Jocko Podcast 401: Am I as Committed As I Should Be? "SOG Codename, Dynamite", with Dick Thompson.

this is Joo podcast number 401 with Echo Charles and me Joo willink good evening Ekko good evening the military advisory command Vietnam studies and observation group Mac vog don't be misled by the name we are not an academic group studying the war in Vietnam we were not advising anyone Mac vog was a top secret group of the most elite special operations Warriors in the world every time I led my team on a mission it was kill or be killed every time hundreds sometimes thousands of people would die it was not about Rules of Engagement was this person an enemy does this person have a weapon is this person about to kill me or the other questions and rules today's special operators may have to deal with saw GR rules were very different and simple everyone was the enemy the enemy had to be terminated or you would be and if the enemy caught you the United States government would deny any involvement with you or what you were doing you had no protection under the Geneva Convention you were a spy you were on your own it has been documented that SOG teams had the highest kill ratio of any unit during the Vietnam era SOG teams also had the highest casualty rate over 200% this means each SOG member was either killed or wounded multiple times for example Staff Sergeant Robert Howard later Colonel Howard was wounded on at least 11 occasions was awarded eight purple hearts the distinguished service cross a and the Medal of Honor 22 men received the distinguished service cross and 13 received the Medal of Honor on SOG operations there has never been a war where such small teams of Young Warriors were set against such overwhelming numbers of enemy forces on every Mission but the sog missions were not fought alone you were always part of a team internal battles however were and still are being fought Alone by what has been burned into each SOG operator's brain once seen you cannot unsee once you do you cannot undo there are experiences on the battlefield that you can never unsee unhear UNS smell unfe or un taste Once you pull the trigger or detonate an explosive the lives you have just terminated cannot be unkilled the enemies the enemy soldiers spouse kids grandkids great grandkids future relatives and potential roles they all play in the history of the world are immediately and permanently erased you can never forget the look on the person's face when you pull the trigger or penetrate him with your knife these are part of you for the rest of your life you can never remove the experience from your brain it is part of you until you die and that right there is an excerpt from the intro of a book that is called SOG code name Dynamite a Mac VG one Z's personal Journal which is written by Henry dick Thompson and on the cover of the book there's a quote from Major General Elden barwell Alle Legend from SOG and from United States Special Operations and the quote from him says I thought I was crazy until I saw what Thompson did when he became my SOG team leader in 1969 now dick Thompson has been on this podcast before he was on episodes 200 4 205 206 back in late 2019 and on those episodes we covered some of his experiences and some of his lessons learned from the Vietnam War we also covered his book which is a book that he had written called the stress effect which is a book about leadership and decision making written about his knowledge from his time as a military officer as a SOG operator leadership consultant and a PhD in Psychology by the way so go listen to those podcast for some background but in this new book code named Dynamite he gives us details about some of his SOG missions in Vietnam the book is an incredible read and I have read a lot of military books and it gives us some insight into the missions and the mindset of these amazing SOG Warriors and it's an absolute honor to have dick Thompson with us here again to talk through this book his experiences and some of his lessons learned sir thank you for joining us again thank you for having me back I'm glad you could make it out me too um that's been almost I guess three or four years since the last time you were was 2019 so it's been a while um and the last time you were on you know we talked through some of your some of the stuff in the beginning is just about how you grew up and and you cover that you cover that in this book as well about you growing up in the woods about you being a general at a young age you were you were actually a general in charge of your own Rangers a group of a group of Rangers a regiment of Rangers that was made up of your cousins and your friends uh you played football you ran track you had an interest in chemist chemistry which included the interest in blowing things up and shooting Rockets into the sky so you graduated high school in 1965 you start college at the University of South Carolina again we covered this on on podcast 204 um and you do cover it some of that with a little more detail in the book but in you know you're you you went to college for a year and the Vietnam War at this time is escalating and you wanted to get into it so you enlisted in the Army um you volunteer for airborne School you volunteer to become an officer and get selected to become an officer you volunteer for Special Forces you go to the Q course you actually had orders that were not going to send you to Vietnam so you volunteered for Vietnam and you are rewarded with going to Vietnam and I remembered asking you the last time you were on you volunteered for all these things you got selected and I said was it hard to get selected and you said hey it was the Vietnam War like oh you want to be special forces yep come on over here oh you want to be airborne come on over here you want to be an officer come on over here the life expectancy of officers was so short at that time they were filling those gaps up as quick as they could um but like I said you cover that in in the beginning of this book and and with with a little more detail I mean with a lot more detail than I just said but that was the path you were on from being a little kid until the point you you get shipped off to Vietnam you you're done with the Q of course you've been to Ranger school um been to special forces training and it's time to go to Vietnam um and I was going to skip right ahead you know get to some of the missions but I I I just had to cover this part when you get to Vietnam um I'm going to go to the book here again the book is called code name dynamite and we'll get to that as well so you arrive in Vietnam uh it says we went quickly through the Customs arrival procedures then we were transported to Reception Center for in processing a special forces Sergeant gathered up those of us who were going to a special forces assignment and took us on a short ride to n Trang there we were temporarily we were assigned temporary quarters given instructions for the next day and fed Bob and Bob is your buddy Who You'd gone through all this training with you became friends in in uh AIT I think Bob and I made contact with Captain John Smith a friend of ours from Fort Brag he got to Vietnam a few weeks ahead of us and was already working in a mic Force another good friends of ours first lieutenant Ray Stax from Fort Bragg had left four weeks ahead of us but we had no idea where he had been assigned John updated us on things that were going on in country especially with the Ted offensive Special Forces and the types of SF assignments we might want to ask for the next day he said tomorrow toward the end of the day one of the last things they are going to do is ask you if you want to volunteer for SOG do not do it regardless of how cool they make it sound do not volunteer for SOG just tell them no if you volunteer you will die almost all of them die the ones who don't die get the crap shot out of them from several times and they return to the states a nutcase don't do it just say no they'll say thank you and you'll move on to your special forces assignment we'll meet back tomorrow evening and you can tell me about your assignments I might know some people where you're going we spent the evening talking about old times and various aspects of the culture his parting words were remember what I said do not volunteer for SOG so you weren't a very good listener at this point I take it obviously not uh I'm going to fast forward a little bit it's the next day and you meet a guy with a guy named colonel colonel Jones and he says uh I see that you volunteered for the Army OCS Airborne Special Forces Rangers and Vietnam and now you have the opportunity to volunteer for the most important job that you will ever have based on what I see in your file you are perfect for the job this is a job that is so Elite that only the people who do it know what it is if you take this job no one will ever know that you did it where you did it or what you did it will not be in your records you cannot tell anyone and you will have to sign papers agreeing not to tell anyone it is very rare that I offer this opportunity to anyone but I'm offering you what do you think I said it would help it would help if I knew what the job was he said I understand all I can say is that you will be volunteering to go anywhere and do anything no questions asked I asked are you asking me if I want to join SG he said is that what you want to do I looked him in the eyes and said yes he said are you sure Lieutenant I replied yes fast forward a little bit I went to the bar that evening to meet John when he saw me walking up to the bar he said you did it I can see it on your face you're a freaking dead Dead Man Walking I told you not to do it crap I thought you were smarter than that bartender give this stupid son of a a double Jack and Coke when John saw Bob walking up to the bar he said you did it too I can see it in your face you are both Dead Men Walking I told you two not to do it crap Boba I thought you were smarter than Thompson bartender give this stupid son of a a double Jack and Coke John repeated his remarks about what we had done several times during the evening so there you go you're in SOG how much did you know about it very little um you know I had heard the word kicked around some at Brag uh no one really knew what it what it was or what people did they would just say things like you know these guys are crazy they do really cool things and nobody knows what don't look at that guy don't make eye contact with him he's rumored to have been in sock those guys are nutcases you make eye contact with him you may disappear tonight and your body will never be found they're crazy okay what's weird about this is look there's all kinds of room you know when I came when I joined the Navy and I was uh trying to go to Seal training you know you'd hear these kind of these kind of same things with SOG it's true like all the stuff that you're hearing is true with the sealed teams and with the regular uh you know Special Operations guys this is the only case I can think of where it is just absolutely freaking true what you guys were doing what you were getting into you know if I would have gotten told that when I was uh 21 year old or 20 years old or 19 years old when I joined up of course yeah I'll go but you you don't think it's G to be what they what it's advertised as you hope it's going to be what it's advertised as but boy did you guys get what it was advertised as didn't you did you had you ever talked to somebody that was SOG beforehand yep no not not that I knew about no so they they did a legit job of keeping it secret and not letting anybody know what's going on all right and you think uh what about a 34 year-old dick Thompson you think you would have volunteered for it then when you were 34 or you think this is a young man's game it's mostly A L young man's game but I did some wacky stuff as it got older too I mean once once I had been in soag you know everything else looked relatively tame um you know whether it was uh making a Halo jump you know in the dark trying to go into a small LZ in the mountain someplace uh it you know you just keep getting smaller and smaller lzs to uh run the adrenaline level up it just whatever the biggest one of the biggest uh issues to deal with was uh trying to show enough restraint because like you mentioned before in in SOG the rules were different and you had so much freedom in terms of what you could do or had to do that when when you came back to the real world it was a matter of I don't like what that person said I would really like to rip his face off but I'm not going to do that I'd like to make this person disappear but I'm not going to do that and it was just constantly I'm not going to do that I'm going to restrain myself and you know I had been taught that to some degree you know in martial arts before I went in in the military know you can do it know you have the capability to take the guy down but back away you don't have to do it because you can show restraint but this was a much more violent type of restraint and just for people listening how how long have you been in the Army for at this point like maybe approaching two years about two years and you're 21 years old 21 21 years old um in case you can't tell just order the book right now I'm I'm obviously not going to read the whole thing but there it's just an epic book so just order it um just go order it so you can read this stuff I'm going to fast forward a little bit now you're you're heading up so so now you're in SOG you volunteered and now you head up to uh fob4 and it says when the fob4 CCN Commander walked in we all stood at attention he said at EAS take your seats I'm Lieutenant Colonel Warren let me tell you what s is about and what you have volunteered to do that you can never tell anyone about you have volunteered to serve in the military advisory command Vietnam studies and observations group mat V SOG this is your official assignment and if you believe you are here to do studies and observations on what happens in Vietnam then you are dumber than an effing board and you need to leave now if you stay you can never leave not alive anyways you have just become a member of the most elite fighting force in the world you have volunteer to go anywhere and do anything you can never tell anyone about it if that's not what you're here for leave now once I start the briefing you are all in am I clear we responded Yes sir Lieutenant Colonel Warren explained that MC vog was a top secret multi-service US Special Operations Force unit established 24 January 1964 to conduct unconventional warfare operations in Southeast Asia associated with the Vietnam War operations took place in South Vietnam North Vietnam La Cambodia and other Southeastern Southeast Asian areas as required MC vog had participated in the most significant campaigns of the Vietnam War in short he said we are North Vietnam's worst nightmare he goes on to tell you about the missions types of missions recover imprisoned and Miss missing Americans training agents for insertion into North Vietnam Black psychological operations raids and ambushes prisoner snatches assassinations doctored ammunition document retrieval wire Taps pipeline destruction b50 2 bomb damage assessment Search and Destroy and other missions as assigned and you mentioned in the book like when you saw those missions or you heard about those missions there was nothing that really surprised you these were kind of all the mostly the type of op operations that you've been prepared for through soft SF training and Rangers as well yeah I mean all of those topics it's up for maybe the doctored ammunition you know we had trained for but to do uh in in Vietnam to do against whatever enemy so the list didn't shock us it was just we're we're going to go do it because um you know I had volunteered to go to Vietnam because I thought Vietnam's where it is I mean that's where we're fighting the war that's what's going on uh and then when I got into s all of a sudden I realized um my mail is going to be sent to Saigon in Vietnam and everybody my family everybody's going to think I'm in Vietnam and I'm fighting a war in Vietnam really that's just where I store my gear that's where I go to train that's where I go to get my mission but when I go to war I'm going to have a combat deployment into other Southeast Asian countries so you know i' I've been in like six different countries uh to go fight in everybody thought I was fighting in Vietnam if you look at the the Tombstones of the guys who were killed in SG all of them say Vietnam that's not where they were killed none of them were killed there you know you were killed in other countries your family everyone was told you were killed in Viet now uh when my family sent a mail to me it went to uh post office box in uh Saigon it was opened it was read and scanned and then sent to me to whatever fob I was in you know and I would get it and read it when I responded back to my family or anyone that I wrote to it went to Saigon it was opened it was read uh to make sure there was nothing in there classified if if it was that letter you know was just lost so Vietnam was just you know kind of like a TDY station I was there to to get ready to go fight someplace MH I mean we we did some operations in Vietnam yeah I was going to say in North Vietnam and but even in South Vietnam we we did a lot of uh fighting there just training yeah let's let's go find some guys over here and and because what we wanted in the training that I think is missing a lot today and I won't get on that soap box but you you just can't imagine uh the effectiveness of having live fire shoot back targets you know you can go out and shoot a silhouette all day and it doesn't shoot back at you and you can take your time you can get good side of alignment you can aim you can shoot at it you hit it it falls over and it pops back up but when it comes back up it doesn't shoot at you and you know in in the first mission in the book there I discovered when people when those targets start shooting back and there's a whole bunch of them shooting back um your stress level goes up and everything changes your vision Chang you can't focus on your sight so you can't aim like you were training to aim uh you can't load your you know your magazine in in the weapon you can't even get it out of your pouch with all those bullets coming at you because you've never been like that before yeah so yeah one thing that we were and I don't know if you ever got to use any of this stuff but by the late 90s we we had simunition so and we were using it it would go in your real gun you know you had adaptive Barrel and you'd put simunition in there and the the you know my my thought was like you said you go and fight paper targets paper targets don't do the two things that the enemy does which is shoot back and maneuver on you so as soon as you had simunition you're getting shot your guys are getting shot and the enemy is now maneuvering on you and it becomes a much more realistic uh simulation of combat and it was really good for working with leaders you know the the the the military the young seal leaders that were going to have to make decisions and make things happen cuz they had to observe they had to run that UDA Loop in their head and observe what was happening Orient themselves decide what to do and then act on it and get the platoon to act on it so that was a huge step up for us when we started being able to use and we ended up with a we also ended up with a with a really high-speed laser tag system that we would use in the in Outdoors so the the paintball is good in in closer terrain like in a in a city environment because you can you know you can shoot 30 or 40 meters and it'll be okay but the the uh laser simulators that we had you know you could shoot someone at like 400 400 meters so it it was pretty good and you had machine guns and they had a little speaker on your shoulder when you get shot at would make snaps going over your head and if you got wounded it would tell you you're wounded if you got killed it would tell you you're killed you lay down it was a really good training system um but still falling short of what you guys had over on marble Mountain where You' go out and find enemy to go fight for your training operations so we'll get to some of that but um going back to the book here you say we also got to pick out our official code names I wanted Ranger but Bob spoke up before me and asked for Ranger then I saw dynamite and I thought it was fitting for me seeing as I always like to blow things up and I was relatively small Dynamite would work for me I had blown up my NE I'd blown my neighbor's windows out when I was a teenager with a rocket that exploded on its Launchpad I didn't intend for that to happen but I was always blowing things up I figured I'd probably be blowing things up in Southeast Asia and I did get to blow up a lot of things Bridges helicopters bad guys Munitions dumps Etc I always carried a lot of C4 and other explosives with me it would be my code name to identify myself if I were wounded or something bad happened to me so that's where Dynamite came so they just had a list of names up on the up on the wall I mean different C call call signs that you could take yeah they had a list and you know it it was important that you had a name uh that would identify you if you were captured uh if you were killed uh to have a a name that if it was used we we knew who it was without telling anything else about you uh if you needed to send some kind of message when you if you were captured and still alive then you know by working that word into whatever you were sending then you know it was it was sending a message out and and ironically um you you didn't just have the code name you also had some other questions uh about you the name of your dog you know what what was your first car and when you think about it that's the same thing you do now that's like the internet security question that's all those questions that's where they came from was was back then you still had to have those uh because the likelihood of of you being um captured you know was pretty high you'd probably die most of the time they just kill you um but you could be captured and they wanted all these different methods so you had a code name and then the the code name um also allowed you to do other things you could be cool yeah yeah hell yeah yeah you know EO walks in how it going down my hell yeah good man uh but and then uh you would get um familiar with the cvy pilant um who were who were flying and directing air strikes all kinds of things for you but you you know you knew who they were uh they knew the one zeros you know because they're up there talking to you you know on a regular basis and sometimes you know that whatever call sign you had for the mission would just go away and all of a a sudden uh they'd be calling me dynamite and you know we just dro the call sign it's a lot easier you know I mean we we had so many assets coming in that I use my my left hand and my right pants leg as my information control center I was constantly writing call signs down of the next aircraft the next set of gunships coming in the next set of f4s coming in I'd write it on there so I could remember it and Cub's talking to all this stuff I'm talking I didn't get to talk to the Air Force guys very much because our radios you know didn't match up uh except for our survival radio but I was talking to the gunship and telling them you know where I wanted it um so and and you know with Pilots all had names so yeah and you know we did too and they all have cool cool names too so yeah you had to get yours oh yeah I I I haven't I haven't confirmed where tilt got his name and I asked him about it but he kind of he kind of snuck around a little bit I didn't get a solid answer you know I think some of the names kind of came about like um fighter pilot names MH you've done something and everybody starts to call you that or you know it's it maybe a name that you had before you got there and I I think the best I can determine tilt had the name tilt before he got there yep and it had something to do I did get this out of them it had something to do with pinball so like when you're playing pinball you tilt the machine and so it's usually because you're doing something nefarious as you're trying to win so that's what we're thinking from tilt he was doing something trying to win trying to beat the game yeah he's gonna win uh one thing that's really cool about this book is you break out at the end of each section you break out some of the Lessons Learned or some of the highlights and this this for this section here I thought it was really interesting some of these highlights that you put together um I boarded a plane in a world I had known all my life and got off a plane in a strange dangerous Wild West World on steroids with a very different set of rules it was like entering another dimension all of my senses were confused nothing made sense my circadian rhythm was 12 hours off death was in the air you could smell it you could feel it Bob and I made a decision a lot of people questioned we volunteered for SOG we had approached the Event Horizon of a black hole and were being C inside where nothing escapes we were at the elite of the elite level the best of the best or the craziest of the crazy probably the the last one there uh in the new world I was given a new name dynamite and sent North on a quest to hunt down and terminate the enemy so you show up then it's off to uh FU by right right yes and I call it fob now out of reverence for you and tilt because we young guys call them fobs right and you guys call them fob so I'm not trying to keep it I we're deferring to The Experts here uh fast forward a little bit sergeant major Macintosh gave gave us a briefing on the fob1 compound security safety rules and general area of operations then he said everyone would be going to one zero school so if you don't know one zero is the people that are going to lead the teams that's what they're called everyone would be going to one zero School a week-long course to teach us how to lead a SOG team on top secret missions across southeast Asia actually he said everyone's going except me when I asked why I wasn't going the sergeant major said Lieutenant you are special forces and Ranger qualified there are a few things they might teach you that you haven't done already but not much you can learn those things from your team which you will be assigned to tomorrow afternoon we are putting you to work so straight Off the Bench into the into the game I know you go ahead if I could just say one one thing about the book um I made it like a journal because what I was trying to do uh with the book is to give people an opportunity to kind of see so Through The Eyes of a one zero uh experienced to some degree what I was experiencing describing it the screw-ups the the fear the whatever you know that was going on um and what I did with with my teams was we did our on after action review after every Mission we get together as a team and we're going to talk about what we did you well what we didn't do so well what happened uh what we need to do some extra training on so I set up postm Mission training for my teams um you know and one case um it was being able to throw a h grenade from the prawn lay it on your belly throw a h grenade and get it far enough away from us you know that it's not going to hit us not hit a tree and have it bounce back at us because with that team I was said they didn't seem to be good at that and what they wanted to do was raise up if you raise up you're going to get hit I want you to stay alive um but you got to use the grenades so that I put in the air things that I saw I learned and we started to practice and as you go through the book you can see how it progresses across time there were things I was doing in the beginning that I discovered that's not the best way to do that there are better ways and we're going to do it differently we're going to I Chang the the load out I changed the amount of ammunition that people were carrying most SOG teams um would have one clay more uh per individual and some individuals might not have any Claymores uh on my teams I went to an soop of you carried three Claymores per person that's a lot of extra weight but if you use those things right you just Shred the bad guys I used to set them up I'd like to have seven Daisy chains on the most likely Avenue of AO Roach coming into us at night I could set them all off simultaneously and when you set off 10 and 12 pounds of C4 the concussion from that the explosion from that if you're anywhere close to it it's going to at least knock you out but when you put 4,900 steel balls in there coming at you at 4,000 ft a second um if you're anywhere in that zone it's going to shred you um so what happens is the Big Bang people shredded and NVA would look at that and say this is different this is not what we're used to with the sog teams this guy's a nutcase but you know they gather the survivors and they would start again and I'd have another role of either five or three Claymores the same way and then they would say he is crazy for sure and then you know like other so teams we would um have some individual Claymores that we'd have time fuses on um and they were randomly going off and you never knew I I changed the load out of frag grenades from five to 10 if you have a seven-man team you have 70 frag grenades and you can chunk those things all night they can't see where they're coming from and just going off all around you uh anyway that's a few of the things that I started doing uh and putting together an sop you know for my teams uh in terms of what I wanted them to carry where it was going to be which pocket you had the map in which you know everything if it's you know the middle of the night and it's raining and it's dark and he can't see anything and I need to get ammunition or grenades or whatever off of your body body I know where to reach to get it if you need to get it off of my body you know where it is um so we we did a a lot of things like that and I wanted to show that how we learned and eventually you get into uh where we were learning about the enemy and how they react what do they do and there's really interesting things I'm won't going into you now but really interesting things in there uh that I learned about the enemy you know I I kind of approached it with a scientific mind because that's what I was you know training to be before I got there so I watched I observed I what if what if we do this what if we do that uh and why are they reacting that way what are the chemical reactions that's going on that's causing them to do different things and then we would talk about it and we'd put that into the training so anyway yeah the the Lessons Learned I mean we could probably do a podcast about each chapter and just cover the lessons learned from each chapter but then on top of that like you said you write this like a journal and you get to when you're reading it experience what you're going through what your thoughts are how it's impacting you and I think a great example of that is here um again you're just checking in you've been there at fob1 for a day you wake up and I'm going to go to the book here it says the next morning I went to the supply room after breakfast when I got there staff sergeant Jones the supply sergeant told me that several SOG team members were killed a few days earlier and their personal effects had to be inventoried by an officer before they could be sent to their families he took me to a room with seven duffel bags on the floor and said dump the bags out one at a time and go through the contents look for anything that might be classified Maps operational pictures or anything like that if there's any correspondence read it to see if it says anything anything about any of the missions if there are pictures take them out I was to sterilize their gear it sounded simple enough I picked up the first olive drab canvas duffel bag and read the name stencl in Big White letters on the outside first lieutenant Raymond C Stacks I felt like I'd been kicked in the groin SOG just got real Ray was Bob's and my friend at Fort Bragg he left for Vietnam about a month before we did Ray had been in sog for a month and I was already inventorying his personal effects to send home to his family Ry was a good guy totally dedicated his special forces in the United States I had no idea he had volunteered for SOG and now he was dead killed in action on a SOG mission in Southeast Asian country actually it was worse than that he and his six teammates and fourman air crew were missing in action their remains could not be recovered their helicopter was hit with anti-aircraft fire at an out itude of 3,000 ft and after falling like a rock into the jungle canopy poow it exploded and burned I quickly looked at the names on the other duffel bags to see if I knew anyone else Gary L Matson Arthur E Bader Gary R Lebon Michael H mine clouse d Schultz Samuel K Tumi and Richard A Fitz before I went before continuing I went back to staff sergeant Jones and asked him what these men were doing when they were killed he said no one there knew it was classified top secret not even the fob1 commander knew going through the personal effects in each bag became a very personal and emotional task that caused a bond to form between me and each hero and to some degree their families as I laid the contents of a bag out on the table I put together a mosaic of each American Hero's personal life his wife kids parents plans for the future dogs family pictures of missed birthday parties holidays First Steps first words pictures and kids pictures the kids had drawn how much time he had left before going home and small talk with his wife and parents all the time hiding the extreme danger of his missions when I was going through staff sergeant Richard Fitz effects I was struck by a picture of his small 2-year-old son and the conversations about him and how much staff sergeant Fitz missed him so that's a welcome to SOG situation Y and uh you know you mentioned in the book but you end up actually making contact uh 20 plus years later or sorry 50 years later you end up making contact with uh Richard Fitz Jr his son who was two years old when he when his dad was killed how how did that connection come about he was he was trying to find out more about his father so he had put a post on a maxg uh Facebook site does anyone know anything about my father so I saw it um and responded to it and you know so that kind of connected us and we decided we would we would meet at the next um uh Special Operations reunion not knowing that it was going to be cancelled because of uh coid so anyway we put it off but you know this summer we'll meet or October we'll meet face to face outstanding so I mean we had some phone calls and you know a lot of emails and stuff back and forth but we haven't had a chance to meet face to face yet and he made a a documentary that's called 21 years in a folded flag um I tried I I did a cursory search for it to see if I could watch it I haven't found it yet but I'm sure I just need to get to the right uh streaming platform or whatever and I'll be able to find it but uh definitely interested in checking that out um but yeah I can't I can't imagine a a a more serious introduction to your second day at SOG and you have got to go through all these guys that were killed I mean if that doesn't uh hit you I don't know what is it um definitely makes it real I mean and all of a sudden I'm thinking what did John say don't volunteer for a s and maybe there's something to that yeah uh you get put into uh RT Alabama and so this is this is now where you're going to start your your SOG career um and you say here and again I'm fast forward I'm only going to read 5% of this book but there's so much detail in here the Lessons Learned we're going to hit some of it but just get the book I'm going to fast forward here you say my first mission with rt Alabama was to conduct a wire tap on a communication Line running along a road being used as a Supply route for North Vietnamese supplies through La in Cambodia or sorry through La into South Vietnam uh and you give your a roster here the one zero is a guy named deck um you're the one one so you're the second in charge Davis is the one two and then you have your interpreter Cowboy um who is actually on this podcast the number 258 so he's your interpreter and then you have HOA pointman do your m79 Gunner and uh Quang is the is the tail gun of rear security so this is your team that you're G to be going out with for for the first time um how was it meeting that team for the first time it was uh it was interesting you know it in the beginning of the book you see when I when I first encountered a SOG team uh as I was traveling uh up to fob4 and it was it was kind of a surreal experience you know we're on the bus I I we're on the bus it's a school bus it was a SOG bus not just because it was painted black but because all the all the windows are shot out the seats are ripped apart where bullets have hit it there's probably 200 or more bullet holes you know in the bus us and you know the Bob and I are looking at each other I'm like man are we even going to get there but and while we're talking we were also supposed to pick up a team and these guys just it was like they just materialized and there they are and and they they're coming toward us and then the the last guy I was looking backwards the whole time he's walking backwards and constantly looking for what's going on and they came up to the bus and they had all this stuff on uh we just never seen before I mean they've got grenades hanging all over them all types of grenades hanging on them they've got grenades on their in pouches you know on their hip they've got magazines on their hip they've got some kind of weapon that we hadn't seen before they had what looked like m79 grenade launchers saw off it was just big fat pistols and they had those hanging on them I mean it's just amazing and everything was sterile there was no name tags no insignias no dog tags no vests no helmets nothing um and they were scared I'm telling they these are some scary dudes coming up there yeah you go over that in the book and they basically tell you hey if we get contacted because there was some little uh Ambush choke point that you had to drive through in this school bus to get to the fob and so they said hey if if we get hit you guys just get down and do what we tell you to do yeah just get on the floor and do what we tell you to do if you want to live yes sir and but when they got on the bus once you know as they are coming on the bus they're going to defensive position everybody had a position on the bus windows that they were focused on um anyway they were scared they they made the hair stand up on the back of your neck and when we when we got the fob4 they walked off the bus and we blinked and they were gone where did they go how did they do that but so I had I had seen you know B and I had seen a team before and we thought man a couple days we're going to be on one of those so I go I go meet my new team and you know it was uh was interesting a team is supposed to have non indigenous members and three Americans most teams didn't have quite that many of of either type of person you know just because they get shot up all the time or killed or whatever um but normally you would go out with two or three Americans on the team and every how many of the uh indid that you wanted to carry you know based on what the mission was so you get linked up with these guys and um just real quick you you explain a so Mission you say a so mission was not just hop on in a hel helicopter fly 30 minutes with uh to a site shoot some bad guys and fly back it's very complicated with a lot of moving Parts all these assets were totally focused on getting the team inserted to the into the area of operations supporting it while it accomplished this Mission and getting the team back out safely as as possible I was quite impressed we were using what I found to be our standard fob1 Mission package for insertion and instraction so so what you're pointing out here is is that yeah there's going to be what seven eight n guys on the ground with a lot of Firepower for a team that big but the package that's supporting you is huge it's a huge package so you have and you go through it here I'll go through it briefly but you have an Airborne Battlefield command and control center so that's you know a big electronic uh host elect uh a a a ec130 basically it's an aircraft with a bunch of electronics in it they can communicate well then you have the the cvy aircraft which is a Forward Air controller into cvy usually in those the cvy Riders are SOG guys that have now moved up into the aircraft to support from the sky those guys do an incredible uh amount of work like the they're like that it's the opposite of what the Marine Corps has the Marine Corps takes a takes a fighter pilot and puts him on the ground for their anglio units like Dave Burke that's what he did good deal Dave this is the opposite yeah good deal Dave this is the opposite they take a saw guy and put him in the sky so it it's pretty unique um then you have the F4 Phantoms then you have the A1 skyraiders then you have the cobras and then you have the lift ships which are which are King Beast so you have this massive package that's going out that's going to be able to support you guys from the sky uh pretty incredible it's also pretty incredible that they were able to keep SOG so compartmentalized even though there's all these aircraft that are going out and flying these missions that's pretty impressive mhm I don't know how they did that cuz these Pilots are going back hitting the bar having some beers I mean how could you not come back if you're a a Skyraider pilot or a cobra pilot or you know one of these Hues that's going in and distracting guys and how can you not go back and say I just got back from Cambodia and my freaking aircraft's full of bullet holes right now well they you know you usually they came from the same unit so they were going back to their little group who were flying these particular Miss they were being pulled out uh on a regular basis to go out and fly these missions got so they could talk to each other when they went back got it um but they'd get a new door gunner or something every once in a while and he's sitting there he didn't know where they're going you I just go where the the chopper goes and he's sitting there and then he sees this River and he's saying H I think that's the Border I think we're we're headed straight for LA or Cambodia or whatever and you know their faces kind of light up and they get brief when they get back don't you dare tell anybody we want to cross that River so uh fast forward a little bit here the flight out as the UI started to wind up I could also hear the high pitch wine of the cobras revving up about 200 meters from us the launch site became very noisy and the smell of jp4 was strong this excitement was building the excitement was building as the noise kept increasing my heart rate was steadily increasing my mouth was getting dry this was exhilarating we had gone over this part of the mission many times but it's different when you're sitting in the middle of the multi-dimensional event with all the sights sounds smells taste adrenaline cortisol butterflies in the stomach a vibrating aircraft starting to lift off the ground for your first SOG Mission and I was thinking about this yesterday this wasn't just your first SOG Mission this was your first mission mission right yeah that's ridiculous that's crazy uh I had the I had like a very nice gentle Glide slope going into combat operations as a matter of fact when I got to Iraq there was one of my buddies who was my who's going to be my task unit senior enlisted guy he'd been there for a while he'd been there for like a month and when we got there he like spun up some little Mission we were going to go outside the wire and we were going to go do some vehicle addiction it was I'm not saying he made it up but he kind of made it up just to kind of get just get me my platoon get us outside the wire drive around get some of the you know get some of the nerves out so that was sort of our our intro and then you know we just started doing a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more but and you do you know you get more used to it you're like okay I'm you shake off some of those nerves but you're going on your first mission and it's a freaking SOG Mission that's kind of crazy it was crazy it it would have been even crazier if I had had any idea about what was going to happen I mean I really thought you know we're going to go out here get on the ground we're going to run around do this wire tap we'll probably shoot a couple of guys before we come back and you know we once we're in contact we'll get shot at some but you know we'll we'll come back not a big deal so it didn't quite go like that no I'm going to go to the book here we were slowly approaching the insertion hole flying with the skids dragging across the jungle canopy the hole looked small the aircraft vibrated and as we literally dropped straight down into the bomb crater the pilot was trying not to clip the trees as we were setting down it was just getting dark Davis and I were on the skid we rapidly scann the jungle around the crater but it was too dark and the vegetation was too thick to see into the jungle our descent stopped we were still about 6 ft above the crater and we were going to have to jump into the bomb crater I thought it was a long jump carrying 95 pounds of weight I knew I just had to suck it up and jump Davis and I bent our knees to jump and as we did I saw an NVA Soldier pop up on my right about 10 feet off to the side with an AK-47 pointed at me instantly instead of jumping I pushed up and back to the edge of the helicopter floor just as I jumped up the soldier opened fire with his AK-47 the bullets came right across where my legs had been half a second before and hit Davis in the legs he screamed and yelled I'm hit I'm hit help as his legs collapsed and started to fall the the fireball coming out of the AK-47 barrel was blinding and the sound was deafening simultaneously the whole jungle lit up around us and made an unbelievably loud roar as 20 to 30 NVA opened fire on automatic at once I grabbed the back of Davis's lbe harness with my left hand and use my right hand to put a half a magazine on Full Auto into the NVA soldier who was less than 10 ft away the impact of the rounds ripped him apart and blood splattered on me as he went down aided by adrenaline and cortisol I managed to jerk Davis up onto the floor of the helicopter blood was going everywhere then I saw the muzzle flashes right in front of me there was nothing but air between me and the NVA who was shooting at me from 20 to 30 feet away I was totally exposed I could be seen I could be hit I could be killed everyone in the aircraft was returning fire the two door Gunners with their M60 machine guns and the team members two of whom were using me as cover and one firing on each side of my head their car 15 muzzles were so close I was getting powder burns from the muzzle flashes my ears began to go numb and I knew I was going to lose my bearing my hearing hot brass was going all over me in the floor of the helicopter and the floor on my side was covered with blood that was getting deeper hundreds of bullets were coming at us traveling faster than the speed of sound I heard them crack as they passed through the cargo compartment of or by the helicopter some were green tracers I could actually see them coming out of the dark jungle vegetation and trees I tried to lean back to present a smaller Target I heard the metallic clangs of bullets hitting the helicopter crap we're going down Davis was in pain rolling on the floor and screaming blood continued to run on the floor I put the other half of the magazine into the muzzle flashes coming from the treeon directly in front of me and saw the NVA Soldier fall out hit the ground hard I heard myself say that's twoo now my magazine was empty we were in a full-fledged Ambush now all the way around us our two go Cobra gun ships had open fire with their Min guns each firing 4,000 rounds a minute it looked like two hoses were being were spraying red water all around us every fifth bullet was a tracer but when they were coming that fast all you could see was red the bullets were ricocheting off trees rocks in the ground friendly bullets were going in all directions the helicopter vibrated violently as the pilot tried to lift us out of the bomb crater he had not planned to lift off with all that all of us still on board some of the bullets were still were hitting trees and Limbs and flying off and some of the trees were falling rocks were being hit sending fragments flying everything was so loud the second set of cobras followed right behind the first two firing Min guns and 40mm grenades explosions went off all around us the air was full of shrapnel smoke and the smell of gunpowder and burned jp4 the team was shooting door Gunners were shooting the Cobras were shooting the NVA were shooting determined to take our helicopter down I was have having trouble getting the magazine out of my pouch it appeared to be stuck and my fingers were slick with all the blood on them I finally got out a magazine then had trouble getting it in the magazine well of my car5 I could see hundreds and hundreds of bullets and green NVA tracers coming at the aircraft I realized the stress level had caused me to lose most of my fine motor skills and B bullets were coming at me still I got the magazine in and re-engaged the enemy I had a conversation going in the back of my head while I kept shooting I'm not happy with this first mission I'm going to die in the first 15 seconds I spent two years training for this what kind of deal is this I came over here to do something this is crazy I got another magazine out of the pouch and sent it into my car 15 I shot at the muzzle flashes in front of me they would go out after I put four or five round burst on them and I saw NVA fall from trees my magazines were coming out of the pouch and into my car 15 much easier now and I racked up some more kills I saw tracers and heard screams coming out of the Jungle from wounded and dying NVA then suddenly a blast wave followed by a loud boom came across and almost knocked the helicopter into the trees it was followed by several more with less intensity all of us in the helicopter were temporarily stunned from the concussions and deafened by the loud explosions the hooches I had seen on the other side of the ridgel line turned out to be tanks camouflaged with straw and the A1 Sky Raiders were dropping 250 bound pound bombs on them this added significantly to the noise and Chaos the a1s were also receiving anti-aircraft fire and they engaged those positions too our helicopter started to vibrate violently because the pilot was trying to climb out of that little hole in the canopy jungle in the jungle canopy at least we were trying to start up but the helicopter was taking hits and the Cobras were making more runs finally we actually lifted out of the bomb crater as we did the NVA shifted their fire following us up as we went I was learning that the NVA were an incredibly determined enemy they would not quit I saw a smoke grenade in the crater spewing red smoke the red smoke meant there were no good guys left on the LZ all aircraft were cleared hot for the LZ as we pulled away from the opening and into the canopy the NVA fire stopped because the cobras blasted the whole Ambush site with rockets the a1s came in with the big stuff and the cobras finished their last run it was an amazing fireworks show they destroyed the whole area to include six tanks as we started to fly away I looked across at staff sergeant deck who was sitting on the other side he looked across he looked across at me with a big grin on his face and gave me an enthusiastic thumbs up I thought to myself look at this guy he's so excited he thought this was the coolest thing but man they almost got us all it was my time it was my first time to experience a level of fear that I didn't know existed many times I tried I tried to imagine what it would be like when people started shooting at me of course I knew it would be a little anxious but I had no clue until I experienced it there was no way I could even imagine the level of fear like that fortunately I was able to manage the fear so I could still shoot I did not let fear stop me from returning fire and doing what I had to do but it scared me welcome to SOG yeah again I mean I'm hitting the highlights of that uh which that's obviously it's a short Mission I mean that whole how that whole thing probably took three minutes or something um you go and hear some firsts this is your first mission first time in combat first time being ambushed first enemy kills unbelievable fear adrenaline cortis so so high I couldn't breathe but I could shoot in the back of my head I thought I was going to die on my first mission not happy about that to have so many bullets coming at me from every direction and not get hit first time saving an American teammate's Life blood and hot brass everywhere high frequency hearing loss a lot temporary and some permanent powder burns on my face earned my combat infantryman's badge discovered firsthand what stress does to my fine motor coordination lot going on you learned a lot even in those 3 minutes yeah there was a lot uh lot happening a lot you know to process but um I mean it was a good experience because I survived lived but you know going back and processing that you know on on my own you know to start with um it was good for me to realize when the target shoot back everything changes and a lot of what what I was doing it do didn't work in that situation I couldn't get the magazine out of the pouch because you know the the rule was you take a a canteen pouch and you cram six 20 round magazines in there so you had one pounce here with six magazines the problem is there and they tight mhm if your hands are like this you can reach in there and grab it and pull it out but when you have blood on your hands your hands slick you couldn't get a hold of it so the next day after thinking through that excuse me after thinking through that I'll put a cord on it piece of parachute cord tape duct tape it onto the center one with a little loop I can hook my finger in because once the first one comes out the rest of them easy to get the rest of them out so just little things little techniques that make all a difference in the world that you don't think about when you're out training and rehearsing and practicing because you don't have any blood on you it's just like when the target shoot back it changes everything blood changes everything so I'm riding all this stuff down uh so that I can make changes you know when I get my team I can tell here's how we're going to do things mhm um you have here additional Lessons Learned and I put a star by a bunch of these um whatever I plan I will have to adapt war is not predictable the only predictability was that the plan will have to be adapted and I have to be able to adapt on the Fly the enemy does not normally get a seat at the mission planning table thus they don't know how they're supposed to act during the mission they tend to mess things up they do every time I must control and manage my fear luck always plays a role in combat don't stop shooting a very high volume return of fire is your best chance of survival focus on the immediate situation too late to ask who is supposed to drain the swamp when you're up to your armpits and alligators must be able to do everything in the dark and Under Fire speed of execu and accuracy are critical know your people their weapons and their actions Under Fire when you select them how to distribute them know how the enemy will will react to your presence and actions mindset is critical to success timing is everything you are part of a team practice practice and practice more I must get better every time I do something and I need to fix my magazines so they're easy to retrieve even under the stress with a bloody hand attach a cord loop on the middle one so there you go uh then you had a list of Leadership Lessons never underestimate luck good or bad that always that always will send up a warning sign to me when I'd be looking at a mission a plan for a mission and you could see that there was some things that were going to have to go in the way of the platoon like well you know we we're hoping for this and it'll probably be that and as soon as you stack a couple of those things up like it ain't going to work it ain't going to work uh leadership lesson I'm not as good as I think I am I can get injured a lot of ways besides getting hit with a bullet nothing will go as planned you can see you learn that lesson pretty hard uh stress changes everything never forget that I that I did it as part of a team I can always do more than I think I can which is weird too you got I'm not as good as I think I am but I can always do more than I think I can uh if I'm doing my job as a leader I am going to get hit communication is my lifeline know my people know my enemy timing is everything down to the fraction of a second everyone must know the one Zero's Commander intent sometimes everyone must perform on their own combat is very loud uh I'm not out of danger until we get back to the fob hence the saying fui is all right um exposure and experience prepare me for more complex learning it's difficult to learn calculus before learning basic math knowledge and learning occur in layers and then you have a I have to throw this one in here never talked to Jack Daniels before giving your boss feedback about how ug because you went in for a debrief you had some you had a few beverages in you probably didn't do the most uh politically correct debrief with your boss you know honestly I was thinking about this though this your first mission right and you got to get in get out get to shoot get to get shot at and it all happened in three minutes it's not a bad first SOG Mission could have been worse yes and I don't know Sergeant deck had a recommendation for me I I asked him when we got got back to Long site I said you know while we were in there how many magazines did you empty you know during that couple of minutes or so that we were down the hole and and he said you know I I emptied five I was almost through with my sixth one I threw two frag grenades and a smoke grenade and I'm thinking wow and then he said I'm going to tell you something Lieutenant if you don't learn to change magazine faster when people are shooting at you you're going to die I said yeah I think you're right but you I thought I would pretty fast but um obviously I got to get faster you know you you can't have those breaks you know and shooting not not when you're that close and that many of them you know what I had seen what you saw on cowboy movies and you saw on some army movies police movies is you know you shoot at me I get down behind the Rock and when you and then you stop shooting and you get behind the Rock and I get up and I shoot and that's not the way it is no I mean you know you might get down to reload or something but Eko still shooting at me that's the way it's supposed to be you know a dozen other guys over here still shooting they can't even see me they just hear you know my gun firing so they know about where I am and they're shooting at me and they can't even see me so there's no break you I mean someone's always shooting at you there's never just one enemy that's the way it's supposed to be um all right fast forward again just get the book there's so much in here I'm G to fast forward a little bit um this is Mission Number Two Al RT Alabama mission number two RT Alabama's next mission was to find and destroy a battalion sized NVA element moving through Northern LA to South Vietnam our eight-man uh RT would be looking for a f for 500 NVA soldiers so this is you know this is SOG right you're go you're G to take eight guys you're g go find a battalion of 500 plus guys and I you know I figured I mean it should be pretty easy to find them I mean if there's 500 of them it it can't be that hard to do now surviving you know is a different story but I was pretty excited because I thought I'm going to learn how to do this I mean this is what SOG does and this is a a relatively small group that we've been tasked to go out and find and and Destroy so are you getting Mission guidance or debriefs from the other SOG teams that are with you guys at this fob we get some most most of it takes place in the club in the bar yeah and you know it was it was like a training center so you go in there and you that's that's when you get a chance to talk to some of the other one zero some of the other operators you know because we're just passing each other in the dark I mean tilt tilt and I we're at fob1 together we'd wave every once in a while as we'd pass each other in the dark we we both went to uh dang together and ran missions out of there together we knew each other but and we'd see each other in the Club every once in a while but we didn't have time for a relationship because you know we were always on the move going out to the field practicing whatever so yeah you would think that uh just being able to communicate with the guys I mean this is now going to be your second mission the lessons learned that they could pass on to you but of course you got deck and he's more experienced um and I had there was a an NCO in in the club um that I met and he kind of took me under his wing and you know he would tell me things like all right you listen to what I'm going to tell you lieutenant never ever shoot an NBAA one time always three or four times and if he Twitches three or four more times because you can't believe how many SOG guys have been killed by dead NVA you have to take them out the person that shoots first it's got the highest chance of survival I mean I mean he had a list of things like that you know that he would share to me with me when we would see each other and there just you know I could ask him you know about different techniques different things yeah that's the kind of feedback you want um and that's obviously some good information for you to have so for for this Mission you know again in the book you cover the plan you cover the preparation you know your thought process and then you get to the insert you talk through the insertion and then of course um we get to the point where you all are contacted and and now it's on um I'm going to fast forward here to the book The Fighting was fierce and we were carrying Quang so Quang had already been wounded I also got to see Cowboy In Action he was a real Warrior no fear he worked with me fighting a delaying action at the rear of the team slowing down the NVA he had experience using Claymores with time fuses and a great Instinct for the way the NVA moved against us Cowboys experience and courage made our Claymores and C4 charges more effective when we you guys are trying to get out of here um I I fast forward to pass that part but when we got about a 100 meters from the LZ all hell broke loose from our front there were 30 to 40 NVA weight in on us now we were between two groups so you're getting chased by a group and now you got a group in front of us the group from from the LZ open fire with a heavy barrage from AK-47s machine guns and RPGs they assaulted and began trying to maneuver around our flanks there were several loud booms one of them hitting me with concussion mud and other debris some of which went in my eyes I was having trouble seeing my Ruck and radio were hit with shrapnel from one of the b40 Rockets the radio looked bad but still worked the small wooden box of blasting caps was hit but not penetrated some of the C4 was hit but that was not a big deal deck called me to his position he wanted the a1s to put their 20mm fire on the NVA to our front we were about to be crushed the first A1 gun run got the nv's attention and stopped their assault they did not expect the devastation of the 20 mm the second A1 gun run made them start to scatter the cobras arrived on site and worked above and below us with rockets Min guns and 40 mm we continued to fight our way to the edge of the LZ and saw 20 to 30 NVA bodies scattered around some of them were still alive and had to be terminated we were not in a position to take prisoners cvy said the extraction ship was a UI and wanted smoke Jones threw a purple smoke grenade on the edge of the LZ the huie identified purple deck got everyone ready to dash to the chopper on his command we also turned our Bush Hats inside out so the bright orange vs7 panel sewn to the inside would make us identifi to identifiable to the door Gunners we didn't want to be mistaken for an NVA trying to get to the chopper which the NVA sometimes tried deck went to the left side of the chopper with HOA do and the wounded Quang Jones cowboy and I took the wounded Quan to the right side I climbed on just before deck as the chopper was lifting off the door Gunners and all team members not wounded return fire from the chopper as we got to 20 ft in the air deck and I both threw a red smoke grenade to signal that the LZ and surrounding areas were cleared hot meaning anyone on the ground was a bad guy cvy was free to destroy everything there we continued to receive fire as we climbed out I heard a few metallic clangs as the chopper took hits I looked over at deck he gave me his characteristic big smile and a thumbs up as I was about as I began to give medical attention to Quang and Quan I thought wow what an adrenaline rush I now had a better understanding of the emotions deck was experiencing while he when he would give me a big smile and thumbs up as we flew away I saw and heard our air assets air assets pounding the crap out of the bad guys we had found the NVA Battalion and Reign death and destruction down on them our team had also taken out a large number of them on the ground I continued to be amazed how at how tough and deadly our little guys were in a firefight after a short prayer I settled back down for the ride yeah you you mentioned earlier that you had cowboy on one of the the podcast and I I was I was watching that and he he said y'all were talking about a contact and he said yeah I I catch bullet and and I could see your face and his and you were you were kind of looking at him like what and he said I catch bullet right here and then you could see you know his hand was just a big scar on inside and then he said and I catch one here and I catch he was he was a hard dude yeah yeah and and and again like so that's your second mission and it's total maam I mean I I read a small portion of it you you're you're it's total manam how did you feel as far as your pro your your internal processor on that one compared to the first one I had I felt that I I knew a lot more about what was going on uh I knew what to expect you know fear wise I knew it was going to mess some things up uh but I was also learning watching what they were doing watching what cowboy was doing uh there were some conversations with deck um you know where pman told deck noo too too many VC mhm deck said go no VC and you know I'm I'm hearing this conversation you know the p man might know what he's talking about so deck said no you know so we stood up and we started go and um you know it's kind of like one of those horror movies where you expect leather face to jump out from behind a tree with a chainsaw and start sewing arms off and stuff because the p man was right but deck said no we're we're going to go and it made me wonder what I mean what did what do deck know that no one else knew we all heard the same sounds why did deck decide it wasn't VC they call them VC the NBA and and then later in that mission it happened again and deck said okay not this um yeah that's NBAA this time but you know so spending some time with him when I got back and said help me understand what what did you hear that was different you know how did you know um that it wasn't right or it was right or whatever so trying to learn trying to pick his brain uh every time we went out see what I could learn and you know one thing I was getting to do is I was carrying the radio so I was having most of the conversations with with cubby and and starting to have conversations with the gunships and and you can see how it progresses in the book to somebody who you know I I knew i' to call artillery I done all of that stuff you know in training but I never talked to a cubby before I didn't know about working gunships I didn't know all this stuff but I was starting to learn each Mission we went out I would you know doing that more and more um and and learning what the NBA were doing what they expected from us and how they reacted so I'm I'm starting to lay this stuff out put it together um and in the first time uh well this this well first time part of the Intel debriefing soon as we got back you that wasn't all that Pleasant either um yeah you put you put that in the book and they're asking you questions well how many weapons did you see you're like a freaking lot of them and but you know so how many times did they shoot at you there's 30 of them firing on automatic I don't know you know I was too busy shooting back at them yeah and you know anyway uh I was told that I needed to change my attitude but but that was part of the learning experience for me because I discovered later that if I listen I might not know how many bullets were coming but I could easily distinguish the difference between an AK-47 and an RPD and if I hear that RPD that's telling me if they've got a machine gun with them oh that's a bigger group this is not four or five guys just out there stumbling through the woods now we got a larger group were there two of them do they have RPGs you know so as I start to hear these other sounds and listen to how they move it tells me what size Force we're up against what we need to do and and you you can see how all that stuff worked into you know strategy you know adapt yeah like we're talking before I got to the point where I knew when my foot stepped off the skid I would have to start adapting whatever plan we have you know because it wasn't going to be exactly like we had planned so yeah um there's a couple things I was thinking is I I think freef fall parachuting is such a good example because everyone that you talk to experiences this your first freef fall like my first freef fall what do you what did you see on your first freef fall you see like the sky the ultim sky altim aler and put parachute worked like that's all you see you you don't know you know and then even the next jump you see a little bit more and then 10 jumps in you're like oh I can see the ocean I can see the mountains you're kind of you you adapt to it and you're your field the vision opens up so much more and that's what you can see in the book this this idea that you're talking about with the air assets um by the end of the book you're like a conductor of a or of a symphony of Destruction and you're calling in the aircraft they're coming in from different places you're setting them up this one first this one second this one third come back and hit him again a little further over there like you you're you can tell you've gotten really good at it which is you can see it again you know this is just experience and then um yeah what you say about the being adaptable I got asked a little while ago you know if we if you were the commander and you were going into the war in uh they were saying oh China invited Taiwan what would you do what would your attitude be if you were going on the ground and I said my my the most important thing to me would be keeping an open mind and everyone kind of looked at me like what kind of answer is that I said because I don't know what the enem is going to do I don't know we sure we we're going to predict some things but I don't know what they're going to do I don't actually know what all my guys are going to do I have a pretty good idea I'm going to land maybe I can guess 80 90% what my guys are going to do maybe I can guess 50% of what the enemy's going to do but that means there's a whole lot of margin for things are going to change so my attitude was always keep an open mind what what's going on don't get stuck in the plan don't get stuck in believing anything that you see right in front of you right now because things are going to change and that's clearly clearly what you had to do as soon as you stepped off that helicopter skid every time all right where are we at how's this going to go uh very good Lessons Learned for anybody in any in anything um fast forward a little bit RT Alabama mission three and this is an operation uh after a day of rest we were assigned another mission with a short prep time our mission was to locate and contaminate an NVA ammunition cache near a major Supply route in the eastern part of the Dem military rise zone between South and North Vietnam using eldest son also called exploding ammunition Italian green and Bine uh po Bean so this is an this is a a a sort of a scops operation that was happening where the US military would take mortar rounds and they would rig those mortar rounds so that when you dropped it into the mortar tube they'd blow up and they do it with bullets they'd do it with everything and it's just a little psychological operation that actually also interferes with whatever operations happened at the time and so they would take these um manipulated ammunition this exploding ammunition and go and plant it so that was your tasking on this Mission um and then you say this I'm going to go to the book unfortunately two weeks prior on 30 November 1968 an eldest son team's helicopter was hit with 37 mm anti-aircraft fire and fell like a rock to the Jungle canopy 3,000 ft below exploded and burned the air crew and seven so team members died that day a bright light mission mission to recover a missing team or missing members was not attempted because of the location and the number of NVA in the area I was shocked when he shared this information I realized that I had inventoried the personal effects of these SOG Heroes including my friend Ray Stax on my second day at fob1 this small piece of so of SOG had come full circle in a week I would be inserted as part of a team to complete their mission that can't feel real comfortable right I mean that just that can't feel real comfortable the last group that went in to do this mission that you're go going on they all died you happen to be and this was only three weeks prior four weeks prior something like that maybe a little over a month fast forward a little bit I'm going to take you into the mission here um ba basically going through the insert real quick you guys as you insert you guys get gassed with cs gas and you guys didn't have your masks with you and the NVA opens fire on you um you know you bring in the cobras they they go in they uh they put down this they kill a bunch of them you you decide to continue Mission and and that's what you do you continue the mission you head to the storage area um you find the the the the cash that you're supposed to mix in these these rounds and that's what you do um you make it to the LZ and you say I give uh gave cvia Roger that Chopper comes in the team boarded quickly and we were off no shots fired I saw deck turn his head to the side quickly gave him a thumbs up and a smile and he laughed so it's a pretty smooth operation probably the rare smooth operation but what really upsets people in general about that mission was there was a dog at T cash and you killed the dog yeah I had to shoot the dog yeah yeah people don't like that you killed several hundred they don't NVA on the they don't care about the NVA but when you shoot a dog you know yeah it's it's not easy shooting dogs yeah they can they can take more hits than you think they can and then they make a bunch of noise yeah so this big clandestine idea that you have oh we're just going to shoot this dog with a suppressed uh MP5 then the things and then what happens to all the other dogs they they want to know what's going on yeah uh the the dogs dogs are great for defense you know they they just any kind of dog that bark they're going to bark they're going to go crazy it's hard to silence them yeah so I didn't realize that we had a touchy subject there on the killing of the dog uh you had some cool Lessons Learned though uh the first group of NVA that ran from us we were very aggressive hunted them down and terminated them they were guards they were not normal NVA Warriors we fought so you hit some like rear Echelon yeah their their mission was um to help with the transportation kind of place a little security around the cachets help rebuild the roads do things they were not the hardcore North Vietnamese SOG hunter killer teams so yeah it was like chasing rabbits you know we just chase them down and terminate them you and and that's when you know when deck and I talked us we got a time I mean it didn't matter if they knew the plan or not or what they were supposed to do they're gone we still have time to get down there and plant the stuff and do a night extraction uh post Mission train you detail so much stuff in the book one of the things that you I'm going to mention here what you mention on the other ones too but this one post Mission training continue Fitness training for the most part the team did not like or want to do it I began to camouflage it into the mission pre-training by having the team carry their Loadout weight for most of our training I found it to be very I found them to be very strong for their size they' been carrying a similar weight for a long time we continue to work so that was interesting like just realizing cuz you were what you weighed a buck 40 yeah and sometimes your gear was approaching 100 pounds yeah I mean even I mean the first the first time I actually started doing something carrying the full load out I mean it was cutting my shoulders yeah I mean I I had to stren I was very strong coming in because I you know i' done all kind of stuff before I got there um but my shoulders were not prepared to have all that weight pulling down on them yeah you know but I watched them and I thought you know I'm going to up the Claymores fried grenades and things like that so they're going to have to carry more weight than what they've been caring we need to build some strength up but the the concept and I here we're going to exercise that did not go over that did not go over at all uh well you did a good job camouflaging it right hey just wear your gear wear your full load out that type of thing um we continued working on I ads and standard operating procedures the team members were not happy about the eating and hydration procedures but did it anyways what was that about I wanted to make sure that they didn't get dehydrated out on the missions so we would start like 3 days before they had to drink a lot more water they had to do do more electrolytes things like that before we went out I gradually excuse me across time started changing what they were allowed to eat because even though North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese were similar at similar kinds of things that were a little different um and how they ate it was a little different so I could smell the North Vietnamese I could smell the South ones too but I could tell the difference because they had different different spices but that meant they could they could do the same thing to us if the wind was coming from behind us they would get a whol of spices that they didn't normally eat and you know eventually he's like where did that come from there's somebody out there probably South Vietnamese so we started doing things like that eventually we got to the point where uh no one was allowed to use soap when they took a shower the last three days so no shaving cream no soap no anything that was going to create an odor um I mean even got to the point where I I just told I said I want your poop to smell like North Vietnamese poop you know so we're going to change what we eat you know we want to smell like them we we want to do there's a lot of things we want to do is and over in the book more we get into where I started teaching them uh how to be invisible and invisibility I won't go into it here but invisibility is a lot more than I camouflage or I be careful how I move invisibility takes in all the senses you have you have to hide all of the you know smell taste sound everything how you move got into you know people tended to want to take their weapon and turn the weapon and sweep back and forth like that when you go deer hunting how do you see that buck when he's coming in the hardest direction to see someone coming at you is when they coming directly at you but even though the buck might be walking directly at you what they tend to do is turn their head and look and when they do you know with with the coloration and everything it makes it easier to see them when coming at you the same with you you start turning your head I'll see the movement even if you're coming straight at me and particularly if you're moving the weapon and we started training with um Point shooting I mean I and I was on a p podcast with a guy a tier one operator from Canada um a few days ago and I was talking about this and I said I I don't aim you know if I'm looking at it that's where the bullet's going to go and he just oh geez that's exactly it he said I don't even think about the gun I'm looking right where I want that bullet to hit and I pull the tri and that's where it goes because I've done it so much you know in training and just shoot and shoot and shoot it's going to be where I'm looking and I'm not swerving the gun around except at the last second um so I'm teaching the p man look straight ahead with his with his head move your eyes they're not going to see your eyes they'll see your face or head if you start turning um so just a lot of things like that that we started put in with the teams yeah you also say you spent uh time talking about and training to be more aggressive then is that based on the fact that these NVA ran for from you and you felt like if you get more aggressive you might be able to get the upper yeah and I I heard some other teams talking about um that they were in contact and they didn't realize how many they were up against and they went after them uh and and you heard them say uh they started to run from us and then they realized you know just a handful of us and they stopped and came back at us and and they had their buddies that came with them so I you know okay they're they're human they don't want to die but if we generate fire superiority you know you always talk fire superiority and you you gain fire superiority and you're coming after them in a aggressive Manner and if I use the the other thing that we talked about about listening what what am I hearing over there how many people are returning fire and what kind of weapons are they using is this a small enough group that we can go after and terminate um and create a lot of damage or do we need to stop and you know start thinking about uh getting away you know plus I'm going to do that anyway I tght all the guys if you hit I want to hear you say in English hit hit hit to let me know you're still alive and you're hit and I have some idea of where you are and we're g to we're going to stop going backwards now we're going to come forward to the degree that we can and get you you know so um you know doing that kind of training and and they would back off from us and there is a place where we actually crawled up and listened to an NVA train train in class where they were teaching this is how you go after so teams when you encounter a SOG team they're immediately going to return fire and break contact they're going to run you know so you can assault and go after them because they're running trying to get away from you and that's yeah you you come after us Watch What Happens yeah you got full sections in here too about you know as you started to adapt to the jungle and and you know you you go through a whole section and I forget where it is but you go through a whole section you're talking about what you're actually doing the protocol that you had when you would sit down after you got off the helicopter how you would L the protocol you use to listen and you know some of nights it's pitch black the only thing you have the only sense that that that matters is you're hearing and you'd break the world around you into quadrants and you'd pay attention to the sounds coming out of each particular I mean it's pretty fascinating and it shows me and it shows anyone how completely focused you guys were on taking every advantage of everything you could even making a uh a sense that we all kind of take for granted but we don't really hone in on when that's your only sense it's all you got you're going to figure out how to use it even better um fast forward a little bit here I'm going to go to Mission four Christmas Road interdiction uh this one you you were set to launch on the 23rd of December plan to stay at least through the 27th this meant we would be deep inside LA and near large concentrations of enemy on Christmas Day I learned that the ceasefire did not cover countries outside the two vietnams no Christmas turkey dinner this year our mission was to make sure that the NVA in our area of operation did not get a free day we were to move to an observation point where we could observe and interdict Supply traffic on a major shipping route from La into South Vietnam so that's what you're going to do for Christmas Merry Christmas and you know for each one of these you would go through and you go through it in the book you know you go through the training cycle that you're going to do how you prep for it you do a visual reconnaissance which means you're going to get in an aircraft like a small little observation aircraft like an ov1 you're going to go and you're going to fly around in that area obviously you're not going to burn it but you'll go fly around seven different areas one of them is going to be the target area you'll you'll observe it from there take a look at it kind of get eyes on um and then you roll out you roll on this operations um you have a good a good section here this is where you get get out on a there's a snake out there that one of your one of your little people uh rolled up on and gave the signal for a snake so this got everyone a little bit paranoid um I'm going to fast forward a little bit to the day two of this operation as daylight dawned on Christmas Eve all team members were alert and listening for the enemy we fast forward we'd been moving about 20 minutes and we heard the Clack of two bamboo sticks hit together approximately 200 100 m down the Ridge and off to the East 40 seconds later we heard a response clack that seemed to be the same distance but on the west side of the ridge we had two trackers leading an NVA group up the ridge looking for us and attempting to flush us out of hiding so they could find us this was not a good sign to make it worse we heard a couple of dog barks I scattered some CS powder around the path we took as we move toward the new observation point this would definitely slow the dog down once it got CS powder up up its nose so this is a nightmare like you you hear these that's the way they signal to each other is they have these bamboo things that they're clacking together and you know what it is it means there's trackers how horrifying is that it gets your attention when you hear it because you know they're back there they have a good idea of where we are and they've got trackers who can follow you know a trail and if you hear a dog bark um now you know they've got dogs coming with them um so yeah that that kind of runs the stress level up a little bit because you know they're going to find you it's just a matter of time yeah you can't cover the tracks of an seven-man Patrol I mean and the dog's going to smell it even even if you you cover it m the dog's going to smell it CU you were there covering [Music] it fast forward a little bit it did not take due for very very long to start sending back information that we related to cvy by 11:30 the first air strike started hitting the air and this I'm fast forward but you guys get into a location you can now see what the NVA is doing and you start dropping bombs on them this increased the NVA effort to find our location the clackers were coming closer fast forward soon we heard the trackers Handler and a small group of NVA go by us and continue up the ridge that was close we decided to stay where we were for our remain overnight so this is horrifying to me uh These Guys these guys out there looking for us tracking us that's just like a nightmare like you said you know they're going to find you it's just a matter of time because they don't care they can move as fast as they want they can pull out machetes and hack their way through there and um fast forward to day three this section's called We're busted it was day three 25 December 1968 Christmas Day we moved from from our Ro site back to the third and most distant Cliff to set up our observation it had rained during the night and the terrain was slippery we had to be careful we observed a lot of traffic just after we got in position to reported to cvy in less than 20 minutes we had f4s pounding them we were able to provide targeting data for about two hours before everything appeared to have been destroyed fast forward 2 minutes later we heard a toe popper explode a loud scream and almost simultaneously a second toe popper explosion followed immediately by a barrage of AK-47 fire so this is because you would when you guys would get in a your your static positions you would set up your Claymores which you talked about but you'd also set up these little toe popper landmines as indicators that someone was coming and also an immediate defensive scenario yeah so you you're moving we use what we call the Fish technique a lot you're moving along and this is where you want your Ro in so we moved past it go up turn and come back to it so if you're tracking us You're Gonna Go by us and when you get up the Airways to to where we turn uh I'm going to leave a little surprise for you so put I you know I learned when I was a little kid how people animals and things Walk Through the Wood when they come to this log M you just instinctly step over or right on the other side of that log where that toe far is going to be and it just for fun I'd put two of them over there so sometimes you'd step over I'd take that leg off and you'd start to fall you'd lend on the other one I get that one too you step on one of those out in the jungle you're going to die because you can't get your back to the hospital or anything like that but that lets us know you know that you're tracking us we know where you are and most of the time when they would step on one they assume we're out in front of them and that's where they initially fire they open fire out that way we're back over here a little way so we know you're there we got some idea of how many people are there and you know from there we've got our Claymores out on the Avenues of approach that you might use to come down uh to get us we've got an evacuation plan on how we're going to go um so then we take whatever action you know seems to be right at that time well we learned the uh fish hook method for controlling and when we're going to set up our perimeters we also learned when you're when you get to a log they're going to put a booby trap on the other side like those lessons got passed down direct uh so the they so they hit a toe poper um and then another toe poer now they start shooting machine gun fire and I'm going to go back to the book some of it was in our Direction some of it was in other directions they didn't know exactly where we were but in that first barrage three AK rounds came through the route on my left side and tore my shirt as they went across my chest and through the root on my right side you were sitting in between these uh trees that look like big rockets and like the fins of the Rockets is what you're sitting between I had just exhaled if I had just inhaled the bullets would have taken the top of my chest off when they came across me they grazed just enough to draw blood it was obvious that the roots were providing just concealment not cover I had to get behind the tree I jumped behind the tree with my Ruck which is 75 pounds in my left hand I heard another toe popper go off followed by a loud scream then the grenade I had left in the area with the trip wire all the AK fire shifted toward our position now they were trying to flank us with a group of about 20 NVA maneuvering around to our right to push our backs against the cliff the grenade I had put on my side exploded and showed their flanking Movement we had a full-fledged firefight going on with more NVA coming down the ridge deck gave me me the command to detonate the first layer of Claymores it was a tremendous explosion as seven Claymores exploded simultaneously it was raining debris dirt pieces of trees rocks and body parts a bloody arm landed right in front of where I had been lying between the roots a thick smoke and smell covered the jungle it temporarily stopped their assault but the automatic weapons fire picked up again it was easy to tell that the group was a lot smaller because of the lower volume of fire but more NVA were coming as soon as the team got near my position and below me I was getting ready to set off the other layer of Claymores when a b40 rocket hit the tree in front of the one I was behind fortunately my Ruck was still setting on the edge of the bank and provided some protection it was riddled with small shrapnel I duck behind the tree and set off the first the last layer of Claymores this group had only five Claymores but it ripped the hole in the NVA assault they were stunned physically and psychologically I don't think the NVA believed we had more Claymores to set off I also got another taste of the impact of adrenaline when I came out from behind the tree I had to grab my ruck sack with my left hand it weighed probably 75 pounds and I'm not a big guy but I toss that ruck sack around like it was a pillow I took it right I took it with me as we fought our way down the Ridge and toward the LZ I paid for it later on after we got extracted I realized I had pulled muscles in my shoulder because they just weren't designed to handle that much weight but I had so much adrenaline pumping through my system I didn't notice at the time Cowboy had dropped off with me and was providing OverWatch fire as I scampered down to him deck and Jones were leading the team down the ridge towards the LZ the rocky terrain was providing some cover but the NVA were able to take advantage of it too as soon as the first toe popper exploded I had notified cvy that we had heavy contact and a prairie fire usually cvy could assess could could have assets on site in 30 to 45 minutes but it was Christmas Day a holiday and not a lot of assets were just hanging out nearby it was a good thing that we had notified cvy right away we needed close air support gunships immediately we knew it would be a while before things would calm down enough to get extraction ship in the NVA were not stopping cowboy and I went into a delaying technique with Claymores on time fuses that were becoming pretty effective at using the NVA appeared to have run right up on the first delayed Claymore based on the screams and yelling we heard Cowboy said VC angry my response was good that means we're really hurting them we left another one as we ran up to catch up with the rest of the team we were shooting a lot of them but it seemed like it was taking two to three hits to put them down cowboy said VC take drugs he must have been correct because they were hard to stop I noticed that three hits on automatic had a lot more knockdown power than three fast individual shots when I hit them on auto they dropped immediately I made a mental note to remember this for later cvy told me that he he had a couple of spads with 20 mm and Napal 20 minutes out I updated our situation we were still receiving a lot of fire into our area as we caught up with deck I updated deck on what cvy said and about the problem putting NVA down we had a steep grade to go down to the LZ and got no protection once we got there we decided to stay where we were in the Rocks suddenly things got got quiet too quiet they were up to something we decided to put our four claymor on the on the most likely Avenues of attack we redistributed ammunition and moved our extra frag and Willy Peak grenades out of our rocks we were expecting a heavy assault to begin any minute you could hear a pin drop then at a very low volume I heard Bravo 6 this is cvy six go spads a1s are here Mark your position with smoke and tell me where you want the 20 Mike mic I threw a smoke grenade and said Roger smoke out Sandy lead identifies yellow six Roger make the first run north to southeast northwest to Southeast 100 meters Northwest of the smoke danger close Roger keep your heads Down the Gun runs effectively triggered the NVA assault on our position we thought there were 20 to 30 of them left it was closer to 200 one thing I had learned is that if you you are not moving you are dying because the NVA are maneuvering into position to cut off your escape the NVA had managed to move so that they had flanked us on three sides the only way we could Escape was to run into the open LZ they were assaulting we set off our four remaining we set off four of our remaining seven Claymores to slow their assault cvy this is six have one spad put Napal where it is first gun run and the second to drop is Napal flying Northeast to South Southwest 100 met north of the smoke this is danger close do it now and come back around with guns in the same place cvy Roger you take you guys take cover and take a deep breath it's going to get very hot the gates of hell are about to open six copy that meanwhile we are being hit with a Hil of AK-47 and RPD fire and b40 Rockets we returned the fire and lob frag grenades from behind rocks it was so Smoky you could barely see when we heard the planes getting close we each threw a grenade took cover and took a deep breath the air was was about to be so hot it would fry the inside of your lungs the fireball heat and smoke were tremendous and the Napalm sucked all the oxygen out of the air air was available but it was hot Smoky and choking and had no oxygen we could see the NVA running around like human torches covered in Fire and screaming we were still receiving a lot of fire from the south cvy this is six that was fantastic we are still receiving fire from the south make one more Napal Rum Run 100 meters south of the smoke flying Northwest to South West danger close this is cvy Roger we have four gunships five mics out this is cvy Napal 30 seconds out take cover the Napal was once again surreal the screams the choking the superheated air the smoke the smell of burning and charred flesh we took out the human torches we could see a couple of our guys could not take the smell and could not hold back the vomit once we had suppressed most of the enemy fire we were able to bring in an extraction ship as we were lifting off still under Fire deck and I both threw a red smoke grenade meaning the LZ was cleared hot take out all living creatures cvy worked the area over and pulled away as we pulled away cvy this is dynamite really appreciate your help we could not have made it without you thanks thank all of your assets for us see you back at the ranch Roger that Dynamite you guys did a great job today as soon as we got far enough away from the L and most of the NVA fire shifted away from us I looked over at deck to see his big smile and thumbs up he wasn't smiling and there was no thumbs up I thought crap he must have been hit I crawled across the guys to get to him grabbed him by the shoulder and asked deck you okay he slowly looked up at me and said Lieutenant I'm done this was my last mission then he looked away I went back to my position in the helicopter a lot of questions popped into my mind I would talk to him more about this we got to the launch site when we got to the launch site I immediately went to him what's going on I asked he said I've completed my mission requirement and I'm going to move to a different job when we get to C CN I would appreciate if you wouldn't say anything about it I'll tell the team when the time is right we did a quick debrief and flew back to what was left of fob1 we got there after dark to find the mess sergeant had saved our Christmas meal for us steak if I remember correctly it tasted really good but the best part of was that fob1 even almost totally closed did not forget about us fuay was all right but this was the end of fui fob1 it was being closed as an fob and the teams distributed it around the other fobs we would be the last team out RT Idaho with John Striker Meyer tilt and Lynn black Blackjack had barely managed to escape from La that day too and had already been transported to CCN RT Alabama would rest that night and fly to C Cen the following morning yeah this is insane right I mean the this is these these stories are insane they're totally insane um getting pressed that hard blasting these Claymores you know we used to set up Claymore ambushes in training um and you know when you clack off seven seven Claymores in the jungle that is a serious serious blast yeah that must have rocked those NVA that rocked their world I mean if rocked your world yeah you have to make sure you're far enough back or yeah because it'll stun you you know in in those days um we didn't have a ter for and talk about uh TV you know I look at you and you days and you can't tell me your name and I I say ja rub a little dirt on your chest just rub a little dirt on you'll be all right you know let's keep going you know we we got things to do we can't fumble around like this just Rubble dirt on U and you know we didn't we didn't realize what the concussion was doing to us yeah but I mean you're getting hit with it you know on know regular basis then you had Lynn black he was getting ready to go on a mission he goes out and trying to figure out how big of a piece of C4 do we need to use to knock somebody out well I'm G to chop up these different sizes set of out here on the ground back up a little wa and set it off and see if it knocks me down so he kept doing it until you know he didn't know who he was and he said okay that's that's how much we need right there ohly C but anyway we used to do Claymores also uh and I know they don't do this anymore but I detonated Claymores that were like on the other side of my ruck sack and I was maybe in a little depression like you can you can be so close yeah to them I mean you get rattled yeah but we used to do that just to kind of explore the the the parameters mhm because the you know the bearings are going in the other direction but you get a little Daz from that we we tried whenever we could to put them in front of trees so you got a big tree and on the other side of the Claymore and then you're you're back here ways but you still got if you're going to do seven at one time you still got to get backway go holy cow um but yeah when and one of the the things that was happening was you know we were closing fob1 and most of the teams and I I don't know all the answers here but most of the teams left there and went uh to uh CCN or or Central or or South as the intact team but for some reason Alabama got split up so when when we moved down there um you know the team for a while wasn't a team anymore so deck went to a different type of job a non-operator job um down there CCN was a it was a a big place a lot going on did you talk to deck about what yeah yeah I talked to him back and he said what he saying I'm done he he said you know I I finished my mission requirements I been on all these things they're going to split the team up uh and they're going to move me to an admin job they're going to take me to CCM but you put me in a um a non-operator job down there and I'm okay with that um and and the team was split up and he told me he had already given me the clearance to be a one zero he had vetted me and I was good um so I would get my my own team when I got down there yeah cuz I don't know if you mentioned this on the podcast it's in the book but the the what they wanted out of you guys was six months or six missions right that's what they wanted out of you guys six months or six missions so if you got to six months and you were didn't want to do it anymore you could move on or if you did six missions you could move on or if the one zero said Joo can't do this got it he's going get somebody killed maybe after your first mission second mission if the one to zero is said no thumbs down he's not an operator take him out then you know you could be moved somewhere else but normally if you got six missions and you want it but and the part of the the thought was that that's a lot of missions and if we keep you longer than that then you know you might not not be okay upstairs mhm you know we we need to we're going to try to protect you by getting you out after six or at least giving you an out if you want it but in reality you know it could be the first mission that did you in I mean there there are people who went on one Mission and came back and said that ain't happening again I can't do this because it was so different when you went across the border you you just against so many people every time you you all and it it reminds me jiujitsu I mean seems like every time I see you guys on uh Instagram or something you're doing some some stuff one person gets down on the mat and the other person gets on top and gets some kind of hold on him or something and then that's when you start and that's kind of what sag was like we're we're going to put the team out there we're going to surround you with all these NBA and then we're gonna say go because it you always started out surrounded every Mission yeah it's like we you know people talk about different the different selection uh courses that there are for for Rangers and for seals and for special forces I don't think there's a harder selection than than so you're going to go out on a mission over the fence and we'll see if we if you hack it or not let see if we can find you again yeah I mean it's it's not funny but it's amazing how many teams went out you they got off the helicopter they moved into the jungle and that was it you didn't hear from them again or maybe you find one or two of them at some point but you had some uh Lessons Learned From This one uh if you can be heard you can be found if you can be found you can be killed uh if you're not moving you are losing the battle you are in the process of dying yeah when you stop and and you get distracted you get sucked in by here's a group of rocks they're coming after here's a group of rocks you know rocks are conceal are not just concealment but cover so we get down in these rocks you know now we can stand there ground and we can get some h no all that does is is fixate you in one little spot in NVA it's just like a big amoeba coming down and and they just go around you now you're not going anywhere I used to have the young seals out in the field doing land Warfare and they being a enemy contact so this you know it's like lasers are getting shot at and all of a sudden you know the the lasers would kind of slow down then they'd come to a stop and you'd see the young leader be like oh you know they're not shooting at us anymore forer perimeter and you know start doing counts and ammo redistribution and I'd say hey man what's going on you'd be like well they stop shooting at us that's cuz they're maneuvering like that they're moving on you right now and now you don't know you knew where they were at least when they were shooting at you now you don't know so you need to now's not the time to stop now's not the time to get stationary now's not the time to get static unless you have some prominent High ground or something like that a piece terrain feature okay but if you're still if you're if you'd maneuvered down a Ravine and now you're in some low ground and you think it's going to be a good time to stop and redistribute ammo no now's not the time so I definitely related to that one uh Claymores on time fuses stun the assaulting NVA made the survivors stop and think they are human they don't want to get shredded and uh Napal was a very scary and powerful weapon the NVA hated it yeah so that and that was that was a big insight for me using Napal and just seeing you know the awesome power of that stuff and and what it did and realizing they don't want it I mean if you get in real trouble you bring some Napal out there and you know they'll change how they react to you because once you see your buddy as a human torch or people just charred all over the place you don't want any of it and it you know I've had it on me you you it won't go out you you know and it doesn't just rub off it just sets on your other hand on fire when you start trying to put it out I mean it it's going to get you um and it's it's just really really brutal the other thing that you run into or we ran into I ran into um was I work mostly North and as you went north um the jungle got a lot thicker so all of a sudden you had double and triple canopy jungle when you see all of these YouTube videos and things of napon being dropped it's out in the open MH and man it it forms this beautiful pattern on the ground and everything and that's cool when you drop it into a double canopy jungle or Triple Canopy it goes off up there and it goes everywhere it starts raining down and it used to just scare me but I knew I had to have it but I said you know I hope I'm picking the right distance I hope that pilot that's coming in is going to put it in the right spot and I hope I didn't make a mistake or he didn't make a mistake in our calculations or it's going to be on us and you just kind of hold your breath and say oh jeez we see what happens you know when it comes down but the nv8 what they started trying to do in ' 69 was try to get get close get close tried to get close enough to us that we couldn't call it in so you couldn't wait too late before you you used it but it was a powerful weapon mhm um I'm going to fast forward here to command and control North fob4 and now you're with uh RT Michigan RT Michigan had a reputation as a solid team and it lost its last two one zeros unlike RT Alabama RT Michigan was a monard team so there always got to be a little bit um dis discomforting when you're going to take a job that the last two guys have been killed well it it almost didn't matter which team you went to probably the reason you were going to that team is CA it one zero yeah I mean if when you made contact if you could survive the first 90 seconds you might have a chance it was just amazing how many one Zer and Americans were killed in the first 90 seconds because everybody you all stand you're standing up so I mean your whole body now is exposed and when that many people open up with that many AKs on automatic there's such a barrage coming at you if you're standing up you're going to get hit if you can get below waste level you know by the time the shooting starts you've got a chance I mean that one reason I didn't want any more than I had to on the front I wanted to the degree I could to look like an empty pair of fatigues laying out there on the ground that I was so close to the ground you know that I I wasn't going to get my ruck sack used to get shot all the pieces you know cuz it was it was sticking up but you know uh my ruck sack saved me on a lot of occasion or radio saved me I got hit so many times in that radio but you got to get close you got to get down you and I I still harass tilt you know and and I think tilt said on the the podcast the first thing his team said to him when he went to his new team The Interpreter said you got going to die too tall yeah yeah it wasn't just too tall you're too tall and you're too ugly you're going to die and I you know I I harassed myself how can you know I used to look at you and say how can a guy 62 survive out here I mean yeah I can I can just site time after time where if I had been a quarter of an inch caller I'd have died you know and I'm nowhere near 60 um so I don't know I mean I've had my head creased with a chunk of shrapnel and stuff like that it just you know I used to want to be taught you know CU my little brother's 6'4 how old are you um 5'7 mhm so 5'8 you wouldn't be here no I wouldn't be here no not at all uh so Michigan you say in my experience with so this is a mountain yard a mountain yard team and you say in my experience with them the yards did not like the Vietnamese I would need to adap from the Vietnamese culture and superstitions to that the of the mountain yards so you got a different crew now and you got to get used to these guys what what was different about the mountain yards most of them had lived in the jungle and they came from the jungle so they had a a lot of experience and knowledge about the jungle uh the creatures the terrain everything out there so you know when when they move through the jungle they could they'd point out a lot of times snake you know they knew where to look to find the snakes where they were going to be things like that um just they were really good at moving through the woods or the jungle and and not making noise um different just a different mindset than the Vietnamese what kind of superstitions did they have don't step over one of them somebody if you were to step over me I was going to die okay so you know don't step over them they they get hostile you start to do that and then like it says in the book I mean that that first day bargewell and and I and one of the the yards are walking across the the company area you know we kind of three a breast when we walking along and in the yard just reaches over and he takes me by the hand mhm he's holding my hand and we're kind of walking along and we swinging our hands and you know I'm looking down and thinking what what are we doing here we don't do this in South Carolina yeah we don't do this in South Carolina and and bargewell looks and he says don't turn it loose he said it's not what you think he's showing you respect and honor if you turn his hand loose you're going to insult him mhm and you don't want to do that but you know just different things it was different culture um the food was a little different that they ate uh they really didn't like the Vietnamese they didn't care if they were North or South they didn't care they just you know yeah I mean they killed each other some sometimes in the compounds oh yeah in the compound yeah I mean you couldn't let them eat at the same time we had uh you know cambodians and and the mountain yards and and the Vietnamese they all ate in the same Messa but they had to have a different feeding schedule you couldn't put them in there together because somebody would get shot because it was it was like living in the old west unlike the US compounds in the saw compounds you know you walked around fully arm I mean you could carry grenades around your pocket you could carry your car 15 around in the compound with you know fully loaded ready to go uh and you subject to get shot and one one thing you didn't want to do I mean I didn't want to walk up you know to eeko and say something that appeared to be aggressive or derogatory to him when his team was with him I mean I'd be looking down the barrels car 15s all of a sudden and nobody's going to mess with the you know with the with the one zero on the team and you know so you you had to be care even Americans you know we all carried weapons too so you had to be careful with them some of them are whacko uh you mentioned barwell uh you say this about barwell I was impressed with barsell right from the beginning he was very knowledgeable and a great operator he had been at Kon with a team during the siege of Kon they were hammered for 77 Days by a massive NVA Force barsell had recruited some of the RT Michigan team members this was a yard team and they all liked him and had a lot of respect for him he was a smart guy everything about him said Warrior I figured if he didn't get killed he was going to be a legend in Special Ops at some point sure enough barsell remained in Special Operations SOG Rangers Delta and Socom throughout his career and retired as a major general and special ops Legend we remained friends until his death April 29th 2019 and yeah I mean uh barell was in charge of sock year Special Operations Command Europe um when I was over there and you know it was pretty awesome my boss had a really good relationship with him and you know it was pretty pretty awesome to be working with a legend like that but that's when he was a general you were working with him when he was what a spec four yeah he's a hard dude you know but even I mean there's not a another General Who as a general instead of walking around with his little pistol walked around with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder and and telling you know his security team if anything happens guys you take care of yourself I'll take care of me I'll be all right you know don't get yourself kill trying to take care of me yeah and holy cow but I mean he was uh he was hard just a unbelievable Warrior um smart and you know he was a spec four and we come back to the States and and I see him and uh he was a a lieutenant and I thought how did you do that well you know I came back and went to OCS okay then I see him again he's a captain and I'm you know I'm just the a major and he's already a captain I thought man you're doing good and then the next time I see him uh you know he was a major and I was about to get promoted to Lieutenant caral I mean he'd already caught me and just you know he just kept going and you know that was cool and you know I'd see him in different places and we'd talk and you know when he was in Delta we were talking and and stuff and it was um yeah it was pretty cool just to watch him he was fascinating but on these teams m i mean he was he was a hard dude you didn't want to irritate him I mean and I think I think that's part of what how he got a DSC was his team after I left the team was hit a b40 came right into the middle of them everybody was wounded barwell took a big piece of shrapnel through the through the side of his face and ldes behind the eye on the other side and it it really irritated him and then they they they had the G about 20 of them to stand up and try to assault the team you know and they're wounded and all this stuff and Bar's got a B piece of straing on his head and he's pissed and he's he was and he had that he had he was carrying the the RPD by then he holds the whole group down I mean he just took out their whole assault by himself and he modified an RPD right like yeah we cut down there's a mission where he got so excited I mean the bad guys are using it against us and he just kept talking about man that thing's awesome it fires so fast it's got that big 100 round belt on it and he does all this stuff and he kept talking and then so I said well we're going over on a training Mission over to the monkey mountain Carri one over there and just see what you think about it you know going through the jungle when he came back and said no you know it hangs on everything it's heavy it's you know that bipod hangs on all this stuff then the next thing I know he tells me this guy's down at CCC saw the barrel off of one of these things and he did some modifications to it it's a lot shorter I and he got one of them and he started carrying it yeah yeah the seals were you know they used m60sbs one time holy cow I got back I will never do that again hangs on everything it's heavy and when the bad guys hear that machine it sounds so different just like an RPD it sounds so different than everything else they know what it is and everybody just you know all the the rounds start coming at that weapon but they know they've got to take it out yeah you didn't like that done too much no uh so now you're you're with this team and you're you know practice practice practice this is your montra now you're practicing everything where to put a tourniquet on uh you get you start enforcing the meals things and you know this was a detail I wanted to bring up just CU it's it's an example of what you guys were how focused you were the snaps on a canteen the canteen cover the little snaps you replace those with wooden buttons so if you're getting a drink no one's going to hear snapping any snaps that's that's where you guys were at you're practicing with the Claymores um this is where you get into the point where you had an eight man teen you got approximately 24 Claymores you were a big fan the Claymores and the grenade same thing you know uh eight-man Team you got guys carrying 10 frag grenades which is pretty epic well you know and I told them I said the good thing one of the good things about carrying all that ammunition is the bad the bad news is it's heavy the good news is that when we make contact it gets lighter and lighter you know but then it turns into the bad news after a while because it's gone but but yeah so I tried to pump them up a little bit about the stuff but they saw I mean it they were they were shocked when they they realized the power that we had with those Claymores and all those frag grenades particularly when you made contact at night MH because at night you can lob that grenade out there and they don't know where it came from I can't imagine the horror of your walking and you think you're assaulting this little so and as your on assault all a sudden seven Claymores get clacked off half your guys are dead or wounded so you go well that must be all they have you charge again and you hit four like that's that's devastating uh fast forward a little bit here to your first mission you say my first mission as one Zer so now you're the guy in charge of RT Michigan was to provide assistance to a hatchet Force platoon LED by my friend Captain Glenn Jordan that would be interdicting a resupply route and this is a pretty cool Mission because that's actually is similar to what uh my guys would do over in ratti which is you dressed up like members of the 101st and went down to with them made it look like you were replacements for some of their soldiers and then when their water supply team went down to the river to resupply their water you guys took off your 101st uniforms got on your your put our bman suit on put on your so your SOG outfits and then boom rolled out that's you know my guys would do stuff like that roll out with the Army you know in their convoys and they'd pull up they'd stop for whatever reason out guys would slip out the back and go start occupying buildings or foot patrol in or whatever any we did a bunch of different that type of thing um so going fast forward a little bit you're on this mission now and someone has your day three of this Mission someone has a genius idea at 1410 we heard bad news from cvy x-ray 5 this is cvy the launch site is sending a helicopter to resupply your water food and batteries your mission has been extended the chopper is 10 minutes out you'll need to identify your location over this is x-ray 5 not going to happen I say again no way we have bad guys all over us we cannot Mark our location to receive supplies send it away this is cvy I sent your response to Quebec Tango 6 he said it's coming get ready to receive it sorry about that this is five I'm not marking my location this is Cubby the Chopper's been ordered to drop the supplies at your last known location this is five you know this is going to create a prairie fire you better start lining up assets this is going to be they're going to be on us like chicken on a June bug I got barsell Nash and canu together and told him what was about to happen it was not a pleasant conversation probably too loud in the end I told him we would not stop in the end I told them we could not stop our position from being compromised and we needed to at least try and hide the supplies from the NVA so they would not find them when they came looking for us we would not have much time so of course this happens I mean this is just a nightmare freaking tell these idiots not to send these resupplies they send them you're hidden you're you're totally clandestine at this point they drop supplies fast forward enemy contact Cy this is five moving south fast we can hear them coming we need air support here now calling artillery and this is something you went into you had laid out an awesome pre-fired plan all the locations you named all the locations all the pre-fire locations and dialed those in with 100 because this was your first time when you're going to be close enough to yeah American forces to actually use artillery so you were pumped yeah um cubby this is five moving south fast we can hear them coming in we need air support here now calling artillery cvy Roger gunships 20 mics out working on spads are you calling a prairie fire this is five soon x-ray 26 x-ray 5 fire mission over so here you are calling in uh the the artillery um Eagle 26 shot over Eagle 26 splashed over this is five outstanding more to come we were moving fast toward an area that we could use for an extraction LZ suddenly CA signaled halt enemy just as we stopped a barrage of AK fire came at us hitting ca he went down in the vegetation cantua yelled CA hit I yelled assault front we needed to get online an assault Beyond where Campell went down so we could get him as we got near CA we found RPGs were coming at us we had to get CA and start moving backwards there at least 20 more NVA as we were fighting and trying to withdraw I worked my way over to ca he was bleed bleeding badly barsell was trying to stop the bleeding barsell personally recruited Campo when he was at Kon he knew ca's family cvy this is five we're in heavy contact with 20 more MVA need help we have at least one redhead code word for wounded I'm declaring Prairie Fire emergency over I shouted over the background heavy volume of gunfire and yelling Roger that can you send up a flare we don't know exactly where you are Roger stand by this is five flare up identify this is cvy identify blue this is five negative negative that's not us hammer it sending up another one this is cvy identify red Roger that standing by artillery coming in eal 26 x-ray 5 fire mission over Roger send it from Target Friday Direction 270 add 250 adjust fire over Eagle 26 Roger shot over so this is you know for people that don't know uh what's going on here this Mark Mark you identify thing is something that you do when you're trying to mark your position so you try and Mark your position for the aircraft that are overhead and you throw out a you know what you throw out you threw out a smoke or a flare flare a flare and you say identify and they are supposed to say what color flare you sent up so they say yep you sent up a blue flare well you didn't send up a blue flare so you're saying hey wherever that flare came from they're not friendly so hammer that thing but that's how good the enemy was like they would know if they would send up just random signaling devices they might be able to get confusion going on uh fast forward a little bit the NVA had cut off our route to the possible LZ and their numbers were increasing we made it into some rocks they were trying to flow around us barsell had cambas bleeding under control and gave him ringer solution to get some of the volume back in his blood cvy this is five this is as far as we can go run the guns again same place we need a string extraction if you can get here fast enough these jokers look like a giant amoeba flowing around their dinner I want to give them indigestion really I really appreciate Quebec Tango's resupply of food he should be with us here to enjoy it over I knew listen yeah I was sure I was sure Quebec Tango 6 could hear what I was saying even with the heavy volume of gunfire explosions and Men yelling in the background cvy Roger guns coming back around working on strings spads here in five mics Roger getting ready this is thick canopy not sure they can get the things the strings through Roger I'll notify Casper 5 extraction on strings through double canopy jungle was rough we would be dragged through the limbs of trees and Treetops the aircraft would always start to go forward before we were above the canopy and then we would be being dragged through it this is Casper 5 we are doing we are here to do some fishing ready to put four lines in the water the Maguire rigs have been removed watch for sandbags x-ray 5 Roger move 12:00 40 MERS and 3:00 20 MERS so this is just chaos going on um we are over your fish bed you're over our fish bed drop the lines we were receiving heavy fire and the extraction aircraft did not want to stay over us long the strings would be 120t nylon ropes with a a sandbag on the end of each to get them through the canopy if they left the Maguire rigs on the ropes they would hang up in the canopy this meant we had to use our nylon utility ropes measuring 12 feet to make Swiss seats while laying down and getting shot at and then hook onto the ropes while we were lying on the ground while this was going on four people would not be returning the NVA fire at the NVA barw Well's first group to be extracted were tossing some of their loaded magazines in a pile for my group to use we were quickly running out of survival time The Hourglass had only had almost run out of sound of sand I really didn't think there was much of a chance that my group would get out so you're freaking surrounded you got eight guys on the ground that need to get out you they're going to be dropping sandbags on the end of ropes from a helicopter through the double canopy jungle that are going to hopefully Land close enough to you guys where while you're freaking laying down you can put a piece of rope around your waist in a Swiss seat and then Carabiner yourselves into these ropes that's the plan and you're going to have to do that twice by the way and you're running out of ammunition yeah it was a it was a stressful day oh yeah that's right you got wounded as well uh here we go I put barsell Nash can AA and aat on the first aircraft strings I wanted the two Americans CA and aat out I couldn't help the group get hooked up because the NVA were starting to charge our position I was shooting some of them within 10 feet or less of our perimeter and some even inside our perimeter my magazine ran out just before one of them jumped over my rock and landed on me I terminated him with my Kar to his neck hitting his koted artery as he landed on me we were receiving a heavy volume of fire the NVA realized what we were trying to do and were really trying hard to kill us and shoot our helicopter down it wasn't every day they got a chance to shoot down a helicopter 100 feet in the air and not moving we had to be careful not to use our grenades up too quickly we are going to be fighting for a while Casper 5 you have our fish go go straight up fast have your door Gunners flood the Willie Pete you are about to see I shouted over the gun fire explosions and yelling Roger I threw a white phosphorus grenade as far as I could toward the main body of the NVA Willie Pete grenades were big and heavy and had a large bursting radius I had to get it far enough away before it exploded which was not easy while receiving a heavy volume of fire and idiots diving on me the wiie Pete grenade created a dense white smoke with small chunks of wiie Pete landing on and burning through the NVA the dense white smoke provided some concealment for barsell group and acted as a choke Ching Point as a choking agent in the nv's lungs Casper 5 this is x-ray five take him straight up over this is Casper 5 we're taking hits we have to get out of here this is x-ray 5 have your door Gunners move their their fire 25 meters north of where they currently firing over Casper Roger the door Gunners returned continued to return fire I could see the red tracers coming down to the ground and I was on the radio trying to adjust the door Gunner's fire because I could see where the NVA were on the ground I was trying to get katuna and hang or hang how do I say his name hang ready to hook on the next set of ropes if there was a next set I returned fire at the NVA as I talked to cvy to tell him where I needed the gunships to make their gun runs while I was dodging bullets I saw that CA Nash akat and barwell were getting beat up through the tree limbs I couldn't help them now they would have to survive the ride to Firebase two the fun things that SOG one zero got to do were be the first person off the aircraft Into the Fire fight and the last one off the ground during extraction but that's what SOG one zeros did first in last out I had only a couple frag grenades left and the NVA were getting ready to assault again I got out my two-b blocks of C4 and inserted the blasting caps that had been crimped on the time fuses with fuse igniters I had only one Claymore left I set up the Claymore facing the direction of the most NVA unrolled the wire and put the clacker under the Rope on my hip so it would be fastened to me and I could reach it to detonate the Claymore my plan was to set it off just before I got to the end of The Wire 100 ft as I was lifted up the gunships were keeping most of the NVA back from us but a few were moving closer to us they wanted to literally hit us and maybe the helicopter as we were being lifted up I had always told my guys if you were not moving you dying and here we were we couldn't move because we had to wait to be lifted up on strings through the canopy our death sentence seemed to be rapidly approaching we had only three courses of action at this point one try to survive getting lifted out on strings if the pilot was willing to try and receive so much fire two try to break contact and disappear into the jungle and hope to be found alive in a few days or three make a stand here until we ran out of ammo then throw a red smoke grenade indicating that the gunships and A1 skyraiders were cleared hot to totally destroy our current location and take out as many NVA as they could I didn't like the third option I decided to have the gunships make two more passes but much closer to our position and have the extraction chip follow right behind them we would fasten the ropes as fast as possible and give us clearance to lift out I would provide covering fire while assisting katun and hang and hooking up if I had time and was able I would fasten on if I couldn't for some reason wounded dead or too much fire I would send katuna and hang out and stay behind and Implement course of action two or three so that's what your decision is you're going to try and at least get these other two guys out of here if you get the chance you're going to hook onto that rope and if you can't you're just going to send them off and you're just going to go down fighting and call in fire on your own position x-ray 5 Casper 4 we are dropping ropes now Roger one is hung up on the canopy fortunately we only needed three katun and hang hooked onto their ropes while lying on the ground behind the Rocks the gun runs were just about on top of us and they took out a few of the guys who crept in on us I didn't have to help katuna and and and hang very much so I just provided cover fire Casper 4 x-ray take us up now straight up we were taking a lot of fire I felt two really hard hits in the back one in the radio and one in the upper left chest and knocked the breath out of me it literally hurt it really hurt but I did not think the bullets penetrated me I was still alive and that was good as I neared the end of the Claymore cord I detonated it I was almost directly above it it was very loud and actually took out some of the NVA and stunned me a little so that's just freaking ridiculous let me explain that to people so you you're all this is going on and as all this is going on you rig up a claymore pointed in the direction of the where the biggest concentration of of NVA was and then you detonate the the Claymore with something called a clacker it's just a little it's a big button actually that you squeeze and it sends the P El electric shock wave down this wire which is 100 feet long and then when it gets there detonates the electric blasting cap and blows up so what you did was take that clacker stuck in in your rope and then as you're being hoisted up out of this hole in through the canopy when you got to the end of that wire you clacked off the Claymore that's some serious freaking presence of M um you say I was having difficulty shooting accur accurately or even in the right place because I was being twisted and turning and hitting limbs I dropped two blocks of C4 with 15sec time fuse they made a lot of noise now the NVA were behind me and it was difficult to shoot in that direction I could tell both katuna and hang were hit because blood was dripping down on me I had no idea how bad they were wounded both seemed to be alive I tried to Radio Casper and cvy but the prick 25 radio which had been hit by two AK-47 rounds would not work I tried to use my URC 10 survival radio but it had it had been hit with a large piece of shrapnel and was not working it was covering my heart I was very fortunate that it stopped the shrapnel at least that part worked but this left me with no way to communicate with the helicopter or cvy it was a long ride back to the first safe place to land the helicopter and to add to the fun we flew over several anti-aircraft positions but it felt good to be off the ground and there's actually a photograph in the book which is freaking ridiculous and you tell the story about how you got this but it's a picture of you and uh who's it hang and and um canant and Canton and you guys are getting lowered into a different fire base after you've been in this gunfight look at this Echo Charles look at this yeah that's so a guy happened to snap the picture on an old type of Polaroid camera I didn't know they had Polaroid cameras in 1969 but this guy had one and he snapped a picture of you guys as you were getting dragged back into this fire base and then before you took off once you loaded back in the helicopter he ran over to you and gave it to you yeah he saw you know he saw bargewell group come in I mean everybody there was just they were in shock I mean you don't see they didn't see people hanging under helicopters on ropes and they never saw anybody coming from that direction on the other side of the border so this was a this was a big deal so this guy ran back and got his little camera he came back out you know cuz he they could tell another helicopter was coming so as I came in he he took the picture of us as they were luring us down and you know takes about 60 seconds for it to process and everything and they uh put me in the helicopter and the other two in the helicopter and we were just starting to lift off and he came running with his hand stuck out and I what is he doing and and you know he got there just in time and I took what he had in his hand out and I looked at it and I said holy cow this is a picture and I have no clue who this guy was or anything but you know he gave me an actual photo of Us coming in and in in the book book it talks about the ropes were not excuse me even and it ended up the rope that I had was about 10 feet longer than what the other two had and then in the picture you can see it I'm hanging down below them yeah and I mean it was a it was total chaos and you know they were lifting up and then it pulled me off balance and I fell and bounc and went into you know the the thicket and all that stuff and Drug up through it and and then you know I'm hanging at we're at 7,000 ft above ground level freezing yeah you know 100 miles an hour all the stuff soaking wet from the sweat and heat that you just left and oscillating back and forth and I'm looking up and I can see my rope rubbing on the edge of the helicopter floor and it's starting to freay you know I'm I'm at 7 7,000 ft so I'm thinking um that's a 30 second delay or a little more before I hit the ground I mean if I'm going to go down I mean you know I can do some back Loop some turns and you know little things before I Splat holy cow you know just trying to distract myself a little bit so yeah it would be it would be interesting to try and recreate that scene somehow like in in a computer Graphics or like a movie or something cuz it would look totally insane like you can't TR what you did what your guys did is not it's I mean the fact that you're alive is is crazy uh I mean the helicopters up there how that thing's not getting shot down I have no idea um I mean it only takes one bullet to knock down a helicopter if it hits the right spot yeah the one thing that that helps the helicopter is if you were under double or triple canopy jungle I mean they were not standing you know right under it shooting up at it they're shooting at an angle so they're going through the trees and the tree limbs and you know canopies and and they can't see it unless they're really close to it cuz it you know we didn't blow a hole or anything they just Dro it right down through the vegetation so they can hear it up there they just can't see it and you know one one thing that trees do is they deflect and some cases stop bullets and i' I've had conversations with gunship pilots and stuff and and one guy Berry pincheck has got a book out and I did a little video and it was it was a video kind of like um Let me let me share with you uh you know from his his part I'll I'll tell you what it looked like to me when I was placing all fire support down there for you and I get to say well let me tell you what it looked like when it came through or what came through most of the stuff you were shooting down it it never hit the ground you know because it's hitting trees and rck cing it's all kinds of things it's a very different perspective from the air versus you know being on the ground um so that I mean that was fun just kind of going back and forth about you know what it looked like the other thing that's crazy to try and imagine is how they could find you in all that I mean sure you throw out smoke but the Smoke Gets dissipated through the can yeah when you're under a canopy like that you got to use the flares they can see you might have to shoot two or three but eventually want to penetrate the canopy and come out and they'll see it you know so here's this Bri bright blue you know flare up there and for them them to come over and be able to get on that spot yeah well I'm me I'm giving them a little guidance I mean they they got talking on a bit yeah so I'm I'm guiding right left whatever and meanwhile you're rigging up Claymore rigging up 15sec time fuse on C4 blocks hooking up your Swiss seat Sho enemy yeah the Swiss seat was that was a pain to because you had to lay down had to lie on the ground keep them getting shot try to put that you got a ruck sack on you got all this stuff on and you're trying to fit that thing around you and people are shooting at you and and the longer you don't shoot back you know the more they're assaulting and coming out you and when it got down to just a three of us you know you didn't have a lot of Firepower to start with and then I I knew what I knew what Cana and and H were thinking because they had asked me one day and I'm not sure whose idea it was to ask if it was The Interpreter K was hang m79 guy and Kenta says it says H wants to know why we have to always come out last with you and I said well because that I need you guys you're important You're The Interpreter you and I can talk he's the m79 guy we need the Firepower and that's just the way we're going to do it you two come out last with me every time MH because we're a team and and we can work together they didn't like I was going to say they love that didn't they uh fast forward a little bit here so you get out of this is a miracle that you guys get out of here um you say uh I was not happy about the resupply captain Welch the Recon company Commander had flown to the launch site to be part of getting RT Michigan out to talk to me before I talked to Major Sims and to attend the debriefing to make sure things me did not get out of hand he told me before he went inside to take to stay calm remember I would be talking to a major and not to hit or shoot anyone and I had to make sure that the team did not do that either so that's your pre-brief for the debrief hey don't hit or shoot anybody I was not happy not happy at all did he have any reason at all like what was his freaking thinking they they needed us to stay longer and that was fine MH we could have stayed longer and they were determined they were doing us a favor if they gave us more you know water and batteries and stuff like that we could stay there because we were we were across the highway and providing protection and support for the the hatchet force that was down there so we were kind of covering this whole area over here and the NBA were coming down from up above and they would stop and fire mortars over the platoon well we could hear them and you know I would call the artillery because I had marked targets all around there and tell them you know where to where to shoot and we were close enough to them I mean we'd hear them every time they drop around yeah so uh they needed us over there to keep the bad guys away from them but we could have done it differently and at a different time that was not that was not a good time to do that so lucky to get out of there for sure definitely learned a lot a lot of things we going to do different the next time um I was just going to say that one of the things that that happens is all of this stuff starts to collapse down into SOG imperatives that when we get into book two it kind of comes together and here it is do these things you know if you want to go out on the so Mission and and have a successful Mission here's some things you need to do but you know if you want to run a company if you want to run your life if you want to do things these apply every day when you get up you think you know what you're going to do that day but you know there are people out there who didn't set in on the planning session and they're going to mess you up and you've got to be able to adapt adapt adapt as you go along you got to practice you got to do these things that we're talking about here to be successful in everyday life or in your business or military or whatever it is that you're going to do yeah so all of this stuff kind of yeah you know I as I was saying oh you were lucky to get out of there it's a miracle you got out of there which look you already gave luck it's fair share right we all understand that luck matters at the same time you guys planned you guys prepared you guys rehearsed you knew like how to put that Swiss seat on you knew how to do it in the dark you know how to do it in the light you know how to do it late like you practiced those things you knew how to rig that Claymore you knew how how to get those 15-second time fuse you know where that where that C4 was on your gear you could do it with your eyes closed with your eyes open with the bloody hands with whatever you and your team knew that and so even though look we say Miracle we say luck which certainly you're going to have some but if you didn't have the rehearsals the practice the mindset the attention to detail the planning you wouldn't have been able to do anything uh you you would have died 15 minutes into this operation so yes we give luck and miracles they're due for sure but the planning the fact that you had all those pre pre uh scheduled fire positions from for the artillery you were able to just call them up immediately the interaction that you had with uh with the aircraft overhead like everything that was going on was because you had planned and prepared for it so you practice what you preach and in the book you preach practice practice practice and that's exactly what you did and that's how you were able to survive this situation which is practically unsurvivable I mean it's practically unsurvivable if you would if you wouldn't be sitting here talking to me right now I wouldn't think that anyone would survive that how can you survive that practice preparation skill honing getting better every time you do it like that's what you guys did and that's what kept you alive um I'm going to fast forward a little bit here uh mission two with with rt Michigan and this is a you guys are out looking for a prisoner prisoner snatch which yeah this is going to be a good one this is our specialty yeah you my my spe not the teams you know I can't put it on them I just there are things that happen so uh our new mission was to conduct a prisoner snatch from area Oscar 8 we had an insertion date of 12 January 1969 that would not give us much time to prepare and again in the book get the book you get to read all these all these uh preparation that you do you get to see the training that you're doing the specialized training that you're doing you can hear about the um the visual reconnaissance I'll tell you a little bit about it so the visual reconnaissance once again this is when you're flying over the the area of operations to get a look at it barwell and I left out of daang Airfield at daylight in an Air Force O2 skymaster observation aircraft to fly a visual reconnaissance of the Oscar 8 area of operations we plan to make one pass over the target area taking photos as we flew over and route to a fake area that we would pretend to check out it was a somewhat cloudy day and the air was very rough as we approached the AO the NVA welcomed us with fire from a couple 51 caliber machine guns around hit the right wing flap and another came through the floor hitting the pilot in the leg the pilot was bleeding badly in a great deal of pain and struggling to control the plane we were all over the sky which actually made us more difficult to hit meanwhile the rounds were still coming up at us another round came through the cargo compartment just behind barsell and out through the top of the plane causing the rear engine to shut down I said to barsell I I think I've seen enough for today he agreed so you had to go and tour get the Pilot's leg I mean this is freaking chaos just on the VR I yeah I hated those things you didn't like going on the visual reconnaissance no I I I knew it could provide me a lot of intelligence but it just seemed like every time I went out there something like this happened and I just think oh jeez what are they going to do today to screw my plan up are we going to shoot the pilot that's great and Oscar eight was a bad bad right oh yeah bad place reputation as a really bad a uh in now in the book you start talking about now you got the visual reconnaissance done you start planning you start the preparation and that the idea is and it's what you talked about earlier with being able to disable someone an enemy in an ambush and basically you make a hole in the Kill Zone of an ambush so you set up an ambush on 50 yards of road or 30 yards of road or whatever you put a bunch of Claymores out and you're going to set up this ambush in such a way so that when an enemy Patrol four five six guys comes walking through this thing you know that at the right moment you can initiate this Ambush cause an explosion and it's gonna kill most of the people but there's a little area a little safe Zone in the middle of the Ambush where someone's going to get a concussion knocked out but they're going to survive and then you can go grab them and bring them home that's the plan uh you you go on the insert fast forward you go on the insert you you conduct the uh the on day two you get into a good ambushed position you've been on a couple ambushed positions and I'm going to go to the book here suddenly I heard a group of NVA open fire at Ambush site one something scared them and they had open fire randomly spraying bullets to both sides of the trail some bullets were coming our way the sounds were all AK-47 except one light machine gun they had a machine gun the sound of the NVA ambush in the sound of the NVA in Ambush site one firing spooked the NVA in our Ambush site it was decision time I had no way to warn our team to close their eyes because they were about to get hit with a blast wave and debris it was too late I simultaneously detonated the Claymores in site one and the main Ambush site the detonation was massive seven Claymores five frag grenades four pounds of C4 and automatic weapons fire from the team I was stunned by the blast wave from the explosives debris branches rocks dirt smoke a blast wave and sound hit me in the face and blinded me the smell of gunpowder and smoke was choking I couldn't he I jerked a leech off my face because you leeches crawling all over you so that's what happens boom seven Claymores five frag grenades four pounds of C4 how far back off the Ambush Trail were you how far do you think you were from the Maybe 15 meters or something that's that's gonna ring your bell oh yeah but we had you know we had trees so we had the Claymores in front of the trees so that that helped some but some of the blast is still going to come around it uh back to the book wait the team wasn't firing why weren't they firing were they knocked out temporarily stunned the 6 to1 and again look I'm I'm skipping ahead you got to read the book to get the if some of this sounds like oh what's that because there was different Ambush sites you had them all set up at the same time the details are in the book get the book The 6 to 10 NVA not in the Kill Zone were firing in random directions then some of the team began firing now the surviving NVA knew where we were and directed their fire on us they were gaining fire superiority and we couldn't let that happen I empty 220 round magazines and tossed a frag grenade I had to get everyone out and returning fire quick quickly I yelled Nash take him out Nash Pua and rapon focused their fire on the NVA and threw two frag grenades and a wiie Pete grenade at them bullets were flying in all directions the wiie Pak grenade produced a shower of white phosphorous chunks that fell on the live NVA burning them severely and creating a very dense white choking smoke it looked like some of the chunks were going to hit us but they didn't the smoke provided temporary concealment of the Kill Zone and in some incapacitation of the NVA Nash Pua and rupon fired into the dense smoke and into the Kill Zone most of the team dashed onto the trail to make sure all the NVA except the prisoners were dead and searched two of the three NVA that had been in the near been in or near the hole were on their hands and knees the third was trying to stand up barsell got there first and quickly body slammed the one trying to get up then pounced on the other I took the third Chong and catua cantua jumped on the prisoner as soon as they hit the ground got the cuffs on them drugged gagged and headb agged them while the other guys were finishing off the NVA in the Kill Zone and searching them AA is that right aa aa was standing in the Kill Zone providing security so the explosion goes off there's a little hesitation while you guys are getting your bearings back now you start shoot sure enough the plan worked cuz in the middle of this Kill Zone there was an area where there was three prisoners that were dazed but alive yeah and sounds like they weren't wounded either which is good the Clock Was ticking we had to get out of the Kill Zone suddenly the first group of NVA that had gone through the Ambush came running back down the trail and opened fire on us now we were the ones now we were the ones in the Kill Zone 18 was hit immediately in the abdomen and went down I was on the ground wrestling with the prisoner and was splattered with A's blood he began yelling hit hit I turned and shot one of the three one of the three with a four round burst cantua quickly terminated the other two then sat on the prisoner on prisoner three while I dragged AA out of the Kill Zone he was bleeding badly and his intestines were hanging out he was in tremendous pain and screaming I slowed A's bleeding and got his intestines contained in his abdomen I injected him with morphine got on the radio cantua maintained control of prisoner 3 cvy Charlie 5 Alpha India which meant Ambush initiated one brunette which is wounded three Papa whiskies prisoners heavy contact moving to Lima Zulu which is the LZ over Roger Charlie 5 Charlie 5 two cobras five mics out Echo Hotel extraction helicopters standing by so at this point you've got these guys um some of the NVA ran up from the trail heavy they put out a heavy volume of fire you have another guy get wounded Chong gets wounded he gets hit this is freaking getting getting gnarly quick um well it was you know we wouldn't have ambushed that group if the ones coming behind them hadn't reacted down at that first ambush site and spooked these guys yeah so we had to set it off so everybody everybody wasn't in the Kill Zone right you know and there were more people than we had planned to do but sometimes you don't have that option to not do something so we had to go ahead and set it off and and do the best that we could and then that first little group that went went through went up a but they turned and and came running back down and you know by that time we were out in the Kill Zone searching bagging all that stuff so yeah it um got a little gnarly there fast forward a little bit we had three prisoners handcuffed behind their backs gagged headbed drugged and secured with ankle ropes this was an 8ft rope we tied to one ankle so we could jerk their foot and cause them to face plan if they tried to run a fourth group of approximately 25 to 30 NVA came up the trail and engaged Nash and Pua pu was rapidly firing 40 MIM high explosive rounds at the NVA causing them to take cover this fourth group seemed to be increasing in number we tried to escape down the slope toward the LZ but they were gaining on us we couldn't move fast with the prisoners fighting us every step of the way to slow us down they kept throwing themselves on the ground and fighting to prevent us from getting them up and move moving barsell carried AA or Ada Nash assisted Chung and returned fire I yelled to Nash to help Pua and put out some Claymores with time fuse to slow down our pursuers I took control of prisoner 3 from Pua he put out a claymore with a Time fuse a group of NVA ran in front of the Claymore Kill Zone just as it detonated it ripped a hole through their assault line and shredded them while we were trying to regroup another Claymore detonated hitting a few more of them the second blast really increased their fear of chasing us but they did it anyways they move slower however and we hesitant to get too close to us Pua put several 40 mm rounds in and around them in R rapid succession and slowed them down cvy Charlie 5 where are the snakes we need them now they're just coming on station and the snakes is the uh cobras Roger cvy 30 seconds out get your heads down I yelled to my team cobras coming in everyone get down protect your head some of the bullets were stopped in the high up in the trees with some of the 40 mm but most were getting through and hitting some some of the NVA it was difficult for the bullets to get through the triple canopy this is five good run good run do it again there was a loud boom and a flash that cvy saw from the air Nash made his way to rapon and prisoner 2 to see how badly they were injured he yelled prisoner 2 is dead rapun has strapped on his leg and arm bleeding can't walk I've got him Nash make sure prisoner 2 is dead and leave him we got to go I yelled back this is five crap they just took out prisoner 2 with an RPG and we've got another brunette that can't walk wait out this is five marking position again ID color I've got a white flare Roger that make it make the Run 50 m south of my position flying east to west danger close do it now and again this is the kind of stuff that you're doing right now because you're a lot better at it than you were when you on your first mission oh yeah the NVA had masked about 20 M out from us and were assaulting take cover they are assaulting us throw some grenades switch to Auto Pua put some 40 mm on them I I shouted they were dropping like flies but more were coming I was firing from behind a tree and just as I finished a magazine I saw an NVA 5 feet from coua whose weapon was empty and prisoner three I drew my Colt 45 and shot at the NVA Soldier twice the impact of the bullets literally picked him up off the ground and threw him backwards wow 45 hits hard don't let them get away keep firing I reloaded and got a couple more of them as they were retreating so did koua koua lead us to the LZ I'm a I'm a little busy cvy I yelled back over the heavy volume of gunfire explosions and me yelling something about nv's ancestors in the background this is five a group of NVA just made the final assault of of their lives put the first Napal 150 meters south of my position flying east to west danger close don't miss we are moving towards the LZ I shouted Michigan get down Napal 20 seconds out the Napal hit the trees but a lot of it came to the ground right on the NVA if it gets on you it won't come off it just sticks and burns the smoke was so thick Under The Canopy our eyes were burning and we couldn't see and we're having trouble breathing the smell was sickening Pua and prisoner one were both throwing up I accidentally pressed the push to talk button before I finished talking to the team check ammo and redistribute sorry cvy it's a little chaotic down here put the second Napal 100 East of my position flying north south to North Roger second Napal 30 seconds out get on the ground with something between you and the Napal ASAP I yelled Michigan on the ground Napal 20 seconds out cover your head most of this one came to the ground it was on the NVA but almost hit us this stuff scared me take out the Torches I shouted the Napal had burned away a lot of the vegetation making it easier to see the NVA and shoot them I kept saying to myself this is the Humane thing to do five get down third Napal 30 seconds out Roger that it's barbecue time Michigan get down Napal 20 seconds out another good drop right on the NVA the smell of overcooked human flesh smoke and low oxygen air makes you want to vomit I watched as coua and Chung began throwing up the Napal stopped the NVA advancement toward us we grabbed the prisoners barsell picked up AA Nash picked up rapon and made a run for the LZ before the NVA regrouped and came after us we were only about 200 meters from the LZ I put the last Napal between us and the LZ to clear a path it definitely did that quite a few of the charred bodies were still burning as we moved through the area the smell was gross there was little oxygen in the air making it difficult to breathe and it was very smoky and burned our eyes we were sweating so much it was running into our eyes making it even more difficult to see we moved as fast as we could with the two prisoners fighting every step and three wounded team members two of whom were being carried we were all soaking wet from the heat humidity running fighting and dragging prisoners we were dehydrated thirsty exhausted running on pure adrenaline but getting closer to the extraction LZ two prisoners three wounded and they you know the prisoners they had rathered die than be a prisoner MH they'd been indoctrinated so much and told what all horrible things we were going to do to them if if we caught them so they would do anything to prevent us from getting them you know to the helicopter they' throw themselves on the ground I mean they would take your weapon they would do anything that they could to try to stop it uh and at the same time their guys are trying to shoot them cuz they didn't want them to go go out either so I mean they're between a rock and a hard place they think we're going to you know carve them up and mutilate them their guys are trying to shoot them they're the only people in the world in a worse spot than you guys were yeah what drugs did you put in them morphine just morphing them up yeah going back to the book and we were about a 100 met from the LZ we hit a wall of withering AK RPG and RPD fire boom Boom the Heat and blast wave from the RPGs temporarily blinded us Michigan get down use single shots cvy we in heavy contact on the south side of the LZ got any more Napal this is cvy yes where you want it I want this I want the center mass of the of I want the center Mass to be 30 meters north of the tree line on the south edge of the LZ Fly East of West danger close actually very close don't miss Roger that stand by this is cvy the Gates of Hell will open in 30 seconds get down Roger Michigan get down Napal 20 seconds out danger close during those 20 seconds the NVA fired an RPG close to prisoner 3 and hit him with strael and peppered me with shrapnel I could feel the heat and blast from the RPG canu was with prisoner 3 prisoner 3 was bleeding badly I couldn't do anything for him until after the napom strike the napom hit very close resulting in most of the team receiving small burns the stuff was really scary to use one miscalculation and the entire team would be crispy Critters I scrambled to prisoner 3 and began trying to stop some of the bleeding I looked up and saw a torch coming toward me can to a take over but not just any torch this one was dragging an RPD by the barrel I hit him in the chest with a three round burst from my car 15 and the torch and machine gun were gone all future Generations that could come from him were instantly erased my pant leg was on fire I tried to Pat that out but it just spread and got on my glove now my glove was burning too and it was hot I grabbed a handful of mud and my glove went out I rubbed the mud on my pant legs and put the flame out it lit up again I put more mud on and realized my shirt sleeve was burning again I rubb mud on it to put it out Napal was hard to extinguish just it's like like that old jod call about napom napom sticks Like Glue I mean can't get it off of you this is five that was a little closer than I expected it fried the bad guys but we have gotten some Burns and the suntan through our clones we might even uh we are ready to go home can you get us out of here Roger that we have two birds on Final Approach escorted by Cobra stand by for extraction Roger we'll be wearing orange hats expect a lot of ground fire standing by Michigan turn turn your hats orange I yelled to my team the first load will be barwell Nash prisoner one AA and Pua there'll be a lot of ground fire we have to load faster they'll leave it or or they will leave us keep the prisoner secured prisoner one resisted getting on the helicopter until barwell punched him in the jaw he staggered and dropped to his knees barsell grabbed him and threw him in the helicopter it seemed like it took a long time to load the wounded my job was to provide supporting fire barwell and Nash were doing a great job loading the wounded without injuring them they finally they fin they were finally in and lifting off I could hear the metallic clangs of bullets hitting their Chopper the second aircraft was on short final I had the wounded prisoner 3 cantua Chong and rapon with me we were receiving a lot of fire but our prisoner 3 was not resisting cantua and I helped the others get aboard what and we lifted off about 2 minutes after bars Well's aircraft the ground fire was still coming at us and the helicopter received several hits as we were leaving I dropped a red smoke grenade the Cobras were ripping the area around the L apart with Min guns 40 mm and Rockets spads were working more naom 250lb bombs and 20 20 mm machine guns higher and lower on the ridge trying to interdict the flow of troops on the ridgel line to suppress the ground fire as I watched the firework show around us I took a deep breath let it out slowly and thought we just might make it out of here cvy this is five thanks we really appreciate you what you guys did for us today outstanding job we'll take you care of you back at the ranch I sat back to relax a few few minutes later I was looking at bars Well's helicopter in front of us and thinking that although the team was banged up pretty badly it was it was a success it was a successful Mission we got out with two prisoners then it happened I saw a body fall from barw Well's helicopter I had on a headset so I was able to ask our pilot how high we were and would he ask the lead aircraft what happened he told me we were at 2,300 feet AGL and apparently the prisoner had got loose and Dove out of the helicopter still handcuffed and head bagged he was last seen as he disappeared head first into the jungle canopy 2300 ft below traveling somewhere between 160 and 180 miles per hour so um you get back with your prisoner and he dies as well died on the table just you know if you get hit in the legs or the the arms you know you can use tarnet there things you can do you can stop the bleeding but you know if you're hit you know and your torso I mean you just can't get there easily to stop the bleeding and eventually you're going to bleed out so you guys were not not good with your a prisoner no no that's a tough freaking Mission I mean it's hard enough to go and kill them but to go not kill them and try and bring them back as they're resisting there I mean there are ways to do it um I mean lot of teams brought prisoners back yeah they did it um I mean you were close you got two on the birds yeah and um yeah I'm sure some of it's me because I had opportunities you'll seeing book too that um it just didn't work out but um yeah is that where you got your second nickname Terminator it was beginning to build up the the name really didn't come about until you know several years later okay with another group but people had known me or knew about me and some things happened and you know I got a different code name and this is before this is before the movie terminated just so you know Echo Charles impressive this is this is where the Terminator got their name for their movie right oh yeah uh some of the Lessons Learned you got here needed more practice securing a violently resisting prisoner loaded with adrenaline uh another one trying to communicate during a firefight especially if we are trying to escape is very difficult need to have Americans in the right places to relay commands need more medical training especi or medical training especially controlling bleeding you have a a a psychological Lessons Learned on this one we need to stay busy between missions inactivity allows fear to creep in what was that all about when you have you know a really tough Mission like a couple of these here um it Spooks the team as they think about it if if you just give them time off and let them go drink and party do whatever they want to do then you know those fears can start to come in so I I started trying to keep them busy and then later on in in book two uh Lynn black you know had the the same thoughts so he and I got together and found some interesting things to do interesting things to do between missions just to you know yeah you say what's one of your other lessons related to it there's a de there's a direct relation between time between missions and level of fear and then at the same also you say we need time to heal physically and psychologically between missions so you need to be you need time but you need to to say busy during that time yeah yeah um we need time between missions to correct problems and train for the next one the physical and psychological effects of wearing a headset was stunning in addition to providing so I didn't mention this part but you this is one of the missions where you first wore a headset inside the helicopter which means you could hear Communications in the helicopter and you weren't getting your ears people have no idea how loud it is in a freaking helicopter like if you watch a movie people you see people like talking in a helicopter no there's not you can't you have you have to get in someone's ear and yell so uh you say in addition to providing real-time Battlefield information also gave me the ability to adapt the insertion plan while we were still in the air have more control of the insertion manage fear focus and relax be fully in the game before arrival at LZ and preserve hearing now and in the future yeah so you know one of the things like preserve hearing like you were just talking about so loud in the aircraft that when you get off and run into the jungle and and you go do your security halt your eyes adjust your smell adjust all of those things adjust your ears take can take several hours before you get all of your hearing back now did you guys even have like you know the little foamy things to stick in your ears or anything like that yes but we had been programmed those were for the range protect your hearing on the Range now after I left some smart guys said why don't we wear those things on the helicopter we can take them out when we when we go off to helicopter we take them out put them in our pocket so you know General boray uh I mean his group did it all the time mhm you know he came about 3 months after after I left and you know some smart guys had said put them in your ears yeah take them out when you get there you you refer a lot of the in the book to the blinding flash of the obvious yeah oh yeah that's one of them right there so I mean I was so I was so impressed by what I could do with that headset before I got on the ground how much adaptation I could do um how much it helped me just to remain focused um yeah I mean that that was great and then if you look around now I mean all the operators M have headsets yeah and that go with them when they get on the ground yeah you know so you can hear each other talk and everything and you have enhanced hearing because it can amplify the sound there's all kinds of things it cuts off um you know an 85 dbel of a gun fire so I mean just super but before that you got out the helicopter treating you death yeah I can't I can't imagine what your hearing sounded like but yeah we we'd go in that security hall and sit there for 15 minutes and think yeah we got it now we can hear man could hear uh you mentioned this before but I here it is again Napal Napal puts the fear of God or maybe the devil in the NVA it is the most horrible cruel terrifying physically and psychologically damaging weapon in our Arsenal it creates a lot of human torches enemy soldiers covered with burning Napal blindly stumbling around as they are being consumed by fire the enemy survivors if there are any never get over the screams smells pain lack of oxygen in the air choking air smoke and visual images they see the experiences literally burned into their brains and Minds the the team that delivers the Napal never gets over the experience calling it in scares me because I know the slightest miscalculation by anyone in the process can cause it to hit the good guys all of the team received some Burns this time but sometimes you have to choose to save the team at all costs what's up with the uh the lack of oxygen in the air so the the Napal Burns and it burns all the oxy it has to have the oxygen in the air to to burn and so it it literally makes it hard to breathe it just takes takes it out so I mean you're you're you're sucking in nitrogen but you're not getting the oxygen that you need to breathe so you know it choking you're taking a breath but you don't feel like you you got any air you're suffocating um and you know if you're right there in the middle of it those guys don't get any yeah it's all gone but just around it you know it's the air has a lot less oxygen in it this one that burn you guys like the one that's on your sleeve it hit your sleeve and pant leg how far were you from that impact it was supposed to be like 100 150 M or so but when it hit the canopy it scatters and it it goes all over and you know it was just a little too close to us but it's I mean if you if you've ever watched them drop those things it's you know it's in a a canister it's not like a bomb it's just in a long canister and when they release it and they turn it loose tumbles it just tumbles and how they get as accurate with it as they do I don't know because it's just tumbling and then you know when it goes into the trees first real hard limb big limb it hits it breaks the canature and and it sets it off if you're dropping it out in a relatively open area you know it tumbles and it hits pretty close to where it's supposed to be it has a nice burn pattern when it comes out but you know I in fact I saw um a discussion on Facebook I think it was last week in people were saying um that anybody up north use napon because of the canopy and most people were saying I don't I don't know how you could and I said I did all the time but but you you know you you take a real chance you have to put it further away it's going to scatter you have to know that um yeah I mean for something to be to smell so bad that guys are puking while they're in combat yeah I mean from it's just the charred flesh the burning flesh it just puts out such a smell that it just invokes that vomit response and you know people start to vomit another lesson learned you got here the the prisoners fought us the whole time and really slowed our movement especially Under Fire they made they also made loading the aircraft difficult barsell had to knock out his prisoner to get him on the helicopter and he still managed to jump out this was a very mentally and physically fatiguing operation start to finish we needed more physical training um you also talk about barsell which you mentioned already today that that he he had seen that RPD and really wanted to start using that that belt-fed machine gun and uh first lieutenant Ken bow Bor b b Bor Bor another guy that uh became a major general yeah who also carried that as person weapon car actually bargewell gave him his his RPD okay so you know I look back at that and I say well geez barsell carried that thing and he became a major general the lieutenant he gave it to became a major general I should have said give it to me let me try may give me the lucky gun but then I go back and look n you know those two guys are good yeah cause too much trouble um now at this juncture in in the deployment for you I I don't know if this is considered a break or not but you guys get put on marble Mountain security for 10 days this is is it is this considered downtime for you guys supposed to be a break supposed to be a break uh there's two basically there's a big outside uh CCN there's a there's a mountain range Marble mountain and you guys put two different combat outposts on top of those so that the enemy couldn't get him and fire down into you and so you guys would rotate up there and this is the compound this is the compound that got overrun or nearly overrun 23 August 1968 the 17 SF guys were killed and one of the reasons it got nearly overrun was because they G they gave up The High Ground the enemy Took The High Ground so you guys put combat Outpost up there to prevent that from happening again and you guys get this tasking to go up there so um you get up there and I mean it's here's a here's here's what we're dealing with the sunset was beautiful from the combat Outpost but it was a l before the storm around 2030 we came under heavy fire from the small Plateau between us and combat Outpost 2 this gave me an opportunity to play with my M60 machine gun I engaged the enemy with a heavy barrage of 762 was joined by the M60 on Cop 2 it was nice not to have to carry the heavy M60 or the ammo um you guys start doing uh a ARS after each day during the a we noticed that the sandbags around our position had not fared well during the attack barsell put in a request for 50 full sandbags along with more ammunition to be delivered by lunch we also discussed the following and you got a bunch of things that we that you put in here that you dealt with and one of them is this kind of claustrophobic feeling that you got I had become so used to shooting and moving that my position felt almost claustrophobic on the peak we could not maneuver so this is a new feeling for you yeah and you don't like it very much uh nowhere to go uh you say in hindsight I find it difficult to believe we did not wear helmets and FL jackets in this static position which is definitely you get up there and you don't have to carry them anywhere but you're not don't have them um fast forward a couple days day three around 11:00 on day three the talk called and said I needed a report to Recon company talk a visitor was waiting for me that was all they would say I took cantuna and hang and we made our way down the mountain I was in total shock when I saw who was waiting for me it was my cousin Carl from the Thompson Rangers this is when you were a kid I knew he was in country on his third tour in Vietnam but did not expect to see him out at while I was out at CCN I especially did not to expect to see him inside a top secret SOG compound that few people outside of SOG knew existed how did he know I was there and how did he talk his way into a restricted compound he' always amazed me with that with what he could do he said he had a few days leave from golf company 75th Rangers and came up to see me I explained that my team was securing the cop and I had to go back up there but if he didn't mind getting shot at while he was on leave I could show him a good time he was all in we ate in the mess hall and then we went to the supply room where he signed for a car 15 some tactical gear Ruck lurs ammo and an IV of ringer solution Poncho and a liner he declined the helmet and Flack jacket and we headed up the mountain it was great to see him and serve in combat for a few days together like we did when we were kids I would have felt better if he had taken the helmet and Flack jacket because this time the bad guys would be shooting back with AK-47s and RPGs the enemy did not disappoint us they attacked several times during the night I think they knew we had a new person with us on the mountain and wanted to welcome Cousin Carl so he takes leave and his leav is to go how did he tell you how he found you how'd he find you he never really divulged his sources but I mean he you know once he was out of the service he became a a car salesman if you stop by his car lot to ask him for direction somewhere he'd s you a car he leaveing with a car yeah he could talk in anybody into anything then somehow he talked his way in to a top secret compound that mean it was Unreal um day four you guys are up there you start getting a little bored so what do you doing your board you go out and start clearing caves there's caves on these on this mountain um this was interesting you're clearing one of these caves we did not find anyone in the cave across from us but we did see a lot of dried blood when we went into the one of the lower caves we surp to NVA Carl put one of them down right away then we started dodging our own bullets cuz you're shooting around in a rock cave we were educated on what happens when you start shooting in a stone cave Ricochet each bullet was bouncing off two or three walls before it stopped after a few minutes we got the hang of it and took out the other bad guy we searched them and left their bodies outside the cave and returned to cop one Campa thought we should put the two NBA's heads on Stakes as a warning to the other NVA I told him to re sheep this knife we're not going to do that he and po are not happy they they wanted to do some psychological operations put them on a steak uh fast forward a couple more days um about 1300 this is day six 1300 hang in CA ask if they could make a quick run down to the Village no trouble they said H said they would be back in an hour barsell agreed and said they could go but they needed they had to take coua Pua and the radio with them 20 minutes later 20 minutes after they left we heard two car5 gun shots followed immediately by kantu on the radio saying no problem we come home barsell said they've done something I can hear in kant's voice uh turns out they went to uh some kind of I guess some kind of Monastery about halfway up there was a monastery and they shot a monk dog what the monks had a dog had a dog they shot him and came back into camp and says monk dog they eat barell almost lost it he had he shared some very heated words with Hayne and Canoa Cana to interpret them barell was not happy with them they had killed the Monk's dog and they were going to eat it the evening meal was dog and rice bargewell Carl and I had Lars actual Carl did have a small portion of dog with rice just to maintain the team Bond day seven a we spent time on no heads on sticks and no eating monks dogs those were the debrief points um well you know Mountain yards some and some Vietnamese you know they love the dog but if you saw a mountain yard squeezing a dog kind of the feeling of it that thing's done it was going to disappear and they they were going to eat it all right but we briefed them we can't put any heads on Stakes and we can't eat the monks dogs couple days later just after 2100 a large group of NVA open fire on both cops with AK-47s and RPGs from the back side of the plateau couple of b40 rockets went over the cop and down toward CCN compound but hit short of the defensive wire called for flares from the mortar Crews at the same time this was happening a marine Compound on the other side of the village was attacked we could see a heavy exchange of fire marines called 155 mm artillery to help defend their position with our cops lit up five flares the snipers decided to join the party then a second group of NVA open fire from positions much closer to us they had the dark night to slip in closer than normal we were definitely slugging it out with them after about 20 minutes while communicating back and forth with the SSG with with uh staff sergeant Saunders on Cop 2 over the radio I slipped in a comment that if we had a case of beer we'd be having a real party up here so then fast forward the end of that gunfight while observing the absence of bodies in The Talk The Talk called for an update to let me know the CC the CCN Commander wanted me to report to his office at 0800 when I got to Lieutenant Colonel I eisler's office he confronted me about the drinking and partying going on at my cop I assured him that was not the case he said he heard me say if I had another case of beer I told him that a case of beer was just banter while was pinned down in fighting position not able to return fire uh his final words were no party being on the mountain I said yes sir did a quick a AR even though we were going back to CCA I discussed being careful about what was said on the radio coua inserted Colonel like NVA always [Laughter] listen oh that was uh that was classic I I actually always had a roll out no joking on the radio that was a rule that I had I had seen a couple I had one of my officers he was we were on a ship Navy ship and on a Navy ship there's something called navy red which is like what every ship you know every Navy ship is listening to and for some reason we were in the bridge of the ship and we were talking to my lieutenant Junior grade was talking to like our commander on another on the mother ship and he was my young Lieutenant was pissed about something that we were getting told to do and so over this he says Whiskey Tango Fox tro over and he got in a he got in trouble for that one um and so I from that time on I made a rule it's like no never joke around on the radio so uh can't be asking for that extra case of beer uh Lessons Learned you say being in a static defensive fighting position is different they know exactly where you are than a team fighting and maneuvering sandbags got shredded very quickly snipers get your attention be careful what you say on the radio eating the monks dogs did not make the monks happy it's a good lesson learned uh mission three Search and Destroy RT Michigan's mission was to search find and destroy an NVA regimental unit so now we're going after 2,000 men operating near the LA North Vietnam border you insert by the king bees you say this I could smell decomp in the air soon CA signaled that he smelled it too we found a day old partially eaten deer koua said tigers that got everyone's attention this this was a yard team they grew up in the jungle and were very familiar with what tigers could do to a human CA became even more Vigilant within two hours after our insertion we heard bamboo clackers being used by trackers and a muffled dog bark we were not expecting dogs dogs or Tigers a few minutes later Pua found tiger scat around TW fast forward you're you're in your layup position for the around 2200 we heard a muffled dog bark and Yelp about 100 meters from us can Tua whispered tiger eat dog this number 10 not good I knew no one would sleep that night this is this is a little uh I picked that up from tilt from tilt like the one through 10 this is number 10 not good as bad as it's GNA get freaking Tigers out there and you got a picture of a tiger in the book and it is look at this Echo Charles and that's actually a small one you can tell it's small but I'll tell you what his teeth aren't small oh yeah that horrifying that thing looks horrifying um a tiger a full grown tiger can take your head off with one swipe just decapitate you they can reach into a fighting position and and they were documented cases where a lot of Marines were in the fighting positions at night and a tiger came by reached in grabbed a hold of him drag him out and ran off in the jungle with God I was in Sri Lanka when there was a civil war going on over in Sri Lanka and we were working with their special operations group but they said that the Tigers would swim into the like close Coastal Waters and grab fishermen out of their boats uh so that's what we're dealing with here um you you you eventually you start putting in air strikes uh and once you guys once you guys start putting in air strikes because the accuracy of the air strikes the NVA know that you're there and so now they start stepping up their patrols they really start looking for you fast forward a little bit you guys are trying to get away um and then you're you're hold up and going to the book around 3:30 we heard a tiger get a dog and its Handler the Handler's scream was scary as the NVA continued to get closer to finding us we got lucky cuvy brought in an a C130 Spectre gunship that could link to our Spectre transponder and shoot all around us without having to Mark our position with flares or strobe BLS the NVA could see technology was continuing to enhance sog's SOG RT's Mission abilities so you heard a tiger then freaking kill a dog in its Handler does the does the tiger make noise or no just hear the dog whimpering and screaming and then you hear a man screaming and whimpering they're very you know they're nocturnal Hunters they're very quiet it's it's amazing as big as they are they don't make any noise you know and and um I deal with this on a regular basis because I a feral cat has decided I'm his new BFF but but anyway they hunt at night um but they have um excellent night vision because the there's a membrane in their eyes that causes the light to reflect around and it gives them this enhanced night vision and that's why if you shine a light on a an animal that has that great night vision their eyes show up I mean they just light up like a deer a raccoon um a cat their eyes you know just like spotlights almost um and they can see and and they have um much higher frequency hearing than a dog so like a a house cat feral cat I mean they can hear those little squeaks little tiny sounds that mice and other animals that they eat make they can track those things down I came home from work the other day and walked into the garage and my cat's all laying back in the garage like he ons the place and laying in front of him is a half of a rat MH so he honored Me by get giving me half of his rat and they do that showing the respect yeah why was this area a different AO where these Tigers were yeah I mean they they they hunted a pretty good size area but um I mean rarely did my teams ever you know encounter them MH we would see there was a another place I don't remember exactly where it was now but a place where you could see that um they had cut down big um pieces of bamboo and really sharpen the ends of them and put them in the ground so they would point it out like that just kind of made a like a a fence around the area to try to keep the Tigers from coming in because they'd walk into the bamboo but you know but we didn't didn't see any actual tigers or any evidence besides that that fence and Ne here but this one we did we saw the scat we saw the the carus we heard the dog you know being the eaten the the Handler but it's quick you know their their preference is to grab you by the back of the neck and just and run off with it they they can drag a huge animal off yeah I've seen some video of them just light work of anything uh fast forward a little bit by 0400 we were in heavy contact and had to declare prair Prairie Fire emergency and bring in close air support to help us try and get out to our extraction LZ it soon became evident we we could not survive to get to the LZ we adapted our plan to be extracted by strings we had to put on Swiss seats while we were in our remain overnight just in case we could not get to the LZ at first light we were extracted by strings while the whole area was pounded by Napal and cluster bomb units from f4s and Rockets Min guns and 40 mm grenades from cobras so we had learned from that other experience put your Swiss seed on first yeah if you think you might have to use it put that thing on yeah now you know later later on um the stabo rig was created so I mean that was your harness you wor of things so you had one on all the time you didn't have to start tying a rope around you um next mission pipeline destruction and Monkey Business uh RT Michigan was assigned the mission of finding a high volume fuel pipeline coming out of North Vietnam and running to fuel points along the hoochi man Trail highway and destroying a section of it we made an early even evening insertion security halt then moved quickly to a predetermined R position two venomous snakes were discovered during our movement to ro we also heard trackers with clackers who picked up our Trail all conditions were right for this to be a long night our plan was to find the pipeline before going after the trackers at approximately 2,300 a 10-man NVA search team walked within 8 ft of our perimeter there were several close calls of the NVA who got closer to the pipeline around 1600 on Day 2 we found the pipeline everything went great until 0130 then we heard movement between us and the cliffs as they got closer the size of the group seemed to grow to Squad size then platoon and finally company size between 120 and 130 I called Moonbeam and requested support Moonbeam found a spectre gunship in the range of our position and diverted it to us Spectre flew several passes between us and the cliff we could hear the screams as over over 120 millimeter he rounds hit the ground beside us and the side of the cliffs you had to see the impact of those rounds to comprehend the Firepower in less than 10 seconds a spectre gun ship could put 12 mm Hy round in every square yard of a football field-sized area there were a few moans and groans for a while then silence Spectre had done its job we got a big surprise as we moved out at daylight the jungle around us was littered with with bodies and body parts of big Apes there had been no definitive proof of Rock Apes people like creatur standing six feet tall but these were really big Apes when asked for an estimated body count I replied 40 so it's just a big herd of monkeys big monkeys apes and and they will attack we'd had SOG teams overrun by them before and they they come through they beat you up they beat you up as they come through and they take your stuff they rob you well these aren't going to get away with it yeah I thought they were in VA uhhuh and you know it was dark we couldn't see I could hear them coming and you know i' got to get them out of here so I put Spectre on them and then the next day I saw what was out there and I thought holy cow I am not telling them they shot a bunch of monkeys um when we arrived at the pipeline I noticed I notified cvy we were on target waiting on the security patrol when the patrol arrived barsell and I quickly terminated the NVA using our 22 caliber pistols with integrated silencers our designated security team moved into place while the rest set up the charges we then activated the time fuse with 20 minutes burning time and quickly moved 100 meters to a second spot on the pipeline placed our second charge and ignited a 5iv minute time fuse we we then began moving quickly toward the extraction LZ I left toe poppers along our path as we moved the 220b C4 charges made tremendous explosions letting the fuel run out on the ground the wiie Pete grenades made sure the fuel ignited it was an awesome fireworks display we heard one set of toe poppers explode and knew the NVA were close to us then we ran into a group of 20 who seemed to be unhappy fortunately by this time cvy had f4s on station following our targeting directions hit the pipeline in more places with a mixture of H and Napal their strikes produced secondary explosions at the refueling stations a1s provided close air support for the for RT Michigan which was now in a prairie fire emergency after about two hours of difficult fighting we were extracted under heavy fire the mission was a success we did not lose anyone there you go RT Michigan mission five be bomb damage assessment RT Michigan's mission was to follow closely behind a B-52 strike in LA and assess the bomb damage collect intelligence from bodies and take a prisoner if possible so you guys launch on this Mission with the exception of the smoke rough air fires across the target area and what looked like the aftermath of a level five hurricane we were able to get into our insertion LZ it took a little longer than normal to acclimate our senses as we neared the target box trees were scattered all around and there were lots of bomb craters throughout the area over 300 bombs 75 tons of explosives and shrapnel had been dropped in the Target box we took pictures of the damage body parts and bodies everything was surreal as we consciously moved toward the center of the target box fast forward to day two we made heavy contact with an NVA company-sized Force as the NVA initially Drew with with Drew they left a concussed NVA Soldier behind we were all over him he was quickly put in a flack jacket and helmet gagged headb backed handcuffed and lightly sedated with morphine the NVA realized we were a small group and it captured one of their people they regrouped and assaulted us I called cvy and told them we had a we had a prisoner and we were in heavy contact we we were declaring a prairie fire emergency and moving toward the extraction LZ it seemed strange but we could already hear the extraction helicopter approaching I told cvy we were approximately 100 met from the LZ but moving very slowly he might want to have a helicopter circle around and come back cvy said our helicopter was still 45 minutes out from the LZ that did not make sense it began to rain harder as we continued to fight our way toward the LZ then we saw a group of NVA running to the LZ in front of us with a tall soldier D in a dressed in a different type of uniform running with them I could not get a good camera shot I told cvy there was another team with us the tall guy looked Chinese a Strang looking helicopter not us not Vietnamese popped out of the clouds down to the LZ and a few seconds later it was back up into the clouds with people on it the pictures I took of the men running toward the LZ and the aircraft lifting off were blurred and cloudy when reviewed later we weren't able to determine the nationality of the man or origin of the aircraft we remained in contact with the a1s to pound attackers for an hour before we were extracted the team was tired and hungry and eager to get back to CCN we boarded the king B and bounced all over the sky in a bad weather on the way home our prisoner bled out on the way back 2 AK 47 rounds went through the Flack jacket and penetrated his lungs they want they would not stop bullets not an AK oh no and it sounds like the enemy was most certainly aiming to kill those guys almost as a priority over killing you guys yeah um and I'll close out the book with this section here says it was a relief to get back to CCN we had been promised a two-day RNR starting the next day no new missions for two days and we needed it at this point I had completed nine across the fence SOG missions as well as some in-country missions we were looking forward to cleaning up eating and starting recovery I knew that within a couple of hours I would have a full stomach and be sleeping like a baby barsell and I would do a quick a and Lessons Learned with the team right after breakfast then the next morning and then let them go for a couple of days when we landed barsell and I cleaned up and met at the mess hall to eat and do our quick a we finished eating around 1930 and went back to our rooms I did a quick clean and reload of my car 15 and webgear and laid down across my bed then I heard a loud knock at my door followed by Lieutenant Thompson are you in there yes what do you want when he told me I said you got to be kidding me no sir 2000 hours that's 8 minutes from now careful what you say sir he's just on the other side of your plywood wall crap just another day in SOG to be continued well give us an indication what were you being asked for you get back from a mission what are they saying to you they're saying we have a new company Recon company Commander a guy named captain Meadows and he wants to meet with you at 2000 and the the way the hooches are set up they were divided in the center so you know you had people living on each side so on the other end of my hood uh turned out to be now you know the new Recon company commander and I was living on this side and there's a little plywood wall between us so you know my room maybe the size about the size of this room normally there would be two guys here two guys over on that side but right now I didn't I didn't have anybody in there with me I hadn't had it to myself and I forgot who was over there but they went away and now the new company Commander is over there and he wanted to see me everybody knew the name and and the reputation of this guy so I thought holy cow you know what does he want I really wanted to go to bed and now I've got a new boss and he wants to see me well um and like I said the book ends with to be continued I I know a little bit about what happens because you know the first time you were on the podcast but again the uh details that you put inside these books is next level um but I know you're about to get promoted right that's what's about to happen my job is about to change y um so the next book is the next book ready already is it coming out when's it coming out should be out around October October and uh what are you done with the writing of it are you just doing the editing now yeah we're just doing the editing how has the how has the book writing been for you look you wrote I know you've written what five or six books but these were the first ones that were dedicated to your combat experience this one the stress effect yep um went fast um enjoyable this is the hardest thing I've ever written and you know we were talking about it when I was here three years ago yeah um it didn't and you know it's it's about me personally whereas the stress effects has a lot of examples and things in it but but this is about what I saw what I experienced the people I knew um and I had to go back 50 plus years to get the information um a lot of the guys uh were gone so I couldn't ask them in some cases um some people said could you give me a different name I I don't want to go back there I left it way back then I want it to stay back then I don't I don't want people contacting me and saying you know I saw your name in the book um so there are a lot of different things like that emotional things with the book so it just took a lot longer and then you know sag was um a top secret organization and when it when it ended in 72 for the most part every all the records and things are destroyed so it it's difficult to go back and and find information and I I realized I had kept some you know timelines and stuff um but when I started to do this and went and started looking for things you know like I mentioned before everybody's Tombstone says Vietnam that's not where they died but some of the dates are wrong I mean I got awards for things that the date on the award de match up with the date these guys supposedly died you know during during this you know particular battle and sty um so trying to get a timeline that's relatively accurate you know was difficult that took a long time and I finally got to the point where I'm going to get it as close as I can get it and if somebody wants to argue over a week or two or something like that on when a particular event happened you know that's fine you know I'm telling the story this is what I saw and even if the dates are a little off um so it was it was difficult and then you know I I wrote the whole year about it and realized then you know I had a book twice that size and was was telling you know it it doesn't fit in the you know the $20 range so you got to do something so they recommended i' I'd make two books out of it you know so the whole thing was written but because I put this one out separately and first I just have to adjust some things in in the second one you know rewrite some things like the preference this is a nice preference for the book but since that one's already done and now we're doing something else and the other I need a different preference to lead into you know where did this come from why why are we doing it like this um but yeah it'll be out I uh I think it will get people's attention yeah I mean there's there's some pretty hairy missions coming up there's some missions that were just one of a kind in terms of things that happen yeah that uh you know shocked people when we talked about it on the podcast yeah and in the greater detail right it's going to shock them you know a little bit more no I'm I'm definitely looking forward to uh getting the rest of the detail and hearing some of those um I mean some of those are just you know they're they're they're they're truly unbelievable in about seven different aspects you know the decision- making process the chances the luck the skill The Bravery the the outcomes um it I mean you can say this about you know just about every Mission you went on you know one one of the uh when you were on the podcast and I didn't read it today but you're in that you're in that helicopter and there's green Tracer fire cutting through that thing and somehow you're not getting shot like that's one that's you know one minute of your time in Vietnam that you shouldn't have survived one minute um so yeah some of the and I know some of the missions in the follow on book are going to be they're even they're even more insane than the ones in this one um when you would you uh sit down and write for like an hour at a time two hours at a time would you spend eight hours writing how would you how what was your methodology it it would kind of depend um and you know to be honest with you um when I would go back to edit you know the different missions and things uh I would find myself there you know reading it and realize holy cow my heart you know is pounding and even though I had read it 10 times you know working on it reading it again and all of a sudden I'm thinking about you know what what was happening and you know really get my attention so um take a break wait a few days you know do it again and uh so yeah I I remember those things so um but anyway I I think it's you know if you look at it as if you want to know get some taste of what war is like and what happens on the special op Battlefield I think anybody from at least SOG forward can read through here and relate to well yeah you know these things happen and that's what bullets sound like and this all the stuff is going on and the chaos of the the battlefield and everything I think they can relate to it I spent um some time just uh recently with with the fifth group operators um I went and spent some time with them and uh you know they all had questions about things and and they look at so guys as this is kind of where our Legacy began things we're doing now started back with with the sog guys and you know some of them with with asked questions like so you didn't have night vision you didn't have thermal imaging and they' go through all this list of stuff that they have now and they would and they'd ask a question so when you went to a building or to a camp and you had to go in and and you know accomplish a mission there how did you do that if you didn't know where they were if you couldn't see them and I said well you can you just don't do it with night vision goggles there are other senses that you have and you learn how to use those because on today's Battlefield when that EMP PSE goes out you're not going to have night vision goggles you're not going to have any of the electronics that you have now all that stuff is gone your headsets are coming off because they're not going to work and you got to be able to do it the way we did it you know I can if you're in the in the dark and I'm coming up looking for you I will smell you I will hear you you will eventually move you'll get scared your sweat smell changes your heart rate's going to start to pound I will hear it and you will move a little bit I'll know where you are you won't know where I am until you feel that Kar go in and it's too late then I'll find you I'll take you out very quietly and then I'll move to your buddy and you guys will be doing the same thing without your gear you're just not used to having to do that now and you know so we talked a lot about different techniques of how to do things there's a lot in here there's a lot more in book two about being invisible ible how do you become invisible so that the enemy can't see you and walking up on him how do you walk up on that joker and find him without him seeing you so some of the techniques I put in there things that that I thought was should be classified I didn't put in there things that i' rather not publish and you know you give to the bad guys and say Here's how you do some of this stuff but when I meet with those guys you know then we can talk about you know some of the real techniques and how to build the skill sets to do some of that well I am definitely looking forward to getting book too and uh talking through that one when it comes out yeah that that the what you guys the Legacy that you guys left and the the work that you guys did is just it's it's it's hard to believe and if I wouldn't have sat down and talk to so many of you guys at this point and it it would be I'm I'm glad I'm I'm honored to be able to have had these conversations and shake your guys' hands and and hear the detailed stories you know this is this is you know what I spent my adult life trying to uh hold up the the reputation that you guys set for Special Operations and it's an honor to be able to talk to you guys about it and and share these stories and I'm I'm uh so happy that you guys are putting this stuff down and documenting with the detail you know like hey part of me when I started preparing for this podcast I'll just read this whole damn book on the you know just let's spend spend nine hours doing it um but get the book if you're out there it just phenomenal and again it's really broken down the lessons learned the experiences the planning the training it's all in there over and over again and you you hear it for each different Mission so just phenomenal stuff um and looking forward to book to coming out and I certainly always you know anybody from SOG has an open invite to come on here and talk about whatever you want to talk about I I'm going to listen um and and what else you got going on you still got um the high performing systems going on still got high performing systems going on so we're still doing a lot of work with executive teams and you know uh Consulting training we a lot of leadership training we do uh decision making under high stress we do a lot of that we still have the um uh suicide PR prevention going on using the Arsenal assessment that we've created um the Navy's picked that up now they're starting to to use it um the Army's still looking at it so there's a lot of things like that going on um working with vets working with veteran organizations um to try to you know help get these guys back I mean it's like I I tell all of them when I work with them the military spent a lot of time effort and money to train you in the skill set that we as as veterans once we leave the active duty we think well that was all good for the military but now I'm out here in the civilian world and I have to find my way around and what to do and those skills still work everything they taught you planning organization all those things that they taught you they still work out here in in the civilian world in real life you can apply them you just have to change that mindset you know to but but they still work and you can have a good life you can manage the stress and you know just like you know you'll hear it in book two but like fear I mean we all have things that we fear but if you if you realize that one of the things that fear does to you is it energizes you it creates a big source of energy it can cause you to freeze up not do well not be able to think but if you realize that's energy why don't I take that energy and turn it toward being positive and helping me accomplish what I'm trying to do you know when I'm riding in on the skill of the the helicopter being on that insertion you know on the the all adrenaline and cortisol and everything's building up rather than than being afraid and now not being able to think about what I have to do when I get on the ground if I take that and turn it into energy now I can focus better I can run faster jump higher see better I can do things much better or I can let the fear let me be distracted so much by the bullets and being afraid that I'm going to be hit and focusing on that that rather than what I need to do so I you know turn it to positive using some of the things that we talked about before stress reduction techniques just on the skid doing the breathing doing the Box breathing going in you know and helps calm you down help you focus help you decide where you're going to go using techniques like you know the headset wow I mean that made such a difference all of a sudden I could hear what was going on and I didn't have to wait until I stepped off the skid to start adapting and trying to figure out what was happening I I could get it on the way in you can do that in your everyday life you don't have to wait till the last second to get information to find out things you can do it and it works so anyway we still do a lot of that so and and uh does that get us up to speed for right now where we're at I think we're a little over four hours right now so I don't know I'll stop talking so well no I mean I'll listen I I listen to you guys uh as long as I possibly can but are we up to speed so you got you got uh HPS y.com is where your your high performance systems is located you're actually on on Instagram um HPS CEO right you're also on Twitter do you ever go on Twitter much uh I've started back recently okay and it's the same thing at HPS CEO you're on on Facebook dick Thompson yeah um and I think that gets us up to speed uh Echo Charles yes any questions yes couple of questions here I've been wondering this whole time so RPD and RPG RPG rocket rocket propell grenade RPD is what like a machine gun of some sort a light machine gun okay and and just RPG doesn't actually stand for rocket propelled grenade it stands for some Russian words that mean something like that but it doesn't actually stand for that oh for real but it sounds good it does sound good yeah right now I'm trying to wonder or remember why I didn't think that then someone told me that obvious it's it's very common I'll say that you know I'll say oh he got hit with a a rocket propelled grenade but it's actually some Russian words oh so so where did that come from cuz it is a rocket propelled grenade that's what it is but it actually stands for this Russian words that I don't know is that kind of like um you know when you when they say uh AR15 assault rifle 15 kind of like that sounds but it doesn't really mean that it doesn't really mean that okay all right all right cool uh uh learn something new every day what about a Willie Pete grenade a white fucer okay so so that's just a a slang name you know because you you he it is you know Willie Pete Wilson picket uh I mean there must be about five different names that that the G came up with to kind of talk about it and it's stuck out there but it's it's so it's a grenade and it it's it's white phosphorus so it's like a metal that burns at a really high temperature what is it like shards of metal or it's liquid uh it's it's actually a white phosphorus uh it's sealed up inside the grenade container and when it's exposed to air you know it starts to burn so it's got a little detonating device in it and it it explodes and it just throws these little pieces of white phosphorus out and all directions and kind of like Napalm if it lands on your arm it it'll burn all the way through or till it burns itself out inside you so it's and what's interesting is the blast radius is Big yeah huge so like if you don't throw it really well you you could have a problem and it's heavy it's a lot heavier than a regular grenade and has a much larger bursting radius so yeah if you don't get it out there you'll you'll get hit with it and then the um that dense white smoke that's produced with it it really meets the the specifications for a chemical agent if you inhale that stuff it'll burn the inside of your lungs oh damn so you know it's not something you want to not cool be in that Willy PE grenade okay so the white phosphorus versus napom mhm napom is more of what like a liquidy plasma type jelly gasoline damn what's worse in your opinion well I wouldn't want the Napal on me I mean it'll just burn you all up the the white flers is going to burn some holes in you it may you know burn your arm off or something but Napal can cook you fairly quickly Raw Deal good to see you again good to see you again that it Echo Charles that's it that's my deep you know all right sir any final thoughts I appreciate the opportunity to come back and um share some of what's in there I think um if if people want to like I said before get a taste of of what the special ops Battlefield is like I I tried to do that with this there'll be people and I say in front of it if you don't want to know what happens out there then stop reading don't read this book or you're going to get upset this is about war this about killing it's about Special Operations and I tried to make it realistic to some degree I mean you've been there you know what it's like it's actually worse than what you see in here um but it it will give you a taste of what SOG people special operators everywhere you know go through out there so well uh sir thanks once again for joining us uh like I said earlier it's an honor to to talk to you it's an honor to hear the stories share the stories uh for from you and from the rest of the sog Warriors and you know like like I said the the example that you all set you guys you guys are my heroes you guys are the the the people that um laid down the path for all Special Operations and set an example I don't think honestly anyone will ever be able to to match what you guys did um I just don't think it's I just don't think it's possible I I just really don't um you guys set a bar that we can aspire to we will try and uphold but we we won't ever be able to overcome the the efforts and the sacrifices that you guys made and so um the honor for me to be here we'll never forget you guys and um never forget the the men of SOG and and especially the sog Warriors that didn't come home thanks sir okay thank you and with that uh dick dynamite dynamite Thompson has left the building I don't really I'm not I don't have a big followup like you know what I mean this just SOG y um nothing else really comes close and that's the way it is agree I was going to ask about Rambo cuz remember you told me recently that Rambo's based on S or he's supposed to be a saw guy yeah yeah I didn't even catch that yeah but if you watch Rambo again now you'll see that there's I actually can we talk about something else because I like literally do not want to talk about Rambo right now come on I was going to ask him about Rambo if I'm glad you didn't was Rambo representing that be right up there with you asking adal MC if you have to be an adal to be in the Navy it' be it wouldn't be the same cuz that's let's face it but it would be in the ballpark well I mean that from your perspective I understand how that could be for sure nonetheless I didn't and you know I thought ramble kind of represented but it's I don't know how accurate my thoughts would be because no Rambo's in a movie yeah that's what I'm saying but you know how like these guys are not in a movie yes I know that but they didn't even do anything if you put what they did in the movie it wouldn't seem unrealistic but it's true yeah yeah so um um yeah and you just it's good to remember and understand how Brave and how tough and how loyal and how smart and how capable and how dedicated human beings can be and maybe if we could try and be just learn a little bit from that it'll help us so um code name Dynamite get the book stress effect I went and relistened to the stress effect podcast that we did I think it was 20 six maybe there was a few of them right yeah well we did 204 205 206 so 206 we I listen to all of them again they're epic but um yeah check out get his books support SOG SOG support it's what we're doing over here also you probably got to support yourself he talked about physical fitness you want to be in good physical fitness get yourself some Jocko fuel Jo field.com get yourself some of these energy drinks some protein I just had a m Cookie by the way do you know that I understand well I I can sense it did you sense it can you smell it no but you know how you know like when someone just finishes eating something and they sort of have these little things going on CAU some of that sens it in that way yeah uh Joo fuel.com get what you need there from the supplement perspective and it will help you you can get those stuff either at joof fuel.com you can go to Wawa you can go to Vitamin Shop you can go to GNC military commissaries AES Hanford Dash stor wake Fern ShopRite HB down in TAS Meyer out in the midwest Harris Teeter Lifetime Fitness Shields small gyms everywhere if you got a small gym Jiu-Jitsu gym CrossFit gym email JFS sales joof field.com help your clients be stronger faster and better Joo fuel Doom check that out origin usa.com we're making americanmade stuff these guys were fighting the Chinese and the Communists in the jungles we're fighting them on the economic Battlefield that's what we're doing if you go to origin usa.com you can invest in the National Security of this country you can invest in Freedom by buying a pair of jeans or a ghee or a Rashard or a pair of boots or a t-shirt or a beanie at some point beanies became the word like you know you stop calling it a hat right I guess did you did you even know what a beanie was when you lived in Hawaii yeah how come it's just like style it's not I yeah style you know and I watch TV okay whatever it is it is America still but yes no beanie is widely unnecessary in Hawaii for the most part but I understand where where the question came from but if you were to need one yeah you get one from origin usa.com made in America right on best in the world that's what we're doing sure go to origin usa.com get yourself some what else it's true also Joo store called Joo store so Joo store this is where you can get you discipline equals Freedom whether it be a shirt a hat hoodie beanies on there as well if you want a discipline equals Freedom beanie they're on there as well um Al so yeah a lot of good stuff you like something get something also on there is what we call now the shirt Locker which is your subscription shirt scenario different design every month it's good people seem to like that one but yeah check that one out as well that that's where this Stoner 63 made its appearance yep it's true you got in some trouble over that one yeah I did it's all good all good CH store.com check that out also subscribe to the podcast also check out Joo underground jock underground.com we got our own platform just in case let's say the Communist take over here and we lose control over the platform we'll still be there on the Underground keeping it real it real if you can't afford it cuz it costs $8 $818 a month if that's a little bit steep right now economy is rough just email what is it assistant atjo underground.com we'll get you taken care of that way you can be in the game with us also we got YouTube channels subscribe to those Joo podcast origin USA Joo fuel we all got our own little YouTube channels we're putting out different pieces of information there we got psychological warfare we got flips side canvas we got a bunch of books look primarily today SOG code name Dynamite by Henry L dick Thompson he also wrote the stress effect go and get these books they're freaking epic also I've written a bunch of books you know what they are final spin leadership strategy and tactics Field Manual the code evaluation protocol all those things dis freedom field manual the way the warrior kid books just get those books for the kids you know just go get them let him have a better life we have Mikey the dragons about face extreme ownership dichotomy of leadership just go just get those kids books for the kids get the books for the adults too but that's in your hands the kid can't do this for himself possibly he's seven years old he doesn't have a freaking Amazon account like you do true he doesn't know he's not listening to this podcast right now this kid doesn't know that his life can get better or her life can get better they don't know that you do what are you waiting for like just be generous also we have asalon front it's leadership consultancy we solve problems through leadership go to Echelon front.com for details we have live events that you can go to we also have a Consulting agency where you can come into your company and help you square away everything inside your organization through leadership we also have an online training platform at extreme ownership. comom where you can learn the skills of leadership for your business and for your entire life on a daily basis check that out extrem ownership. comom also if you want to help service members active in retired you want to help their families Gold Star Family check out markle's mom mama Lee she's got a charity organization and if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to America Mighty warriors.org also don't forget about Mike aink he's taken veterans up into the Wilderness so they can learn and reconnect with their soul so check out Heroes and horses. org and if you want to connect with us on the interweb on Instagram and Twitter dick Thompson he's on Instagram he's on Twitter HPS CEO he's also got a Facebook he's at dick Thompson and of course Ekko is on social media he's at Echo Charles I'm on social media I'm ad joa willink listen just watch out because the the damn algorithm will sneak up on you like a freaking tiger that SWAT your head off so just be careful of that thanks once again to Dick Thompson for coming out here share his experiences share his lessons learned more important thanks to Dick Thompson for his incredible service to our great nation and obviously uh salute to all the sog Warriors that fought a secret war and sacrificed so much we'll never forget what you did and the example that you set for us and thanks to the military people around the world that are listening right now who are currently on the front lines of Freedom we thank you for what you do and to our police law enforcement firefighters paramedics EMTs dispatchers correctional officers border patrol Secret Service all First Responders thanks to all of you for the sacrifices you make to keep us safe on the home front and to everyone else out there let's do a little assessment do a little assessment of ourselves I'm going to take a look in the mirror I will take a look in the mirror I do take a look in the mirror I compare myself to these men the bravest the boldest the most committed think of the commitment these guys had what am I doing am I as committed as I should be am I as focused as I should be am I testing myself the way I should be I don't know but I'll tell you what I think think about these men of SOG and I can tell you this based on their levels of drive and commitment and focus I know factually that I can do better I know I can do better and I can do that every day by going out there and getting after it and until next time the Zeo and Joo out

Channel: Jocko Podcast

Views: 153,443

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, underground

Id: pVUBWPm6pE4

Length: 273min 7sec (16387 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 31 2023