Jocko Podcast 247 w/ John Stryker Meyer W.T.F. What it Takes to Beat The Odds. Wiskey Tango Foxtrot.

this is jocko podcast number 247 with echo charles and me jocko willink good evening echo good evening are you old enough to have a draft card he says yes yes i'm old enough i'm 18. we have to have one well do you have one yeah i say with a full mouth sorry about that spitting hash browns across the table then you're old enough to enlist and get your duty out of the way you sure you're old enough you don't look 18 kind of skinny too i don't know if you'd make it through the most basic of training he riley smiles i'm 18 and can prove it you want to see the card testily reaching for my wallet spitting a mouthful of eggs on the table hey don't go sideways on me boy this is a friendly conversation not a food fight the sergeant laughs the only thing i want you to hand me is your bill for this meal my treat you're trying real hard to get me to enlist smiling i hand him the bill you a recruiter yes i'm a recruiter i'm staff sergeant king what's your name lynn lynn black well lynn black if you volunteer you get your choice of assignments and which country you want to serve in how does that sound and behind door number two it's gotta sound a hell of a lot better than wandering then wondering where you're going to spend the night king cracks a smile my office is right down the street we eat afterwards i enlist and then spend the night at the ymca paid for by the us army the next morning i'm on a boeing 707 headed for a medical examination and basic training at fort ord california during basic i'm selected for the advanced leadership school at fort knox kentucky before going on to the armor school fort knox that's the place they keep all the gold staff sergeant king has signed me for three years active duty in the 13th armored career group europe germany where i'll have access to all the great european art museums and the artwork of the old masters the army is going to pay me to tour europe what a deal my driving passion and greatest ambition has always been to spend my life as a fine art painter i've been working at the local seattle television station art department all the way through high school the art director robert c dinsmore is a decorated world war ii veteran who has encouraged me to get my military duty out of the way the world in 1963 is a peaceful place leave it to beaver and i love lucy are on television so you might have caught that name lynn black and it might sound familiar to you if it does it's probably because you heard it here from john striker meyer aka tilt on podcast 180 181 or 182 or maybe you heard it from doug the frenchman letourneau on podcast 186. like john striker meyer and like doug letourneau lynn black was an army soldier a green beret and he fought in vietnam as a member of sog the studies and observation group a highly classified group that conducted missions in vietnam cambodia and laos they suffered over 100 percent casualties meaning if you were a sog operator you were going to get wounded or killed that is how these men served and sacrificed and before you listen to this podcast if you haven't listened to 180 181 182 186 and additionally 204 205 and 206 with dick thompson go listen to them go listen to them and you'll see that the men of sog are true heroes heroes that conducted completely insane missions missions that very few people ever knew about and lynn black codenamed blackjack wrote a book about his experiences and i just read from that book the book is called whiskey tango foxtrot wtf which we are going to dig into today now unfortunately for a variety of reasons lynn could not make an appearance on the podcast today but we were able to bring back tilt john striker meyer one of my heroes who served with lynn on many operations to talk us through the book and provide some details that only someone who was there would know and understand with that tilt thanks for coming back on good evening sir good to be back awesome to have you here indeed um you you actually sent me this book do you remember sending me this book absolutely yeah because we did the frenchman and i said lynn's book was out and lynn maurice black juniors is the man that i always held in the highest esteem ever since the first time we ran into each other for b1 at foodby in 1968. just a character yeah well and and it's i'm hoping at some point we have the opportunity to get him on here um we'll see how that plays out but hopefully this will provide some encouragement you know just to just to do this section of the book and man it's um just like every single time i start reviewing what you guys did in vietnam i i just i i cannot believe what you guys did i can't i can't believe the level of heroism and courage that you guys had on all these operations they're crazy they're freaking crazy operations i told you last time i said hey if i was in charge i wouldn't have improved any of those operations right i remember that yeah unbelievable and and um and believe me i've approved some pretty some pretty sketchy operations in my time but you guys took it to a whole new level and the success that you guys had on the battlefield was awesome and um yeah every time i every time i read through these books it it just blows my mind and it's an honor to have you on and and to pay some kind of tribute to what you guys did and to have you know what you guys did was you know that's that's my heritage you know even though i'm in the navy you're in the army i mean just the special operations what you guys did over there was just laid the groundwork and and set the bar so high for the rest of us forever oh well thank you well and you know and i'm glad you're reading wtf because lynn's just one of those characters i mean of all the stories for sog for eight years if you put down some of the most harrowing stories the top five for eight years lynn's gotta be right near the top if not the top one that's why i'm glad we're gonna dig into it a little bit today just to pay homage to a man that i've respected from day one and you guys did and i don't think we're gonna go into this part today but you got he but when we covered across the fence and on the ground you you and lynn worked together for how long how long were you guys actually working together uh he ran a he's he came on our team for a few minutes as a strap hanger right and then we went down to ccn in the january of 69 then he came on the team bubba sure left lynn came on and then our little people loved them plus they knew him from october and so when i left i just turned the team over to him i just knew the team was in good hands i never worried about it i came back lynn was the 1-0 that was his 1-1 for a while and then we took turns and then they finally just said hey you got too much experience here black and then yanked him and put him in some special projects that he went off and did and i took over idaho and went back to running just simple recon where lynn was doing some some classified stuff all right well let's get a little bit let's learn a little bit of about lynn black and where he came from i'm going to go to the book here and it says this in the category of common things that go unnoticed in the world while ho chi minh was working for the oss saving allied lives lynn maurice black jr was born to lynn senior and violet black of albany oregon lin jr that's me this is where i come into the picture i was immediately given the name bosco when my mother found that by mixing a bit of the chocolate drink into my baby milk i dozed right off in berlin what is bosco what is it of some kind of old-school chocolate drink or something like hershey's chocolate okay yeah i've never had boss i don't know how that missed me because i'm a chocolate milk kind of fiend he goes on here in berlin germany on the date an hour of my birth at 10 a.m on april 22nd adolf hitler declared to his general staff that germany had lost the war and that he would commit suicide in 19 and here's the caveat or here's the warning i'm skipping through this book i'm not going to read the whole thing so if it seems a little bit chopped up that's why you got to get the book he fast forward here in 1946 my mother was pregnant with my brother hugh we lived in salem oregon where my father worked for the post-war state employment office the war machine was winding down and unemployment was high i was one year old april 1947 on my second birthday we moved to the corner of 123 bomb and 456 detonator ordnance oregon which was a munitions depot town for world war ii war supplies my father managed the payroll office for the depot that's just pretty much the coolest place the coolest address isn't that great that's perfect for lynn oh yeah yeah yeah no doubt about it blowing things up oh yeah in 1950 i was five when the korean war broke out we had moved down the road to hermiston oregon and our father had taken a job with the guy f atkinson construction company as the head of their payroll office our mother had purchased a small road house diner after that my brothers hugh bruce and i were on our own i was the little man bosco the babysitter in that same year the soviet union recognized ho chi minh's government even though vietnam was recognized internationally as part of french indochina joseph stalin convinced ho that the soviet union would bankroll his fight against the french if he agreed to allow chinese advisers to train sixty to seventy thousand viet men hoe bit his lip and agreed to china's support which enabled him to escalate his fight against france in 1953 the korean war ended i was eight years old in the third grade and in love with the red-headed freckle face girl next door on march 13th 1954 with the monetary backing of the soviets and chinese advisors the viet minh engaged the french at denbien few on march 23rd the viet man captured the main airstrip resulting in partial isolation of french army units inclement weather closed in on the area preventing air drops of supplies evacuation of the wounded or close combat air support as the french ran ever lower on supplies and casualties mounted the viet minh took control of the countryside when the french could no longer patrol they were forced into purely defensive positions which were shelled with big guns several times a day on april 7 1954 dwight d eisenhower gave his domino theory speech during a news conference declaring finally you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the falling domino principle you have a row of dominoes set up you knock over the first one and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly so you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences nine days later vice president richard nixon announced that the united states may be putting our own boys in indochina regardless of allied support it's it's always important to me to roll through kind of the way these things unfold and and pay attention to them history yeah and we're living it right now you know and and i was talking to a friend of mine the other day and it seems like maybe we're not always part of history maybe the 90s right what was going on the night so the berlin wall came down so that was kind of historical but then it was down and and there was kind of some time where you feel like how much are we really a part of history that people will be reading about and then things happen like what's going on right now and 9 11 and the wars in iraq and afghanistan and you start realizing oh no we're we're unfortunately gonna play we're gonna we're gonna have our own history as well and when you read things like this it it makes a connection for me that you better remember that what's happening this could this could always escalate things could always go in a direction that you didn't anticipate a little usa can lead to mighty big troubles later down the road crazy oh yeah on may 7th the epic battle of denver diane bien phu ended in a french defeat the viet minh shot the wounded and marched the ambulatory french to the coast where they were loaded on ships and sent packing back to france the french government did not want their citizens to know the defeat and refuse to allow their brave soldiers to disembark from the ships many brave french soldier citizens died in the holes of those ships diem bien feu was the first time a non-european colonial independence movement had evolved through all the stages from guerrilla bands to a conventionally organized and equipped army able to defeat a modern western occupier in pitched battle april 22 1957 i turned 12 and announced i was no longer to be called bosco my name is lin and i wanted to be called by my real name besides kids my age were teasing the hell out of me when they found out my real name things got worse lynn what a sissy name this began a boy named sioux era that never ended never so he thought he was look everyone's making fun of my nickname bosco that's mean i'm just going to go with my real name lin yeah in june of 1963 i graduated from rainier beach high school in seattle washington i was sleeping late on saturday morning when wake up orders my father shaking my shoulder i'm awake barely what's going on are you going back to work at the television station mom asks not today it's saturday i give them my best 18 year old smart ass smile i quit the station six months before graduation to pay attention to a sagging grade average i think i'm going to take the summer and just goof off do you plan on using either your scholarships my father needles me knowing i have no intention of going to college i went to college he chides maybe art school but no college it would be a waste of my time and everybody's money i thought we already had this conversation i reply yawning don't be a smart ass promise mom do you have enough money saved up to pay rent purchase your own food and transportation i thought i'd live here during the summer and go back to work in the fall then i'll get a place in my own how about that if you live here you'll pay rent not the kind of rent you pay now but the kind of rent as if you had your own place you'll be out of money pretty fast you'll need a job understand you heard what your mother said father insists i don't have the savings to pay that kind of rent i groggily complain i would really like to take a break after graduation i take it what you really want is to get me out of the house growing up both of my parents had worked and i was responsible starting at the age of five for taking care of my two brothers the little man and they called me better than my other name bosco i've been working and saved my money since i was 15. all i want to do is take the summer off go back to work and then get an apartment can't this one wait the summer sounds to me like we aren't looking at the same road map mom says firmly both your brothers are old enough to take care of themselves and your father is retired and at home this evening is your last free meal here understand yep sure do stark naked i jump out of bed and boldly head for the shower boy this pisses me off why the hell can't they wait until the fall when i come out they're gone i dress walk a mile to the bus stop and head for the seattle pike place market to get something to eat and wander around the open-air art galleries what am i going to do so at that point you know this is when he goes and he actually meets that recruiter so that's why that recruiter can tell that he's kind of got nowhere to go and he starts his uh starts his journey sergeant king gets him in yep sergeant king man scored at the diner yeah paid that bill and made his quota yeah uh he goes continues on here while at armor school an airborne recruiter dangles the possibility of an extra 55 dollars a month in addition to my meager monthly 79 dollar base pay if i am only man enough to make three parachute jumps sounds as easy as falling out of an airplane i volunteer a second time this volunteering thing is getting to be a habit 134 monthly for a pfc close along with three hots and a cot that's crazy that you guys got that much money for going to airborne school 55 yeah it might not seem like a big deal except for that i think i got 110 in like 1990. where my base pay was probably a thousand bucks you know what i'm saying so it was like one tenth of my base pay where you guys were getting almost double your base pay oh yeah in my case i was getting 50 a week because i'm not sure where lynn got that inflated salary because i was getting 50 and the jump school was 55 dollars so he's like 100 plus and i'm in so he goes to jump school at fort benning georgia yeah which is where i was lucky enough to go they don't send navy guys there anymore where do they send them they go to yuma yeah they go somewhere else yeah yumo or actually it might be here in san diego but they you basically go and learn it's more of a gentleman's course you know and it's faster and you go you get more experience really quick yeah because that three weeks can be consolidated oh you think but i had a great time at airport school man it was awesome um and then he goes to a heavy drop school learning i guess how to how to get everything rigged up to throw out of the back of airplanes oh yeah and then he says this after several weeks of rigor training i receive orders for delta company 16th armor 173rd airborne brigade in okinawa hey okinawa is not a city in germany this is not what i signed up for for an extra 55 bucks a month i've blown away a european tour in art education but i can rig heavy supply loads and vehicles for such snatch outs at high level drops now there's something i can use in the civilian life black you dumbass the 173rd had had been activated in june 1963 the same month i had graduated from rainier beach high school in seattle the 173rd has assumed the assets of the second airborne battle group then stationed on okinawa just south of japan the 173rd the 173rd mission is to quickly close with and destroy the enemy forces using fire maneuver and shock action in coordination with other armed forces it was because of its many parachute exercises on taiwan that the members of the 173rd earned the respect and admiration of the nationalist chinese soldiers so impressed with the paratroopers of the 173rd were the chinese that they nicknamed the men of the brigade tin being or sky soldiers the name stuck the pentagon's public expectation of us is that we can be deployed within 24 hours to any hot spot in the pacific theater engage with and deter an enemy for 72 hours this delaying suicidal action would allow time to deploy real forces such as the marines thank god there aren't any hot spots to be deployed to thank god this is the peacetime army and having no enemy tonight let's go to the ville and get drunk we'll watch the strip shows life's good on the rock that's what the jarheads call okinawa and i'm fast forwarding through some other stuff but he's he's there you know he's there he's kind of doing the peacetime army thing um living the dream march 14th 1965 is the 19th birthday of hugh robert black one of my younger brothers that morning he arrives on okinawa with the future third platoon leader first lieutenant richard h goldsmith pfc hugh is assigned to the 173rd engineering company i'm happy to see him all the way through school i admired hugh's scholastic capability and am admittedly envious of his high grade point average and seemingly easy learning style both of us have enlisted voluntarily to do our duty and then return to pursue life why the hell didn't i just go to art school because you're doing your duty dimwit shut up put your head down and just get it done and stop talking to yourself or they think you belong here permanently yeah the way he's written this book he's got all kinds of these italicized sections where he's kind of just given his own thoughts oh yeah and and they're they're they're awesome to read um the rich mind of lynn black yeah it's just funny no matter what you talk to him about like that stuff there particular his self-examination and his commentary it's just like yeah and i i'm not gonna get too much into it but the way this book is written a lot of it is written and i'll try and explain a lot of is written as conversations that are debriefs either debriefs official debriefs or unofficial debriefs that you guys have in your in your team room yeah with beers and playing dice and then between stream of consciousness right he gets a hot streak going you can just hear the keys going and they'll take a break for a beer when he comes back yeah the atmosphere that he gives out of the team room of you guys is pretty awesome and you guys playing playing freaking liars dice all the time and and the little uh those those little debrief sessions though he mentions it that's how you were learning oh yeah that's that's where you were figuring out what to do and what mistakes this group made and what these guys did right what they did wrong and those those those sessions where you're giving each other a bunch of shit but you're also passing valuable information on oh absolutely particularly in our early time at fob1 that's what we learned was from the senior ncos and any other team member that been on the ground we faithfully made a point of talking to them some wouldn't some couldn't too much trauma but the ones who would talk i mean pat watkins spider parks john mcgovern they're all men that we just admired and they took time to talk to us we could ask them questions and then we got the flying cubby we'd hear about the mission what went wrong always trying to improve the tactics to see what uh we could do to improve when we get in the field we did when you did you say when you got to flying covey well well spider parks became covey right pat watkins after time on the ground got it they were our best coffee riders got it and so at the end of 68 particularly the october 5th mission they were both alternating on station that day it was so historic part of that historic moment in time that missionary and so before that like during september and august uh pat had run several missions out of fob three in the layoffs and then we talk you always learn stuff we just sat there and just tried to sponge it in bring it in yeah and we'll get to some of uh lynn's vietnam experience prior to being in sog and prior to being in special forces but for someone like you and we talked about this in in across the fence i mean is crazy that you were how old were you on your first mission 22 yeah well i was old by some students i i spent two years in college trying to flunk out there you know but by august of 68 they that's when they finally after that uh attack at fob4 um they came up with the idea of putting together a 1-0 school so they would train but there was nothing in place so when we got to fu by may and june man you just talked to the men who would talk to you anybody had any experience at all like john walton came back from two or three really bad targets we talked to him because we're both well he was a high powered e4 i was just low private but anybody who would talk we talked that's where well you're right that clubhouse was uh better than anything we could get in terms of really learning what was going on on the ground air assets weather and the reality of the of the king bees what we worked with at the time it's one thing to talk about in training helicopter come pick you up well you gotta have other conditions there man you know how that goes yeah crazy uh so now we get to 1965. and lynn says somewhere in the middle of april 1965 cryptic rumors begin to spread rampantly from company to company around the brigade hq directs all training to cease and practice mount outs be conducted which is them basically gearing up to go oh yeah shortly the company receives its basic load of live ammunition and begins to prepare all vehicles for a combat check man these rounds are heavy complains one of the new loaders april 22nd 1965. man he nails these dates in here oh yeah it makes me wish i would have kept the journal which i never did me too april 22 1965 i celebrate my 20th birthday may 2nd rumors begin to fly as word spreads that key personnel have received advance party orders to an unknown destination may 3rd company commander joseph c jordan jr at last announces the destination and he says i have just come from general williamson's morning briefing what i'm about to tell you is a chronology of events leading to a temporary offshore assignment on april 24th the general received a top secret message from general westmoreland to meet him in saigon saigon south vietnam at mcv headquarters it seems there's a guerrilla war being waged in that southeast asian country the 173rd is to be a part of what is called rolling thunder being conducted by the u.s air force out of bases in that country what we heard this morning is that the army of the republic of vietnam known as the arvins are having difficulty providing adequate security for the air bases and supporting rolling thunder raids the arvin the arvins are also having difficulty performing offensive operations against the guerrillas known as viet cong or vc general williamson also revealed that several u.s divisions are scheduled to arrive in south vietnam within months the 173rd's mission is to clear the incoming unit's proposed base camp sites of the vc our deployment will be a temporary one probably not lasting more than 60 days the advanced party will leave for bien hoa republic of south vietnam the 173rd is to conduct a security action the ceo announces that he thinks we'll be back on oki for sure by christmas our first mission is to secure patrol and neutralize any threat to bin hoa air base which is our base camp area you all now know about as much about this assignment as i do so there you go these guys go from not even knowing that there was anything going on in vienna i was thinking how different that is now yeah you know because when there's some kind of action taking place in the world everybody knows about it instantly you know you know about it instantly because you look at your phone and there's the news and whether it's iraq or afghanistan or somalia or wherever everybody knows when there's something happening in the world and here these guys they're not they don't have any idea what's happening in vietnam and they're on the rocks they're not getting the new york times or any other newspaper that by that time had carried stories for a few years and pissed off president kennedy pissed off lbj but uh so they missed that and so here's lynn like oh you're gonna go to benoit it will only beer 60 days not uh he goes into this thing about how they had to dye their their underwear green um on may 4th the company receives word we are to delete nine spats from our inventory and replace them with the m113 armored personnel carriers or apc so this is 1965. yeah and you know what we use for kazovac vehicles in the battle of ramadi in 2006 m113s m113s which almost any bullet could still penetrate yeah my uh my commanding officer one time you know he's he was talking me through an operation that the guys were going out on and he said what's the kazovac plan i said hey the kazvak plan is this we'll contact this company they have 113s they'll come out and he says what if what if that 113 hits a subsurface ied so at the time subsurface ied had it everybody knew what that was and what it was was somebody the enemy would bury the the explosives you know underneath the ground and you couldn't see them so it wasn't like something sitting on the side of the road it was under the ground and they would make them big and he says well what will happen if that 113 hits a hits a subsurface ied and i said sir if the 113 hits a subsurface ied everyone in that 113 is going to be dead and that was the facts you know that was the fact that it's going to be their casket the really weird thing is most at that time including the 113 the abrams all these older vehicles the when you build those vehicles you build them as low as the to the ground as you can at the lowest possible profile so that you can't be seen it's like ducking right you build the even a humvee's built like that right a home v is wide but it's low sure and an abrams is is wide but it's low and a 113 is low to the ground they don't have much clearance because you know you don't want to get shot at by another tank so you can hide behind you know a little ridge line or a little knoll or something like that the problem is that's the worst possible vehicle to have when it comes to getting blown up from the ground and so now you when you see the the mine resistant vehicles now they're massive they're tall you've got to get a lot you get into them with a ladder you literally there's a ladder there's like five four or five rungs on a ladder to get up into them because they're built really high and you exit with a parachute yeah they have a v-shaped hole that deflects the blast as well and a 113 has a complete flat bottom it's super low to the ground but they were just they weren't this was not the problem that they were coming up against at that time oh yeah may 5th the company begins feverishly working to prepare our vehicles for shipment the following day may 6th we are we drive to okinawa to the okinawa port of naha where the vehicles are loaded under the direction of lieutenant gilmore the embarkation officer and again i'm just jumping through this stuff you got it's so great to read this you got to get this book because the details that he gives i don't know how he's got a way better memory than me right dates are logged down names and for everyone i mean who remembers the name of the damn embarkation officer he must have written that down he has to but it's great it makes you feel like you're there you're right there perfect absolutely yeah uh the 173rd airborne brigade is the first u.s army unit sent to vietnam can you imagine so talking about history oh yeah may 12 at 12 16 hours company d 16th armor arrives in saigon harbor the paris of southeast asia company d's first combat assignment comes in the form of ambush patrols we're ordered to attach 12 enlisted personnel each day to the first the 503rd for a three-day period so much for riding on tracks so they got all these vehicles but now they're going out on patrols needs of the army do they say needs of the army no okay in the navy that's like a kind of a joke someone will say well what do you think your job's gonna be it's like no needs in the navy well it's like whatever the navy needs you to do you're gonna do i think oh yeah and even though they might not say that in the army that's the way it is because we don't care if you've been trained on these tracks to to fight from armor you're going to go out you're going to be on foot patrol may 18th our vehicles arrive and the company turns to the task of prepping them thank god now now maybe we can start doing stop doing patrols with the grunts i'm an armored guy not a ground pounder one track crew member complains and here's lynn's thoughts i disagree with that no one in their right mind wants to be walking this miserable place when you can be riding oh sorry i agree with that no one in their right mind wants to be walking this miserable place when you can be riding who the hell wants to sleep on the stinking wet ground with bug snakes and god knows what else god damn it i'm supposed to be in europe well it is the paris of the orient uh may 19th the first platoon is attached to the three third three 319th artillery for a security mission the remainder of the month is spent training and seemingly endless improvement of the defensive perimeter here's here's here's lynn's thoughts dig endless trenches trenches fill sandbags build bunkers string concertina wire put up tents wind and rain flood the trenches and bunkers and flatten the tents put up tents again go out on patrol with ground pounders pull kp stand guard duty how in the hell can any of these lifers do this for a living i'm so tired of pots and pans duty i could kill somebody there's a thought so that's how they psychologically prepare us pots and pans on the last day of may general williamson initiated a four-day operation three objectives were hit by our sky soldiers casualties were few against light resistance though our guys experienced no heavy fighting the operation the first u.s offensive action in south vietnam greatly contributed to the confidence of the 173rd airborne brigade the first operation of july is search and destroy in conjunction with elements of the 1st battalion 503rd infantry july 16th the company in conjunction with elma's the first the 503rd and the engineering company conduct a search and destroy operation during that operation my younger brother hugh is critically wounded by an unseen enemy during a mortar attack and several of his friends are killed he's medevaced out of the ao and back to conus so you know i kind of drifted through that part where his brother showed up on okinawa well his brother they're both at the same unit they end up deploying to vietnam the first americans in vietnam and his brother ends up getting wounded by a mortar pretty bad and here's lynn's thoughts on that you fuckers not my brother not my brother show yourselves you cowards god damn it here we are driving up and down the roads while those bastards are hiding in the bushes bushes they can see us but we can't see them where the hell are they somebody has to know where they are i'm sorry hugh i hope you can forgive me i should have been there with you i'll find them they'll pay i promise welcome to the jungle baby that's one of the things that you know uh when i was in ramadi i would always read the book about face you know by by david hackworth and and one of the things that was so similar was what just happened right there this is the beginning of the war and you're fighting against an enemy that you can't see right and it's so frustrating especially for the conventional troops that are out there and and you know i was talking about this today with a client the the mentality and what it does to your mentality of being on offense versus being on defense and when you got on you when they we know when when the mission is go out and walk down this road you might think you're being on offense but if you think about it a little bit deeper you're on defense because you're walking down that road and they can have booby traps and ieds and snipers and mortars they can have all that stuff and you are on defense even though you're moving you're on defense and that was definitely how i felt on my first deployment same thing i would ask like young junior officers i'd say is this an offensive operation i talk about a direct action mission in downtown baghdad i show him a profile of a mission and i'd say is this an offensive operation they go absolutely and i go how long are you on offense for because the whole mission takes an hour and a half two hours right so you drive from baghdad to some other part of baghdad it takes you half an hour to get there and then you hit the target it takes 15 minutes and then you drive back so it's another half an hour so you were out for an hour and 15 minutes i would say how much time were you on offense for and then they'd start thinking about it sometimes they'd say the whole time we're always on offense and i'd say well that sounds good but it's not true it's not true when you're out on patrol when you're moving through enemy territory you are on defense you're a target you're a target now once you get to that target and you set up believe me we go on offense for a good solid three or four minutes but then even once we hit the target now all the bad guys know we're there and now we're on defense again so that what that does to your mentality is it can be hard on people it can be hard to be constantly paranoid and constantly on defense and it's the same thing in life right you know somebody was asking me what do you do and you know what do you do when you've got all these things are happening and the market's changing and i said look you can either be on defense and try and just keep it together which doesn't feel good or you can look at the problem go on offense and attack the problem and that's exactly the mentality that lin's having right here he wants to go on the attack oh yeah absolutely continuing on the 173rd along with other american units and vietnamese troops work together to break the siege of special forces at camp do duke co am i saying that right duco duco captain jordan d the delta company commander leads his company on foot patrols to an exploit to exploit a suspected vc stronghold as well as other armored patrols and security details sir captain jordan let me go with you on the patrols no black you aren't any shape to be going with us i need soldiers not a revenge squad yeah so black's getting left behind and he wants to go get after it and his boss is saying you just need to you need to slow your roll black august 6th company d ferries the royal australian regiment infantry to their area of operations august 17th the second and third platoons along with command track lead for extended operation september 9th 1965 captain joseph c jordan relinquishes his command for a staff position with the great brigade hq captain john e dunlop jr formerly hq company commander is recipient of the guide on while on patrol platoon sergeant herman trent spec 5 carrillo pfc's henry s baker and robert l adams are all wounded when they come under heavy mortar fire by the still unseen enemy s spec 4 craig is credited with saving two lives and later receives the soldiers medal commendation october 8th 1965 company d departs our ben hoa base for the iron triangle on a search and destroy operation not far down the road around the first bend a command detonated mine is set off by the vc completely destroying the apc killing the driver pfc michael brancato and severely wounding staff sergeant saint clair westerman and samson moore son of bitches blew us up westerman later slurs through his wired jaws he's trying to explain to me what happened blew the goddamn track off the pc and flipped it upside down killed brancato good kid god damn it on and on it went warzone c and d the iron triangle op plans new life and smash in december search and destroy and convoy security along with blocking force missions that first tour of duty rolled on much the same way as it did the first six months until specialist fourth class lynn m black jr got promoted then i went back to the world in july of 1966 later that year i appeared on a television morning show hosted by a guy named princeton preston price at king tv seattle washington so here he is he's out of the army yeah with me was an army helicopter gunner who had become a war protester the door gunners mantra for the 30 minute show was that the united states had no business being in southeast asia why would communists on the other side of the world have any effect on our american freedom he didn't believe that any young man of draft age had any responsibility to fight any legal war we needed to question the use of illegal authority this is more than i can take and i accuse the gunner of being a coward and a traitor to his country i immediately launched into a duty honor country speech that would have shamed any man it certainly did me what i wanted to do was kick the unseen enemy's ass for whacking hue it didn't make a dent in the door gunner's resolve and the two of us morning show guests began to talk over the top of one another as the lights were switched off in the studio and the station went into a prolonged set of live beer and appliance dealer commercials in an adjacent studio the unseen enemy killed several of my fellow soldiers and had severely wounded many more my brother and my best friend had been crippled for life or grotesquely wounded i can't say for sure i ever saw the face of the enemy during that tour of duty sitting in my apartment in hawaii watching the evening news i felt guilty pissed off alone and completely consumed by feelings of revenge u.s planes began bombing hanoi we see you now you sons of bitches north vietnam north vietnam declares general mobilization the warsaw pact promises to support north vietnam whiskey tango foxtrot i'm re-enlisting and if anyone hasn't figured out what wtf whiskey tango foxtrot stands for it stands for what the fuck over so that's his first tour of duty and it's crazy to think he's saying hey i don't even think i ever saw the enemy during that and he's got his brother wounded he's got other guys wounded and killed and never saw the enemy yeah and they had a couple times i forget how detailed he went in that first part but when they were in the apc's they got in the into the um rubber plantations we had rows and rows of trees you figure you go in there and hey man we can figure it out well they didn't and they got hammered in there i remember lynn talking about that both in both tours of duty at some point we got into a reflection thing he he would go back once a while but the rubber plantations and then between the snipers and their controlled fire lanes and obviously they set things up in practice before 173rd ever got there and then they had to be careful not to damage any rubber trees that they did the plantation owners would they come back and sue the united states to pay for the damaged rubber trees vietcong well you know he can't deal with them but politics and but that story and the apc is that thin armor oh he had some nightmares i just can't imagine and that's a traditional unit yeah early on and they learned some lessons the hard way boy yeah you know the um when i did um lewis puller junior's book on here um fortunate son and he's go he's rotating between three areas and you know like one of them was bridge security one of them was camp security and then one of them was called the riviera i think or the rivera but every time they'd go out there they'd get take take casualties and they'd never see the enemy and they would do a high five with you know their platoon was heading out there's another platoon rotating back in yeah i forget it was a tuner company i think it was platoon platoon size he'd be heading out he'd high five you know the other platoon commander and you know the guy would say yeah we took two casualties of three casualties we cas evac them out did you see the enemy nope so you're just going out there and taking hits and you don't see the enemy and that that's very similar to iraq you know very similar to iraq where many much of the time guys be out there they just get blown up by an ied or you get hit by mortar fire you get hit by sniper fire and that's uh that's the way that's the way the guerrillas fight against a against america absolutely and then even with the snipers they knew how to get back in the building so they fired out there'd be no direct smoke or evidence of them where the rounds came from you really had to uh have good ear detection or some kind of sensor yeah that sixth sense to figure out where the hell the rounds were coming from i think it would have to be a sixth sense because you can't tell from where those rounds are coming from no that goes in this and you see you see in movies you know there's always a sniper in a window and his barrel sticking two feet out of the window but you're right the snipers are actually not even in that room they're in a room deep one room deep maybe even more down a hallway so their field of vision is tiny but you there's no possible way that you're seeing them no but luckily some people learn to uh adapt and take the fight to the enemy indeed july 1968 and these are some thoughts during my first tour with the 173rd i watched them special forces and other recon men from the herd which is the nickname which is a great nickname for the 173rd the herd from the herd marine force recon the 82nd and 101st airborne divisions there's something different special about recon men i can't quite put my finger on it but i sure as hell want to be one intense yet always joking around it was like they were fighting a different war than the rest of us everyone knew they were the best of the best we graduated from company b special forces training group fort bragg north carolina at the beginning of the class had been 500 of the finest physically fit soldiers ever produced in the united states army that may 1968 graduating class contained less than 70 men standing at attention proudly waiting to be awarded the coveted green beret when did you graduate from special forces training december 67. so you're already you're already done and he's a new guy yeah i'm in camp i'm an fb1 waiting for lynn to get there we had earned the right to work with the best of the best hell we were the best and he kind of just runs through some of the special forces training back then in the beginning phase one we sat in the classroom for eight hours a day listening to lectures and taking notes we were given homework assignments papers to write and participated in small in class and after class working teams half the group was eliminated in phase one every day we heard phrases like if i wanted to sit on my ass all day in a classroom i joined the air force this is college prep school this is college prep school nonsense a lot nonsense a lot of what it took to get through phase one was attitude of willingness being willing to adore the unexpected i don't think any of us expected the classroom did you spend that much time in the classroom oh yeah what were you guys learning about well they they all the indoctrination stuff the history and then um procedures then like our comma class you sat down you're in that class for eight to ten hours just there taking camo and um land navigation all kinds of different things like that you had to take notes i remember well i'm packing the move now going through finding some of my old notes back that's like oh my god i forgot about that that's like i got it out of my mind when you find those notes just take a picture of them and send him to me so we can talk about him at some point that sounds freaking awesome i got this book that i wrote when i was a e5 in the seal teams and i was teaching i was teaching communications and i found it it just says seal team one communications and it's basically on how to work the different radios but then in the back i have a section called lessons learned i'm going to cover it on the podcast because it's legit is that right yeah maybe we have to go back and compare notes indeed got a little morse code training you know oh i was one of the last guys that had to learn morris code yeah did he done dumb did he yeah my uh the guy that was teaching us to it because there was people that were pushing back like we don't need to learn morse code you know we have satellites now and this guy says in the event of what was his phrase he said uh in the event of a nuclear war the only thing that's going to be punching through the ionosphere is hfcoms yeah and morris code so we gotta learn it of course i'm 19 years old i'm totally down i'm like cool if there's a nuclear war i'm ready to make comms yeah they don't teach you it in basic seal training there is no mental challenge whatsoever i mean there's no you don't sit in a classroom you don't sit in a classroom probably ever for more than like an hour when they're trying to teach you dive physics or hydrographic reconnaissance it's just totally they don't do that with us that's why you get some knuckle draggers in the teams yeah yeah you know the special forces guy just you know they got they like that they like that kind of thing they like that kind of thing being a little bit smarter um during phase two we were divided amongst our various specialty groups such as operations intelligence medical weapons and so on i was the hands-on portions this was the hands-on portion training in my case i was being trained as a weapons specialist which i imagine everybody wants to be oh yeah boy toys to the max yeah and and how do they pick what you're gonna do um they gave you tests and then they're supposed to indicate what you're good at and then there's needs what the army needs needs of the army yeah and you ended up comms yeah i ended up comms too because i had this um i stood watch at the seal team one quarter deck like a new guy you're gonna stay and watch and so i'm standing watch i'm standing with this this officer he's a like a platoon commander but he's you know more experienced than me and he's talking to me and we we have to stay there the whole night you know we're like sleeping in the bunk beds or whatever to make sure no one attacks seal team one this is like 1991. and the guy after talking to me he says you know what you know when he's asking me well what are you what are you joining the seal teams for you don't want to be an operator i want to go on missions right and he's in the morning he says hey you know what what you should do is you should go to the radio room tomorrow or or when you when we get off and go tell me you want to be a radio man because the radio man always goes on operations as though he is the only guy that's going on every operation i mean the medic kind of but the radio men for sure have to and so i went up got off a watch went right up banged on the radio i want to be a radio man why i want to go on every operation cool right on sign up here i was probably the only person in the history of seal team one to do that because what does everyone else want to do they want to be a machine gunner and a sniper oh yeah they want to be a weapons guy so fast forward a little bit he's home in seattle on leave he's got some of his sf buddies with him uh named bob and steve and here they are kind of hanging out with hugh and here we go hugh one of my two younger brothers has joined us during our last last afternoon out on our sister carla's back deck this is our last day in the civilian world this is before they go on deployment he's wearing a tank top and t-shirt and a pair of shorts which shows off the scar running from one knee up the length of his leg to his hip after a couple beers he tells the story about the mortar attack his leg wound broken ribs arm and shrapnel filled face and torso he recount recounts the month spent recovering at madigan army hospital bob and steve are visibly shaken by the sight of wounds and more so by the story of inadequate medical treatment and disdain from the hospital staff for anyone dumb enough to get suckered into volunteering for nom the mood of the afternoon darkens and alcohol consumption increases last day gillette softly drones yup give me a beer how do you say this and get engelke how do you say his name do you know uh angle key angle key steve bob uh gillette those are his two buddies oh yeah oh it's gillette okay and gelkay gel k uh ankle key ankle key man i'm gonna keep messing that one angle key stick with steve carla serves up an early dinner we eat our last supper and hugh bluntly asks what the hell are you going to do back in that shit hole for a moment i sit there surprised staring at him dumbfounded it's payback time i quietly reply payback for what he looks surprised then it dawns on him you dumbass you aren't my babysitter my big brother anymore i don't need you to fight any battles on my behalf i did my duty took my hits and now i'm going to college it's time for me to build my life the government got there three years and you can bet you're bippy that there's no one in this country who gives a shit except those who went there and did it sometimes i'm not sure most of them care either time to move on brother time to move on grab me one of those beers out of the cooler will you you stupid idiot and here's len's thoughts on that now that announcement certainly shoots the shit out of my public reason for going back i've been telling everyone who asked that i'm going to extract a little hide from the charlies who nailed my little brother now he's telling me he's not my little brother and to grow up well crap why the hell didn't he make that speech before i re-enlisted laughing to myself i'm a green beret i'm going to be a recon man that's why i'm going back i want to find out what it's like to be the best at something fast forward denying safe house 22 the three of us anxiously await a top secret briefing in a small secured out building that once was a carriage house a sergeant first class e7 is standing behind a long wide thick plank table behind him a captain wearing the green beret and a starched uniform sits quietly watching with an offhanded relaxed gesture so typical of sf men the e7 motions to us to sit rising from his chair the captain says during your training at bragg you men were selected as potential candidates for military assistance command vietnam studies and observations group studies and observations what the hell is that god damn it i came back to be a recon man sounds like they're going to make us into a bunch of clerks i will give you a series of briefings the first of which requires you to make a decision as to whether you want to go on with the second before we continue what you are about to hear is classified top secret requiring you to sign the non-disclosure form in front of you read the form if you choose not to sign get up and leave the room no questions asked read the form okay sign the form and give it to the e7 this better not be a clerk's job top secret clerk i read the form and scribble my signature at the bottom handing it to the e7 as he circulates among us i know this is a lot of it and he goes through some history that's that's what's uh part of the briefing is he says this four years ago april 1964 the government of south vietnam created this special exploitation service or ses to replace the vn special forces command concurrently the cia transferred its advisory role to the newly formed military assistance command vietnam studies and observations group or mac v sag which is run by the u.s military joint services last year the south vietnamese renamed the ses the strategic technical directorate clearing his throat the captain picks up a glass of water taking a long drink and why do i need to know all this questions no okay to the point you men will be assigned to an fob forward operations base or fobs have been in existence since 1964. they are located in fubai kaisan kamduk and da nang fobs conduct classified operations outside south vietnam classified operations doesn't sound like a clerk's job to me this is getting interesting operations in the laos commenced september 1965 as part of operation shining brass and recently have been renamed prairie fire out of country operations are conducted by recon teams called spike teams hatchet forces and slam companies break those down for us real quick spike teams hatchet forces and and and there's also like rt which is recon team well in the early days up until the end of 68 it was spike team because it was top secret code for recon team got it and then you had the hatchet force which could be anything for a platoon up to a company size operation like operation tailwind and then the slam operations that would be one or two hatchet force components depending on the size they would go in and block the ho chi minh trail back it up and then the air force would have air power so anything that backed up on the trail they would hit it hit it hard and of course the nva responded very quickly and the elements that were on the ground got hammered so slam got slammed with those operations that's why by the time you get the tailwind in 70 they change the mo a little bit but that's the breakdown got it yeah uh this this captain continues on mac visa v mac v sag is a joint service high command unconventional warfare task force whose charters to conduct top secret sabotage psychological and special operations in north and south vietnam laos cambodia and southern china it has been given the title studies and observation group as a cover the joint staff is allegedly performing an analysis of the lessons learned up to this point in the war it's obviously a special operations group macv sog is organized into two field commands command and control south and north also called ccs and ccn i know this is a lot of material and i'm jumping ahead i know this is a lot of material but we want you to know what you're volunteering for to continue and he keeps the throughout this and lynn doesn't actually lin says this i volunteered to be here i volunteered for recon sounds like i'm getting exactly what i asked for how old is lin at this point it's nice 75 no at this point oh there um he must be young because he didn't do oh no he did a deployment with the oh yeah no he's he's older actually yeah he's actually probably older than you how old are you probably i was 22 i think lynn would have been he's a year ahead of me okay yeah like he's 75 now i'm four there you go um but still damn that's young but you know why i was the reason i ask you that is because when i think about what a young american male mind is like it's like this you're sitting here and you there's nothing more that anyone wants to hear than a joint service high command unconventional warfare task force who charters to conduct top secret sabotage psychological and special operations sign me up here we go airborne uh continuing on macv's mission is twofold support south vietnam against communist aggression assist in the development of the southern republic the united states and our allies will succeed by winning the people depriving the enemy of safe havens rests and supplies depriving the enemy and this is where mack vsog comes into the picture sog has five primary responsibilities and the capability to undertake additional special missions as required listen up songs primary responsibilities include first cross-border operations conducted to disrupt khmer rouge put that pathetic path at lao and nva in their own territories so that's cambodia laos and and and v and north vietnam secondly keep track of all the imprisoned and missing americans and conducting raids to assist and free them as part of the escape invasion mission for all captured u.s ground personnel and downed airmen mission 3 is training and dispatching agents into north vietnam to run resistance operations called black psychological operations such as establishing false national nva broadcasting stations inside north vietnam and yellow cyclop psychological operations as typified by the hue the way citadel propaganda transmitter mentioned earlier four the captain holds up four fingers waving then them at us mack v sog is also entrusted with specific tasks such as kidnapping assassination and insertion of rigged mortar rounds into enemy ammunition supply system which are set to explode and destroy their crews upon use he pauses to study our faces again clearing his throat five he coughs again is the retrieval of sensitive documents and equipment if lost or captured through enemy action he pauses any questions silence in the room lynn thinks to himself this is a hell of a lot more than just recon wow the next level of information reveals daily operational details i will show you out of the country areas of operations talk in detail about the team makeup and the commitment we hope you will volunteer to make any of you who want to bail out now is the time he pauses looking around the room looks like we're all in this is going to be a hell of a lot of fun reaching to his left the captain rolls back a black cloth covering a map of southeast asia mac v sog is a top secret organization operating the width and breadth of the dmz west into laos and south down through cambodia the shaded areas you see delineate the ao our area of operations you will enter the ao with no personal identification your weapons will not contain serial numbers you and your gear will be what we call sterile you will carry nothing that identifies you as an american you will not carry pictures of your loved ones or anything else that doesn't directly pertain to your mission occasionally you will use enemy weapons as well and dress like them he pauses are there any questions he picks up a glass of water are there any questions the captain asks the second times the second time receiving no response other than stunned faces he continues accepting this assignments accepting this assignment means you will be expected to run a minimum of three cross-border missions to complete your tour of duty with sog after those missions you can request a change of assignment to finish out your year in country if you wish to leave sog we will honor that request if you wish to leave special forces we will send you to another unit or you can stay and continue running missions now are there any questions yes sir are we spies ask one of our party without hesitation by international law yes this is a covert operation as i said top secret our job is to trail watch pow snatch wiretap ambush and just plain old enemy interdiction you will be assigned to recon teams rts those teams are led by three americans who are supported by nine mercenary commandos which make up a full 12-man team the american leader is designated a 1-0 the assistant team leader is a 1-1 and finally the radio operator has a designation of one two the mercenaries are paid by us to work in the ao you see on this map additionally there might be an arvind special forces team member whose job it is to handle the mercenary mercenaries while you do your intelligence work e7 next form please please read this carefully before accepting or rejecting it if you sign you will become members of the most elite fighting force the united states has ever put in the field against an enemy we are fighting a secret war as i said earlier you can never divulge your participation recognize or give koreans to any second or third party knowledge of our existence the captain and e7 move into a shadowed corner quietly talking i read carefully through the non-disclosure statements threats of imprisonment disgrace loss of rights and freedoms i sign talk about getting what you ask for the e7 distributes another set of papers to each of us gentlemen welcome to mac v sog smiles the captain we now need to address this last little consideration if you're unlucky enough to be captured and wind up as a pow we have a cover story along with an individual recognition procedure don't share what you are about to write with anyone there are questions on this form they are the same questions for each of you however your response will be individual and will become the key to recognizing you and obtaining your release as a pow please fill in the answers make them simple and conversational put the form into the attached manila envelope and seal it hand the envelope to me and no one else in this room do not look at each other's answers collecting the envelopes and stuffing them into a canvas attache the captain says men thank you for volunteering good luck and goodbye yeah i forgot that part about the uh the last the second document you put your individual information down i forgot about that lin being sharper as he is he must have taken notes he's got some incredible information man welcome to the secret war welcome to sog yes indeed did you did you when you were going through that moment did you have any like hesitation oh you just so all in it was ridiculous ridiculous yeah absolutely just like lynn i mean you know in my case we had been going through all our training for all those months and it's like this is this is the war and like you know the green beret movie had been out what would the duke do yeah and what's crazy is you were told you were told don't volunteer for sog oh yeah we went through training group they're like hey listen yeah don't volunteer for soccer whatever you do don't volunteer for sog well even there it wasn't like direct it would be like you know when you go get to an a camp learn about the country to people and there's projects don't volunteer get because those people are dying and this is 68 we had so many teams have been wiped out by that point the briefer didn't tell lynn anything about that the casualty race by that point oh yeah gearing up each individual will wear or carry sterile fatigue or tiger suit flop brim hat with a portion of panel sewn inside the top jungle boots pistol belt harness first aid packet pill kit heavy and sharp canteens with water purification tablets smoke grenades compass survival kit individual pistol submachine gun and sawed-off m79 weapons signal mirror panel strobe light pen flare with flares ammo pouches rucksack with reinforced straps rations weapons cleaning kit maps poncho and liner can opener p-38 or knife with can opener waterproof matches insect and leech repellent jungle sweater rt10 survival radio pen light six foot of nylon cord parachute suspension cord swiss seat two snap links notebook and pencil two plastic bags fragmentation white phosphorous and gas grenades two cravat bandages gloves claymore serum the team will need to carry a camera and film binoculars a nprc 25 radio or as you call it a prick 25 with extra battery m14 tow popper mines and booby traps anti-intrusion device wire taps and equipment for prisoner snatches that's all what exactly is a wire tap it's like a go ahead tilt you'd have the telephone lines right so that's the wire and you tap into it and then in our case you got the telephone pole put the wires our wires onto their wire tape it then come down the pole cover with mud so if anybody walked by they wouldn't see it and we'd have it tied into a st at that time state-of-the-art cassette before yeah and we would record even if there was nobody talking the cia had us do the actual recordings so that um they could hear it they would amplify the tapes they could they said they amplified 100 times they could hear things in the background because the nva phones when they're in the cradle they're live like our phones they're they they shut off those are still alive and the ca would we give them all our tapes and they would amplify it they said they got into all of those things yeah so they hear people talking in the background about your stuff yeah and of course you know cia we we give they take and they're done you never hear anything back at all so when you say you're you wiretap's part of the list of stuff that you guys have what is it like a little apparatus or something it was the actual cassette recorder then the wire and then at the end of the wire to be two little things that you tape onto it or do or go through sometimes a wire you have like a double area yeah yeah plug it in between yeah and then you tape it huh how big was the cassette recorder shoebox i'm picturing shoebox was as big as the shoebox no no no no like this side size of a book yeah like a book size like a duck book oh yeah like the old school very old yeah was it was it was there tape cassettes in there or was it like some kind of real to real no kidding you guys were high-speed brother this is 1968 not every real stuff in the field oh yeah dang and the cassettes you know i think we had by then they had the two-hour cassette so you could do an hour on each and one side as opposed to a 60 with 30 on each side and someone's sitting down there freaking flipping those damn cassettes over while you're out in laos in cambodia hey it keeps you something to divert your attention from watching the trail yeah swatting mosquitoes so i mentioned that the way he sets this book up is you're reading and it makes it very conversational in a way but he sets a lot of it up as debriefing yeah and and he also wrote this and this is one of his thoughts have you ever seen yourself through the eyes of someone you've become no this isn't an existential existential question really have you and what that made me think about is when you're debriefing you're kind of you're kind of forcing yourself to detach and explain what you did and it's almost like you're seeing yourself yeah in a in a in a third person situation um so in this particular set to set this up they're in there and this isn't we we talked a little bit about you guys playing liar's dice and sitting around the bar and having some drinks and debriefing amongst yourselves well this one is set up not like that this is an official debriefing oh yeah and did you guys always do official debriefings because it doesn't sound like it sounds like this was a an operation that was so significant that it required a like a like an on-site special debriefing oh yeah always we went right to s2 oh okay so you guys always did this aar so that's an sop got it absolutely and it was really hot they would get the initial word down by radio transmission on rtt and then come back with a four after action report yeah it sounds like this one is um pretty significant so and and i'm gonna fast forward just a little bit and here we go specialist black please begin which again this is crazy he's an e4 yeah freaking crazy specialist black please pre please begin apprehensively i mentally moved back in time the monthly saigon target list arrived and as usual the team leaders gathered in the tactical operations center to pick or be assigned their missions some have to be assigned because no one wants to run those targets why is that they're known to be one-way trips i see response the sergeant oscar 8 which is known to be one of those one-way trips is always assigned on a lottery system my understanding is that the last 12 teams attempting to run that mission have never been heard from again or or were so shot up that they've been disbanded so this one particular mission set was called oscar 8 and this oscar 8 there's been 12 teams that have gone to execute this operation and they've either totally disappeared or they've been so so messed up that they disbanded the teams oh yeah it's just the nasty targets where the major roads came together i forget the exact highways like 92 there's a couple other all came in the northern part of south vietnam and we later learned they had a major headquarters area there and that's where like on the ground the first book with pat first chapter with pat watkins they were in oscar eight when the nva came up and said it's your turn for guard duty that's what lynn's talking about he says uh here one of them one of them one of the analysts specialist black we're interested in the intel gathered during the vr we know the history of the target chai is the lieutenant analyst so the guy's basically going look we know it's a bad target we want to know about your visual reconnaissance sir that's br and he's showing a lot of restraint right now sir that's precisely the point i'm getting at please bear with me as i step through this process so i don't forget any of the details keep calm man he doesn't have a clue of the edge i'm teetering on calm down got to get calmed down how long does it take to get over the after mission jitters be quick about it specialist replies the lieutenant impatiently yeah a ramp at that yes sir alabama won the lottery r11 i point to angelkey ankle key angle key i put to angle key volunteered to lead us through a map study picking primary secondary and alternate landing zones landing in extraction zones we studied every bit of intelligence we could lay our hands on about the weather patterns in the ao area of operation the known enemy and how they maneuver sometimes you can pick up more information in the club than in the reports not in this case there are no surviving old hands to talk about the lottery there was no intel in the target folder that's the point sir so they're going in blind no turnover and then he then fast forward a little bit the the analyst says you were provided no target intelligence we were told none was available armed with maps and a camera bulldog scheduled a vr two days before mission launch offers one one bulldog whose code name is that it was the code name of sergeant stride the alabama team leader r10 as you know he was greased uh killed in action like one one said the same person sitting next to you the same one one are you referring to specialist angle key yes sir recon team alabama's one one the assistant team leader like he said he was sick so i ran the vr with bulldog we needed the intel to be as fresh as possible for the mission it takes one day to develop film and study the pictures so it was never it was then or never if we were going to launch on october 5th one one wasn't feeling well that made me the photographer bulldog and i squeezed side by side into the narrow rear seat of a vietnamese air force u-17 the weather was clear we took off from fubai airfield circling out over the china sea we came in high taking pictures of the entire ao yelling at each other over the engine noise in order to discuss what we could see and attempting to orient what we saw to the maps with those windows and this is a thought with those windows open and the maps were blowing all over the damn place until bulldog got them under control we flew under clouds and over rivers of mist filled ridges plateaus and valleys picking a primary and two alternate lz's bulldog ordered the pilot to make a photo pass over the primary lz at 100 feet the pilot objected and told us he wanted to stay high and leave the area soon good thinking replies the sergeant bulldogs slapped the pilot on the back of his head so this is him this is i'm not doing this very well but this is this is lynn black kind of explaining hey bulldog ordered the pilots make another to to make another pass and the pilot said no i'm not going to do it and then the sergeant says good thinking and he says well bulldogs slapped the pile on the back of his helmet barking the order again we dropped down to teardrop to treetop level and i managed one picture before the nose the ship rose and we began banking for another pass as we climbed our plane was stitched with machine gun fire rounds ripped through the floor exited the ceiling the cabin was sprayed and flecked with blood as the co-pilot was struck under the chin his helmet slammed against the ceiling ricocheting into my lap still containing part of his head that picture will be imprinted in my mind forever forever and he says he he thinks it's a it's a pain i guess i'm sad sadness that grips the soul of my very being i like that co-pilot before we took off from fuba he was trying to tell me a joke in really bad english i didn't get it but laughed anyways you're okay specialist black yo are you sorry you okay specialist blast black asked chief sog glancing at his medical team yes sir i was telling you about the incident the image of the helmet and partial head popped into my mind i'd never seen anything like that before i was fighting a thousand emotions all at once all flooding through me forcing my eyes to glisten those kind of images have a way of staying with us for the reminder of our lives each of us has to find a way to deal with them in order to go on continue with your story orders the chief patiently yes sir i collect my thoughts the pilot dropped the cessna back down to treetop level we got the hell out of dodge and the wild west yeah you know you you mentioned ramps you know you said that this lieutenant alanis is a rampant for those people that don't know remf is stands for rear echelon motherfucker and that's the person that's these are the people that are not on the front lines not doing the fighting it's actually the genesis of the name of my consulting company echelon front which is not rear echelon hey i'm in the rear with the gear but hey frontline leadership and and this whole scene you know for whatever hollywood director is listening to this right now or whatever producer who makes movies echo charles oh all of those people whoever's gonna make this into a movie this is the iconic scene of the rear echelon motherfuckers trying to debrief this guy and we're going to get into the mission and once you once you realize what he just went through you can see why this is such an intense scene because he's sitting there just having barely survived lost guys and they're asking him these questions and it's just your classic iconic scene of a disconnect between the people on the front lines and the rear echelon motherfuckers and that's october 3rd two days before the actual mission doing a vr oh yeah oh yeah that's right so yes so the debrief is after the mission but the part that he's talking about they haven't even done the mission yet yeah this is they're getting shot at as they're doing a visual reconnaissance they lose a pilot while they're doing the visual reconnaissance can you imagine this is why this is till if you did this vr and you came back to me and said hey jocko we did the visual reconnaissance by the way we had a pilot shot the plane got shot up i got a used helmet if you want to use it yeah i'd say hey guess what we're not going into there i think i'd say well it's not happening okay it's not we're not go it's a no-go yeah you guys had freaking balls we didn't have you yeah crazy the insertion covey was captain greg hartness covey 265 was his call sign his rider was sergeant first class patrick watkins code knight code named mandolin the second covey pilot was colonel don borncassel and his rider was staff sergeant bob parks his code name is spider lieutenant george miller scarface 56 was the lead gunship pilot who escorted the king bees into the insertion so now we're now we're actually getting into the operation yes sir and they do you know i'm skipping forward you know and look as i said before to get the rest of the details just buy the book and read it and it's it's it's an incredible the the details that he captures are are awesome so but i'm going to fast forward a little bit so um the he covers the insertions and then the lieutenant says that the the analyst lieutenant says we expect you to take as long as you need on this portion of the debrief when you're finished i'm sure your 1-1 will fill any missing details gather your thoughts and begin when ready 1-1 fill in the details never mind that back across the fence we're moving through dense foliage a ridge rising to a right okay here goes rt alabama was ambushed at approximately 0 800 hours on october 5th 1968 at coordinates yankee charlie five six one six niner two our point man hoa was hit multiple times in his chest and lower body in that same instant three rounds penetrated our 1-0 team leader's head cowboy the interpreter was behind stride and took an rpd round below his left shoulder i was behind cowboy when he went down the assistant team leader the 1-1 went down at the same time i thought he was hit as well are you hit i yell at the 1-1 receiving no response damn he's dead too only six of us left standing bring out the bodies engage the enemy lock hua the zero one vietnamese team leader orders the recon team alabama to a to fire a full magazine just off the ground level to suppress enemy fire at our right on a slight rise there's a line of nva firing down into our position they're above us to the right over there i yell over the din of the ambush thumbing the selector of my car 15 to single shot i began picking them off one at a time 20 rounds expended i pushed the magazine extraction button on the receiver shredding vegetation royals in the air punctuated by green nva tracers searching out their targets fumbling for another magazine and a canteen pouch on my web gear i peer through the raging flora storm in the direction of the tracer source an nva i shot a moment ago is getting up and pointing in my direction okay second magazine snaps into place slapping the left side of the receiver the car 15 bolt slams home as i raised the weapon firing twice stayed down damn it we gotta break contact i yell at the team continuing down the line emptying magazine two the nva fall like targets in a shooting gallery another line moves in behind them taking their place wearing a low spot we have to get out of this hole i yell cowboy interprets to the team who's cowboy is he an american interpreter queries the puzzle lieutenant analyst as he searches through his notes huh what did you ask sir cowboy who's cowboy cowboy is our vietnamese interpreter uh doan van kahn 1-1 inserts quick quickly continue order orders lieutenant crouching i reload surveying our situation then grab the radio handset off my web harness covey blackjack we have three killed and two wounded over who's down covey rider patrick watkins calmly demands point bulldog in 1-1 over blackjack you're not a doctor nor for that fact a medic you can't determine who's dead or alive you must attempt to bring out all the bodies for very verification of death a fresh swarm of automatic weapon fire up another foliage hurricane drowning out covey communication finally it settles down mandolin blackjack we're taking heavy automatic fire we'll be lucky to get the living out they have us surrounded on three sides and are firing down into our position i'm moving the team out of this hole over chu hoy translated means surrender yells one of the nva in a short lull of the ambush i don't think so i yell back firing in his general direction alabama's weapons on full auto drown out further chew hoy requests one one is alive and praying in the middle of a fire in the middle of a gun fight this is no time to pray get up off your sorry ass and return fire i yell one one looks at me with dough eyes shifting his body in an attempt to make him make his form smaller i kneel down next to him and find he has a catholic rosary pressed to his lips and is quietly chanting a prayer i need you to take tactical command while i do my job directing airstrikes and get us a ride home i don't know what to do i i can't think i can't angle key slips into himself well whiskey tango foxtrot over leaves and twigs rain down on alabama as the ground erupts around us from automatic weapons fire so his 1-1 is locked up mentally at this point gone body there but no mind no courage and he actually thought he was dead when everyone got shot in that opening ambush lin which by the way his nickname his code name is blackjack so that's that's who it is blackjack thinks he's dead but then he finally gets to him and looks at him and he's not even shot but he's he's having he's having a meltdown he's on his rosaries back on the radio mandolin so mandolin is the call sign of the uh covey mandolin blackjack you're right we don't have three dead we only have two one one is alive the nva are now on all sides with snipers climbing into trees i have to take action quickly or die blackjack put your 1-1 on the horn over so here's here's the covey rider saying hey put your put the guy in charge on the radio i attempt to push the radio handset into one one's hands but he wraps both hands around his rosary chanting he drops his head drawing his form further inward cowboy tell the team i'm the one zero and locks and locks in charge of b team as if i had to tell them lok's already doing the job mandolin blackjack one one is unable to talk right at the moment i'm the one zero of alabama stand by he's just freaking taken over blackjack's ready to go oh yeah no hesitation whatsoever none roger replies mandolin cowboy i have two have two men strip the bodies get all weapons ammunitions masks maps anything the nva can use distribute their gear to the team quickly now cowboy interprets as the two immediately go to work on the bodies while the rest of the rest continue returning fire cowboy come with me tell loki's in command until we get back i give loca thumbs up as the two of us slowly crawl advancing on hands and knees towards a cluster of bushes flicking aside a large black beetle as has to not crush it is that funny we're able to move close enough to the nva that cowboy hears their commander yelled as troops prepare to charge their position at the periphery of my vision sits a small bird staring sitting below the normal human level of observation in an instant in a flicker of wings it vanishes into the undergrowth i wish i could do that must have been after the beetle everybody seems to be after somebody a kind-hearted reverence for life pushes its way into my thoughts get the claymore out of cowboys rock blasting cap from the survival vest that's it cowboy finishes out a hand grenade and wire spool hastily we rigged the claymore in the direction of those willing men from the north the loving husband and the son-in-law who likes to grow his own vegetables fuck them all a cloud of shredded foliage rains down on cowboy and me as we work our way back towards alabama laying the detonation wires get out of the line of fire my little friend i whisper after the bird the insistent husbands brothers and son-in-laws stampede towards our indefensible position with weapons blazing with their bulging veins frothing at the mouth the whites of their eyes wide cowboy detonates the claymore the air is filled with animal-like howls gunfire the smell of cordite rotting vegetation and death we have blown a bloody path right down through the middle of them claymore smokes clearing i yell alabama up follow me the team moves through the path of carnage with our weapons on full auto as we assist the wounded online this is what you get for screwing one of the with one of the black brothers what's left of their ragged line sporadically fires into our small band cowboy stumbles and falls having taken another round in his left side he comes haltingly to his feet gives the giving the okay signal once seemingly through the past nva battle line one seemingly through and past the nva battle line lok collap collapses our our online formation to inline and orders the team to go in on single shot the left of cowboy shirt is soaked with blood blocked by impassable terrain on one side and nva forces on the other we work our way through the dense undergrowth back toward our point of insertion to our rear and in parallel on both flanks we can hear the nva regrouping gathering their strength random enemy shooting subsides as they begin firing signal shots to indicate the path of our travel flanking teams of two trackers for each enemy squad intermittently push us along as they reveal themselves we cut them down with single shots fire discipline is good gotta find a place where we can stop to patch up our wounded don't fire randomly kill the enemy low quarters we continue maneuvering on our way through the high thick underbrush toward the primary lz leaving behind the stripe the stripped bodies of our point man hoa and our 1-0 gym stride oh i know can you imagine i mean just how any of them lived yeah it's amazing to see too i mean just the just to see someone step up both both blackjack and cowboy cowboy is getting shot he's wounded and he's just leading and and lynn's stepping up and leading when all this mayhem is taking and and you know i always say leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield right if these guys didn't step up and lead everyone's dead 100 it's a guarantee these guys step up they take action they lead and at this point they're gonna it looks like they're gonna get some progress yeah his zero one was sharp and fearless because he he rallied them took care of the other details well then and cowboy going on and poor cowboy getting hit second time like that oh my god he's he was a big vietnamese he was tall cowboy cowboy he was the interpreter the zero one i forget his name you mentioned it there i i just zero one that's our vietnamese counterpoint the 1-0 the american 0-1 he's had the experience because uh alabama four months earlier the entire team was wiped out as separate of 1-0 and he escaped and did a personal e e back to the asheville valley and they picked him up so 68 was a bad year for alabama but the zero one did not go on that fateful mission so they had his experience for october the fifth that between him and cowboy oh yeah loke yeah that's who we're talking about loke is the zero zero one and then the other guy on there is dhoti kwang who later became the idol i stole him from alabama a couple years later he was great but just a fearless absolute warrior badasses oh yeah true and true yeah i mean what's crazy is you know um that you said was the the bombers in in europe the bombers in europe the american bombers that bombed europe in world war ii i think they had to do 25 missions if they did 25 missions they were done and sometimes they'd push a little further yeah but yeah that was what the rule place was and the rule that they gave you guys was three i mean those bombers those guys were taking mass casualties mass casualties oh absolutely profound casualties and yet they said hey you guys are going to do 25 missions and you guys they're saying hey listen can you can we get three out of you yeah see now we never i don't remember that part of the debrief if we ever had it see lynn remembers those details that's why his stuff is just so great it's vivid yeah and don't forget they taught the bombers they remember the frenchman his dad was the leader right on this on one squadron 23 only one comes back out of a thousand airplanes so yeah the same uh catastrophic effects by the enemy continuing on october 5th blackjack mandolin we're returning with the king bees to fubai for fuel no extraction is possible for at least two maybe three hours over another covey is covey is on station you'll be talking to spider as fast as possible mandolin we're about to find out how much longer we can hold out don't panic blackjack find the path don't let them pin you down spider spider bob parks x10 of rt idaho just like mandolin spider blackjack over blackjack spider keeping your cool buddy keeping your cool buddy he's there we're not alone man having you guys with that direct relationship oh yeah with your cubbies and they sat in the briefs and they knew what you were gonna do that's a powerful thing that was the key having that rider and that's the epitome of it that moment in time right there because lin's like oh watkins is gone the king bees are gone nobody's gonna come back for two or three hours you be cool there's a spider talking to him the night before he's beating his ass on liar's dice at the clubhouse i don't know if you've ever heard this story but dave burke good deal david yeah he was in ramadi and he's anglico supporting i think he's supporting an army unit and it's the first real close air support that he's actually calling and you know he's a former f or he's an f-18 pilot and it just so happens by coincidence and miracle and other coincidence that he keys up the mic and says this is lightning six and the guy that answers the guy that's in the air about to give ordinance for him is like one of his buddies no and he says something like hey chip it's you know hey chip it's maverick um i'm ready to rock and roll he goes oh it's like this so having that relationship that you guys had with these cubbies man critical absolutely critical uh so he says keeping your cool buddy standby spider they're pushing us from all sides we're moving back towards the lz perimeter and we'll be ready for extraction over grabbing a claymore from one of the rucksacks i set up a 10 second fuse pointing it to our rear while lope covers me we can hear them screaming in agony as we move through the bush back towards our um insertion and you know what before we go on i just want to go back to this because it's a it's a little bit of a point of contention in the book if you remember i read this part where he says we continue maneuvering our way through the high thick underbrush toward the primary lz leaving behind the stripped bodies of our point man hoa and our 1-0 jim stride so he had to make a decision the hardest possible decision that a person could have to make which is hey these guys are dead we're going to strip their bodies and we're going to leave them because if we try and and look anybody that hasn't ever carried a freaking another human being through rough terrain you have no idea you have no idea look and you can say i'll pick up my i'll pick up echo right now and i'll run you know across the parking lot or whatever run a hundred yards yeah it's it might not seem like that big of a deal if you make echo actual dead weight where he's not helping in any way not adjusting his weight on you not holding on to your neck or holding onto your shoulders none of that if it's just true dead weight 205 pounds or 210 pounds or whatever what are you 220 about 220. okay 220 pounds of dead weight you're 185. it's not that big of a deal to do it it's not when you pick up a buddy and you carry them across the field the football field or the parking lot it's not that big of a deal when their dead weight is totally different when you're in terrain it's even more different and then when you're getting freaking shot at and assaulted by a massive number of nva you got to make a decision what are we gonna do are we gonna survive or are we gonna perish to save our friend's body what would i want what would what would if i was shot if i was dead what would i want you to do i'll die just bring my body out hell no you get your ass out of there and and so lynn had to make this decision and he made it quick and you know that's how you survive oh yeah it wasn't easy but he did the right thing yeah um that's the that's what you got to do and it's not like and by the way when you when you leave that body you're not saying hell we're never going to do anything no i you go do a bright light you could do what what you got to do once you get your forces assembled and you can get more guys and you can get the right air cover and all that stuff you're not abandoning them but at that moment in time you got to make a decision to for the survivability of the team just that's what you have to do here's his thoughts wait a minute we just marked our location how stupid was that this is after they blow after they blow up a claymore they're like oh that was a bad move we just marked our location evades stay out of contact as long as possible yeah right the nva know we're heading toward the lz and they're trying to push us on to it to where we'll be easier targets they intend to use us as bait so they can shoot down more helicopters once we're dead and the helicopters are down the line wait for the bright light rescue choppers screw that today it's not gonna today it's gonna end with us dead or alive these bastards aren't gonna use me as bait bait maybe we can bait them out onto the lz where our gun ships can get at them hunt the hunters so those are just these are lynn's thoughts those were lin lin's thoughts quickly working through cowboy loke and i decided to turn back against the nva we employ fire and maneuver a team firing while b team is maneuvering searching destroying and clearing a path old school cover move we turn we turn moving back through the claymore swath until we encounter a larger enemy force online searching us out down wait ready fire red and dream cree red and green tracers fill the air moving like rush hour traffic lights we are able to grease a couple of platoon size forces up on me alabama forms up as i point southwest towards the lz a new nva line is flooding in this behind searching us out they are using grenades to clear the jungle as they move whistles are sounding on two sides indicating we are moving into a possible ambush they're attempting to hurt us together on the edge of the lz where there's a two thousand foot shear drop on the southern edge alabama online yells loc pointing to pointing our direction of travel boldly we charge pushing them back mowing them down like weeds bold move we close to the perimeter to the lz perimeter don't let them force us out into the open a fast moving object enters my peripheral vision whack my head is snapped back by a wooden handled grenade instantly i'm looking into the jungle canopy seeing a muddled green light stream through a haze of cordite it's over you saw it coming and couldn't get out of the way lower below me the concussion lifts me from the ground pushing me through the air my feet are over my head green tracers track crack around me like lady finger firecrackers that tree is upside down and moving fast this is all wrong focus or you'll miss the moment of your death i hear myself say i can't breathe i feel like i'm drowning the team they are frantically beating me back to consciousness pouring water over my head okay okay i'm back i try to get up my legs don't work from the knees down my fatigue pants are shredded and i'm bleeding one of the men clang starts smearing gelatinized rice on my legs arms face and chest web gear and what is left of my survival vest are lying on the ground in a bloody tatters along with the car 15. it's bent where the barrel meets the receiver and the bolt can't be pulled back loke orders a scout to bury the car cowboy hands me stride's weapon cowboy what's wrong with your hand grenade shrapnel he winces handing me the weapon you have now officially pissed me off i scream at the nva so at this point they're they're doing fire maneuver they get to the edge of the lz he gets hit in the head with a freaking grenade and then it detonates blows him up in the air destroyed his car 15. destroyed his car 15. yeah this is after they charge through the nva rank they go through them it's like even on my best day i don't think i would have thought of that it had to be somebody like lynn it's just such a distinct yeah courageous movie it is and it's one of those things where that's the last thing that the enemies thinks you're going to do and they probably just it would look it was the last thing they would think yeah and then when it happens they're not ready for it they're like wait a second what's happening it's a brilliant just a brilliant move so he says you have now officially pissed me off i scream at the nva god damn my head hurts when i do that scrabbling around my position i finally find the radio handset spider blackjack i'm declaring a prairie fire emergency a prairie fire emergency should drop enough napalm on you suckers to ruin your day laughing blackjack says laughing the reply comes blackjack no kidding brother keep your cool above all else keep your cool so that's awesome i mean um spider had already said hey this he's already moving assets into place he can tell that this is a shit sandwich down here and and then he gives us advice you know this is advice we could all use keep your cool above all else keep your cool oh yeah and that means so much because it's coming from spider who's a who's a a 1-0 himself that's been on the ground that knows what's happening and he's saying above all else keep you cool and so then he says to himself calm the hell down blackjack be cool so that actually worked he actually listened spider blackjack so what's our asset status over all assets have been diverted to your location covey will coordinate them as they arrive and let you know what armament is available you make the decision what you want when and where you want it any questions who's up first i attempt to rise but fall flat on my face god damn it six gunships will prep the lz with gun and rocket runs amongst them will one will attempt to land if that's not possible it will trail a ladder improvise brother roger spider i roll over hugging the radio receiver to my ear trying to get to my feet the gunships fire rockets and then make gun runs near our position the rescue ship attempts to land twice twice we make our move too much lead in the air ground fire is much too intense they're hammering our pickup to pieces get it out of here spider do you copy over the rescue ship limps off while the while marine scarface ships expend their ordinance in covering fire blackjack spider fubai is mounting a bright light rescue to assist you in the fight that's kind of crazy because bruh i mean bright light is as bad as it gets right that means we either had people overrun or had people captured and they're already launching we're getting ready they talked about that's where because we were scheduled for the next day and that we were the bright lights oh so you guys were the freaking bright light yeah and they're telling so so what is that like what are you hearing it's like this is this is not going to be a good day and you just don't know can you hear what what the aircraft cause i know you can't hear what the guys on the ground are saying because they're on the ground and they it's not line of sight so you wouldn't be able could you guys hear what the aircraft are saying back to the guys on the ground when you guys work transmission and pat watkins you could hear some of it could depend on where they were how low they were and up so we picked up some we just knew it was a shit show because the whole camp this society everybody just came to a pause and started praying for them and so what do you guys so so are you the are you the one zero no don welcome was the 1-0 back then i was the 1-1 for idaho and they talked about the bright light don had gone in for the brief and they said we might be the bright light what's your what are you doing when you're when you might be the bright light you already have all your mags they're all loaded you're right we're ready for the night the next day you just well you just take anything out then it's just all bullets and grenades and extra bandages maybe a couple body bags and then we never even got to the launch site they cancelled it because the it's between the enemy the anti-aircraft and and then the weather because it started to cloud it over and then all the gun smoke the cordite and then the clouds they figured one more team when there would be more casualties in the king be like like what lynn just described yeah the first attempt to get him out just like get out of here you if you want to live themselves yeah which you think about the mindset of lynn black yeah your savior is coming down to rescue you and you say nope get out of here yeah what an honorable move beyond yeah yeah he says uh so he says so so spider says hey we're getting a bright light ready for you and then blackjack spider blackjack how would they get in here we don't need more people on the ground or helicopters shot down don't let the nva use us as bait we need to get off the ground and out of the line of fire in the meantime what i really need is a resupply of ammo over blackjack you okay i got nailed with a grenade nothing serious over just can't walk ammo is on the way and i agree with your assessment of the bright light over spider tel fubai alabama is not a sacrificial lamb no bright light over so not only do you call off his the helicopters from coming in he's calling off the rescue mission himself he's saying hey don't send a bright light i'm glad he said that he says roger blackjack by the way the assets are beginning to have difficulty with the weather and smoke hanging over the lz you're difficult to spot which makes accurate airstrikes increasingly difficult over cowboy is working on my legs while he's telling me boku nva on lz we can hear gunships overhead and witness nva tracers riddling the lead ship the nva move across the grassy plain of the lz like a work party of ants trap tramping down the two-foot razor grass which is the only concealment we have suddenly one one panics shouting skyward god save us the nva swarm migrates in our direction so the one one who's been freaked out this whole time and hasn't done his job now yells out god save us and the nva hear it vietnamese team members speaking through cowboys say we're going to kill 1-1 if he doesn't shut up i'll pull the trigger on him myself i agree tearfully one one whispers whimpers god forgive you sounds of an approaching can be king b and our diversion as the carrots of survival are dangled in front of us again each king kingby can hold four so we gotta get everyone out on two sure hope they brought a dozen to this party we've meant we've got to get to the center of the lv help the wounded move i scream in one one's face fearfully confused one one takes hold of loke who is in the who brushes him off with disdain blackjack spider first kingby inbound gunships begin prepping the lz with rack rockets 40 mike mike and m60s blackjack spider i've got a fast mover on track key your handset so he can get a lock put your heads in the dirt over roger roger spider handset keyed heads down we look into the haze street sun as a full flapped phantom his glide path ratio critical ignites the tree line across the lz into sheets of white yellow and orange flames the ship banks sharply after burners crank on and he powers into the valley below nva small arms open up on three sides lazy wagging tongue tongues of green tracer fire sweep the sky for miles heavy triple a fire chase the end the f4 jesus some of those guns aren't far from our location how many of these bastards are there what the hell are we in the middle of keying my handset spider blackjack did you see that anti-aircraft fire on the fast mover over roger blackjack marking map coordinates now this is mandolin back on station over so they've gone from spider as the covey well from from mandolin to spider and now we're back to mandolin and by the way props to that the f4 phantom you know we had it we've we've had a couple f4 phantom vietnam pilots on here oh yeah those guys were those guys were doing a freaking doing god's work up there especially in a case like this drop a napalm to save these guys among those shooting are several nva about 20 feet from our perimeter napalm torches the jungle forcing dozens of the enemy to scurry onto the lz escaping the inferno engulfing their comrades just as another f4 rolls in for a gun run the nva movement move in close to us making every possible attempt to avoid the firestorm firing on single shot we begin to pick them off as they stream out of the fire drenched jungle those close to us endeavor to suppress our fire attempting to protect their comrades their friends fathers brothers uncles that onion-eating son-in-law as they pop up we put them down phantoms return with two cannon and gun runs along our perimeter and i haven't really gone into this but you can hear a couple times that lin has replied referred to the enemy as fathers and sons and and brothers and uncles and so he he just does that to kind of let you know what he's thinking about and he's thinking like yeah these are these are other men and we're about to kill them that's the way it goes oh yeah he yells out ammo check and then two nine cylinder radial engine king bees come chugging up the valley toward us we ignite green smoke marking our position the nva ignite identical smoke markers at several locations confusing the pilots god oh yeah bastards it gets worse we rise moving toward the approaching ships killing everyone in our path ammo is getting critical each of the team has less than a full magazine and those are 20 round mags god whoever invented the 20 round mag instead of the 30 round mag the m79 men are down to their last bandoliers i'm stumbling along working with my browning it's cord peeling the skin off the back of my burned neck we watch in disbelief as this first king b touches down right over an nva smoke marker taking multiple rpg rocket round hits on the flight deck so just to clarify that so everyone can understand when you're marking for location to to get first of all you got to understand that when you're in um when you're in the sky when you're in a helicopter and you're looking down at the ground it's freaking huge it's massive and and i've i had a time where i was in a in a training operation and there was a helicopter coming to pick us up and i was standing there and this was in the desert with your panel and i was standing there with my panel and i'm waving it and i'm like oh yeah i'm right here and he goes where are you and i said i'm right here and he says where are you and i said i'm right freaking here and i'm on the hilltop or whatever stupid thing i said because i was a younger guy yeah i'm on the hilltop well i le i learned a lesson you know how many hilltops he can see from his helicopter you can see 500 of them so i don't narrow it down at all so what we do is we mark our position with something that's very obvious like green smoke so in this situation blackjack gets the green smoke out hey come land on this green smoke the the nva see that and they go oh yep we know what that is they're marked with green smoke hey pull out the green smoke boom so they start throwing green smoke so now what does it look like there's green smoke everywhere additionally they were monitoring the radio oh yeah so they had rdf as well as the monitoring capabilities and so when they heard i don't think lyndon would have said green he probably were gonna pop a smoke the nba either guest was a good guess and you got the results coming so here we go we watching dis belief as the first king bee touches down right over an nva smoke marker taking multiple rpg rocket rounds round hits on its flight deck the force of the blast is so great the ship teeters and finally topples to its side each subsequent rotor blade smashing into the ground whoop whooping in our direction narrowly missing alabama as we approach we grab up nva weapons turning them on the enemy they're everywhere why didn't we see them until now without hesitation we charge the rocket position killing several nva before a hail of fire drives us back to our starting point these aks have a slower rate of cyclic fire cyclic fire the ammunition will last longer we don't need a resupply we can keep doing this till hell freezes over the second so there they ran out of ammo basically now they're picking up the enemy ak-47s and they're shooting and the ak is definitely slower shooting than uh than a car 15 the second ship hits an outcropping of rock on the western side of the knoll after taking heavy gunfire and falls onto the valley floor below blackjack mandolin nice try over screw you mandolin i no longer want to be extracted i'm going to kill every one of these sons of mothers before this day ends so there you go i'm going to read that again i no longer want to be extracted i'm going to kill every one of these sons and mothers before this day ends oh yeah lynn black you don't want to piss off lin black no no no no even on a good day then cowboy says to that in response to that cowboy who's again this is the interpreter right he's the interpreter yes he says one one this is the one one the guy that's been praying the whole time he says 1-1 please pray for the team except blackjack he's on the devil's side now blackjack mandolin fast movers have expended their ordinance are and are returning for resupply your ammo was on that second king b assets in 20 minutes good luck brother mandolin blackjack we don't need forget it over blackjack mandolin blackjack mandolin what's your status over damn it blackjack bugles are sounding wave upon wave of nva troops carrying rifles with fixed bayonets is advancing online when they are feet away we open fire using weapons we have taken from their dead after the first burst of full automatic the team fumbles with ak-47 selector switches to single shot pushing them back we move from body to body using their weapons and their cadavers as shields crawling kneeling knee walking standing scrambling online in line we defend each other and ourselves without a word a look a plan acting on training pure survival instinct all of us except one one are scampering around dragging lugging bodies placing them in a circle around alabama stacking them high we construct a cadaver garrison cowboy is bleeding from a grazing wound to the back of his neck tiny army green leeches in inch out of the trampled razor grass following the blood trails we've created dragging the dead focusing on details directly in front of me i noticed the vampire mosquitoes and ravenous cannibalistic horseflies competing with the leeches to feed on the dead and the wounded and the on the living one of the vietnamese flips me a plastic mosquito repellent bottle hey that stings what the hell are we doing worrying about mosquitoes when people are trying to kill us snag us as much animal ammo as possible i order back and forth and again it's important to remember that this is this is lynn telling the story he's debriefing and the way it's laid out you can tell that he's debriefing in the book i'm probably not doing a great job but this is during the debrief and what's interesting all these things that he's saying about the one one the one one is in the debrief with him he's saying like oh he's not doing anything and and one one's in there and he just kind of is and he goes into it a little bit but he's kind of averting his eye he's keeping his head down like you know he he knows he didn't do a good job back and forth between the nva and recon team alabama continues the back and forth between the nva and the recon team alabama continues on and on and on they just keep coming i don't know how much longer we can keep them up keep this up keep them off us the matted grass is saturated with slimy slippery blood and human innards smoke cordite and the stench of death choke us as foul weather closes in mosquitoes horse flies and the enemy are all conspiring to nibble us to death to swallow us whole soon air support will be possible slowly i come to the realization that i have no physical strength left and i can barely move i can't let my team down one of the team slips and slides on his stomachs over the cadaver garrison to retrieve ammo while other members of the team provide covering fire so these guys are in a freaking small little fort that they've conduct that they've constructed with enemy bodies and when someone goes outside of that perimeter they've constructed a little perimeter when someone goes outside that perimeter from the team to go gather ammo the other guys are laying down fire to protect that guy yeah you know here's another thing too with that team they won zero they had another 1-0 on the team prior to stride being assigned to it and they worked really hard on their team emergency action reaction drills and what they're doing there i think some of that goes back to the training that 1-0 was tim schoff he really worked the team hard and it's a good 1-0 but stride for reasons known only to the command they pulled tim off and put stride and target because he had more rank but that team right there that moment in time when the team's doing all that together that's all that's training that they had prior and experience you know cowboy with his years locke and of course lin from the hurt blackjack mandolin jolly green's 10 minutes out get ready to go home over that announcement lifts a thousand pounds sandbag off my shoulders we're going home mandolin blackjack do you have any idea what size of the force is over blackjack mandolin what you're up against is the regiment you were sent to track over is that all only 3 000 of the bastards well i think we made it a dent i think we made a dent in them don't you just barely brother bugle sound the sky is filled with grenades we're hugging the ground as if as they explode around us and it's till tell us a little bit about the fact that the enemy they don't have radios so what they use is whistles and bugles to coordinate their attacks yeah the command levels have some radios and the command consider to their commander like if you break it down from platoon to squad leaders and then with the bugles and the commands that's what they're they're trained how they are on attack with withdrawal and um that's what then came up against over and over again yeah they uh in the korean war all those all those times when that that's like the most horrifying thing is all those times when they were to get these human assault human wave assaults towards their positions it was all whistles they'd hear the whistles and they'd hear the bugles and they would know what was about to happen sometimes it's for psyops just to make the noise every time you hurt you know they're coming bugle sound the sky is filled with grenades we're hugging the ground as they explode around us hey these aren't fragmentation their concussion just a bunch of noise not sending out much shrapnel concussion stuff stuff like the ones they used on me earlier you're mine now you bastards you stand back up catching some and begin throwing them immediately back you should have seen the look on their faces oh crap here they come wooden grenade shrapnel severs the prick 25 radio antenna i begin to rig an impromptu long wire aerial with the intention of laying it over the cliff behind us out of harm's way relentless the nva continue their advance alongside the leeches mosquitoes and horse flies inch by bloody inch chu hoy surrender i yell at no one in particular mandolin blackjack a large force is now yards away from our perimeter we need help two huey hog attack helicopters rotor chopped their way into the lz first with the m60 chatter followed up by the whoosh of rockets placed into the nva ranks blackjack judge over go judge and the judge is one of the call signs for for the marine corps the marine corps uh this is the um the muskets oh okay judging the executioner okay yeah so these are army units that came out of america and oh yeah scarfaces that scarface marine corps are marine corps yes so what kind of aircraft or is judge an executioner same thing oh so they're they're also cobras no not no cobras at this time all the gunships were old ues that could barely get off the ground got it in fact they're so weighted down without and they're they didn't have the power that the later models had in fact a lot of times when they took off the door gunners would get out to try to lift the helicopter and get it moving and once they got a little forward momentum they jump back in the helicopter and the muskets even put little wheels on the front of the skids so that when they're on asphalt they would be able to move better without having to skid bind if they figured their wheel would roll better and that good honestly out there pushing these things that's like fred flintstone situation trying to get that right so here's a sidebar on one of these on the muskets there was a guy his name was berg and berry this was his very first mission with with the muskets on prairie fire for a sog mission welcome to psalms his first mission as a door gunner yeah these are two these are some epic call signs though judge and executioner oh yeah so uh so judge checks in on the radio and this is just such a you know as a calm guy so when you get that aircraft checking in it's like the best field in the world and he comes up blackjack judge over and the pilots are always a little bit more you know just sort of really smooth on the radio and so he's coming in this totally hot situation blackjack judge over and he says go judge anyone in particular or just kill them all he's laughing yeah grease them all i say with malevolent bloodied grimace you're just in time for the party judges door gunners are working their m-60s in long bursts my guns are gone meltdown executioner is right behind me the nva back off a few moments briefly licking their wounds far from discouraged new assault lines form before they can open fire on us executioner confronts them head on both door gunners blazing away he is hovering inches off the lz skipping rockets off the ground into their ranks executioner lifts up his rotors chopping loudly at the mist filled air they make it over the tree line ducking down into the basin below remaining below anti-aircraft capability regaining airspeed as they come up the executioner and his crew returning for another pass to protect our perimeter the nva charge before we can celebrate fire fire we add more we add more of them to the cadaver garrison along with the weapons and much needed ammo silence no birds chirping no voices mosquitos flies no sounds none even the aircraft have flown far enough away that their absence amplifies the quiet after an almost continuous melee of gunfire grenades and claymore explosions air ordnance expenditures including cluster bomb units napalm and gun runs and 20 millimeter cannons silence have i gone deaf complete silence you've been there yeah that's freaking crazy yeah in dead rest each of us lays motionless and by the way when you say i've been there no tilt i have not been in a freaking cadaver magazine yeah there's a little mag change going on uh each of us rests each in dead rest each of us lays motionless barely breathing my mind is focused inward unaware of its physical surrounding mind and body are not one one one continues to quietly chant his prayer cowboy has taken another hit during the last skirmish along with two of the others come back think move summoning energy from where i don't know i fumble around in my medical gear i'm giving you a morphine and we'll apply a compress to that wound we're going to run out of bandages if you keep getting shot knock it off okay so cowboy's been hit a couple times oh more than that yeah it's like four or five i lost count and so yeah lynn tells me you're gonna run out of bandages so quick getting shot and then cowboy says where's john wayne when you need him alabama laughs as the nva boisterously yells chu hoy dumas another nva orders us to chew hoi in english i flip him the bird as a sniper shoots ku kwang our tail gunner in the crotch i flip my borrowed ak on full auto and unloaded into a tree about a hundred yards away resulting in the sniper falling through his limbs through its limbs and brushed below to the ground with a thud if i could rip your heart out needed i would kong kwang what have we done last week you got arrested by national police and way in a way whore house for carrying a pistol the entire alabama team put on their gear and went down and broke you out of jail so you could go on this mission god damn it i wish we'd left you in that place where you'd be safe right now lok i was calling him loke sorry lock lock is applying direct pressure to call to quang the tail gunner's wound seconds later an ae1 a1e skyraider lumbers into the ao flown by a pilot codenamed snoopy it roars in from the west brushing treetops full flaps working the throttle the aircraft is so close to the team we can hear the distinctive metallic click click of the napalm canister being released from the second world war era plane the skyraider appears to be falling but actually it slips down into the valley to escape gunfire as helicopters and fast movers have maneuvered earlier his wingman roils through the clouds and cordite we can hear nuts bolts and god knows what creaking groaning as he saw salvos his ships rockets three nva mortars opened fire boom boom boom they're long the rounds fall into the valley at our rear there's no way in hell any of us can catch mortars and throw them back time to go back to work i order lock and i slide over the cadaver wall crouching crawling knee walking we move towards the mortars cautiously picking our way through the charred bodies from previous airborne assaults quietly yeah right we travel into the jungle within a few yards of the forced first mortar tube lock stops me to draw a plant in the dirt he will hit one two tube i will take tube three and we will combine on tube two damn suicide mission i say under my breath lock nods at me keat roy he replies we die after the mortar after the mortar men launched the next set of three salvos lock opens fire on his target while i attack tube three discovering several nearby infantry god so he's in the middle of all this freaking crap and then they're going out and assaulting these three mortar positions yeah which god knows i mean how far they had to be at least 100 yards away at least we're talking a football field and there's just some spare infantry trying to kill him in between and those are some motivational words we die and that's sort of like fuck it let's go yeah let's do this he was a tiger uh oh crap there are more of these bastards than i thought i begin moving low and fast as the survivors chase me heading toward tube one where lock is pinned down yelling as loud as possible drawing their attention allowing locke to move out of the kill zone i roll our last fragmentation grenade into their midst killing several wounding the rest lock and i attack the second tube before returning to the team picking ammo from the dead snipers dog us all the way back to our cadaver garrison the two of us press our bloody bodies against the jungle floor as green tracers search the air around us 1-1 take a look at this i say while rolling over the blood and dirt on me are forming a second skin leaves and grasses have begun to stick to my bare skin ants and beetles seem to be making a home on my new crust i'm building my own camouflage it looks like i'm becoming part of this place if i lay down i bet you they won't tell me from the dead oh god please don't go crazy you got to get us out of here i want to go home he pleads we'll all be dead long before i go crazy through the clouds and haze of battle we glimpse a jolly green jg28 starting its descent into the lz as it approaches the radio crackles blackjack this is 28 on short final looking for an orange panel on the southeast side of the lz over blackjack panel is on the ground we'll attempt to suppress enemy fire for your landing orange panel in sight adjusting approach preparing for touchdown blackjack get your people on board over negative negative not southeast we're southwest you're in the wrong place get out of there the nva rays raise up all around jg28 firing everything they have the pilot keys isn't radio to answer back i hear a crew member in the background calm yelling we have fuel leak it's everywhere get us out of here we watch as the glass in the cockpit on the co-pilot side disappears with successive rocket explosions the pilot struggles to lift while lift off while maintaining control of his ship 28 is up 28 is up our ride home is slipping sideways across the lc passing within touching distance above us over the lip of the plateau down into the valley to escape the relentless enemy barrage alabama goes insane on full auto burning up the majority of our ammo on anything that moves 1-1 praise snoopy in his wingman move into the next move in next to the crippled jg28 through the haze and darkening storm clouds covey is attempting to direct gunships across the lz to pick off targets of opportunity their rotors are moving smoke and clouds down across our cadaver strewn landscape obscuring everyone's view 28 blackjack 28 blackjack are you guys okay over blackjack we have a severed fuel line the stuff's sloshing all over the deck fuel fumes are blinding my crew we can't fire our guns without going up in flames snoopy will escort us out of here good luck blackjack out oh yeah tracers shift from horizontal grazing fire across the lz to vertical as jolly green giant 10 approaches the green furies playing a deafening tune through its skin jg jg10 blackjack the enemy is under you right now over from our position we can see an nva rocket crew rise up in the grass take aim and fire directly into the underbelly of jg10 we're hit we have a six inch hole through the floor both engine warning lights just came on we can't make the pickup oh my god look at that both engines are on fire the pilot performs a 180 degree turn moving the damaged aircraft away from the enemy fire away from alabama we can see him struggling to keep his bird airborne as his crew continues firing time has run out traveling several hundred yards the pilot comes up on his survival frequency brace for crash landing they continue firing while the burning ship settles into the jungle blackjack mandolin over go mandolin first you won the lottery then you maneuvered your way into a prairie fire and now for the bonus round saigon has ordered an arclight over bonus round what do they think this is the price is right there's no way we can survive an arc light tell it to the nva maybe they'll run like hell and leave us be what altitude will they be bombing from they'll be cruising at 25 000 feet for a standard carpet bombing mission not exactly accurate from that altitude saigon is assuming you won't be there or be alive by the time the b-52s get here over damn straight i have to get back to camp for recon company football game this evening how long do we have over one of the indiges outside the garrison stealing it stealing ak-47 magazines from the dead he's tossing them into our garrison as the rest of us return fire blackjack mandolin the arclight is off the runway and heading your way over so what tell us about a tell us about an arclight b-52 and what the their load is like over 20 000 pounds of bombs and they usually come more than one and you don't hear them as you know you don't hear anything until the first round impacts and that's what that was the code for an arc light and uh amazing firepower and they're going to basically carpet bomb this area right that's the plan what is carpet bomb bombs everywhere everything like just lay down i mean i don't know how many aircraft there are in this particular mission but it's a probably multiple aircraft with all those bombs and they get over the location and they just open their bombardier doors and out come the other their bay doors and out come the bombs you know when you see pictures or videos where there's just all these airplanes flying there's just bombs falling out exactly leaking out yeah just leaking out that's it suppose the direct support will come in one or two bombs around the team this is like every like jocko saying you may have four or five planes and they fly over everything's all bombs are dropped over 100 at least yeah there'd be anywhere to 250 500 000 pounders blackjack mandolin i don't think i want to be here or sorry mandolin blackjack i don't think i want to be here when they arrive over blackjack mandolin well you have one last option over what is it over unexpectedly our radio frequency is flooded with fast-talking vietnamese god you can't get a break so the vietnamese figure out what radio frequency they're on they start using that unexpectedly our radio frequency is flooded with fast talking vietnamese cowboy listens for a few seconds and says nva find our frequency i switch to an alternate frequency as it is jammed and it is jammed as well i throw the prc radio over the cliff and switch to the urc-10 survival radio mandolin blackjack over mandolin blackjack over blackjack jg32 over go jg32 you're on an air force survival guard frequency 243. covey 265 is busy on other channels we'll get his attention for you i'm hovering in a draw to your west we have 20 minutes of fuel left before i leave the first person we see better be an american hurry we're taking heavy ground fire our armor is not holding up this close to the source jg32 can you hook me up with covey blackjack mandolin over mandolin can you lay down covering fire between us and jg32 give me two minutes to line up assets then move out we're getting empty the next voice you hear will be spiders over roger spider blackjack over i turn and yell the team alabama discard everything we don't need over the side get ready to move out cowboy and i move to the edge of the cliff while lock demands commands the garrison the two of us cautiously peep over the edge 15 feet below us is a ledge that moves in the direction we want to travel move the team to this location i order cowboy crawls back to the cadaver garrison while i make another attempt at contacting spider one at a time alabama comes crawling over to me i begin lowering each of them to the ledge below one one scales the rock face making his own way out making his own way immediately beginning to move along the ledge in the direction of the of jg32 cowboy stop him from the ledge we look up the face of the cliff we can see tracers dancing across the lip of the rim covey's directing daisy chain air strikes between alabama and jg32 blackjack spider we're dropping cluster bomb unit cbu on the path between you and jg32 it will kill some and should temporarily drive the rest out of the zone man so they want to get to where this helicopter is located flying in this little draw and in order to get there they drop cluster bombs on their path yeah for good luck and then that that jolly green settled into the jungle chopping down smaller trees to settle so that way it's brilliant moving somewhere protected yes so that way uh they're not visible not completely exposed they're going to shoot him they go they have to shoot through the jungle to get to him yeah it's counter-intuitive when you're in the air in a helicopter yeah in a helicopter but i guess on on fast movers or aircraft as well you'd think the closer you get to the ground the more danger you're in but the opposite is actually true because when you get down low enough people can't shoot at you because they don't have an angle to shoot at you whether it's in the city or whether it's in uh in a jungle like this people just they they can't see you anymore because you're low right so here the helicopters in the jungle and then like you said with the with the a1 skyraiders the key to their success was how low they made their gun runs they would just come screaming across the path drop their ordinance and be on their way oh yeah so anybody's in the jungle you can hear them coming you can't see them until it's too late even for a slow mover like that but oh we love them continuing on thick choking smoke moves across the lz roiling over the ledge above obscuring our escape from the plane from the plane of death we inch our way toward the last chance arc lights coming blackjack the cbu strike has created negative visibility we're unable to provide support until we get a window over you're looking for a window and i'm looking for a door spider blackjack the good news is it has also decreased visibility for the nva gunfire's noticeably subsided keep up the smoke and we'll move by ear hugging the face of the cliff making our way across the rubble of the ledge we come to a dead end crap we're gonna have to climb back up to the plateau wait here while i take a look if it's okay i'll signal easily climbing with the aid of vines trailing over the ledge i crawl over one side and slide under the low vegetation seconds later one woods head appears spotting me he crawls to my location up under a large broad leaf plant where's your weapon i ask i don't know he sheepishly replies take this ak and cover us while i get the rest of the team up here over can you do that uh-huh lock the zero one is the last person to go over the rim joining the remainder of the team in the undergrowth giving me two thumbs up as quickly as the underbrush will allow we move up a small incline under the protection of enormous broad leaf undergrowth shortly we come to the periphery of a short ledge where we stop before us is a carnivorous half-lit clearing under jungle canopy look at this hundreds of large huts built up on stilts stretch back into the low light everywhere there are trails campfires and cooking area cooking areas two are left as a latrine in a shower facility smoke from cooking has fires spiral upward gently mingling with the battle haze ceiling drifting just below the canopy clothes are hung over low plants and robes strung between towering hardwood trees this must be their main camp this is amazing it's an entire town under the trees no one seems to be home from the sounds of it they must all be over there i say pointing at the direction of jg32 look over there who's that who's that looks like an american hey you he turns pointing a 45 caliber pistol in our direction i stand up motioning him to us he raises a 45 pistol to his lips signaling us to be quiet we cautiously move to his location who are you i'm the jg 10 pj dan caspier rotor head is over there under that hut talking to the 30 talking with 32 who's rotor head i ask our pilot colonel sam grineer i think he has a broken back but he can still walk the other members of your crew did they make it 10 was burning there was only time to get out grineer before it exploded our flight engineer greg lawrence and co-pilot duane wester were trapped inside i didn't have time the pj pauses jg10 exploded before i could get back to them we've been waiting for you guys here hoping we would you would make it before we had to ene grab rotor head and fall in with the seven of us now so so these guys have now just miraculously ran into the pilot and the pair rescue guy that had that was inside that helicopter that got shot down and then exploded yeah and the pilot's got a broken back he's still mobile yes sir the nva are focused on jg32 easing pressure on us we need to move there as quickly as possible 32 doesn't have much time left on station we have to go now order sam grineer none of us have much time left form up we're going home i demand casbir help your colonel we can hear them moving through the jungle all around us they seem to be traveling to the ship paralleling us blackjack spider time's against you buddy 32 can't wait much longer and the arc light is closing fast the b-52s have begun their countdown they're on long final yeah you can't make this up no the arc light's coming in to drop bombs all over everything in the area the aircraft that they're trying to get to that could possibly get them home that's hidden in the jungle is almost out of fuel and they can hear as they're moving towards the helicopter they can hear they're being paralleled by the nva on the move spider arc lights on the way we intersect a trail running down the middle of the ravine i stopped the team helicopter gunships and skyraiders are making blind gun runs up and down the narrow ravine and around jg32 smoke from air strikes hangs over the plateau threading its way down the ravines into the depths of the murky chasm blackjack spider air strikes to clear the way is impossible we can no longer see the jungle let alone your ride home get a move on over i feel as though we are moving past mad dogs guarding the gates of hell itself nva are pouring small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades into the hovering chopper while door gunners and pilots intermittently fire the gatling gun and m-60s desperate i moved the team in onto the trail toward the hovering ship don't move on a trail you dumbass well this is one of those times when jungle rules don't apply amen so they can see the helicopter they can see that it's taking fire there's a trail and you guys and anyone in vietnam is constantly avoiding the trails because that's where ambushes and booby traps get set but in this situation there's no choice no choice we progress hastily tail gunner begins violently shaking in his turn to pasty white to the vietnamese assistant hiding him in thick bushes so tail gunner is your rear security guy and he's he's the one who's shot in the ground he's losing blood he's pale white to the vietnamese assist hiding him in thick bushes then they flee to the chopper i stop them taking lead at the at the crest we see jg32 taking hits and dealing out death it's m60 is red hot someone is firing an m16 out of rear port as we move to jg32 the intensity of gunfire seems to multiply a hundred fold jesus the air is so full of lead i can see it i report to myself loudly fuel and bits of metal skin are falling from the aircraft as we approach on one side of the turbine cowling is lying on the jungle floor blackjack spider who are you talking to over god buddha anyone that'll listen spider blackjack sorry i didn't realize i held the the radio keyed over the jungle penetrator from jg's winch smashes into the ground and then raises a couple feet pj dan caspier scrambles to put three team members on the first load when you get in the chopper man a gun and return fire protect us i yell after them rotor head and pg and the pj along with quang a wounded alabama vietnamese are on the second lift kwang becomes entangled in jungle vines while being hoisted the operator has to stop the hoist lower it to give him time to untangle himself when the hoist moves up toward the aircraft cuang is not sitting in the seat but hanging on with assistance from casbier quang i returned tracing i returned i turned retracing our path back down the trail to the thicket where we had left our tailgunner halfway back i realize i'm alone with no weapon for the first time paralyzing fear sweeps through me i stop what am i doing you couldn't help you when he was hit but you can quang face the boogie man do your job asshole move quang is covered with bloated black leeches mosquitoes and giant flies feeding off the last of his ebbing life mumbling he wobbles his colt 45 at advancing nva toy keat i die the tail gunner motions to me to return to the jolly green i turn and kwang shoots himself you sons of bitches my cry is lost in the sounds of battle tears obscure my vision as i scramble like a raving lunatic back in the direction of the waiting ship smack rushing smack into two screaming nva their aks pointed at me chew hoy i surrender surrendering stretching out my arms continuing to move quickly in their direction within arm's reach i yell in their faces chew hole yourself motherfucker the young soldiers are taken by surprise before they can respond i grab a searing hot ak-47 barrel jerking the weapon from one of them blistered skin rolls off my hand i backhand the one on my right and smashed the soldier on my left in the face with his own weapon hot hot hot i scrambled to the penetrator finding a praying one one on the ground the rest of the team have abandoned him and are on board firing any weapon they can get their hands on as the penetrator lifts in what seems like slow motion one one and i look upward wondering what the hell is taking so long we are showered with hot spent m60 and other weapon shell casing hot brass is sticking to my bare skin creating long water blisters similar to the ones on my hand from the ak i grabbed the air is filled with smoke jet fuel and green tracers moving past us in slow motion like mad hornets never-ending shell casings raining down along with metal debris and a tornado of jungle vegetation the penetrator cable is vibrating violently as jg 32 takes hit after hit it's all coming apart i yell at one one jg 32 piloted by lieutenant colonel jim grady begins lifting out of the jungle ravine with the two of us hanging on below like a couple of crippled puppets on a quarter-inch steel wire there are several great trees on both sides of the ship all of them large enough to severely damage the five 62-foot rotors causing it to crash ascending out of the jungle we can feel the heat of b40 rocket motors as they pass by on their way to slamming into jg-32's plated underside the ship is being boosted upward with each explosion i slump on the penetrator and begin sliding off as my backside is sprayed with shrapnel hey that hurts one one grabs hold wrapping his arms around me saving my life hope what's left of the armor holds i i weakly yell grasping at the penetrator cable for balance the jg flight mechanic reaches out pulling me off the penetrator into the ship dumping me on red hot shell covered deck with 1-1 on my heels para-rescue specialist allen avery leaves his gun position and begins tending to alabama alabama's wounds once clear of the jungle hole the ship begins its ascent out of the valley the flight mechanic sergeant john nussbaum removes his helmet and places it on my head co-pilot major don olson tells me we're on our way out of here partner i'm cold lieutenant an analyst breaks the silence 1-1 do you have anything to add to blackjack's story no sir he softly mumbles with his head down how many nva do you think were in the area and how many do you think were killed or wounded asks sergeant analysis i believe the question was directed to 1-1 but before he can muster with an answer i jump in the answer to both of those questions is more than we had time to count however i'll estimate somewhere between three to five thousand nva how many did we kill before we round out of our ammo we killed hundreds when we started using their weapons we killed hundreds more between us and air support maybe two or three thousand the arc light followed that after we left i hope they finished off the rest of them crazy oh yeah and then that that jolly green giant couldn't fly too far it only went over two more mountaintops it lands another one comes in picks up some of the guys then lynn and the one one had to go back on the cobra gunship because the cobra the the the weapon doors come down and they have seat belts on them oh my god so all the way from layoffs back to the nang they're with the uh yeah uh just to just to top everything off for them and they froze their balls off of course because they're dangling out there five thousand feet take it up to five thousand feet to get away from any yes enemy fire and and the uh and of course the model of the jolly greens that others may live yeah that day they put it right on the line amazing i going in after you see multiple birds shot down like oh one bird goes and gets shot out the next bird goes and gets shot out the next bird goes and gets shot down yeah and you're still coming in yep we're here and one got shot so bad limped back to base barely got back they continue on with this debrief and and one of the analysts says tell us about the terrain again 1-1 you were closer to the terrain than i was why don't you answer that question one one breaks down a medical aid gives him a sedative to quiet his nerves he's been through a lot i sigh do you also need a sedative ask the medic no thanks i don't handle any kind of drugs very well if i take that i'll be asleep in 10 minutes give me an understanding of where you are physically and psychologically ask one of the medics physically today i'm less than 50 percent i took some hard hits and i'm still trying to recover psychologically who the heck knows anyone doing this kind of work is probably crazy from the get-go you know what i mean a combat soldier focuses on what they feel physically what they see hear and smell feelings of fear sadness boredom and joy are suppressed as much as possible so we can focus on the mission our team and staying alive the psychological stuff has to come later or we won't make it does that make sense to you so there you go this is a classic thing we're putting off all this stuff like not worrying about it right now we got a job to do the medic looks up from taking notes it will do for now please continue with your train of thought as soon as my wounds fully close and the stitches come out i'll begin training again i i heal fast and definitely have some ideas on needed training for alabama to be an effective team don't you think that's up to the 1-0 to determine what training is needed for his team 1-1 perks up i jump in ahead of him yes sir no sir i mean it's up to all of us to conduct training as americans the welfare of a special forces team is the responsibility of every man on that team if the designated leader can't lead then it's incumbent on any one of us to step forward and provide that leadership that's what i did and that's what i'll do again if needed so there you go oh yeah real leadership pure leadership fearless peerless so you're ready to go do it again and he thinks to himself i've heard that several guys have hung it up after the first mission i think i know why it's these damn debriefs they were a pain in the ass that's for sure the analyst continues our best intelligence indicates there's probably or i think this is um yeah this is this is the chief song our best intelligence indicates that there's approximately 2 000 miles of trail and between 12 to 15 bin tram and those are like bin tram is like these um organizations what are they like a battalion sized it was a longer trail there'd be a command and control element as well as a hospital overnight rest facilities and then from there they run people out to keep the trails open work with the local indigenous people the conscripts because they're constantly bombing the trail so these these are organizations along the trail they're called bin trams then thousands of anti-aircraft guns 20 to 30 30 000 support soldiers all defended by 40 to 60 000 security troops that's what we need intel on are you ready to take another whack at it chief sog asks half grinning at the two of us whiskey tango foxtrot i'm not sure i really wanted to know that i will be once the wounds of healed when i'm in better physical condition and we get the training that i talked about and after i have a couple more beers tell me about what you thought about out there ask a tall slender gray-haired medical officer on the other side of the table behind him sits two obvious assistants taking notes lynn thinks didn't i just answer the question a few minutes ago these guys are not going to let up and then he says do you mean me personally yes you personally what went through your mind what emotions did you feel how much detail are you asking for god i hate that i hate and he thinks himself god i hate this how did you feel shit didn't i answer that question a few minutes ago we've heard excellent tour guide level detail from the point of the initial ambush to your team's extraction tell us about the period of time from the point of insertion to the ambush take your time give me a tour of your thoughts what were you thinking i lean back in my chair pausing thinking i'm a guy i'm a guy not some woman who wants to do nothing but talk about her feelings guys don't think about their feelings this is just his thoughts we're either happy sad thirsty horny or hungry okay calm the hell down and give him an answer and then he says i was on the second king bee we watched bulldog and the others disembarked from the first ship just before our spiral began our door gunner announced we go down now chuckles around the room we assumed the get ready position with me sitting in the door the lottery lz cork screwed up to meet us several feet off touchdown i spotted an nva flag posted near the edge i remember thinking oh crap several of them laugh or quiet or quietly chuckle what you spotted freaking nva flag on the landing zone yeah i think he goes into a little bit more detail specialist black i've heard about the mission i want to know about your feelings what you felt emotionally do you understand well sir oh crap to me is a pretty strong feeling however when a soldier's in that situation that causes thoughts like oh crap or others we usually don't have time to stop and consider our feelings as soon as our king beat tires bounced down tracers punched through the side of our ship we got the hell out of there i remember thinking what a mistake that was actually sir it was more like we are screwed blackjack the sergeant major objects yes sergeant major in mid liftoff the green swarm engulfed the ship like a disturbed nest of horns the king bee hung in midair laboring slipping to its left the pilot wrestling with a stick his co-pilot was slumped in a seat down it went in a ball of flames the two scarface ships providing cub provided covering fire as i moved my portion of alabama to link up with the 1-0 i yelled the bulldog that we needed to get off the lz he ordered us to form up we quickly moved in a low crouch through the knee-high razor grass to a log where bulldog and the others were we were knee-deep in kimchi and i knew it and there's a little bit of a of a a little bit of a tension between um between uh bulldogs yeah between bulldog and and blackjack and with that tension and i'm fast forward a little bit he said uh did it make the one of the analysts says did it make you angry angry how did it make you feel i didn't care i came back here to do a job why did you come back the medical officer insists because they nailed my brother and best friend and several the guys in my 173rd unit i came back here to get even is that what you want to know am i mad no when i got out of the first when i got out the first time and went home it bugged me that so many of us had been killed or wounded and i couldn't really say i had seen the enemy i felt like a failure i'm gonna fight in a war if i'm gonna fight in a war i wanna see the enemy i wanna look on their face when i pull the trigger or i have them roasted with napalm are you getting what you need with this answer and then he thinks to himself don't ask me this shit again i'm here doing a job that most of the guys back home don't want to do just be satisfied you can get people like me who want to be up here and are qualified yes thank you the medical officer deadpans black continue on with the narration instructs lieutenant analyst and with feeling he snorts again this whole scene is just straight out of a freaking hollywood movie of you know the the the combat soldier fresh off the battlefield getting interrogated by these ramps yeah and even there like the whole thing with the flag and experience one zero would have gone but said no we're out of here they had a green one zero and lynn try to i don't i think if he goes to the details yeah he goes into it a little bit um but he wouldn't listen there was just a couple like that little bit of disagreement you know why did sgt stride make you the radio operator one two and black the one one he goes through this you know um uh so he continues here um yes sir covey asked for a sit rep at which time i reported that the second king bee was shot down and we were waiting for bulldog to make a go no goku decision mandolin asked a talk with bulldog who said he was going to continue with the mission he then motioned to our point man to move over to a well-traveled trail across the lz into the jungle cowboy point the vietnamese team leader lock and i vigorously argued against walking a trail especially when we had already made contact to be honest i thought the order was stupid there i said it and he's thinking to himself there i said it you want to know how i feel that's it so this is when you're the tension that we were talking about oh yeah lieutenant analyst his face red eyes narrowed you argued with your 1-0 in the middle of making contact with the enemy and then lin thinks to himself your ass is in trouble now keep calm he's never been in a combat situation except maybe fighting with his older sister the first rule of recon is never use trails especially well-traveled trails that trail i said to stride definitely fits that category he told me he was in command and that i would follow his orders without questions did you yes sir into really deep kimchi continue the chief orders impatiently bulldog angrily motioned to the team to move up on the trail point leading the way with bulldog pushing from behind on his rucksack the trail wound into dense jungle foliage bending to the left point tried to move cautiously paralleling a small team a small 10 to 20 foot rise to our right bulldog hurried him along pushing pushing him to his death is that statement necessary the lieutenant analyst sarcastically cracks i was instructed to tell you what i was personally thinking i was the only american on the team with vietnam experience with combat experience i was the fourth person in line right behind cowboy i think sergeant stride's experience went back to an a-team in korea and 1-1 had never seen combat is that statement necessary i think so yes rank and combat experience are not necessarily synonymous don't you agree and he says sometimes stay calm stay calm point taken how did you feel when taking fire on insertion asks the doc when we took fire going in i felt anxious he thinks to himself that's an understatement scared the shit out of me that anxiety turned to disbelief when bulldog made the decision to continue the mission and then again when the decision was made to walk a trail i remained on the state of higher alert high alert right up to the ambush an interesting thing happened they all laughed we can imagine people were killing your teammates and you were pinned down how much more interesting could it get observes sergeant analyst they all nervously laugh again i sit silent expressionless looking into each of their eyes the medical officer is quietly observing me after what seems like a long time i turn and look at the one one his head is down his hands folded in his lap whiskey tango foxtrot over i think to myself turning back to the debrief panel you ever been ambushed i asked flatly chief sog and the command sergeant major both shift uncomfortably in their chair none of them have my impatience my impatience with this process is giving way to temper i'm tired remember what covey said keep your cool all these questions have been covered in our initial debrief and documented in the aer what are these guys after give them what they want and then get the hell out of here then he starts speaking again when the nva triggered the ambush all that anxiety disappeared i went to work previous experience and training kicked in i returned fire with the intent of suppressing the nva attack and being able to maneuver out of the spot we were in bulldog was bulldogging 1-1 was down like i said before i thought he was hit and took charge i've learned the best defense is an aggressive offense as long as we had ammunition and could move i took charge of our not so little not no name battle moving at will causing as much confusion for the enemy as possible preventing them from forming up a large force to overrun us that tactic worked until we ran out of ammo the anxiety returned no sir fear one one turns to face me with local dis disbelief how did you deal with it prompts the doctor our situation seemed impossible the fact is i was completely overcome with fear for an instant i couldn't move and he thinks to himself i haven't thought about this until now i don't know if i can express that feeling he continues oddly it seemed to be unconnected to the physical danger the fear yes there were three things going on all at once it was this it was as if i had stepped outside myself seeing all things feeling all emotions all at the same time in that instant i became completely demoralized and he thinks to himself every person in this room is fixed on what i am saying i wish i knew what i was saying or how to say it i'm talking like a woman or like to shrink demoralized the doc gently urges what made the emotion so overpowering was the realization that i had violated every moral precept of my upbringing my childhood focused sharply blending into the present i couldn't wrap my mind around our deeds i was alive we were alive hundreds of others were dead fathers sons husbands you know more would die maybe thousands i raised my hand to hold off further questions as i stared down at the table to focus my thoughts and emotions emotions here they are that he continues that entire thought process lasted a fraction of a second then the usual if i can call it that the re-emergence of our deadly danger the possibility of a sudden assault and total annihilation was welcome and composing reality pacified me our reality emerged in my mind like a clap of thunder my emotions were out prioritized by mortality you might want to talk with us about with you might want to talk with one of our medical staff offers the chief sog and he thinks i just did there's nothing they can do for me ignoring his comment it's interesting to watch the changes in people who are on the spot for instance in that fraction of a second when the concussion grenade hit me i became interesting to myself what does that mean interested in yourself the medical officer is surprised not interested in myself but interesting to myself an object of interest outside myself it's difficult to describe however all that serves no purpose in the moment distractions of that kind prevent us from witnessing our own death from dealing with the present someone on the team mentioned surrendering we all knew they would kill us good thinking offers the command sergeant major anyway that led to a conversation about breaking the team into two man groups to escape and evade at that point in the battle we felt the terrain and enemy activity prevented us from end that's when we decided to fight it out using our using their weapons during daylight hours and then try to get some of the people out under the cover of darkness we now had options and resolve the fear was diminished and a new purpose and mission had gripped every man on the team explain orders the lieutenant analyst i thought i just did blackjack chides the sergeant major okay okay i hesitate looking for the words during daylight hours we decided to fight them as hard as we could using their weapons and tactics i know from experience that when you use the enemy's tactics against them they are they quickly become confused have you ever considered counter measures against your own tactics of course not no one ever does you're not going to fight yourself right that's why it's so important for us to study their tackets and tactics and use those tactics against them in the field the reports saigons send out each month are the basis for that knowledge along with what we learned directly in the field practical experience you all are here making a major contribution to us staying alive and being successful what you have told me about being trans today adds to that knowledge they're smiling shooting approval glances at one another and then he thinks to himself blackjack you're being a kiss ass knock it off thank you specialist black for the performance review of my staff replies the chief's sog with a straight face please continue instantly they all get serious all we had to do is hold out until dark what about the b-52 strike that was on the way mocks the lieutenant analyst minor consideration if thousands of enemy couldn't kill us 20 feet from 20 feet away we could certainly live through b-52's bombing from 20 or 30 000 feet the lt gives me his narrowed eyed narrow-eyed i don't believe you look as the medical officer and others suppress their laughter we begin to pair up as the curtain of death fell around us even though we were still acting as a team curtain of death asks the medical officer quizzically i remember that when the decision was made i felt as if a black curtain were being lowered around me it was something i could see in my mind we made every attempt to maneuver ourselves into an e e launch position which turned out to be the route we took to the last jolly green giant we figured because we were small and they were so large at night we would have they would have to set up blocking positions and not move on us the reasoning was that if they tried to move they would wind up shooting each other in large blocking groups they would make noise revealing themselves and their positions this would give us the opportunity to try and move out between those positions and get out it's a good thing we didn't have to e e at night using that route it would have led us directly into the heart of their camp my job became getting as many of my team off the battlefield and out of the ao to safety as possible black your alabama team is very lucky you didn't have to e e because the b-52 strikes even if you survived them the nva would have taken to widely dispersing its units for instance a 2000 man nva regiment might spread might be spread across a five mile stretch of trail dug in into each bend in the road and hilltop this is by the way of explaining this is by the way of explaining why some sog teams just vanish unwittingly landing amid such an overlapping concentration of nva forces my guess is that no matter which way you would have turned every half mile or so you would have bumped into enemy platoons or companies even 500 man battalions looking directly at chief sogg did you know they were all there at that place we chosen as an lz without hesitation he responds so so you got lynn saying wait a second bro you knew that there was all these people on the freaking ground that we were going to put in an lz and the chief song says no not specifically the 12 teams before alabama were tracking a regiment down the trail that tracking mission as you know became known as the lottery we believe you found that regiment and ben tram those these these organizations that protect the ho chi minh trail ben tram 611 at that same location our intelligence led us to believe that your lz was approximately five miles from that base and that alabama might have a chance at gathering very important intel along the network of trails so prevalent in that area the fact is we now know exactly where bimtran bin tram 611 was located and you have confirmed the type and number of personnel on site rarely is such a small team engage such a large force with so few casualties and live to tell about it the ben tram 611 you all encountered has been destroyed for now along with the regiment that took 12 sog teams we here are all all very proud to work with men like you and your alabama team blackjack is there anything else you want to say asks sergeant analyst anything at all yes the jolly green giants the motto painted on the sides of their ships so that others may live emotion wells up give me a minute please the thought of the jg's the vietnamese king bees and all the others who have committed their lives to saving alabama emotionally inundate my senses overpowering my ability to stuff emotions back down my my eyes flood with tears we're alive today due to all of you thank you amen man yeah and and by the way so that right there is page 60. that that just got us to page 60 of this book of this 300 page book that's one mission one historic sog mission one one mission one historic mission but a mission that represents another day in sauk which was the saying that you guys had yeah many like that that was in a special category yeah yeah but the i mean the setup that's what you guys did you know like the setup hey like we're gonna go in there we're gonna find out where the bad guys are we're taking the king bees in we'll call for fire support if we get in trouble that was your that was your model that was your that was what you guys did oh yeah although if we saw a flight we would definitely try to get out of there if we could post haste how about when you're taking massive fire on insert what about that one is that another thing that you just shot down a good idea or one of your insert craft gets shot down you say we're going to continue the mission can you imagine no dang well there's a ton of other missions to discuss this book it's called whiskey tango foxtrot is written by lynn black jr just get the book and a bunch of the other missions there i want to save some of them so hopefully we can get we can get the man himself on here uh to talk through some of these give us his experiences and it's also cool because we'll get both you guys on here because you know he writes about some of the same missions you guys were on together and you guys both wrote about these missions so to get both you in here to kind of go through those um i'll do my job shut up and just let you guys talk which would be freaking awesome awesome to do um but yeah hopefully we can get him on at some point and if not then we'll if he does if he can't make it on then we'll we'll go through some of these other stories and and share them well it's an honor to pay homage to him he's just a great guy fearless warrior and some of the things he did in that mission oh my god when you think about these times was it seem like it seemed like a long time ago does it seem like yesterday or and i'm going to ask you this does it seem like both because for me sometimes my experience seems like it was a long time ago and sometimes it seems like it was yesterday what does it seem like to you oh it's clearly both yeah absolutely because i can just remember us standing there at the outside the s3 shop waiting for the go for the bright light because don already told us and we were switching everything out that's nothing but ammo hand grenades and bandages and some body bags and uh quite glad that they changed their mind lynn you know again he had this right tactical decision on the ground and he called it right because if we tried to go in just like his the other helicopter shot down and there's more people on the ground more casualties possibly and so yeah so that day comes back every october 5th you know we have our little email loop spider pat watkins and they always go hey lin this is your day brother we don't know how you did it but we're glad you did yeah the fact that you know he's he's saying in the beginning when they inserted like they should have left immediately meaning he's kind of looking to save his own ass right for sure god bless him but then you fast forward whatever it is a few hours and now he's saying nope i'm saving everyone else's ass don't come and get me i mean that's hey don't land your bird he calls off king bees get out of here don't take off leave us here bright light no don't send them we're not going to be bait yeah and you know when he when he finally came back to base like a day or two later they had to go patch him up and then they had a little um ceremony with the air force guys where they swapped rays because the pjs had their brains on i think lynn and steve swapped out theirs and when he came back to base he never talked about it we we'd heard about what spider and mandolin are saying about the mission but you know lynn wouldn't talk about it so even when i did the book i had to go back and physically go come on then i want to get this story into the books i flew up to the night 1980 90 finally interviewed that's when i learned stuff that i never knew about the mission already some of the little details about the um finding the pj cooking the broken back and oh my god so he's just an amazing amazing uh warrior great guy and an artist on top of it and when he was talking about the chief sog that was steve kavanagh who was a highly decorated world war ii vet and then when korea he was in germany but then he was chief sog he came in right after jack singlob and his welcome to sag was august 23rd 68 f of b4 yeah so he was a really good chief song he really cared about the men but uh what was his rank as the chief sog bert oh six so he was a full bird colonel and he was in charge of and he's in charge of all sock ccn ccs and ccc all of our operations and then um see this is again the regular army instead of having a general that could go do battle with other generals they had a colonel part of the in-house fighting with the boys down in saigon and so that's why i love the book because ling gets into this little exchange it's back and forth and he has little his editorials on my comments with these oh yeah it's so freaking classic it's precious it's crazy because i know you yeah and so i'm reading tilt said this and tilt said that tilt's throwing this it's so awesome to read yeah it's freaking awesome he also you know it he also breaks into the whole you get to you get a better you get a very good feeling of the whole kind of deployment when he's going into town and he's there's all kinds of shady kind of cia stuff going on in there that he's wrapped up in oh yeah that's free it's like it's legit well and even in the first 60 pages there are segments there for what he did under fire that could be cut out and used in any leadership school for the military anywheres it's just incredible stuff yeah not to mention anything that he did multiple times over could be used to write an awards citation what did he what did he receive for this well he wound up with a silver star okay which should have been my opinion at least a medal of honor and because in the book he goes into it spider and mandolin are talking a little bit a few days later and the s3 officer a major who will remain nameless um was saying he didn't bring back stride so you'd be glad we put him in for a silver star and you know pat walkers and spider were pretty emphatic it should have been a lot higher than that and we could think about medal of honors that had been awarded where nothing like what lynn was up against getting knocked out all that time on the job patching up his own people and then leading them out and then oh we'll just charge right through the nva ranks they're not used to that oh my god it's weird because he's uh definitely a cerebral guy as you could hear from that last section oh yeah but damn he would get aggressive i mean he's his whole he's pissed off that's kind of one of the reasons he re-enlisted because he's pissed off that they wounded his brother and wounded people from the 173rd and killed people from 173rd so he's got this like pent-up progression but then he's an artist oh yeah right sure he worked at this tv station during high school he's so good but i want to you know we we just read it so and then uh years later i mean he just comes back in his own way and he goes gets a job at boeing rises through the ranks just did incredible work there that nobody could talk about oh yeah damn one of our sog legends to the max and humble and modest he's just like pulling teeth again to talk about it yeah that's why i love the book you know every once in every couple years so i pulled out and re-read it do you know what what inspired him to write this book that's a good question i don't know um these last 15 years or so between the reunions and uh being so far apart i was just everybody was talking to come on lenny got to the book and at one point he told him he threw away four to 500 pages i said lin please tell me you just put them in a little folder somewhere give them to me or give them to somebody and they said no it's done so he worked on for a while he really did and we had chatted back and forth back when i stole the newspaper back in the day well it's it's a it's a phenomenal book i hope everybody goes to pick it up hopefully you can come on here and and talk through some of these stories and if not that then hopefully i can just go shake his hand one day because it'd be an honor indeed next time you go up to seattle area for one of your shows yeah yeah um with that look we've been going for three and a half hours or something like that really yeah yeah i know this must be a jocko podcast quit harassing me uh yeah and and we're gonna come back we'll do some sog chronicles next um yeah until then uh i'm a little bit speechless but it's obviously it's an honor to share these stories these songs stories it's honor always to have you until uh an honor to know you and it's an honor for me to help get the word about get the word out about you and your brothers in sog your books that you've written that we've covered on the podcast across the fence that's the first one on the ground and then sog chronicles volume one you're also out there just getting after the social media a little bit now when i get to tennessee we're going to be moving here real soon then we're going to get really serious i'll be calling up echo for some uh for some skill sets you're on uh you're on twitter but you don't do much on twitter minimal on twitter you're on twitter you're at sog john does that one and and then there's that sog chronicles there's j striker okay meyer that's the other handle but see this is twitter and do you think i should really be honest you have to give me more advice here uh echo depends on what you do i guess yeah instagram has been amazing yeah i know that's so i was going to say jaystriker meyer on instagram that's where you're at um you also have facebook john striker meyer and you have on the internet on the interwebs you're at or it's just sog chronicles.com correct and we're going to get a get my uh 20th century websites going to be upgraded here in the next month or two look like you designed that one on a tape recorder it wasn't that advanced jacob my daughters are on me and anna's on me too so we we're lining up a gentleman now we're interviewing him to come back and redesign absolutely well like i said thank you so much for coming on my pleasure and uh always an honor appreciate it and it's just every time you send me a text message that says airborne it gives me enough motivation to get through like six weeks of mayhem thanks appreciate it until next time airborne indeed and with that john striker meyer tilt has left the building and you know echo it's you know we're sitting here and sometimes we feel like maybe we're getting after it and then you sit down with someone like tilt and you hear the story of lynn black and the guys from sog and it makes me realize that we can do more and we actually should do more with our lives to get after it more so what recommendations do you have to keep us in the mode of getting after it as we pursue as we pursue improvement yeah improvement i just wanted to say as we improve as we as we pursue an unattainable standard yes it's an unattainable standard i'm not ever i mean something would have to go completely haywire for me to get after it to the level of a john striker meyer or of uh lynn black or of a dick thompson there'd have to be there's something's got to go majorly wrong so and i don't you know look we hope that doesn't happen in the world so what we are in the pursuit of that level we're not going to get there but we're trying yes because we're not just going to sit back and say oh they got after it more than me i'm just going to sit on the couch no no we're not doing that no we are going to get after it appropriate at the appropriate level to our world anyway okay well we do i like the fact that you finally came to a self-realization of what you just said made no sense you don't do that you don't get that self-realization very often it makes sense you just got to think about it that's all just got to think about it more anyway so yes we're working out our bodies degeneration regeneration as you said wise man jocko wise man i'm saying i'm saying it okay there you go boom uh the the beatings are the darkness the gains are the light so choco fuel this will help you these things will help you chocolate fuel we've got stuff for your joints stuff for your muscles stuff for your brain stuff for your immunity all this stuff some bases you've got some bases covered yes sir yes we do anyway joint warfare and krill oil these for your joints there's antioxidants in there too by the way also discipline multi multiple forms deployment methods powder mixable in water recommended maybe throw some juice in there no all right well hey i was just seeing it i know that i mixed one up the other day because it has been it's been hot here in the california ao area of operations and i did you see what i i posted it what i mixed up i took just you know well i don't know if you know this when it's hot out iced tea yeah arnold palmer scenarios yeah are very nice to have so you know those you ever seen one of those big basically this it's a big picture you know what a picture is yes it's a clear plastic picture yeah and there's only one true purpose for that thing and that is to mix up iced tea or arnold palmer on a hot hot day so i did it emptied my ice thing into there put in the jacko palmer discipline go what the can no no the powder that's not discipline go put in the discipline powder it was so good it was nice it was so good yeah so you got the arnold palmer jacko palmer you got the arnold palmer feel with the jackal palmer feel even though it didn't make any sense it made sense see that's what i'm talking about so all i had to do was think about it hey look i'm not this one up guy you know you don't wanna you know what a one-up guy is right i'm not that and i'm not a curse i'm not a grammar nazi and i'm not a corrector okay i'll help i'll correct you if you want you just corrected me on discipline but okay whatever you have your weird self-image that's kind of why i kind of said it because i might have came off like a corrector and i might come off like a little bit of a corrector right now but technically you have a pitcher hot summer time california heat wave weekend that's kind of what it was you want a glass pitcher oh no not a plastic yeah yeah ideally from an ideal standpoint i don't know yeah no i agree with you there you go i don't purchase the pictures in my house there you go other people run that part of the machine yeah no worries we'll get some people on the phone we'll sort it out all good either way good luck with that yes sir yes sir either way again things for immunity vitamin d and cold war these are two things different methodologies but immune support yeah i get on that for sure because you know in these times immunity is always a good thing it's never a bad thing immunity yeah as far as you know else is a good thing dessert yeah dessert being able to drink you know you eat a nice ribeye or a nice piece of elk and you're like oh that was so good but there's still a little something in your weird brain yeah that wants dessert yeah which is why we make milk yes we make dessert for you yep and you can just have a dessert short you could have ice cream you could have carrot cake you could have uh you could have chocolate pudding or you could have mulk it all tastes the same genre of food except for all those things are bad for you except milk which is literally good for you literally good for you man will supply you with additional protein you think a cake is going to give you more protein a regular cake we will go toe-to-toe cake versus favorite protein taste taste and protein levels yeah all day so yeah get that one now and uh your kids gonna like it too whether it's that one or the warrior kid malt yeah which there is the kid's gonna like both of those i know from experience kids like this this i know from experience kids love this stuff yes sir it's true it's all cheap also chocolate white tea yes you know little refreshing tea scenario anyway you can get all the stuff at the vitamin shop if you want to go out and get some also if you don't want to go out and get some just go online origin main dot com that's where you get it also at origin main dot com you can get american made products straight up american-made hard goods hard goods durable goods durable goods all that all that all that and it's all made of keys for those jiu-jitsu you can get rash guards also for the jiu-jitsu or other forms of working out or surfing although we are moving into the winter months you might need a wetsuit but that's up to you we do not make wetsuits yes yet t-shirts jeans boots basically you need clothes to wear i mean look here's the deal we need clothes to wear yeah if you're going to get clothes to wear yes get them from origin main they're made in america we got a bunch of awesome people up there rebuilding rebuilding a whole industry in maine support america and get the best possible clothing you can that's that's what we're talking about yeah it's true and they have some shorts that for whatever reason i don't know why they don't talk about the shorts because it's literally aside from board shirts like when i swim and work out or whatever these are the only shorts i wear the shark fan you like the shark fin yeah that's uh uh pete yeah that's naming things it's a very creative namer and i to be honest what do you think came first because the the shark fin shorts has like a pocket on it that kind of looks like a shark fin yeah yeah they didn't know that yeah yeah cool so i don't know if he started to design it that way and then named it the shark fin and then made it look more like a shark fin right it's functional there's a reason for it but i'm just saying well either way to me shark finn sounds cool straight up so i was like hell yeah shark fin shirts shorts yeah anyway very good good stuff originate.com all made in america speaking of shorts speaking of shorts we it's looking a board short so we have ford shorts deathcore to the core discipline equals freedom board shorts at joccostore.com and jacquelinestore.com if you didn't know it is the store it's the store where you can get stuff while you're with you know why you want to if you want to represent on the path is where you can get your shirts you just link with freedom shirts hoodies board shorts like i said but did you did what do you call it did you camo did you cammy did you cammy and did you cammy did you cammy oh i don't know i don't know how i've said it digital camera i think i call it digicam did you cam no digicam is a camera either way camouflage digital you know that one anyway go to dockerstore.com like i said if you see whatever shorts you want what the camouflage one or the regular straight up black one whichever one you want boom available also some girl stuff on there some uh some tank tops like that hoodies hats all this stuff uh if you like something hey man get something yeah and don't forget about the uh warrior kid soap just well there's warrior kid soap actually yes and then there is a bunch of other soap that is made by a warrior kid yes young aiden oh we sell it on jocko's store there's warrior kids soap there's chocolate soap there's trooper soap and there's killer soap all good legitimate soaps but for the month of september uh irish oaks ranch will be donating one dollar per bar of soap to the cure search foundation it's called curacao it's a cancer research center see i'm saying so yeah because cancer uh awareness month september so we're donating one dollar per bar of soap sold that's a young aiden that's a young aiden up there making that happen so there's a kid i think he might be 14 now but started this company started this company wore your kid out there getting after it and he wants to help out kids that have cancer so good for him appreciate the support for that one don't forget to subscribe to this podcast don't forget that we have some other podcasts the jocko unraveling podcast which used to be called the thread we got quite a few episodes coming out of that we have the debrief podcast which is on this thread on the jocko podcast uh what is it called feed for right now we have the grounded podcast we have the warrior kid podcast we also have a youtube channel which which echo makes youtube videos for jocko podcast youtube channel also psychological warfare it's an it's an album with tracks jocko tracks helping you through moments of weakness as they may arise maybe not every day but they arise sometimes i think you might have just reached your breaking point that's the first time that you've said that and you've repeated that thing that you didn't have any enthusiasm or you had that you had you know you had some enthusiasm but it was lower well you know uh so all the times because just by the way my enthusiasm for you saying that ended after about four times so now we're on what are we on 200 something podcast what are you saying that jocko album with track bubble right yeah so so maybe we'll you'll think of it something else to say that the world hopes the world is hoping i'm i'm searching my brain to to to connect the dots they're like i didn't i don't feel like i'm any breaking point in any capacity but i just broke up right here apparently i am but so may maybe i'm gonna assume that you're right yeah soon maybe it's because recently i haven't needed psychological warfare help okay so it's not like fresh on my mind okay you know so maybe it came off like a broke or listen to it well why don't you go and listen to the track that's about doing things that you might not want to do okay because apparently you think you can just come in here and kind of slough off on your execution yeah on the psychological warfare part dang that's kind of what he called that ironic that's ironic all right so you can get that if you want it there's also a flipsidecanvas.com my brother dakota myers my brother my brother dakota myers company where he sells visual representation did you hear that i've said that a bunch of times but you still hear some spirit in my voice because i'm fired up when i'm talking about dakota meyer and flipsidecanvas.com for visual representation that you want to see something if you're if you feel like maybe you've broken like echo has you can hang one of these things up go to flipsidecampus.com for that we also got a bunch of books whiskey tango foxtrot by lynn black that's what we went over today also john striker meyer books across the fence on the ground those are two different books and then sog chronicles we also have the code the evaluation and protocols leadership strategy and tactics field manual way of the warrior kid one two and three mikey and the dragons discipline equals freedom field manual and then extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership so there's a bunch of books if you want to support you can go on to jackalpodcast.com and any of the books that have been on this podcast you can get them from there and if you're wondering hey people always ask what's the give me the top seven books that you've read well they always ask these questions right reading lists yeah can you hey do you have a reading list can you publish reading this yes i can i already did it's called jackopodcast.com books from the podcast you can go on there and if you want to if you want to you can click through there and you can go to amazon and you can actually buy that book and then you can read it and make yourself smarter and better we also have an leadership consultancy called echelon front where what we do is solve problems through leadership if you want to hear me talk to you if you want me to come and talk or present to your team you don't have to go to you don't have to google jocko speaking you can just go to echelonfront.com if you want to have myself or any of the echelon front instructors come and help you come and consult with you about your leadership get you all aligned get you on the right path we can do it go to echelonfront.com we also have ef online which listen if you're wondering hey how can i really like to know this my thing from jocko you want to ask me a question go to ef online come on monday wednesday or friday and chances are i will be there and if i'm not there someone else from the echelon front team is but usually i'm there i will be there to answer your questions whatever you want to ask me there's also a bunch of in-depth granular studies of all the principles from extreme ownership the dichotomy of leadership and leadership strategy and tactics so go to efonline.com also we have the muster we had one in orlando canceled we had one in phoenix cancelled the next one is going to be in dallas texas on december 3rd and 4th go to extremeownership.com if you want to come and of course we have ef overwatch if you need executive leadership you can get experienced military leaders that understand the principles that we talk about go to efoverwatch.com and then america's mightywarriors.org that is mama lee mark lee's mom and what she does is she helps she helps service members service members that are downrange she helps service members families she helps retired service members and she helps gold star families around the world so if you want to help out with that you can go to america's mightywarriors.org to donate or to get involved and if you need to contact us or you have any questions or you have any answers you can find us on the interwebs once again for tilt for john striker meyer he's on twitter at sog john he's on instagram at j striker k e s-t-r-y-k-e-r m e y e r and facebook john striker meyer and on the interwebs at sog chronicles and of course for us two knuckleheads echo is at echo charles and i am at jocko willink and to all of the military personnel out there that swore the oath to put country above self thank you and to tilt and to lin black and the rest of these sog forces in vietnam we can't say thank you enough for doing what you did so that others may live and to police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and emts and dispatchers and correctional officers and border patrol and secret service and all other first responders thanks to you as well for swearing your oath to take care of us here on the home front and everyone else out there think of the incredible odds that these sog soldiers went up against and they did it time and time and time again in those forgotten jungles on those forgotten hills in that forgotten world they sacrificed so much and we must never forget and until next time this is echo and jocko out

Channel: Jocko Podcast

Views: 322,567

Keywords: jocko willink, podcast, discipline, defcor, fredom, leadership, extreme ownership, author, navy seal, usa, military, echelon front, dichotomy of leadership, jiu jitsu, bjj, mma, jocko, victory, echo charles, flixpoint

Id: 9yqPpzdUirU

Length: 220min 55sec (13255 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/mjs90]

These SOG casts are insane. Shit just keeps getting crazier and crazier

[u/danlson381]

The laugh out loud moment in this episode was Jocko explaining the meaning of WTF. I about drove off the road the way he said “it means what the fuck” in a very matter of fact way.

I’d also like to see him host a town hall type of show with SOG veterans. To a man, each of them who Jocko has had on have so much charisma and are such great story tellers.

[u/EchoWhiskey_]

i like when Stryker goes "Ohhhh, yeah."

[u/tinkletwit]

Jocko reads the coordinates for the ambush as YC561692. According to the grid map here, that should be somewhere around the coordinates 15.995223N,107.388492E. They talked about a ridge with a 2,000 ft drop, which I guess is the ridge to the Northeast of those coordinates, and the drop is more of a slope into the adjacent valley. Nice to put a place to the action.

[u/EchoWhiskey_]

Dear god there needs to be a SOG movie. These stories are totally batshit crazy.

[u/tissue4yuo]

Amazing can wait to grab the book

[u/bruuuhh]

After hearing about this story briefly from tilt (and the Frenchman) in prior jocko episodes, then hearing tilts account of the story in Across the Fence, I was so excited to listen to this episode. I cant help but listen to these SOG stories over and over because they are the most insane war stories I’ve ever heard. Glad to see them continue gaining traction with jocko because I need to hear more. Great episode