#317 Johnnie Clark - Surviving One of the Deadliest Jobs During the Vietnam War

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Thank you, Sean, I'm really excited about it. I, it's a great honor. It's my honor. Thank you for being here. You know, I say this to all you guys,

but the Vietnam generation is what motivated me. I did join the military and, and do what I did. And I was just emfatuated with you guys from a very young age.

And, uh, really into G.I. Joe's,

'cause we'll get into later. I gotta story about you. I've heard, I've heard. And, um, but, uh, yeah, it's truly an honor for you to be here. And I was a machine young or two for a little while.

Yeah. That's cool, man.

“What kind, what was your, your machine got, what was it?”

Well, we started with the M60, and then it went into the, then they converted it to what the mar, I think they called the robot. Mark 48, yeah, the 240, 20, 20, 20s on top of a hum beer, fucking amazing. Uh-huh.

Couldn't get you home before I was. (laughing) But, uh, but, yeah, it is. It's an honor to have you sitting here. Thank you.

Thanks, I just, this is really fun for my whole family, because my, my son, my son's Lieutenant with a fire department at Suncoast, uh, Indian Rocks, had an Indian Rocks in, uh, uh, the whole fire department, a huge fans, really.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, they found out, uh, yeah, it's Sean goes in and goes, my dad's gonna be on this podcast, you know, and he said, uh, if you guys ever heard of Sean Ryan podcast, they all went crazy. What?

And then they yelled, who the hell is your dad? (laughing)

“We'll have to blow them up with some stuff to take back”

to the department. - Yeah. - Well, let me give you an introduction here. - Yeah. (clears throat)

- Johnny Clark, you joined the Marine Corps, it's 17 years old, straight out of high school in St. Petersburg, Florida, arrived in Vietnam in 18, assigned as a machine gunner to the Fifth Marine Regiment in the middle of the battle for U-City.

You're wounded three times in combat, a mortar, a grenade, and a gunshot, and we're awarded the Silverstar three purple hearts in the Vietnamese cross of gallantry with palm. You have written nine books in off-Broadway play,

guns up in Gunners Glory are suggested breeding at the Marine Corps School of Infantry in guns up, sits on the Commandance Reading List, recommended to every newly commissioned officer at the basic school.

Wow. You recovered from your wounds in Oakland now, where you began martial arts. It's physical therapy and spent more than 50 years at it. (clears throat)

You are now in eighth-danned Grandmaster of Taekwondo, a member of the USA martial arts Hall of Fame, and you have taught hand-to-hand combat semesters, at West Point and the Naval Academy and in elapolis.

Johnny, welcome home, brother. - Thanks, buddy, thanks. Okay, so before we get too crazy and do your life story here of a Patreon account, it's a subscription account that's turned into quite the community,

and they're the reason that I get the opportunity to sit down here with you today. And so they get the opportunity to ask every single guest a question, and this is from a woman named Amber.

First off, thank you for your service.

What prompted you to write the memoir of your military experience, and can you give any advice to a daughter wanting to preserve with her father's story and/or encourage him to write it?

- I wrote guns up out of anger. You know, I came home from NAMM. I was, I mean, my first,

I've been training in martial arts, and I thought I was going back to NAMM,

“but anyway, I came home and they threw tomatoes at us,”

at El Toro, I got off in El Toro, and I was greeted with guys throwing tomatoes and eggs at us. And I was pushing a young guy off the plane who he probably wasn't gonna live.

A lot of these guys were pretty shot up. I had time to get healthy, so I was healthy, but some of these boys were a mess. And they had a red carpet and they were playing the Marine Corps him for us, and it was fun.

Until we got down the carpet in there, it was at El Toro, and there was a big chain length fence, and on the other side of the fence protesters were throwing tomatoes and eggs and stuff at us. And that was my greeting home, and they had a bunch of MPs there.

We thought to protect us, but it was to keep us from getting to these guys. And so they wouldn't let us get to them, 'cause I tried, then I went into town,

and I was in town, my first right away, I went to a bar

like most Marines, man, a kid from California, and there was a sign on the bar, said, "No Marines are dogs allowed in the bar. Are you serious?" - I'm dead serious. And I got angry, and I already been diagnosed

with severe combat fatigue. I take it back, that came, they diagnosed me later, but I was a little antsy, and an angry guy, because of the way we were being treated. But then we went in, we just got from California,

and you said, "Hey, let's go to my hometown." And you know, I lived down the road here, we'll catch Greyhound bus. There won't be like LA, you know, we'll get out of here. So I said, "Let's go, we go to Greyhound bus station,

and I'm staying in it with my seabag, and I dress greens, you know, I've been on American soil for about 11 hours or something like that." And he's two guys come up, they had one fatigue,

you know, Army fatigues, they bring bow patches, I don't know what they had all over them, but the peace signs, and they made a couple of comments,

“and I think one of them spit on my shoes,”

and anyway, I decked this guy. Well, there were some cops there, resting on a line-out with the bus station, they dropped the line-out, I'm home, I'm just home just a few hours, and I'm on my way to jail.

And got me cuffed, they drive down the street, and I seem looking to review mirror and to go fifth Marines out. Well, I knew right away I was safe, 'cause only another Marine would know that puggy rope, you know, and said, "Yeah," and I said, "Yeah, we were in two five."

So then I knew I was safe. They brought me to a bus station, got my seabag out of the trunk, took the cuffs off me, put me out of bus back to El Toro,

and I never got to see anything, that was my,

that was my welcome home, that's so, 'cause then I, yeah, that was my welcome home, but I got worse and worse as I've tried to go to college, and I've down the line, and I became a male man, and I got injured on the job, and I lost my job as a male man

with a back injury, that came out of Vietnam, I had a jump out of a chopper, the pilot got killed, and anyway, so I lost my job as a male man, and my job at teaching martial arts, the University of South Florida. So my wife said, "Hey, you can make a living another way here,"

and I said, "Oh, yeah, I think you're right." So I took this creative writing course at St. Pete College, and I kept taking the same course over and over again, 'cause they would critique 10 pages of weight. So it was non-credit course, you know,

at night, I took this course, like, you know, 15 times to get the book published. - Well, that's just, 'cause it could take my whole book, but that's how I wrote a book, and I'll tell you the rest of that story later,

and we can talk about other stuff, but I wrote that book out of anger, 'cause it came from people saying,

“you need to tell what the Marines were really doing,”

and no, you know, they weren't killing women and kids, and you know, and that's what they were, they American people really believed that, and so I wrote it out of anger, and but God took that, and turned it completely around.

But I learned that if you wanted to write something,

that the most important thing I got out of all those creative writing courses

was write like you talk, because I barely got out of high school. I had, you know, a D-minus average. They only kept me in a couple of classes, because I was on a really good football team, and I was no super star, but they needed me.

So, so they didn't want to flood me. So I got like a D-minus at English, and I took the easiest math you could take. I took, what was that math, business math.

I mean, even the word algebra scared me,

so I stayed away from anything like that, and I had an old football coach, and he had played for the Chicago Bears, and he picked me up, and he shook me, and he said, Clark, if we didn't need you on this team,

I'd fail you, but I'm giving you a D-minus. (laughs) So, I was least likely to get ever write anything, truly. And, but I had a real purpose for writing guns up, and I, I mean, I had an inspiration,

and I had a story to tell, and I really wanted to, I wanted to honor God, you know, that was a big deal to me. But I wanted to honor the guys that served with, 'cause they were just outstanding.

But if you were gonna try to write anything right like you talk, I'd take some creative writing courses,

you're gonna learn a lot,

but writing today and getting published, everything's different. They have a whole publishing world's so different, you know? It's my story's kind of a miracle story, but I don't know, writing today,

write it for yourself and write it because you love it. Don't write it, trying to be a, write a best cell or trying to make money off it. If you love writing, write it because you love writing, and you want to write it for family,

“'cause that's how a rope guns up, really.”

I only wrote it for my kids. I thought they would at least know the truth. I'm certain to hear a lot of, a lot of people, kids, God kids, they're not kids anymore.

A lot of the, offspring from the Vietnam generation is they want their parents' stories. And it's interesting, this Patreon question just came in,

because I literally just interviewed a woman here for a job, and she had watched all the Vietnam interviews I had done, and her dad is a Vietnam vet who apparently had them really rough go, and he's trying to find some healing.

He's overcome cancer, and she's worried she wants his memoir before he passes. And write it, write it, don't think in a getting published,

write it for your family, and if you write it and rewrite it,

“and eventually if you want to get it published now,”

I mean, you can self-publish on Amazon now. Anybody can't, yeah. - Well, let's get into your story, you ready? - Okay, yeah, it's actually in a game too. Oh, there you go, almost forgot.

Oh, gummies? - Gummies for legit league gummy bears, legal in all 50 states, made in the USA up in Michigan, it's just candy. It's just candy.

We'll load your, sorry, it's hard to carbon up with those. - Well, the one of them, hey, I've got y'all, I gotta get for you. - Oh, I love gifts, yeah. I've seen some of the gifts people have got,

I watched Jeremiah Johnson, my wife and I watched it, and when he gave you those gifts, the papyrus, you know, she said, "Johnny, don't even go." You got nothing to give him. - Oh, yeah.

- I had a Bible, my little guinea Bible, I had a sharp and a hole in it that saved my life. - Wow.

“- And I said, I think, maybe if I give Sean Nat,”

it will be impressive enough. And my daughter hurt this dead, if you give that away, I will slit your throat and just daughter of a non-veh. But, so I brought something a little less than a Bible, a sharp and a hole in it.

Switch hurt, I love it. - Yeah, it guns out and this one. Yeah, there's a story behind this one. Years after, I've been home for many years, and one of the core of the knit worked on me

at one time or another, his name was Dr. Leigh. He's dead now, died of age and orange. But, he showed up at my door 30 years after the war. I didn't even know who it was. You know, you don't recognize each other after all that.

Show us that for my door, and he pulls out this, and he goes, "Why waltz when you can rock and roll?" - Oh, man, that's awesome. - It's so, so, thank you.

Holy shit, that's amazing.

- Some of those made, because all machine gutters get it. - I love that, man, that's awesome. - I don't know where they're going to be. - And a couple of books, thank you. - Thank you, yeah.

- Thank you. - All right, Johnny. - So, where did you grow up? Let's do.

- Where did you grow up? - Oh, sorry.

“I grew up in South Charleston, West Virginia.”

I had, I lived in poverty. My mom was married before she met my dad,

and her first husband, she had two kids

with the first husband, and her first husband was hit three times and killed in the battle of the bulge. And so, then she married my dad, and my dad was destroyed in a car wreck, and was blind and crippled for the last seven years of his life,

and he was real young. And so, she had three kids with my dad, but one baby died. So, my mom couldn't, she couldn't support us. My dad was totally crippled and blind,

and, you know, we lived on 70 bucks a month. We lived in a garage for a long time, and actually, first, when I was a baby, it was a log cabin out in West Virginia Hills, Lincoln County, then we lived in a garage in South Charleston,

one car garage, and we had a bedroom that was just curtains for my dad,

“'cause he was in a body cast for a whole year”

after this wreck, and it's a pretty awful sad story, but as a kid, you know, you deal with this stuff, and so I would bring my little friends there. I was like, 'bout six years old, so I'd bring my buddies in to see my dad,

'cause he looked like the mummy, 'cause he's in a body cast all the way out. And so, we'd go in, and I'd charge of like a nickel to come in and see the mummy. (laughing)

So, so I'd bring kids in to see my dad,

but he finally, he finally, you know,

finally, you're after that, he got out of the body cast, but he lost his memory for a year, he didn't know me or my sister, he didn't know the other kids, he didn't know my mom, but he finally got his memory back,

and he lived for about seven years, and so he died when I was about 10,

“but in the meantime, my mom had to give up the kids,”

I was the only one she kept, 'cause I was a baby. So, she gave my brother and sister from her first husband, Jimmy and Judy gave them to grandparents in Wilmore, Kentucky. So, they grew up there, and she gave my sister

to grandparents out in Lincoln County, West Virginia, and McCullan Farm, that was between the half-fields of McCoy's, and her name was Evelyn Jane. Well, Evelyn, she grew up between the half-fields of McCoy's, she's actually married to a McCoy now,

she married Kirby McCoy, so that half-fields of McCoy save, 'cause it's own war, buddy, they have serious business. So, but yeah, I grew up, then we moved out of that garage, we moved into a quads at hut, which is kind of funny. Very military, it was an old war war two quads at hut,

that this old lady named Alice White, she had bought it and turned in into like a little house and rented it and gave us a place to live. So, I lived in that, and then my dad died, then we moved to St. Pete, Florida.

When I was 10, just me and mom, and the rest, last 65 years, I've lived in St. Pete. Wow. If you have a dog that gets picky about food, you know how frustrating that can be.

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Oh yeah, yeah, we're still close.

“Well, my sister Judy died, and we had a baby died.”

But my sister Evelyn and my brother Jimmy still lives in Lexington and my sister lives in Florence, Alabama. But yeah, we're still close. How'd you guys reconnect? Well, they would send me every summer, mom would

send me to stay with Jimmy and Judy in Kentucky. Or I'll say she'd send me out to Hills or Lincoln County to stay on the farm with Evelyn. So we stayed close growing up, so like every summer I'd spend a month or two in Wilmore and month

and out in the Hills. They would come to see mom when they could. And when they got old enough to drive, they would come in and come to see mom and I'd see them then. Sheesh.

Yeah, it was a tough upbringing.

I mean, literally got my food out of old army. They were like sea ration cans. You know, we had these big green government cans that from World War II that had spam and, you know, various foods.

And that's Salvation Army would bring us a bunch of that kind of food and then that's kind of kept us going. Wow, yeah, yeah, we, it was poverty. But you know, I was such a happy kid. It didn't bother me a bit.

I, I was having fun. What kind of stuff were you into as a kid? I wanted to be a marine since I was five years old. Yeah. So I put together a group of kids,

and I was the leader and we were the Marines.

And we would, we had a place I named marine hill.

And we had wars with other kids. Yeah, you know, we, be begun wars. You know, this is back when you got away with that kind of crap. You know, we, we were coal miner helmets and goggles. And we'd have a war with the Blackwell Street gang.

And we were the Brown Street gang. And we built forts. They dragged by and I invented a machine gun. We would, it was a, I mean, the, when kids used to wear the old little red

handkerchiefs, you know, cowboy handkerchief things. So I would, you'd film it full of rocks. And you would hold, uh, you'd hold all four corners, but you'd hold the fourth corner just between there. And you'd, and you'd let go.

And it would spray rocks. You could take out three or four kids with it. So, so they were, uh, we invented a machine gun. That was my, my machine gun. But the enemy, you know, stole my design

and previously they were using it on us. And, uh, built giant slingshots, we built a giant slingshot. And they'd ride by on their bikes. They were buzz bombers, you know. And they'd ride by on their bikes.

And throw rocks at us or hit us with a machine gun. And, uh, we'd not come off their bikes with this giant slingshot. (laughing) Yeah, I can't do that today, you know. But, uh, well, maybe in out of most places,

around here, you'd probably get it. Yeah, you know, Tennessee, you guys. Yeah. Yeah. What, what, so what, so what, uh,

“what caught your sister's five years old at the Marine Corps?”

Part, what caught your interest at five years old? Well, my uncle, you know, I, like I said, I, there weren't too much beautiful in, uh, in my life. We, I didn't have much. And, uh, all my toys came from Salvation Army or somebody,

you know, or gifts from this group or that group. And, uh, so, I had one uncle, uh, I had a few uncles, but I had one who was stood out and he was a Marine. He had, uh, joined the Marine Corps and kind of got out of the West Virginia poverty, you know.

And, uh, you know, one of those, one of those, no next guys, you know, shout out, get knock people out with head butts. You know, tough, tough Marine. Uh, and I just idolized him.

You know, you see in somebody in that Marine Corps uniform, I, and he was a tough guy. Well, they all were all my uncles were pretty tough guys, uh, but the Marines stood out. And, uh, so he come home, you know,

get liberty and come home and play with me, do push-ups with me and my buddies on his back. And, you know, you just, I just looked up to him and that, that was the beginning of it.

“But, you know, remember when I was a little kid, uh,”

the movies were, uh, the Sands of Ewachima, you know, the Marines were, they were seen as the best. And, uh, you know, all my life, I, I wanted to, I wanted to be in the Marines. I wanted to be in the Marine.

My mom knew it, too. Uh, when I, you know, when I was, I joined, when I was 17, I got an early entry. And, uh, where my mom found out about that. She, she was gonna let me join anything but the Marines, you know,

you're not going." And, uh, yeah, my poor mom, six hearts.

She got six hearts, you know, three from her first husband.

So she, and she went through that. The guy's coming up to the door with the telegram. You know, and they don't tell you how the person is. It's wounded in action, condition unknown. And, uh, she, uh, it was rough.

Oh, shit.

“How long have the Vietnam War been going on when you were decided to join?”

I, I joined in '67, okay. And, um, it had been going on. I mean, you know, we had guys over there in the '50s. So, uh, but, um, '67, '68, you know, that, that was, it got really hot, you know, yeah.

Well, I'm just, just reminding a little bit of been, losing your dad at 10 years old. Yeah, uh, it was tough. But there's a story, a good story that out of that. My dad was in a Christian.

And, um, when, when he, when he was blinded and crippled.

And he finally got his memory back.

You know, you're, you know, you're being in the ozone. Um, he, he was led to Christ by my grandpa and others. And my dad became a strong Christian. So, that's seven years that he lived. He lived seven years as a man of God.

And because of that, you know, I came to Christ. And, um, my whole family. So, my, my dad played a role in saving the whole family. Wow. So, and that might, I don't think that would have happened if he hadn't been blind. Because he was a hell razor.

And, uh, I don't think that would have happened. So, it, it took that horrible tragedy to bring my dad to the Lord. And, you know, it's scripture says, be better to pluck out your eyes than the mess out on heaven. And, uh, in my dad's case, that was the case.

I'll be damned. Man, thank you for sharing that. Thank you for sharing that. Let's move into listening. Yeah, yeah, I, uh, joined at 17.

And I, uh, that's a bad omen's right, right away. I was going in the buddy's buddy system. You know, and I had a couple of buddies from the high school football team. We're going to go win with me. Um, and, and three of them.

I signed up, we're going to show up down at the recruiters. Get on the great home bus to Jacksonville, you know, and get inducted and do all that. And, um, uh, uh, I, nobody showed up. See, you're the only one. My buddies disappear.

So, so I, I went by myself, but it's funny those three guys. Well, one, one went in the Navy and, uh, and, uh, one ended up going, uh, in the army. And, uh, becoming army-rangeer, and, uh, he went to nom a year later after, uh, and then the other

one went in, uh, and, uh, he was in, uh, hunter and first.

And he went, he stayed in, he went all the way from private to, uh, Lieutenant Colonel. Wow. So they'd enjoy with me, but, and they both went, none of them went in the Marine Corps. They went in the army. So, right on.

Yeah. Right on. So how was it? I was built to Jacksonville. Yeah.

And, uh, uh, I've said my goodbye, you know, got, got a couple little cheerleaders waving goodbye to me.

“It was an important moment at a guy's life, and, uh, uh, so, uh, at Jacksonville, they”

tell me, uh, they, they, they, they, for if me, since you, you've got a hernia. And I said, I don't have a hernia, and, you know, you know, this is your out kid. You don't want to go to Vietnam right now. You know, you, these Navy doctors are telling me this, and I, I said, don't know, I want to go.

That's why I'm here. I want to go. And he said, uh, now, this is your out. Don't be stupid, kid. And, uh, it's, you got a hernia, you can't go.

Well, I started, I said, no way. And I started doing, uh, I was y'all been strong. And I started doing one arm pushups. And I'm doing back flips, and I'm saying, I can do anything. I, I, I sound perfectly healthy, and, uh, I cut one of the guys, one of my buddies from

NAMM was there that day. His name was Pat McCreary. He saw me doing all this. He's a witness to this insanity. He said, we thought you were crazy, man.

[laughs] [laughs] So, so he said, he saw all that because he, so he can verify that this actually happened. But I did everything to make sure they'd let me in.

“Well, I'm there, and we're in this hotel of Floridian, or something like that, I think”

of us what it was called. And, uh, first night there, you know, before we're going to go to Paras Island, I go up the stairs, and, uh, some maniac comes in the lobby, and I'm going up the stairs, and

of the hotel.

“He's got a 45-cal, and he's blasted in a way, and he's shooting the steps under my feet,”

as I'm going up the stairs all the way down the stairs. Whoa! I'm not even there yet, they're trying to kill me.

And, uh, I never did find out what, what that was about, but that guy took off, and a couple

of seconds later, these MPs come running in, and I never heard what that story was about. But it's true story. Never heard. [laughs] But that was, that was my welcome to the Marine Corps.

[laughs] Yeah, and then, uh, in Paras Island, what that was, you know, that was insane. I was, I was begging you to get to know I'm just to get out of Paras Island, and they got my attention.

“Yeah, I saw some crazy stuff there, I saw a PT guy, uh, he was, he, uh, he, uh, he was a fat”

body. You know, that, you, that body, you do the other line, anyway, they, they're going to drive them out of the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps likes fat bodies. Oh, boy.

They, you either lose the weight, some more of a Navy thing. They're, they, they, they, they put this guy, they need him to do leg lifts until he got a hernia, and he's screaming in agony. And I'm thinking, this is, this is a serious, this is a lawful, this guy's into agony. They cussed him out of, out of, out of our barracks, we, the old war war, one barracks,

the old wood barracks on Paras Island, we were in the upstairs. We were all in attention as they are watching this, as, as the D.I.s, cursed him, as they took him out on a stretcher, that they, uh, Navy guys came in and put him on a stretch, they're taking him out. They cursed him all the way to the ambulance, they, we told you we'd drive you out of

our Marine Corps. Yeah. A series. And then I saw another guy who lost it, and he went up the water tower at Paras Island.

Well, we didn't know, I mean, I never saw this, but all of a sudden, we're being marched

out to the water tower, and, and we're not allowed to look around, if you even looked, I got, I looked one time, and I don't cuss anymore, but it was IF in the area, if you were caught, IF in the area. You got hit, make this D.I. copy looking like that, because there was, we saw girls, and he came up, he kicked the, my legs out for menry.

That was, that was still black and blue when I got the nom, he kicked me so hard, I thought he broke my life. Well, you didn't do that, you know, you look straight at the guy's head and funny. So I didn't know where I was going, but now I know I'm marching on grass, pretty soon they tell us we can look up, and here's all the whole battalion that is around the water

tower, and here's this guy, this poor sap, is up on the water, tell screaming, if you don't let me out on the Marine Corps, I'm going to jump, I'm going to jump, and these D.I.s down there, you know, they all got their platoon's out there, and they go, all right, we're ready now, I didn't bring all these breeds out here to watch nothing, jump, holy shit, of course he came down, and he said, if you come down from there and don't jump,

we're going to beat the hell out of you, well, he finally came down, he didn't jump,

they beat the crap out of there, I know, they just beat the tower out of that guy, that probably wouldn't happen today, oh no, it wouldn't happen today, yeah, they had little

“chats now, I think that's crazy, I even heard that the obstacle course, I heard the obstacle”

course, you know, that we had to do, it's now for display only, what, it's what I was told by a gunner Chan, well, talk about Chan, remarkable guy, he went back to P.I. and he said, yeah, said the obstacle course is for display only, and he was told that makes some people mad with this one, but he was told that a lot of the women Marines, they couldn't do that obstacle course, and they got rid of it, I don't know if it's true,

wouldn't be far out there, man, so how's the rest of, how's the rest of basic? I went to, from there, went to machine gun school, and that would you wanted to do? No, they just put me there, you know, and you had to shoot all the weapons, and I shot really well with the machine gun, so they threw me a machine gun school, I think that's how they figured it out, and I was too dumb to have it, an MOS doing anything else, so they

put me in machine gun school, and then I, you know, I start seeing the recon Marines

was, this Chinese, Chan was with me all the way from P.I. for the day we joined Alphabetical,

Chan and Clark, you know, and we got stuck together all the way through the Marine Corps, and Chan was, Chinese American, been smuggled out of red, China as a baby, as Dad was a doctor, got him out of China, he was a genius, and he had a minor in ministry,

“and I think from the University of Tennessee, and so Chan was going to be an open heart”

surgeon. Now, you hear one guy say that, you think, yeah, me too, but, you know, this Chinese guy was, he was a giant brain, you know, and, and for me to get stuck with him, you know,

I had that IQ of 00, I'm stuck with this giant brain, and he had this giant vocabulary,

and he used words, I don't know what the hell he was talking about, I said, what are you saying? But Chan was, he wanted to join the Marine Corps, he wanted to pay America back for taking his family, you know, I mean, how do you not love a guy like Dad's cool? Yeah, it's cool.

“I mean, if only some of the immigrants felt that way today, man, I mean, you know, really,”

but Chan wanted to join the Marine Corps, he could have been an officer, he didn't have to be a dumb PFC machine, I mean, he, you know, he had a college degree, he was a smartest hack, so Chan and I were in machine got, we both fired expert with the machine guy in the, and we're, I, I came up with this brilliant idea, we, I want to go, uh, recon, because I'm telling him the recon guys get to where there's little gold wings, man,

it's a chick magnet, I mean, we're gonna pick up, we'll pick up girls everywhere, so I, he goes, "Clark, do you ever think of anything else?" You know, and he gives me some big, you know, tense at word, to describe that I'm not being right, and I say, "Come on, Chan, go with me, man, you know what, you don't want to leave me alone, you know, we've been this far," and he cuts, all right, so we put in our

request to go to recon, and, uh, one night, just a true story, this is right out of a movie,

“but we had this old sergeant, um, I think it was a master sergeant, but he, he lived in”

the barracks where this had, uh, camplers during the machine gun, school barracks. Well, got all these racks, you know, regular barracks with all these machine gunners, and he had an office at the end, and about two in the morning, uh, he comes, comes out, takes him, one of those old metal garbage cans that we had, and he had the plastic guards, and he heaves this metal garbage can down the squad bay, and he hits the lights, it starts

screaming, guns up, guns up, guns up, so everybody out of the racks, standing at attention at the, uh, into your rack, and he's got, he's got a fifth of booze in his hand, and he's angry, he's an angry Marine, and, uh, he's got a bunch of orders, he's got orders in his left hand, and so, and it was transferred, my transports, to, to go to Recon, and chance, and I guess maybe a couple of the other guys wanted to go Recon, and, uh, so, he, he

says, Clark, just be a piece of chalk, he says, draw a line down the center of the barracks. Everybody puts your toes on that line, you know, so we all line up on this line, and he says, okay, all you Marines, all you gunners, the first thing tells us how bad we need gunners, and we did, you know, we really did, uh, and the fifth Marines, when I got there, they told me every machine gunner in the fifth Marines, I mean, killer wounded, so we really needed

machine gunners, and, uh, and he knew that, he, you know, he got all the battlefield casualty

list, and they knew all that stuff, and so, suddenly machine gunners kind of a critical

way in the West, but even though you could be dumb as a stump, and still be one. So, he, uh, he says, uh, okay, all you Marines, to join my Marine Corps, to kill the enemy, stand still, and all you Marines that join my Marine Corps to find the enemy, and tell us to go kill them, step on with that line, and nobody stepped up with the line, and I, I mean, it was like, I stood there, I mean, he shamed to see us like being in the Alamo, step over the line if we're

to leave the Alamo, and, but it worked, not one guy tried to go to Recon, we all just stayed in machine guns, you know, I saw my little gold wings flying out in Paris, uh, uh, I really wanted those wings there, uh, wow, yeah, so we got to, we got to nom, and, you know, I thought it was

begins, and, uh, we thought, that's, you know, that's baloney, it can't be true, and,

“then we get there and all the machine gunners have been killed or wounded, man, I mean,”

so you went to the Battle of Hugh immediately, that's where you showed up, the Battle of Hugh, that's where you want to see it, yeah, it's way, um, yeah, I, uh, I know who I said, that's a little wrong, because I, I mean, I got there for way, uh, and I got there when way was ending, but I just was at the very end of way city, uh, all I, all I did in way city is step in a punchy pit, you know, punchy pits with the, uh, a step in it, and it, it broke, it didn't go through my boots, you know,

God saved me, first week of nom, and he's already saved in me, so I, but I, I just did patrols,

trying to, you know, get the, uh, the NVA that we're trying to get out of way at the end there, but, yeah, I didn't, I didn't really fight in way city, I, and when you went, but you went,

“straight from machine gunner school to Vietnam, yeah, no, no, I, they don't want to camp Pendleton,”

okay, would you, for a jungle warfare school, God, yeah, and, uh, you know, that, uh, the little POW thing that school they give you, and, um, yeah, jungle warfare, uh, that was eye opening too, but, uh, you know, I mean after Paras Island, everything was duck soup, but then they're in, uh, in, uh, jungle warfare school after it was over, they gave them, they give us, uh, they was 24, 48 hours liberty, and so, uh, I talked, Chien, and I had a wave, I've talked a

chin into trouble, so I talked chin into going to Tijuana, you know, I said, we, we're, how are you doing down there? I wanted to go to Tijuana, let's say, so I talked Chien into,

we had to go to Tijuana, man, always, I hear, so, uh, lots of things, yeah, lots of things,

so I talked to him to go to Tijuana, so we go to Tijuana and, uh, we're in one of those really CD bars, you know, and there's a bunch of Marines in there, of course, and, uh, there's activity going on, it was pretty despicable, but they bring us over a bunch of drinks, and I know, we'd order, it was four of us, a former Marines, and we'd order four drinks, well, this big Mexican guy comes over with a tray full of drinks, and I said, we don't, we only one four,

and he expects us to pay for, and, uh, well, that led to a confrontation, and so, uh, I, I, uh, a big brawl, big huge fight, uh, and, uh, I realized this is, get no glee, let's get out of here, so me and Chandler trying to crawl out 'cause bottles flat here, where people fight in all over the place, and we got to the door and the Tijuana police were there, and then everybody said, he started his, he did his, he did his, he did, he did, he did, he did, he did, he did, he did, he did, he did, I didn't do anything.

Uh, but I, I was almost innocent, they put you in the clank, yeah, they were like, a, uh, Tijuana police threw us in the Tijuana break jail, and then the short patrol came and got us out of there, and threw us in the Navy break, and then they took me into San Diego, me and Chan, and, uh, oh,

he was so mad at me, 'cause Chan would never do it, so, uh, we were in, uh, that was the last

time I saw it, uh, San Diego was, Tijuana break, but then they, then the Marines came and got us, they threw us in a red line break. Camp Pendleton, you ever heard anything about those, I haven't, oh, they're awful. Um, yeah, the red line break, uh, you stand in a tension, and there's a, there was a big wall, 'cause, you know, there's a war going on, they take, some guys would get in trouble like this, I think it was going to keep them going to nom.

But, you know, I, that is, I was doing that, I just, I mean, I just, I hit this guy, 'cause he was trying to, extort money, I was, so, so anyway, we were, got our face up against the wall, it's the end of the tension, and now, if you had to go to the head, you know, you had to, they had, the MP jailers, they're marching up and down behind you, and you got your face up against the wall, and if you move your face away from that wall, they hit the back of your head,

“and it drives your face into the wall, and that's why it's called a red line break. There's,”

there's bloody red, where everybody's faces would be. There's a red line, and there's just drips of blood all the way down this wall, red line break, so, that was, yeah, those guys, they didn't play games, and I, I wanted out of there, but I had orders from not for nom, like the next day, so we didn't, we only, I don't know, we might have spent eight hours in that red line

put us on the brand of, old brand of airlines, and flew us to nom, oh, wow, so what was the

like when you landed in nom? Was it what you expected? It was, I, I didn't know what to expect, I mean, I'll be honest with you, I, you know, I was such a kid, I look back at it, I was such a gung-ho dumb kid, you know, but Chan had been reading about Way City, he read newspapers,

“and he's telling me, yeah, you know, there's a lot going on, Way City, I think we're going to be”

going to Way City, and I said, oh, okay, so we get off the plane and then we fall through this, and as soon as you got off the plane, you know, that heat from Vietnam hits you and you're going, wow, you know, I'm from Florida, but this was a different kind of heat, and, and we see the fandoms jetting down the air strip and taking off, and we could hear our artillery and all of a sudden you're going, crap, it's a real war, but you know, I'm in a real war, so we fall through,

uh, they're given us our orders, and I always remember the sergeant, he, uh, he'd go through

and hand him your words, and he stamped it, big red stick, fifth Marines, that's, fifth Marines, next, fifth Marines, and everybody was getting sent to the fifth Marines, and I, I said, Chan, why, you know, why is everybody going to the fifth Marines, man, I, and he goes, didn't you read in the newspaper seven, you haven't, the fifth Marines are taking away city that I said, oh, they need guys, they need guys, yeah, stupid, they need guys, so, uh, fifth Marines

it was, but, Way City was really ending, and, uh, I, you know, I didn't, I really didn't do anything

“of way except patrols around it, uh, I didn't do anything, so I, I read it in a way, how long are you there?”

And nom, and way city, oh, and way, oh, she's just a couple of days patrols, and then they, uh, brought us back to Fubai, uh, and then they, uh, then they sent, uh, they sent us down to a place called Troy Bridge, and, uh, yeah, things started getting hot there, right on, right on, you didn't have any, did you, did you, did you know anybody that had been to Vietnam before you, or, no, you were just bright, you just plopped right in there, yeah, I didn't know, I didn't know anybody, uh, read nervous,

I, you know, I, I was, you know, like super excited, uh, I mean, the, the pretty soon, you know, you can't tell nerves from fear, but, um, but I, yeah, I, I was kind of still as, it was a,

“it was a great adventure, and I, I was so young that I just saw it as just, you know, right now,”

it's a huge adventure, but, you know, once you, once you got out in the bush, yeah, the adventure's over,

and this is, uh, this, it's, it's got, it was hard, it was hard, you know, I, first time I got hit,

I lost, uh, well, when over there, 160 pounds, uh, and, uh, first or second time I got hit, I was, uh, they sent me to a hospital in, uh, like, sent me to, to Denang, but there was so many, uh, wounded Marines that they, they didn't have any beds, they got, guys laying in blood all over the floors, and so they threw a bunch of us on a C130, flew us down to an Air Force hospital, and, uh, camera on bay, and, you know, after six months in the jungle, I, getting the camera on bay,

the Air Force, the Air Force, they live a different life, they, uh, air conditioned hospital, they ate off plates and trays and, uh, they had flushing toilets, and, uh, I went into the head once I was able to walk and there's crazy Marines, he's stupid Marines in, in the, in the bathroom, and he's, he's going, Clark, Clark, come here, man, listen to this, he flushed the door out, oh, oh my god, when you're in, but you're entertained, you're in your flushing toilet,

I mean, I'm sorry, but it's, it's true, oh, man, that, in that hospital, when all the guys started coming out of the morphine and stuff, uh, we, uh, you wake up and you're going, hey, who you with, man, seventh Marines, hey, who you have 26 Marines, and I'd say, you know, how fifth Marines, and so the whole hospital is filled with wounded Marines, you know, it's a tad offensive, and so,

and so this, this one kid, he's, he's, wouldn't say anything. I think, you know, he's still in shock

“or something, you know, and there are a couple of days in, or here's the same thing, hey, who are you”

with, man, hey, who, well you, 26 Marines, who's it, hey, who's that guy with, and he wouldn't say anything.

Finally, the guy started harassing him, he said, who are you with, man, and he goes,

I'm in the air force, so all these Marines go, what, then you see these wounded guys sit up, we go, what do you use? What do you do step on a nail? So he's like, now it was a thumbtack. He says, he goes, "No, it's my mom's fault, man." You know, he was, he was a nice young guy, he goes, "No, it's my mom's fault, man." My brother's a Marine, and she kept sending me letters, and she even contacted my CEO, telling him to make me go check on my brother,

“and see how he's doing. So I said, finally said, okay, and I hopped right up to Denang,”

and then he threw me on a chopper, flew me out to Ann Wa, and we'll come back, and he said, "I got off, I didn't even walk off the tarmac, and they got hit." And I got wounded and I got a purple heart. Oh, he hits down. So every morning, all the Marines, we'd wake, and we'd see, we'd see this kid awake with off we go into the wild, blue, y'all. Yeah, we made his life, although he grew to love us, you know, and it was all a good fun, but pretty funny.

On that note, before we get into the thick of it, we'll take a quick break. Okay, and then we'll

come back, we'll get into your first firefights.

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Ready to upgrade your I wear? Check them out for yourself at Roka.com and use code SRS for 20% off site-wide at checkout. That's ROKA.com and use code SRS. All right, Johnny, we're back from the break. We're getting in. We're getting ready to get into Vietnam. Where do we go from here? Well, I got to Troy Bridge in Troy Bridge. Really, this story about Troy Bridge that I wrote in Guns Up is, it's about big red. I put it

in here because big, big red. I, when it first got there, you know, when we got the food buy right before we went up to do a runway, there was one guy in this big tent where we came into. And he was coming back from the hospital. He'd been wounded coming back from NAS. And so, Chan and I, you know, we, we wanted to pump the sky because tell us what we're walking into here. And his

name was Richard Weaver, but I never knew his real name. I didn't know his real name until 30

years after the war. And nobody had a name. You know, I, and I was, I'm always been awful with names, but it's like, everybody had a nickname. You know, I mean, I'm sure a lot of the guys they knew me as a crazy gunner, but, you know, I didn't think, but I didn't think I had a name sometimes.

looked like the marble band, you know, and the old marble cigarette commercials and big, big and strong. He, he had been a balancer in one of the toughest bars in Cincinnati, Ohio,

“when he was 15, when he was 15. That's what, yeah, I found all this out.”

Way, way later. Do you imagine getting bounced out of the marble? Oh, he was in your old, think about what? Well, he was racist. He was raised his bad upbringing. You know, I, I think his parents

basically, I don't know the full story, but he and Grope with his parents. They kind of abandoned him

and, uh, and I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings right here to this, but I, you know, that's just the story I got, but he didn't really grow up with his folks that much. And I, I think there were reasons who, not maybe not their fault at all, kind of like my mom. My mom had to give up the kids, you know, and she had many food to feed them. Uh, so anyway, he grew up with this old guy who, an old Marine, who had served under Admiral Halsey in World War II and, uh,

raised, he raised big red, you know, like as a Marine from birth. I mean, from the time he was a little

“kid. He was, he brought him up a Marine. And, uh, anyway, how did they get connect? How did they,”

how do they run into each other? Do you know, she, I don't know. I mean, that's interesting. And I don't know, but he, he, he, he, he, Fred, he became my big brother and chance to, uh, because, you know, we're, we're boots. You know, I mean, you got two new boots walking in,

and we don't know what we're walking into. And, uh, and first time we met him, you know, he, we,

he says, trying to get us ready for this. He goes, uh, okay, uh, at first he didn't want to be bothered. Then we go, come, come on, man. You know, and then he filed out, we were O331's machine gutters. And he goes, yeah, it perked him up because, oh boy, they're going to be glad to see you, man. And, you know, we've been told that seven to 10 second crap, you know, and we didn't believe it. And he said, uh, you know, there's, uh, there's probably, uh, I didn't see, I don't know if any,

any gunners left when I got wounded in way. I don't think there's any machine gunners left. Said they were given the M60 to, uh, Mortarman and, you know, bringing up guys, whoever, and, uh, hand in them in the gun and saying, uh, you're the gunner today. And nobody's like, because it was like a target on your back. But, uh, and let me explain that real quick. You know, we'll fight that war at night all the time. And the M60 has a trace around every fifth rounds, a

trace around. Well, it looks like, uh, a laser beam. Of course, I know you know that, but I don't know who's listening to this, but it, it looks like a laser beam. So you see it in all the movies and you see the lasers. Well, that's a whole bunch of bullets with a trace around is every fifth round. And, and so we, we had to have that to point out the enemy. Had to have that to know where you're shooting. Uh, we used it to perform an air strikes, you know, or it's pointers, you know, and, uh,

if forgive me, so for those, those that don't understand what he's saying, a trace around is, is basically, it, it, it, it, it, for America. It's red. Was it red? Yeah, then red. That would be a were green. Yeah. So it's around that kind of burns red as it's going out of the, out of the barrel. And what people will do is exactly what Johnny Sand, they will mark. So if, if a airplane helicopter, somebody's going to drop some ordinance close to your position, you mark enemy territory

where you want them to hit with the trace around. Right. And so they see where the trace around are going. And then they know exactly what they need to hit. Yeah. And, and we used it, you know, when you're calling them phantoms, I mean, there are a few times we had a phantoms had to drop Napom, like, really close to us. And, uh, if I didn't show them where to drop that, I mean, we could be frying like eggs, you know, so, but you know, not a guy still care, I mean, even, even though

we had lasers when I was in, I used to carry an extra mag of all tracers. I mean, oh, in that way, if, whatever, if the laser didn't, if the laser went down or whatever, then I could throw in a mag of tracer and marked target. Yeah. When I wasn't carrying my 60. Yeah. But, well, so, yeah. Yeah, so anyway, big red. Oh, sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say, use traces for a lot of things.

“I mean, yeah, I remember, too, they probably don't do this shit anymore, either, but, uh, you know,”

for a dummy like me, I'd put the last five rounds in my magazine, it's tracer because when you hit that, you know, hey, I'm getting ready to run out of ammo here. I start thinking about a mag change.

Well, that's a smart move. Yeah, I know. I know. I, I never did that. And, or, uh, a rifleman

you know, they didn't have tracers. Gotcha. So, it was all up to me. I mean, it's all up to machine gun.

So, uh, anyway, so, big reds, uh, telling us that, you know, every, because of that tracer round, because it points out who, you know, there's the machine gun. And, you don't only see that the M16s and AK47s going off like, muzzle flashes. It looked like a bunch of lightning bugs and a big shootout. And, the only steady target you saw was the NBA 30 cows, you know, they, they shoot, uh, green tracers. So, it was like Christmas time out there. You know, green and red, crisscross in each other.

And, and we were the only targets. And, and every good army's taught the same thing, knock out the, knock out the machine gun first. Back then, anyway, I assume it's the same. So, anyway, machine gunners didn't last long. If you laid on the trigger very long,

“that's why it was seven to 10 seconds. If you laid on that trigger very long, it was 20 round burst.”

We were told, unless you're being overrun, unless there's no choice, 20 round burst. Don't

be laying on 100 rounds. You won't, you'll never finish that 100 rounds, because some rifleman's

going to pinpoint where your machine gun is and out of the jungle when you're dead. Well, as, that's the reason. You became such an obvious target in a, in a battle where everybody else is a lightning bug, flash and one and all, that gunners didn't last long. And, um, but you got no choice. You got it. You got to use the tracers. It's crucial. And it shows the, uh, it shows the infantry where, where to fire. You know, where's the enemy, etc. It shows you where your rounds are going.

You know, shooting without tracer rounds, you don't know. All your rounds could be run into a tree. I mean, it's really interesting, because the M60 machine gun wasn't just a weapon. It was also a

communication device. Yeah. You know, because you, it, just like all the stuff we were just talking

about, you know what I mean? And then your market targets for your own guys. I mean, you really

“got to be switched on. Well, like, at some gunners, I, I don't remember doing this, but I know,”

I know some gunners, and, uh, they would talk to each other, you know, you'd be mountains apart and a good thing. Yeah. It just, you know, five round burst, five round burst, you know, and they talked each other to kind of let each other know where they were out. And the, you know, the big mountains into it, uh, and, um, like, you know, thong duck and places like that, uh, you know, when you get near the Cambodian border and everything, you know, we're talking big, freaking mountains, you know,

wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't flat jungle, it was straight up straight down. And, uh, so you can't see each other. You don't know where the other platoon might be. But, uh, but I, but I'll, oh, red try to tell us, hm, that, no, that, that wasn't bull crap, you know, seven to 10 seconds. It's about right, and it goes, uh, if you lay on that trigger more than 20 round burst, yeah, you're

“going to be, you're going to be dead. And, uh, he said as a matter of fact, there's, as far as”

he knew there were no gunners left in the, uh, fifth marines. They were all being killed, wounded. And I mean, what's that like for you to hear that shit? Well, your brand knew that hadn't fired around yet. And this, this is, this is a welcome brief. It's real now. You know, I mean, all of a sudden, you know, where it was a big adventure and I'm not all that scared. I'm just kind of excited. It dawns on you. Man, uh, yeah, I might not be alive next week, you know, this, this is going

this could end badly. But, uh, yeah, you got no choice, you know, you're there, you got no choice, you got to do it. And, uh, uh, so that woke me and Chin up, but he was great about everything. Big red was, he was like a big brother. I mean, he was like, you know, been those pins on your frags. You know, we're right off the plane from Denang, you know, and I've given us all this equipment. We got grenades with a pins, our name bent and we got, and we had at that moment, we had M16s.

And, uh, you know, he's telling us what to do with the M16, you know, uh, you know, we had 20 rounds in each clip. Well, you know, you only won 18 and because the old M16s, it would, it would weaken. And, uh, I mean, the magazine would weaken if you kept it filled with 20 round max all the time. And it's going to jam because as a spring gets weak, it's not going to feed the bullet, you know, that. I, I hate to talk to you about this stuff. Because, oh, it's, yeah, equipment has changed over the

years too. So yeah, yeah, no kidding. But anyway, yeah, you had to, you had to take, not a couple rounds. So he took our magazines, took two rounds out of every, uh, I mean, out of every magazine and, uh, uh, threw it back at us. And then he told us about, uh, taking all your, uh, anything of value that

everything, you know, ideas, your NPC, your military payments, or typically get your money.

“Anything you got that you want to try to keep dry. And of course, I have an old Gideon Bible,”

and I want to keep it dry. And, uh, you get hold of plastic bags. There were a lot of them around. You get them from the Corman a lot of times. And so you'd wrap everything in plastic. And, uh, and, you know, and now I like my little Bible, it was wrapped in plastic. So it was real thick, but it was in my pocket. And it was, uh, I had a black jacket on, you know, and, uh, but we had the old Korean era of black jackets. So, you know, their panels, the bullets could go between the panels,

it's, you know, shrapnel could go to prison. But, yeah, we had Korean era of black jackets. Now, the army got the nice new ones. And, of course, it was every Marines duty to steal anything

from the army. So we were always trying to steal from the army. And if we went into food by,

“and since the army heard, that's the Marines are coming in and out of the juggle from,”

uh, they tried to hide all their equipment because we were going to steal everything. But they had all the good stuff. You know, like our, our, our, our M79 guy, our, uh, a blueprint man. Uh, the army had these blueprints that are nothing today. I mean, I know, they got everything today. But back then, the blueprint around was still, it was pretty new. All we had was the HE's, concussion, little grenade, uh, golden eggs. Yeah. And, and, but the army had, they had the

buckshot blueprints and they, they had blueprints that would be like a flare. And, uh, I forgot what

else they had. But, uh, so our blueprint man, who was insane, uh, called him Sam, the blueprint man,

and guns up. And he's, he's a big favorite of all the fans of that book. But, uh, Sam was, Sam was, Sam was, uh, he was, he was a character. You know, he was a total character. But, God, he was good with that. And so, no, real quick, I'm just curious. Would you read your Bible out there? Or was it with you to say that again? Did you read your Bible out there? Would you unwrap it and read it? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I, you know, yeah, I started reading it a lot. And Chan, I had Chan here with me,

you know, and Chan started, uh, like I said, he had a minor in ministry. So I had, I had a Bible

“teacher with me, you know, and you'd ask, and that's, that's why he played such a crucial role and”

it's why he's a main character in guns up. It's, that's interesting too that he came from China as a Christian. Yeah. I know it's fascinating. I know. And, and the fact that he, he should have been an officer, he should have been a doctor. And, uh, and his story, you know, at the end, I mean, you know, he got blown up with me, uh, he got shot up pretty good too. And he, uh, he had, he had, he had, like, 17 surgeries on his arm. And so he couldn't tie surgical knots. So, uh, so at the, uh, you know,

and he went through a serious depression for a while. He came home and the girl he thought he was going to marry that kind of ended day. That had gone away while he was a nom, I think, and, uh, and I don't know all the details, but, uh, that and, and now his dream of being an open heart surgeon, that was gone. But, uh, Chan went on to become the leading cardiovascular profusion expert in the world. Are you serious? Yeah. Yeah, a dumb machine gunner. Yeah, no, no, and I had to go through a

war with this guy and his giant vocabulary. Yeah. He was mad at, Jay, it was, it was pretty funny. You know, I mean, he would do things because he was so smarty. And I was, I barely got out of St. P. Hi. You know, it's still, we'd be, I'd be eating sea rations and he'd go, you know, Clark, those sea rations, uh, they were putting that can when you weren't even a glint in your father's eye. And I'd go, what? And I'd look at the date. You try to find the date. God, you know, 1943. Oh, man.

Damn. Yeah. I know. Anyway, he was, he could be a pain in the butt. But, uh, you know, we're still together. Yeah. Yeah. We're still together. He came to see me in Florida, not long go with his wife had recently died. And yeah, I came down and took him out on my pontoon boat. Drank some wine. Nice. You guys are still buddies. Yeah. Yeah. Where's he at? He's in, uh, New York, in, uh, oh, oyster bag, New York. Right on. Yeah. Right on. He's got a place on, uh,

nan tuck it that, uh, we've been to once and, uh, so nice. Yeah. It's pretty sweet. So where do you guys go from here? Uh, um, oh. Yeah. Now, oh. Well, uh, in Vietnam, we went, we, uh, let me take a

it's so important? What were you doing? You know, later, you look at, there's pictures in that book and there's pictures of toy bridge. It's matter of fact. Show you real quick. Oh, wow, I didn't show the bridge here. But that's me on toy bridge. Yeah. We're going to, yeah. Right-door,

“guarding a picture right there. But toy bridge was, it was like an old, um, I think it”

had originally been an old, uh, train-trial bridge, you know, but it was on Highway 1. And, uh, it, uh, like I said, this part of the toy really in Guns, uh, this is about big red. Uh, big red was a hero and toy bridge. Uh, you know, I, I didn't do much. I didn't do, you know, what were we, what, what was, why were we there? What did we want? Okay, we were, it was on Highway 1,

which the most important route in Vietnam. All of our supplies went up and down Highway 1. So,

the NBA vehicle, and they're always trying to do something to stop Highway 1. And blow up the bridge as long Highway 1 was a big deal. And so, uh, uh, bridge duty, there was a, a good deal from Marines because they mentioned we're not in the bush. You got to come in, you know, it went, when you're on bridge duty, there usually be a little bill there. You, you might even be able to eat some, something besides sea rations, but uh, and I did that a couple of times with, you know, there was

always critters going through your rice. You'd be eaten, they borrow through your rice and you

“close your eyes and keep eating. But, uh, yeah, so anyway, it was, uh, it was an important, uh, bridge,”

got hit with, uh, they said it over 400, uh, 400 NBA, and they, uh, sappers finally, uh, you know,

got, on, onto the bridge and uh, suicide guys, they had, uh, all kinds of, satchel charges tied to them and TNT tied to them, and they were all doked up, you know, you, you'd shoot them and they didn't even know they were dead. They kept coming, sometimes, and, uh, but they, uh, yeah, they got out to the center of the bridge and, you know, they had to break through the wire or on the other side, killed the machine gun team on the other side, but got it, got

onto the bridge, hugged onto it, and the bridge blew up and came down on top of another machine gun team that was, um, on the center span, it's a big cement thing in the river that held up the

“center of the bridge, and, uh, anyway, those guys didn't die right away and, uh, during the battle,”

during this whole thing, Red didn't stop firing the whole time. I mean, he, he, he just, he just fired, I don't know how many routes, you know, just, and that was, that meant everybody knew where he was, said everybody tried to knock out Red and that, that gun bunker, uh, but Red was, Red was a hero, he should have gotten crap, you know, he could have, he could have been put up for the metal of honor there, but it didn't get anything, this is it, he do it all. Uh, 30 years later,

when people read what he did, and my book in guns up, uh, a congressman and, uh, a good friend, a couple of good friends of his that went to the high school with him, uh, cost a stir, and they finally gave him the bronze star, you know, you need been dead for 30 years. He was killed beside me on May 20th, 68, but uh, but anyway, Red was a hero, and he, what he did that night was amazing. And a couple other guys were heroes that night, uh, we had two guys that, to desco and Rosalie,

both corpus, and Rosalie had been put up, uh, in Way City, he had been put up for, um, promotion to Lieutenant, got a battlefield commission, and he, he turned it down, he wanted to go home, and so he turned it down, and they came out to say goodbye to the platoon, so they, they hopped right from Fubai, which is between Way City, Fubai and Troy Bridge. They hopped right from Fubai, which is a great big army base, uh, and that's where the fifth

Marines were too, whenever we went back, but we never went back. But, uh, they, they hopped right

down Highway 1 to come out that Fubai, I mean, come out to Troy Bridge and say, buy it everybody. Well, they were there that, they picked that time to say, buy it everybody in the bridge, got overrun, blown up. Machine gun team was out there screaming, uh, they hadn't died yet, and they were up in a lot of agony, and to desco and Rosalie tried to get out to those guys and got killed, and they should have been on a, they would do for a flight back to the world the next day.

And they should have been in Denang, and they came out there to say, buy it, uh, and they died heroes. Now, they didn't get anything either, as far as I know. Yeah. But, um, yes, a lot of, a lot of brave

you know, just feeding the gun, I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything. Uh, I still significant.

Yeah, I know. Yeah, I got that. Being the gun, you know, life. I, I saw us more later, after the bridge of them blown up, uh, uh, the next next day, uh, we started sending out, uh, three-man killer teams. So I, I volunteered for these three-man killer teams, and, uh, those, those were pretty fascinating. These three-man killer teams. They, um, the, uh, I keep wanting to call them, you know, we call them Gooks. All right, we call them Gooks. And, uh, I think everybody knows, uh,

okay, everybody that's watched any Vietnam movie ever. Well, it came from Korea, you know, that term. I mean, you probably already know that, but yeah, it was, it was, uh, Marines in Korea picked that

“term up, and that's what the Koreans called peasants. And so we, we picked that term up from the”

Koreans brought it to Vietnam, and they were Gooks. But anyway, so, um, the NBA would send out killer, killer squads. They'd send out a squad of guys to go into aville, and if theville wasn't supplying the communist with rice and supplies, they'd find out who theville village chief was, and his family, and they would come into thatville, and they'd get, like, let's say he had a couple of kids. They'd get one of his kids, cut off their head, put it on a bamboo steak, in front of

the, right, the center of theville, and, and then leave, and that was there either start supplying uh, the commies, or, you know, will be back. And they would, they'd come back to, excuse me, they'd

kill a member of his family, and finally him, or his wife, or whoever, and uh, until that village

“started supplying them with rice and whatever they needed. Well, uh, our job on these three”

man killer teams was to, uh, cause if you went out there with a platoon, you, you couldn't get them, you know, they, they, you made too much noise, you know, it's, uh, jungle and rice paddies, and yeah, you had to be quiet, and uh, so I would go out on these three man killer teams, and that's before I started carrying the 60. I mean, I was just an A gun, I didn't carry the 60 until red got killed. Gotcha. Uh, once in a while I would, but a lot of times I didn't carry it till red got killed,

uh, unless he'd be gone for this or that, you know, and then I was the 60 guy, but uh, so these three man killer teams, you damn bush these guys, you, you try to pick them off and it came into aville. And now one of these, uh, one of these things, I mean, we were successful a couple of times, and uh, but one of these, one of these three man killer teams I was on, I was out there

“with this, uh, it's funny black guy. I got him, I call him Jackson in the book, but I didn't remember”

his real name, but he was, uh, he always smiled, you know, he just bit white teeth boy, he smiled,

we don't smile out in the bush, you'll get us all killed. So we were, we were laying in wait, and uh, right at the edge of a, when really a rice paddy, we were rice paddies out there, but this was kind of just, uh, a lot of brush, and then there was real heavy jungle over, maybe 75 yards away, and we were behind a big bush, and uh, and we see some guys come out of the jungle, just two or three of them, we thought the killer team. So, uh, we get, we set up, you know, we're going to,

we're going to blow these guys away, and halfway across this open area, uh, uh, a platoon comes out. These guys are just a point through a three guys, they were just a point then, and pretty soon they're getting closer and closer, if we go ahead and add it, if we show open fire at a whole platoon, you know, they're only three of us, and so pretty soon, it's not a platoon, it was two over 200 NVA came out, and they walked so close to us, they walked, I mean, they could have stepped on us,

because we couldn't do anything, we couldn't run, we couldn't move, we just had stay still, and we're getting eaten up by ants and mosquitoes, you know, the mosquitoes and non, we got the worst, but we're just getting sucked dry with mosquitoes and getting eaten up, and you can't move. And I tell that story sometimes, to other Marines, to tell them, this is why Perversalian was so horrible. But all the stories of a Marine slap on a sand flea on Pei, back when I went in,

if you did that, you were going to be tortured. I mean, I mean, they tortured guys. They, they make you dig a six foot grave with the knee tool, then they'd make you have

and you'd say, it was a guy, all right, this is a female, dig another bot, dig another grave.

“I mean, they tortured you, but you were scared to death, to move, you know, like I was scared”

to death, even look, they worked. They had my attention, and buddy, it worked. I got to know, you know, I had discipline, and all of a sudden, we laid there, it wouldn't matter, I had snakes crawling over me, I wouldn't go to move. If you moved, you're getting, get everybody killed. So, you know, you just didn't make that mistake. We were, well, trained. It was torture, torture training, but it worked. And this night, 200 NBA went plodden by our noses. I mean,

we could smell the garlic. I saw their little hoachy men's, that's the sandals they wore that made them out of tires, American tires, but they, they'd walk by their little hoachy men's

flop and right by our noses. And we're just going, it was never going to end. 200 guys, and they're

kind of spread out. It went on forever. I mean, it felt like forever when they finally got away from us. Well, I had, no, what's it mean? One of the guy, one of the guys, whoever's three of us, I don't know which one it was, but somebody had pulled a, a frag. He pulled the pan on the frag. Thinking, you know, that we got to do something to get out of here and squeeze it at whole time. The spoon and squeezed it, and he was so relieved when these guys went into the jungle. He went,

"Oh, God, it's like going, he let go of the spoon." And now we got a live frag. And he goes, "Frag!" And we all dive flat now. Boom, the grenade goes off right by us. Nobody got hurt. We didn't catch any shrapnel or anything. And now we're scared to death. You know, he's getting it. And another guy, then Jackson says, "Oh, I peed my pants. I peed all over myself. Oh, God, and I did too. I was peeing. I'm going, "Oh my God, we're there, we're Steve, we should history." So, we got out of there.

“But that's what three main killer teams could be like. You didn't know what you were going to run into.”

I mean, you didn't come back for you guys. Huh? They didn't come back for you guys. Oh, no, because soon we heard artillery going off out of food by. Now, I don't know if somebody else spotted all these guys, and they may have. But somebody started calling in artillery. It wasn't us. I mean, if I called in artillery, I'd kill the wrong team. I didn't call it artillery. You didn't want me to. I didn't even have a sense of direction. If I'd air a walk point,

we'd still be there. So, what were some of the success stories with the three main killer teams? Oh, well, there were times where they'd only send in a squad, and you would, yeah, we had a couple of times where we killed three or four of them, and the rest would get away. But what would happen, that they'd stop going back to the vill, because they'd leave the vill alone. And now you were heroes to the village. And now they're on the allied side. I mean, they're on the American side again.

“You know, it's, yeah, it's, yeah, do you want to talk about the first time he killed somebody?”

Yeah, I want to talk about, I want to talk about, yeah, it was an ambush. And I killed this in VA officer. And I guess, you know, it stays with me. Yeah, you know, the shooting was at night. I killed him at night, so I, but we stayed in that position all night. And we stayed there longer than we usually would. We were going to count the bodies, you know, and stuff like that. And so, I don't know why we stayed there. Nobody told me I was a PFC, but we hung around a little longer.

And so I had time to, you know, go up on the trail where I'd kill this guy. And, you know,

and, and look at him. And, you know, it's, it's just always stayed with me. Yeah. I mean, I remember

a smell. It was a hot sunny day, but it wasn't, you know, wasn't the 110-degree hot, but it was hot and sunny. And it was grass. It was like tall grass. It was blowing because there'd be some breeze. And here's a sky laying on this trail with, you know, a breeze going by and, uh, yeah, I, I, I, I, I, I think, I, I, I think of that a lot,

I never knew, but uh, there's a chapter in the book about that. It was called Mercy Killing, uh, and that

was, uh, that one really stays with me. I, and then I was in off, I was in a little bit of handy hand combat and, um, uh, I, I, I'll tell you, you want me to tell you, I'm going to tell you that one, because, uh, it's really unusual, not everybody has this war story. Uh, we'd been going for about, I, I, if I, if I remember correctly, it had been about 17 straight days. And you'd be out that long often, but you didn't make contact with the enemy all the time, you know, but this time,

we made contact with the NVA, uh, off and on, for 17 days, we kept running into them. You know, I mean, it, it, it would short ambushes, big fire fights and it's over, but then the next day, bam, you run it into them again, and we were in a real hot area. It was, uh, it was up near the Cambodian border, if I remember a lay ocean border, but uh, we were in the mountains at that point.

All right, one point. We started to flat land being the mountains. I never knew what was going on.

But I was, we're going around, uh, we're humped at all night, and we'd been going for 17 days, and hadn't had hardly any sleep. You'd set up an ambush. I mean, much, you'd hump all day, you know, stop maybe for some child, but you would just hump and up and down hills all day.

“That's how I lost 40 pounds, the first time I got hit, but you'd just hump all day.”

And, uh, and then at night, set up ambushes all night. So, we set up the same, uh, this 17th day, of contact with the enemy, uh, we were going around the side of the mountain. It wasn't much of a trail, but it's tiny somewhat of a trail around the side of this mountain, and it was way up in the mountains. And, uh, our lieutenant was as dead as we were, and we had a great lieutenant. He'd make mistakes. He'd call in or tail around a dime, you know, uh, you know, anapolis grad,

smart guy, he went on to his name was Nelson, Lieutenant Nelson. He went on to become the head of the FBI, and all of the northeast after the war. Wow. Yeah. He was, he was a hero at that ruby ridge thing. He was one of the FBI guys at that ruby ridge. I think it was called ruby ridge, and anyway, but he was a great lieutenant. We were blessed to have that guy. But he, um, even he was, you know, we didn't know what, you're a sleepwalking. You reach a point where you, you know, you're just sleepwalking.

I got nothing left. Nobody did. So, we set up on the side of this mountain, and he put a couple of guys, uh, above this tiny trail, and I should have been ambushing the trail. I should have

had this 60 on the trail, aiming down the trail one way or the other, and we always did. This night,

“I, I believe everybody was just so exhausted. We didn't know what we're doing. And they sent me up”

on the bottom half of this trail, pointing downhill. Well, I mean, it's possible that maybe he, maybe had a reason to think they were going to come up the hill at us, but, um, normally I'd be ambushing that trail. So I, me and Channer, we're trying to stay awake, and we're, uh, I got potch over the mosquitoes, or even a saliva, and so you couldn't use that potch over, you know, any kind of rain or anything, because it makes noise. But, wasn't raining, trying to, he kind of

fight off the mosquitoes, and I'm hanging over the 60, and I got it here. So, if I, if I fall forward to sleep, it, it, it wakes me up. I hit it. And, uh, it was Channer turned to, you know, take an hour sleep. Sometimes we do two hour shifts. So, um, but I think here, and we were only doing one hour, because couldn't stay awake more than an hour, you know, and, uh, but anyway, Channer, it's his turn to sleep. And, uh, and I'm, hanging over this thing, and, uh, and I'm fade now, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm,

I'm going out. And believe me, you didn't do that. We were scared to death, fall asleep, on lines. We had an Indian named Swift Eagle. It's his real name. He's a funny story, too.

“His real name was Swift Eagle. I had to see it on his paycheck to believe it. I think he had another”

name, too, but Swift Eagle. So, Swift Eagle, he'd been in a non-moder, a couple of tours, maybe more. And he would sneak around, and if anybody fell asleep on lines, this freaking Indian would sneak up, and he'd take a cable, and, and he'd reach around behind you and nick you, just nick it, but a cable, well, and, um, that Nick's going to get infected within a few hours. Everything got infected and Vietnam. So, you learned real quick. Don't fall asleep, you know, I don't care

I was shot him. I thought it was, I, I didn't know what was, uh, but anyway, that guy was a hero. He,

“he got hit seven times. Yes. Yeah. And he kept, he would return down purple hearts, because”

he didn't want to go home. And the Marines were in nom. The Marines were his family. Why would I want to go anywhere else? My family's here. He would say stuff like that. I mean, how do you not love these guys? So, so, I was going to fall asleep if I could help it, because Swift Eagle would make sure I woke up. But this night, I'm dosing, and I'm dreaming. And I'm dreaming back home. You know, we call it a world dream. She's back in the world.

And I'm back in the world. I'm cruising, steak, and shake, and I've got, I've got my 57

vet, and I'm cruising around, steak, and shake, and I'm trying to pick up girls. And I'm just, I'm having a great time in my dream, you know, it's your out of no. And my favorite band,

“this true story, favorite band, was the young rascals. I love the young rascals.”

Well, all of a sudden, in the middle of the frickin' Cambodian mountains, the lay ocean mountains, wherever the heck I was, I started hearing the young rascals singing in the mid-died hour. And I'm thinking, oh my god, this is the best dream I've had since

I came to know. I'm even hearing the music. And I mean, that's where my mind was.

You know, get it. That's where my mind was, man. And then bam, bam! And it wasn't M16 rounds. It was M14 rounds. And there's slap in through my poncho. And the plastic poncho, you old, we had Korean era ponchos. Okay, they were plastic stuff. They would rip through that, and it was cut in my face. From the rounds, not the bullets,

“but the plastic was cut in my face. Bam, bam, it's going through my poncho. Of course,”

I was frozen, but I was awake, and I'm still hearing the music. I'm still hearing the young rascals in the mid-died hour. And all of a sudden, there's a guy on top of me. And it was an NVA. And I have too late to get to the machine gun, too late to get to the 45. I got to the K-bar. I got to my K-bar. And we rolled down the hill, and yeah, yeah. So later on, I found out that we found the body, of course. And he had a boom box. This guy had a big

shiny boom box. And the North Vietnamese loved American music, too. And they would tune in to armed forces radio network. Well, every night at midnight, armed forces radio network played in the midnight hour by the young rascals. Of course, I knew none of this. I hadn't heard music since I left America. But we just sure didn't listen to armed forces radio network. But they did. He had a boom box. He'd been listening to armed forces radio network. And evidently, it had caught

on a twig going through the bush and turned on his boom box. Well, above him was this kid named Alabama. Actually, we called him Sugar Bear. But he was from Alabama. Sugar Bear was at the Lieutenant-Mature one guy in every squad or so had an in-14. Because the M-16s were crap. Yeah, they were plastic. We called him Matty Matels. They would jam in the heat and the rice paddies. And, you know, there have been, there were replacements like Liberty Bridge.

I had heard the numbers if I'm wrong. Forgive me. But I was told 48 Marines died there. And mostly because all their M-16s are Matty Matels jammed. And they ended up using them just as clubs just hand-to-hand. But anyway, so we didn't trust that Matty Matel with plastic. You know, we trained through all our training with an M-14. And at the last minute, they throw us six little plastic guns and say, "Go to Vietnam with this." So one guy would carry an M-14 in case these

M-16s jammed. Well, you know the sound, you know, you can tell the sound and you know more about guns than I do. And so we could hear that M, I knew it was an M-14 fire and threw my punch out. And sure enough, it was sugar bearer. It was the only one to woke up quickly. And these guys went down through this trail, but beneath him. And he had shot the guy, but he wasn't dead. And he rolled down the hill on top of me. And then it was being him. And so flash forward

about 10 years ago, I go to a big party in St. Pete, given by a doctor. And he went,

and roll bands. He hired the young rascals, Felix Cavalry and the young rascals to this party.

“I ended up meeting Felix Cavalry and I told him this story. Yeah, I knifed a guy to”

your to your song in the midnight hour. And he goes, oh god, he goes, I'm going to hear this story. So we spent the night, we tell him this whole story. But it was his favorite story about that song from that point on. We became kind of friends, but it's a true story in the midnight hour. So to this day, every time I hear that song, I mean, I, you know, I'm back in non-man. My mind is back in non. I'm in old man, but it's something's just don't change. Wow.

Can I ask you a question? Yeah. Why does the officer bother you? Why does the what bother the officer? The officer? Oh, no, I, I didn't attend it. Did you see? I didn't attend it. Oh, I liked that guy. Now, I'm not talking about him. The officer that you killed, that you went to go see in the grass. Forgive me, I, I've lost, I'm, I'm not sure. Tell me again. Let me,

we had just spoken about it in I'd asked if you want to talk about the first time you had

to kill somebody. Oh, and you'd brought up an officer. Yeah, he was, uh, I don't know, I guess I remembered. I remember it was, it was an officer. You know, we didn't, we didn't, we didn't, you went kill an officer every day. You know, usually it was just pee on's like me. And, uh, yeah, I think, I think because I stayed around the body so long. You know, I, I think because I had to stay around that

“body longer than normal. And, uh, yeah, it, uh, I think that's why I, I, you know, I don't know. Maybe”

just because it was the first time I saw. I mean, I had been in firefight, but you know, you know, you go out, you're flying some dead bodies. You don't know if you got them. I mean, it, yeah, yeah, yeah, this one I knew and, uh, hit different. Yeah, it's different. It's different. But, enough. Man, of course, some crazy episodes. I, I shot a girl up, uh, that, um, once again, we just had it, it was about 20 guys, about 20 marines. And, I don't know, I don't know what we're

doing, that, but we were walking way up in the mountains and, uh, and the words coming back that were near the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Well, you know, I'm hoping the rest of the battagians out there somewhere, because just 20 guys, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of gooks on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And, uh, so, but we, uh, we came across, we're going up the steep hill, and we came across this, uh, this guy who'd been left behind, an NBA soldier. Well, they got, they ran into him

up at the front of the line. First, our point man comes across him. And, you know, a butt

strokes the guy and kicks him back. And now all the way down the hill, marines are kicking this guy back down the hill. And, uh, and he comes to me, he's on, so, uh, I didn't hit him. He was already a mess, but, uh, we, um, he had been left behind. He wasn't, you know, he'd been wounded. His foot was all infected. And I don't know if it was from a wound or what the jungle, you know, uh, and they had left this guy behind, but we knew they were going to come back for him. So we, uh, you know, we set

“up an ambush, and it was, I mean, I remember this honestly, you know, if I was a good painter,”

I could paint this, but it was all, it was steep hills, and then it was a little flat area, you know, a little mountain, a stream going through this little flat grassy area. And, heavy woods everywhere else, but there's one little open area, and this stream, and the trail went through this, and right along that side of the side that stream, and we set up on a hill beside it. We got up on this hill, and it opened, opened fire down on this thing, and I, I sat the gun up, looking

down on this, this trail waiting for these guys to come back to get that guy. And, uh, sure enough, these little pith helmets, you know, just, it started dating off and out of the, out of the bush, and we get them in the open, and we, we just opened fire blown away, you know, I had, I had a few of them with the 60, and, you know, the 60 does, you know, put a good size hauling people, you know,

one, credible crap. I know you're, one of your guys was showing me a guy over there that was

“shot 20 times or something in the woods. You know, you never know. Uh, so I, after this, uh, during this”

battle, they, they, they were like water bucks. I mean, really, they were like roaches. They weren't

going to stay around in a fight. They never did. And they're gone into the, into the, into the woods.

But one by one, they keep coming out of the woods back into the open to, they're all trying to get to this one guy. It's true story. I, they're trying to get to this, we, we realized it was this one, this one, go, playin' half in the stream and half out that I had hit, and they're all to keep trying to get to this guy. And every time they come out and they open, you know, we'd kill them. And, uh, finally, it's over. And, uh, we, we go down to check the bodies and we're picking them over,

and we kick over this one and in, in this land in the stream, half in the stream, half out.

“And kick that, pith helmet off. And it's a girl, it's a beautiful girl, beautiful Asian girl,”

beautiful, long hair falls out. Uh, and she's pretty, pretty girl, you know, and, you know,

we haven't seen a girl in a long time. So, uh, and she's alive. She's alive. And, and her eyes pop up in it. And she, she starts saying all that, well, Chan had been sent to, because I told to, he was, he was brilliant. They sent Chan to, uh, they was called S5 school or something like that, S2 school, some, some S school, to learn the Vietnamese language. So, he could help in, uh, interpret when we got prisoners and stuff. So, Chan knew a little bit of Vietnamese now. He had learned

enough to figure out some stuff. And, uh, so she keeps saying the same thing, you know, over and over. And, so we, I, Chan, what she's saying, man, she, he goes, she's saying marines, marines, marines, your evil, marines are devils, marines are devils, or something like that. You know, some, something like that, they'd been told about marines. And, uh, the neat part of the story is, uh, after that shootout was done, we're real close to the Ho Chi Minh Trail that

everybody said so. And I already, I mean, you don't have to, you know when you're an engine country. I mean, nobody has to tell you, this is a real danger to us over here. I mean, you'd see, you'd see where they, they'd worn down a path where they were even pulling, uh, you know, boxcards full of crap, you know, and, uh, you know, bicycles loaded down with ammo, and, you know, you could tell, and we were in, we were in a place where there were a lot of,

NVA, uh, and we only got 20 marines. If that many, we called in a chopper to come get this wounded girl. Now, there's huge trees, this one little open area, you know, where we got them, but all around it's these giant trees, and here comes, it's jolly green that usually, it would carry 105, you know, one of those great big choppers. Usually, you don't use that for, you know, MetaVax, but I don't know if that's all they could get. I don't know if it's because of where we were,

but jolly green shows up and starts lower in the basket to get this girl out. And we rescue this girl, and she's cursing us and doing, you know, saying stuff about us the whole time, the corpsman did what he could patch her up. We got her in this basket, and that chopper almost crashed. It's, it's hidden the tree tops and everything trying to, trying to hover and, uh, get this thing out. We could hear our tellery, you know, you could hear, I mean, we know we're into

“bad zone. I always, I think of that, and you know, you come home and, and the Americans are calling”

you a bunch of baby killers and this and that and you go, if only they do, we risked all those marines to get this wounded girl out of there. We risk everybody's life, and I know it, and I, the guys with me knew it, but, and that chopper pilot, those guys, crap, they're hidden, tree limbs and stuff. I mean, they could have gone down at any time, and they didn't take off, and they got that

girl out of there, and I don't know if she ever lived, but we tried, and, um, but I always remember

that, and I always, when we talk about girls in infantry units, I'm really against girls in infantry units. I, I, I won't change. I know I'm old. Maybe that's it, but I'm against that,

with, uh, and this girl was probably an NVA nurse, you know, she didn't even have a weapon, I don't think, but, uh, we had a, we ran into a bunker, and, uh, we, it was, an NVA, we just saw three, three gooks going his bunker, and, of course, we're open fire, we move up on it, start throwing frags in, and, uh, frags are coming back out, they're throwing them back out before they go off,

you know, and, but finally, you know, we hold the pen logger, flip it in, and, uh, anyway,

we finally, there's no way they could be alive, we could pick, you know, and so we're, we sent a guy in, pull out the bodies, and, uh, he didn't come back out, the smoke from the grenades, it got him, and so we drag him out, it sent in another guy, and he starts dragging out the bodies. Well, he only dragged out two bodies, we saw three go into her, and they, uh, eventually, we know there's a third one in there, we don't know, as, you know, and we couldn't find it,

“and, uh, finally, uh, I think it was Corporal, uh, Houston, Corporal Houston, it was another”

brave guy, I tell you, I could tell you, this toy got him too, but Houston goes in,

and it would, would planks inside this bunker, and they had taken, it was a girl, and they buried her under the wood planks, so she could survive the grenades, and, uh, if he found her he drags her out, well, she didn't really survive, and her skull is cracked open, and, uh, we, we're in, we're in combat, we can't, uh, we can't get it, we can't get anybody to, it's way too late to try to save her, and so, uh, and you can literally see her brains, you know,

from the concussion, there's skulls cracked up, and we can see the brains, and I mean, she,

“no way she was gonna live, and that's why it titled it "Mercy Killing," but it doesn't matter,”

you never forget that, you never, so, somebody said, uh, hey, you know, come on, put her out of her misery,

man, you know, 'cause she's gasping and everything, you know, but she's still gasping, and, so a guy shot her with an M-16, you know, around her too, and, we're ready to walk away, and, uh, but we got to search the bodies for papers, and, um, so she didn't die, and then somebody hit me, and I, you know, this is where I, this is, this is where, like knife and they got, you know, some of this, I think my mind tries to protect me, we don't have to go here if you, yeah, you know,

and, and so, uh, yeah, I don't, I don't, I remember somebody hit me and say, and shoot her with a 45, you know, shoot her with a 45, you know, mad even tells, shoot her with a 45 and, uh, and, of course, machine gun, right, I carried a 45 and, um, yeah, so you live with that, you know, you know, I don't, I don't forget that one, and, uh, 30 years later, at the big red memorial, that one, when they were given him the bronze star, 30 years late, and all that stuff, a bunch of

the guys showed up, and, uh, one of the guys was, uh, Sergeant, uh, on crap, okay, he's in that, he's in guns up, there's a picture of him holding the flag from way city, uh, it'll come to me, but anyway, the serge was there, and he pulls out at this reunion, you know, we're having a few beers in a hotel, kind of trying to come down from, uh, a pretty emotional time, and I had to give a speech to a red high school and try to tell what he was, who he was. These kids, you know, knew nothing,

and, anyway, so now we're trying to come down, drink a couple of beers and see if we can chill, and, Stacey Watson, Sergeant Stacey Watson. So Sergeant Stacey Watson goes, you know,

“he had a little briefcase or something with him, and he goes, do you remember this gunner? And he,”

he's got that girl, he had searched, he had to search the bodies that day. He had her full ID, and I mean, it's a full ID, and he made copies of it. I've still got it. I don't know if that's morbid, but I do. But with her name, what where she was born, I mean, all these details, a full ID on this girl that we had to kill. And boy, that one, you know, that one sent me, that one sent me real enough to that. And that's, you know, real close to that is when they, you know, they found out

those who don't know, a 122 is about the size of a telephone pole, it's a big old freaking rocket, and it hit the record shack at M. Law and killed all the guys in the record shack and blew up all our records. Well, I, there've been a shoot-out in a graveyard. And, uh, it's okay, Jolly. Let's take a break. Let's take a break. Let's take a break.

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the last where you heard about them. Please support our show until then, we sent you. See you later. What's all this building? What are you looking for? We're high. Anyway, I've been a pretty pretty big shootout in this graveyard, and I do want to tell you about

“that because it's another incredible hero. I think he's probably the braveest guy I knew”

through the whole war, and I knew some guys that you could make a movie about. I mean, they were, these guys were some of them were like, I mean, Swift Eagle. We had a gunnery sergeant gunnery at McDermott. He'd been put up for the Medal of Honor. I mean, he, and he didn't get it because he hit. He punched an army officer, and they knocked it down to a silver star. Anyway, I mean, God, these guys were warriors being, and I mean, they all did

way more than me. But anyway, this graveyard incident, they found out I'd been put up for the silver star. They told me that night, you know, they'd seen something I did, and they wanted to put me

up with the silver star, and I, you know, 30 years passed. War's way over, but I always wondered about it.

You know, whatever, if, was I ever, was that true, you know, because all the guys came up and told me. And so, 30 years later, they find out all the records have been blown up. And so, you know, I, I, I looked up the old gunnery sergeant, and I didn't know him. It was gunnery sergeant portner, and he was the, I knew my, my company gunnery was McDermott. So I thought it was him who put me up for it, but it wasn't him, but it was, it was, it was portner. So I, I've got a whole

“of portner. He lived in Virginia, and I said, I don't know if you can remember this, you know,”

and I, I said, but I told him the story. I said, do you remember the graveyard that night, you know, when the, when the, when the stock got killed and, uh, Sunday got hit 11 times, I said, do you remember what? And he goes, I remember every, every minute of it, and I, and, uh, I said,

okay, well, I never got it, you know, and I just, I just always wondered, was it true?

It, you know, and I thought it in there, but when they found out the records have been blown up, I'd listen to how they found out. Pat McDermott, the guy who saw me in Jacksonville, doing the one-art pushups in the backflips to get in the Marine Corps, he got shot that night in the graveyard, and, uh, so he wanted a purple heart, and he was still in Jacksonville, and he wanted a purple heart license tag, because they just come out with the purple heart license

tags, and he wanted what? And they wouldn't give him one. And he goes, and he goes, it shows in the bulletle, if you look, and he goes, it's not on your DD-2-14. Well, nothing was on our DD-2-14's.

“Crap, I didn't have anything on my, I had good conduct metal, I think. I had nothing, you know, nothing.”

So, uh, so he, he says, I, I got shot, you know, and he died. August 3rd, 68, I can tell you, well,

he started the investigation that found out that all the records have been blown up. Now, I'm sure. And because of Pat McDermott, one net purple heart license tag, he, he's the reason I got the silver star, you know, 'cause McDermott, I mean, the gunnery partner found out about it. And, uh, one thing led to another, gunnery partner wrote the whole thing up again. Other guys, Dr. Lee wrote up a thing about it, and others did. They're all dead now.

And, but Portner died two weeks after rewriting me up for that. And, uh, so I, I got it, but, um, but that, that particular night, uh, that, that, bringing back that, that, that, getting the silver star, you know, all that stuff comes back on you. And, uh, and then I go to, that's when big red, they gave him the, the bronze star. He, yeah, he deserves a silver star way more than Johnny Clark. He deserved a freaking metal monitor. But, anyway, they, all that happened, and we went to that reunion,

and that's when he shows me the picture of this girl we had to, it had to kill, and, uh, kind of sent me over the edge, you know, I was, "Why do you think he showed you that?" Oh, we, we all been having, we had a few beers, and, you know, and I know, some guys handle it

“better than others. And, and he was his job to search all the bodies. And that, that's how he had the flag”

that we write, the fifth Marines raised over the Citadel at Way City. He still had it. I got a picture of it and guns up him with the flag. But, uh, yeah, I don't, he didn't mean anything bad by it. I, I don't, I'm not mad at him about it. But it, uh, yeah, I kind of, you know, I, I was diagnosed with severe combat fatigue. And, uh, that was, it was a rough ride sometimes. You know, my hair fell out one night, and, uh, and up to that point, they had diagnosed it with mild combat fatigue. And then, I went to the

VA, and I said, hey, that catch up to the denominator. All my hair fell out one night, you know, my wife's screaming, and I'm freaking out and, uh, said, uh, oh, you've been misdiagnosed. You know, severe combat fatigue. So, yeah, it was, it's been a bumpy ride at times, you know, it really has. But, uh, all your hair

fell out in one night, part, all of your hair fell out in one night. Yeah, I've never heard of it. Well,

it grew back, you know, it was, it was a shock. I mean, you know, I don't know. I don't why your body does that. But, yeah, I'd gone through, uh, I, I, I couldn't get out of nom. You know, it's, it's when I first came home. I was like 20, 21 years old. I, yeah, maybe 21. I don't even know if I was 21, but around there. And, uh, and, and, and here's what made it really devastating to me at the time, it, it, it crushed me. That was when, do you remember the musical hair? Uh-huh. No,

hair, beautiful hair. Anyway, hair, long hair became, it's incredible rage in America in, uh,

“the early '70s. And there was a giant musical called Hair. And, uh, I think they made a movie out of it,”

even. But, uh, anyway, hair became this, everybody had long hair. Now, and I didn't, I didn't like that. You know, I'm going to long hair guy, but, uh, everybody had long hair. And so, if you didn't, I already, came home looking, you know, here I got a Marine Corps haircut. So, I already looked out of it and you don't fit in with all your friends because now you're 20 years older than them, even if you're the same age. Uh, and, uh, so you don't fit in anyway. But now, all your hair

fall in that one night, and, and it was, it was shocking. You know, it really threw me over the edge there for a while. And, and, but the VA, you know, oh, yeah, they diagnosed severe, you got severe combat fatigue, uh, but anyway, enough of that, I, uh, but all that came about, from Pat McCurry,

but that night that I, that I got that silver star license tag, I, that I got the silver star,

“was, it was, um, that night, in the graveyard, I wrote that story because of a guy, a kid named”

Undam Stock. We had a kid with us that was so terrified, Sean. He, um, we don't know, nobody could figure out how he got through boot camp. I didn't exaggerate boot camp. It was hell. So, I, we didn't, we didn't know how he got, how he got through boot camp, but somehow he got through, he was a Hollywood Marine. I know that boot camp sees you. The parasite. So, he got through Hollywood Marine, but he got through boot camp. He was so scared that if we go on an ambush, you could hear his teeth chattering,

and you can't shake. He would shake. And, uh, he would make noise, and he would urinate on himself all the time. Now, we're, we all smelled horrible anyway, but, you know, that makes it, don't even worse when somebody, you're in a hole with a guy and he's peeing all the time, you know, all over you, but he, he was absolutely terrified and shouldn't have been there, and it became obvious, you know, he, he, he'd go out on an ambush or an LP with the sky, and, you know, he's just, you know,

making noise shaking. He's going to get everybody killed. So, uh, so we, uh, the lieutenant finally

knew and came to him and said, we, we're going to give you an out, uh, we called him Cowboy. He was from Oklahoma, and we called him Cowboy, and, uh, and he, he had his out from Vietnam. Now, look, a lot of the guys at that point, they weren't letting us win the war. We knew that. It was clear, they weren't going to let us win the war. Uh, they weren't going to let us ever go across that river and invade the north. You know, none of that was ever going to happen. We were just going

to play this stalemate game and end up like Korea. And that, and that doesn't do anything for the guys morale. So, you come to a bunch of guys that to put in a tour, maybe two tours, some of these guys, uh, and you say, okay, here's your ticket home, back to the world. We're going to let you go back to the world, that a lot of guys would get me out of here. You know, I've, I did my time, I'm ready to go home. And, uh, here's the guy who's just, most terrified Marina ever saw, ever met. And he tells Lieutenant,

I ain't going home to all the reach go home. Fuck man. Yeah. Yeah. Well, flash forward. They, they're putting with my gun team. And that, that's a funny story. They're putting with my gun team. I, I got, I got here again. And I was coming back to the unit and they were flying me back from the hospital. And, uh, they tried to land me with the guys. And, okay, um, the guys, uh, we're under real intense fire. They were in a big shootout. And so they couldn't get me, the

chopper couldn't bring me in. And so they, they dropped me on an R artillery base. And, uh,

“so it was all these, they were marines. It was a marina artillery base, uh, one, I think they were mostly”

105. So I had some one, five, five, five. But, um, it was, uh, this already base. These guys live behind barb wire and bunkers. And, you know, and, uh, various grunt units down there in the jungle and keep people away from this, uh, already base. But, it still is no picnic. They got hit and stuff. I'm not saying these, these guys, but, uh, but they live to different life than the grunts out

the bush. And I, uh, I never saw, I never, you know, if you smoked, if you even smoked a cigarette

in the bush with the guys I served with, you, you might get yourself killed. I mean, there were some mean people. They might kill you for some, you know, you risking their life and everybody's like, so you, you just didn't do crap like that, you know, and, um, and the idea of smoking pot,

“you know, I came home and everybody's going, oh, how good was the pot over there?”

I'm good. You've been watching too much TV bro. I don't know. You've been watching the air force over there or something because, uh, no, there weren't no pot where I was. And, uh, so,

so, uh, I ran on this already base. And I'm still 18 years old. I've never smoked pot. I, I don't even,

drops you off with these already guys. I was trying, we'll come out and get you, you know,

“when the heat goes down on your unit. And I say, oh, okay, so I get off and I'm standing a”

lowest, like, guy in a desert, you know, because they're all in their bunkers. So, finally, I see one of them come out to get a while and sure about it. He comes out and he goes, hey, come on, come on up. So, I got a plot over to this bunker and he goes down in and he got, like, beads over the bunker and stuff. You know, like, a little door and I go down in the bunker and they've got music playing, you know, the armed forces radio networks on and, uh, and they're drinking, they get,

they get whiskey, and they're smoking pot. They had pot. And, uh, and they offer me some, and I,

you know, I've never smoked. And they said, hey, you might go back out the bush and get killed tomorrow,

man, at least no one pot tastes like, okay, so, so I tried it. And, uh, and then, uh, I, I get stone, you know, I'm stone. And now, now there, there give me whiskey, shots of whiskey, and I'm thinking, this is a, this is a pretty good way to spend the war.

“Oh, I think I, I think, I'm just going to sign up for artillery here. Well, about that time,”

I hear this scream, and, uh, hey, where's that grunt? His rides here, and I go, oh, God. So, I stagger out of this bunker and hey, like, oh, no, this is going to be bad. And I get over to this chopper and I'm thinking, oh my God, get in the chopper, you know, and I'm like hanging out, they go, oh, but I'll throw up in the chopper. And they, it's, uh, they, they lift off and they bring me back to my unit. And I'm thinking, well, the shootouts over, you know, they'll drop me in. They're

in a perimeter. Shootout wasn't over. So, they, this chopper comes in and there's all kinds of fire, and there's bullets back through this chopper, and they let me out. And I'm, I'm half-buzzed, and I'm standing in the middle of a shootout, and the Marines are all firing around the perimeter,

“and I'm standing in the, and the gun, he's going, get down you idiot, you know, that's why,”

where's my gun to you, really? Your gun, though, when they're a clock, take over the gun. So, I make it back to my gun. Well, it was during that firefight. That, you know, I,

I finally have time to square away, because it went on for a while. And, uh, so they, uh, I mean,

that, we, we had to call in phantoms, and they're, they're dropping napom. Oh, it's a couple hundred yards outside our perimeter, you know, and, I mean, it's not a perimeter, or like a, build up area where we're just in an open area. You know, when we've behind trees dug some holes, fox holes, you know, and it's, uh, but we've got a perimeter set up. And, uh, so, but about 200 yards out in front of me, uh, a lot of the fires coming from. And so, I got a pinpoint,

we're calling in napom, man, over there, and you know, Lieutenant tells me, so I, I show them where the, where the napom, and just the second, I opened up the show where it's at, man. These phantoms rip by. I mean, you could see the pilots, they're so low. You know, in that sound, and you see these canisters tumbling, real slow, and then suddenly it all goes up and flames. And, uh, of course, you know, Marines are cheering this is great, you know, and a couple of gooks ran out of it on fire,

and so we shot them, and, um, but this went on for a while. This, this, they shoot out and, uh, well, later on, uh, we're not going anywhere. Clearly, we're not going anywhere, and nobody's coming to save us. So we're, we're just hungered down, you know, and, and so, um, I, uh, and choppers can't get in, you know, that chopper almost got shot down. So nobody's coming. So, uh, we've been there, this is going on for hours. And, Chan, Chan and I are behind this fault of this tree that's been

knocked down, and we're behind this tree, and we've got a hold, I got, and he says, so, uh, you want some coffee? And I said, oh, man, I really need coffee. He says, yeah, you smell like you need coffee. Uh, uh, there you go. Well, that wasn't my fault. It was already guys, you know, and you got to see it. All right, that's it. So we, you know, break out a sea ration can, and we take a sea ration can, you know, we had these old sea ration cans, we punched holes in it,

and you put a little piece of C4 plastic explosive for those who don't know. So we peed a piece of C4, and the bottom of the can, light it, and, uh, and heat your food. So we heat it up some coffee.

nothing we could do, and I don't have any targets, nobody's saying guns up. So it's like,

“it's have some coffee, and Chan says something funny, and we were always saying, so I mean,”

it's, you know, everybody deals with this crap a different way. And, you know, I'm not pretending humor. We weren't scared, or any kind of crap. But you deal with fear your own way, and you know, it's like you can't do anything about it. So yeah, so we're having a cup of coffee,

and, uh, and he says something funny to me, and I started laughing, because I was always still kind of

out there, and Lieutenant and Gunny hear us over their laughing. And then the word gets around the perimeter. A Clark and Chad are having coffee. Oh, well, pretty soon. Pretty soon, the Gunny, Gunny McDermott, we call him Gunny mag, because he drew so much lead. Gunny mag comes sliding in like he's stealing second base, and he's going, what the hell are you guys doing, you know, and, so, oh, Gunny, you're just, when I have any targets, you know, we're kind of running out of ammo,

I thought you're like, I'm drunk, I'm high, and now I'm fucking caffeinated, so let's go to war. Just, you know, we wouldn't have a cup of coffee, and he goes, he goes, oh, gosh, you know,

that Jesus, you know, Lieutenant's talking about a section eight for you, you guys,

and I go, oh, man, it's not that bad. So flash forward, after all this is over, here's London stock, the kid that's so terrified, and the Gunny and the Lieutenant walk him over to us, you know, the shootouts over and they walk him over to being a chain, and they said, listen, we're going to put him in with your gun team. You know, you need another guy anyway, and, and, of course, a machine gun team supposed to be five guys. A lot of times, it was just me.

You know, there were, I didn't even have an A-gun or sometimes, so now we have three guys with this kid, you know, being dropped in, and so that was good news, but once we realized it was him, we're going, oh, God, you know, he's so terrified, you know, this is going to be rough, but then the Lieutenant came and told me, he said, look, I'm putting him with you guys to see if you can make him laugh, see if he can chill him out a little bit, otherwise,

I've got a sending him home. And so, Shannon, I took him in and tried to mother him a little bit, and started giving him Bible passages, and we started teaching him with Bible a little bit.

“Well, I, we gave him, uh, there's a verse in there, I think, it's out of Romans, I think it's Romans 8.”

I, I, um, this is where I get mad at myself. I should know these verses, and normally I do, I just, a little excited about being on the show and stuff, but, uh, anyway, we sat at Romans 8 and, uh, we said about one of our war and famine and pestilence, and all that might rise against you, and your parents might, your parents might, you know, uh, don't you, but, uh,

but I never will, you know, at that verse, and, uh, and I, uh, uh, here I get a slow down on the story

because I didn't kind of be careful what to say about it, but he, he had problems when he joined the Marine Corps as one of the reasons he joined the Marine Corps, because evidently his family didn't, they, they thought it was a joke him trying to be a Marine, and, uh, that he, he could never hack it, and, um, anyway, he had some, he had some issues, but everybody's got issues with their parents.

“I'm not, you know, I'm not nailing them, but he felt sort of, I think he felt sort of a band”

and something by his family, and in the sense that they didn't support him. I don't know, I don't know the all the details, and I'm not going to pretend to, but I know he needed that verse, and, um, and we prayed with him, and we, uh, we did what we could, you know, to try to, you got a lean on the Lord here, you know, all of us are scared and he'd say, you clowns aren't scared, you look at you, and I said, oh no, so this is just the way we deal with it,

because everybody deals with it differently, and I go, everybody's scared, it's, it's guys dying out here, man. Of course, we're scared, and we'd tell him, you know, hey, uh, let's just pray about it, every time you get like that, you know, we, we'd tell him out of pray. And, and he started getting a little better. Well, uh, right before we went into that graveyard, uh, it was a big, big operation. It was a place called Dodge City in Arizona, Territory. That's not an annual combat base, and it was a,

it looked like Arizona, that's why they called it the Arizona Territory, you know,

one part of it was called Dodge City. If you went in there, you were going to be in a shootout.

“Yeah, you always knew it, everybody knew it. Well, we knew when we're doing an op and Dodge City,”

we knew, uh, we're going to see some crap today, and, uh, and we did, but they took him out of the, our gun team right before that and put him in, uh, uh, corporate Hutsons, uh, H-U-T-E-S-O-N. Corporal Hutsons squad, and, uh, corporate Hutsons, he had already, he was already a hero in way City. I mean, the guy, kind of corporal he wanted, you know, I mean, uh, anyway, he, uh, we, we started off, when we made this op, uh, we started off, we ran into, uh, three, three gooks that come out of

the brush, oh, 50 yards ahead of us, you know, and we saw him. It was open area up to some brush,

uh, at trees, kind of, and, uh, same the blupper man, uh, boom, with his blupper, he, they, they take off a run and he hits one square in the back and he flips, but he's not dead. And, uh, the other two

“grab him in there, they pull him in to the trees, and I, I shot one and he starts jumping in”

to the trees. So we know we've wounded two, and they go into this tree line. Well, the whole company, we got a whole company where this this day, and, uh, I guess there were even more than that out there, but this, this spot, we had a Alpha Company, fifth Marines, uh, one, five,

we're, we're going up to this thing, and we didn't have, usually we were out there was 20 guys,

this time we got a whole company. So we knew they're expecting some big crap, and, um, we get up to that tree line, and we see them dragging each other into the tree line across, it's about 75 meters across, and it's graveyards, uh, and you know the Vietnamese graves with these little round mounts, uh, that it was significant, they would, they would send in the back into the womb,

“you know, when they were buried, you're going back into the womb or something like that. And,”

um, so anyway, there were little round mounts, uh, hey, you know, a couple of feet off the ground, usually you have maybe foot and a half out of it, it depended. And, um, and that was, that was the graveyard, but there wasn't any other cover other than that. It was open. And, uh, so, they told me, recon by fire, uh, I was ordered out. So I, I got in a graveyard, and, uh, I recon by fire. Now at this point, another gunner had been killed, and they gave Chan his gut. So now Chan and I aren't together.

And, uh, Chan's got a gun. I got a gun. So, uh, I sent Chan out too. So me and Chan go out, and we just spray, we spray the other tree line, uh, across the graveyard, we just open fire, uh, maybe a hundred rounds. And, uh, nobody fires back. So they send across Corporal Hutes and squad. And I hiss squad, you know, we're taking some hits. And I forgot how many of you guys were in this squad, you know, maybe eight or 10, I don't even maybe. Uh, but anyway, they, they go across and, uh, they're spread out,

going to, you know, going slowly because it's open area, but they, uh, suddenly, when they're halfway out there, everything opens out. And we found out later, it was that we ran into a battalion. And, uh, I mean, they had, they had everything. They had mortars. They had a mortar teams back. There, they had everything. And, uh, three, 30 caliber machine guns open out from fixed positions. They were in bunkers on the other side, spread out, but three of them. And then, there's fire

coming from the right flank across the graveyard. All on these, the squad out there, because we're still behind the tree line, the rest of the guys. And, uh, and these guys hit the dirt, but I saw a kid named Sunny. Uh, I saw him getting blown back by a 30 cow. And I just assumed he was dead, but then you didn't see anything. Well, this, they kept firing, and we got, we got orders, uh, they're screaming, hold your fire, hold your fire, because if we open fire, we're going to hit

our own guys. They're out in the middle of the graveyard. So, uh, and they're on our side of these mounts trying to hide from all the fire, and you really couldn't see him. It's starting to get dark. It's, uh, now it's getting late, and it starts raining. And, uh, monsoon rain, it was a brutal rainstorm starts coming in, but then it eases up. And now these guys, they open up again, and there's just a ton of fire. I mean, we're talking, I don't know, you know, a battalion's worth of AK-47s.

And these guys, they, they liked opening up full auto. You know, they didn't have any fire discipline.

So, you know, you only did that. So, we didn't, you didn't have infinite ammo, you know. You could just,

“but anyway, but these guys, these crazy NVA, they were just, every, led tracers, they even,”

even threw a couple of satchel charges out in the middle of this graveyard. I don't know what they were, their plans were long range, but they were clearly going to blow stuff up. But, uh, yeah, and here's 8 or 9 Marines, 10 Marines out there in the middle of all this. So, it was, it was horrible, and we keep, we want to open fire, and we can't. I ran down and ran out in the graveyard and, uh, I got on top of one of the mountains. So, I could shoot over them,

you know, without hitting our guys. And I, you know, knocked out a 30, I, I, I killed that gun team. And, uh, and you knew you killed them because their tracers, their green tracers went straight up in the sky for a while. And, uh, and then I hit another one, I turned on the next machine gun,

because you had to knock them out first, which is what, and everybody, they shot my boots out

from under me, you know. So, I, uh, I was knocked down in my A gun at the time, uh, he, he was from Indiana.

“He ran out there, grabbed my boots and dragged me behind the graveyard. Well, that's how,”

you know, another heroic thing, you know, because it was crazy. It was, there was so much lead flying. And, uh, and then we started taking M79 rounds, blooper rounds, and we know they're not a Marines. They had killed some Marines and took their bloopers, you know. But they were firing out us from the right flank. Well, anyway, they, he, he, he pulls me in drags me, we get back up back to the tree line. And, uh, but because everybody's tried to shoot me, most of the squad

was able to get out. And, uh, so this went on though, this, this kept going on. So it went on all night, where this fight is going on all night. And, uh, they, they start calling in their orders down, and we can see the mortar flashes. But the, the Lieutenant moves the whole company around to the left flank. And we're behind rice paddy dunks. And we see the muscle flashes of mortar rounds. Just, you know, I, and I, I can see the flashes and I can see the guy saying, see the NVA soldiers

dropping into mortars from the flash. You can see him standing. And, uh, they're back there in the trees behind us. This, this, there was an old hooch that back there that we had originally blown up. That's where I, I killed one machine gun team. Anyway, uh, they, uh, he wouldn't let me open fire on these guys. Do we were trying to not let him know where we were? Because they were pinpointing our old position with mortars just blowing the crap out of it. So the Lieutenant was holding our fire

until we got, uh, some artillery called in or, or I don't know what his plans were. But the rain, the monsoon rain got so heavy that, uh, we, we're, we're literally, you could drown behind these

“rice paddies that the big dikes were down in the mud, but the water was filling up. That's how much rain”

came in. And so we had finally, in the middle of this mess, we see a guy running out of the graveyard

towards us. Not where our old position was, but towards us. And I start to kill it. I mean, I'm, I'm going to blow him away. And I see a flash of a mortar going off and I see his helmet to an American helmet. We held out of the scream, oh, you're fire on your fire. Nobody shoots him. And I, and he stands on his, oh, you're really, and I ran out of tackled even dragged him back. It was Pat McRerry. The one, yeah, the one who got the purple heart license said the hard way.

Anyway, it was Pat McRerry. And, uh, he had stayed out there with, uh, sunny. The one that I thought was for sure dead. So he comes in and he goes, uh, sunny still out there, sunny still out there. And, uh, so Gunny Mac, he comes out because, all right, you got to take us back to him. We're going to go get him. So I went out with him. We crawled out in the graveyard to try to find sunny. And then, then everybody realizes, uh, on him stalks not here too. So we got two, at least two Marines still

out there. So and, and Corpley Hutson went out with us too. So we're crawling back into this mess. And we couldn't find, we couldn't find him. He, he, he wasn't where he'd been left. And, uh, because, uh, Pat knew exactly where he left him. I mean, you know, he knew exactly where, pretty much where he was. Wouldn't there anymore? Well, we didn't know it at the time, but the uh, group machine gunners came out and dragged him back, dragged his body back up in front

of their gun. And so that they were waiting for us to come and get him. And, uh, so they, and he said,

telecom, and we sweep through though. Fixed bayonets. It's just, you know, and I got no bayonets

“on that 60 bayonets. So we sweep across sweep bayonets fixed and they've, they've deity mowed.”

So we, we, uh, but we ended up running into them again later. But, uh, they, uh, we find, we find Sunny. And I assume he's dead. And we rolling over. And his, his eyes are swollen, shut, you know, like big, like it looks like a a raccoon. And, uh, his eyes suddenly just pop open. And he goes, "Oh, I God, you guys won't believe what happened to me last night." And he starts telling us a crazy tale. And, and he, the, the goose had come out and, and they came down

out and with, with, uh, like a cable. And he thought they were just going to kill it. They were

going to finish him off. And they cut off his web gear, cut off all of his gear, and took it,

and then they dragged him up and thrown the gun and left him. And he said, "Hi, almost drowned." He said, "I was, I was doing everything not to drown." Because the water was rising. It was so much rain. And, uh, he lived. That guy lived. He went on to become a Virginia State Senator. Chan went to see him. He went, actually went to see the guy and, uh, Virginia still lives here. Uh, not that, not that many, maybe a couple of years back. So, so Chan went to see him. And he's

still alive and well. And, uh, he lived through that night. But here's a guy with all these bullet holes who lives. And, not very far away. He was on the stock. He didn't have, we couldn't find a wound on him. Now, later, uh, later years later, they told me they did, they found a little shrapnel hole. But, uh, they said that didn't kill him, you know. But, he, at the time, the, the, the, the corpsman and Chan, who's way more in a corpsman. He was also handy for that stuff. He was like a doctor.

Uh, they said that, yeah, they, he died of heart failure. He, he, he literally died of heart failure. Damn. Didn't have to be out there. Could have gone home. Shit. Wow.

Yeah. Tell the night. Yeah.

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“What was your favorite Bible verse while you're over there? Did you have one?”

Yeah. Well, I'm afraid it's changed over the years for this reason. My Bible verse now is Psalm 121. I lift up my eyes to the mountains from where comes my help. My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. And I know the whole verse, but that's the part that is a big deal to me. That's a huge deal to me. I wrote to me 14 years to write about it because I didn't know what God wanted me to do with this, but it was a miracle. The story behind it is, you know, I mean,

some people would want to put me in a funny farm and a big Christians will hear it and go, yeah, that sounds like God, you know, but it was, well, I should tell you, can I tell you about it? Or should I? I was writing a book called Gunner's Glory, this one. And it's about Machine Gunners,

And I got some of the men I ran into, which is just amazing. And one, it started off I ran into a

guy named Ted Elliston and there was a picture of Ted in this thing. Ted died a few years back, but Ted, Ted was, he, there's a picture of him carrying an old water cold 30 on horseback.

“That's what an old soldier was. He was in the fifth Marines. He was a Nicaragua era.”

They knew that they knew the war was going to start. He, he, he hits Guadalcanal, his whole story is amazing. But through Ted and Ted ran out of ammo on Guadalcanal, ran out of everything, and it had nothing, a jab came out of the bush, and it was him and a jab soldier, he had nothing, but a hunting knife. He didn't even have a cable or his dad had given a hunting knife. And he had he had to kill this jab without hunting knife. He still slept with that hunting knife by his bed.

And I still sleep with a cable and still to this day, to this day. It's one by my bed. It's one on my desk. And I, and a, and a 45. So I still, yeah, I still do. But, you know, when this crap happens

“in the middle of the night, you just, I don't sleep good without it, you know. When I take trips”

like this and you can't bring a weapon on the plane and stuff, I don't like that. I know, I'm still, yeah, I bet you do. And I, I mean, I'm old, but I could still surprise some people with handy hand combat and, you know, I'm not dead yet, but yeah, I don't, I don't like not being able to go to sleep with something beside me. Especially now, I don't hear good. Somebody can sneak up on you. And this, this kind of stuff, you know, I mean, you don't get over it. Yeah, I'll be

that way. And neither did Ted was 84. He slept with his, his, his cable and, uh, and it was all because of this moment on Guadalcanal, where it was the no grenades, no pistol ammo, no machine gun

ammo, nothing left. Yeah, an amazing man. And yeah, I got to tell you how I met him, but him

leading me to another guy. I met him at Hasselm's bookstores where I had my book signings for all my books. He used to be the oldest bookstores in Southeast in St. P. Florida and fabulous old bookstores. And they, the guys ran it, uh, told me one time, they knew I was starting this book. And I,

“and they said, you know, Johnny, you need to meet Ted, you need to meet Ted. And I said,”

who's Ted? He says, Ted, machine gunner, Guadalcanal, fifth marines, says, you need to meet Ted. And so I said, I got to meet him. Let's do it. And so they, they contact they said, yeah, he'll, he'll, he'll meet with you. And they gave me his address. And they said, look, when you meet him, you're going to notice his right hand is a real mess. You know, 84-year-old skin minds get like that, but you, you, you'll notice his, his hand is kind of purple and beat

up. And he, he said, ask him to tell you the story behind that. And I'm going, oh, I think I'm liking this guy already. And they said, oh, no, we got to tell you, he saw a girl. He thought he thought this guy was, uh, roughing up a girl on central avenue in this kind of CD part of central avenue. And he, and Ted was walking down the street, he's coming to Haslam's bookstore. And, uh, he thought this guy was, uh, being un-juntilmanly to this, uh, lady. And, uh, he did, he kissed the guy

Mr. Slapter or something. I don't know what he did. But Ted, uh, goes up to him and says something to him, the guy mouth off. Ted just, boom, knocked him out, lady mouth in the middle of central avenue. How cold. Ted had been a boxer and a fighter. Uh, and he was still a big guy 84, but, you know, still a great big guy. You wouldn't want to get hit by him. And this guy found that out. He's dropped a dude at 84. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. Yeah. No, I'm telling you, these, these old marines,

these old china hands and some of these crazy guys from Korean. I got some stories that you wouldn't believe some of these guys. I mean, they're absolute nut cases. I just love them. Got to research at Francis Hugh Colleen. As Irish as the day is born, played the bagpipes in the face of the

Chinese, the first Chinese him and wave assault at Sue Dogney. They told him, he was ordered to

And he, but he had to write his story to me. If you read these letters from this old Irishman,

you're cry laughing. It's just so beautiful. He's one of my books too. Yeah. But he's in, uh, no better way to die. I put a lot of stuff about him. But anyway, in this one, I, uh, Ted, tells me about, yeah, you know, Mitch Page was, uh, he was in seven thverns, but he, you know, he was, he was, he was at Canal 2 and I'm going, it's a page. Guadal, uh, Bell of honor and he goes, yeah, I think he did. Yeah, I didn't got Bell of honor. You know, and he was just another guy to him.

“And he, uh, because, yeah, you know, uh, you need to talk to Mitch. So anyway, I got, I get Ted's story.”

I get a hold of Mitchel Page. The short version is this, I see you got a GI Joe doll up there. Mitchel Page is the Marine that Hasbro Toys made the GI Joe doll in an honor of, because what he did on Guadal Canal and what he did on Guadal Canal is a little crazy. It, there was one, one big hit where, uh, they caught Japanese barges unloading troops. And, uh, the japs didn't think that the marines would leave, uh, the ridge, Edson's ridge on Guadal Canal.

They thought they'd stay there and hunker down and try to protect the airfield. And the marines, some, some crazy marines said, no, let's go get, let's go out and find them in the juggle. They went out and they saw them, uh, offloading, off barges, getting into position. I mean, uh, uh, alignment and marching down the beach where they were going to attack, you know,

“the Edson's ridge eventually. And Ted, they, they say he could have had, there could have been”

600 japs killed in, in this shoot out, because they had them, totally in the open. And the marines had dug it on the beach. They were coming down the beach, they stayed dug it on the beach with water called thirties and the mahoni gun, which, uh, while these old guys were gunsmiths, Sean Nick, they rigged up a 30 caliber water called to fire, they said, now there's this from them, they said somewhere between 900 and 1200 rounds about it. Whoa, different springs, they, you know,

they were gunsmiths. They really, they had these old marines were, that was their life. They, they, you know, you know, they, you know, they were, they were real, real tough guys. Well, they, this guy named mahoni had, had done all this work on these guns before the jaffspomper harbor. And they knew it was coming. And, uh, he, he had them prepared well, these, these were mahoni guns. So, that mahoni gun place is significant in this whole miracle that I was leading up to. But,

so I interviewed a missile page. And I, uh, more than once, but my final interview with him, he was on his deathbed. His wife, Marilyn, wouldn't, uh, she wouldn't let anybody talk to him, because he was, he was, he was going down. He was, he was dying and everybody knew it. And, uh, and, uh, she let me, she, uh, you know, because I was, I was, I was a marine gunner, she knew I was, I was writing a story about him. And, uh, so I, uh, she let me interview him. Well,

on his deathbed, he told me the story. Now, he had told it to the Gideons,

years before, and Gideons actually put on a little pamphlet about it, but I never heard about it.

But, uh, Edson's Ridge was a ridge that defended the airfield, Henderson, Henderson Field. If we lost Guadalcanal, they say Australia would have fallen.

“Guadalcanal was that important at that point in the war. And a lot of people think,”

you know, America was dominating war and nothing, we further from the truth at that point. You know, we, we were a major trouble, uh, midway, you know, and done a lot, but we never won a ground battle against these guys. And they were building this, this, they built this Henderson Field and, uh, on Guadalcanal and they were going to be able to bomb Australia and it was for taking Australia. And they were going to, they would have taken Australia. We didn't have

enough to stop them at that time. And, uh, and it, because they were already in, uh, the Little Islands moving up to Australia. So the Marines had to hold Guadalcanal. It was really life and death. That I've read old experts that said they, that they think the Japs could have made it all the way to a past California, maybe as far as Chicago. I've actually heard, led this stuff. Yeah,

and old history accounts. Have we not stopped them at Guadalcanal? So it was critical. And,

unless you study history, you know, it's just another battle, but it was fricking critical. And, so all that was keeping the Japs off Henderson Field was this one, this ridge line. And,

Deep, thick jungle. The Japs were, you know, tremendous jungle fighters. And they,

they were coming out of the, coming out of the jungle and hitting Edson's ridge. And at one point, in a mass attack, they, they had almost swamped the ridge. The Marines had run out of ammo. They were, they were just getting clobbered. And we couldn't get any more, the, the, the Japs Navy had sunk a bunch of the U.S. Navy out there. As something else, a lot of people don't study. It don't realize we lost a bunch of naval ships. And our Navy couldn't help us on Guadalcanal,

“because they, they had a lot of them got sunk. It's a big, big battle. I think it was Savile Islander,”

something like that. Anyway, some big, gun, I mean, naval battles out there. We're, the Navy took some huge losses, a lot of them then. Maybe more men died there than only Guadalcanal. I don't even know, but, but it, so at that point, we were going to lose Guadalcanal. At, at one point, a tipping point in this battle for the ridge, the Marines had the Mahoni guns. And even the Japs could tell by the fire, the rate of fire, you could tell by the sound of it. That wasn't a normal water, water cool,

30, that thing, you know, it's always, yeah, it would be like, well, it was like the first time I

heard, puffed the magic dragon. When he fired those mini guns, and it wasn't a machine gun sound, it was that, or, you know, well, I don't, I'm imagining it, it must have sounded, you know,

“somewhat similar, because it didn't sound like, so the Japanese knew these guns were bad news,”

and they were on the receiving end of it. And, but at one point, every single Marine machine gun or had been killed or wounded and knocked out, all the, all the guns, all the machine guns were out of action. There was one machine gun down at one end of the ridge that could cover the whole ridge. If the Japanese got to that gun before Mitchell Page got to that gun, they could turn that Mahoney gun on the ridge. They would control the ridge, they would have won the battle, go out of canal.

It, this is what he told me, other guys have told me that, I trust him. So, at that point, Mitchell Page is in a race to get to that Mahoney gun. He sees it, a Japanese soldier sees it. The jump has a Nambu, 30 round clip, that Nambu machine gun. It's got a 30 round clip, banana clip.

The japs carrying it trying to race to that Mahoney machine gun, because Mitch gets their first

kicks the dead Marines off the, I'll the way and off the gun, because they were draped all over the gun. Guns still in action had been blown up or anything. He gets behind the gun. He leans forward to chamber around. And, you know, the old 30s, he had to put some weight in that. And, he leans, going to lean forward to chamber around and open fire on this jab before he, between him and the jab. The Japanese soldier drops to the ground, point bank range. This is what Mitch says,

point blank range. You know, 10, 20 yards. I mean, point blank range drops to the ground, opens up with his Nambu. Mitch, this is what he told me on his deathbed. I absolutely believe him.

“Now, I really believe him. Now that God stood something similar to me,”

as he goes to lean forward and chamber around, he said, I was frozen in place. He said, I could not move, front, back sideways. He said, I couldn't do anything and he said, but Johnny, I felt at total peace. I wasn't scared. I knew this guy was going to put 30 rounds through my temple. I wasn't scared. I couldn't do anything about it. And, for some reason, I had absolute peace. It was not, it was like a tractor beam. You know, like a star wars guy, he couldn't do anything.

And he said, the jab opens fire. He got burned from here down to here with 30 rounds. Going under his chin and all down here, didn't get hit. Had he been able to lean forward and chamber around, he was dead. But as soon as he fired his last round, he said, I was released. He said, totally released. Boom, fell forward, chambered around, killed the jab soldier. The battle still going on, but not in this sector. Another part of the ridge, but this,

he turns the Mahoney gun now on the japs. They're in retreat now. They beat him back a little bit. Later, he had to then lead a bayonet charge to drive the last ones off into the jungle again. But he goes, and when the shooting is stopped, it's still dark. I mean, your flares are going up.

He says, got behind that bamboo and looked. He said, there's no way he could possibly miss me with 30 rounds.

“And he goes, God, how could this possibly happen? I mean, how could this possibly happen?”

And you had to freeze me. He's talking to God. Well, as he's doing this, he's pleading with God. He had his little finger had been almost severed in the bayonet fight.

So he's bleeding all over the place. So he notices it. He goes, gets his pack and tries to get his first aid kit out

to wrap up this hand. And he said, it says, I picked it up. My Bible just fell out. Yeah, he had a, like, I went, I don't know if it was getting in. I thought, I guess it was getting in. But he had a little Bible. He said, it fell out. And it fell open. And I'd been asking, God, how could this possibly happen? You know, tell me you how. And it falls open to a page. He said, there wasn't any wind, but the page is blew open to a certain page.

“And he said, he said, he said, one passage lights up. He said, it was like gold.”

And it would look bigger than all the other letters on the on the page. It was big and bright.

It showed so bright. He said, it scared the crap out of me because it, it was given away my position. So there's still, there's still japs out there. And this was like a light. And he reads it, Proverbs 35, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding and all your ways acknowledge him and he will lead your path. That was the verse. His mother sent him to war with that was that was her favorite verse.

Later. Yeah. But his favorite verse. Yeah. I know. So he said, I didn't even tell the other guys. He said, if I had told him this, they would have thought I was shell, I had shell shock because it

“wasn't combat fatigue. You know, was shell shock. He said, they would have thought I had shell shock.”

And, you know, they would have thought I was nuts. They wouldn't have believed it. So he said, I didn't even tell the guys. I didn't tell anybody to tell years later. He did tell the Gideon's this. And so his favorite verse, though, is also, it's Psalm 121. I lift my eyes to the mountains. From whence come with my help. My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. That was his favorite verse. And that part of this story, you have me flash forward.

Mitchell Page died soon after my interview with him and soon after he told me this all about this. And go forward about three years. Well, I was working on another book and I,

you know, I finished a book. I never looked at it again because if I do, I hate it and want to

rewrite it. So I don't even look at him again. And that book was put away. And I mean, I admired the heck out of Mitchell Page. Like I said, every time I see a GI Joe doll, that's Mitchell Page. He got some ribbon for that, too. GI Joe, he's a Marine, but that's, anyway. So he caught some crap over that. But anyway, so he years later, I, I was going through a rough ride. It was soon somewhere near when all this crap happened at the big red thing. And I was, you know,

I don't like to call. I don't like PTSD. I don't like the term. So I didn't mind when it said, I had combat fatigue. I don't know. Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm old. But I, I didn't mind that term. You can say that. Just PTSD thing. I don't like this lump, you know, rape cases and car wrecks and everybody, you know, into a PTSD file. I don't think it's the same. And I don't like it. So I, I didn't mind that, but PTSD. So I guess I was, you know, you know, they said I had

100%. And I guess I, I guess, I did. So I, I was going through a tough span. We have a Bible study at my house all the time. You know, I have a Tyquano, my school, and then Tyquano and Judeo school. And afterwards, certain days, you know, we'd have a Bible study class. And so we, we do it at my house. Everybody go into my house and we do it. And I, I was just having a rough time. I was, you know, and my pastor came on a, he, he came to the Bible study. And I, I talked to him,

and after everybody left, I told him the situation. I said, hey, you know, not sleeping good, you know, he's a lot of, remember and stuff. It, not forgiven myself for stuff. He said, I'm doing a

Phil, and Sue, England. He says, Johnny is changing, Phil, it's changing me and Sue's life.

“Cut, and everything off. And just spending time alone with the Lord. He said, you need to go”

spend time. When was the last time you spent time alone with the Lord? It's what he asked me. I said, not since I was a little kid, back in the mountains or West Virginia, I go up on a hill, you know, but I said, not since I was a little kid. And he goes, that's, that's what you need. She need to go spend time alone with the Lord. And I said, well, what does that mean to you? Well, I didn't really know either, because I, and I said, I turned to Nancy and I said, Nancy,

let's, let's go get a mountain cabin or something somewhere. And he goes, no, no, no, Johnny, not with Nancy. Just you, take your Bible, go spend time alone with the Lord, Noah, nobody else, not your family, not your kids, go spend time alone. And I said, gosh,

“you know, one of my senior students, and moved away, he was a, a, a type one, a master and he'd moved to”

North Carolina. He is a professor at Mon Tree College, brilliant guy, you know, really brilliant.

And a strong Christian. And he, I called Tony up and I said, Tony, here's what Phil told me,

I'd like to try it. Can you, can you, can you find me a cabin or something in the North Carolina, or I just, you know, go be alone, something out in the mountains, something out in the hills, because that's really weird. He, he tells me to, these, these people, he's a doctor, from Duke, and he, they own a, like, a little mountain getaway, and they asked Tony and Jane, his wife, to take care of it while they were, they were gone, and they'd rented out and stuff

once they wanted. And he says, you know, they're asking us to take care of this place. And that's

“unbelievable. You can go there. And I, I, well, how much is, you know, I don't have much money,”

and he said, no, no, it's free. We're taking care of it. They won't care a bit. So I said, I'm on my way. So I, I hop a plane, go to Asheville, take a ride out the Black Mountain, North Carolina, it sends me out to it. It's, it's a, it's a Mon Treat, North Carolina, right outside of Black Mountain. And, uh, so I rent this a little, I don't, I don't rent it. I stay in this cabin. I mean, it was pretty rugged. It was pretty rugged cabin. This was, I mean, there were spider webs, you know,

they have, like, keeping this place up a whole lot, but it was perfect. It's just what I needed. And, uh, but I have met out the woods alone since now. I'm really, and, um, I, once again, I didn't have my, I didn't have my 45. I didn't have a pistol. I didn't have a K-bar. And, uh, you know, out of the woods sounds, uh, so I, uh, it started, it started feeling a little antsy, and I, uh, called danty, and I just tell my daughter called, she's all freaking out my daughter, Bonnie K.

Well, uh, she calls and what are you doing Dad? I don't know if that's healthy for you. What are you doing out there? Uh, she's already come to be and said, it's, it's PTSD catching Dad, because I'm worried I'm catching it. I said, oh God, I hope not. So, she, she knows, she knows the story of her Dad. And, uh, but, but here I am, out of the mountains, called danty up in the, and I said, you know, I've been here at a night or two now, and I said, I keep hearing noises outside the cabin,

and I'm not, and I get anything done, you know, I'm not, I'm just uncomfortable.

I can't always watch it in my flanks, you know, I, uh, six. Nobody there, you know, I get,

I don't have a perimeter, I don't feel good out here, well, a perimeter, and, uh, so I, I said, so yeah, I, I, I set up some pungi pits, so I, I set up some pungi pits around this cabin, just, uh, just two my floors with, uh, nails, six piny nails, you know, sticking up, and, so they'll yelp, I'll know somebody's here, and, uh, you know, have some kind of defense ready, and, um, and it, it made me feel a little better. What I found out later, it was bears.

Bears were banging stuff around that cabin, and, and I didn't know, I mean, I don't know,

but, uh, but I'm still, finally, the third day, I'm out on the porch, having to cup a coffee,

doing my Bible steak, going to read my Bible, and feeling, okay, feeling better, you know, now I can really spend some time alone with the Lord and not be thinking about anything else

or something to a place, and now I'm going, oh God, so he's got saws, he's got hammers and saws,

and he's been, and I go, oh my God, I call up Nancy and I said, I can't believe it, this is a total

“failure, and she goes, "Johnny, just take a walk and cool off, just take a walk, you need to just take”

a walk." That's it, I'll take a walk. So I took off a walk from down the hill, from this cabin, through Montreet, up this mountain road, I don't know, it's a few miles, and I just kept walking until I came to a trail. It's a graveyard mountain, it's a hiking trail. Now this was back in 2004, I think, and it wasn't as build up then, it was really out there a little bit, and so anyway, this mountain trail, nobody's there, a storm's rolling in, there's all these warnings,

you know, bring cell phone, bring this, bring water, watch out for bears, et cetera, et cetera. Of course, I'm in shorts and a t-shirt, I just took off walking, and I didn't bring my cell phone, I'm just, I'm just going to hike, so I start hiking up this trail, and I went and went,

“I don't know, a couple thousand feet up, it's, I think it's like 4,800 feet to the top,”

and I'm, I'm just hiking. Well, I had knee surgery not long before that, I shouldn't be doing this, and, but I don't care, you know, at that point, I don't care, I'm just, I need to walk, I need to hike. I've reached a mountain stream, and there's a big rock out the middle, and I go on a jump over, and get on this big rock, the stream's going by me, you know, I mean, it was beautiful, it's perfect postcard, there's nobody out there, I mean, because the storm's, it's thundering,

like it's going to rain, and, you know, it looks terrible, and so nobody's there, but me, nobody, nobody's hiking that trail or anything like that, and I get on the rock and I say a prayer, and I ask the Lord, what am I doing here Father, you know, why would you have me

come out to a mountain and frickin' North Carolina, I've never been in my life?

I mean, what's the point? I'm not, I don't feel like I'm getting any better, I feel, you know, still can I auntie, I mean, I don't see any point to this, there's got to be a reason you'd send me out here, you know, and I'm talking to it, I'm talking to Lord, and then, you know, I start praying, and I, and I, it hits me, what's, what's God's favorite trait, it's humility, that's his favorite trait, he loved Moses, I know, I know you by name, he told Moses, when Moses wanted to see me,

he said, I know you by name, I will have, I will show mercy and compassion on you, and he will, I will let my goodness go before you, you know, because Moses, like a little kid, wanted to see you guy, he wanted to see him, and it's in Exodus 33, so anyway, but I'm, I'm on this rock, praying this, and I realized Moses was called the most humble man on earth, by God, about the best compliment any human being can get, and he used Moses when you say he had a

pretty big way, and so, so I said, humility, here I am, I'm hiking of 4,500 foot mountain, I just had knee surgery, a couple of weeks back, this is stupid, this isn't humble, you know,

“you'd be in a jerk, and say, I need to learn humility, that's what this is about, and I said,”

okay, Lord, I get it, you know, and I felt like, okay, I got it, all this, this whole trip to North Carolina, done it at, you know, by an airplane tickets, I couldn't afford, oh, it's here's the reason, and so I start back down that mountain, and I, I'd gone down 500 feet away from the big rock in the middle of the stream, and I don't know, maybe more, and it's downhill's harder than going uphill, you know, for if your knees kind of screwed up, and, you know, I'm having to take

these steps and land on the good foot, trying to take pressure off the knee, and I'm going down, and you're going to go over a tree branch, gives you a little step on the trail, you've been on it, and I, I, I, at one point, I, I go to step, and I, I was frozen, I could, I couldn't go anywhere.

Now, I've never, I've, I've told this in a church, but I've never, I've never even told

this in my church. I've, I've never talked about this, because I know what it sounds like, and, you know, and I wouldn't blame anybody for thinking this guy, he does have confidence, you know, he's a total fruit kick. I wouldn't blame anybody for that, that I'm hesitated, I've hesitated,

and I've never told anybody except, you know, my, for personal friends, and of course, I told

him right after, or when I'm told the Bible study and told him what happened in now, but I couldn't move. I was just, just like, there was no, no more step in, but I was sitting in a park. I mean, it wasn't uncomfortable. It was just, you know, just, just hanging, just, just kind of hanging, mid step on it. I mean, I wasn't going anywhere, front, back sideways, and I, I didn't even,

“how, I don't even know what I thought. People have asked me, what would you think of it?”

I don't think I was able to think. I just, I mean, I just frozen in time, I didn't know what, I had, I hadn't, my mind froze the wall with the rest of me, I guess, I don't know, I just, that just stood there, just hung there, mid step. Well, then I was released. How long? I don't know how long it was here. I mean, I have no idea, could have been, could have been two seconds, could have been 20 seconds. I don't even know, but I was released, and I'm full now,

now, running down hill, me, I fell down hill a little bit, took those steps and stopped, jumped around, thinking, first thought, something had to have helped me, something behind me, there's nothing there, there's nothing anywhere. It's, it's, it's dead silent, it's, I'm out in the woods alone, nobody, black clouds rolled in over, there's nobody out there, man, and I realized, this, this is God, this is, this is Jesus Christ here, man, I, so I fell to my knees,

I just fell to my knees, I said, what do you want from me, God? And I don't, I don't even know if I said that. I, I wrote it down, so I, I can show you sometime, but anyway, I just fell to my knees,

“and I, I think it was, what do you want from me, God in, in an audible voice, an audible voice.”

If it was inside my head, it sure didn't sound like it. It sounded like a voice talking to me. And, and it, it said, Johnny, get up. Johnny, I want you to walk a little further with me. If you got a Bible, I'll swear to it. I believe it. Yeah. And, um, I got up. I couldn't say anything. I mean, I was so overwhelmed. I think back at that moment, and I go, God, I wish I could have asked some, I wish I could have said, tell me how much you love me or something, God, you know, something.

Yeah, let me hear something good here. You know, I couldn't say, I just did, I said, yes, Lord, and I got up, and I started back up that mountain. I would have walked, I would have gone to Canada. I mean, I was just going to go until he stopped me, and I went back up that mountain. I reached that big rock in the middle of the storm, and made it over that jump to the other side, the trail kept on up. I kept going on up. I've taken my kids' errors. I'm taking my grandkids

to this same spot in about three weeks. We're going, we're going, I'm taking my son and my daughter

if never seen it either. My wife, we've been back two or three times since she could tell you

what her feelings about this. It was stuff. But anyway, I go keep going, and I mean, I'm not thinking. I'm just, I'm going to go until God stops me. I would have kept going until I fainted. But I finally, I come to this big boulder on the side of the trail. There's a big old boulder. Oh, you know, as big as the bottom half of that whole bar set there, a big, and somebody has put a big round plaque embedded in the boulder. Now, I've never been,

I've never been there in my life. I've never been in this place in my life. Never been to Black Mountain in my life. So, if you, you know, somebody's thinking, you knew it was there or something.

Never been as never been on this mountain. I've never been to Black Mountain with Carolina.

My life won't treat never. Here's this plaque, and the plaque says, I lift my eyes to the mountains. From where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.

“I knew. That's what he was leading me to. I didn't walk any further. I fell down and”

worshipped. Yeah. Pretty amazing. When this was over, I went back down off that mountain.

two things going on here. I really have gone over the edge, and I am crazy. But I've got

us, even if I am, I had to tell Nancy and the kids. So, I get back to that cabin, find my phone, call them up, tell them the whole thing. I don't know if she thought I should be. My husband's gone crazy. I don't know what she thought. Then I get my car in a drive and the town and through Black Mountain, through Mon Tree, through Black Mountain, and to where my buddy, Tony, whining lives, and he's on his front porch, and I come out and I'm telling him the whole stuff.

And I'm being, I'm not a motor now. Tony, my God, you won't believe I have to. You know, I start telling him all this. Well, a friend from our church in St. Petersburg had just happened

in on Tony, and was on the front porch with him. So now, his name is Gary Ripple, and he was,

he's the leader of music in our church. So now I'm telling these two guys who both went to my old church, I'm telling them what happened. And I, I don't know what they thought, but Tony told me, you look like Moses had seen the burning bush man. Your face was red. You were flushed beyond flush. He says, "Yeah, I could tell something really dramatic happened to you, whether it was that or not, whether I believed it or not." But he believed me. He's a close friend, so he would believe it.

A stranger would think, "You're out of your frickin' mind." And I don't even, like I said, I wouldn't blame him. I don't know if I believe a guy telling me this story. But anyway, so I go home. Now, I can't wait to get home and tell dancing to kids, and the Bible said he about this.

“But the more I think about him, I'm going, how am I going to tell him about this?”

Am I even supposed to share this? Is this supposed to be something just between me and God? I don't, you know, I've got all these questions. Did it really happen? Am I really crazy? Well, you know, you ask, you don't know. And so I said, "God, how do I know this really happened?" And I'm asking God, Dad, I'm talking to it. As soon as I get home, I'm telling Nancy the story all over again. I mean, I'm just just getting out of the car from the airport, right? And I'm already telling

her the whole story again. I've told her twice on the phone. And I'm telling her again. And she's patiently listening to me. My wife is very flatlined, which is probably what I need. But I'm telling her the whole thing again and I'll take it. Nancy, where's the reaction, man? You got to see reaction here. And so she's going, I have a listening, I have a listening. And so she's listening, but she's also going to the mailbox. And I'm thinking, and I yell at her, "What are you going to the mailbox

“for at a time like this?" I'm telling you the most important moment of my whole freaking life”

on planet Earth. And I'm mad at her now. What do you know? And she pulls mail out of the mailbox and she pulls out the sand. She's looking at the mail. And we got this pamphlet. Now, I've given to this missionary journey, missionary ventures, missionary ventures. I've given money to this group over the years. You know, they helped missionaries. And I've tried to support them over the years,

but they've never, ever sent me anything. It's one of the reasons I supported them. And I'll send

out a bunch of mailings and crap. You know, never gotten anything from these guys. Today, in my mailbox, as I'm telling Nancy for the third time and just got home, here's a thing from missionary ventures. Nancy goes, "Oh, we've ever got anything from them before." She opens it up and on the first page, it says, "My wife, Nancy, loves to shop." And she goes, "Johnny, this is weird." And there's Psalm 121. No way. It gets weirder. So now we have the Bible study. I tell the guys in the Bible

study this whole miracle. You know, trying to, you know, getting ready for anyone who doesn't believe it, think you know, no one, I'm going to sound crazy. And already wondering if I'm supposed to say anything about it. And so, while I'm telling them the whole story, Chris Pegas, one of Tykwondo instructors and other Tykwondo masters, been with me for many years. His dad was wounded in the head, or he would jima. And one of my books is based on his dad. So he is listening. He's just real studious guy.

And he's, he's listening this whole story and he goes, "Johnny, if you've got a copy of your last

“book here, you know, the gunner's glory book," and I said, "Yeah, yeah, I think I got one of the”

bedroom, go." And he goes and gets it, you know. And I still continuing the story with the guys, and he said, "It's opening." So search and he goes, "I knew it." He says, "That Bible verse was in your last

three or four years ago. I, you know, I don't know. And he goes, "Yeah, it's in your book.

“It was Mitchell Page's favorite Bible verse." And I said, "Oh my God." I mean, and I'm thinking,”

"God, is that the connection?" Because I'm thinking back, because I hadn't thought about Mitchell Page since he died. I mean, I, you know, you don't think about those things. I had, I hadn't thought about the fact that God froze him on Guadalcanal, like he did, and just turning point of the war, you know, and I hadn't thought about any of that, and ever since I wrote it. And here I am, here I am, going, "Oh my God, is there a connection?"

And then the guys start talking. And a few seconds later, Chris is going through the book, he goes, "Johnny, here it is again." Mitchell Page prayed that verse when they were being shilled by the Japanese ships, and he thought they were going to die, and they got blown up, but not killed. He said, "He and that other guy prayed Psalm 121." Look, it's on page 66. Just mean the book, and I'm going, "Oh no." And he says clearly, Mitch says clearly,

"This was my favorite Bible verse, and I depended on this verse." The next day, now I've been asking God to confirm this, so I'm not, tell me I'm not crazy God. And the next day, I get a book in the mail. And some guy, I don't know where he's somewhere out west, he'd written a book, and it was a huge fan of my, my books. And he, he was asked comedian and dorses book, right, a little blurb, you know, on there, and, you know, I mean, I was flattered,

why anybody want a blurb from Johnny Clark, you could go find somebody famous or something, you know, but he did, and he sent me this book, and he wrote a nice letter, asked me to do it.

And so, you know, I didn't even look at it at first, you know, I was still caught up in this miracle,

and what did make of it all. And then Nancy sits up there and you know, I don't even even look at it, nice, yeah, yeah, I got it, I better look at it. And now you, you know, I look at it,

“and it was, it was, it was a World War II, it was about it, it was about World War II, that's all I remember.”

And so I opened the first page, the first page, some one 21. Nancy can confirm it, but the first page, then I went to church that Sunday. What's the song we sing? We sing the song based on song 121. I, I got the hint, you know, I'm not the quickest guy out there, but if you hit me enough times, I can finally get it. And I finally, I got the hint, man, and God was telling me,

you might be crazy, but you're crazy on this. You, you, uh, this really happened. And uh, this is the first time in my life I've ever told anybody that story. And I'm going to tell you

right now, I fastened and prayed about saying this story in front of a million people or whatever,

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yeah, this was two, three, two or three years ago. And I can't say it was atheist or anything like that.

“But I just, I paid zero attention to Paris. Done. And this is like when all the, there's a lot of,”

well, there's always a lot of shit on the world. But the gender stuff with kids,

was really fucking with my head, really bad. And, um, in a lot of the child, predator shit. Oh, it's an exploitation. And, um, and stuff that had gone on in Afghanistan. It was, there was a lot of shit that was going on that really, it was right after the withdrawal, the Afghanis sandwich roll. Totally get it, Sean. And, um, so it was a pretty dark spot. Yeah. And, um, one on a vacation with my wife, two Sedona. And, um, but I'm pretty emotionless of the

than anger. You know, I don't, I don't show much happiness. I don't show much sadness. You'll know

when I'm really fucking pissed off, but that's about it. And, um, for whatever reason I, I had a

“complete breakdown on the flight there. But there's just fucking crying and I didn't know why I was crying.”

Yeah. You know, I'm just like the world is a fucking shit place. I hate this place. I don't even know. I wasn't saying I was suicidal, but I'm saying I don't even want to fucking be in this world. I don't feel like I'm a long in this world. Yeah. I don't like eight year olds getting their junk chopped off and changed in sexes, like I don't like all these pedophiles and that's satanic to tell itself. It's like everywhere I looked. I'm like, it's just darkness. Well,

especially doing what you do. You're hearing a lot at dark crap and you're hearing a lot of

satanic crap. Yeah. And you're under attack because you're honoring God. I guarantee you're under satanic attack. I'm aware now. I wasn't at the time, but I'm aware now. And, um, so we go this whole week. It's a shit vacation. It's just fucking sucks. My best friend, sir, with his wife's supposed to be having a great time. I had met this other seal and if I don't have a lot of friends, I had met this other seal here in Franklin who is a very successful

businessman and and our relationship was developing quickly because he didn't need anything for me. And I didn't need anything from him and we could just be with each other and his friendship. Yeah. And that doesn't come around often. You know, seems like the older you get the harder it is to find. And, um, and I don't relate with very many people that haven't been to combat or don't run a business or, you know, to be in the, I just don't have a lot in common with a lot of people

because at least it seemed like that at the time. So he had just died. And, um, so we go through this week and just more shifts happening, more stuff, you know, I'm seeing and smoking weed. Tell him the, the last thing I saw was I saw this country music artist that came out

“who I respected. I thought was a person of God and turns out she's like, well, I think that,”

drag queen should be able to shake the dick and little kids. And I'm like, fuck you. Like, I did not want to see that. And, um, totally it just threw me off course. And then which I was already off course. So I tell my wife I'm like, we got to go on a fucking, we have to go on a hike. So I down and join as fast as I can. We go on this hike. This is embarrassing, but I was out there searching for something. I had heard that Sedona

has all this ex-energy vortexes. Yeah. And yes. Yeah, whatever, right? Like, we're, whatever. And I was into crystals. I was looking at all kinds of shit. Just trying to find some fucking peace. Yeah. And looking at all the wrong places, right? So we pipe this fucking stupid crystal. Those people have this mountain. And I'm like, we're going to feel something. We're going to take this fucking crystal up to this energy vortex. I'm going to feel something. We get up there.

I don't feel shit. Yeah. And I might fuck this stupid crystal and this dumb vortex. And I'm like, let's just go home. You know, the pot did not help at all. I'm where I can down this fucking mountain. And like, I'm starting to have like this internal

all these kids that are getting mutilated. Everybody seems to be for this shit, except for me.

What? What? Maybe I'm the fucked up one. Maybe you're the fucked up one. Sean, maybe eight yearals should be able to change sex. And you know, have their parents fucking throw the dress on the

“kid. Oh, all this shit. And I'm like, what are you worried about all these fucking pedophiles?”

Maybe like, maybe you're the one that's fucked up, Sean? Maybe maybe you shouldn't be. No, I'm scared enough. Of course you know now that's the whole thing. I know. This like I said, this is an internal battle. Yeah. Because I could not make sense of anything that I was seeing. Nothing outside of my family unit made any fucking sense to me at all. Yeah. How can like, how can politicians not be going after pedophiles? How can this be? How is this even fucking real? And so I started,

like, my mind started, I'm like, I said, I'm having this internal battle like, maybe Sean, you're the fucked up one. You shouldn't be standing up for kids. You shouldn't be worried about fucking China. You shouldn't be worried about people dressed in dreadmen and bikinis and whatever they're wearing like shaken their dick in front of your two-year-olds face. That's totally

“normal, Sean. Yeah. But what do you worried about? Everybody, every mainstream media outlet,”

every fucking magazine, every movie, every fucking Hollywood thing. Like it's just all like this is the way. Yeah. And I felt like I felt like I was the only one that was like, saying anything about this shit. You know, especially when I saw the fucking country music artist, I was like, whoa, like, you're over here, spouting Bible quotes and all this other shit, essentially, you know, fuck you. And, and, and disappointed in a dude, like, what the fuck? Yeah.

Of course, then they got like some huge fucking TV show, of course. They probably told her to say it, and they're like, hey, say this. And then we'll award you. Yeah. And she's a sure shit. She's like fucking huge and TV again. I know, you know, I think I even know who you're talking about. Yeah, who cares? I got no matter. I didn't fucking matter. I didn't fucking matter, I didn't even fucking matter. Who it is? Because it's a nobody. Yeah. It's a fucking lying piece of shit. Anyways.

So I'm coming down this mountain. I'm having this internal battle and it felt like they're towards the end of the hike when we got back to the resort. I'm like, it felt like it was a battle

“for my soul. Really, I swear, God, that's how it felt like. I hear you. Now walk through this”

gate. And you know, we have similar backgrounds. You, you don't go to bed without a K bar on a 45 and I'm sure you're very aware. You probably don't like sitting with your back to the door. You don't mean, I'm the same way. I pay attention to security and shit like that. And because of the show a lot of the guys at this gate, these arm guards, they all listen to my show. Yeah. And they're all like, you know, and so I'd interact with them. And we'd been there all weeks.

And like I said, I pay attention. I see these, I recognize them all. You know what I'm coming through the gate? What's up, Johnny? How are you doing? You know, last night we're there walking through the gate. There's this old man being a non-bud Air Force guy. I don't hold it

against him. And he starts trying to talk to me. And I'm like, man, I've never seen this guy before.

And I'm not in the mood to talk. I sure shit don't want to talk about my fucking podcast or anything like that. And so I'm nice and polite, but I'm giving body language like that. I just don't want to talk right now. So, you know, I refuse to like square up to him and actually have a conversation. So I go nice to meet you, you know, walking away, looking at him over my shoulder. Of course, my wife stops, talks to him and I'm like, fuck. So I turn around and I square up to him and he

looks at me and he read my mind from front to back. I had not vocalized any of this shit, nothing. And he goes, he's like, oh, these kids you're worried about. He's like, that's not your battle, man. That was not your battle. And all this shit you're worried about with China. And that

that's not your battle either. And all this stuff, you know, and I after like, wow, after the first

thing, you know, it was after he said all this stuff that's going on with kids right now is not your battle. Wow. And then my mind went blank. I just caught like little glimpses because I was like, how the fuck does this guy know? I'm talking to like, what is happening? This he's inside my fucking head right now. And it's scared this shit out of me. And whatever we wrap up, he's quit talking the silly,

freaking out. I'm like, I would try the fuck are you in my head and how are you in my head?

“And we're walking, so I'm walking away and I look at my wife and I said, holy shit, I think that's”

fucking God. Like, talking to me. And she looked at me and she goes, yeah, no shit, Sean. She's like,

God's always been around you. You just don't make time to let him in. And I was like,

beautiful. What's going on? So keep keeps getting weird just like here. I know. And I remember and so of it. But I forgot. Oh, my best friend in the world was this guy gave a cardee. And he was a seal. We contracted together at CIA. We did a lot of shit down in Columbia off, you know, not working. There were a lot of doing a lot of debauchers shipped down there. Anyways, Gabe has come to addiction here to you. He was had some really bad addictions when he

“left the agency. And I talked him into leaving. And I wanted to help him. I mean, I was all fucked up too.”

Anyways, whatever, I was helping him get over his addiction. He didn't wind up making it.

But Gabe was always known as a protector. He's a hockey player and a force around the hockey team.

Showed up to the seal teams. Bad as mother fucker and every one of his platoons, everybody knew. If you're in trouble, Gabe's going to fucking be there to bail you out one way or another. You know, went to the agency reputation followed him there. Everybody knew it. And anyways, we get to this resort all week. There's this guy identical, like identical, same jawline, same build, Gabe was jacked, this guy's jacked, like, same brow, everything, like coulda been,

“like not identical, but coulda been as identical to him. And I'm like the first thing when we”

did when we saw when we roll up to the resort, I'm like, that guy looks like fucking Gabe. He even fucking walks like Gabe. And I'm in a vulnerable spot everywhere we go throughout this week. This fucking guy is around. We go out and town, the stew's out and town. We go on a hike. He's coming back from a hike. We're at the pool. He's at the fucking pool. And in Katie and I both are like this shit's weird, you know, and my buddy Dan had just died. Some Katie's like, that's Gabe.

He's here. You're in a weird spot. You're in a vulnerable spot right now. She's been telling me this shit a week and like, yeah, whatever. So we go from the gate, it's like maybe a one-minute walk to the bungalow we're staying in, which is like a duplex. And we go in to open our door, unlock the door, and this fucking guy winds up being the, he's staying across the way from us. And I'm like, what the fuck, that fucking guy is in the, he's in the other half of the building. Like there's only

two rooms here. What's the, what's the coincidence of that? Yeah, plus him being on everywhere we're at. Katie looks at me again and she's like, I fucking told you. She doesn't cost. I told you. We get in the room. I have another meltdown. I'm like, what, what's happening? What the fuck is going on? You know, I thought, like, I thought this God is like, what is what is fucking, what's going on? You know, and I'm, I'm, I'm getting emotional. Again, I might have said

I don't really show much emotion. And so we talk it out and she's like, how can you keep saying you can't believe it? It's happening right in front of him. Like, I can't believe it. This is happening. She's like, what do you mean you can't believe it? It's right in front of your face, Sean. Yeah. My phone dings in the middle of this. And so we wrap up the conversation. I go, look at my phone to see what texted me. And it's Dan Sororo's daughter who doesn't, who's my friend that just died,

who doesn't have my number must dug it out over, over dad's phone. And I could read it to you,

but I'll summarize it. It basically says, hey, Sean, I walked into my dad's gunroom for the first

time since he passed and the whole room came alive. And he, he grabbed me and said that I should

loves you just the way that you are. And I was like, man, what is happening? Yeah, three things.

“Then I get home. And I'm all fine, obviously like, okay, holy shit. Like,”

God is real. I've been looking for answers in all the wrong places. So I call this guy up, who's been a huge inspiration and a bit of a mentor, my spiritual journey, his name's Eddie Penny. And he came on and gave, he's a, he's a seal to development group guy and shared his testimony

with me on the show. And I was, it was so powerful. I said, this has to, this has to be like,

we're releasing this on Christmas ever since that day, probably for a year, every single person that has come on my show has brought up their faith and Jesus Christ. Just like you did, like that, well, I didn't know that was going to happen that you were going to bring this up. And

“Eddie, like, full, one of the most powerful podcasts that I've ever done, if it would be most”

powerful one, it's good. It, it obviously made a very serious impression on me. I ended fun when God starts working in your life. And yeah, I mean, it's just, it's just fun to go. He's real.

So I call him up. And I'm talking to him like, at midnight. Like, I start a campfire at my house.

And I'm like, Eddie, I got to talk to you about some shit. And he's like, what is, you know, it's not talking to him. Tell him what I just told you. And he goes, Sean, he goes, a lot of people have been praying for this to happen. And that freaked me out. I'm like, what do you mean people are praying that like, what? Like, this sounds like conversations that are happening behind my back. You guys have plans for me that I don't know about. And he's like, I just want you to know that.

And um, then he starts talking to me about guardian angels and shit like that. I'm like, all right, spiritual warfare and all these things. I'm super tuned into it. So then I go to work the next day. And after the campfire, remember midnight, I have a meeting at noon with my IT guy who's like a super developed Catholic. And I grew up Catholic, but I don't like, I said, I'm at this, at this point in time. I'm I'm pretty sure if I step foot in church. I'm

“probably going to just send a break. But uh, so I think we're going to talk about IT shit. And he”

starts telling me, he doesn't even know anything yet. And he starts telling me about guardian angels for whatever reason. Wow. And how you, you know, they knew you before you were ever even born and they're with you and they're assigned to you and don't, don't, don't. And that meeting happened at noon. So then I take a late lunch drive back home. I want to have lunch with my wife and kid. And um, on the way back to work, I tell Katie about all this shit driving back to work.

And my odometer, like the mileage left to empty, 444 miles, look at the clock, it's 444 in the afternoon, four hours and 44 minutes after my meeting with guardian, uh, my meeting with Adam, my, my old IT guy about guardian angels. Well, I just talked to anybody about guardian angels. I call up, uh, one of my guys here. And I say, just so I don't forget I said, hey, Google the meeting of 444. Come on my way back. Get back to the office. He's standing there. He opens up

Google. Doesn't have any idea what I'm talking about. You Google is shed yourself. 444 is means your guardian angels want you to know that they're watching out for you. Oh, well, I want to high five in the hell. So yeah, no, God, come on. Come on. It's just wonderful. And it's fun to know his real, you know, he's real. I mean, he's invested in you. And he knows you by name. That that one's all he, it's all through the Bible. I, you know, he, he knows every

hair on your head. He knows your name. He knows the day, the second you're going to die and you're

the day in the second you were born. So, you know, worrying about, I've had so many close calls.

I had a Roman candle, didn't know it. Because I thought I was going slow. That was going to die. And, uh, and it opened by itself. It just suddenly before I hit the

“groundward. And I shot up, it saved again. I, you remember that that character, uh, in the old”

cartoons, uh, just don't be out of it. Where they shoot bullet holes all around the guy's head. Well, I mean, I should be dead so many times. I, I, I'd guarding angels are real. I'm convinced of it. But we walked, I walked into an ambush. And we got, they, they opened up machine guns, opened up one of us. And I went to hit the dirt. But it was pitch black, we're out in a jungle. You know, I don't know where I am. And I hit a bank and embankment. And I just hit this embankment, not, knock my

helmet off. And I'm just up against the embankment. And everybody shooting at me. And my, and I had, I got burned from all the phosphorescent tips on the trace around. It burned me. It burned, it burned all the out my neck. It went down to my shirt. It burned all around my burned my face. My nose. Wow,

there we got a scratch. I never got, I didn't get a scratch. I mean, I've, I just, I have countless

examples of that exact same thing. I mean, that door hinge that there's a friend door hinge right there. That's from a guy that was a Delta named Kyle Morgan. And he, he, he, he was in Molly, Africa, huge terrorist attack at the Radisson blue. This was supposed to be like a booze cruise for him, like he had seen a lot of shit. Delta's like, hey, go do, go do this liaison mission and fucking Molly. And I don't know. Have a good time. Yeah. Sleep with some state department bitches.

I don't know. You know, like, just take a break. And so he's down there having a good time, whatever doing his liaison gig. El Shabbab hits the hotel. He responds with two other guys. They bitch out. This, he, he, he, it's super descriptive account. I mean, he talks about

the interests of the Radisson blue. First thing he sees is fucking dead bodies and an elevator

shaft and the elevator doors are open and closing. You know, there's fires all over the fucking place. There's terrorists running around killing fucking people. And he's a one man in a fucking hotel, a massive hotel. It's like going door to door, saving people from burning to death,

“saving, like pulling people out of their hotel room. All by himself. I can't remember how long”

it was like 12 hours or 16 hours of some shit he's doing this. Everybody, everybody else is a fucking pussy to include like the head of state. You know, that's there. He's fucking even cheese balls out of his belly button because he's a fucking pussy. You know, I mean, you know the types. And the feds. And so at the very end of this shit, he corners these Al Shabbab guys at the top of the strip well. He clears up a stairwell. I guess he can't say corner them. They're shooting down at him

damn near a point blank. And the fucking went all around his body. And then he throws up a concussion grenade, discombobulate some runs up, you know, finishes him off, rips the door off the wall. And that's the door hinge that was holding the fucking door. Wow. But I mean, as you know, it's, and he, same thing. Yeah. He pushes you guys. Yeah. Yeah. Lots of guy at he penny. He's got another, he's got, the guy was just telling you about this kind of a spiritual mentor for me, or he's got

“similar situation where I mean, it's just like, where I can't remember exactly. I have like a”

voice told him, like, don't fucking move. And then the building gets leveled. I mean, it's just time and time and time. Yeah. You're not good. You're not good. You're not good. You're not good. You're the stuff.

Die until God says so. He knows the exact second. He knows, and there's some confidence to take

in that. That Bible verse that, uh, proverb three five and six. It's, uh, you know, trust in the Lord with all your heart, do not lean on your own understanding. When, when I can do that, when I, when I try to figure out, you know, I go through that China, worrying about China and worrying about, worry, worry, worry, you know, and it was fret not die self. We're told, don't do it to yourself. Being anxious for nothing, he tells us all through scripture, quick doing it, because it's, it's

a waste of energy. You know, that, that he's in charge. You know, trust in the Lord with all your

and me, uh, you know, we believe in doing things and getting it done. You know, go,

and more contingency planners. Yeah. Right. What if this happens, then we're doing this. What if that goes shit, then we're doing that? It goes, you know, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I, I just think, as, as God's kids, we got it. We got it. We got to be careful where we, we put too much faith in our own trust, not in your own, our own understanding. And, uh, you know, don't lean on your own understanding. When I have any conflict in my own thinking about

about Israel, about China, about whatever it is, I can go back to the world now. And this is

“something that I think Christians have this huge advantage over the world where we can kind of”

take the pressure off ourselves. Even in this, I ran things right now. I know that in Ezekiel 38, 39, I know the Bible says clearly, uh, it gives us the play, the play by play. If you ever read that, that, you know that, what I'm sorry about, it, it gives us the play by play of a final big shootout and who the players are. Uh, Iran will become allies with Russia, Libya, Turkey, Ukraine, and Arab peoples. It's in Ezekiel 38. They will come against Israel. Israel will stand alone.

They're going to have no allies. And I, so they're going to come against Israel. Israel will have no allies. And then this big, future shootout. And I'm sure, you know, you, you, you have fleece trouble on here. You got guys who know this 10 times better than, than I do. But, uh, but in my own little studies of the Bible, you know, it gives me this. I know we're not going to knock off Iran.

“I know we're not. Don't, don't give me wrong. I think we're going to decimate them and maybe”

knock them down a couple of pegs and they're not going to be a problem for a little bit. And I think that's, I'm all for it. But I know we don't get rid of them because Scripture says they're going to be around. They're going to come against Israel with Russia, with Turkey, with Ukraine, with Libya, and anyway, I know that's got to happen. It's prophecy. It's got to happen. Every prophecy really, it comes true. All of them. So this is going to happen. And I know it's going to happen. So every

time I find myself, you know, getting a little upset about this, you know, why it, why aren't we doing this? Why don't we take cargile and, you know, let, why don't we do the, you know, I'm thinking that way. I'm thinking militarily. I'm thinking like a Marine. I know I'm wasting energy because the Lord has this all planned out. This is going to happen. Everything's going to happen with or without Johnny Clark. Although, I know I should pray for it. I know I'm commanded to pray about it.

And, but I know that any end Israel's going to stand alone. And I, I mean, you can see it happening,

the whole world will basically abandon little Israel. It's Bible prophecy. And when, when I ran

in Russia and all these nations, they're going to be destroyed. They're, they're going to die on the mountains of Israel. They're going to get destroyed. And it's, even talks about the coastlands of Russia, you know, fire falling on the coast. And they're going to, they're going to get no more Russia, no more Russian army that that's going to be gone. Iran's going to be gone. But we ain't going to do it. God's going to do it. But even in that, two thirds of the Jews are going to get killed.

So God's going to save that third. But they're going to, in order to save by God, not the USA.

“That's why I understand it too. I think a little differently on you. And the Iran war.”

Yeah. But I mean, and, but the way that I interpret that is that, I mean, the Jews did kill

Jesus. And they've always turned their back on God. And the way that I understand this is that God

is going to allow them to be fucking decimated. And they're going, he is going to unveil all of the fucking corruption that is going on inside of Israel. And then when Christ comes back, the remaining Jews will accept Jesus Christ. Yes. And they will go to heaven. And that's basically it. I don't think Israel is a fucking good guy. And that's it. Oh, I don't, I don't think there are necessarily a good guy. I know they're the chosen people. I know the war of the chosen people. I know that God is going to

God's going to take care of these things, not us, not any human force that the Lord's going to take care of it. And yeah, they are the remaining Jews that survive this are going to come to Christ. They're going to realize Jesus Christ was the Messiah. They're going to, they're going to come

You know, nothing. My worry in about it, nothing's going to stop it. It's, it's got to happen.

“It's Bible prophecy. Yeah, but let me tell you about guns up the miracle with guns up.”

Okay. Okay. It getting published. I told you like, you know, at first I was an angry mess. And I was working as a mailman and teaching martial arts University of South Florida at night. And so I was working two jobs doing okay. It's like, that's just, I mean, could you imagine how many people, if they knew what the fucking mailman was capable? Oh, so I, so I, well, I was really blessed Sean. I mean, you know, in Okanawa, I by accident, I end up, I trained with Grand

Master Shimabuku, the really famous old Okanawa. I didn't know he was. He was just another Okanawa to me. But I was ordered out in theville. We had a lieutenant ahead of his time. He ordered guys with certain wounds to go into theville and take martial arts from this, this little Okanawa

guy. And it ends up being Grand Master Shimabuku. He was an amazing character. Then I come home,

there. I can't find a decent Okanawa school. And I switch over to Taekwondo. And I, I, I mean, by accident, my old neighbor was teaching, he was a language expert for the army in, in Thailand. He met and trained with Grand Master Park in Thailand because the King of Thailand asked him to come there and train the Thai people, Taekwondo. So this Donkun Park that became my Grand Master that trained with for the last 50 years. He, he ended up being, you know, Olympic coach, the 1990 to Olympic

coaches. He's in the Korean Hall of Fame. He was just voted by the nation of Korea as the greatest

Korean Master in Korean history. Yeah, over 280 fights and never lost. He's an amazing girl guy.

I really, really admire him. And now, my wife just showed me a thing of him. He's washing people's feet

“as a missionary in Guatemala. I think it's Guatemala. Yeah, he's, you know, I just loved this guy.”

And now we've been together forever. We had some adventures. But yeah. So anyway, I locked out and getting a train with some, some great man. And I'm just another student. But I lost, I lost both of those jobs when my back went out on me. And I heard that back, I was coming in on a hot LZ. The machine guns, the last one off the chopper. You know, when the old CH, the 46th, you know, the with the back ramp was on, the around 46th is back. Yeah, you run off the back ramp. Well,

you know, they hover and guys run off the little back ramp. The front of it hovers because we were under fire. And so all the guys got off. And me and Chandler the last two, trying to get to that ramp. And the pilot got killed. And the, the chopper went out of control and the copilot got control of it. But we're swirling like this, throwing us all over the place inside the chopper. And I got all that year, you know, 25 pound, M60 and one and one. So Chand got off. Now, I'm, I don't know how high up

in the year. But he finally gains control of the thing. And I know, I've got to, I got to get with the guys. And I, and I, I don't even know how high up. I run off that ramp. I landed like an anchor. But I hit mushy, swampy stuff and, uh, stank down deep into it and, uh, didn't die. And I shot another time. I should have died. And, uh, and everybody's shooting at me and they can't

get me on the mud. And we, I, uh, I came out of it, fine. But that back was never quite the same.

And it finally went. And when it went, uh, now I had to find a way to make a living. And that's

“when Nancy said, you need to write some of your stories from, you know, Vietnam. And, and fight”

the liberal media who are lying about what the guys did over there. And you get so angry about it. You can't, you can't beat everybody up. You got to, you know, fight back a smart way in. So that's the record story. Yeah. And that's why I tried to do. And, but that book was rejected by every publisher from New York to California for four years. I, I, I told you how I learned how I wrote it. I kept taking the same writing class over and over and over. Well, then I writing professors

at St. Pete College thought it was the best war book. They have a red, they were shirts. You know, you know, it's going to get published here and they'd give me all these people to send it to rejected by everybody. I mean, I, you couldn't, there was very few publishers that I hadn't sent it to. I don't know if there's any. And so in about four years into this, Nancy and I started

and you pray for everybody's needs. You know, there's people fighting cancer, people out of work

“and dot it out of it. And, and Nancy one time she goes, I want prayer for Johnny's book to get published.”

Well, I've got all these four letter words in this book. I mean, I wrote it to be non-fiction. I didn't know how I could write the dialogue of Marines in combat without all the words we used. And I, so I did. Well, you know, now I, I want my kids to know the truth, but I didn't want my kids to hear all that, I read that language. I didn't just didn't want them, and I didn't, I, I used to realize, you know, I, I don't feel comfortable. And the Holy Spirit was really convict

to me. And so anyway, one of the Bible verses that sent me over the edge was for those who want her God, God will honor. And those who despise Lord will be held in little esteem. Well, for those who honor God, God will honor. That hit me, that really hit me. And, you know, how you have one verse that just kind of really gets you, that one got me. Convict to me so bad,

I had a finally go to my pastor. I said, hey, I want to call the whole every time the prayer group

praise for my Bible, I booked to get published. If nobody's read it, none of these people read this thing. And so I gave it to him. I said, read it. And he, he did. His things really vivid and, you know,

“hard, I just got a lot and done it. And I said, well, should I rewrite it, take all the words out?”

It goes, ah, no, that's between you and God. I'm not touching that one. So I go to my writing professors, they go, Johnny, if you rewrite guns up, it's going to sound like how he do dejoins the Marine Corps. You can't, and everybody knows Marines don't talk like, you know, they're going to use the F word all the time. They're going to, and, and so I, I said, well, I can't, I can't stand it. It's not getting published anyway. It's got nowhere for you over four years. I can't pray about it anymore

because I'm so convicted. I'm going to do it. So I sat down took six months. I took all the language out of the book, rewrote the thing. But it's the same war, same stories. I just took the language out. And what I discovered is that maybe maybe a better writer, you know, it's easy to describe

“anger with a quick four letter word. That's probably what I've been twice as long with all those,”

well, maybe, maybe. So it took, it took all language out. And the day I finished that rewrite, Nancy, you know, I've got a bottle of champagne, pop the champagne, it's in Nancy, anchors off my back. I pray about the book getting published without, I'm done with it. And the next morning, I get a call from Soldier Fortune Magazine. And they said, "Oh, this is Mr. Clark doubted at it."

Oh, we've got this, we've got this story. You sent us and we want to publish it. I had never had

anything published. So I said, "What story? I never sent you a story." And they go, "Yeah, you know, you sent us a story." And you had to go about a toy bridge, I don't know, and I out of a book called Guns Up. And I said, "Well, yeah, that's my, I wrote that." And then he says, "Because I said, well, we in a minute, when did I send you this?" And he goes, "Let me see. Oh, he sent it to us four years ago." And I go, "What? Why are you just now finding it?" Because I don't know, it just

turned up at our slush pile. Two days later, Eagle Magazine calls. It's the exact same story. Whoa, and I say the exact same thing, "Why now? Why, four years late?" And he goes, "Oh, I can't answer that. It just turned up in our slush pile." Then American Legion Magazine calls League. It's the exact same story, and there was a fourth one. Okay, go ahead and tell me, "Look, baloney. I had honored God, and now God was honoring me." So I sent the book out again. And

I started to send out the publishers again. Within one month, this book that had been rejected by every publisher in New York, North Carolina, California, everywhere, I could find a publisher. Within one month, nine publishers now wanted the book. And the one that bought it was random house, biggest publisher in the world. Now they want this book. So I get a phone call from Pam Strict early ahead of, she was the senior editor at Random House at Balantine Books. And she goes,

"Sir, say, "Well, listen to Mr. Clark, we love this book. We want this book." And I said, "I'm thrilled." But I said, "Why now? Why do you want it now?" And she says, "What do you mean?" And I said, "Well, I had wallpaper. This is something the writing teachers told me to do to

I knocked a hole in our roof of our two bedroom, one bath house, and I built a conding tower on top. It was basically a conding tower. A little stairs going up to it, real thrill with Nancy, didn't do a lot for our living room. But that was my writing room. But I wallpapered by writing room with rejection notices. Are you serious? The whole wallpaper, I had rejection from everybody. And I had grown to know, I could tell when somebody actually read it, or when it was just a stamp,

you know, no thanks. She, I had hers there. And I said, "Pam Strictler?" And she goes, "Yes." And I said, "I have your rejection letter right here." And I said, "You actually read this thing. I can tell." And I read it to her. And she goes, "Oh, I did read that book. I remember." And I said,

“"Well, that was just a year ago." So why do you want it? Now, why do you think it's so great now?”

I said, "Is it because I took all the cuss words out?" And she said, "You mean there's no profanity in this book?" And I said, "No." And she goes, "Mr. Clark, that's incredible. All my readers have read this book." And loved it. She said, "All my junior editors have read this book. I've read this book. No one at random else recognized that there's no profanity in that book."

And I said, "No, no." And she goes, "That's incredible." She goes, "We've never heard of a Vietnam

war book without the profanity." And I said, "Well, yeah." I said, "But you have no." And she goes, "She said, "Gosh, well, we want this book." And I said, "It's yours. It's great. You're the biggest publisher in the world, please." And she says, "But you're going to have to work with us, son."

“And I said, "You know, I figured read rights. I don't know." You know, I said, "Well, sure."”

And she goes, "Well, look, no one's going to believe a Vietnam war book without profanity." She goes, "We're going to need you to put some profanity back in the book." So I said, "Oh, Satan." You are so good. I don't publish anything for my whole life. Now I've got the biggest publisher in the world. If I will put the cusswords back yet. And I, you know, temptation, yeah, you turned them down. Oh, you bet. No way. Are you kidding? I told her. Two chances, Pam, slamming none.

And it never happened. And she goes, "Well, okay." And she'll call me back a little bit later.

They bought it anyway. It's now been in print for 42 years. It's been published in Lithuania. I get, I get email from Lithuanian soldiers. One, in particular, stands out, but this Lithuanian soldier sends me an email saying that all of you are reading this book. And he goes, "Mr. Clark, I just had to tell you that we think this is the greatest war book that God ever wrote." Wow. Wow. I wish, I mean, come on. I don't even feel like I had anything

“to do with this book. Honestly, I feel like this has, you know, it's been on autopilot with God”

from day one, but I don't, the book's a miracle. It just, it's a miracle. It just keeps going and going 42 years. And now, you know, I mean crazy things, the stories that come out of it. I can go on forever, but crazy stories, we had a kid named Frank Burroughs. He, great kid. He died, we got hit. He died, but he didn't die right away. He stayed with him all night. We didn't even know how bad he was hit. Yeah, some wounds we couldn't see. It's black. And a corpsman didn't find him, but patched the ones

he found. But he, he, he carried a picture of his little redheaded daughter. He had a baby. He'd never

seen. And Frank Burroughs was from St. Pete. He went to St. High School's wife. I never knew him. Wow. But he, he had this baby picture. He carried in his helmet because he had to put it in your lining of your helmet to keep it dry. The long story short is this, that picture always stayed up here, you know. And he'd never seen that baby. He wanted to go home so bad he went to see his baby. Well, he died that night. We couldn't get him out of act. Next day, 101st ever, the first

cavern, the 101st terrible one I forgot. But an army unit, the sky's dark with choppers, bringing them a noon meal. We can't get them out of act. And better, you know, I mean, this is during Vietnam, we only got handy dals. And you know the story behind that, the Marine Corps had to stay. We're

Marine Corps was to prove we could keep a guy of a Marine in the field for a third the cost of the

“army. And that's how the Marine stayed the Marine Corps. Yeah, he was great stories about that.”

These old China hands, old China and the Marines told me incredible stories to me and these

guys were a hoot. But yeah, so Frank Percy, I wrote that story in there. But I didn't have Frank's real name. I forgot what I called him. But I didn't know anybody, we didn't know each other's names, you know? But I knew him. I mean, I knew him like I know you, but I didn't know his name. But anyway, he 30, 30 years later, maybe more, maybe 35 years later, I hear from this girl. And she sends me a picture. She gets my email and then she, it's my address. And she sent me an email

contact her back. She said, I think my dad died in nom with you. And it's Frank Burris, it's baby red.

“That's what we call her baby red because she had bushy red here. She had that same picture and she sent”

me a blow-up of it. And it was, she had discovered how her dad died reading that book. But it just, it doesn't stop. I mean, he goes on and on and on. I mean, the stories that God turns up out of this. And it gave her some peace for Mom told me, you know, that she needed it. So bad,

it had. Yeah. Yeah, the books, the books flat out miracle. That's amazing. Yeah, it's it's a miracle. I

don't have much to do with it. I just sit back and marvel. Wow. What the, I mean, that had just hit like a ton of bricks. I'm sorry. What? I mean, just to be connected with her. Oh, yeah. I know. Yeah. Yeah. Family members, you know, that Frank Burris's brother is contacting me. And you know, he didn't know how he died and yeah. Yeah. How'd you meet your wife? A blind date? A blind date? Yeah. Yeah. blind date. I was

that nom vet that they were a little concerned about. And so they didn't, yeah, it was her best friend. And a guy that I went to high school with came over, you know, trying to set me up. You know, I just maybe spend it too much time alone. They thought, you know, and I don't know. Well, it come over and they've her best friend had taken and stolen her license to show me her picture. Just sit. Well, I took one. I took one look at this license. And there I go. Yeah. No thanks.

“We'll skip this one. And she, they go, no, no, no. She's really beautiful. And I, I think,”

yeah, thanks anyway. No, no, she's hot. And now Terry, the guy is telling me, no, no. I wouldn't, I wouldn't leave her all of she. And because she lives right around the corner down here. You know, just, just about blocking a half away from me. Yeah. And I said, well, where? I mean, all around the corner. And I said, black hair, done it at a, a wait a minute. Does, does she have a little brown Toyota? And, uh, she goes, yeah,

I said, does she, does she wash her car and bikini out front? I think, oh, well, I guess so. And I go, okay, let's go in that blind date. So we go to blind date, we're in a free pass. And the last one, she's going to wash her car, nox. Oh, I was quickly dirty in the upper court. We, so we go to a, uh, the old beach theater, which have real old theater out of, say, pee beach. And, uh, we'll go and get by popcorn, you know,

our first blind date. And in the popcorn, we want to free pass to a second movie. So we had an immediate second date. And, uh, yeah, the rest of history. No, we, uh, we just, we just celebrated our 49th wedding anniversary. Congratulations. Yeah, thanks. Yeah. Wow, that's old 49 years. 49 years.

Man, that's amazing. Yeah, five grandkids. I, you know, how did that happen?

grandkids. And now I teach them a little bit more schlard, you know, some just, you know, simple take down some choke outs. I, uh, simple things down to choke now. I want my, uh, I want my, uh,

“I got one, I got one little granddaughter that, uh, I did it. Yeah, I, I, I think I can teach her how to”

kill people. I, she, she's them. She's got potential. Uh, now they all do. They're all, they're just great kids. And they, I mean, they already know Bible verses, you know, that it just, you know, wish I, I wish I had that much scriptural knowledge when I was a little kid. I mean, I really do. I mean, it pays off the rest of your life, you know, they can, these tough questions come up or tough times. God tell, he, it's got a whole instruction manual if it just read it. Yeah.

Well, Johnny will wrap it up the interview. All right, brother. But I've got a hot question here for you. Oh, boy. You ready? Yeah. You were 18 years old when you got to Vietnam, a Marine M60 machine gunner with fifth Marines. Machine gunners had to had a 10, excuse me. Machine gunners had a

7 to 10 second life expectancy once a firefight started. You were the number one target on the

battlefield because every enemy soldier wanted to silence that gun first. Walk me through your combat loadout and be as descriptive as you can for the viewer and tell me if you're loadout ever changed throughout your time and be a numb. Wow. That's it. Good question. I don't know if I can answer it properly. I can tell you this. Twenty round burst if you wanted to stay alive. I, uh,

“sometimes you couldn't, sometimes you had to, you had to lay on the trigger. And, uh, I think,”

if you, you were so concerned about the other guys, you know, I mean, I mean, the machine gun was really

critical to it, you know, to a grunt platoon. You had to have the gun. I mean, you could keep the enemy

heads down, duck and lead. You could do something to allow your, your grunch to stay alive. I did fire a couple of times so much that there were, there were a couple of times where you could see the rounds going through the, the barrel of the M60. Literally, you could see it. It would go, it would go red hot. And then you knew you were in trouble and see the Marine Corps. We, we didn't have any spare barrels. That's another one. Yeah, you guys, I never had spare barrels. I whole time I never had

a spare barrel. So, you know, if you, if you had to, you'd pee on that barrel to, and, you know, just to get the temperature down, make that circuit, pour your canteens on anything to keep it from, because if, if it melded, now you got a 45 in a K bar, you know, and now you, uh, so, but a couple of times, yeah, fired until it would go red hot. And, and then when it went white hot, at white hot, you, you literally could see the, you know, the, the, not every round, but you'd see rounds going through

that, that barrel. Yeah, you could actually see, and now it's red, or white hot. It's like having a light on you, uh, in the middle of a night battle, I'd say. Yeah, yeah, it's, you know, you've got a big spotlight on, did you ever, did you ever blow a barrel out? Uh, I, I, oh, I pulled barrels out, yeah, I mean, like, where the round comes out the side. Did you ever have that happen? No,

I, that never happened to me, but I could see where it could happen, but it didn't happen to me.

But I did, I didn't burn out a barrel in one time, and, you know, and then, uh, we had, we had a steel barrel off, uh, from a, a gunner on a chopper. You didn't want to give it up. And, uh, uh, uh, same, the blue for man, convinced him. But, uh, how many rounds would we need that barrel more than you do? Yeah. And, uh, you, you're, you're firing from way up there. We're eye to eye, give us the barrel. Anyway, so yeah, I burned out a barrel, I bite a burned out a couple. How many

rounds would you carry? I'm carried, uh, 400 by self, uh, and sometimes more, but, plus 400 was usual.

“But, so you're supposed to have ammo hoppers. Well, that's why you have a five-man team,”

but I didn't have a five-man team. It was just me, and sometimes me and Chan, but sometimes Chan had to take over another gun, and now you're all alone, or they give you a grunt to try to help, but, uh, yeah, you're supposed to have five-man team, and, uh, all of them carry 400 rounds each. So the grunts had to carry, you know,

to carry machine gun ammo. So, you know, you know, everybody looks like a Mexican bandit, but everybody's carrying a few hundred rounds, and, uh, they hated it until we hit the crowd.

I need it. Yeah, and, and then, uh, but they were always happy to run through these hundred

“rump guns. Hey, work here! There's Rodin's belt happening. I think this weight off me, man.”

So, yeah, put, uh, yeah, I, I think, uh, you know, you couldn't waste ammo, and I didn't know the lowdown. I'm not sure if that answers it, but, uh, uh, uh, you had to keep that gun cleaned. You know, in the jungle, boy, if you didn't keep that gas cylinder or spit-shined, uh, it's going to jam. And if it jammed, uh, you know, you, I mean, you catch crap from, you know, your sergeants and so forth, but, but worse than that, you know, Marines are going to die if that thing jammed.

So, really had to be careful about cleaning that thing, and that wasn't easy. I mean, the

jungle was everything. It wrotted everything. I mean, I, I would come in sometimes with all my clothes

would been ripped apart. It really half naked. We would come in when walk into Annwalk on that base, and we had to have a Vietnamese laughing at us. It's serious. This truly happened. We're walked, I humpin' in, you know, I got the 60 over my shoulder, we'll hopin' in, and I had to cut the whole part of my trousers out because I had dysentery. So, you, you know, you don't stop and go to the bathroom, you just drain while you walk. Well, a few weeks out in the jungle or more,

you know, your clothes are totally shredded. So, we, we walked in Annwalk a couple of times and, you know, we're half naked, some of us, and yeah, it, and toothbrush, couldn't use my toothbrush. I, we had to use it to clean the gas cylinder on the 60. Yeah. So, when you did brush your teeth, you were brushing with a oil, okay, a gun oil, and you had to use the right kind of gun oil. You had to be careful there. Sometimes the Marines gave us gun oil that it just wasn't the best.

It would, it would get, it'd be no good in the rain and the humidity, sometimes, you know,

“it wasn't. So, there was, usually the army had good gun oil. When's the last time you fired an M60?”

Okay, I, I hadn't fired an M60 since 1968, the last night, no, and a bunch of Marines, Iraq and Afghanistan, young Marines, all machine gunners, they've read the books, you know, they're, in machine guns, they're, they're told to read them. So, they, they, they, they contacted me and they flew me to Pennsylvania and, and, uh, one of me to shoot an M60 machine gun again, and they, they brought a Marine Corps camera man. Uh, it was a combat camera man to come out there and get pictures of it.

And, uh, so it's, you know, like, I don't know, 20 to 30 of these young guys, young Marines, all gunners, you know, they were all, most of them were all gunners. And so, uh, so I did, you know, I was excited about it, but I hadn't fired a, a 60 since, that's 50 years or so, you know, it's, so I, you know, I, you know, I, I don't know what, I'm gonna embarrass myself or what. And, uh, they got it already for me, you know, it was, taught me a little bit, I, it started coming back

some of the hunts and alts and, and then, uh, like riding a bike, uh, yeah, yeah, it came back, it came back, but, uh, but, you know, I had forgotten, you know, just, and, uh, so anyway, that's ready. And, uh, so we, we start firing it, they had, uh, it's probably 150 yards away. I mean, when you look at the little video, you, you can blow it up and you'll see that's a truck

“and a car down there and an old washing machine, and I don't, I think that's about it,”

but it's out on a farm in Pennsylvania and, and it's down there like a little valley, so that the rounds won't, you know, they got sort of something for it to hit if you blow it and, uh, so anyway, uh, I, I, I, I opened fire on this thing and, uh, loved it, but I couldn't see where my rounds were landed because they didn't want to use tracer rounds, they were afraid to

might start a forest fire or something. So, uh, I, I finally said, you know, after a little bit,

like, hey guys, I can't see where my rounds are landing. I, you know, I don't know if I'm hitting the target or not, I don't like that. And, uh, so, so, uh, this one young Marine goes, I got this serve and, uh, he, he comes out a little jar of, is it tan right? So what it's called? Yeah, yeah, a little jar of tan right, had a red label on it. And, you know, it's just a little jar of being tiny, uh, like a jar of pickles, and he, uh, he runs out there, you know, and it's pretty

good distance. He runs out there of this jar and he puts it on, uh, on top of this washing machine.

okay, you know, and, you know, I mean, 76 are old eyes here and I'm going, God, I think I see a little red dot and I did, I could see the little red dot that was on that, that was a label. And I say, okay, let's go in that, you know, so I, I go to, I go to shoot and they're all going,

nah, sir, sorry, you'll, you'll never hit that shooting from the hip. You got to, you go into

by pod. You need a scope to hit that, you know, the new machine goes to have scopes. I'm done it, you know what I said? Yeah, I know, I, I don't like that, I like scopes. I said, you know, I need to, I need to just feel it, see it. And, uh, they said, well, sorry, it's just a waste of ammo. And, well, let me, let me try it. So I am fired by one of 50 years and, uh, open about, that maybe 20 round burst. And it blew up at it, that broke, I mean, the washing machine,

“the whole lid up, blew it, boom. And that's, that's what you see in the video is me going,”

nice. So after that, all these young gunners, I mean, they were blown away, they were cheering me,

and they were getting amazing. Anyways, about that scope, ladies, what was, uh, you know,

well, there's old men moving moments, you know, where you show the young guys, you still got it, but, uh, you know, it was fun, it was fun for the moment, but, so all the young machine gunners, they all, they got to do this now. And, uh, they had like 360's out there. So, uh, I mean, these are crazy marines, they had a mini gun on the back of the truck. I'm not making that up. Like, it's crazy guys. I, you know, I love this guy. That's a gangster shit, right?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so, uh, so they all tried it with the M60, and, uh, all of them tried it

“from the hip, and, you know, because they ran out with another jar of terror, and, uh,”

nobody could do it. They kept trying it. Then they started shooting from the bipod. You know, down on the ground and aiming at it. And, uh, nobody could hit it. That's all. So finally, Sam, frickin' jarhead with a sniper scope. If shot at with a sniper, yeah, it's sniper rifle, and then on, he blew it up. But, uh, yeah, so it was one of those fun moments where you get slaps on the back from the young guys, which felt good. That's all that. Yeah, they,

they enjoyed it too. They had, they got a kick out of it though of the same cable. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I still got a cable. Same one. Oh, no, no, that's same one. No, they took everything from me. Uh, yeah. I had an SKS that I tagged. You know, if, uh, if you, if you killed an NVA with a, uh, single shot weapon, uh, if you had the chance, if you could, you could tag it, you know, send it back to the rear on the, you know, chopper bringing in food or something. And, uh,

they were supposed to put it away for you. So when you went back to the states, you could take single shot weapons home. And, uh, yeah, uh, some poking the rear stole my SKS. Oh, yeah. But I, I got one, I got an SKS now. It's, it's pretty cool. It's just, it got the big banette. I got one too. A SKS? Yeah. Oh, sweet. I pull it out here. The banette? Yep. Oh,

“banette. And a 45. Oh, yeah. Go 45. Oh, 45. Although the truth is, the one time I had to pull”

that 45 out ran out of ammo or something. I don't know who knows why. And, uh, it was, it was rusted so bad. It wouldn't work. Uh, well, I took care of the machine gun. But, you know, kind of ignored that 45 on it, because I didn't plan on ever using that. Yeah. What do you think of nine mil? Oh, I like them. Yeah. I mean, I like, I, yeah. Do you have a nine mil? Uh, yeah, I think I do. I got a nine mil, but, uh, uh, what is it? I think I've got an old, I mean,

it's not a military. It's, it's a billion nine mil later. Uh, I think I got an old Baretta.

Oh, right on. I think it's a Baretta. Yeah. I'm pretty sure it's a Baretta. Well, I got you another present. Oh, got a silencer. That's right. I tried to get to a machine gun, but I just, I couldn't get the paperwork done in time. So, I got a buddy over at Sig is named Jason. He's got a soft spot for Vietnam, but that's just like the room. Oh, Jason, thanks, buddy. So that is a nine mil a meter, six hour P365 macro with a sig flash light, the brand new optics line. So they's got a red

dot on there. The sig suppressor from silencer shop. A silencer, silencer shop is awesome. They do

hope you're in luck. You live in Florida. So silencer shop is going to ship you a brand new can or

“suppressor down to Florida for you. And be able to put that on that weapon right there. I'll”

take care of all the paperwork. The other thing I love about silencer shop is they they stand up

for gun rights for arrest. Yeah, gun enthusiasts. So they're fucking awesome company. Sig is amazing.

That's great. That thing. I mean, we're talking some fucking pews. Oh, don't spit 17 rounds in the magazine plus one in the pipe. Oh, 17 rounds. 17 rounds. Oh, man. Oh, my son's going to be trying to steal this from me. Don't let him. Okay. Oh, yeah. Gosh, this is beautiful. Band, thank you. Well, maybe you can sleep with that thing now. It, it done. Yeah. Done. Nancy won't even know when I've shot somebody. She could still sleep at all to wake up the next day and tell her. Oh, right the way. Oh, gosh.

Thanks, man. What a great. What a great gift. You're well. I feel cheap now. Giving you a book sent a sweatshirt. No, you can. I'm going to wear that shirt everywhere. Oh, God. But um, all right,

“one last question. Yeah. Do you think your buddy Chen would want to come on?”

Do I what? Do you think your buddy Chen would want to come on the show? Oh, I don't know. He, he might have been of you all. He might. Yeah. He, uh, I'll talk to him. I'll tell you, I know some, some great man that probably would do a quicker, but, uh, I was, uh, major Scott Hucing. Do you know him? No. He, uh, he wrote echo in Romani. And, uh, he, he said he, he went from, as a Lance Corporal, he read guns up. And now, as a retired major,

and he, he came to see me and guns up was huge with him and all the guys. I think it was,

I know he's in a Romani, of course, but I think he was in Iraq or the first Gulf War before that.

I'm not even sure where he read guns up. They handed out guns up and they would tear it in sections for a squad to share it. And, uh, so he said, and now he's, you know, in his 50s, and he shows up at my front door, and I, uh, I didn't know this guy. And he goes, um, my name is Major Scott Hucing, and, uh, I've wanted to meet you ever since I was a Lance Corporal. And, uh, got to know him real good. Uh, with the fourth Marines, and this book echo in Romani,

you'd probably relate to that a lot more than non-stop, but, uh, yeah. Anyway, yeah, he's one. I will, I'll talk to Chad. Perfect. See what he says? Yeah. Uh, yeah. Yeah, I, uh, God, this has, this has been, so I've been so excited about this. Me too. I've been, I've been way too anxious. I had to, uh, I had to pray, uh, you know, being anxious for nothing, uh, probably a hundred times, just, I had to chill out a little bit. I was so excited about it. Well, ever since it started when

Jocco came when your show, and suggested me, and I, I, all my friends, sent me. Jocco told John Ryan to have you on, done it, you know, and, and I'm, I mean, from that moment, I've been nervous. Jocco's an awesome dude, man. I'm, uh, excited, but, you know, we're here. Yeah. God, I love this agreement. I love this thing. Yeah, every even shot it yet. I know, but I love it. I, you're gonna love it. Oh, yeah. It's not raining out there. We can crack a couple rounds off.

“Oh, let's do. All right. All right. You want to end this with a prayer? I do. How about you?”

I'll be eating. Okay. I better put my weapon down. Oh, God, I appreciate it. Father God, we come before you Lord, uh, to give thanks. I want to, I want to thank you with all my heart for, uh, for taking care of me through all this, and getting me, uh, just getting me on this podcast. I, I don't believe in accidents, and I know Sean doesn't

either Lord. We want to give you thanks for a million and one blessings. Thank you, Lord, for

the calling you've put on his life. Uh, thank you for using him in such a mighty way and given him

That's not easy in this world, Lord. It's really hard sometimes. Father, uh, keep,

“keep encouraging, uh, Sean with that kind of courage. And don't let any of Satan's attacks.”

And we know there's going to be some. There's always Satan's attacks, especially when a Christian's

doing something. If if a Christian's on the sideline doing nothing, uh, Satan leaves him alone. But when

“you got a man like Sean who's stepping up and, uh, stepping out front, he's, he's walking”

point. God, and that's, that's hard to do down here and you know it. So bless him, bless this show,

bless his family, and we just want to give you all the thanks in the praise in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Thank you, brother. Yeah, pal.

“Johnny. Yeah. It was an honor. Oh, oh, no matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan show”

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