This is JoCo podcast number two forty seven with Echo, Charles and me, JoCo Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

Are you old enough to have a draft card, he says. Yes, yes, I'm old enough, I'm 18. We have to have one. Well, do you have one? Yeah, I say with a full mouth. Sorry about that. Spitting hash browns across the table.

Then you're old enough to enlist and get your duty out of the way. You sure you're old enough? You don't look 18 kind of skinny, too. I don't know if you'd make it through the most basic of training. He wryly smiles. I'm 18 and can prove it.

Do you want to see the card testily reaching for my wallet, spitting a mouthful of eggs on the table. Hey, don't go sideways on me, boy. This is a friendly conversation, not a food fight. The sergeant laughs. The only thing I want you to hand me is your bill for this meal. My treat. You're trying real hard to get me to enlist. Smiling, I hand him the bill. You are a recruiter? Yes, I'm a recruiter.

I'm Staff Sergeant King. What's your name? Lynn, Lynn Black. Well, Lynn Black, if you volunteer, you get your choice of assignments and which country you want to serve in.

How does that sound? And behind door number two, it's got to sound a hell of a lot better than wandering the wondering where you're going to spend the night, King cracks a smile. My office is right down the street. We eat afterwards, I enlist and then spend the night at the YMCA paid for by the U.S. Army.

The next morning I'm on a Boeing 707 headed for a medical examination and basic training at Fort or to California during basic. I'm selected for the Advanced Leadership School at Fort Knox, Kentucky, before going on to the armor school.

Fort Knox, that's the place they keep all the gold, Staff Sergeant King has signed me for three years, active duty in the 13th armored carrier group Europe, Germany, where all have access to all the great European art museums and the artwork of the old masters. The Army's going to pay me to tour Europe. What a deal. My driving passion and greatest ambition has always been to spend my life as a fine art painter. I've been working at the local Seattle television station, art department all the way through high school, the art director, Robert S.

Densmore, is a decorated World War Two veteran who has encouraged me to get my military duty out of the way.

The world in nineteen sixty three is a peaceful place, Leave It to Beaver and I Love Lucy are on television.

So you might have caught that name, Lynn Black, and it might sound familiar to you, if it does, it's probably because you heard it here from John Striker Meyer, a.k.a. Tilt on podcast one eighty one eighty one or one eighty two.

Or maybe you heard it from Doug the Frenchman Létourneau on podcast one eighty six. Like John Striker Meyer and like Doug Létourneau, Lynn Black was an Army soldier, a Green Beret, and he fought in Vietnam as a member of SOGGE, the Studies and Observation Group, a highly classified group that conducted missions in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

They suffered over 100 percent casualties. Meaning, if you were a SOG operator, you were going to get wounded or killed. That is how these men served and sacrificed.

And before you listen to this podcast, if you haven't listened to one eighty one eighty one, one eighty two, one eighty six, and additionally to go four to five and to six with Dick Thompson, go listen to them.

Go listen to them and you'll see that the men of SOGGE are true heroes, heroes that conducted completely insane missions, missions that very few people ever knew about.

And Lyn Black Code named Blackjack, wrote a book about his experiences. And I just read from that book. The book is called Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

WTF, which we are going to dig into today, now, unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, one could not make an appearance on the podcast today, but we were able to bring back Tilt John Striker Myer, one of my heroes who served with Lin on many operations to talk us through the book and provide some details that only someone who was there would know and understand.

With that tilt. Thanks for coming back on. Good evening, sir. Good to be back. Awesome to have you here. Indeed.

You. You actually sent me this book. Do you remember sending me this book? Absolutely. Yeah, I think we did. The Frenchman and I said Lynn's book was out and Lynn Morris Black Junior was the man that I always held in the highest esteem ever since the first time we ran into each other. That will be one at Foobar in 1968.

Just a character. Yeah, well, and and it's I'm hoping at some point we have the opportunity to get him on here. We'll see how that plays out. But hopefully this will provide some encouragement, you know, just to just to do this section of the book.

And man, it's just like every single time I start reviewing what you guys did in Vietnam.

I just I cannot believe what you guys did.

I can't I can't believe the level of heroism and courage that you guys had on all these operations. They're crazy. They're freaking crazy operations. I told you last time, I said, hey, if I was in charge, I wouldn't have improved any of those operations.

Right. I remember that. Yeah. Unbelievable.

And and and believe me, I approved some pretty some pretty sketchy operations in my time. But you guys took it to a whole new level. And the success that you guys had on the battlefield was awesome. And yeah, every time I every time I read through these books, it it just blows my mind. And it's an honor to have you on and to pay some kind of tribute to what you guys did and to have what you guys did was, you know, that's that's my heritage.

You know, even though I'm in the Navy, you're in the Army. I mean, just the special operations. What you guys did over there was just laid the groundwork and set the bar so high for the rest of us forever.

Oh, well, thank you. Well, and you know, and I'm glad you're reading WTF, because Lynch is one of those characters.

I mean, of all the stories for SOGGE for eight years, if you put down some of the most harrowing stories, the top five for eight years, Linscott, you're right near the top, if not the top one, that's never going to dig into it a little bit today just to pay homage to the man that I respected from day one.

And you guys did. And I don't think I want to go into this part today. But you got but when we covered across the fence and on the ground, you and Lynn worked together. For how long how long were you guys actually working together?

He ran he he came on our team for a few missions as a straphangers. Right. And then we went down to CCN eight and the January 69. Then he came on a team publisher left, came on, and then our little people loved it, but they knew him from October. And so when I left, I just turned the team over to him. I just knew the team was in good hands. I never worried about it. I came back.

Lin was the one zero. I was his one one for a while. And then we took turns and then they finally just said, you got too much experience here, black. And they yanked him and put them in some special projects that he went off and did. And I took over Idaho, went back to running, just simple recon. Raelynn was doing some some classified stuff.

All right. Well, let's get a little bit let's learn a little bit about Lin Black and where he came from. I'm going to go to the book here, and it says this in the category of common things that go unnoticed in the world. While Ho Chi Minh was working for the O.S.S. saving allied lives, Lin Morris Black Junior was born to Lin Senior and Violet Black of Albany, Oregon. Lin Junior, that's me. This is where I come into the picture.

I was immediately given the name Boscoe when my mother found that by mixing a bit of the chocolate drink into my baby milk, I dozed right off in.

What is Bosko, what is it of some kind of old school chocolate drink or something like Hershey's chocolate? OK, yeah, I never had bosk. I don't know how that missed me because I'm a chocolate milk kind of fiend.

He goes on here in Berlin, Germany, on the date and hour of my birth at 10:00 a.m. on April twenty second, Adolf Hitler declared to his general staff that Germany had lost the war and that he would commit suicide. In 19. And here's the caveat or here's the warning I'm skipping through this book, I'm not going to read the whole thing. So if it seems a little bit chopped up, that's why you got to get the book. He fast forward here in nineteen forty six.

My mother was pregnant with my brother Hugh. We lived in Salem, Oregon, where my father worked for the post-war state employment office. The war machine was winding down and unemployment was high. I was one year old April nineteen forty seven. On my second birthday we moved to the corner of one, two, three bomb and four five six detonator ordinance Oregon, which was a munitions depot town for World War Two War Supplies. My father managed the payroll office for the depot.

That's just pretty much the coolest place, the coolest address one as perfect for Lynn. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No doubt about it. Blowing things up. Oh yeah.

In nineteen fifty. I was five when the Korean War broke out. We had moved down the road to Hermiston, Oregon, and our father had taken a job with the guy F Atkinson Construction Company as the head of their payroll office. Our mother had purchased a small roadhouse diner.

After that, my brothers Hugh Bruce and I were on our own.

I was the little man Boscoe the babysitter. And that same year, the Soviet Union recognized hockey men's government. Even though Vietnam was recognized internationally as part of French Indochina, Joseph Stalin convinced Ho that the Soviet Union would bankroll his fight against the French if he agreed to allow Chinese advisers to train 60 to 70 thousand vitamin HO bit his lip and agreed to China's support, which enabled him to escalate his fight against France. In nineteen fifty three, the Korean War ended, I was eight years old in the third grade and in love with the red headed, freckle faced girl next door.

On March 13th, nineteen fifty four, with the monetary backing of the Soviets and Chinese advisors, the Viet men engaged the French and then being few. On March twenty third, the men captured the main airstrip, resulting in partial isolation of French army units, inclement weather closed in on the area, preventing airdrops of supplies, evacuating the wounded or close combat air support. As the French ran ever lower on supplies and casualties mounted, the men took control of the countryside when the French could no longer patrol.

They were forced into purely defensive positions, which were shelled with big guns several times a day on April 7th. Nineteen fifty four, Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his domino theory speech during a news conference declaring, Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the falling domino principle. You have a row of dominoes set up. You knock over the first one. And what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly.

So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences. Nine days later, Vice President Richard Nixon announced that the United States may be putting our own boys in Indochina regardless of allied support.

It's it's always important to me to roll through kind of the way these things unfold and and pay attention to history.

Yeah, and we're living it right now, you know, and I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, and it seems like maybe we're not always part of history. Maybe the 90s. Right. What was going on the night of the Berlin Wall came down. So that was kind of historical. But then it was down and and there was kind of some time where you feel like how much are we really a part of history that people will be reading about?

And then things happen like what's going on right now and 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And you start realizing, oh, no, we're we're unfortunately going to play we're going to we're going to have our own history as well. And when you read things like this, it makes a connection for me that you better remember that what's happening this could this could always escalate. Things could always go in a direction that you didn't anticipate.

Little USA can lead to mighty big trouble later down the road. Crazy. Oh, yeah.

On May 7th, the epic battle of Denby at Dien Bien Phu ended in a French defeat. The Viet men shot the wounded and marched the ambulatory French to the coast where they were loaded on ships and sent packing back to France. The French government did not want their citizens to know the defeat and refused to allow their brave soldiers to disembark from the ships. Many brave French soldiers citizens died in the halls of those ships.

Gambian few was the first time a non European colonial independence movement had evolved through all the stages, from guerrilla bands to a conventionally organized and equipped army able to defeat a modern Western occupier in pitched battle.

On April twenty second, nineteen fifty seven, I turned 12 and announced I was no longer to be called Bosko, my name is Lynn and I wanted to be called by my real name.

Besides, kids my age were teasing the hell out of me.

When they found out my real name, things got worse, Lynn, what a sissy name this began a boy named Suara that never ended. Never. So he thought I was. Look, everyone's making fun of my nickname Boscoe. That's mean. I'm just going to go with my real name, Lynn. Yeah.

All in June of nineteen sixty three, I graduated from Rainier Beach High School in Seattle, Washington. I was sleeping late on Saturday morning. When I wake up, orders my father shaking my shoulder. I'm awake, barely. What's going on? Are you going back to work at the television station?

Mom asks. Not today, it's Saturday.

I give them my best eighteen year old smart ass smile. I quit the station six months before graduation to pay attention to a sagging grade average. I think I'm going to take the summer and just goof off.

Do you plan on using either your scholarships? My father needles me knowing I have no intention of going to college. I went to college, he chides. Maybe art school, but no college. It would be a waste of my time and everybody's money. I thought we already had this conversation, I replied, yawning.

Don't be a smartass, prompts Mom.

Do you have enough money saved up to pay rent? Purchase your own food and transportation? I thought I'd live here during the summer and go back to work in the fall.

Then I'm going to place on my own. How about that? If you live here, you'll pay rent. Not the kind of rent you pay now, but the kind of rent as if you had your own place. You'll be out of money pretty fast. You'll need a job. I understand you heard what your mother said. Father insists I don't have the savings to pay that kind of rent.

I groggily complain. I would really like to take a break after graduation. I take it what you really want is to get me out of the house. Growing up, both my parents had worked and I was responsible starting at the age of five for taking care of my two brothers, the little man, and they called me better than my other name, Boscoe.

I've been working and saved my money since I was fifteen. All I want to do is take the summer off, go back to work and then get an apartment. Can't this one wait the summer? Sounds to me like we aren't looking at the same roadmap. Mom says firmly. Both your brothers are old enough to take care of themselves and your father is retired and at home. This evening is your last free meal here, understand? Yep, sure do stark naked.

I jump out of bed and Bowlby head for the shower. Boy, this pisses me off. Why the hell can't they wait until the fall? When I come out they're gone. I dress, walk a mile to the bus stop and head for the Seattle Pike Place market to get something to eat and wander around the open air art galleries. What am I going to do?

So at that point, you know, this is when he goes and he actually meets that recruiter. So that's why that recruiter can tell that he's kind of got nowhere to go and he starts his starts his journey.

So I think King gets him in. The Sergeant King man scored at the diner. Yeah. Paid that bill and made his quota. Yeah.

He goes continues on here. Wallet, armor, school and airborne recruiter dangles the possibility of an extra fifty five dollars a month in addition to my meager monthly seventy nine dollars base pay if I am only man enough to make three parachute jumps. Sounds easy as falling out of an airplane. I volunteer a second time. This volunteering thing is getting to be a habit. One hundred and thirty four monthly for a PFC close along with three hots and a cot.

That's crazy that you guys got that much money for going to airborne school. Fifty five. Yeah, it might not seem like a big deal except for that I think I got one hundred and ten in like nineteen ninety where my base pay was probably a thousand bucks, you know what I'm saying.

So it was like one tenth of my base pay where you guys were getting almost double your base pay. Oh yeah.

My case, I was getting fifty dollars a week unless you're willing pay that inflated salary because I was getting fifty and a jump school's fifty five dollars so like one hundred percent plus and I'm in.

So he goes to jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia, which is where I was lucky enough to go. They don't send Navy guys there anymore. Where do they go to Yuma. Yeah, they go somewhere else. Yeah. Yuma actually might be here in San Diego, but they you basically go and learn it's more of a gentlemen's course and it's faster and you go you get more experience really quick.

Yes. Yes. We we can be consolidated. Oh yeah. I think. But I had a great time at airborne school and there was awesome.

And then he goes to a heavy drop school. Learning, I guess, how to how to get everything rigged up to throw out of the back of airplanes, and then he says this After several weeks of rigor training, I receive orders for Delta Company 16 farmer one hundred and seventy third Airborne Brigade in Okinawa.

Hey, Okinawa is not a city in Germany. This is not what I signed up for, for an extra fifty five bucks a month. I've blown away a European tour, an art education, but I can rig heavy supply loads and vehicles for such snatch outs and high level drops.

Now there's something I can use in the civilian life block, you dumb ass.

The one seventy third had had been activated in June nineteen sixty three, the same month I graduated from Rainier Beach High School in Seattle. The one seventy third has assumed the assets of the second airborne battle group, then stationed on Okinawa, just south of Japan. The one seventy third the one seventy third mission is to quickly close with and destroy the enemy forces using fire maneuver and shock action in coordination with other armed forces. It was because of its many parachute exercises on Taiwan that the members of one hundred seventy third earned the respect and admiration of the nationalist Chinese soldiers so impressed with the paratroopers of the one.

Seventy third were the Chinese that they nicknamed the men of the brigade, 10 being or Sky soldiers.

The name stuck.

The Pentagon's public expectation of us is that we can be deployed within twenty four hours to any hot spot in the Pacific theater, engage with and deter an enemy for seventy two hours. This delaying suicidal action would allow time to deploy real forces such as the Marines. Thank God there aren't any hot spots to be deployed to.

Thank God this is the peacetime army and having no enemy. Tonight, let's go to the vill and get drunk, we'll watch the strip shows life's good on the rock. That's what the jarheads call OK now, and I'm fast forwarding through some other stuff, but he's he's there, you know, he's there. He's kind of doing the peace time army thing. Living the Dream, March 14th, nineteen sixty five is the 19th birthday of Hugh Robert Black, one of my younger brothers.

That morning he arrives on Okinawa with the future third platoon leader, First Lieutenant Richard H. Goldsmith, PFC, who is assigned to the one seventy third engineering company. I'm happy to see him all the way through school. I admired Hughes scholastic capability and they've admittedly envious of his high grade point average and seemingly easy learning style. Both of us have enlisted voluntarily to do our duty and then return to pursue life. Why the hell didn't I just go to art school, because you're doing your duty, dimwit, shut up, put your head down and just get it done and stop talking to yourself.

Or do you think you belong here permanently? Yeah, the way he's written this book, he's got all kinds of these italicized sections where he's kind of just given his own thoughts. Oh, yeah.

And and they're they're awesome to read the rich mind of Lynne Black. Yeah. It's just funny. No matter what you talk to him about, like that stuff, they're particular.

His self-examination and his commentary is just like, yeah, and I'm not going to get too much into it. But the way this book is written, a lot of it is written. And I'll try and explain a lot of his written as conversations that are debriefs, either debriefs, official debriefs or unofficial debriefs that you guys have in your in your team room.

Yeah. With beers and playing dice and in between stream of consciousness.

Right. He gets a hot streak going. You just here to keep going.

They'll take a break for a beer. He comes back. Yeah.

The atmosphere that he gives out of the team room of you guys is pretty awesome. And you guys playing playing freakin liar's dice all the time.

And and the little those those little debrief sessions, though, he mentions it. That's how you were learning. Oh, yeah. That's that's where you were figuring out what to do and what mistakes this group made and what these guys did. Right. And what they did wrong.

And those those those sessions where you're giving each other a bunch of shit, but you're also passing valuable information on. Oh, absolutely.

Particularly in our early time will be one. That's where we learned was from the senior ESCOs and any other team members had been on the ground. We faithfully made a point of talking to him, some wouldn't, some couldn't, too much trauma, but the ones who would talk, I mean, Pat walked in, Spider Parks, John McGovern, they're all men. And we just admired and they took time to talk to us. We could ask them questions.

And then we got the flying cubie.

We hear about the mission, what went wrong, always trying to improve the tactics to see what we could do to improve.

When we get in a field where when you did you say when you got to flying COVEY Well, Spider Parks became Covey, right?

Pat Watkins' after time on the ground. Got it. They were our best Covey riders. Got it. And so on. And the sixty eight partic with the October 5th mission, they were both alternating on station that day. It was so histo the part of that historic moment in time that missioner. And so before that, like during September and August, Pat had run and several missions out of F will be three in the layoffs.

And we talk, you always learn stuff.

We just sat there and just try to sponge it in and bring it in. Yeah. And we'll get to some of Lin's Vietnam experience prior to being in Zogu and prior to being in Special Forces.

But for someone like you and we talked about this in in across the fence, I mean, it is crazy that you were how old were you on your first mission?

Twenty two.

Yeah, well, I was old, but still, I spent two years in college trying to freak out there, you know, but by August of 68, that's when they finally after that, the attack at four, before they came up with the idea, put together a one zero school so they would train, but nothing in place.

So when we got the food by May and June and you just talked to the men who would talk to you, anybody had any experience at all? Like John Walton came back from two or three really big targets. We talked to him. We were both well, he was a high priority for our just low private.

But anybody who would talk, we talked Natsuo well you're right, that clubhouse was better than anything we could get in terms of really learning what was going on on the ground. Air assets, weather and the reality of the of the king bees.

What we worked with at the time, it's what they talk about in training helicopter.

Come pick you up.

Well you got to have that the conditions there, man. You know how that goes. Yeah. Crazy.

So now we get to nineteen sixty five and Lynn says somewhere in the middle of April, nineteen sixty five, cryptic rumors begin to spread rampantly from company to company around the brigade. HQ directs all training to cease and practice Mount LB's be conducted, which is then basically gearing up to go. Oh yeah, surely the company receives its basic load of live ammunition and begins to prepare all vehicles for a combat check. Man, these rounds are heavy, complains one of the new loaders.

April twenty second nineteen sixty five. Matt, he nails these dates in here. It makes me wish I would have kept the journal, which I never did see to April.

Twenty second nineteen sixty five. I celebrate my 20th birthday, May 2nd.

Rumors begin to fly as word spreads that key personnel have received advance party orders to an unknown destination. May 3rd, Company Commander Joseph C. Jordan Jr., at last announces the destination and he says, I have just come from General Williamson's morning briefing. What I'm about to tell you is a chronology of events leading to a temporary offshore assignment. On April 24th, the general received a top secret message from General Westmoreland to meet him inside Saigon, South Vietnam, at Macfie headquarters.

It seems there's a guerrilla war being waged in that Southeast Asian country. The one seventy third is to be a part of what is called Rolling Thunder, being conducted by the US Air Force out of bases in that country. What we heard this morning is that the army of the Republic of Vietnam, known as the Arvind's, are having difficulty providing adequate security for the air bases and supporting Rolling Thunder raids. The Arvin the Arvind's are also having difficulty performing offensive operations against the guerrillas known as Viet Cong or v.C.

General Williamson also revealed that several U.S. divisions are scheduled to arrive in South Vietnam within months. The one third's mission is to clear the incoming units proposed base camp sites of the VC. Our deployment will be a temporary one, probably not lasting more than 60 days. The advance party will leave for being hô Republic of South Vietnam. The one third is to conduct a security action. The CEO announces that he thinks will be back on Occy for sure by Christmas.

Our first mission is to secure patrol and neutralize any threat to Binh HOA Air Base, which is our base camp area.

You all now know about as much about this assignment as I do. So there you go. These guys go from not even knowing that there was anything going on, you know, I was thinking how different that is now. Yeah, because when there's some kind of action taking place in the world, everybody knows about it instantly. You know you know about it instantly because you look at your phone and there's the news. And whether it's Iraq or Afghanistan or Somalia or wherever, everybody knows when there's something happening in the world.

And here these guys, they're not they don't have any idea what's happening in Vietnam. And they're on the rocks.

They're not getting a New York Times or any other newspaper that by that time had carried stories for a few years that pissed off President Kennedy, pissed off LBJ. But so they missed that. And so here's Lynn, like of you're going to go to Ben WA. It will be a 60 days.

Not if he goes into this thing about how they had to ditherer their underwear green on May 4th, the company receives word we are to delete nine Spatz from our inventory and replace them with the M one one three armored personnel carriers or APC. So this is nineteen sixty five. Yeah, and you know what we used for CAS evac vehicles in the battle of Ramadi in 2006 and one one three one one 3s, which almost any book is still penetrator.

Oh yeah. My my commanding officer of one time, you know, he's you talking me through an operation that the guys were going out on and he said, what's the Casavant evac plan? I said, hey, the Cadillac plan is this will contact this company. They have one one 3s. They'll come out and he says, what if what if that one one three hits a Sub-surface IED? So at the time Sub-surface I'd had it, everybody knew what that was and what it was with somebody.

The enemy would bury the the explosives, you know, underneath the ground and you couldn't see them. So it wasn't like something sitting on the side of the road who's under the ground, and they would make them big. And he says, what will happen if that one one three hits, hits Sub-surface IED? And I said, sir, if the one one three hits a Sub-surface IED, everyone in that one one three is going to be dead.

And that was the facts.

You know, that was the fact it was going to be their caskey that really weird thing is.

Most at that time, including the one one, three, the Abrams, all these older vehicles, the when you build those vehicles, you build them as low as to the ground as you can at the lowest possible profile so that you can't be seen. It's like ducking, right. You build the even Humvees built like that.

Right. Humvees wide, but it's low. Sure. And and an Abrams's is wide, but it's low and a one one three is low to the ground zero.

How much clearance. Because you know, you don't want to get shot at by another tank so you can hide behind, you know, a little ridgeline or a little noal or something like that. The problem is that's the worst possible vehicle to have when it comes to getting blown up from the ground. And so now when you see the the mine resistant vehicles, now they're massive, they're tall. You've got to get a lot.

You get into them with a ladder, you literally there's a ladder. There's like four or five rungs on a ladder to get up into them because they're built really high.

And you exit with a parachute. Yeah, they have a V shaped hole that deflects the blast as well. And a one one three has a complete flat bottom.

It's super low to the ground. But they were just they weren't this was not the problem that they were coming up against at that time, right?

Oh, yeah. May 5th. The company begins feverishly working to prepare our vehicles for shipment the following day, May 6th, we we drive to Okinawa, to the Okinawa port of Navarre, where the vehicles are loaded under the direction of Lieutenant Gilmor, the embarkation officer. And again, I'm just jumping through this stuff you got. It's so great to read this. You've got to get this book because the details that he gives, I don't know how he's got a way better memory than me.

Right. Dates or logged down names. And for everyone, I mean, who remembers the name of the damn embarkation officer? He must have written that down.

Has to.

But it's great. It makes you feel like you're there. You're right there perfectly.

Yeah. The 170 3rd Airborne Brigade is the first US Army unit sent to Vietnam.

Imagine so talking about history.

Oh yeah. May 12th, a 12 16 hours company, D 16th Armor arrives in Saigon Harbor, the Paris of Southeast Asia Company D first combat assignment comes in the form of ambush.

Patrols were ordered to attach 12 enlisted personnel each day to the first, the final third for a three day period.

So much for riding on tracks. So they got all these vehicles, but now they're going out on patrols.

Needs of the army, they say. Needs of the army. OK, in the Navy, that's like a kind of a joke. Someone will say, well, what do you think your job is going to be like? My needs in the Navy or whatever the Navy needs you to do, you're going to do it, even though they might not say that in the Army. That's the way it is, because we don't care if you've been training these tracks to to fight from armor, you're going to go out.

You're going to be on foot patrol. May 18th.

Our vehicles arrive and the company turns to the task of prepping them. Thank God. Now, now, maybe we can start doing stop doing patrols with the grunts. I'm an armor guy, not a ground pounder. One track crew member complains and here's Lynn's thoughts. I disagree with that. No one in their right mind wants to be walking this miserable place when you can be riding outside. I agree with that. No one in their right mind wants to be walking this miserable place.

When you can be riding, who the hell wants to sleep on the stinking wet ground with bugs, snakes and God knows what else.

God damn it, I'm supposed to be in Europe is the Paris of the Orient May 19th.

The first platoon is attached to the three third three three hundred nineteen artillery for a security mission. The remainder of the month is spent training and seemingly endless improvement of the defensive perimeter. Here's here's here's Lynn's thoughts.

DYG endless trenches, trenches, fill sandbags, build bunkers, string concertina wire, put up tents, wind and rain, flood the trenches in bunkers and fly the tents, put up tents again, go out on patrol with ground pounders, pull KP Stand Guard duty.

How in the hell can any of these lifers do this for a living? I'm so tired of pots and pans duty I could kill somebody. There's a thought. So that's how they psychologically prepare us pots and pans.

On the last day of May, General Williamson initiated a four day operation. Three objectives were hit by our Sky soldiers. Casualties were few against light resistance. The war guys experienced no heavy fighting the operation. The first US offensive action in South Vietnam, greatly contributed to the confidence of the hundred and seventy third Airborne Brigade.

The first operation of July is search and destroy in conjunction with elements of the 1st Battalion 500 and 3rd Infantry July 16th, the company in conjunction with Elmas the 1st, the final third and the engineering company conduct a search and destroy operation during that operation.

My younger brother Hugh is critically wounded by an unseen enemy during a mortar attack, and several of his friends are killed.

He's medevacked out of the AOM and back to CONUS. So, you know, I kind of drifted through that part where his brother showed up on Okinawa. Well, his brother, they're both of the same unit. They end up deploying to Vietnam, the first Americans in Vietnam, and his brother ends up getting wounded by a mortar pretty bad. And here's Lynn's thoughts on that.

You fuckers. Not my brother. Not my brother. Show yourselves, you cowards. Goddammit. Here we are driving up and down the roads while those bastards are hiding in the bushes, bushes. They can see us, but we can't see them. Where the hell are they? Somebody has to know where they are. I'm sorry, Hugh. I hope you can forgive me. I should have been there with you. I'll find them.

They'll pay, I promise. Welcome to the jungle, baby. That's one of the things that, you know, when I was in Ramadi, I'd always read a book about face, you know, by by David Hackworth.

And and one of the things that was so similar was what just happened right there. This is the beginning of the war and you're fighting against an enemy that you can't see.

Right. And it's so frustrating, especially for the conventional troops that are out there.

And and, you know, I was talking about this today with a client, the the mentality and what it does to your mentality of being on offense versus being on defense.

And when you got out, you know, when when the mission is go out and walk down this road.

You might think you're being on offense, but if you think about a little bit deeper, you're on defense because you're walking down that road and they can have booby traps and IEDs and snipers and mortars. They can have all that stuff. And you are on defense, even though you're moving, you're on defense. And that was definitely how I felt on my first deployment. Same thing I would ask, like a young junior officers, I'd say, is this an offensive operation?

I talk about a direct action mission in downtown Baghdad. I show them a profile of a mission. And I'd say, is this an offensive operation? They go, absolutely. And I go, how long are you on offense for? Because the whole mission takes an hour and a half. Two hours. Right. So you drive from Baghdad to some other part of Baghdad. It takes you a half an hour to get there. And then you hit the target.

It takes 15 minutes and then you drive back to it's another half an hour. So you were out for an hour and 15 minutes, I would say. How much time were you on offense for? And then they'd start thinking about it, sometimes they'd say the whole time, we're always on offense, and I'd say, well, that sounds good, but it's not true. It's not true. When you're out on patrol, when you're moving through enemy territory, you are on defense.

You're a target. You're a target. Now, once you get to that target and you set up, believe me, we go on offense for a good solid three or four minutes. But then even once we hit the target, now all the bad guys know we're there and now we're on defense again.

So that what that does to your mentality is it can be hard on people. It can be hard to be constantly paranoid and constantly on defense. And it's the same thing in life. Right. You know, somebody was asking me, what do you do? And, you know, what do you do when you've got all these things are happening in the markets changing? And I said, look, you can either be on defense and try just keep it together, which doesn't feel good, or you can look at the problem and go on offense and attack the problem.

And that's exactly the mentality that Lynn's having right here. He wants to go on the attack. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Continuing on the one seventy third, along with other American units and Vietnamese troops work together to break the siege of special forces at Camp du Duco. Massenet right, Duco Doko Captain Jordan D, the Delta Company commander leads his company on foot patrols to an exploit to exploit a suspected VC stronghold, as well as other armored patrols and security details.

Sir, Captain Jordan, let me go with you on the patrols, no black, you aren't in any shape to be going with us. I need soldiers, not a revenge squad.

Oh, yeah.

So blacks getting left behind, he wants to go get after it and his bosses. And you just need to you need to slow your roll.

Black August 6th, Companied Faries, the Royal Australian Regiment Infantry to their area of operations, August 17th, the 2nd and 3rd platoons along with command track leave for extended operation. September 9th. Nineteen sixty five, Capt. Joseph C. Jordan relinquishes his command for a staff position with the Great Brigade HQ. Captain John Dunlop Jr., formerly HQ company commander, is recipient of the Guide On.

While on patrol, Platoon Sergeant Herman Trent specked five Correo, PFC Henry S. Baker and Robert L. Adams are all wounded when they come under heavy mortar fire by the still unseen enemy. Respect for Craig is credited with saving two lives and later receives the soldier's medal commendation October 8th, nineteen sixty five Company D departs our Ben Hô base for the Iron Triangle on a search and destroy operation. Not far down the road around the first bend, a command detonated. Mine is set off by the VC, completely destroying the APC, killing the driver, PFC Michael Brancato, and severely wounding Staff Sergeant St.

Clair Westermann and Sampson Moore. Son of bitches blew us up, Westermann later slurs through his wired jaw as he's trying to explain to me what happened, blew the goddamn track off the PC and flipped it upside down. Killed Brancato. Good kid, God damn it. On and on it went. War Zone C and D, the iron triangle. All plans new life and smash and Dec search and destroy and convoy security along with blocking force missions. That first tour of duty rolled on much the same way as it did the first six months until Specialist Fourth Class Lynn M Black Junior got promoted.

Then I went back to the world in July of nineteen sixty six. Later that year, I appeared on a television morning show hosted by a guy named Princeton Preston Price at King TV, Seattle, Washington. So he is is out of the army.

Yeah. With me was an Army helicopter gunner who had become a war protester. The door gunners mantra for the 30 minute show is that the United States had no business being in Southeast Asia. Why would communists on the other side of the world have any effect on our American freedom? He didn't believe that any young man of draft age had any responsibility to fight an illegal war. We needed to question the use of illegal authority.

This is more than I can take. And I accuse the gunner of being a coward and a traitor to his country. I immediately launched into a duty honor country speech that would have shamed any man.

It certainly did me. What I wanted to do was kick the unseen enemies. Asked for whacking Hugh.

It didn't make a dent in the door gunners resolve, and the two of us morning show guests began to talk over the top of one another as the lights were switched off in the studio and the station went into a prolonged set of live beer, an appliance dealer, commercials in an adjacent studio.

The Unseen Enemy killed several of my fellow soldiers and had severely wounded many more. My brother and my best friend have been crippled for life or grotesquely wounded. I can't say for sure I ever saw the face of the enemy during that tour of duty. Sitting in my apartment in Hawaii watching the evening news, I felt guilty, pissed off, alone and completely consumed by feelings of revenge.

U.S. planes began bombing Hanoi. We see you now, you sons of bitches, North Vietnam, North Vietnam declares general mobilization. The Warsaw Pact promises to support North Vietnam. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot reenlisting. And if anyone hasn't figured out what WTF Whiskey Tango Foxtrot stands for, it stands for what the fuck over.

So that's his first tour of duty and it's crazy to think he's saying, hey, I don't even think I ever saw the enemy during that. And he's got his brother wounded. He's got other guys wounded and killed. Never saw the enemy.

Yeah. And they had a couple of times I forget how detailed he went in the first part. But when they were in the APC's, they got in the into the rubber plantations, we had rows and rows of trees.

If you go in there and hey man, we can figure it out what they did and they got hammered in here.

I remember Lynn talking about that both in both tours of duty. At some point we got into a reflection thing.

We would go back once in a while, but the rubber plantations and in between the snipers and their control fire lines and obviously they set things up and practice before one hundred and seventy three ever got there.

And then they had to be careful not to damage any rubber trees because they did the plantation owners, would they come back and sue the United States to pay for the damage, rubber trees, Vietcong?

Well, you know, we can't deal with them, but politics and but that story and the APC, that thin armor, or he has some nightmares that I just can't imagine. And that's a traditional unit. Yeah. Early on. And they learn some lessons the hard way.

Boy. Yeah. You know, the when I did Lewis Poller Jr's book on here, Fortunate Son, and he's got he's rotating between three areas and you know, like one of them was bridge security, one of them was camp security. And then one of them was called the Riviera I think, or the Riviera. But every time they'd go out there, they'd get to take casualties and they'd never see the enemy and they would do a high five with their platoon was heading out.

There's another platoon rotating back in. Yeah, I figured if a tuna company, I think was a platoon platoon sized, he'd be heading out. He'd high five, you know, the other platoon commander. And, you know, the guy would say, yeah, we took two casualties or three casualties. We can have kicked him out. Did you see the enemy? No. They're just going out there and taking hits and you don't see the enemy, and that that's very similar to Iraq, you know, very similar to Iraq, where many, much of the time guys be out there, they just get blown up by an IED or you get hit by mortar fire, you get hit by sniper fire.

And that's that's the way that's the way the guerrillas fight against against America.

Absolutely. And then even with the snipers, they knew how to get back in buildings. So they fired out to be no direct smoke or evidence of them.

Where the rounds came from, you really had to.

Have good ear detection or some kind of sensor, your sixth sense of fear.

Where the hell else would I think you'd have to be a sixth sense because you can't tell where those roots are coming from. Now, with that goes and you see you see in movies, you know, there's always a sniper in a window in his barrel sticking two feet out of the window. But you're right, the snipers are actually not even in that room. They're in a room deep, one room deep, maybe even more down a hallway.

So their field of vision is tiny, but there's no possible way that you're seeing them.

No, but luckily, some people learn to adapt and take the fight to the enemy. Indeed. July nineteen sixty eight. And these are some thoughts during my first tour with the one seventy third, I watched them Special Forces and other recon men from the Herd, which is the nickname, which is a great nickname for the one. Seventy third the herd from the herd.

Marine Force Recon, the eighty second in the 101st Airborne Division's. There's something different special about recon men. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I sure as hell want to be one intense yet always joking around. It was like they were fighting a different war than the rest of us. Everyone knew they were the best of the best. We graduated from Company B Special Forces training group Fort Bragg, North Carolina, at the beginning of the class had been five hundred of the finest physically fit soldiers ever produced in the United States Army.

That May nineteen sixty eight graduating class contained less than 70 men standing at attention, proudly waiting to be awarded the coveted Green Beret. When did you graduate from Special Forces training? December sixty seven, sir. You're already you're already done.

And he's a new guy. Yeah, I'm in camp. I'm going to be one way from to get there.

We had earned the right to work with the best of the best hell. We were the best.

And he kind of just runs through some of the Special Forces training back then. In the beginning, phase one, we sat in the classroom for eight hours a day listening to lectures and taking notes.

We were given homework assignments, papers to write and participated in small in class and after class working teams, half the group was eliminated in phase one. Every day we heard phrases like, if I wanted to sit on my ass all day in a classroom, I joined the Air Force. This is college prep school. This is a college prep school. Nonsense, nonsense. A lot of what it took to get through phase one was attitude of willingness, being willing to endure the unexpected.

I don't think any of us expected the classroom. Did you spend that much time in the classroom? Oh, yeah. What were you guys learning about?

Well, they they all the indoctrination stuff, history and then procedures. Then like our class, you sat down, you're in a class for eight to ten hours. Just they're taking commo and land navigation, all kinds of different things that you had to take notes.

I remember while packing to move now going through finals of my old notes back, just like, oh my God, I forgot all about that.

That's like I got it out of my mind.

When you find those notes, just take a picture of them and send them to me so we can talk about them at some point. That sounds freaking awesome. I got this book that I wrote when I was a E5 in the SEAL teams and I was teaching, I was teaching communications and I found it.

It just says SEAL Team One Communications and it's basically on how to work the different radios. But then in the back, I have a section called Lessons Learned. I'm going to cover it on the podcast because it's legit, is that right?

Yeah. We have to go back and compare notes.

Dean Gullu Morse code training it.

Oh, I was one of the last guys that had to learn Morse code. Yeah. Did he done did he. Yeah. My the guy that was teaching us to it because it was people that were pushing back like we don't need to learn Morse code. You know, we have satellites now. And this guy says in the event of what was his phrase, he said, in the event of a nuclear war, the only thing that's going to be punching through the ionosphere is H.F. CALM's.

Yeah. And Morse code. So we got to learn it. Of course. I'm nineteen years old. I'm totally down by cool. If there is a nuclear war, I'm ready to make bombs.

Yeah, they don't teach you it in basic training.

There is no mental challenge whatsoever.

I mean there's no you don't sit in the classroom, you don't sit in a classroom probably ever for more than like an hour when they're trying to teach you dive physics or hydrographic reconnaissance.

It's just totally they don't do that with us. That's why you get some knuckle draggers, teams.

Yeah, yeah. The Special Forces guy just, you know, they got they like that.

They like that kind of thing. They like that kind of thing being a little bit smarter.

During Phase two, we were divided amongst our various specialty groups, such as operations, intelligence, medical weapons and so on. I was the hands on portions. This was the hands on person training. In my case, I was being trained as a weapons specialist, which I imagine everybody wants to be.

Oh, yeah, boy. Toys to the max. Yeah.

And and how do they pick what you're going to do? They gave you a test and then they're supposed to indicate what you're good at and then his needs. What the army needs. Needs of the army. Yeah.

And you ended up CALM's.

Yeah I ended up CALM's too because I had this, I stood watch at the SEAL team one quarterdeck like new guy.

You're going to stay watch and I'm standing watch. I'm standing with this, this officer, he's like a platoon commander, but he's more experienced than me and he's talking to me and we have to stay there the whole night. You know, we're like sleeping in a bunk beds or whatever to make sure no one attacks SEAL Team one, site nineteen ninety one.

And the guy after talking to me, he says, you know what, you know, and he's asking me what was what he would do. What are you doing. The SEAL teams work. You don't want to be an operator. I want to go on missions. Right. And he's the morning he says, hey, you know what, what you should do is you should go to the radio room tomorrow or when you when we get off and go tell them you want to be a radio man, because the radio man always goes on operations as though he's the only guy that's going in every operation.

I mean, the medic kind of, but the radio man for sure have to.

And so I went up it got off a watch, went right up, banged on the radio. I want to be radioman. Why? I want to go on every operation. Go I don't sign up here. I was probably the only person in the history of SEAL Team One to do that because what does everyone else want to do? They want to be a machine gunner in a sniper.

Oh yeah. I want to be a weapons guy. Oh. So fast forward a little bit.

He's home in Seattle on leave. He's got some of his buddies with him named Bob and Steve.

And here they are kind of hanging out with Hugh. And here we go, Hugh, one of my two younger. Others has joined us during our laught last afternoon out on our sister Carlos back deck. This is our last day in the civilian world.

This is before they go on deployment.

He's wearing a tank top and t shirt and a pair of shorts which shows off the scar running from one knee up the length of his leg to his hip.

After a couple of beers, he tells the story about the mortar attack, his leg wound, broken ribs, arm and shrapnel filled face and torso. He recounts the months spent recovering at Madigan Army Hospital. Bob and Steve are visibly shaken by the sight of wounds and more so by the story of inadequate medical treatment and disdain from the hospital staff for anyone dumb enough to get suckered into volunteering for knowm, the mood of the afternoon darkens and alcohol consumption increases last day.

Galette softly Drones. Yup. Give me a beer. How do you say this and get in? Guelke How do you say his name?

You know, Engelke, Engelke, Scheveningen, Bob Gillette.

Those are his two buddies. Oh yeah. Oh JULlETTE.

OK and Guelke and Guelke Engelke Engelke man. I'm going to keep messing that one angle. Key stick with Steve.

Kalila serves up an early dinner.

We eat our last supper and he bluntly asks What the hell are you going to do back in that shit hole.

For a moment I sit there surprise staring at him, dumbfounded.

It's payback time, I quietly reply. Payback for what? He looked surprised. Then it dawns on him, you dumb ass. You aren't my babysitter, my big brother anymore. I don't need you to fight any battles on my behalf. I did my duty, took my hits, and now I'm going to college. It's time for me to build my life. The government got there three years and you can bet your bippy that there's no one in this country who gives a shit except those who went there and did it.

Sometimes I'm not sure most of them care either. Time to move on, brother. Time to move on. Grab me one of those beers out of the cooler.

Willia, you stupid idiot. And here's Lunn's thoughts on that. Now, that announcement certainly shoots the shit out of my public reason for going back. I've been telling everyone who asks that I'm going to extract a little hide from the Charly's who nailed my little brother. Now he's telling me he's not my little brother and to grow up.

Well, crap.

Why the hell didn't he make that speech before I reenlisted? Laughing to myself, I'm a Green Beret.

I'm going to be a recon man. That's why I'm going back. I want to find out what it's like to be the best at something. Fast forward denying safe house 20 to the three of us anxiously await a top secret briefing in a small secured outbuilding that once was a carriage house, a sergeant First Class E seven is standing behind a long, wide, thick plank table. Behind him, a captain wearing the Green Beret and a starched uniform sits quietly watching with an offhanded, relaxed gesture so typical of men.

The seven motions to us to sit. Rising from his chair, the captain says during your training at Bragg, you men were selected as potential candidates for military assistance command, Vietnam studies and observations, group studies and observations.

What the hell is that?

God damn it. I came back to be a recon man. Sounds like they're going to make us into a bunch of clerks. I will give you a series of briefings, the first of which requires you to make a decision as to whether you want to go on with the second. Before we continue, what you are about to hear is classified top secret, requiring you to sign the nondisclosure form in front of you. Read the form. If you choose not to sign, get up and leave the room.

No questions.

Ask read the form, OK, sign the form and give it to the seven. This better not be a clerk's job. Top secret clerk.

I read the form and scribble my signature at the bottom, handing it to the seven as he circulates among us.

I know this is a lot of money and he goes through some history, that's that's what's part of the briefing is he says this four years ago, April nineteen sixty four, the government of South Vietnam created the Special Exploitation Service or seeks to replace the VN Special Forces Command. Concurrently, the CIA transferred its advisory role to the newly formed Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations Group, or McCorvey SOGGE, which is run by the U.S. Military Joint Services.

Last year, the South Vietnamese renamed the SS, the Strategic Technical Directorate, clearing his throat, the captain picks up a glass of water, taking a long drink.

And why do I need to know all this questions?

No. OK, to the point, you men will be assigned to an effort by forward operations base or Philby's have been in existence since nineteen sixty four. They are located in Phu by case on Comm Duke and Danang. Fobbs conduct classified operations outside South Vietnam, classified operations doesn't sound like a clerk's job to me. This is getting interesting operations and allows commenced September nineteen sixty five as part of Operation Shining Brass and recently have been renamed Prairie Fire.

Out of country, operations are conducted by recon teams called spig teams, hatchet forces and slam companies. Break those down for us real quick, spike teams, hatchet forces, and and there's also like our team, which is recon team.

Well, in the early days, up until the end of sixty eight, it was spiked because it was top secret code for recon team. Got it. And then you had to hatch a force, which could be anything for a platoon up to a company size operation like Operation Tailwind and then the slam operations that would be one or two hatchet force components depending on the size they would go in and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, back it up, and then the Air Force would have air power.

So anything that backed up on a trail, they would hit it hit hard. And of course, the VA responded very quickly and the elements that were on the ground got hammered. So Slim got slammed with those operations. That's why by the time you get the tailwind in 70, they change the ammo a little bit. But that's the breakdown. Got it. Yeah.

This this captain continues on Mac. We saw Mac. This is a joint service, high command, unconventional warfare task force whose charters to conduct top secret sabotage, psychological and special operations in North and South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and southern China. It has been given the title studies and observation group as a cover. The Joint Staff is allegedly performing an analysis of the lessons learned up to this point in the war. It's obviously a special operations group. Machree SOGGE is organized into two field commands Command and Control, South and North, also called SCAS and CCN.

I know this is a lot of material and I'm jumping ahead, I know this is a lot of material, but we want you to know what you're volunteering for. To continue, and he keeps that throughout this and Lynn does actually Lynn says this, I volunteered to be here. I volunteered for recon. Sounds like I'm getting exactly what I asked for.

How old is Lynn at this point? It's like seventy five Noah at this point. Oh, they're. He must be young because he didn't do oh, no, he did a deployment with the Ariana's, he's he's older actually. Yeah, he's actually probably older than you.

How old. I was twenty two. I think Lynn would have been. He's a year ahead of me. OK. Yeah, he's seventy five now. I'm four. There you go.

But still. Damn that's young. But you know why I was the reason I ask you that is because when I think about what a young. American male mind is like it's like this, you're sitting here and there's nothing more that anyone wants to hear than a.

Joint Service, High Command, Unconventional Warfare Task Force, who charters to conduct top secret sabotage, psychological and special operations. Sign me up. There you go.

Airborne. Continuing on Maeve's mission is twofold.

Support South Vietnam against communist aggression. Assist in the development of the Southern Republic. The United States and our allies will succeed by winning the people. Depriving the enemy of safe havens, rests and supplies, depriving the enemy. And this is where Macfie Sogge comes into the picture, SOGGE has five primary responsibilities and the capability to undertake additional special missions as required. Listen up.

Sock's primary responsibilities include first cross-border operations conducted to disrupt Khmer Rouge Pathet Path, that leale path that Lao and Eva in their own territories.

So that's Cambodia, Laos and and and and North Vietnam. Secondly, keep track of all the imprisoned and missing Americans and conducting raids to assist and free them as part of the escape and evasion mission for all captured U.S. ground personnel and downed airmen.

Mission three is training and dispatching agents into North Vietnam to run resistance operations called black psychological operations, such as establishing false national and VA broadcasting stations inside North Vietnam and yellow Cyclopes psychological operations as typified by the hue. The way Citadel propaganda transmitter mentioned earlier for the captain holds up four fingers waving them at us. McCorvey SOGGE is also entrusted with specific tasks such as kidnapping, assassination and insertion of rigged mortar rounds into enemy ammunition supply system, which are set to explode and destroy their crews upon use.

He pauses to study our faces again, clearing his throat. Five, he coughs again is the retrieval of sensitive documents and equipment if lost or captured through enemy action? He pauses. Any questions? Silence in the room. Lynn thinks to himself, this is a hell of a lot more than just retcon wow, the next level of information reveals daily operational details. I will show you out of the country, areas of operations talk in detail about the team makeup and the commitment.

We hope you will volunteer to make any of you who want to bail out. Now is the time. He pauses. Looking around the room looks like we're all in. This is going to be a hell of a lot of fun. Reaching to his left, the captain rolls back a black cloth covering a map of Southeast Asia. McAvey Sogge is a top secret organization operating the width and breadth of the DMZ West Values and South down through Cambodia. The shaded areas you see delineate the al air.

Our area of operations. You will enter the alley with no personal identification. Your weapons will not contain serial numbers. You and your gear will be what we call sterile. You will carry nothing that identifies you as an American. You will not carry pictures of your loved ones or anything else that doesn't directly pertain to your mission. Occasionally you will use enemy weapons as well and dress like them. He pauses. Are there any questions? He picks up a glass of water.

Are there any questions the captain asks? A second time's the second time, receiving no response other than stunned faces, he continues accepting this assignment. Accepting this assignment means you will be expected to run a minimum of three cross-border missions to complete your tour of duty with SOGGE. After those missions, you can request a change of assignment to finish out your year in country. If you wish to leave SOGGE, we will honor that request. If you wish to leave Special Forces, we will send you to another unit or you can stay and continue running missions.

Now, are there any questions?

Yes, sir. Are we spies? Asked one of our party without hesitation by international law. Yes, this is a covert operation, as I said, top secret. Our job is to trail watch us snatch, wiretap, ambush and just plain old enemy interdiction. You will be assigned to recon teams. Arties, those teams are led by three Americans who are supported by nine mercenary commandos, which make up a full 12 man team. The American leader is designated a one zero.

The assistant team leader is a one one.

And finally the radio operator has a designation of one to the mercenaries are paid by us to work in the U.S. on this map. Additionally, there might be an Arvin Special Forces team member whose job it is to handle the mercenary mercenaries while you do your intelligence work. E seven, next form, please, please read this carefully before accepting or rejecting it, if you sign, you will become members of the most elite fighting force the United States has ever put in the field against an enemy.

We are fighting a secret war. As I said earlier, you can never divulge your participation, recognize or give credence to any second or third party knowledge of our existence.

The captain in E seven move into a shadowed corner, quietly talking. I read carefully through the non-disclosure statements, threats of imprisonment, disgrace, loss of rights and freedoms. I sign talk about getting what you ask for. The E seven distributes another set of papers to each of us. Gentlemen, welcome to McAvey SOGGE. Smile's the captain. We now need to address this last little consideration. If you're unlucky enough to be captured and wind up as a W, we have a cover story along with an individual recognition procedure.

Don't share what you are about to write with anyone. There are questions on this form. They are the same questions for each of you. However, your response will be individual and will become the key to recognizing you and obtaining your release as a UW. Please fill in the answers, make them simple and conversational, put the form into the attached manila envelope and seal it. Hand the envelope to me and no one else in this room do not look at each other's answers.

Collecting the envelopes and stuffing them into a canvas attaché, the captain says, men, thank you for volunteering. Good luck. And goodbye. Yeah, I forgot that part about the, uh, the last the second document, you put your individual information down.

Forgot about that Lin being sharper as he is, he must have taken notes. He's got some incredible information, man. Well, the secret war. Welcome to SOGGE. Yes, indeed. Did you did you when you were going through that moment, did you have any, like, hesitation or you just so all it it was ridiculous.

Ridiculous? Yeah, absolutely. It's like Lyn and me and my case, we had been going through our training for all those months.

And it's like this is the war. And like, you know, the Green Beret movie had been out. What would you do? Do. Yeah.

And what's crazy is you were told that you were told don't volunteer for SOGGE. Oh, yeah. I went through training group. They're like, hey, listen, yeah. Don't volunteer for SOGGE or whatever you do, don't volunteer for SOGGE.

Well, even if it wasn't the direct, it would be like, you know, when you go get to an eykamp, learn about the country to people and there's projects, don't volunteer get because the people are dying.

And this is sixty eight. We had so many teams have been wiped out by that point.

The briefer didn't tell them anything about that, the casualty rate.

But I point to. Oh yeah.

Gearing up each individual wear or carry sterile fatigues or tiger suit flop brim hat with a portion of panel sewn inside the top jungle boots, pistol belt harness, first aid packet pill kit, heavy and sharp. CanTeen's with water purification tablets, smoke grenades, compas survival kit, individual pistols, submachine gun and sawed off. Seventy nine weapons signal mirror panel strobe light pen flare with flares, ammo pouches, rucksack with reinforced straps rations, weapons cleaning kit maps poncho and liner can opener P thirty eight or knife with can opener waterproof matches insect and leech repellent jungle sweater.

Our t10 survival radio penlight. Six foot of nylon cord parachute's suspension cord solice to snap links notebook and pencil to plastic bags fragmentation white phosphorus and gas grenades to cravat bandages. Gloves Claymore serum. The team will need to carry a camera and film binoculars, APRC twenty five radio, or as you call it, a prick. Twenty five with extra battery and 14 top copper mines and booby traps, ante intrusion, device wiretaps and equipment for prisoner snatches, that's all.

What exactly is a wiretap? It's like, go ahead, you have to telephone lines.

Right, so that's the wire and you tap into it.

And then in our case you've got the telephone pole put the wires are wires onto their wire tape. It then come down a pole covered with mud. So then by walk by, they wouldn't see it. And we have it tied into a at that time state of the art cassette before.

And we we record even if there is nobody talking. The CIA had us do the actual recordings so that they could hear it. They would amplify the tapes. They could they said they amplified 100 times. They could hear things in the background because the VA phones were in the cradle there live like our phones today. They shut off. Those are still alive to see would we give them all the tapes and they would amplify it. So they got into all of those things.

Yeah.

So we hear people talking in the background about, yes, of course, CIA, we we give, they take and they're done. You never hear anything back at all.

So when you say you're you wiretaps, part of the list of stuff that you guys have, what is it like a little apparatus or something?

That is the actual cassette recorder, the a wire and then at the end of a wire to be two little things that you tape onto it or do or go through some kind of wire. We have like a double area plugged in between. Yeah. And then you tape it, huh.

How big was the cassette recorder shoebox I'm picturing shoe shoebox was as big as a shoe box.

No, no, not this could be a Walkman side like this side the size of the book. Like a book size. Like a silk book. Oh yeah. Like the old school. Very like it. Yeah.

They were to handle was it, was it, was there tape cassettes in there or was it like some kind of reel to reel cassette.

No kidding. You guys were high speed data brother this is 1968.

None of the real stuff in the field and the cassettes, you know, I think we had to by then they had the two hour cassette so you could do an hour on each one side as opposed to sixty with thirty on each side.

It's someone sitting down there freaking flipping those damn cassettes over while you're out. Laursen, Cambodia.

Hey, it keeps you something to divert attention from watching the trail. Yeah. Swatting mosquitoes.

So I mentioned that the way he sets this book up is you're reading and it makes it very conversational in a way. But he sets a lot of it up as debriefing. Yeah. And and he also wrote this and this is one of his thoughts. Have you ever seen yourself through the eyes of someone you've become? No, this isn't an existential, existential question, really. Have you? And that made me think about is when you're debriefing, you're kind of you're kind of forcing yourself to detach and explain what you did.

And it's almost like you're seeing yourself in a third person situation.

So in this particular set to set this up, they're in there. And this is we talked a little bit about you guys playing liar's dice and sitting around the bar and having some drinks and debriefing amongst yourselves. Right. Well, this one is set up.

Not like that. This is an official debriefing.

Oh, yeah. And did you guys always do official debriefings? Because it doesn't sound like it it sounds like this was a an operation that was so significant that it required a like like an on site special debriefing.

Oh yeah. Always we went right to as to OK, so you guys always did this.

A dozen s.o.p. Got it. Absolutely. And it was really hot. They would get the initial word down by radio transmission on RTT and then come back with a fourth or action report.

Yeah. It sounds like this one is. Pretty significant and so and I'm going to fast forward just a little bit, and here we go, Specialist Black. Please begin, which again, this is crazy and E4 yeah, freaking crazy Specialist Black, please, please Bragin apprehensively.

I mentally move back in time. The monthly Saigon target list arrived and as usual, the team leaders gathered in the tactical operations center to pick or be assigned their missions. Some have to be assigned because no one wants to run those targets.

Why is that? They're known to be one way trips, I see response, the sergeant, Oscar eight, which is known to be one of those one way trips, is always assigned on a lottery system. My understanding is that the last 12 teams attempting to run that mission have never been heard from again. Or or were so shot up that they've been disbanded. So this one particular mission set was called Oscar eight and this Oscar eight, there's been 12 teams that have gone to execute this operation and they've either totally disappeared or they've been so, so messed up that they disbanded the teams.

Yeah, it's just a nasty targets where major roads came together. I forget the exact highways like 92. There's a couple other all came in the northern part of South Vietnam. And we later learned they had a major headquarters area there. And that's where, like on the ground, the first book was first chapter with Pat Watkins there in Obscuration when the NBA came up and says your turf for guard duty as that's what let's talk about.

He says one of them, one of them, one of the analysts, Specialist Black, we're interested in the intel gathered during the V.R.. We know the history, the target Chai's, the lieutenant and analysts. So the guys basically go on. Look, we know it's a bad target.

We want to know about your visual reconnaissance, sir.

That's and he's showing a lot of restraint right now, sir. That's precisely the point I'm getting at. Please bear with me as I step through this process so I don't forget any of the details. Keep calm. And he doesn't have a clue of the edge I'm teetering on. Calm down. Got to get calmed down. How long does it take to get over the after mission jitters? Be quick about it, specialist replies Lieutenant impatiently.

Oh, yeah. At that.

Yes, sir. Alabama won the lottery are one one I point to and guelke ankle ankle key I put to Engelke.

Volunteered to lead us through a map study picking primary, secondary and alternate landing zones, landing and extraction zones. We studied every bit of intelligence we could lay our hands on about the weather patterns in the area of operation, the known enemy and how they maneuver. Sometimes you can pick up more information in the club than in the reports, not in this case. There are no surviving old hands to talk about the lottery. There was no intel in the target folder.

That's the point, sir. So they are going in blind. No turnover. And then he then fast forward a little bit, the the analyst says you were provided no target intelligence. We were told none was available. Armed with maps and a camera, bulldog scheduled a V.R. two days before mission launch offers one one bulldog, whose codename is that? It was the codename of Sergeant Stride, the Alabama team leader. Our one zero, as you know, he was greased, killed in action.

Like one one said, the same person sitting next to you, the same one one, are you referring to Specialist Angeliki? Yes, sir. Recon team Alabamas one one, the assistant team leader. Like he said, he was sick. So I ran the V.R. with Bulldog. We needed the intel to be as fresh as possible for the mission. It takes one day to develop, film and study the pictures. So it was never it was then or never.

If we were going to launch on October 5th, one one wasn't feeling well. That made me the photographer Bulldog and I squeezed side by side into the narrow rear seat of a Vietnamese Air Force. You seventeen. The weather was clear. We took off from flew by airfield, circling out over the China Sea. We came in high taking pictures of the entire area, yelling at each other over the engine noise in order to discuss what we could see and attempting to orient what we saw to the maps with those windows.

And this is a thought with those windows open and the maps were blowing all over the damn place until Bulldog got them under control. We flew under clouds and over rivers of mist filled ridges, plateaus and valleys, picking a primary and two alternate ELSS.

Bulldog ordered the pilot to make a photo pass over the primary, Elzy at one hundred feet. The pilot objected and told us he wanted to stay high and leave the area soon. Good thinking, replies the sergeant. Bulldog slapped the pilot on the back of his head.

So this is him. This is I'm not doing this very well. But this is this is Lynn Black kind of explaining. Hey, Bulldog ordered the pilots make another to to make another pass and the pilot said, no, I'm not going to do it. And then the sergeant says, good thinking. And he says, well, Bulldog slapped the part of the back of his helmet, barking the order again. When we drop down to teardrop to tree top level and I manage one picture before the nose of the ship rose and we began banking for another pass.

As we climbed, our plane was stitched with machine gun fire rounds ripped through the floor, exited the ceiling. The cabin was sprayed and flecked with blood as the co-pilot was struck under the chin. His helmet slammed against the ceiling, ricocheting into my lap, still containing part of his head. That picture will be imprinted in my mind forever. Forever. And he says he thinks it's a it's a pain, I guess I'm sad sadness that grips the soul of my very being.

I like that co-pilot. Before we took off from Foobar, he was trying to tell me a joke in really bad English. I didn't get it, but laughed anyways.

You're OK. Specialist Black. You are are you OK? Specialist Bosk Brak, as chief saw glancing at his medical team. Yes, sir. I was telling you about the incident. The image of the helmet and partial head popped into my mind. I never seen anything like that before.

I was fighting a thousand emotions all at once, all flooding through me, forcing my eyes to listen to those kind of images, have a way of staying with us for the remainder of our lives. Each of us has to find a way to deal with them in order to go on. Continue with your story, orders the chief patiently. Yes, sir.

I collect my thoughts. The pilot dropped the Cessna back down to treetop level. We got the hell out of Dodge in the Wild West.

Yeah. You know, you you mentioned ramps. You know, you said that this lieutenant allness is a renford for those people that don't know reemphasise stands for rear echelon motherfucker. And that's the person that's these are the people that are not on the front lines, not doing the fighting. It's actually the genesis of the name of my consulting company, Echelon Front, which is not rear echelon.

Hey, I'm in the rear with the gear, but hey, front line leadership and and this whole scene, you know, for whatever Hollywood director is listening to this right now or whatever producer who who makes movies that controls all all of those.

Well, whoever is going to make this into a movie, this is the iconic scene. Oh.

Of the rear echelon motherfuckers trying to debrief this guy. And we're going to get into the mission. And once you once you realize what he just went through, you can see why this is such an intense scene, because he's sitting there just having barely survived, lost guys and they're asking him these questions. And it's just your classic iconic scene of a disconnect between the people on the front lines and the rear echelon motherfuckers.

That's October 3rd, two days before the actual mission doing a VR. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, that's right. So, yes, this debrief is after the mission. But the part that he's talking about, they haven't even done the mission yet. Yeah, this is they're getting shot at as they're doing a visual reconnaissance. They lose a pilot while they're doing the visual reconnaissance. Can you imagine this is why this is still if you did this VR and you came back to me and said, hey, doc, we did the visual reconnaissance, by the way.

We had a pilot shot. The plane got shot up.

I got a used helmet. You want to use it? Yeah, I'd say, hey, guess what? We're not going into there. I'd say it's not happening. OK, let's not we're not. It's a no go.

Yeah. You guys had freaking balls. We didn't have you. OK, yeah. Crazy. The insertion Covey was Captain Greg Heartiness, covid to sixty five with his callsign, his rider was Sergeant First Class Patrick Watkins, code nine code named Mandoline.

The second covid pilot was Colonel Don Bourne Castle, and his rider was Staff Sergeant Bob Parks. His code name is Spider. Lieutenant George Miller, Scarface, 56, was the lead gunship pilot who has scored the king bees into the insertion. So now we're now we're actually getting into the operation. Yes, sir. And they do you know, I'm skipping forward, you know, and look, as I said before, to get the rest of the details just by the book and read it.

And it's it's it's an incredible the details that he captures are are awesome. So but I'm going to fast forward a little bit. So the he covers the insertions and then the lieutenant says. That the analyst lieutenant says, we expect you to take as long as you need on this portion of the debrief when you're finished, I'm sure your one one will fill in the missing details, gather your thoughts and begin when ready. One, one fill in the details, never mind that back across the fence were moving through dense foliage, a ridge rising to a right.

OK, here goes R.T.. Alabama was ambushed at approximately zero eight hundred hours on October 5th. Nineteen sixty eight at cornets Yankee Charlie five six one six, nine or two. Our point man Huwa was hit multiple times in his chest and lower body. In that same instant, three rounds penetrated our one zero team leaders. Head cowboy. The interpreter was behind stride and took an RPG round below his left shoulder. I was behind Cowboy when he went down.

The assistant team leader, the one one went down at the same time, I thought he was hit as well. Are you hit, I yell at the one one receiving no response. Damn, he's dead, too. Only six of us left standing. Bring out the bodies.

Engage the enemy, LaCour, the zero one Vietnamese team leader orders the recon team Alabama to to fire a full magazine just off the ground level to suppress enemy fire at our right on a slight rise, there's a line of NVE firing down into our position there above us. To the right over there, I yell over the din of the ambush, thumbing the selector of my car 15 to a single shot to begin picking them off one at a time, 20 rounds expended.

I push the magazine extraction button on the receiver, shredding vegetation royals' in the air, punctuated by green and HVA tracers, searching out their targets, fumbling for another magazine and a canteen pouch. On my web gear, I peer through the raging floor, a storm in the direction of the tracer sauce. And then I shot a moment ago is getting up and pointing in my direction. OK, second magazine snaps into place, slapping the left side of the receiver.

The car 15 bolt slams home as I raise the weapon. Firing twice stayed down. Dammit, we've got to break contact. I yell at the team continuing down the line, emptying magazine to the VA fall like targets in a shooting gallery. Another line moves in behind them, taking their place. We're in a low spot. We have to get out of this hole, I yell. Cowboy interprets to the team. Whose cowboy is he? An American interpreter, queries the puzzled LT analyst as he searches through his notes.

Huh. What did you ask, sir? Cowboy who's cowboy cowboys are Vietnamese interpreter Don Van Kande one one inserts quick, quickly continue. Order orders, Lieutenant. Crouching, I reload, surveying our situation, then grab the radio handset off my web, harness, covey blackjack, we have three killed and two wounded over who's down Covey. Patrick Watkins calmly demands Point Bulldog and one one over blackjack. You're not a doctor, nor for that fact, a medic.

You can't determine who's dead or alive. You must attempt to bring out all the bodies for verification of death. A fresh swarm of automatic weapon fire up another foliage hurricane drowning out covid communication. Finally, it settles down mandoline, blackjack. We're taking heavy automatic fire. We'll be lucky to get the living out. They have us surrounded on three sides and are firing down into our position on moving the team out of this hole.

Over to Hoy, translated means surrender, yells one of the VA in a short lull of the ambush. I don't think so, I yell back, firing in his general direction. Alabama's weapons on full auto drown out further to Hoy requests. One one is alive and praying.

In the middle of a fight, in the middle of a gunfight, this is no time to pray, get up off your sorry ass and return fire. I yell when one looks at me with Doe eyes shifting his body in an attempt to make him make his form smaller. I kneel down next to him and find he has a Catholic rosary pressed to his lips and is quietly chanting a prayer. I need you to take contact command while I do my job directing airstrikes and get us a ride home.

I don't know what to do, I, I can't think I can't. Engelke slips into himself while Whiskey Tango Foxtrot over leaves and twigs rained down on Alabama as the ground erupts around us from automatic weapons fire. So his one one is locked up mentally at this point. Gonne body there, but no mind, no courage.

And he actually thought he was dead when everyone got shot in that opening ambush. Lenn, which, by the way, his nickname, his codename is Blackjack.

So that's that's who it is. Blackjack thinks he's dead, but then he finally gets to him and looks at him and he's not even shot. But he's he's having he's having a meltdown.

He's on his rosaries. Back on the radio mandoline, so mandoline is the callsign of the Covey mandoline, blackjack. You're right, we don't have three dead. We only have two one one is alive. The envir now on all sides with snipers climbing into trees. I have to take action quickly or die blackjack. Put your one one on the horn over. So here's here's the Covey rider saying, hey, put your put the guy in charge on the radio.

I attempt to push the radio handset into one one's hands, but he wraps both hands around his rosary, chanting. He drops his head, drawing his forearm further inward. Cowboy, tell the team I'm the one zero and locks Lokes in charge of team as if I had to tell them. Lokes already doing the job mandoline blackjack. One one is unable to talk right at the moment I'm the one zero of Alabama. Standby. He's freaking taken over blackjacks.

Ready.

Oh yeah. No hesitation whatsoever. None.

Roger replies. Mandoline cowboy. I have to have two men strip the bodies, get all weapons, ammunitions, maths maps, anything the VA can use. Distribute their gear to the team quickly. Now Cowboy interprets as the to immediately go to work on the bodies while the rest of the rest continue returning fire. Cowboy, come with me. Tell Loki's in command until we get back.

I give Lokke a thumbs up as the two of us slowly crawl, advancing on hands and knees towards a cluster of bushes, flicking aside a large black beetle. It has to not crush it like that.

But we're able to move close enough to the end. That cowboy hears their commander yell at US troops, prepare to charge their position. At the periphery of my vision sits a small bird staring, sitting below the normal human level of observation. In an instant, in a flicker of wings, it vanishes into the undergrowth. I wish I could do that. Must have been after the beetle. Everybody seems to be after somebody. A kind hearted reverence for life pushes its way into my thoughts.

Get the claymore out of cowboys' rock blasting cap from the survival vest. That's it. Cowboy finishes out a hand grenade and wire spool. Hastily, we rig the claymore in the direction of those willing men from the north, the loving husband and the son in law who likes to grow his own vegetables. Fuck them all. A cloud of shredded foliage rains down on Cowboy and me as we work our way back towards Alabama, laying the detonation wires. Get out of the line of fire, my little friend, I whisper after the bird, the insistent husbands, brothers and son in law's stampede towards our indefensible position with weapons blazing, with their bulging veins frothing at the mouth, the whites of their eyes wide cowboy detonates the claymore.

The air is filled with animal like howls, gunfire, the smell of cordite, rotting vegetation and death.

We have blown a bloody path right down through the middle of them.

Claymore smokes, clearing a yellow Alabama up. Follow me.

The team moves through the path of carnage with our weapons on full auto as we assist the wounded online. This is what you get for screwing one of the with one of the black brothers. What's left of their ragged lines sporadically fires into our small band cowboy stumbles and falls. Having taken another round in his left side, he comes haltingly to his feet, gives the giving the OK signal once seemingly through the past and VA battle line one seemingly through and past the VA battle line.

LOC callup collapses are our online formation to inline and orders the team to go in on single shot. The left of cowboy shirt is soaked with blood blocked by impassable terrain on one side and end VA forces on the other. We work our way through the dense undergrowth, back toward our point of insertion to our rear and in parallel on both flanks we can hear the end VA regrouping, gathering their strength, random enemy shooting subsides as they begin firing signal shots to indicate the path of our travel.

Flanking teams of two trackers for each enemy squad intermittently push us along as they reveal themselves, we cut them down with single shots fired. Discipline is good. Got to find a place where we can stop to patch up our wounded. Don't fire, randomly kill the enemy LOKKE orders, we continue maneuvering on our way through the high, thick underbrush toward the primary, Elzy leaving behind the stripe the stripped bodies of our Point Man hô and our one zero Jim Stride.

Oh, I know. Can you imagine, I mean, just how any of them lived? Yeah. It's amazing to see to I mean, just the just to see someone step up both both blackjack and cowboy cowboys get shot, he's wounded and he's just leading and and Glenn's stepping up and leading when all this mayhem is taking.

And and you always say leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield. Right.

If these guys didn't step up and lead everyone's debt, 100 percent is a guarantee. These guys step up, they take action, they lead.

And at this point, they're going to looks like they're going to get some progress.

Yeah, his 01 was sharp and fearless because he he rallied them, took care of the other details. Well, then and cowboy going on and poor cowboy getting hit the second time like that. Oh my God.

He was a big Vietnamese. He was tall. Who. The zero one cowboy. Cowboy. He was the interpreter. The zero one. I forget his name. You mentioned it there. I think it is zero one. That's your Vietnamese counterpart to the American one. He's had the experience because Alabama four months earlier, the entire team was wiped out except for the one zero. And he escaped and did a personal any back to the actual values, you picked them up.

So 68 was a bad year for Alabama, but the zero one did not go on that fateful mission. So he had his experience right over to that between him and Cowboy or Yaloke.

Yeah, that's who we're talking about.

Loki's the zero zero one. And then the other guy, honoris dhoti Quong, who later became Eido.

I still am from Alabama a couple of years later.

He was great, but just a fearless, absolute warrior badasses. OIA true and true. Yeah.

I mean, what's crazy is, you know, that it was the the bombers and in Europe, the bombers in Europe, the American bombers that bombed Europe in World War Two, I think they had to do twenty five missions.

If they did 25 missions they were done and sometimes they'd push a little further. Yeah but yeah that was the rule in place was and the rule that they gave you guys was three.

I know those bombers, those guys were taking mass casualties, mass casualties, all absolutely profound casualties. And yet they said, hey, you guys are going to do 25 missions. And you guys, they're saying, hey, listen, can you can we get three out of you?

Yeah. See, now, we never I don't remember that part of the debrief if we ever had it. Silin remembers those details. That's why his stuff is just so great. Vivid.

Yeah. And don't forget, they taught the bombers the remember the Frenchman. His dad was right on us and on one squadron. Twenty three.

Only one comes back out of a thousand airplanes. So, yeah. Same catastrophic effects by the enemy. Continuing on October 5th, blackjack mandoline, we're returning with the king bees to food buy for fuel. No extraction is possible for at least two, maybe three hours over.

Another covid is Covey is on station, you'll be talking to Spider. As fast as possible mandoline, we're about to find out how much longer we can hold out. Don't panic. Blackjack, find the path. Don't let them pin you down. Spider, spider. Ballpark's X one zero of RTI, Idaho, just like mandoline. Spider blackjack over blackjack. Spider keeping your cool buddy.

Keeping your cool buddy. He's there. We're not alone, man. Having you guys with that direct relationship with your coveys.

And they sat in the briefs and they knew what you were going to do. That's a powerful thing. That was a key having that rider. And that's the epitome of that moment in time right there, because Linn's like a Watkins is gone to king, bees are gone with nobody's going to come back for two or three hours. You be cool.

This spider talking to him the night before he beat his ass and liar's dies at the club.

Hey, I don't know if you ever heard this story, but Dave Burk, good deal. Yeah, he was in Ramadi and he's Angelico support and he's supporting an Army unit. And it's the first real close air support that he's actually calling. And, you know, he's a former he's an F eighteen pilot. And it just so happens by coincidence and miracle and other coincidence that he keeps up the mike and says, this is Lightning six. And the guy that answers the guy that's in the air about to give ordnance for is like one of his buddies.

No.

And he says something like, hey, Chip, it's you know, hey, Chip, it's Maverick. I'm ready to rock and roll. He goes, oh, it's like this. So having that relationship that you guys had with these Covey's man, critical.

Absolutely critical.

So he says, keeping your cool buddy. Stand by, Spider. They're pushing us from all sides. We're moving back towards the perimeter and we'll be ready for extraction. Over grabbing a claymore from one of the rucksacks, I set up a ten second fuse pointing at it to our rear while Lo covers me. We can hear them screaming in agony as we move through the broad brush back towards our insertion. And you know what? Before we go on, I want I just want to go back to this because it's a it's a little bit of a point of contention in the book.

If you remember, I read this part where he says, We continue maneuvering our way through the high, thick underbrush toward the primary. Elzy leaving behind the stripped bodies of our Point Man hô and our one zero Jim Stride. So he had to make a decision, the hardest possible decision that a person could have to make, which is, hey, these guys are dead. We're going to strip their bodies and we're going to leave them. Because if we try and look anybody that has ever carried a freakin another human being through rough terrain, you have no idea.

You have no idea. Look, and you can say, oh, I'll pick up my boy, I'll pick up Echo right now and I'll run across the parking lot or whatever. Run one hundred yards. Yeah, it might not seem like that big of a deal if you make echo actual dead weight where he's not helping in any way, not adjusting his weight on you, not holding on to your neck or holding on to your shoulders. None of that if it's just true.

Dead weight. Two hundred and five pounds or two hundred and ten pounds or whatever.

Forty two to twenty two, twenty two hundred twenty pounds of dead weight.

You're one eighty five. It's not that big of a deal to do it.

It's not when you pick up a body and you carry him across the field, the football field or the parking lot is not that big of a deal when they're dead weight, it's totally different. When you're in terrain, it's even more different. And then when you're getting free shot at and assaulted by a massive number of VA, you got to make a decision. What are we going to do? Are we going to survive or are we going to perish to save our friend's body?

What would I want? What would what would if I was shot? If I was dead, what would I want you to do? I'll die to bring my body out. Hell, no. You get your ass out of there. And and so Lynn had to make this decision and he made it quick. And, you know, that's how you survive.

Oh, yeah. It wasn't easy, but it did the right thing. Yeah, that's that's what you got to do. And it's not like and by the way, when you when you leave that body, you're not saying now we're never going to do anything. No. You go do a bright light. You could do what you've got to do to once you get your forces assembled, that you can get more guys and you can get the right air cover and all that stuff.

You're not abandoning them. But at that moment in time, you got to make a decision to for the survivability of the team.

It just that's what you have to do.

Here's his thoughts. Wait a minute, we just marked our location. How stupid was that? This is after they blow, after they blow up a claymore. They're like, oh, that was a bad move. We just marked our location. Evade, stay out of contact as long as possible. Yeah, right. The NBA. No, we're heading toward the Elzy and they're trying to push us onto it to where we'll be easier targets.

They intend to use us as bait so they can shoot down more helicopters once we're dead and the helicopters are down the line. Wait for the bright light.

Rescue choppers screw that today.

It's not going to today. It's going to end with us dead or alive. These bastards aren't going to use me as bait. Bait. Maybe we can beat them out of the Elzy where our gunships can get at them, hunt the hunters.

So those are just these are Linn's thoughts, those Werlin faultlines, thoughts quickly working through Cowboy Loken, I decide to turn back against the VA.

We employ fire and maneuver 18 firing while B team is maneuvering, searching, destroying and clearing a path to cover move.

We turn. We turn moving back through the Claymore swath until we encounter a larger enemy force online. Searching us out, down. Wait. Ready, fire. Red and green, create red and green tracers. Fill the air moving like rush hour traffic lights.

We are able to grease a couple of platoon sized forces up on me, Alabama forms up as I point southwest towards the Elzie. A new and VA line is flooding in this behind searching us out, they are using grenades to clear the jungle as they move. Whistles are sounding on two sides, indicating we are moving into a possible ambush.

They're attempting to hurt us together on the edge of the Elzy, where there's a 20 foot sheer drop on the southern edge of Alabama online, yells Lokke, pointing to pointing our direction of travel boldly.

We charge pushing them back, mowing them down like weeds. Bold move. We close to the perimeter, to the perimeter. Don't let them force us out into the open. A fast moving object enters my peripheral vision. Whack my head is snapped back by a wooden handle the grenade. Instantly I'm looking into the jungle canopy, seeing a muddled green light stream through a haze of cordite. It's over. You saw it coming and couldn't get out of the way lower below me.

The concussion lifts me from the ground, pushing me through the air. My feet are over my head. Green tracers track crack around me like ladyfinger firecrackers. That tree is upside down and moving fast. This is all wrong. Focus or you'll miss the moment of your death. I hear myself say I can't breathe.

I feel like I'm drowning the team. They are frantically beating me back to consciousness, pouring water over my head. OK, ok, I'm back. I try to get up my legs don't work from the knees down. My fatigue pants are shredded and I'm bleeding. One of the men Kwang starts smearing. Gelatin ised, rice on my legs, arms, face and chest, web gear and what is left of my survival vest are lying on the ground in a bloody tatters along with the car 15.

It's bent where the barrel meets the receiver and the bolt can't be pulled back. LOC orders a scout to bury the car. Cowboy hands me strides weapon cowboy. What's wrong with your hand grenade? Shrapnel. He winces, handing me the weapon. You have now officially pissed me off, I scream at the NBA.

So at this point, they're they're doing fire maneuver there, get to the edge. The Elzy, he gets hit in the head with a freaking grenade and then it detonates, blows him up in the air, destroyed his car 50, destroyed his car 15.

Yeah. This is after they charge through the NBA rank. They go through them, like, even in my best day. Don't think I would have thought of that. Had to be somebody like Lin.

Just such a distinct. Yeah. Courageous move.

It is. And it's one of those things where that's the last thing that the enemy thinks you're going to do. And they probably just it was the last thing they would think. And then when it happens, they're not ready for it. And what's happening is a brilliant just a brilliant move.

So he says you have now officially pissed me off. I scream at the NBA, God damn, my head hurts when I do that. Scrabbling around my position, I finally find the radio handset spider blackjack. I'm declaring a prairie fire emergency. A prairie fire emergency should drop enough napalm on you suckers to ruin your day. Laughing, Jack says, laughing. The reply comes blackjack. No kidding, brother. Keep your cool above all else. Keep your cool.

So that's awesome, I mean, Spider had already said, hey, this, he's already moving assets into place, he can tell that this is a shit sandwich down here and then he gives us advice. You know, this is advice we could all use. Keep your cool above all else. Keep your cool. Yeah. And that means so much because it's coming from Spider, who's a who's a one zero himself. It's been on the ground that knows what's happening.

And he said, above all else, keep your cool.

And so then he says to himself, calm the hell down, blackjack, be cool, so that actually worked. He actually listened to spider blackjack. So what's our asset status over? All assets have been diverted to your location. Covey will coordinate them as they arrive and let you know what armament is available. You make the decision, what you want, when and where you want it. Any questions? Who's up first? I attempt to rise but fall flat on my face.

God damn it. Six gun ships will prep the Elzy with gun and rocket runs. Amongst them will one will attempt to land. If that's not possible, it will trail a ladder. Improvise, brother Roger Spider. I roll over hugging the radio receiver to my ear, trying to get to my feet. The gunships fire rockets and then make gun runs near our position. The rescue ship attempts to land twice, twice. We make our move too much lead in the air.

Ground fire is much too intense. They're hammering our pick up to pieces. Get it out of here, Spider. Do you copy? Over the rescue ship limps off while the Royal Marine Scarfe ships expand their audience. And covering fire blackjack. Spider Foobar is mounting a bright light rescue to assist you in the fight. That's kind of crazy because, I mean, bright light is as bad as it gets, right? That means we either had people overrun or had people captured and they're already launching.

We'll get ready. They talked about it. That's where we were scheduled for the next day. And we were too bright, like, oh, so you guys were the freaking bright light. Yeah. And your talent. So what does that like, what are you hearing? It's like this is this is not going to be a good day. And you just don't know, can you hear what the aircraft are, because I know you can't hear what the guys on the ground are saying because they're on the ground and it's not line of sight.

So you wouldn't be able could you guys hear what the aircraft are saying back to the guys on the ground when you guys work up some spider's transmission walk because you can hear some of it could depend on where they were, how low they were and up. So we picked up some we just knew it was a shit show because the whole camp, this society, everybody just came to a pause and started praying for them. And so what are you guys so so are you the are you the one zero?

No, Don. What was the one zero back then? I was the one one for Idaho and they talked about the bright light. Dawn had gone in for the brief and he said we might be the bright light. What's your what are you doing when you're when you might be the bright light you already have. All your bags are all loaded. You're all ready for the next day.

You just will you just take anything out then? It's just all bullets and grenades and extra bandages, maybe a couple of body bags. And then we never even got to the launch site.

They canceled because the that's between the enemy, the anti aircraft and and then the weather, because it started to cloud over and then all the gunsmoke, the cordite and then the clouds, they figured one more team went.

We've been more casualties. And the king be like like what Lynn just described the first attempt to get him out, just like get out of here. You if you want to live themselves.

Yeah. Which you think about the mindset of Lyn Black. Yeah. Your savior is coming down to rescue you and you say, no, get out of here. Yeah. What an honorable move beyond. Yeah. Yeah.

He says so, he says so, Spider says, hey, we're getting a bright light ready for you, and then blackjack, spider blackjack, how would they get in here? We don't need more people on the ground or helicopter shot down. Don't let the VA use us as bait. We need to get off the ground and out of the line of fire. In the meantime, what I really need is a resupply of ammo over. Blackjack, you OK?

I got nailed with a grenade, nothing serious over, just can't walk ammos on the way. And I agree with your assessment of the bright light over Spider. Tell Fux by Alabamas. Not a sacrificial lamb, no bright light over. So not only to call off is the helicopters from coming in. He's calling off the rescue mission himself. He's saying, hey, don't send a bright light. I'm glad he said that, he says, Roger, blackjack, by the way, the assets are beginning to have difficulty with the weather and smoke hanging over the Elzy, you're difficult to spot, which makes accurate air strikes increasingly difficult over Cowboys' working on my legs while he's telling me Boku and Vuh on Elzy.

We can hear gunships overhead and witness and HVA tracers riddling the lead ship, the move across the grassy plain of the Elzy like a work party of ants, ants trampling down the two foot rasor grass, which is the only concealment we have. Sunny one one panics, shouting skyward, God save us.

The NBA swarm migrates in our direction, so the one one who's been freaked out this whole time and hasn't done his job now yells out, God save us and the NBA here it.

Vietnamese team members speaking through cowboy say we're going to kill one one if he doesn't shut up, I'll pull the trigger on him myself. I agree. Tearfully One one. Whispers, whimpers God forgive you. Sounds of an approaching can be King B and our diversion has the carrots of survival are dangled in front of us again, each king the king bee can hold for. So we got to get everyone out on to. Sure hope they brought a dozen to this party.

We've meant we've got to get to the center of the Elvie help the wounded move. I scream in one woman's face, fearfully confused one one takes hold of Lokke who is in the who brushes him off with disdain.

Blackjack Spider first can be inbound. Gunships begin prepping the Elzy with rack rockets. Forty Mike, Mike and Sixties Blackjack Spider. I've got a fast mover on track. Key your handset so he can get a lock. Put your heads in the dirt over Roger Roger Spider handset Kaede heads down. We look into the Hayes Street son as a full flapped fantham. His glide path ratio critical ignites the tree line across the Elzy in the sheets of white, yellow and orange flames.

The ship banked sharply after burners crank on and he powers into the valley below and vuh small arms open up on three sides. Lazy, wagging tongue tongues of green tracer fire sweep the sky for miles, heavy triple a fire chase the end the F for Jesus. Some of those guns aren't far from our location. How many of these bastards are there? What the hell are we in the middle of keying my handset? Spider Blackjack. Did you see that antiaircraft fire on the fast mover over Roger Blackjack marking map coordinates.

Now this is mandoline back on station over. So they've gone from Spider as the covey well from from mandoline to spider. And now we're back to mandoline. And by the way, props to that, the F4 Phantom. You know, we had it we've we've had a couple F4 Phantom Vietnam pilots on here. And these guys were those guys we're doing a freakin doing God's work up there, especially in a case like this, dropping napalm to save these guys.

Among those shooting our several in about twenty feet from our perimeter napalm torches, the jungle forcing dozens of the enemy to scurry onto the Elzy, escaping the inferno engulfing their comrades just as another EF four rolls in for a gun, run the VA, move it, move in close to us, making every possible attempt to avoid the firestorm firing on single shot. We begin to pick them off as they stream out of the fire drenched jungle. Those close to us endeavor to suppress our fire, attempting to protect their comrades, their friends, fathers, brothers, uncles, that oniony son in law, as they pop up, we put them down.

Phantoms return with two cannon and gun runs along our border. And I haven't really gone into this. But you can hear a couple of times that Lynne has referred to the enemy as fathers and sons and and brothers and uncles. And so he just does that to kind of let you know what he's thinking about. And he's thinking like, yeah, these are these are other men and we're about to kill them. That's the way it goes.

Oh, yeah. He yells out ammo check. And then to nine cylinder radial engine king bees come chugging up the valley toward us, we ignite green smoke marking our position. The Nova ignite identical smoke markers at several locations, confusing the pilot's got.

Oh, yeah, bastards. It gets worse. We rise moving toward the approaching ships, killing everyone in our path was getting critical. Each of the team has less than a full magazine and those are 20 round mags.

But whoever invented the 20 round mag instead of a 30 round mag, the M seventy nine men are down to their last bandoliers. I'm stumbling along, working with my Browning.

It's called peeling the skin off the back of my burned neck. We watched in disbelief as this first king bee touches down right over and via smoke marker, taking multiple RPG rocket round hits on the flight deck. So just to clarify that so everyone can understand when you're marking for location to get first of all, you've got to understand that when you're when you're in the sky, when you're in a helicopter and you're looking down at the ground, it's freaking huge.

It's massive. And and I've I had a time where I was in it in a training operation and there was a helicopter coming to pick us up. And I was standing there and this was in the desert with your panel.

And I was standing there with my panel and I'm waving and I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm right here. And he goes, Where are you? And I said, I'm right here. This is where are you? And I said, I'm right freakin here and I'm on the hilltop or whatever. Stupid thing I said because I was a younger guy.

Yeah, I'm on the hilltop. Well, the I, I learned a lesson. You know, how many hilltops you can see from his helicopter?

You can see five hundred of them. So I don't narrow it down at all. So what we do is we mark our position with something that's very obvious, like green smoke. So in this situation, blackjack gets the green smoke out. Hey, come land on this green smoke. The the the Vasey that and they go, oh, yep, we know what that is. Their mark with green smoke, pull out the green smoke boom. So they start throwing green smoke.

So now what does it look like? There's green smoke everywhere. Additionally, they were monitoring the radio. Oh yeah.

So they had AALDEF as well as the monitoring capabilities. And so when they heard I don't think Lynn would have said green, he we're going to pop a smoke then the other guest was a good guess and you got the results come.

So here we go, we watched in disbelief as the first king bee touches down right over and HVA smoke marker, taking multiple RPG rocket rounds, round hits on its flight deck. The force of the blast is so great, the ship teeters and finally topples to its side, each subsequent rotor blades smashing into the ground, woop, woop, woop in our direction, narrowly missing Alabama. As we approach, we grab up and vuh weapons, turning them on the enemy.

They're everywhere. Why didn't we see them until now? Without hesitation, we charge the rocket position, killing several and HVA before a hail of fire drives us back to our starting point these days have a slower rate of cyclic fire, cyclic fire. The ammunition will last longer. We don't need a resupply. We can keep doing this till hell freezes over. The second so there they ran out of ammo, basically now they're picking up the enemy AK 47 and they're shooting an AK is definitely slower shooting than than a car 15.

The second shift hits an outcropping of rock on the western side of the Noal after taking heavy gunfire and falls onto the valley floor below blackjack mandoline. Nice try over. Screw you mandoline. I no longer want to be extracted.

I'm going to kill every one of these sons of mothers before this day ends.

So there you go. I'm going to read that again, I no longer want to be extracted, I'm going to kill every one of these sons of mothers before this day ends. Oh, yeah, Lampblack Black. You don't want to piss off Lynn Black, no, no, no, no, even on a good day.

And then Cowboy says to the in response to that cowboy who's again, this is the interpreter, right? He's the interpreter. Yes. He says one one. This is one. One of the guys has been praying the whole time. He says one one, please pray for the team except blackjack. He's on the devil's side now.

Blackjack, mandolin, fast movers have expended their ordinance and are returning for resupply. Your ammo was on that second King assets in twenty minutes. Good luck, brother. Mandoline, blackjack.

We don't need forget it over blackjack, mandoline, blackjack, mandoline. What's your status? Over dammit. Blackjack bugles are sounding wave upon wave of inva troops carrying rifles with fixed bayonets is advancing online when they are feet away. We opened fire using weapons we have taken from their dead. After the first burst of full automatic, the team fumbles with AK forty seven selector switches to single shot, pushing them back. We move from body to body, using their weapons and their cadavers as shields, crawling, kneeling, knee walking, standing, scrambling on line in line.

We defend each other and ourselves without a word, a look, a plan, acting on training, pure survival instinct. All of us except one one are scampering around, dragging, lugging bodies, placing them in a circle around Alabama, stacking them high. We construct a cadaver garrison cowboy is bleeding from a grazing wound to the back of his neck. Tiny army, green leech's in inch out of the trampled razor grass following the blood trails we've created, dragging the dead, focusing on details directly in front of me, I notice the vampire mosquitoes and ravenous cannibalistic horseflies competing with the leeches to feed on the dead and the wounded and the on the living.

One of the Vietnamese flips me a plastic mosquito repellent bottle.

Hey, that's stings, what the hell are we doing worrying about mosquitoes when people are trying to kill us, snag us as much animal ammo as possible? I order back and forth. And again, it's important to remember that this is this is Lynn telling the story. He's debriefing in the way it's laid out. You can tell that he's debriefing the book. I'm probably not doing a great job, but this is during the debrief. And what's interesting, all these things that he's saying about the one one the one one is in the debrief with him, he's saying like, oh, he's not doing anything.

And and one one's in there and he just kind of is and he goes into it a little bit, but he's kind of averting his eyes, keeping his head down like, you know, he he knows he didn't do a good job.

Back and forth between the VA and recon team, Alabama continues the back and forth between the VA and the recon team. Alabama continues on and on and on. They just keep coming. I don't know how much longer we can keep them up, keep this up, keep them off us. The matted grass is saturated with slimy, slippery blood and human innards. Smoke, cordite and the stench of death choke us as foul weather closes in. Mosquitoes, horseflies and the enemy are all conspiring to nibble us to death, to swallow us whole soon, air support will be possible.

Slowly, I come to the realization that I have no physical strength left and I can barely move. I can't let my team down. One of the team slips and slides on his stomachs over the cadaver garrison to retrieve ammo while other members of the team provide covering fire.

So these guys are in a freaking small little fort that they've conducted, that they've constructed with enemy bodies.

And when someone goes outside of that perimeter, they've constructed a little perimeter. When someone goes outside that perimeter from the team to go gather ammo, the other guys are laying down fire to protect that guy.

Yeah, you know, here's another thing, too, with that team, they won zero. They had another one zero on the team prior to stride being assigned to him, and they worked really hard on her team. Bird's the action reaction drills and what they're doing there. I think some of that goes back to training that one zero Tim himself, he really worked a team hard as good, one zero, but struggled for reasons known only to the command.

They pulled him off and pushed right into it because he had more rank.

But that team right there, that moment in time when it team's doing all it together, that's all that training that they had prior and experience cowboy with his year.

Yeah. And of course, Lynn from The Hurt.

Blackjack mandoline, jolly greens, 10 minutes out, get ready to go home over that announcement, lifts a thousand pound sandbag off my shoulders. We're going home. Mandoline, blackjack. Do you have any idea what size of the force is over? Blackjack, mandoline. What you're up against is the regiment you were sent to track over. Is that all? Only three thousand of the bastards. Well, I think we made a dent. I think we made a dent in them.

Don't you just barely. Brother Bugles sound.

The sky is filled with grenades. We're hugging the ground as if as they explode around us and it's till. Tell us a little bit about the fact that the enemy, they don't have radios. So what they use is whistles and bugles to coordinate their attacks.

Yeah, they command levels, have some radios and the command consider to their command, like if you break it down for a platoon to squad leaders and then with the bugles and the commands, that's they they're trained how they are on attack with withdrawal.

And that's what Lynn came up against over and over again.

Yeah. They in the Korean War, all those all those times when that that's like the most horrifying thing is all those times when they were to get these human assault, human wave assaults towards their positions, it was all whistles. They'd hear the whistles and they'd hear the bugles and they would know what was about to happen. Sometimes it's faceoffs just to make the noise.

Every time you heard, you know, they're coming.

Bugle sound The sky is filled with grenades. We're hugging the ground as they explode around us. Hey, these aren't fragmentation. They're concussion. Just a bunch of noise, not sending out much shrapnel, concussion stuff, stuff like the ones they used on me earlier. You're mine now, you bastards.

You stand back up. Catching some and begin throwing them immediately back, you should have seen the look on their faces. Oh, crap, here they come. Wooden grenade, shrapnel severs the prick. Twenty five radio antenna. I begin to rig an impromptu long wire aerial with the intention of laying it over the cliff behind us out of harm's way. Relentless, the VA continue their advance alongside the leeches, mosquitoes and horseflies, inch by bloody inch to hoi surrender.

I yell at no one in particular mandoline. Blackjack. A large force is now yards away from our perimeter.

We need help to huie hogge attack helicopters rotor chop their way into the Elzy first with the 60 chatter followed up by the wash of rockets placed into the envir ranks. Blackjack judge over go judge. And the judge is one of the callsigns four for the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps. This is the the Muscat's. Oh, OK. Judge and the executioner. OK, yeah. So these are army units that came out of Americal and. Oh yeah, Scarface.

Is that Scarface. Marine Corps. Yes. So what kind of aircraft is judge and executioner. Same thing the. Oh so they're, they're also cobras.

No not the no cobras at this time. All the gunships were old you is they could barely get off the ground.

God in fact they're so weighted down with Al and didn't have the power that the later models had a lot of time and they took off the door guards.

We get out to try to lift the helicopter, get it moving, and once it got a little forward momentum, they jumped back in the helicopter and the muskets even put little wheels in the front of the skids so that when they're on asphalt, they would be able to move better without having a skid behind if they figured the wheel would roll better. And the gun, it got them pushing these things.

That's like Fred Flintstone situation, trying to get that right.

So here's a sidebar on one of these on a muskets. There was a guy, his name was Berg and was his very first mission with with the muskets on Prairie Fire for Assad mission. Welcome to song.

Welcome the song First Mission as a door gunner. Yeah, these are two these are some epic callsigns, though, judge and executioner. Oh yeah.

So so judge checks in on the radio. And this is just such a you know, I was a calm guy. So when you get that aircraft checking it, it's like the best feeling in the world. And he comes up blackjack judge over and the pilots are always a little bit more, you know, just sort of really smooth on the radio. And so he's coming in this totally hot situation. Blackjack judge over and he says, go judge anyone in particular act or just kill them all.

He's laughing. Yeah, grease them all. I say with malevolent bloody grimace. You're just in time for the party judges. Door gunners are working their 60s in long burst. My guns are gone. Meltdown executioners right behind me.

The VA back off a few moments, briefly licking their wounds far from discourage new assault lines form before they can open fire on us. Executioner confronts them head on. Both draw guns blazing away. He is hovering inches off the Elzy, skipping rockets off the ground into their ranks. Executioner lifts up his rotors, chopping loudly at the mist filled air. They make it over the tree line, ducking down to the basement below, remaining below anti-aircraft capability, regaining air speed.

As they come up, the executioner and his crew returning for another pass to protect our perimeter, the VA charge before we can celebrate. Fire, fire. We add more. We add more of them to the cadaver garrison along with the weapons and much needed ammo. Silence, no birds chirping, no voices, mosquitoes, flies, no sounds, none. Even the aircraft have flown far enough away that their absence amplifies the quiet after an almost continuous melee of gunfire, grenades and Claymore explosions, air ordinance expenditures, including cluster bomb units, napalm and gun runs and twenty millimeter cannons.

Silence. Have I gone deaf? Complete silence.

You've been there. Yeah, that's freaking crazy. Yeah, in bed rest, each of us lays motionless.

And by the way, when you say I've been there, no, I have not been in a freaking changing magazine. Yeah, there's a whole mag change going on. Each of us rests, each in dead rest. Each of us lays motionless, barely breathing. My mind is focused inward, unaware of its physical surrounding mind and body are not one one one continues to quietly chant his prayer. Cowboy has taken another hit during the last skirmish along with two of the others.

Come back, think move. Summoning energy from where? I don't know. I fumble around in my medical gear, I'm giving you morphine and will apply a compress to that wound. We're going to run out of bandages. If you keep getting shot, knock it off. OK, so has been hit a couple of times, more like four or five.

I lost count.

And so Flynn tells me you're going to run out of benefits quick getting shot. And then Cowboy says, Where's John Wayne when you need him? Alabama laughs as and VA boisterously yells Too high. Dumar Another NBA orders us to chew Hoying English I flipping the bird as a sniper shoots Quong ah tailgunner in the crotch. I flip my borrowed AK on full auto and unloaded into a tree about one hundred yards away, resulting in the sniper falling through his limbs, through its limbs and brush below to the ground with a thud.

If I could rip your heart out needed, I would call Cuong.

What have we done? Last week you got arrested by national police in a way, in a way whorehouse for carrying a pistol. The entire Alabama team put on their gear and went down and broke you out of jail so you could go on this mission. God damn it, I wish we'd left you in that place where you'd be safe right now.

Look, I was calling them look, sorry, lock lock is applying direct pressure to call to Quong the tail wound. Seconds later, an 81 Ahwahnee skywriter lumbers into the AoE flown by a pilot codenamed Snoopy. It roars in from the west, brushing treetops, full flaps, working the throttle. The aircraft is so close to the team, we can hear the distinctive metallic click click of the napalm canister being released from the Second World War aeroplane. The skywriter appears to be falling, but actually it slips down into the valley to escape gunfire as helicopters and fast movers have maneuvered earlier, his wingman roils through the clouds and cordite.

We can hear nuts, bolts and God knows what. Creaking, groaning as he saw the Salvo's, his ship's rockets, three and HVA mortars opened fire. Doop, doop, boom, boom, boom, boom. There along the round fall into the valley at our rear. There's no way in hell any of us can catch mortars and throw them back. Time to go back to work. I order lock and I slide over the cadaver wall, crouching, crawling, knee walking.

We move towards the mortars cautiously picking our way through the charred bodies from previous airborne assaults. Quietly Yeah, right. We travel into the jungle within a few yards of the first mortar tube. Locke stops me to draw a plan in the dirt. He will hit one two tube. I will take two, three, and we will combine on tube to damn suicide mission. I say under my breath. Locke nods at me. Keat Roy, he replies, We die after the mortar.

After the mortar men launch the next set of three salvoes, Locke opens fire on his target. Why attack tube three discovering several nearby infantry gods. He's in the middle of all this freaking crap and then they're going out and assaulting these three mortar positions. Yeah, which God knows. I mean, how far they had to be at least, what, one hundred yards away, at least on a football field.

And there is some spare infantry trying to kill him in between. And those are some motivational words, we die, and that's sort of like, fuck it, let's go. Yeah, let's do this. He was a tiger.

Oh, crap. There are more of these bastards than I thought. I'd begin moving low and fast as the survivors chase me, heading toward Tube one where Locke is pinned down, yelling as loud as possible, drawing their attention, allowing Locke to move out of the kill zone. I roll our last fragmentation grenade into their midst, killing several, wounding the rest. Locke and I attack the second two before returning to the team, picking ammo from the dead.

Snipers dogs us all the way back to our cadaver garrison. The two of us press our bloody bodies against the jungle floor as green tracers search the air around us. One one. Take a look at this. I say while rolling over the blood and dirt on me are forming a second skin. Leaves and grass is a begin to stick to my bare skin. Ants and beetles seem to be making a home on my new crust. I'm building my own camouflage.

It looks like I'm becoming part of this place. If I lay down, I bet they won't tell me from the dead. Oh God, please don't go crazy.

You got to get us out of here. I want to go home, he pleads. We'll all be dead long before I go crazy. Through the clouds and haze of battle, we glimpse a jolly green Jayjay twenty eight, starting its descent into the Elzy. As it approaches, the radio crackles Black Jack. This is twenty eight on short final looking for an orange panel on the south side of the Elzy over. Twenty eight blackjack panel is on the ground will attempt to suppress enemy fire for your landing.

Orange panel in sight, adjusting approach, preparing for touchdown blackjack. Get your people on board over negative. Negative, not southeast. Where Southwest. You're in the wrong place. Get out of there.

The NBA rays raise up all around Jayjay. Twenty eight firing everything. They have the pilot Keyes's radio to answer back. I hear a crew member in the back ground calm yelling We have fuel leak. It's everywhere. Get us out of here. We watch as the glass in the cockpit on the co-pilot side disappears with successive rocket explosions. The pilot struggles to lift while lift off while maintaining control of his ship. Twenty eight is up. Twenty eight is up.

Our ride home is slipping sideways across the Elzy, passing within touching distance above us, over the lip of the plateau down into the valley to escape the relentless enemy barrage. Alabama goes insane on Falardeau, burning up the majority of our ammo on anything that moves one. One prays snooping is winchman move in to the next move in next to the crippled Jayjay twenty eight.

Through the haze and darkening storm clouds, covid is attempting to direct gun ships across the Elzy to pick off targets of opportunity. Their rotors are moving smoke and clouds down across our cadaver strewn landscape, obscuring everyone's view. Twenty eight blackjack. Twenty eight blackjack. Are you guys OK? Over blackjack? We have a severed fuel line. The stuff sloshing all over the deck. Fuel fumes are blinding my crew. We can't fire our guns without going up in flames.

Snoopy will escort us out of here. Good luck. Blackjack out. Oh, yeah, green tracers shift from horizontal grazing fire across the Elzy to vertical as jolly green giant tent approaches the green furies, playing a deafening tune through its skin. G 10 Blackjack. The enemy is under you right now. Over from our position, we can see an end HVA rocket crew rise up in the grass, take aim and fire directly into the underbelly of G ten.

We're hit. We have a six inch hole through the floor. Both engine warning lights just came on. We can't make the pickup. Oh my God, look at that. Both engines are on fire. The pilot performs a 180 degree turn, moving the damaged aircraft away from the enemy fire away from Alabama. We can see him struggling to keep his bowerbird airborne as his crew continues firing. Time is run out. Traveling several hundred yards, the pilot comes up on his survival frequency brace for crash landing.

They continue firing while the burning ship settles into the jungle. Blackjack mandoline over go mandoline. First you won the lottery, then you maneuver your way into a prairie fire. And now for the bonus round. Saigon has ordered an arc light over. Bonus round, what do they think this is the price is right, there's no way we can survive in Arclight, tell it to the NBA. Maybe they'll run like hell and leave us be. What altitude will they be bombing from?

They'll be cruising at twenty five thousand feet for a standard carpet bombing mission. Not exactly accurate from that altitude. Saigon is assuming you won't be there or be alive by the time to be 50 to get here over. Damn straight. I have to get back to camp for recon company football game this evening. How long do we have over? One of the images outside the garrison, stealing, stealing AK 47 magazines from the dead is tossing them into our garrison as the rest of us returned fire blackjack mandoline.

The Arclight is off the runway and heading your way over. So we'll tell us about.

Tell us about an Arclight B 52 and what their load is like.

Over 20000 pounds of bombs and they usually come more than one. And you don't hear them. As you know, you don't hear anything until the first round impacts. And that was the code for dark light and the amazing firepower.

And they're going to basically carpet bomb this area, right? That's the plan. What is carpet bomb bombs everywhere like? Yeah, just lay down. I mean, I don't know how many aircraft there are in this particular mission, but it's a probably multiple aircraft with all those bombs. And they get over the location and they just open their bombardier doors now come to their bay doors.

And how come the bombs, you know, when you see pictures or videos where there's just all these airplanes flying, there's this bombs leaking out, just leaking out, that's supposed to direct support will come in one or two bombs around. This is like like jako saying you may have four or five planes and they fly over and everything's all bombs were dropped.

Karpe over 100 at least.

Yeah, they've been worth it to fifty five hundred thousand pounds.

Blackjack, mandolin, I don't think I want to be here ah, sorry, mandolin, blackjack, I don't think I want to be here when they arrive over blackjack, mandolin. Well, you have one last option over what is it over unexpectedly, our radiofrequency is flooded with fast talking Vietnamese cat. You can't get a break. So the Vietnamese figure out what radio frequency they're on. They start using that unexpectedly. Our radio frequencies flooded with fast talking Vietnamese cowboy listens for a few seconds and says, NVE find our frequency.

I switch to an alternate frequency as it is jammed and it is jammed as well. I throw the PRC radio over the cliff and switch to the U.S. Ten Survival Radio. Mandolin, blackjack over mandolin, blackjack over blackjack, jayjay 30 to over go Jayjay 30 to you're on an Air Force survival guard frequency to forty three covid to sixty five is busy on other channels will get his attention for you. Hovering in a draw to your west. We have 20 minutes of fuel left before I leave.

The first person we see better be in American hurry. We're taking heavy ground fire.

Our armor is not holding up this close to the source. Jayjay thirty two. Can you hook me up with Covey Blackjack mandoline over mandoline. Can you lay down covering fire between us and Jayjay thirty to give me two minutes to line up assets then move out. We're getting empty. The next voice you hear will be spiders over. Roger Spider, blackjack over, I turn yellow, the team, Alabama, discard everything we don't need over the side. Get ready to move out cowboy and I move to the edge of the cliff while locked demands commands the garrison.

The two of us cautiously peep over the edge. Fifteen feet below us is a ledge that moves in the direction we want to travel. Move the team to this location. I order cowboy crawls back to the Conover Garrison while I make another attempt at contacting Spider one at a time. Alabama comes crawling over to me. I begin lowering each of them to the ledge below one. One scale's the rock face, making his own way out, making his own way, immediately beginning to move along the ledge in the direction of the of DJ Thirty to cowboy stop him from the ledge.

We look up the face of the cliff. We can see tracers dancing across the lip of the rim, covid directing daisy chain air strikes between Alabama and DJ. Thirty two blackjack spider. We're dropping cluster bomb unit KBOO on the path between you and Jayjay thirty two. It will kill some and should temporarily drive the rest out of the zone. Matt. So they want to get to where this helicopter is located, flying in this little drawer, and in order to get there, they drop cluster bombs on their path.

Yeah, for good luck.

And then that that jolly green settled into the jungle, chopping down smaller trees to settle. So that way it's brilliant move. Somewhat protected. Yes. So that way to not visible, not completely exposed. They're going to shoot and they go to shoot to the jungle to get to him. Yeah.

It's counterintuitive when you're in the air. In a helicopter. Yeah. In a helicopter. But I guess on on fast movers or aircraft as well, you'd think the closer you get to the ground, the more danger you're in. But the opposite is actually true because when you get down low enough, people can't shoot at you because they don't have an angle to shoot at you, whether it's in the city or whether it's in a jungle like this. People just they can't see you anymore because you're low.

So here the helicopters in the jungle and then like you said with the A-1 skywriters is the key to their success was how low they made their gun runs. They were just screaming across the path, dropped the orders and be on the way.

Yeah. So any bias in the jungle, you can hear him coming.

We can't see him until it's too late, you know, for a slow move like that. But all we love them.

Continuing on thick choking smoke moves across the roiling over the ledge above obscuring our escape from the plane, from the plane of death.

We inch our way toward the last chance arc lights coming blackjack. The KBOO strike has created negative visibility. We're unable to provide support until we get a window over. You're looking for a window and I'm looking for a door. Spider blackjack. The good news is it is also decreased visibility for the EVA gunfire's noticeably subside to keep up the smoke.

And we'll move by ear hugging the face of the cliff, making our way across the rubble of the ledge. We come to a dead end crap. We're going to have to climb back up to the plateau. Wait here while I take a look. If it's OK, I'll signal easily climbing with the aid of vines trailing over the ledge, I crawl over one side and slide under the low vegetation. Seconds later, one one's head appears spotting me. He crawls to my location up under a large broad leaf plant.

Where's your weapon? I ask. I don't know, he sheepishly replies. Take this AK and cover us while I get the rest of the team up here over. Can you do that? I'll lock the zero. One is the last person to go over the rim joining the remainder of the team in the undergrowth, giving me two thumbs up. As quickly as the underbrush will allow, we move up a small incline under the protection of enormous broad leaf undergrowth.

Shortly we come to the periphery of a short ledge. Where we stop before us is a carnivorous, half lit clearing under jungle canopy. Look at this. Hundreds of large huts built up on stilts stretch back into the low light. Everywhere there are trails, campfires and cooking area cooking areas. To our left is a latrine and a shower facility. Smoke from cooking fires spiral upward, gently mingling with the battle haze sealing, drifting just below the canopy.

Clothes are hung over low plants and ropes strung between towering hardwood trees. This must be the main camp.

This is amazing. It's an entire town under the trees. No one seems to be home. From the sounds of it. They must all be over there, I say, pointing at the direction of Jayjay thirty to look over there. Who's that? Who's that? Looks like an American.

Hey, you, he turns pointing a forty five caliber pistol in our direction. I stand up motioning him to us. He raises a forty five pistol to his lips, signaling us to be quiet. We cautiously move to his location.

Who were you on the ten PJI? Dan Kazmir rotor head is over there under that hut, talking to the thirty, talking with thirty two whose rotor head? I ask our pilot, Colonel Sam Grainier. I think he has a broken back but he can still walk. The other members of your crew. Did they make it. Ten was burning. There was only time to get out grainier before it exploded. Our flight engineer Greg Lawrence and co-pilot Dwayne Westar were trapped inside.

I didn't have time. The PJ pauses. Jayjay ten exploded before I could get back to them. We've been waiting for you guys here, hoping we would you would make it before we had to grab rotor head and fall in with the seven of us now.

So so these guys have now just miraculously ran into the pilot and the pair rescue guy that had that was inside that helicopter that got shot down and then exploded. Yeah.

And the pilots got a broken back is still mobile. Yes, sir, the envir focused on June 30 to easing pressure on us. We need to move there as quickly as possible. Thirty two doesn't have much time left on station. We have to go now. Order, Sam. Grainier, none of us have much time left form up. We're going home. I demand Kazmir help your colonel. We can hear them moving through the jungle all around us.

They seem to be traveling to the ship paralleling us. Blackjack Spider. Time's against you, buddy. Thirty two can't wait much longer and the arc light is closing fast. The be fifty twos have begun their countdown. They're on long final.

Yeah. You can't make this up.

No the arc lights coming in to drop bombs all over everything in the area. The aircraft that they're trying to get to that could possibly get them home that's hidden in the jungle is almost out of fuel. And they can hear as they're moving towards the helicopter, they can hear they're being paralleled by the VA. On the move, spider arc lights on the way we intersect a trail running down the middle of the ravine, I stop the team. Helicopter gunships and sky raiders are making blind gun runs up and down the narrow ravine and around 30 to smoke from air strikes hangs over the plateau, threading its way down the ravines into the depths of the murky chiasm.

Blackjack spider airstrikes to clear the way is impossible. We can no longer see the jungle, let alone your ride home. Get a move on over. I feel as though we are moving past mad dogs guarding the gates of hell itself and we are pouring small arms fire and rocket propelled grenades into the hovering chopper while door gunners and pilots intermittently fire the Gatling gun. In my sixties, desperate, I move the team onto the trail toward the hovering ship.

Don't move on a trail, you dumb ass. Well, this is one of those times when jungle rules don't apply.

Amen, so they can see the helicopter, they can see that it's taken fire, there's a trail, and you guys and anyone in Vietnam is constantly avoiding the trails because that's where ambushes and booby traps get set. But in this situation, there's no choice, no choice.

We progress hastily. Tailgunner begins violently shaking and has turned a pasty white to the Vietnamese assist in hiding him in thick bushes.

So Tailgunner is your rear security guy, and he's he's the one who shot in the groin. He's losing blood. He's pale white to the Vietnamese, is just hiding him in the thick bushes. Then they flee to the chopper. I stop them taking lead at the at the crest, we see thirty two taking hits and dealing out death. It's 60 is red hot. Someone is firing an M 16 out a report as we move to 30 to the intensity of gunfire seems to multiply a hundred fold.

Jesus the air is so full of lead I can see it. I report to myself loudly. Fuel and bits of metal skin are falling from the aircraft as we approach on one side of the turbine, cowling is lying on the jungle floor.

Blackjack, spider. Who are you talking to over God, Buddha, anyone that will listen? Spider Blackjack. Sorry, I didn't realize I had the the radio keyed over the Jungle Penetrator from winch smashes into the ground and raises a couple feet. P.J. Dan Casper scrambles to put three team members on the first load. When you get in the chopper, man a gun and return fire, protect us. I yell after them rotor head and and the PJ along with queing, a wounded Alabama Vietnamese are on the second lift.

Kwang becomes entangled in jungle vines while being hoisted. The operator has to stop the hoist, lower it to give him time to untangle himself. When the hoist moves up toward the aircraft. Kwang is not sitting in the seat, but hanging on with assistance from Kazmir Quang. I return tracing. I return, I turn retracing our path back down the trail to the thicket where we had left our tailgunner halfway back. I realize I'm alone with no weapon for the first time, paralyzing fear sweeps through me.

I stop. What am I doing? You couldn't help Hugh when he was it. But you can Quong face the boogeyman. Do your job, asshole. Move. Quong is covered with bloated black leeches, mosquitoes and giant flies feeding off the last of his ebbing life. Mumbling He wobbles his colt forty five at advancing and va troicki I die.

The tailgunner motions to me to return to the jolly green I turn and Quong shoots himself, you sons of bitches, my cry is lost in the sounds of battle. Tears obscure my vision as I scramble like a raving lunatic back in the direction of the waiting ship smashed rushing smack into two screaming and vuh. Their acase pointed at me to Hoy.

I surrender, surrendering, stretching out my arms, continuing to move quickly in their direction, within arm's reach, I yell in their faces to hold yourself, motherfucker. The young soldiers are taken by surprise before they can respond. I grab a searing hot AK forty seven barrel, jerking the weapon from one of them blistered skin rolls off my hand. I backhand the one on my right and smash the soldier on my left in the face with his own weapon.

Hot, hot, hot. I scramble to the penetrator, finding a praying one one on the ground. The rest of the team have abandoned him and are on board firing any weapon they can get their hands on. As the penetrator lifts in what seems like slow motion one one, and I look upward wondering what the hell is taking so long, we are showered with hot spent and 16 other weapons, shell casing, hot brass is sticking to my bare skin, creating long water blisters similar to the ones on my hand from the AK I grabbed.

The air is filled with smoke, jet fuel and green tracers moving past us in slow motion like mad hornets never ending shell casings raining down along with metal debris and a tornado of jungle vegetation. The penetrator cable is vibrating violently as Jayjay 30 two takes hit after hit, it's all coming apart. I yell at one one. Thirty two piloted by Lieutenant Colonel Jim Grady begins lifting out of the jungle ravine with the two of us hanging on below like a couple of crippled puppets on a quarter inch steel wire.

There are several great trees on both sides of the ship, all of them large enough to severely damage the five. Sixty two foot rotors causing it to crash, ascending out of the jungle. We can feel the heat of be 40 rocket motors as they pass by on their way to slamming into G 30 2s plated underside. The ship is being boosted upward with each explosion. I slump on the penetrator and begin sliding off as my backside is sprayed with shrapnel.

Hey, that hurts. One one grabs hold wrapping his arms around me, saving my life. Hope what's left of the armor holds, I, I weakly yell, grasping at the penetrator cable for balance, the flight mechanic reaches out, pulling me off the penetrator into the ship, dumping me on red hot shell covered deck with one one on my heels. Para rescue specialist Alan Avory leaves his gun position and begins tending to alibiing Alabamas wounds.

Once clear of the jungle hole, the ship begins its descent out of the valley. The flight mechanic, Sergeant John Nussbaum, removes his helmet and places it on my head. Co-pilot Major Don Olson tells me. We're on our way out of here, partner. I'm cold. Lieutenant, ad analyst breaks the silence. One, one, do you have anything to add to black blackjack story? No, sir, he softly mumbles with his head down. How many NBA do you think were in the area and how many do you think were killed or wounded?

Asks Sergeant Analysis. I believe the question was directed to one one, but before he can muster with an answer, I jump in. The answer to the both of those questions is more than we had time to count. However, I'll estimate somewhere between three to five thousand and VA. How many did we kill before we ran out of our ammo? We killed hundreds when we started using their weapons, we killed hundreds more between us and air support, maybe two or three thousand.

The ARC Light followed that after we left. I hope they finish off the rest of them.

Crazy. Oh, yeah, and then that that jolly green giant. Couldn't fly too far, it only went over two more mountaintops and lands, another one comes in, picks up some of the guys, then Lynn and the one one had to go back on the COBRA gunship because the COBRA, the the the weapon does come down and they have seat belts on them.

Oh, my God.

So all the way from Lagos back to Danang there with the. Yeah, just the just the top everything off for them.

And they froze their balls off of course, could have dangling out there five thousand feet on that.

It would up to 5000 feet to get away from any. Yes. Enemy fire. And the and of course, the model of the jollying means that others may live there that day, they put it right on the line.

Amazing going in after you see multiple birds shot down like, oh, one bird goes and gets shot out. The next bird goes in, gets shot out. The next bird goes and gets shot down. Yeah. And you're still coming in. Yup. We're here. And one got shot so bad limp back to base.

Really got back. They continue on with his debriefing and one of the analysts says, tell us about the terrain again, one one, you were closer to the terrain than I was. Why don't you answer that question?

One one breaks down a medical aid, gives him a sedative to quiet his nerves.

He's been through a lot. I see. Do you also need a sedative, ask the medic. No, thanks, I don't handle any kind of drugs very well. If I take that, I'll be asleep in ten minutes. Give me an understanding of where you are physically and psychologically as one of the medics physically today, I'm less than 50 percent. I took some hard hits, and I'm still trying to recover psychologically who the heck knows anyone doing this kind of work is probably crazy from the get go, you know what I mean?

A combat soldier focuses on what they feel physically, what they see, hear and smell. Feelings of fear, sadness, boredom and joy are suppressed as much as possible so we can focus on the mission, our team and staying alive.

The psychological stuff has to come later or we won't make it.

Does that make sense to you? So there you go. This is a classic thing. We're putting off all this stuff, like not worrying about it right now. We got a job to do.

The medic looks up from taking notes.

It will do for now. Please continue with your train of thought. As soon as my wounds fully close and the stitches come out, I'll begin training again. I heal fast and definitely have some ideas on needed training for Alabama to be an effective team. Don't you think that's up to the one zero to determine what training is needed for his team? One, one perks up, I jump in ahead of them, yes, sir, no, sir.

I mean, it's up to all of us to conduct training as Americans. The welfare of a Special Forces team is the responsibility of every man on that team.

If the designated leader can't lead, then it's incumbent on any one of us to step forward and provide that leadership.

That's what I did, and that's what I'll do again, if needed.

So there you go. Oh, yeah. Real leadership.

Pure leadership, fearless, fearless. So you're ready to go do it again? And he thinks to himself, I've heard that several guys have hung it up after the first mission. I think I know why. It's these damn debriefs.

Yeah, they were a pain in the ass, that's for sure.

The analyst continues, Our best intelligence indicates there's probably I think this is yeah, this is this is the chief saying our best intelligence indicates that there's approximately two thousand miles of trail and between 12 to 15 bin tram. And those are like bin tram is like these organizations.

What are they like a battalion sized as long a trail to be a command and control element, as well as a hospital overnight rest facilities. And then from there, they run people out to keep the trails open, work with the local indigenous people, the conscripts, because they are constantly bombing a trail.

So these these are organizations along the trail. They're called Bin Tram's, then thousands of anti-aircraft guns, 20 to 30, 30 thousand support soldiers, all defended by 40 to 60 thousand security troops. That's what we need intel on.

Are you ready to take another whack at it, Chief? Sogge asks, half grinning at the two of us Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

I'm not sure I really wanted to know that I will be once the wounds of healed, when I'm in better physical condition and we get the training that I talked about and after I have a couple more beers. Tell me about what you thought about out there as a tall, slender, gray haired medical officer on the other side of the table behind him sits two obvious assistants taking notes. Lynn thinks, didn't I just answer the question a few minutes ago?

These guys are not going to let up. And then he says, Do you mean me personally? Yes. You personally. What went through your mind? What emotions did you feel?

How much detail are you asking for? God, I hate it.

I hate. And he thinks himself. God, I hate this. How did you feel? Shit.

Didn't answer that question a few minutes ago. We've heard excellent tour guide level detail from the point of the initial ambush to your team's extraction. Tell us about the period of time from the point of insertion to the ambush. Take your time. Give me a tour of your thoughts. What were you thinking? I leaned back in my chair pausing, thinking I'm a guy. I'm a guy, not some woman who wants to do nothing but talk about her feelings.

I don't think about their feelings. And this is just his thoughts. We're either happy or sad, thirsty, horny or hungry. OK, calm the hell down and give him an answer.

And then he says, I was on the second king bee. We watched Bulldog and the others disembarked from the first ship. Just before our spiral began, our door gunner announced We go down now. Chuckles Around the room, we assumed the get ready position with me sitting in the door, the lottery. Elzy corkscrewed up to meet us several feet off touchdown. I spotted an NBA flag posted near the edge. I remember thinking, Oh crap. Several of them laugh, were quiet or quietly chuckle.

But you spotted freaking NBA flag on the landing zone. Yeah, I think it goes into more detail.

Disease Specialist Black. I've heard about the mission. I want to know about your feelings, what you felt emotionally. Do you understand?

Well, sir. Oh, crap to me is a pretty strong feeling. However, when a soldier is in that situation that causes thoughts like, oh, crap or others, we usually don't have time to stop and consider our feelings. As soon as our can be tires bounced down, Tracer's punched to the side of our ship. We got the hell out of there. I remember thinking what a mistake that was. Actually, sir, it was more like we are screwed.

Blackjack, the sergeant major objects.

Yes. Sergeant Major in mid lift off the green swarm engulfed the ship like a disturbed nest of hornets that can be hung in midair labouring, slipping to its left. The pilot wrestling with the stick. His co-pilot was slumped in a seat down. It went in a ball of flames. The two scarfe ships providing cover provided covering fire. As I moved my portion of the Alabama to link up with the one zero, I yelled the bulldog that we needed to get off the Elzy.

He ordered us to form up. We quickly moved in a low crouch through the knee high razor grass to a log where Bulldog and the others were. We were knee deep in Kimche and I knew it.

And there's a little bit of a of a little bit of a tension between them, between Bulldog. Yeah, between Bulldog and and blackjack and with that tension and I'm fast forward a little bit, he said, did it make that one of the analysts says, did it make you anger, angry? How did it make you feel? I didn't care. I came back here to do a job. Why did you come back? The medical officer insists, because they nailed my brother and best friend and several the guys in my one hundred and seventy third unit.

I came back here to get even. Is that what you want to know? Am I mad? No. When I got out of the first when I got out the first time and went home, it bugged me that so many of us had been killed or wounded and I couldn't really say I had seen the enemy. I felt like a failure. I'm going to fight in a war. If I'm going to fight in a war, I want to see the enemy.

I want to look on their face when I pulled the trigger or I have them roasted with napalm. Are you getting what you need with this answer? And then he thinks to himself, don't ask me this shit again. I'm here doing a job that most of the guys back home don't want to do. Just be satisfied. You can get people like me who want to be up here and are qualified. Yes, thank you. The medical officer deadpans.

Black continue on with the narration, instructs lieutenant analyst and with feeling he snorts again.

This whole scene is just as straight out of a freaking Hollywood movie of, you know, the the the combat soldier fresh off the battlefield, getting interrogated by these refs. Yeah.

And even there, like the whole thing with the flag and experience one zero. What was said? No, we're out of here. They had a green one zero. And then try to forgive because of that. Yeah, he goes into a little bit, but he wouldn't listen. There was just like that little bit of disagreement, you know, why did Sergeant Stride make you the radio operator? One, two, and black, the one one.

He goes through this, you know.

Yeah. So he continues here. Yes, sir, covid asked for a sitrep at which time I reported that the second king bee was shot down and we were waiting for Bulldog to make a go no go decision.

Mandolin asked to talk with Bulldog, who said he was going to continue with the mission. He then motioned to our point man to move over to a well traveled trail across the Elzy into the jungle cowboy point. The Vietnamese team leader, Locke and I vigorously argued against walking a trail, especially when we had already made contact. To be honest, I thought the order was stupid. There I said it and he's thinking to himself, There I said it.

You want know how I feel? That's it. So this is when you're the tension that we were talking about.

Oh yeah. Lt analyst his face red eyes narrowed.

You argued with your one zero in the middle of making contact with the enemy. And then Lin thinks to himself, your ass is in trouble now keep calm. He's never been in a combat situation except maybe fighting with his older sister. The first rule of recon is never use trails, especially well traveled trails. That trail, I said to stride definitely fits that category. He told me he was in command and that I would follow his orders without questions.

Did you? Yes, sir. Into really deep kimche. Continue the chief orders impatiently. Bulldog angrily motion to the team to move up on the trail point, leading the way with Bulldog pushing from behind on his rucksack. The trail wound into dense jungle foliage, bending to the left point tried to move cautiously, paralleling a small team. A small 10 to 20 foot rise to our right. Bulldog hurried him along, pushing, pushing him to his death.

Is that statement necessary, Lieutenant analyst sarcastically Crack's I was instructed to tell you what I was personally thinking.

I was the only American on the team with Vietnam experience, with combat experience. I was the fourth person in line right behind Cowboy. I think Sergeant Strides Experience went back to an ateam team in Korea and one one had never seen combat. Is that statement necessary? I think so, yes. Rank and combat experience are not necessarily synonymous. Don't you agree? And then he says sometimes stay calm. Stay calm.

Point taken. How did you feel when taking fire on insertion? Asks the doc.

When we took fire going in, I felt anxious and he thinks to himself, that's an understatement. Scared the shit out of me. That anxiety turned to disbelief when Bulldog made the decision to continue the mission. And then again, when the decision was made to walk a trail. I remained on the state of higher alert, high alert, right up to the ambush. An interesting thing happened.

They all laughed.

We can imagine people were killing your teammates and you were pinned down. How much more interesting could it get? Observes Sergeant Analyst. They all nervously laugh again.

I sit silent, expressionless, looking into each of their eyes, the medical officers quietly observing me. After what seems like a long time. I turn and look at the one one. His head is down, his hands folded in his lap.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot over, I think to myself. Turning back to the de-brief panel. You ever been ambushed? I asked flatly. Chief Sogge and the command sergeant major both shift uncomfortably in their chair. None of them have my impatience. My impatience with this process is giving away to temper. Tired. Remember what covid said. Keep your cool. All these questions have been covered in our initial debrief and documented in the E.R.. What are these guys after?

I give them what they want and then get the hell out of here. And he starts speaking again when the NBA triggered the ambush. All that anxiety disappeared. I went to work.

Previous experience and training kicked in. I returned fire with the intent of suppressing the NBA attack and being able to maneuver out of the spot we were in. Bulldog was Bulldog and one one was down.

Like I said before, I thought he was hit and took charge. I've learned the best defense is an aggressive offense. As long as we had ammunition and could move. I took charge of our not so little, not no name battle moving at will, causing as much confusion for the enemy as possible, preventing them from forming up a large force to overrun us. That tactic worked until we ran out of ammo.

The anxiety returned. No, sir, fear one one turns to face me with local disbelief. How did you deal with it? Prompts the doctor. Our situation seemed impossible. The fact is, I was completely overcome with fear. For an instant. I couldn't move. And he thinks to himself, I haven't thought about this until now. I don't know if I can express that feeling, he continues.

Oddly, it seemed to be unconnected to the physical danger.

The fear? Yes, there were three things going on all at once. It was this. It was as if I had stepped outside myself, seeing all things, feeling all emotions, all at the same time. In that instant, I became completely demoralized.

And he thinks to himself, every person in this room is fixed on what I am saying, I wish I knew what I was saying or how to say it. I'm talking like a woman or like the shrink.

Demoralized, the doctor gently urges.

What made the emotion so overpowering was the realization that I had violated every moral precept of my upbringing. My childhood focused sharply, blending into the present. I couldn't wrap my mind around our deeds. I was alive. We were alive. Hundreds of others were dead. Fathers, sons, husbands, you know, more would die, maybe thousands.

I raised my hand to hold off further questions as I stared down at the table to focus my thoughts and emotions. Emotions. Here they are that he continues. That entire thought process lasted a fraction of a second. Then the usual, if I can call it that, the re-emergence of our deadly danger, the possibility of a sudden assault and total annihilation was welcome and composing reality pacified be our reality emerged in my mind like a clap of thunder.

My emotions were all prioritized by mortality. You might want to talk with this about with what you might want to talk with one of our medical staff offers the chief SOGGE. And he thinks I just did, and there's nothing they can do for me ignoring his comment. It's interesting to watch the changes in people who are on the spot, for instance, in that fraction of a second when the concussion grenade hit me, I became interesting to myself. What does that mean, interested in yourself, the medical officer is surprised, not interested in myself, but interesting to myself, an object of interest outside myself.

It's difficult to describe, however, all that serves no purpose in the moment. Distractions of that kind prevent us from witnessing our own death from dealing with the present. Someone on the team mentioned surrendering. We all knew they would kill us. Good thinking offers the command sergeant major anyway, that led to a conversation about breaking the team into two man groups to escape and evade, at that point in the battle, we felt the terrain and enemy activity prevented us from.

And that's when we decided to fight it out using our using their weapons during daylight hours and then try to get some of the people out under the cover of darkness. We now had options and resolve.

The fear was diminished and a new purpose and mission had gripped every man on the team.

Explain orders the lieutenant analyst, I thought I just did blackjack chides the sergeant major, OK, ok, I hesitate looking for the words during daylight hours, we decided to fight them as hard as we could using their weapons and tactics. I know from experience that when you use the enemy's tactics against them, they are they quickly become confused. Have you ever considered countermeasures against your own tactics? Of course not. No one ever does. You're not going to fight yourself, right?

That's why it's so important for us to study their tactics and tactics and use those tactics against them in the field, the report Saigon send out each month are the basis for that knowledge, along with what we learn directly in the field, practical experience. You all are here making a major contribution to us staying alive and being successful. What you've told me about being Tram's today adds to that knowledge there smiling, shooting approval glances at one another, and then he thinks to himself, Blackjack, you're being a kiss ass.

Knock it off.

Thank you, Specialist Black, for the performance review of my staff, replies the chief's SOGGE with a straight face. Please continue instantly. They all get serious. All we had to do is hold out until dark.

What about the B 52 strike that was on the way? Marks the lieutenant analyst minor consideration. If thousands of enemy couldn't kill us 20 feet from 20 feet away, we could certainly live through be 50 two's bombing from twenty or thirty thousand feet. The ELT gives me his narrowed eyed, narrow eyed, I don't believe you look as the medical officer and others suppress their laughter. We begin to pair up as the curtain of death fell around us, even though we were still acting as a team.

Curtain of death?

Asks the medical officer quizzically. I remember that when the decision was made, I felt as if a black curtain were being lowered around me.

It was something I could see in my mind, we made every attempt to maneuver ourselves into an Iani launch position, which turned out to be the route we took to the last jolly green giant. We figured because we were small and they were so large at night, we would have they would have to set up blocking positions and not move on us. The reasoning was that if they tried to move, they would wind up shooting each other a large block and groups, they would make noise, revealing themselves and their positions.

This would give us the opportunity to try and move out between those positions and get out. It's a good thing we didn't have to any at night using that route. It would have led us directly into the heart of their camp. My job became getting as many of my team off the battlefield and out of the air to safety as possible.

Black, your Alabama team is very lucky you didn't have to any because the B 52 strikes, even if you survive them, the NBA would have taken to widely dispersing its units. For instance, a two thousand man and regiment might spread, might be spread across a five mile stretch of trail dug in into each bend in the road and hilltop. This is, by the way, of explaining this is, by the way, of explaining why some SOG teams just vanish, unwittingly landing amid such an overlapping concentration of NBA forces.

My guess is that no matter which way you would have turned every half mile or so, you would have bumped into enemy platoons or companies, even five hundred man battalions.

Looking directly at Chief Sogge. Did you know they were all there at that place we chose as an Elzy? Without hesitation, he responds, So so you got Lynn saying, wait a second, bro, you knew that there was all these people on the freaking ground that we were going to put in an analogy. And the chief SOGGE says, no, not specifically.

The 12 teams before Alabama were tracking a regiment down the trail. That tracking mission, as you know, became known as the lottery. We believe you found that regiment and bin tram. Those are these these organizations that protect the Ho Chi Minh trail bin tram's six 11. At that same location, our intelligence led us to believe that your Elzy was approximately five miles from that base and that Alabama might have a chance at gathering very important intel along the network of trails so prevalent in that area.

The fact is, we now know exactly where bin Treant bin Tran, 611, was located. And you have confirmed the type a number of personnel on site, rarely as such a small team, engaged such a large force with so few casualties and lived to tell about it. The Bin Tram's 611 you all encountered has been destroyed for now, along with the regiment that took 12 SOG teams. We here are all all very proud to work with men like you and your Alabama team.

Blackjack. Is there anything else you want to say, asks Sergeant Analyst Anything at all? Yes. The Jolly Green Giants, the motto painted on the sides of their ships so that others may live. Emotion wells up, give me a minute, please. The thought of the Jews, the Vietnamese king bees and all the others who have committed their lives to saving Alabama emotionally inundate my sense is overpowering my ability to stuff emotions back down. My my eyes flood with tears.

We're alive today due to all of you.

Thank you. Hey, man, man.

Yeah, and and by the way, so that right there is page 60 that that just got us to page 60 of this book of this 300 page book.

That's one mission. One historic SOG mission, one one mission, one historic mission, but a mission that represents another day in SOGGE, which is the same that you guys had.

Yeah, what many like that that was in a special category. Yeah. Yeah.

But the I mean, the set up, that's what you guys did, you know, like the setup. Hey, like we're going to go in there, we're going to find out where the bad guys are. We're taking the king bees in. We're calling for fire support if we get in trouble. That was your that was your model.

That was your that was what you guys did. Oh, yeah.

Although if we saw a flag, we would definitely try to get out of here if we could post-haste. How about when you're taking massive fire on Easter? What about that one? Is that another get shot a good idea or one of your insert craft get shot down? You say we're going to continue the mission. Can you imagine? No.

Yeah. Well. There's a ton of other missions to discuss this book, it's called Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is written by Lynne Black Jr. Just get the book and a bunch of the other missions there. I want to save some of them. So hopefully we can get we can get the man himself on here to talk through some of these, give us his experiences. And it's also cool because we'll get both you guys on here because, you know, he writes about some of the same missions you guys were on together and you guys both wrote about these missions.

So to get both of you in here to kind of go through those, I'll do my job. Shut up and just let you guys talk, which would be freaking awesome. Awesome to do.

But, yeah, hopefully we can get them on at some point. And if not, then if he does, if he can't make it on, then we'll go through some of these other stories and and share them. Well it's an honor to pay homage to him. He's just a great guy, fearless warrior. And some of the things he did that mission.

Oh my God, when you think about these times was it seemed like this seemed like a long time ago. Does it seem like yesterday or and I'm going to ask you this, does it seem like both? Because for me, sometimes my experience seems like it was a long time ago and sometimes it seems like it was yesterday. What does it seem like to you?

Oh, clearly both. Yeah, absolutely.

Because I can just remember us standing there at the Alcides three shop waiting for the go for the bright light, because Dawn already told us and we were switching everything out, does nothing but ammo and grenades and bandages and some body bags. And we're glad that they changed the mind.

Lynne, you know, again, he had the right tactical decision on the ground and we call it right. Because if we tried to go in this like his other helicopter shot down and as more people on the ground were casualties possibly.

And so, yeah, so that day comes back every October 5th, you know, we have our little email loop Spider Pat Watkins, and we go, Hey, Lynn, this is your day brother.

We don't know how you did it, but they were glad you did.

Yeah. And the fact that, you know, he's he said in the beginning when they inserted, like, they should have left immediately, meaning he's kind of looking to save his own ass, right. Sure. God bless them. But then you fast forward whatever it is, a few hours and now he's saying, nope, I'm saving everyone else's ass. Don't come and get me. I mean, that's hey, don't land your calls off, King.

Please get out of here. Don't take off. Leave us here. Bright light. No, don't send him. We're not going to be bait.

Yeah. And you know, when he when he finally came back to base, like a day or two later, they had to go patch him up and then they had a little ceremony with the Air Force guys, but they swap raise the PJs had their berets.

And I think Lynn and Steve swapped out theirs and. When he came back to base, he never talked about it. We'd heard about what spider mandoline are saying about the missing, but, you know, Lynn wouldn't talk about it. So even when I did the book, I had to go back and physically go, Cuong and I want to get the story into the book that flew up to the nineteen eighty ninety final interview. That's where I learned stuff that I never knew about the mission or some of the little details about the find, the PJ Cook and the broken back and.

Oh my God. So it's just an amazing, amazing warrior, great guy and are still top of it. And when he's talking about the Chief SOGGE, that was Steve Cavanaugh, who was a highly decorated World War Two vet.

And then when career he was in Germany, but then he was chief SOG. He came in right after Jack sing Love and his welcome to SOGGE was August twenty third, 68 F will be for you.

Yeah. So he was a really good chief. Sogge he really cared about the man, but what was his rank as the chief SOGGE Bird.

So he was a full bird colonel he was in charge of and he's in charge of all Soke crosschecks and all of our operations.

And then see this is again the regular army.

Instead of having a general that could go do battle with other generals, they had a colonel part of the in-house fighting the boys down in Saigon.

And so that's why I love the book, because Mingus into this little exchange is back and forth and he has his editorials on my comments with these. Oh, yes.

It's so freaking classic. It's it's crazy because I know you. And so I'm reading kilts at this tilt said that until the throw this. It's so awesome. Read. Yeah, it's freaking awesome.

He also you know, he also breaks into the whole you get the you get a better you get a very good feeling of the whole kind of deployment when he's going into town.

And he's there's all kinds of shady kind of CIA stuff going on in there that he's wrapped up in. Oh yeah, that's right.

It's like it's legit.

Well, and even in the first 60 pages, there are segments there for what he did, underfire. That could be cut out and used in any leadership school, oh, for military anywhere's, it's just incredible stuff.

Yeah, not to mention anything that he did multiple times over could be used to write an award citation or what did he what did he receive for this.

Well, he wound up with a Silver Star, OK, which should have been my opinion, at least a Medal of Honor. And because in the book he goes into it, spider and mandoline are talked a little bit a few days later. And the S3 officer major, who will remain nameless, was saying he he didn't bring back stride. So Biglari put him in for a Silver Star. And, you know, Pat Waak is a spider. Were pretty emphatic.

It should have been a lot higher to now. And we could think about medal of honors that had been awarded were nothing like what Lynn was up against, getting knocked out all that time on the job, patching up his own people and then leading them out and then, oh, we'll just charge right through the NBA ranks. And I used to that.

Oh, my God.

It's weird because he's definitely a cerebral guy, as you could hear from that last section. Oh, yeah. But damn, he would get aggressive. I mean, he's he's whole he's pissed off. That's kind of one of the reasons he reenlisted because he's pissed off that they wounded his brother and wounded people from the one seventy third and killed people in seventy third. So he's got this like pent up aggression, but then he's an artist. Oh yeah.

Right.

Sure. He worked at the TV station during high school. He's so good. But I mean, you know, you just read it so and then years later I mean he just comes back in his own way and he goes gets a job at Boeing, rises through the ranks. This did incredible work there that nobody could talk about.

Oh, yeah. One of our song legends to the max and humble Moratti, just like pulling teeth again to talk about it. Yeah, that's why I love the book every once every couple of years, so I poured out and we do you know what what inspired him to write this book?

That's a good question. I don't know these last 15 years or so between a reunion's and being so far apart, I was just everybody was talked to.

Come on, they got to the book. And at one point he told me he threw away four to 500 pages.

I said, please tell me these primitive little folder somewhere given to me or given to somebody. And I said, no, it's done. So he worked on it for a while. He really did. And we had chatted back and forth back when I thought the newspaper back in the day. Well. It's a it's a phenomenal book. I hope everybody goes to pick it up, hopefully, and come on here and and talk through some of these stories, and if not that, then hopefully I can just go shake his hand one day because it'd be an honor indeed, if I got to Seattle for one of your shows.

Yeah. Yeah.

With that look, we've been going for three and a half hours or something like that, really? Yeah, yeah, I know this must be a JoCo podcast. Quit harassing me.

Yeah. And we're going to come back with you. Some SOGGE Chronicles next. Yeah, until then. A little bit speechless, but it's obviously it's an honor to share these stories, these stories, it's honor always to have you on, tell an honor to know you, and it's an honor for me to help get the word about get the word out about you and your brothers in SOGGE, your books that you've written that we've covered on the podcast across the fence.

That's the first one on the ground. And then SOGGE chronicles volume one. You're also out there just getting after the social media a little bit.

Now I get to Tennessee. We're going to be moving here real soon. Then we're going to get really serious. I'll be calling up Echo for some for some skill sets.

You hence you're on you're on Twitter, but you don't do much on Twitter. Minimal on Twitter. You're on Twitter. You're at SOGGE.

John does that one. And then then there's outside Chronicle's Jay Stryker.

OK, Meyer. That's the other handle, but this is Twitter, and do you think I should really be on you to give me more advice here? I don't it depends on what you do.

I guess, in Instagram has been amazing. Yeah, know that. So I was going to say Jay Striker Maya on Instagram, that's where you're at. You also have Facebook, John Striker Maior and you have on the Internet on the inter webs you're at or it's just SOGGE Chronicles dot com. Correct.

And we're going to get a get my 20th century websites going to be upgraded here in the next month or two. Look like you designed that one on a tape recorder. It wasn't that advanced. My daughters are on me and a zombie, too.

So we're lined up a gentlemen. Our interview him to come back in the redesign. Absolutely.

Well, like I said, thank you so much for coming on. My pleasure. And always an honor. Appreciate it. And it's just every time you send me a text message that says airborn gives me enough motivation to get through like six weeks of mayhem.

Thanks. Appreciate it. Till next time.

Airborn indeed. And with that, John Striker, Maior Tilt has left the building. And you know, Echo. It's you know, we're sitting here and sometimes we feel like maybe we're getting after it, and then you sit down with someone like Dale and you hear the story of Lynn Black and the guys from SOGGE, and it makes me realize that we. Can do more and we actually should do more. You know, with our lives to get after it more.

So what recommendations do you have to keep us in the mode of getting after it as we pursue?

As we pursue. Improvement. Yeah, improvement. I just wanted to say, as we improve, as we as we pursue an unattainable standard, yes, it's an unattainable standard.

I'm not ever I mean, someone would have to go completely haywire for me to get after it to the level of a John Striker Meyer or of Lynn Black or of a Dick Thompson. There'd have to be there's someone's going to go majorly wrong. So and I don't know. Look, we hope that doesn't happen in the world. So what?

We are in the pursuit. Of that level, we're not going to get there, but we're trying, yes, because we're not just going to sit back and say, oh, they got after more than me, I'm just going to sit on the couch.

No, no, we're not doing that. No, we are going to get after it. Appropriate at the appropriate level to our world anyway. OK, we do I like the fact that you finally came to a self realization of what you just said made no sense. If you don't do that, you don't get that self realization very often make sense. You just got to think about it, that's all.

Just got to think about it more anyway. So, yes, we're working out our bodies, degeneration, regeneration, as you said, wise man. JoCo, wise man. I'm saying there you go.

Boom. The the beatings are the darkness, the gains or the light.

So JoCo, feel this will help you.

These things will help you and feel we've got stuff for you, joints, stuff for your muscles, stuff for your brain, stuff for your immunity, all the stuff, some basics.

You've got some bases covered. Yes sir. Yes we do anyway.

Joint joint warfare and krill oil. These for your joints. It's antioxidants in there too by the way. Also disciplined, multi, multiple forms, deployment methods, powder mixes well in water recommended. Maybe throw some juice in there. No.

All right.

Well, hey, I was just saying you don't I know I'm next one up the other day because it has been it's been hot here in the California ale area of operations.

And did you see what I posted it what I mixed up. I took just, you know, well, I don't know if you this when it's hot out iced tea. Yes. Arnold Palmer scenarios are very nice to have.

So, you know, have you ever seen one of those big basically this is a big picture. You want a picture is it's a clear plastic picture. And there's only one true purpose for that thing, and that is to mix up ice tea or Arnold Palmer on a hot, hot day.

So I did it emptied my ice thing into there, putting the Jocko Palmer discipline go what the can. No, no, no. The powder. That's not discipline. Go put in the discipline powder you.

And it was so good. It was nice.

It was so good. Yeah. So you got the Arnold Palmer, JoCo Palmer. You got the Arnold Palmer feel with a JoCo Palmer field.

You see when you dig it man it makes sense. Even though it didn't make any sense. It made sense to them, took it away. So I had to do is think about it.

Hey, look, I'm not this one guy. You know, you don't want to you know what one guy is, right? I'm not that. And I'm not a I'm not a grammar Nazi and I'm not a character. OK, well, I'll correct you if you want me. Just corrected me. Disappear, go. OK, whatever. You have your weird self image.

I kind of said it because I might have came off like a character and I might come off like a little bit of a character right now. But technically you have a pitcher, hot summertime California heat wave weekend. That's kind of what it was.

You want a glass pitcher on that one, not a blast.

Yeah. Yeah. Ideally, from an ideal standpoint, I don't know. Yeah, no, I agree with you. I don't purchase the pitchers in my house. There you go. Other people run that part of the machine.

Yeah, no worries. We'll get some people on the phone. We'll sort it out.

All good either way. Good luck with that. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

Either way, again, thanks for immunity, vitamin D and Cold War. These are two things. Different methodologies, but immune support. Yeah, you know, not for sure, because, you know, in these times, immunity is always a good thing. It's never a bad thing. Immunity, yeah. As far as you know is a good thing. Desert.

Yeah. Desert.

Being able to eat a nice rib eye or a nice piece of elk and you're like, oh that was so good.

But there's still a little something in your weird brain that wants dessert. Yeah. Which is why we make milk. Yes. We make dessert for you, you know, and you can have a dessert short, you have ice cream, you could have carrot cake, you could have you could have chocolate pudding or you could have milk. It all tastes the same genre of food except for.

All those things are bad for you except milk, which is literally good for you, literally good for you, and I'll supply you with additional protein. You think a cake is going to give you more protein, a regular cake, we will go toe to toe cake versus protein based taste and protein levels.

Yeah, all day.

So, yeah, I get that one now and your kids are going to like it too, whether it's that one or the word kid, which there is the kids going to like both of those I know from experience kids like this, this concerns kids love this stuff.

Yes sir. It's true.

It's all true. Also chocolate. Yes. You know, little refreshing tea senario. You can get all the stuff at the vitamin shop if you want to go out and get some.

Also, if you don't want to go out and get some online or in main dotcom, that's where you get it. Also at Orjan, main dotcom can get American made products straight up, American made hardgoods, hardgoods, durable goods, durable goods, all that, all that, all that.

And it's all these four digits. You can get Raasch guards also for the digits or other forms of working out or surfing.

Although we are moving into the winter months, you might need a wetsuit, but that's up to you. We do not make wetsuits yet. T shirts, jeans, boots, boots. Basically, you need clothes to wear. I mean, look, here's the deal. We need clothes to wear.

If you're going to get clothes to wear, get them from origin mean they're made in America.

We've got a bunch of awesome people up there rebuilding, rebuilding a whole industry in Maine, support America and get the best possible clothing you can. That's that's what we're talking about. Yeah, it's true.

And they have some shorts that for whatever reason, I don't know why they don't talk about the shorts, because that's literally aside from board shorts, like women work out or whatever. These are the only shorts I wear. The shark fin. Like the shark fin.

Yeah, that's Pete. Yeah. That's naming things. It's very creative namer.

And I to be honest, I like. Do you think came first because the shark fin shorts has like a pocket on it. That kind of looks like a shark fin.

Yeah I do know that. Yeah. Yeah. Cool.

So I don't know if he started to design it that way and then named it the shark fin and then made it look more like a shark fin. Right. It's functional. There's a reason for it. But I'm just saying, Pete.

Yeah, well either way to me, shark fin sounds cool.

Straight up sounds like shark fin shirts.

Shorts. Yeah. Anyway, very good.

Good stuff. Ordinate DoCoMo in America. Speaking of shorts, speaking shorts, we were going to board shorts. We have board shorts, deathcore to the core.

Discipline equals freedom board shorts at JoCo store dotcom and Drugstore.com.

If you didn't know it is the store, the store where you can get stuff while you know, while you want to if you want to represent on the path is where you can get your shirts.

You just link with freedom shirts, hoodies, board shorts. Like I said. Did you, did what do you call it. DigiCam OG Kamei. DigiCam and digicam.

DigiCam. Oh I don't know. I don't know how I've said it digital. I think I call it digicam. DigiCam. No, digicam is a camera. Either way, camouflage, digital, you know that one anyway, go drugstore.com, like I said, if whatever shirts you want, the camouflage one or the regular straight up black one, everyone you want available. Also some girl stuff on there, some some tank tops.

Look at the hoodies, hats, all this stuff, if you like something, Hamit, get something. Yeah, and don't forget about the Warrior Kid, so just well, there's warrior kids, so actually, yes. And then there is a bunch of other help that is made by a warrior kid.

Yes. Young Aiden. Oh, we sell it on JoCo store.

There's where you kids, soldiers, jockeys of this trooper soap and there's killer soap, all good legitimate soaps.

But for the month of September, Ayash Oaks Ranch will be donating one dollar per bar of soap to the Cure Search Foundation. It's called Cuusoo. It's a cancer research center simultaneously for this Cause Cancer Awareness Month, September. So we're donating one dollar per bar of soap sold. That's young, that's young, even up.

They're making that happen. So there's a kid, I think he might be 14 now, but started this company, started this company, Warrior Kid out there getting after it. And he wants to help out kids that have cancer. So good for him. You know, appreciate the support for that one. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast. Don't forget that we have some other podcast, the JoCo Unravelling podcast, which used to be called The Thread.

We got quite a few episodes coming out of that.

We have the DE-BRIEF podcast, which is on this thread on the podcast. What is it called Feed For?

Right now we have the grounded podcast. We have the Warrior Kid podcast.

We also have a YouTube channel, you know, which which makes YouTube videos for JoCo podcast, YouTube channel.

Also Psychological Warfare an it's an album with tracks, Jokela tracks, helping you through moments of weakness as they may arise. Maybe not every day, but they arise sometimes.

I think you might have just reached your breaking point the first day you said that and you've repeated that thing, that you didn't have any enthusiasm where you had you had you know, you had some enthusing, but it was lower.

Well, you know, all the time. Because just by the way, my enthusiasm for you saying that ended after about four times. So now we're on where are we on two hundred and something podcast saying that JoCo album with Trackball. All right. Yeah.

So maybe we'll you'll think of something else to say that the world hopes world is hope.

I'm searching my brain to to connect the dots there like I didn't I don't feel like I'm any breaking point in any capacity, but I just broke up right here. Apparently I am. But so maybe I'm going to assume that you're right there soon. Maybe it's because recently I haven't needed psychological warfare help.

OK, so it's not like fresh in my mind, you know, so maybe it came off like it broke or at least.

Well, why don't you go and listen to the track that's about doing things that you might not want to do.

It's OK because apparently you think you can just come in here and kind of slough off on your execution.

Yeah, on the psychological warfare part thing, that's kind of what you call that ironic. It's ironic.

Very ironic. All right. So you can get that if you want it. There's also a flip side campus dotcom.

My brother, DeCota Myers, my brother, my brother DeCota Myers company where he sells visual representation.

Did you hear that? I've said that a bunch of times, but you still hear some spirit in my voice because I'm fired up when I'm talking about Dakota Meyer and flip side canvas dotcom for visual representation that you want to see something.

If you're if you feel like maybe you've you've broken like Echo says, you can hang one of these things up, go to flip sidecars dot com for that.

We also got a bunch of books, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot by Lynne Black. That's where we went over today. Also, John Striker Mirrabooka across the fence on the ground. Those are two different books. And then SOGGE Chronicles, we also have the code, the evaluation of Protocols, Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, where the Warrior Kid one, two and three making the Dragons disciplined because Freedom Field Manual.

And then extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership, so there's a bunch of books if you want to support, you can go on to JoCo podcast, Dotcom and any of the books that have been on this podcast. You can get them from there.

And if you were wondering, hey, people always ask, what's the give me the top seven books that you've read or they always ask these questions reading list.

Yeah. Can you do you have a reading list. Can you publish reading this. Yes, I can. I already did. It's called Jakiel Podcast Dotcom Books from the podcast. You can go on there and if you want to, if you want to, you can click through there and you can go to Amazon and you can actually buy that book and then you can read it.

Make yourself smarter and better. We also have an. Leadership consultancy called Echelon Front, where what we do is solve problems through leadership, if you want to hear me talk to you, if you want me to come and talk or present to your team, you don't have to go to you don't have to Google JoCo speaking. You can just go to Echelon front dotcom. If you want to have myself or any of the Echelon front instructors come and help you come and consult with you about your leadership, get you all aligned, get you on the right path.

We can do it. Go to ashlawn front dot com. We also have Heff online, which listen, if you're wondering, hey, how can I really would like to know this? My thing from JoCo.

You want to ask me a question, go to EFF online, come on Monday, Wednesday or Friday, and chances are I will be there. And if I'm not there, someone else from the Echelon front team is. But usually I'm there. I will be there to answer your questions, whatever you want to ask me.

There's also a bunch of in-depth granular studies of all the principals from extreme ownership, the dichotomy of leadership and leadership strategy and tactics. So Grigoryev online dotcom. Also, we have the muster.

We had one in Orlando canceled. We had one in Phoenix canceled. The next one is going to be in Dallas, Texas, on December 3rd and 4th. We go to extreme ownership dotcom if you want to come. And of course, we have f overwatch, if you need executive leadership, you can get experienced military leaders that understand the principles that we talk about. Go to f overwatched dot com. And then America's mighty warriors dog, that is my family, Mark Lee's mom, and what she does is she helps.

She helps service members, service members that are down range, she helps service members, families, she helps retired service members. And she helps gold star families around the world, so if you want to help out with that, you can go to America's Mighty Warriors dog to donate or to get involved. And if you need to contact us or you have any questions or you have any answers. You can find us on the website once again for Fajon striker Maior, he's on Twitter at at SOGGE.

John he's on Instagram at J. Striker s t r y r m e y e r and Facebook John Striker Maior. And on the website at Soar Chronicles. And of course, for us two knuckleheads, Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at JoCo Willink and to all of. The military personnel out there that swore the oath to put country above self, thank you and to tell and to Lynne Black. And the rest of the SOGGE forces in Vietnam, we can't say thank you enough for doing what you did so that others may live.

And to police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service and all other first responders, thanks to you as well for swearing your oath to take care of us here on the home front. And everyone else out there. Think of the incredible odds that these SOGGE soldiers went up against and they did it time and time and time again in those forgotten jungles, on those forgotten hills, in that forgotten world.

They sacrificed so much. And we must never forget. And until next time, this is Echo and JoCo out.