MACV-SOG in Vietnam | Jim Shorten | Ep. 266

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at patreon dot com. Slash the Teamhouse, Special Operations SP and I the Team House with Your Hopes, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey folks, welcome to episode two hundred and sixty six of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park and our guest on tonight's show is Jim Shorten.

Jim served in US Special Forces, worked in mac Vie SAG doing cross border operations during the Vietnam War, and then he went on to have a very interesting career as an Air Force PAARA rescue men and continue to have an interesting career after he retired from the military, going to med school and becoming a doctor. So, Jim, thank you very much for joining us on the

show today. Oh my pleasure. Thanks for asking me absolutely man. So I want to start off asking you a little bit about your origin story, about kind of like how you grew up and what kind of propelled you towards military service. Well, I had kind of a kind of a rough childhood, you know, I had I had a stepfather that used to, you

know, slap us around a lot. But I was born in Liverpool, England, and came to the States when I was probably the final time was around eleven years old, and moved all over the country and my mom remarried a guy named Jones. That's where my name, Jim Jones came in. If you look at my military it's all Jim Jones. And so when I got out of the military. After twenty years, I went ahead and changed my name back to Jim Shartan. I'm a junior to carry on my real

father's name. So but then, yeah, when I when I was about I guess I was about sixteen or fifteen years old, I ran away from home, and when I became seventeen, I decided I wanted to join the Navy to go see the world. So what I had to do is I had to become a citizen because I wasn't a citizen. I became a citizen a sixty four. So I did that, and then from the Navy, you know, they went and I stirred. Twenty two months in the Navy over in Vietnam, I learned. I learned I had a working knowledge of

the Vietnamese language from a girlfriend I had there. And then then I decided to go into the Army Special Force. I was going to go into the Navy seals, but then I decided to, uh, you know, that song came out only three out of one hundred and make it. So I went ahead and joined the Army instead. And it wasn't it wasn't very hard for me. I was a gymnast in high school, so I was in really good shape. So and I stayed in shape. I did two hundred

push ups, twound of setups, two to jump jacks every morning. And when I was when I left the Army and went into the pair. Oh, when I left the Army, I came back to the States. I was underwater operations. The whole team went down to Key West and went through Scooba School and then we came back. Then Ian I was teaching a pair of rescue guys foreign weapons and night vision devices and stuff. And I didn't

know who these guys were. So I went out and partied with them a couple of times, and then I went on down and talked to their their base at the one twenty ninth Air Special Rescue Recovery Service, and I decided to leave the Army and go into the Air Force. So I did before before we jumped too far ahead. I want to go back to you know, your time in the Navy, that initial state you said you had service

in Vietnam there as well. I mean, can you tell us what that that initial enlistment in the Navy was like and what they had you doing when I first won the Navy. It's kind of funny, But I got this duty. After training, I can't I don't even remember how long it was. It was sixteen weeks or something. I went to San Diego for a boot camp and so when I left there, I got orders to go to Litchfield Park Naval Air Station in Phoenix, Arizona, or Litchfield Park, Arizona,

just outside of Phoenix. And so when I was there. When I first got to the base, I told everybody I was a dental technician, but it had me actually down as a storekeeper. So I'm telling everybody this. You know I'm a dental tech. You know I'm gonna be working in the dental office. So finally they said, just go find a place and crash for the night and we'll see monday morning. Because it was like on

a late Friday afternoon. So I go down and I start shooting pool and they had this massive arms and it was being a It was a real small base, so everybody was wearing Sivenian clothes. Well the massive of arms, make sure nobody fights on the pool tables and stuff like that. He was a dental tech on the base. So I told him what the truth was and he goes, well, I'll see what I can do. So when you first go on a base, you know, you got to go around

like the medical, the dental, and personnel and all this stuff. So when I went into the dental office and they checked my teeth, his name was Dave Johnson, and he said to Captain Smith was a Navy captain, you know, like a colonel. And he goes, he goes, this is the thing I was telling you about you, sir, and that he

wants to be a dental tech. So Captain Smith asked me about the dental stuff, you know, like he put a tray out and asked me the name off all of the instruments, and I rattled it all off because I studied. I wanted to be a dentist, so I studied all that stuff. So he goes, I'll have you in here in a couple of days. Wow. So I actually became a dental tech. And so after so after after a Captain Smith retired, we had this commander and I know his

son. His son is a locksmith up in Tucson, but his dad passed away. But anyway, I wasn't school trained as a dental tech, so he didn't want me in the office, so he booted me out of the office and I became a lifeguard, and he always wanted me back in the office, but he didn't want to, you know, he didn't want to lose face, so he wouldn't say anything. But he got some guy that was school trained, and the guy didn't know his butt from a hole in

the ground, you know. So anyway, from there, I went to Norfolk, Virginia for a pre commissioning detail for the AGM R two, which is the USS Arlington. It was an old aircraft carry and they put antennas on the ship for communications on the flight deck, and that took forever to get commissioned. So while I was there, I worked on tugboats for like

three or four weeks, and I really loved tugboat duty. Really hard work, but a great bunch of guys, good to work with, and so I did that and then they had a levy come down saying they were looking for guys that wanted to go on a ship. So I went on the USS Denabala or Danabla, I don't really I never knew how to say the word, but it was an A f fifty six was a refrigeration ship. So we went over to the Mediterranean on a cruise. I was on it

for a couple of months. So went over to Mediterranean. We replenished all these ships with you know, with supplies and food and stuff like that. And so when I came back to the States from there, I got off the ship and they were looking for people that wanted to go to Vietnam. And I'm going like, hey, where's Vietnam. You know, I've never heard of the place. And this one chief flips at me and he goes,

we're fighting a war in Vietnam. This is for sure duty. I said, yeah, i'll go. He goes, this is a war. I go, look, I'll go. I said. My dad served. My dad my father was Royal Navy in the British during World War Two. So I volunteered to go. So they sent me to counterinsurgency school and survival school and that sort of thing. And then I went ahead and went on over to Danang, Vietnam. And I liked it. There's so much. I stayed there for twenty two months. I had a girlfriend. She taught

me how to speak a lot of Vietnamese. I had a good working knowledge of it, and so that helped me with special forces. That was mostly Marines in Danang. Yeah, it was mostly all marines there, and I worked on the piers. I worked with the CBS. I was a seaman, but they were so shorthanded on men that I worked with the CBS and we worked eighteen hours on, six hours off, no days off, geez.

And we did that for a while and then finally they started getting more people coming over, and then we started to get like one day a week or two days a week off soon time. Like when you started your initial training and then you know you're you're slotted for at logs right, or and you go to dental tech and then do you have a rate or are you like non rated and you're just like volunteering for whatever jobs come up. Yes, I was non rated. Say I was a storekeeper. I had to

take all my tests in storekeeping. So I took all my tests up to E five. I passed all the tests and everything. But you know, in the Navy, you gotta wait for a slot to open up before you go in. Yeah, and there's so many storekeepers, you know. I spent three years seven months in the Navy. I was like what they call a kiddy cruiser. When you're join when you're seventeen. You get out when

you turn twenty one. So I did three years seven months in the Navy, and uh i, uh, I passed all my tests, but the whole time I came out as an E three. Thats my highest rank in the Navy. Three. Yeah, yeah, it was a seaman. So and I worked with the CBS. H I had the white stripes. You know, CBS have blue stripes. The snipes that work in there, you know they have red and all that aviation have green. So uh yeah, that's the That's pretty much it. And what did you do while you were

with the CEABS. I did a lot of shoring up ships and stuff like that. I drove trucks. I used to drive from De Nang down the Chuli and stuff like that, and then back and forth loading it takes it, supplies, splicing cables. I got injured. I had a truck blown off the road. In nineteen sixty six, they the enemy dropped some rockets milimeters rockets into the Air Force base there. It and it they hit the

bomb storage. The bomb storage was. When it went up, it was so furious that it lifted up a five ton dump truck over some trees and dropped it into two story burbs. Wow, but everybody was out of the barrack, so I knewod he was hurt in it. But it blew my truck off the road and I went out the door and the truck rolled over on me. So but I mean, I was okay. I was going in to get people out of the area, trying to get him out of there, get him in the safety area. So but yeah, that that

was pretty much it. So and after I got injured, stuff, they had me splicing cables, you know for the MIC boats and U boats and where the ramp comes down. So I was flacing the five eighths cable and three quarter inch cables for the ramps. And so you said that initially, like I'd like to know you you've somewhere it got into young Jim's mind that maybe you want to do this special ops thing. You said you'd heard about the seals, and then the Barry Saddler song got you tell us like how

that all came about. Well, when I was you know, back when I was in they they didn't really have seals. They were just now they were just starting to come out. Yeah. What they had was UDT Underwater Demolition teams. So and when I used to go to it was Camp Tenshaw was the main camp, even though I hardly ever stayed there. I used to stay downtown with my girlfriend. But the they had UDT guys there,

and I didn't know everything they were doing, but we used them. Like if we were loading a barge and a bomb came off a cable and went in the wire, the UTTU guys come in picking up, hook it up, and we haul it back out again. But uh, but when I went to have chow or something like that, you know, in the mess hall, I see these guys walking around bandages and their arms and slings when they caught a bullet the shoulder and all kinds of stuff, and I'm going,

you know, who are these masks men? You know? So I started learning a little bit about ud T and the seal teams, and I wanted to be a seal. So but then that song came out, and I'm going, I can do three out of one hundred. I can do that for people who might not know you're talking about the Seal or the song the Green Beret. Uh yeah, ballad, right, yeah, yeah. I think a lot of guys went on the Special Forces after hearing that song. Yeah, and so, so you had to do a like a lateral

inner service transfer to the Army and and start that. Well, I I finished my my hitch in the Navy. So when I got out of the Navy, I wanted to go in the Army Special Forces. So I took my bad test as a civilian. But the interesting thing is I had a GED. I took a GED and if you ever heard of the evelyn Wood speed reading course, I took it from actually from evelyn Wood, and that did that when I was in Arizona. So, but when I wanted to

go into Special Forces, you had to have a high school diploma. You couldn't get you couldn't go into the GED. You can get in the Army, but not special Forces. So what I did is I went to San Diego High School and I said, look, I said this, I told my whole situation. I need to get a diploma. And they said, well, if you take California history and government, we'll go ahead and give

you a diploma. So I was in school, probably not even a week, and they came into the classroom because I'm like twenty one years old with all these teeny boppers in there, right, So they came into the room and they said, we want to talk to in the office, and they just said, we're just going to go ahead and give you a diploma.

So I got my diploma, and so then I went down. I went into Special Forces and I went straight to I went to ford Ord for basic training, and then I went to Advanced Infantry Training and I got the I was the outstanding training of the cycle, uh for the for the a I T. So I got that. I got the little trophy and stuff.

And from there they sent me to a jump school. But when I was at Litchville Park in Arizona, you know, I started flying, air flying of skydiving when I was there, so jumping was nothing for me, you know, to go to jump school. So I went ahead and went to jump school. Finished that. Then I went up to Fort Bragg you know, for for s F training and they I finished Phase one back then that was different than the Q course of what they have today. It was Phase

one. Then you go to your MS training whichever it is, and then you go to phase two and then you get your orders and go so, but after phase one, they put me in communications and I just couldn't get that diddy dum dumb diddy fast enough. So what I did, Yeah, they morse code, so I told, I told the instructor. I said, look, I said, don't lose me. I said, I'm good

in mathematics. I said, I worked with the CBS, I got a working knowledge of Vietnamese language, I said, put me in engineers or something. So they took me out out of Communications and I had to wait for the next class to come through. And then I went to engineers and it was a piece of cake for me. So I went through the engineer training and then phase two was was a piece of cake too. It wasn't that hard for me. So and I mean I had when I was a little

kid. I was raised up and well after I left England, we traveled all over the country. But I tell everybody, I was raised in Colorado and my stepfather was a hunter, and I used to go out, you know, I used to go out in the woods all the time. I knew how to be stealth and everything, so that all helped out quite a bit. Yeah and yeah, I mean I actually would bury myself in the leaves and stuff, and the instructors would walk right by me and you wouldn't

see me like that. You make it through SF training and then you know where do you get assigned. I went to Vietnam into the Trang where the headquarters was, and I went to the first sergeant or the sergeant major there, and I said, I said, I'd like to go to Danang because that's where our station with the Navy, and I knew the town pretty good and stuff. And while I was he said, I'll see what I can

do. And during that time, another guy comes walking in. And oh before that, I met a guy from India that I knew from Danang when I was up there, and he left Danang and went down the Trang and he said, Danang wasn't the same anymore. I mean it, it was totally different. And so a guy comes walking into this combat orientation course, the cock course that they had there. It's like an indectrination to Vietnam kind of thing. So I'm sitting at the bar and the guy comes walking in

and he goes, hey, I'm going home. I said, we're we stationed. He goes out station at eighty five or two one of the best duty stations you can get, and so I said, he talk to me about it, So he did so. Then I next day I ran down the headquarters and I talked to this guy named Sergeant Micah, Mike Micah, and he was, you know, giving out orders and stuff for where people went. And so I talked to him and I said, you know, I'd like to go to A five or two and he goes, well,

if anybody's going to a five with two, I'm going to go. So anyway, about day later, he comes walking into the bar and he goes, hey Jones, I go what he goes, We're both going to a file two. So he cut us both orders. I WoT A five two, and when I was there, they put me on this little outpost called sue Yao. Now, a five two came directly under headquarters. It didn't come under a BC team or anything like that. It came directly under headquarters. And most A teams, you know, had twelve guys on it,

but uh A five or two had about fifty guys on it. And what they were is they were security from the Trang up in the hills. If you were in the Trang and you looked them in the hills. You saw these little outposts out there. They had one American on all these outs post except for one. There was two places where they had more than one American. But the they were the security from the train. And I got an now post that was way over on the other side of the mountains as the

first one out and it was called su Yao. And I had a CID CIDG company, a Sylvan a regular defense group, and I had one hundred and thirty three guys with me there and I was the only American. But they would send Yeah, they would send guys down the every once in a while because I was getting hit about it every one and a half days by the enemy. They shoot into the camp to see if you're away, kind of stuff like that, just test your camp. And so the guys would

come down once in a while and then they would go back. And the Mondays was my day off. So what I did is they I'd get it. I had a pickup truck, or they come down to jeep. I'd leave the truck there, I'd drake the jeep and I'd go back to camp, take my shower, change my clothes, and i'd go down the train and you know, spend the night and I'd parked the jeep at the headquarter and take a Jitney or something, you know, a Sicklow or something like

that going downtown. And I had a couple of girlfriends down there, so I just hang out with them. We'd go have dinner, go to a movie or something, and go back to the last You weren't like really on in O d A. It sounds like that they just kind of no baptism by fire. They put you out there. Yeah, you know that first time I was on a real a team was when I was in the reserves

with the twelfth Group and it was underwater operations. Because after that initial stint in the trag, Like, how how did mac vie SAG come about for you? Uh? Well, they turned the they turned the eight team over to the regional Popular Forces, the rough Puffs. And when they did that, Uh, I volunteered to go to C and C. And so they sent me to CCC up in Kantom. And you, I mean, I guess you heard about SOG and the front from uh being so close to the

headquarters. Uh No, we knew, we knew from going from training group. Oh really Okay, we all knew C n C and like I remember start Orly and Frank's were there, and really I remember really telling me he says, whatever you do, don't go to C and C. He says, you get yourself killed. A go to an a team, get a little bit of combat under your belt first and before you go there. Because a lot of the guys that were killed in SAG, a lot of them

were like their first second mission. Yeah you know, yeah, we had a guy that came with us on one on my first mission up there, and this is the next mission. The whole team got wiped out. Yeah, so tell us. So you get put in CCC Command and Control Central. Tell us where that was when For folks out there who don't know what

your mission was, well, it was a Clindestine mission. What did you When you first go in there, they take your ID card, your dog tags and everything, and then you take your shirt off because you got your rank on your shirt. You take your shirt off, you go into a room and you're sitting there and they give you a hint of what you're going to be doing. You know, you're going to be running clandestine operations. They're very dangerous. That kind of thing. They didn't tell you where that

was. And then they'd say, if anybody wants to leave, leave now. And most of the guys stayed there, so so I said, yeah, yeah, I want to stay there. So what they did is they put me an Archie, Delaware and it was Dan Sturr was the one zero of the team and he was building up the team again. I I, you know, to this day, I don't know why Dan was by himself and that team. I don't know what happened. I need to talk to

him. I think he's on vacation right now. But anyway, so he made me his assistant team leader because I had quite a few missions when I was on the A team. In fact, when I was on the that A team at eight five or two on Suyao, I turned away a ground attack. They tried to overrun my camp and I turned him away. I had a well fortified camp. So so when anyway, when I was there with Dan on Archie Delaware, we went on one mission. We had another guy, Gary Harnin, and he came with us on it. And then

when we came back again after the mission, we almost got captured. It was it was a pretty rough mission. They were supposed to put us in outside of a regiment battalion. We were supposed to go in and try and gather intelligence. And what they did is they put us in between them, and so the enemy let us land and they tried to capture us. So we finally about three days later, you know, the CEO just kept saying, break contact, continue mission. So but three days later we finally convinced

them to get us out of there. And so Dan blew an abte's on a tree. That's where you blow a tree and it's still connected, you know, so you can't move it. And so then the first chopper came in being assistant. I got on the first chopper. Dan's always he's you know, the team. There's always the first in, last out. So anyway, I ran up the tree, had two mote yards with me, the the mountain people that were mercenaries working with us. So two of those

two guys jumped in the helicopter. I ran the tree. I'm getting in the helicopter and the chopper is taken off. I'm holding onto the skin. Oh, I said, doesn't anybody see me here? Chopper's taken off and the moneyards trying to tell the gunner to look down, and because he doesn't speak English that well, so anyway, he looked. The gunner finally looks down. He gets on the horn. He goes, hey, we got

a guy hanging on the skid. So anyway, they reached down one of the other yard laid over their legs and they reached way down by the skid there and they grabbed my arm and I just let go and they pulled me in. So that I was lucky. I could have killed my first mission's bit. So Dan quit the quit running missions after that. He had a

lot of missions and that was a pretty scary mission. But so he decided, you know, maybe it's time to just hang up the you know, the whatever, you know, your hat and go on do something else. Jim, I'm sorry, I apologize to interrupt. I just want to do this ad read real quick and then we can we jump right back into it. Okay. So I want to tell our listeners out there about Legacy. Legacy provides sperm testing and freezing from home, eliminating the need for visits to

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dot Com. There it is. Okay, So Jim, apologies for the interruption, jump right into it. Your your team leader on Artie. Uh it was Doublaware, right, he decided an assistant team leader. I was assistant team leader. Then Dan quit, Yeah quick, right, And so then I'm walking across the compound and the first start and said, Jim, how would you like to take over Archie, Delaware? I go, I just ran one mission, you know, and he goes, well, we

think you're ready. And I found out when I was talking to Dance Sturr a couple of years ago at the Special Opster Union. He goes, yeah, he says, I recommended you. Oh wow, thanks buddy. So but so that I became the one zero, and then Gary Harnet went on to Artie, Pennsylvania, and the whole team got that they blew the chopper out of the air and they were all killed. It was really sad.

He was a good guy. They were all good guys. And so anyway, I had to get a one a one one assistant team leader, and I got a guy by the name of Homer Hungerford. And Homer was he had when I knew him. He had seven and a half years of combat. He served in World War two, Korean War, and in Vietnam. Wow. So yeah, and and then he decided he owned a hotel in Hawaii, and he was kind of like your Ernest Hemingway kind of guy,

looked just like him too. But Homer was really just a great guy, and a lot of guys didn't want to run with him because he was a little older. And I asked Homer, I said, you know, Homo, would you like to be my one one, my assistant team leader? And he goes, yeah, because I want to get out in the field. So I said, look great, So he became my my assistant team leader. And he was good. I mean, they had a wealth of

knowledge because you know, you know CCN. I think there's a story there that Till talks about where they had one guy that coward coward and they started shooting. You got stared. That was when. Yeah. Yeah, So I knew that Homer already had experience in combat, and I knew he wasn't gonna freak out, but that that was worth That's that's worth a lot right there. Absolutely. So anyway, so I took over the team and the

heck, I think I can't. I think I had a couple of linear missions, you know, linary recon just going through trying to find out what's going on there. Did a couple of road watch missions where you go up on the Hoachman Trail and you just count the trucks, go by Cray to see what's inside him. They usually try to get those missions going when there's a full moon, so you can see a little bit in there. This was all pardon, this was all in Laos, Yeah, Laos and Cambodia.

Yeah. And so then then I had a bright light mission. Well, I had a bright light mission with Artie Illinois. Uh it was Steve Keefer was the team leader for RT Illinois. But he was on a thirty day leave and so they asked me if I wouldn't mind taking the RT Illinois up to Docta. It was our launch site and stand down for bright light. And a bright light mission is when a team gets in trouble or for jet crashes, whatever it needs or a body you have to go in get

a body out. Uh, So they would send the team in, so you're gonna you know that bright light's are the most dangerous mission, so you know you're going to go into heavy firefight. So anyway they asked me, I said, yeah, I'll go over and talk to the team and you know, let him get to know me a little bit and then we'll we'll pack up my head up there. So the choppers took us up the Doctau and as soon as we got there, a they had a team that got

in trouble and I think he had one or two guys killed. They got they got the bodies out, or I think they I think they had to leave one body there. And then when they were coming out on rope, they were coming out on strings of sable rig one hundred and twenty foot ropes. So when they were coming out on those ropes, a bullet or something hit a rope, but the rope broke and one of the guys fell to

his death. It was one of them, So he fell to his death, and they want us to go in there and get his body out there in case he had any intel on him, cause you you know, because you know that there was nobody's supposed to be in Laus Cambodia. So I asked him the situation and everything and how many enemies, and they estimated around three hundred and fifty enemy they got hit with. So I said, well, I don't have time for two helicopters. I said, what I'm gonna

do is I'm just gonna take one helicopter. And at that time, Steve Keeber came up on the helicopters and he got off the helicopter and I go, Steve, what are you doing here? He goes, they just got back from leave And I told him. I says, well, we got a bright light mission. You want to go. I mean, I can just see the wheels turning. Damn, I just got back from leaving and I'm gonna go die, you know. And then it didn't help matters when I said, I'm just taking two other guys and myself, you know.

So because there's four ropes, and I had to leave one rope open for the body so we would ahead. We flew in, were repelled in, and they couldn't get us on the ground that there was triple canopy, you know, it was really high. So the chopper just came down, just started mowing down the jungle trying to get us down on the ground. So

we got on the ground. We unhooked, you know, because there's stable rigs that you're you're repelling down on, you know, not the stable rig but the rope, you know, and it's got a bag at the bottom of it. You can't just you know, jump on. Yeah. So we got on the ground, we unhooked, and the Cobra gunship flew overhead and he goes, hey, my code name was the Wild Carrot because I had really bright red hair, and he goes, hey, Carrot, follow me. So we go up this hill and I could see the rope in

the tree where it came down. It whipped and wrapped around a branch, and I could see it. And we dug the guy up and told him to come and get us, and we can hear the enemy coming. You can hear him streaming and yelling. Because you know, they didn't care if we knew where they were or not. They just come running up the hill trying to get us. So they came overhead, they dropped the ropes, we hooked the body up, the other guys up, they hooked me up,

and then they just started getting pulling us up. So when they pull us up, when we got about halfway through the triple canopy, we we could see the enemy coming but they're all shooting at the helicopter because when they get the helicopter, they got all of us, right. So, but the chopper took a lot of hits, but he managed to get out of

there. He pulled us up and got out. And you know, I'm just I'm just sitting there saying, you know, I could hear the bullets whizzing by, you know, but they weren't breaking the soundberry because they're shooting up, you know, they slowed down a little bit, but so I

could hear all that. And then the brass is falling down on us, and an a whee skyraider came right underneath me, just like fifty feet underneath me, and he just waves at me, you know, like like this, you know, and he was he's firing rockets with flaschetts and everything, and you could see the white smoke when it leaves the the It was an whin he skyraider. So when he first left this sky raider, you can

see the white smoke. But when he gets halfway to the ground, you get this puff of big orange smoke and it just blows all like thousands of flesh sets out there. Wow. So that day we got out of there and I'm getting you know, Dear God, get us out of here. Man. That was a freaking mission. But none of us got hurt,

you know. We got out of there and we got back to doc To And there was one that you shared a picture with me where you guys were able to actually do a prisoner snatch, which I know was a huge thing for SOG. You guys were actually successful and nabbing a few all the I took around fifteen prisoners when I was in Vietnam. I didn't take any in Laus or Cambodia. I wanted to grab one one time, but I was strap hanging on another team and Joe Vanderger had the team, and so I

went out with him and we decided to take a break. We were doing a linear recon and we're just we're just sitting there on the ground and we didn't know but we were only a couple of feet from a trail. Because the jungles so thick, we didn't get to the trail yet and we didn't know the trailer. So we're there and all of a sudden we can hear this voice, you know, guy speaking and you see him and they walked like not even three feet four feet away from me, just walks right by

me. And I'm looking at and you know when you when your heart's beating, your body's shaking like this, you know. And I'm sitting there going, man, these guys, I'm just waiting for the bullets to go through me, you know. But they just walked right on by, just walked

right and I wanted to get up and grab one. There was there was three of them that walked by us, and I figured we could take two guys out and take one of the guys or take them all, you know, and what I would have done, But Joe said no, He said, we don't know who's behind him. And I figured I would have taken it. I would have taken a chance. But he was the team leader on that one. So but the yeah, I would have just put them on stable rigs and just had them haul them back by themselves. Just tie

them up, blindfold them, take them back. Yeah, they're probably not going anywhere. Well, they'll hung up on the strings. Yeah, they're not going to go anywhere. And the guys are going to be out there with weapons anyway in case anything happens. So and they're not gonna be able

to untie themselves and get off that stable. Rig touro on a stable where you can't get off it until you're on the ground because those hooks are way up here, way up high, so we have them on here on here, but it pulls way up and then that bag that comes down has these straps that come down with the hooks on them, so you can't really get to them. So but anyways, that that that was that mission, and you see where can we go from there? We'll tell us some of the

other ones that were where you did take some prisoners. Uh those were in Vietnam. And when I was when I was at Suyao on that outpost, we knew there was a hospital up on the hill because one of one of the other camps up just just you see it would be it would be north of me. There was a camp up there that got overrun and uh I went in as a reaction force to it, and it was pretty nasty.

There was a whole bunch of everybody was It was a mess. I mean, you know, enemy blown in half and heads blown off, and our arms and legs gone. It was horrible. But but we went up there. We knew there was a hospital up there, and that's where these guys were taking their wounded after a battle. So what I wanted to do is go up there and capture somebody going up into those hills and find out where

the hospital was. So I went ahead set up an ambush site and a bunch of people came through and they were mostly VC Vietkong, and we ended up getting a two NBA and one was a nurse and I think I think that male was a nurse too. There's one woman and two men. But we took those guys and got them back. And the sad thing in Vietnam is that when you take these prisoners, you know, we talked to them,

interrogate them, then we turn them over to the district chief. The district chief will say something like I'm going to let you go, but please tell your commander not to hit our town or village, you know, just leave us alone. We'll let you go. So they do that, and that was a big thing over there. So in fact, one of the guys, one of the guys that I took as a prisoner, was a

mott yard and he was he was he was sitting there making chopsticks. He had some chopsticks soon, and I told him, I said, hey, once you make me a set of chop sticks. And he goes, no, this isn't very good wood. He said, I'll get some good wood and i'll get him to you. So when the guy was in this little prison jailor whatever it was where they send him, one day, I'm walking

across the main compound on my day off. So I'm walking across and at the main camp and this guy comes up and he says, hey, somebody told me to give these to you. I've got the chop sticks in my kitchen. He actually maybe a set of chop six. So it was kind of weird. So, but yeah, taking prisoners in Vietnam, ra I was, was not that hard. It really wasn't. Guys in SAG think, you know, wow, you know I never took a prisoner, But

I said, I never took a prisoner in SAG either. That's interesting because it's a whole different ballgame, right right right, You're out there totally by yourself. Yeah, I mean it's like in Vietnam, you got all the Americans fighting, They're all in our camps and you see five or six guys walking by, you can take them out, put them on a cat. It's the same thing. It's just reversed. We're five or six guys and got all the enemy there. You know, they were they're not afraid to

come after you. There was also you know the and we've talked about this on the show before, but one of the other things that made uh sag like very dangerous and very challenging for you guys is at like headquarters. It was getting leaked right that there were the headquarters had been infiltrated. So almost if you guys did the the Vietnamese or the NBA like knew what you guys

were going to do. Yeah, I mean we had guys going out in the field and they'd say, Sergeant so and so, welcome nail Z number two. They actually had signs set up. They we had one team that went in. I can't m if it was the CCN team or one of our teams. Uh CCS folded up for pretty early, you know when they made that big push into Cambodia, so CCS shut down pretty early. But the this guy he goes, he goes in, he gets in the l

z H I never went in on LZ. I went on LZ's when I went with other teams as a straphanger, but when I went in, I never went on on LZ because I always knew there's gonna be somebody there watching it, either Dan or went out by ladder. But this guy gets off the helicopter. He's starting to run off the l Z and this an officer of North Vietnamese officer steps out around a tree and he just says, start and so and so, call your helicopters back, get on it and go.

And he called the helicopters back and said come and get us. And yeah, yeah, when he's got the cone, he's a step out behind a tree like that, you can bet you're going to go. It was a totally different animal war in Laos, Cambodia. Any any other missions that you were on with SOG that you know really stick out in your mind that you'd like to talk about before we move on. There was I had one mission where the guy lost a man on his previous mission, and so they

asked me if I would straphang and help him out. So I went over and I taught him his name was Hill, and in fact that that is I can't remember. I can't. I don't remember the name of the team. I wrote it down someplace so I wouldn't forget it, and I did. But anyway, so I asked him. I told himself, I heard you lost a man your last mission, and you got a mission coming up. And he goes, yeah, I said, I'll run with you. And now he's got two team leaders, right, So uh, he said

thanks, I really appreciate that. And he goes, we're going in a couple of couple of days if you want to do a you know, aerial recon. So I flew over and I checked out the area. It was all slash and burn, and I asked him, I said, what what is the mission? Anyway, he goes, hey wants to go knock out a tank. And I've got high sting me. I said, there's gonna be thousands of enemy around that tank. It's not be bumping down the road. It's not balking a lot. So anyway, we go and we take

off and we go in. We go in our primary and the bullets are flying all over the place. You can hear him hitting the helicopter. None of us got hit, so but the bullets are flying all over the place. So then we take off out of there. You go to put us in our secondary. So we go over to the secondary, try to go in the same thing. Bullets are hitting the helicopter, flying all none of us got hit. So He'll gets up between the pilot and the co pilot and says, hey, push down over there. So go over there,

and beginning down, we're getting close to the ground. Then all of a sudden, the bulls start flying again all over the place and are hitting the helicopter, and and I hear Hill going I'm hit, I'm hit, I'm hit. So I reached across and I grab his arm and hold on to him because of the centrifugal force because he's laying on the deck, you know. So I'm holding on to him, and they pull us out of there, and then they canceled that mission. But that was a pretty That was

hilazious being in a helicopter getting hit with that many rounds. I mean, it's it's a lot of rounds and it's pretty scary. What's shocking is with the bullets going going through the helicopter and nobody getting hit. It was just somebody watching over us, you know. Let me see I had some others. Let's see what was some of the others. I had a bright light where some guys parachuted in they got separated. It was Paul Boyd. We flew in and but it was there was was. We had no problems at

all. We just went ahead and just dropped the lattery, climbing hooked onto the lottery. We don't climb the ladders. We just hooked in the the ladder and just fly out hanging on the ladder. So but we got back out and there was no problems. I had another I know I had some other missions, but I had another bright light which was Cobrat four and that's

the that's that one. There was a it was a codebreak four. It was an F four Phantom that there was two pilots in the aircraft and they were going in the blow up a bridge in Cambodia and they took a fifty one caliber round and they lost. Our hydraulics hit the first hill, went across, hit the second hill, and landed on the third hill. And the engines when they hit the first hill, the engines the motors just left the fuselage and they traveled. They landed not too far, like about one

hundred meters or so from where the jet landed. Wow, But that one I went in on. I went on, went down a short ladder and got on the ground. I waited for the homer to come in on the next ladder with I had a seven man team. I always ran a seven man team. I always kept a string open or a ladder open, you know, for a pow. But anyway, they got on the ground. We waited for the you know, the leaves to break and stopped falling, and wait for our ears to pop, you know, because you're coming from

altitude down. And we take off and we start going down this hill and you know where the jet went through it, it was all burned out. I walked down the hill just a little bit and all of a sudden, I catch three guys, three enemy off from my right, and one of them's got a weapon on me and the other two guys I couldn't tell there behind a bush, and I figured they were going to shoot. They would have already shot me. So I told my guys, I said, comsong,

comsong, you know, don't shoot. And because they're mountain yards, but they understand the Vietnamese phrases so but anyway, I just told the guys my rifle, said move on, and so they they left. And because my job was to try to get the pilots, I didn't want it to

deal with all this other stuff. So anyway, I go ahead and I walk down a little further, and I start seeing bunkers and I started seeing these bunkers, and I walked a little bit further and I see this graveyard with a Communist star over and I go in there and I counted about six seven graves. When DPAA Defense pow Mia Accounting Agency went in and they they found thirteen bodies in there, so they're probably stacking them inside one grave.

And then I went a little further and I saw this meeting room on stilts twenty by twenty foot and all bamboo. So we go up the hill a little bit. I found a boot with a foot in it. It was an American boot, but it was a Indigenous foot, so we put that

in the rucksack. And where we go ahead and head up the hill a little bit further, and then all of a sudden, I can hear these trucks and everything coming down the Hoachman Trail and the pilots overhead said you got six truckloads of enemy, two armored cars and a whole bunch of troops running behind it. So I tried to get up the hill. I got to the top, I found a bomb laying there, and at first I thought it was a bomb from the coachman trail, and they were diececting for the

comp B to get it out of there to make satchel charges. But apparently I think it's it came from from the F four that crashed. So and then I noticed all these square patterns on the deck, on the floor, on you know, And so I realized that this was some kind of a village or something, an enemy village. And we saw some hooches around the area. And then the whole village was had bamboo woven over the top of it. It was all woven over the top, so you couldn't see it

from the air except for where the jet went through. So and I had Homer go for one direction. I went on another direction, and we picked up pith helmets, uniforms, belts, medicinal bottles, and you pick up all that stuff and then you send it the Saigon and they can analyze it and try to figure out what unit it is that has that. And they can see where the unit's going from here to here to here, so they can figure out what direction they're going. So we did that and then we

I saw the jet on the other hill and the guys up above. You know, the guys are flying over us. They said, we got to get you out of there, and I said, I'm not to the other hill. He goes, well, if we're running out of aund, because they're firing like crazy trying to get these enemies down. Uh. Main, the miniguns were going right over my head just I mean, it felt I thought they were gonna hit me in the head they were so low. And but the enemy started coming up the hill after us, and I said,

okay, you know, go ahead and get us out. And so I had the one chopper come in. Homer took off with two guys, and then the next chopper comes in and just says he's coming in. He's like one hundred feet away. The enemy starts coming through the bushes and one gets an RPG off. I get hit in the arm the chest and I still

got strapping on my wrist. But we're keeping the enemy down and I had two gunships on both sides of the kiwie as he's coming in, and I said, I want you to parallel that que and I just want you to shoot into these these the jungle as much as you can. They keep these guys down and we're shooting like crazy. But he comes in. They dropped the ladders. We hook into the ladder and then they pick up and they

got us out of there. Chopper took up. Oh. When the chopper was coming in, I thought he got hit with an RPG because as I'm jumping on the ladder and hooking in, I hear this boom, big loud bang, and I thought I was waiting for it to come down on top of me. And what happened as the gunner was shooting so furiously into trying to get the bad guys down that he wasn't watching the roader and the rotor hit a tree. He got two feet of his rotor off on both both

roaders. Wow, he managed to get us out of there. But he still got us up and got us out of there. And I could see the trucks down there. I could see the the jet over on the other hill, but I couldn't get to it, you know. And I so I went back in. I went back in two thousand No, yeah, two thousand and two. I went back to Cambodia and on my own dime, and I hired six Cambodian rangers. There were park rangers, not like

military rangers. And because the Radican Carry Province is right there south of the triborder and it's a big game refuge. So I had these guys and I said, hey, you know, i'd liked I'd like for these guys too. I'm looking for some guys to go with me, take me up there. I want to take some pictures of wildlife and stuff. And he goes, I'll see what I can do. So I got this park ranger guy that he was the son of the province chief, which turns out that saved

my butt later on. But we got together. I told him what I was really gonna do, and he goes, oh, I know the jet crash. I go, really, he goes, yeah, he goes, it'll take us ten days to get there. So we hiked for about one hundred miles going up into there, and it took us ten days to get up there. When I first started, it was killing me because I was

in my fifties. So I turned around, I said, let's go back, and I started jogging and running and exercising and trying to get myself in shape, and then we took off again, and then we made it ten days got up there. We spent three days there. We found the jet, and I realized then that there was no way that I was going to be able to get to that jet fast enough from that second hill because it was just like that, it was really steep. And so anyway we did

that. I found parts of the jet. I brought parts of the jet back, gave to the family. I haven't met the other family yet. It was Eric Kuberth and Alan Trent and Eric Kuberth's family and I were still pretty close. Uh, and but I haven't contacted Alan Trent's family. I'm hoping that who Berth, they're in t Toreuch with him, and I'd like to get him in the piece of the jet if they would like it. So I've still got a piece down stairs. That's incredible. Gym And uh,

you know your your one one. Homer is the man. What was that guy like forty five at the time when he was doing all of this. Yeah, he was about that ageing. Yeah, well I didn't. He passed away in twenty fourteen and I think he was in his nineties. Yeah. Yeah, that's a long that's a long spell there. Good for

him. Yeah, that's amazing. Well for the disposition, Like, how does the how did at the time, how did the government handle these two pilots that went down in Cambodia when obviously we didn't have anybody in Cambodia. Well, DPA knows that, you know, I mean, they knew there was people over There's still a bunch of people missing over there. We may never find him because you know, the minerals in the soil there, it's a cidic and it destroys the bones. One of the interesting things. Well

I'll get to that in a minute. But yeah, anyway, when I came back from that mission, when I went back again in two thousand and two, we stayed there for three days. On the third day we got held up by bandits. And what saved my butt is they didn't want to have them to deal with the province chiefs son. So they came out of the bush of the Ak's and they were screaming at us and you know,

I don't know what they're talking abou. I can't speak Cambodian. So anyway, the next day we were leaving anyway, so it took us ten days to get back. I threw a party for the guys, and then from there I went up to Laos and went up the Coachman trail we'll wait up there, and checked everything out. A lot of damn. I've got a picture of I think I sent you the picture of the truck with the bomb

sitting on it next to the Coachman trail. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that and I found a tanks that were blown up, you know, from guys dropping, you know, our guys dropping bombs on them. Found all kinds of like thirty thirty six millimeters anti aircraft weapons and stuff, all kinds of fifty one machine gun, you know, fifty one caliber machine guns, all kinds of stuff up in there. Sam missiles are still there.

So if we're to wind back to uh, you know, from two thousand and two, back to what was it about nineteen seventy nineteen seventy one when that mission happened. It was nineteen May of nineteen seventy seventy when the mission took place. So how did how did Vietnam start to wind down for you personally? I mean, you finished your tour with SF over there. What was that like for you in returning back home and you know the next stage of your life? Really well, I didn't want to leave. I

missed my flight home twice. Yeah, yeah, I just rather go on on a mission. The second time I missed my flight home. I taught what you know. When I left CCC, I went down to be fifty three and I trained a lot of the guys for one zero School to be team leaders. And I taught in Philexville and pow Snatch. And so when when I was down there, OURTI Mama came down from Cend to go through the pow Snatch school and they were going out to take a prisoner. Well,

I wasn't about to miss out on that. So I got my gear and I'm walking out early in the morning out of the ship. The first sergeant comes walking out there was Veril R. Glenn. A Veril R. Glenn is an amazing man. He had stars all over his Master Blaster wings. He made every possible combat jump you can make during the Korean War in the Second World war. Wow. So they had two jumps going on at one time, so he only can make one. But anyway, he sees me and he goes, hey, Jones, where are you going? I

said, I'm going out on this mission. He goes, aren't you supposed to be going home? I go, damn, Top, If I'm supposed to be going home, let me know, man, I didn't. I haven't heard anything. Because if I find out you're supposed to be going home, I go, really, Top, I haven't heard anything, you know, Please let me know if i'm you know, I'd like to go home. And so anyway, so I go out in the mission. I come back and Man, as soon as I got off that shopper Man, I

walked into his office, they had two guys. They said, take this guy back his bags, march him down to the top sinute, and get him out a plane and get him out of here. So I finally, so they kicked you out of Vietnam. That's how it came about. Yeah, pretty much, you know, because I would have stayed. You know.

One of the things that with SAG is the guys don't want to leave their buddies, you know, yeah, they you know, it's it's a camaraderie, you know, like we're we know we're both going we know what we're going through, and you don't want to leave them there by themselves. You don't want them to go on this mission. You know, like, man, if you're going on to a mission, I want to go with you to make sure you're going to be safe, you know that kind of

thing. And a lot of the guys like what they would say is that, how do you know when to quit? Some of the guys would say that when my uniform falls part and I can't wear it anymore, it's time to quit. Yeah, because I was the same uniform and every mission, and that uniform is in a museum now, so really, which museum can we go see it in? There is a guy named Jason Hardy. Yeah, Jason Hardy's building a museum. You know who he is? No,

I don't. Is it. Is it going to be a Sog museum or Vietnam or what's the I think it's pretty much Soga because he's the guy that wrote all the books on the patches and all the teams and everything. Cool. Yeah, like a six or seven volume set. Cool. It's always going to have a museum. Yeah, he's getting it all together for a museum. That's awesome. So you bought my uniform, he bought it. I gave him some map I gave him some original maps. I made copies

of the maps because I don't care if they're original or not. But I gave him the copies. I gave my uniform that I wore around the camp. It was a black uniform. I gave him that. So but yeah, Jason Harry is quite a good guy, real good guy. I was just talking to him just the other day. So I was trying to get that to find out what team Hill was on it. When I went, I didn't even know what team it was. So, so you get kicked out of Vietnam and now you're you're still in Special Forces. I mean,

what what was the next What was the next step for you? I came back to the States. Well, they wanted me to be an officer. They asked me three times, and the third time I said what I got to do? And I said, well, you're gonna have to reap and I go, I said, you know, I've got a you know, a high school diploma. You know I'm not gonna last as an officer, They're gonna riff me back to a sergeant or something. So I went ahead and said, I'm gonna want to go back to the States and I want

to get an education, you know, go to college. So I came back to the States and I joined the Special Force of Reserves and that team turned over to underwater operation. They send the whole team down the Key West. We all passed. We all did really good. But you know, we had a team starteant that pumped it into us. We didn't go out and party at night. We studied every night really hard. I got a

ninety nine on the test. My dive partner got in ninety nine. Everybody got ninety seven, ninety eight, you know, but we did really good on the written tests and stuff. And so let me see where are I go from there? Oh? When I was there is when I was a police officer in Sunda as a police department. So and then I ended up getting a divorce and I was married, and so I ended up getting a

divorce. And so what I decided to do is I was teaching the para restry guys night vision and submachine guns and stuff like that, you know, foreign weapons, and I didn't know who these guys were. I didn't know what pjs were, and so anyway, they told me what they did, and they were doing this stuff all the time, these missions all the time. And I'm going really, because I was bored to death. You know,

you don't want to be special. If you're going in to be a dream, you're going to be a green bray to go fight a war if there's nothing going on. After a while, crust training gets old. Yeah. So so I went ahead and went on down and saw these guys were doing and I saw their equipment. My gosh, they had air raider scuba tanks. You know, you jump with twin tanks, so you're packed, you know, so it's a stay. Yeah. And they had all this climbing gear. They had all kinds of stuff, and I'm going, damn,

you know. So I went back to the eight team and I told Jimmy Gaston was my team sergeant, and I told jam I said, Jimmy, I said, I'm going to go be a PJ. He goes, no, you can't, you can't be a PJ. I go, yeah, I'm bored. He goes, no, your your your family, you can't leave the team. I go, man, I'm bored to death, Jimmy. So I left. I went down and this guy whose name is

Al Richmond, he said, in charge of the PA section. He shows me this letter where PJ need to have more combat training and I'm going, well, you know, I'd like to just kind of do all this other stuff. I don't want to teach combat stuff, and so he goes, well, that's your ticket in. I go, well, if I have to. So I went ahead and did that, and they put me through a little mini training thing to make sure I can pass the school and that

was a piece of cake for me. And so then I went down to the school and passed everything through school and everything they told me they would. You know, the Air Force has what they call Air Force Now films, and it is to get the young guys interested in staying in the Air Force and promoting into another field if they haven't want to. And so they were

doing an Air Force Now film. So we were doing our full scuba jumps out down in Florida off the coast there, and I jump out of the plane and I've got, you know, probably one hundred and fifty jumps out of C one thirties at this time, you know, And so they told me. He says, oh, you hit the door. I called shit, having hit the door. He goes, yeah, you hit that door. I go what I say? Then I find out they're doing an Air Force Now film and they wanted the young guys my assistant because I was in

charge of the group. So they wanted my assistant to be the guy in charge because they were all young guys and I was an old part. So, you know, I didn't even know how old I was. I think I was thirty thirty two something like that, So I was I was a I was the oldest guy for like about a week that went through PJ training. Then there was a guy that like two weeks behind me, and the guy was phenomenal. The guy was like my age, but he whipped that

training like like it was nothing. I mean, he was built, he was in good shape, thin, a lot of muscle, and he made me look bad. But so anyway, I finished the school and no, I went down to the school and they told me I hit the doors, I had to wait for the next cycle to come through. It's for them to do their scuba jumps. And so I went through and through and I

jumped and I found out if you're doing this Air Force Now film. And that's why they actually told me I hit the door because they didn't want me to graduate the class because they were doing this film. So the next time I got there, I jumped out of the calf. You got over one hundred pounds of gear on you. How do you kind of shout out of that frigging how? You know? So I used to put my arm against my side and put it against the door, and I just swing out to

like a pendulum, right, And that's how I went out. And so I went ahead and got out of the plane. I get it. I land on the water and to go, whoa, you left that door by ten feet, I go, you're so full craft. So anyway, I went up. You know, when I came back to the it's a do we go train for PJ training. It's in New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico Hurklan Air Force Base. So I go there and I'm walking. I'm sitting in the class and then they called me up to the front of the

room. They give me my beret and my my certificate and they were going to take a picture. I go, now, I'm out of here. I just left. I was so furious and fist at him. So I got my Volkswagen van and drove all the way back to Bunch twenty ninth and started doing missions. So and you know, because you talked about, you know, being sf and being bored, because yes, f mission is a combat mission, but these parush you guys were like doing missions all the time.

Can you talk a little bit about that mission, why they were so active and what about that appeal to you? Well, I've always kind of pushed the envelope, you know. I yeah, I've always pushed the envelope just a little bit. But they just the idea of making jumps out in the middle of the ocean, making parachute jumps into the mountains, for plane

crashes, doing a lot of most of the civilian stuff. Yeah, you know savans on ships, plane crashes, you know they have We had went with the plane crashed and there was a husband, wife, and two girls in there and they were all killed. But they got the girls, the guy out, I mean the wife out, but the husband we had to

leave. He was halfway out one window and half out the front window of the plane, and we just cabled the plane down, left it there, and then during the summertime when the snow and everything melts, then Sheriff's apartment will go in and get the remains. So but all that kind of stuff just really it had home with me. You know. I just just had

the thrill of mountain climbing. And because we did a lot of mountain climbing, you know, we had got We used to work on McKinley all the time, uh, you know, just practicing ice climbing and stuff, Ruce glather glacier climb, Mount Shasta, mount Hood up in Oregon. I was one of the paramedics for when Mount Saint Helen blew. Uh, we did that kind of work, you know, we'd go up there and look for remains. I was also a paramedic for the Space Shuttle, you know,

for the first three landings, because it was a motiate contingency. So the first three landings had only the pilot and the pilot and the commander so if if anything happened, they could bail out of it. They had ejection seats, but when they put a third person in there, they disconnected the ejection seats. So that's that took me out of the picture because if if they had to reject, then I would parachute in take care of them. So

they had other pjs that did the other work for when it landed. If you look at the when the shuttle lands like it Edwards Air Force Base, you see these guys with the suits on the tanks and they're breathing oxygen and they're testing the Space Shuttle for poisonous gases. So those are all pjs. And what they do is they those two big arms that go into the back end of the shuttle you see there. Those aren't What they're doing is they're

freezing all the gases. So if they freeze all the gases, then the PJS go in. They test all the air to make sure it's it's stable, and then they open it up and let the astronauts come out. And so those guys continued with the missions, but I stopped after STS one, two, and three. I mean, that's a whole like other ballgame. Like you, I take it you probably had to learn about like aerospace medicine at that point. Uh. Yeah. I trained with Annelie Fisher, the

first mother in space. She worked with us mostly and I became friends with Jim Beaijan. They're all they're medical doctors and astronauts. And then ray A Sedden and I bumped in the Raya Seddon quite a few times. Anna Fisher. I bumped into her a couple of times and talked to him. And then STS three h Jack Lausma, Uh he was an STS three. Uh, I've I've bumped in him a few times and we sit and talk and

stuff. Uh. They go to I go to the space Fest because they have they have a section for Metea rights there, so I go there for that and some of the astronauts that they are signing autographs and stuff. So I'll go in and meet him and talk to him and stuff. And Anna remind remembers me. Ray didn't remember, but she was always asleep anyway in class. And she's married to a guy named Who Gibs and another astanaut and who he goes. Yeah, she still falls asleep all the time. But

she's she's really she's adorable. She's really nice looking. Lady is really nice and a Fisher. She remembers me because I was sitting there taking a picture and she was yelling at me put down the camera, get over here, and learn something, will you? I go, okay, okay, I'm taking pictures. Now she's glad I took the pictures because now I gave her

a copy of them. Yeah. Right. So, in addition to the mountain rescue, because I know that the para rescue units, the guard units in California and Alaska are extremely active with like the mountain rescues and things like that. But you guys also do a lot of the ocean rescue. So if there's a fishing trawler or something out there, high see somebody there appendix versus you guys are the ones they call. And how do rescues like that

go down? Well, if it's over three hundred miles or over one hundred fifty miles or something like that, if it's close to shore, the coast

Guard will do it. But they're not refuelable, so they've they're limited on how far they can go because they have to have return fuel and are reserved by the time they land, So they would What they do is they take two C one thirties and a helicopter and we get into the sea one thirty We fly out out to the ocean where the ship might be eleven hundred miles out of sea, and then we load up and on the way out we're talking to back then it was Scott Air Force Base and you're talking to the

doctors that are in charge over there, and they're telling you what you can do and what not to do, what medications you can give them and don't give them medications that depending on what's going on with them. And so then we go out and we pursued in and the Sea one thirty, the other Sea one thirty is refueling the helicopter all the way out. Now you see those helicopter with that big snorkel in the front that's refueling. Those are usually

pjs, so they're refueling them all the way out. And then we'll get the guy ready because we're out there way ahead of time. Well can put him in a stokes Well, well, the CHAPERI come out and drop a stake slitter and then we're getting the guy already. We've already got him up on the deck and we're going to put him in a sleeping bag, seal him up, put ear muffs on him, goggles on him, and strap

him in. And then we got a rope tied onto the the stakes litter so it doesn't spin, and then they'll bring it up and get him into the helicopter. They take the litter off and they put a penetrator on it. It's a thing that comes down with little seats, and then we get on my buddy and I'll get on it, and then we'll go back up and get it in the helicopter and then we'll refuel like on one, and

we went out eleven hundred miles like I had a rupture appendix. And what we did is we we low leveled a one hundred feet off the water and refueled all the way to the Cruise Bay, Oregon. That was the closest point, and we got there at night, and then all the crews were there. They were, you know, the camera crews. I gotta get I gotta get a copy of the news film. But they took vers of

us coming off. I'd love to get it for my kids. And so from there we just we get rid of the guy and then we moseyon down to the base down in California. So, Jim, I know that this was your job, so it was just like normal half to you. But I feel like there's a point between where you're on a sea one thirty and an airplane there is a boat or a ship in potentially high seas right storm conditions. Whatever managed to get from a sea one thirty because it's not going

to hover over this rocking ship? Right, how do you manage to get from the sea one thirty onto that ship? Oh? We just jump out? What you do? They usually give us the old parachutes, you know, because if you blow a panel on the old shoot, you know, that doesn't matter. You're hitting water. But what we do is we've got medical gear on us, We've got a raft on us, we've got a bunch of stuff, and we got double scuba tant on the parachute, the

reserve chute, a knife and other stuff in case you're run. But you're not going to run the sharks out there. So on that mission we flew out. It was John Stevens and I and John seems he was at PGA a lot longer than I was, so and he had time in Vietnam I think I think he did anyway, So he was a team leader on that one. So we go ahead and we jump out, we drop a What we do is we drop up, we go over the ship where we want to land. We don't land on the ship. We land in the water

because you don't want to get tangled up on the ship. So what you do is you we find a place in water where we want to go, so we go over it and we drop streamers down and watch where the streamers go, and then you count backwards. So if the if you want to land here and the streamer lands over here, well you jump out over here.

So you land here. So so we go ahead and we jump out, and then they'll push bundles out with all the other medical gear that we might we could use, and then there the ship puts a dinghy in the water and so they'll come over and they'll pick you up. And on that mission we had thirty two foot seas and it was it was we had to get there to get the guy because he was going to die. We had to get him, get him out of there and get him to a hospital.

He was twenty one year old. Taiwanese. They're working on those ships that bring the Honda cars over and so, uh, I'm coming down in the parachute. I'm not in the water yet, and I'm look at the top of the wave and I'm going, oh, this isn't going to be good. Yeah. So so and on the way out we're eating donuts, which you don't want to do. So so we get in the water and I'm waiting. I wait for a top of a crestlal wave so I can see the dinghy where it is. And this is why pja's got to be

strong, because you got to swim below this gear on. So you cut the canopy loose and just let it sink, get rid of it, and then you're swimming with your harness, with all your gear, and so you swim on over and the dinghy. When I got to the dinghy, I grabbed the side as it was coming up, and when the boat came all the way up, I could see all the way underneath it. It just came up to the crest of the wave like that. I could see all the way under it. And when it went down, it went down like

this, and I just rowed right into it. What they couldn't get the Yeah, they couldn't even get the dinghy running. The motors kumped out on and these guys are merchant marines and it's really windy and nasty out and everybody's getting sick, and it's blowing all over everybody, and it's just frigging miserable. So they finally the swell of the boat washed you onto the or I'm sorry, the swell of the waves washed you onto the deck of the ship. I just rolled no no, no, no, on the dinghy.

Oh onto the dinghy. Okay, I got it on the dingy. Yeah, so so we got I got in the dinghy and then everything everything, They finally got the thing going. So when you go over to the ship, they have a door on the side of the ship and they drop a rope ladder out of it. So what what what you have to do is you gotta wait for the highest wave on that because it goes up on the

side of the ship. You want the highest wave. And then you grab that ladder and you start climbing up, and that dingy's gonna just disappear thirty thirty two feet below you. You guys are so crazy. Yeah, so then you climb in. I'm climbing in and I'm just puking my guts out from eating all those donuts and that nasty weather and stuff, and so these I can just see those guys they're sitting there going these guys came to help us. Yeah. Yeah, so and then John Stevens, he gets on,

He comes up, he waits for a big wave. He gets on, climbs up the ladder. A bigger wave came along. The boat comes up, knocks him off the ladder and he falls into the dinghy twice. Oh my gosh. Yeah, so he finally got enough. They're a big enough wave and he climbed in, got in there and we took care of the guy. And then the choppers finally got there and we took him up in the deck and you know, got him in the chopper and we flew

to Cosbay. Organ. He was so blown up, and you have to go at low altitude because he's blown up from the gas is building up from the rupture appendix Right, you can't altitude because it gas expands with altitude, and that's why we had to refuel at one hundred feet off the water. So, but he made it. He was a strong kid and he made

it. But he wanted me to cut his gut to get because it was so distended because I got my sister and I was cutting off his underwear and he's sitting't of trying to hold everything up, and he's telling me to cut his gut. And there was no way I can do like a thors Andisis or anything, because I couldn't. I didn't want to puncture his bow right going and trying to get the air out. I didn't want to take a chance on it. So yeah, but he made it, he lived,

you know. And then then I had another mission after that, and the other one was I had a bunch of hoist missions, but that one I had. Another one was a jump mission, and we flew Otters about one thousand miles out. We jumped in and the guy had a bowel obstruction, an ingwall and hernia and a bowl obstruction. And that was a pretty nice That was a nice mission. The water was pretty calm out in the middle

of the ocean. We jumped in and it the sugar island that brings the c and sugar over from Hawaii. So I became good friends with the skipper of the ship, Bill mcculloff was his name, And so we went ahead and and got on got on that boat and we stayed on the ship.

We just jumped in and the helicopter just stayed back in California, but we went because the skipper told us it was nice cromp Seas and we just stabilized the guy, got him set up for surgery, and we just stayed on the ship for a day and a half and took care of him until we got to Hawaii and then they took him off and took him in. Got a nice letter from the doctor that did the surgery and everything said, we

prepped really well. Wow. I had another mission. It was a jump mission and it got canceled when we're out there, but it was a drug dealer ship and they was they blew a plug on their own ship. They were sinking the ship. And then all these bales came out into the water, you know, big giant bales, and all these boats came in and they're loading all these bales and they had dea and uh, you know,

these other police organizations out there, both Mexican and American going out. They're trying to get these guys, but they only got like three of the ships. The boats. Yeah, the only got boats. It was like, I don't know, thirteen bosa came out and about fifteen or sixteen bales in the water. When we were going to jump in because one of the guys got burnt when they blew a charge to sink the ship. And then they found that there was a drug dealer and they said, no, don't jump.

So I want to jump. Yeah, I'm not worried. Damn I'll jump, take their gun away and slap them around. But so anyway, on that boat, I talked the pilots to stay there. Hey, let's stay here and watch his ship sink. And we stayed there and got to watch this big old ship sink. It was really cool. So that was

it. That was That was my jump missions. The other were a hoist missions, you know, like we had one where the guy was an older merchant marine and it was all young marine merchant marines and he didn't fit in, so he was taking medication and drinking alcohol and he fell and hit his

head. Undilated pupils you know, bigger than the other. And we went and we just hoisted him up, got down the boat, got him out of there, took him to Chrissy Field in San Francisco, flew under the Golden Gate, which is really cool, and and that was it, and the others were just regular hoatsmission. You just bring the guys up, get him out, taking them to safety, you know. So, But but I love being a PJ. It's a great job, really good job.

In Mount Saint Helen's when we went up there, we were relieving the guys up in Oregon because they were working around the clock and they needed a break. So guys from New York came out, and then we went up and we relieved those guys and that was that was that was horrendous. You know, when you see those trees that are laying down the ground, they were only about fifty feet where they were standing. All that bear area you see,

all those trees were disintegrated. Yeah, it was just disintegrated. And if the trees laying on the ground, they looked like telephone poles. Know, the branches are gone on the tops of trees are gone because we're disintegrated. But the pressure wasn't strong, so it didn't destroy the whole tree.

There was a like a distance there where it stopped and were flying over and looking down and seeing all these elk and stuff in the river and deer in the river washing down with the mud and stuff, and it looked like the surface of the moon. It was really pretty devastating when you look at it, how massive it was. Now we're talking about sort of, you know, the time between Vietnam and the Global War on Terror. But Para Rescue did also have they do have a combat mission, even if even if that

wasn't necessarily the focus, because you know, that wasn't going on. What how did they You mentioned earlier that they wanted sort of combat training from you. You had been you know, Green Beret, Macty, SAG and Vietnam, Like, how did how did that play in with your time with Para Rescue. I taught them, you know, things like I set up shooting ranges, you know, like like a pathway you walk through and they'll be like guys. And one of the things that a lot of people don't do

is they don't look down by their feet. So I had enemy like just because they're always looking out at around them like this, they don't look down by their feet, and a guy could be in a little little hole right there, you know, and and take you out. So I did a lot of that kind of stuff, a lot of shooting, and trained them a lot. I told me, you know, unless you can really take the guy, if there's only a few guys, you can take the guy out. But if there's a bunch of guys or something like that, you

can shoot down in front of them and the rocks will come up. Because if you shoot the guy and you kill the guy, well they're just gonna leave him there and keep fighting you. But if you will the guy, it's going to take one or two other guys that take him out, get

him out to her and be saved. So those kind of tactics is what I trained him, and I taught him in the iron a DROs immediate action that wh's never worked by the way, you know, the one guy shoots and then you run through the middle and the other guy shoots and they never turned around. You run into a tree or a rock or something. It did work, yeah, but but it gives you a starting point. Yeah.

So yeah, now that that's interesting. And then did you see I don't know when you left Peroscue, and I don't know like when the twenty fourth formed, but like did they you know, as did you maintain your connection to the parish community as they started moving too the global war on terror and they started taking on a more tactical focus. No, that that happened after I left. I got busted up parachuting and I had an injury over

from Vietnam. I got thrown. I got thrown out of a helicopter about twenty five feet or thirty feet, and I fractured my back and I sprung my pelvis open my s eye joint. And I didn't know it. I knew I got hurt. Yeah. I couldn't talk for for a couple of weeks. I mean like that, and every time I try to talk. So when I got injured parachuting, the doc comes out and he goes, have you ever injured yourself before? And I go no, And I said,

why, well, you got a bunch of fractures. You got to fractured T seven L five and you sprung your pelvis and I had a big spur in my SI joint. And I go oh, I said, I got thrown out of a helicopter in Vietnam. He goes, yeah, that'll do it. He said, I'm taking you off jump status. I oh, no, don't take me off jump status. You know, that's that's my life, you know. Yeah that was an eighty two. Okay,

So in eighty four they discharged me and gave me a medical. I chose the medical instead of being a desk jockey, and I had twenty years in so I did that. But I'd still be in Peer Rescue if they'd let me. And I still jump, by the way, So so yeah, that's yeah. No, I loved I love Peer Rescue. Man. It was great, and I still keep them touching. You know, they have their reunion every other year, and they have a mini reunion in the years in between, and the mini reunion this year is going to be in hell

and Georgia. So I'm going to run out there and I'll stay with my brother. He lives in Chickapee, which is only forty five minutes away. So yeah, so I'll take my brother and he can meet the other pjs. But the if you want to see something really cool, go to a Pera Rescue reunion. They're amazing, you know that. You be shocked with

they they take. They take from all the teams around the world. What they do is they take one team from each group and they take the best guys and then those guys they compete against each other at the reunion and you'd be shocked what they get. The winners and stuff I mean rifles, guns ATVs, all kinds of camping equipment, all kinds of stuff. I mean, it's just freaking amazing. And I'm trying to get SA you know,

special Operations associated to do the same thing. There's a really interesting history too, as far as like a crossover between both para rescue and smoke jumpers with the c i A paramilitary guys during the Vietnam conflict. Yeah, I guess pert rescue. I didn't know anything about PERST. I knew that the job raised a super jolly you over there. Yeah, when when we got here in trouble, they would come and get us. But I still didn't know

what pja's were, and i'd know anything about them. When I was in sag Cia. I mean that the CIA was getting themselves killed. That's why they brought SOG in because I mean I see some of these CIA guys and they dressed up like cowboys. I mean they were on a cowboy hat and they were going out there, you know what, the little Australian hat on. And I mean it's like they didn't have the training that they needed and they would get themselves hurt, which is really kind of sad. I think

they're a lot different now. You know, the guys over in the sandbox and stuff. I think they're a lot different now because a lot of guys in CIA now are guys from you know, Delta and CAG and all this stuff. You know, I don't know how many pj's go into it, but yeah, you know, it's a lot different now than it was back in Vietnam. So after you were medically discharged, I mean, what what I mean? You didn't slow down at all. You just kept golling.

Yeah. I went to school become a chiropractor, and I had a hard time bending over because of my injuries in my back and everything, uh, you know, to treat people. So I went and did a residency in radiology and I was four point zero in radiology. I in pathology the same way. And so I went to Saint Louis and I did my residency out there. And so when I finished my residency, I came back. I

came to Tucson, Arizona. And what I did is I said a bunch of letters to all the docks in Tucson and all the docks in Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin area, and Tucson went out. They said we need you here because they only they didn't have any They had one radiologist here for for chiropractors, and so he was up in Phoenix, Gary Lungmier, And so I came to Tucson and I was reading for over one hundred docs and chiropractor for some reason, think they can read their own films, which is really

kind of tragic. But I ended up working for medical groups. So I went. I went to work for Southwest Radiology here in Tucson and well up in Tucson, and I opened up my own practice. Eventually, I wanted to put an MRI in town and my own radiology suite. So what I did is I kept pushing companies to finance me because it's a multimillion dollar deal.

And yeah, so I went to I got in touch with a group called Modern Medical Modalities out of New York, and they came out and talked with me, and they said, we want you to come out to New York. So I went to New York. On they had a big Christmas party, huge party at the Plaza Hotel, and so I went there and they linked me up with a millionaire guy and I sat down and talked with him and he goes, how many can you do? And I said,

I said, I guarantee you a hundred patients a month. And he said, if you can guarantee me a hundred patients a month, you do the write up, do all the paperwork on it. You know, let me know what's showed me. Give me a you know what do you call it? Just give me a folded with yeah, folded with all this information. So I put everything together and he goes, okay, let's go. So I did. I found a location and we went ahead and put the m RY in there, put a cat scan in there, dexa scan, which

I think is worthless, general X ray, that kind of stuff. Everything about mammography. Mammography is a pain in the neck. So went ahead and just put all that together, and and I got a pay He got like five thousand a month. So I was supposed to get a percentage, and and he never I never got my percentage. So I told him, I said, look, here's because he was the money end of it, and

he started changing everything. I would give everybody a rose, and that came every patient a rose, and I had attorneys and doctors call me up, said, you know that's a real nice touch, you know. But he said, that's a waste of money. I mean we might end up with one or two roses left over a day. That's one or two dollars a

day. And that bothered him. So we stopped that. And so then we had a girl running around who would she would she would go and talk all these docs and say, you know, hey, we've got this is what we offer, you know, and what have you and try to bring patients in. Well, he stopped that too. So when he didn't pay me my percentage, I finally just said, look, here's the deal. I want to check for twenty five thousand right now. And I said, or I'm going to take it to court. So he wrote wrote me a

check for twenty five thousand. I left and opened up another business. And so when I did that, he went down the tubes the place is. I think it's gone now. I mean, it just went right down the tubes. So when I opened up my other place, another guy comes walking into my office and he goes, hey, we want you to read our X rays. And I go I says, how much are you gonna pay me? And he goes, we can give you five dollars a case.

I said, what's the other dock getting paid? Because this doc was getting swamped with cases, so he wants somebody to read the cases for him. So he says he was getting fifteen dollars a case. I said, tell him, I'll split it with him seven to fifty a case. And he came back and he goes, yeah, it's a deal. So I said great. So I didn't do less than one hundred and fifty cases, one hundred and sixty cases a day. I am around two hundred cases a day

at seven to fifty a case. So I was making good money. Yeah you're busy though, Oh I was working twenty four to seven. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I would go to bed and I'd get a phone calls and we're sending you sixty cases. I did tolerate. I had six computers. I was reading X rays from Kentucky, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, and Tucson, and it was it was a friggin nightmare. That's one day I did two hundred and seventy six cases and I just said I'm done, So I quit and I retired. Yeah I still read. I

still read. In fact, I just picked up a book on wrist Emeriz of the Wrists and Hands and stuff, and I'm reading that book right now. I mean, all these books that you see right where are they? Me? See right there? All those books right there are radiology. Those

are radiology books. But I mean, you know when when you say retirement, like you kind of have to put that in air quotes, because I mean, you're still flying, you're still half your hand in medicine a bit, and you were talking about collecting media rights, and then you've also had your experiences with DPIA. Yeah. I went back to that crash site in Cambodia with DPA in twenty seventeen. They called me up and said, we're going into that crash site. Would you like to go hi co? Yeah,

most definitely. So I was supposed to go there for two weeks. They were going to be there for six weeks. So I went there for the two weeks. And when I said goodbye to everybody and I was leaving, the colonel said, we'd like that guy to stay here. So the

colonel says, would you like to stay here? And I go yeah, So I went back out and I stayed there for six weeks with them, you know, sifting through and digging and everything and looking for you know, teeth or anything from the you know, pieces of old bone and plus you know, I'm you know, my degree was an anthropology and a minor in archaeology when I went into Caiopaths College. So I've got a big interest in

forensic anthropology. So I was, I was, I was, I could pick out a bone when I see it, you know, versus like, because they're gonna be brown, they're gonna look like a piece of wood, you know. You know. So but I was good at that. And the forensic antha pologies that they had was an m D and her and I got along really good. She was a great gal. And we sit there and talk and back and forth, and we could talk medicine back and forth too, yeah, you know, pathology and stuff. So that was really

kind of good. So I stayed there for the whole six weeks and helped them, and I still keep in touch with the guys. In fact that I just contacted the guy just the other day. That just made sergeant major.

That's awesome. Well out of curiosity, you know, because you mentioned she was a DPA or an MD, and and you know, and you have this ability you know, you're used to seeing bones, seeing you know, reading radiology, you know, reading stuff that's got to really play an important part in archaeology right where, or not just archaeology, but in what you're doing here in determining, like not just with the crash site, but

in determining like what actually happened to this person, like what was the trauma and things like that. Right well, if you found a bone that would that had a bullet hole in it or something, you know that they've probably killed him right there at the site. I think that Alan Trump was actually killed right there in the crash. And I think that Eric Kuber there's a possibility because there's rumors that he might have been taken prisoner and died shortly after.

My guess he'd probably died before even got to the prison camp. You know. One of the things is when I went back in twenty seventeen, I was talking to Stony Beach there. I'm still in touch with the guys, and they went down because the Vietnamese were there looking for their people and they were killed in that battle. And I told him, I said, let me draw you a map. So I drew a map. I said take it to the guys down and tell him this is where they need to

look. And they looked at the map and they go, where'd you get this map? And he goes, well, the guy that use guys were trying to kill is up there on the hill looking for the two pilots. And they said, well, we went into that area. He says, so far we found one hundred and twenty seven remains. We're still missing over one hundred. Yeah, and how many died after that battle, we don't

know. They have died in the hospitals and stuff, and and the place didn't turn It turned out to be a hospital where the hooches were, and everything turned out to be a hospital from people getting injured on the Hoachman trail. I just wish they would have let us go. I don't know why they don't just let you go in there and just get them there, you know, get the bodies out and leave. You know, yeah, might lose all those people over two dead Americans or something you know to me to

makes sense. But you know, do you have any opinions or speculation about like the fifteen hundred plus Americans left you know that were m I A or POW's do you have, and I don't want to put you on the spot if you don't, but if you have any opinions or speculations about some of that, it'd be interesting to hear. Oh, there we go. I think a lot of the people, I think a lot of them died in

prison camp. I think a lot of them died on their way to the prison camp, you know, especially guys who are did if they bled out, they're going to carry the body. They're probably just gonna leave it on the side of the trail. But I believe that when they did that was that operation Welcome Going Home or Welcome Home or whatever. When they brought us. Yeah, when they brought all those prisoners back to the States, well, there was POW camps in South Vietnam, there was POW camps in Cambodia,

and POW camps in Laos. You can bet that they didn't have communications going back and forth, so you know, it might have taken a week or so to get them. So when they brought all those people and brought all those POWs back, there was probably a lot of people left in those prison camps, and who knows what happened to them, you know, because the enemy said that, you know, the NBA said that we gave you everybody we have, you know, and if somebody popped up, they're not

going to lose face. They're probably just gonna take them out right there, right so, and which is really tragic. So I really believe that there was quite a few left behind the prison camps from the other countries and they just just killed him, which is sad. Yeah, I hate say that because, you know, because people might be listening, but but yeah,

I mean, it's it's pretty tragic. Yeah. And the sad thing is that at the end that the Eastern Offensive, I guess was the last big push they were doing, coming across the DMZ to going to South Vietnam, and that was going to be their last big push they were going to the enemy was going to give up. They were going to end the war and we would have won. And then the US, you know, listening to all the hippies and everything and trying to keep their votes so they can stay

in office, and they threw the towel in. But you know, that's really tragic, and they're still doing it. You know, look at look at Biden just did over and and in the sandbox there you know, thirteen guys killed right off the bat, leaving over Americans there. It's just tragic. Yeah, our country's freaking gone down the tubes. So yeah, you see what else can we talk about? Well a bit more about you know, your quote unquote retirement. So you still fly around that, you still

collect metea rights? What's that about? What I do is I find that locations, you know, I like they call it cold hunting when you just go out in the desert and just look. If you can find a new stream field, that'd be pretty good. Some metea ites are worth a lot of money that In general, most of the old meteia rights you find are roughly like anywhere from one to ten dollars a gram if and a gram is about the size of a pea, a little green pea. And so if

you can find one that's they have different types of categories. You got iron metea rights, but iron metea rights are surely five percent that comes from the atmosphere or iron, and they usually come down in large prop quantity. You know, if you look at the sick hotel end that came out of Russia, there's one called Campbell date Cielo out of Argentina. There's a huge uh the one that hit media creators, a big iron media right, it's called

Canyon Diablo. But there those those us to come down in big, huge masses. But the the the stone ones that come down, like the one that went in the Russia a few years that was called um I can't think of it right off the head top of my head. But when those come down, you know, like well, let's say the one that came down in uh Sedan, it was called Almahatacida, which is Arabic for station six.

That one, when it came down, it was about the size a little bit bigger than a Volkswagen. And when it hit the atmosphere, when it by the time it hit on the ground, it was about the if you put it all together, it be about the size of a grapefruit. Wow. It burns up coming through the atmosphere quite a bit. And when you see a meteor, you know, coming through the sky and you see it, you know, flashing like this, yep, like that, it

is breaking up what it's traveling about seventeen eighteen thousand miles an hour. So when it hits the atmosphere, it's like hitting concrete. It's like hitting the ocean. So what it's doing is that the air can't get away from it fast enough in the front and it just breaks it up. It just breaks it up as it's coming in, you know, goes all that and the air gets thicker, it's it's harder. It's hitting the media right harder. So it just seven comes down to pieces. And so some of these ones

that are not iron are worth quite a bit of money. Yeah, actually all of them can be. If you find a new iron one, it'd be worth some money. If one that comes in, if you get it like within a you know, most of them, they pick them up within a week. The guys they do a lot. There's a lot of research you can do, and you go out there and you find it. Those are worth no less than one hundred dollars a gram, yeah when they first got in. But if you get something like there was one that comes to

Sutter's Mill that came down in California a few years ago. Those are called carbonaceous chondrites and they have a lot of carbon in them. Carbonaceous. Uh though that one went for about two thousand dollars a gram. Wow. Yeah, So most lunar meteaites, if they're new and you don't have a lot of it. Are Martian meteorites. Those are worth about one thousand dollars a

gram. They what they do is when a meteor comes through and hits the Moon or hits Mars, there's a very low gravitational pull there, so it splashes and it calls the rocks to go out, and the further they go out, they just keep going out into space. So when they're floating around space, what they do is they get close to Earth, they get pulled into the gravity. And so if you find one of the biggest areas for meteorites is in the Sahara Desert, North Africa. It's called Northwest Africa.

If you go on eBay and look for media rights, you see nw A Northwest Africa, and you'll see a number and that number because there's so many of them. Because the the the bed what do they call the bedlin,

the run around the camels, pedouins. Yeah, when they're running around, they find them and they just put them in bags and they take them into like Morocco, and the dealers there will buy them from them, and then what like guys on myself will buy them from the guys in Morocco and then we sell sell them over if what I'd like to do is just go to Morocco, just buy and bring them back and sell them wholesale to the meteorite

dealers here. Yeah, are there any really interesting myths, legends, conspiracies, you know, anything around sort of the meteorite community that like enormy, like jack orry like that we wouldn't know about. Yeah, there's lots of

different categories of meteorites. You know. If you take there's an iron one called the attack site, and it's like looking at the core of the Earth and they take It takes millions of years for these things to cool down, so when they're going around out in space and stuff, they as you get further away from that core, you start getting what's called a woodmint statin pattern, and it crystallizes when it cools down over the millions of years, it

crystallizes, so you get a real fine it's called a fine woodman satin pattern to a medium to a course. The one that came down in Russia, the iron one there that was, of course they call it an octahedrite, so there was a coarse one. But as you get into the stone, as youre getting further close to the mantle. You know, you're getting all these stones, and you'll get meteorites that have iron, meteorites that have oveline

or paradox crystals in them, you know. And then as you go further, you start getting rock with olivine crystals in it, or you get what's called the mesyl cinerite, which is it's got a lot of iron swirled in it, you know. And then when you get to the my what my opinion is, when you get to the mantle on the outside, you know,

the crust, then you're gonna get into carbonaceous chondrides. So and you know, a lot of the scientists say that the asteroid belt was a planet that never formed, but I would say probably a majority of the guys probably think that it was a planet that they collided. It might have been going the other direction and collided and it blew up and you got the fine ones that are forming the rings around Saturn. Then you got the asteroid belt.

And so every once in a while I'll hit another one and to kick it out of the gravitational pull and it'll float out in space and then it gets close to Earth and atlands here or hits the Moon, or hits some other planet. Out of curiousity, like, has there ever been an element discovered from a media that we haven't encountered on? Oh? Yeah, yeah,

that's how you could. That's how we know how. Look, see, we've been to the Moon, so we know what elements are on the Moon, and we've got you know devices, you know, on Mars that's sending back all kinds of information, So we know what elements are there. And there are elements that we don't have on Earth, so we actually know where they're coming from. They believe they've got some that came from Mercury, but we've never been to Mercury, so we don't know for sure. But yeah,

so there it's kind of a guestimate. Yeah, but yeah, there's The carbonaceous are worth quite a bit of money if you can find They're really nice. There's one called the c One. I had four and a half grams of it and it broke, so I kept one gram and I sold three and a half grams get I set it to a gallup in Colorado and she sold it for me because she knows a lot of heavy hitters around the world. And my share was thirty five dollars. But what I did is

I traded it. I left it keep the money, and I took it. I got the Almadasita, the station one out of Sedan, and then I got I got a piece of the Tucson Ring, which is a famous media right here in Tucson. They don't know, my guess is it's in Mexico. But a guy, a blacksmith, found it and he used it

as an anvil, and it's sitting in Smithsonian now. But I had a piece about the size of a quarter, and I had a hard time trying to sell it, So I just I gave that one to and black Up and she's got its impact as in a of her company and she's selling that one for me. But it's probably worth about twenty five hundred, three thousand dollars about the size of a quarter. And yeah, like who buys these generally? Is it like aficionados and collectors or do do laboratories buy these?

Also? Some of the labs will buy them, but most of the media right hunters like myself, we donate them. You know. I'll go to ASU with what's his name? Lawrence Garvey is the curator for the media rights up there. He's well known and Lawrence and our friends. So what I do is, if I find something that he might not have or I need it evaluated, I go up there and I'll call him up and he'll say, I'll come down and get you, and he'll take me up into the

the area where they have their big lab. And they've got a huge lab. I mean hits, it's huge. They got every kind of mediaite you can think of up there. So but I'll give them to him, and I donate a lot of meteorites to the Vatican. Yeah, I have to. I have to ask Jim, you know, I want to follow up about the Vatican definitely. Yeah, But like, how do you even find a media right? Like you're describing things that are the size of a quarter

or even smaller. I mean, how do you that's a slice? That's a When they found the Tucson Ring, it's a big ring, and the guy used that as an anvil. There was a piece that stuck out in the middle of the ring and they cut it off and then they sliced it up and they sent it to all the labs around the world and the universities and stuff to evaluate it. And study it. But I mean, how do you even go about finding them in the desert in the first place.

This guy was on the ground. A lot of the stone media rights you can find round on top of the ground. Really okay, yeah, they don't they don't make good. You know. The one that can hit the media crater that was that was probably the size of a two double wide sixty foot trailers. You know that came in there. And my guess is it's still down at the bottom. I think it blew down. The dirt cover it over it. But you can go up there, and you know,

it's belongs to the Barringer family. It's called the Barringer Crater is the real name of it. And it's on a lease to the US government and they made it a national site so people can go and visit it. But it still belongs to the Baringer Cret Baringer family and they live in Flagstaff, Arizona.

But you can't go out there and hunt. They don't want people out there because some of these a good hunter will dig up the ground and look for it, and if they take a metal detector and they can find it, and then they dig it up and sometimes it's a it's a bullet or a slug or something, or it could be a meteorite. So but a lot of times they get so pissed they don't fill in the hole. So what happens is cattle are through, they step in it, they break their

legs, right, So don't want anybody there. And I've actually found cattle out there, you know, out by Tombstone, Arizona. I've been out there hunting it and I've actually found cattle and you see they've got a broken leg where they stepped down for a hole. So fill us in about how you sell METEA rights to the Vatican or donate them to the Vatican. I

don't sell them to him. I I What I do is I go to the the u of A University of Arizona and Tucson, and they have a lot of the what do you call him astrophysicists there, and it's a big METEA right Arizona State and a s U or big METEA right colleges. Uh. So they when I'm up, what I do is I I go, I go to lunch with these astrophysicists because they're more about the space stuff and they're they're kind of interested when I bring a metea right and show them and

discuss, you know, and explain the media right to them. Because they're there, they know a lot about the meteorite. Brother Guy consil Manu, who's the curator for the metia rights for the Vatican. He's now in charge of it, but they're the brother Bob Mack he is the new curator, and we all know each other. So but we go have lunch and we'll sit and talk. You know. A brother guy didn't have any The went from Murchison out of Australia, which actually had twenty two amino acids in it

and it's carbonation's condract so he didn't have any. So I brought about three or four of them up there, and I gave him a thin slice that you can look under a microscope, and I said it, take whatever one you want. And so him and I became good friends with that, and so every once in a while I find one. I got a list of all the media rights that he has, so if he doesn't have it and I find one, I'll donate it to him. And he does a lot

of studying. He does a lot of research on medias. Yeah, it's going to ask like, why is the Vatican so keen on media rights? They have their own research facility scientific pursuits. Well, you know, I'm a Christian, and so when I had lunch, when I have lunch with Brother Guy, uh, he'll ask me, how do you feel about science and and and and and Christianity and meteorites and stuff. And I told him, I says, well, you know, it's the study of media study.

Science is the study of how God put it all together, right, you know, That's the way I look at it. So, but they if you there's a Mount Graham just north of here about I don't know about one hundred and fifty miles or so, and there's a big telescope on the top of them out it's actually a Vatican. Oh really, And that's how I know a Bob and Brother Guy. Yeah, because they when if it's cloudy, they'll come on down have lunch with us on Mondays when we get

together. Yeah. So so that's how I met him. But when brother and I get together, we usually talk about old black and white movies and stuff. So, yeah, you you mentioned these amino acids and an asteroid. Have you met with like astrobiologists and people like that who study this stuff. Yeah, I've probably got a I don't know, fifty or sixty books on meteorites, you know that I've read and and I read a lot of science books. I really don't read novels. I read mostly science books.

I just finished one on transgenderism. It's called the End of Sex, the End of Gender, the End of Gender by doctor Debrasaux. And she's she's a sexologist that got into all that stuff, and so the books about you thick. But I went ahead and I just finished it yesterday. I was doing laundry, so I was sitting and reading all my laundry. Yeah, so I found finished it. But so, but I read a lot of

books like that. I've read an awful lot. Like I'm right now, I'm reading a book on amri the hand and wrist fresh from my memory. Yeah, you know, because you can't when you're radiologists, you can't know everything. You got to know where to look. That's the big secret.

You got to know where to look. What have you talked to any like any astrobiologists about their thoughts of like finding things like amino acids or these like these things in like what do they say about about or what are their theories about like extraterrestrial life and whatnot. Oh, I think it's kind of silly to think that we're the only humans and or the only living people or shores

or whatever in the universe. I mean, you look at all those stars out there, are suns like our son, right, and I mean, heck, what is it one hundred and twenty five thousand light years across our galaxy or something like that, right, And there's galaxies that there's millions of galaxies out there, billions of them, right, So yeah, to think that we're the only ones out here, it would be kind of crazy.

But but but but I'm just curious in terms of like what they've found in asteroids or what they've found amino acids, like the building the building block of right. Yeah. Yeah, so, like, well, they don't believe that carbonation chondrites are actually at the crust of another planet that might have exploded. They think it's a different kind of a carbon than what we know is

carbon, like charcoal. I think it's different, but it's really it's black, just like like when a metwright, when a stony metia comes in and hits the ground, it actually bounces along the ground and you can pick them right up. They're not hot like people think, and there's no radioactive activity coming off of it. You can just pick them up. But what you do is you put them in tinfoil because you know you don't want to you

don't want to disturb the what's on there. It'll pick up dirt on the ground, obviously, but then you put it in tinfoil, and then you can give it the A scientists and they can evaluate it and they'll tell you what kind of media right it is. And because you have like h's and l's H means there's more iron flakes in the stone than an L has low

iron flakes in the stone. And then they like, there's one that came down in Wholebrook, Arizona, and it's an L L six, which and the six is more the little conrols and that kind of thing in there. But the LL mean ultra are very low metal in it. But you in the up there, there's so much middle in the ground, salts on the ground, you can't really use the metal detector. You got to use your eyesight. And I found him up there. You can walk around you can

find him. After a rainstorm, they might be sitting on the surface, so you can you can find them. They usually come up on the surface. You never notice, like if you make a ground nice and smooth, then after a rainstorm, while the rocks are on the surface, Yeah, it's kind of like that, they come to the surface. My first media right was six hundred and seventy eight grams. I found it up in Franconia.

It came down about seven thousand years ago, and it was named after a train station called Franconia, and it's long gone now, but they still call it that. But I found it thirteen inches under the ground and I just got done digging up a fifty caliber slug and I went around the bush and I got the same signal again, and I go, it's probably, but you got to dig it up. So I dug it up, and all of a sudden, I started seeing rusty soil and I'm going, whoa.

And I got down a little deeper and I pulled it out of the ground. You know, I just gave it to my granddaughter. That's very cool, such an interesting like passion. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, it's And I got a really close buddy in New York. The medical doctor's world renowned. Yeah, he's really big into meteorites and he's written he's written books on how he thinks life came to the Earth because he thinks that life might have come here by C one condrites, which is

a carbonation condrite. And there's only been three of them ever found. You know, they find pieces of it, but only three falls. And I had two of the falls, but I just kept the one piece. I had over four hundred different falls in my collection and it was just getting ridiculous, so I just kept different classes and just sold the rest off for don't do you have any questions for Jim? Let me check do you have anything on Pictundy? I just want to see we might probably have some fewer questions

for you, Jim that I want to get to. Yeah, that's great. I love fewer questions. You know one thing we haven't don youse, guys haven't done oh cures. Yeah, let me let me get a little poor. What are you drinking tonight, Jim? You know what, I had some provacier earlier and it didn't go down right. So this is this is more creamy. It's kalua guh, yeah, what do you got the

Yeah? Sure, all right, we have from Joel uh. Given we might have to fight each Asia again and are hardwired for desert mountain warfare, what are some of the younger service members slash veterans I need to know about the theater, the terrain and potential adversaries that isn't talked about now. What is he actually asking? What's the terrain like back then and what it is now? I guess what he's asking is like because we're like, we're not

ready exactly we had to go back into Southeast Asia militarily. Yeah, maybe some lessons lost might be because now because we've been focused on like more desert warfare. Well, you know, that's kind of interesting because when we were going to Vietnam, you know, we were learning all the stuff from World War Two in Korea, and and I think a lot of the guys that were training up for desert warfare before the war actually broke out, they were

learning a lot of Vietnam stuff. So if there's another war that breaks out, I think in between, I think we got enough knowledge now. They should have enough knowledge just from Africa, you know, during World War Two. But I think that. I think if we get into another war right now, we're going to be in trouble because our country is really weak with this woke garbage and stuff. It's just insane. It's crazy what's going on

now, So they would definitely be in trouble. I don't know. I don't know any other way to answer that, because the young guys, you know, right, you know when I went through it was when I went out into the jungle, I just wore my shirt halftime. My shirt was open because it's like one hundred and twenty degrees in that typle canopy, and we didn't wear any protection. I wore a cavat on my hair to hide my red hair. You can darken your face if you want, but you

know, it's just gonna melt. It's just gonna sweat off. But you know, today, I don't know how the guys do it today, going around that sandbox with all this gear on them and stuff in that temperature. I don't know how they do it. So it's totally appear for Jim. Yeah, let's hear it. I just lost it, okay. I actually just one from Cormyn. Thanks Manny, Thanks buddy who said hit the like and subscribe. I have a couple. I have a couple, Okay.

From m Corbyn. Will the public ever know the names of all the po w's m I as from the Vietnam conflict that was that supposedly never existed? Yes, that you can find those names now. They got the names of all the people that are missing in Laos Scambodia. It's it. We couldn't talk about it for I think it was twenty or thirty years. And then Johnny Plaster came out with his book, you know, Commandos or whatever it was, and Johnny and I we were at CCC together. But yeah,

now you can, you can. It's all been opened up now and if you research it, you'll find the names of all the people that are missing. Yeah. Well more from Jimbo. Did you ever use or work with conventional army dust off, regular army dust off in Vietnam? I did, Yeah, regular army. The chops were coming. We had guys wounded when I was out there. On Frank Miller, you know Frank Miller, the

Metal of a Recipient. Yeah, him and I served together at A five or two and he if you read his book Reflections Reflections of a warrior. I think it was. He's talking about a guy named Carlson that was killed and that happened right outside of my camp when my outpost, and so we brought brought him in and we've got him on a dust off. But he didn't make it. He passed away. Kind of a sad story. It didn't go down the way Frank put it in the book. But Frank was

he was your rambo. He was really quite a guy. If you got in trouble, you either want Frank Miller to come after you, you want Bob Howard to come after you. Good. Is there any possible of a Jim shortened book? Yes, I'm working on a book. Wow, I'm in a bunch of books. I'm in like sixteen books. Yeah, you know, even the radiology books. I'm in it, you know, just like thirty papers and stuff. But uh, yeah, I'm working on a

book. I'm gonna there's about five. I want to do a couple of children's books, and I want to do uh one on cod grade four. I want to do one on SOG, one on my life story, you know, and maybe one on Vietnam. I want to do one of PJS too, because there's very few books out there on pay rescue. Yeah, yeah, I hope you do. Jim. When you guys were going out, you know, you know, whether it was when you're with SF or when you moved on to CCN, what was your standard carry? Did they?

Did you have flexibility? Like did you have a standard carry? We controlled everything. We took the weapons we wanted. We went in the way we wanted. Uh we we we we're the ones fighting. The guys in camp did know how to fight, you know. I mean they might have fought in career or something like that. They're older guys, but the recon guys, they they pretty much ran the show for themselves. How I wanted

to go in, how many people I wanted to take with me? Like on the three men uh bright Light, I just took two other guys myself. Yeah, you know, they don't say, oh, don't do that, you know, But I carried about I would say, between thirty and three six magazines. I carried a five court bladder and a canteen of water on my on my side, I had the bladder in my backpack, and we had this little tiny rucksack and I'd put a camouflage parachute panel in it

in case got really cold. And let me see, I had I put five cans of peaches in there. All the missions were usually five days. Most of them lasted anywhere from one to three days because you got and you got in contact. But the can I put the cans in there, and that's only eight was one can of peaches a day. Wow, And that kept me going. But I was a young guy then, you know, so, and you chose whatever weapon you want. And the car fifteen that

we had that was probably the best little weapon. When I was down at P fifty three, I carried a Swedish k one time. That was an interesting story. When I was down there, I uh, we were sitting in the R O N and we heard noise coming through coming towards us, and so I, you know, you know, the sweetsh cave fires from an open boat. So I took it off and got ready, and all of a sudden the bushes opened up and a tiger walked in. Wow a

little he just walked in. He just looked at us, looked actually looked at me, and then he just backed out and walked away. Insane. Yeah, really kind of funny. Yeah, uh think Yeah, I think I carried a Newsy one time, and one time I carried a silence stoozy. I had a stend gun that was silenced as well. That was really a nice silence swap in the standown. Yeah. Yeah, you take it.

You take a little piece of leather and you put it between the boat and the chamber, so when the boat comes down, the leather will keep it quiet. Yeah, as long as still seats around. Yeah. Him, Thank you so much for spending your Friday evening with us and telling us about your story. You had a really incredible career in life, and you know, when your book comes out, let us know, you know,

we'd love to have you on the show again to talk about it. Yeah, and for folks out there next Friday, we're going to have another Vietnam veteran on Herschel Davis served in the Navy Seals for a good long time. Oh, very cool. I worked with quite a bit of the Navy Seals. Oh really. When I was in the reserves. We did a raid on Angel Island. We did a raid on Alcatraz with the Seal Team one. That's cool. Yeah, and yeah, they're they're a great bunch of

guys. Man I love the Seals. They're a great bunch of guys. That after Alcatraz was shut down, you guys used that as a training site. Yes, it was right after the movie Gauntlet was filmed on it, you know when they blew up that, because all the rebel was still there from when they blew the tower. You mean the Clint Eastwood movie. Yeah, yeah, that's funny. And the the Seal team was they were their security and they had a guy in the prison. So what we did is

we came down underneath the Golden Gate and Hweiye's like four feet off. The water came up instead of diversion, and then all the Seals came to battle us out because they thought we were coming, and so we had another chopper coming from the south side. They went in and took the guy out of prison and got him out of there. I lived on that one, but we did one on Agent Island and the Seals man, they just kicked my

they cleaned my butt. They killed me. We had a team another deal with the Navy Seals out in Texas where they had a missile and we had to go in and get the missile. We got the missile out and we had to carry and that was that was an amazing mission. We had specter over us and they were ten thousand feet up in the air and our team leader goes, hey, do you have us? And he goes move. We moved about not even ten feet. I got thirteen guys and they picked

from cattle. It was cattle out in the field. There was out there and we managed to go through there and they actually saw every one of us from ten thousand feet. It was amazing. Yeah, Jim, anything you want to tell people about a promote or a website you want to send people to before we get going for the evening, I well, I wish I could think of, Oh, if you want to check out a cool with

the Navy swimmer, I mean the Coast Guard swimmer. He's really a great guy, and it's called rescue, our quest, rescue, rescue, it's our rescue. It's rest rest with a queue at the end. And if you look at him, that would help, that would help him out quite a bit. He's over in Saudi Arabia and one of my PJ brothers was over there and told him about me and he had me on the show.

So but they're both over the other guys working as a what do you call those guys that are civilians got out of Pair of Rescue and he's working rescue over the contractor. And you know you you mentioned the Pair of Rescue reunions, but you're also involved with the Special Operations Association. Yeah. In fact, they just contact me the other day they want me to you know, they have a scholarship foundation and they were looking for people to read the essays

that people are write in they try and get their scholarship. And so I said, yeah, I'll be more than happy to help you with that. And the next thing I know, they had me fill out the paperwork to be the guy in charge of the chairperson. So there you go. Yeah, that's what you get. That's a combination of being a Green Beret, a Pair of Rescue guy, and also an academic and also being in the Navy and a former sailor exactly. Yeah, yeah, we can't we can't

leave that out. Absolutely. Well, Jim, thank you again for doing this interview. Really appreciate it, and you know, I hope to talk to you again when you start, you know, ready to publish some of these books about your life or about Pj's or Macvie, sag or whatever it is. The kids books, Yeah, we love to talk to you about it. Yeah, the kids books. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know when I was when I was making Colorado, I had a dog named Mush. I think I sent you a picture when I was a little kid

with the dog. Yeah. So what I want to do is write the true stories with Mush and I. When we went out in the woods. I remember we came across bears. We came across we had a deer come aftress. Luckily the deer it was a it was a buck, and already lost his antlers, you know, he dropped his antlers already, but he tried to butt us around, tried to check my dog. But it's a

lot of fun stories. I had at one time where I heard the pounding on the ground and I got by a rock and the deer jumped over the rock, you know, coming down a hill and the rock was here and the hill went down. They jumped over the rock right over on top of us. I think it'd make a great children's book. I had a lot of great stories with a dog. That sounds awesome. So all right, Jim, So next Friday, Herschel Davis, Jim Shorten, thanks again man,

and I appreciate it. Yeah, everyone out there, have a great rest of your weekend you too, and have Saint Patrick's stay. I'm Irish, by the way, so much IRIVERPO. All right, so I have a great day. Thank you very much for the interview. Absolutely thank you.