The Team House - Special Forces Detachment A in Berlin, Project Sigma in Vietnam with Bob Charest, Ep. 50

Episode Date: July 11, 2020

Bob Charest served in Vietnam and with Special Forces Detachment A conducting the urban unconventional warfare mission in Berlin in the event that the Soviets ever invaded. In this episode we discuss Bob's career bouncing between Vietnam, Thailand, and Berlin where he served in Project Sigma (which became MACV-SOG) where he did cross border ops into Cambodia, working for the CIA in Thailand, and doing clandestine sabotage ops in Berlin with Det A.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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Visit child and family resource network.org today. Okay, guys, we are live streaming on YouTube right now. This is the Team House. I believe this is actually episode 50 and we couldn't have a better guest for episode 50. honored today to have Bob Charest. Bob was a career Special Forces soldier. You know, we're going to get into his story A to Z. Just real quick, I'm Jack Murphy, co-host, Dave Park. I think everyone knows us. You're probably tired of hearing from us. But Bob had a really interesting career. He served in Vietnam with Project Sigma. He served in Thailand,

up on the Laos border, with the Thai military. He, what, went on a secret mission to Libya, we're going to be able to talk a little bit about. But the bulk of what we're going to be talking about today is Bob's two stints that he did in Special Forces Detachment A in Berlin. They were a clandestine special forces unit. Nobody really knew about them, not even in the special forces

community. They were almost completely unknown. And their mission, as Bob will share in detail, were primarily to act as saboteurs in the event thought the Soviets ever invaded. If the Cold War went hot, these guys would go to ground under cover, and after the Soviets pushed over them, they would activate in the enemy's rear areas and just start wreaking havoc. And it was nearly a suicide mission. But that's really just the beginning of what Dead A did. Later on, they had a counterterrorism mission. There's a lot to this.

And there are very few people as qualified as Bob to really unpack all that for us. So Bob, thank you so much for joining us tonight. It's my pleasure, Jack. The title of this is the team house. If anybody's been in special forces or wants to go in special forces, the team house is where the A-team solved any mental, physical, operational problems. It was comprised of 12 men who confided in each other and really solved any problems they might have had.

So the team house is a very good title. As for my time, that's for my time at Detachmen. Back in 1956, the Cold War was really heating up. We had the four powers in Berlin after World War II. And the Soviets were trying to actually take control of Berlin, who was controlled by the four powers, the French, British, English, and the Russians. You remember the Berlin?

an airlift, a lot of you guys don't remember that, or folks don't remember that. But that's when Berlin Command and the European Command realized we have to have something in place here to stop this, prevent this, or do whatever we can. So the 10 Special Forces, which was down at Baddolz, Germany at the time, they contacted them, coordinated efforts and sent four teams from Baddolz to Berlin, Germany, and undercover, completely undercover. And they were there to analyze the situation, define what was proposed they wanted to do. And they went to McNair barracks first in Berlin. And then about, I'd say a few months later, they went to Andrews Barracks, which was another concern, very enclosed, tightly secured. ASA was the Army security agent.

he was there. And Dede went there, and that's when they started their missions. Then it was comprised of six teams. These six teams were closely compartmentized. Each one had different missions within the city. What these missions consisted of were sabotage assassinations. We were all coat and tie, long hair, We had to blend in with the civilians.

We spoke the language, whatever, you know, a lot of the guys were, if anybody remembers the Lodge Act after World War II, we recruited a lot of the East Block soldiers into the United States Army. In Berlin, Detachment A, we had, I'm going to mention a few names. And as I describe them, you can tell Herman Adler, Gerhardt, Kuhnit, Martin Yurik, Hillmark Kulik. A lot of these guys like Hilma Kulik, he was born in Berlin. He's a real Burlera. He's retired there today.

Martin Yurik was involved in one of the largest tank medals in Russia with the German army. Gerhard Kuhnit was also in the tank corps in the German army. Herman Abla was in the SS and the German army. Okay, other nationals, when I got there, you know, I thought it was in a foreign army. I mean, you had guys like Colin Like, Wolfgang Ostetang, Ans, Stoya, Jeff Rika, George Muskeluk, Stanley Oshivik. Now, do these names, do they sound like Southerners or somebody, you know? It was a good Southern Baptists.

Yeah. And these guys played a very important role because they talk. us mannerisms, customs, and things like this. I mean, it was unreal. The missions were very complicated, sabotaged, like I told you, stuff like this. I mean, we were responsible for, I'll give you a couple of examples like the, they had a railroad ring that surrounded East and West Berlin. Okay, now these railroads are fired by coal. And so we had a railroad ring that surrounded East and West Berlin. And so we had in our arsenal, Coles filled with C3 at the time with blasting caps. Okay, so if they shovel those into the, one of the ways we sabotage things,

they shovel them in the locomotive. Bang, that goes to locomotive. It was unbelievable the missions and the things that we had to do. and if any of you folks got any particular questions. I mean, it was like a, we were like a poor man's James Bond, only it was real. It was not artificial. You know, we communicated by dead drops,

primarily meeting places, live drops, things like this. I mean, it was plainclothes all over the city. You were trying to get as close to the targets that you were responsible for, like I said, six teams. Each team had a different mission, several missions as a matter of fact. And they were real, and we participated in them 24-7. We were always on standby and stuff like this. So Berlin, Detach 4-A, was, I did not know I had served in special forces.

I volunteered in 1961, completed my course, and 62 was assigned the first S-F group in Okinawa. I did my first tour in Vietnam and 63 with the mountain yards. And I left there, went to Bad Tuls, Germany, 10 Special Forces Group. That's when I started finding out little pieces about Berlin. Because the detachment A used to come down to Battles for particular exercises like Flint Lock and stuff like this. And we would, they would use us as guerrillas because they were language qualified. They selected safe houses within the areas that we operated in because of the languages and things like this. So this basically gives you an idea of what initially you would want to know about detached today.

Any particular questions? Just fire away. And how what was, you know, if the balloon ever did go up, Bob, you know, the Soviets have now invaded Berlin. You guys activate a sabotage cells. You complete your missions. then what how do you get out of there okay there was no formal escape and evasion plan it was up to the individual himself we were very individuals most of our activities were it was like you were on your own that was special about detachment a each person there had that particular responsibility and they you know like i said there was no formal escape and invasion route.

We were, first they would do was head to the East Sea and stuff like waterways outside of Berlin. We'd try to escape and evade if possible. But our chances were very slim. Even though we spoke the language,

if we were being interrogated by the KGB the Stasi German secret police or stuff like this, it wouldn't take very long to find out who we were. So, you know, that's, that what we would do.

It was an individual responsibility to escape and evade. And I think that's what, as you mentioned, such a unique part of what DEDA was doing that you guys developed. I mean, you had an assignment, but you were developing the mission plan. And even the other teams in DEDA did not know what the, the adjacent teams in the same unit were up to. Like, it was all compartmentalized. Exactly.

I mean, you know, upstairs in detachment A, we have three levels in detachment A, upstairs with the operational sections, iron-gated team rooms, okay? You never communicated with each other during the day. You were all involved in your teams behind closed doors. Okay. And like you just said, it was compartmentized. Nobody from another team knew what the other team was their targets or their responsibilities. Our association with each other was extremely limited. And it was almost like you didn't know anybody, okay?

You pass them. You had the morning formation upstairs. We could not have formations outside because plain clothes, long hair and stuff like this. So we had formations on the second floor each morning. And then once the formation was over, you went about your business. And come closing time in the evening. everybody was gone. So there was no talking.

Okay. Later on, we developed a team house. We call it the, I guess it was a day room. Yes, the day room. It was an old abandoned mess hall from the 60s. Dead A took it over. We built a little team house down there.

And it was called the day room. We put a bar in, parachute canopy over it. stuff like this and we had Pilsner beer from Czechoslovakia. So then we started having meetings, not meetings, but associations with each other, very limited stuff like this. Then that further developed into something better and bigger. Then we were working with the Western Secret Police.

And they would come and Friday afternoon was called Chicken Friday. And Chicken Friday, it was a day you cleaned up the barracks. We had German vehicles with German plates and we'd service them and stuff like this and clean the building and then come about 2 o'clock in the afternoon was beer time. And that lasted it's a Saturday morning. Okay. We have the German secret police in there and stuff like this and we got a lot done. We really got a lot of downstairs there of that day room. Let me tell you. Bob, I want to rewind. I mean, that was about an amazing introduction to Detachment A. I want to rewind a little bit, just talk about, you know, at the beginning, where did you come from? How did you find your way into the Army in the early

1960s? That's a story. Yeah, I got, I had to lead Dodge at 17, Newfields, Newfields, And I was very lucky. I had Dave Peasley. He was a recruiting sergeant in my hometown. He realized I was headed down the long road. So he said, would you be interested in joining the military? I said, hell yes. Well, I was 16. So he got me in the National Guard first. And then he said, well, your mother and father signed for you at 17? I said, sign me. They'll give me away. You know? So I said, he said, where do you want to go? I said, it's far away. He says, how about Germany? I said, far away. So I went to Germany, 11th Cav, patrol the East German border and stuff like this. And then my tour, after four years, I was sent to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. What year, is that, Bob, that you were, that you were patrol on the border as a young infantryman? Oh, that was 57, 58, 59. So not so long after the conclusion of the war.

I mean, it was pretty rough in Berlin in those days. Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was. And so I came back to Fort Bragg, 1961. JFK came down to Fort Bragg. And Colonel Yarbril called on a demonstration for special forces. And JFK took a look around. He said, who the hell are these people?

He was astounded by the demonstrations he put on. And the question came out. about our green beret. He says, what's that? He says, this is our unofficial head year that we wear. And he was so impressed that he, that was the birth of the green beret for special forces. So I immediately volunteered right after he came down there and was accepted. Like I said, I went to jump school and in 62. I was in the training group and with the first group from training group in Vietnam for the mountain yards. And then the bad tults, bad Tolst. I was there and then after three years, the Vietnam War had exploded.

Vietnam was built up to about 500,000 people, so I knew. I said, once this tour was opened up, I'm going to have to go back to Vietnam. So I called Billy Alexander. She was in special categories at D.C. And she was an angel. And I asked her, I said, what's my future look like? She said, well, if you volunteer to go back to Vietnam, here's what I can do for you. She says, if you get out of Vietnam, I'll send you to language school, German.

And I'll give you the choice of Bad Tolst, Germany, or Detachmane? If you complete language school, I said, I'll take it. So I went to Vietnam, B-56 projects. I had a few friends that were there from Batels. And they requested Sergeant Major John Bruncott wanted me to be in, B-56. He was waiting at Longbed Vietnam and talking to the Repo Depple and said, Bob Charest, son Bob Charest comes here, I want to know. So they contact me once I got in country and said, and Sontradin said, and Sautry major Bruncalfin wanted to see you.

So they called him. He came up and got me and I spent a year down there and would be 56 Project Sigma. And that was very intense. That was the, you had Omega, Sigma, and Delta in them days. That was, that was, was a birth of control of CC South, CC North, and CC Central controlled, because Omega Delta and Sigma couldn't handle. It was getting too bad, too fast. And we were being overextended. So they really opened it up. And I did go. I was in CC South for a brief time. I opened the camp. I went there and I slept in Laconic's container. And for about three weeks that I was due to rotate.

That's when I rotated and went to language school, completely language school. Yeah, Bob, what was Project Sigma? Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, give us a little bit about Omega Delta and Sigma for our viewers who aren't familiar with those outfits. Yeah, that was a beginning of special operations. That was the ground force of special operations. It was called studies and observations. groups. Very insignificant name, but we ran recon, company-sized operations. My Sigma was Cambodia.

Omega was Cambodia. We ran operations across the border. We weren't supposed to be there. I mean, it was, but we were. That was operational areas all along the border in Third Corps, in Vietnam. We ran recon missions, primarily recon missions. We ran hatchet teams. A recon team was six people, four indig, two Americans. A hatchet team was about 18 folks, probably six Americans. The rest were indige. We dealt strictly with Cambodian forces and Chinese nuns.

Vietnamese were worthless. So we did not trust the Vietnamese. We never worked with a Vietnamese. Vietnamese. We had a couple of Vietnamese special forces come to a camp at Honok Tao in South Vietnam. It was between Longbin and Saigon. All they did was a guy showed up a major, this shiny Jeep with a handshaker on the side, browning high power, nice on his hip. And the first thing he tried to do was tap the indig vessel for funds. First thing he tried to do, well, we ran his ass off and said, okay, goodbye. But that was strictly Omega Sigma and Delta, where the beginning of

these special operations forces, like I'm talking about CNC South, C&C North, and C&C Central. What became MACV SOG? MacV SOG was Signal. Okay, we came onto MACV, downtown, up 35, down, General Singlob was one of the commanders of SOG at that time. We operated out of the headquarters was downtown in Saigon. It was called off 35 for Sigma. Okay. And were you with the hatchet force or a recon team? What was your part in it? When you're in Sigma, when you're in that outfit, you're everything. You do everything. You ran companies. You ran recon. You ran hatchet forces. Everything. I, uh,

Got my fourth Purple Heart when I was there in Sigma, and I was on a hatchet team in Cambodia. We went in, we were tasked with looking for underground bridges under the water. They clamped their bridges about two feet under the water so they could move tanks or stuff. They were starting to move tanks in the South Vietnam. So we were tasked to win up. Yes. And so we went in to find these, and we got in.

We were really deep in there. And all of a sudden, myself and Rick LaVoy, we're taking a break, drinking water. We saw, looking down under the terrain there, the jungle, we saw footprints, feet running all around. And we said, oh, shit, we're being surrounded. So we stopped. We got back together again and said, okay, look, they're there. We got to go back out the same way we can. came in. You know what that means? We're going to be ambushed. So by that time, the point man was

pretty exhausted. So they said, we got to have somebody to take the point. Well, we had a colonel, a colonel and a sergeant major on that hatcher team. So you know they weren't going to go on a point, right? So Bob Charest had to go on a point. And I said, okay, guys, look, we're going to get hit. And I said, if I get hit, I'm going to try to break through, but I need you guys to get up there fast. Well, we did get hit. We got hit. We busted the ambush out, but I got almost cut my head blown off. I got shrap wounds on my face from a Claymore mine.

And we shot our way out, regrouped, set up an ambush that night. We had one-seven-five artillery on call right there. We had FOs, two FOs with us on an adjutine. So we called in one seven-fives. I think I shot four. I got four KIAs that day. And we got out, busted out, regrouped, and called in one-seven-fives, had an ambush that night. And we moved back out the next day.

Rick LaVoy sounds so familiar. I'm trying to place where I may have talked to him or come across him. Old 10th group guy. He's been around for a long time. Was he with debt K? Korea? Yes, he was. That's where I'm familiar with them. That's, that's Rick LaVoy. Bob, you had already been in Vietnam and, you know, how, as special forces, how was being part of Sigma different than being, you know, because people think a special force was already, like your first appointment with already. he has special ops. So what was what was different about Sigma compared to like your first tour,

which we would call I guess a Vanilla Special Forces tour if there was such a thing? It was a typical 12 man, the old real special forces back of the day when special forces became famous in Vietnam. We were assigned to replace an A team that was already there at the mountain yard camp at Chiro. So we came in, replaced that team. They flew back to Okinaw. It was a 12-man team. We had about 200 Jari mountain tribes,

which we equipped, trained, and led, and lived with them. You lived very primitively, let me tell you. We had one kerosene refrigerator, And that was mainly for beer. We had a Chinese cook. He was Chinese and half Vietnamese. And this was, we had,

there was a lot of leftos for the Indo-China War within the dry tribes there. So half the team had to speak French. And the other half spoke Vietnamese. We went to a language school for both that on Okinawa before we were deployed. We did a very extensive area study. on the area that we're going into everything, customs, you name it. And you went there and you lived with them.

And one thing about the mountain tribes, once you respected their customs, showed your leadership, they would do anything for you. You could trust them day and night. I lived in a little commo shack with a grass roof. And you could hear the rats up there at night. It sounded like they had combat boots on.

Okay? And then you'd hear this little, boom, pump, pump. And you, what the hell was that? You'd go outside your little bunk of there. There's this little mountain yard. He had a little, a couple of batteries that I threw away. He had a little light. And he had a crossbow and he was shooting these racks. That was dinner, okay? And that was a very, that was my first real mission with special forces. and I loved it. That six-month tour, that tour, where those mountain tribes was unbelievable. I mean, it was, so that was a difference. That was the beginning of the Vietnam War. There was something like 19,000 total Americans in Vietnam at that time.

And John F. Kennedy was talking about reducing that number at the time. Then he got shot in October and killed. And I got shot in October of my left leg. And things changed. that then Vietnam exploded and the rest of history. Very similar in that regards to when we talked to John Mollins a couple episodes back and he was there pretty early on in the war and went back three more times. I don't know what your thoughts are, Bob,

but do you think it was a mistake for the United States military to put all those conventional troops into Vietnam? Absolutely. Yeah. It was definitely a mistake. We didn't belong there. No way. What did we accomplish?

Then we ran out of there with a tail between our legs. You know. And so it was totally different then between your first deployment and your second one going back there with Project Sigma. Definitely. I mean, that was an eye open. A project Sigma was a real eye opener. We were very self-sustained in our operations. We worked closely with the CIA, target selections, and stuff like.

this and we weren't controlled by the conventional army we acted independently they always wanted operational okay what's your operational plan for the subpoena attack on this this and this would give them a false one that would take our own because theirs were almost would be compromised the conventional army was not ready for special forces they did not have intelligence i remember going down to Saigon and they had a big brand new intelligence complex built. I walked in there with my little M16, my shoulder dusty and dirty coming down from them, the cap going into Saigon and stuff like that. They'd say, I'd be looking for intelligence for upcoming operations and they all they told me was we rely on you people for our intelligence.

going, really? I couldn't believe it. This big complex, these guys did not go out on the ground. They did not, they did not know what was really going on. It was unbelievable. And that highway, highway one, which went by our camp between Longbyn and Saigon, was full of, you know, horror houses on the, we call them car washes, okay, on the side of the road. That's where all these conventional guys would go. They'd go down there and they'd just, you know, I never saw it. I never saw, I'm really engaged. I went on, I, 9th Infantry Division, one time I got by ANK, I think it was. They didn't know what the hell they were doing.

I mean, it was, it was unreal. I just wondered. I said, what the hell all these guys doing over here? That sounds very familiar, Bob. I don't know what you think, Dave. Sounds a bit familiar. Yep, it does. And these operations, when you guys were,

going across the fence into Cambodia, what would have happened or what did happen when, you know, somebody lost their life because it was completely deniable, sort of like Detachment A in that sense. Right. It was. But these, our missions, like I told you just a while ago, our off orders for our own. We had a helicopter, dedicated helicopter unit assigned to us. It was not a special forces helicopter unit. It was just a dedicated helicopter unit that was dedicated to Sigma. So we were very fortunate that we could

coordinate our operations. Now, he had an, okay, we take it, for example, recon team. A recon team would go in with two slicks. Two slicks means two H, the, what do they call them? The Huey. The Huey H-W. Yeah, the Hueys. And they'd go in, you had two slicks.

We'd have three guys on each slick going in and two gunships behind us. So we would fly around. We knew where we were going to be inserted. But we would fly around and make false landings. So the Yves Kong was out there looking for us all the time. So we'd do two or three false landings. And then finally put us with the team on the ground. Team on the ground had a sign recon.

mission. We were never designed to be engaged in combat, okay? And so we would just observe movement, troop movements and stuff like this. And every now and then it didn't go quite that good. We got compromised a few times because they were waiting for us. Matter of fact, one of the guys on my team, we got inserted. We put style of putting out of Claymore's. He was putting out the Claymore. next thing I know he got stitched with an AK-47 right up the middle. I carried him out, put him on a chopper, and we got out of that guy, that place that day. And he was another German displaced person, Lajak guy that joined the Army. And that's what, you know, you did that.

It was hard, but it was part of your job. And Larry Thorne was down there, too. Yes, yeah. Oh, yeah, Larry Thorn was very, pretty, he was quite a guy. He was, I think, a Finn, Finland. He had a metal of a vaughan of whatever it was called from the finish on me. 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. Yeah, he was quite a guy. So from Vietnam and the, I believe you said it was a sergeant major, kind of like groomed you or recruited you into Dead A, right? Even though you didn't totally know what it was? No, I didn't.

I had, you know, like everybody, you hear rumors within the SF community or detachments, the Berlin bandits they would call and stuff like this. And they'd come down to Bad Tulsa. I remember when I was in Bad Tulsa, and you'd see them. They'd come down for a jump, parachute jump once a month for proficiency pay and stuff like this. And there they are running around with this long hair,

stuff like this. They didn't really engage with us and stuff like this. They did their jump, got on a truck, and went back up to Munich, got on a plane, went back into Berlin. And that's the last few saw of them, okay? And a couple of times, like on Flintlock, like I told you, they would be attached to us to helping safe houses and stuff like this,

transportation, working with a Bundesgrenshoots, BGS9. They were our aggressors all the time to BGS9 over there. When we're in Battles, also in Berlin, we trained with the BGS9 anti-terrorist unit. They were very proficient. They used live ammunition, high-speed Mercedes. You pull that backseat down. it hit every weapon you wanted or any situation you wanted.

Shotgun, automatic pistol, grenade launcher, right in the back of that. You took that thing down and there was, and these were high-speed Mercedes. You were all trained in the basic driving techniques and stuff like this. They were so professional. It was unbelievable. It wasn't going to truth. BGS 9, it was called. So what was it like then, that first rotation?

into Dead A and I suppose it was a late 1960s. Yeah, I got there. Yeah, after language school, I got there in 1969. We were still in coat and tie mode. Your underwear were German. Everything was German. You got there. They gave you an allowance.

So many Deutsche marks. You went down to Cadet V, which was equivalent to Sears. You picked out your jacket, ties, pants, underwear, socks, stuff like this. And you operated a lot in the city every day. You went down, you did reconning PMPs, stuff like this among yourselves. You tailed yourselves and you tail suspected KGB or whatever. All the time, you worked in the city.

Scuba was becoming very big. Now, I was one of the only scuba qualified instructors. at the time. And at that time, and so I was assigned to the scuba team, and we had Drager equipment, strictly German, double stage tanks, wetsuits. We had a one-man compressor, decompression chamber. All our equipment was Drager, which is, you know, the high-class German scuba equipment. And scuba was very heavy because of the, the wall that went up denied us access to a lot of our targets. So we had to find access routes to get to our assigned targets. So we used the Wansi. They had a lot of sea, which was a big lake in West End, East Berlin.

So we used J-boats, sailboats to train. We'd go out there in a Wanzi and just hit that J-boat, go all around the Wansi and look for selected crossover sites. And with the scuba equipment, we could also access East Berlin by the canals. There were a lot of canals in eastern and West Berlin. You could use those to infiltrate if you had to. Now, were these rebreathers at that time? No, not at that time. The rebreaters came in the 70s. Okay, we got those even before the seals had them.

We had the best German rebreaters and we used to train. up at Ekhenferda, Germany, with the German scova's people. They trained us on that rebreather, super secret job, you know, and which famous about the rebreather is, you know, you don't have bubbles. Right. Like the regular scuba does, you know, that's, that's an ID. I mean, you're under there in a canal in the middle of Berlin at night and some people's Germans like to walk. They look over there and see bubbles, they go, what the hell is going on there? So, Bob, did any of you guys make any of you guys make any clandestine trip up across the border, scouting out these canals?

Yes, there was one guy that did that, Bill Queen. He actually did that. Really? Now, if anybody else did, I didn't know because it was a signed mission of some other team. Okay, but I do know that Bill Queen did make a recon in. And was that the plan for your team that you would do a subsurface infiltration if? If we had to. If called upon?

If it came to that, yes. Now, how much, so you get assigned to debt A. What happens when you show up, you get off the plane in Berlin? You don't, at that point, you don't really know what it is, right? Right. So what happens then? Like, walk us through sort of what your impressions were, how you were brought on and what you were told. Okay, when I was in language school and I got my orders for Berlin.

I immediately got a letter from a sponsor and told me exactly he said, stop letting your hair go a little longer. Do not report to Berlin in uniform. You will be flown by civilian aircraft into Templehof. You will not talk to anybody. A person will meet you at Templehof and will escort you to detach to detachment. My guy was Terry Swarford.

He was, as a matter of fact, He spent a lot of time in Berlin, and he was one of the last command sergeant majors in Berlin when it closed in 1984. Terry Swaffler was my sponsor. And sure enough, I flew. So I let my hair grow out. You had to be in civilian clothes. You could not wear a uniform. You got the Temple Hoff Air Base, and you stood there.

And, of course, they knew exactly who you were, Terry. you know, we all look, you know, he's, he's an American who I know it. So they walked up, got you, they come on, follow me. And you were taken to Dead A and civilian vehicle. And you were briefed and assigned to a team. And then you started learning city techniques. Like I said, the dead drops, PMPs, live drops, surveillance. You were experts at the transit system, the U-Bahn in Berlin.

and you knew that exactly. You knew how to exit and enter one of the cars on the tracks there. Exactly, you could count it by seconds. If somebody was tailing you, you would stand there just like you're hooking up on your own, like you're riding that car. And next thing, you know, it would stop at a station. And you had two seconds, maybe one.

You get out. The door would close. Who was following you? There he went down the tracks. Okay. So it was pretty intense. City training was very important. The touch where they had a city training team that we cross-trained people from 10th group in Battles.

Then when they moved to one, they moved to Fort Devin's Massachusetts. They would send people over teams. We cross-train them in city training. Sealed Team two down in Crete. we crossed to train them in city training. It was about a two-week course. We showed them exactly what we did in the city, how we did it, and they became proficient and stuff like this.

It was one of the highlights. Yeah. You received that initial briefing. Did you feel like it was a suicide mission that they had given you? I mean, what were your initial impressions? No, it did not. At that time, no. You were pretty impressed with the, you,

got an overall briefing. It was just a familiarization briefing on detachment of his operations. Then you were assigned to a team. When you were assigned to that team, that's when you were briefed on your actual missions, plural. You had several missions, plural. You were briefed on those. You had mock-ups. You did what recon you could do. You did. We could go across with these G2-8 patrols. They were called MP driver, Berlin Brigade, sedan. There was designated routes that they were designed, designated. Soviets had they also had designated routes. They could follow in our sectors.

Like you could go to Comox plots and do shopping and stuff like this. And there was certain restaurants you could go to over there. And it was even a secret little, what they call it, the wives used to go to this place where they could buy crystal. real crystal in a back room. Okay, this operator had a nice crystal section. She'd sell you very cheap. I mean, the dollar was, I mean, unbelievable with the East German mark in the Paris.

I mean, you go over there for about a dollar. You're going to have wine, schnitzel, whatever you wanted, you know. It was really something. But you could go over there. You took a look around. You understood. It mingled with the people. and that was as close as you could come to your target.

Now, were you or anybody in debt A, were you guys involved with developing assets, or was it mostly just the physical reconnaissance and sort of target analysis type stuff? It was mainly that, target analysis. Okay, we didn't have a chance to mingle with the locals because that would blow up color. Okay, you did not want to mingle with any locals. Now, I did, okay, I'll give you an example. I was intimate with this German school teacher, and I lived with her. Now, her sister was associated with the bottom Einhoff gang. So I used this as an intelligence asset. Okay, you couldn't get no closer than that. Yeah. You were a hardcore communist, and, and, and, um, and, um, and, um, the school teacher I was going with, I just played along with the game. And I went to a couple of meetings where they had their little functions downtown in Berlin. And, you know, it was pretty interesting.

Well, what was that like? So you were actually at a meeting for the Red Army faction in Berlin and during the Cold War. I mean, you were in the belly of the beast right there. I mean, for Christ's sake, Bob. I mean, you would fought commies in Vietnam. I mean, if they found out who you were, I can only imagine. Yep. That's true.

I mean, I played along. I felt uneasy, but I knew it was an asset and I reported it. Okay. It was recorded for the appropriate people to investigate it. They did. And what happened after that, I don't know if it was effective. But we did clean up the bottom mine half gang. They were under surveillance constantly.

not only about my team, but there's other teams. They were a known threat to everybody, especially Americans. In Berlin, they used to blow up cars at the NGO club and the offices club and stuff like this. I mean, they were a real threat. Bono Meinhof gang was a fair. Yeah, they were hardcore. Well, I mean, describe this scene to, like, I imagine you're like in a basement of a warehouse somewhere. I mean, and they have like Soviet flags up on the walls.

I mean, what was that really like? But worse, there were flags up on a wall. The other guy, Che Guevara. Yeah, he was on the wall and I got a man. I drank my beer, had a good time. And when I was ready to go, I said, let's go. We took off and went and next day, I was standing in front of whoever and said, hey,

I had a pretty interesting night last night. You might want to record this or take some action on this stuff they did and it was effective. It's wild. And another thing too I wanted to ask you about, Bob, is, you know, you were a green beret, you were a commando, you had led indigenous soldiers in combat in Cambodia and Vietnam. I mean, it's hardcore stuff. Now you're in Dead A, you're still a commando, but you're also so much more than that.

And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about how you developed your alias, your legend about, to kind of give you, you know, cover. while you were there in Berlin. They did. We had dual, we had dual passports for one thing. We had several ID cards. We had GS cards, government civilian cards, GS-11, GS-9s, dual passports. I was dark.

So my was Turkish. Okay, there was a million Turk guest mobites in Germany, guest workers, as you call. So you could go downtown and blend in with anybody downtown. We did that a lot. We did that when we're in the city itself on city training. It was important to have a cover. And it was, like I said, dual passports. We had a red passport also for embassy purposes, stuff like the diplomatic passport, I guess they call it.

Yes. everybody had a dual identity and did DASBron A based on their ethnic background like guys we had the Germans are what we had, we had polls, we had checks, we had Russians, Greeks, you name it, we had every nationality there. So it was not hard to have a dual cover, as we call it. Was there anything you had to do to, build up, I don't know, like integrate with the community to, you know, help backstop that cover. Well, let me see.

I'm just thinking of, I think it was Colonel Wilde who told me he coached a German basketball team. Right. Yeah, that was Bill Wilde. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you had that, I did not explore that. 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.

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Visit child and family resource network.org today. I was with, like I said, I was with this German schoolteacher. She had a young son. I helped him with football, soccer. Okay, he was a big soccer fan. So he was my key to my cover to go to soccer games and stuff like this. And I lived with her at a German place downtown. So I was constantly in the city at all times, I guess you would say.

I had a BEQ room in Andrew Barracks. But I very seldom stayed there. I was almost downtown living with his school teacher. And that improved my proficiency in language 100%. Like I said, it got me in there with her sister who I knew. She was a hardcore comatist. And several times I went with different functions with her, like a wedding and stuff like this.

So I got to end the mingle with the civilian population quite a bit. And how did they know you? Did they know you as a soldier, as a businessman, as a government contractor? Nope. Nope. They never, nobody ever questioned me. My proficiency in German was one of the Germans told me you have a, you do not have an accent along. I was so proficient in my language that you can mingle right in. And I look different because I was dark. Okay, I had black hair and very dark. And they knew I was not German, but they never questioned me about what was I, an American? What was I, a military? man, a businessman like you just asked me. Nope, they never got nosy. Never question me. Never.

What's, uh, while we're on this subject, let's, uh, show some, uh, Bob Sharest pictures here. I got some. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Back of my younger days.

Oh, yeah, that was a, that was a meeting with some Germans also. Okay. This guy on the extreme left, I think it was Larry Naderhouse. The other two guys, I don't know. That was a German meeting. I remember that. We were doing something for the Germans.

I don't know what that was. And let's see what else we got here. Oh, I got you Bob with his mutton shops. I think you guys definitely need to see that one. That's a real life rooming, okay? You take that. That's normal. If you were downtown on a one of the,

of our assigned deployment missions where we tested ourselves as guerrillas, you would have a full beard in addition to that long hair. You would have a full beard. And you went around town doing your things, scoping out different places, stuff like this that you were assigned to. But that was the normal relaxed grooming standards. And I'd like to show this is this is not Bob. This is Doc Far, Warner Far. Yeah, you know that picture, yeah. Yeah, you know this one. This is a good picture, though.

Here we go. And this is his subway pass here. Yep, it's a subway pass that you got. Because like I said, we used the U-Bahn extensively. That was our two-go place, wherever you wanted to go into cities. Okay, you went. And the reason why it was there was no attention to you. You were just a regular person riding on the U-Bahn in town, going from one place to another.

So you didn't attract any attention. If you went by POV or any other means, okay, you attracted attention. This is how we got around the city. You had the U-Bahn, which was West Germany, and he had the S-Bahn, which was East Germany. Okay, these are two different rail lines, two different situations of travel. Okay, we would probe that sometimes. I did get to get on the S-Bahn. And there was an underground transportation system in Berlin, underground.

I mean, really underneath. And this was another time. I went down there to buy some Greek cognac. I was with a Greek girl. And we went down there. I'm down there. A rough assignment, Bob. This is a rough assignment you got here.

Yeah. But I mean, there's these Stasi walk around with their, you know, weapons and stuff like this. I'm walking by with my Conyac. I forget what the Greek name is for Conyac. But anyway, that's how you did it, though. You had to mingle. You really did.

And I got a thumbnail here also. We spoke about Jeff Raker, throw his picture up there real quick. It's a little small. That's the man. That's a little Jeff. Yep. Good friend of mine.

Jeff was, he would, correct me if I'm wrong, Bob. He was not log act, but he was a German immigrant. Yeah, he was born Sadatnland in Germany. And he got, they were, I guess they had allocations in his day for folks that wanted to become a soldier. They had something like a lotto to pick from. And he got lucky and picked it and got selected and precious history. But with the logic, you know, we talk about that. And, you know, we've talked about the importance of, especially in early special forces.

about, you know, sort of immigrants bringing, you know, their cultural and language abilities to bear. And I think in the article Jack wrote that at one point in time, like, debt A was was more log-jacked soldiers than natural-born American soldiers. It was. Definitely it was. And that was on purpose because of the mission. And that's why they selected these folks at Battles, Germany, to go to Berlin. And initially, it was, like you said, it was almost all. I mean, the names I mentioned was just a very few. I mean, there was a lot more people there.

I mean, it was strictly German and Russian Poles, real Berliners. They were from Berlin, born in Berlin. Kyle Reich, he was born in Berlin. And it was a, I mean, for the mission, they were, quite an asset. Let me tell you what. They were really, I mean, they did a lot of things that were we could not, as Americans, do ourselves. Now, being, being that some of, you know, there was overlap with the World War II generation and whatnot. Were there hard feelings ever? Were there,

were there, like, cultural impasses that couldn't be breached? There were some hard feelings, yes, because the Europeans had their own ways, all right? Sometimes they were very like a click. And you couldn't kind of break into that click, okay? They were pretty self-centered folks. They stuck together very well. And they didn't really associate with us too much at all. Now, one of my team sergeants was Hilma Kuluk.

Okay, he was, like I said, he was, he's a real Burlena. He's there today. And he was my team son. He was real good. He was a different kind of European. And he assimilated real well with us guys. I say us guys. But he was quite an asset. Most of them were on their own. They stuck together quite a bit. Which was it, Bob? Was it Cooner who when the sergeant major was asking if guys want to go to the D-Day reunion and Coonerate says, yeah, I want to go. I was with Sixth Panzer.

They're like, no, no, no. Deahat Kuntit, yep, he was another. Now, most of these guys, the Europeans who were in Dead A, you hardly ever saw him in the United States. They stayed there. Yeah. Until Vietnam started

exploding. And all of a sudden, they were pried out of Dead A to go to Vietnam. They didn't. They did not. that was unreal for a lot of them because they were so self-scented that they kept them there because it was important. They were a real asset to that NATO mission that we had early on at Cold War. The Cold War was the biggest thing going up until Vietnam. So they had to be there in Berlin and he stayed there in Berlin.

Then all of a sudden Vietnam exploded in the 60s and next you know there they were. their name was, their name came up, you're going to Vietnam. And they did not like that at all, boy. That is such an unknown story, Bob, that people don't get. Like what you were saying, that Lajax soldier on your team getting shot up out on Target in Cambodia, people just don't know about that. Nope, nope, they don't.

This little guy, I can't think of his name right now, but he was in the French Foreign Legion. He was in the, I think it was a Polish, army and then he came to Honokhtau and Sigma and I don't know why anyone ever put him on recon because he was getting kind of old anyways and he didn't belong in recon and that was quite a sad story right there but he was quite a guy the other interesting thing too is yeah on one hand you have a unit that's kind of packed full of reformed Nazis but the commander of De Dei at one point said chat now was a Holocaust survivor.

He was. He was a Jewish Holocaust survivor. And he later became, he was a major then in the 70s, early 70s. And then later on he became the Berlin commander as a one star. And then later went on to retire as a two-star general. I was, we got pretty close. Matter of fact, I did a couple. missions for him when he was Berlin Brigade Commander. And when I left in 72 to go to Thailand, I completed my tour and I had an assignment to Fort Bragg.

I got back to New Hampshire. It was at my folks home and stuff like this phone call rang. And I was told you want to come back to Berlin. I said, you can't dare him right. I'd already been down to Ford and rag to pick up a whole baggage and stuff and talk to several guys on where I can find a B.EQ room. stuff like this. So Sid Shack now said, don't sign in, get on an airplane, come right back to Berlin. That's awesome. Yes, sir. I got off a plane going back to Berlin and he extended me and I stayed for another five years in Berlin. So then we can go ahead. I was just going to say

before we get into all that, I'd like to hear about Thailand. Because like some of my friends, Jim Morris in particular was someone who told me like Thailand was like the hidden gem of like the whole Vietnam conflict. Like that was the mission you wanted to get. It was. Thailand was, I was an A-combe. A-combe had worked for the CIA, okay? Mampong was the headquarters for the CIA.

Bull Swanson was a CIA station chief there. He was also an ex-Sodger major from the 10 Special Forces of Battles. He was in the same building complex. I was. Matter of fact, we used to fight over the lawnwall for the other go out police area of stuff like this. Anyway, next thing I know, there I am with Bull Swanson, CIA.

A company worked strictly for the CIA, and we had a lot of missions with the CIA. Once a month, they'd fly in with a porter aircraft. Give us our assignments, a little envelope with some money to go to Bangkok with for a weekend. And we were there designed to train the Mayo tribes and allows. Okay, here's what happened. The CIA would send us a message. There's going to be so many Blackhawks coming in tonight. We got 100 Mayo tribes.

At that time, the Thailand was winding down. The whole Southeast Asia was winding down by the guys, Kissinger was over there for the ceasefire, and they were pulling combat to himself. So we were trying to grab real estate, so we were pulling in the Mayo tribes, re-arming them, with the latest M16s, M60s.

They had A6s and M1s and M2 carbines. So we would give them the latest weaponry, ammunition, retrain them, put them back on the aircraft, back into Laos to grab as much real estate as we could with the Mayo tribes. Okay, and then- Do you know a path at Lowe? Yep, yep.

Bull Swanson used to be the case officer, or in Svaliket in Laos. Then he was pulled back at a Nampong in Thailand. So that's where we ended up. We ended up, we were in Nampung Dam way up north in Thailand, way up by Nekong Air Base, where B-52s used to fly out of. And during Vietnam, we used to send Rekon teams out of Nekompa-Lam Air Base up there. So that all closed down, and we went back to Nampong to the CIA.

camp in a company and I was reassigned back to B company as a team sergeant. And we were winding down. I had about two months and I was gone back to Berlin. So major chat now hooked you up and just told you get on a plane, get back to Berlin. That's what he did. One call. Don't sign in nowhere. Just get on a plane, come back in Berlin.

I said, I'm on a way. What was it like then your, was there any difference between your first rotation of Dead A and your second when arriving there after? Oh, yeah. Complete, completely. The mission changed. At that time, when I returned, there were already a lot of terrorist activities going on in Europe. Like I mentioned, the Red Brigade, Battle of half gang, hijacking of aircraft. One thing you've got to know about at that time at Berlin, the only thing that, you're going to know about it.

The only aircraft that were allowed in Berlin were British Airways, Pan American, or a French aircraft. The only entranceway for us were the duty train from Helmstead to Berlin, and the Audubon was the only in and out access. Now, the Russians controlled the rail line, the Audubon, and stuff like this. So what was happening was when I returned, they were renegotiating the access routes to Berlin, the four powers. Okay, so they were going to introduce regular aircraft authorizations to access Tegel Airport. Tegel was replacing Tempelhof. Tegel Airport was going to be an international airport. Now, this is where Dade A came in.

we were trying to avoid hijackings, which was rampant. So any American flag carrier like Pan Am, we were trained on a 707 at Templehof Airport, an abandoned. It was an abandoned 707, how to access that thing to prevent terrorists from hijacking it. Matter of fact, some of the pilots said they never heard of some of the stuff that we could do to get into that aircraft and attack these hijackers. We had access to Pan Am.

We had Pan Am uniforms, maintenance workers, staff, everything. And we would work at that. When that became available in Temple and Tatele, there we were in full Pan Am uniforms to avoid any hijacking on American aircraft. That became the main mission was anti-terrorist. We were the Delta Force of Berlin. Before Delta Force existed. Yes, we had everything.

SWAT teams, you name it. We were trained. We went from UW, GW, to anti-terrorists. Unconventional warfare, guerrilla warfare, we were now anti-terrorists. Model 70, Winchester, as far as snipers, I mean, heavy stuff. We, the SWAT teams, fast cars, we know, everything we had C-141 available. We work with the BGS 9 closely, Israeli Mossad closely, and the, like I said, the BGS9. So that was, that remained until detachment A closed. That was their last mission, anti-terrorist.

It was rampant in Europe. And, uh, dead A was. was very effective. We had money was no object. Did this, I think there's an interesting point that the counterterrorism mission started to interfere with your unconventional warfare mission because it raises by the nature of these kinetic activities, it raises the profile of a unit that's supposed to be secret. But it still remained the same. Our UW mission, guerrilla warfare mission still remained the same. That was still there. Because we were, it was strictly if the Russians reared their head and tried to to come across checkpoint Charlie and stuff like this with tanks and stuff like this, we'd go

to our original mission, right back to it. So now you had more training requirements. Was it, was it difficult to meet those training requirements that you had a couple different mission sets? Nope, because the old missions were pretty well standard. They were in place. They were there. We knew they were there. We were trained for them. We knew what we had with the axes that we had. And then a new mission came on, the anti-terrorists. We transitioned into that very easily. We trained, like I said, with the BGS-9 and our own, we had our own training, which was very intense. And we, like I said, money was no problem.

The equipment was no problem. And we assimilated very fast. And it was quite a change. It was very, as you can see there, we have our MPK sub machine guns, which was our weapon-up choice. We had the P-38 pistols that we dug up from the caches that were left there. I didn't talk to you about that, but one of my missions was our mission, I should say, was these cachet sites that were planted by the CIA after World War II. They were planted all over Berlin in case of an uprising.

So we had to go out and dig up a couple of those to see the serviceability of them, like the weapons where I would have was at, ammunition, radios, medical supplies that were in these cachets. So we'd go out there with a GP medium tent in uniform, but the rural forest, put up a big GP medium tent and dig up these caches. The CIA would provide us with a coordinates, and we dig them up, take them to the 40th Armour, and Berlin to one of their bunkers and lay them out and the CIA would come in and check the service ability and a lot of the medical equipment had expired and stuff like this and dried up and stuff like this radios had to be replaced with newer radios things like this weapons would be replaced as needed and stuff like that but it was a that was another interesting

mission that we had in the attachment egg and not you couldn't access all those cash sites anymore right Like some of them had been built over and yeah. Yeah, I mean, like the ones we did were in the Greenwald forest. But they're like I said, they were all over the city. So a lot of them probably sitting on the gas stations right now, you know. This is a, I'm going to share another picture. This was shared with me by a gent that I hope I'll be able to twist his arm a little bit, maybe interview him one day on the show.

That's a BGF9. Yep. But yeah. It's a BGS 9 unit. There's Mike Malary there. There's Ron Broughton there. I see, yeah, Mike Malary's in the middle. Ron Brubb is right next to him.

The rest of BGS 9 on that side, on the left side or other BGS9 guys. Now, you can see the Mercedes right behind them. And I got another one here of their graduation because they actually went to the course and became, you know, qualified GSG9 operators. Absolutely. Yes. here we go. That's pretty cool.

Oh, yeah, there again. Look at those sideburns. That's totally out of regulation, there, Sergeant Major. Yes, Mike Mullery. Right next to Hans Ron Brought. Yeah, again, that's it. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Yep. On the end down there is Kelly, Captain Kelly way down on the end with a best mustache. Oh, yeah. Way down on the end. I don't know this guy right offhand. I know the guy on the white jacket. I can't remember his name. Yeah. And that is Colonel Wagner, the commander of GSG-9 right there on the right-hand side or on the left-hand side wearing a military uniform. Right. That was in Blonde, Blonde, Germany.

It's amazing stuff. We have at least one question. Let me see what we have going on here real quick. It's been about an hour and I want to get to these. Alex Bennett, Thank you very much. Did debt A and SF take any pages out of the book from the French resistance? And how would a modern debt A be organized implemented in a place like Hong Kong? Good question. That's a pretty hard question. Yeah. Right now, it would be hard to form something like this in Hong Kong because I think every one of us know that Chinese oppression is very effective. It's done very effectively, they don't stand a chance.

It's a certain death, certain death, if that ever happened. As far as the French resistance, no, we, I don't think so. Where were most of your con-ops and ideas coming from? I mean, were they from people with experience, or were you guys just sort of creating things on the fly? did things as needed at the time. And it was created by each individual. Every one of us had our own safe houses. We had our own plans. It was very individualist. I mean, you were, you were on your own in detachment. There was nobody governing you, nobody ordering you, telling you what to do.

It was not a conventional army. It was very unconventional. Like I said, we did not exist. We were not there. period. Yeah. We had to completely operate on our own. With the ideas that you mentioned like the coal for the trains, and I'm sure there were so many different ways to sabotage and whatnot that you had and planned, where were those ideas coming from? I mean, were you getting a lot of them from the agency, the former OSS guys? Were you just kind of creating them? I think it was from the former OSS people and also adapted by the CIA. We had several, like the coal, we had shavings, metal shavings that would, for turbine, turbine power plant stuff that we'd put in the, once we got into our tag, would pour, you know,

get them all in the machinery and stuff like this. And the silences on our weapons were to assassinate like, we knew where the manager's office were and stuff like this. And we just limited immediately as we came into the factory and conduct sabotage as needed. Bob, this is just a little bit of my own two cents here on the question about Hong Kong is this is a study that the CIA did, the way we do things, black entry operations in North Vietnam. What they found, and if you read through this study, is that what we tried to do, we tried

to do and the French tried to do, was recreate what worked for us in World War II with the Jedberg teams and the OSS, deploying behind. Nazi lines into occupied France, we tried to recreate that and do that in Vietnam in the Indochina War, and those teams got wiped out. It just didn't work. And I think that's one of the real struggles we would have operating in a place like Hong Kong, is that we're predominantly Caucasian, African American, small amount of Asians in the military. And those who are Asian ethnically, I mean, if you didn't live there, or you didn't grow up there, you didn't grow up there, people are going to pick you out just like they'd pick me up if I try to go and infiltrate the IRA.

So it's very, very difficult to operate in some of those foreign cultures. Definitely. Definitely because it's so concentrated. And you and everybody else knows the way the communists operate. They have, you call them, I call them spies. They have people that will turn you in in a heartbeat for a couple dollars or a favor. stuff like this. And these people in Hong Kong, it's over.

Yeah. It's, yeah. It's over. I'm glad the Brits have offered them. A lot of these people are little sanctuaries, stuff like this. I feel sorry. But that's the way the Chinese are everywhere. The Chinese will, they're very effective at what they do.

Thank you, Brad, at work. Did you know her work with Pat McNamara? No. Let me see if I, if there's any thing, any funny experiences with British and French units. One time I heard the British forces were doing an exercise with the Germans. I thought the Reds were coming over the border and it turned out to be the Scots. Yeah, that was up the east of the British sector. There was a trading exercise that got kind of out of hand between British Dede and the German police.

It was supposed to be a coordinated effort with the German police, but it got out of hand because of Brits thought we were the IRA running around. Okay, we're in severe, of course, severe enclosed, German machine guns and stuff like this. We're on an little exercise with the German police. And all of a sudden, the Brits saw us and didn't know who the hell we were. They thought we were the IRA. And a battle ensued with blanks, of course,

but somebody could have got killed because the Brits did not know who we were. they haul them off to the Olympic stadium with the British had a little headquarters at the Olympic stadium there in the British sector arrested all the Americans up dead. Hey, guys, of course. And of course, they Berlin Brigade got contact and said, yeah, we had a little operation there and all this kind of stuff. It kind of blew over, but it was very tense, very tense. I was arrested by the Brits. We were up in the British sector and our German vehicle. It was about five of us.

We were checking an access route that looked pretty good to cross the border. And all of a sudden, next thing you know, there's two Brits machine gun jeeps. They blocked us, asked us who we were. We had these walk-on water cars, what didn't mean shit to them. They just said, and they're polite British ways. Would you please follow us? Okay, one machine in front, one machine gun behind, took us to the Olympic Stadium. questioned us for about five hours and finally somebody from Berlin-Bergays said,

yeah, they're legitimate. I mean, they just miss around the whole Brits. Bob, maybe you can fact-check this. Something I had been told once was that the Special Forces Challenge Coin originated because of the Lodzac guys in Berlin, that they kept getting beat up by MPs because they didn't believe that they were Green Berets. They didn't believe they were in the U.S. military. No, that's not true.

the Burlington our coin was designed by Julius Ferago, another DP, this place for us, we call him. And he designed this coin. And as a matter of fact, there's one thing missing on this. It's on there, but it's misspelled. I think of Precian is misspelled. That was like, yeah, Julius Farago. Yeah, that's a famous, everybody goes, do you know, the original was not? okay we got a little error on that that was designed in 1971 I believe you had a silver one and a

not a goal it wasn't real gold but it was gold you had two you had a silver and a gold detachment of coin that's that was yeah that's not true that was old that's good to know yeah um go go ahead Dave I got something else I want to I want to lay on you that I think you'll appreciate Bob but go ahead. Okay, Ian Hutchinson, thank you very much. She's asking, what is your best Larry Thorne's story? Larry Thorne, like I said, was a real, he fought the Russians, got the Finnish Medal of Honor, came to special forces, and disappeared, of course, during a had taken the Vietnam War. And he was quite a guy. He had quite a background. He was very well respected in Special Forces community. He was real. The guy was an original, and he belonged in special forces. Let me tell you, he was something. Now, he fought for the finish against the Russians. Then the Germans.

Yep. And he went to Germany to fight the Russians. And he came to America to fight the Russians. There you go. Quite a guy. He's quite a guy. Well known, well respected. Do you have any personal stories of him? No, I do not. No. Okay. No. All right, Bob. You recognize this handsome gentleman? Yeah, I do, but I can't think of his name. It's Rick. Who?

Rick Louvoie. Okay, yes, Rick LaVoea. He's down in Florida now. We stay in touch quite a bit. Like I said, he was on that Hatcher team mission with me, and we stay in touch quite a bit because for him, that was a special time, too, because we could have got wiped out that night, that day.

Mm-hmm. I mean, it was very intense. There's another one. This is in Korea. Yep, well, yeah, by his sunglasses, yes. He was quite a guy. He was well respected. He went on at 10th Special Forces Group in Devons, Command Sergeant Major.

He was run out of Cigran. Really? Yeah, because we were involved in a very big battle by Noi Bonde in Song Bay area. And he was shot out of three. Three landing zones shot out his recon team. And he came back, they were refueling them. I mean, we had big bladders of fuel on a landing zone, PSP on the ground.

It was hot, it was cold, it was smelling. I mean, it was, and Rick was, he was worn out. And he was sitting there at the chopper with his car 15 on his lap and his Colonel Drake's wanted them to reinsert again. He said, not today, sir. And that night, Sergeant Major Bruncott got him out, sent him to another camp, got him out of Honout Townsign. Saved his ass, could Drake with a court marshal his ass. Oh, man.

And this is another picture that Rick, this is getting a little bit off topic, but I think this is a little interesting to people. Now, you probably know this, Bob, but another one of these things that people just don't know about, probably don't know that U.S. Special Forces accompanied South Korean special forces hunting down and killing North Korean communist terrorists who infiltrated across the DMZ and were conducting essentially death squad operations against the civilian population. This is like back in the 60s, most Americans just don't know anything about this stuff. And these are a couple of North Korean infiltrators that they wiped out. I didn't know anything about debt case missions. but that makes sense to me. I mean, they were over there just like we were in today.

Deadcade had their missions, we had ours. You'll have to, you know, Rick lived it, so he knows far more about this than I do. I just know what he was able to share with me. But, man, this is amazing, Bob. So your second tour over there, were there any counterterrorism operations that you guys got spun up for,

that you were like on-call, for that you had to go and execute? No, not really. There was no counterterrorist actual, except for the, but that wasn't, it was, we did counter surveillance only on the bottom of Mainhoff gang. That was what the Germans police asked us to do. And it was their mission, not ours. Okay, we were there to, we did counter surveillance on them.

And their mission was to capture and whatever they wanted to do. them. Okay, but no, we did not. Maybe you weren't there when it happened, but I've been told that De De Dewe was at least on standby or had some part and when I think it was General Dozier or Crozier was kidnapped in Italy. The East, yeah, the Berlin, the Red Brigade, yes. Okay, I don't know if Debt A, I was not there at that time. I don't think they were involved in that. Yeah, I think they were just on stand by for it. Oh, yeah, that probably would make sense because we, the Air and I terrorists group that was our mission at that time. We probably on standby. I don't doubt that a bit. And so after your time in the debt, where did you go afterwards after you got another five years

at Dead A? I went back to Fort Devons where I retired out of and I got a job with Vidal Corporation in Saudi Arabia, got back there, and then I went with the, FEMA mobile emergency response support. We trained at Mount Weather in Berryville, Virginia. It was a continuity of government mission, 24-7 operations center. Very interesting work, a good bunch of people. And I retired out of that in the 90s. Now, while you were gone,

debt A did spin up for a real live counterterrorism operation. You know, you think we could talk about that little bit. That's an interesting interlude as far as Dead A's role in that. The what? When they got spun up for Operation Eagle Claw for the Iran. Right. Okay. Yes. Yeah, that was a I was not there at the time I had left in 1978 and it was right after that. That's when we were at a peak of an. Of course, I was read into the up plan and the after action

report on it and I don't know any I was not involved in it though you asked about living individual thing now again we go back to this our guys got on surveying aircraft went in the country conducted their own reconnaissance missions they had no support from anybody else except themselves their passport and their brains they went down there did recon conducted the recon, gave feedback about the situation at hand, and when everything climax and stuff like this, they were on their own to get out of that country by themselves. And now nobody knew they were the situation, except when they get back to Munich, Germany, or wherever, and said, it's not a major rick or we're here at Munich, Germany, we get out.

That's how it happened. That's amazing. I mean, I don't know if they were planning on exfilling with the assault force, or not, but I wonder how they realize that, oh, shit, like, this isn't happening because it's not like it's on the news, you know, that what's going on at Desert One. So you have to imagine that they might be sitting there, twiddling their thumbs or wondering, like, you know, watching their watches going, hmm, you know, we should have heard something by now. And then at what point they decided to go ahead and extoll the country? Well, that's where the CIA came in.

Okay. Once the final plan and they executed it for these three guys that were at the foreign mission there, then the CIA would have took over. They wouldn't control the situation from then on. I see. Okay. But at that time, you could not expose anybody outside your sources because you didn't want to get people involved that should not be involved.

that should not be involved. Right. So it was strictly a dead-A individual situation like we were famous for. Okay. You did things on your own, you had your own plan, and you knew how to execute that plan. And just to add a little bit of background, if you guys remember, or if you go back and watch the episode we did with Sergeant Major Mike Vining, who was one of the Delta operators on the ground for Eagle Claw, it was a, the embassy was being held.

there were all these American hostages there at the American embassy. Colonel Beckwith realized at a certain point had his hand force by some accounts. He didn't have enough operators to cover the entire embassy grounds and also the chancelry building, the MFA building, where there was an additional, I think it was like what, seven or eight American hostages being held there, Bob? Three. Three. And so he didn't have enough operators to cover both this huge embassy grounds and the MFA

building. And so Dead A was brought in two guys undercover as German businessmen to gather reconnaissance for Eagle Claw. And then on the assault force, they integrated a small element from Dead A since they had a counterterrorism capability. They were to go in with the Delta guys and they were the ones that would have done the assault on the MFA building and released those hostages. Right. That's correct. Yep. And when they were there, like I told you earlier, they realized they didn't have enough forces at the time to do what they were supposed to do. So they requested more Delta Force people to assist in the taking of these people.

And one of the day guys that went in there that you were describing, he actually got pictures of the MFA building, like right in front of it. Scottie McKeown. That's him. with a with a guard right with a guard the guard took the pictures yeah oh yeah that's that's using your head that's that's some big brass balls on on that jet you got it you got it right there yeah hey abop here's a question um from nick i'm just kind of trying to see if i can pick some out how did debt a's planning for unconventional warfare and stay behind operations synchronized with other UW unconventional efforts

planned by the U.S. inside Germany, such as 10th S Special Forces Group, Greenlight Teams, Fifth Corps LERPS, things like that. We had nothing to do with them. We were on our own. We had nothing to do. We were not op-con to 10 special forces at all.

We assisted them in training, like I told you earlier. But our missions were only our own. We had nothing to do with anybody. else. Were you aware of their missions? I mean, was there any type of deconfliction or anything like that? No, the overall, I guess, Fisher was, if the balloon did go up, we had missions that we would conduct all over Europe. Not only if we survived Berlin, okay, we would medically, I mean, not medically, physically, E&E, if we could, but it was, like I said, it was a suicide mission. We had NATO exercises that we participated in with the 10 special forces, like Flint Lock and stuff like this, NATO missions, that we would go with them on.

They had downpilot missions that we would conduct, and we would ask the 10 special forces in battles for help. They would ask us for help, like during Flint Lock exercises. We worked closely together. There was probably a plan at some level that both. units could conduct during a actual situation, but I was not aware of that. When you would run into the, like, I'm sure that some of your guys knew other guys from 10th Special Warfare, you know, or from, you know, from 10th group or whatever, and maybe just being around the conventional army, how did you guys kind of shrug off the

whole, hey, who are you guys or, hey, Bob, what's going on? What are you doing here? I didn't know you were in Germany, you know, that kind of thing. It was a question that was never asked really because 10th group of all the special forces units. Tenth group was the only other people in special forces that had an idea that we were in Berlin. So they didn't ask questions. Most of the other folks in the SF communities didn't know. They had an idea.

They heard there was a unit in Berlin. But it was so well classified that nobody asked any questions. And what about, I'm sorry, go ahead. What about the conventional, I don't know if you had to deal with the conventional army at any point or whatever, but if they would see your reduced grooming or your relaxed grooming standards, you know, you said that sometimes you would go on these, the runs into the authorized runs. How did they deal with you seeing that, you know, you had these huge mutton chops and things like that? It was questionable.

Matter of fact, if you tried to go in Berlin, the PX post-ext. and stuff like that's saying, oh, it's had a guy up there that's checking ID cards. And when you showed up, they'd take a look at you and go, who the hell are you? But you had an ID card and they just, okay, you're in. As conventional forces, yes, we had problems. We had a lot of problems with the conventional office corps, especially, who the hell are you? You know, and there was some confrontation sometimes and they'd want to know what's your rank. Okay, stuff like this.

Well, it's classified. Sorry, I can't tell you. And I was involved in an episode of the East Sea, Rosenbroeder, Germany. And I was conducting sculpt, Schumeric exercises for the Berlin Brigade infantry. And so I was up there taking pictures of targets, selected targets, for them. We could assign to those guys so they could hit them. There was a radar station, okay? I'm out there.

And there's this German watch. by and he's looking at me like, who the hell is this guy? Okay, where he takes down my license plate and stuff like this. Nothing happened. I got back to Berlin and the CID criminal investigation department called my team leader over and says, we got a report of one of your guys that was taking pictures of a radar station. What's all this? Okay. And so it was, you know, run by the proper sources and cleared up and stuff like this. But that's something that happens. You know, you were. You were definitely. a spy. You look like a spy. You know, I mean, God damn. I'm swimming glow a long hair and stuff like this and nobody around. You're taking pictures of a compound. You draw a lot of attention. And we did. I mean, it was, yeah, we did.

There was a lot of conflict with the conventional army, conventional forces. Who the hell are you guys and stuff like this? I was a big question that always came up. Another question has come up a couple times, Bob. Did you guys work with portable nukes, backpacks Sadam devices you're talking about?

Sadam devices? Yeah. No, DETA did not have VATTOLs had them. We did not have no. But that TALS had Saddam. Bob, maybe we can, if you could talk to us a little bit about, you know, because this unit Detachment A, it no longer exists

today. It's an inactivated unit and your colors have been encased and everything else. Can you talk to us a little bit about the winding down of Detachment A and how and why that came about? The exercise in Iraq opened up a lot of questions to the conventional forces in Europe and abroad about who this unit was in Detachment A. Nobody knew who it was over the years and stuff like this. And all of a sudden Newsweek ran an article shortly after the hostage situation down there in which detached money was involved. And they took a look and said, well, who did, again, everybody

always said, who the hell of these guys? So they took a microscope, went over us and they said, well, we have our own Delta force. We don't need another one. The Russians probably know all about the attachment of Berlin, which they did not know. They, upon later examination with General shack down in Berlin. He was like, you know, he had to do. He had to rub shoulders with the, all the four power officers and stuff like this. And he talked to one of the Russian generals. And the Russian general casually said, oh, special forces. Yeah. He said, you had about 900, 800, 800 people in Berlin. Well, we didn't. We had 90 at the back axle. So force multiplies, okay. Stuff like this. So the powers to be.

decided to shut down the Tashmene. And it was stupid because all of a sudden, then they brought in PSS, physical security support element, which was, again, special forces playing military police role, operating as de Tashvone did. Only they were at Roosevelt barracks, not Andrew Barracks. So they had a cover story that they were military police. But there was, again, in uniform, that staff was in uniform. the operators were still in some of your clothes and long hair.

So it was just like a repeat. And they never quite got the attention or the acclaimed that they did. They lasted, I think, four years just around the time of Berlin Wall went down. They were gone. PSAC was gone. And that's what I jumped in after all my time, retired and stuff like this. Going down at Devons and see my ex-detachment A folks, I decided to take a chance and find out what the classification was. I was going to write a book that was in the early 90s, but I was told, no, you can't.

Okay, I left that alone. And in the, right around 2006 or seven, that's when I contacted Sid Schackdown and asked him, can I write this thumbnail report about detachment A because we're losing our history. We're losing our folks who are dying, we're dying out. And I like it to be recognized in SF history. That's when I started the movement to have my annual Asheville detachment A function each year, which was you attended. And we kept this, we got our recognition in the Special Forces Regiment, finally. Got a stone put in down to Fort Bragg. And here we are today.

Let me see. I think I have a picture of the stone. This is down there. Was that a big moment for you, Bob, and for the other guys when you went down there and they had that ceremony? I was so well attended. It was unbelievable.

General Cleveland, the three was a three star. He attended our course that we had in Berlin. I told you about earlier. They ran through from 10th group, to Seals and people like that. He attended our course in Berlin. And that was a particular moment.

I helped design that stone. I made the speech there about that stone. It was one of the most important moments I ever had. I was really proud that that stone went in the ground there. And we had a well-attended. A lot of detach for the folks that came from all over. Yeah. And I mean, that's one of the things that made people don't realize,

is especially today in the information age, even with really... secret units, like there's a whiff of them. You know, you can go on the internet. Maybe what you find isn't accurate, but you can still find mention. You can still find things. But prior to, you know, the information, prior to computers and things like that, like things like G8 were legitimately secret. Like nobody really had any idea. Maybe a few hushed whispers here and there from guys who might know something on the periphery. This is a question for both of you, actually.

So Jack, you went to Asheville to talk to these guys. And what was that like for you? And Bob, what was it like when Jack came down there and for the first time wanted to sort of talk about this thing? And how did you receive it? How did the guys receive it? What was that like for both of you? Bob, if you want to start. for me it was when jack agreed to come an interview and i put the word out like i put out a monthly

sidreeped that's what i'm going to do this guy that guy stuff like this when i put the word out that jack was going to come down and do an interview for an article these people couldn't wait it was like coming out of a clamshell finally we can talk about what the hell we did and we did so many missions. And we got addaboys, but that was all. Right. You did the mission. The next one come along. You did it, did it, did it from 1956 to 1984, and you got no recognition. So when I talked to Jack and he went down there, these people came out of the woodwork and wanted to talk to Jack because they wanted their story told. It was very important to all of us. Jack, yeah. I mean, for me it was a huge honor, you know, to be invited down there and to meet all of these people.

And, you know, you guys are, you know, my heroes. You know, I grew up, you know, idolizing all of you guys. And I didn't even know about Dead A so much until way, way later. But I knew about your service, you know, what special forces did in Vietnam. And, you know, I really grew up admiring you guys wanting to be just like you, which is what led me into the military myself. So to be able to come down there and meet these, guys, these guys were, a lot of them are legends, you know, it was a huge honor for me and a huge

privilege and to, especially at a reunion and be able to just sit there like one after one, one after the other interviewing all these guys and hearing their stories. I mean, oh my God, I talked to Colonel Wilde was there when the wall went up, not when the wall went down, when it went up. He was there for that. So was, oh, geez, I can't remember the other guy's name. He started off as a radio operator and then became special forces and got read onto the mission later. People who are there really early on where there's still Nazi bullet holes in all the buildings and everything. And just doing incredible operations and meeting incredible people. I mentioned Doc Farr, who is one of the staples of special operations medicine. He's a huge deal.

Ron Broughton, martial artists. Some people call him the Chuck Norris of Special Forces, huge martial artist. And just super, super interesting people. And to put them on camera and have them tell their story, it was just so interesting that a lot of them were like, I feel so strange talking about this. I haven't been able to say a word about this for 50 years. And now here I am in front of a camera just like telling you, you know, 90% percent. of it. There were a few guys, one or two, who they got in front of the camera and they gave nothing but the cover story of the unit. I can't talk about that. I'm sorry, I can't conduct

training in Germany. We were there prepared for operations if needed. I can't talk about anything else. That's okay. I respect that. But some guys, they want to take it to the grave with them. But that's the secret. That's the secrecy of the unit. It's a secret unit, a clandestine mission, and people take it seriously. And I think there is, you know, I think there's this misconception, I don't know, misconception. You know, obviously there's the idea of the silent professional that we don't talk, you know, the people in special operations community don't really talk about what they do.

But I think it's more they don't brag about what they do as opposed to if you are a part of history, you sort of want people to know that history. You know, it's not so much about you getting the credit. It's about it's just about people knowing that this. It's really what it's about, first and foremost, is today's generation of Green Berets knowing about what Bob and his teammates did. That's first and foremost, what needs to be understood. Right.

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. 100%. I mean, there were no bragging rights about this unit. I mean, it was all real. And like I said, it was covered up for so long. And some of them wouldn't talk to Jack because they felt it was still the same.

Yeah. And that's what I exposed. I exposed it's not classified no more. We could come out and speak about it. And like I said, today we're in the Special Forces Regiment. We've got the Stone on the Ground and we're in our Special Forces history. And that's very important. It was very important to all of us to finally get the recommendation due for what we did.

And I'll tell you, it was one unit that, uh, I can't say enough about it because it was all true. Well done. If you weren't worth a shit, you didn't stay there long. We had a couple guys that were running refugees for money. They were gone overnight. You just, you had to be top-notch all the time. Yeah.

Now, out of curiosity, let's talk about those guys running refugees. Because for people who don't really understand what Berlin and Germany was like at that time. When when this split happened and Russia took sort of that East Berlin sector, people weren't overly happy and like over a million, maybe three months. I can't remember the exact number, but the people left East Germany, right? And so the wall, even though in what was it called the anti-fascist defense rampart, you know, because, you know, the communist love using anti-fascists as a term for righteousness. But anyway, they, you know, they put that, they put the wall up sort of with the excuse of, we're protecting ourselves

from the West, but really the wall was to stop people from escaping. That's exactly right. Right. And so the numbers of refugees from East Berlin or East Germany went down from like a million or plus to like a hundred. Right. With a lot of people getting killed trying to. So when those guys started running refugees, were they using government resources to do that? Were they using their own wits to do that?

They were using their own POV, their own wits. It was a four money only job. They made a lot of money doing it. And one of them was our S-1, quiet, good bread. Personnel, of course. Yeah, he was a S1 clerk in Detachment A.

And next thing I know, he was gone overnight. I mean, did they, if they weren't using government resources to do it, did they just stay in Germany and keep doing it since they had it down? No, they were reassigned. I don't know where. I did see that one guy in order a couple years later.

And he was a, he was assigned to some unit in southern Germany somewhere. And I got to say hi and that was it. A couple more questions came in us here. Were there any POC or we'll say non-Caucasian members of debt A? And if there were any, how were they incorporated given that the areas you operated were predominantly white? That's a good question. In the early stages, no, we did not have any.

It was strictly white in the early days because in Germany there were not too many blacks running around. Later in the 70s, we had a rigor section for our parachutes. And the first glad we put out, you know, we put out a request for a rigor because we're going to have our own rigorshed to pack our own shoots where we made our monthly jumps in the southern Germany. And the first guy that showed up a rigor with a black dude. Okay. And it was fine. By that time, Germany was very integrated in the 70s. I mean, it was not no more an issue of black and white.

It was, and that's how it did Tashper they would assimilate all the time. With the changes, any changes going on, be it hair, uniforms, coat and tie, blue jeans, anything. We had to assimilate to the locals. And he showed up and bingo. I think one other one showed up later and that was, I mean, that was the way it was. But it was a mission. It was mission oriented. Okay. In the early days, it was such. And later, it was such. So we just assimilated as we had to.

Yeah. It would sort of be like us, the three of us trying to go to Hong Kong and operate. It just wouldn't happen. that's team six you're looking at right there on that picture. I mean, God damn, that's quite a picture, boy. Those mustache and cyber, turner necks. Yeah. The middle guy is Super Jew. He's the team son, Herpers.

And there's Ron Broughton sitting down there on the table. Oh, geez. I didn't even recognize him. Oh, yeah, he was a skinny dude in them days. At Juan Rinter back there was a Cuban. And Robbie Robinson, he was in Thailand with him. me and later came. This guy was on a Sontay raid in North Vietnam. Gil Turkard, he just passed away. John Liner, he's out in Utah right now. This guy with a glasses, hell of a scuba diver

instructor. He was well, well run. That's Team 6. That's a famous picture. Unreal. That's a great picture, though. Yep. That's Dead A. And I'd say that was about 19. Got the ashtray on the table, so it's before all the smoking bands. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there's, see, here, sorry, I lost it. I think there's one more question. Yeah, thanks, Alex. Greetings fellow Granite State are from the Upper Valley.

What was your favorite meal in your travels? And what is your favorite thing about New Hampshire? I was born and raised New Hampshire. It's a beautiful state. Just later on in life, I got four bullet holes for me. Cold weather kind of got to me. Taxes were getting kind of high. And I remember down here in the south was nice.

And we used to train down here and all these exercises. I asked my wife, Linda, I said, Linda, would you like to go down to Carolina? Of course, Linda being Linda, she said, sure. We got out of New Hampshire in 2003, been down here ever since, and we love it down here also. But New Hampshire is beautiful. My favorite meal in Germany, of course, all Americans, they like the venous schnitzel. Everybody loves venous chnissle. Okay, it's pork, very good, very good meal.

German kodotl falich. Banisha kod cutofalade. a very potato salad. When you were in Vietnam and then you went to the mountain yards, what did you think of the food there? And was there anything in particular that you really liked when you're with the yards? None.

I mean, we had water buffalo steaks that were hard as hell. And we used to take a once a month, we'd get out of a couple of guys who got out of Saigon to the commissary and come back with the big, long, OD cans of spam. I mean, stuff like this. And we had cookie used to cook up something. I don't know what it was.

I think it was monkey for hamburger. Okay, stuff like this. We ate a lot of rice. Did you get initiated into the tribe, Bob? Yes, I did. Oh, yes, I did. What was that like? Oh, that was something.

Now, let me tell you what. That was an experience and a half. I mean, they slaughter. It's not slaughtering. It's a custom. They will cut a water buffalo as a sacrifice to you. They cut it, cut it all up.

You were watching them as they do this. I mean, from live to dead to ground. Then you have this nun pie, they call it. It's a big, tall jug with all kinds of shit in the middle, man. There's bugs. There's green stuff in there with a big bamboo straw. And you got to drink their shit. And man, you're gagging.

And there's a water bottle in front of all kinds of flies on it. half cooked and stuff like this and you got to eat it. And then you get your little silver bracelet, little silver thing you put around your hand. A friendship bracelet, yeah. Yep. And you were initiated into the tribe. And it was a real thing.

I mean, this was not a show. You were really, this bracelet was to protect you against the Vietnam also. Yeah. You know, as for them. It was really special. And boy, but what an ordeal it was, well, I'll tell you, it was something else. And you still have your bracelet? Yes, I do.

I still have my bracelets. The dry tribe. Yes, I do. Bob, you're the real deal, man. You are, yeah. You're the real McCoy. You got that you did the special forces mission through and through. Yeah, and I look around today at the, a lot of changes, the old 18s,

not so close as they used to be. They're not used like they used to be. It's changed as every situation in wartime and military. Everything changes. but a lot of concern now. We still have the troops that want to be special forces. They cherish the old special forces, Green Beret timeframe and stuff like this,

but now they're in there. They're getting misused and overextended divorce rates out of the site and stuff like this, and morale is not that good. But the troops are 100% dedicated. as always. They go in looking for the best, and once I get in there, it's not the same no more.

Yep, yep. That pretty much sums up my experience as well, Bob. What do you think has gone wrong? Do you think that we've deviated too far away from the unconventional warfare mission? Do you think Special Forces has gotten too big? No, Jack, the Special Forces mission has increased not decrease. Unconventional warfare is the biggest thing going right now. You see them pulling

out of Afghanistan. Who's left behind? Who's left behind with the training? Who's out there in a field? Special forces troops. Now, the military, conventional forces use special forces badly. I mean, they're out there. They don't have no support. It's like, I don't, do you remember Staple and Anderson who were charged with murder a few years back? A couple years back? Yeah, a few years back. I'd say it was about probably 10 years back there, Jack. Staple was the master sergeant, Staple and Anderson.

They shot a double agent and they went of charge with murder. Okay. What was this, Bob? Oh, Christ, I can't remember. That was back in 2008, probably 2009. For some reason, this is totally slip in my mind. But go ahead. But anyway, they were charged with murder and stuff like this.

So we went down to Socom, a couple of us guys, and tried to get some facts of stuff like this. And Sid Schackdown was in on this also as a two-star. And there was quite a bit of controversy about why they were being charged with murder because it was a bona fide kill. And highly public. publicized. Then all of a sudden the tide turned and Shackdown and his Jewish friends put up the money for the lawyers and legal fees and stuff like this. And we're down there getting a briefing by Admiral Olson. Yeah, he was his chief at that time. And Sid Shackdowne was there. He's retired, but he was sitting there. And there was a bunch of a bunch of us all together down there at Socom in the auditorium. and they were taking questions and stuff like that.

So we brought up Stafflin Anderson. I jumped up and I said, you know, I says, if I was Stafflin Anderson, I said, I would not have gone out of my compound. I said, you know, if they're going to be charged with murder, how the hell can they effectively go out there and train Afghans or whatever? You guys are going to, if they kill a double agent or something like this, you're going to charge them with murder.

So anyway, Andeson retired. He had enough time to retire the match and the other guy was a captain. And we conducted a debriefing up in North Carolina. We had veterans of special forces on a bunch of us, BsF, veterans, specials, Jack now, a couple of other generals, general guests, me, Michael Lanane. So we got a debriefing from the captain. He told us all what happened to stuff like this.

And we went down to Fort Bragg and all that. and attended that meeting. And we really jumped on the offices down there, the animal Olson, stuff like this. So after the meeting was over, this freestyle comes up to me, he said, real casualty, he says, don't wanna make this public right now,

but they've been cleared, they're not gonna be charged with us. I said, oh, that's great, you know, stuff like this. Then I went public, they were cleared, stuff like this, and now I'm going, that's how you use the special forces today. They can't go out, there do their job. Yeah. No. I mean, I'm sorry, but, and they were out there all alone. Here's what

they told us at the debrief. They get, when he gave us the debriefing, he said, they, to get an ammunition at their camp where they were, it would take something like three months after they got a request for ammo to get to their camp. However, when this incident happened, the CID and lawyers were on a helicopter and were there within 24 hours. Amazing how that works. Oh, boy. Well, anyway. I was talking to an SF guy, like in 2008, out in Afghanistan,

2008, 2009. And, I mean, he told me that basically any time they got in a firefighter tick, anytime they fired a weapon, they had to fill out an incident report. And it's like, holy cow. Yeah. I mean, that was a, what would they call it, courageous restraint? I think they called it. That was later on when McChrystal was in charge of Afghanistan.

Yeah. Yeah, but anyways, it's quite a task today. I feel sorry from the young troopers that are coming in. You look at them and they're the best of what we see. You look at them. They're educated. They're well trained. And then they get out there.

And it's just like when Vietnam ended, they tried to disband the groups and stuff like this. They assigned all the NGOs to really, investment sections, ROTC, they busted up the groups. Conventional Army has never, never liked special forces, and that has not changed. Yeah. Yeah, I really think we owe these young men. And as of Thursday, actually, one young woman, we owe all of them better than what we've been given them, you know, the last 20 years or whatever, whatever it is now. It's an institutional problem.

It is. It's not going to go away easily. Oh, it's not. Well, Bob, this has been absolutely amazing. Do we have any one more question left there? No, more question here. Thank you. General Crang, during the Cold War stuff behind the curtain,

so when you guys would take those trips over, did you pack a handgun? And if more like 9-mills, submachine gun, et cetera, like when you would do those approved, would you carry? We carry it all the time, 24-7. Individual choice, individual weapons. You had your own weapon.

The official weapon was a P-38 pistol. We carried civilian clothes. We carried our own weapon. How did you come by that weapon, right? You bought it locally. Okay, if you had a rod and gun clubs over there, you can buy a gun. Ammunition was never a problem. When we met with the German secret police

and a day room downstairs. They'd come in there. They were loaded to the hill with weapons and stuff like this. So were we in. We drank and drank and drank and had a good time. And next day, it went about your business as usual. But it was camaraderie with the German secret police. They were very good.

They were very effective. And it was part of our mission. Okay. We had to operate with them. They were in control of the city, not us. Bob, I'm going to ask you to stay with us for like another 15 minutes to do the bonus segment, talk about Libya, if your wife's not going to kill me. Please thank her for me.

This has been really an amazing episode, and it's really been an honor to have this conversation with you. And I actually learned a lot about you as we did this, too, because you and I, as much as we had talked about Dead A, we had never talked about Vietnam, really, before. So I'm hearing all of this for the first time, and it's absolutely fascinating. So everyone who joined us live, we had like 120 people watching us live tonight. Thank you so much for coming and joining Bob and Dave and I tonight. It's really great. Please like the video. Subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. Leave some comments below.

Tell us what you like, what you dislike. And also there's going to be a link down in the description for this video for our Patreon site if you want to help support the stream, keep us going. And if you'd like to have access to the bonus segments like the one we're about to do with Bob. Next week, let me just tease out the episode for next week real quick. Where are we here? Next week, Neil Hanson, he was an Air America pilot.

And he was flying around the Laos. And this was Air America was the CIA Secret Air Force. I'm sure you know all about that, Bob. Oh, yes, yes, I do. Yeah, he was early in the program. So he has a vast knowledge of how the program grew and where it won. He flew in Vietnam. He flew in Laos.

Very interesting. Bob, could you let the audience know because you run an unofficial website for Detachment A where people can go and get lots more information, see a lot of pictures about the debt. What is that website? What can they find there? I don't have that right now in front of me, but I can get that. It's all right. I'm all over it, Bob.

Okay. It is detachment slash a.org. There you go. If you go and check that out, you'll find an article that I wrote about detachment A that I'm partial to, but there's also a lot of other information on the site and lots of great pictures of the detachment. And this is like the unofficial site of the debt that Bob runs.

And it kind of gets all of the veterans of the unit together, and Bob does a lot of work to bring all the guys back together. I think I saw in there the reunion this year is canceled. Yeah, because of coronavirus, yes. Are you plan to keep it going, though, next year? I don't know, Jack, at this time. I think I'm going to retire. Yeah.

Let one of the other guys take the reins. Well, you know, it's kind of dwindling now. The interest is kind of personal problems, a lot of deaths. People don't want to travel no more. Yeah. It's kind of winding down. I mean, they all stay in touch. I mean, I get calls all the time from folks and stuff.

But I can tell the interest is it's gone. I mean, two years ago, when they had the hurricane up there in Astro, we had over 140 people signed up to come. And that was one of the biggest ones. And the last one I had was last September. And it was about 100. Pretty well attended PSSC. I invited PSSE to come. I wanted to integrate PSSC with Dead A.

because they're younger and they can probably keep the history of Berlin Special Forces going a lot longer than I can. So, yeah, maybe it's up to somebody a little bit younger now to take the reins from Bob. That's what I'm thinking. All right. Well, we will see

you next week, guys, with Neil Hansen talking about Air America in his book, which Dave has read. So we're going to have some great conversation with him. And Bob, thank you one more time. And we'll join you in just a sec for the bonus segment. Ask this pilot if he knew Rocky Neeson. Rocky Neeson?

I will. Air America pilot also in them days. All right. We'll do. All right. Thank you, everybody. We'll see you next.