The Team House - MACV-SOG in Vietnam | Dick “Dynamite” Thompson | Ep.366

Episode Date: August 23, 2025

In this interview, retired Lieutenant Colonel Dick Thompson, a veteran of the top-secret Studies and Observation Group (SOG) in Vietnam, shares his experiences. He recounts his journey from a young enlistee to a highly decorated officer, detailing harrowing missions, the psychological toll of combat, and the unique tactics his unit used. Thompson also reflects on his life after the war and his work helping veterans with combat stress and resilience.Subscribe to our new newsletter!!!!https://teamhousepodcast.kit.com/joinToday's Sponsors:GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 10% off! PIA VPN ⬇️https://piavpn.com/TeamHouseFo 83% off plus 4 months free-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouseTo help support the show and for all bonus content including:-live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video-early access to shows-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured__________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 - Start09:19 - Dick's journey from enlistee to Ranger.26:36 - His recruitment into the top-secret SOG.29:05 - What made SOG different from other units.35:48 - The ambush on his first SOG mission.45:07 - A hand-to-hand fight with an NVA soldier.1:04:25 - SOG's "black ops" tactics.1:11:33 - The physical demands on SOG operators.1:19:50 - Dick's career as a Ranger instructor.1:44:31 - A discussion on PTSD and mental health.2:11:05 - Dick's final thoughts on leadership and resilience.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Special Operations, Cobert Ops, espionage, the Team House, with your hosts, Jack Murphy, and David Park. Everybody, welcome to episode 366 of The Team House. I'm Dave Park, here with Jack Murphy. And tonight, our guest is Dick Thompson, retired Lieutenant Colonel, who wrote a couple of books on MacB. Sog, first one is SOG codenamed dynamite. The one-oh, the team leaders story. It basically reads like a journal. I'm amazed, like, I'm amazed

at how detailed it is. It reads like an action novel, too. It's a lot of great stuff. And one of the things I really appreciated was like at the end of each chapter, you had kind of a lessons learn and everything like that. So, thank you so much for joining us tonight, Dick. Thank you.

honored to be here. Yeah. So, you know, like the book focused on MacB. Sog, and, you know, obviously that was one of the highlights of your career, but you had a 21-year career. But before that, when you were knee-high little Dickie Thompson running around the neighborhood, tell us your origin story. How did you grow up and what led you to the military? I grew up in basically a military family.

My mother's five brothers were all deployed in World War II at the same time. And my father was also deployed. So they had everybody over there in World War II after that was over. My father was also called back in to go to Korea. So I had a lot of exposure as a small kid growing up and hearing the family talk about war. And I became very curious. I asked a lot of questions. You know, what is a squad?

What is the platoon? What do they do? How do they work? So I was always asking questions about it. I spent a lot of time living at my grandparents' house on my mother's side while my father was gone. So I grew up kind of on a farm, but in a lot of woods, I had an opportunity to go out and spend a lot of time in an environment like that. And my father got back and we moved to a small farm. And I would spend hours and hours in the woods along as a, you know, five, six-year-old, seven-year-old kid, watching animals, tracking animals, trying to figure out how can I be invisible.

Hey, what's up, guys? I want to thank our sponsor, PIA VPN. That's private internet access. You guys ever been at a coffee shop connected to their Wi-Fi and wondered just how secure you are? Turns out you're not very secure at all. It's like sending a private text message to a group chat. Everyone can see it. All of your personal data from your passwords to your browser history.

It's all out in the open. And I do not need my browser history out in the open for people. That's a problem. But the solution is private internet access. PIA is super easy to use. And the app protects all of your devices. It hides your IP address and creates an encrypted tunnel from your internet. internet connection so no one can snoop on your data.

And unlike a lot of services out there, PIA is completely transparent. They have a proven no logs policy, which means they never record or store your data. The part that I love best about PIA is I like watching the office. And in the U.S., the office is not available on Netflix. So I just punch in PIA VPN and I can watch Netflix. I can watch the office on Netflix from here. You can change your virtual location to one of their servers in 91. countries and unlock new content, whatever you want to watch.

You could check it out there too. It's pretty cool. And you can protect your entire family with one subscription. So if you want to protect your digital life and get 83% off plus four months free, head to PIA VPN slash Teamhouse and sign up today. They have a 30-day money back guarantee, so there's no risk to you. That's PIAVPN.com slash team house for 83% off plus four months free. And that's actually $2.3.3.000.

cents a month only so it's totally worth it if you're in the market for a VPN PIA is the way to go just head back over to PIA vpn.com slash team house you get 83% off plus four months free that's $2.3 and $3 a month and there's a 30 day money back guarantee so there's no risk at all protect your life and thank you for supporting the show to all the fans out there and thank you PIA VPN for supporting the show as well thanks guys appreciate it how can I walk up on a deer how close can i get to them what other tracks look like how do they behave um so i was learning the field craft like that so i got a little older um i had a cousin carl who would my age who would come over and we'd go out in the woods and play army uh camp in the woods at night

eventually we got to the point where i had a b b b gun we would shoot birds um cook them over or fire and do the kinds of things because we heard about rangers we'd do the kinds of things that we thought rangers did and so i formed a ranger company and i formed i formed a ranger company started out with myself and cousin carol brought in some other cousins and expanded out beyond that a little and then eventually brought in some people who were not related but you know i became general Thompson and we had had our arranger company i still have that log book today you know a lot of the writing is faded but it had people's names in it had the one court martial that we conducted that was a non-family member and um we

We had to let him go, so we court-martialed him and he left. But we saw Darby's Rangers, the movie that got us all fired up even more. So, and I used to hunt and fish. I grew up, you know, firing weapons. So I was pretty good at shooting and hunting. And, you know, just kind of got into that. And then when I was 13, I was sabotaged by Santa Claus. He brought me a chemistry set.

And I used to watch shock theater and these other monster movies and things. So when I got the chemistry set, I started doing things like trying to swap brains between a bird and a frog. and at that time if your parents or mother would go with you to the drugstore, the pharmacy it was amazing

what they would sell you. So I had syringes, I had all kinds of things that I got from the drugstore and kind of grew up with a laboratory out in the barn. But I hadn't forgot the Rangers and I got a ended up with a scholarship to the University of South Carolina.

Dick real quick, I want to stop you because there was something in your book. You talked about your very first MacB-Sog instructor in the barn there. Do you want to tell us about that? Yeah, when I was, you know, I was, you know, about six, I guess or seven, somewhere around that age. And the way our house was set up, there was a road, a dirt road that came from the highway, came right through the middle of our property and separated our house from the barn. And, you know, we didn't have running water. So we got water out of a well.

We didn't have indoor toilets or bathrooms. We had an outhouse, but it was on the other side of the road where the barn was. and my father bought a big turkey. In fact, when we were standing face to face, we were pretty well looking in each other's eyes. And he was very aggressive. He didn't want anybody on what he called his side of the road. So when I needed to go to the bathroom,

I had to try to get into the outhouse before he could have attack me. As he would see me, he'd come running at me, jump up on me, knock me down. And, you know, so I complained to my father about that. And he told me, he said, you know, he knows you're afraid of him. You've got to let him know you're not afraid. I said, well, I am afraid of him. That joker knocked me down and affects me. And he said, you got to let him know, you on that side of the road too. And I said, he's bigger and stronger and faster. than me. He said, but you're smarter. Figure out

how to outsmart him. So that was kind of the beginning of my special operations train. How can I navigate and get to the outhouse and then make it back across the road

without him knocking me down? And I finally decided I could throw rocks at him. You know, hold him back with rocks. I ended up with a slingshot, I'd shoot him with a slingshot, but all kinds of E and E trying to get him around him. Then pay off finally came at Thanksgiving.

He was invited for Thanksgiving dinner, so I didn't have to worry about him anymore. But it really taught me a lot about how do you hide? How do you go from cover and concealment, from one place to another and, you know, get to the house and then get back. Yeah. I learned a lot. So, yeah, thanks.

So I'm sorry for interrupting you. So you go to college and you're going to college for chemical engineering, correct? Well, for chemistry. Chemistry, okay. Kent was to be a good doctor and chemistry, be a research chemist. and at that time, every day at 5 o'clock in the evening, the national news would come on, and there'd always be a segment about what was going on in Vietnam that day. And, you know, they kind of made it sound like we were really winning,

and it probably wasn't going to last much longer. and I in my mind I thought it's going to end before I have a chance to get there so I told my my parents I was going to take a break in school enlist in the army and go in go to Vietnam come back and then you know finish school my mother was not happy with that my father thought it was pretty cool. But, so I took a break and enlisted in the Army. And you... I'm sorry.

But when you, so when you went to go enlist, you actually went to the, you were headed to the Marine cell, right? The Marines, recruiting office and Army, they were side by side. And a building there in town. But, yeah, because you saw the Marines on TV all the time. I mean, that's all you heard about. The Army was there and they were doing something, you know, but the Marines, it's like every other Marines got a camera or something.

And, you know, they publish everything. And so I sounded like they were the ones who were getting something done. So I thought about them, but after I talked to them, I went in the Army recruiters and said, you know, what do you got? And they talked me into going into the Army rather than the Marines. Yeah. And you originally thought that you might be a chemical specialist? Chemical.

Well, they had said the Army recruiters had said, you know, you scored really high on all these and we can get you in the Army Chemical Corps. And I said, well, I mean, that might be cool to make all these chemical weapons and different things. You know, so I went in the Army and thinking about that. And then my first night, Dan at Fort Jackson, went to sleep in bunk, with, you know, 50 other guys in the air and about 3.30 in the morning, all the lights come on.

There's somebody yelling, screaming, hollering, get out, get on in front of your bunk. And I guess the people at the other end of the room were not moving fast enough. And I heard the double, you know, the bunk beds starting to fall over on the floor because whoever this guy was, he was just turning the bunk over with people in them. I got out and I was standing in front of mine as he got down to where we were. And I noticed he was, I mean, he was my size. And I thought, wow, he's not nearly as big as he sounds, but he's a bad dude. And then I noticed, you know, that black and gold ranger tab on his shoulder.

And I said, wow, that's a ranger. That's what these guys are like. I mean, that's cool. I like that. And then, you know, he took us to the mess hall and we had the double time going over the air. And we start with a Jody call about, you know, I want to be an airborne ranger. I want to live a life at danger and all. I mean, I was hooked by the time I got to the mess hall.

I said, I'm only going to be here three years. I might as well be a ranger for three years and, you know, turn some bunk sober and have some, you know, have a good time. So I started thinking that way. Yeah. So you do your basic, you do a leadership prep course, which is like a, like it was a, they don't have it now, but when they identify you as somebody who's going to be a leader at AIT, right, the advanced infantry training. You go to the leader prep course. And then you do your infantry AIT. Now, here's my question, because this is, this is.

this isn't something that happens really anymore. You did Basic and then AIT and then you rolled right into OCS, the Officer Candidate School. How did that happen? Well, the drill sergeant I had in Basic, you know, he made me a platoon guide fairly quickly because I was, you know, very fit. I learned quickly and then I discovered and, you know, one night that there was actually a manual 22-5 that had all the commands that they were using as we marched around.

So, I mean, it didn't take me long at all to go through there and see what the commands were, you know, the preparatory commands, the execution command, which foot they'd give them on. So the next morning, I started correcting the drill sergeants for a short period of time. Then I did a lot of push-ups because I could see when they were doing it wrong. I mean, if you give me the materials, I can learn it. Yeah. So anyway, you made me the platoon guide. And then, you know, I had taken all kinds of tests when I first came in and my drill sergeant, you know, said,

you really need to think about going to OCS. And so I'm going to start putting in your file and pushing you in that direction. And then, you know, that followed up when I was at AIT. And then I got orders to go to OCS at Fort Benning. Were you happy about that? Yeah. I mean, I was ready by then. And then when I got in OCS, and, you know, you got exposed to a lot of things there.

Airborne was one, Ranger was one, you know, all this different. stuff you're doing, you know, the OCS company I was in was right next to the jump towers, you know, so every day I was watching people come down and parachutes out there, you know, so I requested to go to jump school, requested to go to special forces, and I got orders for both of those. As soon as I finished OCS, I went to jump school, finished that, I went to Fort Bragg, went through the Q course up there. You know, became SS qualified and, you know, went on a team, was prepping to go on a mission to Africa because at that time,

the third group was targeted toward Africa. And I had also volunteered to go to Ranger School and Vietnam. So that came through. They sent me the Ranger School. and shortly after that the orders from vietnam came down and to feel special forces group and i i went there and yeah one of the discovery there were something about special ops that i i really didn't know about yeah one of the things you talk about which is something they used to do but they don't anymore was the quick kill course you know they used to use the daisy rifle

for sort of the point shooting can you tell us about that? I don't know. That school went away. They don't do it anymore, but it was a very valuable school, right? Yes. You know, they told us, you know,

we're going to go out and do some training. We're going to do about two weeks of focusing on something that was called Quick Kill. So we went out to the training site, you know, myself and a group of other

young SF guys. And, you know, the instructor came out and he had a BB gun, BB rifle. And he threw about a three or four inch aluminum disc up in the air. And he just shot from his waist with a BB gun and hit it. And he said, you know, you're going to start with a disc like that. And then we're going to go down to this size, and then this size. And he kept getting smaller and smaller. and he's hitting him out of the air every time, you know, without aiming.

Right. That's pretty cool. So we all got our BB guns and started shooting at the disc. Then they changed this over with two-by-fourths that had a little three-inch silhouettes on it. And, you know, you would shoot it to little silhouettes like that. We got good at that. And then we changed over to. at M16 and we'd actually go through a go down a trail on the range that target would pop up

and you would use a quick kill. Sometimes people now still talk about it as point shooting. It's, you know, you're not coming all the way up here. You're shooting from down at the waist or chest level at the most. Yeah. But it's very fast. Yeah. And if you're within 20, 25 meters of a target, you're not going to miss it.

Yeah. It doesn't make you long at all. And I mean, I still put on demonstrations now with, you know, SWAT teams, law enforcement, I still go back to Bragg and Campbell with special ops groups. And I tell, I can still hit from there. In fact, if you're carrying at downport, like most of the, what people do with the stock laying up there. I said, I'll hit you three times before you can even start to move your weapon up.

Yeah. Too slow the way you're carrying your weapon. You pick a door open and go in a room and there's a guy they are already pointing a weapon. You're going to die. He will get you if you're not ready to pull the trigger and hit the target. How hard? I'm sorry, how hard was it to transition from BB gun to the M16? It really wasn't hard in terms of hitting the target.

Yeah. I mean, we had shot the M-16. I mean, we'd done work with the M-16. Sure. Just we hadn't tried to do the quick kill. And, you know, and to jump way ahead, one of the things that happens with all the services is with your marksmanship training, you know, whether it's a pistol or rifle, you spend all kinds of. of time on side alignment, getting the right site picture, and all of that. And that's great until your target starts shooting back at you. And then your stress level skyrockets. And when it does,

one of the changes that happens is your vision changes. You can't see the sites anymore. So you're looking, trying to aim, but the sites are just blurred because your vision changes. So you're, You can't really focus on anything until it's out beyond where your weapon is. But with the porn shooting, you don't have to worry about that. Yeah. Because you're pointing. You're not using a site picture like that. Yeah.

So you get assigned a third group. You're prepped for Africa. You're disappointed because you want to go to Vietnam. You go to Ranger's school. You get back and you find out that you are going to Vietnam. Right. When you get to Vietnam, what was your first impression? I had grown up in a world here in the U.S.

We have laws and rules and rules of engagement and things that you can do. And, you know, I get on a plane and 20, 25 hours later, I step off the plane in Vietnam. And as soon as I exit the plane, the smell hits me. You know, it's, I mean, the smell is just very different. And I realize, I'm in a different world. Yeah. Very different world.

All the noise, the chaos, vehicle of running around, planes landing, taking off. And I also noticed that the people, the Vietnamese were people where I could actually see the tops of their heads. You know, I'm not very tall. I don't see the top of somebody's head very often when I'm talking to them. Yeah. But I can see theirs and I thought, well, this is pretty cool. You know, I'm at least as tall or taller than they are.

A lot of activity going on. Just a real adjustment. And the pilot had told us as we were getting close to landing. and he said this is this is what's going to happen i don't want to scare you but when we when we get close to the airfield i'm going to put us into a nosedive and we're going to dive down toward the airfield i'm going to pull us out at the last minute and flare out will land and when we hit the ground don't unfashion your seatbelt because i'm going to taxi really fast around to to the area where we're going to unload,

you need to be fastening until we get there. And then when we say, go, we want you to get up and you guys move out the front exit doors because the guys who are leaving are going to be coming in through the rear doors. So you're going out in the front. They're coming in the rear because we're not going to be on the ground

but just a few minutes. Because we are a prime target when we're setting there for rockets and mortars to come in on us. So just the landing and take-offs were really different than, you know, what I was used to. So you get there and you get some really solid advice, right? Somebody tells you they give you some good advice, and what was that advice? Yeah, a friend of mine had left for Vietnam about a month.

month before I did. So he had been near. He's already assigned to a mic force, but he got word to that I was coming. And he linked up with me. We went to a bar and, you know, he was telling me all about what's going on and how things work there. And he said, you know, tomorrow you have to go in and fill out all kind of paperwork and forms and things like that. And at the end of the day, they're going to take you into a room and they're going to ask you if you want to volunteer for SOG. And he said, whatever you do, do not volunteer for SOG. I said, I don't even know what it is.

Why would I not volunteer? He said, if you volunteer, you're going to die. Just hear what I'm saying. You're going to die. If you don't die, you're going to get the crap shot out of you and you're going to go back to the states as a nutcase. That's if they find your body. Do not volunteer for soft.

Yeah. We hung out there for a while and he said, I'll see you back here tomorrow. And so when I came walking in, he looked at me and he said, you did it, didn't you? I can tell what I look on your face. You did it.

I mean, you are a dead man walking. So when you go into that room, how did they pitch you? Like what was their big? Did they show you like a motivational video with guys coming out of the water? No, I'm 21 years old. Yeah. And, you know, back in that time, we used to think that the front part of your brain the prefrontal cortex up here,

that its primary function in life was to hold your cranium up so that the front of your head didn't cave in. We found out later that this is really where risk assessment, decision making, all of those kinds of things take place. This is where the CEO of your brain lives. So when he looked at my folder

and he was flipping to it and he said, you know, you volunteered to join the Army, you volunteered for airborne school, you volunteered for, you know, special forces, you volunteered for Ranger, you volunteered to go to Vietnam. I'm about to give you an opportunity to volunteer for the most important thing you will ever volunteer for. I said, if you're about to ask me if I want to volunteer for Saab? He said, yes. said I like what I see here with you.

You're perfect for this job. And I said, what do they do? And he said, I can't tell you. The only way you can find out what they do is you have to go there. But I can tell you this, that if you volunteer for SAAG, you're volunteering to go anywhere, any time, do anything, and not talk about it for 20 years. I'm 21 years old.

My pre-final cortex is not developed yet. I mean, he might as well be holding up a recruiting poster. Go anywhere, do anything, not tell anybody for 20. I can do that. I don't know what it is you want me to do, but I think I can handle that. I volunteered for it. Hey, guys, our show is sponsored by GhostBed. Check them out.

Please, they make awesome mattresses, awesome pillows, awesome betting. Ghostbred provides high quality, super comfortable award-winning mattresses crafted in the U.S. and Canada. Did you know that 60% of U.S. adults report being too hot when they're trying to sleep? That's me. I'm a sweaty little baby. That's why we designed all of our products with cooling features so you stay comfortable and asleep all night long. Pair any of our mattresses with GhostBeds award-winning adjustable base and get the ultimate sleep experience.

Ghostbred rules the family-owned business, $60,000 plus five-star reviews. They have sleep experts on staff with 20 plus years of experience. If you have any questions, you can hit them up and ask them, you know, maybe what kind of mattresses work for you. 20 plus year warranty. That's two times the industry standard. Free shipping and returns on mattresses. Most of the products ship out within 24 hours.

They have in-house customer support and sleep experts chilling in Plantation, Florida. It rules. It's the best. They give you 101 nights risk-free to make. make sure that these beds are right for you. If you don't like it after 101 nights, you can send it back full refund. When you purchase a ghost bed mattress, your comfort guaranteed. I'm reading it right now and it's capital letters guaranteed.

Okay. They do the right thing and they're a great company. If you're not sure which ghost bed's right for you, like I said before, you could take their mattress quiz online or you can give a call to one of their sleep experts and they'll help you with exactly what you possibly could need, what works for you. and what doesn't. And the best news about this is Teamhouse listeners and viewers. You get an extra 10% off sitewide for a limited time.

You just go to ghostbed.com slash house and use the code house at checkout. One more time, that's ghostbed.com slash house with the code house, H-O-U-S-E at checkout for an extra 10% off site wide. I want to thank Ghostbed for their continued support. I want to thank all the fans that listen and watch. for their continued support without you guys. We are nothing. So thank you for supporting the show.

And thank you for supporting the companies that help support the show. Ghostbed.com slash house for 10% off. Made in the U.S., made in Canada. Shout out to our brothers in Canada. They rock. Check them out. I love Ghostbed. Thanks, guys.

Now, can you give us, you know, a rundown on, you know, all these guys were coming from SF, or they're all SF. that are all special forces, why is the studies and observation group? Why is that different than the guys in the A camps and things like that? Like, what's different? What do they do?

Or what did they do? One big difference is, big differences that our targets and our area of operation, they were in different countries. I mean, for the most part, Vietnam, South Vietnam was just a training site for us. We could go out and rehearse missions. We could go get some, you know, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers to come out and train with us and shoot at us.

You know, so we could get used to being shot at and we could shoot some people. but when when you went across the border you went sterile first of all nothing said u.s. No dog tags, no ID card, nothing that said that you were from the U.S. It provided plausible deniability for the president since he was on TV on a regular basis saying we're not in any other countries. just in south vietnam but all of our sog missions were Laos, Cambodia, North Vietnam, the DMZ, Thailand, places like that where we were not supposed to be. Yeah. So if we were caught, then we could be executed on the spot as a spy.

We were not covered by the Geneva Convention. You know, so it was different for us. And then the number of enemy that you would be engaged with was pretty much insane. Yeah. I mean, when they tell you, I want you to take six guys and go out and find this battalion of North Vietnamese and attack them. Okay. They should be easy to find. That's a lot of people.

Yeah. Not sure how to get away from them, but I thought that'd be pretty cool to learn. Yeah. So you get assigned to RT Alabama right and Fubai? Yes. So when I, you went to Danang first, and that's where you found out what SOG was, found out everything was top secret, it that you couldn't say anything after you walked out of that room. And there were three camps, like the one at Danang, and then there were some smaller ones.

You got a code name so that, you know, if you were captured, you could kind of prove or let the U.S. know it was you. And then, you know, Iowa sent up to Fubai. that had some of the teams up there. I put us closer to the Laosian border and North Vietnam. So there were about five or six of us that went up there at the same time. And everybody's name was called off by the Sergeant Major except mine. And they were told they were going to go to a two-week course to teach them how to be team.

team leaders in SOG. And so I'd say, well, you know, what about me? You didn't call my name. And he said, hey, you're a Ranger, special forces, you got all this extra training. I'm putting you to work. You're going to be assigned to a team tomorrow and we're going to get you out doing your thing. So I thought, well, that's cool. Get started pretty fast.

Yeah. And so you get to your team and what was that like when you first got there? When I got where, I'm sorry. To your team. Yeah. Well, on a SOG team, it doesn't matter what your rank is. So I came into the team as an officer and, you know, I was the only officer on the team. but I had to go out with the team several times and prove, you know, my ability to lead in combat

and work with the SOG teams and learn all the little special techniques that they use before I could have my own teams. So I went out as a second in command with a, with an E7. And, you know, he was teaching me. You know, some of the things about being a leadership, being a leader. He was also evaluating me and vetting me to be able to be a leader. Yeah. So with Alabama, I went out, you know, four times with them.

Yeah. And then I was cleared to be a leader. So, you know, you're, you have this kind of, like, Sogg had a wide range of operations. and like your first mission was wiretapping right so so do they like do they have courses for you guys back at the camp like how do you you know if you're doing a pipeline hit or wiretapping or a rendition or you know a snatch and grab like how do you you know learn these these different skills for the most part from operators who have done it before and know it and sometimes there's

if it's something really special. They may be bringing a CIA guy or somebody else who has the expertise. But RT Alabama had done wiretaps before. So they knew how to do it. And I learned, you know, as we went out and did it. It's not that complex once you see how it's done. The execution, you know, actually getting

done without getting caught is the issue. Yeah. But in, you know, in that particular case, first mission, we went out and we were also testing, is it better to go in at last light just before it gets dark? So once you get off to helicopters and get into the jungle, it would be very difficult to track you, already going at first light so you have daylight to try to you know get some space between you and where you go in but we're going in at last light and uh we're we're going to go down into bomb crater they dropped a very large bomb and blew a hole in the jungle canopy just barely big enough

for the helicopter to set down in so we're we're approaching it and you know the skips are almost dragging on the top of the canopy. The team leaders over on one side with a couple of people there standing on the skid of the helicopter over there. I'm on the other side with another American and a couple of indige. And we're standing out and we're just barely moving. And I was thinking if the NBA is down there, he could take a rock and knock me off the skid. I mean, we're wide open and we're just barely moving. So we get to the hole in the canopy and the helicopter starts to settle down in toward the crater.

And we get about probably still six feet from the ground and he can't get any lower. And I'm wearing 75, maybe 80 pounds of gear. And thinking, if when I jump off this skid and go down six feet and hit, I'm probably going to break both legs. But, you know, that's what slog people do. Yeah. So I get ready. I bent my knees to jump in. And just as I got ready to jump, I saw some movement on my right, about 10, 15 feet away was a NVA soldier,

with AK-47 pointed up at me. And I thought, well, man. So instead of jumping into the crater, I jumped back up on the edge of the floor, the helicopter, just as he pulled the trigger. Stream around just came by. They missed me because I had jumped back, but they hit the American next to me,

took his legs out from under him. So I grabbed him by the back of the harness as he was falling. I managed to pull him up. and, you know, took my right hand and hosed down the guy that just shot at us. I'll put about a half a magazine into him. Got the other guy up. Blood's going everywhere. Now everybody's shooting. And the whole bomb crater comes alive because they had an ambush set up around it.

So there's a tracers crisscrossing inside the cargo compartment somehow missing us. and you know I was just amazed that that many bullets could be coming and not being getting hit I went ahead and emptied the rest of the magazine into a tree in front of me where I could see muzzle flashes and saw a guy fall out but when I reached to to get another magazine to reload I had you know my hand was just covered in blood and that made it slick the magazines were really packed tight into the canteen cover that I was using. I couldn't get the magazine out. And eventually I did get it out. But then my fine muscle control had deteriorated so much from the stress.

I couldn't get it in the magazine well. You know, bullets are coming at me and I'm trying to get the magazine in, finally got it in so I could start returning fire. after I got the first one out of the pounce and I could get the others without any problem. But, you know, I had just never experienced that level of fear. I had tried to imagine, you know, what it would be like to have a bunch of people shooting at you.

And, you know, they're 15, 20 meters away at most. Yeah. Nothing but air between me and them. And, you know, it's coming at us. You can hear the rounds hitting in the helicopter. And, you know, the door gunner's right next to me. He's got the M-60 going. Two of my little guys were behind me, one on each side of my head with a car 15,

firing on an automatic. I can feel, you know, the powder burns hitting my face. You know, so all that's going on. I'm trying to shoot. It was probably lasted two. three minutes. It seemed like, you know, all day, but stuff was hitting everywhere. Anyway, we got out of that, and eventually we got back.

And on the way back, I looked over at the team leader, sitting on the other side of the helicopter, and he looked around at me, and when he saw me, I mean, he grinned like a horse eating Saul Breyer and started giving me a thumbs up. And I thought, he thought that was cool. really enjoyed what we just did. I don't know if I'm going to get to that point or not based on how I felt back there, but he's pretty excited about this. Then when we got back, we got off the helicopter, and he came over to me,

and he said, I'm going to tell you something, Lieutenant. If you don't learn to change magazines faster when people are shooting at you, you're going to die and I said copy that I was pretty fast but I didn't realize the impact of someone shooting at me how much slower it was going to be yeah I will start practicing so one of the things I tried to do with the books is I wanted to show the reader this is what I saw you're looking through my eyes yeah my fear you're seeing what I what I'm seeing you're seeing you're see the mistakes that I make, you see the changes that I start making across time as I learn more and more how I'm changing the tactics that I'm using with the team, teaching them how to do

things differently. And you can see a big change as you go across those two books in terms of how I led teams and how we fought. For people who are familiar with SOG and have watched our show or other shows, you probably know why there was an ambush set up. But for people who don't know, SOG was top secret for everybody except for the North Vietnamese who, due to

the political climate in Vietnam, the South Vietnamese had to be informed of everything that you guys did. And that basically was sent up to the North Vietnamese. So there was always you know at least a company if not a battalion waiting for you guys right yeah i i see a lot of people practicing jiu jitsu and the way people do that is you and you and i are going to have a match

so we get down on the floor i get my best hold around you you get your best hold on me and then they say go and you know then we start rolling around fighting um one of us trying to beat the other and that's that's like a sog mission you get a whole bunch yeah you know 500,000 uh and you put him out there in the jungle then you take this little six or eight man uh sog team and you set them right in the middle of them yeah and once they're in there and then somebody says go So now you've got to try to, you know, accomplish the mission that you went there for. And then you have to try to get out. And the most difficult thing of the whole process is getting out.

Because now they all know where you are. Yeah. And, you know, I usually liken it to, it's like kicking the top off of an ant hill. How they just swarm out of the ant hill. Once they find out where you are, they just swarm on you. Yeah. Yeah, you know, you talked about how this book was through your eyes, and the opening of the book has a really intense scene with you grappling with North. Do you want to tell us that story?

Yeah, on one of the missions, and I'm going to go ahead and add a lot, add a little bit more to what's in the front. The helicopter I was in was shot down. So we crashed on the LZ. They broke my back, fractured my spine, some vertebrae, some ribs, things like that. You know, when we crashed, one of my guys had gotten shot through the thigh as the helicopter was coming down. Anyway, the three of us were all thrown out. My interpreter was with me.

We were thrown out onto the ground and all three knocked out. When I came to, I wasn't sure if I was dead or alive, but as my hearing started to come back, I could hear the rounds cracking by and see them digging up the grounds. I figured I must be alive because they're trying to kill me. So I started moving because there was a small bomb crater there. I started moving toward that. And then my guy that was shot in the leg, he couldn't go anywhere.

So I had to go back and I had to get him, drag him to the bomb crater. Take his rucksack off, push him into the crater. I had to go back and get my interpreter, drag him to the bomb crater, push him in. And, you know, there's steadily just coming after us and shooting. the three of us got in the bomb crater and then our what we call the cubby rider the guys in a plane up above us

he called the helicopter was setting there kind of leaning sideways the blade was almost hitting the ground when it would turn the wheels were flattened out on it but he talked to the pilot and told him he wanted him and the co-pilot to get out and let me get him in the bomb crater. The pilot said, no, we fix. And this is a very famous Vietnamese, you know, Sogg helicopter pilot.

I mean, he was shot down four times. I think this was the third time he was shot down. But anyway, these are the QDIs, right? He refused to get out. Yeah. So we had, we were in a bomb crater and they're coming across this little grassy area trying to get us or get close enough to throw a hand grenade. And we're stacking them up like cord, you know, like cordwood all around the, the bomb crater.

I don't know. At one point, the idea popped into my head that what I should do is crawl out there in the grass with them because they're crawling through the grass trying to get to us, I should just go out there with them and snatch one of them up and drag him back into the bomb crater. And again, my prefrontal cortex wasn't working very well. It sounded like a good idea. I mean, I've just got a broken back.

It's not a big deal. But I crawled out there, and I could hear one crawling kind of toward me. I reached out, and I grabbed him by the shoulder, scared him half to death, but he had an AK. So he tries to shoot me. I got his AK. And then he got my muzzle, my car 15, and we're fighting and rolling around. I eventually shot him in the shoulder, but he was overpowering me.

I just didn't have any strength left. And then for some reason, he turned loose of the barrel of my car 15. and just hit me as hard as he could right in the nose, just flatten my nose out. Blood went everywhere. My balls were spinning around. But when he turned loose of the car 15, that gave me a second or so to reoriented it.

And then he realized I could see the look in his eyes that he knew he was dead. because the muzzle of the car 15 was maybe six inches away from his cheek and he just closed his eyes because he knew it was over and I put a five or six round burst in his head and it just exploded so I went went back to the bomb crater decided I'd try to get a prisoner a different day yeah that's so well and then how do they you know you have multiple wounded, you're surrounded, how do they extract you guys? Well, eventually, using tactical air support, got the fire suppressed enough that they came in

and dropped ropes from the helicopter that we fastened on and they pulled us out. Captain On in the helicopter, we were setting on a pretty steep bridge. He got up enough rotor speed to pick it up about a foot or so off the ground and just went over the side of the ridge and right on down to the bottom of the ridge and hit down there. Another aircraft came in and picked him and his copilot up down there. But, yeah, it was, we came out a lot of times hanging on ropes. Yeah, yeah, those Vietnamese pilots for something, weren't they? Oh, yeah. I mean, they were fearless and they were good.

Yeah. They were flying the, you know, CH34 helicopters, the big, big fat ones. Yeah. They're very powerful. Now, when you got to RT Alabama, you also were put on a hatchet for us. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, they assigned me, so I had the double assignment there. They assigned me to, you know, a hatchet platoon.

So I had 50 guys. And, you know, so I was the platoon leader for the hatchet force. But it ended up, the only thing I did with them was trained. I never got to take them on a mission because they kept me so busy with the teams going out. So Alabama kept me busy. And then they shut food by down and sent teams all over. I was sent down to Danang to CCN, and that's where I picked up RT Michigan.

What was the mission of the hatchet force? It was to have kind of like a ranger force, a kinetic, you know, hard-hitting impact to go in and, you know, really, you know, kick some booty with the enemy. Yeah. I mean, you had petunions, but you had companies too,

so you could put a whole company in here. Yeah. And that was a lot of firepower. Yeah. So they shut down Fubai, so you had to Fobb 4 to our team Michigan. And then

can you tell us about a couple of the ops there? Some of them were, I mean, all of them, I'm sure, are standouts, but can you some of the stand a couple of us stand out in your memory? Yeah, when I first got there, the previous team leader, 1-0, had been wounded badly, and so he was, he was, you know, medevaced. So I took over as the team leader, and there was one other American there, a specialist fourth class by the name of bargewell and he was a sharp guy i thought wow i mean

this this kid is really sharp and i'm i'm saying kid you know i was three months older in him so but anyway he he had been with the team for a while a lot of combat experience really good He and I got along really well. We had a mission to go in and actually support a hatchet force that was being put on the ground. We were going to be on the other side of the highway to make sure no one came from that side and attacked the hatchet force. But we were going to do it in a unique way. The 101st had a company right on the border with Laos. So the plan was we were going to fly in with the resupplies for the 101st for that company,

dressed like 101st guys, get off the helicopter that way. And then the next morning we would go down with the water team down to the river to bring water back, except when we got there, all of our clothes and things is going duffel bags. they would bring our clothes back. We would move off across the river, go into Laos, and maneuver over to where we needed to be. So that was a fairly unique way at that point to do an insertion. We also had artillery support.

Only time I had artillery support, because the 101st was close to the border, they could reach us. So I planned all these artillery targets and things out there. And we went in, eventually made some contact, and got in some big battles. And that's when I realized that if you stop, when they're coming after you, if you stop,

what they tend to do, the NVA, what they tend to do is they're just like an amoeba and your dinner and they just kind of move out and just envelop you. All around you, now you're in the center and they just come in and get you. So because they were chasing us. We got into a rocky area and I thought this is an area that not only has some concealment, but it has cover. and we stopped and they just assaulted and salted and eventually we were we were pulled out by you know ropes I sent barge well and the other American that was with us and a couple of team members they went out sent them out first I stayed with the other three team members that we had we came out last both of them

were wounded coming out. I was I was hit in the back with in the radio. And I was also hit with a big piece of shrapnel that hit my survival radio. I know if you're listening to this on a podcast, you can't see it. But the survival radio was, you know, mounted right here in my pocket right over my heart. So a huge piece of shrapnel buried itself. into the radio that stopped it from bearing itself into my heart got out and all of a sudden we're hanging at 7,000 feet on the end of a rope flying at 100 plus miles an hour freeze into death

because we're soaking wet from all the sweat and now we're 7,000 feet up and it's cold and my rope's rubbing back and forth on the edge of the floor of the helicopter and I can see it starting to prey. Oh. And my radio's dead. Yeah. A little radio is dead. I can't radio the pilot and say, it'd be nice if we could sit down somewhere

pretty soon because my rope's about gone. Yeah. But we made it back anyway. So this is a very nerdy question, but I have to ask, you're part of this, you know, covert unit doing things that our country denies. you go to a conventional outpost where the 101st is, how do you coordinate fires with them and tell they're already people, hey, you can't ask who we are,

but we might call you and we want you to fire into Laos. Yeah. Well, you have the same issue with the helicopter crews. The pilots get briefed on the mission. They know they're going to cross the river. But the crew, you know, the gunner, crew chief, and the gunner doesn't know. But you can see the expression on their face when they see that river coming up,

and they're still flying toward it. And, you know, and they're looking down and thinking, oh, geez, we just crossed into Laos or Cambodia or wherever it is. And then they get all their briefings. They can't say anything about it. But with the artillery, you know, they're there, and I'm briefing them and saying, I'm plotting these targets on the other side of the river, but you won't be able to talk about this. I used them.

And then when we had to get pulled out, you know, I sent Barswell and, you know, the other half of the team out first. and they flew back to the fire support base. So those guys are out there seeing this helicopter come from way over on the other side of the border flying right toward them. Right. And landing there. So they got pretty excited and they all came out

and see what was going on. And then my helicopter's coming, you know, with myself and two of my guys hanging under and we're flying to it. So they knew now there's somebody else coming from over there too. And they set us down. The medics did a quick fix on my two guys and put us in a helicopter. And we were just getting ready to lift off.

And I saw a guy running toward the helicopter. He's got his hand well up in the air. And he's got something in his hand. And we're lifting off the ground just as he gets to me. I reached it, reached down and I took what he had in his hand, and then I realized it was a picture. Polaroid had just come out with this small version of the Polaroid camera, and this guy bought one just before he came to Vietnam. So he saw the first helicopter come in, and he ran back to his bunker, and he got his camera, and came back out. So he was ready when mine came in. So I got the,

actual picture that he took coming in hanging under the helicopter there had no clue who he was. Do you have that picture handy by any chance? I'm sorry? Do you have that picture handy by any chance? Is it still?

It's in the book. Oh, is it? Yeah. I don't remember. That's okay. Hey, no, it gives people one more reason to buy the book. Oh, yeah. I mean, the book is loaded with pictures.

Yeah. And I know you're going to ask me that same question. If these were all classified, how did you get those pictures? Well. Oh, I wasn't going to ask that. There are always pictures on classified missions these days. Yeah, I'm just going to look right here for just a second. I might be able to give you a page number.

Yeah, I'm just curious how the talk goes. Yeah, on page 156. 156. I'm just curious how the discussion goes with, like, the base commander and the fire support officer saying, hey, we want you to turn your guns around. And, like, we're authorizing you to fire into Laos, if we call you. Yeah. I wasn't privileged to what they were told at this time.

I know the company commander kind of freaked out when I told him what we were going to do the next morning. Yeah. The fire support lieutenant that he had there freaked out when you said, you're plotting targets on the other side of the river, on the other side of the border. And I said, you're right. Because when I need you, the fire on those targets, I need you to have already computed everything. Yeah.

When I play, you know, fire target Monday, you know, right. 200, drop 300. I need rounds coming in on the target right then because we were in big trouble. Yeah. So they just thought, wow, this is, we've never seen anybody, plot all these targets and name them like days of the week,

so they all make sense. And line them up ahead of time. I mean, that's what Rangers did, you know? Yeah. I did that all the time, you know, under training and stuff. and used them once we got out there because it could come in quick like that. You know, we talked about sort of the expanse of operations that McBosag did. And then, you know, like you had your wiretaps, your search and destroy.

Eldest Sun, even though this was Alabama, Eldest Sun was a very interesting project, right? Do you want to talk about that? Yeah, one of the, one of the SIE-Ops kinds of things that we did, Black Ops, is we would go into North Vietnamese ammunition cachets and add some additional ammunition to it. So we would go in and put, you know, the 7-6-2 rounds for the AKs. We'd put the, you know, 51 calvers for the machine guns. we put in water rounds.

But these rounds would explode. So, you know, if we might put out a MAGA magazine, we have contact and we run and we leave an AK magazine laying there fully loaded. But one of those rounds, when it gets to it and the guy shoots, the whole weapon in his head is going to go away. So if I see that happen to you, now I'm afraid to fire my weapon. Right. And there would only be one in there.

So even if you find what's left of the magazine and start pulling the bullets out and checking them, the rest of the bullets are all fine. Right. It's just the one that exploded. Yeah. But that has a big impact on whether or not you want to pull the trigger. Yeah. Yeah, we were told that, well, I mean, Jack has some first-handed.

experience with that, but we were told that they rebooted that for the global war on terror only since it's a kinder, gentler military that they only fused the weapons. Didn't you? Yeah, I mean, there were also programs like in Afghanistan where the tag track and locate stuff became like a really big deal. Yeah. But yeah, the ammunition wasn't designed to explode anymore, but just to fuse the barrel because we didn't want to hurt the enemy.

Yeah, and, you know, if you think even more recently with what happened, you know, with the Israelis. Yep. And all of a sudden, cell phones are exploding. Yeah, and pagers. I mean, not the cell phones, but the pagers are exploding. Yeah. And it's the same kind of stuff. You rig it, so, man, nobody wants to touch one of those pagers after they see them explode.

Yeah. So now they're afraid of cell phones. on so they don't want to touch a cell phone and you know they planned and and put those things out there way in advance so when you know they were going to use them but um it has a major psychological impact on you something like that you know blows your buddy's head off yeah and then you had like pin uh prisoner war snatches um we'd go in you know prisoner snatches go in and snatch up a prisoner to bring out. So you had those, you had the ambushes.

We'd go watch like the Ho Chi Men Trail set up where we could observe that. And when the trucks would start down the trail, you know, we could call the L-4s to come in and bomb them. So we do those kinds of missions. Sometimes it was a raid. We'd go in and raid a particular. replace. I went into a training site on a mission and we crawled up on top of a mountain and hauled in because they're not going to chance putting that stuff on in the nose.

So putting that stuff on in the nose. So they were teaching them, you know, how to come after us, how to find us. Yeah. When you guys would you, like, if he does, have your like snatches, were those generally targeted for a specific personality or was it just, hey, go get somebody the highest ranked person you can find? Sometimes it was, you know, to get a high rank in person, most of the time it just get somebody. Get somebody. So, you know, in fact, one of the missions with Michigan, they set up an ambush, an ambush. bush and I used C4 right in the middle of it.

So we had to claymores and interlocking fire and everything everywhere except for there's one hole where maybe two people could be in. And what they would get is just a concussion coming from the C4 to stun them. We'd kill everybody else and then jump out on the trail and grab those two guys up, handcuff them, bag them. you know and drag them off but um you know they psychologically they had been told you know that if if americans catch you they're going to mutilate you they're going to kill you but they're going to mutilate you first and torture you and do all this stuff and they were so afraid of being caught they'd kill themselves sometimes or their buddies would kill them yeah the one mission there with

Michigan. I mean, we had a guy that he's bagged handcuffed behind him and he got loose in the helicopter 2,600 feet. He went headfirst out of the helicopter and when last scene

he was traveling about 180 miles head first into the jungle. Yeah. So he dove out of the helicopter, killed himself rather than let us take him back. Yeah. Where, you know, he wouldn't have been tortured or anything. Yeah. But based on what he'd been told with you, was not going back with us.

So, you know, you cover about, I don't know, eight, nine missions. And I don't want to talk about all of them because people should buy this book. They should read the book. And then what's the second book called, which you said is more intense? It's just a book two. Okay, book two. So the book is SOG code name Dynamite. Link is going to be in the description below, but buy it.

It's your favorite bookseller. It's a fantastic, fantastic book. I mean, it's very, very detailed. But, you know, you, Sog, I'm sure, was one of the highlights of your career, but you also, you had a very stellar career. Is there anything from SOG that you want to talk about that we missed? Because I'd like to talk a little bit about your career after that, too. I would just say that, I mean, at the time,

SOG was, that was the Tier 1 most elite, you know, organization out there. And sometimes people read about those missions, hear about the missions now and they just say, you can't do that. In fact, my father-in-law watched a podcast that I was on with Jocko Willick and he

watched it on his iPad and he's very sharp a World War II guy and my wife said, well, so what do you think? And he said, he didn't do that. If he'd done all that stuff, he'd be dead. There's no way he did that.

And, you know, when you read those stories or you hear what the SOT guys did, that's the typical reaction. You can't do that. Yeah. And I have people tell me, you couldn't carry that much weight. Yeah. Well, we did. I used to carry 50, 20-round magazines. and I had somebody just recently say there's no one you you couldn't carry that much weight in ammunition

much less all the other stuff you put with it said well we do yeah I mean there was nobody coming to bring your resupply you had to survive and in one of the missions in book two there I mean it we were in contact with something like 20, 21 hours, 22 hours before we got out. And you got to have a lot of ammunition. And in a lot of cases, you end up having to go out and take AK-47s off of dead bodies and use their weapons of ammunition against them because you've already used up all yours. Yeah. You know, for kind of the nerds out there who want to know this kind of stuff,

what was your standard like weapon load out? And I'm sure it depended on the operation. But you guys were carrying cars. Did everybody carry a car generally? I mean, do guys have shotguns? Were there any like? For the most part, well, in the beginning of SOG, because you couldn't have anything that said U.S., usually it was a stint gun,

A stint gun or Swedish K, you know, was a non-American weapon. And, you know, by the mid-60s, in the late 60s, U.S. weapons were so ubiquitous all over that part of the world. You know, to have a weapon that had U.S. stamped on it somewhere, it wasn't that big of a deal. So they started carrying car 15s, you know, so they were relatively short. have the sliding stock and, you know, 20-round magazines to start with. But, you know, the North Vietnamese had 30-round magazines. I mean, that's a big difference. When you engage another group, and they've got 10 more rounds in their magazines than you do.

Right. I mean, very quickly, you know, they can gain fire superiority over you because you've got to change out magazines at some point. Right. So when my team, once I took over Michigan, pretty much the standard load out for fragmentation grenades was five per person. You carried those in a canteen pouch or maybe a couple hanging on you. So five fragmentation grenades, I changed it to 10. So if I took a seven-man team out, we had a total of 70 frag grenades. You know, but you can go through 70 frag grenades fairly quickly when there's that many

people coming after. Most teams carried 35 magazines. I carried 50, and one reason for that is I don't like to get shot at. So if you shoot at me, I'm going to shoot back. Right. you know so i probably shot a little more than the average team leader plus you know it gave me some rounds i could i could distribute some magazines uh if i needed to um if if the other guys had run out um so we had you had that you'd have a knife of some type i usually carried like k bar um

and again if you listen to the audio you don't see what I had. This is my actual original K-bar that I carried on missions and there are places in near where you will, where I talk about using this and how I used it. And this is the one actual one I was, I'm talking about in the book. So you had a knife, and most people cared a pistol of some type. I got to the point where I carried a high standard 22 long rifle pistol with an integrated silencer so I could take out dogs, take out trackers and people without making, you know, too much noise. But my load bearing equipment, you know, averaged about 35 pounds plus my rucksack because I also carried the radio because I wanted to be able to talk.

You know, my my rucksack was like 70 pounds or more. How much water were you taken in there? Because, I mean, some of those missions... Well, usually we started out with... If it was rainy, rainy season, you didn't have to take as much. But average was like four quarts. Wow. of water, you know, on your load bearing gear, you know, compass, map, the survival radio.

I mean, this thing's almost five pounds. Yeah. Just the radio. Well, the water alone, isn't it, what is it, two and a half, five pounds per quart? I can't remember now. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's heavy. It adds up very quickly. Yeah, for sure. In the book there, in book one, there's a table in there where I've got listed. I broke gear down into the three levels, you know, your survival level that you had to last resort, I've got to have this. And then the tactical level, mostly your ammunition and stuff like that. And then your mission stuff in the rucksack where you might have the wiretap or

long range camera lenses or, you know, you. you know, special equipment, if you're going to blow something up, you have a lot of extra C4 and stuff. But I had it so I could drop the rucksack. I could still fight. If I lost my load bearing gear, I could still survive because I had a knife. I had an extra, I had a bandolier around my waist of the magazines that would still go with me if I dropped everything else. compass was on me so a map was

in my pocket so I had these different levels and it's all broken out in there and it also talks about how much they weigh just to kind of give you some idea. Yeah. Now I you know you had this 21 year career

and I want to ask you you know you're in this very secret program that's you know people are in secret programs now but, you know, because of social media, because of things like that, people are more aware of what's out there these days. But you have this career.

Do they give you a cover story of, like, people obviously know you're in Vietnam, and up until 1988, so you're there when a lot of people, there are very few, I assume, Vietnam vets left in the military near the end of your career. when people say what did you do in Vietnam what can you say well I when I left Saug I came back to the States I went to I'm excuse me I went to the Rangers you know and

so I had 40 other instructors that I was with that all had combat experience they've all been to Vietnam and that helped to support each other but when they would ask me you know I was I went to Vietnam and I was in the fifth special forces group okay I had an SF combat patch on and I just I was in special forces and yeah we we did a lot of raids ambushes and different things but he couldn't mention the word SOG you couldn't say we did those things or in other countries and you know

after a while people just stopped asking your things like that they just see your combat patch and assume you know you were just in a self group now did did the army ever like tell you okay this is officially declassified and give you an official like red off and rollback or did you just kind of have to figure it out when you could actually start talking about it mostly kind of figure it out i mean i had to signed a non-disclosure agreement. You know, when when I volunteered, right, or SAG, I had to sign a volunteer statement that I, I was volunteering to go anywhere, do anything for six months or six missions, whichever came first. And then I had to sign a separate agreement, a non-disclosure agreement, that I wouldn't say anything about SOG, anything about going into other countries or, you know, anything with SOG for 20 years.

Yeah. So, you know, once SOG shut down, then it was 20 years before you're supposed to be able to say anything about it. Yeah. Yeah. So, like you said, after you leave Vietnam, you go to Ranger School, to Dilan. right? And what was that like for you? And I'm sure Ranger School was very different back than it is now. Yeah. Back then, we only had to feed you one meal a day. Yeah. And that's if when you were out on patrol, if whoever the patrol leader was when we requested resupply, if he remembered

to request food. So if he got carried away on ammunition and smoke and all that kind of stuff and forgot to ask for food, there wouldn't be any food even to resupply that day. Or when the team went down to pick up the supplies from the friendly partisan, if they forgot to ask for the food, because it would always be separate from the ammunition. you know so they would very quickly hand you all this ammunition to carry back to the to the patrol um but if you didn't ask for food they didn't tell oh it's over here so you would go back to the patrol and the foot with no food so you didn't get anything to eat that day i can't imagine that their pure

valuations were that good um but it was also like you know now it's a it's a leadership school, it's under Trey-Doc, but back then it was still very like combat focused, right? Very, preparing. It was combat and leadership, but one of the things, back then, you know, they wanted you to be an E5 or higher, you know, to come. They wanted you to have a certain amount of time in the military

before you came to Ranger's school. They wanted you, they wanted you basically to show up there, and demonstrate that you could do all this stuff and that you could tough it out and make it through everything. And then they started backing away on, you know, at least when you were not out in the woods on patrol, they had to give you three meals a day, couldn't drop you for more than 50 push-ups of the time, couldn't make you low crawl from the classroom down to the mess hall down the asphalt as a company so i mean there are a lot of you know things like that it was just hardship things yeah that they started taking out and you know it was still it's still tough to go out there for that long sure and now

you now you go you actually go through a pre-ranger course before you go to Ranger's School. And if you're in the 75th, you know, you have to go through the selection thing to get into the 75th. And then once you're in, you know, have an opportunity to volunteer to go to a Ranger School.

Yeah. And back then also, one of the things you mentioned was that all the instructors had to be, veterans right right everybody was a combat vet and you know when when I was when I went up there and then actually the Delanooga is now is now the fifth Ranger battalion right so when I went up the year so when I went up the year I created and stood up the Halo team, trained the Halo team, led to Halo team. I did demonstrations all around, you know, Halo.

I actually started the parachute club at the North Georgia, what was then, North Georgia Military College that's there in Delanooga, started their parachute club back up, trained the students, threw them out. I put in, you know, Halo missions into the, not the training that the students got to do, but that they would be out and get a message they had to pick up a pilot that had been shot down. And, you know, I would parachute in. They'd see my parachute coming down. they'd have to come find me. So we did a lot of things like that.

We worked on tactical use of Halo and more advanced tactical, you know, procedures and techniques like we used in SAG. I just didn't say that's where it came from. We actually went out and set up desert training, trained the 82nd and some other units in Desert Warfare before they made their efforts. first trip to the Middle East. We set up and I wrote a lot of the training and everything for the desert phase of Ranger School. So for a period of time, there was a fourth phase of Ranger training that was actually in the desert.

And it was desert training. And they eventually took that out. But that was in there for a while. So I did a lot of things there in addition to just, you know, train the Rangers. Yeah. And then when you left there, you went to Second ID in Korea. And they didn't have a Ranger company there at the time. So that was kind of your initiative kicked that off.

Right. I had talked to General Emerson, the second division commander before I went en route to Korea. I went through the infantry officer's advance course at Fort Benning. And so when I got orders going to Korea, I sent him a letter and said, you know, here's my background. This is what I want to do when I get there. I can give you a ranger company of your own that you can use that can do anything the ranger company can do. He used special forces. He got all excited about it, so he gave me a company when I first got there.

I started training them, everything from being picked up on ropes to, you know, helicopter assaults, things like that. And also, you know, we became the quick reaction force for the nuclear sites. Any threat developed around a nuclear site, we were, there were periods of time when we were on a 30-minute alert to launch and go there. But when I first went down to where our launch site was when I saw the foot lockers that had the live ammo stored in it, I told my first sergeant, I said, you know, I don't feel good about our ammunition at all. I'm looking at those foot lockers. It looks to me like, based on those steel bands that are around them and how rusty they are, no one's looked at those. magazines in there in a long time. You can, you know, get some cutters, open one up.

And he said, sir, they're court martial. You're going to get court martial if you open one of those. Like, you can't get, get the cutters. Yeah. I'm going to open these, I'll open one, and we'll see what that one looks like. And then based on that, we'll decide about the others. The magazines were so corroded. I mean, you could barely get the rounds out of the magazines,

We'd take a screwdriver and pry them out. I mean, we couldn't have, nobody's weapon would have fired. I mean, we'd have been standing there, you know, with the blades turning, waiting on us, you know, on the helicopters with no ammunition to go on. So anyway, I got that resolved. And then, you know, based on my training, it was, you've got to rehearse, you've got to practice, so we're going to go out and make an assault. to, you know, one of the sites and see how that goes.

It didn't go well at all because when we got to the landings on, it was trees. Yeah. For 20 years, they hadn't done anything until the landings on. The trees had grown up in, so we couldn't land. And all the sites were like that. So I created a pretty big mess. I mean, it wasn't my fault. I just happened to be the one that said I want to test this stuff out.

Right. But, yeah, I had a good time in Korea. I mean, there were all kinds of competitions. There were something that the division commander had put together called Combat Football, ferocious game. And my company won it both times while we were there. We won the Division Championship. We won the Taekwondo, you know, championship.

We won the infantry platoon and stuff championships. So we were selected to put on the demonstration when the president came over. We put on a ranger capabilities demonstration, you know, for him. That, you know, was pretty impressive and he really liked. So we did a lot of things. I mean, I had a great time with it. And then I came from there back to Fort Bragg and ended up in G3 and eventually with the emergency readiness deployment team where we would test out the Ranger battalions and the Special Forces Battalions. we would go in and to them at 1 o'clock in the morning

handing a set of orders you are now activated you know two hours that wheels up will give you the briefing on you know on the plane is what your mission is where you're going and then evaluate their capability to actually do it and how was that for you?

Oh, love it. Yeah. I mean that because I I was back, you know, and the way I felt, I was back with my people. Right. Rangers, those are my people. Yeah. So I got a change to be willing to go out on these, and all of these things were classified, you know, when they were going to happen, where it was going to take place and what happened when you got there.

And we went to some cool places and, you know, I enjoyed that. And then in 79, you, wait, am I getting ahead here? You became a teacher, an assistant professor, right? And ROTC. No? Well, sort of, yes. Okay. My assignments officer called while I was at Bragg and said,

how would you like to go to degree completion to complete a master's degree? That sounds pretty cool. So as I thought about that, I decided if I was going to go to school and work on a master's, why not just get a doctorate? If I could find the right school that would give me. credit for residency time while I was working on the master's and it was a school that had an ROTC department that I could you know when I finished the master's degree I'd be assigned to the ROTC department that would give me enough time to finish the doctor at one was it so I did that at the

University of Georgia I got the master's degree started working for the RLTC department finished my doctor while I was there and started working on some special op stuff. What happens if you have to go for a long period of time without sleep? So then they sent me to the Commander General Staff College out at Leavenworth. And from there, they assigned. me too the airland battle 2000 team which was figuring out how we were going to fight war in the 21st century so i had done a lot of research on sleep and high-performing leadership

so they put me on that and eventually i started going around briefing the nato countries on this is how we're going to do special ops and it's 21st century. So that, you know, that was fun. Can I ask you, what was it like? Because this is 79. So the, I'm assuming,

like morale's getting a little bit better post-Vietnam, but it's still not super high. So what is it like being part of an ROTC at that time? At that time, particularly at University of Georgia, I mean, it was fine. Yeah. People like the military there.

I mean, Georgia was a land grant college. So, I mean, at one point in its history, if you were a male and you went to Georgia, you had to be in ROTC the first two years. Oh, interesting. But that went away, you know, a number of years back. So it was volunteer. You could join that.

had a strong program. We had a Ranger company within the program there. And I was the advisor trainer for the Ranger company. And we got along well with people on campus, with the exception of the Air Force RLTC. I had a little friction there. I had to be careful because my guys would get so fired up. They didn't want to go over and steal their little

airplanes and things and, you know, creative an issue. But, yeah, that was, that was good. And then, you know, I went to Leavenworth and worked out there. And then eventually, I got a call from the assignments officer again. It said, how would you like to go back to Georgia and be, you know, we call these RLTC department's battalions now. so you would go back there and be the battalion commander. And I said, you know, why?

I mean, why are you offering me this? He said, well, it's always been an 06 position, but the Army's changed it to now it's an 05 position. And Georgia says they're not going to accept an 05. And every 05's name that we sent down there gets rejected for some. reason. And then we remembered you. You already been there once for an assignment. You got a master's and a PhD from their university. You meet all the education, you know, requirements, the experience requirements. They can't say no to you. I said, went and try it and see.

they took me and I ended up having that as my you know final assignment in the military that's great I mean it's kind of a nice way to ease out right yeah yeah and then post military like

what did you do 21 years and then you're out and then go fishing or like what did you do after that well I'd always thought the training and things that we did in the military were pretty cool. Before I got out, I started using some leave and going to some civilian corporate type organizations and saying, you know, let me come in and do some leadership training, team building, whatever.

And, you know, so I was doing a little bit of that before I actually got out. and the civilians loved it. Yeah. So I started a company, high-performing systems, where it was executive leadership and strategic planning and all that kind of stuff, team building.

And in the 90s, outdoor training was big. You know, you take a corporate group out into the woods and you have them move across ropes, bridges and stuff in the treetops. You have them repel off a cliff. I mean, what better job could I have, given my background? So they would take them out, but we would, they would have that kind of training,

but then I would pick obstacles, design obstacles that mirrored some problem they were having with their team. and so they'd have to take them out they'd have to engage that obstacle and at some point somebody would say you know we're doing the same thing the same issues that we have every day at work and we just we we overcame it here and we got through this obstacle why can't we do that at work so then you know like work with them all okay this is how you do that Yeah. And in the process of doing all that, we would be putting their strategic plan together or building their executive team or, you know, things like that.

And they loved it. But, you know, by the time, you know, the 2000s came along, everybody said, you know, been there, done that, got the T-shirt, what else you got? I don't want to, you know, jump off a cliff or whatever. Right. you know, then more of my work became focused around stress, decision-making under stress. So working with law enforcement, working with, continuing to work with, you know, special ops. Working with, you know, nuclear facilities is very stressful in the control room.

Yeah. And those guys in there need training and doing a lot more with vets. because vets need some help. You know, you need somebody you can talk to that knows what you're talking about. Right. You know, because the vets tell me all the time, you know, I'm there in the VA. I go talk to doctor, whatever his or her name is. And when I'm trying to explain to them what I'm experiencing,

I can see it's going right over their head. Right. They, no clue what I'm talking about. They've read some stuff in a book. They've never experienced it so they don't know what I'm talking about. So, you know, I do a lot of counseling and stuff with the vets, do different programs for them. It's been a big part of our organization over the years, too. You know, one of the things that's really been highlighted after the global war on terror is, you know, veteran issues, post-traumatic stress, things like that.

after Vietnam, there was this big public scare about post-traumatic stress, right? The movie that, you know, made for TV movies about a vet, like having flashbacks and killing people in the office, stuff like that. What kind of like resources, were there resources for you guys back then? How were guys dealing with it? I mean, you know, obviously it's become a lot more acceptable to talk about now, things like that. Yeah, it was difficult. I mean, if you wanted to end your career, you know, get diagnosed as having PTSD. Uh-huh.

Particularly if you wanted to be in special ops. I mean, special ops, I mean, you have to be physically filled across the board. Right. So like hearing, for example, if you have significant hearing loss and back, In those days, we didn't have the headsets. Right. You didn't have anything except air. So trying to maintain, you know, excellent hearing, it was very difficult

because car 15s are very loud. Fragg grenades are very loud, explosions, all that kind of stuff. But if you were diagnosed with hearing loss, you couldn't be in halo anymore you couldn't jump you couldn't be special ops so there were all kinds of things like that not even PTSD you know I used to pull shrapnel out if I could get it out I didn't say anything about it right and a lot of people did that right because you don't you don't want to have to go and not be special ops anymore And then we kind of moved to a phase where we talked about PTSD, but it was still, you know, once it got on your record, you know,

regardless of what they were telling you, you were kind of at the end of the road. They're trying to do a better job now, but I don't think the people who are working with the military quite understand we all have a limit and I mentioned to you earlier that when you signed up for SAG you signed a statement that said

six missions or six months whichever comes first so there was a recognition that these things were going to be very stressful but in reality you could go out on the first mission and come back and say I can't do that anymore.

You had no clue. That's what I was going to be like. And you could get off the team and get on a, get another job within SOG where you, you were not an operator anymore and still, you know, can continue to work. You just went going outside the wire and doing things or across the border. So, you know, I do like,

I do things with groups of vets. I created an assessment that I call the Arsenal seven best practices of stress resilience. And nowhere, nowhere in that questionnaire does it ask you, have you considered harming yourself in the last two weeks? Have you considered harming someone else in the last two weeks? I mean, if you go to VA and you take a questionnaire, it's going to ask you that. You know, but the personal goes through and you never see that kind of question in there. But it can still give you an indication of where you are, give you a snapshot of this is where you are right now.

And here's a list of things you need to go do that's specific to you based on how you answered the questions. Yeah. And the Navy's is using it more and more. I just had a Marine group order a bunch of them this past week. And it's spreading because they see it's a way to let people help themselves and get them help without them destroying their career. Where can people find that if they're interested in? It's on my website, but I can know.

What's your website? I'll send you to the, I'll send you to live. Okay. We'll have your website and link below, but for the people who are listening, do you want to give them your website? Yeah, it's just HPSYS.com. W-W-H-P-S-Y-S.com. Hotel Papa.

You'll see the arsenal or how you can get to the arsenal. But, yeah, we can put. Fantastic. Yeah. Before we get to a question, is there anything that we've left out tonight, anything that we didn't cover that you feel like we should have? I mean, we're getting into some things now that, you know, I have a lot of passion around.

I have a lot of passion around special ops stuff. Yeah. but also around the operators who have to go out and do that and then live with it afterwards. I mean, it sounds cool to go out and do it, but you know, you pay a price. Sure, and more times you go out there, you guys, you guys know it. You can only kick so many doors down, you know, before you get blown away or before you mentally can't do it or have difficulty going forward. But there are ways to approach that.

There are ways that you and I can work together. When we're working with other groups, we put a lot of emphasis on buddies. In Rangers school, you have a Ranger buddy. And you and your Ranger buddy have to take care of each other. I watch you, you watch me. and I take care of you and you take care of me and I do the same things even in corporate America I put them in buddy teams every day when you come into work you check out

your buddy and if you're you're having an issue like you stayed up watching the football game last night and maybe you you drink a lot of beer and you're not at the top of your game this morning you tell you you tell you buddy Keep an eye on. You know, there's some decisions and things I have to make today. Kind of, you know, watch me. If you see me, you know, getting a little wacky or whatever, you know, take me all to the side. Let's talk.

Are there things that you would say, you know, that are basic or common knowledge in the military and military leadership that the civilian world just straight up misses? When I got out of the Army and started doing the corporate work, I never said I was in the military. Because if you said you were in the military and you recently retired, all of a sudden in corporate America, that meant you had a, your philosophy of leadership was to be a dictator. Right. You boss people around. you jerk them around when I tell you to do something you say it if I tell you to jump you say how high and that that was people with general view of what the military was like and what military leadership was like so I didn't mention military until 9-11 once 9-11 happened all of a sudden if you were

in you were a military person that was great man thank you appreciate your service but But before that, they just had a different philosophy. And, you know, later there'd be times when people would find out that I'd been in the malls here. And then they'd say, wow, you're just, you're not what I expected. I'm just surprised that you were in the military because your leadership style is so different. They probably see full metal jacket and think every day is basically like boot camp or whatever. Yeah. But would you say that there are things that the military does well that civilians, you know, like a civilian organization when it comes to like leadership and team building just often does, don't get?

That like you're applying very simple principles. Principles are very simple to you that seem magical to them. Yeah. I think in the military we understand about teams and team work. and working together, particularly as you move, you know, towards special ops, but not just special ops, this is in other parts of the military too. But understanding, we function as a team. And we can do things quickly.

Just think about, you know, we, in the Army, we can pick up a brigade-sized unit, take them to the other side of the world, and have them operating, you know, within a few days. I mean, it's unbelievable. The size unit, we can move in such a short period of time, and they hit the ground running. And you talk to a corporate group about moving that much stuff. I mean, it's just beyond their comprehension.

Yeah. We know how to organize. We know how to plan. We know how to, you know, actually carry things out and make them happen. And, you know, to be honest, one of the things, when I'm talking to vets, counseling, and they say, you know, I know how to do Army stuff. I said, that's right. And what you don't realize is you have this tremendous skill set that can happen.

Well, I know. they don't want me to go shooting, but I'm not talking about shooting. Right. You know how to plan. You know how to organize. You know how to execute. You know how to lead. You know how to take care of people.

All of those things are extremely valuable out in the civilian world. And you have all of that. You just have to take off the OD uniform and, you know, put on your civilian clothes and go do that. It works. and that's skills that you have and you can go out and get a job and you you might have to rephrase you know what the skill is that you have so you know civilians understand what you're talking about but you know you didn't waste all that time in the military you learned even from the things that were stressful to you you learned how to operate under stress yeah and you also learned

things not to do you learn that you know if you put your hand on a hot stove and it burns you don't have to put your hand back on that stove again to know that it's going to burn you know you learn fast from things like that and and that's needed out in the in the civilian world particularly now because most people don't want to work they don't even want to go into work they want you to pay them but they don't want to have to go to the office or wherever it is that they're supposed to work I mean, and that's a real issue. Yeah. Particularly for the young rules.

Dee, did you say we have some questions? From Matt Gevin. Thanks for sharing your experiences tonight, sir. What was the most selfless heroic act you saw during your time in the Army? Thanks, gentlemen. Always a good time. The most selfless act. Well, I think there are things particularly in combat.

You see it all the time. I mean, you know, with the assistant team leader I had, Bargewell, that I mentioned earlier, what I didn't mention at the time was Bargewell was a spec for when he started working for me. He retired as a two-star general. He commanded, you know, Delta, every special ops thing out there. He commanded before he got out. In just the last interview we did with Dave Grange, he talked about Bargewell being a squadron commander in Desert Storm. Right. I mean, he was awesome, but he was fearless and smart and everything.

But he was self-ful. I mean, he got a distinguished service cross because he didn't like being shot at either. and when a group of NVA fired a B-40 rocket right into the middle of the team after I had left, wounded everybody, big piece of shrapnel went through, the cheek on this side, lodged behind his eye on the other side, cut of artery inside his nose, and then they assaulted. He stood up with an RPD machine gun and took out 20-0, and just stood there and just hose them down as they tried to assault, and then they tried it again, and he took out just about that many again, to protect his team and got the team out.

I mean, that's the way he was. If you're my team, I'm not leaving you behind. I'm going to take care of you. And I mean, I could go on and on just talking about him and things that he did like that. But just seeing other people, you know, I had to be. people who, you know, violated an order to come in and try to save my team. I mean, they were told, don't dare go over there. There's too many of them.

And they came in anyway and got shot down, and two of them were still missing in action. I mean, just, but there were things like that going on all over Vietnam every day where people were just, you know, putting their life out there on the line to save people or take care of them. So just amazing what people do. Yeah. Dee, anything else? We have a few more. From Rick Redoux.

It sounds like Dick was there around the time. My father was also in Mac V. Sugg. Would you happen to remember a tall moustached man named Ty Redoux? Might have gone by Toby at the time. I almost remembered the name, but I'm not sure. one of the things that happened in SOG

is even if you were at the same camp like you were at Danang at CCN, the teams were coming and going so much and there was a lot of compartmentalization going on. I don't want to know what your team is doing.

I don't want you to know mine because if one of us gets captured we don't want to be able to compromise the other team. So there's 34 people who were killed that were I considered friends or teammates that I knew during that 12 months. But there were 70 something people actually killed. I just didn't know the other.

Right. I just didn't get a chance to see him or. be around him much. I might have seen him in passing, but I'm sorry, I don't remember that particular person. But if he was at Sogg, my feeling is he's American hero. Yeah, and just a bit more he added. He was taken from us last April, and he was a wonderful father and man. So thanks, Rick. was there any thought at the time that mac v sogg would become something bigger or a unit onto itself after the war any discussions about that obviously no one could have foreseen it was a forerunner to delta and jocc etc just curious if anyone was talking about mac v sogg serving in the theaters besides vietnam and becoming an mOS in the army and that's from bill gauge um they didn't discuss it with me but but I was a little too low on a total pole. But I wouldn't be surprised if that was discussed,

but I didn't hear it. And my focus was just mission, go out, do the mission, make sure he came back. And that wouldn't surprise me if at some point they were talking that way. got you right they they did um did put together you know Delta Force when I was at Bragg as I mentioned before when I was up there I had a chance Dick Meadows came he would had been my boss and a good friend and he came to me when they wanted me to be part of Delta force helped with the selection process and be part of the part of Delta.

So I had an opportunity there, but a lot of the, you know, SOG guys ended up over there. And he was one of them. He also contacted me right after I got to the Lonega, the Ranger Department, told me I was getting orders the next day, and I'd be gone for a while. the orders were canceled because of some things that were happening at port benning and but that was i had been chosen to be on the the santa team they didn't get to go because of some flap that happened down at benning not about me just because there were several of us all of a sudden being jerked out with no notice no reason or why we were being pulled out or what we were going to go

to do so anyway all right one last one from corbin was there any kind of tactical fingerprinting attributed to lz ambushes you could you could see the change across time in in the knowledge of the NBA. They became smart enough fairly soon to recognize that if a helicopter came out of nowhere and landed in a clearing out in Laos or Cambodia or North Vietnam and then took off, they probably put a fog team out there. And then they eventually started putting towers on mountaintops where they could see a valley and see where if a helicopter came and landed, see where it was. They started putting people they call trail watchers out in different places where they expected that somebody might come in to watch. They started doing a lot more efficient work with triangulation of radio signals.

to locate where you were to be able to come. They started doing a lot better job of having spies and the camps and getting that kind of information sent out to the field. So they became more and more sophisticated and we were trying to become more sophisticated. So we might have three LZs picked and we would go to the first one and set down and we might or might not get off the helicopter at that one,

and we'd go to the other two, but one of those three we'd get off on things like that, just to try to confuse them. One of the things you mentioned in your book, and, you know, like, so the Americans were totally in the dark about MacVee, but you mentioned, like, when Mad Dog Shriver got killed, that there was an announcement in North Vietnam that he had been killed, and it was like a celebration.

Like, how did it, you know, he's somebody who nobody in America knew who he was, obviously. You know, how did it feel for you guys to know that, like, they knew who he was? And, you know, it was public knowledge. Yeah. They knew who most of the one-zeroes, the team leaders were. And most of them had, most of us, had a. dossier on us. So they had a lot of information.

When you get into book two, I don't want to give it away, but there's a place in book two that will give you chills when you read it because of what they knew and who talked to me. Who called me on the radio

and talk to me and what they said. Yeah. Oh, that was, that was you. Like, I've read that story in other books. Didn't John tell it? John, I think John Plaster wrote about it in his book. Oh, I thought John Stryger Meyer also mentioned that they would call out people's names on the radio at times. Yeah.

You know. Yeah. They read the whole list of names. Oh, man. Yeah. One name they should not have been able to know and they knew it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's crazy how absolutely effective you guys were considering the, the intelligence, you know, the intelligence leak that they had, um, a headquarters.

Yeah. You know, the partner nation leak. Um, but we'll probably have to have you back for book two. Okay. Yeah, book two, book two is loaded. Got some really powerful stuff. But you need book one to set the stage and understand everything. So you can really see the changes in tactics and techniques and things like that. Yeah. A lot more than you're on stress.

And, you know, I had started out in chemistry, but shortly into SOG, I started changing to psychology, trying to understand how to lead mercenaries in combat, how to engage the North Vietnamese. How do you engage people in general? And there's a section in book two where I talk about the human reaction to combat. There are things that humans do. regardless of where you're from in combat that give you away.

And once you start to learn what those are, it gives you an advantage going against the force. You know things they're going to do. It's just instinct and people do it unless you spend a lot of time of trying to train it out of you. So that stuff is in there, pretty heavy in book too. Is that it? Dick, thank you so much.

We really appreciate it. Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity just to share some things like this, to be able to talk to someone that understands, you know, what I'm talking about and being, you know, given a platform. People, vets can be helped. They can do a lot better. And some of the things that help you get better or not complex, you just need somebody to share it with you. And try this.

Here's some things. Keep moving forward. Don't stop. Yeah. One foot in front of the other, right? That's right. And keep going. And practice.

You know, there's a whole set of principles in the book. And one of them is keep moving forward. One of them is practice, practice, practice, because it didn't matter how good your plan is. You're going to have to adapt. So you have to adapt and adapt. I used to know, I knew when I was standing on the skid of the helicopter coming into that landing zone,

whether it was a hot insertion or not, I knew as soon as I stepped off on the ground, the plan was going to change. And I was going to have to start adapting. to where we were going, how are we going to do it, where I was going to put the airstrikes, whatever. So more you practice and the practice adapting and doing it under stress,

the easier it is to do when you get out there and trying to get to the point where you don't let the bullets become a distraction. They're going to hit you or they're not going to hit you. You know, if you're the leader, I mean, you just have to assume you're going to get hit. If you're doing your job, you're going to be exposed and you're probably going to get hit.

But you've got to do it. Yeah. Well, thanks again. Thank you, everybody, for Patreon subscribers. We're going to do a quick team house after dark after this. So if you're not a subscriber on our patron, you should be. You get special bonus episodes and, you know, some cool stuff. But anyway, thank you, everybody.

Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show if you've been watching it, enjoying it. But you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this. You can check out our Patreon. It is patreon.com slash the team house. And for $5 a month, you can get access to all of these episodes of the Team House ad free. The same goes with our affiliated podcast, Eyes On, with Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons, McMulroy, that one, you will also get all of those episodes ad-free.

And you support the channel and the show, and we really appreciate it. The Patreon members are literally what has helped this company, this small business, survive, especially during our early years. And you are what continues to help this thing going, even as we navigate the turbulent world of YouTube advertising. So we really appreciate all of you guys. there's going to be a link down in the description to that Patreon page and there is also going to be a link to our new merch shop.

So if you guys want to go and get some Team House merchandise, we got stickers and we also have patches. And I should mention if you sign up for Patreon at $10 a month, we will mail you this patch as well. So we really appreciate that. But they're also for sale on the merch shop. And additionally, they got T-shirts up there, water bottles, tote bag, coffee mugs, all that good stuff.

So please go and check them out and support the show. We really appreciate it, guys. Thank you.