The Team House - MACV-SOG Team Leader John "Tilt" Meyer: Ep. 61

Episode Date: September 26, 2020

John Meyer tells us about his time with RT Idaho doing cross border missions into Laos and Cambodia that were as secret as they were dangerous as a part of Studies and Observations Group (SOG). Get access to bonus segments with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouse SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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

and those with kids under the age of five, with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. There he is. John, I think we're alive already. I don't know how that happened. Like a bad dream. I'm back.

Let's see here. What can we do to fix you up? I'm sorry that we got off to a little bit of a pruditure start right here. Let me fix you up. Hi, guys, and welcome to the team house. Hi, Dave, how to hell are you? A long time, no C. John, it's been forever.

We haven't just had a couple technical issues, as usual. That's what happens when you get two grunts running the tech stuff. We're live right now, John, just as you know. Pretty scary, man. You know, that picture, if you take a freeze frame with that shot, you put it in your garage, you've got a one-year guarantee. All right. All right. You're going to be rodent free.

Here we are. This is episode 61 of the team house. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park. And our guest tonight is John Stryker-Mayer, old friend, and he was a 1-0, which is a team leader in Mac V-Sogg on RT Idaho. which recon team Idaho. Mac V. Saga, of course, was Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observations Group. They did some of the most dangerous operations of the war, deep behind enemy lines. They were clandestine cross-border operations into Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam. And John was one of those guys, back what, 68 to 70, John?

Great, yeah, April 68, April 69, and then October 69 to 8th,000. people 70 oh there's no sound what's going on here some people are saying they have sounds some people are saying they don't I can hear you fly by there's only one person saying no sound now there's a whole bunch of people some people are saying they have it some people are said they don't I think it's all store games okay yeah some people are saying that they got to reset their browsers yeah geez I'm sorry for the technical issues today everyone I'm not sure why things happened a little bit differently than they normally do.

But thank you, everyone, for chiming in and let me know. John, I apologize again. John is also the author of Across the Fence on the Ground in Sod Chronicles. I have one of his books right here from him. They are all worth checking out. Across the Fence is John's memoir about his own personal experiences in MacVe Sade. Terrific, terrific book. one of my favorite Vietnam memoirs.

And John, thank you again. We're so lucky to have you here today. My pleasure, Jack. And it's always good to be around some fellow combat vets. We can talk to talk a little bit better. John, I think the way we usually kick off this show, the way we usually start it. Well, in addition to the technical difficulties

and ironing everything out, is asking where you came from, how did you get your start? And we want to know your origin story. And I think maybe you can start off by telling us about where you grew up and how you got your nickname and eventually ending up in the military. Well, you know, it all began in Trenton, New Jersey. Dad was a milkman. Mom was the choir director.

And dad saw this pretty lady playing the organ, joined the choir. And before we knew it, they're married. I was the first of four kids, three of which survived. And I grew up in a milk truck. in Trenton. And after graduating from high school, it took me two years to flunk out of college. After I flunked out of college, I was working in Yosemite National National Park. And my dad said, hey, you flunked out, get ready for the draft work. We had the draft back then. And I read the book, The Green Berets by Robin Moore. I said, that's it. If I'm going to war, I want to go with these guys. They sound crazy.

and went through i went down and listed and um the rest of history went through uh got in basic basic advanced infantry jump school and during advanced infantry back then you could volunteer for special forces and they give you the battery of test and the recruitment sergeing at the end of it all goes i'm the last one he goes mire you're lucky we lowered the standards As a millionaire, we went through the programs, and then we had some TDI on RTT before we went to NOM. And then went to NOM, had the in-country training afterwards. They said there's a project looking for volunteers. And me and Johnny McIntyre and so many other guys, we all signed up.

Welcome to McVeigh-A-Og. And, of course, you're familiar with a story from across the fence where we flew into F. B-1, get off the helicopter and Spike Team Idaho. In 68, we were called spike teams. Idaho got on, disappeared, never to be heard from again. And so there's two Americans, Glenn Lane and Robert Owen, are amongst the 50 plus green berets that are still missing in action and layhouse today. So there was an instant opening in RECON.

Spider Parks was there, Spider and I had gone through training group together, and he became a 10 and we had to hire some more Vietnamese, trained for month, dealt with the monsoons, and then we started running missions in August of 68. John, can you explain that a little bit? Like in T, Spike Team Idaho just like disappeared. I mean, there were SOG teams that inserted and never made their first comms window, right? I mean, just like disappeared into the ether. Can you say that again?

I was just asking if you could explain a little bit about SOG teams. like Spike Team Idaho that just disappeared into the ether. Like there were some that inserted and never made their first comms window, if I recall correctly. Correct. Usually most made the first comma, but at 68, by May of 68, which this was, it was like around May 22nd, 23rd, Idaho went in to give a team okay and they were never heard from again. And the bright light went in two days later and George Thurneberg, Mike Tucker and Perry Mike Perry went in and they ran they made instant contact with the NBA the NBA had a car 15s and they had F-26 frag grenades one of which blew off the boots of

George Sternberg and so everybody was wounded some critically and they had one team member that was KIA on that and they left him into bomb crater and now at that point Idaho was the sixth or seventh team that had been wiped out in 68 already. And so sometimes the team would be on the ground. And in Idaho's case, apparently they got hit pretty quick. And then we had a team like Galabama where everybody's wiped out except the 1-0. John Allen escaped and E&E for three days. And then they saw them in the ashaw.

Somebody was able to see his panel and picked them up. So there's a team that, you know, for all intents and purposes, it was wiped out. The saving grace was that John survived. So 68 was a pretty ugly year. And that was only May. And that was the opening onto which you walked onto a recont team. Yes, sir. Welcome to the Secret War.

What did you know about SAG at that time that, you know, you're walking in there? I mean, it was super classified at the time. I don't think John Q. Public knew about it until what the 1990s. What did you know as a young Green Beret? Nothing. I'm dumb as I look. You know, we went in there and you volunteer for the project. And then, you know, it's a funny part was at the 16 months of training, Jack, you know how you break your pad out, you got your pencils or pen.

So here we are at the briefing. We all break our pads and pencils out. And we're sitting there going, okay, let's go. The sergeant beers, put that shit away. This is a top secret briefing. Whoa, that got our undivided attention right there. And we never looked back. We went through the briefing, and he told everybody,

if you don't want to, now is the time to leave. But nobody left. And so we hung in there, went through the process, got the briefing, and the next day, we flew up to FOB1. And that's when we had that little exchange where we lost Lane and Spike Team Idaho. Did they, how much information, I mean, obviously it was a classified project, how much information did they give you at the briefing? And did they give you an indication of like obviously in Vietnam, everything was a risk, but the higher level of risk that it entailed? Well, they told us it was high risk, but you know, when you're as green as we were, we're greener than grass.

Right. Who knows? And the fun thing that we've heard from other people was when they give you the briefing, the Sergeant Major, after you sign the documents, he pulls the map down. And there on the map, there's South Vietnam, and all it has is the cities. then across the fence and layoffs in Cambodia, there's target boxes, 10 by 10 by 10. And that would, that was each target, some more deadly than others. And that gave you a sense of what this is all about. And it was really an eye-opener.

And again, don't talk about it. And that's the way it was. I mean, we had teams that would do almost identical. missions but unless the team members at the pub talked about they would never know yeah and we had that happen a couple times and in fact jack the book with a pitcher on it we were going to go into a mission the mugia pass and that's what we're getting expected for by general stillwell he was the commander for i-core which vietnam was divided in four cores i'd be in northern most so we were getting ready to go into Laos, northern Laos, at the reunion about 10 years ago.

Some guy looks at the book and goes, hey, I remember that mission. You guys were out there taking pictures and I was making fun of you guys. And baby son, you know, and he said, what was that mission about? So I told him, he goes, you're kidding. He said, they came to our team. They told us to do it. We told him it was a suicide mission. We said, hell no, we ain't going.

So they shopped it around until they found some guys who were willing to take it on. They found the knucklehead. Yeah, me. John, what was, I mean, I don't want to belabor it too much because I think this audience has some familiarity. But can you talk a little bit about the various missions that SOG had because it wasn't just RECON. Right. Well, the reason why we had the secret war is because our government had agreed to not have combat troops in Laos or Cambodia. And there was a there was some kind of accord

reached on it and the North Vietnamese being the honorable communist dogs that they were had the same agreement. But by 1968 there were 25 to 35,000 NBA in Laos alone, plus the indigenous for the folks that had to cooperate with them, work on the trails, keep them open, if they They heard helicopters. They had to report the helicopters and where they landed. And same thing was true in Cambodia, where by 69, they had 100,000 troops. And we weren't allowed to have anybody there. So our hands are tied.

So our job was to go in, A, find him, see what they're up to, do wiretats, POWS because as you know, the best source for Intel is a live P.O.W. you. They can tell you what's what. I mean, it may take a little extra convincing that had them to talk to you, but, and you know, they were dedicated. We had one of our guys, in fact, it was the troll. They had picked up two POWs, got him into the helicopter, and they were checking them for weapons and hand grenades. Well, it turned out that one of the POWs they had picked up was a woman. well they were shocked and now remember during the h 34 which had a longer passenger compartment to it than a yui and they were in the back of the helicopter with her when they saw it was a woman they were like

oh my god and there was like momentary pause but they let go over she turned around ran and jumped right out the door holy fuck oh yeah these are there there are there are serious about the mission and that that's these were nvia take it say again the nvada yes north eastern these are army the vectors that came down from the south through the hoachiman trail yeah hard course yeah and that's the way they bring the supplies down and our job was also to monitor that and sometimes the uh we had teams down in the cartoon that would put in roadblocks and then they back it up the air force would come in and knock a bunch of them out uh the trucks and transport just to interdeck but never ending battle uh i wanted to ask you about the what you had

mentioned about the po w snatches because you and um it was lynn black right you developed the kind of like ingenious method to uh snatch a p o w off the hoachingan trail or an enemy po w epw i indeed well the key thing the the key thing that we were debating and trying to refine was like with how do you have a kill zone with claymores and you get one person alive right so the theory was have a hunk of c4 in the dead center of the kill zone and then the claymore's would fan out so that there would be four or five foot section in that kill zone where the ball bearings from the claymores would not kill them. But the question was, how big of a piece of C4?

Is it two inches, four inches? So, I can't take credit for this. We talked about the concept, but good old Lynn Black, Lynn Maurice Black Jr. He worked on this, and he blown it up. So one day he did it. He put the certain amount, I figured what the amount was down.

was too long ago but a certain amount of C4 put it down at six feet away because that's what we planned everything was at six feet in the jungle and he blew it knocked himself out it worked perfect so he came back to base going hey i figured it out his hair was all blown out of place and he's talking really loud because he couldn't hear a damn thing he damaged his he used himself as the test subject for this say again did he use himself as the test subject for this he did he use himself as the test subject for this he He blew himself up literally. And so he was so proud of the fact that he figured it out and it worked. I mean, it was a really good tactic.

And so with that improvement and with that cut of C4, we practiced setting up, establishing the ambush and tearing it down quickly. And because, you know, November, we had a perfect ambush set up, just like that. Had everything set up with the C4. And then, of course, we got socked in. We had to pull it back, and we were on the ground for five days and five nights with them hunting for us, with dogs and everything else. And did you have the opportunity to use that technique?

I did not. Other teams did, and it worked. Really? Yes. Yeah, it's funny, because we had the ambush set up twice. The first time, we had to pull it down because we got socked in. You know, we had been on the ground maybe three or four hours. had the thing set up

and we had moved far off of the LZ normally we would move 10 and 10 we'd move 10 minutes wait 10 minutes blah blah blah here I didn't want to wait we went straight up this hill for almost an hour

and wore the guys out we got to a big trail Croster got to the other side put up the ambush and it was beautiful it was a perfect insertion and when Spider came back for a combo check I gave him code hey we'll have a P oW for us so with that code he would then call the assets we would blow it

and then meet everybody at the LZ with a lot POWW so I gave him the code and spider goes don't breathe don't fart don't do anything I'm at 10,000 feet I can't see the mountain you're on let alone find you an LZ and that was the beginning of a long night and they came after us with dogs and everything else and the other time we were in Cambodia and we had a perfect damn bus set up and they pulled us out because of a of a political thing with the prince complaining yeah well over willie pete right oh yeah yeah so weird like you're in the middle of a war you're doing a technically illegal cross-border operation well yeah i mean to top it off i mean the mission that mission our six-man recont team mission was to go find three NVA divisions, 10,000 each, the first, the third, and the seventh NBA divisions. So, hey, we went, we found them. We barely got out of there alive, and we used the five-second fuse on our clay moors as we

E&E back to the primary LZ. And had it not been for those claymowers and quick response on assets, we'd be Cambodian fertilizer today. Yeah. And yeah, we were pissed. We left. We gave them a little silver near, a little white process. And they filed a formal complaint with the U.S. government.

They weren't concerned about the 50,000 NVA. No problem there. But that damn Willie Pete pissed him off. And that would have put me over the top, too. That's just too much there, John. I agree. I was highly disturbed, Jack. And again, I was only in E4.

I didn't have a clout in that world. Some of the other missions that SAG had, I want to talk about eldest son and the wiretapping. the induction cables that that stuff's really interesting i think yeah well wire taps were were interesting because the again this is uh 1968 and we had a they gave us a cassette player and we had a cassette i think we may have even had a highly advanced 90 minute cassette and what the cia told us was and we had from that cassette we had a wire that we trained our little people or south vietnamese to climb up the telephone poles or a tree climb up tap into the wire

come back down they covered a wire with mud so anybody walking past that we wouldn't see it and then we turned on the tape recorder right away we wouldn't wait whether we heard somebody or not because the cia said if you record bring it back we'll amplify it a hundred times because the nva telephone lines were open all the time whether in the cradle or not like you the American phone it goes off. So we did that a few times and then the POW snatched, well you heard about those and then for the eldest son, that was where we carried ammo that was rigged to explode and it was enemy ammo. So it would be round 7.62 for the AK47s and the SKS as well as the 82 millimeter mortar rounds.

And we would carry those on a mission. Now, sometimes, like on November 30th, there was a specific mission where they had a team of volunteers that went together, seven Americans and a king bee flew towards layoffs. And the mission was to put in a whole load of Elda Sun because they found a cachet. They were going to go in and mix the stuff in and put some more around. Well, that helicopter got blown out of the sky. and we lost seven SF guys plus the entire helicopter crew that day on an eldest son mission. Ordinarily, on our missions, we would always carry at least at minimum the AK-47 rounds. And then we go along the trail, maybe drop a couple, find a trail.

We wouldn't walk on a trail if you crossed it, go up and down, leave a little bit. Or if we ever found an enemy cachet, stick it in there. And that was the long and shore. And we heard amazing reports back. And later, years later, we saw photos on people that had used the rounds to their detriment. John, when you talk about, like, the, sorry, the POW or the, you know, the extraction technique that you developed and then other teams use it successfully, what was training like and how much, you said that you didn't really share missions. But how did the teams interact when it came to, you know, TTPs when it came to, and how did your training in SF or AIT, you know, the advanced infantry and then SF differ from what you learned on the ground with, you know, with the McVe-Sog teams and, you know, and then how did you guys spread that information? Well, one of the key things we had was that we always talked in the club afterwards.

So anytime a team would come back from a mission, we would talk about any of the tactics. ran into and that would be the for us that was the prime source of learning in the middle of 68 because there had been a training they had a training academy set up at not an academy but there was a training facility and cam duck got overrun in early may of 68 so when we landed 68 it's shut down and we were on our own plus we had senior NCOs who had been there for a while we would talk to them. And, you know, one of the things was hard, it was always hard to find LZs.

So we pioneered this whole rope extraction. And again, it was refined. In the very beginning, it would just be a rope. Then they put a rope or a sandbag and a D-ring on it. And then our guys would just have a suede. And then by the end of 68, they had a McGuire seat that was like a big piece of leather or cloth. that had a couple hooks in it and it was something you could jump into and hook you into a little bit more quickly

but it wasn't really stable and then by 69 they had what they called a stable rig that the the straps were tied right into your web gear so that if you wanted to get extracted by ropes you would let the straight let the straps down you could hook them right in and you're ready to go quick the Swiss seat you had to put a Swiss seat on which was a six foot peter rope you know if you're familiar with that or not for repelling purposes so it goes around you know so you know about that so put the D ring in then the rope try to get it down hook in and then take off and of course as you know too well as you're getting extracted the amount of gunfire sometimes the helicopter pilots wouldn't pull you all the way out you would turn into a human pinball here and you're getting ricocheted off the trees as you getting extracted. Well, that happened to you once, John, right?

You got drug through the trees and lost a lot of your equipment? Well, yeah. First I got drug through the trees. And the reason why this was a, we had difficulty finding LZs. We camp with a new tactic of saying, let's try a daisy cutter in the middle of the jungle. So Covey went out. The first day, they found a jungle with no trails. dropped a 2,000 pound bomb and I'm starting I'm getting ready to repel well all of a sudden

there's secondary explosions on that day we had over 20 secondary explosions and to this day hochey men's trying to figure out how the hell those green berets find out about our cachet well the next day I repelled in halfway down the rope I hear them talking back and forth so I'm on the ground for a little bit just light fire m 79 but obviously they were compromised. So I canceled the mission. They came back. They pulled me out. And when I'm getting pulled out, they opened a fire on me with an AK. So I'm firing at them. And I failed to hook up my D ring. So that's the old story where we finally get out. I got drugged through the trees a little bit. So once we get some altitude, I'm holding a rope. And my arms were cut up

pretty bad and the crook of the arms and i was changing hit the air pocket turned me upside down and then the swiss seat went down on my knees so i'm signaling get down get down then all my gear came down on my throat was choking me and then it went down on my feet so i'm this you know i'm there like a new york city hooker my leg spread wide holding the seat on and i passed out and uh when i passed out luckily captain tuon the King B-piled had lowered the helicopter suddenly fell about 10 15 feet Henry King came out took off all my gear including my sod knife and my car 15 which is still in layoffs but he threw me in the helicopter holy shit so that's where I lost oh yeah S4 was not a happy camper that day

yeah you're talking your book about the the um the major the S3 major I that you guys were not too fond of and said that he was not only was he not well liked but the fact that he still had a thick German accent didn't help either right he's the only man to ever call me a coward on top of it but really he just died recently so that's the footnote for him but he's gone was he he had a experience with him was he one of the lodge acts guys yes yeah and Most of those guys were tremendous truth. Yeah, yeah. And he, to his credit, I hate to say this,

but to his credit, when he was down at Khantoon, I'm told he had done some good things down there in Recon. So I don't know that personally, but just to try to be a little bit fair and semi-bound. I hated his balls because he did some really advanced. Like, you know, we were running targets. They just wanted to get a team on the ground. We come in the morning, get a briefing,

get shot out, a primary. secondary, the alternative, they come back, eat lunch. Here's a new target. No intel report. Just get on the ground. Right. And that was him. Right. They wanted to get people on the ground. It's like, okay, that's the other side of the secret war, you know, but like itself, just a need four or one zero.

You know, and some of the accidents and misgivings aside, I do want to point out, like, you, I think you guys and the Lerp teams between the two of you, you guys were like the tactical gods out there as far as I'm concerned. turn, like you really had to have all of your shit dialed in because you're a small team on the ground behind enemy lines. These guys did not have any of the, the kind of air cover, the kind of air cover that we have today. You didn't have the kind of technology that we have today. There are no predator drones and all this ISR. And I think that's a big reason why we had to put teams on the ground, why we needed guys out there on the ground gathering reconnaissance

between that and it being a jungle environment as opposed to, you know, desert like the war, Dave and I served in. Yeah. Well, I agree with everything you said except for the air assets. We had spads. You had the A-10. And I would have liked to have had the A-10. But the spads could stay on station long.

They have more ordinance. And yes, sometimes it would be difficult making contact and triple canopy with the air assets. So that was the first part of the challenge. But once we made it, when we declared a prairie fire emergency, we would have everything from gunships, spads, fast movers, and then at night, you know, one mission, we went through four spectres and the C-130s. And they brought it within 25 feet closer. And we, you know, but they came out. There's hundreds of them that night, It may be over, well, probably a thousand. I was too busy to count, Jack.

Out of them. Like I said, we went through three or four spectres at one night. But we had good air, I said. What was it you were denied air, though? Was it in Cambodia? Correct. In Cambodia, all we were allowed was to have helicopter gunships. No spas, no fast movers.

And we had a couple teams that once it got into a real world of shit, they may have had Spector for a little while and then the Spads came over but they were really close to the border and again sometimes the border would move we'd have a border that would move when the team was really in deep it happens man it happens yeah yeah you had I mean how hard can you tell the border like in in Iraq and Iran Afghanistan who's keeping track even what are you the national geographic society over there John I don't know where that border is yeah right well what border I don't see no stinking border but if I can get some air assets in here what when you when you go dry on four gun ships what is that like for you personally when you get back to base I mean was that like oh that was a hell

of a thing or it's like okay whatever on to the next one oh well that was like Like just another day in Saug, thank God we're alive, thanks to Specter, because we were up all night. They kept coming at us, but they didn't know where we were. We were playing hide and go seek. And about 3 o'clock in the morning as we went through the fourth specter. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five, with free support services to help them on their parenting.

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

The clouds began to move in, and we lost contact, we lost visual with them, and so they came at us harder. So we would throw a hand grenade. Do you hear him coming? We'd throw a hand grenade, they scurry away. Then they would come back. Well, we were getting low on hand grenades. So Sal and Chow went out and found rocks.

and so we would throw rocks and you hear him scurry away and then you waited a while my little people could see him now I couldn't see him but Sal he could smell those folks anyways

this is the way it went for a couple of hours and then we throw a real hand grenade and you hear him dragging the bodies away and we even threw Willie Pete who were getting that low and nobody filed to complain on that one Jack but we were out there all night and then finally came in the morning they got us when they pulled us out we did extensive air cover

around the lz and they came in and we went out with minimal gunfire but there were buku blood trails we lost a lot of people yet we never heard them exclaim or anybody that that'd be me shot by specter i would have been howling like a dog but it's uh this guys were amazing you know the interview we did last week with john cronan he was a force recon marine um where was he quatrang i'm i'd have to go back i'm sorry i can't remember exactly black rifle coffee company john no no john cronan okay uh his forced recon guy but he was telling us how when he was in recon they uh would get hit by the nva and it would be a huge firefight but as the spookiest damn thing because when dawn came in the morning, they had recovered all of their dead already.

There were no bodies and it was almost like, you know, it had not happened. The firefight had not happened. You said it was just the creepiest thing. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was always amazed. I mean, and there was a couple of missions where we stacked up the bodies high. And we were busy getting out. But that mission in particular, it was daylight and what we could see were blood trails.

no bodies again because we had i told the guys to look for a body because you know if you see one you want to get any maps or any intel that you could get off the dead the dead soldier you never know on that note i also want to ask you about the incident where you were listening to the radio and i can't remember before it's a wiretap or not but when you were hearing when you were hearing russian over the radio yes oh yeah we were uh That was the same mission where we had the ambush set up and the guy touched my boot that night. And then two nights later, when we were on a mountaintop, we were, is bored. And we heard an aircraft.

And so I'm scanning through the FM dialed. Came across the channel. They were talking to a Russian. So we put out calls on the emergency beeper and on our FM channel trying to get some air assets. But this is like midnight, 1 o'clock in the morning. And Jack, it was the weirdest thing. You know how dark it is in the jungle. And so we're on the mountaintop, but still we had some canopy.

And when you look out, I had fallen asleep. So I forget if it was Bubba or Henry King came up to me and goes, you will not believe this. And off in the distance, they had lit up their LZ with lights for the supply drop. And it looked like Broadway. It was so bright. and it was out of our range. We had nothing when we could shoot at him.

But that was strange. But yeah, that was November 68. So you saw the Soviets bringing in a supply drop. Sure. And, you know, don't forget, at the end of 68, Johnson had canceled bombing Hanoi. So all the anti-aircraft weaponry then came down to Hucci, Montreal. I mean, they had it in 68,

but they came down with the heavy stuff then. And besides the 12.7, the 23 mic, 37 mic, is it 57. And later on with Operation Tailwind in September of 70, they had ACAC. And, you know, it was like watching a movie from World War II movie. We had the ACAC shooting at the helicopters, the CH53s that were taking the troops in, and then when they brought them out. And we had a medic that to this day was startled by that. You know, it's like, fortunately, they missed.

I know it's contentious in some circles, but I mean, what was, I mean, based on your own experience and also, you know, what we know about Mac V. Saq today, what we know about the operations and what's been declassified. What was the situation with Russian advisors in Laos and North Vietnam in those days? Well, we know that they had it with 3,000. They're also Cubans and they're Chinese there. And there's no question about it. The Russians, we confirmed it there. And about now, about 12, 13 years ago, a YouTube came out that was a reporter in Russia

who was attending the anniversary of Russians killed in the Russian secret war in Vietnam. So as part of his report, reporting, he report that there were over 3,000 Russians had been there and that they had at least 12 or 13 KIAs. So I was really disappointed that we didn't have a higher number of KIAs, those county dogs. But there was a couple times, John, when your guys recovered like Soviet flags, right? Correct. Not us, but other teams. And we had a Marine Corps helicopter pilot, George Miller, who was at the DMZ,

he saw a Russian in uniform. By the time he turned around to go back to waxen, that Russian was smart enough to get it back into the jungle. And then, of course, Lynn Black and Doug Latterno when they were on Idaho, in between my tours, they had a guy that came up on a radio who was Cuban. And he was trying to get that to surrender,

and they wouldn't. Of course, Lynn, And the rush he came up and said, I know where you are. And to show you, this is a secret war now, they give you a sense of how we were compromised. They had a medic on Idaho. The medic had gone home six or seven days before they got inserted into that target. When the Cuban came up on the radio, he said, I know where you are. Here's your cord, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it's the Frenchman and blackjack.

He knew them by code names. And he didn't say anything about the third American. He already knew they were gone. So we've had stories about SOG being compromised. And of course, the fun part of that is at some point, Doug was talking to, and Lynn goes, who the hell are you talking to? We're on a mission.

He goes, he gets it to Lynn. Lynn got talking to the guy. The guy said, we're going to come and get you. And he said, I got your cord. And Lynn goes, let me give you our eight digit, coordinates. I'm on top of the hill. He says, oh, by the way, your mother, well, she must

have been a piss poor whore. Because has she been a good hooker, you wouldn't have got stuck in Vietnam. You would have gotten a good job with the Russians in Europe somewhere. But your mom was a piece with a piss poor whore. They never came for him.

I mean, that means the unit was completely compromised from Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's two. things you know when the when the ship was captured in Korea I'm the name escaped me right yeah it's like red red something red tail or shit it'll come I know exactly what you're talking about the Koreans the Russians asked the Koreans to capture the ship because it was a US ship had all the radio intel stuff so the

second they come into North Korea port the Russians took all of the encryption equipment. That was our latest encryption. Then at that time, on benignance to our country, the Walker's, the father and son combination were selling the codes to the Russians in the

U.S. So for several years, and this was confirmed later by the CIA and by the Navy, that they had all those codes, and then years later we interviewed a CIA agent who had been in Germany, who talked to the Russians, that confirmed that they were there, and they had the coach.

They kept saying, we couldn't believe. The SIG guys didn't have more sophisticated radio equipment. We could monitor them all the time. Wow. And Mac V was compromised in Saigon, right? Correct, at the headquarters, yeah. And John Plaster's book, his coffee table book, is a picture of Major George Gaspar with the spy.

He's right there. Sorry, I'm just digging into our library back here. We dig it deep. John Plaster's book, if you guys want to. That's the regular book, but his pictorial is the one with the picture of the communist spy with Major Gaspar. And yes, John did. John, I call John the godfather of Sogg writers because he was the one that fought the early battles. He was the first one to do a nonfiction book on Sog.

And it's pretty common. They followed up with his pictorial. Oh, yeah, good stuff. And, you know, all this stuff with the Russians, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, you know, the other things that were going on in, um, you know, Angola, for instance. Um, and, and then of course, Afghanistan. So I mean, it really was a, a worldwide war against, you know, international communism. Absolutely. And, you know, and, you know, and there have been a couple of bad pieces, um, that talk about, um, um, um, about how by the Americans fighting communism in Vietnam, other countries, Indonesia, Micronesia, they had a chance to better prepare in Singapore, because Singapore's got one of the top spec ops units in the world today in the Southeast Asia. And they had a chance to get ready

and they fought communism there before he got out of hand. So by us holding ground in Southeast Asia, that's one thing that nobody will talk about. And it was also about reassuring our European allies. I mean, after the Suez incident in the 50s, we had kind of snubbed the British and the French and made them feel, maybe the United States could go either way as far as having our back.

Then you have the Berlin Wall go up, you have communism expanding all around the world. We fought in Vietnam to convince, the Brits and the French and you know our German allies that we were not going to turn away we were not going to back down from the fight and I mean I'd be interested to hear your point of view on that John and and what's it justified I mean you had the the Ken Burns documentary coming at come out that I know you were very critical of and but I mean for someone of my age my generation when I go and look at all the names on the wall in Washington DC it's tough it's it's

it's tough to deal with and i know it's 10 times more for you guys who were there and i i'd really love to hear you know your perspective on it well my my perspective is is unique in that on my team i have four soldiers who came from north vietnam at the end of uh at the world war two the north vietnamese the communist fought the french and the key back was the battle the NBN Fu. Well for 18 months after that people in the north could go south and people in the south if they wanted to could go north. Well thousands of people went south. Nobody went north and the Navy had ships that took thousands of people down. Well on my team. So I say that because all of our guys they knew that South Vietnam was corrupt.

There's no question about that. However, our government prefer to corrupt government they knew as opposed to the communists. And they were familiar with it. And anybody who would take a look at the history of the communists, the way they rule today, as well as then, as well as during World War II, they ruled by an iron fist. Look at Hungary, Czechoslovakia, all these countries, Poland. I mean, do it our way or we'll run you over with our military. and it's our way or the highway.

So my perspective was I went back because I really believed in the team in what we were doing. We were fighting communism at a very top secret level. And it turns out our casualty rate was the highest in the war from SAG. But that mission, I believe in. I still do. And at the end, all the major battles are conventional troops won, the Marines, whoever fought won the major battles. It was Congress that refused a fund. And of course, there was some political changes there along the way.

And tricky dick with the Watergate, that was just a lot of things that came together to hurt the overall mission. So yeah, 58,000 names in that wall, not to mention all of our MIAs today. Painful. And how many MIAs do we still have over in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia? Yeah, the total today is 1,586, and that includes China and Thailand. There were a few pilots that got downed up there, never heard from again. We lost some in Thailand, and of course, our recon guys, and plus, you know, the aviars, like you guys have experienced our aviation assets, whether they're, in your case, it would be the Apaches and the fast-movers.

and of course your A30s. Good stuff. And they were dedicated. They're the best Air Force in the world. We had the same thing. And plus we had the Vietnamese Air Force. And but they paid a price for it. I mean, there was over 100 aviators.

And some of our bright lights were for the downed aircraft. And, you know, we just always salute the airfield. force for that for the courage because without them we wouldn't be here without the south of the indones air force that pulled us out as old secorski you know uh some of our guys had 50 plus different holes in their in their king beat we had one our mission from mech o four we had 48 little holes including one that went right through the helicopter uh rotary blade and uh we always left under fire the only question was how much And how many?

But again, you guys know what that's like. I think you said there's what 50 special forces soldiers still MIA? Right. 50 green berets from the Secret War that are still there, which includes Jerry Mad Dog, Shriver, Idaho, and a lot of other Americans that were there at that time. And nobody could talk about it. You know, and the additional side, the pain of the side of that is... Being a parent can be really challenging.

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with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. The families, because here's a family, all they get is a notification of the army that their soldier died. And they'll probably tell them in Vietnam. Even that's not true. And it's not the families have gone on.

All the parents have died. Some of the siblings have died before they ever learned. So in our case, we had the Special Operations Association where we had a reunion. And we talk about them all the time as well as we had our anniversary in the, 2018 was the 50th anniversary of the night. One of our camps got hit at Danang, where we lost the 16 green berets in one night. But that was by Sappers. They knew who we were.

That was specifically designed to attack SOTC. So we were compromised, and yes, the KASD rate and it's painful. Talk a little bit about that, about the hit on Kantam, because I know you did a ton of research on that. although you weren't there but you did a lot of research and wrote about the attack. Top place the tailwind? CCN when they got hit

the... Oh, that was F.O.B.4, August 23rd, 68. Could you talk a little bit about that? Absolutely. FobB4 was opened in 67, at the end of 67, and there was a top secret base. But anything in Vietnam,

you know, they had their spies, they knew who we were. They attacked the base briefly in December of 67, but we later learned that they planned for a year a Sapper attack on the night of August 23rd, 68, when there was no moon. And we were finding out now some more information about who the exact Sapper units were some NVA Sapper's VACC, and the camp is right next to Marble Mountain. And Marble Mountain was, which we didn't realize at the time, had several levels underneath the mountain where the Via Cong, the locals. And of course, on that attack, the NVA were there. So the night of the attack, several dozen infiltrated through the wire into the base. And they went into the indigenous troop mess hall where they had a final briefing, right on the base.

And then after midnight, there's some confusion as to when it was launched. But our recon company was down by the South China Sea. There were three rows of hoochers down there. And when they hit, they went down with machine gunners, and they lined up at the end of the sidewalk. So anybody coming out would be gunned down. So like one of the hoosures, we had Doug Gottshaw, John Peters, and William Brick III was in there.

And John Peters and Doug, because, and the reason why he hit that, there was a promotion board there for the entire CNC. So you had guys coming in for promotion review. And that they had also consolidated the CNC command, and they brought it into Danang at the headquarters. And they also had their monthly briefing from all the FOB commanders. So they knew they had a lot of extra people there. So all their intel was right on.

and when they hit, they had the machine gun set up down there. They went around to the hoochers with the satchel charges, and it was just a free-for-haul. And even on the mountain, on Marble Mountain, they had mortals that opened fire. And we had a recon team up there where Larry Trimble and his nuns were able to kill the mortar teams, and they were able to suppress them for the rest of the next two or three days. had they not, the Casley would have been much higher. And there was also, just north of FOB4 was an NVA PLW camp that had over 500 NVA soldiers.

And they knew the attack was coming, and there was an effort to try to break them out. But it was thwarted at the last minute. One of our guys had a gunship that came in and made a gun run right between our base and the PLW camp that killed all of sappers that were. trying to get in to free the prisoners so they could come join the battle it was a free-for-all-night it's not just like total chaos out there uh absolutely and they so they they waited in from the

water to get around the perimeter defense right came in on the beach and you remember when i was writing that article about george bacon we talked about this also oh sure because george was fucking passed out on the beach and got shot in the shoulder where these sappers came came up um maybe we'd talk about george a little later he is such a character that's like a whole digression right there and um sadly he was killed in uh angola working as a mercenary on valentine's day nineteen seventy six i believe it was i'd have to take a look but back to contum um What was the counter? Before Dene.

I'm sorry, yeah. It fought for. What was the counterattack? How did these guys begin to repel these sappers that had snuck in? Well, throughout the night, there was no concerted effort. It was individuals that would team up. So the camp was really spread out. And they planned the one key aspect that they missed, the top,

we had opened up a brand new talk two days before the attack. So when they hit the base, they hit the old talk. And we had two or three guys that were killed in there. And fortunately, the men who were in the talk were able to fend off the attack and keep it going as well as the communication center. But they would, they kicked in the air conditioners. And then they would throw in hand grenades inside. and but our guys were able to get the hand grenades back out the hole.

That was just one of the little sidebars that passed out. And then we had individuals like there was one guy named Travis Mills. Travis was in a hooch down the recon company. When he came out, he got shot right away. And he sees the guy to shot him. He goes, no, no, no, I'm an American. He gets shot again. He goes, no, I'm on your side.

He got shot a third time. Well, by now, Travis being from Texas and all, he was an officer, so you know, officers are slow learners sometime. He figured out that maybe this guy wasn't one of our indig, but he got shot two more times. So here he was shot five times. And one of the guys was going around with an ambulance,

one of the officers was driving the ambulance. And we also had a Navy corpsman who had heard all the explosions and came into base that night to help out pick up some of the wounded. Well, when Travis got picked up, taken back to the dispensary, they gave, they triaged them and said, well, your five wounds are bad, but they're not fatal. They passed them up and said, you're in charge of security at the back door.

They gave him a car 15 and there he was for two or three hours before he finally got taken to the main hospital off base. But that was just one of the heroes. you know for that night but there's a lot of that one-on-one stuff and and they um most of the nva had just the loincloth and then many wore the headbands that said we came here to die and they die one of them one of them fucking hold up in the shitter didn't they yeah they had a couple there and they were the last two that we confirmed and uh yeah there was a lot of firepower and they blew themselves up.

Somehow our guys learned they were there because that Colonel Barr, Lieutenant Colonel Barr came down from F-O-B-1 at first lane, and they started by the P-O-W base, and then they came south to F-O-B-4 came in and started sweeping through the camp. And when that was going on, somehow some of the guys that were in the dining hall

heard about these guys in the shitter. So they went out, and there was a firefight and then the guys in the shitter blew up the shitter, a good shitter, and themselves. It cost of war, Jack. I'm telling you. It's a testament to the amount of chaos when the fact that they kicked in the air conditioners into the top. They threw in grenades. The people in the top picked up live grenades, tossed them back out, when that's just a detail of the overall fight. And not, you know what I mean?

like that's insane in and of itself but that's just one small detail of what was going on in that moment yeah we and we had guys that uh i mean some of the tragic deaths i mean like William breck as i said when he came out of his hooch he was gunned down immediately by the NBA gunners and we had another lieutenant who when the satchel charge was thrown into the the transit barracks the explosion had a two by four that went through and pierced his chest and nailed them literally nailed it to his bed killed him instantly and that was just you know just some of these odd things that happened during the night and the hand not much hand-to-hand but hand grenades and shooting people with the 45s and pat walkins and them they were in their in their transit barracks they could see the shadow of this guy and pat only had a 45 he's no

good student and so he shot a couple times but they still threw a disaster charge in this stuff went on late and all throughout the night and there was some big shit show also with like help not arriving until like 24 hours later as i recall well no that's not right uh colonel bar came down from f will be one and they were there at first light so the attack was launched after midnight um and the radio signals went down to our headquarters in the train So the Trang set up a force and they were there by mid morning or late in the morning. Okay. So but Colonel Barr got there first and he had a bunch of volunteers from F-O-B-1 that went

down with him and they cleaned house. Anything left over, then he went through the whole camp and anybody looking for any live POW as well as our guys who were wounded just to see what they could do to help. And your buddy, George Bacon, even though he's wounded, he's talking about. still served and helped some guys. Yeah, yeah, he was a medic. And John, when I was doing the research, I found some stuff in John's book, John Plaster's book. He was out on patrol with George a couple of times.

Oh, is that right? Yeah, yeah. I forgot that. Mm-hmm. But George was with us at F-O-B-1, and he's brilliant. I mean, he came into camp. He was assigned to a Montagnard team. Within a week, he was talking Montagnarie's.

with the yards. And then in between, he would hang out with the Vietnamese just to learn the language. So within a few weeks, he was speaking three different languages. He was speaking the Brood-Montiard dialect. He picked up Vietnamese want to communicate and he talked to the Cambodians. God was brilliant. And he had these big shoulders. He looked like a walking clothes rack And he always wore the ugliest hats in Canada. The thing I remember fondly about George is he found ugly hats somewhere, but he was a hell of a soldier and a great medic. George, you know, his full name, George Washington Bacon III.

And, you know, John knew him. A lot of the side guys knew him, of course, when he was there. But I wrote an article about him years ago. and the guy is just he was a super eccentric individual super high IQ I think that probably had something to do with it it's just like John said he spoke many languages he read every single book he could find and when he ran out of books he'd go digging through the trash to try to find new books to read anything anything that was printed he would read it this guy he wore a Rolex watch at home but instead of the band it was like a pink piece of twine that secured the watch to his wrist.

He did not stop at traffic lights. He did not obey. He did not recognize the lawful authority of traffic lights that I don't need a fucking machine to tell me when there's cars here or not. He drove a Morris Minor. Some of his friends think he gave most of his money away. He wore finally tailored suits because he came from, I was told his family had some connection to Hickney Freeman, big suit company. So he had very nice suits made, but he wore them

with jungle boots. This guy built a Harley Davidson motorcycle. He bought the parts at auctions, and then composed, he built it over time in his basement and built the Harley. And then his friends looking at him like, George, how the fuck are you going to get out of your basement? And he was like, oh, I didn't think of that at all. So his friend had to ride it up the steps, up the basement steps and went flying out the front door, it almost wrecked it. So George, after Vietnam, after MacBi-Sach, George went, he was a CIA contractor in Laos doing paramilitary ops over there. You can find stuff about George in James Parker's book about that, another CIA officer under his call sign, kayak, because that was his favorite sport, was kayaking. After Laos, he bounced between the CIA and academia and he was, he went and served as a mercenary in Angola.

He was just that kind of guy. He'd fight communism wherever it was, wherever you could find it. And there's a lot of contention to this day whether or not he was working for the CIA or not when he was killed. And the honest answer to you is I don't know. Well, we had heard that they had put up. you know the cia has that wall of fame or any of their kia we had heard that there was one of the star for it was for george that once for him yeah that's what i heard that that would be fascinating to uncover the truth behind that oh yeah george man what a character he was a hell of a medic i mean

he was so bright i mean no but the other thing with george was he was a magnet ass whatever team he went on Once they were on the ground, they got into a world of shit. It wasn't like you'd be on the ground for a couple days, and they figured out and they get the tracking dog. No, no, no. They get on the ground, and George got hit hard. But he got the team out. He was just a great guy. When I got to the end of writing that article, John, I felt like I had known him.

And I was just so sad that I had never actually gotten a chance to meet him. And he was killed before I was even born. Right. The way that happened actually was that he was with a Canadian mercenary also and a few others. And they drove headlong into a convoy full of Cubans and others. It's very complicated to politics, but there's Unita. He was with Fenla. And it was like Fenla's dying days in Angola.

They were towards the end of their run. And they were actually in the process of evacuating india. to Zaire when they ran into that convoy and their vehicle just got lit up by machine gun fire. And George was probably dead by the time he stepped out of the vehicle. Wow. Never, never recovered his remains either. Oh, is that right? No.

Whoa. Hmm. We, uh, we have some questions, but my stream froze up. So we're going to have to ask. Yeah, sure. So people got some questions for you, John. Did your machine, damn it? Gordon says, always amazed at the scale of the assets needed to insert the recon teams, i.e. backup helicopters, the number of potential enemy in the AO these teams are faced.

And any experience or stories with white advisors for the NBA while on SOG missions, I've seen a few different recon soft units. Your comment report on this. Aussie Sasser included, I think we talked about that, John, but anything you want to add? You just came in and broken. I think he's asking about foreign advisors with the North Vietnamese. Oh, well, no, we confirmed there's no question about it. And even Chinese, they were there and just a question of how many. And we've confirmed that in multiple sources.

So yeah, Russians. And besides, North Vietnam couldn't have fought that war without the communist block behind him. That's all. they gave them all the supplies they needed. And including the latest anti-aircraft weaponry, they trained their pilots. And, you know, some of our pilots killed some of the Migs, which was good. But they had sophisticated, state-of-the-art equipment at that time.

And we lost a lot of good airmen over that, in that war up there. There's two wars. The war in Hanoi, High Palm, which is North Vietnam. And then we had the Ho Chi Minh Trail. aspect of it and our secret war with our missions and what the Air Force paid a high price and

up there you had Navy and Air Force that launched from carriers so does that answer this question Jack no I think so I think so Chris this is a good question actually what are the differences between SAG and Project Delta Sigma

Omega Gamma etc Well, we had the Delta project was set up initially in country and they were they did tremendous work in country. And like for example, when ACAMP was getting hit, Delta force would go out. And when I first came in country, we were at the safe house and there was a Delta force team that was there that had just come back from a mission where they'd gone into the ashaw to help relieve one of our hatchet force. are one of our recont teams. I forget what it was. So the Sigma project was CCS. And then the project Delta guys stayed mostly in country. Then you had Mike Force also. And in Mike Force, you know, you talked to a couple of guys in Mike Force. You saw guys. You went in in, you did a clandestine mission. That's a good mission for you. When we were in country, we hunted those little fuckers. We went

after him. We looked for them. We wanted to engage him and eliminate them. And they did. They did great work. I mean, there's some epic stories from the mic force. Yeah, yeah. In-country. Absolutely. But that's the difference. And Sigma was ultimately became CCS down south. Because in 68, we had six FOBs. They consolidated. So we had CCN at the Nang. And then we have CCC-C-Contum and CCS.

there was a BAMI to it further south and then to add another layer of complexity to all of this there's the Phoenix program there's all these other other different projects to confuse people further sure and the Phoenix program again here's one that the agency was involved in we had SF people attached to it and it was one of the most effective countermeasures against the Viacong hierarchy they would get into the village learn who the bad guys were and eliminate them they were communists we were at war but again the corrupt south vietnamese sometimes began eliminating political adversaries as opposed to the communists and of course the washington post that one of our friendly publications got a hold of it and put that negative twist on it ignoring all the good that was done and they never understood truly what a guerrilla war is john mullins talked about that when we had him oh john would tell you chapter reverse on that yeah you didn't know he did he did oh yeah yeah yeah no we had him on a while

ago amazing and he told me things about mac the sock i didn't even know about you guys running double agents across the fence oh yeah we had a few but again this is this wasn't that my less above my pay yeah yeah yeah i hear you pretty sneaky um John, maybe we could like, well, hell, let's just go for it. The worst stories, man. I think that there'd be some benefit in kind of like walking people through going out on a patrol, going across the fence, what that whole experience was like kind of preparing for it, going over the border and run and recon.

I don't know if there's a particular operation that you would be interested in talking about, one that comes to my mind, of course, is that terrifies me when I read about it in your book. When you guys got pushed up into the draw and the NBA set the elephant grass on fire around you, just makes me nervous as hell just reading about it. Well, you know, that was small potatoes compared to Lynn Black. Well, in our case, we got inserted on Christmas Day and it was on a little knoll. and the knoll was really steep on the west and the south side we couldn't go down it was just too steep so we landed we go east it's elephant grass and we're heading to the jungle we had only been on the

ground maybe 20 30 minutes i forget now but we our point man made contact minimal we came back and the the northwest side was too steep and it was quiet up at the northeastern side so then Lynn Black said, you know, we could go there, but it's too quiet. And then we had a radio report that came in, said, we have an intelligence report. Now, mind you, we're on the ground. And an intel report says, do not go to the northeast. There's an ambush waiting for you. It turned out that the Frenchman was in another target.

He picked up radio transmission of the NVA talking about. R.T. Idaho. They knew it was us in their A.O. By name. Doug heard them talking. He told Spider and Spider tells me, and Lynn and I had already figured that was the one last option if we were going to try to continue, but we had made the contact, so we're compromised. And then that was the most historic mission for us because they had radio contact. But so with the firefight going on, the, we had hand grenades. And they sparked flames in the elephant grass. And this fire was coming up the mountain at us.

And at one point, Lynn Black and Bubba were putting C4 charges in that literally tried to blow the fire or back down the mountain to gain some time. And we could not leave the peak. It was too steep on each side. We knew the northeast had an ambush. And so we were battling the fire. And at one point, you could look through the flames and see two NVA stand there at Port Arm. arms looking at us. Like going, hey, what are you guys doing? It's going to be crispy critter time.

Well, luckily, Captain Tuan, the Kingby pilot, came down the mountain sideways and the prop wash blew back the flames. We jumped on and left and the whole hilltop was overrun, overcome with the flames. It's just amazing moment in time. And but that is wimpy compared to Lynn Black. Now here's the mission where was on the team. They had a new team leader who came in from 10th group. He didn't understand guerrilla warfare, but he was a team leader because he was a senior NCO. So the day before, they did a visual reconnaissance, and they're flying a visual reconnaissance in a small air of South Vietnamese Air Force, two pilot, co-pilot, and they're doing a visual reconnaissance. A 51

mic mic, Mike, opened up. went around, went through the cabin, took the pilot's head off with his helmet, which landed in Lynn Black's lap. And then needless to say, they left the AEO, went right back. But that was the target they were going into. The next day they launched, and the first helicopter went in with the one zero, Lynn was on a second helicopter. They had a total of nine men. Well, Lynn saw the NVA flag flying. Lynn had a previous tour of duty with the 173rd.

He knew that if there's a flag, there's at least a battalion, 3,000. He talks to this team leader, and the guy goes, no gook's going to run me off my mission. So he didn't listen to Lynn who knew what was going on. Then he committed immortal sin. He told the team to go down a trail. So they had argued for this. They argued about going down the trail.

They finally got down the trail. They're going downhill. And the hill had on the right, like about 30 or 40 feet high. And there was an L. Well, the NBA put 50 soldiers up there. And when they walked down, they opened fire. He killed the point man, who was a good South Vietnamese point man. He killed the 1-0 who made a mistake.

And he wounded a third guy who died later. that day and they were in the firefight and uh that firefight went on for all day now in that 50 people when i interviewed lynn for the book lang goes i remember shooting some people they was spin around i had to shoot them a second and a third time well this mission went on for the entire day where they they stacked up so many dead bodies that when they did a wave attack they used a dead NVA soldiers to sit behind that. When they ran out of ammo, they started using NVA gear and equipment in rounds. And at one point, Lynn got knocked out by a hand grenade. And the impact was so severe that it knocked him unconscious, destroyed his car 15, and they woke him up. He got

back on his feet and carried on. That day, we lost two king bees, a jolly green giant, got shot down. and then ultimately at the end of the mission a Jolly Green came down and hovered and just literally chopped trees down to hover in the jungle while Lynn his team went out and they got to the helicopter and they found the Air Force pilot of the Jolly Green that got shot down and his door gunner

and they were able to get them all back to the helicopter and they were going up the lift and Lynn went back to the team who was wounded and the guy said give me your 45 so Lynn gave him a 45 and then as Lynn was walking running back to the helicopter guy killed himself because he knew the NBA were coming and when Lynn's running back to the helicopter two NVA come out with their AKs and say Chu Hoy meaning surrender and Lynn just kept coming there were young soldiers and Lynn just charged him grabbed their AKs knocked the one guy out with the AKs hit the other guy in a

face and he burned his hands because the AK-47s were hot for them shooting at the helicopter. He gets lifted up, just hoisted down. 30 years later, when they're going back for the body of that one zero, Lynn got a phone call from a North Vietnamese general who said, I ambushed you that day. And he said, I was a colonel then. I set up the ambush. They're talking back and forth.

And so finally, Ling goes, you know, that was a bad day. We lost three men. That guy goes, a bad day for us. You know, we had 90% casualties. Ling goes, 90%. He goes, yeah, between the air, because we had spads, fast movers, the door gunners, you know, the helicopter gunships, I mean. At one point, when Lynn and his team was behind the dead bodies,

they had a wave attack come. And there was a next wave attack. the helicopter came down from the muskets and hovered and opened fire on the pending wave attack then pulled down to help defend that's a kind of protection they had that day and uh so the general goes yeah you inflict the 90 percent casualties and the link goes well we saw the flag that was a battalion right the guy goes no it was an nva divista i had 10 000 men there and you inflicted 90 percent casualties then the general goes hey who

who was the guy standing up in the ambush the link because that was me he said you shot me three times so that's one of the classic all-time SOG stories in my opinion

I bring him back for what it's worth mine too John I was I was rereading that story today when I was going through your book and looking at the highlights I made and what do you like that that mission where you know that you were describing that you were on where the elephant grass was on fire i mean you were

all down to as i recall one magazine apiece that was all you had left you had well at that missioneer i wasn't that low the day twice i remember there are times when i went through 600 plus rounds it down to the last magazine that was echo four on october 7th where we had been in contact for several hours and we had stacked up some bodies there but nothing like what lindexamination in hat and that was when we came out on the we got pulled out he hovered we threw the guys to the helicopter and i was the last guy in and then we let go to the last magazine and last hand grenade and we had been on contact for about four hours i mean you told me about what how many radio intendants did you have shot off your back during the war no only only two that i

can be called only two only two moment time yeah we had the long antenna up and it got they got shot off john when you know you said that uh the they knew your team's name they knew your infiltration points how did that feel like when you go back to base and get new missions did everybody just accept that every single operation you guys went on was compromised somehow how early did you guys learn that's a good question how would that how did that feel for you and for the team in general well you know we we told the intel guys about it and and whenever we had what we felt was we knew there was compromises i mean for example we had one target where um we were going into the lz and somehow my my little people one of my indig saw a wire across the lz so not only did they

know we were coming but they had a trip wire that was was tied to a 500 pound bomb. Had he not seen that, had we hit the wire, that 500 pound bomb would have wiped us right out. Gone. So, you know, it's just like we all have our mission. You go on the mission you're told to do. We're talking behind lines to ourselves at the club. We talked to the office.

We talked to S2 and say, hey, guys, this is stuff's going on. We tell S3. They have reports that go down. of Saigon, but then it's not all of our hands, you know. And then we have to go back the next day we get briefed. I mean, sometimes they wanted teams on the ground so bad, they would just give us a target. You look at it and you get look out on the way out to the helicopter, jump on the chopper and go. So he really wouldn't have much time to really review any of the intel. But again, you know, you follow orders and go. That's one of this. It wasn't. It wasn't.

fun and it was frustrating we just wished that we had more response let me put it that way from Saigon I had read that you guys started bullshit in MacV at a certain point lying about the LZs you were going in because you can't distrust them so much yeah we would and we give

them the for the official report that we go to Saigon here's our primary secondary nontern LZs we get to the launch site you pull a coffee pile of side and say, hey, we told Saigon this, but you find us in LZ and put us in there. And it worked. I mean, we had much more success that way. And even Nick Brockhausen, you know, a year later, Nick was doing the same thing.

They were finding their LZs or just tell Covey, go find one. Because like in the early part of 68, we'd always fly a visual reconnaissance. Well, the economists aren't stupid. If they see a bird dog flying around, they know that. The choppers are coming and get ready. Right. So were the image that you guys worked with, were they above suspicion or did you guys not really know where the leaks were coming from? Was there, you know, was there strife inside the teams?

No. Well, my team, no. My team was highly vetted. The assistant, we had our counterpart. His name was Sal. So when I got there in 68, Sal had been on a team. team for three years. Hepper, our interpreter had been on their team for three years at that point. And they were good. Sal could smell the enemy. He knew how they thought. And so when our team got

wiped out, they vietnamese. We hired three 15-year-olds and another member of the team that came on. So I was green, they were green. And because Sal and Hep had been since veterans, I had to earn their respect. I had to show that I could. live up to their standards to justify being on the team and it took a few months you know sal was a hard customer um but uh so on our individual team no and on some of their really good recon teams because the green berets would work with the indigenous people closely enough that it was not a problem however sometimes with hatchet force the bigger force of the cambodians sometimes you had issues there And Lynn Black later, I think it was 1970, he was given a North Vietnamese team that converted.

And they were supposedly wanting to work. Well, Lynn took them down to the range one day and they're down there training. At some point, Lynn found that he was standing by himself and all the enemy troops were behind him. And they all the enemy troops turned their guns on Lynn and said, put your gun down. We're leaving. So Lynn goes, oh, okay, he throws his gun down, but the NVA forgot that Lynn had his radio. So when they left the range, he could kept track of him. He called up Covey, was able to make radio contact, and called in a gunship and wiped him out. Wow. Jesus. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Lynn Black is one slick soldier, I'll tell you, man.

I wouldn't want to piss them off. Even to this day, I wouldn't want to piss them out. I have to admit I have not read Lynn's book yet. It's out. People want to find it. It's whiskey tango fox trout, right, John? Yes, sir. And make

sure it's the small book version like the 5.5.5 by 8.5. Because he came out when he first did his book, it was a bigger format, but it had no prolog. The smaller version has the prologue, which includes his

time with the 173rd where his brother got shot up really bad and his brother you got hurt there and one of the reasons why lynn got out after the 173 he got out for a little bit of time but then he decided i want to go back to special forces i want to take some revenge from my brother you getting wounded right and he talked to his brother you and you goes what the fuck are you doing i'm back i'm alive you don't have to go back for me Well, Lynn went back, and he did take, he killed some communists. Yeah, it sounds like it. Yes.

Oh, it's a phenomenal book. I mean, I'm sorry, I've read it a few times now because it's because he'd get into Lynn Black's head on some of this stuff. It's really, but also his leadership skills. He just took over that team. You know, the one zero was killed. The other American on the team at that mission, he never fired one round. He was there praying and crying. Really?

Yep. I remember that book. Oh yeah, just a complete coward. John, can you tell us about your first mission in country? Like what you were expecting, how it went down for you? Because that must have been a bit of a culture shock, right? Yeah, well, we did a couple in-country ambushes at night, and so it was just in-country training and no big deal.

Our first real mission across the fence was into the Ashaw Valley. We inserted the Air Force sensors. It had a big central unit with co-ax. cable that went out, maybe 20 feet. So he had to bury everything, leave the antennas up. Well, this is my first mission. So I'm the low man on the total pool. Me and HEP has security at one end and Don Wolkin has security at the other end. And then Spider Parks was our one zero. So prior to going in, we figured, oh shit, this is, it's showtime. You know, we load up with extra bullets and everything. And true to the foreign,

the NBA fight when they want to fight. We went in, put it in the whole device, everything, slick a snail's knot. Choppers came back. We never fired a shot. And when we left, an NBA door gunner opened up. I mean, an NBA gunner with a 51 caliber opened up. Well, we had so much tacky air. They came down and killed him four or five times just for good luck.

But, you know, again, we're thinking, oh, it's going to be a firefighter. It's the Ashaw Valley. And like Ken Miller, those guys had all earned their purple hearts down there. And but not a shot fired. And then we did the same thing. We put in sensors at Kaysaw, right where the historic battle had occurred, because there was a lot of enemy traffic there.

We put that sensor in. And then we had also run an mission on the east side of Yashal. No contact. We went in for four or five days. Did reports. Then Echo 4. and that was the one we went in

the right the day after Lynn Black was extracted on October 6 we went in he got it extracted on the 5th we went on the 6th

we made contact on the 7th and that's where we stacked them up and I went right down to the last magazine so that that lived up the expectations

and that was like a real eye opener but again Sal and Hep opened fire in the NBA before any of us Americans knew it they hit them first

and they did the magazine change so we have fire superior already right away. No, and one other, just one little sidebar. You know how you have tunnel vision in a firefight? Well, I was in the middle of firing one of the main areas that they were coming at us out of the jungle and Fook, our point man, opened fire. So I'm shooting here. I thought he was shooting over my shoulder.

And we got back to base the next day we were talking. And I said, I couldn't hear it because he's just like the rounds. You know how. is when you're in front of it well in your case then 4a1 blasting away i said fuck what the fuck now i couldn't hear why were you shooting over my shoulder he goes you didn't see down the hill there were some nb a coming up i killed them i wasn't shooting over your shoulder yeah so the funnel vision of the moment had he not done that within seconds i would have been a k i so you know

that's just one of those little moments in time yeah you were getting flanked and you were completely unaware because you were your photo yeah yeah so I'm green as grass acting stupid there were folks shiver my ass you know yeah what was like the composition of your team in terms of like Americans and Indage well we had um in the beginning was three Americans and then we had nine Vietnamese so the Americans would usually would run all the missions and then we would rotate the Vietnamese so for the first few months though It would be Hep and Sal, Heps our best interpreter, Sal was the team leader, and then he had trained up Fook to be our point man, and then the other team members were trained. So by time we got into November and December, where we're running multiple missions, particularly on the days, we would go out in the morning and get shot out of the primary, secondary office, come back, refuel the other target.

Same thing. Why little people were getting worn out? So we'd rotate them, but the Americans would stay on. And so in our case, we had nine or 10 South Vietnamese great guys. I'm alive today, thanks to them. And, of course, the Kingby, the South Vietnamese, the Air Force, and all the air assets. But our guys were wonderful. And they trained up.

It took them a while. But when I came back for my second tour of duty, Idaho was tight. And HEP had trained a couple of the South Vietnamese to speak English. so that if I got shot or any of the Americans got shot, the South Vietnamese could pick up the radio, direct airstrikes and talk to Covey and whatever else needed to be done. We trained them up that way. That's part of our cross-training, you know. Yeah. So our team, we were just blessed. We had a great team. And there were nuns, other teams that had historic team members that they literally put their life down. like the freshman he was one night he was calling home he put together tape for his mom and dad

and his appointman came in and said said Doug's parents i want to thank you for sending Doug here don't you worry i'll protect him if they shoot him i will catch his bullet thank you for sending your son yeah that's awesome and so i i just like to hear one more second on the composition of the team the americans were i well you one one two one zero and then you had what four or five indigenous personnel right so by by the time i got to a january of 69 my little people were so good i just had another american so above ashore left 18 Lynn black came on and Lynn was just a phenomenal guy so we ran some missions nothing historic just routine stuff or sometimes getting shot out of the target and then we

had a special mission, the one that the pitcher was there. We were all geared up for it. We're on the helicopters. We're launching and they called us back. And we never, never got into the ground on that mission. And so that was right at the end of my tour of duty. And two days later, I rotated home and went back to Fort Devils for a few months, then came back in October of 69. Lynn was still a one zero. The team was tight. The freshman had been with him. So was the Frenchman and Lynn and then with Lynn and I and then about January he said hey you guys have got too much experience

here so that Lynn went off the team and then I took a we took turns to be in one zero that's pretty incredible yeah it's such a unique arrangement for the missions we always had four I prefer to a six man team because if the shit is really in the fan

and with heavy enemy fire one chopper would take the whole team out when you had eight there are questions of of altitude elevation, enemy fire. Just trying to get the second helicopter sometimes was

fatal. It was a fatal mission. So that's why I preferred. Some other guys like going in heavier. And by 70-71, like I said, when Jack and I were talking before

the show, like Nick Brockhaus and those guys, they all carried RPDs and carried he carried over a thousand rounds for the RPD. And when Eldon Bargewell earned his distinguished service cross, he was shot in the face, and he continued to lay down suppressing fire

when the team was evacuated and with his RPD. And he went right down to the last couple rounds. And, you know, Elton was a fixture, a legend of the special operations community just passed away a few years ago, or maybe just a year ago, really. It wasn't long ago.

Yeah, we lost them two years ago. Two years ago. John, you guys were really being called upon. You know, when you say, oh, we did these missions, nothing historic, but you were really being called upon to really sacrifice to hook and jab to mix it up in ways that I think are beyond most of us. How often would guys show up from, you know, SF,

and not be a good fit for that, not be a good match. Well, there are a few. But, you know, like that mission went ahead with Echo 4. I had a guy on a team. He had been in the 173. He had a tour duty with the 173rd. So by October of 68, we had lost so many people that Saad was bringing in airborne troops. Then eventually in 69, they even brought in some legs if they had combat experience.

So you never knew. We had to get bodies to fill the slot. So in answer to your question, on that mission, after we were done, Jim Davidson, he was the one-two in that mission. Even though I carried the radio, he was the new American on the team. Don was the one zero, I was assistant team leader. And but Jim was great. On the ground, he was tough. He hung in there and he was, couldn't ask more of him.

Two days after the mission, he came up to me and said, hey man, I can't do this. He said, I had a tour with a herd. I've never seen anything like this, and I've never seen anything like that. I don't know if I could ever do that again. And he says, you won't hold that against me? I said, no, why would I do that? You're honest? I appreciate that, because if we went to the field another time, we don't know what would happen.

This way you're telling me, and I said, you and I went to the Ashall. We survived it, and we came back, thanks to you. sure so I have no grudge I would say you want me to go to the sergeant major we'll get a new assignment and that's what I did I went to the sergeant major Jim got another assignment and there are other Americans that some guys

didn't want to be one zero's and we had some guys that would come in look at the guy on Lynn Blacks team complete coward total coward but he it took a while but he got transferred to other duty and even then he created some issues but that's

another story. So in answer to your question, some SF guys said no. And it was a volunteer operation. And, you know, originally it was if you ran for six months, you could take six months off for the end of your duty. Well, we just need a bodies. And it would be up to the individuals. And I respected anybody who said, I can't do this. And you know how does you prefer to have a guy be honest to say, I can't do it. And, um, I respect it anybody who said, I can't do it. And, um, I respected anybody who said, I can't do this. And, you know how does you prefer, that way you don't have to worry about him in the field because the guys and even bubba sure Bubba came up to me he'd been on we ran a shitload of missions with Bubba he was a great guy and he came up to me in January and said look do you I've been offered a job at the

at the headquarters company said do you mind I said no I appreciate it because we had been in a target and he had hesitated a little bit one time one one one order I gave him which we talked about on the ground. And I was just wondering. And when he told me that, after we're back at the bassist, said, no, Bub, I said, you're a stud, man. I love you. You're part of the brotherhood. And whatever you need me to do, I'll help you whatever job you want. And by that time, Lynn Black was ready to rock and roll. So I knew I had Lynn. And he placed a good man with an outstanding man. Yeah, and that's one of the things is sometimes you never know what's going to shake a person and sure it doesn't take away all of their service up until that point

right you know and all the things that they've done just because yeah you never know to the to the lead's in the air right right and uh we've had some historic cases of guys folding up under fire well and if somebody says no i can't at least they're honest enough so you got men in the field and in my case again i was lucky it had spider parks had combat experience don woken They were my two one zeros before I became the one zero. And they took good care of us. You know, they got us in and out. More importantly, got us out.

Yeah, yeah. For sure. We have some more questions real quick. Thank you, Vulcan. What are your thoughts on Russian FSB saboteurs in Ukraine, killing other soft soldiers? Was there anything similar to that in Vietnam? Well, we had a Sapper attack at FAA before.

and we were told that they were planning an attack at F-W-B-1, but we closed it down before the attack came. There was some of that. Our special forces at the A-Camps had some issues with indigenous troops that they hired who went sideways on them in a firefight. Or if the A-camp would be assaulted, some of them would open fire on our guys.

So that was at the traditional A camps. A couple of our recon teams had issues where the little people ran, but they didn't open fire on the Americans. So in SOG, to the best of my knowledge, and there might be other guys that had different experiences, I don't know. We didn't have that. But special forces, there were some really horrible cases of the friendly fire. or our allies

working being aligned with the Viacom or the NDA so it was there maybe not as a dramatic fashion as today in Afghanistan when they get into the base camp and they kill a bunch of American soldiers and whatnot that blue on blue is it Jack is that the proper phrase? Yeah, blue on blue and then blue on green

would be when the head, well blue on blue would be America on America and blue on green would be indige, friendly indige, in their quotes on Americans. Sure, sure. Thank you, Ian, for the donation. Stories about a Kingby pilot named Cowboy. Did you ever meet him

any stories, direct, or indirect about the man? No, I never met Cowboy, and there were more than one cowboy who was a Vietnamese helicopter, both were extraordinary, both were fearless, and the one cowboy, he's mentioning there, died early in the Vietnam War on a mission where he got shot down. And again, extreme courage.

He had performed a couple of amazing missions where he went in under heavy fire, pulled our teams out. And, but that's the cowboy of legend for the kingby side. On Alabama, Lynn Black's team, there was a South Vietnamese co-named cowboy, who was a big tall Vietnamese, and he's still alive. He's up in San Jose, and he was just absolutely fearless. John, was it your book? I may be getting my wires crossed. I can't remember which book I read it about it, where one of the South Vietnamese pilots was on the airstrip, and a CH-47 came barreling down on them, and he starts screaming at the Americans are like, you've got to get out of

the way of the CH-47. He's like, we in Vietnam. I am Vietnamese pilot. Americans get out of my way. Oh, no, no, that was me. That was you? I was me with Captain Tuan. The King Bipa, Captain Tuan, let me fly co-pilot. So one day we're flying from Fubai up to Quang Tree, the launch site, right? And so I'm co-piling, and yeah, you're right. Here comes a Marine Corps Chinook, a lot bigger, a lot of uglier.

And we're on a collision course. And so he could see Captain Tuan could see me going, I'm thinking about moving out of the way here. He goes, no move. And he's bigger than we are. He said, no move. We're Vietnamese Air Force in Vietnam. The Marines will move.

They turned to the last second, and they're all flipping the bird at us and everything. But, hey, Buku Zin-Loy, baby. Oh, yeah. Captain Tuan. We just buried him a couple of the next month, sad to say. You guys were boys and you knew him when he immigrated to America and everything. Yeah, he went back. After Vietnam fell, he had to go back for family.

And the damn kindness got him and his wife told me this time, I thought it was five years. She told me he was incarcerated in a reeducation, quote, reeducation camp for eight years. Jesus Christ. But he escaped, came back, got a great job, and he raised his family. And, of course, they've all got their college degrees. And sadly, we had his funeral back in July. I'm glad that he got here, though. Oh, me too.

You kidding? We got the guy called him up every Christmas. Captain Tuan. You remember where we were, Christmas, 1968? And he goes, yeah. Yeah, I remember. And he was just as cool. The last time I talked to him as he was that day,

I mean, to come down that hill, that mountain flying sideways like he did. And he's the one that pulled me out the day I was upside down. He's the one to land on when I passed out. Oh, yeah, that's why the captain Tuan. I love you, Buku, baby. Oh, yeah. Andy, Burma, thank you very much for the donation. Andy just said seven for five brothers.

Well, thank you. General Crang, thank you. Good evening from Ireland, John. Question, what was the vetting selection process for the indage on SOG teams? Thanks for the great interview. And we covered that a little bit. Yeah, well, in my case, it was our Vietnamese did it. They would go out and most of the recon teams, the team leader, the Vietnamese or the Chinese, Nung or the Montignards, they would recruit, the Montignards would recruit from their families and their village.

the nuns would come from they had a Sholong which was the part of Saigon that was all Chinese the nuns came from there so the nuns would recruit the nuns from their community and then my South Vietnamese I'm not sure where Hep and Sal

got them but everyone that they recruited their outstanding troops it took a couple of a little slower learning but once they got to speed they were fearless completely fearless and just great men in the field John, I want to ask you a little bit about, you know, the post-war experience and how your book and eventually books came about that, you know, when you came home from Vietnam, correct me if I'm wrong, like you kind of put the war to bed. Like, I'm done with that. That's over. Getting on with your life. And the beginning of across the fence, you tell this story that is just so haunting about your daughter playing the piano.

and you're walking out the window and watching the fog come across your backyard. Yeah. Yeah, we were at PiaL as an Invista, and that was my youngest girl. And you know how these flashbacks are. You never know when they're going to hit you. And so I was on the back porch. I could hear her playing. And yeah, and those clouds came in.

There's trees. They started with the trees. and then there's some clouds and stuff that came in and all of a sudden I'm in layoffs I was there and I was talking to Bubba

I'm talking to the the Covey because that was a mission where they put us in we had made we had hoped to stay on the ground but by the end of the day

we knew they were on us and they were coming at us and then we had had heavy contact and we had to blast our way through an area of where soldiers had attacked us but were able to get through them

after a gun run and we found an area where we'd come down with the strings and it was right at the end of the day it was foggy and the hillock I remember looking up to the helicopter once the ropes came out it looked like a toy looks so far away

and all of that came back and we had been in contact for gosh maybe 45 minutes or an hour and it was heavy. They kept coming at us, but we had moved, and they couldn't quite tell where we were. And so when we finally got pulled out,

I had Bubba put a claymore, and he put a white phosphorus grenade, taped it to the front of it. And so we had it, so I forget how we rigged it now, but as we went up, we detonated that thing, and that helped us give us a few more seconds during the extraction. and then all of a sudden was like, I'm back in vista. But my body was sweaty.

And because I didn't think we're going to get out. I really, that day, that was the one day. I really thought we were dead meat either then or it was going to be later that night because they were going to come with us with lanterns and dogs again. And we didn't have enough high ground to hide like we did back in November. But, oh yeah, it came back. Jack. It really did. And how did that impact you that you started, you started thinking about the war again?

How did that call that? Well, you know, the best way to handle you compartmentalize it. It's kind of like, holy shit, where'd that come from? This is like, I forget what year it was now, but Elena was really young with her piano lesson. So she was like five or six, mid-80s. Three, 2004 or something like that. Oh, even later. Oh, yeah.

And so it came back. I mean, and, but, you know, the moment is I'm there with Elena and Anna's there for the piano lesson. So it's like, Daddy, did you hear me play, whatever the song was? Yeah, you did great, kid. You know, I was like, get back to being a dad. This is where you are now. Yeah, yeah. And, yeah, and then I had that nightmare with Captain Tewon.

The nightmare I had for years at Haunted me was on, instead of Captain Tuan, coming down mountain it was a young lieutenant who we had been warned about by the other kingby pilots said if you get this lieutenant try to avoid him being a lead kingby he could be a backup or not the lead king because he was still learning and they were worried about his courage so that that's kind of report we had with the kingby pilots my nightmare it was him coming down the mountain instead of Captain Toulon. And so instead of him coming all the way down, and the prop blown the flames away,

he pulled away, and then I felt the heat of the flames come up. And that nightmare stuck with me for quite a while. And it came back a couple times. He didn't have to have to marry Anna. I mean, we've only been married for 25 years now. But it hasn't come back much the last few years. Is this kind of what,

inspired you to write down your experiences. What was it that kept you to write the first book? Well, it's my wife, really. We had talked about it. And because of the Secret War, and because I had done some stuff for Soldier of Fortune. I had a Gnome DeGere with Soldier of Fortune and Bob Brown. And by the time that Adam and I got around to talk about the book and stuff. It was around 2000. So we had Elena and four teenagers in the house. And I'm talking to her. I'm going, honey, I like to, I've been thinking about writing the book and she goes, no, you got to write it. Start now. I go, honey, we got four teenagers and a young little girl running around here. She goes, I'm with you. And she has. She backed me up every day, every way. First book, second book, third,

the audio books. She's always there. It's been like, my blessing. from the Lord and to have my wife. Amazing. Without her, I still be trying to put together the first book, man. Did Anna understand what you, did you ever tell her what you did in Vietnam up until that point? You know, she had some curiosity. So I would talk to her about it, just like with the kids, you know, if they ever asked the question, answer the question up to the extent that they want to hear it.

And Anna was curious. I mean, she's a sweetheart and she, and as the longer were together the more she wanted to hear and then when she finally met spider and some of the guys they would go hey you know what this knucklehead did in vietnam she did well yeah he ran recon no no no do you know what this knucklehead really did and uh oh yeah and so over times and plus she's been to a couple of uh of events now where i've been a speaker or something like that and she knows the story she's read the books now and uh she's my she's my she's my besides me and my sweetheart.

She's there with my biggest fan. And she's helping out all the time. I want to help more. So we get, we're hearing, I'm in Tennessee now. She's back in the OSHA side, wrapping things up. And then she's got some more plans for how to push out more books and maybe do some podcasts. We'll come back and talk some more podcasts than here. For sure.

Just some tilt talk. Love it. Actually, you never even told us how you came by the nickname of Tilt. Pinball machines. See, like you guys play pinballs and you lose, you walk away and pissed off, right? When I lose, I shake this shit out of the machine. I get to see my nickname in neon. At least I get a little satisfaction, you know?

John, this will absolutely make your day. You'll never forgive me for this. In Manhattan, there's a pinball living museum, which I took my daughter to introduce her to pinball machines because these dangfangled kids and their Nintendo switch and all this other stuff. I took her and I got her introduced. They have pinball machines from like the 1960s up until today. And it was like... Vegas?

No, no, in New York City. It's on like 2nd Avenue. And we went up there and I took her and it's like, hey, kid, this is what grandma's video games were like. Oh, okay. Yeah, here's, you know, here's my embarrassing story, Jeff. I can see this how we're on embarrassing. I had my second daughter, Meredith. We were at a pizza parlor when she's five years old.

She could barely reach the flippers. She beat me. It's like, oh my God. John, how did, you know, it was a secret war. You guys signed all these non-disclosure agreements or told them to talk about it, things like that. How did it all start to come together after the war? the meetings, the organizations,

people actually feeling, you know, getting to the point where they could talk about it, find each other, things like that. Well, in my case, I had taken down some of the names of our guys. And there's a couple like Lynn, Douglas Turner, the Frenchman, Rick Howard, and that we stayed in some contact with after the war for a few years. And that over time, each one would fall off. Lynn and I would talk occasionally the Frenchman. He and I talked until about 79.

When I moved to California, and then my parents moved, we lost contact with Doug. And a lot of the other guys. And then Spider-Parks called me up in 1983 and said, hey, there's a special operations association. It was formed by Sog, Recon, and Hatchet Force. And then the leadership brought in all the aviation. aviation units, the spads, all the door gunners and the helicopter piles of gunships and whatnot.

So they're all eligible for membership in the SOA. And so through there, we began going to the reunions. I mean, the first couple of years, me and Jeffrey Jenkins, the reunions were always in Vegas. And we would drive out, we'd wait for security to leave. They'd go to the bathroom. We'd sneak into the reunion, right? Get the free food, the free drinks, and we'd find one of our guys, and we'd crash on the floor at night, and then go back home.

But we'd see the guys. And then we lost Jeff, and then I took my wife, and Anna wasn't too impressed with the hotel, so she had a few years away from her. But pretty much every year we get together, and that helped out. And then on a very serious note, the SOA, has been doing video recordings of their history. So now we've got over 125 video recordings

of SAC recon, SAAG Hatchet Force, and some of the aviators. And I think we include one for Jack Singlob, who was in the OSS, spec ops for Korea. He was the officer in charge of Sagan for two years. And then, of course, he campaigned vigorously raised money for the Contra is fighting the comedy bastards down there in Nicaragua.

I have his book right here across from me. Hazardous Duty. Indeed. Amazing book. And even Jack, I mean, think about it. Here's Jack Singlow before World War II at UCLA coming into contact with the communists on campus and how screwed up they were. And then at the French resistance with Jack, there's two kinds of resistance.

The communist side? and a side that the Americas were aligned with. And the Congress would only do things that would generate headlines. They knew it. And they were political, even in World War II, those bastards. There's a fascinating interview with Jack Singaw in The Sentinel, which is the SFA newsletter out there.

I heard about that. It's really good. And Singwap talks about that, about how in Nazi-occupied France, the communist partisans would do things to, like, mine the other partisans and they even would set up like fake drop zones so that they would get the resupply drops from the allies rather than the other guys they're really really interesting stuff yeah right now i'm in franklin tennessee which is where jack lives and hopefully i'll have

a cup of coffee with him on sunday morning well give us our regards uh no i've said i got a long list of people that i'm giving regards to jack on but for sure i'll add that to the list of An absolute legend. John, I think, you know, there's a lot here, and there's so much more we could get into. But there's another guy who had a question here, and I think this is actually a good one. But just before we get that, I want to say to our viewers real quick, there's like 230 people just watching this live, John. And there will be many more in the subsequent days. Just want to say we really appreciate all you guys showing up, giving the attention for John and MacB. Saug.

And this is really a story we all believe needs to be told. John's books are across the fence on the ground. Saug Chronicles. You want to do some more research. We talked about Lynn Black's book, Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot. We talked about John Plaster's book, which is just called Saug. I just mentioned Singwop's book, Hazard is Duty. So those are some good places for you guys to begin your own research.

I think probably the price is. for across the fence. I think that's that on the ground. Hope you on the ground will be released. Across the fence is the place to start, in my opinion. It's one of my favorite memoirs to come out of the Vietnam War. I've read a lot of these at this point. No, I'm not trying to be a smart ass, really.

It is a really good book. And otherwise, I just want to let everyone know and remind you, if you haven't subscribed to the channel, please subscribe to it. please give us a little thumbs up or thumbs down if you think we suck leave a comment below tell us how you think we're doing and there's also a link down in the description for our patreon page if you want to support the website or support the channel support the stream if you like what we're doing and keep us running and that will also give you access to the bonus segments that I hope I

can twist your arm into doing for for a hot minute here John I just got like yeah what we need we just got a couple follow-ups for you know 10 15 minutes some interesting things we'll get into. Hey, remember, my wife's in the Oceanside, so I'm right here. I'm ready to roll, but I'm yours. Geographical Bachelor. You got Dave back, so I'm really happy to see Dave. It's like an honor here with such a living legend like Dave and you.

So I'm here, buddy. Too kind. John, we are so honored and grateful for your time. And so S.R. Gross asks, what is your new book coming out? and how can we get your books? Well, the books are on Amazon, and that's the quick way to get them. And they're all available with three books,

and then book four probably won't be starting until a little bit later this year because of moving and all that kind of stuff. And we're dealing with some family issues. So I'll get going on that. Like I said, we're going to, like Anna has really encouraged me because of a podcast we've had with you jack before and and others that we want to think about it would do more to get exposure to get the shock story the maximum exposure because our guys

and SOG as well as those who supported us I mean the aviators you know we had a spadby union for operation tailwind we had it in Tennessee at the Tennessee Aviation Museum in Severeville four years ago, I think it was four or three years ago. And it was amazing because this is the first time that I met and shook hands with a spad pilot. All those times that they came in and delivered ordinance, danger close. I mean, I told them, I remembered from spads and from the musket door gunners, they were so close that we had their 7.62 cartridges in our name. neck of her burning our skin, but I never complained because that was that close coverage.

I mean, and those spads, like my last mission, the spad runner made a gun run. He came back and made a second gun run. He turned a plane a little. He looked over at me. And I could tell you, he was so close, he was smoking a Philly Chirut. And then I saluted him because, you know, but these are guys, we met. So we never knew who these aviators were that saved our bacon. time after time yeah and so that's one of the things with the SOA does and that

be you mean with the SPAD pilots particularly some who remembered being there for Lynn Black on October to 5th just amazing I think you should do it John because you know all of these guys and they'd be comfortable talking to you and you can really break some ground that you know that's never been done before I think you should definitely go for it yeah well we will talk to you more about that when we get off of camera absolutely absolutely thank you and anything we can do to support you i mean this is history and people that the world needs you know we need to know about it needs to be recorded it needs to be there well you guys too being people are doing podcast now this is the new wave

of social media that's amazing because people are tired of what the garbage and crap they see on the boob tube to and there's just no and there's so many of the media that lie where what you all are doing and others that podcasts are coming out that talk about they hear the stories that's just I I sleep what you all are

doing too man I appreciate it. What it is is that people want to hear from you. They want to hear from John you are the guy, you are there they want to hear it from the horse's mouth and you know that's what this is yeah yeah

we it's a mutual admiration society yeah very much so we have you talk to veterans like you guys we appreciate it like I said we feel honored we have a couple more questions Andrew Dunbar thank you how prevalent was amphetamine use amongst the team I had heard stories of which I'm unsure of their veracity well we had what they were called green bombers which were amphetamines which you could take them if you wanted to stay up all night And I never tried it because very early on, you know, when I arrived in May of 68, there are still some elements around from the Tet offensive.

There are still enemy units that were in the villages and they would attack our base on occasion. They firing rockets or they mortars. No ground attacks by May. But anyways, we would go out and do ambushes. Well, one night, I was on guard duty. and the mortar pit started firing mortars. Boom, boom. And the mortars were landing in support of a team that set up an ambush outside the Fulon, the village.

So we hear the rounds impacting, but there's no gunfire. I mean, there's no AK, there's no SKS's. Now, there's some, there's some, our weapons are being fired, American, right? So somebody called this guy up and said, hey, what the hell's going on? out there. We don't hear any enemy gunfire. Oh no, they're coming through our wire. They're coming right to add us. They're coming through our perimeter. And the radio operator said, who? No, the green elephants, they're coming right through our perimeter. The guy was high on the amphetamines. Right. And he had an optical illusion that the green elephants were coming through his

defensive perimeter. And it's like, okay, I just learned the lesson. ain't touching that stuff. I'm crazy enough without drugs. You know, I could be fundamentally dangerous. You start pumping that stuff in my body. So I'd never touched them. But some guys did. They used them to stay up all night. And they could go three or four days. Now, I don't know about others, but in my case, I was afraid of it. So yes, some people did have it. They were available. But they were used in a mission-oriented.

the basis was there abuse probably but again our team we didn't see it and with you either with the Americans or the South Vietnamese Dave do you want to do a quick teaser for next week's guests oh next week we have on a former military close action close action there are what cat teams cap teams yeah close action I don't know what the peace is platoon no anyway close action team so they were essentially the end the guerrilla warfare element of the Marine Corps during Vietnam rarely rarely from did they work with forced recon actually the way they worked was

sort of the same as SF teams in villages working with the indigenous no kidding yes I never heard that because when we were at food by we had the force recon guys would come by and they're always short we would give them extra hand grenades extra bullets and in 68 some of the forced recon guards were still carrying them 14s it's just like hey here take all the bullets you want anything we can give you guys god bless you man yeah but they're going into the nashore combined action pacification program oh so it's not close action combined what is it again combined action pacification program yeah Yes. And on top of that, like just a massive, a very interesting personal story, there may be some gun running involved. Other things. I'm not 100%. I'm not going to tease it out too much.

We'll get into all of it next week. And, you know, until then, you know, John, you guys led the way. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. Well, thank you guys for years later picking up this word and carrying it forward. And thanks for your service, too. It's like the, I always like talking to different generations of veterans. It's an honor. There's so a lot, John. It's always instructive. Next time, gentlemen, we'll be talking.

Dave, take care. Continue to heal, brother. Thank you. Stick around, John. We're going to do the bonus segment. Thanks, everybody. Oh, whatever you need. Let me know.

Okay, okay. We'll see you guys next week.