That made my month, Eric. Thank you for everything. Sure, man. That was a lot of fun. You know, and I'm not kidding when I say you are a great interviewer and you do your homework. I appreciate that. And no notes, by the way, guys. No notes. Believe me, I've done 9,000 of these things and that was a good one. Hey, this is Eric Dorr from the Gettysburg Museum of History.
This interview is pretty amazing to me also because we've probably heard, or at least his fans have heard, a lot of interviews that has to do with his movie roles and his contributions to film and the series Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan and Platoon. But this particular interview is really amazing. He talks about his military service and there's not a whole lot of that out there. And I learned several things that I didn't know about him. It was absolutely an incredible interview.
But I wanted to let you know that he also has come on board with the Gettysburg Museum of History in the capacity of our board of directors. So he's going to be assisting us as we develop the new exhibits over at the new building. And we're going to build a world-class, easy company, Band of Brothers exhibit. And I can't think of anyone better to direct us in this endeavor than Captain Dale Dye. So we give you Captain Dale Dye.
I gotta tell you, I admire your gumption just going out to Hollywood and figuring out a way to make that work. Because my friends and I, when Private Ryan came out, we were, what year was that, 97? Yeah, 97, yeah. We were 19, I think. Yeah, 19. And we saw, you know, the previous four, and we were like, "Oh yeah, let's go see a one more two movie, we're all about it and everything." And when we, when it was over, we went to a diner to get coffee, and four of us were there.
And two of them were these big jock types, you know, the real tough guys. Sure. No one could speak for half an hour because they were ready to cry. And I remember that was the first, I don't know if it was the first movie I saw with Surround Sound, but it was the first one I saw that really made good use of it. Yeah. And the sound of a bullet whizzing past my ear and hitting a piece of metal or dirt or someone's head, and that cold, just it means business and it does what it does sound.
Yeah. I sort of got, I can't watch that movie but once a year, if that, because it's so realistic. You have to credit Steven Spielberg for that. He's a huge believer in sound. Yeah. And I remember when we were through with the film, we shot the initial sequence in a beach called CuraClo in southwest Ireland. And he called me when we got home, he said, you know, "Thank you very much for everything, but I still need you."
And I said, "Well, what's up?" And he said, "We're really going to juice the sound." And I said, "That's good news. Now what?" Yeah. And what we did was we went to a range up in the Bay Area and we arranged microphones down... Down range. Down range. And then I locked up a machine gun so that the mics would pick up the Doppler effect up around, calling by, you know, when you hear it close. Yes. You know when it's close.
Right. And then I went out and bought a side of beef and we hung up a side of beef on the range and we used a suppressed MP5 with subsonic ammo. And I fired into that beef and we'd hit the meat and then we hit the bone and he got...it was miked in there. Yeah. So he got all the sound. And then we put up some angle iron and I fired at that and he got the ricochet effect. Yeah. I knew it was going to be wonderful when he cut it in.
And then obviously it was used again in Band of Brothers and everybody's copied it since then. And it's...I'm it's...I'm it's...I'm it's...I'm it's...I'm it's...I'm And I took it down to get the sound of Civil War artillery rounds because we were live firing artillery. And that was really cool. But again it was chilling because it just comes in and it thwaps against whatever it hits and it doesn't care what's in the way. It just goes through whatever.
And you know it...I've And it always upsets me because I've fired a lot of flintlock weapons. And you hear the snap before you hear they went in on the frisson. The frisson ignites and there it goes around. But you never hear that. You know the sound guys don't get it. I think...didn't the Patriot get that? I don't know. I can't remember. I feel like one of them is the first time I noticed that. Where you hear it. Snap bang. But you're right. Civil War and Revolutionary War.
Well any black powder movies drive me nuts with the sound. Master and Commander was good. Because they did what you guys did. And they took period cannon out to a range. They set up a foe side of a ship. A hull of a ship. And shot into it. Get the wood. I love that. But I don't know. I just love that. To me the visual can be whatever. But you get that sound right. And that's what gets me to the core. It creates...fires the imagination.
And you can see things that aren't really there but the sound is telling you what to do. Right. Right. Yeah. No. It's really good stuff. It's so innovative and it's... I just noticed from that moment on when Ryan came out. Every war movie tried to be it. Some came close but not too many. The brilliant sound thing. And I didn't realize it. Spielberg told me he was going to do it. And I got to thinking about it. And what it is essentially is how when Tom's character Captain Miller submerges.
Dead silence. Because he's under war. And when he reemerges he whacked with that sound again. That was brilliant. It was brilliant. And it's not only just the sounds back on. It's like a whoosh as the water clears your ear. Oh it's so good. He's the best. You can't beat him. He's fantastic. Yeah I've enjoyed watching interviews with you for the last day and a half. Because I've always... When I... Again it had to be Ryan. When I saw like a behind the scenes thing.
That's the first time I'd heard of you. And I thought the actor boot camp was the coolest idea. And I was like that's why this movie is so good. Because these guys went through it. Sort of. You know. They went through something where they have an idea. And a good actor can fill in the rest. Right. But I just... That's such a brilliant idea that you went and did that. Thank God you did that. I really think because you de-romanticize war for me. And I'm so glad of that because...
The guy was asking me the other day. He said look. If you died tomorrow what would your legacy be? What would your... I said look. As far as I'm concerned the epitaph that would be most rewarding to me. Is simply he changed the way Hollywood makes war movies. And if I did that then good on me. I agree. Honestly the way I look at it is unfortunately. Good or bad. Whatever. Most people get their history from movies. Yeah. Yeah they do. Or at least the spark is lit from a movie. And a war movie.
I get why they did it in the 40s and the 50s. During the cold war and World War II and all that stuff. I get why they did the hurrah stuff. And all of that for political purposes or propaganda purposes. But I'm glad that hippie generation got into realism. Because I think war is one thing that is just so heartbreaking and horrendous. And I don't care what anybody tells me. But maybe I care what you tell me if I'm wrong here. But my theory is putting myself in a soldier's shoes.
Is the first time. Either the first time a bullet is fired at him in anger. Or he sees his body die. Or he takes a life. He dies. A part of him dies. He's not that kid who went into basic. And he'll never be that person again. That's right. No matter how well he does in civilian life. I mean I remember my grandfather. He was in World War II. And he told me that he came home. The war was over. And he spent the first seven days locked in his room. And he would only come down for dinner.
Didn't even shower. Just stayed locked in his room. And his sister and mother were like Jackie come on. Come out with us. Everything. He's just no no no. And in that I said well what'd you do for seven days. And he goes. I thought what the hell did I just go through. And he goes because you're not thinking about it when you're in it. You just got to. It's do or die. You got to do it. But when I finally was back home. I didn't feel like I was home. I didn't feel like I was me.
I didn't feel anything. And I was just like what the hell did I just go through. And then finally by day seven he said. I go well. Whatever I went through. I went through it. It's in the past. I am 30 years old. I have a whole life ahead of me. Let's make it happen. And he did. But there's other guys who came back and they lost themselves in the bottom of a bottle or whatever the case may be. And they never were able to.
Yeah it's it's a. You know in my own case there was about 10 years after my war when you and I wouldn't be talking. I had no time for any scum sucking civilian. I mean I just I was angry. Yeah. Because nobody got it. Nobody but another veteran. And so I just isolated myself on base and stayed there. Yeah. 10 years I went through that. So you were in Vietnam. How many tours did you have in Vietnam. Three tours. One Purple Heart tour. Per tour. Right. But three. But it was it was no tour.
No 68 was a really bad year. There were two in that year. And the last one in in early 70. So the first one you. Well how bad were they. Were they bad enough. You got a Purple Heart. Yeah. And you went back. So here's here's the explanation. I've thought about this for 50 years. You know what. Why in the hell did I keep going back when I didn't have to. And when everybody else was scrambling not to do a repeat performance. And it occurred to me that the real reason there are two real reasons.
The first one was because in retrospect I considered myself a pro. OK. I'm a professional. OK. And you know professionals got to play. They want to play. I don't want to be on a bench. I want to be in the game. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. So so that affected me. And along with that came a certain feeling that. If I went and use my experience maybe I could keep some people alive who otherwise wouldn't have been. So that occurred to me.
And the other thing and here's here's one that will probably surprise you. I came to realize that. I liked it. OK. I enjoyed it. All right. That business of living out on the razor's edge adrenaline charge razor's edge made everything else pale by comparison. I can imagine that. Yeah. And so it was a matter of trying to beat the odds the decreasing odds of staying alive. It was it was it jacked me right up. I was I was ready to do this. No I can understand that.
Yeah. It's like why people go skydiving or bungee jumping. It's that risking life. Except yours was actually risking your life. And you know there are moments because I began to think about this. I mean I'm not prone to a lot of fuzzy headed navel gazing but but I am introspective when it comes to the war experience and I because I have to be. I'm in the business of communicating with people what the combat experience is like. Right. And there's a unique. There's a unique experience I guess.
And I call it the come to Jesus moment. OK. And I remember when it happened. What happens is you get into a close combat situation. And a lot of times you're just you know you're firing at shadows in the bush or you see muzzle flash and you shoot at that. And then you get into fights like way what was Ted of 68 where it was close combat. I mean you were looking in his BDS eyeballs and you were looking and he was looking in your right.
And that was the first time I'd ever seen a guy that I killed that I shot believe him apart. And what happened that evening. I was laying on in some rubble building and looking up at the moon. And I said oh my God I think I have just doomed myself. I think my soul is gone. And I was brought up you know as a Christian kid and went to church and all that sort of thing. You know the big big commandment is thou shalt not kill and I just did. Yeah. And I saw the result of it.
No question that I blew that guy away. And you sit there and say oh Jesus. I'm not going to deal with this. You know you really reach a crisis of conscience. Yeah. And it took me I didn't say much about it because it sort of embarrassed me. But as I went along and talked to more people and became really intimate friends with people they would tell me this. Yeah I had the same thing. I get it.
Yeah. And that experience is something that I've often tried to get on film and I'm not I've failed so far because it's so it's so internal it's so visceral that it's very hard to take a picture of it. You know you'd have to show the guy breaking down or something. Yeah. Yeah you can't. Because when you do the breakdowns the combat fatigue sequence everybody says well of course you know he's been through a lot of dangerous things and he's very tired and he's exhausted so he falls over.
In many cases it's because he's suffering that crisis of conscience. Yeah. And and that's something that is kind of unique to the combat experience. The only other people I've talked to who who sort of had to deal with it were police officers law enforcement. Sure. Yeah. They've shot somebody in a line of duty and the guy died and there you are sitting and you know looking at your handiwork if you will.
Right. And so I've talked to policemen who tell me they've they've had that come to Jesus experience. I actually once in a while I'll go down a rabbit hole on YouTube and I'll watch cop body cam videos. And I have seen a number of them where they have had to shoot somebody and they immediately break down and start crying and their buddies have to try to buck them up and make sure they're okay. But what I always found to be the strangest is that you know law enforcement is different the military.
Yeah. But when they when they shoot somebody the first thing they have to do is render eight. Yeah. Which. Yeah. And it's funny that's the difference really between the combat experience and the law enforcement experience. That's usually a one time shootout. It's one guy against another guy down he goes and now you have time to deal with it. You know to render aid or to or to break down and all that sort of thing. In combat you can't do that. No. No. You can't stop. You've got to keep going.
His buddies will shoot you. And I've talked to guys who tell me that they had to come to Jesus moment but it was weeks later when you know their mind got around to review it. Right. Right. So there there's a little bit of difference there. So when you when you have that moment where you've taken your first life that you know you've taken. Yeah. Is is at some point the thought. Well there's no turning back now. I might as well keep going. But you know what I'm saying when I said yeah I do.
And I guess there is some of that. Because you're concerned with survival beyond this. You know this is one thing and you've got to deal with it. Right. But you have to push on. You have to get on. And I think your training takes over if you're well trained. What happens is okay. I've done this. I'm either doomed or I'm not. But I can't stop and contemplate it. I've got to get on and that really saves you. Yeah. So let's go. Let's go back to the beginning.
Not the very beginning but the beginning of your military career. I think what were you 19 when you went in. Yeah. No I was 18. 18. Yeah. Okay. So many you were able to you signed up. Yeah. Originally I had I went to a military school. I was a military academy in Mexico Missouri and I was I was bound to determine to make my military career. Even at a very young age. I thought that's what I want to do. But I chased too many girls and you know played too much sports.
And yeah. So when I came to take the I want to go to the Naval Academy at Annapolis. And when it came to taking the exams I went swirling toward the toilet. I mean I was couldn't handle the engineering and the math and all that stuff. Yeah. So I took these gammon failed it not only once but twice. And I had that you know oh my God what am I there's no money for college. You couldn't get loans or scholarships like you can now. And so what am I going to do.
You know what's what's my life to be here. Am I going to be a farmer. Am I going to you know am I going to work in the AP green fire brick plant for the rest of my life. Most of my buddies did. Right. And I said it just isn't right. I can't accept this. And one winter evening right right either before right after Christmas in 1963. I was crying the poor ass sitting on a curb in Cape Girardeau Missouri. And I happened to be at the time right outside of the post office.
You know just it was sleeting and raining and I was wet and I was cold and I was miserable and I said you know my life is over at 18. Yeah. And I looked around and here was this A sign right outside the post office and it had this picture of this lantern jawed rugged looking marine and dress blue uniform. And it just said one word right over the top. It said ready. And I said you know by God I think I am. And the next day I enlisted.
So when you're at that but before you're at that point as you're growing up you're watching John Wayne movies you're watching all types of war movies are sure right. And it's and it just draws you in. What was it about those. And I know this is this is kind of like I said this is in a lot of your interviews but I want to at least establish this. So what is it about those movies that got you. And then tell me about what happened once you got in.
Look I think I think what happened as I recall it and it's you know at my age I'm 80 now it's hard to remember those things. As I recall it my father used to be a liquor salesman. My most to any other store. Best job he could never keep. And because he drank most of what he was supposed to sell. But he would take me around to the bars with him when he was making his deliveries. And I would sit and listen to these old veterans.
Guys who'd been on Iwo Jima and who'd been at Normandy and and I just you know. In all of them I would sit and look and listen to those stories and I think that's what lit the spark. I suddenly began to I had this vivid imagination as a kid and I still do. And what happened was I began to see myself in that flag waving scene you know from Mount Suribachi and Iwo Jima. And then I began to consume John Wayne in the movies and all that sort of thing. So what's your favorite John Wayne movie.
Favorite favorite John Wayne movie. Well I really like Stagecoach one of his first one. And a number of them I hate the Green Berets. Yeah I didn't like that. It's a horrible piece of work. A little bovine excrement there. Was it was the sands of Iwo Jima one of the movies that got you wanting to do it. Sorry it's a striker. Yeah I mean anybody who's ever worn the marine uniform knows that movie inside and out. Right. Right. Right.
And it's very easy once you think of yourself as either wanting to be a marine or being one. Very easy to put yourself in the sergeant striker position. Yeah. And I did. I certainly did. OK so I derailed you there. I'm sorry. So you were saying you were before the movies and you were listening to these veterans talking and you were and you saw yourself in the Iwo Jima. Yeah. Yeah. And I think there was just a spark in me and it fired my imagination.
You know the flint hit the fritzing pan and suddenly I saw myself in all these situations and I wanted to be that guy. Or I wanted part of that. What was it about that though. I guess it seemed to me that it was purpose. OK. Working in a fire brick plant or you know change the truck tires down at the local. There never seemed to be any purpose to that. Sure. Everybody else thought it was great.
You know I'll get married and have a couple of kids and I'll work a couple of shifts at the fire brick plant and I'm good. Not me. There was something on the other side of that hill and I wanted to see what the hell it was. Yeah. And it was insatiable. It was a drive. I just knew that I could not sit there in Southeast Missouri and be happy unless I had seen everything there was to see. And so I embarked on it and I told myself look some way I'm going to see what this is all about.
I'm going to see what the throbbing heart of this experience is not just superficially. I want to know what it means viscerally. Get down in the gut. And that's what I pursued. You're like an artist. I guess. Yeah. I mean. Interesting analogy but. Well no because you want an artist wants to know everything about life. Yeah. Right. They want to know what makes people people. You know if I'm writing a novel I need to understand people. Yeah. Right. Otherwise all my characters the same.
So you're you are kind of like an artist. You just you just chose to experience these things and later turned it into art. I mean you you are an artist. You know you might not think of yourself that way. You know that's a compliment. Thank you. You're welcome. I think I've always had this vivid imagination. You know I think I hit 12 years old and stop drawing. It was just it. And my imagination would take me places. And like an artist day.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean I write books I make movies and all of that is painting a picture and I'm somewhere in that picture. And that's I almost can't do without that. Yeah. I mean it just is a drive in my life. Yeah. OK. So when you get in what was the first moment where you realized John Wayne's movies are bullshit. What was the first thing that kind of said to you.
Oh man this is completely different. Well look I think anybody will tell you the boot camp experience of the Marine Corps is an eye opener. Yeah. And especially in those days because it was brutally physical. Yeah. They're not allowed to do that stuff today but they were then. And you you begin to. It's a challenge to that that that insatiable artistic urge that you have. Say wait a minute. Is this is it worth this. Can I do without it. And it's not worth it. Can I do without it.
And the answer is you can't. But I didn't have it bad in boot camp because of my military school experiences I knew the drill and all that sort of thing. So I very quickly became you know a leader a private leader in one of the things. So it wasn't it wasn't a horrible experience for me. And initially I was assigned as an 81 millimeter Morterman. Frankly oddly enough because I understood geometry.
Okay. And trigonometry and that's essentially the fire control solution for mortars or indirect fire weapon. You mean you inherently understood it or you did well at any school. The trig and geometry told me the solution and I could see it. Okay. Yeah. And so everybody said oh this kid this kid's going to be a Morterman. And I did that for a couple of years. But once again it wasn't scratching my urge.
Once I knew how to fire a mortar and how to solve the gunnery solution and for indirect fire and all that sort of thing said okay now what. Now what. Yeah. And so I ended up through a buddy of mine. I found out that the Marine Corps had a thing called combat correspondent. And if you had a journalism background or if you were creative or you could write a little you know hometown newspaper story and do it well do it in an interesting fashion.
There was a lot of work to do. And I think that's a very interesting thing. I think it's a very interesting thing. I think it's a very interesting thing. I think it's a very interesting thing. Kinda real torture story. There is death, and but it's MAT apes a pain in the entropy.
I read that I was inwan he said, do what you wanted to do. Find more about your story and do it well, do it in a Trop cu fishing fashion your say you could literally write ui te your own ticket, work whatever the hell you wanted to do as long as you can produce the story there was favorable to the Marine Corps and celebrate the kid and that sort of thing. after it. And it worked out that way.
I mean, they literally, they said, okay, I took a typing test and I had to rewrite a lead sentence a few times. And I said, well, this kid's good. And I had some high school journalism experience. Okay. So, they changed my MOS, my military occupational specialty, and I became a combat correspondent. At that point, though, I discovered that in the Marine Corps, and these double handful of these guys throughout the Marine Corps.
And I found out very quickly that when you talk about a Marine Corps combat correspondent, the emphasis is on the first word, combat. So very shortly thereafter, I found my ass in Southeast Asia, and here we are. Okay. But it was great because I got to run with the grunts, and they used to call me Jar, or just another rifle. And that's essentially what I was. But it was, that's where I began to really observe.
And what I discovered was that I had an insight, I had a catbird seat to observe the absolute best in human nature and the absolute worst in human nature, right on a firing line, in extremis. And I think that finally did it for me. That said, you know, this is so unique. This experience is so unique. And I didn't think about the thousands of other veterans from World War II or Korea. I said, no, this is unique. And so I pursued it.
And it always came to me that somehow I had to find a way to paint that picture and let other people who hadn't had that experience know about it. Yeah. What a good, bad, and indifferent, let them know about it. And that kind of is, you know, the candle that I kept burning for 20 years. You said the best and the worst of humanity that you witnessed, right?
And we, that's one of the common themes in our show that we try to remind people of is that, you know, in war, in the middle of a battle here out in Gettysburg, there's stories of, you know, guys just opening each other's skull with the butt of a musket and another of enemies giving each other kindness by crawling out into the middle of no man's land to give water to a guy crying for his mother and everything in between.
And it is, it's, would you agree that it's the war is humanity, human nature in its most extreme? Well, sure it is. I mean, look, war is hell and it always will be that way. And there it is. But I think it's important that people understand it, if not from personal experience, understand it viscerally. And by painting pictures of that, we can do that.
One of the reasons that I'm so happy and proud to be invited to be an advisor to the board of directors at the Gettysburg Museum of History is simply because they have that similar mission. They want to keep history alive, introduce it to people in a very visceral manner, because those artifacts and things that you see here at the museum, boy, that's a reminder. And they're very unique too. They are unique. And in some ways, there are things you would never see any place else. Absolutely not.
And I find that that's educational. I agree. And by that, I mean, not so much that it gives you an introduction to history, the history of warfare. It certainly does that. But I think it's also a reminder. And this is one of the things that attracts me so much. It's a reminder of what war is really about. Here at the Museum of History, we don't have flags. We have flags with bullet holes and bloodstains on them. And that sort of thing. You see a youngster.
I've seen youngsters down in the museum walk in here and look around and see that. Is that blood? Yeah, that's blood. And there's a reason that that's blood. So that's an invaluable asset and an invaluable mission, I think. It absolutely is. And the Gettysburg Museum of History to me is, first of all, it's a very unique place, like we've said. But it's a place that I wish more museums would take a cue from. But at the same time, I'm glad they don't.
Because then if you go and see a museum like this everywhere else, it loses its specialness. But you come here and you see a museum. And you're in Gettysburg. And it's not just Civil War artifacts. It's from all over. And it's amazing all the stuff that he squeezes into that small space. Yeah, it is. And I'm urging Eric Dordham to spread it out. And I think he's got plans. Yeah, he does. He does. But it's overwhelming. It's so much. It is. It is.
So when you, going back to Vietnam, and you're a journalist, but at some point, you get into just full combat, right? You're not a journalist, or are you a journalist throughout Vietnam? Well, yes and no. So the thing is, the thing about being a Marine Corps combat correspondent, as I said, the emphasis is on the word combat. And when you get an extremist, you're not sitting back there taking notes and pictures. You're shooting back and getting with it.
And you have to do that so that the people with whom you're traveling, the people that you really want to talk to and you really hope will open up to you about their personal experience, if you don't do that, if you don't pull your own weight, if you're just a maggot that's hanging onto the corpse, they'll have nothing to do with you. And we knew that very quickly. Yeah. So you had to pull your weight. And often, the job was secondary. Well, I need to take some notes here. Well, piss on that.
First of all, I got to deal with this machine gun up here. Right, right. So it was always a balancing act. And sometimes, I would come back from a bad combat operation and that sort of thing. And I would say, you know, I don't even know what the hell happened. Yeah. I got to make something up here because I got nothing. Well, so that's okay. So that's something there. You know, you get in a car accident, right? Everything's in slow motion when you remember it, right?
Or if you can remember it at all. And I hear that a lot when I hear or read or hear accounts of combat where it's as if everything happened in slow motion, right? But you're not in slow motion, obviously. What do you think that is? I don't know. It's a form of tunnel vision, I think. Okay. Your focus becomes so tight on what's happening around you. Your focus is lost on what's happening around you. Your focus is on what's happening directly in front of you.
Sure. And I think that tends to make it seem as though the action was slowing down. It's not. It's hot and heavy and furious and going on around. They're flying in both directions and tracers are arcing through the sky. And that's happening all across the firing line, if you will. But not to me. Right. To me, it's happening. This guy and me right here are trading shots. And I think that tends to be a slow motion effect with you.
One of the most brilliant things that we saw in Saving Private Ryan, for instance, was the 90 degree shutter angle that the director of photography was using. So you could see the shrapnel fly and that sort of thing. Whereas if it was a 45 angle, you'd just miss all that. A blur. All going. Yeah. And Spielberg did that very deliberately. He wanted that, you know, to slow it down without slowing the frame rate. Yeah. And he did. It was brilliant.
And he took the coating off the lenses, too, I think. Yeah. I did. So when you... Okay, so tell me, if you will, about your first wound. Okay. The first one was I was firing... It was in way. I was firing cover for a squad that was trying to cross an intersection in the city of Hue, south side of the city of Hue. And I don't know, actually it was on the north side.
And because I'm left handed, I was able to kind of peek around the corner without exposing myself too much and engage this weapon that was firing at the guys who were trying to cross the street. So I was in a cover position. Oh. And unfortunately, I was so focused on suppressing the fire that was coming in, I didn't look off to my left. And off to my left, about two stories up, was a sniper. And he fired at my head, but he hit the receiver of my M16, and it literally exploded. I got...
The weapon just exploded. It almost tore my thumb off because my thumb was around the pistol grip. That exploded. Pieces of plastic were everywhere. And I has one sliver of plastic that went up under my chin, and it pinned my tongue to the roof of my mouth. And so I'm bleeding all over the place. You know, the head wounds just bleed terribly. And I staggered back toward the rear, and I was looking for a corpsman. You know, somebody had helped me, and I finally found one.
He was in a casualty collection point, and he looked at me, and it was covered in blood, and he threw me down, and he said, "Where you hit? Where you hit?" And he said, "What's the matter?" He couldn't talk. He finally said, "Oh, I see." And he spotted the piece of plastic under my chin, and the bastard reached up and put his boot on my chest and just jerked that piece of plastic out of... I exploded all over him.
Oh, God. And interestingly, one of the things that I will always remember about that incident was this corpsman, Doc Fred Geiss was his name, looked at me, and he looked around at the casualties, and literally just 20, 30 guys full of holes just laying around. And he said, "Damn, you know, trying to get through this waste city without getting hit is like trying to run between the damn raindrops and not get wet." And I said, "Whoa, quote that."
And so the title of my first book is about Vietnam, and it's called "Run Between the Raindrops." Perfect title. Yeah. That's where that came from. So you received that when they take you back, patch you up and everything you get? Do you get your Purple Heart right away, or does it come later on? It's paperwork and it has to flow through the system, and eventually they show up and hang it on you, and you send it home to mom or something. Right, right.
Yeah. Which, of course, isn't going to worry her, right? You got a Purple Heart. So you receive it. Now, do you have an option after you're hit to be done, or do they... It depends. If you're badly hit, I mean, to the point you're not going to recover in a month or two, yeah, they're going to send you. You're gone. Sure. They don't want you. And in the days of, say, 67 to 68, if you were hit three times, that was it for you. You beat your odds. Okay. So out you go.
Okay. So there's three purples and a plane ticket, essentially what it was. But I wasn't going to have any part of that, and I was willing to do a lot more than that, but I didn't say a thing about it. So you go back. So this wasn't your worst wound? No. I was hit in the belly and once again in the head that were worse than that one. Really? Yeah. So, I mean, do you mind talking more about them? I don't like to get all gory, but I'll tell you about the torso wound.
And I went to Vietnam with one navel and one asshole and came home with three and two. So you do the math. Okay. Gotcha. We'll leave the wounds alone now. Thank you for that. Okay. So you get the three purple hearts and then they send you home, is what you're saying? Well, and I was going to fight it anyway, but I had been hospitalized and and they want him to keep me back in the States and that sort of thing. And I said, no, I'm no, I'm not having any of it.
And one of the things that convinced me that I needed to go back. They sent me while I was essentially on recovery in the hospital, they sent me on a, what's called a casualty call. And I went and assisted an officer who was going to notify a family. And the family was in Georgia, that their son had been killed. And we did that. And God, it was the hardest thing I'd ever, oh, Jesus, just, and a mother just went nuts, poor lady.
And the dad was trying to be stoic and the little brothers and sisters were weeping. And I said, I can't do this. I just can't. I would rather it be me. And that's what made my decision. I'm going. That's gotta be the toughest job being that guy. Yeah. Casualty assistance contact officer. Now the scene of Private Ryan, when the telegram comes to the mother, is it in any way inspired by that? Well, I didn't write it. Well, I wish I had.
I mean, both Bob Rodat and Steven Spielberg, I had told that story too. So I think there was something in that. Yeah. And they did it very well. They didn't dwell. When the car drives up and the mother's looking out the window, she knows. Yeah. And you don't need to go any further than that, cut onto the next scene and you know what's going to happen. Now, if that doesn't choke you up, I don't know what does now. And then so, okay. You stay in the Marines for 20 years total? 20 years. 20 years.
You're in Beirut. Yeah. So what's going on there? God, I wish we knew. I mean, it was, we were put in an absolutely impossible situation. And those of us who'd been in combat, and this was 1982, 83. So there were still a lot of us more senior guys who had been in Vietnam and been in combat. I don't know. We could see it coming. We could see it walking down the road that we were going to get nailed. And the problem was we had this impossible mission called presence.
Be a presence so that the bad guys will not raise health. Well, look, we didn't even know who the bad guys were. Right. We would hear the Marabi tune is out there raising, what's a Marabi tune? Who the hell are they? Yeah. Sounds like something out of, you know, Walt Disney cartoon. Yeah, right. So we were really badly advised in terms of the threat because we weren't allowed diplomatically to talk to the Israelis or talk to the Lebanese and who had this intelligence that we could have used.
Yeah. And then we had this, the business, there was a diplomatic fear about increasing the US footprint that would make it look as though we were taking sides in an international conflict. And the Brits were under the same problem, and the French were under the same problem, and the Italians were under the same problem. And we couldn't even talk to each other and share that sort of information. So why be there? Well, just because some people are jerks, you know, they just don't get it.
Yeah. And you can't rob a combat situation or a potential combat situation by striped trouser diplomats. No. You just can't do that. No, you're right. Yeah. They don't get it. And so essentially, we were forced to disregard all the basic infantry stuff, like being on the high ground instead on the low ground around the airport, about controlling access to your own perimeter, about patrolling outside your own perimeter. We weren't allowed to do that. And, you know, we sold salts.
We'd get together and look at this as, boy, this is about to turn into a shit sandwich right quick. And here it comes. And in October of 1983, it came, killed 241 of us, one gas-enhanced truck bomb, essentially. And were you right there? No. No. No, I had gone. I rotated through a couple of marine amphibious units, and I stayed there because I thought that was where I should be. But about May, they decided, no, you need to go home. And so I was there from September of 82 through May of 83.
I meant to ask this before, so I want to go back. You know, now, so you're of my parents' generation, and the stories that I heard about how the soldiers were treated when they came back from Vietnam. And even while they were over there, how people back here were working against them, in my estimation, even though they were saying they were working for them, it doesn't help when you're in country and people are undermining your mission. Did you get any of that when you came home? Yeah, I did.
And look, the old wives tale about being spit on and all that sort of thing, I didn't get that. But I certainly got protests, and I certainly got people who didn't want to have anything to do with me because I wore a uniform and all that. That's what I meant. Ten years that went on. It upset me and angered me. And I encountered these people and said, "Well, you're full of crap, and I'm going to knock that," because I'd had done that, and I've killed somebody. And you don't want that.
That's bad for your career. And so I just isolated myself. And I think over the years, one of the things I've learned is that bad juju, that horrible feeling in your gut, you've got to find a way to get that out. You have to sort of talk about it in some fashion, in some way. If you write about it, if you make motion pictures about it, if you make TV shows about it, you write books, you've got to exorcise those demons.
And if you don't, what happens is they sit in there and they poison your system, and you become a crotchety old bastard nobody wants to talk about. And there were a lot of those, a lot of those guys. And I think what happened over the years, America recognized that they had confused the war with the warrior. And there was a knee jerk sort of swinging the other direction. And I think that was a good thing, but it was too late. And a lot of us had learned to ignore it.
We'd learned to live with it. It became like a scam. You mean the swing back? No, no. The misery of the anti-Vietnam situation. We either crawled into the closet and said we were never in Vietnam, even though we were. Did you do that? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That would be beyond me. I couldn't do that, but some did.
And I think the problem there is that it took a while to get out of that closet, sometimes years, a decade, until people would say, okay, you guys pissed me off and you hurt me, but I'm going to forgive it. I'm going to forget about it. I'm going to go on with my life, or I'm going to sort of just say, okay, that's you. This is me. Here we go.
And if there's a good thing that came of that, it's that my generation of veterans who fought in Southeast Asia suddenly became big advocates for the kids who went to Iraq and Saudi Arabia and all that sort of thing. We were the ones who were there sending them off with sage advice and celebrating their service and meeting the airplanes when they came in and welcome home and all that sort of thing. And that's probably the best thing that came out of it. We took our lumps.
We got the snot beat out of us psychologically, viscerally. But we said, it'll never happen again. We're not letting this next generation of kids go to an interminable war in the Middle East and have that happen to them when they come home. So we stepped up, I think, in my generation of veterans, if we did anything right, and there's some who say we didn't do anything right, but if we did anything right, it was probably that. You had empathy for them.
So now this is, when you get now to the 80s, when you get into Hollywood, is the attitude towards Vietnam veterans still negative? Because Hollywood's pretty liberal. So yeah. It just permeated. And look, I knew that the truth of the matter was so much more interesting than the bullshit. I was seeing it from the screenwriting, sort of thing. The problem is when you're, I guess it's not a problem, it's a solution, but when you're ignorant, you can do a lot of things people tell you you can't do.
And that was certainly my case. I'd seen every war movie there was, and the common denominator was, they pissed me off. So I said, I'm going to fix this. I'll go out to Hollywood and I'll find the guys who make these movies and I'll just unscrew their head. Things aren't done that way. And so I really found myself in a Sisyphean mission, trying to push a rock uphill all the time. And I just wasn't getting any traction.
But I was learning some things, how movies are made and all that sort of thing. But what gave you the, I mean, okay, I understand being pissed that Hollywood's not getting it right. A lot of Americans are pissed that Hollywood doesn't get war movies, right? Especially if you're a history buff or a veteran. But what is it that makes you, where were you living before you moved to Hollywood? Well, all over the place, really. I was in Louisiana and in Texas and...
But like the last place before you went to California. I think it was Houston, Texas. So you're in Houston, Texas and you're sitting there and you go, "Ah, you know what? I think I'm going to go to Hollywood and I'm going to tell them that they need me to advise." A little more to the story than that. Okay. Yeah. But what was the story? Look, and I've said this before, but it's really true.
I was sitting in a Motel 6 in Houston, Texas, out of a job, out of prospects, disgruntled, pissed off, didn't know really what I was going to do with the rest of my life. So I said, "All right, I got to figure this out. I'm capable of thinking I need to figure this out." So I went down to a 7-Eleven, Circle K it may have been in those days, and I bought a yellow legal tablet and a box of crayons and a case of beer. Of course.
And I went back to the Motel and I said, "Now I'm going to sit here until I figure out what my assets and what my liabilities are and what I'm going to do with the rest of my life." So I broke out a crayon and I drew a line down the center of that yellow legal pad and I wrote assets on one side and liabilities on the other side. And then I started drinking beer.
And by about dawn, the beer was gone and I looked over my notes and I had something like 15 pages of liabilities and about three lines of assets. Sounds like me. Yeah. And the upshot was that this business always being a movie fan of seeing every military movie there was, was kind of an asset.
And I said, "Wait a minute, if I get involved in that business, I'll just go out there and I'll change everything and I'll have a great time and go give me a bunch of money and I'll just be famous and wonderful." As I said, it didn't work quite that way. I would go on to movie lots and find the first guy carrying a briefcase and wearing a tie and a costume. "Come here, you're a producer, you make war movies where you're screwed up and here's how I'm going to unscrew you."
Because everybody loves that. That's the best approach. Jesus. And so they'd arrest me and throw me off the lot. Right. But I had learned to read the trade papers, Daily Variety and Drama Log and all that sort of thing. And I saw this little blurb in, I think it was Army Archer's column in Daily Variety, that said a relatively heretofore, relatively unknown writer-director by the name of Oliver Stone is going to do this war movie based on his own experience as a combat infantryman in Vietnam.
And I said, "Yes, if anybody's going to know what I'm trying to do here, it'll be Stone." So through a series of machinations I can't really tell you about because the statute of limitations may not have run out yet. I was able to get a couple of minutes with Stone and I did my best three-minute pitch. I said, "Here's what's wrong with war movies. Here's why it's wrong. You know this. I know this. And here's how we fix it."
And that was really the genesis of the business of immersive training prior to any footage being shot at all. So you didn't have a program yet. This is where you developed the program? I mean, except for being a Marine. It was in the back of my mind. I knew that if I used the way we train Marines to train actors with certain limitations, that they couldn't miss the message. And so I began to develop that and expand it and come up with how I was going to do this.
And one of the things that I did, which is kind of unique to the Captain Dye method, is I would, once a day, and a day was 24 hours. We worked all night, night ambushes, all that sort of thing. I would do a thing called stand down. Usually just before or just after evening, chow. And I ate twice a day if they didn't piss me off that day. If they'd piss me off, they only ate once. And the stand down was their one opportunity in every day to ask me any question they'd always wondered about.
And I said, "I don't care how deep you get. I don't care how psychological you get. I don't care what kind of babble you want to come up with. If you've got that question, you need an answer, and I will try to provide that answer." And that turned out to be the magic. And the weirdest damn things, they'd think about what they were going to do in the movie, and it was the only time during the day they were allowed to do that, and then say, "You know, he's going to inject me with morphine.
How's that done? What's a morphine-serret look like? What does it feel like?" And actors are like little dry sponges. If you give them that information, pour that water on it, the sponge expands and becomes useful. And that really was, I think, was the magic of the whole thing.
I've heard in some of the interviews, actually probably all of the interviews I've watched with you, you said something like you want to get into the actors, you want them to get into the heart, mind, and guts of a soldier. And I love that term. People usually say heart, mind, and soul, but you said guts, which is pretty good. Because it's that kind of internal visceral experience that I'm trying to get them to understand. Look, you can sit and lecture them all day.
You can have dog and pony shows that tell them how to handle a weapon, how to wear their equipment, and that sort of thing. And where does the mud go? That's all superficial. I wanted to get in their guts. I wanted them to understand that diary, churning, gut feeling that when the defecation hits the oscillation around you and you're focused here. I wanted them to have some inkling of that.
And I would often say, I'd pull them aside one on one and I'd say, "Listen, what's the most dangerous thing you've ever done?" Well, I fell out of a tree one time and... Okay, look, do you remember how terrified you were on the way down? Yeah, I cried. I said, "Yeah, that's it." And so you teach them that kind of lesson because to be a leader in the military, you really have to be a part-time shrink. You really have to understand people. And I had made a study of this.
And each man, each individual, later I started training females and that was all a different story, but each individual has a set of buttons, psychological buttons. You got to find those buttons and they're often very well hidden. And then you mash that button, you mash that bastard until he understands what the deal is. And that was really the key to it, I think. And you're putting them in, like with Platoon, for example, you're out in the bush for like, what, three weeks?
Three weeks in the jungle of the Philippines. And you've got guys setting up pyrotechnics and you actually have no idea that you're about to call in a mortar attack or something like that, right? Nope, they don't. To me, that's, you know what that's like? Hondo, movie Hondo. John Wayne picks a little boy up when he finds out he can't swim and he throws him in the water. That's what you're doing there. That's a Hondo method. That's what you're doing.
But I think for, you know, I've met some actors in my day and it's amazing to me. Actually, I interviewed Tom Berenger and he speaks so highly. I was interviewing him about the movie Gettysburg and he kept talking about Platoon and you. He has a lot of respect for you and a lot of these guys seem to have a lot of respect for you because you, I mean, dare I say, it might be the first time they come close to being a man, right? You know, I become uncle captain.
Yeah. The Dutch uncle and you'd be surprised. What surprised me was how this imprinted on them. I don't know what many of their home lives were difficult, but they would imprint on me. And, you know, 10 years after I'd trained a kid for a certain movie and hadn't heard from him, the phone rings and it's one of my kids and he's wondering about a part and he wants to talk to uncle captain about that part. How do I do this? Yeah. And that that's tremendously gratifying.
That's tremendously rewarding. I would imagine so. And so Platoon, you say that's the first movie, but wasn't there a movie about Martians and Marigans? Yeah, there was. Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up. Well, you brought it up. I was trying to figure out how the movie business worked. And I had this buddy from Vietnam who was a storyboard artist. Okay. And he was working for the old Canon films, a lot of B-movie grind outs.
And he said, well, you know, I'm working on this film called Invaders from Mars, which was a remake of a 1952 trash classic. And he said, in this version, the Marines killed the Martians. And I said, well, shit, I got no compunction about killing Martians. Let me go to work on this. And so he got me an introduction to Toby Hooper, who was the director, a wonderful little curmudgeon. And he said, well, I don't know how Marines go about killing Martians. Well, I do, Toby. Let me do this.
And I started, I would create these combat scenes with these fake Martians. And that kind of what it did, was it, I went to school during that production of that film to learn, you know, what does a prop guy do? What's a gaffer? You know, what's a grip? And I learned all that stuff. So I had that, I thought I had the basic school. I just had to find somebody who would let me put it to work. And I found that when I got stone and platoon. But didn't you go to the local Marine base and like, I did.
Yeah. I threw my Marine card on the table and I talked this reserve officer, who was down in Long Beach running a reserve unit. And I talked him into lending me about 50 Marines. Yeah. And he made it their duty to come up and report to me on the set. So I had my own company there and I just ran them through this stuff. And they had a great time. Sure. And I said, Oh man, listen, there's something to this. I just have to find the opportunity to show them the way I want to do it.
So that was your, that was your pilot program kind of just to see if it was worth pursuing. Yeah. Right. Cause it was a low budget film. I'm assuming. Like a no budget film. I don't know. I don't know what the hell it was. They didn't pay me anything. Right. But then, so you go on. So platoon wins some Oscars, right? Best picture, best director. Yeah. So you and Oliver Stone are set, right? It's a skyrocket from that moment on. Good luck talisman, I think.
Yeah. And I think I've done five pictures with him now. And, and I just saw him not long ago in Phoenix at another film festival, but next time you see him, tell him he's one of my favorites. I'm sure, I'm sure he won't care. Please tell him he's one of my favorite directors. And he's always, and he'll be like, Oh, yeah, he's, he's an interesting guy. And he, he would put me to work when nobody else would. And he's got to turn me into an actor. Yeah. He said, look, you're a natural.
The camera loves you. And if you ever take an acting lesson, if you ever go to school, I'll never hire you again. I said, shit, really? And he said, yep, absolutely. You do what you do. You be you. And it's best advice I ever got. Really. So that was the next thing I wanted to get to was you are an actually very good actor. And so there's no lessons there. This is just you. There's every time I'm on a set, there's lessons, uh, not formal. That's right. That's what I mean. Yeah. But I observe.
I mean, I'm that consummate observer. See, that's again, artists. And I listen and, and watch and I'll see the little things that they'll do. And I said, damn, I got to incorporate that. I can, I can use that. Uh, so some of the best actors in the world taught me to be an actor. They just didn't know they were doing it. Yeah. That's so cool. Um, what was the first speaking role you had? It was in platoon. Uh, to guess it was.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, now you gotta, you ever, well, what are the roles you've had? Private Ryan, Colonel Sink in band of brothers, which I thought actually was perfect casting, um, that whole show, but you, you as Colonel Sink was great. And you know, again, knowing by that point, when that came out, knowing that you're the guy that does the boot camp. And I was like, that's really cool that they put him in the, in the show like that as their commander. Yeah. It's, it's funny.
The, um, my reputation precedes and exceeds me, but, uh, sure. But it really, you know, I've, I've tried throughout my career to find that odd homosexual hairdresser part that, you know, you can't get it. I don't get a lot of offers. Um, so, I mean, between me and Lee Army, we were the most typecast guy in the world. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but we love you guys. I mean, we love seeing you guys in these roles. Well, I've, I've finally come to realize, and, and so I don't bitch about it.
We don't want to see you as the homosexual hairdresser. We want to see you as the army guy, you know, or now, oh, that's what I wanted to ask you. So you're a Marine. Okay. Um, I can't remember in platoon where they were, they were Marines. No army. They were army. Okay. So then what is the difference in the manual between the army and the Marines? And, and does, is that, there's a world of difference.
Look, I have, we've done, I mean, the motto of my company, Warriors Global is from the Peloponnesian Wars to Star Wars. We will do it all. And we have done it all. Yeah. Um, Starship Troopers. Yeah. Yeah. But it, it really takes research. Um, and that's the problem. Most kids who want to do what I do had four years in the army and that's all they know. Right. I've been an inveterate student all my life. I mean, I know how the Navy does things.
I know how the air force does things, the coast guard, the army, and I know those details and I study those details. So you have to, you have to be a playmaker. You have to know it all. You have a team, obviously. It's not just you. Yeah. I mean, look, I run my company and I run a publishing company. And I hire guys that, I mean, my, my executive officer has been with me for 50 years. We were, we were young corporals together in Vietnam and I talked him into becoming my guy. That's great.
So, and, and we hire, I hire some people, mostly it's piecework because, um, military movies are on a kind of a sign curve. You have a bunch of them for a while and then nothing for 10 years. So you got to find a way to keep busy. Um, and so my guys are piecework. I call them in when I need them. Um, and, and I quickly realized that because of that sign curve, uh, if I'm going to have a successful company, uh, I'm going to need to do something besides movies and television.
So I started doing video games. I started doing a themed entertainment for parks and, and, and that's led to some really smart, interesting stuff. Yeah. I don't know how smart it is. It matters. Survival, I think. Well, but it's still, well, some people wouldn't come up with that and they wouldn't survive. So, you know, that's very smart. So you get, you get a phone call from Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Hilton has this, uh, uh, ride experience, the Star Trek experience.
And they call me and they want me to come up and train their, make the cue video for them. And then, uh, train the people how to be Starship troopers, you know, in the 25th century and that sort of thing. Right. So you get weird calls like that and I love it. Yeah. So what, what was your, do you have a favorite project you worked on? Like one that was just the best experience? Oh, look, that's got to be Band of Brothers. Yeah. The mini series format, you know, 10 episodes and that sort of thing.
You can, you can really deeply get into the story and the characters. Uh, so that format is great. I love that. I loved doing, uh, um, Rough Riders with Tom Barris. Oh yeah. Yeah. I played Tom's, I played, uh, Colonel Leonard Wood. That's right. Rough Riders Commander. Yes. Um, that's a good one. Uh, Platoon will always have a close place in my heart because it started my career, it started my career. Right. But I think, I think Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan, um, and all of those movies.
And, and I've, I've done an interesting bunch of, uh, work with Tom Cruz. Uh, I worked with him on, uh, Born on the 4th of July, uh, where I got to know me and I didn't realize it, but Tom really liked me. Okay. Um, I wasn't in any mood to be a buddy or anything like that. Yeah. But you're a Scientologist now.
Yeah. And I'm not sure how much Tom is anymore, but, um, but lo and behold, um, when we started doing Mission Impossible, I found out that Tom wanted me to be one of the agents that chased him across the country, around the globe. Um, and then I get a call one day and it's Tom's people saying, look, Tom wants you to play his father in a movie called Night and Day. Hmm. And it turns out I, I played his dad. That's awesome. Yeah. It was so those, those relationships are long lasting.
See, it's always who you know, after the beginning, right? After you prove yourself, then it's just who you know. Right. That's how a lot of jobs come about. Well, yes. Um, but there's so much money involved in making a movie. I mean, 130 million is chump chain. Yeah, I know that, um, you do have to campaign for it. You have to, I mean, the phone rings usually when they need me, but if I want something, I have to go out and chase it. But you're legendary.
I mean, forgive me for flattering you too much here, but you, you know, how are people not knocking them out to God's you? I do have a bit of a legendary baggage, I guess. Um, but that's great. I mean, that, but that bring me, bring me captain die. He's not a, well, bring me somebody that looks like captain. No, wait a minute. Bring me somebody that says big as captain die. You know, give me a die type. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like a die type.
What would you say is the acting role that you had that you're most proud of that you think is your best work? Uh, I guess, I guess it would be two things. Um, one was, uh, Leonard Wood and rough riders. I love that, that experience. And the other is Colonel Cenk and Vanda brothers. Yeah. Yeah. Colonel Cenk is great. My favorite scene is when, cause you're, you're relationship with Winters or Cenk's relationship with Winters. I think you and Damien Lewis do it really well.
We understood that really. Yeah. Well, because in bootcamp, right, you're in charge of all of them, but he's in charge of that. And he used every bit of that. Yeah. Which is great. And when, uh, in the foil scene, when you're attacking the village and he goes with your voice, you just yell at him. Yeah. And he reacted instantly because he, recognized that voice. They're very fine actors out there, but, uh, to put them through the bootcamp like you do, I think it shows more in the performance.
It's almost like a documentary. You're documenting. And that's my Oscar. Yeah. That's my Academy Award. When I see those guys sing out there like that. Well, captain Dale, die, you, uh, or someone I've always admired. And this is a true honor and pleasure for me to talk to you. And I, I, I do not exaggerate when I say, I believe you are a national treasure. I, I, I'm so glad that you came here, but, uh, I have to say that because you know what? Eric door is going to put me in the museum.
Let's just stack him up here. Put you behind Plexiglas. Eric door is also here. And I don't want to say goodbye to everybody without acknowledging Eric, Eric, go ahead. Sit, sit in front of that mic there real quick. Let us know. So captain die, uh, alluded to before the fact that he is on your board. That is correct. And we're really honored and happy to have him on board. And, um, he's already, uh, giving me orders and motivating me.
And I greatly appreciate that because we're a little bit behind schedule. So I, I needed to, um, have someone, uh, light me up and that's what he's doing. Maybe he needs to put the board through a boot camp so you guys can snap. Hey, that's a great idea. Uh, please let me document that. Well, Eric, uh, again, you are once again, my hero for the umpteenth time for, for doing this. I really appreciate it. Well, thanks man. No, thank you.
You're very welcome for that compliment, but thank you very much. Cause I, I love this. This was fantastic. Thank you so much. Both of you guys. Sure. And thank you all for watching. Yep. Thanks guys. All right. That was a good interview. Now let's get to the meat. I'm sorry. I got to go. I'm running out. We're not a stuff. I appreciate it so much. Thank you so much for coming. Captain sir, if I may get you to sign, Oh my gosh, his hands gonna fall. I'm so sorry. It's the last one.
Let me get away here. Did you go outside and see Bob Smith's right as my name. I hope you enjoyed that amazing interview with captain Dale Dye. If you want to help the Gettysburg museum of history expand, you can either go to our website, buy some military antiques, or if you go to the website, there's a section there that says foundation and you can donate to the Gettysburg museum of history foundation.
And there's a link there that you can directly donate, or you can always send in a check and that would be payable to the Gettysburg museum of history foundation. That'll go directly to our building and development fund. Thanks again. Have a great night.