# Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) in Vietnam | Gary Linderer (throwback ep)

An episode of [The Team House](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1492797340), 21 May 2026, 1 h 57 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/clrtpod.com/m/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72091136/gary_linderer_throwback.mp3

Gary Linderer is the publisher of Behind the Lines, a magazine that specializes in US military special operations. He served in Vietnam with the LRPs of the 101st Airborne Division, earning two Silver Stars, the Bronze Star with V device (for valor), the Army Commendation Medal with V device, and two Purple Hearts. Gary's books : https://www.amazon.com/stores/Gary-A.-Linderer/author/B001KHOOIG?ref=ap_rdr&shoppingPortalEnabled=true&ccs_id=5aa1b86d-83f3-4258-adc1-41fa9c021663 Support the show here: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouse Grab Jack's new thriller "The Most Dangerous Man" here: https://a.co/d/05NN09wy 00:00 — Start / Vietnam LRP veteran Gary Linderer joins The Team House 01:05 — Growing up with a WWII pilot father and trying to become a military aviator 03:46 — Arriving in Vietnam and volunteering for the 101st Airborne LRPs 08:46 — What LRPs did: long-range recon, helicopter insertions, and working far beyond friendly lines 12:41 — First patrol: immediate contact with a suspected Chinese communist fighter 20:31 — Life inside the LRP company: small teams, stand-downs, and constant readiness 23:37 — The Nui Ke mission: rocket belt patrols, mortars, and air support 29:42 — Night insertion back into Nui Ke and escaping under heavy .51-caliber fire 36:04 — November 20th heavy-team mission against the 2nd NVA Regiment 43:30 — Claymore ambush, killing an NVA major, and recovering the map case 49:53 — Enemy explosive wipes out the team and the fight to keep everyone alive 55:27 — Medevac under fire and the reaction force rescue 01:08:45 — Returning from the hospital as one of the “old guys” in the unit 01:12:14 — Search-and-rescue mission for downed helicopters near Firebase Tomahawk 01:26:36 — LRP weapons: M16s, CAR-15s, Swedish Ks, shotguns, and ammo loadouts 01:29:59 — Coming home from Vietnam, getting married, and carrying the war back with him 01:35:50 — LRPs becoming Rangers and fighting to preserve the LRP legacy 01:38:22 — Writing the books: letters home, reunions, and documenting the LRP experience 01:48:03 — Silver Star, Ranger legacy, helicopter pilots, books, and final thoughts Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome to episode two hundred and twenty four
[0:04] Speaker 1: of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park.
[0:07] Speaker 1: Our guest on tonight's show is Gary Linderer. Gary served
[0:11] Speaker 1: in the WORPS, a long range reconnaissance patrol which became
[0:14] Speaker 1: Ranger Companies later on in the Vietnam Conflict. He's the
[0:17] Speaker 1: author of a number of different books. We have a
[0:20] Speaker 1: few of his here, the Phantom Warriors series, amongst others.
[0:23] Speaker 1: We're really excited to have Gary on the show. We've
[0:25] Speaker 1: had a few of his teammates on before, Larry Chambers
[0:28] Speaker 1: and Ken Miller, so this is I feel like a
[0:31] Speaker 1: long time coming. Gary, So thank you so much for
[0:33] Speaker 1: joining us tonight.
[0:34] Speaker 2: Good to be here.
[0:35] Speaker 1: So Gary, look, man, I mean, it's an honor and
[0:39] Speaker 1: a pleasure, and I'm I'm gonna pitch you the question
[0:43] Speaker 1: I pitch all of our guests, you know, tell us
[0:45] Speaker 1: about your origin, story, about how you grew up, what
[0:47] Speaker 1: your upbringing was like, and what sort of propelled you
[0:50] Speaker 1: towards military service.
[0:52] Speaker 2: I was the oldest of eight kids. My father was
[0:57] Speaker 2: a World War two B seventeen pilot, and growing up
[1:02] Speaker 2: couldn't get him to tell a lot of stories about
[1:04] Speaker 2: his missions in World War Two, but I aspired to
[1:07] Speaker 2: be a pilot myself. When I graduated from high school,
[1:11] Speaker 2: I was a primary. I had a primary appointment to
[1:15] Speaker 2: the Air Force Academy, and in May of my senior year,
[1:20] Speaker 2: when I went to take my physical, they found out
[1:23] Speaker 2: I had a brain concussion in a football game my
[1:26] Speaker 2: senior year in high school, and they informed me at
[1:29] Speaker 2: the end of May that I was going to have
[1:31] Speaker 2: to wait a year to attend the Air Force Academy.
[1:34] Speaker 2: Back then, if you waited a year, you would be drafted.
[1:38] Speaker 2: So I ended up applying at the last minutes at
[1:41] Speaker 2: Missouri University. I attended Missouri University for two years. I
[1:46] Speaker 2: was at Air Force ROTC and at the end of
[1:50] Speaker 2: two years, I ran out of money. My parents couldn't
[1:52] Speaker 2: afford to pay for my junior year, so, fearing that
[1:56] Speaker 2: I would be drafted, I went ahead and enlisted. I
[1:59] Speaker 2: tried to list in the Air Force Aviation program. At
[2:02] Speaker 2: the time, he had to have a college degree. Same
[2:04] Speaker 2: thing with the Marine Corps and the Navy. So I
[2:08] Speaker 2: went to the Army and as the last resort, and
[2:12] Speaker 2: they told me, well, you could be a helicopter pilot.
[2:14] Speaker 2: But you can't go to OCS for six months in
[2:17] Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven unless you had a college degree. Even
[2:21] Speaker 2: the Army wouldn't send you to OCS. This was in
[2:24] Speaker 2: the fall of sixty seven. So I enlisted for Airborne Infantry,
[2:31] Speaker 2: and I was told by my recruiter that they would
[2:34] Speaker 2: probably remove the requirement to have a college degree while
[2:38] Speaker 2: I was in training and I could reapply. So I
[2:42] Speaker 2: went through basic training and AIT and I went to
[2:46] Speaker 2: JUB school, and during JUB school I reapplied. The Army
[2:50] Speaker 2: took the requirement away. I reapplied for OCS. My artists
[2:56] Speaker 2: came down for OCS the day after my artists came
[2:59] Speaker 2: down for Vietnam. So I was engaged at the time
[3:04] Speaker 2: to my high school sweetheart, and I came home on
[3:08] Speaker 2: a thirty day leave and I tried to find out
[3:10] Speaker 2: if I could delay going to Vietnam and go to OCS.
[3:14] Speaker 2: They said there's no way. Vietnam artists supersedes everything else.
[3:18] Speaker 2: So I came home and my fiance found out I
[3:23] Speaker 2: was going to Nam and she wanted to get married
[3:25] Speaker 2: before I left, and I said no. We went together
[3:28] Speaker 2: for five years through high school and college. I said,
[3:31] Speaker 2: let's wait till I get back. So anyway, I went
[3:34] Speaker 2: to Vietnam. There were five guys in my group that
[3:40] Speaker 2: went over for my jump class, only five guys I
[3:44] Speaker 2: knew on the aircraft we landed. All five of us
[3:47] Speaker 2: had orders for the one hundred first Airborne Division. So
[3:50] Speaker 2: during p training, preliminary training, preparatory training that thee hundred
[3:54] Speaker 2: first offered the week long training course, they had different
[3:57] Speaker 2: people come by and speak to us about joining these
[4:00] Speaker 2: different organizations, volunteer organizations, and they had a dog handler
[4:05] Speaker 2: come by and he talked to the whole group. There
[4:08] Speaker 2: was two hundred of us in the group, and he
[4:10] Speaker 2: gave this pitch about being a dog handler and going
[4:13] Speaker 2: to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia for the training for two weeks.
[4:19] Speaker 2: And none of the five guys I had served with
[4:22] Speaker 2: volunteered for this, so I passed up on it. And
[4:25] Speaker 2: I like dogs. Excuse me, I grew up with dogs,
[4:29] Speaker 2: So I almost went that route.
[4:32] Speaker 3: Uh.
[4:33] Speaker 2: The next guy that came was a was a real stud.
[4:37] Speaker 2: He was alert, He had tiger fatigues on and a
[4:40] Speaker 2: red scarf for around his neck starts. Tigraph really looked
[4:44] Speaker 2: like a stud, and he gave us to talk about
[4:46] Speaker 2: what alerts did and that we were the elite of
[4:49] Speaker 2: the army and uh, you know we operated behind enemy
[4:52] Speaker 2: lines and six man teams and really made it sound exciting,
[4:57] Speaker 2: and all four of the guys I went over there
[5:00] Speaker 2: with raised their hand to volunteer, and I had not
[5:03] Speaker 2: wanted to be left out. I did the same thing.
[5:07] Speaker 2: They flew us up north to fu Bai and there
[5:10] Speaker 2: was a jeep waiting for us that took us to
[5:11] Speaker 2: the company reunion, the company unit, and the first sergeant
[5:17] Speaker 2: came out and said, gentlemen, come in here. I'm want
[5:18] Speaker 2: to tell you what you're going to be doing. Well,
[5:20] Speaker 2: he didn't make it sound so glorious. We went in
[5:24] Speaker 2: and he explained that life expectancy at ERPs was I'm
[5:29] Speaker 2: sure he exaggerated because we had lost that many people,
[5:33] Speaker 2: but he made it sound very much akin to being
[5:36] Speaker 2: a second lieutenant in a line unit. Uh what didn't
[5:39] Speaker 2: sound to it? Inviting to it? I remember writing my
[5:43] Speaker 2: first letter home to my fiance and telling her I
[5:46] Speaker 2: really screwed up. So anyway, they assigned each one of
[5:52] Speaker 2: us to a team as a replacement, and that entire
[5:56] Speaker 2: team trained with us daily for two weeks and they
[6:01] Speaker 2: told us any one man on that team could blackball us,
[6:04] Speaker 2: and if they did, we'd go to an infantry company immediately,
[6:07] Speaker 2: no questions asked. I grew up doing a lot of
[6:10] Speaker 2: hunting and fishing, and I was pretty pretty comfortable in
[6:13] Speaker 2: the woods. I was an explorer scout in the boy Scout,
[6:16] Speaker 2: so I can already read a come to her bat
[6:20] Speaker 2: And I think I did pretty good working out with
[6:22] Speaker 2: my team, and at the end of my two weeks,
[6:25] Speaker 2: I was accepted as part of the team. Not long
[6:29] Speaker 2: after I got there, we had a new company commander
[6:33] Speaker 2: that came to the unit, and he had come to
[6:35] Speaker 2: us from a lion company and he wasn't very popular.
[6:39] Speaker 2: He immediately made us have we stood two farmations a day.
[6:45] Speaker 2: We ran in the morning, seven miles. We had to
[6:48] Speaker 2: wear our uniforms our fatigues jungle fatigues with the sleeves
[6:51] Speaker 2: were rolled down, even on work details, and nobody liked
[6:55] Speaker 2: this guy. After about two weeks, he stepped on a
[6:59] Speaker 2: tour popper mind going into his tent one night, and
[7:03] Speaker 2: they almost disbanded our company because of it. That's crazy,
[7:07] Speaker 2: but I was still moved to the works. That's crazy.
[7:09] Speaker 2: How the Viet consill slept through your wire. That's what
[7:12] Speaker 2: we thought. Yeah, yeah, especially in a work year, and
[7:15] Speaker 2: they one shouldn't have been able to come in and
[7:17] Speaker 2: do that.
[7:18] Speaker 4: Yeah, try to take the leadership.
[7:21] Speaker 2: They had a hard time finding somebody that would volunteer
[7:23] Speaker 2: to be company commander. After that, they sent a black
[7:27] Speaker 2: major over and he refused to stay in the company
[7:30] Speaker 2: area at night. He would come over and hold the
[7:32] Speaker 2: morning formation and go back up the division headquarters for
[7:35] Speaker 2: the rest of the day. We'd seen the next morning again. Oh,
[7:41] Speaker 2: I guess it was almost three weeks later Captain Ken
[7:44] Speaker 2: Eckland volunteered to take our company. Captain Eckland had been
[7:49] Speaker 2: with first Brigade, isn't it with an infantry company with
[7:52] Speaker 2: a three twenty seven, and he had an excellent record.
[7:55] Speaker 2: He didn't lose a man in a year over there.
[7:57] Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty five West Pointer Uh. He became our
[8:01] Speaker 2: company commander and he was an outstanding company commander. I
[8:07] Speaker 2: didn't really go out on my first mission. I got
[8:09] Speaker 2: there early June of sixty eight. By the time I
[8:14] Speaker 2: trained and we went through this rigormarole with the captain
[8:17] Speaker 2: that stepped on the toepopper. It was August before actually
[8:20] Speaker 2: went out of the patrol Gary.
[8:23] Speaker 1: For folks out there who don't know or don't understand,
[8:26] Speaker 1: can you explain what your unit did, what a work was,
[8:29] Speaker 1: and what your mission was.
[8:31] Speaker 2: When I was there, primarily we were reconnaissance long range patrol.
[8:36] Speaker 2: We would pull missions that lasted anywhere from three to
[8:40] Speaker 2: seven days. Most of the missions were twenty to forty
[8:46] Speaker 2: kilometers away from the base camp, so we were out
[8:49] Speaker 2: quite a ways past where the infantry companies were working,
[8:53] Speaker 2: as opposed to battalion reconnaissance students that worked in much closer. Normally,
[9:02] Speaker 2: we inserted by helicopter. There were a few missions where
[9:05] Speaker 2: we did a walk in or were dropped off along
[9:09] Speaker 2: a highway by truck, but normally we were We were
[9:12] Speaker 2: taken in by helicopter and we either we either hovered
[9:16] Speaker 2: just above the ground and jumped out, or we repelled in,
[9:21] Speaker 2: or we we act. There's a couple of missions we
[9:22] Speaker 2: actually went in by rope ladder.
[9:25] Speaker 4: Uh.
[9:26] Speaker 2: The assertions were normally at first light or last light,
[9:29] Speaker 2: and we would hit the ground, usually in a small
[9:34] Speaker 2: clearing run into the jungle and immediately set up a
[9:38] Speaker 2: tight perimeter and we laid dog for up to an
[9:41] Speaker 2: hour just listening. Normally, if the enemy had a trail
[9:45] Speaker 2: watcher or we were close to a base camp, they
[9:48] Speaker 2: would come to see what the helicopter was all about.
[9:51] Speaker 2: We had a choice of continuing the mission, or if
[9:54] Speaker 2: we were compromised the helicopters were standing off a few
[9:57] Speaker 2: miles away, they would come back in and try to
[9:59] Speaker 2: pull us out out. When we pulled a mission, it
[10:05] Speaker 2: was usually in an area we called it an area
[10:07] Speaker 2: of operations at ale that was anywhere from four to
[10:11] Speaker 2: seven clicks one thousand meter clicks in diameter or in dimensions.
[10:20] Speaker 2: The clicks might be in a square, they may be oblong,
[10:23] Speaker 2: it depended on the terrain. Before mission, the team leader
[10:28] Speaker 2: and the assistant team leader would do an overflight and
[10:31] Speaker 2: try to locate landing zone, potential landing zones or extraction
[10:35] Speaker 2: zones where the streams were for water purposes and where
[10:40] Speaker 2: possibly the enemy might be hiding. So when we went
[10:43] Speaker 2: on a patrol, usually our our patrol route was predetermined.
[10:48] Speaker 2: Uh we based it on contour maps and what we
[10:51] Speaker 2: saw in the overflight. So when we went in on
[10:55] Speaker 2: the patrol, we weren't we weren't locked into that patrol route,
[10:59] Speaker 2: but we would try to follow it as closely as possible.
[11:02] Speaker 2: A team consisted of a team leader, an assistant team leader,
[11:07] Speaker 2: two scouts, and two radio operators, a senior and a
[11:11] Speaker 2: junior radio operator. The senior radio operator his communication was
[11:16] Speaker 2: with the with the either a radio relay team or
[11:20] Speaker 2: the company talk Tactical Operations Center. The junior radio operator
[11:25] Speaker 2: his was set on an artillery base where our artillery
[11:28] Speaker 2: support came from. We had a lot of communication problems.
[11:33] Speaker 2: Our missions were usually back in the mountains, and where
[11:36] Speaker 2: we were the mountains were very similar to eastern Tennessee,
[11:40] Speaker 2: very rugged, very steep, a lot of double canopy water
[11:45] Speaker 2: in most of the valleys. But that's where the enemy
[11:48] Speaker 2: usually was too around the water, so we had to
[11:50] Speaker 2: be careful trying to resupply water on missions. So that's
[11:54] Speaker 2: pretty well what we did. We didn't cover a lot
[11:57] Speaker 2: of ground. We moved short distance, very silently, did a
[12:01] Speaker 2: lot of listening. We tried not to run trails. We
[12:06] Speaker 2: would try to parallel the trail far enough off that
[12:09] Speaker 2: we could see somebody coming up or down with where
[12:12] Speaker 2: we wouldn't make a lot of noise.
[12:16] Speaker 1: Gary, I mean, where'd even begin? I mean, do you
[12:19] Speaker 1: want to start. Tell us about your first mission that
[12:22] Speaker 1: you started to get into a little bit.
[12:25] Speaker 2: My first mission, we had an E seven was a
[12:28] Speaker 2: team leader. I won't mention any names. I was pretty
[12:32] Speaker 2: impressed by him. I thought he was very professional. We
[12:35] Speaker 2: landed uh in this alpine country, or not alpine country, uh,
[12:39] Speaker 2: Piedmont country, rolling hills, not a lot of cover right
[12:43] Speaker 2: at the base of these tall mountains. We landed about uh.
[12:47] Speaker 2: I think it was about seven or eight in the morning,
[12:50] Speaker 2: and there was six of us. I was the new guy.
[12:53] Speaker 2: The helicopter came in and was still moving when we
[12:56] Speaker 2: jumped out. I remember I hit on my toes on
[12:59] Speaker 2: my feet and did a somersault immediately, not realizing that
[13:03] Speaker 2: when a helicopter's moving, you don't jump out like that. Really,
[13:07] Speaker 2: I felt like a total ass when I did my
[13:10] Speaker 2: tumble and came back up on my feet. I thought,
[13:13] Speaker 2: that'll probably kick me off the team when we get
[13:15] Speaker 2: back from this mission. Anyway, we ran about one hundred
[13:19] Speaker 2: meters off the LZ into a bamboo thicket right at
[13:24] Speaker 2: the edge of the bottom of the mountains, and there
[13:27] Speaker 2: was a trail, high speed trail going up through the bamboo.
[13:32] Speaker 2: I was walking slack for the point man, who happened
[13:35] Speaker 2: to be the team leader. At seven, we went up
[13:39] Speaker 2: in the trail about one hundred meters and he announced
[13:42] Speaker 2: that we were going to have a break, and we
[13:44] Speaker 2: stopped in the middle of this trail and took a
[13:47] Speaker 2: ten minute break. This is right after we inserted and
[13:51] Speaker 2: I found out later that we were playing dog at
[13:54] Speaker 2: the time. But in the middle of a trail, about
[13:57] Speaker 2: fifteen feet above us, the point man the trail made
[14:01] Speaker 2: a turn to the right ninety degree turned and you
[14:05] Speaker 2: couldn't see now because the elephant grass and the bamboo
[14:08] Speaker 2: was too hot. So we're sitting there in the trail
[14:11] Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, I look up and here's
[14:14] Speaker 2: a I think he was a Chinese communist. He was
[14:17] Speaker 2: six foot tall, came around the bend in the trail.
[14:21] Speaker 2: He had khaki fatigues on and a red bandana around
[14:24] Speaker 2: his neck. He had a boonty cap, and he had
[14:27] Speaker 2: an AK forty seven slung over his shoulder, and everything froze.
[14:32] Speaker 2: Nobody moved. He stopped in midstep and stood and looked
[14:37] Speaker 2: at us, and we both looked at him, and the
[14:40] Speaker 2: guy's behind us. I'm not even sure the farther down
[14:42] Speaker 2: the trail. I don't even know if they saw him.
[14:44] Speaker 2: They were pulling security in different directions, and all of
[14:48] Speaker 2: a sudden, the guy grabbed for the sling on his
[14:50] Speaker 2: AK forty seven. When he grabbed on the sling, the
[14:54] Speaker 2: East seven ripped him just across the chest with his eight,
[14:57] Speaker 2: with his.
[15:04] Speaker 3: Fifteen fifteen.
[15:06] Speaker 2: I had an M sixteen and had I had my
[15:09] Speaker 2: finger on the selector switch, thank god, and I flipped
[15:12] Speaker 2: at the fire and full auto matic and I ripped
[15:15] Speaker 2: him again. And every time we hit him, each stagger backwards,
[15:19] Speaker 2: and you can see the dust come off his uniform,
[15:21] Speaker 2: and you can see the splotches of read coming across
[15:23] Speaker 2: his chest. And all of a sudden, the guy turns
[15:26] Speaker 2: around and runs back around the bend in the trail,
[15:29] Speaker 2: and we heard him fall, and we're sitting there. The
[15:34] Speaker 2: East seven didn't say anything. The guy's blow. US didn't
[15:37] Speaker 2: know what was going on. They all stood up, and
[15:39] Speaker 2: I'm still sitting on the ground. You know, I'd fired
[15:43] Speaker 2: twenty rounds out of my magazine, and all of a
[15:46] Speaker 2: sudden it occurred to me, you better reload. I dropped
[15:49] Speaker 2: the magazine and put another mag in and a stick
[15:52] Speaker 2: came flying over the the elephant grass and the bamboo
[15:57] Speaker 2: and landed in the trail. Pretty soon a rock came over,
[16:02] Speaker 2: so the East seven figured he was a point man
[16:06] Speaker 2: for an element and he jumped up and said, everybody
[16:09] Speaker 2: back to the LZ. So we all jumped up in
[16:11] Speaker 2: the East seven pole rear security and we ran one
[16:14] Speaker 2: hundred meters back to the LZ. The helicopters were still
[16:19] Speaker 2: on station, so they came in and picked us up
[16:22] Speaker 2: and took us back to the LZ. We went through
[16:24] Speaker 2: a debriefing, my first one, and we all told what
[16:27] Speaker 2: we saw. The other four guys on the team never
[16:30] Speaker 2: saw this guy. Even when we fired, they didn't see him.
[16:35] Speaker 2: So we reported what happened and the East I wasn't
[16:38] Speaker 2: going to say too much. I was still too new.
[16:41] Speaker 2: In the East seven said I think this guy was
[16:42] Speaker 2: a chikop. He said he had we shot him. His
[16:46] Speaker 2: hat came off and he said he had a flat top,
[16:48] Speaker 2: his hair had been cut recently. The guy was huge
[16:51] Speaker 2: for an Oriental, so I agreed with him because I
[16:55] Speaker 2: basically felt the same thing myself. That was my first
[16:59] Speaker 2: betray I wasn't on the ground probably thirty minutes at
[17:03] Speaker 2: the most, and I remember thinking, God, I think these
[17:06] Speaker 2: people were little. This guy was as big as I was.
[17:11] Speaker 2: Gary's the first of my twenty eight missions.
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[18:12] Speaker 1: So Gary back to you so that was your first
[18:16] Speaker 1: mission less than thirty minutes on the ground and encounter
[18:19] Speaker 1: with an unexpected encounter there, it sounds like what was
[18:24] Speaker 1: the what was the next step for you as as
[18:26] Speaker 1: you integrated into your team and get jocked up, I
[18:30] Speaker 1: guess for the next mission that's coming your way.
[18:32] Speaker 2: Well, we normally would pull anywhere from two to four
[18:36] Speaker 2: missions a month coming in from a patrol. We usually
[18:41] Speaker 2: get a three day standdown between that mission and another one,
[18:45] Speaker 2: which was basically spent either resting if it was a
[18:48] Speaker 2: long patrol, repackaging our gear, re arming if we fired
[18:54] Speaker 2: any AMMO on the mission, you know, replacing the lurp
[18:59] Speaker 2: rash as we took with us. Uh, we were always ready,
[19:03] Speaker 2: our rucksacks were always ready to go on another patrol.
[19:08] Speaker 2: When you're first in country, you pretty well stay with
[19:11] Speaker 2: your team. After you get a little bit of experience,
[19:15] Speaker 2: you end up doing a lot of filling missions where
[19:17] Speaker 2: you might go out as an extra man on another team,
[19:19] Speaker 2: or if somebody's at recondo school or on R and R,
[19:24] Speaker 2: you fill in on that team. I was I was
[19:27] Speaker 2: surprised how well we all did the same thing in
[19:32] Speaker 2: the field. Uh, normally on another team you'd think you
[19:36] Speaker 2: wouldn't fit, but after you had five or six months
[19:39] Speaker 2: under your belt, it was amazing. You could go out
[19:42] Speaker 2: with any team and pretty well be comfortable with them.
[19:44] Speaker 1: How many how many work teams these six man teams?
[19:47] Speaker 1: How many were in your company?
[19:49] Speaker 2: Or t O and E called for two platoons with
[19:52] Speaker 2: six teams in a platoon. Normally we ended up with
[19:56] Speaker 2: about four teams in a platoon because of casualties or ETS's,
[20:01] Speaker 2: d roses, guys going to Ricondo School, R and R
[20:06] Speaker 2: sick wounded, so it never could run eighteen.
[20:09] Speaker 1: So this isn't a small, tight knit, twenty five to
[20:12] Speaker 1: thirty men unit. Really.
[20:14] Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah. We had radio relay teams, which usually consisted
[20:19] Speaker 2: of three to four men that would normally go out
[20:22] Speaker 2: on a fire base or actually go out as another
[20:26] Speaker 2: team and relay our como back to the rear. Especially
[20:31] Speaker 2: when we were a long way out, like in the
[20:33] Speaker 2: Ashall Valley. Sometimes they would send a spotting plane out
[20:38] Speaker 2: at certain periods of time and we'd relay through that
[20:41] Speaker 2: spotted plane. So it just depended on where we were
[20:44] Speaker 2: and what kind of COMMO we had. Anyway, bird Dog,
[20:49] Speaker 2: I was lucky I didn't have a lot of hot missions,
[20:53] Speaker 2: probably until I was there for four or five months.
[20:55] Speaker 2: I think my next hot mission this was in August.
[20:58] Speaker 2: That first mission, I was on a mission the third
[21:01] Speaker 2: of November that turned out to be very hot. Uh.
[21:06] Speaker 2: Matter of fact, four of us were decorated on that mission.
[21:10] Speaker 2: And then November twentieth, I was on another very bad
[21:14] Speaker 2: mission where we had four killed and everybody eight guys
[21:18] Speaker 2: wounded on a heavy team, twelve man team. Everybody got hit.
[21:21] Speaker 1: Let's let's start with the first one that was pretty
[21:24] Speaker 1: hot in November.
[21:26] Speaker 2: The first one Camp Eagle, our division base camp, was
[21:32] Speaker 2: in a huge cemetery in Vietnam h There were graves everywhere,
[21:36] Speaker 2: big concrete graves. Right off a highway one h probably
[21:40] Speaker 2: seven miles south southwest of the City of Way. From
[21:45] Speaker 2: from war Camp Eagle was oh maybe seven miles out
[21:49] Speaker 2: the mountains started, and there was a rolling piedmont up
[21:53] Speaker 2: to the mountains. Right right along the base of the
[21:57] Speaker 2: mountains ran the Song Bow and the Perfume River, So
[22:01] Speaker 2: there was a major waterway that came from the ocean
[22:05] Speaker 2: into the City of Way and came to the mountains
[22:08] Speaker 2: and then ran south along the base of the mountains.
[22:12] Speaker 2: There were a couple of abandoned firebases right at the
[22:15] Speaker 2: near edge of those mountains. One of those was called
[22:18] Speaker 2: newi Key. There were still chopper paths up on top
[22:23] Speaker 2: and bunkers, and it was it was in what we
[22:28] Speaker 2: called the rocket belt. We used to catch a lot
[22:30] Speaker 2: of one twenty two millimeters rockets from back behind newi Ki.
[22:34] Speaker 2: Radar would pick them up as soon as they launched,
[22:37] Speaker 2: but the enemy kept launching them from that proximity. So
[22:41] Speaker 2: they were going to put our team out there on
[22:43] Speaker 2: top of the mountain and we were supposed to walk
[22:45] Speaker 2: off the backside and and hopefully be available in that
[22:49] Speaker 2: area when the rockets were launched. When we landed, actually
[22:55] Speaker 2: we didn't land. The helicopter came in on top of
[22:57] Speaker 2: newi Key, which was abandoned at the time, and for
[23:01] Speaker 2: some reason our team leader said, don't sit down on
[23:05] Speaker 2: the chopper pad, we'll jump off. Well, we jumped off
[23:09] Speaker 2: onto this PSP chopper pad, jumped off of that onto
[23:12] Speaker 2: the ground, and we looked underneath it. There was a
[23:15] Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty pounds bomb underneath the metal chopper pad.
[23:19] Speaker 2: If that chopper would have sat down, it would have
[23:21] Speaker 2: blown us all the hell. I don't know what told
[23:24] Speaker 2: him not to tell that pilot of the land there,
[23:27] Speaker 2: but he did. This was about ten o'clock in the morning,
[23:31] Speaker 2: and there was two fingers that came down off that mountaintop.
[23:37] Speaker 2: One ran down towards the river and the other one
[23:40] Speaker 2: ran down to the south. The other two sides were
[23:43] Speaker 2: very steep. We started down the onunder the river and
[23:48] Speaker 2: it was no vegetation. It had been cleared by the
[23:50] Speaker 2: engineers when they opened up that fire base, a lot
[23:53] Speaker 2: of big boulders. We got about halfway down that ridge
[23:56] Speaker 2: line and we started taking martyr fire and we could
[24:00] Speaker 2: hear the martyrs launching from farther down in the valley
[24:04] Speaker 2: and on the other side, so they were they were.
[24:07] Speaker 2: It was a very narrow ridge and the rams were
[24:10] Speaker 2: straddling itst they were hitting on both sides. It seems
[24:13] Speaker 2: like they couldn't put one on top. So we're sitting
[24:16] Speaker 2: there and raise Oshak, our team leader. He gets on
[24:20] Speaker 2: the radio, the artillery radio, and starts calling in artillery
[24:24] Speaker 2: on the border positions, and after about three adjustments, he
[24:28] Speaker 2: put it right on top of where those martyrs were launching.
[24:31] Speaker 2: I turned around and looked, and I saw four NVA
[24:35] Speaker 2: going up that other ridgelight, and it was also pretty open,
[24:39] Speaker 2: and they were trying to get to the top of
[24:41] Speaker 2: the firebaks. I hollered at Zojack and I said, we
[24:44] Speaker 2: got company and they're coming up the other ridge. He said,
[24:47] Speaker 2: take the rest of the team and get up. Get
[24:50] Speaker 2: it there ahead of them. So four of us took
[24:52] Speaker 2: off running and Zoejack and the radio operator Billy walk About.
[24:57] Speaker 2: They stayed there and kept calling in artillery in the
[25:00] Speaker 2: mortar positions. So we beat the enemy to the top
[25:03] Speaker 2: of the firebase and four of us scattered around it
[25:08] Speaker 2: because we didn't know where they were coming up from,
[25:10] Speaker 2: and so we split up and each one of us
[25:13] Speaker 2: took a different point around that fire base east west,
[25:16] Speaker 2: north and south. About fifteen minutes later, Zoejack and Billy
[25:20] Speaker 2: Walkerbot came back up to the top and we stayed
[25:24] Speaker 2: out there for two or three hours, and we were
[25:29] Speaker 2: the helicopters came in gunships. They started taking fifty one
[25:32] Speaker 2: caliber fire from a couple of different locations. We were
[25:37] Speaker 2: still on top of the mountain. They were they couldn't
[25:40] Speaker 2: get any slicks out to pull us off because they
[25:42] Speaker 2: were involved in another team being extracted so we were
[25:46] Speaker 2: kind of struck out there. At midday, I was sitting
[25:49] Speaker 2: there on the south side of that firebase, looking down
[25:53] Speaker 2: that ridge light where the enemy had come running up,
[25:56] Speaker 2: and all of a sudden we had an F four
[25:58] Speaker 2: fanom come in dropping bombs right across, coming in perpendicular
[26:04] Speaker 2: to that ridge line, dropping bombs right where the vegetation started.
[26:08] Speaker 2: After he made his first pass, I saw four NBA
[26:11] Speaker 2: soldiers break cover and run across the ridge life to
[26:15] Speaker 2: get to the other side of the ridge, and I
[26:17] Speaker 2: opened fire on them. They were probably seventy five yards
[26:20] Speaker 2: away from me, and I dropped two of them, and
[26:23] Speaker 2: I think I hit a third one because you look
[26:26] Speaker 2: like he fell when he got into the cover, and
[26:28] Speaker 2: I missed the fourth guy. I hollered to the rest
[26:31] Speaker 2: of the team. I hadn't I had movement out in
[26:33] Speaker 2: front of me, and uh we Zojaq called an artillery
[26:38] Speaker 2: on that ridge line. After that, the helicopters pulled out.
[26:44] Speaker 2: They came and got us, probably five thirty in the evening.
[26:48] Speaker 2: We flew back to Camp Eagle. We went through the
[26:50] Speaker 2: break debriefing, told him what we had, and Captain Ecklin
[26:54] Speaker 2: comes out. He said, I got some bad news for
[26:56] Speaker 2: you guys, he said, the vision called down. They want
[26:59] Speaker 2: you to go back in where the martyrs were. And
[27:04] Speaker 2: this was off the ridge line, and we had taken
[27:06] Speaker 2: Martyar Fire from down to the valley heavily jungle. So anyway,
[27:12] Speaker 2: one of the guys that was on the mission with us,
[27:14] Speaker 2: he got kind of baked a little. He got heat
[27:17] Speaker 2: stroke after laying on one of those flat rocks of
[27:19] Speaker 2: that afternoon on the firebase. So he was too sick
[27:23] Speaker 2: to go back out, so we had a guy volunteer
[27:25] Speaker 2: to take his place. It was probably eight thirty at night,
[27:30] Speaker 2: pitch dark. The two helicopters came and let's sat down
[27:33] Speaker 2: on our shopper pad. We loaded up. Nobody felt good
[27:36] Speaker 2: about this mission. They flew us back out. They keep
[27:40] Speaker 2: in mind we were only seven miles away from Camp Eagle,
[27:42] Speaker 2: and you could see our company area from the newi
[27:45] Speaker 2: Key Mountain. We flew out there and the helicopter came
[27:50] Speaker 2: in this valley, the same valley we had taken Martar
[27:53] Speaker 2: Fire from, and there was a huge boulder, probably the
[27:56] Speaker 2: size of a house, with a flat top on it,
[27:59] Speaker 2: and the helicopter came in and kicked his floodlin on
[28:02] Speaker 2: the spotlight on just as it got to the bottom
[28:05] Speaker 2: of the valley, and when he kicked it on, that
[28:07] Speaker 2: boulder was right there, so we all he hovered over
[28:10] Speaker 2: the top of the boulder and we all jumped out
[28:13] Speaker 2: on top of this boulder. There was probably another eight
[28:15] Speaker 2: to ten foot dropped to the ground. Well, we got
[28:18] Speaker 2: off the boulder. We set up security right around the
[28:21] Speaker 2: base of the boulder, and the helicopters departed for Camp Eagle.
[28:26] Speaker 2: It wasn't ten minutes after the helicopters were gone and
[28:29] Speaker 2: we heard bamboo sticks clicking on the opposite ridge line
[28:35] Speaker 2: over a distance of probably four hundred yards, probably six
[28:38] Speaker 2: sets of bamboo sticks, and they were clacking them together.
[28:43] Speaker 2: Tried to stay online. So we're sitting there and Zoshak
[28:48] Speaker 2: radio back to the company area and said, they know
[28:51] Speaker 2: we're here. He said, they're coming down the ridge forest now.
[28:56] Speaker 2: But five minutes later we heard a Chinese bugle blowing,
[29:01] Speaker 2: and then we started hearing whistles, police whistles, and they
[29:05] Speaker 2: were covered a pretty long distance. So we realized that
[29:10] Speaker 2: Zojack said, here's the story, guys. Here's the other thing.
[29:14] Speaker 2: The ridge line behind us, the one that we had
[29:17] Speaker 2: taken mortin fire on They also there's also sticks clacking
[29:20] Speaker 2: up on that ridge line to our backside. Zojack said,
[29:24] Speaker 2: the only chance we got. We set out three claymore
[29:27] Speaker 2: mines pointing up hill in the same general area. He said,
[29:31] Speaker 2: let them get on top of us. We'll blow these
[29:33] Speaker 2: claymares and then we bust through them and find our
[29:35] Speaker 2: way back up to top of NEWI Key and get extracted.
[29:39] Speaker 2: So that was our plan. Uh. We had radio back
[29:44] Speaker 2: and reported all this to the company area and uh
[29:48] Speaker 2: they said, we're gonna try to pull you out where
[29:50] Speaker 2: we put you in, and we're thinking, my god, it's
[29:53] Speaker 2: pitch black in here. They got goots coming down both
[29:56] Speaker 2: both ridge lines on us. Those helicopters will never survive
[29:59] Speaker 2: coming up fallet. What happened is Captain Meetcham, one of
[30:05] Speaker 2: our pilots, he comes out and he flies up the
[30:08] Speaker 2: valley probably one hundred and fifty feet off the ground
[30:11] Speaker 2: and starts taking a heavy fifty one caliber fire from
[30:14] Speaker 2: from two different locations to trace small arms tracers all
[30:18] Speaker 2: over the place. Well he was doing that. W. T.
[30:23] Speaker 2: Grant or other pilot. He comes up the floor of
[30:26] Speaker 2: the valley, probably fifty feet above the floor of the
[30:29] Speaker 2: valley below the ridge lines and it comes up and
[30:33] Speaker 2: with no lights on, and uh, we pulled a pin
[30:36] Speaker 2: gun flare, not out of pin gun flare, up pin
[30:41] Speaker 2: gun flare, and we shot it and stuck a strobe
[30:46] Speaker 2: light down on M seventy nine we had and let
[30:49] Speaker 2: he got it in on that signal and hovered over
[30:51] Speaker 2: the top of that rock that we went in on. Well,
[30:54] Speaker 2: we had a hell of a time getting back up
[30:56] Speaker 2: on top of that rock. I think only two guys
[30:58] Speaker 2: were able to do it, standing on the shoulders of
[31:01] Speaker 2: the other guys. Well, Grant kicked out a ladder and
[31:06] Speaker 2: the ladder was at the base of the rock, so
[31:08] Speaker 2: we had to climb that ladder to get into the helicopter.
[31:12] Speaker 2: And the two guys on the rock, one of them
[31:13] Speaker 2: was Jack, the team leader, and the other guy was me. Well,
[31:17] Speaker 2: I was the second the last guy up the ladder.
[31:20] Speaker 2: Zojak was the last one. And while I was climbing
[31:23] Speaker 2: up the ladder, Dave Beidrun stepped on my fingers when
[31:27] Speaker 2: he stepped back on the ladder and mashed the hell
[31:30] Speaker 2: out of my back. And I was still six runs
[31:32] Speaker 2: from the chopper and he mashed my fingers good. I
[31:37] Speaker 2: finally got into the chopper that one of the door
[31:39] Speaker 2: gunners got out and pulled me in. Zojaques de ringed
[31:42] Speaker 2: himself on the ladder and hollered for the door gunner
[31:45] Speaker 2: to get out of there. So he's riding the ladder
[31:48] Speaker 2: coming out at night, and I remember coming out of there,
[31:52] Speaker 2: the fifty one calibers picked up on us because we
[31:56] Speaker 2: had to climb to get out of there, and I
[31:58] Speaker 2: remember it looked like somebody was throwing lights through our helicopter.
[32:02] Speaker 2: I mean the rounds were coming all around us. Helicopter
[32:05] Speaker 2: never took a hit. Uh, there was two fifty one
[32:08] Speaker 2: calibers they pulled off a Captain Meachum short and fired
[32:12] Speaker 2: at our helicopter coming out of there, and we had
[32:14] Speaker 2: to make a U turn to fly back to Camp Eagle,
[32:17] Speaker 2: So it was a nobody got hit. Amazingly. Meachum's chopper
[32:23] Speaker 2: took two rounds. Grants didn't take any with all the
[32:26] Speaker 2: tracers coming out of there. You know, I don't go
[32:30] Speaker 2: to Fourth of July shows anymore because I've seen a veterin.
[32:35] Speaker 1: It's like like Star Wars right with it.
[32:38] Speaker 2: It was.
[32:38] Speaker 1: It was a bad.
[32:39] Speaker 2: Minute times ten. It was really something to see. We
[32:43] Speaker 2: we we figured there had to be one hundred weapons
[32:45] Speaker 2: fired to us coming out of there, and how we
[32:48] Speaker 2: got didn't get hit. I had no idea. That was
[32:52] Speaker 2: November third, that was a one day mission.
[32:54] Speaker 1: What was the feeling when one day? What was the
[32:57] Speaker 1: feeling when you guys get back to the FOB and
[32:59] Speaker 1: I mean that's a close all right?
[33:01] Speaker 2: Uh, I'll tell you I I probably had six close
[33:04] Speaker 2: calls in Vietnam where you just you know you're not
[33:07] Speaker 2: going to survive. Uh would you? Would you come to
[33:11] Speaker 2: that conclusion? The experience I had is a peace came
[33:14] Speaker 2: over me. You know, once you accepted I'm gonna die here.
[33:18] Speaker 2: You know, it's it's almost like, uh, you're not afraid anymore.
[33:24] Speaker 2: You know you've accepted the fact you're not going to survive.
[33:29] Speaker 2: I've had I've had my share of close calls of
[33:31] Speaker 2: my life. I told my wife, I just got out
[33:34] Speaker 2: of the hospital three years ago with a close call.
[33:36] Speaker 2: I said, I think I got too left left, I
[33:43] Speaker 2: wrote myself all four times.
[33:45] Speaker 1: And not yeah. And then you mentioned I think you
[33:49] Speaker 1: said maybe it was later on in November that you
[33:51] Speaker 1: went in with a heavy.
[33:52] Speaker 2: Number twentieth We went out on a heavy team. Uh
[33:57] Speaker 2: I was the assistant team leader on the second team,
[34:01] Speaker 2: the primary team. His assistant team leader was the overall
[34:05] Speaker 2: assistant team leader of the operation. We went out in
[34:09] Speaker 2: the Run Run Valley, which was a big valley that
[34:12] Speaker 2: back in the mountains that ran into the Ashall Valley,
[34:15] Speaker 2: and intelligence had reported that the second MVA regiment had
[34:22] Speaker 2: just come into that valley. The second was the regiment
[34:26] Speaker 2: that went into weigh And during ten to sixty eight.
[34:30] Speaker 2: They were very very professional, great fighters, bad reputation. The
[34:37] Speaker 2: reason we went out with a heavy team is this
[34:40] Speaker 2: regiment had a reputation for hunting down work teams. They
[34:44] Speaker 2: didn't like it, so we went in with a twelve
[34:47] Speaker 2: man team. It was a first light mission. We went
[34:52] Speaker 2: out and two helicopters and we came into a landing
[34:56] Speaker 2: zone that it was all elephant grats. The helicopters was
[35:01] Speaker 2: in a ravine on top of the right at the
[35:03] Speaker 2: base of the wooded ridge light. The first helicopter went in,
[35:08] Speaker 2: the guys got out in the skids and they jumped
[35:10] Speaker 2: in the elephant grass. The elephant grass was fifteen feet
[35:13] Speaker 2: high plus. It was a ravine and it was the
[35:17] Speaker 2: elephant grass was flat across the top, so we thought
[35:19] Speaker 2: it was a clear flattering area. The six guys went in.
[35:24] Speaker 2: None of them landed on their feet. I mean, they
[35:26] Speaker 2: all hit hard. We saw what happened, so when we
[35:30] Speaker 2: went in, we actually got out more hanging on the
[35:32] Speaker 2: skids with our hands and trying to drop, you know,
[35:35] Speaker 2: get another four or five feet before we hit the ground.
[35:41] Speaker 2: My team leader, Jack says he landed on a log,
[35:45] Speaker 2: a teak log laden that elephant grass broke both these ankles,
[35:48] Speaker 2: and he didn't know it at the time, but we
[35:50] Speaker 2: found out later they were broken. So all the twelve
[35:53] Speaker 2: of us were on the ground. Several of us were
[35:55] Speaker 2: pretty shaken up, me included. Jack couldn't hardly stand. We
[36:00] Speaker 2: got him up on his feet. We walked probably thirty
[36:05] Speaker 2: feet through that elephant grass into the edge of the woods.
[36:08] Speaker 2: And immediately into the edge of the woods was a
[36:10] Speaker 2: high speed trail six feet wide, I mean it was
[36:13] Speaker 2: big enough for carts. No vegetation on it, pure dirt,
[36:18] Speaker 2: and it ran along the base of the ridge. The
[36:21] Speaker 2: team leaders stopped the team there and he said lend her.
[36:25] Speaker 2: He said, you and Susan go to the right up
[36:28] Speaker 2: that trail and do a point recon and find a
[36:31] Speaker 2: place to set up an ambush, and he sent two
[36:33] Speaker 2: more guys to the left. Susan and I probably went
[36:38] Speaker 2: one hundred feet and the trail made a bind at
[36:41] Speaker 2: ninety degrees and went up the side of the ridge.
[36:44] Speaker 2: And it wasn't a very tall ridge, It was probably
[36:47] Speaker 2: maybe eighty feet high, and right at the bind was
[36:50] Speaker 2: a trail watcher's booker empty. We checked that out. It
[36:53] Speaker 2: was empty and it looked like it hadn't been used recently.
[36:58] Speaker 2: And it was probably sixty to seventy feet up that
[37:02] Speaker 2: trail to the top of the ridge, and it made
[37:04] Speaker 2: another bend to the right and went down the top
[37:06] Speaker 2: of the ridge. The trail then, so we started up
[37:09] Speaker 2: that after the trail watch bunker. We started up the
[37:12] Speaker 2: ridge line. We got about halfway to the top and
[37:15] Speaker 2: we heard a gun shot, single shot, about three hundred
[37:19] Speaker 2: meters away to the east, and Susan said, they know
[37:25] Speaker 2: we're here. I said, yeap. So we went back to
[37:28] Speaker 2: the team leader and they had heard the shot too,
[37:31] Speaker 2: and we told them, well, we found a trail watch
[37:33] Speaker 2: bunker and right at the top of the ridge or
[37:37] Speaker 2: that trail turns to the right again, there's a knob
[37:40] Speaker 2: right there on top that looks down that trail. I
[37:43] Speaker 2: said that would be a good spot for an ambush
[37:46] Speaker 2: or an observation post. So he called the other two
[37:49] Speaker 2: guys back in and we walked up the trail and
[37:53] Speaker 2: we got to that knob, and he said, this is
[37:55] Speaker 2: a good spot. So we all pulled up on top
[37:56] Speaker 2: of it. We sat up in a circle around that knob,
[38:00] Speaker 2: which was probably only fifty feet across, no bigger than that,
[38:05] Speaker 2: and it was probably three or four foot higher than
[38:07] Speaker 2: the trail itself. On the back side of it was
[38:11] Speaker 2: a bluff straight up and down, probably eighty ninety hundred
[38:17] Speaker 2: foot pretty steep, unclimbable. To the west was a saddle
[38:23] Speaker 2: that went up to a higher ridge on the other
[38:26] Speaker 2: side of the saddle, and the saddle was probably eighty
[38:29] Speaker 2: feet across. Below us was the lz we came in on,
[38:34] Speaker 2: and the trail at the edge of the woods, and
[38:36] Speaker 2: to our east was the trail where it came up
[38:39] Speaker 2: the ridge. So we're sitting right on top of this knob.
[38:43] Speaker 2: The trail dog legs around us. There's a bluff on
[38:46] Speaker 2: one side and a saddle on the other. We spent
[38:49] Speaker 2: the entire day there. This was probably ten o'clock in
[38:52] Speaker 2: the morning when we got up there. We spent the
[38:54] Speaker 2: entire day there. Nothing happened. That night there were about
[38:59] Speaker 2: four or five groups of NBA came down that trail
[39:01] Speaker 2: with landerns, no flashlights, just landers. They were looking for us.
[39:07] Speaker 2: We don't blow ambushes at night, you know, unless you
[39:10] Speaker 2: knew what you were ambushing, you didn't do that at night.
[39:12] Speaker 2: So we let him go by and we reported it
[39:16] Speaker 2: with silent combo with clicks on the radio. And the
[39:21] Speaker 2: next morning sires the guy who broke his ankles, his
[39:26] Speaker 2: feet were so swollen he couldn't get his boots on.
[39:29] Speaker 2: So we decided that we would take him back to
[39:31] Speaker 2: the LZ, which was only one hundred and fifty feet
[39:33] Speaker 2: from us, and extract him menavac him out. So Riley
[39:38] Speaker 2: Cox guy we called Dozer and Frank Susan helped him
[39:43] Speaker 2: down to the LZ. Helicopter came and dropped the jungle
[39:46] Speaker 2: penetrator and hoisted him out. The two guys came back
[39:50] Speaker 2: up to the perimeter and we heard two shots far
[39:53] Speaker 2: same area. We heard that one shot far, so we
[39:56] Speaker 2: figured that they thought we all left It wasn't too
[40:00] Speaker 2: long after that, maybe eight thirty in the morning, a
[40:04] Speaker 2: single NVA came down the trail whistling, making all kinds
[40:09] Speaker 2: of noise, and behind him was about ten more about
[40:13] Speaker 2: fifty feet behind him. Well, we didn't we didn't try
[40:15] Speaker 2: to snatch the one guy. We didn't kill him. And
[40:18] Speaker 2: then the others came by. He was baked and they
[40:22] Speaker 2: didn't come back. They went on down the trail, never
[40:24] Speaker 2: came back. So we're sitting there about I think it
[40:26] Speaker 2: was eleven o'clock in the morning, and the team leader said,
[40:33] Speaker 2: I heard him whisper. We got company and we could
[40:37] Speaker 2: hear people talking. And my Claymore was the first one
[40:42] Speaker 2: in this ambush. And I'm laying back on my back
[40:45] Speaker 2: on the side of this knob and I could see
[40:48] Speaker 2: from here on up anybody walking down the trail. I
[40:52] Speaker 2: looked over and there were nine NBA At the time,
[40:56] Speaker 2: I thought they were orphans because they were wearing green
[40:59] Speaker 2: jungle fatigues booty caps. One of them had a tiger
[41:01] Speaker 2: fatigue booty cap on and they were talking, making noisee
[41:05] Speaker 2: they came walking down the trail and I'm laying there
[41:08] Speaker 2: thinking this is an Arvin unit South Vieta. The me,
[41:11] Speaker 2: what are they doing? An rao. Well, about that time
[41:15] Speaker 2: the team that have snapped his fingers, which was the
[41:17] Speaker 2: sign to blow the ambush. I blew my claymore and
[41:21] Speaker 2: the other five clayboards went off simultaneously. We had six
[41:23] Speaker 2: claymore ambushed. The final claymore fared down the trail. Well,
[41:28] Speaker 2: there were nine of them, excuse me, ten of them,
[41:31] Speaker 2: and we killed nine of the ten in the ambush.
[41:34] Speaker 2: The point man had gotten out of the kill zone
[41:38] Speaker 2: and he had an AK forty seven slung over his arm,
[41:41] Speaker 2: and I had my car fifteen in my right hand,
[41:45] Speaker 2: clacker on the clay board on my left. When I
[41:48] Speaker 2: blew the claymar I saw him through a gap in
[41:51] Speaker 2: the trees, running down the trail, and I had one
[41:54] Speaker 2: hand and shot at him and shot over the top
[41:56] Speaker 2: of him. Frank Susan jumped to his feet and Frank
[42:00] Speaker 2: opened up on him. I saw the guys. He had
[42:02] Speaker 2: a towel at his neck. It flew off, so I thought,
[42:05] Speaker 2: I think Frank Frank hit the guy, and the guy
[42:08] Speaker 2: was running downhill with the towards where that trail watcher
[42:12] Speaker 2: bunker was and he'd throw off the side of the
[42:15] Speaker 2: trail on the left, it disappeared well. We all ran,
[42:18] Speaker 2: four of us ran out to check the bodies. Four
[42:21] Speaker 2: of them were nurses, NBA nurses. I immediately I felt
[42:27] Speaker 2: like shit because Mike claymourd killed two of them. The
[42:32] Speaker 2: rest were guys. One of them had a forty five
[42:36] Speaker 2: automatic in a holster and he had a map pouch
[42:39] Speaker 2: over his shoulder. We found out later he was the
[42:42] Speaker 2: EXO of the second NBA regiment. Wow, we took the
[42:48] Speaker 2: map case, stripped all the bodies. What made me feel better.
[42:52] Speaker 2: All four of the nurses had forty five caliber automatics
[42:55] Speaker 2: nineteen eleven in their rucksacks, so we had five pistols case.
[43:00] Speaker 2: We recovered two of the guys were not armed, and
[43:03] Speaker 2: the point man who was armed got away. We pulled
[43:08] Speaker 2: back up on top of the knob and the team
[43:11] Speaker 2: leader calls in a report, tell them what we got,
[43:15] Speaker 2: and we're sitting there. And normally when you blow an ambush,
[43:19] Speaker 2: you get the hell out of dodge, you don't stay there. Well,
[43:23] Speaker 2: he decided to stay there. He called for a reaction
[43:26] Speaker 2: force or an extraction, and he was pretty proud of
[43:30] Speaker 2: himself having killed nine out of ten NBA, including a major,
[43:34] Speaker 2: and we sat there for fifteen twenty minutes and they
[43:37] Speaker 2: finally called us back, says, we can't get you extracted.
[43:40] Speaker 2: All of our helicopters have been taken for the battalion
[43:43] Speaker 2: sized combat assault, so we have no aircraft available. It
[43:49] Speaker 2: was probably going on noon when this happened. That's not true.
[43:56] Speaker 2: We blew the ambush at nine. It was probably closer
[43:58] Speaker 2: to eleven with this happen. So we're sitting there and
[44:02] Speaker 2: he said, we can't get a reaction for us to
[44:04] Speaker 2: you because the helicompanies. We have no helicompanies. Then we
[44:07] Speaker 2: had a platoon from the second of the seventeenth cab
[44:10] Speaker 2: who was our reaction for us, already reaction for us.
[44:13] Speaker 2: They were tied up. They couldn't get out to us.
[44:16] Speaker 2: So anyway, the assistant team leader of the team, of
[44:19] Speaker 2: the team leader that was in charge of the whole team,
[44:22] Speaker 2: we saw him walk over to the team leader and whispered,
[44:24] Speaker 2: he's their and the two of them got that argument.
[44:27] Speaker 2: I mean, the teamaner kept shaking his head and we're
[44:31] Speaker 2: sitting there. He went back to his position and uh,
[44:35] Speaker 2: Frank Susan or Frank Susan and I, who were the
[44:39] Speaker 2: ranking people on the other team. We went up to
[44:42] Speaker 2: him and said, man, we got to get the hell
[44:43] Speaker 2: out of here. I said, you know, there's a base
[44:46] Speaker 2: camp three hundred meters away from us, and we just
[44:49] Speaker 2: killed nine people. They're going to be coming for us.
[44:52] Speaker 2: He said, we're staying here till they get a reaction
[44:54] Speaker 2: for us. Then the team leader said this so anyway, Yes,
[45:00] Speaker 2: it was one o'clock in the afternoon, and he tells
[45:03] Speaker 2: his assistant team leader. He said, Captain Ecklin's out looking
[45:08] Speaker 2: for us, trying to locate us. Go down in the
[45:10] Speaker 2: saddle where the trees open up and flash him when
[45:13] Speaker 2: he comes over the top with a signal mirror. Jim
[45:17] Speaker 2: Venable was the ATL. He went down and he's down
[45:20] Speaker 2: there flashing his helicopter and we hear it. AK forty
[45:23] Speaker 2: seven opened up and he goes down. He was hitting
[45:27] Speaker 2: the neck in the arm, broke his arm and one
[45:30] Speaker 2: to the upper arm. Frank Suza and Riley Cox ran
[45:38] Speaker 2: down and grabbed him and drugg him back up into
[45:39] Speaker 2: the perimeter. And right after they got him to the perimeter,
[45:42] Speaker 2: we about fifteen NBA come charging up the hill from
[45:46] Speaker 2: where we had come in the original LZ online, and
[45:51] Speaker 2: we opened up on him, drove him back, killed a
[45:54] Speaker 2: couple of them. They were probably fifty sixty more yards away,
[46:00] Speaker 2: not quite a little closer than that. And for the
[46:03] Speaker 2: next two hours they kept doing this. They hit five
[46:06] Speaker 2: kid fifteen guys at a time from different spots they'd
[46:09] Speaker 2: come across the saddle. Never did try to rush us
[46:12] Speaker 2: a large bunch, but we could tell from the gunfire
[46:15] Speaker 2: there was quite a few NBA around us at the time,
[46:18] Speaker 2: and we were adjusting artillery as close as we had
[46:22] Speaker 2: artillery busting about fifty sixty feet away from us, walking
[46:27] Speaker 2: it into us. Oh shit, And I remember thinking, boy
[46:31] Speaker 2: that we're going to push them right into us. They're
[46:32] Speaker 2: gonna try to get close to us. But they didn't.
[46:35] Speaker 2: There weren't enough cover for him. I guess after the
[46:38] Speaker 2: artillery we had gun ships. Finally got four gun ships
[46:41] Speaker 2: out to us, and we went through a total of
[46:44] Speaker 2: eight cobras in the next two hours. They were firing
[46:48] Speaker 2: rockets and hovering over the top of us, doing pedal
[46:51] Speaker 2: turns and firing rockets down all around us on the
[46:53] Speaker 2: ridge line. We had I think we burned up two
[46:57] Speaker 2: sets a f force from the nan came in and
[46:59] Speaker 2: fire board for us. And while this was going on,
[47:05] Speaker 2: that bluff behind us, some NVA somehow another climbed up
[47:10] Speaker 2: that bluff and set up a forty pounds shy coom
[47:12] Speaker 2: right along the edge of it. There was a lot
[47:14] Speaker 2: of brush right there, but it was steep. On the
[47:17] Speaker 2: other side, we had one guy back to the pulling security,
[47:20] Speaker 2: leaning against this big tree. His name was Mike, right
[47:23] Speaker 2: from Kansas City, Missouri, and I'm sure he was watching
[47:26] Speaker 2: what was going on across the perimeter from him because
[47:30] Speaker 2: we didn't expect anything to happen along got steep side.
[47:33] Speaker 2: That's where Mike was right there. About two o'clock, three
[47:38] Speaker 2: o'clock in the afternoon, the team leader said, everybody pulled
[47:41] Speaker 2: back to the top. He said, I'm going to bring
[47:44] Speaker 2: the artillery in closely. And at the time we had
[47:47] Speaker 2: a cobra sit right over the top of us doing
[47:50] Speaker 2: pedal turns and fire rockets all around us down the
[47:52] Speaker 2: ridge line. I remember I turned around and looked and
[47:57] Speaker 2: several of the guys had gotten up into a crouch
[48:00] Speaker 2: and we're pulling their rucksacks with him heading back to
[48:02] Speaker 2: the top of the note. We had been spread out
[48:05] Speaker 2: down along round it. I started shinnying backwards. My rucksack
[48:11] Speaker 2: was in front of me, and I was pulling it
[48:12] Speaker 2: with me because I shinnied backwards, and all of a sudden,
[48:15] Speaker 2: everything blew up. I mean, I remember turning my head
[48:18] Speaker 2: and seeing this ball of black smoke roll over the
[48:21] Speaker 2: top of this dirt, and I couln't see anything else.
[48:25] Speaker 2: Everything finally started settling down and turned around and nobody
[48:28] Speaker 2: was up. Everybody was down, And I remember thinking at
[48:32] Speaker 2: the time, I'm the only one left. And we had
[48:36] Speaker 2: a pact in the LRPS that we wouldn't let anybody
[48:38] Speaker 2: be taken alive, and I was going to shoot anybody
[48:43] Speaker 2: that was still alive, and it killed myself. I'd made
[48:45] Speaker 2: up my mind to do that. And all of a sudden,
[48:48] Speaker 2: Riley Cox across the perimeter from me. He sat up,
[48:52] Speaker 2: a big guy, and when he sat up, he's intestines
[48:55] Speaker 2: fell out, and his lap and this part of his
[48:58] Speaker 2: arm was broken right and hanging down like an elbow.
[49:02] Speaker 2: Right here. Riley had a shotgun. He was armed with
[49:06] Speaker 2: a shotgun on top of it, and uh. He was
[49:09] Speaker 2: on the other side of Frank Susan around the perimeter
[49:13] Speaker 2: from me and Kerry Clifton, my best friend, who had
[49:16] Speaker 2: volunteered traded with another guy to go out on this
[49:19] Speaker 2: patrol because he wanted to be on the team with me, Carrie.
[49:24] Speaker 2: He pushed himself up off the ground and his throat
[49:26] Speaker 2: was ripped out, and when he looked up, blood just
[49:29] Speaker 2: spewed out of his throat, right in front of me
[49:32] Speaker 2: and Billy walk about. I heard him behind me said,
[49:37] Speaker 2: were you hit? Are you hit? He was behind me
[49:39] Speaker 2: and he'd been hit through both hands. When I realized
[49:47] Speaker 2: there were other guys still alive, took me a couple
[49:51] Speaker 2: of minutes to get myself back together again because I
[49:53] Speaker 2: had made up my mind. I don't remember thinking I
[49:55] Speaker 2: was just going I was going to shoot the moon,
[49:58] Speaker 2: and I saw Riley Cox over there. He took the
[50:01] Speaker 2: towel off his neck. He pushed his guts back in
[50:03] Speaker 2: his stomach and stuck that towel in there to hold
[50:06] Speaker 2: his guts in. And he pulled the bandage out of
[50:09] Speaker 2: his rucksack and tidy his arm back like this and
[50:15] Speaker 2: starts pumping that shotgun one handed and fighting with that shotgun.
[50:18] Speaker 2: If he could pump. The enemy didn't come for a
[50:23] Speaker 2: while when they did, they weren't attacking. They were trying
[50:28] Speaker 2: to walk up to see what had happened. And Riley
[50:30] Speaker 2: starts duking out with that twelve games, pumping it with
[50:33] Speaker 2: one hand, shooting the left handed, and he had he
[50:36] Speaker 2: had forty rounds with him. I think he already fired
[50:38] Speaker 2: about ten with that shot gun. Run out of ammo.
[50:42] Speaker 2: He got uh uh, Mike Riif's caught Car fifteen and
[50:47] Speaker 2: started firing at Car fifth about don't you know how
[50:51] Speaker 2: this guy off how he functioned? Uh? The radio operator,
[50:56] Speaker 2: the team leader, was hitting above his ear with a
[50:58] Speaker 2: piece of shrap and blew out of the off of his head,
[51:00] Speaker 2: but he was still alive. And Terry Clifton was dead
[51:05] Speaker 2: by then. Mike Rife, the guy that was sitting by
[51:09] Speaker 2: the bluff, he got hit with a claymore. He wasn't
[51:14] Speaker 2: ten feet from it when he grabbed his arm to
[51:17] Speaker 2: pull him away from the tree. He was pinned at
[51:18] Speaker 2: this tree. His arm came out of his sleep and
[51:21] Speaker 2: severed his arm and his shoulder. He was killed instantly.
[51:26] Speaker 2: I crawled over to the to the radio operator and
[51:31] Speaker 2: he had a chunk of meat as big as my
[51:33] Speaker 2: fist taken out of his right above his knee, and
[51:37] Speaker 2: he was on the radio reporting what had happened. After
[51:40] Speaker 2: he got hit, and he went in the shock, but
[51:43] Speaker 2: you can see him go to the shock. I took
[51:46] Speaker 2: the radio away from him and I got on the
[51:48] Speaker 2: radio and I'm in the clear. I didn't use any code.
[51:52] Speaker 2: I told him we're hit. Everybody's down. I said, you
[51:56] Speaker 2: better get somebody out here, quicker, don't bother with it.
[52:01] Speaker 2: Billy walk About was the only guy that could walk.
[52:05] Speaker 2: He got up on his feet and he was both
[52:07] Speaker 2: these hands were hit pretty bad. They sent him Meta
[52:11] Speaker 2: back out and it came in well before the Metavak
[52:15] Speaker 2: got there. I went over to Frank Seusan. I crawled
[52:18] Speaker 2: over to Frank Seusan and Billy came over. And Frank
[52:21] Speaker 2: had a little hole right dead in the center of
[52:22] Speaker 2: his chest, and I thought, well, he'd been shot. And uh.
[52:28] Speaker 2: I remember grabbing a plastic off a battery and putting
[52:31] Speaker 2: it over the hole and treated as a sucking chest
[52:34] Speaker 2: one and there was no suction. We rolled him over
[52:38] Speaker 2: onto a poncho lighter and he had a hole in
[52:40] Speaker 2: his back about that big a round and I could
[52:43] Speaker 2: see inside he's right along and it was shredding. The
[52:46] Speaker 2: ribs were broken, so whatever hit he just tore out
[52:50] Speaker 2: him from his whole shoulder blade. There it was gone.
[52:54] Speaker 2: We rolled him back over on a on a on
[52:56] Speaker 2: a Vietnamese North Vietnamese Pancho lighter. We had plastic. One
[53:01] Speaker 2: of the guys had it, and we wrapped that around
[53:04] Speaker 2: him and still tried to treat it as a sucking
[53:06] Speaker 2: chest one but we never did get suctioned on it,
[53:09] Speaker 2: and he was unconscious. We got a meta back in
[53:15] Speaker 2: and we decided to get Susa out first because he
[53:17] Speaker 2: was We thought he was hurt the worst. We drug
[53:20] Speaker 2: him over. They dropped the jungle penetrator and we strapped
[53:23] Speaker 2: him to it. They hoisted him out, and the guns,
[53:25] Speaker 2: the helicopters taking gun fire from surrounding Eric constantly, and
[53:31] Speaker 2: they came back in again, started taking more fire, and
[53:35] Speaker 2: the dust off started drifting, and it was drifting down
[53:39] Speaker 2: towards that saddle well. Billy walk About ran down there
[53:43] Speaker 2: and grabbed the penetrator with his arms and ran back
[53:46] Speaker 2: up to the top of the hill, dragging that penetrator
[53:48] Speaker 2: with him, and we got Contreres out that way. He
[53:51] Speaker 2: did that another time the week before we got another
[53:54] Speaker 2: wounded man out. He ran down the hill towards the
[53:59] Speaker 2: enemy no weapon, grabbed that penetrator and ran back up
[54:01] Speaker 2: the hill with So we got three of the wounded
[54:04] Speaker 2: out and I told Riley Cox, I said, you're going
[54:08] Speaker 2: out next, Riley, he said, no, I'm not. He said,
[54:11] Speaker 2: I'm staying here. And at the time he was on
[54:15] Speaker 2: the car fifteen. Anyway, it's probably close to five o'clock
[54:20] Speaker 2: at the evening, and two pilots had been listening to
[54:24] Speaker 2: this on the radio. They broke farmation, flew back to
[54:30] Speaker 2: the company area and radioed ahead, have a reaction for us.
[54:34] Speaker 2: Waiting on the chopper pad. We're gonna pick him up
[54:37] Speaker 2: and take him out to rescue these guys. Well, when
[54:39] Speaker 2: they got to the company, everybody in the rear in
[54:42] Speaker 2: our company was down on the chopper pad waiting to board.
[54:45] Speaker 2: Twenty three guys got on two choppers, thirteen on one
[54:48] Speaker 2: kill on the other way overloaded. Yeah, hwies were made
[54:53] Speaker 2: for six or seven guys plus the crew. Tony Cicero
[54:59] Speaker 2: was going home the next day, you know. He turned
[55:01] Speaker 2: on all of his gear and he's weapon and was
[55:04] Speaker 2: down on the chopper pad playing tag football when the
[55:07] Speaker 2: word came in Tony went up to supply and grabbed
[55:10] Speaker 2: a car fifteen from the armory and the student at
[55:14] Speaker 2: M sixteen and a bandolier of AMMO. And he was
[55:17] Speaker 2: in shore shoes and uh and sharks and no shirt on.
[55:21] Speaker 2: And as he got on the chopper like that, he
[55:24] Speaker 2: gets after the When they got out to us, he
[55:26] Speaker 2: found out that that bandelier of AMMO was boxed MAMO.
[55:29] Speaker 2: It wasn't a magazine. They flew out. They had a
[55:35] Speaker 2: hell of a time getting off the chopper pad because
[55:37] Speaker 2: they were overloaded. One of the guys had his arm
[55:39] Speaker 2: in a cast and Bill Meacham, the pilot terere and said, son,
[55:43] Speaker 2: get off of the helicopter. And the guy struck a
[55:45] Speaker 2: rifle in the back of his helmet and said just
[55:47] Speaker 2: take off, sir. So he comes out with his arm
[55:50] Speaker 2: in a cast. They flew those guys out to the
[55:53] Speaker 2: same LZ we went and on, which was now no cover.
[55:57] Speaker 2: The air strikes and everything had blasted all them elephant
[56:01] Speaker 2: grass away where we had to jump fifteen feet above
[56:05] Speaker 2: the ground. They landed to let these guys out, and
[56:08] Speaker 2: all twenty three. As soon as they got on the ground,
[56:10] Speaker 2: the pilot told them the direction they needed to run
[56:13] Speaker 2: because they could see us up on top of the
[56:15] Speaker 2: hill coming in. And they headed up the hill up
[56:19] Speaker 2: on top where we were. Billy walk About was behind
[56:24] Speaker 2: me and I heard him hollering, womps up here. I
[56:29] Speaker 2: turned to him and I said, shut the hell up,
[56:31] Speaker 2: you go tell him where we are the enemy. All
[56:34] Speaker 2: of a sudden I realized they know where we are.
[56:39] Speaker 2: It went along. Clint goose Miller come running up the
[56:42] Speaker 2: trail over the dead bodies with an M sixty and
[56:45] Speaker 2: sat up looking down that ridge light on the top
[56:48] Speaker 2: of the knob, and then the rest of the guys
[56:50] Speaker 2: poured in. They immediately started getting the wounded guys, taking
[56:55] Speaker 2: care of to get him out. They they got, They
[57:00] Speaker 2: got Billy walk About and I went out together on
[57:03] Speaker 2: a jungle penetrator, and they finally got Roley Cox to
[57:06] Speaker 2: go as the last man. He was the last wounded
[57:08] Speaker 2: man out. They had to force him to go out.
[57:12] Speaker 2: It was dark by then. The twenty three man reaction
[57:15] Speaker 2: for us had to go back down to the LZ
[57:18] Speaker 2: in the dark. By the time they got to us,
[57:23] Speaker 2: the first calf had come in. Thirty five of them
[57:25] Speaker 2: wouldn't get off the landing zone, not the first calf
[57:28] Speaker 2: second of the seventeenth cap. They wouldn't get off the
[57:30] Speaker 2: landing zone. They stayed down there, and when the helicopters
[57:35] Speaker 2: came in to extract everybody, they pulled them out first.
[57:38] Speaker 2: Then our twenty three guys went down there. They had
[57:40] Speaker 2: no lights, no anything. They had to use zippo lighters
[57:44] Speaker 2: to mark the landing zone for the helicopters. Eleven of
[57:48] Speaker 2: the twenty three guys were wounded, none of them bad,
[57:51] Speaker 2: thank god. But they got those guys out. I think
[57:54] Speaker 2: it was nine thirty at night they got them out.
[57:58] Speaker 2: That made me a an advocate of the Brotherhood. I mean,
[58:03] Speaker 2: I still love those guys for what they did that day.
[58:07] Speaker 2: My fiance had sent me a Saint Christopher medal. I
[58:10] Speaker 2: remember holding it in my hand out there, realizing that
[58:13] Speaker 2: the NBA were going to get this metal when they
[58:15] Speaker 2: find my body and I broke myself off. I'm not
[58:18] Speaker 2: coming back from this one. So I probably had three
[58:23] Speaker 2: or four more herryins after that. As a ranger. He
[58:27] Speaker 2: sent me to the hospital triased me. Besides the shrapnel
[58:32] Speaker 2: in the back of my leg and my calf, sometime
[58:35] Speaker 2: during the battle, i'd been shot in the left leg too,
[58:38] Speaker 2: but they think it was a ricochet. It was only
[58:41] Speaker 2: you could almost see the head of the bullet. They
[58:43] Speaker 2: pulled it out with tweezers. So all my wounds were
[58:47] Speaker 2: leg wounds, which I had tribute to the fact that
[58:49] Speaker 2: I was shinny and backwards up that hill when this
[58:52] Speaker 2: thing went off, and all it was on top of
[58:54] Speaker 2: the hill was my legs. I spent a month in
[58:58] Speaker 2: the hospital at Cameron Bay, almost got killed in the
[59:03] Speaker 2: Korean riot. Korean at the hospital I was in, South
[59:07] Speaker 2: Koreans had about there were as many South Koreas the
[59:10] Speaker 2: Cameron bands that were Americans. They were there for rheumatism.
[59:15] Speaker 2: They couldn't handle the weather, so they were used to
[59:18] Speaker 2: cold weathers. Hot weather made the cost of rheumatism, so
[59:21] Speaker 2: none of them were wounded. They were just there, you know,
[59:24] Speaker 2: recovered in the heat down there. Then they were going
[59:26] Speaker 2: back up to their unit. Well, there was a riot
[59:30] Speaker 2: during the USO show and I was unconscious and uh
[59:34] Speaker 2: Koreans then over a can of beer. There's like two
[59:38] Speaker 2: hundred Koreans and two hundred Americans, and the Koreans thought
[59:41] Speaker 2: they were all black belts and they're going to take
[59:44] Speaker 2: the spear from this American. So they grabbed a six
[59:47] Speaker 2: pack of beer from this guy, and the guy jumped
[59:49] Speaker 2: up and overtook it back. Well, the Koreans didn't care
[59:53] Speaker 2: for that. Yeah, they got up, was ready doing this stuff,
[59:56] Speaker 2: ready to kill some Americans. And one of their uncos
[1:00:01] Speaker 2: came down and told them all to go back to
[1:00:03] Speaker 2: their Cutny area. So they're all back at the Cutny
[1:00:06] Speaker 2: area and uh, well, let me tell you what caused
[1:00:10] Speaker 2: the riot. They were hollering back and forth. Uh, nobody
[1:00:15] Speaker 2: was going across the aisle between the two groups, and
[1:00:17] Speaker 2: all of a sudden, from the back of the Americans,
[1:00:19] Speaker 2: loaded beer can comes flying over and hits this Korean
[1:00:22] Speaker 2: between the eye and doctor Prompsey. Well that really pissed
[1:00:26] Speaker 2: them off. I'll tell you they were ready to kill
[1:00:29] Speaker 2: after that. Anyway, they sent them back to their Cutany area.
[1:00:32] Speaker 2: And about fifteen minutes later, we were watching this Filipino
[1:00:36] Speaker 2: USO show. They were one of these Filipino girls was
[1:00:40] Speaker 2: playing Jello Submarine and we heard this roar in the background.
[1:00:46] Speaker 2: There come all these Koreans back and they got shovels
[1:00:48] Speaker 2: and picks and baseball bats. Well, there was a bunch
[1:00:52] Speaker 2: of us in the front two rows on crutches, and
[1:00:55] Speaker 2: we all thought, well, they're not going to bother us.
[1:00:57] Speaker 2: All the Americans jump up and take off running. All
[1:01:01] Speaker 2: though was it could the Koreans come waiting in and
[1:01:03] Speaker 2: start beating the hell out of everybody with tools and stuff.
[1:01:07] Speaker 2: I crawled up on the stage, pushed by a Korean
[1:01:11] Speaker 2: officer to Korean senior n CEO, and I crawled behind
[1:01:14] Speaker 2: the drums on the stage, and I'm loughly of thinking, well,
[1:01:18] Speaker 2: they were going to hit me. And I saw him
[1:01:21] Speaker 2: take a crush away from my guy out in the
[1:01:22] Speaker 2: audience and start beating him with his own crutch, So
[1:01:25] Speaker 2: I was glad I was behind the drums. Anyway. A
[1:01:30] Speaker 2: few minutes later, five six M piece come running up
[1:01:34] Speaker 2: with the lieutenant, and the lieutenant's blowing a whistle and
[1:01:37] Speaker 2: come running up the aisle and he's hollered at these Koreans,
[1:01:40] Speaker 2: and he's got a couple of Korean officers with him,
[1:01:43] Speaker 2: and the Korean buries the pick axe and he's turning.
[1:01:46] Speaker 1: Holy shit offt him.
[1:01:49] Speaker 2: I'm thinking, my god, they sent me here to recover.
[1:01:54] Speaker 2: The next day, I talked to the colonel in charge
[1:01:56] Speaker 2: of the hospital. I said, I want to go back
[1:01:58] Speaker 2: to my company. And he's said, well, he said, you
[1:02:01] Speaker 2: did another two weeks here. I said, put me out
[1:02:03] Speaker 2: a profile and send me back to my company. I
[1:02:05] Speaker 2: want to spend Christmas up there, not here. So anyway,
[1:02:08] Speaker 2: he gave me a pass and I flew back up
[1:02:10] Speaker 2: to fou Bay. I was on a profile for two
[1:02:14] Speaker 2: more weeks and he ended up flying belly man on
[1:02:16] Speaker 2: a on a distraction insertion helicopter for a month until
[1:02:21] Speaker 2: my wounds healed.
[1:02:22] Speaker 1: And so, Gary, I'm trying to recall from reading your
[1:02:25] Speaker 1: book many years ago now that that explosive, that forty
[1:02:28] Speaker 1: or fifty pound explosive that went off, I think that's
[1:02:30] Speaker 1: maybe like what my generation would have called an improvised
[1:02:33] Speaker 1: explosive device, if I recalled, was made out of the
[1:02:36] Speaker 1: bottom of the thirty three gallum bear and it was
[1:02:40] Speaker 1: it was there. There were like nuts and bolts in
[1:02:42] Speaker 1: it that they pulled that aside of the guys.
[1:02:44] Speaker 2: Anything any kind of metal. It was non directional, had
[1:02:47] Speaker 2: plastic Explosi four behind it, and it just pushed it out,
[1:02:51] Speaker 2: not in the fan, and you didn't know where it
[1:02:53] Speaker 2: was going to go.
[1:02:53] Speaker 1: And so, and if I recall correctly from our interview
[1:02:57] Speaker 1: with Larry Chambers. This is you came back to the
[1:02:59] Speaker 1: un and find Larry. There is a new guy, right, No, Larry.
[1:03:03] Speaker 2: Larry actually came to the company in late August of
[1:03:08] Speaker 2: sixty eight. Okay, there he was out. He was out
[1:03:11] Speaker 2: with another twelve man team when we got here.
[1:03:13] Speaker 1: Because I remember, there's something in my mind. I remember,
[1:03:16] Speaker 1: like you you had come back after being wounded. You
[1:03:19] Speaker 1: came back to the unit, and he was there as
[1:03:21] Speaker 1: like a more junior word.
[1:03:24] Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you what you're confused with. When I
[1:03:27] Speaker 2: got back to the company, i'd been there six months.
[1:03:30] Speaker 2: All the guys that came over with division, who were
[1:03:33] Speaker 2: the old guys when I got there. They came over
[1:03:36] Speaker 2: in November of sixty seven, Well they were all they
[1:03:39] Speaker 2: were all de roasted while I was in the hospital.
[1:03:42] Speaker 1: I got you.
[1:03:42] Speaker 2: Well, I came back to the company. You know, Ken
[1:03:45] Speaker 2: Miller was the first guy I ran into. It was
[1:03:47] Speaker 2: like I went to a new unit. I didn't recognize anybody.
[1:03:50] Speaker 1: Okay, a lot of new guys. If you need to
[1:03:53] Speaker 1: do this, let's read.
[1:03:54] Speaker 4: Yeah, we just we want to Uh Hey, when you
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[1:05:13] Speaker 1: And while we're here, I want to give a quick
[1:05:15] Speaker 1: shout out. This is not a sponsor of the show
[1:05:17] Speaker 1: or anything. They're friends of the show. That I just
[1:05:19] Speaker 1: want to talk about real quick is Badger six. The
[1:05:23] Speaker 1: We've had guys involved in this charity on the show before,
[1:05:26] Speaker 1: Toby Harden, Justin Sapp really want to what the Manager
[1:05:32] Speaker 1: six is. It's a charity specifically to bring back the
[1:05:36] Speaker 1: Afghans who worked with the CIA and Special Forces in
[1:05:39] Speaker 1: the opening days of the Afghanistan War. And these guys
[1:05:43] Speaker 1: are now working to help their former friends and allies
[1:05:45] Speaker 1: immigrate to the United States. And so they're holding a
[1:05:48] Speaker 1: charity event. It's going to be on September eighth at
[1:05:51] Speaker 1: the Pauling Mountain Country Clubs. I think there's going to
[1:05:55] Speaker 1: be some shooting clays and then they're going to have
[1:05:58] Speaker 1: a lunch and there'll be a talk. You're going to
[1:06:01] Speaker 1: get to meet some of the original folks who invaded Afghanistan,
[1:06:05] Speaker 1: David Tyson, Justin sat Mark Nutch, Bob Pennington. Another former
[1:06:09] Speaker 1: guest on the show, Alan Mack, who is a one
[1:06:11] Speaker 1: sixtieth helicopter pilot. All those guys are going to be there.
[1:06:14] Speaker 1: So I really hope you guys will you know, consider
[1:06:17] Speaker 1: going to this event supporting this charity. You find out
[1:06:20] Speaker 1: more about them at Badger six dot org. So again,
[1:06:23] Speaker 1: that's uh, that's gonna be September eighth, So Gary. So
[1:06:30] Speaker 1: then you, uh, you come back to your unit after
[1:06:33] Speaker 1: this very interesting stay, your uh your recovery at the hospital. Uh.
[1:06:40] Speaker 1: So you you said that when you got back to
[1:06:41] Speaker 1: the unit, it was sort of like a different cast
[1:06:43] Speaker 1: of characters almost.
[1:06:45] Speaker 2: I had gone from being a middle guy to being
[1:06:48] Speaker 2: one of the old guys. I was an E five
[1:06:53] Speaker 2: at the time and two thirds of the company a
[1:06:55] Speaker 2: d roast while I was in the hospital, so there
[1:06:58] Speaker 2: wasn't a lot of experience hands on deck. When I
[1:07:01] Speaker 2: got back to the unit.
[1:07:04] Speaker 1: What was that like? Were you? Were you now more
[1:07:06] Speaker 1: of like a mentor and a trainer for some of
[1:07:08] Speaker 1: the younger guys.
[1:07:09] Speaker 2: I was there mark to be a team leader. Matter
[1:07:12] Speaker 2: of fact, I had a Ricondo school date for November
[1:07:16] Speaker 2: twenty eighth, and when I got hit, I was in
[1:07:20] Speaker 2: the hospital. My Ricondo D day came up, and in
[1:07:23] Speaker 2: the lorps. When you graduate from Ricondo School. You've got
[1:07:26] Speaker 2: to have six months left in country or you or
[1:07:29] Speaker 2: you don't get to go. Well, when I got back
[1:07:32] Speaker 2: to the company, I only had five months left in country,
[1:07:34] Speaker 2: so I didn't get to go to mcne Ricondo School.
[1:07:38] Speaker 2: I got a team, probably more because there wasn't enough
[1:07:41] Speaker 2: qualified people in the company in late March of sixty nine,
[1:07:47] Speaker 2: like they gave me my own team. I was fairly
[1:07:50] Speaker 2: good at reading maps, as good as anybody else in
[1:07:53] Speaker 2: the company. I could look at a contour map, picture
[1:07:56] Speaker 2: what that looked like out in the jungle, and not
[1:07:59] Speaker 2: look at that map again.
[1:08:00] Speaker 1: The mission wow.
[1:08:01] Speaker 2: And I probably because of my scout training, they gave
[1:08:08] Speaker 2: me a team in March. I think I led five patrols.
[1:08:12] Speaker 2: My last mission was the mission Chambers. While I told
[1:08:16] Speaker 2: you about the one we got hit my lightning on
[1:08:19] Speaker 2: I was supposed to be the team leader. We actually
[1:08:21] Speaker 2: had four guys on that team that had been team leaders,
[1:08:25] Speaker 2: and there was a shaken bag East six came into
[1:08:28] Speaker 2: the company who was taking over my team, so I
[1:08:31] Speaker 2: actually went out as his atl to break him in.
[1:08:37] Speaker 2: That was April twenty third, That mission was, and that
[1:08:40] Speaker 2: was I still had six weeks left in country. When
[1:08:43] Speaker 2: I got out of the hospital on that one, and
[1:08:46] Speaker 2: I tell you I was, I was done. I wouldn't.
[1:08:49] Speaker 2: I wouldn't have gone out on another patrol after that.
[1:08:52] Speaker 2: I wasn't going to take an R and R because
[1:08:54] Speaker 2: I didn't want to spend the money. I was getting
[1:08:56] Speaker 2: married two weeks after I got home, so I didn't
[1:08:58] Speaker 2: want to dip into my savings. And when I got
[1:09:02] Speaker 2: out of the hospital, I took my R and R
[1:09:04] Speaker 2: and I was a wall two days kidding. I made
[1:09:08] Speaker 2: sure I didn't have thirty days left when I got
[1:09:10] Speaker 2: back to the cotany I was, I was, I don't
[1:09:14] Speaker 2: say it was afraid. I was finished getting married six
[1:09:18] Speaker 2: you know, four weeks or six weeks after that. I
[1:09:21] Speaker 2: kept thinking, this is a bad time to get killed.
[1:09:24] Speaker 2: And uh, I didn't want to do that tour, so
[1:09:26] Speaker 2: I just able to go out again.
[1:09:29] Speaker 1: Yeah, after that operation where the team got struck by lightning.
[1:09:33] Speaker 1: I mean I can imagine that that shook everybody up.
[1:09:35] Speaker 1: Ken was out there on that one, too, wasn't he No,
[1:09:38] Speaker 1: kN wasn't. Oh, he wasn't. Okay, Unfortunately, kid was in
[1:09:41] Speaker 1: the other platoon, gotcha.
[1:09:43] Speaker 2: I never got to go out with We were good friends,
[1:09:45] Speaker 2: I never got to go out with.
[1:09:46] Speaker 1: Gotcha, So before leaving Vietnam, any other like significant ones
[1:09:53] Speaker 1: that patrols that you'd like to highlight before moving on.
[1:09:56] Speaker 2: Yeah, I was on a I was on control uh
[1:10:01] Speaker 2: with with Ron mother Rucker. Uh A matter of fact,
[1:10:05] Speaker 2: I was a team there on that patrol. There was
[1:10:07] Speaker 2: a Cobra helicopter had gone down south of Fu Bai,
[1:10:11] Speaker 2: been shot down in the mountains and uh a loach
[1:10:15] Speaker 2: went out looking for it and it didn't come back either.
[1:10:18] Speaker 2: So there's two helicopters missing down by fire based tomahawk. Uh.
[1:10:23] Speaker 2: It's a pretty tall jungle steep mountains and it was
[1:10:28] Speaker 2: in a fog on top of it. So they we
[1:10:30] Speaker 2: got a call at the company and we had two
[1:10:33] Speaker 2: teams on standdown. The rest of them are out in
[1:10:35] Speaker 2: the field, and one of them was my team, and
[1:10:37] Speaker 2: I was sharp two guys on the team and uh
[1:10:41] Speaker 2: see the CEO came in and said, uh, Sergeant Lender,
[1:10:44] Speaker 2: he said, grab two guys and you're gonna go out
[1:10:47] Speaker 2: on a search and air rescue mission. And he said, uh,
[1:10:51] Speaker 2: sergeant Families, the team is gonna go out too. He said,
[1:10:53] Speaker 2: you're gonna have to repel. Then so he said rig
[1:10:55] Speaker 2: for repel, so we did. We packed our rucksacks. Uh,
[1:11:01] Speaker 2: excuse me, we didn't pack a One guy had a
[1:11:03] Speaker 2: rucksack with a radio. We didn't. He said, don't take
[1:11:05] Speaker 2: your rucks actually be out before dark. So we grabbed
[1:11:09] Speaker 2: our web gear. No maps of the area, nothing, one
[1:11:12] Speaker 2: canteen of water apiece, no meals. We go out. They
[1:11:16] Speaker 2: fly us out at the sunny weather to fire based
[1:11:19] Speaker 2: Tomahawk and we land on fire based Tomahawk and General
[1:11:23] Speaker 2: Melvin Seiss comes out and his helicopter lands on the
[1:11:27] Speaker 2: firebase and gives both teams a pep talk and tells us,
[1:11:32] Speaker 2: uh uh, there's two helicopters down out there. We got
[1:11:36] Speaker 2: a captain and a warrant officer and one of them
[1:11:39] Speaker 2: in cobra, and the loach went out looking for him
[1:11:41] Speaker 2: with a lieutenant colonel, a major and a warrant officer
[1:11:43] Speaker 2: at it and they haven't come back. We think we
[1:11:47] Speaker 2: know where they are. We're going to put you guys
[1:11:48] Speaker 2: in on top of them to if they're willing, to
[1:11:51] Speaker 2: get them out if they're dead, to recover the bodies
[1:11:53] Speaker 2: and get them out. So anyway, off in the distance
[1:11:56] Speaker 2: you could see the fog. Arby's Tomewauk was still in
[1:12:01] Speaker 2: the sun. It was a mountain overlooking Highway one out
[1:12:04] Speaker 2: by the coast, and it wasn't in the fog at all.
[1:12:07] Speaker 2: So we got on our helicopters and we fly out
[1:12:09] Speaker 2: and we fly into the fog, and I remember thinking
[1:12:12] Speaker 2: at the time looking down and seeing the tree tops
[1:12:15] Speaker 2: that looked like broccoli sticking up out of mashed potatoes.
[1:12:18] Speaker 2: That's what it looked like. The chopper pilots, who were
[1:12:23] Speaker 2: not our chopper pilots either, they flew into this fog
[1:12:26] Speaker 2: and they finally Fadleis team went in first and repelled in.
[1:12:33] Speaker 2: We had no idea how tall the trees were. All
[1:12:35] Speaker 2: we could see with the tops of them, so we
[1:12:36] Speaker 2: didn't know if we had enough rope to hit the
[1:12:38] Speaker 2: ground on. I couldn't see the ground at all. They
[1:12:42] Speaker 2: bring my team in behind fatleies to a different area.
[1:12:46] Speaker 2: We were three hundred yards apart, and I was the
[1:12:49] Speaker 2: first one out of the helicopter and my car fifteen
[1:12:52] Speaker 2: was slung over my back and I repelled out of
[1:12:55] Speaker 2: the helicopter. You know, I did a fast repel. I
[1:12:58] Speaker 2: landed in the middle of a high speed trail. I
[1:13:00] Speaker 2: turned around. There's a freshly poured concrete bunker behind me,
[1:13:03] Speaker 2: no no camouflage on it. Well, you know, my butthole
[1:13:09] Speaker 2: had squeezed shut. I was a soprano from that end.
[1:13:14] Speaker 2: My radio operator comes down behind me on the same
[1:13:16] Speaker 2: rope and gets tangled about fifteen feet above the ground
[1:13:20] Speaker 2: with his handset cord and he's stuck on the rope.
[1:13:25] Speaker 2: I'm trying to wave the door, got her to bring
[1:13:27] Speaker 2: the helicopter down a lower and he finally comes down
[1:13:30] Speaker 2: low and if I can reach above him and cut
[1:13:31] Speaker 2: the rope, and he fell about five six feet and
[1:13:35] Speaker 2: hit the ground. And the next guy down ran out
[1:13:38] Speaker 2: of rope and fell about ten feet down. And then
[1:13:42] Speaker 2: the other three guys came down the other rope on
[1:13:44] Speaker 2: the other side. So we're all standing there and I'm
[1:13:46] Speaker 2: pointing out this concrete bunker and we get off the
[1:13:50] Speaker 2: side of the trail and we set up. And they
[1:13:52] Speaker 2: were supposed to put us in the same place fatily
[1:13:54] Speaker 2: S team one day. Well there's no family team there
[1:13:57] Speaker 2: and we're going through the helicopter. Tried to relay to
[1:14:01] Speaker 2: family's ten because we couldn't pick him up on the radio.
[1:14:04] Speaker 2: Then we came to the determination. They put us into
[1:14:06] Speaker 2: different spots. So anyway, Family decides to fire his weapon
[1:14:13] Speaker 2: and he fires one shot, and I could tell he
[1:14:15] Speaker 2: was a long way from us, even with the muffle
[1:14:17] Speaker 2: from the fog, and you know I did. I had
[1:14:21] Speaker 2: to answer it. I fired back twice, real fast, two
[1:14:24] Speaker 2: quick shots. So I told the pilot to tell him
[1:14:29] Speaker 2: to come to me. So Family comes to me. It
[1:14:32] Speaker 2: took him a good forty five minutes to get to
[1:14:35] Speaker 2: my location. And it's like five thirty in the evening.
[1:14:39] Speaker 2: So we get online, twelve of us. We sweep up
[1:14:42] Speaker 2: the ridge line and about six thirty we stumble into
[1:14:46] Speaker 2: the cobra and had gone down through the trees, and
[1:14:48] Speaker 2: the tailboom had broken off, and the cockpit was opened,
[1:14:53] Speaker 2: and there was a boot and a helmet laying next
[1:14:55] Speaker 2: to the helicopter. No no pilot, no gunner. And it's almost
[1:15:00] Speaker 2: dark by then, And we swept around that helicopter two
[1:15:03] Speaker 2: or three times online trying to find those guys. Couldn't
[1:15:06] Speaker 2: find them. And we moved about two hundred yards straight
[1:15:10] Speaker 2: across the ridge and out up higher, not down lower.
[1:15:12] Speaker 2: Then we found an area where there was a depression
[1:15:15] Speaker 2: and four big teak trees, one on each corner with
[1:15:18] Speaker 2: a depression in the middle, and we just just got
[1:15:22] Speaker 2: big enough for twelve months. So we got in this
[1:15:24] Speaker 2: and it offered a little bit of protection in case
[1:15:26] Speaker 2: we got hit during the night. And we knew there
[1:15:29] Speaker 2: were goops in the area because the cobra had been
[1:15:31] Speaker 2: shot down and there were bullet holes in it. And
[1:15:34] Speaker 2: that bunker, you know, I didn't have that. That wasn't
[1:15:36] Speaker 2: a mushroom. Somebody did that. We're laying there at night,
[1:15:41] Speaker 2: and uh family who he was any sixth he decided
[1:15:46] Speaker 2: we're gonna have one guy on at a time. Security.
[1:15:49] Speaker 2: I always posted two guys if we were an enemy
[1:15:51] Speaker 2: territory and we knew they were around anyway, family posted
[1:15:55] Speaker 2: one guy for forty five minutes at a time. Well,
[1:16:00] Speaker 2: I had the one thirty time, the one thirty forty
[1:16:03] Speaker 2: five minutes, and I woke the guy next to me.
[1:16:06] Speaker 2: It was a new Guy's name was Gellette, and he
[1:16:09] Speaker 2: was a radio operator. He had he had my team's radio.
[1:16:13] Speaker 2: He was laying next to me, and I reached over
[1:16:14] Speaker 2: and shook him away, and I laid back and went
[1:16:17] Speaker 2: to sleep. But uh, I think it was ten minutes
[1:16:22] Speaker 2: to two something woke me up, and I was laying
[1:16:26] Speaker 2: on my back and I looked at the right and
[1:16:28] Speaker 2: I remember it looked like a shadow disappeared off this
[1:16:31] Speaker 2: way across the perimeter, and I look over at Gillette
[1:16:35] Speaker 2: and Jelette laying there was a sixteen across his chest
[1:16:38] Speaker 2: shaking like this, and I reached over and I whispered
[1:16:42] Speaker 2: his ear and I said, what's the matter? He said,
[1:16:45] Speaker 2: two NBA came into a perimeter and we're looking down
[1:16:49] Speaker 2: at the guys and they just left. And I said,
[1:16:53] Speaker 2: why didn't you shoot him? And he said, there's a
[1:16:55] Speaker 2: sampling next to me. I couldn't bring my weapon around,
[1:16:59] Speaker 2: so he had to set and watched this go on. Well,
[1:17:02] Speaker 2: I woke up everybody and for the rest of the
[1:17:04] Speaker 2: night we all stayed awake. The next morning we went
[1:17:11] Speaker 2: out and started sweeping again, and we got a radio
[1:17:15] Speaker 2: message from the rere that said there was a line company,
[1:17:18] Speaker 2: Charlie Company, first of the three twenty seven, was coming
[1:17:21] Speaker 2: out to link up with us. They were walking in
[1:17:24] Speaker 2: so there was a ridge line above us, and we
[1:17:26] Speaker 2: didn't notice at the time, but that ridge line had
[1:17:29] Speaker 2: been covered several times by US troops. There was a
[1:17:32] Speaker 2: big trail going at the top of it, and it
[1:17:34] Speaker 2: was pretty wide open on top. Well, we heard these
[1:17:37] Speaker 2: guys coming and we couldn't get couldn't get them on
[1:17:40] Speaker 2: our radio yet, but they were above us, probably one
[1:17:43] Speaker 2: hundred and fifty yards up the hillside, and we could
[1:17:45] Speaker 2: hear them talking. And all of a sudden then AK
[1:17:48] Speaker 2: forty seven opened up and we heard them. We heard
[1:17:51] Speaker 2: those guys fire. They fired a couple of rounds. They
[1:17:53] Speaker 2: were hollering, and we didn't know what was going on.
[1:17:57] Speaker 2: They finally got to us on our radio and said
[1:18:00] Speaker 2: oil watcher just shot our four man lead element across
[1:18:03] Speaker 2: the legs. His trail watcher was in a bunker up
[1:18:07] Speaker 2: on top, and he let those four point element guys
[1:18:10] Speaker 2: getting across from me and opened up shot every one
[1:18:12] Speaker 2: of them in the legs. So we're sitting there in
[1:18:16] Speaker 2: this depression twelve twelve of us, and we hear the
[1:18:19] Speaker 2: bush breaking coming down this ridgeline right at us, I
[1:18:24] Speaker 2: mean dead at us. So well, we got one clayboard
[1:18:27] Speaker 2: pointed up hill as all one. We got out and
[1:18:30] Speaker 2: all of a sudden, this NBA breaks through the cover
[1:18:33] Speaker 2: right in front of us. He's not fifteen feet away.
[1:18:36] Speaker 2: He had his sandals in this hand with with his
[1:18:38] Speaker 2: AK forty seven, and he was running with this like this.
[1:18:43] Speaker 2: When he saw us, he lowered that AK forty seven
[1:18:46] Speaker 2: and emptied that magazine right over the top of Well.
[1:18:50] Speaker 2: I was sitting back against that tree with my car fifteen,
[1:18:54] Speaker 2: and before I could shoot him, he fell behind a
[1:18:57] Speaker 2: big log that was uphill front us, and it wasn't
[1:19:01] Speaker 2: eight feet from us. Well, A couple of us jumped
[1:19:05] Speaker 2: up and did this and shot behind that log. I
[1:19:07] Speaker 2: don't think we hit him, and Dave Bedrin pulled the
[1:19:10] Speaker 2: frag out and dropped it over the top of the
[1:19:11] Speaker 2: log that killed him. Tore up. He's AK forty seven too,
[1:19:16] Speaker 2: So of all the places for this guy to run,
[1:19:18] Speaker 2: he runs dead into us one hundred and fifty yards
[1:19:21] Speaker 2: down that hill. We called the line dogs. He said,
[1:19:24] Speaker 2: we we got your assassin. He said, he run dead end.
[1:19:27] Speaker 2: We told him what happened. So we went up linked
[1:19:30] Speaker 2: up with these guys. This was the second day of
[1:19:32] Speaker 2: a one day mission. We spent the next seven days
[1:19:36] Speaker 2: on the ground. Yeah out there no food. The only
[1:19:40] Speaker 2: food we got well, we could move from the line doggies,
[1:19:43] Speaker 2: which wasn't much. We had plenty of water because it
[1:19:47] Speaker 2: was raining almost all the time while we were out there.
[1:19:50] Speaker 2: They put in another team because another loach had come
[1:19:54] Speaker 2: in and located that other helicopter, and it was three
[1:19:57] Speaker 2: miles up the valley from where we were. It was
[1:19:59] Speaker 2: nowhere near that cobra we found. So that was Rucker
[1:20:04] Speaker 2: and Sis on that team. Those guys were pelled in
[1:20:08] Speaker 2: and the three pilots were all burned to death, and
[1:20:12] Speaker 2: they landed on top of them, went right through their bodies.
[1:20:16] Speaker 2: They were fried. They pulled the bodies out and body
[1:20:20] Speaker 2: bags pieces of them and hoisted them out and they
[1:20:23] Speaker 2: then they told him that you couldn't get them out.
[1:20:25] Speaker 2: They had to walk down and link up with us
[1:20:27] Speaker 2: three miles away. So they came down the stream that
[1:20:31] Speaker 2: was down at the base of the ridge. We went
[1:20:33] Speaker 2: in on. Well, we went down to the stream of
[1:20:36] Speaker 2: the twelve of us and thirteen of the line doggies
[1:20:40] Speaker 2: reconn element were with us. So there was twelve of
[1:20:43] Speaker 2: us and thirteen of them. Because with that many enemy
[1:20:46] Speaker 2: in the area, they didn't want twelve guys trying to
[1:20:48] Speaker 2: link up with these six. So we got down to
[1:20:51] Speaker 2: the bottom of the hill that night and we're going
[1:20:54] Speaker 2: up that creek at night following this creek up and
[1:20:57] Speaker 2: we found a little knoll next to the creek, and
[1:21:00] Speaker 2: we got on top of the knoll and laid there sleeping,
[1:21:03] Speaker 2: all twenty five of us. And that night, I don't
[1:21:07] Speaker 2: know how many times we heard a tree crash. I
[1:21:09] Speaker 2: don't know if it's from the rain or what, but
[1:21:13] Speaker 2: or here's something waiting in the stream. And we came
[1:21:17] Speaker 2: to the conclusion later that the NBA knew we were
[1:21:19] Speaker 2: in there. If they had enough stuff in there, they
[1:21:21] Speaker 2: didn't want us to find it, so they followed us
[1:21:24] Speaker 2: but didn't break contact with us. We also figured they
[1:21:27] Speaker 2: probably had those pilots. So we ended up linking up
[1:21:31] Speaker 2: with the other team the third day and turned around
[1:21:35] Speaker 2: and come back down the stream. And this was it
[1:21:39] Speaker 2: wasn't the thurday. It was the seventh day of the mission.
[1:21:41] Speaker 2: The last day. We spent four days up on the
[1:21:43] Speaker 2: ridge line with that line company. We get down, we're
[1:21:47] Speaker 2: coming down the stream and they told us we're gonna
[1:21:49] Speaker 2: have to walk out. They can't helicopter the infantry company
[1:21:53] Speaker 2: up on top of the ridge. The rest of them
[1:21:54] Speaker 2: they were going to do another sweep and they were
[1:21:56] Speaker 2: coming out. They were gonna walk out too, so we
[1:21:59] Speaker 2: get down to just about where we're down below that
[1:22:01] Speaker 2: Infantre company. They're five hundred meters up on this hill
[1:22:04] Speaker 2: and they tell us that the fog is lifted, they're
[1:22:08] Speaker 2: gonna get helicopters don to pull us out. So we're
[1:22:11] Speaker 2: down there. We find a big spot next to the
[1:22:14] Speaker 2: stream with a lot of dead trees and stuff in
[1:22:16] Speaker 2: it that had been defoiliated, and we took our claymares
[1:22:20] Speaker 2: that the Line company guys had and we were knocking
[1:22:22] Speaker 2: down the big trees with a backglass from the claymares
[1:22:25] Speaker 2: and clear in this area so a chopper could get in. Well,
[1:22:29] Speaker 2: we got it big enough for one chopper, and that's
[1:22:31] Speaker 2: really the line dog. He's got out first. And there
[1:22:34] Speaker 2: was eighteen of us still on the ground and these
[1:22:36] Speaker 2: choppers were coming in. One chopper would leave, fly down
[1:22:39] Speaker 2: the valley. Ten minutes later another one would come in.
[1:22:43] Speaker 2: So I was on the second last chopper going out
[1:22:46] Speaker 2: and we had just got off the ground and I
[1:22:48] Speaker 2: heard the door gunner on my chopper hollered Grook's on
[1:22:51] Speaker 2: the LZ. Well, what had happened is the last chopper
[1:22:55] Speaker 2: landed to pick up Rucker and Sars's team and Rutger
[1:22:59] Speaker 2: had just gotten on the helicopter and turned around, and
[1:23:02] Speaker 2: an NBA stood up out of the grass about fifteen
[1:23:05] Speaker 2: feet behind John Sars looking at him like this didn't
[1:23:08] Speaker 2: have didn't have a weapon of just looking at him.
[1:23:10] Speaker 2: But Rucker killed him, and Sars turned around shot another one.
[1:23:14] Speaker 2: So they had followed us to the LC, but weren't
[1:23:17] Speaker 2: messing with us till those guys got out. Okay, it
[1:23:20] Speaker 2: didn't take any fire. The Line Company did that final
[1:23:23] Speaker 2: sweep and found the pilot to the cobra. He had
[1:23:26] Speaker 2: been hiding the whole time. Wow, this Gurner had broken
[1:23:29] Speaker 2: his ankle on the on the crash.
[1:23:31] Speaker 1: That's why he took his boot off.
[1:23:33] Speaker 2: He got him out of the chopper, took his boot off,
[1:23:36] Speaker 2: carried the guy a little ways, and they got separated
[1:23:39] Speaker 2: during the night because the NBA were looking for him
[1:23:41] Speaker 2: same night. Those two found us that same night. They
[1:23:44] Speaker 2: that's when they found those pilots, or were looking for
[1:23:46] Speaker 2: the pilots. So we spent seven days down there with
[1:23:50] Speaker 2: no maps, no poncho liners, colder than the hell out
[1:23:53] Speaker 2: there in that fog. And that was the most miserable
[1:23:56] Speaker 2: time I had in Vietnam.
[1:23:58] Speaker 1: I mean it's yeah, it's incredible.
[1:24:01] Speaker 2: I'm not going to selling books out of this.
[1:24:02] Speaker 1: You realized, well once he once you start yeah, once
[1:24:05] Speaker 1: you start talking about a down helicopter and your your
[1:24:09] Speaker 1: boss is telling you it's a one day mission. We
[1:24:11] Speaker 1: all know from army experience it's not gonna be a
[1:24:14] Speaker 1: one day mission.
[1:24:15] Speaker 6: They didn't tell us about the fog, and we have
[1:24:18] Speaker 6: time back in your Rooks son, Gary, can you for
[1:24:22] Speaker 6: people who might not be familiar with it, can you
[1:24:25] Speaker 6: tell us somebody of the difference between like the M
[1:24:26] Speaker 6: sixteen the car fifteen, which one you preferred, and and
[1:24:31] Speaker 6: you know how about happened?
[1:24:33] Speaker 2: I carried to them sixteen for I guess five months.
[1:24:39] Speaker 2: They could till early November of sixty eight. That's what
[1:24:43] Speaker 2: I got it. You couldn't get a car fifteen unless
[1:24:45] Speaker 2: somebody went home that had one, which we traded SF
[1:24:48] Speaker 2: guys for the car fifteens, and the ones they gave
[1:24:51] Speaker 2: us we had the boarding shot out of them, so
[1:24:53] Speaker 2: I mean they were like a musket. They weren't very
[1:24:56] Speaker 2: accurate past fifty fifty meters, no bluing on them. So
[1:25:02] Speaker 2: you can imagine what you know if guys are oh yeah,
[1:25:05] Speaker 2: we all do no, so, I mean they were pretty
[1:25:09] Speaker 2: well shot up. We had a couple of Swedish caves
[1:25:12] Speaker 2: in the company. I think we had four shot guns.
[1:25:15] Speaker 2: We had a couple of I think we had two
[1:25:19] Speaker 2: grease guns, and it was up to you what you
[1:25:21] Speaker 2: wanted to take, as long as you get your hands
[1:25:23] Speaker 2: on it. There was a couple of missions. I carried
[1:25:25] Speaker 2: a Swedish cave walking point because the Swedish case had
[1:25:28] Speaker 2: silence was on it. They weren't much for range and
[1:25:32] Speaker 2: we couldn't get enough magazines. I think there was only
[1:25:35] Speaker 2: four magazines per weapon, so you were limited on how
[1:25:38] Speaker 2: much AMMO you could carry with a Swedish k Usually
[1:25:41] Speaker 2: if a guy took a Swedish ca out with him,
[1:25:43] Speaker 2: he carried a car fifteen to two. Same problem we
[1:25:47] Speaker 2: have with the grease guns. I think there was only
[1:25:49] Speaker 2: three magazines for each grease gun. I don't think I
[1:25:53] Speaker 2: ever carried a grease gun. I don't remember doing it.
[1:25:55] Speaker 2: I did carry a forty five pistol with me A
[1:25:58] Speaker 2: few times. I used to carry I was known to
[1:26:04] Speaker 2: carry eighteen hundred rounds ammal. I mean I humped some
[1:26:08] Speaker 2: ammal and I used to carry eight to twelve frags too.
[1:26:13] Speaker 2: My first team sergeant told me said, it's better to
[1:26:16] Speaker 2: needing to have nothing to have it, or to have
[1:26:19] Speaker 2: it to need nothing to needing to have not. And
[1:26:21] Speaker 2: I took that as a gospel. Even when I go
[1:26:23] Speaker 2: deer hunting, I'll take fifty rounds with me. I'm pretty
[1:26:28] Speaker 2: good shot, but I you can't shoot fifty deer. But
[1:26:30] Speaker 2: I hate to be called with no am.
[1:26:33] Speaker 3: Was was the Swedish K seven six two or a
[1:26:35] Speaker 3: five five six?
[1:26:36] Speaker 2: It was a it was a It wasn't a five
[1:26:41] Speaker 2: five six.
[1:26:41] Speaker 1: It was a forty nine five. I'm trying to remember myself.
[1:26:47] Speaker 2: Yeah it was. We had we had two stems guns
[1:26:51] Speaker 2: and guns to look up Swedish K.
[1:26:52] Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna pull it up right now.
[1:26:56] Speaker 2: All I remember is it was we only had four
[1:26:58] Speaker 2: magazines for each weapon.
[1:27:00] Speaker 1: I'm embarrassing myself. Yeah it's a forty five. Oh no,
[1:27:03] Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm no. Uh, it's an M forty five
[1:27:07] Speaker 1: Swedish K. But it's nine by nineteen milimeters. You were
[1:27:10] Speaker 1: you were right, you were right. It's not nine mil
[1:27:13] Speaker 1: and that.
[1:27:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, that was the other problem we had. It was
[1:27:14] Speaker 2: hard to getting nine mili ama over there too.
[1:27:16] Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, did forty five AMMA on and.
[1:27:20] Speaker 2: Five point five six was easy to get. Even akmo
[1:27:24] Speaker 2: was easy to get. And we had a few guys
[1:27:26] Speaker 2: that carried aks. John Looney, who looked like an NBA,
[1:27:31] Speaker 2: would offer where black pajamas on patrol of walk Point
[1:27:34] Speaker 2: because he looked like one. He would carry an AK
[1:27:37] Speaker 2: forty seven. I didn't like him because you couldn't tell
[1:27:40] Speaker 2: who was fired and who when they When one of
[1:27:42] Speaker 2: our guys was using.
[1:27:44] Speaker 1: So Gary talked to us about coming home from Vietnam.
[1:27:47] Speaker 1: I mean, you had quite an eventful tour coming back.
[1:27:50] Speaker 1: Two weeks later you're getting married. Yeah, what was it
[1:27:54] Speaker 1: like coming back from from from Nam and getting discharged
[1:27:57] Speaker 1: from the army and coming back to civilian life.
[1:28:00] Speaker 2: When I when I et or d roast, I had
[1:28:04] Speaker 2: a you know, I told you I got shot in
[1:28:05] Speaker 2: the leg November twentieth. They when they packed that wound,
[1:28:12] Speaker 2: they removed the packing too fast and formed an absence.
[1:28:16] Speaker 2: And when I got back from R and R in
[1:28:18] Speaker 2: May of sixty nine, my left leg, my thigh swelled
[1:28:23] Speaker 2: up a big red spot on the side of my
[1:28:25] Speaker 2: leg that stuck out about two inches well. When I
[1:28:28] Speaker 2: was clearing noum clearing records. That thing was so painful.
[1:28:33] Speaker 2: When I got down to Binwath Clear, Vietnam, I went
[1:28:37] Speaker 2: to a hospital there at night to see the emergency room,
[1:28:42] Speaker 2: and a medi came and said, Jesus Christ. He said,
[1:28:44] Speaker 2: you can't go home like that. And he said, I
[1:28:47] Speaker 2: got to lance that. When he lanced it, a plug
[1:28:50] Speaker 2: shot out of my leg. Oh man, about the size
[1:28:53] Speaker 2: of my finger. It was hard. Pluss looked like ivory
[1:28:56] Speaker 2: that hit the ceiling and fell down on the corning
[1:28:58] Speaker 2: of the shit And he said, man, that thing's under pressure.
[1:29:01] Speaker 2: He said, you can't go home like that. I said, man,
[1:29:04] Speaker 2: I'm getting married in two weeks. I said, I gotta
[1:29:07] Speaker 2: go home. I talked him into wrapping it, and he said,
[1:29:11] Speaker 2: as soon as you get back to the state, you
[1:29:12] Speaker 2: go see a doctor. He said, you got a bad infection.
[1:29:15] Speaker 2: I got to They flew us to Japan and then
[1:29:19] Speaker 2: flew me to Fort Dix, New Jersey. Of all places,
[1:29:22] Speaker 2: I flew all the way across Canada, and my next
[1:29:24] Speaker 2: next duty station was at Fort Bragg, North Carolina with
[1:29:28] Speaker 2: the eighty Second, But I was on a permanent profile.
[1:29:30] Speaker 2: I couldn't jump anymore, and I thought, why the hell
[1:29:33] Speaker 2: they sending me to an airborne You know I'm on
[1:29:34] Speaker 2: lage now. When I got to Fort Dix, I went
[1:29:40] Speaker 2: to get travel pay to buy ticket to go home.
[1:29:43] Speaker 2: The ticket was thirty six bucks, a lot of money nowadays,
[1:29:46] Speaker 2: but thirty six bucks back then to fly to Saint
[1:29:48] Speaker 2: Louis from Philadelphia. I Uh, they wouldn't give me travel
[1:29:53] Speaker 2: pay because my next duty station at Fort Bragg was
[1:29:57] Speaker 2: only two hundred and fifty less than two undred and
[1:29:58] Speaker 2: fifty miles from Fort Dicks. And they won't give you
[1:30:01] Speaker 2: a travel pature you get to your next duty station
[1:30:03] Speaker 2: unless it's over two hndred and fifty miles. So here
[1:30:06] Speaker 2: I am with nine dollars on me in Four Dicks.
[1:30:09] Speaker 2: And I went to the Red Cross and told them
[1:30:12] Speaker 2: my story, and they said, well, not much we can
[1:30:14] Speaker 2: do about it. So I had to call home and
[1:30:16] Speaker 2: have my dad water the money to Western Union in Philadelphia,
[1:30:24] Speaker 2: take my nine bucks and pay for a cab to
[1:30:26] Speaker 2: go down and get the water, and go back to
[1:30:30] Speaker 2: walk back to the Four Dicks to buy an airline
[1:30:34] Speaker 2: ticket to come home. So I was in the States
[1:30:37] Speaker 2: two days before I got the leave to come home. Wow,
[1:30:40] Speaker 2: two days in my lead, So had I had to
[1:30:43] Speaker 2: call my fiance and tell her what happened, and I
[1:30:46] Speaker 2: had the feel that she didn't believe me. But we're
[1:30:49] Speaker 2: still married. So I flew home, and for some reason,
[1:30:56] Speaker 2: I thought it was cool to be the last guy
[1:30:57] Speaker 2: off the plane. And I could see him all out
[1:31:00] Speaker 2: there at the airport standing waiting for me. So I
[1:31:02] Speaker 2: wented till everybody got off the plane, and I waited
[1:31:04] Speaker 2: a little bit longer, and I could see the look
[1:31:06] Speaker 2: of dread on theirs and I ain't come walking off
[1:31:10] Speaker 2: the plane. And I don't think she ever forgave me
[1:31:12] Speaker 2: for that. My parents, her parents, and she there at
[1:31:16] Speaker 2: Lambert Airport say was waiting for me. I got home,
[1:31:22] Speaker 2: called a bunch of my buddies. I had want them
[1:31:24] Speaker 2: to say, you weren't nom I thought, where in the
[1:31:27] Speaker 2: hell has he been? I set that forty five. I
[1:31:30] Speaker 2: took off that NBA major home in nine pieces. The
[1:31:34] Speaker 2: only part that didn't make it was the box or
[1:31:37] Speaker 2: the magazine. Magazine didn't make it. Rest of it made it.
[1:31:41] Speaker 2: So I stopped by to get that weapon from him,
[1:31:44] Speaker 2: and he told me, so, I never got a magazine.
[1:31:46] Speaker 2: You said a magazine. I said, a magazine went ammo
[1:31:48] Speaker 2: in it, he said, I never made it, so I
[1:31:51] Speaker 2: shalvage that for my and I set a NBA rucksack
[1:31:54] Speaker 2: home in an NBA flag and h in the signal
[1:31:58] Speaker 2: mirror that was in my pocket got hit by lightning.
[1:32:01] Speaker 2: It shattered, would have wrapped me around that tree. So
[1:32:04] Speaker 2: those are my souvenirs from Vietnam. We got married two
[1:32:08] Speaker 2: weeks later. My hair was still too sharp.
[1:32:12] Speaker 4: Uh.
[1:32:12] Speaker 2: They made us get a haircut the day before we
[1:32:14] Speaker 2: left my home. Everybody, I mean, they buzzed us too,
[1:32:18] Speaker 2: So I wasn't happy with that, but I didn't didn't
[1:32:23] Speaker 2: run into a lot of the only negatives I had.
[1:32:26] Speaker 2: When we got off the plane at eleven thirty at
[1:32:28] Speaker 2: night in Philadelphia, there were about two hundred hippies lined
[1:32:31] Speaker 2: up on the other side of the cyclone fence with
[1:32:33] Speaker 2: signs hollered at us, and the MPs wouldn't let us
[1:32:36] Speaker 2: have them. I mean, boy, what that plane wanted to
[1:32:38] Speaker 2: go after those people. That's the only negatives I had.
[1:32:42] Speaker 2: Nobody spit on me, Nobody really acted like they gave
[1:32:46] Speaker 2: it to mn But yeah, I wasn't put down for it.
[1:32:50] Speaker 3: What year did you leave Vietnam?
[1:32:52] Speaker 2: I left June second, nineteen sixty.
[1:32:55] Speaker 4: Nine, so you were, and they you were still on
[1:32:59] Speaker 4: the RS because you were stelling Lorps right as they
[1:33:03] Speaker 4: transitioned to rager UNI.
[1:33:05] Speaker 2: Yeah, I was there. We went to bed one night
[1:33:07] Speaker 2: at RPS and woke up the next day and there
[1:33:08] Speaker 2: were arders on our outdoor bullets and board saying you
[1:33:11] Speaker 2: are now rangers.
[1:33:13] Speaker 4: Do you know how that happened? Why that happened? I
[1:33:15] Speaker 4: don't know if you have visavailability on that bit. How
[1:33:18] Speaker 4: did that come about?
[1:33:20] Speaker 2: I think they wanted the heraldry of the Lorps were
[1:33:24] Speaker 2: all different units fifty eighth, fifty first, fifty second. They
[1:33:28] Speaker 2: wanted to give us a common bond. So somebody came
[1:33:31] Speaker 2: up with a brilliant idea that we all, all of
[1:33:34] Speaker 2: a sudden we were rangers and our mission didn't change.
[1:33:37] Speaker 2: I remember getting in an argument with a bunch of
[1:33:40] Speaker 2: young rangers at the third Bat in ninety two. We
[1:33:44] Speaker 2: were trying to get the Lurs accepted into the seventy
[1:33:49] Speaker 2: fifth Rangers Association, which my company started. That right, was
[1:33:53] Speaker 2: one hundred first Rangers that started that association in nineteen
[1:33:57] Speaker 2: eighty six. These guys said Werps weren't rangers. I said,
[1:34:00] Speaker 2: what the hell do you think we were in Vietnam
[1:34:02] Speaker 2: and so you guys were rangers. I said, I went
[1:34:04] Speaker 2: to bed one night of warp and woke up the
[1:34:06] Speaker 2: next day. I'm a ranger, and I said, these guys
[1:34:09] Speaker 2: did the same thing we did. I said, if you
[1:34:11] Speaker 2: accept us, you should accept them.
[1:34:14] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[1:34:14] Speaker 2: And we farmed a Long Range Reconsistance Association in twenty fifteen,
[1:34:19] Speaker 2: which now has a thousand members. There are no more lores,
[1:34:23] Speaker 2: so it's an organization that unless they recreate Worse, is
[1:34:27] Speaker 2: going to die out some day.
[1:34:28] Speaker 1: They will one day. They always come back. Yeah, I agree,
[1:34:33] Speaker 1: Drose don't do well in the jungle, yes, sir.
[1:34:37] Speaker 2: Anyway, the day we farmed that association, the president of
[1:34:41] Speaker 2: the seventy fifth Rangers Association called us and wanted us
[1:34:44] Speaker 2: to bring that organization into the seventy fifth and the
[1:34:47] Speaker 2: guys voted at the meeting. There was a one boat
[1:34:49] Speaker 2: in favor of it. But a lot of the guys
[1:34:51] Speaker 2: that were worse were rangers.
[1:34:53] Speaker 1: Gary the Worse and Worths have been accepted into the
[1:34:57] Speaker 1: Range of Regiment Association, though, haven't they No, they haven't really.
[1:35:02] Speaker 2: No, we turned it down. They they tried to bring
[1:35:05] Speaker 2: our association into it.
[1:35:07] Speaker 1: I'm sorry to hear that we rejected it.
[1:35:10] Speaker 2: The only reason they did that is because you know,
[1:35:14] Speaker 2: their organization is losing people too, the Vietnam Investor dying out,
[1:35:18] Speaker 2: and they saw the chance to pick up a bunch
[1:35:20] Speaker 2: of new members. And you know, I belonged to both organizations.
[1:35:24] Speaker 2: And I'll tell you we we host the annual Work
[1:35:27] Speaker 2: Association Reunion right here in Branson every year, and it's
[1:35:31] Speaker 2: we booked three solid hotels with a park between two
[1:35:34] Speaker 2: of them, and there are events in that park for
[1:35:37] Speaker 2: seven days. So it's a good event.
[1:35:40] Speaker 1: So as time goes on, I don't know if you
[1:35:44] Speaker 1: tried to put the war behind you or if it
[1:35:46] Speaker 1: was something that was always with you, but eventually you
[1:35:48] Speaker 1: and your teammates kind of became I don't know what's
[1:35:52] Speaker 1: the term I want to use, like spokesman of a
[1:35:54] Speaker 1: sense for the Vietnam experience and certainly the work experience
[1:35:57] Speaker 1: and all these memoirs that you published. Will you talk
[1:36:00] Speaker 1: to us a little bit about how maybe your personal
[1:36:03] Speaker 1: impressions changed or what led you into publishing and writing I.
[1:36:10] Speaker 2: Nineteen eighty six. My unit was the first company from
[1:36:14] Speaker 2: Vietnam any kind of company that organized the company reunion
[1:36:18] Speaker 2: nineteen eighty six. I was contacted by our company clerk
[1:36:23] Speaker 2: two years before that. He asked me if I would
[1:36:25] Speaker 2: help locate some of the guys that served in the unit. Well,
[1:36:28] Speaker 2: you know, when you come home from the war, you
[1:36:30] Speaker 2: promised to stay in touch. There were no internet back then,
[1:36:34] Speaker 2: so we had to find people by telephone, and I
[1:36:38] Speaker 2: fortunately had a company roster with the original homes where
[1:36:41] Speaker 2: everybody was from. I told this guy I'd help him.
[1:36:45] Speaker 2: We spent two years and we put the first reunion
[1:36:48] Speaker 2: together in nineteen eighty six at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. We
[1:36:51] Speaker 2: had one hundred and eighty six guys show up. Wow,
[1:36:54] Speaker 2: plus twenty four from other units that heard about this.
[1:36:58] Speaker 2: They also can from that reunion, we decided to farm
[1:37:03] Speaker 2: the seventy fifth Ranger Association, So Bob Gilbert the next
[1:37:07] Speaker 2: year put that together and we farmed that association. Matter
[1:37:11] Speaker 2: of fact, I think the first three presidents were from
[1:37:13] Speaker 2: my unit. I had not thought much about nom I
[1:37:21] Speaker 2: hadn't talked to a lot of people about I stayed
[1:37:23] Speaker 2: in touch with John Sires and a couple of the
[1:37:26] Speaker 2: guys from my units were in my wedding, matter of fact,
[1:37:29] Speaker 2: and I stally had in touch with probably five or
[1:37:31] Speaker 2: six guys. When we had that first reunion. I remember
[1:37:35] Speaker 2: telling my wife, I said, I don't think I'm going
[1:37:38] Speaker 2: to go. I said, the hell I put on weight.
[1:37:41] Speaker 2: It's been twenty years. I said, I won't even they
[1:37:45] Speaker 2: won't recognize me. I won't recognize them. I remember their names.
[1:37:49] Speaker 2: And she said, I saved all the letters you wrote me.
[1:37:52] Speaker 2: She said, they're in a shoe box. Once you read
[1:37:54] Speaker 2: through the letters and it'll refresh your memory. So the
[1:37:59] Speaker 2: night before the union, I sat there and read the
[1:38:01] Speaker 2: two hundred and forty three letters. Wow. When I come
[1:38:04] Speaker 2: to find out I had described every mission I was on,
[1:38:09] Speaker 2: and not in great detail, but it was like a
[1:38:12] Speaker 2: diary day by day, and I told who was on
[1:38:16] Speaker 2: the teams with me and basically what happened, didn't give details.
[1:38:21] Speaker 2: And I remember thanking when I was nothant my god,
[1:38:24] Speaker 2: I said, when I get back from this reunion, I'm
[1:38:27] Speaker 2: gonna sit down and write this out, so my son's
[1:38:29] Speaker 2: gonna read what I did when I was in the war.
[1:38:33] Speaker 2: So I this was back before I had a computer.
[1:38:36] Speaker 2: I could type, and I didn't have a computer, didn't
[1:38:37] Speaker 2: have a typewriter. So I bought four legal sized yellow tablets,
[1:38:42] Speaker 2: and I hand wrote out my first two books, wrote
[1:38:45] Speaker 2: out his one book in six months time. And I'm
[1:38:48] Speaker 2: sitting there and Ken Miller, who had already come out
[1:38:51] Speaker 2: with Tiger of THELRP Dog, he called me and he said,
[1:38:54] Speaker 2: how's that diary coming. I said, I'm done with it.
[1:38:58] Speaker 2: He said, wy don't you send it to him? I said,
[1:38:59] Speaker 2: Jesus Christ, get it's on four tablets. And he said, well,
[1:39:03] Speaker 2: send it to me. And so I went down and
[1:39:06] Speaker 2: burn copies of all those pages and I send him
[1:39:09] Speaker 2: the copies and he wrote back and he said, this
[1:39:11] Speaker 2: is pretty good. He said, I'm going to send this
[1:39:13] Speaker 2: to a publisher friend of mine, Jim Morris Broke. He
[1:39:16] Speaker 2: was at Berkeley Books.
[1:39:17] Speaker 1: We've had We've had him on the show too, Jim yep.
[1:39:20] Speaker 2: Well, anyway, I don't hear from Jim. And Tim calls him.
[1:39:24] Speaker 2: He said, Jim's leaving Berkeley. He said he's don't going
[1:39:26] Speaker 2: to be a publisher anymore. I thought, well, left figures.
[1:39:30] Speaker 2: He said, I got another guy. I'm going to send
[1:39:31] Speaker 2: it to you o On Lockett at Ivy Books, Random House.
[1:39:36] Speaker 2: And I said okay. He said I was gonna send
[1:39:38] Speaker 2: him a couple of chapters. Hesid matter of fact, he said,
[1:39:39] Speaker 2: on Wance, you type up a couple of chapters and
[1:39:42] Speaker 2: send him those chapters. So I went down and bought
[1:39:44] Speaker 2: a typewriter, used typewriter, and I typed out that November
[1:39:48] Speaker 2: twentieth mission and the November third mission. There's two and
[1:39:52] Speaker 2: Neuie Key and the twelve man heavy Team, and I
[1:39:55] Speaker 2: sent him to Unlocke. He said it'll take him six
[1:39:57] Speaker 2: months to read it. He said, just tell him that's
[1:39:59] Speaker 2: the books. Here's two sample chapters. He said, you'll probably
[1:40:02] Speaker 2: here front and six months or your bon So I
[1:40:05] Speaker 2: send those two chapters to Onunlock and that was on
[1:40:08] Speaker 2: a Thursday. Next Tuesday, I get a phone call and
[1:40:11] Speaker 2: he says, Gary, he said, this is o Lock. I
[1:40:15] Speaker 2: said who He said, on Lock? I said so. He
[1:40:19] Speaker 2: said old Lock ivy books. I said, you're bullshitting me.
[1:40:23] Speaker 2: I said who is this? I said Millers this year.
[1:40:27] Speaker 2: He said, damn it, this is old Lock. He said,
[1:40:29] Speaker 2: I'll buy your books and the rest. Yeah, I mean,
[1:40:32] Speaker 2: I had nothing else typed up. The book was still handwritten.
[1:40:36] Speaker 2: So I sent him my original tablets and he called
[1:40:41] Speaker 2: me back. I guess it was three weeks after that,
[1:40:45] Speaker 2: he said, well, I got some good news and some
[1:40:47] Speaker 2: bad news. He said, you want what you want first,
[1:40:49] Speaker 2: I want the bad news. He said, you got too
[1:40:51] Speaker 2: much here for a book. So I knew it, and
[1:40:55] Speaker 2: he said, we'll make two books out of it. Yeah,
[1:40:58] Speaker 2: he said, He said, could you send me the rest
[1:41:01] Speaker 2: of it? I said, yeah, I can do that. So
[1:41:03] Speaker 2: I typed the rest of the up sent it to him,
[1:41:05] Speaker 2: and they brought the first two books out nine months apart,
[1:41:09] Speaker 2: which upset me because it was the first half of
[1:41:13] Speaker 2: my story till I got wounded. Then the second half
[1:41:15] Speaker 2: of the story and had I had five thousand letters
[1:41:18] Speaker 2: and people called me six months that within six months
[1:41:21] Speaker 2: that first book coming out, I wanted to know where
[1:41:22] Speaker 2: the hell the rest of the story was. And then
[1:41:26] Speaker 2: a short time later, Uh, I get a call from
[1:41:30] Speaker 2: oh and he says, a military book club wants to
[1:41:32] Speaker 2: combine your books and bring it out the Hardcome, which
[1:41:35] Speaker 2: is the way I originally wrote it. So they sold
[1:41:38] Speaker 2: the rights to Military Book Club for Black Brats and
[1:41:40] Speaker 2: Painted Faces, which was those first two books. They sold
[1:41:44] Speaker 2: twenty thousand copies in six months and applied for another
[1:41:48] Speaker 2: twenty thousand. Random House wouldn't give it to it because
[1:41:52] Speaker 2: they were competing with the paperbacks. So anyway, yeah, I
[1:41:57] Speaker 2: think a year went by and I thought, well, you know,
[1:41:59] Speaker 2: I told my story. My company needs to have its
[1:42:03] Speaker 2: story told. My company lost seventy six guys in Vietnam
[1:42:07] Speaker 2: by far more than any other ARP Ranger company. The
[1:42:10] Speaker 2: first cab I think lost forty two of it. They
[1:42:13] Speaker 2: were there a year longer, and we still lost. We lost.
[1:42:16] Speaker 2: We were in a bad area. So I talked to
[1:42:20] Speaker 2: Miller and Ray Martinez and we decided that Ray would
[1:42:24] Speaker 2: write the first Brigade one hundred and first LART story,
[1:42:27] Speaker 2: the original Alerts. Ken would write f fifty eighth, and
[1:42:30] Speaker 2: I would write the l seventy fifth party. So we
[1:42:34] Speaker 2: did that. I had a bunch of guys from other
[1:42:36] Speaker 2: units calling me and saying, how come none of our
[1:42:40] Speaker 2: guys are writing books? I said, got me and he said.
[1:42:44] Speaker 2: I thought to myself, by God, I'm going to write
[1:42:46] Speaker 2: a story from every LART Ranger unit that fought in Vietnam,
[1:42:50] Speaker 2: and I'm gonna do two books or three books, whatever
[1:42:53] Speaker 2: it takes. So I'm going to recognize all of those
[1:42:56] Speaker 2: companies with one story each. And that was the Fantom
[1:42:59] Speaker 2: Warrior Service and I've had I've had publishers call me,
[1:43:04] Speaker 2: oh lot call me. Uh. Chris Evans from UH he
[1:43:08] Speaker 2: was with he was with Stackpole Books at the time,
[1:43:11] Speaker 2: wanted me to write more books, and I said, I'm done.
[1:43:14] Speaker 2: You know, I did what I wanted to do. I
[1:43:16] Speaker 2: did what I wanted to accomplish. I'd rather help other
[1:43:19] Speaker 2: guys get their stories told, because nobody can tell the
[1:43:21] Speaker 2: story like you can. You know, if you experienced it,
[1:43:24] Speaker 2: somebody else can't write your story. Yeah. Yeah, So I've
[1:43:28] Speaker 2: ended up helping a lot of guys get their books published.
[1:43:30] Speaker 1: I think you said you were involved in something like
[1:43:32] Speaker 1: eighty six different books forty two forty two. Well, okay,
[1:43:35] Speaker 1: I doubled it, but uh that's forty two is still
[1:43:38] Speaker 1: a lot.
[1:43:40] Speaker 2: It was, And I know I helped. I've helped some seals.
[1:43:42] Speaker 2: I have one guy that was a school teacher got
[1:43:45] Speaker 2: drafted when he was twenty six, married with a kid. Oh,
[1:43:48] Speaker 2: he got drafted out was teaching. He wrote Classroom to Claymares.
[1:43:53] Speaker 2: I helped you get published. I helped several seals, quite
[1:43:57] Speaker 2: a few lurps. John Burfer helped him get his book published.
[1:44:01] Speaker 2: He'd be another good one.
[1:44:02] Speaker 1: The interview and you uh you said you were involved
[1:44:06] Speaker 1: in another book that hasn't been published it with Ray Martinez.
[1:44:09] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's Ray actually wrote it. I did the editing
[1:44:12] Speaker 2: on it. Uh. It's David Dolby. He won a Medal
[1:44:17] Speaker 2: of Honor and I drain when the first cab got
[1:44:20] Speaker 2: wiped out there. Uh the story. We got a Medal
[1:44:25] Speaker 2: of Honor and pull four more combat tours in Vietnam
[1:44:27] Speaker 2: after his Medal of ark.
[1:44:28] Speaker 3: Wow.
[1:44:30] Speaker 4: It's incredible, Gary that that's really unusual too, especially during
[1:44:34] Speaker 4: the Vietnam because I know that, like once you won
[1:44:37] Speaker 4: a Medal of Honor, the military was very electing to
[1:44:40] Speaker 4: let you go back.
[1:44:41] Speaker 2: Let me take you. President Johnson turned it down. When
[1:44:44] Speaker 2: he was presented the medal. He told President Johnson, he said,
[1:44:47] Speaker 2: President Johnson said what can I do for him? Said,
[1:44:49] Speaker 2: send me back to mom. He said, I can't do that.
[1:44:52] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[1:44:52] Speaker 2: A year later he was Victnam with a LURP unit.
[1:44:55] Speaker 3: Wow.
[1:44:57] Speaker 2: So I mean he I don't know how he did it,
[1:44:59] Speaker 2: but he did it.
[1:45:00] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[1:45:00] Speaker 2: And man, the man loved to kill NBA. Yeah.
[1:45:04] Speaker 1: Gary, And these these books have had like such a
[1:45:06] Speaker 1: big influence, not just on me, you know, I read
[1:45:09] Speaker 1: these when I was like in high school. Then they
[1:45:11] Speaker 1: influenced me to join the Army and to go to
[1:45:14] Speaker 1: the Ranger Regiment, and so many I think of my
[1:45:17] Speaker 1: peer group were in the same boat. You know. They
[1:45:20] Speaker 1: read these books as young men and like, WHOA, that's
[1:45:23] Speaker 1: what I want to do.
[1:45:24] Speaker 2: You know, I've been. I think that's why I got
[1:45:26] Speaker 2: inducted in the Ranger Hall of Fame. It was more
[1:45:29] Speaker 2: of the books than anything else. There's guys with more
[1:45:31] Speaker 2: decorations than me that have done more for the regiment
[1:45:34] Speaker 2: than I had. But I think that's why I was.
[1:45:38] Speaker 1: You did You did such an incredible story of telling yours,
[1:45:41] Speaker 1: telling your story, telling the warp story, and telling the
[1:45:44] Speaker 1: stories of your teammates. You know, and I don't think
[1:45:47] Speaker 1: maybe you don't want to say it, Gary, but correct
[1:45:49] Speaker 1: me if I'm wrong. You were worth of the silver
[1:45:51] Speaker 1: Star for that November twentieth operation.
[1:45:54] Speaker 2: Exactly putting for a DSc, but they already gave two
[1:45:58] Speaker 2: other guys were putting for metal Bomb and got kicked
[1:46:00] Speaker 2: down to DSCS. But I was given an Impact Solberstar
[1:46:04] Speaker 2: and it was after it was putting for DSc they left.
[1:46:07] Speaker 2: It was a silver star.
[1:46:10] Speaker 1: Incredible, Gary and and so do we have questions for Gary?
[1:46:14] Speaker 3: Uh, let me check real quick. Yeah, I don't.
[1:46:18] Speaker 1: I don't.
[1:46:19] Speaker 4: I didn't see anything that Chell war storm. Now people
[1:46:29] Speaker 4: are enthralled, like nobody nobody asked questions because they're just enthralled.
[1:46:35] Speaker 3: Out of curiosity.
[1:46:36] Speaker 4: You know, you guys became rangers, and then rangers you
[1:46:41] Speaker 4: know went on. You were the seventy fifth Infantry, which
[1:46:45] Speaker 4: the seventieth Rightel Regiment came out of.
[1:46:47] Speaker 3: Have you been following the rangers.
[1:46:49] Speaker 4: Like, what is your It's quite a legacy that they have,
[1:46:55] Speaker 4: right because we talked about WORL War two and then
[1:46:57] Speaker 4: the LARP units in Vietnam and then they formed into
[1:47:01] Speaker 4: more of a direct action unit. What you know, do
[1:47:05] Speaker 4: you have any opinions about that or what do you
[1:47:08] Speaker 4: How do you think the legacy has followed?
[1:47:10] Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I'm proud to be considered a ranger, but
[1:47:14] Speaker 2: I'm not a ranger. You know, I'm in my heart,
[1:47:17] Speaker 2: I'm still alert. They called us rangers, but we didn't
[1:47:20] Speaker 2: pull a ranger mission. Some of our missions might have
[1:47:23] Speaker 2: turned into a ranger mission, but our mission was primarily reconnaistant.
[1:47:27] Speaker 2: We weren't out there to kill people. Usually when we did.
[1:47:30] Speaker 2: It was self defense. We were almost always outnumbered. Uh
[1:47:36] Speaker 2: we you know, thank god, you'll never find alert that
[1:47:39] Speaker 2: eleven chopper pilot by a drink. I mean, you know,
[1:47:43] Speaker 2: that's no joke. They saved up, but so many times. Uh.
[1:47:47] Speaker 2: You know, Bill Meacham and W. T. Grant both wrote
[1:47:50] Speaker 2: books that I got published for them.
[1:47:53] Speaker 4: Uh.
[1:47:53] Speaker 2: They were courageous pilots. Uh. Their their model was that
[1:47:57] Speaker 2: we put you in, we'll get you out. And they
[1:47:58] Speaker 2: meant it and we knew that, but we probably wouldn't
[1:48:01] Speaker 2: have gone out all those missions.
[1:48:04] Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Go ahead, Gary, that's all right. I was
[1:48:07] Speaker 1: just gonna ask you if you could tell people the
[1:48:08] Speaker 1: titles of your books that you authored.
[1:48:12] Speaker 2: I wrote my first book was Eyes of the Eagle.
[1:48:17] Speaker 2: The second half of my first tour was Eyes Behind
[1:48:19] Speaker 2: the Lines. You can't get them new, but you can
[1:48:23] Speaker 2: buy a usual once in a while. The combined book
[1:48:26] Speaker 2: is Black Berets and Painted Faces. Six Island Men's the series.
[1:48:31] Speaker 2: I wrote book three, Ray Martinez wrote book one, Ken
[1:48:35] Speaker 2: Miller wrote Book two, and Phantom Warrior's Book one and
[1:48:38] Speaker 2: two were my final two books.
[1:48:41] Speaker 1: And you also ran a magazine for for a period
[1:48:43] Speaker 1: of time.
[1:48:44] Speaker 2: My brother who was an army journalist. He spent his
[1:48:49] Speaker 2: tire three years in Hawaii, wrote for The Stars and
[1:48:53] Speaker 2: Stripes and some other newspapers in the military. He talked
[1:48:58] Speaker 2: to me after my books came out. I hired him
[1:49:00] Speaker 2: to write my first book, and my wife read the
[1:49:03] Speaker 2: first thirty pages and she said, you need to fire him.
[1:49:06] Speaker 2: She said, you write, you tell your story better than
[1:49:10] Speaker 2: he does. So I fired him. I still end up
[1:49:14] Speaker 2: giving him half the front of the front end check
[1:49:18] Speaker 2: for it, though, since I hired him. But I fired him,
[1:49:21] Speaker 2: and he came back to me after the books came
[1:49:24] Speaker 2: out and he said we had to do a newspaper.
[1:49:28] Speaker 2: So we sat down and we put together a thirty
[1:49:31] Speaker 2: six page black and white newspaper, which was the first issue,
[1:49:35] Speaker 2: and I got Craig Jorgenson and Mike Martin and several
[1:49:40] Speaker 2: guys that had been published before to write articles for it.
[1:49:44] Speaker 2: And I did the David Dobe interview, the only time
[1:49:47] Speaker 2: he's ever been interviewed, and that came out in black
[1:49:50] Speaker 2: and white, and I took a bunch of copies down
[1:49:52] Speaker 2: to Fort Benning and we ended up we published it
[1:49:56] Speaker 2: for six years, took it to a green and white
[1:50:00] Speaker 2: in black newspaper for the next four issues, then we
[1:50:04] Speaker 2: took it to a black and white magazine, then we
[1:50:06] Speaker 2: took it to a full color magazine. Ended up with
[1:50:09] Speaker 2: thirty five thousand subscribers, which isn't a lot. We didn't
[1:50:12] Speaker 2: make any money, but we broke eveling on it, and
[1:50:15] Speaker 2: I made a lot of the guys that rode for
[1:50:17] Speaker 2: us became authors, a lot of them that published wild Man.
[1:50:21] Speaker 3: That's fantastic.
[1:50:23] Speaker 4: Yeah, so Cam, thank you a much, great stories, great stream.
[1:50:27] Speaker 4: Did Miss Gary ever serve with TV actor Nicholas Worth?
[1:50:32] Speaker 4: He had said he was Recondo in an interview.
[1:50:38] Speaker 2: No, there was no Nick Worth in my unit. Doesn't
[1:50:41] Speaker 2: mean he was not Ricondo. He could have gone to
[1:50:44] Speaker 2: Recondo School. There were some Battalion Reconnaistance udents that sent
[1:50:47] Speaker 2: guys to Ricondo School, and a lot of the Battalion
[1:50:49] Speaker 2: recon units called themselves warps. We called them slurpies short control.
[1:50:55] Speaker 2: But they didn't do what we did. But they usually
[1:50:58] Speaker 2: operated in a platoon or double squad sized element and
[1:51:02] Speaker 2: they stayed out longer. Not too far of Beneficittory company,
[1:51:06] Speaker 2: but a lot of them refer to themselves as warps.
[1:51:09] Speaker 2: Second of the five h second with one hundred and
[1:51:10] Speaker 2: first that battalion their recon element. They were called recondos.
[1:51:16] Speaker 2: You've heard of Tiger Force yep, Tiger Force Hawk Recon recondos.
[1:51:21] Speaker 2: Those were all battalion reconnaissance gants. Uh.
[1:51:25] Speaker 3: Paul Janet, thank you.
[1:51:27] Speaker 4: Thank you Team House for bringing us badass dudes like
[1:51:30] Speaker 4: mister Lender. Well, we appreciate Gary for for spending a
[1:51:34] Speaker 4: Friday night.
[1:51:34] Speaker 1: Yes, this is It's been an amazing interview, Gary, and
[1:51:37] Speaker 1: thank you so much for.
[1:51:38] Speaker 4: We have one more that just came in. Jim Scott,
[1:51:40] Speaker 4: thank you so much. Thanks for your service.
[1:51:42] Speaker 3: Gary. Did you know a Silver Star recipient named Kinser?
[1:51:46] Speaker 6: Uh?
[1:51:47] Speaker 3: And if so, can you relate any experience you had
[1:51:49] Speaker 3: with them? I can relate.
[1:51:52] Speaker 2: Yeah, I knew a Kinser. I'm not I don't think
[1:51:55] Speaker 2: he was in my coming. I knew a kins Who
[1:51:58] Speaker 2: was he with?
[1:51:59] Speaker 3: Uh?
[1:52:00] Speaker 4: He was a Silver Star recipient And then Jim said
[1:52:04] Speaker 4: I can relay it to him, but he didn't say
[1:52:05] Speaker 4: what unit he was with.
[1:52:07] Speaker 2: If it was Pat Kinsury was in the first brigade
[1:52:10] Speaker 2: of the hundred first LARPs.
[1:52:13] Speaker 1: Yes, one more question?
[1:52:16] Speaker 3: Oh what was the other question?
[1:52:18] Speaker 2: Oh?
[1:52:19] Speaker 3: Okay, dj S, thank you. How did LERP and Lurish
[1:52:22] Speaker 3: units different from Macbe sog.
[1:52:24] Speaker 2: Okay Macbee SAG would across the border into Laos, Cambodia
[1:52:29] Speaker 2: in North Vietnam. We stayed in Vietnam South Vietnam. That
[1:52:34] Speaker 2: was the main difference. They worked with an indigenous troops.
[1:52:37] Speaker 2: We didn't very often. Sometimes we took a kit Carson
[1:52:40] Speaker 2: out with us. The experience we had taking out three
[1:52:44] Speaker 2: Orban soldiers and three Americans didn't work out well because
[1:52:48] Speaker 2: of the language barrier.
[1:52:51] Speaker 1: Gary, is there anything else that you want to tell
[1:52:53] Speaker 1: people upcoming, whether it's like a Ranger Association event or
[1:52:57] Speaker 1: anything else that you want people to know about.
[1:53:00] Speaker 2: Well, you know, if you're a ranger, join the Ranger Association,
[1:53:03] Speaker 2: go to the rendezvous. The brotherhood is still strong. If
[1:53:07] Speaker 2: you're a LERP, go to the Long Range Reconnaissance Association,
[1:53:12] Speaker 2: join it. Come to a rally every summer every June
[1:53:15] Speaker 2: in Branson. The brotherhood is just as strong there.
[1:53:19] Speaker 3: And Jim said it was pat Kinser that he was
[1:53:22] Speaker 3: talking about.
[1:53:23] Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I'm new pat Kinser.
[1:53:25] Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah cool. So yeah, Gary again, man, it's
[1:53:30] Speaker 1: been amazing to hear your stories and I'm so glad
[1:53:32] Speaker 1: that we could finally do this. It's just great. Well,
[1:53:36] Speaker 1: sorry it took so long, not at all, man, It's
[1:53:38] Speaker 1: worth it. And oh and I was supposed to mention
[1:53:42] Speaker 1: Larry Chambers wanted me to mention that he felt he's
[1:53:45] Speaker 1: the most handsome of the three of you.
[1:53:47] Speaker 2: You my hair is still brown.
[1:53:53] Speaker 1: I had to throw that one out there for Larry.
[1:53:57] Speaker 2: I'll give him that he's been married three times.
[1:53:59] Speaker 1: I've been married, Gary, Thank you, man. And you know,
[1:54:07] Speaker 1: I really hope that guys will continue to go out
[1:54:10] Speaker 1: and read these books. I mean, they really are just
[1:54:12] Speaker 1: an amazing historical my novels. Yeah, thank you, thank you,
[1:54:18] Speaker 1: thank you, Gary. And I'll send you I'll send you
[1:54:21] Speaker 1: some copies of my book. And there's like we were
[1:54:25] Speaker 1: talking a little bit before the show. Happy for any
[1:54:28] Speaker 1: introductions to other works. We love to have you guys
[1:54:30] Speaker 1: on the show. We can talk later about that.
[1:54:33] Speaker 2: Send me a mailing address. I'll send you one of
[1:54:35] Speaker 2: these you can't get.
[1:54:37] Speaker 1: I want it. I want I want one with your
[1:54:40] Speaker 1: Herbie Hancock on it. Gary, that's Chambers. Is it? The
[1:54:45] Speaker 1: handsome one and the smart one?
[1:54:51] Speaker 2: All right?
[1:54:52] Speaker 1: And uh, for everyone watching next Friday, we'll be back.
[1:54:55] Speaker 1: We're gonna be are your book available in the UK
[1:55:01] Speaker 1: Do you know that, Gary.
[1:55:02] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they're out there Australia too.
[1:55:05] Speaker 1: In Australia, So next Friday we're gonna have Alana Barry
[1:55:09] Speaker 1: on the show. She is a former CIA case officer
[1:55:13] Speaker 1: served overseas during the Iraq War. Now novelist wrote a
[1:55:18] Speaker 1: terrific novel I just read recently. I believe it's called
[1:55:21] Speaker 1: The Peacock and the Sparrow. I hope I'm not reversing that.
[1:55:24] Speaker 1: Maybe it's the sparrow in the Peacock. The Peacock and
[1:55:27] Speaker 1: the Sparrow. Terrific, terrific novel. We'll be here with her
[1:55:31] Speaker 1: next Friday. Gary, again, thank you so much for taking
[1:55:35] Speaker 1: the time to do this.
[1:55:36] Speaker 2: Nice to meet you, David. You guys take care.
[1:55:40] Speaker 3: Thank you.
[1:55:40] Speaker 1: We'll see everyone next Friday.

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