in great detail, but it was like a diary day by day. And I told who was on the teams with me and basically what happened, didn't give details.

And I remember thanking him when I was done. My God, I said, when I get back from this reunion, I'm going to sit down. and write this out so my sons can read what I did when I was in a war. So I, this was back before I had a computer. I could type, but I didn't have a computer. I didn't have a typewriter. So I bought four legal-sized yellow tablets, and I hand-wrote out my first two books, wrote it out as one book in six months' time.

And I'm sitting there, and Ken Miller, who had already come out with Tiger the Lerp Dog, he called me and he said, how's that diary coming? I said, I'm done with it. He says, why don't you send it to me? I said, Jesus Christ, kid, it's on full tablets. And he said, well, send it to me. And so I went down and burned copies of all those pages. And I sent him the copies.

And he wrote back and he said, this is pretty good. He said, I'm going to send this to a publisher friend of mine, Jim Morris. He was at Berkeley books. We've had him on the show too. Yeah, Jim? Yep. Well, anyway, I don't hear from Jim. And Ken calls him and he said, Jim's leaving Berkeley.

He said he's not going to be a publisher anymore. I thought, well, that figures. He said, I got another guy I'm going to send it to Owen Lock at Ivy Books, Random House. And I said, okay, he said, I was going to send him a couple chapters. He said, matter of fact, he said, want you type up a couple of chapters and send him those chapters. So I went down and bought a typewriter, used typewriter, and I typed out that November 20th mission and the November 3rd mission, the two in Neue Key and the 12-man heavy team. And I sent him to Oenlock.

He said, it'll take him six months to read it. He said, just tell him that the book's done. Here's two sample chapters. He said, you'll probably hear from him in six months or you won't. So I send those two chapters to Owen Lock, and that was on a Thursday. Next Tuesday, I get a phone call, and he says, Gary, he said, this is Owen Lock. I said, who? He said, Owen Lock.

I said, so? He said, Owen Lock, Ivy Books. I said, you're bullshit me. I said, Miller, is this you? I said, damn it, this is all luck. He said, I'll buy your books and the rest. I mean, I had nothing else typed up. The book was still handwritten.

So I sent him my original tablets. And he called me back, I guess it was three weeks after that. He said, well, I got some good news and some bad news. He said, what you want first? I said, I want the bad news. He said, you got too much here for a book. So I knew it. And he said, we'll make two books out.

of it. And he said, he said, could you type it up and send me the rest of it? I said, yeah, I can do that. So I typed the rest of them up and said it to him. And they brought the first two books out nine months apart, which upset me because it was the first half of my story until I got wounded, then the second half of the story. And I had, I had 5,000 letters of people called me, six months, within six months, that first book coming out, wanted to know where the hell the rest of the story while. And then a short time later, I get a call from Owen.

He says, Military Book Club wants to combine your books and bring it out in a hardcover, which is the way I originally wrote it. So they sold the rights to Military Book Club for Black Berets and Painted Faces, which was those first two books. They sold 20,000 copies in six months

and applied for another $20,000 and Random House wouldn't give it to it. Because they were, competing with the paperbacks. So anyway, I think a year went by and I thought, well, you know, I told my story. My company needs to have its story told. My company lost 76 guys in Vietnam by far more than any other Warp Ranger company. The first cab, I think, lost 42.

They were there a year longer. And we still lost, we were in a bad area. So I talked to Miller and Ray Martinez. And we decided that Ray would write the first brigade 101 L-1Rurps story, the original LRELPs. Ken would write F-58, and I would write the L-75th part of it. So we did that. I had a bunch of guys from other units calling me and saying, how come none of our guys are writing books?

I said, got me. And he said, I thought to myself, by God, I'm going to write a story from every Lerp Ranger unit that fought in Vietnam. And I'm going to do two books or three books, it takes. So I'm going to recognize all of those companies with one story each. And that was the Phantom Warrior series. And I've had I've had publishers call me, O'Lock, call me Chris Evans from, he was with stackpole books at the time, wanted me to write more books and I said, I'm done. You know, I did what I wanted to do. I did what I wanted to accomplish. I'd rather help other guys get their stories told because nobody can tell a story like you can.

You know, if you experienced it, somebody else can't write your story. Yeah, yeah. So I've ended up helping a lot of guys get through books published. I think you said you were involved in something like 86 different books. 42. 42. Well, okay, I doubled it, but that's 42 is still a lot. Almost.

It was. And I've helped some seals. I helped one guy that was a school teacher got drafted when he was 26, married with a kid. Holy shit. He got drafted out of his teaching. He wrote Classroom to Claymore's. I helped him get published. I helped several seals, quite a few lorps.

John Burford, I helped him get his book published. He'd be another good one to interview. And you said you're involved in another book that hasn't been published it with Ray Martinez. Yeah, Ray actually wrote it. I did the editing on it. It's David Dolby. He won a Medal of Honor in the Iodran when the first Cav got wiped out there. All of the story.

we got a Medal of Honor and pull four more combat tours in Vietnam after his Medal of Honor Wow That's incredible Gary That's really unusual too Especially during Vietnam Because I know that like

Once you won a Medal of Honor The military was very reluctant To let you go back Let me change President Johnson turned him down When he was presented the medal He told President Johnson He said

What can I do for? He said send me back to mom He said I can't do that A year later, he was back in NOM with a Lurper unit. Wow. So, I mean, I don't know how he did it, but he did it. Yeah. The man loved to kill NBA.

Yeah. Gary, these books have had, like, such a big influence, not just on me. You know, I read these when I was, like, in high school, then they influenced me to join the Army and to go to the Ranger Regiment. And so many, I think, of my peer group were in the same boat. You know, they read these books as young men. like, whoa, that's what I want to do. You know, I think that's why I got inducted in the Ranger Hall of Fame. It was more of the books than anything else.

There's guys with more decorations than me that have done more for the regiment than I have. But I think that's why I was, you. Well, you did such an incredible story of telling your story, telling your story, telling the warps story and telling the stories of your teammates, you know. And I don't think, maybe you don't want to say it, Gary, but correct me if I'm wrong, you were awarded the Silver Star for that November 20th operation. I was actually putting for a DSC. But they already gave two other guys were putting for Medal of Honors and got kicked down to DSCs.

I was given an impact Silver Star and it was after it was put in for DSC, they left it as a Silver Star. Incredible, Gary. And so do we have questions for Gary? Let me check real quick. Yeah, I don't, I don't. I didn't see anything. We'll check real quick. That's how I get for telling all those war stories.

Now, people are enthralled. Like, nobody, nobody asked questions because they're just enthralled. Out of curiosity, you know, you guys became Rangers, and then Rangers, you know, went on. You were the 75th Infantry, which the 70th, the Regiment came out of. Have you been following the Rangers? Like, what is your, it's quite a. legacy that they have, right? Because we talk about World War II and then the LERP units in Vietnam, and then they formed into more of a direct action unit. What, you know, do you have any

opinions about that? Or what do you, how do you think the legacy has followed? Well, I'm proud to be considered a Ranger, but I'm not a Ranger. You know, in my heart, I'm still a Lerp. They called us Rangers, but we didn't pull a Ranger mission. Um, some of the, our missions might have turned into a Ranger mission, but our mission was primarily reconnaissance. We weren't out there to kill people. Usually when we did, it was self-defense. We were almost always outnumbered. You know, you'll never find an alert that 11 chopper pilot buy a drink. I mean, that's no joke. They saved our butts so many times. You know, Bill Meacham and W.T. Grant both wrote books that I got published for them.

They were courageous pilots. Their motto was that we put you in, we'll get you out, and they meant it. And we knew that, but we probably wouldn't have gone out on those missions. I'm sorry, go ahead, Gary. That's all right. I was just going to ask you if you could tell people the titles of your books that you authored. I wrote my first book was Eyes of the Eagle. The second half of my first tour was Eyes Behind the Lions.

You can't get them new, but you can buy them. I used one once in a while. The combined book is Black Berets and Painted Faces. Six Island Men's The Series. I wrote book three. Ray Martinez wrote book one. Ken Miller wrote book two. And Phantom Warriors book one and two were my final two books.

And you also ran a magazine for a period of time. My brother, who was an Army journalist, he spent his entire three years in Hawaii, wrote for the Stars and Stripes and some other newspapers in the military he talked to me after my books came matter of fact I hired him to write my first book and my wife read the first 30 pages

and she says you need to fire him she said you write you tell your story better than he does so I fired him I still ended up giving him half the front of the front end check for it though since I hired him

But I fired him and he came back to me after the books came out and he said, we had to do a newspaper. So we sat down and we put together a 36-page black and white newspaper, which was the first issue. And I got Craig Jorgensen and Mike Martin and several guys that had been published before to write articles for it. And I did the David Dolby interview, the only time he's ever been interviewed. it. And that came out in black and white, and I took a bunch of copies down to Ford Benning, and we ended up, we published it for six years, took it to a green and white in black newspaper for the next four issues, then we took it to a black and white magazine, then we took it to a full color magazine, ended up with 35,000 subscribers, which isn't a lot.

We didn't make any money, but we broke even on it. And I made a lot of the guys that wrote for us became authors. lot of them got published wild man that's fantastic yeah so KM thank you very much great stories great stream

did Mr. Gary ever served with TV actor Nicholas Worth he had said he was ricondo in an interview no there was no Nick Worth in my unit doesn't mean he was not

ricondo he could have gone to recondo school there was some battalion reconnaissance units that sent guys to recondo school and a lot of the battalion recon units call themselves LERPS. We call them slurpees, short-long-wain control. But they didn't do what we did, but they usually operated in a platoon size or double-squad-sized element,

and they stayed out longer. So not too far from an infantry company. A lot of them refer to themselves as LERPS. Second of the 502nd with 101st, that battalion, their recon element, they were called reconnips. You've heard a Tiger Force? Yep. Niagara Forres, Hawk reconos, those were all battalion reconnaissance shows. Paul Janick, thank you.

Thank you, Team House, for bringing us badass dudes like Mr. Linder. We appreciate Gary for spending a Friday night. Yes, this has been an amazing interview, Gary, and thank you so much for sharing your time. We have one more that just came in. Jim Scott, thank you so much. Thanks for your service, Gary. Did you know a Silver Star recipient named Kinzer? and if so, can you relate any experience you had with him?

I can relate. Yeah, I knew a Kinzer. I don't think he was in my country. I knew a Kinzer. Who was he with? He was a Silver Star recipient, and then Jim said, I can relay it to him, but he didn't say what unit he was with. If it was Pat Kensery, he was in the first brigade of the 1001st LARPS.

Yes. One more question? Oh, what was the other question? Oh, okay, DJ Sneed, thank you. How did LERP and LERS units differ from McVe-Sogg? Okay. MacB-Sog would across the border into Laos, Cambodia, North Vietnam. We stayed in Vietnam, South Vietnam.

That was the main difference. They worked with indigenous troops. We didn't very often. Sometimes we took a Kit Carson out with us. The experience we had taken out three Arvin soldiers and three Americans didn't work out well because of the language barrier. Gary, is there anything else that you want to tell people upcoming, whether it's like a Ranger Association event or anything else that you want people to know about?

Well, you know, if you're a Ranger, join the Ranger Association, go to the rendezvous. The Brotherhood is still strong. If you're a LERP, go to the Long Range Reconnaissance Association, join it, come to our rally every summer, every June. In Branson, the Brotherhood is just as strong there. And Jim said it was Pat Kinzer that he was talking about. Yeah, I knew Pat Kinzer. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Cool. So, yeah, Gary, again, man, it's been amazing to hear your stories. And I'm so glad that we could finally do this. It's just great. Well, I'm sorry it took so long. Not at all, man. It's worth it.

And, oh, and I was supposed to mention Larry Chambers wanted me to mention that he felt he's the most handsome of the three of you. You can. My hair is still brown. I had to throw that one out there for Larry. I'll give him that. He's been married three times. I've been married once.

Gary, thank you, man. I really hope that guys will continue to go out and read these books. I mean, they really are just an amazing historical account. You can read these, too. My novels. Yeah, thank you. read these too thank you Gary and I'll send you I'll send you some copies of my book and there's like we're talking a little bit before the show happy for any introductions

to other works we love to have you guys on the show we can talk later about that send me a mailing address I'll send you one of these because you can't get these I want it I want I want one with your Herbie Hancock on it Gary that's Chambers is it that's me the handsome one and the smart one The Guardian. And for everyone watching, next Friday, we'll be back. We're going to be. So I was asking, are the books for sale in the UK?

Are your books available in the UK? Do you know that, Gary? Yeah. Yeah, they're out there. Australia, too. And Australia. So next Friday, we're going to have Alana Berry on the show. She is a former CIA case officer, served overseas during the Iraq war.

Now a novelist wrote a terrific novel I just read recently. I believe it's called The Peacock and the Sparrow. I hope I'm not reversing that. Maybe it's the Sparrow and the Peacock and the Sparrow. Terrific, terrific, novel. We'll be here with her next Friday. Gary, again, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. Nice to meet you, David.

You guys take care. Have a nice night. Thank you. We'll see everyone next Friday.