#276 Nick Brokhausen - The Deadliest Stories From Vietnam with MACV-SOG

Mr. Nick Brockhausen, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Sean. It's an honor having you guys. Well, likewise. Thank you. Thank you. So we got connected through Tilt, correct? Oh, yeah. Tilt. It's so nice to see him in men's clothing again. Oh, my God. What did he used to wear? Well... Right on. Well, seriously, I tell all you guys this and everybody that I've interviewed from the Vietnam generation. And I just want to say how much, and I don't say this lightly, how much of an honor it is to have you here. And, you know, when I was growing up, the Vietnam generation is what inspired me to join service, become a Navy SEAL, and fight for my country. and it truly is. It was the movies. It was the guys. It was everything to me about the Vietnam generation. It just fascinated me from a young age and still to this day. I think you guys are just a special breed of human beings. Stop. I'm going to have to buy a new hat. Right on. But, no, I'm being serious, so welcome home. Well, I appreciate that. And I got to tell you, the new generation, every once in a while I get the distinct honor of working with special forces, SEALs, whatever. You know, and I got to say, you're all right, proper rascals. You know, the same spirit, the same drive, the same professionalism is still there. you know it's uh it it's a pleasure to to interact with them and it gives me faith that we actually have a chance to recover the republic yeah yeah you know that i know every every new generation gets a lot of shit you know but um they weren't as hard and they're not as tough and but uh but the ones that i meet are shit hot fucking operators and um lots has changed I feel like I'm a dinosaur now I'm sure you do too with the way warfare is conducted now but those guys are truly innovative and it's really cool to see all the SEALs special forces they've all evolved and in some aspects they've become one dimensional and Iraq was and Afghanistan was the reason for that. They became door kickers. You know, our generation was more working with the Indedge and training them, equipping them, and leading them into counterinsurgency. Yeah. And they're slowly but surely going back to that, and I'm glad to see that because that's really where the individualism and the teamwork really shine when they start going back to the basic. because, you know, SF was based on the OSS. You know, and our lineage was that you were going to get jumped into somebody else's country, and you might spend seven years there, you know, fighting a war and that. So, you know, the training for it, the mentality, the nexus was based around that concept. And I'm glad to see that they're finally getting back to that in such a way that they can become a really effective tool. Yeah, yeah. You know, we haven't really talked much about the OSS. Do you want to go into that a little bit? Well, what I know about it, I'm not Victor David Hansen. I'm no great intellect. I do read, though. So, yeah, the OSS was, you know, in the beginning when they started the OSS, Donovan was given the OSS Office of Strategic Service. And it was a battle with J. Edgar Hoover because J. Edgar Hoover wanted it all. He wanted to be, you know, the guy who was putting FBI agents in where OSS agents actually ended up going. and they did a compromise with him. They gave him the counterintelligence role in the U.S. and in South America. So the FBI had limited influence in South America and Mexico because the Nazis had a huge, huge station in Mexico. They were operating out of Mexico, northern Colombia, places like that, Argentina. but you know the OSS was originally designed to provide war fighters people that could go in provide strategic intelligence on the Nazis and on their military and what they were doing in other countries and what he did is he picked businessmen people that had traveled in Germany, people that had traveled that were maybe natives of Italy, Bulgaria, Armenia, whatever, and drew them in and formed the OSS. And they had different divisions of it. And each of those divisions had a certain amount of latitude to how they operated. But the whole thing was based on clandestine. We're not going to make a big show like the commandos and that. We're going to drop you out of a Lancaster bomber in a business suit, and you're going to get on the ground and go to meet your contacts in that country and then start providing intel back. And then after the war, they got rid of the OSS and it became the Central Intelligence Agency. And it really ruined it when they did that because it took away some of that expertise and Elon of the operators from World War II. But the OSS was a very effective tool. I just read a white paper written by an E8 from a tense group, a guy named Kevin O'Connor, O.C., 280 pounds of moving Irish intellect, where he suggested, and it's a good suggestion, is to do away with special ops and turn it back into the OSS and have the same different divisions that within it. For one thing, centralized purchasing. There's so much redundancy in the purchasing. And second of all, it does away with each service having their special operations division. Put them all in one unit. Make them all warrant officers. So perfect rank to operate in. You know, you've got officers and you've got warrant officers, but you don't have NCOs anymore. And if you transfer into it, you automatically become a warrant officer. When did this white paper come out? He wrote it. Oh, I know. He wrote it and Al Mullins edited it, thank God. But about six months ago. Six months ago? Yeah. And I think he sent it to the Secretary of Defense, or he might have sent it to Center as a suggestion. Here it is. I think that's a genius idea. What do you think about that? It's got some flaws, but it's much better than what they're operating under now. I'm just curious. Why do you think that would be better? I have my own opinions. Let's see. How do I put it? they've got the ability to act without massive oversight. You know, this whole organization in special forces stands on the shoulders of 12 men. And they forgot that. You've got PSYOPs and you've got civil affairs and you've got, you know, ribbon cutting outfit or some other hoopla. Those are all support units. They're not special operations. I don't consider them a special operation. I'm sure that people in PSYOPs argue about, you know, they actually captured this or captured that when they were out in the countryside. But really, it's all based on a SEAL team and an A team. Those guys are where the rubber meets the road. And, you know, I'll give you an example. Over the years, I had people come to me and go, well, what kind of special school did you go to to get in CCN? Well, a prior felony helped. We were selected because it was just another SF assignment. It was no more than that. You'd go there, you'd do your thing in Vietnam, and then you'd come back to the States. You might get assigned to Red Empire or the Tenth Group, and then you did the missions that they had on the board. But it gave you a vast pool of knowledge and cross-pollinization. with people that actually know how to operate on the ground. You know, that's interesting. So what units would he have? What did the white paper say? Well, he broke it down into how they would structure it, the T&E, and the big thing that he was concentrating on was, I'm looking for the right word here. Sometimes I trip. The ability to act independently without micromanagement. To give that power and authority and responsibility down to the working level in order to get the job done. Because where the rubber meets the road, that's where innovation comes from. And expertise. he uh you know another thing was you know the weapons try and do similar weapons uh so you don't again relaying back to why buy six different systems when two actually will do the job and standardization makes it easier for ammunition parts supply uh you know and training simplifying it. I hope they do it. I mean, I know it would... I tell you what, I think I might have a copy of it. I'll forward it to you. I would love to read it. I mean, I think that it would be... You know, I gotta be honest. I didn't know that's how it used to be. But... Well, you know, today, you go in the fifth group, you stay in the fifth group. In my day, you go to the tenth group, you be there for three years, you might get transferred to Dede or get transferred to the sixth group, or you know the first group whatever and that allowed for a lot of cross-pollinization and that you met guys that were doing different things yeah and and you were able to give your input and take theirs and and move on with it you know you know not only that but the first thing that came to my mind when you're talking about you know um you know consolidating all the special operations under one umbrella that's not the navy army marine corps no it's own force actually it's its own branch. He's making his own branch. I've always thought this was a good idea. I think it'd piss a lot of people off because the history would, you know, that would be the end of the Green Berets, the Navy Seals. Well, I made the suggestion one time that you ought to put the Navy under the Marine Corps. I thought I'd pull my pecker out in front of them. Yeah. But I think it just gets rid of the competition. And when I mean competition, I don't mean And, you know, Green Beret of Seal, I mean, competition is in the salesmanship that goes into who's going to get what specific operation. I would think that that all goes away because it will be put on some type of thing. It won't all go away, but it will make it a lot cleaner, a lot more transparent. Yeah, and then the other thing is, you know, after World War II, we had all these bases all over the world, you know, Germany, everywhere, right? And those become the commands themselves, you know, UCOM, CENTCOM, AFRICOM, PACOM. And so, you know, those, whoever's in charge of UCOM, for example, has two SEAL platoons and two SF units. And, you know what I mean? They have that allocated to UCOM, and those leaders never want to, they never want to give up an asset no matter what's going on in the rest of the world. So that creates a shortage because you have to send a fucking task unit of SEALs to Germany when there's two wars going on in the Middle East. And if you had something like that, then it rips everything. It rips all the assets from these people that are fucking hoarding it for no reason. And they all get allocated into the actual war zone, the conflict that is happening right now. A good example of that waste of talent and energy was I was in Detachment A in Berlin for six years. And Dead A reported directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And the commanding general of UCOM didn't like that. He didn't like the fact that we were opcom to the chiefs of staff and not under his TO&E. And eventually he got his way and got a hatchet man in there and basically made the excuse that the cover that we were using was too transparent and they should reorganize it. They made it into an MP outfit and gave him the aditance. You see, Dede had the counterterrorism mission and their primary mission, which was a stay-behind mission, in case the Russians got drunk and decided to invade. And they would invade, and we'd disappear into the population and start blowing up their rail yards and telecommunications and that. And then we picked up the counterterrorism mission because nobody else was ready. Blue Light was in the process of forming, and Charlie and Delta were in their infancy. So we were the designee if something happened in Europe or the Middle East for about, I think, four years before they got totally spun up. But he kept that mission and kept the primary mission and then added a mission after he got control over it of doing security for all the diplomats overseas. overseas, checking their houses, checking the embassies, checking their toilet, you know, whatever, you know. And the guys did a, that unit did a superlative job, but it was, it was unnecessary. Yeah. You know, they made a separate unit to do that, you know, because the DIP security guys was the State Department, mostly SF anyway. And, you know, they've got that job. Yeah. Redundancy. Yeah. Thank you. We live in an environment our biology was never designed for. EMFs, artificial light, seed oils, microplastics, endocrine disruptors, modern stressors, the list goes on. These assaults can disrupt the signals your body relies on, negatively impacting gut, immune, and overall health. Armora Colostrum works at the cellular level to bolster your health from within. Colostrum is nature's first whole food with over 400 bioactive nutrients that fortify gut health, strengthen immune health, fuel performance, and more, paving the way for your best health and vitality. I've been using Armora myself because I wanted something simple that supports overall health without adding another complicated routine. I genuinely feel better having it as part of my day. Ready to reclaim your extraordinary? Well, now you can, because we've worked out a special offer for my audience. Receive 30% off your first subscription order. Go to armora.com slash SRS or enter SRS to get 30% off your first subscription order. That's A-R-M-R-A dot com slash SRS. Let's get into your story real quick. Well, not real quick. It's going to be a long interview, but everybody starts off with an introduction. Nick Brockhausen, a Green Beret with a 17-year career in the U.S. Special Forces, including multiple combat tours in Vietnam. A veteran of the highly classified MACV SOG, running covert recon missions deep into enemy territory in Laos and Vietnam as part of Recon Team Habu in command and control north. the author of We Few, U.S. Special Forces in Vietnam, and its sequel, Whispers in the Tall Grass. You've since had adventures around the world and now run a tech company and an armory. This is the quote that I love. I'm cured for life of ever-dating redheaded women, or even making eye contact with them. I never make eye contact. It isn't that I'm bonkers over them. They find me as some sort of training aid. I just don't have the deranged state in body fluids for that exercise anymore. I don't, really. I run from them. Oh, shit. I love that. Well, Nick, before we get started, I've got a couple of things here. So everybody that comes on the show gets a bag of these. Those are Vigilance League gummy bears. Oh, good for the trip back. That's right. That's right. Thank you. You're welcome. Made here in the USA. And I got, have you ever heard of USCCA? No. Well, USCCA is a soft spot in their heart for Vietnam vets, just like I do. And so they wanted me to give this to you. Oh, thank you. This is, so basically, that is an insurance policy for life. and if you ever have to defend yourself, your family, your friends, whatever happens, these guys will provide you the legal advice, the legal funding. Well, I'm old school. And help you. I really don't need the insurance policy if you don't leave any witnesses. Well, if you do leave a witness, the OSACA will be there to help you. Thank you. As long as it's legitimate self-defense. So, but... Legitimate self-defense. Isn't that an oxymoron? I don't know. I don't know, but... Well, thank you. You're welcome. Thank them. You're welcome. All right, Nick. So, I want to do a life story on you, starting at childhood. So, where did you grow up? Well, my life started in 1969 when I was accepted into Special Forces Selection Course. Roger that. Is that where you want to start? Well, I grew up poor, relatively poor. My parents were, my dad was a former Army Air Corps, my stepdad. And my mom was a waitress, a cook. It's like from Clockwork Orange, what are you? Well, my father was Russian, my mother was a waitress. But they raised four kids on a waitress salary and a bartender. We actually lived in North Dakota and my dad had a farm. We had 640 acres or something like that. We raised cattle, hogs, chickens, and grain. you know we sold all of the above and uh two years of drought and uh another two years of floods put us out of the farming business yeah so my dad was able to keep the farm and he took the money from the sale of the machinery and everything and we moved to minnesota to a little town called glenwood and he opened a bar, hotel, and restaurant all in one building. And that's where I spent my formative from the time I was a preteen until I was old enough to be drafted or whatever. And it was a great life. I mean, I hunted, I fished, I skipped school to go squirrel hunting, You know, I hid the guns in a hollow tree outside where they had what they call a shop class. And we'd skid her out over the roof of the building and go squirrel hunting all afternoon. So I was very adept in the woods. You know, my brother and I had ran a trap line for a number of years to make money to buy school clothes. No kidding. Yeah. The Montgomery Ward and J.C. Penney's. You know, you'd order your school clothes and that. And your school clothes in the year before became your work and play clothes. What would you sell the fish? Huh? The trout line. Oh, trap line. Yeah. Outside of Glenwood. It was all woods. Woods and farmland. We'd trap mink. There was a big swamp area that a number of them, muskrat, mink, martins, fisher cats, you know, all of which brought good money and porcupines. No kidding. Yeah, now, I got caught. My brother and I, you know, we killed these four porcupines, and there was a bounty for porcupines that you had to take the nose, right? And then you pickle it, and you take it down to the game warden, and you send it in, you know, and you get, I think it was like 25 bucks for a porcupine. So we're skinning the porcupines, and I skinned the pads. off their paws and dropped it in the pickling it's a nose so instead of one nose we now have five noses per porcupine so we didn't dump kids you know we turned them all in and that game warden was drinking buddy of my father he called my father up and he goes well either your two boys have cleaned out every porcupine between here and the canadian border or they're up to something so So he sent it in to the University of Minnesota. Of course, it comes back, these are paws and these are noses and that. And they took us down and, you know, scared the shit out of us by locking us in a jail cell. I think I was like 12 or 13 at the time, you know. A lot of fun, you know. I learned how to exist in the woods. Yeah. Learned how to track. Learned how to, you know, learn the animals, learn their habits. I had a lot of fun with my brother and my little brother who was built like a crash dummy because that's the only way he survived childhood and then eventually I went into the military and eventually evolved I learned the ground rules for the military and then applied for special forces and was accepted in 1968 or 69. And I went to jump school, went to SF selection course, came out of the selection course and went to Vietnam for my second tour. What was your first tour? The Marines. The Marines? You were a Marine? Did I mumble that? Why are you mumbling? I didn't. I didn't. I have a lot of respect for the Marine Corps. Me too. Taught me my craft. Taught me that I actually could work under pressure. When I first transferred services, you know, you've got to go through the basic training, AIT, and then you're in a casual status for a certain amount of time. Before I went to Special Forces Selection course, I went to Korea, and I was with the 2nd Division up there on the DMZ. during the Pueblo incident. I'm not familiar with that. There was a spy ship that the North Koreans captured. And at the same time, they sent a 40-man commando outfit down to Seoul to try and assassinate the president of South Korea. And the 2nd Division was in the sector. Everybody in the country was hunting for these guys. They got recognized at the front gate of the Blue Palace. Because the guard recognized their accent wasn't from the south. And a run and gun battle started there. And they, I was, my company was assigned as a backup unit to the Koreans. The White Horse Division that eventually went to Vietnam from the Koreans. And they tracked down the last 15 survivors. And we were part of the suite that drove them up on top of this mountain. And they committed suicide at the last minute. Shit. And then I got transferred from there and then back to Fort Benning to go through jump school and then eventually into Special Forces. Why did you join the Marine Corps first? I got drafted. You got drafted? Yeah. How did the, okay. What was that like? It's like the Marines. To get drafted. I mean, how did the letter come? I was going to do lists. you know just time and events caught up with me before I could enlist in those days you couldn't step out of the line and move over and enlist and take a three year in the army once you were designated you went you know and it was interesting what was your first tour like what? what was your first tour in Vietnam like a line company you never knew where you were going just know that you were going to get in a fight and eventually you know you'd get mauled or you'd maul them and then come back to it now the same thing was in korea with uh with the second division we were up on the dmz and that's all we did was we either were in the towers or we were over in the dmz doing hunter killer patrols same exact thing just more intense in vietnam than it was in korea no shit yeah how was south how was korea what how was korea cold cold cold wet nasty everything smelled like human shit and well the demilitarized zone there was nobody over there they basically cleared all the koreans out of there in the southern part of the dmz when once you crossed the imjim river you were in the demilitarized zone and that extended up to the actual border and then well you had the line of towers and wire which they were just putting in during that time they didn't have them at originally we there was just foxholes you you did went out and you set up machine gun positions and and then the foxholes in a lot like a line outfit does you know and then And gradually they started replacing that with a fence system and 25-foot wooden towers with machine guns in them. And then they had gates, and there was a minefield this side and a desk strip that was raked and cleaned so you could see tracks. And then on the north side of the border, there were some minefields, but there was a lot of old minefields left over from the war. A lot of them were marked and a lot of them weren't. You had to be really careful where you were moving about. I liked the hunter-killer patrol better than I liked the static, just sitting there all night getting eaten by mosquitoes in the summertime and freezing your balls off in the winter. Yeah. A lot of interesting because it's where I first discovered kimchi. Kimchi. Kimchi. You know what kimchi is? No. Pickled cabbages. Oh, I do know what that is. Wow. There was one. They make kimchi. I make my own now. Nice. And you store it in porcelain jars. And in the old days you used to put out like a straw stopper in the top of it and it was about that big around and I stepped through one of them out in the DMZ and pulled my foot out what is that and the Koreans I was with went nuts ah kimchi you know and they started dipping it out with their canteen cups and that but a lot of destroyed villages uh really kind of ghostly moving around in you know they uh a lot of fog a lot of activities some months and a lot of months with no activity you know they were always trying to probe the wire and get through and slip infiltrators in there was a funny story there was a our sister unit was a third battalion of the 38th and they had there's two bridges across the one down by pam and john and one up north by newlery and the one up north was called freedom bridge and there were dad machine gun posts along the bridge looking down into the m gym river which at that point is probably a couple hundred meters wide and and if it during the monsoon season it's flooded. It's moving fast. This was kind of in between and one of the machine gun posts opened up. Just blasted away and said, I got a submarine in the water. And of course they had a sergeant of the guard and a lieutenant ran out there and they looked. They don't see shit. The guy was a spec 4. They took him back and they had him down to the sites to make sure he didn't crack up in that And he's going, no, I saw a submarine. I saw a submarine. Bullshit, right? Two weeks later, a mini slug washed up on a sandbar. Are you serious? Between that bridge and the next bridge with the crewman still in it. He had shot the conning tower, and the one guy got stuck in the escape hatch, and they all drowned. Well, he died. They made him a staff sergeant and sent him back to the States. Wow. There were all kinds of little incidents like that. They tried many subs off the coast, many subs up the M-Gym. A lot of times tried to come across in rafts, either rubber rafts or rafts they made out of vegetation and tried to float across and make their way stripped down and come across. Of course, in those days we had the mighty PRC-6 walkie-talkie at squad level. And I think it was a PRC-10, which you had to calibrate all the time to keep it on frequency. You spit. There was too much humidity in the air for it to stay on frequency. The weapon was M14s. And I think when I first got over there, we still had BARs for the squad automatic weapon. rather than the M14E2 because all that shit was going south. But interesting tour. I remember when it took from the DMZ to Seoul was a grueling, bouncing, jarring ride in the back of a deuce and aft. It took three and a half hours. On the Audubon now, the freeway, takes 15 minutes to get from Seoul to the DMZ. Jeez. So how long were you there? 11 months. And where did you go from there? I went to jump school. You went to jump school? Right, and from jump school into selection. Where was the Vietnam? Before that. Okay. Yeah. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah. It's the same as Korea, being a grunt. Yeah. I have an undying love for the Corps. If they'd have spent all that money on the Corps, they would have had a true UW capability. Like I said, I made the suggestion once that the Marines should be in charge of the Navy, and it wasn't well taken in that. But I learned discipline, and I learned that I could operate under pressure, and I learned that I could take a lot of suffering and still keep going. And that helped me a lot when I decided to transfer over. First of all, I went in the Army and in Special Forces because you could get promoted. You didn't have to wait for somebody to die up the chain of command for a slot to open. So it was, you know, and, you know, at that time, Special Forces was vogue. You know, go into the Green Berets, you know, be all the man you can be or whatever the slogan was. And I found it interesting. I found it really interesting. I read a lot when I was in high school, like I said, about the OSS and about the commandos. the Rangers and, you know, the Raiders, you know, all those specialized outfits. And it seemed like the thing that I could fit well in. How did you, did you see any mad, any SOG guys when you were in the Marine Corps? No. No. No. No. You know, when I, even when I was at CCN, And we worked with Tom Duchamp, the Seals over at Tom Duchamp. How was that? It was fun. I mean, they had a warrant officer named Mr. Johnson, a funny guy, funny guy. Whip cruel, too, if he had to be. And we used to change, you know, equipment. You know, you need this? Well, I got some extra of that. RPD lengths, yeah, we got some of those. RPDs, yeah, we got four of those extra in that, back and forth. And we did a couple of missions where they supported us with a, one time with a full SEAL team on an amphibious landing to blow up a bridge. And they, a typhoon or some sort of storm came up. They got washed way down the coast and didn't make the rendezvous. and we came in from the land and we found their boats. They washed up down the coast in that and they managed to infiltrate in and get picked up by a helicopter in that. But they didn't make the target. And we didn't make the target consequently too. Bad storm. Bad. They had some Marines with the SEALs that were working with the nasty boats. You know what the nasty boats are? Don't. So, it gets kind of convoluted. The CIA ran some of the projects, and the military was gradually taking over from them. The nasty boats were Norwegian PT boats. Okay. Real fast, you know, armed to the teeth and that. And what they were doing, they were going up into North Vietnam and taking agents and putting them ashore with those boats. and said they were doing raids and coming back out. And there were Force Recon Marines that were with the SEALs working on that project. I never, it's like now you see all these guys that claim that their unit was Maxog. You know, Force Recon was Maxog. I don't know if it was ever on the TONE. I never saw Force Recon running recon missions for Max Saug. They might have. You know, I was in one project. There were two others, three others. You know, that's possible. But, you know, Max Saug originally was the SEALs and Special Forces. The SEALs were down south, you know, where you guys, you know, with places flooded. It's your natural habitat. Keep your skin wet all the time. You know, go into hyperventilation. and up anything north into the highlands and up to North Vietnam was, you know, our kind of terrain. So it was those two units that basically made up the core of it. I did a study on my own when I was writing my first two books. The original T-O-N-E or MAC-SAUG, MAC-V-SAUG, was 1,174 Americans. assigned to it. That included all the officers, all the, you know, the support units, all the radio relay sites, all the, you know, the people that were at the launch sites, and the two sections of it that actually ran ground combat operations. So you take all that support stuff and shove it over here. You have, all right, we had 18 teams that were recon, And usually each team had two Americans assigned to it. So sometimes three, but two normally. That's 36 people in a recon company. The Hatchet Force, they had two guys per platoon or whatever. You got three platoons. So you had six guys in each company and they had three companies. So 18 there, 36. it's what, 48 people that are on the ground running operations on the ground and I've met 18,000 of them since I left the war and everybody I was in MacFeeds it's a very small group and I think there was, during this entire time if you took those numbers and translated into nine years and that, that's about But about 4,000 plus people. And only half of us survived the war. A little less than half of us survived the war. So it's a small, small fraternity. Yeah, yeah. Very elite. And I go to the SOA every year because there's 30 guys I like to drink with that are like brothers. And the rest of that hoopla with the politicians and that. I've never been to a business meeting yet. they've tried a number of times to shut the bar down during the business meeting and one time we got physical with the sergeant at arms and they've given up on that idea we don't go there for that yeah and and these days well when when we first started the soa it was for recon and then we went well that's not fair the guys in the hatchet force should be in it too so we let the guys from the hatchet force in then we let the guys that were at the launch sites in and the cubby riders and people like that and then when we were out doing things i went to africa for a while doing that i wasn't going all the time the colonels got in charge and then they started, they needed members, so they said, well, if you served in a unit that supported Max Sox, that's how we got all the rotor heads in there. Well, I didn't disagree with the helicopter crews that flew us in, and they were dumb enough to come back and pick us up, you know, but, you know, I didn't want their basketball control officer and their, you know, their H&R guy, whatever they call them, you know, So you ended up with a lot of people that were remps that got blessed into the organization. I got you. But there are fewer and fewer of us left every year. You know, the ranks are really, really thinning. Yeah. Yeah. So what did you actually... He's dying off early. did you did you get out of service and then re-enlist in the army or did you no no straight across the board well yeah and left that one and had to join the other basically that's how it worked in those days and you joined the army to go MACVSAG no no I joined the army to go special forces and I was in casual status so they sent me to Korea while I was waiting to get a slot. Gotcha. We'll just put you over here. You'll be comfortable. Gotcha. You already know what mosquitoes are like. Let's take a quick break and when we come back we'll get into selection. Selection? I don't know if I want to go into that. You don't? I'm joking. Alright folks. We've got a new sponsor on the show, Beam. They make one of the best sleep products on the market, Beam's Dream Nighttime Coco. It's helped millions of people get better sleep. And if you've ever struggled with sleep like I have, you know how much that matters. When you're sleep deprived, focus drops and mistakes happen. That's exactly why I turned to Beam. Beam is an American company that makes clean, science-backed products designed to help people perform at their best. Dream is their sleep formula, and it's loaded with ingredients your body actually needs to recover. Reishi, magnesium, apigenin, and melatonin, but dosed intelligently. This isn't the cheap off-the-shelf stuff. Dream helps you fall asleep fast and wake up clear. 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Well, in those days, it was phase one, phase two, and phase three. phase one was at camp mccall i can't remember how long it was i think it was like a month you went out and you learned basic patrolling you learned survival you learned uh target recognition all the things that you know woodcraft and that and you jumped in and uh you lived in in those days we lived in tents gp mediums and the only structures at camp mccall were tar paper shacks for the headquarters and the medic plant shack and the classrooms were you know open air or sometimes you know under under canvas and that interesting interesting uh four weeks a really intensive training with you know guys that the guy who funny story the guy who taught uh survival was an E7 named Rodney. Rodney, I think, was his first name. Nail. And Nail had a black eye patch because he'd gotten shot by an AK to his eye. Not one side. And he was a typical crusty old redneck, right? And, you know, he taught you how to, you know, they'd kill snakes and, you know, rabbits and other animals and teach you how to cook things, you know, take a, chickens that wrap them in mud and then put them in the coals of a fire and go do patrolling all day when you came back you just peel the mud off and it's uh roast chicken right stuff like that so uh we were getting ready to finish up phase one and i was with a guy named tony anderson tony got a dsc uh when rt kansas got wiped out um and he was a he was a pool shark when before he'd come in the army and that real real cool guy he said his nickname was fast eddie and uh nail is sitting we were getting ready to get go back to fort bragg and go into our mls training and uh nail was uh it was telling us well you know we ain got no booze here but you can get high if you take the mortar charges from the four deuce because they looked like little cheese packets. So just bite off a little bit. It was nitroglycer. So what he didn't tell us was that all your capillaries explode. so Tony and I ate a little bit too large of a chunk and we ended up in Womack Army Hospitals and they thought we had meningitis we're laying in the hospital ward the doctor comes in and he goes he had this clipboard he goes let me ask you something do either one of you two gentlemen know Sergeant Nail? yes sir I said well he usually gets one or two of the students in every class You don't have meningitis, but you do have some damage to your capillaries and that. But it was, you know, it was a good training. A lot of good guys I went through, you know, a training group with. Then later, you know, went over to become part of SOG. At that time, they were still filling up the A-teams over there. They were still active, and the mic force was active still. then I went to from there to weapons training and I was 11 Charlie now I think it's an 18 Charlie or I think they're all 18 BBs now but you went to small arms pistols first then submachine guns and carbines and then rifles and machine guns and then you transfer the next phase of that training was heavy weapons training. And it was both foreign and U.S. So we shot the Bren gun. We shot the RPD. We shot the Madsen, the Swedish K. All of those were in the curriculum. Both classes, assembly, disassembly, so you could do it in the dark. And then finally range, got to the range, and combat course and regular marksmanship training and that with each weapon. And then you transferred to mortars and we trained on the 4-deuce, the 81, the 60, both the Russian 82 and the Russian equivalent of the 60, and then recoilist rifles, the 57-millimeter, the 106, the Russian equivalent, and German equivalents and that. And then the Ford Deuce. We did the Ford Deuce and then the 105 Howitzer. So we learned up to the 105. Wow. Doing both. And you train both in the gun crew and then the fire direction control and then the forward reservists. Live fire on the ranges, calling in fire while the rest of, you know, some of you were manning the gun. Some of you were the FTC, and some of you were out there as forward observers and that. Very intensive course, very compacted. So a lot of practical exercise combined with teaching in the classroom. And then when you finish that, meanwhile, those others from your phase one who decided that they were going to be sparkies went to combo training and they did morse code day after day after day after day after day and they learned how to operate both our radios and the soviet radios and that and uh the engineers went off and learned how to build things you know you know framing framing barracks doing shit like that and also blowing things up very intensive course in in demolitions and that. And then the radio engineers. Oh yeah, the medics. You know how medics are. Sick. If there's a strange really goofy religion anywhere in the world you can bet both your medics are practicing. Highly intelligent with the bedside manner of Dr. Mengele. They go for a real long course. In those days, it was over a year. They'd go to the 300F1 course, and then they would come back and do dog lab. And dog lab was, they used to shoot dogs. And then their job was to treat the wound, manage the wound, heal the wound, bring the dog back, right? Yeah, live tissue training. And all the cruelty of the animal people got on their case and they changed over to doing it on goats. And the only step different is removing the Arab from the back of the goat. But very intense, of course. To this day, I would rather have a special forces medic treat me than any doctor. No kidding. In fact, there's a guy that teaches the SEAL teams combat medicine, a guy named Ron Broughton, who was in Berlin with me. He originally was in Project 404 in Laos. And he came to Dede, and he was a medic there. and eventually he runs like 20 emergency rooms in Florida and teaches up at Little Creek, you know, combat medicine there. Muscled up, really dyed almost white blonde hair. We call him Doc Savage. Nice. And he does have the bedside manner of Dr. Manuel. It doesn't hurt that bad. but special forces medics 18, what do they call them, deltas is that the same in the seals 18 deltas well they're going through the army's delta course yeah absolutely wonderful course you know special forces medics in the old days could get licensed as a practicing physician in over 20 countries no kidding the training was that good and that well respected. And to this day, it's one of the best courses that the military offers. Don't leave them alone with your girlfriends or household pets. And then when you finish with your MOS training, you went to Phase 3, and they brought everybody back together and formed up teams, regular 12-man team. There'd be two officers assigned to it. They had gone to their own course over here, which, you know, taught them not to scratch their nuts with the salad fork or whatever. And they would join the team, and then they'd jump you into Gobbler Woods exercising. And you'd actually operate as an A-team in an unconventional warfare scenario in that. And Phase 3 also had a real intensive class in the beginning of it, which was called Methods of Instruction, where they taught you how to teach, taught you how to teach the military way, how to compress all that knowledge of four hours of data into one hour and make it stick. So the dumbest guy in the class could get it. then you moved on from there and it taught you things like you know stage presence you know don't walk around with air force gloves on hands in your pockets you know don't be a sword fighter with the you know with the stick you know and you know and and how to tell jokes to lighten things up and that you know some of the jokes i heard were really lame too but that was a a good part of that and they they taught you the special forces operations as an A-team. What each MOS's responsibility were, you know, how to tie each other together with the team sergeant and with the officers and that. And once you graduated from that, in those days you didn't get a flash on the back of your beret behind a crest until you graduated from the Q course, as they call it now. Before that, you had a candy flash. No, you didn't have a flash at all. It was support troops that had the candy flash, a little ribbon, the same colors as the group patches and that. Okay. Yeah. And then once you were three qualified, that was the beginning. You went to a group and you were actively assigned to a team, and you started operating in a special forces team, you know, in whatever their missions were. Where did you go? I went to the sixth group. Like I said, it was a holding area for people that, and I was in the sixth group, I think, for like six months, seven months, something like that. We did a real interesting, in those days, the Red Empire bling didn't have South America. It was the eighth group, which was stationed out of Panama. And we did an MTT with the sixth group. we went down with them and we went to Bolivia. And at that time, they were tracking down bandits in the mountains and that, with the Bolivian Rinche, the Rangers, which were strange. All of them were Indians, big barrel-chested. You know, they all operate above 6,000 feet. So, you know, in the flatlands, they can run forever. Yeah. But they were tracking them down, and we were providing radio operators, and I went down there as a mortar instructor, and that was a 2-inch or 60-millimeter. It was easy to pack around in the mountains and get it into battery real quick. And they were just starting to use indirect fire when they caught these bandit groups, which eventually became the Sendero Luminosa, were 30, 60, 100-man groups in that, and they lived off raiding villages. They'd move into a village. They'd kill all the men. They'd rape the women until they used them up and throw all the bodies in the well and move on to the next village, and the rangers were right behind them trying to close them up, and we tracked this one group and the time I was there for about 60 kilometers over the mountains and finally caught them in makeshift bait camp and raided them and killed all of them except about maybe 10 or 15 that escaped out of the net. You were on that? Yeah. How many of them were there? A little over 100 when they started. Holy shit, so you guys killed them. And they, you know. 85, 90 people. They were no match for the Bolivian Rangers. You know, they were terrorizing the countryside because nobody, the militias really didn't have the firepower to stand up to them. And they were vicious. Vicious. Absolutely. They'd kill the children and throw them down the well and then got done raping the women and kill them and throw them down the well. You know, poison the water and move on to the next target. what was the point of that why were they doing that they were bandits they were just bandits and they eventually the communists came in and kind of moved them around and changed them into an insurgent force against the government it was interesting how do I put this While we were up there, we found an Inca grave. And I removed a couple of terracotta figures that were inside that grave and stuck them in my rucksack to bring them back because they were really, one of them was a corn god and the other one was like they were Loki, you know. And I had them in my rucksack, right. and when we were in the mountains they came around they came around the sergeant would pull out what looked like a bar of soap kind of a brown colored bar of soap take a pen knife cut a sliver off give it to you and say chew this and it helps you assimilate oxygen in the high altitudes well it was coke there was cocaine based material in that so normally they would give one bar to every three or five men and that and they ended up he was giving me one bar by myself so i wouldn't use it after a while i didn't need it and that i was just chucking it in my uh my rucksack so we flew back to brag they'd line us up and customs comes they're going to search everybody's bag and they uh dumped my bag out and i was really worried they'd find the two little caracotta thing they weren't even interested in that when that because it says on the outside of the cardboard box you know product de coca right so as soon as that fell out they were interested only that so they they got me standing there and i had like five or six bars in my rucksack and he goes what's this so much the stuff they gave us to assimilate oxygen at high altitudes and that and they're like really so they called for my uh sergeant major who was sergeant major louis brown little short guy um it looked like a fire plug they painted a face on it and he comes out there and he's like what the fuck have you done now i don't know you know it's uh and he's standing there with me and the two cussing guys are standing there and we're like acting like what's the problem here and the older guy the younger guy turns He's the older guy. He goes, you know, I don't think they know what we're talking about. And he goes, I'm pretty sure they don't. They ended up confiscating them, and I got through with my two little terracotta figures in that. Congratulations. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We'll have to add drug smuggler to your introduction. Yeah, thanks. Yeah. Yeah. It was, I thoroughly enjoyed Special Forces training, and I thoroughly enjoyed the process by which I finally, finally got on an A-team. And then started, I came back from Bolivia, and about a month later I got my order to go to Vietnam. And I was supposed to go to the Mike Force. and when we got to Vietnam I sent this guy Bernie O'Connell never have the Irish involved with anything you're doing because they hear a loud noise they think it's awake right so when we got to Natrang I sent them with our orders I said go over make sure we don't get policed up by one of those press gangs because we were at the regular repo depot in Saigon the consignate or wherever and uh i sent him over with the paperwork for the we were supposed to go to the mic force and he comes because the press gangs from the regular army divisions were looking for ncos and they'd pay somebody off in admin and they'd take four or five out of the lift and assign them as platoon sojourns or squad leaders to the division he comes back and uh i had uh he brought back some bummy bob beer in a net and i i had stolen a co2 fire extinguisher and we were busy lowering his body temperature in the room and he goes oh good thing you sent me over there because they we were on a list to go to the big red one and i'm going oh yeah uh but obviously it's not all bad news because he's back here and he's gritting he goes i ran into a guy now bernie was mid to late 40s was a buck sergeant he had been a master sergeant he got out of the army and got into high-tech field of eight air conditioning but he didn't have the accounting skills so he went bankrupt so he rejoined the army bulbous nose irish face you know looked like a oversized leprechaun so he's he's but i i got us a good deal this guy i know he was in the davy crockett platoon with me in germany you know what the davy crockett was it was a weapon that was deployed down to the i think battalion level and what it was was a an oversized mortar that shot a one kiloton atomic shell holy shit and the instructions were get in the battery get the gun ready fire the cannon and try and get a ridge line between you and the target before it goes off it was T&E and all the army divisions at that time I think Bernie might have been slapping leather to the guy's wife for a while. Comes back and he goes, I got us assigned to the Special Forces unit. There's a waiting line to get in. Bernie, the only waiting line in this country is at the airport to get out. He said, no, no, no, no. It's a special unit. It's all voluntary and that. And that's when my heart fell to my asshole. He goes, it's CCN. Well, I knew some people that had been in projects. CCC, CCN, whatsoever. and all of them were nuttier than a squirrel. So I go, oh, this can't be good, but it is voluntary. So we left Natrang, we went up to Da Nang, and when we were met at the airport, the most decrepit deuce and a half I've ever seen in my life was our transportation from the airport to CCN FOB4. and driving it was another friend of Bernie's that he'd known in the regimental combat teams in Korea who had a plate in his head. He also had instructions from the Army he was never to have pharmaceuticals and alcohol in his bloodstream and he had both when he picked us up. Stevie Comerford got a DSC and he was driving like a madman. When we pulled into the compound They were launching, and one of the launch sites was shut down. They were using Da Nang as a launch site. When we pulled into the compound, there was a Cobra on fire on the PSP. And Bernie would be going, oh, this is probably like one of those show camps, you know, with a crest on everything, everything cemented, colored stones and medicine. You know, Bernie, this doesn't look like one of those show camps. This might be a little different than that. And that was my introduction to CCN. Wow Sorry to travel so fast No So you get there Do you know what Max Sog is yet? I knew what Max Sog was because I knew some guys That were there before I was proud to be there It was also in the back of my mind This is a volunteer unit This is a volunteer unit But you know peer pressure You're never going to say I don't think I could cut it. How many of you guys went? I arrived with a, I think there were nine of us. Nine of you? That got assigned there. And a year later, three of us were still running Raycon. Shit. The rest were either wounded or dead, you know. But we had a real high attrition rate, you know. So, anyway, we processed the end. We pull in the front gate, get off the deuce and a half, and I see these really ragged-looking fucking gypsies sitting on this. They had a, you know what a mule is, the vehicle? Marines had it. They had a 106 mounted on it. It's a flat, looks like a coffee table on wheels, open seat with a steering wheel in that. anyway there's five or six of them hanging around on it with cut off jungle fatigues and wearing you know various parts of uniforms and that drinking wine and that when when we got out the truck the cat call started ah new meat this is great yeah whatsoever and uh the guy they came out and they took us in, they processed us in. And I think two guys went to the hatchet force and the rest of us got assigned to recon. So we got our briefing from the sergeant major. You know, this is a voluntary unit. This is what we do. We're a strategic recon outfit. You're going to be assigned to a recon team. When you get down to recon company, the recon company commander will brief you and assign you to your teams. Bye, Dandy. We go down to Recon Company, and my first introduction to Larry T. Manus was a Recon Company commander. Former E-7. Looked like a heavy gravity planet inhabitant. Thick neck, square face, crew cut, blonde. And we were standing outside the orderly room, and the door bursts open and a body comes flying out and lands in the sand. The guy kind of shakes his head, gets up, stumbles out down into the company and that, and the door swings open and there's Manus. I'm the recon company commander and this is your briefing, your orientation, and spoiling my drinking time. said you can call me sir you can call me motherfucker sir or you can just hide when I'm looking for you. First man. And I, you know, first of all I recognize that this is a retread. You know, I mean that kind of squat bread deal is immediately, you know, identifiable. So I said sir, you know worst thing I could have done is this is a voluntary unit. Yeah. It is peckerhead. You a barracks lawyer or what? I said, well, what did that guy do? He wanted to quit. And I hate quitters. I said, since you're so astute, I'm going to sign you without even interviewing. And I'm going to sign you to R.T. Habu. And you can go over there and make that hooch a collective IQ of three. And that's how I got assigned to Habu. Right on. I love Larry. He's in a hospice at home now. Oh, man. Just absolutely the best officer I ever served under. And Larry had been in projects in the very beginning. He was still wearing box hats, you know, yellow name tapes it should have. And he protected us from all the bullshit and took the flack for all our shenanigans and that. Yeah. Sounds like a good man. and when I stole the half track he confiscated it not because he wanted it for any other purpose than it had two big whip antennas on it with little guidelines and no radios just so it would slap back and forth when he slammed on the brakes you know they just said I'm confiscating it I think it ended up in security company somewhere else so how did it go when you got to when you checked into Habu when what when you checked into Habu how did it go yeah well yeah they had just come back from Quantry and they were on standout and they do you need to throw up or nope oh do it smuggling my notes yeah uh jimmy johnson and minnie mac were in the hooch um snake was up at headquarters he was the one zero and and danzer danzer and mac and jimmy johnson so they're sitting there they're cleaning weapons mac was cleaning a 22 with a silencer and i walked in i said and he goes before you say anything You're obviously the new guy. And you've obviously run into Daiwi Manis. Did you question him? Did you make a comment? What did you do to get assigned here? And I go, well, I asked him about it being a volunteer. And he says, well, he sent you here just to annoy us because you're obviously a Yankee. about that time Castillo the Cuban I think he was on Bolton's team at that time walks in oily little shit that he is and and he goes over to the refrigerator opens it up takes a beer out of it and starts to hold it up like that and Mac pings it with the 22 and it starts peeing all over the floor holy shit and he never misses the beat he goes just as a as a cautionary don't have anything you value around these two or they'll bubify it. And he drank a beer and went out. That was my introduction to Habu. Right on, man. And it was, we clicked right from the beginning. And Mac, Mac and I stayed together I think the longest. I stayed on Habu until like two months before I left and I took over as a 1-0 crusader. And of course, there was some chicanery in there. We had convinced Manus that I stuttered when I got excited. So I was absolutely no good on the radio, and they won zero in those days. They normally carried the radio and that. Until Boudreaux caught us chuckling about it and then threatened us. He said, I'm going to tell Manus what you two have been doing. So, but we ran together solid for 11 months. Wow. Did some interesting stuff. And we got Cookie. Cookie was a bonus. Cookie, Robert Cook, from Vidalia, Georgia. Olive skin. Had the mannerisms of a Mississippi riverboat gambler. Had a complete solid eyebrow all across here. And he called everybody stretch. Well, stretch. Yeah. You know, he was the first time I saw him, and he was a ranger. He had ranger strings on everything. Ranger string to his compass. Ranger string to his camouflage stick. Ranger string to his peanut radio, you know, all packed. I used to tell Mac, we used to throw him down in front of the NBA. They'll get all tangled up in all those strings and we'll be able to escape. But really intense professional guy. on the team Mac was a 1-0 he was a buck sergeant he was actually I outranked him when Maness finally did interview me he goes I'm assigning you to R.T. Habu and the 1-0 now is is McLaughlin he's a buck sergeant you got any grief with that? I said does he come back with the same number of people he went out with? what has that got to do with it? Well, if he does, I'm willing to change his diapers if that's necessary. So he was the 1-0. Really, really cool, calm, under fire. Never got flustered at Alabama. Well, I guess we're going to have to move because it's getting kind of hot here. And Danzer actually was the 1-0. but they had just come back from or right after that I went to I think I went to 1-0 school because you couldn't run Laos unless you went to 1-0 school down in Longton and they ran the bright light on Doc Watson and baby Jesus Lloyd both of whom had been lost on a mission up in the DL or in the Ash Owl the bright light went in damsler was a one zero because snake had gone home on emergency leave and they got on the ground the asho valley is built in a series of steps it goes up levels off goes up levels off got real sheer and they got inserted on the top of the plateau and they started working their way down because what had happened is that they pulled sammy hernandez out they got in a hellacious firefight and they pulled sammy hernandez out on strings and uh doc watson and baby jesus were on another set of strings and the helicopter lost power and they were on the strings underneath it that slammed into the cliff face man when they found both of them they were both dead they were hanging in the trees max said they looked like they were asleep just hanging there in their harness but they were they could see them but they couldn't reach them that they were out about they were up at the level where they could stand and see out and and to them but they couldn't reach them they were trying to get long branches and that try and pull them pull them back in and recover the bodies and they decided it got dark and they decided to spend a night on the top of the plateau so they we wouldn't flowers like maybe 100 meters to the top they got back up on the top set up in the RON and a half horseshoe thing and five o'clock in the morning there about say heard trucks pulling up the trail on the top and troops dismounting and they unloaded about three companies the NVA and started sweeping they knew the team was in there somewhere they started sweeping down the plateau and they they opened opened up on them with a RPG two two RPGs two rounds hit and one of Horton was with them too one one of some of the shrapnel blew his lower leg off and it was partially attached but it was it was off in that and uh they started dialing everybody in fighting soon and they were throwing stick grenades at them and that and eventually there was nowhere to go so they started going down the cliff just stepped off and went uh i heard different stories mac tried to throw horton to a tree for him to grab on he didn't make it went all the way down and mac tried to jump out to the same tree and didn't make it landed on top of him everybody got down to the bottom danzer got blown off the top of the cliff damn he was behind his rucksack and the radio was in the rucksack and he had a handset and either a grenade or an rpg hit nearby and blew him off he ended up at the pace of the cliff with nothing but the the handset in his hand and he was shocked you know he wasn't functioning totally cliff newman who was also a one zero had been strap hanging with him he took over command of the team and uh they they had one of the chase medics uh was also with a wood duck woody and he was patching up Horton's leg and dealing with the other wounded that were in there and Mack was covering the ridge there was like a cut in it and the MVA were trying to come down hopping from rock to rock and he was like at the carnival picking them off between the rocks and they Newman just performed outstanding he got the you know the 9mm pistol and I think a silver star for that. And eventually went and ran a recon club for us after that. He was basically responsible for getting everybody out that was still living and breathing. And they extracted them with a CH-53 and they worked over the top of that ridge line and turned it into a killing ground with air support and got a heavy hook in there and pulled them out of there. He was just recently, they're trying to get his Silver Star changed to a Medal of Honor, which he really deserved for his actions that day. It went all the way through the Chief of Staff of the Army, all the way through the Secretary of Defense, and then it was approved under the Biden administration. And then when the new administration came in, they just killed it out of politics. They killed it? they killed it heck says said no and we think it's because the guys who approved it were all Biden appointees but Newman earned that medal seven times over that day you know and I know that this thing with approval higher awards from a lesser award when Paris Davis got do you know him I don't Paris Davis, read his Silver Star and his Medal of Honor, which he eventually got. He was a colonel. He was a young captain at the time. He did stuff on a mission that they make movies out of. Went out from the, you know, saved people that were wounded, dragged them back into the perimeter, went back out, captured prisoners, brought them back, and basically got everybody out of it. and that. And I think he got a silver star for it. The Army didn't like him because he was black. In those days, the Armor Corps is what ran the Army. And there was a lot of racial prejudice. They thought he was just uppity. And they weren't going to give him a medal of honor. He got out and retired as a colonel. He was my commander at Devons for a while. Best group commander I ever had. And he eventually the guys got together and they went back and redid it and got his Medal of Honor here last year. Oh, man, right on. He was at the convention last year. I love Paris. He was special. I had to go to race relations classes. In those days, yeah. What classes? Race relations. Race relations. Equal Opportunity Race Relations. They picked two NCOs. So they picked me and a guy named Johnny King, who was a full-blooded Chakaria Apache, right, to go to the classes. And there's a guy from my battalion, right? And there's two guys from 3rd Battalion, whatever, two guys from headquarters, all that. And we're supposed to learn how to be correct, politically correct, and be able to hold classes to train the rest of the chimpanzees in the techniques of being politically correct. So we're in this classroom, and they've got a guy. He's an associate professor or something like that from Boston College, complete with the revolution knitted black power cap on and the dreadlocks and all that. And he's talking on about, you know, well, you know, we've got to be careful about how we call each other. And, you know, these things have been done bad to black people in the past. And when I walked into the room, I turned the thermostat up to 94. So King is sitting in the front row. he's unbutting his field jacket and was nodding off everybody was nodding off except me i'm watching to see all of them fall asleep and uh the instructor came over and kicked king's foot said wake up and he uncoiled out of that seat and pulled a cruiser bowie out of somewhere and had it against this guy's throat. He's going, they used to kill my people for sport and I still like them better than I like you. That's it. Out of here. We get sent back to group. I got sent back because I was with it. I hadn't done anything. 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Policies issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company not available in certain states. Prices subject to underwriting and health questions. What was your first mission with Mac V. Sock? It was you went to the was it the Ash Hill? I think it was the Ash Hill. lower end of the ash shell. And it was a recon mission, linear recon. We were supposed to follow this trail and see if we could find common wire so that another team could come in and put a wiretap on it. And we landed, and this particular target was in an old caldera, and the trail ran up to the center of it and that it was reported there was a a north vietnamese regiment in that caldera somewhere and uh we were going to go in and do linear recon and partial area recon inside that six by six no bomb buck and uh when they when they put us in we came under fire immediately as soon as the choppers lifted off everybody in the world started shooting at us and I remember that was a mission anyway my job on the team was to fight the team as a unit mine and cooks and Mac handled the radio made sure the cubby got air into us when we needed it did all that stuff, kept in communications with Covey. So I'm fighting my fortunate team, laying them in down below and that. I saw these NVA break out of this ravine, like we're down here like this. Over here is this ravine, and there's a ravine that runs up, follows up that way. I saw them break cover and run up in that ravine, and I started moving up to tell Mac. and I saw a bunch of three or four stick grenades come up out of that ravine and land right where he was. So I run up there. Fuck, they got the radio and they got the midget at the same time. This is bad. So I get up there and he starts yelling at me, will you please get down your draw on fire? And he's got his pants down. And I look at what, he's checking to see if his junk is still there because he's got a shrapnel wound on the inside of his leg. And I'm thinking to myself, this is the coolest son of a bitch in the world. He's masturbating. He's got the thing to look like that. He goes down and grabs a cubby. He was on the line. You'll have to wait a minute. The one zero is masturbating. You said that? Oh, yeah. And Dave Cheney, big Paiute Indian, was that cubby writer. He goes, well, besides that, what else you got? We called in airstrikes and eventually pulled out. I remember we got back and I had my basic load normally when I was carrying a car 15 was one, two, three, four canteen covers with six magazines, one of which was a 30-round magazine, and six 30-round magazines and an AK vest, two canteen covers with mini grenades, two M67 baseball grenades, and a WP grenade, and plus extra stuff for, you know, we carried a machine, you know, we carried a belt of ammo and a thing. When I got back on, back to the launch site, I had two magazines left. Holy. And my pistol ammunition and everything else I shot. I would have blown up a nuke and told them it was kids playing with fire if it would have helped. But it was just, it was that intense. And I'm telling Matt, I said, God damn, that was intense. He goes, that was a train ammunition. So you're kidding me. and the yards like you by the way because you've got dialogue when you're hyperventilating that was my first mission it it just went on from there you got into the rhythm you go back to the on site you'd either pull a bright light for a team that was going in or you were done and you went back to Da Nang, and you get three or four days off, and then you went back into that process again, go into isolation, get your target, go to launch site. How did that compare to your Marine Corps deployment? Oh, a world of difference, world of difference. What was the major differences? The intensity of combat. Really? You have no idea, well, you do probably, how loud combat is. and the smell, and the deuterus, the dust, the explosions, the, you know, the blood. It's, you're many times fighting at very close range with these, you, we were heavy enough that we could give a company a black eye. You hit us, and we were going to hit you so fucking hard that you want to back off. And that's how we survived. we'd pick the point and we would go for that point to break through and break out and get some running room and then find our terrain that we could defend and that and it was in that short time period like I said you'd use a five, six, seven magazines just doing that breakout wow and grenades and anything else you could throw out there claymores on coat hangers Claymore's on coat hanger. Yeah, you'd cap them and have them everywhere and ready to go, and you'd put a coat hanger on it. And you've got the clacker in the bag. You pull the claymore out, and you throw it up in the tree, and then run to the end of the wire and fire it off, break contact. Make sure it's facing the right way. And then run off, and then it just clears a path. or throw it in front of you and blow it off so you got a clear path in that. And a lot of mini grenades. A lot of mini grenades. How many guys were you rolling out with? Normally, it was the three of us, or sometimes just Mac and I. But the three of us, after a while, that was the three Americans and from six to eight Montagnards. Sometimes we'd take ten Montagnards with us up to lunch in case we got tasked with a bright light. We'd have extra guns on the team. Because remember, they've got to have enough helicopters to get you in and get you out. So you can't overload them in that. But normally, six to eight yards and two or three of us. How often are you guys going out? Well, every night? Every what? How often are you guys going out? Well, the rotation was you'd go to the launch site. The only two times they gave us a target after we ran a target while we were up there. And we did the isolation thing in the hooch at the time, and it was an ambush. We were trying to get a prisoner. but most of the time you go to launch site you'd launch do your thing be back in five days get two or three days off go back in the system go back up the launch site three or five days back sometimes one day After a while I was telling him what his name I had one target. I can't remember whether it was Hotel 6 or, I think it was DM-10, Demilitarized Zone 10. It was that caldera thing again. I ran it four times, and my cumulative time on the ground was a little over an hour. and four times wow that you know like i said it was intense if you got caught or they thought they could catch you with your pants down they put everything they could to kill you and capture you because they knew if you got on the radio and got the air power they had to grab you by the belt buckle before that so it was right at the first edge full push trying to get on top of you And then once you can break contact, kill enough of them to make them back off, then you could start doing an IA drone, getting a path to where you could grab some terrain. When we looked at the target areas, we specifically picked terrain that was in the neighborhood of where the LZ was or along our path. If we got hit, we're going to go here because that's defensible. We can't defend it here or over here, but we can there if we get air power in. Shit. Yeah, that brings back a lot of memories. I'll bet it does. Yeah. Sometimes I can smell it. Are you doing all right? Yeah. No brains, no headaches. How's that? Yeah, I don't normally get weepy. I get weepy over the little people. Yeah, we... Our Tihabu was a brew war party. Plain and simple. Just like dog soldiers, you know, from the Crow. When we hit the ground, the last people in the world you wanted to run into It was us. Just the finest, finest troops I ever worked with were the yards. No kidding. Yeah. How long were you there? Huh? How long were you there? How long? How long were you with that specific unit? Oh, for 11 months straight with Habu. And when I took over Crusader, they were also a brew team. so you know we had sedang brew raday all different tribes uh the the brew looked like bushman real short you know very you know sometimes almost african features in some of them uh the sedang lighter skinned and they filed their teeth so they looked when they grinned at you they looked like wolves no tattoos and raday looked like pollinasians very good-looking people beautiful all of them are beautiful people but uh the raday women are stunning you know and then we had some jirai and some of the teams were vietnamese and some of the teams were uh shit vietnamese and noong's big fucking chinese rick hendricks had all noong's he couldn't remember their names so he named them after uh donald duck's nephews huey dewey louis whatever yeah and it's uh huey spoke english like he was from southern california we funny story my team's going to to Quantry, the launch site. And Hendricks' team is coming back. Or no, we're coming back. We're at Quantry. We're getting ready to go back to Da Nang. And Hendricks' team comes up there. He's got seven noons. Huey, Dewey, Louie, whatever. And they're on, I don't know who thought this up. They came in on a caramou. And there was two donut dollies on board. as we're laying in the shade waiting for the caribou to turn around and get on it and go back to Da Nang and Hendricks and his team start filing off with all their man jewelry and they're coming down and preceding them are the two donut dollies and they're going well I can't believe this I can't believe that those gooks were on the plane with us one of them had this face I swear it looked like a horse was long and the other was kind of portly and they were all outraged you know going whatever they go over towards flight control over there and that and hendrix comes out hendrix is going he's kind of chuckling to himself for that here's what happened they're on the plane and they're in orbit getting ready to land and that and horseface starts going wow what are these gooks doing on the plane with us you know why are we here with these gooks and everything and and uh hendrix is is huey started in by well uh actually uh are you official army prostitutes is that what that uniform is and that blaked her eyes up wide open this is a i think it's a great idea but uh i actually own a whorehouse in the trang and i don't think i could get five bucks a trick for both of you unless there was a werewolf involved yeah all in perfect English right and Hendricks tries to throw water on the fire and he goes well you know I know you have to understand they're going on a dangerous mission they you know they may be you know may not say the best of things in that and he says I understand your mission being Red Cross and all that where you put up the you know the the maps with the name the state some lucky guy gets an extra donut and that and he says look here he sticks his finger out through his fly and he goes looks like the state of florida and everything ended there and we ended up the guy from the flight right comes out there you need to get on that caribou and get it on now they've contacted the provost marshal and they're on their way here right now yeah hendrix him and his nuns his star english people man you know i was talking to our mutual friend John Stryker Meyer before he got here. Yeah, Tilt hides a lot of his sins. He had a, he had a couple questions for you. He wanted to know about the pet monkey at CCN. Fucking monkey. Yeah, Mac had a pet monkey. I don't know where he acquired a spider monkey. No, it was actually, I think it might have been a gibbon. Anyway, a nasty little piece of shit. We had, we had a pole with a perch on it outside our hooch. And of course Sergeant Major's like, Billy Wah's going, get rid of that fucking monkey. I don't want to see that fucking monkey. And Mac kept it just to aggravate the Sergeant Major. All the dogs in Recon Company hated this thing because it would sit on his perch, scream at him, roll up his shit and throw at him. And all of them wanted, most of all, UGMO. UGMO was a mixed breed, two of which weren't from this planet. It kind of looked like a Sharpay that had cancer. And Cook and I were secretly feeding at screwdrivers with Darvon. So I hated the thing. Cook hated it more because the monkey would break into our hooch and find anything that belonged to him and either chew it, shit on it, or do something else with it. It wouldn't bother my stuff or Max. Always went after Cook's stuff. so one night we got sick of it you know get rid of this god damn monkey once and for all Mac went downtown and we were in the hooch we didn't want to go downtown we'd been at the club and we'd been drinking so we started feeding the monkey Darbon and screwdrivers at an accelerated pace until finally we started to have storm right and we were sitting in the doorway watching the monkey and he's out there rolling it up shit throwing it at the dogs and over down here and finally it just went and fell over backwards and hit the ground and they ripped it to fur and bones in about five minutes the dogs did the dogs did right and uh so we're uh before that we had thrown the monkey on Lamar when he came back from the club and he tried to shoot it and he hit UGMO instead. So UGMO was out of the pack at that point. So we decided to cover, it was lightning, right? So we go, wow, we can cover up this crime. So we set fire to the pole and the remains on the ground. So when Matt came, stumbled back in there later on the night, he found the monkey and woke us up and he went oh it must have been a lightning that hit it and that and he goes that's why we thought we got away with it and as we were getting ready to go breakfast he goes uh by the way uh i think it was pulley pulley told me all about how my monkey died and so that's what happened to the monkey he used to the monkey would sit on his head and he'd like some kind of weird hat and he'd go how do i look it looks like that monkey's got an ugly growth on its ass. Yeah. I hated that thing. We offered to buy him another one. He goes, nah, you two as pets are enough. What is with the World War II helmet? Ah, well. Family heirloom. I wanted my Luger. I had a Luger. So I told my mom, send my Luger over to me and she sent the helmet. too. When the day I got it, the impacted the helmet was a fruitcake. Even the yards won't eat fruitcake. Really. That, whoosh, number 10. So I get that, I get that, she put my Luger in a family-sized box of Cheerios. The only dry cereal we got at the mess hall was grape nuts. You know, little hard, crunchy rocks. So Cheerios was like a special thing so i run over to the best hall and uh i'm sitting there with mac and cookie we all got our little bowls and the milk and everything and we're having cheerios and that as i'm pouring it out the barrel of the luger falls out into my bowl just as manis walks up to the table and then came to the handle and the receiver and the magazines and he goes well how did he say how did he put it he goes uh what are those great that doesn't look like a box of Cracker Jacks, my man. But the helmet was fun. I wore it on bright lights where you go in and you know you've got to shoot. I figured, you know, the NBA would go, whose side is Germans on? Yeah. And other people borrowed it. Eldon borrowed it one time. Barswell. Mm-hmm. And who else was it? I wouldn't let Jimmy Johnson wear it because he looked like something really grotesque. Big ears hanging out from underneath it. But, yeah, I brought it back. When I came back, I had it in my luggage, my bags, and the MPs tried to confiscate it. And everybody that was there ganged up on it. No, no, no, no, no. That was sent by his mom to him. And they just, okay. So I managed to get it back to the States. a pissed off girlfriend got rid of it I was offered 10 grand for that helmet I'll bet with my name and pictures of me with it and that it was worth 10 grand which I bring up to her once in a while and you missed out on that one what is with the sawed off RPD a lot of guys have not just me before I got mine I had one of the Philippine armors up at S4 would saw them off make sure that it was just the right length that you didn't fuck up the rate of fire too much it's we had sawed off M60s too the sawed off M60 had a tendency for the fucking barrel to fall out in mid stroke the RPD did not have that problem and it slightly slowed the cyclic rate of fire, but it sounded like a 50 caliber. Doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom. And some of us, like Cassio, I did it online too. I put an oil funnel on the front of it. And when that thing went off, it really sounded like a 50 and it would shoot a gout of blue-green plasma out about six feet in front of it. At night, it was horrifying. but it lighter easier to move around in the bush which you'd carry a lot more ammo with it because you know it's 52 instead of or 39 instead of 51 for the extra weight there in the shells and that and I got so I can make it sing and it was real effective on bright lights you need a lot of firepower you need it down you need something that can chop through brush to get to them the RPD is your weapon excellent for that I taught myself how to load you lift the cover just like you do on an M60 it's got a feeder strip that comes out of the drum that you have to put through and pull out and then slam the lid if it's in the drum if it's in a belt it still has a feeder clip but you gotta feed it through hold it, pull it through to get it out. I taught myself how to do that by reaching over and doing that and being able to then slam the lid down. But I wanted something that I could protect myself with. You know, I had the pistol, high power that I carried, or the Silas 22 if I was carrying it. We might stumble upon somebody that we could capture. But I had the armorers make me a sawed-off 12-gauge coach gun. That long with the little pistol handle and that two barrels. And I carried 25 rounds for it in my 1-0 vest and one up here either in loops or in the pockets if I had a vest on. Otherwise, I kept them in a canteen cup cover. and I added in a slide holster in the small of my back so when I had to reload the gun I'd be reloading it with this hand and I'd pull that 12 gauge out so I could cover myself and I started I was using double lot buck and slug and then I came up with a bright idea that slug just wasn't doing the job that it should so I started I took the double lot buck out I left the bottom four. And then I put, I was putting nickels in there to start with. And I started counting up how much that was going to cost me. And I went, hmm. So I started using a five dong piece. It's a brass coin the same size as a nickel. And it's brass. So I could put four of those in on top of the buckshot at the base of it. And then three rounds of buck, you know, the balls on top of that, and they close it up, seal it. That, at close range, both barrels will blow a man in half. I know that for a fact. You've seen, you've blown a man in half. That guy came up on me in the elephant grass, and I let loose at about eight feet. And his legs were there, and the top of his body went there. Shit. Because the brass doesn't deform, and it comes out like little saw blades or flat, and it just cut them in half. I was surprised myself how bad it was. And after that, that was the load for the shotgun. What were the slugs doing? Why do you say they weren't doing the job? There wasn't enough of them to really get a pattern. they either too many of them went out to the side rather than hitting center or mass the flat coins worked better because it held together as a mass you know and it it was devastating it would cut down brush too shit but you know you learn and you adapt you you know you did all kinds of crazy shit with guns How many times were guys sneaking up on you? I think three times that I actually had to use the shotgun. Because I was quick reloading that gun. I could drop the old drum, put a new drum in, and get it in a matter of seconds. Just when we were, I was always nervous about somebody coming up on me when I'm crouched down or bent over the gun. I didn't want to get shot. and having the shotgun handy was, you know, Max only complained, quit waving that thing around. I'm only going to shoot you on intent. That was a good weapon. Good weapon. Did the killing bother you? Did the killing bother you? Did it get to you? No. most of them were jumbled together every you know years afterwards some of them are oh i had a it's in the book i i had a ghost that haunted me for a long time what a ghost we'd come back when i was you know i'd have had a malarial relapse and he'd be visited and when i'd get tired or you know didn't take care of my my you know my drinking and that I'd wake up in nightmares. It was a 16-year-old, 15, 16-year-old kid, MVA. He had... He came up on me real quick. well actually i fell on top of him i got blown we were trying to dig in on this little incline and that they were pushing us and a grenade went off and blew me and one of the other yards down in a little gully that was behind us and that they were coming up it and i landed in amongst about five or six of them and the only thing i had was an entrenching tool and i killed him with the entrenching tool and i remember like i said i don't think about him often but i remember he was the same age as my little brother fuck man The others, I remember them screaming, yelling, teeth bared, coming at us. Or they came up with us real quick and I dropped them. They didn't really get to look in their eyes or see their face. You hear them kicking around and screaming after they were on the ground. But most of that's a jumble. Every once in a while, one will pop up because of something that we did or you see a piece of terrain that looks just like we were in, you know, you'll come back and they'll pop up. You know that? They didn't have PTSD. Before that, they called it battle fatigue. And we never thought we were battle fatigued. You know, it was years afterwards we realized that, you know, we had drinking and anger problems and why. And the military finally accepted the fact of what it was. and started, the VA started treating it. But, you know, in the early days, we just managed to push it aside. A lot of drinking, you know. I know a lot of guys that got into the bottle and then welded the cap on after them. Yeah. So. How would the ghost appear to you? Oh, the what? The ghost. What about him? How would he appear to you? It would be a nightmare, and he'd be like I last saw him with half his head caved open and one eye falling out, and he would wake me up. And he'd just be, in the book, I described one of his visits. I'm on the lake in Minnesota, and I'm fishing with my little brother. and he's uh he's got this old yellow rain jacket on that my mom hated in that and he's bent over he's he's not facing me he's facing out the back of the boat and he's fishing he's got a line in the water and And he's sobbing. Sorry. It's okay, Nick. Pussy. It's okay. Anyway, I reach over to touch his shoulder to find out why he's crying. And he turns around. and it's the kid, not him. And he grabs my hand, and I stand up, and he steps off the back of the boat with me. And I'm going down under the water, and he's holding onto my hand, and I can't get him to let go. And then I wake up. Shit. It's okay. It's okay. Yeah, well, I don't want to be a pussy. I don't want to go there. You know, I have a really good friend of mine. His name's Chris Fettis. He was a sniper for a dev group. And I had him on. And he had to kill two kids on a hostage rescue mission. And he has nightmares similar to that. Oh, yeah. And he had sons. Some of them never leave you. They're that age. In his nightmares, his sons look up at him. I haven't had a visit from him in 10 years. Probably, maybe. And it's always when I'm worn down, you know, then it comes back. Or like today. How do you deal with it? I push them back. Push them back. Don't let them in. And I try not to think about things like that. Try not to think about some of the guys that I know that got blown to pieces. But, you know, one minute they were there, and the next minute there's some kind of hamburger meat with bones sticking out of it. You just deal with it. First of all, the psychiatric industry is a bunch of hooey. All those therapists that try and talk you through it. I did a little bit of that when I was in Germany. And the problem is that they put a jacket on you, and now you're barred from enlistment and all that shit because you're loopy inside, so nobody goes to them. And two sessions I went to was, yeah, listen, Bozo, you don't even know what you're talking about. You're trying to, you're condescending. And that's an insult, you know. It's, you know, I got problems, I'll deal with them. Thanks. Sign my slip so I can get out of here. My generation, we just dealt with it. We dealt with it. I see some of these guys now with a traumatic brain injury from bombs and that, and severe PTSD. First of all, a Navy SEAL, God bless his soul, found that psychedelic mushrooms can be used to treat PTSD. Psychedelic mushroom, there's a friend of mine, Al Mullen, another medic, who understands this completely, how it's done and all that. And the VA is just now starting to accept it as a treatment protocol. It's psychedelic mushrooms, some kind of bark from a tree. It's Ibogaine. And crystallized secretions from some African frog. It's a U.S. toad. Is it a U.S. toad? The Sonoran toad. We're talking about 5-MeO-DMT and Ibogaine. Oh, cool. I've done it. Have you done this? No. No. Why not? I got too much shit to do right now. Nick. But the other thing that they found out about it, it cures drug addiction. Yep. You've got your meth, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, whatever. It takes away the total desire to have those substances in your body. That is the method they should use for cleaning up the drug addiction and the homelessness in this country. Just grab them off the street, stick them in a re-education compound. micro dose their food until they finally realize that they don't want to be on it and then put them through the treatment but no i haven't done it or haven't even approached it i did it did it help fuck yeah it helped i haven't had a drop of booze in almost four years really and it was effortless yeah that's why all these fucking bottles are still here otherwise they'd all be gone but it Nick I'm not going to bullshit you it fucking changed my life well maybe I'll get around to it someday I don't drink that much anyway anymore my normal consumption is probably a glass of wine with dinner this helps a lot more than just taking the booze away this stuff helps a lot more than just taking the booze away. I'll talk to Al. I'm sure he'd like to watch while I go through it. Yeah. And I would trust him to watch while I go through it. Yeah. Is it offered to the VA? No. You have to go to Mexico. Well, I go to Mexico all the time. Well, not all the time. Maybe I can... Where is it, Mexico City? I can't say exactly where it is because... because you don't want to arrive in a laundry bag and they dropped you off that's right at a clinic yeah I will tell you off camera where it is yeah okay and if you want I will connect you with the people like I say I might think about it I hope you do I'm not usually this weepy or loopy that's okay happens a lot in here I get like that when I think about the yards laying on top of me to keep me from getting hit again. You know, that's another one that brings the tears. Yeah. Probably because I owed them money. More than like, or they thought that I owed them money. Do you want to talk about the prisoner capture attempts? The what? The prisoner capture attempts. The prisoner? Capturing prisoners. Oh, yeah, well, that didn't turn out all that well. We really, how we only had, well, when I was there, only had one real prisoner's snatch. And we went there to do a prisoner's snatch. the uh the area was high concentrations and it was laced with trails that couriers and etc if they knew that you were wiretapping or that they had moonbeam overhead trying to listen for radio signals and locate things on the ground they would use couriers on trails going back and forth between the different units and that we we set it up to do the uh to do a snatch and it was fairly simple we we found a trail high speed trail knew that they would use it if they got pressed and that and they we started using an air support to bomb them and make them get up and start moving around in that. And they knew if we were bombing them, they'd have something up there listening for radios at the same time. So they went, anyway, we're set up on this trail. Kind of cool. It was a really large tree back from over there where the wall is. And Mack was behind that. and I was over here behind some slightly smaller trees than that and I had a Silence 22. Was it 22? Yeah. And Mac had a Silence gun in that. And anyway, the yards are spread out to kill anybody behind the ones we want. We're going to let a couple of them go through yards are on the other side of Mack, a couple of them and three or four of them behind me over here down stretched out on that trail. So they start bombing making them get up and move around and that we hear that pitter patter little feet coming down the trail and it's three guys actually four. One guy slightly ahead the guy in the next guy was an officer we knew he was an officer because it's the you know collar tabs and he had a map case and uh the guy behind him and then uh a third guy or yeah a third guy behind him and that and I waited for him to get by and uh mac stepped out shot the first one in the leg and pistol whipped him and then shot the second guy uh and i i got the the third and fourth guy i killed them and uh the one guy when i shot him He said, brother in Vietnamese. And it turned out later that the guy in the front was his brother. And he was calling out to him. And the guy that we shot and captured, you know, shoot him in the legs and he can't run off. Put a tourniquet on him, grab him, cuff him up, start carrying him, start deeing him out to get to an LZ to get pulled out. We did all that in a matter of minutes and we're gone. Well, we stripped the bodies, went through their pockets and everything, threw it into a sack. I think we used an A7-8 bag. So all their equipment except for the guns. And pulled the bodies and took the guns apart and threw it out under the underbrush and hid the bodies in that. Sometimes we'd take the bodies back with us, too, so they could do an autopsy and see what they were eating, and see if they had any kind of parasites, that sort of shit. You know how doctors get involved. But we grabbed the guy. We went to the extraction LZ. They dropped the strings, and we decided to put Kuhlman, the 101, and I think some pot on there with the prisoner. and then Mac and I and the other yards got on the second chopper that came in and we lift out and away we go into the blue yonder and that. We're watching the one in the front and suddenly it looked like somebody dropped a rucksack. There was three yards with the prisoner on the first one and we thought somebody dropped a rucksack. It was the prisoner. What had happened, they had them trussed up and they didn't get to snap and link him in tight enough to him. And he started swinging around down underneath the aircraft and he came back in and he bit Koeman in the face and held onto him like that. And Koeman just pulled out a knife and just sayonara. There he goes. Holy shit. All the way to the ground. We were already counting the bonus money. Let's see, that's $300. you and 300 for you and the yards all get a month's pay we get to go to the train get laid and we watched them go all the way to the ground we got to the refuel point it was a old uh fire base and they land everybody's rolling up the strings and that we go see coomins bleeding all over his face and that you know mac goes what happened and he explained it says well yeah you you why did you kill him you better be in the face you know number 10 dvc that uh i said well you know we're not going to get paid money for it don't need money need to kill vc that was the end of the end of the conversation that's how boudreaux threatened us because when we got back to the lunch site we were sitting in that little mess hall portion that we drank beer in and we were joking about what we were going to tell Manus, how we lost a prisoner. We were going to tell him that I tied him in with some knot I learned in the Sea Scouts. Or I forgot the rope and I packed it because I had too many candy bars in my rucksack. I used a piece of rope we found out there. And Boudreaux was listening over in the shadows. He goes, you know, you're lucky I just don't tell Manus what you two are really up to. It's a good mission. Just things went bad at the last minute. I have here that you were interrogating captives in the field. Yeah. No? No. Never had time for that. Okay. You might do impact interrogation on me. How many more are with you? Where are they? And the yards handled that. But, you know, you don't have time to do that. You snatch them and you run because getting them back is everything. And turning them over to people that can really, like I said, impact stuff. How many guys were with you? That sort of thing. Slap, slap. Yeah, let's go. You know, the most valuable POW that I heard of that CCN got was Eldon Bargewell. what do you think that F.O.W. did for a living? He was the battalion mess sergeant. No shit. So we know who he had to feed, what their names were, what units they were, where they were at, all their rations. He had all this wealth of information because he was the mess sergeant. The guy we grabbed, the only thing he was a senior lieutenant and he was the and we're acting as some sort of S2 capacity because the map case had you know just like we use the clear plastic covers and he had units marked on it and all that and it was a tactical map so he wasn't a line officer and we pulled a bunch of shit out of his pockets that you know gave the guys in Saigon said well he was an intelligence officer Yeah, I remember Eldon told me, he said, the one time they found carved into a tree born in the north to die in the south. Yeah. A lot of people don't realize how much outdated banking is costing them. Monthly fees, overdraft charges, and minimum balances that punish you for not having enough. That's how traditional banks have worked for years. Chime is built differently. 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Head to chime.com slash SRS. That's chime.com slash SRS. Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services, a secured Chime Visa credit card, and MyPay line of credit provided by the Bancor Bank N.A. or StrideBank NA. MyPay eligibility requirements apply and credit limit ranges $20 to $500. Optional services and products may have fees or charges. See chime.com slash fees info. Advertised annual percentage yield with chime plus status only. Otherwise, 1.00% APY applies. No min balance required. Time card on time payment history may have a positive impact on your credit score. Results may vary. See chime.com for details and applicable terms. Yeah, I mean, you've got to remember, these guys are GIs just like us, just wearing a different uniform. Yeah. Hardcore little sons of bitches. I'll give them that. Sounds like it. I had a lot of respect for them. I didn't have any respect for the VC because they were ash and trash, you know, militia. But the Pavan, they would come to bombs to get at you and keep coming, you know, take casualties. Damn. Were you on an operation, too, that did you retrieve downed pilots? Oh, yeah. We did a couple of times on bright lights. you're doing a bright light choppers go in you're the one you got to go get them I remember I think the chapter is called blue eyes we went in on a chopper that had gone down on an insert and we the one one and a door gunner had not gone in with the helicopter. They had leaped free from the wreckage. Or when they hit the water, they got thrown free. Everybody else was dead. And it burned afterwards, which is bad. I did another one. One of them I had the guy delivered to me. Another bright light. One of the choppers was going past, got shot to shit, took an RPG right in the transmission and fell out of the sky. And the door gunner got blown up the slope. He landed like that far away from me. He still had the M60 in his hand, except the barrel was cut in half from shrapnel and that. And the other guys, well, the chopper rolled down the hill. We were going to go down to it and see if anybody survived. and uh no that was a another one we went in and uh later on the afternoon on the wreckage and we got there and we got up on we could see the chopper in the brush below us and we could see movement around it but according to the cubby everybody had gotten pulled out so we thought it was mva going over the wreckage and that pulling shit out and that so cook threw a grenade down there and it landed up. The chopper was laying on the side like that. The grenade landed here, went off. Threw another grenade, it landed on the other side of the chopper and it went off. And we heard this voice, please don't throw another grenade down here. And it was American. Oh boy. So we'd go down, it was one of the door gunners and his leg was pinned under the underside of the aircraft in that. He had... Shit. almost gotten out and the aircraft rolled over on him. So we managed to break him out of the wreckage and got him back. The funny story. They take him to the evac hospital and he's in one bed and the co-pilot is in another bed. The middle of the night, the staff hear the ruckus and he's in there trying to strangle the co-pilot. And what had happened was when they unasked the aircraft, they just left him and took his M60 and reported that he was dead. So they took his gun and left the aircraft. And he was trying to kill that warrant off. Yeah, a number of times we went in. I went in on an F-4. One pilot had either failed to eject or partially ejected. He was still in the aircraft. He was dead. And we found him. He was kind of jammed up against the ejection seat, went out about halfway before something folded in it and stopped it. And the rockets in the ejection seat burned him to death. He was toast from, let the waste out. Everything was burned off. Damn. Yeah. Not a nice way to go. No kidding. I don't have nightmares about him because he's Air Force. Yeah, that was the worst part. When they burn. and that's uh i can understand getting blown to pieces and shot up but uh i don't want to ever see another burned body again yeah how was it leaving leaving was happy sad yeah i i hated to leave you i actually thought about just going off in the bush with the yards I loved them that much and I really had no ties to the my family of course but I really had no ties to the civilized world at that point I'd been with them so long I was Brew a lot of guys were like that thought about because they they closed when they closed off the when they started moving American troops out we knew that they were going to close and abandon the yards. The South Vietnamese would for sure, and the American command weren't all that reliable to take care of them. We were. They were our family. So we were stealing shit for them. Ammunition, mortars, machine guns, rifles, flamethrowers, anything. Because when that big American units like AmeriCal and the mechanized, what was the name of it? tent mechanized or something like that when they left quantri the pdo yard was full of stuff floor fans big piles of wrenches and sockets you know uh anything you could make tonics containers with mortar ammunition actual mortars machine guns and all that just fucking left it for the vietnamese so we were going up there raiding it and every time we went to my lock we were taking fling loads The pilots were in on it. They knew what we were doing. Every time we went up there, we filled up the helicopters, either with ourselves or with equipment and ammunition, and then a sling load of stuff underneath it, and we'd fly it up to my lock, and it would disappear. At least give them a chance to fight when the thing happened. But very, very sad to leave them, and sad to leave the guys. The allies. The guys, these are your brothers. Sounds a lot like Afghanistan. Huh? Sounds a lot like how we left Afghanistan. Oh, yeah. I'm sure. We just abandoned those people. I'm sure. We just, you know, betrayal. You know, not you, but the dipshits in charge. I had a lot of anger about that for a long time. When I went back, I found two of my yards. You went back? I went back twice. How was that? In lightning. No shit. I had a friend that papered me, so I wasn't traveling on my passport. And Canadian. So I actually went back. The first time I did a project, I was working in environmental. and we came up with a system where we were treating waste, shit, with anaerobic microbes, which increase the, and anaerobic means doesn't need oxygen. And what it does is those microbes eat the shit and the pathogens and they produce methane. and we built these silos in the ground with lined them with clay and on top of it was a cement plug with a shaft on it with a agitator and that was run from the top and it would stir the shit You make it real liquid You put some straw organic material in there, but it's mostly shit and water. And then you cook it in the microbes. It makes methane. It comes out through the top, goes over here. You dehumidify it. You can run a reciprocating engine on it just like natural gas because that's what natural gas is, methane. So I had a contact in Canada. They got a contract to try and use the system we had in Vietnam with four of these big pig collectives. They brought all the pigs in from the surrounding villages, put them in one big building, and they had a lot of pig shit. fine we'd create electricity with it and when the silo got done cooking down at the bottom of the silo was this thick really black material that was kind of part of it was a slurry and part of it was kind of grainy pure nitrogen so they would take that out you'd empty the silo you take it out lay it out on iron sheets, dry it out. You've got 90% nitrogen fertilizer. In fact, they were taking the fertilizer and actually bagging it and selling it to the farmers, right, to replace using human shit in the bedrower holes, which stops a whole bunch of other diseases. It was so rich they had to hit it with potash in order to reestablish a livable pH in it. So I went back for that. And I had a good time for about three months. And I went back one more time that just had a curious. I had the first time I heard rumors about the re-education camps and how some of the yards had survived. And I made a contact there in Danang. And he told me that he knew some mountain yards. That had gotten out of the education camps. That were kind of living like street beggars. And I went back and I found two of the guys from CCM. One of them was on my team. No shit. And I managed to get them enough money to get them out of Da Nang. And back up in the Highlands. And both of them were missing an arm. the little people had SCU tattooed on their special commando unit tattooed on their arms and if the North Vietnamese found it they chopped their arm off so both of them had their arm chopped off from here down but yeah it was a really great reunion yeah I found out about how their families had gone back up in the hills how they actually had fought a running battle back into the mountains and a trail of tears so to speak damn man hell yeah I think I got a star on my map for that one fuck I have a affinity for primitive cultures you know the yards were basically a semi-iron age tribes when we came along with all our man toys and war and they adapted to it like ducks to water and they are the finest natural warriors I've ever seen and I've worked with other groups in other countries all of them pretty much share the same kind of culture you're a warrior and you're a member of the tribe. And the first duty is to protect the tribe. Above everything else, protect the tribe. Well, Nick, let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk about what it was like coming home. Think back to a first date that actually mattered, one where there was a chemistry right out of the gate. You didn't just sit there making small talk. You ask the real questions early. What do you want? What are your non-negotiables? Where is this actually going? You do that because you're trying to figure out fast whether this is someone worth investing more time in or if you should move on. Well, the same goes if you're hiring. You definitely want to address key questions first to see if someone could be right for your role. That's why you need ZipRecruiter. When you post your job, ZipRecruiter suggests screening questions to help you hone in on top candidates faster. And today, you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash SRS. In my experience, finding the right fit for the team is everything. 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Our new SRS on-site specials and access to an entire tactical training library you will not find anywhere else. And the best part, Patreon members can ask our guests questions directly. Your insights can help shape the show. Join us on Patreon now, support the mission, and become part of the Sean Ryan Show's story. all right Nick we're back from the break we're kind of wrapping up Vietnam we have wrapped up Vietnam what was it like coming home for you total decompression and shock I mean the height of the anti-war thing in that I was only spit on once and that was in Oakland and they were a bunch of Buddhists or something I remember punching them really hard and all kinds of robes flying around but coming back to the states now you're you have nothing in common with your high school friends you have very little in common with the outskirts of your family. Your mom, your dad, your brothers and sisters, you know, all there for you. Yeah, I was fortunate. And, you know, I had a support mechanism there. But once again, after about a, oh, I don't know, two weeks of being home, I really started getting itchy feet. wanted to go around people that i i knew and so i i got in my car and went back to the cries of my mother saying that i abandoned her after she carried me for nine months yeah nurtured me for you know years you know but uh i went right to i stopped on the way from fort bragg to visit a a friend of mine that I knew from the Mike Force. And I spend about, I don't know, you know, visitors and fish have the same three-day limit, especially with wives. So after about the fourth day, she started getting, you know, the skunk eye look when she looked at me, you know, and she knew she was going to have to retrain them after I'd been there for a while. So on the fourth day, I told them I was going to take off for Bragg. And, you know, she made me chocolate chip cookies for the trip. And I suspected that they might have had X-lax in them. But they didn't. But I drove to Fort Bragg. I checked into the sixth group again. And it was a wild time. I was on the team. We did a lot of stuff. We were always training. We were always going someplace. and it helped didn't have a lot of personal relationships I just couldn't get into that I got laid but I didn't get into personal relationships and gradually why not I just weren't ready I didn't want to let myself go I didn't want to trust somebody that It hadn't gone to what I went through. And I saw all my friends that were, you know, having problems with their marriages and their girlfriends, the same thing. You know, we drank a lot, a lot. You know, I managed to control myself so I didn't get in a lot of trouble. but like I said once you've been on that kind of adrenaline high it's hard to give it up for ice cream cones and cognac so it was took a long while to totally decompress to the level where I was socially acceptable and you'd be looking at people going they say something and you go you stupid fuck, you know, and then go at it. But I think what really saved me was I got married when I, and I'm really sorry for her because she was 19 and I was 27. and I had a baby daughter. And I got orders to go to Berlin, which in those days was like grabbing the brass ring and hitting the top. And I was getting ready to go to Berlin. She knows she was going to have to. She was a 19-year-old from, what's the name of that town, up in San Francisco Bay. Monterey. Not Monterey. I can't take it any. Palo Alto? No, further north. Up right there. Shit. The big electronics center now. Silicon Valley? I'll think of it later after we get off this thing now. But her parents were from there. Her sister had married a guy from the 5th Special Forces Group. And their marriage was already on the rocks when I met her. I got married in Monterey, full military wedding, of which Spider Parks and two other guys tried to stab me with the sabers when I walked down to it. We'd been drinking. Yeah. But got married. She got pregnant. We drove to Fort Devins, my next assignment. And I was at Fort Devins for about two years with her, and things just fell apart. I was working as a bouncer at a place in Lemister for extra money, and we didn't get paid all that much. I told somebody the other day, the E7. He asked me, he says, how much did you make as an E7? I said, well, my pay was $1,250 a month. And he went, what? And when he told me what they had paid now, I wanted to rob him right there on the spot. But, you know, money was tight. You know, I was gone a lot. The first year I was at Fort Devens, I saw her 112 days out of that year. The rest of the time I was either on exercises, flintlock, mobile training team, wherever. And it just fell apart. I went to West Point to, you know, every year the cadets, the sophomore cadets get patrolling, mountaineering, rubber rafts, all that training and that. And everything's new. They get everything new, new jeeps, new weapons, new fatigues, new poncho liners, you name it. And when I came back from that training, I had a week to clear post before I went to, or no, I had a month's leave and a week to clear post. And when I got back to Fort Devens, I walked into my government housing, and there was nothing in it. all my clothes were piled in the middle of the of the living room and all the furniture was gone there was a container of sour milk in the refrigerator and a beer and i sat there on the floor and had that beer and i i called up jay graves and told him what happened he said don't say anything i'll be there in 30 minutes and he came down picked me up took took me up to his place and dropped me off with a well-known gangster, a real criminal, and I stayed with him for a week and I made the mistake of trying to go back to California and patch things up, which didn't work out at all. I got back there, I tracked her down to a nightclub and she was sitting on her ex-boyfriend's lap when I jumped him and bit a dollar-sized hole out of the top of his head and the fight was on and I mean the bouncers decided they don't want anything to do with me after I broke one of them's arm and uh I just escaped and got outside realized how badly had fucked up and still tried to go back and talk to her and when i got there her father stormed out the front door and shoved me and i hit him and he had a heart attack so uh from there it was a mad flight to get somewhere i i hired a private plane to fly me to another city and then caught commercial air when i got back to uh boston i i stopped in cincinnati or someplace and i called jay i said uh hey i got in some trouble and he goes we know i said what do you mean you know he said don't go to boston airport the state police are waiting for you with a warrant and i said well Okay, so I flew into New York City and Chester, God, I loved him. He died here two years ago. A former Marine from the late 50s, Fleet Marine, who became a criminal. He was, the FBI always suspected he was involved in this or that. He was a one-man crime wave, boosting trucks, selling the stuff, you know. Great guy, just full of life. I had travel orders and a ticket on, you know, the contracted airlines and had to leave from Boston and go to Frankfurt and then on to Berlin. He bought me a first-class ticket on British Airways out of Connecticut. and to Frankfurt. And that's how I escaped the net. And group actually covered my ass. They told them that I was on classified orders and that I had already left and that they no longer were responsible for me. They'd have to talk to my receiving unit, but unfortunately that was classified and they couldn't tell them with the group commander involved in that loop. And so I went from there to Berlin, and Berlin really was the healing process. You know, it was exciting. It was demanding. It kept me occupied. It was, you know, I was in an environment that I absolutely loved. Berlin is still one of my favorite cities. They're in Munich. You know, those two hit the top of the charts. and it you know I was speaking German almost all the time either in my job or you know I was living out on the economy I had a really nice flat over in Selendorf that was it was just magic I had two motorcycles and a Volvo so I had plenty of stuff to you know mental health stuff and get on a Harley and put something exciting between their legs and take a drive. And I met a woman there that was in ASA, Army Security Agency. She was an oral comprehension specialist, listening and being able to translate. She couldn't speak Russian, but she could listen to it and understand the dialects and all that, named Claire. and Claire wow she was she was something I lived with her for almost four years before I dumped out of the army and she just you know recently surfaced and she our relationship eventually fell apart because I didn't want to get married I decided I was never getting married again And she wanted to get married, and I didn't. So she went off and married a real nice guy, a warrant officer, and built a life out of that. But the time in Berlin was really healing because there was just so much going on. We were doing stuff like, you know, in Dead A, we did a lot of work with the Zonder Ninesatz Commando, S-E-K, which is their counter-terrorist counter-intelligence police and they they were great guys i mean every every one of them were just really talented they were like special forces same attitude same same skills i mean just wonderful guys i uh i managed to about halfway through there there were six of them going on vacation to the united states so i lined them up with all my friends and contacts that were in California, Arizona, places like that, every one of them came back with a saddle that they were going to put in their bar downstairs and use that as their stool to sit on. And a lot of interaction with them. We did a lot of counter-surveillance and surveillance of their targets. What better way to learn? We'd follow Soviet agents, East German agents, criminals, whatever they had on the ticket list. Or we'd do counter surveillance, you know, with their guys trying to follow us. You know, we'd play the rabbit, the hare. So you really got good at people watching you and being able to sense it in that. And all the little tips of the trade in that. And then, funny story. I had the Volvo. and I wanted to get another car and get it registered as a German vehicle. So I wanted to get a Volkswagen. But I knew this guy, German guy, he owned a bar up in the Turkey sector. Gunther. Gunther was afraid of his girlfriend. And Gunther was aggravating but he was fun sometimes. He had a Messerschmitt. You know what that is? No. Okay. After the war, Messerschmitt, the actual Messerschmitt factory, designed a car that was powered by a motorcycle engine. It had two wheels in the front, one wheel in the back. And it actually looked like the fuselage of a Messerschmitt 109. You had to get in it. You had to pull the canopy back, climb in the front seat, and had a passenger seat behind you in that. and that I had, I fell in love with it the first time I saw it. Shit, I gotta have this, right? So I make a deal with Gunther for $2,500 cash and I bought that thing from him and he's, you know, he's fussing about the paperwork. Wow, you know, what if you get in an accident when you're going back to your house and that? I'd prefer if I drove with you and that, you know, so come up and pick up the car. Said, okay, the date, when I went up to pick it up, I'm wearing a leather jacket. a leather flying helmet, and a white scarf and goggles. And he goes, oh, no. I said, hop in the back. Come on, we'll get down there. Don't worry. I said, have you been drinking? No, not at all. I had a flask underneath the seat already, and I was fairly well lit. We took off down the hovel, which is like in the center of Berlin, there's a freeway. Before we got a quarter away out of the turkey sector, I already had two police escort try to catch me. And I'm weaving in and out of traffic. I've got the canopy pulled back and the scarf's out the window, and I'm cackling as I'm going along. And I got far enough ahead of them, and I was using the shoulders, everything I could to avoid them in that. We came up on the Grunewald exit, which if you turn left, you go over to Clay Alley where the consulate is and Berlin headquarters and my BEQ was over there too, but my apartment was further down over in Selendorf, which is next to the big Bonsai, the lake there. So I see the cutoff, and if you turn left, you go over to the American side. If you turn right, you're on the horse trails that go around. The Grunewald is a 12-mile long, 3-mile wide park, all forests, and hiking trails, horse trails, all that. And that Messerschmitt could scoot in there, and the cop cars couldn't. Nice. So I'm fucking throwing mud, going around corners, taking, because I know the whole area, we go out there and do exercises and that. I finally lose all of them except one, and he's right on my fucking tail. I'm thinking, that son of a bitch, he's got to be a dirt track driver and that. So I got down towards Salendorf, and there's an alley that cuts off to the right off the horse trails and that, and gets to the end, and there's just enough space to get that Messerschmitt through, and it goes on a long, gentle slope down to the Hobble River where it's paved walkways and that, and it's like a block and a half up to where my apartment is, which is an old mansion. I got the second floor. So I get down there. The guy's right behind me. And I'm looking around. I'm saying, well, he doesn't look familiar in that. And I see the hedge. I said, well, just cut through the hedge. It's a gentle slope. See if this baby can take some damage. Turned to the right. There was a moment of weightlessness. And then we hit the water. It was the wrong alley. Went through the hedge. out about 20, 30 feet and straight down into the river. When I surfaced, I came to the surface and I'm looking around for Gunter. And he surfaced, he bubbled up to the top a couple seconds later. First thing out of his mouth was, I hate you. So I said, well, you know, we got more problems than that. We need to get out of the water for one thing. And then we got to shore and there was a taxi stand not far from there that was a lighted telephone pole. You could pick it up and call a taxi. And I called my flat, and a cleric was there, and I said, you need to come pick me up at such a location. There was a little guest house that was closed, but the place we used to go and have a, you know, wine or cheese plate, whatever. I said, come down here and pick me up. What was the name of that? Something Forest. and she shows up about 10 minutes later with the Volkswagen that I had bought her and we pack Gunter into the back of it and we drive all the way back up the bedding and by that time, the whole park's full of fucking police cars going up and down the street, driving around, you know, looking for us and then we get back up there and all the way up there, I'm telling her, look, it's simple. I've already signed the pink slip, right? Just tell them, don't even show them the pink slip. Tell them it was in the car and that somebody stole the car. You'll get it, your insurance will pay for the car, no problem. Everything's handled, right? But three days later, I go into the detachment and I walk in the team room. and one of the guys from the scuba team comes in and throws the license plate from the uh from the measuresmith he says you might want to keep this and uh a little after that i walked back in and my team started with a wonderful guy named craychuck he was sitting at his desk and my leather flying helmet was on his desk all sodden and everything and he's tapping it with a pencil says you might want to put this in with that plate evidently the scuba team had been called out by the the german police diving team because they were trying to recover two two drunks that had gone into the hobble river and they were dragging the river for their bodies in that holy shit it was a healing process sounds like a healing process they uh a great group of guys great mission saw a lot of really you know a lot of guys from Project went to Dead A there was probably when I was there there was probably 20 of us that had been in Projects you know it's like all your friends that you don't want as a character would show up but the only sour point about it was I was there when the general that wanted to get controlled and his hatchet sent his hatchet man down there. And he hated me with a passion. And the feeling was fucking mutual. He made sure he wasn't in front of me on any jumps just in case his static line got disconnected. About a couple of those. Yeah, you know, they're a sour taste, but they are there. There's no denying it. They're little Martinets. They think they're shit to the mistake. Nick, where's your daughter now? I tracked her down. One of the guys that I used as an instructor was the head of the SWAT team in Costa Mesa and a homicide detective. And when he got out, he became a private eye. and he tracked her down to San Jose and she was living in San Jose about two miles from where her grandparents were and I found her on the internet and sent her a note I really hate to break it to you this way that I might be your natural father. And she took her sight down the next day. And that was the last I heard of her, except how long ago? About five or six years ago. My phone rang, and a young man was on it. Somebody post-teenager, but young. And he goes, are you Nick Brockhaus? And I said, yes, I am. He says, I'm your eldest grandson. And I heard a bunch of yelling in the background, a woman's voice, and he never called back. So, as far as I know, she's in San Jose. Married, my ex-wife married a Cajun. So, that all wrapped together. It probably wasn't a good idea to go back and try and establish the Leo ties. so I still think about her what would you say to her? I'm sorry do you think you'll get that opportunity? who knows winning the lottery and that soothes a lot of hard feelings maybe maybe maybe maybe she'll see what I'm doing now and try and make contact with herself I wouldn't put money on it that's the hope. Have you done any interviews before? What? Have you done many interviews before? Yeah, a couple of them. You know, I did one with, who's the guy, the captain from SF? That was a good one. I did, I just did one last night with two L.A. cops that's called War Stories. They were fun. One of them was a former Marine. I kept telling them, I know there's some dark shit in your past. Don't lie to me. I hope you meet her again. I hope you get to say that to her. I do, too. I do, too. You know, I don't have any real regrets in my life. I'm not a perfect man. I've got a lot of flaws. At least I admit my flaws, you know, and I live with them. There's no such thing as a perfect man. Yeah, according to my partner, he's close to it. Yeah. Wow. We covered a lot of ground. We did. How are you feeling? Well, I'm fine. Yeah. I wrote three books. The first two were about projects. and they without my trying they became cult books I've had many many people and I didn't write it for the public I wrote it for the guys I bled with and I'm happy as hell when one of them walks up to me and goes way to go Nick but the public seem to take it in a while and I'm still getting paid royalty so I guess they're doing alright I wrote this book Vagabonds because I had a contract to supply a West African nation with six 737-300s on a lease. And I happen to know a wonderful man in London that I'd been in a freight business with in Africa that had all these airline, how to get airplanes and run an airline and that. And we set up a lease contract with them for six years. contract was signed money was being transferred into escrow i moved from palm desert to uh tucson because they were going to paint all the planes and and and um you know put delivery on them and that and do the sea check of that before they send them to africa i got there and a month later COVID came ashore and everything I was set to make $35,000 a month on a six year contract so I got there and that's when I moved in and I signed a lease for two years with my business partner as a co-tenant and everything dropped out so we were locked up for COVID we're sitting there we watched everything on Netflix and said what are we going to do Let's write a book about what we did after we got out of the military. So we wrote the book, 67 days, start to finish. Nice. Pushed it to a wonderful editor in London, Oxford, a woman named Ruth Shepard. Been really good to me. The owner of the company, I would gladly run over with a pickup truck. She is wonderful, and her staff is wonderful. She got it approved, got it published and that, and it doesn't do as well as the other two books. But it's, and it was all about what he and I did after we got out of the military. We rescued kidnapped children in Algeria, Guatemala, rescued people in Mexico from kidnapped, real kidnapped gangs. and one in Chechnya, which I'll never do again. Why not? I didn't actually run that thing. That was a friend of mine that had the contract in that. I came up with a way of tracking the victim, and I used the Russian. Jeff and I had gone to Russia. Oh, God, back as one of the things we did, we went to Kazakhstan with an asphalt company. that was trying to get a contract to build four-lane highways connecting Kazakhstan with the rest of Russia and that. And they used cold-mixed concrete, or cold-mixed asphalt, which you can use in arctic conditions. That's what they built an Alcan highway out of, no frost thieves, all that stuff. So we had met, my friend in London introduced us to the KGB at a very high level. And we went to Moscow and, you know, met the head of directorate nine, who was a lieutenant general in the KGB, had a beautiful baritone voice, spoke fluent English and fluent German. And where was I going with that? So anyway, we went to Kazakhstan. It's in the book. It's, you know, the adventures of going over there and doing that. And were we on the airplanes or on the, I lost my track there for a moment. You were going to Russia. Yeah, we went to Russia for this deal with the asphalt company. And that was one of the things. And while I was there, I made really good contacts with the KGB. and after communism fell, you understand the KGB did not belong to the central government. It belonged to the Communist Party. So when the Communist Party fell out, they no longer had a mandate to operate. So they were going through all this rioting about how they were going to build a new Russia and that, and that's how they came up with the FSB, which is what they have currently in that. But the KGB also owned all kinds of things. They owned cities where they had research going on. They had no roads going in or out. Everything came in by air. Scientific facilities. They owned gold mines. They owned oil fields. And they were funding themselves, but they were looking for cash. and on the thing in Chechnya we actually rented a Spetsnaz outfit we had come up with a way to track them and actually the Russians came up with it and it was a friendly isotope and the victim was an industrialist from the west tried to make an oil deal with the Chechens the chechens grabbed him and demanded money basically all the first group that went in to try and pay the ransom they just killed him and took the money the second group went in were sas guys and they shot their way out of it and my friend who was an sas guy actually picked up the third and he came up with this plan that if we could locate them we also could put enough force to actually grab them so the Russians came up with two tricks one was a way to track them and that was a friendly isotope there are only two places in the region where you could buy the medicine that he needed to stay alive so they broke in there and dosed all the medication with that friendly isotope if he peed on the ground they could detect it from the air so they did the nest team flying back and forth doing the grids and they located them in a mountain mountain village and they came up with a substance they could treat the money with if you touch the money within 24 hours you were dead so they dosed the ransom they picked it up they they had already located the village and about two o'clock in the morning they went in and rescued him there was about eight of them that were still kicking and everybody else was dead no old people and no children yeah all young people in the building so you know it was uh the russians are they've got finesse sometimes and sometimes they're bull in the court yeah damn but they're my trip over there my association with them you know i knew who they were and i knew what the communists were and you know they were my sworn enemies at one time but i watched them rebuild after a total collapse in the system i asked vladimir the general i said so what kind of government do you think you're going to have he goes well nick it won't be communist because that's the law and it won't be western either but one thing it will be is russian totally russian and that's what he came up with a free market society still with the vestiges of one strong man and one strong party you know and and i admire them for being able to pull through without totally collapsing yeah they're uh it's interesting to watch the events and watch trump working with them and trying to but they realize You know, the Europeans were raping them after the communism fell. They went and made deals with all the steel plants and the shipyards in Poland and all that and basically fed the U.S. this thing about, you know, how crooked the communists are and they're still in control while they were buying everything and making joint ventures. Oddly enough, the Kazakhs, you know, the one group of people they would rather do business with? Germans. Yeah. Because the Germans keep meticulous records. Yeah. So it was really interesting. We did a lot of things with a lot of different people. And eventually we trained SWAT teams. We trained personal bodyguards in Mexico. I ended up supplying, you know, my clients with armored cars that were produced in my partner's plant in Mexico City. Damn. trying to stay away from working with the government. That's, you can get on a lot of kimchi without that, you know, too much effort with that crowd. Yeah. Yeah. Well, as you know. You have lived a lot of lives. You get painted, say you know something, and you feel it's in your, because the person you are, it's your best interest to tell federal law enforcement. The minute that you do that, they start building a jacket on you. If you're hanging out with these people, obviously you're a bad guy. So I did that once and regretted it in the end. And I swore never again. It meant somebody's life, yeah, but I just don't have a lot of trust in their ethics. So anyway, By that, to the present time, we come back to Jeff Miller, my partner, came out here and met a studio, a production company called Show Dog Studio, run by a really great guy, John Attard. He was a former NCO and the Royal Fusiliers way back when. And he made an offer to love the book, said, we can turn this into a Netflix series. So that was the offer that he gave us that what they're currently planning is to turn it into a streamer. Using the book as the basis. I mean, basically, every chapter can become an episode. Congratulations. Congratulations. I'm happy about it when the check clears the bank. Well, that's pretty funny. You know, the thing's going to be called American Ronin. Not my choice, but it'll work. Sounds pretty badass to me. They can keep Hollywood out of it, you know, make it, you know, stick to the story. When do you think it will go? I hope I'm not speaking out of turn here. Me, personally, I think it will actually start writing sometime this spring and filming maybe fall and release in late 26. I mean, if everything works. Man, well, that will be awesome. Yeah, we'll see. I can't wait to see it. I'm pleased with it because it's interesting. He's pleased with it because he wants his grandkids to go, that's Grandpa. I am doing everything I can to ruin that scene. Anyway, that's what I'm doing now. And I'm still writing every once in a while. I wrote a fiction book years ago that I may get published. It's about Gaius Casca Longinus, who was a centurion that stabbed Christ in the side. No, she didn't. on the hill and as the myth goes when he stabbed him in the side a clear liquid if he hung on a cross what happens is your pleural cavity fills up with liquid and you suffocate you you know that between the bleeding and the and the trauma you suffocate in your own juices when he pushed the lance through his side that clear liquid splashed out on his hands his shoulders and he had a milky eye that was from a sling stone and his sight returned his rheumatoid arthritis and that was all gone and as christ looked at him uh the the myth is is that he says as you are centurion so you shall remain until we meet again and robin moore wrote a series of books called casca the eternal soldier and I met Robin at the SOA and I said you know I'd really like to do an update on that do you have a how do I get to use a copyright on the character and he goes Casca's not copyrighted Casca was a real person he was a Spaniard Iberian and he actually was the how do they call it the the head spear, the most senior centurion in every legion. He was actually the centurion that had the guard mount in the center of the city, and that's how he came to be there. No kidding. You go to South America, that myth pops up every once in a while. The Romans are around. So I wrote a fiction book based around the Banana Wars, in El Salvador, and that brought it up to date. And I just never published it. Well, I hope you do. I'm fiddling around with it still. Anyway, I don't want to keep it too late. No, Nick, it's been an honor. It's been an honor for me, really. Me too. I've watched you on TV, and I go, there's something about that guy. Well, seriously, it's been an honor to get your story out. And you're going to make me blush. Come on. I've been one you've been through. You've lived a lot of lives. I've lived a long and eventful life. And I've met a lot of good people. I've met some that weren't. Some of them passed. Not by my hand. but I think the thing I learned is I love being human every aspect the agony and the ecstasy good stay away from redheads alright I will cheers oh wait thank you cheers No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, Head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.