Jocko Podcast 186 w/ The Frenchman Doug Letourneau. Taking a Secret War to The Enemy

this is Jocko podcast number 186 with me jakka willing among the newly minted Special Forces soldiers were Douglas L Letourneau a skinny 135 pound California cowboy John Shore a blond-haired slightly overweight baby-faced kid from Georgia and Frank mcklusky a tough combat hardened veteran of the hundred and first Airborne Division McCloskey arrived sporting seepage from a wound in the back of his head this trio of Green Berets had completed their Special Forces in-country training program in NHA trang the 5th Special Forces Group Headquarters when a sergeant NHA trang asked for Special Forces soldiers to volunteer for a secret project they raised their hands in short order they were flown to fo b4 in the northern sector of South Vietnam I Corps upon reporting in they were told camp commander Colonel Jack Warren would brief them in the morning on the CNC mission in Southeast Asia finally after more than a year of training for Letourneau the game was on how much better could this get it seems all his life he'd been preparing for this moment from riding Rodeo Bronx and breaking nearly every bone in his body to wrangling animals for television shows like Daktari and cowboy in Africa starring Chuck Connors Letourneau knew a little bit about taking a calculated risk and after he had gotten his hands on Robin Moore's book of the Green Berets he knew this was for him guerrilla warfare check counterinsurgency training check unconventional warfare check Letourneau couldn't wait to write his own story that he could someday share with his dad a world war ii b-17 pilot and former POWs however could have prepared him for the sight that greeted him as he entered the transient barracks they're etched onto the concrete floor and forever in his memory was the charred outline of a man's body a grisly reminder of the 23 August 1968 attack on FO before that fateful evening North Vietnamese sappers and Vietcong operatives killed 18 Green Berets in a carefully executed sneak attack the deadly side of guerrilla warfare was brought home to him right there he was in a war zone the enemy didn't play by any set rules it was an unsettling event the next morning after breakfast the trio walked over to a three and chose their codenames Letourneau McCloskey and Shore now became the Frenchman namu and Bubba names that would stick with them far beyond their tours of duty in Vietnam because s3 was temporarily located in the headquarters section of FO b4 since the attack it was a quick shuffle into the briefing room with everyone else an intense short an intense short black haired man wearing pajamas slippers and a bathrobe walked in smoking a cigarette before a word was spoken Colonel Warren abruptly pulled a white sheet off a large map with a flourish and toss to decide and announced welcome to C&C men turning to the large map that had black tape boxed target designators on it in laos the DMZ and north vietnam he continued this is what you volunteered for this is why this is a top-secret project if anybody asks the president can say we have no men stationed in the AO that is why you'll wear sterile fatigues and carry no form of identification of any kind on your missions that's why you agreed not to talk to anyone about this operation for at least 20 years our Intel reports land in the White House any questions not waiting for a response Warren continued to explain the difference between spike teams and Hatchett force elements where the different fo B's were located how fo b3 at Khe Sanh was closed after the siege earlier in the year and how major Clyde sincere jr. had opened a site at my lock now designated fo b3 following an update on intelligence reports in the respective areas of operations Colonel Warren asked if anyone had any questions Letourneau raised his hand where do you need help sir we need men at fo b1 we lost a10 on October 5th and some of the 1st Special Forces TDY troops from Okinawa are returning back to the island the turned to shore and McCloskey and asked how about it fo b1 sure nodded in the affirmative McClosky said no I think I'll stay here Letourneau turned back to Warren and said we'll go nodding toward shore surprised at McCluskey's response without missing a beat Warren told the remainder of the SF troops in the room that he'd be right back he turned a litter no inshore and said follow me as he headed out of the briefing room and into the s3 Operations Center he told the center staff to get a king bee to fo before in an hour to transport Letourneau and shore to fo b1 ASAP next he headed to s1 and told the clerk that the newbies were to be processed and cleared to go to phu by an hour later PFC Letourneau and speck foreshore were in a king bee heading north to fo b1 and that right there is an excerpt from the book across the fence which was written by John Stryker Myer nicknamed tilt was a Special Forces soldier and SOG recon leader in Vietnam and we went deep with tilta on podcast 180 181 and 182 and if you haven't listened to those podcasts and stopped this one right now and go back and listen to those first but if you have already listened to those podcasts then you heard a little bit about Doug Letourneau codename the Frenchman and you know that he was also a Special Forces soldier a green beret and was also a SOG team member in Vietnam and it is an absolute honor to have not only tilt back again on this podcast but he brought with him the Frenchman himself Doug litter know the one and the only gentleman thank you for coming on good to see you again good evening sir good evening thank you for having us they had great to meet you great to have you both here and yeah let's talk a little bit about how you ended up that I mean we you you go you glaze over in the book we're ridin rodeo Broncos we're working in Hollywood taming and animals what was your upbringing that got you to do that you there believe it or not I was born in East LA in the barrio well that makes sense yeah not yeah but no so living in the city I got fortunate enough when I got into high school then I got into a program called the Future Farmers of America and it gave me a whole different way of looking at life and I ended up becoming a president of the chapter but I had several Spanish speaking in Spanish people in our chapter one of the largest in all of Southern California as it turned out well with these people I could became such good friends and their way of life and we're still working the fields of the San Fernando Valley which was still open I tended to lean towards the country way of life even though I was born and raised in the city and I knew nothing about anything at all but city life but I tried to break away from that through the organization and the western end of the San Fernando Valley well one thing led to another and I learned about you could go rodeo and there was a place that I could go ride in practice we could do bull riding and bronc riding and bareback riding and all the three were severed and no rally this was actually out in thousands oaks okay at the Paramount Studios okay yeah they had a ranch right there and D Cooper's is what it was called in those days and we could go out on a Wednesday night and Saturday and Sunday and ride and have jackpots and I got into it and then one thing led to another I got into college and I got on the college intercollegiate team and we traveled in Brodie Oden and as I went through college I became adept to it and got into Ropin with rope and horses and own my own rope horse and it's just the way a life changed from being a city slicker to to a cowboy where did you go to college I started out at Pierce junior college at the in Woodland Hills I'm cocky the Safran out of Valley and then ended up with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo a Mustang er yeah so through courses there and but basically we just just kept on going and then with the TV series that were popular with a lot of animals there was an opening to be a wild animal trainer at Africa USA in San Canyon New Hall so I jumped up there how old are you at this point I'm night I'm 20 yeah okay well the animal trainer sounds like you know well another day in college there you go so I jumped up there and before I knew it I was handling Clarence to cross out of line Judy the chimp and then they had a rope horse there that what they used it and they wanted me to call Dakota Duke and they wanted me to go out and capture all these animals by roping them and they knew I could row there's actual picture of me on the front of the Piggin string that was produced out of Lancaster Antelope Valley me on the front cover roping a tiger off of this horse off this horse and that's what I did and I roped elephants and I wrote you know he'll demand I healed giraffes and and I headed up White Rhino form it was coming at us and I turned him back and you know where they would do all these what they call a veil a veil would be open land it's a it's a African term and we just would turn these animals loose but somebody had to go get them so I I actually got to work on the on the TV series that was very popular called Daktari and people would see the trucks they were zebra trucks I went on YouTube and checked out some Daktari old footage like a classic show really and but it was shot in like Africa but actually was all done right there knew all saugus you know at the compound and so from there we ran into a series called cowboy in Africa we brought Chuck Connors in it and he was the star and hugh o'brian had actually done the original movie there's of cowboy in africa and they shot it in africa but here they're going to shoot it here in the united states and so i got to work with ostriches and all kinds of different animals that they had to have around the compound of the house that he was working out of in the series but one thing left to another but as it turned out one night somebody handed me an old ragged book it's called the Green Beret by Robin Moore and I looked at it and I read it and I couldn't put it down and I said this has got to be something that this Vietnam War has been going on for quite a while I grew up almost listening to it every day there's got to be something going on that I need to contribute and I think this is what I want to do I went down the next day very next day and signed up what - what year was that how old were you I was 20 and this was like September just before it was like well I say because I went in September first so it was the day before so you know August 30th oh wait you're though 1968 1966 or 77 67 yes and I actually entered the service in late September 1st 1967 yeah by that time he had obtained a college degree by attending classes at night so instead of going through the 4-year program the college with three years well I graduated when I was 17 okay from high school from high school guy was early in with the classes at night yeah as spare time and and like the the attitude towards the Vietnam War in 1967 you know from the I mean it's better when we think of Hollywood now we think of people that just are you know just detest everything that has to do with the military most of the time and you were kind of in that Hollywood scene hanging around with all these people but that didn't rub off on you at all it didn't happen that way in 67 68 it wasn't like wasn't like that back then I was shocked when I got back and I actually visited Bubba in on Peach Street in Atlanta Georgia and there was a anti rally Vietnam rally going down the street and I looked out the window and I said Bubba what in the world is that he says those are anti-war protestors I'd never seen it never heard of it but in 67 everybody was still pretty patriotic God and didn't have that situation and and now what about your old man who was you know he was you were raised as the son of a guy that was a b-17 pilot yes a war hero in his self he was he ran 13 missions he was actually at first two missions in we're over Berlin he was on the first two missions to bomb Berlin itself but he flew 13 missions on his 13th mission they gave him a brand new airplane because his airplane had been shot up so bad with his crew that he brought from the United States and flew it over to England that they had to give him a brand new airplane that morning and he took off and he had 999 planes behind him he was point that day and he went over a target called Schweinfurt as it turned out schweinfurt in 1444 had lost 56 airplanes and this day his entire squadron of 22 out of 23 were to be shot down that day and he was the first one down and they were using new tactics the Nazis were when they would line up Misha Smith's and 109s and in a row and go right through them instead of coming around or going on top they just go right through them they didn't care if they lost the planes or not and then they had fought with 190s behind them and they they took out all these planes in the very lead just to start the battle but no one could ever figure out why schweinfurt was so protected and so many losses every time that was tried to be bombed and gehrig during the Nuremberg trials he admitted that it was the only ball bearing factory the Germans owned without ball bearings a war would have been over within a matter of a few months and this whole war went on and on and on because neither the British or the US could figure figure that out and they should have bobbed it every day as what he said and they favored the war would have been over what they would have had to surrender but just the quirk in the whole situation but my dad ended up being my first airborne person in our family voluntary and halo and he brought himself what altitude would they find out ten thousand feet when he jumped because his plane caught on fire and they couldn't extinguish it his engines were on fire and he couldn't open the bomb bay doors the hydraulic system had been shot up he'd lost his radio operator had a 20 millimeter right through his stomach had to put a parachute on him and just shove him out the the bottom door and it was pretty pretty hectic plane blew up in midair but those that could got out and made the free fall to the ground and pulled their chutes and anyway my dad was attacked by farmers with pitchforks and thank God the Gestapo and SS were there to retrieve him and push the farmers back he thought he was gonna die right there in the hole he sprained his ankle and he was kind of out of it and but anyway they hauled him off and strung him up and tried to make him talk and you know the usual serial number name and rank and then they put him in Stalag one which was an all officer camp had 15,000 officers that had been shot down in that camp all day listening Minh went to enlisted stocks and he served 13 months in the powa camp and then one morning they woke up and the Russians were there the Russians liberated him and he was taken home and that's the story and and he became well known for in our town for what he did plus he had two brothers and my uncle Armand was given a Silver Star by Patton General Patton himself in France pinned on his chest and my Uncle Eddie flew Corsairs so the Letourneau brothers were quite active yes there were so I had a lot to follow yeah you did Jesus so I read vidiots there and I Iran 13 missions how ironic right that is ran 13 missions and one bright light when your dad came home what did he do when did he get out of the army did he well his Army Air Corps in those days it wasn't the Air Force and so he he he tried doing a little bartending and this a little that but he had been in construction he actually was partnered up with this my grandfather like my Grandpere and it was Letourneau and Letourneau construction company and he filtered back into the construction and started building because they needed homes every all these soldiers coming home and he built most of Burbank Glendale at the time and that did he always did quite well and got into commercial buildings and and I sort of followed into those footsteps eventually after I got back from the service so when you when you enlisted what did you how did your dad feel about that well he was not happy about it because he only gave him a day's notice I said I'm going I'm going into the service and I'm gonna go to Vietnam and I'm gonna be a green beret but of course when we and I enlisted they couldn't give me that it was the only MOS that they could not give because it wasn't guaranteed they could guarantee me anything else they wanted me to be an officer because I had a degree and I said no I'm not going to go to OCS I want to I want to go and be whatever it takes to be in Special Forces as it turned out in the long run whether you really want to hear the whole story it's up to you but I did end up being a green beret and going through all the processes and going through all the volunteer and being accepted and going into it and I'm past it but during that time I'm you have to realize I'm just an e2 I went in as an e1 I'm an e2 I'm the lowest ranking there is and the MOS that I actually graduated with was a prized MOS that only a few would maintain and that was heavy weapons they go you can't be heavy weapons unless you're an e5 or above but when my turn came up to go in front of the panel my name being an L that's a made a document that's why I can say this I was the first eetu ever to be accepted for weapons MOS training because I told him exactly what I had in mind I said come Monday morning we've already gone through our phase 1 and I've got my green beret and I said we need to go into MLS and I just want Monday I can start I said when that MOS is done it so happens phase 2 of graduation exercised over a year ago out in the field for two weeks in survival mode I said it will start immediately the following Monday and I said and I can be in Vietnam in the next three months and they looked at me and said you got it so if you look at the orders everything can L dizzy there was a eetu e3 e4 was in my weapons class because I started something that couldn't be turned back tied and turned so when I got to Vietnam and my first assignment to F will be one I'm now a PFC III and Pat Watkins who has the DSC Distinguished Service Cross from his time in August 23rd when the FO before was attacked he told everybody there must be one bad son of a bitch coming up here because he's a PFC he's 11 charlie s SF he said he's been busted down so far he's got to be that bad a soldier working on the land and when I showed up and he looked at me he goes you are a PFC greenest grass and knew nothing just been trained darn that's a good that's a good way to kick it off man yeah well when F will be one yeah yeah what did you when you're going through the check how long was the how long was the block of training that you so you go through boot camp how long was the SF training was that total well I had to go through boot camp and that where I had to volunteer to even be go through the acceptance of trying to be a sign to SF training then I went into advanced AIT which is advanced infantry training you had to go through that and you also had to sign up for Airborne training so you had to go through all all the basics and come out as an 11 b which was a small infantry arms so anyway then jump yeah jump school but I went through that the nomination part of it taking tests and physical tests and swimming everything and then interviews with the SF guys that were there that were in charge of selecting who was going to go we started out with 350 men volunteering to go through this acceptance they only took 35 and the end of the deal I was one of the 35 or I went on to airborne school the next day and went through jump school at Fort Benning Georgia they put us after our last jump which was out of the old Bhaskar 119 s and then they came in with the new jets and so I I'm kind of proud of that and we went on a bus that night all the way to Fort Bragg and got there in the early morning hours of Saturday Saturday morning and then Monday morning we were in formation for very first day of training in in Special Forces and now that block there was two weeks out on survival phase one then eight weeks of training after that and then another two weeks of our graduation exercises where we're trained to overtake a government that's what Special Forces does is actually over takeover governments and trained guerrillas to do so and so then 30 days later I was in Vietnam was the oh I'm sure the focus must've been like a hundred percent on hey you're going to Vietnam we know you're going to Vietnam this is what its gonna be like this is what you're dealing with when I graduated the colonel stood in front of us ahead of all of trading group and said I don't want a one of you to volunteer for fifth group Vietnam we spent too much money on you you're just gonna go there and die you stay here pick any other group I'm gonna go down the line with the command sergeant major and he's gonna tell me what group you want to go to I had 23 graduates in my class all but three volunteered from Vietnam he was not happy what I yeah you think like why does why is someone during the Vietnam War gonna join Special Forces unless they want to go to Vietnam I mean exactly but in my mind there was something wrong it had been going on for years mmm-hmm and Special Forces had been there before it was a bit a war advising and I just could not figure that out and I said I've got to go I've got to see why it's taken so long it's taking longer than the World War two and that was five years so why is it taking so dang long so I said I've got to get there and do something about it that's how I attitude was Frenchman's come he's gonna handle this thing see oh I see yeah yeah alright I'm gonna go to the book here going this is going back to across the fence and obviously I told everyone to buy this because I've been reading chunks of it and if you haven't bought it yet just buy it right now written by John Stryker Meyer so this is a section where he's and he's writing about the Frenchman so here we go within 24 hours Letourneau and Shore were on recon teams at fo b1 and they immediately began training immediate reaction drills weapons and explosives training reviewing team SOPs practicing helicopter extractions on strings and practicing wiretaps as october yielded to november many of the members of the two Recon teams began to build a rapport because they were doing so much training together on the food buy range in addition Letourneau ensure cook also quickly learned that the veteran indigenous personnel on their teams were highly skilled and fearless warriors one night while Letourneau was recording a verbal message for his parents on his portable cassette player lap the young point man on st virginia came into his room and spoken to the recorder i want to tell you parents of private Letourneau not to worry about him we respect him and I'll keep an eye out for him and don't worry if an enemy shoots at him I'll catch the bullets with my body I'll protect your son thank you for sending it him to Vietnam he's a good soldier daddy was the kid was like 16 years old and he was our point man who knows how many kills he had he was fearless his parents had been both killed he was an adoptee in the song he was raised and lived and fought in SOG Wow and he prided himself on trying to learn how to speak English because he wanted to be number one interpreter yeah how'd your parents like that did they ever get the tape they got the tape yeah I wish I knew where they were but they passed away and we couldn't find him but yeah he it was amazing and my dad knew right then and there I wasn't coming home he knew I wasn't coming home and he didn't he had to try to keep my mother from figuring that out but he knew that I would not be left come home because of the secret missions he figured they would the government would take me out before they would let me come home with what I knew and lap was the kind of Vietnamese South media's ally that you never heard about mmm that we worked with every day and we're alive today thanks to them mm-hmm our lives to them oh yeah we do and a couple can be pilots yeah it's true distractions I have 13 string extractions 13 for 13 yes lucky 13 I know it's a bad dad said he had 1,300 bombing hours flight hours but he also had 13 months in the powa and he was also shot down on Friday the 13th April 13th April April 13th no superstition here are Nazis alright continuing on a few days before Thanksgiving St Virginia's 1 0 Childress announced that an operation ordered come down from the s3 the team had a mission in the western section of the DMZ and then I'm gonna fast-forward a little bit here to a guy named McGovern quiet spoken McGovern gave him a wry smile and said we can't have that you need to have a car 15 for your first mission follow me the dual walked over to McGovern's room he opened his locker and pulled out a clean car 15 and handed it to Letourneau this is a special car 15 he said according to official army records this car 15 was written off as a combat loss at fo b3 and Khe Sahn meaning as far as the army is concerned this weapon doesn't exist someday after successful tour of duty in Vietnam if you're so inclined you can take this baby home with you because it doesn't exist but as you can see it does and it's a sweet weapon it never failed me and I know that since you're a weapons man you'll take good care of it up to this point Letourneau had used an m16 for all of this training now with his car 15 he was ready to take on the world true there was a mean weapon you see it in that picture yeah yeah look has the picture of it yeah the and just just rockin those 20 round mags I every time I see those pictures of you guys with those 20 round mags I just I was Carrie I carried 25 of them stuffed into the canteen covers we didn't carry food per se all my food I had zippers sewed into my sleeves up on my shoulders left and right and I would roll up dry dehydrated rice with electrical tape instead of one full ration I took one full ration of food and cut it into five different days from maximum output and we only ate once a day and we just put we only had four quarts of water because we didn't want to carry any more weight or any more anything else but ammunition we carried all ammunition grenades m79 shells because we carried sawed-off m79 and so that's all we carried was ammunition because when we go in that's our supply there's no resupply it's all up to us and many a time we came back with nothing mmm and had to resupply ourselves because we got down to the last bullet many times 25 it was your load you know much you load outweighed yes my web gear with all the clips and everything in it and on the water all that weighed 75 pounds my rut sack because I carried the radio the PRC 25 c-4 claymores blasting caps on everything that you needed an extra antenna all that stuff inside was another 75 pounds I weighed 130 5 I carried 150 pounds into the field yeah that's crazy that's that's crazy but thousands everybody's load the in ditch are mercenaries they carried probably a hundred and thirty pounds and they probably didn't weigh more than 120 115 this continuing on the opportunity arrived on Thanksgiving Day 1968 after the weather cleared at the kua try launch site Quang Tri is that right calling tree Quang tree launch site SD Virginia boarded the king bees and headed west to the target area with three American and four South Vietnamese team members lap the 17 year old hardcore point man who had none many missions hone is that right yes home the interpreter Cho the m79 operator and con cowboy Doan who had fought valiantly besides Lin and black jr. with st alabama as the second Sikorski turned westward 135-pound Letourneau went through a mental checklist of everything he was carrying McGovern's car 15 the PRC 25 FM radio an extra battery for it a sawed-off m79 m79 grenade launcher a 22 caliber high standard pistol with a silencer ammunition for all weapons hand grenades gas masks smoke grenades a camera and five special bags of dehydrated rice he quickly realized he was carrying more than a hundred pounds of gear his inner thoughts were jarred when the door gunner test-fired his thirty caliber machine gun without announcing his intention to anyone with it within a matter of seconds that came be cut power and began a tight downward spiral into the LZ where Childress the lieutenant hone and lap were already waiting the dizzying downward spiral ended as the pilot revved the engine and landed on the LZ Cho exited the h-34 with Letourneau and cowboy following him into the wood line connecting with the remaining members of the team the King be lifted off and the LZ quickly cleared the target area and then there was absolute silence so there's your first your first mission insert right there my first insert you talked about it I haven't record I'm not knowing what the heck we're doing but we just dropped out of the sky no way and I mean it was adrenaline rush but you know I've been roping tigers and rhinos and I've been riding bulls and Broncs and you know it just it just came to me you know but it but it was I mean I'm here all my training all that time over a year I'm here this is it this is the day yeah now you question whether you're gonna stand up to it because you know the enemy's there we didn't go there because it wasn't we went there because there was a trail that needed to be followed and find out who's running that trail the the door gunner test fire in that 30 Cal just is a good wake-up call the Laza I'm sitting in the door it is right over my head but cotton and not only that our King bees were so stripped that they were so light compared to the regular h-34 marine ships they could out fly him in height and we could get up and over into those mountains and those high ranges and stuff and but they dripped oil and they had oil going down your neck at a time and then when he shot that 30 caliber to top me the hot brass hit me in the neck you know scared the crap outta me almost jumped out hey back to the book the audio contrast was starlit startling as Letourneau senses adjusted the quiet he scoped out the LZ which was in a deep valley between 3 jungled covered mountains gradually sounds of the jungle resurfaced birds chirping bugs humming after 10 minutes Childress signaled Letourneau to Radio Covey with the team ok the insertion was successful no enemy act the evident Childress moved the team toward the first Mountain movement was slowed by tall elephant grass and the only communication between the team members was hand signals the team moved in 10-minute intervals stopping every 10 minutes to listen to what was going on around it after more than an hour the team finally emerged from the elephant grass as it continued to climb the first mountain Letourneau was on hyper alert his heart pounding hard whether sitting in a long rest period or moving up the mountain near the top of the mountain lap pointed out an observation platform that had been cut to the jungle high off the ground from that platform anyone could observe the LZ and the valley where the team was inserted as well as the other open areas that could be used for landing helicopters had a trail watcher been sitting on the platform when st virginia flew into the LZ if so where was he headed and when with the NVA hit the team late in the day the team finally reached the top of the mountain and found a wide well-used trail litter nose first thought was how could anyone be out here in the middle of this in the middle of nowhere in this thick jungle regardless the team set up its night perimeter far above the trail where it could see anyone moving while remaining camouflage and out of sight at last light Childress made the final Comeau Jack with Covey as the team settled in for its first night in the jungle there was an uneventful night Childress did a midnight Comeau check with Hillsboro the night command aircraft that flew high above the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the DMZ and checked in with Covey in the early morning after the team ate breakfast and shifts Childress directed lap to move parallel to the trail with cowboy as a tail gunner in the line of march and Letourneau walking in front of cowboy the team moved slowly in less than 10 minute intervals before taking breaks to listen to the surrounding sounds they did this because moving next to the trail was fraught with inherent risks so there's your first night out in the jungle yeah relatively mellow it was but the mosquitoes were huge and we were curve at surround our we actually used those four tourniquets as more as we could pull them down over our ears and face throughout it and pick those mosquitos out the next day cuz they were like cranes and I mean then you have to realize - that's the first meal for an entire day with 100 day 100 degree weather and only one quart of water a sip in the morning a sip at noon a little bit for the dehydrated rice at night and a sip this wash it down with them there's one quart gone for the day it couldn't allow yourself to drink ever except on those intervals and you didn't you didn't did you guys plan to resupply water like did you guys look at the maps and see melt sea rivers or anything no streams no nothing so you planted one quart a day one quart a day we figure out it's not healthy I know you're I know you're a trainer but that's what we had to allow ourself there because of the weight you know a gallon of water 7.5 it is so we had to judge our weight of versus ammunition and we that's what we trained ourselves to do and not only that we also took pills so that we wouldn't go to the bathroom either hmm because they could smell you I'm smelling American that's why we had to eat rice and eat everything they ate otherwise they'd smell you know MRIs and and can't see rations all that stuff they could smell that for miles and they had trackers out there and you had to watch for those which I think you'll get to but just that water ration is what you have I trained myself for a year to do that I I did that all the time because we figured we'd be out in the sixth day we'd come out in the sixth day so we'd have no water on the last day but we can survive the five days did you ever take any casualties guys that went down from lack of water actually never did that's amazing in the desert we would even a training guys we'd have guys go down like on a on a two-day operation I'd have guys go down from lack of water I've had guys go down in training in the stateside mm-hmm but I never had any our guys we would I'm just gonna say we were talking well it jungle is a little different in the desert too yeah yeah and because you're got shade yeah your your triple canopy so you actually are got shade under Nover the tapia you're not in open areas you never go in an open area you always follow the canopy but you have to move slowly because it's so darn thick so it takes time and you have the tail Gunners job is to cover the trail mm-hmm try to put if you everybody walks in everybody's footprint if you try that's what you're supposed to do everybody has a an area to cover one guy turns to the right and the other guy turns to the left the point man covers the 180 in front tail got it causes a 180 in back and we train like that we don't turn our backs and look it's what the other guy is doing we only concentrate on our area and keep that area clean unless we have to move in that direction then we all turn that way and move mm-hmm it's a precision it's a precision movement that we practice we train like that every time we were back in camp we trained how to move that's why our T Virginia and our T Idaho or survivable teams besides the having the luck of the Gods with us mm-hmm you know sometimes you got to make your own luck a little bit through and you know we we talk about that all the time like we would train all the time we'd patrol around in the compound rehearse rehearse we'd rehearse get this is only shocks people versus getting that in and out of the trucks like you know we'd have a big a big giant truck to transport troops in but we do raids with those things and we practice getting out you know like okay because if this takes you seven seconds if you're in a firefight I mean seven sex sis you've law a long time to be trying to get out of a truck that people are launching grenades at you know and so we'd practice that we could do it quickly do it at night do it in the dark do it with your gear on you know reverse order do it again and that's what we do so that we'd be you know ready we for those six we did the same thing we actually working on a vessel before we had a island called monkey Mountain and we'd go over there and we set up a course to walk from one side to the other and that's how we were trained so that we we could continually upgrade how we walked and you guys didn't I've talked to tilt about this you guys didn't bring mosquito nets in a field to wear over your head never that would be what we had was what they called believe it or not they had mosquito repellent that was US Army issue but we also had Max Factor that did the makeup okay what's that all about the greasepaint camouflage paint oh yeah and what we'd would do is take the repellent and mix it in our palms squirt it into our palms and put the grease paint in our palms and then put the paint over our face or to cover our highlights so there's no reflections and besides that I used electrical tape and wrapped up my my trousers at the bottom around my my boots so to keep the leeches out but also that closed off and then I also did that around the wrists of my arms and then we wore we our car 15s are so hot that we had to wear gloves with a few fingers cut out among them we looked like Michael Jackson way before his time I wish you talking about that grease paint ID I like that there you go a little late the leaf base or no mosquito repellent and the grease paint mixed together made a very gooey mess but it would keep them off of your face you know and when you were at night when they were at their worst you could pull that Corvette and then you know keep him out of your ears and they would stay off your face because they didn't want anything to do with it and we always carry just a little extra with us to keep it going you know because being out there for five days you know the most that most that I mean most of the time we get shot out in the day two days three days but I had the luck of having several five and seven day missions I was able to stay out a long time as our teams progressed further and deeper they didn't think we'd go that far but we went deeper than anybody could ever go we got down to some of our missions and layoffs with one minute on time with the king bee there was no bringing us out once they dropped us on the ground it was over with they had to go back and get fuel so no 10 minute station time they just dropped your left add to add to but they weren't expecting us that far we could get right in to catch him off guard all right going back to the book has st virginia moved up ii mountain cowboy and Letourneau began to hear women's voices off the trail cowboy urged Letourneau to go explore the sounds Letourneau shook his head no indicating they had to stay with the team cowboy who spoke broken English repeated the suggestion adding it could be a small NVA village we could kill everyone and make the NVA beaucoup angry we want to let them know we can hurt them the same way they attack our camps and villages let's her note again declined and gave him the hand signal to plant some m14 anti-personnel mines on the trail behind them in case the NVA soldiers were trailing them as the team moved on Letourneau planted a few more toe poppers and marked their locations on his map for after covering them expertly he laid down some powdered mustard gas on the ground for any tracker dogs that might follow their trail the mustard gas was left over from World War one how it landed at Phu Bai remained a mystery to Letourneau the good news it was that it still worked the fact that it was the fact was confirmed during the next break when the team heard a dog howl in anguish after snorting some of the old mustard gas maybe it didn't work that well because a few minutes later the dog was back on the teams trail cowboy told the terno to use his pistol to kill the dog litter nose mine flashed back to Special Forces training group our instructors had said the same thing Letourneau pulled out the 22 quietly moved back down the trail took off his rock rucksack and moved a few more feet before lying down on the ground facing the trail the dog never realized the turno was there when the dog was about ten feet away Letourneau fired one shot it struck the dog between the eyes killing him instantly the canine dropped in his tracks out a litter nose view unaware of what had happened the dog's handler moved up the trail he got near the dead dog when he got near the dead dog he stepped on a toe popper Letourneau and cowboy heard the NVA screaming in pain and anguish they left him behind figuring he would die shortly the team moved further up the mountain with Letourneau and cowboy providing rear security again turn oh and cowboy we heard women's voices below them again cowboy urged the Letourneau to go downhill and attack the encampment and again Letourneau declined that's so that's so these guys are on you obviously at this point when when you are you guys are still heading up the mountain because but but do you think you can get away from them and what is your point what is your what is your what are you trying to accomplish at this point at this point we're trying to get away from the tracker well I managed to take care of the tractor but we don't know how many people are there we keep hearing the voices of women's voices below us cowboy keeps wanting me to go down there with him trying to confuse the whole situation because he wants to kill him because he says it'll make a mad then he'll come after us and they can really get into it well cowboy just got off a mission on October 5th which is in the book where they decimated a 10,000 man division of all things eight and a half hours they took down 85% of them with an eight-man team incredible but it's true you know they stack bodies up for sandbags that's how many they were killing so fast but he was insistent but I told him we can't do that because I can't split the team I have to do it my one zero says I'm I'm just a one two ha ha I'm unload man on the totem pole here you know there's even a lieutenant with us but he's he's the one one he's bullet he's actually below my sergeant because there's no rank in song that was one of the things that that always took me back was there was no rankings and song we didn't carry rank we didn't wear rank is whoever was there the longest that lived the longest was the tenth head man he's the one zero who ever lived the longest was the one zero and that's how it went down and then when that one zero was killed the one one took over and usually took over the team from there on until he was killed and then the next one the one two would take over he because he'd stepped up to the one one position and that's how we progressed our teams because everybody was killed one as as it as we went along we were just lucky but I did lose my one zero Gunther wall and course Childress went home and he was lost to an automobile accident and so it's just you know but that's how they progressed it and at this point this is your first mission you got a it's like I'm trying to do everything right yeah and you're getting the full benefit on your first mission you got the dog track of you you've got the the NVA encampment down below you got the women's voices you got the tracker coming up behind the dog I mean it's the he's hitting the toe popper this is like and we know you know everything everything you were hoping for here it is and we know the NVA is there because the jungle baby because the families are there so we know of course we're on we're thinking - maybe they they're the trackers families - you know because they would hire trackers they tell the trackers you either track for us we'll kill you and so they have no choices but because they're just ended out there living trying to survive so you're trying to get up the mountain get away from the tracker was it possible to shake the trackers was it possible to like actually lose him sometimes sometimes or did you feel like once the trackers were on you you were pretty much heading to your extract exactly exactly because they were they were communicating in some way of fashion to let the NVA know we fought regular troops we never shot fought the Vietcong that they call the VC we we actually fought uniformed NVA and the Regular Army mm-hmm the North Vietnamese had but we needed to get off of that keep off the trail and keep going because we needed to find out where this trail was going this was our mission to try to figure out where this trail went it we did accomplish it in the end because I went on a second mission just later in the book and I found actually went into North Vietnam and was inserted on Christmas of 68 in North Vietnam on the same trail but higher up and that's a whole different story there but we're going back to this story here we go by the time Letourneau completed his last radio call to Covey the team was enveloped in darkness and team members began to set up a perimeter for the night dawn broke without any enemy activity with Covey flew over the team in the morning he warned Childress that a team was being extracted extracted under heavy fire and another was being inserted into a top priority target sit tight was the last instruction from Covey st virginia didn't move from its quiet spot alongside the mountain during lunch hour the member each member ate in shifts and Letourneau went out to inspect the claymore mines the team had deployed to ensure the NVA hadn't turned the deadly explosive devices around to face toward them when he completed his inspection Letourneau found a log to sit behind the NVA would actually do that they'd crawl up to your perimeter and turn your claim triple-canopy you don't you could pass them up within two feet of you they could be two feet away from me and you wouldn't know it that's how thick the jungle is and you would see a foot you know you think combat you might see a foot and you shoot the foot as long as you shot the foot you know he was down he wouldn't go to survive they had no hospitals you know see you could count that as a as a kill but you know but you can see you just had to mow down the jungle open it up guess where they're at the green trace is coming out gave you a clue yeah yeah it's just shocking to me that they they would crawl up and try and turn around your claymore mines so that when you attack when they attacked you then you clock off your claymores and boom you're actually claymore in yourself later on the CIA gave us a piece of equipment that I carried that had a little thread out of a box and you could wrap that whole thread around your your encampment where you were a Oh is right at the moment and put it in your ear and if that's thread was broke it would sound a buzzing noise in your ear and you knew somebody came through it could have been an animal but you knew somebody came through your perimeter and you just had to put it in front of all your claymores and then to stop it you just lit a match and burned it you used the next day the next time but once you I had that my my perimeters were always covered going back to the book later in the afternoon Childress signaled the team to pull in their claymore mines and prepare to move out due to the combined weight of his rucksack and web gear Letourneau moved to his knees and slung his rucksack on his back just as it landed on his back ache a forty-sevens opened fire Letourneau was slammed to the ground face-first the impact so severe he thought he had broken his nose startled Letourneau jumped up with his car 15 pointing toward the ak-47 gunfire that was near the front of the team surprised that there was no NVA near him Letourneau removed the rucksack to discover that four ak-47 rounds had ripped through the 23 pound PRC 25 he reached into an especially especially tailored pocket on his fatigue shirt which was sewn with vertical zippers one on the left side of the shirt and one on the right side between the top and bottom of the pockets of the shirt it pulled out his URC 10 emergency radio and broadcast a general alert for any aircraft in the area st virginia was declaring a prairie fire emergency so this is that your first fire from the enemy he could shop the radio for four rounds in the radio knock you down yeah I didn't know nothing all I knew and my button nose was busted I thought it was anyway and and I'm going and I'm having to think what am I supposed to do and I my it was my first reaction meanwhile my 1-0 Childress was mad as hell at me because he says bring me that damn radio that hurt a ting could do crap for us he said I said any work and I think it's shot up and I said it don't work there's no signal and so I brought it to him well needles are saying I was standing up when I brought it to him and he's laying on the ground and he grabs me he says can't you just get down well the ak-47 rounds are hitting all over us we're in the middle of a firefight artwork returning fire me I'm still standing there in shock and he pulls me to the ground saves my life and he says he looks at the radio real quick and he goes the antennas been shot off that was the fifth round mm-hmm that went through it I reached between my nutsack and my Webb gear and pulled out my spare antenna and screwed it on and we had , that radio was good to go that's air-conditioned and we just then Pat Watkins is flying over our comfy rider and he called whee-hee-hee assess what was going on he could see it from where his location was in the air and he could see he could see we were taking massive amounts of fire and he called for an extraction from Quang tree and they they brought the king bees in to get us we had yeah yeah the once he got that once he got once he got the radio back for you to started working children screams into the radio we need an exfil now I'm declaring prairie fire emergency is anyone out there within a second or two there was a response calm down Childress I realize you're under fire said a co V rider just at that moment several ak-47s opened up from the wood line near the log where Letourneau had been unceremoniously slammed onto his face lap and cowboy returned fire Covey Rider continued we heard your team declare a prairie fire emergency on the guard frequency and have rallied the cavalry what's your mark do you have an LZ in sight before Childress said a word in the radio he turned to Letourneau and said see it suppose we have left it for the envier never I say never ever leave a radio behind as if to emphasize that point the NVA opened fire again as a lap took as that began looking for an LZ while moving the team down the hill away from the most concentrated NVA gunfire cutting litter no no slack Childress roared tell Covey we'll give him a fix in five minutes we'll probably need strings to get out of here I doubt we can make it into the valley where it can be king bee can pick us up without missing a beat litter know who for the first time felt for burning stings in his back repeated those words to Covey while he and Kowboy began providing cover fire as the tail element of the team then Letourneau nodded a cowboy who ignited several claymore mines that the team had set out on this perimeter those mines only sold the NVA for a few seconds before the dust and debris from the blast settled the NVA soldiers were moving through it toward cowboy and Letourneau without saying a word the two men took turns firing at the enemy while moving down the hill rotating around each other cowboy would fire several bursts from his car fifteen and then reload as he reloaded letona would open fire providing cover for covering fire for the team the classic cover and move scenario yes just the way we drill it that's right oh yeah and it just came natural believe it or not it just came natural what part of it just came natural just load and fire lower higher and move load and fire move load and fire and that just we had to get and the team came together our firepower you can only imagine what a full team of firepower with all car 15s and m79 s and claymore mines going off they knew they had a battle but they were overpowering us yeah it's about this with tilt as well like the determination of of them where you think of the insurgents insurgent army you know their rule is like a we don't we don't need to fight we don't need to win this firefight we don't need to win this battle cuz we're gonna be here for a long time we can wait we will fight when we want to fight and it's the way that they attacked you and law took so many losses but to continued to press and continue to press like their their fighting spirit was high well let me give you a backdrop on that maybe tilt hasn't even got to that after the war is over with and history starts evolving in the books and people start asking questions we find out that they've got 40,000 troops hunting this down hunting sagres down and there's a huge bounty on us we heard a hundred thousand two hundred thousand dollars to kill an American I'm on a song team and they had to kill an American award if they kill somebody they got the award and a bonus mm-hmm and they were instant heroes in Hanoi forever it meant everything to them to kill us and they put 40,000 troops designated that we had tied up because they wanted to kill us because we did so much damage to go ahead yeah speaking of damage during one short law cowboy again planting two claymore mine in the direction of the advancing NVA in Letourneau dug out another Claymore from his rucksack and placed a 10-second delay fuse in it when the NVA again advanced cowboy ignited his claymore mind claymore mine when the NVA moved again toward the team Letourneau ignited his fuse and ran down the hill with cowboy to catch up to their team before they reached the team to be 40 anti-personnel rockets slammed into the trees above them showering them with shrapnel a few more exploded as Letourneau and cowboy moved down the hill the 10 second then the 10 second fuse ignited in another Claymore it brought it bought precious time for the gun and run team of Letourneau and cowboy to cover ground and catch up with a remainder of st virginia would you guys drill pulling out those claymores with the tents that confused and hooking them up and setting them up I mean you know it takes like a little bit of time to do that did you guys have them pre-rigged where you could just stick them in the ground how did you guys do that we did we had them pre-rigged everybody says well you can't have your blast caps with you you're just they hit the blast guys she's gonna blow you to smithereens yeah but those precious seconds with me and I had mine in my nut sack pre-rigged there you go yeah with us but Bubba had his pre-cut so we had to five-second ten seconds and then longer and then you had axle cracker itself with the full standard cord that you could blow it they would give you more distant how long was that core 50 feet 50 feet and so you could put the claim word down on the tree and pull back and then you hit it the handheld yeah Lorelei's we did and I'm one mission we were using the five seconds that Bubba put in but they were pre-cut we had them ready to go so you just put the fuse in and pull it and stick it in the ground yeah the little stakes standard for stakes yeah boom jamming in the ground and you're good yeah so you're setting those things up in like 10 seconds she always had to make sure they're pointed the right way yes indeed I point towards the end run towards enemy yeah continue on as Childress called an air strikes Letourneau reflected on how surreal this firefight had been it wasn't like anything he'd witnessed on television or in it in any movie instead of men charging each other and killing each other in plain sight here in triple-canopy jungle he observed Green tracers from ak-47s first or at the most an enemy hand or foot and somehow the NVA found firing lanes where they could launch shoulder held be 40 anti-personnel rockets that slammed above and around them as they raced down the hill for their lives again the end they voices of the Special Forces instructors echoed in his mind they had told the young aspiring Green Berets at Fort Bragg that the NVA was a tough resilient opponent many had fought against the Japanese during World War two and against the French driving them from Vietnam in 1954 after the Battle of Denby MTU in North Vietnam the sounds of King bees in the distance and the crashing Thunder of b40 rocket slamming into trees above his head shook Letourneau out of his moment of introspection and turned his undivided attention to a crescendo of ak-47 fire from the enemy SD Virginia responded with volley after volley a full and semi automatic gunfire while Letourneau and Cho fired several m79 rounds toward the densest section of the jungle where the ak-47 gunfire was emanating through the gunfire someone popped a smoke grenade which brought the King bees closer to arty Virginia's location in the jungle over the din of gunfire childress and cowboy told everyone to put their swiss seats on and prepare for an extraction in short order a king bee was hovering over st virginia more than 125 feet above the jungle floor Letourneau cowboy chow and hone hook their D rings into the old McGuire rig that hung from the end of the ropes and shortly were being lifted out of the jungle as the quartet of recon men was being lifted into the air the envy on the NVA Unleashed another salvo of ak-47 gunfire and several b40 rockets shrapnel from the rockets hit them with varying degrees of size and velocity all of them were wounded it was during those explosions that Letourneau realized his car 15 and somehow been caught in a rope above him just far enough away that he couldn't reach it he pulled out his m79 and launched a 40-millimeter grenade toward the NVA positions now all he could see of the enemy were hundreds of muzzle blast from ak-47s and green tracers Green tracer rounds eerily climbing toward the quartet of st virginia men before he could reload his m79 the king bee began to move away from the target area surprising him because the men had not yet cleared the jungle instead of continuing to climb out of the target moving straight up until the men cleared the jungles triple canopy of trees and vegetation the king bee was moving away from the target area due to heavy enemy ground fire in recent months at least two King bees were shot down during string extractions from hot targets but these facts were unknown to Letourneau at the time shrapnel from the b40 rocket exploded around st virginia men stinging them with bits of hot metal further spooking the king bee crew Letourneau began to violently collide with tall jungle trees feeling like a metal ball in a pinball machine litter noka room doff several more trees as Atlee one more b40 exploded in the treetops again showering him with shrapnel a tree branch hit Letourneau from the side and turned him upside down in his in his robe swiss seat as the Rope began to slip down from his hips Letourneau remembered spider telling him how a one zero from another team had recently been shot out of his Swiss seat during a rope extraction another tree struck Letourneau before he was able to muster a surge of strength and momentum to reach up and grab the rope above him as his body finally cleared the treetops the only thing between him and certain death below on the jungle floor 200 feet down was the single piece of rope tied into the king bee gees just another day and saw just another day in SOG huh and I had 13 of those like that how did you guys when you're getting hit with all that and you're shooting back hanging from a string I mean that's just like completely insane that that no one died on that on that rope on that extraction and you're also spinning just the rotation now hop down get knocked around the strings just spinning and the air is flowing past you and you're having you know you're just trying everything you do to stick with it but that was my first mission later on I've finally realized that I didn't have an extra d-ring on my web gear to strap in that's why I was falling over backwards I did that twice then I finally found out from my good buddy here til that I was doing it wrong because after my second mission childress had left but he had not given me that information out of all of our training I had not thought about it he was extracted on another job so he didn't see that happen this just it's it's unbelievable when I when I read these things I just can't it's just hard to even fathom the the mayhem when you're talking about just all these b40 rockets which is basically like an RPG it's an older hour RPG it's crazy going back to the book with one final urgent poll eternal was able to move himself upright in the Swiss seat as the king be continued to climb higher into the sky distance distancing itself from the fear of exploding v40 an ak-47 gunfire while gaining airspeed as the king bee ascended the heavily sweating Letourneau clung to the rope as another sensation overwhelmed his body chattering teeth within a matter of minutes that king bee had climbed to an altitude of more than 5,000 feet where the air is thinner and much much colder than on the jungle floor so much colder that litter nose body began shaking violently from the dipping temperatures as the king bee continued to climb into the safety of higher altitude in ordinary circumstances few people would ever think about freezing to death over Southeast Asia but for the men in C&C it was just another hurdle they had to clear as the king beheaded East will eternal look down on the spots in the jungle that appeared to be good L Z's thinking why don't you land there but st virginia's collective agony continued until the King bees finally landed in South Vietnam by that time every member of st st virginia had their circulation cut off to their legs they couldn't stand or walk all they could do is unhook from their Swiss seat grab their stuff and try and get the circulation going again in their legs while the door gunner helped them to get back to the king bee when the team returned to Quang Tri Quang tree long tree launch site before heading south to Phu Bai Childress pulled Letourneau aside and told him take good care of that radio you're gonna take it on the next mission whether you like it or not was he gonna make you bring the shot up radio yeah he did we did it saved his life tilts life in the end how's that that Christmas Day mission okay we had the Intel report was that the same radio yeah you brought a shot up radio and defeated not me I got a hundred-mile skip out of it that's ridiculous as darkness fell that King bees lifted off from quang tree for flew by when the old warbirds landed on fo b1 landing zone st Virginia was greeted by one man former st Virginia one-zero John McGovern he greeted each of the team members as they exec sitted the King bees asking each one are you okay after the King bees departed bathing them in sand dust and LZ debris kicked up by the product propwash McGovern asked Childress did you hear about Bader a tall Childress shook his head no what happened November 13th we lost a king bee with seven SF troops on it we lost the entire King bee crew they were a bunch of straphangers who volunteered to pull an elder son mission on the trail but an anti-aircraft round hit the king bee en route to the target it exploded in midair they never had a chance in silence McGovern drove the tired dirty and hungry team back to the team room as the Vietnamese team members climbed off the truck McGovern turned to Letourneau and said you know what was really scary about that mission the day before they got shot down me Lin black Rick Howard John Peters Tim Schaaf and a few others had volunteered and were actually on the King B's suited up ready to go only to be canceled last minute by bad whiskey x-ray which is weather in the AL that was too close for comfort after a long pause pause Letourneau he asked Letourneau how did it go out there I heard you were good on the radio you didn't get rattled you ain't a cheery no more you've joined a small unique Club of SF men C and C recon men who went across the fence it was nothing like I ever could have imagined litter no responded looking toward the Vietnamese team members he added let me get some chow for the in ditch you were right about them they have ice in their veins I'm beat I'll see you in the morning Letourneau walked through the white sand to the mess hall picked up some fresh sandwiches and cold sodas for the team after lingering with the Vietnamese team members Letourneau returned to his room finally taking off his rucksack and web gear as he started to undress Letourneau became aware of pain in his back where from where the four ak-47 rounds had slammed him face-first into the ground first he peeled off his jungle fatigued shirt and was amazed to find four bullet holes in it then he took off his undershirt ditto for bullet holes were in it Letourneau picked up his rucksack four bullet holes were in it both in the front and the back something he hadn't realized during the firefight then he looked in the mirror and saw four large welts and broken skin up his spine with the ak-47 rounds had hit his body after punching through his rucksack and the PRC twenty five only then did Letourneau begin to comprehend just how lucky he had been hours earlier in the day when the NVA shot him in the back four times Letourneau began to cut away the metal the black electrical tape around his socks which he pulled up over his pant legs to keep out leeches and bugs then he made a startling discovery when he pulled his pant leg from the sock and pulled off his right boot four ak-47 bullets fell on the ground in the heat of the battle the Frenchman didn't realize that after he was shot in the back the four 7.62 millimeter NVA rounds had fallen through his pants and his socks into his right boot he stood an utter amazement staring at the four rounds on the floor before picking them up and throwing them in the sand outside his room exhausted Letourneau walked over to the shower room the water stung the wounds in his back amazingly the four bullets had enough energy to penetrate his skin wounding him but not enough to get under his skin too tired to treat the four bullet wounds in his back and shrapnel wounds in his arm Letourneau finished his shower and went to bed so that that was mission number one there's a saying that we came to realize later on everybody just look at you and say well that's just another day in song my first mission I had to run 12 more before it was done and when you got done with it I mean were you were you talk to the other guys and they were telling you hey yeah that's that's how it is yes that's how it is so you couldn't go in the into the bar and go there this is what I did you just said yeah I I got back well and don't forget the footnote on that it goes like about about four or five days later the medics yeah tell about the wounds from the shrapnel of course I had to ignore everything because otherwise they'd all think I was you know just a Wooper so I just suck it up not say nothing and but all of a sudden I started getting these boils on me they were huge so I went to the medic and and maggio Louie yeah Maggio says well he says you got shrapnel in you buddy that's all that's all swollen it's infecting you he says you're gonna have that for quite a while until we can get every piece out of you he says I don't know how many holes you got but this one here needs attention right now and it's huge and there was a my arm and forearm actually and he looked at the other medic shipping and said hold him down and he looked at me and said yeah don't you look at what I'm doing don't you turn your head he said because otherwise you're gonna pass out on me well you see what I'm gonna do he said so don't you look holding judgment you hold him down and don't look her glass out well what he was doing was taking a big stick swab in hydrogen peroxide and burning a hole right through the the boil and then he took forceps he pulled the strings out with the shrapnel on the end from the beef 40 Rockets because they're all made you know in China they're Tchaikovsky no and so they had a lot of string that's how they wrapped them they didn't mold up in the metal like we did and so anyway I kept having to go and then another day I had to go in he had to do the back of my head and I had a couple in my head and then I had a couple in my back and another under my arm and I walked around with bandages until I went out on my next mission I gotta tell you I witnessed one of those getting pulled out and it was gross what were you doing just wanted to do swell they he had pulled several out well I you talked about the pus but hey where you gonna go back in the field anyways yeah it was like hey it doesn't matter we'll do we'll do what we can right now what makes that exact the field exactly because we had another mission lined out for Christmas of 68 so what was the op tempo like meaning how often would you when you did you did your 13 missions how long did that take what timespan was that over well then one-year tour one-year tour I had 13 missions and one bright light and someday we'll talk about the bright light I guess why not today you know it's a it's a it's not written in the books because of what it ended up being but a bright light and SOG is a volunteer situation where a team will volunteer to go in and get another team out that's okay can't get out and we had a lot of those or to try to find a team that disappeared and we had a lot of teams disappear IRT Idaho Lane and Owens completely disappeared they've never been found to this day no trace just completely off the map people have gone into this day and hunt the government hunts today and can't find them under good circumstances are these the guys that you took over for yes yes you know and so when I got on the Idahoans transferred from Virginia to Idaho because tilt went home and I became Lynn blacks 101 one day he had been gone for a while up at headquarters and I I always protected him because I'm the one one I protected my one zeros I had to know where they were don't do it all the time because you just never knew because we had we had nuns we had cam boats we had mountain yards and we had Vietnamese in our camp they all fought amongst themselves let alone wondering if they're the enemy and we also had an entire team of NVA Chu hoist to hoist being they gave up and that was team Cobra and they were there for a very special mission that they went on and to get us prisoners out of a camp that was located but we got a call Lin went up to their headquarters it had been a little while so I went up there to see what was going on he's walking back down and says can we go on a bright light I said we're ready we're packed cuz that's just what you did if you were asked you went he said we got two pilots down and we and there they we think they're alive we got to go in they brought a Jolly Green Giant in for us which is very unusual Air Force I don't know where they really took us at this point in time in my life I'd we still don't know they have all kinds of records but it's very confusing of where we went but we came in and that jolly when we circled over the top of the plane it was all intact it was just sitting there in elephant grass no one could figure out why so they brought us down and I jumped out but when I jumped out there was a slight lift in the plane and in the Jolly Green and it just came down back down on me bout crushed me and then it came back up and then Lin jumped out and my guys jumped out and each other and it was a no - what's a push-pull Cessna a engine in the front and engine in the back that's what I've been shot down yeah we think it was shot down we don't or crash town - - however we just don't know how it happened but what the real deal was is the plane whatever happened to it was making an emergency landing and he saw this opening like an LZ and thought this would be a good place to at least start the landing even if it went into the jungle it would slow it down problem was as soon as they hit the ground there was a bowl and they hit the front of the bowl with the front engine and stopped dead like a burner it was a bird yeah and it stopped it dead but it bent the engine around to the right and the man in the right seat was sucked up into their carburetors into the like home engine and he was in the fins and he just had his head in his arm stick it out said when I got there on that side it said ten minutes after 10:00 in the morning his Rolex watch was cracked the bezel was cracked and it stopped the watch 10 after 10:00 and we didn't get there till about 2:30 well and don't forget when the choppers going down you're under fire yeah and it's we're getting some small arms fire and Lynn goes to the pilot side on the on the left side and he looked fine but we realized the yoke had crushed his chest and killed him in place but it also had him trapped and we couldn't get either one out but at that point in time that was a trap they had set the Jolly Green had backed off and we started taking tremendous amount of a fire I looked across the inside of the cabin at Lynn and then looked back at me and I said I love you brother not getting out of this and he he said no we're not this is it finally got us and I looked up and radioed the Jolly Green to come back in and he shook his head I could see him plain as day he shook his head I don't think I can come back I said you better cuz I got an m79 pointed at you I'll take you down with us he moved up forward by that time there was 200 MVA surrounding us giving it everything they got and we managed to crawl into that chopper because if we got up on the wings and he scooped us up and I had already called in attack here because they already had TAC air ready and as we lifted off and got up about fifty feet and they once bad flew right underneath us between the plane and the in the chopper and I he looked up at me like this it was smiling and he dropped the WP right on top of them and there was crispy critters running everywhere and we got out of there and got back and we walked down landed us back at fo before and we walked down the the road back to our couch and we just looked at each other's another day and saw and all the time there on the ground made their under fire going in they put a perimeter around the aircraft while Lynn and Doug went in to try to establish what the status of the pilots war and the firefight was intense Kember when I got back Doug had just left and I came back to now at the end of October 69 so that bright lay was fresh on Lynn's mind he talked about it and I talked to happen it later about that Braley and they're going dis was crazy cuz chef Sally went in before in ditch from RT I know and that team and Lynn was like man I don't even know how we got out of there so as one of real another just a really tight one but like Doug says in a way when you now in retrospect like just another day in SOG but that wasn't really stuck yeah I just thought now out of all my missions and if you read the book and were tilt honors me with a few missions in his books between across the fence and on the ground that one there was as tense as it got and we thought it was over fit physically and mentally we gave up we thought it was over that we just weren't gonna get up out of that mess and get into that chopper then b40 rockets were hitting that plate underneath that Jolly Green we were going up in the air faster than the chopper could get us up in the air from the pounding we were takin that had been four that's bad we might not have mm-hmm to this day we can't find this bad pilot we have reunions we go to as Maddon readings but we still haven't been able to find that spam pilot did that day cuz ways sans like when the Jolly Green is pulling out the beef forty pounded underneath and the armor playing could sustain it and it would but it give the chopper Jolla Clint black hat on October 15 this but there is experiencing again one october year later same thing exactly yeah i'm surprised that they take those be forty strikes like that I mean one lucky shop that hits the tail rotor or something analyst game over sure you know when we get back on missions we walk around our King B's and count how many bullet holes and how many were in the blades we do there's clean shots through the blades and then we caught 40 50 80 rounds in our King B's when we come back and pieces of metal gone that they had to put tin over they use beer cans yeah Aluna beer cans yeah and what about the what about that operation were you we had to go and get the 55-gallon drum of and pull that one over okay well go through that somebody would probably like to read it in the book but we'll kind of go through that we were trained we had a CIA agent come in and train us for a brand new explosive detonator there was a time device they were shaped on the top end of a bun of a 55-gallon drum as curls you put a wrench on it and unscrew it you've seen them and we said this is by the way this is a seal type mission so you really appreciate this no this is absolutely yeah when I read about it I was like that's a good seal mission but yeah but oh well well they didn't let the seals do that in those days no they were busy on the coast yeah they were busy on the coast they really were we under this I mean everything up to that is in a jungle you get to the river but exactly but we actually went into secret lockup couldn't talk to anybody nobody could come in and talk to us and we went through these exercises and training we actually loaded up for it and they took us out to it and took us to Hong tree and we launched out of there and went into layoffs into this huge river that they had but we had to stay away from it we had to actually hike in for two days to get to it and when we got there and down the hill and to the river it was night on the second end of the second day and then Gunther was my one zero and I was as one one there was no one one two and he was an ex-marine and he was an e6 and he was my one cero he'd been around a while and he says okay go in and get that drum and I says well you're the marine you're Navy why should I go in you're the one okay you're here the one one you're a PFC and I'm an e6 so that's how it's going down well and don't forget before you get there they hiked through jungle for two days and two nights right to meet the CIA agent got that who gave them the specialized charge he come from he had Chinese with him and he said I will meet you out there to give you this device because I can't trust anybody to have this device in case you're caught between now and then I said there's no way we're gonna find you out there this is impossible he says don't you worry about it you get to this coordinate and I will I will find you that's impressive and he did we got to that coordinate and we waited and we waited next thing I know he come right out of the jungle and there he was we were gonna kill him we thought was NBA yeah of course I need Zola naka 'less was his name at Fiat pronounce it right I probably do I can't pronounce it right a common spelling it was he actually was a renegade CIA agent he was a desk jockey that wanted to prove that he could be an infield agent as the story finally went that we didn't learn about this until what about 12 years ago yeah and did you meet him yeah later no no no no no one knows where he went or what happened to it we met another CIA guy we needed that was actually a counterpart to a Russian KGB agent that when they D D finally admitted and Declassified the Vietnam War mitad they had 3000 Russians helping the the NVA and they had a reunion and they did an actual video of the reunion admitting that they had worked with the NVA in the Chinese in helping the the NVA go up and down the Ho Chi Minh Trail well this Zola nachus had figured this out and got a hold of this device and how we learned about it was this CIA agent had gone there and helped declassify all the records of Special Ops stuff that was they were they had located and he hold here they found my name in the KGB at files in Moscow twice my code name and my real name and the missions that I ran they did that twice and they found Lin because we bumped into a what we I thought was a Mexican spanish-speaking person speaking broken English and I'm from California right I go back to my old days and I told Lynn I said this this guy's Mexican gotta be what the hell's he doing out here and he's talking to us on the radio he's got our frequency and Glynn says give me that football so he goes back and forth with he mean and he says you got to move out of the area he says I'm not going to move out of the area I'm here to stay here's my coordinates he gave him a five digit coordinate no what are you gonna do he says well nothing but you need to move out of he was trying to save our butts because he he was from Angola he was a Cuban stationed in Angola and had been shipped of lost layoffs and then turned around and he hated the Vietnamese so much he was trying to help us but we could see him on the other side of the river that where we were at on this particular mission and so that mission was in the KGB files that we had spoke to him and he had our they knew it was Artie Idaho and that we knew it was letting me and so that as much because we had spies in Saigon giving all this information out knew he had a spy that that they finally caught an American it was giving all this information now but for two missions I'm in the KGB files so on this oil drum mission we get down there after we've been given the device at night and I go in and I grab a hold of a drum of course they have those little lips on there and I can pull that drum and they're full of about three-quarters because they got to be buoyant and I bring that fuel drum right to the side and I'm holding it there and Gunther unscrews it that bug off and puts the new one in it screws it up tight now I've got to get that drum back out into the flow while the flow is NVA walking it down with bamboo poles pushing them around so I get it out there but I can't get back because here they come so I had to go under and hold my breath but I can't hold my breath that long this water is ice-cold right but fortunately I was a great swimmer in my youth and I could I could handle this but I could get my nose just above the surface blow out and take a breath and go back under but because it's dark and they went on by me finally but I thought for sure they'd stick me with the weather one of the poles but they pushed that drum on down and the few drums that were around me and I came back to the edge and crawled out but I was so cold I can hardly move I'm soaking wet of course and Gunther says come on we got to go and I finally put my gear back on my rucksack in the radio and my web gear and everything else back on and up the hill we go but I'm still just barely making it just barely make I'm so stiff and we crawled out of there took two days to get out but that device was set for two days but they hadn't gone off yet but we finally got extraction orders in and they came in goddess and strung us out and when we were on strings it went off McCovey right it was there and it was like an atom bomb it was a miniature mushroom and the shockwave even though we were miles away came through us on strings and the choppers and just like this and we're going like this back and forth and and the chopper and in the cubby plane is is shaking like this and I mean it was like an atomic bomb just went through us what you picture when you see and then then everything became calm and mission completed that's a good one that's a real cool that's a good I knew never knew well they didn't know until the Russians knew yeah other than that they never knew who what and we weren't allowed to talk or tell anybody in camp when we got back they just what were you doing just another day in song and that was what we said because we weren't even allowed to tell anybody what we did because of the CIA mission that we ran but we everybody had certain things that they did like that but it was the first time had never been accomplished what did you notice about the one zeroes that you had from a leadership perspective that you remember us like yeah this is this is the quality some of the qualities that they had from a leadership perspective that you would follow him I was most fortunate I think I had great one zeroes some of them not as great as others but when you my first one he was my idol because my first two missions and Thanksgiving of 68 and Christmas of 68 and I you can't ever forget those you know and so in fact the mission of 68 is where I got the skip from the bloat up radio that let him know he was walking into an ad letting tilt know that he was walking into an ambush and I'm laying on a trail with the radio on and heard this my interpreter comes up and interprets what's going on I managed to get ahold of spider parks he just had me going by for a radio check and I told him what's going on he radios to the tilt to turn around and go back that he had Intel and tilts going what yeah is the first time I ever had like a direct Intel report do not go through the Northeast this is the Christmas Day mission we were on top of that Knoll and Lynn and I had talked about that was the one quiet area probably there's a problem but we were talking that spider goes do not go through the Northeast we have an Intel report do not go there only Intel report that never happened before or after one alive mission we're on the ground and we didn't know what to help us but they were right we didn't you noticed or we could extract us and we're back in base a few days later him above a connect and it's gone like well were you on the ground at Christmas and then we found out that he had that Intel report that was confirmed the one place we could have gone we shouldn't have our instincts were right but we had the confirmation from the Intel report and I was just amazing you know to this day they got out of it and due to other factors they got out of it but just that it saved the team was walking into an l-shape ambushed it had been slaughtered and they were they were pushing them that way with trackers gunfire and everything else and so they just just like you say the gods were always with us sometimes but at that very next day I'm still on the trail where we were signed that was the trail for my very first mission we we got into North Vietnam into it called nickel steel and I've been laying there for four days through this process and Gunther was I I mean Childress was my one zero and we were taking turns and it had been two foliated with Agent Orange and so we had a pretty good view and all of a sudden I saw six point men coming up MDA I'm up there at the trail behind a log they're down below I give him the signal I give him the signal I got six and I can see him and Childress right away knows what's going on so he's preparing the team to fight and exfil out of the situation but he can't with me up above but here comes one of the NVA he comes right up to the log and steps over and steps right on me I put my car 15 into his belly and I pulled the trigger all twenty wounds made a big gapping hole all the way through him threw him over the log and I'm on the run and I've got the radio and down the hill we go and here comes 200 NBA and their point chasing us and we're we're bringing I'm trying to get TAC air on the line I finally do we're putting TAC air between them and us and I'm throwing smoke over my shoulder yeah yes is anything anything in this smoke feeling and finally they bring the some slicks in and pull us out and and and get us out of there on strings the odd strings again and on the run and so the side note to the whole mission is I don't know how many we killed but it was not a good day for them but that Agent Orange was the only time I was ever near it and right now I've got stage 4 cancer from Agent Orange was a limited amount of time left so that's why I'm glad I'm here to tell a few stories I'm glad you're here to airborne the so how many tours did you do was that what one tour I signed up for why I volunteered to go in Special Forces when I was Regular Army I volunteered Regular Army went through got Special Forces volunteered for Vietnam volunteered for CCN and SOG and and did one tour and went back home and became a weapons instructor for Special Forces training group and and got out it's how many years was the total three three years three years that was it and then what you do when you when you got out I kind of went back to rodeo and training horses and things like that and then I sort of got calm got your PA's license yeah I got my pilot's license fixed wing and rotary where you got home how long did it take to kind of adapt to the civilian life it took about a year that because I slept with my car 15 and then when I was in training group I always had all the weapons around me I felt safe but it you know fourth of July it was always a hard one with stuff going on you don't know and it took me a while to do to calm down and not because I had a lot of kills and you just have to work through all that all the time and I was pretty good because not after that period of time you know we never talked to each other we weren't allowed to talk about it for 20 years as what I was told so I never ever talked to anybody I never met anybody until 2000 did you guys I mean when you when you guys didn't keep in touch you guys didn't write each other or each other's health and I wrote each other but he his family moved I only had his mother and father's address and I lost contact for 25 years I moved he moved my parents moved and so the commo drop but we were down if there was no books no yeah nobody could say anything what about other team members other guys was there anyone that you kept in touch with over the next 20 years no so when you were done you were done I was done your didn't your day was over yeah because I couldn't find anybody I didn't know anybody to talk to so I was just done and I just let in my life just I never thought about it anymore you know I I knew I did stuff but I couldn't talk about it and I had gotten married and I told my wife about it but we just thought that we didn't know where anybody went I didn't know where anybody went to and then all of a sudden the internet came about I typed in SF one time and a couple of emails came up old ones I typed in McCluskey mmm God he was working as a medevac pilot and he called me and he was on shift and he saw it and he called me he gave me tilts phone number and I called tilt the next day was Easter Sunday year was half 2000 yeah we're going to get ready to go to church I haven't I hadn't seen him since 1968 our 69 and where were you living at the time I lived up Bayou cemani National Park in the town called Mariposa beautiful and you were just down and in Oceanside yeah working at the paper to fish rapper so I said well shoot you know I could so I got the phone number and I called him on Easter Sunday he was going out the door to go to church and I said you better sit down this is the Frenchman I did we've been we talk every day though because we can what did you uh what do you do for a job so you had to kind of continue to kind of get it out of your system we're breaking horses or whatever rodeo for another year after you know phone's breaking poor poster and then you went into the construction business one in the construction business that my father had gone into a private construction for a particular person and so that left the license open so I just continued the license and he handed it over to me and I built for almost 45 years I'm retired now what where did you guys overlap what was that did you guys overlap in Artie Idaho is that when you guys overlapped well we are at Fubon when he came in he came a little bubble okay and so McGovern got him first before I ever talked to him and I got Bubba so we were in camp we're training together out at the firing range then Bob and I were doing our targets they're doing theirs and then when we moved he was that he closed out F will be one is the last SF troop there his recon team closed it locked the gate by that time Lynn and I were down in Danang already so we were running missions he went down with with a RT Virginia with gun through wall and so they went down and ran their mission including the famous oil drum one mm-hmm and Lynn and I were doing our thing and then by April my time in country was getting close so Lynn had agreed to be to come to one zero we had a special mission we're supposed to go up to the media pass we brought Doug in max Fortenberry and an officer to go with us on that mission we trained for the mission crane right up to it went to the launch site on the choppers took off and they called us back and because two aircraft was shot down over the target area that day and so I was about four or five days from de Rossi I mean they we went back to camp they put up the Marble Mountain so we're up there we have some pictures from that time there and then I walked off in Marble Mountain when I pack up my gear and went home so Doug stayed with Idaho jonard so from April at the end of April all the way through to October 69 he's with Idaho with Lynn and they ran a load of missions and when I come back he had just left base Butlins there so the limb was the one zero so he and I took turns and then finally sergeant major goes there's too much experience here black you're out of here mm-hmm and I went back to being a one zero for another five months and it by that time he had come home but he was in training group mm-hmm so technically he got out of the army after I did I got out in April and you got out in June July September 1st December 1st you know and so I went my I went back to the Garden State and then he went back to California and separate ways and we did we had the cards and some notes I don't think made phone calls no and it just led us back if we had a couple guys I had other people I stayed in contact with and then I just figured he got a job with the CIA or did something somewhere else you know and then finally got the phone call on 2000 and the rest is history and how often do you guys link up now every day it's on the phone like it's like you and Michael Charles you know we talk almost every day and because we can we're alive and we try now to spread the story since we've been Declassified like you're helping tremendously to spread this story to let people know that we actually there was a secret war going on and we were actually taking the war to the enemy because our country had signed a treaty saying that we would not go into North Vietnam Laos and Cambodia or the DMZ in which we operated in everyday right we weren't stationed there we just flew in by helicopters people always ask me well how long did you fight in South Vietnam I said I never fought a day in South Vietnam the oh you needn't do anything no that's proof Yeah right it's what was your reaction as stuff started to kind of come to the surface and people started talking about it it was a slow Prince been a slow process I've got a hold of tilt and then we saw each other for the very first time after all those years like he was standing on a corner when I drove by and picked him up yeah you know Society yeah we went to an airshow and we started talking we had our photo albums that we weren't supposed to have because no pictures were supposed to be taken look at all the pictures that are out there good recon men always do whatever they want right so but it's been the slowest as well we have a reunion now I really and we'd have it in Vegas every October now and it's been going on what 45 years I pick 43 44 years worth I've been there about 18 years now a special operation is Association yeah and so we go there and see each other and sit around and drink and of course I don't drink but you know we everybody drinks and it's a free bar and and tell old war stories to each other and couples lost a couple eyes and the stories get more exaggerated and but we we have a we have the output problem is we're dying faster than then you can were we were losing about 10 or 12 tops six seven in the very beginning now we're losing over 50 a year there weren't that many of us to start with but this is a combined all the support troops actual recon troops there's probably not but 45 or 50 there don't at all because we only had what 450 recon errs cousin you talked to yeah you know and so we have this great reunion every year and I just never miss it because I don't know who's gonna die it's like yesterday was our interpreter perhaps two year anniversary of his death and most everybody's going down with Agent Orange of some kind of cancer and stuff El DeBarge well just went down from an accident he was our two-star general I'm very proud of him but at the time he was shot go ahead Thomas sure he wasn't well I didn't I my loss to work directly I was under his command but my my boss at the time just you know just absolutely loved him and and you know tried to tell me tried to give me quotes when he'd come back from a meeting with bars well he's at bar old man said this no man said that you know he he was just at my house not too long before that and my train room I've got trains lyon l and he was there and had a great but there are roommates for a few months okay we went R&R together i met his first son when he was 2 months old Wow yeah well we could you know remember stories Alvin getting shot in the chest yeah so two days later Eldon and Doug went to Hawaii with their respective wives for R&R they're there for five days and Eldon met his son for the first time huh his eldest son Brant yeah Brad Brant was there so you guys must have watched him cuz he was you know a general in the army he was in the limelight for sure for a military guy oh yeah and you guys knew the whole time you're looking at him thinking hey blue is calm specialist fourth class yeah that's the way we knew I could never call him general I could never call him a bar drawer I called him elder you know spent for Elvan yeah and-and-and he was the same Eldon that we met in 68 is the same I'll know but it went to being with us last year mmm he was there and as we spend at glory and know that's the way we respected here like my son got wounded and Iraq he went and saw this care for that the hospital picked up for him right away they couldn't believe what two-star general a little grunt yeah some of those betcha he's a scout and he got banged up with a Humvee really bad but the Elton was here was that August 20th 2005 a couple weeks later you were in country then no it's I didn't was in there Oh three or four and 106 yeah where do you know where it wasn't Iraq yeah he was southeast of the Green Zone okay yeah small world what's he doing now he's up at doing heavy equipment training okay up in the Long Beach him and Bruno his faithful companion are there they're doing it and just kickin ass takin average so pretty soon have all the licenses in place and if you need any heavy equipment work give him a call right on and every freshman will build a house for you I mean what about so you got you got you got married when he got done is that or along the way along the way yeah did you have any kids I have a son and I have a daughter I've got a grandson and two granddaughters very proud of him I'm really proud of my son he he has his own company in the oil business doing really well he repairs all the big fracking machines okay yeah right now I am in Texas I was in Tennessee when I'm in Texas now now that I've found out what my medical health is I want to try to get my grandson to know me before I go well that's that's awesome he's gonna be as proud you can be as proud of you as you are of him that's for damn sure well they made an action figure of me so I've left that action figure for him that's the famous picture yes the famous SOG the Frenchman yes I've seen it there's a good review of it on on YouTube I watched yeah you can go to youtube and look up Frenchmen action figure and it's done really well by Ryan Peters yeah he's did a really excellent job even made the box and everything for it yeah it's pretty awesome well I'll definitely I'll definitely post the data that picture when when this goes up when this goes out on to the under the interwebs as they say and you've got your Frenchmen challenge coin I got my Frenchmen challenge corn yeah it's right here the lowest-ranking challenge coming up it makes the generals I'd be it's a PFC challenge good it doesn't get much better than that yeah for sure you got anything else I think this is a good place I mean and if you listen to this and you think of more things you want to say but you know I think this is a good good spot to wrap up this one so if you got anything to tell you got anything else first no I these stories you know it's funny because even we were in base we never knew a lot of the details and so when I put the books together talk to other people like the oil drums story we learn about 40 years later that Lin black had done the similar thing with RT Idaho after I left right in between these guys and it's just like lot of history that comes out slowly like Doug has said was anyone tracking was anyone writin down the history as I was happening was anyone taken the operational summaries and compiling them somewhere they are all destroyed that was when I left Phu Bai one of my Jobs was to go through and make sure that all the drums had been no the ashes that they'd burnt all the lot of reports after-action reports were all burnt and then as we pulled out of every F OB and closed down CCN and CCS and CCC we closed them all that everything was destroyed there's very few after-action reports what there are is just minuscule reports people try to put them out on eBay but there there just isn't any door out that we have been there reports of archives that were even now begin to look into but at a recent reunion a guy came up to me and said hey you know if you've done your books I got I'd like to talk to you because my job when we close con to meeee was to destroy all the records yeah yeah a lot of Valor yeah we that's that's that's why I didn't even receive my Purple Heart for that first mission until eleven eleven eleven really yeah had to go back to the paperwork on it and we had took six years and a lot of people and we and a lot of affidavits and a lot of this and a lot of that and it took six years and told Diane black my congresswoman called me one day I was coming back from Arlington from Barry and Gunther wall and and my Virginia team Donnie shoe and in bill brown William Brown and she calls me on the phone I don't even know who she is she says are you Doug maternal the Frenchman I said yes and she says I'm Diane black congressman for Tennessee for your district or your district and I'm in my limousine right now and I'm holding a Purple Heart in my hand how do you want it presented I said I want you to pin it on the front of our Memorial in Gallatin Tennessee and she did on 11/11/11 Wow yeah yeah and my guys came and watched I had seven of my sagres come to that and watch tilt came everybody flew there we were there and even there we found one Domenic's that had pulled that this distrain out from the shrapnel uh-huh as an eyewitness that's that was a key thing we got the CEO to do a letter but took a while to track it down and put it together but we did because all the records have been destroyed you know so well this record won't be destroyed right here I'm sure that podcast one eight six one eight six there you go but I would like to say as a closing thing my mom and dad are both gone my dad was a hero I he gave me everything he had to give he was the best father ever my mother was the best mother I'm proud of my kids my daughter my son what they've accomplished in their lives I'm proud of my grandkids and what they do and I'm glad I have something to leave behind yeah his mom when she learned that my mother died I got a phone call the next day till your mom's dead but I'm your mom yep my mom loved every one of them Bubba came to LA it's said I need a bunk up for a couple days six and a half months later and he'd gone through the LAPD six and a half months later he even got married he brought his wife into the house my mom and dad finally said enough sit up brother for your wedding present we're giving you an apartment but any sauger was welcome to my mom and dad's house oh yeah well that is awesome and as you both should know any sagar is welcome to come here at any time and share their story this this door to this podcast is open this could just become the saag podcast as far as I'm concerned at this point so work on it we thank you appreciate it tell me what I'm about yeah you've opened up a lot of doors to people that will hear this history absolutely and and it there I'm sure that I'm sure you're hearing from them till I don't man you've been transferring some of the messages to me what's your what's the Twitter that you're actually looking at right now because you have a couple I have John SOG you have SOG Chronicles you know which one it is my daughter sceptres one is J striker my initial j in the striker mine I haven't I've fallen out the Twitter thing you you've admitted so Instagram Instagram Instagram is what you're doing a little bit social yeah over yeah I'm trying to catch up to you I might be slow but I'm slow who've been so busy the last few weeks between work and yes responding to a lot of feedback from folks off of the last podcast people want to reach out to you should they go through through John Frenchman yeah they can go they go great out through is John or they could catch me on train 153 the word train one the numbers 5 3 at hotmail.com that's my email this is email and then my website is saw chronicles calm and my emails here and I'll connect anybody with Doug that's the old-fashioned way and instagrams worship we're still working on there yeah but my daughter's gotta give me another but she went to Tennessee so what she's out of town I'm struggling but maybe give me a briefing we hang up here for that but oh good a it's such an honor to talk to you guys Frenchman it's an honor to meet you and you're welcome back anytime I was glad that I could come and meet you and I told you what happened on the airplane I'm sitting next to somebody what are you doing I'm gonna go doing a podcast with a guy named chocolate Jocko oh my god I got him on my feet whips out his phone and it there you are and he says I got Twitter with him I got everything but it's my buddy yeah I mean why would I even expect that somebody would have it's such a small world it really is well regardless our service were all part of one percent or less of our country mmm that served the country yeah and in combat and I'll tell you the amount of feedback I've gotten from when you came on tilt I mean it's been overwhelming the number of people that just you know thank you for your service they're gonna pass the same thing on to you you know you guys should know that America loves you guys for what you did for this country well thank you thank you very much you two airborne air but all the way on would and with that SOG has left the building the Frenchman and Tilt have departed awesome what an honor to have those guys on and I got to say this right after we got done of course we we did some more talking and the Frenchman was was explaining the fact that when he would go out on a mission every mission he would go out on he would square away his footlocker make sure everything was ready to be shipped home because every time you went out he figured he would not be coming back so real heroes and it's awesome to be able to sit here and talk to those guys and what a wooden honor that is and anyways you know actually one of the reasons that I can sit here and talk to guys like tilt and the French men is because of all the support that comes in from all of you so appreciate you know that because as you know I don't have any like regular whatever they're called advertisements on here because I'm not gonna interrupt someone like tilt or someone like the Frenchman or someone like btf Tony or someone like Dakota Meyer I'm not gonna interrupt them so I can say you know hey buy this or buy that or whatever and I'm not gonna stop reading colder than hell or I'm not gonna stop reading The Forgotten Highlander I'm not gonna stop reading one soldier's war so that I can you know mention a product or something like that so to me that's not what this podcast is about the information and yeah the information in this podcast is what is paramount to me then getting it to all of you uninterrupted is what matters because I will tell you that I wish that I could have listened to this podcast when I was growing up or even when I was a kid when I was in the teams just to just to have this information would have been really helpful to me so I'm not keeping it from anyone so that's what we're doing here so if you do want to help out which like I said that's that's what allows us to be able to do this that's what allows me to be able to fly the Frenchmen out here to sit down and and talk and tell his story and so it's because of you all out there supporting supporting my companies or my books or whatever so it's appreciated so if you want to if you do want to help out you want to support the podcast then you can check on orange and main comm where we have keys for jujitsu we have rash guards we have clothing of all whatever sorts including jeans and we got supplements up there people used to ask me what supplements I take I take the supplements that I make so join warfare krill oil discipline discipline go and I drink milk because it's awesome and delicious and of course chocolate white tea so you can get some of that that's all at origin main dot-com we also have chocolate or calm where you can get rash guards t-shirts hats hoodies all that stuff if you like the podcast subscribe to it and don't forget that I also have a kids podcast called the war your kid podcast so your kids can get in the game too that's called the warrior kid podcast check out warrior kids soap from young Aiden who's making soap on his farm up in central California that's an Irish Oaks ranch com there's a YouTube channel that's called Jocko podcast and that's where we have the videos of this so if you want to see what the Frenchman looks like or you want to see what tilt looks like you can check out the YouTube channel there's also little shortened excerpts of this podcast I got a album called psychological warfare that's on iTunes Google Play other mp3 platforms it's me talking about how to overcome little interruptions in your game that you're trying to win so you can check that or we also have flipside canvas calm my brother Dakota Meyer has that company and he's making visual artwork for your walls that you can hang up we also have on it on it comm slash jock or you can get all kinds of cool stuff on there kettlebells jump ropes sandbags things that you can get stronger with I've also written a bunch of books if you want to support you can get some of the books way the warrior kid is a series of books I wrote there's three of them the most recent one is called where's where there's a will and that book is available right now and so where's worrywe the warrior kid won and way the warrior kid - which is subtitled Mark's mission miking the Dragons that book for younger kids that I wrote so your kids can learn how to overcome fear the discipline equals free freedom Field Manual which is a manual about how to get after it all the little questions that you have are answered if you want the audio version of that it's on iTunes Amazon music google play other mp3 platforms and of course there's extreme ownership which is the first book I wrote with my brother Leif babban and then we have a follow-on book to that called the dichotomy of leadership and those books are both about leadership and how to lead people I have a leadership consultancy called a salon front and what we do is solve problems through leadership if you have problems in your company it is because you have problems with your leadership so go to a salon front comm if you want us to come and help you solve those problems EF online this is leadership training online it's interactive and I always say that leadership is not an inoculation you can't get one shot of it and you know everything it's like going to one jiu-jitsu class and thinking you know how to choke people out now no you have to train continually that's what EF online is for its online interactive training EF online calm we got the muster events these are leadership conferences musters gatherings where we deep dive and get granular on the pragmatics tools we have for leading people the next one we're doing is in September September 19th and 20th it is in Denver it is going to sell out in fact it's getting close I think right now yeah they've all sold out that one will sell out as well and then December 4th and 5th in Sydney Australia who knows when we're going back to Sydney but we're going this time so if you want to come to the muster check out extreme ownership calm and then EF overwatch EF overwatch calm what we're doing there is taking proven spec ops leaders proven combat aviation leaders and placing them into companies in the civilian sector that need leadership so if you need leadership in your organization go to EF overwatch comm and if you want to give me some feedback on this podcast or you have a question or you have an answer or whatever for me I'm on Twitter Instagram and Facebook at Chaco willing and then once again just the deepest thanks I can give to to John Stryker Meyer tilt and Doug Letourneau the Frenchman for doing everything that they did to fight against the dark tyranny of communism as it tried to spread through the world they they held the line and it's incredible the operations that they did and it's incredible the sacrifices that those operators made in that time especially and obviously the ones that did not come home and to the rest of you that have served or you are serving thank you for keeping us safe from today's threats which are vast and equally evil it is you that keeps us secure and keeps our way of life secure into our police and law enforcement to the firefighters out there to the paramedics EMTs dispatchers correctional officers Border Patrol Secret Service and and all other first responders you are on call every day you are waiting when we need help you are there so thank you for keeping us safe and to everyone else out there remember what the Frenchmen remember what the Frenchman said after his colonel got done explaining the treacherous situation that they were set to go into when that Colonel asked if anyone had any questions the Frenchman replied where do you need help where do you need help it's a simple question but it's a powerful one there's people around you that need help ask them what it is they need ask them where it is that they need help and then get up and lock and load your sawed-off m79 or whatever tool it is that you need to unleash to give them the help that they need and until next time this is Jocko I hope

Channel: Jocko Podcast

Views: 342,794

Keywords: discipline, vietnam, sog, green beret, history, podcast, jocko, no echo, john stryker meyer, extreme ownership, leadership, freedom

Id: dXy3rlnGDyo

Length: 141min 53sec (8513 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 18 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/streetfools]

Fucks me up to listen to these and hear that they survived literal hell, and Agent Orange is ultimately how they are killed. Vietnam is still killing these warriors. Such a shame.

[u/[deleted]]

Stryker needs his own podcast.

[u/useful_stranger]

What happened to Echo?

[u/walloffear]

Jocko just mentioned on IG that Doug just passed away. So sad.

[u/jaxles]

This episode had some pretty tall stories IMHO.