SOGCast 003: We Few, and Whispers In The Tall Grass. With Nick Brokhausen

[Music] welcome to sodcast number three my name is john striker meyer today we are joined by our guest a fellow sog recon man nick brockhausen nick welcome to the show thank you tucker glad to be here indeed so this would be one of our more uh definitely uh informative as well as entertaining uh interviews we've been looking forward to it for a while anyways i like to start off with the reading from the first of nick's three books and again these are books that are not only are they well written but they document our song missions during your tour of duty and what was the total time at ccn nick for the second and third tours uh i think it was like 17 months you know on the ground on the ground yes and so for we had the secret war for eight years we had uh by 1970 we had three operational bases one down south the ccs one at ccc contoum and then ccn north at danae and you landed there in the fall of 1970. yeah and so um the first book i'm going to go to steps we refer to it as i was sentenced there in the fall of seven indeed so the first book that nick has written that came out years ago has been reprinted thankfully and it is we few again excellent tight writing stories about the missions and also there's a lot of um reflections about the unique relationship between green berets and the indigenous troops they work with in this case your brew on that team rt habu right i like that it's got a rhyme the brew from rt okay we can make a good rap song out of that we could do that the second book we have whispers in the tall grass which is also available both are available on amazon and another read that continues on with more stories later into the tour of duty and so today we will be focusing on these forks the stories the man behind them the unique personality and fortunately for our readers that like the first two books we have a third book that is in the process of being produced vagabonds tourists in the heart of darkness darkness and that's just the perfect uh headline for another book that will go into missions that you ran and stories it's it's basically the adventures i had with two or three of my other friends from special forces for 40 years after after we left the service but before there were contractors there were vagabonds people that went out there and basically built the industry indeed that uh you know that later became you know blackweiser and all the other companies indeed indeed so um in we few one of the uh uh one of many compelling stories here but there's one mission where your team is getting inserted into the dmz if i can interject something please and stay close to the mic most people don't understand i did not write this these books as a great american novel and they aren't it's not an archival it's not something that you know somebody's gonna go look up and for research for their phd i wrote these books as a catharsis i was uh going to a difficult time in my life i went back to to basically spend time with the guy i'd spent the two years running recon with and during that time i wrote these two books and i wrote them as a tribute to the people that i knew in that outfit and the people that had gone before me and came after me for that select group of men that was all they were written for what wasn't really written for the general public i'm pleased that the general public finds them entertaining or or informative but the books are really written for for my peers and i'm the highest accolade i can get is from somebody who actually ran recon and goes wow you're a man you're spot on that's that's better than getting the pulitzer prize i know the feeling and and as a peer uh nick arrived at ccn after i left a few months later all that bad [ __ ] happened after he left indeed indeed and as a peer uh fellow recon guy this book is amazing each book is uh one i've gone back to reread because they're not only is it re written well but the stories are compelling and the way you articulate the relationship with the men you serve with from the special forces side but even more detailed information i've seen anywhere on the relationship between a green beret and his indigenous troops oh yeah it was just outstanding and so i wanted to start off with uh one of the chapters from we few where on this mission rt habu is going into the dmz and could you uh just lay out because on a team and this team was just the two americans you and mac and explain who mack is and the one zero one one and then how many little people you had and when we say little people we say that with the term of endearment great endearment indeed or talked about our indigenous people that in your case you're brew in in fact i mean like that the brew team leader had been fighting the communists for nine years nine straight years they butchered his family you know he and he hated the communists and and he was uh while he was subordinate to our command he was also a mentor to us on teaching us you know survival skills uh combat skills and how to operate working with with the brew and that he was actually i think the closest thing you could call it would be like a a war chief in uh in one of the plains tribes like the crow the dog soldiers or something like that you know he basically was the most effective combat leader amongst the brew and was treated as such and we treated him like that but he uh he a lot of times would give us advice you know like one time when he was always amused about the fact that we always made captain manus very angry and captain maintenance was the ceo of a recon company of ccn at that time and i remember one time he was chewing he was chewing us out mac and i he goes oh number 10. all time make captain made buku angry and he pointed at his testicles and he said this is not the thinking organ civil philosophy what was the profound wisdom oh yeah you know and we a lot of times we got that i mean we had well not to get too far afield that's okay the the monyards are very special people they were essentially an iron age tribal unit and there were oh god i used to have a great book and somebody stole it from me and if you're out there i'm going to eventually remember who you are and it was all the ethnic groups of vietnam it's about that thick you know you know army field manual with the vanilla cover you know and and it outlined every tribe what their marriage ceremonies were like what the the taboos were uh how they were marked what kind of clothing they were i mean all that but the the mountain yards were the hilltop mountain yard means mountain people been in french and they were they were considered by the vietnamese both the north and the south to be less than than human and they did their dead level like a monyard in the south vietnamese army couldn't be an officer they could be ncos but they couldn't be an officer they could be an officer in the north vietnamese army but not nassau but both sides tried to eradicate them as a people both before before the war and after the war you know the they they were the people that north vietnamese used yellow rain on you know and nerve gas and tried to eradicate the people of the highlands so but they were very special to us they were absolutely excellent fighters the finest you could find totally fearless and totally fair well when you when you say fearless most of us that are combat veterans know that term is overused right you know it's controlling your fears you know could they control their fear better than most people yes yes no more accurate i say i like that yeah so on this mission you still haven't explained who mac is okay so mclaughlin was the 1-0 the 1-0 is a recon team leader when when when snake adams went home and danzer took over habu as the 1-0 the very next mission they ran was the recovery for doc watson and baby son lloyd to try and get their bodies back in that and after that was over horton who had been wounded really bad there was uh danzer horton and mack and i think jimmy johnson was still on the team of that so he was like the one three or one four and when they went in to get doc watson and baby son lloyd they they found the bodies hanging in the trees where the strings had separated right they looked like they were asleep they were only about 20 yards out yeah that was the mission where the chop was extracting right had the had the sf men hanging from the ropes sami hernandez uh right his rope broke he fell he's the only one that survived only want to survive he was knocked on conscious separated shoulder as the helicopter further lifted out it was hit with something it turned around and crashed into the granite space or a mountain killing everybody right and this is where habu went in for a bright light which is a mission to recover down teams or in this case bodies right so after they ran that mission mack took over as the 1-0 or the recon team leader and i became the one one now there were there were two other guys that were in the interim there there was a guy named steve hank and steve i'm sorry i didn't put you in the books you should have been in there and uh and a guy named ken holmes that were also on hubbu at that time ken eventually went up to become an ast right of at the top and was one of the best they had up there absolutely yeah but uh habu essentially then became cored out with uh lemuel mcglothrin mini mac or the combat pygmy and cookie robert cook and myself and the three of us ran the longest time together sure mac was the the team leader mac's job was to have the radio the radio stayed with him so we could talk to covey my job was to fight the team as a unit between cook and i we we basically fought the team as a unit yeah and then mack took care of the radio because i have a tendency when i'm hyperventilating to stutter on the radio and cooks from georgia and you know how they are nobody can understand them so on this particular mission uh the first helicopter goes in matt gets off and as your helicopter you're on the second helicopter as it's descending um reading from the book now we view we aren't even on short final when i hear the pilot screaming abort abort i look down where mac landed and gets sick to my stomach he's lying on his back and right next to him is the trapped door to a bunker concealed right at the crest of the trail he has fallen on it and plugged the door there are two nva trying to crawl out of a side entrance and the yards shoot them worse yet i can see about 15 other likely bunkers up slope on the opposite side i am standing on the skid and i feel the ship start to gain power i instinctually know that they are going to abort and pull up which will leave mack with too few men to save himself i slammed the barrel of my car 15 in the back of the pilot's head and his helmet and i scream into the mic put this [ __ ] bird down where he is now he chops power other words he reduces power we slam into the slope we all jump in our throne clear i land heavily when i hit the ground my ears feel like i just ripped them off i still feel the headset when i jumped the bird screams loudly as it winds up and is gone immediately i get the yards in some sort of fighting perimeter where we can at least hold on or fight our way to better ground i run up in a crotch and max says why did you land i told them to abort he did there are bunkers all over the hill to our right and eight of us can fight a lot harder than five i yell back he grabs the radio handset go tie in the team and let me bring in some air in this case bringing tactical air i work my way down slope where i see zompot team member stand up and fire methodically he slants he fires like he is on the rifle range he is standing upright just like we did at the range it is almost amusing because he looks like a poster child for the nra i think he's shooting at nothing he is new on the team and this is his first mission i yell at bob and tua to see what he's firing at a grenade goes off over by where tua is and he yells at the team because he thinks one of the team has thrown it and it fell short i've run over to where a zop pod is and down the trail i see the crumpled bodies of three nva with a whole shitload of canteens on bamboo poles lying amongst their bodies they had just walked up the trail he just stood up yelled something like hey and dropped all three that's pretty good discipline or he just got lucky we are starting to take ground fire now and the tempo is picking up i run back up slope well i trudge up slope-like i use the team to tie in closer and i am working my way back up to where mac is beside the bunker nearby i can see a group of nva and green khakis break from cover by some rocks to his left front they start to try to flank him cumin and bong drop all of them who make it to a small wash below mac cumin throws a grenade down into just as a thick grenade comes lofting out of the wash lands where mac is and explodes i hear max scream god damn it that's just unbelievable well how did mac do with that well you know let me start with dm10 indeed dm10 is demilitarized zone number 10 target and it's the the terrain is an old caldera like the inside of a crater with the overgrown brush on the top and a trail that ran down to the center of it we knew there was a division plus in that area and what i didn't know at the time but mac knew and he didn't want to inform me because he knows that i have delicate feelings was that they were inserting two other teams to try and the whole the whole concept would basically stir them up till they get up on the radio and they start talking so they can rdf them call back to guam roll out the b-52s they get a pedicure on the way over and found the place in the snot and and there were air packages that were prepared for the other two teams that were on the outside and adjacent to our no bomb box of six by six i didn't know this at the time which is why when the cavalry showed up we had everything we had a1es we had fast movers we had the choppers you know every i think i even saw air nook mom go by but there was a lot of air available to us that day and our our mission was to go in and basically try and stir them up get get them up out of the hole we knew that they and we went in at pot time every day in in vietnam between such such an hour and such september time it's like siesta time in mexico so they they were part time we landed right in the middle of their nook mom lunch and all hell broke loose because when they came in mack bailed out on the right hand side and he hit the the opening to the bunker and it caved in underneath him so he's laying on his back like a ninja turtle scrambling around and i didn't know it but he had told the the left abort abort abort because he realized there was no reason to bring more people in there we're all going to die well he's on the ground with three people not five himself and two other yards and i had myself in four yards on my chopper so you know there was no time to explain to the to the pilot that who by the way i met later years later and he goes oh yeah i remember you you're the crazy son but stuck a gun in the back of my head wow i shoved a gun there was no way to to get the immediacy across to him i had to threaten him so i stuck the gun in the back of his helmet atlanta chopper now and the reason was it was getting ready to turn very bad and mack and the other two yards were dead unless we got on the ground so we got on the ground and you know it just uh when i said it was park time everybody was awake five minutes later and shooting at us you know i remember looking up it when you look at the terrain there this it's a huge just imagine a crater wall that's been eroded and and the center cone has been eroded and where we were was in that center cone and that's where there was like within 20 meters there were four bunkers all of them manned by nba and on the slopes where everybody woke up there must easily another 100 150 just on that one side that suddenly woke up and started shooting at us then they they couldn't get at us because we got into a gully and we finally rolled down into that because we were taking fire from everywhere we rolled down into this gully and they started organizing so they could mass on us because they know if they don't mass on us the air force is going to come and blow everything into smithereens so the whole idea is get on top of you grab you by the belt buckle and and stay with them so about that time you know we were they they came up they started throwing grenades uphill at us and one of the grenades went off right next to where mac was well i'm trying to tie in the team and get a i can't do anything on the ground the guy who's killed more people in this world is the guy who invented hit the dirt because you can't see anything from the dirt you've got to get up and move if you can't get up shoot move and communicate your debt so i'm up doing what i'm supposed to do which is fight the team and i go back up and i'm going oh my god it landed right where mac was so i i went up to check on him and he's got the handset cupped in his hand like this he's leaning against his rucksack and he's got his pants down and he's handling his junk and i'm thinking to myself you know this is the coolest son of a [ __ ] in the world we're in the middle of firefight and he's masturbating [Laughter] well what had happened the grenade had gone up and it nicked him on the inside of his thigh right next to his junk and that and he was just checking to make sure the equipment was there didn't want any brain damage yeah no brain damage yeah right yeah so he's he looks at me like you know what are you looking at and covey keeps calling you know calling us saying where do you want to you know where do you want us to lay it in and that and i took the handset away from him i said you'll have to give him a minute because uh my 1-0 is busy fondling himself and i think he may be masturbating so and dick cheney was that was the uh was the the covey and he's going well we'll take that into account put him back on the line so it was a bad target a lot of a lot of bad people oh yeah let me just go because this this is the next couple of progress you're still there we both look up slope to our east and the platoon we had driven to ground has been joined by about 10 more stallard lads and is getting ready to assault us the yards are dropping them like they were ducks in a shooting gallery but the small arms fire isn't slacking off at all we are getting heavy fire from both sides now and i can count at least six bunker openings and with muzzle flashes some of them are only 40 yards away mother mcrae this is bad bad bad we are tucked into a wars so he can't really get at us but if they can lay enough fire on us they will be able to keep our heads down then they will hit us with the b-40s and brushes that will be the end of rt hibou the end of my dreams of becoming president and any dreams i have of ever becoming a porno star mack yells at me the guns are on the way the slicks are about 10 minutes out hang on oh no red ryder i think i will just give up maybe they won't put me in a tiger cage with someone who was more interested in his future as a breeding stud crump the high explosives go off west about 50 meters oh great someone brought a mortar to the party how novel now we are all really [ __ ] they can reach us into ours with that i'm trying to figure out some great tactical wizardry that will allow me to get out of this alive but all i can come up with is becoming invisible i look over at the torrent bodies of the two nva we shot coming in i am wondering if i can fit into one of the uniforms i did and slip away into the crowd i'm wondering i remember reading how some planesmen had escaped from a war party of sue by crawling inside a dead horse carcass and concealing himself i look around nope there aren't any horse carcasses here but there are plenty of pissed off indians and they are starting to get organized i hear the unmistakable of a minigun and the slope in front of me erupts causing bunches of the green khaki tribe go down rockets a 40 mike mike start hitting the slope to the rear i have my irkten emergency radio and i can hear covey talking to another ship that has been hit and gone down the crew was out and slicks from the package are dropping in to pick them up the cobras bank up and to the right and a pair of spads come in guns chewing up the real estate get down nape mack yells i didn't see the canister drop but then a ruling fire storm erupts in front of us and envelops any of the survivors of the assault force who were splashing into the bunkers there is a blast of heat behind me and i can hear someone screaming it is too far away to be one of us fry you little ricey net napalm sucks oxygen out of the area making it hard to breathe i don't notice because when i'm scared shitless i have a tendency to hyperventilate so oxygen isn't yet a problem the mortar has stopped maybe we got lucky very lucky incredible writing too well what but most people don't understand i mean it sounds like some action movie but people don't understand the concentrations that the north vietnamese had in the demilitarized zone at that time they were moving division south and they had base camps they had bunker systems they had refit facilities i mean all and our job was to find them we had to you know our specific mission we were trying to find a pipeline that they were supplying their tanks because they were seeing we were seeing t-54 tanks south of the demilitarized zone and early 71 then yeah wow yeah there was uh you know the the the soviet tank normally carries a 55 gallon drum on the back actually they're 44 gallon drums that are on the back two of them for spare fuel supply and they also used the diesel fuel they injected on top of the heads and create a smoke screen using the exhaust and that but none of the tanks were showing up with those extra fuel tanks on the back so they had to be getting fuel from somewhere if they weren't bringing it down by the trucks then we had to figure out how they were getting the fuel and that's when we eventually stumbled onto the pipeline that they had run from actually there were three of three pipelines three already all in the dmz uh they came came one skirted over through laos and came down into the amazing one yeah one came down to the dmz and i think one of them really went way around and down south and actually entered almost just above where ccc's northern boundary was for their okay but the the reason we were there was basically that you're doing in recon find out what the other guy is up to we knew there was high concentrations in there but when you read that particular chapter it sounds like you know we there's thousands of people again and says well the north vietnamese are like the germans in world war ii you beat the snot out of them and then sit down to reload they're gonna come back with a counter counter-attack and that's just what they did as soon as we hit them and we landed in the middle of their nook mom party they got they got organized immediately and started putting maneuver troops on us from out of those bunker systems and what i found out later was all the air that had been laid on by papi boudreau and and the other people the launch site was actually in preparation because they figured we were going to get our titner ringer and we were going to need all the air support that we had which is the key note of this chapter is basically the use of combined arms which is something that we developed in vietnam and still used today air power and overwhelming technology makes up it's a force multiplier you can use a small group of people to do more than a division can do you know and eventually the projects we we made the north vietnamese redirect 50 000 troops just to take care of us that's 50 000 troops that weren't fighting our troops on the battlefield and weren't invading this out they were there specifically to protect their logistical lines from a mall and the night visitors which would be us indeed but very it was a tough that was a tough target and i ran dm-10 four times four times four times and almost a fuel line no no and anytime it was a major headquarter i mean that that whole wall nor north and eastern wall was nothing but bunkers and tunnel systems and everything i mean i don't think anybody really got in there and did a survey of it unless you know the cubans snuck in there looking for porno magazines he might have gone through the times but it was a real uh developed complex they had storage caves they had uh bunker systems for and they had a major uh coaxial cable that was uh connecting everything and had any aircraft everywhere 37 millimeter 57 millimeter laid down all the 12.5 all protecting that area it's a key area obviously we wanted to know what was going on in it so we we went in dm10 dm9 and i think dm6 was just above that those three targets i ran dm 10 four times and my cumulative time on the ground was less than three hours oh my god and everyone was like this a lot every one of them i mean this was the worst one was the one with mac but yeah i mean i remember one time he got him our total time on the ground was like 16 minutes and by the time 16 minutes were up i had expended half the ammunition i had taken in with me did you ever find any the fuel line i i think i think it was jesse campbell and keith larson and uh mcdowell mcdowell was jesse the one zero with idaho yeah yeah i think i think they were the ones that that found the pipeline the first time i had to give jesse a call yeah yeah the thing with jesse is don't talk to him on the radio because it takes them a while to explain what's going on but he gets the job done eventually yeah well in the second book there's a chapter about uh called the night before christmas and we will get to that shortly about him and larson and mcdonald but like another aspect of we few your first book uh i want to get back to the story because one of the things you capture here is the action and the sense of of what it's like to be on the ground and then you throw in a couple of your little twists your little editorials of what you're thinking while on the ground while under fire and finally like you said for those four times during that target you're only there for three hours and in this case your first time in mac the one zero tells you hey the birds are on the way so you're checking things out and you're going to be out in the first slick so i'll take it from here in the book the first slick comes in slams down about 10 yards from me i run toward it and start throwing little people on board i'm about to dive in when it is suddenly up and gone i stand there momentarily with feelings of despair betrayal and a big oh [ __ ] however i haven't got time for hurt feelings i have to get back to where mac is or they will leave me here and all these pissed off people will blame me for ruining their lunch hour i run over to mack and the second bird slams into the ground almost on top of us we dive inside cumin lands on top of me and we start to lift the door gunners on both sides are burning their guns out on full auto and they have plenty to shoot at the nva are trying to get right on top of us because the guns and the spads are killing everything except what is about 20 yards from the chopper we are on you can feel the rounds hitting the chopper a staccato metal thunk thunk thunk from where i am lying on the floor i can see an nva officer running at us with a pistol and yelling at his men [ __ ] this boy must have watched too many war movies i wonder how he can run that far that fast having such big balls i just don't know how he did it i can't get my gun up because i'm half lying on it so i just pull the trigger and let it rip we are lifting and i can't see if i got him a grenade flies in matt kicks it and it rumbles out the side of the bird another grenade bounces off the gunner's helmet and falls out the gunner swats at his face with one hand like he's shooing away some nasty bug but keeps burning up the gun with one long continuous burst the engines are screaming up to full power and i can see rounds chewing up the overhead and inside the bird then we are up and away there is another sudden rush of hot air from ordnance going off real close and the chopper jumps up from the concussion but we are still gaining altitude pulling free and getting some sky getting up and beyond the 12.5 millimeters and all those other weapons trying to pull us back down yeah just another dance sock well i mean you know it sounds like it's unique but it's not yeah i mean i mean you ran missions the same way you know you you know the the idea that you have an overview of everything that's going on in combat that's [ __ ] you see what's in your immediate vicinity and then talking to others you eventually put together the whole picture in that but most of what i remember that target is confusion fear anger and uh and it was a lot it was a lot i saw like i said when i said weird they were rushing us when that nba officer came up he had about eight guys with him that that were still standing the the door gunners had chopped up the formation that he was leading in that but uh he had about eight guys still with him and then to this day i admire his his courage oh yeah he stood there like with that maricopa pistol and was firing at us and i think he's the one that threw the grenade that mack kicked out yeah i mean that the guy was hard charger man he was uh and i did my gun was laying underneath me so i just reached down with my thumb it was like sticking out in front of my face like that it was pointing at him so i just pulled the trigger bad move because i couldn't hear [ __ ] afterwards right now the gun in that and i think cooman may have nailed him you know he was right next to me and i heard him firing but uh the guy to this day hey here's to you nugent i hope you made it indeed you certainly deserved it well at that point in the early time at ccn you were still carrying a car for a car 15 before you transfer it over to an rpd later in your time right to do what you're carrying a car 15 later months later i never transferred to the rpd we had an rpd and on a team on the team okay i wasn't sure that's why let's saw it off our rpd what's that little conniving cuban stripped all the parts out there and then we got to get the conniving cube in a little ink here that's bob castillo from uh at that time rt idaho also yeah a real troublemaker well you know what a hell of a real team had a certain ambiance in the criminal side they did yeah everybody had different weapons and that and i love to ask for you go up there and go i want a swedish cave with a silencer i'd give you one i want six thompsons and a case of 45 ammunition because i'm feeling a little belligerent today i want to go to the rain you got it yeah but we had the rpd and the rpd was great sawed off it slowed down the cyclic rate of fire a bit because when you you cut it off just ahead of the gas port and uh but it produces a gout of blue-green plasma out the end of it that scares the [ __ ] out of everybody especially at night but the problem with the rpd was links because the our rpd uses a a canadian continuous belt it's hooked see the m60 and the 242 they used a disintegrating link in other words that when the round is fed into the chamber right and it ejects that link is thrown out and you can put a belt together by putting those little links together but with the the rpd was like the german they had the half moon um link right and then you just slid the shelves in and they were hard to get so everybody carried something to put your used belts in as you used them up i kept a claymore bag that would broken out on on the side so i could shove the used links in there and i carried the rpd on specific targets okay we were doing a bright light right i carried the rpd we needed the firepower no food no water no food no water you're gonna you're not gonna need that you're not gonna be here long enough for that just one survival ration usually a pir that you kept in the inner thigh pocket to keep it hot right yeah and water but none of the extra rations you're going in you want every grenade and every round of ammunition you can get so i carried when i carried the rpd i also carry the car 15 at the same time is that right i carried the rpd and i had one two three three fully round loaded drums on me hanging on me and one in the gun and one in the gun and then i carried a car 15 slung in the back and uh ak vests with six magazines on it 30 round magazines because eventually gonna run out of ammo enough because everybody on the team carried an extra belt for that machine gun right so i had on the ground somewhere around 1500 rounds belted up if i needed them oh yeah but and i had another you know what uh six six times 30 180 rounds for the car car 15. i i switched from the car because uh somebody stole my sawed-off shotgun i i taught myself how to load the rpd with one hand reloaded and i needed something other than a pistol to protect myself when i was doing that so i had gotten a an old coach gun 12 gauge double barrel right and the filipinos up there sawed it off and made up like extension for your wrist and that's it took the shock up and i kept that in a slide holster behind my back and i carried 25 rounds of shotgun for it uh somebody most of them double up buck and slug right yeah because if you needed if while you're changing magazines you have somebody runs up on you gotta have something to defend yourself i actually ended up taking the the 12 gauge shells apart and instead of putting double up buck in there i started putting um either nickels or this or the 10 10 dong piece right the brass ten dong piece actually held together really well when you fired it and if in inside eight feet it would cut a man in half i know that for a fact yeah yeah it will kill a man and cut him in half one barrel wow so different weapons for different missions yeah well i want to go to your second book for a couple more chapters here and the second book of course we're talking about whispers in the tall grass chapter five twas the night before christmas oh yeah so set us up a little bit about uh what the night before chris what the mission was right and then how jesse campbell's uh enters into your into your experience there first of all i want everybody to know that i no longer correspond with any of the people in that team i don't hang out with them they don't come to my my family affairs and most of them are still down south all right rt idaho good team uh jesse campbell was the uh 1-0 at the time 1-0 i think mcdowell was a 1-1 now george mcdowell if you can imagine somebody who has all the temperament of a gut shot wolverine and a stick of dynamite pretty good description of him if he's not breaking something he's destroying something punching somebody out really good recon guy yeah keith larson who's uh from my home state of minnesota um a really really nice guy another good recon man and i think um mariano or raimonde one of the two was on there and anyway they're they get the mission to go out there and uh it's ecstatic they're gonna sit on top of the hill and become a carbuncle in uh north vietnamese supply chain get there they gotta eventually mass on them run them off so they're on top of this hill they they get set up to go in they naped it they prepped it with the guns they realized when they got on the top that there was there had been a major unit there it hadn't been a couple of trail watchers because they found 20 or 30 bodies on the top of the hill and they were all dressed in the same uniform had the same markings and that so they they knew that they had they'd hit the gold mine so to speak now where they were at you could see a major trail connection for the ho chi minh trail going uh i think it's highway 91 east of the ashow in that area there and they were moving troops down right so they get up there they get set up and they they end up calling what we call a world series a world series is a emergency radio call to to let everybody in the command know i have more than a regiment in the open as a target bring me help so they they called the world series there was the entire north vietnamese regiment moving down this trail system and on top of that was a special group that were all dressed in gray fatigues and that were obviously caucasians no kidding the either east germans or cubans or russians or what because uh the north vietnamese there's a lot of north uh uh east germans and russians and cubans as their advisors for their anti-aircraft and chinese and chinese well chinese are in everything yeah they uh but they there was one special group that was moving down in the open where they could see them that had great fatigues on and don audi murphy was flying covey to understand murphy one needs to dig deep into the dark side murphy's up there flying around his motorized sports car and that you know and he's directing air strikes for him and about the time they get going and they're starting to really lay in air strikes on this regiment in the open out of the woods trundles of t-54 tank which was part of the reason we were looking for pipelines was that tank had no spare tanks on it right it had no 55 gallon drums on the back of it it was and it was obviously far enough down they were getting fuel for somewhere and they destroyed that tank with with air strikes and then of course danang interrupts in the middle of everything to tell them that they want the team to go down there and get some pieces off that tank pieces pieces you know get the gun sites you know get us something to bring back that we can brag to the girls in the club i guess you know and of course you know mcdowell's trying to suppress jesse's uh you know tell jesse to do something it gets done you know so he didn't want to go down the valley and the yards are all going we go to the tank we know come back we we we died down there so they scratched going down to the tank and getting souvenirs for it and they they worked that perfectly one one of the problems had when they went in there was a 12.7 machine gun below the slope from them that was chewing up the aircraft coming in to resupply them so they decided to get rid of it with hand grenades so keith is crawling down closer to the edge trying to throw hand grenades over the edge and knock out this heavy machine gun and it hits a tree and bounces back in front of mcdowell's position then crawls over to him to explain to him the idea of grenades is to kill the enemy not the team this is called combat counseling but yeah really good mission uh they came back for now they were still all juiced up when they got back to da nang and that we were sitting in a club well actually they started in the club and then somebody told them i'd made a beer run and i had three cases of bomby bomb my hooch so they ended up in my hooch for the and after after the war celebration yes indeed and i got the whole story and i i put it in that chapter excellent excellent mission by by rt idaho yeah and keith larson jesse and i were like tilt tonight we're still friends to this day indeed because we we've got pictures of each other in a hotel room with chickens [Laughter] and then moving along chapter five there's this is the one when i read it i had never heard anything like it ghost uh ghosts or is that the one or windows in the past windows in the past yeah with the little people and the snakes oh yeah uh we got lucky mack and i we we first of all there there's dry holes which i know only saw once and that was this particular mission where you go in and you don't get any contact it's it's like a three-day walk through through the woods yeah and uh we got we drew this target it was on the northwestern edge of of the of the dm going up where it climbs up into ocean plateau and uh we went in we were they wanted they just wanted to find out what was in the area because that the last after action report had been from 1967. somebody had been in that and this is like in 70 71. yeah yeah so we we draw the mission and we get up there and boudreau had been a 1-0 who he was a launch side nco he had been a 1-0 when that mission had gotten run in 67 no is that right yeah but he wasn't on the team but he remembered that but he had the area on the ground and he's giving us a hard time here yeah you know the last people were in there you know they came out with their tail between their legs you know wild stories and all this so mac and i get geared up we get get inserted and nothing there's we found some tracks found uh mostly barefoot you know no sandals no ho chi minh sandals with truck tires on the bottom no bata boot these were barefoot natives so they they had to be yards so and the yards are all spooky they're like jittery you know you know something's going on and you know they finally get over by by uh cumin with mac and mac goes uh like what's going on and come and go ush number ten snake people bad peoples bad peoples yard no like tahan no like uh and we're going uh okay so i had to go back and check the team and as i wandered to the back and ran into bond the shaman and he's the same way he's like looking around he's a lot more composed than the rest of them but he's sitting there and i go uh bong what are the snake people and he goes don't say their name oh why is that yeah yeah so i'm starting to think of all these bats i i think they're headhunters because some of the brew and some of the sedan had not been headhunters that long ago you know back 10 15 years before that they were still taking heads is that right oh yeah well yeah okay yeah um and i think the jurai would like that so i'm thinking they're headhunters yeah okay but the yards are spooked and we don't see any mba and i asked bong i said how come no nba here and he says snake people snake people nba no come here nba no come here snake people bad people you know and you keep hearing it bad people number ten and when we we had found this cave that we were going up we're winding our way up to this cut notch up to the plateau and it was in the one wall of the of the gorge and it was probably 20 meters wide maybe 10 meters deep and at the back of it was just it was all overgrown inside with moss and and mildew and [ __ ] like that there was a bunch of poles arranged and there was uh like that there was the head of a bear a skull of a bear that was all covered over with mold and there was a set of what looked like aviator goggles hanging from a center pole and some other pieces of equipment and bones that look like human bones so and that's really freaked out the arts oh [ __ ] number two i started to go in and take a look at it and cooma grabbed me like i was holding me back from the edge of a clip no no no number 10 number 10. so i pulled back and said well you know whatever it is let's keep moving so we move back up the the gorge we get on top maybe a half a mile from from where we found the cave and we found the remains of an old prop driven fighter aircraft found an engine and then part of the rear part of it and then the actual fuselage with the cockpit in it was separate had separated from one wing and i'm up inside of it you know most of our fighter aircraft under the pilot seat is a survival kit that has like a silence 22 and they got emergency rations and there's a you know medical kit and gold in the form of chains or and why was that so i'm looking for that stack i'm underneath up underneath there and i don't i find a bunch of crumpled papers it looked like it was a map and a journal and that and no gold but laying on the between the runners and that is as a classmate and it says langley on it well langley is the official knife maker for the french army it means bumblebee and that the little back of the knife on the back strap is a picture of a bumblebee so i dug it out of there and i stuck it in my pocket i still have it to this day somewhere you know but uh you know and every time i feel bad that i've had bad luck bad women bad whiskey i blame it on the knife and the bad luck radee you know we we we found this old french aircraft we figured out we found part of a parachute and a shoe a little further from the airplane we figured the guy bailed out and the thing bellied in on the plane of jars up there and uh they the bad peoples got him and either killed him or come across his body and they put the remains in that cave and that so we're we're finally when we find the aircraft they tell us already get ready to be extracted and then direct us to an lz and that when we get to the lz and we get set up all the way there the yards are jumpy you know you've never seen that before no neverland you don't see that kind of hinkiness yeah the the mountain yards i mean they could go on the ground and dracula could be there and they wouldn't give a damn yeah but whatever it was with smoke spooking them in that we get to the lz and we you know get set up and we're lifting off as we're lifting off i look back down on the lz and there's two mountain yards primitives they're still wearing loincloths you know one one of them's armed with a crossbow with the you know the little uh quiver and all that the other guy was carrying a mat 49 french submachine gun circuit in the 1950s and they had tattoos around their eyes and that you know like like the the sedan sometimes tattooed themselves like that and then when we got back bong the shaman uh because i had seen him and he had been with me when i seen him i had to go for a cleansing where he took me down into the yard oh yeah took me down to yard hut and they were burning monkey balls and hair or something and waving it around me you know put pennies on my back you know and chanting some sort of [ __ ] and that and mac was could i couldn't go i wanted to go downtown and no no no we got to fix your spirit so that th the bad peoples don't take your spirit and hold it now you'll have to stay here and you'll have to drink this horrible concoction and get smoked shoved up your ass meanwhile cookie and them are heading down to the pink house and i don't want to go so they're uh they're getting ready to leave and they go you're going to leave me here like this and they go yeah you know it's your fault you saw him said really watch this i turned the bong and i said i saw mack talking to those to the bad people and he gave him every mountain yard name that ended their trip to the pink house they're sitting with me suffering through the oh you got to be cleansed [Music] now we're really weird target very very strange i mean uh obviously they were a mountain yard tribe but the other martin yards didn't trade with them they didn't intermarry with them and they were all afraid of and the north vietnamese were afraid of them too yeah how many areas and around anywhere in southeast asia that the nva didn't go i can only remember one other place over on the east coast in the dm where another small splinter group in that there were the same oh these were real tall mountain yards wherever they came from you know probably harlem you know but they uh but the only two places i remember in vietnam totaled that where there was we didn't operate in there and the north vietnamese didn't operate in there for some reason we didn't operate in there because there's nobody to go after right you know and the nba didn't operate in there i guess because they sent somebody in there and they disappeared and they figured well we just won't go through there again yeah very very strange target indeed and then um i want to go back to your first book just a little bit here because um for the indictment indeed but the um get bear with me a second here because your first mission that for you is your first time on the ground with the team and you're going into the target there's firefights and in your mind it's just like um this is a pretty bad target then at the end of it they uh oh yeah they explained to you that this is just this is an easy one and then the other part two is like i want to get back a little bit to your unique relationship with your your captain because you're told that this is a volunteer operation and so you finally after you go through your briefing and the train you get your briefing i guess did you get your c your cnc briefing after you arrived that denying oh yeah yeah the train was basically you went through there that was headquarters right right and then you went to whatever project you'd been sentenced to and you when you got there you got briefed by you know you get you i remember the day we arrived you go up to the headquarters up at the headshed and they process in all your paperwork you get to meet the sergeant major for the project and you know the colonel gives you a little raw rod talk and then you get sent to either the hatchet company or s4 hickory the combo section or recon right depending on which one you've been assigned to and then my first meeting with captain manus was when i arrived down in recon company right and so this is like what's it's funny but it also gives you a little bit of flavor of some of the characters that you're with there and captain manus well you got to remember that manus was a prior nco indeed who had learned gone to school learned not to scratch his nuts with the salad fork and they made him an officer indeed right so but he's i mean if you can imagine a square face bullnecked blonde hair you know combat soldier you know and he'd been a senior nco before and then got a commission to be a captain is there a ghost in the house no no and so he you know he he was in charge of recon company and it was like uh jedi related or are you going to well i i like to get into the book because some of the language in it was just so funny as so you're you've arrived at ccn and they tell you to go down to the recon company area and as we walk up to the early room and getting back to the book we view dragging our bags with us our god draws something about waiting outside in the shade until the company commander has a chance to talk with us he sticks his head in the door and says something to those inside he suddenly jerks himself out of the way just as the door bursts open and a body flies out landing in front of us the man begins to pick himself up then falls back face first in the sand he then manages to help himself up and staggers off towards the back of the company area we stare at the retreating form wondering what this is all about and then our heads swing up as the door opens a second time i'm sorry i is this is another little insight yeah so a short squat blonde captain is standing in the doorway with his fist balled up without blinking an eye he surveys us he looks around as if expecting the body that had preceded him to still be there he has all the charm of a bouncer at an orphanage he sticks out his jaw apparently in an attempt to punctuate his next statement but it fails to delineate if this troll actually has a neck he takes a breath and starts in welcome to recon company i'm captain manus but you may call me sir or [ __ ] sir or just hide when you think i'm looking for you i will be assigning you to a team just as soon as i can because we need warm bodies this is a volunteer organization if at any time you feel that you can't hack it all you have to do is come in here and tell me you're the sergeant major and we will reassign you somewhere else gentlemen this is real important so i hope you have been picking your ears instead of your ass if you're too shaky to do this job you don't need to be out there where you can get someone else killed he pauses which is good because i'm trying to figure if this is actually a human being he gulps a breath his mouth settles into some sort of grimace that slashes across the square features like a watermark and continues this is the extent of the briefing welcoming speech and pre-dark pep talk are there any questions if there are there better not be stupid questions because questions and answers time cuts into my leisure activities so at this point you're saying i look at the sand and then he turns to you and you've got a question so what was your question well first of all you got to understand larry the way you're describing the way this guy in the book you don't get the full of that okay when larry talks you can call me sir you can call me [ __ ] sir or you can just [ __ ] hide when i'm looking for you you know and he's got this no neck and i'm sitting there i know what the squat breads all about and i immediately suspected that he was former nco yeah yeah i mean there's a you know the polish is not there this is not a you know a military academy project or a product this is right out of the ranks so i asked him i said uh so uh this is a voluntary outfit uh what was wrong with that guy he wanted to quit so why why why why did he want to quit because he's a [ __ ] and i said but i thought it was a voluntary outfit he said well let me what's your name i said brock out he said well listen broken trout yeah you're obviously some kind of barracks room lawyer or you've got you know some sort of you know hidden agenda in that i'm gonna put you on rt habu you know where you can be another burden to society and maybe between the three of you you can actually be a real team so that's how i got assigned uh rt hubba right down in there so when i showed up in the hooch oh yeah jimmy johnson and mac are in there and they're they're they're cleaning their guns when i walked in the door shut the door we don't want the sunlight in here why dracula in here with you what and they're cleaning their guns and they go mac looks at me and goes let me guess you've run into captain maintenance and you had a discussion with him and then he assigned you to us i go that's exactly what happened he said well you either annoyed him or he sent you over here to see if you know he can make we can make something out of you and that that's how i ended up and then castro came in right after that yeah castillo comes in and fishes a beer out of the refrigerator and that mac was sitting there cleaning the silence 22 and shoots the beer can and it starts peeing all over the place and that and castro never even breaks breaks stride he goes well that's that's real good if you have anything of value make sure these two don't get their hands on it because they'll bubblify it but that was that was my introduction to habu indeed welcome to the team jimmy johnson and uh and mclaughlin well they must have signed you because he figured that you had you were going to add some kind of intelligence and in fact i think maynard said that that'll make the collective iq in that hooch 3. yeah larry's and i still love the man indeed well that people don't understand i mean the officers that we had you know people read the book and they think that we're you know we're a bunch of disorganized disrespectful you know [Music] you know out of control troops in that well we had a lot of respect for our officers because they they were victims in our own little demise and that you know i mean there were fellow travelers in that and they were worse than us they had some captain come in one time hey i think he was with the marical division or something when he got there he'd read klaus wits and you know and knew all the arts of war and then by god he was gonna straighten out recon company and get us back in uniform make us act like an army unit and that unfortunately he did this at the officers club and manus uh see manus i think taylor was there messenger was there and i think lightning wonderlick was there they decided to save his life so they got him drunk and they took him down to the to the mountain yard [ __ ] you know that the the toilets with the 55 gallon drums they duct taped them and it stuck him inside underneath one of the holes and by by morning he was a babbling idiot you know they they they had uh he'd gone completely nuts had a nervous breakdown and all that and somebody asked uh manuscript why'd you do that well we didn't do it probably one of the ncos did that yeah right right you guys did it to save his life because we would have committed homicide on him we didn't suffer fools but at the same time we had a lot of respect for our officers the good ones particularly the good ones yeah and then i i think the entire time i was there i mean in recon company i can't think of one officer that was was was a worthless piece of [ __ ] and every single one of them was a good combat officer and probably because of manus or see who was there kimmel remember kimmel yes larry kept that larry larry who the colonel complained because he said that we laid around drunk all the time so that he wanted recon to run pt no so the last day that larry is in command a recon company before he leaves he leads recon company on the run around the perimeter road yeah leading recon company wearing nothing but his boots and a cigar recon never ran again that was the end of that yo he eventually became a colonel larry oh yeah he was you know hunter liggett yeah he was the commander of hunter liggett he was also he told me he was the chief ranger at in the grand canyon so i i mean i don't know i mean i call up his office and everything i said i'd like to speak to the head ranger uh who are you i'm a friend of his who do you think is the chief friend well you know larry kimmel you mean the grounds manager for the north rim oh yeah oh and it turned out it was his boss who was the head ranger a woman oh no it was actually yeah and i i got on the phone with her and there now larry never answers the phone right 20 minutes after i had that conversation with that woman he was on the phone don't ever call my office again don't ever talk to anybody do tell uh good good good people though beaurey uh gary robb oh yeah but he was the second lieutenant he was washing the jeep i had stolen the night right before right yeah yeah yeah and of course he stayed in and rose to a two-star gym i think he was a three-star i think he got out as a three-star that does it too trust me there was another guy who was uh was an nco and became a a major general in the marine corps allen or something like that sam hong he ran out of ccc oh yeah yeah and uh he rose high in the ranks of the marine corps yeah and he was a general and i don't remember that yes he was and then um well eldon was a staff sergeant well we were e4s together for b1 in the early days look at look at mo elmore you know the half-assed decent staff sergeant and then he became a colonel well we'll get back to a little bit of action here uh regarding your very first mission where um you just got on the team you did your training you get to go order they change things around max the one zero you're the one one and they did a multiple team insertion or at least they wanted to appear that way and then you guys get into the target and then uh after the insertion uh you guys are on the ground first night you set up an ron right and then you're on the ground for a while and uh i think the next day is when you begin to make enemy contact yeah well the other teams got in they inserted three teams all at once which is all at once which is a no no i mean obviously it was fumbai because uh pappy boudreau would never do that up there out of quality right that would dover in that crowd but uh they put us in we were at the far far end we were the last team that went in and the next morning the other team started getting rolled up one right after the other and we got we got hit last and it was uh i mean suddenly we had people all over us coming from everywhere and uh the reason that the whole thing boils down to this we were fighting for what i thought was our lives that it was desperate situation and uh you know the yards were performing perfectly i was doing what i had to do and it was the first time that mack and i had actually been in combat together so it was a kind of a the bulk and mind meld between the two of us and we got done with the thing and uh max telling me says well that worked out good so what do you mean worked out good we were alive but i didn't think we accomplished anything he said no there was a this was training this is a chance for the mountain yards to see how well you operated under uh under stress before we get a tough target well i'm looking to think i mean i'm i was down when we pulled out i think i had like three magazines left and i normally carried up a load of anywhere between i carried six 30 round magazines and back then you had 30 rounds we didn't have those luxuries yeah we got them because castillo the cat that the cuban the cuban found a source for that and we stole that source away from them and then we ended up with a truckload of the things that everybody had enough they were making them you know the filipino marmers are making them up and uh making 30 and 40 round magazines up at the s4 was that right and they worked pretty good the even the 40 round the 41 round would jam yeah i mean i give it i've never used it for a long push for a spring yeah but in this particular mission was basically i thought it was a tough mission and uh mac just basically said no you did well the yards like you they think you're number one they like the fact you have dialogue when you're screaming and you know you're in it's like getting getting elected to boys club but that was that was a tough mission i thought and it soon proved that looking back on it now was a cakewalk by comparison i mean out after i did my first bright light right that that's when i realized that this [ __ ] could get real serious real quick so your first bright light was how many missions into into your time with mac with uh habu at that time i think the third or fourth i said what was the bright light for specifically uh i went in to get a team was shot up you know the the 1-0 was shot up the 1-1 i think it's covered in there as blue eyes the where the chopper went down the one zero was thrown into the river when the chopper went down the one one was shot up real bad and we went in to find out the 1-0 and and the crew and when we got there the the chopper had burned and one the door gunner all i remember about him he had really brilliant blue eyes and that was the only thing that was unmarked on him he was completely charred up burned right down to the bones and he oh when i was went to check him out he opened his eyes and no more eyelids he'd you know they would just burp crust there and he opened his eyes and looked at me and it freaked me out and i went to give him a give him a morphine right just kill him you know because there's nothing there to save and then max stop me says save it we may need the morphine later there's there's nothing there he doesn't even feel pain anymore it's all gone and that uh sometimes i close my eyes i can still see that guy you know but that was the worst thing about going in on aircraft was especially if they burn oh yes it's horrible bad bad scene but that that was the first bright light with blue eyes i think first yeah pretty sure that was the first one yes according to the book yeah that was that was the one that was west west of da nang because we launched out of uh out of off the the psp strip there right there yeah yeah so it's one of the lower targets in the prairie fire yeah i mean it was funny you know they would fubio was always getting sucked in right otherwise and that and then they'd run things out of da nang because you could still get out in the ao and and a lot of times they fubai was in transition over something the only salon site that ran like clockwork was quantrie and that was because papi boudreaux was up there nobody messed with pappy oh who's gonna mess with the buffalo yeah yeah major slatten was in charge and the medic and boudreau were giving him some kind of pharmaceutical cocktail he didn't even know what century was in here signed these papers sir yeah i'm running this place ever sure you are but pappy wouldn't let you go in if he didn't have enough helicopters to get you out he wouldn't put yet but bottom line fubai they'd put three teams in and only have enough choppers and air support to get one up and that's that's when and most of the uh the bright lights the hairy ones we ran we're out of fubai or one of their one of their boxes and that yeah and that after that first mission i realized after the first bright light that that first mission really was a cakewalk by comparison because bright light will tighten your ass up yeah and again you'll go in heavy like you said with the rpd with your car 15 strapped to your back and then the early days you had your shotgun sawed off to somebody stole it i would have taken in a mini nuke if i thought i'd get away with it i'm just you know that you're going in you're going to shoot your way in grab up all the survivors and shoot your way back to the helicopters hopefully intact and get out that's bright light and it's s hopefully gathering up all the dead bodies and then i never i think i did went on one bright light where nobody was there there's a lot of dead people right we picked up a flight crew that was i mean no they hadn't booby-trapped the place they hadn't uh set up an ambush waiting for us to come back they just killed them and left but usually there was lots of people there and they were using any survivors as bait to try and kill more of you indeed yes um i'd like to just go back at the very beginning of your book you talk a little bit about the formation of where this all began and uh the uh what you talked about earlier but the the writing here captures some of the history and the let's like take a few paragraphs and get into that for a little bit more reflection after this if you don't mind yeah this book is is first of two detailing the actions and experiences of a small group of americans and their indigenous allies who were the backbone of ground reconnaissance to the republic of vietnam during the war the unit that's described here was part of mac visage military assistance command studies and observations group or just sog in the eight years that it existed the small recon companies that were the center of its activities conducted some of the most dangerous and daring missions of the war originally conceived as a unit capable of infiltrating the heart of the area controlled by the north vietnamese in both laos and vietnam it expanded its reach to north vietnam cambodia and a few other places best left unmentioned during that time companies never exceeded more than 30 americans yet they were the best source for the enemy's disposition and were key to us military being able to take the war to the enemy through the air and on the ground this was accomplished by utilizing new and innovative technology but also heavily relied on the ability of the individual team members being able to use tactics as old as those from the french and indian wars in that process this small unit racked up one of the most impressive records of awards for valor of any unit in the history united states army it came at a terrible price however the number of wounded and killed in action resulted in the computation of a life expectancy that was measured in a matter of a few months those missions today seem suicidal in 1970 they seemed equally so yet these men went out day after day with their indigenous allies consisting of montana tribesmen vietnamese and chinese nuns and faced the challenges with courage and resolve after the fall of the republic of vietnam the indigenous survivors faced persecution and in some cases wholesale execution today the montana minority is still being persecuted by the central government as their traditional life is being robbed along with the resources of their homelands in the mountains of vietnam and laos in the end the communist regimes seem determined to wipe out these amazing people and that's just a little bit of a commentary but first it goes back to us an aspect of the war of the little people we left behind and just how courageous they were and what today is is you have some reflections back on those times with those people and i know we've had some mountain yard communities that are have been able to flourish in north carolina pennsylvania and i think there's one in in minnesota i'm not sure about that one the one in minnesota is also among not just uh mountain yard but it's mon hmong also okay and the two guys that run save the dega people right get all the kudos in the world those guys have done a magnificent job over the years actually bringing the survivors and establishing communities here in the united states and and the communities have prospered uh their children have gone to college uh they as diverse they become doctors lawyers they own their own furniture companies one of them's actually a 747 pilot one of the children and have a green beret and yeah and uh and they've they become part of the fabric of our country and we just they deserve to be you know the yards gave everything to our effort the yards stayed loyal to us the yards i i had mountain yards lay on top of me to keep me from being hit again when you go through something like that that's a bond with the people that you don't forget like i always tell people i wear this bracelet because i will be brew until the day i die and i am and most of guys i know we we have an undying love for those people and would you know would do anything for them and they in turn remain loyal to us what was unique about the unitoid was some of the numbers in the eight to nine years that from 1964 to 1973 basically that the unit existed uh well even when the unit ended it still existed right it still existed but they you know something like 8 600 people served in it as ground combat operations that's not the action trash the s4 the shoe clerks down in the triangle but the guys who actually ran the missions and that eight years was something like around six or seven thousand and only eighteen hundred of us survived the war 1800 out of that number survived the war give you an idea of the casualty i didn't know anybody i think i knew one guy that never got wounded everybody else had wounded one two three times most of us would not even write it up because you'd always getting bomb trash and shrapnel and stuff and that you know unless you're like chaffey and you know you got nine purple hearts because you're right up every single time you got scratched you know or like carry he's another one yes yeah but you know the most guys didn't go after most guys weren't uh metal hunters what we called them you know there's a few i know one guy that actually wrote up his silver star citation before he got on the helicopter oh my god but it was i mean it was if you read the after-action reports from the mission before that and he did all those things and did him again which would have been qualified for valor and you know a valorous gallon award and that was silverstar so he wrote up the silverstar there's a strange guy though indeed most of the time like with matt mack wrote me up for two bronze stars and a silver star i never got the silver star because uh when they closed the project out it was still pending and the c-21 that was carrying all the records back flew into the side of a mountain down near natrang murphy actually ran the the bright light on the plane crash was that right yeah he said there was paperwork scattered all up in the trees and that so they just naped the entire area and scorched it to the ground in that and mack and cook tried to submit a later one i said hey give it up man i know what i did and it wasn't that heroic and if you're trying to get me an award i suspect you're up to something so i didn't bother with it but you've got a lot of guys that have gone back and you know tried to check their awards update there's a certain class of those people now that are trying to i got a silver star but i'm not happy with that i should have a medal of honor yeah and it just cheapens the award you got a silver star be happy with that you earned that silver star you're home now you're home now you know you don't earn you don't deserve a dlc you don't deserve a medal of honor be happy with what you got and the fact that you got peers that love and respect you up to this point yeah this is the vital part of the conversation but anyways um i want to get back mentioned their first book we few the second book whispers in the tall grass and these are excellent they're well written the story is about sog recon one of our finest teams and but also written with a style and panas that is second to none um tell us a little bit about what we're going to get in the near future sir if you got a little extra time here talk about your third book and uh um i just the vagabonds took my glasses off here taurus into the heart of darkness details my time as an exotic dancer in the philippines that's when you surrendered your dream of being a porn star that would be the one okay vagabonds was a collective effort between myself then a gentleman named jeff miller jeff miller and i met after vietnam and we're in the 10th special forces group together and then which was a sign where at the time at fort devins massachusetts and our swan song was the uh was the uh iran hostage raid you know we both got out at the same time after the second one collapsed really oh we were both both of us were involved in the first one on the peripheral and then on the second one i was going in with one of the assault teams and miller was was actually on the first one he handled moving all those ch-53s around so the russians wouldn't find out what we were doing that's how they ended up with the sea stallions instead of the jolly greens the jolly greens have the filters that keep the dust out of the engines the sea stallions didn't which was a major failure oh yeah but it was all done to keep the russians from telling the iranians they're coming you know so but when we got out we formed a friendship that's lasted 50 some years and we we were doing things that eventually developed into the contractor industry in those days she go found somebody convinced him that he needed something and then showed up at his doorstep as the answer to his problem and we we did a lot of that we did kidnap recoveries in the middle east in chechnya in in mexico colombia we did we trained police forces in the united states under the international association of chiefs police swat seminars we did training for foreign countries like taiwan korea uh colombia brazil um a couple other places that's not unmentioned to train special groups you know police and or or military um what else should we do computers verify well let's just get people to convert will will your book be available for a pre-order yeah it's available now you can it's on amazon please tell us so vagabonds is on amazon now is on amazon you can pre-order all right and um any as we get down here at the end any last closing thoughts anything you want to add or something we should cover just it's your time give me a moment i'll give you two moments if you like now i pleased to be here i'm glad you guys had me and there's so much to talk about with special projects indeed because special projects is the backbone of what we have now the things that we did that we conceived and then good and that we nurtured and handed off to the next generation is what makes special operations so good today because we imbued in them not only the technical aspects but the fact that you have to be a bit of a of a of a bastard child in order to survive in this business and that that was the one thing that i felt very proud of was the fact that group has always neutered that up until recently when when all the carpet baggers and when they made when they made it a branch right that's what ruined it because now then officer could come in and stay in and stay in the branch before you were an infantry officer artillery officer chemical officer you came to special forces you punched your ticket you moved on and then you came back after you made feel great today they they grow up and i think in a bubble but the teams are the same i've talked to a lot of enlisted men over the years and that in different places one thing that holds true no matter how dark the night no matter how dangerous the mission if you show up at an mss full of special forces with purloined booze and stakes you're welcome with open arms as if you're a relative and if you have ammo you get extra points indeed and and and it's true at the team level today we've had the honor of meeting some of these team members at different groups in recent months and uh the young men that wear the funny looking hat that keeps neither the rain nor the sun out of your eyes um are the highest quality perhaps a little bit better than we were in our day now they're smarter better educated no i promised you i would never tell this indeed you promised but now we're on live i ran into the team sergeant and the team when i was selling armored cars over in iraq who had found hussey and usai's private car collection and they were selling them through the kurds back into germany and like that they were taking the money and using it to pay their intel contacts and the reason they were doing that was because when they got money from the from the military a bunch of mucks up there at mi and that and over at the post office in langley when they get money from them they had to write down who they gave it to what the address was what was for in that and they were getting their all their they weren't getting info anymore because the the opposition was killing them up because they had the phones tapped or they knew some state department guy or they were sleeping with some state department guy and got the information so that innovativeness was still there indeed they took that money for the sale of those cars and they were paying their their agents in hard cash and take one dime for themselves and take one dime to buy one case of booze or anything like that everything went back into the op fun and for that i feel extremely proud to know those guys indeed i promised i wouldn't tell i can give up your names john yes we will but not today we'll come back for a second session on the names to be given up well nick thanks for joining us today and again uh the three books are amazing reading um just go to nick brockhausen and amazon.com and take a look at the book and there's many stories in there we just scratched the surface as jocko would say on this busy day and we thank you for joining us so at this point i want to thank jaco for having us do podcast number three today and have an outstanding guest like this we have more coming up soon and uh as we close out we want to thank today's service members our first responders every everybody who's on the front lines particularly with these times with the virus and um anybody in between firefighters and if i forget anybody nick who do you think well that thought will close and we'll be back and ships at sea ships at sea indeed thank you and until next time god bless god bless america

Channel: Jocko Podcast

Views: 205,862

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

Id: PHSGiYOTlL0

Length: 97min 2sec (5822 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 08 2022