# Ep. 226 | Fred Apgar | Air Force Intelligence and Secret War in Laos

An episode of [Former Action Guys Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1475060182), 28 Feb 2025, 1 h 45 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/64634507/air_force_vietnam.mp3

Fred Apgar worked in Air Force intelligence during the Vietnam War. However, he was part of the clandestine war in Laos that was not acknowledged at the time. We talk fire support, electronic warfare, and Fred's return to the country to close that chapter of his life. Support the show https://www.patreon.com/formeractionguys https://www.jcramergraphics.com https://www.ANGLICOshop.com Fred's Book https://www.amazon.com/Return-Plaine-Jarres-Fred-Apgar/dp/1964300037 00:00:00 J Cramer Graphics Ad 00:00:40 Intro | Joining the Air Force 00:04:07 Treatment of Veterans | Deployment Cycles 00:14:08 Individual Augments to Vietnam | Joining the Air Force 00:17:49 Vietnam Vet Reacts to Afghanistan Withdrawal 00:29:31 Airborne Intelligence in Laos and Vietnam 00:32:20 What are the JTAC and FAC Jobs? 00:41:28 Operations in Laos and the Naming of the Podcast 00:44:43 Laos ELINT Missions | TF Alpha 00:53:27 First Paveway Bombs | Dragon's Jaw Bridge 01:00:46 "We Weren't In Laos" 01:07:22 Redemption 01:18:11 Keep Your Honor Clean | POWs

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: It was Welcome to the Former Guys podcast. Before we
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[0:39] Speaker 1: let's get to it. Let's talk about it. Man, the history.
[0:42] Speaker 1: So what made you decide? Are you from a military family?
[0:46] Speaker 1: You have this military you have this history, you know,
[0:48] Speaker 1: longstanding history in the United States? Is your family military?
[0:51] Speaker 2: I am not. My father did not serve. He was
[0:54] Speaker 2: born in nineteen oh two, so he was too young
[0:57] Speaker 2: for World War One and little for World War Two.
[1:03] Speaker 2: But my interest in the military started as a child,
[1:07] Speaker 2: and I was blessed to have been to have grown
[1:11] Speaker 2: up and when I did, and where I did a
[1:14] Speaker 2: small town upstate New York, I say, about thirty miles
[1:18] Speaker 2: north of the city. But I was exposed to a
[1:24] Speaker 2: value system that was reinforced by my parents, my school,
[1:29] Speaker 2: the community about respecting particularly World War two and Korean
[1:33] Speaker 2: War heroes veterans, because it was right after I was
[1:37] Speaker 2: born at forty four, so it was World War Two
[1:41] Speaker 2: was ending, and so those veterans of World War Two
[1:45] Speaker 2: in Korea were kind of prominent in communities across America.
[1:50] Speaker 2: At anyway, they just became my heroes. My favorite activity
[1:55] Speaker 2: as a kid was you know, cowboys and Indians and
[2:00] Speaker 2: ops and robbers and war. You know, we've had our
[2:03] Speaker 2: sticks and guns and you know, shot each other and
[2:06] Speaker 2: so forth. And as a child, justin I just had
[2:09] Speaker 2: this desire, childhood dream of always wearing the nation's uniform
[2:16] Speaker 2: and it was it was something that stuck with me
[2:21] Speaker 2: and I you know, it was a childhood goal and
[2:23] Speaker 2: I made it become a reality.
[2:26] Speaker 1: That is that is an interesting time to grow up
[2:28] Speaker 1: with all those people that served. I mean, we don't
[2:32] Speaker 1: think about it now, but back then they had the
[2:35] Speaker 1: draft and so many people went to World War One,
[2:38] Speaker 1: World War two and stuff like that. So more often
[2:41] Speaker 1: than not, you'd run into veterans all over the place.
[2:44] Speaker 1: You know. It was a pretty large network of people,
[2:46] Speaker 1: whereas now the veteran population is much smaller and it's
[2:50] Speaker 1: all but it's all volunteer. Nobody's getting told to go.
[2:54] Speaker 2: Don't know the exact percentage. I believe world War two,
[2:58] Speaker 2: the percentage of Americans who served was like over eleven percent.
[3:05] Speaker 2: Vietnam I believe was four point three or something like that.
[3:10] Speaker 2: Currently it's under one percent. Yeah, well, uh, you're right.
[3:15] Speaker 1: That's why books like yours and I think podcasts, you know,
[3:19] Speaker 1: like this and other podcasts are do a good job
[3:22] Speaker 1: of reminding people like there's people out there. I remember
[3:25] Speaker 1: coming home from deployments and being like coming back from
[3:28] Speaker 1: a deployment and then going back home to visit family
[3:31] Speaker 1: and people like, oh, we're still in Afghanistan. You know,
[3:34] Speaker 1: like people didn't even realize It's like, dude, there's people
[3:36] Speaker 1: fighting over there right now, man, Like, you know, it's
[3:39] Speaker 1: it was such a weird there's such a weird disconnect
[3:42] Speaker 1: between the American public and the military services. And I
[3:47] Speaker 1: think that's getting corrected a little bit. I think the
[3:51] Speaker 1: peak behind the curtain is happening as we see more
[3:54] Speaker 1: military stuff on social media becomes more prevalent and stuff.
[3:59] Speaker 1: But yeah, stuff not underappreciated, but under understood, you know
[4:04] Speaker 1: what I'm saying. I don't enough people know about it.
[4:08] Speaker 2: What sort of getting ahead of myself. But one of
[4:15] Speaker 2: the lessons from Vietnam, I think was the returning veteran
[4:20] Speaker 2: and how he and she should be treated. And your
[4:25] Speaker 2: generation of veterans received a much a much warmer and
[4:31] Speaker 2: embracing welcome home, you know, than my generation of veterans.
[4:36] Speaker 2: So if there was one good thing that came out
[4:38] Speaker 2: of it, perhaps it's it's the way a nation treats veterans.
[4:43] Speaker 2: But still, you know, veterans are sort of a not
[4:49] Speaker 2: a neglected lot, but there are still a lot of veterans.
[4:53] Speaker 2: Suicide rate is indication of how troubled serving in combat
[5:00] Speaker 2: troubling it can be. And there are thousands of veterans
[5:06] Speaker 2: that aren't getting the care and treatment that you know
[5:09] Speaker 2: that they need.
[5:12] Speaker 1: So I don't know what that's what do you think that?
[5:15] Speaker 1: I mean, I know what it differs on individuals, but
[5:19] Speaker 1: what is the treatment? You know what I'm saying. I
[5:22] Speaker 1: think I feel like we we we sometimes we get
[5:29] Speaker 1: angry at the government or the VA or whatever that
[5:31] Speaker 1: there's not something done. You know, there's not more done
[5:35] Speaker 1: to prevent it. But it's what what can we do?
[5:39] Speaker 1: There's so many programs, there's so many things you talk about.
[5:42] Speaker 1: And my thing is, my big thing is, and I've
[5:45] Speaker 1: said it on the podcast a million times, the biggest
[5:48] Speaker 1: way to prevent veterans suicide is by veterans reaching out
[5:51] Speaker 1: to their buddies that they served with every once in
[5:54] Speaker 1: a while, checking in and just saying what's up. You
[5:57] Speaker 1: may not even receive a response. You may not engage
[6:02] Speaker 1: in a conversation or which has happened to me a
[6:04] Speaker 1: lot of times when people have reached out to me,
[6:06] Speaker 1: we end up talking for an hour or two hours,
[6:09] Speaker 1: you know, just catching up. That has got to be
[6:13] Speaker 1: the biggest thing is people got to stop isolating themselves
[6:17] Speaker 1: and reach out to other people. You know, I'm not
[6:19] Speaker 1: sure what else can be done. I don't think drugs
[6:24] Speaker 1: are a correct route. Maybe for some people. But I
[6:27] Speaker 1: think a lot of times it's not You.
[6:31] Speaker 2: Think personal connection and if someone is willing to exert
[6:36] Speaker 2: the energy and the time to establish a connection, and
[6:41] Speaker 2: then yes, that veteran needs to open up and make
[6:45] Speaker 2: himself or herself available to that and willing to engage. Yeah,
[6:53] Speaker 2: I think that A part of my book and my
[6:59] Speaker 2: return to Southeast Asian twenty fourteen was just that it
[7:05] Speaker 2: was I knew that something was missing in my life,
[7:09] Speaker 2: and what it was is what I had left behind
[7:12] Speaker 2: because I didn't feel comfortable in identifying as a you know,
[7:18] Speaker 2: Vietnam veteran, you know in America. And another way of
[7:25] Speaker 2: saying exactly what you said justin is, you know, any
[7:30] Speaker 2: no soldier is unaffected by serving in war. Everyone to
[7:36] Speaker 2: a certain extent is suffers the wounds of war, and
[7:42] Speaker 2: in Vietnam, and I'm sure it's the same Afghanistan, Iraq
[7:46] Speaker 2: or wherever. In a sense, some people never come home,
[7:54] Speaker 2: you know, mentally and emotionally, they're just incapable that they've
[7:58] Speaker 2: just been harmed and damaged to the extent. You know,
[8:03] Speaker 2: your generation of veterans, what we did to you folks,
[8:08] Speaker 2: it's unconscionable. Seven eight nine. I heard people ten eleven deployments.
[8:16] Speaker 2: You can't you can't have that, you can't do.
[8:18] Speaker 1: That, And well it's on that person too though, you know,
[8:24] Speaker 1: if you continue to re enlist and you know, and
[8:27] Speaker 1: you're in an as a as a jtach in the Marines,
[8:31] Speaker 1: I knew if I re enlisted, I was going to deploy.
[8:34] Speaker 1: It was just that was it. I mean, that was
[8:36] Speaker 1: like it was the job. You know, it was like, okay,
[8:39] Speaker 1: good point, that was part of it. I think where
[8:44] Speaker 1: the Army fucked up or you know, messed up. Sorry
[8:47] Speaker 1: you fellow it, which, but I think where the Army
[8:50] Speaker 1: really messed up was by sending these guys out for
[8:53] Speaker 1: a year or sixteen months. You know. I am so
[8:57] Speaker 1: grateful to have been in the Marines where we only
[9:00] Speaker 1: did seven month deployments. Every once in a while they'd
[9:03] Speaker 1: get extended or if you're with like a higher command,
[9:06] Speaker 1: you're there for a year. That but that's like you're
[9:09] Speaker 1: working in the command center. You're not you're not out
[9:11] Speaker 1: on foot patrols or you know, stuff like that for
[9:14] Speaker 1: a year. The Army during the whole Global War on
[9:17] Speaker 1: Terror was sending guys out for a year or more.
[9:20] Speaker 1: Which was crazy. Now they're rangers. You hear a lot
[9:24] Speaker 1: of times. You hear guys have twelve deployments. That's their rangers,
[9:27] Speaker 1: and those are like three month long deployments, which is
[9:29] Speaker 1: still three months of you know, craziness obviously, but that's
[9:34] Speaker 1: it's I don't.
[9:36] Speaker 2: Know you when you returned. What was the process from
[9:42] Speaker 2: leaving the field and what was the length of time
[9:44] Speaker 2: in the process of leaving the field to actually stepping
[9:48] Speaker 2: off the plane and going home.
[9:50] Speaker 1: It differed, but it was normally from like, hey, we're
[9:55] Speaker 1: going home and like jumping on like I'm trying to
[9:58] Speaker 1: think and singing when I came out when we got
[10:00] Speaker 1: on the helo to leave there. By the time I
[10:03] Speaker 1: was home, I was home within a week, I'm pretty sure. Okay,
[10:06] Speaker 1: you know, so yeah, within a week I went from
[10:09] Speaker 1: The process was for me because I was living in
[10:12] Speaker 1: and saying in on an advisor team. We had these
[10:15] Speaker 1: like dirt huts that we made with like what's called
[10:18] Speaker 1: a Hesco barrier. It's like a big wire mesh and
[10:23] Speaker 1: burlap lined cube that you can just instead of filling
[10:27] Speaker 1: up a million sandbags, you just put this big Hesco
[10:29] Speaker 1: barrier out and then you dump sand into it with
[10:32] Speaker 1: like a backhoe or something like that. So we had
[10:36] Speaker 1: our living quarters were made out of these Hesco barriers,
[10:39] Speaker 1: so we're living inside these like dirt huts basically. And
[10:43] Speaker 1: went from that to flying to leather Neck, got on
[10:48] Speaker 1: a helo, flew to leather Neck, got in some tents there,
[10:52] Speaker 1: had our first chow haul, like actual chow haul, and
[10:56] Speaker 1: forever I remember us getting like ice cream at the
[10:58] Speaker 1: chow haul. We're like, dude, this is like I can't
[11:01] Speaker 1: believe they have ice cream here, you know, like wow.
[11:04] Speaker 1: And then we were there for probably a day or
[11:07] Speaker 1: two and then we jump on a plane and go
[11:09] Speaker 1: to Kyrgyzstan. And then Kyrgyzstan was like probably like Okanawl
[11:15] Speaker 1: was for for Vietnam. It was just like a stopover
[11:19] Speaker 1: and we stopped in Kyrgyzstan and we were there for
[11:25] Speaker 1: a few days, maybe two or three days. And that's
[11:29] Speaker 1: where you start kind of just hanging out and not
[11:32] Speaker 1: doing anything. Everybody's with each other. They give you your
[11:34] Speaker 1: first time you can have beer. I know, you guys
[11:37] Speaker 1: got to drink in Vietnam, but here when you get
[11:39] Speaker 1: to Krgyzstan, they have like a bar and everybody can
[11:42] Speaker 1: get two beers. And then from there, you know, after
[11:48] Speaker 1: you're there for a couple of days, you jump on
[11:49] Speaker 1: the plane and then usually on our I was east coast,
[11:52] Speaker 1: on our way home, we would stop in bangor Main
[11:55] Speaker 1: and that was like the first like you know, you're
[11:58] Speaker 1: in the US and they'd always have the USO or
[12:01] Speaker 1: somebody would be there to like greet you and stuff.
[12:03] Speaker 1: It was. It was pretty cool, you know, and then
[12:05] Speaker 1: you'd fly home.
[12:08] Speaker 2: Counseling. Uh oh, so you could, you could decompress, but
[12:15] Speaker 2: you know, any counseling.
[12:17] Speaker 1: So when you get back, So what happens is when
[12:19] Speaker 1: you get back from Afghan Iraq Afghanistan at the time,
[12:23] Speaker 1: and this changed overtime, before you deploy, they make you
[12:28] Speaker 1: go and take a cognitive test. I can't remember what
[12:31] Speaker 1: the cognitive test is or what it was called, but
[12:34] Speaker 1: it was like a timed like cognitive test, you know,
[12:38] Speaker 1: just to random stuff, how many squares can fit in this,
[12:42] Speaker 1: blah blah stuff like that. And then when you get
[12:45] Speaker 1: back within like a week, you go back and take
[12:49] Speaker 1: that test again. And then you also that's a time
[12:52] Speaker 1: where you can be like, hey, they want you to
[12:54] Speaker 1: list everything. They want you to list were you in
[12:57] Speaker 1: a place that had dust, were you in a did
[12:59] Speaker 1: you see dead body? Did you see explosions? Did you
[13:01] Speaker 1: see gunfire? Were you injured? Were you you know, it
[13:06] Speaker 1: was all these different questions just to keep a record
[13:08] Speaker 1: of it so later on if I have an issue,
[13:11] Speaker 1: I can be like, hey, man, it's you know recorded here.
[13:14] Speaker 1: Some guys. There was different opinions on what guys would
[13:17] Speaker 1: put on that. But I'm like, hey, if you're honest
[13:19] Speaker 1: and you're like, yeah, I saw a dead body or
[13:21] Speaker 1: I was there was an explosion or an ID or
[13:23] Speaker 1: whatever went off, but you're like, I'm okay with it,
[13:27] Speaker 1: you know. I'm like, I'm dealing with it. Okay, it
[13:29] Speaker 1: was fucked up. You know, it was messed up at
[13:30] Speaker 1: the time, but now I'm dealing with it. Then you're fine.
[13:34] Speaker 1: It's people where like I don't know, it's a way
[13:39] Speaker 1: to track, like, man, this guy's been seeing a lot
[13:41] Speaker 1: of dead bodies. Maybe that's probably the issue. You know.
[13:44] Speaker 2: So, as far as I know, in Vietnam, there was
[13:48] Speaker 2: nothing like that to track keep the tabs, and you know,
[13:54] Speaker 2: the guys in the field, like you, they were put
[13:57] Speaker 2: on a helicopter, went back to base, camp and continue
[14:00] Speaker 2: hop on a plane and you know, forty eight hours
[14:04] Speaker 2: later they were they were home again.
[14:06] Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, crazy, it's a it's a it's a
[14:09] Speaker 1: crazy flip. And what the other thing too, to point
[14:11] Speaker 1: out for you guys, where you guys had it worse,
[14:14] Speaker 1: was that you were all individual augments. It wasn't like
[14:18] Speaker 1: you were we all deployed together and then come home together.
[14:21] Speaker 1: You know, for the most part, we probably come in
[14:23] Speaker 1: two waves. There's an advance party stuff like that, but
[14:26] Speaker 1: for the most part, the entire unit deploys together and
[14:30] Speaker 1: then they do the deployment and then come home. Whereas
[14:32] Speaker 1: in Vietnam, the unit is stationed in Vietnam and you
[14:37] Speaker 1: just have rotations coming through, correct, But.
[14:41] Speaker 2: You don't know anyone going in and your next duty assignment,
[14:44] Speaker 2: you don't know anyone there. Yeah. Yeah, you're all augmentees,
[14:48] Speaker 2: as you say.
[14:49] Speaker 1: So, so when you when you became of age to
[14:52] Speaker 1: where you could start making this decision to join, what
[14:56] Speaker 1: made you choose? You know, what made you choose your
[14:58] Speaker 1: branch and your job?
[15:01] Speaker 2: Well, I I graduated college, I went to one year
[15:06] Speaker 2: of graduate school, and again in the back of my mind,
[15:09] Speaker 2: I always wanted to I knew I wanted to serve,
[15:14] Speaker 2: and I looked around and I chose the Air Force,
[15:19] Speaker 2: and talking with a recruiter, you know, about different career
[15:25] Speaker 2: paths and so forth, intelligence, becoming an intelligence officer was something,
[15:31] Speaker 2: you know, that appealed to me. It was a seven
[15:36] Speaker 2: month training program in Aurora, Colorado, Lowry Air Force Base,
[15:43] Speaker 2: and then oh, a month or so before we were graduating,
[15:49] Speaker 2: maybe it was even more than a month. You fill
[15:51] Speaker 2: out your jeez, what the heck? We call him the
[15:54] Speaker 2: wish list, you know, And there was no question in
[15:58] Speaker 2: my mind. I wanted to go to Vietnam, and I
[16:02] Speaker 2: wanted to be in a in a combat assignment. And
[16:08] Speaker 2: in my way of thinking that that's why you joined
[16:11] Speaker 2: the military. Why else would you want to volunteer and
[16:15] Speaker 2: do that if if not to serve your country in
[16:18] Speaker 2: that role. And I was blessed. I was very lucky,
[16:22] Speaker 2: very fortunate. I got a flying assignment in an airborne
[16:26] Speaker 2: command post, and I was I was certain I had
[16:32] Speaker 2: one of the best intel Air Force intel assignments. I
[16:35] Speaker 2: think in Southeast Asia. There are a couple other intel
[16:40] Speaker 2: guys that worked for the c I a up up
[16:45] Speaker 2: in Laos, and that was that was pretty hands on
[16:49] Speaker 2: as well, so you know, there was I don't know
[16:55] Speaker 2: if I embarrassed to admit this. As I'm going through
[17:01] Speaker 2: Intel school, there was almost a kind of a concern that, Hey,
[17:07] Speaker 2: I hope this war isn't over before I graduate and
[17:10] Speaker 2: I can get over there. And I know that, you know,
[17:13] Speaker 2: there were others that sort of felt the same thing.
[17:16] Speaker 1: Guys were doing. Guys were doing the same thing when
[17:19] Speaker 1: I joined. I joined in two thousand and six, so
[17:21] Speaker 1: we were like, oh, we're probably not going to go
[17:22] Speaker 1: to Iraq, like the world'll be over by then. And
[17:25] Speaker 1: then I actually was supposed to deploy first in two
[17:28] Speaker 1: thousand and seven or eight, I don't remember, and they
[17:32] Speaker 1: pulled me off of it because I was working on
[17:34] Speaker 1: this other project. I was working on this test jeep
[17:37] Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and I was like, I was
[17:40] Speaker 1: mad because I was like, well, if you pull me
[17:41] Speaker 1: off this, I'm probably never going to get to deploy.
[17:44] Speaker 1: And then not knowing that the war was going to
[17:46] Speaker 1: keep going on for at least a couple more years.
[17:48] Speaker 2: So in fact, Afghanistan that was longer than Vietnam, right.
[17:53] Speaker 1: Yeah, it was over twenty years. They went in in
[17:56] Speaker 1: October a two thousand and one and then yeah, just
[17:59] Speaker 1: over twenty years when did they pull out? What was
[18:01] Speaker 1: the actual date? I don't remember the actual date. It
[18:03] Speaker 1: was twenty twenty two, do I believe? Though? What'd you
[18:07] Speaker 1: think about that when you saw that as a Vietnam
[18:09] Speaker 1: VET of the war, the pullout of Afghanistan?
[18:15] Speaker 2: Horrible, horrible and disturbing? What thirteen was it? Thirteen lives
[18:23] Speaker 2: that we lost, and just as reprehensible, no one has
[18:32] Speaker 2: been held responsible. The only two people that I military
[18:39] Speaker 2: that I heard were held responsible were two One was
[18:43] Speaker 2: a Marine Corps officer and perhaps the other was an
[18:48] Speaker 2: Army officer, and they demanded some accountability for that pullout
[18:53] Speaker 2: and the fact that who was responsible, I mean, someone
[18:56] Speaker 2: signed the orders and someone made the decision, and the
[19:01] Speaker 2: lives of those thirteen men and women, it's just unconscionable.
[19:06] Speaker 2: And then the billions of dollars of I don't know
[19:10] Speaker 2: how many brand new Humbies, brand new Blackhawk helicopters, palettes
[19:14] Speaker 2: of one hundred dollars bills, and to this day, I
[19:19] Speaker 2: just no one's even hell responsible.
[19:22] Speaker 1: I will say, I will say part of the equipment
[19:25] Speaker 1: that was left behind was intended for the Afghan National
[19:28] Speaker 1: Army to use to support our country. So part of
[19:31] Speaker 1: it was that. But I having been an Afghan National
[19:36] Speaker 1: Army advisor and worked with them, when they said we
[19:41] Speaker 1: were pulling out on this date. I remember when they
[19:43] Speaker 1: announced like a date and there was someone on Twitter
[19:47] Speaker 1: or something that was like, you know, Taliban will take
[19:51] Speaker 1: over Afghanistan within six weeks, and I was like six weeks.
[19:54] Speaker 1: I think I put it on Twitter. I think six
[19:56] Speaker 1: weeks more like six days, and it like because just
[20:00] Speaker 1: because I knew the corruption within the system, there was
[20:03] Speaker 1: no way that you're talking about on these far outposts
[20:06] Speaker 1: that these Afghan National Army soldiers are at, there's no
[20:09] Speaker 1: way that they're going to attempt to defend anything when
[20:12] Speaker 1: they have one magazine of AMMO, they haven't been paid
[20:15] Speaker 1: in a couple months, and they're hungry. When the tile
[20:18] Speaker 1: band rolls up and goes you can drop your arms
[20:21] Speaker 1: and live or we'll just kill you, Like you know,
[20:24] Speaker 1: what do you expect them to do? And that's because
[20:26] Speaker 1: of corruption. Now I agree with you. Someone needs to
[20:29] Speaker 1: be held all accountable. I don't know the fact that
[20:32] Speaker 1: the generals allowed this to happen, and I know they
[20:35] Speaker 1: can't say no to the president. I guess from what
[20:39] Speaker 1: I understand this is a lot of the details were
[20:42] Speaker 1: dictated directly from the White House. But if that's the case,
[20:46] Speaker 1: then now that Biden administration is over, some of those
[20:50] Speaker 1: general officers that are probably retired now need to come
[20:53] Speaker 1: out and speak out about it and be like, hey, listen,
[20:55] Speaker 1: we tried to say, don't use Kabul. Let's do bogrum
[21:00] Speaker 1: this airfield in the middle of nowhere on a base,
[21:02] Speaker 1: you know, rather than in the middle of the city.
[21:03] Speaker 1: But either way, after our go ahead.
[21:07] Speaker 2: Dude, as we talk, I see, I'm reminded of what
[21:12] Speaker 2: really are parallels between Vietnam and what you experienced. And
[21:19] Speaker 2: if I could frequall everything that's going through my mind,
[21:22] Speaker 2: but very quickly, the scenes on the tarmacs, the runways
[21:26] Speaker 2: where the big transports are running down and all these
[21:28] Speaker 2: people are running after them. Well, in the book, I
[21:32] Speaker 2: talk about the betrayal of the the Mong, the Hmong,
[21:36] Speaker 2: the ethnic Laotians that formed the so called secret army.
[21:43] Speaker 2: Forty thousand of them were left on the runway as well.
[21:47] Speaker 2: When we left Laos, we took out despite pledges and
[21:52] Speaker 2: promises that the warriors and their families would be taken
[21:57] Speaker 2: from Laos because like Afghanistan, they were hunted down by
[22:02] Speaker 2: the communist regime. So yeah, there are you know, there
[22:10] Speaker 2: are some parallels.
[22:12] Speaker 1: Was there any kind of accountability after Vietnam? Did you
[22:15] Speaker 1: see generals getting fired? Was there? I mean, what was
[22:18] Speaker 1: the the days, like the weeks and months after the
[22:22] Speaker 1: final pullout, those famous photos of them being pulled out
[22:24] Speaker 1: of the embassy, off the rooftop. There was there anything
[22:28] Speaker 1: after that.
[22:29] Speaker 2: Not that I'm aware of. You know, you mentioned that
[22:35] Speaker 2: the generals. Where were the generals and you know, did
[22:38] Speaker 2: they say anything or in retirement did they say anything?
[22:42] Speaker 2: In the aftermath of Vietnam And while things were unfolding,
[22:47] Speaker 2: we knew, for example, in the Air War that targeting
[22:53] Speaker 2: was done basically from the White House and President Johnson
[22:57] Speaker 2: and his minions were doing the targeting. But they were
[23:04] Speaker 2: targeting the same targets, same time on target, the same
[23:08] Speaker 2: ips were being used. There was no And my thing is,
[23:16] Speaker 2: where were the colonels and the generals in the Air
[23:19] Speaker 2: Force to say, wait a minute, this, We've got to
[23:23] Speaker 2: change something. In the Christmas bombing of what twenty nineteen
[23:31] Speaker 2: seventy two, I guess to get the North of knees
[23:35] Speaker 2: back to the bargaining table they Johnson or Nixon. It
[23:42] Speaker 2: was Nixon who brought in the B fifty twos, and
[23:46] Speaker 2: all the B fifty two strikes in South Vietnam were
[23:49] Speaker 2: being targeted and made from off at Air Force Base,
[23:55] Speaker 2: Strategic Air Command Center, and in those Christmas bombing they
[24:01] Speaker 2: were using the same tactics that were in B fifty
[24:07] Speaker 2: two strategic bombing tactics from whenever, and that was release
[24:13] Speaker 2: of bombs. You go into a tight right turn, and
[24:17] Speaker 2: that's been something every mission was targeted that way until
[24:21] Speaker 2: the pilots. I think we lost eleven B fifty two
[24:24] Speaker 2: and I don't know how many crewmen in that Wow
[24:27] Speaker 2: the pot and the pilots basically rebelled and said we're
[24:33] Speaker 2: not doing it under threat of court martial. Well no
[24:37] Speaker 2: one was ever court martial, but they went ahead and
[24:41] Speaker 2: took evasive actions and so forth, because when you made
[24:43] Speaker 2: the right hand turn, it exposed the belly of the
[24:48] Speaker 2: aircraft and the black boxes weren't effective, so they picked
[24:53] Speaker 2: up on the radar. Anyway, that's in the weeds, but.
[24:58] Speaker 1: It's just it's just ongoing examples of micromanagement from the top,
[25:04] Speaker 1: not understanding the what's going on on the ground and
[25:09] Speaker 1: just real quick, like I interviewed a guy named Thomas Gathwright.
[25:14] Speaker 1: It was like episode one twenty two or one twelve
[25:17] Speaker 1: or something like that, and he was a naval officer.
[25:21] Speaker 1: He was an enlisted guy naval officer, then got out
[25:23] Speaker 1: and became a medic and worked as a contractor for
[25:30] Speaker 1: the Department of State and he got sent to Kabul
[25:33] Speaker 1: like a week or two before they got overran, and
[25:38] Speaker 1: he was like, I showed up and you can watch
[25:40] Speaker 1: the interview on my channel, and he's like I showed
[25:43] Speaker 1: up and everybody was just walking around like it was
[25:46] Speaker 1: business like usual. He's like, I just came over here,
[25:49] Speaker 1: no one thinking that it was gonna be all insane,
[25:51] Speaker 1: and they're just they're painting walls, working on work requests,
[25:54] Speaker 1: like nothing's actually being done to prep for this mass
[25:57] Speaker 1: evacuation it's about to happen. And then he describes how
[25:59] Speaker 1: it just turned into caf overnight, and it's just that
[26:02] Speaker 1: over the leadership, you know, like dictating if it came
[26:05] Speaker 1: from the White House, don't use don't use Bogrum, use Kabul.
[26:10] Speaker 1: That's another example of what you're talking about there. Where
[26:13] Speaker 1: it's just like you don't understand what's happening on the ground.
[26:17] Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, where were those people to stand
[26:21] Speaker 2: up and say this is wrong, We've got to do
[26:23] Speaker 2: something different. I understand pensions and unwillingness and so forth,
[26:28] Speaker 2: but uh, that was really one of the oh saying
[26:36] Speaker 2: unfortunate episodes in the Vietnam WARNT. It sounds like, you know,
[26:40] Speaker 2: we haven't learned a whole lot u militarily in the process. Yeah.
[26:47] Speaker 1: Part of that too, when you're talking about people from
[26:50] Speaker 1: like off it controlling it, that's almost like commanders wanting
[26:55] Speaker 1: to get in the game, you know what I'm saying.
[26:58] Speaker 1: They're like, hey, they're using our B fifty twos. That's
[27:00] Speaker 1: a strategic asset where the strat colm we should be
[27:02] Speaker 1: the ones or were whatever, We should be the ones
[27:06] Speaker 1: that are giving the dictation, not the people that are
[27:09] Speaker 1: over there. And it's like, I get what you're trying
[27:11] Speaker 1: to do, and like you want to get in the
[27:12] Speaker 1: game and stuff, but that's ridiculous to have somebody here it.
[27:15] Speaker 2: Is Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's turf and you know,
[27:21] Speaker 2: this is my turf and you don't go there, and
[27:24] Speaker 2: and you know, historically that's with the branches of the service.
[27:28] Speaker 2: Tween the Army and the air Force. That was always
[27:31] Speaker 2: an ongoing battle. And finally it was agreed that the
[27:35] Speaker 2: air Force would fly aircraft fixed wing aircraft combat missions
[27:43] Speaker 2: and the Army can have the gunships, the helicopter gunships,
[27:50] Speaker 2: you know. And that was a trade off. In Vietnam,
[27:52] Speaker 2: there was a trade off that the Navy had certain
[27:55] Speaker 2: route packages that was designated Navy. The Air Force had
[27:59] Speaker 2: certain you know, wasn't it. I don't know. Maybe there
[28:03] Speaker 2: was some sense to it I that you know, was
[28:07] Speaker 2: well by a pay grade, but it was just like, okay, well,
[28:12] Speaker 2: Marine Corps, this is your responsibility, Navy here, Air Force there,
[28:16] Speaker 2: each branch wanting its own turf.
[28:20] Speaker 1: Yeah and uh.
[28:22] Speaker 2: And it was ultimately to the detriment of the men
[28:26] Speaker 2: on the ground.
[28:28] Speaker 1: So we had a Again, we had similar thing in Afghanistan.
[28:32] Speaker 1: The reason that the Marines were in Helmand we focused
[28:36] Speaker 1: on that particular part. Originally we were all over the
[28:40] Speaker 1: country where army units were, there were marine units and
[28:43] Speaker 1: stuff like that. During the early days of Afghanistan, and
[28:46] Speaker 1: then during the plus up, the Marine Corps was bringing
[28:49] Speaker 1: in like a meth command. I believe or something like
[28:51] Speaker 1: that there, you know, bringing in more people and they
[28:55] Speaker 1: didn't want their Marines. They the Marines were like, hey,
[28:58] Speaker 1: we're coming in and we're bringing all our own some
[29:00] Speaker 1: with us. We have our own artillery, we have our
[29:02] Speaker 1: own aircraft. We don't need anything else, Like, we don't
[29:05] Speaker 1: want to break up all these units into smaller units
[29:07] Speaker 1: and send off and be under army commands. And that's
[29:10] Speaker 1: why we ended up as Marines being focused on Helmet
[29:14] Speaker 1: Province in Afghanistan, similar to how they broke up portions
[29:17] Speaker 1: of Vietnam, and different branches had their own missions going on,
[29:21] Speaker 1: you know, and there was some crossover, but for the
[29:24] Speaker 1: most part, it's like this is my area, you know,
[29:26] Speaker 1: this is where we're working at. So, yeah, it's very
[29:29] Speaker 1: interesting stuff, these military tactics. How you know. I was
[29:32] Speaker 1: listening to a video that you would put out about
[29:34] Speaker 1: the I think it was your first mission or something
[29:39] Speaker 1: like that in Vietnam, and you were describing like the map,
[29:42] Speaker 1: boards and things and everything you described is what you
[29:45] Speaker 1: would see in a current command center, you know, plus
[29:49] Speaker 1: ad on top of that, TVs and computers everywhere. But
[29:54] Speaker 1: I had a paper map with pushpins in it with
[29:57] Speaker 1: you know, different. Hey, there was this fire mission here,
[30:01] Speaker 1: there was this you know, I'm tracking stuff on the map.
[30:03] Speaker 1: I had a whiteboard that had fire caps on it,
[30:08] Speaker 1: you know, fire capass showing the different ordnance loadouts for
[30:11] Speaker 1: different elements that we had and support and stuff. It
[30:13] Speaker 1: was very familiar.
[30:15] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I had I britt into a force. In fact,
[30:23] Speaker 2: he was still an active duty and he was an
[30:25] Speaker 2: intelligence officer, and he didn't want to reveal a whole lot,
[30:28] Speaker 2: but we we talked a little bit, and it's some
[30:34] Speaker 2: of the things are saying, but a lot is different.
[30:36] Speaker 2: For example, I was in this airborne command post, and
[30:41] Speaker 2: the main reason we had an airborne command post is
[30:44] Speaker 2: because our radios were line of sight. You know, we
[30:47] Speaker 2: didn't have satellite radios. Uh, So that for us to
[30:54] Speaker 2: communicate with the teams on the ground, you know, we
[30:58] Speaker 2: had to be in the air have a line of
[31:01] Speaker 2: sight to their radios. And if we're you know, a
[31:05] Speaker 2: hill or mountain was in the way, we had to
[31:07] Speaker 2: all right change our orbit and go so that so
[31:10] Speaker 2: that we could talk. So you know, that was a
[31:13] Speaker 2: little bit archaic, but well, it's nice to know.
[31:18] Speaker 1: No, it's still we're still doing the as a JTAC.
[31:21] Speaker 1: On the ground, we're still using those same type of
[31:23] Speaker 1: frequencies their line of sight. If an aircraft is too yeah,
[31:27] Speaker 1: well we'll pick them up. I mean, you get, you
[31:30] Speaker 1: get for people. I mean, it sounds like it's not
[31:33] Speaker 1: a good way to transmit, but when you're talking about
[31:35] Speaker 1: aircraft that is like fixed wing especially that are usually
[31:39] Speaker 1: ten thousand feet or above, you're you're getting good communications
[31:43] Speaker 1: with them all day long, helos depending on their flight profile.
[31:47] Speaker 1: If they're coming in low then yeah, you might lose
[31:49] Speaker 1: them for a minute. You might lose some of their
[31:51] Speaker 1: comms when they're behind something. But yeah, that's pretty much
[31:54] Speaker 1: what we're using sat satcoms not use as much as
[31:56] Speaker 1: people think. It is used for stuff, but it's not
[31:59] Speaker 1: as I guess, field friendly if you will. I'm sure
[32:04] Speaker 1: there's been developments and stuff since I've been out. I've
[32:06] Speaker 1: been out for like eight years now, seven years. But
[32:11] Speaker 1: satcom was used some, but not not for aircraft for sure.
[32:21] Speaker 2: You said you were a sack on the ground. What
[32:26] Speaker 2: did you call that?
[32:27] Speaker 1: Justin a jaytack J tack. Yeah, so we have now
[32:34] Speaker 1: and I'll get some of this for everyone to understand better.
[32:38] Speaker 1: The jatack role. What it is is someone that's on
[32:41] Speaker 1: the ground that talks to aircraft and directs close air
[32:44] Speaker 1: support strikes and stuff like that. That's what the JAY
[32:47] Speaker 1: attack on the ground does. That originated back before Vietnam,
[32:51] Speaker 1: but in Vietnam they use what's called a fact a
[32:54] Speaker 1: Ford air controller. A Ford air controller is the same
[32:58] Speaker 1: thing they control ordinance. They can they tell aircraft where
[33:01] Speaker 1: to fly in the sky and bring them in certain
[33:03] Speaker 1: directions for attacks and stuff like that. But if they're
[33:06] Speaker 1: in an aircraft, we call them a fac a so
[33:08] Speaker 1: fact airborne Ford air controller airborne. Now, in the Marine Corps,
[33:14] Speaker 1: pilots have to do a ground tour. That's after their
[33:17] Speaker 1: first like six years or something like that. They do
[33:20] Speaker 1: like a two year ground tour. A lot of those
[33:23] Speaker 1: pilots want to go become JA tax But if they
[33:27] Speaker 1: get they get that JTACK qualification, they go through the schoolhouse.
[33:31] Speaker 1: It's called TCP school Tactical Air Control Party School. You
[33:34] Speaker 1: go through that and you get certified as a JAYTACK
[33:37] Speaker 1: a Joint Terminal Attack controller. Well, if you're a pilot,
[33:40] Speaker 1: you get certified as a fac Ford air controller, same thing.
[33:43] Speaker 1: It just means that he's a pilot. He's an officer
[33:46] Speaker 1: pilot that does jaytack work. If an artillery officer becomes
[33:51] Speaker 1: a jtack, he's a jay attack. He's not a fact
[33:53] Speaker 1: because he's not a pilot.
[33:56] Speaker 2: Those ground facts US servicemen were used in Vietnam. In Laos,
[34:04] Speaker 2: we used what were called forward air guides, same principle
[34:10] Speaker 2: fags they were, and they were CIA personnel trained in
[34:18] Speaker 2: some layocean, but a lot of Ties and a handful
[34:21] Speaker 2: of Americans, and they were embedded lots of time, but
[34:27] Speaker 2: sometimes they were with smaller gorilla units and those were
[34:32] Speaker 2: That was one of my main jobs was to communicate
[34:36] Speaker 2: with the fags on the ground, and during my year
[34:44] Speaker 2: I became close, particularly close with one. His call sign
[34:50] Speaker 2: was Hilltop. But that was a big part of our
[34:54] Speaker 2: job as intel was to communicate with them, and then
[34:58] Speaker 2: they would be the ones it would direct the strikes,
[35:01] Speaker 2: the aircraft, the gunships, flair ships or whatever we sent
[35:06] Speaker 2: to them whenever they had troops in contact. So so yeah, similar,
[35:13] Speaker 2: I guess as. So you were using them in Afghanistan
[35:17] Speaker 2: as well the ground.
[35:19] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the Jatas for a while, actually, I think
[35:24] Speaker 1: they started to see the worth of having somebody there
[35:27] Speaker 1: that can direct air strikes, and they wanted a jaytack.
[35:33] Speaker 1: Basically on every detachment that was going out, every detachment
[35:38] Speaker 1: that was deployed was trying to get a jay tack
[35:40] Speaker 1: and we had to we actually this may surprise you,
[35:43] Speaker 1: but we were having sergeants go to TCP school. That's
[35:45] Speaker 1: when you would first if you were a Ford observer sergeant,
[35:49] Speaker 1: you were more than likely going to be screened to
[35:52] Speaker 1: go to TCP school to become a JI.
[35:54] Speaker 2: I never realized that. Well, for example, line of sight
[35:58] Speaker 2: videos were still being used and using these j tax
[36:03] Speaker 2: as you call them.
[36:06] Speaker 1: Yeah, well, go ahead, go ahead.
[36:08] Speaker 2: Well, the Air Force of course had extensive use made
[36:12] Speaker 2: extensive use of airborne facts and they were in slow
[36:16] Speaker 2: moving aircraft wing steep bank six who he turns down
[36:21] Speaker 2: the trail system and so forth, and they played a
[36:25] Speaker 2: huge role in the air war.
[36:27] Speaker 1: So now now are fat a's are you can be a?
[36:34] Speaker 1: I mean all the pilots, all the fighter pilots, not
[36:37] Speaker 1: all of them, but a lot of not even half
[36:42] Speaker 1: of them become fat a's, but quite a few of them.
[36:45] Speaker 1: Every squadron has fat a's in it, both helo pilots
[36:49] Speaker 1: and fixed wing like your F thirty five, your harriers
[36:51] Speaker 1: and stuff like that. At eighteens, those guys are fat
[36:54] Speaker 1: a's and as a j tach on the ground, what
[36:57] Speaker 1: we will do sometimes is if I'm working an area,
[37:01] Speaker 1: if I'm like, okay, this is my target area, I
[37:04] Speaker 1: have multiple targets and I have multiple aircraft checking in,
[37:08] Speaker 1: then I will put some of my work on the
[37:10] Speaker 1: fac A. I'll be like, hey, you can control you
[37:14] Speaker 1: control routing, safety of flight, and check ins and all
[37:19] Speaker 1: let them as aircraft come to me, They'll take the routing,
[37:22] Speaker 1: safety of flight, and check in. While I'm working on
[37:25] Speaker 1: my missions. I'm like, okay, I know I have two
[37:27] Speaker 1: F eighteen's coming, I have two apaches coming. Then these
[37:31] Speaker 1: are this is and I'm coming up with how I'm
[37:32] Speaker 1: gonna do my strike. Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a
[37:37] Speaker 1: weird dance. And now, because of technology, like in Afghanistan,
[37:42] Speaker 1: what we wanted was we would want a jaytack at
[37:46] Speaker 1: every like outpost. Basically every company, every line company had
[37:50] Speaker 1: a jaytack in it. But the jaytack would basically sit
[37:54] Speaker 1: at the command center and that way he can control
[37:57] Speaker 1: the entire battlefield. He can control air for everybody he
[38:00] Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily out on foot patrols. There are times that
[38:04] Speaker 1: that happened, especially when you're talking about like raids and
[38:07] Speaker 1: special operations units stuff like that. More so there, but
[38:10] Speaker 1: for your normal infantry jaytach a lot of times during
[38:14] Speaker 1: command center so you can control more of the battle space.
[38:16] Speaker 1: Because if I'm out on a foot patrol with first squad,
[38:20] Speaker 1: that I can really only have situational awareness of what
[38:22] Speaker 1: first squad is doing. I don't know what the rest
[38:24] Speaker 1: of the company's doing. So the jaytach could be there.
[38:28] Speaker 1: And then we have what's called a Joint fires Observer,
[38:31] Speaker 1: which is basically an artillery forward observer. Any most a
[38:36] Speaker 1: lot of jobs can get the qualification, but an artillery
[38:39] Speaker 1: forward observer was the one that started it. That can
[38:41] Speaker 1: talk to aircraft. That just means you've been to school
[38:44] Speaker 1: to talk to aircraft. And now me as the jaytach,
[38:47] Speaker 1: I have a JFO in each platoon of my company
[38:53] Speaker 1: or each squad of my company. So when they go
[38:55] Speaker 1: out on a mission and something happens, I got a
[38:57] Speaker 1: guy that can give me good targeting information and then
[39:00] Speaker 1: we're going to do the striking. He can give correction
[39:03] Speaker 1: to the aircraft can he just can't clear him.
[39:06] Speaker 2: Hot who controlled the aircraft coming into your area and
[39:13] Speaker 2: out of your area? Did you do that too?
[39:16] Speaker 1: So the once checking in that would be at the
[39:19] Speaker 1: battalion level, we have the air officer, so let's yeah,
[39:23] Speaker 1: the way it works from the ground level is I
[39:26] Speaker 1: have a JFO that's out on a patrol base and
[39:29] Speaker 1: he goes out on and out on actual foot patrols
[39:32] Speaker 1: and he may talk to the aircraft to give targeting information,
[39:35] Speaker 1: but he's not allowed to clear them. Then at the
[39:37] Speaker 1: company command center you have the jatach who is talking
[39:41] Speaker 1: to that JFO, and then when the mission is approved,
[39:44] Speaker 1: he's giving the actual clearance to drop, and he's talking
[39:48] Speaker 1: back to the battalion where the battalion has the battalion
[39:51] Speaker 1: Air officer. The battalion air officer gets his approval, gets
[39:55] Speaker 1: the approval for the emission from the CEO OPSO or XO,
[39:59] Speaker 1: and tells the JAY that he can drop before that,
[40:02] Speaker 1: then you have the next level up is the it's
[40:05] Speaker 1: the regimental Air officer, but they're working with like higher
[40:08] Speaker 1: levels and they're directing aircraft. So there's all these elements.
[40:11] Speaker 1: There's like the strategic picture, like hey, we're gonna have
[40:15] Speaker 1: six F eighteens in this in southern Afghanistan today, and
[40:20] Speaker 1: then from there it's the smaller picture down to the regiment. Okay,
[40:23] Speaker 1: this regiment gets to this regiment gets to this regiment
[40:26] Speaker 1: gets two, and then the the battalions. Though the regiment
[40:29] Speaker 1: will go this battalion is our main effort today, So
[40:32] Speaker 1: they're getting the two aircraft, but then the other battalion.
[40:36] Speaker 1: Something happens that troops in contact, we call it a
[40:38] Speaker 1: tick that will get redirected over. So, but on the ground,
[40:43] Speaker 1: you are in control of any aircraft that's in your battlespace.
[40:46] Speaker 1: So if I'm on the ground and aircraft are calling
[40:48] Speaker 1: me to check in, let's say we're getting in a
[40:50] Speaker 1: firefight and I declare a tick troops in contact, They're
[40:53] Speaker 1: gonna start routing aircraft to me, multiple fix wing sections,
[40:57] Speaker 1: and I'm gonna start placing them in the sky. I'm
[40:59] Speaker 1: gonna be like like, hey, this is your echo point,
[41:02] Speaker 1: which a lot of times is the target point. From
[41:04] Speaker 1: your echo point, You're gonna hold Bravo ten, which means
[41:08] Speaker 1: you're gonna hold east ten miles, So they're gonna be
[41:11] Speaker 1: up ten miles, you know, fifteen to seventeen and that's
[41:13] Speaker 1: where so they're gonna be flying fifteen thousand seventeen thousand
[41:16] Speaker 1: feet ten miles east of the target area. And that way,
[41:19] Speaker 1: I know I can have them come from, you know,
[41:22] Speaker 1: that direction for attacks and stuff. It's a lot. It's
[41:25] Speaker 1: fun though, I'm getting all pumped up.
[41:27] Speaker 2: Sentially, Yeah, that's essentially how we worked. Our orbit was
[41:33] Speaker 2: Northern Laos which is called what's what's called Barrel Roll,
[41:38] Speaker 2: and then I flew in a night mission, so we
[41:41] Speaker 2: were on station approximately six pm til six hundred and
[41:47] Speaker 2: then we were relieved by another command post. And then
[41:52] Speaker 2: for Southern Laos which was called Steel Tiger, same thing.
[41:57] Speaker 2: There was an evening orbit six to admit or six
[42:01] Speaker 2: pm to six O six hundred, and then the day
[42:04] Speaker 2: orbits would go from six hundred to eighteen hundred hours.
[42:09] Speaker 2: And then we had controllers that aircraft came into our
[42:13] Speaker 2: area and they would be handed off to the fags
[42:18] Speaker 2: on the ground or they would be handed off to
[42:21] Speaker 2: a fact that would put them in on a frag
[42:24] Speaker 2: target that they had, and then my role would be
[42:29] Speaker 2: for targets of opportunity and we had a variety of resources.
[42:33] Speaker 2: How we how we could identify targets in addition to
[42:37] Speaker 2: the fags or the roadwatch teams that were on the ground.
[42:42] Speaker 1: I bet those guys love that acronym that they were
[42:45] Speaker 1: the fags before.
[42:47] Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, it was before you know, political correctness,
[42:52] Speaker 2: I guess, but it wasn't a factor back then.
[42:56] Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think I've ever brought it up
[42:58] Speaker 1: on the podcast before. I don't know if I have
[43:00] Speaker 1: or not, but obviously my podcast, Former Action Guys is
[43:04] Speaker 1: fags podcast, and that was just a joke on We
[43:08] Speaker 1: used to call each other that, like you're a fag,
[43:10] Speaker 1: you're a former action guy. And it was like somebody
[43:13] Speaker 1: that went from working at working like like a j
[43:16] Speaker 1: tach job or something like that. But now you got promoted.
[43:18] Speaker 1: Now you've got to do more spreadsheets and you're doing
[43:20] Speaker 1: manning meetings and you know, you become an office worker.
[43:24] Speaker 1: So that's why. And people bring it up in the
[43:27] Speaker 1: comments every once in a while they're like, hey, do
[43:28] Speaker 1: you know what the acronym for this show is? Like, yeah, I.
[43:31] Speaker 2: A Forward Action Guide. Is that what you said?
[43:36] Speaker 1: No, so the show is called Former Action Guys.
[43:39] Speaker 2: Oh, Former Action Guys.
[43:40] Speaker 1: Yeah, Like like used to be a cool guy. You know,
[43:43] Speaker 1: I used to go do cool stuff and now I don't.
[43:45] Speaker 1: I'm a former action guy. I sat on that name
[43:49] Speaker 1: for a few months because I wasn't sure how people
[43:51] Speaker 1: would react to it. You know, former action guys. I
[43:54] Speaker 1: knew it. I knew the acronym was FAG. I was like, man,
[43:57] Speaker 1: they may not like this. So I sat on it
[43:59] Speaker 1: for a few months before I decided to pull the
[44:01] Speaker 1: trigger and go for it. But you know, when you're
[44:05] Speaker 1: talking about I had a guy on uh previously. He
[44:08] Speaker 1: wrote a book as well. I'm trying to remember which
[44:12] Speaker 1: one it is. What the Taliban told me or something
[44:14] Speaker 1: like that, Yeah, what the Taliband told me. He was
[44:18] Speaker 1: a Air Force cryptologist that flew on AC one thirties
[44:25] Speaker 1: and would pick up radio chatter and feed that down
[44:28] Speaker 1: to you know, elements that were working, like use that
[44:32] Speaker 1: as part of the intel. Right, was that something similar
[44:35] Speaker 1: to what you guys would do, try to pick up
[44:36] Speaker 1: that that radio chatter and then like you know, update
[44:39] Speaker 1: guys that are on the ground with what's going on.
[44:42] Speaker 2: Not in real time. The Air Force and the Army
[44:49] Speaker 2: flew a missions electronic intelligence, so they would gather that information.
[44:57] Speaker 2: But then that would have to it would have to
[44:58] Speaker 2: be interpreted and diagnosed. Now what we did have, of
[45:06] Speaker 2: course real time, we had the fags on the ground,
[45:09] Speaker 2: the road watch teams, but we also had MacNamara's Fence,
[45:15] Speaker 2: and those were the sensors that were placed on the ground.
[45:20] Speaker 2: They were first placed along the Ho Chiman Trail, which
[45:23] Speaker 2: a little bit was in northern Laos, but most of
[45:25] Speaker 2: it was in southern Laos along the border with Vietnam
[45:31] Speaker 2: on the Animal through the Animite Mountains. And the sensors
[45:36] Speaker 2: there were two types. They were acoustic which picked up
[45:42] Speaker 2: words and noises and so forth, and then there were
[45:46] Speaker 2: seismic that picked up movement on the tremors on the ground.
[45:52] Speaker 2: For the most part they were air delivered. Some were
[45:55] Speaker 2: actually placed hand placed by some SOD teams that went
[46:04] Speaker 2: in and then the sensors were placed in lines and
[46:11] Speaker 2: once they were activated, that information was radio to an
[46:16] Speaker 2: airborne platform that then transmitted that information to a command
[46:21] Speaker 2: center at a base on the eastern side of Thailand
[46:26] Speaker 2: right on the Mekong River. The Confina NKP Naked Fanny,
[46:31] Speaker 2: and they had an organization called Task Force Alpha. At
[46:35] Speaker 2: the time it was well McNamara's Fence it was known about,
[46:41] Speaker 2: but they were, you know, first generation of computers. So
[46:47] Speaker 2: the computers interpreted the information. Then by radio they would
[46:51] Speaker 2: contact us and indicate where the movers were, where the
[46:56] Speaker 2: people were. They would give us coordinates, and then we
[46:59] Speaker 2: would divert gunships or fast movers or slow movers, whatever
[47:06] Speaker 2: platform we might have available to that location. Because the
[47:13] Speaker 2: North Vietnamese moved at night under the cover of darkness,
[47:19] Speaker 2: very little activity on the trail system. During the day,
[47:22] Speaker 2: they all hunkered down at truck parks and caves and
[47:26] Speaker 2: so forth. But at night, that's when the sensors were
[47:30] Speaker 2: most active, and through some programs. You know, at the
[47:38] Speaker 2: start of the Vietnam War, we were, and I can
[47:41] Speaker 2: speak for the Air Force, we were woefully unprepared for
[47:44] Speaker 2: unconventional warfare. You know. The Air Force had high fast
[47:52] Speaker 2: craft that were designed to do one of two things.
[47:54] Speaker 2: One intercept the Russian bombers hundreds of miles off the coast,
[47:59] Speaker 2: or the other was to like the F one O
[48:01] Speaker 2: five and F four oh four, do a pop up
[48:03] Speaker 2: maneuver and deliver a nuclear bomb. They were never designed
[48:07] Speaker 2: from close airsport. My god, that's what we were using
[48:10] Speaker 2: early on in the war. F one O four is
[48:12] Speaker 2: F one oh six is for close air support. It
[48:16] Speaker 2: was totally insane. So the Air Force embarked upon two things.
[48:20] Speaker 2: One it was called shed Light, and this was technology.
[48:25] Speaker 2: It was a battlefield illumination. It was also night vision
[48:32] Speaker 2: and they developed that was the start of Night Division
[48:37] Speaker 2: white night observation devices, which I'm sure you used on
[48:42] Speaker 2: your helmets, right, So that was the start, and that
[48:46] Speaker 2: was placed on aircraft. So for the first time we
[48:49] Speaker 2: actually could locate through infrared targets on the ground at night, troops,
[48:56] Speaker 2: vehicles and so forth. So all of a sudden we
[49:00] Speaker 2: had a night time capability.
[49:03] Speaker 1: How good was it though, I mean, I imagine that
[49:05] Speaker 1: first first version was like, hey, there's a blob. There's
[49:08] Speaker 1: a blob on the ground.
[49:10] Speaker 2: It was hit or moves, and I shouldn't say that
[49:14] Speaker 2: it was more hit than miss. It was pretty good.
[49:17] Speaker 2: They could identify the movers and we were mainly interested
[49:22] Speaker 2: in the vehicles, the tanks and the trucks, and they
[49:27] Speaker 2: could locate them. And then of course we had gunships,
[49:32] Speaker 2: which was another product. It wasn't it didn't come out
[49:35] Speaker 2: of Operation shed Light, but they had a special gunship
[49:40] Speaker 2: program start out with C forty seven one nineteen, But
[49:45] Speaker 2: the C one thirty gunship was just incredible. They might
[49:50] Speaker 2: take one round for aiming and then they were just
[49:54] Speaker 2: deadly one round one truck. So they were good. They
[49:59] Speaker 2: were very good, accumulated great bda and depending upon the location,
[50:07] Speaker 2: of course, we transmitted all that the location, so daylight,
[50:10] Speaker 2: they fast movers were sent out their first thing to
[50:14] Speaker 2: try to pick up whatever, uh was left in that area.
[50:19] Speaker 1: So yeah, that's uh for the ground sensors. How I mean,
[50:27] Speaker 1: how accurate were those I mean were they Was it
[50:29] Speaker 1: main you said, you guys were mainly looking for vehicles,
[50:32] Speaker 1: so you're not picking up foot traffic or anything like that.
[50:34] Speaker 1: Like how they was giving you good information? Because I imagine,
[50:38] Speaker 1: like you said, if you put them in line along
[50:40] Speaker 1: the trail and you're getting those hits on the sensors, well,
[50:44] Speaker 1: now you can estimate size because if it's both of
[50:47] Speaker 1: them are getting hit at the same time, then obviously
[50:49] Speaker 1: it's this long. And then you can estimate time of travel,
[50:53] Speaker 1: like how fast are going because this sensor got hit
[50:55] Speaker 1: at this time, this we got hit at this time,
[50:56] Speaker 1: so they're moving this fast exactly.
[50:59] Speaker 2: They were put down strings and so they knew that
[51:02] Speaker 2: they knew the location of the sensors and they could
[51:05] Speaker 2: figure out time and distance. They were pretty accurate. Task
[51:12] Speaker 2: Force Alpha that was called and the project was a
[51:15] Speaker 2: blue white A couple of funny things with the acoustic sensors. Again,
[51:23] Speaker 2: they could hear sound well. From time to time they
[51:27] Speaker 2: would hear soldiers urinating on the sensor or near the sensor.
[51:36] Speaker 2: Another time they heard and it was it was all translated.
[51:43] Speaker 2: It was a North Vietnamese officer. These acoustic sensors, by
[51:49] Speaker 2: the way, they had parachutes designed to hang up in
[51:52] Speaker 2: the tree so they could hear the seismic were designed
[51:55] Speaker 2: to penetrate into the ground so they would see some
[52:01] Speaker 2: of these acoustic sensors. And and this guy evidently was
[52:04] Speaker 2: sending up a couple of enlisted guys to get the
[52:09] Speaker 2: little parachute material to make a dress for his wife.
[52:13] Speaker 2: He's going to send it back to his wife. And
[52:16] Speaker 2: the next thing they know, they hear the sound of chopping.
[52:20] Speaker 2: So they're chopping trees down and then they hear screams.
[52:26] Speaker 2: So evidently the tree fell on or close.
[52:30] Speaker 1: To Oh, you're going to say they got bombed.
[52:34] Speaker 2: So they yeah, so gez. So they chopped the tree
[52:37] Speaker 2: down and injured some of theirs.
[52:39] Speaker 1: But how big are these sensors? Like, what do you think,
[52:41] Speaker 1: like a baseball size or something, or maybe small.
[52:43] Speaker 2: A little a little bigger than a baseball bat as
[52:47] Speaker 2: I recall, about four feet in length, about a similar diameter.
[52:52] Speaker 1: That's bigger than I thought.
[52:53] Speaker 2: Wow, yeah, that's yeah.
[52:59] Speaker 1: Yeah, that's uh, that's I know. We still use those
[53:03] Speaker 1: for other things. I know, guys, I remember guys that
[53:06] Speaker 1: would get task force or get tasked to go work
[53:09] Speaker 1: on the border and supplement the border patrol, and they
[53:13] Speaker 1: would be out there putting sensors out for yeah, for
[53:17] Speaker 1: to track foot movement and stuff like that. I always
[53:19] Speaker 1: wondered how accurate those were, how good they were obviously,
[53:23] Speaker 1: I mean, we've been using them for a while, so
[53:24] Speaker 1: they must do something.
[53:25] Speaker 2: It was first generation by far. The greatest technology that
[53:34] Speaker 2: came out of that Operation shed Light were what are
[53:39] Speaker 2: called they were called paveway munitions smart bombs. Yeah, and
[53:44] Speaker 2: of course initially they were laser guided. So with two aircraft,
[53:48] Speaker 2: one aircraft would light up illuminate the target. The other
[53:52] Speaker 2: aircraft would drop the munition that had technology. So once
[53:56] Speaker 2: it got into the cone of that laser, it was
[54:00] Speaker 2: directed towards the target that's been perfected. But that was
[54:06] Speaker 2: just probably one of the single most impressive developments during
[54:11] Speaker 2: the Vietnam War, the smart bombs as opposed to the
[54:16] Speaker 2: to the dumb bombs.
[54:17] Speaker 1: And that's one that's actually one of the one of
[54:21] Speaker 1: the first classes you get in TCP school for j TAX.
[54:25] Speaker 1: They tell you about that about how they became. They
[54:31] Speaker 1: initially started working on them because there was a bridge
[54:34] Speaker 1: that they couldn't drop. They had been dropping like hundreds
[54:37] Speaker 1: of bombs and they could not get this bridge to drop,
[54:40] Speaker 1: and so they finally got around and developed a smart bomb,
[54:44] Speaker 1: which was our I think it was the g WU ten.
[54:48] Speaker 1: That's a two thousand pounds laser update or laser guided bomb.
[54:53] Speaker 1: And for those what the way that works is for
[54:56] Speaker 1: those that don't know, there's fins on the side of
[54:59] Speaker 1: the bomb and all it is is a normal two
[55:02] Speaker 1: thousand pound bomb. They just take that two thousand pound
[55:05] Speaker 1: bomb and they have a bomb guidance kit that they
[55:09] Speaker 1: attached to it, and it basically bolts on and that
[55:13] Speaker 1: kit has little wings, little flanges that pop out and
[55:17] Speaker 1: when they drop, like you were talking about before, that
[55:20] Speaker 1: cone of the laser that's what we call the laser
[55:22] Speaker 1: safety basket or laser I think something like that. Other
[55:26] Speaker 1: j tex that are in there can correct me if
[55:28] Speaker 1: I'm wrong. You have them come in at a cert
[55:31] Speaker 1: I'm not gonna give the actual degrees, but you have
[55:32] Speaker 1: them come in at a certain angle over your left
[55:35] Speaker 1: or right shoulder, so that they can see that laser,
[55:37] Speaker 1: that laser code that you're putting down on the if
[55:39] Speaker 1: your ground based lasing, if it's from the air, they're
[55:43] Speaker 1: lasing from the air and they just point straight down.
[55:45] Speaker 1: But that seeker head on the front of this bomb
[55:48] Speaker 1: picks up that laser energy. And what it does is
[55:51] Speaker 1: what we call it's called bang bang guidance. Meaning the
[55:54] Speaker 1: flaps don't like it doesn't like fly. They're fly all
[55:58] Speaker 1: the way open or closed. It's all the way open
[56:00] Speaker 1: or closed. And so the bomb is going through the
[56:01] Speaker 1: air and it's kind of dropping like that. It's doing
[56:03] Speaker 1: this right here because that flaps open and then it'll close.
[56:05] Speaker 1: They'll open, it'll close, and then it hits the target.
[56:08] Speaker 1: It's crazy how it works. And now they have the paveway.
[56:12] Speaker 1: Now then they had paveway two, and now I think
[56:14] Speaker 1: they have the paveway three, and I believe those actually
[56:18] Speaker 1: guide to it. They don't have that banking guidance. Yeah,
[56:20] Speaker 1: so they can they can actually fly a lot farther.
[56:23] Speaker 1: They can drop the ordinance from a lot farther out
[56:24] Speaker 1: and let it let a cruise.
[56:26] Speaker 2: So bridge you were referring to in North Vietnam, I
[56:32] Speaker 2: believe was the Dragon's Jaw Bridge.
[56:35] Speaker 1: Yep, exactly. I was gonna say the same thing, but
[56:38] Speaker 1: I wasn't sure, so I'm glad you said.
[56:39] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there was another bridge in North Vietnam called
[56:44] Speaker 2: the Paul Dumer Bridge. Paul Dumer was the French I
[56:51] Speaker 2: don't know what his title was, president or Secretary General
[56:53] Speaker 2: of French Indo China, and they built this bridge in
[56:58] Speaker 2: Hanoi over the Red River nineteen oh three. And the
[57:03] Speaker 2: Dragon's Jaw as well as the Paul Dumer Bridge, they
[57:07] Speaker 2: were targets in Rolling Thunder, the original bombing and you're
[57:12] Speaker 2: absolutely right. They sent I don't know, sixty ninety one
[57:20] Speaker 2: oh fives on a bombing mission and did very little
[57:24] Speaker 2: damage to it. And the Paul Dumer Bridge similar kind
[57:28] Speaker 2: of a thing. They had a little success eventually with
[57:31] Speaker 2: the Paul Dumer Bridge. When I visited Hanoi. One of
[57:36] Speaker 2: my must sy destinations was the Paul Dumer Bridge, and
[57:40] Speaker 2: I was able to walk out on the bridge and
[57:44] Speaker 2: go under, actually go down on the ground underneath and
[57:47] Speaker 2: see the old pylons where we had destroyed it. They
[57:52] Speaker 2: were so ingenious. We had knocked out a couple of
[57:56] Speaker 2: spans and within a day or two they were still
[58:00] Speaker 2: shipping goods across the river. They had old tugboats and barges.
[58:06] Speaker 2: They just and then would repair seemingly overnight, all the
[58:13] Speaker 2: damage bomb damage that we had done. Yeah, but well
[58:19] Speaker 2: that's interesting. So paveway three, Okay, I should do a
[58:24] Speaker 2: little research on that and see where we are with
[58:27] Speaker 2: smart weapons. So yeah, I was there when paveway was introduced,
[58:33] Speaker 2: and it made a huge difference.
[58:36] Speaker 1: Oh, I can't imagine. I think difference One bomb on
[58:40] Speaker 1: target is way better than twenty where you're you know,
[58:43] Speaker 1: and even now now, I will say, because of the
[58:48] Speaker 1: computers and stuff that are in aircraft, they're pretty accurate
[58:52] Speaker 1: with even dumb bombs, you know, because it's calculating and
[58:55] Speaker 1: when you're flying. Let's say they're flying and they're doing
[58:57] Speaker 1: like a level pass and they're just dropping it level.
[59:00] Speaker 1: They're just holding the button, and when it gets to
[59:03] Speaker 1: the release point, the aircraft will release it as long
[59:07] Speaker 1: as that button's being held. So it's not like necessarily
[59:09] Speaker 1: like he hits the button right at the right time.
[59:11] Speaker 1: He's like holding the button and the computer releases just
[59:14] Speaker 1: as long as that. You know. That's like the safety
[59:16] Speaker 1: and it's so it's way more I mean, And don't
[59:19] Speaker 1: get me wrong, there's some good, really really good pilots
[59:22] Speaker 1: that can shock targets, and there's some really bad pilots
[59:24] Speaker 1: that cannot. So yeah, it's no hate. I mean, I
[59:28] Speaker 1: don't know how I would perform flying four or five
[59:30] Speaker 1: hundred miles an hour, dropping bounds on things.
[59:32] Speaker 2: Yeah, with the NA aircraft and Sam's and yeah, yeah,
[59:37] Speaker 2: it's I was so impressed because I would listen in
[59:43] Speaker 2: on strike frequencies. Our system was the controllers and our aircraft.
[59:49] Speaker 2: As aircraft came into our area control, they would have
[59:53] Speaker 2: them loiter and then they would pass them off to
[59:55] Speaker 2: the FAG or the or the roadwatch team or whomever
[59:59] Speaker 2: was control the flight. So I would always listen in
[1:00:03] Speaker 2: on the strike frequencies, and almost to a person, these
[1:00:10] Speaker 2: pilots were so professional, very patient, you know, with some
[1:00:14] Speaker 2: of these guys on the ground that didn't speak the
[1:00:16] Speaker 2: best English, but they were very patient and very professional,
[1:00:22] Speaker 2: and it was I was I was privileged to have
[1:00:27] Speaker 2: played just a small role in the whole scheme of
[1:00:31] Speaker 2: the air war, in this case in Laos, which is
[1:00:34] Speaker 2: a very small part of the overall theater of Southeast
[1:00:40] Speaker 2: Asia and the Vietnam War. So they were wonderful, wonderful men.
[1:00:46] Speaker 1: What was it like being in an area? I mean,
[1:00:49] Speaker 1: because this was a well known at the time obviously
[1:00:51] Speaker 1: that you guys were doing those kind of operations. So
[1:00:54] Speaker 1: it's not like you can come home from the war
[1:00:57] Speaker 1: and you know, like everyone else that came back, maybe
[1:01:00] Speaker 1: relate with them, because you can't even really talk about
[1:01:02] Speaker 1: some of the stuff you were doing at the time.
[1:01:04] Speaker 2: Correct, correct, Yeah, publicly, you know, the war in Laos.
[1:01:12] Speaker 2: We weren't in Laos, we weren't bombing and so on
[1:01:15] Speaker 2: and so forth. You know, we used to laugh. We
[1:01:19] Speaker 2: had seven aircraft and our squadron six four were flying
[1:01:23] Speaker 2: every day. Two were spares, and then one always went
[1:01:26] Speaker 2: to Taiwan for major overall and the crew would bring
[1:01:31] Speaker 2: back magazines, Time magazine and books and records and that
[1:01:35] Speaker 2: sort of thing. Because Taiwan had no you know, they
[1:01:38] Speaker 2: didn't abide by our copyright laws. But the news magazines,
[1:01:43] Speaker 2: you know, in fact, I still have articles that we
[1:01:45] Speaker 2: cut out of, you know, declarations from the United States
[1:01:49] Speaker 2: that you don't work. There are no air operations taking
[1:01:52] Speaker 2: place in Laos. And for a fact, we.
[1:01:55] Speaker 1: Know, you know, as you read it in Laos.
[1:01:58] Speaker 2: There are one hundred and fifty he's flown that night
[1:02:01] Speaker 2: up in north of Laos. But yeah, you're right. I
[1:02:06] Speaker 2: when I came home, I had the advantage and I
[1:02:10] Speaker 2: went to headquarters TACK at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia,
[1:02:14] Speaker 2: Tactical Air Command, and I was in a targeting's targeting
[1:02:18] Speaker 2: office and one of my squadron mates returned a couple
[1:02:24] Speaker 2: of months after I did. Uh So, two things. One,
[1:02:28] Speaker 2: I had someone whom with whom I you know, we
[1:02:33] Speaker 2: worked closely. We knew each other, we were counterparts. Actually
[1:02:36] Speaker 2: we both flew night missions, but different different orbits. He
[1:02:39] Speaker 2: flew in south southern Laos. I flew up north. But
[1:02:44] Speaker 2: I also had the advantage that I was I had
[1:02:47] Speaker 2: two more years in a military environment, unlike those other troops, airmen, marines,
[1:02:55] Speaker 2: army that when they came back they separated, so they
[1:02:59] Speaker 2: now were me thrown into a civilian community. So I
[1:03:03] Speaker 2: was somewhat protected from you know, the civilian culture, animosity
[1:03:10] Speaker 2: and all that was directed at the at the Vietnam VET,
[1:03:15] Speaker 2: and I felt for those others that you know, they
[1:03:17] Speaker 2: didn't have that environment. They had to keep it in. Yeah,
[1:03:22] Speaker 2: there was no one with whom they could talk.
[1:03:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, in situations like that, I guess it's when like
[1:03:27] Speaker 1: the VFW and the American Legion and stuff really come
[1:03:30] Speaker 1: into play. Now there's less of that. I think there's less.
[1:03:35] Speaker 1: I mean, I know as part of a part of
[1:03:37] Speaker 1: the American Legion here, the numbers are dwindling in all
[1:03:40] Speaker 1: those organizations. Yeah, but people are There's a lot more
[1:03:46] Speaker 1: other like veteran groups out there. Before those were the
[1:03:50] Speaker 1: those are the only two, like national level and their
[1:03:53] Speaker 1: lobbying for for veterans' rights and stuff like that. But
[1:03:56] Speaker 1: there's also now through social media there's a lot of
[1:03:59] Speaker 1: like VET and meet up groups and stuff like that.
[1:04:02] Speaker 1: There's one that I always talk about on the show
[1:04:04] Speaker 1: called Piebiabat, which is a named after a Marine sniper
[1:04:09] Speaker 1: that was you know killed and he you know, he
[1:04:12] Speaker 1: just did a lot of work in Afghanistan. That was
[1:04:15] Speaker 1: you know, they're with three fives deployment, so they named
[1:04:17] Speaker 1: a group after that, and they have like a place
[1:04:19] Speaker 1: in I think it's Montana, like a camp, and they
[1:04:21] Speaker 1: do events there and people can come and you know,
[1:04:24] Speaker 1: there's there's other outlets. But you know, it's hard enough
[1:04:27] Speaker 1: now for guys to just it's weird already to get
[1:04:30] Speaker 1: out of the military and one day you're on base
[1:04:32] Speaker 1: and you have pt and you got to go to
[1:04:34] Speaker 1: Chao and this and that, and then the next day
[1:04:35] Speaker 1: you're just a civilian. You can go do whatever you want.
[1:04:38] Speaker 1: That's already its own kind of weird culture shock. So
[1:04:41] Speaker 1: I can't imagine coming home from Vietnam from war, especially
[1:04:46] Speaker 1: if you're like an infantry guy down in it the
[1:04:48] Speaker 1: whole time and you come back and within a week
[1:04:52] Speaker 1: you're back home on your couch, like, what the hell?
[1:04:55] Speaker 1: You know, what a mine? What a mind game?
[1:04:57] Speaker 2: That had to absolutely, yeah, they had. They carried a burden,
[1:05:04] Speaker 2: and unfortunately, you know, it was made worse by the
[1:05:09] Speaker 2: public and the public animosity and hatred that was directed,
[1:05:14] Speaker 2: you know, towards the veteran.
[1:05:17] Speaker 1: I will say now when coming back now, I never
[1:05:21] Speaker 1: saw animosity it's a varying degree of like full overwhelming
[1:05:26] Speaker 1: support to indifference. Yeah, it's mostly indifference. People are like, oh,
[1:05:31] Speaker 1: you're still in Afghanistan, Oh, we still have people in Africa,
[1:05:34] Speaker 1: you know, or like whatever, I'm.
[1:05:37] Speaker 2: Sure that you are. There are many Vietnam veterans they
[1:05:40] Speaker 2: would have taken the indifference, you know, Yeah, that was
[1:05:44] Speaker 2: that would be better than you know, what they what
[1:05:47] Speaker 2: they had to deal with. When I left for Southeast Asia,
[1:05:53] Speaker 2: returned from Travis Air Force Base. It's up in northern California.
[1:05:56] Speaker 2: You probably know where it is, and we were counseled.
[1:06:02] Speaker 2: We were told don't wear your uniforms, you know, once
[1:06:06] Speaker 2: you get the Travis, turn change into civilian clothes and
[1:06:10] Speaker 2: don't wear your uniform while you're you know, making your
[1:06:14] Speaker 2: way back home whatever means of transportation. But at the gate,
[1:06:19] Speaker 2: as we you know, we're leaving the base, I can
[1:06:23] Speaker 2: still see the hatred and the faces of these young
[1:06:29] Speaker 2: men and young women that were that were right there
[1:06:32] Speaker 2: at the gate, yelling and screaming in the signs and
[1:06:36] Speaker 2: so forth. They told us that, you know, we were
[1:06:40] Speaker 2: aware that there was political unrest back home, but I
[1:06:44] Speaker 2: don't think any of us were ready you know, for
[1:06:46] Speaker 2: the depth of what we of what they experienced and
[1:06:53] Speaker 2: and listen, I did fine. I had very few problems,
[1:06:58] Speaker 2: and so I'm blessed.
[1:07:01] Speaker 1: How did you feel about it in retrospect? How do
[1:07:04] Speaker 1: you feel about your mission? You know what you were doing.
[1:07:07] Speaker 1: Do you feel like you were making a difference? You think?
[1:07:10] Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of guys now that went
[1:07:12] Speaker 1: to Iraq that are like, what were we doing there?
[1:07:14] Speaker 1: That was such a waste of mine? My friends, times lives?
[1:07:18] Speaker 1: What was the end result? You know? Was it worth it?
[1:07:23] Speaker 1: Do you ever ponder upon that, like what was I
[1:07:25] Speaker 1: doing there? That was such a waste of my time?
[1:07:28] Speaker 2: Well? The you're kind enough to, you know, speak to
[1:07:35] Speaker 2: me about is roughly in three sections. The first section
[1:07:40] Speaker 2: is my time in Southeast Asia. The middle section is
[1:07:46] Speaker 2: watching the war from Afar. I had two years in
[1:07:49] Speaker 2: the military, then as a civilian. But then the third
[1:07:53] Speaker 2: part I returned to Southeast I returned to Lallis in
[1:07:57] Speaker 2: twenty fourteen, and I went in search of, you know, whatever,
[1:08:03] Speaker 2: that part of me that was left behind. And but
[1:08:07] Speaker 2: to answer your question, I met some wonderful, wonderful people.
[1:08:16] Speaker 2: I wanted to meet some enemy combatants. I wanted to
[1:08:19] Speaker 2: meet some people that fought for the Mong, the Mong
[1:08:24] Speaker 2: that that fought for the Clandestine le Army, clandestine, the
[1:08:30] Speaker 2: so called secret army. And I wanted to meet some
[1:08:35] Speaker 2: of the Lao of the citizens. So and I'll try
[1:08:38] Speaker 2: to make this quick. I met as I indicated North,
[1:08:43] Speaker 2: or maybe I did. I met a individual who had
[1:08:47] Speaker 2: been a senior lieutenant North Vietnamese Army, just by accident
[1:08:51] Speaker 2: walking down the street. I was out on the Long
[1:08:54] Speaker 2: Tan Bridge. I come back, here's this guy in a uniform.
[1:08:56] Speaker 2: We meet. And later another day I met an elderly
[1:09:04] Speaker 2: gentleman who really was physically had serious problems. He had
[1:09:09] Speaker 2: fought for the path at Loo. It was a gunner
[1:09:13] Speaker 2: and just totally debilitated. And then later in my journey,
[1:09:19] Speaker 2: I met two men that had fought with the Mung Army.
[1:09:25] Speaker 2: In each instance justin when we met and when they
[1:09:31] Speaker 2: asked me what I did. The two guys that fought
[1:09:36] Speaker 2: in the Mong Army knew my call sign. But just
[1:09:40] Speaker 2: like the North Vietnamese officer the Laotian officer, it was
[1:09:47] Speaker 2: instant brotherhood. It was as if we had been long
[1:09:50] Speaker 2: lost friends and were meeting each other. You know, it
[1:09:53] Speaker 2: had been years since we had met, but it was
[1:09:55] Speaker 2: instant bonding affection. There was hand holding, kisses. It was
[1:10:03] Speaker 2: just an incredibly powerful and moving experience. And they gave
[1:10:09] Speaker 2: me the gift of brotherhood, which I you know, you
[1:10:14] Speaker 2: having served, you know that connection that develops between the
[1:10:20] Speaker 2: men and women that are in the field and you've
[1:10:24] Speaker 2: got each other's back and so forth. I met innocent
[1:10:29] Speaker 2: loos who were victims of the war, incredible, incredible stories.
[1:10:38] Speaker 2: And I should say, and I apologize for going on
[1:10:41] Speaker 2: about this, but before I left on my journey, I
[1:10:46] Speaker 2: was in Washington. I attended a new church. I was
[1:10:49] Speaker 2: in search of a church at any right. There was
[1:10:52] Speaker 2: a guest pastor in the church, and he was giving
[1:10:59] Speaker 2: a sermon on forgiveness, and he quoted Philippians three, verse thirteen,
[1:11:05] Speaker 2: which and I haven't written down here. I'm focusing all
[1:11:07] Speaker 2: my energies on this one thing, forgetting the past and
[1:11:11] Speaker 2: looking forward to what lies ahead. In that instant, I
[1:11:16] Speaker 2: was one of these Vietnam vets that had this hatred
[1:11:19] Speaker 2: towards the anti war demonstrators, the Jane Fondas and the
[1:11:25] Speaker 2: John Kerrys of the world. In that instant that disappeared,
[1:11:30] Speaker 2: and I talked about divine intervention, and it was divine
[1:11:34] Speaker 2: intervention that brought me to these victims of the war.
[1:11:40] Speaker 2: One woman. Because of the aircraft and all of these
[1:11:45] Speaker 2: people that I met, we were connected by time. We
[1:11:49] Speaker 2: were all in the same general location at the same time,
[1:11:54] Speaker 2: which kind of blew me away. One woman lived in
[1:11:59] Speaker 2: a cave with her five siblings and her mother and
[1:12:02] Speaker 2: grandmother and an aunt. It was the Caves of Tampu.
[1:12:08] Speaker 2: And one morning she left with her aunt. She was
[1:12:11] Speaker 2: going to visit a relative in a nearby village, and
[1:12:14] Speaker 2: they got to the bottom of the mountain. The airplanes came.
[1:12:18] Speaker 2: The cave was destroyed in that instant. She lost her mother, grandmother,
[1:12:23] Speaker 2: and five siblings. She went lived with an aunt. I
[1:12:27] Speaker 2: met her after I visited the Caves of Tampu, and
[1:12:32] Speaker 2: I spoke with her. Boo Boa Hung is her name.
[1:12:37] Speaker 2: I've got that written down somewhere. And like the other
[1:12:42] Speaker 2: victims of the war, I asked them, I said, well,
[1:12:44] Speaker 2: how do you feel about the United States? Are you?
[1:12:46] Speaker 2: Are you angry at the United States for having caused you, know, this,
[1:12:52] Speaker 2: this heartache in your life, this this loss of life. He,
[1:12:58] Speaker 2: as well as the other victims, almost verbatim quoted that verse.
[1:13:05] Speaker 2: Now I've got grandchildren. I only I'm concerned about what's
[1:13:10] Speaker 2: going to happen to my grandchildren. What happened in the past,
[1:13:14] Speaker 2: I've forgotten about. I've left it in the past. So
[1:13:19] Speaker 2: I was given this wonderful gift of forgiveness. And after
[1:13:25] Speaker 2: talking with these people and many other others to who
[1:13:29] Speaker 2: I met in Laos, I came to the realization that,
[1:13:34] Speaker 2: you know, I did what I was sent to do,
[1:13:39] Speaker 2: I did it well, and the way the war was
[1:13:49] Speaker 2: fought was beyond my control. I didn't, you know, identify
[1:13:54] Speaker 2: the targets or allocate the resources. I had a mission
[1:13:58] Speaker 2: like the two point seven million others, you know, we
[1:14:02] Speaker 2: each had our mission to do, and that's that's all
[1:14:04] Speaker 2: that I could do. And so for that I felt redemption.
[1:14:09] Speaker 2: So I I did feel responsible. You know, for example,
[1:14:17] Speaker 2: there's tons of unexploded ordinance all over Laos today, and
[1:14:22] Speaker 2: you know, I carried that guilt and responsibility. But I
[1:14:27] Speaker 2: was given that gift of redemption as well that you know,
[1:14:31] Speaker 2: there was only certain things that I could control. We
[1:14:35] Speaker 2: did it. So I I was given these wonderful gifts
[1:14:41] Speaker 2: by total strangers, and so I could you know, we
[1:14:47] Speaker 2: were We're proud to have served. We're proud that we
[1:14:55] Speaker 2: were faithful to our mission. We were proud that, you know,
[1:14:59] Speaker 2: we support one another and the emotional attachments that were developed.
[1:15:05] Speaker 2: We're proud of the sacrifices that we made, and in
[1:15:13] Speaker 2: some ways we're proud that we went and served, while
[1:15:17] Speaker 2: not everyone did. There were others that you know, left,
[1:15:21] Speaker 2: left the country and whatever, and they had to make
[1:15:24] Speaker 2: their decision. They have to live with that decision, and
[1:15:27] Speaker 2: in a way, the experience was such a learning experience
[1:15:32] Speaker 2: for me and for a lot of us. I almost
[1:15:36] Speaker 2: feel sorry. I almost feel sorry for those that chose,
[1:15:40] Speaker 2: you know, not to go and let others serve in
[1:15:43] Speaker 2: their stead. But yeah, I've left that behind. I appreciate
[1:15:49] Speaker 2: the brotherhood and the forgiveness the Laosian people. I just
[1:15:53] Speaker 2: can't say enough wonderful things about those wonderful lawn who
[1:16:01] Speaker 2: lived very simple lives. They deserve to live free. They
[1:16:06] Speaker 2: to this day deserve to live free, but are forced
[1:16:10] Speaker 2: to live under a oppressive regime.
[1:16:14] Speaker 1: So yeah, that's a I've earlier on in the podcast
[1:16:22] Speaker 1: days I had mentioned a few times I was like,
[1:16:25] Speaker 1: I wonder what it would be like if I could
[1:16:27] Speaker 1: get like a Taliban guy on to the podcast and
[1:16:30] Speaker 1: just talk to him about you know, not that I
[1:16:33] Speaker 1: think that they're doing anything right or that they're good people,
[1:16:37] Speaker 1: but it would be interesting to get the perspective from them,
[1:16:42] Speaker 1: you know, like why, you know, what they thought about
[1:16:45] Speaker 1: us fighting and coming there. And I'd prefer, honestly, if
[1:16:49] Speaker 1: I did, I'd want a Taliban dude from from Afghanistan,
[1:16:54] Speaker 1: not one of the dudes that came down from Pakistan
[1:16:57] Speaker 1: or something like that, because at least a guy from
[1:16:59] Speaker 1: Afghanistan and be like, hey, this is my country. You
[1:17:01] Speaker 1: guys came here and fought, and I can get behind that.
[1:17:04] Speaker 1: A guy that came from Pakistan. I'm like, you came
[1:17:07] Speaker 1: from the war, homie, like you knew what you were doing.
[1:17:11] Speaker 2: Thirty five years passed from the time, you know, of
[1:17:16] Speaker 2: the war the end of the war in nineteen seventy five.
[1:17:22] Speaker 2: Most of us were gone by seventy three. Most Americans
[1:17:25] Speaker 2: were going by seventy three, so there was a little
[1:17:29] Speaker 2: bit more time. And with the North Vietnamese officer and
[1:17:34] Speaker 2: the path at Lao soldier, there was nothing other than
[1:17:39] Speaker 2: just joy, pure joy to meet someone. At one time
[1:17:44] Speaker 2: we had been adversaries, and there was just nothing in
[1:17:47] Speaker 2: the way of lingering, doubts or hostility. Yeah, it was
[1:17:55] Speaker 2: just ah, a remarkable, remarkable experience.
[1:18:00] Speaker 1: I just I think we're too early for the I
[1:18:02] Speaker 1: think the it's still too soon for Afgan stuff like that.
[1:18:06] Speaker 1: I don't know, it's yeah, it's weird. I mean one
[1:18:11] Speaker 1: thing that they always said in the Marines was keep
[1:18:13] Speaker 1: your honor clean. You know what I'm saying, Like, war
[1:18:16] Speaker 1: is an ugly place you're gonna go and things, things
[1:18:19] Speaker 1: are bad, and there's no reason to make it worse
[1:18:21] Speaker 1: than it has to be. You know, I never saw
[1:18:24] Speaker 1: you hear these news stories and they were like, well
[1:18:27] Speaker 1: they you know, they targeted these women and children, they
[1:18:29] Speaker 1: did this, and they did that, And it's like I
[1:18:31] Speaker 1: never saw that one time. You know, you were, I
[1:18:36] Speaker 1: mean you worked in targeting for us. For targeting, it
[1:18:39] Speaker 1: was such a to get a bomb drop, especially later
[1:18:42] Speaker 1: on in the war. The rules of engagement were so strict.
[1:18:46] Speaker 1: You know, as the fire support chief for third Battalion,
[1:18:50] Speaker 1: six Marines, I would sit here on my computer and
[1:18:54] Speaker 1: bring up like CEP rings, like the Circle Area of
[1:18:57] Speaker 1: Probability rings and stuff of where you know, you probably
[1:19:01] Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about, like the damage rings
[1:19:03] Speaker 1: and like hey this house, this other building is within
[1:19:05] Speaker 1: that ring. We can't drop there, you know. And that's
[1:19:07] Speaker 1: how we would like we had different rings that we
[1:19:09] Speaker 1: pull up for different ordinance and be like here's where
[1:19:11] Speaker 1: the effects are gonna are gonna go. And there was
[1:19:13] Speaker 1: and then we also had a list of like of
[1:19:16] Speaker 1: mosque and there's like a million mosque everywhere, like every
[1:19:19] Speaker 1: other building almost was a mosque. And those are all
[1:19:21] Speaker 1: no strike you know, you had your no strike lists
[1:19:22] Speaker 1: and stuff like that. So I don't know, it's just
[1:19:28] Speaker 1: go ahead.
[1:19:31] Speaker 2: This conversation. It was so enlightening because that's another thing,
[1:19:36] Speaker 2: the rules of engagement that drove us crazy and I
[1:19:40] Speaker 2: sort of changed my thinking a little bit on that.
[1:19:44] Speaker 2: But yeah, we had no bomb lines around Chinese Cultural Center.
[1:19:49] Speaker 2: We couldn't attack targets twenty within twenty miles of the
[1:19:53] Speaker 2: border with China. And there in the fucking rail yards
[1:19:56] Speaker 2: were thirty five railroad flo beed cars with SAM missiles
[1:20:01] Speaker 2: loaded on them, you know, waiting to be shipped out
[1:20:04] Speaker 2: in the field. There they were, but we couldn't attack them.
[1:20:08] Speaker 2: We couldn't attack a SAM site until it went active.
[1:20:14] Speaker 2: How crazy is that we could not attack big aircraft
[1:20:18] Speaker 2: on the ground.
[1:20:20] Speaker 1: Really we could.
[1:20:21] Speaker 2: We could only attack enemy aircraft with the engines on
[1:20:25] Speaker 2: and they were airborne. Now what out insane? So some
[1:20:29] Speaker 2: of the rules of engagement were absolutely insane and just
[1:20:33] Speaker 2: a source of uh frustration, and and really, you know,
[1:20:37] Speaker 2: got people killed in the process. It really did. When
[1:20:42] Speaker 2: I went to Vietnam to Hanois, that was the first
[1:20:48] Speaker 2: stop in my journey. When I returned to Southeast Asia,
[1:20:51] Speaker 2: one of the places I visited was and now I'm
[1:20:58] Speaker 2: the name escase me. I just read that this morning.
[1:21:01] Speaker 2: But it was a it was Athedril of Learning or
[1:21:08] Speaker 2: something something along that line. I can pull that up
[1:21:11] Speaker 2: here in a second. Temple of Literature is what it was.
[1:21:17] Speaker 2: Temple of Literature, and this goes back hundreds I'm not hundreds,
[1:21:24] Speaker 2: hundreds of years, centuries, and it is just exquisite. It
[1:21:33] Speaker 2: is marvel The history from the I don't know, eleven
[1:21:37] Speaker 2: hundreds and so forth, just absolutely beautiful. Well, that was
[1:21:41] Speaker 2: part of a no bomb line, and you know what,
[1:21:43] Speaker 2: I'm glad it was because it has been preserved. But
[1:21:47] Speaker 2: on the other hand, some of the other rules of
[1:21:50] Speaker 2: engagement just drove us crazy source of source of irritation.
[1:21:54] Speaker 1: Most people can agree on stuff like that, Hey, we
[1:21:57] Speaker 1: shouldn't be blowing up a mosque, we shouldn't be blown
[1:21:59] Speaker 1: up cultural you know, I mean the same thing in Iraq,
[1:22:03] Speaker 1: like we did. I think we did a pretty good
[1:22:04] Speaker 1: job of protecting, uh, like cultural sites that were like
[1:22:09] Speaker 1: UNESCO Heritage sites and stuff like that. And then when
[1:22:12] Speaker 1: we started pulling out of there and we had that
[1:22:15] Speaker 1: problem with Isis for a little bit, Isis went in
[1:22:17] Speaker 1: there and destroyed a lot of those cultural sites because
[1:22:20] Speaker 1: it was against their you know, they solved his blasphemy
[1:22:22] Speaker 1: or whatever by how Yeah, they went.
[1:22:26] Speaker 2: Through and destroyed statuary.
[1:22:28] Speaker 1: Yeah, stuff from the beginning days of man, you know,
[1:22:32] Speaker 1: like this old stuff. But yeah, so a lot of
[1:22:35] Speaker 1: the rules of engagement we could agree on and no
[1:22:39] Speaker 1: problem with it makes sense, Hey you don't want to
[1:22:43] Speaker 1: but some of it became they were like, hey, listen,
[1:22:46] Speaker 1: we want to dance, we don't we want to limit
[1:22:48] Speaker 1: any damage to any structures at all. Unless you're actively
[1:22:52] Speaker 1: taking gunfire from a structure, you can't drop on it
[1:22:56] Speaker 1: or anything like that. And that turned into that was
[1:23:00] Speaker 1: like the general level, you know, like this is what
[1:23:03] Speaker 1: you this is what we're gonna do. We're not gonna
[1:23:05] Speaker 1: target structures unless we need to. Well, when that trickles
[1:23:08] Speaker 1: down the commands all the way down to the battalion commander,
[1:23:12] Speaker 1: that became any structure is off limits to strike. And
[1:23:15] Speaker 1: I remember I remember being like panned down on a
[1:23:18] Speaker 1: rooftop and a guy was shooting at us, and he
[1:23:21] Speaker 1: was next to a mud wall. It was a field,
[1:23:24] Speaker 1: and he was next to a mud wall. And I
[1:23:26] Speaker 1: was talking to a harrier and I was trying to
[1:23:30] Speaker 1: drop on this guy, and they denied my fire mission
[1:23:35] Speaker 1: because they said he was next to a structure, which
[1:23:38] Speaker 1: was just a mud wall in a field. And I'm like,
[1:23:41] Speaker 1: this is crazy, you know. Like so it's very frustrating.
[1:23:45] Speaker 1: Though all those frustrations still exist, just in different you know,
[1:23:52] Speaker 1: it's changed a little because of technology and things. Yeah,
[1:23:57] Speaker 1: so man's such a crazy time, though. Did you guys,
[1:24:02] Speaker 1: you know, you're airborne quite a bit. Did you guys
[1:24:05] Speaker 1: ever have any aircraft get shot down? Did you ever
[1:24:09] Speaker 1: do any kind of work like I'd like to know
[1:24:12] Speaker 1: if you were had any kind of you know, engagement
[1:24:17] Speaker 1: with like pow rescues or anything like that. Was that
[1:24:20] Speaker 1: a thing? I mean that war was so much more
[1:24:24] Speaker 1: of a case of POW's than like what we see
[1:24:26] Speaker 1: now in more modern wars. You don't really see that
[1:24:29] Speaker 1: as much like you did in Vietnam. Vietnam had a
[1:24:32] Speaker 1: lot of POW's and there's a lot of really good
[1:24:34] Speaker 1: books out there for people that may not have read
[1:24:37] Speaker 1: them about POW and Vietnam.
[1:24:39] Speaker 2: Yep. I've had the honor really to you know, call
[1:24:45] Speaker 2: among a couple of friends, you know, some former POWs
[1:24:48] Speaker 2: who suffered mightily, some as long as I don't know Alvarez,
[1:24:54] Speaker 2: not Alpharez, but seven years our born platform. The way
[1:25:03] Speaker 2: that search and rescue was organized in Southeast Asia, in
[1:25:09] Speaker 2: Vietnam as well as Laos, and I'm most familiar with Laos,
[1:25:14] Speaker 2: so I'll limit it to Laos. We had a number
[1:25:17] Speaker 2: of pilots go down. There were shootdowns every day. Justin
[1:25:22] Speaker 2: the way that stars were managed was really remarkable, and
[1:25:29] Speaker 2: it was the military and collaboration at its best. Twenty
[1:25:34] Speaker 2: four to seven, there were C one thirties, which a
[1:25:38] Speaker 2: remarkable aircraft first produced in the fifties and projected to
[1:25:43] Speaker 2: still be produced in twenty forty. Just a remarkable, remarkable aircraft.
[1:25:48] Speaker 2: But anyway, HC one thirties call sign was King and
[1:25:53] Speaker 2: they were airborne. Two or three were airborne twenty four
[1:25:58] Speaker 2: to seven in the event of a shootdown, and typically
[1:26:06] Speaker 2: strike aircraft were in pairs, not always, but there was
[1:26:12] Speaker 2: usually a wingman, so that if an aircraft went in
[1:26:15] Speaker 2: it was shot down, we knew it was known almost immediately,
[1:26:21] Speaker 2: either by a radio mayday call or someone sees the
[1:26:25] Speaker 2: aircraft go in. Even when an aircraft goes down and
[1:26:28] Speaker 2: a pilot ejects, a beeper automatically goes off, so there
[1:26:32] Speaker 2: are signals that we pretty much know exactly when an
[1:26:36] Speaker 2: aircraft shot down, not always the case, and at that moment,
[1:26:40] Speaker 2: the king that was nearest the site becomes King one,
[1:26:45] Speaker 2: the on site commander, and in that area, the whole
[1:26:49] Speaker 2: air war stops for that rescue and all of the
[1:26:54] Speaker 2: resources are held off. King one is advice. First thing,
[1:26:59] Speaker 2: of course, is the want to establish contact if they
[1:27:02] Speaker 2: can with Alpha or Bravo front seater or backseater that
[1:27:07] Speaker 2: are on the ground, and that's the first priority. But
[1:27:12] Speaker 2: while that's happening, air assets are being organized and diverted
[1:27:16] Speaker 2: to that location, so that almost immediately if the communications
[1:27:22] Speaker 2: with someone on the ground is established, King has will
[1:27:26] Speaker 2: designate a fact who will direct the aircraft to strike.
[1:27:32] Speaker 2: They'll mark the target and direct the aircraft to strike,
[1:27:36] Speaker 2: and then at the same time aircraft are being ordered
[1:27:44] Speaker 2: to take off to report. And the best aircraft for
[1:27:51] Speaker 2: stars was the A one to E World War two
[1:27:55] Speaker 2: aircraft sky Raider, very huge, huge weapons load. It could
[1:28:01] Speaker 2: loiter for four or five hours and was practically indestructively.
[1:28:08] Speaker 2: It was famous for coming back with flight services damaged
[1:28:12] Speaker 2: and incredible damage, but it could still land. So anyway,
[1:28:17] Speaker 2: King one would begin to feed aircraft and support to
[1:28:21] Speaker 2: the down to air crewmen. At the same time Jolly
[1:28:26] Speaker 2: Green Rescue HH fifty three C's Air Force Jolly Green Giants.
[1:28:32] Speaker 2: They were launched and they were circling in the area.
[1:28:38] Speaker 2: They could be refueled by King actually, so they could
[1:28:41] Speaker 2: loiter for hours, so almost immediately the resources are there.
[1:28:46] Speaker 2: Capability is there to pick up the down pilot if
[1:28:50] Speaker 2: they are in a relatively if they're in a zone
[1:28:55] Speaker 2: that they can be affected, they can be effectively picked up.
[1:29:00] Speaker 2: So in some cases it was a very quick rescue.
[1:29:05] Speaker 2: In other cases it might take several hours. They don't
[1:29:08] Speaker 2: have to work on the bad guys. Uh, you know,
[1:29:12] Speaker 2: suppressing the soldiers, the bad guys that are in the vicinity.
[1:29:20] Speaker 2: It was. It was an impressive, impressive display of collaboration, professionalism,
[1:29:30] Speaker 2: and you know, and courage. I don't know where you
[1:29:35] Speaker 2: know that. The courage and bravery of these pilots unreal.
[1:29:41] Speaker 1: One of my one of my first interviews was with
[1:29:44] Speaker 1: a four Phantom pilot, Jerry Geller. These are my first
[1:29:48] Speaker 1: fifteen interviews, and he got shot down on a bombing
[1:29:52] Speaker 1: run in Vietnam, and he ejected as he was going
[1:29:57] Speaker 1: into the tree canopies and the canopy hitting his the
[1:30:02] Speaker 1: branches and stuff hitting the canopy of his aircraft blinded
[1:30:06] Speaker 1: him and it was just like wild to hear. I'm like,
[1:30:11] Speaker 1: how did you even? The fact that you survived is crazy.
[1:30:14] Speaker 1: The fact that you were rescued while being completely blind
[1:30:18] Speaker 1: is yeah. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, it's just
[1:30:21] Speaker 1: such a miracle.
[1:30:23] Speaker 2: Oh God for the radio of the surreal radios that
[1:30:26] Speaker 2: you know, that was practically the only real time link
[1:30:30] Speaker 2: between those down air crewmen. The longest star in Vietnam
[1:30:37] Speaker 2: was about fifty six hours, and that was Boxer two
[1:30:40] Speaker 2: to two Alpha and Bravo both survived on the ground
[1:30:47] Speaker 2: opposite sides of a I won't say a river, but
[1:30:51] Speaker 2: a stream of water, and that lasted, as I said,
[1:30:57] Speaker 2: almost fifty six hours before the rescue. Alpha was killed
[1:31:03] Speaker 2: and they did rescue Boxer to to Bravo Woody Bergeron
[1:31:11] Speaker 2: is his name, and he was rescued. It was thirty
[1:31:21] Speaker 2: I forget how many years. Thirty some odd years later
[1:31:25] Speaker 2: the body of Boxer to two Alpha his last name
[1:31:30] Speaker 2: was Danielson was recovered and he was returned home. During
[1:31:36] Speaker 2: that rescue, one Air Force para jumper was killed well,
[1:31:47] Speaker 2: and a couple of planes were shot down to trying
[1:31:49] Speaker 2: to affect the rescuer. Yeah, it's just incredible.
[1:31:53] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it is crazy. And you you know, there's
[1:31:57] Speaker 1: actually see updates pretty regularly of these groups that are
[1:32:00] Speaker 1: looking for missing soldiers and airmen and stuff that both
[1:32:04] Speaker 1: both in Vietnam and both in like the Pacific Islands
[1:32:07] Speaker 1: and stuff where all this fighting happened. Because I don't know,
[1:32:12] Speaker 1: it's what a crazy time. I can't imagine, you know,
[1:32:16] Speaker 1: something like I can't imagine being shot down and then
[1:32:19] Speaker 1: legitimately trying to survive for you know, a few days
[1:32:22] Speaker 1: to to try to make it out of there. You mentioned,
[1:32:27] Speaker 1: you mentioned the guy that you know some guys that
[1:32:29] Speaker 1: were POW's did did they? I mean, how did they
[1:32:34] Speaker 1: look at it from I don't know what they've shared
[1:32:37] Speaker 1: with you or anything like that, but you you have
[1:32:40] Speaker 1: this sense of relief and you know, forgiveness, it seems like,
[1:32:44] Speaker 1: but did they? Do you think that they time has
[1:32:49] Speaker 1: kind of healed that wound or no?
[1:32:51] Speaker 2: People who I know go Kraka, he lives. I think
[1:32:56] Speaker 2: he still lives in Washington. And he came to a
[1:32:59] Speaker 2: vf W post meeting to talk about his experience, and
[1:33:03] Speaker 2: we sort of, you know, became friends, casual friends and
[1:33:08] Speaker 2: so forth. His call sign was Dogwood Dogwood. He was
[1:33:14] Speaker 2: shot down. He covered a lot. But to answer your question, no,
[1:33:26] Speaker 2: he's not of a forgiving mode. He's still And this
[1:33:32] Speaker 2: was the last time we spoke, which which was a
[1:33:35] Speaker 2: couple of years ago, that you know, he still had
[1:33:39] Speaker 2: hostile feelings towards his treatment. And in speaking with him,
[1:33:46] Speaker 2: I learned something just blew my mind. Joe, how did
[1:33:51] Speaker 2: you survive? What did you do subjected to the beatings
[1:33:54] Speaker 2: and the torture and isolation? And he said, well, it
[1:34:03] Speaker 2: was a love of country, it was my religion, It
[1:34:09] Speaker 2: was the camaraderie of the fellow prisoners that kept him going.
[1:34:17] Speaker 2: And he said, and it was a sense of humor.
[1:34:20] Speaker 2: I said, Joe, what do you mean a sense of humor?
[1:34:25] Speaker 2: You know, you were in the Hanoi Hilton, which I
[1:34:28] Speaker 2: visited when I was in Hanoi. In honor of Joe,
[1:34:32] Speaker 2: I wanted I brought back some earth and stones for him.
[1:34:37] Speaker 2: And he said, well, yeah, you know, we we laughed
[1:34:42] Speaker 2: and we told jokes. And so it's really a testament
[1:34:47] Speaker 2: to their you know, their fortitude, their courage, and you
[1:34:51] Speaker 2: know that they could somehow find humor, you know, in
[1:34:55] Speaker 2: that desperate, desperate situation in which they found him. Now
[1:34:59] Speaker 2: that was That's one person. I really don't know you
[1:35:03] Speaker 2: know about other POW's, but he was there a long,
[1:35:08] Speaker 2: long time. A little side note, Joe had an incredible memory.
[1:35:14] Speaker 2: And there was a Navy, young Navy guy, had Doll
[1:35:19] Speaker 2: who was released. He had fallen off a ship blue
[1:35:23] Speaker 2: while out in the waters and he was held prisoner.
[1:35:27] Speaker 2: But he was one that was released. You know, the
[1:35:30] Speaker 2: North Vietneast periodically would release three POWs at a time
[1:35:35] Speaker 2: for goodwill, whatever publicity. And Joe worked with this young
[1:35:40] Speaker 2: man who memorized the names of like five hundred POWs.
[1:35:48] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because it was important that the names of
[1:35:55] Speaker 2: those that were still alive, you know that the in fact,
[1:35:59] Speaker 2: I think it was sid I'd have six hundreds, so
[1:36:02] Speaker 2: four ecly somehow as soon as he got back started,
[1:36:07] Speaker 2: you know, just going through all these names.
[1:36:09] Speaker 1: Yeah. I remember reading about that. He got released on
[1:36:12] Speaker 1: one of those early releases, and he confirmed how a
[1:36:17] Speaker 1: lot of people were still alive that they had thought
[1:36:20] Speaker 1: were missing in action, or a lot of people that
[1:36:22] Speaker 1: were listened as missing an action. They didn't know what
[1:36:24] Speaker 1: had happened to him. He confirmed that they were still
[1:36:26] Speaker 1: alive or something that had died in prison and stuff
[1:36:28] Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, that's a pretty famous story. That's crazy, man. Yeah,
[1:36:33] Speaker 1: if people haven't if people if you are not aware
[1:36:36] Speaker 1: of the pow experience in Vietnam. I have two books
[1:36:43] Speaker 1: that are on my bookshelf. One is called why Didn't
[1:36:45] Speaker 1: You Get Me Out? Which is pretty crazy where that
[1:36:49] Speaker 1: guy holds animosity towards the US government too. I think
[1:36:52] Speaker 1: he believes that they could have gotten him out, that
[1:36:55] Speaker 1: they knew where he was at and never came to
[1:36:57] Speaker 1: get him. And then the other one is called I
[1:36:59] Speaker 1: Think it's it's either five years to freedom or seven
[1:37:01] Speaker 1: years to freedom. And that's a really good one too.
[1:37:04] Speaker 1: And it's just you know, experiences may vary. Right. You
[1:37:07] Speaker 1: had the people in the Hanoi Hilton that were in
[1:37:10] Speaker 1: like almost it's almost like a prison like environment, right
[1:37:13] Speaker 1: it cells, And and then you had other POWs that
[1:37:16] Speaker 1: were like in jungle prisons, that were I mean, one
[1:37:21] Speaker 1: of the books I read, I think it was why
[1:37:22] Speaker 1: Didn't You Get Me Out? He talked about how he
[1:37:26] Speaker 1: had upset the guards, so they took him into the
[1:37:30] Speaker 1: jungle away from the camp and staked him to the ground,
[1:37:35] Speaker 1: his arms and legs down so that he couldn't move,
[1:37:38] Speaker 1: and let the bugs and stuff eat at them all night.
[1:37:41] Speaker 1: They they kept them out overnight, stake to the ground,
[1:37:44] Speaker 1: and all the jungle creatures just came and you know,
[1:37:48] Speaker 1: nibbled at him, and I was like.
[1:37:49] Speaker 2: Oh God. And he did eventually get out, right, he
[1:37:53] Speaker 2: did return. And what's the name of that book? Justin
[1:37:57] Speaker 2: I've got to get that.
[1:37:58] Speaker 1: There's two. There's one why didn't you get me out?
[1:38:02] Speaker 2: Why didn't you get Me out?
[1:38:03] Speaker 1: And then the second one, I believe is called Seven
[1:38:06] Speaker 1: Years to Freedom. It's either seven years to freedom or
[1:38:10] Speaker 1: five years to freedom. I can't see. I can't tell
[1:38:12] Speaker 1: it both of them are. I mean, it's just like
[1:38:18] Speaker 1: I just can't imagine. I just can't imagine. And I
[1:38:21] Speaker 1: understand why they would carry animosity. I think a lot
[1:38:25] Speaker 1: of people, I'm sure some of them are like most
[1:38:28] Speaker 1: veterans where it's like hey, man, Like for me, I
[1:38:33] Speaker 1: had no issues with the Afghans. I have no issue
[1:38:35] Speaker 1: with the Afghan people. I have no issue with We
[1:38:38] Speaker 1: were there to fight the bad guys, and women and
[1:38:41] Speaker 1: kids and people that are just trying to live their
[1:38:42] Speaker 1: lives are not the bad guys. I will say. Like
[1:38:45] Speaker 1: when I was insang in, the area was secure enough
[1:38:48] Speaker 1: where the Bizarre was always busy and there was things
[1:38:51] Speaker 1: happening and life happening. And when we pulled out of
[1:38:54] Speaker 1: there and our area got overrun after the Americans pulled out,
[1:39:00] Speaker 1: it was immediately I saw videos on YouTube of it.
[1:39:03] Speaker 1: It was immediately like a ghost town, like there's tumbleweeds
[1:39:06] Speaker 1: tumbling through the bizarre. There's no one else, you know,
[1:39:08] Speaker 1: like there's no shops open, and it was just like
[1:39:11] Speaker 1: it's sad to see that, you know, and it's I
[1:39:14] Speaker 1: feel bad for those Afghan people. And that's why I'm
[1:39:17] Speaker 1: sure some of those POWs are also like, hey, listen,
[1:39:19] Speaker 1: I don't care about the Vietnamese people or whoever, like,
[1:39:23] Speaker 1: they're probably nice people. But the specific people I was
[1:39:27] Speaker 1: fighting or in, you know, as a pow, the guy
[1:39:30] Speaker 1: that was torturing me, you know, screw that guy forever.
[1:39:37] Speaker 2: One night, well, I was working flying. I was talking
[1:39:41] Speaker 2: with one of the facts. His call sign was Pogo,
[1:39:46] Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, Pogo stopped communicating. And I
[1:39:52] Speaker 2: heard this in a foreign language. I didn't know Laotian
[1:39:56] Speaker 2: or something, and it was loud and so on and
[1:39:58] Speaker 2: so forth. And I learned from another fag who interpreted
[1:40:03] Speaker 2: for me. He said that Pogo was shot and killed.
[1:40:05] Speaker 2: Took a bullet right in the forehead. He was shot
[1:40:08] Speaker 2: and killed. Okay, fast forward, I get out of I
[1:40:18] Speaker 2: leave Southeast Asia, and I'm back still in the Air Force,
[1:40:23] Speaker 2: I believe. And there is the prison raid at Sante,
[1:40:29] Speaker 2: which was a successful raid inasmuch as it went according
[1:40:34] Speaker 2: to plan. They landed in this prison compound and killed
[1:40:38] Speaker 2: by the way Russian soldiers, but there were no prisoners there.
[1:40:46] Speaker 2: And then I read subsequently that the raid on Sante
[1:40:52] Speaker 2: had been intended to occur, like ten months previous. But
[1:40:59] Speaker 2: the surveillance a team that was sent to surveil the area.
[1:41:08] Speaker 2: The leader of the team was shot and killed and
[1:41:10] Speaker 2: that was Pogo. So had had that team not been detected,
[1:41:16] Speaker 2: maybe the surveillance could have been done and maybe that raid,
[1:41:21] Speaker 2: you know, would have been conducted as it was originally
[1:41:23] Speaker 2: scheduled to be conducted ten months ten months earlier. But
[1:41:27] Speaker 2: who knows, uh, just.
[1:41:31] Speaker 1: Little I just can't imagine how the American public would
[1:41:34] Speaker 1: react today to like hundreds of Americans being imprisoned, you know,
[1:41:39] Speaker 1: a video of that coming out. I just I don't know.
[1:41:43] Speaker 1: I mean, during the Global War on Terror, there was
[1:41:45] Speaker 1: a handful of people that got captured whatever you want
[1:41:51] Speaker 1: to call it. I mean, there was different things that
[1:41:52] Speaker 1: different instances that occurred. But there's nowhere near Vietnam, World
[1:42:00] Speaker 1: War two, Korea, like pow camps were not like a thing,
[1:42:04] Speaker 1: you know, it was just a it's different now it's
[1:42:07] Speaker 1: it's like an interesting thing. Yeah yeah, but yeah, man Fred,
[1:42:12] Speaker 1: I really appreciate you coming on. Where can people find
[1:42:15] Speaker 1: your book?
[1:42:17] Speaker 2: The book is a return to the war. Well, let's
[1:42:21] Speaker 2: see this backwards war returned to the war on the
[1:42:27] Speaker 2: Plane Djars. The plane Djars or the pdj is an area.
[1:42:31] Speaker 2: It's a five hundred square mile area right in the
[1:42:34] Speaker 2: middle of northern Laos and that's where a majority of
[1:42:37] Speaker 2: the fighting took place and occurred. But the book is
[1:42:42] Speaker 2: available on Amazon as well as other books what's that
[1:42:48] Speaker 2: Barnes and Noble and other bookstores. It's available. But yeah,
[1:42:54] Speaker 2: I appreciate this opportunity justin very much. It's a The
[1:43:03] Speaker 2: book was cathartic in a lot of ways for me,
[1:43:06] Speaker 2: and you know, I've had a fairly positive response, and
[1:43:12] Speaker 2: I hope that based on our discussion today, you know,
[1:43:15] Speaker 2: something's been mentioned that you know, might pique someone's interest.
[1:43:20] Speaker 2: And if in an email, send me your mailing address
[1:43:25] Speaker 2: and I'll be happy to send you a copy.
[1:43:27] Speaker 1: Oh, I appreciate that.
[1:43:28] Speaker 2: Add that to your bookshelf.
[1:43:29] Speaker 1: I'll put it on the bookshelf behind me when I've
[1:43:31] Speaker 1: done reading it. That's awesome. I really appreciate it. I
[1:43:34] Speaker 1: really appreciate you taking the time to read or to
[1:43:36] Speaker 1: excuse me to write a book. I mean, I think
[1:43:38] Speaker 1: it's important. We talked about this a little bit before
[1:43:40] Speaker 1: we started, but it's important for people to record their histories,
[1:43:45] Speaker 1: record their story, write yourself a book, keep a journal,
[1:43:48] Speaker 1: go on a podcast. You know, when I first started
[1:43:51] Speaker 1: the podcast, I always told people like, you know, think
[1:43:53] Speaker 1: of this as a They'd ask me, what do you
[1:43:56] Speaker 1: want to talk about, and I'm like, well, we're going
[1:43:58] Speaker 1: to talk. I'd like, I want to talk about your career.
[1:44:00] Speaker 1: But this is an opportunity for you to record something
[1:44:03] Speaker 1: for your great great great grandchildren to maybe find this
[1:44:07] Speaker 1: audio file or video file and be like, oh, that's
[1:44:11] Speaker 1: what great great great grandpa so and so did during
[1:44:13] Speaker 1: the war, you know. And I think that's to have
[1:44:16] Speaker 1: that like first person perspective from your mouth here's what happened,
[1:44:21] Speaker 1: is invaluable not only for your families, but also for
[1:44:24] Speaker 1: the country as a whole, because people deserve to know
[1:44:28] Speaker 1: what is being done in their name and other countries
[1:44:31] Speaker 1: and deserve to know, you know, where their taxpayer money
[1:44:33] Speaker 1: and stuff is going. So I think what you've done
[1:44:36] Speaker 1: is great. Everybody can check out my stuff Former Action Guys,
[1:44:40] Speaker 1: former Action News, both of those on Instagram. My website
[1:44:43] Speaker 1: is Jacramergraphics dot com. And Fred, again, I really appreciate
[1:44:46] Speaker 1: you coming on today.
[1:44:49] Speaker 2: Justin for the opportunity, and thank you for your service
[1:44:52] Speaker 2: to our great nation
[1:44:53] Speaker 1: You too, I appreciate it.

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