529: Firebase Kate Was Under Siege, Surrounded, Outgunned. With Capt. Bill "Hawk" Albracht

All that I knew of this war was that America was fighting communists, and it was my duty to help my country.

“At age 21, I believe that I was seven feet tall, bulletproof, invisible when needed, and that Vietnam was to be the greatest adventure I could ever hope for.”

I'd had three years of service, but not a mid-it in combat. My troops were very young, many still in their teens. Like me, most had enlisted or been drafted straight out of high school. A few had several months of combat under their belts, but even they could not have been prepared for what awaited us in late October 1969.

And so we went, more or less happily onto the isolated hilltop called Kate, ignorant of the misaligned forces that controlled our fate, never expecting a bloody five-day monsoon of steel and fire.

And that right there is an excerpt from a book called Abandoned in Hell, written by William Bill Allbrack and Marvin Wolff and Bill Allbrack, called sign Hawke served as the youngest Greenbrake captain in Vietnam, where he experienced significant combat, not only at fire base Kate, but later as a Mike Force leader, he is the recipient of three silver stars, five bronze stars, several of those with the combat distinguishing the three purple hearts and most important, the combat infantrymen's badge.

And upon leaving the army, he served 25 years in the Secret Service and is an honor to have him here with us tonight to share some of his stories and lessons learned, Bill. Thanks for joining us, absolute honor to have you here. Absolutely, this is my honor, I've been following you for some time and the way you interview and how you delve into the subject and get to the heart of the matter as well as the individual.

“I'm just blown away with and it's like one of the most important things I've ever done in my life is sitting here across for me on this table.”

I'll tell you what, just going through this book, which is incredible and if you're listening right now, just order the book immediately abandoned and hell.

I obviously can only touch on the wave tops of the book, but the book is just absolutely phenomenal and one of the most incredible things that you do is like a, like almost a many biography of the guys that were with you. It's a real tribute to their bravery and not only their bravery of the Americans that were with you, but then of the Mont Yard as well who served incredibly tough fighters and you, you make sure to pay them their their credit as well. And the amount of research that's in this book and the fact is the fact that you have the radio transmissions in the back of the book and being a radio man when I was in the field teams, of course, I was very interested in reading those things because it provides so much.

“It provides us like you're there, you know, when you read some of these transmissions that are going back and forth between you and the guys near it's just phenomenal read those.”

But just incredible book and what you and your guys went through at this fire base in the middle of Vietnam, it's like a, you know, and the book has some cool pictures of what the fire base looked like. And, you know, as I was reading the book, I'm kind of trying to imagine what it looks like and then you, and I had a pretty good picture in my mind and then I opened up to the, got to the point where the pictures and you can see what the fire base looked like and you can see what ambushed hell looked like and you go, I did all kind of comes to life.

So the book is phenomenal and it's just, it's just a great to have you here to capture some of this stuff and honor the people that served like yourself. So thanks for coming out. I want to see one thing before we get into this Marvin J Wolf. Let me just take it back a step. So I even prepared number 1970 and yeah, yeah, yeah, there was nothing wrong with me. And so college and so on in 2008 and we'll talk about coming home. We'll talk about 2008 and sat down and not, not the right of book, but just to put on paper, this battle.

And the battle led to the book, the book led to a documentary and by God, there's even a country song about this thing here. But the guy who was initially the thruster and this whole thing was kind of can moth it, wasn't most, to niches individual, I've ever met my life. I wouldn't want all one money. Okay, let's just put it that way. He started to, my God, this is a book and he went out and he ended up talking to Joe Galloway and Joe Galloway said, boy, this is up my alley, wrote the forward.

So I want to give him his homage. He is the best, the absolute best having said that at least. And so he was a Vietnam veteran as well. Yes, he was a decorated captain and yeah, he so he knew he understood everything. Yeah, that makes a huge difference. I know one of my friends wrote a book about the seal teams and the origination of the seal teams and where came from starting a World War II. And you know, he was a seal, this name is Ben Milligan, but just the fact that he had been through hell week, just the fact that he had been in combat.

It just gave him a way to tell that story, even even from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, gave him an ability to tell that story from a perspective that he truly, at least understood it more than someone had never served before.

And that comes through in this book again, it's just it's an amazing book.

The insight is provided. Yeah, because you've got to know, you've got to kind of know what questions to ask, you know, because somebody will tell you something.

“But if you've been in combat before, especially, oh, you were in combat in Vietnam, when you say something, you go, oh, what kind of air coverage do you have that night? What was the weather?”

Because, you know, a lot of people they think, oh, you just call the aircraft. Well, a Vietnam guy will go, what was the weather like? Because if there's bad weather, there's no aircraft. And so all those little tiny questions that he asked that really brought out this incredible story. And, you know, part of the story is your story. And just to go to the book a little bit, get a little background on you.

You say this, I was born in Rock Island in August 1948, the third of the third of five children of second generation American farmers. I'm certain that my father, Leander, a welder at John Deere, the giant manufacturer of tractors and farm implements, loved me and all his children. But he rarely showed this affection. Tasset turned and emotionally closed, a compact muscular and short fused man. He punched like a prize fighter and relied mostly on his fist to communicate his displeasure with me. As I entered puberty, my beloved mother, Germaine, a sensitive intelligent woman, was diagnosed with depression and hypertension.

Like many depressed women of that era, she was severely overmedicated. She was soon bedridden and rarely left her room for days on end.

My mom died of a stroke in 1965. My relations with that, which never had been good, chilled to an icy truce.

So that's grown up for you. Yeah. And this overmedication of moms. They were given like moms like opiates and stuff. Value. Yeah. Like candy, like chocolate. So you just give it to them.

And the thing was, there was no way that one pharmacy checked with another pharmacy anything.

“So I remember, you know, my bicycle going to one pharmacy picking up this, another pharmacy picking up this and another picking up this.”

And I remember looking and I didn't understand what these medical names of the body. Do remember value. And but each was a different doctor. So yeah, she was over drugged. She used.

Yeah. And so you had, you're the middle child. Yeah. Right. You got this. Nancy and Bob were older.

Yeah. And then Don and Mary followed you. Yeah. So you got five kids running around. You went to Catholic schools.

Absolutely. Which may have been the result. The cause of all these kids in the first place. You worked at a grocery store. Yep.

You're, uh, and again, the details in this book are awesome. Um, you say this in the book. At this time in my life, academics didn't interest me much. Studying was not my thing at all. Instead, I devoted my high school years to enjoying myself.

The soon the nuns had labeled me.

I was the boy who would never live up to my potential.

Helped to such low expectations. I did my best not to disappoint anyone. So you weren't super academically inclined. Wow. Wow.

And what was this like early 1960s? Yeah. Yeah. She was like 60, uh, three, four, five, and then six. And I knew that I was going to the military.

I knew that. So I knew that I didn't have, I knew I had to have a high school education. That's all I was shooting for.

“The most important thing I did my entire high school career was play varsity football.”

After that, again, it was a ride. So, uh, yeah, you're playing varsity football, um, fast forward a little bit here. With my best friend, Joe Murphy, I spent a few weeks considering service options. I could enlist for three years in the army or four years in the Marines, Air Force or Navy. I could volunteer for the draft or wait to be drafted, which meant only two years.

Joe and I decided that the Marines offered the biggest challenge and the most possibilities for adventure. I idolized my brother, Bob, and he wouldn't hear of me joining the Marines. After completing a four-year hitch in the Air Force, instead of returning to Rock Island, he re-opped.

then went to jump school and volunteered for special forces. Bob was a paratrooper.

“In the entire 18 years of my life, I'd never even met a paratrooper.”

So when Bob said, forget about the Marines, I listened. In the Gospel, according to Brother Bob, special forces was where the action was. He laid it out for us. Enlist in the army, volunteer for airborne infantry, then ask for Vietnam. Boom.

Boom, yeah. And I'll see you there. It's funny. I had Dick Thompson on who is it. Soggy and Vietnam.

Yeah. You know, he says, you know, I volunteered for OCS. I was, it was hard to get noticed. He goes, no, you just had a volunteer. He said, I volunteered for special forces.

It was hard to volunteer for special forces. No, you just had a volunteer. I forget, you know, like, this is the height of Vietnam. So if you're saying, hey, I'm ready to go to Vietnam. They're ready to take you.

Yeah. You fast forward. And there's a funny story here about, you know, how you, when you tell the guy, you know, hey. Oh, the recruiter. Yeah.

The recruiter. I'm referring. I go down to the charge carless. Rock Island Illinois. And we graduated in high school and, oh,

Vietnam. I don't know. And we graduated in high school. And we graduated in high school. And we graduated in high school.

“And, oh, Vietnam was heating up like crazy.”

Sixty-six. Well, I think how can I help you boys? Well, we want to, we want to join the army. And we want to be airborne infantry and go to Vietnam. And he looked at us.

He'd be like, we chatted too heads. And he talked to, like, there's a camera somewhere. And he looked around.

And when he finally figured it out, he goes, well.

This is your lucky day. I just happened to have two slots. But I don't know if I have many in the day. I don't know what I'll get them again. Oh, Joe, come on.

We got to sign up in the office. There you go. Well, that recruiter did his job. He saw, he saw some ripe recruits. And he got him.

He's gotten to sign the paper. October 2nd, 1966. Joe and I took the train to Chicago. You guys go to basic training. You have to take an OCS test.

And you say this. Joe, who'd earned better high school grades than I did. Wanted that kind of responsibility. His score on the officer candidate exam missed the caught off. By one point.

I passed by one point.

“So you get to boot camp and they give you a test.”

Well, they they give you a series of tasks back then. And to see if. If you were worthwhile giving the first all. They said. Based on the scores cause like earlier, the Nuns and Priests were correct.

I was not applying myself. So I was taking these general intelligence to test. And I was doing quite well. And then they came and said, all right here. Take the OCS test.

No, no, Jago. I thought all army officers came from West Point. Period, the end.

I had never heard OCS never in our OTC.

This could OCS could have met Oklahoma cook school to me. I had no idea what it was. But they said, take it. And I took it. Then I passed.

And that's it. So you're 18 years old? I am 18 years old. Not by much. And then they called us all in.

You know, a base train is like about 220 guys or so. Good company. And the captain who was the Vietnam vet calls in was like 20 of us. Maybe 22 of us. And he goes, all right.

Y'all pass the OCS test. Y'all go on the OCS. He says, pick your branches. Don't get exotic. Keep in the combat arms.

And I'm going, oh, shit. I don't want to go to OCS. I still want to sign up for war. I don't want to be an officer. And he goes, hey, what is this?

Raise the head. He goes, yes, private. So what if you don't want to go to OCS? Uh huh. So I have a levy.

I have a levy of 20 names. And he says, I got 20 here. The paths and you're going. Any other questions? No, sir.

After wild. That's wild. And I guess that's just the Vietnam timeframe. They just took you. Oh, they call it an opportunity.

Yeah. Yeah. And it was like. When I graduated in the middle. So I turned 19.

Middle August. And I was commissioned. August 31st of 1967. Good news. I was again nice.

Go ahead to buy the bear. So always a folder. When you go to OCS. Is there any, any, any infantry officer course? Was there any challenges that you had?

Are you pretty good to go? It was very, very tough physically. Okay. But you know, it was in pretty good shape. And then after basic and advanced and individual training,

I was in better shape.

So that never really got me.

And the academics were were very, very capable. I mean, this thing you had to know is an infantry officer. You know, how to call an artillery, how to, you know, a map reading. It's certain amount of math is involved. But it wasn't anything overwhelming.

So if you studied, you did well. However, the biggest thing that was leadership. Showing leadership and so on. As you well know from Buds, they get around you and start screaming at you. And to me, make a decision, candidate.

Just disintegrate.

“So guys broke down and, and that's what they were looking for.”

And that's what they wanted to make sure that you wouldn't as you well know. You wouldn't be doing this in common. Combat when you're supposed to be in charge. And people are screaming at you. What do we do?

We shouldn't have be that question shouldn't come up because you already done it. So there was a lot of harassment. A lot of harassment. And tell you, became a senior candidate. And then you were given out to a harassment.

It was good program. And you guys knew. I mean, you had to know that you're just going to Vietnam. Oh, yes. Absolutely.

So I can't even imagine the amount of attentiveness you had like learning to call for fire. And learning the comms plans and learning the weapon systems. Is it, is it naive of me to think that you guys were extremely focused knowing that you're going to know? Absolutely not.

As a matter of fact, the first thing you look for when I'm instructors because of the infantry, I'll see us.

Fort, for betting school for boys, right? And the first thing you look for when instructor got up, there was a combat of Germans badge. The rifle with the wreath and the blue back, the blue badge encouraged. First thing you look for. And when they spoke, you listened.

“And not to say we didn't listen to the other ones.”

But you listened to them harder and better. But I want to end one thing here. And this is, uh, so it was like the first week of Officer County School, week one. And they run us over there and we get an infantry haul. And we out our pennies and papers and we're all ready to go.

And this guy got out there and he says, this is your first class when leadership. So I'm going to teach you everything you ever need to know about leadership here today and now. Now this is 1967, March. He says, it's called the 3M's of leadership. The mission that men and men in me, he says number one, you will accomplish the mission at all cars.

Number two, once the mission is accomplished, you will take care of your men because without your men, you would not have been able to accomplish that mission. And number three at a distance third, me. Acco accolades, promotions, anything comes your way and you've done the other two. Take it.

And Jack, I'm going to tell you that that simple. And I know you know it, too. I have led my life that way, all my life from that day forward. I've led it on the principle of the 3M's of leadership.

And it has never let me down.

I know you know what I'm talking about. No, it's not. That's good advice. Good advice getting it getting that day one. Um, so you finish the officer infantry course.

You go to airborne school. Yeah, volunteer volunteer. Yeah, volunteer. Jumped out of the towers and everything. I went to I was lucky enough that I went when I went through Navy training.

We went to the army for airborne school. So I went back to go down there to forebending it. See the black hats and whatnot and get it get my arm. Oh, they just they just love the seals in the forestry. Conmarine.

I love putting them through.

“So then it's off to the, how hard was it to get the Q course?”

Same thing like all hard. Hard. Very hard. Hard to get in because we had a lot of SF guys were getting the sign to to smoke bomb health to the special forces detachers that were there.

And they only had so many slots. I think there was, oh, God, I don't know. Maybe a hundred and twenty five or so per class, four classes a year. So I happened, this is the way my life goes. And there was a big waiting line to get in.

Well, my two, my two best friends in OCS and then at SF state side. Left screen and at Baltsley. We got out in there. They're in New Yorkers. They're going home after jump school.

I said now I'm going to go to brag. I'll see you there. So I walked in. I checked into the CQ and he goes. Hey Lieutenant.

I said yes Major. He goes. So you're going to sign special forces. He goes listen. We just had a guy.

Just had a guy. Drop out of out of the, special forces officers of course. Could you attend, start 10 tomorrow. See, it's the same.

You call them start calling around. He goes, I said yes sir. Boom. There I am. So I show up.

I got in. And it was, it'll, I tell you. Physically. It was, it was, it was very, very demanding physically.

As you know, in spec ops is always demanding physically.

And but I was in, oh my God, I was in such shape in 19. Mentally. Wow. It was tough. It was colleagues level.

And it was really, really hard. Now I wasn't at the bottom of the class, but I could see it from where I was. And your brother giving you any heads up about the cue course or anything. His, his was totally the, unless did he was a comment.

And it was totally different. We did all the little jobs of this and that. But ours was intelligence and operations, planning, leadership, et cetera, et cetera. So ours was pretty much different.

And ours is only three months long where he was in school for like, year and a half or something. It seemed like I had to learn that Morris code.

I don't think to do that. I forget. I was lucky.

“I guess I'm old enough that I had to learn Morris code.”

I forget I meet groups a minute and I did. But boy, that was torture for some guys. You have a cool thing about cue course. And here you say, I was the only student just out of OCS. Most of my classmates had served a year more in various infantry units.

And very few if any lacked at least some exposure to post secondary education.

But time in a college classroom doesn't always prepare an officer for the challenge of high risk,

high stress, unconventional warfare. I recall a particular lieutenant who was brilliant in class, but could not operate in the field. He was reassigned to the 82nd airborne a few days before he would have graduated. By then I had realized that special forces was where I wanted to be as long as I was in uniform.

There was nothing about it that I didn't like. I'd found a home, a real home with brothers for whom I would die. Yeah, seeing that they just weed guys out like this guy. You know, who's I'm sure he's a patriotic guy. I'm sure he's a good guy, but you know, he just couldn't get it done in the field.

Hey, well, he screwed up the curve. My God. He was blown it out of the water on these tests. You know, the thing, okay, the C141 is going so many knots. And you have six door bundles and they weigh so much.

And the LZ or how big does LZ have to be based. He was he ripped those things out. I'm like, oh my God, this is bad. So that you have it. It was kind of sad, but it was showed how it was literally the day before graduated.

He was in there and they called him in and they came back and gathered. He said, where are you going? He's the 82nd airborne. Because this guy could not find his ass with both hands. It's a fly slide in the field.

He was horrible. So therefore, yeah, off he goes. So you get done. And of course you put in for the Oda Vietnam. Yes.

And your brother's over there at this time? Yes, he is. Gosh. And for some reason, you get assigned to the 46 special forces company in Thailand. I know.

Maybe because Bob was probably because Bob was there in the same unit I would be going to. So they looked and said, you know, like the like the brothers, the Sullivan brothers in World War II. They might have looked at you and said, hey, we don't want to have two guys. Brothers engaged in combat Vietnam with special forces at the same time.

“You would like to think that, but that's pretty much what I think too.”

So I went to Thailand for a year. And how disappointed were you when you got orders to Thailand? Very. You know, I trained and trained and trained to go to Vietnam and they got all the training folks. That's where it vectored into, then Vietnam.

I want to do. And now I've been trained for two years. And now I go someplace else. Now I taught. I taught the Royal Ty army.

And they had a lot of returning. They had a lot of Vietnam veterans. SF guys coming over there. Green boys. And I went down to when I was an executive officer down in southern Thailand down by.

It was called train. And it was only 13. America's there. Our team of 12 special forces and one CIA operative. And then we were at the Malaysian border.

And we trained them down there in the Queensland National Forest. So I'm thinking, I shouldn't be done yet.

“So that's what a year long billet that you do that for?”

Yes, one year.

And then you're basically, you're time yourself.

You're served your time. Two years. And you have that opportunity to get out and you say in the book here. A month before I was due for discharge. I told our personnel officer that I'd stick around for that extra year.

But only if I could serve it in a special forces unit in Vietnam. He gave me a funny look. The personnel officer smiled. That my friend is your lucky day. Yeah.

My dream had become real. I was headed for combat with the special forces. So there you go. You're like a recruiters dream and a personnel assignment officer's dream. Yeah.

Yeah. I know if we're just before going just. So you stand for another year? Is that what it is? I did.

I said it for one more year. Some guys went indefinite. I didn't want to do that. I mean, the handwriting's on a wall. I mean, I knew that when that there we had lots and lots of company grade officers

with no college.

And when the risk came and reduction in force started coming, they were the first to go.

And I knew that. I mean, you know, very Charles could see that coming. Okay. So I just said one year, one year will do. Yeah.

You say a Robin Vietnam August 25th, 1969. And of course, you get tasked with a headquarters job. And, you know, there's a thing called the Mike Force, which gives us a quick brief on what a Mike forces. Certainly. For why I didn't get tasked with an administrative job out of the top.

It's combat orientation course.

Pretty good.

“And when I sat down with the deputy commander, he said, what do you want to go?”

A young captain. And I said, I want to go to the two core. Because Vietnam was broken in I core in the mountains up by the DMZ. Two core central islands. Three core.

And then four core was a delta. And I said, I wanted to go to two core. That's where Bob had been. And I want to be with the mobile strike force now. They're special ops.

Now there's a distinction in special ops in Vietnam. There is the sod guys, a special operations group. We've talked about an interview. A John Strucker, Meyer, Tilt. I mean, those guys are just half nuts.

They're not completely.

They go on groups of eight.

Maybe more. And their whole job is to snoop and poop and find the enemy. Locate him and then bring smoke on him. But the last thing in the world, they want to do is be discovered. Our job, the Mike force.

We go out with a battalion of highly trained airborne mountain yards. And our job was to find and hook up with them and kick their ass. Totally different job. So the Mike force was broken down into battalions in course. Two core be in the biggest.

We went to central islands. We had four battalions. And that would be about three hundred. I'm sorry. Four hundred to four hundred fifty mountain yards.

All highly paid airborne. And they were way above the mountain yard skill level at the eight camps on the border.

And we would go out with them with a team of American special forces.

And either you're going into combat because one of the camps is in trouble. Or you were going where likely they had the enemy was crossing over from there. Which you meant trail. Your job was to find, engage, and kick their butts. So we went out, back and for bear every time we went out.

And that was the difference between the two special lots. I asked for the battalion over the Mike force. And a young captain, you have not been in combat. You've not heard shot fire in anger. But we got a hot area.

We want to send you to executive officers to the senior captain. Which is a southernmost camp in two core special forces. And that's where I went. And then you show up there. And you're on the ground there for not very long.

And you get your next assignment, which is ordered to go to this fire base called fire base. Kate. The monsoon's when the monsoon's come in. It's rain. You can't believe it.

And it's just regular clockwork. And what it does to your defenses, your sandbags. It was not concrete. It's going to deteriorate in a little way.

“So you have to rebuild everything at the end.”

Re-fortify. So I was in the middle of re-fortifying because the enemy, all the enemy indications. And it was pretty rudimentary back then intelligence. Was saying that the NVA was coming down. The NVA, north of the enemy's army.

Was coming down from the north. And they were going to hit the camp of Booprang. And then move to the district capital of Bammitut. And then proceed over to the coast and cut the country in half. That was going to be the big push.

And in 75 they actually did that. So I was very busy working with the local moniors doing that. And the Colonel came out from B team. We were a team, B team, in Bambitut. And the enemy came in and told us briefing.

Just said what I just told you. And he goes, yeah, okay, he says, yeah, okay. Well, he says, by the way, you're going out to fire base gate for 30 days. Captain Barnham is there and he's coming in. And I said, but sir, but sir, you don't understand.

They need me here. I'm getting this for you. Uh huh. Get on the next chopper out there, yes, sir.

“So Booprang, how far was it from Booprang to Booprang?”

Booprang was. Booprang. Booprang. Not that many miles are clicks. It wasn't that many, maybe eight.

So was it like a substation of Booprang? Fire base gate for those three of them around. Anacate Susan. And they were mutually supporting each other in the support of fire of Booprang. In anticipation, these were the smallest fire bases that you could have.

I mean, it wasn't as big as a football field. They usually had two, one, five, five, howitzers and one, one or five howitzers. And they were in the middle of nowhere. Now, I didn't even have any in Susan. I had been to Kate, a little factoid.

The Lieutenant Colonel of the artillery named the fire bases. Any Kate Susan after his three daughters. Kind of a four, four bearer of, again, been fooled. And he named the mountains after his mistresses. Anyway, so I got sent to Kate.

We were the ones. We were maybe a kilometer from Cambodia, the Cambodian border.

And I got there.

“I think, you know, looking at the pictures of fire base gates.”

Yes.

It looks like a little mountain top, like you said.

It's about the size of a football field or so. Now, did coalition forces, or I know what you call, did the mountain yards and the Americans cut down the trees up there and make that. Or is that just naturally, like, formed in that way, where there's not trees on top of the fire, on top of that hill?

In that part of Southern Thailand, it's gorgeous. There's rolling hills and rolling hills. Some significantly high. Dance, triple canopy jungle, at the bottom of them, where there's moisture and creeks and everything.

And then there's hills, there's fields that are, like, thigh high grass. And then there's more vegetation. Fire base gate had a lot of vegetation thigh high grass on it. Some went level.

“And then I think they dropped the bulldozer in there and just scraped it off.”

And then they dug burpets. You're saying the book here. Again, get the book. I just jumped through. You're going to such great detail on this stuff.

I'm going to fast forward a little bit. From high above, fire base gate was a modeled red football field, with dark laces on a bed of green felt. The pilot put the nose down and as we descended, the felt became jungle.

The football resolved itself into sandbag gun pits and bunkers carved out a red dirt. And the laces turned into curving lines of foxholes. So this is you from the air looking down at fire base gate. Now, as you're going in there and you cover this in the book, like, you didn't want to go primarily because it looks like it was going to be boring.

Oh my god, yes.

“So you're like, well, you know, why am I going to go be out there in your mind?”

When you see it isolated like that or you're like, well, this could get spicy at some point. Well, my mind is going in there and seeing what is on the map. I was thinking, my god, there's no help run. There's no roads.

There's no help. There's only two ways in helicopter or walk. And that's it. So that kind of said, huh, I'm going to make sure this place is best. Fast forward a little bit. We settled down in a dust cloud and the crew chief began tossing out boxes of ammo

and sea rations. I grabbed my car 15 assault rifle, Rucksack, and hopped off. It was about 1,500 local time on the afternoon of October 28th, 1969. I looked around unhappily noticing the high forested ridge to the southeast. Why in God's name did they put a fire base here, I thought.

From that ridge, the enemy could shoot down at us with flat trajectory weapon, small arms, rockets, recoil, lifeless, it felt like we were in a punch ball. I flashed on what I'd read of the Denbyn few fiasco where the French cited their guns

in a valley surrounded by big high hills, convinced the via men could never haul

artillery to those heights. They learned that. They, I can fact would haul artillery to those heights. I put those thoughts aside as Sergeant Dan Perrelli came to meet me. As we moved toward the command post, I looked around noting the two big 150-5-millimeter

houters and small 105-millimeter gun pointed north toward ambush hill. And again, just to describe this, there's fire base k, which is a knoll sticking up. And then, join to it by little fingers, is this other hill. To the north called, which you guys called ambush hill, which is also cleared off. So it looks very simple.

No, no, it's not. It looks like it looks to be in the pictures. Well, that's because that's the after. Oh, yeah. Okay.

If it's that. Let me be the best to describe this way. So you had this small dinner football field fire base and around it on three sides. East, west, and south, down about 60 to 80 meters was dense, dense jungle. That 1680 meters between the top of fire base and down was thigh high grass.

So basically, you cover, but I mean, concealment, but not cover.

To the north, you had a gentle slope, because the rest of them were steep slopes. A gentle slope that ran north, ran down a gentle slope, and into the lower basin of it. And there was dense, dense jungle there, but there was a gap. A natural gap. You probably drive a doux and a half through it.

And then you go on to, so you call that a saddle. And then the other half of the saddle was a smaller hill. A much smaller hill, but on the, and it had thigh high grass at the top. With dense jungle on top of it, but it wasn't big. Maybe it was about 50 meters by 50 meters of wooded area on top of there.

And every night, we call it ambush hill, because we put in about five, four, five guys out there. As a listening post to detect, because this was a, this was the way we figured the enemy would come.

Am I saying that right? Yes.

And he's an SF guy as well.

“Oh, buck sergeant, probably one of the, one of the finest guys ever served with my life.”

God knows, he was my right hand man. He was my number two. He was, he, he was exemplary. He, he passed not too long ago. But, um, I cut it down without him.

He was just that good. But other than that, you have on this base. Uh, 150 or so mountain yards. Yes. And then 30 or so.

27 American artillery soldiers. Yes. And that's their job. So they're not special forces guys. The regular soldiers.

They're not infantry. They are artillery. Canococcus. Right.

Uh, continuing on here, not understanding until years later,

that artillery and Vietnam operate in 360 degree world. I wondered why the big guns had no overhead cover. Only chest high sandbags.

“Then I turned my head to take another look at the thickly forest.”

Did sharply to find ridge to the southeast. I knew that we were less than four kilometers from the poorly defined border. Positioned within a bulge that my map showed jutting into Cambodia. Disputed zone claimed by both countries. It was reminder that Cambodia was to the north east and west.

And that even paving troops. These are, uh, people's army of Vietnam troops were not on that forested ridge. Kate was still well within range of their 82 millimeter mortars. 75 millimeter mortars and 75 millimeter recordals for rifles. There'd be 40 rocket propelled grenades.

And of course, there'd be 120 millimeter rockets. Not a good feeling to have. No. No, not at all. Uh, I show cans with Lieutenant Smith and Kurt dropped my gear in a little sleeping

hooch that I would share with Pereli and got a wake up call.

The roof was a row of sandbags on a sheet of plastic. It would keep the sun and rain out, but wouldn't stop a rifleball that let alone a mortar. The front side facing away from the hill was exposed in short. It was a half-assed attempt at best. Together we started a slow thorough inspection of the perimeter.

So that's kind of your welcome to Kate. And, you know, I was saying that you didn't think there was going to be much action there. And there really hadn't been much action. Absolutely none. These guys were playing volleyball.

These guys were, you know, they didn't feel like the need to really dig in. The way somebody that it feels like attack is eminent. And so that's kind of what you see when you get there. Well, I talked to Danny. Danny got there the day before I did.

And I just, Danny, what we got here. And don't, don't, don't. You're going to go best we take a walk about. So we did a walk around the perimeter. And the fighting positions weren't deep enough.

No, overhead cover. The concertino wasn't correct. There was enough of it. The weeds were overgrown. The fields of fire weren't clear.

There wasn't enough claymores. It was bad. And then, and everybody else, they were playing cards, sending themselves. They were, they, you know, just weren't like in combat zone.

Volleyball. And the archer playing volleyball too. And it was, oh, what are we on? A resort here on it? You got to be there for a while before you get the mountain yards to start playing volleyball.

That's right. That's the next level right there. What is this one? So I said, this is ridiculous. So I called a meeting of all the artillery guys and in the mountain yard leadership.

Because see they have their own leadership. We're in charge. But they have, and it's kind of by a village. This guy may be in charge. He may be the captain of the guard of the mountain yards.

But there's a village owner there that will tell him what to do. Oh, you have to be aware of that. So I called him, I said, no more cards. And we're volleyball. We're going to get this.

I said, I don't know anything about intelligence here. But I tell you right now, we cannot sustain anything. And the condition we're in. So now the sun is getting low. So I got there three notes about five pushing six.

And when that sun sets, there is no ambient light. It is as dark as you could imagine it to be. So I said, I said, I don't know what to do. I said, I don't know what to do. I said, I don't know what to do.

But this is dark as you could imagine it to be. So I said, nothing can be done now. But tomorrow morning, we're going to start in a dandy. And I went, yeah, you know what? We're going back to our hooch now.

“I think I think we're on the right track.”

And I said, dandy was the last time they ran a patrol. He goes, well, the other captain let him let the yards go out hunting. Yeah, and they killed a monkey in a, I don't know what else. And you know, I'm sure they went, the deep dive into the, into the vegetation hunting. I said, well, tomorrow morning, let's take what 20 guys.

Let's go out there and do a clover leaf patrolling around far away. Scains see if see what's out there. Not much we can do now, it's dark. So I did something. Jaco that, um, we're all the guys that have been in a combat situation.

I took my boots off because it's that I felt that safe. And we were in a combat situation.

“But any night that you could actually take your boots off and not sleep in them.”

Well, now that's a good night. And I took my boots off until 1130. Half an hour before midnight. I was jarred awake by the rattle and pop, small arms fire. I opened my eyes struggling to comprehend and orient myself from time and space.

But I always said, it's ambush hill.

We put a listing post out there at night. A few minutes later, I heard the outpost strikers coming in. Six or seven men beating feet as fast as they, their legs could carry them. Down steep ambush hill to the nearly flat saddle between the peaks. Then up into Kate more than a football field, expanse and all.

They came in yelling, boku vc, boku vc. They spoke a few words of French, our strikers. And that's a term that you use to, you call them out near the strikers. And to them, there was no difference between Vcong and Pete Paven, which is, again, the people's army. Many enemy soldiers is what they were saying.

So this is sort of your first indication that something's happening. Absolutely. You have a AC 47 spooky aircraft arrived overhead about 40 minutes after I made the call and began laying

“curtains to fire all around Kate. So you guys got air support pretty quickly.”

Pretty quick. At zero 300 with no further sign of the enemy spooky departed for its base. And I slipped back into my fart sack for a few winks. A good thing because it was the last interrupted sleep I would enjoy for days to come. Wednesday, October 29th, 1969, something loud and close jard me awake at dawn.

I opened my eyes, it had to be Mike Smith's gun bun, he's firing. Nothing to worry about, I told myself. So you know, you get here the big bangs, you think it's outgoing. Fast forward a little bit by the time Paraly and I were up and out of the sack. It was a drummer symphony of explosions. Boom, boom, boom.

Shells from Reocorulus, rifles and mortars and rockets landing everywhere. A muscular black gunner named Rudy Child's person to our hoots screaming, "We're taking incoming. I'm hit. I'm hit." I called for the medic. We put child down on our floor. He was in shock, really freaking out. His back was peppermous, shrapnel and bleeding badly.

Den and I pulled out our field dressing and started to patch him up. As bad as he looked, we tried to reassure him to calm him down. Hey, you're going to be okay. I said repeating it a couple of times. It's not that bad. You're just bleeding a lot. You'll be fine.

“Oh, am I? He said, "We both nodded, yes."”

And this had an almost immediate effect. Child's calm down a lot, allowing us to bandage him. Meanwhile, I'm thinking, "Holy shit. This guy is really shot to pieces." So this is like it's on. And the horror of incoming indirect and direct fire.

Yeah. And it just blankets you guys. It does. You just hit us all the same time. But it was a barrage in the last minutes. And then it ceased. And then the way you were patching people up, called in MetaVax. And stop here. MetaVax does does.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Those guys are the bravest men I've ever met. They were phenomenal. And they come in and they, you know, you deployed you to some fighter or a gunship from a couple of cobras. But they'll come in and they'll get you.

They'll get you. Never had one even.

Even hesitate to come in no matter what and get the wounded. But I wanted to say something about those brave, brave men that flew those. Oh, unarmed. Big red, red, big sighting cross on the side of it for him. Yeah. So we called it in.

And I said, that's why I said, Danny. Let's go. I'm thinking this stat off the top of my head. I think I have it right. The 5,000 Ewees were set to Vietnam.

3,200 up more lost in combat. I believe every bit of that. Absolutely. And those guys flew those things. I've had a few of those Evo pilots on here.

Those guys flew those things like they were rented vehicles. They were freaking hostile with those things.

I never know before, but that's about it.

Except the Marines. The Marines felt that if they wouldn't went down they had to pay for it. The Army guys did not give a shit about those birds. Yeah. And they flew them in all kinds of crazy conditions.

You know, I've had to see Wolf pilots on here. The Navy, the Navy Huey pilots. And like, they were, they would run out of fuel. There's, there's pictures of them. They ran out of fuel to, in order to stay on station.

And then had to just set down in a random rice patty where they used ammo cans to siphon gas from one other Hellow into there. Hellow to get it back up in the air. Yeah, those Vietnam heely pilots were something else. Cowboys.

The help true. And I don't mean that a dragotry term. I mean that in the best term. They were cowboys. Yes indeed.

In the greatest sense of the word. Yes.

I assembled two dozen strikers.

“Armed with M16 rifles, grenade launchers and a couple of M60 machine guns.”

We left circle. We left the circle of foxholes threaded our way to the through the gap and moved across the grassy saddle and up ambush. So you see what's happening. You want to be at least go on the offensive a little bit.

See what you can get. And I do what you're up against. Exactly.

And this is like your second time.

Second day of interacting with these mountain yards. Not even a day, maybe 12 hours. Had they been trained by special forces guys. Okay. So that's where it is.

And they were all from different camps. They'd be like a platoon from maybe 30, 40 guys from one camp, 30, 40 guys from another camp. They're all from different camps. They blended well. They worked well together.

“So they weren't all from one particular camp.”

And anyway. But you got that connection with them pretty pretty straight. That they had been trained with special forces guys. Yes. They knew what to do.

Because otherwise grab enough bunch of people that you never worked with before.

And going out. That's a pretty aggressive move. They're all infantry. Chuck. Ambushal is about the same elevation as Kate or perhaps a few meters less.

Unlike Kate and offered somewhat gentler slope in three directions down to the jungle below. The sun was much smaller than Kate's. Maybe 30 meters across and top by a cops of trees surrounded by a veil of thick, brush offering good concealment. We reach the hill top without drama.

In the tall grass, we found a paving pit helmet and numerous blood trails. I sent a point man down Ambushal toward the jungle. The rest of us followed single file through waist high grass down the slope.

“As a slope that grew steeper as we descended.”

About 30 meters from the tree line, the jungle turned into the fourth of July and bestial day. At least one machine gun in several AK 47's. We went prone to return fire and a shit storm of fine lead came right back over our heads. The grass was high enough to hide us but offered no protection. I called the Dan and he blew up a few M79 grenades into the tree line.

That quieted them down until we could pull back to a sort of berm. A long, knee-high mound of soil covered with grass that offered at least for a few minutes both cover and concealment. Three of my men were wounded but still ambulatory.

For just a second or two, I was back at OCS.

One of our tactical officers is speaking. Gentleman goes this voice in my head a hundred times faster than in real life. A lot of you are new to the army. Your young guys with no experience were training you to be infantry officers leaders of men. When you become a new second lieutenant, you will be tested.

You will be the butt of jokes about being green and inexperienced. But when your men hear their first shots fired at them, they're all going to look to you. Your private corpals and sergeants even your senior platoon sergeants. They will all look to you. That's how the army works.

They're going to look to you and you better goddamn be well ready to make the right decisions. Sure, shit. As soon as the shooting starts, my striker said, "What do we do?" I've been an officer for two years. Special forces trained.

I'd been around many senior non-comans and they had taught tutored mentored me. I wasn't afraid. I knew what to do and I was pissed about being ambushed. I couldn't tell whether it was a squad down there or a regiment. But if they wanted to dance, our thermory was my middle name.

Yeah, that's, I really liked that because you go through that moment where you realize in that moment. Yep. Everyone's, I got to make the decision. I got to make something up and that's the leadership position. Do something and do it now.

Don't freeze. You get in kind of a skirmish line. You start to sweep down the hill. Meanwhile, helicopter shows up like an observation helicopter called a load, you know, OH6. And this guy shows up.

And as you're starting to kind of flank the enemy, you start to move in sort of a big wagon-wheel-type sweeping movement. Kind of reminded me of little round-top. Exactly what I said. Yeah. It's like a little round-top maneuver that you start to make.

And meanwhile, this load guy says, "Let me see what's going on there for you." He said hovering just off the tree tops. He rose maybe twice tree top level and called back, "Get out of there, man. I see you. I see where you're going."

And they're mounting a force to flank you. A whole shitload of guys coming. A lot more than you've got. I told everybody to pull back up to the berm as we moved. I heard the loadch pilot flying over the enemy.

While hollering on the tactical frequency for more help. This was one crazy dude. It takes two hands and two feet to fly a helicopter. But while he slid sideways and I blink off the trees and talking on the radio, he was also shooting out the window with his 45-side arm. And the enemy, of course, was shooting back with automatic weapons.

What a freaking maniac. Yeah, I had so much wanted to beat this guy. What a beast. Hey, you got to get out of there. He called half a minute later, he was back in the air.

You've got one down in the tall grass. It was the point, man. I couldn't leave him dead or alive. I took three men and we charged down the hill, catching the enemy by surprise. And fortunately, we didn't have to go far.

He was hitting the head barely alive. Then it was rice crispies time, all snap crackling pop. The pavement opened up with dozens of rifles. My strikers fired back. I reached down, picked up the wounded striker, and put him across my shoulders and a fireman's carry.

And grabbed his weapon, just like in the movies. Then I discovered this is a lot effing harder in real life. We moved his fast so we could back up the hill, steel jacket, it hornets buzzing and whining all around us, and somehow got back behind the berm unscathed. So you freaking charged down to grab this wounded guy.

Let me mention something about this. When I do seminars or talk events, some of the first questions, you would ask. You as the leader, as the one that's on the radio calling in the air strikes, and Danny's quite capable. But it was pretty much on me at that time.

Why would I do that? Instead of having somebody else do that. And the reason is these mountain yards didn't know me from an egg. They didn't know nothing about me. And by doing that, first of all, let me go back to this.

I've never asked anyone to do anything that I hadn't done or wouldn't do.

That goes right with a three-hums of leadership. Never. So I said, "Let's go get 'em." And in the doing of that, they saw that I valued my life.

“Their life is the same as I value my own life.”

Now, I don't think I'd ever had any problem. But they understood that we were all in this together, and that I didn't put myself up here. And I was one of them, and I was in command. So thank God I didn't get shot.

But I did wasn't able to get 'em back there. And that's why I did that, because I've been asked many times about that. Yeah, we had some, not quite the same thing, but a similar element working with Iraqi soldiers. Yeah.

The Iraqi soldiers were not well trained. They were not very motivated. They were not educated. They were very unskilled. And so, you know, sometimes it was like, "Well, why do you guys go out with them?" So we would train them, but we didn't get a lot of time to train them. We'd do some training with them, but then we'd have to go out and feel them on patrols.

And some of the questions were like, "Well, why are you going out with them? Why don't you just let them go out with them?"

Well, first of all, that would be a disaster.

They couldn't call for fire support. They couldn't get cash with the evacuation done, because they just didn't have the capability to do that. So that was part of it. But the other thing is exactly what you're saying.

“You have to show them that like, "Hey, we're going to bear some of this burden with you."”

Yeah. And so that they, so you develop a actual relationship so that they can hopefully end up in a position where they can defend their own country. And, you know, this is a lot more extreme example of that. Of you, saying, "Hey, listen, we're here."

Same principle. Yep. Same principle. You go on to say, a couple of strikers took the wounded man, and I paused 10 seconds to think.

Strange, strange head said that we had to get out of here because they were closing in on us as we were moving back up the hill. Then he added, "They're going to cut you off at the gap." That meant that they were moving southward using the jungle to mask their project and we're planning to take us off as we came toward the narrow passageway

leading into the fire base. The one and only thing to do was to beat them. Hi, diddle diddle right up the middle. The most direct route straight across that grassy saddle.

And hope to help we got there first.

We took off moving as fast as we could. Two guys carrying the headshot man and others helping out our ambulatory wounded and we ran like the devil was on our heels. Thankfully, back at Kate, I learned the striker rescue. The striker I had rescued, the one with the head wound had died.

And that's a classic like leadership scenario, right? You hear word that the enemy is maneuvering to cut you off

“and you have to make a decision right then.”

And there's a constant battle for a leader between speed and security. You know, hey, we can move fast. We can get something done quickly. But we're going to sacrifice some security when we do that. Or we can be very secure.

But we're going to move slowly. And you had to make that call instantly. Hey, we're going to just haul ass and beat them. And get across that gap before they can cut us off. Right.

Which thankfully that's a call that you made. Yeah. Otherwise it would have been nightmare. So this how this is like your first day of real combat.

Iron egg.

I know I said that several times.

Yes, it is. I just in in one fell swoop. I received, uh, I earned my combat. And which one was bad maneuvering against a hostile enemy force while in any infantry.

“How well did you think you were prepared for that looking back now?”

I was very prepared. And people asked me that a lot of time. I just did a seminar here in Florida. And they said at 21 years old, barely 21. First time in combat.

And this five day or how did you do it? I said, I was trained. I was trained. The army trained me to do this. And when when were you going with shot? Okay. When President were going with shot. The guys reacted as they were trained.

And they in the doing of that they saved his life.

And this is the same thing. I reacted at all kicked in right away. You've been there. You don't even think about it. You do it because this is the way you trained.

And then you've done the many times. So that's the same thing. Yeah, I've had some guys I had James Webb who was the sector of the Navy. But you know, same thing. You know, he went to the Naval Academy.

Got done with the Naval Academy. Went to the Base School. Went to the Base School. Went to the infantry officer course for the Marine Corps. Had nine days of leave or whatever it was. Get to Vietnam.

They put him in a Jeep. They take him out of the Jeep. They drive out there. They walk a little while. They point up at a ridge line.

They go eight year platoons up there. Am I relieving anybody? Nope. The last platoon commander got wounded or killed. But whatever he's not there.

So you're just taking over. He gets up there. And that night he's in this massive gunfight. Call him for fire the whole nine yards and ask him how prepared were you. He's like I was totally prepared.

And it's again, you know, and we were talking about this a little bit before we hit record today. But just the experienced people that combat experience guys that were putting you through training. That they are able to like one to one directly transfer that information to you. And the other guys so that they know it. And when you get there, you're ready.

“And unfortunately, I think once you lose that direct combat experience as instructors, you start losing some.”

It's that that knowledge transfer. It becomes less accurate and less intense. And, you know, I was lucky I learned from some Vietnam guys. Yeah. And then and then we learned from guys that had learned directly from Vietnam guys.

And I still felt like it was a good transfer. But I think over time, you know, administrative constraints come in and people. They start, you know, it's like they start relating more to what they see in the movies to what actually happens. Where you're talking about carrying this wounded guy. You know, people don't realize how hard it is to get up to carry the wounded guy.

It's freaking, it takes four guys, you know, to truly pick up and carry someone for a long time. It really takes you out of the fight. And, you know, can you do it? Yeah, you can. You did, obviously.

But those kind of little lessons over time, they get lost. So the fact that you were able to step up day one and lead troops in combat with just proof of the experience and the attitude of the people that taught you and trained you. Yeah, they were good. And they were all, we said, I think, well, less is learned in Vietnam. And they were all, all the stuff they were teaching us, little tricks and things like this.

That's what they had. Yeah. Fast forward a little bit around 100 hours. Almost before my strikers were back in their foxholes. Paven 82 millimeter mortars before he rockers.

Recorderless rifles, machine guns and small arms slammed Kate with a typhoon of steel and fire. Most of this, but not all came from those easterly heights. The 105 millimeter hawitzer guarding our north and our most vulnerable quarter was knocked out. Its tires flattened so it couldn't be aimed. Nevertheless, it's true disregard the mortars and rocks to remain at their gun.

They manhandled it around to where they could fire at the ridge and started shooting. The previously damaged 155 hawitzer was hit again. The only bright spot was that Air Force Major George Latin, a forward air controller now circling high overhead in his bird dog to serve as our primary aircraft manager. He was our lifeline.

“The only thing that we could save everyone on Kate from certain death.”

Latin called sign a Walt 20 was on his way to becoming a legend in his own time.

But like me, this was his first engagement on his first day of combat in Vietnam.

Outnumbered an outguned effectively surrounded by a vastly superior paving force later estimated at between 4,000 and 6,000. By the way, you have 150 or 200 guys. Yeah. They have 4,000 or 6,000. We would have been overrun that very day had not Latin vectored fast mover help to our tiny outpost.

First, in were the burly but surprisingly agile F4 fanom from the 559th tactical fighter squadron call sign boxers out of camera on bay.

Then brought in swift and deadly F100 super savers from the 35th tactical fighter wing called call sign blades.

And you go on to just talk about how these guys show up and the incredible difference it makes.

And we get into Napalms near the tumbling Napalm canisters exploded, spilling liquid fire to boil across the dark green jungle. The heat warmed our exposed skins. Skin and the wind wafed at the sharp metallic taste of charred petroleum to bite deep in our throats. When the fanoms were gone, the super savers appeared low and fast, flitting seemingly almost close enough to touch. Sweeping across the ridge to our east.

Black finned tail or black finned bombs seemed to break loose of their own volition, slanting downward. The blast perhaps a rifle shot distant hurled a concussion wave that seemed to bend the air before staggering us with its invisible force. It was great theater truly unforgettable performance. And you're talking directly to Latin this time. I can't talk to the fast move, I can't talk to the jets, but I talk to him.

I'll visually, I'll say, "Okay, you see that ridge line that I'm shooting at with or whatever.

“You see I think I see where it is and then he would put a rocket, a white phosphorus rocket, marker."”

And I'd say, "No, it's about about 50 meters that the dot and then he would call in the jets and then injector them in using the correction." And it worked pretty well until it didn't work. Until it was the jungle all looked at kind of the same, it was getting very hard. So I took a magazine and I went to our ammo supply and I took all the tracer rounds and I loaded up a magazine and tracer rounds. And I said, "Okay, watch this and I went to the edge of the perimeter and I laid down on my stomach and I started shooting the tracer rounds exactly where I wanted it to go."

And he said, "Got it and he put around in exactly where I was shooting and they came in and just spawned the piss out of it." So I went to the other side and I started doing it again. Again, bulls eye. I went to the third place while they were catching on now. So we had to either back that up a couple clicks.

Once he established where was they came in and did well. But I could talk to him. I mean, I said, "But I couldn't talk to the jets." Chopper's a different story. Talk right to them.

“Yeah, that's something that when I was a young radio man in the Seal teams, we were to clear,”

I'd carry a mag of all tracers to mark the target, you know, and never got to do it.

But apparently it worked out. About two times, about all you can do it. I would say about the third time you'd be a real bullet bag that though. Yeah. Fast forward a little bit.

About 1100 hours, I called for the MetaVac chopper to take out our wounded. This proved to be a dangerous procedure. Not only for the pilots and crew flew through fire to land on K. Because you had taken a bunch of wounded in these attacks. These mortar rocket artillery attacks.

You'd taken a bunch of wounded. Also for the men who was obliged to stand in the open while directing the chopper to safely land on our small crowded hilltop. That was me.

“As a MetaVac slowly hovered in, both pilots had their eyes riveted on me.”

Seconds from touchdown from the corner of my eye, I saw B40 rockets fiery launch from the hillside to our east. I was poised to die behind something, but the pilots didn't see the rocket. Frantically milling my arms. I waved them off, but the bird kept coming. In my mind, I saw the rocket and helicopter arriving simultaneously.

Finally, the pilot realized what was happening and started to peel off.

The rocket landed with a fiery explosion. Something red haunt slammed in my upper left arm, staggering me. Jagged holes appeared in the MetaVac huge underside as it shuddered upward. It dipped from sight into the valley below and then climbed back into the safety of the clouds. My arm was on fire.

The worst pain I'd ever felt. Dark blood soaked my fatigue jacket as I ran to K to make shift aid station. Doc cleaned the entrance and exit wounds. It seemed that the strap went all the way through. He wrapped my arm in a big bandage, what we dubbed an elephant co-text. The red hot steel and prompt disinfecting assured that there would be no infection.

Doc told me I was very lucky. Then he said another MetaVac chopper was inbound and asked if I wanted to get on it. Until then, I hadn't even thought about leaving. I shook my head. I wasn't going anywhere.

So you're wounded. How bad was it? Could you move your arm? It got better. I didn't put a sling or anything.

Just bandaged up. Took some pills.

What kind of pills did you guys have? You guys had like the stay awake pills, huh? Which is just basically meth. It's, we'll talk about that right now. When I got to Vietnam, they gave me a jar of dextral infinity.

And I never heard of it. I didn't know what it was. And I said, "What are these?" They said, "Stay awake pills." And I said, "What are they for?"

“And I said, "Being, you have to be up on a radio all night.”

Or some put running for your life in the jungle. You're going to want these." And you're going to give them to your men too.

Okay, never thought about it.

Put it in a rug. I started using them then. And now the after story is when I'm going home de-rosing and going home. And I am, uh, I've told this to her a few times. I go, "Oh, well, this might come in handy in the state."

And I also, I show her my shaving cut. And I'm going through. And you, you're leaving Vietnam. All these signs. If you have any drugs for them in this bin.

No question to ask. That I did all you, you cross this line. You're going to jail. Oh, okay, fine. Now I'm in a war suit.

I got the barray on.

Gackies, ribbons, jump boots, spit shine.

I'm looking pretty goddamn sharp. And I walk up there and this is private. He's, you know, and he's MP and he's going through. And he opened the way bag. He pulls this out.

He goes, "Freeze, dex don't fit on me on there." And he goes, "Sir, uh, are these yours?" I said, "Yeah." And he goes, "Sarge!" [laughing]

So the sergeant comes and he looks at this. And he was kind of a gruff guy and he looks at him. He goes, "Sir, these yours?" I said, "Yeah." And he goes, "This is keeping him behind the curtain."

And he goes, "What did you get these?" I said, "They were issued to me." He said, "You know what these are?" And I said, "Yeah, they stay weight pills." And he goes, "This is speed."

And I go, "You know, that's a good name for it." [laughing] And he's probably going to bar somewhere now. Telling that story. And he's like, "Go, put him in that container out there and then get, get, get,

go through goal." Yeah. True story.

“And it's got its own legs, but yeah, that's what happens.”

So yeah, I was on desk when I was filming. I was taking that. And my god, does that shit work? [laughing] Check.

Fast forward a little bit. A little later, siege 47 Chinook swooped in to drop sling load gear and then flew away. Just before dark, the Chinook was back with a new 105-millimeter. So, you know, the guns that had been damaged, they bring in new guns. Thankfully.

One gun. Oh, one gun. A little after the Chinook departed, a line of five UHD-1 Hueies that flying delivery trucks known as Slex and armed only with door-mounted machine guns approach low and slow. Approach low and fast from the west.

They were escorted by two Huey gun ships. All seven aircraft were from the 48th AHC out of BMT in the right hand seat of the leading gunship was chief-borne officer Ben Gay, aged 20 out of Richmond, Virginia, serving as aircraft commander and leader of this two-ship fire team. Across the valley to the southeast, our Paven neighbors had been planning a big reception in our honor.

When the party committee saw that we had invited more friends to share the fun they were furious. As the first Slex approached, the neighbors began shooting them with 12.7mm heavy machine gun, small arms and RPGs. My strikers were in the fighting positions shooting back, but it didn't seem to have much effect. I told Garerman, I'm saying that, right, Garerman. Garerman, the generator man, as well as Hopkins and Cune and whoever else, I could lay hands onto fine spots

and fire at the enemy positions. The 105 crew cranked their gun around to the east and opened up direct fire mode. So this is again, number one, you guys are on a seriously bad position. And number two, the everybody that's coming in to try and help you is getting like engaged in a real big way. Yeah.

Now, you say here, I'm fast forward to a big chunk here. I spent the night of the 20, or this isn't you talking. I spent the night of the 29th and a generator pit on the radio with Spooky and Shadow, the gunships, John Kerr recall. And again, listen, you introduce all these characters and you give a awesome biography of who they are, where they come from. And I'm not, the guys on the ground with you, some of the pilots that you did were able to track down.

So the book has just got so much incredible detail of these heroes.

Here's one of them. I spent the night of the 29th and a generator pit on the radio with Spooky and Shadow, the gunships, John Kerr recalls. I enjoyed that. We had really good support that night on the dawn of at dawn on the 30th, as soon as the last gunship left in coming fire resumed.

“Then it was all brought and me sitting in this foxhole kind of staring at each other as if to say, what are we going to do now?”

As soon as that barrage began, I started prepping to defend against a ground attack. The night before I'd sent a coded message requesting more reinforcements, lots of ammunition and water we were running low on everything.

It does push them away. And then as soon as they go away, because the gunships don't fly at night, and again, these are, if you don't know, these are the, what an AC 47 gunships, they fly low and slow. And they just orbit around the ground forces and they can be hit by ground fire. So they generally speak and they do not, to this day, like an AC 130, those things do not fly during the day. They will leave and go back to safety.

And so that's what's happening here.

There's, there's that critical time that, as you well know, in combat, when you're, when you're having that much support.

Once the, the night warriors go home, because they can't be out there or done.

“But prior to enough light for the choppers to come in, or the jets to come in, is a very crucial time, because they'll hit you with everything, a plus the kitchen sink.”

And that's what they did every time. And we, and we knew that, and we were ready. And you're sending messages, we need ammunition, we need food, and we need water. Food, not so much. Water, animal, absolutely.

Uh, you say this, I took stock of our ammo and found that we had very little left, and we had fired off all our clay more minds. Usually to go to fact, even if we were to get more of these anti-personnel mine, there was so much incoming that I didn't see how my men could leave covered and place them as safe distance, below their fighting positions. Several aircraft tried to bring us ammo, but each time was driven off by intense fire. Around noon there was a break in the action.

By now we were virtually out of water, and many of my strikers only had a couple of 20 round magazines left.

“While we redistributed what little ammo we had, I called again for resupply.”

20 round mag, and you guys are pretty much out of water. Yeah, that's horrible. Been out of water. So worse. Um, fast forward a little bit.

Black and Nolan arrived over Kate in their gunships at almost the same time as Matlock and Guthrie in their slick. And again, these names that I'm throwing out there, you give great background on who these guys are, where they come from, where they're flying out of what their job was.

Like it's, it's incredible.

So get the book. The Joker's guns gave them cover on their approach. Then our fact directed Gaze fire team to find and finish a suspected paving anti-aircraft site with at least one 12.7 millimeter heavy machine gun.

“I located the area of the AA site and began an attack at about 150 feet above the jungle followed by blackie and hern.”

In the second aircraft, Gaze wrote in his after action report. Matlock and Gun 3, Guthrie in Ghost Rider 12 were just then hovering on to Kate as we passed over the wire and bunkers. The men in the cargo compartment kicked out the water and ammo wrote Guthrie. Matlock flared the Huey and stood on its tail to stop it. The Medivac helicopters came in like a shot recalls the slightly built German.

They were so amazing. They came in at full speed just above the tree tops and as soon as they got close to the base of our hill, they would gun it to get up the slope and then circle around and what seemed like full power. Then they'd stop and hover just a little above the grounds that they didn't have to build up momentum to lift off. It seemed like it just took a couple of minutes to come in reload and take off because the enemy was constantly shooting at them.

I landed on the H for Helopad. It should have been R for mortar registration points as Matlock. Jeremy and man handled the wounded striker toward the landing Huey.

Neither was neither the first nor the last time he would do so on Kate.

He was shot up so bad that when I lifted him he could barely hold his head up and he was so bloody that I'd put my arms under his armpits and grab his other hand. He would have just slipped out of my grasp, a German said. Covered with the wounded man's blood, he put the striker on the Huey's cargo floor. The crew chief back into German to come aboard but his shook his head, I'm not hurt, it's not my blood he held over the engines. A beat behind Jeremy, more than a dozen strikers mob the aircraft.

A yard unharmed and carrying his weapon jumped on. The gunner yelled to us as he's supposed to be going says, "German, if he isn't wounded he's not supposed to go, German yelled." The gunner aimed the M60 at the yard and told him to get off or he'd blow him away. So he jumped off another yard, grabbed him, disarmed him and two more yards took him away. A few seconds later I heard one shot and then the two yards walked away without the guy, without the guy they pulled off the chopper.

Jeremy believed the striker was executed for desertion. That's kind of a wild story. It is. Like this guy was going to try and get out of there and his buddies said, "No, actually you're not going anywhere." And you're on or I don't, I don't know nothing about that.

Matt Lock now tried to hover off the helipad but the overloaded ship with wounded men standing on the skids and cling to the sides couldn't rise.

Matt Lock recalls. The blast wave blew the helicopter off the LZ, doing some structural and sheet metal damage to the bird. We also took a few rifle rounds coming out. In fact, the mortars steel tail fins were driven almost completely through the aircraft's hardened aluminum fuselage. Working to Kate's north gay had made several passages passes each time followed by black and hairline.

All firing rockets at the pavement machine guns.

As I turned behind Blackfy, I observed AA fire ground fire on from a second 12.7 millimeter gun.

Hidden about 90 degrees from the first one gay recalls. It was a flat trap. The second gun had remained silent and hidden until the first gun had lowered a gun ship into range. I saw Black's ship getting hit, says gay. The bottom of the aircraft was struck in the fuel cell by a 12.7 millimeter rounds and immediately burst into flames.

I called immediately 85.

“This is 73 year on fire, you need to put it down.”

Both aircraft were so low they couldn't see very far. Black replied, "Where's the field?" Before gay could respond, the striking hewis tail boom separated from its fuselage,

and the ship flipped upside down plunging 50 feet into the jungle and exploding on contact with the ground.

The aircraft was so close that I felt the blast intense heat on my face and arms, a spectacle that haunts me to this day as the reality of what it just witnessed. What I had just witnessed sunk in, I felt hollow. Fighting nausea, I struggled to focus my attention on the multitude of other urgent issues confronting me. Where would the next ground attack come from?

Did I have enough men to hold the flank? Enough ammo. Meanwhile, Matt Lock and Gun 3 were fighting gravity and blast damage,

“nursing their overloaded hewis up from the trees and out of small arms range.”

To them and to many on Kate, it appeared that Joker 85 had been hit by an RPG. We were taking off to the west and they just crashed into the jungle to the north of our flight path. As we passed over the wreckage, I saw pavement troops shooting into the cockpit. Gabe began to circle the flaming wreckage, but immediately came under heavy fire. The fact ordered him to leave the area.

I thought about mounting a rescue for any survivors. After a few seconds, I realized that no one could have lived through that explosion, and that would have been suicide, adventure among the hostile swarming around the crash site. Every man on Kate who witnessed the horrific event was damaged in some way for the rest of his life. None of these, none of us had met these aviators.

Black, hern, Canada, and Lot. Didn't then didn't even know their names. But they were our brothers, American soldiers, who had repeatedly risked their lives for us, and they were now dead. The thought of it was overwhelming.

Even now thinking about it is painful. To read it, as graphic as it is, is one thing, but to have seen it. Those of us are dead, and then felt that heat from the explosion was a tough time for all of us.

“Now, did this from a tactical perspective, did this in your mind inhibit any other birds from coming in?”

Yeah, it was suicide. They brought in a 37-millimeter N.A. aircraft gun, too. And so it was now suicide to come in for... We had these chopper pies, these fighters, these gun ships were coming in fast and dumping rockets, and grenades, and everything they had, the machine guns and many guns and everything.

And then we can't do it anymore, because it was suicide. And so we gave up that close air support and rightly so. So now it was, they had to come from a fair. So we were in a bad situation, it just got worse. This fighting continues on fast forward a little bit.

I was running on adrenaline, and the tiny, dextro, metafine, and fedamine pills that special force provided extended combat situations you already talked about that. Late that night, I was back on the radio with Spooky 6-1, orbiting overhead since full darkness, firing at any light they saw on the ground, and anything that we heard from the darkness outside our stronghold. This is it, your hunker down, your, your, you know, got spooky out there.

Thankfully, laying down fire, taking out whatever they see. Fast forward a little bit here. I never saw the B-52s.

I never heard their engines.

At 10-11 local time, 36 seconds after the first bomb was released. As it reached a velocity of just over 800 miles per hour, it slammed into the ground and detonated.

90 tons of high explosives packed in steel, landed a half a kilometer or less from Kate.

“Not knowing what was coming in, I glanced eastward, and be held the first few massive explosions.”

For a fleeting moment, I thought they were back blast from some indirect fire weapon. Recorling, shocked, I thought, "Oh my God, if that's the back blast, how in God's name will we ever survive the impact?" Then the incredible shock waves and deafening sounds rolled over me, and my nose went in the dirt. On Kate, it was like being camped out on the road between Sodom and Gomorrah, while fire and brimstone rained from the heavens. And on Earth, the roar assaulted our ears.

The earth bucked up and dipped and shook for a minute for a minute that seemed like an eternity. Although they slept on clean sheets, shower daily with hot water. Eat eight in air conditioned mess hall, and nobody was shooting at them. I've got to applaud those airmen for putting their bombs just where I wanted them. Anyone of those 500-pounders had landed on Kate.

I'm sure that it would've killed me and everyone else on her hill. As it was, one bomb landed in the gully to our east. Close enough for shrapnel, kill one of my strikers, and wound two others. Three hundred and twenty three five hundred-pound bombs.

It was amazing. I've never seen it well. You're never that close.

That's a way beyond danger close, but we needed it.

“What was the coordination like for that? Did you pass it up? Did you pass it?”

Did you pass it? Did they give you a timeline? Last moment. They said take cover, deep cover, and I put the word out real quick. I still didn't know what was going on. I mean, I'd ask for everything in the kitchen sink. But I had no idea there was going to put a B52 strike in, but they did. And it was truly one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in combat. No, the most amazing thing I've ever seen in combat, be that close to it.

Two close. Two close. But it had to be. So it was that ten minutes after the devastation of the B52 strike, the shitstorm battering Kate resumed. Rockets mortars recoil us when I was small and fire smashed Kate from every direction. So even after that massive. What happened, and I found out this after the war is.

A lot of those laid launch out of the Philippines, and they fly in a certain direction. And those Russian trawlers that are out there in the ocean, they tracked them.

“And they would be broadcasting it. And then when they make their turns.”

And then then they started heading for a hot area. They kind of asked to make where they would. They would broadcast to the NVA and the NVA would let them say, "Hey, so believe it or not, they had actual warning." And if you caught them without warning, oh my god, you had to break the back of any major battle. But they knew. And although I'm sure we did massive damage, they not enough to break their backs.

So they came back out of their caves and bunkers and resumed the fight. I was a bit disappointed.

Yeah, it's always crazy how what we think is going to like totally decimate the enemy.

Let me look at the island campaigns over in the Pacific theater. Like those guys would get the Japanese would get bomb for days. And the Marines would be thinking, "Oh, there's no way in which to ride that." And sure enough, they're just dug into caves. That's just a crazy concept to think about.

Because you see it happening. You think no way could anybody survive that. But if you dig in, it's survivable. You say here our last functioning howitzer the 105 took its second direct hit from a recoilless rifle and was finally knocked out. A little later I made the rounds of the perimeter with Ross, and we took advantage of a low in the action to chat about personal things. So Ross was a guy that had showed up as a replacement.

For Curr. For Curr. Cause Curr would be-- Actually for Mike Smith, who had been wounded, and he didn't want to go, but we can't take care of you here. So he showed up for them on October 30th.

But I couldn't meet with him until the 31st of October. You say--so I made--as I made rounds of the perimeter with Ross, we took advantage of a low in the action to chat about personal things. He used from a small town of Wisconsin grew up 150 miles away in a neighborhood in neighboring Illinois. Our backgrounds are starting--I grew up less than 150 miles away in neighboring Illinois. Our backgrounds are similar though. He'd been to college and was a bit older.

During our conversation, he had noticed he was wearing a wedding band. So I asked about his wife. Ross replied that he was due to meet her.

And their newborn son, John, a child that he'd never seen in Hawaii when he went on our honor.

Ron went on to talk about his son.

About how he could not wait to hold the infant.

“About his hopes and dreams for his little family's future.”

Then the shooting resumed. In a moment we were pinned down on the northwest side of the perimeter. We were safe for that moment, but I couldn't run the show from there. When things slowed down around 11, 20, and after a few minutes with only occasional incoming, I decided we had to risk moving.

We were high on the military crest as soon as we stood and moved to the top, we'd be silhouetted against the sky. I pointed out the sandbagged command bunker and told Ross that that was where we were headed. I described it's el-shaped entrance and blast wall in front to protect it from near misses of flying explosives. I told Ross we're going to run to that bunker.

When you get there and are from that side, Ross nodded his head to show that he understood. There's no point in giving them two targets I continued. I'll go first. Let me get to cover behind the blast wall before you follow. Understand? Got it?

Ross nodded again. I got it.

“It was 50 or 60 feet to the bunker, the first part uphill,”

but altogether no more than a four-second sprint.

I took off running as fast as I could. The enemy was only about 125 meters away on the opposite hillside. When I was about halfway to the bunker, I heard Ross's footsteps behind me a few steps back and closing. Then I saw the rocket. Time seemed to slow down as I heard the B-40's distinctive scream.

From the corner of my eye I saw its fiery red tail heading right at me. I hit the entrance behind the blast wall and the exploding warhead's shockwave blew me inside the bunker to safety. Behind me, Ross laid crumpled in the doorway. One more step and he would be telling this story. Instead, a jagged hole in his neck pulsed a fountain of blood.

I slapped my hand over the wound. Someone from inside the bunker moved up behind me to help. I have no earthly idea who that was, but despite my hand, clamped over his throat, Ross was still scoring blood. In half a minute, the fountain slowed to a trickle.

Deathly pale, Ross was not breathing and I realized he would never see his new son.

I had told him to wait until I was in the bunker.

“He said that he understood why the hell didn't he wait?”

I felt rotten, empty. I needed time to come to terms with his death, but I didn't even have a few minutes. I tucked the thought away and returned to the urgent work of getting more air support and preparing for yet another ground attack. An hour later, I zipped Ross into a body bag.

I noticed that he neglected to button the top of his flat vest, leaving that leaving his throat exposed. Head had been closed, with that few inches of Kevlar have saved him. It's very hard to know. [Music]

Okay. So, when they bought Ross, he had the blueist eyes that I'd ever seen. And I met Frank Sinatra. And when I held him, in my arms, his beautiful blue eyes. As you could see the life drained out of him.

And since he was from Appleton, Wisconsin, and I was from Rock Island, Illinois, I said when I get out, when this war's over, if I make it through this, and when I would Appleton, and I'm going to go to his parents and his wife,

and his son, while his infant son, and tell him, that, yes, I was with him the day he died. And he died in the arms of a friend. He wasn't just that killed in a jungle, and shipped home that day.

But I actually held him in his last and in my new friend. And well, time gets in the way. And life gets in the way. So in October, so, I didn't, because everything started going.

And I got so busy and everything, but it haunted me.

That I never fulfilled this promise that I made to myself.

And in the writing of the book, in the doing of the book, Ken Moffitt, who I've mentioned, was incredible movie force of this whole thing. Found, John Ross, the son, that his father never saw.

There was a war of lie when not that far. He knew nothing about his father, because his mother was devastated. His grandparents would never ever talk about him. It wouldn't allow to bring it up.

There would be on, beyond grief. So the first army in Rock Island, Illinois, when they got into this thing, they had a special ceremony. And we brought John in. And they presented him with the flags and purple hard.

But prior to going to the ceremony,

I sat down with him in my living room with my wife, Mary, and his wife. And I told him what had happened. But as I looked into his eyes, there it was again.

The blue-est eyes you could ever see. There I was back again, talking to Ron. And I told him about it. And he had no idea what had happened to his father. No one want to talk about it.

So that's circle of my life. Close. And we went to the ceremony. And he was presented and told about his father.

“So to me, I came to peace with a very important thing that I had failed to do.”

But I finally did do it.

And that is not in the book because it happened after the book.

But I really felt like I needed to talk about that right now. I mean, I can't even imagine what that meant to him. You know, it's funny. You know, with my guys that I lost in combat when I talked to their parents, any or just siblings, any like fraction of a new story that you remember,

that you can tell them and share with them is like gold. It's they treasure it so much because, you know, the unfortunate truth is, we're with these guys, we're with these guys 24 hours a day. And we see them kind of grow and we see them in their final form in a way. And of course, we get the stories too.

You know, we get stories about them when they were kids and it kind of completes our understanding. But and that's that we treasure that as well. But you can see, you know, sharing with the parents, you know, some silly little thing that they did or said or whatever the case may be, they just relish it so much.

And I can't even imagine for him not knowing anything that had happened,

“just to be able to understand what it occurred and what that meant,”

just that that's incredible service to him, both the son and the dad,

to be able to to be able to connect them. Oh, the parents are long gone. Yeah. But even if I would have reacted, if I done, yeah, that would have been a good thing. Well, I mean, the dad, I'm saying it's a service to Ross himself because, you know,

you know, like, how did he, he would want, you know, he would want to send to know what happened. And now he does. Fast forward a little bit. We needed to plug.

We needed more men to plug the gaps in our perimeter. We needed ammunition. I need to lie down and sleep for a week. I needed to cold beer. Most of all, we needed water.

By the afternoon of October 31st, we were out. Every canteen was dry, and even the canteens of the dead had been drained. 48 hours of fighting under the sun and moon, and no water since the previous night. I was learning the hard way that when you're out of water, when you can no longer sweat, when peeing is out of the question,

because there's no fluid left in your kidneys, when you grow lehargic and there's nothing left in your body, core to draw energy from. When even standing up and walking around as hard, then you're literally starting to die from dehydration.

“The only thing you can think about is water.”

God, I wish I had some water. And this was where I was, and pretty much everyone on Kate was. So you guys are now fully dehydrated. It's terrible. We can Thursday thinking about it.

Luckily, some cobras in a CH-47 roll in, and they drop off a water buffalo. And M-149 water jailer was at 400 gallons of water. And somehow that thing miraculously doesn't get shot up or wounded in any way. So you guys ended up with some water.

But which brought upon another crisis. It was dropped, let's see, about 3 o'clock and afternoon. And they all started running towards it. And I'm out there with Danny. Go back, go back, because in the air, like, well, look at here.

Look at here. Target practice. So we got as soon as a couple rounds land. And we got to everybody. Well, shit, we got to get back to our positions.

So now we all had the weight. Tell the sunset. No one, it's right there. And when we end to the dark dark, then I gave the word. And everybody started coming up.

Fast forward a little bit. The pavement had respected no rules of engagement. They fired from Cambodia. It made no difference where they came from. It was 105 or bigger or bigger.

Another rounded landed near Kate. Another two more, almost together. If this didn't stop soon, we'd all die. Our defensive defenses simply could not take a direct hit from that kind of artillery and survive.

And again, this is guns that you know.

You're looking at on the map during Cambodia. Yes. You flew northwest circling low over the Vietnam side of the international border. A few minutes after a few minutes you called back. Can't do it, Hawk.

He said they're a nut to your call sign. Can't do it, Hawk. They're on the other side of the fence. I got back on the radio and told Latin and no uncertain words that I didn't care where they were. I wanted them hit.

“The only way I can do that is if the ground commander declares a tactical emergency.”

No sooner to hits had he said these words that my ears in my ears that I said. I declare a tactical emergency. If the same tone of voice that I might have used to order a cold tiger beer at the officers club. Roger returned Latin. The next thing I knew, the fast movers were screaming eastward to bomb the ballaks out of the camp law rolling.

A week later, there was a blooper been newsweek to the effect that the US Air Force planes had bombed a neutral Cambodia and army base.

John Kerry mentioned it in his winter soldier rants.

So let me set the record state straight for all time. That was me. I did that. If I hadn't my bones and those of everyone else on Kate would probably be rotting in the bottom of the big ravine below Kate's ghost. So absolutely.

That's a real good. Combat. Yeah, real good engagement. Yeah, they were it was bad. And my name ended up on Nixon's desk in an hour as creating an international incident.

Actually twice because I have to go back and do it again. Did they give you any static on round two? You know what? No, they didn't.

“They didn't give me any static from from round one.”

They just, you know, it was what it was. And they had was a, it was a Cambodian army base and they had just taken it over. So we had two infantry divisions. Regiment. So it gets us.

So that's four, five thousand and plus the artillery regiment that was staying over there. They come, they were come loaded for bear. And an interesting fact about this. One of the artillery, one of the infantry regiments. There's a 28th in the 66th.

The 66th. Ho Chi Minh's finest. That's the same one. How more fought. And we were soldiers once in the Hydrangea Valley in 1965.

So they were hard and hard core. Maybe the best they had. And they fought like there was the best they had. Um, I'm going to fast forward a little bit. Are we getting to some, well, guys are reaching their breaking point.

Uh, you say here Hopkins lost it. He was a very brave man. A good soldier. He had done as much he can to defend our little corner of hell.

“The fact is, however, that under prolonged combat, every man can be broken.”

There's no shame in it. Hopkins had reached his breaking point and couldn't take it anymore. He began screaming. I said, this is bullshit. You get me the fuck out of here.

This is bullshit. If my country's not willing to protect me, you can get me the hell out of here. Our medic dock had been in the corner watching and listening. He moved over to Hopkins repeating his name in a soothing voice. He gave him an injection of some kind, something to common.

And a few minutes Hopkins was asleep. I called for Medevac. I still had to get red call well out as well. But it would be a long time before anything that didn't explode or ricochet could land on Kate. Not every artillery man in our small garrison was actively involved in our defense.

A couple more, a couple more senior noncoms. And I am reliably told, remained undercover during every firefight.

One PFC he should be very glad that a never got his name was sent to load wounded man on a chopper when the Medevac took off.

He was on it. So some guys, maybe that. Kac worth in about face. He talks about men or vessels. Yep.

And once in combat, that vessels fall. That's it. And every man's vessels is a different size. Ken Hopkins fought like a banshee. He, he, these about him and Nelson Koen and a couple of these other guys.

They were artillerymen, but they took up the infantry banner. And when we would get penetrations in the wire, they'd come in. These guys were ready to react in force. They take an M60 machine gun. Go to the point of the break.

Lay it out of base of fire and start driving them back. Brave? Yeah. Absolutely. But when we were denied or request the band in which you'll get to Hopkins just said,

That's it. What they had any, you read what he said. Brave man, but his vessel was filled. And you know, that can spread. So best we sedade him.

And I didn't call the chopper in just for him. There was other wounded, but I put him on that chopper. Because you know how panic can spread. And it's like somebody said it's like the common cold. Yeah.

Yeah, you say, I pulled my other go to guys, including Koen and German.

as I told them what was going on and shared my assessment of our situation,

“I also explained the very real hope that a mic that the mic force would get us out.”

So this is stuff you're ordering again. It's get the book, the explain so well what it's like being combat like all these little details that people, you know, show that in the movies, you know, like how hard it is to get these things to happen. But you, you explain it in the book. You've got this mic force.

You're trying to get them to come and help you. As I spoke, I looked around the dim crowded room peering at their dirty, stumbled faces. There was hardly water enough to drink, let alone wash or shave. I told them as if I, as if they didn't already know that the pavement

and his with almost every goddamn thing they had for more than three days. We had blood and we had died, but we held our hilltop still. As I spoke updating our situation, I studied their faces. One man, if I ever knew it, I can no longer recall his name, was hunched over, cradling his jaw, looking very much like the famous rodine sculpture,

almost at living the thinker. I looked into their bloodshot eyes and I said, listen, we're all under some heavy duty pressure here, boys, and we got to watch out for each other.

“Just then I saw the thinker tremble, the tiny movement.”

And seconds he was visibly shaking violently. Then he broke down, muttering, I'm sorry, I just can't take it anymore. He began to weep and I could see how strongly this affected all of us. How it created even more intense bond between us. I told him, hey, it's all right, man, it's all right.

After a little while, Doc came in and sedated him as well. In 1969, I'd yet to start college. I didn't know how much, I didn't know much was then known about what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder. In Vietnam, we called it combat fatigue or battle fatigue.

Our forefathers generation called it shell shock. All the same thing. I didn't need to agree in psychology to understand what would happen to these men. Lord have mercy, I knew what we'd been through. What we still were going through.

I never ever felt anything but simply sympathy and brotherhood for these guys.

And even though we were now desperately short-handed, they had to be evacuated. I'd rather go into battle with five men I can depend on with my life than a hundred that I can't be sure of. That's a tough call to make.

“But yeah, you got these guys that are freaking out.”

There's no point in keeping them there. No. Fast forward a little bit. In the dark hours of the early morning of November 1st, I received a coded message from A236 to attachment B20

of the two core mobile strike force. Headquartered in play coup. But then at BooPring would mount the operation to come to our assistance. We were before that. So I had requested, I said, you know, we need boots on the ground.

If I'm going to hold this and I will, I need boots on the ground. So the request went up, went forward. And I went to see the headquarters and the fourth infantry division was about a hundred clicks north. There was just 10,000 men, hardcore fighters. And to our west, I'm sorry, to our east, was the 23rd Arvin of South Vietnamese Army.

10,000 infantry. So the request went, and the fourth would have come. Oh, yeah. I mean, we found them coming help us out. But they said, no, stand down.

Next, it was tiered, turning the world over to Vietnameseization. Or letting the Vietnamese take over the battle, the fights. So no, fourth, no, stand down. They went to the 23rd Arvin to Bami, too. The division, they said, hey, you've got to go into Cate and get these guys out.

Otherwise, they're going to be annihilated.

And first of all, the Vietnamese have no love for the mountain yours.

Nor did the mountain yours for the Vietnamese. Anyway, yeah, you know what? I'm not going to do that. It's no, no, no, no. This is your war.

This is a battle. This is the perfect time you've got to go in and get those guys out. And it goes, yeah, I don't. And I won't. And I'm not.

I have to stay here because when they're done there, they may come here. And I got to defend this. So nobody's going anywhere. And nobody blinks. That's when the two core mic force said, well, fuck this.

We're going in. And, you know, you say my true being spirit sword, obviously. My special forces brothers were coming to help us in our dire time of need. Then the Paven dropped the other shoe a little after day break. Have you shelling from Cambodia resumed man?

They're just they're just freaking do give throwing everything they can at you.

Um, so here's what goes down with the mic force fast forward a little bit.

And the late afternoon, I saw a swarm of dots that represented a dozen or more Huey slicks escorted by several gun ships approaching from the northwest. Enough lift ships. I judged to carry one mic force company. They dipped down out of sight at a distance that I judged to maybe two kilometers or so.

The choppers rose empty and hurried away.

But before the last of those choppers were down,

“the wind brought the faint rattle and chatter of small arms fire,”

along with the louder echo and crash of mortar impacts and the sharp crack of RPGs. I turned my PRC 25 radio to the mic force frequency and heard their advisors. Australia and special air service by their accents, talking to mic force headquarters. I understood from this that two rifle companies were boots on the ground,

but they had been surrounded almost immediately by paving infantry and were taking mortar fire. And they weren't again. We were dug it. They weren't. It became painfully clear that Kate was cut off surrounded dependent for survival on whatever decisions.

I made next. There would be either neither rescue nor reinforcements any time soon. For the first time since I arrived on Kate, I began to consider abandoning the hill. Do not misunderstand me.

I'd come here to fight. My Montnard strikers had come to fight and had done so individually and collectively with great distinction. Some of the artillery men had joined them and had acquitted themselves well, inspiring one another with their valor no less than they inspired the strikers. No matter how tough things got,

I never considered anything except finding a way to hang on.

With each attack,

“I'm concentrated on what we needed to survive it and did the same for the next one.”

We regrouped redistributed our ammo, moved our machine guns, shifted a squad here and there, and screamed to get more supplies and ammo. Even so,

now I had more than dozen strikers dead in body bags. I would never surrender. I never even considered it. But now our artillery pieces had taken so many direct hits that they were little more than scrap metal.

We were defending an impact area. Nothing more. Again, ammo was dangerously low. The water buffalo had been emptied and our water supplied dwindled to what remained in our canteens.

Any chopper pilot bold enough to try resupplying us to the better than better than than even chance of being blown out of the sky. I had to begin thinking about if and how we could safely abandon Kate. Right on cue, the leaders of the Indage Force came to tell me that they were leaving.

They had discussed it among themselves and agreed that Kate could no longer be defended, and that we would very soon be overrun. After talking to Smith and Zollner, I went to see the Mont-Yard leaders.

“Through an interpreter fighting through the language barrier,”

I told them that they were right. That it was time to leave, but that we should leave with air cover. We should wait until full darkness. We should leave all together.

They discussed this right in front of me, but in their own language and after a few minutes, their spokesman replied, "They would wait. We would all leave together."

Through boo-prang, I communicated with Major Brighton, and he agreed that his force would send a small element, perhaps able to infiltrate the area to the north end at the base of Ambushil. They would guide us back to the main force dug in several kilometers away.

Even then, I didn't want to leave Kate. But I had to consider the facts. Our Howardsters were useless. The enemy had was zeroed in on every one of our bunkers. Many had taken multiple hits.

Some had collapsed or were partly so. Our defending, our physical defenses were crumbling. 15 of the original 27 artillery men on Kate had been wounded. And one of their replacements, Ross, was dead.

About a third of my original 156 indigenous strikers,

which also, which included the platoon reinforcements, had been killed or wounded. We had ceased to be a fire support base. A few more artillery shells and our cratered hilltop would look like the surface of the moon

with about the same population. I saw no choice but to send an encrypted message to special forces command declaring the situation untenable and requesting permission to abandon Kate. Their reply was swift and directly to the point.

Permission to abandon denied. One thing. And it's really not in there. But the yards did. We got to get out of this place, right?

I said, okay, let me, so I got your input. And I went talk to the artillery guys, the NCOs,

and Danny Perl, Danny Perl, always.

And basically I had a little meeting. And I said, we have three options. With the yards. We have three options. One surrender.

Which we're never going to do. To die in place. But to what end. You know, we're not. We're not the Alamo.

Gathering time for Sam Houston and raise an army. Or three. We're going to attempt to break out. Break out of here. And we are going to go with three.

Now again, as we discussed earlier, touched on. It wasn't a vote. It wasn't a vote. It was a decision that leaders have to make

I knew what the yards wanted. But I wanted to hear what the others of the suggestions.

“And once that was made, once they had their input,”

then the decision was firmed up and made. And it had to be made by me. Because I was in command. I was the leader. Rise or fall.

Good or bad. All annihilated on the hill going out. It was all on me. And as that's what a leader does. And you know that.

And it's an awesome responsibility. But that's what you're trained for. Yeah. And I mean, after this many days, and this many wound you guys, and no guns available, and no support available,

and no resupply available. I mean, this is a worst case scenario. And I think, you know, what was good. And this is a classic thing. You know, I tell people all the time.

If you want people to listen to you, you got to listen to them. Yes. And so for you, if you were to say, hey, Mont Neward's, you know, we're staying until tonight. They might have said, oh, actually, we're out of here.

But you listen to what they had to say. And you you presented your case. And now you get when when when you listen to people, they listen to you as well. And you start explain listen.

You can leave right now. But tonight we're going to have gunships overhead. And they're going to lay down awesome fire. We're going to be able to maneuver together. So you explain those things together to them.

And then they understand your position. And they recognize that the best decision is the one that you're presenting. You know, option three, let's stick together and leave as a unit. Yeah, it was not, it was not an ultimatum by any means. It was more like, hey, we got to get out of there.

There's no, there's no whole plough. We all want to leave, we all want to leave. No, it was by no means of demand. Yeah. But it, but it just happened to be, I'm thinking the same thing.

We're on our own. We're 100% on our own. If anything's going to happen, it's going to happen here. The recovery is not going to write in and get us out of this one. Yeah.

“Yeah, that's actually now I think back to the conversation that you had with them.”

And you actually start off with one of the best leadership moves to start this conversation. They present their case. And you say, you guys are right. They, we got to get out of here. You go, you guys are right.

And they go, okay. So he's on our side. As opposed to like, you got, no, we shouldn't leave. It's like a little subtle thing that you did as a 21 year old out there in the field.

Your first time in combat, like that's the kind of leadership where people go, okay.

That makes sense. You present your case to me. And I tell you, you're right. I agree with you. How can we do it best?

And that's just like a black belt chess move to make that happen and get them all bored. Because these guys are near me. I mean, I don't, maybe I'm in my own mind. But this could be a mutiny situation, right? If they, I suppose it could have been.

If they didn't respect you. Yeah. Like, let's say you didn't run down and grab their wounded point man. Let's say instead, you sent two guys down there where you left him behind. Then they'll, their respect goes down a little bit.

Let's say you weren't taking risks as you're trying to reposition the perimeter. Their respect for you is going down. Like all these things you would build up leadership capital at them and respect where when you said, hey, guys, here's where we're at. They've viewed you as a, not just a leader on paper,

but, you know, not just a leader by rank, but a leader, like a tribal leader that has stepped up and we are going to follow.

And that's a powerful thing.

It's a powerful thing. And they understood that their welfare and my welfare were tied together. And my welfare of the men, and that we weren't two entities, mountain yards in Americans, we were one group together. And they, they were getting that.

Meanwhile, you get told, no, you can't. Yeah. I take a quick, it was a quick war story.

“And you know, there was, you know, war story to fairytale?”

No. Fairytale starts out once upon a time. War story starts out this thing. No shit. Well, as they know, shit.

So I am working with Marvin, and it was cold winter night. We're back and forth. We're documents back and forth. And I get to this part here. And I read it.

And that's the break in one of the parts of the book. And the, it comes back, because permission to a benefit of his kid, and with pretty swiftly permission denied. Now, I know this is going to end. But that's where it stops.

And I pushed back in my chair. And it's about 10 30 at night. And it's snowing. And it's cold. And it's winter.

I am shaking. My hands are kind of trembling. And I'm like, it all came back. It all came back. And I got up.

And I went into the bedroom. Mary was reading a book. I said, "Merry, where's the ambient?" [laughter] Yeah.

It was the first time that I had to deal with that.

Because, I mean, no, seriously. Yeah. Yeah. It's another thing we were talking about before. It was like the leader on the phone.

Oh, it's always right. The pat and said it. I forget who you quoted, just similar quote of like, the person that's on the ground knows what's happening.

And by the way, when you've lost a helicopter,

and you've lost multiple people. And these guys are surrounded.

“And they've been fighting for four and a half days.”

And they ask permission to leave because the position is untenable. You might want to listen to what their request is. [clears throat] Fast forward a little bit.

High above Kate at an altitude beyond the range of even the pavins, spiffy, new 37 millimeter act act guns. The three star commander of I-4's Vietnam and his aide were circling in a Huey fitted out as a command and control bird. Lieutenant General Charles A. Cockcorcoran,

who answered only the General Abrams, boss of all U.S. forces in Vietnam and its waters, had received my classified message. So this guy had heard that you wanted to leave. General Corkcoran,

who as a boy had roamed the streets of Loretto, Texas decreed that he would be known in the air as

Pony Bill, a reference to Gordon W. Lily,

a wild west show performer and contemporary of Buffalo Bill Cody. Pony, Pony Bill Alpha, was Corkcoran's squeaky voiced aide. Recalls denote, and this is another guy I tell in this story. Pony Bill Alpha called Bill Albracht,

Hawk from way high over Kate.

“We use several different frequencies at Brouperang camp,”

but for whatever reason, Pony Bill couldn't communicate directly with Hawk to note continues. Two or three times Pony Bill came back on the air with the same fucking request to verify the size of the surrounding force

or the force surrounding firebase Kate. So I got on the frequency identified by myself, by call sign and said, Pony Bill Alpha, if you don't believe them,

drop your fucking helicopter, 10,000 feet and take a look for yourself. Ow! And the rock doesn't know. What a guy.

And the voice that came back a voice that sounded like God said, this is Pony Bill Roger Copy out. Somebody, somebody of the radio bugger said, you fucked up. I said, what are they going to do?

Relieve me and send me to the not train, so I can serve and eat the dairy queen. Surely after that exchange, the order was given for firebase Kate to execute and escape innovation.

That's freaking insane story. The fact that this three star was above you and happened to know what was going on. And then, of course, he's asking you to verify the number of forces

and the radio man says, come see for yourself mother, fucker. Well, two things. Number one, they were all continually asking us for BDA, bomb damage,

just like how many people we killed. And that was insane. The second thing was in Vietnam, at that particular time, countrywide,

there was nothing else going on of any note, nothing of any note. This is where the NBA had all their forces. And that is why he was up there. Other than that,

you never see a three star venture out.

And he was God. Yeah. So, so you guys get the permission that you need. Fast-forward a little bit. I gathered everyone together,

strikers and artillery men in the vicinity of Kate's north end. The only slope that could easily be traversed at one from which we had taken the least amount of enemy fire. It was dark and the sky was clear, slightly more than a half moon would rise at about $2,300.

By then, I wanted to be long gone. We got busy with preparations to move through our own wire and then through enemy lines. In my heart of hearts, however,

“I believe that we were merely dead men walking.”

I didn't see how it would be possible to evade the thousands of paving troops, roaming the hills and valleys surrounding Kate. I kept such thoughts to myself as I circulated our artillery men telling them how we would jump,

how we would join up with the Mike Force, near the bottom of ambush hill, that everything was under control, that if we stuck together and didn't panic, we'd all be fine.

After I explained our situation, I told everyone what to do to prepare to escape Kate and evade the enemy. Wow. So, you got 100, 100 something,

30 or 40. You got these artillery men, who are not infantry men. They ain't been through the jungle school. They ain't been out practice and patrolling.

You know, they're going to do the best they can, but this is not the force you choose to go on this operation with. You got to go out war with the army you got. And meanwhile,

you're entirely surrounded. The whole place is crawling with these North Vietnamese troops. This is the bad situation. Couldn't be any worse.

And couldn't be. But yet again, it did get worse. [laughs] I had Perreli and some of the artillery guys to finish the houseers with thermite grenades,

devices that burn white hot, generating enough concentrated heat to melt the barrel's hard and steel.

Caninears call the spiking a tube,

apparently this rarely used procedure. So this is, they take thermite grenades

“and put them into the artillery to ruin them.”

Yeah, just in case. Just in case they can ever rehab them. But this is a dire situation. This, like you said, doesn't happen very often. Yeah, because we don't get overrun very often

as Americans. We also used thermite on the artillery units. Heavy communications equipment. The useless 50-cal machine gun. The FADAC computer.

The generators and all the documents. I decided it would be hard enough to get everybody off-cate in one piece. And then survive a night march of several miles at least through tracklist triple canopy jungle.

It would become impossible with the added burden of carrying our dead. It was unfortunate. But I decided that the needs of a living outweigh the respect and courtesy of our do do

are departed comrades. We would have to leave the dozen or so dead strikers stacked on Cates' Hellepad. Let me say something about that. The dead you take with.

If you can.

“The wounded you never leave without them.”

But you see the dead are going to be just as dead tomorrow. And there's a good chance you can live through it. As much as I would want to. It becomes impossible.

And even when we lost. Very good friend of mine rich McDonald, worth pretending commander. Danny little went down. American at.

At doxying. And the arts came back carrying his rifle. And. And they said he got stitched from one into the other part of his head.

And he's dead. But the mountain yards are not Americans at some fall. And they fought. They couldn't bring him back. He was too big, too.

Rich. Monetary tremendous counter attack to get back and recover Danny's body. And he was brutal. And he started taking casualties.

And he had to pull back. Because you don't take casualties or get somebody killed. To recover a dead body. Because as I said, they're going to be just as dead tomorrow as they are today.

And it's a wonderful thought. But when you start losing people for that. That will not happen. Yeah. And they don't want you to take that risk for their body.

Your friends do not want you to lose more guys to recover their body. Leave me. You know, it's leave me.

“And that's what everybody's attitude is.”

Well, it's not still, I mean, of definitely a very harrowing decision that you have to make. You know, this is not what we want to do. But, you know, in a situation like this, you have to make decisions. Again, this is leadership. Fast forward a little bit.

And if, you know, you go through the preparation and stuff. And then I gave that order and we moved out. Well, go ahead. You mean to wait to actually move. There is one.

There was one piece in there. A seminal moment of the whole thing. We were hovered on the north side of the hill of Kate. It was so dark. And it was quiet.

I have everybody.

And now for the first time, I'm not doing anything.

Spoky's coming in because Spoky's supposed to come in and they're going to spray in front of us. And I thought, you know, this, this is good. They're going to be out about a hundred yards ahead of us spraying. And we're going to be walking behind this wall still. Spoky's on him waiting for to come on.

Hey, Hock, remember, I didn't got my call sign. Hey, Hock, this is a Spoky 58. Hey, Hock, I got a little problem here with a mechanical. I got to go back. But don't worry.

We got a second Spoky coming. Oh, I got to wait longer. We're ready to go. We're ready to go. And the moon's coming up at 2300.

So you got that coming too. Yeah. I call Spoky where are you? Hey, Hock, this is a Spoky 56. Hey, you got some engine pros.

We've got to go back to Fan Ray. But don't worry. Now that one's coming. Well, Hock is worried now.

Okay. This is the third one they're sending out.

And it's getting really bad. And I'm waiting for the third one. And I-- I mean, guys are going around saying, Hey, if I get out of this, tell my mother or this or my wife this. And they're saying they're final goodbyes.

We are so scared. We are scared now. The first time I am so scared. I'm not doing anything now, but waiting. Waiting to take action.

And I got on that microphone at Pric 25 mic. And I depressed it. I called Spoky 41, Spoky 41 Hawk.

Spoky 41 at a whisper. Hock over. Nothing. And I had coms with him before. And I looked at my radio operator.

“Text, artillery guy, and I said, this damn radio is broken.”

He goes, sir. You got to release the push to talk switch. And I looked down on my hand. And my knuckles in my hand were white. I was so scared.

I had pressed down on that. And to speak. And forgot to release it. So I could receive. And I released it right away.

They came. They were coming. I don't know how long it will be. But we're coming to you. And I went holy shit.

If I don't get a hold of myself. If I panic right now, not only am I going to get myself killed. I'm going to get everybody here killed. And that's when it hit me. And I looked down into the night.

And I saw that gap into distance. I said, I'm going to die tonight. And that is where the gods are going to take my life right there at that gap. And I looked up into the cosmos to the big ranger. And I said, dear Lord, I know I'm going to get out tonight.

I know that. There's toy. I can't. But please. Please.

Let me get as many of these fine young men out as possible. And then take me and I'll be ready to go. And chocolate that moment. At that exact moment. I was a longer afraid.

All of a sudden, I had this inner peace. And I was no longer afraid. And the situation had changed a bit. And Spooky hadn't got there. And I said, let's go.

Follow me. Here we go. And we stepped off into the night. Well. Yeah.

Waiting is way worse than doing.

It's like I've always found.

Waiting is way. It's weird. Where you feel fear. You know, it's weird. It's weird.

Once you're doing it, you're doing it. Like we don't have time to think about it. You're just doing it. And so you're caught up in doing it. You do the thing.

And when it's over, sometimes you look back and go, damn that was sketchy. 100, how I got through that one. But the waiting and especially when you're waiting in a situation like this. Like you have no choice. There's no turning back.

You guys already spiked all your barrels. Everything is gone. You're not going to live another night or another day or another sunrise on cake. That's not happening. So there's no going back.

There's only going forward. You might not have air cover and you're waiting. And that waiting is horrific. The call sign hawk. That was like an evolution that kind of became hawk.

How that happened? Well, because the Asian NBA were, they would, they'd have good English speakers and everything. And they would, so they would, they'd monitor our nets and sometimes interfere with them. You know, send false messages. So they take ridiculous call signs.

Like my first call sign going out there at Kate was chicken wolf.

Chicken wolf. And there was dashing Lancer. And all these crazy things they put together. You know what I'm talking about. And I am day two.

I'm in fighting position. And I'm calling a talking to the Ford Air Controller. And Walter once says, hey, I got to go refuel. But don't worry. I got a guy coming.

He'll be a couple minutes. He's coming right behind me. And I said, okay. And I'm, uh, McGinn called chicken wolf. So I hear a guy come on and he goes, uh,

a chicken hawk. Chicken hawk. My K-2. And I'm going, oh, the fuck is chicken hawk.

“And why would they put somebody that posted a name to mind?”

Well, this is my first time. Okay. And I'm calling. Who's this guy? Because the chicken hawk chicken hawk.

My K-2. And I was like, oh, wait a minute. I said, uh, my K-2. This is chicken wolf. And in the meantime, the world has come.

That we're getting murdered in rockets. And all this bomb. Boom. I said, this is, this is chicken wolf. He goes, oh, oh.

Little joke, right off. I thought your call sign was chicken wolf. Our, yeah, chicken hawk. And I said to him, call me chicken wolf. Chicken hawk or chicken shit.

Just getting some goddamn air power in here now. Well, it went to chicken hawk. And then it just got shortened to hawk. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The other thing thing about this, uh, the, the, the overcoming of fear is like that full acceptance of death, which, to me, is of the most liberating thing.

And I always, you know, when I'd see guys that were have that fear,

“it was a lot of times I think of that they're afraid of dying.”

Whereas once you go, yeah, I'm pretty much going to die. That's what's going to happen. And that's what I signed up for. And that's what we're doing.

And it really does relieve you of a lot of that fear.

“Uh, um, because what else is there, you know?”

Oh, it's a real come to Jesus while I know. [laughs] Real time come to Jesus moment is happening. Uh, so now we get to this point. Um, I gave the order and we moved out.

But for after 40 or 50 meters, the line stopped. I worked my way to the front and found up the point man, 20 meters from the gap leading to ambush Hill, frozen with fear. He was unable to move forward. Spooky was still too far out to fire and clear our path.

The enemy was on our heels. I must act immediately. I moved up and took point. There you go. Uh, fast forward.

I got on the radio. Call and call the Mike force element waiting below us to advise them that we were about to enter their perimeter. No answer. A moment later, S.A.S. Major Brighton,

the commander of both Mike force battalions and the vicinity, replied from BooPring. No Mike force troops awaited us below ambush Hill, he said.

They were miles away to the northwest and we would have to find them.

God. That's freaking ridiculous. Well, you think so. No air power. Nobody thinks so.

Could it get worse? Well, yes, it could. I was pissed. But before I could react to this shock, or great green balls of fire came hurtling down the slope,

just overheads and stuttering, and the stuttering roar of heavy machine gun broke the silence. I thought Spooky was firing on us. I yelled to cease firing at the radio. The Skyrader pilot came back on that Spooky was not firing.

It wasn't on station yet. Then through the foliage, I saw that the fire was coming from the top of ambush Hill. And this is one of those kind of lucky situations where their disco machine gun wasn't traversed,

couldn't traverse and actually hit you guys. So you got very lucky there. The tripod had that bar in front. Yeah. And we were down deep enough,

where that dude wouldn't shoot him about a foot over our heads. Yeah. Now, if that isn't the hand of God, I don't know what it is. And what their tactics was,

we couldn't find out later, was they wanted us to go through the gap, and we had broadcast in the clear, because the air force didn't have our codes. I would go to the left of ambush Hill,

to the left. And that's where they were waiting. And the mic force was supposed to be there, but they weren't, of course, as we know. I would go to the left.

But see, when I was studying in the gap, and was shooting, I'd go to the school, the point man, now back on point,

went to the right of ambush Hill. And he took us around that ambush, not even knowing it was there. So that machine gun at top had to traverse around and shoot us at the other side.

So as bad as it was, we caught a clean, good break.

Again, I always say by the hand of God,

“because that's the only thing I could do.”

That's the only way you're getting out of my way. And no mic force. And my Lord, chaos isn't the word that is good enough to describe what happened next.

Because I am putting them in 150 guys into the jungle, single, five. Into this horrible, wooded jungle at night. And I put them in the skull.

Let's go. Let's go and then the firefight breaks out. And why we returned fire? We're now in a battle with this guy. And I'm still trying to get in there.

There is no silence at God. Let's go this way. Come here. I'm in the jungle. Danny's kicking him in the ass and the rear.

And we get him in there. And by God, we did get him in there. And of course, that's why I found there's no mic force to link up to.

Okay, good. Fine. Let's go. And we get away and we get away. And I got him in a single file.

And I went back to the latinants. And the yards. Do we have everybody? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you sure?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Off we go. Just I have a red filter flashlight, a map and a compass. And just echo Charles.

“Have you ever been on a patrol at night in the thick jungle?”

Me, no. Well, let me tell you something. Having a squad of eight guys going through the jungle is like really hard to control. You literally can't see the hand in front of your face. Having like 20 guys,

it starts to turn into a like, I really, this is just a, I can barely even know what's going on right now. So now when you're talking about 150 guys,

with a language barrier, you know why the way. Like this isn't, you think about the language. You don't think much of it, but that language barrier.

We work with Iraqi soldiers. Like you can't say move left or move right. Like that's when you said that, what I read that in the book, I'm like, oh, yeah, no surprise.

We, Iraqi soldiers didn't even have like words for left and right. They didn't know. And numbers. You couldn't say like 20 or 30,

not all of them, but a lot of them were uneducated. The yards are not like an educated crew of people. So you got the language barrier. And then you're just 150 people deep.

You can't explain it.

It is so challenging to try and get,

it'd be challenging to move 150 people. I'll tell you what, echo Charles, take 150 people and get them to go from one end of a mall to the end of another mall. Just trying to do that.

You can barely do that. So this is a, and now by the way, we've got people misshoot, now there's with machine guns.

This is a total. This is, this is the difficult as it gets. And, and by the way, this whole thing is going to culminate.

“In what I believe to be the most difficult thing to do in combat,”

which is link up under fire. Linking up under fire people, people don't think about it. That is the hardest thing to do in combat. Trying to get two friendly units that don't know where each other are.

To link up while there's bad guys. That's at night. At night. It is, it is because everyone, you know, the possibility of blue on blue,

there's so many things that can go wrong. It's just, it's a nightmare. So that's where we're at. Fast forward a little, despite the ineffectiveness of their fire,

those frightening green traces, caused the men in, in our column, to panic, men begin crashing pal Mel through the brush.

I raced ahead to take lead the main body, yelling for them to continue northward along a tree line. As I had a little early, our grabbed every troop, I could find him pushed him in the direction of the column.

Behind me, Paraly was doing the same. Then fast forward a little bit. Once I found the head of the column,

“just quick forward as quickly as the darkness and train will allow after several minutes.”

I stopped to regroup and assess the situation. I still expected to link up with a might force, but there was no longer share where we were or where they were. Because that's another thing, the disorientation that you get in the jungle,

is for it happens very rapidly. And because the maps and the terrain, you can't even see it. So you think you're, oh, I'm on this null,

but that wasn't even on the map. You just think you just thought it was something, or you thought it was a ravine, that ravine didn't show up anywhere. So now you're just in ravine, that's not Mark anywhere in the world.

And you're in it. And you think it's three ravines over. Like there's so many complications here. It's ridiculous. It's horrible.

Now again, I'm going to fast forward, get this book so you can understand this, how insane this is. Fast forward a little bit.

I waited another few minutes, then called Mike Force again. This time they sent the coded grid coordinates of their position. I could only hope that there was good at map reading as I thought I was. At my signal,

“the column resumed its slow stealthy track through the jungle.”

I navigated by compass, stopping from time to time to check the asthma, and keeping a rough count on my pace is to give me some idea of how much ground we had covered. Except for an occasional glimpse of this starry sky, we're in almost total darkness.

Each step I took was slow and deliberate. My boot shot, toes felt for the ground, trying to avoid a route that I might trip over or Mike and noise crushing a twig.

Fast forward, about three hours after leaving Kate, the moon rose, pouring cold bright light on the jungle clearings, enough to allow me to view the terrain features

and get a better feeling for our proximal location. We seem to be close to where we were, I had supposed we were. I altered course slightly, and we moved out again,

still exercising the greatest caution. Bright as the occasional clearing and small openings in the jungle canopy were, beneath the thick rain forest vegetation it was like wearing sunglasses and a coal mine.

About 230 or more than six hours after leaving Kate, we reached a point in my map that I'd judge to be close to the Mike forest perimeter.

So you finally get there,

by the most awesome land navigation skills ever displayed. And if you're not going to credit a little grace of God to that one, I would say that before you. (laughs)

So now you call the Mike forest guys, you ask them, hey, like I can see it clearly. About 80 yard field in front of us. Yeah, and you're like, okay, put a guy out there.

And what do they say back to you? You put a guy out there. So, of course, again, leadership, what do you do? Do you send one of your other guys out there?

Do you send a yard out there? Nope. You know that it's going to be a risky thing and you take the risk yourself. Fast forward a little bit.

Feeling naked in the moonlight. My weapon slung over my shoulder. I stepped in the field, realizing as I did so that even if I was walking straight toward the Mike forest,

there could also be a thousand guns pointing at me from the jungle on either flank. I took a step forward, then another calling as I went in parade ground for voice.

I'm an American. Are you the Mike forest? I repeated several times as I moved across the field. There was no answer.

I kept calling and I kept walking.

Finally, I reached the tree line,

and there to my left, a Mike forest striker stared back at me from a foxhole. Sergeant first class, lowle Stevens.

The Mike forest ground commander appeared from nowhere to grab my arm. Go back and get the rest of your menu whispered. So, the link up happens.

soldier, soldier special forces.

“The other sergeant, I can't remember his name right now.”

They were magnificent, and they got there, and they did the best they could. They fought like benches, and then we're driven back,

and they just couldn't get anybody out because of it. There was so many in and there. We were sure, fortunate to be able to link up with them.

And I'm going to close out the book. Let me say one thing. There's a quote by a, it's one of the century, 1920 author,

poet, female, baker, and it's stuck with me from my ears and it's about courage. And you have to have courage. And I had showed courage,

and my men showed courage. But her quote was, courage is fear

that has set its prayers,

and that is so very true. So when we had the link up there, we went ash, so then when we got linked up, I was pretty much out of the game.

I was unbelievably exhausted, mentally, physically, and they, the bike horse took over. They put us in a sandwich, and they let front, back,

and I just tagged along. I could hardly keep my eyes open,

“but that was the end of it for me almost.”

I'll close out the book with this. Once you've resumed our march, my exhausted mind slid into autopilot. I left everything to the special forces, and I was in the same room,

and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room,

and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room,

and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room,

and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room,

and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room,

and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room, and I was in the same room, and from there in the book,

you do such a great job,

“you detail what happened with people afterwards,”

you talk about what it's like for those guys, and the families of guys that were killed, it's just really awesome. And one of the things that,

I guess it's a whole mother book, but you get done with this, where you barely get out of there alive, and instead of you taking a push job somewhere, instead,

and you might have only passed that officer, candidate school, test by one point, and we might know why, because instead of taking a push job,

you say, "No, I actually want to volunteer to go work with Mike Force." Well, the story behind that, too. Let's go.

So, I'm back, and it was a big, big media event, because it's like, "Nothing was going to run Vietnam the time." And here you have these guys that were totally surrounded,

and they 150 of them get out. And so as a media was everywhere, and it made a big splash, and I was kind of overwhelmed me to me, like, "Okay, enough's enough."

Well, the group commander, "I am Mike Healy." He was going to fly out to personally congratulate me. This is not done, okay. So, he said, "Hey, he's coming in.

I'm shaved, I'm in clean fatigues, and my team is back in back of me, and he flies in, and he served, and he hugs me."

Men didn't hug back then, okay? He hugs me. He was like, "Oh, damn, they're all wrecked. Finders traditions, especially forces.

I can't believe what you do there. Let's get her out of there." He said, "What do you want to go? What do you want to do? What do you want to be?"

Remember, he had made mention that they're in a train headquarters. It was actually an ice cream store. Which we just all consider.

We always call it a dairy queen.

"Oh, you're back in a train. Get a dairy queen." So, I listened to my said, "Sir, I'd like to be the OIC officer in charge." "I'd like to be the OIC of the dairy queen."

"And my men behind me said, "Oh, yeah." "I'm laughing." "And I'm smiling here to you." "He looks at me." "Because there's a lot of people around."

"He looks at me," and he goes, "I'm afraid that this is already taken." "What else do you want?" I said, "I like to go to the park." "I'm afraid that this is already taken."

"What else do you want?" "I don't want to go." "So, that was it." "How long did you take you to recover from these five days?"

Well, what happened is, what about four days later, then it's been called, in Vietnam, to have this thing called impact award.

“And what they would do is they would give you a medal”

for whatever the occasion was, whatever you had done. And then they'd back it up with paperwork and if need be, they would upgrade it.

You would never really like downgraded it.

So, one particular day about a week later, Rocco didn't know the guy that told Pone, he built a land-to-fucking helicopter. He says, "Hey, he says, "Cocker and the three-star." He's requested your presence in Bami Toot.

He says, "There's going to be a ceremony." And it was so windy. Every helicopter was grounded. Every helicopter was grounded. Not even MetaVax Flow.

So, like I said, Pone Bill being God. Well, apparently he outbreaks mother nature too, because he sent a helicopter out. For me, and I'm there and it's windy, and this chopper's coming in and he lands.

And he kept all the breaks. This is you, we're taking you back to Bami Toot. I said, "Okay." And just about then, the Mike Force, who had been around us,

engaging 'cause the enemy had followed back to Booprank

“with them under siege, had brought in about three or four”

badly, badly wounded mountain yards.

And they said, "We've done all weekend. Our medic there was really good ahead of Spansry." He said, "There's nothing I can do." And they said, "If we don't get these guys to the hospital, they're going to die."

And so, the Mike Force guy, and I don't remember who he was. "Can we use your helicopter?" I looked at the process. "Can we just go to the helicopter?"

For instance, "Sir, this is your helicopter." And I said, "Let me see. Go back to an award ceremony or four guys die." I'll tell you what. Load 'em up.

And here we go. And we flew back. And we got him to the area hospital. And I think one did expire. But three of them were alive when they got him in.

And I think they did recover. But then, when I got to the award ceremony, just in time to see the generals who look up to fly away. And the guys that come to home, going, "They are telling you guys the memories."

"Why are they all worried about me?" I said, "I got held up." And they said, "Oh, yeah, the general was waiting for you." And then they got pissed off and flew away. They said, "They had an award for you."

And I'm sure they'll catch up with me. What did in 2012? But that's another story. So, we all went out. All of us, enlisted, officer, sergeants,

insios, whatever, got drunk. Right there, and somebody's a bunker. And that was a good damn night. Metal or no metal. That was a good way tonight.

And then, sir, your next move is go with Mike force. I did. I stayed there for the siege of Blue praying. The same group followed a 66th and 28th. And the artillery followed us back to Blue praying.

And they put Blue praying under siege. But they had significantly been weakened. We knocked out about 20% of their strength. Well, all those air strikes. So, they were significantly wound weakened.

But it was a pretty good one. They did some ground attacks. Oh my God, it's Kate. They would come out of the jungle. Hundreds of them would come out of chopper pilot.

It was said later that he was up there watching a Kate when the in-between strikes. And he said, "It looked like Ant." Oh, it was when they were going to drop the B-52s. And everybody had to back off.

He said, "They're hundreds of them." He might look like ants calling up and he'll hundreds of black ants. So they came in the Blue praying and they put late siege to us. But we held good.

We never really were in a critical moment of anything.

So we were able to repel them there. How long did that last for? That lasted from November. Got back to November 2nd, too. Right about a week before Christmas.

Maybe it was pretty long. Yeah. But you had water. And you had our... And you had our...

And you had our... No, for head cover. Everything. Everything you could possibly want. We had our teleory.

We had all the stuff. And so then I... And then I got my hours came in and I... I've caught a flight up to a plate coup. Mm-hmm.

And the two core mobile strike force, the mic force.

“And then how was the optempo up there with those guys?”

You know, okay. So you... You certainly can understand this being a seal. Special forces. Absolutely the same.

So I had my... Fate face all over the media. I mean, this thing was... This thing... I was in newsweek and time.

And there was... It was on every front page newspaper, a... A picture of me in the story of Firebase Gate.

Because I was still inviting into war.

“But it was like, "Oh, look at who we're getting here.”

We're getting this young captain. Who thinks he's all that in a bag of chips, right? I kept a very low profile." And once the guy saw... I actually went to...

When I went to my first opt.

Out for 30 days came back and I was like, "Yeah. This... This case, okay." But I had some of them like, "They're all kind of giving me the... Hey, how you doing?"

You know, when you sign your movie star contract, Oh, this bullshit. You know, I said, "Look, I had nothing to do with that." But once they understood that, especially at my first opt,

it was... I had found a home. I... This was the best goddamn unit ever been in my life and not that many of them.

But everything was exactly as it should be. And we went ahead, and so I ended up becoming a battalion commander. And I had 450, 400 mountain yards, an 18 of enlisted guys who were the... The best you could ever be.

“And remember, sod goes out and looks for them.”

Once they found them, we went out and kicked their ass. But then again, sometimes it didn't really work out where they were kicked. We got our asses kicked in too.

That was the best. So you're an 18 leader. But you have all these mountain yards, 450 mountain yards. So you're a battalion commander. You've got three companies or four companies

worth of maneuver elements, all these potones. How freakin' cool is that for a 21-year-old kid? I was in heaven. It was the best of the best of the thing. And these guys were special ops, special operations.

So I had the best, the ANCO, it was not that my other ANCO's SNF ANCO's weren't good. These were the best of the best. So they, I'd learned from them. Again, they mentored me.

Once they understood that I did want to learn from them. And again, I did, and then I made decisions and everything.

But I always took console with them.

Oh my God, they were just the best of ever could be. Now, so three rifle potones. Heavy rifle potones. You know what our mortar platoon was? One mountain yard carrying a 60-millimeter tube, no base plate.

Just jammed in the ground and, you know, hand-fired, and everybody would carry ammo for him. That was our mortar platoon. Our heavy weapons. For one man mortar platoon.

And he, he carried, he couldn't carry rifles. We carried a 45, which was the envy of every mountain yard there who, you know, he had a sidearm at 45. But yeah, that, we'd go out and go out for a few months. And we tried to develop where the hot areas were.

Or in case of doxying, which was a incredible battle, we went in right into the jaws of the lion. So how do you guys get called into there?

“Is it like a QRF, a quick reaction force call that comes out?”

Almost. Almost. And then are you guys he, he low? He low in? Yes, everything.

Doxying was up near. It was very much, very close to the lion's shoulder. So it was north of, way north of Booprang, in two corners. That's where I was. These were mountains up there.

And the next core up was not that far away. It was I core. So it was a border camp. And they were in a valley. But it wasn't the, the mountains weren't on top of them.

They were in a nice valley with a river. There was a village there. So they were dug in there. And Dexon had ordered the army into Cambodia. A Cambodian coercion.

And that kicked a shed out of the envy. I mean, they, they really hurt him bad. So they were doing everything they could to kind of, maybe cause some problems with the guys to come back. So they hit a couple of in the arrangements came down and hit the camp of Doxying.

And that was a full blown camp heavy camp. And it was dug in quite well. And my brother was actually there at one time. And they damn near overrun. They hit him at dawn.

No idea. There was no intelligence. And they just came this close to April 1st, 1970 to overrunning him. But they didn't. They held out.

And so the call went out. So that's April 1st then. So they went, they wanted to send a mic for us in right away. So we had one battalion. I was third battalion.

The first battalion they called the International Battalion.

Because it had Australian SAS. I mean, if I'd made your bill, we made reference to it. It was a different major there then. And he was the battalion commander. Normally, the battalion commander is Americans were captains.

And then he had another Australian officers and all the rest of them. Two little companies were Australian war officers. They didn't really use sergeants to use war officers. And then the other company was ran by an American captain. Captain Raul.

Good. Good guy. And they had American special forces.

They also had American special forces sprinkled in there with them. Like medics and things of this.

“That was the International first battalion.”

Good battalion. They dropped them into the back pocket of the doxying several miles away. So the NVR, kicking the ass out of doxying, I was to think, "Oh, wait a minute. I'm going to battalion here and I'm back pocket." So they started turning their resources then.

And I wasn't there then.

I wasn't there the first day.

But Captain Raul got the shit shot out of him. And so they had, and I had gone to the colonel. Because we all knew it was going on April 1st. And I went to the colonel. Ten of colonel Collins.

It's a tremendous officer. I said, Sir, I'd like to go in as a first replacement. As needed if American officer gets hit. I hardly got back to my bunk. Captain Raul.

Captain Raul. Captain Central Operations Center. You got your shit back. Yes, sir. Go to Hellpad.

And so I went in on day two. And I got with them. And I think the first day we fought. Sun up to sundown and we went on our yards. Yeah.

It was brutal. And we kept just. They just continually continually were throwing shit at us.

“And again now being dug in a kid is one thing, right?”

Okay. We were dug in. But when you're on the ground maneuvering in the, against the hostile force. And they're dug in. Well, then it's a different story.

Now we're on that end of it. But we did plug away as long as we could. And then we got a situation where we had to, we had to dig in and hold on. And we did. And we, we tried to establish from there.

And we could actually, we were pretty close to the camp at that time. We were told to spread out.

But we got this, the first place we dug in and kind of set up a base camp for a couple days.

Major Beal was his name. And made a bride in the essay. As he was, he was mentioned in dispatches. And then which is a big British thing. You know what I ever heard of that before?

Yes. I had my team. Yes. I have heard of dispatches before. I mentioned in dispatches a big deal.

Big deal in the English and Australian and Canadian Army. And that was kind of guy he was. He was just a tremendous guy. Bill, not too much. Okay.

More quiet. And they had their perspective of fighting. And he, Bill even wrote this book. And he talked about this badly. He talked about.

He said the Americans are there.

They are. Let's go get him. And let's kill every one of the insons of bitches. He says where the British are. The Australian was more.

There they are. Let's think this through.

“Let's think of the best way that we can bother that.”

And many of the Americans are. Balls of the wall. Well, it really showed. And we were to make it a lot of progress. But I was just, I was just a company commander.

And we were getting low on water. We're getting low on ammo. And they were going to again. We're having a difficult time getting in. And he's, and there was a significant money on VA attacking us.

And on my side of the perimeter, my company. And he was calling in air strikes. And they were bringing in Napom. They're dropping Napom. And he kept going closer.

Closer. Closer. And the son of a bitch came right my perimeter. And I remember I was in my position. My company's out here.

And I'm listening to this on the radio. I'm going to wait a minute. And this ball of orange fire came roaring into our perimeter. And I hit the ground. And I put my nose in the dirt again as it went over me.

And all of a sudden, I couldn't breathe. Because it sucks all the oxygen out of the air. So I came back up. And it was, it was horrible. I had probably 30% of my perimeter had been affected.

The lucky ones died instantly. The ones that didn't, you know, those threads of morphine, you give them barely took the edge off. It was horrible. So two things had to happen quickly.

Well, one had to shrink my perimeter, make up for that gap immediately. But the good news, if there was good news, it did break up the NBA attack. Because they were out there burning too.

So that damn near Brollkar back as far as morale and everything. And remember, my team started to build a lead better.

So we're getting metovax in.

“The NBA are in disarray too after this one.”

Because they did, we did a lot of damage. So we're getting metovac, metovac, metovac, metovac in. And we're probably hauled out 25, 30, 30 mountain yards. That were born in, you know, the medic, Eddie Hill.

That was first on the scene, a special force of medic.

And when we started right, we're trying to write a second book about this. And he said, "You're going to make me recount all that horse show again." I said, "Yeah, if we want to pay tribute and I hate to do it." So it was really bad. Anyway, he called us back to the little command post that he had set up

within our peremoners. We had platoon, platoon, platoon, platoon. And things were looking bad for the home team. And I'm new to the first battalion. I've only been there now, maybe a week.

And I'm with Sergeant Billy Ledbetter, my team, Sergeant, and the Australians had a captain, Shilston. And then the worn officers and the worn officers were quite. And he comes in. Now, this is, this is, I'm telling you the story. Oh, it's hand to God. And to God.

“He sits there in the bill goes, "Well, he says, you know, we're in a bad situation."”

You know, we know that. And we're running on water, we're running on ammo. And we've got some coming in that are down. But we're down now, maybe 20% of manpower. And we were into one from 450, we're down to 325 or less.

He said, "There's a very, very good possibility we're going to be overrun." We go, "Yeah, tell me something, I don't know, right?" And he goes, "So when they do, if they do." Well, actually, things that when they do. He says, "Stand up, throw your rifles down and put your hands up."

And I looked at Billy Ledbetter.

I had never operated in this battalion before.

I looked at Billy Ledbetter like, "What the fuck?" And he's like, "I mean, he's got a little short cigar in his mouth." I said, "And the war officers were like, "Look at any other." And this captain's show is going, "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea." Yeah, we should do that.

That's for sure. Let's story on him later.

“And so we're walking back and I'm going, "Billy, what the hell's going on?"”

He goes, "I don't know, he says, "No, he's a very kind of weak." I said, "Well, we're going to be facing the enemy with guns and hands." And he goes, "I know that, I don't know." And this was the worst we got. Well, suggestions, maybe.

So it was bad. However, the next day, the fourth battalion inserted on top of us. Captain Rich McDonald, Big Mac, brought in 450 fresh troops. Right out of training, right out of rehab. And I rehab it, down time.

And they landed dead in the middle of our perimeter. When we doubled our strength immediately, they had water. They had ammo. They were fresh. And we dug in.

And now we were, we were content. Now we were blown back there attacks. Matter of fact, the blue and back so fast. It's so quick. We got orders from headquarters that move out.

Proceed. Pushed to the camp of Doxyang. Which we did. So we took off together with two battalions. Well, by the way, I'm not exactly sure.

Oh, no, he'd be able to still, so we took off two battalions. My company in lead. Mac was up with his lead company. And then we got to the Doxyang would be sitting like dead front of us. And it was a small river.

He was given orders to cross the river and go east. And I was to stay west and head around Doxyang and engaged clear as we went. Now, we didn't have a lot. And we, you know, they had the most men. And that was the least resistance.

And we did it as long as we could. We did it for a couple of days. And then we got held up on a. And we had to dig in to survive. And it had sloping side, sloping side, sloping side.

And then one that we wouldn't call it a cliff. But you'd call it a very, very steep hill.

You could never attack up.

There's no way in the world. So we dug in there. And we fought. And during that time. Major Bill choppered out.

And he left command to Peter Shilston. Peter Shilston couldn't lead an old hoard of bed. And he had some issues. And he never got out of the foxhole. So the command shifted to me.

So I was now the battalion commander of the first battalion. So I was making all the decisions calling in all the. And we held on there. And that wasn't as bad as Kate.

And I kept continuing to get worse.

And finally, we and there's a whole back story to why.

It got so bad. There was an NBA hospital. A dug in this underground hospital. Large hospital. not real far from where we were dug in and they were fighting like banshee's to protect it. We didn't know that. So I said, um, we can't hold this anymore. We're just not, you know, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're we're attacked to get, we're losing more people and they're gaining more ground. So we've got to, you know, I got to plan once again a breakout. I was like my, I've become known as a, that's my forte. So this is what we're going to do. We're going to, and I had the Australian, more and also,

“everybody was involved in those except for that one particular captain. I think they're story about him for a minute.”

We're there and we're trying to figure out how to break out of this thing and he leads, um, his, uh, like, platoon. He takes a platoon from his company and goes out and gets engaged in this bunker up area. And he's calling for help. I need help. I need, you know, I get there. I said, sure. So I took a platoon from ours. And, and I went there with him and there I could see him and he's probably 15, 20 meters away from me. I could see him and I could get up with my people and we spread out and we're in with his people and we start moving forward.

I said, I got this. We're going and we're starting not going to bunkers. And I look around now and he's not there. He took his people in the drill.

I was like, oh, oh, the second shift is here. Okay, I'm, I'm going home now. So I mean,

“about a bit of a middle of a firefighter. So there's how I could do about it. So this is kind of humorous.”

We're, we're the last bunker. The sun's getting low. We got to clean this mess up pronto. And the last bunker is really fortified. Earth and bunker probably two feet thick. And we're just not getting through to what, what we bring to it. So I'm to the right of it. And I look at my, uh, one of my yards next to me. I said, uh, I want you to drop your gear. Take this grenade. Low crawl lump get underneath that and toss this into the aperture of that bunker.

And he looked at me once again like I had two heads. And I said, not a problem. So I dropped my

belly lid better. It was there. I said, I'll do this. And goes, I'll be fine. And I dropped it.

It's slung my rifle. And I, I low crawl around and kept underneath the fire. And I got up to that.

“And I'm sitting there with the aperture. And I'm going, okay, I know what grenade has like six”

seconds, right? And you know, you pop the pin goes up. So I said, I want to hold this for about four and a half sink and before and throw it into the can't throw it out. Like, pop it, ping, and one thousand, one, fuck this. And I threw it in. And I roll like this to, to get away from the blast and that the same time, with it say, they threw one of their grenades out. But I didn't see it. And one of my guys was so close. It's because it was puppy, medic, great guy. Louis was his name.

He goes, "Hock, grenade, grenade!" And I know it. Oh, it is. So two things happened. Migraine went off, American grenade. Oh my god, they're devastated. They killed everybody in there. Their grenade goes up. And I felt like I was Superman. I was flying through the air. Hands out. And for about 15 feet then boom, I hit the ground. Spread eagle. The guy is sweeped through. And we eliminate that bunker. Poppy runs up to me. And I knew I'd been hit. I knew I'd been hit. And he goes, "Hock, he says

you're hit. I said, I know that. Dead in the middle of my back." To trap no. Because, you know, I'm laying, he says, "Can you move?" I said, "I don't know." And he said, "What have you tried?" And I said, "No." And he goes, "Well, God damn it, try." Sorry. I'm wearing this hand. This hand, I go, "Oh, yes, oh, yeah, I can't." So, pats me up and back we go. Because it was, it was, it would turn out out extra, it was close to the spine. But they said, "You know, we're going to leave

this here." Because we don't want to go in and fuck with it. This is 1970, right? Anyway, so the battle continues. And I said, "We can't hold this thing." So, we're going to stay here. We're going to fame that we're here. But everybody's going off the side of the cliff or the very, very, very, very steep hill. We regroup at the bottom. And Charlie Childers, who was one of my captains, great guy, ran one of the platoons. I was Charlie regrouping down there and start

moving out towards the camp. And as the guys come down, regroup and get eyes that I'll go on with you.

it wasn't everybody gets up and leaves a perimeter. And in a certain order, you know, guys were coming back and then we get to the hill and then they would take the slide for life down this thing. And this probably was about 50 yards down. And so, you know, you could try to walk it, but you didn't have to go on your butt sliding. And I said, once again, take only what you need. Take us, we're going to be fighting and running. So, don't take, you know, you leave your fucking

child, and leave your bed roll, because we're doing a run for our lives again. So, they did.

“And I should take only what you have to have. And my mountain yard, RTL, the radio guy, good guy,”

good guy. So, I get there, I'm on the edge of the hill, and the guys are coming past me. I see you're going down, going down, and it's daylight, it's about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, 3 o'clock. And I'm, I start calling the border control. I'm getting nothing. And I call again, nothing. I looked down, I got no antenna. I looked at the yard, I said, "Where's he antenna?" He said, "You said, leave everything." I said, "Go back and get the goddamn antenna."

He runs back. And he gets in the short antenna, the one that bendable, one that I'm putting on the prick 25, and I'm putting it on there. And the meantime, guys are coming by me, guys are coming by me, guys are coming by me. They're doing a slide for life, and I'm finally, I established contact. I said, "Yeah, right, yeah, Hawk, we got you." Yeah, okay. I said, "Okay, and I look, I'm the last one there." And through their comp, probably about 20, about 40 meters

through, they're coming into our perimeter. They're walk, it's slow. They think we're still there. And their envy is walk, it's slow. Maybe it does enough of them are coming in there.

I'm like, "Fuck." So, I said, "Okay, here's what I need you to do. I'm going to pop smoke

“and everything to the northeast of Dada Dada." I said, "You need to come in and hit it real quick,”

because they're all, they're almost on me." So, it's a Roger. So, I pop smoke, spray it, I sprayed, and I was the only one that had a 30-round magazine. I had a choir that. Everybody else did the 20s. And I did a spray of that, and he came in and just bombed the shed out of those guys that were there and then kept it on. And I slid down and I got a hole, I came up and I found Charlie, and they had run back into a bunker complex. So, I said, "We don't have time to knock this out.

We got a flank around it." So, I started, I was Charlie, take this, go this way. So, I started maneuvering the battalion around the bunker complex. So, we skirted it. And we left enough people there to get keep their attention, thinking that we were still there. And then we all withdrew. And at a meantime, the NVA on top side, they're through that, and they see what happened. So, they're sliding their ass down this hill too. They get to the bottom of the hill. We're not there. So, they proceeded

in the most likely way to go, and they run into the bunker complex, and yet another firefighter erupts. Oh, yeah. It blew up. It blew up. I started fighting each other, and we're away over here, and we're going, yeah. And so, we were able to break out, and we got as far as a runway to the camp, it was all hugger down, and they kind of realized it, and they, the hot pursuit, and we engaged again,

but we got into the safety of doxyang. So, I got wounded the third time. So, that's you been

“wounded twice. And I get wounded the third time. And then the third time, what happened there?”

I went back for a stand-down, and actually, I went on an R&R, and it came back to you. Where'd you go on an R? Thailand or Japan? Well, I, there was just, no, I went to Hawaii to meet this possible woman that I was very much thought I was in love with. And, yeah, Jody, you know, I didn't know what I was there. Anyway, that didn't work out. So, I came back and I went back to the field. Sometimes it's easier just to be in the field. So, then do you want to be in the field?

Oh, God, joined up with the guys, and you know, it was your brother hearing about all this, like you were on the freaking cover newsweek and all this stuff. Is he going with the hell? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he was, he was, Jesus. Because the family would all go to him. What's going on? Yeah. And he downplayed as much as possible. I would see, so was he active duty while you were already out. When I was, he was out then, but he was active duty when I got the

brag when I was in the to the course. So, he was out. And now he's seen all this stuff. He's telling your family like, oh, it's no big deal. Don't worry about it. I didn't get to the other letter that,

you know, I'm wounded yet again. All right. So, you get done with the R and R with incredible R and

Hawaii that, and now you're back again, and how did you wounded this entire time? We were, uh, Billy Ledbear and I, we were out and, um, we were in, in for the night and we dug in and we went out to, to take, check out this twilight twilight to see the, what was out there kind of the route

but caught both of us in the legs. So, I didn't think much of it. A couple pieces of strapped all in,

“in my leg, come on. So, patch that up, but they have to report that shit. And then, so the next”

day we're moving and they, uh, they called and they said, uh, Haka, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a helicopter out there to get you. And I said, uh, he said, what? They said, yeah, you can be on the helicopter, sending it out. There's headquarters. So, yeah, I'm the like this. So, it came out and I had some walking wounded. I put them on there and I sent it back without me. Little bit later. Haka sent it. So, yeah, it's a helicopter, we don't be on this.

Yeah, Roger. Second one. I, some other guys I said, I'll, I said, hey, bring some ammo with you,

you know. So, I didn't get on that one either. The third time they said, if you're not on this helicopter, we will court marshal you. Okay. Okay. So, I flew back and now it says, what's going on? They said, down, back, back. It's well, three times. This is where, three times is a charm anywhere. We're not going to be, you know, your family says,

“you know, he already, he got wounded three times and you kept him in the field. What's wrong with you?”

So, we don't want to, we don't want to do that. So, that was it. My, my combat time was over. And I hung up my rifle and picked up a pin. And then it does where you did some staff job for the last few months. The last few months, I was in the train. Whether Dairy Queen was no longer there

I might have had. And I was the liaison between the first field force Vietnam and special forces

in two corps. And it was a plumb job I didn't do shit. I gained like 20 pounds. I went from 55 to 75, 175 was at the beach drinking beer and kind of easing my way into civilian life. And you were sure at this point that civilian life was the route you wanted to take. I was sure that I had to get a college education. Okay. I love the army. I loved what I was doing. But I knew, like I said, Ray Charles could see this one coming. The rift was coming. And I was 100% right. And when I graduated

1975 from Augustana in Rock Island, I called up the infantry branch and said, hey, I'm thinking about coming back in. I just graduated and they said, well, let me pull your file. And they said, well, you got a good combat record, good officer, officials, reports, what's your masters in that

“home master? So I just got an undergraduate. No, no, no, no, this 75. You have to have a”

masters work out on your doctor to get in this man's army now. And they were just, they were just getting rid of guys like crazy. That's so crazy. You got the high school graduate to OCS and others say you can't be an officer unless you're working on your doctorate. Damn. How was it coming home? Well, how was that transition? You know, when you get back, how was the hippies? What was

all that like? I never got bothered by hippies for obvious reasons. I was about to take your

shit and I would, there would have been a lot more fights than I already did have. And my position was, um, nothing on me. I apparently did have some anger issues though. And I ended up working as a bouncer in a bar for a couple years and that was therapy. I just, it was just therapy. And so what I was, I was a little fucked up. I'll tell you there right now. Let me tell you this and I talk about this when I speak publicly. So guys like me and veterans in general, as like yourself,

you, uh, when you're no longer involved in that, you take those horrific memories or bad things that happened nasty things. And I always say, I put them in in my mind, I put them, uh, I lock them up and, you know, like a foot locker. And I put those memories in there and, um, wall locker foot locker closet, whatever, in your mind, you, you nail that son of a bitch shut and you padlock it. Because when I got home, I, my friends, it didn't serve. You know, they were all,

you know, starting on families and education and our apprenticeships or whatever. So I was behind. So I knew I had to, I had to catch up. So I just stoded all the way. But, but sometimes it could be a smell, something you saw, it could be a turn of phrase. And then, and then, put it like we come up a little bit and someone come out and I'll even hit me in which is like boom, oh my god, the memory came right back, right back like a freight train. And I didn't climb any

tower and start shooting there or anybody didn't have a meltdown. I just remembered, okay, yes,

and you think it through and you process it, okay. Now let's put that back in the foot locker and

“you put it back in there and you close it, but it just, it doesn't quite go once it's open and”

never goes back all the way closed. So you, you do that in every time a little bit more. Now this could

be once every six months or once every six days. And then 2008, when I was no longer an agent and I was no longer with foreign motor company and I was just doing consulting work. 2008, the locker came open, the foot locker came open, everything came out, everything. So I sat down and started to write about it. Now I had the after-actual report. I had all the newspaper clippings, all the magazine about it. I had a log that I carried with me every day in Vietnam with a little

notes in it and I started to write. And some days I'd write for eight hours and some days I'd write for eight minutes, but I wrote in, and I wrote the entire battle down as best I could.

“And that was very cathartic for me as the book has, as the documentary has. It was very cathartic.”

Because when, when I came home to say that Vietnam veterans who were on popular is the understatement of the year, we were, we were maligned, we were baby killers, we were dog drug addicts and and those were some of the better things they said about us. And it was just a really, really tough time to be a veteran, very tough time. But buddy of mine, John Kathman, who was an now retired teacher, but he said, then he was with the cab and the first cab combat officer was

a badge, infantryman. He was home in February of 1970, sitting at this local gin mill called Hafters in Molina, Illinois. And he was in the field 10 days before. And it's a Friday night, he's waiting for his wife to get off work and it's cold snow outside and a guy next to him busy, busy. Looks like it was a hey man. It's a nice tan you have. Where'd you get that? And he says, I looked at him and I thought about it and I said, this cab back in Florida. And he goes, okay,

he's not because I wasn't proud, I didn't serve without a note. I didn't want to get into it. I didn't want to have to explain this and start from this with somebody who had no idea of what I had just been through for a year. And that's the way we were. We didn't talk about it unless we figured you had been there or knew something or I could relate to it. And then we didn't

talk about horrible things. We talked about things that GIs always talk about. And then the other

one I always had is in 1996, Richmond Donald Big Mac that we stayed close all these years in Charlie Childers too. We went down to Fort Bragg North Carolina to the conference that they have every year as Special Forces Association. And they had this Mike Force reunion there too. And I got to see low Stevens and Simmons again. First time I saw him since fire base gate. Kind of great picture in the book. It's in there. And that night they had a formal dinner, suits,

tuxes, whatever you want to call it. And I'm in there with Mac. And there he is, boat grites. They'll boat grites is a legend in the FBI in the Special Forces. A legend. He was very well known, very very well known. And I met him in the train in 1970 at the

“officer's club. I believe. And I looked at the eight there's boat grites. I got to say hi.”

So I went over to him. I said the Colonel Grites and he goes, yeah, I said Bill Allbrack. I met you and then the train officer's club. And when you were there and I was in Special Forces two and he goes, oh we meant Vietnam. I said yeah, and he shook my hand. He smiled. He said,

welcome home. I had never heard that before. I was dumbfounded. I was like, uh, uh, and thank you.

And now, I know, of course, I just struck me. I never heard that before. Now, of course, that's the big thing Vietnam veterans meet each other. It's it's welcome home because we never got a welcome home ever. And not I'm not whining in on a complaining and not being a baby about this. It's just the way it was. And this is what we dealt with. And this is why we had to move on and go from there. And so that's pretty much what you had to do. It's just, all right, I got to go to school,

get a degree. Did you, did you, did you do the reserves through the army reserves? Yes, I did. I was four years company commander of a leg outfit. Good bunch of guys. And, uh, they said, well, sir,

you in first day. But the half that stayed, we'd be good. And then how did you end up in the secret service? I was going to post push in 27 and I was going to graduate from college. And as a matter of

fact, I got to take through when I, when I never going to college. So I started off with the junior

college, a black hawk junior college in Moline, Illinois. And that really got my feet on the ground and got me focused it on the way, what I should, how college is it papers and do and because, and then that much, much to look back on from high school. So then I transferred from there to a four year to Augustana, Rock Island, Illinois, good school. So I took it from there and then when I come time to graduate, well, it was 75 job market was in and I could get a job selling insurance and

I could do that. And about just starting senior year, I don't, I don't want to do any of that stuff. And my buddy had applied, uh, was applying for alcohol tobacco firearms. He said in different

state agencies, he said, you know, you ought to, you know, think about law enforcement. And I never

did before. So I did. And the more I got into it, the more I thought, you know, this is really what I need to be. So I shot gunned my applications off to the FBI, the customs, the secret service, and ATF, and, uh, and waited for response. And, uh, the, and the secret service picked it up very quickly, because Gerald Ford had just gotten shots taken at him twice, uh, squeaky from surgery and more. I should be said to attempts to send shots. So they were, they were beefing up and I got

was part of that. So in 1975, October, I raised my right hand and was sworn in as a special aid

“with U.S. Secret Service. How was the screening process and the training for all that?”

Screening process was very, very thorough. And, um, in later years, um, I took a job part-time job with the Secret Service as a special investigator. And I'd do backgrounds. I'd sit on panel interviews for new hires part-time part-time. And it was very, very thorough. And, uh, they, when they went to, I go and talk to, hey, uh, Jaco's my buddy and I put him down as a reference, so I go, hey, Jaco, how you doing? Hey, yeah, you know something about Jaco Charlie here?

Yeah, okay, okay, okay, you could, they, they don't come in better really. Okay. Well, uh, nose and pretty well. Oh, well, and you can be about three names, two of which I have third one I don't. Oh, go tell them. So I talk to the third one, because I figured it all the ones are good. I'm going to go talk to them, but I'm figure they're going to, I got a, I got a third one.

“Hey, yeah, I was pretty good guy at decent. And, uh, well, what else do you think I would know?”

And, boom, so you finally get the people that aren't pre-worned. Hey, you're going to say good things. So they do it in depth background investigation. Oh, of course, drug tests, hearing tests, physical tests, um, all that kind of thing. Now, they polygraph them too. They didn't, they didn't when I came on. Thank God. And so, uh, that Hawaiian trip to what a pop thing is. So there, there, it was a very, very thorough. And now it's even, it's even more exhausting, one. And I then

had part of my career, I taught in the academy, and that was kind of fun too. So what was your job when you were, you know, when you started off in the cerebral service? I started off in the Chicago district and, uh, as a new agent, they had these, uh, criminal violations at that time. You know, I don't think that, and they were treasury checks, bonds, securities, stolen, forged, cached. And that's just what you did. They kind of broke your, your teeth on investigations. They were

very low profile, nobody like you, but shit about them dead at truth. But it was a good thing, good learning process. And then you did counterfeit money. Ah, now we're talking. Now we're talking some great investigations. That was fun. And then, um, threats against the president, the vice president, their families, you would investigate those and things of this nation. Those are the three primaries.

And then always, always protection. No matter what you're doing, you drop it. But if you're in the

field, then you're not going to be in DC at the White House on that inner perimeter. So you're going to be in the field, and they'll say, hey, the president or the vice president, it's going to Cincinnati. We need 52 post-standards. We need 52 agents and they go, okay, Chicago district give up so many, so many here, so many there. And you go, they report, they say, okay, today, you're going to be at this location. And this is your job. And then we enter mix with the police local. And

“that is paramount importance without the local police. And we enter mix with them. And so that's what”

you do. And then after a certain time, then I went from there to New Yorkfield office and um,

Now, LA will say they are. I will argue with that. So we were always in competition, New York,

and LA, why's the competition for shutting down counterfeit plans? And we would work a counterfeit case like was murder one. And that was quite the deal. So we did that. And about that time in '79, terrorism was on the rise, and they came out and said, you know what, we are going to

“start an anti-terrorist unit, and the secret service we could have called, cat, counter salt teams.”

And Ernie Cohn started putting together teams in the summer of '79, and they started asking for volunteers. They wanted them in the field office, because the detail guys who are with the President of Vice President, they're just too damn busy, and they don't have enough of them. They tried it,

but it didn't work. So Washington Field Office, LA, New York, we fielded teams, and they would have

us come out, and we went through a then-two-week course of, and three of us were Vietnam combat veterans, and there was tactical, motorcade assaults. So the President gets hit or the Vice President gets hit, and you can do immediate, like counter salt, check. Exactly. And that's kind of stuff you used to do. Yeah, that's all. That's like it's good of a job as you can go on. Although you got to,

“you don't want to be hoping that something bad happens to the President, obviously, in order”

to get to do your job, and then how long did you have that role for? Well, so the work criminal work in New York and the counterfeit squad, that was the best of times. They worked us like

Red and Mules, so we loved it. And then the cat came in, it was like playing football in high

schools, those were your grades and we're up, you could still play football. So we trained and best we could, and then we'd be deployed. And after a while, especially in charge of New York said, hey, they're either mine or yours, make a decision, but you can't be hauling these guys out all the time, because we had some very, very good agents. Team would be five or six guys. So they said, okay, we centralized them in '82 down in Washington, D.C. and that became the special operations

“of the Secret Service. So I took the transfer down, I went down and became a playing colder on”

the kind of assault teams as well, so it was like three, three or four teams back then, and did that for a couple of years. And now this is where the journeyman level at that time was a G.S. 12. G.S. 12 plus 25% pay. The 13 was a promotion. Now, a journeyman level is a 13, which should have been back then, and I went and talked to after two years in D.C. two years in New York, two years in D.C. Well, it was a, it was a considerate, a career suicide,

to be a keep stay on cat. Yep. Now it's like holy shed. That all changed when my partner in New York and my partner, one of the team leaders in D.C., also special forces, Vietnam, became the director of the Secret Service. So nice. Loomer letting. Great, great guy. So I went in, they said, hey, we got you. I said, are you going to make us team leaders promoted? Yeah, well, Bill, you know, we're thinking about that and I go, so that's a no. All right, so I need to

get off, you know, get off, kind of solve things. He goes, okay, we got your slot to go to P.B.D. president of protection, Reagan. I said, no, I don't want to do that. Reagan was 70 plus years old. He didn't like to travel. He liked to go to the ranch. And he liked to go to Camp David. And he, he, he, he just didn't like the go out and do all these other things. He just didn't like to go foreign travel. He just didn't like. He didn't care to do that. So that meant his agents were not

getting the experience of going on doing advanced work as much as George Bush. George Bush was nonstop travel. Reagan to call him in his office and say, from my lips to your ears, this is what I want you to tell so and so. So he was nonstop. So I said, I want to go to the vice president, he'll deal with George Bush. So I did. So you traveled them all the time? Oh, yeah, oh, my God. Did you ever go to Kenny Bunk main all the time? So I was probably about,

I don't know, 10, 12 years old or something like that. And my dad worked up in Kenny Bunk. And so the vice president was coming. And he was given a speech in like the little port town, like in this little town. And so he might, I'm there, my dad takes me to see, you know, the vice president is coming to speech. And they need a lot of tiny town. And like this little square is very

And I'm also like a punk ass kid, you know, even though I'm only 12 or whatever, I'm 10, 12.

And so I'm standing there. I can't really see anything. And so then my dad gives me a camera. And it's like this is this is 1980 something, right? I don't know what specific year. But this is, you know, old, like respectful times, right? These are these are respectful times. And it's a small

“new England town. Very respectful. And so my dad says, hey, you know, can you get a picture?”

I'm like, well, I can't say anything. He says, well, there's a little window sill behind us. And he goes, we'll get up on that window sill and see if you can get a picture. And so he gives me a camera. And I have a little kid I stand up there. And I get the camera up and, uh, and I go,

hey, George, just like that. I mean, the whole, like, I've got a lot of voice anyways.

Hey, George. And he knows, I mean, he can hear, clear, clear his day. And he like looks over me. And I click a picture. And none of your guys like jump me or anything like that. Oh, God, that's great. That was pretty, uh, pretty funny. I'm sure I, I'm sure I made a fool out of, uh, you know, my dad and the family. Oh, no, whatever. So, so, but like I said, none of your guys tackled me or anything. Well, I got big stars. What does that picture know? I, I think it's just lost in the history of time,

which is a bummer, uh, you know, because it was probably, you know, just want to some little cheap,

“film camera. But I remember seeing the, like, we got it developed. And it's not a spectacular picture.”

Because it's not like a telephoto lens. It's like the picture of Abraham Lincoln given the Gettysburg address. You know, it's kind of like, wait, where is he that guy? But you could tell us him. You know, he's a little town circle. You could see him. It was pretty cool. But that's my George W, George, that's my George Bush story. That's a good story. Yeah. That's a good story. That's a good story. Nice, a good guy. Both of those guys. What you, what you, what you saw is what you got. If you didn't

like what their, uh, parents of public was, we wouldn't like him in, uh, private either. They were just true Americans. Really, it was a, we looked back, you know, the secret service has gone through some transitions down. There's some scandals and things of this nature. Us old ties, um, we hang, and we talk, and we have to consider ourselves a golden age. We had some of the sharpest brightest best guys and some, a lot of you guys went on to be captives of industry in a security world at

everything. You know, Barley was up with the Cleveland Browns for years as a VP and so on. Um,

but back then, my God, we had good, if he, competition was incredible. I was going to say, I'm

imagine they're just the screening process. And not just the initial screen to get in, but like the screening. As you go up,

“the chain of command and you get those billets. Like how many people do you have to select for in the whole”

country and then down select for this group and then down select down select to where you're guarding either the president or the vice president. These have got to be like the best, most capable humans we have. It's, uh, it's not quite that much. It's there. We're going to be looking at you as a field agent. What you do as a field agent and then your different protective assignments because as a field agent, when the, uh, the Chancellor of Germany comes in to your district, you're going to be the one

doing the advance and with the Germans and so on. And they're going to be looking to kind of work you do. So when your, your, your, your number comes up, your billet comes up to be transferred and they need people on PPD or VPD. They're going to be looking at that. Now if you're some slug, no, got a great story about one guy who was, uh, came to New York. I want me to say his name, but he was very, very much overweight. Now most of us guys, very fit, PT task at all that. It was

very, very overweight. And we're like, oh God, he was from do Daddy, Mississippi or something. And you know, hey, how you got to do it? And you know, and we're, uh, and this guy, he gets there. And he starts going on lock it up the world. He goes out to do a bed for it. Stives at a Brooklyn start bringing these check forgers. And next thing you know, his new name was, uh, Sheriff of New York City. And I, like, oh my God, this guy was good, but he was very much overweight.

And the, uh, the boss who got to his god damn it, you got to lose a way. You're too damn bad. Oh, no, I'm not sure. I know. And then that's line of hurt. He's up there. You lose weight yet. Son, and he goes, they're, they hired me fat. Well, guy like that. No, but he went to Miami and made a just set up a whole new career of locking people up and, and doing things, uh, organized, crying down there. And so, no, he would not

going to go or somebody at this nature. And then if they get a bad amount, I don't want to say that, but they get to somebody that doesn't fit in or can't fit in, they won't be there alone.

understand when you're in protection. And you've protected enough people to understand that

“you're not there, you know, friend, you're, you're there to protect them. And when I first got”

out at a VPD tail, especially in charge, had they bring him in, angry with some of 10 to a dozen, so that the vice president comes out of rain that comes out when they get all new agents around. You know, they, they just bring him in so slowly, they interject new people. So we're in the, uh, the, uh, kind of, uh, that, that were their orientation. And I'm in there with the other new guys, and especially in charge of Kevin gets in and just his little greeting. He's a George Bush,

is one of the finest men that I've ever met. Truly is. And he did a little bit of a background and a World War II pilot shot down that it up. And he says, uh, you know, he's got this resume. He just won't stop. Probably our next president after Reagan, but he said, uh, and he's the George Bush obviously knows my name, of course. And he knows my wife's name. He knows my children's name. He knows my anniversary date. He knows my birthday. He knows my wife's birthday. He's a good thing to

one thing about George Bush. He's not my friend, nor will he be yours. He said, this is a great guy, great personality, but you're not here to be their friend. If you're their friend, you're not doing proper protection. If we detect anybody, trying to be their friend, you won't be on this detail. And, uh, and that was the way it was, because you're not their friend, you're there to work. Yeah. Yeah. Kevin, have that, uh, little bit of separation for sure. You know, they're looking

out for guys that are trying to, uh, you know, kiss ass to the, to the big boss, which is certainly it's not going to be, uh, prudent for good security work. Uh, so how long, and how long, what you'd you would return from that? Uh, 2001 before, then in 11, 2001, I got a, uh, an offer for Ford Motor Company. I couldn't refuse. So I went to Ford Motor Company and executive operations as a manager, uh, there for a, and I did security work for one bill for the next sale of a travel,

got their due to advances and travel with them as security. And for the World Trade Center, I mean, the, uh, New York World Headquarters, the New York Ford Motor Company, World Headquarters, and the Research and Engineering Center had, you had security fire people there, so you'd have

“50, 60 guys to responsible for, to do that when you were traveling. And how long does that get for?”

About four years, and then they started, uh, downsizing, because the auto industry was starting to slide and Ford had some great top end people, and they saw it all coming. And, uh, when, when it really hit, they, they weren't, they were, they only wasn't didn't take a bail. Yep, they weren't. And they were in position, they had repositioned, and I was making a lot of money. And my number two guy was not making that kind of money good, but not certainly not. I was making. And when the,

uh, when they called me and said, "Hey, great job Bill, you've done a wonderful job." Uh, what do you think about this, uh, buyout thing here is, uh, and I looked at him thinking, the fuck do I got a kill for this, you know, I can't, I can't for the government. We didn't have buyout, you just, you just left. And anyway, yeah, they were very, very kind to be, and buy all my duties or responsibilities of, of the protection, that, that protection, not that. Shifted to them,

and they never raised this, uh, his, uh, salaries or anything. They said, "Well, you're in charge

now." Uh, no. And so this is what kind of things they did. They were very, very good about it, and hence they ended up surviving without a bailout. Um, and then how did you, how did you, how long did you do that for? About four years. Four years. Yeah. And then we'll came after that. Well, uh, I'll home town boy, I went back to the Quad Cities, and uh, got back there and just kind of hung on my shingled, shingled to do security consulting. And there's a whole network, and then

call, "Hey, are you available to do this, this, this?" Uh, no, I'm gonna go skiing or no, I'm, you know, but, or yes, I am. So I just pick and choose the different jobs. I did not want a full time job again.

And then, you, you know, this third silver star, which you didn't get until 2012. How did that come

about? Good story. Because you, you know, you told the story already that you went to get an award. You didn't know what the award was. You decided that was more important to save people's lives than to get an award. So you end up showing a plate to your own award service, and you end up getting

“no award. And you said I'll catch up with me at some point. You never saw it. So how did that come about?”

In 2010, Bobby Shilling was where I lived in Rock Island County was, uh, same, or maybe more

And, um, and that brings them upon their own problems that people have with one party control, either party. You're gonna have problems. So Bobby Shilling decided to run for Congress in 2010. And the guy he was running with was a slug. And, uh, another veteran by the name of Ken Moffitt has come up and come. He'd be really like to be said, "Hey, would you help me with the veteran angle to help Bobby get in?" So, uh, I heard him talk and I talked to him, I meant him and I said, "Yeah,

so we did, we formed a pack, actually, a veteran for the Constitution. And we were very helpful

in getting him into office. He won. He won. First, Republican Congressman, they had there in

oh my god, 40 years. So he got in, he came to me and he said, Bill, I want to offer you a job as my veteran constituent working in my bubble bonnet. No. Thanks, but no, thanks. But I'd say he would be good as Ken Moffitt. He goes, "Well, that'd be my second choice. I can

“would be good." And he, anyone, he was just great at it. He said, "But is there anything I can do for you?”

Is he a servant? Is there is one thing?" I, and I told him a little bit story about Kate and I, I missed the ceremony. I said, "If you could look into that and see what happened to it, I would, uh, I would appreciate that." So he said, uh, absolutely. So Ken, now being the veteran guy,

comes to me, and he says, "You got anything on this, written on." I says, "Well, remember, I told you

2008. I wrote it all down. As this is a matter of fact, I do." So I handed it over to him. He then took the ball and ran with it. Oh my god, started looking up people, interviewing people. He was the basis for the research, the starting research of the book, and then Marvin took it over. Now listen, so they did, and they decided not me, I had nothing to do with this, that they were going to submit me for the, uh, melevonner, and they did. And it, yeah, came back, and they said,

silver star is good enough. So I was presented with the silver star in 2012.

“Yeah, I'm not sure what else you got to do, but we'll take it. Yeah, that's what I said.”

Yeah, and I've, you know, I've seen stuff with people like it, asking, you know, the president to intervene, to get that upgraded, uh, let's see where all that goes. You know, there's a guy in, in Ramadi, a guy named Marquis, Sergeant Marquis Quick, and he, you know, his, his company Sergeant was on this podcast, but he, he jumped on grenades to save some of those guys, and like he, they're looking to get him, the metal of honor, searching

for the last few I witnessed is right now, but what a process it is, uh, but, you know, absolutely, you know, there's such a clear case, uh, guy that sacrifices his life for his friends like that. Yeah. And, you know, we're, but the, the process of going through it, I'm, you know, just tangently know what's going on because I'm friends with friends with dampenian who's, the, the, the functioning force to try and make it happen. And just seeing from the outside what

he's doing to try and push that forward, huge efforts going forth, and, uh, hopefully it happens, you know, because, you know, clearly, clearly. Well, yeah, you know, sacrifices life. That, absolutely. What else is left? No, nothing. Yeah. Um, so, so what are you doing now, then? Well, I did, uh, I was selling out a special investigator for the Secret Service part time they called me up and I did that for nine and a half years that didn't even know what was doing it.

I was still doing contract work, too. So I just stopped doing that. Mary is very happy about that. And, um, now I'm trying to do some of the things developed what they call hobbies. But I got to say one thing about this, uh, the thing was something that I, that I, talking about the warrior's rising. Yeah, you mentioned before we hit record. Oh, but yeah, let's hear what that's all about. It's warrior rise warriors warrior rising. Okay. And, uh,

basically, it is a company, a company. It's a veteran organization founded by some special forces

guys. And right now Casey Max did is, is the president of it. And what they'll do is, so if you have

“to emphasize it, that's what we're talking about. It's one individual made these and beautiful,”

nice, incredibly beautiful. And they were well worth putting them into production. But they didn't have the foggy's idea. How what do you need it? A business plan? He needs a business. How finance, how do you get finances? How do you do a HR? How do you how do you set up a factory? How do you do all these things? That's what warrior rising does. They bring these guys in and they take them to

a business, how to run a business, and they help them all along the way. And then at the end of this, uh, we're just coming up to one now in Iowa, in March. There's going to be a shoot-out event, all the different kinds of guns that we shot. But that's one razor. Then a dinner where they'll have a shark tank that I before and a top five or six will present their ideas to this, uh, panel. And they're not all veterans. They're uh, captain's of industry type people. These

the panel is all captain panels. Yes. And then they'll decide who they're going to fund beyond.

And it's really a cool deal. And then they have this dinner, which I always go to and free load and

drink for free and eat whatever they have. And I spoke a lot of them, so not that one. But it earned your food and boost. And that's right. Now pay me out just eat this here. Okay. So and they do this and they do a very, very good job of it. Well, you're as rising. So it's a good worthwhile. Do you

“know the website by any chance? I think it's warriors-rising.com. Okay. That's cool. That's awesome.”

And then so does that get us up to speed of where we're at right now? Yeah, pretty much. So you're working on another book with the next book, the Mike Forst book? Yeah. It's going to be about Dauce Yang. And it's a, it's a, it's a movie at the pace of a glacier right now. See, the cake was simple in that. I control all this stuff. And I could get, find out all this other stuff. But this is got another Mike Forst unit coming in from the train. We have a Ranger unit. I got a man

of latrell, Sergeant latrell. He was, I had an Arvin Ranger unit, which was pretty shit hot. And they were, they were inserted on top of one of these hills kind of like a fire base cake type of hills. And they had three American advisors, like a major captain in him. He has such a first class, all killed. And plus, most of the command structure of the Ranger's killed. But he organized

“them. And, and the last day, they were there. He took those Rangers. He let them off that hill”

with air cover and got them to safety. And he received the Medal of Honor. Gary Byrick at

Special Forces Medic at Doxyang. Receive the Medal of Honor. Incredible. Pass. He's passed.

Incredible what he did. So there's a lot of moving parts in this thing. And I can focus in on the fourth battalion and the first battalion. But then I got to bring in all these other things. Like there was more Caribou shot down there at Doxyang than the history of Caribou's the Indian Vietnam. And they had brought in these things stinger who could shoot artillery rounds off the back bunker penetrate rounds off the back of their platform. A lot of a lot of a hot shit thing

was going on there. And they're tough to bring in all together. Yeah, and that's definitely a bigger chore than the one where you kind of owned everything yourself. And it lasted for six weeks. Yeah, as opposed to five days. Yeah. And are you still doing like you mentioned a little bit consulting and speaking and stuff like that? Yeah. When you feel like it. Speaking now, you know, they'll, they'll usually be some money involved. Unless it's unless it's some organization that

“you know, yeah. So yeah, I think they get hold of me and I'll say, well, what do you got going and”

do that? Yeah. Yeah. Nice. So does that get us up to speed? I think so. And people can find you. You got captain, uh, hyphenhawk.com. That's where people can find me. I think about best to go to the website. And that's yeah, that's right. You just said it. Yeah, captain, hyphenhawk.com. Yeah. That's where I, when I go, would you that popped up right away? Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Uh, echo Charles, you got any questions? Yeah. A little bit of clarify the warriors rising. Is it warriors?

Rising or warrior? Right. And warrior singularly. Singler. Okay. No, that's enough. Okay. God, I say that. I hope I'm right. We'll look it up. We'll make sure. Yeah, I'm confirmed. Okay. People. Oh, you mentioned you played football varsity football high school. Um, did you, well, first off, what position did you play on the right tackle offensive defense offensive family? Yeah, online all day. Um, do you find that? Because I kind of wonder this where do you find

that like the principles of football carried over to the military? I mean, yeah, let me answer that. That's an excellent question. Let me tell you about that. First of all, it was a little kid by football play baseball basketball, not too much. Um, and I was always one that preferred to go to Blackhawk State Park in the woods with my band of, uh, of warriors in set up ambushes and

ambush other kids always said the army was always in my heart. So I played football, first

was somewhere here and then, uh, and I was still sent out for that's for God damn sure. But I really love the game. Come junior year. My father said if you want to go to almond Catholic high school,

and that's why I worked. And so I could go up football junior year. I'm going somewhere with this.

“So senior year, I was senior at the grocery store and I went and told them I'm going out for varsity”

football and I would like you to rearrange my hours if not I can't work here anymore. Yes, they did. So they rearranged my hours so I could practice playing on Friday night and work all weekend. So I went out varsity year to play and I was pretty good, I guess, okay. But the two guys in front of me had played for four years. So they were first string. So I was absolutely second string. I would

be like the third tackle going in. So I never started a game. But I loved being part of a team.

Just what we're talking about. Being a part of a team, being a part of something a force multiplier, being something bigger than you are because you're with everybody else. I love that. And at the end of the season, we had a good season. The end of the season, they handed, I paid enough to get a varsity letter. And that varsity letter met so much to me right now. It is framed and hanging downstairs among my words and decorations right between two silver stars.

That's the first thing in my life that I ever completed from beginning to end of any substance. And that took me then into the army knowing gave me, it sounds, it doesn't sound like wood, but it gave me the confidence to know that I can start something in tough and get through it. So to answer your question, a resounding, yes. Yeah. Of course, this, you know, you asked me what time it is. I just told you how to build a clock. No, no, that's actually what I was

wondering. I have two friends that went into the seal teams. They just, they both retired recently. And we played football from childhood to college. And they would say, yeah, you know, it's kind of like football in this way or that way. And I, all I can do is kind of imagine it or whatever. But then there's a lot of people who don't, who, you know, who don't play football necessarily. And they go through. So I just kind of wonder when I map it back on my experience, like when I'm trying to imagine this stuff.

Take this a step further when, when, so interview these young applicants for this equal service.

First of all, you're looking for a veteran and you're looking for a cop, X-cop. That's, I mean,

you got to really screw up for me not to get you into the, because we're for a step. The other thing I found that I look for is guys that played collegiate athletes. And they didn't have to play, you know, division one or what. They could even been played continually in intermural sports. But played on the field, sweated, bump heads, did physical, men and women. And that was, that really showed me some commitment and some drive. And that is something that I found to be

in the, the applicants that we did get. Those that had participated in team sports. Yeah, football too is, I mean, that's the main one that I played and track. But I have a shock. Tell you, I'm shocked. Yeah, football is a kind of, I guess in a way, unique where every single position has this very specific job to do any of the pairs, right? You have, you know, two tackles, two white, you know, sometimes. But they all have such different jobs when you

“compare the different positions, but each job is equally as important. Regardless of the glory,”

you know, like the white receiver or the quarterback or the right, they're going to get the touchdowns and all this other stuff. But if the online, in any given play, let's say one online and doesn't do his job, the whole team fails in the team. Seems like all the jobs are so different, but each one equally is important. I'm saying completely great. On every play, too, it's like in that, you know, kind of sense. Look at the line on the super of the last Superball, what happened to the,

you know, offensive line. Okay. That's the way it goes. What was your position? Why do you see you? Okay. Play for running back to you. What are the young athletes like all the ball positions, but yeah, in college, like you see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Good to meet you, sir. Good to meet you, sir. Good to meet you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Bill, any closing thoughts? I, I, I'm just thrilled to be here. Now, you guys represent a lot in our community, a lot in our community of veterans and law enforcement

“and current activities. And you, your interviews are incredible. And I think the, the thing that”

I find the most is your in-depth questioning of what's going on. And that is very, very important.

And there are men. I mean, I, first time I've ever heard of one, when you would, about John Duffy,

I'd get to where I was going. And I'd sit in the car for another hour, just to just a listen to that. I was so taken by that. And some of the other ones that I've listened. So it's truly my honor to be here.

but back to, uh, where my wife is in our winter place. And, um, chalked this up to one of the better accomplishments in my life. Well, honestly, it's, uh, it's absolutely honor to be able to meet

“with you guys. You guys are my heroes when I was growing up, you know, uh, that's, that's what I,”

matter of fact, uh, you know, I get asked like, if I go back in time, what would I, what would I do,

what would I, what would I go, what would I do? And I always say, I'd be a seal in Vietnam. That's what I have.

That's what I'd want to do. Um, so for me to be able to sit down with with you and hear these things firsthand and capture and share with other people, uh, it's just, it's just an absolutely honor for me to be able to do. And so thanks for coming out. Thanks for, you know, sharing these lessons learned in the book. Like I said, the book is absolutely phenomenal. I hope you pick up the pace on the next book and you write a little bit faster because I'm going to be waiting for it

and we'll come back and talk about that thing as well. But, you know, so thanks so much for all that. And then most important thanks for your service to our country and, uh, for your service in Vietnam. And then your service as a, as a secret service member. And really, I pointed this out in the beginning, but the book really does an outstanding job of making sure that we don't forget the sacrifices that our military makes and the heroes that did not come home. So thank you. It was my honor to

serve and thank you. And with that, Bill All-Brock has left the building. Uh, all this story. By the way, my man, 21 years old at that time. Yeah, crazy. 21 years old, 150 to 200 guys, all their lives depend on what you're doing as a 21 year old. That, that is, that is outstanding.

“Right there. Also, I will note that, I think for the first time in the history of this podcast,”

you got told that your question. I believe the word to use with excellent excellent questions. So, I mean, I know you're a fan for life. And that's a crazy thing is like, you read this book. And that book is about five days. And you know, even the story just told, and he covers the mic for stuff in the book abandoned and held in like a page and a half. You know, all the I was wounded again, wounded again. And then you start hearing like the little, a little bit of

context around those situations. And it's just incredible. So awesome to have him on board and then share those stories. And just another reminder, man, you got to be ready. You don't know what you're, you don't know when the things are going to go down. Even flying in to Firebase Kate, he's like, can't believe I'm getting stuck out here with nothing going on. This is ridiculous. But guess what he did got out there was like, all right, got to start square and stuff away.

Now, they didn't even have time because it got dark. But that was the attitude. We got to be ready.

Always got to be ready. And that doesn't just apply to fire bases and non.

“It applies to life as well. So that's what we're doing. We're going to be ready for anything. That”

means training. That means you get to that means running, lifting, sprinting, just overall studying and getting after it. That's what we're doing. And by the way, when that happens, you need some fuel. And we highly recommend, Jocco fuel. We have the pro series out. We have the warrior kid series out. Warrior kid protein. Have you had any of those yet? Not the warrior kid, but the pro series all day. Yeah, the pro series outstanding all day. Also the warrior kid. So it's

it's protein boxes. You know what I'm saying? Like the little boxes. It's a drink. Oh, like the juice box. Yeah, like a juice box. It's like a juice box. And you know, they sent me some as a sample. Like, hey, Jocco, you know, here's the finished product. Here's the run. Here's the packaging. Here's the bubble wall. So I get them. Put them in my fridge. You know, oh, I have one.

There's vanilla chocolate strawberry. They're all amazing. And I actually ordered more. So even though

I have a look, I have the pro line. I have regular milk all day, right? But occasionally, just to be able to grab like 12 grams of protein that tastes just absolutely delicious. So but the kids are loving it. So we got that. We got the energy. We got greens. We got all the supplementation. We got muscle drive, which is a big deal. Yeah, I need some of that. Yeah. The muscle drive is no joke. And I'll tell you what's interesting about the muscle drive is

because it's it's got like all the amino acids that you need in it. And I don't know if it's that psychological or what, but it makes you feel full. You know, you're kind of like you kind of feel gratified after you have it. Okay. So, but that's really, that's awesome for people, especially like weight cuts. Or just cutting weight in general, but you want to protect your muscle,

In any kind of cut, any kind of lose weight. So here's the thing. When you're losing weight,

“don't say lose weight. That's why I always say, hey, you're on a cut, right? Not to mention it,”

just sounds cooler. But you got to get it correct because if you're like, well, I'm going to lose weight. It's like, okay, what kind of weight? Like, bro, you can chop off your arm and lose weight. You're just saying, but you want to lose body fat. You want to improve your body fat percentage, right? That's kind of the goal. And you want to at the very least preserve muscle. The very least, ideally you want to gain some muscle. Ideally, but keep in mind, sometimes these things go.

They work against each other. If you're trying to lose, that means you're on a calorie deficit. But you got to have enough protein and carbohydrates, by the way, to build muscle,

generally speaking. So like, are you going to square that circle? That'll be right. Exactly. Right?

So a lot of times, especially if you're cutting hard, you're going to lose that muscle. It's just, that's just how. And you can slow the reduction of the muscle. You don't want to lift and get enough protein, stuff like that. But it's natural to lose that muscle. You got to thread the needle pretty hard core to be able to maintain or gain muscle while you cut up. It's a balancing act for sure, especially over time, but it's not easy. No. Ask any fighter. When they cut away,

they lose so much muscle. But it's like, you know, it's just sort of worth it because you're

“smiling. You're competing against smaller people. So I get it. Of course, that's how. But in the”

game of life, in the game of life, in the fight, the whole thing, I mean, I'm just saying, the standard is losing muscle when you're losing like any significant amount of weight. The standard, you know? Don't accept that. Don't accept it. Check out Jockelfield.com. You can get it at Jockelfield.com. Where you can get it up. Retailers around the country. So check that out. Also, origin USA. Origin. We're making American-made clothing, rash guards, geese, due to belts. So everything

that you need for the mats of justice, origin USA. But listen, we can't, unfortunately, wear a G to the grocery store. We got to wear jeans. We got to wear hoodies. We got to wear t-shirts. We got to wear boots. That's why we have origin USA clothing. Whatever you need, we got to cover it. And it's all 100% made in America. That's what we're doing. Check out origin at USA.com. Also, check out Jockelstore.com. We're representing Disclinicals Freedom. Good. Get after it. Stand

by to get some. All these things that you want to, let's say, embrace as an approach to life in any given situation, probably we can represent. I'm telling you, this is quality too, by the way. So many people. And I really mean this. So many people have said, like, hey, these are like,

of course, they look good or whatever, but the real tale gets told because they always want to wear it,

because it fits them. Great. All I'm saying is, hey, this is quality stuff. It's not just some

“giveaway type. So it's good. Also, if you want to subscribe to the channel called the shirt locker,”

new design every month. A little bit outside the box creatively. We collaborate with people sometimes away. They, you know, it's fun. The design. Same sort of theme, though. More or less. But yeah, check that out. New design every month. It's called the shirt locker. It's all in Choco store.com. Check. Also, Sog legacy.com. You want to represent Sog support. Sog support. That's a very important distinction. You know, most of us, we were not in Sog. Yeah. We were not far from being in

they'll mention Sog today. Yeah. Studies and observations group. Yep. One thing about Sog, universal respect. Yeah. Universal respect. Look, you get the inner service rivalries. Oh, isn't this war? You were in that war? I was in this theater. You were in that theater. I was in this group. You were in that group. Bob, blah, blah. Everyone, you know, everyone's got their little beef with everybody else. Except for Sog. Universal, universal respect. Oh, yeah. And so we show

universal support at the Sog store. Yeah. Sog legacy.com. You know, check them out. It's cool. There's a cool really, really good covert black on black one. Red ones really, really solid. Then you got, then you get the regular logo one. All of them is just support. Sog saying, like I said, we're not in Sog. But we support. And that does support Sog history. Yes. It does support Sog legacy by supporting the Sog cast. It's true. So that's what we're doing. Sog legacy. Sog. We got some

books. Obviously abandoned in hell by William Allbrook. This is just an outstanding book. So check that. I'll put your, put your legs on by Rob Jones. And then Dave Burke need to lead check out those books. And then of course, I've written a bunch of books about leadership. So you can check those apps as well. I also have a leadership consultancy. It's called echelon front. You can go to echelonfront.com. If you need help with with leadership inside your organization, we also have an online training academy.

Go to extreme ownership.com to learn the skills of leadership. Well, you can learn them right there online. So check that out as well. And if you want to help service members active and retired,

mom. She's got the most amazing organization. It's a charity organization. And it helps out so many

“of our service members. And so if you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's”

mighty warriors dot org. Also check out heroes and horses dot org and finally Jimmy May's organization beyond the brotherhood dot org. Also warrior rising dot org. So we didn't get that right during the podcast. But if you want to check out that organization that helps helps our veterans

“transition into civilian sector warrior rising dot org. And once again, if you want to find a”

bill all-brake, first of all, you can check out warriors rising dot org. But also he's on the

interwebs captain hyphen hawk dot com. There you go. And for us, you can check out jokko dot com. And then on social media, I'm at jokko willing connect with that. I coach us. We don't encourage you to go there, though. Once again, thanks to captain William hawk all-brake for joining us today. And thank you for your decades of service to the United States of America. We are indebted to you. And thanks to all the military personnel out there around the world right now and to all

of our veterans with a solemn salute to our Vietnam veterans who fought and sacrificed in that war and did their duty to the utmost. Also, thanks to our police law enforcement firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol and secret service. Of course,

and all other surf first responders, thank you for doing your duty here on the home front to protect

“us and everyone else out there. Just remember that no matter how bad things get, no matter what you're”

up against, no matter how to bleak things might appear. You can find a way out. Even if, like Bill Albrake, you have to make that way out, you have to make it yourself. So no matter what, keep fighting. That's all I've got tonight. Until next time. This is echo and jokko out.