#276 Nick Brokhausen - The Deadliest Stories From Vietnam with MACV-SOG

Mr. Nick Brockhausen, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Sean. It's an honor having you guys. Well, likewise. Thank you. Thank you. So we got connected through Tilt, correct? Oh, yeah, Tilt. It's so nice to see him in men's clothing again. Oh, my God. What did he used to wear? Well... Right on. Well, seriously, I tell all you guys this and everybody that I've interviewed from the Vietnam generation. And I just want to say how much, and I don't say this lightly, how much of an honor it is to have you here. And, you know, when I was growing up, the Vietnam generation is what inspired me to join service, become a Navy SEAL, and fight for my country. and it truly is. It was the movies. It was the guys. It was everything to me about the Vietnam generation that just fascinated me from a young age. And still to this day, I think you guys are just a special breed of human beings. And so it means a lot. Stop. I'm going to have to buy a new hat. Right on. But no, I'm being serious. So welcome home. Well, I appreciate that. And I got to tell you, the new generation, every once in a while I get the distinct honor of working with Special Forces, SEALs, whatever. I got to say, you're all right proper rascals. The same spirit, the same drive, the same professionalism is still there. you know it's uh it it's a pleasure to to interact with them and it gives me faith that we actually have a chance to recover the republic yeah yeah you know that i know every every new generation gets a lot of shit you know but um they weren't as hard and they're not as tough and but uh but but the ones that I made are shit hot fucking operators and lots has changed. I feel like I'm a dinosaur now. I'm sure you do too with the way warfare is conducted now, but those guys are truly innovative and it really cool to see You know all the SEALs special forces they all evolved In some aspects, they've become one-dimensional. And Iraq was a – and Afghanistan was a reason for that. They became door kickers. You know, our generation was more working with the Indej and training them, equipping them, and leading them into counterinsurgency. And they're slowly but surely going back to that, and I'm glad to see that because that's really where the individualism and the teamwork really shine when they start going back to the basic. You know, SF was based on the OSS. you know and you our lineage was that you were going to get jumped into somebody else's country and you might spend seven years there you know fighting a war in that so you know the the the training for it the mentality the the nexus was based around that concept and i'm glad to see that they're finally getting back to that in such a way that they can become a really effective tool. Yeah, yeah. You know, we haven't really talked much about the OSS. Do you want to go into that a little bit? Well, what I know about it, I'm not Victor David Hanson, and I'm no great intellect. I do read, though. Yeah, the OSS was, you know, in the beginning when they started of the OSS, Donovan, was given the OSS Office of Strategic Service. And it was a battle with J. Edgar Hoover, because J. Edgar Hoover wanted it all. He wanted to be the guy who was putting FBI agents in where OSS agents actually ended up going. And they did a compromise with him. They gave him the counterintelligence role in the U.S. and in South America. So the FBI had limited influence in South America and Mexico because the Nazis had a huge, huge station in Mexico. They were operating out of Mexico, northern Colombia, places like that, Argentina. But the OSS was originally designed to provide war fighters people that could go in provide strategic intelligence on the Nazis and on their military and what they were doing in other countries And what he did is he picked businessmen, people that had traveled in Germany, people that traveled that were maybe natives of Italy, Bulgaria, Armenia, whatever, and drew them in and formed the OSS. And they had different divisions of it. And each of those divisions had a certain amount of latitude how they operated. But the whole thing was based on clandestine. You know, we're not going to make a big show like the commandos and that. We're going to drop you out of a Lancaster bomber in a business suit, and you're going to get on the ground and go to meet your contacts in that country and then start providing intel back. And then after the war, they got rid of the OSS, and it became the Central Intelligence Agency. and it really ruined it when they did that because it took away some of that expertise and elan of the operators from World War II. But the OSS was a very effective tool. I just read a white paper written by an E-8 from a 10th group, a guy named Kevin O'Connor, O.C., 280 pounds of moving Irish intellect, where he suggested, and it's a good suggestion, is to do away with special ops and turn it back into the OSS and have the same different divisions and that within it. For one thing, centralized purchasing. There's so much redundancy in the purchasing. and second of all it does away with each service having their special operations division. Put them all in one unit make them all warrant officers. So perfect rank to operate in. You know you got officers, you got warrant officers but you don't have NCOs anymore. And if you transfer into it you automatically become a warrant officer When did this flight paper come out He wrote it Oh I know He wrote it and Al Mullins edited it thank God But six months ago. Six months ago? Yeah. And I think he sent it to the Secretary of Defense, or he might have sent it to Center as a suggestion. Here it is. I think that's a genius idea. What do you think about that? Got some flaws, but it's much better than what they're operating under now. I'm just curious, why do you think that would be better? I have my own opinions. Let's see, how do I put it? They've got the ability to act without massive oversight. You know, this whole organization in Special Forces stands on the shoulders of 12 men. and they forgot that. You've got PSYOPs and you've got civil affairs and you've got ribbon-cutting outfit or some other hoofla. Those are all support units. They're not special operations. I don't consider them a special operation. I'm sure that people in PSYOPs argue about they actually captured this or captured that when they were out in the countryside, but really it's all based on a SEAL team and an A team. those guys are where the rubber meets the road. And, you know, I'll give you an example. Over the years, I had people come to me and go, what kind of special school did you go to to get in CCN? Well, a prior felony helped. We were selected because it was just another SF assignment. It was no more than that. You'd go there, you'd do your thing in Vietnam, and then you come back to the States, you might get assigned to the Red Empire or the 10th Group, and then you did the missions that they had on the board and that. But it gave you a vast pool of knowledge and cross-pollinization with people that actually know how to operate on the ground. You know, it's... That's interesting. What, what, so what, what units would he have? What did, what did the white paper say? What did the white paper say? Well, he broke it down into how they would structure it, the T-O-N-E, and the big thing that he was concentrating on was, I'm looking for the right word here, sometimes I trip, the ability to act independently without micromanagement, to give that power and authority and responsibility down to the working level in order to get the job done. Because where the rubber meets the road, that's where innovation comes from and expertise. Another thing was the weapons, try and do similar weapons so you don't, again, relaying back to why buy six different systems when two actually will do the job. And standardization makes it easier for ammunition, parts, supply, and training, simplifying it. I hope they do it. I mean, I know it would. I tell you what, I think I might have a copy of it. I'll forward it to you. I would love to read it. I mean, I think that it would be, you know, I got to be honest, I didn't know that's how it used to be. Well, you know, today you go in the fifth group, you stay in the fifth group. In my day, you go to the 10th group, you'd be there for three years, you might get transferred to dead A or get transferred to the sixth group or, you know, the first group, whatever. And that allowed for a lot of cross-pollinization in that. You met guys that were doing different things. Yeah. And you were able to give your input and take theirs and move on with it. You know, not only that, but the first thing that came to my mind when you're talking about consolidating all the special operations under one umbrella that's not the Navy, Army, Marine Corps. No, it's its own branch. It's its own branch. It's its own branch. I've always thought this was a good idea. I think it would piss a lot of people off because the history would, you know, that would be the end of the Green Berets, the Navy SEALs. Well, I made the suggestion one time that you ought to put the Navy under the Marine Corps. I thought I pulled my pecker out in front of them. Yeah but I think it just gets rid of the competition And when I mean competition I don mean Green Beret to Seal I mean competition as in the salesmanship that goes into who's going to get what specific operation. I would think that that all goes away because it will be put on some type of a cycle. It won't all go away, but it will make it a lot cleaner. A lot more transparent. Yeah. And then the other thing is, after World War II, we had all these bases all over the world, Germany, everywhere, right? And those become the commands themselves, UCOM, CENTCOM, AFRICOM, PACOM. And so whoever's in charge of UCOM, for example, has two SEAL platoons and two SF units. And you know what I mean? they have that allocated to Ucom and those leaders never want to, they never want to give up an asset no matter what's going on in the rest of the world. So that creates a shortage because you have to send a fucking task unit of seals to Germany when there's two wars going on in the middle East. And if you had something like that, then it rips everything. It rips all the assets from these people that are fucking hoarding it for no reason. And they all get allocated into the, you see when I'm into the actual war zone, the conflict that is happening right now. A good example of that waste of talent and energy was, I was in Detachment A in Berlin for six years. And Det A reported directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. and the commanding general of UCOMP didn't like that. He didn't like the fact that we were op-com to the chiefs of staff and not under his TONE. And eventually he got his way and got a hatchet man in there and basically made the excuse that the cover that we were using was too transparent and they should reorganize it. They made it into an MP outfit. and gave them the added ten. See, Dead A had the counterterrorism mission and their primary mission, which was a stay-behind mission, in case the Russians got drunk and decided to invade. And they would invade and we disappear into the population and start blowing up their rail yards and telecommunications and that And then we picked up the counterterrorism mission because nobody else was ready blue light was in the process of forming and Charlie and Delta were in their infancy so we were the the the designee if something happened in Europe or the Middle East for about think four years before they got totally spun up but you He kept that mission and kept the primary mission and then added a mission after he got control over it of doing security for all the diplomats overseas. Checking their houses, checking the embassies, checking their toilet, whatever. And the guys did a – that unit did a superlative job, but it was unnecessary. It was a misallocation of – a separate unit to do that, because the dip security guys were the State Department, mostly SF anyway. And they've got that job. Yeah. Redundancy. Yeah. We live in an environment our biology was never designed for. EMFs, artificial light, seed oils, microplastics, endocrine disruptors, modern stressors, the list goes on. These assaults can disrupt the signals your body relies on, negatively impacting gut, immune, and overall health. Armora Colostrum works at the cellular level to bolster your health from within. Colostrum is nature's first whole food with over 400 bioactive nutrients that fortify gut health, strengthen immune health, fuel performance, and more, paving the way for your best health and vitality. I've been using Armour myself because I wanted something simple that supports overall health without adding another complicated routine. I genuinely feel better having it as part of my day Ready to reclaim your extraordinary Well now you can because we worked out a special offer for my audience Receive 30% off your first subscription order. Go to armora.com slash SRS or enter SRS to get 30% off your first subscription order. That's A-R-M-R-A dot com slash SRS. let's get into your story real quick well not real quick it's gonna be it's gonna be a long interview but everybody starts off with an introduction nick brockhausen a green beret with a 17-year career in the u.s special forces including multiple combat tours in vietnam A veteran of the highly classified MACV SOG, running covert recon missions deep into enemy territory in Laos and Vietnam as part of Recon Team Habu in Command and Control North. The author of We Few U.S. Special Forces in Vietnam and its sequel, Whispers in the Tall Grass. You've since had adventures around the world and now run a tech company and an armory. This is a quote that I love. I'm cured for life of ever dating redheaded women or even making eye contact with them. Never make eye contact. It isn't that I'm bonkers over them. They find me as some sort of training aid. I just don't have the deranged state and body fluids for that exercise anymore. I don't really. I run from them. Oh, shit. I love that. well nick before we get started i got a couple of things here so everybody that comes on the show gets a bag of these those are vigilance league gummy bears oh good for the trip back that's right that's right thank you you're welcome made here in the usa and i got have you ever heard of No. Well, USCCA has a soft spot in their heart for Vietnam vets, just like I do. So they wanted me to give this to you. Oh, thank you. So basically, that is an insurance policy for life, and if you ever have to defend yourself, your family, your friends, whatever happens, these guys will provide you the legal For life. For life. And if you ever have to defend yourself, your family, your friends, whatever happens, these guys will provide you the legal advice, the legal funding. Well, I'm old school. And help you. I really don't need the insurance policy if you don't leave any witnesses. Well, if you do leave a witness, USCCA will be there to help you. Thank you. as long as it's legitimate self-defense. Legitimate self-defense. Isn't that an oxymoron? I don't know. I don't know. Well, thank you. You're welcome. And thank them. You're welcome. All right, Nick. So I want to do a life story on you starting at childhood. So where did you grow up? My life started in 1969 when I was accepted into Special Forces Selection Corps. Roger that. Is that where you want to start? Well, I grew up poor, relatively poor. My parents were, my dad was a former Army Air Corps, my stepdad. And my mom was a waitress, a cook. It's like from Clockwork Orange, what are you? Well, my father was Russian. My mother was a waitress. But they raised four kids on a waitress salary and a bartender. We actually lived in North Dakota, and my dad had a farm. We had 640 acres or something like that. We raised cattle, hogs, chickens, and grain. You know, we sold all of the above. And two years of drought and another two years of floods put us out of the farming business. So my dad was able to keep the farm, and he took the money from the sale of the machinery and everything, and we moved to Minnesota to a little town called Glenwood. and he opened a bar, hotel, and restaurant all in one building. And that where I spent my formative from the time I was preteen until I was old enough to be drafted or whatever And it was a great life. I mean, I hunted, I fished, I skipped school to go squirrel hunting. Nice. Hid the guns in a hollow tree outside where they had what they call a shop class. And we'd skid her out over the roof of the building and go squirrel hunting all afternoon. So I was very adept in the woods. My brother and I had ran a trap line for a number of years to make money to buy school clothes. No kidding. Yeah. Montgomery Ward and J.C. Penney's. You'd order your school clothes and that. And your school clothes from the year before became your work and play clothes. What would you sell the fish? Huh? The trout line. Oh, trap line. Yeah. Outside of Glenwood. It was all woods. Woods and farmland. We trapped mink. There was a big swamp area that a number of them. and that muskrat, mink, martens, fisher cats, all of which brought good money, and porcupines. No kidding. Yeah. Now, I got caught. My brother and I, we killed these four porcupines, and there was a bounty for porcupines that you had to take the nose, right? and then you pickle it and you take it down to the game warden and he'd send it in, you know, and you get, I think it was like 25 bucks for a porcupine. So we're skinning the porcupines and that, and I skinned the pads off their paws and dropped it in the pickling. It's a nose. So instead of one nose, we now have five noses per porcupine. So we didn't dump kids, you know, we turned them all in. And that game warden was drinking buddy of my father. He called my father up and he goes, well, either your two boys have cleaned out every porcupine between here and the Canadian border, or they're up to something. So he sent it in to the University of Minnesota. Of course, it comes back, these are paws and these are noses and that And they took us down and you know scared the shit out of us by locking us in a jail cell I think I was like 12 or 13 at the time A lot of fun. I learned how to exist in the woods. Learned how to track. Learned animals. Learned their habits. Had a lot of fun with my brother. And my little brother was built like a crash dummy because that's the only way he survived childhood. And then eventually, you know, I went into the military and eventually evolved into, I learned the ground rules for the military and then applied for special forces and was accepted in 1968 or 69. and I went to jump school, went to SF selection course, came out of the selection course and went to Vietnam for my second tour. What was your first tour? The Marines. The Marines. You were a Marine. Did I mumble that? Why are you mumbling? I didn't. I didn't. I have a lot of respect for the Marine Corps. Me too. Taught me my craft, taught me that I actually could work under pressure. When I first transferred services, you know, you got to go through the basic training, AIT, and then you're in a casual status for a certain amount of time. Before I went to Special Forces Selection Course, I went to Korea, and I was with the 2nd Division up there on the DMZ. during the Pueblo incident. I'm not familiar with that. That was a spy ship that the North Koreans captured. And at the same time, they sent a 40-man commando outfit down to Seoul to try and assassinate the president of South Korea. And the 2nd Division was in the sector. Everybody in the country was hunting for these guys. They got recognized at the front gate of the Blue Palace because the guard recognized their accent wasn't from the South. And a run and gun battle started there. And my company was assigned as a backup unit to the Koreans the White Horse Division that eventually went to Vietnam from the Koreans and they tracked down the last 15 survivors, and we were part of the sweep that drove them up on top of this mountain, and they committed suicide at the last minute. Shit. And then I got transferred from there and then back to Fort Benning to go through jump school and then eventually into Special Forces. Why did you join the Marine Corps first? I got drafted. You got drafted? Yeah. Okay. What was that like? It's like the Marines. To get drafted. I mean, how did the letter come? I just haven't talked to them. I was going to enlist. You know, just time and events caught up with me before I could enlist. In those days, you couldn't step out of the line and move over and enlist and take a three-year in the Army. once you were designated, you went, you know. And it was interesting. What was your first tour like? What? What was your first tour in Vietnam like? A line company. You never knew where you were going, just know that you were going to get in a fight. And eventually, you know, you'd get mauled or you'd maul them and then come back to it. Same thing was in Korea with the 2nd Division. We were up on the DMZ, and that's all we did was we either were in the towers or we were over in the DMZ doing hunter-killer patrols. Same exact thing, just more intense in Vietnam than it was in Korea. Oh, shit. Yeah. How was South Korea? What? How was Korea? Cold. Cold? Cold. Wet. nasty everything smelled like human shit and well the demilitarized zone there was nobody over there they basically cleared all the koreans out of there in the southern part of the dmz once you cross the imjim river you were in the demilitarized zone and that extended up to the actual border and then well you had the line of towers and wire which they were just putting in during that time. They didn't have them at, originally there was just foxholes. You went out and you set up machine gun positions and then the foxholes, like a line outfit does. Originally, there was just foxholes. Originally, there was just foxholes. You went out and you set up machine gun positions and then the foxholes, like a line outfit does, you know. And then gradually they started replacing that with a fence system and 25-foot wooden towers with machine guns in them. And then they had gates and there was a minefield this side and a desk strip that was raked and cleaned so you could see tracks and that. And then on the north side of the border, there were some minefields, but there was a lot of old minefields left over from the war. So you had to really be, a lot of them were marked and a lot of them weren't. You had to be really careful where you were moving about. I liked the 100 killer patrols better than I liked the static, just sitting there all night getting eaten by mosquitoes in the summertime and freezing their balls off in the winter. A lot of interesting things. That's where I first discovered kimchi. Kimchi. Kimchi. You know what kimchi is? No. Pickled cabbages. Oh, I do know what that is. Wow. I make my own now. Nice. You store it in porcelain jars. In the old days, you used to put a straw stopper in the top of it, and it was about that big and round enough. I stepped through one of them out in a DMZ and pulled my foot out. I go, what is that? And the Koreans I was with went nuts. Ah, kimchi. And they started dipping it out with their canteen cups and that. But a lot of destroyed villages, really kind of ghostly moving around. in you know they uh a lot of fog uh a lot of activities some months and a lot of months with no activity you know they were always trying to probe the wire and get through and slip infiltrators and there was a funny story there was a our sister unit was a third battalion of the 38th And they had, there's two bridges across the M-Gym, one down by Pemmingen and one up north by New Lurie. And the one up north was called Freedom Bridge And they had machine gun posts along the bridge looking down into the MGM River which at that point is probably a couple hundred meters wide And during the monsoon season, it's flooded. It's moving fast. This was kind of in between. And one of the machine gun posts opened up, just blasted away and said, I got a submarine in the water. And, of course, the sergeant of the guard and the lieutenant ran out there, and they looked. They don't see shit, right? So the guy was a spec four. They took him back, and they had him down to the psychs to make sure he didn't crack up and that. And he's going, no, I saw a submarine. I saw a submarine. Ah, bullshit, right? Two weeks later, a mini-slub washed up on a sandbar. Are you serious? Between that bridge and the next bridge with the crewmen still in it. He had shot the conning tower, and the one guy got stuck in the escape hatch, and they all drowned. Well, he died. They made him a staff sergeant and sent him back to the States. Wow. There was all kinds of little incidents like that. They tried many subs off the coast, many subs up the MGM. a lot of times trying to come across in rafts you know either rubber rafts or rafts they made out of vegetation and try and just float across and make their way stripped down and come across of course in those days we had the mighty prc6 walkie-talkie for at squad level and i think it was the PRC-10, which you had to calibrate all the time to keep it on frequency. You spit. There was too much humidity in the air for it to stay on frequency. The weapon was M14s and I think when I first got over there, we still had BARs for the squad automatic weapon rather than the M14E2. Because all that shit was going south. But interesting tour. I remember when it took, from the DMZ to Seoul, was a grueling bouncing jarring ride in the back of a Dusan app that took three and a half hours On the Audubon now the freeway it takes 15 minutes to get from Seoul to the DMZ Jeez. So how long were you there? 11 months. And where did you go from there? I went to jump school. You went to jump school? Right, and from jump school into selection. Where was the Vietnam? Before that. Okay. Yeah. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah. It's the same as Korea, being a grunt. I have an undying love for the Corps. If they'd have spent all that money on the Corps, they would have had a true UW capability. Like I said, I made the suggestion once that the Marines should be in charge of the Navy, and it wasn't well taken in that. But I learned discipline and I learned that I could operate under pressure and I learned that I could take a lot of suffering and still keep going. And that helped me a lot when I decided to transfer over. First of all, I went in the Army and in Special Forces because you could get promoted it. You didn't have to wait for somebody to die up the chain of command for a slot to open. So it was, you know, and, you know, at that time, Special Forces was vogue. Go into the Green Berets, you know, be all the man you can be, or whatever the slogan was. And I found it interesting. I found it really interesting. I read a lot when I was in high school, like I said, about the OSS, about the commandos, and the Rangers and the Raiders, all those specialized outfits, and it seemed like the thing that I could fit well in. How did you see any SOG guys when you were in the Marine Corps? No. No. No. No. You know, even when I was at CCN, We worked with Tong Dushan, the seals over Tong Dushan. How was that? It was fun. I mean they had a warrant officer named Mr Johnson a funny guy funny guy Whip cruel too if he had to be And we used to change you know equipment You know, you need this? Well, I got some extra of that. RPD links? Yeah, we got some of those, you know. RPDs? Yeah, we got four of those extra and that. Back and forth. And we did a couple of missions where they supported us with a full SEAL team on an amphibious landing to blow up a bridge. And a typhoon or some sort of storm came up. They got washed way down the coast and didn't make the rendezvous. and we came in from the land and we found their boats. They washed up down the coast and that, and they managed to infiltrate in and get picked up by a helicopter and that. But they didn't make the target, and we didn't make the target consequently too. Bad storm. They had some Marines with the SEALs that were working with the nasty boats. You know what the nasty boats are? I don't. Well, it gets kind of convoluted. The CIA ran some of the projects, and the military was gradually taking over from them. The nasty boats were Norwegian PT boats. Okay. Real fast, you know, armed to the teeth and that. And what they were doing, they were going up into North Vietnam and taking agents and putting them ashore with those boats. and same thing doing raids and coming back out. And there were force recon Marines that were with the SEALs working on that project. It's like now you see all these guys that claim that their unit was back sawed. Force recon was back sawed. I don't know if it was ever on the TONE. I never saw force recon running recon missions for Max on they might have you know I was in one project there were two others three others, you know that that's possible, but you know Max Ogg originally was the seals and special forces The seals were down south, you know where you guys you know with places flooded. It's your nappies SOG originally was the SEALs and Special Forces. SOG originally was the SEALs and Special Forces. The SEALs were down south, you know, where you guys, you know, with places flooded, it's your natural habitat. Keep your skin wet all the time, you know, go into hyperventilation. And up anything north into the highlands and up to North Vietnam was, you know, our kind of terrain. So it was those two units that basically made up the core of it. I did a study on my own when I was writing my first two books. The original T-O-N-E for MACVSOG was 1,174 Americans assigned to it. That included all the officers, all the support units, all the radio relay sites, all the people that were at the launch sites, and the two sections of it that actually ran ground combat operations. So you take all that support stuff and shove it over here. You have, all right, we had 18 teams that were recon, and usually each team had two Americans assigned to it. So sometimes three, but two normally. That's 36 people. in recon company. The hatchet force, they had two guys per platoon or whatever, you got three platoons. So you had six guys in each company and they had three companies. So 18 there, 36, that's what, 48 people that are on the ground running operations on the ground. And I've met 18,000 of them since I left the war. because everybody, I was in Macpherson. Yeah, sure. Yeah. It's a very small group. And I think there was, during its entire time, if you took those numbers and translated into nine years and that, that's about 4,000-plus people. And only half of us survived the war. A little less than half of us survived the war. So it's a small, small fraternity. Yeah, yeah. Very elite. And I go to the SOA every year because there 30 guys I like to drink with that are like brothers And the rest of that hoopla with the politicians and that I never been to a business meeting yet They've tried a number of times to shut the bar down during the business meeting. One time we got physical with the sergeant at arms, and they've given up on that idea. We don't go there for that. yeah and these days well when when we first started the soa it was for recon and then we went well that's not fair the guys in the hatchet force should be in it too so we let the guys from the hatchet force in then we let the guys that were at the launch sites in and the cubby riders and people like that and then when we were out doing things i went to Africa for a while doing that. I wasn't going all the time. The colonels got in charge. And then they started, they needed members. So they said, well, if you served in a unit that supported Max Soggs, that's how we got all the rotor heads in there. Well, I didn't disagree with the helicopter crews that flew us in. And they were dumb enough to come back and pick us up. but I didn't want their basketball control officer and their H&R guy or whatever they called them. So you ended up with a lot of people that were remps that got blessed into the organization. I got you. But there are fewer and fewer of us left every year. The ranks are really, really thinning. Yeah, yeah. so what did you actually he's dying off early did you did you get out of service and then re-enlist in the army or did you no no straight across the board transfer well yeah and left that one and had to join the other okay basically that's how it worked in those days and you joined the army to go MACV SOG to go no no I joined the army to go special forces okay And I was in casual status, so they sent me to Korea while I was waiting to get a slot. Gotcha. We'll just put you over here. You'll be comfortable. Gotcha. You already know what mosquitoes are like. Let take a quick break and when we come back we get into selection selection well i don know if i want to go into that you don i joking all right folks we've got a new sponsor on the show beam they make one of the best sleep products on the market beams dream nighttime cocoa it's helped millions of people get better sleep and And if you've ever struggled with sleep like I have, you know how much that matters. 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For Patreon exclusives, you're going to get epic range days with me and damn near every guest that's come in the studio. You're also going to get behind the scenes content and guest updates. You're going to get first dibs on new merch drops and limited edition items that will never be sold again. Plus, exclusive offers from our partners you won't find anywhere else. So subscribe to the Vigilance Elite newsletter right now. All right, Nick, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to get into selection. ah well selection well in in those days it was phase one phase two and phase three phase one was a camp mccall i can't remember how long it was i think it was like a month you went out and you learned basic patrolling you learned survival you learned uh target recognition all the things that you know woodcraft and that and you jumped in and uh you lived in in those days we lived in tents, GP mediums. And the only structures at Camp McCall were tar paper shacks for the headquarters and the medic shack and the classrooms were open air or sometimes under canvas and that. Interesting four weeks, really intensive training with guys that, the guy who, funny story, The guy who taught survival was an E7 named Rodney. Rodney, I think, was his first name. Nail. And Nail had a black eyepatch because he'd gotten shot by an AK through his eye. Not one sight. And he was a typical crusty old redneck, right? And he taught you how to kill snakes and rabbits and other animals and teach how to cook things you know take a chickens and wrap them in mud and then put them in the coals of a fire and go do patrolling all day when you came back you just peel the mud off and it's a of a fire and go do patrolling all day when you came back you just peel the mud off and it's a roast chicken right stuff like that so we were getting ready to finish up phase one and I was with a guy named Tony Anderson Tony got a DSC when RT Kansas got wiped out and he was a it was a pool shark when before he come in the army and that real cool guy who said his nickname was fast Eddie and nail is sitting or we were getting ready to get go back to Fort Bragg and go into our MOS training and nail was telling us well you know we ain't got no booze here but you can get high if you take the mortar charges from the four deuce because they look like little cheese packets. So just bite off a little bit. It was nitroglycerin. So what he didn't tell us was that all your capillaries explode. So Tony and I ate a little bit too large of a chunk, and we ended up in Womack Army Hospital, and they thought we had meningitis. We're laying in the hospital ward, and the doctor comes in, and he goes, he had his clipboard, and he goes, let me ask you something. Do either one of you two gentlemen know Sergeant Nail? Yes, sir. I said, well, he usually gets one or two of the students in every class. Holy shit. You don't have meningitis, but you do have some damage to your capillaries and that. But it was a good training. A lot of good guys I went through a training group with. that later went over to become part of SOG. At that time, they were still filling up the A-teams over there. They were still active, and the Mike Force was active still. Then I went from there to weapons training, and I was an 11 Charlie. Now I think it's an 18 Charlie. I think they're all 18 BBs now. but you went to small arms pistols first then submachine guns and carbines and then rifles and machine guns and then the next phase of that training was heavy weapons training and it was both foreign and both foreign and and us so we shot you know the brendan gun we shot the you know the rpd we shot uh you know the the madsen the uh the swedish k all of those were in in the curriculum and that both classes assembly disassembly so you could do it in the dark and then finally range got to the range and you know combat course, you know, and regular marksmanship training and that with each weapon. And then you transferred to mortars and we trained on the 4-deuce, the 81, the 60, both the Russian 82 and the Russian equivalent of the 60. And then recoilless rifles, the 57 millimeter, the 106, the Russian equivalent, and German equivalents in that. And then the 4 Deuce. We did the 4 Deuce and then the 105 Howitzer. So we learned up to the 105. Wow. Doing both. And you train both in the gun crew and then the fire direction control and then the forward observers. Live fire on the ranges, calling in fire while the rest of, you know, So some of you were manning the gun, some of you were the FTC, and some of you were out there as forward observers and that. Very intensive course, very compacted. So a lot of practical exercise combined with teaching in the classroom. And then when you finish that, meanwhile, those others from your Phase I who decided that they were going to be sparkies, went to combo training. And they did Morse code day after day after day after day after day. And they learned how to operate both our radios and the Soviet radios and that. And the engineers went off and learned how to build things, you know, framing barracks, doing shit like that, and also blowing things up. Very intensive course in demolitions and that. And then the radio engineers, oh yeah, the medics. You know how medics are right Sick Sick If there a strange really goofy religion anywhere in the world you can bet both your medics are practicing. Highly intelligent with the bedside manner of Dr. Mengele. They go for a real long course. In those days, it was over a year. They go to they do they'd go to the 300 F1 course and then they would come back and do dog lab and dog lab was they used to shoot dogs and then their job was to treat the wound, manage the wound heal the wound bring the dog back live tissue training and all the the cruelty of the animal people got on their case and they changed over to doing it on goats and the only step different is removing the Arab from the back of the goat. But very intensive course. To this day, I would rather have a special forces medic treat me than any doctor. No kidding. Yeah. In fact, there's a guy that teaches the SEAL teams combat medicine, a guy named Ron Broughton, who was in Berlin with me. He originally was in Project 404 in Laos. and he came to Dead A and he was a medic there and eventually he runs like 20 emergency rooms in Florida and teaches up at what is it? Little Creek? You know, combat medicine there. Muscled up, really dyed, almost white blonde hair. We call him Doc Savage. Nice. And he does have the bedside manner of Dr. Manuela. It doesn't hurt that bad. But Special Forces Medics, they 18, what do they call them, deltas? Is that the same in the SEALs, 18 deltas? Yeah. Well, they're going through the Army's delta course. Yeah. Absolutely wonderful course. You know, Special Forces Medics in the old days could get licensed as a practicing physician in over 20 countries. No kidding. I didn't know that. training was that good and that well respected. And to this day it one of the best courses that the military offers Don leave them alone with your girlfriends or household pets And then when you finish with your MOS training, you went to phase three, and they brought everybody back together and formed up teams, regular 12-man team. There'd be two officers assigned to it. They had gone through their own course over here, which I taught them not to scratch their nuts with a salad fork or whatever. And they would join the team, and then they'd jump you into Gobbler Woods exercise, and you'd actually operate as an A-team in an unconventional warfare scenario. And Phase 3 also had a real intensive class in the beginning of it, which was called methods of instruction, where they taught you how to teach, taught you how to teach the military way, how to compress all that knowledge of four hours of data into one hour and make it stick so the dumbest guy in the class could get it. And then you moved on from there. And they taught you things like stage presence. Don't walk around with Air Force gloves on, hands in your pockets. Don't be a sword fighter with the stick. And how to tell jokes to lighten things up. Some of the jokes I heard were really lame too. But that was a good part of that. And they taught you the special forces operations as an A-team. What each MOS's responsibility were, how to tie each other together with the team sergeant and with the officers and that. And once you graduated from that, in those days, you didn't get a flash on the back of your beret behind a crest until you graduated from the Q course, as they call it now. Then you got a, before that, you had a candy flash. No, you didn't have a flash at all. It was support troops that had the candy flash, the little ribbon, the same colors as a group patches and that. Okay. Yeah. And then once you were three qualified, that was the beginning. You went to a group and you were actively assigned to a team and you started operating in a special forces team, you know, in whatever their mission. you went to a group and you were actively assigned to a team you went to a group and you were actively assigned to a team and you started operating in a special forces team, you know, in whatever their missions were. Where did you go? I went to the 6th group. Like I said, it was a holding area for people that, and I was in the 6th group, I think, for like six months, seven months, something like that. We did a real interesting, in those days, the Red Empire, bling, didn't have South America. It was the 8th Group, which was stationed out of Panama. And we did an MTT with the 6th Group. We went down with them, and we went to Bolivia. And at that time, they were tracking down bandits in the mountains and that with the Bolivian Rinche, the Rangers, which were strange. All of them were Indians, big barrel-chested. They all operate above 6,000 feet. So in the flatlands, they can run forever. Yeah. But they were tracking them down, and we were providing radio operators and some – I went down there as a mortar instructor with a 2-inch or 60-millimeter. It was easy to pack around in the mountains and get it in the battery real quick. And they were just starting to use indirect fire when they caught. These bandit groups, which eventually became the Sendero Luminosa, were 30, 60, 100-man groups in that, and they lived off raiding villages. They'd move into a village. They'd kill all the men. they'd rape the women until they used them up and throw all the bodies in the well and move on to the next village and the rangers were right behind them trying to close them up and we tracked this one group and the time I was there for about about 60 kilometers over the mountains and finally caught them in makeshift bait camp and raided them and killed all of them except about maybe 10 or 15 that escaped out of the net. You were on that? Yeah. How many of them were there A little over 100 when they started Holy shit So you guys killed 85 90 people There were no match for the Bolivian Rangers They were terrorizing the countryside because nobody, the militias really didn't have the firepower to stand up to them. And they were vicious, vicious, absolutely. They killed the children and throw them down the well, and then got done raping the women and killed them and throw them down the well, poison the water and move on to the next target. What was the point of that? Why were they doing that? They were bandits. They were just? They were just bandits. And eventually the communists came in and kind of moved them around, and cadre-ed them and changed them into an insurgent force against the government. It was interesting. How do I put this? While we were up there, we found an Inca grave. and I removed a couple of terracotta figures that were inside that grave and stuck them in my rucksack to bring them back because they were really, one of them was a corn god and the other one was like their Loki, you know, and I had them in my rucksack, right? And when we were in the mountains, they came around, And they came around, the sergeant would pull out what looked like a bar of soap, kind of a brown-colored bar of soap. Take a penknife, cut a sliver off, give it to you and said, chew this. And it helps you assimilate oxygen in the high altitudes. Well, it was coke. It was cocaine-based material on that. So normally they would give one bar to every three or five men and that. And it ended up he was giving me one bar by myself. So I went and used it. After a while, I didn't need it. I was just chucking it in my rucksack. So we flew back to Bragg. They'd line us up and customs comes. They're going to search everybody's bag. And they dumped my bag out, and I was really worried they'd find the two little terracotta things. They weren't even interested in that. because it says on the outside of the cardboard box you know product de coca right So as soon as that fell out they were interested in only that So they got me standing there, and I had like five or six bars in my rucksack. And he goes, what's this? I said, well, it's the stuff they gave us to assimilate oxygen at high altitudes and that. And they're like, really? So they called for my Sergeant Major, who was Sergeant Major Louis Brown, little short guy looked like a fire plug they painted a face on and he comes out there and he goes what the fuck have you done now I don't know and he's standing there with me and the two customs guys are standing there and we're like acting like what's the problem here and the older guy the younger guy turns to the older guy he goes you know I don't think they know what we're talking about and he goes I'm pretty sure they don't They ended up confiscating them, and I got through with my two little terracotta figures and that. Congratulations. Oh, yeah. We'll have to add drug smuggler to your introduction. Oh, yeah, thanks. Yeah. I thoroughly enjoyed Special Forces training, and I thoroughly enjoyed the process by which I finally, finally got on an A-team. and then started, I came back from Bolivia, and about a month later, I got my order to go to Vietnam. And I was supposed to go to the Mike Force. And when we got to Vietnam, I sent this guy, Bernie O'Connell, never have the Irish involved with anything you're doing because they hear loud noises, they think it's a wake, right? So when we got to Nha Trang, I sent them with our orders. I said, go over and make sure we don't get policed up by one of those press gangs because we were at the regular repo depot in Saigon, the Tonsenudo, wherever. And I sent them over with the paperwork. We were supposed to go to the Mike Force. And he comes because the press gangs from the regular Army divisions, we were looking for NCOs, and they'd pay somebody off in admin, and they'd take four or five out of the lift and assign them as platoon sergeants or squad leaders to the division He comes back and I had He brought back some bommie bob beer and a net and I had stolen a CO2 fire extinguisher and we were busy lowering his body temperature in the room and he goes good thing you sent me over there because we were on a list to go to the big red one and I'm going but obviously it's not all bad news because he's back here and he's gritting. He goes, I ran into a guy. Now, Bernie was mid to late 40s. Was a buck sergeant. He had been a master sergeant. He got out of the army and got into a high-tech field of air conditioning. But he didn't have the accounting skills, so he went bankrupt. So he rejoined the army. Bulbous nose, Irish face, looked like an oversized leprechaun. So he's, I got us a good deal. This guy I know, he was in the Davy Crockett platoon with me in Germany. You know what the Davy Crockett was? It was a weapon that was deployed down to the, I think, battalion level. And what it was was an oversized mortar that shot a one kiloton atomic shell. Holy shit. And the instructions were, get in the battery, get the gun ready, fire the cannon, and try and get a ridgeline between you and the target before it goes off. It was T.O.N.E. and all the Army divisions at that time. I think Bernie might have been slapping leather to the guy's wife for a while. Comes back and he goes, I got us assigned to the special forces unit. There's a waiting line to get in. And then Bernie, the only waiting line in this country is at the airport to get out. So no, no, no, no, it's a special unit. It's all voluntary and that. And that's when my heart fell to my asshole. And he goes, it's CCN. Well, I knew some people that had been in projects, CCC, CCN, whatsoever. And all of them were nuttier than a squirrel. So I go, oh, this can't be good, but it is voluntary. We left Nha Trang, we went up to Da Nang. well, this can't be good, but it is voluntary. well, this can't be good, but it is voluntary. So we left Nha Trang, we went up to Da Nang, and when we were met at the airport, the most decrepit deuce and a half I've ever seen in my life was our transportation from the airport to CCN FOB 4. And driving it was another friend of Bernie's that he'd known in the regimental combat teams in Korea, who had a plate in his head. He also had instructions from the Army. He was never to have pharmaceuticals and alcohol in his bloodstream, and he had both when he picked us up. Stevie Comerford got a DSC, and he was driving like a madman. When we pulled into the compound, they were launching. One of the launch sites was shut down. and they were using Da Nang as a launch site. When we pulled into the compound, there was a Cobra on fire on the PSP. And Bernie had been going, oh, this is probably like one of those show camps, you know, with the crest on everything, everything's cemented, colored stones and that. You know, Bernie, this doesn't look like one of those show camps. This might be a little different than that. And that was my introduction to CCN, basically. Wow. Sorry to travel so fast. No. So you get there. Do you know what Maxog is yet? I knew what Maxog was because I knew some guys that were there before. I was proud to be there. It was also in the back of my mind once. This is a volunteer unit. This is a volunteer unit. This is a volunteer unit. But, you know, peer pressure, you're never going to say. I don't think I can cut it. How many of you guys went? I arrived with a, I think there were nine of us. Nine of you? That got assigned there. And a year later, three of us were still running Raycon. Shit. And the rest were either wounded or dead. But we had a real high attrition rate. So anyway, we process in. We pull in the front gate, get off the deuce and a half. And I see these really ragged looking fucking gypsies sitting on this They had a you know what a mule is The vehicle Marines had them They had a 106 mounted on it It's a flat, looks like a coffee table on wheels. Open seat with a steering wheel in that. Anyway, there's five or six of them hanging around on it with cut-off jungle fatigues and wearing various parts of uniforms and drinking wine. And when we got off the truck, the cat calls started. Ah, new meat. This is great. Yeah. Whatsoever. And they came out, and they took us in. They processed us in. And I think two guys went to the hatchet for us, and the rest of us got assigned to recon. So we got our briefing from the sergeant major. You know, this is a voluntary unit. This is what we do. We're a strategic recon outfit. you're going to be assigned to a recon team when you get down to recon company you'll the recon company commander will brief you and assign you to your teams by dandy we go down to recon company and uh my first introduction to larry t manis was a recon company commander former e7 looked like a heavy gravity planet inhabitant, thick neck, square face, crew cut, blonde. And we're standing outside the orderly room and the door bursts open and a body comes flying out and lands in the sand. And the guy kind of shakes his head, gets up, stumbles out down into the company and the door swings open and there's Manus. He says, I'm the recon company commander, and this is your briefing, your orientation, and spoiling my drinking time. He says, you can call me sir, you can call me motherfucker sir, or you can just hide when I'm looking for you. First man. And I, you know, first of all, I recognize that this is a retread. You know, I mean, that kind of squat bread is immediately identifiable. So I said, sir, you know, worst thing I could have done. This is a voluntary unit Yeah it is peckerhead You a barracks lawyer or what I said well what did that guy do He wanted to quit And I hate quitters. He said, since you're so astute in that, I'm going to sign you without even interviewing and I'm going to sign you to R.T. Habu. And you can go over there and make that hooch a collective IQ of three. And that's how I got assigned to Habu. Right on. I love Larry He's in a hospice at home now. Oh, man. Just absolutely the best officer I ever served under. And Larry had been in projects in the very beginning when he was still wearing box hats, the yellow name tapes that showed. And he protected us from all the bullshit and took the flack for all our shenanigans and that. yeah sounds like a good man yeah well when I stole the half track he confiscated it not because he wanted it for any other purpose than it had two big whip antennas on it with little guidelines and no radios just so it would slap back and forth when he slammed on the brakes you don't need this here I'm confiscating it I think it ended up in security company somewhere else so how did it go when you got to when you checked into habu when what when you checked into habu how did it go yeah well yeah they had just come back from quandary and they were on stand down and they uh do you need to throw up or nope oh I'm doing it. Smuggling under your breath. Jimmy Johnson and Minnie Mack were in the hooch. Snake was up at headquarters. He was the one zero. And Danzer. Danzer and Mack and Jimmy Johnson. So they're sitting there. They're cleaning weapons. Mack was cleaning a .22 with a silencer. And I walked in. And he goes, before you say anything, you're obviously the new guy, and you've obviously run into Diwimenis Did you question him Did you make a comment What did you do to get assigned here And I go well I asked him about it being a volunteer unit He says, well, he sent you here just to annoy us because you're obviously a Yankee. About that time, Castillo, the Cuban, I think he was on Bolton's team at that time, walks in, oily little shit that he is, and he goes over to the refrigerator, opens it up, takes a beer out of it, and starts to hold it up like that, and Mac pings it with the .22, and it starts peeing all over the floor. Holy shit. And he never misses a beat. He goes, just as a cautionary, don't have anything you value around these two or they'll bubify it. And he drank the beer and went out. That was my introduction to Habu. Right on, man. And we clicked right from the beginning. And Mac and I stayed together, I think, the longest. I stayed on Habu until like two months before I left, and I took over as a 1-0 Crusader. And, of course, there was some chicanery in there. We had convinced Manus that I stuttered when I got excited. so he's absolutely no good on the radio and they won zero in those days normally carried the radio and that until Boudreaux caught us chuckling about it and then threatened us he said I'm gonna tell mainest what you two have been doing so but we ran together solid for 11 months and did some interesting stuff And we got Cookie. Cookie was a bonus. Cookie, Robert Cook, from Vidalia, Georgia. Olive skin, had the mannerisms of a Mississippi riverboat gambler. Had a complete solid eyebrow all across here. And he called everybody Stretch. Well, Stretch, you know. He was, first time I saw him, and he was a ranger. So he had Ranger strings on everything. Ranger string to his compass, Ranger string to his camouflage stick, Ranger string to his peanut radio, you know. All packed in. I used to tell Mac, we just throw them down in front of the NBA. They'll get all packed in. ranger string that is a peanut radio, you know, all packed in. I used to tell Mac, we just throw them down in front of the NBA. They'll get all tangled up in all those strings, and we'll be able to escape. But really intense professional guy. On the team, Mac was a 1-0. He was a buck sergeant. He was actually, I outranked him. when Maness finally did interview me he goes I'm assigning you to R.T. Habu and the one zero now is is McLaughlin he's a buck sergeant you got any grief with that? I said does he come back with the same number of people he went out with? what does that got to do with it? well if he does I'm only going to change his diapers if that's necessary so he was the one zero really, really cool, calm, under fire. Never got flustered. That Alabama, well, I guess we're going to have to move because it's getting kind of hot here. And Danzer actually was the 1-0. But they had just come back from, or right after that, I went to, I think I went to 1-0 school because you couldn't run Laos unless you went to 1-0 school down a long time. And they ran the bright light on Doc Watson and Baby Jesus Lloyd, both of whom had been lost on a mission up in the DL or in the ASHA. The bright light went in. And Danzer was a 1-0 because Snake had gone home on emergency leave. And they got on the ground. The Ashaw Valley is built in a series of steps. It goes up, levels off, goes up, levels off, got real sheer. And they got inserted on the top of the plateau. And they started working their way down. Because what had happened is that they pulled Sammy Hernandez out. They got in a hellacious firefight and they pulled Sammy Hernandez out on strings And Doc Watson and Baby Jesus were on another set of strings and the helicopter lost power And they were on the strings underneath it and that slammed into the cliff face. Oh, man. When they found both of them, they were both dead. They were hanging in the trees. Max said they looked like they were asleep, just hanging there in their harness. But they were, they could see them, but they couldn't reach them. they were out about they were up at the level where they could stand and see out and to them but they couldn't reach them they were trying to get long branches and that try and pull them pull them back in and recover the bodies and they decided it got dark and they decided to spend a night on the top of the plateau so they it wasn't far it was like maybe 100 meters to the top they got back up on the top, set up in a RON, in a half horseshoe thing. And 5 o'clock in the morning thereabouts, they heard trucks pulling up the trail on the top and troops dismounting. And they unloaded about three companies, the NVA, and started sweeping. They knew the team was in there somewhere. they started sweeping down the plateau and they opened opened up on them with a RPG two RPGs two rounds hit and one of them Horton was with them too some of the shrapnel blew his lower leg off and it was partially attached but it was off and they started dialing everybody in, fighting, throwing, and they were throwing stick grenades at them and that. And eventually there was nowhere to go. So they started going down the cliff, just stepped off and went. I heard different stories. Mack tried to throw Horton to a tree for him to grab on. He didn't make it, went all the way down. And Mack tried to jump out to the same tree and didn't make it, landed on top of him. Everybody got down to the bottom. Danzer got blown off the top of the cliff. Damn. He was behind his rucksack, and the radio was in the rucksack, and he had a handset. And either a grenade or an RPG hit nearby and blew him off He ended up at the base of the cliff with nothing but the handset in his hand and he was shocked You know he wasn functioning totally Cliff Newman who was also a 1 and had been strap-hanging with him, he took over command of the team, and they had one One of the chase medics was also with a duck, Woody, and he was patching up Horton's leg and dealing with the other wounded that were there. And Mack was covering the ridge. There was like a cut in it. The MVA were trying to come down, hopping from rock to rock. And he was like at the carnival, picking them off between the rocks and that. Newman just performed outstanding. He got the 9mm pistol and I think a Silver Star for that. And eventually went and ran the recon club for us after that. He was basically responsible for getting everybody out that was still living and breathing. And they extracted him with a CH-53. and they worked over the top of that ridge line, turned it into a killing ground with air support and got a heavy hook in there and pulled him out of there. He was just recently, they're trying to get his Silver Star changed to a Medal of Honor, which he really deserved for his actions that day. It went all the way through the Chief of Staff of the Army, all the way through the Secretary of Defense, and then it was approved under the Biden administration. And then when the new administration came in, they just killed it out of politics. They killed it? They killed it. Why? I don't know. And we think it's because the guys who approved it were all Biden appointees. But Newman earned that medal seven times over that day. You know, this thing with approval of higher awards from a lesser award. When Paris Davis got, do you know him? I don't. Paris Davis read his Silver Star and his Medal of Honor which he eventually got He was a colonel He was a young captain at the time He did stuff on a mission that they make movies out of Went out from the, you know, saved people that were wounded, dragged them back into the perimeter, went back out, captured prisoners, brought them back, and basically got everybody out of it. I think he got a Silver Star for it. The Army didn't like him because he was black. In those days, the Armor Corps is what ran the Army, and there was a lot of racial prejudice, and they thought he was just uppity, and they weren't going to give him a medal of honor. He got out and retired as a colonel. He was my commander at Devons for a while, best group commander I ever had. And eventually, the guys got together, and they went back and redid it and got his Medal of Honor here last year. Oh, man, right on. He was at the convention last year. I love Paris. He was special. I had to go to race relations classes. In those days, you had race relations. Equal opportunity race relations. They picked two NCOs. So they picked me and a guy named Johnny King, who was a full-blooded chocorea patching, right, to go to the classes. And there's guys from my battalion, right? And there's two guys from 3rd Battalion, whatever, two guys from headquarters, all that. And we're supposed to learn how to be correct, politically correct, and be able to hold classes to train the rest of the chimpanzees in the techniques of being politically correct. So we're in this classroom, and they've got a guy. he's an associate professor or something like that from Boston College, complete with the revolution knitted black power cap on and the dreadlocks and all that. And he's talking on about, you know, well, you know, we got to be careful about how we call each other. And, you know, these things have been done bad to black people in the past. And when I walked into the room, I turned the thermostat up to 94. So, bad to black people in the past. And when I walked into the room, I turned the thermostat up to 94. bad to black people in the past. And when I walked into the room, I turned the thermostat up to 94. So King is sitting in the front row. He's unbuttoned his field jacket and was nodding off. Everybody was nodding off except me. I'm watching to see all of them fall asleep. And the instructor came over and kicked King's foot. He said, wake up. And he uncoiled out of that seat and pulled a cruiser bowie out of somewhere and had it against this guy's throat. And he's going, they used to kill my people for sport, and I still like them better than I like you. That's it. Out of here. We got sent back to group. I got sent back because I was with him. I hadn't done anything. Well, I turned the thermostat up, but nobody knew it at the time. Yeah. Yeah, Paris. You had one job, and that was to keep an eye on that blanket-ass savage, and you failed. 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It was, we went to the, was it the Asheville? I think it was the Asheville. Lower end of the Asheville. And it was a recon mission, linear recon. We were supposed to follow this trail and see if we could find commonware so another team could come in and put a wiretap on it. And we landed at this particular target. It was in an old caldera, and the trail ran up to the center of it. And it was reported there was a North Vietnamese regiment in that caldera somewhere. And we were going to go in and do linear recon and partial area recon inside that 6x6 Nobamba. And when they put us in, we came under fire immediately. As soon as the choppers lifted off, everybody in the world started shooting at us. And I remember I came out of that one mission. Anyway, my job on the team was to fight the team as a unit, mine and Cook's. And Mac handled the radio, made sure the Covey got air into us when we needed it, did all that stuff, kept in communications with Covey. So I'm fighting my portion of the team, laying them in down below and that. I saw these NVA break out of this ravine like we down here like this over here is this ravine and there a ravine that runs up follows up that way I saw them recover and run up in that ravine, and I started moving up to tell Mac, and I saw a bunch of three or four stick grenades come up out of that ravine and land right where he was. So I run up there. Fuck, they got the radio and they got the midget at the same time. This is bad. So I get up there, and he starts yelling at me, will you please get down, you're drawing fire. And he's got his pants down. And I look, and he's checking to see if his junk is still there, because he's got a shrapnel wound on the inside of his leg. And I'm thinking to myself, this is the coolest son of a bitch in the world, he's masturbating. he's not he's got the hook like that down and grab a cubby was on the on the line they go you'll have to wait a minute the one zero is masturbating you said that oh yeah and and dave cheney big big piute india was that cubby writer you go well besides that what else you got and then we called in airstrikes and eventually pulled out i remember we got back and i had My basic load normally when I was carrying a Kar-15 was one, two, three, four canteen covers with six magazines, one of which was a 30-round magazine and six 30-round magazines and an AK vest. Two canteen covers with mini grenades, two M67 baseball grenades, and a WP grenade. And plus extra stuff for, you know, we carried a machine gun, we carried a belt of ammo and a thing. And when I got back on, back to the launch site, I had two magazines left. Holy shit. And my pistol ammunition and everything else I'd shot. I would have blown up a nuke and told them it was kids playing with fire if it would have helped. But it was just, it was that intense. and I'm telling Mac I said god damn that was intense he goes that was a training mission so you're kidding me so now and the yards like you by the way because you got dialogue when you hyperventilating That was my first mission Sheesh It just went on from there. I mean, you got into the rhythm. You go back to the launch site. You'd either pull a bright light for a team that was going in, or you were done, and you went back to Da Nang, and you get three or four days off, and then you went back into that process again, go into isolation, get your target, go to launch site. How did that compare to your Marine Corps deployment? Oh, a world of difference, a world of difference. What was the major differences? The intensity of combat. Really? You have no idea. Well, you do probably, how loud combat is and the smell and the deuteris, the dust, the explosions, the blood. You're many times fighting at very close range with these. We were heavy enough that we could give a company a black eye. You hit us, and we were going to hit you so fucking hard that you'd want to back off. And that's how we survived. we'd pick the point and we would go for that point to break through and break out and get some running room and then find our terrain that we could defend in that and it was in that short time period like i said you'd use up five six seven magazines just doing that breakout wow and grenades and anything else you could throw out there claymores on coat hangers. Claymores on coat hangers. Yeah, you'd cap them and have them everywhere and ready to go, and you'd put a coat hanger on it. And you've got the clacker in the bag. You pull the claymore out and you throw it up in the tree and then run to the end of the wire and fire it off, break contact, and make sure it's facing the right way. And then run off and then it just clears a path. or throw it in front of you and blow it off so you got a clear path, you know? And a lot of mini grenades. A lot of mini grenades. How many guys were you rolling out with? Normally, it was the three of us, or sometimes just Mac and I. of mini grenades. A lot of mini grenades. How many guys were you rolling out with? of mini grenades. A lot of mini grenades. How many guys were you rolling out with? Normally it was the three of us or sometimes just Mac and I, but three of us after a while. That was three Americans and from six to eight Montagnards. Sometimes we'd take 10 Montagnards with us up to lunch in case we got tasked with a bright light. We'd have extra guns on the team. Because remember, they got to have enough helicopters to get you in and get you out. So you can't overload them in that. But normally, six to eight yards and two or three of us. How often were you guys going out? Oh, well. Every night? Every what? How often were you guys going out? Well, the rotation was you'd go to the launch site. Only two times they gave us a target after we ran a target. while we were up there. And we did the isolation thing in the hooch at the time, and it was an ambush. We were trying to get a prisoner. But most of the time, you'd go to the launch site, you'd launch, do your thing, be back in five days, get two or three days off, go back in the system, go back up to the launch site, three or five days, back, sometimes one day. After a while, I was telling him what's his name, didn't it? I had one target. I can't remember whether it was Hotel Six or, I think it was DM-10, Demilitarized Zone 10. It was that caldera thing again. I ran it four times, and my cumulative time on the ground was a little over an hour. And four times. wow that you know like i said it was intense if you got caught or they thought they could catch you with your pants down they put everything they could to kill you and capture you because they knew if you got on the radio and got the air power they had to grab you by the belt buckle before that so it was right at the first full push trying to get on top of you now once you could break contact, kill enough of them, make them back off. Then you could start doing an IA drone getting a path to where you could grab some terrain When we looked at the target areas we specifically picked terrain that was in the neighborhood of where the LZ was or along our path. If we got hit, we're going to go here because that's defensible. We can't defend it here or over here, but we can there if we get air power in. Shit. Yeah, it brings back a lot of memories. I'll bet it does. Yeah. Sometimes I can smell it. Are you doing all right? Yeah, no brains, no headaches. How's that? Yeah, I don't normally get weepy. I get weepy over the little people. yeah we our T-Habu was a was a brew war party plain and simple just like dog soldiers you know from the crow when we hit the ground the last people in the world you wanted to run into was us just the finest finest troops I ever worked with were the yards no kidding how long were you there? how long were you there? how long were you with that specific unit? oh for 11 months straight with Habu and when I took over Crusader they were also a brew team so you know we had Sedang, Brew Rade all different tribes the Brew looked like Bushman real short You know, very, you know, sometimes almost African features in some of them. The Sedang, lighter skinned, and they filed their teeth. So they look, when they grinned at you, they looked like wolves. No shit. They had tattoos. And the Rade looked like Polynesians. Very good looking people. Beautiful. All of them are beautiful people, but the Rade women are stunning. and then we had some Jirai and some of the teams were Vietnamese and some of the teams were shit Vietnamese and Nungs Big fucking Chinese Rick Hendricks had all Nungs. He couldn't remember their names, so he named them after Donald Duck's nephews. Huey, Dewey, Louie, whatever. And it's Huey spoke English like he was from Southern California. Funny story. My team's going to Quantree, the launch site. And Hendrix's team is coming back. Or no, we're coming back. We're at Quantree. We're getting ready to go back to Da Nang. And Hendrix's team comes up there. He's got seven nuns, Huey, Dewey, Louie, whatever. And they're on, I don't know who thought this up. They came in on a caramu, and there was two donut dollies on board. as we're laying in the shade waiting for the caribou to turn around and go back to Nang and Hendrickson and his team start filing off with all their man jewelry and that and they're coming down preceding them are the two donut dollies and they're going well I can't believe this I can't believe that those gooks were on the plane with us one of them had this face I swear it looked like a horse was long and the other was kind of portly. And they were all outraged, you know, going whatever. They go over towards flight control over there and that, and Hendricks comes out. Hendricks is going, he's kind of chuckling to himself. Here's what happened. They're on the plane and they're in orbit getting ready to land and that, and Horseface starts going, well, what are these gooks doing on the plane with us? You know, why are we here with these gooks and everything? And Hendrix, Huey started in by, well, actually, are you official army prostitutes? Is that what that uniform is? And that blaked her eyes wide open. I think it's a great idea, but I actually own a whorehouse in the Trang, and I don't think I could get five bucks a trick for both of you unless there was a werewolf involved. Yeah, all in perfect English, right? And Hendrix tries to throw water on the fire, and he goes, well you know I know you have to understand they going on a dangerous mission They you know they may be you know may not say the best of things and that And he says I understand your mission being Red Cross and all that where you put up the maps with the name of the state. Some lucky guy gets an extra donut and that. And he says, look here. He sticks his finger out through his fly and he goes, looks like the state of Florida. Everything ended there. and we ended up the guy from the flight light comes out you need to get on that caribou and get it on now they've contacted the provost marshal and they're on their way here right now yeah Hendrix him and his nungs his star English pupil man you know I was talking to our mutual friend John Stryker Meyer before you got here Tilt hides a lot of his sins he had a He had a couple questions for you. He wanted to know about the pet monkey at CCN. Fucking monkey. Mac had a pet monkey. I don't know where he acquired it. A spider monkey. No, it was actually, I think it might have been a gibbon. And it was a nasty little piece of shit. We had a pole with a perch on it outside our hooch. And of course, Sergeant Major was like, Billy Wah is going, get rid of that fucking monkey. I don't want to see that fucking monkey. and Mac Mac kept it just to aggravate the sergeant major all the dogs in recon company hated this thing because it would sit on his perch scream at him, roll up its shit and throw at him and all of them wanted, most of all, Ugmo Ugmo was a mixed breed two of which weren't from this planet kind of looked like a sharp pay that had cancer and And Cook and I were secretly feeding it screwdrivers with Darbon. So I hated the thing. Cook hated it more because the monkey would break into our hooch and find anything that belonged to him and either chew it, shit on it, or do something else with it. It wouldn't bother my stuff or Max. Always went after Cook's stuff. So one night we got sick of it. Get rid of this goddamn monkey once and for all. Mac was, Mac went downtown and we were in the hooch. We didn't want to go downtown. We'd been at the club and we'd been drinking. So we started feeding the monkey Darbon and screwdrivers at an accelerated pace until finally it was. we've been at the club and we've been drinking so we started feeding the monkey Darbon and we've been at the club and we've been drinking so we started feeding the monkey Darbon and screwdrivers at an accelerated pace until finally started to have storm right and we're sitting in the doorway watching the monkey and he's out there rolling up shit throwing it at the dogs and over down here and finally it just went and fell over backwards and hit the ground and they ripped it to fur and bones in about five minutes. The dogs did? The dogs did, right? And so we're, before that, we had thrown the monkey on Lamar when he came back from the club. And he tried to shoot it, and he hit Ugmo instead. So Ugmo was out of the pack at that point. So we decided to cover, it was lightning, right? So we go, well, we can cover up this crime. So we set fire to the pole and the remains on the ground. So when Matt came, stumbled back in there later on the night, he found the monkey and woke us up. And we went, wow, it must have been a lightning that hit it. And he goes, actually, we thought we got away with it. And as we were getting ready to go breakfast, he goes, by the way, I think it was Pulley. Pulley told me all about how my monkey died. And so that's what happened to the monkey. He used to, the monkey would sit on his head, like some kind of weird hat, and he'd go, how do I look? Well, it looks like that monkey's got an ugly growth on its ass. I hated that thing. Sounds like it. We offered to buy him another one. He goes, nah, you two as pets are enough. What is with the World War II helmet? But, well, family heirloom. I wanted my Luger. I had a Luger. So I told my mom, send my Luger over to me, and she sent the helmet too. The day I got it, and packed in the helmet was a fruitcake. Even the yards won't eat fruitcake. Really. Whoosh, number 10. So I get that. I get that. she'd put my Luger in a family-sized box of Cheerios. The only dry cereal we got at the mess hall was Grape Nuts you know a little hard crunchy rocks so Cheerios was like a special thing so I run over to the mess hall and uh I sitting there with Mac and Cookie we all got our little bowls and the milk and everything and we're having Cheerios in that as I'm pouring it out the barrel of the Luger falls out into my bowl just as Maness walks up to the table. And then came the handle and the receiver and the magazines, and he goes, well, how did he say, how did he put it? And he goes, what are those? That doesn't look like a box of Cracker Jacks, my man. But the helmet was fun. I wore it on bright lights where you're going in, you know you're going to shoot. And I figured, you know, the NBA go, who signed the Germans on? Yeah, so. And other people borrowed it. Eldon borrowed it one time. Bargewell. Mm-hmm. And who else was it? I wouldn't let Jimmy Johnson wear it because he looked like something really grotesque. Big ears hanging out from underneath it. Yeah. But yeah, I brought it back. When I came back, I had it in my luggage, my bags. And the MPs tried to confiscate it. and everybody that was there ganged up on it. No, no, no, no, no. That was sent by his mom to him, and they just, okay. So I managed to get it back to the States. A pissed-off girlfriend got rid of it. Uh-oh. I was offered 10 grand for that helmet. I'll bet. With my name and pictures of me with it and that, it was worth 10 grand, which I bring up to her once in a while. Yeah, you missed out on that one. What is with the sawed-off RPD? A lot of guys had them. Well, not just me. Before I got mine, I had one of the Philippine armors up at S4 would saw them off, make sure that it was just the right length so you didn't fuck up the rate of fire too much. We had sawed-off M60s too. the SOT-FM6 he had a tendency for the fucking barrel to fall out in mid-stroke the RPD did not have that problem and it slightly slowed the cyclic rate of fire but it sounded like a like Doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom And some of us like Castro I did on mine too I put an oil funnel on the front of it. And when that thing went off, it really sounded like a .50, and it would shoot a gout of blue-green plasma out about six feet in front of it. At night, it was horrifying. but it lighter easier to move around in the bush which you carry a lot more ammo with it because of you know it's 52 instead of 39 instead of 51 so the extra weight there in the shells and that and it I got so I can make it sing and it was real effective on bright lights you need a lot of firepower you need it down you need something that can chop through brush to get to them the RPD is your your weapon excellent for that I taught myself how to load that you lift the cover just like you do on an amp 60 in that but it's got a feeder strip that comes out of the drum that you have to put through and pull out and and then slam the lid, and then you're back in, if it's in the drum. If it's in a belt, it still has a feeder clip, but you got to feed it through, hold it, pull it through to get it out. I taught myself how to do that by reaching over and doing that and being able to then slam the lid down. But I wanted something that I could protect myself with. You know, I had a pistol, high power, that I carried, or the Silas 22. If I was carrying it, we might stumble upon somebody that we could capture. But I had the armorers make me a sawed-off 12-gauge coach gun. That long, with the little pistol handle on that, two barrels. and I carried 25 rounds for it in my 1-0 vest and one of the, up here, either in loops or in the pockets, if I had a vest on. Otherwise, I kept them in a canteen cup cover. And I had it in a slide holster in the small of my back. So when I had to reload the gun, I'd be reloading it with this hand and I pull that 12 out so I could cover started I was using double buck and slug And then I came up with a bright idea that slug just wasn doing the job that it should. So I started, I took the double-aught buck out. I left the bottom four. And then I put, I was putting nickels in there to start with. And I started counting up how much that was going to cost me. And I went, hmm. So I started using the five dong piece. It's a brass coin the same size as a nickel. And it's brass. So I could put four of those in on top of the buckshot at the base of it. And then three rounds of buck, you know, the balls on top of that. And then close it up, seal it. that at close range both barrels will blow a man in half I know that for a fact you've seen you've blown a man in half that guy came up on me in the elephant grass and I let loose at about 8 feet and his legs were there and the top of his body went there shit because the brass doesn't deform and it comes out like little saw blades or flat and it just cut them in half. I was surprised myself how bad it was. And after that, that was the load for the shotgun. What were the slugs doing? Why do you say they weren't doing the job? There wasn't enough of them to really get a pattern. They either, too many of them went out to the side rather than hitting center or mast. The flat coins worked better because they held together as a mass. It was devastating. It would cut down brush, too. Shit. But you learn and you adapt. You did all kinds of crazy shit with guns. How many times were guys sneaking up on you? I think three times that I actually had to use the shotgun Because I was quick reloading that gun. I could drop the old drum, put a new drum in, and get it in a matter of seconds. Just when we were... I was always nervous about somebody coming up on me when I'm crouched down or bent over. old drum, put a new drum in and get in a matter of seconds. old drum, put a new drum in and get in a matter of seconds. Just when we were, I was always nervous about somebody coming up on me when I'm crouched down or bent over the gun. I didn't want to get shot. And having the shotgun handy was, you know, Max only complained, quit waving that thing around. I'm only going to shoot you on intent. that was a good weapon good weapon did the killing bother you? did the killing bother you? did it get to you? no most of them were jumbled together every you know years afterwards some of them I had a it's in the book I had a ghost that haunted me for a long time What? A ghost. It would come back when I was, you know, I had a malarial relapse and he'd be visiting. And when I'd get tired or, you know, didn't take care of my drinking and that, I'd wake up in nightmares. It was a 16-year-old, 15, 16-year-old kid, MBA. he had he came up on me real quick well actually I fell on top of him I got blown we were trying to dig in on this little incline and they were pushing us and a grenade went off and blew me and one of the other yards down in a little gully that was behind us. And they were coming up it. And I landed in amongst about five or six of them. And the only thing I had was an entrenching tool. And I killed them with the entrenching tool. And I remember them. Like I say, I don't think about them often. But I remember he was the same age as my little brother. Fuck, man. The others I remember them screaming yelling teeth bared coming at us or they came up real quick and I dropped them you know they didn't really get to look in their eyes or see their face you know you hear them kicking around and screaming after they were on the ground and that but most of that's a jumble every once in a while one will pop up you know because of something that we did, or you see a piece of terrain that looks just like we were in, you'll come back and they'll pop up. They didn't have PTSD. Before that, they called it battle fatigue. And we never thought we were battle fatigued at that. Years afterwards, we realized that we had drinking and anger problems. And why? And the military finally accepted the fact of what it was and the VA started treating it. But in the early days, we just managed to push it aside. A lot of drinking. I know a lot of guys that got into the bottle and then welded the cap on after them. Yeah. How would the ghost appear to you? The what? The ghost. What about him? How would he appear to you? It'd be a nightmare, and he'd be like I last saw him when half his head caved open and one eye falling out, and he would wake me up. And he'd just be... In the book, I described one of his visits. I'm on the lake in Minnesota, and I'm fishing with my little brother. And he's got this old yellow rain jacket on that my mom hated and that. And he's bent over. He's not facing me. He's facing out the back of the boat. And he's fishing. He's got a line in the water and that. And he's sobbing. Sorry It okay Nick Shit Pussy It okay Anyway, I reach over to touch his shoulder to find out why he's crying, and he turns around, and it's the kid, not him. And he grabs my hand, and I stand up and he steps off the back of the boat with me and I'm going down under the water and he's holding onto my hand and I can't get him to let go. And then I wake up. Shit. It's okay. Yeah, well, I don't want to be a pussy. I didn't want to go there. You know, I have a really good friend of mine his name's Chris Fettus he was a sniper for a dev group and I had him on and he had to kill two kids on a hostage rescue mission and he has nightmares similar to that and he had sons some of them never leave you they're that age and his nightmares his sons look up at him I haven't had a visit from him in 10 years. Five, maybe. And it's always when I'm worn down, you know, then it comes back. Or like today. How do you deal with it? I push him back. Push him back. Don't let him in. And I try not to think about things like that. Try not to think about some of the guys that I know that got blown to pieces. But, you know, one minute they were there, and the next minute there's some kind of hamburger meat with bones sticking out of it. You just deal with it. First of all, the psychiatric industry is a bunch of hooey. All those therapists that try and talk you through it. I did a little bit of that when I was in Germany. And the problem is is that they put a jacket on you and then now you barred from enlistment and all that shit because you Louie loopy inside so nobody goes to him and two sessions I went to was yeah listen bozo you don't even know what you're talking about you're trying to your condescending and that's that's an insult you know it's you know I got problems, I'll deal with them. Thanks. Sign my slip so I can get out of here. My generation, we just dealt with it. I see some of these guys now with the traumatic brain injury from bombs and that and severe PTSD. First of all, a Navy SEAL, God bless his soul, found that psychedelic mushrooms can be used to treat PTSD. Psychedelic mushroom There's a friend of mine, Al Mullin, another medic Who understands This completely, how it's done and all that And the VA is just now starting To accept it as a treatment protocol It's Psychedelic mushroom Some kind of bark from a tree And crystallized Secretions from some African frog It's a U.S. Toad Is it a U.S. toad? The Sonoran toad You're talking about 5-MeO-DMT and Ibogaine. Oh, cool. I've done it. Have you done this? No. Why not? I got too much shit to do right now. Nick. But the other thing that they found out about it, it cures drug addiction. Yep. You've got your meth, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, whatever. It takes away the total desire to have those substances in your body. that is the method they should use for cleaning up the drug addiction and the homelessness in this country. Just grab them off the street, take them in a re-education compound, micro-dose their food until they finally realize that they don't want to be on it, and then put them through the treatment. But no, I haven't done it or haven't even approached it. I did it. Did it help? Fuck yeah, it helped. I haven't had a drop of booze in almost four years. Really? And it was effortless. Yeah, that's why all these fucking bottles are still here. Otherwise, they'd all be gone. Oh, yeah. But it... Nick, I'm not going to bullshit you. It changed... are still here. are still here. Otherwise, they'd all be gone. Yeah. But it, Nick, I'm not going to bullshit you, it changed, it fucking changed my life. Well, maybe I'll get around to it someday. I don't drink that much anyway anymore. You know, my normal consumption is probably a glass of wine with dinner. This helps a lot more than just taking the booze away. What? This stuff helps a lot more than just taking the booze away. Yeah, well, I'll talk to Al. I'm sure he'd like to watch while I go through it. Yeah. And I would trust him to watch while I go through it. Yeah. Is it offered to the VA? No. You have to go to Mexico. Yeah, well, I go to Mexico all the time. Well, not all the time. Maybe I can... Where is it, Mexico City? I can't say exactly where it is because I just don't want to disclose it. You arrived in a laundry bag and they dropped you off? That's right. At a clinic? Yeah. I will tell you off camera where it is. Yeah, okay. And if you want, I will connect you with the people. Like I say, I might think about it. I hope you do. I'm not usually this weepy or loopy. That's okay. Happens a lot in here. I get like that when I think about the yards laying on top of me to keep me from getting hit again. Yeah. That's another one that brings the tears. Yeah. Probably because I owed them money. More than like, or they thought that I owed them money. do you want to talk about the prisoner capture attempts the prisoner capture attempts the prisoner capturing prisoners oh yeah well that didn't turn out all that well we really how we only had well when I was there only had one real prisoner snatch and we went there to do a prisoner's stash. The area was high concentrations and it was laced with trails that couriers and et cetera If they knew that you were wiretapping or that they had moonbeam overhead trying to listen for radio signals and locate things on the ground, they would use couriers on trails going back and forth between the different units. We set it up to do a snatch. and it was fairly simple. We found a trail, high-speed trail, knew that they would use it if they got pressed and that, and we started using air support to bomb them and make them get up and start moving around and that, and they knew if we were bombing them, they'd have something up there listening for radios at the same time. So anyway, we're set up on this trail. Kind of cool. It was a really large tree, but from over there where the wall is. And Mac was behind that. And I was over here behind some slightly smaller trees than that. And I had a Silenced .22. Was it .22? Yeah. And Mac had a Silenced gun in that. and uh anyway the the yards are spread out to kill anybody behind the ones we want we're gonna let a couple of them go through yards are on the other side of matt a couple of them and three or four of them behind me over here down stretched out on this trail so they start bombing making them get up and move around and that we hear that pitter patter There were little feet coming down the trail. And it's three guys. Actually, four. One guy slightly ahead. The guy in the next guy was an officer. We knew he was an officer because of the collar tabs. And he had a map case. And the guy behind him. and then a third guy, or yeah, a third guy behind him. And I waited for him to get by and Mac stepped out shot the first one in the leg and pistol him and then shot the second guy. And I got the third and fourth guy. I killed them. and the one guy when I shot him he said brother in Vietnamese and it turned out later that the guy in the front was his brother and he was calling out to him and the guy that we shot and captured shoot him in the leg so they can't run off put a tourniquet on him grab him cuff him up start carrying him, start deeding him out to get to a LZ to get pulled out. We did all that in a matter of minutes and we're gone. Well, we stripped the bodies, went through their pockets and everything, threw it into a sack, or I think we used an A7A bag. So all their equipment except for the guns, and pulled the bodies and took the guns apart, threw it out under the underbrush and hid the bodies in that. sometimes we'd take the bodies back with us too so they could do an autopsy and see what they were eating, see if they had any kind of parasites, that sort of shit. You know how doctors get involved. But we grabbed the guy. We went to the extraction LZ. They dropped the strings, and we decided to put Kuman, the 101, one and I think some pot on there with the prisoner. And then Mac and I and the other yards got on the second chopper that came in, and we left out. And away we go into the blue yonder and that. We're watching the one in the front, and suddenly it looked like somebody dropped a rucksack. There were three yards with the prisoner on the first one. And we thought somebody dropped a rucksack. It was a prisoner. What had happened, they had him trussed up. And they didn't get to snap and link a man tight enough to him. And he started swinging around down underneath the aircraft. And he came back in and he bit Koeman in the face and held onto him like that And Koeman just pulled out a knife and just sayonara There you go Holy shit All the way to the ground. We were already counting the bonus money. Let's see that. That's 300 for you and 300 for you. And yards all get a month's pay. We get to go to the train, get laid. And we watched them go all the way to the ground. We got to the refuel point. It was an old fire base. And they land. Everybody's rolling up the strings and that. We go see Coomans bleeding all over his face. And Matt goes, what happened? And he explained it to us. You know, why did you kill him? He bit me in the face. You know, number 10, VC. I said, well, you know, we're not going to get paid money for it. He said, well, don't need money. Need to kill VC. That was the end of the conversation. That's how Boudreaux threatened us, because when we got back to the launch site, we were sitting in that little mess hall portion that we drank beer in, and we were joking about what we were going to tell Manus, how we lost a prisoner. We were going to tell him that I tied him in with some knot I learned in the Sea Scouts, or I forgot the rope, and I packed it because I had too many candy bars in my rucksack, and I used a piece of rope we found out there and Boudreaux was listening over in the shadows. He goes, you know, you're lucky I just don't tell Manus what you two are really up to. But it's a good mission. Just things went bad at the last minute. I have here that you were interrogating captives in the field? No. No. No. never had time for that. Okay. Oh, you might do impact interrogation on me. How many more are with you? You know, where are they? And the yards handle that. But you don't have time to do that. You snatch them and you run because getting them back is everything. And turning them over to people that can really, and like I said, impact stuff. How many guys were with you? That sort of thing, slap, slap. Yeah, let's go. You know, the most valuable POW that I heard of that CCN got was Eldon Bargewell. You know, the most valuable POW that I heard of that CCN got was Eldon Bargewell. What do you think that POW did for a living? He was the battalion mess sergeant. No shit. So, you know, who he had to feed, what their names were, what units they were, where they were at, all their rations. He had all this wealth of information because he was an MS surgeon. The guy we grabbed, the only thing, he was a senior lieutenant, and we're acting as some sort of S2 capacity because the map case had, just like we used, clear plastic covers, and he had units marked on it and all that, and it was a tactical map. so he wasn't a line officer and we pulled a bunch of shit out of his pockets that you know gave the guys in Saigon said well he was an intelligence officer yeah I remember Eldon told me he said the one time they found carved into a tree born in the north to die in the south damn ABC's David Muir the most trusted anchor in America The most watched anchor in America. Thank you for making World News Tonight with David Muir, the number one newscast in America. Most trusted, most watched. David Muir on ABC. Yeah, I mean, you got to remember, these guys are GIs just like us, just wearing a different uniform. Yeah. Hardcore little sons of bitches. I'll give them that. Sounds like it. I had a lot of respect for them. I didn't have any respect for the BC because they were ash and trash, you know, militia. But the Pavin, they would come to bombs to get at you and keep coming, you know, take casualties. Damn. Were you on an operation, too, that did you retrieve downed pilots? Oh, yeah. We did a couple times on bright lights. Choppers, you know, you're doing a bright light, choppers go in, you're the one. You've got to go get them. I remember I think the chapter called Blue Eyes We went in on a chopper that had gone down on an insert and the one-one and the door gunner had not gone in with the helicopter. They had leaped free from the wreckage, or when they hit the water, they got thrown free. Everybody else was dead, and it burned afterwards, which is bad. I did another one. One of them, the guy delivered to me. Another bright light. One of the choppers was going past, got shot to shit, took an RPG right in the transmission and fell out of the sky. And the door gunner got blown up the slope. He landed like that far away from me. He still had the M60 in his hand, except the barrel was cut in half from shrapnel and that. And the other guys, well, the chopper rolled down the hill. We were going to go down to it and see if anybody survived. And, you know, that was another one. We went in later on in the afternoon on the wreckage, and we got there, and we got up on, we could see the chopper in the brush below us, and we could see movement around it. But according to the cubby, everybody had gotten pulled out. So we thought it was MVA going over the wreckage and that pulling shit out and that. So Cook threw a grenade down there, and it landed up. The chopper was laying on its side like that. The grenade landed here, went off. Threw another grenade. It landed on the other side of the chopper, and it went off. And we heard this voice, please don't throw another grenade down here. And it was American. Oh, boy. So we go down. It was one of the door gunners, and his leg was pinned under the underside of the aircraft. and that. He had almost gotten out and the aircraft rolled over on him. So we managed to break him out of the wreckage and got him back. The funny story They take him to the hospital and he in one bed and the co is in another bed The middle of the night, the staff hears a ruckus, and he's in there trying to strangle the co-pilot. And what had happened was when they unasked the aircraft, they just left him and took his M60 and reported that he was dead so they took his gun and left the aircraft and he was trying to kill that warrant officer yeah a number of times I went in on a on an F4 one pilot had either failed to eject or partially ejected he was still in the aircraft He was dead. We found him. He was kind of jammed up against the injection seat, went out about halfway before something folded in it and stopped it. And the rockets and the injection seat burned him to death. He was toast from about the waist down. Everything was burned off. Damn. Yeah. Not a nice way to go. No kidding. I don't have nightmares about him because he's Air Force. Yeah, that was the worst part, when they burn. I can understand getting blown to pieces and shot up, but I don't want to ever see another burned body again. Yeah. How was it leaving? leaving was happy sad you know I hated to leave I actually thought about just going off in the bush with the yards I loved them that much I really had no ties to my family of course but I really had no ties to the civilized world at that point I'd been with them so long I was brew So a lot of guys were like that thought about you know because they closed the when they closed off the when they started moving American troops out we knew that they were going to close and abandon the yards The South Vietnamese went for sure and the American command weren all that reliable to take care of them We were. They were our family. So we were stealing shit for them. Ammunition, mortars, machine guns, rifles, flamethrowers, anything. because when that big American units like Americal and the mechanized, what was the name of it, tent mechanized or something like that, when they left Quantree, the PDO yard was full of stuff, floor fans, big piles of wrenches and sockets, you know, anything you could imagine, conics containers with mortar ammunition, actual mortars, machine guns and all that. They just fucking left it for the Vietnamese. so we were going up there raiding it and every time we went to my lock we were taking sling loads the pilots were in on they knew what we were doing every time we went up there we filled up the helicopters either with ourselves or with equipment and ammunition and then a sling load of stuff underneath it and would fly it up to my lock and it would disappear and give at At least give them a chance to fight when the thing happened. But very, very sad to leave them. And sad to leave the guys. The allies. The guys. These are your brothers. Sounds a lot like Afghanistan. Huh? Sounds a lot like how we left Afghanistan. Oh, yeah. I'm sure. We just abandoned those people. I'm sure. We just, you know, betrayal. You know, not you, but the dipshits in charge. I had a lot of anger about that for a long time. When I went back, I found two of my yards. You went back? I went back twice. How was that? It was lightning. No shit. I had a friend that papered me, so I wasn't traveling on my passport. And Canadian. I actually went back. The first time I did a project, I was working in environmental, and we came up with a system where we were treating waste, shit, with anaerobic microbes, the more we were treating waste, shit, with anaerobic microbes, which increased the—and anaerobic means doesn't need oxygen. And what it does is those microbes eat the shit and the pathogens, and they produce methane. And we built these silos in the ground. We lined them with clay, and on top of it was a cement plug with a shaft down it with an agitator. And that was run from the top, and it would stir the shit. You make it real liquid. You put some straw organic material in there, but it's mostly shit and water. And then you cook it in the microbes. It makes methane. It comes out through the top, goes over here. You dehumidify it. You can run a reciprocating engine on it just like natural gas because that's what natural gas is, methane. So I had a contact in Canada that got a contract to try and use the system we had in Vietnam with four of these big pig collectives. They brought all the pigs in from the surrounding villages, put them in one big building, and they had a lot of pig shit. fine we'd create electricity with it and when the silo got done cooking down at the bottom of the silo was this thick really black material there was kind of part of it was a slurry and part of it was kind of grainy pure nitrogen so they would take that out you'd empty the silo you take it out lay it out on iron and sheets, dry it out, you've got 90% nitrogen fertilizer. In fact, they were taking the fertilizer and actually bagging it and selling it to the farmers to replace using human shit in the benjo holes, which stops a whole bunch of other diseases by using them. It was so rich they had to hit it with potash in order to reestablish a livable pH in it. So I went back for that. And I had a good time for about three months And I went back one more time that just had a tree I I had the first time I heard rumors about the re camps and how some of the yards had survived and I had a I made a contact there and in Danang and he told me that he knew some Montagnards that had gotten out of the education camps that were kind of living like street beggars. And I went back and I found two of the guys from CCM. One of them was on my team. No shit. And I managed to get them enough money to get them out of Da Nang and back up in the highlands. Both of them were missing an arm. The little people had SCU tattooed on their special commando unit, tattooed on their arms. And if the North Vietnamese found it, they'd chop their arm off. So both of them had their arm chopped off from here down. But yeah, it was a really great reunion. Yeah, I found out about, you know, how their families had gone back up in the hills, how they actually had fought a running battle back into the mountains. and a trail of tears, so to speak. Damn, man. Hell, yeah. I think I got a star on my map for that one. Fuck. I have an affinity for primitive cultures. you know the yards were basically a semi iron age tribes when we came along with all our man toys and war and they adapted to it like ducks to water and they are the finest natural warriors I've ever seen and I've worked with other groups in other countries all of them pretty much share the same kind of culture you're a warrior and you're a member of the tribe. And the first duty is to protect the tribe. Above everything else, protect the tribe. Well Nick let take a quick break And when we come back we talk about what it was like coming home Think back to a first date that actually mattered One where there was chemistry right out of the gate You didn't just sit there making small talk. You asked the real questions early. What do you want? What are your non-negotiables? Where is this actually going? You do that because you're trying to figure out fast whether this is someone worth investing more time in or if you should move on. Well, the same goes if you're hiring. You definitely want to address key questions first to see if someone could be right for your role. That's why you need ZipRecruiter. When you post your job, ZipRecruiter suggests screening questions to help you hone in on top candidates faster. And today, you can try it for free. it's ZipRecruiter.com slash SRS. In my experience, finding the right fit for the team is everything. ZipRecruiter's matching technology is great because it immediately finds qualified candidates that check all your boxes. To save you time, they recommend specific screening questions you can add to your post to filter through the highest quality applicants before you even start the interview process. It's no wonder they are the number one rated hiring site based on G2. Ask key questions and hire faster with ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash SRS. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash SRS. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. Want more from The Sean Ryan Show? Join our Patreon today for more clips and exclusive content. You'll get an exclusive look behind the scenes where you can watch the guests interact with the team and explore the studio before every episode. Plus, unlock bonus content like our extra intel segments where we ask our guests additional questions. Our new SRS on-site specials and access to an entire tactical training library you will not find anywhere else. And the best part? Patreon members can ask our guests questions directly. Your insights can help shape the show. Join us on Patreon now, support the mission, and become part of the Sean Ryan Show's story. All right Nick We back from the break We kind of wrapping up Vietnam We have wrapped up Vietnam What was it like coming home for you Total decompression and shock. I mean, this is the height of the anti-war thing. I was only spit on once. and that was in Oakland, and they were a bunch of Buddhists or something. I remember punching them really hard and all kinds of roves flying around. But coming back to the States, you have nothing in common with your high school friends. You have very little in common with the outskirts of your family, your mom, your dad, your brothers and sisters. you know, all there for you. Yeah, I was fortunate. And, you know, I had a support mechanism there. But once again, after about a, oh, I don't know, two weeks of being home, I really started getting itchy feet. I wanted to go around people that I knew. You know, so I got in my car and went back to the cries of my mother saying that I abandoned her after she carried me for nine months, you know, nurtured me for, you know, years. But I went right to, I stopped on the way from Fort Bragg to visit a friend of mine that I knew from the Mike Force. and spend about, I don't know, you know, visitors and fish have the same three-day limit, especially with wives. So after about the fourth day, she started getting the skunk eye look when she looked at me, and she knew she was going to have to retrain them after I'd been there for a while. So on the fourth day, I told them I was going to take off for Bragg, And she made me chocolate chip cookies for the trip. And I suspected that they might have had X-lax in them. But they didn't. But I drove to Fort Bragg. I checked into the sixth group. that they might have had X-lax in them, but they didn't. that they might have had X-lax in them, but they didn't. But I drove to Fort Bragg. I checked into the sixth group again, and it was a wild time. I was on a team. We did a lot of stuff. We were always training. We were always going someplace, and it helped. Didn't have a lot of personal relationships. and just I just couldn't get into that I got laid but I didn't get into personal relationships and and gradually the why not just weren't ready didn't want to let myself go I didn't want to trust somebody that hadn't gone to what I went through and I I saw all my friends that were you know having problems with their marriages and their girlfriends the same thing we drank a lot a lot I managed to control myself so I didn't get in a lot of trouble but like I said once you've been on that kind of adrenaline high it's hard to give it up for ice cream cones and cognac so it was took a long while to totally decompress to the level where I was socially acceptable. And you'd be looking at people going, and they'd say something, and you'd go, you stupid fuck, and then go at it. But I think what really saved me was I got married. when I I'm really sorry for her because she was 19 and I was 27 and I had a baby daughter and I got orders to go to Berlin which in those days was like grabbing a brass ring and hitting the top And I was getting ready to go to Berlin She knows she was going to have to She was a 19 from what the name of that town up in San Francisco Bay Monterey? Not Monterey. I can't think of the name. Palo Alto? No, further north, up right, shit, the big electronics center now. Silicon Valley? I'll think of it later after we get off this thing now. But her parents were from there. Her sister had married a guy from the 5th Special Forces Group. And their marriage was already on the rocks when I met her. I got married in Monterey, full military wedding, of which Spider Parks and two other guys tried to stab me with the sabers when I walked down to it. We'd been drinking. Yeah. But got married. She got pregnant. We drove to Fort Devens, my next assignment. And I was at Fort Devens for about two years with her, and things just fell apart. I was working as a bouncer at a place in Leominster for extra money, and we didn't get paid all that much. I told somebody the other day, the E7 asked me, he says, how much do you make as an E7? So my pay was $1,250 a month. And he went, what? And when he told me what they had paid now, I wanted to rob them right there on the spot. But, you know, money was tight. You know, I was gone a lot. The first year I was at Fort Devens, I saw her 112 days out of that year. The rest of the time I was either on exercises, flintlock, mobile training team, wherever. And it just fell apart. And I went to West Point. Every year the cadets, the sophomore cadets, get patrolling, mountaineering, rubber wraps, all that training and that. And everything's new. They get everything new, new Jeeps, new weapons, new fatigues, new poncho liners, you name it. And when I came back from that training I had a week to clear posts before I went to or no I had a month leave and a week to clear posts And when I got back to Fort Devens I walked into my government housing and there was nothing in it. All my clothes were piled in the middle of the of the living room and all the furniture was gone there was a container of sour milk in the refrigerator and a beer and i sat there on the floor and had that beer and i i called up jay graves and told him what happened he said don't say anything i'll be there in 30 minutes and he came down picked me up took took me up to his place and dropped me off with a well known gangster, a real criminal. And I stayed with him for a week. And I made the mistake of trying to go back to California and patch things up, which didn't work out at all. I got back there. I tracked her down to a nightclub and she was sitting on her ex-boyfriend's lap when I jumped him and bit a dollar-sized hole out of the top of his head. And the fight was on. And the bouncers decided they didn't want anything to do with me after I broke one of them's arm. And I just escaped and got outside, realized how badly I'd fucked up, and still tried to go back and talk to her. And when I got there, her father stormed out the front door and shoved me, and I hit him, and he had a heart attack. so from there it was a mad flight to get somewhere I hired a private plane to fly me to another city and then caught commercial air when I got back to Boston I stopped in Cincinnati or some place and I called Jay I said I got into some trouble And he goes, we know. I said, what do you mean you know? He said, don't go to Boston Airport. The state police are waiting for you with a warrant. And I said well OK So I flew into New York City and Chester God I loved him He died here two years ago A former Marine from the late 50s, Fleet Marine, who became a criminal. He was, the FBI always suspected he was involved in this or that. He was a one-man crime wave, boosting trucks, selling the stuff, you know. Great guy, just full of life. I had travel orders and a ticket on, you know, the contracted airlines and had to leave from Boston and go to Frankfurt and then on to Berlin. He bought me a first-class ticket on British Airways out of Connecticut. into Frankfurt. And that's how I escaped the net. And the group actually covered my ass. They told them that I was on classified orders and that I had already left and that they no longer were responsible for me. They'd have to talk to my receiving unit, but unfortunately that was classified and they couldn't tell them with the group commander involved in that loop. And so I went from there to Berlin, and Berlin really was the healing process. You know, it was exciting. It was demanding. It kept me occupied. I was in an environment that I absolutely loved. Berlin is still one of my favorite cities. They're in Munich. Those two hit the top of the charts. I was speaking German almost all the time either in my job or I was living out on the economy I had a really nice flat over in Salendorf that was it was just magic I had two motorcycles and a Volvo so I had plenty of stuff mental health stuff I'd get on a Harley and put something exciting between their legs and take a drive. And I met a woman there that was in ASA, Army Security Agency. between their legs and take a drive, you know. between their legs and take a drive, you know. And I met a woman there that was in ASA, Army Security Agency. She was an oral comprehension specialist, listening and being able to translate. She couldn't speak Russian, but she could listen to it and understand the dialects and all that, named Claire. And Claire, wow. she was something I lived with her for almost four years before I dumped out of the army and she just you know recently surfaced and she, our relationship eventually fell apart because I didn't want to get married I decided I was never getting married again and she wanted to get married, I didn't So she went off and married a real nice guy, a warrant officer, and built a life out of that. But the time in Berlin was really healing because there was just so much going on. We were doing stuff like, you know, in Dead A, we did a lot of work with the Sonderneinsatzkommando, S-E-K, which is their counterterrorist, counterintelligence police. and they were great guys. I mean, every one of them were just really talented. They were like special forces. Same attitude, same skills. I mean, just wonderful guys. I managed to, about halfway through there, there were six of them going on vacation to the United States. So I lined them up with all my friends and contacts that were in California, Arizona, places like that. every one of them came back with a saddle that they were going to put in their bar downstairs and use that as their stool to sit on. And a lot of interaction with them. We did a lot of counter surveillance and surveillance of their targets. What better way to learn? We'd follow Soviet agents, East Sherman agents, criminals, whatever they had on the ticket list. or we'd do counter surveillance, you know, with their guys trying to follow us You know we played the rabbit the hare So you really got good at people watching you and being able to sense it and that. And all the little tips of the trade and that. And then, funny story, I had the Volvo, and I wanted to get another car and get it registered as a German vehicle. So I wanted to get a Volkswagen. But I knew this guy, German guy. He owned a bar up in the Turkish sector. Gunter. Gunter was afraid of his girlfriend, right? And Gunter was aggravating, but he was fun sometimes. He had a Messerschmitt. You know what that is? No. Okay. After the war, Messerschmitt, the actual Messerschmitt factory, designed a car that was powered by a motorcycle engine and had two wheels in the front, one wheel in the back. And it actually looked like the fuselage of a Messerschmitt 109. You had to get in it, you had to pull the canopy back, climb in the front seat and had a passenger seat behind you in that. And I fell in love with it the first time I saw it. Shit, I got to have this, right? so I make a deal with Gunter for $2,500 cash and I bought that thing from him and he's fussing about the paperwork well you know what if you get in an accident when you're going back to your house and that I'd prefer if I drove with you and that you know so come up and pick up the car said okay the date when I went up to pick it up I'm wearing a leather jacket a leather flying helmet and a white scarf and goggles and he goes Oh, no. I said, hop in the back. Come on, we'll get down there. Don't worry. He said, have you been drinking? No, not at all. I had a flask underneath the seat already, and I was fairly well lit. We took off down to Havel, which is like in the center of Berlin, there's a freeway. Before we got a quarter of the way out of the turkey sector, I already had two police escorts trying to catch me. And I'm weaving in and out of traffic. I've got the canopy pulled back and the scurfs out the window and I'm cackling as I'm going along. I got far enough ahead of them and I was using the shoulders everything I could to avoid them in that We came up on the Grunewald exit which if you turn left you go over to Clay Alley where the consulate is and Berlin headquarters, and my BEQ was over there too, but my apartment was further down over in Salendorf, which is next to the big Bonsai, the lake there. So I see the cutoff, and if you turn left, you go over to the American side. If you turn right, you're on the horse trails that go around. The Grunewald is a 12-mile long, 3-mile wide park, all forests and hiking trails, horse trails, all that. And that Messerschmitt could scoot in there, and the cop cars couldn't. Nice. So I'm fucking throwing mud, going around corners, taking, because I know the whole area. We go out there and do exercises and that, you know. I finally lose all of them except one, and he's right on my fucking tail. I'm thinking, son of a bitch. He's got to be a dirt track driver and that. So I got down towards Salendorf, and there's an alley that cuts off to the right off the horse trails and that and gets to the end. And there's just enough space to get that Messerschmitt through. And it goes on a long, gentle slope down to the Hobble River where it's paved walkways and that. And it's like a block and a half up to where my apartment is, which is an old mansion. I got the second floor. So I get down there and the guy's right behind me. And I'm looking around. I said, it doesn't look familiar. And I see the hedge. I said, well, just cut through the hedge. It's a gentle slope. See if this baby can take some damage. Turned to the right. There was a moment of weightlessness. And then we hit the water. It was the wrong alley. Went through the hedge, out about 20, 30 feet, and straight down into the river. When I surfaced, I came to the surface, and I'm looking around for Gunter. And he bubbled up to the top a couple seconds later. First thing out of his mouth was, I hate you. So I said well you know we got more problems than that We need to get out of the water for one thing And then we got to shore and there was a taxi stand not far from there that was a lighted telephone pole. You could pick it up and call a taxi. And I called my flat, and Claire was there, and I said, you need to come pick me up at such and such a location. There was a little guest house that was closed, but the place we used to go and have a wine or cheese plate, whatever. I said, come down here and pick me up at, what was the name of that? Something Forest. And she shows up about 10 minutes later with the Volkswagen that I had bought her. And we packed Gunther into the back of it, and we drive all the way back up to Bedding. And by that time, the whole park's full of fucking police cars going up and down the streets, driving around, you know, looking for us. And then we get back up there, and all the way up there, I tell them, I said, look, it's simple. I've already signed the pink slip, right? Just tell them, don't even show them the pink slip. Tell them it was in the car and that somebody stole the car. You'll get, your insurance will pay for the car, no problem. Everything's handled, right? but three days later i go into the detachment and i walk in the team room and one of the guys from the scuba team comes in and throws the license plate from the uh from the from the measure schmidt he says you might want to keep this and uh a little after that i walked back in and my team started with a wonderful guy named cray chuck he was sitting at his desk and my leather flying helmet was on his desk all sodden and everything and he's tapping it with a pencil. He said, you might want to put this in with that plate. Evidently the scuba team had been called out by the German police diving team because they were trying to recover two drunks that had gone into the Hobble River and they were dragging the river for their bodies and that. Holy shit. It was a healing process. Sounds like quite the healing process. Yeah. A great group of guys, great mission. Saw a lot of really, you know, a lot of guys from Project went to Dead Egg. There was probably, when I was there, there was probably 20 of us that had been in projects. There was probably, when I was there, there was probably 20 of us that had been in projects. It's like all your friends that you don't want as a character would show up. But the only sour point about it was I was there when the general that wanted to get controlled and his hatchet man sent his hatchet man down there. And he hated me with a passion. and the feeling was fucking mutual. He made sure he wasn't in front of me on any jumps, just in case his static line got disconnected. About a couple of those. Yeah, you know, they're a sour taste, but they are there. There's no denying it. They're little martinets that think their shit doesn't stick. Nick, where's your daughter now? I tracked her down. One of the guys that I used as an instructor was up. They headed a SWAT team in Costa Mesa and a homicide detective. And when he got out, he became a private eye. And he tracked her down to San Jose. And she was living in San Jose about two miles from where her grandparents were. and I found her on the internet and sent her a note saying, you know, I really hate to break it to you this way, but I might be your natural father. And she took her sight down the next day. And that was the last I heard of her, except, how long ago? about five or six years ago, my phone rang, and a young man was on it, somebody post-teenager but young. And he goes, are you Nick Brockhaus? And I said, yes, I am. He says, I'm your eldest grandson. And I heard a bunch of yelling in the background, a woman's voice, and he never called back. As far as I know, she's in San Jose. My ex married a Cajun so that all wrapped together it probably wasn't a good idea to go back and try and establish filial ties so I still think about her what would you say to her I'm sorry do you think you'll get that opportunity who knows winning the lottery and that soothes a lot of hard feelings. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe she'll see what I'm doing now and try and make contact herself. I wouldn't put money on it, but, you know. Have you done any interviews before? What? Have you done many interviews before? A couple of them. You know, I did one with, who's the guy, the captain from SF? That was a good one. I just did one last night with two L.A. cops. It's called War Stories. They were fun. One of them was a former Marine. I kept telling her, I know there's some dark shit in your path. Don't lie to me. I hope you meet her again. I hope you get to say that to her. I do, too. I do, too. You know, I don't have any real regrets in my life. I'm not a perfect man. I got a lot of flaws. At least I admit my flaws, you know, and I live with them. There's no such thing as a perfect man. Yeah, according to my partner, he's close to it. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. We covered a lot of ground. We did. How are you feeling? Well, I'm fine. I wrote three books. The first two were about projects. And without my trying, they became cult books. I've had many, many people. And I didn't write it for the public. I wrote it for the guys I bled with. And I'm happy as hell when one of them walks up to me and goes, Way to go, Nick. but the public seemed to taken them well and they I still getting paid royalties so I guess they doing all right I wrote this book Vagabonds because I had a contract to supply a West African nation with six 737 on a lease And I happen to know a wonderful man in London that I'd been in the freight business with in Africa that had all these airline, how to get airplanes and run an airline and that. And we set up a lease contract with them for six years. Contract was signed. Money was being transferred into escrow. I moved from Palm Desert to Tucson because they were going to paint all the planes and put delivery on them and that and do the sea check and that before they sent them to Africa. I got there, and a month later, COVID came ashore. Oh, shit. And everything died. I was set to make $35,000 a month on a six-year contract. So I got there, and that's when I moved in. I signed a lease for two years with my business partner as a co-tenant, and everything dropped out. So we were locked up for COVID. we're sitting there we watched everything on netflix and so what are we going to do let's write a book about what we did after we got out of the military so we wrote the book 67 days start to finish nice pushed it through i had a wonderful editor in london oxford a woman named ruth shepherd been really good to me the owner of the company I would gladly run over with a pickup truck. But she's wonderful, and her staff is wonderful. She got it approved, got it published, and that. And it doesn't do as well as the other two books. And it was all about what he and I did after we got out of the military. We rescued kidnapped children in Algeria, Guatemala. rescued people in Mexico from kidnaps, real kidnap gangs. And one in Chechnya, which I'll never do again. Why not? I didn't actually run that thing. That was a friend of mine that had the contract in that. I came up with a way of tracking the victim And I used the Russian Jeff and I had gone to Russia oh god back as one of the things we did we went to Kazakhstan with a asphalt company that was trying to get a contract to build four-lane highways connecting Kazakhstan with the rest of Russia and that and And they used cold-mixed concrete, or cold-mixed asphalt, which you can use in arctic conditions. That's why they built the Alcan Highway out of them, because no frost thieves, all that stuff. So we had met, my friend in London introduced us to the KGB at a very high level. And we went to Moscow. and met the head of directorate nine, who was a lieutenant general in the KGB, had a beautiful baritone voice, spoke fluent English and fluent German. And where was I going with that? So anyway, we went to Kazakhstan. It's in the book. The adventures of going over there and doing that. And were we on the airplanes or on the – I lost my track there for a moment. You were going to Russia. Yeah, we went to Russia for this deal with the asphalt company. And that was one of the things. And while I was there, I made really good contacts with the KGB. and after communism fell, you understand the KGB did not belong to the central government. It belonged to the Communist Party. So when the Communist Party fell out, they no longer had a mandate to operate. So they were going through all this writing about how they were going to build a new Russia and that, and that's how they came up with the FSB, which is what they have currently in that. But the KGB also owned all kinds of things. They owned cities where they had research going on. They had no roads going in or out. Everything came in by air. Scientific facilities. They owned gold mines. They owned oil fields. And they were funding themselves, but they were looking mines, they owned oil fields, and they were funding themselves, but they were looking for cash. And on the thing in Chetia, we actually rented a Spetsnaz outfit. We had come up with a way to track them, and actually the Russians came up with it. and it was a friendly isotope. And the victim was an industrialist from the West, tried to make an oil deal with the Chechens. The Chechens grabbed him and demanded money, basically how it went. The first group that went in to try and pay the ransom, they just killed him and took the money. The second group went in were SAS guys, and they shot their way out of it. And my friend who was an SAS guy actually picked up the third and we came up with this plan that if we could locate him, we also could put enough force to actually grab him. So the Russians came up with two tricks. One was a way to track him, and that was a friendly isotope. There were only two places in the region where you could buy the medicine that he needed to stay alive. So they broke in there and dosed all his medication with that friendly isotope. If he peed on the ground, they could detect it from the air. So they did a nest team flying back and forth doing the grids, and they located him in a mountain village. And they came up with a substance they could treat the money with. If you touched the money, within 24 hours you were dead. So they dosed the ransom. They picked it up. They had already located the village, and about 2 o'clock in the morning they went in and rescued him. There was about eight of them that were still kicking, and everybody else was dead. No old people and no children. Damn. All young people in the building. So, you know, it was— The Russians are—they've got finesse sometimes, and sometimes they're bull in the court. Damn. But they're—my trip over there, my association with them, you know, I knew who they were, and I knew what the communists were. They were my sworn enemies at one time But I watched them rebuild after a total collapse of the system I asked Vladimir the general I said so what kind of government do you think you going to have? He goes, well, Nick, it won't be communist because that's gone. And it won't be Western either. But one thing it will be is Russian, totally Russian. And that's what he came up with, a free market society still with the vestiges of one strong man and one strong party. And I admire him for being able to pull through without totally collapsing. It's interesting to watch the events and watch Trump working with them and trying to. But he realized, you know, the Europeans were raping them after the communism fell. They went and made deals with all the steel plants and the shipyards in Poland and all that and basically fed the U.S. this thing about, you know, how crooked the communists are and they're still in control while they were buying everything and making joint ventures. Oddly enough, the Kazakhs, you know the one group of people they would rather do business with? Germans. Because the Germans keep meticulous records. So it was really interesting. We did a lot of things with a lot of different people. And eventually we trained SWAT teams. We trained personal bodyguards in Mexico. I ended up supplying my clients with armored cars that were produced in my partner's plant in Mexico City. Tried to stay away from working with the government. You can get on a lot of kimchi without too much effort with that crowd. Yeah. Well, as you know. You have lived a lot of lives. You get painted. Say you know something, and you feel it's in your, because the person you are, it's your best interest to tell federal law enforcement. The minute that you do that, they start building a jacket on you. If you're hanging out with these people, obviously you're a bad guy. So I did that once and regretted it in the end and I swore never again You know if it meant somebody life yeah But I just don have a lot of trust in their ethics So anyway, to the present time, we come back to Jeff Miller, my partner, came out here and met a studio, a production company called Show Dog Studio. run by a really great guy, John Attard. He was a former NCO in the Royal Fusiliers way back when. And he made an offer to love the book, said, we can turn this into a Netflix series. So that was the offer that he gave us. What they're currently planning is to turn it into a streamer. Using the book as the basis. I mean, basically, every chapter can become an episode. Congratulations. Well, I'm happy about it when the check clears the bank. Well, that's pretty funny. You know, the thing's going to be called American Ronin. Not my choice, but it'll work. Sounds pretty badass to me. You know, they can keep Hollywood out of it, you know, and make it, you know, stick to the story. When do you think it will go? I hope I'm not speaking out of turn here. Me, personally, I think they will actually start writing sometime this spring and filming maybe fall and release in late 26. Actually, if everything works. Man, well, that will be awesome. Yeah, we'll see. I can't wait to see it. I'm pleased with it because it's interesting. He's pleased with it because he wants his grandkids to go, That's Grandpa. And I'm doing everything I can to ruin that scene. Anyway, that's what I'm doing now. And I'm still writing every once in a while. I wrote a fiction book years ago that I may get published. It's about Gaius Cascologenus, who was a centurion that stabbed Christ in the side. No shit. On the hill And as the myth goes when he stabbed him in the side a clear liquid if he hung on a cross what happens is your pleural cavity fills up with liquid and you suffocate. Between the bleeding and the trauma, you suffocate in your own juices. When he pushed the lance to his side, that clear liquid splashed out on his hands, his shoulders, and he had a milky eye that was from a sling stone. and his sight returned, his arthritis and that was all gone. And as Christ looked at him, the myth is that he says, as you are centurion, so you shall remain until we meet again. And Robin Moore wrote a series of books called Casca, The Eternal Soldier. And I met Robin at the SOA, and I said, you know, I'd really like to do an update on that. How do I get to use the copyright on the character? And he goes, Casca's not copyrighted. Casca was a real person. He was a Spaniard, Iberian, and he actually was the, what do you call it, the Pylem Prima, the head spear, the most senior centurion ever, legion and that. He was actually the centurion that had the guard mount in the center of the city, and that's how he came to be there. No kidding. And you go to South America, that myth pops up every once in a while. The Roman, you know, the Romans around. So I wrote a fiction book based around the Banana Wars in El Salvador, and that brought it up to date. And I just never published it. Well, I hope you do. I'm fiddling around with it still. Anyway, I don't want to keep you too late. No, Nick, it's been an honor. It's been an honor for me. Me too. I watch you on TV and I go, there's something about that guy. Well, seriously, it's been an honor to get your story out. You're going to make me blush. Come on. You've been through, you've lived a lot of lives. but I've lived a long and eventful life and I've met a lot of good but now I've lived a long and eventful life and and I'm I've met a lot of good people I met some that weren't some of them passed not by my hand and but I I think the thing I learned is that I love being human. Yeah. Every aspect of it. The agony and the ecstasy. Good. Yeah. And stay away from redheads. All right. Yeah. I will. Yes. I have to jerk. Oh, wait. Oh, thank you. You too. Cheers. No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.