Long Range Recon Patrol (LRRP) in Vietnam | Larry Chambers | Ep. 186

foreign Special Operations covert Ops espionage the team house with your hopes Jack Murphy and David Park good evening everyone this is episode 186 of the team house I'm Jack Murphy Dave's out at a cyber security conference tonight and it'll just be me and Larry talking tonight Our Guest Larry Chambers is the author of rocondo and death in a Shaw Valley he is a former warp Ranger served in the long range reconnaissance Patrols in Vietnam one of his teammates was a former guest of The Show Ken Miller I hope you guys will check that interview out after this one um also served with Gary linderer uh you know a kind of a your peer group that wrote a lot about the lurps after the war and people like me read those books uh you know in the 1990s as kids and uh it was certainly found them inspirational so I mean this is really like a special moment for me Larry and I really appreciate you coming on the show tonight well you're welcome no it's exciting so Larry uh I'd like to start off talking about you know your origin story and sort of like how you grew up and what your pathway was that that eventually took you towards the military well I always I grew up in the military I knew I was going to be in the military there every childhood picture of me is in is in a uniform my dad's little cut down officer's uniform and so and we lived on uh an army base called Fort Berry in Fort Cronkite on the San Francisco Coast was a missile battery and so that was you know in the um mid 50s and so I kind of remember the Bro the old brown boot Army because it wasn't that long after Korea and my dad served in Korea served in World War II and he got kind of a choice assignment after the war and so all these so my friends growing up were privates and corporals that worked under my dad he ran the radar um site on the bay on the fort and so I mean my dream was to be uh was to go to West Point my dream was to then it became my dream was to I wanted to be a a fighter pilot and I took the Marine Corps I remember when I went down to take the Marine Corps um flight test the and flunked it I got such a low score they didn't even tell me what the score was it was so bad I was so nervous because I wanted it so bad I literally would go blank I would you know I was one of those kids that I take a test and I'd have to read one question 15 times you know um does the plane take off uh in the air I don't know I mean it was just it was terrible so I was I was let's say for the last couple years of high school I was just so I thought oh man I'll never I'm never going to get my dream come true and then I found out I could volunteer for the draft I mean this is opposite from the all the stories you hear about oh it was drafted I was like when I got my draft and I was like yeah it was like oh my God you know it was weird um but that I I loved the Army I loved being in the Army I I was um my friendships are still lifelong friendships with guys like Miller and Linder and and Looney and Burford and all of these guys over the years and well you know as soon as one guy dies everybody no no you know we're getting closer but just lifelong friendships I've never found you know I would use my Ranger service in that when I was in business to shame people be like if somebody stood me up or was late like 20 minutes I said great you just got my whole team killed what are you talking about I go well as far as I'm concerned if you're late you're dead if the chopper comes in and you're going to go like what are you talking about nobody had that kind of I was a stockbroker I worked for your hunting at after I graduated from University of Utah and and I I sort of had to tone that down you know I've sort of kept the whole time of because they used to think if you went to Vietnam you were crazy and there was all these guys that had never gone to Vietnam that were crazy and they were and they gave such a bad rap for the guys but and I would hear these stories and I'd go like that's not the story that I remember I mean I remember guys tearing each other apart to get on the helicopter to go out to rescue people and you know our teams and and um we never left anybody behind and guys would you know take a bullet for I mean it was everything that you see in in the Avenger stories but were true you know these guys were Heroes and I was just lucky to be you know I always felt like I was like the like the like the I just felt I was lucky to be there I just you know I never put myself up to to think I was anything um at the time I just I was really good at being alert I was good being appointment that's I used to say I went from the I had dyslexia I mean I still have dyslexia you know which made school and I was add or still yes I am so made school really really difficult for me and I I remember going into going in the Army it was like I moved to the Head of the Class you know I just I mean the training was it was like a piece of cake I thought it was like you know somebody had sent me to Camp it was like fun like fun camp and I get to Vietnam and it was even more fun and they had you know all the rounds they gave you all the ammunition and targets were everywhere so it was like oh my gosh what you know but I couldn't tell this you know I come back and try to yeah yeah tell people you know they don't get it if you're I don't know if you ever heard of a Ranger named uh Cox and he he was this guy and I just talked to his wife he just died uh two years ago when every time he seen me he would like give me a he would punch me in the shoulder it just he just loved to punch me it was just like one of these big guys and I got to her I just let him punch me so one time I mean he was on that mission that you may remember that Gary Linda wrote about uh um where the whole team got wiped out that huge Claymore or something a huge yeah huge uh NBA Claymore and I was on the other team so I was out too but we were close enough we could hear him but far enough away we couldn't get to him and Cox got his good good is his um his arm like his hand was blown back and his stomach was blown open he like set his own arm and taped it to his shotgun taped himself up and was there for the next five hours shooting guys coming up the hill and you're like I told that what was it a at a party at a college party in like 1970 after he came back and there was a guy and he was holding Court he was talking about you know he plays rugby and I'll tell you what that's a goddamn tough sport that Ruby I'll tell you I sprained this ankle I played the whole game with his sprained ankle and a tooth broken and I went like well I you know I had a friend that got his sprained ankle too but he also got his stomach blown up and his hand was blown you know I'd start telling this story and people would be like uh uh in shock you know it was just a little bit too real yeah you know but before Larry before moving on I just want to take a moment to ask you about your dad because he was an Alamo Scout which was like very unique unit um that Rangers traced their lineage back to I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about his experiences and kind of like what you grew up around well he was also a functional alcoholic so he was you know he could handle the job but you know mostly he was an alcoholic so um he never ever talked to me about any of that stuff but that's always I'd heard that he was part of the he was in the Philippines he was wounded in late day and um you know the uh he came back I guess I mean it didn't had me after after he you know was sent back home but so I don't know a lot about well I I do know this one story but this is speculation but he's dead so there's nothing he can do to me right now um he was a young lieutenant and I've got a picture of him in his um he's a brand new second lieutenant uh out of high school and he's at a Thanksgiving dinner and it's 1940 one Thanksgiving so it's like two weeks or something before the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and I've got a picture of him you know these guys have no idea what's gonna what's coming down the horn so he goes they they go when they train in the Philippines and they did all of that and um I'd heard that uh he and like a nah I shouldn't even tell it well now I've started I got to tell the story but um there was like a Machine Gun Nest and he took us you know it's a platoon he's a platoon leader right so he takes his platoon and a whole bunch of the guys get shot and he came he finally came back and a lot of his guys got shot and they busted him for it because yeah he lost so many guys and he sort of never got over I mean he never ever talked about that I heard that from like a half brother of mine that told me that story so I can't say it's true but it sort of fit but yeah it makes sense why he wouldn't want to talk about it too much but I remember you know I remember him as um a Sergeant First Class on this fort on Fort Berry and how strike everything was and how you know his his his fatigues were like crackled they were just crisp and the boots were always shined and everything and I just grew up with that and I you know so when I got to Vietnam it was a shock it was like I grew up in one Army and then there was a gap you know from the 50s and then the six I go in 68 and I'd go into a whole new Army that I did not recognize you know they didn't a lot of guys did not have the respect I mean not in our unit but in other units you know didn't have respect for the the guys above them and all that stuff it was it just didn't changed it was and of course that war was a lot different right you know right other than other Wars so and if you were drafted so you uh you happily accepted your Drafting and uh joined the army and uh your your infantry right yeah yeah and and then uh let's let's kind of like fast forward to the part where you arrive in Vietnam and how you get yourself on a work team okay but I was infantry but I went to jump school that after infantry you know training you know so I've got the pop pop 11 11 Fox whatever that is um and so but when I arrived in Vietnam is that what you yeah yeah when you got there and volunteered to be a lerp I mean could you walk us through some of that oh yeah um um like I said I wanted to do all these really cool things that I couldn't test out to do so I get there and I you know to me Special Forces I don't can't believe that people don't equate this in Vietnam but I sure do they were like Gods literally walking Gods if you were an SF you were the coolest thing on the planet Earth and um but it was a four-year six-year commitment to do that and I and what I what I found out by volunteer for lips I could do and you know I could uh with 1049 or whatever that was into fob like into an fob1 or something if you wanted to so there's a way to get into SF and not you know we didn't I don't know if they had the Q course back to entering that stuff but I was a bunch of these um paratroopers that had got there and they sort of um um they didn't sort of they sort they were counting guys off and they counted off and this was 1968 and this was we had lost a thousand guys in 101st up in the north and and so 101st wasn't exactly everybody's choice you know when they get there but they counted off and I remember they dropped like a couple in front of me and you guys are 100 and I jumped up and yelled is excitement because that was my dream come true I had it all mapped out in my mind I'd be 101st and I'd volunteered to do something really cool so and I do that and everybody was you know a lot of these guys thought it was like nuts for for for that for that show the motion and then um we there would be a guy that would come by and um they would this this young Sergeant uh gave us a talk about being alert what it meant to be alert and he he said something that I would never forget and it was look when you're out you got five six guys the good and I hate to use this word but I got to say it goop because it's a word that wasn't used at that time yeah it was used at the time it's very you know I would never use it now but um um shoot that made me lose my trend of thought about oh so here's what so he goes you're out in it in the in the jungle and the gooks don't they they can't see you you can't see them you're out there trying to find them he says look it's some of you guys are going to go north and you're going to be on a Firebase you're going to be an infantry company and you can hear an infantry company all the way to Hanoi that makes so much noise the lerps were silent he told us the whole story goes it's safer behind the lines than it is in front of them and they're like boom my hand went up and volunteered and uh people thought it was crazy when I did that but I really think it's say that saved my life it just being in that lerp company though it was hard I mean it wasn't you know a cakewalk but you're around motivated competent people everybody there was they're all volunteers twice when we were still on jump status so um you know the 101st wasn't on jump stat just us and I think the you know another group like the uh Pathfinders and that was all so we still got jump pay and um um so you you sort of self-selected yourself into it so you were around got like-minded guys and so that's why my experience of that war is completely different than a lot of the stories I mean I don't you know I I feel bad for guys that I lost but you know I'm not I don't dwell on that I don't feel bad about you know things that I did I feel uh crowd of every single thing my my team did we did and the in my uh my unit my Ranger unit I mean we were like we would get up sometimes in the morning and run we still had to run if you believe it or not and we would run through what we call legs you know even though they were 100 first they were still to us legs and we would run through their Barracks at like five o'clock in the morning which you know just pissed everybody off but we were so proud of you know that we could piss people off not only in the back but out in the front you know whatever wherever we were at we wanted to like cause trouble yeah Ken told me these guys were troublemakers Ken was you know Ken's not a big tall guy right whatever the minimum is to get in the army he's like two inches lower than that but here's the thing like one time some new guy came in to our unit and um he wanted to fight guys and we're sitting in our team you know our team house our team tents and this guy came in and I was sitting there and it was you know it's pissed me off pissed me off because he he was kind of drunk and he was really mouthing off about how he could beat anybody you know what you guys are so tough you know all this [ __ ] so I went Miller come on so we went around the back of the tent now this is a cheap shot I'm sorry but I cold cocked him I came from the bottom and I hit him right in the face and knocked him cleared down into the road and he rolled and Miller and I did high fives we thought that was the greatest thing in the world until suddenly he shows back up with that platoon was like the first platoon and they're all like oh what a chief John you're going to fight these guys are this one guy that's my size is standing in front of me and he's good you know he's pointing his finger and stuff like that and he touched Miller and it was a mistake the guy took a swing at Miller and Miller caught the swing in his mouth bit through his knuckle you know just almost bit his finger completely off and then got on him on his ear and bit his ear off and spit it so he did that way before you know the boxer Did spit the ear out blood was going everywhere and all of us just stood back in shock and went you [ __ ] up you you know that you should never bite somebody that's shorter than you are because we couldn't get him off he kept we we were all trying to pry him off but he just kept beating this guy up it was like tragic you know it was Miller Miller neglected to tell me that story well he's not going to tell that story no tell me then what what it was like when you first showed up at your unit at 101st Corps what was it like getting there as a new guy well here's okay so I'll tell you what it was like because I was Mr Odie collodi like I didn't smoke didn't drink didn't smoke dope didn't even cuss and believed in God I even you know how weird am I and I show up and so we're it was like the first or second day and this guy named Marty Martinez which was one of the point man who had a huge body count and and he goes yeah the God damn good I said um excuse me you really shouldn't use the lord's name in vain guy went freaking awesome it just was so pissed off at me and what had happened was in our unit one of somebody got really pissed off at the company Commander which was the before I got there and blew his foot off so they lost company commander and they got a new Commander about the same time I came in so I come in a little too clean a little too like I didn't cuss and everything like that and now I got the guy who's got the biggest body count in our unit pissed off at me and like so he so it wasn't a few weeks later that I was I had to go we had an ammo bunk we had to go I'd go down to the animal bunker I was told to go to the ammo bunker and and we had a Machine Gun Nest thing that we would man all night long and so I go to get all of the Claymores and all that and he had to climb down into this bunker and it was dug in the ground we had tons of C4 and dairy kind all kinds of [ __ ] inside this thing and I get in there and I and I find the Claymores is I pull it like a thermal grenade starts open off and I had no time I had like just dropped everything and just made my way up I had to go out through this thing and Dixie dog or on this dog she came over to see why I was there wanting to get some food and I grabbed a hold of her and I ran like 15 feet there was a bunker and I jumped in this bunker and then was like the whole Earth blew up we that thing blew up and they had PCP covering on top of the sandbags and that [ __ ] was bouncing down and bouncing around and Hand Grenades were cooking off machine gun ammo was flying you know everything was cooking off and it the the commander of of the uh at Eagle called in to see he thought the north uh Vietnamese that did an airstrike because it was such a big explosion you know Dan it was me so in through the clouds I come walking I finally I like make my way through I still got Dixie had scrambled out of my arms and I still have her dog tags I still have it today and I walked out and went like uh hello I it's okay I mean what do you say when you when you blew up all of our ambulance I think the correct answer was the NVA got us we had sappers in The Wire I didn't think about that I wanted to use but it I had no I just went ah it was uh that was a nightmare because I had to go down and explain what had happened to these these young second lieutenants that were an S2 or something and anyway uh I got to take a minute to uh give a shout out to our sponsors for the show and then I got I definitely have more questions for you Larry um so I want to tell the viewers out there about silent this is you'd find them at slnt.com silent and these guys make these various bags you see a couple different models and sizes here these are Faraday bags so you can put your laptop your cell phone your tablet whatever kinds of devices you like to use uh in here and it stops people from you know stealing your data getting a hold of your signal um or if or if you just want to go dark for whatever reason some of you guys there's a variety of reasons you might want to do that uh and yeah so check them out they're at slnt.com you can also find these available at sapgear.com and other sponsor of the show um so definitely go check them out and then the other sponsor for this show is uh ten thousand ten thousand makes a workout gear it's ten thousand dot CC uh these are their shorts I I use these shorts when I work out they're awesome probably the best pair of shorts I've ever owned actually and um these things are great use them when I do kettlebell exercises and stuff like that again 10 000.cc the promo code you can use as team to get 15 off your order um so I hope you guys will check out ten thousand definitely worth it if you're staying active and then just take a second to tell you guys about uh we have our t-shirts and our merch too if you guys are interested got t-shirts coffee mugs all that good stuff um the link is down in the description so um yeah thank you to our sponsors uh oh Larry uh just to clarify for people out there who have maybe have not read your book yet or don't know too much about you know our military during the Vietnam war could you describe what the lerps were and what their mission was lurks long range reconnaissance Patrol and even though we came 75th Rangers it was still the same the same tactics but we would go five six men on a team and there would usually be two teams would go out into a you know into a a grid Square several grids grid squares that we had gotten Intelligence on and we would go out sometimes 30 miles away you know for or further away than the line unit so we would be the eyes and ears of the division you know there's different guys who call themselves lerps that were lerps in the division but they were short you know around for infantry units we were we would we worked real close with fob1 which was forward operations base one a special forces guys SOG and so we shared Intel and sometimes we did SOG missions we didn't even know there were SOG missions but that mission into the Asha Valley that first time was like a SOG Mission even though you know we didn't get a t-shirt which I'd love to have by the way or with shorts for doing that but that that was that was our mission and sometimes it would be ambushes if we would see a a unit that we could Ambush we would do either a hasty Ambush or or literally go in and set up but done that we've done that before we'll you know Ambush a a unit that's been moving into the area and we're up we were up in um i-core which icore which was way fuba out to the ashaw valley um it would have been West but that's kind of good so tell us then about uh about your first insertion your first mission as a lerp uh uh they my first I you know what I remember was the helicopter ride because even though I jumped out of planes I'd never been in a helicopter and it was kind of unsettling to be sitting in the center of that thing and it just lifted up it was just the strangest experience that's what I remembered was well actually not what I remember what I remember was I forgot my rifle which is like the most embarrassing imagine your first mission and I'm all excited and I go down to the um to the pad the launch pad where the helicopters were warming up and I remember um the team leader going like uh where's your rifle and we're like and I just turn and I sprinted almost like tears are coming down my eyes back to my to the hooch and I grab you know grabbed my car 15 and ran back down but it was so embarrassing so I was living through the shame and then the excitement of the helicopter ride and um the the first mission was uneventful the second mission was the mission where lenders guys got all shot up so that was we found this huge bunker complex and um I I remember this deer was chasing these monkeys it was weird and that it sounded like the whole NBA fifth NBA regiment was running down the hill towards us and we were we had a 12 man we called a heavy team and we were waiting to be you know for all these NBA to run into us and it was this deer this deer came by and then a monkey came by it was like what so that and then I was lucky because I was on this was Sergeant Burnell which is a kind of a famous Ranger 82nd Airborne guys know him there he's in for life he led he led that mission because it was um it was so uh uh it was a big deal as it actually turned out to be and the other young Sergeant got killed um in his section so we ended up staying out there until they got everybody out and we end up staying out there for like a couple of days like we didn't have enough backup if we'd got into a big fight like that one team did we'd have been in a lot of trouble so they had a slay dog and we just laid in the rain was raining the hardest rain I've ever seen it rained so hard to you know I just would look up and I couldn't even see my Claymore Mine said I couldn't you couldn't see that far ahead of you so we knew that the enemy couldn't see either so we just sort of like kicked back and waited for a couple days till they could get a helicopter in and get us was this the operation where you were um you were wrapped in your in your chill liner and uh the NBA walked within like six feet of the patrol oh that was like the second mission or something like that yeah the the um that that was a that really I got a lot of Gravitas from that because I had set up at night and I I set I was right on the edge of the trail and and I had a a poncho liner and so I kind of read was really cold and I wrapped myself in the poncho liner and I actually had um I'd set my rifle over here and my hands were inside and I heard something it was like about four in the morning or something like that and I lifted up into a half sit up and right there walking was an NBA Soldier was like he came within just like a meter of of me and so I just froze and then the guys were behind me were all for you know they were obviously all Frozen too and we had something like 20 guys or I said 28 I forget how many it was a lot walk past when I got through I was so glad I had done lots of sit-ups earlier in my life so I was really I had a strong core because I literally kept a half sit-up for 15 minutes without even moving to air so that was that was like scary but it also meant I could take being around enemy really close which you know the old guys went okay I want him on my team so that was really that was I I moved up in um uh what do you call it stature stature yeah that was the word I was searching for statue um sometimes like they would you know you never know how somebody's going to react in combat and like everybody thinks because it you know they can bench press hundreds of pounds and they're all in great shape it means zero means absolutely nothing in the scrawniest looking guys there are sometimes are the best lerps and the best Rangers there can be hey they'll never give up they're just hard as nails and they're afraid of nothing but one time we took out a young guy who was smarter than all of us he was really smart kid and he freaked out he ended up shooting up he got surround they were surrounded but we're always surrounded I mean that's part of the drill and he got so freaked out he just started firing his M16 and actually shot one of our guys holy [ __ ] and I always remember it's like you've got to test these guys you got to test somebody before you really get on a team so all of our guys were had been through the the you know a test so to speak you know going on on a mission where you're going to be surrounded and you are there is no infantry coming to your rescue except we had air rifles that would come you know once you got into a firefight but you know that still might be 30 minutes away your sector that you talk about your that your unit covered in the book was pretty interesting because it encompassed like some pretty historical areas like the like Hamburger Hill Asia Valley a few other notable places uh it was a pretty is am I right to say it was a pretty hot area if you didn't get wounded we used to say you were gay I mean I know that's not probably the right thing to say in today's world but that was the way we joked around it was like what the [ __ ] you know yeah you're this was it was it was teeming I mean if you look at the at the Ho Chi Minh trail the way it came in it dropped in from Laos right in the ashaw valley when right over and then they could go into into way fubai on um on the rest of the weekend in way city was in that area also yeah way city was that's where if that's where our we we were close to that that's where our camp Eagle was was about five miles from here or something like that real close but yeah it was so hard could you tell us then there was the Run rung Valley that was another one you all we every almost after the first couple minutes I mean almost every Mission I went on we got contact some form of contact either we would see enemy or we got in a firefight and got shot out one of the other could you tell us about the mission this is kind of a an interesting one with the black boxes that they wanted you to implant uh or or in place I should say um mean when the helicopter got shot down or it was that was that on the was that on the way back yeah tell us about that mission and and uh I thought that was Miller was on that with me and so Miller was Miller was the sergeant in charge I would still expect forward then and we were planting black boxes and they were just these black boxes with a little aerial and we would you know they had it marked and where where they were going to be and supposedly if any tanks or heavy stuff went by there it would you know the vibrations they would call in airstrikes so we'd been doing that for a couple days and the last day we were leaving and the helicopter takes off and hit a tree and it lobbed off about three foot of the blade so this thing and we were way in the hell up and he couldn't land back down because he was out over this big canyon so he just Dove Dove the helicopter and it was I don't know if you've ever been in a helicopter that lost four foot of the rotor blade it only has that one rotor it's like you're in a washing machine and luckily the guy got or you know Auto rotated the last little bit but we hit really hard you know so hard that everybody banged up against the roof and then banged back down and then you know we had it was weird when that's correct when Chris something crap when you crash like that because you don't have a map for that you don't know where you're at or you don't have your map want lined up so you're on your own you know and so we had to set up a perimeter around the helicopter and it took forever before they could you know get a big another Chopper in to pull that one out and Miller and I were the last two we stayed to the very end but there's a one more story about that that crash so we come back and and Miller had brought that had picked up a big bone uh like a water bison's bone and and I remember we always sort of had this competition and and I said I could knock with that bone that canteen cup off Miller's head so he stood there and I was back at the end of the hooch and I threw it really hard and it missed of course it hit him in the head split his head open and now he's got blood all running down so he's making himself like an Indian and he's like you know now I know I'm gonna catch it because I have to take the punishment from what I just did and you know I just stand there and Miller threw that thing as hard as he could and I put my hand up and it hit my hand and broke my fingers so now you know we're actually this would have been an Article 15 if if you know we'd have been found out but we go down to the Aid Station luckily we crashed in the helicopter so we went yeah we were in a terrible helicopter helicopter crash Miller's all bleeding and stuff and I'm you know my fingers broken and so and I put on they put me in a like a cast and I cut it down and I still trained and I actually I've got pictures of me and a McGuire rig and I've got this cast on my hand you know that's how gun whole we were I mean we didn't you didn't go you get the hospital and you come back to your unit we wanted to go back out and you know get going which is not again what you normally hear you know people people say but yeah and was this about the time that your unit started going into Asia Valley or was that later yeah it was later um we didn't go into the Asian Valley until after I got back from her condo school which was March okay let's uh let's cover that first I mean before we get there was there any other like notable missions before of a condo school that you think are important to bring up I mean I know there is a lot of them I mean I I sort of felt like I had a sixth sense we were talking about this earlier and and I was and I'd walk point and I would like know when something was going to happen I would just know it and one time um stopped and we got off the trail and I walked uh Burford was the team leader at the time and he so he's he was behind me and I left and I went into the I just had this feeling I went into the jungle and it went around the trail was was going down this way and I went so I go around in the jungle and I come out behind and I was stepping over this log and I looked down and I started Counting you know NVA was like I just froze and just stopped breathing stop I mean I had my car 15 but I couldn't I couldn't I lost count of the number of guys that were sitting on the ground they were talking to each other and one guy sort of heard me and he even turned around and he looked right at me but you know we had total camouflage on we had tiger fatigues on so I blended in and you know you just don't think some white Americans gonna show up you know in the jungle when they didn't even hear us but they that we would have walked into an ambush but I walked around behind him and so I literally I made the decision not to fire them up because I was too close I literally could reach down and go excuse me you guys I'm now going to shoot you so I you know I I just held my fire and backed up and and Burford remember look he said he counted the number of ant of gooks on the ground in my eyes he could tell that I saw something because my eyes were like gigantically big I'd never seen it you know thing like this so we go back and we we set up and and Looney called in an extraction helicopter called him for an extraction and I was sitting at this bush and I started thinking did I imagine that did I imagine I mean it couldn't have been true to and then sud then suddenly a guy pops up he was like 50 meters away which is not that far and he he popped up and he had um glasses and he was like looking around looking at the trail that I'd left as I ran as I ran like a little girl out of there and he like tracked and I remember he was like looking right at me and I was like ever and I saw the one this the guy with the glasses took his glasses down and I saw I'm talking to one of his guys and he go he goes like that which meant to flank us and this guy took he had a uh like an American parachute which is a camouflage parachute and he flicked it once he put it over his head and he disappeared and I went like my heart was like okay now I can't see him but I know this guy is coming around you know gonna flank us and so you know Burford goes okay here's what we're gonna do and we had six guys um uh Chambers and I are going to stay behind on the count of three your guys are going to take off running and I remember saying like what if Chambers doesn't get to stay behind what you went to count and I get to go shut up and so he goes I don't know I had a weird sense of humor and circumstances he goes one two three and we literally had to stand up because there was a brush right there and like fired up the guys that were in the that were before they shot at us and so that that was I never forgot that mission and then you guys I I think it broke contact to the to the LLC and got out of there yeah we got out of there and then um then they bring in What's called the um what was our reactionary Force the um yes I I and SF it would have been like the the mic force uh or a handling yeah yeah same same type thing uh all right let's uh let's talk about recondo school uh because that's you know the title of your book for condo in a couple chapters in the book are all about it I mean that was a very unique course that was held in Vietnam um could you tell us um you know why why did you go why did you get sent what was the what was the school all about well this the school was um actually called Mac V fifth Special Forces recondo school and the it was actually westmoreland's uh uh pride and joy School in the in the Army that's me right there that came from that was that tape I told you that they'd found yeah that's me back then my hat's a little bit too small because then you get kicked out of school but what made it really interesting is that we ran through um there's my guide that got the Vietnamese guy right there on the bottom left he's a great guide if you ever go to Vietnam I'll give you his name yeah and check out check out Larry's uh he has a YouTube channel just type in Larry Chambers and he'll come up and and he has a bunch of cool videos on there that you guys can check out I'm sorry there's also go ahead yeah there's also a website called Larry and that's Dash chambers.com and I have a whole bunch of stuff so um so the first week they tried to weed out the guys that aren't physically strong and you're tired I mean you've been in you you took first of all it was an invitation only you got invited but you were in and you were sent by your unit so it was a kind of a big deal to get sent there because that meant you were going to be a team leader when you came back and um so it was real honor to go but everybody was nervous because of the swim the dreaded swim there was the run the Run was am so you get through the run but on the second week they had the the swim and there was a lot of stuff that you were doing it was non-stop I mean you're up till late at night and you know all training all day long you know jump you know practicing McGuire Rigs and and repelling and you know everything that any good you know combats uh unit would train you for uh first aid you know where you'd have to give yourself serving album or at least know how to give yourself a but they had big needles back then so there was lots of blood everywhere when we went through that part of the course but the swim you'd have to swim out 200 meters and at the time I was like a lousy swimmer and I I didn't know really how to swim and I could just sort of side thing but if you touched there was this two special forces sergeants out in this pontoon boat out in the ocean and you had to swim around it and swim all the way back and that eliminated a lot of guys if they couldn't make the swim I just remember how exhausting it was because you also ran that day and you're doing a lot of stuff so there's go through all of that and then we come to the last day and this is what gives it the distinction of the only School the Army's ever had where you could get killed in it a lot of the buildings were named after um you know guys that were killed in the school you know they were there they because we did a live um alert Mission and you would rotate um at each point so they wanted you to you know be a team leader that wants you to be a slackman they wanted you to be a point man they wanted you to be very secure you know you go through the whole thing so the first two days were out there and it's like just a normal alert Mission and this mission was pulled um near La Trang in the train and suddenly I'm walking along and I I walk into you know four or five guys sitting in the middle there was probably it was way more than that because we found like 10 or 15 backpacks but I so I fired them up and I turned around and the guy that behind me took off running he broke the protocol the protocol you know is I sit down the line fire the next guy does and he took off and it got the other guy worried you know we didn't know who these guys were that were in our school and so I watched these two guys running back in the jungle and I'm still out there so I hit the ground and I just you know kept putting fire down until suddenly the the on the this the school we'd have two instructors that would go out with us and Louis LePage I could still just remember him he was just like he was like God he was like the the toughest guy I'd ever seen in my life he comes running through the Jung he doesn't care about bullets screw pull he's got a he's got his um he's he carried a a thumper you know an m79 and he shoots the shoots at it and it hit the tree and I remember going like over my head like it didn't go off because it didn't go far enough to arm and he's he's so he comes out where I'm and we both fire and maneuver back and so he was Furious that the guys that ran he was so pissed off and he goes Chambers you and and um my slack man you're gonna walk us back there I'm going oh my God why do I keep getting myself where I'm gonna get do good now I have to go back in there and so I was so I so we went back later that same day and I'm walking along and suddenly this North Vietnamese guy walked right out in front of me and just like that and he looked at me and I looked at him and he started to run and I took off running and I ran after him and I tackled him like a football tackle and I got him down on the ground and and matter of fact LePage is a little pissed off at me because that's not what you're supposed to do you're supposed to fire him up but I could see the guy didn't have a weapon someone's gonna shoot an unarmed guy so I figure I could tackle him and he turned out to be this young Lieutenant I've still got his um I have it right here I brought it to show but this was the belt buckle that he was wearing let's see if you can see that an NVA belt buckle NBA bubblegum so he was and I've actually tried to find that guy in my trips back to Vietnam but that so we captured this I captured this MBA officer like I thought it was the hero of the day we get back and it was like let me give this you know it was like you know business as usual well he captured he was like no this is Special Forces this isn't like Tinker Toys you know and I but the but LePage um ended up getting me an r r to why I got seven day you know for doing that so I was all happy for that yeah I mean I I think Ken Miller and I think yourself both you know killed enemy in recondo school but I mean you actually captured an enemy which is like exceedingly rare I mean everyone was ready to do that yeah yeah this was just totally an accident actually when I I've written back to try to find this guy because I always hoped he turned out to be you know would do good you know something and I even went to uh condau which is an island where they sent all the prisoners to try to I know this delusion of grandeur that I could try to find this guy but um I I I we I the the the the you know they brought in the mic Force like you said they brought all that [ __ ] in so suddenly was around like 300 guys and you know we're all surrounded by all these guys and they were they they would um they were interviewing my prisoner and the South Vietnamese were you know to they would just step on his butt you know like I always see these movies where they they're you know you've got how do you torture somebody to you know use that waterboarding they just stepped on a guy's nuts with their boots and the guy was going like he was telling everything so that pissed me off this guy was being tortured so me and my slack guy Duty that was his name Duty we go over and we I don't know if Duty pushed the Arvin guy away but we kind of protected the guy all night he was ours we risked our life to capture we're gonna let the South even used to kill him because they were just butcherers they were you know terrible and um then they took him back they actually took him up in a uh McGuire or yeah McGuire rig out and then I so that was my three weeks in wakanda school which was it was hard it was really I and I thought a lot of guys I thought everybody that went there graduated and I'd find out later that guys that loved when they went there and they didn't graduate but you know what he tells you that just they didn't get the recondo patch uh we have some questions and I'm actually struggling to pull it up you have empty um sorry we have we have some audience questions for you as well Larry um I'm sorry I didn't mean to reduce I didn't mean are these from North are they North Vietnamese possibly possibly so Alejandro uh has one uh I still have your book death in the Asha Valley from Sandhill PX from os-u-t at Benning as Jack said a lot of us going into bat always strive to be better wanting to live up to the legacies you guys created thank you for coming on suicide thanks Alejandro we have a few more okay um you want to get them at the end yeah okay so yeah there's no questions there that's just yeah we'll uh we'll we'll get we'll get to a few more towards the end of the uh the interview so yeah you kept the guy's belt and his belt buckle and wore it after that right oh yeah yeah well I stripped him immediately of his belt buckle because that I got offered 500 for that by a leg officer in Saigon uh you know but I wouldn't give it up and when you did finally graduate from recondo school uh you go get back to your unit and now you're a team leader yeah so you go back and you're on you're a team leader and I um um well I wasn't well I was a team leader but that came later um that uh lightning Mission happened shortly after and I I they made me a sergeant and I was on r r so some time went by and then suddenly they brought it was like they wanted to get and it sounds egotistical but the best of the best so they got a bunch of us guys we're all sergeants and we're gonna go on the First Alert Mission back in the Asha Valley the last time anybody had been in there was the 173rd and they lost 37 helicopters in so many minutes so it was a bad place to go and you know we were just starting to to build all of the different firebases on on the way out to the Azure Valley and so they wanted us to they wanted eyes and ears out there so we spent five days on the border and here in um at night we would in the daytime we would see hundreds of North Vietnamese in the valley and um and then it uh night we would hear of cutting wood and I I showed you you know from going back what I brought back I guess I could show it now yeah sure yeah so I'd gone back to Hamburger Hill or close to where we where we were we got struck by lightning believe it or not on our last day of the mission and we're all like paralyzed and luckily I mean we lost comma we had one radio that Como finally and that um the you know they they we got out you know in uh in penetrators that was what they sat down it was a basket for lender and then the penetrators for the rest of us that's what that lightning struck it like blew up your grenades and Claymores and everything oh it blew yeah we had all of our our claim luckily just before that happened I remember reading the back of my Claymore mind thinking like that's a little too close and reading the back of it so I went down and I moved it out further when this lightning hit I just remember this white light and there's like no sound for like a multi-azillionth of a second a Flash and then I remember going up in the air and blowing blown into a thousand pieces and this deafening sound and then hitting the ground which seemed like later like I always thought I was blown in pieces and then God went like yeah not ready yet they're putting it back together turn it back down on the ground so I land like down this hill and I can remember I could move and I looked down at my legs and smoke was coming off my clothes and it was like I couldn't move but I could move my arms and I finally kind of got my senses back I had no rifle I didn't know where I was and I and I crawled this is the scariest I'd ever been in Vietnam I never really got that scared but this scared me I crawled back up the hill and I look around and where we were was all a burnt out Circle and no one was there they were all also blown away but I for a few minutes it seemed like an eternity I was like oh my God I am alone here you know I'm gonna get my throat cut where's my rifle and I so I start started looking around and I found my clacker placard is what you used to blow you know hard plastic I don't know if you use those for Claymores but it's a hard plastic was melted so we figured the lightning came down through the antenna the radio man and put this antenna up in a thunderstorm questionable reason for that and sent we had to send a sit rep and when he did the lightning went down and it didn't hit us directly or when it killed us but we got not only the the explosion um um Gary linder's backpack had a percussion grenade and then that blew up so we got that and then the back Blast from all of the Claymores that were around us so we got the back blasting that's probably what why we're all in some form of paralysis for some of us for a day you know you write that when the radio man clicked the hand mic to send up the sit rep that was when the lightning struck that's when the lightning hit yeah and I just remember just this white light which is kind of scary when you think about it oh I am dead and I kind of was I kind of just remember the last thing I said was [ __ ] it was pissed me off I mean why you know like the last day of the mission or something I just didn't want to get blown up I mean anyway um so long story short in 2015 I go back and hire a guide and go back to the Hamburger Hill and I climb up to the top and I'm looking all around and they've got it really laid out cool they've built steps up there's a like a little Shack down below where it tells the history of it and of course the Northview you know first liar wins or second liar but they tell how they defeated the enemy you know they defeated us and all which was [ __ ] you know it didn't never happen and so at the top of the hill there's a topa and uh um you know dedicated to their their guys that died up there because they lost a lot of guys and we you know you know we had the third of the 187th I think was that went up there and they lost like 87 I mean it was a hundred guys wound I mean it was it was so bad we didn't get paid for our pay skipped a month because you know the guys that did pay and Grace Graves registration with the same guys so they were backed up from that one you know from Hamburger Hill so I wanted to go up and look around I'm digging around and I find this which is a log that was in a bunker um and I and I just I stuck at my backpack and I thought wow I wonder I'll bet I heard those guys cutting that log you know back then we could have heard them because that's where we think we were hit was on that was somewhere on that Hill I mean it's a kind of a Long Hill and um it's it's fun to go back to those places because you you would never know um you know because the jungle covers everything up fire bases are all covered over I couldn't find Camp Eagle I found the the graveyards that we used to that were close by us but so much except um except the Hamburger Hill they've the enemy is preserved the enemy they're not our enemy the the Vietnamese have preserved that you know as a site you know like they did Denver you go to all these cool places the museums are just um amazing but that was that was that so then I needless to say I was kind of nervous about going out after that mission I was and I went out a couple times and I started overseeing things because I was waiting for the next shoe to drum I'd never been in an ex well it was the second explosion I'd been in um but I'd never been in anything like that before and I so I was probably a little bit freaked out so I thought I would do something uh safe so I started flying belly in the you know which turned out to be not as so safe because we were taking fire all the time what does that mean for folks out there what does it mean to fly belly okay every uh Ranger team lurp team has to have one of their own guys in the helicopter to you know to help them get in and out of the helicopter so you've got all this backpack on and you've got your ammo and your guns and and you've got one guy that like you you had to be recondo trained so you know I qualified you had to be able to put the ropes together and rope ladders McGuire rigs everything in the and that's your job you're in the back the two pilots in the front and the two door Gunners are on the side and so that's when Miller's team was in a they were in the second helicopter that um they went out to pick up Miller's team and I guess they got shot down and they helped the blade went through one of the guys in Miller's team's head of course killed him and so then we fly over and we get shot at um so we I still remember tracers going up you know a little open wind doors open the pressure will go by like that and the chopper goes around and all this stuff and so we came back in and we had to make four separate uh uh um uh extractions trips and so I would throw the because we were coming in because the helicopter had crashed and the guys had to climb up on the crash helicopter to get in so I sort of helped them back the helicopter in I don't know if you know what I mean like sort of like I got out on I threw the rope ladder out and then I climbed down on the skid I climbed out on the skid and I would and I could see the pilot and I could you know hear him talk to him and all that and I would say okay we're all you know I was talking while the door Gunners were watching out to the side and so when that when I came in the we took some fire and I really didn't have my rifle because I'm standing outside the helicopter so I flipped the bird to this North Vietnamese guy that was shooting at us which Miller remembers everybody on the ground was cheering and they thought it was so cool they wanted to see me get shot off of the off of the uh skid would have been really that would that would have made their day but he missed and I went in and I'm joking worse you know and I helped the guys in and I got my I got an air medal with a V for Valor for that mission it sounded pretty dicey I mean like you was it you and Miller were like the last two guys out yeah yeah and you were how and how long were you guys on the ground you two by yourselves waiting for the well Miller was on the ground with another with it with his radio guy and I was still in the helicopter I would take everybody back and then I would come back and helicopter right right but Miller stayed on the ground for like 30 we had to refuel which was scary because all he had was cobras flying above them they could talk to but um you know and then we finally we got out there and I um we couldn't wait to get out I couldn't wait to get it over with and I was I had so much adrenaline pumping and Miller is so light I was on that ladder and I get down and you know the old Huey's from the from the um from the skids to up inside it's it's a job I mean it's a hike I mean it's a I don't know how many feet is a couple of feet and I was so pumped I grabbed Miller by the back of his web gear and Drew him almost out he landed and almost flew out the other side of the helicopter was like so stoked to you know not that it was so strong but I was just you know like all hot hyped up and that by this point you're uh starting to get kind of short too right as far as yeah exactly so I what I did was I started taking radio relay missions and I would do um like I was on ripcord when they got hit and and that was an amazing thing I'd never been around the Infantry and never wanted to be around infantry and again scary because you're sort of trapped on a hill you know I'm used to hiding in the bushes or something or flying away but they had to stay there and fight it was like oh my God when's this night gonna get over with you know it was like freaky but anyway I um then at the end they asked me to go and and recruit guys which I usually do for the actually the better looking guys they ask to go do it so I don't think Miller got asked her lender I know didn't get asked to go do that you know because they wanted you to represent the lurps the Rangers good uh could you tell us a little bit about how like of your your unit and how the war changed during your time there because I remember you writing your book about how your sector your AO like drastically expanded as time went on and that they started like you guys were getting teams were getting inserted sometimes twice a day making you know it sounded like insanity well this was to our our wonderful president Richard Nixon just the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet I still I am not a crook I'm not a group might I remember having a dream one time that I got to go dig up his body and I was going to drag it back anyway that was another story but you know he had said he had ran in the 68 election on um today pull the troops out which he did but when he it was a trick for us it was a trick because all they pulled out all of these companies and they expanded Rao so we ended up having we REO like quadrupled in size I mean they were flying all by the time we'd left in 70 you know they were they were flying you know from oh all over the place in the in i-corp but it they just it the reason why I didn't volunteer to go back uh because as you can see in my I'm sort of got I was sort of going home but we got this young second lieutenant and he um you know just out of jump school and Officer school and all kind of school thing and he goes so he takes me out on uh we go on a Recon helicopter we go out looking for a DZ and I said you mean an LZ sir and he goes no it drops them to DZ and I go why he goes well you're a paratrooper right and I go I am like I jumped out of a plane in two years like we have to jump you want us to jump out of the hell jump out of plane and he goes yeah he had this idea where he was gonna and it was in the ashon valley and he was gonna um they were gonna pin these guys in and then we were gonna jump in and then we would cat and I wouldn't like you know I am getting really short here I think I need to like find another profession you know I don't know what happened to that guy yeah somebody's hunted hunting for medals yeah he was looking you know what he wanted was the jump with the star you know he wanted a combat blast because no one nobody with special forces jumped I mean you could go down to try and jump with them and get your jump your Arvin I mean your yeah your Arvin jump wings but to a combat blast hadn't been since Korea so well you don't you uh a work unit no reason is it a is it a mess they're not gonna do a Mass Attack infantry assault I mean that doesn't mean it's stupid yeah it doesn't make it that's what I mean I thought where are they getting these guys because this guy was cuckoo you know it's like this is not our t-o-n-e not our our our our mission you know our mission is to go out with five six guys and find enemy and tell the other guys tell the good guys where the bad guys are not you know it's not Normandy we're not jumping you know so they took they sent to you on the uh Barry Sadler recruitment drive for a little bit yeah yeah I went back and recruited guys and I would at first I couldn't get anybody to go because I thought I was trying to you know I was what's called being profiling I was like yeah I was Mr Man you know had all the double double um 101st patches on my shoulders and recondo school and had my body count rope and my NVA belt buckle and I thought surely these guys will see me and immediately go boy I want to be just like you instead it was like they couldn't wait to get out of that tent you know I say what we're doing and then finally I would start telling this story about uh I I got a map of i-core and I said look you know you guys are infantry I'm gonna tell you the story was told to me you know you're going north you're going to be out either on an infantry company and you'll be out could be for a month at a time could be six week whatever it is or you might get lucky and be on a Firebase you think you're lucky but let me see this map and I'd hold up the map and I go I could buy this map on the black market so every NVA Commander has the same map and so I said look what the lurks do is we go out where the enemies we think are they don't know where we are they don't know we're coming so they don't see us and we're trying to find them so think about it this way it's safer behind the lines than it is in front of them and three hands went up and then the next time I got and then four hands went up I got 26 guys and refilled you know because it had to be all volunteer in our in our Ranger unit and I refilled it before I left I was real proud of that that I got you know figured I could sell then I could be a Salesman later in life or something so tell us about when uh when you finally uh finish your tour in Vietnam and you know getting on your freedom bird the fight did I talk about the fight I got in no no uh the fight with the guy on the plane yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I seem to always get into or start fight yeah fight okay so I got in a fight anyway so we're getting ready to go and this guy was bragging about killing killing the gooks and he was talking about he was a bus driver he ran him over he was bragging about how many people he'd ran over and and so I'm sitting on this plane and I could hear the guy talking there's always somebody who's going to listen because if you've got you know 200 guys on the plane coming back from Vietnam 150 of them have never been in the jungle and you know a small number had been in the Infantry and three guys were special for I mean there was like nobody you know not a lot of guys well you know there's always somebody would listen to some [ __ ] guy like that so I'd had enough and the guy sitting next to me was 173rd and I said do you want to go kill him or will you let me and he goes you go kill him first and I'll kill him second so I got and well here's what he did he's at the back of the 707 quick and back then the the seats where the bathroom was wouldn't wouldn't recline and he was like there's the Stuart stewards my seat won't go back my seat won't go back so I went back there and I was so [ __ ] mad I'd never been so mad in my life probably every single thing that had happened had boiled up to them and I reached around and I grabbed this guy and I went inside of his shirt where I could grab his neck it was kind of a heavy set guy and I pulled him up right in my face I said shut up fat [ __ ] I'm gonna cut your throat I mean just pushed him down as hard as I could and then I I come back and I remember walking back in the plane going yeah they were all applauding you know it was it was I kind of marched back with my 101st patches on and sat back down to my seat and that guy never said a word the rest of the we didn't even hear him I don't even was on the plane after that but yeah anyway so when I came back I was I didn't go oh the hippies are make me so sad I feel so uh what I did I was like [ __ ] I had none I just I would um I never had that stuff happen to me just maybe because they wouldn't do it or something but I I just didn't I went back to college and um University of Utah because I was uh non-mormon but I could get I heard I could get laid there so that was like the most important thing oh yeah you remember that store that was another story yeah the PostScript of your book is the stewardess on that airplane on the ride okay so that I should probably say that story because I get back and my friend Dave cranning was also he'd been wounded he'd been shot up so bad he had a battlefield amputation on the battle they thought he was gonna die he's got machine gun through the chest his fingers were blown off he was really in bad bed in shape he came back and um he had a brand new GTO and he let me use it to go down and I my last girlfriend before I left was Sue hog stresser and she was hot and she became the stewardess and I and so I was gonna drive down young and I called her and she was you know gonna meet me and I thought oh my God this is going to be great I'm gonna get laid I'm driving at 110 miles an hour you know down from down it's from Sacramento it's called the winners cut off and I'm going 110 mile and I remember looking up in my rear view mirror and I saw this way in the back like you know just lights flashing like that and back then in 1969 for 70 I guess it used to be it was this was during the summer time and I had on flip-flops you know flip-flop and I'd taken them off so I was driving Barefoot and I heard I remembered it's against the law to drive barefoot so I was reaching underneath as he pulled up behind me and I'm stuck I'm reaching under pulling on my shoes like that so when he came up to the he asked me to open the door and as I opened the door I was met with a 357 right in my face he was just like holding it he pulled me out onto the ground I'm laying around like I just better fit and I was like you know I was like in a Mickey Mouse voice you know I never had a thru I thought I was going to get executed right there what I didn't know was this was 1969 and the the um there's something the Zodiac Killer Zodiac Killer had killed people on this same area and so these cops were not taking any chances and you know then he I had a military ID but I didn't have a driver's license and the car wasn't registered to me I was like and what I did 110 he goes you know you're doing 110 and went like come on trying to go get laid I told him the truth and so he sat in there and he had a brother that was in Vietnam let me go he said just slow it down learn the new rules you know so I always thought like wow it was great but I ended up going to University of Utah and by then I got smarter it was really funny I guess my brain had a chance to mature but suddenly you know I could go to college and then it was you know could pass tests and all that sort of stuff um except the really hard test I did alert mission one time in to get the to get a final that I crawled into this guy's office one night which everybody in the department thought that was the coolest thing that ever had happened because I got all the answers the old-fashioned way right what are they gonna do send me back to Vietnam who gives a [ __ ] but I I got through that and uh I always had I always found a place I'm like the guy that always finds the perfect parking place and the perfect place to live because I drive around and I know I'm going to find it six cents whatever it is and I drove past this I I had graduated in the only degree I could get which was in the department of recreation because they didn't have a lot of reading I mean there was an English attached to it so I had this degree and I went down to take a test and there was I went you know California a Manhattan Beach and there must have been 1200 people and taken for two positions so I knew this wasn't going to happen so I was driving around what am I going to do for a living I went past a brokerage firm and I saw a brand new portion of brand new Mercedes-Benz and were like I could do that whatever that is and went in and the guy said this is 1974 and the market had crashed and everybody lost a lot of money and they hired me I ended up going to work went back to New York went to work for UF Hutton and every move everything I did went up because from 1975 on the market just steadily went up and up and up and up but I would get in arguments with people using Common Sense logic like back then you could get bonds the they were called Big Macs they were the municipal monster for New York City and they were 10 with a 10 yield tax double tax-free and I got a buck a bond which is unheard of and the old Brokers would say don't you realize you're screwing these people and I go I look I was just in New York I looked around everybody had jobs they just built they had just completed the the the towers the Twin Towers this place is humming okay it's not going to happen and I I was right and those bonds everybody made a ton of money so I started thinking this is a piece of cake and everything I did was making money and I thought I'm now going to become a real estate developer so I started building condos in Park City Utah and I at one time I was the biggest um I had the biggest contractor in Summit County we were we built like 160 units down south and blah blah blah blah and I hit the snag where I ended up losing like because it like 27 million dollars or something like that and it was really sad um but I decided I moved back to California after that big loss paid everybody back that I owed money to I came back and I went like what can I do you know um and I had all this experience and I thought I'd I'd uh written in an article I started writing articles and the very first article I wrote became a cover story on pension World magazine I had this knack for writing and I started doing that you know 50 books later when a lot of uh Vietnam veterans came back I mean it wasn't popular to talk about the war and so I'm wondering like when did when did the idea um get into your mind I mean is you and Gary and Ken and all of you wrote about the war I mean what how did that come about for you guys Ken Miller because of Ken Miller it was about 20 years later you know and if you'll see every war the books come out 10 or 15 or 20 years later because people there's there's been a gap now they want to read about it and Miller had written tiger the lerp dog which is our dog and he was and that's how uh he knew the editor at random house and mil and Linder asked me to write about you know I told you about recondo school and capturing the NBA officer so um excuse me so I wrote about 30 pages there was it was single space there was no paragraph breaks or nothing and I sent it back to Linder who had you know grown up with nuns beating his hand so he could spell and write everything perfect you know and he goes it's great but paragraphs don't go on for 20 pages one paragraph okay so I sort of had to learn that on the job too and I remember he goes you know you ought to send this to my publisher so I put 30 pages I hired an Editor to edit for me I sent it to him I sent a FedEx on you know on Wednesday and Friday I get a phone call and my name is Owen Locke I'm with random house and I want to buy your book no negotiation no agent nothing and bang that's awesome yeah it was it was amazing and that's why you know we're sort of clumped together it's because of Miller Miller's contact you know and now people were ready to start talking about the war and talking about these experience well they still I mean I I remember the last uh I did a tour Randolph sent me on a tour and I went around and I spoke at B Dalton said I don't know this wouldn't be Dalton and this guy this young guy goes so are you crazy are you really crazy I mean he was asking all these stupid ridiculous questions and no and then so I have as you can see my sense of humor isn't necessarily for everybody it's good for combat vets but the average civilian is going to get pissed off at me really quick so I'm talking about no I'm telling some story and I admit and I'm talking about these marines this is a true story we were out at out at this dump where we would test for our weapons or shoot rats or whatever the hell we're doing and these marines walked by and they were set up and they were shooting and I made something of I said like yeah that these um Jarhead I said jarheads this woman gets up in the front and she's got my book and throws it at me and goes my husband was a marine and he died in Vietnam and she turned around and marched out and the only thing I could think was to say was I didn't kill him I I'm sorry you know this is just what happened this with combat vets I can make fun of Navy SEALs I can make fun of Air Force para Commandos um because if I'm in that group it's okay but if you're not in the group you better watch out you're going to have a mouthful of fists so it's it's like we you know we get to joke around about I mean you know I'm making light of a lot of stuff because that's probably how I bury things but um you know I feel like I feel like my sense of humor kept me sane in nam and I would be very inappropriate like on One mission it might have been the Asheville Valley Mission we were going out and they were they were there with the talk and they had big Maps set up in this guy from S2 this Captain was shown well there's uh we think there's 15 000 of the fifth NBA regimen up here in the before there's a Recon of 3 000 North Vietnamese coming down here we're going to insert you and I remember raising my hand and this thing is packed we've got helicopter Pilots the two team the teams everybody's there and I raised my hand and goes uh yes Sergeant Chambers and go like should we even bring any food or anything or just like a lot of extra ammo and everybody's going chamber shut up they would get so pissed off because I would say these goofy comments but the way they painted it we weren't coming back so I figured what why bring a bunch of extra stuff if we're only going to go out and get you know shot I don't know and you've made I mean you mentioned that a little bit but you've also went and like spent a lot of time in Cambodia and made numerous trips back to Vietnam what was that sort of like I mean retracing your old Patrols in some instances well I spent a lot of times 10 years in Cambodia so you know I was you know guys will say yeah I did I did three tours in nam I go like well I did 10 years in Cambodia so it's true no I I went back to Vietnam basically on a dare I took my son to Thailand and um we wanted to go surfing and stuff like that and so anyway he was there and he was going back to school and I stayed and I met these women and I was up in Chiang Mai I don't know if you know Thailand but Chiang Mai is Way North it's a beautiful little city and I was thinking I was going to live there this is great I like this and I had no thoughts of ever going back to Vietnam even though it wasn't that far away and I got in this argument with this real super liberal woman who was Canadian and she told me how wrong the war was and how certain things didn't happen and I was like rather than argued with her you know she goes um I didn't and she goes we're so close why don't you go find out for yourself and I went I will so I got a ticket and I flew um I flew to Laos and then from Laos I flew into Hanoi I remember that first night I felt like all right this is 2012 or 11 or something like that and I felt like wow I'm here I'm just no no backup no ammo no gun no anything what if they're gonna recognize me it was just thinking like what if some oh I remember him I shoot him get him you know all these weird things go through your mind and drive into into um Hanoi on a beautiful brand new four-lane highway and I stayed at the at the Hanoi Hilton not the one that's famous but the real Hilton where um bush had stayed when he went when he visited there and they were so nice to me and I got the last room and I'm watching I'm watching television it was the HBO special when McNamara said like six times that was a mistake that we went into Vietnam and this didn't happen that didn't happen and this was wrong I remember throwing the remote control at the television and breaking and I was so pissed off and that sort of started my quest to find out I started What's called the hidden history project and I would go to the archives in um uh in Hanoi where there's there's no internet connection to them there there's just raw stuff and like I showed you this this one picture which is of um Ho Chi Minh is the really the thin guy in the center now to in the rest are all Americans then General [ __ ] is the guy in the white suit right there he was working with the OSS so there's all of these um things in Ho Chi minh's archives that that he wrote about and that all of the letters I saw that was addressed to Truman that Truman never read they were going to open up they wanted to you know give us access to you know hi Fong um see the problem was with the French they had been enslaved by the French and if Roosevelt would have lived just a few more months and Truman wouldn't have been president there would have been Vietnam would have been put in a conservative like a trusteeship like Hong Kong was for 30 years then go back to Vietnam that's what um uh Roosevelt wanted to do he hated the French he that's why you know people forget the Vichy French I mean the French rolled over like incapitulated in about was it a week when they rolled into France well what people don't realize that that Hitler now had access to the second largest Navy in the world which was the French navy and they were everywhere which meant also Vietnam Vietnam was called indu China so people don't realize into China is Vietnam Laos Cambodia and it's and it was all under the Vichy French and they just opened the doors for the Japanese Imperial Army to come in and what the the the Japanese had to deal with the French they said look you keep your jobs and that will free up more men so we go kill Americans so basically the Vichy French were doing all the support stuff and the airports and everything for the Japanese you know people everybody knows about Pearl Harbor December 7th 1940 they don't know about December 8th 250 000 people were killed on December 8th when the the next when The Fleets you know went through the whole rest of Asia killing you know Singapore and Indonesia and you know the Philippines all all through there on the eighth and that that our mod that that that that um uh Fleet came out of Vietnam that that's where it sailed from and those airplanes and I you know and I started reading how Ho Chi Minh had the vietmen had rescued American pilots and he he walked one all the way back you know it took a month to get to to poonan China and what's great is if you get older and you can travel which I live with you I would go and Trace these places I would Trace where Ho Chi Minh went and I would Trace where the the the um osfs were in in China in in cumin China and there's a great big thing and says you know thanks America you know we saved China you never hear that now that's all been like it gets it gets covered over with the new communist government doesn't want to hear a lot about that stuff but it's all out there you know if you visit these museums and so I started finding out more and more stuff and find finding out this history that was sort of hidden from us young guys that that it wasn't that we were fighting the Communists we had inherited this thing because the French said the French name there's no such thing as a Viet Cong you know by the way that's a [ __ ] term that was made up by the French Vietnamese communism but there's no Viet Cong that you know they know you know that's a that's the front when you go to Vietnam and you start looking around you could look at the memorials there's a memorial to the American they call it the Americans War yeah and so that was 10-year war and it's a it's a topa like a you know Shrine little Shrine blah blah and then we go to the French monument and it's this um big great big tree because they fought him for 200 years and of course then you go then my guy goes oh yeah but that's nothing and he takes me to the monument to the war with China which is up on a hill which is this massive great big thing you know they've been fighting them for two thousand years they hated the Chinese yeah they still hate the Chinese you know they tolerate them they would get weapons from but if somebody like I remember reading in the state department in the 40s there was or 50s 60s there was Zero Vietnamese or any anybody of Asian descent that was in the state department if somebody would have came over and just counted the number of cannons that were I saw in this one museum for every you know 10 every 100 years that they fought with the the Chinese they would know that we were never gonna it wasn't backed by China you know all of our Intel all of our information was skewed by the French you know you can read all about that I want to go off onto that topic but that just got me deeper and deeper uh into I wanted to help and so um I I sort of had it was sort of my uh giving back I went into Cambodia and found I showed you that picture earlier I'd found of all of the B-52 strikes I mean this is the photograph I'd showed yeah yeah that so that see is that uh well I get it it's like that so that's anyway it's hard to show that but that's Cambodia we just we dropped more tonnage on Cambodia than any country even during World War II more tonnage wise and and you can and all of this I got this from Yale University but the air force keeps accurate records and so all of those are bomb sorties and and of the I think of the eight 8 500 sorties three thousand of them didn't even have a mission they just went out and dropped bombs and so you know I'm in Cambodia and I'm I've met a lot of people that lost their grandparents that you know B-52s flies so freaking High you don't know it's there until the bomb blows up so you know we and that just pushed all of these young people into Pol pots arms Pol Pot was the crazy guy that thought Mao was the greatest things in sliced bread but he was going to take it to the next level take Cambodia back to year zero so he executed you if you wore glasses if you had an education you know they would if you um didn't if you broke a needle in stitching if you you couldn't have a family picture I mean they literally just just destroyed that culture and of the seven million people probably killed three million either forced labor you know because they they dumped the people out of but on pen and marched them out into the vill out into the farmland and they became farmers and they would do ridiculous things like I saw this one place where they were trying to build a reservoir uphill but they were stupid the people that were running that had no education even now today and I hopefully this doesn't hunting doesn't well he won't care he's the prime minister of Cambodia he's a third graduate education you know people don't they didn't have a lot of Education back then and he fought with olpot and then he went over on the Vietnamese site and came back in and kicked uh the camera Rouge out and then he became the Prime Minister that's 30 years ago and he's still the Prime Minister today but I decided I'm living here I'm going to help these people I've joined the Rotary Club the VFW it's really neat when you're the VFW and your VFW is the the guys the the name of it is the guys that were on that Merchant Marine ship that got blasted after at the end of the war you know so we get to we go to the the embassy and hang out with all these Cool Young you know soldiers and uh marines that are stationed in Phnom Penh and also the uh finding missing soldiers I got to work with the our guys called stone is the um code name for it but the main guy for um uh the fighting and missing soldiers is even a Vietnam is stationed so I got to know him and um what I would do is I'd say look you know I know the way these people think let's give them something so let's give them I did this big painting of the Vietnamese um but when they land when they went through the um the gates in at the end of the war and I thought just give this to them because they give us in Intel on our missing guys we still have 1250 guys missing and I found out all of the original that goes through it to try to find it's amazing the North Vietnamese at 400 000 and all it says on their births on the death certificate location South so yeah nothing so I I even found these they've they're called Corp uh they're they're psychics they're they're corporate they're corpse finders they and they have this psychic thing and some of it works and stuff like that but it's like so bizarre so I I've helped this uh woman who has an organization um to find their their missing soldiers and I found 250 250 graves in Phnom Penh just by talking like this and uh and so one of my friends said I know where there's this grave site that's Chinese but it looks like Vietnamese and we went there and it was all these Vietnamese graves because the Vietnamese lost they lost 86 000 men fighting the camera Rouge after we were gone we know nothing about all these wars that went on and when you go there I mean if if I'm there I'll take you around I'll take you to seeing a rip and there's a museum the best museum there you've ever seen because all the tanks and the artillery pieces were left where the last battle was aimed at each other they're still there it's just it's a it's amazing you know to find that that kind of that kind of stuff that's crazy no no it's this is all like fascinating to hear about um I was wondering if you could also tell us about you know some of your art you know that some of it you can see behind you um if you could tell us how you got into painting and and um you know some of your work is also Vietnam themed well it was a lot of it was actually I did I did this this was this brochure that I made and these are all right I can't hold that how can I handle this straight okay these are all paintings that I did this one let's see which one is it this one this one one first place in the um va's art contest of like 4 500 different va's across the country and I it wasn't even one of my favorites but I I guess what it is was the it captured you know what that guy was going through a moment yeah yeah moment and this is me and the one this is me and tubby Clawson where there was a these would be photographs and then I would paint them so that was that and then I started painting like my girls um like this well it's hard to do this when you're it's reversed yeah everything's reversed but um let's see I saw you some other ones that are I just did this one the other day or a week few weeks ago I like to copy stuff and so that's a Picasso and then there's another one of my I I saw her in downtown um Ho Chi Minh City which is Saigon for those of you that won't call it Ho Chi Minh City and I and we talked about this earlier but that's always been one of my reliefs you know probably read way before I wrote anything about Vietnam but I would paint well it was funny when I finished writing that story or the death in the National Valley I stopped talking about it there was nothing else to talk about it was really weird it was like I got it out of my head and down on paper where it belongs and so you know the way I face my PTSD was like they say bite bite the dog that bit you you know bite the hair on the dog whatever that saying is going back there did more to help my than a thousand therapists because I got to see the Vietnamese as loving real people with loving families and these people treat by the way if you're a veteran Vietnam War and you go to Vietnam you're you're a class higher than any of the tourists they love Americans that come back I mean I've seen Ho Chi minh's body I waited in line and I had me and another veteran were there and I um this little old guy old is my age come up and he had his NVA uniform on and all he wanted to do was shake my hand for coming coming here it was just so moving to to it's still it's still real for a lot of these people you know it'd be like I'm sure the way that civil war must have been you know in America it went on for a long time there was just pain there's still going on well that's still raw there I mean there's still guys are I mean when I first moved to Cambodia we were averaging at least one young kid would get killed a week with a bomb you know picking up a bomb you know something you know it was one a week and now it's it I don't hear that much about it so that's dropped down a lot but you know it a country where it's just scattered not only with bombs at the the uh um bullpots guys left but every time you know I don't know if you've ever seen the what comes out of a B-52 those little the cluster Munitions cluster Munitions they look like balls to play with and they just go everywhere I've got you know you go into Laos and you can go and I went into this Museum where um actually um President Obama had gone into and there's all of these it's it's sad because there's all of these um makeshift like they cut their own foot like they cut the wood thing for their foot if they've got their foot blown off they build their own prosthetic foot or hand or arm you know still I mean that still goes on and you know there's it allow us especially we've still got a lot of I've got a friend over there I get every day I get stuff from him on Facebook and he um we drive motorcycles over there and drive a motorcycle I mean if you want to go down the Ho Chi Minh trail I've got the guy we could go do a tour and it'll blow your mind you'll see because everything's left the way it was like they only a couple years ago they found a giant Chinese tank that that the the Vietnamese were using in Laos and it got covered over like the turret was blown off and then somehow got covered up with dirt and then they were doing a bridge and they uncovered this is complete tank you know with the with the rounds in it and everything still ready to fire I mean that's still you find amazing you know that's going to be gone soon you know for the scrap guys we'll get it but it's still there d uh do we have any uh viewer questions that we can hit up uh yeah I think we have some some viewers got some questions here give me one sec Alejandra again not the Fanboy too much uh but would it be okay if I reach out to you to send me it to send my book to you and get it autographed oh absolutely but what I will request is that you send a return envelope paid for let people do that and I end up spending you know six dollars to send a book that I made 30 cents on but here's my my address is one two five um surfway uh unit 339 Monterey California 9-3 hold on 93 something nine three nine three nine four oh and my email is Larry ellechambers.com that's really nice of you Arie um sure Scott G thank you I wore ten thousands tactical pants doing it job interview and I ended up getting the job there you go good for you ringing endorsement um Alejandro again thank you can you tell the story about the lightning strike oh he did yeah um Joe's by the way I got a purple heart for that lightning strike and Miller was the one that pointed out he said did you ever read your purple heart it's for enemies against America so God is like your enemy I mean Miller would always you know he was the most educated of all of us and he would somehow turn something on us with it uh Joe's thank you was radio Direction finding ever a capability you guys use to locate the enemy no no um no Ralph that might have been later have you used your recon skills in the finance Securities industry if so what techniques were useful and what and was it in an urban environment Urban environment well I was a stockbroker in Salt Lake City but yeah I definitely I actually to brag I opened up more accounts for EF Hutton in one year I've set the record I opened up 300 accounts and what I would do and this is when my partner that started at the same time he opened up 24. but I opened up so many accounts because what I would do is like I'd walk outside and I looked around and I went like wow there's the there's this golden in Salt Lake City there's the temple you know the Mormon Temple but then there's also the um [Music] not the white house but the governor you know the Governor's Mansion or something yeah well yeah for the you know it looks like the White House and I'd look up there and they had a gold it was the top of the building was gold and I went like gold money so I called up the treasurer of the state of Utah and I opened up the account my first um order was like eight million um it was no eight eight hundred thousand dollar bill bonds that I and I wasn't even sure how to buy them but I would like run into my management like I just got this kind of phone and wants to invest eight you know he's going to roll over his mortgage money and we put together a little Bond portfolio but so I would I would do that I would I would make sure because we were yet button and there was Merrill Lynch and we'd start at like um start at five o'clock in the morning I would start at four o'clock in the morning I made sure that nobody was earlier than me this is in my early years when I was starting because I had more time to get on the phone and call people so I would go in at four just as an ego thing I found out that my um I found out that the president of this school I found out I find out what people would make and then I would like well somebody had fired me once and um it was another brokerage firm when I early on when I started and it was because I couldn't pass that test that first test I'd never never taken a business class so I didn't know so I used to every month I would send him my run and I was at one time I was averaging 20 000 a month but one month I made forty thousand dollars this is like 1978 when that was a lot of money for a month and I would I would send in my run and just like just to so I guess I used my ego my ego to to um to make to make myself be the best me I could be I never did anything illegal or wrong or anything like that but I just would push myself push myself because I knew I could take it you know like one time I gave a talk to uh this was at the Santa Barbara writers conference it's the last time they ever inviting me I went and I talked to all of these women that wanted to write Memoirs and I'd written that recondo thing and and I was writing every day because I had two kids to feed and I got up and I said look it's unfair because you can't compete against me I've got to make a living I'm not doing this because I've got some extra time and I want to like write something right you know I'm doing this because I got two kids to feed an ex-wife and probably soon to be another ex-wife I've got to pay I got a lot to do and that's the attitude you've got to take with writing and I just would send stuff out to anybody and there's oh you're not supposed to send it to the editor I'd call the guy up he's just a guy or a woman hi it's Larry Chambers I got an article and I figured out I would I would give them the article free and I'd have some corporate like you have sponsor I had sponsors that would pay me so I didn't need money from the magazine so pretty soon I'm writing I was writing three um uh three columns a month and two books a year three sometimes three books a year and I did that for years so you know I guess that's how I use it I just use my tenacity and you know what I always would remember is standing there getting that that that that um that air metal depend on my chest I was so proud of that and when I do that I would like get into a stance and I could just go all day long I don't need drugs I don't need anything you know I don't need to drink I just would just on pure like Pride or I don't know the way to explain it but I didn't use I didn't sneak around and steal stuff you know to get if that was what the guy was wondering I didn't do that I just used tenacity tenacity it would be the word I would say um one more scotchy when you were attending University of Utah what was your opinion of the economics classes slash professors and any Marxist economics they taught you since you planned I didn't I didn't take any economic classes I took I was a ski instructor back then I graduated from I went I became a ski instructor and I taught at Alta and I got certified at Alf England which is the hardest ski school in Utah I mean there's the best of the best and so I taught for the University of Utah and I combined that I sort of made after I got my first my bachelor's because I'd already graduated from Junior College before I went in the Army then I came got the bachelor's and then I got a master's degree and I used the skiing as a part of a part of that remember I told you I was dyslexic in add so I avoided anything now now what's to tell something on myself the first book I read I probably wasn't it was Catcher in the Rye and I was probably 30 years old when I read a whole book a whole novel all the way through it was the first book I'd ever read because I just avoided reading I was so bad at it so dyslexic I couldn't read and you know so I like cheated most of my way through Grammar School you know that how they were going to put me back in the third grade but I remember I learned how to forge my mother's signature and I took the note home and said no he needs he's going to go on you know and I just would cheat but I nobody knew I was undiagnosed nobody knew what that stuff was yeah yeah or how to how to deal with it all right last one Mike thank you uh thank you gentlemen for hosting another or another extraordinary man who did extraordinary things for our country thank you Mike thank you for those kind words yeah uh no I feel the same way Larry I mean thank you again for doing this and I really hope that folks out there will read his uh I mean you have as you said lots of folks out there some of them are about Finance uh tonight we were talking about recondo and the other book Larry wrote uh death in a Shaw Valley um are definitely going to be of interest to our viewers I plowed through this book in a couple days I really hope you guys will check it out um Larry uh his his YouTube his um website you'll be able to find it just down below in the description to this uh video or podcast if that's how you're listening to it uh Larry any final thoughts anything else that I failed to cover that you want to get out there well yeah this is this is for Lego like for vets I mean one of the things that I've done is I went in Cambodia I found a woman that had five young daughters and I've supported I she she'd understand I remember telling her you're not going to understand you know I I don't want anything from you I want to help your family and I I've sent them through school I pay for food Lodge where they live for meals for their clothes I've done that for 10 years and I've had some people help me excuse me along the way but I sort of indirect or directly adopted this to my family and I have to tell you for a veteran I have so much meaning in my life because that's what they say you know what what makes you for you know I'm 75 years old I'm happy as [ __ ] and I've got two great kids that are adult children Logan and Kristen um in America but I've got all of these people that I've helped in Cambodia and I just feel proud of that you know not like I owe the Vietnam what Vietnam did to me it's so I suggest you know going and taking on a mission something like in in in in our motto in rotary is service above self and that's what it I get so much more out of helping somebody else than my dumb [ __ ] stuff it's it's been really interesting to see a lot of the Afghanistan veterans helping out Afghan immigrants in the aftermath of the war and yeah and helping them come here and settle down and it's been interesting to see all of that the like the the guy that wrote about this early on was um uh you know the real it was he was in a in a concentration camp and he he saw that the the two there was two groups of people that made it the ones that were super religious so they held on their religion which I'm not in that group but the other one was they created a sense of meaning that's why you'll always hear you know their adamant about the Holocaust and about what happened they will you they're not going to ever let that die because that gives them purpose and meaning in their life and that's what those guys helping the Afghanistan vets are trying to get somebody all that stuff that just that gives you like a goal a tangible goal to reach and do that's good and you know you feel good about you I mean what a great feeling you know Larry thank you again so much man and uh next uh coming up uh this week we're gonna have uh two shows actually we're going to have on the 24th Alex Hollings uh is a former Marine and he writes for a lot of Aviation stuff a lot of Aerospace news uh and then on Friday uh episode 88 Mark denbaugh uh who is a lawyer who represents uh one of the inmates down in Guantanamo Bay um so we're going to have him in studio it's going to be an interesting episode um different perspective than what we usually get around here uh so yeah Larry I mean this has been amazing thank you so much man and um you know please stay in touch let us know if we can help in any way yeah you bet well thank you it's been fun absolutely all right we will see all you guys next Friday or actually before that we'll see you with Alex first and then on Friday okay

Channel: The Team House

Views: 342,757

Keywords: Special Operations, Covert ops, Espionage, Jack Murphy green beret, The team house, jsoc, delta force, special forces, the unit, cia, covert ops, dictators

Id: _rH5Wj_qPqM

Length: 112min 15sec (6735 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 21 2023