📄 Extracted Text (29,745 words)
[00:00:05] Mr. Nick Brockhousen, welcome to the
[00:00:07] show.
[00:00:08] >> Thanks for having me, Sean.
[00:00:11] >> It's an honor having you guys.
[00:00:13] >> Well, likewise.
[00:00:14] >> Thank you. Thank you. So, we got
[00:00:16] connected through Tilt, correct?
[00:00:19] >> Oh, yeah. Tilt. It's so nice to see him
[00:00:21] in men's clothing again.
[00:00:23] >> Oh my gosh. What did he used to wear?
[00:00:26] >> Well,
[00:00:28] right on. Well, seriously,
[00:00:32] I tell all you guys this and uh
[00:00:34] everybody that I've interviewed from the
[00:00:36] Vietnam generation and and uh I just
[00:00:39] want to say how much and and I I don't
[00:00:41] say this lightly, how much of an honor
[00:00:43] it is to have you here and and um you
[00:00:45] know, when I was growing up,
[00:00:48] the Vietnam generation is what inspired
[00:00:50] me to to join service, become a Navy
[00:00:53] Seal, and uh and fight for my country.
[00:00:56] And it it truly is. It was the it was
[00:00:58] the movies, it was the guys, it was
[00:01:00] everything to me about the Vietnam
[00:01:03] generation that that uh it just
[00:01:05] fascinated me from from a young age. And
[00:01:08] still to this day, I think you guys are
[00:01:10] just a special breed of human beings.
[00:01:12] And so it means a stop. I'm going to
[00:01:14] have to buy a new hat.
[00:01:17] >> Right on. But uh No, I'm being serious.
[00:01:20] So, welcome home.
[00:01:21] >> Yeah.
[00:01:22] >> Well, I appreciate that. And I got to
[00:01:25] tell you, the new generation, every once
[00:01:27] in a while, I get the the distinct honor
[00:01:29] of of working with special forces, SEAL,
[00:01:33] whatever, you know, and it um I got to
[00:01:37] say, you're all right. Proper rascals,
[00:01:41] you know, the same spirit, the same
[00:01:43] drive, the same professionalism is still
[00:01:47] there. You know, it's uh it it's a
[00:01:50] pleasure to to interact with them and it
[00:01:53] gives me faith that we actually have a
[00:01:55] chance to recover the republic.
[00:01:58] Yeah. Yeah. You know, that I know every
[00:02:02] every new generation gets a lot of [ __ ]
[00:02:05] you know, but um they weren't as hard
[00:02:07] and they're not as tough and but uh but
[00:02:10] the ones that I made are [ __ ] hot
[00:02:12] [ __ ] operators and um lots has
[00:02:15] changed. I feel like I'm a dinosaur now.
[00:02:18] I'm sure I'm sure you do too with so
[00:02:21] with the way warfare is conducted now.
[00:02:23] But um those guys are are true truly
[00:02:27] innovative and uh it's really cool to
[00:02:30] see but
[00:02:31] >> you know the all the SEAL special forces
[00:02:36] they they've all evolved and in some
[00:02:38] aspects they become one-dimensional you
[00:02:41] and Iraq was a and and uh Afghanistan
[00:02:45] was a reason for that they became door
[00:02:47] kickers you know our generation was more
[00:02:51] working with the and edge and and
[00:02:54] training them, equipping them, and
[00:02:55] leading them into counterinsurgency. And
[00:02:58] >> and they're slowly but surely going back
[00:03:00] to that. And I'm glad to see that
[00:03:02] because that's really where your the
[00:03:05] individualism
[00:03:07] and the teamwork
[00:03:09] really shine when they start going back
[00:03:11] to the basic cuz you know SF was ba was
[00:03:15] based on the OSS
[00:03:17] you know and you you our lineage was
[00:03:21] that you were going to get jumped into
[00:03:23] somebody else's country and you might
[00:03:25] spend seven years there be you know
[00:03:28] fighting a war and that so you know the
[00:03:30] the the training for it, the mentality,
[00:03:32] the the uh nexus was based around that
[00:03:36] concept. And I'm glad to see that
[00:03:38] they're finally getting back to that in
[00:03:40] such a way that uh they can become a
[00:03:43] really effective tool.
[00:03:44] >> Yeah. Yeah. You know, we haven't really
[00:03:47] talked much about the OSS. Do you want
[00:03:49] do you do you want to go into that a
[00:03:51] little bit?
[00:03:52] >> Well, what I know about I'm I'm not
[00:03:54] Victor David Hansen and I'm no great
[00:03:57] intellect. I do read though. Um yeah,
[00:04:01] the OSS was um you know in the beginning
[00:04:05] when they when they started the OSS
[00:04:08] um Donovan was given the OSS Office of
[00:04:13] Strategic Service and it was a battle
[00:04:15] with Jay Edgar Hoover because Jay Edgar
[00:04:17] Hoover wanted it all. He wanted to be,
[00:04:20] you know, the guy who was putting FBI
[00:04:23] agents in where OSS agents actually
[00:04:26] ended up going. And they they did a
[00:04:29] compromise with him. They gave him the
[00:04:32] counter intelligence role in the US and
[00:04:36] in South America. So the FBI had limited
[00:04:42] influence in South America and Mexico
[00:04:44] because there was the the Nazis had a
[00:04:46] huge huge station in Mexico. They were
[00:04:50] operating out of Mexico, northern
[00:04:52] Colombia, places like that, Argentina.
[00:04:55] Um, but you know, the OSS was originally
[00:04:58] designed
[00:05:00] to provide uh war fighters, people that
[00:05:04] could go in, provide strategic
[00:05:07] intelligence on the uh on the Nazis and
[00:05:10] on their military and what they were
[00:05:12] doing in other countries and that. And
[00:05:14] what he did is he picked businessmen,
[00:05:17] >> people that had traveled in in Germany,
[00:05:19] people that had traveled that were maybe
[00:05:21] natives of Italy, Bulgaria, Armania,
[00:05:26] whatever. And uh and drew them in and
[00:05:29] formed the OSS. And they had different
[00:05:32] divisions of it. And each of those
[00:05:35] divisions had uh a certain amount of
[00:05:38] latitude how they operated. But the
[00:05:40] whole thing was based on clandestine.
[00:05:43] You know that we're we're not going to
[00:05:45] be make a big show like the commandos
[00:05:47] and that. We're going to drop you out of
[00:05:49] a Langster bomber in a business suit and
[00:05:52] you're going to get on the ground and go
[00:05:53] to meet your contacts in that country
[00:05:56] and then start providing intel back.
[00:06:00] And then after the war, they uh they got
[00:06:03] rid of the OSS and it became the Central
[00:06:06] Intelligence Agency.
[00:06:08] Then it really ruined it when they did
[00:06:11] that because it uh it took away some of
[00:06:14] that uh expertise and Elon of the
[00:06:19] operators from World War II.
[00:06:21] >> Mhm.
[00:06:22] >> But the OSS was a very effective tool. I
[00:06:25] just read a white paper written by a E8
[00:06:30] from a tenth group guy named Kevin O'
[00:06:33] Conor OC
[00:06:36] 280 lbs of moving Irish intellect
[00:06:40] uh where he suggested it's a a good
[00:06:44] suggestion is to do away with special
[00:06:48] ops and turn it back into the OSS
[00:06:52] and have the same different divisions of
[00:06:55] that within it. And for one thing,
[00:06:57] centralized purchasing
[00:06:59] >> and there's so much redundancy in the
[00:07:01] purchasing
[00:07:02] >> and and second of all, it it it does
[00:07:04] away with each of each service having
[00:07:07] their special oper operations division
[00:07:10] that put them all put them all in in one
[00:07:13] unit. Make them all warrant officers.
[00:07:16] So, perfect rank to operate in. You
[00:07:19] know, you got officers, you got warrant
[00:07:21] officers, but you don't have NCOs
[00:07:23] anymore. And if you transfer into it,
[00:07:25] you automatically become a warrant
[00:07:27] officer.
[00:07:27] >> When did this white paper come out?
[00:07:29] >> Oh, he wrote it. Oh, I know.
[00:07:31] >> He wrote it and Al Mullins uh edited it.
[00:07:35] Thank God. Um but Oh, about six months
[00:07:39] ago.
[00:07:40] >> Six months ago.
[00:07:41] >> Yeah. And he I I think he sent it to the
[00:07:44] Secretary of Defense or we might have
[00:07:46] sent it to Senator as you know a
[00:07:49] suggestion. Here it is.
[00:07:50] >> I think that's a genius idea. it what do
[00:07:53] you think it's got some flaws but it
[00:07:56] it's much better than what they're
[00:07:57] operating under now
[00:07:58] >> what I'm just curious why do you think
[00:08:00] that would be better I have my own
[00:08:02] opinions but
[00:08:03] >> uh
[00:08:05] let's see how do I put it uh they
[00:08:09] they've got the ability to act without
[00:08:11] massive oversight
[00:08:14] you know this this whole organization in
[00:08:17] special forces
[00:08:19] stands on the shoulders of 12 men and
[00:08:23] they forgot that you've got scops and
[00:08:26] you got civil affairs and you got, you
[00:08:28] know, ribbon cutting outfit or some
[00:08:31] other hua. Those are all support units.
[00:08:35] >> They're not special operations. I don't
[00:08:38] consider them special operation. I'm
[00:08:40] sure that people in SCAOAPS argue about,
[00:08:42] you know, they actual captured this or
[00:08:44] captured that when they were out in the
[00:08:46] countryside, but really it it's all
[00:08:48] based on a SEAL team and an A team.
[00:08:52] Those guys are where the rubber meets
[00:08:54] the road. And you know, we
[00:08:59] give you an example. When over the
[00:09:01] years, I had people come to me and go,
[00:09:03] "Wow, what kind of special school did
[00:09:05] you go to to get in CCN?" Well, a prior
[00:09:08] felony helped. Uh, it's uh we were
[00:09:12] selected because it was just another SF
[00:09:15] assignment. It was no more than that.
[00:09:18] You you'd go there and you do your thing
[00:09:20] in Vietnam and then you come back to the
[00:09:22] States, you might get assigned to Red
[00:09:24] Empire or the Tenth Group and then you
[00:09:27] did the missions that they had on the
[00:09:28] board and that. So, but it gave you a
[00:09:32] a vast pool of knowledge and and
[00:09:35] cross-pollinization
[00:09:37] with people that actually know how to
[00:09:39] operate on the ground.
[00:09:40] >> You know, it it's
[00:09:44] that's that's interesting.
[00:09:47] What what So, what what units
[00:09:51] would he have? What did what did the
[00:09:53] white paper say? What
[00:09:55] >> Well, he broke it down into how they
[00:09:57] would, you know, structure it. the t and
[00:10:00] you know how how would it the big thing
[00:10:03] that he was concentrating on was uh I'm
[00:10:06] looking for the right word here
[00:10:08] sometimes I trip the the ability to act
[00:10:11] independently without micromanagement
[00:10:15] to give that power and authority and
[00:10:18] responsibility down to the working level
[00:10:21] >> in order to get the job done because
[00:10:23] that when the where the rubber meets the
[00:10:26] road that's where innovation comes from
[00:10:29] and expertise.
[00:10:31] He uh you know another thing was you
[00:10:34] know the weapons try and do similar
[00:10:37] weapons uh so you don't again re reling
[00:10:40] back to why buy six different systems
[00:10:43] when two actually will do the job
[00:10:46] >> and standardization makes it easier for
[00:10:50] ammunition parts supply uh you know and
[00:10:55] training simplifying it
[00:10:58] >> I hope they do it I mean I know it would
[00:11:00] uh
[00:11:00] >> I tell you I I'm think I might have a
[00:11:02] copy of it. I'll I'll forward it to you.
[00:11:04] >> I would love to read it.
[00:11:06] >> I mean, I think that it would be,
[00:11:10] >> you know, I got to be honest, I didn't
[00:11:11] know that's how it used to be, but
[00:11:14] >> Well, you know, we today, you go in the
[00:11:16] fifth group, you stay in the fifth
[00:11:17] group.
[00:11:18] >> Mhm.
[00:11:19] >> In my day, you go to the 10th group, you
[00:11:21] be there for three years, you might get
[00:11:22] transferred to dead A or get transferred
[00:11:24] to the to the sixth group or, you know,
[00:11:27] the first group, whatever. And that
[00:11:29] allowed for a lot of crosspollinization
[00:11:31] in that and you met guys that were doing
[00:11:34] different things
[00:11:35] >> and and you were able to give your input
[00:11:37] and take theirs and and move on with it.
[00:11:39] You know,
[00:11:39] >> you know, not only that, but the the
[00:11:41] first thing that came to my mind when
[00:11:42] you're talking about you know um you
[00:11:46] know consolidating all the special
[00:11:48] operations under one umbrella that's not
[00:11:50] the Navy, Army, Marine Corps.
[00:11:52] >> No, it owns Air Force. Actually, make it
[00:11:55] own branch. It's own. I've always
[00:11:57] thought this was a good idea. I think I
[00:11:59] think it'd piss a lot of people off
[00:12:00] because the history would, you know,
[00:12:02] that would be the end of the Green
[00:12:03] Berets, the Navy Seals.
[00:12:04] >> Well, I made the suggestion one time
[00:12:06] that they ought to put the Navy under
[00:12:08] the Marine Corps.
[00:12:10] >> I thought I pulled my pecker out in
[00:12:12] front of them.
[00:12:12] >> Yeah.
[00:12:13] >> But but uh I think it just gets rid of
[00:12:18] the
[00:12:20] competition. And when I mean
[00:12:21] competition, I don't mean, you know,
[00:12:24] Green Bay to seal. I mean, competition
[00:12:26] is in the the salesmanship that goes
[00:12:30] into who's going to get what specific
[00:12:32] operation that I would think that that
[00:12:34] all goes away because it will be put on
[00:12:36] some type of
[00:12:37] >> It won't all go away, but it'll make it
[00:12:38] a lot cleaner.
[00:12:39] >> The other thing more transparent.
[00:12:41] >> Yeah. And then the other thing is, you
[00:12:43] know, after World War II, we had all
[00:12:44] these bases all over the world, you
[00:12:46] know, Germany, everywhere, right? And
[00:12:50] and and those become the commands
[00:12:52] themselves. you know, Yukcom, Sentcom,
[00:12:55] ARICOM, Paycom. And so, you know, those
[00:12:59] those whoever's in charge of Yukcom, for
[00:13:02] example, has two SEAL platoons and two
[00:13:06] SF units and you know what I mean? They
[00:13:09] have that allocated to Yukcom. And those
[00:13:12] leaders never want to they never want to
[00:13:14] give up an asset no matter what's going
[00:13:16] on in the rest of the world. So that
[00:13:19] creates a shortage because you have to
[00:13:20] send a [ __ ] task unit of SEALs to
[00:13:22] Germany when there's two war wars going
[00:13:25] on in the Middle East. And if you had
[00:13:28] something like that, then it rips
[00:13:30] everything. It rips all the assets from
[00:13:32] these people that are [ __ ] hoarding
[00:13:34] it for no reason. And they all get
[00:13:36] allocated into the you see what I'm into
[00:13:39] the actual war zone, the conflict that
[00:13:41] is that is happening right now. A good
[00:13:44] example of that waste of uh of talent
[00:13:47] and energy was uh I was in detachment A
[00:13:50] in Berlin for six years
[00:13:53] and dead A reported directly
[00:13:57] to uh the joint chiefs of staff
[00:14:01] and the commanding general of uh Yukcom
[00:14:06] didn't like that. He didn't like the
[00:14:08] fact that we were OPCOM to the chiefs of
[00:14:11] staff and not under his toe.
[00:14:14] And eventually he got his way and got a
[00:14:17] hatchet man in there and it basically
[00:14:20] made the excuse that the cover that we
[00:14:22] were using was too transparent and they
[00:14:25] should reorganize it. They made it into
[00:14:27] an MP outfit and uh gave them the added
[00:14:31] tent.
[00:14:32] Dead A had a counterterrorism mission
[00:14:35] and their primary mission which was a
[00:14:37] staybehind mission in case the Russians
[00:14:39] got drunk and decided to invade
[00:14:42] >> and they would invade and we'd disappear
[00:14:44] into the population and start blowing up
[00:14:46] their rail yards and telecommunications
[00:14:48] and that and then we picked up the
[00:14:50] counterterrorism mission because nobody
[00:14:53] else was ready. Blue Light was in the
[00:14:55] process of forming and Charlie and Delta
[00:14:58] were in their infancy. So we were the
[00:15:02] the the designate if something happened
[00:15:06] in Europe or the Middle East for about
[00:15:09] I think four years before they got
[00:15:11] totally spun up. But you kept that
[00:15:14] mission and and kept the primary mission
[00:15:16] and then added a mission after you got
[00:15:19] control over it of doing uh security for
[00:15:23] all the diplomats overseas.
[00:15:27] >> Checking their houses, checking the
[00:15:29] embassies, checking their toilet, you
[00:15:31] know, whatever, you know, and and the
[00:15:33] guys did a that unit did a superlative
[00:15:36] job, but it was it was unnecessary.
[00:15:40] Yeah. you know, they misallocation made
[00:15:42] a separate unit to do that, you know,
[00:15:44] cuz the DIP security guys with the State
[00:15:47] Department are mostly SF anyway
[00:15:49] >> and you know, they've got that job.
[00:15:51] >> Yeah.
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[00:17:43] Let's get into your story real quick.
[00:17:46] Well, not real quick. It's going to be
[00:17:48] it's going to be a long interview, but
[00:17:51] everybody starts off with an
[00:17:52] introduction.
[00:17:54] Nick Brockhousen, a Green Bray with a
[00:17:58] 17-year career in the US special forces,
[00:18:00] including multiple combat tours in
[00:18:02] Vietnam. A veteran of the highly
[00:18:05] classified M. Vog, running covert recon
[00:18:09] missions deep into enemy territory in
[00:18:11] Laos in Vietnam, is part of recon team
[00:18:14] Habu in command and control north.
[00:18:19] the author of We Few: US Special Forces
[00:18:23] in Vietnam and its sequel, Whispers in
[00:18:26] the Tall Grass. You've since had
[00:18:28] adventures around the world and now run
[00:18:30] a tech company and an armory. This is a
[00:18:33] quote that I love.
[00:18:36] I'm cured for life of ever dating
[00:18:38] red-headed women or even making eye
[00:18:41] contact with them.
[00:18:42] >> Oh, never make eye contact.
[00:18:43] >> It isn't that I'm bonkers over them.
[00:18:45] They find me as some sort of training
[00:18:47] aid. I just don't have the deranged
[00:18:50] state in body fluids for that exercise
[00:18:52] anymore. I
[00:18:53] >> I don't really I I run from them.
[00:18:58] >> Oh [ __ ] I love that.
[00:19:01] Well, Nick, before we get started, I got
[00:19:03] a couple of things here. So, everybody
[00:19:06] that comes on the show
[00:19:09] gets a bag of these.
[00:19:12] Those are Vigilance Leak Gummy Bears.
[00:19:13] >> Gummy bears. out good for the trip back.
[00:19:15] >> That's right. That's right.
[00:19:17] >> Thank you.
[00:19:17] >> You're welcome. Made here in the USA.
[00:19:19] And I got Have you ever heard of USCCA?
[00:19:23] >> No.
[00:19:24] >> Well, USCCA
[00:19:27] has a soft spot in their heart for for
[00:19:29] Vietnam vets just like I do. And so they
[00:19:31] wanted me to give this to you.
[00:19:33] >> Oh, thank you.
[00:19:34] >> This is
[00:19:36] so basically that is an insurance policy
[00:19:39] for life. And if you ever have to defend
[00:19:42] yourself, your family, your friends,
[00:19:46] whatever happens, these guys will
[00:19:49] provide you the legal advice, the legal
[00:19:51] funding.
[00:19:53] >> Well, I'm old school
[00:19:55] >> and help you.
[00:19:56] >> I really don't need the insurance policy
[00:19:58] if you don't leave any witnesses.
[00:20:01] >> Well, if you do leave a witness,
[00:20:04] >> well, you know,
[00:20:04] >> USCA will be there to help you. So, as
[00:20:07] long as it's, you know, legitimate
[00:20:09] self-defense. So, but uh
[00:20:12] >> legitimate self-defense. Isn't that an
[00:20:14] oxymoron?
[00:20:15] >> I don't know. I don't know. But
[00:20:17] >> Well, thank you.
[00:20:18] >> You're welcome.
[00:20:19] >> And thank them.
[00:20:19] >> You're welcome.
[00:20:21] >> All right, Nick. So, I want to do I want
[00:20:23] to do a life story on you starting a
[00:20:26] childhood. So, where did you grow up?
[00:20:29] >> Well,
[00:20:30] my life started in 1969 when I was
[00:20:33] accepted into special forces selection
[00:20:36] course.
[00:20:37] >> Roger that. Is that where you want to
[00:20:38] start? Uh well, you I grew up po poor,
[00:20:43] relatively poor. My my parents were uh
[00:20:46] my my dad was uh
[00:20:49] um former Army Airore and my stepdad and
[00:20:54] my mom uh was a a waitress, a cook.
[00:21:01] It's like from Clockwork Orange. What
[00:21:04] What are you? Well, my father was
[00:21:05] Russian. My mother was a waitress. Yeah.
[00:21:08] But um they raised four kids on a
[00:21:12] waitress salary and a and a bartender.
[00:21:15] And we we actually
[00:21:19] we we lived in North Dakota and my dad
[00:21:22] had a farm.
[00:21:24] Um we had a 640 acres or something like
[00:21:29] that. We raised cattle, hogs, uh
[00:21:33] chickens, and and grain. You know, we we
[00:21:36] sold all of the above
[00:21:38] >> and uh two years of drought and uh
[00:21:42] another two years of floods put us out
[00:21:44] of the farming business.
[00:21:46] >> [ __ ]
[00:21:47] >> So, my dad was able to keep the farm and
[00:21:49] he took the money from the sale of the
[00:21:51] machinery and everything and we moved to
[00:21:54] Minnesota to a little town called uh
[00:21:56] Glenwood
[00:21:58] and um he opened a bar, hotel, and
[00:22:01] restaurant all in one building. M
[00:22:05] >> and that's where I spent my
[00:22:08] um formative from the time I was
[00:22:11] pre-teen until I was uh you know old
[00:22:13] enough to be drafted or whatever. And uh
[00:22:18] it was a great life. I mean I you know
[00:22:20] we I hunted, I fished, I skipped school
[00:22:23] to go squirrel hunting, you know, hid
[00:22:25] the hid the guns in a hollow tree
[00:22:27] outside where the where they had what
[00:22:29] they call a shop class. and we'd skitter
[00:22:32] out over the roof of the building and go
[00:22:34] squirrel hunting all afternoon. So I was
[00:22:37] very adept in the woods and we my
[00:22:40] brother and I had uh ran a trap line for
[00:22:43] a number of years
[00:22:45] um for make money to buy school clothes.
[00:22:49] >> No kidding.
[00:22:49] >> Yeah. the the Montgomery Ward and JC
[00:22:53] Penies. You know, you'd order your
[00:22:55] school clothes and that and your school
[00:22:58] clothes in the year before became your
[00:23:00] work and play clothes.
[00:23:01] >> What would you sell the fish?
[00:23:03] >> Huh?
[00:23:04] >> The trout line.
[00:23:05] >> Oh, trap line.
[00:23:06] >> Yeah.
[00:23:08] >> Outside of Glenwood, it was all woods.
[00:23:09] Woods and farmland. We trap mink. The
[00:23:12] There was a big swamp area that uh a
[00:23:17] number of them. and that that that uh
[00:23:20] muskrat, mink, um martins, fisher cats,
[00:23:25] you know, all of which brought good
[00:23:26] money and
[00:23:28] porcupines.
[00:23:30] >> No kidding.
[00:23:31] >> Yeah. Now,
[00:23:33] I got caught,
[00:23:35] my brother and I, you we killed these
[00:23:38] four porcupines and there was a bounty
[00:23:41] for porcupines
[00:23:43] that you had to take the nose, right?
[00:23:46] And then you pickle it and you take it
[00:23:48] down to the game warden and he'd send it
[00:23:50] in, you know, and you get I think it was
[00:23:52] like 25 bucks a for a porcupine. So we
[00:23:56] we're skinning the porcupines and that
[00:23:58] and I skin the pads off their paws and
[00:24:02] dropped it in the pickling of it's a
[00:24:04] nose.
[00:24:07] So instead of one nose, we now have five
[00:24:10] noses per porcupine.
[00:24:12] So we
[00:24:13] >> being dumb kids, you know, we we turned
[00:24:15] them all in and that game warden was
[00:24:17] drinking buddy and my father.
[00:24:20] He called my father up and he goes,
[00:24:22] "Well, either your two boys have cleaned
[00:24:24] out every porcupine between here and the
[00:24:26] Canadian border or they're up to
[00:24:28] something." So he sent it in to the
[00:24:30] University of Minnesota. Of course, it
[00:24:32] comes back, these are paws, and these
[00:24:34] are noses. And that they took us down
[00:24:36] and, you know, scared the [ __ ] out of us
[00:24:39] by locking us in a jail cell and Uh
[00:24:42] >> well I think I was like 12 or 13 at the
[00:24:44] time. You know a lot of fun. You know I
[00:24:47] I learned I learned how to exist in the
[00:24:50] woods.
[00:24:50] >> Yeah.
[00:24:51] >> You know learned how to track, learned
[00:24:52] how to you know learned animals, learned
[00:24:54] their habits. Um had a lot of fun with
[00:24:58] my brother and my little brother who was
[00:25:01] built like a crash dummy because that's
[00:25:03] the only way he survived childhood.
[00:25:06] And then eventually, you know, I I went
[00:25:10] into the military
[00:25:13] and uh
[00:25:16] eventually evolved into I I learned the
[00:25:18] ground rules for the military and then
[00:25:22] applied for special forces and was
[00:25:24] accepted in 1968
[00:25:27] or 69.
[00:25:29] And uh I went to went to jump school,
[00:25:33] went to SF selection course, came out of
[00:25:36] the selection course and uh went to
[00:25:40] Vietnam for my second tour.
[00:25:42] >> What was your first tour?
[00:25:44] >> The Marines.
[00:25:46] >> The Marines. You were a Marine.
[00:25:47] >> Did I just mumble that?
[00:25:48] >> Why are you mumbling?
[00:25:50] >> I didn't. I didn't. I have a lot of
[00:25:52] respect for the Marine Corps, you know.
[00:25:54] >> Me, too.
[00:25:55] >> Taught me my craft. taught me that I
[00:25:57] actually could work under pressure.
[00:26:00] Um, you know, when I first transferred
[00:26:04] services, you know, that you got to go
[00:26:07] through that, you know, basic training,
[00:26:09] AIT and that and then you're in a casual
[00:26:12] status for a certain amount of time
[00:26:14] before I
[00:26:16] went to special forces selection course.
[00:26:18] I went to Korea and I was with the
[00:26:20] second division up there on the DMZ.
[00:26:24] uh during the Maya or during the uh the
[00:26:27] Pueblo incident.
[00:26:29] >> I'm not familiar with
[00:26:31] >> that was a a spy ship that the North
[00:26:33] Koreans captured and at the same time
[00:26:37] they sent a 40man commando outfit down
[00:26:39] to Seoul to try and assassinate the
[00:26:42] president of South Korea. And the second
[00:26:45] division was in the sector. Everybody in
[00:26:48] the country was hunting for these guys.
[00:26:50] They got recognized at the front gate of
[00:26:52] the blue palace because the guard
[00:26:54] recognized their accent wasn't from the
[00:26:56] south and a run and gun battle started
[00:26:59] there and they uh I was um my company
[00:27:04] was assigned as a um backup unit to the
[00:27:09] Koreans, the White Horse Division that
[00:27:13] eventually went to Vietnam from the
[00:27:15] Koreans and they tracked down the last
[00:27:18] 15 survivors And we were part of the
[00:27:20] sweep that drove them up on top this
[00:27:22] mountain and they committed suicide at
[00:27:26] the last minute and
[00:27:27] >> [ __ ]
[00:27:28] >> And then I got transferred from there
[00:27:30] then back to Fort Benning to go through
[00:27:31] jump school and then eventually in the
[00:27:33] special forces.
[00:27:34] >> Why did you join the Marine Corps first?
[00:27:36] >> I got drafted.
[00:27:37] >> You got drafted?
[00:27:38] >> Yeah.
[00:27:39] >> How did the Okay.
[00:27:41] What was that like?
[00:27:43] >> It's like the Marines
[00:27:45] >> to get drafted. I mean, how did the
[00:27:47] letter come? I was going to enlist,
[00:27:50] >> you know,
[00:27:52] it just uh time and events caught up
[00:27:55] with me before I could enlist. And in
[00:27:57] those days, you couldn't step out of the
[00:27:58] line
[00:27:59] >> and and move over and enlist and take a
[00:28:01] a three-year in the army once you were
[00:28:05] designated. You went, you know,
[00:28:07] and it was uh it was interesting.
[00:28:11] >> What was your first tour like?
[00:28:13] >> What was your first tour in Vietnam
[00:28:15] like?
[00:28:21] uh a line company. You never knew where
[00:28:23] you were going. Just know that you were
[00:28:25] going to get in a fight and eventually,
[00:28:28] you know, you'd get mauled or you'd maul
[00:28:30] them and then come back to it. Same
[00:28:33] thing was in Korea with the with the
[00:28:35] second division. We were up on the DMZ
[00:28:38] and that's all we did was we either were
[00:28:40] in the towers or we were over in the DMZ
[00:28:42] doing hunter killer patrols. Same exact
[00:28:45] thing, just more intense in Vietnam than
[00:28:47] it was in Korea.
[00:28:48] >> No [ __ ]
[00:28:49] >> Yeah.
[00:28:53] >> How was South How was Korea?
[00:28:55] >> What?
[00:28:56] >> How was Korea?
[00:28:58] >> Cold.
[00:28:59] >> Cold.
[00:29:00] >> Cold. Wet. Nasty. Everything smelled
[00:29:04] like human [ __ ] And well, the
[00:29:06] demilitarized zone, there was nobody
[00:29:08] over there. They basically cleared all
[00:29:10] the Koreans out of there in the southern
[00:29:12] part of the DMZ. When once you crossed
[00:29:15] the Mjim River, you were in the
[00:29:18] demilitarized zone and that extended up
[00:29:21] to the actual border and then well you
[00:29:24] had the the line of towers and wire
[00:29:26] which they were just putting in during
[00:29:28] that time. They didn't have them at
[00:29:30] originally we there was just foxholes.
[00:29:32] He's you did went out and they set up
[00:29:34] machine gun positions and and then the
[00:29:36] foxholes in a line like a line outfit
[00:29:38] does, you know, and then gradually they
[00:29:41] started replacing that with a fence
[00:29:43] system and uh 25 ft wooden towers with
[00:29:47] machine guns in them. And then then they
[00:29:50] had gates and there was a minefield
[00:29:53] this side and a a death strip that was
[00:29:56] raked and cleaned so you could see
[00:29:58] tracks and that and and then on the
[00:30:01] north side of the border there were uh
[00:30:05] uh there were some minefields but there
[00:30:08] was a lot of old minefields left over
[00:30:10] from the war. You had to really be a lot
[00:30:13] of them were marked and a lot of them
[00:30:14] weren't. You had to be really careful
[00:30:17] where you were moving about.
[00:30:20] The hunter I I like the hunter killer
[00:30:22] patrols better than I like the static.
[00:30:25] Just sitting there all night getting
[00:30:27] eaten by mosquitoes in the summertime
[00:30:29] and freezing your balls off in the
[00:30:30] winter. Yeah.
[00:30:33] A lot of interesting. This is where I
[00:30:34] first discovered kimchi.
[00:30:37] >> Chei.
[00:30:38] >> Kimchi. You know what kimchi is?
[00:30:39] >> No.
[00:30:40] >> Pickled cabbages.
[00:30:41] >> Oh, I do know what that is.
[00:30:43] >> Wow. There was like they they make kept
[00:30:46] I make my own now.
[00:30:47] >> Nice. And you store it in porcelain jars
[00:30:52] and in the old days they used to put a
[00:30:53] like a straw stopper in the top of it
[00:30:56] and it was about that big around that. I
[00:30:58] stepped through one of them out in a DMZ
[00:31:01] and pulled my foot out. What is that?
[00:31:03] And the Koreans I was with went [ __ ]
[00:31:05] went nuts. Ah kimchi. You know they
[00:31:08] started dipping it out with their
[00:31:09] canteen cups and that. But uh a lot of
[00:31:12] destroyed villages
[00:31:14] uh really kind of ghostly moving around
[00:31:18] in they uh lot of fog
[00:31:23] uh a lot of activities some months and a
[00:31:27] lot of months with no activity. You know
[00:31:30] you were always trying to probe the wire
[00:31:34] >> and get through and slip infiltrators
[00:31:36] in. There was a funny story. There was a
[00:31:41] our sister unit was a third battalion of
[00:31:44] the 38th and they had there's two
[00:31:47] bridges that crossed the MGM one down by
[00:31:49] Pamejun and one up north by Nuler and
[00:31:53] the one up north was called the Freedom
[00:31:56] Bridge and there they had machine gun
[00:32:00] posts along the bridge looking down into
[00:32:02] the MJM River which at that point is
[00:32:05] probably
[00:32:07] couple hundred meters wide and and if
[00:32:10] During the monsoon season, it's flooded.
[00:32:12] It's moving fast. This was kind of in
[00:32:16] between.
[00:32:18] >> And one of the machine gun post opened
[00:32:20] up, just blast away said, "I got a
[00:32:22] submarine in the water."
[00:32:25] And of course, they had sergeant of the
[00:32:27] guard and lieutenant ran out there and
[00:32:29] they looked, they don't see [ __ ] right?
[00:32:30] So they the guy was a spec four. They
[00:32:35] took him back and they had him down to
[00:32:36] the the the Sykes to make sure he wasn't
[00:32:40] didn't crack up in that. And then, you
[00:32:41] know, he's going, "No, I saw a
[00:32:42] submarine. I saw a submarine." [ __ ]
[00:32:45] Right. Two weeks later, a mini slub
[00:32:48] washed up on a sandbar.
[00:32:50] >> Are you serious?
[00:32:51] >> Between that bridge and the next bridge
[00:32:53] with with the crewman still in it. He
[00:32:56] had shot the the conning tower and the
[00:32:59] one guy got stuck in the escape hatch
[00:33:01] and they all drowned. Well, he died of
[00:33:04] they made him a staff sergeant and sent
[00:33:06] him back to the states.
[00:33:08] >> Yeah.
[00:33:08] >> Wow.
[00:33:09] >> Yeah.
[00:33:10] >> There all kinds of little incidents like
[00:33:12] that. They, you know, they tried many
[00:33:14] subs off the coast, many subs up the M
[00:33:17] gym. Um, a lot of times trying to come
[00:33:20] across in rafts, you know, either rubber
[00:33:23] rafts or rafts they made out of
[00:33:25] vegetation and try and just float across
[00:33:27] and make their way strip down and come
[00:33:30] across. Of course, in those days, we had
[00:33:32] the mighty PRC6
[00:33:35] walkie-talkie for you at squad level and
[00:33:38] uh I think it was the
[00:33:40] PRC10
[00:33:43] which you had to calibrate all the time
[00:33:45] to keep it on frequency. You spit there
[00:33:48] was too much humidity in the air for it
[00:33:50] to stay on frequency.
[00:33:53] But a lot of the the weapon was uh M14s
[00:33:59] and I I think when I first got over
[00:34:01] there we still had BARS
[00:34:03] for the squad automatic weapon and that
[00:34:06] uh rather than the M14 E2 cuz all that
[00:34:10] [ __ ] was going south.
[00:34:12] >> But uh interesting tour. I I remember
[00:34:16] when it took uh from the DMZ to Soul
[00:34:20] was a grueling, bouncing,
[00:34:23] jarring ride in the back of a Ducenap
[00:34:26] that took three and a half hours
[00:34:28] on the Ottoman. Now the freeway takes 15
[00:34:32] minutes to get from Soul to the DMZ.
[00:34:35] >> Jeez.
[00:34:37] >> So how long were you how long were you
[00:34:39] there?
[00:34:40] >> Uh 11 months.
[00:34:42] >> And where did you go from there? I went
[00:34:44] to uh jump school.
[00:34:46] >> You went to jump school,
[00:34:47] >> right? And from jump school and
[00:34:49] selection.
[00:34:51] >> When where was the Vietnam where was the
[00:34:52] Vietnam
[00:34:53] >> before that?
[00:34:55] >> Okay.
[00:34:55] >> Yeah.
[00:34:56] >> Do you want to talk about that?
[00:34:58] >> Same as as Korea being a grunt. You
[00:35:01] know,
[00:35:04] I I have an undying love for the core.
[00:35:09] If they'd have spent all that money on
[00:35:12] the core,
[00:35:13] they would have had a true UW
[00:35:16] capability.
[00:35:18] Like I said, I made the suggestion once
[00:35:20] that the Marines should be in charge of
[00:35:22] the Navy and it was it wasn't well taken
[00:35:25] in that. But it uh
[00:35:30] I learned discipline and I learned that
[00:35:33] I could operate under pressure and I
[00:35:36] learned that I could take a lot of
[00:35:38] suffering and still keep going
[00:35:40] and that uh that helped me a lot when I
[00:35:43] decided to transfer over. Yeah. First of
[00:35:47] all, I went in the army and in special
[00:35:50] forces because you could get promoted.
[00:35:53] you didn't have to wait for somebody to
[00:35:55] die up the chain of command for a slot
[00:35:57] to open.
[00:35:59] So it was, you know, and you know, at
[00:36:02] that time, special forces was vogue. You
[00:36:06] go into the Green Beretss, you know,
[00:36:08] it's the, you know, be all the man you
[00:36:10] can be or whatever the slogan was. And I
[00:36:13] found it interesting. I found it really
[00:36:15] interesting because I read a lot when I
[00:36:18] was in high school, like I said, about
[00:36:20] the OSS and about the Commandos and the
[00:36:23] Rangers and, you know, and you know, the
[00:36:26] Raiders, you know, all all those
[00:36:28] specialized outfits and it seemed like
[00:36:30] the thing that I could fit well in.
[00:36:35] >> How did you did you see any Mav any SAG
[00:36:40] guys when you were in the Marine Corps?
[00:36:42] >> No.
[00:36:43] >> No. No, no. You know, when I even when I
[00:36:47] was at CCN, we I we worked with Tong
[00:36:50] Duchan, the seal seals over at Tong
[00:36:53] Duchan.
[00:36:54] >> How was it?
[00:36:55] >> It was fun. I mean, they had a warrant
[00:36:57] officer named Mr. Johnson. Funny guy.
[00:37:00] Funny guy. Whip cruel, too, if he had
[00:37:02] had to be. And uh we used to change, you
[00:37:06] know, equipment. You know, you need
[00:37:09] this. Well, I got some extra of that.
[00:37:11] RPD links. Yeah, we got some of those,
[00:37:13] you know, uh RPDs. Yeah, we got four of
[00:37:15] those extra and that we back and forth.
[00:37:18] And we did a couple of missions where
[00:37:20] they supported us with a one time with
[00:37:25] with a full seat SEAL team on a
[00:37:27] amphibious uh landing
[00:37:30] to to blow up a bridge and uh
[00:37:35] they
[00:37:37] typhoon or some sort of storm came up.
[00:37:39] They got washed way down the coast and
[00:37:42] didn't make the rendevous and we came in
[00:37:44] from the land. And uh we found their
[00:37:48] boats. They they washed up down down the
[00:37:52] coast and that and they managed to
[00:37:54] infiltrate in and get picked up by a
[00:37:56] helicopter and that but uh they didn't
[00:37:58] make the target and we didn't make the
[00:38:00] target consequently too. Bad storm.
[00:38:02] >> Damn. Uh they they had some uh Marines
[00:38:06] with the the SEALs that were working
[00:38:08] with the nasty boats. You know what the
[00:38:10] nasty boats are?
[00:38:11] >> I don't.
[00:38:13] >> Uh they
[00:38:16] it gets kind of convoluted. The the CIA
[00:38:19] ran some of the projects and the
[00:38:21] military was gradually taking over from
[00:38:24] them. The nasty boats were Norwegian uh
[00:38:27] PT boats.
[00:38:29] >> Okay.
[00:38:29] >> Real fast, you know, armed to the teeth
[00:38:31] and that. And what they were doing, they
[00:38:34] were going up into North Vietnam and
[00:38:36] taking agents and putting them ashore
[00:38:39] with those boats and then and same thing
[00:38:41] doing raids and coming back out. And
[00:38:44] there was there were uh force recon
[00:38:48] marines that were with them with the
[00:38:50] SEALs working that project. And that I
[00:38:54] never it's like now you you see all
[00:38:57] these guys that you know claim that
[00:38:59] their unit was max you know that force
[00:39:03] recon was max. Well I don't know if it
[00:39:05] was ever on the T. I never saw force
[00:39:08] recon running recon missions for max.
[00:39:11] They might have. You know I was in one
[00:39:13] project. There were two others three
[00:39:15] others. You know that that's possible.
[00:39:18] But you know, Max Sog originally was the
[00:39:22] SEALs and special forces. The SEALs were
[00:39:25] down south, you know, where you guys,
[00:39:27] you know, with the place is flooded.
[00:39:29] It's your natural habitat.
[00:39:31] >> Keep your skin wet all the time, you
[00:39:34] know, go into hyperventilation
[00:39:36] and up anything north into the highlands
[00:39:38] and up up to North Vietnam was, you
[00:39:41] know, our kind of terrain. So it was uh
[00:39:44] those two units that basically made up
[00:39:48] the core of it. I did a study on my own
[00:39:52] when I was writing my first two books.
[00:39:55] Um the original toe for MacG
[00:40:01] was 1,174
[00:40:04] Americans assigned to it. That included
[00:40:07] all the officers, all the, you know, the
[00:40:09] support units, all the all the radio
[00:40:12] relay sites, all the, you know, the
[00:40:14] people that were at the launch sites and
[00:40:16] the two out the two sections of it that
[00:40:19] actually ran ground combat operations.
[00:40:22] So, you take all that support stuff and
[00:40:24] shove it over here. You have
[00:40:28] all right we had 18 teams
[00:40:31] that were recon and usually each team
[00:40:34] had two Americans assigned to it so
[00:40:38] sometimes three but two normally that's
[00:40:41] 36 people in recon company the hatchet
[00:40:45] force they had two guys per platoon or
[00:40:49] whatever you got three platoon so you
[00:40:51] had six guys in each company and they
[00:40:53] had three companies
[00:40:55] So 18 there 36
[00:40:59] uh it's what 48 people that are on the
[00:41:02] ground running operations on the ground
[00:41:05] and I've met 18,000 of them since I left
[00:41:08] the war
[00:41:10] >> cuz everybody I was yeah I was in Mecca
[00:41:13] yeah sure you were
[00:41:16] >> it's a very small group and
[00:41:18] I think there was during its entire time
[00:41:21] if you took those numbers and translated
[00:41:24] into nine mirrors and that that's about
[00:41:26] uh about 4,000 plus people and only half
[00:41:30] of us survived the war. Little less than
[00:41:33] half of us survived the war. So it it's
[00:41:35] it's a small small fraternity.
[00:41:38] >> Yep. Yep.
[00:41:41] Very elite.
[00:41:42] >> It uh and I you know I go to the S SOA
[00:41:46] every year because there's 30 guys I
[00:41:48] like to drink with that are like
[00:41:49] brothers. the rest of that hoopa with
[00:41:52] the politicians and that I've never been
[00:41:54] to a business meeting yet.
[00:41:58] >> They've tried a number of times to shut
[00:42:00] the bar down during the business meeting
[00:42:02] and one time we got physical with the
[00:42:05] sergeant-at-arms and they've given up on
[00:42:08] that idea. They we don't go there for
[00:42:10] that, you know.
[00:42:11] >> Yeah.
[00:42:12] And and these days,
[00:42:15] well, when when we first started the S
[00:42:19] SOA, it was for recon.
[00:42:22] And then we went, well, that's not fair.
[00:42:24] The guys in the hatchet force should be
[00:42:26] in it, too. So, we let the guys from the
[00:42:28] hatchet force in. Then, we let the guys
[00:42:30] that were at the launch sites in and the
[00:42:33] cubby riders and people like that. And
[00:42:36] then when when we were out doing things,
[00:42:38] I I went to Africa for a while doing
[00:42:40] that. that wasn't going all the time.
[00:42:42] the colonels got in charge and then they
[00:42:45] started they needed members so they said
[00:42:48] well if you served in a unit that
[00:42:51] supported Max so that's how we got all
[00:42:54] the rotor heads in there all well I
[00:42:57] didn't disagree with the helicopter
[00:42:59] crews that flew us in and then were dumb
[00:43:01] enough to come back and pick us up you
[00:43:04] know but you know I didn't want their
[00:43:05] basketball control officer and their you
[00:43:08] know their their uh H&R guy or whatever
[00:43:11] they called Mhm.
[00:43:12] >> You know, so you ended up with a lot of
[00:43:13] people that were
[00:43:16] ramps that that got blessed into into
[00:43:19] the organization.
[00:43:21] >> I gota
[00:43:23] But there are fewer and fewer of us left
[00:43:26] every year. You know, the ranks are
[00:43:28] really really thinning.
[00:43:30] >> Yeah.
[00:43:30] >> Yeah.
[00:43:32] >> So what did you dying off early?
[00:43:38] Did you did you get out of service and
[00:43:41] then reinlist
[00:43:43] in the army or did you know straight
[00:43:46] across the board transfer? Well, yeah.
[00:43:48] And left at one and had to join the
[00:43:49] other.
[00:43:50] >> Okay.
[00:43:50] >> Basically,
[00:43:52] >> it's how it worked in those days.
[00:43:53] >> And you joined the army to go MVIS to
[00:43:57] go.
[00:43:57] >> No, I joined the army to to go special
[00:44:00] forces. Okay.
[00:44:01] >> And I got I was in casual status. So
[00:44:03] they, you know, they sent me to Korea
[00:44:06] while I was waiting to get a slot.
[00:44:08] >> Gotcha.
[00:44:09] >> Yeah. We'll just put you over here.
[00:44:11] You'll be comfortable.
[00:44:12] >> Gotcha.
[00:44:13] >> You already know what mosquitoes are
[00:44:14] like.
[00:44:16] Well,
[00:44:16] >> let's let's take a quick break and when
[00:44:19] we come back, we'll get into selection.
[00:44:23] >> Selection. Well, I don't know if I want
[00:44:26] to go into that.
[00:44:27] >> You don't?
[00:44:29] >> I'm joking.
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[00:47:33] All right, Nick, we're back from the
[00:47:35] break. We're getting ready to get into
[00:47:37] selection.
[00:47:39] >> Uh well, selection.
[00:47:42] Well, in in those days it was phase one,
[00:47:46] phase two, and phase three. Phase one
[00:47:48] was in Camp McCall. I can't remember how
[00:47:51] long it was. I think it was like a
[00:47:53] month. You went out and you learned
[00:47:55] basic patrolling, you learned survival,
[00:47:57] you learned uh target recognition, all
[00:48:00] the things that you know, woodcraft in
[00:48:02] that. and you jumped in and uh you lived
[00:48:06] in in those days we lived in tents, GP
[00:48:09] mediums and the only structures at Camp
[00:48:12] McCall were tarp paper shacks
[00:48:14] >> where the headquarters and the and the
[00:48:16] medic shack and the the classrooms were
[00:48:19] you know open air or sometimes you know
[00:48:22] under under canvas and that interesting
[00:48:26] interesting uh four weeks really
[00:48:29] intensive training with you know guys
[00:48:32] that the guy who funny story the guy who
[00:48:36] taught uh survival was a E7 named Rodney
[00:48:40] Rodney I think was his first name
[00:48:43] and N had a black eye patch cuz he'd
[00:48:46] gotten shot by an AK through his eye
[00:48:49] >> out one side and he was a typical crusty
[00:48:52] old redneck right and uh you know he
[00:48:56] taught you how to you know they'd kill
[00:48:57] snakes and you know they rabbits and
[00:49:01] other animals and teach you how to cook
[00:49:04] things, you know, take a um chickens and
[00:49:07] wrap them in mud and then put them in
[00:49:09] the coals of a fire and go do patrolling
[00:49:12] all day. When you came back, you just
[00:49:13] peel the mud off and it's uh it's roast
[00:49:15] chicken, right? Stuff like that. So, uh
[00:49:19] we were getting ready to finish up phase
[00:49:22] one and I was with a guy named Tony
[00:49:25] Anderson. Tony got a DSC
[00:49:29] uh when RT Kansas got wiped out. Um and
[00:49:35] he was a he was a pool shark when before
[00:49:38] he come in the army and that real cool
[00:49:41] guy was his nickname was fast Eddie. And
[00:49:44] uh Neil is sitting we were getting ready
[00:49:48] to get go back to Fort Bragg and go into
[00:49:50] our MOS training and uh Nil was uh was
[00:49:55] telling us well you know we ain't got no
[00:49:57] booze here but you can get high if you
[00:50:01] take the mortar charges from the Ford
[00:50:04] deuce cuz they look like little cheese
[00:50:06] packets.
[00:50:07] >> Mhm.
[00:50:07] >> So just bite off a little bit. It was
[00:50:09] nitroglycerin.
[00:50:10] So when what he didn't tell us was that
[00:50:13] all your capillaries explode.
[00:50:16] So Tony and I ate a little bit too large
[00:50:19] of a a chunk. We ended up in Wulmac Army
[00:50:22] Hospital and they thought we had
[00:50:24] menitis.
[00:50:26] We're laying in in the hospital ward.
[00:50:28] The doctor comes in. He goes, he had his
[00:50:31] clipboard. He goes, "Uh, let me ask you
[00:50:33] something. Do either one of you two
[00:50:35] gentlemen know Sergeant Nail?" And yes,
[00:50:38] sir. I said, "Well, he usually gets one
[00:50:40] or two of the students in every class."
[00:50:44] >> You don't have menitis, but you do have
[00:50:46] uh some damage to your capillaries and
[00:50:49] that. Yeah. But it was, you know, it was
[00:50:52] a good good training. A lot of good guys
[00:50:55] and went through a you know uh training
[00:50:58] group with then later you know went over
[00:51:01] to uh to become part of SOG or at that
[00:51:05] time they were still filling up the A
[00:51:06] teams over there. They were still active
[00:51:09] and the mike force was active still.
[00:51:11] Then I went to from there to weapons
[00:51:13] training and I was an 11 Charlie. Now I
[00:51:17] think it's an 18 Charlie or I think
[00:51:19] they're all 18 BBs now. But uh you went
[00:51:23] to small arms,
[00:51:26] pistols first, then uh submachine guns
[00:51:29] and and carbines and then rifles and
[00:51:31] machine guns. And then you trans the
[00:51:34] next phase of that training was heavy
[00:51:36] weapons training. and you train and it
[00:51:38] was both foreign and and US. So we shot,
[00:51:41] you know, the Bren gun, we shot the, you
[00:51:44] know, the RPD, we shot uh, you know, the
[00:51:46] the Madson, the
[00:51:50] Swedish K, all of those were in in the
[00:51:53] curriculum and that both classes,
[00:51:56] assembly, disassembly, so you could do
[00:51:58] it in the dark. And then finally range
[00:52:01] got to the range and you know combat
[00:52:02] course you know and regular marksmanship
[00:52:06] training and that with each weapon. And
[00:52:09] then you transferred to uh mortars and
[00:52:12] uh and we trained on the forduce the 81
[00:52:16] the 60 and both the Russian 82 and and
[00:52:21] the Russian equivalent of the 60. And
[00:52:24] then recoilless rifles, uh, the 57
[00:52:27] millimeter, the 106, the Russian
[00:52:30] equivalent, and German equivalents in
[00:52:34] that. And then, uh, the four deuce. We
[00:52:38] we did the four deuce and then, uh, the
[00:52:40] 105 Howitzer.
[00:52:42] So, we we learned up to the 105.
[00:52:45] >> Wow.
[00:52:46] >> Doing both. And you train both in the
[00:52:48] gun crew and then the fire direction
[00:52:50] control and then the forward reservers
[00:52:53] live fire on the ranges calling in fire
[00:52:56] while the rest of you know we some of
[00:52:58] you were manning the gun some of you
[00:53:00] were the FDC and some of you were out
[00:53:02] there as forward observers and that very
[00:53:05] intensive course very uh
[00:53:09] um very compacted so lot of uh lot of
[00:53:13] practical exercise combined with uh
[00:53:16] teaching in the classroom. And then when
[00:53:18] you finish that, meanwhile, those others
[00:53:22] from your uh phase one who were decided
[00:53:25] that they were going to be sparkies went
[00:53:28] to combo training and they did Morse
[00:53:32] code day after day after day after day
[00:53:35] after day. And they learned how to
[00:53:37] operate both our radios and the Soviet
[00:53:40] radios. in that and uh the engineers
[00:53:43] went off and learned how to build
[00:53:46] things, you know, build, you know,
[00:53:48] framing framing barracks, doing [ __ ]
[00:53:50] like that and also blowing things up.
[00:53:53] >> Very intensive course in in demolitions
[00:53:56] and that. And then the uh the radio
[00:54:00] engineers, we Oh, yeah. The medics. You
[00:54:04] know how medics are, right? Yeah. You
[00:54:06] know, sick sick. If there's a strange
[00:54:10] strange really goofy lane religion
[00:54:14] anywhere in the world, you can bet both
[00:54:17] your medics are practicing.
[00:54:19] And highly intelligent with the bedside
[00:54:23] banner of Dr. Mangala, you know, they
[00:54:26] they go for a real long course. And in
[00:54:29] those days, it was over a year. They'd
[00:54:31] go to for they they do uh they go to the
[00:54:35] 300 F1 course and then they would come
[00:54:39] back and do dog lab. And dog lab was
[00:54:42] they used to shoot dogs.
[00:54:44] >> And then their job was to treat the
[00:54:46] wound, manage the wound, heal the wound,
[00:54:49] bring the dog back. Right.
[00:54:51] >> Yeah. Live tissue.
[00:54:52] >> And all the, you know, the the cruelty
[00:54:55] the animal people got got on their case
[00:54:58] and they changed over to doing a goats.
[00:55:00] Mhm.
[00:55:01] >> And the only step different is removing
[00:55:03] the Arab from the back of the goat.
[00:55:06] Yeah. But uh very intensive course um to
[00:55:11] this day I would rather have a special
[00:55:14] forces medic treat me than any doctor.
[00:55:17] >> No kidding.
[00:55:17] >> Yeah. It's uh there in fact there's
[00:55:20] there's a guy that teaches the SEAL
[00:55:22] teams combat medicine. A guy named Ron
[00:55:25] Broen
[00:55:27] >> who was in Berlin with me. He originally
[00:55:29] was in project 404 in Laos and he went
[00:55:33] he came to dead A and he was a a medic
[00:55:35] there and he eventually he runs like 20
[00:55:38] emergency rooms in Florida and teaches
[00:55:42] up at uh the what is it uh Little Creek
[00:55:46] >> Mhm.
[00:55:46] >> you know to combat medicine there.
[00:55:48] >> Yeah.
[00:55:50] >> Muscled up
[00:55:52] really dyed almost white blonde hair and
[00:55:55] we call him Doc Savage.
[00:55:56] >> Nice. that uh and he does have the
[00:55:59] bedside banner of Dr. Mangula. Ah, it
[00:56:02] doesn't hurt that bad, you know. But uh
[00:56:06] special forces medic 18, what do they
[00:56:09] call them? Deltas.
[00:56:10] >> Mhm.
[00:56:11] >> Is that same in the SEALs? 18 deltas.
[00:56:13] Yeah.
[00:56:14] >> They
[00:56:14] >> Well, they're going through the army's
[00:56:16] delta course.
[00:56:17] >> Yeah. Absolutely. Wonderful course. You
[00:56:20] know, a special forces medics in the old
[00:56:23] days could get licensed as a practicing
[00:56:25] physi physician in over 20 countries.
[00:56:29] >> No kid could training was that good and
[00:56:32] that that well respected and that and to
[00:56:36] this day it's one of the best courses
[00:56:38] that the military offers.
[00:56:39] >> Yeah.
[00:56:40] >> Yeah. Don't leave them alone with your
[00:56:41] girlfriends or household pets.
[00:56:46] They uh and then when you finished with
[00:56:48] your MOS training, you went to phase
[00:56:50] three and they brought everybody back
[00:56:53] together and formed up teams, regular
[00:56:55] 12man team. They there'd be two officers
[00:56:58] assigned to it. They had gone through
[00:56:59] their own course over here, which I know
[00:57:04] taught them how not to scratch their
[00:57:05] nuts with the salad fork or whatever.
[00:57:08] and they would join the team and then
[00:57:09] you they jump you into gobbler woods
[00:57:12] exercise and you'd actually operate as
[00:57:14] an A team in an unconventional warfare
[00:57:17] scenario in that and once you and uh
[00:57:21] phase three also had uh a real intensive
[00:57:24] class in the beginning of it which was
[00:57:27] called methods of instruction
[00:57:30] >> where they taught you how to teach
[00:57:32] taught you how to teach the military way
[00:57:35] how to compress all that knowledge four
[00:57:38] hours of of uh of of data into one hour
[00:57:42] and make it stick so the dumbest guy in
[00:57:45] the class could get it. Then you moved
[00:57:47] on from there. And it touch of things
[00:57:50] like, you know, stage presence, you
[00:57:52] know, don't walk around with Air Force
[00:57:53] gloves on, hands in your pockets, you
[00:57:56] know, don't be a sword fighter with the,
[00:57:58] you know, with the stick, you know, and,
[00:58:01] you know, and and how to tell jokes to
[00:58:04] lighten things up and that, you know,
[00:58:06] some of the jokes I heard were really
[00:58:07] lame, too. But, uh, that was a a good
[00:58:11] part of that. and they they taught you
[00:58:13] the um special forces operations as a a
[00:58:18] team,
[00:58:19] >> but each MOS's responsibility were you
[00:58:22] know how to tie each other together with
[00:58:24] the team sergeant and then with the with
[00:58:25] the officers and that and uh once once
[00:58:28] you graduated from that you in those
[00:58:31] days you didn't get a flash on the back
[00:58:34] of your beret behind the crest until you
[00:58:36] graduated from the the uh the Q course
[00:58:40] as they call it now. Then you got a
[00:58:42] Before that you had a candy candy flash.
[00:58:45] >> No, you didn't have a flash at all. It
[00:58:47] was support troops that had the candy
[00:58:50] flash, the little ribbon the same colors
[00:58:52] as a as a group patches and that.
[00:58:55] >> Okay.
[00:58:55] >> Yeah. And then once you were
[00:58:58] threequalified, that was the beginning.
[00:59:00] You went to a group and you were
[00:59:02] actively assigned to a team and you
[00:59:06] started operating in a special forces
[00:59:08] team, you know, and whatever their
[00:59:09] missions were. Where did you go?
[00:59:12] >> Uh, I went to the sixth group. Like I
[00:59:13] said, it was a holding area for people
[00:59:16] that And I was in the sixth group, I
[00:59:18] think, for like six months, seven
[00:59:20] months, something like that. Uh, we did
[00:59:24] a real interesting in in those days the
[00:59:27] the Red Empire bling didn't have South
[00:59:31] America. It was the eighth group which
[00:59:34] was stationed out of Panama.
[00:59:37] and we did an MTT with the sixth group.
[00:59:40] We went down with them and we we went to
[00:59:42] uh Bolivia
[00:59:45] and uh at that time they were tracking
[00:59:47] down bandits in the mountains and that
[00:59:50] with the Bolivian uh wrench the rangers
[00:59:54] and uh which were strange. All of them
[00:59:56] were were Indians uh big barrelchested
[01:00:00] you know they they all operate above
[01:00:02] 6,000 ft. you know, in the flat lands
[01:00:05] they can they can run forever.
[01:00:07] >> Yeah.
[01:00:07] >> But uh they were tracking them down and
[01:00:10] they we were providing uh radio
[01:00:12] operators and uh some uh um I I went
[01:00:18] down there as a mortar instructor and
[01:00:21] that with the with the 2 in or 60 mm
[01:00:24] there. It was easy to pack around in the
[01:00:26] mountains and get it get it in the
[01:00:28] battery real quick. And they they were
[01:00:31] just starting to use indirect fire when
[01:00:33] they caught these these bandit groups
[01:00:35] which eventually became the Cinderea
[01:00:37] Luminosa
[01:00:39] were
[01:00:42] 30 60 100 man groups in that and they
[01:00:47] lived off raiding villages. They'd move
[01:00:50] into a village, they'd kill all the men,
[01:00:53] they'd rape the women till they used
[01:00:55] them up and throw all the bodies in the
[01:00:56] well and move on to the next village.
[01:00:59] and the rangers were right behind them
[01:01:01] trying to close them up. And we uh we
[01:01:04] tracked this one group in the time I was
[01:01:07] there for about
[01:01:09] about 60 kilometers over the mountains
[01:01:12] and finally caught them in in the
[01:01:14] makeshift bait camp and raided them and
[01:01:17] killed all of them except about maybe 10
[01:01:20] or 15 that escaped out of the net.
[01:01:23] >> You were on that?
[01:01:24] >> Yeah.
[01:01:24] >> How many of them were there? Uh, a
[01:01:27] little over a hundred when they started.
[01:01:30] >> Holy [ __ ] So you guys killed, you know,
[01:01:32] 85, 90 people.
[01:01:33] >> Oh, they were no match for the the the
[01:01:35] Bolivian Rangers. You know, they were,
[01:01:38] you know, they were terrorizing the
[01:01:40] countryside because nobody the militias
[01:01:42] really didn't have the firepower to
[01:01:44] stand up to them. And they were vicious.
[01:01:47] Vicious. Absolutely. They killed the
[01:01:50] children and throw them down the well.
[01:01:52] and then got done raping the women and
[01:01:54] kill them and throw them down the well,
[01:01:56] you know, poison the water and move on
[01:01:58] to the next target. And that
[01:02:00] >> what was the point of that? Why were
[01:02:02] they doing that?
[01:02:03] >> They were bandits.
[01:02:05] They were just they were just bandits.
[01:02:08] And they eventually the communists came
[01:02:10] in and kind of moved them around, cadied
[01:02:13] them and and and changed them into a you
[01:02:16] know an insurgent force against the uh
[01:02:20] the the the government. And that it was
[01:02:24] it was interesting.
[01:02:26] Uh
[01:02:28] how do I put this? We while we were up
[01:02:30] there, we found a an Inca grave.
[01:02:37] And I removed a couple of terracotta
[01:02:40] figures that were inside that grave and
[01:02:43] stuck them in my rucks sack to bring
[01:02:45] them back cuz they were really one of
[01:02:46] them was a corn god and the other one
[01:02:48] was uh the like they were Loki, you
[01:02:52] know, and I had them in my rucks sack,
[01:02:54] right? And uh
[01:02:57] when we were in the mountains, they they
[01:02:59] came around,
[01:03:02] they came around, they they pulled the
[01:03:03] sergeant would pull out a what looked
[01:03:05] like a bar of soap, kind of a brown
[01:03:07] colored bar of soap, take a pen knife,
[01:03:11] cut a sliver up, give it to you, and
[01:03:13] said, "Chew this." And it helps you
[01:03:15] assimilate oxygen in the high altitudes
[01:03:18] and that. Well, it was coke. It was
[01:03:20] cocaine based material in that. So,
[01:03:23] normally they would give one bar to
[01:03:26] every three or five men and that and it
[01:03:29] ended up he was giving me one bar by
[01:03:31] myself. So, I wasn't using it after a
[01:03:34] while. I didn't need it and that I was
[01:03:35] just chucking it in my uh my rucks sack.
[01:03:38] So, we flew back to Bragg. They'd line
[01:03:41] us up and customs comes. They're going
[01:03:44] to search everybody's bag. And they uh
[01:03:47] dump my bag out. And I was really
[01:03:49] worried they'd find the two little
[01:03:51] terracotta things. They weren't even
[01:03:53] interested in that when they cuz it says
[01:03:56] on the outside of the cardboard box, you
[01:03:58] know, product deca, right? So, as soon
[01:04:02] as that fell out, they were interested
[01:04:04] only that. So, they they got me standing
[01:04:07] there and I had like I five or six bars
[01:04:09] in my rucks sack. And he goes, "What's
[01:04:12] this?" I said, "Well, it's the stuff
[01:04:13] they gave us to assimilate oxygen at
[01:04:16] high altitudes and that." And they're
[01:04:17] like, "Really?"
[01:04:20] So, they called for my sergeant major
[01:04:22] was Sergeant Major Louis Brown. Little
[01:04:25] short guy. Um, it looked like a fire
[01:04:28] plug they painted a face on. And he
[01:04:31] comes out there and what the [ __ ] have
[01:04:33] you done now? I don't know. I mean, it's
[01:04:36] a And he's standing there with me and
[01:04:38] the two customs guys are standing there
[01:04:40] and we're like acting like
[01:04:42] what's the problem here? And the older
[01:04:44] guy, the younger guy turns to the older
[01:04:47] guy, he goes, you know, I don't think
[01:04:48] they know what we're talking about. And
[01:04:50] he goes, I'm pretty sure they don't.
[01:04:53] They ended up confiscated them and I I
[01:04:55] got through with my two little
[01:04:57] terracotta figures and that, you know,
[01:04:59] but it was
[01:05:00] >> congratulations.
[01:05:01] >> Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But uh
[01:05:03] >> we'll have to add drug smuggler to your
[01:05:05] uh introduction.
[01:05:06] >> Oh, yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah, the uh it
[01:05:11] was I I thoroughly enjoyed special
[01:05:13] forces training and I thoroughly enjoyed
[01:05:16] the process by which I finally finally
[01:05:19] got on an A team and then started I I
[01:05:23] came back from Bolivia
[01:05:26] and about uh a month later I got my
[01:05:29] orders to go to Vietnam.
[01:05:31] Yeah. And I was supposed to go to the
[01:05:33] mic force. And um when we got to
[01:05:37] Vietnam, I said this guy Bernie
[01:05:39] O'Connell, "Never have the Irish
[01:05:41] involved with anything you're doing
[01:05:44] because
[01:05:45] they hear loud noises. They think it's a
[01:05:48] wake." Right? So when we got to Natrang,
[01:05:52] I sent them with our orders. I said, "Go
[01:05:54] over and make sure we don't get policed
[01:05:56] up by one of those press gangs." But
[01:05:58] because we were at the regular repo
[01:06:00] depot in in uh Saigon in the tons or
[01:06:03] wherever and uh I sent him over with the
[01:06:06] paperwork for the we were supposed to go
[01:06:08] to the mic force and he comes because
[01:06:11] the press gangs from the regular army
[01:06:13] divisions were looking for NCOs's and
[01:06:16] they'd pay somebody off in admin and
[01:06:18] they'd take four or five out of the lift
[01:06:21] and assign them as platoon soldiers or
[01:06:23] squad leaders to the division.
[01:06:26] He comes back and uh I had uh
[01:06:31] he brought back some Bammy Bob beer and
[01:06:33] a net and I I had stolen a CO2 fire
[01:06:37] extinguisher. We were busy lowering his
[01:06:40] body temperature in the room. And he
[01:06:42] goes, "Oh, good thing you sent me over
[01:06:45] there because they we were on a list to
[01:06:47] go to the big red one." And I I'm going
[01:06:51] uh but obviously it's not all bad news
[01:06:54] because he's back here and he's
[01:06:55] gritting. He goes, I ran into a guy. Now
[01:07:00] Bernie was mid to late 40s. Was a buck
[01:07:04] sergeant. He had been a master sergeant.
[01:07:06] He got out of the army and got into
[01:07:08] high-tech field of air conditioning,
[01:07:12] >> but he didn't have the accounting
[01:07:13] skills. So it he went bankrupt. So he
[01:07:16] rejoined the army. bulbous nose, Irish
[01:07:20] face, you know, look like a oversized
[01:07:22] leprechaun.
[01:07:23] So he's he's I got us a good deal. This
[01:07:27] guy I know, he was in the Davy Crockett
[01:07:29] platoon with me in Germany. You know
[01:07:31] what the Davy Crockett was? It was a
[01:07:34] weapon that was deployed down to the I
[01:07:38] think battalion level. And what it was
[01:07:41] was a
[01:07:43] an oversized mortar that shot a 1
[01:07:47] kiloton
[01:07:49] atomic shell.
[01:07:51] >> Holy [ __ ]
[01:07:52] >> And it was the instructions were get in
[01:07:55] the battery, get the get the gun ready,
[01:07:59] fire the cannon, and try and get a ridge
[01:08:02] line between you and the target before
[01:08:04] it goes off. you know, was it was Tony
[01:08:07] and all the army divisions at that time.
[01:08:11] Uh
[01:08:12] I think he Bernie might have been
[01:08:14] slapping leather to the guy's wife for a
[01:08:17] while.
[01:08:18] >> Comes back and he goes, "I got this
[01:08:20] assigned to the special forces unit.
[01:08:22] There's a waiting line to get in."
[01:08:25] >> Then Bernie, the only waiting line in
[01:08:27] this country is at the airport to get
[01:08:29] out. Said, "No, no, no, no. It's a
[01:08:32] special units all voluntary and that."
[01:08:34] And that's when my heart fell to my
[01:08:37] [ __ ] and he goes, "It's CCN."
[01:08:40] Well, I knew some people that had been
[01:08:42] in projects CCC CCN whatsoever. And all
[01:08:46] of them were nuttier than a than a
[01:08:48] squirrel. So I go, "Oh, this can't be
[01:08:50] good." But it is voluntary.
[01:08:53] So we we left Natrang, we went up to
[01:08:56] Daang. And as we were when when we uh
[01:09:01] when we were met at the airport, the
[01:09:03] most decrepit deuce and a half I've ever
[01:09:05] seen in my life was our transportation
[01:09:08] from the airport to CCN FOB4.
[01:09:12] And driving it was another friend of
[01:09:15] Bernie's that he'd known in the
[01:09:16] regimenal combat teams in uh in Korea
[01:09:20] who had a plate in his head. He also had
[01:09:23] instructions from the army. He's never
[01:09:25] to have pharmaceuticals and alcohol in
[01:09:28] his bloodstream and he had both when he
[01:09:30] picked us up. Stevie Cmerford got a DSC
[01:09:34] and he's driving like a madman. Yeah.
[01:09:38] And when we pulled into the compound,
[01:09:40] they were launching at one of the launch
[01:09:43] sites was shut down. They were using
[01:09:44] Daang as a launch site. When we pulled
[01:09:47] into the compound, there was a Cobra on
[01:09:50] fire on the PSP and and Bernie had been
[01:09:54] going, "Oh, this is probably like one of
[01:09:55] those show camps, you know, with, you
[01:09:57] know, crested on everything.
[01:09:58] Everything's cemented colored stones and
[01:10:00] that, you know, Bernie, this doesn't
[01:10:02] look like one of those show camps. This
[01:10:05] might be a little different than that."
[01:10:07] And that was my introduction to CCN
[01:10:09] basically.
[01:10:10] >> Wow.
[01:10:11] >> Sorry to travel so fast. No far.
[01:10:13] >> Yeah.
[01:10:15] So you get there.
[01:10:20] >> Do you know what Max Sag is yet?
[01:10:22] >> But I knew what Max Sog was because I
[01:10:24] knew some guys that were there before.
[01:10:26] It was I was proud to be there. It was
[01:10:29] also in the back of my mind once. This
[01:10:31] is a volunteer unit. This is a volunteer
[01:10:33] unit. This is a volunteer unit. But you
[01:10:36] know, peer pressure. You're never going
[01:10:37] to say I don't think I could cut it.
[01:10:39] >> How many of you guys went? Uh, I arrived
[01:10:42] with a uh
[01:10:45] I think there were nine of us.
[01:10:47] >> Nine of you
[01:10:48] >> that that got assigned there. And
[01:10:53] a year later, three of us were still
[01:10:56] running Raycon.
[01:10:57] >> [ __ ]
[01:10:59] Rest are either wounded or dead, you
[01:11:01] know. But, uh, we had a real high
[01:11:04] attrition rate, you know.
[01:11:06] So anyway, we process in, we pull into
[01:11:08] the front gate, get off the the deuce
[01:11:10] and a half, and I see these really
[01:11:13] ragged looking [ __ ] gypsies
[01:11:16] >> sitting on this. They had a you know
[01:11:18] what a mule is the vehicle.
[01:11:22] >> Mhm.
[01:11:22] >> Marines had them. They had a 106 mounted
[01:11:24] on it and it's a flat looks like a
[01:11:26] coffee table on wheels.
[01:11:28] >> Open seat with a drive with a steering
[01:11:32] wheel in that. Anyway, there there's
[01:11:34] five or six of them hanging around on it
[01:11:36] with cut off jungle fatigues and
[01:11:38] wearing, you know, various
[01:11:42] parts of uniforms and that drinking wine
[01:11:45] and uh when when we got out the truck,
[01:11:47] the cat calls started. Ah, new meat.
[01:11:49] This is great. Yeah. Whatsoever. And uh
[01:11:53] the guy they came out and they took us
[01:11:55] in. They processed us in and uh
[01:11:59] um I think two guys went to the hatchet
[01:12:02] force and the rest of us got assigned a
[01:12:04] recon. So we got our briefing from the
[01:12:07] sergeant major. You know, this is a
[01:12:09] voluntary unit. This is what we do.
[01:12:11] We're strategic recon outfit. You're
[01:12:14] going to be assigned to a recon team.
[01:12:16] When you get down to recon company,
[01:12:18] you'll the recon company commander will
[01:12:20] brief you and assign you to your teams.
[01:12:24] By dandy, we get down to recon company
[01:12:28] and uh my first introduction to Larry T.
[01:12:32] Manus was a recon company commander.
[01:12:35] Former E7
[01:12:37] looked like a heavy gravity planet
[01:12:40] inhabitant. thick neck, squareface, crew
[01:12:43] cut, blonde, and uh we we're standing
[01:12:48] outside the orderly room and the door
[01:12:51] bursts open and a body comes flying out
[01:12:54] and lands in the sand and the guy kind
[01:12:57] of shakes his head, gets up, stumbles
[01:13:00] out down into the company and that and
[01:13:03] the door swings open and there's Mayus
[01:13:07] says, "Uh, I'm the recon company
[01:13:09] commander and this is your briefing,
[01:13:12] your uh your orientation
[01:13:16] and spoiling my drinking time said, "You
[01:13:20] can call me sir, you can call me
[01:13:22] [ __ ] sir, or you can just hide
[01:13:24] when I'm looking for you." First man and
[01:13:27] I, you know, first of all, I recognize
[01:13:29] that this is a retread, you know? I
[01:13:32] mean, that kind of squat bread, you
[01:13:34] know, is immediately, you know,
[01:13:36] identifiable.
[01:13:38] So I said, "Uh, uh, sir, you know, worst
[01:13:41] thing I could have done is is this is a
[01:13:45] voluntary unit." Yeah, it is,
[01:13:47] peckerhead. You a barracks lawyer or
[01:13:50] what? I said, well, what did that guy
[01:13:53] do? He wanted to quit and I hate
[01:13:55] quitters. said since you're so astute in
[01:13:58] that, I'm gonna assign you without even
[01:14:00] interviewing and I'm gonna assign you to
[01:14:03] RT Habu and you can go over there and
[01:14:06] make that hooch a collective IQ of
[01:14:08] three. And that's how I got assigned to
[01:14:11] Haboo.
[01:14:13] >> Right on.
[01:14:13] >> I I love M Larry. He's in a he's in a
[01:14:16] hospice at home now. But uh
[01:14:19] >> Oh man,
[01:14:19] >> just absolutely the best uh officer I
[01:14:23] ever served under. And Larry Larry had
[01:14:25] been in projects in the very beginning.
[01:14:28] We still wearing box hats, you know,
[01:14:31] yellow name tapes. It should have. Yeah.
[01:14:33] And um they protected us from all the
[01:14:37] [ __ ] and took the flack for all our
[01:14:41] shenanigans and that. Yeah.
[01:14:44] >> Sounds like a good man.
[01:14:46] >> Yeah. Well, when I stole the halftrack,
[01:14:47] he confiscated it. Not not because he
[01:14:50] wanted it for any other purpose and it
[01:14:54] had two big whip antennas on it with
[01:14:56] little guidelines and no radios just so
[01:14:59] it would slap back and forth when he
[01:15:00] slammed on the brakes and that you don't
[01:15:03] need this here. I'm confiscating it.
[01:15:07] I think it ended up in security company
[01:15:10] and somewhere else.
[01:15:14] >> So how did it go when you got to when
[01:15:16] you checked into Habou? When what
[01:15:19] >> when you checked into Habou, how did it
[01:15:21] go?
[01:15:21] >> Yeah. Well,
[01:15:24] they had just come back from Quantry and
[01:15:28] they were on standown and they uh
[01:15:33] Do you need to throw up or?
[01:15:34] >> Nope.
[01:15:35] >> Oh, doing
[01:15:38] my breath.
[01:15:39] >> Yeah. Uh Jimmy Johnson and Minnie Mack
[01:15:44] were in the Hooch. Um, Snake was up at
[01:15:48] at headquarters. He was the one zero and
[01:15:51] and Danzer. Danzer and Mac and Jimmy
[01:15:56] Johnson. So, they're sitting there.
[01:15:58] They're cleaning weapons. And Mac was
[01:16:00] cleaning a a 22 with a silencer. And I
[01:16:03] walked in. I said, and he goes, "Before
[01:16:06] you say anything, you're obviously the
[01:16:09] new guy and you've obviously run into
[01:16:13] Dwee Manus.
[01:16:15] Did you question him? Did you make a
[01:16:19] comment? What did you do to get assigned
[01:16:22] here? And I go, "Well, I asked him about
[01:16:26] it being a volunteer unit." He says,
[01:16:27] "Well, he sent you here just to annoy us
[01:16:30] cuz you're obviously a Yankee."
[01:16:33] About that time, Castillo, the Cuban,
[01:16:37] was I think he was on Bolton's team at
[01:16:38] that time, walks in,
[01:16:42] oily little [ __ ] that he is, and M and
[01:16:45] he goes over to the refrigerator, opens
[01:16:48] it up, takes a beer out of it, and
[01:16:50] starts to hold it up like that, and Mac
[01:16:52] pings it with with the 22, and it starts
[01:16:54] peeing all over the floor.
[01:16:55] >> Holy [ __ ]
[01:16:56] >> And he never misses the beat. He goes,
[01:16:58] "Just as a as a cautionary, don't have
[01:17:01] anything you value around these two or
[01:17:03] they'll bubify it." And he drank the
[01:17:06] beer and went out. That was my
[01:17:07] introduction to Haboo.
[01:17:09] >> Right on, man.
[01:17:10] >> And it was we clicked right from the
[01:17:13] beginning.
[01:17:15] >> And Mac
[01:17:17] and I stayed together, I think, the
[01:17:19] longest.
[01:17:21] Uh, I stayed on Haboo until like 2
[01:17:25] months before I left and I took over as
[01:17:27] a one zero crusader
[01:17:30] and uh, of course there was some chicery
[01:17:33] in there. We had convinced Bayis that I
[01:17:37] stuttered when I got excited. So I was
[01:17:40] absolutely no good on the radio and the
[01:17:42] one zero in those days normally carried
[01:17:44] the radio and that until Budro caught us
[01:17:47] chuckling about it and then threatened
[01:17:49] us. He said, "I'm going to tell Mayus
[01:17:51] what you two have been doing."
[01:17:55] So, but uh we ran together solid for 11
[01:18:01] months and did some interesting stuff.
[01:18:04] And we got Cookie. Cookie was a bonus.
[01:18:08] >> Cookie, Robert Cook,
[01:18:10] >> uh from Vidalia, Georgia.
[01:18:13] Olive skin. had the mannerisms of a
[01:18:17] Mississippi riverboat gambler.
[01:18:20] Had a complete solid eyebrow all across
[01:18:23] here and called everybody stretch. Well,
[01:18:26] stretch. Yeah. He uh he was a
[01:18:31] first time I saw and he was a ranger.
[01:18:33] >> Mhm.
[01:18:34] >> So had ranger strings on everything.
[01:18:36] Ranger string to his compass, ranger
[01:18:38] string to his camouflage stick, ranger
[01:18:40] string to his peanut radio, you know,
[01:18:44] all packed. I I used to tell Mac, we
[01:18:46] just just throw them down in front of
[01:18:47] the NBA. They'll get all tangled up in
[01:18:50] all those strings and we'll be able to
[01:18:51] escape, you know,
[01:18:53] >> but really really intense professional
[01:18:56] guy. The on the team Mack was a one
[01:19:00] zero. He was a bucks. He was actually I
[01:19:03] outranked him. Uh but when uh Mayus
[01:19:07] finally did interview me, he goes, "Uh,
[01:19:10] I'm assigning you to RT Habu and the one
[01:19:13] zero now is uh is Mclothan. He's a buck
[01:19:17] sergeant. You got any grief with that?"
[01:19:19] I says, "Does he come back with the same
[01:19:21] number of people he went out with?"
[01:19:24] What has that got to do with it? Well,
[01:19:26] if he does, I'm willing to change his
[01:19:28] diapers if that's necessary. So, he was
[01:19:32] a one zero. really really cool, calm
[01:19:35] under under fire. Never got flustered
[01:19:38] that that Alabama. Well, I guess we're
[01:19:42] going to have to move cuz it's getting
[01:19:44] kind of hot here.
[01:19:48] and and Danzer actually was the uh
[01:19:52] was the one zero, but they had just come
[01:19:56] back from uh or right after that I I I
[01:20:00] went to uh I think I went to one zero
[01:20:04] school cuz you couldn't run Laos unless
[01:20:06] you went to one zero school down a long
[01:20:08] time. And uh they ran the bright light
[01:20:11] on Doc Watson and Baby Jesus Lloyd, both
[01:20:15] of whom had been lost on a mission up in
[01:20:18] the the or in the ashaw.
[01:20:21] Uh the bright light went in.
[01:20:26] Danzer was a one zero cuz Snake had gone
[01:20:28] home on emergency leave. And uh they got
[01:20:33] on the ground.
[01:20:35] The Ashawa Valley is built in a series
[01:20:38] of steps. It goes up, levels off, goes
[01:20:42] up, levels up, got real sheer.
[01:20:44] >> Mhm.
[01:20:44] >> And uh they they got inserted on the top
[01:20:48] and uh of the plateau and they started
[01:20:52] working their way down cuz what had
[01:20:54] happened is that uh they pulled Sammy
[01:20:57] Hernandez out. They got in a hellacious
[01:21:00] firefight and they pulled Sammy
[01:21:03] Hernandez out on strings
[01:21:06] and uh Doc Watson and Baby Jesus were on
[01:21:09] another set of strings and the
[01:21:11] helicopter lost power and they were on
[01:21:14] the strings underneath it and that
[01:21:16] slammed into the cliff face.
[01:21:17] >> Oh man.
[01:21:18] >> When they found both of them, they were
[01:21:20] both dead. They were hanging in the
[01:21:23] trees. Max said they looked like they
[01:21:24] were asleep just hanging there in their
[01:21:26] harness, but they were
[01:21:29] They could see them, but they couldn't
[01:21:31] reach them. They were out about they
[01:21:34] were up at the level where they could
[01:21:36] stand and see out and and to them, but
[01:21:38] they couldn't reach them. They were
[01:21:40] trying to get long branches and that try
[01:21:42] and pull them pull them back in and
[01:21:44] recover the bodies. And they decided it
[01:21:47] got dark and they decided to spend a
[01:21:49] night on the top of the plateau.
[01:21:52] So they it wasn't far. It was like maybe
[01:21:55] 100 meters to the top. They got back up
[01:21:57] on the top, set up in a RO in a half
[01:22:01] horseshoe thing and
[01:22:06] five o'clock in the morning thereabouts.
[01:22:08] They heard trucks pulling up the trail
[01:22:11] on the top and troops dismounting
[01:22:15] >> and they unloaded about three companies
[01:22:17] of NVA and started sweeping. They knew
[01:22:21] the team was in there somewhere. They
[01:22:23] started sweeping down the the the
[01:22:25] plateau and they they opened open opened
[01:22:29] up on them with a RP RPG.
[01:22:32] Two two RPGs. Two rounds hit and uh one
[01:22:37] of Horton was with them too. one one of
[01:22:42] some of the shrapnel blew his lower leg
[01:22:44] off and it was partially attached but it
[01:22:48] was it was off in that and uh they
[01:22:51] started dialing everybody in fighting
[01:22:53] throwing they were throwing stick
[01:22:55] grenades at them and that and eventually
[01:22:58] there was nowhere to go so they started
[01:23:00] going down the cliff just stepped off
[01:23:03] and went uh I heard different stories
[01:23:08] Mac tried to throw Horton to a tree for
[01:23:10] him to grab AB on. He didn't make it.
[01:23:12] Went all the way down. Then Mac tried to
[01:23:15] jump out to the same tree and didn't
[01:23:17] make it. Landed on top of him. Everybody
[01:23:20] got down to the bottom. Danzer got blown
[01:23:23] off the top of the cliff.
[01:23:25] >> Damn.
[01:23:25] >> He was behind his rucks sack and the
[01:23:27] radio was in the rucks sack and he had
[01:23:29] the handset and either a grenade or an
[01:23:32] RPG hit nearby and blew him off. He
[01:23:36] ended up at the pace of the cliff with
[01:23:38] nothing but the the handset in his hand
[01:23:41] and he was shocked. You know, he wasn't
[01:23:44] functioning totally.
[01:23:46] Cliff Newman,
[01:23:48] who was also a one zero, had been strap
[01:23:51] hanging with him. He took over command
[01:23:54] of the team
[01:23:56] and uh they they had one of the chase
[01:23:59] medics uh was also with a wood duck
[01:24:03] Woody and he was patching up u Horton's
[01:24:07] leg and dealing with the other wounded
[01:24:09] that were there and and Mack was
[01:24:11] covering the ridge. There was like a cut
[01:24:13] in it. the NBA were trying to come down
[01:24:15] hopping from rock to rock and he was
[01:24:17] like at the carnival picking them off
[01:24:19] between the rocks and that and they uh
[01:24:24] Newman
[01:24:27] just performed outstanding. He he got
[01:24:30] the you know the 9 mm pistol and I think
[01:24:34] a silver star for that um and eventually
[01:24:38] went and ran a recon club for us after
[01:24:40] that. He's
[01:24:44] he he was basically responsible for
[01:24:46] getting everybody out that was still
[01:24:48] living and breathing. And they they
[01:24:50] extracted him with a with a CH53
[01:24:54] and they worked over the top of that
[01:24:55] ridge line, turned it into a killing
[01:24:57] ground with a with air support and got a
[01:25:00] a heavy hook in there and pulled him out
[01:25:02] of there.
[01:25:03] He was just recently
[01:25:06] they're trying to get his silver star
[01:25:08] changed to a a Medal of Honor which he
[01:25:11] really deserves for his actions that
[01:25:14] day. It went all the way through the
[01:25:16] chief of staff of the army, all the way
[01:25:18] through the Secretary of Defense and
[01:25:21] then u was approved under the Biden
[01:25:23] administration and then when the new
[01:25:26] administration came in, they just killed
[01:25:29] it out of politics. They killed it.
[01:25:32] >> They killed it. He's
[01:25:34] >> dead now.
[01:25:36] >> And we think it's because
[01:25:38] >> the the guys who approved it were all
[01:25:40] Biden appointees.
[01:25:42] >> But Newman earned that medal seven times
[01:25:47] over that day. You know,
[01:25:50] you know that this thing with approval
[01:25:54] of higher awards from a lesser award.
[01:25:58] when Paris Davis got do you know him?
[01:26:01] >> I don't.
[01:26:02] >> Paris Davis read his Silver Star and his
[01:26:06] Medal of Honor which he eventually got.
[01:26:08] He was a colonel. He was a young captain
[01:26:11] at the time.
[01:26:15] He did stuff on a mission that they make
[01:26:18] movies out of. went out from the, you
[01:26:21] know, saved people that were wounded,
[01:26:23] dragged them back into the perimeter,
[01:26:24] went back out, captured prisoners,
[01:26:27] brought them back and and basically got
[01:26:30] everybody out of it. And that and they I
[01:26:32] think he got a silver star for it. They
[01:26:35] the army didn't like him cuz he was
[01:26:37] black.
[01:26:39] In in those days, the the armor corps is
[01:26:41] what ran the army
[01:26:43] >> and there was a lot of racial prejudice
[01:26:45] and they they thought he was just
[01:26:47] uppidity and they weren't going to give
[01:26:49] him a medal honor. He got out retired as
[01:26:51] a colonel. He was my commander at Devons
[01:26:53] for a while. Best group commander I ever
[01:26:56] had you and he eventually
[01:26:59] the guys got together and they they went
[01:27:02] back and redid it and got his medal of
[01:27:04] honor here last year. My name was He was
[01:27:07] at the convention last year.
[01:27:09] >> Uh and I love Paris. Yeah. He was uh
[01:27:14] >> special.
[01:27:16] >> He uh
[01:27:19] I uh I had to go to race relations
[01:27:21] classes.
[01:27:23] And in those days
[01:27:25] >> what classes?
[01:27:26] >> Race relations.
[01:27:27] >> Race relations.
[01:27:28] >> Equal opportunity race relations. They
[01:27:29] picked two NCOs. Gotcha. So they picked
[01:27:32] me and a guy named Johnny King who is a
[01:27:34] full-blooded Chakaria Apache, right, to
[01:27:38] go to the classes. And there's guys from
[01:27:40] my battalion, right? And there's two
[01:27:42] guys from third battalion, whatever. the
[01:27:45] guys from headquarters, what all that.
[01:27:47] And we're supposed to be learn how to be
[01:27:50] um correct, politically correct, and be
[01:27:54] able to hold classes to train the rest
[01:27:58] of the chimpanzees in the techniques of
[01:28:01] being politically correct. So, we're in
[01:28:04] this classroom and they've got a they
[01:28:08] got a guy uh he's a associate professor
[01:28:13] or something like that from Boston
[01:28:14] College complete with the revolution
[01:28:17] knitted black power cap on and the and
[01:28:21] the dreadlocks and all that. And he's
[01:28:23] talking about, you know, well, you know,
[01:28:25] we got to be careful about how we call
[01:28:27] each other and, you know, these things
[01:28:29] have been done bad to black people in
[01:28:31] the past. And when I walked into the
[01:28:34] room, I turned the thermostat up to 94.
[01:28:39] So Kane is sitting in the front row, he
[01:28:42] unbuttoned his his fuel jacket and was
[01:28:47] nodding off. Everybody was nodding off
[01:28:49] except me. I'm watching to see all of
[01:28:52] them fall asleep. And uh the instructor
[01:28:55] came over and kicked King's foot, said,
[01:28:59] "Wake up." and he uncoiled out of that
[01:29:02] seat and pulled a cruer Bowie out of
[01:29:05] somewhere and had it against this guy's
[01:29:07] throat and he's going, "They used to
[01:29:10] kill my people for sport and I still
[01:29:12] like him better than I like you. That's
[01:29:14] it. Out of here." We get sent back to
[01:29:17] group. I got sent back cuz I was with
[01:29:20] him. I hadn't done any Well, I turned
[01:29:22] the thermostat up, but nobody knew what
[01:29:24] it did at that time. Yeah. Yeah. Paris,
[01:29:28] you had one job and that was to keep an
[01:29:30] eye on that blanket ass savage and you
[01:29:33] failed.
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[01:31:45] >> What was your first mission with Mac
[01:31:47] Vis? It was uh
[01:31:52] we went to the was it the Ashell? I
[01:31:55] think it was the Ashell,
[01:31:58] lower end of the Ashell.
[01:32:01] And uh it was it was a it was a recon
[01:32:04] mission, linear recon. We were supposed
[01:32:06] to follow this trail and see if we could
[01:32:09] find common wire so that another team
[01:32:12] could come in and put a wire tap on it.
[01:32:15] And we we landed. It this target
[01:32:19] particular target was uh
[01:32:23] was in an old caldera and the trail ran
[01:32:26] up through the center of it. And that it
[01:32:29] was reported there was a a North
[01:32:31] Vietnamese regiment in that caldera
[01:32:34] somewhere.
[01:32:36] And uh we were going to go in and do
[01:32:38] linear recon and partial area recon
[01:32:41] inside that 6x6 no bomba.
[01:32:44] And uh when they
[01:32:48] when they put us in,
[01:32:52] we came under fire immediately. As soon
[01:32:54] as the choppers lifted off, everybody in
[01:32:56] the world started shooting at us. And uh
[01:33:00] I remember I came that mission. Anyway,
[01:33:03] that I'm my job on the team was to fight
[01:33:06] the team as a unit, mine and cooks and
[01:33:10] and Mac handled the radio, made sure
[01:33:12] air, you know, the Cubby got air into us
[01:33:15] when we needed it, did all that stuff,
[01:33:17] kept in communications with Cubby. So,
[01:33:20] I'm fighting by portion of the team,
[01:33:22] laying them in down below and that. And
[01:33:24] I saw these NVA break out of the this
[01:33:28] ravine. Like we're down here like this.
[01:33:30] And over here's this ravine. And there's
[01:33:32] a ravine that runs up follows up that
[01:33:35] way. I saw him break cover and run up in
[01:33:37] that ravine. And I started moving up to
[01:33:40] tell Mac and I saw bunch of three or
[01:33:43] four stick grenades come up out of that
[01:33:45] ravine and land right where he was.
[01:33:49] So I run up to [ __ ] They got the radio
[01:33:51] and they got the [ __ ] at the same
[01:33:53] time. This is bad. So I get up there
[01:33:58] and he starts yelling at me, "Will you
[01:34:00] please get down? You're drawing fire."
[01:34:04] And he's got his pants down.
[01:34:07] And I look and what
[01:34:10] he's checking to see if his junk is
[01:34:12] still there cuz he's got a shrapnel
[01:34:13] wound on the inside of his leg. And I'm
[01:34:16] thinking to myself, "This is the coolest
[01:34:18] son of [ __ ] in the world. He's
[01:34:19] masturbating.
[01:34:23] He's got he's got the radio hook like
[01:34:25] that. Reach down and grab a cubby was on
[01:34:27] on the line. I go, you'll have to wait a
[01:34:30] minute. The one zero is masturbating.
[01:34:32] >> You said that.
[01:34:33] >> Oh, yeah. And and Dave Cheney, big big
[01:34:35] Pyute Indian was that cubby writer. He
[01:34:38] go, "Well,
[01:34:40] besides that, what else you got?" And
[01:34:43] then we called in air strikes and
[01:34:45] eventually pulled out. I remember we got
[01:34:48] back and I had my my basic load normally
[01:34:51] when I was carrying a car 15 was one,
[01:34:54] two, three, four canteen cup covers with
[01:35:00] six magazines. One of which was a 30
[01:35:02] round magazine and six 30 round
[01:35:06] magazines and a AK vest.
[01:35:10] Two T canteen covers with mini grenades.
[01:35:14] uh two M667
[01:35:16] baseball grenades and a WP grenade and
[01:35:20] plus extra stuff for you know we carried
[01:35:23] a machine gun we carried a belt of ammo
[01:35:26] in the thing and when when I got back on
[01:35:28] back to the launch site I had two
[01:35:31] magazines left.
[01:35:34] >> Holy.
[01:35:34] >> And my pistol ammunition and everything
[01:35:37] else I shot. I would have blown up a
[01:35:39] nuke and told them it was kids playing
[01:35:41] with fire would have helped. You know,
[01:35:43] but it was just it was that intense. And
[01:35:46] I I'm telling Mac, I said, "God damn,
[01:35:48] that was intense." He go, "That was a
[01:35:50] training mission." So, you're kidding
[01:35:52] me. So, now and and the yards like you,
[01:35:55] by the way, cuz you've got dialogue when
[01:35:58] you're when you're hyperventilating,
[01:36:00] you know, that was my first mission. She
[01:36:07] uh it it just went on from there. I mean
[01:36:10] that you got into the rhythm, you know,
[01:36:12] you might you go back to the launch
[01:36:15] site, you'd either pull a bright light
[01:36:18] for a team that was going in or or you
[01:36:20] were done and you went back to Daang and
[01:36:23] you get three or four days off and then
[01:36:24] you went back into that process again,
[01:36:27] go into isolation, get your target, go
[01:36:29] to launch site.
[01:36:30] >> How did that how did that I mean how did
[01:36:33] that compare to your Marine Corps
[01:36:34] deployment to Vietnam?
[01:36:36] >> The world of difference. World of
[01:36:37] difference. What was the major
[01:36:38] differences?
[01:36:39] >> The intensity of combat.
[01:36:41] >> Really?
[01:36:42] >> The in you you have no idea.
[01:36:46] Well, you do probably how loud combat
[01:36:51] is.
[01:36:51] >> Mhm.
[01:36:52] >> And the smell and the duterus, the dust,
[01:36:55] the explosions, the uh you know, the
[01:36:58] blood. It's uh Yeah. You're
[01:37:03] many times fighting at very close range
[01:37:06] with these you that we were heavy enough
[01:37:09] that we could give a company a black
[01:37:11] black eye. You hit us and we were going
[01:37:14] to hit you so [ __ ] hard that you want
[01:37:17] to back off. And that's how we survived.
[01:37:20] We'd we'd pick the point and we would go
[01:37:22] for that point to break through and
[01:37:24] break out and get some running room and
[01:37:26] then find our terrain that we could
[01:37:28] defend and that. And it was in that
[01:37:32] short time period, like I said, you'd
[01:37:34] use up five, six, seven magazines just
[01:37:39] doing that breakout.
[01:37:40] >> Wow.
[01:37:41] >> And grenades and anything else you could
[01:37:43] throw out there. Uh claymores on coat
[01:37:47] hangers. claymores on coat hangers. Hey,
[01:37:50] you
[01:37:51] >> cap them and have them everywhere and
[01:37:52] ready to go. And you put a coat hanger
[01:37:54] on it and it's got the clacker in the
[01:37:58] bag. You pull the claymore out and you
[01:38:00] throw it up in the tree and then run to
[01:38:03] the end of the wire and fire it off,
[01:38:05] break contact, and that that make sure
[01:38:08] it's facing the right way.
[01:38:09] >> Yeah.
[01:38:10] >> And then run off and then it just clears
[01:38:12] a path or throw it in front of you and
[01:38:16] blow it off. So you got a clear path in
[01:38:18] that and a lot of many grenades. A lot
[01:38:22] of many grenades.
[01:38:23] >> How many guys were you rolling out with?
[01:38:25] >> Normally it was the three of us or and
[01:38:29] sometimes just Mac and I but three of us
[01:38:32] after a while it was that was a three
[01:38:34] Americans and from six to eight martys.
[01:38:39] Sometimes we'd take 10 martys with us up
[01:38:41] to launch site in case we got tasked
[01:38:43] with a bright light. We'd have extra
[01:38:46] extra guns on the team because remember
[01:38:49] they got to have enough helicopters to
[01:38:51] get you in and get you out. So you can't
[01:38:54] overload them in that. Yeah. But
[01:38:57] normally
[01:38:59] 6 to8 yards and two or three of us.
[01:39:02] >> How often were you guys going out?
[01:39:05] >> Well, every night.
[01:39:07] >> Every what?
[01:39:08] >> How often were you guys going out?
[01:39:11] >> Well, the rotation was you'd go to the
[01:39:13] launch site. I the only only two times
[01:39:16] they gave us a target after we ran a
[01:39:18] target uh while we were up there and we
[01:39:21] did the isolation thing in the in the
[01:39:24] hooch at the time and it was um
[01:39:28] a
[01:39:29] an ambush. We were trying to get a
[01:39:31] prisoner. But most of the time, you'd go
[01:39:34] to the launch site, you'd launch,
[01:39:37] do your thing, be back in 5 days, get
[01:39:42] two or three days off, go back in the
[01:39:44] system, go back up to the launch site,
[01:39:47] three or five days back, then sometimes
[01:39:49] one day, you know, you after a while,
[01:39:53] um, I was telling, what's his name?
[01:39:55] Didn't it I had one target, I can't
[01:39:57] remember whether it was hotel 6 or I
[01:39:59] think it was DM10, demilitarized zone
[01:40:01] 10.
[01:40:03] It was that caldera thing again. I ran
[01:40:06] it four times and my cumulative time on
[01:40:10] the ground was a little over an hour.
[01:40:14] And four times.
[01:40:16] >> Wow. That, you know, like I said, it was
[01:40:19] intense. If you got caught or they
[01:40:22] thought they could catch you with your
[01:40:23] pants down, they put everything they
[01:40:25] could to kill you and capture you
[01:40:27] because they knew if you got on the
[01:40:29] radio and got the air power, they had to
[01:40:31] grab you by the belt buckle before that.
[01:40:34] So it was right at the first they had to
[01:40:37] full push trying to get on top of you.
[01:40:40] And then once you could break contact,
[01:40:42] kill enough of them to make them back
[01:40:43] off, then then you could start doing an
[01:40:47] IIA drone, getting getting a path to
[01:40:50] where you could grab some terrain. When
[01:40:51] we looked at the target areas, we
[01:40:54] specifically picked terrain that was in
[01:40:57] the neighborhood of where the LZ was or
[01:41:00] along our path. If we got hit, we're
[01:41:02] going to go here cuz that's defensible.
[01:41:05] We can't defend it here or over here,
[01:41:08] but we can there if we get air power in
[01:41:11] [ __ ]
[01:41:15] Yeah, the
[01:41:18] brings back a lot of memories.
[01:41:20] I'll bet it does.
[01:41:24] Yeah.
[01:41:26] Sometimes I can smell it.
[01:41:31] Are you doing all right?
[01:41:34] Yeah, no brains, no headaches. Roger
[01:41:37] that.
[01:41:40] >> Yeah, I don't normally get weepy. I get
[01:41:43] weepy over the little people.
[01:41:48] Yeah, we RT Habu was a was a brew war
[01:41:53] party, plain and simple. Just like dog
[01:41:57] soldiers, you know, from the from the
[01:41:59] crow.
[01:42:01] When we hit the ground, the last people
[01:42:02] in the world you wanted to run into was
[01:42:04] us.
[01:42:07] Just the finest finest troops I ever
[01:42:10] worked with were the yards.
[01:42:12] >> No kidding.
[01:42:13] >> Yeah.
[01:42:14] >> How long were you there?
[01:42:15] >> Huh?
[01:42:16] >> How long were you there?
[01:42:17] >> How how long
[01:42:18] >> how long were you with that specific
[01:42:20] unit?
[01:42:21] >> Oh, for 11 months straight with with
[01:42:24] Habu. And when I took over Crusader,
[01:42:26] they were also a brew team. So, you
[01:42:29] know, we had Sedang, Brew,
[01:42:33] Raday,
[01:42:34] all different tribes. Uh, the the Brew
[01:42:39] look like Bushmen, real short, you know,
[01:42:42] very, you know, sometimes almost African
[01:42:45] features in some of them. Uh, the Sedang
[01:42:48] lighter skinned and they filed their
[01:42:50] teeth. So, they look when they grinned
[01:42:53] at you, they looked like wolves.
[01:42:55] >> No,
[01:42:55] >> they had tattoos.
[01:42:57] And Raday look like Polynesians.
[01:43:00] Very good-looking people. Beautiful. All
[01:43:02] of them are beautiful people. But uh the
[01:43:04] Rad women are stunning, you know. And
[01:43:08] then we had some Jerai
[01:43:11] and some of the teams were Vietnamese
[01:43:14] and some of the teams were uh
[01:43:17] [ __ ] Vietnamese and nungs.
[01:43:21] Big [ __ ] Chinese. Rick Hendricks had
[01:43:24] all nugs and he couldn't remember their
[01:43:27] names, so he named them after Donald
[01:43:29] Duck's nephews.
[01:43:31] Huie, Dewey, Louie, whatever. And it's
[01:43:37] uh Huie
[01:43:38] spoke English like he was from Southern
[01:43:41] California.
[01:43:43] We buddy story. My team's going to
[01:43:47] Quantry, the launch site, and
[01:43:49] Hendricks's team is coming back or no,
[01:43:53] we're coming back. We're at Quantry.
[01:43:55] We're getting ready to go back to Daang.
[01:43:57] And Henrik's team comes up there. He's
[01:43:59] got seven nongs, Huey, Dwey, Louie, and
[01:44:03] whatever. And and they're on I don't
[01:44:06] know who thought this up. They came in
[01:44:07] on a caru and there was two doughut
[01:44:10] dollies on board.
[01:44:13] As we're we're laying in the shade
[01:44:15] waiting for the caribou to turn around
[01:44:17] that get on it, go back to to Da Nang
[01:44:19] and Henrik and his team start filing
[01:44:22] off, you know, with all their man
[01:44:23] jewelry and that clink clank, you know,
[01:44:25] and they're coming down and that that
[01:44:27] preceding them are the two doughut
[01:44:29] dollies and they're they're going,
[01:44:32] "Well, I can't believe this. I I can't
[01:44:34] believe that those gs were on the plane
[01:44:36] with us. You know, I I will never one of
[01:44:38] them had this face I swear looked like a
[01:44:40] horse. was long and when the other was
[01:44:43] kind of portly and they were all
[01:44:46] outraged, you know, going whatever. They
[01:44:49] go over towards flight control over
[01:44:52] there and that and Hrix comes out. Hrix
[01:44:55] is going. He's kind of chuckling to
[01:44:57] himself and that here's what happened.
[01:45:00] They're on the plane and they're in
[01:45:02] orbit getting ready to land and that and
[01:45:04] Horseface starts going, "Wow, what are
[01:45:06] these goss doing on the plane with us?
[01:45:08] you know, why are we here with these
[01:45:10] goss and everything and and uh Hrix
[01:45:14] is is Huie started in by Well, uh
[01:45:19] actually uh are you official army
[01:45:21] prostitutes? Is that what that uniform
[01:45:24] is? And that blink
[01:45:28] idea, but uh I actually own a wh house
[01:45:31] in the Trang, and I don't think I could
[01:45:32] get five bucks a trick for both of you
[01:45:34] unless there was a werewolf involved.
[01:45:38] you know, all in perfect English, right?
[01:45:40] And Hendrickx tries to throw water on
[01:45:42] the fire and he goes, "Well, you know, I
[01:45:44] know you have to understand they're
[01:45:46] going on a dangerous mission. They, you
[01:45:48] know, they may be, you know, they, you
[01:45:50] know, may not say the best of things and
[01:45:52] that." And he says, "I understand your
[01:45:53] mission being Red Cross and all that
[01:45:56] where you put up the, you know, the the
[01:45:59] maps with the name the state, some lucky
[01:46:02] guy gets an extra donut and that and he
[01:46:04] says, "Look here." He sticks his finger
[01:46:06] out through his fly and he goes, "Looks
[01:46:08] like the state of Florida."
[01:46:10] Everything ended there and we ended up
[01:46:14] the the guy from the flight light comes
[01:46:16] out. You need to get on that caribou and
[01:46:18] get it on now. They've contacted the
[01:46:20] provice marshall and they're on their
[01:46:22] way here right now. So yeah, Hendrickx,
[01:46:26] him and his nuns, his star English
[01:46:29] pupil,
[01:46:30] >> man.
[01:46:31] You know, I was talking to our mutual
[01:46:34] friend John Striker Meyer before he got
[01:46:37] here.
[01:46:37] >> Yeah, Tilt Tilt hides a lot of his sins.
[01:46:40] >> He had uh he had a couple questions for
[01:46:42] you. He wanted to know about the pet
[01:46:44] monkey at CCN.
[01:46:47] >> [ __ ] monkey.
[01:46:49] Mac had a pet monkey. I don't know where
[01:46:51] he acquired a spider monkey. I know it
[01:46:54] was actually I think it might have been
[01:46:55] a gibbon. Anyways, a nasty little piece
[01:46:58] of [ __ ] We we had we had a pole with a
[01:47:02] perch on it outside our hooch. And of
[01:47:04] course, Sergeant Major is like Billy W
[01:47:06] going, "Get rid of that [ __ ] monkey.
[01:47:08] I don't want to see that [ __ ]
[01:47:09] monkey." And and and Mack
[01:47:13] kept it just to aggravate the the
[01:47:16] sergeant major. All the dogs in Recon
[01:47:19] Company hated this thing because it
[01:47:20] would sit on his perch, scream at him,
[01:47:23] roll up it [ __ ] and throw at him. And
[01:47:26] all of them wanted most of all Ugmo.
[01:47:28] Ugmo was a mixed breed. Two of which
[01:47:31] weren't from this planet. All right.
[01:47:33] Kind of looked like a sharp pay that had
[01:47:35] cancer. And uh Cook and I were secretly
[01:47:39] feeding it screwdrivers with garb,
[01:47:43] you know. So I hated the thing. Cook
[01:47:45] hated it more cuz the monkey would break
[01:47:47] into our hooch and find anything that
[01:47:50] belonged to him and either chew it, [ __ ]
[01:47:53] on it, or do something else with it.
[01:47:55] Wouldn't bother my stuff or Max. always
[01:47:57] went after cook stuff. So, one night we
[01:48:00] got sick of it, you know, and get rid of
[01:48:02] this goddamn monkey once and for all.
[01:48:04] Mac was Mac went downtown
[01:48:07] and we were in the hooch. We we didn't
[01:48:09] want to go downtown. We'd been at the
[01:48:11] club and we'd been drinking. So, we
[01:48:13] started feeding the monkey Darbon and
[01:48:16] screwdrivers at an accelerated pace
[01:48:19] until fin started to have storm, right?
[01:48:22] And we're sitting in the doorway
[01:48:24] watching the monkey and he's out there
[01:48:28] rolling it up [ __ ] throwing it at the
[01:48:30] dogs and oh, we're down here and finally
[01:48:32] it just went
[01:48:34] and fell over backwards and hit the
[01:48:37] ground and they ripped it to fur and
[01:48:39] bones in about 5 minutes. The dogs did.
[01:48:42] The dogs did, right? And uh so we're uh
[01:48:47] uh before that we had thrown the monkey
[01:48:50] on Lamar when he came back from the club
[01:48:52] and he tried to shoot it and he hit
[01:48:55] Uggmo
[01:48:57] instead. So Ugmo was out of the pack at
[01:49:00] that point. So we decided to cover it
[01:49:02] was lightning, right? So we go, "Wow, we
[01:49:05] can cover up this crime." So we set fire
[01:49:07] to the to the pole and the remains on
[01:49:10] the ground. So when Mim stumbled back in
[01:49:14] there later on the night, he found the
[01:49:15] found the monkey and woke us up and he
[01:49:18] went, "Wow, it must have been a
[01:49:19] lightning that hit it that." And he
[01:49:22] goes,
[01:49:24] actually, we thought we got away with
[01:49:25] it. And as we were getting ready to go
[01:49:27] breakfast, he goes, "Uh, by the way,
[01:49:31] uh, I think it was Pulley. Pulley told
[01:49:33] me all about how my monkey died."
[01:49:37] So that's what happened to the monkey.
[01:49:38] He used to the monkey would sit on his
[01:49:41] head and he'd like some kind of weird
[01:49:43] hat and he'd go, "How do I look?" Well,
[01:49:46] it looks like that monkeyy's got an ugly
[01:49:47] growth on its ass. Yeah. I hated that
[01:49:51] thing.
[01:49:52] >> Sounds like
[01:49:52] >> We offered to buy him another one. He
[01:49:54] goes, "Nah, you two as pets are enough."
[01:49:59] >> What is with the World War II helmet?
[01:50:02] Uh, well,
[01:50:06] family heirloom.
[01:50:09] I I wanted I wanted my Luger. I had a
[01:50:12] Luger. So, I told my mom, "Send my Luger
[01:50:15] over to me." And she sent the helmet,
[01:50:17] too. When the day I got it, they patted
[01:50:20] the helmet was was a fruitc cake. Even
[01:50:23] the yards won't eat fruitc cake. Really?
[01:50:26] They whoosh. Number 10. So, I get it. I
[01:50:30] get that. She'd put my Luger in a
[01:50:32] familysized box of Cheerios.
[01:50:36] Uh the only dry cereal we got at the
[01:50:38] messel was grape nuts, you know, little
[01:50:41] hard crunchy rocks.
[01:50:43] >> So Cheerios was like a special thing. So
[01:50:45] I run over to the messel and uh I'm
[01:50:49] sitting there with Mac and Cookie. We
[01:50:51] all got our little bowls and the milk
[01:50:52] and everything and we're having Cheerios
[01:50:54] and that. As I'm pouring it out, the
[01:50:56] barrel of the Luger falls out into my
[01:50:58] bowl. Just as Manus walks up to the
[01:51:01] table and then came the the handle and
[01:51:04] the receiver and the magazines and he
[01:51:06] goes, "Well, how did he say how did he
[01:51:08] put it?" He goes, "Uh, what are those?
[01:51:10] That doesn't look like a box of Cracker
[01:51:12] Jacks, my man."
[01:51:15] But the the helmet was uh was fun to I
[01:51:18] wore it on bright lights where you're
[01:51:20] going in, you know, you got to shoot. I
[01:51:21] figured, you know, the NBA go whose side
[01:51:24] are the Germans on, you know. So, and
[01:51:28] other people borrowed it. Elden borrowed
[01:51:31] it one time. Bargewell.
[01:51:33] >> Mhm.
[01:51:34] >> And uh who else was it? Uh I wouldn't
[01:51:38] let Jimmy Johnson wear it because he
[01:51:40] looked like something really grotesque.
[01:51:42] Big ears hanging out from underneath it.
[01:51:44] That Yeah. But yeah, I I brought it back
[01:51:48] when I came back. I had it in my my
[01:51:51] luggage but bags and the MPs tried to
[01:51:54] confiscate it and uh everybody that was
[01:51:58] there ganged up on said no no no no that
[01:52:00] was sent from by his mom to him and they
[01:52:03] just okay. So I I managed to get it back
[01:52:06] to the states. A uh pissed-off
[01:52:10] girlfriend
[01:52:12] got rid of it.
[01:52:14] >> Uh oh.
[01:52:14] >> I was offered 10 grand for that helmet.
[01:52:17] >> Oh bet. with with my name and pictures
[01:52:19] of me with it and that it was worth 10
[01:52:21] grant which I bring up to her once in a
[01:52:25] while. Yeah. And you missed out on that
[01:52:28] one.
[01:52:31] >> What is with the saw off RPD?
[01:52:34] >> A lot of guys had Well, not not just me.
[01:52:37] Before I got mine, I had well the
[01:52:40] Philippine armors up at uh S4 would
[01:52:43] would saw them off, make sure that it
[01:52:45] was just the right length. You didn't
[01:52:47] [ __ ] up the rate of fire too much.
[01:52:50] It's
[01:52:51] We had saw off M60s, too. The saw off
[01:52:55] M60 had a a tendency for the [ __ ]
[01:52:58] barrel to fall out in in mid-stroke. M
[01:53:02] >> the RPD did not have that problem and it
[01:53:05] slightly slowed the cyclic rate of fire,
[01:53:08] but it sounded like a like a 50 caliber
[01:53:12] do.
[01:53:14] And some of us like Castro I I did on
[01:53:17] mine too. I put a oil funnel on the
[01:53:21] front of it and when that thing went off
[01:53:23] it really sounded like a 50 and it would
[01:53:25] shoot a gout of blue green plasma out
[01:53:29] about 6 ft in front of it at night. It
[01:53:32] was horrifying
[01:53:33] but it uh lighter
[01:53:37] uh
[01:53:38] easier to move around in the bush with.
[01:53:40] you carry a lot more ammo with it cuz
[01:53:43] it, you know, it's 52 instead of or 39
[01:53:46] instead of 51. So, the extra weight
[01:53:49] there in the shells and that and it I I
[01:53:52] got so I can make it sing and it was
[01:53:55] real effective on bright lights. You you
[01:53:57] need a lot of firepower. You need it
[01:53:59] down. You need something that can chop
[01:54:01] through brush to get to them. The RPD is
[01:54:03] your your weapon.
[01:54:05] >> It's excellent for that. I taught myself
[01:54:08] how to load
[01:54:11] the
[01:54:13] you lift the cover just like you do on
[01:54:15] the M60 and that but it's got a feeder
[01:54:17] strip that comes out of the drum that
[01:54:20] you have to put through and pull out and
[01:54:23] then slam the lid and then you're back
[01:54:26] in. But if it's in the drum, if it's in
[01:54:28] a a belt, it still has a feeder clip,
[01:54:30] but you got to feed it through, hold it,
[01:54:33] pull it through to get it out. I taught
[01:54:35] myself how to do that by reaching over
[01:54:38] and doing that and being able to then
[01:54:40] slam the lid down, but I wanted
[01:54:42] something that was that I could protect
[01:54:44] myself with. You know, I had I had the
[01:54:47] pistol
[01:54:49] um high power that I I carried or the
[01:54:53] silence 22 if I was carrying it. We
[01:54:56] might stumble upon somebody that we
[01:54:58] could capture. But uh I I had the armor
[01:55:01] is make me a sawed off 12 gauge
[01:55:04] >> coach gun
[01:55:06] that long with the the little pistol
[01:55:09] handle and that two barrels. And I
[01:55:12] carried
[01:55:14] 25 rounds for it in my one zero vest and
[01:55:18] one of the up here in either in loops or
[01:55:20] in the pockets if I had a vest on.
[01:55:23] Otherwise, I kept them in a in a canteen
[01:55:25] cup cover. And I had it in a slide
[01:55:28] holster in the small of my back. So when
[01:55:31] I had to reload the gun, I'd be
[01:55:33] reloading it with this hand and I'd pull
[01:55:35] that 12 gauge out so I could cover
[01:55:37] myself.
[01:55:39] And uh I started I was using double lot
[01:55:41] buck and slug.
[01:55:43] And then I I came up with a bright idea
[01:55:47] that slug just wasn't doing the job that
[01:55:50] it should. Um so I started I took the
[01:55:54] double op buck out. I left the the
[01:55:56] bottom four and then I put uh I was
[01:56:00] putting nickels in there to start with
[01:56:01] and I started counting up how much that
[01:56:03] was going to cost me and I went
[01:56:05] >> so uh I started using the five dong
[01:56:08] piece. It's a brass coin the same size
[01:56:11] as a nickel
[01:56:12] >> and it's brass so I I could put
[01:56:18] four of those in on top of the buckshot
[01:56:21] at the base of it and then three rounds
[01:56:24] of a buck, you know, the balls on top of
[01:56:27] that and they close it up, seal it. That
[01:56:30] at close range,
[01:56:33] both barrels will blow a man in half. I
[01:56:36] know that for a fact.
[01:56:38] >> You've seen You've blown a man in half.
[01:56:40] >> That guy came up on me in the elephant
[01:56:42] grass and I let loose at about 8 ft and
[01:56:47] his legs were there and his top of his
[01:56:49] body went there.
[01:56:51] >> [ __ ] Yeah, because the brass doesn't
[01:56:53] deform and it comes out like little saw
[01:56:55] blades and that or flat and it just it
[01:56:59] cut them in half. I I was surprised
[01:57:01] myself how you know how bad it was. And
[01:57:03] after that that was the load for the for
[01:57:06] the shotgun.
[01:57:08] >> What were the slugs doing? Why do you
[01:57:09] say they weren't doing the job?
[01:57:13] >> There wasn't enough of them
[01:57:16] to really get a pattern.
[01:57:19] Uh they either
[01:57:23] too many of them went out to the side.
[01:57:25] >> Gotcha.
[01:57:25] >> Rather than hitting a center of mass.
[01:57:27] The flat coins worked better cuz it held
[01:57:29] together as a mass, you know, and it uh
[01:57:32] it was devastating. It would cut down
[01:57:34] brush, too.
[01:57:36] >> [ __ ]
[01:57:37] >> Yeah.
[01:57:37] >> But you know, you you learn and you
[01:57:40] adapt.
[01:57:41] You uh
[01:57:44] Yeah, we did all kinds of crazy [ __ ]
[01:57:46] with guns. How many times were guys
[01:57:48] sneaking up on you?
[01:57:50] >> Uh, I think three times that I actually
[01:57:53] had to had to use the shotgun cuz I was
[01:57:56] quick reloading that gun. I could drop
[01:57:59] the old drum, put a new drum in and get
[01:58:02] it in a matter of seconds. You just when
[01:58:05] we were I was always nervous about
[01:58:07] somebody coming up on me when I'm
[01:58:08] crouched down or bent over the gun. I
[01:58:11] didn't want to get shot.
[01:58:13] So, and having that the shotgun handy
[01:58:16] was uh you know,
[01:58:18] Max only complained, "Quit waving that
[01:58:20] thing around." You know,
[01:58:23] I'm only going to shoot you on intent.
[01:58:28] Yeah, it was a good weapon. Good weapon.
[01:58:33] >> Did the killing bother you?
[01:58:36] Did the killing bother you? Did it get
[01:58:39] to you? No. Um
[01:58:45] Most of them are jumbled together
[01:58:48] every, you know, years afterwards. Some
[01:58:50] of them, well, I had a, it's in the
[01:58:53] book. I had a ghost that haunted me for
[01:58:56] a long time. what
[01:58:58] >> a ghost
[01:59:00] would come back when I was, you know,
[01:59:01] I'd have I had a malarial relapse and
[01:59:03] he'd be visited and when I'd get tired
[01:59:06] or, you know, didn't take care of my my,
[01:59:09] you know, my drinking and that I'd wake
[01:59:11] up and in nightmares. It was a
[01:59:16] 16year-old, 15, 16 year old kid, MVA.
[01:59:21] Um
[01:59:22] he had uh
[01:59:27] uh
[01:59:35] he came up on me real quick.
[01:59:38] Well, actually I fell on top of him. I
[01:59:41] got blown. We were trying to dig in on
[01:59:43] this little incline and that they were
[01:59:45] pushing us and um grenade went off and
[01:59:49] blew me and one of the other yards
[01:59:52] down in the little gully that was behind
[01:59:56] us and that they were coming up it and I
[01:59:58] landed in amongst about five or six of
[02:00:01] them and I only thing I had was an
[02:00:04] entrenching tool and I killed them with
[02:00:07] the entrenching tool and I remember him.
[02:00:16] Like I say, I don't think about him
[02:00:18] often, but I remember he was the same
[02:00:20] age as my little brother. [ __ ] man.
[02:00:29] The others I remember him screaming,
[02:00:32] yelling, teeth beared, coming at us or
[02:00:35] they came up on it real quick and I
[02:00:37] dropped them. you know, you didn't
[02:00:40] really get to look in their eyes or see
[02:00:42] their face. You know, you hear them
[02:00:43] kicking around and screaming after they
[02:00:46] were on the ground and that, but uh most
[02:00:49] of that's a jumble.
[02:00:51] Every once in a while, one will pop up,
[02:00:53] you know, because of something that he
[02:00:56] did or see a piece of terrain that looks
[02:00:58] just like we were in, you know, you'll
[02:01:01] come back and they'll pop up. You know,
[02:01:04] that
[02:01:06] they didn't have PTSD.
[02:01:09] Mhm.
[02:01:10] Before that they called it battle
[02:01:12] fatigue and we never thought we were
[02:01:14] battle fatigued that that you know it
[02:01:16] was years afterwards we realized that
[02:01:19] you know we had drinking and anger
[02:01:20] problems and why and the military
[02:01:23] finally accepted the fact of what it was
[02:01:26] and started the VA started treating it.
[02:01:29] But uh you know in the early days we
[02:01:32] just managed to push it aside. a lot of
[02:01:35] drinking. You know, I I know a lot of
[02:01:37] guys that got into the bottle and then
[02:01:40] welded the the cap on after him.
[02:01:43] >> Yeah.
[02:01:44] >> Uh,
[02:01:48] how would the ghost appear to you?
[02:01:50] >> How the what?
[02:01:50] >> The ghost.
[02:01:52] >> What about him?
[02:01:53] >> How would he appear to you?
[02:01:57] >> It'd be a nightmare. And he'd
[02:02:00] he'd be like I last saw him with his
[02:02:03] head caved open. and one eye falling out
[02:02:06] and he would wake me up
[02:02:09] and he'd
[02:02:11] just be in in the book I I described one
[02:02:15] of his visits. I'm I'm on the lake in
[02:02:19] Minnesota and I'm fishing with my little
[02:02:22] brother
[02:02:24] and he's uh
[02:02:29] he's got this old yellow rain jacket on
[02:02:33] that my mom hated and that and he's bent
[02:02:36] over. He's he's not facing me. He's
[02:02:38] facing out the back of the boat and he's
[02:02:40] fishing. He's got a line in the water
[02:02:42] and that and he's sobbing.
[02:02:56] Sorry.
[02:02:57] >> It's okay, Nick.
[02:03:03] >> Shut [ __ ]
[02:03:04] >> It's okay. And anyway, I reach over to
[02:03:08] touch his shoulder to find out why he's
[02:03:11] crying and he turns around and it's the
[02:03:13] kid, not him.
[02:03:17] And he uh he grabs my hand
[02:03:22] and I stand up and he steps off the back
[02:03:25] of the boat with me and I'm going down
[02:03:29] under the water and he's holding on to
[02:03:31] my hand and I can't get him to let go.
[02:03:34] And then I wake up.
[02:03:40] [ __ ]
[02:03:41] >> It's okay.
[02:03:42] >> Yeah. Well, I don't want to be a [ __ ]
[02:03:45] I didn't want to go there.
[02:03:47] >> You know, I have a really good friend of
[02:03:49] mine. His name's Chris Fettis. He was a
[02:03:52] sniper for a dev group.
[02:03:57] And I had him on.
[02:04:01] And he had to kill two kids on a hostage
[02:04:06] rescue mission.
[02:04:08] And he has nightmares similar to that.
[02:04:11] >> Yeah.
[02:04:11] >> And he had sons.
[02:04:12] >> Some of them never leave you.
[02:04:14] >> They're that age.
[02:04:15] >> And his nightmares, his sons
[02:04:18] look up at him. The
[02:04:20] >> I haven't had a visit from him in 10
[02:04:23] years.
[02:04:24] Then five maybe. And it's always when
[02:04:27] I'm worn down, you know, then then then
[02:04:30] it comes back
[02:04:32] or
[02:04:34] like today, you know,
[02:04:38] how do you deal with it?
[02:04:41] I push him back.
[02:04:43] Push him back. Don't let him in.
[02:04:47] I try not to think about things like
[02:04:48] that. Try not to think about some of the
[02:04:50] guys that I know that got blown to
[02:04:52] pieces
[02:04:54] that, you know, one minute they were
[02:04:56] there and next minute there's some kind
[02:04:57] of hamburger meat with bones sticking
[02:04:59] out of it. Uh,
[02:05:04] you just deal with it. It's
[02:05:08] first of all, the psychiatric industry
[02:05:11] is a bunch of hoie.
[02:05:13] uh all those therapists that try and
[02:05:15] talk you through it and that I I did a
[02:05:17] little bit of that when I uh
[02:05:20] when I was in Germany
[02:05:22] and and the problem is is that they put
[02:05:24] a jacket on you and then now you're
[02:05:26] barred from enlistment and all that [ __ ]
[02:05:28] cuz you're Louis Lupy inside so nobody
[02:05:30] goes to them and uh
[02:05:34] two sessions I went to was uh yeah
[02:05:38] listen bozo you don't even know what
[02:05:40] you're talking about
[02:05:42] you're trying you're condescending and
[02:05:44] that's that's an insult. You know, it's
[02:05:48] you know, I got problems. I'll deal with
[02:05:50] them. Thanks. Sign my slip so I can get
[02:05:52] out of here.
[02:05:56] My generation, we just dealt with it. I
[02:06:00] dealt with I see some of these guys now
[02:06:02] with the traumatic brain injury from
[02:06:04] bombs and that and severe PTSD. First of
[02:06:08] all, a Navy Seal, God bless his soul, uh
[02:06:12] found that uh psychedelic mushrooms can
[02:06:15] be used to treat PTSD.
[02:06:18] Psychedelic mushroom. And there's a
[02:06:20] friend of mine, Al Mullen, another medic
[02:06:23] who understands this completely, how
[02:06:25] it's done and all that. And the VA is
[02:06:27] just now starting to accept it as a
[02:06:29] treatment protocol. It's uh psychedelic
[02:06:33] mushrooms, some kind of bark from a tree
[02:06:36] I
[02:06:36] >> and crystallized secretions from some
[02:06:39] African frog.
[02:06:40] >> It's a It's a US toad.
[02:06:43] >> Is it a US toad?
[02:06:45] >> The the sonor and toad. You're talking
[02:06:47] about five otain.
[02:06:50] >> Oh, cool.
[02:06:51] >> I've done it. Have you done this?
[02:06:52] >> No. No.
[02:06:53] >> Why not?
[02:06:55] >> I got too much [ __ ] to do right now. the
[02:06:58] uh
[02:06:59] >> Nick.
[02:06:59] >> But the the other thing that they found
[02:07:01] out about it, the other thing they found
[02:07:03] out about it, it cures drug addiction.
[02:07:05] >> Yep. It cures.
[02:07:06] >> You got your meth, cocaine, heroin,
[02:07:10] marijuana, whatever. It takes away the
[02:07:12] total desire to have those substances in
[02:07:15] your body.
[02:07:17] That that is the method they should use
[02:07:20] for cleaning up the drug addiction and
[02:07:22] the uh homelessness in this country.
[02:07:24] just grab them off the street, stick
[02:07:26] them in a re-education compound, micro
[02:07:29] dose their food until they finally
[02:07:31] realize that they don't want to be on it
[02:07:33] and then put them through the treatment.
[02:07:35] But no, I haven't done it or I haven't
[02:07:37] even approached it.
[02:07:38] >> I did it.
[02:07:40] >> Did it help?
[02:07:41] >> [ __ ] yeah, it helped. I haven't had a
[02:07:43] drop of booze in almost four years.
[02:07:47] >> Really?
[02:07:47] >> And it was effortless. Yeah. That's why
[02:07:49] all these [ __ ] bottles are still
[02:07:50] here.
[02:07:53] Otherwise, I'd all be gone.
[02:07:55] >> Yeah, but it
[02:07:58] Nick, I'm not going to [ __ ] you. It
[02:07:59] changed it [ __ ] changed my life.
[02:08:03] >> Well, maybe I'll get around to it
[02:08:04] someday.
[02:08:06] I don't drink that much anyway anymore.
[02:08:08] You know, my my normal consumption is
[02:08:11] probably a glass of wine with dinner.
[02:08:14] >> This helps a lot more than just taking
[02:08:15] the booze away.
[02:08:16] >> What? This stuff helps a lot more than
[02:08:20] just taking the booze away.
[02:08:21] >> Yeah. Well, I'll talk to Al. I'm sure
[02:08:22] he'd like to watch while I go through
[02:08:24] it. Yeah. And I would trust him to watch
[02:08:27] while I go through it. Yeah.
[02:08:30] Is it offered through the VA?
[02:08:33] >> No. You have to go to Mexico.
[02:08:37] >> Well, I go to Mexico all the time.
[02:08:39] >> Well, well, not all the time.
[02:08:41] >> Maybe I can.
[02:08:42] >> Where is it? Mexico City. I can't say
[02:08:45] exactly where it is because
[02:08:48] because
[02:08:50] >> you arrived in a laundry bag and they
[02:08:53] dropped you off.
[02:08:54] >> That's right.
[02:08:54] >> At a clinic.
[02:08:55] >> Yeah.
[02:08:55] >> I will tell you off camera where it is.
[02:08:58] >> Yeah. Okay.
[02:08:58] >> And if you want, I will connect you with
[02:09:00] the people.
[02:09:02] >> Yeah. Like I say, I might think about
[02:09:03] it.
[02:09:05] >> I hope you do.
[02:09:08] >> I'm not usually this weepy or loopy.
[02:09:12] >> That's okay.
[02:09:14] happens a lot on here.
[02:09:17] >> I get like that when I think about the
[02:09:19] yards laying on top of me to keep me
[02:09:21] from getting hit again.
[02:09:23] You know, that's another one that brings
[02:09:25] the tears.
[02:09:28] Yeah.
[02:09:31] Probably because I owed them money
[02:09:35] more than likely or they thought that I
[02:09:37] owed them money.
[02:09:42] Do you want to talk about the
[02:09:45] prisoner capture attempts?
[02:09:47] >> The what?
[02:09:48] >> The prisoner capture attempts.
[02:09:50] >> The prisoner capturing prisoners.
[02:09:54] >> Oh yeah. Well, that didn't turn out well
[02:09:56] that well.
[02:09:59] Uh we really Habu only had well when I
[02:10:01] was there only had one real prisoner
[02:10:04] snatch and we we went there to do a
[02:10:07] prisoner snatch. They uh the area was
[02:10:13] high concentrations
[02:10:15] and it was laced with uh trails that
[02:10:19] couriers and etc. If they knew that you
[02:10:24] were wiretapping or that they had moon
[02:10:26] beam overhead trying to listen for radio
[02:10:29] signals and locate things on the ground.
[02:10:32] They would use couriers
[02:10:34] on trails going back and forth between
[02:10:37] the different units and that we we set
[02:10:39] it up to do the uh
[02:10:43] to do a snatch
[02:10:46] and it was fairly simple. We we found a
[02:10:50] trail, high-speed trail, knew that they
[02:10:53] would use it if they got pressed and
[02:10:56] that and they we started using an air
[02:10:58] support to bomb them and make them get
[02:11:01] up and start moving around and that and
[02:11:04] uh they they knew if we were bombing
[02:11:06] them, they'd have something up there
[02:11:07] listening for radios at the same time.
[02:11:10] So they anyway, we're set up on this
[02:11:12] trail.
[02:11:14] Kind of cool. There's a really large
[02:11:16] tree by from over there where the wall
[02:11:19] is and Mac was behind that. And I was
[02:11:24] over here
[02:11:26] behind some slightly smaller trees than
[02:11:29] that. And and I had a a silenced 20 22.
[02:11:34] Was it 22? Yeah. And uh and Mac had a
[02:11:39] silence gun in that.
[02:11:42] And uh anyway, the the yards are spread
[02:11:45] out to kill anybody behind the ones we
[02:11:48] want. We're going to let couple of them
[02:11:51] go through. Yards are on the other side
[02:11:53] of M. Couple of them and there three or
[02:11:57] four of them behind me over here down
[02:11:59] stretch out this trail. So they start
[02:12:03] bombing, making them get up and move
[02:12:05] around and that we hear that
[02:12:06] pitterpatter of little feet coming down
[02:12:08] the trail. And uh
[02:12:12] it's three guys
[02:12:14] uh actually four uh
[02:12:19] one guy
[02:12:21] slightly ahead.
[02:12:23] The guy in the next guy was an officer.
[02:12:26] We knew he was an officer because of
[02:12:28] the, you know, collar tabs and he had a
[02:12:31] map case and uh the guy behind him and
[02:12:35] then a a third guy
[02:12:39] or or yeah, a third guy behind him and
[02:12:42] that and I waited for him to get by and
[02:12:46] uh
[02:12:49] M
[02:12:51] stepped out, shot the first one in the
[02:12:55] leg and pistol whipped him and then shot
[02:12:59] the second guy.
[02:13:01] Uh, and I I got the the third and fourth
[02:13:05] guy. I killed them. And uh, the one guy
[02:13:11] when I shot him, he said brother in in
[02:13:14] Vietnamese.
[02:13:16] And it turned out later that the guy in
[02:13:18] the front was his brother.
[02:13:20] >> [ __ ]
[02:13:21] >> And he was calling out to him. and the
[02:13:23] the guy that we shot and captured you
[02:13:26] shoot him in the leg so they can't run
[02:13:28] off. Uh put a tourniquet on them, grab
[02:13:32] him, cuff them up, start carrying them,
[02:13:35] start demol
[02:13:42] took the we stripped the bodies, went
[02:13:45] through their pockets and everything,
[02:13:46] threw it into a sack or I think we used
[02:13:48] a A78 bag. threw their all their
[02:13:51] equipment uh except for the the guns and
[02:13:55] uh pulled the bodies and and took the
[02:13:57] guns apart and threw threw it out on
[02:13:59] under the underbrush and hid the bodies
[02:14:02] and that.
[02:14:04] Sometimes we take the bodies back with
[02:14:05] us too so they could do an autopsy and
[02:14:08] see what they were eating, see if they
[02:14:10] had any kind of parasites, that sort of
[02:14:11] [ __ ] You know, you know how doctors get
[02:14:14] involved.
[02:14:14] >> Mhm. But we grabbed the guy. We went to
[02:14:17] the extraction LZ.
[02:14:20] They uh they dropped the strings and we
[02:14:24] decided to put uh Kumman
[02:14:27] the one zero or 01
[02:14:30] and uh I think S pot on there with the
[02:14:33] prisoner and then M and I
[02:14:38] and the other yards got on the second
[02:14:41] chopper that came in and we lift out and
[02:14:44] away we go into the blue yonder and that
[02:14:46] we're the ones we're watching the one in
[02:14:48] the front And suddenly it looked like
[02:14:51] somebody dropped a rucks sack. Though
[02:14:53] there was three yards with the prisoner
[02:14:55] on the first one and it uh we thought
[02:14:57] somebody dropped a rucks sack. It was a
[02:14:59] prisoner. What had happened? And they
[02:15:02] had him trusted up and they they didn't
[02:15:05] get to snap and link him in tight enough
[02:15:07] to him and he started swinging around
[02:15:10] down underneath the aircraft and he came
[02:15:13] back in and he bit Kumman in the face
[02:15:17] and held on to him like that and Kumman
[02:15:20] just pulled out a knife and just
[02:15:23] sayanara. There you go. Holy [ __ ] All
[02:15:26] the way to the ground and we were
[02:15:29] already counting the bonus money. I see
[02:15:31] that. So that's 300 for you and 300 for
[02:15:34] you and the yards all get a month's pay.
[02:15:36] We get to go to the train get laid and
[02:15:39] we watched them go all the way to the
[02:15:41] ground. We got to the refuel point. It
[02:15:44] was a old fire base and they land
[02:15:49] everybody's rolling up the strings and
[02:15:50] that we go see Kumman's bleeding all
[02:15:52] over his face and then Matt goes, "What
[02:15:54] happened?" And he explained it to you.
[02:15:59] Why did you kill him? You better be in
[02:16:01] the face, you know. Number 10, D VC
[02:16:05] said, uh, I said, well, you know, we're
[02:16:07] not going to get paid money for don't
[02:16:09] need money. Need to kill VC. That was
[02:16:13] end of the end of the conversation.
[02:16:15] That's how Budro threatened us cuz when
[02:16:17] we got back to the launch site, we were
[02:16:20] sitting in the little messaul portion
[02:16:22] that we drank beer in, and we were
[02:16:23] joking about what we were going to tell
[02:16:26] Mayus about how we lost a prisoner.
[02:16:29] We're going to tell them that uh I tied
[02:16:31] them in with some knot I learned in the
[02:16:33] sea scouts or uh I had uh I forgot the
[02:16:37] rope and I packed it because I had too
[02:16:39] many candy bars in my rucks sack and
[02:16:41] that we used a piece of rope we found
[02:16:43] out there and Budro was listening over
[02:16:46] in the shadows.
[02:16:48] He goes, "You know, you're lucky I just
[02:16:49] don't tell Mayus what you two are really
[02:16:51] up to." Yeah, but then it's a good
[02:16:55] mission. just uh things went bad at the
[02:16:58] last minute.
[02:17:01] >> I have here that
[02:17:04] you were interrogating
[02:17:06] captives in the field.
[02:17:09] >> No,
[02:17:09] >> no, no. Never had time for that.
[02:17:12] >> Okay.
[02:17:13] >> Oh, I you might do impact interrogation
[02:17:16] on me. How many more are with you? You
[02:17:18] know, where are they? And and the yards
[02:17:20] handled that. But you
[02:17:23] don't have time to do that. You got you
[02:17:25] snatch them and you run until cuz
[02:17:28] getting them back is everything and and
[02:17:31] and turning them over to people that can
[02:17:33] really and like I said impact stuff. How
[02:17:36] many guys were with you and that sort of
[02:17:38] thing? Slap flap, you know, let's go.
[02:17:39] >> Mhm.
[02:17:40] >> Uh, you know, the the most valuable P
[02:17:44] that I heard of that CCN got was Elden
[02:17:48] Bargewell.
[02:17:50] What What do you think that P did for a
[02:17:53] living?
[02:17:56] He was the battalion mess sergeant. No
[02:17:59] [ __ ] So he know who who he had to feed,
[02:18:02] what their names were, what units they
[02:18:04] were, where they were at, all the
[02:18:07] rations. He had all this wealth of
[02:18:10] information because he was MS surgeon.
[02:18:14] the the guy we grabbed, the only thing
[02:18:17] Well, he was a
[02:18:19] senior lieutenant
[02:18:22] and he was the S and we're acting as
[02:18:24] some sort of S2 capacity cuz the the map
[02:18:27] case
[02:18:28] had uh you know just like we used clear
[02:18:31] plastic covers and he had units marked
[02:18:33] on it and all that. It was it was a
[02:18:35] tactical map. So it wasn't a line
[02:18:38] officer
[02:18:40] and we pulled a bunch of [ __ ] out of his
[02:18:42] pockets that you know gave the guys in
[02:18:45] Saigon said well he was an intelligence
[02:18:47] officer.
[02:18:50] Yeah. I remember Elden told me he said
[02:18:52] that one time they found a carved into a
[02:18:55] tree born in the north to die in the
[02:18:58] south.
[02:19:00] Damn.
[02:19:02] >> Yeah. I mean, you got to remember these
[02:19:04] guys are GIS just like us, just wearing
[02:19:06] a different uniform.
[02:19:08] >> Yeah.
[02:19:09] >> Hardcore little sons of [ __ ] We'll
[02:19:11] give them that.
[02:19:12] >> Sounds like it.
[02:19:13] >> I had a lot of respect for them. I I
[02:19:15] didn't have any respect for the VC cuz
[02:19:17] they were ashing trash, you know,
[02:19:20] militia, but the the Pavin that they
[02:19:24] would come to bombs to get at you and
[02:19:27] keep coming, you know, take casualties.
[02:19:30] >> Damn.
[02:19:32] Were you on an operation too that uh did
[02:19:34] you retrieve down pilots?
[02:19:38] >> Oh yeah, we did a couple of times on on
[02:19:40] bright lights choppers. You know, you're
[02:19:43] doing a bright light, choppers go in,
[02:19:45] you're you're the one you you got to go
[02:19:47] get them. Uh
[02:19:54] I remember I think the chapter is called
[02:19:56] Blue Eyes. We went in on a chopper that
[02:20:00] had gone down on an insert and we uh
[02:20:06] the the the
[02:20:08] one one
[02:20:10] and a door gunner had not gone in with
[02:20:13] the with the with the helicopter. They
[02:20:16] had leaped free from the wreckage or
[02:20:19] when they hit the water they got thrown
[02:20:21] free. Everybody else was dead then, you
[02:20:24] know, the and it burned afterwards,
[02:20:27] which is bad.
[02:20:29] Uh, I did another one.
[02:20:32] Uh, one of them I had to the guy
[02:20:35] delivered to me, but another bright
[02:20:37] light. Uh, one of the choppers was going
[02:20:40] past, got shot to [ __ ] took an RPG
[02:20:43] right in the transmission and fell out
[02:20:46] of the sky. And the door gunner got
[02:20:49] blown up the slope. He landed like that
[02:20:51] far away from me. He still had the M60
[02:20:53] in his hand except the barrel was cut in
[02:20:56] half from shrapnel and that. And uh the
[02:20:59] other the other guys uh well the chopper
[02:21:03] rolled down the hill. We were going to
[02:21:06] go down to it and see if anybody
[02:21:08] survived.
[02:21:10] And uh
[02:21:12] no, that was another one. We went in the
[02:21:15] the later on the afternoon on the
[02:21:18] wreckage and we got there and we got up
[02:21:21] on we could see the chopper in the brush
[02:21:24] below us and we could see movement
[02:21:26] around it but according to the cubby
[02:21:30] everybody had gotten pulled out.
[02:21:34] So we thought it was NBA going over the
[02:21:36] wreckage that pulling [ __ ] out and that.
[02:21:38] So Cook threw a grenade down there and
[02:21:41] it landed up. The chopper was laying on
[02:21:43] the side like that. The grenade landed
[02:21:46] here, went off. Threw another grenade.
[02:21:49] It landed on the other side of the
[02:21:50] chopper and it went off. And we heard
[02:21:52] this voice, "Please don't throw another
[02:21:55] grenade down here." And it was American.
[02:21:59] >> Oh boy.
[02:21:59] >> So we go down. It was one of the door
[02:22:01] gunners. And his leg was pinned under
[02:22:03] the underside of the aircraft. and that
[02:22:06] he had [ __ ] almost gotten out and the
[02:22:09] and the aircraft rolled over on him. So
[02:22:12] we managed to break break him out of the
[02:22:15] wreckage and that got him back and uh
[02:22:19] the uh funny story. They take him to the
[02:22:23] evac hospital and he's in one bed
[02:22:28] and the co-pilot is in another bed. the
[02:22:33] middle of the night, the staff wake, you
[02:22:36] know, hears a ruckus and he's in there
[02:22:38] trying to strangle the co-pilot.
[02:22:41] And what had happened was when they
[02:22:43] unassed the aircraft,
[02:22:46] they just left him and took his M60 and
[02:22:49] reported that he was dead. So they took
[02:22:52] his gun and left the aircraft and he was
[02:22:54] trying to kill that warrant officer.
[02:22:57] Yeah.
[02:22:59] >> Yeah. number of times we we went in. I
[02:23:02] went in on a
[02:23:04] on an F4.
[02:23:07] The
[02:23:08] one pilot had either failed to eject or
[02:23:12] partially ejected. He he was still in
[02:23:14] the aircraft. He was dead and we we
[02:23:17] found him. He was kind of jammed up
[02:23:19] against the the the ejection seat, went
[02:23:23] out about halfway before something
[02:23:24] folded in it and stopped it. And the
[02:23:27] rockets and the and the ejection seat
[02:23:29] burned him to death. I mean, he was
[02:23:32] toast from about the waist down.
[02:23:35] Everything was burned off.
[02:23:36] >> Damn.
[02:23:37] >> Yeah.
[02:23:39] >> Not a not a nice way to go.
[02:23:40] >> No kidding.
[02:23:45] >> I don't have nightmares about him
[02:23:46] because he's Air Force.
[02:23:54] Yeah, that's that that was the worst
[02:23:55] part. People
[02:23:57] when they burn.
[02:24:00] And that's uh I I can understand getting
[02:24:02] blown to pieces and shot up, but uh I
[02:24:05] don't want to ever see another burned
[02:24:07] body again. Yeah. How was it leaving?
[02:24:13] Leaving was
[02:24:16] happy sad.
[02:24:18] Yeah. I I hated to leave. I I actually
[02:24:21] thought about just going off in the bush
[02:24:23] with the arts.
[02:24:25] I I I loved him that much and I really
[02:24:30] had no ties to the my family of course,
[02:24:33] but I really had no ties to the
[02:24:34] civilized world at that point.
[02:24:37] I'd been with him so long I was brew
[02:24:42] a lot of guys were like that thought
[02:24:43] about you know cuz they they closed the
[02:24:47] when they closed off the
[02:24:51] when they started moving American troops
[02:24:53] out we knew that they were going to
[02:24:54] close and abandon the yards. The South
[02:24:58] Vietnamese would for sure and American
[02:25:00] American command weren't weren't all
[02:25:02] that you know reliable to take care of
[02:25:04] them. We were they were our family. So
[02:25:08] we were stealing [ __ ] for them.
[02:25:10] Ammunition, mortars, machine guns,
[02:25:13] rifles,
[02:25:14] uh flamethrowers, anything. Cuz when the
[02:25:17] big American units like Americal and the
[02:25:20] and
[02:25:21] the mechanized, what was the name of it?
[02:25:23] Uh tent mechanized or something like
[02:25:26] that. When they left Quantri, the PDO
[02:25:29] yard was full of stuff. floor fans, big
[02:25:32] piles of of wrenches and sockets, you
[02:25:35] know, uh, anything you could mic
[02:25:38] containers with mortar ammunition,
[02:25:40] actual mortars, machine guns, and all
[02:25:42] that. Just [ __ ] left it for the
[02:25:44] Vietnamese. So, we were going up there
[02:25:46] raiding it. And every time we went to my
[02:25:49] lock, we were taking sling loads. The
[02:25:53] pilots were in on it. They knew what we
[02:25:55] were doing. Every time we went up there,
[02:25:57] we filled up the helicopters either with
[02:25:59] ourselves or with equipment and
[02:26:01] ammunition and then a sling load of
[02:26:04] stuff underneath it and would fly it up
[02:26:05] to my lock and it would disappear and
[02:26:09] give at least give them a chance to
[02:26:10] fight.
[02:26:11] >> Mhm.
[02:26:11] >> You know, when the thing happened, but
[02:26:14] it very sad to leave them and sad to
[02:26:17] leave the the guys, you know,
[02:26:19] >> the allies.
[02:26:20] >> The guy these are your brothers, you
[02:26:22] know.
[02:26:22] >> Sounds a lot like Afghanistan,
[02:26:24] >> huh? Sounds a lot like how we left
[02:26:27] Afghanistan.
[02:26:28] >> Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I'm sure
[02:26:30] >> we just abandoned those people.
[02:26:31] >> I'm sure. We just, you know, betrayal,
[02:26:33] you know, not you, but the [ __ ] in
[02:26:37] charge.
[02:26:39] I I had a lot of anger about that for a
[02:26:41] long time.
[02:26:43] You know, when I went back, I I found
[02:26:45] two of our my yards.
[02:26:47] >> You went back?
[02:26:48] >> I went back twice.
[02:26:49] >> How was that?
[02:26:51] >> In lightning.
[02:26:53] >> No [ __ ]
[02:26:53] >> Yeah. I had a friend that papered me so
[02:26:57] I wasn't traveling on my passport
[02:27:01] uh and uh Canadian.
[02:27:04] So, uh, I I I actually went back the
[02:27:06] first time I I did a project. I I had a
[02:27:09] I was working in environmental and we
[02:27:11] came up with a
[02:27:14] a system where we were treating
[02:27:17] um waste um [ __ ] with anorobic microbes
[02:27:23] which which increase the and anorobic
[02:27:26] means doesn't need oxygen. And what it
[02:27:28] does is those microbes
[02:27:31] eat the [ __ ] and the pathogens and they
[02:27:33] produce methane.
[02:27:35] And we built these silos in the ground.
[02:27:40] We lined them with clay and on top of it
[02:27:42] was a cement plug
[02:27:45] with a shaft down it with a agitator
[02:27:50] and that was run from the top and it
[02:27:52] would stir the [ __ ] You make it real
[02:27:54] liquid. You know, you put some some
[02:27:57] straw organic material in there, but
[02:27:59] it's mostly [ __ ] and water. And then you
[02:28:02] cook it in the in the microbes. It makes
[02:28:04] methane. It comes out through the top,
[02:28:06] goes over here, you dehumidify it. You
[02:28:09] can run a reciprocating engine on it
[02:28:11] just like natural gas cuz that's what
[02:28:14] natural gas is, methane.
[02:28:16] So, uh, I had a contact at, uh, in
[02:28:21] Canada that got a contract to, to try
[02:28:24] and use the system we had
[02:28:28] in Vietnam with, uh, four of these big
[02:28:31] pig collectives. They brought all the
[02:28:34] pigs in from the surrounding villages,
[02:28:36] put them in one big, you know, building,
[02:28:38] and, you know, they had a lot of pig
[02:28:40] [ __ ] Fine. We we'd create electricity
[02:28:43] with it. And when the silo got done
[02:28:46] cooking down, at the bottom of the silo
[02:28:49] was this thick,
[02:28:51] really
[02:28:52] black material that was kind of
[02:28:57] part of it was a slurry and part of it
[02:28:59] was kind of grainy, pure nitrogen.
[02:29:02] So they would take that out. You'd empty
[02:29:04] the silo and you take it out, lay it out
[02:29:06] on iron sheets, dry it out. You've got
[02:29:09] 90% nitrogen fertilizer. In fact, they
[02:29:13] they were taking the fertilizer and
[02:29:16] actually bagging it and selling it to
[02:29:19] the farmers, right? To replace using
[02:29:21] human [ __ ] in the benjo holes, which
[02:29:24] stops a whole bunch of other diseases
[02:29:27] >> by using they have it was so rich they
[02:29:29] had to hit it with pot ash in order to
[02:29:32] reestablish a a livable uh pH in it. So
[02:29:36] I went back for that and I I had a good
[02:29:39] time for about 3 months and I went back
[02:29:41] one more time that uh
[02:29:44] just had a cur I I I had the first time
[02:29:48] I heard rumors about the uh re-education
[02:29:52] camps and how some of the yards had
[02:29:54] survived
[02:29:56] and uh I had a I made a contact there in
[02:30:00] in Daang
[02:30:02] and uh he told me that he knew some
[02:30:04] martyrs
[02:30:06] that had gotten out of the education
[02:30:09] camps that were kind of living like
[02:30:12] street makers.
[02:30:14] And I went back and I found two of the
[02:30:16] guys from CCN. One of them was on my
[02:30:18] team.
[02:30:19] >> No [ __ ]
[02:30:20] >> And I I managed to get them enough money
[02:30:22] to get them out of Daang and back up in
[02:30:26] the Highlands. Both of them were missing
[02:30:28] an arm.
[02:30:30] the the the the little people had SCU
[02:30:34] tattooed on their special commando unit
[02:30:37] tattooed on their arms and if the North
[02:30:40] Vietnamese found it, they chopped their
[02:30:42] arm off. So both of them had their arm
[02:30:45] chopped off from here down.
[02:30:47] >> [ __ ]
[02:30:48] >> But uh yeah, it was a really great
[02:30:52] reunion.
[02:30:54] Yeah, I found out about, you know, how
[02:30:56] their families had gone back up in the
[02:30:58] hills, how they actually had fought a
[02:31:01] running battle back into the mountains
[02:31:04] and uh
[02:31:06] a Trail of Tears, so to speak. Damn,
[02:31:09] man. Hell yeah.
[02:31:13] I think I got a star on my map for that
[02:31:15] one.
[02:31:17] [ __ ]
[02:31:24] I have a affinity for primitive
[02:31:27] cultures. You know, the you know, the
[02:31:30] yards were basically a
[02:31:34] semiiron age tribes when we came along
[02:31:37] with all our man toys and war and they
[02:31:41] adapted to it like ducks to water and
[02:31:43] they they are the finest natural
[02:31:45] warriors I've ever seen. And I've worked
[02:31:47] with other groups in other countries.
[02:31:51] All of them pretty much share the same
[02:31:54] kind of culture.
[02:31:56] You're a warrior and you're a member of
[02:31:59] the tribe. And the first duty is to
[02:32:02] protect the tribe above everything else.
[02:32:05] Protect the tribe.
[02:32:10] Well, Nick, let's take a quick break and
[02:32:13] uh when we come back, we'll talk about
[02:32:15] what it was like coming home.
[02:32:19] Think back to a first date that actually
[02:32:21] mattered. One where there was chemistry
[02:32:24] right out of the gate. You didn't just
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[02:32:31] want? What are your non-negotiables?
[02:32:34] Where is this actually going? You do
[02:32:37] that because you're trying to figure out
[02:32:39] fast whether this is someone worth
[02:32:41] investing more time in or if you should
[02:32:44] move on. Well, the same goes if you're
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[02:34:42] All right, Nick, we're back from the
[02:34:44] break. We're kind of wrapping up
[02:34:46] Vietnam. We have wrapped up Vietnam.
[02:34:48] What was it like coming home for you?
[02:34:55] Total decompression.
[02:34:58] Um and and shock. I mean, the height of
[02:35:03] the anti-war
[02:35:05] thing and that um I was only spit on
[02:35:09] once.
[02:35:10] Uh and that was in Oakland and they were
[02:35:14] a bunch of Buddhists or something. I I
[02:35:16] remember punching them really hard and
[02:35:18] all kinds of robes flying around. But uh
[02:35:22] coming back to the States,
[02:35:25] you know, you're you have nothing in
[02:35:27] common with your high school friends.
[02:35:29] >> Mhm.
[02:35:30] >> You have very little in common with uh
[02:35:35] the outskirts of your family, your your
[02:35:37] mom, your dad, your brothers and
[02:35:38] sisters, you know, all there for you.
[02:35:43] Yeah. I was fortunate
[02:35:45] uh
[02:35:48] and that you know I had a support
[02:35:50] mechanism there but once again after
[02:35:53] about a
[02:35:55] oh I don't know
[02:35:57] two weeks of being home I really started
[02:36:01] getting itchy feet I wanted to go
[02:36:04] around people that I I knew you know so
[02:36:07] I I got in my car and
[02:36:11] went back to the cries of my mother
[02:36:13] saying that I abandoned her after she
[02:36:15] carried me for nine months,
[02:36:18] nurtured me for, you know, years, you
[02:36:20] know, but uh
[02:36:24] I I went right to I stopped on the way
[02:36:28] from Fort Bragg to visit a friend of
[02:36:29] mine that I knew from the Mike Force and
[02:36:34] spend about I don't know, you know,
[02:36:37] visitors and fish have the same
[02:36:39] three-day limit, especially with wives.
[02:36:43] So after about the fourth day, she
[02:36:45] started getting the, you know, the skunk
[02:36:47] eye look when she looked at me, you
[02:36:49] know, and she knew she was going to have
[02:36:50] to retrain him after I'd been there for
[02:36:52] a while. So on the fourth day, I told
[02:36:56] him I was going to take off for brag.
[02:36:58] And, you know, she made me chocolate
[02:37:02] chip cookies for the trip, and I
[02:37:04] suspected that they might have had XLAX
[02:37:06] in them, but uh they didn't. But uh I I
[02:37:11] drove to Fort Bragg. I checked into the
[02:37:14] sixth group again and uh
[02:37:19] it it was a wild time. I was on the
[02:37:22] team. We did a lot of stuff. We were
[02:37:24] always training. We were always going
[02:37:25] someplace and it it helped uh
[02:37:31] didn't have a lot of uh personal
[02:37:34] relationships.
[02:37:36] uh just
[02:37:38] I I just couldn't get into that. I got
[02:37:41] laid, but I didn't get into personal
[02:37:44] relationships.
[02:37:45] And and gradually the
[02:37:47] >> why not?
[02:37:49] >> Just weren't ready.
[02:37:50] >> Didn't want to let myself go.
[02:37:52] >> I didn't want to trust somebody that
[02:37:55] hadn't gone through what I went through.
[02:37:58] And I I saw all my friends that were,
[02:38:01] you know, having problems with their
[02:38:02] marriages and their girlfriends, the
[02:38:04] same thing. you know, we uh we drank a
[02:38:07] lot a lot. You know,
[02:38:11] you I I managed to control myself, so I
[02:38:15] didn't get in a lot of trouble. But, uh
[02:38:19] like I said, I once you've been on that
[02:38:22] kind of an adrenaline high, it's hard to
[02:38:24] give it up for ice cream cones and
[02:38:26] conac, you know?
[02:38:27] >> Yeah. So it was uh took a long while to
[02:38:32] totally decompress to the level where I
[02:38:34] was socially acceptable
[02:38:40] and you you'd be looking at people going
[02:38:43] they'd say something and you you go you
[02:38:45] stupid [ __ ] you know and then go at it.
[02:38:50] Um,
[02:38:52] what I think what
[02:38:56] really saved me
[02:38:59] was I got married
[02:39:01] when I and and I I'm really sorry for
[02:39:05] her because it uh she she was uh 19 and
[02:39:09] I was 27
[02:39:12] and uh I had had a baby daughter
[02:39:18] and
[02:39:20] I got orders to go to Berlin,
[02:39:24] which in those days was like grabbing
[02:39:26] the brass ring and and hitting the top.
[02:39:30] And I was getting ready to go to Berlin.
[02:39:33] She know she was going to have to She
[02:39:36] was an 80-year-old girl from uh uh what
[02:39:42] it's the name of that town
[02:39:44] up by San Francisco Bay. Monterey. Not
[02:39:48] Monterey. Uh uh I can't think of the
[02:39:51] name.
[02:39:51] >> Palto.
[02:39:53] >> No, further north up right [ __ ] the big
[02:39:56] electronics center now. Uh
[02:39:58] >> Silicon Valley.
[02:39:59] >> Uh I'll think of it later after we get
[02:40:02] off this thing. Yeah. But uh her her
[02:40:05] parents were from there. Her sister had
[02:40:08] married a guy from the fifth special
[02:40:10] forces group and they their marriage was
[02:40:14] already on the rocks when I met her. I
[02:40:18] got married in Monteray full military
[02:40:20] wedding of which Spider Parks and two
[02:40:23] other guys tried to stab me with the
[02:40:25] sabers when I walked down to it. Yeah,
[02:40:27] we'd been drinking. Yeah. But uh got
[02:40:31] married.
[02:40:33] Uh she got pregnant. We drove to uh Fort
[02:40:36] Deans, my next assignment. And uh I was
[02:40:40] at Fort Deans for about two years with
[02:40:42] her and things just fell apart.
[02:40:47] Uh, I was working as a bouncer
[02:40:50] at a place in Lemonster for extra money
[02:40:53] and we didn't get paid all that much. I
[02:40:56] told somebody the other day, the E7
[02:40:59] asked me, he said, "How much do you make
[02:41:00] as an E7?" So, my pay was $1,250 a
[02:41:04] month. And he went, "What?" And I was,
[02:41:07] when he told me what they get paid now,
[02:41:09] I wanted to rob him right there on the
[02:41:12] spot. But, uh, you know, money was
[02:41:15] tight.
[02:41:16] You know, I was gone a lot. The first
[02:41:18] year I was at Fort Debbins, I saw her
[02:41:20] 112 days out of that year. The rest of
[02:41:23] the time I was either on exercises,
[02:41:26] flint lock, mobile training team,
[02:41:29] wherever.
[02:41:31] And it just it fell apart. And I went to
[02:41:34] West Point to to, you know, every year
[02:41:38] the the cadetses, the sophomore cadetses
[02:41:41] get uh
[02:41:43] patrolling,
[02:41:45] mountaineering, rubber wraps, all that
[02:41:47] training and that. And uh and um and
[02:41:51] everything's new. They get everything
[02:41:52] new. New jeeps, new weapons, new
[02:41:55] fatigues, new poncho liners, you name
[02:41:57] it. And uh when I came back from uh from
[02:42:01] that training, I had a week to clear
[02:42:05] post
[02:42:06] before I went to uh or no, I had a
[02:42:08] month's leave and a week to to clear
[02:42:12] post. And when I got back to uh Fort
[02:42:15] Debons, I walked into my uh government
[02:42:18] housing and there were nothing in it.
[02:42:21] All my clothes were piled in the middle
[02:42:23] of the of the living room and all the
[02:42:27] furniture was gone. There was a a
[02:42:31] container of sour milk in the
[02:42:33] refrigerator and a beer. And I sat there
[02:42:37] on the floor and had that beer and I I
[02:42:39] called up Jay Graves and told him what
[02:42:42] happened. He said, "Don't say anything.
[02:42:44] I'll be there in 30 minutes." And uh he
[02:42:47] came down, picked me up, took took me up
[02:42:50] to his place and dropped me off with a
[02:42:52] well-known gangster, a real criminal.
[02:42:56] And I stayed with him for uh a week, and
[02:43:00] I made the mistake of trying to go back
[02:43:03] to California and patch things up, which
[02:43:06] didn't work out at all. I got back
[02:43:09] there, I I tracked her down to a
[02:43:13] nightclub and she was sitting on her
[02:43:15] ex-boyfriend's lap when I jumped him and
[02:43:19] bit a dollarized hole out of the top of
[02:43:22] his head and the fight was on. And I the
[02:43:27] the bouncers decided they didn't want
[02:43:29] anything to do with me after I broke one
[02:43:31] of them's arm.
[02:43:33] And uh I just escaped and got outside,
[02:43:36] realized how badly I'd [ __ ] up and
[02:43:39] still tried to go back and talk to her.
[02:43:42] And when I got there, her father stormed
[02:43:45] out the front door and
[02:43:48] shoved me and I hit him and he had a
[02:43:49] heart attack.
[02:43:52] So, uh
[02:43:55] from there it was a mad flight to get
[02:43:58] somewhere. I I hired a private plane to
[02:44:01] fly me to uh another city and then
[02:44:04] caught commercial air. When I got back
[02:44:08] to uh Boston, I I I stopped in
[02:44:13] Cincinnati or someplace and I called
[02:44:16] Jay. I said uh I got in some trouble and
[02:44:20] he goes, "We know." I said, "What do you
[02:44:23] mean you know?" He said, "Don't go to
[02:44:25] Boston airport. the state police are
[02:44:27] waiting for you with a warrant.
[02:44:30] And I said, "Well, okay." So, I I flew
[02:44:32] into New York City and uh Chester, God,
[02:44:37] I loved him. He died here two years ago.
[02:44:42] Former Marine from the late 50s, fleet
[02:44:45] marine, uh who became a a criminal. He
[02:44:51] uh he he was the FBI always suspected he
[02:44:55] was involved in this or that. He was a
[02:44:57] one-man crime wave boosting trucks,
[02:45:00] selling the stuff, you know. Um great
[02:45:04] guy, just full of life. He uh I had uh
[02:45:08] travel orders and a ticket on uh you
[02:45:12] know the contracted airlines and that to
[02:45:15] leave from Boston and go to Frankfurt
[02:45:18] and then on to Berlin. He bought me a
[02:45:21] first class ticket on uh British Airways
[02:45:25] out of Connecticut and into Frankfurt
[02:45:28] and uh that's how I escaped the the net
[02:45:31] and
[02:45:33] group actually covered my ass. They told
[02:45:37] them that I was on classified orders and
[02:45:40] that I had already left and that u they
[02:45:43] no longer were responsible for me.
[02:45:46] they'd have to talk to my receiving
[02:45:48] unit, but unfortunately that was
[02:45:50] classified and they couldn't tell them
[02:45:51] who with the group commander involved in
[02:45:54] that loop. And so I went from there to
[02:45:58] Berlin and Berlin really was the the
[02:46:02] healing process.
[02:46:04] You know, it was it was exciting. It was
[02:46:08] demanding.
[02:46:09] It it kept me occupied. It was, you
[02:46:12] know, I I was in an environment that I
[02:46:15] absolutely loved.
[02:46:17] Uh Berlin is still one of my favorite
[02:46:19] cities
[02:46:20] there in Munich. You know, those two hit
[02:46:23] the top of the charts
[02:46:25] and it, you know, uh I was speaking
[02:46:28] German almost all the time either in my
[02:46:32] job or, you know, I was living out on
[02:46:34] the economy.
[02:46:37] I had a really nice flat over in Saleorf
[02:46:40] that uh was uh
[02:46:44] it was just magic. I had two motorcycles
[02:46:46] and a Volvo. So, uh, I had plenty of
[02:46:49] stuff to, you know, mental health stuff.
[02:46:52] Get on the Harley and put something
[02:46:54] exciting between your legs and take a
[02:46:56] drive, you know.
[02:46:58] And I I I met a I met a woman there that
[02:47:01] was in ASA,
[02:47:03] Army Army Security Agency. She was a
[02:47:08] oral comprehension specialist, listening
[02:47:11] and being able to translate. She
[02:47:13] couldn't speak Russian, but she could
[02:47:15] listen to it and understand the dialects
[02:47:17] and all that. Named Claire.
[02:47:20] And Claire,
[02:47:22] wow,
[02:47:24] she was uh she was something. I I lived
[02:47:26] with her for
[02:47:29] almost four years before I I dumped out
[02:47:33] of the army.
[02:47:35] And she just,
[02:47:37] you know, recently surfaced.
[02:47:41] And uh she our relationship eventually
[02:47:44] fell apart cuz I didn't want to get
[02:47:46] married. I decided I was never getting
[02:47:48] married again. And she wanted to get
[02:47:50] married. I didn't. So she she went off
[02:47:53] and married a real nice guy, a warrant
[02:47:55] officer, and built a life out of that.
[02:48:00] But uh the time in Berlin was uh really
[02:48:02] healing cuz it was just so much going
[02:48:05] on. It was and it was we were doing
[02:48:08] stuff like uh you know dead a we did a
[02:48:12] lot of work with the zunderer nine
[02:48:14] commando sec which is their
[02:48:16] counterterrorist counter intelligence
[02:48:19] police and they they were great guys. I
[02:48:22] mean every every one of them were just
[02:48:24] really talent. They were like special
[02:48:25] forces.
[02:48:27] Same attitude same same skills. I mean
[02:48:30] just wonderful guys. I uh I managed to
[02:48:35] about halfway through there, there were
[02:48:37] six of them going on vacation to the
[02:48:40] United States. So I lined them up with
[02:48:42] all my friends and contacts that were in
[02:48:45] California, Arizona, places like that.
[02:48:48] Every one of them came back with a
[02:48:50] saddle
[02:48:52] that they were going to put in their bar
[02:48:53] downstairs and use that as their stool
[02:48:56] to sit on.
[02:48:58] and they uh a lot of interaction with
[02:49:01] them. We did a lot of counter
[02:49:02] surveillance and surveillance of their
[02:49:05] targets.
[02:49:07] Uh what better way to learn, you know,
[02:49:09] we'd follow Soviet agents, East German
[02:49:12] agents, criminals, whatever they had on
[02:49:14] the ticket list or we'd do counter
[02:49:18] surveillance, you know, with, you know,
[02:49:20] with their guys trying to follow us. You
[02:49:22] know, we play the rabbit, the the hair.
[02:49:25] So you really got good at at people
[02:49:29] people watching you
[02:49:30] >> and being able to sense it and that and
[02:49:32] all the little tips of the trade and
[02:49:34] that and then uh
[02:49:38] funny story.
[02:49:41] I had the Volvo and I wanted to get
[02:49:43] another car and get it registered as a
[02:49:47] German vehicle
[02:49:49] though. I wanted to get a Volkswagen
[02:49:52] but I knew this guy, German guy. He
[02:49:54] owned a bar up in in uh the Turkish
[02:49:57] sector,
[02:49:58] Gunter. And Gutter was afraid of his
[02:50:02] girlfriend, right? And and Gunter Gutter
[02:50:06] was aggravating, but he was fun
[02:50:08] sometimes. He had a Measure Schmidt. You
[02:50:11] know what that is?
[02:50:12] >> No.
[02:50:13] >> Okay. After the war, Measures, the
[02:50:16] actual Measure factory,
[02:50:19] designed a car that was powered by a
[02:50:21] motorcycle engine that had uh two wheels
[02:50:24] in the front, one wheel in the back. And
[02:50:27] it actually looked like the the fuselage
[02:50:30] of a measure spit 109 that you had to
[02:50:33] get in it. You had to pull the canopy
[02:50:35] back, climb in the front seat, and had a
[02:50:37] passenger seat behind you. and that and
[02:50:40] that uh I had I I fell in love with it
[02:50:43] the first time I saw [ __ ] I got to have
[02:50:45] this right. So I make a deal with Gunter
[02:50:48] for $2,500 cash and I bought that thing
[02:50:51] from him and he's you know he's fussing
[02:50:53] about the paperwork. Wow. You know what
[02:50:55] if you get in an accident when you're
[02:50:57] going back to your house and that I'd
[02:50:59] prefer if I drove with you and that you
[02:51:01] know so come up and pick up the car.
[02:51:03] said, "Okay, the date when I went up to
[02:51:06] to pick it up, I'm wearing a leather
[02:51:08] jacket, a leather flying helmet, and a
[02:51:11] white scarf and goggles."
[02:51:15] And he goes, "Oh, no." Said, "Hop in the
[02:51:18] back. Come on, we'll get down there.
[02:51:19] Don't worry." Said, "You've been
[02:51:21] drinking?" "No, not at all." I had a
[02:51:23] flask underneath the seat already, and I
[02:51:25] I was barely well lit. We took off down
[02:51:28] to Havl, which is like in the center of
[02:51:30] Berlin. There's a freeway
[02:51:33] before we got a quarter way out of the
[02:51:36] turkey sector. I already had two police
[02:51:38] escorts trying to catch me and I'm
[02:51:40] weaving in and out of traffic. I've got
[02:51:42] the canopy pulled back and the scarfs
[02:51:45] out the window and I'm cackling as I'm
[02:51:47] going along and I I got far enough ahead
[02:51:50] of him and and I was using the
[02:51:52] shoulders, everything I could to avoid
[02:51:53] him and that. We came up on the
[02:51:56] Grunovald exit which if you turn left
[02:51:59] you go over to clay alley where the emb
[02:52:01] or the consulate is and the Berlin
[02:52:04] headquarters and my uh beq was over
[02:52:08] there too but my apartment was further
[02:52:11] down over in Saleondorf which is next to
[02:52:13] the big bonsai the lake there. So I see
[02:52:17] the cut off and if if you turn left you
[02:52:20] go over to the American side. If you
[02:52:22] turn right, you're on the horse trails
[02:52:25] that go around the the the Grudal is a
[02:52:29] it's a 12mi long, three mile wide park,
[02:52:33] all forests and hiking trails, horse
[02:52:36] trails, all that. And that measurement
[02:52:39] could scoot in there and the cop cars
[02:52:41] couldn't.
[02:52:42] >> Nice.
[02:52:42] >> So I'm [ __ ] throwing mud, going
[02:52:45] around corners, taking because I know
[02:52:47] the whole area. We go out there and do
[02:52:48] exercises and that, you know. I finally
[02:52:52] lose all of them except one and he's
[02:52:55] right on my [ __ ] tail. I'm thinking
[02:52:56] this son of a [ __ ] He's got to be a
[02:52:58] dirt track driver in that. So I I got
[02:53:01] down towards the Sailindorf
[02:53:04] and I there's an alley that cuts off to
[02:53:08] the right off the horse trails and that
[02:53:10] and gets to the end and there's just
[02:53:13] enough space to get that bedroom through
[02:53:16] and it goes on a long gentle slope down
[02:53:19] to the Hobble River where it's a paved
[02:53:22] walkways and that and it's like a block
[02:53:25] and a half up to where my my apartment
[02:53:27] is which is an old mansion. I got the
[02:53:31] second floor. So I get down there and
[02:53:34] the guy's right behind me and I get I
[02:53:36] can't I'm looking around. I'm said point
[02:53:38] doesn't look familiar that and I see the
[02:53:41] hedge. I said well just cut through the
[02:53:43] hedge. It's a gentle slope. See if this
[02:53:45] baby can take some damage.
[02:53:47] Turn to the right. There was a moment of
[02:53:50] weightlessness
[02:53:52] and then we hit the water. It was the
[02:53:55] wrong alley. went through the hedge out
[02:53:58] about 20 30 feet and straight down into
[02:54:02] the river. When I surfaced,
[02:54:06] I came to the surface and I'm looking
[02:54:07] around for Gunter and he surfaced. He
[02:54:10] bubbled up to the top a couple seconds
[02:54:12] later. First thing out of his mouth was,
[02:54:14] "I hate you."
[02:54:17] So I said, "Well, you we got more
[02:54:20] problems than that. We need to get out
[02:54:21] of the water for one thing." And then uh
[02:54:26] we we got to shore and there was a taxi
[02:54:28] stand not far from there that was a
[02:54:32] lighted telephone pole. You can pick it
[02:54:34] up and call a taxi and uh I called my
[02:54:37] flat and cla was there and I said you
[02:54:40] need to come pick me up at such such a
[02:54:42] location. There was a little guest house
[02:54:44] that was closed but there's a place we
[02:54:46] used to go and have a you know wine or
[02:54:49] cheese cheese plate whatever. I said,
[02:54:51] "Come down here and pick me up at what
[02:54:52] was the name of that something forest."
[02:54:55] And she shows up about about 10 minutes
[02:54:58] later with the the Volkswagen that I had
[02:55:01] bought her. And we pack Gunter into the
[02:55:04] back of it. We drive all the way back up
[02:55:06] to bedding and and by that time the
[02:55:09] whole park's full of [ __ ] police cars
[02:55:11] going up and down the streets driving
[02:55:13] around, you know, looking for for us.
[02:55:16] And then uh we get back up there and all
[02:55:19] the way up there and tell them said,
[02:55:20] "Look, it's simple. I've already signed
[02:55:22] the pink slip, right? Just tell them,
[02:55:25] don't even show them the pink slip. Tell
[02:55:28] them it was in the car and that somebody
[02:55:31] stole the car. You'll get in you'll get
[02:55:34] your insurance will pay for the car. No
[02:55:36] problem. Everything's handled, right?"
[02:55:41] But three days later, I go into the
[02:55:43] detachment and I walk in the team room
[02:55:46] and one of the guys from the scuba team
[02:55:48] comes in and throws the license plate
[02:55:51] from the uh from the from the measure
[02:55:53] schmidt. He says, "You might want to
[02:55:55] keep this." And uh little little after
[02:55:59] that, I walked back in and my team
[02:56:01] sergeant was a wonderful guy named
[02:56:03] Crach. He was sitting at his desk and my
[02:56:06] leather flying helmet was on his desk
[02:56:08] all soden and everything and he's
[02:56:10] tapping it with a pencil said you might
[02:56:12] want to put this in with that plate. So
[02:56:15] evidently the scuba team had been called
[02:56:16] out by the the German police diving team
[02:56:20] cuz they were trying to recover two two
[02:56:22] drunks that had gone into the Hobble
[02:56:24] River and they were dragging the river
[02:56:25] for their bodies and that
[02:56:28] >> holy [ __ ]
[02:56:29] >> It was a healing process. Sounds like
[02:56:32] quite the healing process.
[02:56:34] >> They uh
[02:56:36] a great group of guys, great mission. Uh
[02:56:40] saw a lot of really, you know, a lot of
[02:56:42] guys from project went to Dead A.
[02:56:45] >> There was probably when I was there,
[02:56:47] there was probably
[02:56:49] 20 of us that had been in projects. You
[02:56:52] know,
[02:56:53] >> it's like all your friends that you
[02:56:56] don't want as a character show up.
[02:56:58] >> Yeah.
[02:57:01] But the only sour point about it was I
[02:57:03] was there when
[02:57:06] the general that wanted to get get
[02:57:07] control of the detachment sent his
[02:57:09] hatchet man down there and he hated me
[02:57:13] with a passion and and the feeling was
[02:57:16] [ __ ] mutual.
[02:57:19] He made sure he wasn't in front of me on
[02:57:21] any jumps
[02:57:22] just in case his static line got
[02:57:25] disconnected. Yeah,
[02:57:28] >> I've met a couple of those.
[02:57:30] >> Yeah, you know, they're they're
[02:57:32] everyone. They're a sour taste, but they
[02:57:34] are there. There's no denying it.
[02:57:37] They're little martinets that think
[02:57:38] they're [ __ ] doesn't stick.
[02:57:42] Nick, where's your daughter now?
[02:57:47] I tracked her down.
[02:57:50] One of the guys I used as an instructor
[02:57:52] was a
[02:57:54] the head of the SWAT team in Costa Mesa
[02:57:58] and a homicide detective. And when he
[02:58:00] got out, he became a private eye. And he
[02:58:03] tracked her down to uh San Jose.
[02:58:06] And she was living in San Jose about a
[02:58:10] about two miles from where her
[02:58:11] grandparents were. and uh
[02:58:17] I found her on uh the internet
[02:58:22] and sent her a a note said uh you know I
[02:58:27] really hate to break it to you this way
[02:58:29] but I might be your natural father. And
[02:58:32] she took her sight down the next day.
[02:58:36] And that was the last I heard of her
[02:58:38] except uh about how long ago? about five
[02:58:42] or six years ago, my phone rang
[02:58:46] and a young man was on it. Uh, somebody
[02:58:51] post teenager, but that young and he
[02:58:54] goes, "Are you Nick Brock?" I said,
[02:58:55] "Yes, I am." He goes, he says, "I'm your
[02:58:58] eldest grandson." And I heard a bunch of
[02:59:01] yelling in the background, woman's
[02:59:03] voice, and he never called back.
[02:59:06] So far as I know, she's in San Jose.
[02:59:12] married uh my ex-wife married a cinjun.
[02:59:18] So that all wrapped together. It
[02:59:20] probably wasn't a good idea to go back
[02:59:22] and try and establish fal ties. So
[02:59:26] I still think about her. What would you
[02:59:29] say to her? I'm sorry.
[02:59:35] Do you think you'll get that
[02:59:36] opportunity?
[02:59:38] >> Who knows? I'm winning the lottery and
[02:59:40] that soothed a lot of hard feelings.
[02:59:44] Maybe maybe maybe she'll see what I'm
[02:59:48] doing now and try and make contact
[02:59:51] herself. I wouldn't put money on it, but
[02:59:53] you know.
[02:59:54] >> Have you done any interviews before?
[02:59:56] >> What
[02:59:56] >> have you done many interviews before?
[02:59:59] >> When this Yeah, a couple of them. You
[03:00:01] know, I did one with uh
[03:00:05] who's the guy the captain from SF. Uh,
[03:00:08] that was a good one. I did. Uh, I just
[03:00:10] did one last night with two LA cops that
[03:00:14] uh, it's called War Stories. Uh, they
[03:00:16] were fun. One of them was a former
[03:00:19] Marine. I kept telling her, "I know
[03:00:21] there's some dark [ __ ] in your path.
[03:00:24] Don't lie to me."
[03:00:26] >> I hope you meet her again.
[03:00:28] >> I hope you get to say that to her.
[03:00:32] >> I do, too. I do, too. You know, we I
[03:00:36] don't have any real regrets in my life.
[03:00:40] Uh
[03:00:43] I'm not a perfect man. I got a lot of
[03:00:45] flaws. At least I admit my flaws, you
[03:00:48] know, and I live with them. There's no
[03:00:51] such thing as a perfect man.
[03:00:53] >> Yeah. According to my partner, he's
[03:00:55] close to it.
[03:01:01] Yeah.
[03:01:04] Wow,
[03:01:06] we covered a lot of ground.
[03:01:08] >> We did.
[03:01:09] >> How are you feeling?
[03:01:11] >> Well, I'm fine. Yeah. Yeah. I wrote
[03:01:14] three books. You know, the first two
[03:01:16] were about projects.
[03:01:18] >> And they without my trying, they became
[03:01:22] cult books. You know, I've had many,
[03:01:24] many people. And I didn't write it for
[03:01:26] the public. I wrote it for the guys I
[03:01:29] bled with. And I'm happy as hell when
[03:01:32] one of them walks up to me and goes,
[03:01:33] "Way to go, Nick." Uh, but the public
[03:01:36] seem to taking them well. And they they
[03:01:40] I'm still getting paid royalty, so I
[03:01:42] guess they're doing all right.
[03:01:45] I wrote this book, Vagabonds,
[03:01:49] because I had a contract to supply a
[03:01:51] West African nation with uh six 737300s
[03:01:57] on a lease. And I happened to know a
[03:02:00] wonderful man in London that I'd been in
[03:02:02] a freight business with in Africa that
[03:02:05] had all these airline how how to get
[03:02:08] airplanes and and run an airline and
[03:02:10] that. and we set up a lease contract
[03:02:13] with them for six years.
[03:02:16] Contract was signed. Money was being
[03:02:18] transferred into escrow. I move from
[03:02:22] Palm Desert to uh Tucson because they
[03:02:25] were going to paint all the planes and
[03:02:27] and and um you know put the livery on
[03:02:30] them and that and do the sea check and
[03:02:32] that before they send them to Africa. I
[03:02:34] got there
[03:02:36] and a month later CO came ashore.
[03:02:40] >> Oh [ __ ] and everything. I was I was set
[03:02:42] to make 35,000 a month on a six-year
[03:02:45] contract. So, I got there and that
[03:02:48] that's when I moved in. I signed a lease
[03:02:51] for two years with my business partner
[03:02:54] as a co-enant and everything dropped
[03:02:58] out. So, we we were locked up for COVID.
[03:03:02] We're sitting there, we watched
[03:03:03] everything on Netflix and said, "What
[03:03:04] are we going to do?" Well, let's write a
[03:03:06] book about what we did after we got out
[03:03:08] of the military.
[03:03:10] So, we wrote the book 67 days start to
[03:03:13] finish.
[03:03:13] >> Nice.
[03:03:14] >> Pushed it through. I had a wonderful
[03:03:16] editor in in London, Oxford, a woman
[03:03:19] named Ruth Shepard, been really good to
[03:03:22] me. The the owner of the company I would
[03:03:25] gladly run over with a pickup truck.
[03:03:27] But, uh,
[03:03:29] the she's wonderful and her staff is
[03:03:32] wonderful. She got it approved, got it
[03:03:35] published, and that it doesn't do as
[03:03:37] well as the other two books, but it's uh
[03:03:40] and it was all about what he and I did
[03:03:43] after we got out of the military. We uh
[03:03:46] rescued kidnapped children in Algeria,
[03:03:50] Guatemala,
[03:03:52] uh rescued uh people in Mexico
[03:03:56] uh from kidnapped, real kidnap gangs,
[03:03:58] and uh one in Cheschna,
[03:04:01] >> which I'll never do again.
[03:04:03] >> Why not?
[03:04:04] >> I didn't actually run that thing. That
[03:04:06] was a friend of mine that had the
[03:04:08] contract and that I came up with a way
[03:04:10] of uh of tracking the victim.
[03:04:14] Uh, and I used the Russian Jeff and I
[03:04:17] had gone to Russia.
[03:04:19] Oh god. Back as one of the things we
[03:04:21] did, we went to Kazakhstan
[03:04:24] with a um asphalt company that was
[03:04:28] trying to get a contract to build
[03:04:31] four-lane highways connecting Kazakhstan
[03:04:35] with the rest of Russia. And that and
[03:04:37] they they use cold mix concrete which or
[03:04:40] cold mix asphalt which you can use in
[03:04:42] artic conditions. That's what they built
[03:04:44] the Alcan highway out of cuz no prostes
[03:04:47] all that stuff. So we had met uh my
[03:04:51] friend in London introduced us to the
[03:04:53] KGB
[03:04:55] uh at a a very high level and uh we went
[03:05:00] to Moscow
[03:05:02] and uh you know met the the the head of
[03:05:06] director at nine who was uh made the
[03:05:11] lieutenant general in in the KGB had a
[03:05:13] beautiful baritone voice spoke fluent
[03:05:16] English and fluent German and uh where
[03:05:20] was I going with that? So any anyway, we
[03:05:24] we went to Kazakhstan. It's in the book.
[03:05:26] It's uh you know the the adventures of
[03:05:29] going over there and doing that.
[03:05:32] And um were we on the airplanes or on
[03:05:36] the I lost my track there for a moment.
[03:05:38] >> We were you were going to Russia? Yeah,
[03:05:41] we went to went to Russia for this deal
[03:05:44] with the asphalt company and uh that was
[03:05:47] one of the things and and uh while I was
[03:05:49] there made really good contacts with the
[03:05:51] with the KGB and after communism fell
[03:05:57] you you understand the KGB did not
[03:05:59] belong to the central government. It
[03:06:02] belonged to the communist party.
[03:06:04] >> So when the communist party fell out,
[03:06:07] they no longer had a mandate to operate.
[03:06:10] So they were going through all this
[03:06:13] rioting about how they were going to
[03:06:14] build the new Russia and that and that's
[03:06:16] how they came up with the F FSB which is
[03:06:19] what they have currently in that. But
[03:06:21] the KGB also owned all kinds of things.
[03:06:24] They owned cities where they had
[03:06:26] research going on. They had no roads
[03:06:28] going in or out. Everything came in by
[03:06:30] air. Uh scientific facilities. They
[03:06:34] owned uh gold mines. They owned uh oil
[03:06:37] fields. uh they they uh and they were
[03:06:40] funding themselves, but uh they were
[03:06:43] looking for cash and uh on on the thing
[03:06:48] in in Chache, we actually rented
[03:06:51] um a Spetsnas
[03:06:53] outfit that we had come up with a way to
[03:06:56] uh
[03:06:58] to track them.
[03:07:00] Uh, and actually the Russians came up
[03:07:03] with it and it was a friendly isotope
[03:07:06] and the victim was an industrialist from
[03:07:10] the west. Tried to make an oil deal with
[03:07:13] the Chetchkins. The Chetchins grabbed
[03:07:14] them and demanded money basically how it
[03:07:16] went. The first group that went in to
[03:07:19] try and pay the ransom. They just killed
[03:07:22] them and took the money. The second
[03:07:24] group went in were SAS guys and they
[03:07:26] shot their way out of it. And then my
[03:07:29] friend who was an SAS guy actually
[03:07:31] picked up the third and came up with
[03:07:33] this plan that if we could locate them,
[03:07:37] we also could
[03:07:40] put enough force to actually grab them.
[03:07:43] So the Russians came up with two tricks.
[03:07:44] One was a way to track him and that was
[03:07:46] a friendly isotope. There were only two
[03:07:49] places in the region where you could buy
[03:07:52] the medicine that he needed to stay
[03:07:53] alive. So they broke in there and dosed
[03:07:56] all his medication with that friendly
[03:07:59] isotope. If he peed on the ground, they
[03:08:02] could detect it from the air. So they
[03:08:05] did a nest team flying back and forth
[03:08:07] doing the grids and they located him in
[03:08:09] a mountain village and they came up with
[03:08:12] a substance they could treat the money
[03:08:15] with. If you touch the money within 24
[03:08:18] hours you were dead.
[03:08:20] So they dose the ransom.
[03:08:24] They picked it up. They They had already
[03:08:26] located the village and about 2:00 in
[03:08:28] the morning, they went in and rescued
[03:08:30] him. There was about eight of them that
[03:08:32] were still kicking and everybody else
[03:08:34] was dead. No old people and no children.
[03:08:36] >> Damn.
[03:08:37] >> All young people in the belly. So, you
[03:08:39] know,
[03:08:40] >> it was uh the Russians are they've got
[03:08:42] finesse sometimes and sometimes they're
[03:08:45] bulling the court, you know.
[03:08:47] >> Damn. But they're, you know, I my trip
[03:08:50] over there, my association with them,
[03:08:55] you know, I knew who they were and I
[03:08:56] knew what the communists were and, you
[03:08:58] know, they were my sworn enemies at one
[03:09:00] time, but I watched them rebuild after a
[03:09:03] total collapse of the system. I asked
[03:09:06] Vladimir, the general, I said, "Uh, so
[03:09:08] what kind of government do you think
[03:09:10] you're going to have?" He goes, "Well,
[03:09:11] Nick,
[03:09:13] it won't be communist because that's the
[03:09:15] law. And it won't be western either, but
[03:09:19] one thing it will be is Russian. Totally
[03:09:23] Russian. And that's what he came up with
[03:09:25] a a free market society still with the
[03:09:28] vestages of one strong man and one
[03:09:32] strong party,
[03:09:34] you know, and I I admire them for being
[03:09:37] able to pull through without totally
[03:09:38] collapsing.
[03:09:41] Yeah. They're uh it's interesting to
[03:09:44] watch the events and watch Trump working
[03:09:46] with them and trying to
[03:09:48] >> cuz he realizes you know the west west
[03:09:50] the Europeans were raping them after the
[03:09:54] communism fell. They went and made deals
[03:09:56] with all the the steel plants and the
[03:09:59] shipyards in Poland and all that and uh
[03:10:02] basically fed the the US this thing
[03:10:06] about you know how crooked the the
[03:10:08] communists are and they're still in
[03:10:10] control while they were buying
[03:10:11] everything and making joint ventures.
[03:10:13] Oddly enough the Kazaks that you know
[03:10:16] the one group of people they would
[03:10:18] rather do business with
[03:10:20] Germans.
[03:10:22] >> Yeah. because the Germans keep
[03:10:23] meticulous records.
[03:10:26] So it it was really interesting. We uh
[03:10:30] we did a lot of things with a lot of
[03:10:32] different people and eventually we we
[03:10:35] trained SWAT teams. We trained personal
[03:10:37] bodyguards in Mexico. Ended up
[03:10:40] supplying, you know, my clients with
[03:10:42] armored cars that were produced in my
[03:10:44] partner's plant in Mexico City.
[03:10:47] >> Damn.
[03:10:48] uh tried to stay away from working with
[03:10:51] the government. That's you can get on a
[03:10:55] lot of a lot of chemi without uh you
[03:10:58] know too much effort with that crowd.
[03:11:01] >> Yeah.
[03:11:02] >> Yeah. Well, as you know,
[03:11:04] >> you have lived a lot of lives. You get
[03:11:06] painted
[03:11:08] that you say you know something and you
[03:11:11] feel it's in your
[03:11:14] because the person you are it's your
[03:11:15] best interest to tell federal law
[03:11:17] enforcement. The minute that you do that
[03:11:20] they start building a jacket on you.
[03:11:22] >> Yeah.
[03:11:23] >> And if you're hanging out with these
[03:11:24] people obviously you're a bad guy. So I
[03:11:29] did that once and regretted it in the
[03:11:32] end and I swore never again. you know,
[03:11:35] if it meant somebody's life. Yeah. But
[03:11:37] uh I I just don't have a lot of trust in
[03:11:41] their ethics.
[03:11:42] >> Yeah.
[03:11:43] So anyway, that to present time we we
[03:11:47] come back to Jeff Miller, my partner,
[03:11:51] came out here and uh met uh studio
[03:11:56] production company called Show Dog
[03:11:58] Studio run by a really great guy, John
[03:12:03] Atard, who's a former NCO in the Royal
[03:12:06] Fuselers back way back when.
[03:12:10] and uh he made an offer to love the book
[03:12:13] said we can turn this into a Netflix
[03:12:16] series. So that was the offer that he
[03:12:18] gave us that uh what they're currently
[03:12:22] planning is to turn it into a streamer.
[03:12:25] >> Uh using the book as the basis, you
[03:12:27] know, basically
[03:12:29] >> every chapter can become a episode.
[03:12:32] >> Congratulations.
[03:12:33] >> Yeah. Well, I'm happy about it when the
[03:12:35] check clears the bank.
[03:12:37] >> Wow. That's pretty funny. You know, it's
[03:12:39] a the the thing's going to be called
[03:12:42] American Ronin.
[03:12:46] Not my choice, but it'll work.
[03:12:48] >> Sounds pretty badass to me.
[03:12:50] >> If they can keep Hollywood out of it,
[03:12:52] you know, make it, you know, stick to
[03:12:54] the story.
[03:12:54] >> When do you think it will go?
[03:12:58] >> I hope I'm not speaking out of turn
[03:13:00] here. I I me personally, I think that
[03:13:02] we'll actually start writing sometime
[03:13:05] this spring and filming maybe fall and
[03:13:12] release in late 26. Actually, if
[03:13:16] everything works in that,
[03:13:17] >> man. Well, that will be awesome.
[03:13:19] >> Yeah, we'll see.
[03:13:20] >> I can't wait to see.
[03:13:21] >> I'm pleased with it because it's it's
[03:13:23] interesting.
[03:13:24] He's pleased with it because he wants
[03:13:26] his grandkids to go, "That's grandpa.
[03:13:30] Yeah, I'm doing everything I can to ruin
[03:13:32] that scene.
[03:13:35] Yeah. Anyway, that that that's what I'm
[03:13:38] doing now. And I'm I'm still writing
[03:13:40] every once in a while. I I wrote a
[03:13:43] fiction book years ago that uh I may get
[03:13:47] published. And it it's about uh Casa Gas
[03:13:51] Casca
[03:13:53] >> who was a centurion that stabbed Christ
[03:13:56] in the side.
[03:13:57] >> No. on on the hill. And as the myth
[03:14:01] goes, when he stabbed him in the side, a
[03:14:04] clear liquid, if he hung on the cross,
[03:14:07] what happens is your plural cavity fills
[03:14:09] up with liquid and you suffocate. You
[03:14:12] you you know that between the bleeding
[03:14:14] and the and the trauma, you suffocate in
[03:14:16] your own juices. When he pushed the
[03:14:19] lance to his side, that clear liquid
[03:14:21] splashed out on his hands, his
[03:14:24] shoulders, and he had a milky eye.
[03:14:27] that was from a sling stone and his
[03:14:31] sight returned, his rheumat or his uh
[03:14:35] arthritis and that was all gone. And as
[03:14:38] Christ looked at him, the the myth is is
[03:14:41] that he says, "As you are centurion, so
[03:14:44] you shall remain until we meet again."
[03:14:48] And Robin Moore wrote a series of books
[03:14:50] called Casa, the eternal soldier. And I
[03:14:55] met Robin at the S SOA and I I said,
[03:14:59] 'You know, I'd really like to do an
[03:15:00] update on that. Uh, do you have a how do
[03:15:04] I get the to use the copyright on the
[03:15:07] characters? And he goes, Casa is not
[03:15:09] copyrighted. Casa was a real person. He
[03:15:13] was a Spaniard Iberian and he actually
[03:15:16] was the what do they call it? uh po
[03:15:21] uh Pylum Primma, the the head spear, the
[03:15:25] most senior centurion in every legion
[03:15:28] and that and he was actually the
[03:15:30] centurion that had the guard mount in
[03:15:33] the center of the city and that's that's
[03:15:35] how he came to be there.
[03:15:37] >> No kidding.
[03:15:38] >> And you go to South America that that
[03:15:40] myth pops up every once in a while. The
[03:15:42] Roman, you know, the Romans around. So,
[03:15:44] I I wrote a fiction book based around
[03:15:47] the Banana Wars in uh El Salvador and
[03:15:51] that brought brought it up to date and
[03:15:53] that and I I just never published it.
[03:15:55] So,
[03:15:56] >> Well, I hope you do.
[03:15:57] >> I'm fiddling around with it still.
[03:15:59] >> Anyway, I don't want to keep you too
[03:16:01] late.
[03:16:01] >> No, Nick, it's been an honor.
[03:16:04] >> It's been an honor for me. Really?
[03:16:05] >> Me, too.
[03:16:06] >> I watched you on TV and I There's
[03:16:09] something about that guy.
[03:16:13] Well, seriously, it's been an honor to
[03:16:15] get your story out and um
[03:16:19] >> you're going to make me blush. Come on.
[03:16:21] It's
[03:16:21] >> been one you have been through.
[03:16:23] >> You've lived a lot of lives, but I've
[03:16:26] lived a long
[03:16:28] and eventful life and and I' I've met a
[03:16:32] lot of good people. I've met some that
[03:16:35] weren't.
[03:16:38] Some of them passed,
[03:16:41] not by my hand.
[03:16:43] And but uh
[03:16:46] I think the thing I learned is that
[03:16:49] I love being human.
[03:16:52] Yeah. Every aspect, the agony and the
[03:16:55] ecstasy.
[03:16:57] >> Good.
[03:16:58] >> Yeah. And stay away from redheads.
[03:17:01] >> All right.
[03:17:01] >> Yeah, I will.
[03:17:05] Oh, wait. All right. Thank you. You too.
[03:17:08] Cheers.
[03:17:21] No matter where you're watching the
[03:17:22] Shawn Ryan Show from, if you get
[03:17:25] anything out of this at all, anything,
[03:17:27] please like, comment, and subscribe. And
[03:17:32] most importantly, share this everywhere
[03:17:36] you possibly can. And if you're feeling
[03:17:39] extra generous, head to Apple Podcast
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