Inside MACV-SOG: Black Ops Behind Enemy Lines in Vietnam | Ed Wolcoff | Ep. 407

But they you know, they they gave some uh, some insider information. Uh. They said that SOG recon had seventy percent casualty rate. And I said, oh, that's that's the place where I want to go. Uh uh and uh. I dropped out of college uh and joined the army as an enlisted man with the intent of realizing that dream going airborne, you know, volunteering all the way, going airborne uh and special Forces and ultimately in SOG. And

I achieved that. And uh. At that point, I had no no real intent to become a career soldier, but I decided to do that after my experience in UH in SOG and Vietnam. What year was this that you joined up? Sixty seven?

a group and I chose weapons. When I was in a I T, I was an eleven Charlie, which was Morderman UH and I had an affinity. I wanted to get into UH close combat operations, so UH I selected UH eleven Bravo MOS, which was you know, infantryman light weapons actually and was trained in light and heavy weapons UH. Later on, after a return from Vietnam, I went to a love and foxtrot course and that became my secondary

that was operations and intelligence. But at any rate, my assignment out of training group was to the sixth Special Forces Group. I wasn't there very long. The my team

sergeant and my sergeant major took a liking to me and they sent me to UH Underwater Operations Course scuba school, and at that point I was a spec for UH and UH. UH. I asked around the more senior n CEOs about how I could get to SOG and I found a guy who was who was bound for Vietnam, and he gave me UH the phone number for the woman we referred to as missus A, who was the assignments up at the Pentagon. Not at the Pentagon, but at first called personnel.

done me the favor of signing me up for scuba school. Anyway, Uh, it was uh, you know, when I was on the phone with her, I told her I wanted to I wanted to go to SOG And she said, are you sure, because she knew what the casualty rate was she had to fill all those slots and I said, yes, I'm absolutely sure. So she said, okay, I'll get your I'll

get you your orders. So I was waiting around and then the class date for school school started and uh, back then and probably still, there is a kind of a make or break uh event in the course which is called the uh. It was a pool training like a shark attack. Yeah, it was an harassment swim uh. And I had just finished successfully completing the harassment swim uh.

And it wasn't very pleasant for me because they had paired me up with the captain and they were all after the captain and I was just kind of like a uh, you know, a coincidental casualty, you might say. But anyway, I passed that. UH, and we went back to the barracks to get ready for the next class, and I was told that the C I C of the committee wanted to see me. And I said, oh, Ship, I failed, I failed to swim, I failed the harassment swim.

He brought me and said, you got orders, uh and UH, and he he knew what the code was on the orders that indicated I was going to SAG UH and UH. He said, we'll put you on a on a bus back up to Fort Bragg and you'll have to process out and then you're on your You're on your way. I didn't know at that point as a you know, a lowly spec for that, I could have asked for a delay until I completed the scubas of course, but

I didn't know that at the time. So UH back up to BRAG, processed out, and UH got to an trang where they gave me they they further assigned me to the specific part of UH SAG where I was to be a signed, which was Command and Control Central or also known as FOB two. ED.

and they'd give them some kind of brief, like very vague, we have this special reconnaissance outfit. You want to volunteer, And that's kind of how they found their way in. It was that like a unique situation that you found yourself in.

ultimate unit of assignment. And I didn't know that at the time, but it was explained to me by by the n c C, the Scuba Committee, and uh so I got to a got in to trang uh and uh processed in and then found my way on a blackbird, uh from the Trang to uh Contomb and that was an interesting there were my adventures started, you know.

from the Blackbird to take it to the fob. So I and there was about four other folks on board the aircraft who were inbound and so we were sitting on the pallets as we drove out out the road the access road to the airfield, and right there was the provincial government building uh for Kantum Province. Took her right and in front of the the provincial headquarters was this big open field uh and uh overgrown with weeds, and right in the middle of it was a French

penhard armored car that had been destroyed. And it kind of resonated with me that the French had been there before us and UH and had failed and UH and you know, the historical aspect of that kind of rushed in on me. Up the road about three miles I would say, from Kantum from the airfield, at least, passing over a bridge, and we entered the gate. Now the fob, for some strange reason, was divided into two by the highway.

The highway is called q L fourteen and UH. As far as a UH defensive setting, I thought it was inappropriate to have a highway dividing your your compound. UH. You know, not only was it a highway for the Vietnamese, it was a highway for an enemy who wanted to, you know, to to attack you, uh on a high speed route of approach. Bet I digress here, but drove in the gate and it was it was child time and people were coming out of the mess hall UH, and among them was a guy who had gone through

training group with me. His name was John Saint Martin, and John recognized me instantly. UH and UH wanted me to h to join his his team. He was not the team leader, he was the assistant team leader and and but there was a vacancy on the team, so UH he took me to see his team leader and he basically gave me the nod. And then I went over and spoke to the first sergeant over at Recon

Company headquarters. The following so I knighted over in the team room, and the following day we went over to see the sergeant major and he gave us the end brief, or at least part of it, and gave us the opportunity to decline the operation indicating hazardous operation you know across border operations, all that good stuff. UH and UH so among us was a medic and then there was four other guys. One was an n c O UH

and UH. The NCO decided he would go to the Exploitation Force and the rest of us UH opted for a recon. From there, we got inbriefed by UH the S two shop and gave us the one over the world thing. We got to see the big map on the wall where the area of operations was, and it was all, you know, just what I kind of expected. My first sergeant at that point was the guy by the name of Bob Howard, and he was a very striking in appearance, extremely well built, powerfully built guy, scar

on his face. And Saint Martin had told me that he had been submitted for his third recommendation for a Medal of Honor at that point, uh, and that he was going to get it this go round. Uh. And of course, uh, Saint Martin was in awe of Bob Howard and as was most everybody else that I knew that I encountered. He's very well thought of for obvious reasons.

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all overgrown by that point. And then there was at least two branches of that road that went into Cambodia went south into Cambodia, UH and everything. And I later found out that that particular area was an NBA base area for UH. It was called Base Area six O nine UH and UH there was a concentration of enemy troops and enemy UH logistics located there. UH and that logistics fed not only into South Vietnam into the Central Highlands, but it also fed into UH the border area along

the Cambodia South Vietnam border. So it was a vital area of interest to the enemy. And because of that, it was extremely well guarded and uh UH and very

hazardous territory for for operations. So I later on found out that our S two shop had failed us in a number of respects by not providing us UH the intelligence that I that was was at McFee headquarters j J two and never seemed to wind up uh down at our level, and UH disseminated among the team leaders and UH, I can tell you about a couple operations that for me that revealed these kinds of things about

what I was really getting into. And it turns out that the casualty rate for our reconn company at FOB two was one hundred UH or over one hundred percent, rather than the seventy percent that I had been told earlier. And of course casualties include k I A, w I A, M I A and UH. UH. So the the reason

why the casually rate was so high was that guys would get wounded and they would come back come back to the FOB UH from the hospital. Directly from the hospital, they they many of them were to be medev act and they declined meta medevac to Okinawa or back to the States and UH and escaped from the from the hospital and UH hitchhike back to the FOB. An example of that was a guy by the name of Norm

Doni Norm Domiy Dony. After Howard became UH an officer and came back to command UH the Recon Company f w B two. Norm Dony Dony had been with Delta Project UH at Natrange and UH for reasons that I can discuss later, he decided to leave Delta and he was first sergeant a recon comp but he had Delta Project and he wanted to be first sergeant a recon company at FOB two. So he was an outstanding individual. Brought a lot of experience. He had run recon himself

before he took the first sergeant's job. He wanted to prove his medal to to the to the personnel that he would be in charge of as first sergeant. So he took I think it was RT. Texas and he took several operations and on one operation he got wounded. Uh, and it was his left eye, a fragment grenade fragment penetrated his his left eye. Uh, and they you know, evacuated in the hospital and he just he shiked his

way back to the fob. They were going to avac him to the States to perform surgery on the eye, and he refused and uh he uh. He had optic fluid coming out of his eye and down to his cheek, and his remedy for that was just he had a hanky and he had pad it and continued to dry on and then he did another couple of missions with that before he before he became first started. So that was the kind of guys that we had there in the leadership positions that we looked up to set the example for us.

selection process, never went through Special Forces training. And UH A couple of these guys really turned out to be really bad. And among them was my first team leader. Uh. And he didn't train the team, He was not particularly involved with the mont yards. Ah, and he he did some things that were unacceptable as a team leader. The only deployment that I had under him was to a

bright Light, a week long bright light assignment. Bright Light was conducted out of our launch site, and the bright Light operation consisted of a special you know, a recon team designated to go to the the rescue of a

team in trouble or recover the remains of those who had been killed, or rescue and or recover crewman, aircraft crewman, and there it was often a very hazardous job. So we went up to uh To doc To, which was the lawn site, and we were not called out for any rescue operations or recovery operations, which was fortunate because

this team leader had never trained us. The training consisted of going out in the helipad and running through an immediate action drill or and do that a couple of times, and then go to the range and shoot your weapons and not even run battle drills and then come back and that was it. And both Saint Martin and I were very concerned about that. Plus his behavior was I don't want to even talk about his behavior frankly, I could tell you offline, but.

from Special Forces, but apparently that didn't happen. And I ran into him later on when I was an instructor at Camp McCall as a student. He was a student, and he was he deserted.

meta back back to the States. So the radio man wound up being the team leader, and he wound up being the team leader because he had claimed to have been a recon team leader in the one seventy third and uh uh.

He would come from training and go directly to the club and start drinking, and that was his practice every day. And we had the first operation with him was a very simple operation. We were going into a very hot area, but the mission was to drop off a transponder into an area called Oscar three for B fifty twos to

home in on beacon bombing. Yes, And it was basically fly in, jump off the helicopter, hide the transponder, call the helicopter, come get you, and go back and that was it. So the first two people off the helicopter supposed to be the team leader and the radio man, which is what I was at that point, and he, uh, I lost my balance. I was. I was standing on the skid ready to jump off the helicopter under the ground.

I lost my balance and got to the ground before him, and he was very upset that I got onto the ground before him. Uh, and chewed me out and it went downhill from there.

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and we knew about it. Ah, but uh he we got this mission to Tango seven and we're up at the the launch site. Uh and he's he tells the launch officer. The launch officer tells him get ready to go. We got a window. Uh and he says, I can't go. I refuse to go. I feel sick to my stomach. And uh so the launch officer radio is back to

the fob. The fob commander personally comes out and goes to uh confronts him and his face is just purple with rage. Uh and he said, are you going to take this mission or not? And the guy said, no, I don't feel good. Wow. Uh. So he said, you're relieved, you releaeve him on the spot, turned to Saint Martin and said, can you take the team on this op? And Saint Art looks at me and I nod. We agreed that we were going to take the team shorthanded and go on the op. And it was a successful operation.

And this guy from being relieved, they sent him to the security company to run guard posts and stuff like that. He was relieved for cowardice and he should have been kicked out of Special Forces or the army and the Army. But interestingly, because we were so classified, nobody was ever given an article of fifteen. Nobody was ever court martialed, even though some earned it, include me.

and and set up blocking force for you. UH. Normally within a couple of days we would be tracked down by uh uh the tracker teams uh NVA squads typically with Laotian tribes and trackers. And these were the excellent troops. These were outstanding troops, but at any rate, Uh. Two days into the op they had not yet tracked us down. And we came upon an area of dead bamboo. Uh

and Uh. If you know anything about dead dead bamboo, particularly if it's fallen, and they make a god awful noise, it's impossible to get through a patch of dead bamboo, almost impossible to get through it without making an eye of a lot of noise. Ah and Uh as cause as cautious as you could be. And uh. So we entered that area of dead bamboo, which is fairly extensive

area probably had been killed by Asian orange. Ah and Uh got to the other side, and all of a sudden we heard shouting from the green periphery uh, inside inside the vegetation, uh and Uh. At this point, John, being the second guy in in order of the file order, he saw and the point man saw buildings, and they gave the sign for buildings, which is basically like that. And I assumed that they were the typical bamboo huts kind of thing that the NBA used in the field.

And just at that point there was yelling in Vietnamese from inside this this area. Uh. And for some reason, our translator or interpreter did not translate what was being said to John, and I found out later after John had been all shot up and we got back to the FOB that they were saying there's Americans in the

dead bamboo. Uh. So we got into inside the verge and I was confronted by something I really didn't expect, which is really big buildings under canopy, heavy log structure, long buildings, a cluster of four of them, and the grounds surrounding these buildings there wasn't a leaf or a twig on it. It was totally pleased up. And right before this cleared area where these buildings were there was

a fallen log, a fallen tree. And we assembled there and John got this great idea that we would attack the the largest building in the hopes of capturing NVA

officers and documents of you know, of importance and things like that. And uh, I I suggested to him that maybe we ought to bomb at first before we assaulted it with an eight man recontem you know. Uh. And he agreed with that. So he we got in contact with our communication relay site and they passed the word back to the FOB. At this point, it was getting near dusk. It was about an hour or a half an hour before dusk, uh and UH the order came back from the FOBI commander to to bomb the facility

and then police up whatever we could. But we were so close to those buildings that the only thing that would penetrate the canopy would be a white phosphorus grenade. And if we set off a white phosphorus grenade, then the enemy would know exactly where we were. So we summoned air support, which came in the form of a one fighter bombers, and attempted to adjust fire by sound.

We tried to you know, zero them into where we were located by the sound of their engines, told them to do a ninety degree turn or you know whatever to get us in the visa entity so that they could then and we had hoped that they that would be close enough where they could drop their bombs. They were they were only carrying uh heavy bombs, cased caste bombs, fragmentation bombs, and that didn't have anything else to uh

for We're loaded on those aircraft at that point. Well, they dropped some ordinance and it was totally way off uh in the in the distance, not even close uh. So John decided, the hell with it, We're going to go and assault that building. So we go back to where this fallen uh fallen log is, and he divised

the team into two parts. At that we were running an eight man team, so they were three Americans and the rest were mont Yards, three three mont Yards, So it was Saint Martin and I and two Martyards UH up in the the front and the the second of UH wave was to be our radio man with the two N seventy nine grenadiers and A and A and a third Montyard and the grenadiers were too bracket our our contested area with m you know h G while

the first wave you know, assaulted this building. Uh. And just at that point, so John and I were up at the up at that log and we booth, both pulled pins on grenades, uh and getting ready to assault

the building. And John stepped over the log and just out at that point, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a squad of MVA infantry with their weapons at high port, walking along the periphery of this cleared area, pretending that they didn't see us, but they did, and they hit us on the flank and John fortunately threw his grenade and then fell back from stepping over the log. I threw my grenade and opened fire on this squad of MVA. John had been hit three times. He had

been hit in the ankle. If you know anything about an AK, it has a muzzle rise as it fires, so it rises up and to the left, because the ejection porter is on the right. Would hit him in the ankle, hit him in the leg and then sliced across his ad to him and which emptied his intestines. Oh, my god, to the ground uh and uh so uh Fortunately we were sheltered by the UH, by the log and my firing and possibly the firing of the the grenadiers had knocked out some some of the NBA squad

uh so uh. I had not been trained how to administer morphine, but John was in extreme pain. He was screaming and hollering, which of course pinpointed us the team leader. UH. In sag recon teams always called what was called the one zero kit, which had medicines tetracycling uh, the modal uh, the cure chrome, all this kind of ship and uh and also had the morphine ceretes in them. And I wasn't taught how to use the morphine cerettes. Uh. And uh this was like my maybe my fourth operation on

the ground. And everybody who went to uh to sag to the sag fobs who were too who were destined for recon or exploition exploitation force were supposed to go through the one zero course a long time, and uh, they forgot about me. So I it might have been that I missed that course on the serettes because I was I never went to long time everybody else went

for some reason they missed me at any rate. I tried to mister the morphine and and it wouldn't eject H. And John was still carrying on and screaming and shit, And I said, all right, enough of this. I took his intestines. I piled him back on top of his ad abdomen, tucked his undershirt in, and tightened down his belt to contain his intestines. Uh. And then I UH, I got his his rucksack and gave it to one Montyard to carry, gave his weapon too another Montiard to carry,

and gave his webyeard to another Montyard to carry. And then for the remaining people I had you know. I tried to get them to help me drag Saying Martin to an LZ, which was the dead the area of de dead bamboo from whence we came. And it turns out that Montyards could carry a load equivalent to that of an American any day. They were really small in stature,

but they could really carry a lot of weight. But their upper body strength was absolutely terrible, and they couldn't They couldn't carry a Saint Martin and they couldn't drag him. So I wound up dragging him back to the to the l Z, and we were just reached the LZ just as my strength ran out. I mean, he outweighed me by thirty forty pounds, and it was just.

like that. So we get in you know, about ten fifteen meters inside the uh the bamboo, and two of them Montyards had their street smarts about them, and they went along the periphery of the dead bamboo where there was some live bamboo, and they shook the bambo who away from where Saint Martin was to distract the enemy, away from where Saint Martin was moaning and groaning and where the rest of the team was, and and attracted

the firing towards where the bamboo was being shaken. So we called, you know, an emergency for an emergency extraction. And by now it was dusk uh and uh uh uh. We had a Ford Air controller by the name of Don Fulton, a captain, and he had a Covey rider which was a senior n c O and he's seven uh and uh who was hitting in the back seat. And we started taking fire and and uh. So the the pilot had had four rockets under his slung under his wings uh and uh most of them were uh.

They all were as a matter of fact, white phosphorus. So he did strafing runs with these rockets and fired them into the into where these where the fire, the weapons fire was coming from. And at dusk. He could now see the muzzle flashes from these weapons, and he estimated that we had a company closing in on us based on the amount of fire. They weren't just firing at us, they were firing up at him because he

was making low passes. They ran out of rockets. So the n c O, who was sitting in the back of the aircraft opened the window and was firing his M sixteen out the window at the enemy as they were closing and the fire, the amount of fire that they were taking as they were doing these strafing runs was increasing increasing, And then they said, you got a battalion coming at you, and he had summoned, of course,

air assets. And by the time they got there, it was starting to rain and it was dark, and the first helicopter came in and they had to turn their landing lights on in order to see us and to see how close they were to the ground and to the bamboo, which made them a perfect target, and they started taking all kinds of hits. Now we at that at that point the helicopters would not land because of

the because of the bamboo. So uh at that point in time, we were using an extraction rig called the Hanson rig, and what it was was a a twelve to sixteen foot length of one and a half inch one and a half inch webbing with a very stout buckle on it. It was used for, you know, to tie down cargo on aircraft palates and stuff like that.

And we found a way to use those which which if properly donned, could basically create kind of like a a basket arrangement so that you wouldn't fall out of a handsome rig unless you actually tried, and so we used those. At that point it had replaced something was called the McGuire rig, and the McGuire rig was simply a loop, a padded loop that you would sit on, and we lost a pilot that had been rescued because

he didn't know how to use it. He thought it was like the CIA rescue where you put it under your arms. He had to sit on it. He fell out of that, you know, the circulation was cut off, and he just fell out of it while he was being rescued and died anyway. So you were supposed to rig these up and carry them on your web gear, hooked onto your web gear with a carabiner, and mine was all hooked up. It was you know, the webbing was cut, you know, set to the my length from

my shoulders down to my feet. Uh and and was laced through this very robust steel buckle and was tied off and all that good stuff, and mine was ready to go. Saint Martin had never rigged his his his hands and ring, so it was just a sixteen foot inch belt. Oh my god. So I gave Saint Martin

my stable rig and hooked him up. Uh. And when the aircraft came in, they dropped ropes uh with the loops in them at the bottom and at midway on on the on the rope five eighths inch repelling rope effectively, I hooked him into that and uh and three of the other mont yards uh maybe four uh And I

charged them with, you know, taking care of John. And he was still screaming bloody murder and stuff like that, and that helicopter took off and that's when I found out that John's that I I didn't have time enough to rig the hansom rig to my dimensions, so I tied it into a Swiss seat. Never do that, by the way, if you can avoid it. Uh And uh. And when the second ship came in again with landing lights on and taking fire. Ah uh our our radio

man and the remaining montyard hooked on and I hooked

up the radio to another string uh and uh. As the helicopter gained altitude, we started taking any aircraft fire from twenty three mic mic and thirty seven mic mic uh any aircraft fire, and it was starting to rain like hell, and we saw the detonations of the U of the any aircraft artillery built below us as we were and the so we were flying back to our launch site over all this rugged uh rainforest and mountains, and I started feeling a lot of pain from the

from the webbing which had bound up and was really slicing into my groin area. And at the same time that was going on, I was dealing with that the radio Prick seventy seven was flying out like a pendulum in coming back and smacking me repeatedly. So I managed to grab the radio, got a hold of the handset and begged the pilot to set us down so that I could because I was in pain and I was afraid that my circulation we cut off and that I

would fall out of the harness. He refused to do that, and we flew through a torrential rainstorm at the the op. You know the cruising speed for the UH one D, which is probably around one hundred and twenty miles an hour something like that. So that was a you know, kind of a complimenting, complimentary effect, the rain hitting you at that speed while you were flying at one hundred

and twenty miles an hour. And the rain was so heavy and cloud cover was so dense that Saint Martin's helicopter entirely missed the UH the launch site and flew all away to Contome Airfield. Oh my god. And they landed and got Saint Martin loaded up on the helicopter. They had a Chase medic with him, and they got him to the Plaikoup hospital and they had to put an enormous amount of blood into him just to save

his life. And they have that you know. Of course, when they got him stable, they met it acted him uh first to huh uh Okinawa and then to the States. That round that hit his thigh shattered, his thigh bone, his ankle was shattered, and of course you know his intestines, you can you can imagine, and so my helicopter was able to see the launch site airfield airstrip because there was a jeep there that had its headlights on illuminating

the airstrip for them. So he comes in in the usual flight pattern, and he came in too low, and I hit the asphalt pretty hard, and then he started dragging me all the way down the airstrip towards where the launch site was, and I had this I looked like a comet because something metal on my backpack was dragging on the concrete and it's a shower of sparks all around me, and their eyes laying on my back. Well,

this was going on. I'm looking up at the helicopter and there's the crew chief looking out looking down at me, and I'm going, you know, like you know what, you know, what are you going to do about this kind of a I'm sure he couldn't see my expression, but finally he was able to communicate with the pilot, and the pilot gained altitude to get me up off the asphalt close to where the launchide was and then dropped me

like a sack of potatoes again on the asphalt. Well, it turns out that this was the new commander of

the fifty fifty seven helicopter Company and this was his cherry flight. So he was a he was a major, and he was every time you take over a helicopter company, you want to take a lead one one flight with them, and particularly since this was uh a deep penetration operation, he'd never been on one before. So this was this

was his cherry flight for uh FA Sad. And he comes out of the the helicopter, runs over to me and begs my forgiveness, and he said he had lost uh ah, his between night vision, the glare of the head headlights on the jeep. Uh and uh, he was, he had lost the it's like depth perception, deep perception, thank you very much. He lost depth perception. And it was just uh. So he apologized all over the place, and I said, don't worry about it. I'm happy to

be here kind of a thing. Uh. We were transported back to to the FOB and we were met by the new commander of Recon Company by the name of Gulay, great guy, and the first sergeant which I think it was DONI at that point, and the tradition for us was you come off and op and you would be taken to the miss hall and fed a steak dinner. So they had to wake up the They had to wake up the mess sergeant to cook us some steaks.

M and me. I. I was sitting at the table with the commander and the first sergeant and John Blough was sitting with me, and they wanted an account of what had happened. Uh, and I gave them, you know, the story, and then uh, it it kind of hit me how ridiculous this whole thing was about an eight man recon team attacking uh an NBA installation. And I started laughing like crazy. Uh and uh. At some point, uh Blow saw the humor in it too, and he

started laughing. But I caught a strange look between the commander and the first argument, UH that I must have must have gone off my rocker. But at that point then I became the team leader of our two New.

Uh and as the tactical situation on the ground changed, they didn't and they So what you got out of the one zero course was valuable, mind you, but it was in my view of basic special reconnaissance course where you got your advanced training was at the hands of a multi tour team leader.

they thought that he was, you know, invulnerable. Ah. And Uh then I take over the team and I don't initially, I don't enjoy the same ah relationship Ah And I was more I love the yards and they and we got along great, but not in the same sense, not as close as the same Martin was with him, and I was more directive in nature. Uh and uh uh and I the first mission that we had was uh kind of uh raised their level of concern about me.

So that first mission was at this At this point, the first sergeant was guy by the name of Pappy Greenwood, Master Sergeant good guy. He had been in the Provincial Reconnaissance Unit under associated with Phoenix program and he came to SOG and it was the first sergeant and uh uh he uh. He said, we got a mission for you. Right at that point, I was on bright light duty and he called me back from bright light and said, we've got a mission for you. That's the way it went.

He said, there's going to be a B fifty two strike along the MSR and we're going to send you in on a bomb damage assessment b d A. And he said, you've never been on a b DA before, so I'll tell you what what typically happens you land. It's tough getting through all the tangle of trees that have been tossed up by the B fifty two strikes, you wind up spending nighting over and then commencing your

reconnaissance the following day. And he says, every time the teams get run out of the target area before they can accomplish the mission because the North three lads have figured out where you are and they're waiting for you. And they know that every after every beef it to two strike, a BDA would follow, so they were always waiting for us on a BDA. So H I said, okay, well, why don't we do it this way? Why don't you

just land me on the beaten zone. I'll conduct my recon right then and there, and then I'll get extracted before nightfall, rather than landing outside the beaten zone, which was the usual protocol, land me right there. And he said he was really shocked at that suggestion, and he said, are you sure you want to do it that way? I said yes, and he said, all right, it's your call. UH,

And so we were inserted by a H thirty four helicopter and UH landed down in this stream valley that was at the foot of this ridge, and the MSR followed along at the base basically at the base of this ridge towards the triborder area, and it was an all it was an all weather road and was vital

to the enemy. So we landed there and we scaled up the side of this ridge to get on top of the road, and I started taking pictures, and there was bunkers along the side of the road for North Viet meats to take shelter from air attack and whatnot. We walked a kilometer in the open along the road after B fifty two strike had cleaned out all the vegetation, so anybody who was on a ridge on the other side of the beaten area of the other side of the stream valley could have seen us very easily, but

they but nothing happened untoward. And we got to a to a point in the road which kind of formed the loop around a finger of this ridge, and I sad and my montyards were getting extremely nervous, and my point man kept on drifting back so that I so that I got the message that he didn't want to go any further, and so I decided that we would climb this ridge and get to the top of the to the ridge and get some more perspective, which is

what we did. And we got up to the top of the ridge and there was this bomb crater from a five hundred pound bomb right where that finger was, and some trees had been knocked out, knocked off around there, but this bomb crater. We looked at the bottom bomb crater and there was a tunnel. It had breached the tunnel, a top of a tunnel, And that gives me remind me to come back to this this tunnel issue, because it gets back to the intelligence issue that I mentioned

earlier on in the conversation. So so I say to my one of my grenadiers that I wanted him to go down into the tunnel because he was not only armed with a with a M seventy nine grenade launcher, but he also was carrying a forty five pistol and I had a flashlight for him. And he refuses, so

I decide I'll do it. I'd take his forty five and I go down into the to the bottom of the crater and go into the into this this tunnel has been exposed, and I'm there with my flashlight and my forty five and I'm crawling into the around in this tunnel and come to a point where there'd been a cave in, and I couldn't go any further, so I was contemplated what I was going to do next.

Just then I get a shout from my assistant team leader saying nvah and uh, so I have I can't turn around, so I wind up scooting back until I get even with the opening and uh. I get a hand up and we all get into the bomb crater and uh. They tell me where they see these see the NVA the NVA had crossed. They say it was an NVA squad that had crossed the beaten zone for the beef at the juice strike and was now on our side of the road and on the ridge where

we were, but at some distance. So I said, all right, that's enough. I've gotten all the photos that I that I need. I take another photos from this elevation. Not a single bomb from the two struck strike had had had hit the road, not a single one, which was disappointing to me. So I called for an extraction and they send again the H thirty four to pick us up, and the blade length was such that they could not land or even get close to this finger that was

on the ridge. So the Ford air controller directed us to another open area that was further along the ridge. That open area was separated from my open area by a finger of you know, a ansmiss of vegetation. Now, I had tried to knock down a tree with a claymore and all it did was knock off the bark from the tree. So that wasn't a solution. So I tell the point man who was big fan of John Saint Martin. His name was Jerong and he had a

brother on the team. It was one of my ends seventy nine guys, I said, I point him and I said, we go there, l Z over there, And as soon as we get inside the green verge, he takes off running in a panic, trying to get to the LZ to get the hell out of there. And I then become the point man, and I'm really pissed off. Uh, And you know, we get we get through this this green patch and we wind up where the the C

thirty four had enough room to pick us up. And uh, my interpreter taps me on the shoulder and says, one of the montyards says, there's n v A. There were in an ambush and an ambush position that we just walked right past them and they were pointing their weapons at us, and the Montyard pretended as though he didn't see them, because he was afraid that if he acknowledged them and started a firefight, that they had to drop

on us and would wipe us out. The reason why those NVA did not open up their ambush on us was because we had Cobra Cobra aircraft flying overhead and they were and they had just suffered a B fifty two strike, so they were they were not they didn't want to invite a fight. Well, that pissed me off because it could have gone all wrong. He should have

opened fire on them. And because the if they had been able to initiate the ambush without us initiating first, uh, it would be a you know, a gunfight at six you know, the OK Corral kind of a situation. Uh. Better to initiate the gunfight than to, you know, let them have have first shot. That was my view. And anyway, got back to the to the fob and I was going to fire the point man and his and his brother just a pointment. Actually he beat me to it.

He quit and his brother went with him. And that's why it was my first inkling that my team was a little concerned about my acceptance of risk, you know. And but I had always tried to measure the risk against uh opportunity uh and uh and way the the odds other thing based on experience. So to circle back

to this intelligence issue. Yes, so my next operation was in the same vicinity. And I'm not gonna talk about that operation right now, Listen, you asked me to. But suffice to say that operation with Saint Martin and I discovered a major what apparently was not a logistics facility, but a major headquarters. These log structures. A regimental headquarters would be constructed of bamboo, a major headquarters be constructed a log semi permanent kind of a thing. I reasoned

that out. When we came back from an op, we would go to the S two to get a debriefing, and we described these these structures. We described how, you know, the how well kept this whole area was, and how was how was sheltered by the terrain, and how was sheltered by uh the canopy h And you know, gave them all, you know, everything that I could, uh the

divine from from the operation. And they never went back in S two or the the Intel office at Sog could not make the connection, uh, that this was more than just something out in the woods, you know, like, uh, you know logistics, and Saint Martin hadn't taken a photo so, which he should have done, definitely should have done. That would have validated everything we were saying about it. But anyway, then the second mission, I find an underground tunnel. Now

you report an underground tunnel to headquarters. That's back in Vietnam, and that's fairly commonplace. That was commonplace in Vietnam, but the North Vietnamese owned the entire length of the Hochiman Trail. They had no need to build tunnels go to that effort. What was there in that tunnel that was required such care?

So it was something spectacular to me. It was not so spectacular to an Intel analyst beck ATSOG headquarters who had never been on the ground, who did not connect the dots that this was an anomaly that you did not see in Laos but did see in South Vietnam. The third mission was in the same area again, Tango seven and I discovered on one side of a river, a north south river, a set of high speed trails heading towards Cambodia. On the other side of that river,

I discovered a hidden road. So when I get back from the operation again, I get debriefed and I tell them this time this kind of stuff, and no one seems to connect the dots because this is another route from the MSR into Cambodia, and no one is recounting that area to find out where it leads. You know, what encampents lie along that river, along those trails and

roads and all that other kind of stuff. And so there was no follow up to the kinds of things that we discovered, which was appalling because what we were reconed, right, we were supposed to discover this kind of stuff and then we expected some sort of follow up, some sort of action when it was discovered, and it wasn't happening.

this is something unusual, this is something that bears, you know, a second look, et cetera, et cetera. An example would be UH, the Russians and probably the Chinese, it's certainly uh so the Soviets and and the Russians in Ukraine. UH would use penal battalions the Russians during civil war, and these were criminals or deserters or slackerts UH who refused to fight and they were sent to penal battalion.

Penal battalions were used as they were suicide units. They were they were the point the end of the spear UH to draw fire, and they were sent they were the first one sent against UH UH you know AH and the the Allied units, and they got slaughtered. And when they were encamped, they were encamped basically in a an enclosure UH logs like a fort, a fort, barbed wire on top of the you know, the logs, but

the guards were on the outside looking in. So if you saw that, you might think, oh, the guards are looking out, but no, the guards the good. If the towers were on the outside, they were protected by the by the wall, they were looking inward, and then you would say, oh, all these soldiers that are inside this enclosure or none of them are carrying weapons. Okay. So unless you told an analyst what to look for not carrying weapons, morale looks low. Their their comportment is bad,

and they're being guarded from the outside. You wouldn't know that they're a penal battalion. So that's the same kind of thing that I think is a problem with all intelligence analysts unless they are informed by somebody who has the tactical wisdom. Wisdom is training plus experience, Okay, and so uh that's I chalk that up to them. And what do you call it? Intellectual incuriosity, failure of the imagination? Yeah,

just just staring at photos all day, staring at all day. Uh, you probably don't get it, so uh, but anyway, that's what I chalked it up to to be. Uh. And I found out other things in my experience. Uh. So this disease went all the way up to J two at MCVEE. Yeah. Yeah, And example was a sod team discovered tank track tracks near the across the border from the Long Long Vey a camp in I Corps reported

it back. They bring the team leader down to mcviee headquarters and he explains what he's seeing and he's got photographs of the tracks and the U The staff officer in charge of J two was a major general and he says, not possible. There are no tanks. The norfield means don't have any tanks, and the north of me could never get tanks down into through these mountains. That's what that was his opinion. And the I guess then it was Westmoreland, and Westmoreland listened to him and then

they attacked Longvai. The funny part about this story was he did it again. Ben Heat, down the Triborder area got attacked by tanks again special Forces and SOG teams that had discovered tracks on both occasions. This major general says, those are caterpillar tracks from earth moving equipment, and they attacked ben Hett. Of course they got wiped out, but it was a surprise to ben Heat that they were

being attacked by tanks and they they actually fired. They had knocked out one of our forty seven, so m forty eight tanks and killed. They voted. But so it's the same major General says, not possible, and this time it's I don't know if it's still Westmoreland or if Abrams had taken charge at that point, but.

way comment. It was that was a remarkable feat because for two years SOG had it our ccc FB two had in access of casualties and not me and one American and one Yard got wounded for the entire eighteen months plus that I was a team leader. It's not all positive. And I really enjoyed my Special Forces experience to that point, and then wound up, you know, re enlisting, and I became an instructor at the Special at the

h Special Forces Reconnaissance Course at Camp McCall. Now, as I mentioned in the book, UH, at long time, all the POI primary instruction and lesson LANs were all destroyed, gone forever. As the United States started as drawed down, they still had the necessity SAD was still going on for several months, and they still needed uh the new folks who were due to to come to the fobs. Now, at that point there was two fobs I guess to go through that training. So they had begun at this

course at Camp McCall. So I was there briefly, but the position actually called for an eleven foxtrot and I was not eleven foxtrot yet, So they sent me off to to own high school and by the time I got back, they had discontinued the course and again they destroyed all the lesson plans of POI. So one of my challenges then was to kind of not only come up with the the old you know, the tactics, techniques,

and procedures, but also make them relevant to today, right, And that was why I wrote the first.

o CS, uh, I mean. My experience in the seventh Special Force Group was my sergeant major loved me and he sent me to you know, courses. I was number one in the NCAO Academy Distinguished undergrad that kind of stuff. He thought I was. I walked on water. He sent me to Halo School, which at that point was going to that was an exception rather than the routine as

it is now, as a reward for my performance. And so I went to OCS and in my platoon there was a one of my fellow candidates was an EOD guy, and he said, you know, you ought to consider going into EOD because as a second lieutenant you get to command, which is probably the only occasion where uh, a second lieutenant would command a unit, actually lead a unit, yes, but command no. So the uh so that and he said, and all you know, you learned some new stuff and

uh uh and it's an actual mission and all that good stuff. And that appealed to me. And I reasoned that if I, h if another war came along, I could do a branch transfer and go back to special Forces. Yeah. Uh and uh so that was my decision. I went into ordinance and I commanded a UN detachment and then I had subsequent Uh. I was in Berlin Brigade as the EO D Officer for the American sector and had

a couple of other hats I were as well. Great assignment, accomplished a great deal uh and then commanded a company back in uh in West Germany, which is a very challenging assignment. Uh And I did very well there. So my experience to that point was that I I really enjoyed my military experience. Uh And uh So that answers your question.

something about Charlie Beckwith. There was a number of guys who were in SAG who left Delta because of Charlie Beckworth. They could tolerate him. Yeah, And there were other things about Charlie beckwith that I had learned as well, and among them was he didn't take advice. He thought he knew everything. And I knew that that was a prescription

for or that was not. Yeah, that was not a guy that you wanted as your commander, and did I declined that position and it was And that was a good thing because then I went onto the advance course and my subsequent subsequently went to Berlin, which was a great assignment. Great assignment.

munitions UH and directed energy weapons. And I thought, you know this is you know, this is really great. It's another great assignment for me. I didn't expect it to be because frankly, Human proven Ground is the asshole of the world. But it was. It was a good, really

good experience. I got to do some interesting, really stuff and I work with Special Forces in developing uh some of the smart, intelligent, brilliant minitions and and some of the booby trap devices that are still in their inventory. They also had a munition developed specifically for them. Uh. Uh what was the name of it.

you know, So I go into the conference room. I sit down, and there's five guys from the agency and my boss and my boss's boss, and they describe the problem and and they asked me if I could, if I could handle this, because it had been a cock up they had they had come to the months prior and went to the wrong off us to coordinate the test, and and so then they show up with the with the expectation that it was the test would be he kicked off on time, and no one knew in the

test director at all at any rate. So I said, yeah, I can do this, And I looked across the table. I looked around the table, and then across the table from me was the guy from CCC by the name of Joe Walker. Oh yeah, Joe Walker was probably the best team leader I'd ever encountered, UH and very well respected, formerly with Delta before he came to CCC. And then he had and the ammunition that they were testing was foreign ammunition and it was the one twenty two millimeter rocket.

And when Joe Walker was at SOG he had gone to some of these ammunition holding areas for farm munitions to police up stuff that he might be able to use, and he saw all these stacks of one twenty two millimeters rockets and he started thinking about how he might be able to use those time passes. He's in the agency, he has an opportunity to use them. But he had They don't have launchers. They have to figure out how to how to.

this this jury rigged system. And they also wanted to test a fuse that was used that they thought might work.

They didn't have enough uses for all the the one twenty twos that they had, and they wanted to test the different fuse to see if that would work. And it didn't. And so they had a fairly significant inventory of one twenty two's that were restored here in the United States in bunkers on installation storage ammunition storage areas. So that was my purpose is to try and Joe tried to recruit me into the agency, but I said, I don't have my twenty years in yet, so I

don't want to forego by military retirement. And then so I declined the opportunity, but said check with me later. You know, after I hit my twenty I didn't know how to get in contact with him. Actually, but years later I discovered that he's working out at Harvey Point.

Now he had been operational. So this thing with the one twenty two's that is a legendary op that has never spoken about, I guess among But Joe Walker became a legend and at Harvey Point, his picture is all along the hallways in the in the main building at Harvey Point.

we had a program doing that for them. So like the people who work for me in my division, my corporate division, we're doing that kind of stuff out in Nevada. And then uh, you know, so it was at the Harvey Point again, and so I met up with him a couple of times, and he was running, he had had a well, he was still operationally. He had this really serious accident. He was on a railroad platform, fell off backwards and broke his back, and uh, and that

was it. So they hired him at Harvey Point to be an instructor, and then when he reached retirement there at the agency, they hired him back as a contractor to do the same thing he had been doing as a as a an agency employee. And he passed away from Parkinson's a couple of years ago, and I I helped get him recognized as a distinguished member of the Special Forces Regiment before he passed.

for Biological Defense. And President Clinton had read a book about Ebola and started asking questions about it from the science Advisor and was convinced that we needed to up our game in biological defense, and so they started up this office and I was like, very very early into that program and was there for four or five years or so. And during that timeframe, I went from you know, a research analyst all the way up to a senior vice president within my firm and had the biggest division

within the firm. Because I'm naturally aggressive, and I went after business. Any business that I thought I could win, I went after it. And I left that corporation because they had someone savory business practices that I couldn't tolerate, and the president of the corporation and I didn't like

each other. So I left and became a consultant and kept working on classified programs here and there, and worked in business development for to do proposals to win contracts, mostly defense contracts, and then retired, but have been keeping my hand in and like writing all these issues and giving presentations to people who really care about these things. I hope, and I'm kind of like wedded to these campaigns about getting prepared for the next war.

first book there. And in the course of my research for the first book, I literally read hundreds, that's plural, hundreds of books and field manuals and tech manuals and also non military authors who wrote on military affairs, and so I wrote an article for the Marine Corps Gizette which is kind of sets up my concern about being prepared for jungle operations. Anybody who reads it should take the lesson from that article and say, Wow, this happened,

then it could happen again. Shouldn't we do something about that now? I'm afraid that it hasn't had enough circulation where it's been sufficient to have an impact. But just a couple of brief notes about that. That would be during World War one crushed World War two, shortly after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded Malaysia and at that point the Brits had a multinational corps in Malaysia one hundred thousand something like that. You know a lot of people,

and the Japanese kicked their asses. So they had Brits, they had Australians, they had Indian and they had Malaysian troops and they had some Dutch casualty rate and lost Malaysia within two months something like that and UH, and then then the Japanese invaded a Pua New Guinea UH and the Australians has sent three divisions to fight in North Africa and they did a great job fighting in

North Africa. They were considered by the Allies as an elite echelon to forces because they had light infantry and it's like the outback, right, Yes, they had the outback. Yeah, that's true. They had that kind of territory. So the the Japanese were after Port Moresby, which was on the southern coast of uh Pa Pula and New Guinea and right across the channel from Australia. And if the Japanese were able to take Port Moresby then that would be

a major threat to Australia. So Australia called in, pulled back one of its crack divisions from North Africa and they had about a week I think it's probably probably true about a week, maybe as much as a month before they were committed to a combat in North Africa against the Japanese, and the Japanese kicked their asses. This is an elite unit. Now, the New Zealand's weren't equipped.

They were still wearing in rainforest, wearing shorts and knee socks and low cut boots and short sleeve shirts in an infested area. And long story short, seventy casualties for this, I think it was the seventh Australian Infantry Division. Then the Americans were called to participate, and what they wanted to do was to clean the uh, the Japanese from the ports that were on the northern coast of Papua

New Guinea. UH. Now, the reason why the Australians eventually succeeded in beating back the Japanese was because our navy had cut off supply lines to Rabau and uh other islands where their bases were, and they weren't getting any supplies, they weren't getting personnel replacements, and the Japanese were starving to the point where they were actually indulging in cannibalism. Uh and UH so they they were they retired to these ports that were, you know, on the northern coast.

And so the Australians and the Americans teamed up. So there was an American division that was literally boarding vessels to take them to Ireland heading in the opposite direction. When they were recalled put on trains sent across the United States, put on votes sent to Australia, sent to New Guinea. They had a seven percent counter degree. And this story goes on. You know, over and over and over again, these guys were not trained for jungle operations, and they paid for it all the way to and

even when they are trained. So I mean Merrill's marauders were trained by the Chindts in India for four months I think it was, and they were effectively almost a

brigade and strength by the time they were committed to Burma, and within five months they were reduced to about one hundred and twenty five people who could still stand on their feet. And these were trained. So I take a look at the the Chinese, and the Chinese have got military districts and two to three of them are along their southern border, are far jungle and rainforest. They obviously train in that environment and and we don't.

soldiers or blow up vehicles. If we have to fight in the jungle again, I'm not saying that we won't ever use drones, but it'll be in a very very different manner than what we've seen so far.

ways that could be done. Uh. There are ways where uh drones could be used in an unconventional warfare setting. Uh So, for example, when the Chinese it, when the Chinese UH invade the country in the Pacific island chain, they have to get there somehow, and that will be vessels, you know, Chinese uh, the p L A N the navy, you know, and uh they'll be loaded with a lot of ammunition and fuel and so forth and so on.

So launching drones that those kinds of targets would be very productive because then you're cutting off their logistics change, right and uh, and so that would be productive. But how do you resupply uh an a team or a special operation team of any any service when the when we don't own the skies and we don't own the water, uh and uh uh you don't you don't have a U an adequate supply of drones? You know, how effective

are you going to be? Right? The other end? Interesting thing is, and I asked this a couple a couple of times. Two military folks officer officers to include officers. I said, have you ever seen an OP plan or an OP order for that matter, that has an annex in it that describes what your unit will do if they're cut off by the enemy, which, of course I discuss in my second book. Because partisans are different from guerrillas.

Partisans are conventional troops and conventional units comprised of military personnel who have been cut off from their parent unit. Gurillas are basically civilians, some of whom may have military backgrounds but are not no longer military generally speaking. So if you're cut off and in the island chain someplace from your parent unit, one of your duties is to

try and reunite with your parent unit. But if not, then you should be conducting unconventional operations against the enemy, and you should be trained accordingly, and you should have some part of your UP order and your OP plan indicating what you do in the event that you're cut off. And everybody that I've asked, everybody has said they've never seen such a thing, So you know, their head is not in the game. If you follow my.

you will not get a single hand. I could almost guarantee ith uh and uh ah if you don't know how the enemy is going to come at you, and and then but you can be guaranteed that they know how you're going to come at them. But they don't know. You know, we don't know how they're going to come at us unless we start studying these these things and

incorporating those into train. So force on force, red on blue kinds of training needs to be done, incorporating these Chinese tactics and the interesting history history about the development of their tactics.

I'm being a little mysterious here, but uh. The core of the book is about a Special Forces SAG team leader who goes off as rocker uh and uh because of the pressures of deep penetration operations, and he has personal tragedy uh with uh with a wife who committed suicide on him and stuff like that. Uh and uh he uh is uh his uh. His team teammates are thinking that he's suicidal and he's They're concerned about not only his welfare but their own. So, I mean that's that's kind of like the theme of.

command of lieutenant colonel. And it was at the at that juncture about a month before I got there, maybe a couple of months before I got there, where those those fobs were actually separated out under separate command. UH. And there was no capstone uh c c C or c n C commander so to speak, other than so headquarters itself.

is sent from CCN. Uh and at this at this point, c CC is commanded by a major, so this is lieutenant colonel sends a team to uh CCC to launch into c CC's AO, and the the team leader is kind of arrogant, thinking that he's seen everything there is to see based on his you know, the work that he did up at c c N. He goes into an area near the area that I referred to as Hotel nine earlier in the conversation and they for about a day they're moving freely, and their practice was two

when they make a night defensive perimeter. Back then we called it ro o n rest. Overnight they formed a linear arrangement where the yards and the Americans would sit in a line back to back, you know, facing out, which is a horrible thing to do. That this was being taught actually at UH a long time and it's literally one rocket or would would kill most of a team, if not all of them, if fired along the long axis,

So very very stupid in my view. And you don't have visibility over terrain as it varies from from where you actually are, so you catch my point. So they're in that UH and comes dawn, which is normally UH a period of a point of extreme caution. I want to be an extreme caution because that's when the North through North Vietnamese would hit reconteam after tracking them. They would close the distance and get ready to assault as

dawn strikes, as the sun starts to come up. So as always, you know, you should always be very careful around that time, and this team did not take that care and one American, uh, the assistant team leader, gets up and he has to go take a crap, takes off his web gear, his rucksack is laying on the ground, He takes his weapon, and he goes down to take take a crap downslope, and just then the NBA attack, uh, and they kill everybody on the team except for the

two Americans, the team leader and the radio man, two Montyards, the guy who's taking a crab, and another Montyard who managed to break away. These are north through to ME special operations personnel, and one of them is carrying a flamethrower and he lights up part of the perimeter and kills some of the montyard with a plant thrower. They capture two Montyards and the two Americans, and they take them off and they tie them to trees, and along

comes an MVA officer who speaks perfect English. He knows their names, he knows the name of the team, uh and uh, who's in charge? You know, who's the team leader? All that kind of detail he knows, and he's he's happy to tell the team leader and the radio man that he knows this. And then he said, basically, he

directs the flamethrower. The guy who has the flamethrower to use the flamethrower on the two Montyards who are tied to trees and burns them to a center. And meanwhile the team leader is screaming at the north end of Me's and telling him, you know, he's trying to put the bravest front that he can. He knows he's doomed,

so he's basically telling him, you know, fuck you. Uh. So the uh, you know, do your worst, and and and the the this officer directs the flamethrower, tell operator to turn the flamethrower on on the team leader and burns him to a center. He doesn't do anything to the radio man, and he tells the radio man, I'm going to let you go, yeah, uh. And my purpose is that I want you to tell everybody what you've

seen here today. So the uh, the guy who's out taking a dump and the other Montyard wind up getting to an Elsie and they're extracted, and the NVA take the radio man to an LZ without his equipment, without his weapon, and so forth. They leave him his his his.

all this shit. And the commander from CCN who controlled all the fobs, flies down by helicopter to doct and gets nose to nose with this poor guy, this radio man, and tells him that he's a liar and he's a coward. And meanwhile, Sabatowski is the guy who got the middle of honor. Zabatowski is there at the at the launch site. And Zabatowski goes to this officer and confronts him and says, don't you dare you know challenge that this this young man.

I'm convinced that he's telling the truth, and I'm going to go in under bright light and find the remains of this team. And by now they're still trying to find the you know, the yeah, the other American and the Montyard. And he says, and if you got any hair on your balls at all, you'll come with me, And this lieutenant colonel refuses to do that. Ah, So he goes in on the operation and he finds the site.

You know, he follows the trail from the US back to where this incineration had been done, and he finds all these these burnout corpses and he retrieves them, and Chief Zog finds out about how this lieutenant colonel treated this radio man and relieves him for what he did. And so wouldn't that make a great episode in a movie. I mean, yeah, it's a high drama a movie.

Ed and otherwise. I just wanted to say thank you for coming on the show. We really appreciate it.

wilds of West Africa. This book is based on stories that I heard over the years about safari guides taking wealthy clients hunting for poachers on game reserves in Africa. I took that and I took a century old short story, The Most Dangerous Game, and modernized it. And the product is this book, which I think will feel contemporary and resonate with audiences today. Thank you and please check it out.