MACV-SOG in Vietnam | Dick “Dynamite” Thompson | Ep.366

Special Operations, Colbert, Oh, SPI and I The Team House with your host Jack Murphy and David Bark.

Everybody, Welcome to episode three sixty six of The Teamhouse.

I'm Dave Park.

You're with Jack Murphy, and tonight our guest is Dick Thompson, retired Lieutenant Carl who wrote a couple of books on MacB Soag. The first one is Soag code named Dynamite. The one, Oh, the team Leader's story basically reads like a journal. I'm amazed, Like, I'm amazed at how detailed it is. It reads like an action novel too. It's a lot of great stuff. And one of the things I really appreciated was like at the end of each chapter you have kind of a less and learned and everything like that.

So, thank you so much for joining us to night.

Did thank you honored to be here.

Yeah.

So, you know, like the books on back, the book focused on macbe Sag and you know, obviously that was one of the highlights of your career, but you had a twenty one year career. But before that, when you were knee high little Dickey Toms and running around the neighborhood. Tell us your origin story, how did you grow up and what led you to the military.

I grew up in basically a military family. My mother's five brothers were all deployed to in World War Two at the same time, and my father was also deployed, so they had everybody over there in World War Two. After that was over, my father was also called back in to go to Korea. So I had a lot of exposure as a small kid growing up and hearing the family talk about war, and I became very curious, so I asked a lot of questions.

You know, what is the squad, what is the platoon?

What do they do? How did they work? So I was always asking questions about it. I spent a lot of time living at my grandparents' house on my mother's side while my father was gone, So I grew up kind of on a farm, but you know, a lot of woods. I had an opportunity to go out and spend a lot of time, you know, in an environment like that. When my father got back and we moved to a small farm, and I was spend hours and

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How can I walk up on a deer? How close can I get to them? What do their tracks look like? How do they behave? So I was learning the field craft like that. So I got a little older. I had a cousin, Carl, who would my age, who would come over and we'd go out in the woods and play army camp in the woods at night. Eventually we got to the point where I had a bb gun. We would shoot birds, cook them over or fire and do the kinds of things. Because we've heard about rangers.

Him go, so we court martialed him and he left.

But we saw Darby's Rangers, the movie that got us all fired up even more so. And I used to to hunt and fish. I grew up, you know, firing weapons, so I was pretty good at shooting and hunting, and you know, just kind of got into that. And then when I was thirteen, I was sabotaged by Santa Claus. He brought me a chemistry set and I used to watch Shock Theater and these other monster movies and things.

Take real quick, I want to stop you, because there was something in your book you talked about your very first macbe sag instructor in the in the barn there.

Do you do you want to tell us about that?

Yeah, when I was you know, I was was you know, about six, I guess or seven, somewhere around that age.

And and the way our house was was set up.

There was a road, a dirt road that came from the highway, came right through the middle of our property, uh and separated our house from the barn. And you know, we didn't have running water, so we got water out of a well. We didn't have indoor toilets or bathrooms. We had an outhouse, but it was on the other side of the road where the barn was, and my father bought a big turkey. In fact, when we were

Of E and E trying to get him around him.

Then pay all finally came at Thanksgiving, he was invited for Thanksgiving dinner. Didn't have to worry about him anymore. But it really taught me a lot about how do you how do you hide? How do you go from cover and conceilment from one place to another and you know, get to the house and then get back.

Yeah, a lot so, yeah, thanks, So I'm sorry for interrupting you. So you go to college, and you're going to college for chemical engineering.

Correct, well, for chemistry.

Chemistry.

Intent was to be a guilt a doctor in chemistry, be a research chemist. And at that time, every day, at five o'clock in the evening, the national news would come on and there'd always be a segment about what was going on in Vietnam that that day, and you know, they they kind of made it sound like we were really winning and it probably wasn't going to last much longer. And I, in my mind, I thought it's going to

And you very quick.

I'm sorry, but when you so, when you went to go enlist, you actually went to the You were headed to the marine though right.

The Marine's office, the recruiting office, and army they were side by side a building there in town but yeah, because you saw the Marines on TV all the time. I mean, that's that's all you heard about. The Army was there and they were doing something, you know. But the Marines, it's like every other Marine's got a camera or something, and you know, they publish everything, excuse me. And so I sounded like they were the ones who were getting something done.

So I thought about them. But after I talked to them, I went in the.

Army recruiters and said, you know, what do you got and they talked me into going into the Army rather than the Marines.

Yeah, and you originally thought that you might be a chemical, especially a chemical.

Well, they had said, the Army recruiters had said, you know, you scored really high on all these tests and we can get you in the Army Chemical Corps. And I said, well, I mean that might be cool to make all these chemical weapons and different things, you know.

So I went into Army and thinking about that.

And then my first night I dant at Fort Faxon, went to sleep in bunk bed and you know, fifty other guys in the air and about three point thirty in the morning, all the lights come on.

There's somebody yelling.

Screaming and hollering, get out, get out in front of your bunk. And I guess the people at the other end of the room we're not moving fast enough. And I heard the double you know, the bunk beds starting to fall over on the floor because whoever this guy was, he was just turning to.

Bunks over the people in him.

I got out and I was sending in front of mine as he got where we were, and I noticed he was I mean, he was my size, and I thought, wow, he's not nearly as big as he sounds, but he's a bad dude. And then I noticed, you know, that black and gold Ranger tab on his shoulder, and I said, wow, that's a Ranger.

That's what these guys are like. I mean, that's cool.

I like that.

And then you know, he took us to the mess hall and we had to double time going over there, and we start with a Jodie call about you know, I want to be an airborne ranger. I want a little life at danger, and I mean I was hooked by the time I got to the messhall. I said, I'm only going to be here three years. I might as well be a ranger for three years. And you know, turn some blunks over and have some you know, have a good time. So I started thinking that way.

Yeah, so you you your Basic, you do a leadership prep course which is like a like it was. They don't have it now, but when they identify you as somebody who's going to be a leader at ai T, right the Advanced Infantry Training, you go to a leader prep course and then you do your Infantry a T. Now here's my question, because this is this isn't something that happens really anymore. You did Basic and then ai T, and then you rolled right into OCS, the Officer Candidate School.

How did that happen?

Well, the drill sergeant I had in Basic, you know, he made me a platoon guide fairly quickly because I was, you know, very fit. I learned quickly. And then I discovered and one night that there was actually a manual twenty two days five that had all the commands that they were using as we marched around.

So I need didn't take me long.

At all to go through there and see what the commands were, you know, the preparatory commands, the execution command which put to give them on till the next morning I started correcting the drill sergeants for a short period of time. Then I did a lot of push outs because I could see when they were doing it wrong. I mean, if you give me the materials, I can learn it.

Yeah.

So anyway, you made me the platoon guide.

And then you know, I had taken all kinds of tests when I first came in and my drill sergeant I said, you really need to think about going to OCS, And so I A'm going to start putting in your file and pushing you in that direction. And then you know that followed up when I was at AI T and then I got orders to go to OCS at Fort Benning.

Were you happy about that?

Yeah, I mean I was ready yeah by then. And then when I got o CS and uh, you know, you got exposed to a lot of things there. Airborne was wine Ranger was one. You know, all this different stuff you were doing. And you know, the the O C S company I was in was right next to the jump towers, you know, so every day I was watching people come down and parachutes out there.

You know.

So I requested to go to jump school, requested to go to Special Forces, and and I got orders for both of those. So as soon as I finished OCS, I went to Jump School. Finished that, I went to Fort Bragg, went through the Q course up there, you know, became SS qualified and you know, went on a team was prepping to go on a mission to Africa because at that time, the Third Group was targeted toward Africa. And I had also volunteered to go to Ranger School

Yeah.

One of the things you talk about, which is something they used to do but they don't aymore, was the quick kill course. You know, they used to use the Daisy rifle for sort of the point shooting. Can you tell us about that? Because that I don't know. That school went away. They don't do it anymore, but it was a very valuable school, right.

Yes, uh, you know they told us, you know, we're going to go out and do some training to do about two weeks of focusing on on something that was called quick cool. So we we went out to the training site, you know, myself and a group of other young SF guys, and you know, the instructor came out and he had a BB gun TB rifle and he threw a about a three or four inch aluminum disc up in the air and he just shot from his

Then they changed.

This over with two by fours that had a little three inch silhouettes on it, and you know, you would shoot at the little silhouettes like that, and we got good at that. And then we changed over to M sixteen and we'd actually go through a go down a trail on the range, that target would pop up and you would use a quick kill. Sometimes people now still

Yeah, but it's very fast.

If you're within twenty twenty five meters of a target, you're not going to miss it.

Yeah, it didn't take you long at all.

And I mean I still put on demonstrations now with you swat teams law enforcement. I still go back to Bragg and Campbell, the special obscurus, and as home, I can still hit from there. In fact, if you're carrying at downport like most people do, with the stock leaning up there, I said, I'll hit you three times before you can even start to move your weapon up. Yeah,

Eight.

You can die.

You know, he will get you if you're not ready to pull the trigger and hit the target.

How hard, I'm sorry. How hard was it to transition from BB gun to the M sixteen.

It really wasn't hard in terms of hitting the target. I mean we had shot the six I mean, we'd done work with the M sixteen, just we hadn't tried to do the quick kill and you know, and to jump way ahead. One of the things that happens with it all the services is with your marksmanship training. You know, whether it's a pistol or rifle, you spend all kinds of time on side alignment, getting the right site picture

Yeah.

So you get assigned a third group, you're prep for Africa. You're disappointed because you want to go to Vietnam. You go to ranger school, you get back and you find out that you are going to Vietnam.

Right.

What when you get to Vietnam? What was your first impression.

I had?

I had grown up in a world here in the US, and we have laws and rules and rules of engagement and things that you can do. And you know, I get on a plane and twenty and twenty five hours later, I step off the plane in Vietnam, and as soon as I exit the plane, the smell hits me.

Yeah it is.

I mean, the smell is just very different. And I rollize I'm in a different world. Yeah, a very different world. All the noise, the chaos, vehicles running around, planes landing, taking off. And I also noticed that the people, the Vietnamese, were people where I could actually see the tops of their heads. You know, I'm not very tall. I don't see the top of somebody's head very often talking to them. Yeah, but I could see theirs, and I thought, well, this

So you get there and you get some really solid advice, right, somebody tells you they give you good advice.

And what was that advice?

A friend of mine, I had left for Vietnam about a month before I did, so he had been near He's already a signil mic force, but he got word that I was coming and he linked up with me.

You're going to die.

If you don't die, you're going to get the crap shot out of you and you're going to go back to the States as a nutcase.

That's what they find your body. Do not volunteer for salt.

Yeah, any we hung out there for a while and he said, I'll see you back here.

It's more.

And so when I came walking in, he looked at me and he said, you.

Did it, didn't you. I can't tell what I look on your face.

You did it.

I mean, you are a dead man walking.

So when you when you go into that room, how do they pitch?

How did they pitch you like, what was their big uh?

Did they show you like a motivational video with guys coming out of the water.

Now I'm I'm twenty one years old.

Yeah.

And you know, back at that time, we used to

And he said, I.

Can't tell you.

The only way you can find out what they do is you have to go there. But I can tell you this that if you volunteer for SOG, you're volunteering to go anywhere, anytime, do anything, and not talk about it for twenty years. I'm twenty one years old. My prefunnel cortex has not developed yet. I mean he might as well be holding up a recruiting poster. Go anywhere, do anything, and not tell anybody for twenty I can do that. I don't know what it is you want me to do, but I think I can handle that.

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Now, can you give us, you know, a rundown on?

You know all these guys were coming from SF or they're all SF, they're all Special Forces. Why is the studies an observation group. Why is that different than the guys in the A camps and and things like that, like what's different?

What do they do or what did they do?

Yeah, one big difference is big difference is that.

Our targets in our area of operation, they were in different countries.

I mean, for the.

Most part, Vietnam. South Vietnam was just a training site for US. We could go out and rehearse missions. We could go get some you know, Vietcong and North Vietnamese soldiers to come out and train with us and shoot at us, you know, so we could get used to being shot at and we could shoot some people. But when when you went across the border you went Sterle, first of all, nothing said us. No dog tags, no ID card, nothing that said that you were from from

As a spy.

We were not covered by the Geneva Convention, you know, so it was different for us. And then the number of enemy that you would be engaged with was pretty much insane. I mean, when they tell you, I want you to take six guys and go out and find this battalion of North Vietnamese and attacker. Okay, they should

Yeah.

So so you you get assigned to RT Alabama right and Fubai.

Yes.

So when I you went to d NAG first, and that's where you found out what SAG was found out.

Everything was top secret.

You couldn't say anything after you walked out of that room. And when they were there were three camps like the one that d NAG and then there were some smaller ones. You got a code name so that you know you if you were captured, you could kind of prove or let the US know it was you and where you And then you know, I was sent up to Fubai, uh that had some of the teams up there. I put a closer uh uh to the Lallish and border

So I said, you know what about me?

You didn't call my name and he said, hey, your Ranger Special Forces. You got all this extra training, I'm putting you to work. You're going to be assigned to a team tomorrow, uh, and we're going to get you out doing your thing. I thought, well, that's cool. Get started pretty fast.

And so you get to your team And what was that like when you first got there?

When I got were to your team? Well, on a SOG team, it doesn't matter what your rank is. So I came into the team as an officer, and you know, I was the only officer on the team. But I had to go out with the team uh several times and prove you know, my ability to lead in combat and work with the SOG teams and learn all the little special techniques that they use before I could have

So you know, you're you have this kind of like SAGA had a wide range of operations and like your first mission was wire tapping, right, So so do they like do they have courses for you guys back at the camp, Like how do you you know if you're doing a pipeline hit or wire tapping or a rendition or you know, a snatch and grab, Like, how do you know, learn these these different skills.

For the most part from operators who have done it before and know it. And sometimes if it's something really special, they may be bringing in a CIA GA or somebody else who has the expertise. But the RT Alabama and then while the wire taps before, so they knew how to do it, and I learned, you know, as we went out and did it. It's not that complex once you see how it's done. The execution, you know, actually

Be very difficult to track you.

Or do you go in first light so you have daylight to try to, you know, get some space between you and where you go in. But we're going in at last light, and we're gonna go down until a bomb crater. They dropped a very large bomb and blew a hole into jungle canopy, just barely big enough for the helicopter to set down in. So we're approaching it and you know, the skids are almost dragging on the top of the canopy. The team leaders over on one side with a couple of people. They're standing on the

But you know that's what sog people do. So I get ready.

I bent my knees to jump in, and just as I got ready to jump, I saw some movement on my right. About ten fifteen feet away was a NVA soldier with AK forty seven pointed up at me, and I thought, well, man, So instead of jumping into the crater, I jumped back up on the edge of the floor of the helicopter. Just as he pulled the trigger, stream

Blood's going everywhere.

Now everybody's shooting, and the whole bomb crater comes alive because they had an ambush set up around it. So there's a tracers criss crossing inside the cargo compartment, somehow missing us. And you know, I was just amazed that that many bullets could come be coming and not be getting hit. I went ahead and emptied the rest of the magazine into a tree in front of me where I could see muscle flashers and saw a guy fall out.

Canteen cover that I was using.

I couldn't get the magazine out, And eventually I did get it out, but then my fine muscle control had deteriorated so much from the stress.

I couldn't get it in the magazine.

Well, you know, bullets are coming at me and I'm trying to get the magazine in. Finally got it in so I could start returning fire. After I got the first one out of the pals and I could get the others without any problem. But you know, I had just never experienced that level of fear. I had tried to imagine, you know, what it would be like to have a bunch of people shooting at you, and you know they're they're fifteen twenty meters away at most. Yeah,

Coming at us.

You can hear hear the rounds hitting in the helicopter, and you know, the the door gunners right next to me. He's got the sixty going. Two of my little guys are behind me, one on each side of my head. With the car fifteen firing on automatic. I can feel, you know, the powder burns hitting my face. You know, it's all that's going on. I'm trying to shoot.

And it was.

Probably lasted two or three minutes. It seemed like, you know, all.

Day, but.

Because stuff was hitting everywhere.

Anyway, we got it out of that and eventually we've got back. And on the way back, I looked over at the team leader sitting on the other side of the helicopter and he looked around at me, and when he saw me, I mean, he grinned like a horse eat and saw bryar and started giving me the thumbs up, and I thought he thought that was cool.

Really in George, what we just did.

I don't know if I'm going to get to that point or not based on how I felt back there, but he's pretty excited about this. Then when we got back and we got off the helicopter and he came over to me and he said, I'm going to tell you something, lutt If you don't learn to change magazines baster when people are shooting at.

You, you're going to die. And I said copy that.

I was pretty fast, but I didn't realize the impact of someone shooting at me how much slower it.

Was going to be. Yeah, I will start practicing.

So one of the things I tried to do with the books is I wanted to show the reader this is what I saw. You're looking through my eyes. You're figuring my fear, You're seeing what I'm seeing. You see the mistakes that I make, You see the changes that I start making Across time, as I learned more and more how I'm changing the tactics that I'm using with

For people who are familiar with SOG and I've watched our shows or other shows, you probably know why there was an ambush set up. But for people who don't know, SG was top secret for everybody except for the North Vietnamese, who, due to the political climate in Vietnam, the South fields had to be informed of everything that you guys did, and that basically was sent up to the North Vietnamese, so there was always, you know, at least a company of not a battalion waiting.

For you guys. Right. Yeah.

I see a lot of people practicing jiu jitsu, and the way people do that is that you and I are going going to have a match, So we get down on the floor. I get my best hole around you, you get your best hold on me, and then they say go and you know, then we start rolling around fighting when I was trying to beat the other. And that's that's like a SOG mission. You get a whole bunch, you know, five hundred thousand, uh, and you put him

And then you have to try to get out.

And the most difficult thing of the whole process is getting out because now they all know where you are. Yeah, and you know, I used to liking it too. It's like kicking the top off of an ant hill. They just swarm out of the ant hill. Once they find out where you are, they just swarm on you.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know you talked about how this book was through your eyes and the opening, the opening of the book has a really.

Intense scene with you grappling with North. Do you want to tell us that story?

The on on one of the missions, And I'm going to.

Go ahead and add a lot, add a little bit more to what's in the front. The helicopter I was in was shot down, so we crashed on the l Z. They broke my back, practured my spine, some vertebrae, some ribs and.

Things like that.

You know, when we crashed, one of my guys had gotten shot through the thigh as the helicopter was coming down anyway, where the three of us were all thrown out.

My interpreter was with me.

We were thrown out onto the ground and all three knocked out. When I came to, I wasn't sure if I was dead or alive. But as I my hearing started to come back, I could hear the rounds cracking bines and digging up the ground. So I figured I must be alive because they're trying to kill me. So I started moving, and because there was a small bomb

And I don't know.

At one point, the idea popped into my head that what I should do is crawl out there and the grass with them, because they're all through the grass trying to get to us. I should just go out there with him and snatch one of them up and drag him back into the bomb crater, and again my prefhone quartex wasn't working very well. It sounded like a good idea. I mean, I've just got a broken back, it's not a big deal. But I crawled out there and I

I just didn't have any strength left.

And then for some reason, he turned loose the barrel of my car fifteen and just hit me as hard as he could.

Right in the nose.

Just flattened my nose out, blood went everywhere. My ball was spinning around. But when he turned loose to the car fifteen, that gave me a second or so to reorient it. And then he realized. I could see the look in his eyes that he knew he was dead because the muzzle of the car fifteen was maybe six inches away from his cheek and he just closed his eyes because he knew it was over, and I put a five or six round burst into his head and

Yeah, that's so well.

And then how do they you know, you have multiple wounded around it, how do they extract you guys?

Well, eventually.

Using tactical air support and got the fire suppressed enough that they came in and dropped ropes from the helicopter that we fastened on, and they pulled us out. Captain on in the helicopter, we were sitting on a pretty steep ridge. He got up enough rotor speed to pick it up about a foot or so off the ground and just went over the side of the ridge and right on down to the bottom of the ridge and hit down there, and another aircraft came in and picked

Yeah. Yeah. Those those Vietnamese pilots for something, weren't they.

Oh yeah, I mean they were they were fearless and they were good.

Yeah, they were flying the you know, h thirty four helicopters, the big, big fat ones.

Yeah, they're very powerful.

Now, when you got to RT Alabama, you also were put on a hatchet for us.

Can you tell us about that?

Yeah, they assigned me so I had the double assignment there. They assigned me to you know, a hatchet platoon. So I had fifty guys and you know, so I was the platoon leader.

For the Hatchet Force.

But it ended up the only thing I did with him was trained. I never got to take them on a mission because they kept kept me so busy with the teams going out. So Alabama kept kept me busy, and then they shut food By down and sent teams all over.

I was sent down to Danang.

To c CN and that's where I picked up RT Michigan.

What what what was the mission of the Hatchet Force.

It was to have.

It's kind of kind of like a Ranger force, kinetic, you know, hard hitting impact to go in and you know, really you know, kick some booty with.

The with the enemy.

I mean you you had patams, but you had companies too, so you could put a whole company in there.

And that was a lot of firepower.

So so they shut down Subai, so you had to fop forward RT Michigan And then, uh, can you tell us about a couple of the ops there. Some of them were, I mean all of them, I'm sure are standouts and they're in the book, but can some of the couple that stand.

Out in your memory? Yeah. When I when I first got there, the previous team leader one zero had been wounded badly and so he was he was, you know, meta BacT So I took over as a as the team leader. And there was one other American there, specialist fourth class, by the name of Bargewell, and.

He was a sharp guy.

I thought, Wow, I mean this this kid is really sharp. And I'm saying kid, you know, I was three months older than him. But anyway, he had been with the team for a while, a lot of combat experience, really good. He and I got along really well.

We had.

Had a mission to go in and actually port a hatchet force that was being put on the ground. We were going to be on the other side of the highway to make sure no one came from that side and attack the hatchet force. But we were going to do it in a unique way. The one hundred and first had a company right on the border.

With Loos Oh.

The plan was we were going to fly in with the resupplies for the one hundred first for that company. Drafts like one hundred and first guys get off the helicopter that way, and then the next morning we would go down with the water team down to the river.

To bring water back.

Except when we got there, all of our clothes and things is going duffel bags. They would bring our clothes back, we would move off across the river, go into loos Were over to where we needed to be. So that was a fairly unique way at that point to do an insertion. We also had artillery support. Only time I had artillery support because one hundred first was close to

And got in some big battles.

And that's when I I realized that if you stop when they when they're coming after you, if you stop, what they tend to do.

The NBA.

What they tend to do is they're just like an amiba and your dinner, and they just kind of move out and us enveloped. You all around you. Now you're you're in the center and they just come in and get you. So because they were chasing us, we got into a rocky area and I thought, this is a this is an area not only has some concealment, but it has cover. And we stopped and they just salted and salted. Eventually we were we were pulled out by

I was.

I was hit in the back with.

It in the the radio, and I was also hit with a big piece of shrapnel.

That hit.

My survival radio.

I know, if you're listening to this on the podcast, you can't see it, but the survival radio was mounted right here my pocket, right over my heart. So huge piece of strapnel buried itself into the radio that stopped it from bearing itself into my heart.

Got out and all of a sudden, we're.

Hanging at seven thousand feet on the end of a rope, flying at one hundred plus miles an hour, freezing to death, you know, because we're soaking wet from all the sweat and now we're seven thousand feet up and you know, it's cold.

And my ropes rubbing back and.

Forth on the edge of the floor of the helicopter and I can see it starting to pray, and my radio is dead.

Yeah, radio is dead. I can't radio the pilot and say it.

I a said if we could sit down somewhere pretty soon because my rope's about gone.

But we made it back anyway.

So this is a very nerdy question, but I have to ask.

You're part of this, you know, uh covert unit doing things that our country denies.

You go to a conventional.

Outpost where the hundred and first is how do you coordinate fires with them and tell they're already people. Hey, you can't ask who we are, but we might call you and we want you to fire into laus.

Yeah, well, you have the same You have the same issue with the helicopter crews. Okay, the pilots get briefed on the mission. They know they're going to cross the river. But the crew, you know, the gunner crew to you from the gunner that know. But you can see the expression on their face when they see that river coming up and they're still flying toward it, and you know, and and they're looking down and thinking, oh, geez, we just crossed into Laos or Cambodie or wherever it is.

I used them.

And then when we had to get pulled out, you know, I sent Bar aswell, and and you know, the other half of the team out first, and they flew back to the fire support base. So those guys are out there seeing this helicopter come from way over on the other side of the border flying right toward them, right and.

There.

So they got pretty excited and they all came out to see what was going on. And then my helicopter's coming, you know, with myself and two of my guys hanging under it, and we're flying to it. So they knew now there's somebody else coming from over there too.

And they set us down.

The medics did a quick fix on my two guys and put us in a helicopter, and we were just getting ready to lift off. I sawid guy running towards the helicopter. This guy's hand went up in the air and he's got something in his hand, and we're lifting off the ground. Just as he gets Timmy, you know, reached down and I took what he had in his hand,

There no clue he was.

Picture handy, by the by any chance, I'm sorry, do you have that picture handy?

Is it still?

It's it's in the book, Oh is it? Yeah?

Uh? I don't remember.

That's okay, hey, no, it gives people one more reason to uh to buy the book.

I mean, the book is loaded with pictures.

Yeah, and I know you're going to ask me that same question if these were all classified, how did you get those pictures?

Well, oh, I wasn't going to ask that. There are always pictures on classified missions these days.

Yeah, I'm just gonna look right here for just a second. I might be able to give you a page number.

Yeah, I'm just curious how the talk.

Goes on page I'm just curious how the discussion goes with like the base commander and the fire support officer saying, hey, we want you to turn your guns around.

Uh, and and we're like, we're we're authorizing you to fire and a louse if we call you.

I wasn't privileged to what they were told time. I know the company commander kind of freaked out when I told him what we were going.

To do the next morning.

Yeah, the fire support lieutenant that he had there freaked out when you said, you're you're plotting targets on the other side of the river, on the other side of the order.

I said, you're right, because.

When when I need you to fire on those targets, I need you to have already computed everything.

Yeah, when I.

You know, you know, fire target Monday, you know, write two hundred, drop three hundred. I need grounds coming in on the target right then because we're in big trouble.

Yeah.

So yeah, they just they just thought, wow, this is we've never seen anybody at all these targets and name them like days of the week so they all make sense, and line them up ahead of time.

I mean that's what rangers did, you know.

I mean, yeah, I did that all the time, you know, when the training and stuff. So and used them once we got out there because it could come in quick like that.

You know.

We talked about sort of the expanse of operations that actually start did and like and then you know, like you had your wire taps or search and destroy all this son. Even though this was Alabama, all this son was a very interesting project, right.

You want to talk.

About one of the one of the psyops kinds of things that we did Black ops is we would go into North Vietnamese ammunition cache is and add some additional ammunition to it. So we would we would go in and put uh, you know the seven six two rounds for the aks, we'd put to you know, fifty one calibers for the machine guns. We'd put Watar rounds, but these rounds would explode. So in a you know, if we might put out a Maga AK magazine, we have contact and we run, and we leave an AK forty

Big impact on whether or not you want to pull the trigger.

Yeah, yeah, we were told that. Well, I mean Jack has some first ten experience with that. But we're told that they rebooted that for the Global War on Terror only since it's a kinder, gentler military, or that they only fused the weapons, didn't you.

Yeah there, I mean there were also programs like in Afghanistan where the tag, track and locate stuff became like a really big deal.

But yeah, the ammunition wasn't designed to explode anymore, but just to fuse the barrel because we didn't want to hurt the enemy.

Yeah.

And you know, if you think even more recently with with what what happened, you know with the Israelis and all of a sudden, cell phones are exploding, pagers, pagers exploding,

You rig it.

So man, nobody wants to touch one of those pages after they explode. Set Now they were afraid of cell phones. They don't want to touch a cellphone. And you know they planned and and put those things out there way in advance and when you know they were going to use them. But it has a major psychological impact on something like that blows your buddy's head on.

Yeah.

And then you had like uh, prisoner war snatches.

We'd go in prisoner snatches and statch up a prisoner to bring out, so you had those, you had the ambushes we have. We'd go watch like the whole ho Chi Minh trail, uh set up where we could observe that. And when the trucks would start down the trail, you know, we could call the L four's to come in and bomb them. So we do those kinds of missions. Sometimes it was a raid. We'd go in and rate a

It's putting that stuff, so holting that stuff.

So they were teaching them, you know, how to come after us, how to find us.

Yeah.

When when when you guys, would you like ep w r uh like snatches? Were those justly targeted for a specific personality or was it just hey, go get somebody the highest ranked person you can find.

Uh?

Sometimes it was, you know, to get a high ranking person. Most of the time it just get somebody, get somebody, so.

You know what.

In fact, one of the one of the missions with.

Michigan, I set up an ambush, uh, and I I used.

C four right in the middle of it.

So we had to claymores and interlocking fire and everything everywhere except for this one hole where maybe two people could be in and what they would get is just a concussion coming from the C four to stun them. We kill everybody else and then jump out on the trail and grab those two guys up handcuff them, bag them, you know, and drag them off. But you know, they psychologically they had been told, you know that if Americans

With So you know, you cover about not I don't know, eight nine missions, and I don't want to talk about all of them because people should buy this book, they should read the book. And then what's the second book called which you said is more intense.

It's this book too, okay, book two.

So the book is a SOG code named Dynamite Link is going to be in the description below, but buy it at your favorite bookseller. It's a fantastic, fantastic like book. I mean, it's very, very detailed. But you know, you I'm sure was one of the highlights of your career, but you also you had a very stellar career. Is there anything from SOG that you want to talk about that we missed, because I'd like to talk a little bit about your career after that too.

I would just say that, I mean, at the time, SAG was that was the tier one, most elite, you know, organization out there, and sometimes people read about those missions. Hear about the missions now and they just say, you can't do that. In fact, my father in law watched the podcast that I was along with Jocko Willick, and he watched it and when he's.

A iPad, he's very sharp World War two guy.

And my wife said, well, so what do you think and he said, he didn't do that. If you'd done all that stuff, he'd be dead. There's no way he did that. And you know when you read those stories and you hear what the hot guys did, that's the typical reaction is you can't do that. Yeah, And I have people tell me you couldn't carry that much weight.

Well we did. I used to carry.

Fifty magazine fifty twenty round magazines. And I had somebody just recently say there's no way you couldn't carry that much weight and ammunition, much less all the other stuff you put with it, said, well we do.

Yeah.

I mean, there was nobody coming to bring you a resupply. You had to survive. And in one of the missions and books, who there? I mean it we were in contact, was helping like twenty twenty one hours, twenty two hours before we got out. And you've got to have a lot of ammunition, and in a lot of cases you end up having to go out and take AK forty seven's off of dead bodies and use their weapons and ammunition against them because you've already used up all.

Yeah.

You know, for kind of the nerds out there who want to know this kind of stuff, what was your standard like weapon load out? And I'm sure it depended on the operation, But you guys were carrying cars, did everybody carry a car generally, I mean, do you guys have shotguns?

Were there any like?

For the for the most part, well in the beginning of SOG because you couldn't have anything it said US. Usually it was a stun, a stand gun or sweetish kad you know, was a non American weapon. And you know, by the by the mid sixties, in the late sixties, US weapons were so ubiquitous all over that part of the world. You know, to have a weapon that had US stamped on it somewhere, it wasn't that big of a deal. So I started carrying car fifteens, you know,

Right.

So with my team, once I I took over Michigan, pretty much the standard load out for fragmentation grenades was was five per person. She carried those in a canteen pouch or maybe a couple hanging on you. So five fragmentation grenades. I changed it to ten. So if I took a seven man team out, we had a total of seventy frag grenades.

You know, but you can go through.

Seventy frag grenades fairly quickly when there's that many people coming after you. Most most teams carried thirty five magazines.

I carried fifty. And one reason for that is.

I don't like to get shot at, so if you shoot at me, I'm going to shoot back, right, you know. So I probably shot a little more than the average team leader. Plus you know, it gave me some rounds I could. I could distribute some magazines if I needed to, if the other guys had run out. So we had you had that, you'd have a knife of some type. I usually carried my kebar. And again if you listen to the audio, you don't see what I had. This is my actual original k bar that I carried on missions.

But my load bearing equipment, you know.

Averaged about thirty five pounds plus my rucksack because I also carried the radio because I wanted to be able to talk. You know, my rucksack was like seventy pounds or more.

How much water were you taken in there? Because I mean some of those.

Visions usually we started out with if it was a rainy, rainy season season, you didn't have to take as much, but.

Average was like four quarts. Wow, the water you know on your load beering gear, you.

Know, compass map, the survival radio I talked about. I mean, this thing's almost five pounds. Yeah, just the radio. Well the water alone, isn't it. What is two and a half five pounds per quart? I can't er down something like that.

Yeah, yeah, it adds up very quickly. The book Geer.

In book one, there's a table in there where I've got listed. I broke gear down into the three levels. You know, your survival level that you had to lance resort, I've got to have this, and then the tactical level, mostly your ammunition and stuff like that, and then you mission stuff in the rucksack where you might have.

The wire tap or.

Long range camera lenses or you know, special equipment if you're going to blow something up, you have a lot of extra C four and stuff. But I had it so I could drop your rucksack. I could still fight if I lost my load bearing gear. I could still survive because I had a knife, I had extra I have a banditlier around my waist of the magazines that would still go with me if I dropped everything out Compass it was all me, so map was all in my pocket. So I had these different levels and it's

Yeah, now, I.

You know, you had this twenty one year career, and

Well, I when I when I left SAG and I came back to the States, I went to I'm excuse me, I went to the Rangers.

You know.

So I had forty other instructors that I was with that all had combat experience, that's all been Vietnam, and that helped us support each other. But when they would ask me, you know, I was I went to Vietnam and I was in the.

Special Forces Group, you know, Okay, I had.

An SF combat patch on, and I just I was in Special Forces. And yeah, we did a lot of raids, ambushes and different things. But you couldn't mention the word soog. You couldn't say we did those things over in other countries. And you know, after a while, people were just you know, stop asking you things like that they just see a combat patch and assume you know, you were just in a self group.

Now did did the army ever like tell you, okay, this is officially declassified and give you an official like read off and roll back or did you just kind of have to figure it out when you could actually start talking.

About it mostly kind of figure it out?

I mean I had to sign a non disclosure agreement, you know when when I volunteered or SAG I had. I had to sign a volunteer statement that I was volunteering to go anywhere do anything for six months or six missions, whichever came first, and then I had to sign a separate agreement, a non disclosure agreement that I wouldn't say anything about SOG, anything about going into other countries or you know, anything with SOG for twenty years.

Yeah.

So you know, once SOG shut down, it was twenty years before you're supposed to be able to say anything about it.

Yeah.

Yeah, So, like you said, after you leave Vietnam, you go to Ranger School to Jolanaga, right, And what was that like for you?

And I'm sure Ranger School was very different back then than it is now.

Yeah. Back then, we only had to feed you one meal a day. Yeah, and that's if when you were out on patrol, if whoever the patrol leader was when we requested recent lie, if he remembered to request food. So if he got carried away on ammunition and smoke and all that kind of stuff and forgot to ask for food, there wouldn't be any food, even the resupply.

That day or when the.

Team went down to pick up the supplies from the friendly partisan, if they forgot to ask for the food, because it would always be separate from the ammunition, you know, so they would very quickly hand you all this ammunition to carry back to the to the patrol. But if you didn't ask for food, they didn't take oh it's over here, so you would go back to the patrol and with no food, so you didn't get anything to eat that day.

I can't imagine that their pure evaluations were that good. But it was also like you know, now it's it's a leadership school, it's under trade OC, but back then it was still very like combat focused, right.

Very preparing combat and the leadership. But one of the things back then, you know, they wanted you to be an E five or or hire you know, to come. They wanted you to have a certain amount of time in the military before you came to Rangers School. They wanted you they wanted you basically to show up there and demonstrate that you could do all this stuff and that you could tough it out and make it through everything.

And then.

They started backing away on you know, at least when you were not out in the woods on patrol, they had to give you three meals a day, couldn't drop you for more than fifty push ups at the time, It couldn't make you low crawl from the classroom down to the mess hall, down the asphalt as a company. I mean, there are a lot of you know, things like that that were just hardship things that they started taking out.

And you know, it was still still tough to go out.

There for that long sure, And now now you go you actually go through a pre ranger course before you go to Ranger School, and if you're in the seventy fifth, you know, you you have to go through the selection thing to get into the seventy fifth and then once you're in, you you know, have an opportunity to volunteer to go to a Ranger school.

Yeah, and back then also one of the things you mentioned was that all the instructors had to be combat that.

Right, everybody was a combat vet.

And you know when when I was when I went up there, and actually the Delanaga is now is now the fifth Ranger Battalion, right right, So when I went up the here, I created and stood up the Halo Team, trained, the Halo team, led the Halo Team. I did demonstrations

So we did a lot of things like that.

We worked on tactical use of Halo and more advanced tactical procedures and techniques like we used in Saga just didn't say that's where it came from. We actually went out and set up desert training train the eighty second and some other units in desert warfare before they made their first trip to the Middle East.

We set up I wrote a lot of the.

Training and things for the desert phase of ranger school. So for a period of time there was a fourth phase of ranger training that was actually in the desert, and it was desert training, and they eventually took that out, but.

That was in there for a while.

So I did a lot of things there in addition to just you know, train the rangers.

And then when you left, when you left there, you went to.

The second idea in Korea, and they didn't have a ranger company there at the time, so that was kind of your initiative.

Kicked that off, right, I had.

I talked to General Emerson, the second Division Commander, before I went in route to Korea. I went through the Inmstry Officers Advanced Course at Fort Benning, and so when I got the orders going to Korea, I sent him a letter and said, you know, here's my background, this is what I want to do. When I get there. I can give you a ranger company of your own that you can use, that can do anything that a ranger company can do. He was Special Forces. He got

But when I first went down to.

Where our launch site was, when I saw the foot lockers that had the live AMMO story in it, I told my first arts and I said, you know, I don't feel good about our ammunition at all. I'm looking at those foot lockers. It looks to me like based on those steel bands that are around them and how rusty they are, no one's looked at those magazines in there in a long time. You know, get get some cutters,

I mean we couldn't. Nobody's weapon would have powered.

I mean we'd have been standing near, you know, with the blades turning waiting on us, you know, on the helicopters, with no ammunition to go.

So anyway, I got that.

Resolved, and then, uh, you know, based on my training, it was you got to rehearse, you got to practice. So really go out and make an assault into you know, one of the sights and see how that goes. It didn't go well at all because when we got to the landing zone, it was trees. For twenty years, they hadn't done anything till the landings off. Trees had grown up and so we couldn't land and all the sites so like that so.

Created pretty big mess. I mean, it wasn't my fault.

I just happened to be the one that said I want to test this stuff out.

But yeah, I had a good time in Korea.

It was I mean there were all kinds of competitions.

There are something that.

The division commander had put together called Combat Football Ferocious Game, and my company won it both times.

While we were there.

We won the division championship, we won the taekwondo you know championship, we won the Infantry platoons and stuff championships. So we were selected to put on the demonstration when the President came over, we put on the Ranger capabilities demonstration, you know, for him that you know, it was pretty impressive and he really liked so we did a lot

And how was that for you?

Oh?

I love it?

Yeah, I mean because I was back, you know, and the way I felt I was back when my my people, right, rangers, those are my people. Yeah, I got a chance to be willing to go out on these All of these things were classified, you know, when they were going to happen, where it was going to take place, and and what happened when you got there and that we went to some cool places and you know, and I enjoyed that.

And then in seventy nine you, uh wait, am I getting ahead here? You you you became a teacher and assistant professor, right and and uh r o TC no.

Well sort of yes, Okay.

My assignments officer called while I was at BRAG and said, how would you like to you go to degree completion to complete a master's degree? Said, well, that sounds pretty cool. So as I thought about that, I decided, if I was going to go to school and work on a master's.

Why not just get a doctorate?

If I could find the right school that would give me credit for residency time while I was working on the masters And it was a school that had an ROTC department that I could you know, when I finished the master's degree, i'd be assigned to the ROALTC department. That would give me enough time to finish the doctorate?

What was it?

So I did that at the University of Georgia. Oh, I got the master's degree, started working for the ROALTC department, finished my doctorate, you know, while I was there, and started working on some special op step what happens if you have to go for a long period of time without sleep.

So that then they sent me to.

The Commanding General Staff College out at Leavenworth, and from there they assigned me to the Airline Battle two thousand team, which was figuring out how we're going to fight war in the twenty first century. So I had done a lot of research on sleep and high performing leadership, so they put me on that and eventually I started going around briefing the NATO countries on this is how we're going to do special ops in twenty first century and so that you know, that was fun.

Can can I ask you what was it like? Because this is seventy nine, so the I'm assuming like morale is getting a little bit better post Vietnam, but it's still not super high.

So what is it like being part of an r OTC at that time?

At that time particularly University of Georgia. I mean it was it was fine. Yeah, people people liked the military there. The I mean Georgia was a land grant college. So I mean, at one point in its history, if you if you were a male and you went to Georgia, you had to be in ROTC. The first two years, oh interesting, but that went away, you know a number of years back. But so it was volunteer you could join,

But uh, that was that was good.

And then you know, I went to Leavenworth and worked out there, and then eventually I got a call from an assignments officer again and said, how would you like to go back to Georgia and be you know, we called we call these RLTC departments battalions now, so you would go back there and be the battalion commander. And I said, you know why why, I mean, why do you offer me this? I said, well, it's always been an six position, but the Army's changed it to now

An O five.

And every O five's name that we sent down there gets rejected for some reason. And then we remembered you, uh,

They can't say no to you. I said, try it and see. So they took me and I ended up having that as my uh, you know, final assignment in the military.

That's great, I mean it's kind of a nice way to ease out, right, yeah.

Yeah.

And then post military, like what did you do twenty one years? And then you're out and then go fishing or like what did you do after that?

Well, I'd always thought the training and things that we did in the military were pretty cool. Before I got out, I started using some leave and going to some civilian corporate type organizations and saying, you know, let me come in and do some leadership training, team building, whatever. And you know, so I was doing a little bit of that before I actually got out, and the you know, the civilians loved it.

Yeah.

I started a company, my Performing Systems, where it was executive leadership and strategic planning and all that kind of stuff. Team building, and in the nineties, outdoor training was big. You know, you take a corporate group out into the woods and you have them move across ropes, bridges and stuff, and the treetops, you have them rerepeled off a cliff whatever. I mean, what better job could I have given my background.

But then I would.

Pick obstacles, design obstacles that mirrored some problem they were having with their team, and so they'd have to take them out. They'd have to engage you know, that obstacle. And at some point somebody would say, you know, we're doing the same thing, the same issues that we have every day at work, and we just we we overcame it here and we got through this obstacle. Why can't we do that at work? So then you know, I work with them all, Okay, this is how you do that.

You know, one of the things that's really been highlighted after the Global War on Terror is you know, veteran issues, post traumatic stress, things like that. After Vietnam, there was this big public scare about post traumatic stress, right the movie that you know, made for TV movies about a VET like having flashbacks and killing people in the office, stuff like that. What kind of like resources were there.

Resources for you guys back then? How were guys dealing with it?

I mean, you know, obviously it's become a lot more acceptable to talk about now, things like that.

Yeah, it was difficult. I mean if you wanted to end your career, you know, get diagnosed as I am in PTSD, huh, particularly if you want to be in special ops. I mean special ops. I mean you have to be physically feel across the board. So like hearing, for example, if you have significant hearing loss, and back

And the Navy is using it more and more. I just had a Marine group.

Order a bunch bunch of them this past week and it's spreading because they see it's a way to let people help themselves and get them help without them restoring their career.

Where can people find that if they're interested.

In It's on my website, but I can what's your website?

We'll send Okay, we'll have it. We'll have your website in link below. But for the people who are listening, do you want to give them your website?

Yeah, it's just the h P s y S dot com w w W h P s y s dot com Hotel Poppy. You'll see the arsenal or how you can get to the arsenal. But yeah, we can put fantastic. Yeah. Before we get to question, is is there anything.

That we've left out tonight and anything that we didn't cover that you feel like we should have.

I mean, we're getting into some things now that you know.

I have a lot of passion around I have a lot of passion around special ot stuff, but also around uh, the operators who you have to go out and do that and then live with it afterwards. I mean, it sounds cool to go out and do it, but you know, you pay a price short more times you go out there. You guys, you guys know it. You can only kick so many doors down.

Uh.

You know, before you uh you get blown away, or before you mentally uh you know can't do it or or have difficulty going forward.

But there are ways to approached that.

There are ways that you and I can work together when we're working with uh, with other groups, we put a lot of emphasis on buddies. You know, in ranger school, you have a ranger buddy, and you and your ranger buddy have to take care of these other I watch you, you watch me, and I take care of you, and you take care of me, and I do the same things. Even in corporate America, I put them in buddy teams. Every day when you come into work, you check out

Keep an eye on.

You know, there's some decisions and things I have to make today kind of you know, watch me if you see see me, you know, getting a little whacky or whatever. You know, take me on to the side. Let's talk.

Are there are there things that you would say and you know that are basic or common knowledge in the military and military leadership that the civilian world just straight up misses.

When when I got out of the army and started doing the corporate work, I never said I was in the military. Because if you said you were in the military and you recently retired, all of a sudden in corporate America, that meant you had your Your philosophy of leadership was to be a dictator.

You boss people around, you jerk them around.

When I tell you to do something, you say, if I tell you to jump, you say how high? And that was people general view of what the military was like and what military leadership was like. So I didn't mention military until nine to eleven. Once not eleven happened all of a sudden, If you were you were a military person, that was great. I think you appreciate your service.

They probably see full metal jacket and think every day is basically like boot camp or whatever.

Yeah, but but are there But would.

You say that there are things that the military does well that civilians, you know, like a civilian organization when it comes to like leadership and team building just often does. Don't get that, like you're applying very simple principles. Principles are very simple to you, that seemed magical to them.

Yeah, I think in the military we understand about teams and teamwork and working together, particularly as you move you know, towards special ops, but not just special ops, in other parts of the military too, But understanding we function as a team, and we can do things quickly. Just think about you know, we in the army, we can pick up a brigade sized unit, take them to the other side of the world and have them operating, you know,

I mean, it's just beyond their comprehension.

We know how the organized, we know how to plan, we know how to you know, actually carry things out and make them happen. And you know, to be honest, one of the things when I'm talking to vets on counseling and they say, you know, I know how to do army stuff, I said, that's right. And what you don't realize is you have this tremendous skill set that can happen. Well, I know they don't want me to

How to take care of people.

All of those things are extremely valuable out in the civilian world.

And you have all of that.

You just have to take off the od uniform and and you know, put on your civilian clothes and go do that. It works, and that's that skills that you have, and you can go out and get a job and you you might have to rephrase you know what the skill is that you have, so you know, civilians understand what you're talking about. But you know, you didn't waste all that time in the military. You learned even from

They don't even want to go into work.

They want you to pay them, but they don't want to have to go to the office or wherever it is that they're supposed to work. That's a real issue, particularly for the younger ones.

Uh, did you say we have some questions? We do? Maybe one moment.

From Matt Gevin. Thanks for sharing your experiences tonight, sir. What was the most selfless heroic act you saw.

During your time in the army? Thanks, gentlemen, always a good time.

Yeah, the most selfless act? Well, I think I think there were things, particularly in combat. You see it all the time. I mean, you know with the assistant team leader. I had Bargewell that I mentioned earlier. What I didn't mention at the time was Bargewell was respect for when he was started working for me. He retired as a two star general. He commanded you know, Delta, every special ops thing out there. He commanded before he got out.

And in just the last interview we did with Dave Grange, he talked about Bargewell being a squadron commander in Desert Storm, right.

I mean, he was awesome, but he was fearless and smart and everything, but he was selfle I mean, he got a Distinguished Service Cross because he didn't like being shot at either. And when a group of NVA fired a B forty rocket right into the middle of the team after I had left, wounded everybody, big piece of shrapman went through the cheek on this side, lodged behind his eye, on the other side, an artery inside of

Just seeing other people. You know, I had people who.

Violated an order to come in and try to save my team. I mean they were told, don't dare go over there, there's too many of them, and they came in anyway, got shot down, and two of them.

Still missing in action.

I mean, just but there were things like that going on all over Vietnam every day where people were just you know, putting their life out there on the line to say people take care of them. So just amazing what people do.

See anything else, We have a few more from Rick Redo. It sounds like Dick was there around the time. My father was also in McVie sag. Would you happen to remember a tall mustache man named Tyra Dou might have gone by Tolby at the time.

I almost remembered the name, but I'm not sure. One of the things that happened in SOG is even if you were at the same camp like you were at the NAG at CCN, the teams were coming and going so much, and there's a lot of compartmentalization going on. I don't want to know what your team is doing. I don't want you to know mine, because if one of us gets captured, we don't want to be able

But if he was at SOD, my feeling is he's an American hero.

Yeah, and just a bit more.

He added, he was taken from us last last April, and he was a wonderful father and man.

So thanks Rick.

A couple more.

Uh, was there any thought at the time that mac VISAG would become something bigger or a unit unto itself after the war, Any discussions about that. Obviously, no one could have foreseen it was a forerunner to Delta and Jaysack, et cetera. Just curious if anyone was talking about mac visag serving in the theaters besides Vietnam and becoming an MS in the army. And that's from Bill Gage.

They didn't discuss it with me, but I was I was a little too low in a total bowl. But I wouldn't be surprised if that was discussed. But I didn't hear it, and my my focus was just mission, go out, do the mission, make sure he came back. And but that wouldn't surprise me if at some point they were they were talking that way, because you're right they.

They did did put together, you know, Delta Force.

When I was at Brag as I mentioned before, when I was up there, uh, I had a chance. Dick Meadows came he had been my boss and a good friend, and he came to me when they wanted me to be part of Delta Force. H helped with the selection process and be part of the part of Delta. So I had an opportunity there. But a lot of the you know sad guys ended up over there, and he was one of them.

Uh.

He also uh contacted me right after I got to the lot of the Ranger Department. I told me I was getting orders the next day and I'd be gone for a while. The orders were canceled because of some

So all right, one last one from Corbin.

Was there any kind of tactical fingerprinting attributed to l Z ambushes?

You could, you could see the change.

Across time in the knowledge of the NBA.

Uh.

They became smart enough fairly soon to recognize that if a if a helicopter came out of nowhere and landed in a clearing out in Laos or Cambodia or North Vietnam and then took off, they probably put a SOG team out there. And then they eventually started putting towers on mountaintops where they could see a valley and see where if a helicopter came and landed, see where it was.

One of the things you mentioned in your book, and you know, like so the Americans were totally in the dark about MacFee. But you mentioned like when Matt doc Schreiber got killed, that there was an announcement in North Vietnam that he had been killed, and it was like a celebration, Like, how did it you know, he's he's somebody who nobody in America knew who he was obviously, you know, how did it feel for you guys to know that? Like, they knew who he was and you know it was public knowledge.

Yeah, they they knew who most of the one zeros the team leaders were, and most of them had most of us had a dossier, so they had a lot of information. When you get into the book two, I don't want to give it away, but there's a place in book two that that will give you chills when you read it because of what they.

Knew and.

Who talked to me, who all me on the radio and talk to me? And what they said, Yeah.

That was that was you Like, I've read that story in other books, didn't John tell John? I think John Plaster wrote about it in his book.

John schucker Meyer also mentioned that they would call out people's names on the radio at times.

You know, yeah, they read they read the whole list of names. Oh man, Yeah, one name they they should not have been able to know and and they knew it.

Yeah.

Yeah, Yeah, that's it's it's crazy.

It's crazy how.

Absolutely effective you guys were considering the the the intelligence you know, the intelligence leak that they had headquarters. Yeah, you know, the Partner Nation leak. But well, we'll probably have to have you back for book two.

Okay, yeah, book two. Book two is loaded.

I got some really powerful stuff, but you need book one to set the stage and understand everything so you can really see the changes in tactics and techniques and things like that. Yeah, a lot more than your own stress. And you know, I had started out in chemistry, but shortly into SOG I started changing the psychology, trying to understand how to lead mercenaries in combat, how to engage the North Vietnamese, how do you engage people in general?

And there's a.

Section in book two where I talk about the the human reaction to combat. They are things that humans do, regardless of where you're from, and combat that give you away. And once you start to learn what those are, it gives you an advantage going against the force.

You know things they're going to do.

They it's just instinct and people do it unless you spend a lot of time trying to train it out of you.

So that stuff is in there pretty heavy in book too.

Is that it Ty Dick thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Thank you.

I really appreciate the opportunity just to share some things like this, to be able to talk to someone that understands, you know, what I'm talking about, and being you know, given a platform, people vets can be helped, they can do a lot better. And some of the things that help you get better or not complex. You just need somebody to share it with you and try this. What's the here's some things. Keep moving forward, don't stop.

Yeah, one foot in front of the other, right, that's.

Right, and keep going and practice.

You know, there's a whole set of principles in the book, and one of them is keep moving forward. One of them is practice, practice, practice, Because it didn't matter how good your plan is, you're going to have to adapt. So you have to adapt and adapt. I used to know.

They're going to hit you. They're not going to hit you. You know other thing.

If you're the leader, I mean you, you just have to assume you're going to get hit. If you're doing your job, you're going to be exposed and you're probably going to get hit, but you got to do it.

Yeah. Well, thanks again, Thank you everybody.

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