Long Range Recon Patrol (LRRP) in Vietnam | Larry Chambers (throwback ep)

Ken Miller. I hope you guys will check that interview out after this one. Also served with Gary Linderer. You know, a kind of your peer group that wrote a lot about the WORPS after the war, and people like me read those books, you know, in the nineteen nineties as kids, and it was certainly found them inspirational. So I mean, this is really like a special moment for me, Larry, and I really appreciate you coming on the show tonight.

that long after Korea. And my dad sertain degree served in World War Two and he got kind of a choice assignment after the war, and so all these so my friends growing up were privates and corporals that worked under my dad. He ran the radar site on the Bay on the Ford, and so, I mean, my dream was to be was to go to West Point. My dream was to then it became my dream was wanted to be a fighter pilot. And I took the Marine Corps. I remember when I went down to take the Marine

Corps flight test, influnked it. I got such a little score. They didn't even tell me what the score was. It was so bad. I was so nervous because I wanted it so bad. I literally would go blank. I would you know, I was one of those kids that I take a test and I'd have to read one question fifteen times. You know, does the plane take off in the air? I don't know. I mean, I was just it was terrible. So I was I was, let's say,

for the last couple of years of high school. It was just so I thought, oh man, I'll never I'm never going to get my dream come true. And then I found out I could volunteer for the draft. I mean, this is opposite from all the stories of here about oh I was drafted. I got I was like, when I got my draft, I was were like, yeah, it was like, oh my god. You know, it was weird, but that I loved the Army. I loved being in

the army. I was My friendships are still lifelong friendships with guys like Miller and Linder and Looney and Burford and all of these guys over the years, and well, you know, as soon as one guy dies, everybody no, no, you know, we're getting closer. But just lifelong friendships I'd never found, you know, I would use my ranger service in that when I was in business to shame people. Like if somebody stood me up or was late like twenty minutes, I said, great, you just got my whole

team killed. What are you talking about? Me go, well, as far as I'm concern, if you're late, you're dead. If the chopper comes in and you're doing like, what are you talking about? Nobody had that kind of I was a stockbroker, I worked for you after I graduated from University of Utah, and and I sort of had to tone that down, you know, I've sort of kept the whole because they used to think if you went

to Vietnam, you were crazy. And there was all these guys that had never gone to Vietnam that were crazy, and they were and they gave such a bad rap for the guys. But and I would hear these stories and I go like, that's not the story that I remember. I mean, I remember guys tearing each other apart to get on the helicopter to go out to rescue people. And you know, our teams and we never left anybody behind.

And guys, would you know, take a bullet for I mean, it was everything that you see and in the Avenger stories. But we're true. You know, these guys were heroes and and I was just lucky to be you know. I always felt like I was like the like the like the I just felt I was lucky to be there. I just, you know, I never put myself up to think I was anything at the time. I just I was really good at being alert. I was good being appointment. That's I used to say. I went from the I

had dyslexia. I mean, I still have dyslexi, you know, which made school and I was a d D or still guess I am. So I made school really really difficult for me. And I I remember going into going in the Army. It was like I moved to the head of the class, you know. I just I mean, the training was it was like a piece of cake. I thought it was like, you know, somebody had sent me to camp. It was like fun. Like Cap and

I get the Vietnam it was even more fun. And they had, you know, all the rounds, they gave you, all the ammunition and targets were everywhere. So it was like, oh my gosh, what you know. But I couldn't tell this, you know. I come back and try to Yeah, yeah, tell people, you know, like, I don't know if you ever heard of a ranger named Cox, and he he was this guy and I just talked to his wife. He just died two years ago. When every time he seen me, he would like give me a he would

punch me in the shoulder. It just he just loved to punch me. It was just like one of these big guys. And I got to where I just let him punch me. So one time, I mean, he was on that mission that you may remember that Gary Linda wrote about where the whole team got wiped out by the guys got huge or something a huge, yeah huge NBA Claymore. And I was on the other team, so I was out too, but we were close enough we

could hear him arnucle we couldn't get to him. And Cox got his got blown his his arm like his hand was blown back and his stomach was blown open. He like set his own arm and taped it to his shotgun, taped himself up and was there for the

next five hours shooting guys coming up the hill. And you're like, I told that was it a at a party at a college party in like nineteen seventy after I came back and there was a guy and he was holding court and he was talking about, you know, he plays rugby, and I'll tell you what, that's a goddamn tough sport, that rugby. I'll tell you I sprayed this ankle. I played the whole game with his spraying

ankle and a tooth broken. And I went like, well, you know I had a friend that he got his spray ankle too, but he also got his stomach blown up and his hand was blown you know, I'd start telling his story and people would be like, uh in shock. You know, it was just a little bit too real, that Wold war, you know.

do know this one story, but this is speculation. But he's dead, so there's nothing he can do to me right now. He was a young lieutenant and I've got a picture of him in his He's a brand new second lieutenant out of high school and he's at a Thanksgiving dinner and it's nineteen forty one Thanksgiving, so it's like two weeks or something before the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, and I've got a picture of him. You know, these guys have no idea what's what's coming down the horn.

So he goes, they go when they train in the Philippines and they did all of that, and i'd heard that he and like, nah, I shouldn't even tell it. Well, now I've started. I got to tell the story. But there was like a machine gun nest and he took us. You know, it's a platoon. He's a platoon leader, right, so he takes his platoon and a whole bunch of the guys get shot, and he came He finally came back, and a lot of his guys got shot and they busted him for it. Got he lost so many guys,

and he sort of never got over. I mean, they never ever talked about that. I heard that from like a half brother of mine that told me that story. So I can't say it's true, but it sort of fit.

the sixties. I go in sixty eight and I'd go into a whole new army that I did not recognize. You know, they didn't A lot of the guys did not have the respect I mean not in our unit, but in other units, you know, didn't have respect for the the guys above him and all that stuff. It just did change. It was And of course that war was a lot different, you know, other than other wars.

And I and what I I found out by volunteerfer Lips, I could see you, and you know, I could uh what ten forty nine or whatever that was into fob like into an fob one or something if you wanted to. So there's a way to get into SF and not you know, we didn't. I don't know if they had the Q course backed entery and that stuff. But I was a bunch of these paratroopers that had got there, and they sort of they didn't sort of they sort of well they were counting guys off and they counted off.

And this was nineteen sixty eight, and this was we had lost a thousand guys and one hundred and first up in the north and and so one hundred first wasn't exactly like everybody's choice, you know when they get there. But they counted off, and I remember they drop like a couple in front of me and you guys are all hundred first, and I jumped up and yelled is excitement because that was my dream come true. I had it all mapped out in my mind. I'd be hunting

first and I volunteer to do something really cool. So and I do that, and everybody was you know, a lot of these guys. I thought it was like nuts

for that show of emotion. And then there would be a guy that would come by and they would this young sergeant I gave us a talk about being alert, what it meant to be alert, and he said something that I would never forget, and it was, look, when you're out, you got five six guys the good And I hate to use this word, but I got to say it goop because it's a word that hated me back.

It was used at the time. It's very you know, I would never use it now, but being shoot that made me lose my trend of thought about oh so here's what. So he goes, you're out in it, in the in the jungle, and the gooks don't they can't see you. You can't see them. You're out there trying to find them. He says, Look, it's some of you guys are going to go north and you're going to

be on a firebase. You're going to be an infantry company, and you can hear an infantry company all the way to hand noise that makes so much noise that lerps were silent. He told us. The whole story goes, it's safer behind the lines than it is in front of him, and we're like boom, my hand went up and volunteered, and people thought it was crazy when I did that, but I really think it's say that saved my life. It just being in that lurt company though it was hard.

I mean, it wasn't you know, cake walk, but.

lot of the stories. I mean, I don't, you know, I feel bad for guys that I lost, but you know, I'm not. I don't dwell on that. I don't feel bad about, you know, things that I did. I feel proud of every single thing my team did. We did and they and my my unit, my ranger unit. I mean we were like we would get up sometimes in the morning and run. We still had to run, if

you believe or not. And we would run through what we call legs, you know, even though they were one hunter first, they were still legs and we would run through their barracks at like five o'clock in the morning, which, you know, we just pissed everybody off. But we were so proud of, you know, that we could piss people off, not only in the back but out in the front. You know, whatever wherever we were at, we wanted to like cause trouble. Yeah.

mouthing off about how he could beat anybody. You know what. You guys are so tough, you know, So I went, no, come on, So we went around the back of the tent. Now this is a cheap shot, I'm sorry, but I coll cocked him. Mine came from the bottom and I hit him right in the face and knocked him clear down into the road and he rolled and Miller and

I did high fives. We thought that was the greatest thing in the world until suddenly he shows back up with that platoon was like the first platoon, and they're all like, oh, what the chief joke and were going to fight these guys are this one guy that's my size is standing in front of me and he's good, you know, he's pointing his finger and stuff like that,

and he touched Miller and it was a mistake. The guy took a swing at Miller and Miller caught the swing in his mouth, bit through his knuckle, you know, just almost bit his finger completely off, and then got on him on his ear and bit his ear off and spit it. So he did that way before you know, the boxer did spit the ear out. Blood was going everywhere, and all of us just stood back and shock and went, you fucked up. You know that you should never fight

somebody that's shorter than you are. Because we couldn't get him off. He kept We were all trying to try him off, but he just kept beating this guy up. It was like tragic.

the Lord's name in vain. This guy flicking off. It just was so pissed off of me. And what had happened was in our unit, one of somebody got really pissed off at the company commander, which was the before I got there, and blew his foot off. So they lost the company banner and they got a new commander ab at the same time I came in. So I come in a little too clean, a little too like,

I didn't cuss and everything like that. And now I got the guy who's got the biggest body count in our unit pissed off at me and like so he So it wasn't a few weeks later that I was I had to go. We had an AMMO bunker, we had to go. I'd go down to the AMMA bunker. I was told to go the AMMO bunker and and we had a machine gun nest thing that we would man all night long. And so I go to get all of the claym wars and all that, and you had to climb down into this bunker and it was

dug in the ground. We had tons of C four and all kinds of shit inside this thing. And I get in there, and I and I find the claym wars. As I pull it, like a Thermo grenade starts cooking off. And I had no time. I had like just dropped everything and just made my way up. I had to go out through the sink and Dixie dog or on this dog, she came over to see why I was there. I wanted to get some food, and I grabbed a

hold of her and I ran like fifteen feet. There was a bunker and I jumped in this bunker and then was like the whole earth blew up. That thing blew up and had PCP covering on top of the sand bags, and that shit was bouncing down and bouncing around, and hand grenades were cooking off, machine gun amma was flying. You know, everything was cooking off. And the commander of the AT Eagle called in to see. He thought the North VIETNAMESEID did an air strike because it was such

a big explosion. You know. It was me so in through the clouds, I come walking. I finally I like make my way through. I still got Dixie had scrambled out of my arms, and I still have her dog tag. I still have it today. And I walked out and went like, uh, hello, it's okay. I mean, what do you say when you when you blew up all of our ambience?

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Just to clarify for people out there who have maybe have not read your book yet or don't know too much about you know, our military during the Vietnam War, could you describe what the warps were and what their mission was?

be the eyes and ears of the division. You know, there's different guys that call themselves lerps that were lurks in the division, but they were short, you know, a REP for infantry units. We were. We would we worked real close with FOB one, which was for Operations Base one Special Forces guys SOG, and so we shared intel

and sometimes we did SOG missions. We didn't even know there were SOG missions, but that mission into the Ashaw Valley that first time was like a SOG mission, even though you know, we didn't get a T shirt, which I'd love to have, by the way, or the shorts for doing that, but that that was that was our mission. And sometimes it would be ambushes if we would see a unit that we could ambush we would do either a hasty ambush or literally go in and set up.

Done that. We've done that before. We're we'll you know, ambush a unit that's been moving into the area and we're up. We were up in I Corps, which I Corps, which was way fu Bay out to the Ashaw Valley would have been west.

And I'm all excited and I go down to the to the pad, the launch pad where the helicopters were warming up, and I remember the team would going like, uh, where's your rifle, and We're like and I just turned and I spread it almost like tears are coming down. My eyes back to my to the hooch, and I grabbed, you know, grabbed my car fifteen and ran back down. But it was so embarrassing. So I was living through the shame and then the excitement of the helicopter ride.

And the first mission was uneventful. The second mission was the mission where Linders guys got all shot up. So that was we found this huge bunker complex and I remember this deer was chasing these monkeys. It was weird, and that it sounded like the whole NVA fifth NBA Regiment was running down the hill towards us, and we were we had a twelve man we called a heavy team, and we were waiting to be you know, for all these NVA to run into us. And it was this deer.

This deer came by, and then a monkey came by. It was like what so that? And then I was lucky because I was on. This was Sergeant Burnell, which is a kind of a famous ranger, eighty second Airborne Guy's know him there in for life. He led He led that mission because it was it was so it was a big deal as it actually turned out to be. And the other young sergeant got killed in his section. So we ended up staying out there till they got everybody out, And we ended up staying out there for

like a couple of days. Like we didn't have enough backup. If we'd got into a big fight like that one team did, we'd have been in a lot of trouble. So they had a leagh dog and we just laid in the rain. It was raining, the hardest reign I've ever seen, and weren so hard to you know. I just would look up and I couldn't even see my

play more minds that I couldn't. You couldn't see that far ahead of you, So we knew that the enemy couldn't see either, So we just sort of like kicked back and waited for a couple of days till they could get a helicopter in and get us.

hands were inside, and I heard something. It was like about four in the morning or something like that, and I lifted up into a half set up and right there walking was an MVA soldier. Was like it came within just like a meter of of me, and so I just froze. And then the guys were behind me were all you know, they were obviously all frozen too. And we had something like twenty guys or they said twenty, I forget how many. It was a lot walk past.

When I got through, I was so glad. I had done lots of sit ups earlier in my life, so I was really I had a strong core because I literally kept a half sit up for fifteen minutes without even a moving a hair. So that was that was like scary, but it also meant I could take being around enemy really close, which you know, the old guys went, okay, I want him on my team. So that was really that was. I moved up in.

just hard as nails and they're afraid of nothing. But one time we took out a young guy who was smarter than all of us. He was really smart kid, and he freaked out. He ended up shooting up. He got surrounded. They were surrounded, but we're always surrounded, I mean that's part of the drill. And he got so freaked out he just started firing his M sixteen and actually shot one of our guys. And I always remember,

it's like, you've got to test these guys. You got to test somebody before you really get on a team. So all of our guys were had been through the the you know, a test so to speak, you know, going out on a mission, where you're going to be surrounded and you are there is no infantry coming to your rescue, except we'd have air rifles that would come, you know, once you got into a firefight, but you know that still might be thirty minutes away.

call in air strikes. So we'd been doing that for a couple of days, and the last day we were leaving and the helicopter takes off and hit a tree and it lobbed off about three foot of the blade, so this thing and we were way in the hell up and he couldn't land back down because he was out over this big canyon, so he just dove dove the helicopter and it was I don't know if you ever been in a helicopter that lost four foot of the rotor blade. It only has that one rotor. It's like

you're in a washing machine. And luckily the guy got or you know, auto rotated the last little bit. But we had really hard, you know, so hard that everybody banged up against the up and then banged back down and then you know, we had It was weird when that's when something crap, when you crash like that, because you don't have a map for that, you don't know where you're at, or you don't have your map lined up,

so you're on your own, you know. And so we had to set up a perimeter around the helicopter and took forever before they could you know, get a big another chopper in to pull that one out and Miller and I were the last two. We stayed to the very end. But there's this one more story about that that crash. So we come back and and Miller had brought that had picked up a big bone, like a water bison's bone. And I remember we always sort of had this competition, and I said, I could knock with

that bone that canteen cup off Miller's head. So he stood there and I was back at the end of the hooch, and I threw it really hard and it missed. Of course, it hit him in the head, split his head open, and now he's got blood all running down, so he's making himself like an Indian and he's like, you know, now I know I'm going to catch it because I have to take the punishment from what I

just did. And you know, I just stand there and Miller threw that thing as hard as he could, and I put my hand up and it hit my hand and broke my fingers. So now you know we're actually this would have been an article fifteen if if you know, we'd have been found out. But we go down to the age station. Luckily we crashed in the helicopter, so I went, yeah, we were in a terrible helicopter. Helicopter crashed.

Miller's all bleeding and stuff, and I'm, you know, my finger's broken and so I put on They put me in a like a cast and I cut it down and I still trained. And I actually I've got pictures of me and a McGuire rig and I've got this cast on my hand. You know, that's how gun ho we were. I mean, we didn't. You didn't go. You get to the hospital and you come back to your unit. We wanted to go back out and you know, get going, which is not again what you normally hear, you know people people say.

So I go around in the jungle and I come out behind and I was stepping over this log and I looked down and I started counting. You know, NVA was like I just froze and just stopped breathing. Stop. I mean, I had my car fifteen, but I couldn't. I couldn't. I lost count of the number of guys that were sitting on the ground. They were talking to each other, and one guy sort of heard me and he even turned around and he looked for right at me. But you know, we had total camouflage on. We had

tiger fatigues on. So I had blended in. And you know, you just don't think some white Americans going to show up, you know, in the jungle when they didn't even hear us, but we would have walked into an ambush. But I walked around behind him, and so I literally I made the decision not to fire them up because I was too close. I literally could reach down and go, excuse me, you guys are now going to shoot you. So you know, I just held my fire and backed up. And Burford

remembered looking. He said he counted the number of of cooks on the ground in my eyes. He could tell that I saw something because my eyes were like gigantically big. I'd never seen any you know, a thing like this. So we go back and we we set up, and Looney called in an extraction. Helicopter called in for an extraction. And I was sitting at this bush and I started thinking, did I imagine it? Did I imagine? I mean, that

couldn't have been true. And then sudden, then suddenly a guy pops up and he was about fifteen meters away, which is not that far, And he popped up and he had glasses and he was like looking around, looking at the trail that I had left. As I ran like a little girl out of there, and he like tracked, and I remember he was like looking right at me, and I was like, perfont was over talking, Okay, what we're gonna do with Barbara Book, and I'm going they're

looking at me. So Berba came over and said, and I saw the one, the guy with the glasses took his glasses down and I saw him talking to one of his guys and he go he goes like that which meant to flank us. And this guy took he had a like an American parachute, which is a camouflage parachute, and he flicked it once and put it over his head and he disappeared, and I went like, my heart is like now I can't see him, but I know this guy is coming around, you know, going to flank us.

And so you know, Burford goes, okay, here's what we're gonna do. And we had six guys. Uh, Chambers now going to stay behind on the count of three. Your guys are going to take up running. And I remember saying like, what if Chambers doesn't get to stay behind what we had to count and I get to go shut up? And so he goes. I don't know, I

had a weird sense of humor and circumstances. He was one two three, and we literally had to stand up because it was a brush right there and like fired up the guys that were in that that were before they shot at us. And so that that was I never forgot that mission.

He's a great guy. If you ever go to Vietnam, I'll give you his name.

and so it was real honor to go. But everybody was nervous because of the swim, the dreaded swim. There was the run. The run was so you get through the run, but on the second week they had the swim and there was a lot of stuff that you were doing. It was NonStop. I mean you're up till late at night and you know, all training all day long.

You know, jump, you know, practicing McGuire rigs and repelling and you know everything that any good you know, combat unit would train you for first aid, you know where you'd have to give yourself serving album or at least know how to give yourself. But they had big needles back then, so there was lots of blood everywhere when

we went through that part of the course. But the swim you'd have to swim out two hundred meters and at the time I was like a lousy swimmer and I didn't know really how to swim, and I just sort of side thing. But if you touch there was this two Special Forces sergeants out in this pontoon boat out in the ocean, and you had to swim around it and swim all the way back. And that eliminated a lot of guys if they couldn't make the swim.

I just remember how exhausting. It was because you also ran that day and you do a lot of stuff, and so go through all of that and then we come to the last day. And this is what gives it the distinction of the only School of the Armies ever had where you could get killed in it. A lot of the buildings were named after, you know, guys that were killed in the school. You know. They because we did a live alert mission and you would rotate at each point. So they wanted you to, you know,

be a team leader. They wanted you to be a slack man. They wanted you to be a point man. They wanted you to be very secure, you know, you go through the whole thing. So the first two days were out there and it's like just a normal alert mission. And this mission was pulled near La Trange and on the train and suddenly I'm walking along and I walk into you know, four or five guys sitting in the middle. There was probably it was way more than that, because

we found like ten or fifteen backpacks. But I so I fired them up and I turned around and the guy that behind me took off running. He broke the protocol. The protocol you know, is I sit down the line fire, the next guy does and he took off and it got the other guy where. You know, we didn't know who these guys were that were in our school, and so I watched these two guys running back of the

juggle and I'm still out there. So I hit the ground and I just you know, kept putting fire down until suddenly on the school we'd have two instructors that would go out with us, and Louis La Page. I could still just remember he was just like he was like God, he was like the toughest guy I'd ever seen in my life. And he comes running through the jung, doesn't care about bullets. Screw a bullet. He's got a

he's got his. He's he carried a thumper, you know in m seventy nine, and he shoots the shoots at it and it hit the tree and I remember going like over my head like it didn't go off because it didn't go far enough to arm. And he's he's So he comes out where I'm and we both fire and maneuver back. And so he was furious at the guys that ran. He was so pissed off, and he goes chambers. You and and my slack man, you're gonna walk us back there? Oh my god, why do I

keep getting myself where I'm gonna get? Do good? Now I have to go back in there, and so I was, so I so we went back later that same day and I'm walking along and suddenly this North vietn East guy walked right out in front of me and just like that, and he looked at me, and I looked at him, and he started to run, and I took off running and I ran after him, and I tackled him like a football tackle, and I got him down

on the ground. And matter of fact, Lapage was a little pissed off at me, because that's not what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to fire him up. But I could see the guy didn't have a weapon. I was gonna shoot an unarmed guy, so I figured I could tackle him. And he turned out to be this young lieutenant. I've still got his I have it right here. I brought it to show. But this was the belt buckle that he was wearing.

And I but but Lapage ended up getting me a r an art of why I got seven D eight, you know, for doing that, So I was all happy for that.

like you said, they brought all that she did. So suddenly was around like three hundred guys and you know, we're all surrounded by all these guys and they were they would they were interviewing my prisoner, and the southeam knees were you know, they would just step on his ball, you know, like I would see these movies where they they're you know, you've got how do you torture somebody to you know, use that waterboarding on? They just stepped on the guy's nuts with their boots and the guy

was going like, oh, he was telling everything. So that pissed me off. This guy was being tortured. So me and my slack guy Duty, that was his name, Duty, we go over and we I don't know if Duty pushed the arvind guy away, but we kind of protected the guy all night. He was ours. We risked our life to captures. We're gonna let the southeat and he's kill him because they were just butcherers. They were, you know, terrible.

And then they took him back. They actually took him up in a McGuire rigg or yah McGuire rig out and then I So that was my three weeks in Ricondo school which was it was hard. It was really and I thought a lot of guys. I thought everybody that went there graduated, and I'd find out later the guys that a lot of them that went there and they didn't graduate. But nobody tells you that just they didn't get the Ricondo patch.

Ashaw Valley. The last time anybody had been in there was the one seventy third and they lost thirty seven helicopters in so many minutes. So it was a bad place to go. And you know, we were just starting to build all of the different firebases on the way out to the Ashaw Valley, and so they wanted us to They wanted ice and years out there. So we spent five days on the border and hearing at night. We would in the daytime we would see hundreds of North Vietnese in the valley, and then at night we

would hear cutting wood. And I showed you, you know, from going back what I brought back. I guess I could show it now. Yeah, so I'd gone back to Amburger Hiller, close to where we where we were. We got struck by lightning, believe it or not, on our last day of the mission, and we're all like paralyzed. And luckily, I mean we lost Calma. We had one radio that Colmo finally and the you know they they we got out in penetrators. That was what they sent down.

It was a basket for Lender and then the penetrators for the rest of us.

I just remember this white light and there was like no sound for like a multi exilient of a second a flash, and then I remember going up in the air and blowing blown into a thousand pieces, this deathening sound, and then hitting the ground, which seemed like later like I always thought I was blown in pieces. And then God went like, ah, not ready yet, and then put me back together, threw me back down on the ground.

So I land like down this hill, and I can remember I could move and I looked down at my legs and smoke was coming off my clothes and it was like I couldn't move, but I could move my arms, and I finally kind of got my senses back. I had no rifle, I didn't know where I was, and I crawled. This is the scaredest I'd ever been in Vietnam. I never really got that scared, but this scared me. I crawled back up the hill and I look around and where we were was all a burnt out circle,

and no one was there. They were all also blown away. But I for a few minutes it seemed like an eternity. I was like, oh my god, I am alone here. You know, I'm going to get my throat cut. Where's my rifle? And I so I start started looking around and I found my clacker. Clacker is what you used to blow hard plastic. I don't know if you use those for play wars, but it's a hard plastic was melted. So we figured the lightning came down through the antenna.

The radio man and put this antenna up in a thunderstorm, questionable for that, and sent we had to send a sit rep. And when he did, the lightning went down and it didn't hit us directly or what it killed us, but we got not only the explosion. Gary Linder's backpack had a percussion grade and then that blew up, so we got that and then the backblast from all of

the claim wars that were around us. So we got the backblast and that's probably why we were all in some form of paralysis for some of us for a day.

blown up. I mean. Anyway, So long story short, in twenty fifteen, I go back and hire a guide and go back to the Hamburger Hill and I climb up to the top and I'm looking all around and they've got it really laid out cool. They've built steps up, there's a like a little shack down below, or tells the history of it, and of course the North throw you know, first liar wins or second liar. But they tell how they defeated the enemy, you know, they defeated us,

and which was bullshit. You know, it didn't ever happen. And so at the top of the hill there's a topa and you know, dedicated to their guys that died up there, because they lost a lot of guys and we you know, you know, we had the third of the one eighty seventh was that went up there and they lost like eighty seven. I mean, it was a hundred guys wound. I mean it was. It was so bad.

We didn't get paid for our pay skipped a month because you know, the guys that did pay and graves registration, graves registration were the same guys, so they were backed up from that one, you know, from Hamburger Hill. So I wanted to go up and look around. I'm digging around and I find this, which is a log that was in a bunker, and I and I just I stuck at my backpack and I thought, wow, I wonder,

I'll bet I heard those guys cutting that log. You know, back then we could have heard them because that's where we think we were hit was on that was somewhere on that hill. I mean, it's a kind of a long hill. And it's it's fun to go back to those places because you you would never know, you know, because the jungle covers everything up. Fires are all covered over. I couldn't find Camp Eagle. I found the graveyards that we used to that were close biased, but so much

except except the Hamburger Hill. They the enemy is preserved. The enemy. They're not our enemy. The Vietnamese have preserved that, you know as a site, you know, like they did Dinbin Foo. You go to all these cool places. The museums are just amazing. But that was that was that. So then I neils to say I was kind of nervous about going out after that mission. I was, and I went out a couple of times and I started overseeing things because I was waiting for the next shooting round.

I'd never been in an well, it was the second explosion i'd been in, but I'd never been in anything like that before, and so I was probably a little bit freaked out. So I thought I would do something safe. So I started flying belly and you know, which turned out to be not as so safe because we were taking fire all the time.

the two door grunners on the side. And so that's when Miller's team was in a They were in the second helicopter that they went out to pick up Miller's team, and I guess they got shot down and they help. The blade went through one of the guys in Miller's team's head killed him, and so then we fly over and we get shot at. So we I still remember tracers going up, you know, the open window, every door is open. The treasure will go by like that, and

the chopper goes around and all this stuff. And so we came back in and we had to make four separate extractions trips, and so I would throw the as we were coming in because the helicopter had crashed and the guys had to climb up on the crash helicopter to get in. So I sort of helped him back the helicopter in. I don't know if you know what I mean, like sort of like I got out on I threw the rope ladder out and then I climbed

down on the skid. I climbed out on the skid and I would I could see the pilot and I could, you know, hear him and talk to him all that, and I would say, okay, we're all you know. I was talking to him while the door gunners were watching out to the side. And so when I came in, we took some fire and I didn't have my rifle

because I'm standing outside the helicopter. So I flipped the to this North VIETNSE guy that was shooting Atison, which Miller remembers that everybody on the ground was cheering and they thought it was so cool. They wanted to seem to get shot off of the off of the skid would have been really that would have that would have

made their day. But he missed and I went in and I'm joking worse, you know, And I helped the guys in and I got my I got an air Medal with a V for valor for that mission and that means my proudest medal.

Miller is so light. I was on that ladder and I get down and you know the old Yuwie's from the from the from the skids to up inside. It's it's a jump. I mean it's a hike. I mean it's a I don't know how many feet, it's a couple of feet. And I was so pumped. I grabbed Miller by the back of his web here and brewing almost out. He landed and almost flew out the other side of the helicopter. It was like so stoked to you know, not that I was so strong, but I was just you know, like all hot, hyped up.

You know, it was like freaky. But anyway, I then at the end they asked me to go and recruit guys, which is they usually do for the actually the better looking guys. They asked to go do it. So I don't think Miller got asked or Linda, I know, didn't get asked to go do that, you know, because they wanted you to represents the Rangers.

it was a trick for us. It was a trick because all they pulled out all of these companies and they expanded RAO, so we ended up halving Rio like quadrupled in size. I mean, they were flying all by the time we'd left in seventy you know, they were they were flying you know, from oh all over the place in the in I Corps. But they just it the reason why I didn't volunteer to go back because as you can see in my I'm sort of gone.

I was sort of gunn home. But we got this young second lieutenant and he you know, just out of jump school and officers school and all kinds of school things. And he goes and so he takes me out on We go on a reconnt in helicopter. We go out looking for a DZ and I said, you mean an l Z, sir, And he goes, no, he drops the DZ and I go why. He goes, well, you're a paratrooper, right, you go. I am like, I didn't jump out of a plane in two years, Like, we have to jump.

You want us to jump out of the help jump out a plane? And he goes, yeah, he had this idea where he was gonna it was in the Ashaw Valley and he was gonna they were going to pin these guys in and then we were going to jump in and then we would catch. And I went like, you know, I am getting really short here. I think I need to like find another profession, you know. And I don't know what happened that guy.

immediately go, well, I want to be just like you. Instead, it was like they couldn't wait to get out of that tent. You know. I'd say what we're doing, and then finally I would start telling this story about I got a map of I Corps and I said, look, you know you guys are infantry. I'm gonna tell you a story was told to me. You know you're going. You're gonna be out either an infantry company and you'll be out, could be for a month at a time, could be six weeks, whatever it is. Or you might

get lucky and be on a firebase. You think you're lucky. But let me see this map. And I'd hold up the map and I go, I could buy this map on the black market. So every NVA command has the same map. And so I said, look, what the lurps do is we go out where the enemies we think are. They don't know where we are, they don't know where we're coming, so they don't see us and we're trying to find them. So think about it this way. It's safer behind the lines than it is in front of them.

And three hands went up, and then the next time I got and then four hands went up. I got twenty six guys and refilled, you know, because it had to be all volunteer in our in our ranger unit, and I refilled it before I left. I was real proud of that that I got. You know, figured I could sell then I could be a salesman later in life or something.

And there's always somebody who's gonna listen because if you got you know, two hundred guys on the plane coming back from Vietnam, one hundred and fifty of them had never been in the jungle, and you know a small number had been in the infantry, and three guys were special for it. I mean, there was like nobody, you know, not a lot of guys. You know, there's always somebody would listen to some bullshit guy like that. So I

had had enough. And the guy sitting next to me was one seventy third and I said, do you want to go kill him? Or will you let me? And he goes, you go kill him first, and I'll kill him second. So I got and well here's what he did. He's at the back of the seven oh seven quick and back then the seats where the bathroom was wouldn't wouldn't recline, and he was like the Stewart Stewarts, my seat won't go back, My seat won't go back. So I went back there, and I was so fucking mad.

I'd never been so mad in my life. Probably every single thing that had happened and boiled up. And then and I reached around and I grabbed this guy and I went inside of his shirt where I could grab his neck. It was kind of a heavy set guy, and I pulled him up right in my face and I said, you shut up, that fucker. I'm going to cut your throat. I mean, just pushed him down as hard as I could. And then I come back and I remember walking back in the plane, it were all applauding,

you know it was. I kind of marched back with one hundred first patches on and sat back down in my seat. And that guy never said a word the rest of the we need to hear him. I don't even even was on the plane after that. But yeah, anyway, so when I came back, I wasn't I didn't go, oh, the hippies are make me so sad, I feel so what I did, I was like bullshit, I had none. I just I would I never had that stuff happen to me, just maybe because they wouldn't do it or something,

but I just didn't. I went back to college and University of Utah because I was a non Mormon, but I could get I heard, I could get laid there. So that was like the most important thing. Oh yeah, you remember that store. That was another story.

go down. And my last girlfriend before I left was two hawkstrusts her and she was hot and she became a stewardess and I and so I was going to drive down and I called her and she was, you know, going to meet me. And I thought, oh my god, this is going to be great. I'm going to get laid. I'm driving at one hundred and ten miles an hour, you know, down from down it's from Sacramento. It's called

the Winter's cut Off. And I'm going one hundred and ten miles and I remember looking up in my rear view mirror and I saw this way in the back, like you know, just lights flashing like that, and back then in nineteen sixty nine or seventy, I guess it used to be. It was. This was during the summertime, and I had on flip flops, you know, flip flop, and I'd taken him off. So I was driving barefoot and I heard and I remember it against a lot to drive barefoot. So I was reaching underneath as he

pulled up behind me, and I'm stopped. I'm reaching under pulling on my shoes like that. So when he came up to the he asked me to open the door, and as I opened the door, I was met with a three fifty seven right in my face and he was just like holding it. He pulled me out onto the ground. I'm laying it around like back Vietnam. I was like, you know, it was like in a mouse boys. You know. I never had a thrill. I thought I

was going to get executed right there. What I didn't know was this was nineteen sixty nine and the the something.

new rules, you know. So I always thought like, wow, it was great. But I ended up going to University of Utah, and by then I got smarter. It was really funny. I guess my brain had a chance to matur but suddenly, you know, I could go to college and then it was you know, I could pass tests and all that sort of stuff, except in the really

hard test. I did alert mission one time, and to get the to get a final that I crawled into this guy's office one night, which everybody in the department thought that was the coolest thing that ever had happened, because I got all the answers the old fashioned way. But what are you gonna do? Send me back to Vietnam? Who gives a shit? But I got through that, and I always had. I always found a place. I'm like the guy that always finds the perfect parking place and

the perfect place to live. As I drive around and I know I'm going to find it sixth sense, whatever it is, and I drove past this. I had graduated in the only degree I could get, which was in the Department of Recreation because they didn't have a lot of reading. I mean, there was an English attached to it. So I had this degree and I went down to take a test and there was I went California in manhatt Beach and there must have been twelve hundred people

and taken for two positions. So I knew this wasn't going to happen. So I was driving around and what am I going to do for a living? I went past a brokerage firm and I saw a brand new portion of brand new Cities Bends and We're like, I could do that whatever that is, and went in and the guy said, this is nineteen seventy four and the market had crashed and everybody lost a lot of money,

and they hired me. I ended up going to went back to New York, went to work for Hutton, and every move, everything I did went up, because from nineteen seventy five on the market just steadily went up and up and up and up. But I would get in arguments with people using common sense logic. Like back then, you could get bonds. They were called Big Max. They were the municipal bonster for New York City and they were ten percent with a ten percent yield tax double

tax free. And I got a buck a bond, which is unheard of. And the old brokers will say, don't you realize you're screwing these people? And I go, look, I was just in New York. I looked around. Everybody had jobs, they just built, they had just completed the towers, the twin towers. This place is humming. How could it's not going to happen? And I was right, And those bonds, everybody made a ton of money. So I started thinking, this is a piece of k. Everything I did was

making money. I thought, I'm now going to become a real estate developer. So I started building condos in Park City, Utah. And at one time I was the biggest I had the biggest contractor in Summit County. We built like one hundred and sixty units down south and blah blah blah blah blah, and I hit the snag where I ended up losing, like because it like twenty seven million dollars

or something like that, and it was really sad. But I decided I moved back to California after that big loss, paid everybody back that I would money to, and I came back and I went like, what can I do? You know? And I had all this experience and I thought I'd written in an article. I started writing articles and the very first article I wrote became a cover story on Pinching World magazine. I had this knack for writing, and I started doing that, and you know, fifty books later.

So excuse me. So I wrote about thirty pages. There were it was single space, there was no paragraph breaks or nothing. And I sent it back to Linder, who had, you know, grown up with nuns beating his hand so he could spell and write everything perfect, you know, and he goes, it's great, but paragraphs don't go on for twenty pages. One paragraph, okay. So I sort of had to learn that on the job too. And I remember, he goes, you know, you ought to send this to

my publisher. So I put thirty pages, and I hired an editor to edit for me. I sent it to him. I sent a FedEx, you know, on Wednesday and Friday, I get a phone call and I'm my name is ohen Locke. I'm with Random House. I want to buy your book. No negotiation, no agent, nothing, and bang.

going to get pissed off of me really quick. So I'm talking about No, I'm telling some story and I and I'm talking about these marines. This is a true story. We were out at out at this dump where we would test by our weapons or shoot rats or whatever the hell we were doing. And these marines walk by and they were set up and they were shooting, and I made something of it. I said, like, yeah, that

these jar hit I said, jar hits. This woman gets up in the front and she's got my book and throws it at me and goes my husband was a marine and he died in Vietnam, and she turned around and marched out, and the only thing I could think was to say was I didn't kill him. I'm sorry, you know, this is just what happened. This with combat vets, I can make fun of Navy seals. I can make fun of Air Force pair of commandos because if I'm in that group, it's okay. But if you're not in

the group, you better watch out. You're gonna have a mouthful of fists. So it's it's like we, you know, we get to joke around about I mean, you know, I'm making light of a lot of stuff because that's probably how I bury things. But you know, I feel like I feel like my sense of humor kept me

saying in nom and I would be very inappropriate. Like on one mission, it might have been the Ashaut Valley mission, and we were going out and there they were, they with the talk and they had big maps set up, and this guy from S two, this captain was showing, well, there's a we think there's fifteen thousand of the fifth NBA Regiment up here. In the fourth there was a recon of three thousand North Vin's coming down here and we're going to insert you. And I remember raising my

hand and this thing is packed. We've got helicopter pilots, the two, the teams, everybody's there, and I raised my hand and he goes yes, Sergeant Chambers and go like, should we even bring any food or anything or just like a lot of extra ammo? And he's Chambers shut up. You would get so pissed off because I would say these goofy comments. But the way they painted it, we weren't coming back. So I figured why I'd bring a bunch of extra stuff if we're only going to go

out and get you know, shot. I don't know.

but Ching MAI's way north. It's a beautiful little city, and I was thinking I was going to live there. This is great. I like this, and I had no thoughts of ever going back to Vietnam, even though it wasn't that far away. And I got in this argument with this real super liberal woman who was Canadian, and she told me how wrong the war was and how

certain things didn't happen. And I was like, rather than argue with her, you know, she goes, I didn't, and she goes, we're so close, why don't you go find out for yourself? And I went, I will. So I got a ticket and I flew. I flew to Laos, and then from Laos, I flew into Hanoi. And I remember that first night. I felt like, this is twenty twelve or eleven or something like that, and I felt like wow, I'm here. I'm just no no backup, no ammo,

no gun, no anything. What if they're going to recognize me? It was just thinking like what if some oh I remember him, I shoot him, get him. You know, there's all these weird things go through your mind. And drive into into Hanoi and on a beautiful, brand new four lane highway. And I stayed at the at the Hanoi Hilton, not the one that's famous, but the real Hilton where Bush and State or when he went, when he visited there, and they were so nice to me, and I got

the last room and I'm watching I'm watching television. Was the HBO special when mac namara said like six times how I was of a state that we went into Vietnam and this didn't happen. That didn't happen, and this was wrong. And I remember throwing the remote control at the television and breaking and I was so pissed off. And that sort of started my quest to find out. I started what's called the Hidden History Project, and I would go to the archives in u in Hanoid where

there's there's no Internet connection to them. There there's just raw stuff. And like I showed you this, this one picture, which is of Poa Chi Minh is really the thin guy in the center to in the rest of all Americans. And then General Jap is the guy in the white suit right there. He was working with the OSS. So there's all of these things in Ho Chi Men's archives that he wrote about, and that all of the letters I saw that was addressed to Truman that Truman never read.

They were going to open up. They wanted to, you know, give us access to you know, High Fong. See, the problem was with the French, that they had been enslaved by the French. And if Roosevelt would have lived just a few more months and Truman wouldn't have been president, there would have been Vietnam would have been put in a Conservatives like a trusteeship like Hong Kong was for thirty years, and then go back to Vietnam. That's what Roosevelt wanted to do. He hated the French. That's why,

you know, people forget the VC French. I mean the French rolled over like incapitulated in about was it a

week when they rolled into France. Well, what people don't realize that that Hitler now had access to the second largest navy in the world, which was the French Navy, and they were everywhere, which meant also Vietnam, Vietnam was called Indo China, so people don't realize into China is Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and it's and it was all under the VC French and they just opened the doors for the Japanese

Imperial Army to come in. And what the Japanese had to deal with the French they said, look, you keep your jobs and that will free up more men, so we go kill Americans. So basically the VC French we're doing all the support stuff in the airports and everything for the Japanese people. Everybody knows about Pearl Harbor December seventh, nineteen forty, they don't know about December eighth. Two hundred

and fifty thousand people were killed on December eighth. When the next when the fleets, you know, went through the whole rest of Asia, killing you know, Singapore and Indonesia and you know, the Philippine all all through there on the eighth and that that that that that fleet came out of Vietnam, that that's where it sailed from, and those airplanes and I you know, and I started reading how Ho Chi Minh had that the Viet min had rescued American pilots and he he walked one all the

way back. You know, it took a month to get to Coonan, China. And what's great if you get older and you can travel, which I love to do. I would go and trace these places. I would trace where Ho Chi Minh went, and I would trace where uh the oss we're in in China and in coon and Kuhman, China. And there's a great big thing and says, you know, thanks America. You know, he saved China. You never hear that.

Now that's all been like it gets it gets covered over with the new communist government doesn't want to hear a lot about that stuff. But it's all out there, you know if you visit these museums. And so I started finding out more and more stuff and find finding out this history that was sort of hidden from us young guys, that that it wasn't that we were fighting the communists. We had inherited this thing because the French said, the French name. There's no such thing as a Viet Cong.

You know, by the way, that's a bullshit term. That was made up by the French Vietmese communism. But there's no Viet Kong that you know, they know, you know, that's that's the front. When you go to Vietnam and you start looking around, you could look at the memorials. There's a memorial to the America. They call it the Americans War, and so that was Tenure War, and it's a it's a topa like a you know, shrine, little shrine,

blah blah. And then we go to the French monument and it's this big, great, big trick because they fought him for two hundred years. And of course then you go. Then my guy goes, oh, yeah, but that's nothing, and he takes me to the Monument of the War with China, which is up on a hill, which is this massive, great, big thing. You know, they've been fighting him for two thousand years. They hated the Chinese. They still hate the Chinese.

You know, if they tolerate them, they would get ups from But if like I remember reading in the State Department in the forties, there was a fifties sixties there was zero Vietnamese or anybody of Asian descent that was in the State Department. If somebody would have came over and just counted the number of cannons that were I saw in this one museum for every you know, every one hundred years that they fought with the Chinese, they would know that we were never going to there wasn't

back by China. You know, all of our intel, all of our information was skewed by the French, you know, and you can read all about that. I want to go off onto that topic, but that just got me deeper and deeper into I wanted to help, and so I sort of had. It was sort of my giving back. I went into Cambodia and found I showed you that picture earlier I'd found of all of the B fifty two strikes. I mean, this is the photograph showed that.

So that see is that again? It's like that, So that's anyway, it's hard to show that, but that's Cambodia. We just we dropped more tonnage on Cambodia than any country even during World War Two, more tonnage wise, and you can and all of this I got this from Yale University. But the Air Force keeps accurate records, and so all of those are bomb sorties and of the I think of the eight eighty five hundred sorties, three thousand of them didn't even have a mission. They just

went out and dropped bombs. And so, you know, I'm in Cambodia and I've met a lot of people that lost their grandparents that you know, fifty two flives so fricking high. You don't know it's there until the bomb blows up, So you know, we and that just pushed all of these young people into Pulpot's arms. Pullpop was the crazy guy that thought Mao was the greatest thing in safe ice bread. But he was going to take it to the next level, take Cambodia back to year zero.

So he executed you if you wore glasses, if you had an education, you know, they would if you didn't, if you broke a needle and stitching, if you you couldn't have a family picture. I mean, they literally just

just destroyed that culture. And of the seven million people probably killed three million either forced labor, you know, because they dumped the people out of banam Pen and marched them out into the bill, out into the farmland, and they became farmers and they would do ridiculous things like I saw this one place where they were trying to build a reservoir uphill, but they were stupid. The people

that were running that had no education. Even now today and hopefully this doesn't hunting doesn't, he won't carry He's the Prime Minister of Cambodia. Here's a third grade education. You know, people don't They did have a lot of education back then. And he fought with Polpot and then he went over on the n east side and came back in and kicked the camerouge out, and then he became the prime minister. That's thirty years ago and he's still the prime minister today. But I decided I'm living here.

I'm going to help these people. I've joined the rotary Club the VFW. It's really neat when you're the VFW and your VFW is the guys. The name of it is the guys that were on that Merchant Marine ship that got lasted after at the end of the war. You know. So we get to go to the embassy and hang out with all these cool young you know, soldiers and Marines that are stationed in Panampen and also the finding missing soldiers. I got to work with our

guy's called stone is the code name for it. But the main guy for the finding the missing soldiers is even the Vietnam A station PanAm Pen. So I got to know him, and what I would do is I'd say, look, you know, I know the way these people think, Let's give him something. So let's give them. I did this big painting of the Vietnamese when they land, when they went through the the gates and at the end of the war, and I thought, just give this to them,

because they give us intel on our missing guys. We still have twelve hundred and fifty guys missing. And I found out all of the rigorole that goes through it to try to find It's amazing. The North Vietinese have four hundred thousand and all it says on their bursts on the death certificate location South, so they had nothing.

So I even't found these They're called corp they're psychics, their corporate their corpse finders, and they have this psychic thing and some of it works and stuff like that, but it's like so bizarre. So I've helped this woman who has an organization to find their missing soldiers, and I found two hundred and fifty two hundred and fifty graves in Panampan just by talking like this. And one of my friends said, I know where there's this grave

site that's Chinese but it looks like Vietnamese. And we went there and it was all these vietmanse graves because the Vietnamese lost, they lost eighty six thousand men fighting the Camerooge. After we were gone, we know nothing about all these wars that went on. And when you go there, I mean, if I'm there, I'll take you around. I'll take you to see a rip And there's a museum, the best museum there you've ever seen, because all the tanks and the artillery pieces were left where the last

battle was aimed at each other. They're still there. It's just it's amazing, you know, to find that that kind of stuff.

what that guy was going through a moment. Yeah, yeah, moment. And this is me and the one this is me and Tubby Claus and where there was these would be photographs and then I would paint him. So that was that, and then I started painting like my girls like this.

of my reliefs. You know, probably read your Way before I wrote anything about Vietnam, but I would paint well. It was funny when I finished writing that story or the death in the Ashell Valley, I stopped talking about it. There was nothing else to talk about. It was really weird. It was like I got it out of my head and down on paper where it belongs. And so, you know, the way I faced my PTSD was like they say, bite, bite the dog, the bit you you know, bite the

hair and the dog. Whatever that saying is going back there did more to help my than a thousand therapists because I got to see the Vietnamese as loving, real people with loving families. And these people treat By the way, if you're a veteran of Vietnam War and you go to Vietnam, you're you're a class higher than any of the tourists. They love Americans that come back. I mean,

I've seen Ho Chi Men's body. I waited in line and I had me and another veteran were there and this little old guy, old he's my age, come up to and he had his NVA uniform on, and all he wanted to do was shake my hand for coming coming here. It was just so moving to it's still it's still real for a lot of these people. You know, it'd be like, I'm sure the way the Civil War must have been. You know, in America it went on for a long time. There was just pain. There's still

going on. Well, that's still raw there. I mean, there's still guys are I mean, when I first moved to Cambodia, we were averaging at least one young kid would get killed a week with a bomb, you know, picking up a bomb, you know something. You know, it was one a week, and now it's I don't hear that much

about it. So that's dropped down a lot. But you know, it in a country where that's just scattered, not only with bombs at the that ther bullpots guys left, but every time, you know, I don't know if you've ever seen what comes out of B fifty two, those.

prosthetic foot or hand or arm. You know. Still, I mean that still goes on, and you know there's Loos especially, it's still got a lot of I've got a friend over there i'd get every day. I get stuff from him on Facebook and he we drive motorcycles over there and drive motorcycle. I mean, if you want to go down the Ho Chiumn trail, I've got the guy. We could go do a tour and it'll blow your mind,

you'll see, because everything's left the way. It was like they only a couple of years ago they found a giant Chinese tank that that that the Vietnamese were using in Laos and it got covered over like the tour it was blown off and then somehow got covered up with dirt and then they were doing a bridge and they covered this complete tank you know, with the with the rounds in it and everything still ready to fire.

I mean, that's still you find amazing, you know, that's going to be gone soon, you know, for the scrap guys. We'll get it, but it's still there.

there's this golden in Salt Lake City. There's the temple, you know, the Mormon Temple. But then there's also the well, not the White House, but the governor you know, the Governor's mansion or something. Well, yeah, for the you know, it looks like the White House. And I'd look up there and they had a gold It was the top of the buildings gold. And I want like gold money. So I called up the Treasure of the State of Utah and I opened up the account. My first order

was like eight million. There was no eight eight hundred thousand dollars bonds that I and I wasn't even sure how to buy them. But I would like run into my management, like I just got this guy in the Phonian wants to invest eight you know, he's going to roll over his mortgage money and we put together old bond portfolio. But so I would I would do that. I would. I would make sure because we were and there was Merrill Lynch and we'd start at like start

at five o'clock in the morning. I would start at four o'clock in the morning. I made sure that nobody was earlier than me. This is in my early years when I was starting, because I had more time to get on the phone and call people. So I would go in at four, just as an ego thing. I found out that my I found out that the president

of this school, I found out. I'd find out what people would make and then I would like, oh, somebody had fired me once and it was another brokerage firm when I early on when I started, and it was because I couldn't pass that test, that first test. I'd never never taken a business class, so I didn't know. So I used to every month, I would send him

my run. And I was at one time, I was averaging twenty thousand a month, but one month they made forty thousand dollars, just like nineteen seventy eight, when that was a lot of money for a month, and I would I would send him my run and just like just to so, I guess I used my e my ego to to make to make myself be the best me I could be. I never did anything illegal or wrong or anything like that, but I just would push myself, push myself because I knew I could take it. You know.

Like one time I gave a talk to this was at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. The last time they ever invited me. I went and I talked to all of these women that wanted to write memoirs. And I'd written that recondo thing, and and I was writing every day because I had two kids defeed and I got up and I said, look, it's unfair because you can't compete against me. I've got to make a living. I'm not doing this because I've got some extra time and

I want to like write something. You know, I'm doing this because I got two kids to feed, an ex wife and probably soon to be another ex wife. I've got to pay it. I got a lot to do. And that's the attitude you've got to take with writing. And I just would send stuff out to anybody, and there's well, you're not supposed to send it to the editor. I'd call the guy up. He's just a guy or

a woman. Hi, Larry Chambers. I got an article, and I figured out I would I would give them the article free, and I'd have some corporate like you have a sponsors. I had sponsors that would pay me, so I didn't need money from the magazine. So pretty soon I'm writing. I was writing three h three columns a month and two books a year, three sometimes three books a year, and I did that for years, So you know, I guess that's how I used it. I just use

my tenacity. And you know what I always would remember is standing there getting that that that that that air metal pinned on my chest. I was so proud of that. And when I do that, I would like get into a stance and I could just go all day long. I don't need drugs, I don't need anything, you know, I don't need to drink. I just would just I'm pure, like pride or I don't know the way explain it, but I didn't use I didn't sneak around and steal stuff, you know, to get if that was what the guy

was wondering, I didn't do that. I just used tenacity. Tenacity would be the word I would say.

junior college before I went in the Army. Then I came up to bachelor's and then I got a master's degree, and I used the skiing as a part of a part of that. Remember I told you I was dyslexic and add so I avoided anything. Now, now, what's to tell something on myself. The first book I read, I probably wasn't It was Catcher in the Rye and I was probably thirty years old when I read a whole book, a whole novel all the way through. Was the first

book I'd ever read because I just avoided reading. I was so bad at it, so dyslexic, I couldn't read. And you know, so I like cheated most of my way through grammar school. You know how they were going to put me back in the third grade. But I learned how to forge my mother's signature, and I took the note home and said, no, Heed, He's going to go on, you know, and then I just would cheat. But nobody knew I was undiagnosed. Nobody knew what that

stuff was. Yeah, yeah, or to how to deal with it all right?

his his YouTube, his website. You'll be able to find it just down below in the description to this video or podcast if that's how you're listening to it. Larry, any final thoughts, anything else that I failed to cover that you want to get out there.

I've done that for ten years and I've had some people help me excuse me along the way, but I sort of it indirect or directly adopted this to my family. And I have to tell you, for a veteran, I have so much meaning in my life because that's what they say. You know, what what makes you for? You know, I'm seventy five years old, I'm happy is shit, and I've got two great kids that are adult children, Logan

and Kristen in America. But I've got all of these people that I've helped in Cambodia, and I just feel proud of that, you know, not like I owe the Vietnam what Vietnam did to me. It's so I suggest, you know, going and taking on a mission something like in our motto in rotary service above self, and that's what I get so much more out of helping somebody else than my dumb shit stuff.

what happened. They will you they're not going to ever let that die because that gives them purpose and meaning in their life. And that's what those guys helping the Afghanist and trying to get somebody all that stuff that just gives you like a goal, of tangible goal to reach and do. That's good and you know you feel good about you. I mean, what a great feeling, you know.

usually get around here. So yeah, Larry, I mean, this has been amazing, Thank you so much, man, and you know, please stay in touch, let us know if we can help it anyway.