The Team House - MACV-SOG veteran Nick Brokhausen, Ep. 76

Episode Date: January 16, 2021

Nick Brokhausen served two tours with the highly classified Studies and Observations Group (SOG) in Vietnam, running recon in denied enemy territory "across the fence" without the benefits of a passport. After the war, Nick used his skills in the private sector all around the globe. He is the author of "We Few" and "Whispers in the Tall Grass." Get access to bonus segments with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouse NEW! Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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. having issues but good Dave looks like every commo man I've ever worked

I wish I were sweaty earphones on and you know they're talking in some kind of warble with London you know and they got the barbed wire fence being loaded up as a reflector what are you doing? I'll be back with you later all right guys we are alive

this is episode 76 of the team house I'm Jack Murphy here with co-host over over over this area, Dave Park. We are here today with our guest, Nick Brockhausen, a Vietnam veteran, served in Mac V. Sogg, doing clandestine operations across the fence. He is the author of Whispers in the Tall Grass.

Dave, you have WeFew. That's his first book, WeFew. And then he has a new one coming out later on this year in 2021 that we're going to talk about a little later. So Nick, welcome to the show. show how are you fine thanks for having me on absolutely man we really appreciate it and i just want to say up front that you are probably the most requested guest we've had i've had so many people hit me up saying you got to have nick brockhousin on the show so you are you are a fan

favorite from the get go how many of them told you i owed money none of them none of them they've read your books and they really enjoyed them that's why they were they all say it's not to get their foot in the door. That's how they get you. Right, that's right. Hey, he owe me a Rolex. So, Nick, really the first way we usually get started on this show other than having a few whiskeys

is we ask our guest what their origin story is. If you were, you know, Spider-Man got bit by a radioactive spider, how did you find your way into special forces? How did that whole deal come about?

It was a dark and stormy night. you know, underneath the 5,000-watt radio station. I grew up in Minnesota, and, you know, we basically, you know, we, I grew up North Dakota and Minnesota on farms and, you know, in old America, where everybody learned how to do things like fix a carburetor. And, you know, we did a lot of hunting, a lot of fishing, and it seemed natural. in those days when your country called you went it wasn't any question you got a draft notice or didn't like to draft notice you unless it in the

air force and you know whatever you wanted to do so I graduated into into the military basically at the base level of you know a rifleman and you know went through the my first combat tour was as a as a wife and i was laying on the side of the road trying to decide whether i was going to

actually be enlist and i saw this feller coming up the road some tall long lanky looking feller and tiger stripe fatigues carrying a Swedish cave with the silencer on it and they had like about 40 of what looked like brigands behind him with all this man jewelry hanging all over him you knives, grenades, and that. Asked the sergeant. I said, what's that? And he goes, well, that's one of those snake eaters. And so what's that?

He goes, well, you know, Green Berets, special forces. They said, where's their officers? And he goes, they don't have any. So I knew exactly where I was going to go after that. I made that path that we all made to get into special forces. There's a lot different in those days. One thing I can tell you, if you get caught with a rucksack full of cannibal in Camp McCall that you snuck out purloin from a field and brought back to the other rats in your tent, if you get caught, you will eat all of them. And you will probably have diarrhea for about three years.

Things were different in those days. they, you know, I think the last time I went down to McCall years ago and that I was just amazed at the place and what they were doing there and different programs in that. So I went through all that. When I, you know, went back to Nam, I basically got Shanghai by a friend. I was supposed to go to Mike Force, which is a nice place. because there's 240 other targets out there for the oriental gentleman to shoot at rather than just you. And I got, I said this guy, Bernie O'Connell, to check on our orders.

And he came back and he goes, I got us a really good deal. And when somebody, when any of your friends says something like that, the first thing that happens, pucker. Which is the deal. He said, it's an all-volunteer outfit. and people are in line to get into it. Right there, you know that's a lie. Right there, I said, what's the name of it? And he goes, it's Maxog and a place we're going to is CCF.

And it was like somebody shoved a hot electrical wire up my anus. Because I had met a couple of guys that had come back from there, like Hardy Bachelors Brother, who was mad as a March Hare. And they, you know, I mean, there were good combat troops in that, but it was like everybody avoided them like they were lepers. So anyway, we ended up going up to Danang and got dialed in up there. And, you know, for the next several months, I had the joy of running recon. So you got put in command and control North. Could you tell us about like getting introduced to your team, getting introduced to, were they mountain yards?

were they Nungs? Who were the Indig you work with? R.T. Habu. I first got introduced to the Americans when I got there because Captain Manus decided I was a smart ass and said, well, I'm just going to put you in there with two Southerners and see how smart ass you are. So I ended up on R.T. Habu and Monyards for that team were all brute. Most of what we used up in Command of Control North were Sedang, brew, Radei, and some jirai, very few jirai. Then Vietnamese and some cambodes and Nunes, Chinese Nunes. And so the teams were made up,

but usually didn't have a mix of Nungs and Monterech. There are Nungs and Vietnamese. You know, it was, if you had a Nung team, he had a Nung team. Hendricks had a Nung team. He could never pronounce their name, so he named him after Dapney Duck's nephews. Louis, Dewey, Louis, all that.

And Louis could speak perfect American English. And he was always trying it out on people like, you know, like donut dollies. And it was ugly every time. So usually the teams were based on whatever ethnicity that you were running. Brew, Sedang. The Sedang are cool because they filed her teeth. But they, you know, they look like wolves when they smile at you. good lord now when you talk about well they're from the central highlights yeah when you talk about

the brew and the sedang and them those are all various tribes of the mountain yards oh yeah it's the daga people dagan and you know they're what's out about them is they're an old people growing back neolithic they actually have in their war their verbal lore the of hunting elephants with long hair. So they originated up in China somewhere. And then, you know, as everybody came in, they gradually compressed them down into the peninsula and into China. That's amazing.

And the monger related to them. You know, there's, I used to have this book, which I loved. It was all the tribes, all their cultural things and that. And somebody swaped it from me at a party one night. It was an actual FM, you know, that yellow. covered cover with the FM 24 dash dash one squirrel five you know the usual stuff but it was a great book and and the the the mine yards are an amazing people just right out of the iron age imagine that warrior culture from the iron age and then you stumble in there with all these

man toys like machine guns and grenades and that oh popular guy And some of these guys have been fighting for quite a while, right? You mentioned in We Few that like some of them had served with the French Foreign Legion during the Indochian War. They spoke French. They spoke German. That Bonn and Bong, our thump gunner, was also a shaman. And he had fought with force 36, you know, the Legion group, the strike group that went north trying to relieve DMV. and that as a striker at the age of 15.

Wow. And here we are in Vietnam in in 70 and you know he's still plotting up and down the amount of hardcore hardcore and they you know they they just basically were trying to survive you know and everybody was fighting around them and they got dragged into it. My yard team leader, Kuman, had been fighting the communists for 12 years. And he'd already lost a family. They'd come into his village and butchering his wife and kids.

So he had no love for him. Yeah. Then the brewer, boo, man. I mean, no matter whether they're, like, we retreat, we recruited Bond out of the POW camp next door. He was a former NVA Sapper commander. But he was brute. And the brew go, hey, he wants to come over,

and fight with it hey you trust them I'll trust them I trust you guys except with my money on my rations was I mean was it pretty was that fairly common to find Monton Yards who had been with the NVA for whatever reason and yeah well we had chew hoys too you know there was a huge POW camp right next door to CCN we used to get drunk and they go take CS grenades and shoot them into the compound just to keep the MPs and them on their toes. But that's who overran the camp in 1968. The Sappers came in from the sea, a company,

and their plan was to kill as many Americans as they could, take the arms and arm the POW camp next door, and then just sweep into Danang and some kind of concerted effort. So you arrive at as you refer, refer to it as chuckle-chalky north and so when you get there how is that different than how you'd been trained because you had just been through the Q course you'd just gotten trained up as as SF right or you'd uh wait i mean you you you know later on i talk to guys from your generation and the generation before that you know that there were between me and you and they go what kind

the selection course did you go through? I went to SF training because it basically was just another assignment. The only difference was it was voluntary and they didn't tell you why it was voluntary until you got there and found out what you'd be doing. And at that point, you're screwed. Who's going to go, well, you know, I really don't think this is for me and that, you know, and get off the truck. Right. So you get shuffled down to recon company. The next thing you know, some gentlemen are walking out there pat me on the cheek and going take this bag of grenades with it might need him yeah you said that your pressure was fairly quickly i'm sorry you said that peer pressure was a huge motivator while you're there right i mean it's not just pure pressure it's it's

you're there with brothers and arms and the desire to perform to standard um so when you show up at a unit like that whatever your expectations were or weren't did you find that everybody who's up there or almost everybody who showed up there just uh put in maximum effort especially since the the high casualty rates and and everything like that we were in the rangers right yeah yeah same thing yeah yeah pressure now and i like to think we invented it gave it to you kids but uh you know and that line is goes along a long a long way back i never wanted to to be anything but special forces when you know i mean that was the the epitome of well first of all i read in playboy magazine with like 1965 that the most wanted person to be at a party in hollywood

was a green beret and i figured that was my path to uh hanging out with women who didn't complain about the way i smell so i mean it was just like being arranged I knew all the early rangers when you guys got the ribbon, the 75th Ranger ribbon and that that came out of Vietnam. And usually it was, they had to, I think it was a company with each division in like four different companies. Zabotowski, who was one of our Medal of Honor winners, was also in the Rangers there. Tommy Shook was in the Ranger Hall of Fame, who should have been arrested for littering, is in was in that

that group Clem Lemke you know a lot a lot of good guys you know that's what formed up the heart of that

and you know how it is in the range of Italians you're just not going to say no I mean you have to be scared everybody's scared

crapless is that good enough are we getting with the sensors no we're all good yeah Jack was just kidding

when he said this was PG-13 you can say whatever you want really yeah We are, Mark. Yeah, you can.

You can. Fuck shit ass. Cockballs pussy. Yeah. These two youngsters don't know what they wandered into, have they? Yeah, well, so to answer your question that, you know, once you got there, most, I think of, we had guys to quit. Because it was voluntary. And like I said on my interview on C-SPAN and that, there was no stain against her on.

because once you realize what you were doing, it's not for everybody. Right. You know, there's people that choked up, couldn't, you know, and guys that ran two or four missions and we're doing fine, and they finally hit that one bright light where you're down to your last eight rounds of ammunition, you're shot, the guy you went in to get shot,

you're trying to make your perforated ass back to the helicopter. And that was it. You know, it just stopped it. Yeah, you wrote about that in Whispers in the Tallgrass, too, a few different guys you knew who they punched out. They were like, I'm done. And you were like, you know, that's the mature decision to make at that point when you've really, you know, your nerves are afraid to that point. Yeah, well, it'll give you an example. We had a really good guy, former Marine.

all right because, you know, he'd been in combat before and that, but just when we got on the ground, we came back and the yard team leader said, he's not going out with this again, because if he goes out with this again, we're going to kill him. But it just, they, if the yards didn't like him, he was out. And he went from there to become the best ASP that we had. had up at the top. The guy who brings you your target folder and tells you, this is the Intel for the last five years. You know, these are after action reports. And that really good guy,

really good guy. But, you know, the yards made the decision. No, you know, we don't trust them like you, Trotsie. That's, of course, because he didn't owe him any money. So tell us then about, you know, your first mission with Mac V. Sock. I mean, you get on the ground, boots on the the ground to get introduced to your team what's the job well i first of all the other half of my soul is a guy named lemuel mcgrothran and i pronounce it lemuel although he can pronounce it lemuel and he's a little short alabamaan gator runner and that and he's the other half of my soul So we bonded right from the beginning. And it was, I mean, that's the way it is.

I mean, it's either you do or you don't, you don't click or you do click. So we'd done a couple of training things, you know, where went out to cover somebody doing something. You know, West had an Ag came back. And then my first real recon mission was in a place called DM10. DM 10 is demilitarized zone target number 10 which is a huge extinct caldera and it's got the spine crater all the way around except on one side and a trail coming up the middle of it that was probably meter a meter and a half wide we dropped in yeah we'd read the you know all the intel data and that there was supposed to be a division in that area they were all there right there we lowered or came in on the

old z got off mac got off the chopper he was in the chopper ahead of me he got off the chopper and he fell in the entrance of a bunker upside down with his rucksack facing down into the hole and then he's squatting around like some kind of turtle in that and the pilot starts the pull pitch and pull out of there. And I told him, put me on the ground. He wouldn't, he started, kept doing it. So I shoved a gun in the back of his helmets and put me on the ground. He can't fight with three guys.

We can fight with seven. So they put us on the bunker. And about 20 minutes, we were working all the air we could find. Everything, Covey could call up. I mean, the fast movers, A1 knees, you name it, just to get our sorry ass out of there. But that was my baptism of fire and it came back.

And Mack told me, he goes, the yard's like you. And I go, why? He says, because you scream when you're shooting. So that bonded me to the team. That's awesome. How was...

Different war. How is that different than your experience as a rifleman with the infantry. You never know where you're going. You have no idea where you're going. You just walk and you plod and people shoot at you and people fall down beside you and you get up and repeat the whole process over again.

And that gets scary. The major difference is that whatever, whether you're a Marine or Army riflemen or you know the grunt that that's your life misery cold and heightened moments of sheer terror inner space with gee I hope I don't forget what women smell like so you do the first mission and Mac I guess tells you that that they want to take you on something easy for your first mission right well that was easy yeah we actually we were supposed to go on an easy mission And the team ahead of us got shot up running a bright light on another team.

So they moved us into their slot with the target. We were supposed to be just southed there in another six by six no bomb box. And as well, since you were down here and you studied the intel and that is pretty much the same up here. I mean, where you put the overlays on, you can't see the contour lines because of the enemy unit. Oh, yeah. So that's how we got to start. So for people who haven't read your book yet, because I'm sure they will after this, what is a bright light team?

A bright light team, in the beginning they used the hatchet companies, which were set up pretty much like the might force, you know. Shot troops go in, you know, do rays, do ambushes, do rescues, whatever. and it eventually became too complicated because there's too many of them to haul in and haul out so we started running our own what we called Bright Lake which is basically a rescue mission. You have a team on the ground that's so shot up

that it can't get to the helicopters on its own or they just need to be beefed up so you can shoot your way up and normally in the normal rotation of things was that you would leave Danang go to the lunch site either in Fubai or in Quintree and you would... 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. 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. Sometimes they send teams up there to do nothing but bright light, and they were usually heavy teams. Teams that were running 8, 10, 12, 15 people. And then later it got to be, you were on the draw. You got a mission.

There's three teams up there. When one goes in, the other two actors of Brightlight. And then when he comes out, they switch places and that until they rotate the team back to the hang and bring up a new batch of lucky winners for their lottery. And it's complicated. We developed a lot of tactics that you guys use later. Things like you got to clear everything in front of me so you use the air. use them dropping hard bombs dropping napalm dropping don't drop C-BU because you may have to walk through it later ones that didn't go off will you know use air support to clear the area in front of you or blow an LZ

that's closer to the team because you can't possibly drag them a kilometer and a half to the the only LZ in the area I never went in and repelled it. I always went in on something that was either an old bomb crater or was big enough to get one ship in. And a lot of times we blew LZs with using the Claymore with the ring main, with the dead court in between. And you dropped the trees,

and it still doesn't make a flat landing place. I don't care what Hollywood sets. Claymore does not clear off the tree and the ground and make it look like it was manicured. There are big splinters and shit sticking up that the helicopter guys don't like. So, but the bright light's basically a rescue mission. You go in, shoot your way in. Hopefully you don't have to shoot your way in. Air support is suppressed them and up to hold them back. But if you have to, you shoot your way in, gather up all the wounded and dead try and drag your perforated carcass back to the helicopter

when you talk about the bright light teams and shoot your way in can you tell us a little bit about like the statistics of mac v sog and particularly like ccn like i don't think people understand just how lethal that assignment could be lethal yeah just what the life like how uh well in terms of in terms of how day risk it was for you guys? Well, I've watched a lot of war movies. The closest depiction I saw of what actual combat is like

is saving private riot. I mean, photography on that and how they followed, you know, and the sound, you know, the sound of a high velocity round going past your mortal coil sounds like a crack. And the louder it sounds,

the closer it is, is to your mortal coil. But there's so much noise on a battlefield, especially in the situations that we were in because we were using air power to save ourselves, to soften them up, back them off, get them to the point where we could do the rescue or whatever. Or if you were a recon team and they'd run you run your ass on the ground, they're trying to kill you. You bring in as much air, support as you can. God bless the aviators. Don't ever tell anybody I said this.

They saved our cookies on so many occasions. You know, you got to when we started the Special Operations Association, we were only letting associate members in, you know, people that had been in the Marquis in World War II. Because they were originally, the

SOA was for recon only. Some of you guys forgot that. And then it changed into all of the song. And the first people we let in were the aviates because they flew us in and then they were dumb enough

to come back and pick us up. So we considered them brothers in arms and that. And it really wasn't. Combined arms, the tactics and the way of working that we developed through our missions

went a long ways all the way into Desert storm you know and and beyond to say you know and i'm happy to say i didn't write the book tilt mire wrote the book and if you want to blame somebody blame him there's tilt we've had tilt on the show before perfect hi jilt if you're enjoying wherever you're at he's doing good he moved to uh nashville i think he's doing good he moved to uh nashville i think he's in tennessee I was trying not to give that up. Sure, these guys are operators.

I'm bad, I'm bad. But no, John's doing real well. Yeah, I talked to them this afternoon. Oh, right on. Yeah. So, I hope I cast some illumination on it, didn't ramble on too long. No, no, not at all. I just, I was amazing at, you said,

that while you were there or when you first arrived, that they lost like a team and a half or something like that. And it was shortly after. It was like, but then before the month was up. When I got there, we arrived and there was, CCCM was a big compound right on the sea, right? And that the front part of it facing the hardball was a perforated steel plate landing field.

When I drove in the gate, there was a cobra helicopter burning at the far end, was still on fire. And I looked at Bernie, who was the guy who got us the assignment. He goes, I said, Bernie, this doesn't look like one of those show camps you were talking about. This looks like it might be a little more serious. So you talk about the bright light teams, and your second mission, was actually as a bright light, correct? We did bright lights all the time. Okay.

I mean, you were there to run recon. And the way that was organized, like I said, after a while, the hatching companies couldn't keep up with the tactics that the North via the maze were using. Because we were there. We were shooting, fighting with them and all that. We knew how they were going to operate,

especially when they came in with anti-recon units, they would run your ass down and kill you. They'd use the green tree. troops to take casualties to get enough close enough to get on your belt buckle and then they'd kill you. And they were all, I mean, these were tough guys. And we found out later, most of them were NCOs. Well, they'd taken them from other units, handpicked them in that, put them in special formation. The good thing about Mr. Chuck, he was on the learning curve all the time.

And if you weren't, you were dead. Yeah. All right. so then we move on i'm just kind of going by your book if you don't mind um uh the bandit brandy um bandit brady i knew these little suckles going to come up of it oh the titles well bandit brandy i actually went to taiwan and i got a book on merrill's marauders because they have no copyright laws there about hundreds of books and i was shipping them back to my brother right from taiwan when I went over on R&R.

Well, actually, go over on the CCK flight so it doesn't count as an R&R, which was when they sent the blackbirds over. We were used in there. They were getting, you know, they checked your oil, wipe the windshield, do all that shit. Then they'd be three days, five days in Taiwan. So I got this book. It was about Merrill's Maraudism. They were talking about when they brought them back from the Kakima Airfield Fight.

They were all malaria. and shot this shit. They brought them back to a rest area, which was by a strain. And everybody was washing, you know, getting back and eating food and not being shot at all the time. And they gave the officers a bottle of liquor each,

whiskey, scot, whatever they had. And the enlisted men got two cans of stale three-two beer per man. And while they were in the rest of the rest area, So they had been with the natives long enough. The natives were telling them, well, you make band of brandy brand. Well, how do you make brandy brandy?

Well, first you get a lot of tropical fruit. Well, the first thing you get is a 55 gallon gas drum. You put it in that fast movement stream and throw sand to gravel in there until it scours out the inside so it's like stainless steel. Then you set it up on dry line, dry it out, and you fill it with tropical fruits, squabas, you know, monkey shit, whatever. And it goes in there and then on top of that, they'd put marijuana. And then they would cap it.

You remember that old plastic from World War II? That real thick plastic they used to use for bunkers and shit like that. That's a little bit before that time, Nick. I'm sorry. They would cap it with that and then tie it up, tape it up, whatever they did in those days. and put it out in the hot sun and let it bake for about five days. When the black plastic swelled up so it was kind of a gray-looking balloon on the top of it, they would pop it, put all the marijuana out of the top,

put it on a perforated steel plate, let it dry out for the natives' consumption later. And then they would drink it. It was called Band and Brandy. Now, they put the officer, each officer's bottle of liquor went in there too, the scots and bourbon and five the little gym and uh i decided to recreate that and uh we made it on uh it was because the weather was socked in the a a o we closed down for like a week week and a half and uh and that was up north so no no teams are going up to

quontria and that so we made this concoction of i remember getting a canteen cup full of this stuff on a Friday afternoon. I woke up in the minefield on the on the east end of the camp, start naked with that canteen cup and it was still about a quarter full. And everybody in the camp was looking for. Who did this? They did this. You know, a bunch of little rats. So it was an interesting experience. And better than the you know the yards used to make this thing of rice wine rice you know to keep pouring mom pay to keep pouring in water the more water they put in the drunken you get this stuff was better than that much better than that had captain maynace

tell me what a well you started off with scoundrel and i went to demon within about three sentences now uh was this about the same time uh that you woke up someplace you didn't expect to wake up That was like a weekend later. How did you wake up in a morgue? Well, Dr. Cottrell, who's actually a staff servant, I got, first thing you learn in recon, don't get drunk and stay in the recon. You may end up at part of a Nordic funeral and a boat made out of blown up prophylatics and rubber gloves. Or you could end up like me in the morgue.

So I'm freezing. I came out of whatever alcoholic speaker I was in at the time. And I'm freezing, I'm going, oh, the little shit's locked me in the meatlock. So I went to sit up, it was dark, went to sit up, my head hit the top or whatever I was in within a couple of inches. And about the time I was recovering, and I was inside a plastic bag. And I'm going, look at them, what have they done with my mortal coil? coil. So about that time the thing behind me clicks and the shelf rolls out and I'm in the morgue on one of the shelves and there's a there's a black spec four who's got a clipboard

and he's writing down the tow tags of all the debt that are in there and I rolled out and I sat up and that's the last time I saw it He disappeared so fast, he dissipated. But about a minute after that, all these nurses and doctors come running in with the panels and everything, and they're going, hold still, you know, you got, you know, we want to make sure you all get away from me. I got that tray that was laying, the guy who had the clipboard, his tray was laying on the board, them holding off the doctors and the nurses going to get away from me. Well, what had happened is I passed out.

And they took me down to the board, put me in a body bag, and slammed me in one of the drawers in that. And my toe hurt so bad. It was like swollen to six times in size because there was a toe tag. You know, on the corpse, you put the cause of death and date action and all that. And they had twisted the wire down with a pair of pliers. cut up all my circulation of my toe so it was like this big around and i'm trying to limp around with that toe tag and i was looking at it and i caused the death with bomb and i'm going i was in a bomb

what if i'll get some off time well and i get you know they had to go on what they call that uh when you're not available for work profile can i go on profile yeah then they on the to add insult to injury, they sent Stevie Comerford with me. They didn't pick me up. He was an EA. And Stephen Comerford had a plate in his head. And he also had orders from doctors never to use alcohol, pharmaceuticals, or gunpowder. And he was doing all three. He'd gotten a DSC in Korea with the regimental combat team.

He was the friend of the guy who went and found his friend, the goddess in the CCF. They'd all been in Korea together. Yeah, that crowd. And they sent him to pick me up. And he's like, he looks like a deranged wolverie. He's like, those little rascals, when you get back, I'll guess you'll have to have a chat with them.

Yeah. When I got back, I was looking for some midget killing hardware. Yeah, I mean, a lot of crazy things go on when you, well you guys were both there you know what it's like in the zone it's not like gee well you guys are different i in fact we went back a while back and we were talking some of you letters and they were going wow you guys did this should got away with let me tell you something we wouldn't last it five minutes in your army they took all the fun after when he got the four devins had three DUIs and three consecutive nights

when he ran over the MP stand. These officers are really taking all the fun out of war, I think. It's just terrible. They can never take the fun out of war. They're trying. They're trying. Well, they try. Sure, Lieutenant.

You got anything more on the first one before we go to. Well, that was one of the things that struck me about your book, is it, as much as it is about your combat operations, it's also about your shenanigans. And yeah, so much of that stuff would not have flown at all in today's military. What are you drinking there, brother? Is that buffalo trace? No, toxic? Toxic. What is it? We can see toxic.

Toxic masculinity. It's his whiskey. We'll get into that later. Well, you know, I had a lot of people that call me, talk to me, and they go, well, you guys were jeep stealing, hell-raising, you know, heathens. If that's all they got out of the book, they missed the point of it. We did all that. And I have talked to some of you youngsters. I've got some stories about you that ought to be a friend.

Wise. Followed by more lies. Yeah. Yeah, I remember the A team that found Saddam. Tom's son's exotic car collection, and we're selling it into Germany to the Kurds to pay their intel assets. That sounds like a made-up story. No, no, no, no, no. I know a couple of these rascots.

But, no, as you said, Nick, I mean, you're in that place. You're in a war. You've got to improvise and overcome. I mean, that's like a super S-F thing to do. Like, you've got a job to do. How do you get it done? I always consider myself a professional. Most of my commanders considered me as a management nightmare.

You know, I, my generation, and I've seen it amongst the younger generation. We all treat special forces as a way of life, not a job description. We were there. They asked us to do something. and came up with ways to do it. We suffered for it. We had the highest casualty rate of any unit in Vietnam. And, you know, I know very few people that did a tour there

that did not get wounded, or at least wounded more than once. Yeah. But, and look at the numbers, I think it was like, I've seen very, I saw it like there was 6,800, 7,800 guys that served in ground combat. had operations and saw actual saw and out of that like 1800 or 1300 survived the war so you know it's uh we we lost a lot of good people but we got done what we set up to do and and that's what inspired me when i went when i stayed in the army to stay in special

forces and try to do just that same thing and that i gotta tell you after the war We did a lot of really exciting things. We went on MTTs, the Bolivia, and trained the Rinchas, the Rangers, the track down, the bandits in the hill. We went to Zaire to give a jump master school. That didn't turn out well. Most of those guys are dead now, so it doesn't matter. But, yeah, we did a lot of different things in that. We developed all kinds of different tactics and that.

If you follow the lineage of the 10th Special Forces Group, most of them were special projects, people. Because Jim Butler, my ratchet brother-in-law, who was the adjutant there, was looking around for, like, Minnie Mac went to Leavenworth as a prison guard, you know, guys went to become drill sergeants and all that. He reached out for him through Mrs. A and pulled all those guys back into the 10th group,

That's what built the core of the 10 Special Forces Group in the 70. And Dead A, when I was in Dead A, there were at least 10, 15 guys that had been in CCN, CCS, or whatever. Most of them were problem children, but not being served. All that bad shit happened after I left. Nick, do you want to tell us about the donut dollies and your fondness for them? sure yeah but what are you trying to start right i got enough grief over that i became the most hated man in christendom over that well you know and the donut dollies did a lot of they did you know but you know i i really didn't have all that much interaction with them

that was not on a negative basis you know i just there was there was there was you know they they come out with these stupid gait when i was a rifle men they come out and there's you know round-eyed women oh god's 270 smelly beasts and that you know and they're up front holding up these little outlines of the state going what state is this you know and a guy who gets it right gets to get an extra donut and a handshake from something that smelled better than the rest of them and yeah i think that the crowned that with louis remember i was telling you about the chinese the no that little bastard we were at the once i'm trying to leave and go back to danang because i've already done my bloodlet and

henrich's team came in on a c123 blackbird and they had donut and the donut dollies come out this one actually looked like a horse see i just faced it i swear to god look like a horse and the other one was some you know rubinask product from ohio and they came off the thing and they were absolutely indicted let me find someone to report this too and they're going past us and hendricks and this team comes up now these are all nuns right and hendish is arguing with louis going Why did you start that? I mean, what were you thinking? Well, what had happened, they were on the plane,

and these two women took offense that there were gooks on the train on the plane. Oh, my God. Why are we flying with these gooks? These gooks do this, these gooks do that. And Louis got up and he goes, well, I'm sorry you feel that way about us, but we're going on a particularly dangerous mission. I happen to own a whorehouse in the Tram. And I'm pretty sure I'd go more than five bucks for the two of you.

If you had a trapeze in your ass. They screwed right into the ceiling. We're barking at the plane crew or whatever. And when they landed, you know, they went huffing off to get the... They came back with the MP. They were taken off. Because the guy on the Caribou goes, you need to get on now because they're talking to the tower

and the MPs are on the way. And we got on and Hendricks went up to infamy or whatever he was doing with his star English student. And we managed to get back to Benang. Yeah. So the last thing they're expecting is for a Vietnamese or, you know, to stand up an imperfect American English tell, say a joke like a special forces guy.

Like that must have been shocked. Years, years later. I was in New York City with a friend who wanted to introduce me to the Tongues. And we went to the, I don't know, the Dragon or Retribution restaurant or whatever. There was a big meeting. We were the only white guys there. And there's trails. And he goes, well, the Tong leaders coming in from Dallas, the big Tong leader.

and I'm sitting there at this table with these Chinese fellows and that my friend and the big commotion at the front of the hall and this guy comes in everybody's like kissing his hand bowing to him and everything and I look up guess who it is no fucking why yep yeah he goes oh chugsy oh this is good this is not gonna be well I can thank you a kilo if you want you When you say the Tongues, you're talking about the Chinese mafia. Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, that's you bought the Nungs out of Vietnam. The Taiwanese tongs and that, but you actually managed to get them out of Vietnam.

I probably shouldn't be telling you this. Well, you're not telling you. I'm 73. I really don't give a shit. It's between you, me, Dave, and the internet. Yeah. And we won't tell. Yeah.

These guys are lying. I could tell them they look like fucking radio operators. You know, smart enough to be radio operators, to be honest with you. No, that's pretty accurate. Yeah, well, you know, we'll get into it later, but our book that we wrote together and that was about what we did after we got out of the military. And you guys, you know, you got to remember that you're going to make mistakes. Yeah.

If you get in the tone for your mistakes and keep moving forward, great. If not get divorced, find a young chick with really, you know, an arthritis problem. And get on with you. That's what we did. That's good advice. Carol Cuddy. So one of the missions you wrote about, one of the missions you wrote about in your book was the insertion that you and Mac had where you observed a road repair going on. And then I think kind of on the fly, right, decided to turn that into a prison.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, a lot of this stuff we were doing was trying to find their network. You know, Highway 912, the Huchy Mint Trail, was made up of complex and smaller trails. You know, they, like, built things underneath the canopy. They built false roads so that the air support to be flying, looking for trucks, and they're nowhere near that because they're over here. the whole side of the hills moving that's all those trucks under under leaves and then and we were

doing a lot of area recon to kind of uncover that find out what the what the matrix was now the secondary mission was we were trying to find their headquarters if we could find the headquarters we could find the high speed trails they normally they uh the north of me's weren't stupid they did a lot of coaxial cable common line we did wire caps should like that But a lot of times they'd send courier. And we figured if we could grab a courier, we could grab his packet at the same time. And we noticed the road building, we figured out that, you know, we could probably grab a prisoner here. So we called up Covey, told them, we think we're going to interdict this trail.

Somebody put some heat on these people. So somebody starts moving around these trails and that. So they, Covey brought in airstraights, and those airstrikes scared them up. And they started running the trails. That's how we grabbed the guy. Eventually lost him, but we grabbed the guy. Now, when you say you lost him, so you grabbed this guy, air strikes are going on. How did you X-fill?

On strings. They pulled down on string. And the way we lost them was Kuban cut him loose. They were hanging on the strings together, and the guy bit him in the face, and he just cut his rope. we we went oh there goes $700

yeah so you're on you got a bonus when like the yards we get one month pay and you know you get to go to Taiwan for five days and take yourself

into the stupor and convince yourself to get on the plane and come back so you were on and these guys are drinking Scott for Christ sake that's a girl's drink We're fancy. Men drink rye and older mature men mix it with absinth. With absent.

Yeah, you got more hair on your bowls than I do, Nick. I'm not afraid to admit it. I don't have any hair on my balls. Actually, I don't have any balls. I left in some woman's purse. He doesn't have any hair either. Well, mostly frightening. And I guess the fat naked guy that runs around in my bedroom. So you did say we could say anything. You can say anything. It's on. It's on.

So I think that our viewers would, I need to understand that when you say you went out on a string, you went out on stable basically. You had a harness and they came and they basically just yanked you, correct? You're wearing a stable ring, which is basically a parachute harness. I mean, it got simplified. It's not like the B-12. harness and that it's it got down to straps and you know all the basic linkage in that you bring it up you hook you hook your legs in and your butts in and all your web gear is on that stable ring all your ammo pouches all your everything is connected to that and it's got two d rings up here that when they throw the string down it's got two hooks on it that you've clapping two snap legs you put into there and then got a 120 foot rope that they lift up to the canopy and hopefully you fly off like

Mary Poppins. That's strings. And so you get picked up and you're on a different string. You and Mac are on a different string than the prisoner. No, you're hooked together. When you get on the strings, you're all together and you're hooked snap links into each other. Okay. And we figured out we wanted to send a prisoner out first, and we put Kuman and Tua on the strings with him, because we were at high altitude, we were up by the ashaw and the West Rim and they were pulling them out. At that altitude, you know, and then have a lot of lift capability for weight. So there's like three yards on it.

We said, well, great, we'll get him out, and then we'll come out afterwards. So we had Coon and Tua in the prisoner, oh, and one other yard, the lightest one, T.T. Lloyd. And then Mack and I and the other four yards came out on the second string. So we're hooked together like this, and we see them ahead of us, and all of a sudden, one of the dark spots underneath the helicopter just drops off. What had happened was the guy, he was trussed up with tight, you know, the plastic cups in that, that and he had gotten this swinging back and forth and his snap link came loose and he kicked away from cooman and when he came back he grabbed on to cooman with his teeth in his face

bit him right here holy shit and kumman just reached up took a knife of him five an hour straight to the ground and then when we got him on the ground he's going he's still spitting blood and everything his face and bleeding he's number 10 bc no need bc no need prisoner number 10 okay that sounds good our next trick we'll go see if we can kidnap a tank so uh i mean you you went into your book also about how they keep coughing like that not because of a coke freakery. I have COVID. We don't pry.

We don't pry. Whatever you want to share, you can share. I love this. He looks just looking captain of him. Well, we're not here to judge. You talk about like prisoner fever, where everybody starts getting the bright idea that now we, like every op needs to be,

centered around and snatching somebody? You know, the most valuable prisoner that they grabbed when I was there was grabbed by Eldon Bargewell. Oh, you know who Elvin Bargewell is? Yeah, he's a legend. I knew him when he was a stamp sergeant, and he did not scratch his nuts with a salad fork. But Eldon grabbed a prisoner. You know what the prisoner did? was he a battalion commander

or special ops or any recant? Guess what he did? He was the cook and he had the roster of all the units that he was supposed to feed. Right down to the last private. They grabbed him with his roster and his intel and

all that and they knew every unit that was in the bowl of the DM10, the 309th Hot Rocket Division, Battalion 4 major known you know i mean everything he was a cook unreal they never knew what you were going to get you know you hope that you get an officer what is uh you know map map case and all that stuff

but you might grab some guys that's just some scared private well the two guys that were with that officer were both privates both of them were brothers yeah and then elven saw also told me he found a place out there that was a a message and born in the north to die in the south carved into a tree wow I always used to carve into trees out there John Wayne is my father good work no and then I guess what the last things we'll cover from this book because I want to I want you tell the Buffalo story but I want you to tell that like on the would he say that was the last thing

No, no, no. Are we done already? This little shit's kicking us off. Well, look. What was the story you wanted me to talk? And don't call it the story. The factual account of the events on the ground. Well, I would like you later on sort of our exclusive to tell the factual events of the Buffalo that you witnessed.

The what? The Buffalo. The Buffalo. Yeah. And. And no, they're talking about Boudreau with his fucking Western novels and shit. And, yeah. So, if we're a rubble in Kwan tree.

And the yards want to sacrifice a water buffalo. I mean, it was like rained in, there's nobody in the AO. All right. So they bring in a water buffalo. They got this big rice straw collar and rope that holds the buffalo's head. stretch like this and the deal is that was a very good principle well I've done it several of this yeah I can do a chicken wait till late so they they bring this buffalo in they got in and Boudreau you got to remember Pappy Boudreau and God bless

his soul he passed a while back he was the reason that Quantry lunche like ran it was a senior E8, mean and nasty like a snake. And Major Slatton, who ran the place in that, him and the Boudreau and the medic were feeding up some kind of pharmaceutical cocktail. They kept him in the Bolivian until he signed papers. But they ran in the launch set. The Boudreaux was in his pooch, and we got this big thing going on with all the way.

There was four teams up there, plus part of the hatching companies are, you know, protecting the launch site. And they have this tent thing. I forget what festival is, you know, the festival of Buddha's shining balls or whatever. And they're going to sacrifice the water buffalo. So the idea is that one man, one of the muntyards, usually Bong, the shaman, would stand there with this big, long, carved, looks like a, what's that Japanese spear, Assega, not Assega, a saga. You know, it's got the big, like, buoy knife end on it, big long thing. And then one guy is to cut the buffalo's neck through with that.

And the other one is to stab them just behind the rib cage and disembowl the water buffalo at the same time. and Mac, my little gator friend, was the one with the hatchet to cut, you know, to cut the buffalo's neck. And I, the chum, was the one with the spear who was going to disemble, or doing the whole thing with the loincloths and all that you. And Mac takes his swing, cuts the collar and the rope holding the water belt down. Just about the same time I stick the spear inside of the Monsieur Buff and disavowling. And it didn't get all the way through because he turned on a dime.

Like one minute he was facing that way and the next minute, his two really red eyes are like that far away from it. And he's starting that blowing blood, shit, and that. And we take off running. We run underneath a Jeep. And the Buffalo wandered, rushes right over. takes one horn, hooks a jeep off of us,

and then starts running around. Finally, we get past, we go right past Boudreau's hooch, and Matt slaps the door, so it swings open, and we run around the hooch, and the buffalo go right into the hooch. And Boudreau's laying on his bunk,

reading Zane Gray, or whatever it was, and the Buffalo came in, just totally trashed his hooch. He had to run. roll the bed over on top of himself to protect himself. And the buffalo ran, actually ran out the outside wall. And then finally one of the yards shot him on an M79 and killed him.

You know what a piss tube is? Oh, you do. Well, let's explain to the public what a piss tube is. That's where you take an artillery canister that holds an artillery round, which is made out of aluminum and it's about, where am I here? over this way yeah you're good but wait yeah that big one that and you bury it in the ground and then people that have to urinate or leave themselves come and pee in that tube so that it goes

down and becomes part of the environment the owls are friendly and the seals that are living well i've done piss tubes for a month there were so many you could you could walk out any door or your hooch on that compound and within 15 steps have a pistoon near you. That's how many we put in. Boodro. Nice guy. So I want to ask you some questions about your second book here, Whispers in the Tallgrass. I'm going to go through some... Am I getting too long-winded? No, not at all. No, not at all. No, this is great. I want to make sure for my fans so that...

Speaking, speaking of which, I'm going to go through some of your family... said they were in jail that they're submitting. So Joey says, glove what you guys are doing. Thank you, Joey. Anthony says, due to your book, the legacy of Bandit Brandy lives on,

at least in my unit. What's your preferred recipe? Spill the beans, Mr. Brockhausen, thanks. I think you pretty much told your preferred recipe, right? I didn't give them the dosage.

What's the dosage? I could do that if he wants to text me on, you know, on Signal, which the NSA listens to. And I could give them the exact dosy. Send us an email, Anthony, and we'll get to you on that. Douglas says, does Uncle Nick have the pocket knife

that he found in the World War II plane wreckage still made by Laguerre with the B on it? Legend A, the classic knife maker for the French military. And that's a story you tell in this book. Do you want to talk about that for a second? Yeah, it was a dry hole. We went up on, yeah, you got to remember the ashaw runs up north, and it climbs up into the Laotian Plateau in a series of steps.

You know, like 30 meters and the 10, 10 meter wide step, and then 30 meters and 10, or 10 meters, whatever. And at the far end of that is the area that slices off into Northern Lounge. I don't know how we got this target. And I have no idea at all. I don't know what they were looking for. It was just that it was an area recon. They go in and see who's there.

And we went in and the target folders were, Penn Holmes would know because I think it was the AST. then it was the newest report aAR was like 1965 or something like that we're going shit okay you know probably nothing there you're gonna have a barbecue calling the highway patrol have a good time you know get some addresses and we launched in there we got in there we got in and there we was from the very beginning it was spooky we got on the ground we started moving within the first 500 meters the yards were all jittery you know we never what's wrong man i can go check with bomb so i go back to bond the shaman and i go what's going on he goes oh bad people

snake people what the fuck are snake people oh no bad number 10 number 10 000 so We go a little bit further and we finally worked our way. It was like a cleft, a narrow gorge going up to the Laoshe and Plateau. And it got narrow and narrow the farther you climbed up. We climbed up that for about a thick, maybe a little more. And as it kept going, a big tumble boulders, steep cliffs on those sides, working our way up and that we got to this place where we found

this cave and this cave was you know that the point came back and I think the point was some pot and Sam Pot came back and his eyes are about this big around and he's going osh number 10 they're going what do you mean number 10? Oh shit number 10 he goes and talks to Kuhman

and then Kuhman comes over whoosh number 10,000 that means really really bad So we go up and we look at it and it goes back in maybe 20 feet, 30 feet, something like that. And in the back is, best I can describe it is a shrine. There's a bamboo pole and hanging from it is the remains of a leather helmet, light helmet, and a pair of goggles. And there's all kinds of, there's bear,

bear skulls in there. You know, bamboo bears, and murgolite going. And everything's covered with mold. Everything. Mold and lichens and moss, whatever, went in there. So I started to go inside and Cuman grabs my arm.

Oh, shit, I'm dead. Don't go in. So Mom comes up, the shame, and he goes, you know, we must leave now. So I'm still looking at this thing and I'm going, wow, that's weird. As we climbed up the escarpment, got on top, we went about three, 400 meters. And we stumbled across an old French fighter plane from circa 1950s. Got that really weird, dark green paint on it and that that they use.

the hell it wasn't a P-47 it was something like they called a buffalo or something that the frogs made had a coffee maker in the cockpit and a footballer and we

so we're all over it you know the thing the canopies half slid open climbed in top and that I got got down inside and I'm digging around because all

US fighter planes that went down underneath the ejection seat was a drawer that had a 22 caliber silent pistol rations, antibiotics and

in the form of blank slugs, coins, whatever. Usually around in those days, $15,000 and $40,000, or whatever. But it was at 35 an ounce it was a lot of coal.

But when we went in on wrecks, we always, no, we're there. They're doing the government's work. Why not check, right? So we went underneath the seat, and I found it was, that tray was still there. And it had been pulled out. It was the sliders were there, but the tray was gone. They later found it over by the Starbbing Wing. And there were down in between the seat brackets.

that was this night that was all rusted in there from the weather and that and I dug it out it's a langolay langolay langolo and they are it means bumblebee and they are the official nightmaker for the french military i still have it to this day every once in a while i go out and i prick myself just to make sure i'm still here the uh the snake people they it turned out that they were another mutton yard tribe right that the yards were scared death of them. They said, you know, number 10, we don't, don't look at them. I found out later that Kuhlman and Tua had both looked up from where they were moving. There was a snake person, like within five feet of them. And they immediately cast their eyes down. They, they put it this

way. The North Vietnamese weren't in that area for a reason. And when we, when we lifted out, I remember looking back down at the LZ and two guys showed up two monyards primitives. One of them was carrying a Matt 49 submachine gun, French, but French into a China war. And the other guy was carrying bow, arrow, blowgun, and the usual man jewelry in that. It was like looking down and go, wow, they got out of there. Yeah, it's like looking into the past. I first thought they were Democrats.

Was the fear because of like superstition? Was it because? They were head under cannibals. Okay. That's what I got out of Bongla. When we got back to the site, I had to go through like two days of cleansing with, you know, herb, smoke and all that bullshit, rubbing copper pennies on my, forehead and my pecker and whatever.

They, you know, Bon told me, he said, these people eat other people, and they take the heads. And we all know that. And we're all scared shipless of them,

basically what it was wild. So A.J. Gamble says, thanks for another epic guest, love his books. Douglas Pack had a second part of that question. What happened to your sog knife you were wearing on the cover of WeFew?

God. Gone. Gone. Gone. The Cisco knives that they produced for the sog knives and that wouldn't hold an edge, and they broke a lot. So, you know, I wore the sog knife probably half my time there, and then I switched over to a K-bar. And, you know, actually, boys, that I have here is a fair bear.

A knife that was made for me by a fan, a fan, who's a master knife smith. That's all Damascene steel, and that's a copy of the M-42 original commandant. That's awesome. That's amazing. So if any of you were out there thinking about maybe, you know,

wadding my authorial qualities in that, a knife would be nice. So, Nick, did you, start using a K-bar because in your heart of hearts you wanted to be a Marine? Well, actually, I wanted to be a cook in the Navy. You know, and they got a sharper

cutlery for sure. Why not? Andrew... Is it better be an exotic dancer, but what? Andrew says, I need to hear more about the Zaire Jumpmaster course that did not go well.

What master course? In Zaire? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no you don't, young man. All right, that's okay. He has another question. He's saying about you drinking absent. He says, what is he, an 1890s Bohemian Crypto Marxist literature professor? So he's answering like he's on one of the second game.

What is that? What is that? The 18th century, 19th century literature professor? An 1890s Bohemian Crypto Marxist literature professor. Shut up. This guy's a... I'm telling you, this guy's a troll. He's from the Democratic Party.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, we know Renee. We know where he lives. We know where his children go to school. Hammer and Nails, thank you for the donation. So, Nick, a lot of... Somebody donated to you guys? Oh, yeah.

We're getting mad rich, because... because of you we're retiring after this show yeah yeah well we need to get into the new book too yes we will that's we're gonna talk on the bonus segment i just want to uh for a few minutes you're drinking toxic masculinity just slurping it down you're full you're full of toxic masculinity neck but you look at it they're measuring the bottle love that whispers in the tallgrass this book starts off like you guys are in a lot of trouble your team and a lot of people keep asking in the chat here, what the hell did Cookie do, your teammate, that got you guys in so much trouble? Oh, no. Oh, no. I don't know to this very day.

Really? Nobody ever gave up the secret of what Cookie did. I know that him and Rocky Sherman were involved in the Ranger, you know, a little Sicilian cab driver. But whatever they did in sight, nobody would talk to it. I mean, you know, how? house 10 when they threw us out the air force crew that flew up they knew they're a while you heard the guy so yeah well you know and when we got on the ground captain rob who was formerly in the phoenix project and was a god bless us solely passed here last year and that but uh he was a he was an enigma he wouldn't even tell it she just snickered at us and went but you guys are in trouble never found out don't want to know

I think involved a man and gee and a pre-teenage girl or something. I don't know. So a lot of what you write about in this book, aside from the snake people, that insane story, is your team working to tap enemy commo lines with like induction cables. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Well, that's a particular chapter where I was laying with my ass hanging out all over. place. The first wiretaps we had were god off of devices. They were probably, you know, 13 inches long, four inches thick and some kind of real to real bullshit out of that all undercovered. And they would

only last for six or eight hours and then you had to go back and pull the spools off and put them back. Then they came out with a smaller unit that was really great. And it would also, you know, the normal wire tap had like a pair of alligator clips that had like a long prong and you put it into the wire

and then it would pick everything up there was some kind of radio 05b you know electromagnetic flux very girly and then they came out

with one that actually wrapped around and coaxial cable but it still had little teeth in it But the big thing about it was the little cassettes would last for 24 hours. So we, I only did one, I did one successful wire cap and another one that didn't work out. So we didn't get any, any traffic at all. And they were a good idea because the North Vietnamese knew, if they came up on the air,

what was that, Moonbeam or somebody like that would be up there, you know, listening to what they were saying doing the RDF and all that. So they went to use an hardware and courier. That's why we tried to do the prisoner snatches because we knew they weren't talking on the radio. They'd use

curio to be dropped bombs under little asses. They'd get the couriers up and move and tell everybody what to do before they got up on on the air. So the wire caps were it was a tool, it was a useful tool. Some guys

got good traffic some of it's got mediocre traffic some of us got you know doggy porn out of Denmark who knows the first one you did you talk about how you're sitting there because someone has to have eyes on the tap right or be close by it went down to change the tape and and that was when the NBA were like doing a class oh yeah yeah they came up they you know i was laying there sweating bullets. And, well, you had to go down, change the tape. They'd put it in the day before, and I'd changed the tape once.

And then I was going back the next day to change the tape. Back decided I was the best one because I was the best crawler. I could crawl without bruising the underbrush. This is how he's explaining it to me. And him and cookie are up there with the rest of the day. headhunters and they're covered me and I you got to move real slow and you got to remember the other guy is trying to stay alive just as much as you are and they're living in that environment that you're living in so every little thing like this insect stopping talking the bush goes silent bruises on plants in that hall or indicators of just how close you are to get in your butts blown away. So we're real careful about moving and it might take you, I mean normally you can go from here to 25 meters and a couple of minutes or a minute.

There it might take you half a day to get there. So but still within the constraints of what you got to do. So I'm down at the thing, I get the tape out. I pulled the old tape, put a new tape at and I'm on my way up, back up the hill, about 15 yards from where the tap is. And I hear these people coming up in Toronto. Well, first thing I hear is a click on the emergency raider, the York 10, which means watch your ass, something's happening. And I go still, and I hear these people come up from below me and behind me.

And it's about, well, first thing that came was, guys with the headphones and the mind sweeper looking device that they used to check the load loss on the line that basically tells you whether there's a tap on or not right and they're going along the wire and then they left and then i started crawling back uphill and like 15 minutes later here they come and remember i'm trying to move slow at the same time and they they come up with about 2025 people and they sit down on this little hillside on the other side of the trail and they start giving a class I mean I've been in enough classes I don't care if it's in Lithuanian I know what's going on so I'm sitting there going oh shit and they go on

and I I hear a commotion and then typical NCO shit I hear this guy over to the cycle furry work and had a couple of slacks so then they come down they break down and they move off and i finally get up back up to the top of the hill and i asked mac i go what's going on you well they came back up to give a class evidently and we were laying there and we were watching make sure they didn't see i i've never felt so exposed in my life i was trying to be a dandelion i didn't make it and the couple of privates fell asleep in the back rank and that i guess one of the ncio went back there jacked her ass up here you know and then they moved on and we were

getting up there we we were going to try and pull the tap said now we'll leave it here for 24 hours and come back and get it and i when i put it in i put a toe popper you know what a toe popper is a little man mine yeah that is a landmine designed to remove your lower leg and your junk so that's what they put in there and then I mousetrapped the whole thing and we said well we'll just leave it in there we'll come back in 24 hours we got back up the top and not 15 minutes like before we were ready to move 30 guys came up and these were not in a class they were looking for us either they noticed me no oh look there's a meat-eating gringo laying over there

with his butt showing or they noticed a line loss or whatever and they started hunting us and they found the tap and when they found the tap the guy picked it up and blew up him or whoever was near it and then we threw grenades and never shoot drove grenades remember grenades you don't have to clean afterwards and they don't give away your position they threw the grenades down there Cook yelled up, there was a couple of wounded, and you yelled up and Mac, you want me to go get one of the bodies. He said, no, we got to get out of here. So we hauled ass and for the next, I don't know, seven, eight hours we were on the run,

put them on us, trying to box us in. But that was the one successful wiretap. We got about 18 hours of real good traffic on that tape, where they can say, well, yeah, this is the Gio Knight's Hart, you know, Hot Rocket Division. The commanders got piles. And that coax cable was running along like, what, a ridge between two fairly substantial? It ran all the way down that valley. There was a juncture of like six trails where we knew that they were in there.

They had bunker complexes and all that. We were slightly northwest of there, up on the ridge where the main main. high-speed trails that would be used by the careers and people moving troops around and it was right along the right along the trail i you know how i found it i was watching as my one zero who has spent i had spent most of my vietnam career picking up after he tripped over something tripped over the water and fell down his slow that's how we found Nick, you know, we're just kind of scratching the surface of both of these books, but I mean, that's okay because people can go and read them for themselves. Before, we're going to talk about your new book coming out later this year in detail on the bonus segment with your co-author and partner, Jeff Miller.

But for just the mainstream audience, the big, bad world out there, could you give a little bit like just a short synopsis of what the new book is about in the title? first of all I'd like to thank my fan and those of you that hate me because it makes my life you know worth living and I thank you all for that that would be my co-author

who I've been together for 50 years worse than a bad marriage but anyway the second book is called vagabonds tourists in the heart of darkness What third book?

What the hell is he doing with this? Is that the white supremacist thing? It's a code signal. The hell is that? It's a few whispers of the ballgrass, vagabonds. Bagabonds is the third book, right? Did I miss something there? Yeah.

Oh, yeah, of course. So, Jeff Miller and I were in special forces at a detention group. and we did a lot of amazing things while we were there. And then after we got out of the military, we decided to do something with our lives. And in those days, there was no contractor industry run by the FBI and the rent-a-cops. So we had to have been our own.

In those days, you had to find a project, see somebody that needed something, convince them that you were the solution and then go on from there. So the book is snippets of 40 years of doing that. You know, becoming consultants in the mining industry, helping people recover kidnapped victims, verifying computers. There was another thing with...

It was something there with doing something with virgins. But that's the third. book is about our wanderings for 40 years when is the book due out what's the release date and where can people well wait I'll put my co-author on yes so is extremely handsome and invented tweaked I don't know I mean so good good evening Jeff hello so where can people go there you go where can people go there you Where can people go in pre-order vagabonds? Amazon right now, I'm sure, trying to get myself centered here.

It's all good. I'm sure once it comes out and be in all the normal book purchasing areas, but right now it's available for pre-order on Amazon. Okay. All right, thank you. All vagabonds, tourists in the Heart of Darkness, and it's public, by a company called Case Made out of London. Yep. So we're going to talk about Vagabonds in depth

with you and Nick on the bonus segment. For everyone who joined us live tonight out there, I just want to say thanks for coming, spending some time with us and Nick. Please remember to like, share this video, subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. Tell your friends about the channel. Tell your dog about it.

Spread it around as much as you can. And down the description, there's a link to our Patreon page. want to get involved in supporting the channel and get access to our bonus segments uh like the one we're going to do with nick and jeff in just a moment here jeff did you say vagabond's tourists in the heart of darkness tourists in the heart of darkness yes dave did i forget anything to mention anything here tonight uh no i i don't think so do we

have uh do we have any more questions no that i don't know what i'm doing and uh next next next so sit in and something i'll happen next week episode 77 we're going to have john gardner on who is the author of the fading light he served in the australian s as and the rhodesian s as and then south african special forces and became something uh the pejorative term a mercenary if you will uh after all that so he will be on next uh next friday we're excited to have him in here i'm like halfway through his book it's it's super so jeff nick Thank you so much for joining us. And for everyone who sponsors the show, we will see you guys for the bonus segment.

So thank you, everyone. That's it? The bonus segment is the bonus segment. We are the bonus segment. I am the bonus segment.