Jocko Podcast 459: No Matter What Happens, Keep Moving Forward. SOG Warrior "Dynamite" Dick Thompson

this is Joo podcast number 459 with Eko Charles and me Joo willink good evening Eko good evening every time I led my team on a mission it was a kill or be killed event each time hundreds sometimes thousands of people would die it was not about Rules of Engagement was this person an enemy does this person have a weapon is this person about to kill me or the many other questions and rules today special operators might have to deal with SOG Rules of Engagement were very simple everyone was the enemy the enemy had to be

terminated or you would be and if the enemy caught you the United States government would deny any involvement with you or what you were doing you had no protection under the Geneva Convention you were a spy you were on your own the death rate for SOG operators was high after five months in SOG I had lost 16 friends teammates there were many other SOG operators killed in action and Mission and action that I did not know personally being a SOG operator was not conducive to longterm survival at this point in SOG I had been hit

with shrapnel on six missions splattered with small amounts of Napalm twice shot three times with an AK-47 in the radio on my back hit by a large piece of shrapnel in my URC 10 survival radio on my chest suffered two concussions and survived a fixed wi aircraft cash Crash Landing site and eight Prairie Fire emergencies but I was alive and that right there is exer from the preface to a incredible book called s code name Dynamite book two by Special Forces officer and SOG warrior Henry dick Thomson dick Thompson has been on this podcast before

episodes 204 205 206 401 he's been on the sog cast with John Striker Meyer he's written eight books and we've covered two of them on this podcast the first one being the stress effect on episode 206 and we covered SOG code name Dynamite book one on episode 401 and those are certainly well worth listening to but for this new book it is an honor to have this Special Operations Legend back with us again to discuss this book dick thanks for joining us again thanks for the opportunity to come back so very excited about this one

the the door is always open for the sog Warriors as Eko was just saying before we hit record we the door is always open for the so Warriors it's been a little over a year since you were last on uh when did the when did you release this book this new one it came out uh earlier in the year yeah I think it was it was several months ago it came out how's the response been to the the new book very good yeah it's doing doing well so how long did it take you to write

this one um well I wrote I wrote book one and two as a book to start with and then it was so long I went back and cut it in half and then you know some uh some tweaks to it because it was an individual book to start with like that um I guess all together it took a good three years to do this and and part of that was uh there are sections in here where I had to you know sometimes stop and say I I need a break for a week or two before

I I go back in there because every time when you're working on on it you're going back into the jungle and you know your heart rat's up and you know you're experiencing everything um John Striker Meer and I were talking one day and I about one of his books and and I told him I said til you got to understand that you know when a SOG guy reads A SOG book it's not just words we hear everything all the sounds all the SM everything is there we can't read it without hearing that and I saw

a a meme somebody posted not long ago of a of a Huey helicopter and I what the guy was talking about was you cannot see this picture without hearing it when you see that picture you hear that helicopter everything in there uh I hear feel taste smell um so sometimes had to take a break and then come back to it one of the things before we hit record you were talking about and it's it's in that's in the book is this progression that you're making as you're going on operation after operation after operation after operation

after operation and you're starting to get a a wider aperture of what you're seeing you're starting to understand it better I know the first free fall parachute jump I ever did felt like it was 4 seconds long you know you're what and the only thing you see is is your altimeter and and maybe you know your rip cord and then as you do more and more parachute jumps it's longer and longer and you see you know you actually see that there's a horizon and you see that there's an aircraft you see there's other parachute jumpers

so I imagine you're feeling that and that's what that's what I started feeling in the book as you're just starting to be much more aware of what's Happening much more aware of what the enemy is doing and then you talk about making changes to the way you guys are operating based on that yeah when when you first go out on a combat Mission and you know people start shooting at you um your stress level skyrockets and everything becomes very focused uh on where they are and what you're doing uh but as you continue to go

out you start to see more and more of the battle space and what's going on you start to hear things you didn't hear the first time uh and in in the book you can see when uh it dawned on me one day I don't like the fact that they're shooting at us with a RPD machine gun but that's information if they have an RPD that's giving me more information about how large the force is uh that we're up against I hear two of them this time there are a lot of people out there now if

they have two machine guns coming and they're moving if they're moving where are they going and now I'm beginning to sense a wider battle space the movement of the Enemy Inside the battle space what they're trying to do and across time I started thinking wait a minute they're trying to force me to go to where they want me to go so they can Ambush me or keep me away from The Landing zone why don't I do that to them I know the terrain I memorize it before I go out I can see you know that

map in in my my mind uh there are places I can cause them to move to that makes them a better Target when I bring bring in the close air support so why don't I start maneuvering them because they will react to the way I go uh they have trackers out you know firing individual shots or clacking uh bamboo together to try to get us to go I'll just let my team continue to move this way I'll just fall back and I'll wait on this guy and when that tracker gets close I'll take my 22

pistol with the integrated silencer and I'll silence him and you know so I can start doing those things to them and you know it's a it's not just me having to go out there and have them pounce on us I I can pounce back yeah if if I play the cards right yeah and again in the book you kind of see this transition book one to book two and it's also not only the awareness of the battle space the enemy but also a hyper sensitive awareness of yourself and what the stress is doing to you

what your reaction what time is what time is doing in your head as these things are unfolding so you end up being this sort of hyper aware enlightened human being out there on this on this battlefield and it's pretty awesome to see and awesome to be able to learn from it yeah it it as you start to become more self-aware of what's happening with you you can become you know more effective Warrior but then to go to the next level is becoming more aware of what the enemy is doing and realizing some of the things

you see them doing every time you're in contact they're doing because they're human I'm not just shooting animals I'm shooting at humans humans have a reaction to being in combat there's certain things they do and you know I you'll see in the book one of the things I I told my guys I said you watch when we initially engage if they die behind a tree or a rock or something like that almost every time you will see the muzzle of that AK-47 com around the right side of the tree they all will go shoot from

the right side of the tree so you know they're going to do that so you you can be waiting on them as soon as that muzzle comes you get ready to put a three or four round burst right behind it because that head's coming you know right around behind the the muzzle uh and they started watching and well they do that in fact I had a a guy in Italy that's in a SOG group um where they go out and reenact and you know play uh and they do it with paintball and he read that

and then he he uh emailed me and he said we were out you know in contact this morning in our so group and I was watching we do that with paintball the guys we were going against would they shooting around the right side of the tree I said they're human that's where they're going to go U so you know then you have to realize we're human too and if we don't train that out of us we'll go the same way every time and they can figure that out that you're going to come around that side

or you're going to hit the ground and you're going to shoot from right where you are if they see you go down to vegetation they're going to shoot right there MH you need to move soon as you hit the ground you need to roll right or left don't be right where you went down cuz they're going to get you they just shoot into the vegetation they'll get you so those things are part of the learning process and then you teach your people and you practice it yeah it's it's it's very fascinating to watch that progression

through the books um so as we get into book two to set this up you know book one I I I from what I figured it's probably about halfway through your year-long deployment um your T your tour to Vietnam you pick up in March of March of 1969 is where is where this picks up and uh going to the book you say I just returned to CCN from a tough B52 strike bomb damage assessment in Northern LA with rt Michigan and Elden barwell as my 1-1 we've talked about Elden barwell the legend uh on the

other podcast it was late and I was tired hungry and injured I needed to go to the dispensary and have the Medics repair some wounds before getting cleaned up and meeting barsell at the mess hall for some much needed nourishment barsell and I did a quick prea while we were eating so we'd be ready to do a team a in the morning when barsell and I finished I went back to my Hooch cleaned and reloaded my car 15 web gear I lay across my bed to rest for a few minutes I started to drift off

to sleep and heard a loud knock on my door followed by Lieutenant Thompson are you in there yes what do you want we have a new Recon company Commander Captain metos he wants you to report to his Hooch at 2000 hours when he told me I said you got to be kidding me no sir 2000 hours that's 8 minutes from now careful what you say sir he's on the other side of your pyw would wall crap it's just another day of n so uh some people are fortunate enough to spend time under the mentorship of

a legend in their career field this was my first time you know immediately that you are in the presence of a legend because the things they say do and tell you to do scare the crap out of you they are so far beyond anything you have experienced before that it can be terrifying but at the same time exhilarating you know you're in for the ride of your life and if you survive you'll experience a new way of thinking and Performing as a result Captain dick Meadows was already a special operations Legend everyone in the Special

Operations world had heard the stories Meadows had fought in the Korean War as the youngest Master Sergeant he had been in super secret operations most of his career he had reached a point in his service where the Army gave him a choice he was told he could be promoted as sergeant major or Captain Meadows became the first direct Battlefield commission that General West Morland awarded during the Vietnam war and had a guarantee that he could retire as a major that's pretty impressive he's the first Battlefield Commission in Vietnam and also got a got a guarantee

that's that's kind of nice yeah I don't know if there's any stipulations on what kind of trouble you might cause uh at 2 200 hours I knocked on Meadow's door and reported to him he invited me in and said in a calm serious voice good job out there Thompson I've been looking at your record I like what I see you're a warrior you are Relentless and not afraid to mix it up you always have a high body count I like that effective right now you're the con company EXO I said that's great sir but I

don't want to give up my team he said don't worry about that we'll find you another team you're the EXO and you're going to help me fix some things around here to start with coming tomor uh to start with tomorrow morning you and I are going to have a come to Jesus meeting with all the sog operators and Recon company one at a time I've been going through their records I think some of the operators Berets have gotten a little too heavy for them and we are going to send them back to Special Forces tomorrow

they don't need to be in SOG they can be with special forces but they're not going to be in SOG I asked what do you mean he said there are people here who are not going out on missions very often and others going out on missions and getting shot off the LZ every time that's they never actually complete a mission some people never go on a mission they're always sick lame or lazy and can't deploy they need to go somewhere else and tomorrow you and I are going to send them there Captain Meadows did not

play around oh it's like welcome aboard we're going to clean house and he he was just serious as a heart attack all the time I mean it didn't matter if he was getting shot at what was going on he was just having a conversation all right you move over there you take those guys you come with me we're going to go this way and it just as calm as he could be but he was yeah and he was a and he was a physical stud too you you got a little story here so he's 16

years older than you cuz what are you what are you at this time 21 21 was so he's 37 so he's 37 years old you guys going on a little beach run and you say in here he'd been uh 16 years older than you he'd been shot several times he'd been stabbed he'd been hit with shrapnel and he takes off on a s minute pace and then he started running faster in the soft sand not not down on the compacted sand but on the soft uh you say meadows was not slowing down when we got

to the 2.5 mile point I said I'm going to turn around here and head back I have some things I need to take care of meadow said you do that Lieutenant I'm going to keep running for a while and he kept going he used to say you're you keep your body sharp you keep your mind sharp so so how was those how were those uh conversations with the the the the troops that you had to get rid of not pleasant for them and what if they're at SOG and they don't want to operate why would

they want to stay there cuz there was not many eyes on them and they could kind of sneak through the CL it's a some of it's a status thing some of you just you don't want to have to admit that you don't want to go out anymore even though uh you volunteered to do six missions or six months whichever came first uh you could come back from your first mission and say I'm not doing that again I this is not my thing I didn't realize this this is what I was volunteering for you know so

you would have some people just say I'm I want to different job I don't mind staying here but I don't want to be an operator you know it's it's a different world on the other side of that border it's not like combat inside Vietnam so uh and the other thing that could happen is you're you're one zero your team leader could say uh I don't think this is your thing M I don't want you out with a team anymore so I'm going to you know have you taking off the team so you could remove people

um but sometimes you know You' you'd buil a friendship with them and you just let them hang around even though you knew they're going to get sick before you know time to go on the mission or whatever and how often are you getting new guys coming in new guys coming in the sog uh on a fairly regular basis you know two guys three guys at a time sometimes one guy shows up and there was the once they came to SOG I forget are they doing any they're they're basically going into the team and that's where

they're getting their additional training there's no like other SOG pipeline uh yeah it it depended on to some degree on your rank uh a lot of people got to go to what was called one zero school so you went to a week of special training on so missions how missions were run uh the rules when you went out how you did a remain overnight position the things like that so you you picked up on some things you probably hadn't gotten anywhere else mhm and then it's on um well this this book then really gets right

into just starting to execute operations there's one here uh operation Shiloh which by the way 40 years later your youngest granddaughter was born in name Shiloh that's that's coincidence or was that coincidence synchronicity uh I mean cuz no no one uh knew anything about that mission I mean for the most part except for my wife no one knew I was in SOG they knew I was in Special Forces so mhm yeah I just thought that was interesting that that name popped up I you know when the decision was made that that's what she was going

to be named I thought oh that got my attention where did that come from well I'm glad I don't have a daughter named ramadi yeah uh so operation Shiloh's mission was to stop the flow of supplies coming from North Vietnam through the mo guy pass and establish a physical presence on The High Ground above the MGP and coordinating air strikes day and night so this is a pretty this is a this is of common mission for S like they're bringing stuff through and we're going to stop them except this the difference being here is about

75% or more of what came down the whole men Trail came through that path that's kind of it left Vietnam North Vietnam he came through that pass to start his his journey down troops uh supplies everything coming down through there mhm um so it's a very dangerous space they had a lot of air antiaircraft um positions set up around where they would start to enter into it to try to you know keep it from being bombed um in fact later on uh a documentary was produced uh that was actually titled the most dangerous airspace in

Southeast Asia and it was right there but in in the book you'll hear what I was being told you know we're going to put you up there yeah yeah and again you know I obviously I can't read the whole book even though it's very Ed to read this whole book on the podcast we were talking about that beforehand trying to figure out what to actually read if just get the book so that you can hear all these details the details are incredible and you get such a good understanding of the what you guys were doing

uh and one of the interesting that things that you guys would do is you would do preiss your your premission training was real operations against a real enemy so talk a little bit about that training on you know going to monkey mountain to train for a mission so you get your team you know you got a mission to do and you go to train in a re in real Combat now one of the things that I said after my very first mission uh when I came back was that it would have helped me uh before

I went on the mission if I could have had some actual training in a jungle environment I mean you can go out in a uh you know on the beach and you can run immediate action drills and you can see where everybody is and you make sure you don't shoot anybody because you're firing live ammo you can do all that stuff really easy there but when you go into the jungle environment now you got trees you have vegetation you have logs they holes you're falling over things you're trying not to shoot anybody your your own

people it's much more difficult if you do it in the jungle so once I got you know my team and I said suggested it on this one and we started doing a little bit but um I suggested let's do uh premission training in a jungle environment and when we got down to CCN dang we had monkey mountain which was a jungle environment and you know had some uh Viet Kong out there had a few NBA running around out there um so you couldn't just go out in the jungle and walk around and not worry about

it you had to be on your toes all the time or your subject to get shot um but you could go out there and practice and that really made a difference in the skill set M because now we know how to move much better in the jungle we know what it's like at night we set up an RO out there and we we have to have security because somebody May stumble into your your position there but um you start to learn the jungle and that was part of what I wanted my my people to do

was understand the jungle what does it sound like what does it smell like what changes when you we're about to make contact what changes because you'll hear people talk about uh you know I could feel it I could feel something was about to happen and I used to ask myself the qu what do you feel I mean what I mean I get a feeling like that where's it coming from and from a chemical background I'm starting to think about what uh the different chemicals that are being released into my and why why am I starting

to feel this way you know the smell changes the sounds change all of these things collectively come into I just take took all my senses and put them together as the sense and this information is coming in there and you feel different you know something's going on here um and then learning how to use that and and start to differentiate that what I'm really experiencing right now is smell I'm smelling something when you get scared you sweat but it's a different kind of sweat that you that comes out it has a different smell to it

a much stronger uh smell more pungent U and once you begin to to recognize wow that's human fear that I'm smelling right now and there it's coming from up in front of us there's somebody up there that knows they're about to have contact and they're sweating and they're scared uh I need to know what that means you know my father he told me one time when was little I went to pick a dog up and he it tried to bite me and I said what's wrong with the dog he said he knows you're afraid of

him I said how do he know I was trying to pet him' he said he can tell I my father never said how he could tell he just said animals can tell they can sense fear you know in a human they were smelling you know my smell changed so you can use that against humans if you know it and you know what it smells like but anyway being able to get in the jungle and practice there uh really increases the skill set yeah we um the the the seals train out in the desert in Imperial

Valley in California and so we do all of our immediate action drills in on the desert terrain but in the specific area where we are there's waterways and they have a lot of vegetation around them so depending on where we're fighting like in the Viet in Vietnam the seals would in that desert training area would go to this specific area where it's very closed jungle like terrain and it's the same type of iads that you would or same type of immediate action drills that you do in the jungle cuz it is a jungle but it's

it's so the mechanics are the same but the some of those there there's things that have to adjust when you get into closed terrain and and for you to be able to go out there and Patrol through that is very necessary because if you've never done it in closed terrain you've only done it in open terrain cuz in closed terrain you take seven steps and you can't see a person anymore like they're gone and so you got to tighten up the the the spacing and everything but you can't make it too tight cuz now we're

all vulnerable to one shot so yeah just that the whole fact that you guys would go out there and train for missions in combat is that that says a lot about what was happening in Vietnam at the time uh fast forward a little bit in the book The Snake Bite training missions reinforced my belief that many SOG missions could be accomplished more efficiently with less loss of air assets and lives if we used much smaller SOG teams it appeared to me that on most missions I could be inserted or extracted alone with one helicopter I

began to build my case for an RT dynamite and RT is Recon team so Recon teams they have names after stage um this one is RT Dynamite is what your recommending discussion with Meadows I had suggested that this that I'd be inserted alone as a one-man team to Chief SOG with the Shiloh Mission but it had not been received well I became more and more convinced that I could move with more stealth and speed as a oneman SOG team RT Dynamite cuz that's your your call sign your code name was Dynamite when I finished my

last night by mission to Elephant Valley I approached Meadows and laid out my plan uh Meadows listened as long as he could and then said you're totally effing crazy Thompson I responded that's what all my teams had told me and I agree with them that's why I can make this work Meadow said there's no way I'm sending you across the border alone you would do it I thought I thought through it all the contingencies I replied what if you get the crap shot out of you with no one to help you if I get hit

the worst case scenarios you lose one crazy so guy this Mission does not require a bright light team no one to pick me up unless I signal you if you don't hear from me you'll know I'm dead or I'm walking back across the border you've been out in the sun too long I'll put you back on a team but it will have other people in it what about a team with me as the only American talk to me in the morning yes sir so you had this plan that you're going to that you could do

these operations alone yeah I was convinced I could I could be more stealth MH I don't have to carry all their equipment I don't I'm not going to make any noise uh it's just me you know if it was a mission where what I was doing was going to locate an enemy force or observe you know what was uh in a convoy things like that where it wasn't I was kinetic type mission where I was going to go out and actually intentionally attack someone I mean I don't need a bunch of people with me just

put me out there I'm not carrying that big radio either that thing's heavy you know I got my survival radio if I need to talk to you you know I'll come up on the emergency frequency and talk so that lightens me up I might not even carry car 15 I'll carry you know a s gun or something with a silencer on it and my 22 pistol with a silencer so if I do make contact uh they don't they don't know what happens to me I just disappear all of a sudden so but if they shoot

me um then I'll try to survive get away from them uh and once I'm able I'll start working my way toward the border so yeah yeah I I get I can imagine Captain Meadows just thinking about the risk profile there of like you know the one little thing happens and that's it yeah well we I mean we lose people um but for your point it'd be only one yeah just be one and they won't know I'm there because you insert me at night uh by Parachute you know you he he goes flying across to you

know the top of the Canon pieces and stuff crosses a little clearing and keeps going when he hits that clearing I just slide out of the aircraft I don't need a reserve cuz I'm only about 3 or 400 ft above the ground when I jump out anyway parachute has has enough time to open I hit the ground bag it move off into the jungle um you know you can do it very quickly MH and and later on uh when I was with the Rangers I I demonstrated that that I could do it with Halo but

I could also do it you know static line just going out low like that and anyway well as we'll find out later in the book you are Dynamite does make a does make a run we'll get there um fast forward a little bit in the book uh I went back to my room to Think Through more of the details the next day I received a letter from a friend of mine and Bob Sheridan's Bob was my best friend the letter started off with I'm sure you have heard by now and I'm so sorry about Bob

being killed on 26th March I was stunned SOG operators rarely heard about what was going on at the other fobs I had no idea that Bob had been killed I requested immediately to fly down to CCC before Bob's remains were shipped back to the US Meadow's reply was not going to happen if you go down there his body is not going to be at CCC Graves registration will not let you see him even if they would that would be one of the biggest mistakes of your life you need to remember him the way he looked

the last time you saw him not the way he looks now besides I'm giving you a new Mission tomorrow go to the club have a few drinks in his honor and get some sleep see me at 0700 in the morning I was not happy with his response or him even though he was right it took a few days for me to realize that it was a great piece of advice Meadow had given me I used it with many others many times after that I found barsell went to the the club and made several toasts to

Bob barsell listened to my thoughts and plated Me by agreeing that he would go with me the next day and together we would kill all the NVA he did a really good job of consoling me but I became more determined to add a second objective to all my missions terminate as many NVA as I could after finishing my primary mission so that loss of Bob Sheridan definitely changed your mindset yeah and you know bargewell was great as we sat there and consume some of the philosophical nectar at the club and and he was like oh

yeah you know tomorrow we'll go get them and we'll take them out you and I together I mean we can do some damage out there and all this kind of stuff to keep me calmed down mhm um so that that was great and got me through that and next day it's time to to go do some things but you know I had continue to think about it I mean once I accomplish the mission and all these guys are trying to you know terminate us terminate the team I'm going to do whatever I can to take

as many of them out as I can and some of that is you know particularly after I learned more about me maneuvering the enemy rather than the enemy maneuvering me and I I start to move them in a position where uh it's easier to get them with the tack air and stuff that's coming in I can take a lot of them out as we're leaving so you also say this on 17 March 1969 my good friend Sergeant First Class work Ricardo G Davis wanted to talk to me about his upcoming coming Mission he' been on

many successful missions but this one had him spooked this one was scaring him and making him feel like it was his last I tried to encourage him but he was really down before RT Copperhead was flown to the to Thailand launch site Davis gave Lamont his 1 a letter and his ring and asked him to deliver them to a particular person after the mission RT Copperhead was overrun on 20 March and Davis's body was not recovered and that's the first in this book where guys are telling you this happens over and over again guys are

telling you they got a bad feeling about a mission and they end up not making it uh you know at what point in this deployment did you real did you start to see that Trend well early I mean with with Bob when what happened was you know we got to to SOG together at denain we were briefed on what SOG was and everything but then that was the first time Bob and I got sent in different directions so I went I went North to fubi and he went you know South to CCC that was the

first time in two years we'd been a part you know Thompson and Sheran are really close and you know in the alphabet and the Army did everything alphabetical you know so we would always be in the same patoon same Squad Ranger buddies together everything you know we did everything together um but I had that feeling you know that day when he left I think this is it I just I don't feel good about this and um you know and and he didn't come back so uh but then I had other people uh you'll read about

a book tell me that and then in one case um the one zero you know friend of mine was telling me the one one was telling my one one that he he was concerned about them coming back so I mean and I didn't I didn't know you know my one one was talking you know to the other guy wait your one one was telling the other one one the other yeah so there was a team going out uh Dennis was my roommate and and Dennis and I had a conversation right before they left to go

up to the launch site and he said I I've never felt like this before and you know so we had that conversation at the same time he and I were having a conversation his one one met with my one one and said I I'm really scared about this Mission so they both had a bad feeling they both were having it at the same time uh for the same Mission and they didn't come back hey we'll get to those stories here in a minute and you got a bunch of quotes in the book throughout the book

but this one is one that's worth covering whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons that's Doug Douglas MacArthur just to go to lighter note here next mission you go through the man the mission was to conduct a reconnaissance beginning 28 April along Highway 22 in La um you could start prepping again get the book If You' listen to this podcast get the book there's so many details in here one of the things that you do is you break stuff down almost in an operational type uh format and here's

some basic Sops you talk about as you're preparing for this no soap during the last 3 days prior to the mission obviously you guys wanted to smell like not like a perfume right only selected spices during the last three days prior to the mission if we had a smell if we had a smell it had to be an NVA smell so you guys did you just eat just nothing but Vietnamese food and fin few days the particularly what the NVA ate particularly the spices they they seem to have access to you know I told I

told the guys when when we were out there at some point you're going to have to poop and when you poop I want it to smell like NVA poop you know so if they find it I want them to say oh yeah that's one of us so uh let's be careful what we eat and uh you know because in there in the book you'll also see I I finally started teaching them about how to be invisible mhm and that became our big thing you know the signal be invisible um I won't go into it here

but uh you have to be invisible in all of your senses so if I'm going to be invisible I can't smell if I do smell I need to smell like you so you don't you don't recognize it um I don't make any sounds so everything was taped fastened down and just prior to to getting on the helicopter to insert you had to do the jump up and down test could I hear anything rattle anything flop you know did you have any shiny piece of metal on you that if if you had shiny metal it had

to be spray painted black or it had to be covered with black tape you know nothing could shine and so uh all of those little components really focused around the different senses so don't smell like soap mhm another one the the inside of boony hats would be covered with the orange side of a vs7 panel this is a trick that we we used up until we started wearing helmets all the time which but in the in the '90s we did the same thing we inside of our floppy hats we put uh Orange vs 17 panel

so we could turn them inside out and let the helicopters or air supports see us um everyone would participate in IV and tourniquet training everyone would carry 10 frag grenades and three Claymore and 6 40 mm H rounds that's a good load out that was not received um oh yeah they were not Bo were not happy about that not happy about that but if you think about it if you have a seven-man team you take seven guys out that's 70 frag grenades that you've got 21 Claymores and I like to daisy chain the Claymores and

I like to have on the Main Avenue of approach coming into our Ro at night i' like to have seven Claymores Daisy change covering that Avenue of approach and sometimes a couple of white phosphorous grenades in front of it just for fun uh and if you approach us that's 10 and 12 PBS of C4 4,900 steel balls traveling at 4,000 ft a second when that thing goes out just a blast wave from that even if the balls don't hit you yeah and you know the NBAA would say this is different this guy's crazy yeah this

is not a normal sock team these guys are crazy one Claymore mind is a deterrent seven Claymore mines is a whole another ball game yeah yeah that's and then there's three more after that yeah so if you your survivors decide they are going to come on down to try to get us there's three three more days change and now they're thinking this guy really is crazy nobody does that and there must be a lot of them too right they're thinking that a lot of you yeah you mentioned in the book what you say keeping up

with the Joneses or something like that like you got oh Keeping Up Appearances you got to keep making them think that there's a lot more because there's only six of us or seven of us yeah if they knew how small of a group we were they'd just come down and take us out yeah but if they think you're big MH then and and you're taking a lot of them out in the process uh yeah and this is where you talk about beginning to train them to be invisible which you which you just mentioned you do

uh you do a a visual Recon flying over it you set up the insertion again there's so many good details in here uh going out on this Mission now you've been out there for a few days in the field get the book to get that day three the rain stopped and the sky began to clear around 10 on day three and cvy was on station at an RP rendevu Point several miles away from our location our observation team returned from the road just before 12 and was giving a quick silent briefing on what they had

seen on the road suddenly a toe poper exploded followed immediately by a scream and a barrage and Roar of AK-47 fir directed away from us at a distance of about 50 m to our East the NVA thought we were close and fortunately made a bad and fortunately made a bad guess as to our location based on the number of AKs firing and at at least two rpds we estimated it was at least a platoon sized force of 40 men now we knew exactly where they were and that they were that they had a dying tracker

or Point man with them again these are all things that you know now that you have all this experience you know that that first person walking to the toe pomper was either a point man or he's a Tracker you hear two rpds you hear the number of AK-47s and now you can make an assessment that probably 6 months ago you wouldn't have been able to make you just didn't have the experience now you go Yep this is probably a platoon siiz element we hit their point man Andor tracker all right so you're calculating all that

thing um you say I always got to rush when a Tracker stepped on one of my minds but I contained my excitement we needed to be more concerned about all the NVA that were descending on us and the others running to assist them it was getting very crowded we knew we were well hidden and should not move or fire on them we wanted to get as many possible with the Claymores the NVA expected us to be directly behind the Claymores yeah cuz two of the five Claymores on their most probable assault path had Willie Pete

in front of them and were angled so we were not directly behind them this would create the illusion that we were in a different location than than we were the NVA expected us to be directly behind the Claymores the Claymores would cut through a swath of the NVA assault line and the wiie Pete would add a lot of pain fear choking and smoke and block visibility of the survivors Ben had the Detonator for our first layer of Claymores and made eye contact with me I had duck send the code for enemy contact to cvy when

the NVA turned toward our position and began firing into our general location I gave Ben the signal to detonate the claymor sending 3500 steel balls traveling at 4,000 fet per second at the NVA with the Willie Pete right behind them when they regrouped and started advancing again Ben detonated a second layer of Claymores and we began to withdraw quickly the NVA were stunned and suffered considerable losses but regrouped quickly and continued to advance all the time placing heavy fire in the direction of the Claymore blast when they got the right distance from the second Claymore

layer I gave Ben the signal to launch it was a smaller explosion than the first this one was three Claymores 4.5 lbs of C4 and 2100 steel BS but it got their attention and again I mean a claymore when a claymore goes off Echo Charles you know what an M80 is you know like the thing yeah yeah hell yeah that is nothing compared to a claymore like a claymore rocks your world it's it's it's a massive sharp explosion and to have first seven of those things or five of those things going off at one time

is like the fact that these guys Advance through this is impressive it's impressive and these things have steel ball bearings or something like that yeah they have it's basically a pie ofc4 and then literally the whole front of it is stacked with just ball bearings yeah the front towards enemy front towards enemy that's exactly what it is that's a Claymore Mine and that right behind that layer of plastic is 2100 steel ball bearings and then behind that is the C4 that's going to blow up so kind of like a wide angle shotgun kind of a

scenario yes very much like a wide angle shotgun yeah that's brutal yeah um fast forward a little bit we needed air support right then judging from the fire we were receiving as we withdrew the NVA Force had built back to about 40 n VA a directly engaging us my concern was I could still hear at least two rpds multiple Firepower multipliers the car1 15 AK-47 and RPD had a each had a very distinct sound Duke contact contacted cvy and told him we were in heavy contact and needed gunship and extraction aircraft ASAP cvy told duke

it would be approximately 45 minutes before he could have gunship gunships and slicks on site but he You' have two a1s in about 20 minutes so if for those of you guys that haven't listened to the other podcast about SOG cvy is the overhead Special Operations guy SOG guy that's overhead flying and coordinating everything from the air and that's really the lifeline that just is connecting the guys on the ground with the rest of the world so that's what and they're the ones that are coordinating all this air totally critical to the mission and you

guys are in this heavy contact and you get yeah we got it's about 45 minutes before we can get you some the support that you need but we can get the a1s which are awesome uh close air support aircraft in about 20 minutes fast forward a little bit I signaled Kim the pointman to continue to head for the extraction LZ and for Khan to begin and again I'm throwing out these characters Kim KH Ben like these guys you explain who these guys are in the book you give the character of their background the relationship that

you had with these guys so get the book um I signal for Khan to begin leaving Claymores behind on 30 second fuses that's another neat little trick yeah cuz Not only would you set them up when you're in a remain overnight position where you'd intentionally and deliberately plant the Claymores on the most likely Avenue of enemy approach you guys would also rig Claymores that you could just stick in the ground and with 30 second time fuses on them so Echo Charles on a claymore mind there's a there's little feet on it and they're little Stakes

they're like little they're little staks that you can you can flip them out and bend them down you can just Jam the thing right in the ground it's the most convenient like device ever and so they would set little 30se second time fuses boom stick it in the ground pull the time fuse now 30 seconds later if someone's following you they're going to get blasted um we continue to move low and fast toward the ex extraction LZ the tracker on our left there's a Tracker some that was trying to hunt you guys down was continuing

to get closer to us and trying harder to turn us meaning he's trying to pressure you in a way where you'll turn in a certain direction that they want you to turn right and this is a key component that you've been talking about today I told Duck to continue moving the team toward the extraction LZ and keep talking to cvy I would rejoin the team in a few minutes and I and I put Ben unofficially in charge of Duke I slipped away from the team and moved quickly and silently toward where I anticipated the tracker

on her left would be when I got to him I went into a One-Shot one kill mode and put a silence 22 long rifle bullet in the tracker's left temple he flinched and dropped straight down I ran to the body made sure he was dead and searched him I took the documents I found on him so that's exactly what you were talking about earlier whereas maybe earlier in your SOG career you might have said oh there's a Tracker over there we need need to go in the other direction he said oh I know where he's

going to be and I'm going to go kill him soon I was back with the team and slowly taking over coordinating air support the a1s were very helpful in holding back the NVA but the NVA numbers were increasing so fast we had to stop our movement toward the LZ the automatic fire was churning up the ground knocking bark off trees and limbs were falling we had to stay low and go from tree to tree the NVA fire was steadily increasing and becoming more accurate and the area around us was becoming Smoky I told cvy we

might need to try and get the team out on strings then it happened a loud screen from duke he was rolling around on the ground screaming and holding his leg he was screaming and yelling hit hit and something about someone's mother in Vietnamese I crawled to him as fast as I could he had not only taken a round on the thigh but through the femur not good I could see bones sticking out of the exit wound in his thigh and he was bleeding profusely but for fortunately not arterially I called cvy and declared a prairie

fire emergency told him the one Zer was hit and continued to work on stopping the bleeding and stabilizing the wound Duke could not keep quiet broken shattered femurs are extremely painful it always Spooks the team when they hear one of their own screaming the NVA could hear Duke screams above the gunfire they knew where he and I were they focused their fire on us I asked cvy to keep working the assets we had and to find some Napal as AP while I worked on Duke if he could not get Napal quickly the NVA were going

to overrun us I knew if we stopped moving the NVA would quickly surround us then we would be dead but we could not move duck without splinting his leg slowing the bleeding and as much as I hated to do it giving him a morphine injection the NVA could hear him screaming and focus more of their fire in our position they could tell we were not moving I could not keep him quiet without morphine he was an excu cating pain and we are going to splint his leg and drag him to the LZ with the Envy

shooting at us I gave him the morphine good news came from cvy Napal was on the way it was time to put some NVA on the Barbie the new plan was to make two Napal runs and have the second extraction helicopter Trail the first by 60 seconds I inserted Duck's IV for his ringer solution while we were waiting fast forward a little bit we were receiving withering fire in quick running out of time every time I fired five to six rounds as the NVA at the NVA they sent hundreds back at me from different locations

so this is a it almost feels like an inten untenable situation that's what I felt like got wounded guys you're almost surrounded you've with the amount of Destruction that you've Unleashed on the enemy and they're still coming after you nightmare yeah I I kind of felt like it was in these situations it was like what happens when you kick the top off of a antill and they just come swarming out after you you make contact with that small group and all of a sudden they come from everywhere yeah cuz they know where we are now

and they come after us and they also know that you're you know you're back Behind Enemy Lines like there's no you there's nowhere to run they got to they got to be thinking oh we got we got them cornered we we can get them yeah fast forward a little bit dynamite cvy cvy and I were friends he started using my code name in place of my mission call sign he knew it was a constant reminder that I had a friend above working hard to get the team out Dynamite go Dynamite you the one zero now

Roger that sometimes In the Heat of battle call signs got temporarily dropped in the conent back and forth communication congratulations on your promotion thanks do you have nape for me we're running out of time down here I've got a flight of fast movers with nape I need you to mark your location at ASAP I fired a white flare through the canopy Roger ID flare I identify white and that's just a protocol to go through you mark your position and then that they identify what color it is dynamite Roger that put the nape 100 met Southwest

of my position flying Southeast and Northwest danger close second nape 60 seconds later same position in asouth cvy nape 100 meters Southwest of your position flying Southeast to Northwest danger close second nape 60 seconds later Dynamite Roger that Dynamite nape is one nape one is 60 seconds out danger close get your head down Roger that I yelled to the guys above the gunfire Virginia get down nape in 30 seconds as usual the jungle canopy made the Napal very messy but most of it landed on the NVA and none on the team great job cvy Roger

that nape two and 30 seconds followed 60 seconds later by that extraction bird heads down then standby Virginia get heads down nape in 30 seconds Virginia orange hats another great job cvy first load ready but it's very smoky difficult to see and breathe smells terrible still a lot of ground fire don't shoot the orange hats Ben baow and Chin placed as much supporting fire on the NVA positions around the LC as they could while I stood up with a vs17 panel to guide the extraction bird to the first extraction load location I had to drop

to my knees because so much fire was coming at me I would have gone all the way to the ground but the grass was too high to be able to see from the prone position so you're trying to get these helicopters to be able to see you and know where to land and in order to do that you've got to pull out a VF vs7 panel which is a bright orange piece of material and you've got to mark your location exactly and there's so much gunfire you're on your knees you can't go all the way

to the ground because you'd be in the grass they wouldn't be able to see it the helicopter had to come to us because we could only move Duke a few meters especially with all the automatic fire coming at us the ground fire in our position in helicopter was steadily increasing once the first load was on the helicopter I gave the silence a thumbs up and signal to lift off he was receiving so much fire he was already lifting off the ground before I gave the signal the door Gunners were destroying the NVA the barrel on

the one door gunner M60 was so hot it turned red I could see that some of the tracers were going in strange directions because it was so hot some were tumbling end over end the first extraction helicopter with Duke and the other three team members lifted up and out of the LZ With the Enemy fire all around them above the cracking and popping of the bullets I could hear some metallic clangs as the helicopter took hits I had to drop to the ground and crawl back to the tree line where Ben baow and Chin were

waiting once the helicopter was headed for the launch site Ben ba and chin and I made a run for the extraction point on the LZ ba was leaving Claymores with time fuses in our wake to slow the NVA B was firing his 40 mm high explosive rounds to the NVA as fast as he could chin was firing his car 15 on auto cuvy worked the LZ with Napal and had gunships attacking the NVA who were chasing us the bad news was The Heavy Rain with low clouds was moving back in quickly the rain had already

started the wind was picking up and I could see the clouds rolling in like a big black wave towards us it would be a close race between the extraction helicopter and the clouds at best we might get this one chance for extraction if we could survive the withering Fire coming at us then out of nowhere aoud boom intense heat a blast wave and shrapnel coming from about 30 meters east of us the NVA had introduced RPGs into the game and I could hear an RPD firing everything was going sideways so again if you haven't listened

to any of these SOG podcasts or the socast if you don't have good weather if the clouds come in you're screwed because the because the air assets are going to go away there's just not it's just becomes impossible especially in Vietnam they'd have thick ground fog or thick ground clouds and it's just game over if that happens and here you can see that these clouds are coming in Back to the book cvy Dynamite abort the pickup I say again abort the pickup the ground fire is too heavy they have RPGs and and an RPD Casper

this is cvy abort abort abort this is Casper Roger we took a few hits but seem Okay sandy lead this is cvy I need another nape run North to South 100 meters west of the LZ ASAP this is Sandy lead rolling in with hot rolling in hot with nape Casper follow close behind Sandy lead and pick up the team watch the smoke and only pick up the orange hats Ro Casper Roger turning on short final now to pick up the orange hats Casper this is Tango 6 Dynamite we are taking a lot of fire be

quick on your pickup Tango six we're coming in fast for a touch and go you guys jump on the skid as we are lifting off up this tangle six copy that tangle six start running toward touchdown point now stay low be fast don't run in front of the door Gunners Roger that orange out orange out the four of us were getting hammered as we ran for the touchdown point just as we approached the helicopter chin was hit and disappeared into the grass I could hear chin screaming for help hit hit Trung way TR way he

thought he was going to be left behind and Trung way is that's same as die way right no Trung way is the lieutenant right so what's way trong we is is Lieutenant I don't know about trong way but trong we is was me okay that is just my bad view me that is yeah dway dway is Captain yeah okay got it that's what that's what I was trying to think of um he thought he was going to be left behind I signal for bin and baow to g get on the helicopter I ran as fast

and low as I could to where I saw chin go down found him he was hitting the shoulder and arm as I was picking him up I heard Ben above the unbelievably loud noise yelling for me trong way trong way Ben and ba had not gone to the helicopter when Ben saw me I smiled I yelled I told you two to get in the helicopter Ben said you stay we stay that's the camaraderie right there yep he wasn't going without you but you had a question about that a little later well go Ben was The

Interpreter and Ben said we're on the helicopter we're flying back um and he said B wants to know why us two have to come out last with you and I I told him I said well you tell ba I think this is really Ben's question but anyway you tell B that if I become the one zero the three of us could comeing out last every time together cuz they I need you you can speak Vietnamese I need him because he's got that 40 millimeter so we'll come out together every time they were not happy about

that um yeah I mean okay Ben help me carry ttin to the chopper bow cover us as we stood up and turned toward the chopper we saw it lifting off we missed our ride there had been a lot of radio traffic but I had been too busy to listen cvy Dynamite guess we R missed our ride we're going back to the tree line This grass is not stopping bullets Dynamite negative stay where you are a backup bird is your last chance to get out today it's on short final now if I were you Dynamite I

would not let anything stop me from getting on this one this is dynamite if he gets within 10t of the ground we'll be on it copy that our ride was descending fast I told Ben about to get in and I would hand chin to them once they started dragging chin up onto the floor the helicopter I grabbed the skid as it was lifting up and forward swung my legs up and got over the skid as I watched the ground rapidly moving away the door gunner and Ben grabbed my hand and arm and pulled me up

onto the floor I put a tourniquet on Chin's arm and pressure bandage on his shoulder he was still bleeding I had been give him a ringer solution IV the hard ring clowns hit us as we were lifting off it was rough and wet but we got out and the air assets were continuing to pound the NVA one of one of the things that I was learning uh about tourniquets if when you put a tourniquet on someone you have to really tighten it down really tighten it down if if the person is in a auto accident

or whatever you encounter today if the person is not screaming and hollering about it hurts it's too hot too tight right you got to loosen it if if you're not making them scream and holler it's not tight enough to stop it and that's one of the first things you know the MTS to tell you you got to sense that baby down you know most of them have a a handle you can twist and you got to really tighten that thing down or it won't stop arterial bleeding um couple of the lessons that you got here

using a sand and again I'm reading like a just a couple the using a sand table for rehearsals studying the terrain memorizing the terrain and making a simple drawing of the terrain increases the one Zero's ability to manage the battle space during the contact it's too late to learn once you're on the ground had to be difficult cuz how big of an area are you looking at when you're looking at insertion you know you're looking at a map what are you looking at like a a square kilometer yeah something something around that big and it

could be more than that but usually about that and you build a sand table to represent that with the red lines the streams the clearings or whatever but you know now you can see it you can see it in three dimension and you know from my perspective what I'm trying to do is memorize that I don't want to have to pull the map out when someone's shooting at me and try to figure out where the ridges and different things are I need to be able to see it in my mind three dimensionally you know in

the battle space while we're shooting while I'm talking to cuby while I'm telling people to get down telling people to shift their fire I'm listening to Chin or someone you know I train them if you're hit start yelling hit hit hit I need to know first of all you're still alive and I need to know where you are because you're probably down in the vegetation so I need to try to hear you I know you're alive I will come get you but I got to know you're down there so hit is a secret word everybody

can say that and you know so we would practice because it's so loud and there's so much going on um yeah F I'm going to fast forward a little bit to uh next mission um this is a aptly named technique the suicide technique insert two small teams together on one LZ the teams would go in different directions have one of the teams make contact and be raed the second team would stay behind and continue their mission this is um yeah I seals would in Vietnam sometimes they would the extraction bird would land guys would get

in one side and get out the other side and that bird would take off and they'd still be on the ground or at least some of them would still be on the ground uh but this is definitely an interesting idea uh and in this one you have rt Virginia your team and then RT keelback which is a different team that you're going to one of you is going to be the suicide team and the other one's going to do the work I'm not sure which one is more work uh insertion goes smooth um fast forward

a little bit after we moved about 150 meters away from the trail we heard a Tracker used bamboo clacker signals 75 to a th000 to 200 meters behind us when you're going in on this did you designate who was going to be the suicide team that made contact or was it just by chance which everyone runs into the enemy first okay so you got two teams U and the first one usually goes in that's the team that's going to stay behind we're visible we got at least two helicopters we're visible in the helicopter coming in

um and we get on the ground go to the woods and we separate so the team that's going to stay behind you know they just stay low stay out of sight and then in this case my team team went looking for trouble so we want to make contact we want them to know that we're there we take out as many as we can we wanted them to see us get extracted with two birds again some of us in each one so it looks like the two teams have come out together uh but actually the kill

back was still there on the ground well it didn't take you long to find trouble actually in this case uh after about 2 minutes I could see see him about 15 met from me but I couldn't see his head I wanted a head shot suddenly he turned and started to move away giving me a view of his head he must have heard or smelled something from my direction and quickly turned and faced me I put 4 22 long rifle bullets in his chest and two in his head before he dropped to his knees fell slowly

to his side the target practice I had been doing with the high standard pistol with integrated silencer had paid off and you talk a bunch about the training that you doing here in between operations you end up um in a in a remain overnight location there's a bunch of rain fast forward a little bit uh the weather was too bad to get support that's what I was just talking about we didn't know how many NVA were coming they were searching the thick vegetation for us to do this they had divided into small three to four

person teams and one team was coming right at us so so you guys are in this you guys are in a perimeter trying to be quiet sitting in this position where you're going to where you're planning to remain overnight and you can hear these small teams bushwhacking looking for you guys right um fast forward a little bit then suddenly our worst nightmare happened two NVA stepped inside our small perimeter perimeter is about 6 feet in diameter we all froze in place and literally held our breath mannequins freezing and scared mannequins we could not fire our

weapons for obvious reasons it would take too long and make too much noise to attack with our knives I had my 22 high standard with integrated silencer in my hand I always kept it out and easily acceptable in the remain overnight just in case we had visitors like now the rain would cover most of the noise but the small muzzle flashes would say hey here we are shoot us especially shoot me we held our breaths as they passed through our perimeter without stepping on anyone I could feel the weight of a large blood-filled luch leech

hanging on my back I could smell the spices on the nv's breath the NVA were about 15 feet out of our perimeter when one of them felt his foot catch on a wire and Ben felt his detonating wire jerk the NVA Soldier told his teammate he had found a wire and he was going to follow it and for his teammate to follow the wire in the direction they were traveling the NVA Soldier was coming toward so so these guys are walking they walk right through your perimeter they're out out of your perimeter which is a

miracle but then they hit one of your Claymore wires that you guys had set up and now he's tracing that wire back to see where it leads the NVA Soldier was coming but he was but he was smart the one that's talking he he was smart he sent his butt to go to the other end of the wire because he figured that's where the Claymore was yeah said you walk down there uh the NVA Soldier was was coming toward our perimeter and write at Ben I whispered to Ben to stand by when the NV is

about 10 ft from Ben I whispered now Ben set off the close layer of Claymores I simultaneously fired four long rifle bullets into the NVA Soldier the loud explosion Blast wave very bright flash of light flying debris body parts and screams random firing covered the small flashes and sounds of from my pistol the two NVA and others close to us were down for good we then set off all the remaining Claymores with a tremendous explosure and thousands of Steel balls going away from us in all directions the NVA who were not killed or wounded were

stunned confused and F and firing randomly even at each other I threw two frag grenades toward the closest group of NVA and gave the code word to withdraw we began to slip and slide away from the RO site and the NVA who were firing in our direction we had to slip by another search team that was firing randomly I threw a frag grenade toward their muzzle flashes they stopped firing and I heard screams and moaning fast forward I radioed Moonbeam using the whisper technique and sent the prairie fire emergency code and if you don't know

again listen to the sog cast listen to this podcast when when we've had the other SOG warriors on here Prairie Fire emergency when you guys would send out that code word every air asset in Vietnam that was would would come to Aid you guys because it meant you were in threat of being overrun um fast forward a little bit cvat scrambled to F4 Phantoms and it extraction King bees and gunships on standby cvy was about 10 minutes out but he was already running the air show we had to evade and survive until air support arrived

one of my immediate concerns was to make sure we RT Virginia did not put any air strikes or gun runs on RT Keb back at that point I didn't know their exact location but I was sure cvy did so you've got this is the suicide mission so you've actually got friendlies that are out there doing their thing and you obviously need to be cautious about dropping air fast forward Dynamite this is cvy I'm on station and working the valley with fast movers we are getting secondary explosions in the valley cobras are getting close hang in

there Dynamite Roger this is cvy I'm going to need to know where you are when the when the snakes arrive Dynamite Roger this is cvy I've got a second set of fast movers I'm going to work them north of your position until the snakes arrive the Cobras were getting close but were not to us yet and it was very dark making it difficult to use them we were completely surrounded by over 200 NVA and more were coming they were tightening the Noose if they had known there were only five of us they would have come

down and killed us this is one of those cases where we had to keep up appearances that's what I was talking about earlier and luckily you guys all carried 10 grenades each which is ridiculous and awesome uh fast forward a little bit this is cvy snakes are coming in hot with fra with fangs out stay down Dynamite Roger the Cobras were receiving a lot of ground fire but the NVA were getting the worst first end of it thousands of 762 mm rounds were raining from the sky along with a mixture of rockets and 17lb high

explosive warheads and 40mm high explosive grenade rounds bullets and shrapnel were going everywhere the smell of gunpow was strong and the smoke was irritating our eyes the NVA bodies were literally stacking [Music] up of course the NVA they're determined fast forward a little bit the NVA mounted their next assault right into our Claymores and 40 mm grenades back launched his 40mm grenades in Rapid succession as they got closer we began to use three round burst toward their muzzle flashes and sounds and tossed frag grenades we were taking a lot of casualties and I'm sure they

thought they were facing a larger Force than we were yeah that's another thing just in case you haven't been tracking these SOG missions or just general combat it especially at night if you start shooting the enemy is going to know where you are but if you're just throwing grenades you have plausible deniability about where you are right that explosion could have come from it not only could have could have come from anywhere but it kind of could be uh different things it could be a booby trap it could be a land mine there's only one

thing with a shooting gun and that's a person shooting a gun so you're giving your position away but if there's an explosion happens could have been a booby trap could have been a landmine could it be a claymore you don't really know and so that's what you guys are trying to minimize shooting as much as you can because you don't want to give away your position position right yeah when you pull that trigger you light up like a neon sign and then you know the NVA would light you up um fast forward a little give

me 20 mm danger close 30 m north of our position fly east to west identify my flare and again just from a from a closer support perspective there's a reason that you have to give the the asthm that you want the aircraft to fly on because you want to make sure that if their shots are short or long they don't strafe you right so you're when you're in when you're in control of those air assets there's so much thought that has to be happening very rapidly to make sure that you keep your team safe on

the ground you know when you're flying an aircraft shooting whether it's 20 mm or Rockets or machine gun out of it the slightest little movement that that round can go 100 200 meters in the opposite or in a different direction so you've got to keep these guys on a on a asmith that keeps your team safe while they're shooting yeah during it's much easier during the daytime because in the daytime uh my left palm and my right thigh became my uh information center writing call signs writing asthmas uh I can see the terrain I've memorized

it but now I can see it you know so it's easy for me to come up with an asmith to tell you to go on without having to pull the compass out and start looking at but at night it's difficult to see that you're having to estimate uh distance differently um so everything becomes much more comp I can't read things on my hand because I can't turn my flashlight on look at it um so I'm having to remember all that stuff so it becomes a little more difficult yeah that sounds a lot more difficult actually

um but you're making it happen identify my flare Roger standing by ID red Roger that spads 60 seconds out bad's another term for that a E1 um aircraft get your heads down Roger I yelled Virginia get your heads down the 20 mm high explosive rounds literally cut down trees limbs were falling and debris was flying all round they were ripping us they were ripping into the NBA even though the NBA were trying to hug us and this is something that you talked about I didn't mention but they're going to the enemy will try and get

so close to you that they that we can't use close air support and that's what they're trying to do Dynamite second A1 30 seconds out Roger I yelled Virginia grenade then stay down everyone threw a grenade toward the NVA to slow their assault then hugged the ground the 20 mm rip through the bad guys cvy they're hitting us from both flanks run a palm on both sides of us 100 meters out now danger close south to North Roger can you send up a flare sure I don't have anything else to do flare up yeah I

got a little snarky every once in a while uh this is cvy ID yellow boom an RPG hit 15 meters away and showered us all with shrapnel my Ruck was shredded the PRC 77 radio took the brunt of it and was not working somehow the shrapnel missed my blasting caps and two Willie Peak grenades if it had hit either one of those we would all have died Khan was yelling hit hit he had the worst shrapnel wound of the team a big piece of shrapnel had gone into his right leg causing severe bleeding I crawled

over to him and quickly put a tourniquet on his leg to slow the bleeding I got my Ur C10 emergency radio out and called cvy using the guard emergency frequency cvy this is dynamite on guard you copy I'm on guard cvy you hear me Dynamite Roger on guard IID yellow get your heads down a palm 30 seconds out Roger Virginia grenade then stay down the Gates of Hell opened on both sides of us an unbelievable Heat Wave and ball of orange red flame and light came across us from both sides burning everything in its path

a roaring fire than black smoke followed by Ox by air without oxygen the stench of burning flesh and terrifying screams of Agony the screams continued as human torches stumbled around and fell cons consumed by the jellied gasoline bow and con began to vomit uncontrollably Kim's leg was on fire and I had a small fire on my side we got the fires put out and engag the NVA survivors the Napalm had opened up the terrain significantly providing us with light from its fires it from the fires it started and good fields of fire the NVA were

determined to destroy us but seem to be dazed making them easy targets that Napal saved you huh oh yeah I when I discovered Napal fairly early on I realized that was the most brutal thing I could use against him the thing that terrified them the most was Napal when they saw their buddies staggering around just human torches and they were dying they could smell their buddies cooking if they survived if they didn't get hit they wanted no part of it mhm let's back away clean Jack cuz you these guys are serious that's some bad stuff

and it's so bad that your guys are they're they can't stop throwing up from smell smell the smell of the the cooking flesh you know is just yeah I mean it's hard not to throw up when you smell all that stuff fast forward this is cuvy King bees are 60 seconds out and they could come and get you I threw a red smoke grenade as we lifted off I could hear the metallic clangs of the aircraft we were taking taking hits as we were lifting up the king bees kept climbing as we flew away I

looked down at the aftermath and knew that RT keelback was still down there and that they would be on the ground for four more days completing what would be a very successful Mission but Virginia was out some days at SOG were more difficult than others and this has been one of those days yeah yeah you guys had the signal where when you dropped red smoke that meant the last guy was out and they were cleared hot the aircraft were cleared hot um one of your a points when you get soaked to the bone with cold

rain it makes your teeth want to chatter and your leg shake if you add a little fear to the cold it becomes much more difficult not to chatter and Andor Shake it's weird CU people when they think of Vietnam they don't think of freezing cold when you get wet but when you get wet and then throw a little fear on top of it you know your your leg just starts hopping on the ground and push it down you cuz you know it's then you te start to chatter in holy cow uh next one we got

this is where RT Dynamite meaning Recon team Dynamite meaning a oneman a oneman Evolution a oneman mission happens and it kind of happens by chance you're going on RNR um rest and relaxation and a bright light call is coming in so a bright light explain a bright light to us a bright light is a a team that goes in when you have a team in trouble uh maybe they've been overrun maybe they've disappeared but something's happened to them this is a standby team that launches to go out to try to find them rescue them bring

them in is there always a team on bright light standby most of the time or did you have to spin one off but sometimes yeah sometimes grab a team that's already at the launch site and just change their mission and send you in as a bright light team what was it SOG only or could a downed American pilot you know any downed American crewman was that considered a bright light as well was a bright L term for just so if you didn't have um you know if if it wasn't um a SOG team that was

in trouble uh had been overrun or whatever it could be a down pilot that somebody had just gone in MH and you could launch the bright light team to go in and try to recover got it so it's really any American in massive threat of being captured or killed or overrun in LA or Cambodia the the Vietnam seals told me that there if there was a a seal element in trouble or a down aircraft they were going no matter what like that's what they're just like Work loading aircraft and going if there's that that's happening

we're going U that's what I always think of when I think of the bright light situation you got your teammates and sometimes it is um I think Lynn Black's got a good example uh in his book of where they they just pulled guys together all us said get on the aircraft we got to go now MH and they just put a BRI bright light team together and launched them out there and sometimes you have one standing by or sometimes it's you take a team that's already there like the book later on you'll see our mission

was was changed at the launch site we were getting ready to launch on a different Mission and a team got overrun and they just brought me in and said your missions changed this is what you're doing now you're the bright light go for it mhm well in this particular case you're just kind of getting ready to go on RNR for the first time in a while yeah take a a day break or something yeah take a day break and you see a helicopter and then there a guy kind of sees you and he comes running

he's kind of yelling something you can't really hear what he's saying to you but he finally gets over to you and he's you know says hey LT you know how to set up a Maguire rig a Maguire rig is a is a basically a rope system that you can drop down and people can hook their carabiners into it and you can pull people out without having to land so this guy comes over and you do know how to do it and so now you're going to uh help him rig this Maguire rig inside the helicopter

he says we ran to the helicopter the sergeant told me that we had a team in trouble with casualties in elephant Valley a marine Force Recon area of operation we used for training ground for some of our missions because it came loaded with plenty of live fire shoot back targets that moved aggressively yeah it had a lot more uh shoot back targets than monkey mountain so if you really wanted you know some training you go out there uh one of our ch34 helicopter had gone to the area to attempt an extraction of some SOG team

members during the extraction attempt it had been shot down crashed through the 120 to 150t high jungle canopy and had explosion exploded and burned on impact with the ground there appeared to be two or three survivors a medac helicopter had left a few minutes earlier to try and help there were no lzs in that area just a very high and thick jungle canopy Maguire rig Maguire rigs would be needed for the extraction I took one quick look at the gate about 150 M away as we continued to run again you're you're running towards the helicopter

I the plans I had for the day were quickly put on hold as my adrenaline levels climbed in my mind I could see the smoldering remains of a burned ch34 helicopter dead and wounded crew members and the bad guys moving in for the final kill time was of the E Essence I had to rig the helicopter quickly so they could go get the survivors out as I approached the helicopter I leaned my car 15 and ammunition Bandelier against the conx against a conx container you know you're going to be rigging something you're going be on

the ground you're going to be working tying knots and you've got your weapon and so you just set it down outside the helicopter so it's not bothered you when you're in the helicopter all right I climbed in the cargo compartment of the helicopter began working feverishly to attach the Maguire riged nylon ropes to the floor after a few minutes the crew chief leaned over and yelled to me the team is an enemy contact we have to go at that point I realized I had been concentrating so much on what I was doing I had not

noticed that the pilot had turned up the engine RPM and the aircraft was beginning to vibrate in fact we were lifting off I pulled the crew chief over to me and yelled I'm not supposed to be on here he looked back at me Shrugged his shoulders and yelled back sorry about that as I looked down I saw the CCN main gate pass under me I sat back against the firewall fastened a seat Bel around my waist and resigned myself to the fact that my RNR would be delayed a couple hours as we flew I began

to realize that I didn't know where I was going what I was going to do and I was naked I had left my weapon and ammunition leaning against the conx I was flying into combat without a weapon the only things I had were my fatigues and boots and a pounding heart what a Friday afternoon of arar this was turning out to be so that's just got to be the most horrible feeling that you could ever possibly have in your life it wasn't exactly what I wanted to do that afternoon so but not having your weapon

yeah I I never went anywhere without a weapon yeah until that day yeah and and the conx box is probably 15t away you know like when you're oh I'm going to go rank this thing I don't want to it to be in the way about 15 minutes into the flight I had anep an epiphany I had previously asked Chief SG uh Colonel Kavanaugh Lieutenant Donahue the CCN Commander and Dick me Meadows a Recon company Commander to let me do an RT Dynamite Mission a one-man team just me they all said no but fate had just

said yes this was my [Music] chance are you already thinking you're going in at this point yeah fast forward a little bit a few minutes later the crew chief with a shocked look on his face pulled me toward him and yelled it's happening the helicopter is in front of us the helicopter in front of us has been shot down the team is still in contact and cannot go to the crash site we'll be there in 10 minutes so there was another helicopter rescue helicopter ahead of you they got shot down so there's a helicopter that

had crashed now the rescue helicopter gets shot down and you're the following helicopter he looked at me and shook his head in disbelief my pucker faer Factor increased significantly RT Dynamite had just been activated fast forward a little bit we circled around and came back to the medac crash site for a closer look this time I could see the crew members were injured and trapped inside the aircraft and fuel was spilling out on the crew any spark from inside the aircraft or a trace around would ignite the fuel and burn them alive and you what

what elevation are you hovering at well we're you know 3 or 400 ft you know above the canopy but you know I can see down through that hole and you can see the aircraft was down in a ravine so it's elevated the fuel is spilling out kind of running down across them fast forward I yelled to the crew chief to tell the pilot to go back to the medac crash site and I would drop a a Maguire rig down into the canopy climb down to it then climb down a tree to the ground so this

is already you know superhero activities it just sound like a good plan I don't have any other way to get down here I mean this I mean this is simple climb down the road climb down the tree when he the crew chief told them both the pilot and co-pilot looked around over their shoulders at me as if to say are youing crazy the crew chief leaned over and yelled the pilot says you're crazy I told them to tell the pilot that I might be crazy but his buddies were going to die a horrible death in

a few minutes if we didn't do something he quickly turned the aircraft around and flew back to the med that crash site I pushed them I pushed out one of the Maguire Rigs and the bag of sand quickly took it to the canopy we were still receiving ground fire at this point we're approximately 100 feet above the canopy I happened to see that the crew chief had an M16 strapped to the wall behind him I told him to give it to me he was a little hesitant at first probably because he thought he would never

see it again he handed it to me along with a Bandelier of four magazines I checked the safety chambered around and thought great I'm going into the middle of a firefight alone with five magazines of ammunition and a weapon that may or may not be cited in definitely not cited in for you I stepped out onto the skid of the helicopter confident that I had a workable plan okay fair enough I was 400 ft above the jungle floor as I looked down and took a quick mental picture map of the terrain crash sites location of

the sonicc that I could use to navigate by once I was on the ground as I grabbed the rope with my be hands I remembered that the ropes were new white nylon ropes new nylon ropes are very slick I knew it was going to be very tough to hold on to but I figured I could wrap my feet around it and make it work the crew chief leaned over to me and yelled the pilot says we're receiving too much ground fire we have to leave I knew it was time some situations do not give you

decision Alternatives this was one of those cases more men were about to die going down the Rope was the only way I could influence the outcome I stepped off the skid and quickly began to discover some flaws in my plan even though I squeezed the Rope as tightly as I could I was not able to hold the Slick rope tight enough to prevent the rope from sliding through my hands a nylon rope will cause severe burns if it slides across your skin the Rope began to slide through my hands at a faster and faster rate

after about 30t the white rope had turned blood red from sliding through my hands literally it had burned the skin off the inside of my hands fingers and thumbs I was bleeding badly and could not slow down to make matters worse the Rope no longer reached the canopy the aircraft was beginning to move because of the ground fire and had lifted the end of the Rope about 15 to 20 ft above the 150t Treetops my rate of descent was increasing rapidly and the only thing I could do to prevent my death was to be able

to hold onto the Maguire rig strap when I got to the end of the Rope unknown to me at this time our tactical Operation Center at CCN was monitoring the helicopter's radio frequency and I found out later that about this time a fourth aircraft had arrived in the area and was observing my descent he radioed my aircraft and asked who the hell is that the reply was classic some crazy special forces guy at the time that would probably have been my reply too word of the operation was spreading fast and CCN Recon people includ including

barsell dick Meadows and other friends were gathering around the CCN talk to listen to the radio Transmissions on the outside speaker when I hit so here you are you're sliding uncontrollably fast down this Maguire rig rope and that's probably what 100 ft long 75 ft long no 150 no so it's a long one you're sliding down that thing you were planning to get into the jungle canopy on that but now it's 20 ft above the jungle canopy and increasing because they're taking fire you're getting towards the end of the Rope when I hit the end

of the Maguire rig at the end of the Rope I closed down with every ounce of strength I had left and I stopped the pain in my hands was excruciating blood was running down my arms it seemed as this the NVA had stopped shooting at the helicopter and were now shooting at me as I looked up I could see the red streams of tracers coming down from the door Gunners and green tracers going up the loud cracking sounds of bullets were all around me I was also now swinging on the end of a long pendulum

about 20 15 to 20 ft above the canopy I knew the canopy was about 150 ft above the jungle floor my strength was gone once again it was decision time I took one last look at the battlefield to validate my mental map and decided that I as I swung over the center of the next Treetop I would let go and try to grab hold of something as I crashed through the canopy I looked down and as I centered a treetop I let go the fall brought my stomach into my throat the sensation was quickly overcome

by the impact of the Jungle canopy I grabbed wildly as I crashed through the tree limbs but I just couldn't didn't seem to hold on to anything I was moving too fast and bouncing off limbs leaving blood and skin on each one finally I hit a large limb with my stomach and wrapped around it the impact knocked the breath out of me but I had stopped falling after a couple minutes I was able to begin my descent I had crashed through 100t of canopy leaving only about 50 ft to go before impact with the ground

climbing down with no skin on the inside of my blooded hands fingers and thumbs with visible cuts into the muscles and ligaments was very painful um so that jungle canopy is thick and you you drop down into it what what's the first thing you hit like do you hit the Le so you hit some leaves on top and it is it like how violent is this fall it's pretty violent and it becomes more violent as you you get underneath at the top the the tree limbs are small and sometimes you have some vines or something

there but they're small and they Bend easy when you hit them so it starts to slow you down but then it gets thinner and you start to bounce off of big Limbs and you're moving moving so fast I mean you you can grab but you just can't hold on to it particularly if you the Skin's going off the inside of your hands so I'm just kind of hitting Limbs and bouncing and bouncing and then fold around that that one big one that stopped me so then worked my way over and went down the tree but

um you know and there's some conversations going on in the background about you idiot was any of those conversations going on inside your own head at this point oh yeah that's where they were you idiot what made you think you could grab something going through the show you that fast fast forward a little bit I could hear the firefight the RT team was involved in about 200 300 met from me the this reference point helped Orient me where I was and where I needed to go more bad guys were probably moving around the jungle a

feeling of excitement crept over me as I realized I was a oneman bright light team RT dynamite and that not only would the NVA be shooting at me but so would the team because they probably didn't know I was on the ground I moved out rapidly in the direction of the second crash site there was no time to waist I had moved only about 50 m when I heard a twig break to my left as I looked in that direction I saw two Soldiers with AK-47s about 20 M away moving parallel to me just as

I turned my M16 toward them they both saw me and began to turn their AK-47s towards me everything went into slow motion in the next fraction of a second I had to decide if they were really NVA or two of the RT team members dressed like our NVA IID practice an immediate action drill for just such an occasion hundreds of times on our firing range and had used it in previous encounters I decided to take them out as I dove for the ground I emptied a 20 round mag at both of them I mean this

was this was something I had done a lot uh I mean every time you know between missions when we would go to the range one of the things we'd do is set up Silhouettes and I used to set five up fairly close and then you know use that Tech Tech of diving for the ground empty the magazine and making sure I hit all five of them on the way down you know so but that's on a range and and they're not standing there they cage pointing back at me but I had done that so many

times uh you know I was confident I I could do that um so I just executed that and and I could tell I was hitting them because I could see them jerking around as the bullets with there's only two of them you know with with two firing on automatic I'll hit both of you in a less than a second you know so if if you're spread out and I have to shoot at you first and then I have to go you know aim over here to hit uh Echo then I'm in trouble because I've got

to make all of you get hit within less than a second because whoever's not getting hit um they're going to return fire and I'm in I'm in you know trouble that's one of the thing you know Close Quarters combat when you go in you clear in a room you want to use that V when you get in there you want to be separated so if there's somebody there he has to pick one of you that shoot at and the other's going to get himh and you you also had the thought in your mind that these

could be the the Americans Yeah because sometimes be S guys cuz sometimes you guys will get dressed up like NVA yeah we didn't normally do it uh you know in elephant Valley you know because the Marines operated out there and they saw us dress that way yeah you're going down yeah so I you know those things went through my mind but very quickly fast forward a little bit after moving about 150 meters someone fired a shot at me I thought it would it sounded strange as I dove for cover it wasn't a rifle it was

a pistol probably a 38 caliber AK-47s made a different distinct sound the helicopter crew was shooting at me the co-pilot had managed to crawl out of the wreckage had seen my movement had begun firing at me with his 38 I yelled to him that I was a good guy he did not believe me and continued to shoot my experience had been that helicopter Pilots were very cool calm and control when they were in the air the jungle was a different matter he continued to fire at me until he had to reload his revolver at that

point I rushed him and got the drop on him the pilot co-pilot and crew were battered wounded bloody stunned confused and going into shock they kept asking me where my other men were I told them it's just me but I will get you all out of here they found it hard to believe that I was their rescuer and I was alone confidence was not super high with one guy with bloody hands probably three mags left at this point I I look like the person who needed [Laughter] rescue uh they had been extracting two men with

a jungle penetrator when the air this is what had happened to them they had been extracting two men with a jungle penetrator when the aircraft aircraft lost power and they started going forward and down the jungle penetrator hung on a large tree limb and the cable snapped dropping the two men 100 ft to the ground and launching the aircraft Through the 150ft Jungle canopy into the Ravine so that's the situation that you're dealing with yeah once that once that cable I mean they were already headed toward the canopy once that cable snapped and he's like

being shot out of a slingshot you know they just went right on through the canopy fast forward I told the co-pilot that I was going to get help and for him to keep everyone quiet and hidden and not to shoot at anyone unless they physically stepped on them I moved quickly towards the ch34 crash site by this time the firefight had stopped and I was not sure where the sog team was or where the NVA were my movement was extremely cautious because of the so team team detected my movement they would open fire and they

would not miss as I neared the other crash light I heard movement a short distance up from the ch34 crash light and muffled voices I moved very slowly and deliberately I heard an American Voice at this point I could only assume the enemy had captured one of the survivors from the c34 crash my plan was to move in as close as I possible and look for an opportunity to attack and free the American as I crept closer and closer to the group I eventually got close enough to see an American sergeant that I recognized he

staff sergeant Jones was the one Zer of the sog team that was on the ground he was still armed and obviously not a prisoner I got down behind a tree and yelled to him that I was the bright light team and coming in for him and to have his people hold their fire after he told me it was okay I stood up holding the M16 in the air with one hand and walked toward the group once inside their perimeter I discovered that the loud American Voice was that of an American Air Force Lieutenant Colonel who

was down who who said he was the down pilot of the first aircraft that had been shot down I informed the lieutenant colonel that I was the bright light team and Senior ground commander and was now in charge of the operation that went over well yeah the fact that a lieutenant colonel significantly outranked a lieutenant did not matter because he was air Air Force and we were on the ground that meant I was in charge he became very upset and began to threaten me with what was going to happen me if when we got to

safety about that time the yards on the so team had heard enough and The Yards the mon yards the the uh locals that are part of the sog team they'd heard enough several of them turned their weapons towards the lieutenant colonel and made some very cold and serious remarks The Interpreter told the lieutenant colonel that trong way Lieutenant was in charge and everyone would do what he said I told the lieutenant colonel that they were ready to kill him and bury him in the jungle never to be seen again he could see they were ready

to kill him if he did not submit that ended the entire discussion that's wild yeah I mean it is what what kind of it would really scare you I mean teams were very protective of the Americans and the looks on their faces when they were getting ready to kill somebody and you and they do it all they kill people all the time this is no different so you know we can take you out it's not a big deal they'll never find you mhm yeah so I it finally hit him yeah I better go along not

to mention he's an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel on the ground that's just lost his hel I mean you think he was in some kind of weird Panic eag he still he was still in shock MH yeah but because see you know the aircraft had crashed and it burned and he survived two other members on the aircraft survived but they were wounded or you know busted up pretty badly and that those are the two that the metac helicopter was trying to pull out on the jungle penetrator so when the cable broke those guys fell 100 ft

and and were killed on on impact so now he knows he's lost those guys he's the only Survivor you know from the aircraft so well you so now you go into action I took 14 members with me to find the jungle penetrator and two men strapped to he found the penetrator and unhooked the bodies from it when we picked up the American and put him over my shoulder the air rushed out of his lungs I was engulfed in the smell of death as we worked our way back up the hill it began to rain once

inside the main perimeter we laid the bodies down alongside each other since American SOG members wore sterile uniforms the American Sergeant did not have a name tag I did not know who I had carried up the hill so I asked Lieutenant Colonel who the young Sergeant was the already sickening feeling in my stomach increased tremendously when I heard his name magasine Fred was a friend of mine who I had joked with the day before I felt No Remorse for the two NVA I had killed an hour before but the sight of the Dead American especially

a friend created a range of emotions from deep sadness to extreme anger toward the enemy one of the first rules you learned when you arrived in Vietnam was not to get close to anyone but there's no way you can prevent it we covered them with ponchos and wondered where the bad guys were so the guy that you recover is a buddy of yours um my next problem was the crew members from the Huey that had crashed they were still out there where I'd put them alone I took four of the so team members and moved

consciously to their location and established a security perimeter around them to get the 17 to get the 17 of us out I would have to use some demolitions to blow down some trees and bring in a helicopter gunship to suppress enemy fire while everyone was hoisted up into a marine ch46 helicopter i' had been able to contact the rear using the so team's radio and had the necessary demolitions on the way by the time the extraction helicopter arrived with the demolitions the weather was closing in the rain was coming down harder and the clouds were

moving down from the mountain we would have to work fast just to beat the weather the Marine ch46 crew chief dropped the demolition through the jungle canopy the enemy had been quiet until the arrival of the ch46 now we could hear them all around us shooting at the helicopter about the time the demolition Came Crashing to the ground gunships arrived we signaled our location and had Sergeant Jones begin to work the gunships around us while the gunships were keeping the enemy busy a couple of the sog team members helped me carry the 50 lbs of

C4 blasting caps roll of time fuse a Time fuse igniter and a detonating detonation cord near the Huey but far enough away to not injure the them or detonate the aircraft I placed a C4 on several trees and dropped them this opened up a large enough hole in the canopy to give us a better chance of not having a repeat of the last jungle penetrator incident the ch46 that dropped the demolitions returned and hovered over our hole as it began to lower the jungle penetrator the enemy ground fire increased dramatically and both door Gunners open

fire with their 50 cal machine guns we could see large red tracers penetrating deep into the jungle the two gunships were now raining bullets through the trees with their Min guns up to 4,000 rounds a minute firing 40 mm grenades and 2.75 in Rockets with 17lb high explosive Warheads the popping and cracking sound of the bullets and explosions of the grenades and Rockets were exacerbated by the falling tree limbs and shrapnel flying in every direction the darkening sky made the tracers appear very bright the hot wet jungle air was getting Smoky filled with the smell

of burned rocket propellant and gunpow by the time the ch46 jungle penetrator reached the ground we had carried the pilot and crew chief over to where it landed we strapped them on as quickly as possible and signal to pull them up the ride up took about 2 minutes we sent the other wounded crew members up next followed by the injured crew members the lieutenant colonel and the two dead the ch46 left to take them to the hospital The ch46 Returned about an hour later with a fresh set of gunships to continue extracting the rest of

us I began putting the team members on as fast as I could while Jones continued to work the gunships the jungle floor had become mud and was making the job of hooking people up much more difficult eventually just Jones and I were left on the ground unfortunately some NVA had moved up close to our position and were beginning to fire at the helicopter we knew we'd be exposed to their fire if we ascended we had two options find them and take them out or chance being hoisted up with them shooting at us the pilot narrowed

options by saying the clouds were beginning to cover the hole and it was now or never we strapped ourselves on and fired behind each other's backs as we slowly moved Skyward spinning slowly swinging back and forth and watching the tracers come by it seemed like it took an hour to make the trip up although it only took about 2 minutes once inside and unstrapped from the jungle penetrator I rolled over on my back closed my eyes and said a prayer of thanks Upon a at the CCN compound we were greeted by a small group who

welcomed us back Elden barwell and Dick Meadows were in the group with a big smile on his face barsell said I heard you did some crazy out there today great job Meadows looked at me and almost smiled when he said RT Dynamite good job Thompson it was really a good feeling to be back and to pick up my weapon and ammunition that were leaning against the conx container where I left them we had been taught in ranger training to never get more than an arms length from your weapon I would not make that mistake again

Lieutenant Donahue the CCN Commander was sitting at his table with a full full colel non-sp Special Forces and seemed to be having a heated conversation Lieutenant Donahue congratulated me on doing a good job and then told me what he and the other Lieutenant Colonel had been discussing he said we had left a crew member in the first crash on the ground apparently a crew chief in the CH4 ch34 had allegedly been killed and burned in the wreckage the Air Force Lieutenant Colonel pilot had not told me that his crew chief was missing Lieutenant Colonel Donahue

told me to get a team together and be prepared to launch it first light to go recover the crew Chief's body and destroy the Medevac helicopter there was concern that the helicopter's communication equipment and codes were intact these needed to be destroyed before the enemy could make use of them on the way to the shower I found Ben and told him to assemble as many team members as he could while I showered the shower was great even though I found three fat leeches that had crawled under my shirt and attached themselves to my body they

were having a feast at my expense a squirt of insect repellent made them turn loose so you come back from this totally insane Mission and they tell you cool good job get your team together CA the lieutenant colonel left his crew chief out there and didn't tell you by the way right and there's sensitive cryptological gear in the helicopter that needs to be destroyed along with the helicopter can I get a freaking breakover here or what wasn't what I was expecting to be told it would never mention that there you know a crew chief was

missing or that they even had one mhm and they're telling you you're going to go the next day yeah and you your hands are trash still drip dripping blood everywhere so and your response is Roger that get the team ready exactly and I went yeah had my hands treated washed your hands uh you get back out I'm just going to fast word um you get back out there to recover this body and Destroy This helicopter and Equipment the helicopter was nosed down in a ravine a very undefendable place I quickly photographed the aircraft from different

angles to show the condition of the record in numerous bullet holes uh just as I gave the order to move our team our our five team members to the top of the Ravine burst of AK-47 from 3 to 5 NVA began to hit around us the team returned fire as quickly as they quickly moved to the top of the Ravine and away from the NVA since the there were only a few NVA decided to stay with the helicopter and plant the demolition charges so you're in this helicopter you guys start taking fire the team moves

up the top of the Ravine but since you're already there you have the explosives you're like well I might as well get the job done I'm already in there they don't know I'm in there mhm they think everybody went you know back up top they don't know what I'm doing in there and I'm you know putting all the C4 around uhhuh and you know and it's taking a hit every once in a while but it you know C4 can take hits yeah that won't set at all off but once I put a blasting cap in

there if that thing gets hit everything goes so you know it was a little tense once I said okay I got to I got to stick to these two blasting caps in there pull the fuse igniter and then I got to be able to get out of this thing and climb that bank so and a lot more was starting to show up yeah so so as that's happening RT Virginia so you're you're in the aircraft you're this demolition getting it ready to blow um finally they've realized that you're in there you got to make that

decision do I put the blasting caps in and roll the dice if they are going to how much they shoot at me you decide you're going to roll the dice you should have played the lotto on these couple days uh RT Virginia had increased their volume of fire to help cover me as I rolled up on top of the bank this is you after you leave the helicopter I look back to see three to five NVA I thought there were three my team said there were five run up behind the helicopter if I had waited

a few more seconds they would have had me so you bailed out of that helicopter at the last second now you get up this up the Ravine you look back and you see them getting into the helicopter several of the team members looked quickly at me with the same expression of disbelief that I had what happened next was beyond words a tremendous explosion produced a giant black yellow and orange Fireball followed by a shock wave that literally dazed us all and exposed us to tremendous heat there was a momentary lull and on fire as it

began to rain pieces of metal helicopter parts rocks dirt tree limbs trees and the remains of the NVA who had been hiding behind or near the helicopter the jungle is full of black smoke so as you leave the helicopter they go into the helicopter taking cover and probably going to start looking around well they didn't look around quickly enough because your your charge went off and killed them all yeah and and we were we were very fortunate because the the helicopter was in a Reve so it was nose nose first down in the Ravine so

you know the Ravine has walls on the side of it and you know it's long so when it exploded most of the blast went straight up or down the Ravine on each side um if we' have been on level ground with it it had taken us out too 40 lbs of C4 oh it will get your attention I mean you bring big buildings down with that that just you know um talking about your demolitions calculations you did not need to bring 40 lbs to destroy this helicopter sir well it was already there oh oh so

from the day before got it yeah that was left over when from blowing the trees down so it was already there so you're just like oh this is what we're doing well just use it and I'm not going to leave any behind you know for the bad guys I'll just just do it all at once yeah 40 lb is all yeah man this this is going to be [Laughter] cool when it doubt overload yeah I don't think I'd ever set that much off before uh the enemy fire picked back up quickly with a new twist

they had moved an RPD machine gun in a position on the other side of us so we're now in a crossfire we were pinned down and couldn't move we had to get rid of the machine gun and we'd all be dead the problem was getting across 20 M of open terrain with the withering Fire coming from both sides without getting hit the NVA had also brought an RPG and it fired two rockets at us three team members and I were hit by some small pieces of shrap and broke and pieces of rockets time was running

out I told the team to cover me and I went across the ground like a mole watching mud being dug up all around me the only way I could explain not being hit was that God put a force field around me he did not allow he did allow my Ruck to take a few hits just to remind me to stay close to the ground fortunately the bullets did not hit the blasting Caps or white phosphor grenades in my Ruck the NVA began to shift fire away from me as they near as I neared the Rocks

this seemed strange but I was so glad that I made it I didn't think much about it the Rocks did not provide as much protection as I anticipated the machine gun had to be dealt with quickly I pulled myself to the edge of the bank and I looked over I quickly discovered why the enemy had shifted most of their fire away from me less than 3 ft from me an NVA Soldier was crawling up the bank to get me I didn't know which one of us had the biggest look of shock on his face probably

me time began to move in slow motion and what in reality was 2 or 3 seconds seemed like minutes in the next fraction of a second the NVA Soldier squeezed the trigger on his AK-47 and fired a five to6 round burst that just missed my head by what must have been an inch or two burning powder coming out of the barrel was hitting me in the face as the bullets streamed out AK-47s have a tendency to rise up when they're fired on automatic so that the other bullets go were going over my head I squeezed

off a burst of six to eight rounds from a distance of Less Than 3 ft they all hid him in the face and head and caused it to explode sending brain matter bone debris yellow fatty tissue and an arterial spray of blood all over me especially my face as his torso tumbled down the bank I could taste his blood that had hit me in the mouth this was a lesson that I was in the process of learning um if you shoot someone that close to you close your mouth CU you're going to get hit in

the face with a whole bunch of stuff and if your mouth is open you're going to get a mouth full it yeah six to eight rounds at one foot that's going to make a mess about this time fast forward a little bit about this time two gunships arrived I marked our position initially with a flare gun then purple smoke grenade after they identified our location I directed their minigun 40 mm grenade and Rocket to fire it onto the enemy the gunships were literally ripping the trees ground an enemy apart even though we RT Virginia had

already killed 40 or more of the enemy at least that many or more were still shooting at us the gunships had killed a lot and we attacking another group coming up the ridge after us the NVA were having a bad day I worked the air strikes as close in as close as I could to our position eventually was able to suppress the enemy's fire and crawl back to the team so far was the only team member who had been seriously wounded shrapnel from a b40 rocket had hit him in the back it was not life-threatening

at the moment but he was bleeding and in a lot of pain we were using a lot of EnV ammunition and the NVA force was increasing the time had come to break contact with the Enemy or die in place once again the weather moved in on us very quickly and the rain came down hard before we were halfway up the mountain the clouds had already covered the upper half of the mountain including the ridgel line we could not be extracted that day the team was tired and somewhat demoralized as we continued to climb toward the

top of the mountain we had at least temporarily broken contact with the Enemy eventually we found a dense Rocky steep Peak we thought we could defend the rain continued the rest of the day and throughout the night the good news is this provided us with a lot of drinking water and we were really thirsty being stuck there overnight did not go well with the team it had a significant negative impact on their morale we really thought that once we got to the top of the ridge we could get distracted but not once the weather rolled

in I knew we were going to be there at least until the next day sometimes things just didn't work out the way we wanted them to we had to keep adapting times like this really tested my leadership skills I had to keep their morale up by congratulating them pumping them up and telling them how well we did this was another successful heavy firefight as a team and we destroyed all the NVA got the body we went after and blew up the [Music] helicopter I told them you really did a good job job today except hang

and I didn't mention this earlier but he had brought a a Coca-Cola out on the mission what a bottle of coke is that what can a can can uh don't ever thinking about bringing a soft drink on a mission again I also told them we had to keep our guard up and pay attention we couldn't dwell on what had happened the weather would clear when it cleared and when it cleared we would get out in the meantime we had to stay sharp we were in a good position if the NVA tried to come up we

would take him out we spent almost 48 Hours on that little Peak constantly watching listening and feeling for the enemy before the weather cleared and we were extracted everyone was excited to climb on board the helicopter and head home even though the smell was terrible until we got in the air when we got back I was told to report to Lieutenant Colonel Donahue's office the aviation colonel was with him and immediately asked you blew up my helicopter I said that's what you told me to do sir destroy the helicopter he said I didn't tell you

that you were not supposed to destroy the destroy it just put a thermite on it or something on the radios but not destroy the helicopter well the aircraft is in a million pieces and merged with the NVA body parts it's gone I wanted to hear hey man you did a great job not why did you blow up my helicopter that's another ridiculous thing three months later I was awarded the air metal with v device second award for heroism during the aerial combat and a Vietnamese Cross of gallantry for my actions on May 9th 1969 I

was also awarded the bronze star medal with v device for heroism in ground combat for my actions on May 12th 1969 both American Awards have been had been downgraded from Silver Stars my purple heart was never found so there's you mention in this book and I wanted to ask you about this uh you mentioned in the book there's strange things about this whole event one of them was this American pilot piloting this particular type of hel there was some things that didn't seem to make sense to you in the book what's what do you think

that's all about I'm not sure um the Air Force had what they called h34 it was the same aircraft it was just made by a different company um the king bees the the Vietnamese Pilots had the ch 34 the same aircraft M pained a little different um and the air Air Force flew a small group that they had had nothing to do you know with us but all of a sudden this is what appears to be a a king be one of the uh Vietnamese CH 34s it's got um an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel pilot

has a Vietnamese Lieutenant Colonel pilot and had a crew chief and then it had one of our s guys in it and it's just a strange mixture I mean nobody at the time could explain what was going on uh he got the aviation guy got so upset about the helicopter being blown up I mean he was really upset about that um so something was going on there they tried to initially write it up as the helicopters just lost power and when I turned in the film to be developed I didn't get the pictures back showing

the ones I the pictures I had taken of of all the bullet holes in the aircraft I got the one of the aircraft down in the Ravine and the remains of the the ch34 that had burned up so I was missing some pictures no one could account for it well we we developed all you gave us you're missing some um the awards got downgraded I mean it was just a whole series of things about this mission that were strange and I I never managed to get answers to that I was just told here's your next

mission you go do it yeah it's very strange the fact that those a WS got downgraded they should have been completely upgraded to the top um it's crazy and and there are other incidents you know in the book where strange things happen you know like the mission being canell the shallow Mission being canceled at the last minute um and some other things that later are in the book where they said no you didn't see that that well I took pictures of it and they gave it to you no you didn't we have no record of

what you saw on that Convoy you know all my little guys this is the female drivers what you're talking about the female drivers and I I can understand now uh why they were saying you didn't see it we're not going to put that out if if the American public at the time would the attit toward the war knew that on a daily basis we were killing women truck drivers it would not have gone over well even though they were enemy yeah they were women and that time you couldn't do that I mean you remember uh

you know later on when Obama was President he would he wouldn't let us hit the convoys even though you know the the bad guys are Drive they were saying well these guys were forced to do that we're not going to hit those convoys and kill those drivers so he he stopped a lot of attacks on the convoys but you know for whatever reason there but um yeah they just said you didn't see the women well I'm going to go get I'm going to go get one no don't you dare pull one out of a truck

uh some of the lesson that you learned on this one um obviously you already pointed out keep your mouth closed when you shoot someone up close here's another one that I really liked a burning fuse drives everything for a while and that's because when you once you pull the fuse on that but I thought about that from a life perspective because we you know obviously we we do Target raids and stuff and we once we pull the time fuse like you it's going to drive every decision you're going to make like you got to get

out of there so that was definitely a a good one designated 2ic so make sure the second uh in command knows who he is never underestimate luck good or bad and what I liked about this is this is coupled with success and failure come from mindset so I thought that was an interesting pair of Lessons Learned one is that never underestimate luck and the other one is success and failure defend on depend on mindset so there's going to be good luck there's going to be bad luck what are you going to do with it when

it shows up cuz both of them are coming yeah might be a brand new know on rope you know just the luck of the draw you got a brand new one and you know it smoked your hands um yeah so the mindset is in a lot of cases is do I do this or not MH and I I think a lot of times um in the special ops Community that's one of the things in general that separates special ops guys you know from from from the regular people it's the mindset we're going to do this

it might sound crazy but we're going to go do it and we're going to do a good job about it and you know so you go do it do you think that you know and again we're going to get some more of these uh friends of yours that would say hey I got a bad feeling about this Mission how much of that is like if your mindset is things are going to go wrong and they start to go wrong and you have the mindset that they're going to go wrong and you have the mindset that

I don't I'm going to come back as opposed to the mindset of like it doesn't matter what they bring we're going to kick their ass how much do you think that plays into it I think this is just me I I think there are times when you know people know uh that they're not going to come back from this that uh this is it there's I don't know why but I think this is my last mission I'm going to go out there and I'm going to do my thing but I'm probably not coming back I

think there's sometimes when you have an opportunity to change that because you feel that way because you know that you know like with Dennis later on in the book I told him Dennis if you that feel that strongly don't go you can say say that you're not going you can come up with a reason not to go on this Mission if if it's really bothering you that much then you probably shouldn't go and you know he just brushed that off no you can't do that I've got to go it's my mission so I don't know

and and with the other guys um with with the chainy I mean he they were out there uh they found 15 NVA in a whole group and they were watching them and he decided that we can take them they were a lot more formidable than he estimated and uh in addition to them putting up a stronger fight when they brought in um gunships there was a a rocket that went off course M and he got hit with a shrapnel from the rocket and and it appears at least from what they were saying was that the

pilot didn't shoot it in the wrong place he shot several but one of them veered off from from the rest of them uh crooked fin or whatever yeah so you also have this one when the enemy when you can't locate when you can't locate the enemy they are maneuvering which is a very uh important thing to remember once again not only in battle but in life yeah yeah all of those things apply to to life and then in the end I summarize some of them as so imperatives you know never stop moving you keep moving

forward even if it's one step at a time you know I I tell you guys you run as far as you can when you can't run you start walking when you can't walk anymore you get on your hands and knees and crawl when you can't crawl anymore you get on your belly and you crawl when you can't crawl anymore you start doing push-ups until you decide you're going to start moving forward again but you always continue to move forward once you stop that's it m and I I tell senior people agewise never stop when you

start sitting in your favorite chair and not getting up and you sit there and do things in your chair all day pretty soon you can't get out of that chair you've got to keep moving even if it's walk around the driveway walk around the block do you got to move forward don't sit around MH um you got to use it to lose it as they say exactly uh you just an interesting part of the book where you talk about this guy Mike Mike Hammer how you say his name Hammer Hammer Hammer he's like a buddy

of yours from high school just showed up at the game with a couple of his buddies and you guys and and gets in yeah rolled out rolled out on some operations so I mean he he was a Navy uh c yeah and they they had a little compound there in denain and at some point I I don't know Cousin Carl told him somebody told him I was over there in that compound and here he comes top secret the the existence of the compound is top secret nobody knows it's even there but and certainly no one

knows who's inside that compound here he comes and he gets in you know Cousin Carl oh he walked in I had to come down off the mountain and get him and I took him to the S4 we loaded him up with gear took him up there he spent a week there with firefights every day holy go uh um fast forward a little bit May 1969 the 101st Airborne assisted by Arvin forces was ordered to assault and take Hill 937 that's Hamburger Hill if you don't know unknown to US forces the NVA were moving a 10,000

man NVA division towards Hamburger Hill with the intent of crushing the 101st us intelligence picked up information about the force headed to Hamburger Hill and Mac VG was tasked with finding and destroying the NVA Force I couldn't help but wonder how do you lose a 10,000 man unit so yeah um you start talking here and so that's your mission your mission is to go and stop this 10,000 man you know division of enemy that are heading to fight the 101st um you start talking about this human combat reaction we were talking about a little this

a little bit before and also even before we hit record you know some of the things that you say here most humans do not want to die in combat under high stress fear people have a strong survival Instinct which causes them to react in a certain predetermined unconscious way a proximately 90% of of humans are right-handed right-handed Shooters tend to shoot around the right side of cover trees rocks Etc when an enemy soldier goes behind a tree he will most likely look around the right side of the tree from his perspective and fire from that

side we needed to be ready to fire at that side of the tree instantly when we saw the moment the chance of hitting him before he could return fire or react was to us was higher the NVA the team's Instinct was to react the same way as the NVA we spent half a day talking about and practicing how the NVA reacted and how we could make sure we did not react the same way and we started practicing that in between missions every time we to go to the range and that and shooting uh with the

opposite hand offhand shooting yeah yeah because it's it's just un unbelievable you have to try it to to get the effect the car5 M16 everything is set up select a switch with your your thumb you know if you're right-handed magazine release with your index finger you put it in your left hand everything is wrong now even trying to get the magazine in when you put it over there uh now you know you can change it you know the armor can reverse it if you're left-handed but you a do it in the middle of a battle

you can't even figure out how to get a new magazine in in the middle of a battle so you got to practice Yeah so I started putting that in about 20% of our range time between missions shoot with the other hand you got to learn how to do it yeah not when people are shooting you at you we we we definitely we would I would say there was a there was a whole kind of dynamic that we went through like when I first got in the SEAL Teams which was in the early 90s we would

shoot offand you know in the event that we were wounded we want to be able to shoot off hand we want to be able to change mags with our with one hand with our weak hand and so we did a lot of that but then at a certain point we started shooting ambid idest how do you say that that Charles idex yeah we started shooting with both hands yeah and it was because as we started doing more and more urban and Close Quarters combat you know you come to a a corner and if you want

to look it's somebody's got to change it's yeah it's beneficial to be able to put that weapon in your other hand and we kind of went back to the trend of or the the the mindset of well you can kind of maneuver your body a little bit more and still shoot with your strong hand so people I but I think just people need to get comfortable with what they're going to do and be ready to do it I was telling my guys is where you the most likely to get hit when you're shooting if you're

shooting around the right side of the tree what are you sticking out around the tree your right arm your right shoulder and right hand uh and left hand you know to some degree but you got a high probability of getting hit here so now it's not a matter of just option if you're going to continue to shoot you got to shoot with the other hand and you probably don't have this one to put a magazine in with now so we've got to be prepared to go either way and the same with a pistol you know

you got to shoot I mean special ops guys now do that they go to the range and they practice totally you know just and anyway you know all that stuff but um back then we didn't do that M and I thought that's crazy you know we got to learn how to do it and do it that way everything you know when the last time you threw a h grenade with your left hand or your off hand we don't practice that everybody's afraid you'll drop it well we got to learn how to I don't you to

drop it in the middle of a firefight you know you got to chunk that thing you got to learn how to do it with both hands all of these different things that we do I mean you got to be ambitous out there um so at first my team thought you're kind of crazy I said yeah I am but we're going to survive you know yeah that's why we going to give each other IVs yeah know you got to learn how to do that before you give me one well people shooting at us mhm I don't

want to bleed to death because you can't get it inh so um this mission that you're getting ready for you say it was a humbling feeling know that o to know that over the next two days literally thousands of people would die as a result of what RT Virginia was about to do there was also a very high pro probability that some or all of us would be among the dead was this a mission that you that that seemed even more intense and higher probability of getting killed than the other missions you went on because

you're going out against 10,000 or did you kind of measure them all like it is what it is and I think somewhere in there I say there's only so many people you got 10,000 of them out there all all 10,000 can't shoot at you at one time you know a small group's going to come at you so in terms of engaging them uh until you run out of ammunition you know uh you can you can probably deal with what's coming at you although it's a lot um but so 10,000 makes them easier to find and

my plan at this point uh my experience has been I can take out a lot of people with close airs support M I just need to find you once I know where you are I'm going to smoke you so uh and and part of the mission too was not not just finding them but identifying where they are and drawing a Target box MH because the B-52s needed to have the coordin the corner coordinates of that Target box because that's where they were going to get them so if I could find out where they were hiding

um you know to stay out of sight so we couldn't see them during the day and draw a box around that and then send it to the B52 guys six b52s dropping 110 500 lb bombs a piece within a time span of like 2 minutes 660 500lb bombs going to hit inside this target box it's gonna leave a mark yeah and there's not going to be much left I won't have to deal with those guys I just need to find out where they are send the coordinates back and those guys are coming they they won't

hear them they won't know they're up there it's just the whole world all of a sudden starts exploding yeah yeah those things are the arklite missions from those bombers or something else um but like you said somebody's got to find them yeah don't drop those bombs and that's where you come in yeah you know so you know I figure six or seven guys we can go take on a Division it sounds cool but you know we're not taking on the whole division we're just stirring them up a little bit so we can figure out where

they are I'm fast forward to you guys are getting inserted this is King B2 30 seconds to final cvy Roger King B2 Dynamite 20 seconds to touchdown stay alert Dynam M Roger Mye King B was about 200 ft above the ground 250 ft above the ground aligned with the LZ when suddenly the jungle came alive with a heavy volume of automatic weapons fire green tracers came at us from every direction I could see smoke trails from b40 Rockets going by us the king B was taking Small Arms hits and immediately began to vibrate violently I

could hear the metallic clangs of bullets hitting the aircraft and saw bullets coming through the floor and sides of the cargo compartment of the king be I heard a loud scream and bow yelled Tri young Tri TR TR hit hit one of the bullets coming through the floor hit B's right thigh he was bleeding profusely but I couldn't get to him bullets were cracking all around us I could hear the radio through the headset and I heard cvy say King B1 abort abort do not go to the LZ I say again abort but it was

too late I felt the bottom drop out from under us and felt my stomach come up into my throat I heard our pilot captain on King one mayday mayday mayday go down in the background I heard Scarface this is cvy King B1 going down put immediate fire on the north side of the LZ and ridgel line Dynamite you guys brace for impact King B2 abort abort abort returned to Romeo Papa I yelled at Ben to sit down and both of them to hold on as I pulled my legs inside cuz your legs were hanging outside

the helicopter I heard a scream from the cockpit and saw blood splattered all over the bottom of the cockpit and growing stream of blood running down from above one or both of the pilots had been hit and we were falling I could see a swarm of red tracers from Scarface Min guns going past us under the tree line cvy was still talking but I was losing my ability to hear I was also experiencing time dilation everything was moving in slow motion and becoming quiet it was surreal dreamlike the aircraft was vibrating and rocking violently we

were being tossed around inside the aircraft as we plummeted toward the ground my pucker Factor was so high you could not have driven a greased needle up my rear end with a 32 o ballpen Hammer I could see the ground rushing up towards us in silent slow motion I saw green tracers going by us and felt more bullets hitting the king be then came the ground I don't remember hitting the ground everything just went black Quebec Tango this is cvy King B1 is down on the LZ receiving heavy fire I can see three team members

lying in the grass outside the king B they're not moving Dynamite this is spider which was cvy can you hear me over Dynamite you copy over no response from Dynamite King B1 you copy no response from King B1 Quebec Tango this is cvy I'm declaring Prairie Fire emergency King B1 crew and three team members down on the LZ under heavy fire no communication with them no one moving everyone focus on my voice Quebec Tango alert Bright Light Team to stand by to launch so this is the start off of this freaking mission right here you're

going into the you're going into the LZ to get dropped off and you get way laid attack guy gets hit in the leg he's bleeding you think one of the pilots is hit the pilots calls out and this is Captain On's been on the podcast heroic guy he's doing his best to get this thing under control but he can't stop it from going down they trying to board it from Landing they can't abort it from Landing they abort the other helicopter from coming in but you guys crash into the LZ and you get knocked out

I I guess you get knocked out is what it seems like everyone's just just laying there and cvy sees this crash happened and he calls for a prairie fire emergency cuz it's it's already as bad as it and he alerts the bright light anticipating that you guys might get overrun so this is the first 40 seconds of your mission yeah um you wake up you know am I dead or alive the king be sitting on its belly cuz it did a hard Landing you crawl towards bow hail of bullets flying all around you you hear

being tring way tring way um you yell back to him we have to get in the crater so there's a big crater down there that you end up positioning yourself in um you get the guys to the crater I'm going fast forward a little bit and get the book so you can see the details of this Insanity King B1 this is Cubby get out of your aircraft and dynamite will get you to the crater this is King B1 and this is Captain on talking no we fix co-pilot hurt bad captain not have been shot down

several times on soag operations he had no fear Dynamite the crew is staying in the king be I see three or four NV crawling in the grass 40 m at 11:00 they're trying to get in with within hand grenade range Roger keep your eye on them and see how they like this if if I could just yeah give you a break in the action two things one is the the cover of this book is the crater mhm I said Museum painting of us in the crater okay and the other is um I I gave Mr

Han Mr Han um a copy of the book he he thought it was great he loved it you know and he uh he emailed me and he said since I got shot down the last time my memory not so good I love this book that's awesome cuz he's in there you know several other places too he was doing all kinds of stuff yeah and for those of you that didn't listen to podcast with Captain on on there he he was eventually shot down as his aircraft was was on fire he had to let go of

the of the Yoke cuz it was so hot it was burning hot and when he let go of the Yol now the aircraft is totally out of control so he has to overcome the pain of grabbing onto the yoke to get control of the aircraft again and give it a a a hard landing and when he did that it it destroyed his hands so he lost both of his hands in in that accident eventually he ends up in a communist prison camp um eventually got out of there and escaped to America but one of the

most awesome humans ever and this is the you know this is the type of thing that he was doing which is his aircraft crashes into the LZ they tell him hey get to the crater and he says no I'm not I'm going to get my aircraft back up and running which is incredible um so that's what happens uh uh and meanwhile you've got people approaching and you say you the cvy tells you there's enemy crawling within the re range and you say let's see how they like this you took bows m79 stood up and put

a 40mm round right where cvy said they were while Ben sprayed the area with 18 rounds from his car 15 this is spider looks like they're all dead or wounded good work Dynamite but there's more they keep hitting you with the rpds firing the AK-47s Rockets they had fired an RPG almost and almost got the rocket in the crater all three of us were hit with shrapnel and covered in dirt luckily nothing serious this is spider you guys okay I saw the smoke Trail it came from 1:00 about 50 m out Scarface is coming back

around we'll see if we he can take out the RPG keep your heads down Roger looks like they brought plenty of rockets Roger get your heads down Scarface is 30 seconds out about 20 seconds later we he Scarface open up with a minigun and 40 mm adrenaline cortisol were losing their ability to keep my pain manageable my back was killing me obviously you impacted super hard and you you hurt your back and I couldn't take a deep breath my broken ribs from the last mission which we didn't cover but yes you broke your ribs in

your last mission had been re-broken so much for using deep breathing for stress and pain relief my arms and legs were bruised and wounds and my hands were open and bleeding my gloves were so soaked and blood was running out of the cut off fingers even though King B1 had taken a lot of hits and crashed Captain an used the distraction of Scarface gun runs and got it flying again and quickly lifted a few feet in the air and dropped down the side of the ridge before the NVA re realized what was happening the kinby

pilots especially captain on were amazing he was able to get it into a small clearing in the valley one of the backup King bees picked up Captain honor and his crew so the co-pilot was wounded but he's able to at least get this thing off of ground zero and to another clearing where then they got picked up immediately uh didn't you're still in the crater though of course uh just intense more intense fighting massive air strikes more uh more air support coming in all those calls happening get the book get the details you say I

got a little irritated okay maybe it's a side effect of too much adrenaline I thought I need to get one of these Jokers I know they're crawling around in the grass I'm going to crawl out there and get one spider Dynamite I'm going out in the grass to get one you're talking about an enemy fighter you know there's been and it's in the book people are wanting to capture one of these enemy one of these NVA and you decide I don't know why but you decide Now's the Time to do it negative Dynamite I don't

think that's a good idea there are too many out there I'm running out of steam fast this might be my last chance I want to snatch one if we could take if we could take one back he could give a lot of Intel about where they are and what they're planning which way to the closest live one 3:00 30 m Roger watch me I'm leaving the radi with with Ben yeah see that's that's one of those situations today that we would describe as hey Ben hold my beer I'm going to go get one that's exactly

what you said not smart uh s fast forward suddenly I could hear you start crawling out trying to find trying to capture someone in the midst of all this freaking chaos you decide you're going to go capture a prisoner suddenly I could hear an NVA that seemed to be crawling directly toward me the crass was the grass was about 2 and 1/2 ft high and he was on a collision path with me even though even with all the background noise I could hear his Panic breathing and fearful grunting as he crawled on his belly he

was alive I didn't know this was the one spider had told me about but I could smell his last meal no pun intended Ben and ba were still receiving a lot of fire in the crater Ben was returning fire the NVA did not realize I was out there with them I could smell and hear one in front of me I slowly crawled toward him thinking if I could get the timing right so he didn't see me immediately I could probably wound him drag him back to the crater and he would be ours I was in

the prone position coiled with one leg cocked ready to strike through the grass my fingers were like of snakes fangs as I shot my hand out and bit into grabbed the shoulder of the North Vietnamese Army soldier he gave a startled yell when he felt my fangs penetrate his shoulder our eyes made contact and he saw me SMI he saw the smile on my face I grabbed and pushed his AK-47 barrel away from me at the same time I realized I was in trouble I didn't have enough strength to pull a greasy string out of

a car's out of a cat's rear end the pain in my back was excruciating it was difficult for me to breathe we were grappling he was terrified and determined to kill me he yelled for his teammates who were crawling in the grass approximately 400 meters from us to help him and pulled the trigger on his AK-47 trying to shoot me the bullets just missed me but the burning powder hit my face I was getting weaker and having more difficulty breathing but now I was determined to take him prisoner I was no longer smiling now I

was staring right through him he rolled on top of me and started fighting harder I managed to get my car 15 pointed toward him and shot one round into his shoulder I thought that would take some of the fight out of him but he was still overpowering me he kept yelling for his teammates and firing off rounds trying to hit me as we continued to wrestle I was about to pass out from the excruciating pain in my back he was holding the barrel of my car5 and I couldn't get it pointed at him he could

see that he was beginning to overpower me I knew I was about to become the victim then suddenly he turned loose of my car5 barrel and punched me really hard in the nose blood spattered over my face from my nose my eyes crossed and got got blurry I grabbed his wrist with my left hand then our eyes locked again this time I could see the look in his eyes that i' had seen before in people who knew they were going to die he had realized that in turning in the Turning loose of my car 15

allowed me to point it towards his face and that would be what killed him he knew he had about a second to live I had moved the muzzle of my car 15 so was pointed toward his head about 6 in from his cheek at this point there was nothing he could do he knew knew he was dead he had not been cooperating with me I had only one option left I had to terminate him he closed his eyes an instant before I squeezed off a four to five round burst on Full Auto directly into his

face his head literally exploded covering my face and head with gray and white brain matter yellow fatty tissue and Bone fragments followed immediately by a hot stream of blood from his cored artery once again I did not have my mouth closed and found myself with a mouthful of blood and other matter his mostly headless body went limp as it collapsed on top of me and his blood and life continued to pour out on me the sounds of the firefight and reality came back very loudly you got to close your mouth got to close your mouth

when you're shooting people in the close range guy was freaking uh the guy was tough he's strong well I had a broken spine I didn't realize that at the time I knew it hurt I just didn't realize how seriously I was hurt um fast forward spider and I put together a plan we decided to have the extraction helicopter fall the a1s on a strafing rum drop the Maguire Rigs and snatch us out Scarface gunships would strafe both sides of the crater wood line as we lift it out Air Force F fired two Wily Pete Rockets

just North King B3 followed the strafing a1s with Scarface gunship on each side laying down suppressive fire with their Min guns the gunship door Gunners played a critical role in putting accurate M60 machine gun fire on the enemy the door Gunners were totally explosed to the enemy fire but had a great view of the battle space and of the enemy and you guys prep your your Swiss seats with your uh with your 12T nylon rope and you clip into the Maguire Rigs and they take off you say I fell backwards as we lifted off the

ground was almost upside down hanging onto the sides of a large strap with both hands we swung way out on our ropes and descended fast with our feet and head flying just inches above the jungle canopy in some areas and Swinging wide as we turned and headed back to the river with the NVA shooting at us the whole time what a ride even with the excruciating pain I managed to hang on until we got back to the launch site Major Robert said good job out there today Thompson the body count was close to 3,000 but

we still have several thousand left I need you to go back in at first light tomorrow I explained to him that I had some significant issues with my back and ribs my ribs were broken for sure and maybe my back Major Roberts explained that time was critical if the remainer of this NVA division got to hill hill 937 the 101st battalions would be wiped out there was no other teams that could be deployed fast enough to stop this division there was no way I was not going I was excited about going back in with my

back injured but understood the urgency or I was not excited about going back in with my back injury but I understood the urgency so once again you go through total Mayhem and you get out of the field and they're like good job you got to go back in um some of your Lessons Learned stress causes temporary hearing loss stress can cause time dilation once again keep your mouth closed you shoot someone up close in hindsight going after a prisoner prisoner in my physical condition was probably not a good idea I almost became his prisoner or

dead I did not make a smart decision under the stress of the situation and this is obviously something that you focused on for the rest of your career we covered your books and on those in some of the earlier podcasts um Captain an was a famous King be pilot who had flown numerous so missions in the hottest areas across the border at this point he had already been shot down twice and managed to surv survive later in his career he would lose both of his hands in another crash much later in his life he would

receive his American citizenship as the writing of this book he lives in the US and has appeared on the jaal podcast number 259 with John Striker Meer and then you also another lesson was I'm beginning to see a correlation between high stress and dumb decisions and this is stuff that you you know again you wrote the stress effect why smart leaders make dumb decisions and what to do about it uh so what are we doing the next day the next day going back right back into it fast forward two NVA appeared in front of us

and above us Kim opened fire killing both of them Unfortunately they were not alone the other NVA with them launched a heavy barrage of fire toward us to include an RPG Kim was hit in the arm and leg and went down KH was hit with strael from a rocket grenade both were yelling hit hit spider wearing heavy contact two redheads that's wounded in action need gunships now over and it just the cycle starts again Scarface one Roger 60 seconds out Dynamite this is Cubby pop smoke talk to Scarface Roger Scarface smoke out this is Scarface

I identify purple negative Scarface I say again negative purple smoke is NVA have your wingman hit them hard ID my flare this is Scarface hitting purple smoke identify a red flare Roger that make a gun run north to South 100 meters east of the flare Roger that get your heads down Roger great job Scarface run it again same place and mix in some 40 mm I just wanted to read that section because there's a reason why you do this I Mark you identify and here was one where you said identify smoke and they see purple

because the enemy was throwing smokes trying to confuse things as well um between RT Virginia and Scarface we' quickly stacked up over 100 NVA bodies that could be seen from the air and then you bring in the Napal I continued working the gunships to keep the NVA off of us while cvy was hitting the mountain tops with the F4 250lb bombs and a1's dropping Napal and cbus which are the cluster bombs and then six B-52 bombers carrying 110 500lb bombs had left Guam air air base several hours before and route to our little party the

B-52 Pilots un official slogan was put Warheads on foreheads oh they love that they just love it uh and then believe it or not you know maybe we're not learning the lessons we should be learning I feel better today I'm going to get one I left bin with the radio and crawled into an unknown area to search in search of prey covered by fire from B in Scarface gunships I crawled to an NVA Soldier but he did not want to cooperate and I didn't have the strength to man handle him under normal conditions I could

have brought him back but I was in too much pain so I terminated him with a quick punch to the neck with my Kar to keep from giving away my position wipe the arterial blood spray off my face and look took another potential prisoner so you went and tried to get another one but you had to give him the K Bar instead yeah it just no strength yeah how much did you weigh at this point oh 140 Maybe how much do you think the average NVA Soldier weighed same no less oh yeah 120 110 I

mean there were a few bigger bigger ones but most of them you know they were short they were smaller mhm how much like martial arts training were you guys doing um in in terms of the SAG people um later on uh Captain uh Waltz assigned me to do Combs with every morning for a while with the teams that were back but it was I mean it was combatives uh primarily focused on uh killing your opponent mhm so gouging your eyes out crushing your throat anything to kill you with whatever you could find was the focus

of it no high kicks all the kicks were low uh things that you could probably get away with and you could do fast MH and it was going pretty well until um the company Commander came out he was a black belt and something he hit one of the Yards right in the eye MH strong Hard Punch he got a little carried away swell it up so the yards got upset so we're not doing this anymore so so our combat program you know kind of stopped um well meanwhile back to the book here things were heating

up and Ben knew Ben and I knew we could not last much longer we had to get out I had what I thought were good coordinates to Mark the corners of the target that's what you were talking about earlier about an hour later spyer said he had a king be for our extraction using all Air assets we had available we were able to suppress the NVA fire long enough for a king be to come and extract Ben and me on strings we received a lot of heavy automatic fire during the extraction fortunately extraction was quick

and we were not hit I left red smoke grenade on the ground as we lifted off indicating there were no more good guys and the area was cleared hot I've been on the ground for most of the day and we had constant upclose NVA interactions four NVA had died in the hand-to-hand combat with me that day I knew Ben had pulled the trigger on well over 2 to 300 NVA most of whom died and erected air strikes on several thousands it was a very long bloody and deadly day when Ben and I got back to

the launch site we were examined by the medics we had a lot of cuts and bruises but nothing serious from that day but the medic said to me we think there's more wrong with you than fractured ribs and a hurt back we need to get you to the hospital and get checked out yeah I think so too but not today do it tomorrow I I need pain meds and sleep I went to a sleeping tent to sleep on a cot just before my eyes closed Ben looked at me from his cot with his head face

and arm bandaged and said to me with a smile on his face Lieutenant just another day at SOG I gave him a thumbs up as my eyes rolled back in my head the next day Medics determined I had fractured my spine and two vertebrae compressed two vertebrae bra and refracturing ribs from the previous Mission I had a broken nose and my hands were a bloody mess they couldn't believe I had actually gone on two missions back to back like that and was able to do what we did I got a few days downtime after that

and I ate ibuprofen like it was candy I chose pain overtaking the hard stuff but by the time the next mission came around I would be a little better our top secret mission had pretty much decimated a 10,000 man NVA division on their way to crush the 101st units at Hamburger Hill and no one would ever know what happened the NVA division never made it to Hamburger Hill that's why the 101st battalions were not wiped out the 101st did find finally make it to the top once they got up there they were told okay come

back down when we so operators heard things like that we thought what are we doing why would the US do that why would you sacrifice that many lives the 101st lost 72 men killed in action and 372 wounded that's a lot of Americans killed trying to get to the top of a hill just to turn around and walk back down I know it wasn't just that it was a big political move but I don't think it's worth losing a single life for politics that kind of knows news how to drive you freaking crazy oh yeah

drove everybody crazy do are you guys even think like when you talk about this political stuff how much are you thinking about that like you see these things happen you see all these guys get killed you hear that they walk do you hear that while you're there or is that like an afterthought that you saw years later occasionally occasionally you will if you get a hold of the stars and or something like that that might show up every once in a while but um we don't hear a whole lot mhm you know because all of

our stuff is classified I mean I don't even know what's going on at the other two compounds except they're running so missions too but I don't know the success rate or anything and so you keep working yeah and just keep doing it y next mission Air Force had recently dropped sensors into an area just inside North Vietnamese border and was picking up NVA activity RT Virginia was assigned the mission of searching the area determining what activity was taking place and destroying the NVA Battalion and you know I at this point I could have walked in

and said I'm done I'm done I'm way past my six missions way past it and I'm I'm done I don't want to do this anymore that's not what that's not that's that's not what that's not what dick is doing I still want to go out there by myself so yeah and I'm got to get this book there's so many things I mean like I said I I don't want to read this entire book because that would just be an audio book I guess yeah but like here's one example from this Mission I was lying under

under a bush watching the NVA when I noticed a movement in the peripheral of my right eye there was something moving in the bush then I realized it was a snake a big snake 7 to 8T F feet long coming in my direction but it was not just any snake it was a cobra I froze held my breath and watched watched it craw by me within two feet of my face it seemed to be in a hurry for a minute I was literally caught between a proverbial Rock which was the 100 NVA you were watching

and a hard place the 8 foot Cobra and did not want to tangle with either it appeared that the Cobra went by glanced at me did a head nod stuck out his tongue and did not slow down he was gone quickly but the NVA appeared to have finished eating and we're ready to move up the ridge towards our location so like not only you fight in the NVA you're fighting Mother Nature out there including you've got a we talked about this before but you got into a pretty serious hand-to-hand situation with the banana tree that

fell on you and you out on patrol and the reason even I wasn't going to mention that again because we covered on one of the other podcasts but you did Kill the your first banana tree you know now you say I've heard however that banana trees in this part of the world Still Tremble At The Mention Of Your Name and kind of joke about it but one thing you did say is the enem is not always who and what you expect and stress can change what you see and experience so that's you were at such

a height anded state that when this tree fell on you just was a random tree fell on you in the jungle you fought this thing thought it was the enemy like that's how your perception can get twisted just I've been sitting there for 45 minutes or so observing 40 or 50 of them and see them coming up the Ridge and then all of a sudden I'm blindsided knocked off my feet and I'm falling down to the thing but I took him with me you know so I was going to deal with him you know once

I got a chance and I did you know I broke bones I did all that stuff and finally it was over and yes you know my poor little team standing up there looking at me they're in a State of Shock and I'm thinking yeah you're probably as shaken up over this as I am and then I I realized I got a tree on top of me where did this thing come from no wonder they're in a State of Shock I battling a stupid tree uh um another mission you're doing an underwater Bridge raid meaning there's

a bridge that's like slightly underneath the the depth of the river hard to see uh this was really good you again you can read about it in the books ends up being really you say it's the smoothest operation that you could conducted uh no enemy contact no team members injured and you got the mission done awesome um you get you end up for your next mission you're getting a couple addition additional Americans on board uh Craig Stephenson Stenson Stevenson Craig Stevenson and cydney schaer and uh then you got to get these guys trained up you

go on a mission here you know the mission was to find and destroy an NVA Battalion moving from LA to South Vietnam insertion goes well you get the dogs tracking you you CS power again awesome read uh just before they found us you say we made conduct with a platoon-sized element of 40 men that quickly grew into a company sized element of 150 men 1900 I called Prairie Fire emergency here come the A1 strikes here come the F4 strikes and one thing that's interesting about this is you say these two kind of a little bit

opposing things you say it was easier for me to communicate with Stevenson and Schaefer because we shared a common language English right of course that's real real obvious but then you say it was more difficult to communicate Under Fire because Stevenson and Schaefer did not understand the Nuance nuances of how the team responded to NVA attacks based on terrain Etc they would learn with experience so even though you could speak English to them it was harder in some ways because they weren't used to predicting what you were going to do and what calls you going

to make um yeah and if I could just inject something here Craig Stevenson M and I finally got a chance to talk a few months ago I mean we I tried to track him down before never could you know round him up but eventually his son was listening to your podcast uh where we were talking about one of the missions and and you know said his name so he called his father and said you're not going to believe this you know so anyway so he getss us link back up and and we're talking and um

he said you know there's there's something that I never told you uh so I I I just want to tell you this when schaer and I joined ourt Virginia when we came to the team for some reason both of us thought that you were just a lieutenant and this this was really going to be your first time out as a one zero we didn't know who you were until we got out there and we got in a prairie fire and we thought holy crap this guy is crazy and he said we we were in shock

and and then we realized this is not his first rodeo yeah you use the term dinky da which means crazy that's one of your Ste Stevenson and Schaefer learned that this was not my first rodeo and I was dinky Dow a little bit crazy dinky uh you you you link up with Lynn black another Legend code named Blackjack and you guys do some you know we we we covered his book on this podcast his book Whiskey Tango Fox Trot covered that with John Striker Meer on 247 and he also did do a so cast with

John Striker me which if you haven't listened to those listen it's maybe it's cool to have me sit here and read your books and and talk to you guys but there's nothing better than the so cast where you guys talk to each other as teammates that went through the same thing together so if you if you're out there and you haven't listened to the socast just go look it up it's available wherever you listen to your podcast it's SOG cast John Striker Meer going out and finding all the sog Legends and his old buddies and

his old old teammates and capturing these stories in in a better way than I ever could cuz I wasn't there I'm just you know sitting on the sidelines watching the game going damn these guys are awesome so if you want to hear the real deal go check out the so cast it's it's freaking amazing to listen to um and yeah so you got you you end up with with uh Lynn black you end up doing some what you call Hunting Expeditions trying out some new techniques and Technologies awesome to read about that uh you know

Lynn was a master Warrior no fear and I always learned from him you guys started using suppressed weapons which is pretty cool some of that Starlight stuff um and then Captain dick Meadows eventually he leaves and another guy named captain Bill Walsh Takes Over You got a picture of your uh of the of the sign the Recon company sign and I got a kick out of it because it says we kill for peace which I thought was pretty awesome uh you mentioned this name earlier Captain Dennis Neil he ends up being your roommate Dennis had

already been shot once he like many operators had caught the sog bug he was addicted he needed the adrenaline rush that the across Defence missions were famous for giving SOG operators fast forward a little bit he shared with me he had a bad feeling about his upcoming coming Mission he did not know how to explain it it was just a feeling he couldn't shake he said he never felt this way before but was sure everything would be okay I did not realize it at the time but Captain Bruce Lumbard was having a similar conversation with

Michael Burns Dennis's 1-1 this Mission had Michael really scared Bruce reminded him that Dennis was very experienced and he should follow Dennis's lead and things work out at this point in my so tour I had had had this conversation with several other friends just prior to the mission from which they did not return and would have similar conversations with others who would not return these conversations centered around the idea that something very bad like not coming back this time was going to happen I had this feeling as my best friend Bob walked away headed for

a command and control Central in addition to Bob Dennis and Michael I also had this conversation with my good friends Sergeant First Class Ricardo Davis first lieutenant Peter H McMurray and Captain Stephen Cheney and each one of those guys were killed in action uh in each case the conversation happened only once it was 1 to 3 days before their last mission a premonition of what was going to happen I was convinced that sometimes you know things before they happen especially your death I also believe that often you can choose your fate I suggested to Dennis

that he try to find a way not to go on the mission of course a suggestion like that to a so Warrior was a waste of time so I changed the topic to things he could do to reduce the risk for example the is not over until you're back at CCN getting the extraction LZ does not end the mission for some reason it seemed really important for me to emphasize that point so um you're at this point in the book spun up to do a a p recovery Mission and you were mentioning this earlier as

you were spinning up to do this Mission there was a a situation that unfolded you guys are are listening to the Tactical operations center suddenly we heard those dreaded words that make chills run up your spine we heard a high pitched fast panicked American Voice yelling into the radio handset this is Tango Alpha Prairie Fire emergency Prairie Fire emergency were being overrun all of us on St Victor India had experienced at least one Prairie Fire emergency at this point I had experienced 14 what was happening was that Dennis had sensed maybe he but maybe he

could survive it then the cvy out in the area heard a transmission on a URC 10 radio he heard what he described as a high-pitched panicked American voice saying help me help me help me for God's sake somebody help me then nothing radio silence this cvy did not personally know Neil or Burns so he could not identify which one if either might have transmitted the message Dennis's team was not only a prairie fire emergency but was now a missing an action and fast forward a little bit RT Rattler's extraction team was quickly briefed on the

situation and cleared to launch I was looking at the extraction helicopter spinning up to go rescue the survivors of Dennis's team that little voice in the back of my head was saying very loudly you need to get on that extraction helicopter you need to go with them so another team you guys were getting ready to do a p Rescue Mission this other team gets tasked to go help them you're watching them and you start basically thinking you're going to go join them you want to go join them I immediately started running in the direction of

the helicopter as I ran I thought I have to lead my own mission to get the PS out in a couple hours I can't just jump on this aircraft and fly off on a different Mission that's not going to work I slowed to a jog stopped short of the helicopter as it lifted off in hindsight I think this is one of the days I was supposed to have died even the granite memorial wall in my hometown has an empty space where my name would have been there there yeah well they just had that um there's

just happens to be an empty space on the people from your town that were killed in Vietnam and there's a space for your name alphabetically that's where we go well their rescue mission doesn't work out too great and then the commander comes in your Miss has changed St Victor India is now the bright light bright light team too that's you guys Bruce and I got the team together and I told Ben to repeat after me warning order RT Rattler is Miss Missing the HF bright light is pined down pinned down on the LZ by a

large NVA Force our mission has changed we will now do the P Mission later we are now Bright Light Team to we can expect anti-aircraft fire to start approximately 20 minutes out from our insertion it's going to be a hot insertion against a large NVA force on the ground cobras will be prepping the LZ in a tree line with Min guns and flette Rockets expect your aircraft to be taking heavy machine gun and AK 47 fire on short final RPGs were fired at some of Jordan's aircraft your aircraft will probably be taking Small Arms hits

on the way to the LZ team members wounded inside the aircraft will be left on the aircraft if you're hit on the LZ Jones The Medic will take check on you and put you on the next aircraft for extraction we can expect to be in heavy contact the whole time we're on the ground well we had a lot of air support we have to be careful where we put it because we don't where the NVA had NE and burns so you're going into it seems like this going in it's going to be the hottest Landing

Zone insertion you've ever gone into that's what you're hearing for Intel um you go in you search again get the book so you can you can read that story uh eventually we had not been able to find any sign of Neil or Burns if we were in the right area Neil and burns would have been moved if they were not if we were not in the right area there was no way we could expand our search the day before had been my opportunity and I had not taken it I could never go back and change

that event I had to live with it and eventually uh we were extracted Under Fire but it was a lot lighter than when we were inserted we were very fortunate on both the insertion and extraction that the NVA did not use RPGs against us like they did with rt Rattler Neil Burns and the two yards were never found there's no doubt in my mind that the two survivors pan and Coman gave us the wrong location of where the team was when it was overrun so there's again this is in the book but the the yards

that were with them that made it out described where they thought Neil and burns were but it just didn't make sense and you say I don't think they did it intentionally I think the stress of being wounded chased and trying to survive I think they lost track of how far they traveled trying to get to the extraction LZ we searched the ridge thoroughly where it happened nothing was there we were initially debriefed at the launch site then again when we arrived back at CCN it was always crushing disappointment to lose a team member and in

this case almost a whole team families had to be notified I found it particularly emotional when I walked back into the room I shared with Dennis seeing all his personal effects on his side of the room knowing he would never return I made the decision to wait until the next day to pack up his personal effects it brought back memories of invent Tories I did at fob1 when I had first arrived this was even more personal Dennis and I had shared the same room fought together and worked together we were good friends I was at

the launch site heard his emergency call and led his Bright Light Team I felt s very sad for their families they would be notified that their sons were missing an action in Vietnam the news would devastate their families and leave them hanging on to the hope that one day their sons would walk back into their lives but it would not happen they would never have closure while on this Earth their parents would not live to see the day their sons remains would be [Music] repatriated you say I did not go on the recovery helicopter for

Dennis and Michael notgo turned out to be the biggest regret of my military career I have almost always always felt I've always felt that not getting on that helicopter almost certainly saved my life but I might have caused Neil Burns or both to have been retrieved had I gone 9 years later the day before Mother's Day 1978 while sitting in my living room I had to look Dennis mother Dennis's mother and father in the eyes and explain what happened to their son they were on their way to Washington to start the process of having Dennis's

status change from missing in action to to presumptive finding of death Michael Burn's status was also changed their remains have never been repatriated a lot has been posted on the internet over the years about what happened to RT Rattler and the bright light team the majority of what is written even in official reports is incorrect Bruce and I were there we were all the guys on the ground we personally search that area and know what was there and what wasn't Dennis Neil was my good friend call and roommate we talked a lot about missions and

tactics he was an outstanding Warrior friend and human being had a personal stake in finding Dennis and his team I just wasn't able to do it and of course the war doesn't stop and the missions keep coming and now you have that P event um you know that you're looking to go execute and you know strangely enough and we've talked about this on one of the other podcasts you hear your name being used on a encrypted radio by a woman with a Vietnamese accent I mean it's very very disturbing um and very eerie when you

talk about that again get the book to get some of these get get these details of of these operations um there's so much heroism that takes place fast forward a little bit um my good friend first lieutenant Peter McMurray came to talk to me we had attended most of the same school training and assignments for most of our time in the Army once again Pete told me he did not have a good feeling about his upcoming Mission he said he never felt this type of fear before he typically experienced normal excitement associated with a mission

this one was different we spent time talking about his feelings what he could do to help mitigate them one of my recommendations was to avoid exposing himself don't get out in the open when Pete left that evening I had the sickening feeling that I had with other friends before their last mission late afternoon on the 27th RT Virginia flew to Quang Tri launch site shortly after arriving there we learned that Pete had been killed that day when he was hit by the main rotor blade of a crashing ch34 helicopter the news really had an impact

on me I had to grieve quickly and set it aside until after our mission easier said than done when you guys go out you execute that mission you execute a mission where you take out a pipeline a brid Bridge like there's just so much so much happening and you had the same conversation with uh Captain Steve Cheney he told you had a bad feeling three days later Steve died of a shrap in a wounds from a friendly rocket that's the one you were talking about earlier heavy casualties in the sog teams it's unbelievable uh fast

forward a little bit Lieutenant Colonel Donahue assumed command of CCN at the end of September he took me off RT Virginia which is an operator job and made me as South operations officer in CCN operations which is a non-operator job I transitioned from being a one zero operator to being a rph it was a very important job and I might live longer but it was not what I signed up for when I came in country and that's where you kind of wrap up your your time going in the field as an operator H how long

did you spend in that in that uh position the ramp position maybe six weeks so it was right right at the end uh you get done with that and and it's time to go back you know to the world yeah as you guys called it in Vietnam I thought this what you wrote about flying home was really a a great explanation of what that was like for you say I was sitting on a Plane full of soldiers some of whom seemed really happy to be alive and going home back to the world but most seemed

to be engaged in deep thought or self-reflection I saw some Soldiers with tears in their eyes wanting to be left alone perhaps thinking about the friends lost the fear they experienced or the unforgettable scenes of horror that they had been burned that had been burned in the recesses of their minds forever many of these men died on the battlefield yet they were sitting on the plane pretending to still be alive and some would end the pretense with death by Suicide at some point in the future what was I experiencing it had been a long 12

months I'd been down the black hole and come back out 34 of my SOG friends and teammates were killed or missing in action I had escaped death more times than I could count and knew I could not begin to describe the past 12 months in terms anyone could possibly understand even if I were allowed to I had 20 more years to decide if I would tell my story and how I might do that what I did know was that I felt guilty leaving my friends and team members behind I knew I would volunteer to return

to SG in the near future after I had time to heal and then we get into these um SOG imperatives which are if I could say yes AB one more thing um reference that um comment about you know I would return so my plan was to come back to the States I'd been told within 8 months after you get back you're going to be sent back to Vietnam so uh what I thought was okay so I've got eight months I'm going to start SOG 2 training so I'm going to use the next eight months to

see how much I can improve my skill set on you know SOG kinds of things so that was one thing that helped me be able to write these two books was I came back and started reviewing all the missions all the things that I've done you know the people skills those kinds of things so I was working on that so that helped me when I started to to write the book I was able to go back find notes a few notes that I had taken in country uh particularly one with dates someone had told me

early on um every time you get on on an aircraft and fly Mission write it down mhm when was it what type of aircraft you know so I've got a list of dates of you know when I was going out there so I was able to set up a timeline and things like that um so anyway I prepped for SOG 2 I just didn't get to go back and do it these uh yeah and this is where these imperatives that you talk about you're you're prepping this stuff and you know the so imperatives lead by

example practice practice practice mindset drives success high stress equals bad decisions adapt adapt adapt don't stop moving here's one of my favorites uh one of my favorite saying I've heard in a long time today started three days ago which you can you can also say today started three years ago you can say this month started five years ago like where you are right now is based on what you did so make sure that right now you're doing the right things uh battle space is dynamic change requires a reboot and practice dominant response hierarchy equals First

Response and make critical decisions before stress is something that we try and always do in Special Operations is you have a plan that if this happens we already know what we're going to do if we get contacted from the left we're going to do this we get contacted from the right if we get hit from the target building here's our response we're not going to we're not going to have to make these critical decisions during these during the stressful moment we already made them we already thought through through them so those are really and you

expand on these things in the book it's one of the one of the best things in there in the book and and again the you know you you go through what you do when you get home you talk about you become a ranger instruct instructor they eventually say hey we need combat veterans to be teaching Ranger school so we can't send you back to Vietnam and so you end up for what a normal person would be they'd be happy about but for dick Thompson he's not happy because he gets stuck in in stat side uh

you end up you know company command in the second Infantry Division in Korea then you go to graduate school you go to command and general staff College you end up a professor of military science um and then in 1986 you say I took an assignment in 1986 and retired in 199 1998 having completed 21 years in the Army the goal I set back in 1970 was to complete at least 20 years of active service and retire from the Army at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel or higher mission complete I launched a veteran-owned and operated International

Management Consulting form High performing Systems Inc HPS in January of 1984 as my next career the company provided a platform to apply all the skills I had developed across my military career and teach those things teach those skills to Executives around the world and that's you're still doing that today it's 40 years old uh in 2024 um and just to just to close out the book and again get the book I've read probably 4% of the book today it's an amazing book every page has incredible action and also incredible lessons but it close out the

book with this across the eight years of sog's existence approximately 4,000 men served in the unit of those 4,000 less than 600 were operators men who participated in the crossb operations over 300 of The Operators were killed in action as I write this book there are currently over 50 operators and Aviator supporting SOG operations still missing in action out of the killed and missing in action 34 of them were my friends and teammates during my time as a SOG operator from 1968 to 1969 they are all American heroes and I think of them every day

I still you know go out and work with law enforcement SW teams uh military Special Ops and teaching you know things and I was doing a presentation to Historical Society a few months ago and the audience about 60 people we're probably almost all of them were 50 or older and I made the the comment like that that I still go out and and work with them and a guy asked me he said how could you possibly help today's special ops guys you know what you were doing was over 50 years ago I mean technolog is

Advanced all this stuff is Advanced what what could you do to help those guys and I said well they do have have tons of technology and the one thing they ask me about when I go talk to them is how could you guys have done what you did without the technology and what I tell them is that in today's environment all of your technology can end in a nanc all you need is electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear explosion and all of a sudden your night vision goggles your thermal energy all the radios all the things

that you guys use is gone and the question is so how do you do it and I tell them you have to develop the sense and I said let me give you an example take a deep breath let it out slide slowly and just relax my assistant is going to turn the light off so just relax the light goes off it's dark you can't see your hand in front of your face I said okay just follow what I'm saying imagine that you're in this room right now alone you're in here all by yourself you can't

see anything but you also know I'm in this room and my mission is DET terminate you you don't know where I am you don't know how I'm going to do it you don't know how close I am to you but I know where you are because your sweat smells different and you're really starting to sweat right now cuz you know I'm here and I'm coming after you your heart rate starting to beat faster and faster and it'll get to the war so I can hear it you're starting to breathe faster you're starting to get uncomfortable

you're going to move your foot in a minute and I'm going to hear your shoe on the floor when you move it you're going to start grunning as you're breathing because your stress level is going up so high and you don't know where I am but I know exactly where you you are and you can't hear me coming and all of a sudden everything's going black I turn the light on and everybody's holy cow I said I know how to do that I learn how to do that I can I can do it in the

woods I can do it in a building I don't need thermal energy I know you're in there I know how to find you I I know how to move so you can't hear me I know how to take care of you when I do find you and today's guys want to know how can I learn to do that because you can't learn it instantly it's something you've got to train on you got to practice on and be able to do it because it's coming and I'll tell you even with all that technology behind all that

technology is a human that's right and that human is going to have behaviors that will betray them to a person that understands those behaviors so being able to do that is is doesn't matter how much technology you put out there you know you you and I both have night vision but I'm noisy mhm you're going to get me you and I both have thermal but I'm moving in areas where it's comfortable for me to move and you know what those areas are guess what you're going to get me so yeah the technology is there the

technology plays a role but it still is at the end of all technology is a human yeah so important to know and understand and um obviously important to to honor our fallen and I think you know uh these books that you've written they just continue to to share the memories and keep the memories of all all the so Warriors alive so so can't thank you enough for writing these things um does that get us up to speed as far as you know what we're doing right now you have you still have high performance systems that's

HPS y.com right um you're on Twitter at at HPS CEO you're on Instagram HPS CEO so I I know I follow those that way I can always get a little a little SOG hit when I need it yeah um and you're you're on Facebook at dick Thompson um and I know I know you and I we we're talking for a little while about doing some stuff together maybe on the on the echelon front side so it's been a little bit crazy so hopefully we can have maybe I was looking through some old emails have some

of those conversations again because you know the the knowledge that you have is not only applied to combat it applies to interacting with other human beings and understanding you know uh uh what what people are thinking and how they're thinking and all that stuff is really powerful I know I've got one of your old books here called Young's function attitudes explained and I know we don't have time to do it today but at some point you know we got a lot of uh uh people right now that are young has become very popular uh Jordan

Peterson is a big fan of of young and so young has become very popular again and here you are you I think this book is from the 1990s you you're you're old school you got the knowledge so at some point we'll bring you all back on it we'll talk about young and function attitudes explained looking forward to that would enjoy that um Echo Charles you got any questions real quick uh what's a RPD because it's RPG which you know RPD is a it was what they call the machine gun the Russian machine gun at that

time was it stand for Russian some Russian names okay okay but it's a machine gun okay so it's not a rocket propelled something that starts with a machine gun um used as a drum in in fact um oh like a Dr like Tommy Gun tomm I have I have mentioned uh before that uh when bargewell and I were out on a mission and we got attacked and the guy had a RPD machine gun after it was over we got in we were talking to bargewell said man that thing is powerful I would I'd like to

try one of those I said well let's get it you know when our our post Mission train we're going over to the mountain so let's get you one and take it over there and see how it handles going through the jungle see so we got one he took it over and when we came back he said nah it hangs on everything too big too heavy it's got a f a tripod on it you can't take off and you know a long barrel all that stuff can't do it a while after that um then at CCC

somebody had said hey let's just saw the barrel off right here that takes care of all this extra weight on the end gets rid of it makes it shorter it's easier to maneuver so they started playing with it so Bara got one and uh that was the machine gun or the machine gun he had with him on the mission where he got his DSC you know the whole team got wounded from a b40 rocket bargewell took a big piece of shrapnel through the side that Lo his head lodged behind his eye and that really irritated

him that makes sense and when they jumped up and tried to assault to finish the team off 20 something of them bargewell stood up with that RPD and just took them all out well dang so the so it worked after he saw it off it was kind of more it was easy it's heavy you know and everybody in on the team cared a drum an extra drum for him because that thing shoots fast but it's a 100 round drum so then when bargewell uh was leaving another guy Ken boray had come in and K it

man I like that I'd like to have that my take it you I can't take it back with me you you take it you so he went out and used it and then I think bargewell retired as a twar General Ken Bay retired as a two-star general both of them spent the rest of their careers in Special Ops I could have said barge I'd like to use that gun yeah you know and maybe I could have been a two star a little correlation so there was something going on actually I think I don't think it

had to do with the gun I think it was you know those two guys just had that special touch you know yeah but um anyway I had my chance and I blew it yeah so is there like you ever watch the movie Predator Jo you know one the guy with a minigun right Blaine Jess V he is is that do you guys look at that and be like BR that's so unrealistic because it's like not practical or is that even practical there are versions of that oh I mean I I saw I saw a video

on one of the sock sites uh in the last couple months where a guy is standing out there with mini gun and firing it on the Range and he's got a big backpack on it's got the ammunition in it he's feeding out coming around to the side but you know you're walking backwards when you pulling that trigger we had guys that would make well they called them you'll appreciate this Echo Charles Predator packs which was maybe 800 rounds of ammunition linked together but it wasn't quite as highp speed as at least I never saw a

version that was high speed it was more like the guys would when they'd get set up in a in a position like a base element to to assault the target they would take the backpack off and set it next to their gun so it just feed in there and you kind of have to like help it feed a little bit maybe a couple times guys tried to like shoot it off their back and they'd have to reach back and like pull the ammo out you know pull it out so it would yeah go and and

get assisted going through the weapon but so yeah the minigun takes power too like it needs it needs power oh like a power like a Battery Source yeah to make it spin yeah it would seem like the more comes with it the more impractical it becomes see I'm saying but pretty dope though but that RPD was oh it was brutal legit I mean things are shooting so fast um but you know I mean fact that um Delta Park the one they set up for barwell um with his statue and everything MH that's what he's got

is that our oh hell yeah right on cool good to see you again as always good to see you and I appreciate the opportunity to come out and chat with you any any other closing thoughts sir no I just appreciate what you're doing and um you know getting the word out about things that you can do to be successful because I think I talked to a lot of vets um particularly vets who are struggling and uh trying to help them understand that just because you were in combat doesn't mean you can't move into civilian life

and be successful and you know I can always point at you and say look at Joo look at what all he did and he's successful in business you can still do it you know the Army your military whatever you're in uh teaches you all kinds of skill sets the problem is a lot of times when we leave the service we think that was all military stuff just like with the sog imperatives paint them uh with a pinstriped suit or whatever them or put blue jeans on them it still works don't stop moving you got to

keep moving forward practice practice practice whatever you're doing you got to practice and you got to adapt adapt that everything you plan is going to change when you start executing it and you got to be prepared to adapt when I'm standing on a skid the chopper coming in I'm standing there thinking about what I got to do when I'm on the ground but I'm also thinking when my foot hits the ground I'm going to have to start adapting because they're not going to be where they're supposed to be something's going to happen and I've got

to be ready and we've been rehearsing different options different immediate action drills so that we're ready to adapt you know when situation changes cuz I I think I might have mentioned this once before but when we would be doing our mission planning uh I realize one day why you have to start adap and why you have to change everything once you get on the ground there's there's an empty chair setting here that the NVA guy is not at the planning table with us so when we plan this thing out nobody's telling him what he's supposed

to do so when we land and we get out there you know this guy he didn't know what to do so he starts improvising doing his own and screws the whole plan up you know if we just put him at the table and say this is where you going to be on the LZ when we come in this is how you're going to maneuver things would go a lot better but that doesn't happen and it doesn't happen out in in the real world out in the you know business world or whatever you have to be

ready to adapt yes sir anyway well the enemy gets a vote yeah you know he does well sir thanks for joining us once again uh it's always awesome to see you it's always awesome to hear your experiences read about your experiences get the Lessons Learned which you have so many and of course thank you for your your service your sacrifice and and also thank you for sharing the stories of your of your brethren and continuing the legacy of your Fallen comrades we will not forget them exactly thank you thank you sir and with that dick

Thompson has left the building once again awesome to have him back these guys the sog Warriors I just was talking to him anything that I can do or we can do to support SOG we're in so the so cast if you haven't if you haven't tapped into the sog cast yet just go go check it out it's John Striker Meer he's been traveling around the country he goes and he links up with these SOG Legends and interviews them talks to them and it's different you know like when Dick Thompson is talking to a saw guy

it's it's two Bros just hanging out talking so you're going to get some stuff that you're not going to get when you listen to him with me yeah I'm I'm holding them in awe and reverence yeah you know what I mean yeah so there just Bros yeah they're like well of course we were stacking bodies and hiding behind them you know you know what I mean oh yeah fully so of course we you know well of course we were just going to kill 10,000 NVA man division of course that's what we're doing so yeah well

when tilt um is going back and forth with them too it's like yeah they're browing out they you know they two guys and a lot of times he'll add to the very Story the guy's talking about and give a lot of this like additional context as cuz he's like there so it's kind of like yeah it's it's like how you positionally when you kind of listen to it or whatever it's like you know how you said you you hold them in reverence or whatever this other guy is like kind of right there with them almost

like they're kind of Tandem kind of tag team in the whole story it's it's actually very interesting AES song so check out the so cast and and then like from a perspective you heard dick Meadows another SOG legend in the book here you have to keep your body sharp you keep your mind Sharp I recommend you do that dick Meadows recommend you do that dick Thompson recommends you do that that means you're going to have to put in the work it also means you're going to need the right fuel MH I recommend Joo fuel we

had our first 434 tour stop in San Diego you missed it you were at a birthday celebration for BC yes sir good celebration good celebration yeah did things get wild crazy oh heart at the end of yeah kind of all of the above I mean wild wild well you know anything get broken no okay I lost my Bluetooth speaker I didn't lose it I left it so that's a little wild you know what I mean it's a little wild y not quite broken it's one level Bel below broken is lost yes yeah that was it

it was it was good very successful we'll say successful operation good time well while you were doing that mhm I was with a several hundred Troopers in the Walmart parking lot here in San Diego and got a awesome PT hung out MET everybody it was it was just killer so that's kind of our launch point we're doing uh bunch more of these how many is in a bunch I don't know if you said five I'd be like yeah that's a little Bunch that's the plan right now was like five or six more and yeah just

letting everyone know we in Walmart Joo field is in Walmart um so you can get you can hey look Walmart WWA vitamin shop GNC military commissaries AES Hanford Dash stores shopright wake Fern HB down in Texas HB all day oh up in up in the midwest Meyer all day out in the East Wegman's all day also Harris Teeter Lifetime Fitness so we're in a bunch of different places but we just went into Walmart so accessible to a lot of people there's a lot of Walmarts so check that out that's if you need protein that's if

you need hydration that's if you need you need joint Warfare I talked to a lot of people give me feedback yeah sure after the PT one woman was like I could not run until I started taking joint Warfare and krill oil she's like I could not run never mind doing burpees yeah she's like we just did 100 or so burpees mhm thank you mhm so joint Warfare super cill protein we got it all joof fuel.com check it out go to the stores if you need it check it out appreciate the support and we're supporting you

back by giving you the best possible products you can get so check that out also you probably are doing Jiu-Jitsu as part of your keeping your mind and body sharp that means you need Jiu-Jitsu clothing sure H yeah it means you need a ghee it means you need Rashard means you need you need you need shorts you need stuff to train in you want that stuff to be made in America not made in a communist country we had our SOG Warriors and the rest of our people in Vietnam fighting against Communists we had our people

in Korea fighting against Communists that enslave people don't buy from a communist country buy from America you can get Jiu-Jitsu gear you can get jeans boots t-shirts hats belts belts all day what else wallets some wallets for sure some hunt gear yeah rain jacket I mean we got it going on so check out origin usa.com get americanmade boots yeah and everything else that you need to wear check that out yep it's true a lot of those you say you talk about the jeans but they got a bunch of other kind of pants as well like

if you're into the Moab pants oh yeah the various uh types of pants functional pants you know look are they dressed slacks yet maybe maybe not but I will say this if you wear those you can wear those black jeans yeah anywhere oh yeah like I'm talking to a dress event now look are you going to go to the freaking I don't know ceremony or whatever maybe not but yeah you could I could it's exactly what I mean you know but like workwise functionally no matter what you're doing there's going to be some pants over

there for you you know what I'm saying so yeah very impressive array of pants options want to throw it in that in in there good point hey it's been hitting me lately we we are thankful yes sir across the board speaking of being thankful Joo has a store called Joo store so you go to Joost store.com so discipline equals Freedom which is true by the way if you want to represent that that's where you go so Jo store.com you get just when Freedom good we got some rash cards on there some T-shirts shirts that's kind

of the main thing yeah very shirts for representation no we got some shorts on there too though functional made for a lot of stuff they're board shorts but they're also grappling shorts and running they're a little bit more like um like they're not not with those pockets on them yeah you all here's the thing they're like kind of roomy a little bit I mean you got to be into shorts to to understand all the little subtleties so it doesn't matter just know that these are made for a lot of stuff so but they have pockets

on them yeah not the kind of pockets like a cargo pocket that like velcro shut but just Pockets so you can't wear those grappling I mean I've worn them before a couple times but that's not yeah maybe not in a competition but no I wear them for DS for sure 100% you never got someone's pinky caught in that pocket oh I don't know maybe I did I don't care about that kind stuff though well think about this though here's why that matters a lot less than you might think if you ever wear a t-shirt grappling

which I know you do because freaking it's a thing and I'll get my toes caught in your t-shirt it's real but we still wear t-shirts you know what I'm saying I'm not saying it's ideal is it ideal no but it's available to you see what I'm saying as far as an option to wear you're going to wear that and not jeans that's true good point or cargo shorts noted see what I'm saying but you can still wear them to the mall put your W put your wallet in the pocket okay straw man argument anyway nonetheless

um there's also a we'll call it a scenario called the shirt Locker this is a new shirt new shirt design every month it's a subscription situation um so yeah check the website out for you know maybe little hints and and and sneak peeks of past uh designs and Current Designs check also primal beef.com colorcraft beef.com you need steak in your life and you need a lot of it you maybe need some ground beef maybe you need some some jerky maybe you need some beef sticks got all kinds of good stuff check out Primal beef.com check

out colorcraft beef.com get what you need for protein steak in your life also subscribe to the podcast also check out uh Joo underground.com also check out the YouTube channels that we've got we got one for Joo podcast you made a Jocko podcast Clips joh we made a few oh we made a OHP Channel like a channel yep there's a Channel of Jo podcast clips and then origin USA has one and Jo fuel has one all put cool stuff on there check out psychological warfare check out Flipside canvas.com Dakota Meyer putting cool stuff into the world

to hang on your wall books obviously we got the sog codeen name Dynamite books there's one and two we also have the stress effect by dick Thompson he also wrote Young's function attitudes explained because he's a PhD in Psych is it psychology yeah I think it's psychology but that's going to be a hard one to get I got one anyways check out the books by Henry L dick Thompson Dynamite they're awesome I've written a bunch of books too you can check those out check out the kids books that I've written you might be hearing more

about those in the future because they're being turned into a movie the movie is being filmed currently the mov is yeah how's it coming along so so far so good like that take it from me so far so good now is it hard for you to assess how good the movie is when you're in it like you are well you know yeah just being so close to it it's it's hard to get a kind of a bird's eye view perspective for sure or detached perspective as one might say but from what you could tell what's

your assessment so far so good here's the thing here's a good thing you know being on the production set the way I am from time to time you can you can see the uh you know the the monitors right so you can get a pretty good view of how at the very least it's going to look obviously put together it takes on a whole different thing 100% But at the very least you get little hints of how it's going to look how it's going to feel visually and stuff and oh yeah very well done mhm

I think we got ourselves a big one coming so way the warrior kid check out those books check out the Mike and the dragons and then I've written a bunch of other books for adults about leadership about life I've I've written a different novel so that's called final spin so anyways check out the books also Echelon front we have a leadership consultancy we solve problems through leadership we if you want to help your organization and help their leadership and when you solve the leadership problems you solve all the problems inside of an organization leadership solves

problems so go to Echelon front.com and we will help you solve all the problems that you have in your business in your company in your team also we have an online Training Academy extreme ownership. comom the skills that you heard dick Thompson talking about today for combat for interacting with other human beings on the battlefield there's also skills that you need to interact with human beings in a meeting in an email in a relationship whether it's your wife your husband your son your daughter your peer your boss your subordinate these are skills and you can

hone these skills and if you want to you can take some of our courses extreme ownership. comom go and check it out there's some free courses at least take the free courses just take them the free no Factor if you want to help service members active and retired you want to help their families you want to help goldar family check out Mark Le's mom mama Lee She's Got an amazing charity organization if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to Americas Mighty warriors.org also check out Micah thinks got an incredible organization

Heroes and horses. org and finally Jimmy Mays got an amazing organization that you heard about from sea Murphy the other day beyondthe brotherhood. org if you want to connect with us first of all dick Thompson if you want to check out his website it's HPS y.com he's also on Instagram and Twitter [Music] HPS CEO and he's also on Facebook at dick Thompson for us I'm at jco.com and we're both on social media right I'm at Joo willing Echo at Echo Charles just be careful because speaking of Ambush you'll get ambush by the algorithm it'll take

you out once again thanks to Dick Thompson for joining us all these so guys are my heroes and true American Heroes it's an honor to be able to talk to them and share their stories also thanks to all of our soldiers Sailors Airmen Marines and tonight especially thanks to our Vietnam veterans thank you for stepping up and answering the call in such a brutal War additionally thanks to our police law enforcement firefighters paramedics EMTs dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret Serv is all First Responders thank you for stepping up every day to protect us here

at home and everyone else out there heed that guidance from dick Thompson Dynamite today started three days ago today started three days ago the situation you're in right now started to develop three days ago and again we can put all kinds of all kinds of time frames on this what that means is be prepared what that means is think about the future what that means is think long-term strategic don't think think short-term tactical what you are doing right now impacts where you are going to be so don't wait don't put it off do it now

don't stop moving that's all we've got for tonight until next time this is Eko and Joo out