The Team House - MACV-SOG in Vietnam | Jim Shorten | Ep. 266

Episode Date: March 17, 2024

I joined the US Navy in 1964.  After training I served at Naval Air Station, Litchfield Park, just outside of Phoenix, Arizona.  After a year there I was sent to the USS Arlington AGMR2 for pre commissioning of the ship.  The time went on so I served on Yard Tug boat's in Norfolk, Virginia, then I served for a couple of month's on the USS Denebola AF56 (Refrigeration ship)  When I returned to Norfolk I decided to put in for Vietnam and was sent to DaNang, Vietnam.  After 22 month's I was discharged and then joined the US Army, Special Forces.  I went through Basic infantry, then advanced infantry (graduated as the honor student) then I went to jump school in Ft. Benning, Georgia. Then up to Ft. Bragg for Special Forces training.  I asked to go back to Vietnam and did.  I was sent to A-502, 5th SFGp Abn, out of NaTrang, Vietnam.  I was the NCOIC of a CIDG camp 554, Sui Dou.  Then after after 6 month's or so, the camp closed down so I went to SOA-CCC (MACV-SOG)  I was 1-1 of Rt. Delaware for one mission then became the 1-0 (team leader)  I ran 7 mission's (4 linear recon and 3 brightlight missions) in Laos or Cambodia.  After my 7th mission I was asked if I wanted to go to SOA-B53 and teach Special Op's mission's.  I said ok and went to B-53 for an additional 6 month's.  Then I was discharged and came home and joined the 12th SFGpAbn (reserves).  In 1978 I did a cross service transfer to the 129th ARRS, USAF Pararescue. I left the Army as an E-8 and dropped to E-6 in the USAF.  After completing  Pararescue school, I was a PJ.  I was a rescue, parachuting paramedic for the first 3 launches of the Space Shuttle (STS-1, 2 and 3) also for the Mt. St. Helens Volcano eruption.  President Carter and Senator Ted Kennedy.  Also did 2 parachute rescue mission's for ship's at sea and a few hoist mission's.  After an injury parachuting, I was medically discharged from the service.  I had 20 year in service so I got out and went to college to become a Doctor (Radiologist)  I did this for 20 years and now I hunt, sell and collect meteorite's.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseTeam House merch: ⬇️https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Social Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleWant to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]#macvsog #specialforces #vietnamBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. We would really appreciate it if you guys went and reviewed us on Apple or Spotify. Those reviews really help people find the podcast and help it get recognized. And, you know, if you've been enjoying the show, we really appreciate your support. Another thing that you can do to support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. And when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes ad-free. That's the big bonus for that.

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I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park. And our guest on tonight's show is Jim Shorten. Jim served in U.S. Special Forces, worked in MacB. Saug doing cross-border operations during the Vietnam War. And then he went on to have a very interesting career as an Air Force Base. pararescue men and continued to have an interesting career after he retired from the military, going to med school and becoming a doctor. So, Jim, thank you very much for joining us on the show today. Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for asking me. Absolutely, man. So I want to start off asking you a little bit

about your origin story, about kind of like how you grew up and what kind of propelled you towards military service. Well, I had kind of a rough childhood. You know, I had a step. I had a step. that used to, you know, slap us around a lot. But I was born in Liverpool, England, and I came to the States when I was probably the final time, was around 11 years old, and moved all over the country. And my mom remarried a guy named Jones. That's where my name Jim Jones came in. If you look at my military, it's all Jim Jones. And so when I got out of the military, after 20 years, I went ahead and changed my name back to Jim Chartan.

I'm a junior. They carry on my real father's name. So, but then, yeah, when I, when I was about, I guess I was about 16 or 15 years old, I ran away from home. And when I became 17, I decided I wanted to join the Navy to go see the world. So what I had to do is I had to become a citizen because I wasn't a citizen. I became a citizen at 64. So I did that. And then from the Navy, you know, they went in, I started 22 months in the Navy over in Vietnam.

I learned, I learned, I had a working knowledge of the Vietnamese language from a girlfriend I had there. And then, then I decided to go into the Army special. I was going to go into the Navy Seals. But then I decided to, you know, that song came out, only three out of a hundred make it. So I went ahead and joined the Army instead. And it wasn't, it wasn't very hard for me. I was a gymnast in high school. So I was in really good shape.

So nice day in shape. I did 200 pushups, 200 sit-ups, 200 jump jacks every morning. and when I left the Army and went into the para, oh, when I left the Army, I came back to States, I was underwater operations. The whole team went down to Key West and went through school and school. And then I was teaching pararescue guys, foreign weapons, night vision devices and stuff. And I didn't know who these guys were. So I went out and partied with them a couple of times. And then I went on down and talked to their base at the 129th Aerospace Rescue Recovery Service.

and I decided to leave the Army and go into the Air Force. So I did. Before we jump too far ahead, I want to go back to your time in the Navy. That initial stint, you said you had service in Vietnam there as well. I mean, can you tell us what that initial enlistment in the Navy was like and what they had you doing? When I first won the Navy, it's kind of funny. But I got this duty, after training, I don't even remember how long it was. It was 16 weeks or something.

I went to San Diego for a boot camp. And so when I left there, I got orders to go to Litchfield Park, Naval Air Station in Phoenix, Arizona, or Litchfield Park, Arizona, just outside of Phoenix. And so when I was there, when I first got to the base, I told everybody I was a dental technician. But it had me actually down as a storekeeper. So I'm telling everybody that she, You know, I'm a dental tech. You know, I'm going to be working in the dental office.

So finally, they said, just go find a place and crash for the night. And we'll see you Monday morning because it was like on a late Friday afternoon. So I go down and I start shooting pool and they had this mass of arms. And it was a real small base. So everybody was wearing civilian clothes. Well, the master of her arms, making sure nobody fights on the pool tables and stuff like that. He was the dental tech on the base. So I told him what the truth was.

and he goes, well, I'll see what I can do. So when you first go on a base, you know, you got to go around like the medical, the dental and personnel, all the stuff. So when I went into the dental office and they checked my teeth, his name was Dave Johnson. And he said to Captain Smith was a Navy captain, you know, like a colonel. And he goes, this is the guy I was telling you about you, sir, and he wants to be at dental tech.

So Captain Smith asked me about the dental stuff, you know, like he put a tray out and asked me to name off all of the instruments. and I rattled it all off because I studied the I wanted to be a dentist so I studied all that stuff so he goes I'll have you in here in a couple of days wow so I actually became a dental tech and so after so after after a cap of smith retired we had this commander and I know his son his son is a locksmith up in Tucson and but his dad passed away but anyway I wasn't school trained as a dental tech so he didn't want me in the office. So he booted me out of the office and I became a lifeguard. And he always wanted me back in the office, but he didn't want to, you know, he didn't want to lose face.

So he wouldn't say anything. But he got some guy that was school trained and the guy didn't know his butt from a hole in the ground. So, so anyway, from there, I went to Norfolk, Virginia for a pre-commissioning detail for the AGMR2, which is the USS Arlington. It was an old aircraft carrier and they put antennas on the ship for communications, on the flight deck. and that took forever to get commissioned. So while I was there, I worked on tugboats for like three or four weeks, and I really love tugboat duty, really hard work, but a great bunch of guys, good to work with.

So I did that, and then they had a levy come down saying they were looking for guys that wanted to go on a ship. So I went on the USS Denabala or DeNabla. I never knew how to say the word, but it was an AF-56, it was a refrigeration ship. So we went over to the Mediterranean on a cruise. I was on it for a couple of months. So went over to Mediterranean.

We replenished all these ships with, you know, with supplies and food and stuff like that. And so when I came back to the states from there, I got off the ship and they were looking for people that wanted to go to Vietnam. And I'm going like, hey, where's Vietnam? You know, I've never heard of the place. And this one chief looks at me and he goes, we're fighting a war in Vietnam.

This is for shore duty. I said, yeah, I'll go. He goes, this is a war. I go, look, I'll go. I said, my dad. served my dad my father was royal navy in the in the british during world war two um so um i volunteered to go so they sent me to counterinsurgency school and survival school and that sort of thing and then i went ahead and went on over to denang vietnam and i liked it there so much i stayed there for 22

months i had a girlfriend she taught me how to speak a lot of vietnamese i had a good working knowledge of it and so that helped me with special forces that was uh mostly mostly marines in denang Yeah, it was mostly all Marines there. And I worked on the peers. I worked with the C-Bs. I was a seaman, but they were so short-handed on men that I worked with the C-Bs. And we worked 18 hours on, six hours off, no days off. We did that for a while.

And then finally they started getting more people coming over. And then we started to get like one day a week or two days a week off. So the whole time, like when you started your initial training and then, you know, you're slotted for logs, right? And you go to dental tech. Do you have a rate or are you like non-rated and you're just like volunteering for whatever jobs come up? Yes, I was non-rated. See, I was a storekeeper. But I had to take all my tests in storekeeping. So I took all my tests up to E5. I passed all the test and everything. But, you know, in the Navy, you've got to wait for a slot to open up before you go in. Yeah. And there's so many storekeepers, you know, heck, I, I, I,

I spent three years, seven months in the Navy. I was like, what they call a Kitty Cruiser. When you're joining when you're 17, you get out when you turn 21. So I did three or seven months in the Navy, and I passed all my test, but the whole time I came out as an E3. That was my highest rank in the Navy, E3. Yeah, yeah. So it was a seaman.

And I worked with the CBs. I had the white stripes, you know, CVs have blue stripes, the snipes that work and they have red and all that thing. Aviation have green. So, yeah, that's pretty much it. And what did you do while you're with the C-Bs? I did a lot of shoring up ships and stuff like that. I drove trucks. I used to drive from Denang down to Chulai and stuff like that.

And then back and forth, loading, taking supplies, splicing cables. I got injured. I had a truck blown off the road. In 1966, the enemy dropped some rockets, 1-22-millimeter rockets, into the Air Force base there, and they hit the bomb storage. The bomb storage was when it went up, it was so furious that it lifted up a five-ton dump truck over some trees and dropped it in a two-story barracks. Wow.

But everybody was out of the barracks, so nobody was hurt in it. But it blew my truck off the road, and I went out the door, and the truck rolled over on me. So, but, I mean, I was okay. I was going in to get people out of the area. trying to get him out of the get him in the safety area so um but yeah that that was pretty much it so and after i got injured stuff they had me splicing cables you know for the mike boats and u boats and where the ramp comes down so i was splicing the five-eights cable and three-quarter-inch cables for the ramps and so you said that initially like i'd like to know you you somewhere it got into

young jim's mind that maybe you want to do this special ops thing uh you said you'd heard about the seals and then the Barry Sadler song got you. Tell us how that all came about. Well, when I was, you know, back when I was in, they didn't really have seals. They were just starting to come out. Yeah. What they had was UDT, underwater demolition teams.

So, and when I used to go to, it was Camp Tenshaw was the main camp, even though I hardly ever stayed there. I used to stay downtown with my girlfriend. But the, they have UDT guys there. And I didn't, didn't know everything they were doing, but we used them like if we were loading a barge and our bomb came off a cable and went in the water, the UDT guys come in, pick it up, we hook it up and we'd

haul it back out again. But when I went to have chow or something like that, you know, in the mess hall, I see these guys walking around bandages and their arms and slings where they caught a bullet with shoulder and all kinds of stuff. And I'm going, you know, who are these mask men, you know? So I started learning a little bit about UDT and the SEAL teams, and I wanted to be a seal. So, but then that song came out, and I'm going, I can do three out of 100. I can do that. For people who might not know, you're talking about the song, the Green Beret by Barry. Ballot of the Green Beret, right.

Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of guys went on the special forces after hearing that song. Yeah. And so you had to do a lateral inter-service transfer to the Army and start that? Well, I finished my hitch in the Navy. So when I got out of the Navy, I wanted to go into Army Special Forces. So I took my battery test as a civilian.

But the interesting thing is I had a GED. I took a GED. And have you ever heard of the Evelyn Wood speed reading course? I took it from actually from Evelyn Wood. And that did that when I was in Arizona. So but when I wanted to go into Special Forces, you had to have a high school diploma. you couldn't get you could go into the GED you can get in the army but not special forces so what I did is I went to San Diego high school and I said look I said this I told my whole situation I need to get a diploma and they said

well if you take California history and government we'll go ahead and give you a diploma so I was in school probably not even a week and they came into the classroom because I'm like 21 years old with all these teeny boppers in there right so they came into the room and they said said, we want to talk to in the office. And they said, we're just going to go ahead and give you a diploma. So I got my diploma. And so then I went down. I went into special forces.

And I went straight to, I went to Ford Ord for basic training. And then I went to advanced infantry training. And I got the, I was the outstanding trainee of the cycle for the, for the AIT. So I got that. And I got that little trophy and stuff. And from there, they said. sent me to a jump school. But when I was at Litchville Park in Arizona, you know, I started flying airplanes and skydiving when I was there.

So jumping was nothing for me, you know, to go to jump school. So I went ahead and went to jump school, finished that. Then I went up to Fort Bragg, you know, for SF training. And they, I finished phase one. Back then it was different than the Q course of what they have today. It was phase one. Then you go to your MOS training, whichever it is. And then you go to phase two.

and then you get your orders and go. But after phase one, they put me in communications, and I just couldn't get that diddy, dumb, dumdiddy fast enough. So what I did is, yeah, the Morris Code. So I told the instructor that said, look, I said, don't lose me. I said, I'm good in mathematics. I said, I worked with the C-Bs. I got a working knowledge of Vietnamese language.

I said, put me in engineers or something. So they took me out out of communications, and I had to wait for the next class to come through, and then I went into engineers and it was a piece of cake for me. So I went through engineer training and then phase two was a piece of cake too. It wasn't that hard for me. So, and I mean, I had, when I was a little kid, I was raised up in college. Well, after I left England, we'd travel all over the country, but I tell everybody I was raised in Colorado.

And my stepfather was a hunter and I used to go out, you know, I used to go out in the woods all the time. I knew how to be stealth and everything. So that all helped out quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I actually would bury myself in the leaves and stuff, and the instructors would walk right by me and he wouldn't see me. So you make it through SF training and then, you know, where do you get assigned? I went to, I went to Vietnam into the triangle where the headquarters was. And I went to the first sergeant or the sergeant major there and I said, I'd like to go to Danang because that's where I stationed with the Navy.

and I knew the town pretty good and stuff. And while I was, he said, I'll see what I can do. And during that time, another guy comes walking in. And, oh, before that, I met a guy from India that I knew from Danang when I was up there. And he left Danang and went down to Trang. And he said Danang wasn't the same anymore. I mean, it was totally different. And so a guy comes walking into this combat orientation course, the cock course that they had there.

It's like an indetriation to Vietnam kind of thing. So I'm sitting at the bar and the guy comes walking in and he goes, hey, I'm going home. I said, where were we stationed? He goes, I was stationed at 8502, one of the best duty stations you can get. And so I said, he talked to me about it. So he did. So then next day I ran down the headquarters and I talked to this guy named Sergeant Micah, Mike Micah. And he was giving out orders and stuff for where people went.

And so I talked to him and I said, you know, I'd like to go to A502. And he goes, well, if anybody's going to A5102, I'm going to go. So anyway, about a day later, he comes walking into the bar. And he goes, hey, Jones. I go, what? He goes, we're both going to A502. So he cut us both orders. So I went to A502, and when I was there, they put me on this little outpost called Sue Yao.

Now, A5O2 came directly under headquarters. It didn't come under a BC team or anything like that. It came directly under headquarters, and most A-teams, you know, had 12 guys on it. But A-502 had about 50 guys on it. And what they were is they were security for Netrang. Up in the hills, if you were Netrang, and you looked at them in the hills,

you saw all these little outposts out there. They had one American on all these outposts, except for one, there was two places where they had more than one American. But they were the security for Netrang. And I got an outpost that was, way over on the other side of the mountains. It was the first one out, and it was called Siou Yao,

and I had a CIDG company, a civilian, a regular defense group. And I had 133 guys with me there, and I was the only American. Really? Yeah, they would send guys down there every once in a while, because I was getting hit about every one and a half days by the enemy. They shoot into the camp to see if you're awake, kind of stuff out of that. Just test your camp. And so the guys would come down once in a while.

while and then they would go back and a mondays was my day off so what i did is they i'd get it i had a pickup truck and or they'd come down to jeep i'd leave the truck there i'd break the jeep and i'd go back to camp take my shower change my clothes and i'd go down the trang and you know spend the night and um i part the jeep at the headquarters and take a jitney or something you know a syclo or something like that going downtown and i had a couple of girlfriends down there so i'd just hang out with them we'd go have dinner go to a movie or something and go back to their place so you you weren't like really on an ODA, it sounds like. But they just kind of, baptism by fire, they put you out there.

Yeah. The first time I was on a real A-te team was when I was in the reserves with the 12th group, and it was underwater operations. Because after that initial stint in the Trang, like, how did MacB. Saug come about for you? Well, they turned the eight team over to the regional popular forces, the rough puffs. And when they did that, I volunteered to go to CNC. And so they sent me to CCC up in C&M. And I mean, I guess you heard about Sagan that being so close to the headquarters?

No, we knew from going from training group. Oh, really? Okay. We all knew C&C. And like I remember Sergeant Worley and Franks were there. And really, I remember Worley telling me, says, whatever you do, don't go to CNC. He says you get yourself killed. Go to an A team, get a little bit of combat under your belt first, and before you go there.

Because a lot of the guys that were killed in SOG, a lot of them were like their first second mission. Yeah. You know, so we had a guy that came with us on my first mission up there, and his next mission, the whole team got wiped out. Yeah. So tell us, so you get put in CCC, Command and Control Central. Tell us where that was, and for folks out there who don't know what your mission.

was. Well, it was a clandestine mission. What do you, when you first go in there, they take your ID cards, your dog tags and everything, and then you take your shirt off, because you've got your rank on your shirt, you take your shirt off, you go into a room, and you're sitting there, and they give you a hint of what you're going to be doing. You know, you're going to be running clandestine operations. They're very dangerous, that kind of thing. They didn't tell you where it was. And then they'd say, if anybody wants to leave, leave now. And most of the guys stayed there. So I said, yeah, I want to stay there. So what they did is they put me in RT Delaware,

and it was Dan Sturr was the one zero of the team. And he was building up the team again. You know, to this day, I don't know why Dan was by himself in that team. I don't know what happened. I need the talk to him. I think he's on vacation right now. But anyway, so he made me his assistant team leader, because I had quite a few missions when I was on the A team.

In fact, when I was on that A-team at 8502, on Suea, I turned away a ground attack. They tried to overrun my camp, and I turned them away. I had a well-fortified camp. So anyway, when I was there with Dan on Archie Delaware, we went on one mission. We had another guy, Gary Harned, and he came with us on it. And then when we came back again after the mission, we almost got captured. It was a pretty rough mission. they were supposed to put us in outside of a regiment battalion we were supposed to go in and try and gather intelligence and what they did is they put us in between them and so the enemy let us land and they tried to capture us so we finally about three days later you know the CEO just kept saying break contact continuation so but three days later we finally convinced them to get us out of there and so Dan blew an abatees on a tree that's where you blow a tree and it's still connected you know so you can't move it and so then the first

chopper came in being assistant i got on the first chopper dan's always he's oh you know the team there's always the first in last out so anyway i ran up the tree uh had two mutton yards with me the the mountain people that were mercenaries working with us so uh two of those two guys jumped in the helicopter i ran at the tree i'm getting in the helicopter and the chopper's taken off i'm holding onto the skid oh my god i'm saying doesn't anybody see me here you know the chopper's taken off and the Martin Yard's trying to tell the gunner to look down because he doesn't speak English that well. So anyway, he looked, the gunner finally looks down. He gets on the horn and he goes, hey, we got a guy hanging on the skid. So anyway, they reached down, one of the other yard laid over their legs.

And they reached way down by the skid there and they grabbed my arm and I just let go and they pulled me in. So I was lucky. I could have been killed my first mission. That's totally. So Dan quit running missions after that. He had a lot of missions and that was a pretty scary. mission, but so he decided, you know, maybe it's time to just hang up the, you know, the, whatever, you know, your hat and go on, do something else. Jim, if, uh, I'm sorry, I apologize to interrupt. I just want to do this ad read real quick,

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It was Delaware, right? He decided. I was assistant team leader. I was assistant team leader. Then Dan quit. Yeah. Right, right. And so then I'm walking across the compound and the first sergeant said, Jim, how would

you like to take over Archie Delaware? I just ran one mission, you know? And he goes, well, we think you're ready. And I found out when I was talking to Dan Stewart a couple of years ago at the special option reunion, he goes, yeah, he says, I recommended you. Oh, wow. Thanks, buddy. so but so that i became the one zero and then gary hard had went on to r t pennsylvania and the whole team got

they they blew the chopper out of the air and they were all killed um really sad he was a good guy they were all good guys and um so anyway um i had to get a one a one one assistant team leader and i got a guy by the name of homer hungerford and homer was um uh he he had when i knew him he had seven and a half years of combat. He served in World War II, Korean War, and in Vietnam. Wow. So, yeah, and then he decided, he owned a hotel in Hawaii. And he was kind of like your Ernest Hemingway kind of guy.

He looked just like him, too. But Homer was really just a great guy. And a lot of guys didn't want to run with him because he was a little older. And I asked Homer, I said, you know, Homer, would you like to be my 1-1, my assistant team leader? And he goes, yeah, yeah, because I want to get out in the field. So I said, great. So he became my assistant team leader. And he was good.

I mean, they had a wealth of knowledge. Because, you know, CCN, I think there's a story there that Tilt talks about where they had one guy that coward, coward. And when they started shooting, it got scared. Yeah, that was when Blacksmith. Yeah. So I knew that Homer already had experience in combat, and I knew he wasn't going to freak out. Right, right. So that that was worth, that's worth a lot right there.

Absolutely. So anyway, so I took over the team and, heck, I think, I can't, I think I had a couple of linear missions, you know, linear recon, just going through trying to find out what's going on there. Did a couple of road watch missions where you go up on the Hoceman Trail and you just count the trucks go by, try to see what's inside them. They usually try to get those missions going when there's a full moon so you can see a little bit in there. This was all in Laos. Pardon? This was all in Laos. Yeah, Laos and Cambodia.

Okay, well, got you. And so then I had a bright light mission. Well, I had a bright light mission with R.T. Illinois. It was Steve Kiefer was the team leader for R.T. Illinois. But he was on a 30-day leave. And so they asked me if I wouldn't mind taking the RT Illinois up to Docto. It was our launch site and stand down for bright light. And a bright light mission is when a team gets in trouble or if a jet crashes,

whatever it needs or a body, you have to go in and get a body out. So they would send the team in. So you know the bright lights are the most dangerous mission. So you know you're going to go into heavy firefight. So anyway, they asked me, I said, yeah, I'll go over and talk to the team and, you know, let them get to know me a little bit, and then we'll pack up and my head up there. So the choppers took us up the docto, and as soon as we got there, they had a team that got in trouble. I think he had one or two guys killed.

They got the bodies out. I think they had to leave one body there. And then when they were coming out on ropes, they were coming out on strings, a sable rig, 120-foot ropes. So when they were coming out on those ropes, a bullet or something hit a rope, but the rope broke and one of the guys fell to his death.

It was one of the mutinyers. So he fell to his death, and they wanted us to go in there and get his body out there in case he had any intel on him. Because you know, because you know that there was nobody supposed to be in Laos, Cambodia. Right, right.

So I asked him the situation and everything and how many enemies. And they estimated around 350 enemy they got hit with. So I said, well, I don't have time for two helicopters. I said, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to take one helicopter. And at that time, Steve Kieber came up on the helicopters. And he got off the helicopter. And I go, Steve, what are you doing here? He goes, I just got back from leave.

And I told him, I says, well, we got a bright light mission. You want to go? I mean, I can just see the wheels turning. Damn, I just got back from leave. And I'm going to go die, you know. And then it didn't help matters. And I said, I'm just taking two other guys to myself. You know, so that, because there's four ropes, and I had to leave one rope open for the body.

So we went ahead, we flew in, we repelled in, and they couldn't get us on the ground. That there was triple canopy, you know, it was really high. So the chopper just came down, just started mowing down the jungle, trying to get us down on the ground. So we got on the ground, we unhooked, you know, because there's stable rigs that you're repelling down on. You know, not the stable rig, but the rope. You know, and it's got a bag at the bottom of it. You can't just, you know, jump off. Like a sandbag. Right.

Yeah. So we got on the ground, we unhooked, and a cobra gunship flew overhead, and he goes, hey, my code name was the wild carrot because I had really bright red hair. And he goes, hey, carrot, follow me. So we go up this hill, and I can see the rope in the tree where it came down, it whipped and wrapped and wrapped around a branch, and I could see it. And we dug the guy up and told him, I come and get us. and we can hear the enemy coming. You can hear them screaming and yelling because they didn't care if we knew

where they were or not. They just come running up the hill trying to get us. So they came overhead, they dropped the ropes. We hooked the body up, the other guys up, they hooked me up, and then they just started pulling us up. So when they pull us up,

and we got about halfway through the triple canopy, we can see the enemy coming, but they're all shooting at the helicopter because when they get the helicopter, they got all of us. Right. But the chopper took a lot of hits, but he managed to get out of there.

He pulled us up and got out, and, you know, I'm just sitting there saying, you know, I can hear the bullets whizzing by, you know, but they weren't breaking the soundberry because they're shooting up, you know, and they slowed down a little bit. But so I can hear all that, and then the brass is falling down on us. And an A1E Sky Rader came right underneath me, just like 50 feet underneath me. And he just waves at me, you know, like this, you know. And he was, he's firing rockets. fleshettes and everything. And you can see the white smoke when it leaves the, it was an A1y Skyrater.

So when he first left the Skyrater, you can see the white smoke. But when he gets halfway to the ground, you get this puff of big orange smoke. And it just blows all like thousands of flichettes out there. So that we got out of there. And I'm getting, you know, dear God, get us out of here. And that was a, that was a freaking mission. But none of us got hurt. You know, we got out of there and we got back to Dr. Doe. And there was one that, you shared a picture with me where you guys were able to actually do a prisoner snatch, which I know was a huge thing for Saag. You guys were actually successful in nabbing a few? All the, I took around 15 prisoners when I was in Vietnam.

I didn't take any in Laos or Cambodia. I wanted to grab one one time, but I was strap hanging on another team. And Joe Bandarger had the team. And so I went out with him, and we decided to take a break. We were doing a linear recon. and we're just sitting there on the ground and we didn't know, but we were only a couple of feet from a trail

because the jungle's so thick, we didn't get to the trail yet and we didn't know there was a trail there. So we're there and all of a sudden we can hear this voice, you know, guys speaking and you see them, they walked like not even three feet, four feet away from me,

just walked right by me and I'm looking out and you know when your heart's beating and your body's shaking like this, you know, and I'm sitting there go, man, these guys, I'm just waiting for the bullets to go through me, you know, but they just walked right on. I just walked right.

And I wanted to get up and grab one. There was three of them that walked by us. And I figured we could take two guys out and take one of the guys or take them all, you know. And what I would have done, but Joe said no. He said, we don't know who's behind him. And I figured I would have taken a chance. But he was the team leader on that one. So, but the, yeah, I would have just put him on stable rigs and just had them haul them back by themselves.

Just tie him up, blindfold them, take them back. Yeah, they're probably not going anywhere while they'll hung up on the street. rings. Yeah, they're not going to go anywhere. And the guys that are going to be out there with weapons anyway, in case anything happens. And they're not going to be able to untie themselves and get off that stable rig. Once you're on a stable rig, you can't get off it until you're on the ground. Yeah. Because those hooks are way up here, way up high. So we have them on here, but it pulls way up. Yeah. And then that bag that comes down has these straps that come down with the hooks on them. So you can't really get to them. So, um, so. So, um, so. So, um, so. So,

But anyway, that was that mission. And let me see, where can we go from there? Well, tell us some of the other ones that were where you did take some prisoners. Those were in Vietnam. And when I was at Siou Yao on that outpost, we knew there was a hospital up on the hill. Ah, okay. Because one of the other camps of just, you see, it would be north of me. There was a camp up there that got overrun.

And I went in as a reaction. force to it and it was pretty nasty there was a whole bunch of everybody was it was a mess i mean you know enemy blown in half and heads blown off and arms and legs gone it was horrible but um but we went up there uh we knew there was a hospital up there and that's where these guys were taking their wounded after a battle so what i want to do is go up there and capture somebody going up into those hills and find out where the hospital was so uh i went ahead set up an ambush site and a bunch of people came through. And they were mostly VC, Viet Cong.

And we ended up getting two NVA. And one was a nurse. And I think that male was a nurse too. There was one woman and two men. But we took those guys and got them back. And the sad thing in Vietnam is that when you take these prisoners, you know, we talk to them, interrogate them. Then we turn them over to the district chief.

The district chief will say something like, I'm going to let you go, but please tell your commander not to hit our town or village. You know, just leave us alone. We'll let you go. So they do that, and that was a big thing over there. So, and in fact, one of the guys, one of the guys that I took as a prisoner was a motting yard. And he was, he was sitting there making chopsticks. He had some chopsticks soon. And I told him, I said, hey, why don't you make me a set of chopsticks?

And he goes, no, this isn't very good wood. He said, I'll get some good wood. and I'll get them to you. So when the guy was in this little prison jail, wherever it was where they send them, one day I'm walking across the main compound on my day off. So I'm walking across at the main camp. And this guy comes up and he says,

hey, somebody told me to give these to you. I've got the chopsticks in my kitchen. He actually made me a set of chopsticks. So it was kind of weird. So, but yeah, taking prisoners in Vietnam where I was, was not that hard. It really wasn't. Guys in Saug think, wow, you know, wow, you know, I never took a prisoner, but I said, I never took a prisoner in Sog either.

That's interesting, yeah. Because it's a whole different ball game. Right, right, right. You're out there totally by yourself. Yeah, I mean, it's like in Vietnam, you got all the Americans fighting. They're all in their camps and you see five or six guys walking by. You can take them out. Yeah, put them on a jeep.

In Vietnam, in Laos, Cambodia, it's the same thing. It's just reversed. We're five or six guys and got all the enemy there, you know. And they're not afraid to come after you. There was also, you know, the, and we've talked about this on the show before, but one of the other things that made Saag, like, very dangerous and very challenging for you guys is at, like, headquarters, it was getting leaked, right? That there were, the headquarters had been infiltrated.

So almost anything you guys did, the Vietnamese or the NBA, like, knew what you guys were going to do. Yeah. I mean, we had guys going out in the field, and they, It's a sergeant, so-and-so, welcome the LZ number two. They actually had signs set up. Yeah. We had one team that went in. I can't remember if it was a CCN team or one of our teams.

CCS folded up pretty early, you know, and they made that big push into Cambodia. So CCS shut down pretty early. But this guy, he goes in. He gets in the LZ. I never went on an LZ. I went on LZ. I went on LZ when I went without a team. teams as a strap hanger.

But when I went in, I never went on an LZ, because I always knew there was going to be somebody there watching it. Right, right. I either rebelled in or went on by ladder. But this guy gets off the helicopter. He's starting to run off the LZ, and this, an officer, North Vietnamese officer, steps out around a tree, and he just says, Sergeant So-and-so, call your helicopters back, get on it, and go. And he called the helicopters back and said, come and get us.

Yeah. Probably a wise decision at that point. Yeah. When he's got the Cajonies to step out behind a tree like that, you can bet you're going to go. Yeah. It was a totally different kind of a war in Laos, Cambodia. Any other missions that you were on with Saug

that really stick out in your mind that you'd like to talk about before we move on? There was, I had one mission where the guy lost a man on his previous mission, and so they asked me if I would strap hang and help him out. So I went over and I talked, and his name was Hill. And in fact, God is, I can't remember, I can't, I don't remember the name of the team. I wrote it down someplace, so I wouldn't forget it and I did. But anyway, so I asked him, I told him, I said, I heard you lost man, your last mission, and you've got a mission coming up.

He goes, yeah, I said, I'll run with you. And now he's got two team leaders, right? So he said, thanks, I really appreciate that. And he goes, we're going in a couple of days if you want to do a, a full, you know, aerial recon. So I flew over and I checked out the area. It was all slash and burn. And I asked him, I said, what is the mission anyway?

He goes, they want us to go knock out a tank. And I've gone, are you shaming me? I said, there's going to be thousands of enemy around that tank. It's not be bumping down the road. It's not a fucking lot. So anyway, we go on, we take off and we go in. We go in our primary, and the bullets are flying all over the plate. You can hear him hitting the helicopter.

None of us got hit. So the bullets are flying all the place. So then we take off out of there. He goes, put us in our secondary. So we go over to the secondary, try to go in. Same thing. Bullets are hitting the helicopter flying all, none of us got hit. So Hill gets up between the pilot and the co-pilot and says, hey, push down over there.

So go over there and be getting down. We're even close to the ground. Then all of a sudden, the bullets start flying again all over the place and are hitting the helicopter. And I hear a hill going, I'm hit. I'm hit, I'm hit, I'm hit. So I reached across and I grab his arm and hold on to him because of the centrifugal force. Because he's laying on the deck, you know? So I'm holding

onto him, they pull us out of there, and then they canceled that mission. But that was a pretty, that was hellacious. Being in a helicopter getting hit with that many rounds, I mean, it's a lot of rounds and it's pretty scary. What's shocking is the bullets won't go and going through the helicopter and nobody getting hit.

It's just somebody watching over us. Let me see, I had some others let's see what was some of the others I had a bright light where some guys parachuted in they got separated it was Paul Boyd and we flew in but it was there was

we had no problems at all we just went ahead and just dropped the ladder he climbed onto the ladder we don't climb on the ladders we just hook in to the ladder and just fly out hanging on the ladder so but we got it back out and there was no problems I had another

I know I had some other missions. But I had another bright light, which is Cobrae 4. And that's that one there. It was a, it was a Cobra 84, it was a, an F4 phantom that, there was two pilots in the aircraft. And they were going in the blow up a bridge in Cambodia. And they took a 51 caliber round and it, they lost their hydraulics, hit the first hill, went across, hit the second hill, and landed on third hill. And the engines, when they hit the first hill, the engines, the motors just left the fuselage. And they traveled. They landed not too far, like about 100 meters or so from where the jet landed.

Wow. But that one I went in on, I went down a short ladder and got on the ground. I waited for the Homer to come in on the next ladder. I had a seven-man team. I always ran a seven-man team. I always kept a string open or a ladder open, you know, for a POW. But anyway, when they got on the ground, we waited for the leaves to break and stop falling and wait for our ears to pop, you know, because you're coming from altitude down.

And we take off and we start going down this hill. And, you know, where the jet went through it, it was all burned out. I walked down the hill just a little bit. And all of a sudden I catch three guys, three enemy off from my right. And one of them's got a weapon on me. And the other two guys I couldn't tell they were behind a bush. And I figured if they were going to shoot, they were. everybody shot me. So I told my guys and said,

Komsung, Komsung, you know, don't shoot. And, because they're mountain yards, but they understand the Vietnamese phrases. So, but anyway, I just told the guys my rifle, I said, move on. And so they left. And because my job was to try to get the pilots. I didn't want to deal with all this other stuff. So anyway, I go ahead and I walk down a little further and I start seeing bunkers. And I start seeing these bunkers.

And I walk a little bit further. and I see this graveyard with a communist star over it. And I go in there and I counted about six, seven graves. When DPA, defense POW, MIA accounting agency went in, they found 13 bodies in there. So they're probably stacking them inside one grave. And then I went a little further and I saw this meeting room on stilts, 20 by 20 foot and all bamboo.

So we go up the hill a little bit. I found a boot with a foot in it. It was an American boot, but it was a indigenous foot. So we put that in the rucksack, and we go ahead and head up the hill a little bit further. And then all of a sudden, I can hear these trucks and everything coming down the Hoceman Trail.

And the pilots overhead said, you've got six truckloads of enemy, two armored cars, and a whole bunch of troops running behind it. So I tried to get up the hill. I got to the top. I found a bomb laying there, and at first I thought it was a bomb from the Huchman Trail, and they were dissecting for the comp B

to get it out of there and make satchel charges. but apparently I think it's it came from from the F4 that crashed so and then I noticed all these square patterns on the deck on the floor on you know and so I realized this was some kind of a village or something

an enemy village and we saw some hootches around the area and the whole village was had bamboo woven over the top of it was all woven over the top so you couldn't see it from the air except for where the jet went through so and I had Homer go

one direction, I went on another direction, and we picked up Pith Helmets, uniforms, belts, medicinal bottles, and you pick up all that stuff, and then you sent it to Saigon, and they can analyze it and try to figure out what unit it is that has that, and they can see where the unit's going from here to here to here, so they can figure out what direction they're going. So we did that, and then we, I saw the jet on the other hill, but the, and the, the guys up above, you know, the guys are flying over us. They said, we got to get you out of there. And I said, I'm not to the other hill.

He goes, well, if we're running out of ammo, because they're firing like crazy trying to get these enemy down. And the mini guns were going right over my head. I mean, I thought they were going to hit me in the head. They were so low. And, but the enemy started coming up the hill after us. And I said, okay, you know, go ahead and get us out. And so I had the one shop would come in.

Homer took off with two guys. and then the next chopper comes in and just as he's coming in he's like 100 feet away the enemy starts coming through the bushes and one gets an RPG off I get hit in the arm, the chest and I still got shraping on my wrist

but we're keeping the enemy down and I had two gunships on both sides of the Huey as he's coming in and I said I want you to parallel that Huey and I just want you to shoot into the jungle as much as you can they keep these guys down

and we're shooting like crazy but he comes in they drop the ladders we hook into the ladder and then they pick up and they got us out of the chopper took up oh when the chopper was coming in i thought he got hit with an RPG because as i'm jumping on the ladder and hooking in i hear this boom big loud bang and i thought i was waiting for it to come down on top of me and what happened is the gunner was shooting so furiously into trying to get the bad guys down that he wasn't watching the rotor and the rotor hit a tree he got two feet of his rotor off on both both rotors oh wow

he managed to get us out of there but he still got us up and got us up and got us out of there. And I could see the trucks down there. I could see the jet over on the other hill, but I couldn't get to it. And so I went back in, I went back in 2000,

no, yeah, 2002. I went back to Cambodia and on my own dime. And I hired six Cambodian Rangers. There were Park Rangers, not like military Rangers. And because the Radican Carey province is right there south of the tribe border. And it's a big

game refuge. So I had these guys and I said, hey, you know, I'd like them. I'd like for these guys to I'm looking for some guys to go with me, take me up there. I want to take some pictures of wildlife and stuff. And he goes, well, I'll see what I can do. So I got this park ranger guy who's the son of the province chief, which turns out that saved my butt later on. But the, we got together. I told him what I was really going to do. And he goes, oh, I know the jet crash. I go, really? He goes, yeah. He goes, it'll take us 10 days to get there. So we hiked for about 100 miles going up into there, and it took us 10 days to get up there. When I first started, it was killing me because I was in my 50s. So I turned around. I said, let's go back. And I started

jogging and running and exercising and trying to get myself in shape. And then we took off again. And then we made it. 10 days got up there. We spent three days there. We found the jet. And I realized then that there was no way that I was going to be able to get to that jet fast enough from that second hill. Right. Because it was just like that. It was really steep. And so anyway, we did that.

I found parts of the jet. I brought parts of the jet back, gave it to the family. I haven't met the other family yet. It was Eric Hubert and Alan Trent. And Eric Hubert's family and I are still pretty close. But I haven't contacted Alan Trent's family. I'm hoping that Huberth, they're in touch with him. And I'd like to get him in a piece of the jet if they would like it.

So I've still got a piece downstairs. That's incredible, Jim. And, you know, your 1-1, Homer is the man. Whoa, was that guy like 45 at the time when he was doing all this? Yeah, he was about that age. That's amazing. Yeah, hardcore. He passed away in 2014.

Oh, wow. And I think he was in his 90s. Yeah, yeah. That's a long, that's a long spell. there, good for him. Yeah. That's amazing. For the disposition, like, how did, at the time, how did the government handle these two pilots that went down in Cambodia when, obviously, we didn't have anybody in Cambodia?

Well, DPA knows that, you know, I mean, they knew there was people over there. There's still a bunch of people missing over there. We may never find them because, you know, the minerals in the soil there, it's acidic, and it destroys the bones. one of the interesting things well i'll get that in a minute um but um yeah anyway when i came back from that mission when i went back again in 2002 uh we stayed there for three days on the third day we got held up by bandits and um what saved my butt is they didn't want to have to deal with the province chief son yeah so they came out of the bush of the aks and they were screaming at us and you know i don't know what they're talking i can't speak cambodian so anyway um

The next day we were leaving anyway. So it took us 10 days to get back. I threw a party for the guys. And then from there, I went up to Laos and went up to Hoechman Trail. We'll be up there and checked everything out. A lot of damned. I got a picture of, I think I sent you the picture of the truck with the bombs sitting on it next to the Hodgeman Trail. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that. And I found tanks that were blown up, you know, for guys dropping, you know, our guys dropping bombs on them. found all kinds of like 30 36 millimeter aircraft weapons and stuff all kinds of 51 machine gun you know 51 caliber machine guns all kinds of stuff up in there sam missiles are still there so if we're to wind back to uh you know from 2002 back to what was it about 1970 1970 1971 when that mission happened oh it was 19 may of 1970 70 when the mission took place so how did How did Vietnam start to wind down for you personally? I mean, you finished your tour with SF over there.

What was that like for you in returning back home and, you know, the next stage of your life, really? Well, I didn't want to leave. I missed my flight home twice. Yeah, I just rather go on a mission. The second time I missed my flight home, I taught what, you know, When I left CCC, I went down to B53, and I trained a lot of the guys for a one zero school to be team leaders. And I taught in Phil X, Phil, and PODW snatch. And so when I was down there, RT. Mamba came down from CCN to go through the PODW Snatch School.

And they were going out to take a prisoner. Well, I wasn't about to miss out on that. So I got my gear, and I'm walking out early in the morning out of the chambre. The first sergeant comes walking out And there was Verlard Glenn Now Verlard Glenn is an amazing man He had stars all over his master blaster wings He made every possible combat jump you can make

During the Korean War and Second World War Wow They had two jumps going on at one time So he only can make one But anyway he sees me And he goes, hey Jones, where are you going? I said, I'm going on this mission He goes, aren't you supposed to be going home?

I go, damn, top, if I'm supposed to be going home let me know, man, I didn't, I haven't heard anything. He goes, if I find out you're supposed to be going home, I go, really, top, I haven't heard anything. You know, please let me know if I'm, I'd like to go home. So anyway, so I go out on the mission, I come back, and man, as soon as I got off that chopper, man, I walked into his office, they had two guys. They said, take this guy, pack his bags, march him down the top of the suit, and get him out of plane and get him out of here. So I finally. So they kicked you out of Vietnam.

That's how it came about. Yeah, pretty much, you know, because I would have stayed, you know, one of the things that with Saab is the guys don't want to leave their buddies, you know? Yeah. You know, it's a camaraderie, you know, like we're, we know we're both going. We know what we're going through, and you don't want to leave them there by themselves. You don't want them to go on this mission. You know, like, man, if you're going on a mission, I want to go with you to make sure you're going to be safe, you know, that kind of thing.

And a lot of the guys, like what they would say is that how do you know when to quit? Some of the guys would say that when my uniform falls apart and I can't wear it anymore, it's time to quit. Yeah. Because I wear the same uniform on every mission. And that uniform's in a museum now. Really? Which museum can we go see it in? There's a guy named Jason Hardy.

Yeah. Jason Hardy's building a museum. You know who he is? No, I don't. Is it going to be a SOG museum or Vietnam or what's the... Yeah, I think it's pretty much SOG. Okay. Because he's the guy that wrote all the books on the patches and all the teams and everything.

Cool. Yeah, it's like a six or seven volume set. Cool. And so he's going to have a museum. Yeah, he's getting it all together for a museum. That's awesome. So he bought my uniform. I gave him some original maps.

I made copies of the maps because I don't care if they're original or not. But I gave them the copies. I gave my uniform that I wore around the camp. It was a black uniform. I gave him that. So, but yeah, Jason Harri is quite a good guy, real good guy. I was just talking to him just the other day. So I was trying to get to find out what team Hill was on when I went to get that time.

I didn't even know what team it was. So you get kicked out of Vietnam, and now you're still in special forces. I mean, what was the next step for you? I came back to the States. Well, they wanted me to be an officer. They asked me three times, and the third time, I said, what I got to do? And they said, well, you're going to have to re-up. And I go, I said, you know, I've got a high school diploma, you know, I'm not going to last as an officer. They're going to riff me back to

sergeant or something. So I went ahead and said, I'm going to go back to states and I want to get an education, you know, go to college. So I came back to the States and I joined the Special Forces Reserves. And that team turned over to underwater operation. They sent the whole team down to Key West. We all passed. We all did really good. But, you know, We had a team started that pumped it into us. We didn't go out and party at night. We studied every night really hard. I got a 99 on the test.

My dive partner got a 99. Everybody got 97, 98. We did really good on the written tests and stuff. So let me see, where are I going from there? When I was there, it was when I was a police officer in San Jose, the police department. And then I ended up getting a divorce. and I was married until I ended up getting a divorce

and so what I decided to do is I was teaching a pair of rescue guys, Night Vision and and um, uh,

some machine guns and stuff like that, you know, foreign weapons. And, uh, I didn't know who these guys were. I didn't know what PJs were. And,

um, so anyway, they told me what they did and they were doing this stuff all the time, these missions all the time. And I'm going, really? Because I was bored to, death. Right. You know, you don't want to be, especially if you're going to be a green beret,

you're going to be a green beret to go fight a war. Right. If there's nothing going on, after a while, cross training gets old. Yeah. So, so I went ahead and went on down and saw what these guys were doing. And I saw their equipment. My gosh, they had air raider, scuba tanks. You know, you jump with twin tanks. So you're packed, you know, so it's stable. The 20s, yeah. Yeah. And they had all this climbing gear. They had all kinds of stuff. And I'm going, damn, you know. So I went back to the 8th team, and I told that Jimmy Gaston was my team sergeant.

And I told you, I said, Jimmy, I said, I'm going to go be a PJ. He goes, no, you can't, you can't be a PJ. I go, yeah, I'm bored. He goes, no, you're your family. You can't leave the team. I go, man, I'm bored to death, Jimmy. So I left. I went down and as a guy's name, Zal Richmond.

He was in charge of the PJ section. He shows me this letter where PJs need to have more combat training. And I'm going, well, you know, I'd like to just kind of do all this other stuff. I don't want to teach combat stuff. And so he goes, well, that's your ticket in. I go, well, if I have to. So I went ahead and did that. And they put me through a little mini training thing to make sure I can pass the school.

And that was a piece of cake for me. And so then I went down to the school and passed everything through school and everything. I hit, they told me, they would, you know, the Air Force has what they call Air Force Now films, and it's to get the young guys interested in staying in the Air Force and promoting into another field if they want to. And so they were doing an Air Force Now film. So we were doing our full scuba jumps out down in Florida off the coast there. And I jump out of the plane.

And I've got, you know, probably 150 jumps out of C-130s at this time, you know. And so they told me, he says, oh, you hit the door. I called, I didn't hit the door. He goes, yeah, you hit that door. I go, what? I said, then I find out they're doing an Air Force Now film, and they wanted the young guys, my assistant, because I was in charge of the group.

So they wanted my assistant to be the guy in charge because they were all young guys, and I was an old fart. So, you know, I didn't even know how old I was. I think I was, like 32, something like that, I was a, I was a, I was a, I was a, the oldest guy for like about a week that went through PJ training. Then there was a guy that like two weeks behind me and the guy was phenomenal. The guy was like my age, but he whipped that training like it was nothing.

I mean, he was built. He was in good shape, thin, a lot of muscle and he made me look bad. But so anyway, I finished the school and, oh no, I went down to the school and they told I hit the doors, I had the way for the next cycle to come through for them to do their scuba jumps. And so I went through and I jumped and I found out you're doing this Air Force now film. And that's why they actually told me I hit the door because they didn't want me to graduate the class because they were doing this film. So the next time I got there, I jumped out of the, you can't help. You got over 100 pounds of gear on you.

How do you get to jump out of that frigging hell that feeling for you? You know, so I used to bark and put my arm against my side. and put it against the door, and I just swing out to like a pendulum. Right. And that's how I went out. And so I went ahead and got out of the plane. I got it.

I landed on the water and they go, whoa, you left that door by 10 feet. I go, you're so full of crap. So anyway, I went up, you know, when I came back to the, to, it's, where the heck do we go train from PJ training? It's in New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Kirkland Air Force Base.

So, I guess, go there and I'm walking, I'm sitting in the class, and then they call me up to the front of the room. They give me my beret and my certificate, and they were going to take a picture. I go, now I'm out of here. I just left. I was so furious and pissed at him. So I got my Volkswagen van and drove all the way back to 129th and started doing missions. And, you know, because you talked about, you know, being SF and being bored because the SF mission is a combat mission.

but these parrushy guys were like doing missions all the time. Can you talk a little bit about that mission, why they were so active, and what about that appealed to you? Well, I've always kind of pushed the envelope, you know? Yeah, I've always pushed the envelope just a little bit. But just the idea of making jumps out in the middle of the ocean, making parachute jumps into the mountains for playing crashes, doing a lot of

most of it was civilian stuff yeah you know civilians on ships plane crashes you know they have we have one where the plane crashed and there was a husband wife and two girls in there and they were all killed but they

they got the girls the guy out I mean the wife out but the husband we had to leave he was halfway out one window and half out the front window of the plane and we just cabled the plane down left it there and then during the summertime when the snow and everything melts

then sheriff's apartment will go in and get the remains. But all that kind of stuff just really, it had home with me. Yeah. You know, I just, just had the thrill of mountain climbing and, because we did a lot of mountain climbing, you know, we used to work on McKinley all the time, you know, just practicing ice climbing and stuff, Ruth Sclather, glacier, climbed Mount Shasta, Mount Hood up in Oregon.

I was one of the paramedics for when Mount St. Helen blew. We did that kind of work. You know, we'd go up there and look for remains. I was also a paramedic for the space shuttle, you know, for the first three landings because it was a mode eight contingency. So the first three landings had only the pilot and the pilot and the commander. So if anything happened, they could bail out of it. They had ejection seats. But when they put a third person in there, they disconnected the ejection seats.

So that took me out of the picture. because if they had to reject, then I would parachute and take care of them. So they had other PJs that did the other work for when it landed. If you look at the, when the shuttle lands like at Edwards Air Force Base, you see these guys with the suits on,

the tanks, and they're breathing oxygen, and they're testing the space shuttle for poisonous gases. So those are all PJs. And what they do is those two big arms that go into the back end of the shuttle, you see there, those aren't. What they're doing is they're freezing all the gases.

So if they freeze all the gases, then the PJs go in, they test all the air to make sure it's stable, and then they open it up and let the astronauts come out. So those guys continued with the missions, but I stopped after STS 1, 2, and 3. I mean, that's a whole, like, other ballgame. Like, I take it you probably had to learn about aerospace medicine at that point. Yeah, I trained with Anna Lee Fisher, the first mother in space. She worked with us mostly, and I became friends with the... Jim Bayesian. They're all,

they're medical doctors and astronauts. And then Reyes Acedon. And I bumped in the Ray of Seddon quite a few times. Anna Fisher, I bumped into her a couple of times and talked to him. And then STS3, Jack Laosma, he was on SCS3.

I bumped in him a few times and we sit and talk and stuff. I go to the Space Fest because they have a section for meteorites there. So I go there for that. And some of the astronauts are there signing autographs and stuff. So I'll go in and meet him and talk to him and stuff. Anna remembers me. Rhea didn't remember, but she was always asleep anyway in class. She's married to a guy named Hout Gibson, another astronaut.

And Hout, he goes, yeah, she still falls asleep all the time. But she's really, she's adorable. She's really a nice-looking lady, really nice. Anna Fisher, she remembers me because I was sitting there taking a picture and she was yelling at me put down the camera get over here and learn something will you i'm going okay okay i'm taking pictures now she's glad i took the pictures because now i gave her a copy of yeah right so in addition to the mountain rescue um because i know that the uh the pararescue units the guard units in california and in alaska are extremely active with like the mountain rescues and

things like that yeah but you guys also do a lot of the ocean rescues so if there's a a fishing trawler or something out there, high seas, somebody, their appendix first, you guys are the ones they call. And how do rescues like that go down? Well, if it's over 300 miles or over 150 miles or something like that, if it's close to shore, the Coast Guard will do it. But they're not refuelable. So they're limited on how far they can go because they have to have return fuel

and a reserve by the time they land. So they would, what they do is they take, two C-130s and a helicopter. And we get into the C-130. We fly out out to the ocean where the ship might be 1100 miles out of sea. And then we load up. And on the way out, we're talking to,

back then it was Scott Air Force Base. And you're talking to the doctors that are in charge over there, and they're telling you what you can do and what not to do, what medications you can give them and don't give them medications, depending on what's going on with them.

And so then we go out and we parachute in. And the C-130, the other C-130, is refueling the helicopter all the way out. And if you see those helicopters with that big snorkel in the front, that's refueling. Those are usually PJs. So they're refueling them all the way out. And then we'll get the guy ready because we're out there way ahead of time. We'll put him in a stokes. Well, the chopper will come out and drop a stokes slitter.

And then we're getting the guy all ready. We've already got him up on the deck. And we're going to put him in a sleeping bag, seal them up, put earmuffs on them, goggles on them and strap them in. And then we got a rope tied on to the Stokes litter so it doesn't spin. And then they'll bring it up and get them into the helicopter. They take the litter off and they put a penetrator on it.

It's a thing that comes down with little seats. And then we get on, my buddy and I'll get on it. And then we'll go back up and get in the helicopter. And then we'll refuel. Like on one that we went out of 1100 miles. Like I had a ruptured appendix. And what we did is we low-leveled 100 feet off the water. and refueled all the way to Cus Bay, Oregon.

Because that was the closest point. And we got there at night, and then all the crews were there. They were, you know, a camera cruise. I got to get a copy of the news film. Yeah. But they took pictures of it was coming off. I'd love to get it for my kids. And so, and from there, we just, we get rid of the guy,

and then we mosey on down to the base down in California. So, Jim, I know that this was your job, so it was just, like, normal half to you. but I feel like there's a point between where you're on a C-130 and an airplane. There is a boat or a ship in potentially high seas, right? Storm conditions, whatever. How do you manage to get from a C-130? Because it's not going to hover over this rocking ship, right? How do you manage to get from the C-130 onto that ship?

Oh, we just jump out. No, what you do, they usually give us the old parachutes. You know, because if you blow a panel on the old shoot, you know, that doesn't matter, you're hitting water. But what we do is we've got medical gear on us. We've got a raft on us. We've got a bunch of stuff on. We've got double scuba tanks on, the parachute, the reserve shoot, a knife and other stuff in case you run. But you're not going to run the sharks out there.

So on that mission, we flew out. It was John Stevens and I. And John Stevens, he was a PJ lot longer than I was. And he had time in Vietnam. I think he did. Anyway, so he was a team leader on that one. So we go ahead and we jump out. We drop a, what we do is we drop up.

We go over the ship where we want to land. We don't land on the ship. We land in the water because you don't want to get tangled up on a ship. So what you do is you, we. find a place in water where we want to go. So we go over it and we drop streamers down and watch where the streamers go. And then you count backwards. So if you want to land here and the streamer lands over here, well, you jump out over here so you land here. So we go ahead and we jump out. And then they'll push bundles out with all the other medical gear that we might we could use.

And then the ship puts a dingy in the water. And so they'll come over and they'll pick you up. And on that mission, we had 32-foot seas. And it was, it was, we had to get there to get the guy because he was going to die. We had to get him out of there and get him to a hospital. He was 21-year-old Taiwanese. They're working on those ships that bring the Honda cars over. And so I'm coming down in the parachute. I'm not in the water yet.

And I'm looking at the top of the wave. And I'm going, oh, this isn't going to be good. Yeah. So, so, and on the way out, we're eating donuts. That's what you don't want to do. So we get in the water, and I'm waiting, I wait for a top of a crest of a wave so I can see the dinghy where it is. And this is why PJ's got to be strong because you've got to swim with all this gear on. Yeah.

So you cut the canopy loose and just let it sink, get rid of it. And then you're swimming with your harness with all your gear. And so you swim on over in the dingy. When I got to the dingy, I grabbed the side as it was coming up. And when the boat came all the way up, I could see all the way underneath. It just came up across the wave like that. I can see all the way under it. And when it went down, it went down like this.

And I just rolled right into it. What? And they couldn't get the diggy running. The motors comped out on it. And these guys are merchant marines. And it's really windy and nasty out. And everybody's getting sick. And it's blowing all over everybody.

And it's just frigging miserable. So they finally get the... The swell of the boat washed you onto the... I'm sorry, the swell of the waves washed you onto the deck of the ship? I just rolled, no, no, no, no, on the dinghy. Oh, onto the dinghy. Okay, I got it. Yeah, on the dingy.

Yeah, so we got it in the dingy, and then everything, everything, they finally got the thing going. So when you go over to the ship, they have a door on the side of the ship, and they drop a rope ladder out of it. So what you have to do is you got to wait for the highest wave on that, because it goes up on the side of the ship. You want the highest wave, and then you grab that last wave, and then you grab that, and you start climbing up and that dinghy's going to just disappear 30 32 feet below you. You guys are so crazy. Yeah, so then you climb in. I'm climbing in and I'm just puking my guts out from eating all those donuts and that nasty

brother and stuff. And so I can just see those guys. They're sitting there going, these guys came to help us. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then John Stevens, he gets on, he comes up, he waits for a big wave. He gets on, climbs up the ladder. A bigger wave came along.

the boat comes up, knocks him off the ladder, and he falls into the dinghy twice. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, so he finally got a big enough wave, and he climbed in, got in there, and we took care of the guy, and then the choppers finally got there, and we took him up in the deck and got him in the chopper, and we flew to Coos Bay, Oregon. He was so blown up, and you have to go at low altitude, because he's blown up from the gases building up from the ruptured appendix.

Right. You can't get altitude because the gas expands with altitude. And that's why we had to refill at 100 feet off the water. But he made it. He was a strong kid and he made it. But he wanted me to cut his gut to get, because it was so distended.

Yeah. Because I got my sister and I was cutting off his underwear and he's sitting there trying to hold everything up. And he's telling me to cut his gut. Yeah. And there was no way I can do like a thoracentesis or anything because I couldn't, I didn't want to puncture his bowel. Right, right.

Going and trying to get the air out. Right. I didn't want to take a chance on it. So, yeah, but he made it. He lived in. you know, and then I had another mission after that, and the other one was, I had a bunch of hoist missions, but that one, I had another one was a jump mission, and we flew out. It was about a thousand miles out. We jumped in, and the guy had a bowel obstruction, an ingual or hernia and a bowel

obstruction. And that was a pretty nice. That was a nice mission. The water was pretty calm out in the middle of the ocean. We jumped in, and it was the sugar island that brings the C&A sugar over from Hawaii. So I became good friends with the skipper of the ship. Bill McCullough was his name. And so we went ahead and got on that boat. And we stayed on the ship. We just jumped in and the helicopter just stayed back in California. But we went because the skipper told us it was nice comps. And we just stabilized the guy, got him set up for surgery. And we just stayed on the ship for a day and a half and took care of them until we got to Hawaii and then they took them off and took them in got a nice letter from the doctor that did the surgery and everything said we prepped it really

well wow I had another mission it was a jump mission and it got canceled when we're out there but it was a drug dealership and they was they blew a plug on their own ship they were sinking the ship and then all these bales came out into the water you know big giant bales and all these boats came in and they're loading all these bales and they had DEA and And, you know, these other police organizations out there, both Mexican and American, going out, they're trying to get these guys. But they only got like three of the ships, the boats. Yeah. They only got three boats.

It was like, I don't know, 13 boats that came out. And about 15 or 16 bales in the water. When we were going to jump in because one of the guys got burnt when they blew a charge to sink to ship. And they found that there was a drug dealer. And they said, no, don't jump. So I want to jump. Yeah, I'm not worried. Damn.

I'll jump Yeah Take their gun away And slap them around But so anyway On that boat I talked to pilots To stay there

Hey let's stay here And watch this ship sink And we stayed there And got to watch This big old ship sink It was really cool So that was it That was my jump missions

The other were hoist missions You know Like we had one Where the guy Was an older merchant marine And it was all young Merchant Marines And he didn't fit in

So he was taking medication and drinking alcohol and he fell and hit his head undilated pupils you know bigger than the other and we went and we just hoisted him up got down the boat got him out of there took him to uh chrissey field in san francisco flew under the golden gate which is really cool and um and that was it and the others were just regular hoist-mish you just bring the guys up get him out taking the safety you know so but it but i loved being a pj it's a great job yeah really good job. In Mount St. Helens, when we went up there, we were relieving the guys up in Oregon because they were working around the clock and they needed a break. So guys from New York came out,

and then we went up, and we relieved those guys. And that was horrendous. You know, when you see those trees that are laying down the ground, they're only about 50 feet where they were standing. And all that bare area you see, all those trees were disintegrated. Yeah. It was just disintegrated. And if you look with the trees laying on the ground, they look like telephone poles. You know, the branches are gone, the tops of trees are gone because they're disintegrated, but the pressure wasn't as strong, so it didn't destroy the whole tree. There was like a distance there where it stopped.

That's spooky. I remember flying over and looking down and seeing all these elk and stuff in the river and deer in the river washing down with the mud and stuff. And it looked like the surface of the moon. It was really pretty devastating when you look at it. how massive it was. Now, we're talking about sort of, you know, the time between Vietnam and the Global War on Terror,

but Paral Rescue did also have, they do have a combat mission, even if that wasn't necessarily the focus because, you know, that wasn't going on. What, how did they, you mentioned earlier that they wanted sort of combat training from you. You had been, you know, Green Beret, MacB, Saug, and Vietnam. Like, how did, uh,

How did that play in with your time with Pararescue? I taught them, you know, things like I set up shooting ranges, you know, like a pathway. You walk through and there'll be like guys. And one of the things that a lot of people don't do is they don't look down by their feet. So I had enemy like just because they're always looking out around them like this. They don't look down by their feet. And a guy could be in a little hole right there, you know, and take you out. So I did a lot of that kind of stuff, a lot of shooting and trained them a lot.

I told me, you know, unless you can really take the guy out, there's only a few guys you can take the guy out. But if there's a bunch of guys or something like that, you can shoot down in front of them and the rocks will come up. Because if you shoot the guy and you kill the guy, well, they're just going to leave him there and keep fighting you. But if you will the guy, it's going to take one or two other guys to take him out, get him out to where he can be saved. So those kind of tactics is what I trained him. and I taught them in the A&A drills and media action which never worked by the way you know where you the one guy shoots

and you run through the middle and the other guy shoots and you turn around you run into a tree or a rock or something and they never work. Yeah. But it gives you a starting point. Yeah. So. Yeah.

No, that's interesting. And then did you see, I don't know when you left Parascue and I don't know like when the 24th formed, but like, did they, you know, as, did you maintain your connection to the power rust community as they started moving to the global war on terror and they started taking on a more tactical focus? No, that happened after I left.

I got busted up parachuting and I had an injury over from Vietnam. I got thrown out of a helicopter about 25 feet or 30 feet. And I fractured my back and I sprung my pelvis open, my SI joint. And I didn't know it. I knew I got hurt. Yeah. I couldn't talk for a couple of weeks. I mean, I got like that, you know, every time I try to talk.

So when I got injured parachuting, the doc comes out and he goes, have you ever injured yourself before? And I go, no. And I said, why? Well, you got a bunch of fractures. You got a fractured T7, L5, and you sprung your pelvis. So I had a big spur of my SI joint. And I go, oh, I said, I got thrown out of a helicopter in Vietnam.

He goes, yeah, that'll do it. He said, I'm taking you off jump status. like, oh, no, don't take me out jump status. You know, that's my life. Yeah. That was in 82. Okay. So in 84, they discharged me and gave me a medical.

I chose the medical instead of being a desk jockey. Yeah. And I had 20 years in. So I did that. But I'd still be in progress if they'd let me. Yeah. And I still jumped, by the way. Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah, that's, yeah, no, I loved, I love pararescue, man. It was great. And I still keep them touch with them. You know, they have their reunion every other year. And they have a mini reunion and the years in between. And the mini reunion this year is going to be in hell in Georgia.

So I'm going to run out there and I'll stay with my brother. He lives in Chickapie, which is only 45 minutes away. Yeah. So, yeah, so I'll take my brother up and he can meet the other PJs. But if you want to see something really cool, go to a pair of rescue reunion. Yeah. Amazing.

You know, that you'd be. shocked with they take the they take from all the teams around the world what they do is they take one team from each group and they take the best guys and then those guys um they compete against each other at the reunion and you'd be shocked what they'd get the winners and stuff yeah i mean rifles guns uh ATVs all kinds of camping equipment all kinds of stuff i mean it's just friggin amazing yeah and i'm trying to get uh soa you know special operations associated to do the same thing. There's a really interesting history, too, as far as like a crossover between both pararescue and smoke jumpers with the CIA's paramilitary guys during the Vietnam

conflict. Yeah, I guess per rescue, I didn't know anything about per rescue. I knew the Jolly and Vazas is super jolly over there. Yeah. When we got our in trouble, they would come and get us, but I still didn't know what PJs were and I'd know anything about them. I was in SAG, CIA, I mean, the CIA was getting themselves killed. That's why they brought SAG in. Because, I mean, I see some of these CIA guys, and they dress up like cowboys. I mean, they were in a cowboy hat, and they were going out there, you know, with the little Australian hat on. I mean, it's like they didn't have the training that they needed, and they were getting themselves hurt, which is really kind of sad. I think they're a lot different now. You know, the guys over in the

sandbox and stuff. I think they're a lot different now. Because a lot of guys in CIA now are guys from, you know, Delta and Cag and all this stuff, you know, I don't know how many PJs go into it, but yeah, you know, it's a lot different now than it was back in Vietnam. So after you were medically discharged, I mean, what, I mean, you didn't slow down at all. You just kept going. Yeah. I went to school, become a chiropractor. And, um, I had a hard time bending over because of my injuries and my back and everything. Uh, you know, treat people. So I went and did a residency in radiology. And I was 4.0 in radiology.

I, in pathology the same way. And so I went to St. Louis and I did my residency out there. And so when I finished my residency, I came back, I came to Tucson, Arizona. And what I did is I said a bunch of letters to all the docks in Tucson and all the docks in Wisconsin area. and Tucson won out. They said, we need you here. Because they only, they didn't have any, they had one radiologist here for chiropractors.

And so he was up in Phoenix, Gary Longmere. And so I came to Tucson and I was reading for over 100 docs. And chiropractor, for some reason, think they can read their own films, which is really kind of tragic. But I ended up working for medical groups. So I went to work for Southwest Radiology here in Tucson, well, up in Tucson. And I opened up my own practice eventually. I wanted to put an MRI in town and my own radiology suite.

So what I did is I kept pushing companies to finance me because it's a multimillion dollar deal. Oh, yeah. And yeah, so I went to, I got in touch with a group called Modern Medical Modalities out of New York. and they came out and talked with me and they said, we want you to come out to New York. So I went to New York on, they had a big Christmas party,

huge party at the Plaza Hotel. And so I went there and they linked me up with a millionaire guy. And I sat down and talked with him, and he goes, how many can you do? And I said, I said, I guarantee you 100 patients a month.

And he said, if you can guarantee me 100 patients a month, you do the write-up do all the paperwork on it, you know, let me know, show me, give me a, you know, what do you call it? Just a proposal. Give me a folder with, yeah, folded with all this information. So I put everything together and he goes, okay, let's go. So I did. I found a location and we went ahead and put the MRI in there, put a CAT scan in there,

Dexas scan, which I think is worthless, general x-ray, that kind of stuff. Everything about mammography. Mammography is a pain in the net. So went ahead and just put all that together. And I got a pay, I got like $5,000 a month off, so I was supposed to get a percentage. And I never got my percentage. So I told him, I said, look, because he was the money end of it. And he started changing everything.

I would give everybody a rose, every patient arose. And I had attorneys and doctors called me up saying, you know, that's a real nice touch. you know, but he said that's a waste of money. I mean, we might end up with one or two roses left over a day. That's one or two dollars a day. And that bothered him. So we stopped that. And so then we had a girl running around who would,

she would go and talk all these docs and say, you know, hey, this is what we offer, you know, and what have you, and try to bring patients in. Well, he stopped that too. So what he didn't pay me my percentage, I finally just said, look, here's the deal. I want a check for $25,000 right now. And I said, or I'm going to take you to court.

So he wrote me a check for $25,000. I left and opened up another business. And so when I did that, he went down the tubes. The place is, I think it's gone now. I mean, it just went right down the tubes. So when I opened up my other place, another guy comes walking into my office, and he goes, hey, we want you to read our x-rays. And I go, I says, how much are you going to pay me?

And he goes, we can give you $5 a case. I said, what's the other doc getting paid? Because this doc was getting swamped with cases. So he wanted somebody to read the cases for him. So he says, he was getting $15 a case. I said, tell him, I'll split it with him, $750 a case. And he came back and he goes, yeah, it's a deal. So I said, great.

So I didn't do less than 150 cases, 160 cases a day. I averaged around 200 cases a day at 750 a case. So I was making good money. You were busy, though. Oh, I was working 24-7. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I would go to bed and I'd get a phone call, and we're sending you 60 cases.

I did teloradiology. I had six computers. I was reading x-rays from Kentucky, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, and Tucson. And it was that frigging nightmare. That's one day, it did 276 cases, and I just said, I'm done. Yeah.

I'm out. Yeah. So I quit and I retired. Yeah. Wow. I still read. I still read. In fact, I just picked up a book on wrist, MRIs of the wrist and hand and stuff.

And I'm reading that book right now. I mean, all these books that you see right, where are they? Yeah. Let me see. Right there, all those books right there are radio. Wow. Those are real radiology books. But I mean, you know, when you say retirement, like you kind of have to put that in air quotes

because, I mean, you're still flying. You're still have your hand in medicine a bit. And we're talking about collecting media rights. And then you've also had your experiences with DPAA. Yeah, I went back to that crash site in Cambodia with DPA. In 2017, they called me up and said, we're going into that crash site. Would you like to go?

I go, yeah, most definitely. So I was supposed to go there for two weeks. They were going to be there for six weeks. So I went there for the two weeks. weeks and when I said goodbye to everybody and I was leaving, the colonel said, we'd like that guy to stay here. So the colonel said, would you like to stay here? And I go, yeah. So I went back out and I stayed there for six weeks with them, you know, sifting through and digging and everything and looking for, you know, teeth or anything from the, you know, pieces of old bone. And plus, you know, I'm, you know,

my degree was in anthropology, in a minor in archaeology when I went into Carpath College. so I've got a big interest in forensic cancerology so I was I was I was I could pick out a bone when I see it yeah you know versus like because they're going to be brown they're going to look like a piece of wood yeah you know they're so but I was good at that

and the forensic cancer oncologist that they had was an MD and her and I got along really good she was a great gal and we sit there and talk and back and forth and we can talk medicine back and forth too you know pathology and stuff so that was really kind of good. So I stayed there for the whole six weeks and helped them. And I still keep in touch with the guys. Back that I just contacted the guy just the other day that just made Sergeant Major. That's awesome. Out of curiosity, you know, because you mentioned she was a DPA or an MD and, you know,

and you have this ability, you know, you're used to seeing bones, seeing, you know, reading radiology, you know, reading stuff. That's got to really play an important part in archaeology, right? or not just archaeology, but in what you're doing here in determining, like, not just at the crash site, but in determining, like, what actually happened to this person? Like, what was the trauma and things like that, right? Well, if you found a bone that would, that had a bullet hole in it or something, you know, that they probably killed them right there at the site. I think that Alan Trent was actually killed right there in the crash. Yeah. And I think that Eric Hoover, there's a possibility, because there's rumors that he might have been taken for

and died shortly after. My guess he probably died before he even got to the prison camp. You know, one of the things is when I went back in 2017, I was talking to Stony Beach there, I'm still in touch with the guys, and they went down because the Vietnamese were there looking for their people. They were killed in that battle. And I told him, I said, let me draw you a map. So I drew a map.

I said, take it to the guy down, tell them this is where they need to look. And they looked at the map, and they go, where did you get this map? And he goes, well, the guy that you guys were trying to kill is up there on the hill looking for the two pilots. And they said, well, we went into that area. He says, so far we found 127 remains. We're still missing over 100. Yeah. And how many died after that battle, we don't know.

They died in the hospitals and stuff. And the place didn't turn. It turned out to be a hospital. Where the hoochers were and everything. It turned out to be a hospital from. people getting injured on the Hoachman Trail. I just wish they would have let us go. I don't know why they don't just let you go in there and just get the, you know,

get the bodies out and leave, you know? Why lose all those people over two dead Americans or something, you know? Yeah. To me, it doesn't make sense. Jim, do you have any opinions or speculation about, like, the 1,500-plus Americans left, you know, that were MIA or POWs? do you have and I don't want to put you on the spot if you don't

but if you have any opinions or speculations about some of that it'd be interesting to hear Oh there we go I think a lot of the people I think a lot of them died in prison camp I think a lot of them died on their way to the prison camp you know especially guys who are wounded if they bled out there and aren't going to carry the body

they're probably just going to leave it on the side of the trail but I believe that when they did that was that Operation Welcome Home or Yeah, yeah. Welcome home or whatever. Homecoming.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. When they brought all those prisoners back to the states, well, there was POW camps in South Vietnam. There was POW camps in Cambodia and POW camps in Laos. You can bet that they didn't have

communications going back and forth. So, you know, it might have taken a week or so to get some. So when they brought all those people and brought all those POWs back, there was probably a lot of people left in those prison camps and who knows what happened to them you know because the enemy said that

you know the NBA said that we gave you everybody we had you know and if somebody popped up they're not going to lose face they're probably just going to take them out right there right so and which is really tragic so I really believe that there was quite a few left behind the prison camps from in the other countries and they just killed him which is sad.

Yeah. I hate to say that because, you know, because people may be listening. Yeah. But, but, yeah, I mean, it's pretty tragic. Yeah. And the sad thing is that at the end that the Easter offensive, I guess, was the last big push they were doing coming across the DMZ to go into South Vietnam. And that was going to be their last big push.

They were going to, the enemy was going to give up. They were going to end the war and we would have won. and then the U.S., you know, listening to all the hippies and everything and trying to keep their votes so they can stay in office and they threw the towel in. But, you know, that's really tragic. And they're still doing it. You know, look at Biden just did over in the sandbox.

There are, you know, 13 guys killed right off the bat, leaving over 100 Americans there. It's just tragic. Yeah. Our country's freaking gone down the tubes. So, yeah. Let me see, what else can we talk about? Well, a bit more about, you know, your quote-unquote retirement.

So you still fly around and you still collect meteorites. What's that about? What I do is I find that locations, you know, I like, they call it cold hunting when you just go out in the desert and just look. If you can find a new string field, that'd be pretty good. Some meteorites are worth a lot of money. In general, most of the old meteorites are found. are roughly like anywhere from one to $10 a gram. And a gram is about the size of a pea, a little green pea.

And so if you can find one that's, they have different types of categories. You've got iron meteorites, but iron meteorites are usually 5% that comes through the atmosphere are iron. And they usually come down in large quantity. You know, if you look at the Sikodilin that came out of Russia, there's one called Campo de Chiello out of Argentina. There's a huge. The one that hit Meteor Creators, a big iron media, right? It's called Canyon Diablo. But those usually come down in big, huge masses.

But the stone ones that come down, like the one that went in the Russia, a few years, that was called, I can't think right off the top of my head. But when those come down, you know, like, well, let's say the one that came down in Sudan, It was called Almohadacita, which is Arabic for Station 6. That one, when it came down, it was about the size a little bit bigger than a Volkswagen. And when it hit the atmosphere, when it, by the time it hit on the ground, it was about the, if you put it all together, it'd be about the size of a grapefruit. Wow. It burns up coming through the atmosphere quite a bit.

Right. And when you see a meteor coming through the sky and you see it, you know, flashing like this. Yep. like that it's breaking up it's traveling about 17,000 18,000 miles an hour so when it hits the atmosphere it's like hitting concrete

it's like hitting the ocean so what it's doing is that the air can't get away from it fast enough in the front and it just breaks it up it just breaks it up as it's coming in you know goes all that and the air gets thicker it's it's harder it's hitting the meteorite harder

so it just something comes down in pieces and so some of these ones that are not iron or worth quite a bit of money actually all of them can be if you find a new iron one it'd be worth some money if one that comes in if you get it like within a you know most of them they pick them up within a week the guys they do a lot there's a lot of research you can do and you go out there and you find that those are worth no less than a hundred dollars a gram yeah when they first got but if you get something like there was one that come the Sutter's mill that came down in california a few years ago those are called carbonaceous

condrites and they have a lot of carbon in them carbonaceous though that one went for about two thousand dollars a gram wow wow yeah yeah so uh most lunar meteorites if they're new and you don't have a lot of it or martian meteorites uh those are worth about a thousand dollars a gram what they what they do is when a meteor uh comes through and hits the moon or hits mars there's very low gravitational pull there. So it splashes, and it calls the rocks to go out. And the further they go out, they just keep going out into space.

So when they're floating around space, what they do is they get close to Earth and they get pulled into the gravity. And so if you find, one of the biggest areas for meteorites is in the Sahara Desert, North Africa. It's called Northwest Africa. If you go on eBay and look for meteorites, you see NWA, Northwest Africa, and you'll see a number. And that number, because there's so many of them,

because the, what they call the bedelin, the run around the camels? Bedouins? Bedouins, yeah. When they're running around, they find them. And they just put them in bags, and they take them into, like, Morocco, and the dealers there will buy them from them.

And then, like, guys on myself, will buy them from the guys in Morocco. And then we sell them over them. What I'd like to do is just go to Morocco, just buy them, bring them back, and sell them wholesale to the, the meteorite dealers here. Yeah.

Are there any really interesting myths, legends, conspiracies, you know, anything around sort of the meteorite community that like a normie, like, Jacari, like, that we wouldn't know about? Yeah, there's lots of different categories of meteorites. You know, if you take, there's an iron one called the A-Taxite. and it's like looking at the core of the earth. And it takes millions of years for these things to cool down. So when they're going around out in space and stuff, as you get further away from that core,

you start getting what's called a Widman-Statin pattern, and it crystallizes. When it cools down over the millions of years, it crystallizes. So you get a real fine, it's called a fine woodman-satin pattern to a medium to a, to a, to a, a coarse. The one that came down in Russia, the iron one there, that was, of course,

they call it an octahedrite. So it was a coarse one. But as you get into the stone, as you get further close to the mantle, you're getting all these stones. And you'll get meteorites that have iron meteorites that have avaline or peridocrystals in them.

And as you go further, you start getting rock with olivine crystals in it. Or you get what's called the mesociderite, which is it's got a lot of iron swirled in it. you know and then when you get to the what my opinion is when you get to the mantle on the outside you know the crust then you're going to get into carbonaceous chondrites so and you know a lot of the scientists say that the asteroid belt was a planet that never formed but i would say probably a majority of the guys probably think that it was a planet that they collided it might

have been going the other direction and it collided and it blew up and you got the fine ones that forming the rings around Saturn, then you got the asteroid belt. And so every once in a while, one will hit another one and it kick it out of the gravitational pull, and it'll float out in the space, and then it gets close to Earth and it lands here, or hits the moon or hits some other planet. Has there ever been an element discovered from a meteor that we haven't encountered on? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's how you could.

That's how we know how, see, we've been to the moon, so we know what elements are on the moon, and we've got, you know, devices, you know, on Mars that's sending back all kinds of information so we know what elements are there. And there are elements that we don't have on Earth, so we actually know where they're coming from. They believe they've got some that came from Mercury, but we've never been to Mercury, so we don't know for sure. Interesting. Yeah, so it's kind of a guesstimate. Yeah. But, yeah, there's the Carbonaceous are worth quite a bit of money, if you can find.

They're really nice. There's one called the C-1. I had four and a half grams of it, and it broke, so I kept one gram, and I sold three and a half grams. I set it to a gal up in Colorado, and she sold it for me because she knows a lot of heavy hitters around the world. And my share was $3,500. But what I did is I traded it. I left to keep the money, and I took it. I got the Alamadocita, the Station 1, out of sedan.

And then I got a piece of the Tucson ring, which is a famous media right here in Tucson. They don't know. My guess is it's in Mexico. But a guy, a blacksmith found it, and he used it as an anvil. And it's sitting in Smithsonian now. But I had a piece about the size of a quarter. And I had a hard time trying to sell it. So I just gave that one to Ann Black up in.

She's got it's Impactica as the name of her company. And she's selling that one for me. but it's probably worth about $2,500, $3,000, about the size of a quarter. That's amazing. And who, like, who buys these generally? Is it, like, officinados and collectors, or do laboratories buy these also?

Some of the labs will buy them, but most of the meteor hunters like myself, we donate them. You know, I'll go to ASU with, what's his name? Lawrence Garby is the curated for the meteorites up there. He's well known. And Lawrence and our friends. So what I do is if I find something that he might not have or I need it evaluated, I go up there and I'll call him up and he'll say, I'll come down and get you.

And he'll take me up to the area where they have their big lab. And they've got a huge lab. I mean, it's huge. They've got every kind of meteorite you can think of up there. But I'll give them to him. And I donate a lot of meteorites to the Vatican. I have to ask, Jim, you know, I want to follow up about the batting. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah. But, like, how do you even find a media right? Like, you're describing things that are the size of a quarter or even smaller. I mean, how do you even find that? Well, that's a slice. That's a slice. When they found the Tucson ring, it's a big ring. And the guy used it as an anvil.

There was a piece that stuck out in the middle of the ring. Okay. And they cut it off. And then they sliced it up. And they sent it to all the labs around the world. and the universities and stuff to evaluate it and study it. But I mean, how do you even go about finding them in the desert in the first place? This guy, it was on the ground.

A lot of the stone meteorites, you can find around on top of the ground. Really? Okay. Yeah, they don't make, you know, the one that can hit the meteor crater, that was probably the size of two double-wide 60-foot trailers, you know, that came in there. And my guess is it's still down at the bottom. I think it blew down the dirt covered over it. But you can go up there and, you know, it belongs to the Beringer family. It's called the Beringer Crater is the real name of it.

And it's on a lease to the U.S. government. And they made it a national site so people can go and visit it. But it still belongs to the Beringer Crater, Berenger family. And they live in Flagstaff, Arizona. But you can't go out there and hunt. They don't want people out there because a good hunter will dig up the ground and look for it. They take a metal detector and they can find it, and then they dig it up. sometimes it's a bullet or a slug or something, or it could be a meteorite.

So, but a lot of times they get so pissed, they don't fill in the hole. So what happens is cattle through, they step in it, they break their leg. Right. So now they don't want anybody there. Yeah. And I've actually found cattle out there, out by Tombstone, Arizona. I've been out there hunting, and I've actually found cattle, and you've seen they've got a broken leg where they stepped up for a hole. So fill us in about how you sell meteorites to the Vatican, or donate them to the Vatican.

I don't sell them to them. What I do is I go to the U of A, University of Arizona up in Tucson, and they have a lot of the, what do you call them, astrophysicists up there. And it's a big meteorite. Arizona State and ASU are big meteorite colleges. So they, what I'm up, what I do is I go to lunch with these astrophysicists because they're more about the space stuff and they're kind of interested when I bring a meteorite

and show them and explain the meteorite to them because they know a lot about meteorite. Brother Guy Consumannio who's the curator for the meteorites for the Vatican, he's now in charge of it. But the brother Bob Mackie is the new curator, and we all know each other. But we go have lunch, and we'll sit and talk. you know

brother guy didn't have any the one from Murchison out of Australia which actually had 22 amino acids in it and it's a carbonaceous chondri. So he didn't have any so I brought about three or four of them up there

and I gave him a thin slice so you can look under a microscope and I said take whatever one you want and so him and I became good friends in that and so every once and while I find one I got a list of of all those meteorites that he has. So if he doesn't have it and I find one,

I'll donate it to him. And he does a lot of studying. He does a lot of research on meteorites. Yeah, it's going to ask, like, why is the Vatican so keen on meteorites? They have their own research facility, scientific pursuits? Well, you know, I'm a Christian. And so when I had lunch with Brother Guy, he'll ask me, how do you feel about science and,

and Christianity and meteorites and stuff. And I told them, I says, well, you know, science is a study of how God put it all together. Right. You know, that's the way I look at it. So, but they, if you, there's a Mount Graham just north of here about, I don't know, about 150 miles or so. And there's a big telescope on top of them out.

program. It's actually the Vatican. Oh, really? And that's how I know Bob Backe and Brother Guy. Yeah, because if it's cloudy, they'll come on down and have luncheas on Mondays when we get together. Yeah, so that's how I met

him. But when brother and I get together, we usually talk about old black and white movies and stuff. Yeah. You mentioned these amino acids in an asteroid. Have you met with like astrobiologists and people like that who study this stuff?

Yeah, I've probably got, I don't know, 50 or 60 books on meteorites, you know, that I've read. And I read a lot of science books. I really don't read novels. I read mostly science books. I just finished one on transgenderism. It's called The End of Sex. No, The End of Gender. The End of Gender by Dr. Deborah Soe.

And she's a sexologist that got into all that stuff. and so the book's about yea thick but I went ahead and I just finished it yesterday and I was doing laundry so I was sitting there reading all my laundry so I finally finished it but so but I read a lot of books like that I read an awful lot like right now I'm reading a book on

MRI of their hand and wrist to refresh my memory yeah you know because you can't when you're radiologist you can't know everything yeah you gotta know where to look that's the big secret you got to know where to look have you talked to any like any astrobiologist about their thoughts

of finding things like amino acids or these, like, these things in, like, what do they say about, about, or what are their theories about, like, extraterrestrial life and whatnot? Oh, I think it's kind of silly to think that we're the only humans or the only living people or whatever in the universe. I mean, you look at all those stars out there are sons like our son. Right. And, I mean, heck, what is it, 120?

thousand light years across our galaxy or something like that. Right. And there's galaxies out there's millions of galaxies out there, billions of them. Right. So yeah, to think that we're the only ones out here, it'd be kind of crazy. But I'm just curious in terms of like what they've found in asteroids or what they've found. Amino acids are like the building blocks of the building block of, right? Yeah.

So like, well, they don't believe that carbonacea chondrites are actually at the crust of another planet that might have. exploded. They think it's a different kind of a carbon than what we know is carbon, like charcoal. We think it's different. But it's really, it's black just like, like, when a meteorite, when a stony meteorite comes in and it hits the ground, it actually bounces along the ground. And you can pick them right up. They're not hot, like people think. And there's no radioactive activity coming off of a deer. You can just pick them up. But what you do is you put them in tinfoil because you know, you don't want to, you don't want to disturb the, what's on there. It'll pick up dirt on the ground, obviously. But then you put it in tinfoil,

and then you can give it to a scientist, and they can evaluate it. And they'll tell you what kind of meteorite it is. Because you have like H's and L's. H means there's more iron flakes in the stone than an L has low iron flakes in the stone. Yeah. And then they have, like there's one that came down in Holbrook, Arizona, and it's an L-L-L-6, and the six is more like the little condols and that kind of thing in there, but the L-L mean ultra, or very low metal in it. But up there, there's so much metal in the ground and salts on the ground, you can't really use a metal detector. You've got to use your eyesight.

Yeah. And I found them up there. You can walk around. You can find them. After a rainstorm, they might be sitting on the surface, so you can find them. They usually come up on the surface. You never notice, like, if you make it. ground nice and smooth and after a rainstorm while the rocks are on the surface.

Yeah. It's kind of like that. They come to the surface. Interesting. My first me, right, was 678 grams. I found it up in Franconia. It came down about 7,000 years ago. And it was named after a train station called Franconia. And it's long gone now, but they still call it that. But I found it 13 inches under the ground. And I just got done digging up a 50-calibre slug. and I went around the bush and I got the same signal again and I go it's probably but you got to dig it up so I dug it up all of a sudden I started seeing rusty soil

and I'm going whoa and I got down a little deeper and I pulled it out of the ground wow I just gave it to my granddaughter that's very cool so such an interesting like passion yeah yeah yeah it's interesting yeah it's and I got a really close buddy in New York the the medical doctor's world renowned yeah he's really big into meteorites and he's written books on how he thinks life came to the earth because he thinks that life might have come here by C1 chondrites which is carbonation chondrite and there's only been three of them ever found you know they find pieces of it but only three

falls and i had two of the falls but i just kept the one piece i had over 400 different falls in my collection and it was just getting ridiculous yeah so i just kept different classes. Yeah. And just sold the rest off for Donated. Do we have any questions for Jim? Let me check. Do we have anything on Patreon, Andy?

Oh, yeah. We just want to see. We probably have some viewer questions for you, Jim, that I want to get to. Oh, yeah, that's great. I love fewer questions. You know, one thing we haven't done, these guys haven't done. Oh, cheers. Yeah, let me get a little more.

What are you drinking tonight, Jim? You know what? I had some provostier earlier, and it didn't go down right. So this is more creamy. It's Kalua. Nice. I love Klua. Cheers.

Yeah, what do you got, Dave? Yeah, sure. All right. We have from Joel, given we might have to fight in East Asia again and are hardwired for desert mountain warfare. What are some of the younger service members slash veterans need to know about the theater, the terrain, and potential adversaries that isn't talked about? now. What is he actually asking?

What's the terrain like back then and what it is now? I guess what he's asking is like because we're like we're not ready exactly. Like if we had to go back into Southeast Asia militarily. Yeah. What did you think maybe some lessons lost might be because now because we've been focused on like more desert warfare. Well, you know, that's kind of interesting because when we were going to Vietnam, you know, we were learning all the stuff from World War II. in Korea. And I think a lot of the guys that were training up for desert warfare before the war actually broke out,

they were learning a lot of Vietnam stuff. So if there's another war that breaks out, I think in between, I think we got enough knowledge now. They should have enough knowledge just from Africa, you know, during World War II. But I think that I think if we get into another war right now, we're going to be in trouble because our country is really weak with this woke garbage. and stuff. It's just insane. It's crazy what's going on now. So they would definitely be in trouble. I don't know any other way to answer that because the young guys, you know, right. You know, when I went through, it was when I went out into the jungle, I just wore my shirt, half the time my shirt was open because it's like 120 degrees in that triple canopy.

And we didn't wear any protection. I wore a cavada on my hair to hide my red hair. You can darken your face if you want, but, you know, it's just going to melt. It's just going to sweat off. But, you know, today, I don't know how the guys do it today going around that sandbox with all this gear on them and stuff. In that temperature, I don't know how they do it. So it's totally different. Do you think anything else for Jim? Yeah.

Let's see here. Okay. Actually, we just one from Corbyn. Thanks, many. Thanks, buddy. He said, hit the like us. I have a couple. I have a couple.

Okay. From M. Corbyn, will the public ever know the names of all the P.O.Ws, MIAs from the Vietnam conflict that supposedly never existed? Yes. You can find those names now. They got the names of all the people that are missing in Laos, Cambodia. We couldn't talk about it for, I think it was 20 or 30 years. And then Johnny Plaster came out with his book, you know, Commandos or whatever it was.

and Johnny and I, we were at CCC together. But, yeah, now you can, it's all been opened up now, and if you research it, you'll find the names of all the people that are missing. Yeah. One more from Jimbo. Did you ever use or work with conventional Army dust off? Regular Army dust off? In Vietnam, I did, yeah.

A regular Army, the Charbers were coming. We had guys wounded when I was out there on Frank Mill. You know, Frank Miller, the Medal of Audor recipient. Yeah, him and I served together at A502. And he, if you read his book, Reflections of a Warrior, I think it was, he's talking about a guy named Carlson that was killed. And that happened right outside my camp, my outpost. And so we brought him in, and we got him on a dust off, but he didn't make it.

He passed away. Kind of a sad story. It didn't go down the way Frank put it in the book. but Frank was, he was your Rambo. He was really quite a guy. If you got in trouble, you either want Frank Bill to come after you or you want Bob Howard to come after you. Is there any, those guys were good? Is there any possible of a Jim Shorten book? Yes, I'm working on a book now. I'm in a bunch of books. I'm in like 16 books. Yeah.

You know, even the radiology books, I'm in it, you know. I published like 30 papers and stuff. But, yeah, I'm working on a book. I want to do a couple of children's books. Cool. And I want to do one on COBRA84. I want to do one on SOG, one of my life story, you know, and maybe one on Vietnam. I want to do one of PJs too because there's very few books out there on Prarescue. Yeah.

Yeah, I hope you do. Jim, when you guys were going out, you know, whether it was when you're with SF or when you moved on to CCN, And what was your standard carry? Did you have flexibility? Like, did you have a standard carry? We controlled everything. We took the weapons we wanted. We went in the way we wanted.

We were the ones fighting. The guys in camp didn't know how to fight. They might have fought in career or something like that. They're older guys. But the recon guys, they pretty much ran the show for themselves. How I wanted to go in, how many people I want to take with. me like on the three-man bright light I just took two other guys myself yeah you know they don't say oh don't do that you know but I carried about I would say between 30 and

36 magazines I carried a five-court bladder and a canteen and water on my on my side I had the bladder in my backpack and we had this little tiny rucksack and I'd put a a camouflage parachute panel in it in case it got really cold. And let me see. I had, I put five cans of peaches in there. All the missions were usually five days.

Yeah. Most of them lasted anywhere from one to three days because you got in, you got in contact. But I put the cans in there, and that's all eight, was one can of peaches a day. Wow. And that kept me going. But I was a young guy then, you know, so.

And you chose whatever weapon you want. And the car 15 that we had, that was probably the best little weapon. When I was down at P53, I carried a Swedish cave one time. That was an interesting story. When I was down there, we were sitting in the RON, and we heard noise coming through, coming towards us. And so, you know, the Swedish cave fires from an open boat. So I took it off and got ready. And all of a sudden, the bushes opened up and a tiger walked in.

Wow. He just walked in. He just walked in. He just looked at us, actually looked at me, and then he just backed out and walked away. That's insane. Yeah. Really kind of funny.

Yeah. Yeah, I carried a Newsy one time, and one time I carried a silenced doozy. I had a stand gun that was silenced as well. That was really a nice silence weapon to stand gun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you take a little piece of leather and you put it between the boat and the chamber.

So when the boat comes down, the leather will keep it quiet. Damping it. Yeah, as long as it still seats around. Yeah. Jim, thank you so much for spending your Friday evening with us and telling us about your story. You had a really incredible career in life. And, you know, when your book comes out, let us know. We'd love to have you on the show again to talk about it.

Yeah, I'd love to. And for folks out there next Friday, we're going to have another Vietnam veteran on. Herschel Davis served in the Navy. SEALs for a good long time. Oh, very cool. Yeah. I worked quite a bit of the Navy SEALs. Oh, really?

When I was in the Reserves, we did a raid on Angel Island. We did a raid on Alcatraz with the SEAL Team 1. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, and yeah, they're a great bunch of guys. Man, I love the SEAL. They're a great bunch of guys. That was after Alcatraz was shut down.

You guys used that as a training site? Yes. It was right after the movie Gontlop was filmed on it. You know, when they blew up that, because all the rubble was still there from when they blew that tower. The Glocklet? You mean the Cuen Eastwood movie? Yeah.

Yeah. That's funny. And the SEALs, the SEAL team was that they were their security and they had a guy in the prison. So what we did is, we came down underneath the Golden Gate and Hueys, like four feet off the water, came up instead of diversion. And then all the SEALs came to battle us out because they thought we were coming. And so we had another chopper coming from the south side. They went in and took the guy out of prison and got him out of there. I lived on that one, but we did one on Agile Island, and the seals, man, they just kicked my, they cleaned my butt.

They killed me. Yeah, yeah. We had another deal with the Navy SEALs out in Texas where they had a missile, and we had to go in and get the missile. We got the missile out, and we had to kick. And that was an amazing mission. We had Spectre over us, and they were 10,000 feet up in the air, and our team leader goes, hey, do you have us? and he goes move we moved about not even 10 feet i got 13 guys and they they picked from cattle yeah it was cattle out the field yeah there was uh tex out there and we managed to go through there

and they actually saw every one of us from 10,000 feet that's amazing it was amazing yeah yeah Jim anything you want to tell people about a promote or a website you want to send people to before we get going for the evening um I wish I could think of, oh, if you want to check out a cool with the Navy Swimmer, I mean, Coast Guard Swimmer. He's really a great guy, and it's called Rescue. Our Quest, Rescue, rescue, it's a, rescue, it's with a cue at the end. And if you look at him, that would help him out quite a bit. He's over in Saudi Arabia.

And one of my PJ brothers was over there and told him about me, and he had me on the show. But they're both over. The other guy's working as what do you call those guys that as civilians, got out of parerexcue, and he's working rescue over there. And you mentioned the pararescue reunions, but you're also involved with the Special Operations Association? Yeah. In fact, they just contacted me the other day. They want me to, you know, they have a scholarship foundation.

and they were looking for people to read the essays that people write in to try and get their scholarship. And so I said, yeah, I'll be more than happy to help you with that. And the next thing I know, they had me fill out the paperwork to be the guy in charge, the chairperson. There you go. Yeah. That's a combination of being a green beret, a pararescue guy, and also an academic. Yeah, and also being in the Navy. And a former sailor, exactly.

Yeah, we can't leave that out. Absolutely. Jim, thank you again for doing this interview. Really appreciate it. And, you know, I hope to talk to you again when you start, you know, ready to publish some of these books about your life or about PJs or MacB Sog or whatever it is you get into. Yeah, we love to talk to you about it. Yeah, the kids' books, yeah. Yeah.

Well, you know, when I was raised in Colorado, I had a dog named Mush. I think I sent you a picture when I was a little kid with the dog. I think he did. Yeah. So what I want to do is write the true stories with Mush and I when we went out in the woods. I remember we came across bears We came across We had a deer come after us

Luckily the deer It was a buck And already lost his antlers You know he dropped his antlers already But he tried to butt us around Try to check my dog But it's a lot of fun stories I had at one time where I heard the pounding on the ground

And I got by a rock And the deer jumped over the rock You know coming down a hill And the rock was here And the hill went down They jumped over the rock Right over at top of us I think it'd make a great children's book

I had a lot of great stories with a dog. That sounds awesome. All right, Jim. So next Friday, Herschel Davis, Jim Shorten. Thanks again, man. And yeah, everyone out there, have a great rest of your weekend. You too. And happy St. Patrick's Day.

I'm Irish, by the way. So much. Iris, he said, born in Liverpool. All right. So have a great day. Thank you very much for the interview. Absolutely, Jim. Thank you.