Jocko Podcast 182 w/ John "TILT" Stryker Meyer: The Claustrophobic Reality of The Vietnam Jungle

this is Jocko podcast number 182 with echo Charles and me jogo willing good evening a couple good evening the insertion was flawless we were in the wood line and on our way for a general area reconnaissance this time we played it by the book moving ten minutes than waiting ten minutes as we moved I swore that I'd never run an eight-man team again it's too cumbersome in this target the vegetation still made me a tad on edge as it had a second canopy in some areas but still gave us long lines of sight something we weren't used to as darkness approached we looked for a good spot to our o n with the flat terrain finding a good ro n became really dicey ordinarily we'd look for high ground dense vegetation or an area far from any trail finally we found one and South set up a perimeter set up the watch rotation and oversaw the placement of extra claymore mines in one area where the vegetation was thin Bubba placed a couple of tow poppers in the ground I couldn't sleep the flat terrain played on my mind before first light the entire team was awake alert retrieving the claymore mines and preparing for our move out of the RO end after a night on the jungle floor I wanted an R&R anywhere with firm beds clean sheets and cold drinks because I insisted on carrying the PRC 25 there was little room in my backpack except for essentials at night when I slept on the ground I did so without an air mattress or hammock the sole item of comfort was an army-issue pullover sweater that buttoned up to the neck whenever I put it on at night I was always worried about Charlie hitting us when I was pulling the sweater over my head it was one of the few creature comforts I allowed myself or had room for in my rucksack shortly after first light the Green Hornet's CNC aircraft flew into the edge of our AO for a routine Comeau check I gave him a quick team okay and prepared to move the team out of the RO n however the C and C crew told me to wrap up the mission there was another problem that he couldn't discuss on an open frequency we knew the NVA monitored SOG FM radio transmissions and had radio direction-finding equipment the CNC pilot told us to find an LZ and let and to let him know when we'd be ready for extraction a few minutes later the Green Hornet's roared into the new LZ picked us up and returned us to base the reason we were yanked from the field this time stemmed from a tragedy in the Prairie fryer area of operations on 30 November and age 34 king b was shot out of the sky during an eldest son operation seven green berets from fo b 1 and fo b 4 were killed when an anti-aircraft round struck the sikorsky chopper and ignited the ammunition on the aircraft killing everyone on board one of the men killed and that ill-fated king B was Staff Sergeant Arthur e Bader I liked Bader on my last night at fo b1 before shipping out to fo b6 I played in a poker game where he won a lot of money the longer we played the more money Bader won the more money Boehner won the more morose he became at one point I asked him what was wrong he was winning and he was ahead several hundred dollars but kept complaining that he'd never spend the money his response was that he had a premonition that he was going to die and that men about to die often win a lot of money money that they would never spend we all tried to Josh him out of his dark mood but failed Bader was a unique Special Forces Green Beret he had earned and lost three separate fortunes in between three terms in the service he was in his 30s but still enjoyed SF spoke fluent German and a few other languages and merely wanted to any mission assigned to him on the flight on the long flight back to Phu Bai I kept hearing him talk to us at the poker table that last night now he was gone now he was gone and that is the reality of war captured in the best-selling book across the fence and back with us again to talk about war as the author of that book and of another book called on the ground and of a series of books called the SOG chronicles a man who has seen more than most and who has had more close calls than any man should have John the striker Meyer and if you haven't listened to podcast 180 and 180 one yet go back and listen to them first to hear the background of this hero this warrior Special Forces soldier and leader of RT Idaho a recon team for Mac V SOG working missions across the border from Vietnam into Laos and Cambodia John good evening sir good evening thanks for coming back again plan to be back every time you walk out the studio about ten minutes later I said you attack say hey can you come back again next week we'd have so much fun I can't say no that's happened that's that happened that's both that's how you ended up here again every time you walk out of here I go I want to hear to hear you talk more hear more about what you've done and ya know it's been awesome and the response from people have been hitting me up they've been just just enthralled with what you've been talking about and here in here and you tell these stories has been and has been interesting and you haven't seen this have you heard of a movie character named Jason Bourne this guy yeah okay yeah so I posted a picture of you when you were 21 or 20 or 22 he's my illegitimate son yeah they've got some definite comments about that interesting so yeah we got the the real guy back again so I know we have that first excerpt that I just read was from across the fence and I wanted to go back to your other book for a little bit the book on the ground and then I just want to I got a bunch of things I want to just ask you about and talk to you about but I wanted to cover one more section of this book on the ground I was reading through it again yesterday and it's just again one of these situations where I don't know how you're here right now to be honest with you only buddy grace of God indeed the Recon guides to smiled on our team and you know I you guys had more than 100 percent casualty rate correct you had guys that you had some guys that had seven eight nine purple hearts Bob Howard was put in for 11 he only received 8 in my case I've been put in for 2 more but it's just shrapnel mmm you know you look at guys who get two legs blown off arms Blancas like almost embarrassed to take it and and anybody got a Purple Heart in our day you got really rag for it yeah because they you dumbass he just couldn't get out of the way fast enough she got a Purple Heart yeah I think we had is one of my old Vietnam seal buddies I think he called it the the Vietcong Achievement Medal was the Purple Heart that's a good I like that so you're put in for two more how many did you get already almost had one okay and again spider parks and Pat Watkins my you know my gurus my recon gurus we had one that have been put in for just minor strappin all the paperwork disappeared another one had more shrapnel and this time with a little bit a lot more serious bleeding and scratching and stuff a little blood nothing serious compared to what guys for sure they're really good hammered they said no put in for it someday you may have to go to the VA right afters VA even though the benefits it's there you give home loans oh okay that might be a future if we get through this there might be a future some that had dope Dan 20 mom after three purple hearts was that a rule no that's this not a nun sock what about a normal soldier I wouldn't know I never spent any time in a regular unit yeah no I mean Bob Howard he took his 8 and he should have had 11 all the cluster they guess they ran out of clusters for those yeah and you talk about in saw Chronicles vol 1 what was it 16 guys went out 16 Special Forces soldiers went out and they got 33 purple hearts in four days oh yeah and probably could have gotten more sure ridiculous absolutely this is crazy yeah yeah all right we're going back to on the ground here we go the Huey's lifted off made gentle lazy turn and pointed their noses Northwest once everyone was settled I allowed my mind to wander as I looked out and marveled how beautiful landscape was from several thousand feet up in the air up where it was open and cool rather than closed in muggy there was also a sense of inner peace and pride this is what I had volunteered and trained so hard for this chance to run top-secret missions behind enemy lines dangerous missions that made a difference like most special forces types I couldn't stomach the monotonous routines of camp life the ash and trash detail stuff the petty rules regulations formations and egos more amazing yet here I was at the ripe old age of 22 sporting the exalted rank of efore and the one zero of a SOG recon team 22 years old young and dumb yeah 22 years old and you'd been bus if you hadn't been but you got busted down once or twice only once okay so you would have been an e5 you think at this point I would have been up most of powerful yes cease any fire that must have been called crazy because usually you got promoted based one if you're running missions whenever the appropriate time frame was to be in one grape if we be considered for the next SOG was really good about getting the promotions at least our people so as soon as you accomplish your time in rank don't you get out with me do Stevie for really quick so when you this this idea of being an SF and just being on camp and on base and having the the normal kind of routines you just couldn't stand that no you just would rather be out in the field oh yeah just tries you nuts yeah all right here we go back to the book I had been with Artie Idaho for seven months now by dint of hard work lots of mission experience and simply having survived I was now a team leader at a moment's notice I could have millions and millions of dollars worth of air support assets some of them manned by majors and lieutenant Colonel's all doing my bidding all giving their courageous best to save my bacon I had come a long way since flunking out of college and doing a stint as a garbage collector in Yosemite National Park Park my egotistical reveries were cut short when the door gunner on my side of the Huey decided to cut loose with a long burst of m60 machine gun fire right next to my ear fortunately he was simply test firing it your you know we would get I guess it's kind of similar is we be driving to a target right being in a Humvee yeah you know sometimes the targets are an hour sometimes two hours you know we did some long long transits but you would get time to sit there and think about stuff because well you're geared you're sitting there being transported there's not too much you can do you know you're scanned and you're looking for but you're in a helicopter there's nothing to do but think really it was always amazing because it's just so beautiful I mean Southeast Asia from the air even when you went over a combat zone you see the bomb craters me but the jungle it was just this beautiful country and then look you get under it and get into the underbelly the jungle dislike those you know it's another whole world the Starling contrast you know there and like you if you're in the desert it has its own beauty yeah and it can be spellbinding if you just watch it oh wow look at this that without realized that somewhere there's a little hole some guy could pop out up a hitch with an RPG or detonate in your case does remote controls yeah when you roll over did you it sounds like you recognize this when you were doing these operations you kind of knew that this was I don't know I I guess I'm gonna use this word you were lucky to be there oh clearly because I want a hundred percent when I was in Iraq and I only did two deployments to Iraq i 100% knew every day that I was there I knew that this was like my time this is what I'd been this is what I would lived for and I knew that it wasn't like I look back and say I went really wish I would have appreciated those days know when I was in them I completely knew it and appreciated being there like every single day yeah and like I it was a nice feeling personally to think that here we are with the best of the best and we're running the missions and that's we live for it okay now we're here let's go do this and just hope get the mission done and just was the damn trackers who leave you alone so you get the mission done good doodle wiretapper snatch up eow something like that oh yeah it felt good but you know it's like quiet professionals you just don't talk about that much yeah going back to the book as we approach the LZ the team crowded the two doors of the helicopter I was on the right half standing on the skid Sawa's kneeling behind me his hand on my shoulder ready to follow me out the door next to him was kept my 1 1 John Bubba sure along with fuck our point man and Tuan our Grenadier got ready to exit out the left side door we all kept her eyes riveted on the looming jungle scanning for any signs of movement in the treeline surrounding our LZ the top of the Triple Canopy growth of trees vines and other vegetation was at least a hundred feet off the jungle floor and the opening into which we were descending reminded me of the mouth of a long dark tunnel at the bottom of which resided things Alice never dreamed of when she tumbled into that rabbit hole of hers as we were swallowed up and the darkness increased a cold chill ran down my spine when you're going into these spots so you had pre identified this LZ prior to is that correct at that point we were working with Covey at during the briefing we give out the officials of L Z's you know the primary secondary alternate and and that would go to Saigon then we whisper in his ear find something else because we knew this air was corrupt and then so by finding something else you're basically just looking for a clearing of some kind within that within that target and usually be somewheres else they go somewheres where Saigon the leak there wouldn't get the word back because we had that one target we went in with the bomb the LZ was literally wired in a top sheet cou already had wire already with a 500 pounder so we were beginning to do that much more often then could we had good create coffees they knew what we did to the Capitol the Cubbies fly the area of operations before you inserted on the a before or anything like that well during the day up they would just fly over it sure where they take pictures or anything no no usually they would just do a VR visual reconnaissance and they would try to be subtle about like an early 60 we always flew a visual we cost us prior to the mission the NVA is not stupid if they see a bird dog flying over targeted they figure well pretty soon we're gonna get visitors and sure enough so I gave them time to get ready so we basically cut out the VRS on our part and then when cub you go out you know a lot of guys flying they're more familiar with the VR with a helicopter oh no no Luzi with a South Vietnamese Air Force they'd have a little oh one just like from World War two the one from the battle from the balls where Henry Fonda's up here in the right seat and the pilots got this little cub Piper Cubs 80 miles an hour at the top speed downhill yeah yeah and that's what and so that would be most of our be ours but then by Christmas we pretty much cut that out and that's just because they were they that was given away you know we used to ride on logistics air and kind of move the logistics there a little bit to go over an area that we were going over so no one would know that we were in there that we were taking pictures you know like just logistics air just an aircraft flying somewhere they'd go in a straight line they wouldn't they're just veer off a little bit so we could see what we wanted to see sure and then also did the fake gal fake inserts sometimes they didn't have enough fuel to do a lot fake inserts but they had a device called the Nightingale where they would go in sort of Nightingale off and pull the detonator on it and it was sound like a fire fight so that would have all that commotion and then they would jump up go to a second LZ and put us in at down south we were with the the Green Hornet's they they really had a cold because it was flat down up down up so at the NVA were trying to guess which of the three or four touchdowns where we were they were really busy got it going back to the book as the chopper neared the jungle floor Bubba and I executed our first standard operating procedure which was checking the LZ for trip wires or booby traps while the rest of the team searched the surrounding jungle for any signs of trouble after giving the all-clear the team was out the doors and on the ground before the skids firmly touched down how long would you hover there and look at the LZ for oh not long like a matter of 10 seconds as we go in goes down get out sure yeah we used to just jump out lay down like the helicopter would just touch them take off if we would just jump out lay down right there we wouldn't move away from it just jump out lay down modern-day version of touch-and-go yeah we quickly headed to the wood line and set up a provisional perimeter where we could wait and listen when again we saw and heard nothing suspicious we burrow deeper into the jungle where as both denser and darker like some furtive predatory animal we were looking to hide ourselves after ten minutes of no threatening sounds or movements i radioed covey and gave him the message he had been waiting to hear team okay he and others could take up breathing again at least for the time being the deeper we moved in the deeper we moved the darker and more claustrophobic things became moving through the foliage was an excruciating ly slow and painful process with sweat stinging one's eyes bugs crawling and feasting upon exposed skin and visibility cut to mere feet it could be also be disorienting especially when the maps we were given were so useless and here was RT Idaho looking for fuel lines some bright-eyed Covey Rider had spotted and directed airstrikes against intelligence reports said there was a second pipeline in this AO as well regardless of how many any pipeline we found we were going to destroy what would the map well you have one to fifty maps is that what you had yeah one to fifty thousand right but they would cut out from the big map they would cut out like a ten by ten or twelve by twelve square mm-hmm so that if we were killed they came across the map to be no other intel on separate at one target area that we were on the ground now I've gone into triple-canopy jungle before with what year has seen a 1 to 24 map they're basically more detailed than us they're twice as detailed they're pretty good but wonder 50s are not that accurate no then move ahead I want to argue where they had forgotten a mountain and we're on a mountain we're getting ready to go down to go over and we look at it it's like hey they forgot one really could stretch your mission out when you're in Triple Canopy claustrophobic you use that word claustrophobic quite a bit in this section is this jungle just tight very yeah because again sometimes you had to keep sight on the guy in front of you as you moved because you just become separated so easily because of the dense vegetation of course a lot of times our Vietnamese were shorter they get through a cricket we would be down on our knees and I'd be I wore out more pants crawling through the jungle I know I saw a picture I was looking at the pictures in the books I saw a picture one of the indigenous that some of those guys were really small oh yeah really small 98 pounds soaking wet but 50 pounds of heart that's awesome all right going back to the book but I had more immediate and pressing concerns the adrenaline rush that always accompanied an insertion had pretty much worn off and another characteristic sensation had begun to take its place it was a feeling of familiarity and comfort combined with an eerie sense of foreboding both were a product of experience I was comfortable because I was surrounded by extraordinary well-trained and fiercely devoted team that knew what it was doing yet we also had stepped in enough accidental shit and had encountered so many hostile enemy units that it was impossible to not feel serious anxiety in fact I figured that when I stopped being scared shitless I would be on my way to buying the farm cockiness had cost more than one life so you still you get that little mixed feeling of comfort but fear and anxiety at the same time yes you know you think the whole adrenalin of the you know how it is the asserted you're just pumped and at some point you get off you get on the ground because you guys would hit so many times you would insert and immediately get contacted a lot of times yeah so once be amped up going in and then when there's nothing there that starts to fade yeah then you finally get on the grass like Oh at last for on the ground now let's get on with the mission worry about the trackers get moving but let's also stay cognizant to keep our situational awareness tight and that you know this is a one of the reasons I highlighted this section is you know just this is something that you know what we talked about complacency all the time I know there was a boy in the Marine Corps units we were with the three eighth in Ramadi they had a bed a sign that signs around their compound complacency kills yeah for sure but this idea of you know I also talk to young military guys young seals that you know they're they're scared of this they're scared that's like I was so him good you know you should you should be afraid you cuz if you're afraid you're gonna prepare more you're gonna train harder you're gonna you're not gonna cut any corners you're not gonna get complacent and that's the same thing that you're saying here is you'd seen cockiness cost people their lives because they think oh we can just get away with whatever yeah if you're not scared I'm scared of you really yeah yeah and then you have to overcome that though because you can't let that get get controlling you we were talking before we started recording we were talking about a guy that was in a firefight there was one guy that didn't fire a shot stayed curled up in a ball praying yeah that's when that's when fear is not good not your friend your guys wanted to shoot him so you got to balance that you got to be you got to have the fear you got to feel it but you got to deal with it correct we had compasses so we knew the general direction we were headed which was to the north west away from the LZ we had been working away slowly through the underbrush for about an hour when suddenly we heard an explosion behind us it had to have been the Claymore Bubba rigged to go off of anyone tried to follow us off the LZ its detonation singled signaled a profound change in the situation the hunters were about to become the hunted in the jungle there are almost always animal noises of some kind and these suddenly fell silent in the quiet we could hear some distressing sounds to the west sounds that were not of a jungle kind but those of men on the move we were not alone welcome to the jungle baby yes indeed that how do you know that the claymores that you rigged weren't set off by some kind of monkey or whatever some kind of animal he has rigged them a certain way that that was unlikely the way the way Bubba and and the Frenchman later would do it and Lin they would put it in an area where it would be easiest for the trackers to follow and so he's based on human nature you're gonna go through the stick part you're gonna go where it's easier to travel and it could have been an animal but basically it's an envier animal yeah you know yeah the coincidence would be too much and the chances are it's just NVA yeah and if it is a monkey as opposed to an NVA we're happy but we'll find that out within the next couple of hours on the other hand let's get ready yeah and this so that when there was when there was enemy moving in the jungle the animals would stop making noises it all depends how clothes he wore but yes law thoughts that's why the most important thing in the jungle was listening yeah I mean 10 and 10 sounds pretty extreme but it really gives you time to hear what's going on because you lot of time you can't see that's the best sense in the jungle and like I said I've I've been in Triple Canopy and we've found patrolling triple-canopy and you can hit by monkeys too right yeah yeah yeah we had monkeys freak us out but that the sense just so people can understand you can only see in that thick jungle sometimes you can only see five feet sure five or ten feet at the most and so you patrol for ten minutes and then you just stop everyone is quiet and you listen to see if anyone's following you to see if there's any other movement out there that's what you're doing sure I mean and it's so thick that if I'm behind a point man or sometimes it would be the point man with Sal and myself why would never see the appointment I would just keep an eye on Sal and the guy behind me would just be on my backpack I wouldn't I couldn't tell you where the point man was I just follow sounds the vegetation was that thick a lot of times again I'm depending on the Vietnamese cuz they know they need a jungle better than me how come the animals would stop making noise would the animal stop making noise when you would patrol I would assume but once we settle down then things would come back to normal aha so when you stop moving then the sounds would escalate and if he didn't after ten minutes you go the pucker factor tightens up too little bit more I immediately signaled Fogg who is on point to head north this would take us up a hill that dominated our right flank that climb was pretty severe which was good and bad news while it made the going rough it also meant we were gaining some genuine high ground and high ground is the preferred position when it comes to defense the steepness also meant the enemy would have to work as hard as we were I couldn't tell how close the NVA trackers were or how many of them were headed our way but I knew if push came to shove I wanted to be looking down on them always take the high ground always that's just military maxim and you know I I will actually say you take the moral high ground as well take the high ground is gonna take you amen when we reach the hilltop just as dark clouds unleashed a torrent of rain while bubble and sow began setting out a perimeter of claymores I can't contact Covey and appraised him of the situation namely that it didn't look good and that we might be calling for an immediate extraction before nightfall do you guys speak at all only only minimal because most of you handsome this is everything else just I usually you'd have to whisper near yeah but if we we just avoided as much as we could but something like this just so people understand something like this you're on Patrol you're not saying anything you head up the hill you don't say anything you get to perimeter you give the perimeter signal you don't say anything and knows what to do when you're in there you could go days out in the field without talking oh yeah absolutely because what the training is posse got the visual with the person that you're signaling mm-hmm like in my case if I'm behind fucked at the point man I'm telling him what to do and I'll turn around tell the guy behind me same signals and then we go yeah while I was talking to Covey sow who had moved north to set out his Claymore suddenly opened fire on full automatic a sure sign we had visitors this was immediately confirmed when heavy ak-47 fire ripped out of the jungle in response in less than five seconds the well-practiced sow had fired off all 18 rounds in his car 15 set off the claymores and reloaded his weapon while falling back to join the rest of the team that's legit right there Sal was making things happen he was demand would you guys you guys be trained in these immediate action drills mag changes I mean everything that we do right you guys can't drill that stuff every drill and drill and drill if we're in camp we go down often and just particularly in the beginning to June my first couple months whenever every day hundred surrounds and when this happens these guys are called the enemy is covary close to you because you can at least know that they're there they gotta be what 15 20 maybe 30 meters away and in that case here I forget how close they weren't that far for Sal to blow his Claymore and take ar-15 and reload and do it one more time back to the book cover you'd heard the background shots and explosions so he was not overly surprised when I stated the obvious we had a prairie fire emergency in progress and we wanted out ASAP the mission was over if the fuel lines would have to wait until another day the focus now became saving our asses and to this end every air sab air asset within striking distance would immediately be vectored to our target area the odds would soon turn if not necessarily in our favor very decidedly against the enemy arty Idaho might not make it out alive but neither would the end you guys had some serious confidence in that air power yeah that was our lifeline I mean a major edge that we had and whenever we could use it we we use it because there's only a matter of time before they would give more bodies there and we had teams that had been overrun and 67-68 so we knew the potential for things that go really wrong and that was one of the things I could neutralize demand power when I had the enemy has so many troops did teams ever get overrun while they had air power oh sure sadly yes yeah oh yeah they would just keep coming this silver the Medal of Honor recipients fred's apatow ski Robert Howard SF on missions and they were directing air power stills got overrun that's all part of the horror of being on the ground it gets they really determined foe so even though you have confidence in your air power you know there's limitations and if things really go bad that air power is not going to be able to deceive you correct again it's time weather and where are you in the jungle and the Triple Canopy if you're in Triple Canopy all you could do is maybe gun runs and you're not even sure how effective it'll be but at least you get their attention going back to the book call King bees call King bees beaucoup VC beaucoup VC it was clear sow and I shared similar appraisal of our situation and the same thoughts about what needed to be done the only hitch was how to pull it off well with darkness approaching a storm raging and no helicopters anywhere near us I didn't want to add to either sounds or the team's angst so I didn't share my misgivings instead I gave Covey the direction and probable distance we'd moved from the LZ and told them I was about to throw two yellow smoke grenades to marco location i threw two hoping some of the smoke would somehow travel up through the thick vegetation and into the clear where Covey could see it Covey had good and bad news he thought he had our location but he doubted seriously if he could get extraction helicopters to us before nightfall not good not good at all we now had confirmed enemy north and south of us and they were closing in South frantically signaled Bubba to set off from the south facing claymores when Bubba hesitated for a second I could hear Hsiao his coat of crocodile VC how do you say that taka dal Kaka Dalvi see him use for kill do ma which is Vietnamese for mother motherfuckers as the claymores erupted Sal pulled the pin on a fragmentation grenade and lobbed it into the boiling dust and smoke even as even more enemy troops came up the slope with my ears ringing from the blasts I thought I heard additional movement to the east but I couldn't be sure because the NVA had abandoned any pretense of stealth I soon verified they were coming from that flank as well and there were lots of them as these unseen forces maneuvered in for the kill the jungle took on its most terrifying and claustrophobic reality not a friendly place in the very best of circumstances it was now about the worst place in the world to be again that claustrophobic sense can you see can you see the sky in this Triple Canopy depends sometimes you can see it like glimpses of it or like to be a little opening so he was able to see the smoke sometimes you pop a yellow smoke which is bright and it wouldn't even be able to get through everyone was cutting loose as fast as he could an effort to suppress the enemy's fire and drive him back Tuan had managed to find some narrow openings in the vegetation and was shooting rounds with his m79 grenade launcher and suddenly the jungle went silent as if someone had thrown a switch or hit it hit the mute button the only sounds were the metallic clicks as both Artie Idaho and the NVA locked fresh magazines into their weapons the fight was far from over in fact the party was just getting started and we were simply changing records for the next dance with death the jungle again erupted with deafening roar of gunfire so that's sketchy that's got to be a horrifying feeling boom goes quiet everyone dumps their mags there's that moment of silence and in that silence are you here as reload out well and you know too when when that happens how when your Adrenaline's pumping when you're here your time frame has expanded mm-hmm so now instead of like you read it that's how quick it is bam bam you're saying but now I mean the adrenaline it feels like it slow down you can feel the magazine coming out you hear that click everybody else is ramming them in come on boys let's come down on this first and our guys one with all the noise I had to shove the radio handset damn near inside my ear to hear what Covey was trying to tell me the good news bad news routine continued the good news was that some of the yellow smoke had finally made its way to where come he could see it but the bad news was we were nowhere near the nlz he wanted to know if we could fight our way back to where we had been inserted negative I yelled as fuck Bubba and HAP all opened up on some NVA who had managed to sneak up from the south there were green tracers whizzing all around me Covey would have to wait and that's another good point because in this war the enemy almost always had green tracers always okay yeah for us the enemy didn't always have green a gret they in fact most of time well a lot of times I had red because they had well no kidding yeah so what they learned a lesson yeah so it was it you know they just they got their ammo from all different sources and so it wasn't just this there wasn't just hey they're green and we're red it was mostly red some green occasionally but wow yeah yeah after helping repel the attack I got back on the radio to impress upon Covey the direness of our straights but of course he already knew that so in his calm voice which could drive a 1:02 murder he said we don't have a lot of time no shit the only chance we have is about a hundred meters north by northeast from your location there's a small hole in the roof and we might be able to get strings down to you he inquired if we had much activity to our north it depended I thought on what you meant by much an activity I reminded him that North was where the whole shooting match got started and while the unit while I fought we had pretty much taken that group of NVA out of action I couldn't be sure when I finished he said don't worry I have a pair of a1 E's on station and I'll have the leader make a gun run and then give and then have his wingman follow with 500-pounders before I could say Roger that the first sky Raider roared across our northern perimeter his 20 millimeter cannons blazing away as woodchips dust and debris filled the air the members of RTI Idaho did not need to be told what to do we kissed Mother Earth and pressed against her body for all we were worth in the brief quiet that followed I told Bubba to prepare some explosives just in case we needed to cut down trees at the extraction point I told Sal we needed to head north as that was our only chance for escape no one looked happy with this news particularly not Sal who had finished who had seen firsthand what was waiting in that direction about this time the second sky Raider appeared and released its load of 500-pound bombs they were so close that the concussions bounced us like jumping beans and this is all based on the yellow smoke that you'd thrown five minutes ago or eight minutes ago right there looking at a massive weight this is another thing it's hard to understand it's hard for me nurse and I was memorize a radio man when I was a new guy and we were out in the desert and we were trying to call in helicopters to come pick us up and it's me call them in it's not we as me I'm sitting there on the radio trying to call in these helicopters and I got my air panel out and we're in the desert this isn't Tripucka this is the desert and these helicopters can't see me they're not far they're not at altitude they're probably five hundred to five hundred meters away are they doing that for the earth or they're looking for us they're kind of they know we're in the general area and they're looking for us and I'm sitting there with a signal panel like trying to get their attention and what you don't realize is that there's you know you you're seeing this helicopter it's so obvious I mean you'd think there's no possible way that they can't see you'd think there's no pop we got us a 16-man seal platoon out there I'm waving around a piece of fluorescent orange we're the only human beings in this desert and they can't see us and now you're and the reason they can't see us is because they're looking everywhere they're looking they're looking at whatever what how many square miles that into an ocean yeah yeah they can see all this space and so it takes him a while you know finally I get him to say I think I pop this I think I propped a smoke and they didn't see the smoke and then I popped another smoke and so that I can't imagine these guys are coming in hot dropping bombs based on where the cut not even him but where the covey saw smoke five minutes ago yeah we may have popped another smoke in there somewhere and also I know that I had talked to cubby okay here's our smoke north of us and he knew they had we had a lot of octane north and south and he forgot about maybe we won't get it from the east but for talked about trying to get to the north that's why he he came across the northern so he knew basically where we were and he came in at cost of five hundred pounds were able to get through the jungle and impact on the ground and those things rocked you guys oh yeah one of those happy pings good times I guess tilt alright with the a1e activity to occupy us we had momentarily taken our attention away from our southern flank and now a wave of NVA hit us from that direction everyone responded with automatic fire and Bubba and I lob some grenades down the slope I am from Covey of the attack and told him that when I gave the word and the team moved to the north I wanted more a one he runs to our South in my heart of hearts I also wanted more runs to the north but we didn't have time for that we had to get out while the getting was good the next NVA wave could be the one to overrun us as Bubba finished preparing explosives HAP and I continued rolling grenades downhill toward the enemy sow and fook covered Tuan with car 15 fire as he set up a claymore facing south and covered it with leaves a little parting gift for our friends the race was on I gave Covey the word and behind us the a1 the a1 ease began bombing the shit out of whoever was back there fuck angled back to the north we passed the we passed bodies of dead NVA soldiers but we didn't have time to stop and search them for papers or anything of an intelligence value we had only one thought in mind get out it was something of a miracle that Faulk and sau actually located the spot Covey had found for us when we finally looked up toward the hole itself however it appeared a long long ways away it was at least a hundred feet or more and the green tunnel leading to it was narrow and dangerous as we were approaching I had seen the tops of trees being whipped around by the gusting wind and knew this would complicate matters even more this was not going to be an easy exit so you guys are moving to this thing you're looking up at the treetops and you see there's like a heavy wind because I store that's just weather wind like it's wet it's windy out and we had weather forecasts and it might be some problems with the weather so here we are as dark and I'm I didn't tell the geysers I mean yeah I knew that seeing those trees like that this is yeah and I was getting late dark I needed your Nog's yeah you did I wish you could Adam bro but when I totally changed this whole scenario oh yeah cuz the helicopter because the aircraft too sure because the aircraft would be oh yeah we got you yeah we got you locked and we'll just will you guys can just you know pitch a tent and the NVA this still you know the the big motto of the insurgents right is that they only fight when they want to and they don't have to fight if they don't need to and you don't imagine troops that don't have to fight just keep coming after you just keep you're laying waste to them but they keep coming that must be the value of capturing you all cross-border would be so high that they just must have had serious intent to try and capture well yeah and then then too you know you had that propaganda they've been fed for all those years they really believed they really believed that like the French we were there to occupy but we're just there was combating communism but then they never heard any of that stuff and they were dedicated that's absolutely yes sir back to the book the envy had not given up its troops were hot on our tail even though we had heard Tuan's claim or go off and had listened to the a1 EES work them over you had to hand it to the NVA soldiers they were very tough and determined I again contacted Covey and asked for some asked for some Tactical Air Command air support to our rear and in a matter of minutes bombs were falling and cannons were blasting away I'm sure I was impressed with the service as the NVA were surprised by how quickly the ordinance has been delivered they were learning a lesson the hard way if a recon team wasn't wiped out in the first few minutes of the fight the NVA would pay dearly for the mistake but more than one NVA unit had experienced this firsthand so that's kind of a creek critical few minutes as long as how long did it take for air to get on station usually well dependent everywhere it's been several hours - in this case we were fortunate to make contact really early on with Covey who fortunately had a ones that were within a few minutes away so there were some luck involved very much I mean we didn't we seldom had that kind of response and layoffs did you ever pre plan to have coverage at certain times it would be a special mission yeah like the ones we put in the sensors you put him in and you know you're gonna have any ground for two or three hours he booked the times had the SS set so we have to go or something happens in between being eating come in but most of the time were these were these aircraft necessarily briefed on the mission itself so that we they know coming in hey this is the ail that they're working over these guys just coming are they were just they were just random pilots OB both they had specific a1 units in the air force in that time frame that were specifically there for SOG missions and SAR search and rescue up north for any downed pilots so they were very much attuned to our people working with con tomb and with us up north so they knew everything was in the prairie fire AO sometimes when you like when we're in Echo for our first contact was with a fighter jet that heard the Herc ten beeper and responded to that so and other missions another aircraft would hear it and they would if they had ordnance then we had to you know get the Miri get them located to find us and then bring in the Ordnance well he put the call out to get the Covey or the hillsborough or moonbeam let them know they had a tactical emergency going on and you're doing all that on the radio while you're still fighting yeah we had had to spend a few rounds here lighten the load all right Bubba sau and fuck had been busy placing explosive charges on trees while hep and Tuan set out claymores facing south I couldn't help but shake my head in wonder at HAP in a dark jungle with night approaching he still had his ever-present sunglasses we blew the charges around the trees and they were cut clean but the dense jungle refused to let them fall we had not succeeded in making the hole any bigger so we just have to hope the rescue ships could manage to drop the ropes down to us and then pray the ropes were long enough so you're trying to make that hole in the jungle a little bit bigger like what diameter is this hole that you're looking at oh this is like 10 meters is it not not you know it's a good question maybe 2030 meters okay at the most but there's treason ya know it's Lisa it's a little bit more open as opposed to just Triple Canopy enclosed where you're just completely we could see skylight you can literally see the sky mm-hmm but and then you try and blow some of the trees but they don't even fall down because it's too much jungle - mines yeah yes exactly doesn't even help didn't help good times instead of frustration we tried to blow up some palm trees or actually was Lafe Leif's platoon tried to blow up some palm trees that were obstructing their view you know overwatch position right and they blew up they said they said so many charges on these palm trees it was embarrassing I never launched I got read no they weren't they didn't budge no I got embarrassed I'm sitting there telling the the battalion commander he's saying what I'm saying hey sir there's gonna be another controlled debt and boom and then so there's gonna be another control tent and then boom and then so there's gonna be another control bet and then BOOM he said what are they doing I said - trying to get rid of some bomb trees don't worry about it you know what sir we're just gonna leave those palm trees yeah the score right now is palm trees three seals zero yeah that's what happened know those palm trees are hard resilient thick alright back to the book with the helicopters on their final approach I threw out another smoke grenade to mark our location and the rest of the team began firing at the NVA who had again pressed in on us we could barely make out make out their shadows but they were definitely out there as evidenced by the green tracer rounds flying towards us Covey hadn't been able to see my smoke so he asked for a pen flare when I tried to fire it up through the trees it struck a limb and bounced back being desperate I told Covey Oh is gonna shoot three tracer rounds red tracer rounds up through the hole and before he could scream no I had pulled the trigger on my car fifteen I immediately realized what a dangerous move it was as I saw him pass overhead in case there was any doubt in my mind Covey took the time to let me know in no uncertain terms how stupid I was I believe the expressions dumb asked and shit-for-brains came into play loudly so you're in this situation he still took the time to call you shit-for-brains yeah no you're about to die prize oh yeah and you know I was thinking I've never fought in Afghanistan I don't know what they hadn't know if they saw a lot of more green tracers over there off to ask some of my buddies and never really thought about that so that's a that was that just like the normal little pencil flare yes a little trigger thing you crack single right like a 22 round that fires up it's a tracer yes you know it didn't penetrate through so you decide you're just gonna fire some compounds but fuck my tracers but they saw him right they did yeah so hey one four till just before the rescue choppers attempted to hover and drop the ropes I told Covey I wanted the gunships that accompanied them to work over the area around us particularly to the south I wanted the NVA to be either dead wounded or with their heads buried in the ground when we tried to make our escape the muskets the men from the 176 assault helicopter company immediately went to work with their 2.75 inch rockets and their Gatling like many guns multi-barreled weapons that could pump 6,000 rounds of six to a minute as the last rocket hit and exploded behind us the first 101st Airborne Division slick appeared over the hole in the jungle roof and dropped sandbags with ropes attached to them the helicopter was so high up it looked like a toy and even its powerful rotor wash couldn't reach us I could tell he wasn't being buffeted by the wind but he'd somehow managed to hold steady over the opening one of the sandbags attached to the rope had a strobe light attached to it and we watched it bounce off the limbs as it fell toward us you guys I guess they hadn't invented the jungle penetrator yet they has but not on you ease they had them on the HH threes and the mean giant yes for those that don't know it's like a big metal yeah jungle penetrator it's a big metal kind of spear almost spear man that was still cable to hook to a crane and it just drops down and that weight and it's well shaped as opposed to just a random sandbag it bouncing here and so this thing was hot this thing must have been like 150 feet up yeah they had the longest ropes in there surprise even got down to us back to the book while we kept an eye on the ropes descending through the trees the NVA mounted a desperate last charge towards us Tuan and hep triggered their K claymores and the rest of us opened up with all we had somehow in the midst of all the tumultuous activity the four ended had managed to rig themselves a Swiss seat using the six foot long pieces of rope we carried just for that purpose bub and I now tried to do the same but it wasn't easy to wrap a rope around my waist pass it between my legs and then finish tying it off on the right hip while under fire but we managed to do it while the in Dajjal doff the enemy and began to hook up for the lift out you guys ever think about using some kind of pre-rigged like sid harness or something they they were developing those at a time they upgrade they had like the McGuire rig which is just basically a thick material that you could sit in and then later they came out with the rigs Captagon there but it was a an outfit where you had your heart's built-in she had the web gear with the harness so when they came down he just hopefully in clicking you ready good I'd be thinking about that stay free when I when I found this you credit AIA story seat yeah that's awesome we were getting low on ammunition grenades and claymores if we didn't make it out it was gonna be a very long night in fact I wasn't sure we could I wasn't sure if we could survive the night no matter what kind of air support managed to reach us it was Now or Never Sal and Fock located three of the four ropes and it attached themselves to one of them using snap links when I asked Covey if the chopper could lift us all out at once he replied no way it's going to take two lifts no way is exactly what I thought in return there was no way we had enough time for two attempts there was no way I was going to split the team either all six of us were going out together on four ropes or we were going to die together trying call it camaraderie or fear but I was not going to leave anyone myself included on the ground for a minute longer than necessary I had heard all the horror stories I needed to about what could result in and I didn't want to be the subject of some gruesome tale around the bar at fo b1 I suddenly had a bright idea and asked Bob if he still had the Claymore with the white phosphorus grenade taped to its front when he nodded yes I told him to strap it as high as he could as high as he could reach on a nearby tree facing south he gave me his best are you out of your fucking mind look because he knew at that proximity the back blast would kill us all when we set it off so he hesitated and I had to order him to do it once he finished the remaining two little people paired up and hooked themselves on into one of the ropes while Bubba and I each took one of the remaining two I wanted to balance out the weight distribution by having me on one side of the helicopter and Bubba on the other but it was impossible to tell for sure which ropes went where so I took a wild and hope for the best best using the barrel of my m79 to shield the flash from the NVA I used a strobe light to signal the chopper to begin to lift to begin lifting us out did the chopper have enough power would we be dragged through the trees would the NVA manage to shoot one or all of us out of our saddles we were about to find out as the ropes became taut fire gunfire erupted from the West Southfork and I returned fire but our bodies blocked the others line of sight so they watched in frustration because my rope was longer than the other three I was the last to leave the ground this also gave me the additional seconds I needed to reload my empty car 15 twice things were happening very fast almost too fast and my bright idea demanded perfect timing as we started up Bubba reached out and ignited the delay flues on the delay fuse on the last Claymore the one he'd fastened to the tree with my feet dangling in the air I fired around for my m79 still gaining altitude I then pulled the pins on two hand grenades and tossed them down onto the ground at about the same time the Claymore went off the back blast blew under us but we could still feel its power and heat the phosphorous was like a giant flash bulb going off and that frozen instant of illumination I could finally see the faces of my enemy they were hurting but still advancing with its engine screaming the Huey somehow came up with the power it needed it was agonizingly slow going and we had to push our way through some branches but we were not being dragged through them we were being lifted straight up the NVA continued to fire at us and I had the unsettling impression that tracer rounds were passing between my legs and a sensation that will give any man pause for thought the team fired back on full automatic and we threw the last of our grenades like two fiercely demented and determined beasts the NVA and Artie Idaho remain locked in battle to the bitter end as we finally cleared the trees I immediately called Covey and confessed our little deception the team is out the whole team is out I screamed into the handset we came out together do not send in a second helicopter I repeat no second chopper the muskets rolled in and pulverized the ground we had just left the a1 es were right behind them and as the muffled explosion and light flashes reached me I found myself feeling a little sorry for the NVA troops down there they were valiant and dedicated soldiers they would have - they would have been a credit a credit to any army those left alive would no doubt have some stories to tell but I doubted they would ever admit that a six-man team had held them at bay for so long and then escaped their most determined efforts to wipe them out as for RT Idaho we were simply happy to be alive not something I would have bet on a short while earlier oh yeah oh yeah and we were we were lucky too because of the were more lucky than that I mean we we used up a whole lot of luck on that one but you know is we're lucky because we were still relatively high not like the big Peaks and deeper into layoffs and so the helicopter was able to pull us out if that had been in the middle of the day and with jungle heat and the heat of the day he never would have been able to have six of us out but we weighed all that and I didn't listen to cubby just rolled the dice cuz it was so dark at that point so oh yeah the recon guide smiled on us one more time so when you when you once you got pulled out would they just look for a clearing somewhere to set down get you guys in the helicopter for real no that's the part that support day just froze your balls off because with the Swiss seat out in the rope you just everything goes numb yeah and so because it was dark particularly they want to make sure they wherever they put us down was going to be somewhere in South Vietnam so we were in the air I just forget how long and they finally set us down but you can't walk you just you like to like a cripple for a five-minute clip yeah on clip you can't flip so they so they didn't really care about your comfort no and we end we didn't complain too much but you here you go you're all sweaty yeah and you know how it is we fight five minutes later you're 5,000 feet which is cold people forget how cold it is at 5,000 feet yeah you're freezing yeah especially because you're soaking wet yeah any feeling it's 80 miles an hour so yeah 80 mile an hour wind yeah all that - yeah this is just I mean this is just crazy it's absolutely crazy and this was just over and over again now you know I spent a lot of time on the books on the last couple podcasts I wanted to I wanted to kind of just ask you a couple questions get your thoughts on some stuff and it's also another way you might have to come back again but I got saga Chronicles here I read that outstanding book you know this is the song chronicles real quick talks about a big operation that that would that took place that you weren't on but you got really good descriptions and talked to people operation tailwind that's another one where helicopters are getting shot down I mean it's completely completely insane yeah and and no no ordinary hillock these are the C's 53's Delta models yeah the biggest Marine Corps had and they took out two of those left one really banged up yeah and when they inserted they still they had three WS on their assertion but they had to get in for that to take the pressure off of the CIA operation that was the mission September 1970 yeah that's so that's operation tailing operation tailwind and that that chronicles Volume one and I hope there's gonna be about 30 more volumes I'm gonna be working on it the model that Anna and I came up with is that we're gonna write till we die I like it could there's so many socks there is that there have been told you could we couldn't tell and some of her guys I mean even when I a fellow recon guy talked to him it's like pulling information I was sure you've run into that with your people they they're not they're not inclined to talk well yeah and they're modest that's an interesting thing because people do not the wannabes at the bar I'm a green beret or I'm a seal and most of the guys when you know people say well you should have more guys from tu bruiser on there you have to have more guys more seals on the seals that I know that I would want to have on a lot of them they're still in or they don't want to come on they won't say a word yeah there's they're like hey I'm good you know and then obviously I got a lot of my friends that that do come on and it gets great when they come on but yeah a lot of guys are still doing it you know and so hey that's the way it is I want once those guys retire and I do have some friends that are retiring soon and they're becoming on so that's pretty awesome oh yeah but um yes so the SOG Chronicles you you've like I said hopefully there's 30 volumes of that right now there's just one we're gonna try to turn across the fence and on the ground into audio books that's awesome that's our project right now and then as soon as we're done with that to commence with volume 2 and we got a couple of stories there well the one that we talked about it on the ground the August 23rd attack we've had a lot more research we had this gal who's a that she was an MI and she has pulled out more information as we're gonna pull the whole thing together for the Hopi the most detailed story tonight because of such a tragic yet heroic night for the people that were there on the ground and I and Larry tremble up on Marble Mountain yeah so we have that a couple other stories many other stories but there's the other one one of our guys went in for a bright light and they got shot out in a f4 crashed as it was crashing it hit three separate hilt coming to rest on a third one they got to the second Hill and it got shot out he went back 25 years later he became a doctor on his own money spent $70,000 to go back to Cambodia to try to find that f4 just not as conscience they got in got to the site and were run off by bandits he went back now would be two years ago with DPA a and DPA a was working on the second hill where the jet was on the third hills he's he able to go in and give them direct sighting as to where to dig so they're still working and he was on the ground digging things out with these guys that's gonna be in that book yeah yeah so check out that book to SOG chronicles your training how ready do you think you were when you got to Vietnam how ready for you for what you were about to encounter well a lot better than the guys that went through just basic training and advanced infantry training and I'm sure that commissioning units had in-country training our in-country training was was good he worked we you know we practice calling in spooky worked with the helicopters told about the dangers and working with the little people to history as well as some of the do's and don'ts about working with South Vietnamese and I thought that was good but then to just know a camp Duty which is I think all that was geared for the eight camps mmm SOG was just in another level and that's why we always talked so people like Pat walk in spite of parks John McGovern dick gross Deaver the senior East 7th or east sixes in camp all of whom had run at night us green guys would talk to him particularly after missing and then we talk to each other you know John Walton came back from a target and where Tom Cunningham's leg was blown off one of those little people it's got shot four times in captain tin who saved us in October pulled them out August and we talked right away that night well what did you learn and and always be just back and forth to try to get any sense of what happened when anything you could do to give us anything for another edge on the field and meanwhile we're getting the Intel reports we knew Bello teams have been wiped out and Intel reports about the sappers so y'all balanced it out and just key thing was comma so an answer to your question SOG was so different a lot of both innovative the things we were doing there were these strings that was all things that you used today really advanced it no no fast ropes that was another dimension of another war so we're working at the firepower working with the air assets and new weapons but it was all I could experimental things learn as you go try take was best and looking in black blow yourself up in an ambush that's what good luck to make sure it really works did you when you were calling for fire so I don't know if you know this but now it's like a school you go to you you go to joint tactical inter controller school and that's sort of your specialty is calling for fire calling right bombs but you just you trained in country to learn how to do it yes and again we talked to that's where we talked to spider and pat walk is specifically and so that was the that was more important than actually going out pop and smoke and having a gun run there was learning how to do it the right way now you're in a box and you never have a gun run go across you hit be in front you know your front to left southeast and you direct it that way and how many inches I mean how many feet of yards from your perimeter how many meters and that applied when we got to the field because once we were up at feu by we didn't practice airstrikes once we're on the ground we did it but it did it with confidence thanks to Spyder walkins and John McGovern particularly they sat with the green guys at night and made us you know understand that and we had a couple cases where people made mistakes and teams got hit and lost people they had a they were bringing some people where our body count was so low that they were bringing in people from other units and they were coming cocky and when once they got on the ground they were just maybe a little too cocky and have listened to little lessons and some of the teams would let the other people carry their I carried a radio and we had one team young guy came in and called airstrike on his own team they came with a gun ran right across the team's ro n and it's like that you know so III that does not surprise me at all I mean when I'm listening to or reading your books the fact that you guys were doing that the you can obviously had a massive amount of skill to not have that happen cuz like I said these guys are looking at a jungle canopy they looking at some random bit of smoke that came out and yet you're directing fire based on that it's it's it's awesome but I could see where somebody could easily you know make a mistake you know you give the wrong direction you you know you look at your compass is spinning the wrong way you know it's could close to your weapon you got your cardinal directions I mean there's so many things that could go wrong that and yeah and yet you're just doing I mean there's times we're out there doing gun runs for for 12 hours straight long time and in like your case we you had the the unit that you wanted attacked the building and you challenged that three times and the last time you called it off because it was another unit another SEAL team well we had that common sense thing on the ground to where we would direct it but if there was something that wasn't quite right you put everything on hold until you got it right yeah that's it's weird cuz life and I wrote extreme ownership and we didn't really coordinate stories that we were talking about and yet there's multiple stories in there about either blue on blues or potential bloom blues cuz man in a city like that with all these different different units running around all on different radio frequencies oh yeah and a bunch of enemy Mujahideen fighters running around in there too it was blue on blue was a very real thing and there would be probably one case of blue on a day that would happen and maybe one a week that would get reported you know but just and I'm not talking more someone who's shop but like you know just all of a sudden you're taking rounds you like where are those coming from oh that's another unit down there and for us and for a one opening up on me exactly exactly so that it would happen all the time and that's one thing that was nice about well for you if not nice but it's less complicated you're the only friendly guys out there well you know there was no friendly fire happening you guys this us versus them when you got mission taskings hmm where'd they come from were they were they coming from up above were you guys developing targets yourself where did that how did that process a happy mix of both the the chain command for SOG went to saw headquarters right to the White House they had somebody from DoD that was there some I don't serve in general somebody but that was their mission was keep an eye on saw so they would send missions from there that would come to headquarters to each fo be and then our immediate action reports that I'll go back after actually reports would go back through the chain of command so they knew what was going on at the White House there was somebody at the West that's where we were told and on occasions if we had a target that we wanted to do b-52 strike that would go back to the chain of command and then get approval on but the the from what the public knew the public knew we were bombing I didn't know anything about him but they didn't even know we were bombing Laos and Cambodia rekt nothing there are no reporters in there there's no communist news network back then so and the Communists would not talk about it because they had agreed to the agreement not having their people there could they always said hey les I can't but they're neutral we respect them lion dogs and we said the same thing but ours we just went in with our Recon teams as opposed to them just going down and enslaving all the people to work there work with us help us to open the roads and you know if we saw indigenous people we were not open fire on I mean it's like you're not gonna go ahead to the local people they don't know any better just caught in the middle mm-hmm but the NBA Dave David Tom you work with us so you die yeah well you you know and one of the books you're talking about how the the NVA treated the ended people they're so horribly that the end is that you weren't worth I hated the NVA oh he hated him the these NVA had raped their women and beat their wives and just done horrible things to them and so they were there for they were there to fight yep and they they cut nobody any slack I mean America today particularly our snowflakes don't know what the soldiers of communism were really like in the field and it's just nasty people and that's what we were fighting mm-hmm and they were dead they were really dedicated and their their sense of purpose because they've been so thoroughly indoctrinated and they really believe what they're doing even though they're working off of propaganda yeah when you saw them so you would come up with some of the missions some of the missions would come down to you majority came majority came down to you and of course you know they was had sometimes I think there would be we got to get a team on the ground that's why we were going in primary secondary all think is shot out eat lunch go back and try again because they just wanted to get somebody on the ground and that would just be your s automatic aerial reconnaissance and that's because they had something they wanted to see there something something like that sometimes whereas three people would just want to get a team on the ground so they could be poor to headquarters at night we have one or two teams on the ground where do you mean that they're just wanting to hey look what we're doing yeah now if shorty guys are an s3 would deny it and emphatically but it felt like that yeah her technique came back and said here's a new target and they'll pick an LZ for you while you're flying back to the next target did you ever what if you what if there was a mission that you looked at and you said hey this is dumb this doesn't make sense well there's only one - I declined to rant about Christmastime is 68 I just had a feeling and a team went in I was worried but they'd only ground for five days and it was a dry hole and they came out without any shots fired or anything so that's one time I officially turned something down maybe that's why you had a bad feeling tell if you knew nothing was gonna happen it wasn't your kind of target yeah I want a boring - are you so if so how did it go when you when you said no would you say hey look my guys need rest sorry yeah not this time we had the right to say no it was found on yeah but you know they had at that time we had a couple new teams in camp and Rodney had came in and he was good one zero so he went out he came back said hey you know that target was pretty cool we stopped a lot dry hole dry hole so really I had all these feelings man I was hyperventilating Terrell I figured we're gonna run it to Ho Chi Minh is and you know a couple of divisions again for good luck I hadn't seen a division in a month no it's like okay but no see and that kind of showed me how your mental state of mind - because I really that's why I believed that and the system was such that you could turn it down and we took it for near where you say that's where you believed you you believe that it was a bad target I just felt we had been so lucky and going through the Christmas Thanksgiving and everything else that our I just felt our number is gonna bill didn't know how and I just said this could be the target it's an MMA target and those were particularly dirty of the ones that are all along the DMZ River west of Vietnam that went deeper into layoffs and they were NASA we lost several teams up there mm-hmm I figured this could be our turn so buzzer oh no did you ever get that feeling again not not not enough strong enough to act on it and I mean they're carried in the back of my tiny mind just like you thought you were gonna die you didn't I had some guys that thought they were gonna die every time we left the wire do you know what I mean god bless him but he's no man this tonight could be the night man no I'm not feeling good about this one and they'd always get their gear on but I'd say no yeah I always looked at as a good sign if certain people were scared if they wouldn't wouldn't have been scared I would have been nervous because they were so scared all the time I think man this must be really stressful for him yeah I never wrote the letter like dear Mom and Dad I'm dead now if you read this letter I'm dead yeah I know I just felt it hoped that we somehow get through it and and you're right about the scare thing you you want that emotional edge a little fear can go along it's a great motivator but I wouldn't I wouldn't go out with a guy if somebody say hey man I'm not afraid mm I'm afraid you do you go somebody else I also used to get the feeling that if you were scared like that if you were if you were scared and you were gonna be hesitant that was gonna be bad sure like I I was more worried about guys that were like hesitant or I felt like if they were hesitant on the battlefield that would work out bad for them the guys that I always felt like okay if someone's aggressive not not not unafraid and suicidal like that but just hey oh yeah I'm gonna go do I'm gonna go we're gonna go kick ass right now I was felt that was the attitude to have it was to be aggressive was to be like okay yeah we're oh you want you got an OP for us cool we'll go do it now we turn down ops to there was ops where we looked at and said man this is not good and this is a massive amount of risk I mean there was areas where there was areas where they would take ie D strikes on vehicles and like you know and when in a big idea hits a Humvee everyone dies or oh yeah three out of five people died or something like that I mean it's it's very catastrophic and there was one target they were looking at for us they asked us to do and the that was like one road going in that had multiple big ID strikes and then they wanted us to they were asking if we could take out mortar it was either a mortar team or an ID in Placer but we were looking at it and we're that more does it been launched from we're all over the place so it was just it was one of the one of the types of missions where we looked at and said hey there's got to be a better way to do this because us going up there is not going to be worth it a lot of your misses were point missions right what do you mean by that they give you target get to this point and wipe it out I would say my first deployment it was go capture kill bad guys that was my first deployment to Iraq we're in Baghdad where that's where mostly what we were doing the middle of the night we'd find out what a bad guy was we'd go get him and that's what my second deployment in Ramadi mostly what guys were doing was overwatch sniper overwatch positions set up in buildings so that when the bad guys would either maneuver on friendly forces or they'd be out doing what they shouldn't be doing right the guys would take them out so that's that's pretty much the then there's all kinds of crap in between that everything from you know everything from doing just reconnaissance of areas to counter mortar types it's just you know a lot of other a lot of other things would happen but primarily it was direct-action missions going out to take out a target or these sniper overwatch types but you know we'd be doing big clearances to big conventional clearances you know we had our we call them jaundice which is Jun D means it means soldier in in Arabic right and and so we call them John D's that's what they called himself Sundays but so we had John D's like you guys had little people like you have ended for us we had in ditch forces they were John D's and so we would do very conventional missions with the Jun DS of them and us you know we'd be overseeing them as they cleared big sections of the city and we'd be working in conjunction with the army so yeah we did a little bit of everything but see that brings us back to our side of it where you can give yourself mental delusion which is our mission is to go look an area recon so theoretically you're gonna get inserted quietly and go about your job and that's different from you with your point misses the whole different free online so theoretically okay we're hoping to get into our mission to come back and report or find a fuel line blow it up or get the peel w get the wiretap give them intel what your going out and doing your ie D pickups and and mortars that's totally different so at least in my mind I think that's part of my self comfort factor we're going to get inserted in couple nice quiet mission for five or six days take some pictures that sounds great come on back it's really cool yeah we're behind enemy lines what percentage of operations would you guys get contacted on oh we left always left under fire the only question was how much never had well one they one where we got you opened up our discussion tonight there where we got pulled out there's no fire there because they came in and got us we had a great ro N and we were gonna get some POWs but they pulled us out right away so there's no gunfire and I'm missing but other than that every time we left under gunfire is the only question how much sucked I looks like the whole jungle is light enough sometimes only be 2 or 300 and yet you still fooled yourself into figured hey this recon they're gonna be different but yeah so I guess my point was I looked at it and I still look at it if you are nervous about getting hurt if you're nervous about something going wrong to me that's when something goes wrong yeah when you're nervous about it now I'm not saying you should be arrogant about it and think all we're gonna get away with whatever but I'm saying like when you're doing us even when you're doing like a sport you know even when you're doing some physical activity if you if you're afraid you might get injured to me that's when you get injured it's when those when you're when you're afraid I think fear can hurt you that being said the other side of the coin is if you have no fear well then you're definitely you're definitely at risk he who hesitates is lost there you go so there's a dichotomy there's a balanced beat yeah that's where we're so lucky we you know help us out did a great job of vetting our indigenous troops and to go from spider parks to walk in to Bubba and then back to limb black and then when I left the team is in Lynn's hands mm-hm and I came back Lynn's the one zero mmm-hmm what more could you ask for that was just that you know very fortunate what was your uh your mission planning like so you guys get at asking how long does it how long did you guys plan for if it's just an area mission area tree constants vary little but the wiretaps obviously we did ours now as a training on that and then as time went on you know first it was just Sal who could do it and then Sal trained to have and fuck the guys that were strong to do it all and as well every every aspect of it and then we cross trained each other and we even had so that HAP would it was beginning to teach a couple to young guys basic English so if any of us got killed HAP could take over the radio or the Indigo so a couple guys are like Chow and hung as it went Hong came on the team they picked up Bing was pretty quick so he worked with him and we practiced calling in working on the radio the problems with the batteries and things like that so we cross trained everything back and forth and the wiretap was one particular one were we had several guys on the team trained up to do it all everything from known about the batteries watching it keeping a battery indicator to getting to put the wire up the tree or a telephone pole and when he came down he covered it with mud that was from that area so it looked like it was part of that area and try to cover the wire but as far as the actual mission planning of okay here's what we're going in tonight they didn't take you much because you were running repetitive type mission right it's a high degree of similarity the most important thing was the training so when you made contact you could take care of yourself and how to react try to continue mission but these were like reconnaissance so once you've been seen or compromised the missus compromised would you would be flying in what was your degree of certainty on where you were inserted oh we knew very clear where we're gone so like in a case we would talk to cubby we'd send the three L's ease down to Saigon and Kobe would go pick a site and then he would tell me on a radio okay this is where we're gone and you would be would you be looking at your map as you started and he knew what what the frame was it would be in within that map that we or that section of map that we akan remember when we first you know as a radio man believe it or not when GPS is first came out the radio man kind of got saddled with the GPS because it was a piece of electronic equipment but and then no one else could work with electronic or women so so I would be usually a lot of times be carrying the GPS as opposed to the appointment and the point man you know which it was still using map and compasses in the early 90s but the GPS wouldn't always work well in a helicopter and so sometimes it took me you know this is some training operations where I learned oh so I'm not what I think I am and you get out and that GPS finally finds itself and you realize you're three klicks away from where you're supposed to be or whatever and it's bad and that's why we'd go yeah I went back to hey when I'm in the helicopter I'm on a map so that way when my boss looks at me and says hey where're we supposed to be either yes or no like don't get out of the bird or okay we're good but but that so I was thinking about that for you guys you'd be doing the same thing as you approach to okay yep there's that terrain feature there's this other terrain feature cooler where we're supposed to be yep and then less also want to know where the water was because some of the targets they had more more streams of things so we would carry less water IVA Lou just carry one canteen with the purification pills so that we were in for several days like would that go for by the end of the first day we had gone through some water and we all took a turn going into the little stream put the purification pills in hit the water and let it sit for a couple hours before you drank it did you get acclimated where you needed less water oh yeah absolutely less water and I can truly say I never defecated in layoffs somehow the body just tightened up then they had no shit pills that guys would take so they Lily would not go to the bathroom I worried about those you know I would meet there oh yeah I was like anyway for numerous reasons that the creative mind could think about but so I didn't but my body never had and we never did it the in the do you guys didn't is STM I did you guys have you guys did you guys use imagery at all like an overhead imagery nothing no some of the gun the Cobras or no some of the first calf helicopters had some trying to what I are they would have the ability to see through the clouds in style okay and it was just a very primitive both the beginning whereas the Cobra conscious didn't have it but the first calf could get low into the jungle and navigate and fog and stuff to get down to our guys but no you guys wouldn't see photographs of the areas where you were going into it all know the only time was down in Cambodia for that mission err where that was now that base was really close to Saigon close to Mac V headquarters and we may have had overviews I just forget for up north that one down there it's Texas stuck in my mind and then what was your what was your op temple like in other words how often were you going in the field well through November December we if we weren't on the if we weren't on the ground we were getting ready to go back to the next day that's why it was such a push push push and I've rotated our little people out because they were just getting beat and we had trained him up so by November December all the cross training we had done all those months you know South could take a day off even hep could take a day off we had a couple two guys that could speak enough English if anything happened to me or Bubba they could take care of the radio due to comms and so we rotated him through but it was every day and then if the weather came we get a break and sort of know and the rule of thumb was if you ran a mission for five days you came back you got five days off so you could clean up get back in shape get the team ready but for that period of time we had minimal teams that the teams at fo b 1 had become so between disease health God's getting wiped out teams getting blown away we were one of the few teams in camp that was fully operational so that's why I was the other pressure we had like I remember they asked me just say hey you're the only got to be god you're going to say afternoon here's your target go eat okay so we didn't and then we got shot out they come back the next day and so there was no this the OP temple was supposed to be robbed my mission five to ten days if you're lucky will it ever happened some guys did don't get me wrong we had some guys that were able to stay on the ground amazing but in our case we didn't so it would be very flexible then you really take less than less than six guys a few guys ran with four and at the end of my tour duty second tour I tried a four-man team but we had this whole issue with the radio stuff just so he could move faster she wanted to try anything something different because when we had moved fast we had success in getting away from the LZ and that caused them confusion so if we broke what our SOPs were it worked but the eight-man was too much too much I felt more comfortable with six it was a lot of firepower we had diem sitting a nine there and then all the Americas at the EM City nines - and then how often would you get legitimate R&R you had one a year at one for a tour duty you get five days anywhere you wanted so I went to Hong Kong bought my stereo buy time spoke of money said I bought a nice stereo state-of-the-art sent home to mom and dad they they my little brother put it together he was good at that stuff yeah and that's it other than that there's no no one on our if we got an F plw ah then you would have gotten more yeah we would have what was the offer for catching a bad guy an R&R anywhere in the world and you got a 100 bonus how many days five like a regular R&R hey oh yeah it was yeah that's why we lost it for him yeah I cried when spider said no a hundred bucks how much was a hundred bucks how about how much was your normal paycheck how much you make a month back then oh I don't know well when we went through jump school now I'm only a private e one right I got a hard percent pay raise my jump pay that's getting paid $50 a month the jump pay was 55 so 55 was a constant then later maybe e 2 is like 75 I never paid it was never enough so 100 bucks was like a hundred bucks was like a a month to pay basically he has a lot of money even n a c-note was a big deal absolutely and then when you guys would come back you were talking about this how you would sit there in debrief would you debrief your your team would you guys sit down in debrief what happened what went wrong what we're right we always talked to little people maybe not right away because s 2 would want to know what happened so we would go in for an immediate debrief go back to team make sure they had food for tonight and stuff and then go back for a final after-action report which would go through talking about everything from the vegetation the type of Hills animals you encountered all that kind of just crazy stuff the fauna oh my god the questions there it was just after was like always the same there's layoffs yeah Triple Canopy has pretty dangerous the NVA are pretty dedicated and then anything specifics off the target from that that they could learn from how long how long did it take you to become the one zero well in my case I got in country in May the spider put me on a team at the end of May we trained June and July had a couple in country like literally ambushes locally and then we had a the practice mission in August and then we did it first wiretap another wiretap but the air force sensors we did two of those missions in September we had two monsoons too it's a lot of between the rain we had like weeks we would just rain see like it rained every day you ever see you horizontal rain yeah I've seen as much which so you guys would not run missions during him on Susie's no you used too much too much whether it was gonna be too bad your saw your socked and you couldn't get out of the base the King bees couldn't get to the base so how long so how long was that like four months before you were yeah four months and and we might and how many missions did you run before you were one a one zero I had five missions under my belt we had a to practice the to wiretap and then Don Walken echo for mmm and by that time when they came to me he said you know welcome got promoted to a cubby rider and because Pat Walker's was leaving there's an opening so he went there and they gave me the option are you ready well we see what happen with Alabama with Lyn black in October when they put a guy on a team that didn't had no experience so I talked it over with it happened salad I said look this situation I don't know who they're going to give us so what about I'll be the ones hero and spider had thought that was okay to do it talk to walkins and they all said well you're ready if you want to try it and we need to know who could they had new people coming into camp and some these guys were the older ones who had no experience on layoffs but didn't want anything to do with them and it has so many younger guys who are coming in like like Jim Robson who was on the team for one mission and we didn't know how they would stand up so our guys were happy and then Bubba came in bubbling the guy named the frenchman doug Letourneau the frenchman came in together and the freshman got picked for Virginia and I got Bubba they were buddies they caught be training group together yeah that's I have you so you'd been in the Army for like a couple years and you never in charge of a recon team yeah got in the army December 66 became a-10 in October or 68 so you figure you're almost two years yeah because the whole SF training between that and going through basic jump school and then we had that training before Vietnam the RTT training which was different but that's just because we're combo geeks oh the RTT training was just radio ready to teletype got it they wanted top secret clearance men on those machines how much did you see the tactics that you guys were using change over time I think by the time like when you read we few by Nick Brock housing some of those guys were all carrying either RPGs or an m60 so they were just going in heavier and they would go into bigger team and they were just anticipating the contact more or as we thought we would try to go in and try to escape and evade and to the point where you hope you can get at least some of the mission done or to get some Intel reports about troop movements truck stuff like that or get a good wiretap so the biggest thing that changed was the guys started going in heavier and actually bringing automatic weapons oh yeah or belt-fed machine guns sure that makes sense I every single time I read any of your operations I want nothing more than a belfie machine so the weaves we didn't know who was gonna carry did you know the seals had the stoner oh yeah did you guys ever think about using that we thought about it a lot but and it was a great system we heard many great reports about it but again the stoner system you need all the ammo you had to get the supply systems set up and we just weren't sure if we were gonna be able to get the guarantee if we convert it who would it be just the Americans we want everybody with common weapons so that somebody gets blown up their weapon gets blown they know how to use the other guy's weapon you're on it and you have the same magazines everything all that sure and what about the mission set itself did you guys did you notice that change over time while you were there later we began to get more point targets like in on the ground one of my favorite stories was the Frenchman he goes in to a Cecile type mission the CIA comes and says we know about the NVA they're floating 55-gallon drums down the river into a storage area deep in lay us so we want you guys to go in but we don't trust you with the device they had a device that they screwed into a 55-gallon drum so what we're going to do is and that would be like a tracking device no no explosive in nature oh that's right that's right yeah that's okay so here's what they said we're gonna meet you on this hilltop in lay us so Doug was the one one on RT Virginia Gunther Wald was the one zero they go in hump with three days get to the mountaintop there's the CIA with a couple guys okay here's your device go install it now comforting wall was a marine so you think that he'd be the guy doing a swimming right he goes I'm an e6 Frenchman you're an e4 hit the workers so the CIA gave the disclosure device humped down the mountain get to the river and then now they're on a river with all the stuff going by the drums and some have NVA troops riding the drums or being present with a boat or something so in between artists Doug strips down goes in gets a drum brings it back puts in the explosive device swims it back out and comes back soaking wet and not happy he's for Southern California he's he's really not happy but two days later they're getting extracted now the King bees come extract and they're getting extracted his use explosion and had sonic boom that literally moved the aircraft and the guys were on the string swinging from the sonic boom looked back there goes the fuel dump beautiful mission yeah so those are kind so the point mission the the wiretap stick in the pipelines we have more reports of pipelines and then also they were doing some trail work trying to figure out how to look like you'd be a stream but they have things that's one of our miss about the orchid mission to get in there see well how'd it go on its water and who you go in and while you're there blow it up maybe with the truck on it sure let's talk a little bit about gear and you put you actually have a section in song chronicles and it's an across the fence to where you talk about stuff you carry and stuff that you didn't carry and some of the stuff that you didn't carry no underwear never no socks never and that's because you're just want to stay dry as much as possible yeah and both those things just hold water and keep moisture in yeah and then black when he came oh I had a mate that was stealing all my underwear I went over with eight or ten pair of the jockey shorts right okay so I was down on my last pair and the maid was literally stealing could think selling on the black market they're relatively clean relatively new mom bought me a whole bunch of stuff with socks and everything so yeah we had army socks but so anyways I talked to Lynn oh I can't believe my maze been stealing my underwear I we pulled down his little I doubt there's my underwear so I said here take the last one have a good day lingo don't wear that stuff because you get jungle rock crotch rot and he says the same thing put away your socks well you know at first couple weeks the jungle boots were really tougher on my feet but he was right yeah once you get a bunch get your feet broken in and the jungle boots broken in and that's how you go through the water we we did somewhere in country stuff where you were in the rice paddies oh my god but they would dry out quicker you have to worry about the socks so no helmet never no body armor nope and your body armor talked about this attack that was big clumsy heavy it didn't work no entrenching tool never no bayonet no sleeping bag no hammock no poncho no poncho line or no ground path correct you are not travelling for comfort never we had to carry it as you know know that feeling yeah what you're taking to the field you're carrying you don't have your maid with you yeah that that rucksack gets heavy too so quick yeah and arms are like small we had the indigenous rucksacks uh-huh and what and so you want you put the radio and put the sweater underneath no radio so it protect your back and they throw some rations master a couple archer and magazines in there and then extra hand grenades and study nine rounds and a battery for good luck man yeah you guys no dog tags no military ID your idea of any kind no rank no name tags no jump wings no CIB no patches no unit identifiers nothing no pictures of momma no pictures of momma right totally slick so those are the things you didn't carry things you did carry car 15 oh love it you love the car fifty oh yeah so imma back to my second tour Rock Meyers was an s4 he's healing he'd been wounded I came back he says your back said I got a present for me gave me a brand new car 15 it was still in the box take it out stone it all the tin foil and all the oils and greases and stuff and you take it out took it down to rains it was perfectly zero never touched that went crazy just put a little cloth strap on it and went to work and and you never had problems with that weapon never yeah they did yours have a forward assist on it did you yep just lord assist yeah so that was a that was a car 15 Wow so the m16 would it with a classical stock yeah and a shortened barrel yeah it's weird so many people and myself being one of them complaining about the car the car 15 or the m4 frame and now the m4 is not a lot nicer I mean them for law have you - you got the rails and everything oh yeah we win the light load thing those I hate look like you got anything but a cigarette lighter on here sometimes I would be surprised - so that's awesome you used a cravat for your sling yes well yeah I did that during my second tour could they had the cravats quiet and then god forbid if he ever needed a cravat and because I was carried I always wore one around my neck had one on my head and then one on the car fifteen of course you carried bandages yeah we had crevasse in cases as at the very bottom of the rucksack we would get is sort of one of those things they'd never wear a sling and some guys would say that get caught up and that's just man especially when you're in a leadership position you need a sling cuz you got a look at your map you got a pull out you know yeah you got to do stuff you know and the other thing is you don't have a sling and you get blown up yeah dig where's your weapon you have no idea when you wake up so yeah but then there's some you know some people just they wouldn't carry sling mark leaves one of my shank on receive just no sling no that was like real a man thing to do was no sling you on the m60 or these days at mark 48 really yeah yeah how small this guy strong yes strong m79 you carried sawed-off oh yes I cannot believe that me and my guys did not think of sawing off our I'm 70 that's cuz I guarantee guys were to saw it off the excess oh yeah my first self-inflicted wound was from a sawed-off m79 what you do well we're in a process of cutting him down the question was how far he cut the barrel down so we finally cut it right down to the last hinge mmm were it's the last one that's yeah this to the bottom of the frame got it so you crack put the round in so we we kept bringing it back so we're down to range we're there and the question was because you cut the barrel off you need the number of rotations now our weapons guys knew that but I was me and Rick how it work on well guys and I didn't really ask it's just the question was fire I see so on this day I fire it fairly close it goes being popped in that noise and 39 makes and then it went all they popped being like that and I go so I go to Rick Carris it I think Abby just hit me pull my strategy dumbass you just shot yourself my first self-inflicted wound but the good news was that I'm sitting I worked and of course we cut the handle down yeah to just have enough tea you could hold on to because that way is less less weapon firepower oh yeah cut that weapon down by half oh yeah I was looking at the pictures you have it in your book it's that thing is tiny tiny but effective Charlie hated those things and at one point you had a you had a holster for that thing yeah that's the John Wayne yes that's still in layoffs with my SOG knife Hey I had it somebody had crafted it and I put it on so yeah that that was perfect but never had a Nova from that point I just like everybody else they just carried it one doesn't were d-ring we taped it so be quiet though you carried 34 20 round max each Pat each with 18 rounds each so that's six hundred and twelve rounds for good luck yeah that's not all we carried extra like a pouch with a couple extra clips and in case we need to reload the thirty-four magazines and you went on you mentioned you had few missions where you were down to your last one or two at least twice I remember echo 4 is the first time did you always hang on to your magazines when you were out at dependent on the degree of intensity of the firefight if I had time we keep best for a happy I'll bring back my damn magazines did you stuff on your shirt yeah because the web gear would be tight so our jungle fatigues were out yeah so you had the pants but then the harness from the the web gear was held everything in when I came in with stuff magazine or shirt and then but with body armor you can't do that so now I'm a scary like pouches or just dropping their leg cargo pockets or whatever yeah our preferred thing with the BA are bells because you could put four magazines in and one across the top it was a nice pass the BA our belts at the half - perfect for the 20-round magazines that's a lot of just you know we would normally carry seven to ten thirty round max so we carried like I mean sometimes I guess meant more than that but not know 600 rounds but you weren't anticipated being alone for a while no we weren't fighting divisions worth of people either so yeah you know and I guess we did what we did have is we always had heavy machine guns you know who so that makes a big difference to I guess you know you we would have mark 48 which is seven six two and then the mark 46 which is five five six you know that's basically like a little stoner and and 60 the modern versions of those two things but yeah you know so we had it's all - right yeah well that's the the mark 46 is a saw okay yeah yeah so we had those and those guys would carry a lot of routes a lot of rounds like 800 to a thousand sometimes more on carried carried like that over a thousand yeah and I had guys go Winchester go run out of bullets really yeah with that many so yeah I guess maybe that was the differentiator you carried ten to twelve frag grenades that's a lot of frag grenades I guess when you're going picking fights with divisions you got to carry a lot of frag grenades oh yeah and they always kept the last one that was the one up here I'm just I'm not gonna be a peel W absolutely we would carry I don't know well I would carry like one or two how often would you how often would you anymore to to them hopefully never yeah you know and especially I'm in a leadership position I'm hopefully not fuckin grenades but uh ya know then you know the big difference especially in Ramadi I mean in Ramadi I remember explaining to the guys that relieved us you know we had a big overhead imagery yeah and I put my hand on the map and I said no matter where you put your hand on this map you'll be touching the unit so like annual this is you know probably within three to five hundred meters of you anywhere you were in Raimondi there's a friendly unit really so that's why you know you were gonna get reinforcements you were gonna get tanks you're gonna get Bradley fighting vehicles so yeah yeah but in between that time you earned your pay you have to earn your pay yeah yeah I was talking to late look what leaf that's another thing so Lafe Leif's got a chapter in dichotomy a leadership where he's talking about preparing / / / preparing for too many contingencies and he talks about it was his first patrol out on out going out with a Marine Corps into daytime patrol and he's talking about how much stuff he cared he carried all this stuff but one of the thing he carried is you know eight grenades or something like that and you know he reflects on how that was we just way too many and I was like hey man you know Tilted go out in the field with less than ten so different ao dai would adjusted her grenades I wonder how much you would have changed if you had to wear body armor or if you would have decided not to or whatever you know it's interesting that's an interesting develop I'll tell you if we even had today's state-of-the-art a never would've worn it it's just too much weight and you have to be able to move I mean you know not to mention you're so damn lucky no bullets are gonna hit you yeah that's why I crawled a lot dressed with a low profile but no I I probably would declined it because of the weight there as it was in our AO maybe another AO with different situations more flexibility with assets and the only thing that's interesting is you know one of the reasons why you wear a helmet now isn't just to protect your head it's cuz that's where your nods mount on to your night vision oh yeah night vision mount on here so you they do have a contraption that's like a headband looking thing I don't think they make it anymore but but where you could wear that but you know your knobs mount on your your night-vision mounts on your helmet your that's just the way it is I see no ciliates we've got 15 dogs that's a cool I want one sit yeah yeah that's go time windows flip down all right but instead of wearing a helmet you wore a cravat the green for that green curve out on your head one around your neck you had you weren't regular army fatigues yeah there is sterile fatigues that had a two pockets up top with an angle mm-hmm and two pockets down here to hung out and then we customized and we had the the tailor put in pockets here and so for mirrors Maps morphine syrettes it's all closed right here and then we had a pockets on each arm to put other things up there were pin players other think that's such that we did too so we did even before even the 90s before the everyone because now the fatigues come issued with pockets on the arms I think but we used to take them off and sew them on and that's where you'd keep your your pens and your notebooks and your pen flares and your and your signal mirror yeah and then on the ones on your chest you had maps and more if you need an extra notebook your URC 10 emergency radio and then you had a you wore a watch a Seiko yeah a luminous watch you wore gloves always just cut out the thumb index finger and then the middle finger just cut it to tip so you grab the tape on the magazine sort of firefight same thing same thing we would do but you always wear gloves the good otherwise your hands are just getting destroyed the jungle forget about it yeah because lot of times we wind up get have to get a new pair of gloves we just get torn up so much and the jungle fatigues man those wait a minute wait a minute of inés and the thorns because you know there are wait a minute you get caught into it the you walk in to your leg goes into the pins that's come together so you had to stop and then get the pin to get your leg otherwise it goes deeper into your into your like well no did you carry any kind of mosquito net for your head no how come never thought about a mosquito net for the head yeah well I used to this is like the most brilliant thing I think it was an Australian guys told me this you I would have liked a little square of mosquito netting hmm and when we would stop patrolling I would take out that little square put it over my head right over my right over my floppy hat and talk it in and all of a sudden you not getting chewed apart by mosquitoes oh yeah one night with them one time we did a practice mission east of the I saw in the morning I couldn't I couldn't open my eyes had been bitten so much by mosquitoes my face was puffed out you need that mosquito net needed Oh had I only known I should have thought about stuff about that one I had a guy we were doing some training and none of us had mosquito netting except for the officer and so the officer was sleeping heartily like just fully and one of the other young listed guys was catching mosquitoes and putting him inside this guy's Wow not only those mosquitoes were trapped in there with him they were wrapped in there and they couldn't get out they were just having a feast trapped hungry mosquitoes that thought yeah so but no not for you no mosquito net no I hadn't thought about that one leeches oh you guys ran into a lot of leeches always yeah we had the bug repellent for that it even ray the bug the repellant on him once you got sucked on by a leech yeah they would instantly fall but he always tried to wait try to see if he could jiggle them off because you knew the bug repellent could be smelled mm-hmm but a bad guys so then you had your on your web gear which was the old world war two web gear you had on your left harness you had your k bar handle down or a sod knife or SOG knife until you lost it to us that's what we need to do a recovery mission for get the song back yes I'll handle down sure that's how you rolled it cuz this way you pull it on you're ready what's up here used to pour out in the jungle you might get caught up in the vines got it got it you got hand grenades there because you were basically covered in hand grenades oh yeah smoke you had there you had some some you know bandages there on your right harness you had your strobe light you had more hand grenades you had your d-ring and you had more smoke grenades then on your belt you had one canteen usually it depends on on target sometimes it'd be maybe two but usually one and then one I had a second one in my in my backpack rucksack you normally wouldn't get would you get thirsty was there normally enough water uh in the jungle wasn't as bad as Cambodia so but yeah you get thirsty you're hopping up and down there's a couple times be particularly that day we went straight up with the orchids that was a day we got we were all out of water not fun no so you had one canteen you had a Willie Pete grenade we had your survival axe which was the Frank and Warren survival axe type - indeed that's what I won wasn't my did I want to type - I looked him up and had like a hook at the top yeah you went through and when he came back on the on the back pool you could try to make it effective to cut if particular cutting vines and that thing came with you all the time every mission I got it home under my desk right now a case and the tutor comes in I'm ready I like it intruders feeling lucky yeah luck meet mister tilt I compass around your neck you used to curve at for your belt yes so the belt I was talking about before is the belt of your web gear but just the health of your pants was just uh was a cravat you carried a Swiss Army knife you carried a gas mask always you always carried a gas man have we had teams that got hit and in camps that have been hit by the enemy used - yes and they use I forget what the the instance were but there were a couple times that the enemy had used gas on our people unless as well as with a CIA operation but we weren't told that but we had cold evidence that they had done it and that they could hit one of our Recon teams so we had to carry that bulky a sting at all times I was gonna say but and this is this was the the concern was tear gas well tear gas or who else knows what they had I mean these are communists not going to play by the rules of engagement you know not in Laos because yeah that's a thousand I was think with all this crap that you're carrying and a gas masks are just huge and bulky yeah left hip out carry that all the time had to and we used them twice and we in fact we had designed a mission one of our missions was to when we gotta strike two from a target an EM a target we saw a road that had little guard station a Guard Station but it was north of the DMZ River so the quest for getting a live PLW we found out that we had one of our guys that did a VR and it flew a couple of rows they saw these little weigh stations along the way so our thought was we'll get gas gas and they said they had a knockout gas at the time right so we practiced for a couple days with tear gas and I had to get the helicopter pilots and the gun crews everybody would their mass and then have mass that they could talk to each other and then talk to us and so we practiced for several days training with the helicopters coming in the I and the mission plan was go up in the middle of the day go to one of those camps hit it gas it go in and scar from up and go home get a five-day pass a hundred bucks yeah but they and they had a special knockout gas that we're supposed to use at the end they they wouldn't let us they wouldn't give us the gas or I don't know if they had it they wouldn't give us the knockout gas so then another mission came up that we had a bright light to run and we never got to the concept of doing it and you carried a you usually carried one grenade for your forty mike-mike that was to your gasps always sure case we needed it and that was what would your what would your tactic be on using that but usually it would be to you know to create disorder because you hit somebody with tear gas if is far away it that that would distract him for a second take their mind off a business or at least make them have a harder time to kill us and we also carried a grass a gas grenade local okay so we had in our SOP procedure that the word I forgot to heckle was but we had a signal or a sign for CS gas so if we're getting so over R underwear at the Papas CS to break the break to charge with some of our teams did they used it in the operation Tailwind quite effectively saved their bacon so the idea would be hey this is gonna linger whereas a frag grenade it goes off you either wound guys or you don't you either kill guys or you don't but that's it it's over yeah whereas gas you you can really disrupt them because now you've got guys coughing and yeah puking or whatever and it's and it hangs to the ground and then it hangs around as long as the wind it's got a little hang around got it left pant pocket you had a marking panel large and small right pant pocket pen flares dehydrated lerp ration bug repellant for leeches an extra cot and extra bandage did anybody carry IV a summer Oh guys did okay uh limp black did and we had I think South Carolina one of our in ditch Gary one we had an IB and the same line solution that came in a canister it's always had one in case we need it in your rucksack yet sir you got your PRC 25 which you guys called the prick 25 yeah I think I was I think I was outlawed from calling it a prick because that that PRC 25 so the PRC 25 was replaced by the PR 77 the press 77 and I will say it was 1969 or something like that when I got the seal team one that's what I used was a Pete was one of the radios that we had that story was a PRC 77 yeah which came directly from the PRC 25 so you'd carry that you had the big whip antenna but you wouldn't you'd have the little tape antenna on there so you know right identified as the radio guy because otherwise you're gonna know yeah over in our case the antenna we just get it and bend it down come beneath your arm just stick it into the fatigues and so be low profile on it then you had your your 1c rat of fruit that was like your that was as your your go-to indeed you'd carry one of those two of those something like that he's just one could after a while you know we kept getting shot out so often Slyke okay I'm not too much weight yeah yeah yeah after you had your extra mags in there he's got an extra m79 Browns you had your army long sleeve sweater you had a plastic rain jacket toilet paper even though you apparently never used it correct but you can also use it to pack wounds there you go extra battery for the for the prick 25 and the URC 10 extra smoke grenades extra canteen water extra ration and then you had your claim or or claymores with five and ten second fuses and on top of that the 22 caliber hushpuppy on some operations sometimes yeah and all this when you weighed yourself you'd be about 90 pounds heavy right around there yeah it was it was an old rickety s scale so I just jumped on carrying everything just to see what it was well that's a heavy load out I'll tell you right now that's a heavy load out that is absolutely all of 90 pounds when you start talking about 600 rounds of ammunition research talking about 10 10 to 12 hand grenades smoke smoke grenades are heavy as hell we got all that material in them that smokes sure they're big giant beasts and a Willie Peter was the really matters heavy to crazy mouth and I guess like I said and like you said you're carrying all that firepower because the operations your to carrying a crazy amount of firepower cause you're doing crazy operations yeah and again from talking to the other one zeros Pat walkins and McGovern because initially I don't know what the loads were but they kept increasing him because there were several times and they ran out of ammo already got close to running out that's the last thing in the world you want you know yeah awesome well you know that's a little over two hours right now and it's been a quick night yeah indeed indeed but Gunny you got any closing thoughts no just to thank you for having me in three times and we've gained some extra tests like I said before we were just chatting is these stories always felt more significant in terms of the stories about what SOG did and the men more importantly men and also like I said to you earlier my stuff is hairy but if you had a hairy scale on one to ten I mean I feel I put myself at a five or six compared to the guys that got the Medal of Honor the guys that didn't come home that went down fighting getting overrun by the NVA and we we could just talk about Medal of Honor missions of guys standing there just fighting off and dying on the LZ putting their people on a helicopter first John Kayden Berg Johnny gallon time and again our SF God would take care of the little people you even get him on the chopper get him out and so those stories I felt with great valor and so I thank you for the low exposure to your audience well we appreciate them we'll we'll bring you back on and we'll get and I know you and I are talking about other guys that we're going to come on and all those stories of those heroes we'll we'll get them out there because people want to know I want to hear them I want to know as much as I can about them and and and you know we'll get you back well I'm ready to roll so thank you and I thank you for the time and also your honor you're like mr. social media now I don't realize that you have to give me a full briefing word does so you're on Twitter who neckla Cara let's get me squared away you're on Twitter we haven't quite figured out Twitter yet apparently your that makes two of us you're old your old Twitter handle was at SOG Chronicles your new Twitter handle is at John striker Meyer that's that's where it's at right now yes sir that's right all right so people will start trying to communicate with you on that good luck I'm gonna call it a presence aid president Trump could you help me out of my Twitter of President Trump it Suites all the time the king at Twitter yeah yes he is hey it was I'm sorry you know you'll be able to you'll be able to you win you that's the incredible thing about Twitter is everybody has a platform it's incredibly good sometimes it's impressed incredibly bad but everybody has a platform so no the cool thing about it is people have been you know talking to me and hitting me up and just thanking you for your service thanking you for coming on thank you for sharing the story so it'll be cool that they'll be able to actually thank you instead of just telling me to tell you things I just go to our website they got the link in there for email for the old-fashioned route saw Chronicles dot-com saw Chronicles calm horn that B we're thankful on there I wanted to close out reading one last thing and this is your dedication for the book sod Chronicles one and it said it says this book is dedicated to the SOG men and their courageous indigenous team members who went across the fence into Laos Cambodia in North Vietnam during the eight-year secret war and to the and to the brave aviators and crew members of the Army Air Force Marine Corps and our fearless allies from the 219 South Vietnamese Air Forces Special Operations Squadron the legendary King bees who supported who supported SOG teams on the ground this book is also for every man in SOG and the aviators who made the ultimate sacrifice far outside the boundaries of conventional the nom war that America saw reported on the nightly news give their closing note today 1598 Americans that are m.i.a and Southeast Asia from the Vietnam War fifty Green Berets alone in layoffs still am ia including a hundred and forty plus a vias that died strictly supporting our mission and this week the National League appeal wmia Founders Day having his 50th annual meeting in Arlington on this topic they've been diligent and an Mills Griffiths is the CEO she's putting it all together they worked with the Pentagon she had been on this mission from day one and our prayers are with them to continue because they're pushing to bring our people home absolutely and if you want to put that out either on SOG chronicles put a link to how people can support that cause people will absolutely support that cause oh okay we'll do a dessert yes absolutely we can make that happen huh thank you airborne all right well like I said you have an opening invite on here anytime you want you let us know we're here and we'll get some of your friends on and thanks for coming on yourself thanks for sharing your stories and most of all more than anything else thanks for your service and sacrifice likewise brother you've been there you seen the elephant appreciate it and once again John a striker Meyer has left the building tilt tilt has left the building mm-hmm finishing up the three podcasts wage on strike a minor yeah sappers sappers asked him what sappers was who work as there's various references first second and this past one to sappers and more notably one if you remember the movie predator the first one he says sappers those sapper has been on a sense blah blah blah whatever they're interesting and I always wondered what's a sapper special group Vietnam North Vietnamese group of anti-american fighters trained specifically right right I got that right did I remember that correctly yeah that's that's the definition that John striker Meyer just gave you yeah cool what else Jaco well I would say no awesome awesome to have John Stryker Meyer on here and just to hear him talk about what human beings can do right what people human beings can do and it's interesting because you ever look at dogs and you think oh there's a little tiny Chihuahua and then there's like a German Shepherd yeah and you think those are the same animal Yeah right yes they are technically technically human beings think like you look at him John Stryker Meyer hmm he's like a German Shepherd yeah and then you got people running around they're Chihuahuas defense the chihuahuas but you Chihuahuas not gonna yes fend off hordes no no - I was not calling in airstrikes danger-close no so I guess my point is that human beings that do have capabilities and I think that when you listen to tilt you realize that I can probably do better I know that's what I realize I think I can do better than I'm doing right now yeah I think I can I can push the envelope a little bit yeah move further toward the potential the part that kind of will probably will stick with me is how he didn't carry poncho like the sleeves no come no I want it if we have to go sleep I'm just gonna sleep right here in the hand on the anthill just whatever see that part when I was a kid the kid that was viable but now you need comfort yeah I'm weak yeah so that part maybe I have to mentally maybe work on that you know all right let's face it there are ways to get better yes sir there is maybe sleeping without a ground pad is one of them yeah maybe another one is trained in jiu-jitsu oh yeah big time that's a I mean so I was training the other day with Noah Oliver right and knows been training and he's kind of sorting out you know how you go in phases of training partners and you know I've been training with Andy for like the last like three months you know more than so man but he's been like beat me down the other day yesterday yesterday before whatever and yeah he beat me down but at the same time I didn't leave thinking like oh my gosh Georgia do socks you know when you get beat down you think of okay what do I need to do to that's it correct at it yes well especially well when you have training partners that you like and you trust and you you know you you enjoy what you get from the training whatever regardless you got beat down or not I think your mind on it will start automatically go to that I think most of the time it's usually when I don't know the other circumstances then you'll be all salty make excuses or something like that either way so I'm thinking you know of all the things and then I arrive at the concept of men the in any other situation you take that kind of like just physical turmoil mm-hmm not only do you get beat but it was like kind of hard you know usually I don't feel this good about it I'm not looking forward to the next time you know like come on let's face it you do a hardened metcon you're like boom I'm glad that's over with but in this case you are looking for it Tom next one yeah you're looking forward to the next why you looking forward to just training more in general there's a short-term and long-term payoff for this jujitsu thing interesting oh yeah very true not to mention the capability that you wind up with so we're pro Jiu Jitsu is what we're did it we're a hundred thousand percent short-term and long-term there's no there's no dichotomy there's just short-term gain long-term gain yes in my opinion but it could be argued that Oh its word what about the day in what about sometimes when people don't want to Train they let the jujitsu window closed like reconfirmed is a thing it is the thing but that's you know what I kind of arrived at as well the days that you actually don't want to Train are way more rainer than you might think like have you ever said man i really don't feel like training and then you make the drive to the gym you get to the gym you training partner show up you right when you go to shake hands and you still feel like I really don't want to train around Argos you have never have never right hardly ever I can't think of one single time I've thought I came to him one time and I got there and I was like I still don't want to train but it was because there was only like three people there and they were like really brand new at the time and then I was like and I just went home one time in my whole life but I did I literally did not feel like a anyway legitimate usually if you don't feel like training it's not that you don't feel like that's never happened to me it's you don't feel like training it's you don't feel like getting off the couch getting into your car getting your gear getting you know doing that that's what you don't feel like doing oh you feel like training because when it's time to Train it's good fun every single time that's what I think it's a weird aspect that jiu-jitsu is fun it's fun yeah I have a feeling sometimes when I change it to where I'm literally like kind of beside myself with how fun that just oh yeah yeah you know and that's sometimes I'm getting beat down and I'm thinking that sometimes I'm winning and I'm thinking but either way I'm like yeah it's it's kind of like a feeling that's very hard to to describe even yeah I would I would agree with that yeah because you have that obviously the physical part of it right yes yes that's always good you know that but this is like it's like prospect if you roll with like guys who are like good then they're not good because they're so athletic even though they might be athletic they're good because they know what to do like a Dean Lister like Greg McIntyre these guys who like if it chain if you don't think your way into or out of you the situation you want man you're you're just not gonna do it you know so it's that problem-solving task that's just intertwine and the whole thing I think that's what makes it fun that's what I think agree anyway G Mogi streets whatever if you want to do gear you're gonna need a key you get Agee from origin or didn't mean that unless we can get me very selections on there the best me in America by the way made in America yeah and just kind of massive shipment of cotton and I'm up I'm talking not talking to woven I'm talking unwoven those strands of cotton check out check out check out the Instagram there's pallets and pallets that are there and it's just you think okay this cotton is gonna get woven and then turned into goose that I'm gonna wear what does the cotton look like when it comes from pallets because it's got little spools of it's not even it's not just cotton by the way it's it's a blended material so slobbering yeah it's like a spool but it's thick a little bit thicker good that all gets woven together we used to grow cotton when I was young we're hard and quiet really mm-hmm for what purpose just that's just how I guess I don't know little did I do something with I don't know random it was a row of cotton trees so cotton is like a it's like a almost like a pod that turns inside out like a popcorn almost yeah if I remember correctly and so that cotton would be balls of cotton you know like you get you know when you buy cotton balls right yeah I'm sure you always buy cotton balls but when you buy cotton balls they're in balls they're kind of like that but more like there's not they're not in a ball and a big clump okay there's seeds all in there you gotta pick out the seeds and the seeds are all stuck to the content I thought that's how they came but they're they're twined in or yes spun yeah into string all right so we got coffee we got keys we got jeans also I got jeans by the way oh so you're in the game now I am totally in the game and I'm surprised how good okay good dan I'm sure the buttons brass origin buttons I was impressed with that when I saw the pictures when I see him sure I'm impressed but I'm import maybe I'm more surprised on top of the impress of how they fit next level I thought they were gonna be like the kind older just generic fitting worker jeans which is fine I get it but that's not really what I was like deep down hoping for I was hoping for the kind that you know I can put on I can wear to you know if I go somewhere special with my life or something like that yes yes they're very good they fit good hand it to be yeah that stylish fashion dude leaves a little bit what it's skinny nice all right t-shirts jeans jeez rash guards joggers supplements yes supplements get your joint warfare get your krill oil get your discipline get your discipline go get these things they will they will they will make your life better that's crazy as that sounds you know they will might make your life better as will Moke yes and some people say what is Moke and the answer is very clear milk is milk is moment that's right mocha smoke you can't just call it something you can't call you can't call a knife by some other name right right it's a nice knife yeah yeah so you can't call milk you can't say milk is something else no mocha smoke then again I mean hey man Devils that picky you can call the knife up shank okay a bleed yeah you're right cold steel you know there's a lot of words for a knife you know so there's other words for Molk than is what you're saying no I'm not saying that you know just say well milk is more yeah it is a dessert in the shape of a protein powder that's healthy okay so you can either call it that or you can call it milk it tastes like dessert and yet it's good for you and gives you protein strawberry is delicious mint chocolate chip I had a I had so much strawberry I had to go back two men and I was like good lord ya mean it's crazy min is delicious I did this what do you want mint chocolate chip ice cream milkshake or do you want a mint Mork oh I'll take the mint mark all day long oh yeah short and long-term pale short and long-term payoff peanut butter Reese's Cup I don't know if you're allowed to say Reese's Cup but that's basically well right yeah yeah peanut butter Reese's Cup but it's peanut butter and chocolate mocha tasty what am I missing vanilla I'm not a vanilla guy I don't like the vanilla yogurt I don't like vanilla the vanilla milk is its if you like vanilla you're good right if you don't really like vanilla you know don't get it there's a whole hoard of vanilla like crazy yeah for sure and the thing that's cool about vanilla I guess is that you can do other things with it yeah Jason Gardner put it in your morning coffee yeah hit it with the he likes to say hit it with the blender stick right and you know people some people like to say things he's like I hit it he gets all fired up too I hate it with that blender stick he calls it a blender stick so there Jason Gardner so in and Jason Gardner's in great shape getting after it so maybe it maybe it's a positive thing and don't forget that there's a warrior kid mulk cuz do you want to feed your child poison no do you I do not okay cool then you get a milk mmm do you want your kid to to be miserable when they eat because what you're feeding them tastes disgusting let me think No okay cool - so you give them milk and you know being healthy and you're taking care of your kid and you're actually being a good parent oh yeah yeah otherwise you're neglecting your child's welfare don't do it yeah milk strawberry mocha chocolate milk get some it's true my dog is in this phase hopefully short where like she's comparing her body with like other people's body oh yeah that'll be a short phase it only lasts like five hundred years so man it kind of makes you think like oh shoot she's paying attention now she got your guns good oh yeah whatever anyway uh so Margie over in the corner doing curls yeah push-ups and actually she does burp you know what I tell her it's it's kind of a trick I don't tell me if you think this is a lie so she'll be like hey I don't really feel like doing the workout today mm-hmm so I say okay you don't have to do the workout if and only if you do burpees in push-ups kind of like burpees and push-ups are not your workout even though that is the workout here oh yeah it's like 70 burpees in like 40 push-ups or something like that that's the whole workout and make a six-year-old do a you know full-on met Conor nothing like that but I say you don't have to do the workout you only have to do the push-ups you like okay you know kind of like she escaped the workout even though that is worried is that lying its blanking right yeah that's like yeah hell yeah unless you're good that's authorized good yes anyway my point is that yeah once you know when when you know I little girl being conscious of how her body looks and all this stuff and she makes here's what is this six men and I kind of feel this overwhelming responsibility like hey if she starts like putting on weight that she doesn't like or something like that it's kind of my fault you know at this point it is for sure so the Malka you can feel real good about it mm-hmm especially that she likes it you know and that's job everyone I don't know how he did that but keep doing it that's all I know anyway also chocolate white tea yes can you get addicted to jakka white tea the answer is yes yeah yes it's psychological JP to know GP knows my brother currently I'm not talking about about him I'm saying the boys got a little bit of an addiction problem with the drunk old whitey all right well there you go and I I mean I'm sure I haven't thought about that much but I'm sure there is some drawbacks to being addicted to chocolate II I don't know but from here I mean the intuitive thought is that men that's all upside addicted to good stuff yeah you know it's like I am addicted to jakka whitey and I have an 8,000 pound deadlift how's it going yeah probably way more now 1200 or something anyway yes available cans as well eggs as well on the store it's on the stores on Amazon it's everywhere mm-hmm get it but it's up there yeah sure get your addiction on something good also we have our own store speaking of the stores called jaco store this is where you can get discipline equals freedom shirts like I said jockle YT is on the store it's on the store tins refills all that stuff hoodies lightweight and heavyweight hats rash guards rash guards Oh big time oh yeah gonna represent the path while you're on the sport in a rash guard today when I was doing a ring workout rings we're using the rings and if you don't wear a rash guard when you're doing rings if you do high reps you'll start to chafe your arms a bunch yeah which is no big deal but then you get like you know your if you're doing jujitsu then you're starting to get little infection exposures going on so just wear the rash guard yeah also you know if you work at the bank or in somewhere where people sorta have to have at least a little bit of trust in you if you're rolling around with chief hands and arms and stuff they're like wow what's up with this guy you know they don't know how to just realize that more well yeah you but you're like you're like one two levels like beyond you know like in Fight Club well you know well this movie Fight Club word like know I've said yeah you know when he's at the restaurant he sees it the two black guys a broken nose and he trusts some more he says I'm the nod but a no importance like our clue is this guy with two black eyes broken nose changed arms all this stuff with this guy so weird oh he's doing weirdo stuff he's doing deviant stuff that's for sure so you don't want that you don't want that on the surface is what I'm saying even though you like it so basically what you're saying is get a get a rash guard from the Jocko stores that you're not weird to other people that's what I just heard correct just to break it down simplify what you said also subscribe to the podcast as I was my kids my children they were they were going off about some social media thing and they like smash the like button yeah so I'm gonna tell you right now if you're a little younger profile what I'm trying to say is smash the subscribe button read don't don't say that don't try to say that don't gotta set I don't think you should go into that whoa wait it falls right in it goes right into the share layer like subscribe yeah if you want it's it's more you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna embrace that I'm gonna embrace that right now share like and subscribe share like in subscriber like you so we shouldn't be acceptable that I'm like smash the like button no cuz it's like why tweet why I'm not gonna do it just cuz you said it's it should be more of like a reminder right like if I was all motivational like you know what you see that like but you gotta smash that thing alright don't worry about it we're just kidding whatever if you want to subscribe to and subscribe if subscription is available will say that just lets leave the button you don't worry about smashing if you're gonna smash something smash your next workout don't worry about the like button don't worry about the subscribe button smash a metcon yeah how's that that was good I was actually really good anyway also yes warrior kid podcast too let's not forget about let's never forget it never again it's hibernating a little bit sure some people have been to commenting now yeah there's somebody posted a picture of like someone that was like Undead yeah like the warrior kid podcast is by no means dead it lives on yeah and since I have just wrapped up a major project I will have some time hopefully before certain people are not available to record to record yeah well so there'll be some more coming yeah good good podcast and actually that kind of is important to know because you know if they're like hey yeah it's done and they won't even it won't be on their mind no-one's even on the lookout for it then it could go and notice one doesn't come back nonetheless it's gonna come back it doesn't have to come back it's there right now you listen to an episode it's not that's there okay cool some people are just discovering that warrior kid podcast I dig it anyway we're gonna we're your kids Aidan's making soap mmm that's right a goat milk various other ingredients in America by the way Irish Oaks ranch Commons where you can get a trooper soap and Jacko's so wait does this tell that you're pursue or was that just a special edition how's it yeah man and that's legit no one's on a row but yeah and what's the slogan I I'd say the slogan you say but we're better me go ahead this slogan is simply stay clean there you go then we have a YouTube channel and what we would like is for you to smash this hey we got a youtube channel if you wanna watching youtube videos if you're not getting inundated with enough YouTube videos wasting your time watching videos of street fights watching videos of car crashes watching videos of acrobatic people climbing around in the city oh the parkour yeah you know what's funny it's like you're just totally putting yourself on report Oh about all the videos are sure these are the things like oh you like to watch 3-5 videos the thing is YouTube knows what you like to watch oh yeah so it just puts up you know three on one Jiu Jitsu involved I'm like oh somebody suddenly made that video for me so what I'm saying is subscribe to the YouTube channel if you want to see the videos that we put out otherwise go watch some more drunk girl fails I don't really watch that one but I will why not like fast tactical reloads so anyways there you go boom there it is yeah YouTube also psychological warfare if you don't know what that is it's an album with tracks of jaakko telling you how to get past moments of weakness if they may arise if they may arise I went to it I didn't go to the donut shop I passed it there's a bank and there's a doughnut shop right by where I'll isn't it weird that donut shops exist though they don't anymore that was gonna be my point zero people in there the lady in there so we're wearing you know what we're winning we're gonna win I even heard uh what do you call Krispy Kremes is like either out of business or going out of business like I don't know record or something but men the lady in the donut shop was um on her laptop in one of the customer like tables on the seat you know it was she wasn't behind the counter I know just coming in here yeah no one's coming in here at all dang anyway what should they replace all donut shops with steak houses yeah well yeah I guess the less you have this videos yeah just like a vacant you know what they should do a vacant building they clear out all the donut material and machine so I don't know how you make donuts but clear out all that stuff and you just put one like matte space one matte space that's it enough to end a paper and a pencil you just sign a name when I came in use this met me and my partner boom come in leave but nonetheless psychological warfare would have seen the tracks about Jocko can you through your most so what I've waited the report says that that psychological warfare the album has done massive damage to the donut industry apparently is what's going on that's what I'm here yeah big time evidently it's if you don't want the audio version of that but you want a visual version you can check out flip side to canvas comm run by my brother Dakota Meyer and he makes things for you to hang on your wall high quality things for you to hang on your wall to remind you of what it is that you're doing here so check it out if you have any suggestions you can hit up Dakota on social media and tell them what you want to see so there you go flipside campus.com also on it is a good one fun accom slash Jacko's where you can get your kettlebells your battle ropes various fitness equipment is good you'd also get socks didn't seem like it I know and I've said it before he gets socks socks socks or thing I guess well I you know I'm one of those guys well kind of like cool socks I don't buy them all the time but I don't know what kind of guy likes cool socks I don't know but there's a whole industry out there used to be and for me it still is socks means one thing what pair of white socks that's a sock Smith well yeah well you're you Darth Vader socks like you do or whatever no I have Darth Vader kettlebells okay but no no wait the Darth Vader kettlebells from on it of course because they got Darth Vader they got Iron Man they got some good ones on there also they have like this things called the elk bars same thing is a warrior bar but it's been an elk mmm high in protein really good like a almost like big beef jerky stick it's good gift that a lot of good stuff on there ah Netcom slash job though like something good something also we got some books that the books that were written by John Stryker Myer the books by written by tilt you can get those on Amazon across the fence the secret war in Vietnam on the ground the secret war in Vietnam and Zog Chronicles Volume one check those books out there they're really amazing to read especially and with their kind of books that when you read them you have to actually slow down and think about what the hell is actually going on man because when you think about what's actually going on you'll realize that the what these guys were doing was just absolutely completely insane so check out those books also check out way the warrior Kid 3 where there's a will that book is live and ready for you to read or if ready for your kids to read also go away the warrior Kid 1 and way the warrior Kid 2 marks mission these are good books to get kids on the path all those little things that you want kids to know but they don't really listen to you because you're their parent this is the ultimate flank and if you listen to JP Danelle he says that these warrior kid books are a flank on the parent - yeah yeah as is Mikey in the Dragons which is a book for kids to learn how to overcome fear so check those out then we've got the discipline equals freedom Field Manual which will tell you how to get after it you don't need to ask you can just get the manual well that'd be nice yeah oh it's true it is nice yes you get that Field Manual and you're good to go if you want them audio version out it's on iTunes Amazon music Google Play and other mp3 platforms and then of course you've got extreme ownership and that I caught a me of leadership the two books that I wrote with my brother Lafe babban talking about everything that we learned in combat and how you can take those lessons and you can utilize them with your business with your team with your life so check those out also we got extra on front that's my leadership consultancy and what we do is solve problems through leadership every problem that exists in your organization is a leadership problem so if you need help fixing that leadership problem and thereby fixing the problems that you have inside your organization go to echelon front comm if you need further instruction if you want something beyond this podcast if you want to come to the muster the muster is a leadership training seminar I guess I'd call it it's a leadership convention and what we do is go deep dive get granular on leadership the next one is September 19th and 20th in Denver and then after that it's December 4th and 5th in Sydney Australia every single we've done seven they've all sold out these are gonna sell out too so if you want to come go to extreme ownership calm and sign up and if you can't come to that you can go to EF online.com and that's our leadership training interactive online platform where you can get the skills you can reinforce the skills the skills that I talk about on this podcast the skills that we wrote about in the books those skills need further training all the time you never master these things so go to EF online.com and check that out and then there's of course EF overwatch where we've been taking proven leaders tested leaders from Special Operations that from combat aviation and putting them into companies in the civilian sector that need leadership so if you're looking to hire don't always hire you because someone has experienced higher for character higher for leadership capability and then you teach them the industry specifics because that's easier than trying to teach someone character or trying to teach someone leadership EF overwatch comm if you need leadership and if you want to converse with us further then we are on the interwebs on Twitter on Instagram and on that Shh Vasia posh echo is that echo Charles I am at Jocko will again John striker Mayer is at John striker Myer and once again thanks to John striker Mayer 22 years old putting his life on the line over and over and over again for our freedom and to those of you in uniform right now putting your lives on the line for our freedom thank you for being there for us and the same thing goes for our police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service and all force first responders out there you put your lives on the line to keep us safe and we thank you for it and to everyone else out there you might be scared and you might be tired and you might be surrounded by the enemy who is preparing to attack but you know what you're still alive so get the high ground set up your perimeter lock and load your weapons and go get after it and until next time this is echo and Jocko out

Channel: Jocko Podcast

Views: 515,505

Keywords: Discipline, freedom, military, extreme ownership, leadership, advice, jocko willink, echelon front, navy seal, jocko podcast, excerpt, echo charles, leader, lead, win, jocko store, discipline equals freedom, defcor, vietnam, sog, special forces, recon, jungle, triple canopy

Id: 0xjwJHzwRTo

Length: 168min 18sec (10098 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 20 2019